Sean Castrina is the founder of The Weekend MBA. He’s a serial entrepreneur, having started more than 20 companies over the last 20 years, and still seeks to launch a new venture annually.
Sean is the author of 4 bestselling business books including 8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success, The Greatest Entrepreneur in the World, Developing The Entrepreneur Within and World’s Greatest Business Plan.
He hosts one of the most popular business podcasts on the planet- The 10 Minute Entrepreneur Podcast.
What you will learn
- How Sean’s addiction to entrepreneurship developed as he launched various businesses
- The three key things a business owner needs to do to find success
- Why systems and processes are so important for an entrepreneur
- Why small businesses should think like a Fortune 500 company
- How to identify great business opportunities
- The ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of startups: Find out why new businesses tend to disappear
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:05 – 00:01:05
Hi everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today I have with me, Sean Castrina. Now, Sean is dialing in from on Zoom as we do it here from Charlottesville, Virginia and of course we’re calling from Sydney, Australia, love the tech, but let’s talk a little bit more about Sean. Sean is the Founder of The Weekend MBA and host of The 10 minute Entrepreneur Podcast, which is a top 10 entrepreneurship podcast as well as author of four bestselling books. Obviously, he doesn’t take much time off to get all that done, he’s also started 15 companies plus we, he’s lost count. He’s been featured in Forbes, Inc, Money Magazine as a verified Instagram account with over 300,000 followers. Sean is a recovering white color drug addict and we’ll find out more what that actually means.
We love to have addicts on this show, Sean. So it’s great to have you here and we’ll be sharing why every person should be thinking like an entrepreneur. I love that. So Sean, welcome to the show.
Sean Castrina
00:01:06 – 00:01:08
Well, great, it’s great to be on the podcast.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:09 – 00:01:27
So Sean, we both have a common interest in the skill, art and science of being an entrepreneur and so what led you to be recovering white collar addicts and what got and also I’m sure connected with that is what got you to fall in love with being an entrepreneur?
Sean Castrina
00:01:28 – 00:07:20
Great, let me take you through the first, I’ll tell you how I became an entrepreneur and then I’ll tell you the white collar thing because they’re two great stories, but I was a Division 1 college wrestler, went to grad school, got my dream job coming out of college, actually offered to work for free cause I didn’t want to start at the bottom and took $500 in my car and I did an internship for free, and they end up hiring me and I did really well, thought I’d be there forever. Change in leadership and I was let go pretty much overnight and I knew then that, okay, wait, you could be a really good employee and be let go at any time and I’ll never forget when they let you go. It’s just kind of like, we’re gonna, they said it’s so calm, we’re just moving in a different direction. It’s like a really polite way of giving you the middle finger, you know, really, it was just a nice way of just giving you the finger. And I just had a child and I’m like, this is, this is insanity. So I knew then that I would, I would never work for somebody long term, I’ll work until I get my feet, you know, get my feet up under me, but you know, I’m definitely gonna do my own thing and I’ve been doing my own thing for, you know, the better part of the last 25 years and you know, I started more than 20 companies. Currently run more than 10 as we speak, so I’m addicted to entrepreneurship because it just, it allows you to dictate, you know, your life, you have so much good for good or bad, you know, for good or bad, when I tell people it’s like the titanic, the one thing about being an entrepreneur, I at least can, if I see, you know the iceberg, I can turn the wheel, you know, where if you’re an employee you can’t sometimes, you know, you’re not in a leadership position to do that. All the, you know, you look at Circuit City and Sears and JCPenney and all these companies are blockbuster, you know, none of those employees could fix that, they weren’t in a position of leadership to alter that, so that’s why I’m addicted to entrepreneurship. Now the drugs that was, you know, as I said, I was a Division 1 college wrestler and I started having massive back pain like in 2012, and the funny thing about it is that I don’t drink, drank one time as a middle school, didn’t like the taste of it and I never smoked, never did drugs, so no drugs, no alcohol neither, I mean definitely a healthy guy, but I had a doctor started putting me on Oxis codings and I was at one point, I was up to, I was getting taken 20 a day, so I was getting 300 and 600 prescribed per, I used to get prescribed so many over 600 a month that I would go to CVS pharmacy and they’d be like, Sean, you know, you got to give us like two days notice and then I would have to keep them in my safe at my house because my wife and everybody like, well if you know, if anybody ever knows you have that many Oxis because of the street value, you’re gonna get robbed, you need to keep him in there and then he said, just to make it even easier for you, you know, because I was very well known. I own a business that TV commercials, you know, maybe he thought he was trying to help me, which was insanity. He said, I’ll give you 75 mg of Fentanyl in a patch and we’ll try that every 48 hours, needless to say I lost about 45 lbs and probably would have died. Thankfully, he got arrested about six years into this concept, seven years in. So I was on this drugs for seven years, all those Oxis, the Fentanyl patches, everything and then he gets arrested and I just, I thought it would be like really easy. Like I just go to another pain doctor and get re-prescribed.
