5 Steps to Start Your First Business
3 Video Views·Mar 22, 2025
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Starting a business can sound like an impossible task.
You might think that you don't have what it takes,
you might think you're not very entrepreneurial,
and you might know the stat
that nine out of 10 startups fail.
Shit.
But what I've learned over the years
of building my own multimillion dollar business
and interviewing dozens of successful entrepreneurs
is that starting a business
is actually a step-by-step process.
And if you follow those steps,
then actually things can become a lot more manageable.
Okay.
So it might be a case of copy-pasting C6.
Hey friends, welcome back to the channel
and to another episode of Money Club,
the ongoing series where we discuss the principles,
strategies, and tools that can help us
on our shared journey towards financial independence
and building a life that we love.
In this video, I wanna introduce you
to the step-by-step castle method of building a business.
And this video is gonna be aimed at beginners.
So if you've been thinking of starting a business,
but you maybe haven't started one yet,
then I promise if you follow the first two steps
of this method, you will create a working,
minimum viable product, hopefully in under two hours.
Throughout this video,
we're gonna be designing a business completely from scratch,
and I'm gonna be going through the castle method
on this template over here.
And if you want this template,
it is available completely for free
alongside a Google Doc version.
If you don't like Notion, that'll be linked down below.
We've got the difference between J-Curve
and non-J-Curve businesses.
You got all of my highlights from this book over subscribed
and a bunch of other resources that will help you
because this video is gonna be ridiculously long.
And so we're just gonna pile all the other information
straight into that template.
Again, it's completely free.
Just hit the link down below
and you can download it if you like.
So let's start with step one of the castle method,
and that is conceptualize.
And to illustrate this,
I wanna tell you a little bit about Cedric.
This strapping young lad must be Cedric, am I right?
Cedric is an 18 year old who has just graduated from school
and he realizes that he wants the freedom,
fun and flexibility and the money
that building his own business can lend him.
His family haven't had much money growing up
and he's seen the power of financial independence.
And so he really wants to start his first business.
So one step is ideation.
Ideation is coming up with at least 10 ideas
and then figuring out which one would be the best
or which two or three ideas would be the best.
So that's an actual process called ideation.
And most people jump from first idea to action
rather than coming up with nine other ideas
and saying, well, why did I choose that one?
That's Daniel Priestley.
He's a serial entrepreneur
and he's also a coach for CEOs and for business owners.
And he's written a bunch of books
that are all about starting and growing businesses.
And Daniel's book, Oversubscribed,
is my most highlighted book of all time.
And the knowledge I got from this book
has directly translated to over $2 million worth of sales
for my own business.
So step one is ideation.
So what Cedric needs to do
and what you need to do if you're starting a business
is just generate lots and lots of ideas
for what possible business you could start
if you wanted to.
And if you look inside our template,
we've got some more instructions here
that you can follow around brainstorming,
researching the market,
identifying the problem that you're solving,
developing a unique value proposition
and ultimately refining your idea.
And because Cedric is intelligent,
he understands the power of artificial intelligence
to help him come up with his business ideas
and to refine his value proposition as well.
Now, at this point,
you wanna look through your list of business ideas
and you wanna try and combine two different things.
You wanna combine what you think
there might be a genuine market for
with what you personally might be potentially interested in
or what you have personal expertise in.
And this is an idea from Jim Collins' book,
Good to Great,
and it's called the hedgehog concept.
And it's basically this Venn diagram intersection
between the things that the market wants,
the thing that you could potentially
be the best in the world at
and the thing that you personally enjoy.
And if you can find something
in the intersection of that Venn diagram,
that's when you really have a business that could flourish.
But within this hedgehog concept,
especially if you're starting your first business,
by far the most important thing
is trying to focus on the problem
that you're solving for your customers,
trying to focus on being of service
rather than being selfish.
Cedric might decide, for example,
that he really wants to start this magical fitness studio.
But if he looks at the market
and realises that actually no one really cares
about magical fitness
and there's tons and tons of fitness studios in the area,
even if Cedric is super interested in fitness himself,
it's probably a pretty bad idea
to start that particular business
because it's a real uphill battle
to get customers for that particular product.
And so thinking in terms of what he's interested in,
also what there's a market for,
Cedric looks at his list of business ideas
and he thinks, ooh, wand makers workshop.
What if he starts a business
where he could potentially sell custom wands
to people who want custom wands?
