next this is a long quote from Andrew
Carnegie is basically talking about
putting your eggs in one basket and the
common advice is don’t put your eggs all
in one basket because it’s really
risking what he’s saying he was richest
man in the world or a period of time he
likes to put all his eggs in one basket
and he watches that basket he said it’s
too difficult to watch too many baskets
and I think that’s a challenge a lot of
entrepreneurs faces they have a mean
things going on at once and as a result
of trying to do too much the quality
sucks right you’re not doing anything
really well where if you really focus in
on only one basket and you make sure you
do a really really good job of that then
you’re much more likely to be able to
achieve your success so having lots of
baskets might be good from an investment
point of view you want to diversify if
you’re putting your money into stocks
you don’t want to all by in one stock
but as an entrepreneur the
recommendation here is put your eggs in
one basket you know and really really
focus on it and I’m over the lip so if
you’re selling the business focus on the
business and trying to provide an
awesome value proposition to them and
make sure you’re doing everything you
can to to have them get a result but
they want to keep hiring you back and
back and back over and over again
number 10 don’t spend until you burn and
this is a common challenge that a lot of
entrepreneurs face is they’re trying to
get money to start up the business and I
hate spending money until I’m making
money and I like it a lot of emails from
people writing in saying I need to raise
capital to you know what’s your business
who is venture capital or you know five
hundred dollars or five thousand dollars
or whatever it is whenever you can you
want to try to start a business without
spending money try to earn a little bit
before you start paying up anybody can
spend money right if it gave you all
million dollars you could all go out and
find a million ways to spend it that’s
not the challenge is an entrepreneur
it’s how do you earn it and as a venture
capitalist we saw all sorts of deals
that we just said no to because they
weren’t earning anything it was just an
idea on paper and you want to show and
prove to yourself that you have
legitimate valuable idea even now
whenever I’m launching new programs I
always start off doing it in a way that
I’m not spending in the light so for
those of you who’ve seen my youtube
videos as an example you’ve seen it on
facebook in the newsletter the very
first ones were really really bad that
the content was was good I think but the
production quality was brutal and I just
had my own little you know crappy tiny
camera and you know put it on a shelf
and sort of recorded myself and the
lighting was bad and the quality was bad
and there was no microphone so that the
audio quality was bad and I did that
because I didn’t want to go start
spending money on a new project until I
knew that I was going to be able to make
money from it and so as I sort of being
able to monetize it then I started
investing to better equipment you got a
better camera and got a tripod and got
my teen get a backdrop and all the
things that you know maybe made sense in
beginnings at oh I should have done that
but we’ll try lots of different projects
and only sick with the ones that we
see as being able to build generate
return to us the danger is getting too
excited about an idea going out and
spending the whole whack of money on it
and then it doesn’t succeed all right so
I’d rather start small take a smaller
profit margin on it and then start
investing into as I see it achieving
success I recently had a lunch with
somebody who was creating his own design
of t-shirts and his challenge which is I
think a common one whenever you are in a
product is he got so excited about his
idea that he ordered a whole bunch of
these t-shirts and now he’s sitting on
this inventory that he can’t sell and
yes you you can you know the cost goes
down as you get higher quantities right
anytime you’re making purchases if
you’re buying tons of quantity your
possible unit goes down so it’s
attractive and it’s a there’s an
incentive to want to make big orders the
challenge there is you don’t know if
that’s gonna sell or not so I’d rather
start much smaller do it on your print
on demand use a service like cafepress
where you’re not gonna make a lot of
money your profit per you know shirt or
whatever your product is it’s not going
to be high but you’re making sure that
you’re not going to lose a ton of money
right you’re not going out spending all
this money in your stock sitting a whole
bunch of inventory so whatever your your
program is and this is great especially
if you’re doing a service type of
business you don’t have to spend a lot
of money it’s your time to launch right
you want to spend your time but you
don’t want to inject a ton of capital
into it until you see that you’re able
to make some kind of return and its
really tough to see I’ll get a lot of
emails people telling their story and
pour in the heart out of how they