So I’ll never forget. I go to like National Pain Center and I’m like, and they knew who I was, hey Sean, it’s great that you know, blah blah blah. But by the way, there’s not anybody in United States of America that is going to prescribe you. This was during the 2018 election. Like, you know, Fentanyl was like, you know the top of discussion and he’s like, there is no one in the United States of America that is gonna refill your prescription. Never forget him saying that never, will not happen. And so my family physician as kind of a favor for being my doctor for 20 years gives me a Fentanyl, a box of Fentanyl patches. He prescribes me one last box which is, you know, that would maybe take me 10 days because the box of five of them and I never forget I picked those up on a Friday and I called my buddies from college and we, that weekend we rented a beach house and I went into detox by my with no, no prescription, no nothing. I just said, man, I’m gonna, you know, I’m a, I’m a Division I wrestler. I’ve sucked way before I can do this. Well obviously it was a lot harder than I thought, but I did it. And yeah, so you know, seven days later, I remember I kept Googling like when do you know you kinda and they’re like, if you can get to day five. And so yeah, so I kicked it and I came back and gave the pack of five back to my doctor and the guy that was head of National Pain Center at the time said to me the doctor, he’s just, it’s a prisoner war mentality. He said, I’ve never, more than 20 years, ever had anybody quit either of those without help because he told me cause you know, you know you’re probably gonna need to go into some type of rehab and that just did not fit my schedule. I’m like, how am I gonna find time to do this? So to me that the way to do it was just to kind of go away and do it myself and I did it. And so it’s funny, my doctor, I still have the Fentanyl but that thing of five you say it’s yours, it’s your prescription and it sits in my safe and it just kind of reminds me of, you know what you can do if you genuinely put your mind to it and entrepreneurship is like that. You gotta have a prisoner of war mentality.
Jeff Bullas
00:07:20 – 00:07:23
So you decided early on to be the captain of the ship rather than a passenger?
Sean Castrina
00:07:24 – 00:07:27
Absolutely. I’m gonna wreck this thing I want to know I’m holding the wheel.
Jeff Bullas
00:07:30 – 00:07:32
So what was your first venture?
Sean Castrina
00:07:33 – 00:10:46
Yeah, so my first one is when I, when I obviously was let go, you know a good communicator, I was hired to do sell life insurance, which you can see that you know anybody can, you know, if you can sell, life insurance is a way to go. And I remember we had staff meetings every Monday sales meetings and they were like never ending like 2-3 hours of rara rara and it’s the first time I’d ever been around where people had really nice cars and insurance, you know they’re making money because everybody had a Mercedes and I’m looking out the window, looking at this whole parking lot of really nice cars and it hits me. Hits me and this is kind of funny. I was thinking to myself what if I could, if I could get a company that came here during our meeting and wash these cars. Like detailed them but right in the parking lot that sounds like now you’re like laughing at but you know almost 30 years ago nobody was doing that.
