773 Take Your Business to a New Level with the Shark Tank Masters

This is episode number 773 with the Shark Tank masters. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Theodore Isaac Rubin said, happiness does not come from doing easy work, but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. Welcome to this special edition with the Shark Tank Masters. Now, if you're an entrepreneur or you just like the show Shark Tank, we've had a number of the Sharks on this podcast, on the School of Greatness, and they've been some of our biggest interviews. Some of the most inspiring stories come from entrepreneurs who have had nothing or who've been through so many extreme challenges in their life, and yet they went on to become billionaires, famous inventors, successful entrepreneurs. They've gone on Shark Tank to share their stories and help other young entrepreneurs grow their businesses and brand. And in this interview, we've got Sara Blakely, who is an American billionaire businesswoman, founder of Spanx, super inspiring, one of Time Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People in the World list. We've got Kevin Harrington, who's an entrepreneur and business executive. He's the founder of As Seen on TV. He's been on Shark Tank and a massive keynote speaker and author. We've got Daymond John, my friend, who is bestselling author, inventor, investor, personality, and motivational speaker. We've got him in the house. We've got Matt Higgins, who is co-founder and CEO of RSE Ventures, a private investment firm that focuses on sports and entertainment, media and marketing, food and lifestyle, and technology. And we've got Barbara Corcoran, who is an investor, speaker, consultant, and massive TV personality, began her her career in the '70s with real estate and just blew up in the NYC real estate industry. And in this episode, we talk about what the hardest part of getting a company off the ground is for entrepreneurs, how to evolve your business model and reinvent. This is something that keeps coming up for me is in the industry of social media and, and digital marketing and people's attention spans constantly getting smaller and smaller. How do we reinvent to build businesses? How to continue to master your skills in sales and marketing and branding? What to do when you go all in in and you fail? That's a common question. And what to do with profit when you make it in your business? How do you spend your money so that you grow and protect yourself? Super pumped about this one powerful episode. Make sure to share with your friends, lewishowes.com/773, and let me know @lewishowes on Instagram what you think when you're sharing it out. You know how people sometimes invest in something that seems incredible at first, but then it doesn't live up to the hype? Like when everyone was convinced NFTs were the future and people were buying them for thousands of dollars and now they barely have any value. Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for numbers that look great, like impressions, but then they don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bull spend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn Ads. Cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com/lewis. Terms apply. Spring is here and Spring Fest is happening now at Lowe's. Refresh your yard with Stay Green Premium 2 cubic foot mulch. 5 bags for just $10. Heading indoors, save up to 40% off select major appliances to help supercharge your chores. The best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid through April 22nd while supplies last. Selection varies by location. See lowes.com for details. Mulch offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Hiring isn't just filling seats. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, they'll help you match with candidates who can actually move your business forward. Target candidates by skills, certifications, or location. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results now with Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, do it the right way with Indeed. Again, a big thank you to our sponsors. And I am so excited about this interview with the one and only Shark Tank Masters. Did you wake up every morning and say, this is my dream to sell fax machines door to door? Were you thinking, no, what am I doing in my life?

Exactly. So what happened was a lot of people think that Spanx started when I cut the feet out of my pantyhose, but actually it started long before that. It started when I was selling fax machines door to door and getting my card, business card ripped up in my face, being escorted out of buildings all day, every day, that I woke up one day and just thought, I'm in the wrong movie. Like, how did this happen? This is not my life.

Yeah.

Cut scene director, like call the producer. And I got out a piece of paper and I wrote down, what am I good at? And the only thing in the good column was sales. And I thought, okay, what am I gonna do with that? And I ended up writing in my journal, I'm going to invent a product and sell it to millions of people that will make them feel good. And then I asked the universe for an idea and I was very specific and it took 2 years. And I only cut the feet out of my pantyhose one time, and I was not going to squander any idea the universe gave me because I had really asked for it. And then the minute I cut the feet out, I started trying to make it. I started looking up manufacturers on the internet.

How did you find a manufacturer at that time?

