WIN with 7 MICROSOFT Strategies! Lessons For Success

Today I'm going to talk about the 7 incredible lessons I learned from Microsoft that saved my business. So my first business was a software company, and I was 19 years old when I was a part of it, and I was an owner in it, and I was struggling. I was making $300 a month. I wasn't able to survive. And one of the companies that I looked to that really helped save the business and helped me get through to being acquired 3 years later and becoming more of a success as an entrepreneur was Microsoft, and I thought I'd share today the 7 lessons that I learned from them that helped me grow a significant business and hopefully can help you guys too. So number 1 is form alliances, and this really was the biggest strategy that, that saved my business. I told my business partner I quit. We weren't making any money, we were disagreeing on how the company should go forward. I had hit rock bottom with my company. I thought I should go back and get a job. I thought I made the biggest mistake of my life in being in this business and that I should go off and do something else where I felt valued, where I felt like I could contribute, where I felt like if I worked harder I would get results, where here I was working hard and not getting any results. The thing that changed was I said, I'm not the first guy to try to sell software before. How did Microsoft do it? How did Bill Gates do it? How did they get started? And forming alliances was one of the key things that helped that company grow. Microsoft's big deal came with IBM when every IBM shipped, had Microsoft software on it, but Microsoft was already a $7 million company when that happened. Now, $7 million is not a huge company, but it was still $7 million more than what I had when I was starting off and where I was at that point. And how did Microsoft get to that $7 million? The same strategy, by forming alliances. So find people who are already selling to your target audience and how can you figure out a way to partner up with them? Not that they have to take ownership in your business, just a marketing alliance to go after the same audience. I did that with my company. I closed my first deal for $13,500, and man, that felt good. That may not feel like a lot of money to you guys, but to me at that time, it felt like I had won the lottery. And more importantly, I had a way to be able to continue to grow and reach more customers the same way. So I had a business plan. I had a new recipe for success through forming alliances. Number 2 is have a vision.

The original vision of the company was a slogan that was a computer on every desk and in every home. And in the mid-1980s, that was still kind of a crazy thing. And we get a lot of pushback from people who would either say, look, there's no way that they'll be on every desk because most business people don't need a computer. And especially they don't need it in the home. That's what we took most grief for, was this idea that, what, a computer in every home? What would you do with it? It went in a very short period of time from insane that everyone would have a computer to my God, of course everyone needs to have a computer.

Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We make things that help you make things and make things happen.

So what's always impressed me about Microsoft is having a big vision, is having the vision when people think you're crazy, people think you're stupid, people tell you that's never gonna happen. You know, I wanna help a billion entrepreneurs. People say that's impossible. People say there aren't even a billion entrepreneurs on the planet. People might be telling you that your vision is crazy and stupid and not achievable and not possible. And if you just hang around those people, then yeah, you're never gonna realize your vision. But if you start hanging around people who have big dreams, who are iconic, who are trying to do big things, then your big dream feels like it's more achievable. So when I had haters in my life saying that I couldn't do what I was trying to do, I would look to Microsoft and I would look at the big vision that they had and say, listen, this is— they started from nothing too. Started with, you know, one guy trying to build a software company and achieved massive success. If he can do it, if they can do it, I can do it too. And just being surrounded by people and companies and ideas that are big who are trying to accomplish massive things gives me the confidence and boldness to want to do something big myself. Number 3 is partner to grow. One of the things that I love about Microsoft and how they achieve success is they partner up with other companies to get into new industries and then grow it. So when they were getting into Expedia, they didn't have any experience in the travel industry before. And so they partnered up with American Express and they launched Expedia.com together. And it was an alliance that lasted a couple years, I think, and then American Express backed out and now Microsoft owns Expedia. And that's how they enter into new industries, is they, they find the partner that they can work with who understands that space the best and finds a way to work together. Recently they acquired LinkedIn. They wanted to get into more of the social media side. They wanted to integrate Office with social networking, and LinkedIn was the most obvious choice. And they made the second biggest tech acquisition in history, I think. And so they wanted to get into that space. Instead of just trying to do it themselves, they went out and bought the company. And so whether it's, it's buying a competitor or buying somebody complementary to you or partnering up with somebody to get into a new market, if you don't know what you're doing, you can figure it out a lot faster by working with people who already have that knowledge. Where I think a lot of entrepreneurs just try to do everything themselves We try to figure it all out for ourselves and we make a ton of mistakes. But we can learn from the expertise of others to help us get into those markets faster. However you wanna structure that deal, there's a lot of different ways to skin the cat, so they say. But just not trying to do everything yourself and find the right partners for you to enter into different markets can save you a lot of time. Number 4 is work with influencers. One of the fastest way to grow your business is to look at who are the influencers who have your audience? And how can you get them on your side? How can you connect with them? How can you get them to help you spread your message? When I first started my biotech software company, one of the things that I really focused on was getting into the media, trying to connect with the key people in the media who are influence to my target audience, and how can I get them to tell my story? Can we do an interview together? Can I profile my founder? Can we support and give content to help your publication grow? Can we be an expert You know, those experts that you quote anytime a story comes up. Microsoft is doing that now with us. So, you know, I'm part of a program where there's a number of us who are all part of Microsoft Influencers team. You know, they don't force me to say anything, right? But they bring me out to Microsoft, they show me the new tech they're working on. Honestly, until, until they did that, I thought Microsoft was a boring company. And they brought me out to their offices and I saw the cool stuff that they're doing. And it's interesting again, and I want to check out Microsoft products. I'm curious about what new things are coming down the pipe. And so the lesson is, you know, if you're trying to promote a new app, or you're trying to get your new product out onto the market, instead of trying to go, you know, one at a time, door by door, try to find those influencers. Look at who are the biggest people on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter now who are talking about your space, right? If you had a product for entrepreneurs, you would want to talk to someone like me. If you had a product for the music industry, you want to talk to certain musicians, right? For any category that you're in, there are experts, there are thought leaders, and if, you know, they mention your company, it would start to take off. Those are the people that you want to try to target. Working with influencers can be a massive way to shortcut your path to getting market acceptance. Number 5 is innovate. One of the things that I respect and admire the most about Microsoft is innovating. They keep innovating. It would be easy to just sit on their product office and not do anything about it. And now they've moved, like they've moved on to the cloud, even to the point where you had their CEO Satya Nadella using Apple products in his demos.

