This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn users share the best advice they've ever received. Read all the posts here.
The man pictured above, is one of many vendors in Istanbul's overwhelming Grand Bazaar.
It was an early summer morning, and the crowds were only starting to pour into the market. My friends and I were his among his first customers of the day.
Presenting a luxury silk scarf, my friends and we listened, skeptically, as he described the quality of his product. Though we stood out as tourists and presented ourselves as such, we weren't ready to be swindled by just any market seller touting his wares.
Surprisingly, our doubts were dispelled as soon as he began to tell a story.
As we sat in the little shop, the man described its history. Grandpa was the locale's proprietor. Decades ago, Grandpa opened up the store, and has since grown the business, serving new customers every day while also catering to many mega-celebs. Proof of purchase was presented in analog photograph form. Most recently,Grandpa stood proudly next to Russell Crowe, who paid a visit just the day before. The man himself -- Grandpa, not Crowe -- was just outside in the market halls, attending to other passersby.
There it was.
Gorgeous product. A proud, local business. Celebrity customers.
We were sold, literally. Between the four of us, we walked out with nearly a dozen scarves. My new purchases would soon go to my sister, mother and cousins as gifts from my travels.
But I felt robbed.
No, we weren't cheated. In fact, more than half a year later, the scarves continue to delight.
What was actually missing was from the experience wasn't something lost in the physical exchange of Turkish lira for product. Rather, what I wish the man gave us more of was Grandpa's story.
I desperately wanted to hear about Grandpa's journey growing a successful business. I especially desired to learn about the tougher times when Grandpathought the business wouldn't survive another day. In fact, I would have loved to know about his very first sale.

My Flirt with Entrepreneurship

When I was 19, I co-founded Blank Label, a luxury menswear brand, with Fan Bi. At the time, the business was merely an idea, but it was my personal claim to fame. I had a business -- one that I frequently told my friends and family about.
But for a whole summer's worth of work, I didn't have a dime to show from it.
We were pre-revenue, and I should have been ashamed to call myself an entrepreneur. I was experiencing delusions of grandeur. Pitifully, I had my fingers crossed, hoping something incredible would happen that would ultimately make Fan and I filthy rich.
I was a college sophomore at the time and Fan was wrapping up his studies, preparing to go full-time with this "business."
My grades were slipping because I was unnecessarily occupied thinking about Blank Label. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that "thinking" accurately describes one of my main roles in the early months of the company. I wasn't doing anything substantial. As the de-facto CMO, I was doing a lot of this, and not enough that would warrant a victory fist pump.
We finally launched the business on October 31st, 2009, and swiftly made our first sale. Before the day was over, we had purchases from our first handful of customers.
Time for a well-deserved high-five.
The next few months, post-launch were terribly slow. Fan moved to China to build out a fast and sophisticated supply chain while I daydreamed during my Accounting (GB202) class.
I had it easy. I worked on Blank Label nights and weekends, and generally ignored class projects and homework.
Fan had it hard. Fan lived alone in Shanghai, running around the city working with our manufacturers during the day. During the evenings, he would stay up ridiculously late or wake up frustratingly early to accommodate everyone else in the team, including me, because we were stateside. 
During one of our weekly ooVoo conferences, Fan laid out the cold hard facts. We were selling less than 10 shirts a day. All costs considered, we probably had just enough money to expense a team lunch. But since we were a distributed team, even that wasn't possible. We all knew what he was thinking. This business is going to fail.
But Fan wasn't about to let that happen, and I'll never forget what he said next.
Sell today before there is no tomorrow.
Motivated by a sense of urgency, we began an aggressive campaign to market our product through PR, SEO, social media, and advertising.
We sold our product believing there might not be another tomorrow -- and it paid off.
To-date, we've fitted tens of thousands of customers, both online and offline. In 2012, Fan and I were even named in Inc. Magazine's 30 under 30 list.

A New Opportunity to Sell

In late 2012, I transitioned out of my day-to-day role at Blank Label and took on an advisory role in order to pursue personal interests. More recently, I joinedShareaholic, a content discovery and sharing platform.
In early 2013, Shareaholic focused all of its energy on improving our publisher tools. Later in the year, I joined, followed by key hires Rob Balazy then Christopher Gillett. Reaching a key inflection point, CEO and Founder Jay Meattle turned to the team and directed us to metaphorically "sell, sell, sell" our free platform to users -- and it worked.
In the past couple months, we've signed on 50,000 new publishers.
So far in my career, I have been incredibly lucky to work with so many talented people advising me to do all of the right things, which led to growth and success for everyone involved. If, instead of selling today and waiting until tomorrow, my career -- and our revenues and user base -- would have flatlined, and, worse, I'd be here telling you a different story, one that would probably have started with, "Our business is pre-revenue with a handful of beta testers. We've been working on this product for five years, and are confident it will disrupt XYZ industry and make us a billion dollars."
The fact is, in order to make a billion dollars, in most cases -- Instagram, and other startup unicorns aside -- you'll need to start by making your first dollar right now.
How about it? What are you going to sell today?