Are You Playing Business, Or Are You BUILDING One? (7-Figure Blueprint Series - Part 3)

Hey, one, I'm Brandon Turner, host of Better Life, podcast list three of the seven figure

business blueprint series been doing it for the last few weeks.

Today we're talking about how to actually build a business.

Like no matter what you're doing, I'm going to cover how to do it with the lean startup

method.

Why most entrepreneurs are just playing dress up and how to get paid before you build

anything.

Hey, DM me the word seven blueprint, like the number seven blueprint on Instagram at

Beardy Brandon for the full PDF summary, let's get to it.

So my six year old built a website last week, totally functioning.

I'm serious.

He used like AI to build a app that basically gamifies his chores.

So like he gets a real world rewards now.

Like if he does certain chores, he can get ice cream or a date with mom or dad and all

this cool stuff.

It's super cool.

Like how great is that the six year olds out there using AI to build this cool tool.

However, he's not building the business.

And I mean, even though it's got a logo, even though the website works, you could get it,

you could use it.

It's got everything, but it's not a business.

He built a website and that is the trap that most quote unquote entrepreneurs fall into

these days.

Welcome back to the seven figure business blueprint series.

My name is Brandon Turner and this is a six part series designed to give you every

single thing you need to build a million dollar a year profit business.

This is pillar number three, building a business that works.

Now if you haven't watched the first two videos, go watch those videos.

They're so good.

Links are in the description and probably here and here on my screen.

I think we can pop those up there.

But here's where we've been so far in case you want a quicker view.

In pillar one, we talked about the mental game, like getting fed up enough to decide and

then picking one thing and then preparing for the dip and why consistency beats intensity

every time, but both are required.

In pillar two, we figured out what to build by seeing problems everywhere.

We talked about why boring beats flashy, how solving expensive problems for people with

money is the best way to go and niching down hard matters.

Now today, we're talking about how to actually turn your idea that you have into a real business

or at least test it, something that can make real money.

But I want to start by telling you about a trap that catches most everyone off guard.

So let's start there with a trap.

If you believe the people, and let's be honest, the bots on Twitter or X, whatever they

call it now, like you'll think all that you have to do to launch a million dollar

of your business is like vibe code something online and you'll just make a bunch of money.

Like you probably seen the post, right?

Screenshots of products and SaaS tools and companies that were built in hours using some

fancy AI tool, maybe you're not on Twitter, probably good for your mental health.

But here's what they're not telling you.

Most of that stuff, like it's making nothing, no money.

Even when people say that they're making money, it's fake, they're lying.

Or it's like one out of 10,000 that does that.

Like you never hear about the losers or maybe somebody already has a big successful business

or a client list and they just sold a new thing to them.

Like look, those aren't businesses.

Now with the help of AI, every day hundreds of new quote unquote businesses are created,

maybe thousands.

I put that in air quotes because having a website is not a business.

A business has customers, a business has revenue.

And the barrier to looking like looking like a business has never been lower, like vibe

coding tools, like a lovable or replete or whatever, like they let you spin up a website

in minutes.

And AI can write your copy, they can design your logo, it can generate a business plan

for you.

And here's the trap, all of that feels like progress, but it's not.

Like you spend four hours building a website and you design a logo and you set up an Instagram

account and you tell all your friends, you feel like an entrepreneur, but you haven't

talked to a single customer.

You haven't made a single dollar.

You've been playing business, not building one.

Now that trap existed long before AI and it was business cards.

It was building your brand on social media.

It was signing up for some multi level marketing thing.

So same trap, different costume.

The trap is anything that feels like progress, but doesn't generate revenue.

It's not actually building the business, designing logos is fun, talking to strangers,

that's uncomfortable.

Building a website, super satisfying, asking someone to buy, super scary, posting on social

media, gets dopamine hits, cold calling, gets rejection.

My nine year old daughter recently wrote and illustrated a book.

She wrote it herself, used Chatsubiti to illustrate it and then we printed it on

Canva.

But when it came time to sell it, I told her, you had to just call your grandparents

and your relatives.

No way Dad, can you call for me?

Like, she's nine.

But her mentality is no different than 99% of entrepreneurs out there.

It's fun to build, it's hard to sell.

And the only thing that matters though is revenue, a customer, someone who gave you money

because you solved their problem.

Anything else is cosplay.

Like my son built that tool with AI and it's cool, it's helpful.

It's helping him earn real money by doing chores and ice cream and dates and all that, but

it's not a business.

It's a tool.

So how do you actually build a real business?

So let me introduce you to a concept that made me a millionaire many times over.

Eric Reese or Rice, I think his Reese, he wrote a book called The Lean Startup like over

20 years ago.

If you haven't read it, read it.

Let me give you the core idea here.

Traditional business thinking goes like this.

I'm up on that idea, spend months planning it, launch the perfect product, perfect, launch

big, and then hope customers show up.

