I'm a good entrepreneur because I'm so ugly and all of the girls say no to me when I ask them out. And so I got really good at hearing no. And so I learned to get no. But then you only need one girl to say yes, one customer to get you started. Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make? I'm excited to have you. I'm your host, Mirav Ozzeri. Today's guest is Jim Beach, a serial entrepreneur, longtime radio host, and the voice behind School for Startups. Jim brings a very non-traditional take on entrepreneurship. He pushes back on follow your passion and believes execution matters more than big ideas. Whether you agree with him or not, his perspective is practical, grounded, and worth listening to. So let's turn to Jim. Jim, thanks for coming to the show. Let's start by telling us how your career started. All right. Well, I wanted to be the CEO of Coca-Cola and they decided they didn't want me to be their CEO. And so they walked me out the door and I was devastated. And at 23, I had no clue what I wanted to do. So I started a business and it did well. And that turned into a book and that turned into a radio show. And so today I have a lot of different things, but all focused on one thing, which is helping other entrepreneurs be successful and have some tips, tricks, and techniques to help them get started. I came up with a philosophy along the way, and I try to share that philosophy that anyone can be a successful entrepreneur when you change the game a little bit. I don't believe in creativity, risk, or passion. I think those are all bad things for an entrepreneur. And so when you get rid of those things, it's a little bit easier. And of course, I'll go through the three things if you want me to. That's my mission today is to spread that idea. It shattered my idea about starting a business. I thought you always have to be passionate about it. And then I read your stuff and said, no. So yeah, by all means, please tell me about it. Well, let's start with creativity. 93%, 93% of businesses are copies of other existing businesses. That data comes from the London School of Economics. So it's a good source. But what it means is we've had restaurants for thousands of years. We've had hotels for thousands of years, but we still consider Conrad Hilton a great entrepreneur, even though he was a hotel man. But that wasn't creative. It's not creative to start a hotel. And so we have people sitting on the sofa saying, when God hits me with my lightning bolt of creativity, when God gives me my big idea, oh, I'm going to be going crazy then. Well, the idea is God's not going to just sit there and throw ideas at you. Maybe he already is and you haven't noticed. You know, there's tons of magazines that have ideas for you to copy, Inc. Magazine or Entrepreneur Magazine. You can read about what other people are doing in other states and do it in your state. My first business was 100% a copy of another business, but I didn't copy the trademarks, the copyrights, or the patents, of course. But this idea that you need a new idea stops people when what they really need to do is take someone else's idea and just try to do it a little bit better. And that's the essence. Just try to do someone else's idea a little bit better. But how do you check if in the marketplace there is a place for the same business at the same area? Well, I would have to assume so that if they're busy and I'm going to be doing a better job than them, I would think that I will get new customers and steal some of theirs. So I think the fact that they're successful is great evidence that you should be successful too. That is so interesting. So what would be the first test that somebody would do to see if there is a real market for the product? Copying or original? Whatever it is, put an ad in the paper and see if people respond to it or run a series of ads on Google and see if people respond. You'll spend a little bit of money to find out whether the idea is going to work. So with my very first idea, I ran two ads. I had two marketplaces, one in each marketplace. And I got 30 telephone calls off of a $400 ad. Which business was that? Was that the campground? That was the summer camp business, yes. And I ran an ad in the parent magazine in Palo Alto and in the Boston parenting magazine. and I got calls. So I knew that there was interest. And for $400, I already had 50 names of potential customers. And so I think that proves that it's worth advertising again and seeing if I can get another 50 names. Another thing I do with sort of talking about the money, I didn't spend the money to create a brochure until I knew I had enough people to send it to. So if I only got 10 responses, this business isn't going to work. There's not enough interest. So why even build the brochure? And so I always do stuff as late as possible and procrastinate as much as possible because there's no reason to go and get a bank account if I don't have a check to put in it. You know, why do I do that? I don't need to do that. So I try to save money, do things as cheaply as possible and validate as early as possible. And I think it's easier than people think. Run a $500 ad campaign and see what people say. You know, I heard a story about Google. When they started, they decided to call it Google. And then some investor came and said, oh, I'm putting $100,000. They didn't even ask him and wrote a check for Google Inc. So then they had to open a bank account and register their business and all of that. Yes. Now, you mentioned a few times I heard wantrepreneur, people that want to be entrepreneurs. What is the biggest change or shift that they have to do in their mind in order to become successful? They just have to start. It's all about starting and saying, I'm going to do something every day to make this possible I not going to do a big step every day just a small step every day to see if this idea works And it all a matter of just you putting your hand up and say me I the one that going to do this I the one that going to be different from my friends