So I got a you know a big Ford 250 van, put a big water tank in the back. And then I hired an auto detailing guy and this is the formula I’ve been using for 25 years of my success. I did it with that company. I was like, alright, I know I will make the phone ring. Alright, I will attract customers for whatever reason that’s always been something that has come really easy like so that was it. And then I would send, I set up an automated phone. So you called in, I never forget the number was 1889333824 toll free. WE DETAIL was the phone number and they call in and the second, the lady who answered the phone would basically say is it a car or truck? Do you want the outside or the inside or both? So it’s a really simple sales script. He’d go out and do them and every Friday he and I would settle up 50-50 split and I made $30,000 and this is in, you know, the like 1995 doing nothing like somebody answered the phone, this person cleaned the cars, Fridays we settled up and I knew then that the ah-ha moment hit me. I’m like okay wait you don’t have to do the work. You don’t have to know anything about the industry necessarily. You just need to have something that people want and you have to be able to attract customers and fulfill what it is you sell. And I’ve always said business is only three things. Everybody makes it complicated. Think about this for a second. You only do three things in business. Every single business does only three things, they attract customers – marketing, they sell customers and then you fulfill whatever it is you sold and or provide the warranty with it. But its fulfillment. That’s it. That’s that’s the whole thing and I realized with the detailing. It was very simple. It made 30 grand. I’ve rinsed and repeated that formula for millions and millions of dollars. And you know, I mean, I own a construction company. I don’t even, I have a plastic toolbox upstairs that I got when I got married. I own a roofing siding company, I own a kitchen remodeling company, a bath remodeling company. We do like very like $60,000 bathrooms. You know I have a handyman company, a painting company, masonry and I’ve used that exact same formula. I own a digital marketing company, basically the same formula and I’ve rinsed and repeated my whole adult career.
Jeff Bullas
00:10:46 – 00:11:12
So the one thing I think that impresses me beyond the simplicity, which is great and that’s what we try to do on the show is get to the essence of what it means. And you said three things, okay, find a problem, deliver it, generate leads so that’s really it. But what also sounds great is that you learn the art of delegation.
Sean Castrina
00:11:13 – 00:11:26
I joked, don’t take this wrong. I would delegate a bowel movement if somebody would come up behind, if somebody would clean my hind end adequately, I would delegate a bowel movement so I could do something at the same time.
Jeff Bullas
00:11:27 – 00:11:35
And that’s the thing about a lot of service industry that these coaches and everything. They’ve got to show up all the time. They’re trading time for money whereas you’ve got leverage.
Sean Castrina
00:11:36 – 00:13:13
Yeah, I do. I mean, my typical week and again, I live really, you know, I’ve got all the toys and all that and I mowed my grass one time in my adult life, in my adult life, I’ve mowed grass ones, I have shoveled snow maybe once as a joke, just so my wife would just have a heart attack me doing it. But no, I delegate everything. I know what I do really well. What I do extremely well is I see opportunities, I see needs that need to be met. I’m really good at recruiting a team and I’m very good at partnering, I’m very good at like not only hiring people. Bringing in that top tier guy to partner with me, I’ve partnered in every one of my companies, every company I have, I have partners. So that’s my formula and I stick with that formula. I don’t try to veer from it and, and I know, you know, I know what I’m really good at, I’m good at getting things off the ground. I’m good at creating that conveyor belt, that three things I talked about, I’m really good at getting marketing in place, really good sale, closing, you know, getting customers selling them and fulfillment. I’m obsessive about the fulfillment part and that’s all entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship is, it’s, you gotta find a recipe that works for you, it’s finding a recipe and once you find it, then, you know, you can, to some degree, print money now to what the amount, you know, that’s up to the industry you’re in and how big the businesses and all that, but you, it’s simple, you know, entrepreneurship is, it doesn’t have to be rocket science.
Jeff Bullas
00:13:14 – 00:13:23
I love the way you distilled it now. Tell us a little bit about how you recruit top people, how you identify them and what’s the process for that?
Sean Castrina
00:13:24 – 00:18:10
Yeah, I’m a talent scout. What I’m saying is I look for talent, I’m like a homing device. I don’t care if I go out to dinner somewhere and somebody introduces me to somebody, let’s say somebody comes to my house and they sell me, you know, I’m getting my gutters cleaned or something, something my company doesn’t do when I meet someone talented, I get their name and phone number and I’m having lunch with them and even if it’s just to kind of feel them out to kind of see where they may fit in the equation at a later date, like in my desk at my office, I’ve got cards of people that like are my next idea, this is the person I want to partner with and I tell people that we’ll go to lunch and I go, listen, I’m an entrepreneur. Every year, I typically have something I’m gonna launch and you’re just somebody that I really, I may reach out to and they’ll go, I’d love for you to do that and I’ve been using that formula, you know over and over. I give it like a simple example of how I do it to a tea. This would be the simplest way to do it. Alright gig strategic just making all this so that you can follow it, gig strategic if you google it GigStrategic.com, you’re gonna see James. All right. He runs my companies, work with Fortune 100 companies. I do not know how to do digital marketing and my competitors were doing a lot of digital marketing. I do like your Super Bowl ads. I did the US Open Golf. I use a lot of traditional media so I didn’t understand digital marketing. Everybody wanted my account because I spend big money on advertising. So the tv stations, everybody was pitching me, it’s about four years ago the radio station comes in meeting in my conference room. Everybody’s trying to sell me the quietest guy in the room was that guy, James.