A website called ThomasRegistry.com, and it lists all the manufacturers in the country based on category. And that's when I found out that a lot of hosiery and undergarments were being made in North Carolina.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So you got a local?

Yes. So, so I called and called and no one would take my call and they'd either hang up on me or say they weren't interested. So I took a week off of work and drove around in person and just showed up and said, I just showed up.

Hey, I wanna create a sample.

Yeah.

Cuz if they weren't gonna get a big order for something, they're probably like, what's, I'm not gonna do a little sample for you.

Right, right.

Yeah.

I showed up with my lucky red backpack from college. It's always with me.

You still have it?

Yeah, of course. So anyway, I went into the host, the manufacturing plants, and they asked me the same 3 questions. And you are, let's say, Sarah Blakely, and you're with like, uh, myself, Sarah Blakely, and you're financially backed by, and I was like, Sarah Blakely. So you can imagine how those went. It was like, well, have a nice day, honey, and good luck. And, um, about, you know, a few weeks after I made all those rounds, I got a call from a guy in North Carolina who had took pity on me and said, Sarah, I've decided to make your crazy idea. And when I asked him why he had the change of heart, he said, I have 3 daughters. Yeah. So he ran the idea by them and they're like, Dad, that sounds interesting. You got to give that girl a chance.

Amazing. So he called you back. You didn't follow up with these people?

Oh yeah, I was following up, but to no avail.

But he, he followed up and said, yeah, we'll give it a shot. Yes, we'll make this. So what was the next step? Was he just making a sample for you or testing different models or sizes, or—

Yeah, so it just set up to make the garment while I was making it with his manufacturing plant. I was also wanting to patent the idea. Mm-hmm. And I was also trying to come up with the name for the invention. So I was doing those 3 things simultaneously, driving up on the weekends and working with Ted in the back of the manufacturing plant that I'd become very close with.

And driving to North Carolina from Florida.

No, from Atlanta. I was living in Atlanta at the time. Atlanta. Ted, Ted became my buddy and I went to get it patented, but all the patent lawyers wanted between $3,000 and $5,000, and I had $5,000 set aside to do this.

That's it.

Yeah.

So I wrote my own patent. I went to Barnes Noble.

No way.

And I bought a book called Patents and Trademarks, and I wrote the patent. And then I called one of the patent lawyers that was the nicest to me and said, please, please, please, will you write the claims over the weekend for a discounted price? I've done all the other rest of the patent.

Yeah, the legwork you'd done. Yeah, you just kind of needed to button it up.

And yeah, you needed to sign it off, the legal part.

And so he did.

He actually He admitted to me that when I came to visit him, he thought I'd been sent by Candid Camera, which— let me put it in your words—

he thought he was being punked. Of course, of course.

Wow.

Yeah, he thought he was being punked, okay?

And he thought, where's Dashing? Where's Ashton?

Yeah, exactly. He thought that his friends were playing a joke on him.

No way.

Yeah, he goes, who's this girl? Sarah? I mean, like, you're not the typical person who walks in the door saying, I've got product and I want to patent it. So anyway, he did that. Then at the same time, I'm trying to think of the name. I had horrible names written on scrap pieces of paper all over the place in my apartment, in my car, and rental cars, on the back of like Avis agreements. And, um, you want to hear how bad the runner-up name to Spanx was?

Yeah.

Open-Toed Delilahs.

No way.

Yes.

I cannot believe that was even an option.

It was, it was the runner-up. Like, how bad is that?

Open-Toed Delilahs.

So wouldn't be sitting here with you right now if I named it that.

That is the horrible Yeah, it's so bad.

Wow.

Yes. So anyway, okay, so what does Spanx stand for? Well, it's all about the butt, and it makes your mind wander a little bit. Nobody ever forgets it. I had no money to advertise. It was risky. It was fun at the time. Listen, now it's become a household name, but when I first invented it, I would call people and say, hi, I'm Sara from Spanx, and they would hang up, right?

And I was probably like a porn.

