6 Things To Know Before You Become An Entrepreneur

Hey friends, what's going on? Welcome to the show. This is ryan. This is capitalism.com and today I'm going to chat with you about six things that I wish I had known when I had started my entrepreneurial journey. And this is straight out of the introduction of my book 12 months to 1 million, which is available now on Amazon and at bookstores nowhere because bookstores are not open and you can't go there right now and you can't buy my book. So actually you could buy it there if it was open, but they're not open. So you can drive to the curbside pickup and grab it, which no one is doing. Or you could just click the add to cart button on Amazon by searching my name. So in my introduction to 12 months to 1 million, I go through a little bit of how we got here, a little bit of the journey of getting to the point at which I can formulaically build million dollar businesses and being on the other side of all of the struggle and the hardship and the sleepless nights and the worries about money and fears of failure after having a more than $10 million exit after having lots of failures to get there. I condensed what I wish I had known at the beginning of my journey into six major lessons. And I'm just going to share with you. I'm going to do a little bit of a free flow while also reading a few selections from the introduction of the book. But I'll just jump right in with the first thing that I wish someone had told me when I had started. Number one, this is harder than you think. And if I could say this differently today.

I would just say this is a life sentence. Most entrepreneurs get into this game because they're looking for a short term win rather than the beginning of a lifelong adventure. I wish I had known at the beginning of my journey that the goal was not to be free from work, free from struggle, free from financial worries. I wish that I had known at the beginning that this entrepreneurial pursuit, this adventure, this journey is not about ending financial stress. That is not what this is. This is a lifelong sentence, a lifelong adventure in which we are going to become better and better and better as time goes on. And I used to look at entrepreneurship as a way to make money, but I know now that it is a way to become the most impactful person that I can possibly be. And I don't think there's any faster route to discover that than by bearing the responsibility of building a company and serving customers and managing capital. I don't think there's any way to become a more impactful person. Obviously, I believe that capitalists create change, so making someone a capitalist real quick creates a whole heck of a lot of change. But the way that I described it in the book was a little bit more jarring. I said, this is harder than you think. I say becoming and succeeding as an entrepreneur is a lot like parenting. I can tell you it's hard. You can read books like this one that explain all the pitfalls and provide all the tips, but at the end of the day, you just cannot imagine how difficult it will be. And.

I might say this a little bit differently now, but when I was writing this, I wanted to kind of shake up the person who was reading a book about making a million dollars if they were coming in with the idea of I have this fast lane to riches. Because that's not what this is. Entrepreneurship, again, is a lifelong sentence.

It is a multi decade adventure of you creating and exploring and sometimes winning, sometimes losing, sometimes hustling, sometimes chilling, but the entire time finding more and more ways to be impactful. To me, that's what entrepreneurship is. Or as Russell Brunson has quoted me as saying, an entrepreneur is someone who takes responsibility for a problem that they did not create. And that, to me, is what this game is about. And so I wish I had known at the beginning of my journey that this was not about what I could get in the short term, but about what I would become and the adventure that I would go on, understanding that at times this was going to be way harder than I could ever imagine.

I say in this section, the people who think that the entrepreneur life is easy almost always fail. More accurately, they think that it will be easier than they've been told. After all, how hard could it be to hustle for 12 months for a million dollar payday? But you have to nurture your business. You have to live with it every hour of every day, like a child. Sometimes it calls for you in the middle of the night and you have to get up to help it. People who plan for an easy ride get kicked in the teeth and quit. Even if you enter knowing how hard this can be, you'll find the reality surprising. But knowing the challenges from the start gives you a much better shot to build something that works. This is why Gary Vee is such an advocate of following your passion. He doesn't say following your passion, but doing something that you're passionate about or finding passion in what it is that you're doing, because in his words, is the only way to pull you through the difficulty that is the job of an entrepreneur. If there is not something compelling you forward, you will give up and quit. And most people don't believe this. But money is not enough of a motivator to pull you through that time. So you have to like it. You have to do the thing you like, otherwise you will give up. This is harder than you think, so do something you like. That's a good way to put it. It's harder than you think, so do something you like. Always in some of my coaching calls inside the tribe, it has come up of the question of what should I do? And we often go back to what do you want? What do you like? What is it that you are building this for? Because the minute you compromise that for something.

You'Re on the wrong path. Number two, it's not about what you can get, but what about. Let me say that again. It's not about what you can get, but what you can create. One of the first mindset shifts you'll need to understand is the difference between value extraction and value creation. Too many people think that they are not.

