49 Powerful Lessons From All Entrepreneurs I’ve Interviewed

Video Transcript

Welcome to Big Money Investing
Your Ultimate Destination for Learning From Big Money and How You Can Succeed Too!

Are you ready to take it to the next level?

Investing into sound investments like big money does. Subscribe to the Big Money Investing Channel

– People think that I gotta go out there and find this business model that is gonna make me money. Find the thing that you’re gonna be passionate about, – Have kind of a strategy around the risk. – Failure was what you were really afraid of. – You don’t wait till you have all the pieces to start building the thing. – [Interviewer] Mm. – You use, what you have to do what you can. – There’s only three things investors care about. If you map out those three things, they will give you money. – With 184 entrepreneurs interviewed in the past four years, here’s UpFlip’s top guests with priceless advice and closely held business secrets you wish you knew earlier. – Don’t be terrified of small beginnings. You know, everything starts with a seed. And if you can get that seed in the ground, you water it and you nurture it, you love it. One day you may come back and find that seed to come up out of the ground. Be careful of instant success. – [Interviewer] Hmm. – Instant success can lead to failure because you don’t learn the hard lesson. – Yeah. – Be willing to take it all, you know, suffer the pain through it all. Because boy, when you emerge from that stuff, it’s like pure gold. It’s like you’ve been through the fire, tested by fire and out comes the goal the. – Purified. – Purified. (indistinct) – Ready to go. (speaker chuckling) – Imagine if there was a gun to your head. I go now, I said, "I’m gonna pull the trigger. If you don’t gimme the answer." What is the one thing you would do for free if I paid for your whole lifestyle, your health insurance, everything, food, rent, everything. "Like, oh man. I would repair motorcycles. Like classic motorcycles", like specifically Hondas is what he mentioned. I was like, great. Be so good at it that people will pay you to do it. Like people think that I gotta go out there and find this business model that is gonna make me money. Find the thing that you’re gonna be passionate about, even when the odds are stacked against you. See, I love franchising so much. I love gyms so much. I love health and wellness and mindset so much. When the pandemic came. – [Speaker] You were shut down. – It didn’t discourage me. I was still focused, I was still disciplined. I was still gung-ho even when we lost 218 franchise locations. – Oh wow. – In the 10 month period of the pandemic. Could you imagine if I went into the fitness and franchising industry because it’s a lucrative industry? Well, as soon as some kind of setback comes, like the pandemic, I’d give up. And so if you do something that you’re excited about, that you would do for free, because it is like if someone paid for your lifestyle, you would do this thing for free, then be so good at it, and then shared on social media that people will pay you for it. – It’s important for people that are viewing this to really understand like the power of manifestation, the power of goal setting. One of the things that’s been really important for me over the course of the last 30 years is setting goals and intentions about what I want outta my life. And so 2010 had not, I didn’t have a paycheck. I wrote out the goal, you know, my dream home and this is what my dream home would look like. I would have this view, I would have this kind of kitchen, I would have that the TV room. And why would I want it? I want it because I want to entertain. I love to have people here. And it really empowers me. And so I didn’t know how that was gonna manifest. But in 2012, I found this piece of property. While we were door knocking or while we were walking, driving street by street, I brought my wife here in 2012 and said, "This is my dream piece of property." We made an offer on this property five years in a row until finally one day while we were in the middle of building another house, they said, "We’re ready to sell." And so I brought my wife onto this deck and I showed her the view. She’s like, "Let’s do it." That was the manifestation of living here. It wasn’t that long ago that Jay and I didn’t have any money and we didn’t know where our paycheck was gonna come from. You know, when you think about, you know, just any goal that you have in life and it ultimately being able to happen. – Mm hmm. – Like I’m grateful every day when I come down here and go, this is where I get to live. – So for listeners in that are just starting their business and just getting out into the marketplace. – Mm hmm. – Facebook is gonna be a powerful tool for you. And I’ll kind of explain a little bit on why. So when I first started, I went into all the community groups in my area. So this is, you know, different cities like Battleground, Vancouver, and they all have these little community Facebook groups. – Mm hmm. – And I would go into those groups and I would apply to be inside of it. ‘Cause most of the time you have to apply to get inside of it. So I’d apply to all of the groups around me and then I would go ahead and every time I’d finish a job I would take before and afters and I would upload those into all of the community groups around my area. And I wouldn’t be spammy. The idea is to not be spammy. ‘Cause people do not like, you know, they’re just, that’s not what you’re there to do, advertise. But you can put little things in here and there. Do a post a week or or something like that. And a lot of people will start commenting. You can get, you know, some interaction that way. It’s a great place to start. ‘Cause a lot of the community will start to see you around. And so if they start seeing your photos and your brand in those groups, you’ll have a lot more business attraction from them. – You’ll never know the right time. And I was terrified every day when I was like, this is the day I’m gonna call my boss. ‘Cause I was working remotely at the time. This is the day I’m gonna call him and say I’m the last one day. And I was like. – You got that. – Not today. Not today, not today. My best advice to go all in on your side hustle is to have kind of a strategy around the risk. So I tracked my finances for, I mean, throughout my entire journey, but I said, I’m gonna track my finances for a year of my side hustle. And if for 12 months I can make a pretty average, consistent amount of money every single month in the side hustle. So it’s not just one good month, you know, and then have, and it’s down to nothing. So I consistently tracked for about a year and when I looked back and saw that it was, you know, give or take within 10, 15% each month of, you know, a will is something that I could, you know, sustain my lifestyle with. – Mm hmm. – I was like, it is not really 100% a risk at this point. It’s pretty proven that I can make money from it. Make a living from it. Now let’s go all in. – Hype is a tough word, right? But I’ll