Top 7 Rules for Starting Your Business Now

What's up, Believe Nation? Today I'm going to talk about the 7 reasons why millennials should start their business today. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So I get a lot of messages, comments, emails from millennials, young people who are trying to start a business. They want to do it, but they're unsure. Should I start it now? Should I wait? And so here is my advice on the 7 reasons why you should be starting your business right now. Today. Reason number 1 is you have no responsibilities. I remember when I was in university, I was in my commerce class, we had a guest speaker come in and he said, "You guys need to start today. Whatever thing you wanna do, whatever passion you have, do it right now. Don't wait because when you get older, you have a lot of responsibilities." and it's gonna be harder for you to get started. And I thought, yeah, but I have a lot of responsibilities now, man. Like, you don't know what you're talking about. I got a lot happening. I got a lot of people that I need to make sure I'm spending time with. I have a lot of responsibilities. And I shouldn't have disrespected that advice because it's true. As you get older, when you have to think about you have a spouse, you have kids, you have mortgage, you have older parents you might have to be looking after, there's a lot more weight that you have on your life, and so the time to explore is now. When you're younger, that's the time to make bigger mistakes, that's the time to really go out and chase what you wanna do and see if it works or not, to discover yourself. Because once you get on a corporate path, and that's what you do, you go get a job, it's really hard to leave. At the beginning, it's easy to leave because you're not making that much money, you haven't taken on a mortgage, you don't have a lot of responsibilities. As you get older, as you move your way up, it's hard to leave that path to go do something new and scary and different. One, because you've done it for so long, you just wanna keep doing it because that's the habit you've built up. And two, you're making more money. And while you've made more money, you've gone out and got that house and have kids to pay for and a spouse to pay for. And not having that reliable, steady income stream makes it really, really difficult to jump off. It's not impossible, still absolutely doable, just makes it harder. And so why make life harder for yourself if you don't have to? Start now when you don't have a ton of responsibilities. Number 2 is you can offer immediate value. Young people are respected now in a way that they've never been respected in the past. It used to be for any career, for any job, for any entrepreneur working your way up, you had to learn the business, you had to get You had to understand how things worked. And the older you got, the more experience you built up, and that allowed you to offer them more value. And yes, it's true that experience helps allow you to bring more value to your customers, but young people are looked at now with way more respect than they used to be because you guys have skills that older people don't have. If you're looking about the importance of technology and the importance of social media and how quickly things are changing, for older people who aren't using social media. They don't understand how to market on Snapchat and YouTube and Instagram. You're using it daily, you grew up with it, and so they're looking to you to help them understand their strategy and figure it out. You know, most people aren't going to hire a 75-year-old to help them manage their Snapchat account because most 75-year-olds didn't grow up using Snapchat. They're going to hire the 75-year-old for something else. For leadership, for strategy, for all the other things and skill sets that they built up over their life experience. But for things like social media and technology and emerging trends, you guys grew up with it. And so there's a lot more respect. You can offer immediate value. People are looking to young people as thought leaders already in a way that hasn't happened as much in the past. And so this is your chance to offer immediate value and make some money and build a business. Number 3 is you don't need money. You don't need money to start a business anymore. You don't need to have a company car and an office and expensive equipment. You're not building anything as much anymore, right? You don't need money to start a business. It may be part of your goal. You may long-term want to be a manufacturer. You may long-term want to have an office and have a team and have staff, and that's great. It's great to have that big picture vision for where you want to go, But to start now, you don't need money. You don't need a retail location. You could start off with a website that you don't even need to design because you could start off with a Facebook page, right? All you need is this. You have this, you can start a business. And it's going to be about your energy, your heart, your hustle, your ability to deliver results, your ability to talk to people and get them excited about your vision, what you're trying to do. You can offer immediate value without having to spend any money. It's never been easier. It's never cost less to start a business, and so you don't have the excuses that you used to be able to have in the past why you can't start right now. Number 4 is there's an abundance of role models. If you see somebody who's like you, who's gone out and done something that you want to do, it means you can do it too. Yes, you could try to be the exception, you could try to be the first who's ever tried to do it. There is risk associated with that. You may not hit that mark, you may not be the first one, and you still, you want to take that courageous step? Amazing. But if somebody has already done it, then it means it's possible. It's doable. We made a video way back, one of our first videos to pop was about breaking the 4-minute mile. To be able to run a mile in under 4 minutes was seen to be impossible. And then one guy did it. And then after that, lots of people have done it. High schoolers have done it because they knew it was possible, so they went out and did it themselves. There's tons of people who are younger than you who have started a business and had massive success. There's never been such an abundance of role models to look to. If they can do it and have success at a young age, you can too. There's nothing holding you back. Number 5 is there's insanely good resources. I'm old enough to remember in high school And in grade school, going to libraries, right? I went to my school library to find resources. And then in high school, it was about encyclopedias, and