What’s Really Slowing Your Business Growth (And How to Fix It)

Welcome to episode 108 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What is new in the world of entrepreneurship? Well, if you're here, there's a good chance your business isn't where you want it to be, at least not yet. It looks like we have. It's just a quick technical issue here. Hold on. Sorry about this. One second. One second. Ayayayayay. I think we are doing okay. Hmm. All right. We should be okay now. So if you're here, there's a good chance that your business isn't where you want it to be yet. And maybe you're working hard, maybe you're getting some traction, but something feels off. And that's what I want to break down today. I want to walk you through 3 categories that what I call the barriers to growth. There's there are strategic barriers, there are tactical barriers, and there are mindset barriers. So I want to this is not theoretical; this is practical. This is from the trenches. This is limiting to a lot of entrepreneurs. I speak to two to three founders every week, and I see these common. Patterns. Um, so, so I want to break it down. I want to help you out. I want to show you exactly how to fix it. I will give you templates, worksheets. I'll show you examples. So if you're here, um, and you want to grow the business, stay with me, get your notepad, and let's dive into it. And if you're new to this channel, my name is Feras. I've built several consulting businesses, stumped the 7th to 7 figures and one to 8-figure that I ended up sold, uh, selling to Dentsu, the global media giant, back in 2019. And since, um, I've been helping entrepreneurs and founders start, grow, and scale their businesses. My goal is to help you out. So if you have a question, if you have a comment, if you have an issue, let me know. I am here to help. You can leave me a comment on the YouTube channel, which is @StartupWithFeras, and Feras is spelled with F-E-R-A-S, or you can email me if it's something personal, you haven't told the world that you're leaving your corporate job and you're starting a new business and you want to send something private about business, about entrepreneurship, email me at info@startupwithferas.com. Again, Feras is spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S. Awesome. All right, so with that, let us dive right into it. So strategic barriers. I want to talk about five strategic barriers. The first one is, what is it that you're focusing on? So if you're just starting out, or if you're planning on taking the leap. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I'll tell you that you have to do everything yourself when you start, when you're starting out. Um, so, so that is just part of the process. You have to learn how to register your company, how to vet your idea, how to put together a business plan— not a 50-page document, that's a different— I have a video on that— um, how to tell people about what you sell, how to market, how to send proposals, negotiate, close a deal, and then once you close a deal, you celebrate, and then you have to deliver on what you promised, and then you have to take care of those clients and retain them and get referrals and then start hiring, so there's just a lot of learning, and typically people who start a consulting business, they know their craft really well. You have 5 years of experience, 10 years of experience, 20+ years of experience. I've had founders where this is going to be their 3rd mountain to climb. They've done— they had a journey, amazing journey in corporate, then they went on and did something else, and now they want to do their next startup, and I've talked to founders who have a few years of experience, and I speak at colleges, all the time, and there's 16%, according to some research, 16% of graduating students already have a venture or already have a side hustle or something that they want to pursue, and 32%, I believe 33%, they want to have their own business within a couple years, so millions of people are into this, in this thing called entrepreneurship, and they all Have something, especially in consulting. You know something you want to help others with. You want to solve problems. So that's I'm assuming you have that. If you don't have skills, you don't have knowledge, you don't have something that you can help others with, you have to build that to start a business on your own. But assuming you have that, typically you have to learn the other aspects of of the business, which is which is not easy, but it's not hard either. My job here is to make it easier for you. So So after that initial phase of getting things started and dabbling with marketing, once you have some momentum, once you start— you're starting to getting leads, once you are— you have a few proposals in the pipeline, at this point, what's holding you back from growing is this first strategic barrier is what is it that you are focusing on? And that's really important. If you are spending a lot of time on administrative work, if you're doing a lot of things, and I'll pick on accounting, my favorite topic, because that's what held me back for a long time. I was doing everything here in my head, even when we were in 7 figures by that time, I was still doing all of the accounting. It was messy. It was huge. And I have I have a whole video on, on why you shouldn't do your own accounting, but I'm just giving this as an example. You could be, you could be using content as a way to market your business and establish thought leadership, and you could be spending a lot of time doing your own video editing. Now, if you are a creator and you want to master on YouTube and you want to really understand editing, video editing, that's part of maybe your craft. But for the rest of us, most of us, You can find good talent these days where you can outsource the video editing to them, and then you can still be involved in the process of reviewing the edits and providing feedback. So, so, and it's a lot of times you can find, um, inexpensive resources depending on what you're looking to do. Just, these are just examples. You could be also doing data entry yourself. You could get an intern to help you with these things, especially around summertime. A lot of people want to intern. A lot of the students now are afraid of being replaced by AI. I don't blame them. So they're looking for opportunities to gain real-life experience. So you can find ways, inexpensive ways to outsource, delegate these tasks. And I'll talk about delegation later in this session, but focusing, you can find other people or you can use AI. I'll talk about it later as well, but I want you from a strategic perspective, I want you to put most of your time, most of your effort in 3 things. One is marketing, getting the word out, networking, being out there, sending emails, following up, all of that, and then obviously once you have some traction, once you're hearing back from from your leads, there's a whole sales, um, sales process, the sales life cycle. You have to nurture the lead, you have to educate them, you have to present, do a demo, you have to understand the objections, get used to the rejections, send a proposal, close the proposal, deliver the service. So, so, so the 3 things you want to— I want you to focus on is, is marketing. Most of your time should be done should be spent on marketing, sales, and then there has to be a time every week, every day may be difficult, but at least once a week where you unplug from the day-to-day, all the hustle, all the things you have to do, and then work on the business. So instead of being in the business, following up on email, responding to a customer, sending sending proposals. Those are all important, but there has to be an hour or 2 a week where you are stepping aside from the business, stepping away from the business, and focusing on the business. Any processes that you want to enhance, any relationship you want to nurture, any partnership, a technology partner you want to be part of, just bigger picture, bigger reflection. So whether it— whatever you do, if you go to Go to the gym on the way, on the way to the gym, put some soothing music in the background and reflect on the week. You can do it Friday, end of day Friday. You can do end of day Sunday, Monday morning, whatever works for you. But make sure you take some time once a week, an hour a week where you can step away and focus on the business. That's really important. So three things from a from a strategic barrier for for that first strategic barrier. What is it that you're focusing on? Marketing, sales, and then focusing on the business. So that is, that's really, really important. The second strategic barrier is weak differentiation. So, you know, people talk about niching and riches in the niches, and it is, there's truth to that. So If you're just starting, I always have to qualify this. It's really important because we have folks in our community who are about to start or they're just starting out, and we have folks who have been around for a little bit and they have some traction. So differentiation is really important. There are a lot of people pick a vertical