The Complete Entrepreneur – EP36

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We are talking about opportunity. I like to say ideas are everywhere we look. And today we’re going to talk about those ideas and you might be in the audience here. And if you want to share some of these ideas, we want you on stage today.

But this week we’re looking at where the opportunities to say number one question, I get asked all the time. Okay, Michael, where are the opportunities like where should I go along in advanced or what businesses should I start and what is below that right.

Open and really explore what that means. Like where are these opportunities? And I think it’s going to be a great conversation for the next hour and I’m on the complete entrepreneur. So it’s one of the great things about this hour is only complete entrepreneur. We’re going to look at not just the business aspects of what it means to be an entrepreneur, but the [00:01:00] life experience of an entrepreneur.

What does it mean to lead that life of an entrepreneur? But just before we do Colin, what’s going on with startup book club? Oh my gosh. Start a club. We are almost a high 820,000 members. Tomorrow, by the way, we have billionaire bobbin. joining us at two o’clock Eastern. He has started a multiple unicorns.

And this is going to be an interesting session because we’re actually going to figure out what does it take to really start and scale an exit, a unicorn. And he and his brother had done it multiple times. You probably know bobbin from Radix Michael. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I do know him and he’s an incredible guy that is really worth listening to you.

I’ll tell you why it’s such an incredible experience and everything, but so it’s lots going on with startup.club then. [00:02:00] Oh my gosh, it’s just, it’s going crazy. And we just launched a podcast for the show that we do on Fridays. You can now check out the serial entrepreneur club. We hit our 50th episode.

We are, we have a website now www startup.club, and you can sign up to the mailing. Because when you hear about these types of speakers that are coming on tomorrow, they are special. These people are coming and they’re going to share their wisdom and help us figure out what it takes to make a startup succeed.

And it’s going to be phenomenal. Look, I’m looking forward to today. Today. Ideas are everywhere and I see ideas when I go through life and everybody sees ideas and you’re in the audience today. You’re thinking about, you know what? I see some opportunities. Do I turn them into businesses? What makes an idea work?

Michael, tell us a little bit more about today’s topic. Yeah it’s looking at looking at ideas, but also more than [00:03:00] ideas of where are there opportunities like to me, ideas are great. Opportunities are even better. And then executing those opportunities is just awesome. Possibly executing.

And so quite often it’s like a big funnel of things going around in an entrepreneur’s head and ideas and that sort of stuff. But let me just tell you a story. I must admit when I go to the U S prior to pre COVID, anyway, I’d go to the us all the time. And as I just want to say for those people that are in the us this is the impact it has on a lowly Australia.

I step off the plane and I feel like I’m surrounded by gold on the ground everywhere. There is so many opportunities. I go to a conference and my biggest problem is trying to work at which, which opportunities to pursue and which ones to not pursue. That’s my biggest problem. There is so many opportunities in the U S like w when you considered like greater ally, the population of [00:04:00] greater ally is basically the population of the entirety of the.

And you just got population working for you just there, but more than that, it’s a mindset. And the U S I find there is more a this is tried. And I think sometimes when you look at different opportunities and things like that it’s a matter of just throwing them out at the wall and just see what sticks.

And I find that’s often the case, particularly in cutting edge areas or things like that. But I’m not sure about yourself, but I want to jump down to Michelle because Michelle, I need to apologize for last week. She was on the show as a moderator, and I didn’t get any feedback from yourself, Michelle.

So today I’d love to hear from you, Michelle. What’s your thoughts on where are the opportunities? Hey, thanks, Michael. So much. Yeah. Have Michael, The questions I always am struggling with is which opportunity [00:05:00] do I jump that? Because I personally have a tendency to over-commit, which I actually think can be very detrimental because then you’re not necessarily putting the effort into the opportunity.

I think one of the things we have to really consider is where can we really move forward with that idea or, opportunity that’s presented and do we have times and resources for it because it could be the best idea ever, but it’s just not the right time. So I’m curious, Colin and Jeff, you, I know you get a lot of opportunities presented to you, what do you do to figure out where to put your time?

Because if you get too divided is it’s really, it could be quite bad and you miss out on that.

Yeah, Jeff, I’d love to hear from you. As Michelle just said, there is that there’s so many opportunities. [00:06:00] So how do you begin to shake things down? I think great points that Michelle made and I think a lot of it has to do Michael with first knowing what is your objective? You, are you talking about an opportunity for a side hustle or something that you want to do while you’re doing other things, while you talking for an opportunity to invest in a new business?