I'm the one that's not going to party all weekend and go to a festival all weekend. I'm going to work all weekend on my new business. You have to make a personal decision to get off of the sofa and to take the remote control and to destroy it so that you don't spend time watching the real housewives of ESPN. Spend your free time building the business. And that's the decision you have to make. And that's why it's hard because you have to do it. You know, you can't wait for someone to help you. You can't wait for your boss to chime in and say, now is the time to go do that. You have to personally decide to do something uncomfortable right now. And that's all it takes. In the research that I did, you say to start a business with like $5,000, no more than that. How is it even possible in today's market? Well, that's the second part of my thesis, the risk part. I'm not willing to take more than $5,000 of risk. Now, if I spend $5,000 and I prove that the market's a good idea and I already have some customers, then I might be willing to spend more. But on my radio show, I have done 2,700 episodes with two or three guests per show. That's 5,000 guests. We always talk about bootstrapping and how to start with no money. And I promise you that in every industry, there is someone that has already bootstrapped successfully in that industry on my radio show that you can copy. And, you know, we have famous examples. Richard Bronson built an airline for free with zero money. He literally started Virgin Airlines with zero money and had paying customers before he bought an airplane. And he didn't even buy the airplane. He borrowed it. And so he did everything that he could to reduce the cost and to prove that there was a market. He literally had paying customers before he got his airplane. And I did the same thing. I had, you know, 100 people signed up before I went and paid the money to secure the location. You know, so I had already proven the market before I spent the money. And I'll give you the most famous example, restaurants. Every man wants a restaurant or a bar with his own table and stuff like that. How cool would it be to walk into a bar that you own? Well, I know a guy named Joey who wanted a bar, wanted to start a restaurant empire. He only had $5,000. He spent $5,000 to build this restaurant. It's a dump. But think about how many beers you have to sell to recoup $5,000. Not a lot. Now, if I go and spend a million dollars to build my new restaurant, how many beers do I have to sell to recoup my million dollar investment? Right. That bar is still open 20 years later. And now he owns three or four other bars that are much nicer. but by lowering his goal, instead of saying, I want to have a fancy restaurant with all of the beer brewing equipment, all that brass stuff in the front foyer, I'm not going to spend money on that. I'm going to have a restaurant or a bar that I can afford to start. And that's a dump. But now he's rich enough to have other places that are really nice. And you think it's possible in this market to start something with 5,000? I do it every day and I see people doing it every day. I just started a publishing company. Yeah. Okay. So what do I have to do to start a publishing company? I need a name and a logo and a website. You can build all of those for free. And then I go on LinkedIn and advertise every day. I have a publishing company that would love to talk to you. And so far I've done nothing. I haven't spent a single penny yet, but all of a sudden someone contacts me and says, Hey, I saw your post on LinkedIn, I need help with my publishing. Now I have a customer and I have still spent no money. Which is the most successful advertising channel? What worked for you the best? LinkedIn? Word of mouth. You know, there's nothing better than word of mouth. And you can create that very easily. You know, you can offer deals. You know, if you tell me or tell a friend of yours about my business, I'll give you a discount. You know, there's so many ways to create that word of mouth. And it's usually by making something exclusive. Like I'm going to create an exclusive club and you are now a member. And in the club, you get points for telling people about us. And the first person to get 100 points wins a new hard drive, which is a $50 cost. But now I might've gotten 10 customers because I have this new club. Do anything you can to encourage your current customers to bring their friend next week or going out personally to all of the local Chamber of Commerce events and things like that as a way of you personally spreading the word, getting word of mouth out there. But by far, word of mouth is the best. Yeah. So I know some entrepreneurs that have more products rather than restaurant or location like that. And they're developing and developing. When is the time to stop developing and actually starting selling? The second you have anything, you should start selling. Developing and developing and developing is a horrible trap to get stuck in. You want to develop and deploy and then develop some more and deploy some more. Some of the best ideas that I've ever seen failed because they tried to deploy too much, tried to have 18 features when you needed to start with one feature. And so I say get to market as soon as possible, no matter what that means. If you're opening a bar, you know, as soon as you get your letter of occupancy, open, even if you don't have your liquor license. You don't have two weeks where you don't serve liquor, but tell people, hey, when you come back, we're going to have great drinks when we get our liquor license. People understand that, you know, so I don't have any problem doing that. Open as soon as you can. What do you think is the most important skill for an entrepreneur? The ability to hear no and to keep going. I a good entrepreneur because I so ugly and all of the girls say no to me when I ask them out And so I got really good at hearing no And so you know I learned to get no But then you only need one girl to say yes one customer to get you