Tag / entrepreneur

by Nathan Coumbe

What does the community need?

Benjamin Franklin knew how to make things happen.

He founded the first post office in the (future) United States, its first subscription library, and even established the first fire departments and police force.

He created what eventually became the University of Pennsylvania and the nation’s first learned society (The American Philosophical Society) to promote useful knowledge for the good of the citizenry.

He was able to do this by constantly asking, “What does this community need?”

It might seem like this question is harder than ever to answer. So many of the things we need have already been created.

But even in the digital age, humans need new creations.

Maybe the community isn’t the one you live in, like it was for Franklin. Maybe it’s one you can create online.

Maybe the needs are less tangible than they were for Franklin. We have fire departments and schools, so what do we need now?

Perhaps it’s connection. Or understanding. Or a group. Perhaps it’s a new tool or process.

The needs may be less obvious than they were, but they still exist. And remember, the needs Franklin solved were probably not obvious in his time either, even if they are now in hindsight.

by Nathan Coumbe

Your job is a trust fund

Think of your job as a trust fund that provides you with a steady income, enabling you to pursue other interests. 

Want to write a book? Your job provides you with the living expenses you need to survive while you’re writing. 

Want to build a small business? Your job salary is the startup funds you need to get started. 

Don’t hold your day job in contempt because you feel like it’s preventing you from doing something great. Reframe it as the steady flow of income it is to help you launch the next thing.

by Nathan Coumbe

25 free business ideas you can steal

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I challenged myself to come up with as many business ideas as I could in 10 minutes that met the criteria I laid out. Here’s what I came up with. Feel free to steal any of them and start your own business.

  1. Offer training content creation services to businesses with a small (or non-existent) L&D department.
  2. Become a health coach and offer sessions in-person or online.
  3. Lead in-home personal training sessions for clients (a concierge training offering). As a bonus, help them set up a minimum viable home gym to meet their health goals.
  4. If you’re a clear and persuasive writer, offer your writing services to small businesses or the marketing departments of larger organizations.
  5. Help other people land new jobs, negotiate raises, or change careers by offering your services as a career coach. This one, you could offer as a no-fee upfront service and take a small percentage of their new salary as payment (like a talent agent).
  6. Become a health and wellness consultant for large companies and design wellness coaching packages for their employees as part of their HR offerings.
  7. Start a green lawn care service, using only electric tools to keep people’s yards looking nice while lowering the carbon footprint of that work (I’m sure you’ve seen all the e-lawn tools if you have a Costco membership).
  8. Become a piano tuner. You can learn how for less than $1,500 bucks, and you’ll have almost no competition as it’s a dying trade.
  9. Become a drum tech for churches. Have you ever seen how beat up and terrible-sounding those drum sets are?
  10. Here’s an easy one: teach music lessons. Specialize in helping students prepare for, and win, auditions. There’s a lot of scholarship money to be had for musicians in college (and the military).
  11. Become a tutor in whatever field you know best. Take the summers off or offer “preparatory” tutoring when school is out.
  12. Become a writing coach for K-12 students. This may be the most important skill students will learn today as AI proliferates and the skill that makes us human is supplanted by garbage.
  13. Create and sell a really helpful e-book that teaches someone how to do a very specific task or skill.
  14. Create an online course on a topic or skill you know well. You can put it up on an e-learning site like Teachable, or you can offer it as an “email correspondence” course like Ryan Holiday does with his excellent Stoic challenges.
  15. Shuttle seniors to doctor’s appointments. You could charge them a low price by the mile or see if senior care homes might pay you for the service.
  16. Start a “walking school bus” for the children in your neighborhood. Children need more movement in their days, and parents might be willing to have a responsible adult or two get their kids to school in the morning while also working off some of that kiddo energy.
  17. Here’s one I’ve been thinking about: create a membership group to organize people around citizenship and political activism.
  18. Offer pet grooming services in your town.
  19. Along the same lines, wash and detail cars.
  20. Here’s another: buy a sponge, bucket, squeegee, and cleaning solution, then sell your services as a window washer to businesses and restaurants in your city.
  21. This one is big where I live: powerwash houses and driveways.
  22. One more handyman idea: paint houses.
  23. Know how to promote the work of others? Become a marketing consultant for small businesses. Trust me, they all need help getting the word out.
  24. Are you a decent cook? Deliver home-cooked meals to customers who don’t have time to cook for themselves every night.
  25. Speaking of cooking, why not offer healthy cooking classes to small groups looking to improve their health and that of their families?

