Video Transcript: How to Start a Business part 1 - Do Something

All right. Welcome to the next video. I hope you're enjoying these plenty to think  about. Let all the things that you're learning percolate in your mind. Lot of your  best thoughts will come when you're not working at something, but it's there. It's  all working. Things will happen in your life. You'll meet somebody, and it will  relate to things that you've learned. So keep learning, keep growing. God  created us with these minds that can absorb things, not only absorb things, but  uniquely put them together. God is a God who works through many different  means. So what we're going to look at in the next three videos is how to start a  business. How, if you were thinking a business, starting a business or an  enterprise, what are the things that you would do? I put here as the tagline, do  something a lot of people talk and think and read, but they never actually do  something. I'm hoping that you are one that will actually try to do you may fail.  You probably will fail if this is your first attempt, but you'll never get to success  without trying, without doing something. Okay, start with your education. You  want to start something. You want to start a business. Start by learning  something. This class, for example, you're taking this class. You're interested in  enterprise. You're interested in tent making, perhaps making a living, supporting  your family, but also getting into ministry. That's why you came to Christian  leaders Institute in the first place. So start with this class. Then there are other  classes that you could take in the enterprise program. There's classes on  finance. There's a whole class on marketing. We're going to keep adding  classes. Talked to Henry this morning. He has this person that can teach a class on leadership. We're going to have class after class after class on these topics.  This is sort of just 101, it's an introductory to the whole concept. You get a  general idea of all these things. But I encourage you, after this class to take  other classes go in depth on some of these things. It will greatly help you in  terms of starting something. Call on successful people that you know, call on  successful people that you know in your town, or that are somehow in your  network, and just ask, if you can ask them a few questions. I know somebody  who called on some of the big names in our country, and you wonder, how he,  how did he do that? And what he did is he, he sent a letter to the secretaries,  and he said, I would like 15 minutes with your boss, just to ask him about  business, and I will pay $100 I will pay $100 to have this talk. Most of them let  him have the talk for no money at all. They were just amazed that he, you know,  was willing to do that to hear what they had to say. So talk to people, successful  people that you know, call successful business people that you've heard of. Why not? The the worst that can happen to you is someone will just say no. You'll be  amazed at how many people will say yes, if you have some kind of connection,  and it can be a connection of any sort. You know, I'm Dutch. I can call on any  Dutch person in the world and start off with, Hey, I'm Dutch too, and I want to  learn something about what you do. And so I'm calling you, and nine times out of 10 they will meet with me, because there is some kind of connection we connect

with what is familiar next. Look for a mentor, someone that can help you,  someone who's succeeded already. And there's two kinds of mentors to look for. One is someone that is hugely successful, someone in your network for Henry  and I with CLI, when we started connecting with someone like Rich DeVos, co  founder of Amway, one of the richest people in the world. And the connection  was possible because there's a similar background, same denomination, same  Dutch background. And so it was a possibility. Well, he agreed to mentor us and  to help us, and so we learned a lot from someone who was incredibly, wildly  successful. And that's helpful. It the number one thing it does for you is it  bolsters your. Sense of what is possible and what you could do, because  people, in the end, are people, and you'll discover that the most wildly  successful person in the world is still a person just like you. Secondly, find  someone who's just ahead of you. I just listened to a TED talk, and this person  was talking about, you know, how people succeed and when they have, when  they listen to a successful person who is wildly ahead of them, often they get  discouraged. If you play basketball with someone like Shaquille O'Neal, who is  seven feet tall and he can dunk the basketball, it's discouraging for someone like me, five foot nine, because I can't even come close to doing what he does. So if  I, if I do something and it's totally out of my league, I feel like a beginner. I get  discouraged because I'm a long ways from being what they are. But if I, let's  say, play a sport with someone who's just a little bit better than I am, then I feel  like, Hey, I'm close. If I just keep working at this, I could actually be as good as  this person. So find someone in business, someone who's just gotten started,  someone like you, who's just a little bit ahead of you and talk to that person,  because when you're done talking, you'll feel like, hey, I can do this too for me.  In my whole church planting world, it was it was Henry. He was planting a  church in Chicago. I was planting a church in Vancouver. I don't know if he was  ahead or if I was ahead, but we were in similar places. I talked to other people. I  went to seminars, people that built mega churches, and lot of times I just get  discouraged. I'm a long way from that. But when I talk to Henry, it's like, Hey,  you're doing the thing that I'm doing, and what you do is something that I could  possibly do. And it was very, very encouraging. All right, next, if you, if you want  to start a business, you got to figure out what your product or service is. What is  it going are you going to come up with a product that you sell? Are you going to  come up with a service that you do for someone? Basically, those are the two  things, things to sell to people, products and services. If you come up with a  product or even a service, make a prototype of a product or a makeshift service  to test it, you have an idea. Instead of, you know, going in and manufacturing a  bunch of things and spending a lot of money make a few back in 1996 Henry,  and I joined forces. We started our own nonprofit. I moved from Vancouver, he  moved from Oregon, and we came to Chicago. We're going to start a new  nonprofit. We had an idea. I had taken a time management course, and we had 

