Just Do It Once: A Starter Checklist for Your First Hustle

Around 2002 or 2003, before iPhones and long before AI, Jose and Jason rented a booth at a flea market and called it Third Mind Concepts. Jose’s cousins put up a wall. They hung a green screen, shot photos on a Sony digital camera, swapped the backgrounds in Photoshop by hand, and printed at Sam’s Club. Customers came back the next weekend to pick up their packages. They had a logo. They had polos.

It worked well enough to prove people would pay. It also ate every weekend they had. Eventually Jason went back to school, and the booth closed. But the photo business kept going in other forms: two seasons of Little League photos, a high school prom, canvas prints, portraits in a spare bedroom. Jose put some of that money toward furnishing his first house.

Neither of us got rich at a flea market. What we got was the habit of starting. So instead of retelling the episode, here is that habit turned into a checklist.

Knowledge is power, but execution is the true power.

The biggest mistake: pricing scared

Asked for his biggest business mistake, Jason did not hesitate: not charging what he was worth. He says it is probably why he did not go out on his own sooner. The revenue was not there, and he says that was his fault.

His way of thinking about it is the elementary teacher test. The world needs kindergarten teachers as much as professors. You do not have to be the top expert to be worth paying. If you know more than the person who is just starting, you have something to sell.

The ‘just do it once’ starter checklist

Jason’s mantra came out at the end of the episode, and it is the whole post in four words. Wonder what shooting a wedding is like? Do it once. Wonder if anyone will pay you to build a website? Do it once. When he started selling podcast tables, the goal was to sell one. When he hosted a podcasting workshop, the goal was to host one.

1. Shrink the idea to one unit. One cake, one table, one photo session, one website. Not the company. The first sale.
2. Keep the entry cost low. Jose’s point: if you are about to drop a lot of money, of course you will be scared. Find the version you can afford to get wrong.
3. Set the price before anyone asks. Use the test above. Write it down so you do not cave at the table.
4. Look like you mean it. A name, a simple logo, a shirt. Third Mind Concepts had polos. It changed how we showed up and how people treated us.
5. Find one customer. A friend of a friend counts. The goal is to go through the whole process once, from yes to delivered.
6. Write down what you learned while it is fresh. What it really cost, how long it really took, what the customer asked that you did not expect. That is the start of knowing your cost and your profit.
7. Look for a second door for the same skill. The flea market photos led to Little League and a prom. Same camera, new customers.
8. Decide on purpose: again, adjust, or stop. All three are fine. Just make it a decision instead of letting it fade.

If it works, ask how to get out of the booth

We proved the concept that demand was there. We just never scaled out of the flea market.

That is Jose’s one regret. Demand was there. People bought canvas prints for a few hundred dollars at times. But the business only existed on Saturdays and Sundays inside one rented space, and they were young and tired of losing every weekend. If your one turns into five, ask the next question: what would this look like if it did not depend on me standing in one spot?

Nothing you learn gets wasted

The booth closed. The skills did not. Jason went on to study graphic design, took a digital photography course, and shot for a hockey team. Then came side work: portraits, wedding albums, assisting a wedding photographer, WordPress sites, design on retainer. Every skill turned into another way to earn. His business today, Podcast Table Shop, uses all of it, and he calls launch day the starting line, not the finish line.

Just do it once. Do it one time. Find one customer, go through that process, go through the motions, and learn from it.

Your turn

What is the one thing you have been meaning to try “someday”? Name it in the YouTube comments on the episode, and tell us the smallest version you could do once this month.