Building your business from the ground up (part 1)

Escape the relentless tick-tock of your office clock and seize the reins to your career destiny! Zeke and I, Oscar, unfold the blueprint of entrepreneurship, starting with the linchpin of every triumphant venture: a killer Unique Selling Proposition. Our hands-on guide isn't just talk; we'll walk you through the birth of a candle business from a spark of an idea to the glow of success in grand retailers. Along the way, we illuminate the steps to distinguish your flame in a sea of competitors, sharing key insights that ensure your business lights up the market.

Then, we chisel away at the marble slab of vision and mission statements, the foundation of your business philosophy. As your company evolves, so should these declarations, and we dissect the process of keeping them aligned with your growing ambitions—with a nod to major players like Facebook for inspiration. You'll learn to wield tools like SWOT analysis to carve out your niche and turn competitors' weaknesses into your strategic advantage. And remember, hit that subscribe button to join our convoy of dreamers and doers, because next week, we've got even more entrepreneurial wisdom to fan into flames.

For any enquiries or to connect with Oscar, Zeke, or their company, Asset Road, listeners can visit the following links:

• Finance Bible Podcast Instagram
• Asset Road Instagram
• Asset Road Website

The advice shared on The Finance Bible is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. The Finance Bible exists purely for educational / entertainment purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs.

Transcript

Zeke Guenthroth: 0:10

Welcome back to another episode of the Finance Bible Podcast.

Oscar Don: 0:14

Zeke here and your co-host Oscar. But before we get into it, please note that nothing in this podcast should ever be considered as personal financial advice.

Zeke Guenthroth: 0:23

Of course, if that is what you are seeking, reach out. We'll get you in touch with the correct professionals. Get the job done properly. Sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Let's get into it. Today we're doing an interesting topic, a little bit out of the ordinary, you could say. Don and I are sitting here and we're thinking we are the finance bible and everyone loves to come here and get tips and um, innuendo is into advice, even though we don't provide direct advice. But we thought today a lot of our listeners would be out there going, hey, we want to get business advice, we want to actually create a business and escape the matrix, the rat race, whatever you want to refer to it as, just a day-to-day grind of going to and from an office every day. So here we are. We've made an episode. We're going to be talking about different ways to start businesses and things to think about. That might be a bit all over the show.

Oscar Don: 1:19

It probably will. Well, we're going to touch on the process and it's most likely that this episode will be broken down into, I'd say, two to three parts. I imagine Definitely two parts. But really the reason we're doing this is for those following our journey. What was it? A year and a half ago, zeke and I started our own business and first time for everything, we had no idea what the go was, where to start, who to speak to, but we had an idea and through networking and getting advice from family and friends and people in the industry, we figured out how to actually build this business which we have today, and it's really got us out on our own and changed our lives at the moment. So if we can share back the process of how you can do it yourself, if you're wanting to do that, I think that's a game changer, because when I was younger, I always had these ideas.

Zeke Guenthroth: 2:19

I'm like well, I've got this idea. How do I get it out?

Oscar Don: 2:22

Where do I start? So we'll start from the beginning. First things first. You want to have a point of difference.

Zeke Guenthroth: 2:30

Just before we jump into that, I just want to say for everyone listening we're not out here claiming to be like the biggest business owners in the world and these giant men that are out here making millions of dollars or anything like that.

Oscar Don: 2:45

The reals on Instagram rules. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not at all, we're not an instagram rule.

Zeke Guenthroth: 2:48

Listen to this podcast and you'll get 10 million dollars. Now, no, we've walked the walk. We're we're going well, and it's more to sharing our experience of things that we thought of, um and and different things to actually take into account when you're doing it. You talk to to Oscar, you talk to me, you talk to someone else with a business. You're going to get different answers, and the more info that's out there, the better it is for you. So now let's get into the point of difference.

Oscar Don: 3:14

So, first thing, you've probably got an idea in your head or you're really good at your job and you're fed up with your company and you might want to leave and do it yourself. So the first thing, in our point of view, is what is your point of difference that yourself or your company will offer to your competitors in the industry? So how would you set yourself apart? How will you be the main one to get potentially still their customers and their clients to be the real driving force and be the main one for your competitors to look to yourself? So you need to define your usp, which is your unique selling proposition, and really do the research and understand from the research why the customers should choose your product or service over others and how are you going to make that happen.

Zeke Guenthroth: 4:05

Yeah, and it could be. As Oscar said, you're sitting there, you're at work and you're going.