started So I think the number one thing that we need as entrepreneurs is resilience and the idea that I going to fight on even if the circumstances are against me I wanted to go to architecture school decades ago and I got rejected. There's a stereotype now. I decided to reject their rejection. And I stood or sat in the hallway outside of the dean's office for a month until he changed his mind. Wow. So resilience really is resilience. That's what it takes. Just because you say no, that doesn't mean I say no. What is the most common mistake new business owners make? Oh, just spending money on stupid stuff. You know, they already have a logo, but they can't tell you what their business does. They already have a secretary and they already have office space, but they don't have any income yet. You don't have any income. Why do you need office space and a secretary? You know, I want a nice golf shirt with my logo on it, too. But that's a luxury item that you only deserve when you've had some sales. Talking about sales, how do you measure success? Let's say the first year of business. You know, if you can break even in the first year, you are successful. Oh. You know, if you don't lose any more money, I would call that a win. You don't have to be successful the first year. Try it the second year. I have no problem with that. That doesn't bother me at all. Businesses are going to start small and grow. My largest business that I ever had, 600 employees. We started with $56,000 of revenue year one. Well, we also had $56,000 of expenses. So we ended up zero, but we were able to go into year two strong with no debt. And in year two, we did 256,000. And then in year three, we did 1.2 million. And our expenses went down because the word of mouth advertising kicked in. So, you know, I'm a big firm believer in starting small. And even if it isn't profitable, you know, just if you're still in business, you're winning. Do you have a story of a business that started with very little money, not your business, but that started with very little money, they didn't have to raise money and became very successful? I have thousands of stories like that. One of my students, Eric, wanted to start a business and had no money. And so we decided that he would start a web design company, one of thousands, one of thousands. But Eric is the most dedicated, diligent person I've ever met. If he says, I'm going to call you tomorrow at five, he calls you tomorrow at five, even if he has nothing to say. And so he started a web design business, zero startup capital. He did not know, this is the best part. He didn't know how to do web design when he started his web design company. Really? He spent tons of time on Google learning how to build websites, learning, starting with WordPress and then moving on to other languages. And all of those videos on YouTube are excellent. There's anything you want to learn, you can learn on YouTube. He learned how to do his design. And now 12 years later, he has a wife and two kids and four or five million dollars a year. What numbers owners should pay attention to the most? Customer acquisition, margin? There's only one. How much money you have in the bank. That determines everything. It determines how long you can stay in business. If I have 12 months of electricity payments, I can stay in business for 12 more months. Your cash on hand, I think, is the number one thing. Because you can be making millions of dollars on paper and still be broke. Now, you mentioned your radio show, syndicated radio show. It's a daily show. No, it's not. It's not syndicated, which means I did it by myself. All 100 stations I got by myself without a syndication deal. Wait, you got some station before you got a deal with the station that you do the show at? I don't do my show at a station. I do it 100% at home and then email all of the stations the show. I do not have a home network, so to speak. Now it's in like in a lot of stations around the country, AM and FM. 100 stations five days a week, yes. And we started on just the internet. You know, it's free. And so I started off on an internet platform, an internet radio station. They went out of business and started doing my show and putting it up every day. and then tried to find a new place to get it and, you know, tried to get more online distribution and then tried to find more terrestrial distribution. And I got one radio station kind of out of the blue, sort of with luck. And then I learned how to find, you know, 99 more radio stations. So it's a system just like anything else. There's a system to it. And once you figure out the system, it's easy. Call the station master and say, hey, I have a show. would you like to put it on? The problem is he has to cut something to add a new show. So if he has a need for an hour show, I can fill that need. And I would love to get a syndication deal. I'm not opposed to that. It just hasn't happened yet for me, but I did find a different niche, which is stations that are not themselves part of a syndication deal that still need content. I'm not on every station yet. I'd like to be on a lot more, but I'm still on 100 now using my free method and doing it myself. So the income for the show comes, the radio station pays you or from advertisement? Advertisement. No, to be on radio, you have to pay them. Sean Hannity, everybody has to buy that time. You think about it, what does the radio station have to sell? The only thing they have to sell is time. Right. So either they're going to give you the time for free or you have to buy that time. And so I do all sorts of deals with the advertising time, we do make money from advertising, I will do a deal where I'll give the station the show for free and then they get to keep six minutes, an hour to run ad. But then you're making no money at all on the show? On that show in that market. Oh, okay. In that market, I'm not. Right. But hopefully I using the show to do something else to sell something else The show is a loss leader for the other parts of the business It not actually