How Entrepreneurs Build a Growth Mindset for Success | Founder Mindset Workshop

We are live. Welcome to episode 113 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Today, we're doing something a little different. And one of the reasons I'm very passionate about today's topic is that I see many people with incredible potential who never get to realize it. They're intelligent, they're experienced, and they have valuable skills, but they hold themselves back because of the stories they tell themselves after something doesn't go according to plan. And I've lived that myself. When I started my career as a hardware design engineer in at Home Shopping Network, I didn't make a whole lot of progress, nor did I get any bonuses or promotions. And I spent— maybe wasted, I don't know— I spent nearly 3 years blaming everything around me, the manager, the other employees, the economy. And I wasn't asking the harder questions. What was my own contribution to this situation? And what do I need to learn? So instead of asking this question about what is it that I'm doing in this situation, I was always blaming my manager. He's not giving me opportunity. This other person is taking my— the cool project. He's getting the bonus, I'm not. All of those stories were happening in my own mind, stories I was telling myself, but That mindset kept me stuck far longer than it should have. And when I finally started to learn about growth mindset— it wasn't called that way back then— when I finally started to take ownership of the situation and contribute to it and learn about how to deal with it, and when I started to shift my thinking from blaming to learning everything began to change. And I carried this mindset to when I was laid off and then founded my very first business. And when you start a business, as all of you know, entrepreneurs out there who are thinking about starting a business or started and they're struggling, you know that you have to learn about marketing, about sales, about business development, about entrepreneurship, about hiring, about all that, all those components that are required to have a successful business. And I knew nothing about. So with that mindset of learning, that shift, that change ultimately led to building several companies. And as those of you who follow the channel know, that we ended up selling— growing one company to 8 figures and sell that company to global media giant Dentsu. So that shift in mindset was critical, crucial, fundamental to, to just my way of viewing what is happening to me, what's happening around me. So today I'm not sharing a presentation about a business framework or a marketing tactic or an AI tool. These are important, but today I want to talk about the operating system that sits underneath every business decision that you make, and that is That operating system is your mindset, and there are plenty of channels and books on on this topic of mindset. But my goal today, as it is the focus of this channel, is is not about just mindset in general; it's about mindset in the context of entrepreneurship. Because I believe this mindset, and especially this growth mindset that I'll I'll spend a lot of time on it today, it is. One, if not the biggest reason why some founders thrive while others with as much intelligence and as much experience, they stay stuck. And over the last couple weeks, I've, I've been revisiting Dr. Carol Dweck's book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. I had read the book when it first came out, but I just recently listened to the audiobook of the latest edition. And in the book, it talks about what a fixed mindset is and what a growth mindset is in different contexts, relationships, parenting, and then business. And when you read something for the second time, or maybe sometimes the third time, you know, things come up and you find gems that you didn't come across the first time around. So when I was reading this after building and selling companies, after helping hundreds of founders and also making plenty of mistakes myself, I realized, I realized this, this biggest difference that I mentioned earlier. If you are still living or sitting or stuck in this fixed mindset, it's going to be really hard for you to build and grow and scale a business. You could be successful, you could make it, and you can have achieved some of your goals or maybe all of your goals, but it wouldn't be as enjoyable, it wouldn't be as fun, it wouldn't be as rewarding if you didn't have this growth mindset. So today, I want you to think about the story that you tell yourself. So when something goes wrong, as an entrepreneur, you might be saying, maybe I'm just not cut out for this. Or you might be saying, interesting. What, what, what does the situation, or what is the situation trying to teach me? So it's same event. Something happened, you lost a proposal, you got some rejections, you couldn't find the right type of customer, you hired the wrong person, whatever happens, all of these things happen in entrepreneurship, that's just part of the journey. When these things happen, you could be asking yourself, you could be saying, again, the story that you're telling yourself, that hey, I'm just not cut out for this, or you could say, what can I learn from the situation. So the same event, you can have the same event, the same action, then your reaction is what matters, right? So you can have the same event, but you can have a different, a completely different interpretation, which would lead to a completely different future. I've seen it with so many entrepreneurs. The same thing happens to them. And then one reacts in a way that will enable them to learn and then overcome that challenge and thrive, and others who remain and get, get and remain stuck. So today I'm going to make this practical. I will cover 6 traps, mindset traps that entrepreneurs fall into and how to avoid those traps. And then next week I'll be discussing how, how to develop a genuine