Analyzing Budgets | Allen Saakyan

Your service, it's gonna be really important for you to ask them questions about their budget. How much do you budget for products like mine? How much money is in your budget for this? Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to feel out how wealthy they are. Because the reality is, is that you're a little toddler. You just came out of the womb as a business. You're down here crawling, and you're trying to, you're trying to talk to like 16-year-olds and 30-year-olds that are that are Fortune 500 companies or small businesses, and they have a lot more going for them right now than your toddler business does. So what you want to do is you want to hear out how much they can allocate to you and then ask them for— and don't be afraid to ask them for that maximum amount. I mean, literally go all the way. Ask them to go on the high end of their budget. When they say that they can only pay $1,000 for your service, that's all the amount of money that they have, then you tell— you don't respond and try and get them at a— or if they give you $500 to $1,000 as their window, go with $1,000. Push for it. They'll help you grow. If they say, well, we might not be able to do that, then you say, okay, well, then negotiate. Discounted and free clients are still clients, especially when you're trying to grow your business. And this way you can actually test as well. All right, quick poll. This is a good question. Have you ever sold a product or service to a business as an entrepreneur? All right. Let's see what we got. OK. About— what is it? 70% of you said no. So to those that said yes, if you could raise your hand. If not, no worries. Oh yeah, you have too. So let's hear about— I would love to hear— I would love to have a little more dialogue with you about this, but we're running really, really, really, really late on time. I want to get through everything for you guys. So do you guys know what equanimity is? Have you guys heard of that word before?

Yes.

Some yes, some no. So the word equanimity means mental evenness. So it's the ability to stay even keel at times of high stress. When somebody— when you're in a rush to go somewhere and you're rushing around, it's your ability to, like, to keep doing your thing but to not get all stressed and anxious about it. Same thing on the high side of things. When you achieve an incredible objective, it's great to celebrate, But then if we don't achieve it in the future, we start clinging and craving that kind of stuff. Expressing gratitude. This is really an important one. And I like to have an example for it to explain the importance of the keep knocking.

So—

Who wants $20? Really, half of you didn't raise your hands? Who wants $20? All right, all right, all right, that's good. All right, ready? Now who wants $20? OK, about the same amount, right? All right, hold on. Mmm. Now who wants $20? Okay, so the reason why I'm showing you this is because this is what happens in life. We get stepped on, we get crumbled up, but it's up to us to be resilient and to get back up. and continue going through our lives happily and with strength. It's still just as good of a $20 bill, is it not?

Yes.

Yes? So are we when we experience difficulty. A lot of people even say that when we experience difficulty, it actually makes us stronger.

All right.

In the practice of meditation, of observing respiration. Normally I'd go through a little meditation exercise here, but we— Don't have time.

Alright.

So celebrating success is going to be really important as you achieve it. This is the tiered commission structure, something for you to keep in mind in the future. If somebody makes 3 sales, they get 10% commission. If somebody makes 5 sales, they could get 20% commission on those deals. It's just something to keep in mind. Quarter company-wide sales goals, oh well, everybody will go to Great America or the theme park or wherever, racetrack, Go-kart racing.

Go-kart racing.

And these last 3 things. A success channel on your company. Oh, a developer made a new push of a build. Oh, an operations person just refined a process really well. A designer just made a new graphic. Or a salesperson scored a deal. So building this camaraderie across teams is really important. Company high fives are really important. Feels really good to get some high fives up in here, right? So, so the idea of, of, of, of doing this type of stuff within your company is going to build stronger connections between one another. All right, doo doo doo. All right, let's get through this. This one's also, this one's also important. It's a little bit further out for you as well, but The idea is referring— referrals, getting referrals from your customers. So following up with them. You have customers now. For those that have customers, it's really important to call. Call your customers. What can I do to help make sure that you're satisfied with the product? Oh, you're really satisfied with the product? Will you refer me to 3 people that you think would be— would also like the product? By the way, if they close with us, I'll give you a month free, or I'll give you $50, or whatever. Does that make sense, everyone?