Yeah, they thought I was pranking them. I'm called— I'm like, no, really, I'm Sara, and my company really is called Spanx. And I had department stores across the country that wouldn't sell it. They thought it was too risqué of a name. Yeah. And my mom sent her whole lunch into the wrong website when I first started. I was like, Mom, it's with an X.

Oh my God, it's super important.

It's with an X.

So yeah, anyway, I ended up buying the word Spanx from a man who said he was holding out from the porn industry. Funny enough, I bet.

Yeah, I paid Spanx with an X.

I paid some money for that. But, um, anyway, yes. So amazing. Named it Spanx. It came to me because I narrowed down my thinking. I knew that Kodak and Coca-Cola were the two most recognized names in the world at the time. And I thought, what do they have in common? I like to think about words and phrases a lot. They both had a strong K sound in them. And the man that created Kodak liked the K sound so much, he took a K and put it in the beginning and the end of the word and played with letters in the alphabet. So, and I also had a bunch of friends who did standup comedy, and it's this weird trade secret among comedians. Audience that the K sound will make your audience laugh. So I put all that together and I'm like, okay, I want my product name to have the K sound in it for good luck. And literally Spanx came across my dashboard in my car in my mind, and I pulled off the side of the road. I wrote it down. I went home that night. I typed it in my computer for $150 with my credit card. And at the last second, I backspaced the K and the S and put in an X and hit send.

So it was accident kind of with the X.

No, I knew. I, no, I thought—

you backspaced. Gotcha.

I backspaced because I stared at it for a while and I had done research that made up words do better for product than real words and they're easier to trademark.

Yeah.

So then, then I had the name and I had the, the, the patent in the works, got my prototype, and my patent lawyer said, Sarah, I need to know what's in this garment in order to write the patent. I said, okay, no problem, we'll call Ted. So I get Ted on the phone. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to the manufacturer? Yeah. Like in the back, in the back. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to my patent lawyer? He's like, yeah. So we're all talking and he goes— I go, can you tell him what's in it? He's like, yeah. Well, it's 70% nylon and 30% lacquer. And I'm like, all right. And so I'm taking notes, my patent lawyer is taking notes. And that night I could not sleep. I'm up all night. And the next morning I wake up, I'm like, how is there lacquer in this product?

What is lacquer?

Just so I'm aware, it's like paint thinner or something.

Okay.

So I called—

30% paint thinner.

So I called Ted. I go, Ted, can you spell lacquer? He's like, yeah, L-Y-C-R-A. I'm like, oh my God, Lycra.

Oh yeah, I was like, got it, dude.

All change on Lycra immediately. My patent lawyer was laughing. He said, you know how fast you would have gotten a patent if you, um, tried to make this out of paint thinner? He's like, they would be like, sure.

So was it challenging to get it? Did you get the first try?

The patent? I did.

Wow, usually it takes a few turns, doesn't it?

I got the patent the first try, and I got the trademark name Spanx.

Amazing.

Yeah.

So it didn't seem like there was that many challenges once you submitted it or whatever. You kind of got the things you needed in place, you got the orders in. Was, was there a lot of challenges after that once you got the patent, the trademark?

That was a really hard part. It's just I heard the word no for 2 years. Yeah. All the manufacturers, nobody thought it was a good idea. And, and also when you're just yourself trying to break into an industry like you mentioned, the manufacturers, it's not really in their best interest to slow down machines or try to give a girl with a couple grand a chance.

Unless you're gonna give 'em a bunch of money for a big order of something.

Yeah.

It's like, what's the point? Right. What's the proven model that everyone needs, whether it's gonna be a mega hit or maybe it's not gonna work, but it needs it either way.

Right.

The formula.

My business model coming off Shark Tank is people would see me on Shark Tank and they're like, I wonder what do people really want when they go on Shark Tank? They want, money, but then they— people would come to me off of the show and like email me and say, look, yeah, I do want money and I need money, but if I could just do a deal with you, you open up your Rolodex, maybe more than money, we can go raise money together. So, so that is sort of my new model over the last, um, about 4 or 5 years is I, I, what I do is I take strategic kind of advisory positions, board positions, public companies, as well as startups.