growth mindset, and, and most, most importantly, how to apply all of those ideas to your own business. So throughout this live stream, whether you are listening or watching live or tuning in later, drop me a question, leave me a comment, let me know what is it that you are struggling with as it relates to mindset. But if you have another question about entrepreneurship in general, let me know. I'm happy to be of help. So Uh, for those of you who are just joining in, and for those of you who are new to the channel, first of all, welcome. My name is Feras, and I've started and built and scaled 7 businesses, a few of them in consulting, most of them in consulting. A couple of them we grew to 7 figures. When I say we, my co-founders and I have always had amazing co-founders. And then we grew one of the companies, you know, a digital analytics consulting company, we grew that to 8 figures, and then we sold it to global media giant Dentsu. Since then, I've taken— I took some, some, some time off to support some pro— some nonprofit work, and then I started Startup with Feras to help entrepreneurs who want to start, grow, and scale a consulting business. I focus on this niche, on, on folks like you who have started And they're struggling, or they're thinking of leaving corporate and wanted to take the leap, but they don't know that they don't have the tools, they don't have the system, they don't know how to do it. Or those of you who maybe were laid off and and now you have time on your hand, and I know layoffs are awful experiences. I've gone through one myself, so I I I feel you, I hear you, I understand the challenges you're going through. But one thing you have. Um, with you when you, when you, when you are laid off is you have a lot of time on your hand. So, so whether you're again in corporate, want, want to leave, or you are laid off and you want to check out this entrepreneur thing, thing called entrepreneurship, or you've started already and you're struggling, you have a side hustle and you're not sure what to do next, so I'm here to support you start, grow, and scale a consulting business to 6 figures, 7 figures, and potentially to, to 8 figures. Um, I, I, I tell it as it is. I don't sugarcoat it. I don't tell you it's gonna happen overnight. There's no such a thing as overnight success unless you follow a lot of the channels on social media, on YouTube. It's the only place where you can become a millionaire in 2 to 3 months. You can, you can get to $50,000 in revenue and $20,000 in profit in 2 months if you follow This and this and that framework, my friends, don't waste your time. This is— these get-rich, get-rich-quick schemes are schemes. There are— there's no way that you can make it to the top. You can— there's no way that you can achieve big things in life, things that you're proud of, things that you, um, you have been dreaming about achieving including financial independence, including growing a company and scaling a company and having an amazing team of, of, of friends who will help you build that business. All of those cannot happen with 4 hours a week or 10 hours a week while you're at the beach and then things happening, you know, while, while you're, you're just having fun. It doesn't work that way. A lot, unfortunately, there's a lot of this on, on YouTube where if you follow this framework or this system or this operating system you can do that, you can chill at the beach while the business is running itself, it doesn't happen. I've been in Silicon Valley for almost 30 years, I've seen people who are millionaires, billionaires, I've seen people who've sold businesses for hundreds of thousands, hundreds of millions of dollars, everybody works very hard, and that is my motto in life, work hard, play hard, and then give back. So there is time for other things once you're a bit more established, but initially, You really have to focus on entrepreneurship, on this business, on this venture, take care of key relationships in your life, but you have to give up on leisure, on extra, maybe extra stuff, you have to focus on this business that you are building to make it grow and to survive, especially in the first few months when you're just not sure what to do, how to get clients, how to get some traction. Alright, so Enough with that. If you have any questions, again, leave me a comment. If you haven't really announced to the world that you're going into entrepreneurship and you don't want to put a comment out publicly on LinkedIn or on YouTube, you can email me, email me at info@startupwithferas. I do read all these emails and I do respond to them. I keep it all confidential. My mission here is to help you make it and make it big, so don't hesitate to reach out. All right, so 6 traps I want to cover, but before I go into the traps, I want to make sure we are— we're all talking about the same thing. So let me first answer that question. What is— when we say a growth mindset, what is that? You have to have a growth mindset. You can't have a fixed mindset to succeed. What do we mean by that? And Professor Carol Dweck talked about it at length in her book. That's what the book is about. But when people hear the term growth mindset, they assume it means positivity, you know, be positive or believe in yourself, or you can do whatever you want. You can achieve whatever you want. You can achieve whatever you dream of or work harder. That is not what it's meant by growth mindset. A growth mindset is simply the belief that your abilities You're capable, your capabilities, your abilities can be developed through learning, through deliberate practice, through different strategies, and also to be willing to receive feedback. So that's what a growth mindset is. It is about learning that if, and scientifically, if you read some of the books on the brain and neuroplasticity and the neurons, and you can make new— the brain can, can grow in terms of the capacity to learn when these, these, these new