Welcome to the 10-minute entrepreneur podcast, intended to equip and encourage business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, taught by active business owner, best-selling author, and teacher, Sean Castrina.

All right, this podcast is about knowing your industry and the value that you have when you

understand your industry. I have sadly started businesses where I did not understand the

industry very well. And it cost me a lot of money. So I think there's five reasons why you do want to have an industry understanding.

Five reasons why you want to know about the industry that you're moving forward in.

And my advice before we even get started is if you do not have this industry understanding that you partner with someone that does. That has been my secret

for the last, geez, 15, 20 years is that I don't let industry knowledge be my deterrent

because I look to solve a problem. I don't care what industry it's in. If I see that I could,

that we could solve a problem and there's a need for that, there's a big market for it,

then I kind of reverse engineer it from there and I will go find someone who fits what I want in a business partner and we will partner to solve the problem.

So I've used partnerships as my way of having industry knowledge personally.

All right, but let me give you the five reasons why you do want to have industry knowledge

if you're going to start a business.

The first is it'll save you money.

I have spent so much money on things I just didn't understand and I spent money on things I thought I needed

to move forward in the businesses that I chose

where I didn't have a really clear understanding of the industry. So if you partner with someone,

they're going to tell you what you should have and you shouldn't have. So I think, again,

the reason why I always talk about partnerships is I often said that I would rather have 50% of a lot than 100% of a little.

All right. Second reason why you want to have industry knowledge is it gives you, you'll have a

better understanding you'll know your target customers needs and wants. If you have someone or you

understand the industry, you're going to know far better what the target customer looks like

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