But I knew he was the smartest guy in the room and they had all his sales managers and all that. And I kept talking to James and the meeting going, alright, James, how does this work? And if you know how does like Facebook ads and I mean I just want to understand it, made it very very simple for me. The meeting was over. Everybody gave me their business cards, threw everybody’s business cards away. But James is. I called James the next day, I said James, listen, I’m gonna hire you guys to handle my digital marketing but you’re gonna do it. I will hire if you do it. And I said every month I want you to spend, come to by my office and tell me in under 15 minutes what I spent my money on whether it’s working or not working. Show me whether it’s working or not working or tell me how you’re gonna pivot. Very simple. I just wanna do every 15 minutes. And I said and oh by the way you either didn’t come work for me or you and I are going to start a company together.
I asked him about that later, he said you know, he said you have one of the personalities where you’re either the most arrogant S. O. B. Or the most confident he goes, but I believed it because you just give off that air. Like you wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it. So needless to say he took over my account, did an incredible job. That was like in November when we started, May of that year, I asked him have you ever been to Disney World? He’s got young kids. He goes no, we’ve never been to Disney World. My wife and I have talked about it, great, I want to pay for you and your family to go to Disney World, he goes, well, why, why would you do that? I said, I told you when we talked originally that you’re either gonna come work for me or be one of my partners. And this is my down payment. I paid for his trip to Disney World and it was thousands and thousands of dollars. Two years later, he and I started Gig Strategic needless to say I’ve gotten that Disney world vacation back and a whole lot of zeros, but I just, I’m always looking for talent. And I told him that to about a year in, I said, listen, you need to leverage yourself for a big raise. I said, you are their digital marketing company. His wife was a stay at home mom. So I’m like, don’t necessarily run the entrepreneurship route, try to get just a massive raise and hope maybe they’ll give it to you. They didn’t, that was their mistake. Remember it was like right before Christmas they said, no, we’re not going to give it to you. I said, great January 1st, we’re launching this company and I said, I’ll guarantee what you make at the radio. They told me what the amount was, I’ll guarantee it for a year. I only had to bankroll one month of expenses. We launched it so fast. I brought all my poker buddies that own companies, I mean we sold them all, you know, it’s a seven figure company and that’s just how I do it. I’m like a homing device. I’ve done that. That James is one of, I can literally go one story after another. All my partners in my company is a similar story like that. Like I meet somebody on my son’s soccer team, a dad who just got laid off. You know, it was an engineer. Well that engineer now runs my roofing siding and solar division. You know, it’s just every story like that.
Jeff Bullas
00:18:10 – 00:18:17
So you identify someone who’s got the expertise in an industry you want to target and then, and then you add value.
Sean Castrina
00:18:18 – 00:18:32
That’s 100%. And I find the expert and I provide the money, you know, the money and the infrastructure. I’m really good at creating systems. But yeah, no, I find extraordinarily talented people that aren’t being utilized.
Jeff Bullas
00:18:33 – 00:18:38
That raises the other question just raised then how important our systems and processes are to an entrepreneur?
Sean Castrina
00:18:39 – 00:19:31
I mean to me, you can’t sell a company without systems. You can’t scale a company without systems. You can’t fulfill without systems because you don’t know what you did. You don’t know what you’re, you know, I always tell my partners when we have a problem and some customers are upset. I said, I can live with one customer being upset, but I don’t want it to be repeated. I don’t like systemic problems. So what do we need to put in place? So that never happens again. It’s like just today, I had something like that. I sent a picture of one of my guys and I said, see this little thing here, I don’t want this to ever happen again. Put this down as a sean-ism, this little thing never can happen again and then you know, so you’re, you create systems so that good things get repeated and bad things get but eliminated. There you go. Systems, good things get repeated, bad things get eliminated. That’s why you have systems.