pathways are developed, when we are learning new things, when we're doing difficult things. So I'm a big believer of committing to doing, to doing difficult things. If you've never been to a networking event and you're scared to death to go and speak to strangers about your business, that's very difficult. Start with a small group. Then goes to a bigger event. Do difficult things outside of business to get, to get your body, to get your mind used to taking on difficult things. You can't achieve big things in life without doing big things, without taking on difficult tasks and difficult projects and difficult, difficult initiatives. So, so this growth mindset is about you believing that you can grow your abilities, your capabilities with learning, with trying different strategies. If I'm doing the same thing again and again and again, that's, I think, what Einstein defined as insanity, is doing the same thing again and again and again and then expecting different results. So learning, I can improve my abilities, my capabilities by learning. By practice, deliberate practice. As my Aikido, one of our Aikido teachers says, practice doesn't make perfect. He says practice makes permanent. Deliberate practice is what makes perfect. So learning, deliberate practice, different strategies, and then be willing to listen, listen to signals from customers, from employees, from partners, from, from, from the universe. But you have to be open, and you have to be open, you have to be open to, to, uh, to receive that feedback and then act on that feedback. So that's what a growth mindset is. Now I'll give you a ton of examples today. So, so that's, that's a growth mindset. Now a fixed mindset is the belief that your abilities are largely fixed. So you either have them or you don't in sports, in academia, in entrepreneurship. That's what you think. That's just, you know, I just don't have this. I don't know. I don't know how to sell. Um, so, so, so the difference between growth, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset is that it's not intelligence. It is really how we interpret the situations around us. It's how we interpret experiences, and imagine, let's just walk you through an example. Again, I run into these things all the time. I speak to 2 to 3 founders on the average every week, so I hear it all the time, say 2 founders, they send a proposal to sell their services, and They get rejected. The client goes with another vendor. So the first entrepreneur thinks, I guess I'm just not good at sales. They kind of tell that story. They say it, and if they don't say it publicly, they don't tell it to their spouse, they just say it in their mind. They tell their own story. And then the second entrepreneur, they say, Okay, I lost this deal. I— this— my proposal didn't work out. So he or she would say, something about my sales process did not work. Let me figure out what it was. So same outcome, a proposal was rejected, you did not win the deal, but completely— a completely different conclusion. The fixed mindset person, they turn this event— losing a project, yes, it's sad, it's awful, I put a lot of time into it, but you lost that proposal— they turn that into an identity, like I'm a failure, like I don't know how to sell. Now the growth mindset, on the other hand, the growth mindset entrepreneur turns this event into information. Yes, it sucks to lose a deal, It's awful. You put a lot of time and energy into it. It's going to impact your cash flow. I get all of that. These are difficult things, but it is information. I didn't win this proposal maybe because my proposal was awful, or maybe I overpriced, or I didn't follow up. So you start digging to understand what is it that led to this outcome. So that's, that's One way of thinking of growth mindset and fixed mindset is that your abilities can evolve, can develop. You try different strategies, whereas the the other mindset, the fixed mindset focuses on telling yourself stories that that are not helpful. So so when something goes wrong. We turn this the story into like, what does this say about me? You should be asking, what can I learn from this? Instead of instead of defining making this an identity thing, like what does this failure say about me? So so there's a big difference because the first question when you say what this what does this say about me? It's a judgment. But the second question, when you say, what can I learn from this? This is about growth. So here's another way, another example, same one. You send a proposal, the client says no. If you have this fixed mindset, oh my God, I'm an awful consultant. I'm very technical. I know what I was doing. I was doing well in corporate. I was getting, awards and I was getting bonuses and I was getting promoted. Now I took the leap, I started my own business and now clients are not buying from me. I'm just not good. I'm not cut out for consulting. You should be saying the opposite. When a client says no, say, interesting. Was it my positioning? Was it my pricing? Was it my proposal? Was it my timing? Was it there were just too many competitors and I didn't do my due diligence and didn't differentiate, didn't stand out? Or, you know, at times, and I always say this in sales, you could do everything right and still not win the deal because the timing is not right. Sometimes clients get busy with internal initiatives, with new regulations, people are off, people are on maternity leave, you name it. So at times, you've done everything right, you just have to wait. This is the nature of sales. There's no guarantee. Sometimes you just have to wait. So I remember sending in a proposal and doing all the best practices, follow up, add value, always send more information to the client, be available for a follow-up call, speak with their executives. I've done all of that, and then the client says, at this point, we don't need you. We have to put everything on hold, and, you know, go back to the office and