MBA2449 Why Right Now is The Best Time To Start a Business

0:28Heyo, welcome to the$100 MBA show. is not starting sooner. In today's lesson, I'm going to explain why right now I'm talking about this moment is the best time to start your business. I'll explain the benefits of getting started immediately, as well as the cost of waiting another day, month, year. I'm talking about the actual number, dollar amount that it will cost you. We'll also get into why 2024 is one of the best times to start a business in so many ways, economically, in terms of the resources available, and much, much more. You're going to walk away with knowing what to do, how to do it, and why it's so important.

1:07So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. One of the things that people don't tell you when you start in entrepreneurship, when you start a business of any kind, is that it takes time for you to actually get good at this business thing. To be good at business, you have to get good at a few important skills. By the way, this is applicable to pretty much anything you learn. You want to learn how to play the piano, you're going to have to know how to read music. You have to have an ear for music. You have to learn how to play with one hand, two hands, understand pitch, timing, a whole bunch of stuff.

1:39So you need a bunch of skills so that you can play the piano. And entrepreneurship is the same. You have to learn a bunch of skills so that you can be good at business. And it takes time for you to get good at those things. And the longer you wait to get started, the longer it will take for you to get good because you need the reps. You need to give yourself the time to work at getting better at business. A lot of people ask me, Omar, how do you have this successful podcast, the$100 MBA show, over 2 million downloads a month, one of the top business podcasts in the world, I say, firstly, thank you.

2:12I appreciate that. But the answer is that I've been doing this for a while. I've given myself enough time to get better at it. I've been doing this for over nine and a half years and all this is going to be 10 years. If you do something for 10 years, you do anything for 10 years, you're going to get good at it. And this allows me to have an advantage. It allows me to compete with my market, with other podcasts that are good and great. But if I didn't start 10 years ago and just decided to start today, I would be 10 years behind my competition. Obviously, it's great that I started 10 years ago, but the next best time is right now.

2:46You don't want to waste any more time gaining the skills, working at it, getting better, and compounding those skills and that momentum, all the stuff that you're building in your business, over time so that you can be a powerhouse in your market. Look at it this way. If you start right now, tomorrow you will be better than yesterday, and next week we'll be better than this week and next month will be better than this month. And next year, you're going to be way ahead than where you are right now. So you got to get started. Listen, I know it can be hard at the start, not only to do the work, but to even just put the work out there.

3:23I'll be totally honest with you. I have a hard time listening to the first hundred episodes of this podcast on our MBA show. It's cringeworthy to me because I've grown and that's a good thing. You know, I've gotten better. A lot of my friends, they say, what do you talk about? Those first on their episodes are great. And that's sweet and all, but I know that they're not as good as today's episodes or at least the last few years of episodes because I've had, you know, five, six, seven years of repetition work improvement to make the show amazing. But you have to start somewhere. I always say that if you don't have cringeworthy work, you have started too late.

3:57You got to put it out there so you can get better and you have to play at game speed. What does that mean? I learned this when I was playing basketball as a young kid. This is a term that coaches use is that when you're playing basketball in practice, you're supposed to play at game speed, meaning don't play as if it's practice. Play like it's a real game because you need to know how to play at that speed, at that intensity at all times. If you kind of play lackadaisically during practice, then you play at game speed during an actual game. It's going to feel awkward. It's going to feel weird. You're not going to be used to shooting layups at that speed.

4:34So play at game speed means that you want to put in the reps as if you are putting it out there. And guess what? By putting it out there, you're putting it out in game speed. You're doing it as if it's real because it is real. You're putting it out in the world, whether it's a blog post or whether it's a YouTube video or a new product or service or a speech you're working on stage. The point here is that you're actually putting in real world experience with real people to get feedback, to learn, to get better. That's the fastest way to win at business, really. So starting right now, super important.

