How I Would Build A Business i

Summary #

The provided video transcript outlines how to build a business from scratch in 2025 by focusing on an entrepreneurial mindset, understanding business mechanics, and embracing the "lifestyle business" model. It highlights the differences between traditional education and entrepreneurship, debunks myths about business risk, and emphasizes the importance of a 766 apprenticeship to gain practical experience before launching a venture. The discussion also covers identifying founder-opportunity fit and focusing on high-value clients to build a sustainable and enjoyable business.

Introduction to Entrepreneurship #

• Many people are held back from starting a business by fears of not having a good idea, not knowing what to sell, or lacking skills.
• Starting a business is achievable for almost anyone, especially with internet access.
• The video is structured around nine key lessons from serial entrepreneur Daniel Priestley.
• The series, "Freedom Fridays," explores strategies for building a business that leads to fun, fulfillment, and financial freedom.

Lesson 1: School Didn't Teach You How to Be an Entrepreneur #

• Traditional schooling conditions individuals for success within established systems, often opposing entrepreneurial traits.
• The school system originated in the 1850s to prepare people for factory work, emphasizing obedience and conformity.
• Traits discouraged in school (disruptiveness, attention-seeking, teamwork as cheating) are often valued in entrepreneurship.
• Children are naturally entrepreneurial, but these instincts are often "beaten out" of them by the education system.
• Skills that make a good student (permission-seeking, following schedules, aiming for perfect answers) are often the opposite of what makes a good entrepreneur (taking initiative, designing own schedule, iterating on imperfect solutions).

Lesson 2: The Entrepreneur's Mindset Shift #

• Many aspiring entrepreneurs seek "business in a box" solutions, desiring to be told exactly what to do.
• This desire to be told what to do is antithetical to entrepreneurship, where entrepreneurs are the "shot callers" and creators.
• Entrepreneurs typically focus on step 1 (vision, team, systems) and step 10 (commercialization, next steps) of a project, outsourcing steps 2-9 to labor or AI.
• AI excels at doing the middle steps but cannot define the beginning or end goals, highlighting the unique role of the entrepreneur.
• If you seek to be told what to do, you are essentially labor and can be replaced by AI.

Is Entrepreneurship for Everyone? #

• Entrepreneurship is a team sport; not everyone is cut out to be a founder, but they can be valuable core team members, potentially with equity or profit share.
• The founder role requires managing complexity and abstraction, and a visioning capability.
• Factors like IQ level, life phase, or personality might make someone less suited to be a founder.
• Co-founding is often preferred over solo founding, as it provides support and ease.

Resource Recommendation: 12 Ways to Build Wealth Beyond Your Paycheck #

• A free guide by The Hustle and HubSpot, in collaboration with Marina (Silicon Valley Girl), sharing five specific income streams with difficulty and return ratings.
• Includes a worksheet to audit current income and plan next steps.
• Emphasizes building multiple income streams for flexibility and switching focus between creative projects.

Lesson 3: The Lie You Were Taught About Business #

• The belief that a job guarantees financial security is outdated.
• Many professional jobs no longer keep up with the cost of living, with some highly qualified individuals struggling to find employment (e.g., a doctor facing unemployment).
• Even traditionally secure professions like accounting are impacted by AI and outsourcing.
• A job is often a "smooth road that ends rough" (initial security, but potential instability later in life).
• Building a business is a "rough road that ends smooth" (initial struggle, but potential for significant wealth, options, and security later).

Debunking Business Failure Myths #

• The "90% of businesses fail" statistic is a myth, often based on misinterpretations or different definitions of "failure."
• Many businesses close or merge, which isn't necessarily a failure.
• Entrepreneurs can conduct "fast and cheap experiments" to test ideas with minimal risk.
• Starting a business often involves asymmetrical risk: small downside (a few thousand dollars for experiments) with massive upside (potentially millions in return).
• The definition of "success" varies; VCs aim for billion-dollar valuations, while most entrepreneurs seek a seven-figure revenue and six-figure profit (a "lifestyle business").
• Most entrepreneurs are not aiming to be professional athletes (like Bezos) but rather to get fit at the gym (achieve mild success through skills).
• A well-run lifestyle business (e.g., generating six-figure profit) can operate independently of broader economic trends.
• Examples include SaaS founders with a few thousand customers paying $30-40/month, supporting a small team.

Lesson 4: What a Lifestyle Business Actually Looks Like #

• A lifestyle business is designed to provide fun, freedom, and flexibility, fitting within one's broader life context.
• It offers benefits of both a job (security, cash flow) and a business (flexibility, creative freedom), without endless growth or profitability as primary goals.
• This model is historically unprecedented, enabled by the internet, AI, social media, and affordable software tools.
• Examples:
  • Steven Box: Monetized his passion for Warhammer, travels as a speaker, and earns more than many professionals.
  • Scott Manley (Driver 61 YouTube channel): Built a community around track driving, living a dream lifestyle.
  • Gabriela Rosa: Created a successful virtual fertility clinic with remote workers, authors books, and won awards.
• The ideal size for a lifestyle business is typically 3-12 employees, where it's self-managing and enjoyable.
• Larger businesses (13+ employees) require significant management infrastructure (general management, board, executive committees) and become more demanding.