and pick a consulting business, for example, IT. It could be, it could be HR. It could be, um, someone who helps speakers find gigs. It could be any number of all of the consulting, um, type, type of services. So what, what is it that's different about you? So I'll give you examples. I spoke with 2 founders recently, one in the IT space who was laid off And another founder with his co-founders, they on their own decided to take the leap. And one of them, the first one, the IT consultant, he said, yeah, I've done a lot of IT for the last 15+ years. I've worked, I've got all the certifications, I've got this amazing project portfolio, I've done, I mean, everything. I don't know IT that much. I know a little bit, but it was very impressive from what he said. So he said, and he's starting to build a website. Kudos. That's great. He's trying to update his LinkedIn profile. That's great. But then he's just, his brand is so vanilla or so generic. I don't know who he's serving. He doesn't know who he's serving. And if you don't know who is it that you're serving, the fancy word for this, your target audience or your customer persona or your customer avatar, all those marketing buzzwords. So, so these are important things, is who is it that will be buying from you? And the reason it is important, because you have to find these people. So if you tell I want to help all companies in IT, I mean, where are you going to start? They're what, 30 million businesses in the US? So what are you going to start? So it's really important to focus on an audience, and I'll walk you through the discussion that I had with this founder, and then identify who is it that you're most qualified to serve, and then— figuring out how to differentiate for that client. So for this, for this consultant, he's done a lot of work for school districts. I said, that's great. He's done a lot of work for government, that's government agencies, that's great. He's done a specific type of IT services. So I said, okay, you've— you can now, if you want to start small, he's— he doesn't think he's ready to go to, to pitch to school districts. might be looking for a larger company. I said, okay, well, there are a lot of private businesses, there are a lot of daycare centers, there are just so many education-related companies who are smaller, on the smaller size, that you can go and connect with, and those you see, let's say, I want to start with small private schools, elementary schools, or daycare centers, they still need to have Wi-Fi and security, and these days, these— most of these daycare centers, they have some sort of technology, they send updates to parents, so there is technology and internet and security and cybersecurity, all of that is important even to a very small business owner, a small daycare center with 10 kids, right? 10 children, so we went from I want to do IT to everybody to focusing on a specific geography where he lives, And then on a specific customer size, smaller schools, smaller daycare centers, smaller potentially tutoring centers, like small, very small, because he knows the lingo of this education space. He knows the concerns of educators and administrators. So that is an easy entry for him. And then what differentiates him, which is— this is this point here, the barrier about differentiation, is that he has he has the certifications, he has the portfolio of serving this type of audience. So you can differentiate by years of experience, by the quality of the work you've done, case studies, testimonials that you've had in the past, even if you had those testimonials from when you were an employee, it's the same person, it's you, so you can use those testimonials if you have people who have given you recommendations on LinkedIn, all of that works in your favor, and then you can differentiate with additional certifications, you can differentiate with if you produce content, if you've written white papers, if you've written a book, some folks have, if you have— if you've won awards in your industry, if you have, let's say there's an association, I remember when we were in analytics, there was the Digital Analytics Association, and then there was becoming a web analytics certified, that was a thing, so I encouraged my team and I got that certification and all that, so if you have a technology partner that you are certified to manage, to train, to implement that technology, you can be a certified partner. In my own story, in my own journey, We were back in the Enoor days before we sold the business. We were Google certified with 5 or 6, no, actually 5 or 6 designations different. There was an A/B testing type product. There was analytics. There were AdWords at the time. All of those were certifications, were logos we would have when we were presenting ourselves. Even now in the business I have with my partners in Dubai, we are partners with some leading tech providers in the marketing space. So there's just, there are a lot of ways for you to differentiate. You have to dig deeper into your own experience and your own journey and identify, pick those things that make you stand out because a customer, a buyer is getting pitches from different folks and you have to differentiate. And obviously, You want to be approachable, you want to be nice, professional, show up on time. All of that is really important. So differentiation, lack of differentiation is a major barrier to growth. So sit down this 1 hour of the week when you're thinking about the business, working on the business, and go back and identify ways for you to differentiate when you are speaking with potential buyers, when you're out there networking, right? So you don't have to burst all of that in one sentence. You can obviously have that on your LinkedIn profile, on your website, social media. Also, you can include a slide on that in your pitch deck, and you can include part of it in your elevator pitch or in your 30-second pitch. So that is the second barrier. And then for those of you who are joining us live and for those who will be listening or watching later, we are covering— I'm covering today the 3 major barriers to growth. And I've seen it. I speak with a lot of founders. These patterns happen again and again and again. And what I'm diving in today is what is really slowing your business growth, and not only that, also how to fix it. So, so far we've talked about strategic barriers, and that included— hold on, let's see if this, my mouse here would work. I covered the first 2 barriers under the strategic category. What is it that you're focusing on? And then weak differentiation. The third barrier is pricing, and here's here's the challenge: If pricing doesn't reflect the value that you're offering, it will affect your margins and the client quality and growth. And people have a lot of misconceptions on pricing. Here's one. One is that pricing is about the value you offer to clients. It's not about how much something costs you or the number of hours you put into it. And I have a full video, a 20-minute video on the different pricing models, hourly, project-based, value-based, performance-based, all of that. So I'll include the link to that in the description, but— A lot of consultants, when they're starting out, they underprice, way underprice their services with the idea that I'm not that experienced, I don't have clients yet, so I'll just go as low as I can so I can get that project, that client. So as always, If you're just starting out and you haven't really practiced your sales muscle and your proposal muscle and negotiating and all that, yes, I want you to sell the first couple of clients. The margin is not important. Pricing is not important. Making a lot of money is not important. What's important initially the first few times is to go through that whole cycle from pitching to negotiating to closing to delivering the service. Getting a testimonial from the client. I want you to do that a few times, and if you can make a buck while you do that, nice, good. But beyond that initial phase of having a few clients, you really have to think of pricing completely different to what might come, uh, to, to your mind, uh, sort of, um, naturally, that, hey, I just should discount my, my pricing. So I struggle with that as well, and it wasn't an issue of— like, there are 2 issues. One is that how much do I charge? And you should do your own research. You can check with ChatGPT, Claude. You can go to networking events, and you can go on competitors' websites. You can tell what other people are pricing just from some research. But again, if you've differentiated yourself, The point that I just covered, and if people see the value of what you have and you're solving real problems, not every lead is going to be price sensitive. Some will be; they like to haggle, and they like to get five proposals and go with the least expensive. I get it. Everybody wants to wants to get a discount. Everybody wants to get. you know, get something extra. I get that. People want to get maybe an extra session of training. They want to get a couple more hours. I mean, people, you know, we all like to get free stuff. I get that. But if the