How to Start a LEGITIMATE Business (And Spot Scams)

Starting a legitimate business is not hard to do if you do it for the right reasons. In this episode I discuss the very basics for starting a business and the mindset you should have before you do. Next, we discuss how to spot scams or at the ver least, a shitty business.

https://www.jessievirga.com 
https://www.instagram.com/drvirga 
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Welcome to Jessie Virga’s channel, where she shares insights on her wide array of interests. Jessie also hosts an audio podcast (link below). 

Jessie Virga hails from the Bronx and has an extensive background in security and defense, having spent 10 years in the military in various security roles. Following her military service, she pursued a degree in Cognitive Behavioral Neuroscience from UCSD and briefly pursued medical school. Realizing her true passion lay elsewhere, she transitioned back to security work with the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, earning both an MBA and a DBA in Homeland Security. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Health Psychology. 

Jessie’s career has always focused on protecting people, information, and infrastructure. Her dedication extends beyond her professional life. She volunteers for Search and Rescue, works as a part-time EMT (TCCC/TECC), and enjoys hiking, backpacking, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and staying active. 

In addition to her professional and volunteer commitments, Jessie is an entrepreneur. She owns several businesses, including a nonprofit animal welfare organization, K&L Animal Rescue. Jessie is eager to share her extensive knowledge and experiences through her journeys. These thoughts are her own, and she welcomes engaging with those who have something interesting to share. Feel free to reach out via email. 

Thank you for being here, and God Bless. 
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https://www.jessievirga.com 
K&L Animal Rescue: https://www.klrescue.org 
MB Fitness: https://www.mbfitnessusa.com 
MB Security: https://www.mbsecurityusa.com 
Entrepreneur HQ: https://www.enhq.org 

Visit jessievirga.com for our privacy policy, terms and conditions and terms of service. This is not legal, security, health, fitness, business, finance or any other type of advice. This is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing any specific advice. You should contact your primary healthcare provider, attorney, etc., to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed as (insert service)-client privilege (yes "insert service" is there on purpose). If you are looking for more information about any of the services I provide, please click on the respective link.

Visit jessievirga.com for our privacy policy, terms and conditions and terms of service. This is not legal, security, health, fitness, business, finance or any other type of advice. This is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing any specific advice. You should contact your primary healthcare provider, attorney, etc., to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed as (insert service)-client privilege (yes "insert service" is there on purpose). If you are looking for more information about any of the services I provide, please click on the respective link.

