TES 003 - Myths That Can Destroy Your Business & Steal Your Dreams

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. This is Mel Abraham, and welcome to this session of the Entrepreneur Solution Show. In this session, I'm going to take you through some of the myths, the old world, what used to be the truths, but are no longer the truth that can destroy your business, the things that are holding entrepreneurs back. So in a moment, I'm going to come back after this brief introduction. I'm going to take you through some of these myths, give you the truth about being an entrepreneur in today's world. How do you escalate your your business? What are the alternatives and options you have? So stay tuned. See you soon.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur Solution, where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want, one of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big, and live life your way.

Hey there. Welcome back. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy, where we teach you how to design a business and to create a life, to create a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution. And in this episode, I kind of want to tackle some of the things that I've seen over the years, over the decades as being an entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial mentor and as well as a consultant that have held businesses back, that have held entrepreneurs back from not only starting but achieving their full potential. And.

They'Re the untruths, they're the myths, they're the old world view of what they think still exists today. And I can tell you that much of that is completely gone. And our ability to excel, our ability to create businesses, our ability to build businesses, to scale businesses, our ability to have access to capital, to customers, to the world based on technology, has expanded immensely, I mean, beyond imagination, at an accelerating pace. And it's going to continue to do so. And so I want to take you through some of these things in hopes that what we can do is put them aside and deal with them right up front before we start digging deeper into business and say, these things don't matter, they're not going to have an effect because they don't apply, or there's alternatives, or there's options that maybe you haven't thought about. For instance, one of the biggest things that I've heard through the years with entrepreneurs is it takes a lot of money. It takes money to make money. I mean, how many times have you heard that? And we've all kind of heard that takes money to make money. And, you know, there's some truth in that. And certainly in the industrial age, when we were, we needed to spend a lot of money to invest into assets, into equipment, into labor, into structures and facilities and all of those types of things. It took a lot of money. It took a lot of money to develop businesses at that level. But today, given the technological advances today, given the kind of expert industries that we're in, the kind of access we have given.

Internet and global economy and all of the advancements that exist, we don't need a lot of money. We can build a business on a grassroots basis. And when you think about what we have access to today compared to years gone by, it's staggering. Just take a moment to think about the fact that we, at our fingertips, can become a publisher. All we need to do is use a blog or go to print on demand. And there's very little cost to doing that other than the cost of print on demand. I don't have to. I remember years ago, I published a book and I bought 3,000 copies. They were sitting in the garage on a pallet until I could get them sold. We don't need to do that today. Today I can literally create a book and have it published on demand.

Even better, I don't even need to publish it. They can just download it as an electronic ebook through either Kindle or on the iPad or some other electronic reader. So we have at our fingertips the ability to be a publisher. We have at our fingertips the ability to have our own TV station. I'm sitting here in my home office down by the beach in Southern California. And I'm broadcasting to you.

In what's basically an office studio environment right now that allows me to do this.

If you looked at the studio, it's not some expensive board, it's not some expensive equipment, it's not a huge investment. Certainly there is some investment in lights and camera and software and that type of thing, but nothing of the magnitude that we would be used to if we were trying to film in the past or record anything in the past. And then all I need to do is take that, do some editing on it, and quite frankly, you get imovie on the Mac for free or cheap, and you can use that to edit. And then you upload it to YouTube and you've got yourself your own broadcast station at your fingertips. I can have my own radio station. As I sit here today, I'm recording this. This is going to turn into a podcast, and I'm going to put my podcast out there in itunes. So I, in effect, have my own radio station. And I don't need to purchase the equipment, the antennas, the frequencies, all of that information. And when you think about communication with your customers and your clients and your marketplace, we have at our fingertips the ability to connect with them at, at a level that is unsurpassed in times gone by because of technological advances. So, yeah, in some cases, in some businesses, we need some money. And we'll talk about where some of those funding sources might come from. But by and large, if you're smart, if you take the time to strategically think about your business, to strategically plan your business, you can do it on a grassroots budget without having to make some huge investments in dollars. Another one of the myths that kind of goes along with this is that there's no funding for businesses. And I totally get that, especially with some of the economic changes and shifts that have happened in the recent.