5:09Next, business is all about compounding. I mentioned this briefly before, but you want to compound your wins, meaning the things that you do today are going to help you tomorrow because it's going to compound against each other. Not only the work, but the skills and the effort. Now, let's put that aside for a moment. Your reputation gets better and better the more you put things out there. So, for example, when I got started 20 years ago, I had no reputation. I had no products, no services. I've never done business with anybody. I haven't sold anything. So, it's really hard for people to trust me and to do business with me.

5:42But as I got started and started to get my first sales, my first businesses got underway. I had an e-commerce business. I did well. I had customers. I learned how to run a business. I learned about the finances of business, marketing, sales, all that kind of stuff. People liked my products and got good reviews. I then moved on to another business where I was a business consulting firm. I learned how to please my customers. They were happy. They gave me good reviews. My reputation in the market started to get better and better. People started hearing about me. I started a podcast and program called The$100 MBA.

6:14That did really well. And that gave me a lot of credibility because people heard about the product that I was creating and the work and heard the podcast and saw the videos and saw the website and was like, okay, this is actually really good stuff. I then started a software company called Webinar Ninja. That also allowed me to get some credibility. I built that for nine and a half years, exited that company recently. So all this stuff compounds and becomes your reputation. You become a well-known entrepreneur. And now when I create something new or I launch a new product or service, if I reach out to anybody in my space to support me, to help me, to partner with me, They know who I am.

6:52I have a track record that compounded over time. This is why it's so important to get started to start that compounding, let alone the compounding of other assets like money. When you make money with your business, you're able to take that and reinvest it in your business and reinvest and reinvest and reinvest. And now you're starting businesses with a lot of capital now. You're able to do better things, hire better people, create better products, all because you got started and that compounded over time. The thing about starting a business and starting down this journey as entrepreneurs is that once you get started and you start learning as you build, you start to get hungry to get better and better.

7:30So you start reaching out for opportunities, whether it's reaching for a book and learning something new so you can get better in some aspect of business. It could be sales, marketing, finance, networking, negotiation, whatever it might be. So as the journey goes on, you start getting better. you become the person you need to be to build the products and services that will make you successful, you start reaching out to other people at conferences, you meet people, you learn from courses and masterminds, you get a coach. Because the thing about success is that it begets success, meaning you get a couple wins under your belt when you get started, you make a few sales, and you want more so you figure out, how do I learn more skills?

8:10How do I get better so I can get more? Then you get another win, you get another win, another win, that starts to compound, starts to grow and it starts getting addictive. It's like you want to keep on winning and you understand that to win, you got to get better. You got to skill up. You have to improve. And it becomes this flywheel effect of improvement, results, improvement, results. Now, why start a business in 2024? All the best businesses I've created started during a recession. We are in a recession right now. The economy is in a tough spot, recovering from COVID and other financial reasons why we're in this recession.

8:46But the point here is that a lot of great businesses start during recessions. And you can Google this, you can do some research. And the reason for this is that when you start at the bottom of the economy, you kind of ride the wave of the economy rebounding. And as the economy grows, you grow. And when things hit rock bottom in economies, they open up opportunities. They open up chances for you to reinvent things in an industry. It opens up different needs and problems that you can solve. People are looking for alternative solutions. People are looking for a better way to do things. And that's where you come in.

9:21That's where your product comes in, your service, your thing to help those customers. Next, there's never been more resources, free and paid, for you to build a great business. I'm not talking only about educational resources. I'm not talking about just videos on YouTube or books on bookshelves or in bookstores or on Amazon. I'm talking about software, tools, support networks, communities. There is so much out there right now to help you grow. Almost too much. When I got started 20 years ago, there was very little out there to learn how to build an online business. There was very little information out there.

10:01In fact, a lot of the information out there was kind of seen as scammy and kind of shwarmy. And I had to kind of filter out the bad and keep the good. And it was really expensive. Like the cheapest online course I could buy was$2 ,000. Now you can learn how to run Facebook ads for$49 on a Udemy course. You can learn how to shoot incredible looking cinematic videos for free watching YouTube videos. You want to speed things up. You want to pay for your training. you want to pay for your ability to improve, there's coaching programs, there's masterminds that you can join that will really speed things up for you, whatever market you're in.