tell you how I did it. Whatever you’re doing with your product, talk to everybody about it. I mean, everybody. Many of the connections that I made either led me to somebody that was interested in knowing and doing a story or they spread the word and I was contacted by it. I think the second thing is I think people don’t realize the power of social media. Like I am not a social media guy. But when I started doing this, I really fell in love with it. And as I started kind of studying it, I understand the power of it. You gotta get people to interact with you. You gotta get people involved. You gotta get people excited. – Yeah. So some people like to keep their personal life and their business life separated. They don’t like to put their face on things, but that just is not gonna fly if you wanna have pipe. Is that what you’re saying? – Yes, I think so because people wanna know the story and that’s what creates the hype. Also collaborations like, "Hey, can I collaborate with you?" Like other people? There’s so many ways of doing it. Just be creative in thinking of how can I get my product out there and it’s not gonna cost you a lot of money. – So I think any internet business is gonna have what they call top funnel. So we’re gonna bring people in for something. – Mm hmm. – Usually it could be a newsletter, it could be a free product, it could be something. So you start with a relationship. – [Interviewer] Okay. – And then you gotta manage that. So that second part of that funnel is really like creating value. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – You wanna create value before you ask for value. So it could be something like creating a newsletter that they actually wanna read. – [Interviewer] Mm hmm. – Or something that really adds value to someone’s life. Or giving them for us in the pet space, tips on how to train their dog right themself or you know, how to deal with an issue that they’re having. – Mm hmm. – And you’re creating a ton of value. And there’s this value vacuum that happens where if you create a ton of value first, then later on people are gonna lean in when you have an ask or you have an opportunity for them. But it starts with creating value. Too many people start early by just asking like buy this, buy this, buy this. – [Interviewer] Yeah, yeah. – [Marshall] That’s not how we buy. – [Interviewer] Mm hmm. – [Marshall] You know, we don’t like that. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – [Marshall] It’s like the car salesman tactic. – [Interviewer] Uh huh. – You just wanna create a ton of value and people will lean into your brand. – I like that. – You know, when I was first starting, I honestly, everything I did kind of flopped. – [Interviewer] Mm hmm. – I tried e-commerce, I tried dropshipping, I tried digital marketing and like nothing was really working. I remember getting really down on myself. ‘Cause at the time I just wanted to skip the grind. I wanna help my parents, but it just wasn’t working. And I think a lot of people get into that, right? You hit failure after failure and you’re like, why should I keep going? This is kind of cushy. I could just stay in this job. Right? I remember after college I was working at this firm and there was a guy there, his name is Paul, I’ll call him Partner Paul. And he was 52 or 53 years old and he was set to retire. And my coworker is like, dude, Partner Paul has $20 million in the bank. – Wow. – And I remember thinking like, this guy’s made it, he’s figured out the American dream, this is what it is. And within one year of retiring, he had a heart attack and died. And if you think about that and that really set the tone for my early career of realizing like time’s very precious. And even though I was getting down on myself and things weren’t really going well, what is the alternative? Is it, you know, slaving away for 30 years? Is it working the grind and not being able to provide something else outside of my job? And I think that story has always really resonated with me and has kind of kept me going to actually try the thing and try the next thing and try the next thing. And I think that’s all people need. You know, sometimes there’s business models which are easier and harder and you know, those are different things to talk about as well. But a lot of it is just having the motivation to keep going. Even if you’re not getting early success. – How do I now validate. – Oh, I love this question. One of my favorite questions. So here it’s the way it works. So now you wanna know whether or not your idea is good. So we have a litmus test for that. Number one is I show you the idea and you look at it and you go, "Hmm, that’s cool." – Okay. – That’s not a good idea. – It’s not a good idea, okay. – Now, watch this. And then I show you the idea you go, "Wow, that’s really cool." That’s not a good idea. (interviewer laughing) – Okay. So it’s not what I was expecting. – I know it wasn’t, this is why I’m trying to help your listeners. – So you don’t need positive reaffirmation. – I want your listeners to understand what the real litmus test is for a good idea. You ready? – Yeah. – And this is it. I show you the idea and you say, "I want that. Where can I buy it?" – Oh I get it. – You open up your wallet and you say, "I need that now." When someone replies to you that way, you know you have something. – Oof. Oh, I love it. – Great thing about business, right, is that when you think about athletes, think about athletes at the highest level, these guys gotta be the best at it. – Absolutely. – Right. The best at it. They’re not gonna be there. Entrepreneurs don’t have to be, there’s plenty of entrepreneurs, plenty of millionaires that are pretty average, but they’re. – I’m shocked to hear it. – They’re beating people. Yeah. There’s a lot of people that are beating people by just doing the work. And a lot of times most entrepreneurs aren’t really at the top of their game. There’s some that are really, really killing at the top of the game. But a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people that are making millions are really just above average. The bar isn’t as high as people think to become successful in business. – A lot of people, when they’re starting their businesses, they believe that they are afraid of failure. – Mm. – But I believe that we’re afraid of success. – Whoa. – Because you would not start a business and get people rallied around a thing if you truly believed that it wasn’t going to work. Right? – Yeah. – But when you put all of your faith, or your effort or your confidence into a thing, you really do believe it’s gonna work. Or you wouldn’t waste the time if failure was what you were really afraid of. – Mm. – And so the reason why I believe that success is the thing that most people fear. – Mm. – Is because success requires something. – Yeah. – Success means I’ve gotta get up every morning and I’ve gotta show up to the table when I don’t feel like it, when I’m tired or when all of my family is going on vacation, I’ve gotta stay at work and do this thing that now people are lining up