Yeah.

And, and so that really has been really fun because I've got equity in a little company that started at 10 cents a share. It's now $3.60. And you know, what could be so bad to get a lot of shares in those kind of deals, right? So I have tens of millions of, of shares of public companies. You know, I think Tim Ferriss is kind of doing this kind of stuff. Get in on the ground floor and take a little equity and, and open up the Rolodex and all that. So I, I, I really love— and, and I'm— and I'll bring some capital to the table if it's needed, but if somebody's like, hey, I need a million dollars, I can't just fund every deal that needs a million dollars because eventually you run out of money, right? You know, and, um, plus I'm— I have a— I'm, I'm married now twice, and my new wife, and that, you know, we've been together 14 years, so that's new because I have a 28-year-old son from my first marriage and 19-year-old boy also. But she's It's like, you know, you can't be everything to everybody. So you have to kind of pick and choose what you want to do and focus on the winners and the winning people with a winning business.

That's it.

That's it.

Yeah.

So that's really, you know, 'cause the asking the TV businesses, they're in the middle of disruption. 'Cause it's no secret there's a lot less people watching TV today than there was 5 years ago.

Right.

In fact, it's 50% less than it was 10 years ago.

No way.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're online. They're on— I mean, I'll give you a great example. My 19-year-old started college, went over, got his apartment for him, and the furniture is being delivered. The cable guy shows up and I said, great, what, you know, what cable package did you get, Nick? And he said, oh, um, sorry to tell you, Dad, but he's just putting in internet. I'm not yet— yeah, Apple TV. He says, I don't watch TV. I'm like, how do you think we're paying for your college education? And, you know, you're getting at least the basic channels. I need to be able to watch some shows when I'm over here hanging out at your place. So we got cable. But I mean, I'm like, I was almost— I mean, he knew he was going to offend me by not getting something, but he wasn't telling me till I got there. So kids don't watch TV.

It's crazy.

I mean, I used to, in the very beginning, I had 5 channels. Then I had the 30-channel package, and that's how I created this whole infomercial space is one day I'm watching TV and the screen went dark and then they put bars up and that was Discovery Channel. It was dark for 6 hours. And yeah, with bars on the screen.

And you're like, I should buy that.

I said, yeah. I said, Discovery, for the first 5 years of its existence, was an 18-hour-a-day network.

Shut up.

And I bought the 6 hours nationwide from Discovery. Yeah, back in the, back in the mid-'80s.

Wow.

By the way, we paid them $1,000 a day for 6 hours, and that's $365,000 a year. And that was generating tens of millions of dollars in sales.

That was a great media buy.

So that was an extremely good media buy. And that was the early, early days.

So before everyone got in and got it. Yeah.

And then when that contract expired, that time block went from $365,000. It was a multi-year contract for $28 million. That's how beautiful.

$28 million for 3 years for $1,000 a day.

Yes.

$1,000 a day. Yes.

You got it.

And it went for $28 million because it was generating tens of millions of dollars in sales. So that's when I said, I gotta go to Europe, I gotta go to Asia, I gotta go to Latin America and start picking up these, all this downtime.

Wow.

So that's back in the '80s.

This was in the '80s. So we went to, Europe and Latin America, etc.

Just bought it all up.

Every, every place we could, we'd sign long-term contracts.

How much is the media right now?

Oh, it's outrageous. I mean, Discovery, what, what we were buying for $1,000 a day, they have slots to go for $20,000 for 30 minutes now. Discovery.

Is it worth it to buy this media?

It's becoming so difficult to make money off of. But our strategy has changed.

Billboard, right?

It's like a billboard. But what we've had to do is tie it into Amazon and social media. And so anymore today, if you just go on TV, you're not going to make money.

Just like call the phone and— Yeah, yeah.

