"The SECRET to Beating the FEAR of Not Being Successful | Advice for Entrepreneurs"

Luke. Okay. Luke has been asking this question at least 10 times in the chat. Luke, I'm hearing you. There's a ton of questions. We're going to— we're going to get it. This is for you, Luke. Okay. Luke says, I'm a young entrepreneur and people keep telling me or giving me the feeling that I won't be successful. What advice do you have?

Wow. Luke, actually, at SAFE Summit, one of the things that blew me away out, I went on the floor and we did loads of mentoring. I met a 14-year-old entrepreneur on his second business idea. I loved it. He blew me away.

God.

So Luke, I don't know what age you are, but there's so many people and maybe this is, maybe it's a little bit ageist, but particularly some older people who probably, will tell you the reasons why it's not such a good idea. But if you believe in it and then, you know, do everything we've talked about previous programs— test your idea, test drive it, road test it. You can road test it with your friends, uh, you can road test it on social, and you can create a following. And that will give you the energy and positivity to know that your idea is going to land. But I, I— how do you know if an idea is not going to land if you don't try it? And back to that example, if you don't try it, you know, failure is actually not trying it. The fear of failure actually creates almost like a cancer. If you fail to try it, then, you know, you've, you've let us all down because you could have done it. I'll tell you, Evan will tell you today, if you have an idea, you know, if you back yourself, you're halfway there. And, and what, what is brilliant and what I love doing more than anything is defying the cynics. Loads of people could be cynical or jealous. People might be jealous that you've had that idea and you're going to make your idea come to reality and you're going to make your dreams come true. But, you know, I'd back yourself and I'd do your idea. Whatever happened, you know, and it's amazing, you never know what twists and turns life's got in front of you. So I'll give you an example. When I left graduate school, And it was before the internet. So I wrote one of my buddies. I'll give you an example, a real good buddy called Paul Smith, great guy. He wrote 240 companies, 240 companies, and he only got a handful of replies. All of those turned him down. He didn't even get an interview, but he kept on going. And just, you know, could you imagine how demoralizing that I got turned down by so many companies for graduate school. I even got turned down. This, you know, I applied to all these great companies at the time called Unilever and all these great— P&G, and they turned me down. So one of the funny things is, Evan, you know, in those days you kind of did these placements. I did a 4-year course and I did kind of 2— they call it a sandwich course, a placement at a company. And the company that I did a placement at, BP, I thought I was a shoo-in for the job. I went for the job and I got turned down. So, you know, how does that work? So, um, but you just got to pick yourself up. And, and what I would, I would say there's a few things in that sort of scenario. One of the things that, um, I asked for, which is so powerful that I don't think very few people ask for, is a magic word called feedback. And if people turn you down, you know, whether it's for an audition, if you want to be an actor, whether it's a business person, you did a pitch, or if you're going to, you know, a later stage company, if you're going to raise money and you do a pitch to your family, you know, why are they backing you or why are they turning you down? If you ask them feedback, it is mind-blowing how you can improve your business, your product. Your whole sales pitch, your website, your social experience. So I think, you know, bottom line, Luke, is, you know, back yourself, defy the cynics, try your idea, and constantly have those social antennae on to say, you know, how can I constantly improve and course correct my product and my idea to make it land and make it big? I love it.

And Luke is loving that, that we picked his question. So he's He's happy in the chat. Luke, I would say, I would say one, back to our initial comment at the top about the environment, the environment matters. I would start surrounding myself with young entrepreneurs who are off trying to do something. And if you don't have any young entrepreneurs that you know, go to meetups, go to events, try to connect with them. And if you still can't find them, then, you know, read articles, watch videos, like learn from people who are already doing it so that you know that it's possible. I think Mark Zuckerberg's big success made it possible for a lot of young entrepreneurs to realize, hey, if he can do it, I can do it too. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet on myself. And then the second thing I would think about is the people who are giving you the advice, and maybe because they're jealous, and maybe because they love you, like maybe mom and dad love you and they just don't want to see you fail. They're not trying to hurt you, they think they're trying to help you. I would look at Have the people who are giving you this advice done it before? Have they done it themselves? And if they haven't, then they may not be in the best position. Like the people who are hating on you, if they haven't done it themselves, they haven't taken a chance themselves, maybe they're not the best people to kind of be giving you that advice. So I wouldn't pay attention to them, right? And find out, seek out the mentors who you can learn from.