How to Know You'll Never Start That Business (And What to Do About It)

Joshua: Okay, Josh, have you been on X recently? On all AI bro. On all AI, okay. AI aside, there's an insane debate going on on X, which is this bunch of high profile founders. in Singapore are like debating about why there is no good entrepreneurs in Singapore. who these high profile founders? Why are we not on it? They are not on it. To be fair, I don't know if they are high profile, but they look like they know what they talking about, so I imagine I assume they are founders. They very articulate about their points. Yeah, so one guy was like, ⁓ I realized I just paid my taxes in Singapore last weekend, and I realized Singapore would never be a great startup hub because everything just works too well here. It's too convenient for people to want to do anything. And then another guy is like... ⁓ running a startup in Singapore is so negative EV. 100 % If I'm earning like 20-30k a month, which is not crazy if you work in the right industry, Like, doing a startup is so hard. Why would you choose that path? It's negative EV and I met founder of Doctor Anywhere, Waiman. was telling me he was on track to earn a million dollars a year at Temasek or GIC. Doing a startup is so negative EV. People grind for years and they don't even get a million dollar outcome. What's a million dollars a year? What are you talking about? Bro, I don't understand that world. We are not smart enough to settle that debate about why systematically there is no better founders in Singapore, whether it's true. But we have seen a lot of people who come to us and be like, ⁓ I want to start a business on the side. I want to quit my corporate job one day and start a business. Every day, bro. Every day people are DMing me about this, bro. But also right, sometimes you look at them and we are like, we know you're not going to be a founder. Don't share my inner thoughts out with other people. Okay, but Josh, let's break down why. Why do we look at some people and be like, I don't think you're gonna do what you say you're gonna do and be a founder. I have some perspective on this. I think the first one is like, I think that salary is like one of the most potent drugs in the world, right? Because if you're constantly getting a certain amount of money at the end of the month, whether you perform or not, right? Like you just securely get that. Every month you just wait for that dopamine hit, right? Why would you leave that drug? to go to a place where you probably suck for an unknown period of time not having any cash to come in the the the it makes no sense for for you to jump out of it right so I might as well continue taking that drug right it's too comfortable yeah bro and the higher you climb the worse it is if you are earning like what we said like 10-20k a month like why why why would you do that Like if you think about like, Ecom margins right? We don't talk about the people that say that, ⁓ I made like six figures of money. We talk margins bro, because revenue is vanity. What? Profit is sanity, right? We talk about margins. On average, Ecom maybe if you are good, 20%, right? 20 % net margins you put in your pocket. To earn what? 50... to earn like 10k a month, you need $50,000 in revenue. If you sell a $50 product, you need a thousand people to buy from you every month to earn the same amount of money that if you sit down at your corporate job and you type every day on Excel and you get the same amount of money! That is true. is true. Yeah. Like why would you leave that? So are you saying that the more income a person earns, the less likely he is going to actually quit his job and become a founder? 1000 % bro Right So if you see a lawyer or doctor tell you they want to be a founder you'll be like nope you're not going to quit your drug Yeah, yeah Probably if like maybe for doctors if they open their own clinic right but because it's like it's kind of certain right for lawyers I think jumping out to build your own like legal center is a little bit hard but most of them they earn their money from being a partner in the law firm which can give them like a million dollars a year. So why would you go out and take all these risks and you need to figure out so many other things? True, true. Goes back to work. If you have a good job, well-paying job where the income is certain, then it's negative easy to start a business or to be a founder. Negative. ⁓ But most people are probably around their mid-30s to 40s. ⁓ It's more like, wah, I tired. Everyday do same thing. And then they see us and they think like, look like they very free. Like okay what, you run a business okay what. We are very free now. Now. Okay what other signs you see that when a person comes to you, it makes you feel like they not going to be a founder? I think one very clear thing is, they like to ask me for should I do this? They like to ask for permission okay? Yes, they like to ask for permission to like... Should I run ads or should I do organic? Or should I go and visit my supplier? it feels like they need permission to go and test things and fail. They kind of need that certainty. It's a very corporate Singapore mindset of like, ⁓ I want to this risk. I need someone, someone to just tell me that I can do it. And that someone is you, you're the Jesus. Yeah, they basically need me to say, very good. I'm of you. Now for me, it's like, just try bro. It's like, know, so I think