And Cedric liked this idea
because when he was in school,
he just found himself being quite interested
in the idea of wand lore
and started reading books about it.
And so there's a little bit of a passion there as well.
And now Cedric comes up with a name
and because again, he's just using AI
because it's just a fairly quick thing,
he decides, you know what,
let's go for the wand studio.
That is Cedric's new business.
Now, step two of the castle method
is to assemble your minimum viable product.
And again, this is where so many people get it wrong.
People think that to start a business,
you have to put in so much work to build a product.
And then once you put in six months, a year,
two years of effort building a product,
then you proffer it to the market
and you hope that people will come.
But the castle method
and the method that Daniel Priestly talks about,
and in fact, the method that every startup
who is intelligent in the world follows these days,
is starting off by building a minimum viable product
where the objective is lead generation.
So you want a very simple MVP.
It's just lead generation at first.
So all you're trying to do is can I generate leads
because everything is downstream from lead generation.
And this is a golden law of business.
Everything is downstream of lead generation.
If you cannot generate leads for a business,
there is no way in hell
you're ever gonna be able to generate sales for a business.
And a lead is basically any indicator of interest.
So the point of your minimum viable product, your MVP,
is to generate those leads.
And the way you get those indicators of interest
from the market is by giving away something of value
for free and seeing if people
are potentially interested in it.
I personally recommend giving the thing away for free
rather than charging for it,
because if it's free
and you can't get people to sign up for it,
there's no way in hell you're ever gonna be able
to get people to pay you for anything.
So what are the MVPs that you can create for free?
Well, there's a bunch of different options,
but there's two that I would recommend,
and that is either a scorecard or a free webinar.
So in the case of OneStudio,
they could, if they wanted to, create a free webinar,
and they could do it on one-making techniques
and on the history of one-making or something like that.
Let's say you don't wanna do the one thing
and maybe you wanna start a business
offering financial services.
Now, you probably wouldn't just go to the market and say,
hey, buy my financial services.
You might offer a free webinar
that teaches people about the current trends
in the finance markets.
And because it's free,
people are more likely to sign up for it.
You've got your indicators of interest,
you've got your lead generation,
and you've validated your business idea.
So it doesn't take long
to put one of these webinars together
and again, in this template,
we've got a bunch of different tools that you can use
to schedule them completely for free,
and you can use that as a way of testing your business idea.
But one thing I've started to use recently in my business
is to create a scorecard minimum viable product.
Now, a scorecard is basically a glorified online quiz,
and these are great,
because A, people love filling in online quizzes,
and B, you can ask a load of questions
to validate your business idea.
So we're just gonna create one of these scorecards
for Cedric's OneStudio,
and I'm gonna show you how easy this is to do.
Now, if you want, you can do this on a Google Form
or a Typeform or anything,
but there is a specifically designed app called ScoreApp,
which is actually a company owned by Daniel Priestly,
and he actually has a book on it
called Scorecard Marketing,
and that's the app that we've been using
for the last six months.
I'll put a link down below,
and it's also in the template for a free 30-day trial
if you wanna try this out.
But I'm gonna log into my account,
and you can see we've got Productivity Quiz,
Podcaster, Brand Income, Side Hustle,
YouTube Growth, Scorecard, The Wheel of Life.
Like, we use scorecards for a lot of things
to generate leads for our own business and our own products.
But we are gonna create a scorecard for the OneStudio,
and I'm gonna show you how easy this is.
So let's hit Create Scorecard,
and we're gonna use the AI Setup Wizard.
By the way, quick heads up,
ScoreApp are not sponsoring this video,
but I am an investor in the product.
I invested in it like two weeks ago
because I just fricking love it
because we've been using it so much.
So feel free to explore the market if you like,
but if you end up using ScoreApp,
then it looks good on me
because it shows that I'm a good investor
because I've plugged the product or something.
Whatever, you can do whatever you want.
This is one way of generating quizzes
or scorecards for your products,
but you can use dozens of other software as well
if you really want.
Anyway, I'm gonna create a scorecard.
So my primary goal for the scorecard
is to generate new leads,
and I actually think something like a which wand
is right for you scorecard would make perfect sense.
So I want a single outcome.
I wanna tell the customer
what wand type they're gonna go for.
How would I describe my business?
Custom wand.
How would you describe your target audience?
Harry Potter fans, cosplay enthusiasts,
magic hair performers.
Yeah, let's call it Harry Potter fans.