a thing called the planner, and there was a way to keep track of your things and  your times and what you were doing, your to do list and all of that, and your  goals and all of that kind of stuff. We're going to talk about that in a video in the  future. But at the same time, I was struggling or figuring out this whole concept  of a walk with God in my personal life, my marriage, my family, my church, all of  these things. So on the one hand, I was trying to get my life in order, time  management, and I'd write in my to do list and all these things. And then I had  my prayer sheets. We actually did prayer. We wrote out our prayers. So I'd get  up in the morning, and I would write out my prayers, God bless this meeting.  Bless this thing I'm going to do, bless, you know. And I'd go through my prayers,  then I'd get to the church office, and I'd get out my planner, and I'd write my to  do list. And I'm going to do this meeting, and I do this thing, you know. And after  a couple of weeks, I discovered, you know, I'm doing this twice. I'm I'm making  my prayer list, and then I'm making my to do list, and there the same thing. So  we have this idea of, why don't we do a planner that does both, where your to do list is your prayer list. I only do it once. My planning is my prayer to God. So  Henry and I, we bought Mac books. They were tiny little things, and we learned  how to do these programs, and we made a planner, the 365 day, two page  planner, and the to do list was the prayer list. And we put in a verse for the day,  and we put in a thought for the day, and we put it in a question for the day. And  then, while we're at it, we thought, well, let's put different reading tracks Bible  reading tracks through the whole Bible in a year, through the New Testament a  year, we added these different things, and it was a planner, and so we did it, and we printed, like 1000 of them. And then we started marketing them. We put it in  magazines, we put it here. And I remember we still have that. We have a picture  somewhere of the first van load that we brought to the post office. We started  with just an idea. We used it. We had other people use it, and then we printed a  small number and see, can we sell these. And then we got connected to the  Bible League, another nonprofit organization. We brought the planner thing to  them. We started doing it with school, in schools, and soon we were doing  50,000 a year. We started with a small little idea. We made them out of paper,  we Xeroxed them, and we used them ourselves. We then got other people to do  the same thing. We started out small, and then we gradually built from there,  make a prototype. Make a prototype of your service, and then get out there and  do something with it. Test, test, test, go out and make something happen. Don't  sit at a desk and try to figure out everything and get your product perfectly, and  then when you have your product perfectly, make a gazillion of them, because it  might not work at all. What you come up with is never the thing ultimately that  you're going to do or make or sell. So you've got to do little things, little at a time, get out there and make it happen over and over again. Test, all right. Start with  friends and family. People will try them because they're related to you. Hey, I got this concept. Try this. Henry and I started something called Life Debt 21 back, 

back in the 90s. It was a walk with God. And it was the serendipity Bible, and it  was writing out your prayers. And if you did your prayers for 21 days in a row,  you'd get a green sticker. If you did it 42 days in a row, you get a silver sticker. If  you get did it 63 days in a row, you got a gold sticker. I still have my Bible with  my stickers in it. We started with our family and friends. Hey, we think people  should have a walk with God. You want to try this? And then we did it. And then  once our family and friends liked it, and it seemed to be going really well, we did  it in our churches. And then we started making a kit. We made some little  cassettes that people could listen to how it's done, and we packaged them, put  them in a box, and we sold them. We started with our family and friends. We  weren't worried about making a huge profit. Let's just see if this works at all.  Eventually, when it worked well, we called up the serendipity Bible people. We  got a deal, you know, if we bought so many of them, and so, you know, we  started to scale things. But in the beginning, we just did what we could. We just,  we used the copier just make it happen. Put some mud on the wall. It's a phrase we have here in the United States. You put some mud on the wall and see if  something sticks. You try something. If it sticks, if it works, then we keep  developing it. Half the things that we try are we going to throw that mud on the  wall? It's just going to fall down and come to nothing, okay, but if you don't throw Mud on the wall, you're never going to find out what works and what doesn't.  Sell your prototype and or your makeshift service to as many people as you can  get out there and make something happen. I can't emphasize this enough. Just  go out and do the process of getting out there, talking to people, seeing if it  works, seeing what's wrong, is going to fine tune the idea that you have make a  business plan. Maybe you've heard about business when you want to start a  business, you got to make a business plan. Make a business plan only after  plenty of trial and error. Too many spend a lot of time and money perfecting an  idea that ultimately does not work. I know so many people that have gone, for  example, into teaching. They go to four years of college, they go into this  teaching profession, and after four years of college, they discover that they  really don't like kids, or they don't like teaching, and they discover that after four  years of school, before you invest four years of school into this thing, practice  teach, volunteer, go to Church, teach Sunday school, see if you like this, then  put in all the time in the effort. So people will do that. They'll they'll just spin their  wheels spending all this time. So in a business, it's easy to sit at a desk and in  make logos and and make possible titles of your name and research this, and  research that, instead of getting out there and doing something, you got to get  out of the office and start talking to people. It's easy to sit at a desk and make  plans, design logos, map out websites and play around with numbers. You  know, if I make this, make so many of these, we sell so many. This is how much  we can make I'm not saying you don't do any of that, but you can spend all your  time doing that, rather than get out and talk to potential customers. That's where