going rate in your industry, let's say it's $200 an hour, let's say $150 an hour, and you go in and you present yourself as this highly qualified consultant and you price your services at $50 an hour, I can tell you that a lot of buyers will put a big question mark if they're getting proposals from different vendors, from your competitors, at $150 an hour, $175 an hour, $200 an hour, $125 an hour, and you're coming at $50 an hour. That's a big question mark for most people. Not, not a good thing, because why is this guy so low, or this gal so low? Why, why is the price— why it's $50? What What is it that I'm not getting? So you have to be careful just because you're the low— you have a lower price, it doesn't mean that you'll get more business. So I want you to differentiate, that's why I had differentiation first, and once you differentiate, you can even bring that up, you can lean into that and say, I might not be the least expensive, but I know my stuff. I can deliver and solve your problem. I can be there 7 AM. I can be there, um, to, to, uh, you can call me, uh, when you have an issue. Uh, I, I, I offer 12 by 5 support. I will be visiting your offices and meeting with the stakeholders, and I will present my findings in person, that could be a differentiator. A lot of people want to see consultants in person working maybe on-premise. So whatever your differentiators are, that is your edge, that's your advantage, and I want you to— I don't want you to be shy about it. I want you to lean into it and say, yes, that's why— that's just how I am. I offer professional service. Quality, on time, all of that. That's, that's me. That's, that's my service to you. That's my commitment to you. And look at my testimonials. Again, it's difficult to, to, to— if you're just starting out, difficult to say all of that. But I want you to have that in your mind and gradually, after the first couple of sales, start positioning, positioning yourself as this amazing consultant because you know your skills. You are a great consultant, now you have to package yourself as such and you have to present yourself and sell your services as such. So when people have issues with pricing, when pricing feels uncomfortable, it usually comes to these 3 things: the value, what you're offering, isn't clearly defined; the value hasn't been tested Enough in real conversations, and then you really haven't done your homework in terms of discovery, both competitive research and also understanding from the client what is it that they are paying for, because you could be replacing an incumbent, you could be the new consultant who is doing the work of another consultant who did similar things last year. So in your discovery, when you are asking questions, learning about the client and their environment, some clients in my experience, they would share with you, they would share with you, yeah, we used to pay this guy $125 and we were happy with him and we want to stay in that range. You already have that signal. So some research and making sure the value is clear and you're differentiated, and then that will help you get over this, this challenge of, of pricing. And I did it, I did a poll, let me see, I have my notes here on it, a while ago, a few weeks ago, about, about challenges that consultants have. I listed pricing as one, I listed challenges with delivery or struggling to close deals at, at late stages, and I said what's the number one issue, and 50%, over 50% of respondents I said they hesitate when it comes to pricing. So if you don't know anything about pricing, you can check out my, um, The Ultimate Guide to Pricing for Consultants. It's— I'll put the link in the description. It's a 20-minute video on pricing. But if you know about pricing and you know you want to go with hourly or project-based and it's just an issue of presenting pricing, then Hopefully the tips in this video, in this session will help you get over the hump. Again, if you're having issues, you're not sure how to price or you hesitate, you're not confident in presenting this, whether verbally in real time or when you're sending those out in a proposal, let me know exactly where the challenge is and I'll be more than happy to answer, to address it. For you, give you some tips. But, uh, my friend, you don't want— you don't want to be the lowest price consultant unless— unless— there's always an exception, there's always an unless— unless your entire business model is based on competing on price and you want to be the lower, the, the least expensive provider, and you have systems and processes and potentially offshore talent where you can really be efficient and still profitable and you can grow with scale at tinier margins, if that's your business model, that competing on price is a good thing. But for most everyone else in consulting, I'm not a big proponent of competing on price. It'll be a It'll be a war to the bottom. You go from $150 to $125, your competitor will hear about it, they'll go to $100. You hear about it, you go to $90. Everybody ends up bidding at $65 an hour and then you're barely making any money. So keep that in mind when it comes to pricing. And I will— I still have 2 more strategic barriers I want to talk about before we go to the tactical barriers and then to the mindset barriers. But for the pricing, I have an example of someone I was working with, a language instructor, and he was way, way underpricing. So, and he was struggling because he's working all these hours, early mornings. He was teaching across different continents actually, and he can help people apply— it's not just regular casual conversational language learning skills. He was actually helping people who are applying to law school in another language, to applying to medical school, passing certain exams. And he was highly qualified to help all these at different levels of learning a language. So I said, my friend, you're way underpricing your services. So he said, what do I do? I said, well, why don't you double your pricing? And he thought I was nuts. I said, try it. Of course, it's a big decision. I didn't say it lightly. I said, think about it this way. If you have 20 clients today and you're working 10, 12 hours a day, if you double your pricing and you lose half of your clients, you still make the same exact money. And now you have 50% of your time back to you. So it took a little bit of time and a bit of convincing— oops, sorry. It took a little bit of convincing, but then he agreed to do it. And of course, when you make a big business decision such as that, you don't just do it overnight. You think about it. How do I convey this message to my existing customers? How do I You know, I gotta update my website, my social media, my profile, whatever, but then come up with a plan. And he did come up with a plan, and he gave a grace period for his existing customers. I think he gave them a 3-month period, and he said, living expenses are, are on the rise. I put a lot of time into it. I give you my heart and soul, and within 3 months, I'd love to keep you as a client, but at at that point in time, the new pricing will take effect. I checked with him, I think 6 months later, 5 months later, he did not lose one client. So I'm not saying you go and you double your pricing today. Don't, don't, you always have to take the advice you're getting from me or from someone else, you have to take it in context. So if you're charging $200 an hour, I'm not saying you go and double to $400. right away. Maybe you go to $250, right? If you're charging $60, maybe you go to $120. So depends. And again, you have to understand your, your competitor landscape, the clients you're talking to. A lot of that discovery, being out there talking to people who are potential buyers and in your ecosystem, will give you a lot of good signals. And that, that you can turn those signals into actions, um, for, for your business. So that's That was barrier number three. Barrier barrier number four. Strategic barrier number four: lack or lack of capital or insufficient capital. And when I speak about capital here, it's not just about money. There's resources. your network. So that's, that's one part. There's the skills that you have, your own hard skills, soft skills, and then of course financial. So as, as I think in the book, I think The Founder's Dilemma, I think he's— yeah, he said human capital. I, I, I say skills, network, and then money. He said, um, I think probably more eloquently Human capital, social capital, and financial capital. So this is a huge, huge barrier to growth. I, I get it, people don't have money. You're starting this business on a shoestring budget. You, you don't have a lot of savings. You have a financial runway, but the spouse, the life partner, people are, hey, what's going on? No revenue. So I get it, there's a lot of pressure on people when they're starting their business and sales are not coming in, so you have to find ways, if, let me put it that way, if you're starting out, if you haven't taken the leap, you have a full-time job or you have a side hustle, you're making money, the best time to start a job, sorry, the best time to start your