Yes.

All right, good. All right, this is really important. This is called learning culture. So as you guys actually form companies, and right now you're a big part of learning culture, right now this is learning culture. Somebody's coming and talking to you. I've learned now being here with you as well. By making these connections across parts of your company, you end up building stronger teams. Promoting intercompany talks. So for example, like what we're doing right now, if when you start your business, if you on Friday, or even without starting a business, you can just say, hey friends, 2 or 3 friends, I'm gonna give a 5-minute talk, and then Jane's gonna give a 5-minute talk, and then we're just gonna eat a salad over lunch. That is literally the essence of knowing to take the inventory of your mind and communicate it via a presentation to other people. It's strong, it fortifies those neural connections in your mind and makes you more able to impact other people with what's on your mind. Practicing giving a presentation. So I have a quick poll for that. All right, have you given a talk or presentation before, yes or no?

Yes.

All right, good. I see a bunch of heads nodding, a lot of good yeses. All right. All right, so let's see the results. So normally— wow, wow. Can we get a round of applause for you guys? Woo! That's really good. That's really good. 8 people said yes, that they've given talks and presentations. That's really great. Have you guys done that at Draper already? Yeah.

Yeah?

Everyone has?

Yes.

Okay, very good. So, I'm finishing up.

Yeah.

So, this last tip. Make sure that this last tip becomes something that you think about every single day. Every single day, think about taking care of your body and your mind. When you have the option to eat a pizza or eat a salad, pick the salad. It's not just a long-term investment. Oh, it's so I live longer. No, it's a short-term investment. You feel groggy when you eat pizza. You feel awake when you eat a salad. Doing things like getting a refurbished Vitamix, it can be your best friend. Blend up almond milk, spinach, and bananas, and you have an incredible smoothie. Getting up every 30 minutes to stand, stretch, meditate, do jumping jacks, get the blood flowing a little bit after this. Get up, get the blood flowing a little bit. You don't need a gym to do any of this. You can do push-ups right here, right now. All right, and last thing was creative hobbies, but did I— oh, I went too far back.

All right.

What's your favorite thing to do? All right, let me do this poll, last poll quick. Last poll is, how many times per week do you exercise or eat a healthy meal? So either or, how many times per week do you either eat a healthy meal or you exercise? So add them together, add them together. 0 to 2, 3 to 5, 6 to 8, 9 to 11, 12 plus. Healthy is subjective, of course, but, you know, overloading on burgers or pizza is probably less healthy than eating a bowl of pasta, right? That kind of stuff.

Ice cream.

It's pretty good. Generally healthy, or ice cream, yeah. Generally healthy, multiple times per week, very good. All right, so enjoy creative hobbies and activities like art and hiking outside of your work. We're going work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Well, when do we go and hike? When do we go and write? So by doing that, we're going to again enable ourselves to become more actualized. We're gonna explore the arts and explore nature and calm down. It's nature therapy, it's meditative of stress and stress reduction. So, all right, in summary again, find your passion, strategize execution, ask personal questions, take concise notes, use templates, use something like Google Calendar, scale your pricing, practice equanimity, mental evenness, celebrate success, referrals, learning culture, and focus on your health daily, daily, daily. All right, and what's the word polymath mean?

Multiple talents.

Wide-ranging learning. What's the word empath mean? Emotional intelligence expert. And why do I bring up these words? I explained it a little bit at the beginning, and I wanna say one more thing about it right now, is that it will not only maximize your life outcome, but it's also, we know about AI proliferating across every single industry, It will take longer for your work to be automated if you are both a polymath and an empath. It'll take much longer for AI to be able to automate emotional intelligence. It'll take longer for AI to be able to automate some creative connection between neuroscience and art, or between biotech and astrophysics, right? It'll take longer. So that is all, everyone. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

That is it.

Woo!