Jeff Bullas
00:19:31 – 00:19:50
Awesome. I love that. The thing is I think entrepreneurs have to fall in love with systems because it’s like you said, the only way to scale and it’s the only way you can sell a business because someone’s gonna walk in and going, how do you do all this? How can we take over without actually having to employ you for four years as in golden handcuffs, you’re going, well, I’m not gonna do that.
Sean Castrina
00:19:50 – 00:20:33
And how do you do something else? I’m an entrepreneur addict. So if I’m, if I’m completely trapped by this one company, I couldn’t have done all the other businesses that I’m doing, but I can do it because I’m fanatical about systems that I can show you my phone that I get an email at and I get an email every single morning from my CPA’s that shows every one of my companies. Every account, if anything doesn’t look correct. At 4:30 every day. I get another massive spreadsheet of all my companies, every call, every conversion, everything that came in at the, anything that looks, I could be anywhere in the world and run my companies on what I get every day. I have a dashboard in place.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:33 – 00:20:40
That’s what I was just gonna mention, you’ve actually made sure that you have a dashboard that allows you to control the steering and the engine of the ship.
Sean Castrina
00:20:41 – 00:20:57
If I can see a trend and I’ll tell my partners, I go, something’s getting ready to happen. Well how can you tell I said, I know what trends look like, I know what negative trends look like and I know what positive trends look like and this is we’re trending in the wrong way right here and I can see that because of the dashboard.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:58 – 00:21:10
That’s awesome. So one question that I want to ask you was which you’ve raised before in the prep for this, why should small businesses think like a Fortune 500 company?
Sean Castrina
00:21:10 – 00:22:19
Because you gotta think big, this idea that you start small, you start small, you stay small, you don’t have to start small if you think about it, you can, you can start a few, you know, you can start a few, you know, levels up on the ladder, you know, you can start quick and you can, you know feed that, you know once you start converting customers, feed that fire quick, I just think that, you know, why not try to build your company, not every company can be a Fortune 500 company but there’s certain things that Fortune 500 companies do. This is what they do. Number one is they have systems, number two is they try to add divisions, locations that you know what I mean, so they try to scale, alright. Next they try to be able to have enough value so that they can be sold and or sell stock in them. Well if every small business did those few things they would be a far better company if they had systems, if they were scalable and if they built the company from day one with the value so that it could be sold maybe you can take some chips off the table but you gotta think like a fortune, you know think like a Fortune 500 company.
Jeff Bullas
00:22:20 – 00:22:32
Yeah, that’s really really cool and a lot of small businesses don’t think that way. I think one of the biggest weakness I find especially in services they just trade time for money, they don’t think about leverage.
Sean Castrina
00:22:33 – 00:23:05
If you’re the technician and you own the company, shame on you. You know that just doesn’t make any sense. If anything you should know what a good technician looks like when you’re hiring them. That’s your advantage when you’re hiring them, you should be really good at creating systems and understanding what a customer would want in that industry, but you should not be doing the actual part of that business. You should not be doing it. I mean, it’s, you know, the myth, you know, shared that, the idea that you need to work on your business, not in your business.
Jeff Bullas
00:23:05 – 00:23:24
Yeah, exactly. And that’s really important. I think that entrepreneurs, whether it’s a side hustle or whatever they’re going to do is they’re gonna think that way. One final question. You talked about before the Bermuda Triangle of startups, which is why startups fail. Tell us about that.