own business is when you have benefits and 401 and a salary and PTO and all that, because the financial side of things is taken care of. So you can— you'll have to sacrifice some of the time in the evenings, on the weekends, to plan and work on your venture, new venture, but then you don't have any issues with, with the finances, right? Because you have a source of income. Alternatively, if you— let's say you were laid off. I'm here to support. I was laid off. I know it's painful. But let's say you had a very nice severance. Let's say like a 4-month severance or a 6-month severance. Then you can tighten your finances, spend less, and make this 6-month severance last you for a year. And this way you have, you have some peace of mind that I have my basic finances and expenses are covered, then you can put 120% of your energy into the business, right? But at times— when I was laid off, I had 2 months of severance. I had some savings. Uh, so, so, so, so I know people who were laid off with very little savings because they have a lot of expenses. So, so you have to— and I have a full live stream on the financial runway and how to build a 6-month financial runway. I'll put the link in the description for those of you who are thinking about that, but it's really hard to grow the business without that financial stability. So, so what I want you to do, because my promise here is that I list the barrier and I list also the fix. So if you're about to start out, Make sure you have that financial runway. If you already started and cash is tight, so take a look at your business expenses, your personal expenses, tighten the belt. Let anyone who's impacted by those financial decisions, let them make them aware, get their support. Peace at home is peace at work. So, so do that and then really, really focus on sales and marketing. At one point though, even you could be highly, you could be very, very disciplined financially, you could be very resourceful, you could be bringing in sales and breaking even, which is initially, that's a plus. If you're just breaking even for the first few months, that's awesome. Over time, of course, I want you to have a healthy margin, but at one point, even if you're doing all the above, you have a nice financial runway for your expenses, home, at work, you are bringing in some revenue and you're breaking even, even if you're starting to have a little bit of a profit, at one point, if you want to scale, you might need to infuse some cash in the business. So I'm, I'm not recommending you do that. I'm not saying you have to do that. All I'm saying is early on you need some money to get the business off the ground and to support yourself, your family, support the— cover the expenses of the business before the revenue from sales comes in, right? There will be this period where You're pitching, you're selling, people want to buy from you, they buy from you, they're not going to pay you everything upfront. That would be a rare occasion. So there could be a 3-month period before you have any real money coming in. So you have to, in that case, again, you have to tighten the belt and work as hard as you can and focus on sales and marketing. Now, if you're past that point and you want to grow the business, beyond this slow organic growth, you might infuse— you will have to most likely have to infuse some cash in the business because you've identified this amazing talent, this person who's a great first employee. They compliment you, they can help you with things that just takes you forever to do. You know, you've gotten good at marketing and sales and you want someone to come in and take care of all the back office. But they're expensive. This person is going to be mid-level to senior. They're not going to be junior, so it's going to be expensive. The business can't afford to hire this person, so you might have to have some cash infusion to do that, or sometimes you have to, maybe because of the clientele, you might have to have like a nicer office, you might have to do a lot of travel, so there are some inflection points in a business lifecycle where You need to infuse cash to grow. You might have to invest in some software. So at one point, again, all of the details of how much you need will depend a lot on where you are in your business growth journey and also on the type of services that you have and some other factors. So you have to figure out a way to get money in the business, and I have— Yeah. In terms of funding a business, I have a video. I'll put the resource in the description as well. If you're looking for ways to fund your business, there are actually a lot, including grants. There are a lot of grants for for-profit businesses, but there are other ways as well, and there are good ways to get money. There are awful ways with awful consequences if, consequences if, um, um, if you, if you, if you borrow money with high interest rates and, and, or you get investors who will breathe down your neck every other day, they're all— this whole, this whole raising money for the business is, it deserves its own. I think I have a live stream on that. If not, I will schedule one in the near future because raising money At a certain point, even for a consulting business, for a services business, at certain inflection points, when you see the opportunity and you just need to now invest in expansion, you need some extra cash beyond what you have organically. So for me, it happened about 2 years into the business. Once we, my partner and I, figured out how to sell and how to deliver and got a lot of scars and wounds that experience, we figured it out. We were starting to be profitable and we saw the potential. That was around 2005. People now wanting, you know, we were selling websites at the time and people wanted to get into online marketing and have better web presence and all that. And we saw the potential. So we injected, my business partner borrowed money from his family. I I put some money from my savings. That was sort of the last thing I had, but I was 100% committed to the business, and that investment paid off handsomely for us over the next couple of years. And then we ended up building an offshore business to support our back office services, and that also turned out to be a very smart move for us. So, but we needed some extra cash to do all of that. Now, So be aware of it, be aware of capital, you need all types of capital when you're growing, whether it's resources, whether it's your network or the network of your network, and obviously the financial capital. The last strategic barrier, and it sort of ties to what I just mentioned about needing human social and financial capital, and it is about business partnership. You can succeed as a solo founder, no doubt, and there are examples of amazing people who have done really well as single founders. Michael Dell is one. You have a lot of examples of those who did it as partners. You look at Airbnb, look at Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, so so you have examples in both worlds: people who went solo and did did well, and those who went with partners who did well. My preference in all my journeys and all my ventures: I've always had business partners, and this is I'm on my seventh journey. I'm on my seventh venture now, and I've always had business partners, and it worked out really well for me. I've had these lifelong friendships beyond just business. And, and there are a lot of benefits to that. I'll talk about that in a different video. But for now, from a strategic growth perspective, I want you to think of your current situation. If you are struggling with capital, or, or you don't have a wide network, or you're missing certain skills, key skills for the business, skills you can learn, you put a lot of time and energy, you read about it, you attend courses, you watch things on YouTube, You practice, you do the reps, you pick up skills. Network, you have to network like crazy. If you don't have a— you have to start building a network. That's just part of sales, part of marketing. So that puts a lot of pressure on solo founders. So if you want to grow and you're the type of person who enjoys the company of others, They like to get other perspectives. They want a shoulder to lean in on, to cry on when things go really bad. It is lonely when you're a solo founder. It's lonely when you have your own business, even with partners. So there are pros and cons to having business partners. This is not the subject of today's call, but I wanted to— to think about it from this way. At times you need to invest, uh, you know, at times you need to identify the gaps, um, that are holding you back from growing. And if you can get a business partner who will have— who will share equity with you, so you have to give, give up some equity and you have to give up some decision-making rights, and also it could kind of slow you down a little bit because you have now someone else to check with. All of that, all of those cons, they're addressed by all the pros of having a business partner. 