for. – Yeah. Yeah. – That’s the success that makes you afraid. And so that’s what I want people to see. There’s a mind shift that happens. You are not afraid to fail. You are afraid to succeed. – Wow. – I always told myself, if I had three months to get something started, I would make it happen. COVID happened. I had no money, but you know what? I had enough money to make 12 candles. I made 12 candles. – Okay? – Made them amazing. Took amazing pictures of those 12 candles, then did pre-orders. I took the money from those pre-orders, reinvested them back into the business, started only buying 10 pounds of wax to 45 pounds of wax to pallets of 15 to 20 pounds of wax all by recirculating the money. I quit making excuses. I took what I had and I made something happen with it. – So the key word is pre-orders. – Pre-orders, you make pre-orders of your items. If you could only make 10, make those 10 make the best 10 candles you’ve ever made in your life and sell ’em. – I think it’s different for everybody. I think that it’s kind of a fallacy to think, oh, you gotta go all in on something and you gotta commit to it and you gotta quit your job and do this, get your commercial space. For me, I just put my toe in the water and I wanted to see, am I good at this? Is there a demand for it? – It’s smart. – I think a lot of people realize like, "Hey, I might not like this. It seems great, but you know, maybe I hate dealing with customers. Maybe I’m not great with furniture. Maybe I don’t like running the books or doing everything that comes with running a business." So for me it was just start small and see if it’s something that’s, you know, worked out well for me. – Your ideas are only as good as your ability to communicate them. Whether you’re a content creator, constantly trading emails and drafting scripts like us at UpFlip or a working professional looking to make an impact or even hunting for your next opportunity. Clear and efficient communication is essential for success. That’s why we use Grammarly, the AI writing partner that simply put, makes you a better working professional save time crafting emails because Grammarly’s reply feature gets you out of the inbox and back to getting things done, saving you so much time, while their ideate feature is pure magic, instantly generating and organizing your thoughts into clear and conscious writing. Grammarly allows you to write stronger, faster, and more effectively than ever. And with Grammarly, your data stays your data with no third party data collection. Their secure AI gives you the tools to succeed without compromising your privacy. That’s why Grammarly’s trusted by tens of millions of working professionals to help them thrive. The best part, it’s absolutely free to use. Just sign up and download using our link, grammarly.com/upflip and level up your working game today. – So I’m a big proponent of do what you can now. – Mm hmm. – Don’t wait. – I love that. – Tomorrow. Don’t wait next year. Don’t wait when I get more money, everybody can do something now. – If I just said to my customers, I want your money, do you think they would come to me? – I doubt it. – No. But if I said I have something that can solve your problems, I have something that can make your life better, make your work more enjoyable, make your work higher, raise the quality of your work, would they come to me? Money’s never even been talked about. – Mm hmm. – So you first go into business for the purpose of serving or providing something to a customer. And when you do that at a high level, they exchange, they give you their time and money in exchange for it. – You’ll never have a problem of profit at that point. – It’s impossible. It’s against the laws of nature. If you’re adding value, you’re giving something that someone that they need, they’re more than happy to exchange your money for a nice cup of coffee. Right? But if they gave you a crappy cup of coffee, would you give them the money? – I’d hesitate. – But if I said, I just want money, I wanna open up a coffee shop and I want money, are you gonna give it to Woods Coffee? No, they’re providing something of value. And it’s the value that you’re in business for. – Yeah. – To deliver that quality product, that service and the profit is a byproduct. – I’ve gone through what I would say most, if not all entrepreneurs have gone through and it’s called the entrepreneurial transition curve. So when you start off a brand new venture business, something like that, right? You’re excited, you don’t, it’s based on, you know, just the idea of some sort of excitement piece. And that’s what we call uninformed optimism. So when I very first started everline, I thought, this is gonna be something, you know, you’re gonna make it big. I’m paint every parking lot out there, whatnot. Then you start making calls and you hear, "No, no, no." – Mm hmm. – And then you move to the next stage, which is called informed pessimism. You’re saying this is not nearly as as easy as I thought it would be. This is, I’m getting some resistance here. – Self-talk, right? – Exactly, right? – Yeah. – You’re saying that’s yourself. And then at after that you get to what you call a crisis of meeting. And that’s the low point. And I’ve been there countless times. Sometimes it happens on the level of on a monthly basis, sometime an hourly basis, things like that. It depends on the issue. And then once you get to that crisis of meeting, you have a decision as an entrepreneur, you can decide to crash and burn and you know, you just say, this is too hard. I’m not gonna learn from the lessons that brought me here. Or you gather up, you know, you pull up the bootstraps and you either reach out for support, solve the issue that’s coming at you and you launch into what you call informed optimism. So this is something, or hopeful realism is also what it’s called. Now, you’ve come across an obstacle, you’ve reached the bottom and you’ve decided you’re gonna get over it. You were aware of that obstacle, you now solved it, and now you have grown, as a result of that. So I mean, I’ve had so many instances of that, you know, imposter syndrome, you’ve had, you know, self-doubt and yeah. It’s just understanding that this is actually a very normal part of the entrepreneurial process. – There’s two point of view, one is, you know, there’s not enough and then there’s other point of view, there’s plenty of enough out there. So many people focus on lack. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – Not enough opportunity, not enough deals, not enough air to breathe. Not enough, you know, just not enough. I have learned early on from a lot of my great teacher that there is plenty opportunity, plenty of deals, plenty of (indistinct), plenty of air. So you don’t even have to worry or fight about it because I know there’s plenty of opportunity out there and there’s enough for everybody to share. – Yeah. So you do you and you focus on your deals and you don’t compare yourself to the good or the bad competition. – Nope, I just say, you know what, there’s plenty out there. It’s enough for everybody. I’m gonna get mine. You gotta get yours. – You don’t wait till you have all the pieces to start building the thing. – [Interviewer] Mm. – You use what you have, to do what you can. – Even if it means propping the door open and. – I don’t care what it means, get started. Every castle was built by a crook. Get started. – I actually think a lot of entrepreneurship is luck. – It is, yeah, we hear it all over again. – Yeah and you can’t really control the creation of luck, but you can control like the odds of getting lucky. Like if, how often you roll the dice, you can’t control what numbers come out the dice, but you could wake up and put in more hours every day to roll it more often. And then you could also spend more time to capitalize on luck. That’s something you have control over. So, you know, when that’s when of third came out, we immediately capitalize on the way of users. We try to learn as much as we could, built for these new users that came in. And even though that was a huge spike in users, ever since then, we’ve only grown faster since that month because we were able to capitalize on that. – I believe it’s never too late to start. – Mm. – Start from where you are to get to where you wanna be. People are always thinking they’ve got to wait for some big amazing. – Yeah. – Thing to happen in order for them to begin. – Uh huh. – And I have learned that studies are showing that four out of 10 people that are starting businesses have already had children. And then those who start their businesses after their thirties and closer to their forties are finding more success because they have more connections. – [Interviewer] Okay. – They know what the risks are that they’re actually getting involved with and they have more experience in the business that they’ve chosen. – Yeah. – So maybe why I thought it was the end for me. – Uh huh. – It was only just the beginning because I had learned a lot from the school of hard doc. – As a business owner, nobody’s going to tell you to get off your phone and figure the problem out. – [Interviewer] Right. – And a lot of times, you’re getting put in those scenarios where you really don’t want to do it. And there’s another person, just another little voice in your head that’s telling you to go do it. And it’s developing that little voice and allowing it to grow inside of your mindset and let it become part of your identity. – Confidence comes later on. First you have to have the knowledge. If you want to be successful in the flooring business, you first have to go work for another flooring store. You have to see all the falls, you have to see all the ups and downs. You have to see all the challenges, you have to see all the problems that they have in order for you to start building some kind of a platform of confidence. You can’t just come in and say, I’m confident and I’m gonna go in. – That’s tough. – I’m gonna start making sales. – Yeah. – You can’t just talk out of no knowledge. – You know, the reality is if you’ve got the dedication, perseverance, you’re gonna be successful to what you define that degree of success. You got to find that answer because you know, some people look at it and say, "Hey, they’ve got all the money, but do they have the time?" Do you know what time they spent, gave up on their family time? The next thing you know, their children all grown up. – Yeah. – So to what value you want money, balance it, family, happiness and love. I mean, and your community. It’s not all or nothing. You can have it all but work at it and be dedicated and faithful to it. I’m a business owner, I can do whatever I want with my business. – Amen to that. – And I needed to kind of do some soul searching. I needed to slow down. I needed to kind of say, wait a minute, I need to adjust. And I needed to really start to focus on a genuine me. And I kind of got to the point where I asked the question, do I own my business or does the business own me? That’s part of the factor of business success. It’s not just about money. It’s not just about the, you know, the volume of business. – Right. – It’s also about what your business can give you in here. – It’s your wellbeing. – And what is in here that you can give to your business. – So you worked 80 hours back in the day, where are you at now in terms of how much time you spend working? Just curious. – I probably, these days I work anywhere between 10 hours a week and 40. – People ask me like, "Hey, what makes you happy?" But I actually don’t think of life as terms of happiness. I don’t, I think it boils down to more of contentness. Right and maybe that in some way being content. – Leads to yeah. – Makes you feel happy. – Yeah. – Right. Because drugs and party can make me happy. – [Interviewer] True. – Is that gonna be the secret to happiness? So there’s a contentness in how you’re proud of yourself, I think that makes you happy. And it doesn’t come from money, it doesn’t come from cars, right? – [Interviewer] Yeah. – Because if someone gave me a bunch of this cars, I don’t think I’d be content. I’d have some fun for a while, but then when I feel discontent in myself and that I wasn’t able to earn or achieve anything. So I think this, people see the cars and they think that’s happiness now that’s just the fruits of labor. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – And that’s what your goal is. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – And that’s what your passion is. Even if you don’t make a dollar, but you’re always striving to better yourself and learn things, I think you’d always be happy because you’ll always be content with yourself. Because I see a lot of millionaires that are very depressed. – [Interviewer] Mm hmm. – And I see a lot of people with very meager resources that are super happy. So remembering that the secret to happiness is just being content in yourself and not what you have around you. Not the material stuff that if you strip it all away, people say, "Man, I like that guy, or I like that girl." Like. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – Yeah, that’s a good person. You’ll always find happiness. – That’s what I said my friend. – So we kind of break down a four part system that’s connect, discover, show and close. And Apple actually uses this in their Apple stores. This is like not my invention. This is like a real process. – This is not your invention, no. So somebody else came up with it. – Yeah. – You connect with the customer first, you know, and when you go into the Genius door and you know the Genius Bar and you talk to someone, that’s typically what they do. They try to connect with you somehow and then discover. You ask lots of questions about, you know, have you ever, you know, shop this in the past? You know, if we did one thing on the job that you know, would totally make you frustrated, what would that be? You know, agitate, pain and then more questions. And then you go to the show part where you actually answer and take each one of their pains that they listed one at a time and address ’em. And then you ask for the close. So