Last night I went for dinner with a guy I met recently. He told me about his idea for a new business, what he’s working on, what’s holding him back. I listened without giving input or comments. I wanted to, but nowadays I simply don’t.

This morning the conversation still lingered. I really feel I can help this guy. Get a business going sooner. Save a lot of money he’s going to waste. Save a bunch of time.

It’s not the first time I’ve had this feeling. I dedicated a whole past life to helping aspiring entrepreneurs. I even wrote a book about it.

Here’s the thing though. It’s not just about telling someone what to do, they do it, problem solved. Between my thoughts and their actions, there lies friction. Past experience showed me they won’t accept what I say. They’ll argue. They’ll justify why their position is different. And I don’t have the time or the energy to convince someone who has never started a business how to start a business.

But it left me frustrated. So I thought I’d come here and do what I do best with these things: write. It can live somewhere online, and whenever I have a similar conversation, I can send them the link.

So let’s start at the beginning.

I’m no billionaire. I’m no multi-serial-sportscar-mansion-einstein dude who walks around with bodyguards because I have 45 companies. I don’t even see myself as an entrepreneur anymore, I live a different life now. But I was one. I built businesses, I invested in them, and most importantly I worked with thousands of entrepreneurs and small business owners for 20 years.

When you do that, you see the same patterns play out over and over. You build mental frameworks for how a business starts and grows. And you see how the failures fail, over and over again.

I haven’t started a new business in five years. This year I did start one small project. A product that tells business owners what their business is actually worth. Last month it made over $3000. Total time invested to date: under 30 hours.

Building a billion-dollar company that changes the world? That’s tough. Building a small business or a product that pays you well and replaces your salary? Easy game.

Let me start with the patterns, because if this matches your current thinking, maybe there’s something here.

Your idea probably won’t work

I’m sorry to break it to you, but your current idea will most likely not work. Yeah, I know yours is different and it will. But it won’t.

Most aspiring entrepreneurs approach their business as a guaranteed success. They just need the time and the money to do everything they already know must be done, and then success is imminent. It’s not. Your thinking is wrong. Your product idea is wrong. You have assumptions about this business, and your job is to go out and prove them right or wrong. To do that you need to stick your confidence in your back pocket and go looking for the truth.

Business is ruthless about the truth. You either make money or you don’t. There’s no middle way.

If I talk to someone and they talk all about their business and never listen, never ask a question, I know. Guaranteed to fail. Nobody gets to be that certain this early.

The flip side is just as fatal, and quieter. For every opportunity you point out, some people have an answer ready for why it won’t work. You need to be optimistic. You need to be delusional about what’s achievable. You need to believe that whatever setback comes, you’ll find a way through it. You’re trying to find a small number of customers in a world of 8 billion people. If you can’t believe that’s possible, go back to your day job.

You’re planning instead of starting

I see friends who are always working on their business plan. For months. For years. They never take the first step. Always planning, then more planning. Or waiting. When I have a vacation. When my child goes to school. When I finish with this or that.

If you don’t start now, you most likely never will. If you can’t create four hours this week to work on your business, it’s not a big enough priority to ever start.

And here’s the trap: they put in just enough time each day to believe they’re building towards something, while nothing actually moves. It’s the same as people learning a language on Duolingo. Five minutes a day, a four-year streak, and still not able to order a coffee. The daily exercise makes you believe you’re learning a language. But speaking a language is about speaking a language, not about fooling yourself into feeling progress.

Business is about having customers and making money. Not planning and waiting.

You’re overcomplicating it

If you make it past those, this is the one that gets you. Taking something that should be fast and simple and turning it into a project that’s always on hold. It looks like this:

• Waiting for funding to launch the big idea.
• Registering a company and getting the legal work in order first.
• Thousands of hours on the brand, the business cards, the website.
• Months or years building the full product, because you couldn’t possibly launch a watered-down version.

Every one of those keeps you from your first customer, and your first customer is the only thing that matters. Nothing else does.

You don’t need a registered business. You don’t need a website. You don’t need a perfect product. You need a customer, and you should take whatever shortcut gets you there fastest. If you genuinely believe you need one of those things first, good news: you don’t. And if you still really, really think you do, then rethink the business.

So how should you approach it?

Here’s the ultimate question. Whatever your idea is:

How can you scale it down so you have a paying customer in one month?

When starting something new, your timeline for success should be weeks. Not months, and definitely not years.

Take Jose. He wants to start a vegan brunch restaurant and he’s looking to raise $200k to kit out a building, buy equipment, hire staff. Jose has never run a business in his life, but he managed a restaurant once and he knows this will work. Business school and Instagram tell him to raise the money, write the plan, then launch.

So he spends months planning. Then he goes looking for investors. Nobody invests. Maybe he gets lucky and friends or family come in. He starts. The build costs more than he budgeted. The opening is delayed. When the doors finally open, everyone celebrates and takes pictures. Jose is exhausted and Jose is a hero.

Then the real work starts. Customers are nowhere near what he expected. Nobody is looking for vegan brunch. The location is wrong. But he’s stubborn and he knows it’ll turn around. By the time he accepts that he needs to change something — the location, the product, anything — there’s no energy left in the tank and no money left in the bank. Jose closes, or sells at a loss.

If 100 people start this way, maybe 10 get the doors open. Of those 10, maybe one makes it.

Now the other Jose. Same guy, same food, one rule: a paying customer within 30 days.

He calls every friend he has and asks if they’d want vegan brunch delivered to their door. He runs ads in the local neighbourhood. He was sure 90% of his friends would bite; 5% actually place an order. The ads cost him a few hundred dollars and deliver nothing. So maybe vegan brunch isn’t the hot product he thought it was.

He sends his network a list of things he could make instead. 80% pick fresh juices. He puts together an offer. People buy. They refer other people. He tries a few more things and most of them go nowhere — the salads die, the granola sits — but two products sell every single week. Within a few months the kitchen at home isn’t big enough. He rents a small industrial one with his own cash, because he has cash. No investors. He keeps 100% of the profit. The shop comes later, and by the time it opens he already knows exactly what people will buy, because they’ve been buying it for a year.

If 100 people start this way, more than half end up with a business that makes money. And it happens faster than the first group takes to finish planning.

So, shortened:

1. What product or service do I want to offer?
2. How do I get a paying customer in 30 days?
3. What do I assume about this business, and how do I test that in the next 30 days?

Thirty days at a time. Nothing more, nothing less. Validate, then take the next 30.

It’ll force you into the hard work, which is the actual point. It’s easier to design a website than to cold-call ten strangers. It’s easier to wait for legal documents than to hear what someone really thinks of your product. Every task you’re drawn to is probably the one that doesn’t matter.

Your personality will fight you here. Doing things outside your own structure will drive you nuts. That’s the point.

The guy I had dinner with doesn’t need $200k. He needs one person to pay him for something in the next 30 days.

I didn’t tell him that. But if he asks, I’ll send him this.