🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

My big thing in terms of advice is to just Start the business. Its not going to turn out the way you want it to, almost certainly. Whether that means you need to make a small pivot or the business was not meant to be there is something that is not going to work out the way that you are expecting it to. So I think the important part is to just start and you will learn as you go, adapt as you go, an...

I'm a huge fan of side projects and side hustles so to speak. Before you decide to change your life, quit your job, or take money out of your 401 K, try to get one customer. Try to just do one thing. Try to validate the idea in a number of different ways.

There isn't necessarily a right way to do it. I would say that if you are trying to figure out what to do as a start up and where to start the most important thing to do is start. If you can get 80% of the way there then often times that remaining 20%, lets say that remaining 20% is the gap between where your at and a perfect answer, a perfect product, a perfect sales pitch. Often times that 20% i...

It's about persistence. I actually think it was Ryan Smith with Qualtrics he said the same thing about being all in. So if you are doing this be all in. Also be persistent in what you are doing. If you do run into some road blocks, and they are legitimate road blocks, evaluate that. Maybe you are not on the right course and maybe you need to make some adjustments. However that happens just keep at...

Identifying where your largest community is. I always want my clients to get the biggest bang for their buck when they are looking at their content. So finding where the majority of your people are and targeting the top three to five questions, interactions, or response that you see most often is a really great place to start when you are looking to create content. Chances are you are already enga...

If you feel like your business is stagnant, or not moving like you would want it to then focus on talking to new people. If you set aside an entire afternoon and just talk to new people then you will fill up your next weeks schedule. It does not have to be people in your industry. If you sell shoes talk to the guy that sells carpets and see how he dose it. Talking to new people I think has been on...

Be Stubborn. I never ever quit.  When it looks like this is a terrible idea or you hear no for the thousandth time you just have to preserver and keep going an pushing because it only takes the one time. You can quote Edison, Colonel Sanders, and other people but it really only takes the one time for it to blow up. If you stop then you will never find out that one time.

Priorities change, life is a journey. Find the right framework to help to ask the right questions. I think that is key for any entrepreneur.

Find people that you really trust and partner with them. It's crazy what you can do with other people compared to what you can do alone. It does not matter how smart you are, or think you are. I was so reluctant in the beginning to get on board with an investor and to partner but taking his money and also having him as a permanent consultant to the company and getting his whole life's worth of exp...

Learn how to sell. I think a lot of people who want to start businesses focus on a lot of different things but, they don't actually go out and get customers. I think Mark Cuban said that "sales solves all problems" or something like that. I think that is something that is super underrated. People are a little bit thinking we are in the tech world so we are all on the computer, not really talking t...

Meet with 2 new people, 3 new people, 4 new people a week. As many people as you possibly can. I have found that people absolutely love to  support business owners. It's still one of the reasons I think America is such an amazing and great country. Entrepreneurship is such a foundation for what this whole country is built on. To me I have seen so many times someone who just wanted to support...

Focus on your customer. A lot of start up business owners my self included like to think about your product and/or service. That is probably the part of your business that you are most passionate about. In my view, the way that you actually make a business succeed is start with your customer. Who are you going to sell to? What are you going to sell? Why would they care? If you can get those first...

Show up everyday ready to work. Work hard because you can only be responsible for the effort. The result will take of its self. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

I think that having someone that you trust and best friend in a business partner. Someone that compliments you in everything you are maybe not as good at is definitely the biggest assets you can have. If at all possible, having a partner by your side that shares the same values, complimentary skill set, and understands that the journey of starting a business, especially in a different country, is...

Definitely those profile pictures. You don't want to have one with you in a group where someone is going to look at it and go ok which one is it. You don't want to have one from your high school/all-star years were you are now 35 and 40 and you don't look the same. You definitely want to make sure that it is you. Also your headline. It's that quick snap this is who I am in a nut shell. It does not...

The first thing you need to do is commit. A lot of people try to figure out things and put the details in place and who is going to do what, where they are going to get the money for this. None of that will happen unless you commit first. The biggest lesson that I learned in my career and starting a business is commitment. That decision has to be made that you are all in. Then everything falls int...

If your just starting out in business there is nothing more valuable, especially in todays market, then to be able to grow your network and be able to find the right people in your network. I think the best piece of advice I have for you is whichever direction you want to be able to go in to, whatever niche you want to go into study that niche. But, give yourself a deadline. Give yourself maybe a...

You need to be really really introspective. I know a lot of CEO's that were really happy as the number two in their previous company. As the COO, or CFO or whatever and they are miserable as CEO's. I have hired a number of folks who will tell you they want to be in start ups, who desperately want this to be the right path for them and they should be working at Bank of America. There is a very diff...

We had a lot of people on our rookie roaster and I was leader in charge of the rookie class because I was determined, I believed in myself, and I made it happen. Even in business when I discounted myself sometimes saying oh your just an athlete, oh you don't know much about business, This and that. Just believe in yourself and make things happen. It's literally the truth. If you can tell yourself...

The most important thing is to keep learning and be an infinite learner. No one is born an infinite learner or made one over night but you need to practice that. You need to constantly grow yourself as a founder, CEO, or as team member, you constantly need to grow. Growth is the only solution. That would be my advice. Keep learning no matter what. You need to enjoy learning and it will give you ar...

Value pricing mean that, where our focus as a business is how can we create more value for our clients? How can we change their lives? How can we make as big difference as possible? Knowing that the more of a difference we make, we can also charge a higher price. We create a win win. We both win from that. The customer gets a better result/solution and we get a better price and make more money. So...

My business partner Jill, she owns several companies and has a parent company that runs them all. Since she owns a portion this company, I now have access to her CFO and all the accounting and book keeping that she does. That is part of her investment. She has a cash investment as well as a sweat equity investment in the form of development resources as well as some financial resources. Financing...

My piece of advice would be to trust yourself. You are going to make mistakes. I am sure there is not an entrepreneur out there, there is not a business owner out there who said oh yah this is a very smooth process and I came up with this idea, I built it and everything worked perfectly just like I thought it would.  Everybody goes through these growing pains, struggles and self doubt. Every...

I would lean into partnerships. One of my partners is really good at board of directors, getting all the structure set up, a phantom stock and all of that advance stuff that I don't fully understand. I do know that something I have learned is that partnerships are great. If you can bring people in, even if it's for a small  percentage of your company or even if it is conditionally based I lov...

Despite everything I went through go after your dreams. Go after what it is your heart tells you that you want to do. For me it's worse to live in the what would have been and regret decisions I didn't make or things I didn't go for versus going and learning. Your going to learn. If you accept that failing is also part of succeeding then that is all part of the big lesson. If I  were to sit b...