Sean Castrina
00:23:24 – 00:27:41
Yeah, well, you know, obviously there’s a Bermuda Triangle and planes that get, you know, that fly into the space tend to disappear, boats tend to disappear. Well, there’s three, you know, corners of a triangle and I think an entrepreneurship is the same thing. The first one is, the entrepreneur is so fascinated, so excited about their idea that they never beta tested and they don’t, they don’t put it up for any criticism. I’m like, just take your idea, go to a restaurant one night and just stop by every table and just say, listen, I hate to interrupt for just a minute, but I’m getting ready to launch a business and I’ll pay for your dessert. You know, here’s 20 bucks for, towards your meal. But tell me, what do you think about this idea and work your way through the entire restaurant. Number one would be a great exercise and just confidence and communicating, but I’m telling you, everybody will give you an answer. I think it’s a great idea, I think sucks, go to the next table what you got to do something, you got to get some validation from somebody other than you that this idea, people want it and we tend to get, you know, just because you’re excited about something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, it may be a good idea in one part of the country, but not a good idea and you’re part of the country. So that’s the first thing is that you got a beta tester idea. The second thing is, what, what is this fascination with hiring friends and family? I love my family and I love hanging out with my buddies, I don’t want any of them to work for me. I don’t, because they’re good at certain areas, but I’m a talent scout, you can be my friend, it doesn’t mean that you’re good enough to work for me in the industry that I have companies in. There just may not be an alignment there and so I find that, you know, so many entrepreneurs do that, you know, it sounds great when you’re in college and you’re under the age of, or you’re under the age of 25 you and your buddy go start a business, I love it if you’re under 25 excuse everything I’m saying, but for the rest of us, adults hire talented people and try to stay out of the family and friends, you know, zone of it, you know, so that I’m a fanatic, you know, you know, you know fanatic about that and then my Bermuda Triangle is that I know there was a third one in there and I completely, completely, I was like, I know exactly what it is. I got my idea, I got my friends and oh, here it is. Yeah, I know it. You can’t run a successful business if you’re a schmuck, I don’t, don’t really say it that way, but you the founder of the company, you don’t have the goods. You don’t, you’re not a leader, you’re not a leader, you’re not, you can’t sell anything, you know, when you’re launching a company, typically you’re doing a lot of the selling for the first 100,000, which is the launch stage. Some people, it’s okay. You’re not wired for this. You do not, like my wife could never, she could never start a business. My daughter is a school teacher. She could never start a business. Hey, that’s okay. My wife’s a nurse, my daughter’s a school teacher, that’s okay, but it’s not for everybody and I think we’re so it’s kind of so cool to say you’re an entrepreneur, right. It’s kind of really cool. Now, Elon Musk really made it cool, you know, a lot, you know, it’s cool, Jack Dorsey, it’s cool, but it’s not for everybody. So I think you have to again, look at your idea and beta test it. Don’t just let it float around in your head and your buddies, I’ll tell you it’s good. Number two is higher, especially when you’re launching a business, your first hire is so important and I have a hard time believing the best person you can hire is your friend or your family. I just, I’ve never had that. Not one time was anybody in my family or my friends the right hire for that industry.
And third, if you can’t lead anybody, if nobody likes you, okay and then just you generally turn people off you, nobody’s gonna want to come work for you. I mean we’re starting a company, people come work for you because there’s a little bit of a likeability there. They believe in your vision, kind of excited about it. I mean you’ve got to have a little something if you have nothing that I’m talking about. You know, you have no self discipline. You have no, you know tenaciousness, you’re not competitive, you know, you don’t have that, you know, stick with it. You know, some people just have tremendous resilience. I mean half the things I just said, you don’t have, I don’t know if you’re gonna make it.
Jeff Bullas
00:27:41 – 00:27:52
Yeah, exactly. So one last question, business says, or failure is in the planning. Tell us about that.
Sean Castrina
00:27:52 – 00:29:56
Yeah, I mean, I wrote The World’s Greatest Business Plan. So I think everything I do has a plan. I always say listen for every dream I have for every big goal I have, there’s a plan there and I think that what we try to do is, you know, the law of attraction and all this other stuff. I’m sorry, I can’t think about something that happens now. If I think about something a lot and I’m excited about something, I have a parallel plan and a strategy and I take action on it every day which is within my plan. I am shocked at some of the stuff I’ve achieved, but you gotta have a plan and specifically a business. I mean to me, you plan out your vacation, you plan out a wedding. You know, you, but you don’t plan out your business, like who’s your target customer? We’re really simple. Like a super simple business plan here. Who is your target customer? That’s the person most likely to buy what it is you’re selling? Who is your competition? What is going to be different between you and your competition? Okay. There you go. How are you going to attract this target customer? What is going to be your pricing? Your competition is here, what’s going to be your pricing? Who do you have to hire to get this business off the ground or who’s gonna open the doors, who’s gonna, you know, provide the manufacturing and or you know, wait the table, whatever it is, whoever you need to get to put this team on the field so that it operates day one, who is it?