2 sets of eyes, better than one. More energy, more time, more resources, more capital potentially, just more hours in the day to do more things. So if you're at a point where I've tried it on my own, I've gotten some traction, but boy, these areas, it's just so difficult for me. And I want to, I see the opportunity and I don't want to lose this opportunity. So finding a business partner who can come in and fill those gaps for you, uh, would be a huge plus for the business and will help you overcome this, this barrier. So, so don't take decision— don't make this decision lightly at all. Choosing a business partner is like choosing a life partner. It is the most consequential decision you make in business, in life. The life partner, that is, and then the business partner in business. So go through the process of learning about them, understanding their values, making sure you and them are aligned on what you want to do with the business, who's contributing what, make sure the expectations are all set up properly, get an attorney to help you put together a partnership agreement, an operating agreement. All of that is important. And then if you're not really sure if they're a good fit, Don't rush to sign the document. Don't rush to say I do. Work with them on a project or 2. Go out with them to a restaurant. See how they treat others. See how they behave under pressure. All of, all of those are really important things to look for when you're looking for a partner. And again, I have a whole playlist on, on partnership. If you're thinking of having a business partner, check out that playlist. It will save you a whole lot of whole lot of headache in the future with partners. So, but it is a barrier at times. It is a barrier. And I would say, and hopefully this is not the case, but it's more— I hear about it more than, than, than I like to— is that if you have a partnership where it's not working out, your best school buddy, your ex-classmate, someone you met at the gym, you like them a lot But when it comes to business, you're killing yourself. You're putting 80 hours a week and they're chilling, they're coasting. That's just— you can live with that for a week or two, but then it's just going to burn you alive. It's going to just eat. It's just going to really, really, um, hinder, uh, your, your growth. So if you're in this category where you have a business partner and things are not working out, you have to address this right away. Schedule time on the calendar, sit down, have that awkward conversation. Only great things come out of awkward conversations, but you got to have that awkward conversation. Reset, agree on certain things, put a plan together, put a weekly meeting on the calendar so that you can review progress. Don't let things drag, address them. And then if things are still not working out, then maybe it's time to ask your partner to leave. And that could get, that could get really ugly. It might, it might end up going the legal route. Try to avoid the legal route at all. I mean, it's just very expensive. It is going to be very time-consuming. You don't want to go the legal route unless you have to, so maybe you can get an attorney to help you kind of mitigate the situation, to educate both of you on the implications of these decisions, but at times you have to say bye-bye to the business partner if they're not delivering on their commitment to you, if they're not living to the expectations, if they're not just up to the challenge of entrepreneurship, and the same goes for if you've hired the first hire, the second hire, and typically those are going to be really, really important assets for your business. These are almost like— they're almost like co-founders for you. If you have hired people and things are not working out, you don't want to let the situation drag. Call them out, not publicly. Have it again, have those weekly meetings, go over expectations. Help them, support them. If they need training, give them training. Whatever they need, address their needs. And then they have to execute, they have to deliver. And if they're not delivering, put it in writing. In corporate, they talk about a PIP, personal improvement plan. Do that. And then within a couple months, if they're still not delivering, you have to ask them to leave. So, so these are, these are things that you have to deal with as a, as an owner, as a business owner. And it's not the fun part, is not the romance of entrepreneurship. This is the real things that you have to do as a business owner. But if you're not, if you have a— if you don't have— if you have a lot— so, so 3, 3 situations here, potential situations. One is you have a lot of gaps in, in human capital, resource capital, financial capital. Bringing in a business partner could help you bridge the gap and, and then go on, go on your growth path. The second situation is that you have a business partner, they're not performing, they're not carrying their weight. You have to have that heart-to-heart discussion with them, and then eventually they shape up, or you ask them to leave, and then avoid the legal route at all costs. And then third, if you, if you have an employee and they're not performing You go through the steps to help them out and train them, but then if they still underperform, you have to ask them to leave. So those were the 5 strategic barriers. And again, for those of you who are with us live, thank you for being live. If you have a question, you have a comment— I'm talking about barriers to growth. If you have other questions about entrepreneurship, I am happy to address. Just leave me a comment here. on the YouTube channel or at Startup with Feras, or if it's something a bit, as I always say, if it's something a bit private, you don't want to share this with the world, so you can email me at info@startupwithferas.com, and it doesn't have to be a challenge, it doesn't have to be an issue, if you are having some wins, small wins or big wins, I'd love to hear from you. Just someone emailed me, Mark, just a couple of days ago on the weekend, And he said, hey, Feras, I watch your videos and I'm deciding— I've decided to take the leap and I'm starting in a couple months and thank you so much. I mean, that was just very nice to hear. And then he said— I said, hey, I'm here to help. And he said, and by the way, I've got my first client. That's amazing. I was so happy for him. You made my day. It took me 6, 7 weeks to get my first client. I almost quit. Too many rejections initially. So let me know. I'd love to hear from you about the challenges you're going through and if you need any help, or if you are having some wins. I also want to hear about that, and we'll share that with the community. Of course, we protect your confidence. You know, everything's confidential. We protect your privacy. But I can always— I always love to share success stories. So anyhow, so if you're with us, let me know. Ask a question. I'm happy to— To answer, so we covered the five strategic barriers. I've got two barriers that are tactical. Now, tactical barriers—I can spend five hours on tactical things. I just want to talk about two things. I think they cover a lot of the areas of the tactical things that we do as business owners. So it's a lot of it is with execution and operations. So you can have the right strategy. You can avoid all these. Strategic barriers I covered, but then if you don't have the right set of operation, I would say if you don't have operational excellence, your business is going to suffer. So it takes a while to get to excellence, but meanwhile, if you're not, if you don't have systems in place, if you don't have certain habits in the business, the day-to-day habits, your business will suffer. So let me talk about— there are 2 here. Let me talk about the first one. The one is to do with responsiveness, and I might be old school, but responsiveness is a huge differentiator. In the strategic barriers, the number one barrier— the second barrier was about differentiation, and I can tell you In this day and age, if you are very responsive, you will do significantly better than most of the others because most people, a lot of the vendors these days, for whatever reason, they're not very responsive. They don't even send thank you notes or a summary email after you have— they have a sales call. I've experienced this myself, um, and, and, and with others. My friend You want to be responsive. When you have a lead emailing you or calling you, get back to them within 2 hours. If someone sends you a list of potential time slots for you to meet with them, pick the first time slot. And then if someone is ready to receive a proposal and you've done all the proposal items, All that you've gone through the proposal checklist. I have a checklist, I can share that with you as well. I can share my screen here in a second and show that to you. Send the proposal within 2 business days. So this is my 2-1-2 rule: respond within 2 hours, take the first meeting spot when you're offered a number of time slots, and then send the proposal promptly within 2 business days. So Okay, people say, Feras, this is unrealistic, I can't do this, my proposals take a week to prepare. Okay, fine, make your rule 2-1-2, uh, sorry, make it— make your rule 