Half a decade or so, that we don't necessarily have access to the funds that we once did, but we still have access to funds, and we in fact have access to funds that didn't exist back then, that exist right now. For instance, the whole concept of crowdfunding is huge.

They say that the crowdfunding in and of itself is a $2.7 billion industry. And that's going back. That's going back statistics back a couple of years right now. So it's going to expand. It's going to be a 3, 4, 5 billion dollar industry where we can go out to the public and get funding. In fact, I was, I, one of my good friends has had.

The biggest, most successful.

Kickstarter campaign in history. Over $11 million in a Kickstarter campaign in which he came up with a design, he put it out there. In fact, he failed the first time he went out to Kickstarter to fully fund.

His project, his idea. And he came back, he restructured it, he restrategized it, he redesigned it, came back at it and built it. And not only successfully funded it, but funded it to magnitudes that were unimaginable. And so when you think about there's no funding for your business, it's a matter of looking in the non traditional areas. If we're going to go to banks, yeah, you're probably going to have some challenges and some difficulties with getting funding because banks, traditional lenders are not lending in the way that they used to lend in the past. But there's at least 20 other funding sources out there for you that you can use to fund your business about being creative, it's about being resourceful. It's about looking at what exists in the marketplace today, whether it's a crowdfunding source. You know, I'm not a recommender of venture capital sources of funding unless it's a very specific set of circumstances. Angel funding. I have been involved with a number of angel projects and for those of you that don't know what angel funding is, that's entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs such as myself that will take on startup companies and startup entrepreneurs and help fund their process to build. Because we want to see them grow. We believe in the product, we believe in the management, we believe in the idea and we want to see it grow. And so you can get access to angel investors just the same. So when you start asking the question and say that there's no funding for businesses, if you're knocking on a bank's door, then you're probably going to find that it's going to be a little more challenging if impossible in some cases, especially if you're just starting out to get funding. But that doesn't mean that that's the only source. So all I'm saying is expand your horizons, expand your view and start looking and researching and being resourceful to find sources of funds. I'm not a recommender also of I don't recommend going and running up your credit cards to start your business or to run your business. I'm not, I don't recommend that you go and strip out your retire to build a business and run your business. I would tell you that there's other sources to go to first. Before you ever even think of that next myth is old worldview is that it will consume my life. And certainly there are times I would totally honestly, there are times that your business and your ideas will consume your life. But at the same time, if it is your passion, if you're on purpose, if you're on path, if you're on the right journey, it's not going to feel like it's consuming your life. But remember what I said earlier, that there's this concept of work life balance is a fallacy and that every decision, every choice we make is a life choice. And so I invite you, as you start to build, to think about your life and think about all the choices you're making as life decisions and how you can build that in. And it's about planning, it's about managing, it's about understanding and being intentional about the things you do when you do them. Knowing that, hey, you know what, for this next week or so I'm going to have to bury myself in because I've got a deadline, but then I need to pull myself away and give some space for myself to grow and all that for this. My wife and I, we intentionally plan our time away. We intentionally plan our time together as breaks. We put them hard coded in the calendar to make sure that we've embedded it in the system. So we don't allow just life to take on and work to take on. Because it's really easy to say, well, I'll get to that. Well, I'll get to next week, next week we'll take some time off. Next week we'll do that. No, no, no. Make it part of your life. Make it part of, of who you are. Make it part of how you're showing up. Make it part of your value system and make sure that it is clear that you're putting it in there. It doesn't need to be this way. And now with outsourcing and access to doing things, you can leverage a lot of the aspects of your business. And by leveraging the aspects of your business, it relieves you from doing things. There's a number of things that are in my business right now that I leverage out and I'm pretty much the conductor and just orchestrating it right now. And other people are doing some of the things for me, but all the core things come back to me. And all the core elements of my business, I run, I oversee and I take care of. So that's one of the other myths. The next one is that I need a good idea and the interesting thing is that ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas and innovation are a dime a dozen. And I know that some of you may argue with me on this point, but hold off for a second, Bear with me for a moment. The fact is that, that there are plenty of ideas out there that have never seen the light of day, that are phenomenal ideas that are phenomenal. Innovations that have never, have never gone anywhere. And the reason they've never gone anywhere is because there was a lack of execution behind them. What we need is not a plethora of ideas, but what we need is a discipline of execution. And with execution, we'll bring that forward. In fact, there's a movement now afoot in society today where they're saying, oh, innovation is going to bring our economy back. And that's absolutely not true. Innovation will not bring our economy back. Entrepreneurs will bring our economy back. Here's why I say that. Innovation for itself is simply ideas, it's innovative thoughts, it's a thought process, it's concepts, it's concept cars, it's concept products, it's concepts, concepts, concepts. But the only way they come to the world, the only way they come to fruition, the only way that they have an economic impact is when an entrepreneur gets behind that innovation, behind the idea, behind the concept, and moves it forward into customers hands where there's a value exchange, like we talked in the last, in the last session, last episode, that there's a value exchange out there. Well, that's driven by entrepreneurship. And so the real key behind your success is not the ideas, but the execution of the ideas you have.

