🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

"I think the biggest piece of advice is to get the right people on your team and don't be afraid of doing that. Take the time in the beginning to strategies and hopefully move forward in a way that you can afford to financially invest in those people. For me, I have a wonderful business consultant and he has been really helpful to me as far as moving forward and giving me those gold nuggets and pi...

Persistence is king and, I know you are going to hear that a lot or don't give up, don't have fear. But the way I describe it is there are days when I am kind of afraid of heights and, there are days where I feel like my job is to go, walk on the edge of a seventy-story building and look down. I just swallow it and get on the train and start working. You really have to push yourself past your comf...

Definitely product-market fit. I think too many start-ups say I have a great idea let's just do it. And I always say: well no, we have to figure that out. And they go but, I read the lean start-up book and, I know if I ask people if they like this idea, then it's good. And I say: well, unfortunately, the lean start-up book didn't tell you how to ask the right questions. They told you to go, ask qu...

You really can never stop learning, there are so many good resources out there, there is so much good information. And then specifically to learn about how to have the right mindset to be successful. Because I really believe that mindset is 50% of the battle. And once you can believe in yourself and believe that you have the ability to make money and to be successful with your business your half w...

Anything that you don't think you can do. If you are an entrepreneur, don't waste time trying to figure it out. It's going to waste time and, it's the one resource that you can never get back. People will ask what's the most important thing in your life and you go well you know there are a lot of things love, money, what have you but believe me time. The older you get to realize this, that is the...

Speak with as many people as you can. But, always know how to listen, and what to learn from every type of conversation and from every interaction.

In the first 4 years of the business, you're doing three things at once. You're working in the business, serving customers, answering phone calls, in my case mowing grass. And then you're working on the business. What does the marketing system look like? What does the employee recruitment system look like? What does the employee retention system look like? How do we activate cold customers? All of...

In addition to knowing what it is you want to do, look at how other people, either in your field or adjacent, do it. You can learn as much from the good that they do as you can from the things that you disagree with. It's really useful to be able to thread your own path that's a little bit different from what everybody is doing but getting the benefit of what they have learned.

Get really good at hiring. Your team is going to determine whether or not you are going to be successful. All your business problems are people problems in disguise. You can tail everything back to your people. There are some of us who are entrepreneurs who people are drawn to, and they want to work with us for whatever reason. That's great, but if you don't have those skills or that muscle that's...

As soon as you think you've done enough research, you are only halfway there. You need to do more. You need to act as if you are currently running a business and find out where those holes are. If you could be where I was a year into my business when you first start, which I think entrepreneurs can be if they just know more. It's a great system. I would also ask to speak with other start-ups in si...

Be open to advice from others. Listen to people. Learn from people. Find people that have done something similar and try to learn from their experience. I can't emphasize enough how much it has helped me. Not just having a mentor but having people around me. Being able to learn from people, for example: with fundraising. The first time I went out and did that I got a tremendous amount of input fro...

So, I've learned that you prepare for growth and have the compacity. Then once you have the compacity, you start the marketing piece and the sales piece. You start looking for new business. When the new business comes in, you can handle it. Then your customers won't be dissatisfied and your new customers won't be dissatisfied, because you are able to meet their quota. That's the most important thi...

Bootstrap. It's incredible what you can think of and come up with limited resources. Giving away equity and bringing in a partner soon. I find that these create more problems than they solve. Getting outside funding. Borrowing heavily to launch a business, I think, is a mistake. Scaling it down to the point that you control it, you don't owe anyone anything makes you very resourceful and creative....

If someone is starting, I would say, get a mentor right from the bat. Get someone who has helped build a business from the ground up. Don't just try it yourself cause it will take you four years where it could have taken you a couple of months to figure out exactly what you are doing? Who you are doing it for? What's a mission and vision is and how do they differ? And how having that strategy set...

Tell them to be cautiously fearless. I would tell them that there is nothing stopping them. They have as much right and as much ability to do this as anyone else. I've met some people that maybe their IQ isn't the highest or maybe their family does not have the most money. But they would just come and, they did it. People will help you if you ask for help. Don't be afraid to get advice. Don't be a...

You need to know enough about finance to be able to speak the language. I relate it to communication. If I am going to go to a foreign country if I know how to speak the language, I am going to have a much better trip than if I have no idea how to speak the language. That does not mean that I have to be a professional speaker or that I have to be a literary genius in that language. But, I have to...

Someone has already taken that journey before you. So finding some that's started something similar or in the same industry that you can become a mentee of that, you can learn from and not have to recreate some of these experiences that someone has already walked that path so, there is no reason to make the same mistakes.

Number one, you are either built for this or, you aren't. You either have the fire in your belly or, you don't. Nobody will push you harder. Nobody will make you deal with and overcome adversity harder than you. Don't look to anybody else. Don't look to clients, partners, employees, or vendors. It's either you are committing to this, and you have the fire in your belly, or you don't.

Don't allow yourself to be blinded by the purity of your own vision. I have seen too many people who are so convinced that their vision is pure and presents the best and the only solution to the problem that they fail to see that some of their assumptions are flawed. If being an entrepreneur requires great intellectual curiosity but, also intellectual honesty, you really need to be nimble, humble,...

The short version is "quit or become rich". This is actually by Po Ram, so it is his quote. A longer version is my own version, which is to have faith in yourself, have faith in life, and be very focused on what you are doing.

Be a little bit more prepared in the beginning. Understand the true costs of what it will take. I had the fortune of having a little bit of a savings plus retirement income. Plan out your I can do this. I have six months to start making some revenue. What is my minimum revenue point?

For all the early people you bring on or cofounders, invest into your equity and into your position because you are getting married to somebody. In some cases, you might not know the person very well. Maybe you have different opinions or something several months into it or a different direction you want to go. A pivot you want to make. So if you don't invest in your equity, it makes getting a divo...

Build a pitch deck. Google pitch deck and find a way to build your pitch deck. The reason for that is who knows you might need to go out and get funding so, that is the first reason you might want it. The main reason is it really does bring home and drive home what it is you do. Why you do it, and why somebody should care. If you do a good pitch deck you touch on your finance, marketing, operation...

Definitely, what I said earlier of really looking at what already exists in your community. Not just well, no, I have never heard of someone who is doing this. No, you need to dig in. Most of these have nonprofit councils of some sort. Dig in and see who is at least serving the demographic of people that you want to serve. What in the area are you doing with them? Can you partner with them on addi...

Definitely get your paperwork and everything in order, and then be ok with the mistakes because that's part of the fun and part of the learning. No matter how much you study or how much you learn, actually going and doing is going to give you better results even though you make a million mistakes than if you just think about it forever.