Ideas are really overrated. Everybody puts a lot of emphasis on the idea itself, instead of the things that really work to build a real business, which is execution, intentionality, focus and discipline.

This podcast is brought to you by Fast Slow Motion, a team of expert consultants that have helped hundreds of growing businesses build scalable systems on the HubSpot and Salesforce platforms. To learn more, visit fastSlowmotion.com. Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion podcast, where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. In our podcast, we talk key learnings, cheat codes, hacks and principles that have saved us on our journey in the hopes that they serve you as well.

I’m your host, Sam Donaghey, and today I’m joined by John Burdett, President and CEO of Fast Slow Motion. John, how are you doing today? Doing well, Sam, thanks for having me again on the podcast. Awesome. It’s so good to have you here. And you know, in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how to turn your idea into a business.

John, I know that you’ve taken concepts and you’ve turned them into several successful businesses over the years, including Fast Slow Motion. And I think this is a really interesting topic. I think today’s episode is going to give a lot of people some clarity around which steps they need to take. I’m sure that a lot of people have thought about starting their own business, but it’s one thing to think about doing something, and it’s quite another to turn that thought and put it into action.

So I’d love to start at the beginning. John, how do you actually turn an idea into a business? Yeah, Sam, I think in today’s culture, we’ve kind of glamorized entrepreneurship at some level. And what I fundamentally believe, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs believe, is that ideas are really overrated. Everybody puts a lot of emphasis on the idea itself, instead of the things that really work to build a real business, which is execution, intentionality, focus and discipline.

Those are often non sexy things, so people don’t want to comment on it or really focus on it. But those are the fundamentals that really are critical to building a real business. Much less around the idea. You know, investors are the ones that take an idea and create something. And entrepreneurs are those people that turn those products and services into something useful for customers that our customers are willing to pay for and to build a sustainable business model around that.

So just because it’s a good idea does not mean it’s a good business. And entrepreneurs are rarely inventors, and inventors are rarely entrepreneurs. Thanks to Shark Tank and the popularity of that program, I think a lot of people have obviously gotten a lot more interested in being entrepreneurs, but they always highlight, you know, hey, you’ve got a product and not a business. And I think people are hopefully starting to realize, like, just because I’ve invented something or I have this great idea, I have this product, doesn’t mean you can actually turn that into a real business. And so very few businesses are actually created on a novel idea. A lot of the most successful businesses in the world didn’t really invent anything. They took something and made it better. They innovated on that idea. So you take somebody like an Apple or something like that. They didn’t invent really anything. They invent the computer or the smartphone vision goggles, any of those kinds of things. They’ve just taken it to the next level and created a real business around that. So it’s really not about the idea, in my opinion. It’s much more about execution around how do I turn that idea into something that somebody is going to pay for and add value in the marketplace?

I really find that quite comforting, to know that you don’t actually have to come up with the next big idea, right? To be successful as an entrepreneur, I find that really interesting. So it’s more about execution, intentionality, focus, and discipline. So for those that are really interested in being entrepreneurs and building a successful business, how do they actually choose which type of business to start? Yeah, I think take some of that pressure off. You don’t have to invent something. You don’t have to come up with a perfect idea. So stop waiting for the perfect idea would be the thing I would say, just look around. What are you passionate about? What do you love doing? What’s out there that you can make better and improve? That’s a much better idea around creating a really good business than trying to invent something or come up with something somebody has never had before. And those businesses are the ones that are usually very, very successful. But if it aligns with your passion and you’re solving a real problem, that’s where I would start on that journey and start looking around for those kinds of things.

And once again, the template is there for a lot of very successful businesses from the Apples of the world, the Microsofts of the world, the Facebooks of the world. Even people like Uber, who created a whole other marketplace. They didn’t invent the taxi, they just took it to a different level. Now you take somebody like Uber and their journey versus Apple — very, very difficult to break into that market. They had so many hurdles. It required a tremendous amount of cash and perseverance and all those kinds of things because of really disrupting a very established marketplace with taxis and things like that. I would look for ways of like, how can I make something better? What am I passionate about? How can I improve and add more value to something versus inventing some idea?

John, would you say even if the business idea isn’t unique, is it still important to have a unique value proposition for the business? Uniqueness is really a perception of the customer. The customer thinks you’re unique. The world thinks Apple is unique. Well, they’re very good at what they do and they’ve created that brand perception within that customer mindset, which means it’s reality because perception is reality.

So you can take something and make it better and then create that perception that it’s very unique and different. And all those differentiators can be established if you’re adding real value to the marketplace, and then you can iterate on those and innovate on those ideas and those unique value propositions that you have to create something that’s very different in the marketplace today.