10 minutes, 25 business ideas. I don’t know that I could pull all of them off, but some of them seem promising.

The hard part is picking one and being brave enough to face rejection. Regardless of what you choose, you’ll get a lot of no’s.

But if you’re starting your own thing, that comes with the territory. Don’t let it deter you!

by Nathan Coumbe

You’re fired. Now what?

Here’s a question I’ve been noodling on:

What if you got fired today? What would you do?

But wait, it gets worse…

Not only were you fired, but your industry collapsed and no longer exists. And to make matters worse, all the specialized skills you built up in that industry are now irrelevant (hypothetically, an AI could do them all now and for free).

And, you can’t hide by going back to school for another degree.

You have to start something of your own—you have no choice.

What would you start? What would you build? What problem would you solve and for whom?

Take a 20-minute walk and think on this today.

by Nathan Coumbe

The secret approach to bootstrapping

You can be an entrepreneur: someone who builds something big, hires lots of people to do the work, and gets a ton of start-up money from investors.

Or you can be a freelancer: a skilled craftsperson who does high-quality work directly for clients.

But there’s a third option: bootstrapping.

To bootstrap a business is to find a group of customers with a problem who are so willing for you to solve it that they will pay you up front to build the business that will solve it for them.

And the secret to bootstrapping that many up-and-coming business people don’t know is that you don’t necessarily have to have the solution to the problem.

You simply have to see the problem, empathize with the people who have it, and trust yourself to know that you can and will figure out a solution that works.1

Why does this approach matter? Because smart, solution-oriented people often get so bogged down in the details of how to solve a problem that they never do the hard work of finding customers with a problem that needs solving.

So, find people who need help first, then figure out how to solve the issue.

(H/t to Seth Godin and the folks over at Purple Space)

  1. Don’t lie to people and tell them you can solve their problem, then take their money and run. That’s not bootstrapping – that’s a con. ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

Are you an innovator… or one of the others?

Here’s one of the most enlightening things I’ve heard this week (and it’s 30+ years old).

It’s a quote by Denis Waitley from his audio program “The Psychology of Winning“:

“Victims are inactive, waiting and dreading… the survivors are reacting, and hanging in there… the dreamers are in the shower, active but nonproductive… [but] the innovators are out of the shower, dressed, ready, and proactive in the market. 

The innovator for the 21st century has the visionary’s ability to look ahead…

The philosopher’s ability to learn from history…

The inventor’s ability to employ breakthrough concepts…

And the entrepreneur’s ability to deliver those concepts profitably and effectively to the marketplace.”

Right now, if I’m honest, I’d say I’m somewhere between dreamer and innovator. What’s holding me back? My failure to take action when I think I should.

What about you? Where do you fall within these categories?

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by Nathan Coumbe

The messy middle

Any worthwhile pursuit has a messy middle. In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller talks about what it’s like to cross a stretch of water. We leave the shore and eventually arrive on the opposite side.

But in between those two points, we have “the hard work of the middle.” That’s where the journey becomes a slog, the motions seem repetitive, and the effort seems useless.

Pursuing a goal, starting a business, losing weight… All of these pursuits have that same hard work to be done in the middle.

In almost every case, we start strong and make decent, even quick, progress. But soon after we hit a point where we lose focus and motivation.

“Why am I at the gym for the third time this week? I just want to go home…”

“I really just want to pig out on pizza, beer, and ice cream. I don’t feel like cooking…”

We get frustrated, hit plateaus, and our motivation wanes.

It’s when we hit that point we have to rely on our “why”.

Our reason for pursuing whatever it is has to be strong enough to get us through the messy middle. Seth Godin calls this “the dip” in his book of the same name.

Without a strong why, without a reason to keep pushing through, we burn out and quit.

Not only does our motivation have to be strong, but we have to revisit it every day. Zig Ziglar had a saying about this rule:

“Motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it every day.”

First, identify a strong reason why you want to pursue something.

Then make time every day to review it. Keep your motivation front of mind.

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by Nathan Coumbe

3 Easy Tips to Help You Get Unstuck

Being stuck is rough. It can leave you with feelings of hopelessness, frustration, or even anger.

Maybe you’re in a dead-end job you can’t stand…

Or your money situation is quickly moving from bad to worse…

Maybe you don’t even know why you’re feeling stuck. All you know is you are.

So how do you break the logjam?

