🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

Follow your heart, Follow your conviction because you are the person who knows why you started the business in the first place. It's always good to pivot and take in feedback and change. I am not asking you to be ridged but, I think if there is one thing you can be ridged about it is telling people hey I want to follow my conviction, I want to follow my heart so that if I lead a life and fail I can always get up and change course and be satisfied. But, I never want to live with that regret that I did not start in the first place. I think that is the number one reason when people are on their death bed saying why did I listen to people more and why did I not listen to myself. I would say just listen to you. You have a short life, just 60 to 70 years of quality life. Go pursue your dream. That's the best thing you can do for yourself and for the community because you are creating something that will impact people.

Sustainability is no longer as nice to deal with. It's a transforming industry. People are making their buying decisions based on those practices and it leads to a competitive advantage.

It does not matter how much you know, but how much you are willing to learn. And I think growth mindset along the way. I have seen even among my business partners, It's really understanding that you are not going to have all the right answers but if you are willing to fight for it then that's what is going to make the whole difference. I just look back on where I was when I first started this. I did not know anything about business, nothing about strategy, and nothing about building products. Just even being able to dive into it and learn that, I know that that was more important at least to me then just trying to make it work in the long run. I think knowing that goal in mind is huge for any entrepreneur going in.

My big thing in terms of advice is to just Start the business. Its not going to turn out the way you want it to, almost certainly. Whether that means you need to make a small pivot or the business was not meant to be there is something that is not going to work out the way that you are expecting it to. So I think the important part is to just start and you will learn as you go, adapt as you go, and pivot as you go. I think that is really the most effective way to learn.

I'm a huge fan of side projects and side hustles so to speak. Before you decide to change your life, quit your job, or take money out of your 401 K, try to get one customer. Try to just do one thing. Try to validate the idea in a number of different ways.

There isn't necessarily a right way to do it. I would say that if you are trying to figure out what to do as a start up and where to start the most important thing to do is start. If you can get 80% of the way there then often times that remaining 20%, lets say that remaining 20% is the gap between where your at and a perfect answer, a perfect product, a perfect sales pitch. Often times that 20% is more of a nice to have then the 80% of actually having something there.

It's about persistence. I actually think it was Ryan Smith with Qualtrics he said the same thing about being all in. So if you are doing this be all in. Also be persistent in what you are doing. If you do run into some road blocks, and they are legitimate road blocks, evaluate that. Maybe you are not on the right course and maybe you need to make some adjustments. However that happens just keep at it. If it is something that is legitimately a great thing that will help whatever market you are in then you will see results but that persistence has to be there.

Identifying where your largest community is. I always want my clients to get the biggest bang for their buck when they are looking at their content. So finding where the majority of your people are and targeting the top three to five questions, interactions, or response that you see most often is a really great place to start when you are looking to create content. Chances are you are already engaging with those people and working to answer that question anyway. So building the content is an opportunity for you to polish and fine toon that response and make it available to people easier, which will eventually save you time on the other side.

If you feel like your business is stagnant, or not moving like you would want it to then focus on talking to new people. If you set aside an entire afternoon and just talk to new people then you will fill up your next weeks schedule. It does not have to be people in your industry. If you sell shoes talk to the guy that sells carpets and see how he dose it. Talking to new people I think has been one of the biggest drivers for our business. We are always looking for new people to connect with via linked-in, Instagram, and Friends and family. New people that have not heard about your value propositions yet, I would take time to talk with those people if you feel like things are not moving like you want them to.

Be Stubborn. I never ever quit.  When it looks like this is a terrible idea or you hear no for the thousandth time you just have to preserver and keep going an pushing because it only takes the one time. You can quote Edison, Colonel Sanders, and other people but it really only takes the one time for it to blow up. If you stop then you will never find out that one time.