Discover the 12 Rules to Elevate Your Business | 9 Minutes Insight

It's great to be here. It's our first webinar, it's our trial, so you guys are the guinea pigs, and it's great to be able to connect with you guys. I've done a lot of workshops here in my city and presentations. We haven't done webinars before, so I'm not used to not seeing my audience, but I'm looking forward to having a good discussion today. Today we're going to talk about getting past survival and we're focusing in on the early stage, starting your business. We're going to look at 12 rules for startup success. Today is part 1, so we're going to look at the first 6 rules. I just wanted to go over a quick couple ground rules. About me, for those of you who don't know me, I help entrepreneurs. My goal is to help a billion entrepreneurs. When I was 19, I had a biotech software company. We built it up, sold it. And then when I was 22, I joined a VC, venture capitalist. We were raising $500 million to $50 million for companies. There's a bunch of miscellaneous stats on me now. My main business is evancarmichael.com, and our goal is to help a billion entrepreneurs. And I'm 30— how old am I now? 32? 32. So I always have to think of what year it is. So a little bit about me for those of you who aren't as familiar. So the biggest thing for a lot of entrepreneurs when they're first starting up is getting past the survival stage. And you may have huge visions of where you want to go and the world you want to change, and that's awesome. Step 1 is you got to get to survival. If you're not able to put enough money on the table to feed yourselves and pay for your rent and everything else, then you're not going to be able to have that big vision for your business. So this part is really focusing on how can we get to that survival point so you're making enough money to quit your job and start having the life that you want, and then you'll be able to make it big and hopefully change the world. A quick note on questions: ideally we're going to have a question and answer section at the end, but if there's a really important question that you have, feel free to ask it, and Carl, who's monitoring the questions, may interrupt and ask that question. If it really pertains to the topic we're talking about on this slide, then feel free to ask it, but we're also going to have a section at the end. We're going to get to the incubator question, and if you have other ones, let me know too. And one last thing on prizes, we're going to do some prizes here. We're going to have one prize, it's going to be a 30-minute call with me to ask any question, talk about your business, and we're also going to give away some packs of the Famous Entrepreneur trading cards that I created, and that's going to be awarded by questions, and it's going to be a random question, so make sure you're asking those questions, and we're going to pick one winner. At random for the call and a couple for the cards, and Carl will figure that out at the end of the call. So here we go, the first 6 rules. So a quick overview of what we're going to talk about today: number 1, follow your passion; number 2, work to learn; number 3, start part-time; number 4, build around the customer; number 5, income depends on the value you provide; and number 6 is model success. And if you stick around all the way to the end, I'm also going to include a sample mentoring script. I know that's something that a lot of people are worried about and thinking about, "How do I get a mentor to help me with my business?" And so I'm going to show you how you can do it and give you an actual script that you can use and copy and paste if you're going to start emailing some potential mentors. So I hope you're excited. I'm excited. Then let's kick this thing off. So first rule, and by far the most important rule, at least in my opinion, when you're starting a business is you have to do something that you're super, super passionate about. Too many entrepreneurs start a business just because they're trying to make money, and that's almost always the wrong way to do it. You'll often find that people who are just trying to make money rarely end up making money, as strange as that sounds. And if you look at the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, and you can do your own research, we've done a lot on our site, you'll find that they started a business because they had a really strong passion for doing something. They wanted to change the way that things were done. And they would do it even if they weren't making money from it. If they couldn't turn it into a full-time business, they would still do it. And those are the ones who go on to become hugely successful entrepreneurs. And so I want to encourage you, if you're at the point where you're thinking about what business you want to start, to really focus in on something that you're passionate about because it's going to be tough. Entrepreneurship is sexy and everybody wants to do it and be your own boss and work your own hours. But it's really hard and you'll— every entrepreneur will go to the point where they think about quitting and going back and getting a job because it's just too hard. And if you're not really passionate about it, you're going to give up. So if you're just chasing the dollars, it's probably not going to happen. You know, first sign of failure, you're going to give up and go chase something else. Where if you are going after something you're really passionate about and really fuels you, you get that energy to push through all the