Thread by @sweatystartup

At business school you read Zero to One and study how Amazon and Microsoft navigated the 2000s.

News flash:

Starting a business from scratch and creating something that can put food on your table is nothing like any of that.

The problem with MBA entrepreneurs:

They focus on building an organization and structure and plans.

And they’re not willing to do the damn work in the early days that isn’t fun, isn’t high level, and isn’t scalable.

In the early days you don’t need grand visions and business plans.

You need salesmanship, grit, and resourcefulness.

And there is only one way to learn that stuff:

Put your ego aside and roll up your sleeves.

When my partner and I started our business in 2011 we spent the first 3 years grinding.

Answering phones. Driving trucks. Loading trucks. Sweating.

Our friends in our entrepreneurship classes made fun of us when we purchased our $1500 cargo van while they were out pitching.

We sold. Worked smart. Hired. Fired.

And then 3 years in when we were out earning all of our ivy league friends with big corporate jobs and we had a proven model we spent time acting like the MBAs.

And we scaled and grew slowly. Still doing a lot of "lowly" work along the way.

Entrepreneurship culture in America is all messed up and it’s a shame.

TechCrunch. Product Hunt. Shark Tank.

It’s all about new ideas. Changing the world. Innovation. 0 to 1. Blue ocean. Venture capital and exits and scalability.

And ITS ALL A LIE.

Everybody wants to be an investor. Everybody wants to raise a round. Everybody wants to hire and steer the ship and delegate.

But nobody understands the real entrepreneurs, in the early days, are doing the damn work themselves and learning the ins and outs of their business.

You ask the average american who a real entrepreneur is they’ll say Jobs, Musk or Zuck.

We read their books and idolize them and hang on their every word.

So the brightest among us think they need a moat. A new idea. Something revolutionary.

Were setting them up for FAILURE.

I took an entrepreneurship course at Cornell in 2011. 24 kids with new ideas. Big plans. Pitch decks looking for series As.

I was #25 with a regular old-fashioned business.

When professors asked me what my differentiator was I didn’t have an answer.

I saw a company out there doing sweaty, non scalable work.

They were making great money.

And they were terrible at it.

So we started by trading our time for money. Bought that van. Used the things we had in our lives to make some damn money.

I wasn’t trying to educate a customer base.

I wasn’t following my passion.

I didn’t need funding or a network.

I wasn’t competing against brilliant folks from Stanford.

I want trying to prove a concept.

I wasn’t emotionally attached to anything except adding value.

My customers and my competitors existed. I could study them interacting with each other.

I made decisions with my brain, not my heart.

I was competing against folks with fax machines, clipboards and paper ledgers.

And the best part... WE WERE PROFITABLE FROM DAY ONE.

None of those 24 folks in my class succeeded. They all went and got jobs. Their new ideas didn’t catch on.

They all had dreams of millions of users and an exit.

Scalable models that could work anywhere from a computer.

But 90% failed to make a single dollar.

So who are the real entrepreneurs?

Who are the wealthiest people you know?

I’m not talking about money.

I’m talking about the people who do what they want to do when they want to do it.

Who are they?

Now hear comes the hard truth.

I know a lot of wealthy emtrepreneurs.

None of them had new ideas. None of them raised VC money. None of them were on shark tank.

They all did common things uncommonly well.

Regular old businesses just a little better.

Most of them have a few things in common:

They worked really hard doing something not fun for 5+ years. Many times 20+ yrs.

They started out trading their time for money.

They did things that weren’t scalable.

Many of them offered services.

They all had to talk to people. Most of the time face to face.

They had to sell themselves and their ideas.

They didn’t take a lot of risk.

Most of them hired coders but few of them were coders.

Stop buying into the hype. The click bait. The sexy stories of overnight success and mega riches.

Entrepreneurship isn’t that complicated.

Do something with good odds, low risk and moderate rewards.

Don’t master your craft, master leading other people.

Think with your head, not your heart.

It’s not about you and what YOU love or what YOU want to be doing.

And lastly..

Start SMALL.

Biz is about momentum.

I sold $300k worth of online courses yesterday.

It took me three years of hard, unsexy, sweaty work to make that much money in the beginning.

We'll buy $50MM worth of self storage this year.

I could never imagine that would happen in my lifetime even 2 years ago.

And the best part.

When you’re successful, experienced, wealthy and you have a killer network...

It’s time to change the world with something BIG.

If you're tired of being fed the same clickbait entrepreneur crap over and over again, sign up for my newsletter:

sweatystartup.substack.com

Stories like this are everywhere if you look up from your computer screen.

https://twitter.com/phil_harp/status/1366810254571429889

A lot of folks asking in the comments about opportunities and books I like:

sweatystartup.com/businesses-i-l…

sweatystartup.com/booklist