He started 7 businesses. Now he helps others avoid the mistakes he couldn't.

Starting a business is like pitching a film to a big Hollywood movie studio.

That's according to Nick Tietz, the founder of ILT Academy and ILT Studios, a St. Cloud-based education provider and co-working lab for small-business owners. When it comes to nurturing a business idea, accelerator programs, lenders and investors tend to rally around the 1% of new companies that have the potential to become blockbusters, he said.

"Not all movies are hits," he said.

In Minnesota and other parts of the U.S., though, there's a dearth of environments for "the other 99%," Tietz said.

"Could we create a thousand $100,000 businesses every year?" he said.

Tietz sought a way to teach people how to be successful entrepreneurs and avoid mistakes he made in his startup experiences. He launched and raised capital for six previous companies: an advertising and marketing agency; a motion graphics design business that merged into a new company focused on digital interactive design; an app that serves as a mobile profile for people with disabilities to improve interactions between first responders and educators; a home management platform for active military members; and a fitness coach app. All but one eventually shuttered.

In November 2020, he launched ILT Academy, which operates free, 10-week programs to help entrepreneurs — mostly in Greater Minnesota — validate their products and understand their market fit through customer discovery. In three years, he's taught more than 500 small-business owners.

Tietz — whose academy the North Dakota Department of Commerce recently selected to be the state's official provider of educational material for socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs and small-business owners — shared his perspective on how entrepreneurs should really think, and why the failure rate is so high for new business owners. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What are some of the lessons you've learned in standing up different small businesses?

A: Team is so important. If you don't have the right team, you won't get where you want. It's also important to get people on your team that you can trust, that trust you and that are willing to backfill the things that you're not good at. I've never been at a large corporation that only had a handful of people. It's all of these other specialists.

Q: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only half of businesses survive past five years. What can be done to bring the success rate up?

A: I think as the business gets less risky, the failure rate goes significantly down. The failure rate on a coffee shop is way lower than a high-growth, high-tech startup because the uncertainty in the customer segments and the marketplace is so different. A small business typically has a known customer with a known problem, a known solution and a known context. Those are a little bit easier of a problem to solve and troubleshoot. The failure rate goes up when you start getting into things that are completely new. There's a skill set in finding a customer and then finding a market.

Q: Is it OK for entrepreneurs to fake it till they make it?

A: What I hear a lot of founders talk about is imposter syndrome. I think what they're really talking about is confidence. I think it's really important to describe what it is you're trying to build, that part of a vision and that as part of a future product. But don't describe the acorn. Describe the tree. You want to sell the oak tree. You have to describe the bigger version for what this thing is, but be confident in saying, "Today, I'm just a little 2-foot tree." That would make founders feel less of that imposter syndrome and help them be more OK with describing the future. If you deliver a fake product, then you've got vaporware [advertised hardware or software that is not yet available] and that will ruin your brand and trust you're trying to build with partners and future customers and investors.

Q: What is the biggest difference between business founders in Minnesota and Silicon Valley?

A: What you get when you are living in one of these nutrient-rich soils in Silicon Valley or the East Coast, there's a a ton of [venture capital] that's traditionally been poured into it, so soil is richer. So even bad ideas flourish faster because there's more nutrients there. ... Outside of the Twin Cities, we're so spread out. We're not sharpening each other's ideas faster. We're not getting enough reps.

Without the nutrient-rich soil, you can't grow and sprout fast enough to even test your idea, unless you're wealthy or willing to take that risk and leave your job to test this thing. There's plenty of money in the Twin Cities, but it's not going into the startup community to let more people fail faster. I've heard a number of founders here say they'll go to the coasts to raise their money because people are willing to take higher bets on startups. It's not that we don't have good ideas, it's that we don't have enough founders that know how to pitch their ideas in compelling ways.