cry, you know, sad about that, but 6 months later, a year later, I get a call, hey, Feras, we're ready to move forward, are you ready? I said, of course we're ready, we've been waiting on you, right? Or the same person ends up moving to another company, and then they recommend us because we did all the right things, so if you're losing a proposal or a deal, I want you to— I don't want you to be— to identify yourself as a failure, or it's like, I'm not a good consultant. Like, what can I learn from this situation? Especially when you're starting out, like, there's just so much learning. There's so many mistakes that all of you will make. I made a ton of mistakes, and I, I speak with founders all the time. They make a ton of mistakes, especially initially, because it's new. You're new to this thing called entrepreneurship. So again, the difference between this fixed mindset where you kind of associate yourself with this failure and sort of this conversation ends there and you've added, you've confirmed this negative narrative, whereas a growth mindset, when you ask yourself these questions about the pricing, the proposal, the competitors, the timing. It's just a new conversation. It's instead of ending the conversation with something about you and your identity and your failure, you're actually, you're asking a bunch of questions that you have to dig deeper to identify. So the conversation actually begins there and you're learning from that. So I'm not saying it's okay to fail. I'm not saying, yeah, just take it, you know, it's casual to, to, to lose a deal. No, no, I get it. In the ventures I'm involved in, sometimes we pitch to tier 1 clients, Fortune 500, and it takes tens and tens of hours to prepare a proposal, a demo, an onsite visit, and then you lose the deal, and it hurts because you've invested heavily, but what did we learn? What impression did we leave on this client? maybe we missed identifying needs of a specific stakeholder. So you're always, you're always improving. So, and then before I go, I know, I know I promised to speak about the 6 traps, which I'm getting to here in a minute, but one last concept here is that as, as you're going through this mindset concept, I want you to be aware that entrepreneurs are especially susceptible here because you're always in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship exposes you to constant judgment. Every week you're receiving feedback. Clients say no. Proposals ignore you. You get ghosted. Contents that you spend a lot of time to publish on social media, gets very few views, views, a proposal, another proposal is rejected, someone negotiates hard and you need to win that deal and you end up selling way below what you were hoping to sell, a competitor comes last minute into a deal that you thought you had, a client that you've nurtured for so long, a point of contact, your champion in this company, they end up leaving or they change roles so that they don't have the decision, they don't, they don't make the buying decision. So, so many things could happen, and you as an entrepreneur, you're getting all of that feedback. And because you're learning and, and things are not initially, they're not going well because this is part of learning. Just like when you first learned how to ride the bike, it wasn't— you, you weren't going down San Francisco hills at full speed, you know, you were barely making it with the training wheels, right? Same thing in entrepreneurship. So if you're falling, if you're tripping, if you're missing things, messing things up, that's just part of that learning process. So be aware that entrepreneurs are especially susceptible to this this feeling of being judged. So just be, be aware of what story you tell yourself. Be aware of how you let this, this failure or this misstep or this issue— make sure you, you know how to manage it so you turn it into ways and conversations to learn more about what went wrong, as opposed to labeling yourself as a failure or as a bad consultant or as someone who left an amazing, comfortable job in corporate with all the perks to start something that now they are failing at. Okay? So that's growth mindset, fixed mindset, judgment, identity versus information gathering, okay? So let's now talk about the 6 traps, the 6, these are very specific traps for founders, and again, I've read about it, I've seen it, I've lived most of them myself, and then I hear it and I see it from founders I speak with every other week, and for those of you who are just joining or just, or maybe you're watching this later, if you have a comment, if you have a question about mindset, about issues, about challenges you're facing in Either starting the business or growing the business, let me know. Leave me a comment. I'll be more than happy to address before we wrap up this session today. All right, the six founder mindset traps. So the first trap is I'm not ready. Especially if you're, if you're the perfectionist type, if you're the structured type, if, if you're kind of left-brained, you want to have your checklist of things, you want to have your, um, the systems in place, you want to get all the credentials, all the certifications, you want to learn about every, you know, you want to watch every video on YouTube about starting a business. If you're that type You'll never be ready unless you take action. So if you are waiting to be ready so that you can get more confident, let me tell you, after a certain level of learning, especially theoretical learning, you have to get your feet wet. You have to step on the mat. You can't learn martial arts by watching YouTube. Okay? You have to step on the mat. So, so, so, so confidence rarely comes first. It'll give you learning, theoretical learning, watching, listening, talking to others who started a business. This is, this is helpful, it's useful, but you only need a little bit of it, and then you have to step on the mat. You have to start building confidence with