2-1-5, make your rule 4-1-5. The point here is to have a process, a measurable process, a mindset. That's the DNA of the business. We always get back to clients within 2 business hours. We We always send proposals within 3 business days or 2 business days. That would be you as a founder, when you model that behavior in the future, when you have salespeople and account managers and customer support people, they will follow your behavior, not what you say, what you do. So from early on, I really want you to focus on responsiveness. This has worked Wonders for me. And I can give you an example of, of the second point about picking the first time slot. People might think this is silly advice, okay? It's up to you. But a typical sales cycle, if you look at HubSpot, they say in B2B, larger, larger sale, it's anywhere from 3 to 9 months. That meaning, meaning even if you win the deal, let's just take an average 6 months. If you end up winning the deal, it's going to be 6 months from when you start. This is for larger B2B deals. I get it. So, so for you, it could be 6 weeks. That's fine if you're working with the SMB, with the small businesses for now. So if the client— if it takes about 5 to 6 to 7 follow-ups to close this deal, think about it. Every time you have to have a meeting with a client because there's the initial introduction, There's meeting the stakeholders, there's demonstrating, doing, running a demo, there are the proposal meetings, there are the follow-ups, oh, this executive wants to meet the vendor, there's all these things that come up. So every time you want to meet with a client, if they give you, let's say, 3 slots, 3 slots, one of them on Monday, one of them on Tuesday, one of them on Friday, and you pick Friday, that means 4 days have gone by and you haven't made progress on the sale. So, and if there are 5— I'm going to the extreme case here— if there are like 5 touch points and every touch point is delayed by 4 or 5 days, you've delayed closing the deal by anywhere from 4 to 5 weeks. That's a contract signed delayed by 4 to 5 weeks. That's the first deposit delayed by 4 to 5 weeks. That's The final deposit or the final payment delayed by 4 to 5 weeks. So this might be something that you think about that kind of, okay, I'll pick any time that's available. No, if you can move— when it comes to sales, especially initially, no sale, no sales, no sale, no revenue, no revenue, no business. So initially, bent over backward, to take the first slots that the customers give you to meet with them, even if it's inconvenient, even if it— you have to move things around, internal stuff that you have on your calendar. Obviously, if you have another client meeting, don't move that, but to the extent that you can take the first booking, go for it. It shaves off a few days from your you getting that first payment, that contract. And it's really this— again, this might sound like a small thing or like a silly thing, but it's that mindset, that go-getterness that worked well for me. Like, I want to be like the first one there. I want to pick that first slot. I want to send the proposal quickly. I want to respond very quickly. It becomes just a habit for you. Again, with Yeah, you don't want to take, you know, someone emails you at 8 PM on Friday, I'm not saying you respond at 10 PM on Friday. No, unless it's an emergency or you're doing 24/7 support, but in general, that sense of responsiveness, that sense of ownership, that sense that I want to go and be there and be the first one there, that is really important. It sets the tone for you as an operator. And also sets up the tone for the team when you build the company and you grow the company. So that is— responsiveness is really, really important, especially these days when a lot of people just don't send emails. They don't send follow-up emails. They don't send thank you emails. They don't send a summary and highlight certain things. I know AI can do this, but still, we are missing the human touch. You will differentiate significantly in a good way if you do these things, if you add a human touch to the interaction. Okay, so that is the point here. Again, for those of you who are live, if you have a question, don't hesitate to put it in the comment. I'll be more than happy to address it. So going to the second tactical barrier, and that is Systems, processes, and tech, and of course AI. So initially you'll do everything manually because you just got to do it. You got to do— I don't have a checklist, I don't have a template, I don't have a worksheet. Although if you follow my videos, you can get a huge head start because I give you all these spreadsheets, all these templates available for you, no charge. All is available, um, if you look at the description of, of any of my videos, you'll see a list of links to resources I mentioned in that video. So you can— they're typically a Google Doc or a Google Slide doc or a Google Worksheet. You can make your own copy and then customize it to your liking. So, so what I want you to focus on, as soon as you start to do repeat certain tasks— when I go to a networking event, when I'm sending a proposal, when I am Um, I'm going on site, uh, when I'm hiring, when I'm getting a contractor, every aspect of the business that you are likely to do again and again, you want to document, you want to set up a process around it. Initially, it could be a simple checklist in, in a Google, in a free Google Sheet. That's it. And then when I, when I do the same task again, I go and, okay, well, this, I can do this better. So improve, improve on this checklist. And later, when, when you do the same tasks again and again and again, they're already listed for you. So, so that makes it more efficient. And the second thing is you're building a business. You're building a business that you want to grow, you want to scale, you want to eventually exit, sell to someone. And the more systems and processes and proper use of tech and AI, the better the valuation in the future. And then the easier for you to onboard and train your team members on the things that you've done and you've mastered and you know really well, but it's all here. You want to put it on paper in documents. And if you go with ClickUp or Asana or Notion, there are a lot of these tools today. They give you templates that you can use right away. So I have templates. I'll share those with you. But if you use any of these systems, they come up with, they come out with an onboarding checklist. So when you hire someone, here are the things that I gotta do. When you bring on a new customer, how do I onboard customers? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right? So, so there are ways, uh, tools out there, and I'm, I'm not a big fan of spending a lot of money on tech. Start with no-cost or low-cost tech, use it, overuse it, abuse it, and then at one point you have to migrate to something that you have to pay for. But it is, it is put most of your time and energy on leveraging the tool. Big companies, there's this 90/10 thing. They put 90% of their time and budget, budget on buying the tool, very little time and money and effort on enabling people, training people, hiring people to manage the tool. It should be the other way around. It should be 80/20 or 90/10, you know, 70/30, but the bulk of the investment should be on people, trained people who can make use of this technology, whether it's Salesforce or HubSpot or anything. You gotta put the right people behind it to, to do something worthwhile with this technology. So, so a big, big, big recommendation here, a huge recommendation, is to leverage systems and processes and AI. And AI I have what I call AI-first and AI-enhanced. So you could be delivering AI services to your customers, so that could be part of your consulting. A few of us might be doing this, but for the rest of us, all of us, this is— there's AI-enhanced. This is where you can enhance what you're delivering to the client with AI, applied AI tools that fit your delivery, or back office, whether it's creating slides, whether it's taking notes in meetings, whether it is, you know, all the common usage of generative AI and agentic AI as we're getting more into it. So find what works well for your business. Don't outsource your thinking. You have to do the thinking. You have to do the brainstorming. You have— you can do research with AI, but don't rely 100% on AI. I think we'll all get dumber. You have to use the this brain. You can— the mundane stuff you can outsource to AI, that's totally fine. You can research, you can get ideas, you can generate derivatives of your idea, that's all fine, but it's really important to use tech in general and to use AI and do it gradually. Don't go and buy— I have an article here, I have a document I'll include on include the link to it in the description of the most— what did I call it? I call it the low-cost, no-cost technology checklist in all areas of your business, from office tools to messaging to project management to e-signing to make sure the whole proposal process is streamlined, graphics and all that. So I have that document, kind of master checklist of