Why not?
What do you wanna help your clients improve, achieve,
or prevent by using the scorecard?
Find your perfect wand match is pretty good.
Now choose what you'd like the possible outcomes to be.
Here are some suggested categories,
and let's keep it at three.
We're allowing people to either end up
with dragon heartstring, phoenix feather,
or unicorn hair just to keep things simple.
Next, phoenix feather.
Bravery and courage above all else.
Fierce loyalty.
And let's go justice and fairness.
Why not?
That's for phoenix feather.
Gave another feather.
Just one other.
Okay, good.
So I've got my single outcome.
Find your perfect wand match.
Dragon heartstring, phoenix feather, unicorn hair.
Nine questions.
Create my scorecard.
Let's see what happens.
Discover your perfect wand match with a profile test.
Answer nine questions.
We'll send you a personalized report.
Sick.
All right, let's go take the scorecard.
Boom.
Enter my details.
This is clever because when you're doing lead generation
and you ask it to enter the details initially,
it means you get the contact details.
So it's nice.
Obviously there's like consent and all that kind of stuff
which you can ask for at the end of it.
Do you have a strong desire for power?
Yes.
Do you believe that the end justifies the means?
Hell yes.
Do you believe in loyalty above all else?
Yeah, why not?
Do you value honesty and integrity?
Nope.
Do you believe in second chances?
Hell no.
And are you compassionate towards other lols?
Absolutely not.
Congratulations on finding the perfect wand match.
Dragon heartstring, this is your profile.
And now when I was doing this in the screen recording
that didn't record,
I adjusted this text to basically say,
create a custom call to action.
Are you interested in a custom wand?
If you'd like to order a really nice, beautiful custom wand,
let's jump on a quick, no obligation,
100% free 10 minute Zoom call.
And if you want, you can use something like Calendly.
But Calendly is really good.
You can literally just get people
to hop on a 10 minute Zoom call with you
and it's completely free.
But literally in a very small amount of time,
we have created a minimum viable product.
And this is where so many people go wrong with businesses.
I have seen so many friends and colleagues
try and start businesses
where they try and charge people from day one.
Don't charge people from day one.
Offer them something for free,
create a minimum viable product
because everything is downstream of lead generation.
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Now we are onto step three,
which is shape your product towards product market fit.
Product market fit is adjusting the product
to meet the market.
So you imagined the product would be red,
but everyone wants it in blue.
And you're like,
ah, okay, as much as I thought it should be red,
it needs to be blue.
Now, generally when people are building actual startups
in the real world,
they spend several months, if not sometimes years
on continuing to refine their product
until they've got product market fit.
In my wand maker business,
I might think that people really want custom wands
and will be willing to pay $100 for them.
But as I hop on Zoom calls with people
and try and sell my custom ones for $100,
I realize people don't want that.
People want a really basic wand
because they want to learn about the introduction
to wand lore in the first place.
And so my product might actually change
instead of it being I sell custom ones,
I might realize through market validation
and market research,
actually, I should make a wand craft school
because people are way more likely
to buy an online course in wand lore.
And then I can upsell them on my fancy custom one
further down the line,
rather than get them to buy a fancy one straight up.
And that's something I wouldn't have known
had I not actually validated my idea
by talking to my customers and testing the idea out.
We really noticed this in my own business
when I created my part-time YouTuber Academy.
So we started off,
our minimum viable product was actually just a quiz.
At the time, score app wasn't a thing,
so we just used a Google form.
We asked people,
when it comes to starting a YouTube channel,
what's your biggest challenge?
Now, the product I had in my mind,
I thought I was gonna make a course
that taught people with over 100,000 subscribers
how to scale their systems and delegate and hire a team
and build a business around their YouTube channel.
But when we put the scorecard out on my email list
and on Twitter,
turns out 99% of people
had not even started a YouTube channel in the first place.
And like 0.01% of people that filled out the survey
had more than 100,000 subscribers.
And so that was complete, like, whoa, shit, okay.
I thought I was building a product
for a tiny, tiny, tiny component of the market,
which is what they needed.
But turns out, actually,
my audience is broadly full of noobs,
no offense when it comes to YouTube.
And so the product molded
to become way more beginner friendly,
because in my mind, the product was very different.
But what the market told me was something else.
And so we got product market fit.
And then the Part-Time YouTuber Academy
ended up being a multi-million dollar product.