You got to go on TV and then have all the other elements around it ready, ready to go. And then also pricing protected, because what do most people do now? They see it on TV. They actually go online, go online to see if they can find it cheaper. And then there's knockoff guys that actually take out out, hey, you've seen the NuWave, click here. Well, they've got something similar for half the price or whatever, right? So it's a, it's a cutthroat business, and, and we drive other people's sales with TV for sure.

Yeah.

In fact, we, you know, like I said, when there was 20 resellers of that hair-growing helmet on Amazon, we had to clean them up because what am I— why am I going to go on TV and drive their sales? No, no, you can't afford it. So, so it's a, it's a more sophisticated business today, but you're still still active and aggressively buying media on TV? Yes. Oh yeah.

Even today, 30 years later?

Oh yeah.

Even how competitive it is, how more expensive it still works.

Yeah. But we start on social media actually.

Wow.

We start on Facebook or Pinterest or Instagram or one of the social media channels, test it and see if you get a few sales. Yeah.

Okay.

We call it test before we invest.

That's it.

Yeah. It's a focus group.

Proof of concept.

Yeah.

I really kind of mentally said to myself, I'll get to know my daughters when they're 10 or 15 years old because there is no time now. I have to be in Asia for 6 months at a time. I have to be doing this and that. And I questioned if it was the smartest move to do, but I said to myself, you know what, if I was a sanitation worker, I would still— or nothing wrong with that, but if I worked a city job, I would still work every overtime I could because I need to to be able to provide for them. And now, you know, I have my beautiful little 2-year-old, and it's a different way of life now. Now, in going back to this, as we'll talk about the book, Rise and Grind, now my theory is how much love can I give to this, to this little being? Yeah, because it has changed, you know. Now my life, obviously, I am in a better place, and I have the opportunity to be able to give as much love as I can to her. Not that I don't give as much love as I can to my other daughters. They're my driving force as well.

Right. So do you feel like you have a little bit more balance now? Even though you're working just as hard, but you feel like you take that time to—

I do, but that's exactly how the theory for the book came around. I was—

'Cause I don't see you slowing down, really.

Right, so what was happening was I looked at it and I said, you know, I'm going on 9 years of Shark Tank. I have hundreds of companies I work with and/or deal with, and I'm investing in about bunch of them. I have a new 2-year-old. I have work-life balance. I want to get home to my lady. You know, I want to do the things I love to do— fish or archery or whatever, snowboard. I'm really good on the board, baby. But I want to do all those things. How do I do it? And I went and I would go in to speak to other people that I respect. And I would say, what's the tricks or the techniques you do to have work-life balance? They all told me the same exact thing, but in different forms. And I started to notice that I can improve in certain areas. Again, like you and I were talking, I don't know if it was on camera or off camera, but there is no one area of success or mastery you get to and you go, I'm done, right? You know, you can, you can be somebody who's a master at judo or karate or something like that. And, you know, at 40 years old or 25 years old, you're a certain master. But at 80 years old, you don't have the same muscle retention or the same speed. So you have to learn to master it a different way. Kind of like when Ali came out of jail and they stripped him of his prime, he had to learn the rope-a-dope to beat George Foreman, and he had to fight a different way.

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Yeah, you can't, you can't do that, right? So I had to start figuring out how to master my grind today because the Daymond John at 48 years old is not the grind that the Daymond John at 28 years old had. And I learned all these techniques from the book. Book from asking these people, right?

Right. So what were the big things that people taught you then about this, how to navigate?

So the theory in the book is I study these 15 subjects in there, and they have, uh, success from all various ways of life, whether it's Santana or Tyler, the Creator, the Grammy award-winning kid, or, you know, our buddy Kyle Maynard, who army crawled Mount Kilimanjaro with no arms and no legs, right?

One of the most inspiring guys ever.