technology that that a consulting company would need, so I'll include the link to that in my— in the description. So that was the second part of the tactical barriers, and oh, I forgot to mention one thing. I do have from an AI assistance perspective, I created 2 AI assistants to help you generate proposals and to make your proposal generation process streamlined. One I used with ChatGPT and one with Google Notebook LM. So it's, uh, I'll put, I'll put those links as well in the description. Um, you can go there, use it right away, or you can actually even customize that, that GPT, uh, to your own needs and to your own business. And I cover all of that— how, how to use the GPT, uh, to generate proposals and also how to use the Google NotebookLM, I have it all in the video, in this hour-plus video on the ultimate guide to generating winning proposals. I go through the entire proposal cycle and why most consultants actually miss, don't close deals because they think of proposals as a point in the process where it's really a continuum. So I cover all of that in the proposal video. But for now, and to wrap this up here, the 3rd barrier, and I'll go quick with here, we have the mindset barrier. And I didn't want to start with this today because everybody talks about mindset, and it's important to have the right mindset and the entrepreneurial mindset. I get it. But there's specific things that you got to do in your business strategically. We covered 5 of them. The specific things you got to do in your business tactically, we covered 2 of them, and now I want to wrap it up with the mindset barriers, so that growth mindset, the growth capacity. The first one is recognizing the level of effort required. A lot of people get into entrepreneurship and they think it is much easier than reality. So, so it's a It's hard, it's 5 times harder than you think it's going to take, because a lot of learning, a lot of trials and errors, a lot of unknown territory, so if you come into entrepreneurship and you're thinking it's going to take you a couple of weeks to get revenue, and you're going to have amazing clients right away, and because of all your expertise and certifications and name in the industry, Everybody's going to like you and send you leads. You will be disappointed. You'll be hit with the dispassionate— if you have passion for entrepreneurship, you'll be hit with the dispassionate reality of entrepreneurship. So I want you to be aware. I'm not here to discourage you. I want you to succeed. After all these years and this gray hair, my job is to help you succeed. That's my mission is to help you out and make This journey easier. The journey is not easy, no matter what people say on social media, no matter what people say on YouTube. There's no way. There's no. It doesn't happen. It's you can. The chance of winning the lottery is one in two hundred ninety-three. I don't do lottery, but just statistically, it's very low. And the chance of making it big in business without working hard is zero. Is close to zero. Zero point zero zero zero zero zero one. Because you might luck out, yes, but you don't plan for that. Things could happen your way, and yes, it would be not the norm, but what you do is you prepare for this journey. It is— it's a beautiful journey. The journey itself, the lifelong friendships that you'll have throughout this whole journey, the memories, the The financial independence—it might take you a couple tries, three three try three attempts to get there. The experience, the relationships, the network—all of those are worth this effort. So I want you to get into entrepreneurship, but I want you to come in prepared. And the first part of preparedness is the mindset. Having this mindset—the first part is understanding what it takes. to get there. So if you come in with the right expectations, you are more likely to succeed, because otherwise you'll burn out, you'll blame others, you'll, you'll just have a very negative outlook on life because you've given it everything you've had and it didn't work out. So I want you to increase the likelihood of succeeding, and it starts with recognizing the level of effort required and level of sacrifice required. Passion is not enough. Passion is optional. It's one of our Black Belt Startup rules. Passion is optional. Sacrifice and skills are not. So that's the number one barrier that is mindset related. The second one is thinking bigger once you have traction. So if you keep thinking small, I've got a few clients, I've got some recurring revenue, I'm good, that's it, I don't want to grow the business, you will not grow the business because that's what you're happy with where you're at. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, said, life is about growth, you grow or you die. So part of this mindset thing for entrepreneurs is a growth mindset. There's a whole— there's a book by the Stanford professor Dweck on the growth mindset, a great, great book. No time to spend a lot of time on it today. No time to spend a lot of time on it today, but really think of where you want to be in a year from now. I'm not a big visionary. At least me personally, What is it I want to do in 5 years? You can dream big. You want to say, I want to kind of sort of general direction. I want to have a profitable business. I want to be a leader in the industry. I want to have this amazing culture in our business, avoid all the negative experiences you've had in corporate. Those are lofty goals. You should have them. And then plan quarterly, plan, at least that's how I operate. I plan. Quarterly review, monthly plan for the year and review quarterly and move things around, pivot a little bit if needed, but do think bigger, don't think too small, there's a huge opportunity, especially now with the technological shifts we're going through, yes, some sections of the economy might be impacted, but if you are leveraging AI effectively, if you're using AI intelligently, if you're incorporating tech in your processes, if you're leaning in on the changes, you don't have to be bleeding edge, but you want to be a little bit cutting edge, not left behind. There's just huge opportunities in many, many, many sectors. So, and I talk a lot about that in vetting your idea and then business planning. So I have a playlist on that. If you're not sure about kind of what business to pursue and what sector to go into, but if you've already committed and you started and you have some traction, don't think small, think big, and there's just a lot of opportunities out there. And the last part, the last thing I want to cover today is, it's also a mindset thing, it's about delegation, and I spoke about this before, As a founder, I know you're the best one. As a founder, you're the best person who can do this job, who can deliver this service, who can create a website, who can put a cybersecurity strategy, who can come in and improve the HR processes. I know you're good at what you do. You can come in and improve a company's workflow with AI. I know you're good at that, and you could be You could have all the industry awards and the certificates. I get it. But at one point, if you want to scale, if you want to grow, delegation is something you cannot escape. And there's— I covered the details of it last week, and I showed my Founder Focus Optimizer and the process to identify what you can delegate. But the idea here is that don't hold on too tightly to things in your business. When you're starting out, you're doing everything. Over time, you start finding packaged things that either you're not very good at and you want someone else to do for you, and things that maybe you're good at but you shouldn't be doing, um, like the video editing example I mentioned earlier. So especially when you have some resources, when you have some some cash flow and you have some margins and profit, strategically understand strategically where should I be putting my time between now and the end of the year? If I want to increase my sales by 20%, 30%, okay, what marketing effort should I be putting? What sales effort? What technology partnerships do I need? What places do I need to go to? So if you're going to increase your activities in sales or in marketing by 20%, The time has to come from somewhere else. Even if you are willing to put more time, you work, you're working 60 hours a week, you're, you're ready, able, willing to, to put 70, 80 hours a week, that's great for a period of time. That's okay. I've done it. Can't do it, you know, for years, but you can do it for a specific season. Um, but, but even if you can do that, you might have to You might be able to do it with less effort if you identify the things that you're still doing that you can pass on to an intern, to a contractor, that you can use systems and AI and technology to, to help you do it in a more streamlined way. But the idea is that if you want to grow, you have to delegate. You can, you can grow to a certain degree without delegating. You can— I know, I know successful solopreneurs, they've been in business for many years and they, you know, they, they don't want to hire people, they don't want to deal with