Now, there are some other caveats here.
Like, this is a really, really huge topic,
how to start a business.
I wanna talk about J-Curve versus non-J-Curve businesses
and what type of businesses that you should start.
But this video is gonna be way too long for the algorithm.
I mean, it's probably still too long.
And so all of the information that I wanna say
is now inside this template.
Again, it's completely free.
There's a link to my website down below.
You can just download the Notion template.
So that will give you the five-step castle framework
and also way more information around the other stuff
that I couldn't quite squeeze into this video,
because we have to keep to time.
Step four is to launch your product, i.e. go-to market.
Go-to market is once you've got product market fit
and now you're ready to launch
and you're ready to put marketing firepower
behind your product.
And at this point, you might be spending money on paid ads.
You might be hiring influencers like me
to shill your product on their YouTube channels.
You might be going out and, I don't know,
old school knocking on doors
and like trying to sell the product to people.
You're doing that kind of stuff to get more people in
because you validated your idea
and you've molded your product
based on a small number of customers
that you had early on.
The other thing that triggers every single sale
is a combination of emotion, logic, and urgency.
So some, and I've found that all businesses
are only really naturally good at one.
So some businesses naturally are good
at generating emotion in their customers,
but not logic or urgency.
Some businesses are really good
with the logical side of why you should buy,
but they're not very good at the emotion or the urgency.
And great businesses, they understand
how to do logic, emotion, and urgency in the right doses.
So a company like Apple, for example,
is really good at all of these different things.
They create logic because it makes you feel
like I'm buying a new iPhone for a reason
because of all the marketing materials that say,
oh, hello, the camera is X percent better than last time.
They create emotion because all of the stuff
in the Apple keynotes and the ads
make you feel an emotional sense of like,
ah, I really need to have this iPhone
so then I can be a cool person.
And they create urgency by allowing you to pre-order
even your pre-order because you know
that the new iPhone's gonna sell out
and therefore there's a sense of like,
ah, I need to have this now
rather than further down the line.
And then step five E is expand and scale up.
Scale is multiple locations.
Now we're gonna go out in, so we might start in London
and then go out to Los Angeles and New York
and different locations.
So we're gonna go, scale is normally new products,
new markets, new territories.
This is a place where very few people get to
because very few businesses actually get to the point
where they even launch because people get hamstrung
along the way by not giving things away for free.
And scale is basically multiple locations, multiple markets.
This is stuff that I am just now dipping my toes into
but I'm nowhere near an expert on it.
And so I don't really wanna kind of over-egg
my expertise on this particular area.
This is where it's really helpful to have a CEO coach
or a business coach.
We spent thousands of dollars a month
on my own CEO coach, Eric Partaker.
He's great.
He's scaled a bunch of businesses in the past.
He really is helping us with scaling ours.
Like all of that fun stuff comes in.
If you're interested in learning more
about these sorts of marketing principles
and how to get customers to buy your product
then two amazing books I'd recommend.
The first is A Hundred Million Dollar Office
by Alex Hormozy.
And the second is Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson.
And also if you have a launch-based business
it's Oversubscribed by Dan Priestley,
which as I said is my most highlighted book of all time
for business stuff.
Those books will teach you a lot of what you need to know
to get your product out there.
But I suspect if you're watching this video
you probably haven't started a business yet.
It will be, it'll be too much.
This book is not aimed at beginners.
Start by conceptualizing, by assembling your MVP
and by getting product market fit.
And once you've done that
and you've got some customers for your product
which you've molded to meet the needs of the market
at that point you can worry about copywriting
and sales and marketing and emotion, logic, urgency
and all this kind of stuff.
But the main thing to remember from this video
is that every single thing is downstream of lead generation.
Find a way to validate your business idea
by getting customers in for free
via a scorecard or a webinar or a landing page
or whatever you want.
And then once you've validated your business idea
actually have conversations with your customers
to get product market fit.
And then you can worry about all this stuff later.
And we do talk in way more detail about all of these steps
in the long form podcast interview
that I did with Daniel Priestley.
So that is on my Deep Dive podcast channel over here.
You can also find it on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Podcasts
wherever you get your podcasts, but that is sick.
So if you liked this video
and you've gotten to the end of it
you will absolutely love that episode.
The comments on it are like,
oh my God, I can't believe this is free.
So check it out completely for free over there.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope you liked this video
and I'll see you hopefully in the next one.
Bye bye.