invested everything into this business
idea and they mortgage their home and
you know their their wife or husband is
about to leave them as I’ve spent so
much of their money on this company and
they still haven’t proven that it can
make any money and so I don’t want you
guys to go out and spend all this cash
whatever you have you know it’s the
amount is relative if you only have ten
thousand dollars in your bank account
that’s that’s a lot of money to go up
and spend on the business I tried to not
spend any money go out try to make
some initial order sales really small
scale prove to yourself but this is
something that you can build the
business off of and then slowly expand
you’ll find that that the businesses who
are very conscious of cash flow at the
beginning are the ones who are really
successful down the line is eight states
they’re used to that thinking about you
know bootstrapping and being able to
save I’ve been every penny that they can
so as much as you can don’t spend until
you earn familiar and Vernon work hard
that’s the bottom line don’t spend more
money than you’ve got don’t spend money
before you’ve got it okay so your
challenges go out try to run a couple
bucks and then you can invest a little
back of that back into your company and
just keep hustling and keep spending
your time to go out and earn work Steve
Jobs innovation has nothing to do with
how many rd dollars you have when Apple
came up with the mac IBM would spend at
least 100 times more on rd it’s not
about the money it’s about the people
you have how your lead and how much you
get so again it’s not how much you’re
spending that’s not going to dictate
your success it’s about how much hustle
you have and if you’re building a
business model that makes sense or not
number 11 don’t let the naysayers get
you down this is a huge challenge for a
lot of people you know if you don’t have
much courage and your family or if your
friends aren’t entrepreneurs when you
say you’re starting the business there’s
a lot of people who may wish you good
luck but there are afraid for you are
the ones who care about you are afraid
they entrepreneurship is not a really
easy safe way to earn a living hardly
getting a corporate job and so they may
discourage you let me say why you just
go and get a job like everybody else and
kind of shut down your ideas a little
bit even if they do support you you’ll
also have the friends or the so-called
friends will be jealous now they always
wanted to do something but we’re too
afraid to take the leap and so they say
I said we’re going to work and so out of
their own insecurities they want to make
you feel bad for watching business and
as much as possible you want to try to
ignore the naysayers what I found
particularly helpful for me was a couple
things one I I took comfort in the fact
that i knew i was helping people and
that goes back to again rule number one
about doing something you’re really
passionate about if you know you’re
really excited about what you’re doing
and you know that you’re helping people
that gets you through a lot of these you
know negative situations that will come
up as you as you launch and run your
business if somebody said oh you know
you’re never gonna make it but then you
see some great feedback from somebody
saying thank you really helped me that’s
good motivation to want to keep going
keep going and keep going so I’d
encourage you as much as possible again
start around something you’re really
excited about and then tie back into
that every time you get into some kind
of negative situation somebody tells you
just not gonna work out we even do this
internally on our own company we have a
whole bunch of people who write for our
website 7,000 people write for my
website and people on my team they get
emails every day from them saying you
know things that may not be working out
they don’t understand basically they’re
dealing with all the problems and so
they’re getting negative feedback every
day to say here we need to exist me to
the success you know people don’t quite
understand how something works
but they’re only dealing with the people
who have problems where most of the
people really enjoyed in love and find
great value so what I do every month is
I send them a list of all the great
things that people said about them about
us so that they can also see hey you
know what we’re helping off there’s a
lot of guy in what we’re doing so i
found that huh helpful now if you’re not
really passionate what you’re doing and
you’re not really helping people if
you’re in some kind of scam business or
something that’s hard to get excited
about right people say you know you’re
just scamming people and you are and you
believe you’re scaring people then maybe
it’s time to actually do a different
business but this I’m talking about when
you actually are adding value people’s
lives and making them you know given
them a lot of value so that’s one thing
to help me the other thing was looking
at famous entrepreneurs and I was a
little scared when I first started my
first real business I was 19 years old
and really know what it was doing and I