Man, I'm preparing for my audio book Tripping over my words. Too many people think they are only out to get a slice of the pie, of the limited value out there in the world. They walk up to a table that has a single pie, take a slice and think that's enough. They imagine that once all the slices are gone, that's it, no more value. That's why people hate on billionaires or companies that don't pay enough taxes. They believe that the top 1% get rich by taking from others. But the truth is we create value. For every slice you take, you have to bake a whole other pie. Jeff Bezos got insanely rich because he changed an industry. That's value creation. I wish that I had understood at the beginning of my journey that you are creating value by default and you are doing it unconsciously, but if you do it consciously, you can create a lot more value. The reason why there's jobs in the world is because there is value to be created and we have to come together to create more value than what currently exists. This is why there's a famous Marxist argument from people who are socialists or communists or just read the works of Karl Marx. They say that they make this argument that workers are by nature underpaid because in order to turn a profit, you have to pay the worker less than what the company can make. And it's a false premise because the premise is based on the idea that when two people come together, they can't create more value than they could on their own. But that's what's true. When two people come together with a mutual desire to create something, to go in the same direction, you can create more value than you take. Value is not a fixed amount. Money is not a fixed amount. It grows, it compounds, it expands. It's why the world gets better over time. It's why we have more solutions to problems over time. Because there is not a lack of money in the world. There is, however, money that has not been created yet. That's a thing. So you becoming a successful entrepreneur does not take from anyone. You are actually creating the money. It is created. I don't just mean created for you. Created from nothing. Value is infinite. It can grow. There is no limit to the amount of money and value that exists in the world. I am not talking about paper money that the Federal Reserve controls. I'm talking about real value measured in the form of dollars. In terms of the United States, value is created. Money is the byproduct of, and we can create as much as possible. Now, I wish I had known that from the beginning because it would have just given me permission to create from a place of abundance rather than from a place of what will work or what will make me money. What will make me money is creating a lot of value. I wish I had known that at the beginning of my journey because it would have given me permission to think more creatively, to go for it more aggressively, to be more fired up. And most people get into this game thinking about what does the marketplace want and how do I extract as much as possible? And that's why people get stuck. All right, number three, growth is like interest. It compounds over time. A hustler lives from small win to small win. Tiny wins, like buying things at garage sales and selling them on ebay, never compound. You might work really hard to make extra money, but it's unlikely you'll become a millionaire. If you follow my plan, results will stack extremely quickly. They might seem insignificant at first, but after a year, you will have a hard charging income stream that continues to grow for years to come. One of my favorite books is called the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. In it, he argues that extraordinary results do not come from big wins. They come from incremental steps forward that compound over time. For instance, you don't get fat by overeating one time. You get fat when you consistently overeat. The same is true with wealth. You don't get Rich with one big sale. You get rich by doing the right thing long enough for it to compound. In my experience, it takes about 12 months of consistent compounding efforts to create a successful, profitable business. Everything we do in life and all the success we have comes from habits. More to the point, it comes from them setting long term goals and using those habits to drive toward them. Whether I'm trying to get fit, get rich or get happy, I need to think long term. If I treat my customers well, they'll be happy. If my customers are happy, they'll leave. Good reviews. Good reviews build a loyal customer base. Efforts and actions compound and the more long term you can think, the more successful you will be. So just like, just like how Warren Buffett invests for the extreme long term, looking at exponential compounding returns. That's how I wish I had thought about business at the beginning of my journey. Had I thought about the extremely long term with the intention of doing the right things now, knowing that even if they seem insignificant now, they will lead to compounding exponential results over 1, 2, 5, 10, 30 years, then you will go faster than everyone else. So often we want to take the lane of skipping all of the things that are in front of us. But in reality, if we do the things that are in front of us really well, then everything else becomes unnecessary and they move out of our way. So that's how we can. Even if this is how people like Brooke Castillo can say I'm gonna have a hundred million dollar business. Even though she was only doing like $2 million or whatever it was when she set that goal. Because things compound, they don't increase incrementally. They compound. Alright, number four. Your business impacts more than your bank account. I wish someone had told me way back when I was getting started just how big this was all going to get. I had no idea what I was building or what it would all mean years later. Had I known, I would have gone even harder. I would have been even more aggressive.

We all have brands that we're passionate about. For me it's Quest Nutrition and Zevia and we love to buy them. You will be building something that directly impacts people on that level. People get into this life thinking too small. They want the added revenue stream, they want a little extra, but they have no clue just how big this can get. There are a million dominoes ready to fall and all it takes is someone with the drive to push the first one. Every micro decision is a reflection of what happens at scale. I might make nine videos that get 100 views apiece. But my 10th one is seen by 100,000 people out of 100 videos. One will go viral and be seen by millions. So actually it goes on to say, that's why it's a good idea to treat every customer well every single time. Nine out of 10 are going to say thanks for my thing, but one is going to brag about you to 10 of their friends. And one out of 100 is going to be an influencer with a following of 10,000. So what I wish I had known at the beginning was just how many people would potentially be touched by my business. A really interesting thing happened to me when I sold Sheer Strength. And it was, I sold to this private equity firm or what I thought was this, you know, big, reputable private equity firm. And they.

