🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

Do your research and take the time to understand the different segments within your market so that you don't have pointless conversations. Your not talking to the wrong people. Sometimes you have to talk to the wrong people to know that you're building the right thing. You want to keep those wrong conversations to as few as possible.

So this led me to create Techspeak for entrepreneurs which is a program where I teach a ten step process that I personally use to mange developers, help entrepreneurs with communication to be able to understand all the tech speak and all the jargon around how to build a start up. Then learn the entire process so they can gain their confidence back and be able to mange and lead with confidence and...

There are so many places, so many pain point and struggles that no one is touching. I think what you want to look for is a pain point that seems obvious to you that should be solved that no one else really is interested in. If you find that then there's a lot of opportunity there for you. Too many people are trying to create either a copy cat product or something similar, Its not particularly uniq...

Care for your relationships. This is the most important thing. You can not achieve profit without the help of others. We can not achieve profit without the help of employees. They care for our company and pursue our mission.

Do a little everyday. This is based on a concept I have for my show called the wheel of momentum. If you have ever seen a large engine they have what's called a fly wheel on them. It's to help keep the momentum of the engine going. You see them on big old machines, sometimes they have monstrous fly wheels, 20 feet in diameter. My advice to folks would be give a little push at minimum everyday. I d...

I think that you have to realize if you're going to start a company it takes time and effort. It's the comment you made before that big hit that was all the ten years in the making. I mean you have to stick to it. You have to adapt to it and change to the things that come to you cause it's not going to be easy. Stick to it and realize it takes time.

I'm big on next steps. Take a step. There is something out there that they need to go to the next level. I was thinking about it this morning while I was driving in my truck, it's dark out still. Some people are laying in bed, some people are being lazy, some people are not giving it one hundred percent. For me it's always everybody I see that wants to do what I do or wants to do what you do, they...

The most important thing to figure out is a plan. Develop a plan and a strategy so you can really understand your product or service and where it fits in the market. You do some business modeling and some financial modeling, Figure out where your break even point is and then do some development in marketing strategy. Then in general really stick with it and be consistent.

Establish boundaries around your time, And make sure you schedule your self-care time first. We can fill our calendars up with work. Not a problem, it's easily done. But when we try to squeeze in self-care its harder to find time. You put that on your calendar first and don't move it. Don't worry, the work is going to find the open slots, it won't be a problem. Schedule your self-care first and co...

For Entrepreneurs is you better build your team. You can not name a successful person, a world changer without identifying his or her team.

Be very open-minded. Go in with a vision and have a direction. You have to know what you want. But the way to get there, there is a million plus one ways. So the more open-minded you are the better you adapt because the journey to were we are now has been through four or five of pivots and like very hard pivots from one industry to another. Through image analysis to text analysis, so just keep tha...

The bar to what is a good first step to take a start up is too high. So people have to high of expectations. So they start thinking about ideas and talk themselves out of doing things. The bar to get started is really low you just have to take a step. So just go. In our case we want to refinance our loans, what does that mean? We need to talk to people who have an auto loan, so talk to them. The s...

As much as you should take some advice from experts, I really believe that most of the answers that you're looking for you have within you. Some people can guide you with stuff like IP Law. Yes, you need to talk to Devin for that stuff. But there is other stuff like how are you going to market? How are you going to advertise? How are you going to do outreach? Everyone does it differently and you h...

Remain Curious. I think it gets so easy to pack a ton of one piece of advice for someone starting. Curiosity to your point with your story with the pitch year one year two it was your curiosity from year one that got you back to your year two. So just stay curious and follow almost like Scooby-Doo follow your nose as to where those next clues go even if the door is closed.

Create content and just put it out there. Write about what you like, do podcasts, do videos, write books, put everything for free out there. Then if you show expertise and if what you say makes sense then the clients will come to you automatically.

Focus on lessons learned. This is the biggest lesson I have learned. When you focus on learning, not only do you grow yourself you also grow your team and then that will eventually grow the business.

Try solving problems that exist right now. And always make sure that someone is going to pay you to solve that problem, or else you don't have a business.   Right? So solving problems is what I do, naturally, but I can only do that if someone is gonna to pay me to do that. That's how I measure that I have a business idea that actually has legs or not. Join us and Afifa Siddiqui from Canadian...

"As a small business owner like me I rely on leads. There is a good mentality called the two, ten, forty mentality and principle where every day you want to be talking to two prospects. Every week you want to talk to ten and every month you want to talk to forty. I use that guideline of if I need to meet that quota what am I going to do? These are people who want my services and they want to talk...

Know Your Business. Any kind of business that you want to do, you MUST know the business. You must know the customer. Otherwise, don't start the company, like, just looking at Twitter and saying "Oh, ok, that company has raised that much, I can do that!"  Definitely know your market, know your technology, and know your business. That is definitely what I would advise to you.

Don't care what anyone else thinks of you. Get clear on your thoughts around giving a concern about what anyone else thinks. That will create fear in your life and that will keep you small.   What anyone else thinks has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.  I mean, if there is someone in your life who has exactly the career path that you want, and you want to go to them...

My experience is, always, intellectual property protection. When you have a piece of intellectual property & a protection, that gives you a lot more leverage.   To negotiate a market share. To negotiate cause of production. To also carve out your own niche.   That gives you an opportunity to slow down your competition, or to fence out the knock-offs, the copycats, or infringers. &nbs...

Get customers first. If you can find customers, you're going to find investment.  So many times, I talk with start-up founders, and they're like, "If could only get the money, if I could get 10 million dollars, I could build this thing and we could go get our customers."  In every pitch contest that you ever go to, if you ask any judge or anyone that does any judging, "Why did you pick t...

There are inevitably people who have trod the path that you are on beforehand. And, whereas it may feel like an exciting adventure that you are on alone, there are people who have made mistakes which you don't need to make because they can tell you what they are.   There are people who have had successes that you won't understand until they share them with you. So the role of advisors an...

"Done is better than perfect. I think a lot of business owners get in this perfectionist mode, and they hear an outside voice tell them, 'Well, you're not posting, what you're posting isn't good enough, ...' from their families, or their friends, or some guru they see.   "No. In the beginning days of your business, you've just got to get started. You just have to do something..."

Find where you can bring value, something that you enjoy (because you're going to have to do a lot of things that you don't enjoy), find where you're strengths are, and something that's monetizable.  Get all them together, and find what's in the middle. There'll be something in there for you that you can do, that will bring value to the world, will get you paid, that'll be something you'll en...