The #1 Skill You Need as an Entrepreneur - Episode 7

On this episode, we answer another audience question: What is the #1 skill or attribute needed to succeed as an entrepreneur?   Free download: Mindset Starter Kit  Book recommendation: Mindset by Carol Dweck     This episode is sponsored by my first book, "The 7 Steps to App Success".  12 million downloads, 8 years of grinding, 7 months of writing & editing, and thousands of dollars of my own money later, it’s finally here…. And you can get it for wayyyy less. Head to appmagic.co/book and pick up your digital copy, in its 108 pages of glory.   Stay connected with the movement: Join the Facebook Community: gameofgrow.com/community Instagram: instagram.com/gameofgrow Facebook:facebook.com/gameofgrow Twitter: twitter.com/gameofgrow LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/muoyo To sign up for our weekly email updates from "The Hustler's Corner" visit us at gameofgrow.com and use the sign up form at the top of the page. --   Welcome back! We are back! You are now listening to the Game of Grow Podcast and I’m your host, Muoyo Okome   Before we even get into the action, let’s try something new. I think it is going to be cool. I think it’ll be kind of fun. If you are driving, this doesn’t apply to you right this moment… wait til you get where you’re going first, and then you can join in on our fun. We want to practice safe podcasting.For the rest of you who are able to do this safely right now, I want to have some fun as a community. I want you to take a screenshot of your phone right now as you are listening in your podcast app. I want you to post it in your instagram story and tag @gameofgrow. If you like, tell people a little bit about what’s happening here, what you are getting from Game of Grow and why you listen to the show.   This is going to allow other people in your network to discover our community and benefit from the information we give out, the stories we tell, and everything we are doing here so we can continue to grow this community and impact more people… because that, my friends, is the goal! And I will be sure to shout you out as soon as I see it. I will definitely show you love right back. So who’s with me, people? Let’s rock...   Episode 7 of the most dangerous business podcast in the world! Not sure how they haven’t taken us off the air yet, but we still on the air for now, so let’s go... It doesn’t matter where you start or where you are right now. Where do you want to go? Who do you want to become? And what is the price you are willing to pay to get there? Review of the Week Real quick... before we hit the review of the week, I wanted to announce that thanks to you guys, Game of Grow has crossed our first 5000 downloads in less than 4 weeks (there is a chance we hit 6000 in the month) and also made it across 70 reviews, so shout out to you guys. I believe it’s about 72 reviews, so who is going to get us to 75, or to 100, let me know.   All thanks to you guys, and I think I mentioned this last time, we are featured in New & Noteworthy across 6 Categories and Subcategories: Business, Marketing, Health, Self Help, Education, and Training… and it’s all thanks to you guys subscribing, reviewing, and spreading the word. I mean I’d love to think it’s because I’m just that handsome, but that is unfortunately not the reason. Maybe it should be, but it’s not. And by the way all of this helps to make this an attractive platform for amazing people like Rohan to come share with us if and when we decide to invite guests into our space.   Also, in my app business, after numerous setbacks and false starts I have a couple of apps that should be ready to roll soon that I am excited about. We are taking things to a different level and creating products for a specific community that I happen to belong to. So I’m super excited about that.   I also have another one in testing. It’s only the first day (we were supposed to start last week, but the analytics were not set up correctly… 4 times was apparently the charm for us, and now they are), but I have never seen numbers like this. Numbers are looking very good. So I am excited… but at the same time it is only day one, so who knows. But he have got to make this one work. Guys, it is always a process and you just have to keep going until you make it.   This week’s review comes from Roberts RN BSN, who says:   Biz lessons that usually go unsaid    "Thanks so much for sharing business lessons that typically go unsaid. So many in these internet streets teach the false story of "just manifest and wake up to six figures". I love how in the maid service episode Rohan shared we have to "choose our hard ". In short working 40 years in a job that does not allow real freedom is hard, and so is starting a business, choose the type of hard, as nothing worth having is easy. I have made my choice. Keep up the great work. -Amelia R."   And guys… after you subscribe and leave your review, please email me at [email protected] to let me know that you did. And I actually want to throw in a sweetener… because life is about incentives, right? (I don’t know if that’s true… but it sounds good) In my vault here, I have about 6 never before released super top secret conversations I’ve had with 6, 7, and yes even 8 figure entrepreneurs who happen to be friends of mine within my network, and within the powerful, shadowy, and secretive Game of Grow community. When you hit me up at [email protected] and let me know that you are not only a subscriber, but also a reviewer, I am going to provide you EXCLUSIVE behind the scenes access to these conversations which you cannot get anywhere else… and trust me, they are full of GOLD that you can apply that can help you.   