Transcript

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if you are trying to start a business and you are in it just for the money chances are you're not going to be successful and that's simply based on the fact that nobody wants to give their business to somebody who's money hungry you might get their initial purchase but your primary goals are going to be so apparent and nobody is going to come back and that is not what you want as a business owner repeat clients clients that are loyal to you customers that are loyal to you that is the that is the goal of most business owners they intend or they should hope to intend to provide so much value and the best experience to their customers and to their consumers that you have to come back for more because you're not gonna get service like this or a product like this anywhere else yes there might be some things that people sell like a service for example that maybe you only need once and that's fine your referral or word of mouth is probably right up there along with you coming back for another product or service but if you're only in it for the money the quality of your product the quality of your service your customer support all of those things are going to be lacking and that's just simply based on the fact that you have a toxic goal so today I wanna talk about how this happens how consumers are able to sniff this out and if you are a consumer and if you are just not really aware of the intentions of the businesses who own the products and services that you purchase or consume I'm going to teach you how so let's get into it any successful entrepreneur who comes into the business world who doesn't have rich daddies and mommies who give them $1 million to start their first business but that's what rich parents and my cash are for right anybody who enters the business world from scratch as a self made business owner should be looking to provide immense value man that's easy said than done money is always second yes we understand you want your business to grow you wanna become financially you know free you wanna become financially independent you wanna quit your 9 to 5 and only work for yourself yes the goal is to be financially free but the only way for you to be financially free is to run a business that's consistent that's growing if you try to come into the business world with the goal of just wanting to be rich you're not going to get anywhere you will fail humanity will fall the reason why I wanna talk about this is because so many people come through my doors at Entrepreneur Headquarters seeking a business coach wanting my advice 99% of the time they come to me broke which is fine right I'm looking to help you I'm trying to provide something anything I can to give you an idea of where to start but the problem is they come to me clients will call them they people come to me and they say I have no money but I wanna make a ton of money and I'm like you are in the wrong place I am not here to teach you how to get rich quick 1 because there's no fucking such thing there's no such thing I'm not running to get rich quick scheme this isn't a pyramid scheme 2 you have to be able to put in the work so not only do people come to me with the only intention with their only intention being to make money the second thing is they don't have time no matter what it's they don't have time and I'm like so you wanna make a ton of money you don't wanna do a lot of work and you have nothing to offer I got nothing the fuck you want me to do for you right now it's the people who come through my door who say I see a problem I wanna fix that problem because there are people out there that are just like me who had this problem and I don't think they know how to fix it and those people sometimes come to me with that goal and sometimes they need help finding funding other times they have the funding but they wanna make sure they do things the right way those are the people that are going to be successful entrepreneurs you have to provide a service in some way whether you're solving a painpoint of a particular group of people or you're looking to grow a business to create jobs for others right maybe you're a construction worker and you wanna start a construction company in the hopes that you can hire a team of really awesome construction workers and laborers masons whatever you know then provide an awesome service to your clients and that's fine too but if your only goal is to make money you are not going to get anywhere now that that's being now that I've said all of that the next piece that you have to consider if you're looking to start a business is first the business idea what is your great idea right you wanna solve a problem you wanna be a service to others through what do you have a skill set do you have an idea for a product do you see a vacancy in an industry that you can fill meaning do you see that most rural places don't have access to something right and maybe you want to start to create you want to create access to a certain commodity or good right maybe rural areas don't have access to our freaking all sprouts Whole Foods I don't just I don't know fucking know if you see a problem you see a pain point that people are having you maybe are at one point were one of those people and you're frustrated because there is no solution so you wanna create the solution that's one thing and I'll give you an example when I started Entrepreneur Headquarters it was because I had been a business coach for like unofficially for a few years because I had been a successful business owner and people were constantly coming to me for advice and they were telling their friends and their friends were coming to me for advice and before I knew it I was just spending hours a week helping people with their business I'm like I just turn this into a fucking business and make money from this because I'm clearly doing a really good job and it would give me the ability to help more than just friends and friends of friends I can spread the word and maybe help other people be successful too because me kind of like unofficially being a coach for people for friends and friends of friends and that LED to their success and I'm like okay maybe I do have a neck for this right maybe I just wasn't lucky the few businesses that I started the six businesses that I started maybe I'll start a seven business and show people how to do this so that's what I did and it was because I had a talent there wasn't really any business coaches out there who were helping you know people start from scratch and if they were they were charging an astronomical price and I didn't wanna do that I wanted to help people at an affordable rate get them going and if they became successful which I know they would be then they can hire me to be their one on one coach right cause that was like my high ticket thing so the first thing is your idea and you maybe you have multiple ideas I also have tons of people come to me like I wanna start a business and I wanna do this and this and this and this and I'm like pick one pick one thing right I understand you want your business to grow and you wanna offer all of these things but you gotta pick one I was talking to a client who wants to start a security company has a really good opportunity to you know provide armed guards and have