Lesson 5: Goodbye, Homer Simpson #

• The idea of a stable, high-paying middle-class job for a large corporation (like Homer Simpson's) is a recent, post-WWII phenomenon.
• Historically, most businesses were smaller (around 150 people), like family businesses.
• The middle-class stability was partially due to rebuilding efforts after WWII.
• Women entering the workforce, while positive, diluted labor value, leading to increased household income requirements.
• Since the 1970s, new technologies (outsourcing, automation) have decoupled labor from production, shrinking job opportunities in large corporations (e.g., steel production now requires far fewer workers).
• The Digital Age vs. Industrial Age: We are transitioning from the Industrial Age (represented by Homer Simpson's era) to the Digital Age.
• The digital economy offers increasing opportunities, while the industrialized economy faces growing challenges.
• The speaker's own career shift from medicine to YouTube exemplifies moving from a declining industrialized system to an ascending digital economy.
• This shift mirrors historical changes where new economic drivers (e.g., industrialists vs. landowners) replaced old ones.
• Classical Economics: Land, Labor, Capital, Enterprise. The digital age elevates the importance of "enterprise" (entrepreneurship), as less land, labor, or capital is needed to start a business compared to previous eras.
• Working for a tech company as labor is still part of the industrialized model; the key is to be entrepreneurial within the tech sector.

Lesson 6: How Business Actually Works #

• The primary barrier to starting a business is often perceived as "not having the right idea."
• A business fundamentally exists when a customer wants to buy something, not just when you have something to sell.
• Having something to sell without a customer interested in buying means you're not in business.
• Entrepreneurs should prioritize finding someone who wants to buy before investing heavily in creating a product.
• Most people lack understanding of how businesses operate (generating leads, sales, customer satisfaction, product development).
• Business ideas are abundant (cloning successful models, identifying imperfections); the challenge is understanding business mechanics.

Lesson 7: The 766 Apprenticeship #

• To learn how businesses run, engage in a "766 apprenticeship": find a business with 7-figure revenue and 6-figure profit.
• Spend six months working as a direct report to the entrepreneur.
• This allows observation of lead generation, sales, customer care, and ongoing development within a successful small business.
• Even if you're established (e.g., a doctor in their 30s), this "fast, cheap experiment" is about de-risking and protecting financial stability.
• It might involve working part-time or lending existing skills to a small business.
• The goal is to gain exposure to realities of small business and its operations, which differ greatly from large corporations or public services.
• Why contact with the founder is important: To learn the specific role of a founder, including pitching, recruitment, customer acquisition, and operational tasks (landing pages, social media).
• Payment for apprenticeship: Focus on getting paid in experience, self-awareness (of strengths/weaknesses as a founder), commercial awareness, and access to resources (team, suppliers, money) rather than just cash.
• Exposure to a small business provides a "fire hose of information" for those from corporate backgrounds.
• Examples of alumni who applied learnings to start successful businesses, including multi-millionaires.
• Entrepreneurship is a learnable system, a process of conducting experiments and following effective steps, similar to the aviation industry's evolution towards safety and predictability through checklists.

Lesson 8: Your Founder Opportunity Fit #

• The initial business idea rarely becomes the scaling idea; ideas evolve.
• Execution is often more important than the idea itself (e.g., Pret A Manger selling sandwiches).
• The focus should be on a "good idea for you," considering "founder opportunity fit."
• Key questions for founder opportunity fit:
  • Origin: What is your background? What successful case studies or special skills do you possess? What have people valued from you in the past?
  • Vision: What future do you want to see? What meaningful change do you want to contribute to?
  • Mission: What are the highest value activities you can perform throughout a month that align with your vision and leverage your origin?

Lesson 9: Pain, Prize, and Payment #

• When coming up with business ideas, consider:
  • Pain: What problems can you solve? (e.g., doctor's knowledge of the body, credibility for health startups).
  • Prize: What big outcome or emotional uplift can you deliver?
  • Payment: Who has big budgets and is willing to pay for your solution?
• Doctor example: Instead of helping students get into med school (low willingness to pay), doctors can solve various pains by leveraging their medical expertise and credibility.
• Market dynamics: A small percentage of the market (e.g., 1 person for 15% of budget, 9 people for 45%) holds most of the budget, while the majority (90%) share only 40%.
• This suggests focusing on affluent clients who have significant budgets, as they value solutions that save them time or provide high returns.
• Intuitive vs. counter-intuitive: Most people assume the market is broke and price-sensitive, leading them to lower prices. The counter-intuitive approach is to focus on the affluent segment.

Lesson 10: Selling to Rich People #

• Example: Friends selling university admission programs for £7,000-£15,000 to affluent Chinese families, having amazing results by focusing exclusively on this high-paying niche.
• They qualify leads by school fees to ensure they only engage with individuals who can afford their highly-priced packages.
• Affluent clients justify higher spending because it frees up time they can use to earn more (e.g., a CEO saving a week of time is equivalent to their weekly salary).
• Value is based on the client's situation, not the service provider's.
• Example: A famous couples therapist charges high fees to wealthy couples because keeping a high-asset marriage together has a higher value for them.
• Designing your business: Focus on attracting a few high-paying clients for higher profitability and easier management.
• This doesn't mean ignoring others; once a profitable business is established, one can choose to offer free content or mentorship (as the speaker does with prison mentoring and free startup content).
• High price vs. low price, high volume vs. low volume:
  • Selling one thing for $100,000 is often easier than selling 100,000 things for $1.
  • High volume businesses (e.g., selling burritos or energy drinks) require immense effort and scale, often only feasible with massive existing audiences.
  • The "sweet spot" for new businesses is typically selling something priced between $1,000-$10,000 (or $2,000-$20,000) to 10-100 customers (e.g., agency or services businesses).
  • This balance offers less risk and a higher likelihood of success for a first business.