That’s right, I am sweetening the pot! When you subscribe, leave a review, and email me at [email protected] I am hooking you up with something that is really going to help you that you can’t get anywhere else. I’ll keep this offer open a couple days, but probably not forever, so don’t sleep...   I also have one 9-figure conversation in the vault, but sorry, I can’t release that one. He’s kind of shy. I’m sorry! Alright, so moving on… If you are new here, welcome! If you are a returning Grow Getter, welcome back! Either way, you could be anywhere in the world right now, but you are here with me, and I will never take that for granted, so I promise to give you everything I’ve got. On This Episode...   On today’s episode…. We are tackling another listener question…. Jay from DC writes… "What would you say is the number 1 skill or attribute needed to be a successful entrepreneur?"  I love this question, because as you know, I do believe it is all about building skills. Without skills, you will not win. You can meet the right people, be in the right places, have all the popularity and social media followers that you want, but if you do not have the skills… to pay the bills… that is alright, but you better start working on that   But getting back to the question at hand… “What is the #1 skill or attribute needed to be a successful entrepreneur” In some ways, one could say that this is kind of a gotcha question. In entrepreneurship, as with anything, there are so many critical factors that come together to comprise one’s success or failure   We can talk about selling….   If you recall in episode 3, I talked about a “business” I started after college with an alum of my school. We wanted to change the education industry in a small way. We wanted to take the college consulting services that he was providing to wealthy families for thousands of dollars a pop and offer a mass market version for $25, and we even had fee waivers for families who needed them so they would be able to get them for free.   Everything was wonderful. Product looked nice, and generated some very pretty, and even potentially useful reports. When we talked with students, parents, faculty, administrators, everyone loved this product, but when it came time to sell and we started rolling things out, I learned that we did not have a viable sales and marketing plan. We did not know how to make sales. I would be surprised if we grossed more than a few hundred dollars total after all that work and all those magnificent team lunches and dinners, and the product soon died a natural death. RIP CollegeChances.com.   A lot of us get started in business because we want to be creative, and creativity is important, but if you don’t developer the ability to influence a customer to give you money in exchange for your thing, if you cannot make sales, if you do not perform transactions, you do not have a business. What you have is an expensive hobby. You need to be able to sell. Valuable lesson.   In addition to selling, we can also talk about action taking… having a bias for action. People often think it’s about money… access to capital, but it’s not. Yes, some opportunities require more money than others, but mostly this is an excuse or a crutch that people rely on not to act... and most of the time they may not even know it.   You can have the perfect plan, the perfect advisors, all the resources, everything laid out for you and still be reasoning and rationalizing about it, while someone else is taking action with the exact same resources and information or even less… And guess who is going to get more results faster.   And I am not just talking about other people. I am talking about myself too   In my own experience, when I started with apps, even after I made a decision and a commitment like we talked about in episode 4, I STILL found myself falling into this trap as well, and trying to think of the perfect idea, perfect plan… and generally just overthinking a whole lot of details that in reality had very little bearing on my success. In retrospect, my actions (or lack of actions) were actually a little ridiculous based on what I was SAYING I wanted to accomplish, but I still see it all the time.   Thankfully I was part of a community group of people who were going through this app course together, and I was able to witness some of them moving forward, taking action, and getting results. And it’s not even like all of their actions were of the best quality, or all of their apps were masterpieces, but they were moving forward and doing things, and as a result, things were happening for them, they were getting results, they were making money, and they were getting better.   Last week on Episode 6, Rohan introduced us to a blueprint that has worked for him and others. A lot of us were fascinated and intrigued and started to think about it. Many fewer of us actually took action.   And by the way, that’s actually why I decided to go through with it. Do I need another thing to do and another business to work on? No! It would probably be better for me to focus on what I’m already doing.   