This video focuses on the mindset required to be an entrepreneur, emphasizing dedication, sacrifice, and the importance of choosing a business idea with significant market potential. It also touches on networking for future fundraising efforts.
What this video covers
The first thing is to learn what it means. At the end of the day, you need to understand and familiarize yourself with what it’s going to take to make this thing happen. This is going to be five to seven years that you are allocating in your life to going after this, sweat, tears, you name it.
The next thing is picking a business idea. Business ideas are just 5% of it; 95% of the success is for the execution, but you want to grab an idea that is big enough that it’s going to justify all the sacrifices that you’re going to be putting out on this like, missing out on birthdays, not being with your family as much. In the end, you want to go for markets that are big enough so that they can provide a great opportunity for you, and then also for potential investors that you may want to bring in.
Then, you want to build your network. The network is your network. You want to build the network on, as early as literally having an idea on a napkin. Here, you want to build different types of networks.
You want to build a network for the money with those investors.
You want to build a network for potential employees.
You want to build that network with potential candidates that you’re going to need later down the line, and with that being said, you want to have that person ready and available for you to call them whenever you need them.
The next thing is, you want to organize your business. You’re going to need legal advice to help you with incorporating your business, to help you with structuring that partnership with your partner, and here it’s not going to be a civil or a family lawyer, or maybe your cousin Vinney that studied law in law school. Here, you need corporate lawyers that can provide that guidance that you’re going to need to make sure that you’re doing things well from day one.
The next thing is, you want to test your idea. Before you even go to market, don’t think that “Oh, my gosh, this is going to be amazing. My assumptions are fantastic,” because never are you going to get it right with the assumptions. The way you want to go about it is you want to go where your potential customers are going to be and ask them, test them, get the service, get the product in front of them, try to get some data points, try to get some feedback.
The next thing is you want to turn your early adopters into raving fans. At the beginning, the last thing that you want is crickets. You launch something, and then you’re waiting for people to come. You want to get those early adopters; you want to give those early adopters fantastic discounts, incentives to come, and to tell their friends.
The next thing is, you need to ask yourself – obviously, it’s raising money, but you need to ask yourself, “Do I want to build a billion-dollar business, or do I want to build a lifestyle business that is just going to be paying for my bills?” If it’s a billion-dollar business, you’re going to need to raise money.
Next, you really want to scale the business. If it’s something that is working that you have product/market fit, meaning that people love it, that it’s flying off the shelves, then you need to understand how are you going to be able to expand this? How can you take it to other geographic locations? How can you get more employees to help you, and you can delegate on them? What kind of investors are you going to be bringing in? What kind of business development deals are you going to do to help with distribution? So, it’s all about scaling.