But that's how most businesses fail.

They burn through time and money, building something that ultimately nobody wants.

In fact, just this morning, a buddy showed me an app that his friend had created, it's

in the construction industry space, right?

My buddy told me that his buddy has been building it for years, has over $3 million in on

the build and they have no customers yet.

They're hoping and praying and believing it's going to attract customers because it's

such a great tool and maybe it will, but I would bet it's even more likely it won't.

The Lean Startup actually flips that script.

You have a theory, a hypothesis about the customer wants.

Maybe you think busy homeowners will pay $1,500 for a clean grudge.

That's a theory.

You don't know if that's true yet.

I don't know if that's true.

We're just talking about it, right?

So you test it and not by building out a massive whole company with employees and trucks

and debt and an app by doing the smallest possible experiment posted on a local Facebook

group or knock on 10 doors in a nice neighborhood or tell everyone you know to see if anyone

bites.

You don't have to have a truck yet.

You could rent one for 50 bucks and somebody said, yes, that's a lean test.

And then you learn, hey, did anyone say yes?

What objections did they have?

What did you hear?

What questions did they ask?

And then you iterate, which means change something and you adjust your offer or you adjust

the product or whatever.

You basically change something based on a new theory of what people want and then you

test it again.

You theory or hypothesize, you test, you learn, you iterate and that cycle should be quick

like days, not months.

Let reality guide you instead of assumptions, like speed of implementation, it beats perfection

every day.

So the entrepreneurs who launch ugly and iterate fast, they're going to crush the still

perfect businesses that are still working on their plan.

So here's an example of how that might work in that app for the construction industry.

My buddy's buddy is building instead of spending three million bucks building a slot for

first, maybe start by asking a simpler question to construction companies actually want this

matter enough to pay for it.

Before writing a single line of code, they can go find 10 contractors and offer to solve

that problem manually.

Now, if the app is supposed to help them track jobs or change orders or crews or materials,

we'll then do that in a spreadsheet, like a shared Google form, a group text, or even

a simple dashboard built in air table or lovable charge them for it.

Not someday.

If no one's going to pay you to solve that problem manually, then there's a good chance

you're not going to pay you to solve that automatically either.

But if 5 out of 10 say, yeah, for sure, I really need that.

Well, now you got something.

Then you learn what part they actually care most about.

And maybe they don't want the full all-in-ones system that you imagined.

Maybe they want, I don't know, maybe faster estimating or easier scheduling or cleaner

communication with their subs, I don't know, that insight can save you millions of dollars

in years of time.

Because now you're not building based on your guess and what you think is right.

You're building based on actual demand, real people.

That's the point of the lean startup.

Don't start with code.

Start with a pain.

Don't build the whole machine.

Prove the problem first.

Then, build only what people are already trying to buy.

Now, related to this, here's a principle that sounds backwards, but we'll save you

years.

Validate with money.

Not a thing.

I give you ask somebody, hey, would you buy this?

People that appreciate friends are always going to say yes to be polite, and those conversations

are worse than that.

But they're worse than worthless.

They give you false confidence.

Would you buy this?

It gives you an opinion.

Here's my Venmo, active shoe reality.

But whenever possible, try to get people to pay you even before you build it.

Pre-sell it.

Take it a positive or create a landing page that takes orders before you have inventory.

If they say no, you just stay just up amongst a building something that nobody really

wants.

And if they say yes, now you've got customers waiting.

And now you have the ultimate motivation to figure it out and how to deliver it quickly.

Money is the only vote that counts, so get your votes in a vote.

All right.

I want to move on to some maybe more practical business, billion tips, and talk about something

that I am super passionate about, that I think everyone should do entrepreneur or not.

Goal studying.

Using most people and businesses, certain goals like wishes.

They think about one bag intention, I may hope that it's going to work out, but winners

work backwards.

I mean, let's just say you want a $10,000 a month in profit within two years.

Don't ask, what should I do today?

Start with what would have to happen to be true for that to happen?

Like maybe it means 30 customers paying $500 a month or a hundred jobs at $100 profit

each.

Well, like figure out the math.

Does that success actually look like at the end of the day and then ask what would I need

to do for that to be true this year?

And then what do I need to do that in 90 days and what about this week?

Now you're not guessing, you're a reverse engineering.

So I use a simple framework, it's six steps, I call it REIOS, but it's step one.

Tell the truth.

Where are you actually starting from, not where you wished you were, where are you actually

today?

Be on step two to find your future.

But what does winning look like three years now be very specific, dollar amount, lifestyle

details, the whole picture, step three is aligning your goals, break that three year

vision into a one year target and then 90 days difference and then weekly action plans.

And then step four is track your inputs.

So don't just track the results, track the action that you control.

How many calls did you make?

How many doors did you knock?

Like those inputs will actually create the outputs ultimately.

