MBA1633 Guest Teacher – Gino Wickman – How To Determine If You Have What It Takes To Become An Entrepreneur

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Hey oh. Welcome to the 100 Auct RBA Show. Because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is a very special guest teacher episode. Today we have best selling author and business expert Gino Wickman and he'll be showing you how to determine if you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur. Geno Wickman started his entrepreneurial career at 21. At 25 he took his family's business and after seven years sold it successfully. He's the best selling author of Rocket Fuel as well as how to Get a Grip on youn Business, a book that I actually reviewed here as a must read episode and one of the books that have been recommended to me so many times. You can learn a whole lot more about Gino and his work@e-leap.com but you're going to get an exclusive lesson from him today to learn if entrepreneurship is right for you. It's not for everybody as you'll learn in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. One of the first things I learned when I became a full time entrepreneur is that entrepreneurship is a career in itself. It's really a lifestyle. And just like any profession, whether I want to be a surgeon, a musician, an artist, there are certain things that I need to have possess in myself, in my personality, in what I do to succeed in those areas so that that career, that path is not torture. In today's lesson, Gina Wickman will be sharing with you so many great insights to find out if entrepreneurship is the right path for you. Including the six essential traits that every entrepreneur must possess. I'm going to pass it on to Gino right now, but I'll be back to wrap up today's lesson and give my takeaways. But for now, take it away Gino.

Welcome to A Journey of Self Discovery to determine if you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur. My name is Geno Wickman and I have helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs get everything they want from their businesses. I have taken my 30 years of obsessing about what makes entrepreneurs successful, helping countless entrepreneurs succeed, and building and selling to companies and put it all into a book called Entrepreneurial to help you. What we are going to cover today are three tools from that book. These three tools will help you succeed as a potential entrepreneur. For starters, I urge you to grab something to write on and with reading, Entrepreneurial Leap will take you on an emotional, psychological, philosophical, soul searching journey of self discovery that is custom designed for you as an entrepreneur in the making. In the next 10 minutes I want to create some of that same experience for you. Entrepreneurial Leap is written in three parts and our journey today will be in those same three parts. They are Confirm, Glimpse and path. Confirm is to first confirm you have the DNA of a true entrepreneur. Glimpse is all about showing you a glimpse of the life of an entrepreneur. And path is to give you a clear path to increase your odds of success. Let's take each one of those one at a time. First Confirm. Let's first confirm that you possess the six essential traits of all true entrepreneurs. I want you to do a checkup on yourself as I read them. Literally do a scan on yourself body to see if you possess these six essential traits at a high level. They are visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker and responsible. A deeper dive into each of the six are visionary. What I mean by that is that you have lots of ideas. You're able to connect the dots. You put things together, you see things that others don't see, passionate means that you have undying passion for your product, your service, that thing that you want to bring to the world. You have strong belief, you want to fill a void, you want to put a dent in the universe. Problem solver means that you are a creative problem solver. You lean into setbacks. You're an optimist by nature and where most people see problems, you see solutions. Driven means that you have this internal fire, this sense of urgency, this competitive nature. You're self motivated and you love working hard. Risk taker means that you don't freeze on tough decisions. You are rebellious in nature and you err on the side of begging for forgiveness instead of asking for permission. And responsible simply means that you blame no one when something goes wrong. You look in the mirror, you don't point fingers. If you possess these traits that I just shared, you are probably an entrepreneur in the making. The tool I have to offer you is a free entrepreneur in the making assessment. You can access it and take it on our website@e-leap.com and if you score 90 or higher, you're probably an entrepreneur in the making. If you don't, entrepreneurship may not be right for you. And this 10 minutes will potentially save you 10 years of hell. On to part two. Glimpse in glimpse, I give you a vivid picture of what your life looks like as an entrepreneur and all of your options. I give you real life stories of people who are right where you are right now and how they built what they built. I then illustrate for you a day in the life, both scenarios, both the dream and the nightmare. And I also show you how to avoid the nightmare. And then I share with you all of your options as an entrepreneur. And so now let's drill down on those options because there are thousands of options for you as an entrepreneur. Those options fall into three industry types and sizes. When I say industry, it's important to understand that there are hundreds of industries out there for you to choose from in starting your business. There's more to being an entrepreneur and more options than just being a billion dollar tech unicorn. Then we're on to type. And when we say type of business. As an entrepreneur you've got to decide are you more of a service person or a product person? Are you more interested in selling services or are you more interested in selling products? Are you more of a B2B entrepreneur or a B2C entrepreneur meaning business to business, you prefer to sell to businesses or business to consumer you prefer to sell to consumers? And then are you more interested in high end or low Cost. Are you interested in high end, high price, high value, low volume or are you more interested in low cost, high volume? Both work. You just can't be both. And then number three is size. You have to decide the kind of business you're built for, the size of business you're built for. Because again, billion dollar tech unicorns aren't the only option. You may want to build a million dollar company, you may want to build a billion dollar company and, or something in between. And so those are all of your options and your job is to decide what are you built for, what are you drawn to? The tool I have to offer you to help you make that decision is called My BizMatch. Again, you can access it on the website e-leap.com and it's literally a 10 minute exercise where you go through and soul search and answer all of those questions I just shared with you and out pops the perfect business for you. So now we've confirmed that you are an entrepreneur in the making and given you a glimpse. Now let's show you the path to greatly increase your odds of success. In part three, path I show you the way, help you increase your odds and help you eliminate half the mistakes you're going to make. In part three, I address college or not, depending on your age. As an entrepreneur in the making, I address how to discover your passion, I show you how to find a mentor. I teach you the power of ten year thinking, show you the eight disciplines to greatly increase your odds of success and show you the nine stages of building your business. What we're going to drill down on in this conversation is discipline, one of the eight disciplines, which is clarify your vision. I'd like to start by saying there is no need for a detailed business plan. 95% of the time you start your business, 95% of the successful entrepreneurs I work with did not start with a detailed business plan. However, you must have a vision. The tool I have to offer you is my Vision Clarifier. Again, you can download that from the website right now. Might make sense for you to hit pause, download it so you can literally fill it out as I share it with you. And once you've done that, it's@e-leap.com in the free tools section. Let's get to work. And so with that, as you fill it out, any sections you can't answer right now, it just means you have some work to do and that's okay. But here we go, let's take them one at a time. The first section of my vision clarifier is you have to answer, what are you passionate about? That is the beginning of everything. Why are you doing this? What is the purpose, the passion, the cause? Number two, what want or need are you filling for your customer and client? You have to know how you're going to be unique in the marketplace. What distinguishes you from your competition? Number three, who is your ideal customer? You must know who you're going after. The demographic, geographic and psychographic of your ideal customer. Who are they? Where are they? What are they? Number four is what is the pricing structure for your product or service? What is your pricing model? You have to know your pricing model when you take your leap so you don't stumble. Now, odds are that pricing model is going to change as you evolve. But you've got to come out with something that's clear and concise. Number five, what's your number one most important goal to accomplish in the next 10 years? So in 10 years of what's the goal? You've got to know the finish line. You've got to know that star on the horizon which will drive you. Number six, here's where it starts to get real. What will the business look like in three years? Top line revenue, personal income, profit. And then 10 bullet points that paint a vivid picture of what your business will look like from there. Number seven, what do you have to accomplish in the first year? Again, top line revenue, personal income and profit. And then the three to seven most important goals you must accomplish in that first year. And then finally, number eight, where the rubber hits the road. What are the three to seven most important things you must accomplish in the next 90 days? And this is where we get to work. And so there they are. The three parts. Confirm, glimpse, path, and three tools to help you succeed. I would like to thank you for your time. Please go to edash leap.com for the free assessment. The two tools I mentioned, the two other tools I mentioned, my Bismatch and my Vision clarifier. And also you will find a total of nine free tools, including a free chapter of Entrepreneurial Leap. I wish you tremendous success.