The other thing that I hear a lot from entrepreneurs is well, I've got this product, I've got this idea and build it and they shall come. You know that whole cliche, that whole mindset of build it and they shall come. Well, not in today's world. We went from an industrial age type of environment where there was products and there wasn't a huge selection of products and it wasn't access to products except within the local area markets, within the local townships, within that locale. But now we've basically transcended geographic lines. Every business has the capacity to be a global business. I have clients in Australia, in New Zealand, in Europe, in Germany, in Austria and Belgium and all around the us. I have clients all over the place because I've been able to transcend the global space, the geographic lines in doing that. It's not about build it and they shall come, it's about connecting with them at a Visceral level, just like we talked about in the last episode. It's about connection. What our audience, what our marketplace is looking for is a place to belong, a place of meaning. Remember when we talked about value of purpose and passion and promise, Promise of an aspirational thing? And so what we need to do within our products, within our services, within our businesses, has come from that aspirational view, come from a connection view, to go out there and say, I want to have a relationship with my marketplace. I want to have a dialogue with my marketplace. I want to have an intimate understanding of who my marketplace is. There's a reason that Tony Hsieh and Zappos is so successful, because they've come from a culture of delivering happiness. And when you deliver happiness, you shift lives, you transform lives. And when you transform lives, you create a relationship, a loyalty that is unequaled elsewhere. So focus on, rather than focusing on building things and putting things out there and hoping they come, focus on creating something that is absolutely phenomenal, that serves a purpose, that creates a solution, that solves a problem and that changes their lives. And then go out there and campaign it by connecting with them at a deep level. The next one is, boy, do I hear this all the time. Oh, I need a business plan.

Yes. And I am a proponent of business plans. I'm actually a proponent of the process of business plans. I don't think you need the business plan in the sense of the document. Because what happens with business plans is most of the time, we go through all the process of the business plan. We publish the document, it goes on the shelf, and it's never looked at, it's never used again. But what's important is the process you go through through. What's more important, though, is you need a business model. The business model which we talked about in the last episode is you need a viable business model. Something that. That is an optimal business model. That is this creating value, that's cultivating value, that's campaigning value, that's capturing value and delivering value to, in a holistic way to our customers, to our vendors, to our team and employees and staff, to ourselves and to the people around us. When we create the proper business model, the business plan will come together. And rather than getting so focused on writing a document and focused on the words on a page, let's focus on the realism of a business model that generates value, real value in the marketplace and for everyone that's involved in our business.

The other one that I've heard is, is that you can't start a business in recessionary times. You can't start a business in depressionary times. You can't start a business when there's economic uncertainty. And that is so off base. I mean it's a really good cop out, it's a really good excuse, it's a really good reason to not start, it's a really good fear based perspective to stop. But what you really need to do is instead of focusing on the recession, it's a mindset shift, it's an attitude towards things, is that we need to be resilient. And the resilience, we're not going to have a trajectory that's a linear trajectory. We're going to have our ebbs and flows, our ups and downs, but we need to navigate that. We need to have resilience and persistence to move through that. There's a number of businesses that are tremendously successful today that were started in recessions. FedEx is one of them, IHOP's another Revlon, GE, Microsoft. I mean all of these businesses, if you look at when they were started, they were started at times where everyone was saying no, no, no, it's the worst time to start a business. But you know what, there's always need out in the marketplace. And when you serve that need at a high level, when you, when you, you create solutions, when you solve problems, when you build on aspirations, there will always be buyers for that. And when you can create that, it doesn't matter whether you're in recession, depression or boom times, your business will be successful. So we need resilience, we need to be intelligent about it and we need to move forward and be strategic about it. Then.