research famous entrepreneurs and we
talked about mom and success in the last
workshop but find people who you looked
up to and research their story and
you’ll find that everybody struggle the
guys are the most successful now any any
name you want to throw their if it’s
Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or whoever it
is they all had big challenges when they
were studying up and they all doubted
themselves and they all had all these
problems and you don’t see any of that
stuff but reading their stories and
understanding what they had to overcome
at least for me made me feel like I can
do this to you know they had all these
problems and they were able to overcome
it and a lot of people are telling them
that there wasn’t going to work out and
they made it happen so that gave me a
motivation sometimes all you need is the
one more day you know the the motivation
to go one more day and sometimes that’s
the day that gets you over the hump and
tomorrow is a brighter day so try not to
try not to listen to the naysayers gotta
surround yourself with people either you
know customers who are giving you great
feedback or people who you may not know
but respect as you know the modeling
mentors or you can also try to find
people who are in your local area who
are entrepreneurs and get together and
try to help you shut up
we run a group of mastermind groups here
in Toronto and the entrence get together
once a month and we sit down we talk
about our businesses and we try to help
each other out and sometimes it’s around
you know how do i market myself what are
you doing it works and sharing best
practices well a lot a lot of the
benefit also is just realizing that
other people are facing the same
problems as me and they may be doubting
themselves and one month a delta cells
and next month they’re they’re doing
awesome so being around other people who
are entrepreneurs can be a tremendous
boost so you can help each other out and
when you’re down they can help you and
when they’re down you can help them it’s
really hard when you are you know the
the only person who is the entrepreneur
in your immediate circle of friends and
family also trying to surround yourself
with some people are joining webinars
like this or whatever it is that gets
you you know excited and motivated and
feel like you can do it keep trying to
do those and try to lock out the other
people in your life Ted Turner and
founder of CNN all my life people have
said that I wasn’t going to make it you
can never quit winners never quit but it
was never win
you
Carnegie is basically talking about
putting your eggs in one basket and the
common advice is don’t put your eggs all
in one basket because it’s really
risking what he’s saying he was richest
man in the world or a period of time he
likes to put all his eggs in one basket
and he watches that basket he said it’s
too difficult to watch too many baskets
and I think that’s a challenge a lot of
entrepreneurs faces they have a mean
things going on at once and as a result
of trying to do too much the quality
sucks right you’re not doing anything
really well where if you really focus in
on only one basket and you make sure you
do a really really good job of that then
you’re much more likely to be able to
achieve your success so having lots of
baskets might be good from an investment
point of view you want to diversify if
you’re putting your money into stocks
you don’t want to all by in one stock
but as an entrepreneur the
recommendation here is put your eggs in
one basket you know and really really
focus on it and I’m over the lip so if
you’re selling the business focus on the
business and trying to provide an
awesome value proposition to them and
make sure you’re doing everything you
can to to have them get a result but
they want to keep hiring you back and
back and back over and over again
number 10 don’t spend until you burn and
this is a common challenge that a lot of
entrepreneurs face is they’re trying to
get money to start up the business and I
hate spending money until I’m making
money and I like it a lot of emails from
people writing in saying I need to raise
capital to you know what’s your business
who is venture capital or you know five
hundred dollars or five thousand dollars
or whatever it is whenever you can you
want to try to start a business without
spending money try to earn a little bit
before you start paying up anybody can
spend money right if it gave you all
million dollars you could all go out and
find a million ways to spend it that’s
not the challenge is an entrepreneur
it’s how do you earn it and as a venture
capitalist we saw all sorts of deals
that we just said no to because they
weren’t earning anything it was just an
idea on paper and you want to show and
prove to yourself that you have
legitimate valuable idea even now
whenever I’m launching new programs I
always start off doing it in a way that
I’m not spending in the light so for
those of you who’ve seen my youtube
videos as an example you’ve seen it on
facebook in the newsletter the very
first ones were really really bad that
the content was was good I think but the