So a lot of times that uniqueness mindset is just a mindset so that the customer perceives it as different and they want it. I mean, how many different brands out there make blue jeans or pants or whatever? And we all have our favorites and we’re like, this is so different than somebody else. Well, the copy is pretty easy to copy. That brand perception is not. So that’s where branding comes into play. But once you’ve proven to have a viable solution, then it’s really just all about building a sustainable business model on top of that. And that’s what real entrepreneurs do. So I often define a sustainable business model as building something that’s repeatable, using consistent systems that delivers value to customers that are going to pay you over the long term. You’re gonna have long term profits from being able to do this so that you remain healthy, so that you can keep serving that customer well. That’s the unique sauce — how do I build a business model around this solution, product, whatever I’m doing, so that the market votes with their dollars and they pay you for it and you can make a profit long term?

John, I’ve also heard you say in the past that a business shouldn’t try to be everything to everyone. So what advice do you have for an entrepreneur who’s trying to decide whether to focus right now on a narrow niche, or maybe a broader audience? And they’re sort of crossways right now — they just don’t know which way to go.

Yeah, great question. It first starts with an understanding of your TAM, your total addressable market. You hear that a lot, especially from investors. And what that basically means is how big is the market out there that can buy or would be interested in buying the product and service that I’m offering? And so with a large TAM, you don’t have to capture as much market share to make a lot of money. And so the larger the TAM the better. The downside of that is the larger the TAM, usually there’s a lot more competition involved because there’s more people competing for those dollars and competing for those customers that are out there. So investors really look at TAM a lot because it de-risks their investment tremendously. You can make a lot of mistakes when you have a really big market opportunity, and you don’t have to capture as much market share.

Now, if you’re looking at a narrow niche that has a really small TAM, you got to really analyze that to make sure you can actually create a business around that. Because if you can’t, it doesn’t matter how great you are, it doesn’t matter how good your idea is, it doesn’t matter how much you innovate — you’re not going to be able to generate enough revenue to make enough profit to create a real business. And therefore, it’s not worth the time and effort to be able to solve that problem. One of my favorite Warren Buffett quotes — he says, I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them because sooner or later one will. That kind of gives you that investor mindset around how they really envision TAM as an important thing to look at, because execution is so very, very hard.

So I would say you want to look at a good balance. You want to find a market that has a reasonable TAM that you can add value to, and gains enough market share to create a viable business model. That is really kind of the holy grail — how can I go after that market, get enough market share and limit the competition that competes with me? And that’s kind of like winning the lottery. That’s really what we’re striving for as entrepreneurs. On the niche side, the value of that is focus. And so what I would say is try to find a TAM that’s big enough to serve so that if you are moderately successful, it’s worth the effort to do that. But then stay focused on that, because a lot of us entrepreneurs get distracted and want to go after other different things. So once you find what’s working and you’ve developed a business model, you need to have the discipline — that’s where discipline comes in — to stay focused on those things so that you continue to execute well and you continue to add value, and you don’t dilute your focus on other things that may or may not turn out to be a good business.

John, what if you’ve entered a market that has a large TAM but it’s overly saturated with competition? How do you quickly identify that? And is it wise to pivot out of that pretty quickly? Yeah, that’s where you want to fail fast, I would say. So if you do have a large TAM that you’re going after with a lot of competition, but you really feel strongly you have something unique that’s going to disrupt that market or create an advantage for you, try to find ways to test that very quickly so that you can validate your assumptions, because you definitely don’t want to go on this very long, multi-year journey and then figure out it really wasn’t that unique. I’m not a big fan of focusing on your competition, but when you’re entering a market, you need to see what your competition is doing and understand what their advantages are. If you’re going into a market with a large TAM and the competitors have a lot of money, that’s very, very difficult to compete with because they can make a lot of mistakes. They can outspend you, they can do a lot of things. And it’s kind of not fair because you may have a better solution or a better mousetrap, but they’re going to beat you almost every time because they have more capital and they’re going to be able to outlast you, outspend you, and out-execute you at the end of the day because they can make a lot more mistakes.

Okay, that’s really interesting. So John, why did you actually decide to start a consulting firm in the first place, rather than any other type of business? So I’ve had the opportunity and blessings to help build multiple types of businesses. And I’ve been exposed to a lot of different business models. So I definitely learned the things I enjoy and don’t enjoy, and what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. And so I think that comes with experience, and I always recommend people early in their career to take advantage of those kinds of opportunities, because you don’t really know until you get there and do that.

So I started Fast Slow Motion because it checked all the boxes that were important to me personally. Number one, I’m very passionate about helping people build their business the right way and not make all the mistakes that I’ve done. I’m very passionate about technology. I’ve always been in software. I love building solutions and systems and things like that. And so it was the perfect mix of those things.

Honestly, early in my career, I thought I would never want to do services again. I’d done it before, did product, and then kind of went back and forth. And what I realized is, yes, there are pros and cons to every business. You know, the grass is not always greener. There’s always challenges and things that come along with every different business model. But I’ve learned to embrace the negative aspects of a consulting business and realize that it doesn’t bother me as much. And I’m like, okay, that’s the challenge — how do I solve those problems versus I hate life and I don’t want to do it anymore. And so those kinds of things — I really kind of understood what I was good at, what I was passionate about. And that’s why we started Fast Slow Motion.