even those types of systems in the sales process is really important. You know, we talk about our criminal background screen technicians and we really try to educate the customer on what to expect. When you layer all those things together. That’s why we get those higher closing ratios and higher average tickets. – My number one piece of advice to grow your brand or your product in the influencer space is to give away your product for free as much as possible. The marketing spend, instead of trying to run ads early on, try to get it into these micro influencers or just anyone that will respond. And my number one tip is to not ask for anything in return. You hope that they’re gonna post about it, you hope that they’re gonna tell their friends. But if you have a good product and a good brand, and nowadays you really need to create, if you’re in the CPG space, you need to create a product or a service that is Instagramable, which wasn’t a word forever ago, right? You need to make it that people want to post it, they want to talk about it. It’s cool, it’s content. Nowadays, a lot of creators are looking for things to create content around. And if you have a product that fits into that niche or something unique, people are gonna post about it. But you never wanna ask for anything in return. You just kind of cross your fingers and hope. And we’ve sent our products to thousands and thousands of influencers, celebrities. Many have posted us, many have not posted us. I think if you have something good, generally the influencers will kind of come back to you go, "Hey, I really like that. Can I get some more?" And at that point you say, "Yeah, absolutely. I would love to send you some more." And you don’t say "We would, you know, here’s the line items you need to do. If we give another product", you go casual. You say, "We’d love to send you some more product." – Here you go. – "And if it’s not too much to ask, we’d love it, if you loved it, if you could give us a mention on your story, we’d really appreciate that." Again, very kind of gentle. – That’s only after the initial contact. – Correct, that’s when they’re coming back to us like, "Hey, I love the candy, can I have some more?" I’m like, "You sure can. But you know, would you mind a little Instagram story?" It’s not a requirement. You’re just like, it’d be great if you could and in return, nine times outta 10, these people are gonna say yes. And when you organically send out this product and you start building up this awareness of your brand and of your product, then the people that follow all these individuals, maybe they didn’t buy off your website when a big influencer post. That’s why I wouldn’t recommend paying for these huge ones because we’ve had some massive names that you don’t see a single spike. Like you think you would, you’d be like, oh, this rapper or influencer posted about us. Lemme go to the Shopify. Wait, no, wait, wait, where’s the influx of sales? You know? – [Interviewer] Mm hmm. – So that’s why I think focus your efforts on maybe smaller influencers and the hope is brand awareness. I’m trying to smother the world in my brand, not trying to immediately convert a more long term picture so that when these influencers are continuing to post about the product, then the people that follow them and they’re walking down the aisle and they’re like, "Uh oh, that’s that candy that so-and-so posts, lemme try it out." – Right. – "Oh my god, I love it." You know, so that’s the goal. But you can’t track the ROI on it. You can’t look at the data, the analytics of the post conversions. I don’t do any of that. We just we’re like, it’s out in the world. It’s out in the world. – Give it away. And don’t ask for anything in return initially. – Unless they come back to you. – There you go. – People like to follow a good story. People like to see the origins, how you get started. And they want to help the underdog. They want to see like, hey, if you got a good story, like if you struggled, you’re a single mom, you bought a photo booth, you want it to work, they want support that kind of business. – Mm hmm. – And so I think if you share that kind of story out there, the platform that can help you grow your business. – Don’t over plan, imperfect action leads the way. – Imperfect action leads the way I love it. Versus inaction – Versus inaction. So many people just plan and plan and plan, overplan again as a way of avoiding jumping outta that plane. When you jump out of that plane, there’s a high level of urgency, the splat factor. – It’s true. – That motivate you. – Pretty serious when. – To build, to figure out how to turn your shirt and your pants into a parachute very quickly, right? – That’s right. – Yeah. – The reality is like there are people out there that wanna invest in stuff that they really want to hear pitches, but they’re not gonna be, oh, you know, overly zealous to tell people that, right? You know, when you go out and meet people, hey, what are you working on? What are you excited about? Oh, I’m super excited about this. We’re, you know, we’re doing this, we’re gonna be doing this, we’re gonna start raising investor funds. You’re not saying, "Hey, I wanna borrow money from you," you’re saying, "but I’m really excited ’cause now we’re gonna start raising though investor funds." You go to local meetups, you go to local business meetups, you can go to real estate meetups, you can go to all sorts of things where people with money, will be hanging out. You’ll get a chance to meet people. And when you’re outgoing again, hey, this is what I’m doing, I’m so excited. And pretty soon we’re gonna start raising money for it. You’re not asking them for money, but then eventually then they’ll say, "Oh, when you’re ready reach back out to me." – So believe in what you’re doing, be excited about it and then get out there and talk to as many people as possible. – Yeah. And take people up on it when they say, "Hey, reach back out to me when you’re ready." Like, I’ve all said people that they’re like afraid to go do that outreach. Now, if somebody gives you any interest at all, they’re interested in hearing from you. – There’s only three things investors care about, whether they’re investing into debt or equity, where’s the money going? How’s the stability of what’s backing it and how do they get paid back? And if you map out those three things, they will give you money. – And it’s almost always a discussion. It is a sit down over coffee. We don’t put up big slides or presentations together, we don’t give ’em a Word doc, we have an idea. This is why it’s gonna work. This is where your money’s going, this is how it’s coming back. – Mm hmm. That’s it. – Super simple. – The first thing is, how big is the problem I’m solving for? You need to identify that. Like, if I’m raising money to do a business, how many people care about this and what’s the return on this? How big is the problem I’m solving for? And then secondly, I would say, why is your method and your team right for this problem? Right? You need to build that story into your deck and into your pitch. They need to understand why they should believe that you are the reason and have the solution to the problem. – The biggest thing for me was definitely reviews. So whether that’s Yelp reviews or Google reviews, those kind of give you the initial credibility you need for people to pick up the phone and start calling you. – [Interviewer] Okay. – ‘Cause if you don’t have those initially, no one’s gonna trust you as a business owner. – It’s better to be very cautious about what you’re doing. You need to know something about what you’re doing, have experience, work for someone else. Learn something about what you’re doing because you’re gonna make mistakes anyway, even if you know everything. You know, entrepreneurs are risk takers. They’re the ones that throw themselves in the middle of the ocean on a night off of luxury liner and throw themselves in the middle ocean and say, I’ll find land. – Yeah. – We live in a society of instant gratification. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – People want gratification instantly. It doesn’t come instantly. Sometimes it could take 40 years. Are you willing to wait 40 years, for your gratification to come? – First you wanna generate leads and then you wanna start, you know, layering on branding. Once you’ve started to satiate those, you know, you’re spending a whole bunch on AdWords and you have high impression share, you know you’re maximizing your Facebook budget. What else can you do to kind of maximize all that? Then you start layering in those billboards and all that branding stuff. – I like how you said focus on leads first that will give you the business. – Exactly. – Not so much on branding as much, right? – Yeah because everybody thinks like, oh well you know, you have to know this brand. – Right? – But I mean, when you think of home services, no, there’s no McDonald’s of home services necessarily, right? People just want to know what you’re about. And you can do that through Facebook ads. You can do that on AdWords, right? So it’s literally when you show up, that’s when you explain how you’re different. Your brand is gonna grow over time, but that’s not really the important piece of front. You need to get jobs, right? – Yes. – Jobs create jobs. – Yeah. – The most important one is something called three SE. It means to sweep, to clean everything. So the first thing you do when you start your work, the first thing they do when they walk into their studio, the first thing you do when you sit down at your office is you don’t open up your phone and look at your email. You don’t turn on your computer. – Right. – You look in your office and say, what can be cleaned here? And you start to clean, you clean the dust, you clean the windowsill, you realize the cables are all bunched up in the back of your computer and you sweep that means to clean, you sort, you take all the papers around your desk. Like if you go down to my desk right now, you’ll see there’s hardly anything on it. Right? And I’m a busy guy, but there’s nothing on it. ‘Cause I’ve sorted, I’ve taken all the crap that’s piled up on most people’s desks and work area and I got rid of it. So you sweep, you sort, get rid of the things you don’t need and you standardize. You create standards on how you do work. We tell people to do that for 10, 15 minutes a day, max no longer that we do it for a half hour here. The reason why you 3X, is to find problems. So it isn’t to keep a neat clean place. Look how clean this place is, it’s incredible. Right, this is a factory. – Yeah, it’s good. – You can eat off the floor. We don’t do it for that reason. We do it to find problems – Interesting – Because when we clean, we go, oh, why is that dirt accumulating there? Where is that dirt coming from? That dirt’s coming from the seal in the door that’s faulty. So then we go and fix the seal in the door and then we don’t have the dirt there anymore. So we saw the problem, then we create a standard that alleviated the problem. We call it a countermeasure. That’s why you 3F. – I definitely say that an interview is not gonna tell you the full story. A lot of people will be like, "Hey, let’s just do an interview, whatever, and then we’ll do maybe a drive test." No, I asked them, "Hey, I want to take ’em to lunch." I want to see if they wanna go to dinner. I’ll say, "Hey, bring your wife or bring your kids, or whoever, I’ll buy you guys food because I wanna talk to think that’s better." Or the reason I say that is because you really get to see who they are around other people and then you know, with yourself. And so we just talk and I get to really know them and then say, "Hey, I feel comfortable with you driving my truck" and give ’em a shot. – Shut up and listen. Like, I’m not telling you to shut up, (both laughing) but I’m saying like, listen, like really hear what they have to say. It’s really easy as a boss or a manager or any place in authority to just say, "Hey, it’s my way or the highway." But if you just are quiet and listen, they’ll give you enough to where you know what the needs are and you’ll be able to find a place to meet ’em. – One of the biggest lessons I learned in life was from baseball. – Mm hmm. – And that was not to be a quitter. After one game, I got shell shocked by this one team in Lake Winnie. I mean the first three guys must have hit the ball either off the fence or over the fence. Devastated me. I said, "Coach, come get me. I can’t do this." Went on to cry my heart out. You know, I was just so embarrassed. Went home, father, no one ever said anything in their car until I got home. He said, "Son, you can win. You can lose. You can even get beat." – Yeah? – But in life one thing you can’t do is quit." – That’s what- – And that has sustained me through all these years. That one lesson at that age. – That’s pretty cool. – Branding is everything. You know when you have the beat up truck with the magnet signs on the side and they come up and they get the quote on a napkin and they leave it with the customer, like, that’s not gonna get you those high average tickets. They’re only gonna compare that person’s quote to someone else that’s kind of like similar in the ballpark. And it becomes just like all about. – [Interviewer] Absolutely. – [Brandon] The cost. – [Interviewer] Yeah. – But when we show up in this, they’re like, oh, okay, this is a professional company. We have the presentation folders, we have the videos, we have the branding locked down, we have the AI power visualizer tool. We adopt a baby elephant in their name, then literally have a picture of the baby elephant and like give ’em a certificate like at the end of the job. All that’s all automated. – That’s a good selling point. – So, you know, all those things go into an emotional experience where they’re like, okay, I can trust this company. – I think in life it’s good to be diversified. Keep your hobbies and your interest. Don’t just be focused on one thing. But when it comes to business, it’s not very important at all to diversify. Sometimes it’s best to focus on that one business until it’s really