What’s your operation costs? How long can you, how much money you got in the bank, assuming nobody comes in right away because that’s probably what’s going to happen. So to me, I mean I could just do it. I’m doing a simple to do list, but these are normal questions and the fact that people don’t think they need to do it. You know, to me it’s hubris, it’s just extreme arrogance and to me it’s just not very smart. I mean you don’t have to do a massive business plan, but you know, to full legal pages of questions would probably serve you well.
Jeff Bullas
00:29:56 – 00:30:00
So you said you write The World’s Greatest Business Plan, so where can we find that?
Sean Castrina
00:30:01 – 00:30:30
Yes, if you actually get it for free, if you go to world-greatest-business-plan, I think it’s a forward slash free book. I’m 99% sure you can get it that way. And if you go to SeanCastrina.com, you get my eight unbreakable rules for business startups, success, it’s on there too. So if you go there, I’m giving away a book all the time. So there’s always a free book on my site and I’m 99.9% sure if you go to worlds greatest business plan forward slash free book, you can get it there.
Jeff Bullas
00:30:31 – 00:30:53
There you go. So just before we finish up here, Sean, it’s been awesome. I love your distillation of complexity into simplicity. It’s really, really cool. You’ve really, like in 30 minutes, you’ve covered about three hours most people do, which is great. So any top tips before we finish up and let you go and start another business.
Sean Castrina
00:30:53 – 00:32:41
Yeah, I mean, I just think entrepreneurship is the greatest thing in the world. It really is next to faith. I think entrepreneurship does more good for the world than any other thing, it does. Now, it’s every building at a university that’s big. It’s named after a business owner who donated the money. Okay, the wings of hospitals, they’re named after wealthy people. So the idea that, you know, entrepreneurship is just extraordinary. But let me make it so simple for you, this is all you have to do if you do this, you’re gonna, I’m gonna make it the concept so simple, try to help someone meet a need. You know, just find out what somebody else needs and meet that need. If you do that, you have just begun a business, all entrepreneurship is seeing a need and fulfilling it. And if you do that, you’ll win and they’ll win. And normally, you know, if you price it right, you know, everything just, it all works out for you. But I’ve done that my whole life. I just look around for, you know, things that people need, problems that people have and if I, and if I help people with their need, they want their problem. Typically 90% of every business is one of those three things either fulfill the need, satisfy a want like a Rolex watch over a Timex, you do that, you know, and you solve a problem, want, need, problem. If you do those three things, you’re helping somebody, the world gets better and you make money off of it. It’s very simple. So just be highly alert to just needs, wants and problems
Jeff Bullas
00:32:33 – 00:32:41
That’s awesome, in other words, be very aware and go look for problems to solve, which sounds like you do every time you launch your business.
Sean Castrina
00:32:41 – 00:32:48
Yeah and they fall on my lap. I mean none of my business is our sexy but every, every business was something that I personally, saw that, you know what I mean? It just kind of was like laying in my lap, looking out a window with the detailing company. I needed a home office and I couldn’t get anybody to turn my dining room into an office. So I start a home improvement company and that ends up being a multimillion dollar thing. I needed a digital marketing company cause all my competitors were doing it. So I started Gig Strategic, The Weekend MBA. My, you know, big time event. I did that because every event I would go to was all hype. It was all hype and all sales. I’m like, wait, wait, wait, business. Okay. Is anybody teach a P and L statement? You know, is anybody teach how to hire and fire staff? Does anybody teach how you franchise or when you should franchise or if you should franchise and licensing agreement? So every, every one of my businesses came from something that I saw as a need.
Jeff Bullas
00:33:37 – 00:34:06
Yeah, well, it sounds like you actually are the law of attraction because you’re asking the right questions in your head and then you look for opportunities and attract opportunities through that. So thanks, Sean, for your insights. It’s been fantastic. I’ve learned a lot and this is what I love about having these conversations with some of the smartest people in the world, such as yourself. That adds value to our audience. So thank you very much for sharing your wisdom and insights and experience has been absolute joy.
Sean Castrina
00:34:06 – 00:34:09
Great, Jeff. Thank you for having me on the podcast.