a loss leader We make money from the show but that wasn always the case The show is designed to make the rest of my life look more reputable. So I'm a speaker and I love to go out and give speeches. And if someone's hiring a speaker and there's two people left in the competition, someone who has a podcast and someone who's on 100 radio stations five days a week, who are you going to choose? You're going to choose the person with 100 stations five days a week. That gives me more credibility. If someone wants to hire me to write a book, I can advertise your book on my stations for free as part of the deal. So it helps the rest of my business substantially by doing the show. And you get some powerful people to come on your show. How do you get them? You just write to them? Well, no, I started the show 14 years ago now, and I made one very important decision. I never went after guests, never. But I will go after publicists. And so I would go and hook up with a publicist, and that publicist over 15 years will send me 100 guests. You know, I'd love to have Elon Musk on. I think I'm sure I could get him. But my strategy is just for to wait until he wants to be on to promote his book. And I'll get him then and it'll be him asking me as opposed to me asking him. Right. I do get amazing guests we had. Yeah, the shark tank guy. Yeah, we have everybody billionaires. I try to have a billionaire every month. The billionaires, by the way, and we're talking about risk, they always raise money at the beginning of the business, right? Not necessarily. I would say that probably the opposite is true, that most of the billionaires were the people who didn't raise money and therefore they maintain more equity. You know, if you raise money at the beginning, then your equity goes down and you may only have 30 percent of the business. then it's going to be hard to be a billionaire. And the name of the show is School of Startup. It's a great name. Well, thank you. I didn't have anything to do with it. I wanted to call it the Entrepreneur School. And I got a letter from Entrepreneur Magazine threatening to sue me because Entrepreneur Magazine owns the trademark entrepreneur. And if you use entrepreneur in any of your businesses, that word, EMI, the owner of Entrepreneur Magazine, will sue you. They are incredibly aggressive. And then at the same time, my publisher, McGraw-Hill, my first book, they came back and said, we don't like the name of the Entrepreneur School. Can we call it School for Startups instead? And I was like, yes, you can, because that way I won't get sued. And so I was forced to change the name and it was imposed upon me by McGraw-Hill. Entrepreneur Magazine is bad people, everybody. I don't know how somebody can trademark an English word. There was a movie made about it called Trademark Wars. I was interviewed for the movie, but was not actually in it. It's a movie about how this happened. Cure, the word C-U-R-E, is owned by Susan G. Komen. And if you're having a Cure walk-a-thon in your local town in Wisconsin, and Susan G. Komen will come in and sue you for using the word cure. They made a whole movie about this, Trademark Wars. You have an online school, School for Startup. What do you teach there? Right now we are doing Lightning Bolt. We have a special program right now called Lightning Bolt, where what we are trying to do is get you that crazy idea. So you're going to come to us with absolutely no idea what you want to do as an entrepreneur. and in one hour we will find a lightning bolt brilliant idea that excites you. And then do you walk them through like the beginning stages? You know, we can, but there are a billion people who can do that, you know, and I'll help you with the beginning stages, of course. From all the things that you do between speaking and author and radio show and all of that, which is all, it's all connected. What's your favorite thing to do? Take my kids to Disney. And so that's a huge part of my theory. You know, I'm not willing to spend more than $5,000 a week at Disney. And that should be your test. That's how you decide if something is risky or not. If it's more than a week vacation for you, maybe you shouldn't do it. And you should take vacation instead. So that's your favorite thing. If people want to find you, where shall they go? JimBeach.com is an easy place that links to everything. You can go to school, jimbeach.com. Can I throw out one more thing? Absolutely. So I just released a new book called The Real Environmentalist, and it introduces the entrepreneurs, 216 entrepreneurs that are solving the world's environmental crisis. I no longer worry about climate warming because I know the man, the woman that is solving every problem that you're worried about. Your big problem, the thing you worry about is killing all of our coral reefs. Well, I know the company that can grow coral 50 times faster than God does. They can grow you coral in their swimming pool and then a week later plant it in your resort at the ocean. And now you have coral again. Wow. I know the people cleaning the air. I know the people cleaning the water. I know the people cleaning the microplastics. There is an entrepreneur right now already solving for profit all of our environmental problems. So quit worrying about the environment and get on board the solution by being an entrepreneur and realizing that the academics are the ones slowing down environmental cleanup. Can you tell me the name one more time, please? Real Environmentalist. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was so interesting. I'm an entrepreneur myself, but you totally shattered some of my ideas about entrepreneurship. And I'm going to look into it. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you for having me. That was Jim Beach, host of School of Startups. If this episode made you rethink how you approach entrepreneurship or what kind of business is worth starting, then it did its job. Thank you for listening. Please like and review. And we'll see you next week on How Much Can I Make?