action, and, and come— it's not that Confidence comes first is it's competence, not confidence. Competence comes first and then confidence follows. So let's say you're— again, I've heard this in different settings, but let's say a marketing manager, they have 15 or 20 years of experience and they know their stuff cold and they've kept up with all the development, they know about online marketing, they know about AI, they know about how to set up marketing automation, the whole marketing ops system and processes. They know about all of that, and they're doing really well in their day job, but they keep saying for months, for 12 months, for 18 months, that It doesn't. I don't feel ready yet. While someone with maybe one-third the experience that they have, they launch first. They go to networking events. They start to tell their entire network that they are they started this business. You see this person with one half or one-third their experience. Launching first, getting feedback from the market, tweaking, pivoting, tweaking their offer, tweaking their pricing, maybe going after a specific vertical. And you see this, this entrepreneur now, the second entrepreneur, signing deals, getting clients, getting some cash flow, and, and now starting to grow the business. So waiting to be ready is a huge trap. A lot of people I speak with, they really— 60 60 million Americans want to be their own bosses. And then in another stat I read, I believe it was from the labor— the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics— 9% end up actually making that decision, taking the leap and starting a business. So, so if you're waiting to be ready, You're not going to be ready till you take action. So that is, that's really important. And then you can, I covered this in, in, uh, The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business on my YouTube channel @StartupWithFeras. Check it out. And I talk about how to step by step, it's a 51-minute video on how to start a consulting business. So if you're not ready, watch this video and look at the things you can do step by step. And I provided all the templates, all the worksheets, the formula, everything you need to get started. You can stay at your current full-time job. You can— you have the benefits, the perks, the salary. You just have to commit an hour at night, 2 hours at night, half a day on the weekend to start putting something in writing. Not a 50-page business plan, but just put some ideas on paper. Focus— if you had 3 ideas, focus on one. Start speaking with clients, potential clients. Use my 10+5 worksheet. I'll link to it in the description. Talk to 10 people and research 5 competitors. All of that, you can synthesize all of that into the offer and then start. You have to take the next step and start to talk to people about it. So you can do this on the side for a little bit. I'm not a big fan of long-term side hustling. I think you won't be able to do well in your morning job and you won't do as well in, in your evening side hustle. So, so, but you can do it for a short period of time. That's the idea, while you have a salary, while you have the benefits. So, but there are different approaches. I, I cover all of that in The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. So that's trap number 1 on, on being ready, being ready. Trap number 2, and I hear this probably, probably the most common thing I hear from entrepreneurs. I'm just not good at sales. I get it. Most of us who started and start a business, we don't know a lot about marketing or sales. So that's just the reality. So when you say I'm, I'm just not good at sales, you're not telling me anything new. Most people aren't. And most founders aren't, and most successful founders when they start, they're not good at sales either unless they were doing sales in a previous life and that's different, but sales is learnable. When I was laid off and started our— my co-founder and I started our very first business, I had no idea. I had no idea about how to sell to small businesses. I was in corporate. I was— we had a VP of sales and a sales department. They were selling to the enterprise, to telcos like AT&T and Comcast and these big companies, and I was more involved, and I was a VP of professional services. We would develop how to implement, how to roll out the service to the client and all of that, and how to project manage that. So I had zero background in knocking on doors and asking strangers for money, but after I listened to some CDs on sales at the time, 20+ years ago. I took some sales training and they said, that's what you got to do. And I had— that's what you had to do. And I had a young family at the time and I was the breadwinner at the time, so the sole breadwinner at the time, and I had to do something about it. So you have to muster, you have to find, you have to dig deep and find the courage to go out and talk to strangers. about it. And then what's the worst thing that they'll say? No. Okay, thank you. Uh, ask them why, right? And again, I cover all of that in the videos in the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. But the idea here is that it is totally okay that you start a business and you're not good at sales. That's where most people are. Now what you do about it is what's important. That Watch my videos on sales. I have a few playlists just dedicated to sales because this is the number one issue that founders struggle with. So if you say, I'm technical, I have all the certifications, I have filed and I have some IP and I have a trademark and I have my own patent, that's great, that's awesome, you can put that on your website, You can stand out technically, but in a month or 2 or 3, if you're still saying, I'm not good at sales, and you're polishing your website and you're adding more certifications, you're not going to be— you're not going to be able to take off. Trust me, you have to find the courage to go and meet people. You can do other