How to start a business

Step 1. Draw a circle. Step 2. Draw the rest of the fucking owl.

I’m just gunna free flow this one cos it’s late and honestly things have been all over the place lately. There hasn’t been that regular “ah that’s what I’ll write about today” feeling.

So instead I am doing the next best thing which is to just start writing.

And there is the point that I’d like to make! The power of “just start.” (Thanks freeflow writing!)

A friend was telling me today a story of this guy who had grand visions for the company he will one day build. Hundreds of chains across the globe - with everything just so. He would hire all kinds of people. This is the car he would drive. And the culture would be like this. You get the idea.

He built up this fantasy in his head and SPOKE about starting a business for over two years!

And he’s done nothing. Apparently still working at Tesco (no shade, I used to work for Tesco lol)

I have a lot of empathy for this kind of person. I was afflicted by the “fantasy building” stage. This manifests in me in the form of buying domain names and designing logos. Or needlessly tinkering on something entirely useless in the grand scheme of things (a website).

I think the main problem with the idea of business building is that it seems like you have to work backwards from the end goal. In our friend’s story - the vision was super clear. And I kind of don’t blame him.

It’s super debilitating having built up this fantasy in your head. Making any real moves on it turns it into reality. And reality is gross and scary and hard.

If I knew what the size and scope of Pip Decks would be now when I had started - I wouldn’t know how to get here. Hell I wouldn’t even know where to START.

And so you never do.

Because businesses tend to start either by accident, or to fulfil some immediate short-term need.

Derek Sivers wanted to help him and his friends sell their CDs on the “world-wide web” - which then went on to become CD Baby and sell for ~$20m.

Pip Decks started the same way. I made the first product to help one person. But I didn’t really think about it beyond “what if I made it look cool” and then “what if I tried to sell it to other people”. There was no great ambition of a “multi-million global publishing company”.

So the unintuitive advice is this: don’t try and start a “business”. Instead, start helping just one person. Do it in a lo-fi way. Do it because you genuinely want to help them. “Business building” is then a matter of refining and scaling that solution and solving for distribution.

An uncanny truth: your ambition may be inversely correlated with success.

That’s kinda useless to hear isn’t it? Sorry!

Let me know your thoughts, maybe that was useful. Maybe not.

Charles.