successful. And then if you feel like you want to tackle something new and for your own personal growth, or if you’re in a volatile market you don’t think is gonna last 10, 20, 30 years, then it becomes important to diversify. – Mm hmm. – Because now you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. – Right? – It happens. There’s the human element. And so, and most clients do understand that. But really it’s what matters is, and we call this the service recovery paradox. – Right. – Is that when issues happen on site and you know, say somebody’s not happy with the work was performed or the product that’s been been served or whatnot, you know, in fact the way that you react to that and take care of them in that moment actually builds out a greater, I guess a deeper relationship with those clients, especially in the B2B world. – Mm hmm. – So in our instance, say a line that they painted, it’s not the straightest, you know, you’re, somebody’s learning and they’re growing there and you know, the client calls you and says, "I want this line perfectly straight and this shouldn’t have happened." Agreeing and operating with what we call proactive urgency to take care of the client. – [Interviewer] Right? – And when that occurs, they will truly trust you a lot more and they’re gonna use you more. – You see online, they’re like, I’m working 13, you know, 17 hours a day, grinding we never sleeping, waking up at 4:00 AM, guys, I watch "The Office" at night with my girlfriend. You know, we watch movies on the weekends. I’m not working 24/7. But there’s times when you need to hustle. – Mm hmm. – And there’s times when work-life balance is gonna help you succeed even more because you can kind of de-stress a little bit. And, you know, meeting my girlfriend was actually one of the craziest things that helped me separate myself from the business a little bit. And I think it’s helped me elevate my business. – My biggest hack for you guys, especially starting out and grow a business is when you’re offering a price to your customers, always give them three options. Always give them an A, a B and a C. And the reason for that is, you know, when you go and just offer one price, it’s either a yes or no right? When you offer three different options, when you offer, you know, maybe the window cleaning, maybe it’s not so detailed and we don’t clean the insides, but just give them three options on your service. And then what’ll happen is it’ll give them options. It’ll give them the base price of package A maybe it’s not so expensive. Package C is your biggest package and package B is right in the middle, right? – Yeah. – So it gives them some options and you can, it’s better than a yes or no situation. Maybe you can find a package that better tailors and better fits their needs. – I do use the email list. I do capture leads. Main reason is because even though my entire business was built from Instagram, if Mark decides to take that away tomorrow, then my business is gone. So I need to make sure I capture my customers. Yes, Instagram is a great place of finding my customers, but then I take them out of Instagram and place them into my email list. But one thing I tell my customers, ’cause I personally don’t like being emailed a lot. – Yeah. – It’s the worst. I only email them important stuff like when I’m having a sale. ‘Cause that’s all they really want to know about. I’m not going to email and say happy Sunday, I’m not gonna email you for unnecessary stuff. And I’ve built that relationship and trust with my email list. So even when I do send out emails, my unsubscribe list is extremely low because I’ve created that relationship. – Speaking to your users early on. It’s more important than even the money coming in. Like if you could choose between making a few hundred bucks, making a few thousand bucks versus having very in-depth conversations with like a subset of users that actually use your product and trying to find out how to make your users love that product. That is the key difference between a product that’s just kind of flopping and doing okay and is destined to die versus a product that’s going to just continually spread and bring the lights to everybody that uses it, so. – What’s the most effective way, David, to communicate with your base? – I will say, first of all it’s really difficult to talk to your users. It’s very difficult to get them on the phone, get them to speak with you. Little did I know this was about to be extremely painful and I was about to be rejected for five hours with most people not even picking up my calls. Which you’re about to see. – [Speaker] Thank you for calling. – [Speaker] Thank you for calling. – [Speaker] Thank you for calling. – [Speaker] Please leave your message. (indistinct) – [Speaker] No ones available. – [Speaker] Thank you for calling. – I mean one hack that I did, well back when Bitgen was B2B was I would just cold call users. I would say I’m a student. I’m really interested in this industry. Would love to learn more about what you guys do. Hi John. Hi Natalie. Thanks so much for picking up my call. – [Speaker] No, I don’t have any. – [Speaker] No, I’m all right, thanks. – I actually just lost. – [Speaker] I got a full staff, thank you. – Obviously when you do cold calls, you have thick skin because a lot of them are gonna be annoyed and not wanna talk to you. But yeah, you have to kind of find whatever way to do that. And it was worth it to get rejected and kind of treated like an annoying person. But then you were able to have those conversations and through those insights you could actually make like a delightful products. – I used to stress out a lot more until I started writing everything down. And that way, whatever was in my mind, keeping me up at night, I would just write it down on a piece of paper and I would have it in the morning and I could get it done in the morning rather than staying up. ‘Cause you don’t get that much done at night like that. – I would be the person watching this video five, six, seven years ago going, how the hell do I do what I’ve now done? Right and have more to do. And so I literally was the exact same person that’s probably on the other side of the screen wondering if I was built out for it, if I could do it. If I could do this. – Yeah, that’s good. – It’s the same thing. I’m just the same guy. I just applied it and learned and definitely there’s some luck involved for sure. So yeah, that’s what I’d leave everyone with is certainly, if I can do it, you certainly can as well. – If you’re hanging out and you’re watching this video, I will agree with you that life is hard, but succeed anyway. I would encourage you. Never ever give up. Giving up is the quickest way to failure. But staying consistent and never quitting, no matter what the challenge is, there’s always a solution. Learn what you don’t know and surround yourself with great people is the best way to experience success inside this life. – Man. Well said. Appreciate it. – Yep. Thank you. – Thanks again for watching. We appreciate your support. Take care. (bright music)