But aside from the fact I think it will be super cool to start a business I have no experience in live on a podcast, I want to show you guys what it looks like to get the blueprint to success, and implement that blueprint with no hesitation. And plus I love the fact that it is a super practical and tangible type of business everyone can understand and relate to, as opposed to the app business where sometimes people will get a bit more intimidated.   So yeah… Taking action is super important…   But yet that is not the #1 skill we are talking about today! I could have mentioned resilience, or ability to deal with ambiguity, as I’ve alluded to or told you directly about so many of the things I have tried that have not worked, and all of the lessons I’ve learned from them… as much as it is not that fun at the time,BUT EVEN STILL…we can do better! We are looking for the number 1 skill, attribute, success factor required to succeed as an entrepreneur…. And I will say, that it is kind of cheating, in the same way that when a genie asks for your three wishes, you’re always going to ask for unlimited wishes as one of your wishes unless you are just stupid or overly “rules following”, but I digress... this skill is the master key, so you need this skill. Start working on this skill right away.   … but first before I reveal the skill, I want to tell you a quick story…   When I was first starting out in the app business, I had no idea how to build a mobile app, I had no idea how to market them, I didn’t code them (I still don’t). What I knew was what I saw in front of me… other people who were not special, who were no different from me were able to create and launch these apps that their customers could enjoy and so they had success with them.   They weren’t special, but they learned how to do it. They had knowledge and a blueprint. They learned the steps, and they executed against those steps. As obstacles arose, they figured out ways to deal with them and adjusted, and if they stayed consistent enough, eventually they had success.   Because I saw them do it, I knew it was possible, and if it was possible for them it had to be possible for me. I just needed to learn the steps, execute the steps, and adjust on the fly, so that’s what I did, and eventually I started to have success and more success.   But that does not mean that I was set forever or that things would not change. Things ALWAYS change. Later on down the road, to make a long story short… Apple made some adjustments to their platform and the way things were working. I don’t even remember exactly what they were in this case, but my business was over reliant on some of these factors and so were the businesses of a lot of the people I knew.     Over the course of 2 days, the revenue I was making literally cut in half. It was shocking. I was shell shocked. Although I was still “doing well” and making good money, it was shocking to me that I could lose half of my progress practically overnight. And I kind of went into a shell for a while and did not want to act. A lot of people exited the business at that time.   Thankfully after a bit of time passed I was speaking with one of my friends who was also in the business, who I had helped out in the past, and whereas everyone else was in turmoil, he seemed to be having as much success as he had ever had and more. And he talked me through what he was doing at a high level. And then he offered a beta version of his App Store Optimization Course (and if you don’t know what App Store Optimization, or ASO is, don’t even worry… just know that he had a different, and more in depth approach than anything I had seen before) And so I paid for this course, I immersed myself, and eventually I emerged with new skills and abilities, and my business went up. Things are always going to change and winners find ways to deal with that change and excel.   And even more recently, the app game has changed again… many indie entrepreneurs have exited again, and yet there are some people, including some of my students who continue to get results and excel. How…? Let me tell you another quick story. And I wrote about this one on Facebook and some other platforms (find me @gameofgrow)   The story: For the last couple months, been working on a new app project I'm excited about because I know it will bring value to my community as well as fun, profit, and fulfillment for me. Surprisingly, it turns out these things are not always easy... Hit a big setback this weekend and was so pissed and frustrated I could barely sleep Saturday night. Anyone else get like that sometimes...? Woke up Sunday morning with a new (but yet old) perspective and decided to smile. Anyone trying to do anything will face resistance, but I get to choose whether to feel sorry for myself & quit or cry about it a little and then figure out how I'll still win. Finding problems is easy, but finding solutions pays. Which one do you think I chose? And which will you choose next time it's your turn?   