the idea is going to go. You have to talk to people. Okay, opportunity comes  when you are out on the street, making connections. So number one, learn from potential customers. They're going to tell you whether they like it or they don't.  That's the cool thing about the marketplace. People don't like it, they won't buy  it. Here's some questions that you might ask people. Why do you think most  people would not want to buy this product or service. So you have a product,  you have a service, you take it to them, and you go, why do you think people  wouldn't want to buy this product? Now it's kind of a negative thing, but I'll tell  you it works. I used it in church planting. People that I would meet. I was  planting a church in Surrey, in British Columbia, near Vancouver, and every  person that I met, I asked this question, why do you think people don't go to  church? It was a great question, why do you think people don't go to church?  Now I wasn't asking them why they didn't go to church. If I was asking them why they didn't go to church, it would be offensive, but I was asking them what they  thought. Why do you think people don't go to church? They were eager to tell  me, Oh, I'll tell you why people don't go to church. I'd say the two most common  answers was, sermons are irrelevant and boring. And number two, churches are more interested in money than they are in you. So I know those. I had to answer those two objections. So I'd ask them that question. They would go on and on  and on. They were happy to tell me, because I was asking for their opinion, and  they knew something about it. By the way, they would, in the end, tell me why  they didn't go to church. Then the follow up question was this. Follow up  question was, if you were to go to church, what would you like to see different  there if you were, I'm not saying you'd want to go to church, but if you were to go to church, what would you want to see? And all of a sudden, I've got a person  who would never consider going to church, considering it. They're thinking,  Okay, well, if I were to go to church, which is a thought I've never had in my life.  This is what would have to change. This is what I would like to see. And so just  adapt that to the business world. If you were to buy this product or service, what  would you change about it that would help you do so see, I got them actively  Now, considering my product or considering my service, and they're going to  give their insights as to what it would take for me to sell it to them. Opportunity  comes when you're out on the street making connections. Number two, learn  from related businesses. Here's another question you could ask, I'm starting a  business related to your business. How could I do my business in such a way  that would help your business? Is there something I could do that would help  you, or is there something that your business could do to help me see? When  you ask it like this, you're asking for a partner, not a critic. What advice do you  have for a guy starting out in a business like yours, I'm coming to you, I'm being  humble. I am looking to you as a leader. I am honoring you, and I'm saying, what could you do to help me? I did this with I mentioned I play pickleball. It's a game, and, you know, I'm advancing and doing pretty well, but there was a group of 

people that were at the next level, and one of them, he never wanted to play  with me. He totally ignored me. He had nothing to do with me. And one time in  between games, I looked at him and I said, you know, you're a really good  player. What would someone like you? What kind of advice would someone like  you give to me? And he sat down and he thought. He said, Well, I think you  could do this, this and this. And then he said, Well, why don't we play a game  against some other people? And I did exactly what he said. He is one of my best friends now today, and he takes credit for all the good things that I've done, but  that one little question, what could I do that would help me? You're a good  player. What? What could I do that would help me? He became a mentor  without even trying. He became interested in me. Why? Because when I  succeed, he succeeds. He succeeds as a mentor and a coach. Number three,  learn from random people. I'm starting a business that sells this or offers this  service, and I'm looking for advice from ordinary people, the kind of people that  may or may not be interested in my product or service, and that might be you.  How can you help me? What would you say about my idea or my (mumbled)?  Now I'm not. Asking for criticism, I'm asking for help. And there's a difference  between the two. When you ask for criticism, when you ask someone's opinion,  hey, what do you think of this? People go into critique mode. Well, I don't like  this. I don't like that. If you show somebody something you've designed on the  computer and say, Well, what's your opinion of this? They think that if they're  going to say anything intelligent, they have to say something that's critical of  what you've just done. Well, I like it, but I think the blue is wrong or the font is  too big. You get if you ask for someone's opinion, you get a critic. If you ask for  someone's help, you get a partner. Hey, can you help me with this? See, now  they're a partner. Now they're invested, now they're part of it. So ask for help. So in this video, step one, we've explored some ways that you can get going.  They're just basic ways of thinking about starting a business. And video number  two, we're going to continue this question of how does one actually get off the  ground and starting something