10:39Now with AI and software automation, there's so many tools out there to make your life easier and start building faster, whatever that is in your business. You mean creating a website? Super simple. You don't need to know how to code. Writing copy? I mean, people are using AI left and right now. Video editing, audio editing, there's so many tools out there. There's even free tools like CapCut for video that do an incredible job, like better than most video editing software out there 10 years ago. There's really nothing stopping you from getting started. Even from a financial point of view, there's a lot of free options out there just to get you started.

11:11Just choose something and do it. It doesn't have to be the perfect option. You can change it later, but just get started. There's so many resources for you. No excuses. There's one more thing I want to mention when it comes to why right now is the best time to start a business. We're in the early stages of a time where there are really very little, if no, gatekeepers when it comes to media. If you want to get your voice out there with a podcast, with a video channel on YouTube, with a blog, with an e-book, with a published book, like a physical book, you can do this on your own with no permission, with no certificate, with nothing, right?

11:53You could just do this now. You can just have a voice. You could be your own media company. You can publish your own books. You can publish your own series on YouTube. No one's going to stop you. For most people in most countries around the world, you can do this very, very easily. From a financial point of view, from the finances point of view, there's so many options now for you to process payments. Even in rural countries, they have some options out there. But if you're in North America, if you're in Europe, if you're in Asia, most of Asia, if you're in Australia, New Zealand, if you're in most of the countries in South America, you can use tools like Stripe, like PayPal, that can allow you to accept payments internationally easily and get paid in your bank account.

12:37This was not the case just like 15 years ago. It was almost impossible for you to do this. You had to go to a bank, get a merchant account, have all these approvals. You got to show that you're actually worth processing payments and that they're not wasting the bank's time and money. You can literally accept payments in minutes with a small application online. It's not even an application. You give your name and email address and you're all set up. So really, it's so, so easy because the gatekeepers basically are all gone. You can do anything you want. And it's only hindered by your ability to be consistent, to give a strong effort and work hard and be committed to your dream, to your business, to your thing.

13:19And the reason why this is exciting is because most people won't do this. Let me say that again. Most people won't do this. Most people will not work hard. Most people will not be consistent. Most people will flake out. Most people will quit after three months. Most people will not actually do what's necessary to be successful. The next time a new idea comes about, they jump on that new idea. They're never consistent. They never work hard. They kind of don't do what's required. And this is what's exciting is because if you just do what you need to do, work hard, buckle down, be consistent, get good at something, add value to the marketplace, you will win.

13:56So if you're not afraid of hard work, then there are no more gatekeepers or no excuses. There are no limitations. You can basically do what you like. It's just all based on what you want and how you want to move forward. Thanks so much for listening to The$100 MBA Show. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you found any of our episodes to be great and valuable to you, you could do us a huge favor and it's very easy. All you got to do is subscribe to the podcast on whatever podcast player you're using right now, whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever it might be, hit follow and follow us so that you get our next episodes automatically and you tell the algorithm, hey, this show is amazing.

14:34It allows us to reach new audiences to create an even bigger and better podcast experience for you every single episode. So on your side, all you need to do is a couple of clicks. On our side, we'll work hard to continue to give you great value on this podcast. Thank you for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The enemy of success is procrastination. When you put things off, you're putting everything off. What do I mean by that? Well, if you put off starting a business by one day, then you are going to taste success one day later. If you put it off by one week, one week later, one month, one year, you get the point.

15:07If I look at my business and see how much I've been earning every single year, and for many businesses, it's like seven figures, eight figures a year. And every year you've delayed starting your business, you're losing that much money. You got to have a little bit more foresight and say, hey, every day that goes by is every day I'm not winning and I'm not living the dream. I'm delaying my dream. I'm delaying what I want. One of my favorite lines is pain is temporary. I think I learned this from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Pain is temporary. Being a champion is forever or being successful is forever.

15:39So go ahead and take that leap and get started right now. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Thank you.