for some people, when they come and ask me things that are Googleable or things that are A-hiable, I ignore their message now. Right. Because I think they cannot make it. Because... Because like... Yeah, you don't even have that initiative to go and like figure this out and figure it out. Yeah. Right. Like very, very clear stuff like, ⁓ this one, ⁓ how do I ship from China to Singapore? I'm like, brother, a million people have done it before. Like you don't need me. If you can't figure something out that is Googleable, you probably aren't ready to be an entrepreneur to start a business. Yes. It's not even like the secrets of e-comm that like I need to tell them. Right like it's the you haven't even tried Yeah, because it's very different if they ask you like they have tried shipping from China to Singapore But they have a very specific question of like hey, bro I've tried shipping is seen from sing out China to Singapore But how do I best optimize the text and holding period in the China warehouse? Do you have a recommendation? that's a very different question. That's a very different question Yes, and or in some of them they came and be like, ⁓ how do I? How do I ⁓ find suppliers? Wow, brother, you know, how many people come and text me? do I find suppliers? helps ya. You go Alibaba, you try already or not? You think everybody wanna work with you? Like who are you? You try a hundred of them, maybe five of them reply you. Right, so the sign is, hey, they ask for permission. They haven't, they resort to asking someone instead of trying the first few steps. Yes, yes. And I think if you think about us right, like sometimes we just do first and we think later. Like okay we have this hypothesis, we're going to test it, we're going to try and figure it out and then we just launch whatever shitty version there is and then we see what happens. There's a little bit more agency. Agency and urgency yes. Agency and urgency right, like you just believe like okay like I have this theory, other people are doing a shit job. I'm gonna do a better job, this naivety and then you just like do first and then you think later. You don't ask for permission to like, like, succeed or- To try something to suck at it. Yeah. Yeah? And I think, I think what you're describing is the things we do well that we don't know we do well as founders. Which is this ability to, yeah I have an idea, let's just do it. I don't need to ask for permission, I'll just find a way to do it and test and only until I'm stuck then I go and ask someone. Yes. Yes. Yeah? Okay, have another sign. This one annoys me the most. It's this person I meet for the first time and he tells me a business idea, maybe an app that he's very excited about. like, great, I'm excited for you. Go and do it. Yeah, do the, what are the next three steps? And he tell me, okay, I think I need to find developer. I need to design a website and talk to customers. Okay, excited. Six months later, you meet this guy, you talk to him again, you ask him how's his progress. He's still telling you the same fucking thing. Yup. Yup. I call this the ideas guy. Yup. Sometimes I call ourselves that bro. Hey bro, but we have forward momentum actually. Hey, hey, hey. Getting too personal here. ⁓ I'm sure you have met this guy right? Yeah. Yeah. Thousand percent like it's just there's always something else right? And I think it goes back to I am still comfortable at my job right? This becomes ⁓ nice to have. This becomes good to have. And if you look at people that succeeded, I think one of the things I heard online is most people that succeed, have a chip on their shoulder. They need to prove something. ⁓ So like, if you're comfortable, you got nothing to prove, why would you take the hard road? It's very hard. Why would you do that? No point at all. True. True, true. What does that thing, ⁓ all your need for accomplishment stems from unhealed trauma. Hey! Yeah bro, if I- if They are all just speaking to insurance agents and kind of high ranking insurance agent because I want to understand ⁓ how they hire. So typically insurance agents, go through this cycle where like at the start, once they make some money, they'll say, okay, I want to build a team but hiring in insurance is very hard, right? So you take whoever that comes and they will run it for one, two years and then they'll realize that, wah, a lot of them cannot make it. So they will streamline it and then they will be left with two to three people that are very good and then they will say that, ⁓ I am trying to bring in only the best people. So I'd like to understand what do you mean by that? How do you identify? What do you mean by the best people? Because previously they are the higher fast fire slow type of people. Because it's difficult to hire. Right? Now they are, okay, I'm gonna hire slow but I'm gonna hire quality. Which, on surface, sounds great. Right? Everybody wants to do that. But in, in practical, how do you do it? I don't know bro. So this one guy, he told me, ⁓ I like to ask them about their childhood. If they have some form of trauma, if they have some form of, ⁓ something to prove, if they came from a very poor family, or people bully them, brother, those people work very hard, bro. People work very hard, bro. Yeah bro, something to prove bro. Right? Like this is their only option. Right. Right? Then like the desperation is different. The desperation and the having to prove something is