hurdles that are going to come at you, and it's also a lot more fun. When you're helping people and you do something that excites you, it's way more fun and way more profitable than just going out and trying to make a buck. So I really want you guys to think about how you can connect to your passion and be able to build a business around it. I'm going to go through a quick exercise of how to help you identify what your passion is and then be able to build a business from it. So I just did a quick Google search yesterday and I put in "how many people hate" and the top results coming back were their jobs, their life, their boss, and their mother. I don't think I can help you much with your mother if that's a challenge, but your job, your life, your boss is probably something that can help if you're going to be an entrepreneur. So a lot of people hate what they're doing and that's what forces people to start their own business because they don't like their current environment. And so I want to encourage you to do it and kind of give you some of the steps to help you through that process. So a couple of quotes from famous entrepreneurs. If you don't believe me, then hopefully these guys will help convince you as well. And when I was getting started, I found that this was really helpful to be able to look at famous entrepreneurs and see how they were successful, and that gave me the inspiration and motivation to keep going when things got really tough. And that's one of the main motivations that I started my website. So this is from Dana White, who's the— President of USC, writes, "90% of America gets up in the morning and drives to a job they hate." That's true, and as an entrepreneur, you get the chance to be able to create your own destiny, create your own work life, and choose projects to work on that excite you. So hopefully, if you're an entrepreneur, you're not going to a job that you hate. You're creating your own life and something that you really have a passion for doing. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, Burdin is saying, "Pursue your passion. If you're passionate about something and you work hard, you will be successful." Again, talking about that passion, making sure you're following it and use that to fuel your business growth. And one more, Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel, "Passion, that's it. When you believe in what you're doing, that's it." And again, if you look at any famous entrepreneur, their success story, go back to the beginning, nobody will say, "I did this because I wanted to make a lot of money." I did it because I really loved what I was doing and I wanted to have an impact on the world or impact on my market, and as a result, it became really successful. You have to make money, right? You have to make money if you're in business, but it's not the main goal. Your main goal is a greater purpose and being able to create something that you're really proud of what you've done. So quick exercise on how to find your passion. I get a lot of questions on it. I don't want to spend too, too much time on it, but because I get so many questions, I thought it would be helpful to go through a quick exercise. If you're not sure what you're passionate about or what business to start, what I recommend doing is write down a list of 10 things that make you happy. Don't worry about it being a business opportunity yet, just things that you get a natural high off doing, you really enjoy, super fun and exciting for you. And then think about how much do you love it, rank it out of 10, and how much does it help others. So that's the value. So I want you to write down here, 1 to 10, your activities. How much do you love it out of 10? And then how much value does it give to other people? So, uh, the more that you're able to help other people, the more you're going to make it into a business and become successful. Then you add it up. So this last column is going to be your total score, and, uh, it's going to be out of 20. So again, you don't have to worry about it being a business opportunity yet. Just start around what you're really excited about and passionate about, what makes you happy, what helps others, and generate that list. And this is your starting point. The next thing I would do here is write down another list of up to 10 of what you wish you could do. So, you know, if the world were limitless, you know, which it pretty much is, what do you wish you could do ideally, in an ideal world? You may not have too much experience in it, but you really have a strong passion to learn about something. What type of opportunity could you create? And then do it again for What kinds of frustrations have you solved? A lot of the best businesses in the world have been created by entrepreneurs who had their own personal challenge or frustration. They wish something could be different and then they created a solution to it. Well, if you're having that problem, chances are other people are having that problem too, and that's how you could start a business. So ideally you have a list of maximum of 30 ideas of things that you like, things that you wish you could do. And frustrations that you've solved, and you've ranked them all by how much you love doing those activities, and then how much value you think it provides to other people. What I want you to then do is think about the ones that score higher than 16 and circle them, and those are going to be our starting point for business opportunities to be able to build around what we're really passionate about.