🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

Have a niche. It is so important to have a niche even a micro-niche. Like many business people, I was afraid to lose customers, so it led me to be a generalist. So, the first thing we do is translate from English to many languages and many languages into English. Having a specialty now I realize is so important not just for my industry but for anything.

Make sure you are uncomfortable. That's always the first step. Having a level of discomfort keeps you on track and keeps your focus. With that, I would say read everything you can. I don't mean just about your industry and becoming an expert in your field. There are so many outside things that contribute to your decision-making. It could be baking or learning how certain calls get called in a football game. So many things like that. Those are things that help with decision-making processes.

Prepare to work hard and give it the runway that it deserves. What I mean by runway is it's going to take longer than what you think to be successful. I think people are looking for short-term wins, get rich quick, whatever it is. If you think in terms of decades instead of in the next two years I am going to make this much money. Put some longevity behind your plan and then go execute your plan. The correct expectations will be set and you will build a solid foundation. You will learn a ton along the way and have a lot of fun. Think a little longer terms than short term.

"I think the biggest piece of advice is to get the right people on your team and don't be afraid of doing that. Take the time in the beginning to strategies and hopefully move forward in a way that you can afford to financially invest in those people. For me, I have a wonderful business consultant and he has been really helpful to me as far as moving forward and giving me those gold nuggets and pieces of advice to build right in the very beginning and the structure that I need to have in place to start things right."

Persistence is king and, I know you are going to hear that a lot or don't give up, don't have fear. But the way I describe it is there are days when I am kind of afraid of heights and, there are days where I feel like my job is to go, walk on the edge of a seventy-story building and look down. I just swallow it and get on the train and start working. You really have to push yourself past your comfort zone. Don't pay attention to the negative. Focus on where you are getting traction and momentum. Believe in your passion and what you are working on. Focus on building a network with people who really buy into your dream as opposed to spending your nights staring at the ceiling thinking about why somebody told you that you suck.

Definitely product-market fit. I think too many start-ups say I have a great idea let's just do it. And I always say: well no, we have to figure that out. And they go but, I read the lean start-up book and, I know if I ask people if they like this idea, then it's good. And I say: well, unfortunately, the lean start-up book didn't tell you how to ask the right questions. They told you to go, ask questions but, they did not tell you how to ask the right questions. Un-bias questions, non-leading questions, and, that's what we do. I tell people that instead of studying, do people like your idea research; what are they doing now? How do they do it? What's working for them? And what's not working for them? If this is your target audience, fine-tune that solution for their unmet needs and their tasks.

You really can never stop learning, there are so many good resources out there, there is so much good information. And then specifically to learn about how to have the right mindset to be successful. Because I really believe that mindset is 50% of the battle. And once you can believe in yourself and believe that you have the ability to make money and to be successful with your business your half way there.

Anything that you don't think you can do. If you are an entrepreneur, don't waste time trying to figure it out. It's going to waste time and, it's the one resource that you can never get back. People will ask what's the most important thing in your life and you go well you know there are a lot of things love, money, what have you but believe me time. The older you get to realize this, that is the one resource you don't have enough of and, it's limited so, it's going to end. So the best thing to do is to do what you can do. Use the talent and skill and the knowledge that you have and everything else; if you are starting out as an entrepreneur, make sure that money is going to the things that you don't know cause you are just going to be wasting a lot of time and resources and, you won't get the return on it. ROI is the bottom line here.

Speak with as many people as you can. But, always know how to listen, and what to learn from every type of conversation and from every interaction.

In the first 4 years of the business, you're doing three things at once. You're working in the business, serving customers, answering phone calls, in my case mowing grass. And then you're working on the business. What does the marketing system look like? What does the employee recruitment system look like? What does the employee retention system look like? How do we activate cold customers? All of these things are working on the business. Then you're working on yourself.