people issues, they don't want to deal with payroll and, and performance reviews and all of that, but they hit a cap. And once you hit a cap, if you're satisfied with it, that's great, but a lot of people are not satisfied. They say, I want to make more money, more profit. But then you're not changing your mind, you're not setting up the system to grow based on this direction that you want to take the company to. So to summarize here for the mindset barriers, we talked about recognizing the level of effort required, entrepreneurship is 5 times harder than you think, and then thinking bigger, once you have some traction, don't think too small, And last but not least, delegation. Delegation is really, really important. And if you can't delegate, then you will hit a cap. And later, when you want to sell the business, if it's just you and no processes, no systems, this will have a significant impact on the valuation of that business. You can always find buyers, but the issue is the valuation. You might get one-third of what you could potentially get if you have some systems and processes and some people, so the business is not just you. It looks like we have some comments here, let me see that. Hello, so working— thank you for being here, okay, let's see, working across event planning versus long-term sales, what are a few pointers you can get from a startup perspective, from a startup? And thank you, we have Let's see, let me put this here on. Mindset is extremely hard, honestly harder than the business. So, Brooke? Yeah, can't tell the name from what I'm looking at, but thank you. Yes, mindset is extremely hard, but let me tell you, I'll get to the first question in a second, the first comment, but you know, it's Like in business, it's just like going to the gym or training for— if you run, training for maybe half a marathon. Or in my case, I'm into martial arts, I'm into archery. So, so it's about stepping on the mat. I've been doing martial arts for, for a long time, and I can still remember the first time I, I got on the mat. And in aikido, we do a lot of rolls. I mean, I was terrified rolling. I'd never done any, um, any, any type of, of workout where I needed to roll back, back, back or forward. But gradually, it took me a few weeks, and then you start rolling and it just feels— it's like second nature, you know? It saved my life a couple times outside, outside the dojo in real life where I felt— I was in a park and I slid and I I took a roll and I think that I would have broken a hip or something. So just stepping on the mat, so, so, and getting the reps in day in, day out, I think that helps. So, so the mindset, if, if you, if you don't have that growth mindset and, you know, because of, I don't know, nature or nurtured, the way we were born, the genes, or the way the, the environment around us. it could have led to where we're not, we don't have that growth mindset, but you can do something about it. So learning about business is one thing. Now, as they say, learning is education plus application. So how I do make it part of my daily activities where I got a rejection today, okay? Awful. Well, on my first day when I started sales, the first day, the first business, 5 rejections. I mean, I almost quit. My business partner and I, we almost quit. It was so hard to take. We went home and said, man, what did we get ourselves into? 5 rejections in one day. But then, you know, it took us a couple of days to recover. We got ourselves busy with business plan. Let's plan the vision for the next 5 years, right? But then we had to go back and hit the pavement, right? So it's really, it's small things. I think small things in business, just like you run for a little bit, tomorrow you run a little bit more. Same thing in archery, same thing in painting, same thing in, in any art. And, and there's a lot of analogies to art in business. So, so I would say if I'm getting rejections, that's, that's the fact. Okay, analyze what happened. I didn't prepare well, I didn't have a right pitch, I misread the customer. Obviously, I'm kind of not blaming myself, but I'm listing the things that I could do better, right? So identify what went wrong, and then for the next pitch, avoid these 5 things, and you're more likely to succeed. So even with this, the mindset of there's that fixed mindset and there's the growth mindset. And I think that the main thing is, is that I think I love what Stephen Covey, the late Stephen Covey, talked about it in his book I read 25 years ago, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He talked about like things happen to us, we don't control that. In most cases, just things happen to us. It's our reaction. The reaction is what we have control over. And again, depending on life circumstances and other things we maybe react in a certain way, but that we have control over our reactions. So as long as we, we go out there, learn what to do, and watching this video and other videos on the channel hopefully will give you a lot of, a lot of tips on what to do in sales and in marketing and in hiring and all that. So, and then doing those reps and learning from those, I think you can overcome issues with the mindset. But it is hard, to your point. I, I totally agree. The first comment here, and then I think we'll wrap it up. I don't think I have any other comments. So, so I, I don't get the question. It says working, working across event planning versus long-term sales. Uh, I'm not sure I understand the question. If you're, if you're planning events to get leads, if that's what you mean, that's a good thing, um, versus long-term sales. can get from a startup perspective, like long-term sales? I think, again, I really don't get— if you're still live with us, if you can just clarify the comment, and this is D-Y-A-O-R-G-8-I, this is the name of the commenter here, but if event planning, if you're attending events, or let's say you're an HR consultant, you can host a meetup, local meetup, You can do it online. I like to do things in person and then invite managers of HR. And the point here is to maybe you can make a buck from hosting that event, but also you're listening to the HR managers' issues, challenges. Maybe they're just struggling with using AI. You can offer a perspective there. So yeah, so that's the first step in the process of getting leads through the event that you planned. And then you have to nurture the leads depending on the service you're offering. I have a full video on the sales funnels I mentioned earlier in the live stream. You can use that to understand the 5 stages of, of the sales funnel and nurture, nurture leads from that first encounter to becoming clients. Looks like we have one more from Stephen. Hey Stephen, welcome back. Uh, what are some good books for mindset change and shift in business? Um, let's see. Um, well, we have a book coming up. I'll let you know as soon as it's ready. Uh, but, uh, no, seriously, I think I do have a playlist on mindset. I think that, that you'll find it useful, free, available to you on the YouTube channel. The, the, the book, um, uh, that Growth Mindset Versus the Fixed Mindset by, um, Dweck, I think Caroline Dweck. I forgot the name now. Oh my goodness. Um, D.W. Dweck, E.C.K., I believe. Um, but that's sort of the book on mindset. I think I read it many years ago. It benefited me a lot. Um, and it's, it's, um, you know, um, uh, you can also do, um, a personality assessment. I, I— there are a number of them, but the one I, I, I used most recently, um, by Kiersey, Professor Kiersey, and he talks about 4 types. The, the, um, what do you call them? Yeah, there's the rational, there's the idealist, they're the guardian, and there's the artisan. And, and, and it's sort of everybody behaves differently depending, depending on their personality type and their temperament. So, so spending a little bit of time on that, um, you do that or you do StrengthsFinder is another one, um, that I used I'm sort of more that learning and execution are top traits for me, and that's good to know. And then there's side effects to that. So if you keep on learning, you don't execute. So I think a combination of reading about it, doing, running through one of those tests, and then don't spend months on it. My recommendation is just put it into action, put it into— put it into action right away, in your next meeting, at home with a life partner, you know, discuss these things and get feedback from them. People who love you, people who trust you, people in your inner circle, they're probably the most honest, except when you ask them, is this a good business idea? They don't want to hurt your feelings, they say yes. So take their input about yourself, your personality, your behavior, but not about business. Business sometimes, People who love us, they just don't want to hurt our feelings, so they say, yeah, it's a good business idea. But other than that, let me know if you have any other follow-up questions. Leave me a comment on the video or email me at info@startupwithferus.com, and I'll be more than happy to answer. Thank you for being here, and we'll see you on the next livestream next week. Have a good one. Bye.