it was on CD-ROMs. And in university, there was internet, and there's a lot of information I could get from there. I remember going to my university class and taking a course on entrepreneurship, and it was so basic and so boring, and I was already running my company. I learned almost nothing. I can't remember one thing that I learned in my fourth-year, you know, level university class on entrepreneurship. And that's at a time where there wasn't a lot of content out there, right? Look at how much information there is now. Look at how many, just in the YouTube world alone, how many people are creating content to help entrepreneurs. Whether you like my videos, whether you like GaryVee's videos, Lewis Howes' videos, there's lots of people who are creating great content to help you that you, you have such an abundance of information around you that never existed before. You don't have to rely on having a parent teach you something. You don't have to rely on having a decent high school teacher or university teacher give you the keys. The keys are everywhere. There's tons of people you can learn from who've done what you want to do. It's never been easier to model their success, and so whatever goal you have, somebody's figured it out and they've made a video about it, or they've done a podcast about it, or they've written an ebook about it. Pick those things up and learn. It's never been easier. Number 6 is access has never been easier. If you want to reach out to somebody and get their opinion on how they look at your business plan, or give you some mentoring or coaching advice, it's never been easier to reach people. You know, 10 years ago, if you wanted to reach an entrepreneur, how would you do it? Some, some big entrepreneur, how would you reach out to them? You have to go maybe actually knock on their company's door and go through 8 levels of gatekeepers and maybe get that meeting, or hopefully find them at some event or trade show and be one of the people in the audience and maybe get their attention. It's never been easier now. People are all on Twitter, they're on social media. You can reach out. Now you still have to provide value. Don't assume that everybody that you reach out to is say, "Hey, can you give me help?" that they're gonna respond. There's still a barrier, and the barrier is proving to that person that you're worth spending time on, because a lot of people reach out to people as potential mentors and they never actually do the work, and so the mentors now don't want to help people because they're afraid that you're gonna be another person who doesn't do the work. So you need to provide value, you need to stand out, but it's never been easier. Go to Twitter, find the person, engage with their stuff. Are they tweeting? Are they sharing? Can you retweet them? Can you support them? Can you give them tips, advice? Whenever you're trying to accomplish something, finding somebody who's already done it and asking for some help, whether it's a coffee meeting, whether it's, you know, a quick phone call. If you've built up enough value, there are people on this channel who I know who have never met in person, but they comment on all the videos. They share, they tweet the videos out, they add as much value as they can to the Believe Nation community. If they needed me for something, if they wanted me to check out their business plan, if they wanted to hop on a quick phone call to talk about something, I would say yes because they've added so much value. 10 years ago, it wasn't possible. It wasn't possible to reach out to that person and get that connection. And understand that people who've had success, for the most part, want to give back as well because somewhere along the line, somebody helped them. Them, right? For me, mentors helped me get to where I'm at, and so I want to help other people. It's really fulfilling to give back and help, but again, making sure that it's the people who are actually going to do the work. And so separating yourself out as being the hustler, of being a person who will grind it, who will take the advice, a little bit of advice, and just go and push hard on it and achieve some success, and then come back and ask for a little bit more advice, is really important. But the access has never been easier to get on somebody's radar who could give you meaningful advice in a conversation. And number 7 is do both. You don't have to do one or the other. You don't have to have a career or start a business. You could do both in parallel. And I actually recommend it. I think if your long-term goal is to be an entrepreneur and have your own business, then go work for an entrepreneur. Don't go work at some big bank Go work for an entrepreneur who is a little bit ahead of you, who has 10 employees, who you could see yourself being in 3 to 5 years. Go work for them and take on as much as you can to learn, not just your one specific role, but get close to the entrepreneur founder, learn as much as you can, understand the industry, understand how their business works. You're essentially getting paid to go to school, right? Right now you're paying to go to school, you're getting paid now to learn how an industry works. And at the same time, You start your business, you start your side hustle, you're off grinding, trying to make this thing work. And everything you learned from your job, you're now applying to your business. That's why it's so important to get a job where you're going to learn. Yes, you get paid, but you're going to learn because that makes you a better entrepreneur, makes you a better human being. And the things you're going to learn over here, you're going to bring to your business. You're going to start to build it up. And when you get to the point where either you're not learning as much as you used to at that job you had, or where your own business is getting to the point where it's sustaining you, you can afford to quit the job, then you can go all in on your business. I wouldn't approach any situation where it's either one or the other. Often, the answer to those, should I do this or should I do this? Often the answer is yes. Do both. Embrace the genius in the ant. So those are my 7 reasons why millennials should start their business today. I'd love to know, what do you guys think? What was your favorite rule? What resonated most with you? Did I miss some? Is there an 8, 9, 10 that you guys wanna add to the list? Let me know, leave it down in the comments below. I'm gonna join in the discussion. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to 109 Innovations. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really means a lot to me and I hope you're enjoying it. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, I'll see you soon.