So I want to first start off on, on this iPhone, and it's, it's not my phone, but it is an iPhone. But what— it's a pretty unique— it is a pretty unique iPhone. IPhone, in the sense, I like to call it the iPhone Pro because it's got all the Microsoft software and applications on it. It's got Skype. It's pretty amazing.

A lot of companies get lazy. A lot of entrepreneurs get lazy. You've had some success in the past and you let that success be the chains that hold you back from doing more. And I experienced this on my YouTube channel where, you know, at the start I was having success with some of the series on my channels, but I lost interest in them even though they were being successful. And so the key was to innovate, like kept doing new things, kept trying new things. Still on the YouTube channel now, there's new innovations that come out every week. Some of them are bigger, some of them are smaller, some of you may notice, some you don't. And I test and I try and I see what you guys like, but also what I like, what makes me come alive. And to too many entrepreneurs get stuck in the rut of doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. And even though it may make money in the short term, when it gets boring— like, for any entrepreneur to do the same thing repeatedly gets super boring— and two, over time, if you stop investing into your company and your products and services, it's going to start to decline. So you need to constantly be innovating, and I believe your company should always be a reflection of who you are, what you're interested in, what you're passionate about, and bring that to your business every day to help fuel the growth. Number 6 is believe.

I've always felt that I'm not— I have confidence. I mean, this is one of those fascinating things, right, I've learned, which is all great achievement happens only when you have self-belief and you have confidence in yourself.

This is obviously an easy one for me. My channel is all about believe. I felt when I was a younger entrepreneur though, I didn't I didn't fully believe in myself all the time. I was 19 years old selling software to people 3 times my age who had degrees that I didn't have, and I felt like they wouldn't want to buy from somebody my age. In looking up to Microsoft and Bill Gates and how he started, and he was a young entrepreneur, and how he managed to convince big companies to work with him, it gave me a little bit more confidence and helped me realize that really what it's all about is Providing value. If you can provide value, if you can help somebody, then they don't care as much about how old you are, what country you're from, or all the other things that we think that people care about. They care about, can you help them? And once I got over that, I started to believe in myself more. I started to close deals, I started to close sales, I started to make business happen, and it was all just up in here. So if you can believe like Bill and believe like Sacha, you're on your way to having success in your business. And number 7 is have high standards.

I get energized when I see people achieve high standards in anything. Uh, at work, when somebody comes to me with an idea that they've implemented and it's something that I've not seen before, that's the thing that gets me going.

I think having high standards comes when you have a deep passion for what you're doing and you are proud of what you're putting out. I wanna create videos for you guys, for myself, but also for my grandkids. Like, I wanna be able to create something that I would be proud to show my grandkids and say, "Look what I did." And I think a lot of people mail it in. A lot of people quit too soon. A lot of people just give a mediocre product. A lot of people only make something to the standards that their customers have, where really you should be making it to your own standards. Like, your standards should be higher than what your customer standards are, what the government standards are. I remember when I was in school growing up, I never got the best grades in my family. My sisters always had straight A's and I was getting B's and C's. And my parents always told me I was like Evan Carmichael, I can do whatever I wanted to. And then something funny happened, and I don't know what triggered the switch, but in my last year of high school, I didn't get just straight A's, I got straight 90s. And I exceeded the expectations of my parents. My parents wanted me to be here. I was always down here. And something happened that made me go up here. And that should be the case for you. Like, your standards for yourself should be higher than the standards your customers have of you. If you have a job, it should be higher than the standards that your boss has for you. It should be higher than the standards that the community or the media has for you. You should have high standards, and that comes when you actually love what you're doing and you care deeply about it. Like, if I produced a crappy video It would bother me. Like, we've not produced videos on certain days. We've held back videos because I didn't like it enough. I'm sure if you guys saw it, you say, "Ah, it was a good video. You should have kept it. It was quality." But just bothers me that it wasn't to my standard. That doesn't mean everything we put out is perfect, but we're trying to make it better every time. And it's important that you have really high standards in your company. So those are the 7 lessons that I learned from Microsoft that saved my business. I'm curious what you thought of them. Which one did you like the best? Which one do you think is most relevant to you? Have you learned something from a big company that's helped you in your business? Leave it in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.