EP #33 The Entrepreneur Mindset w/ Dan Sullivan

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Everybody. Welcome to Moonshots and mindsets. I am here with Dan Sullivan and we're going to be talking about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. What are the most important attributes of an entrepreneur? What does it take to succeed? How do you know if you're an entrepreneur? And what does it mean once you become an entrepreneur? So stay tuned for an extraordinary conversation with the head of strategic coach, the founder, a dear friend, the man who inspired me to create abundance360, my coach, Dan Sullivan, everybody. Peter Diamandis here. Welcome to our next episode of Exponential Wisdom. I'm here with my dear friend Dan Sullivan and today we're going to talk about something that is near and dear to both of our hearts and it's the entrepreneurial journey. We haven't had a chance to talk about this, Dan, but like, what makes an entrepreneur? What are the highs and lows, the pros, the cons of being an entrepreneur? What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? How do you succeed at it? And how do you know if it's right for you? So this is a subject that both you and I exude from our pores and excited to jump in.

Well, it's a very recent concept because if you go back, check the dictionary, the best definition was 1804. And that was a Frenchman by the name of Jean Baptiste. Say, and he said entrepreneurs are someone who take, who takes resources from A lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. So entrepreneurs improve things. They take existing things, they create new things, but they take resources. And he was asked what kind of resource? And he said, any kind of resource. And just a little note, and then I'll pass it on to you, whether you've heard other definitions. But he was asked, and there was no such thing as entrepreneur was a really new term as we use it today. And his whole belief was that it was the Industrial Revolution that really created a whole new class of individuals who could literally come from nowhere and become major economic players unlike anything that had happened before. And so he was the. I think that technically the Industrial revolution starts in 1776, in March of 1776. And it's when James Watt introduced an improved steam engine that got a 25% energy return, which was phenomenal. It'd probably still be phenomenal in some centers, but it was that sudden where almost any individual who was ambitious, who was enterprising, who is ingenious, could now use a new technology to massively transform productivity in all existing industries, starting with. Basically the fabric industry was where it was first used, and I mean as a real productive. It was used to get water out of coal mines in Great Britain. That was the main purpose. But it created two classes. It created the entrepreneurs who were these people who could come from nowhere and create great enterprises and great fortunes. And. And it created the intellectual class. There was no class called the intellectual class. And these are the people who hated entrepreneurs because they didn't deserve their status. They weren't educated, they weren't, you know, they didn't have aristocracy. They hadn't come up the normal way. And I think it starts there and then, you see, the 19th century was a phenomenal entrepreneurial decade. And of course, it's gotten exponentially larger.

You know, I define an entrepreneur as someone who finds a juicy problem and solves it. That's my, my definition. And I think today more than ever, especially during this exponential age, the ability for an. In a single individual to make a dent in the universe, to find a problem, solve a problem, is greater than ever before. Yeah. If you think about what it takes to become an entrepreneur, and I'm curious for those who are entrepreneurs, you know it. You thrive on it. I'm on my 26th or 27th company, some really good ones, some spectacular failures and everything in between. But I think I would if I were to rattle off the list of things. First of all, it requires passion or obsession with a subject because it's not easy. It's much easier. Just get a job and do what you're told. So that's the first thing. I think it requires a reasonably high risk tolerance because if you're really doing something on your own that hasn't been done before and you could lose it all and you're not sure where your next paycheck is coming, which is some part of the early entrepreneurial journey, risk is there. And then I think there's a certain amount of self confidence. I would say having an understanding of the problem you want to solve and possibly not required an expertise you're bringing to the table. Because a true entrepreneur will not ask how, but who, right? As you've famously said, they'll pull together a team. What are the other elements that you think of an entrepreneur needs to have?

Well, I think the one that I've noticed because I am fascinated in people's history. So whenever I meet an entrepreneur, I said, you know, when you think about the entrepreneurial path, which is definitely a fork in the road from the way that most people think about their future, when did you notice it showing up? If you had to go back to the earliest age, that you were doing things different than your peer group was doing, you were doing something different than them and you wanted to have a direct relationship with the marketplace. Okay. You didn't want a buffer of someone who guaranteed you income, didn't guarantee you security. You wanted to hit the marketplace. So do you remember?

I mean, I do, I do. I remember. I was in high school. I started a snow removal service between my house and my friend's house a few miles away. We went door to door and sold Snow removal for 20 bucks a shot. Wow, that was good.

Because that would have been the late 70s.

Yeah. The problem was we had a record three foot snowfall on one day and destroyed the business because I couldn't take care of it. But. But you know, that was my, my first effort. But my real entrepreneurial journey was my first year at MIT when I started a, a national international student space organization called Students with Exploration and Development of Space. And it was this bold, crazy vision that actually came true. And I was like, wow, this is cool. And there's like this, this element of surprise and delight when you start a business and people. And it was a nonprofit, but. And I got hooked. I got addicted on the idea of an idea and creating something that people would participate. How about you, Dan? What was yours?

Well, I grew up on a farm. So farming is a very risky entrepreneurial business. And our farm failed and my father recreated himself at age 60 as a landscaper and had his best. He worked right till he was 82 and he had his best business here. And he left, you know, my mother. He died at 83. But he worked full time when he was 82. And then he packed it in, he packed it in. He said, I can't do it anymore. And, and my feeling is that the day my father wasn't doing business, he didn't know what he, who he was. And. Yeah, and he just, he said, I'm out of here, you know, and that joy that you talk about, the excitement and a lot of it is just the applause. I think applause really keeps people in the game. Teamwork, deadlines, you know, having to create new solutions. But you're doing it face to face with the marketplace. So, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're really getting the best kind of research for the development of what you're doing. And it's check writers. Check writers are crucial and you want to be paid directly. You don't want to go through a third party. You don't want to have five levels of money coming down to you. And what I noticed just to finish this topic, that it shows up very early. I mean, the instinct for it shows up where it's chosen. I think there are people who are forced into it because of the failure of a large employer, and that happens. But I noticed the ones who start early tend to create new things more than the people who are forced into it. And you had a very divided, not only postgraduate, but you had, you were already added in undergraduate because you have your famous. Getting your medical degree because, because it received your medical school, received the least amount of your passion.

Yes, it. Very true. I mean, when you're hooked as an entrepreneur, you, you love what you're doing and you're excited to jump out of bed in the morning and go and see what are the results of what I did yesterday and what can I do different today? Dan, I think it'd be interesting to ask a question and get your insights and I have a few to add of what don't people realize about entrepreneurship? Like, what are some of the surprises that if you haven't been an entrepreneur and you become an entrepreneur, what are the surprises that, that most people don't know about?

No, go ahead.

I have one. I have one. I'm going to say the surprise is you're going to spend more time with your co workers and your co founders than you will your family or your Kids, you know, it's a. The reality is starting a company is never easy. Most companies are, you know, overnight successes after 10 years of hard work. And so pick your co founder and your employee team that you're working with carefully because they're going to be as close to you and sometimes closer than family. What about you, Dan? What else?

I think the biggest thing I often said, if there's a God in the entrepreneurial heaven, the name of that God is cash flow. Yeah, yeah, the getting the cash flow routine. Because you have to market and you have to create. In other words, and it takes a while for you to get these two together, that you can't just create and solve problems and then start marketing. You have to do both of them at the same time. And I think that's the hardest thing. I see more bankruptcies, I see more failed businesses just because they didn't get cash flow down. I went bankrupt twice in the late 70s and early 80s, and it was strictly receivables that killed me, you know, so in 84, we made a decision that we me talking to myself that I would never have another receivable, that what I was doing would get paid for up front. And people said, well, people just won't do that. And I said, well, I'm just going to find the check writers who would be willing to do it. But there you really have to be thinking in terms of their goals. You have to really be thinking. And I think that's the next thing that you have to understand that all of your money is in the aspirational future of your best clients.

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You said something really important about cash flow being critical. You know, as an entrepreneur, you're going to make a decision early on on if you're going to use your own money and your own blood, sweat and tear to get the company going. Are you planning at the end of this to own 100% of your own company or are you going to go out there and raise money from, you know, friends, families, angel investors, venture capitalists, and slowly, you know, dilute yourself from 100 ownership down to. Many times it may be down to 20% or 10%. And I've done both. And some of the crazy moonshot ideas require massive amounts of outside capital. But the companies that I've started and owned myself, and I started the company based upon making the first sales and building it on cash flow, have been the most fulfilling. Do you want to speak to that, Dan?

Well, I can remember when we started collaborating and A360 got created and it was at the first really big one, we did a sample version.

At SUS in Silicon Valley, right?

Yeah, yeah. And. And that's when I became fully human in your eyes.

Because you brought check writers.

I put butts in seats, you know, and I said, I don't think. I think I was more of an abstraction or a theory before that. And I remember the day before we did that first event, which was incredibly successful and has been ever since. All the money was already in. You hadn't put any. You hadn't put the presentation on. And I said. He said, boy, all the money. I haven't, I haven't actually presented anything yet.

Everybody bought the tickets in advance.

Everybody bought the tickets and, and so I've taken, I've just stuck with that one model for our own life. And we're up, you know, the real program, strategic coach program. I had 15 years of one on one and then I, we went to a workshop for him. And the reason was that Babs and I are Americans who live in Canada. And when we moved to Canada, they said that the tax system is voluntary. And I thought it meant optional. And then I had this true Canadian called me up with a distinctly Indian voice and said, oh, Mr. Sullivan, you've been a very, very naughty boy. You do not want to own the government money because we'll tax you on the money you pay us for. And so the one on one career was over. And I said, we're going to have to do a workshop to pay our taxes. And I say that because there's the story that entrepreneurs tell about how their business, you know, they were very systematic, they were very strategic. And then there's the actual story that actually got you started. And we were scared silly because we didn't think we could coach a room full of people. And we had six people in the first group and we weren't charging same as if I was charging for a whole year for a single individual. But it was 80% times six, so it was five times bigger.

Yes.

And I died and went to heaven on that day.

I tell you. And I agree with when you get.

Entrepreneurs and they're talking to each other, they love the failure stories. That's the thing about entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are the only people who thrive on, on failure stories. Corporate execs, you can never get people to talk about that, you know, government bureaucrats, nobody talks about their failures because they're swimming among sharks and it's blood in the water for sure.

For sure. So other truisms about being an entrepreneur, if you step into that lifestyle, the first, you know, the result is the buck stops with you and everybody looks to you. Something that we talked about in, in, in conversation before, before this podcast was the notion that, and it's a distinction people need to realize is entrepreneurs don't need to be the CEO of the company. Entrepreneurs hire CEOs many times and they're different phases of a company. Right in the beginning it is n of 1, it's you and you're responsible for everything and you'll bring in a team and then ultimately, you know, the thing I love is taking a role as founder and chairman or founder and executive chairman and hiring a great CEO to run all the day to day operations. The stuff that I don't love doing. I love the creative, I love the teaching, I love the strategy. I love all of that. You want to speak about the idea of. Of entrepreneurs hiring CEOs?

Yeah. Well, in my case, I married my CEO or she married me. I'm not quite sure how it went. But Babs, who's my lifetime partner in personal life and business life, she was really great at creating teams. And to this day, as a real gift for putting teams together. Okay. And she just looked at me and she says, you're just doing so much, one that you're no good at. And the other thing is some of the things that you're no good at, you just don't do, like filing with the government and, you know, paying attention to that. And so from probably the year before we actually started the program, she was just freeing me up. And there's one rule that she has in the company, and this goes back 34 years, and it's free up Dan. You free up Dan to what he's doing, and you don't have Dan. Like, we have business meetings to run the company, and if there's more than three per year, I ask for an investigation. Why am I sitting? Why am I in more meetings? But the way we look at it, it's like a live theater. If you think about the business of a live theater, there's the whole business of the theater, which is all the backstage that has to go in to fill up an audience. And I'm responsible for what goes on stage. I'm the front stage guy, and it's all my creativity that constitutes the front stage. But everything backstage I have no part of.

So is a concept in Coach.

No. What I say, there's no rule for this. There's no rule for this. It's how you want to have it. I mean, you created your entrepreneurial business for freedom. You want to be freed up to just do what you're passionate about. What you started the podcast with, it's about passion, but I think it's passion for freedom.

Yes. I mean, I think a true entrepreneur loves to do what they love to do. I would say if it's just about making money, you pick the wrong topic. You know, money comes as a result of doing what you love to do and what people need. But I was going to get to the idea that. That you speak about in Coach, which I love, which is unique ability. And as an entrepreneur, it's understanding what your unique ability is. It could be that you're a coder. It could be that you're a coach, it could be that you're a writer, it could be anything. You can build businesses around any unique abilities. And it's also knowing what you don't love doing and finding people the who's to partner with to do those things you don't love doing.

Yeah, I mean unique ability is really the concept, the cornerstone concept for what we've done. And my whole point is there that everybody's born and I think this is factory installed. People are born with a particular passionate interest in some sort of activity. And, and I think we've talked before about the school system. The school system I think tries to educate you out of a passion and wants you to be a generalist. You know, that you have to take everything. And it's very, very interesting. And we've had about 22,000 entrepreneurs who have on average spent three years, three years in the coaching program. And I can remember on one hand the number of entrepreneurs in 34 years. Well, actually 48 years because I started working with entrepreneurs in 1974 and I can't remember any of them saying that their formal education had really anything to do with their entrepreneurism. It's not that they're opposed to it or they're a thing, they just don't see it as a crucial factor to who they are as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, no, if it does have something to do with you, you became an entrepreneur during school and then school became a distraction for you along the way. So I have like one of the speakers at Abundance360 this year, Alexander Wang, who's the CEO of Scale AI which is a multi billion dollar company. He became the youngest self made billionaire and he tells the story that he was at MIT and over the summer he went to go work on AI and he told his parents it was going to be just this summer thing and he never went back.

That was the end of school.

That was the end of school.

I mean I think it happens so frequently, certainly during the microchip revolution. It happens so frequently that it's almost become a cliche. You know, I think it was, you know, she's in prison now. But you know, Elizabeth Holmes, her big thing was that she followed. You know, she went to Stanford and you know, got everything she needed and I think not even a year and then she went out. But that had become sort of a model that Steve, it was a badge.

Of honor to drop out of school.

Oh yeah, yeah. You obviously didn't have what it took to. I mean she had some other interesting issues with her whole presentation. But the thing was that she was following something that had been very, very dominant, especially in the 70s, I think was. But, you know, I mean, it's, it's an interesting thing, but it's almost like folklore, you know. Well, if you go to a university, then you have to drop out at a certain point or say, start your business and everything else. And you know, but the vast majority of people do get an education, but it just, they got an education because it was what you had to do. But it, it didn't figure prominently in the crucial center of why they're a successful entrepreneur.

Yeah, it wasn't like going to medical school to be a doctor or going to law school to become a lawyer. And you know, I don't actually know whether getting an MBA is that, you know, there's one reason to go to get your business degree is to meet a lot of other people. It's like the network that you.

I would say network is the crucial.

Yeah, but I, I've written some blogs about the idea. Instead of going and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and getting your mba, find a great network and plug into it or become an apprentice for someone you want to apprentice for.

Let me mention, how did that work for you? I mean, if you go back to your Harvard and your MIT days, I mean, I, I didn't. But it seems to me that you were making your network outside of both of them.

Yeah, it was all outside my, you know, I built my space network through that first group I met. I, I started and founded Students of Exploration Development Space. You know, Jeff Bezos was the president of the Princeton chapter and I met a lot of amazing people, but outside of school and same thing for medical school. I was checking the boxes and surviving in medical school to get that diploma and send it to my parents at the end. But my network was outside. Here's another attribute I think is important for entrepreneurs and I'm curious your thoughts. I think to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be a great communicator. You need to be effectively a salesman, saleswoman. You need to be able to compel your idea and get people to get it. Believe it, because you're in the beginning, you're selling yourself and you're selling your idea.

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Can I ask you a question about that? What gets communicated? You say a great salesperson, but from your experience, because you've really been heavily into the venture capital community for a lot of your different ventures and what are they betting on? Are they betting on the idea or are they betting on the person?

So I think about funding in phases. Right in the beginning there's the friends and family round when you have an idea and you're going out and pitching to get some capital. And the friends and family round of any capitalization. If you're raising capital, they're only betting on you. And because you don't really have a track record yet, you really don't have a fundamental idea. And what you want is people putting small amounts of money on you and then following how you succeed. And if you are able to succeed and you keep that community of investors informed, then as they see you succeed or fail and learn, learn something and then succeed, they're going to be willing to put additional money in and then, you know, there's the jockey or the horse obviously is the, is the, is the conversation. But at the end of the day, a great entrepreneur with a mediocre business will reinvent it into a great business. You know, a great business with a mediocre entrepreneur will fail. And so it, it needs to have that, that level of a great, a great person. But people in the early days are investing in you and the promise of the idea, they're definitely not.

That's the only thing real.

Yeah, it's the only thing real.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another, another question about that is really the, the, the failure. Because failure has a totally different meaning in the entrepreneurial world than it does in all other worlds. I mean, I can't think of another world maybe even where, where like in the entertainment industry, it's still, it's still the same model Babs and I are. I think you may know him or have met him. Jeff Madoff.

Yes, I know him.

And Jeff, at age 73, decided to write a Broadway play, a Broadway musical play and started five years ago. And it opens in Chicago. It's gone through the first route to open outside of New York City. They had workshops in New York and then started in Philadelphia and they had a three week run and it was spectacular. I mean they got rave reviews and sellout audiences and now they've gone. But at each level, who was doing the funding moved up a level. You started off with people you knew when you began and now it's big, big money coming in. And they have a 12 week run in Chicago right in the center of the. It's called Personality. And it's the musical history of Lloyd Price, who was the real first crossover Rock and Roll, 1951, 1952. And so Babs, Babs. And I just invested because my first thought in life is I wanted to go into theater, you know, and I've got good skills, I've got good theater skills, but I don't have the passion, you know, I wouldn't stick with, I wouldn't stick with it. And I said, Jeff, we'll pay for the coffee. We'll pay for the coffee. And we put in, we're on our third round. We put in not insignificant, but certainly not the top investor. But now you're talking about millions have to come in. And it's coming in from foundations, it's coming in from people who are strangers.

There's also a different world today as an entrepreneur where capital, capital goes through cycles of being restrictive and hard to get. And capital becomes open and available in the late dot Com Revolution. There was, like, I remember a friend of mine describing Silicon Valley as rivers of gold flowing. All you do is put your ladle and pick it up, and then all of a sudden, it shut off instantly. And so when I think about guidance to an entrepreneur, it's okay to have a big, passionate moonshot where you want to impact, you know, millions or billions of people, but I think it's really important to have a business plan that delivers $1 to a customer in the beginning. Like you say, check writers. Right. Because you learn a lot when you actually have to generate revenue at the start versus, versus, you know, theory. How do you. How do you think about that? What's your advice to entrepreneurs who are getting started now?

Well, I think the faster you can one. I mean, $1 for the. For the investor, but $1 for yourself. So Babs and I put in a policy rate from the beginning that 15% of gross was ours right off the top every year. And we've done. And we've done that since. Well, since we. Since we started. Okay. And we've. You know, I mean, we started off with two employees, and now we have 130. You know, we were just in Toronto, and Now we're in three countries, and I have 16 other coaches, and we've just had that constant model. The other thing, and this is a trick of borders, is that we're Americans, and Canadians, for the most part, don't know there's another country south of Canada. You know, there's this big space on the map, and being an American in Toronto is like being a shark at a beach party, you know? Yeah. I mean, there's an aggressiveness to the American marketplace that's. I mean, you can freeze to death up here. And I think it has so something to do up there. And. But we've arranged it so that 80% of our revenue is always in American dollars but repatriated to Toronto. I mean, there's a certain amount of money that we have to keep in our American company in Chicago, you know, but it just satisfies the requirements to have a company, and. Same thing in the UK but it comes back. But we pay almost all of our expenses with Canadian dollars, and for 34 years, it's been $1.26 difference. So we're getting 26 cents on every dollar. So one of the things I'm always saying that is that every entrepreneur works out unique formulas. That's a unique formula. And people say, well, why do you live in Canada? It's so expensive up there. And I say, oh, there are some hedges. There's some offsets. It's also easier to put a team together in Canada than the United States States, because Canadians are not nearly as mobile as people in the states. There's about 20. There's about 20 big centers that you could find opportunity. And Toronto, it's Toronto. You know, Canada, it's basically Toronto or maybe Calgary.

Means people stick around for the job for a little bit longer than.

Yeah, so we have 70 who have been more than 10 years. We have 25 that are more than 20 years. And the payoff for that if they're good people and you're operating according to unique ability and unique ability teamwork. There's an enormous institutional wisdom that grows up in the company.

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Dan when you're hearing the pitch from a young entrepreneur, whether they're joining coach or they're at Abundance 360, or you just meet them someplace. Are there, are there elements that you say, wow, this, this guy or gal is going to be a great entrepreneur or this person's, you know, dreaming is it. Is there a way that elements that make you put them in one or.

The other bucket, that they're, they're the pitches totally how the check writers benefit from this new idea that there's problems that the customer has that are not being solved, or there's better ways to solve the dangers they have, the opportunities they have, the strengths they have. And you've got a unique take on how they're immediately going to experience benefit. And if they don't have a handle on who the customer is. Then, then they're, you know, they're making up, you know, they're, they're making up fancy futures.

Yeah, that's a real important point. I would, I would say a slightly different way. If you've got someone who's got a neat technology that's searching for a problem that's a failure mode over and over again versus someone's seen.

I mean, I think probably the, you know, the microchip. I, I, I think this all starts when Gordon Moore, you know, put together a prediction line, you know, in 1965 wasn't even called microchips. I think 73 is when the term hit on. And it was very, very clear that this was a historic game changer, that there was going to be something. And I think there was a lot of people throwing solutions at nine problems because people were throwing money at new solutions. But I suspect if you go back to any other, you know, since the Industrial Revolution, that was the case. You know, people, there are a lot of people have money that they don't need and they just want to throw it at somebody, you know, or, or.

At some, at some problem to learn about. If you go back, you know, into late 1800s and the early 1900s when electricity first became viable, the, the entrepreneur du jour, or the invention du jour, was taking a mechanical thing and adding electricity to it.

Oh, yeah, right.

You know, the electric dishwasher.

Well, in 1910, there were 3,000 car companies in the United States.

Crazy.

And 40% of them were electric cars.

Yeah, that's even crazier. And, and now, of course, we're in the midst of the generative AI revolution where everybody's throwing generative AI at their favorite, at their favorite problem.

It's, I mean, it's, it's new, but it's class. There's a classical classic pattern on what happens during the early days. People are betting on the bet. They're not actually betting on the, you know, in some ways, they're not even betting on the thing they just want to see. You know, I mean, there was the recent example not naming names here of, you know, the, in the crypto, crypto world. And the guy got 220 million and he was in shorts and somebody said, I love the founder. I love the founder. 220. I just want to give him $220 million.

I could not imagine who that could possibly be. All right, so I want to maybe wrap with a rapid fire session on this podcast of advice to someone who wants to Be an entrepreneur or thinks they might want to be an entrepreneur. It's like, what do you need to think about? I'm going to throw out the first one. Choose your co founders wisely. You're going to, you're going to live with them, spend time with them, make sure they bring a different unique ability than you do. And that you talk about, you're talking all the time and sharing your ideas and your challenges and you have respect to their person. What's another piece of advice?

Yeah, I would say the other thing is make your first hire an artist.

Really? That's unusual. Tell me about that.

Yeah, because they can take your ideas and put them into graphic form.

And can it be Dall E2 or, or a stable diffusion?

Well, I mean, I, my rule is I always keep a smart human between me and the technology.

Okay.

And so, but my first hire was an artist. He was 16 years old and he had, he was into computers, you know, so this was 1987, 1988. And I promised him a Mac 2 if he came aboard. The Mac 2? Yeah, it was the little Mac to start with. You know, the little box like Mac. When the Mac 2 came in, they did get, you know, I mean, he was a dream and. But I have artistic skills. I was a layout artist in the advertising world, so I knew the basics. And he said, how come we always. He says, how come we always use Helvetica? And I says, because everybody uses Helvetica. I know, but we should be different. I said, there's a reason why everybody uses Helvetica, you know, and, and, you know, and so I hired an artist and because we had fantastic slides in those days and you could tell your whole story.

Dan, you're dating yourself way back.

I mean, I was old in 1980s. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm timeless now.

Yes, you are. You are. You're only halfway done with life. At. At least.

That was my first. And I. People said, well, why not a secretary? And I said, first of all, you can hire them by the hour, but you want to get your image of what you're doing in picture form as fast as you can.

We now have generative AI to help us on that. I'm going to throw out another one. Pick a subject you're obsessed by not interested in that is like that. You pick a topic for your business, your company that you're, is, you're passionate about, you're obsessed by. And it's not a passing fancy, it's.

A passion for or Passion against?

No. Well, it could be a passion for a passion against. Right. It could be, it could be a problem that you refuse to let go on any further. I'm going to solve this no matter what it takes or I'm, I'm going to create this because what's another piece.

Of advice, mine is talented, successful, ambitious entrepreneurs who don't have any lifestyle goals that they're heading towards and don't have any status goals, they just have growth goals.

Okay, I, I, I buy that. Understand your unique ability and, and do that which you're great at and you love doing and then bring in partners or employees who do the other stuff for you and support you. Yeah. Oh, another one you mentioned, we mentioned earlier. Generate dollars on day one. If you can get to check writers.

Get a fast Turnaround on your first. So I have a 90 day turnaround on anything new that I create. It's all, it's in the profit after 90 days, you know, and mind you, I'm dealing with ideas, it's not with stuff, you know, so I can do that. But I remember when we, when a360 got created and you know, I said, you know, you're going to have enormous amount of money before the first day of this. And we did, we did. And you were able to grow your team from that. And you know, for sure, I mean.

The equivalent here is build a minimally viable product, an mvp. You can prototype it, you can start selling it. You can start taking out Google AdWords and testing it. You can throw up a Shopify page and see if anybody wants it. You can go to, you know, a variety of platforms and, and get, hey, yeah, today, get customer feedback. Get customer feedback.

Yeah. And there's only, the only person who can tell you it's a good idea is somebody who would write a check for it. Nobody else is. Your friends, your family, especially not your staff. You're paying them. They don't think any new idea is that good.

Well, it's interesting, right? On the flip side, sometimes your staff will tell you it is a good idea when it isn't. I remember I was interviewing Elon Musk on a Goldman Sachs stage and he said something I never forget. He said, your friends tell you how great everything is. Your best friends tell you what suck. So make sure you've got people.

Yeah, but check writers will just tell you that they wouldn't, they wouldn't pay for it the way it is. But if you've made some adjustments and that's great market research, you know, and I think you mentioned Elon and I think Elon is the. From my perspective, you know, which is not close like yours is. He is. Of all the big tech people, I think he's the truest entrepreneur of them all.

Yeah, for sure. Sees a problem, jumps on it.

Well, not only that, but he continually takes big risks. Okay.

Yes.

And the other thing he's got a very interesting, which I totally agree with, is fail as fast as you can and as often as you can, and pretty soon you're going to get to something that nobody else could possibly have created.

Yeah, it's amazing.

I mean, he, he's got a different kind of nervous system. I think he does.

He's also one of the most extraordinarily intelligent individuals I've ever met in my life who has a first principle thinking mindset.

Yeah, he read and almost memorized whole encyclopedias when he was a K. And no, no, I mean his understanding of geopolitics and everything, I mean, when Elon makes a big decisions like a 10 million dollar factory in Mexico.

10 billion, right?

Yeah, 10 billion. 10 million. Yeah. You can't round off with 10 million. But $10 billion factory, he's sensing something in the wind. And the thing is that there's a shift on and where the North America, the United States, Canada and Mexico have just tested out supply chains from all over the world that aren't dependable. And he said one of the things everybody's decided, it can be in Mexico, but it has to be on the continent. You can do it by truck, you can do it by train, you can do, you know, and everything. But the other thing, the pay scales in Mexico are about 1/6 the pay scales in the United States. At almost every level, the US is six times the pay scale. And you have to have that with high technology. You got to have this spectrum of pay scales, you know, for it. I just think, you know, I mean, he, he bought Twitter and everybody says, you know, he's just fooling around. It's like buying, buying somebody buying a baseball team. And I said, no, no, no, no. I said, I mean, it's really dangerous. The second. Second guess, Elon Musk.

Yeah. No, my, my guess is that when he takes it public again, It'll be at least 5x what he bought it for with a number of new revenue streams. Okay, my last thought on entrepreneurship here to close out our podcast here, buddy, is it is one of the highest forms of artistic creativity. You're creating something that can change the world. If you've got a Bent for it. If you're interested in it, I could not commend it more than, you know, a way of life. It is extraordinary. I love being an entrepreneur, and I love hanging out with entrepreneurs, and I think they're the most important forces of making the world a better place.

Yeah. And I talk to people as if it's a career choice. It's not a career choice. It's a lifetime choice. Okay. And I said, you have to understand that if you've been at it for five or 10 years, this is a life sentence.

There's no going back.

They will have you back. And what are you going to show them for the 10 years? You know? Well, who did you work for? I mean, you know, who withheld your tax at, you know, at Source and everything like that?

You know, you become unemployable after a year or two.

I would say that that's the actual decision that takes the greatest commitment. This is for life, you know, Your whole life. Your whole life. Certainly mine. I mean, the day I quit will be the day after I die.

Yes. For sure. All right, buddy, as always, a pleasure spend time with you. That was. That was fun. All right. See you. See you soon. See you next time. Okay.

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