The good news is there are a few things you can do now that’ll help you get unstuck:

  1. Learn Something New: This might be a new skill, a new way of doing the same thing, or just a new piece of information that helps you change your mindset. Pick up a book from the library or Amazon. Type your problem into YouTube and find 100 videos that’ll give you a new approach. Or listen to a really insightful podcast or TED talk. I wrote up an entire blog post on how you can get a free (or nearly so) education WITHOUT having to go back to school. Check it out here.
  2. Take a Break: One thing many folks do is bang their head against the problem over and over without seeing any new results. Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop and walk away from the problem. This could be as simple as going for a 20-minute walk outside. Or it could be even more extreme: a weeklong vacation to leave all your troubles behind. Regardless of how you choose to take a break, you’ll come back to the problem with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.
  3. Find a Teacher or Mentor: This tip is the one that’s helped me the most. Coaches, mentors, and teachers have a way of looking at the same problem you’re dealing with and seeing it in a whole new light. I was stuck in my career, hating every single moment I was at work, but I thought there was no other way to live. “That’s just how work is…” Then I had a coach show me that work could be a part of my life’s purpose AND enjoyable. Now I’m in a job I love and doing work that matters. All thanks to an outsider’s perspective.

Speaking of mentors, my coach Dan Miller is hosting a free masterclass today at two different times: 1pm CDT and 7pm CDT.

And the best part? The whole thing is about getting you unstuck no matter your problem.

“5 Reasons Big Dreamers Get Stuck And How To Blast Through Them To Success”

You can register for your seat here.

If you’re tired of going it alone and want an outside perspective on your problem, I strongly encourage you to sign up.

You’ll come away with fresh ideas, a renewed sense of hope, and strategies for moving forward on your most important goals.

There’s still time to register, but it’s happening TODAY. So make sure you sign up before it’s too late.

Save your spot now by clicking here!

I’ll be there too. I hope to see you this afternoon.

by Nathan Coumbe

Do you have big dreams?

I see you there, hiding away to dream about what it would be like if you weren’t in your current J.O.B.

  • If you actually enjoyed what you’re doing and didn’t have so much trouble waking up each morning to go to work
  • If you had time to spend with your family instead of working all that overtime just to make ends meet
  • If you felt like your skills and talents were being put to good use doing something that really matters in the world

It’s so great to have big dreams. 

So what now? 

Feel stuck in moving forward with those dreams? Do you want them to become more than just a break-room diversion over a bologna sandwich or a microwave pizza?

My friend Dan Miller has helped thousands of people take their dreams and develop a plan and act on them with resources like his New York Times Bestseller 48 Days To the Work and Life You Love and No More Dreaded Mondays.

He’ll be hosting a FREE Masterclass that you NEED to check out. It’s Thursday, July 15th with two times to choose from — 1 PM CT and 7 PM CT.

“5 Reasons Big Dreamers Get Stuck And How To Blast Through Them To Success”

You can register here!

He’ll walk you through those 5 reasons. Chances are one (or some) of them are holding you back from your dreams as well.

He’ll also help you with some immediate action points and real-life examples of people who’ve used them so you can start blasting through those sticking points to the success you’ve been dreaming of.

So open up those eyes, dreamer, and save your seat TODAY for Dan Miller’s FREE Masterclass. 

Click here to register!

by Nathan Coumbe

What’s Your “Why”?

Some people see this and think I mean “What gets you out of bed in the morning?”

They’d be wrong. Plenty of us have very little that gets us out of bed in the morning.

Maybe we have jobs we hate. Or tough relationships that don’t fulfill us. Or life situations we can’t seem to escape.

If you don’t have that “something” yet, think about it this way:

“What would make you WANT to get out of bed in the morning?”

My “why” has everything to do with my own personal freedom.

  • The freedom to rule my daily schedule
  • The freedom to control my income (however high or low I want it)
  • Freedom from debt
  • Giving my wife freedom to pursue whatever work, career, project, or lifestyle she desires

But I also feel I have a purpose that involves helping other people find freedom, happiness, and joy in their lives. And I genuinely believe the best way to do that is to help them create and run successful businesses or freelance practices.

Why? Because it’s the best way for them to have the freedom to live life on their terms. To do what they love and help the people they want to help. To make the difference they seek to make in the world. 

And I feel like I can achieve that purpose as a copywriter and marketer. That work helps people serve their customers, grow their businesses, and achieve the kind of freedom I’m talking about.

What’s your “why”? Tell me in the comments below.

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