So because you guys are my podcast fam.. My Game of Grow Movement fam, I am going to let you in behind the scenes and let you know exactly what happened. We were working on this app project, things were going great (at least I thought they were), and midway through the developer I was working with decided he could not continue… he did not have the passion for this anymore (not sure what that had to do with anything)…  and he quit on me. This was a project I had been very excited about. I wanted to start the year right with proper momentum, I wanted to have this done in January, and ready by the time we launched Game of Grow so you guys could hear about it. I had put money and time into this and things were just not turning out the way I wanted here And of course, after I stopped being a baby about the whole thing (I gave myself a whole night to do this) I accepted that the whole thing was ultimately my fault as a leader, and chose that rather than look at the problem, which is really easy, I was going to find a solution. I evaluated the options for everything I could possibly do, and then I took action and  moved forward aggressively and as a result, things are in a much better place right now and we’ve been able to turn that one failing project into 2 promising projects we are bringing to market in the near future.   So I’ve told you 3 disparate mini stories, but what is the point, and what is the #1 skill you need as an entrepreneur. That skill would be mindset. In her book “Mindset”, Carol Dweck (and I would highly recommend you read it, or at least read the first 2 chapters) introduces the concepts of a fixed mindset and a growth mindset and really dives into them deeply. But if I wanted to save you a whole bunch of time, I would boil it down to saying that when you embody a fixed mindset, you believe certain skills and attributes are fixed, whether it be intelligence, mathematical skill, dancing ability, and the list goes on… whereas when you embrace the GROWTH MINDSET, you KNOW you can ultimately learn anything at all, because human beings are the ultimate adaptation machine. Now I am not saying that talent doesn’t matter, and I am not saying it will be easy, or that everything is equally easy for everyone, but I am saying that you know you can learn absolutely anything if you are willing to put in the work over time.   As we often say on the Game of Grow. It’s not about where you start or where you are right now. It’s about where you want to go, who you want to become, and the price you are willing to pay to get there. We are essentially talking about developing a Growth Mindset. And I am not saying you have to hear me right now, and be all the way there today… I mean it would help if that was the case, but I am saying that I do believe that if you want to be an entrepreneur, this is THE foundational skill you want to work to develop, because it’s going to allow you to unlock everything else over time… and depending on what it is you’re trying to accomplish, there are going to be a hell of a lot of skills you’ll need to unlock. Can you see how this would be an invaluable skill? Mindset is the thing, and we all need to work on it continually. It is that one master skill or master ability that is going to allow you to access all the other skills.   And to help you out, I have put together a little Mindset Starter Kit. It is something I give to all of my App Moguls, so go to gameofgrow.com/mindset and I am going to get you set up. We even have one you can use on your phone’s lock screen, so send me a screenshot if & when you use it. I would also recommend that you check out the book Mindset, as mentioned before, AND... Every single day, I am posting and reposting tiny little pieces of wisdom to help you with your mindset, so check out @gameofgrow especially on Instagram, but also on Facebook and Twitter, and I got you covered. Question of the Week Which brings us to the question of the week…. How can I help you? What questions do you have for me? Send your response in to [email protected], or the Game of Grow Community -- gameofgrow.com/community or you can reach me @gameofgrow on instagram, facebook or twitter The Fee Finally, of course we have the fee… And I am not talking about money... we can do a lot better than that. I’m talking, of course, about growing this community together. If you’ve been here before, you already know the deal. If you’re brand new. Welcome once again, this is pretty easy stuff. You will have it down in no time. And shout out to all of you guys for killing it! For each episode you got some value from bring me back one like minded person who you know would enjoy this content and show them how to subscribe and leave a review… and obviously I would love for you to do the same. And send me a screenshot at [email protected] so I can say thank you!   Another way to accomplish this, as we talked about before, simply take a screenshot while you’re listening, share it on your Instagram story and tag me @gameofgrow. I promise to to shout you out right back… it’s actually a lot of fun. I actually spent a good portion of my recent Amtrak ride thanking people for reviews on my stories and tagging their Instagram whenever I knew who it was. Might not sound fun, but it was fun… trust me. Anyway, thank you to all of you guys! Alright… And with that, I’ll see you guys back here real soon on the Game of Grow Podcast. Would love to see you in the Game of Grow Facebook Community. Join us at gameofgrow.com/community To sign up for our weekly email updates from the Hustler’s Corner check out gameofgrow.com, and use the sign up form at the very top of the page… (there are 2 separate forms, and either one of them works)   Put in your name, put in your email address… hit the button and boom, you are in!   Cuz remember guys...   It doesn’t matter where you start or where you are right now... Are you willing to take the challenge and GROW?   DJ drop that beat and take us out