real. Yeah. I love these interview alphas where you find a new way to discover gems. Yeah. Now we are going into trauma. ⁓ yeah, boy. I have different hypothesis about... these people, which is that. And I think it's a more human nature thing than entrepreneurship specific is that sometimes it's more comfortable to talk about the potential of your idea than actually executing on it. This is, this is like classic procrastinator kind of ⁓ psychology, which is that you actually get, they actually get a high talking about it and that validation from people of saying, ⁓ it's a great idea. I love that for you. I'm very supportive. That actually gives them the high, but when they actually do the thing it, and that comes into reality. that destroys it. So they prefer to be stuck perpetually in the world of potential. Right, right, right, right. Sometimes we get stuck in as well. Yeah. And last time I'm like, you're not gonna do it bro. Six months, maybe six months I'm here to talk about the same shit. Is this the same as like, like why people like to buy Udemy courses, but they actually don't go through it? They just want to feel the high of like accomplishing something. Yes. But actually not doing the actual thing. Yeah. I think it's quite similar in the sense that living in the world of potential is satisfying, it's gratifying, but actually doing it is not. Yeah. Yeah. But okay, so I do actually meet people that last time when I was in that whole everybody should be an entrepreneur type of era, when I see people that are good at what they do, I always think like, why are you not running your own business? Why are you like still working for somebody else? If you are as good as what you say you do and your boss needs you and your boss undervalues you but you produce very good work, why not go and start something on your own? Then I realised I was wrong because they are very good at the craft. But once it comes to things that matter, like let's say in business where a lot of them are very good at the craft but not very good at selling or they don't understand how to sell and that selling becomes something that is very uncomfortable for them. So like at end of the day, they don't even start. So you think about, now white coding is great, right? ⁓ Lovable, like people white code every single thing like that they can think of. How many net new businesses do you think was created because white coding was great? Right? In comparison to the number of apps that were being created, right? The ratio is not very high. Like number of businesses that are created is still very small, but number of things that are white coded are like... immense. Ah, so you're saying a million people are creating apps for themselves but only maybe a fraction of it, a thousand businesses launched from this million app. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I saw the actual stats on Twitter. Gotcha. But I didn't, I didn't, I don't remember. As you just say, the ratio is 0.1 % of VibeCoded. Things actually get launched as business. Yes, but you can see it right? Like, VibeCoding is very exciting. You build and then something gets... Like if something gets produced and you can actually use it. How many of them actually turns it into a business? Because you need to flip from building, being good at a craft, solving a problem to actually selling and taking money from people. Yep. Right? Which in a corporate world, is not something that you need to face. Because in a corporate world, to succeed, you often have to be good at just doing one, two things. Especially your craft. To some degree, it's the politics of it. Sure, but you just need to be good at that one specialization that you have. We're starting a business, you need to be good at what you do, but also a bunch of other skills that supports a business, in particular, selling. In particular, think about the business model, which is different from just being good at what business have you seen? Fortune telling as a business, for example, as a craft. Yeah, yeah. You need to be able to figure out a lot of other stuff, which is why sometimes when new people come and then they say they want to start and then I see like... Maybe you are good at selling, why not just go to an organization where you are just meant to sell high ticket items? Which you might still make a lot of money. And you don't need to figure out product, operations, fulfillment, like everything else is done for you. Your job is to bring in money for the company. Which if you were to start a business, you still need to figure that out on your own. ⁓ so true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Any other signs? have a third one. Come. read a great article recently by Derek Sivers, one of my favorite entrepreneurs. He's one of those man's men. Man's man ⁓ Which is he lives a life that is accomplished in all directions. Okay. I really respect that. There are entrepreneurs that I respect and then there are entrepreneurs whose life I want to live. Yes. He belongs to that. Right? Entrepreneurs whose life I don't be like Elon Musk. It's painful as fuck. But Derek Stevens, I want to live his life. And he did this great article which talks about how your actions are your values. Okay. I.E. the difference. A lot of people say they value certain things, but their actions are not the same. He's saying your values, whatever you tell me about your values is bullshit. The only thing that