Oscar Don: 4:10

Oh man, I could be doing this better on my own, or I don't really want to be coming in here all the time we were struggling, going to work all the time. Oh, it's just such a dampener on the mood, wasn't it? We had about eight months just sitting there just thinking get us out of here please.

Zeke Guenthroth: 4:26

A very crook time in our lives. But you could even be in that circumstance and going actually, I just want a complete change of industry. Or I don't even want to be necessarily in one where I'm doing consulting work or I'm talking to people, I want to create some kind of product and sell it. So even if you're thinking, you know, I want to make toys or I want to go out and make a gym brand or protein or literally anything, that question is important. You know what is our unique difference? The market in nearly every industry is just drastically oversaturated with let's be real there's crap, there's good and there's a bit of in-between. Let's just pick an example out of the hat and just think of something in this room and tell me what it is Candle, candle. Oh, wow, that's a good one.

Zeke Guenthroth: 5:17

I know a lot of people who they start up businesses making candles so that's actually unreal. But you go into the candle market, right, you've got to think okay, who am I actually competing with? You're going to be competing with people at, like, your local markets and everything, which is probably where you'd want to start. You're also then going to be talking about bigger shops like Dusk. Yeah, it's a massively oversaturated market.

Oscar Don: 5:40

What's that one over there we got, can you read?

Zeke Guenthroth: 5:42

that.

Oscar Don: 5:43

Trojan or something I don't know Something like that. But you got the. You know the upmarket ones, which are just. You only get them Like. You just know the demographic for that one. It just sets themselves apart. Yeah, you've really got to figure out.

Zeke Guenthroth: 5:57

How are you actually going to compete with each of them? And in that specific niche of candles, you know who is my competitor. As I was going to say, there's up market, there's low market, which would be actually at the market, funnily enough. So there's so many different things going into actually defining your point of difference. On to the next point your mission statement or vision statement. Now, we're not necessarily saying that this is in order. Like you know, you might get the idea and then go. Statement or vision statement. Now, we're not necessarily saying that this is in order. Like you know, you might get the idea and then you go oh, I could be a point of difference from this, or that I'm going to make a mission statement, or you could go and do research, or you could go and think of a name or color schemes or something, but they're all just different things that we did or that you would think of or you would have to do as a business owner, right?

Oscar Don: 6:42

Yeah yeah. The mission and vision statement is a funny one because sometimes when you're so early in the business stage, you don't really know that much of what the vision is. You just have an idea. Obviously, you want the vision to be I want to be the leading company in this industry, or whatever it may be, and impact the world with this way. But I think, looking back, we actually we didn't write our mission, vision, vision statement like fully straight away. I think it. We we got to it and then we came back to it after a day or two because it took us a while to actually think about it. But even if it takes you one or two or a week to to get it done, it is very important because it basically just outlines your business's purposes and values. So if you have your own values of what you want to be like authentic hardworking, you want to be driven in a sustainable company everything you do, every decision you'll make, will be made to align with those values.

Zeke Guenthroth: 7:46

Yeah, and a lot of it is like for us, specifically at that point in time when we were doing it, we're like, oh, do we really need to like focus on that? There's so many other things we can be doing. You know, mission statement symbol we want to make money, we want to do the job, we want to do it well.

Oscar Don: 8:02

Yeah, we didn't even think of doing this until we were speaking with someone and he said get us a business plan ASAP with all these things. Yeah, it was chaos.

Zeke Guenthroth: 8:13

But at the end of the day, going through business and thinking of like associates and people that we know in the business world and people we've watched grow and fall, we know for a fact that their initial mission statement way back in the day, if they had one, would have been truly positive and if they actually followed that to a T, they'd still be around today. There's many, many, many companies that I've seen and worked with or even just dealt with or crossed paths with in my time. If they just, when they're making a certain decision, look back at that statement, we're like hang on, I've taken the wrong step here. When I first did it, I wanted to do X, Y, Z. Am I doing that anymore? No, Okay, Time to reframe and take a step back, re-get that trajectory going and fix it.

Oscar Don: 9:00

Yeah, exactly right, because your mission statement is something that, at the time, you're wanting to abide by, but it can also be something that you continually edit over the years. So if you make one now and your business lasts 10 years, in year eight or something, you've still got the same mission statement, but you're going to change it. You can change it whenever you want, but it's just good to go by those values. Like Facebook, one of the biggest companies in the world, they've got a mission statement. They're short and sharp. Theirs is let me just get it up here is give people the capacity to form communities and bring the globe closer together. Simple, short, effective. Yeah, that's all you need. Very easy, and I'm sure Zuckerberg will update that whenever he feels it's necessary to do so. But it's just something to continue to look back and if you get lost, you'll find your feet again.

