🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

It's a long road, and you have to be resilient and passionate. Otherwise, you burn out.

It's just as simple as that.

Being an entrepreneur, having been in different startups, you can't survive unless you have that mentality.

View video: https://milleripl.com/blogs/inventive-journey/resilient-&-passionate

Make sure you are ready for it and be prepared because it's a long, hard, tough road. But be incredibly stubborn.

There were at least a half a dozen times at Simple that I was ready to just give up & just be like "We can't do this!" like "This is just undoable!"

There are so many [moments] where you think that everything is fine, you have it all figured out, and out of the left field you just get this massive shock and you're like "Everything that we've spent the last 6 months working on, throw it away, start again!"

The only reason that we succeeded is because we just kept at it. We never ACTUALLY gave up. That's where having a good co-founder is useful. Many times I've convinced Josh not to throw in the towel, and many times Josh convinced ME not to throw in the towel.

It's simple, right? We never had all 3 cofounders ready to give up at the same time, thankfully. So we never did.

I think trying to get multiple perspectives on something [is important]. It sort of contradicts what I said earlier. In a way, you don't want to be distracted.

At the same time, when you are building plans and when you are basically looking at everything and deciding whether this project is something that may grow into something big, I think various perspectives from people with different backgrounds, particularly a business background, are extremely helpful.

The more focused you get, the better.

Something you NEVER want to say is "I want to just podcast about everything and I want it to be for everybody." If it's about everything, it's about nothing. If it's for everybody, it's for nobody. It's the truth, the more focused you can get, the better.

I had somebody that I've done some work with, and her name is Vanessa Edwards. She has something called "The Science of People" which is her company. When she first got started, she said that it was for "recovering awkward people." She fully expected there to be 10 people that fit that category. People that are anti-social, that get nervous around people, and wanted to recover from it.

She firmly said, she said she only had 10 customers. That's all she was ever going to get. Maybe 100 if she met EVERYONE all of the people in the world that fit that category. She literally has MILLIONS of listeners and customers now.

I'd just go back to my slogan that "Easy is Hard, and Hard is nearly impossible." Where, if you're going at it with a small group of people, you want to have something competitive. However, if you overdesign and overreach on features...

SME. Are you an SME in the field? Are you a Subject Matter Expert. If you're not, partner with someone, or get a bunch of advisors who are.

You have to answer, as an innovator, you have to answer, every call has to be, "Why the heck do you exist?" And if you can't answer that, please don't start a company.

Make sure you find the right partner. It's all about people. Business is all about "If you want to solve the problem", it's all about the people!

By yourself, you can do certain things, but you need to have somebody that will be able to challenge you at the same time. So try to find a lead, a partner that will align with your personality and your culture. Whatever is it is, make sure you find the right type. Pick the right type as soon as possible, and don't delay the process.

You are optimistic anyway, so you tend to be aggressive. But then you say "Ok, I'm aggressive, so, therefore, I want to try to be conservative." So you make some estimates and then, maybe, you double it.

Well, you're really probably wrong by 6x. What I've always found is that things are 3x as long and cost 3x as much as I tend to think when I go into it. So you have to prepare for that.

One thing that they really need to do is: Get a team of experts. And a team of experts doesn't cost that much. So make sure that you have one person that is a really good mentor. So start with that.

Then, get a good attorney, get a good CPA, get it started right.

"For every step that you take up that ladder, through a network or through a connection from somebody that pulls you up, pull up 3 other people behind you. That's my advice."

"Think about the pyramid effect, the positive pyramid effect, if we all did that. It'll pay back so many times if you do that. If you don't just look out for yourself, but look out for your community."