# The Smallest Business You Can Start Without Quitting Your Job Channel: Adam Erhart Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlzwItv9pDc Duration: 10 min Language: English Words: 2366 Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/zlzwItv9pDc --- [0:00] If you've ever caught yourself on a Sunday night dreading Monday morning, thinking, "I can't keep doing this for another 10 or 20 years," this video is for you. Because if you're anything like the people I talk to every single day, you've already played this out in your head. You know that if nothing changes, 5 years from now, you're going to be sitting in the same chair with the same calendar you don't control, the same paycheck that somebody else decides, and the same feeling that your life doesn't really feel like your life. And yet, here you are still in it. And it's not because you're lazy. It's because either [0:28] you don't know what the alternative is or you've looked at the alternatives, but there's this voice in the back of your head saying, "Yeah, but that won't work for me." So, here's what I want you to hear today. There's another way to do this, a better one. You don't have to burn the boats. You don't have to quit your job. You don't have to sell everything you own and move back in with [0:46] your parents. None of that is required. There are small steps you can take starting this week that do two incredibly powerful things both at the same time. One, they start moving you in a better direction. And two, they flip a switch inside you that only flips once you take action. And I'll explain both of those before we're done here. But first, I want you to know that I'm not guessing here because I did this the wrong way. When I left the corporate world, I did the dramatic version. I burned the boats. And then I spent the next stretch of my life broke as a joke working for minimum wage, selling [1:16] running shoes, living in an apartment so small it didn't have room for a kitchen table, going from no clients to bad clients, back to no clients again. Forget Feast and Famine. And this was famine to famine. Since then, I've built three sevenfigure agencies, worked with over 1500 small businesses, and run thousands of campaigns. And today, I do it all as a oneperson agency with zero employees. So, when I tell you that there's a smarter way to do this than the way I did it, it's because I've lived both versions. And the reason I wanted to share all of this with you today is because I actually got asked [1:46] about this just yesterday. A friend of mine has a son who's 20. He's 2 years into college, and he's already doing the thing you've probably done yourself, looking down the road. he's on playing it forward and not loving where it ends up. So my friend asked me straight up, what should I tell him? What would you do? And here's the thing. The answer I gave him is the exact same answer that I'm going to give you because it doesn't matter whether you're 20 and starting down that path or you're 45 and you're 20 years into walking it. The problem is the same and so is the way out. So let [2:16] me tell you exactly what I told him. Three things. And the first one is the one that most people never get past. So the first thing is this. If you want control over your life, your calendar, your income, your future, then you have to accept that getting that control is up to you. Nobody is going to hand it over to you willingly. Not your boss, not the company, not the economy. It's your responsibility now. And I know how that sounds. Sounds heavy. And honestly, this right here is where most people get stuck because accepting that it's all up to you is uncomfortable. But this is actually the best news in this entire [2:49] video because if it's up to you, that means that you're not waiting on anybody's permission anymore. Now, there's a lot of advice out there about this, most of it from well-meaning people. People telling you to invest or buy real estate or whatever's trending this month. And look, I'm not saying that advice is bad, but for most people most of the time, none of it gets you control anytime soon because all of it [3:09] requires money that you don't have yet. So, practically speaking, the fastest way to get real control over your income is owning your own business. And before that word scares you off, I don't mean it in the way that you're probably picturing it. I'm not talking about renting an office or hiring employees or taking out a loan or printing business cards. None of that stuff. I'm talking about the smallest version of a business that exists, which is just this. You help somebody solve a problem and they pay you for it. That's it. That is a business. And here's the part that makes this just so much less scary than it [3:40] sounds. You kind of already do this right now, every single day. I mean, that's literally what a job is. You show up, you solve problems for your boss, and they pay you a salary for it. The only difference is that at a job, there's a middleman between you and the value you create. And that middleman, well, they're the one that sets your price and your conditions. So, the basic idea isn't new to you. Solving problems and getting paid for it is what you already do. What changes is who you do it for and how you do it and that the money comes straight to you instead of [4:10] through somebody else. Okay, so that's the first thing, the mindset, the fact that it's up to you and the way that you get to where you want to go is the smallest possible business. The second thing is how money actually works. And you might want to write this one down or screenshot this because once you see it, a lot of the confusing stuff gets really simple. Money is made when value is provided. And value is provided by solving problems. So, if you want to [4:33] make money, you have to solve problems. That's the whole equation. Not by having a fancy logo, not by having a website, not by having a business name or an LLC or the perfect niche picked out. People pay for problems getting solved and everything else is just decoration, which means the question stops being, "How do I start a business?" which is vague and overwhelming and has no real definitive answer, and it becomes, whose problems can I solve first? That [4:58] question actually does have an answer. Which brings me to the third thing. There are a lot of problems out there. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the world is not running low on problems. So, the real question is which problem should you pick to solve first? And here, I'm not guessing either because I've now watched thousands of people do this, regular people just like you and me. Most of them starting with a 9 toive job. And the pattern that works over and over again is just this. You find one problem you can solve for a local business owner and you use software and simple systems [5:31] to solve it for them. You see, local business owners are the best people on the planet to do this for. The plumber, the electrician, the dentist, the roofer, because their problems are visible. They're fixable. They're universal because every small business in the world, and there are millions of them, have these problems. And solving them makes the business money, which [5:49] means they're willing to pay you for it. And it's that last part that matters, possibly most of all, because when you're deciding what to sell, the easiest thing in the world to sell is something that makes the other person money. Because you don't have to convince somebody that getting them more customers is worth paying for. They already know. So, let me tell you what I told my friend and make this as easy as possible for you and just give you the one that I'd start with, which is reviews. Specifically, you help a local business get more Google reviews. So, when somebody searches for a plumber in [6:16] their town, they pick that business instead of the guy down the street. That's it. And here's the good news. You don't have to figure everything out today. Things like which business and what to charge and what do you actually say to them, all of that comes later. And it gets a whole lot easier once you're moving instead of sitting still and trying to work it all out in your [6:33] head first. So that's the three things. The fact that it's up to you, that money comes from solving problems, and that the easiest problem to start with is Google reviews for a local business. Now, back to those two things that I promised you at the start, because this is the part I really want you to get. The first thing taking a small step does is start moving you in a better direction. And small is the point. I mean, if you decided to get healthy tomorrow, you wouldn't lace up brand new running shoes and try to run 20 miles because you wouldn't make it. You'd probably just injure yourself. You'd [7:02] feel terrible and you'd quit. What you'd actually do is go for a walk, maybe do some push-ups, something small enough that you'd actually do it again the next day. Well, starting a business works in pretty much exactly the same way. the small version that you'll actually do beats the impressive version that you're going to quit pretty much every single time. The second thing a small step does is flip a switch inside you. And I don't know a better way to say this, but there's this change that happens in a [7:27] person the moment that they take action. And it doesn't matter how small that action is, something just shifts. You stop being someone who's just thinking about it, and you become someone who's actually doing it. And confidence gets built out of exactly those moments stacked on top of each other. You can't read your way to it. You can't watch your way to it. It only comes from doing. And look, if you're sitting there thinking, "Okay, I'm in. But what is my small step?" Well, I'm going to give you one. Ideally, your first step is something free, something small enough [7:57] that you don't overthink it to death. You can just take action. So, here's what I do. And look, I'm sure there are other ways to get started. This is just the one that's worked for me and for the thousands of other people that I've helped do it. So, it's the one I'm going to point you at. There's a link in the description below this video for an extended 30-day free trial of High Level. This is the software I use to run my entire oneperson agency with zero employees, and it's what a review system for a local business actually gets built in. It's free for 30 days. You'll be in [8:24] there with a bunch of other people doing the exact same thing, and you can figure out whether this is for you or not before it cost you anything. Now, let's be honest with each other for a second here, because the odds are good that most people who get to this part of the video are going to just nod along and think, "Yeah, that makes sense." And then do nothing. Not because they don't want to, but because the let me think about it option feels safe and responsible and feels like you're being [8:47] careful. And I get it. Change is scary. But I think about this a lot because I've got four young kids and honestly, I've got no idea what the world is going to look like by the time they're old enough to work. Everything's changing faster than it ever has. the economy, the tools, the jobs themselves, and the old rules, things like go get a degree and get the safe job and keep your head down for 40 years, retire comfortably. I mean, does anybody actually believe that that deal still exists? So, here's the thing nobody tells you. You're not [9:15] choosing between risk and safety. Staying exactly where you are, depending on one employer and one paycheck and one decision that gets made in a meeting that you just happen to not be invited to, that's a risk, too. You just don't find out that it was a risk until it's too late to do anything about it. So, a year from now, you're going to be one of two different kinds of people. The person who took a small step this week and started building something that's actually theirs, or the person who's still thinking about it. I mean, the time is going to go by either way. The only question is which one of those [9:43] people you want to be. So, if you're the first one, well, take the first step right now while you're still sitting there. The free trial is linked below. It costs nothing, takes 5 minutes, and it's the switch that we just talked about. Then the very next questions you're going to hit are the practical ones. Things like, "How do you actually find that first local business?" And what do you say to them so you don't sound like every other person out there trying to sell them? And how do you actually make money with this? Well, that's the whole next conversation. And I made a free master class that I've got [10:09] linked up right here that's going to walk you through the whole thing step by step. So feel free to tap or click that now. I'll see you in there just a --- About this transcript Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com). 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