🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

"Patience and commitment" Nobody will ever be more dedicated than you and you just have to find the time. It is not right to take the quantity of time over the quality of work. You got to find the windows of opportunities and seize them, put in the time and the commitment to the business from day one.

You need to work on your business and not in your business. It's not the "what" it's the "who". It's not what you need to do, it's who can you help to what you need to do. Spend more time working on your business by valuing and educating yourself and the employees instead of just pleasing your customers.

Adaptable mindset, If you want to be an entrepreneur(starting a business), you got to have the right mindset, because it's straightforward for people to give up if they don't see any results or anything manifesting and they might wanna give up in the middle of one year so to speak, not everything is going to be shiny or golden. The journey is hard, there is pain, and there are ups and downs, Judy...

Make sure the "Why" of your business is bigger than yourself. That's what going to motivate you to really get up every day when it's tough and hard and also help you to seek that community to support you. So, make your why bigger than yourself and be willing to pivot.

Don't be scared to ask for help, you'd be surprised how many people are willing to help you if you just ask. Lots of times, you're starting something, you question yourself, like, is this right? Am I wrong? What should I do next? A lot of times reaching out and asking for help, people would be willing to give you advice or lead you to somebody who could help you.

Were a 100,000 percent into this business. This is not a side hustle this is a full time day and night, even while we dream, type of job. This is what my dreams consist of today, dreaming about Sim. The one thing I would say to entrepreneurs who are looking to start a business if you believe in yourself go all in. Take the risk, there's nobody better to bet on then yourself. If your in the stock m...

Don't wait. I waited many years, I always wanted to start my business. I always knew that I could create something. I already had a ton of ideas that I was working on. My two cents are if you really feel like you were made to start a business and that it is what you like then do it. Don't wait to long worrying about money or how you will actually do it. Jump in and then raising money and find cust...

Never launch your perfect product, always launch the imperfect product. If you think back to the iPad 1 it only became the product that it is after several iterations. In my personal experience when I wrote the book "abominable secrets revealed" It was only a year since I learned how to type. Prior to joining the Air Force I did not know how to type. I had to figure out how to type 30 words per mi...

Keep talking to people that you don't know that you should know. What I mean by this is that often these technology companies are founded by technologist and they think they know all the answers.  But they have to go talk to the economic buyer and they have to understand what the economic buyer is really thinking. So my advice is never stop reaching out to talk to people.

Talk to people. Find out from other people who are doing that work, something similar, what its like. Ask them for pointers, talk to them, engage. Its almost like networking, I guess it is networking. Talk to people who have done it. I thought I knew what I was getting into, and for the most part I did, but there were key elements that I was missing that slowed me down. You may find that the exper...

Branding is everything. People want to do business with people not a logo. That is what I very much stick by. You have to show case who you are as a person, why someone should do business with you, what the culture of your company is. That is what people want to see when they do business with somebody.

Start with the end customer in mind. Figure out who your end customer is going to be and go starting lighting those people up. Because at the end of the day that's who you have to satisfy. So whatever the business deal is just figure out where the end customer is going to be and make sure that through letters of intent or something like that you get a relationship in place. And if you do that &nbs...

Remember that everybody sees the world through their own lens. I was using the example of a telescope with somebody and we all have the view that we see and so as you're starting off in business, or even later on in business, everyone's gonna have that amazing piece of advice. So just really take everything in with a ton of gratitude that people in their heart desire to help you.  But then re...

Really do the homework and hone in on your target market. Research, research, research. You have to be clear and spell out your value proposition.

Don't get ahead of your skis. Don't think your idea is so great that you're going to bet the farm on it. First of all, you need to make sure that your business model is solid and the best way to do that is to try it out in a small scale. You find a small venue like a restaurant or any kind of a franchise, you build one and make sure that it works, and I don't mean just hope it works. Run the numbe...

Have a good plan. Because I pulled a little bit of a TF2, if people know that video game, where one of the characters asks a support, are you sure this will work and the support replies I have no idea. I just had the idea and then just punched through it really. I just kept punching through it until things started to mold together. If you can sit down and give yourself some time in the day to give...

Find the best solution for every problem. Read professionally or personally. There's a saying of mine, figure out the solution the very first time otherwise you have to figure it out again and again until you master it.

We tell people who your going to hire is most important. As a small business owner that is what I always think about. Our firms slogan is to hire slow and fire fast. We do our best to hire people based on culture and our values, but it doesn't always turn out to be a good hire. We try to be transparent and set goals and milestones for them so we can quickly assess if there a good fit for our compa...

Honestly, understand what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. You hear that all the time right but, you hear it all the time cause its important. Really focus on making sure you're not limiting yourself and bottlenecking your own growth. Check out that book the Big Leap by Hendricks. One thing I did not mention but is pretty important to me is making sure I write down my goals. Pla...

Go all in, I mean it's something if you're going to get into, it's like Parks and Rec, like don't hold a half asset you got to get a whole asset. So go all in. You know you can't sit there to the side and say you know I'm going to work on this small business but I'm going do it under the confines of nine to five. Like if you jump in and you're not the founder or you're someone early...

Take the time to structure things correctly. From a legal, financial, and tax standpoint, you want to get your business set up correctly. Intellectually property. I think it's very important to get the right counseling and to get the right structure in place beneath you to have a foundation to go forward.

Get involved in content. Investing in your personal brand. Spending time on social. Whatever that looks like have a strategy for that because it's more important than you probably think.

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 foot...

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....