things, of course. You can publish content, you can do paid ads, you can run campaigns on Google Ads or Meta. Of course, you can do all that. I'm a big proponent of founders speaking with their potential clients. You really need to do that, ideally in person, but if you live in a place where maybe you're in a different country where you're servicing or you live in a small town, it might be difficult to meet people on a weekly basis. Find opportunities to do this in person, to attend networking events, but find also ways to do it virtually and start with your own network, so you really have to build that sales muscle, there's no other, there's just no other way, you cannot, you have to know how to build, how to deliver the service, you also have to know how to sell. Now, there are always exceptions in consulting, right? You can have a co-founder, so you can focus on the back office and the delivery, and then your co-founder can do sales, but in a unit, in a business unit, in a company, in a venture, someone in there, a founder, not an employee, a founder has to do the selling. You can later hire for these functions and you can have someone sell on your behalf, and I've done that, and I've made a lot of mistakes in hiring, but later we figured it out, and then we had a sales department and we were bringing in 6-figure deals. Yes, and I just couldn't do it by myself, so you had to get some professionals, those who know how to sell 6-figure deals, but initially I did it myself and I had to learn how to do it. So if I did it, I'm pretty sure most of you can as well. All right, so that was the second trap. The third trap is, which I alluded to earlier is this story that you tell yourself that I failed. So instead of saying I failed, remove that from, from your vocabulary. The project failed, the proposal failed, the delivery failed, but you are not a failure. And again, this is not some positive thinking talk, but it's really important. You have to separate identity, you as a person, as an entrepreneur, from the outcomes, and if you, for example, decide after you've done, you've exhausted your network and you've done a lot of networking, you've done a lot of networking, a lot of warm outreach, you've sent emails to people you know, and now you've exhausted that, and now you want to try a new marketing initiative, say I want to do cold emailing, and you send 30 cold emails and you get zero response, you can start now thinking, I'm terrible at business, I failed at cold email. Don't say that. Look at what happened. Well, first of all, if you only send 30 emails and the open rate is like 1%, you need to send like 100 emails to get 1% to get back to you on the average. So it could be just a numbers thing. Also, you're not targeting the right people, like the list that you've curated for people to send this email to, maybe you were off. in the way you've identified the recipients of these emails, your ICP, your ideal client profile, or maybe the actual message in the email and the offer, it doesn't really talk to the pain point of the recipient. So instead of saying I'm terrible at cold email, I'm terrible at business, remove that from your vocabulary and think about what did go wrong in this specific initiative, right? And you can, these days there's so much stuff, there's a lot of great stuff on YouTube, so go and learn it. You can find, you go on some of these freelance websites like Upwork and others and find someone, pay them a little bit of money, they can teach you about how to do cold email properly. It's a lot of hard work actually to do cold email properly, and have a sequence and have a follow-up. You can't just, as we used to say in marketing, spray and pray. It doesn't work that way. So, so learn how to do cold email properly. Get it, get the help of maybe a specialist and set up a system that then you can, you can manage on your own. So that was the third trap. The fourth trap is I need the perfect idea. Kind of similar to the first trap where we said I'm not ready. And I think this is Like you're disguising, uh, that I'm not ready and having the courage to, to talk to people about business by saying I need the perfect idea. Dude, perfection doesn't exist in real life, and perfection delays learning. So, uh, who was it? Uh, Reid Hoffman. Reid Hoffman, the, the co-founder of LinkedIn. He said in his book— great book, by the way— The Startup of You, he said If you launch your first release of a product, of a service, and you're not ashamed of it, then you've launched too late. So he wants you to build and launch, build and launch, build and launch. You learn. And he talks about this concept of being in beta, like just a mental state where you're always learning, you're always improving. So, so if you're waiting for the perfect offer for the perfect pricing, for the perfect client, for the perfect drop, whatever you want in business, then you're not learning, you're not executing, you're not taking the steps that you need to build that confidence. So you don't need the perfect logo, you don't need the perfect branding, especially with AI these days, you can get something usable, presentable, and then put very little energy into it so you come across professional, you come across as basically professional. I don't want you to have a sloppy website that doesn't work or your LinkedIn profile doesn't look good or the banner looks like someone in 8th grade designed it with whatever that tool that they use. I used to make fun of it, I forgot the name of that tool. Microsoft Brush or something like that. I forgot the name of it, but you can, you know, do something with AI these days. You can have some professional photos of yourself and make sure your banner looks great, your tagline is professional, is catchy, your LinkedIn profile speaks to your audience. All of that you can do, and you don't have to spend a ton of money on that. But I don't want you to stay focused on, on your LinkedIn profile or on your