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What a powerful lesson by Gina Wickman. Thank you, Gina for that great lesson in today's episode. I want to share a little bit of my own experience when transitioning into entrepreneurship. One of the things that people don't mention that I noticed when I made the transition is you really need to be self motivated, not only to, you know, get things done and be productive. I'm talking about something very simple like when you work at a job, you have colleagues and you have supervisors and your boss cheering you on, giving you praises, telling you good job, showing you either with words or with promotions or with a raise that you're doing well, that hey, you're making it happen. But when you transition into entrepreneurship, there is nobody to do that for you. You have to do that for yourself. You need to remember your wins. You need to remember to celebrate because no one's going to do it for you. No one's going to praise you, no one's going to tell you good job. No one's going to give you a promotion or a raise. And you may think to yourself right now, oh, that's no big deal. I don't really care about those things. It's one of those things that you may not notice until it's gone, kind of miss it when it's not there. I know there's something very small and maybe insignificant to some people, but it's something I noticed. It's something that I realized, man, I got to make sure that I stay positive. I surround myself with the right people. I don't come down on myself or be too hard on myself because I got to make sure that I'm motivating myself and staying motivated. Because if I'm down, the business is down. Don't forget to check out all of the amazing free resources that Gina Wickman shared with us today. The self assessment over at e-leap.com assessment for the My Bismatch tool over at-leap.com tools. You can also find my Vision clarifier over at that link. And of course your free chapter of Entrepreneurial Leap Gino's amazing book. Go ahead and grab that over at e-leap.com chapter that wraps up today's lesson. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now so you don't miss a beat by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically right on your device, on whatever app you like to use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio or Spotify or Himalaya, we're on them all. Before I go, I want to leave you with this I'm the first one to honestly say that entrepreneurship is a tough road. It is a lot of bumps and challenges and failures and falling on your face and some wins and some celebrations and some positive things, but also some moments of truth where you realize, man, I gotta get better, man. You know, I'm not where I need to be. So it's super important for you to have healthy mental health to be ready for the challenges ahead. This is why I highly recommend you make sure that you have a support network, that you have positive friends, that you create an environment around yourself that is conducive to making sure that you can pick yourself up when you go down. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.