They were wanting to buy our business. They were, you know, courting our business, looking at other businesses to buy too. And it occurred to me, oh, my goodness, this business, this private equity business is counting on people like me starting businesses that become profitable so that they can acquire them and scale them. It made me realize that if you think about this, the companies that are portfolio businesses like Procter and Gamble, they go out and they buy businesses. They bought my buddy Moise ali's business for $100 million. Procter & Gamble is a publicly traded company that is owned by tens of thousands of people around the world. And pensions are in Procter and Gamble pensions are in businesses. So if you think about it, there are teachers associations whose retirement is dependent upon Moiz Ali starting native deodorant in 2015. They are now going to have a wealthier retirement because Moise Ali started a business that was then acquired by a publicly traded company. Do you get that? He started a company with $500 and it will change the financial future of people who have never met him because they have a pension that partially invests in Procter and Gamble. Who bought Native Deodorant. This is how the world works. A publicly traded company bought Quest Nutrition. Same thing. There are going to be people whose retirement is now bigger because Quest Nutrition was started by Tom Bilyeu in 2011 or whenever he started.

So this is way bigger than you think. And it's not just bigger, like, because E Commerce is roaring like a fire. And it is, it's bigger because everything that you do has ripple effects that can impact people you never meet.

That is what's happening here. That is the opportunity we're sitting on. And if you know that up front, it gives you permission to think bigger, to Go harder and be even more aggressive. Number five. Having a partner can be a blessing or a curse if it's done wrong. Great partnerships are not 50 50, they are 100. 100. You have to punch the expectation that you will each do an equal amount of work because there will be times when you drive the ship and times when your partner carries the torch. If you can take total and full ownership for your own results, then I would highly suggest bringing on a partner with the same mentality. When two people come together and they both take total responsibility for the results of the project, it can be magical. It can also be a disaster if it's the wrong fit. There are two types of entrepreneurs. Those who drive the vision and those who build. It's incredibly rare for one person to be both a visionary and a builder. So I'm a visionary. My business partner Matt is the builder and together we're incredible. We're so good together. But two visionaries. I have tried to partner with other visionaries. Absolute disaster. Absolute disaster. I go on to say in this section.

Take an example of my business partner, Sean. This is my partner on the yoga mats business. When I first started, we built and sold a small yoga business. A few years ago, while we were in the initial building phase, he couldn't get his head out of the planning process and he wouldn't make any decisions. He's the builder. I'm a visionary. Every time he got stuck, I pushed us toward the next step. It forced him to play catch up. At the same time, his need to be prepared meant we always had answers to any questions that arose. Together we built a business. We balance each other out. To this day, Sean says, if it wasn't for you, I'd still be looking at spreadsheets trying to decide what product to sell. I reply, without you, I'd still be thinking a year into the future about how to scale a million dollar business I haven't even built yet. So this is when two plus two equals five. When you can partner with the person who is the opposite of you and together it's magic. But if you partner with somebody who's just like you, absolute nightmare. I like to say if the two of you are in charge of the same things, one of you is unnecessary and you have to punt the expectation that it's a 50, 50 thing, it's 100, 100. You will never see what the other person brings to the table and you should not expect to. You just have to go into business together, trust the other person is going to carry their Weight in an opposite way as you and move forward. It is the only way a partnership can work. All right. And number six, no matter what, the chips stay on the table. When it comes to building a seven figure business, here's the mindset you should take on. The longer you can keep your chips on the table, the bigger your end result will be. This means not taking an income from the business as soon as you're profitable. It means keeping the profits in play for the business rather than for your own bank account. Put simply, it means reinvesting rather than recouping. It took me a long time to understand the idea that the money in the business's bank account was not my money, it was the business's money. And just because I own the business does not entitle me to the money that is in the business bank account. That is the business's money. And if I take money out too early, I am starving the business of needed resources. Resources that it needs more than me. And had I known this early on, I would have reinvested for those compounding results that would have made me way richer than I am now. I end the chapter with kind of a call to arms about your 12 months beginning right now. And I say this year is not spent sitting around. You're working, growing and building towards your goal. Those habits you develop only grow stronger and that time builds up quality exponentially. Think about it like compound interest. Let's say you sell your business after six months and make $100,000 on the sale. Imagine how much more you could have made had you waited and kept building for the entire year. You could have grown into new markets, cemented your customer base and improved your product list. By giving into the appeal of a short term payout, you've potentially cost yourself millions. So It's a full 12 month sprint and I've really enjoyed. Some people have reached out to me on Instagram or other social media channels and they've said today's day one. They just reached out and said today's day one. I don't know what I'm going to do. But today's day one because they recognize that it's day one of a of a full year adventure. So if you want to start yours, go grab a copy of the book. 12 months to 1 million. It's the best piece of content I've ever created. I am unbelievably confident that it is going to radically change thousands of entrepreneurs lives, yourself included. So thank you for all your support throughout this process of the book and the podcast, I honestly feel like it's definitely day one again. I'm so pumped for everything that is happening in this community. E commerce is on fire, the tribe is growing, the 1% is popping. We're having so much fun, and I'm really enjoying hanging out with you here on the podcast. So thank you for listening. I hope you grab a copy of the book, and when you do, I hope you enjoy every page. Thanks for listening to the show. I'll see you guys on the next episode.