contracts for armed guards but he also wants to be a firearms instructor and he wants to do risk assessments and vulnerability assessments and I'm like who is doing all of those things is it you how are you doing all those things do you have the talent already that can provide those services and it's no so then guess what you can't provide those services what is the thing that you can provide right now and can you afford to provide that right now if you can't what are your plans for getting funding right those are the questions that I generally ask when people have a million different things they wanna do for their business or they have a million different business ideas and they're not even related I'm just like you need to pick one I had somebody else come up to me he wanted to start a car detailing business and that included paint correction but then he also wanted to be a tutor because his background was an education and like those are two very awesome things you're one person though and if an auto detail with paint correction is is taking up six to eight hours of your day do you have time to be a full time tutor like you need to ask yourself these questions so that's business idea the next thing is you wanna validate your business idea so you write down all the ideas that you have and then you're gonna go into your research this kind of bleeds into what's called market research and you wanna see is there space for your business out there maybe you can't find a microfiber cloth that works in the way you want it to work so you do some research are there Reddit posts are there Google reviews are there any is there anything else out there for other products or other services that people were not happy with or maybe you are a car detailer and you look up other car detailing businesses to find out what people were having issues with now this is an example I use a lot and let's say you wanted to open up a pet store and I told you or you remember hearing okay Jesse said to pick one thing so I'm going to pick dog bowls and you look up the reviews of other dog bowls and you see that plastic dog bowls people didn't like because the plastic degraded stainless steel or metal dog bowls would rust or they weren't good outside and you can see what people's pain points are and you're like okay is there a product that exists that can answer these problems there is there is a product that exists is it reasonable like can I afford to buy the inventory for that product or can I afford with my time to provide that service to people who have this problem if the answer is yes then you have a good business idea and you're gonna do that for every idea that you write down and eventually you're gonna narrow it down and sometimes you might narrow it down by what's the most lucrative cool now you have a valid business idea you've done some market research you found that there's room for you in that in the market in the industry the next thing you want to do and I always recommend that people start a business plan and even if it's this is just like a side gig that's totally fine but I do recommend that you at least start take a stab at a business plan because doing that and having a business plan is going to make you think about things you might not otherwise be thinking about The Small Business Association has great business plan templates Canva has a couple I'm not really a big fan of the business plan templates on Canva so you can take the information from the SBA templates and then make it look pretty in Canva if you want but they are the most comprehensive and if you do that and if you put in the leg work and you are proud of the business that you're creating because it's providing a service it's answering a question you're being a service to others in some capacity then you will be successful now there's a lot more to starting a business but that is how you should get started if you try to start your business in any other way you know maybe you're just trying to find the next the next best thing that's making that's making money it's going to be short lived you're never gonna reach financial freedom you're never gonna understand true wealth and people are gonna see right fucking through that and if you're not sure if people are gonna see right through that I'm gonna tell people right now how to see through that if you are a consumer or if you're a business owner doing your market research some of the ways that you can tell someone is just in and it to make the money is a few different things now I will say this it's going to be bit of an Assumption maybe they're just really bad at business or maybe they let their business lapse because they're lazy like maybe there's some other reason other than them being money hungry but a clear indication that there is at least some problem with the business or some problem with the mission of the business is one customers have the same problem over a long period of time so maybe someone in may complains about customer service or long shipping times and then by December people are still complaining about shipping issues and the owner hasn't updated or commented on these posts saying hey listen I'm sorry we were having some issues with manufacturing we're gonna get this to you right away or here's a 20% off coupon if if you don't see that the problem was at least addressed by the business owner that's one clear indication that they're just in it for the money or their foreign company and they just don't give a fuck the second clear indication is if you do purchase something from that business and it fucking sucks the service sucks or the product itself sucks and you go back and you tell them and you hear diddly squat by the way when I say squat I mean diddly squat chances are because they don't give a fuck you already paid them they don't care right there's no resolution or if they say hey listen sorry it sucks there's no refunds okay like don't even try to fix it or talk to you a little bit about it they're just in it for the money right anybody who's in business to be in business for the right reasons cares about the reputation of their business and is going to want to make things right unless you're just a dick you as the customer are a dick and they've really exhausted all efforts and now they're just like listen I can't help you that's a different story but at the end of the day those are kind of the ways that people can tell that the company's a piece of shit like or the owner's a piece of shit so if you're looking to start a business don't be that guy nobody likes that guy don't be that guy so that's all I have for you guys today quick little tip on starting a business and starting a business for the right reasons I talk to people all the fucking time about business about their business about starting a business and a lot of the people who come to me are just looking to make money and what do I tell them I tell them I can't fucking help you if you wanna learn how to start a business you can sign up for my course you can buy my book but I am not going to take my time my precious time my precious to sit down and talk to you about how to start a successful business because you don't fucking care you just wanna make money and therefore it is a waste of time for me and my time is valuable with that I'll see you guys on the flip side