website for weeks. Spend a day, half a day, get it done. The next day, review it, finalize it, launch it, and then maybe an hour the next week to tweak it. That's it. Now, how do I get more impressions? How do I get people traffic to my website? How do I get people to check out my LinkedIn profile? To do that, you can't, you can't build and they'll come. You have to do your part. You have to go out and reach. You have to reach out to people to come and check you out, check out your website, your LinkedIn profile. If you're active on other social media platforms like on YouTube, whatever it is, that's— you have to get people to come your way. Well, YouTube is different because if you have great content, you'll get the traffic. This is just how YouTube works, but in a lot of these other— same thing on, you know, obviously on Shorts, on Instagram and TikTok, depending on your business. But from a, from a B2B business, most likely you'll be leveraging your website or maybe LinkedIn. So that is the trap, the trap of perfection, that I'm not ready, I need the perfect idea, I need the perfect service. Do your due diligence, do some planning, but then put it into action. Put it, put the work to, to launch. That was trap number 4. Trap number 5, and we have one more trap and then we'll wrap it up for today. Trap number 5 is, I've already tried that. I've done this and nobody buys. I've done this and not getting open emails. I've done this and my proposals get ghosted. I get ghosted. You have to ask follow-up questions. What happened? When? What was the strategy? Under what conditions? How? Like if you tried something, maybe I started a newsletter and I'm collecting emails, people who come to my website and they download my white paper or my case study, I'm capturing their email, that's great, and now you have let's say 500 people email addresses in your list and you're getting zero open, Right. Nobody's opening. I mean, that's very low. That's probably— there's something wrong in maybe the deliverability. So you can go and read about email deliverability or maybe hire someone again. And with a couple hundred bucks, they can probably help you set up the right setting for deliverability. So maybe, you know, your emails are going to spam or they're not even getting delivered. I'm just giving you an example. I mean, I can talk about this for an hour. in terms of I've already tried that. I've went to the Chamber of Commerce and never got any lead. Now, of course, if you've done all the right steps, all the best practices, you've prepared, you have your pitch, you have your conversation starter, you have, you know how to handle objections. If you do something for a long time and you're not getting the results, yes, it's okay to, okay, this is not working out, I'll do something different. But if you've tried once and it's not working, and then you say, I've already done that and nobody's buying or nobody's talking to me, nobody's replying. You haven't done enough reps. So understand what happened, how it happened, what was your strategy at the time, what were the conditions at the time, and then learn from that. Most entrepreneurs repeat conclusions instead of repeating experiments. So, so Do something different, approach it differently. This is the growth mindset we talked about. It's about knowing that you can learn, you can grow, develop your abilities by doing different strategies. So doing different strategies are likely to— will likely lead to different results and different outcomes. All right, so that was trap number 5. Trap number 6. It's all about telling yourself this story. Successful founders are different. So you start comparing yourself to those who are very established, those who maybe came 5 years before you or 3 years before you or last year, and now they're doing well. And you say, look, yeah, they're just different. They're born that way. They're good. They're just— they're good at what they're doing. So in a way, especially if you're just starting out or you're about to start, you're now comparing chapter 1 for you to someone else's chapter 20 or chapter 25. So that's not a fair comparison. You shouldn't compare anyhow. You should learn from others to see what they're doing. I think Picasso said, a good artist borrow from other artists, and then great artists steal. Something like that. So learn from others for sure, but don't compare. Everybody's different. Everybody's situation is different. Do your best, learn from others, but don't compare that way. Comparison is what is the killer of joy, right? So the thief of joy. Unfortunately, on social media, you see people make all kinds of claims. If you go on LinkedIn, everybody's a CEO, everybody is this amazing founder, and they've done all these certain things. It's okay to embellish a little bit, but don't make things up. So social media, in a way, forces us subconsciously to compare, and the other thing is a lot of times, We suffer from this thing called survivorship bias. You're only seeing those who made it, those who are successful, and you're listening to their stories, and you're not seeing maybe the 90% who did not make it, who did not survive. So so so that the planes that came back to the base and survived the enemy's attacks. So we're studying those, and we didn't study like what led to. those who did not come back to the base. So here it's important that you learn from others, but don't compare to someone who's been doing this for 5 years. I always say you learn a lot from your peers and you learn from your competitors, especially those who are close to you. Like they have similar challenges, they have similar type activities. So you can see from them what's working now, what's not working, right? And you can, once you start to network, you'll find a lot of nice people who'll share with you. I used to think like, oh my God, they're a competitor, and I had this, this mindset of scarcity. But a lot of— there are some people are like