matters is your actions. Right? And I see this most commonly in people who tell me they want to be entrepreneurs, but when I look at how they spend their spare time, I know they're not going to do it. Right. Spare time or money? Spare time or money, both. Yeah. It is the people who's working corporate and they say they want to be a founder, but they spend most of their free time watching next weeks. Right. Right. You need to be willing to do that sacrifice. When we were doing a go-to and I was still working ⁓ a job outside. I remember taking leave to come back to work. I didn't want to make that kind of sacrifice. Right, right, right. That is when my actions were aligned with my value. Right. Yeah. I think I didn't even have a Netflix subscription until the acquisition. Okay. I still had that. I'm not the most aligned. You're more aligned. Yeah. Yes. I think more people are kind of value on... At least I think I value a lot on entrepreneurs that... that takes the action because the talking is easy. We all know that the execution is the hard part. By the time you take the time to come and message me and wait for me to reply and wait for me to meet you, you could have probably tested 5, 10 things and answered the questions on your own. True? Yeah. So like sometimes it's a little bit harder. to work with people that haven't even started yet. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brother, let me ask you, do you think we have habits that make us entrepreneurs? That we didn't even realize. I think one of the things I realized I do from young is, and that's something from my dad, which is I would go to a restaurant and a place and ask how the fuck does this place make money? Oh damn, you did that since young? Not young when I'm like teenager, maybe my 20s. You know, I go to a restaurant and I'm like, How many tables can they turn in one night? How many people can they see what is their average at all the value? like, ⁓ okay. That means they are making $2,000 a night. Over 20 nights, that is $40,000 and I minus the rent minus, are they making money? Right, right, right. I realize that's one of the signs that someone is likely to be a founder. What do you think? Do you think you have anything they do like that? Yeah, no, I think this is the founder muscle that can be trained on. Okay. Like the founder master can be trained. It's like, if I have friends right, that let's say they know a well-known brand in Singapore and they look at their brand and they say, they got lucky. ⁓ because they have their family rich, founders family rich. That's why they became successful, which may be true. But if you were to, if you have ever ran businesses before, you know that a lot. of times, there's more intentionality in the things that you build or the actions that a business does in order for them to become successful rather than everything is because of one thing. Yep. True. You know when we launched Agotune, people will be like, ⁓ it's just OEM. ⁓ it's ⁓ just another chair. ⁓ I could have done that also. They just sell online. I also can. Yeah. But like the intricacies of like... What website, offer, what's the pricing, like how do you reach out, how do you market, how much to spend on ads, like all these things takes up, ⁓ there's a lot more intentionality done into it. And I think when I hear these people talk about these businesses, to me, they're not gonna make it. Right. Because if I see, I'll be like, okay, there has to be more to it, right? And if you listen to more founder type of podcast, you would have known. that a lot of times there's a lot of things that goes on behind it. Yeah, and it's the compounded 1-2 % of small little things that you do that makes them who they are. Which like, I think if you build that into a muscle, every business that you see, every distribution, everything that you buy online, you start to question like, how are they making money? Are they actually making money? Right? You look at their ads, what they run, why is this working? Yeah, at some point you become a better entrepreneur also. Yeah, it is the muscle that can start building before you build your business. It's actually fun. So the non-founder mindset is reaching for that simple answer and let it explain everything. It is when we were doing a growth tune and sometimes I'm bit fan-tien, I'll go on Reddit and see what people are talking about. You'll get a lot of comments on like, oh, they're just an OEM marketing company. Sure. And they use that to comfort themselves and explain everything. But the founder mindset will be like, ⁓ yeah, they are OEM company, but why is it that they are successful when anyone can go to the supply and take this chair as well? Yes. And you start asking questions and you realize, ⁓ they made a decision in terms of positioning. They made a decision here in terms of focusing on Facebook ads. Yeah. Yeah. It's forcing you to come to Trinidad. What other things they did, right? Instead of reaching for that simple, comforting answer. Yes. Yes. You hear this a lot when people talk about Prism. They just sell cheap electronics. Like, I also can... Like, brother, you think the factory is so easy to sell you TVs and aircons? Like, you think every factory wants to work with you? You think it's just marketing with pretty girls? Brother! It's a nine-figure brand! If it's so easy, everybody will be running a nine-figure brand! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like there's a cool name for this. It's the Simple Answer Paradox. ⁓ yes, yes Everything that we say add a paradox behind it will sound cool It does sound cool bro But it is very true I haven't thought about it It is These people that annoys me is because they reach for very simplistic surface level answer And they are satisfied with that ⁓ the recent one I heard is Xiangxiang Have you heard of Xiangxiang? ⁓ the Hunancai Yeah Do know it's opened by a Singaporean? ⁓ shit! ⁓ shit okay Bro! My mind exploded when I heard it was opened by Singaporeans And you know when you ask people why do you think Xiangxiang is successful? Guess what people say bro? it's from China? No bro they say cause of the rice I told them As in their rice is great right like yeah but like If you say a whole business, 20 of the outers in Singapore succeeded because of the price. Another thing that I thought about, which you actually mentioned before, I think it's on the asymmetric risk that people are willing to take. I think if you look at corporate, right, the risk is conceptually lower, but the reward is also lower, right? Like it's kind of kept, right? Every year you just go for your performance review. your base of 3 % increment due to inflation, that will happen. If you do certain things well, maybe they give you 10%, right? But when people see us taking like, oh, after we graduate, we didn't take a job. What's the cost to us? We did calculate the cost, right? A fresh-dread salary that comes out is gonna be 5, 6K. And that is what I'm essentially losing every month that I'm not working. But my upside, if... this business does well, it's gonna be in the millions of dollars. The upside is like uncapped, but the risk is maybe like five, six KM. And I think founders that like, founders just have this, what's the downside here? The downside sometimes is my time. ⁓ my time is not worth much now, right? Then I'll take more risks, right? What's the downside? And I think in corporate, there's this mentality of like, I have done certain things, I should be rewarded for certain things. ⁓ right. Yeah. It's ability to be rewarded. It's an ability to be not rewarded. We can launch 10 things and like none work. Maybe if I look back, this is what I could have done better. That's true. That's true. Okay, let's go into what we can do about it. I love this part about asymmetric risk. Let's go into what we can do about it if we are advising someone who's stuck in a corporate job who says they want to start a business but you see some of their mindsets is not aligned. Right? What can they do about it? I think the first one you mentioned is remind themselves that I think we as human are poor at understanding the idea of a symmetric risk. ⁓ Right. We have this default of downside protection that we can't see that, ⁓ whatever we're losing is two years salary, but the upside could be 10 times. If we make it, will be, if we make it, can cover for 20 years of salary, a few million dollars. that is a risk worth taking because the worst case I go back to a corporate job. People in general have trouble seeing that they need to remind themselves of that. Any other ideas for our audience who's like I don't want to be a founder but you think their mindset is not there? The moment you listen to this go take that first step. Whatever your first step looks like is it to contact a supplier? If you haven't even been on Alibaba and you want to start an e-commerce brand I don't know what you are doing. Just take that first step. Go and contact a supplier. Go and ask around, like, for actual things that moves your needle. Stop asking for advice. Yeah? Go do things for- Yeah, because I think that helps you to ask better questions. I don't mind somebody that goes to, maybe they want to do a makeup brand, and they say that, hey bro, this one, the Cox is $5. I see the average retail price is $40. Do you think this has, this, margins is good enough? Like, do I have enough to run ads? Right? Like, that's a, that's a- better question to ask than how do I find a makeup supplier? Yeah, and you can only know that by taking action and then like you get feedback from it. I think the other one is around risk and that's the the part that is a bit hard to get over which is it's true right sometimes it is risky and it is scary to quit your full-time job to jump straight into a business and that's why a lot of people don't do it right they if they have a family to support if a mortgage to support sure It's very hard to tell them just fucking take the risk and don't pay mortgage. So I think the solution for a lot of people is just build on the side until you reach a certain comfort level that you can go and work on your... you can full time into that business. It's perfectly valid part because I see a lot of people is like, ⁓ I'll wait until a certain time and I'll quit and then, and then only then what I do. I'm like, no, just go and do it until you feel comfortable enough to quit your job. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they think that the business will take off like this. Yes. It's like once I start, right, bro, I'm an unstoppable train, bro. Boom. Freaking rocket that flies to the sky, right? You know, it's not going to happen like that. There's a lot of waiting. There's a lot of like, bro, you do finish my product already or not. Website. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So building on the site while you're still working on your corporate job is perfectly valid. You don't have to go all in that. Some people do, some businesses require that. But to get started, just start on the side. Burn your weekend, burn your holidays. I think you heard this concept of the freedom number before. And I think that is useful here. So for the audience that never heard of this concept before, a freedom number is like the minimum amount of income that you need in order for you to survive, not thrive in this world. And everybody's freedom number is very different. So back then when we were first starting out, we were students. We were very used to the type of quality of life that a student has. Taking bus, eating at the market, you don't need to pay rent. Our freedom number was very low. But why we call it a freedom number is every month I just need this amount to survive. But then I don't need to trade so much of my time to achieve. more amount right I just I just want to find something that can give me this amount of money so I can survive and all the other time that I buy back I can now work on my business. Gotcha right so the so one of the ways if let's say you are you are dead set on wanting to be an entrepreneur right one way is you you build something on the side right like which is what you said perfectly valid point the other way is you will have certain level of expertise Are you able to find ways to trade the expertise for money? And typically it's a lot higher value on a per hour basis. So let's say I'm a corporate worker, but I know how to play piano, right? Or I know how to teach tuition. I can go out and teach tuition. Maybe my freedom number is like two, $3,000. All I need to do is gather that amount of money and the rest of the time you focus on building your business. Gotcha. You'll suffer for a while, but like at least that freedom number pays the bills. Right. I get that, I think the difficult part is knowing what your freedom number is. Especially if you have experienced lifestyle inflation. Yeah yeah yeah, 1000 % bro. In theory, I can live on a thousand dollars a month. you know what I mean? like, I might want to go back to living on a thousand dollars a month. It's a bit hard. But I think everybody's freedom number is different. It's also a bit packed. Like if you are high ranking in the corporate world, you probably have more expertise and more skills. that if you switch a little bit to freelance, you might be able to double or triple the value that you get for the same amount of time. That's on the income side. Yeah. I guess I'm saying the hard part is knowing what your expense is. That's fair. It helps to have been poor before. And that is what Elon Musk said. Someone's asking him, why are you willing to take so much risk? His playbook is he will take his weenings from one company and whack all of it into the next one. Which is insane, right? Because we will be like, ⁓ no, I want to protect that weening that I have and the next company should be something else on top of my weening. And the reason he said he was able to do that is that I just remind myself when I was in college, I was able to live on ramen and hot dogs. So whatever happens, I'll be okay. That takes a different human being, bro. It takes a different human being? But having being poor helps you know that your freedom number is a lot lower than you think it is. Okay, what else what else we have what other advice we have I have one which is I think a common thing that I hear it They can't do much because they are waiting for the business to be set up. They are waiting for suppliers, are waiting for certain thing, they are waiting for certification, they are waiting for the product to be ready, they are waiting for a designer. I think in scenarios like this, one thing they can practice is that find and understand what the leverage is in the business and just practice that. So let's say you are doing an e-commerce brand and building the supply chain, getting the product ready does take a while. What do you do in the meantime? Figure out what is most important in e-commerce, is traffic and audience, and start doing that on the side. Just practice the ability to get people's attention, to get people interested in your product, to be able to create pages or posts that goes viral, or ads. Because by then, when your business foundation is ready, at least you have the skills, the muscles to more quickly push it forward. Yeah, yeah, thousand percent. think that, okay, I think one of our, one of the things that worked well for us was we always tested demand first. And I think on hindsight, because we tested demand first, we, it was because we didn't have enough money to take risks, right? But it was a smarter play because we actually needed to figure out how to drive traffic, what are the levers that we need to pull in order for us to actually make money. Yeah, so like just by trying to figure out how to drive traffic, learn what attention is in the current economy, how to create things at scale and actually start testing it, I think those are definitely things that people can start doing. Yeah, true. And on a related note, the next advice is just keep shipping something. Stop talking about your ideas and just ship something concrete every week. It can be a landing page, can be a pre-sale page, can be a carousel listing, anything that gets you closer to your first dollar. Just keep shipping, even if it's embarrassing