Zeke Guenthroth: 9:56

Yeah, at the end of the day, it's like your sole mission is to do X, y, z At any point. If I'm not, then take a step back.

Oscar Don: 10:04

Yeah, and another mission to do a different type of mission is to take us on to. The next one is study, study, study your competitors. So, whatever industry you are, as you mentioned before, a lot of markets and industries are oversaturated with pretty average companies, good ones and really good ones, but there's so many out there. So wherever you jump, jump into it, you need to figure out what are the companies doing, what are their names, what are their logos, what are their websites like, how do they market on Facebook or Instagram or whatever platform they use, and why are they good, why are they bad? Write down their strengths, even do a SWOT analysis for them. So strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and figuring that out will give you an idea of where you can, kind of, you know, put your way into the middle and jump them.

Zeke Guenthroth: 11:01

Yeah, and it's nearly every market has that, you know top of the line. You know whether it's cars or candles or whatever it is line, you know whether it's cars or candles or whatever it is. And then they always have that very bottom of the line too, which doesn't necessarily mean cheap crap, but it means it's affordable for everyone, like there's no entry barrier. So even if you're making things as simple as massage guns, right, you've got like theragun, you know, like six hundred dollars, it's the top dog of the of the chain. Well, I don't know if it actually is, but in my eyes it was um. And then you know you've got um like renpo and that the more low-end, like hundred dollars where you're not really sure if they actually work.

Zeke Guenthroth: 11:40

you don't buy them um, well, I didn't, but yeah, you need to figure out, okay, what are they doing, what are they doing well, what are they doing well, what are they doing poorly Exactly as Don said, and grasp. How can I improve on that or where do I fit in and what can I actually go on? I think for me personally, when we were starting up our business, one of the main things that I actually focused on were weaknesses and threats. So you know, you've got your strengths and opportunities and all of that, but I wanted to figure out, okay, what are the weaknesses and the threats to other companies and how can we make sure we're better than that? And that kind of gave us the potential to go all right, well, they're exposed here. We can come in and make sure we aren't like that. So that's just something to take into account as well. But another massively important step is is a financial assessment. I'm a numbers man, you all know.

Oscar Don: 12:38

I'm a big numbers man. We like to say it frequently on the podcast.

Zeke Guenthroth: 12:41

Numbers, numbers, numbers One plus one equals three makes sense to me, as people once said. What's his name? Perez? Yes, Christian Armando Perez Perez, but you need to figure out a whole bunch of different things with numbers, right?

Oscar Don: 12:58

You do.

Zeke Guenthroth: 12:59

Your startup cost, your actual profit margins, how much it costs to run the business. And there's so many things as well, like referral fees or gifts to clients, or even like live lights. Softwares, yep software subscription.

Oscar Don: 13:12

There's a lot of different calculators out there, like business calculators, that you can actually download and I'd probably say 99% of them are actually free to download online. There are different calculators out there, like business calculators, that you can actually download and I'd probably say 99% of them are actually free to download online and you can just play around with it. Because we played around with it, I remember before we actually started, I went to Zeke's house when we were both living in Sydney and then he says come up to the desk, mate, come up. And he says look, I had a thought.

Zeke Guenthroth: 13:39

Yes, a very late night. Thought, yeah, it was like at 12.30 or something.

Oscar Don: 13:43

He said what we're doing now. We can actually do this ourselves and look at the numbers I've popped in. We can make money with it, we can pay ourselves, and then that was the calculator before any of this started. So we had a rough idea of expenses, what would be needed, and then when we got closer to actually starting it, so when we did the financial assessment, we figured out our startup costs. So we probably had around eight different categories of startup costs. Our startup costs came to I think it was $30,000 on the dot roughly around $30,000.

Oscar Don: 14:16

Yeah give or take Roughly around $30,000. And then you've got to figure out how do you allocate this 30. So for us, you obviously need clients to start. So for us, a big one was getting leads so that was our main one and then obviously set up costs of you want to have a nice website, you want to get all the licensing and get all the ABNs, et cetera, all the paperwork done, and do you need equipment? So do you have a laptop? Do you need a laptop? Do you have a phone? Do you need a phone? What do you actually need to start off? Because if you don't have a laptop and you need one for your business, well, you're going to have to put that into your budget to start with.

