Vidit Gandhi owns Flashy Video, a business creating explainer videos for companies. He's been running it for 5 years, and had some great lessons to teach about how to maximize your efforts to not be wasted, and how to build the perfect team so you can work with whatever skill set you have.
LESSON 1: DON'T BE STUPID WITH MONEY
Bootstrapping is not a new concept. It's the process of starting a company with only your own investment, letting it pay for itself as it grows.
But here's the twist that Vidit gave:
If you don't have good enough personal finance skills, you DEFINITELY won't have good enough business finance skills.
Wisdom in personal finance is a MUST before even CONSIDERING starting your own business. If you have bad finance skills, not only will be be exponentially harder to keep track of the business profits and losses (you know, the whole point of having a business?) But if you are bad at finance now, what makes you think that having more money will magically make you better at finances??
LESSON 2: LEARNING IS EARNING
I love the simple quote from Warren Buffet: "The more you learn, the more you'll learn." A wee bit gimmicky, but we didn't get into the business game to be poets.
Take programming for example. If you learn Python (which takes a month and a free 4 hour course on YouTube), here's what you can do to make money
USE the skillFreelance
Regular job (gross, I know, but it pays the bills)
Make software to sell to companies (Saas is all about this)
TEACH the skillMake a course of your own
Create events for people who want to get into python programming
Become a specialized programming tutor
Not bad for 1 month of work. And with a few online certifications, you will have the same on-paper mastery as someone with a 4 year degree. That's a 97% decrease in time. 😎
This is where the true genius of Vidit comes through. He doesn't have the knowledge of a full-fledged video editor, or script-writer, but what makes him extremely successful is that he uses people who do.
This is where a lot of people trip up. They think they have to start off doing everything on their own.
"I don't have the networking skills" Vidit found most of his people on Facebook groups, so he leveraged the online community. Now THAT'S online business as it should be
"That would cost too much in the beginning" NO IT ISN'T Slap upside the head Freelance work is all about getting paid per project, not being on retainer. There are PLENTY of people that are willing to grow with the company. You just gotta ask. Silly Willy.
Vidit used this to make a killer team that makes incredibly professional videos. And as they expand their repertoire, they hire people who are skilled in that area. For example, they wanted to get into 3D animation, so they hired a 3D animator. EASY.
At the end of the day, it's what you DO that matters. Leverage yourself and you can find yourself in a scary-good situation. It did for Vidit.
