The second you say brand to somebody they are like, oh, I have the greatest logo and name. Hopefully, the conversation we just had shows you that's really not what a brand is. A logo and a name that's a visual and a verbal queue of what your brand is. But that's not your brand. Just because you come up with a great logo or a great name does not mean you have a brand.

When you think you want to venture off and work for yourself, a lot of people will try to push you or steer you away. It scares them but comes from a loving place usually. A lot of people told me with real estate it is a high turnover rate. Every year about 87% don't renew their license. And people told me it takes like two to three years to really get off the ground. I just feel like if you have that limited mindset then, of course, you won't. I feel like if you grind it out and work really hard, I did it in six months. I tripled my business in just a year's time. It's all mindset. So, don't let people with their perceived timeline of when. If you feel like you can do it, then you can totally do it. You feel like you can do it in six months, you can absolutely do it in six months.

My advice is always to put your thoughts on paper. A lot of things are in your head. As you put things on paper, it becomes a bit clearer how you are going to delegate them. It does not need to be very complicated at first. You write down this is my idea and, then you start to break it down. This is my idea; what is my product or service? What is my market? How do I sell to my customer? You try to answer these questions. After that, you start breaking down all these items. Putting things on paper because if it sits in your head it may be super clear to you. But as you put your idea on paper, you will already judge your idea. It's also what you can share.

You don't have to use or make your own technology. You can just go online a free API free open source code and just start using AI. It can really improve your business and improve your customer experience. So, I think that leveraging artificial intelligence with any company or most companies rather is super important, and it defiantly has a big application.

We can change to be better. It is something we are all going to be able to accept. So, the problem you have to face there is you don't want staff thinking, oh this is the flavor of the month, don't worry, it will be gone next month, and he will come up with something new. We created an environment and a culture where we were willing to take a risk and go do something. If it did not work, we were going to change things.

You need to write in one column what you think your message is for your product. What do you think your value proposition is for your product? Who do you think your target customer is for your product? What people would say to describe your product on one side of the column. On the other side, the other column is the feedback you get from people. What actually do people say when you ask them those questions? How to get value for my product? How would you describe my product? Who would be a perfect customer for your product? Then compare those side by side and continuously do that. That will lead you down the path of one knowing who you're selling to. We know how to talk to them. We know what's important to them. And we know how to describe our product.

I would say go, sell something. If you are trying to determine whether your concept is going to work, then whether this is a viable business, you can't figure that out in a conference room. You've got to go get in front of people that have needs for your services. Call them prototype conversations. Call them whatever you want. Get out in the market in front of people that buy the thing you are selling. That's the only way that you can validate the concept. Understand whether your pitch and business that you want to start is going to work.

Customer discovery by far. There are processes to ask questions and have conversations with potential customers. I'd say that if folks spend more time just doing that process of learning their market and going through the iterations about having conversations even before putting a website up. Even before writing a line of code. There are some great resources out there. Such as worksheets and canvases to fill out and that kind of stuff. That's where I would suggest starting. Spend the time there, make a gel and then move on to the really heavy lifting.

Two things to sum it up, do something. Get started now. Don't keep waiting. Also, don't get ready to get ready. It's ok to get ready to a certain point but, after a while, there are all of these milestones that prevent you from moving forward it's time to take an internal assessment and say what's actually preventing us from moving forward?

The first question we always ask is what, are the areas in your business you spend the most time on? We look for redundant tasks. We go through that process of discovery with our clients to understand where the pain point is. What are the things that keep you from being more efficient and from going out and focusing on revenue-generating tasks or providing a better service to your customers? We always start with that. And what we hear is oh, I do this every day. I do this over and over and over again. I spend x amount of time performing this task and this activity. This is my process for this, and it's just so redundant. Those are some simple questions that you can ask yourself to get a firm understanding of what areas you need to focus on in the beginning to automate.