How Business Development Can Give You More Money And Free Time | Eric Edmeades

There is no perfect time to start a business except, well, like right now or whenever you started yours. People often ask me how I was so brave. How did I know to start my first business? Because it's easy to look now and think that I was very brave. I mean, I've owned companies in mobile computing and data capture, Hollywood special effects, 3D camera engineering, military research and development, even medical simulation for the US Army. I've had an incredibly interesting business life and so people often think I'm very brave. I. But no, that's not what happened. Let me tell you why I started my first business. First of all, I got a job. I was the very first full time employee for a small tech startup in Vancouver, Canada and the owner and I shared an office. And during those days he would often talk to me about shares and options and how the only worry that I would have in the future is what color my Ferrari was. Little did he know I'm a Jeep guy. But the point being is that there was always this conversation about shares and options. And some years later when it kind of came time to really to talk about those things because now we had 150 employees and we were doing millions and millions a year, he had decided that shares and options were no longer appropriate. This very often happens to entrepreneurs. They make promises when there is no value and once there's actual value there, it's hard for them to keep the promises. In fact, there's a great book about this called Big Promises and Little White Lies. Now at the point that my boss decided that shares and options were no longer an option, I really thought about leaving my job. But he made me a new offer. Go to Europe. Go to Europe and start our company there. Start the European branch. I was 25 years old. This was an incredibly exciting idea. I'd go to Europe, I'd have a five year contract and I would get shares and options. This time in the European venture. Knowing what we built already. This meant that by the time I was 30 years old, I would have a retireable sum of money and I would have had a ton of fun living in another country I was in. So I moved. I moved myself and my new wife and off we went. We got a house, we got cars, we got a dog and we thought, why not? This is a perfectly good time to start a family. We've got a five year contract, we're going to be independently wealthy. At the end of it, everything is perfect, isn't it? And so we started living our lives. And then one day my Contract arrived, and you know what wasn't in the contract? Shares or options. They just weren't there. He changed his mind again. I'd leased the office. I'd hired the managing director. I'd hired the sales director. I'd hired the initial staff. I'd done all the groundwork, and now the options didn't matter anymore. This time. This time I couldn't stay. This time I quit my job. But I want you to think about this for a minute. I quit my job. I went home immediately and told my wife no more baby making. We'd been trying for about two weeks, so let's just stop right now. I think you know where that went, right? So the next thing you know, I've got a pregnant wife. I'm living in a country where I no longer have a work visa because my right to work there was related to my job. And I have no money. Now, the good news is my boss owes me lots of money. About 150, $180,000. So it's okay. When I get that money, I'm going to be able to rebuild my life. And I'd received a great job offer. The job offer was to go and learn about stock trading and bond trading and stuff, and in Grand Cayman in the Caribbean, where I'd always wanted to live. So everything was going to be just fine. But you know what? That same boss that decided that shares weren't a good idea also decided that paying me the money he owed me wasn't a good idea either. In the weirdest twist of irony, he didn't want to pay me the money because he was afraid I would use the money to start a competitive venture. Why was it a twist of irony? Well, because I was going to use the money to move to Grand Cayman and get involved in investments. But now I was stuck. I had a family to feed. I had a house to pay for. I didn't have the legal right to work. And so I was left with very little choice but to start a business. That's right. It wasn't out of bravery that I started business. It was out of survival. I started the business because one day one of my clients called me and he said, eric, can you help me find these 10 computers? And I was like, yeah, I can, but I don't do that anymore. And he goes, well, we need your help. And one thing led to another, and I found him those 10 computers, and I made £7,000 profit on that first deal. And I was like, this is incredible. I just made £7,000, maybe I should have a business. But I then sat down and thought a lot about the kind of business I wanted to start. And I knew something that day. I did not want to be self employed. I did not want to start a business that would make me work harder and harder and harder, the bigger the business got. I wanted to build a business that one day I'd be able to sell or license or franchise or exit in some way. And so I began working on the foundations. There was a difference between self employment and owning a business. What's the difference? Well, self employment means your business needs you to be there every day. Owning a business means your business doesn't necessarily need you to be there every day. It's an asset, it's standalone. And that's what I wanted to build. I went and studied every successful entrepreneur I could find and I started doing, I started using the things that I'd learned from them. And I laid the foundation for what we now think of as business freedom. I went through some very powerful exercises, some visioning exercises that helped me to really understand the business I was building and how I was going to build it and what the next two or three years are going to look like. And I'm so grateful that I did that. In fact, another guy left the company that I worked for at the same time as me, and he started his company three years later. He was driving Ferraris, I'm not kidding, actual Ferraris. And I was often a little jealous. I'd see him driving along in his brand new Ferrari and I was like, why am I not driving a Ferrari? But you know, the difference was, is that he was building the business only for his short term cash flow and I was building an asset. I had employees. He was working hard all the time, by the way, after nine years, I sold my company and I did incredibly well. What was he still doing? Going to work every day to pay for his leased Ferrari. Now there came an incredibly important moment in my business. And that was the moment my business didn't really need me anymore. After about three or four years, I was able to reduce my work days down. I was only working six hours a day. I very rarely barely worked on Fridays. I had created a tremendous sense of freedom for myself. In other words, as your business gets bigger, you should become more free, not more busy. And you know what? Then I got bored. And I have come to realize that what the planet needs is more bored entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs that can apply their creativity and their optimism to problems bigger than the ones inside their business. What did I do? I contacted the Prince's Trust. The Prince's Trust is an incredible organization that creates loans for young entrepreneurs and then assigns them to a mentor. And so I started doing business mentoring. I started doing business mentoring because my business didn't need me anymore. And it was one of the most fulfilling things I'd ever done. Helping young entrepreneurs get started, helping them avoid some of the pitfalls that I'd had, helping them take some of the shortcuts that I'd wish I'd known about so that they, too, could have a fantastic business. And ever since then, I've been doing everything I can to help entrepreneurs have the most incredible businesses. Because entrepreneurship is the ultimate expression of personal freedom. I want you to understand, when you build a company, you should not get busier. As the company gets bigger, you should become more free. The bigger the company gets, the more free you become. The bigger the company gets, the more financial abundance you experience. The bigger the company gets, the the more time you have to spend with your family, travel the world, and live the way you really want to, and to work on your genuine passions. Join me for this masterclass with Mindvalley now, and let's learn some powerful things about entrepreneurship and your personal freedom.