The other, the other thing that in fact I just had this conversation a week ago with someone that we were talking about. They said I can't do it. I said really? You can't do what you need to do? And well, I don't know how to do it, so I can't do it. Well, if you think about that, because that's a huge distinction. I said, so you're saying you can't do it because you don't know how to. Or is it that you can't do it because you don't have the capability? And she said no, it's because I don't know how to. Well, this concept of I have no experience, so I have no experience means that.

You can't do it. There's very little in this world that hasn't been done before. And the cool thing is that given the Internet and given Our access to resources. In today's world, there's nothing you can't find out how to do. We just need to go to that whole new. This new invention that just came out. Well, maybe not just came out. It's called the Google. Just go to the Google and Google it. How to, how to, how to. There's plenty of resources out there, and in all likelihood, there's nothing that you're thinking of doing or changing or shifting your business that hasn't been done before. And so look for it, model it, and build from there. From that perspective, it's easy to access experience. That's probably one of the easiest, easiest things to solve. Here's the other thing to think about. Do you have a mentor? Do you have a mentor? I have mentors. I have colleagues. I have mentors. And I have people that I can go to when I'm struggling with something, when I'm trying to figure out something, when I'm trying to get a different vision where I might be missing the boat. I have mentors. We all need mentors.

There are people out there that you should think about and say, who should be my mentor? Who do I want to be? My mentor. And I differentiate between mentorship and coaching. And coaching is a process that someone takes you through.

That will help you come to the conclusion and come to some answers to build from. But they may not have ever walked the path. They may not have ever had the experience. In my mind, what a mentor is, is someone that's walked the walk, someone that has ran the miles, that has stubbed the toes, skinned the knees, and broke the nose. And that's why I look at myself as a mentor from an entrepreneurial perspective. Because, trust me, I have stubbed the toes, skinned the knees, and broken my nose plenty of times. So I can sit down with my clients, with you through the show, and work with you in the context with that experience in mind to say, then I've been down this road before, and I can tell you that there's a hole there and a hole there, and we need to avoid that. And the way to avoid that is to do this. And so make sure that you surround yourself with mentors, whether you believe in this cliche or not, that the level of success is based upon is going to be capped by the average salary or the average intelligence or the average success of the five people that are around you. And in some senses, I believe that when you surround yourself with successful people that hold you to a higher standard, that spur you to live bigger, to live Longer live at a higher ideal, you're going to step up. And so one of the biggest things is right now I would look at and say, make a list of the people that you would like as your mentors and start figuring out one how can you get them to be a mentor? And maybe having to pay them to be a mentor, it may be serving them in some way, it may be some other creative way you come up, come out of it. But there is no such thing as a self made millionaire. Not in my mind. Because all of the successes that everyone has had, including myself, have been with the assistance, with the support, with the pushing, with the urging, with the pulling, with the clawing of people around me. I sit here today with the kind of blessed life and success that I've had in spite of all the failures, because of all the people that pushed me along and said, keep going kid, keep going, kid, keep going, kid. And if I can serve that for you, then that's what this show is about to say. Keep going, keep going. Ask the questions, let's move you forward, let's keep going. To do that then I think this is probably the last one that I have is this concept that, oh, most businesses fail.

And it's an interesting thought that most businesses fail. But when you really start to look at it, I think that what happens is most business owners fail the business first and then the business fails second. Most business failures are a result of one of a couple things. A bad thought process or a bad belief process. In other words, the, the way they're thinking of their business is very tunnel vision and there's only one way. And they're not being flexible enough to understand and look at the bigger picture and see what other alternatives and what other ways they might be able to move through that comes about. And when you have a foundational thought process that is flawed, every decision and choice you make beyond that will be flawed too. And then the results obviously are not going to be there. The other part of it is a lack of execution. We talked about that earlier. You can't sit back and expect things to just happen. I mean, I think all of us at some point in time in our lives, you know, would have liked things to be done for us, but they're just not that way. And so the execution is the other piece of where.