He is. He— I mean, he made me feel like an absolute loser, right? And they all told me the same thing, but they told me in different ways and different formulas. And what I found, the takeaway is that everybody's extremely selfish. All successful people are extremely selfish in a very good way. Like Chris Sacca always says, you know, and a lot of these people here will not answer any emails for the first hour of the day because they believe that you give up all your power if you're answering everybody else's problems when you wake up. They'll send out emails, and like Chris Sacca always says, his inbox is as deep and says, outboxes his offense. They won't look at Instagram when they first wake up or anything else because they don't want to hear about how everybody else on the Gram is looking beautiful, they're starting skinnier, whatever. They all got problems, right?

What would you say to anyone who's been playing small when they maybe think they're playing big? They're listening or they're watching right now, but you know that we're all capable for more. What advice would you have for people playing small?

I would say take that boulder that you're chained to instead of behind you and throw it in front of you. Let it pull you forward.

Wow.

Like, do not, playing small is the best way to ensure that you won't ever achieve big dreams, right? That you have to, don't get comfortable where you're staying right now. Get uncomfortable right away and press ahead. Because you probably know that you inside yourself that you have more to give this world. And it's gonna haunt you one day when you look back. So I do think there's something to be said for spending a little time, right? Look around, assess yourself, but quickly move off the dime and press ahead.

Wow.

In fact, my biggest regrets in business so far have been the times I've played small.

Really?

Yeah, it's true. Like, I don't regret the misses, 'cause I understand why I did 'em. I don't understand why I played small. Right, there's no great excuse for playing small in retrospect.

When you mean playing small, is that like I made a small investment in this where I could have gone bigger?

Exactly.

I think mostly playing small for me looks like I know I'm right. I'm nervous about optics. I'm nervous about being judged for being wrong just in case. Or I'm insecure, whatever it is.

So I only put $100K in as opposed to $1 million.

Exactly. Or something's teetering and I know I'm right and I don't double down.

Wow.

Like that is— now I haven't made a lot of those. But those are the ones that I regret. Because— and this is Steve, my partner's point— like, when you have a winner and you know it, those are hard to come by. Go all in, right? And the spray and pray is nonsense. Spray and pray, to me, is the playground of people who want to hedge all day long and are afraid to be wrong, right? I'd rather—

I'd rather just invest in index funds.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Right, right.

You'll do better anyway.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly. Get your annualized yield, and you'll be fine. Fine. So I think when you have a winner in your hands, doesn't matter if anybody else knows, you got to press it. And that's, those are my biggest regrets.

Now what happens when you press it and you go all in big and then you lose?

Yeah, those—

and you lose all your money and all your time and energy. How do you look at those deals?

Those are tough.

And you felt like, well, I thought I was right and I knew it, but the market or this or the person, whatever.

Those are painful. But what I say is when you dissect it and you put the, you know, the patient on the table and you sort of do your postmortem you will quickly find out the thing you missed. And the thing you missed is usually related to some misalignment in your character or your personality, right? Like, there was some, you were worried about the downside, you were worried about acknowledging that they needed to pivot. You didn't confront the CEO because you didn't want to offend them. Like, I have not had a situation like that where I was not able to dissect what I could do.

See where you missed it.

Where I missed it. It's never, that's what's great about life. We're all playing the same, you know, patterns. Maybe there are like 7. You know, allegorical patterns playing out. There aren't new ones being created. So if you spend enough time paying attention, you could dissect it. So I'd much rather have gone all in and be wrong than have never gone all in at all on the winners. 'Cause you don't get many winners. You don't. Right?

Big winners. You might get small winners, like, yeah, we made some money there, that did well, and we exited. But the big ones, there's like, how many of those every few years are the big winners?

Well, for one, you have to see so many deals to spot a winner.

I'm curious. You talked about the first year you made a profit, $40,000, I think you said. $47,000, I think. $47,562.

Well, I don't know about that.

Exactly. If someone is an entrepreneur right now, let's just say they had their biggest year ever and they had a bunch of extra cash laying around. They're just like, wow, we finally made some money, an extra $100,000, an extra $300,000, whatever it is, $1 million. What should they do with that extra money? Money. How should they reinvest it to continue to grow?