Welcome to Big Money Investing – Your Ultimate Destination for In The Money Facts!

🌴 Discover the Big Money Investing Strategies on Metals and Real Estate Investing. 🌊

Experience the world of finance with Big Money Investing. We bring you the latest and greatest from Big Money Investors, showcasing the whys, how-to’s, and best practices. Whether you’re planning a short—or long-term investment, preparing is the first and most important step. The Big Money Investing channel is a great go-to investment advice source

🔥 What You Can Expect:
  • Exclusive Financial and Big Money Investing How-To’s
  • Big Money Financial Traits: Learn how to mix and match your perfect investment portfolio to match the planned-out time horizons.
  • Financial Learning Is A Lifestyle Change: Stay financially fabulous with our expert investing tips, real estate practices, and healthy lifestyle advice.
  • Behind-the-Scenes: Get a sneak peek into how the Big Money Investors spend some of that return, from photoshoots to interviews with the experts.
👙 Why Subscribe to Big Money Investing?
  • Stay Updated: Be the first to know about new investment ideas and most importantly what not to be part of in today’s age.
  • Inspired Goals Lend Motivation: Get inspired by our Big Money Investors’ vibrant and diverse lifestyles, a perfect view at times.
  • Engaging Community: Join a community of financial enthusiasts and wealth producers who love to share their passion for life with others.

🔔 Subscribe Now: Hit the subscribe button and turn on notifications so you never miss an update from Big Money Investing. Join us on this fabulous journey and transform your financial situation with the latest trends and tips from Big Money Investing. Thank you for being a part of our amazing community.

🔗 Subscribe here!

#BigMoneyInvesting #big #money #investing #lifestyle #investors

Support Big Money Investing Sponsors

Leave a comment on this content and future topics you would like us to cover on Big Money Investing!

Share this post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *