SKELLYCEO tells Evan Carmichael that you don't need to travel to grow. Tap multicultural communities in your city, use the internet to access global partners and mentors, and leverage local meetups and online resources. Entrepreneurship is resourcefulness.
Questions this video answers
Identify your product and target audience, then tap into local multicultural communities if available; otherwise, use the internet to access global resources, build virtual teams, and connect with mentors via social media.
Seek local meet‑up groups, classes, and online videos; use virtual collaborations and social media to find mentors and partners; focus on aligning audience, market, and network to bring ideas to reality.
For those who can't afford to travel, what is the best way to expand your mind?
That's a great question, Katie. I think, I think the reality would be if you live in a cosmopolitan city like Toronto, New York, or near a city, you could actually go and there's tons of amazing communities. You know, there's massive Cantonese community, Mandarin community, Indian community, you know, Bangladeshi community in all these places. So Again, it depends. First of all, kind of stick to what is your idea? What is your product? What is your mission? And then think about where is the audience that's gonna be the market for your product? Who are you gonna be your customers? And then even physically, you might find that there's cities near you where they're well represented or their demographics are well represented. And then the next question, if that's not the case, I don't know, say you live, in the middle of the Midwest in the US, in a kind of rural community, then the great news is the power of the internet has changed everything in the last 20 years. So you can go online, you can find anything 'cause you got an encyclopedia at the palm of your hand where you can find. And the other thing I've found with some great entrepreneurs recently, they've just built a virtual business of colleagues they've met around the world through the internet. You know, there's actually someone who's published a book and they self-published it and they actually got the editor, I think, from Turkey. You know, they're out of New York State, but they got the guys in terms of the bookbinding out of Canada. So, you know, the world is a virtual world that's all there for you. And I think the opportunity— and actually this really helps diversity and creativity— is there's tons of resources and brilliant people around the world. Well, there's 7 billion people, but there's a lot of people who want to support your success or your idea who are untapped resources. And they can either even be mentors to you to help you on your journey. And through social media, there's a great way of connecting with them now. And the nice thing about social media is it's almost a bond of trust. It's almost like when we meet people, we have to get to know them, but with social media, you kind of meet someone socially and you automatically trust them. And if they have got something that helps your idea come to market, then wow, it's worth testing that and pursuing that. And you actually can build a business and you can educate yourself, Katie. I think very clearly around where is your audience, where is your market, and who is the network of people I need to to make that idea come to reality and build a business. And it's all available through social and it's all available through the internet. So I would really encourage— I'm obviously really social by coming on this show. There's probably loads of people who are listening now, talking, paying questions in, who could be really powerful in your network to help your idea come to market.
Listen, Katie, I think this is part of entrepreneurship. You never have all the resources you want to do the thing that you want to do. You got to find another way to get started, right? Don't let the fact that you don't have the money to travel be the reason why you don't go out and try to expand your mind, right? And, you know, I, I don't have a building, so I can't— you know, we're always going to have these reasons why we can't do the things. Entrepreneurship is about resourcefulness and finding a way. So what can you do in your local city to find a way? Maybe there's meetup groups, you know, uh, there's salsa classes here in Toronto. I don't have to go, you know, to a different country to learn how to dance salsa. There's different activities you can do around, there's different videos you can watch. I learned a ton from my own videos where we cover— you guys give us suggestions on videos, people to cover, people I've never heard of who are— have had massive success in countries outside of North America, and I get to learn from that. And so it's just finding a way. What do you wanna learn? What are the skills? What are the people you wanna be able to connect with? There's probably a local group already covering that in some way. And if not, there's definitely one online that you can get involved with. So much more just about the resourcefulness than the lack of resources.
