Entrepreneurship does not start with an idea, but with income

Many people want to become entrepreneurs.

They talk about freedom, passion, impact, scalability, personal branding, investors and maybe even purpose. All fine words, as long as there is something real behind them.

Income.

Because without income, you do not have a business. At most, you have an idea, a dream, a LinkedIn profile or a PowerPoint presentation.

Entrepreneurship does not start with a brilliant idea. Entrepreneurship starts with the willingness to do something today that makes money. Even if it is not much. Even if it is uncomfortable. Even if it is something that gives you no status at all.

As long as it works.

The Frenchman who was not a guitarist, but made money anyway

During one of my trips through Thailand, I met a Frenchman. Sylvain who became a friend.

He played guitar in a small band. Not because he was a great musician, but because it made money. That is why he had taught himself to play guitar a year earlier.

For me, that is where entrepreneurship starts.

Not with the question of where your passion lies, but with the question of where value is being created at that moment.

He had already been travelling through Thailand and Cambodia for two years. Before that, he had been in Ireland. And that was another story altogether. He arrived there completely broke, with only ten euros in his pocket, in an old second-hand car that he also slept in.

In the harbour where he was parked, he got talking to a skipper. Not long after that, he was working as a fisherman on a fishing boat.

Once he had made some money again, he travelled further through the country and met someone who asked him if he wanted to run a hotdog stand at festivals. According to him, that brought in fifteen thousand euros a month in good months.

After that, he went to Thailand.

When playing in bands there became more difficult, he left for Phnom Penh in Cambodia. With the last of his money, he bought a very old house, renovated it and sold it at a profit. Then he did the same thing again.

No MBA. No pitch deck. No investor. No complicated model.

Just the willingness to keep asking the same question: where is the opportunity to make money now?

The entrepreneurial attitude we rarely recognise in the Netherlands anymore

That attitude is something I come across less and less in the Netherlands, or actually in Europe.

We have an explanation for everything. The market is against us. The government is not helping. The bank does not want to finance it. The website is not finished yet. The timing is not right. The branding is not there yet. The circumstances are complicated.

All of that may be true.

But the real entrepreneurial question is usually left untouched:

What can I do today that brings in money today?

Not in six months. Not after a subsidy. Not after an investment. Not after everything is perfect.

Today.

And that is exactly why I thought of a good friend of mine this week.

My friend became a can collector

He has had bad luck in life. He lives in social housing, has built up debts and, because of an unfortunate set of circumstances, lost his driving licence. He also lives on social assistance and needs expensive medication to function normally.

Then life suddenly becomes very concrete.

Buying medication. Paying off debts. Eating. Paying rent. Getting through the month in a normal way.

It does not fit.

Working full-time is difficult, because many of the jobs he could apply for require a driving licence. Waiting for a solution is possible. Complaining is possible too. You can also be angry at the court, the municipality, the rules, the system or the bad luck you have had.

But none of that brings in one extra euro.

So he chose a profession.

Can collector.

The train as a business model

He takes it more seriously than many starting entrepreneurs take their own business.

His working area is the train, because fortunately he has a free monthly travel pass.

Usually around five o’clock in the afternoon, he gets on the train with a large suitcase and a backpack.

Then his round begins.

Carriage by carriage. Bin by bin. As quietly as possible. As invisibly as possible. Looking for cans with a deposit value.

And while he tells me about it, his eyes start to sparkle.

Because this too turns out to be a skill.

You need to know which trains are interesting. At what times people drink. Where the bins are. At which stations the train empties out for a moment. How to move quickly through a carriage without being noticed.

He has routes. Timing. Competition. Risks. Daily revenue.

In other words, he simply has a business model.

Nobody calls it that, because it does not happen in a coffee bar behind a laptop.

Competition does not always come from where you expect it

The detail I liked most was his competitive analysis.

On the train, according to him, his biggest competitors are not homeless people or other can collectors, but the conductors. Not because what he does is forbidden, but because they can obviously see what is in the bins too.

So he has to be smart.

Not too visible. Not too slow. Not too bold. Not too obvious.

In the cities, the competition is different again. From a distance, you can often already see whether someone has been there before you. Half the contents of the bin will be lying around the bin, and then you know there is little point.

But the most painful competitors are not the people most would immediately think of.

They are often pensioners.

People who have worked their whole lives and now, with shame in their eyes, take can after can out of public bins because their state pension is not enough to live normally.

That is painful.

But it is also entrepreneurial.

Because however small the amount may be, they are doing something. They are moving. They are trying to find value where others only see waste.

In short: entrepreneurship does not start with a brilliant idea, a business plan or a beautiful website. Entrepreneurship starts with the willingness to do something today that makes money. Sometimes that is a hotdog stand. Sometimes it is renovating an old house. And sometimes it is collecting cans on a train.

Making money usually starts smaller than your ego can handle

Many people who want to become entrepreneurs wait for the big idea.

But the big idea rarely comes first.

Most of the time, entrepreneurship starts with something small. Something simple. Something that may not give you any status. Something that makes money from day one.

A hotdog stand. A fishing boat. An old house. A guitar in a Thai band. Or collecting cans on the train.

That may not sound like entrepreneurship, but it is.

In fact, it is often purer entrepreneurship than someone who has spent two years talking about a concept that no one has ever paid for.

Because making money is ultimately not that complicated.

You have to find something that someone values, or something that already contains value, and then be willing to do the work others leave behind.

The question every entrepreneur should ask themselves

That is why the can collector may be a better mirror for entrepreneurs than the average success guru.

Not because collecting cans is romantic. It is not.

It is poverty. It is necessity. It can be humiliating. And it also says something painful about a country in which elderly people, sick people and people who have had bad luck have to earn extra money this way.

But apart from that, there is also an entrepreneurial lesson in it that many people have forgotten.

If you really want to build a business, you have to stop waiting for perfect circumstances.

You have to start with the question:

Where is value today that I can turn into income?

And after that comes the next question:

Am I willing to do what is needed, even if my ego thinks it is beneath me?

Because that is often where entrepreneurship starts.

Not with a business plan.

But with rolling up your sleeves.