and looks like shit. Like stop clinging on to the perfect version of it. Right, I recently dug up our very first version of our website. Woooo, WooCommerce? Yeah bro, people think that AI slot websites are bad bro. Wait till they see mine bro. Bro, this is actual head. Bro, I tell you in 20 years, people appreciate websites like this because it's handcrafted. It's actually built by non-developers. It's actually built by non-developers by hand, by love. It's not built by agents. It's like after years of cups being made in factories, mass produced, you'll appreciate those made by master craftsmen. We're not master craftsmen but actually crafted. With some chips here and there that cuts your lips right? That also makes you beautiful. Yeah, so for those that want to start a business, that you keep thinking, not knowing what to do, keep asking for advice, keep waiting for permission to fail. If you're listening to this episode, let this be a reminder that none of us got it right on the first try. A lot of times it's taking the action. I have one final mindset shift that I think is gonna be helpful to practice before as you learn to become a founder. And I think it is something you can practice at work, which is to practice speed. A lot of what... being a startup is, because the real advantage that startup has against the big boys is that you're able to move faster. But if you're in a corporate job, sometimes you're stuck in that mindset of like move, things needs to move slowly. Of like, ⁓ things needs a thousand layer of approval. Things needs to be bounced back and forth. Right? So practice that muscle of, okay, if you're running a startup, what does it look like to move with speed? And it can be at work of like asking, hey, what would it take to do this project? in a month instead of a year. Then ask again, what would it take? What would it take to do it in a week instead of a year? Of that constant... Your colleagues will probably find it fucking annoying. You don't actually have to do it, but just ask yourself. That mental practice, I think, is so helpful. Okay, because then that forces you, that constraint forces you to collapse everything else and like, ⁓ yeah, approval is not important. Getting your boss to look through is not important. If I need to get it done in one week to save my life, these are the three things I need to do. Yeah. That is what it's like to run a startup successfully. Yeah. Actually we do that very often when we were running the company. And I think even current entrepreneurs that I have met, maybe in your zero to maybe $1 to like two, three mil, a lot of them also don't have this. Cause they kind of get used to the way that they have been doing things. So I think this is a, this is a very useful mental exercise to just think about compressing timeline. ⁓ Especially once you start hiring people, you realize there's a lot of arbitrary timelines that are created. Like, can you do this creative? ⁓ when? Next week. Why? How come so long? And some of them will find you annoying because they feel that you don't understand the challenge that they are facing. So all you need to do is to come off from ⁓ trying to understand the perspective. Right? Because I think once you come off as like, no, I'm trying to understand why is it gonna take so long because I'm not an expert in it ma. Right? It's like if you ask me to develop a website, I'm gonna tell you three months. You're gonna ask me why three months? Like I need to now justify why three months is needed. Right? Because when you give the timeline, you're often giving yourself a buffer as well. Yes, yes. And a lot of times the... So one is buffer for safety. I think one is priorities. Because especially when you're running a company, you probably task people a lot more than you think and you don't have a good sensing of what ⁓ everything that they need to do entails. But once they are able to tell you and you ask them why cannot, they'll tell you everything that they do and then you can now say that, actually this part, de-prioritize. Like if we cannot scolding, if customers scold us, it's fine. Leave the customer service aside, focus on this. Like, can we get this done in two days? Yup. You're also telling them what they can ignore. Yes. Yeah. And I think that's a useful exercise to do. I realize that 70 % of my job as a CEO is just asking, why can't this be done faster? For real? I'm not even kidding. And it sounds like you're doing jack shit. Yeah. It sounds like you're doing jack shit. It sounds like I'm defending my job. But I think it's so important to have that mindset. Because people's default is not to speed an urgency. Yes, yes. And that time saving compounds one. If you can make it ⁓ into your employees or at least your top managers are also asking that same question, the whole company moves a little bit faster. Daily they move a bit faster and you're just ahead of your competition. Yeah, if everyone moves 1 % faster, the whole organization moves 100 % faster. I don't want to do the public math of how the math compounds but somewhere... Somewhere along that line. It will 1 % on combine to 100 % I think. Yeah. Never do public math. Alright, you got anything else? No, I think that's the pod. Good luck to all our founders out there. There is nothing wrong with being in a corporate job. We hope you find the strength and the wisdom to be a founder. Thank you. And that's the pod. That's the pod.