So, you know, chasing a market opportunity — a lot of times I hear this from people that want to be an entrepreneur or a business owner. They’re really chasing a market opportunity, and they’re not really passionate about what they do and why they do it. And to me, that’s very short sighted, because more than likely the road is going to be a lot more bumpy than you want it to be, and you’re probably going to quit or get burned out or get tired because you are not really called to do it. You’re not passionate about what you’re doing. There’s no joy in that journey. And so I would encourage people to find things that you’re passionate about and then find ways to create a business around those types of things. And that’s the win win. That’s really what you’re wanting to do. So for me, Fast Slow Motion was the win win that checked all my boxes — I know it adds value, I know I’m good at it, and then we’ve proven we’re able to make money and create a viable business. And so I would just encourage people to stop copying other people and stop trying to be somebody that they’re not, because a lot of times we get caught up in that. We’re like, oh, I want to be that person, or if I just have this idea or if I could just have this opportunity — no. Level set yourself and understand what you’re good at, where you can add value, and then create a business around that. And then you’ll be authentic, you’ll enjoy what you’re doing, and it’ll be a lot more fun. And then the days that are very difficult, you won’t want to quit. You’ll be able to persevere through that and keep moving on because the mission is bigger than yourself or just making some money along the way.

That’s great advice. Okay, I love that. So once you’ve found your passion or found the idea, what’s the next step after that? What should someone do to get started?

So I’m not a big fan of going all in. I don’t think entrepreneurs are really risk takers. I think we like betting on ourselves, and I’d much rather bet on myself than corporate America or some other big job out there. And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs are wired that way. I do think you can do some of these things that we talked about without quitting your day job or going all in and mortgaging your house and stuff like that. So find ways to get started where you don’t have to go all in. You’re committed, you want it to work, but you’re not at a point where you’ve burned the boats and you can’t get out, or it’s a one way door and you can’t get back out. So try to position the opportunity around that, and then just prove to yourself that you can get through certain things along the way so that you’re either verifying or not verifying that this business will work. Before you do that. Now, at some point, you’re going to have to commit to it. And that’s a very important step in the whole process. But I wouldn’t do that early on until I’ve proven some things along the way so that I’m not investing too much capital or I’m not quitting all my jobs and having to mortgage my house.

I’ll give you a personal example. I had the privilege of helping start a nonprofit called Red Mountain Grace, and we offer hospitality housing for people coming to Birmingham, Alabama for medical care. So Birmingham is a big medical city. There’s a lot of great hospitals in the area, and people regionally come to Birmingham when they have serious medical conditions — from transplants to cancer to car wrecks, whatever. But if you’re five hours away and you need that medical care, you got to move your family there. You got to displace. So they provide hospitality housing while those patients are getting medical care so the family can have a sense of normalcy around it. When we were looking to start that nonprofit and we were trying to verify some of these stats — like, is there a market, is there a need, how can we do it — the original plan was to build a building, and we would either build or buy a building where we had multiple places people could stay and we had a sense of community. Well, building or buying a building is very capital intensive and we didn’t have any capital. We hadn’t even proved the model yet to see if this would even work or not.

And so what we did is we pivoted to an apartment model. One of our founders owned a couple apartments. We were able to secure those apartments. The rest of us furnished those apartments, and then we went through the process of, okay, how do we work with the hospitals to get patients and all the logistics and the operational things that were necessary to make that nonprofit successful. And we were able to do it in a way without investing millions of dollars to prove it could work. And then that created a bit of a flywheel — okay, we’ve proven the model, now we can add more apartments and scale up much faster than we could versus acquiring a building. So that’s a personal example of starting something where it seemed like we were going to have to invest millions of dollars to get it even off the ground, and we came up with an innovative way to get started. And that really allowed the organization to thrive. It’s over ten years old now and doing very, very well. And otherwise we’d never have gotten started, or we would have probably failed if we tried to buy or build a building to serve that model.

Wow. And that was a unique idea that you hadn’t seen that business model anywhere else in the state, correct? Yeah. And a lot of that is what entrepreneurship is — you’re innovators. You’re like, okay, there’s a wall in front of me. I can knock it down, I can run through it, I can jump over it, I can buy a ladder. There’s all these different ways to solve these problems. And that’s the fun part of entrepreneurship — how do I creatively look at these problems and solve them different ways? And that’s a much better way to build a business, because you’ve already kind of proven there’s a market out there. There’s usually, if you’re copying something and innovating on top of it, they’ve already proven the market for you. Now you can find ways to make it better and improve upon that.

John, this has been a great discussion so far. And you’ve got so much wisdom. To our listeners, we hope that you’ll join us for part two of this topic in the next episode. So remember to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform, or you can find archived episodes at fastslowmotion.com/podcast.