production quality was brutal and I just
had my own little you know crappy tiny
camera and you know put it on a shelf
and sort of recorded myself and the
lighting was bad and the quality was bad
and there was no microphone so that the
audio quality was bad and I did that
because I didn’t want to go start
spending money on a new project until I
knew that I was going to be able to make
money from it and so as I sort of being
able to monetize it then I started
investing to better equipment you got a
better camera and got a tripod and got
my teen get a backdrop and all the
things that you know maybe made sense in
beginnings at oh I should have done that
but we’ll try lots of different projects
and only sick with the ones that we
see as being able to build generate
return to us the danger is getting too
excited about an idea going out and
spending the whole whack of money on it
and then it doesn’t succeed all right so
I’d rather start small take a smaller
profit margin on it and then start
investing into as I see it achieving
success I recently had a lunch with
somebody who was creating his own design
of t-shirts and his challenge which is I
think a common one whenever you are in a
product is he got so excited about his
idea that he ordered a whole bunch of
these t-shirts and now he’s sitting on
this inventory that he can’t sell and
yes you you can you know the cost goes
down as you get higher quantities right
anytime you’re making purchases if
you’re buying tons of quantity your
possible unit goes down so it’s
attractive and it’s a there’s an
incentive to want to make big orders the
challenge there is you don’t know if
that’s gonna sell or not so I’d rather
start much smaller do it on your print
on demand use a service like cafepress
where you’re not gonna make a lot of
money your profit per you know shirt or
whatever your product is it’s not going
to be high but you’re making sure that
you’re not going to lose a ton of money
right you’re not going out spending all
this money in your stock sitting a whole
bunch of inventory so whatever your your
program is and this is great especially
if you’re doing a service type of
business you don’t have to spend a lot
of money it’s your time to launch right
you want to spend your time but you
don’t want to inject a ton of capital
into it until you see that you’re able
to make some kind of return and its
really tough to see I’ll get a lot of
emails people telling their story and
pour in the heart out of how they
invested everything into this business
idea and they mortgage their home and
you know their their wife or husband is
about to leave them as I’ve spent so
much of their money on this company and
they still haven’t proven that it can
make any money and so I don’t want you
guys to go out and spend all this cash
whatever you have you know it’s the
amount is relative if you only have ten
thousand dollars in your bank account
that’s that’s a lot of money to go up
and spend on the business I tried to not
spend any money go out try to make
some initial order sales really small
scale prove to yourself but this is
something that you can build the
business off of and then slowly expand
you’ll find that that the businesses who
are very conscious of cash flow at the
beginning are the ones who are really
successful down the line is eight states
they’re used to that thinking about you
know bootstrapping and being able to
save I’ve been every penny that they can
so as much as you can don’t spend until
you earn familiar and Vernon work hard
that’s the bottom line don’t spend more
money than you’ve got don’t spend money
before you’ve got it okay so your
challenges go out try to run a couple
bucks and then you can invest a little
back of that back into your company and
just keep hustling and keep spending
your time to go out and earn work Steve
Jobs innovation has nothing to do with
how many rd dollars you have when Apple
came up with the mac IBM would spend at
least 100 times more on rd it’s not
about the money it’s about the people
you have how your lead and how much you
get so again it’s not how much you’re
spending that’s not going to dictate
your success it’s about how much hustle
you have and if you’re building a
business model that makes sense or not
number 11 don’t let the naysayers get
you down this is a huge challenge for a
lot of people you know if you don’t have
much courage and your family or if your
friends aren’t entrepreneurs when you
say you’re starting the business there’s
a lot of people who may wish you good
luck but there are afraid for you are
the ones who care about you are afraid
they entrepreneurship is not a really
easy safe way to earn a living hardly
getting a corporate job and so they may
discourage you let me say why you just
go and get a job like everybody else and
kind of shut down your ideas a little
bit even if they do support you you’ll
also have the friends or the so-called
friends will be jealous now they always
wanted to do something but we’re too
afraid to take the leap and so they say
I said we’re going to work and so out of
their own insecurities they want to make