Two things I thought of right away. Number one, they shouldn't have that money.

Okay?

If you're really serious about building a business, you're putting the pedal to the metal, you're spending the money and putting the bets down long before it comes in. So the idea— like, I made a mistake that one year I had a profit. Shame on me. I mean, I made something good of it, of course. But you should really have any money coming in over-aggressively targeted towards something that you do well. And I think the best place to put the money— and I work with my entrepreneurs all the time on this, and they're not so inclined. Most people want to put the money in on a new idea, a new version, or a new this. No, the best place to put the money is what has worked. Where have you gotten your sales? Give me the sources. What has worked? That's where you put your money all in. Put it, pile it up until it stops working, then you move to something else. But people don't do that. People always like the new stuff, like, oh, but if we hire a PR company, you know, we'll really get— no, no, no, the trade show has produced 80% of your money.

Right.

Showing up and building those relationships yourself, yeah.

Whatever has worked for you before, keep repeating, repeating, repeating. And I just think the money shouldn't be there in the first place. Do you know, my whole life, I opened offices much bigger than I had any business doing. I— the minute I had sales in a company and started seeing that we were doing well and I started smelling a profit, like we might get a profit, this thing might really start kicking in, I was out looking for office space. And if I needed, if I thought I needed 18 desks, I'd go out looking for 36.

Wow.

And I plunked the money down, start— because I found that when you threw the money onto your bet in advance, you find a way to make it work. If you wait till the time is right and wait till you have the profit, guess what? There's a smarter guy out there that's already put the money, your competitor, already ahead of you. And it's such a quick market when you're competing, you gotta like, ba, ba, ba, ba ba. Like there's like a timer on you, you know, get it going. You have to have it done early, I think.

So invest it back in the thing that's worked before for you until it doesn't work anymore and more than you think you could handle.

Because human beings who are talented, especially entrepreneurs, are remarkable on making things work. When the gun's against their head and they're under fire, but gives them a lot of leeway and have them plot out, they start to go to sleep. It's really. It's really not healthy for a business.

It's that pressure that allows you to really kind of have more urgency and make it happen.

Well, you were a football player. Did you play better in a game or in practice?

Game.

Yeah, same difference, same old thing.

Yeah.

Okay, so you said that was the first thing. You said there was two things potentially.

Two things that I wanted to say was you shouldn't have the money, it should be spent way in advance. And the second thing is spend it on stuff that's worked before.

There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode with the Shark Tank Masters. If you're looking to build your business, start your entrepreneurial dream, or just get a side hustle off the ground, then this is the episode for you. And if you know someone, if you've got a friend who's a business owner, who's a coach, a consultant, or starting to get a side hustle idea off the ground, send them this episode right now. Spread the message of greatness to them. Help a friend in need. Text them this link, message them on Facebook, send them a message, a DM on Instagram, wherever it may be that you like to connect. Send them a message to the link lewishowes.com/773. Again, lewishowes.com/773. I'm so excited about this episode and all the interviews we did here in the show. Shark Tank Masters mashup, and we've got some big guests coming up, guys. Get pumped. If this is your first time here, please subscribe to the podcast over on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on SoundCloud, everywhere podcasts are at. Subscribe, leave us a review. The more reviews we get, the more people learn about the message of greatness and we can spread this message far and wide. Very excited about everything we are doing as a community and a movement together on the School of Greatness. And as Theodore Isaac Rubin said, happiness did not come from doing easy work, but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demands our best. There is no easy path to building your brand and building your business and, and building financial freedom. There's no simple, easy path, as you saw from all these entrepreneurs on Shark Tank. They've all gone through different challenges and adversities along the way. It's the afterglow of satisfaction that comes once you take on the difficult task. That's part of it. It's part of the journey. It's part of the ups and downs. Life would be boring if it was always easy getting to the top. Find fulfillment in the path. Find fulfillment in the journey and in those little moments every single day. Find the little moments moments of victories that you can celebrate and keep moving forward. As always, I love you so very much, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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