Failures come about. And then the last is a lot of businesses are created with the wrong business model or they're created with a business model that makes sense today, but not six months or a year or six years from now, if you look at things like the Polaroid camera, it was a business model that worked back in the day, but they got left behind because they wouldn't shift their business model with the trends in technology, the trends in times, the trends and preferences to digital.

Cameras and that type of thing. So when it comes to business failures, it's not the business that fails, it's the business owner that fails the business. And the end result is that the business ends up failing. So check your thought process, check your belief process, check the business model, and open up the view. And what will help you open up the view is what we just talked about earlier is having mentors, having people that can talk about your blind spots and be, in a loving way, direct with you to say no, you're totally off base and you shouldn't be doing it that way or saying no, you've got that right. So when I look at all of these put together, any one of these can hold you back. Any one of these can hold you back from ever starting your business or hold you back from taking the next step in your business, or hold you back from ever getting to your dreams. And that's the thing that drives me crazy. That's the thing that.

Really.

Is the thing that I want to push back at, because I think we're here to live a life, live a life of vibrancy, live a life that is by our own design, to live a life that when we get to the waning years of our life, we are huffing and puffing and going, man, that was a hell of a ride. But the way we got to do that is to create the journey, to design the journey based on our vision of our life. And like I've said to my son, as long as it's moral, legal, and you're not hurting anyone, go for it. You get to choose your life, and so do we. I get to choose my life. You get to choose your life. And I want to. I want to help you in that process to realize that what you think are obstacles are not really obstacles. If you want to build your business to the next level or you want to start a business and start to grow it, it doesn't matter what age you are. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. It doesn't matter. It's there. There's resources out there. I mean, this age thing, I've heard before.

You know, Zipcar was started by.

A mother of a number of children who was in her 40s, and.

She saw a need. She saw an opportunity. She didn't have new ideas. She simply combined existing technologies, rental cars.

Internet, mobile payments, and created Zipcar, which was now we could rent cars on an hourly basis instead of on a daily basis. And she was on the verge of failure. $68 in her checking account before she got additional funding and ultimately ended up selling the business out for a billion dollars. She's a consultant to Congress on transportation policy now. And. And you look at it and say, it doesn't matter when you start. It matters that you do start. It matters that you take and put the life into those dreams and that you move them forward, that you take that business and we start to expand the vision and grow it bigger. And so looking back on some of these myths, ask yourself, which one of these am I allowing to hold me back.

And then find the way past it? You know, check yourself and look at and say, all right, have I researched, you know, the resources for funding? Have I exhausted my resources with respect to funding? Am I managing my life properly so it's not consuming my life and it's not affecting my relationships and my health? And do I need to connect with people that might be mentors and.

Might be able to guide me and shorten my learning curve and avoid the possibility potholes that maybe I'm happening to be stepping into? Am I connected with my customers? Am I connected with my marketplace? Do I really know what their fears, fascinations, and frustrations are? Do I understand it at a visceral level and do I message it out to them in a way that I connect with them? And so ask yourself a series of these questions and see how you start to relieve yourself of the burdens of what these myths are, this old worldview of how businesses and entrepreneurs cannot, cannot.

Be successful because you are successful, you have the potential to be successful, and you have the opportunity to grow. And that's what this show is about, is to give you the tools, give you the skills, give you the strategies to build on. We talked about the foundational elements in the last episode. I want to knock down these myths right from the get go so we can start digging deeper into some of the elements of business in the upcoming episodes. And so I hope this serves you. I hope that you found this useful and that it flips some lights on for you and that you get a chance to reconsider some of the things that maybe have been holding you back in time. So you like this episode, go ahead and subscribe and make sure that you get get notification every time that I put another video out or another another episode out and also share it. Go ahead and share it with a friend. Give a friend the gift of their dreams, their possibility in their life by them getting access to some of this information. And if you have a question for me, go ahead and go to askmelnow.com askmelnow.com and leave your question or comment there in a voicemail. If it's a question, I'll make sure that I get it on one of the upcoming episodes and make sure that we get it answered. I want you to be supported. I'm your entrepreneurial mentor through this show and through this program and until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be granted, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

And that's it for this episode of Building your Money Machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.