703: (Solo) If I Had to Start Over in 2026, Here's How I'd Make My First $1M

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1:03Welcome back to another episode of the Founder Founder Solo podcast. And I'm going to go through with you, if I had to start all over in 2026, this is how I'd go from zero to a million dollars, the whole playbook. So if I lost everything tomorrow, the team, the audience, the brand, the 13 years of relationships, network I've built and I had to make a million dollars from zero, here's exactly what I do. This is not a motivational speech pep talk. This is the real tactical step-by-step playbook. No fluff. All right, let's go.

1:33Nathan Chan:Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:46First and foremost, before we start, we partnered with Xero recently. And it's kind of crazy because I've been paying for this company to manage all of our cloud accounting software as a customer for 13 years. They've ran our books literally since day one. It is the software, out of all the softwares we've used, Xero is the one that we have used this whole lifetime of founders history. So they're going to come up naturally in this episode because they're genuinely part of the playbook. And we've sorted out an incredible offer for founder listeners. It's in the show notes. It's literally crazy.

2:26You can't get anything else out there. So if you want to support the show, please make sure you check out Xero. Sign up. As an online business, you have to use accounting software. That's the software I use. So the first thing I do, I need to validate before I build. And this is the step that most people skip. and I'm not building anything until I know people want it. And this is a mistake that I see so many founders over and over, over again. They build the product, then they try and find customers, but you need to flip it. You need to find customers and then build the product. So I'm building an e-commerce brand, physical product, not dropshipping.

3:00I wanna be clear with that distinction. Dropshipping is a little bit of a hit and miss. Maybe you could use dropshipping to validate the product, but you want to quickly pivot away to really kind of build out your own brand. And I want to find a product that solves a real problem. It's got to be a painkiller, not a vitamin. And before I spend a single dollar on inventory, I'm going to do these three things. One, I'm going to be talking to 20 potential customers, not surveying them, talking to them, getting really close to the customer. Two, I'm going to look at reviews for that product. I'm going to look at three star, two and three stars.

3:41I find that's where you find the gold. Then I'm going to put up a simple landing page or however I differentiate the product. I'm going to put up a simple landing page with, you know, a notify me button where people can opt in. It costs almost nothing, takes a day. And then I'm using ad creatives with tiny spend, maybe a few hundred bucks, really just to measure click-through rate, not sell, just to learn. If I can't get at least 50 people to put in their email in for a product that doesn't exist yet. I don't have product market fit. And then full stop, I go back, I iterate, and I do not order 5 ,000 units and pray.

4:16And this is all we did with the Healthish water bottle when I started Healthish, right? Like we spoke to customers, we looked at different reviews, we looked at how we could come into the market. This is what Greta did, right? She built Skinny Meat Tea from zero to$600 ,000 a month in six months. She made a million dollars in a day. She actually was obsessed. She was actually obsessed with solving a problem that people had. And when we surveyed the founder audience, we were getting into, you know, building out the education. It was very, very, very clear that people wanted to learn how to start and grow an e-commerce brand.

4:47So Greta was a natural fit. We gave people exactly what they asked for. The data was there. We just had to listen. Then the next thing I need to do before I make a single dollar, I need somewhere for that dollar to go. And I don't just mean a bank account. I mean a system that gives real visibility into my money from day one. So one of the biggest mistakes I made when I was building founder was flying blind on cash flow for so long. And when you're small, you know, and our first day was two subscribers. And if I was to start over, I would make sure day one I'd be using Xero. It's cloud accounting, invoicing, bills, payments, expenses, all in one place.

5:23The automation alone saves hours every week on stuff I shouldn't be touching manually. When I started Founder and I was using Xero, we didn't have all these awesome tools that they have now around using AI and automation. So you can get paid faster, right? When you're bootstrapping, that's the gap between when you invoice and when the money actually...

5:43Nathan Chan:Real quick, before we jump in, I want to shout out one of our sponsors, Xero. I've used Xero from day one of Founder, 13 years now, and it's still how we run the business today. It's cloud accounting software built for founders exactly like us. and it automates all the admin that I used to do when I first started Founder. Invoicing, chasing payments, expenses, all the accounting. It really helps me get paid faster and keep an eye on cash flow. So Founder listeners, get a crazy 95 % off for the first six months. Just sign up through our form at founder.com forward slash zero. Terms and conditions apply.

6:20Remember, when you support our sponsors, you're supporting the show. All right, now let's jump back in. it lands so 13 years as a customer this is one of the very few tools that i'd never leave out of my stack so everything else has been swapped out multiple times and that tells you something the next step is i'd have one product one channel so once i'd validate the product set up my tech stack this is the big piece of the puzzle so many people right now they try and launch a brand and they do 101 different channels they're trying facebook ads they're trying instagram organic TikTok organic and then want to do a blog and then we'll do Twitter and then we'll do a podcast.

6:58It's too much, too much stuff, right? One channel, one product, that's it until you hit a million. And this is the mistake I constantly see people make. I'd want to focus on one hero product with one really epic landing page that solves one problem, get really clear on the avatar. I would not launch another SKU. I'd really focus on just really making sure that that product absolutely nailed it and get the messaging right and I would just keep working on it until I get that messaging right and then when it comes to the product I try and choose a product that has really good margins ideally 70 % minimum above I'd also want to make sure that I can get the AOV at least above 60 70 at least even ideally close to 80 plus dollars so then that gives me a really good AOV so I can spend enough to acquire a customer and then when it comes to pricing like one of the things I really stuffed up for me was Founder V1 when we raised about$200 ,000 in sales for our Kickstarter campaign.

7:59Sounds great, right? Well, I priced the book at$40 Australian, but then I made shipping $40, which is crazy. The book should have been$60 and$20 shipping. So I'd really get clear on the pricing psychology. I'd be testing there. I'd be serving our community, all that good stuff. And then as for a channel, like I said, pick one, go deep. For Founder, it was Instagram. For healthish, it was Instagram. I just kept doubling down on that channel. So when it comes to your content as your growth engine, we bootstrap founder to eight figures without raising a single dollar when it comes to healthish. The way that I did it was I got other people to create the content for us, but I'd focus on one channel.

8:38And if it were me, I would use my face and be the face of it from day one of my brand. And I take people on a journey. Founder led content is where it is at. One of my biggest regrets with Founder, if you take anything away from this episode, it's this. I hid behind the Founder brand for 10 years, to be honest. I was happy to interview people, but that was it. I didn't feel worthy. I thought, who am I to put myself out there? I wanted to build an asset-based business that could survive without me. And look, that's fair enough, but I took it too far. So, you know, I really can't stress this enough.

9:12Something that really woke me was, you know, when the new season of Shark Tank Australia launch, several of my peers became sharks. And the common thread was they all had strong personal brands. And I'd been producing content for years. That was my wake up call. So you need to be committed post once a day for like at 90 days, 108 days, once a day for the whole year, if you can. If I start over, I'd make sure my face was the brand from day one. So that's the whole thing, guys, from start to finish. I'll do a quick wrap up. One, validate before you build. Talk to real customers test demand don't guess to set up your financial system from day one cash flow visibility is not optional that's where zero comes in it's been my playbook for 13 years three one product one channel nail the economics and four build content as your growth engine and make sure you are the face of it from day one founder-led content is where it's at so guys if you found this useful share it with one person who's thinking about starting something make sure you leave us a review and go and check out our friends at Xero.

10:16Xero put together a crazy deal for you guys. You can get 95 % off for the first six months when you sign up, when you go to founder.com forward slash Xero. Absolutely insane. Link in the show notes. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I'll see you in the next one.