that too, but a lot of people are willing to share, and they share a lot of details. They might not give you the exact amount of pricing they're using to close deals. They're not— they won't give you the specifics of a specific— they will not give you the specifics of a client proposal, but they'll share with you ranges and things that are working for them. And then those who have been to where you want to go. Those who are already established, they can also tell you about their own blood and sweat and tears. They can totally— they can, they can tell you about their journey and what they— what they— they can tell you about their journey and the challenges that they had to overcome, and they can give you some general guidance. See, everybody's journey is different. My journey is different than yours, but there are a lot of there are a lot of similar type situations that you'll face, especially, you know, when I'm speaking to 100+ founders every year, I get a lot of— I see patterns. And one of my friends is a physician, and I tell him, like, how do you do all this analysis and all of that? And he says, well, you know, there are patterns, and once you figure out these patterns and you study these patterns, You'll see, you know exactly what happened and what led to this in most cases, in severe illnesses maybe it's different. So same thing in business, there are patterns, so you might not have the same challenge that I— you might not have the same challenges that I went through, you'll have your own challenges, but there are patterns and there are inputs and outputs that if you do this specific input, you are likely to get that output. So that is why it's important to avoid this trap. It's important not to compare yourself with others and say, these are successful founders, they're built that way, they're born that way, they had a lot of money, they have a huge network, all of that. Well, you can build your own network, even if you have a very small network today, You can start building that network today. You can go to events, you can attend even virtual things if you can't go to events, you know, in person, but you can build your network. You can have these genuine connections with others. You can go to LinkedIn groups or Facebook groups, or you can go and learn from other places where your audience, your target audience is, and be there and contribute, add value to these conversations, because you are, if you want to be a consultant, The underlying assumption is you have something to offer, you have some technical know-how, you solve problems, so don't think to yourself, yes, I say a lot about selling, you have to sell, but you're not a sleazy salesperson, you are a trusted advisor, you are a consultant, a knowledgeable consultant who will solve problems for people who have pain, have challenges, a business owner who is getting hacked and their data is not backed up, they need you as an IT consultant to come in and help them out. A manager or a business owner who's suffering from employee retention or maybe client retention, if they have an employee retention problem, they can come to you as the HR, the amazing HR consultant, and you can help them address why the employees are not happy. Or if you are a sales consultant, you can come in and understand why clients are leaving. They're not the client, you know, your, your client is not retaining their own clients. So, so think of yourself as a trusted advisor, as someone who solves problems, and then you can go in and have those conversations. So those were the 6 traps that I want you to avoid. Let me just recap here quickly. One, the first trap, you're thinking, I am not ready. And we said Confidence comes from action. The second trap was on, I failed. Again, you— that was the third trap. The second trap was, I'm just not good at sales. Sales is learnable. The third trap was, I failed, instead of saying, what failed? Again, don't associate failure with you, with your identity. It's just an event. Failure is just an event. Learn from it so that you avoid it in the future. Trap number 4 was on, I need the perfect idea. Remember, there's no such a thing. So perfection will delay learning. So you have to step on the mat and take some steps, incomplete steps, wrong steps. You'll trip, you'll fall, but you can get back up. That's resilience. And do it again and learn from that previous misstep. Trap number 5 was on this mindset of, I've done everything I can. I've done everything I could, I've already tried that, now I have some follow-up questions, what is it that I can do differently next time? And then the last one is, the last drop is, successful founders are different, they're just made out of a different mold, they're just good at sales, they have a network, they have a lot of money, you can list 100 reasons, I want you to Learn from those founders and how they became successful. What is it that they've done? And so don't compare your own chapter 1 to someone else's chapter 20 or chapter 25. Learn from them, and then you have a chart— chart your own path. So that is it for today. We talked about those— I talked about those 6 traps, and next week I'll talk about how to build a growth mindset. So if you have any questions, Between now and then, or at any time, leave me a comment on the YouTube channel @StartupWithFeras, and then if it's something private, you don't want to put it out there to the world, you can email me at info@startupwithferas.com, and again, if you're liking this content, if you're benefiting from this content, subscribe to the channel, share it with others, click like, and let me know, again, let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you about Obviously, your challenges. If you have issues, I'm happy to help. And also, I want to learn about your wins. What is it that's working out really well for you? I, I love hearing these stories. And then with that, we'll end today, and we will see you next time. Have a good one.