🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

As much as you should take some advice from experts, I really believe that most of the answers that you're looking for you have within you. Some people can guide you with stuff like IP Law. Yes, you need to talk to Devin for that stuff. But there is other stuff like how are you going to market? How are you going to advertise? How are you going to do outreach? Everyone does it differently and you have to figure out how you do it for yourself. How do you want to work? How do you want to be paid to be you? You don't want to leave a cooperate  job only to do the exact same pattern at your business. Because you left that cooperate job to be free. So if you are doing the exact same way then what are you doing?

Remain Curious. I think it gets so easy to pack a ton of one piece of advice for someone starting. Curiosity to your point with your story with the pitch year one year two it was your curiosity from year one that got you back to your year two. So just stay curious and follow almost like Scooby-Doo follow your nose as to where those next clues go even if the door is closed.

Create content and just put it out there. Write about what you like, do podcasts, do videos, write books, put everything for free out there. Then if you show expertise and if what you say makes sense then the clients will come to you automatically.

Focus on lessons learned. This is the biggest lesson I have learned. When you focus on learning, not only do you grow yourself you also grow your team and then that will eventually grow the business.

Try solving problems that exist right now. And always make sure that someone is going to pay you to solve that problem, or else you don't have a business.  

Right? So solving problems is what I do, naturally, but I can only do that if someone is gonna to pay me to do that. That's how I measure that I have a business idea that actually has legs or not.

Join us and Afifa Siddiqui from Canadian Payroll Services (www.canadianpayrollservices.com)

"As a small business owner like me I rely on leads. There is a good mentality called the two, ten, forty mentality and principle where every day you want to be talking to two prospects. Every week you want to talk to ten and every month you want to talk to forty. I use that guideline of if I need to meet that quota what am I going to do? These are people who want my services and they want to talk to me. I want to make sure I can integrate and literally connected with them within a second."

Know Your Business. Any kind of business that you want to do, you MUST know the business. You must know the customer. Otherwise, don't start the company, like, just looking at Twitter and saying "Oh, ok, that company has raised that much, I can do that!"  Definitely know your market, know your technology, and know your business. That is definitely what I would advise to you.

Don't care what anyone else thinks of you. Get clear on your thoughts around giving a concern about what anyone else thinks. That will create fear in your life and that will keep you small.  

What anyone else thinks has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.  I mean, if there is someone in your life who has exactly the career path that you want, and you want to go to them for guidance or advice specifically around who to be as this type of a businessperson, that's one thing.  

But to start up a business and go to your friends for thoughts on it and have them all tell you that it's not a good idea, or it stinks, or this, that or the other thing...  

Unless they have what you want, or they have experience in this area, then don't even go to them. I would really just disregard it.

My experience is, always, intellectual property protection. When you have a piece of intellectual property & a protection, that gives you a lot more leverage.  

To negotiate a market share.

That gives you an opportunity to slow down your competition, or to fence out the knock-offs, the copycats, or infringers.  

If there is an opportunity, if there is creativity, try to file legal protection.

Get customers first. If you can find customers, you're going to find investment.  So many times, I talk with start-up founders, and they're like, "If could only get the money, if I could get 10 million dollars, I could build this thing and we could go get our customers."  In every pitch contest that you ever go to, if you ask any judge or anyone that does any judging, "Why did you pick the winner?" It's always "They had an existing customer base. They have already proven it was..."  So if you can go out and take your concept, and get customers around it, people willing to pay money for the idea that you have, you are far more likely to attract investment. You are far more likely to be able to grow your idea. You are far more likely to make it successful.