you feel bad for watching business and
as much as possible you want to try to
ignore the naysayers what I found
particularly helpful for me was a couple
things one I I took comfort in the fact
that i knew i was helping people and
that goes back to again rule number one
about doing something you’re really
passionate about if you know you’re
really excited about what you’re doing
and you know that you’re helping people
that gets you through a lot of these you
know negative situations that will come
up as you as you launch and run your
business if somebody said oh you know
you’re never gonna make it but then you
see some great feedback from somebody
saying thank you really helped me that’s
good motivation to want to keep going
keep going and keep going so I’d
encourage you as much as possible again
start around something you’re really
excited about and then tie back into
that every time you get into some kind
of negative situation somebody tells you
just not gonna work out we even do this
internally on our own company we have a
whole bunch of people who write for our
website 7,000 people write for my
website and people on my team they get
emails every day from them saying you
know things that may not be working out
they don’t understand basically they’re
dealing with all the problems and so
they’re getting negative feedback every
day to say here we need to exist me to
the success you know people don’t quite
understand how something works
but they’re only dealing with the people
who have problems where most of the
people really enjoyed in love and find
great value so what I do every month is
I send them a list of all the great
things that people said about them about
us so that they can also see hey you
know what we’re helping off there’s a
lot of guy in what we’re doing so i
found that huh helpful now if you’re not
really passionate what you’re doing and
you’re not really helping people if
you’re in some kind of scam business or
something that’s hard to get excited
about right people say you know you’re
just scamming people and you are and you
believe you’re scaring people then maybe
it’s time to actually do a different
business but this I’m talking about when
you actually are adding value people’s
lives and making them you know given
them a lot of value so that’s one thing
to help me the other thing was looking
at famous entrepreneurs and I was a
little scared when I first started my
first real business I was 19 years old
and really know what it was doing and I
research famous entrepreneurs and we
talked about mom and success in the last
workshop but find people who you looked
up to and research their story and
you’ll find that everybody struggle the
guys are the most successful now any any
name you want to throw their if it’s
Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or whoever it
is they all had big challenges when they
were studying up and they all doubted
themselves and they all had all these
problems and you don’t see any of that
stuff but reading their stories and
understanding what they had to overcome
at least for me made me feel like I can
do this to you know they had all these
problems and they were able to overcome
it and a lot of people are telling them
that there wasn’t going to work out and
they made it happen so that gave me a
motivation sometimes all you need is the
one more day you know the the motivation
to go one more day and sometimes that’s
the day that gets you over the hump and
tomorrow is a brighter day so try not to
try not to listen to the naysayers gotta
surround yourself with people either you
know customers who are giving you great
feedback or people who you may not know
but respect as you know the modeling
mentors or you can also try to find
people who are in your local area who
are entrepreneurs and get together and
try to help you shut up
we run a group of mastermind groups here
in Toronto and the entrence get together
once a month and we sit down we talk
about our businesses and we try to help
each other out and sometimes it’s around
you know how do i market myself what are
you doing it works and sharing best
practices well a lot a lot of the
benefit also is just realizing that
other people are facing the same
problems as me and they may be doubting
themselves and one month a delta cells
and next month they’re they’re doing
awesome so being around other people who
are entrepreneurs can be a tremendous
boost so you can help each other out and
when you’re down they can help you and
when they’re down you can help them it’s
really hard when you are you know the
the only person who is the entrepreneur
in your immediate circle of friends and
family also trying to surround yourself
with some people are joining webinars
like this or whatever it is that gets
you you know excited and motivated and
feel like you can do it keep trying to
do those and try to lock out the other
people in your life Ted Turner and
founder of CNN all my life people have
said that I wasn’t going to make it you
can never quit winners never quit but it
was never win
you
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