Zeke Guenthroth: 15:00

Yeah. And also, if you're actually looking to begin the business now, before you transition, or you're looking to transition or you know you're going cold turkey at the job, quitting tomorrow and starting, how do you afford to live for the next six weeks, 12 weeks? What's your lead time? Does it take you three months to settle a deal? Yeah, Sorry.

Oscar Don: 15:15

We thought it's quite funny because we thought when we started this we would be out on our own from the start of it to probably four to six months roughly yeah, fast forward. It took us around 18 months from that start 12 months roughly, but now like 18 months to actually start paying ourselves an income yeah, to get like in a position where we're fully pay yourself and have money in the business yeah, that's right so it's quite funny how that happens.

Oscar Don: 15:42

So stay yes, we'll touch on a bit later on, but stay into your. Stay in your current job until your side business, which turns into your business down the track, can actually pay you what you're making now, what you're happy to live off yeah, unless you've got bulk savings or you've got something going on or your job's really really eating away. Yeah, that's true. It's like get out of there, because it does happen. It's very.

Zeke Guenthroth: 16:09

Well, well, well, but to actually figure out those finances, you need to have an idea of other things we're going to talk about as well, and we just mentioned then, like lead time. So, for example, if you are a consultant or you're doing work with people, right, like you actually rely on making a sale with an individual, then you know what is your time frame for that. Is it a day, is it a month, is it two months, is it three? Is it a year? Um, yeah, like some things and some jobs, I know you can be having meetings for, like actually a whole year before you get any income from it. Uh, if you're selling things, you know you got to acquire the goods, you got to sell them, you got to pay for transportation, this, that and the other. You know it might be a week, it might be two, it might be three. So take that into account when you're doing it and it really helps you map out and map out at least six months on.

Zeke Guenthroth: 17:04

To another fun one, which is team composition. Now, this one's an interesting one because you got to. If it's just you, then you're handling everything yourself, right, so it's not really as important, but when there's more than one of you. There's a lot of different things to think about and a lot of responsibilities and roles and jobs, expertise. One person might be good at this, the other might be good at that. Don take over.

Oscar Don: 17:31

Yeah. So when we figured this out, we looked at all the different aspects and components that you need to run a business. So you know, finances, marketing, sales, it support, communication with referral partners, etc. The list goes on, but we figured that out. All right, let's divide that. What are we both good at, like, what are our strengths? So, zeke numbers man, give him all the finance. You can look after the finance. Me, I do all the marketing. So I do all the Instagram, linkedin, all you see there, because I did that at uni. But that's just one example. We both obviously have more roles than that. But figure out if you do have a business partner or a few other people, figure out everyone's strengths. And it's as easy as just having a conversation and asking what are you, what are you comfortable with, like, what do you actually feel you're good at?

Zeke Guenthroth: 18:23

yeah, and if, if your mates, it makes it a bit easier because you don't really know yeah, you could sit down with your mate and go I know you're bloody excellent at doing xyz, I feel like I'm good at doing this and like how do you feel? What do you actually feel is appropriate to do? And from there you can normally figure it out. But it is a bit of common sense. There's also a bit of give and take with it too. Like you know, you both might be good at something there and one of you might be like oh, I don't really want to give that up and you need to like figure it out. But there's also the circumstance where you can both do the same thing.

Oscar Don: 19:02

Yeah, exactly right and work on it together, but it just doesn't make sense to do that for things like accounting and that no, but I was going to say like, for example, because I mainly do the marketing side, which you don't, it doesn't mean if you call me up and say, oh mate, I've got a good idea.

Zeke Guenthroth: 19:20

Yeah, exactly.

Oscar Don: 19:21

Let's run this real, which has happened all the time. I'm like, all right, good idea, bang, let's do it. And it's like, with numbers as well, I'm like, oh, I've got this expense. Or let's do it this way. You'd be like, yep, done, run the mentioned. You can both do the same things, but if you have one person who is the main one looking after it, that is important because they know their roles and responsibilities and it's not going to get left behind.

Zeke Guenthroth: 19:51

We hope you enjoyed the episode. As always, you know exactly what to do.

Oscar Don: 19:54

Hit that follow button. Subscribe whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. Also share it to friends, families, co-workers, whoever you think may benefit from it. But unfortunately it's the end and we'll see you next week.