Python for Entrepreneurs Transcripts
Chapter: Welcome to the course
Lecture: Welcome and thanks for coming
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0:01
Hello and welcome to Python for Entrepreneurs. We are so excited and honored that you are taking our course.
0:07
We can't wait to help you build your online business. Now, before we get to all the mechanics of what we are going to cover,
0:12
what you need for the course, how to connect to this database or that,
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let's just talk briefly about why right now is the best time to start an online business. It's easy to get nostalgic and look back and say
0:24
well, twenty years ago things were so much easier, I just started like look at the companies that exist now.
0:29
But I am going to show you that yesterday was not as golden as we think it is. It's also easy to say well, I've just got to wait,
0:36
now is not really the right time to get started, and if I just put it off for another two years all these thing will fall into place
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and I'll be ready to roll- I don't think so. I think the right time to start is now.
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You build a base, even if you just started as a side business and let it grow,
0:51
let it mature and build it up over time and you are going to have something amazing.
0:55
What did it take to build a business before the internet, an actual physical business, with things made of atoms, rather than bits?
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Well, you would probably run full page ads in expensive magazines like this, here is an ad from 1968 when Chevy was advertising their brand new cars.
1:11
Whether you were starting a car business or something on main street, it is hard to get started on these types of business.
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The startup costs were probably millions, the time to get started is maybe a year if you are fast, it's really hard to get started,
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the barrier to entry is quite high; and the even so, the profit margin this companies make is quite low.
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So General Motors just had a record breaking year for profit margins, and it put them way up in the stratosphere at 6%, that is not very high
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but there are many businesses like gas stations and stuff that make like .3, .2% profit margin.
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It's extremely hard to work with that little bit of extra revenue, so maybe these physical businesses were not the way to go,
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maybe it was the .com boom days, back in the late 1990s, early 2000s that we should have started our business.
2:01
I think venture capital was more accessible at least you didn't have to prove so much to get it,
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if you'd create a web site with a crazy idea maybe the people gave you money, but to actually get started for most folks was really hard.
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I recall in 1998 going to a workshop type thing, put together by a couple of software and hardware companies working together
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and their goal was to show us how easy it was to build an e-commerce site in 1998,
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and they said look, all you are going to need is this load balancer, this SSL accelerator, these kinds of connections in your data center,
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this special hard drive, and they said, in the end, it's just going to take you only a 100 000 dollars to get started.
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I think we could have thrown away some of their software and get started from maybe 50 000, but still, that is a pretty high barrier to entry.
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This isn't something you just spend up on the side because you have a great idea, it also takes a while to get all those things in place,
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set up the load balancer, set up the server, set up the software on them,
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but not just that- connecting the things like credit card systems used to be way harder.
2:58
While starting a business in a .com day was easier than before, it's not maybe as easy as we might remember.
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what does it take to start an online digital business today? Let's look inside my business. The one that you've probably bought this class from.
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So I started Talk Python Training in the early part of 2016, and I went back and I did some math to figure
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how much I spent in time and money to get things started. It cost me 346 dollars in materials, in hosting,
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and domains and SSL certificates, to get started, that's it. I built the entire website with the e-commerce capabilities,
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the email account management, video delivery, everything in 2 to 3 weeks, that's it. After that, I launched the first product on Kickstarter
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and within 2 months was making solid money. That is a very, very different picture than even the .com days.
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And yet factoring this out over time, my profit margins are running at 93%. I am telling you, right now is a golden time to get started,
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and throughout this course, I am going to give you a look inside of my business, Talk Python Training and the podcast,
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and Matt Makai is going to give you a look inside the Full Stack Python. So you are going to have two real world examples
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of how we have started a business that to some degree or other is standing out and succeeding. Now it's not all rainbows and unicorns,
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there are more challenges in other areas today. Almost because it's easier to get started you'll see the competition is tough,
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so let's just go back ten years if you could pass the technical barriers, put money up front to get started, and get things up and running,
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chances are you would be running in a pretty thin pack, competition existed but it wasn't so tough, it wasn't so hard to get the word out.
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However, zoom forward ten years to today, and it looks more like this- even if you are building a business that is unique,
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it's still really hard to get the word out, so the technical chops to build the business is not enough.
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That's why in this course we are also going to talk about SEO, growth hacking, the things you need to stand out and break free of this dusty pack.
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All right, competition now withstanding, I hope you are excited to get started because it is a golden time to start a business,
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and we are both super excited to share our story and our techniques with you.