Step five, you got to maximize accountability, like tell someone, join a group, hire a coach,

whatever it takes to make sure you can't just quietly fade away, which is what most people

do.

Step six, skip a team.

So we have people, repeat the steps with them.

Again, everyone aligned, everyone clear, work backwards and then execute forwards.

And remember what we talked about in the first video, we don't need a giant hail Mary

every day.

Think about football.

The teams that win championships aren't throwing 60 yard bombs every play.

They're running the ball, hook the middle, four yards, first out, four more yards, three

more yards, two more yards.

It's boring stuff.

Doesn't make the highlight real.

But that's what wins game.

Your business is the same way.

Every day asks yourself, what is the most important thing I can do today to move this forward

to hit my week and then when I get my week goal, what do I got to do?

I'm not attracted to my quarterly goal.

And do that main thing, that one thing before email, before social, before anything else,

put that sales call done or that piece of content done, get that improvement done.

Now, here's the secret.

Most of your competition, they're going to quit.

They're going to burn hop for three weeks and disappear.

They're going to hit a rough patch and they're going to take a break that never ends.

All you have to do is keep showing up, four yards, first down, repeat.

That's how you build a business, run it lean, run it consistently.

Now, let's check in real quick on Jake.

Now, if you didn't watch the other videos in the series or you just don't remember, throughout

this seven-figure business blueprints series, I'm wrapping every lesson up with a story

of a man named Jake.

He tried to build a seven-figure business so he can retire his wife and increase his

income and increase his work hours and ultimately just raise some kids.

In the first video, Jake finally hit the tipping point of being sped up with his inability

to fully provide for his wife, Rhea.

But he absolutely committed to doing whatever it takes to get her out.

In video two, Jake looked at the problems all around him and decided to solve a simple

one, cleaning and organizing garages through his new business idea, garage, then.

Now he needs to actually build it.

Not by raising a million bucks and venture capital money and spending two years building

some cool app that he was going to want, he's starting broke.

So first, he sets a goal.

He wants 10,000 a month profit within the next call it three years and he works backwards.

In order to get that, he gets to do 15 to 20 jobs a month that $600 average profit,

it's four to five jobs a week.

If it doesn't need to help, Mary, he needs to test whether people actually need that

service.

Now he's got the outcome.

Let's reverse engineer it.

Will people pay for what he needs to charge?

So for a source test, he goes minimal.

He designs some nice flyer on Google's Gemini, it's a cool AI tool, and then he prints

100 flyers at the library for 10 bucks, junk gone, garage clean, same-day service.

He's been Saturday putting them on the doors in a nice neighborhood, you know, the kind

with like two car garages and boats in the driveway.

And day one, he gets nothing, day two, he gets nothing, day three, phone rings.

Woman wants her garage cleared out before her mother-in-law visit.

Now Jake has never done this before.

He doesn't have a truck.

He's got his buddies pick up truck.

He has no idea what to charge, so he just quotes her 800 bucks and, you know, his

voice kind of cracks.

She says, yes, without negotiating at all.

Five hours later, two trips to the dump.

He's a profit, $680.

He's in business.

Now he doesn't have a guaranteed group, but it's good evidence.

And his doesn't have a truck, doesn't have a two-man team of employees, doesn't have uniforms.

He doesn't need that.

He needs to test his hypothesis.

I'll pro-class people with garages will pay good money to have their garages cleaned

and organized.

And as he gets more and more calls, he begins to test everything, he's pricing.

He can test a thousand bucks, he can test a whole hundred.

He tests two thousand.

He starts to get some serious pushback, he keeps out.

I mean, good.

Now he knows.

He also begins to test different flyer copies, like different language, different neighborhood,

Facebook groups versus DoorDog.

And within a couple of months, he's done 23 jobs.

He knows his average job size.

He knows his best leads for it.

He knows his closing rate on a phone call.

He didn't build a business plan.

He built a real business, one small test at a time.

And that's business pillar number three, build a business that works.

Now let me recap it.

Avoid the entrepreneur's trap that revenue is all that matters.

Use the lean startup methodology to build, which is theory, past, learned, iterate.

Charge before you build with validate with money, not opinions, and then work backwards

from your goal.

And get the system worked on.

Four yards, three yards, five yards, a bunch down.

But here's the thing.

Building it is only temporary kind of thing.

Just because your business looks cool online, and even if you have some customers, doesn't

mean you can scale up.

The other 90% is sales and marketing.

Can you reach people about your business and get them to buy?

Well, that is what we're going to cover in the next video.

He'll also offer marketing, sales, and funnels.

And this is going to be probably the longest video in this whole series.

And the one that I think is one of the most important.

I'm just sharing an incredibly powerful technique for 10X in your business through funnel

optimization.

And this is where the real money is made.

So make sure you subscribe and follow me at Beauty Brand and I'll see you in the next.