Are you talking about an opportunity to start a new business yourself from the ground up because those different objectives might steer you crinkly in different directions, right? If you’re looking, if you’ve got. Funds available. Maybe you’ve got some money yourself from a previous success and friends and family, and you’re looking to really start something and you’re looking for what areas might you want to start it in.

That would be a different approach than if you’re looking for a side hustle that might eventually become your full-time job, so to speak. There are opportunities everywhere and it’s really about keeping your eyes [00:07:00] open, but also more importantly, knowing what it is, what is your objective?

What are you trying to do? Are you trying to start a new business, a new career? Are you trying to supplement your current situation, et cetera? That’s going to affect what, where you look for opportunities. I think, yeah, absolutely great advice there. Jeff as always, I think that the issue also is how do we define what is an option?

What is actually an opportunity versus what’s just an idea, like I’ve got this great idea, but is it really an opportunity? Is it, does it have the capabilities of becoming that side hustle or that business or that some transformational activity for your life, but that’s the thing is what really is an opportunity.

Now, if you’re in the audience right now and you’re saying. This conversation is beginning to really light my fire such. And then please stick up your hand. If you have some questions or something like that, or you say these are things that I do [00:08:00] for weeding out opportunities which ones to pursue the please put up your hand.

We’d love to hear from you up on stage rather than the four of us. We’d love to hear from the hundred of us. That’s for sure. Cause that’s one of the reasons why I must admit I do this is to hear from people like yourself. So put up your hand, we’d love to invite you to the stage, but in the meantime, so what is an opportunity?

It’s a call. I want to come back to you. How do you define the difference between a great idea even and an opportunity? Is there some sort of like magic that you do in that process? Like which, where do you put your resources? Where do you put your time? And to take that, to determine whether an opportunity is something you should pursue.

So no one’s ever asked me that question. What’s the difference between an idea and the opportunity and the answer, I think, is that an idea is an idea. An opportunity is something that you’ve vetted. And, I look back at history and my own companies [00:09:00] and whatnot, how we came up with different ideas are everywhere, and they come from your existing job.

They come when you can’t get something to work and you can solve an existing problem, they’re everywhere. And if you can solve these problems, if you can identify these opportunities, opportunity, I shouldn’t use that word yet, but if you can identify what’s going on here, you can figure out there is an opportunity here.

And an opportunity is simply an idea that’s been embedded that you think that this has got an opportunity. There’s something here. I had a conversation. Gentlemen, he’s coming on to clubhouse, by the way. I’m, I’ve convinced him to come on. He’s 24 years old. He just graduated from college a year ago.

He’s working for a $2 billion company in the real estate sector. And he’s talking about tokenizing real estate. Now, Michael, you might know one of my businesses is is a vacation rental business. So I’m quite intrigued by this concept or this idea. Is there an opportunity for me to figure out how to tokenize real estate in the south Florida market and actually make money from that, [00:10:00] but also in the process, democratize ownership of properties.

So you don’t necessarily need to have a buy, you don’t necessarily need to buy a 10th of a real estate business or own a timeshare. You can actually own a coin that represents a real estate portfolio. Does that exist? Does that opportunity exist? And that’s something that I’m, I’m bouncing around right now.

I got him coming on the show and next. Talking about the concept of tokenizing real estate, is, and if our NFTs and opportunity, while quite frankly, I’ve been pretty negative on NFTs and I’m going to continue to be negative. Is Bitcoin an opportunity? Quite frankly, I’m pretty big on Bitcoin and I buy a lot of Bitcoin.

I own six of them right now. And I’m going to continue to believe that’s a store of value. So I’m, I am not totally, anti crypto, anti whatever, but I’m also very careful to think about what are those opportunities. And we have to sometimes look at what’s going to take and what’s not going to take.

And so I’m going to lean on Jeffrey Moore here. I’m going to lean on crossing the chasm. I believe NFTs are on a chasm. I believe that they may never get out of a chasm, but I’ve [00:11:00] also been pretty negative. Virtual reality VR augmented reality, I think has got more future than virtually. And the fact of the matter is you see a company like magic leap in Fort Lauderdale, which just totally seems to be imploding.

In my opinion, don’t see any evidences, any life in that company, get their receipt, billions of dollars. There was an opportunity. So I often look at what are the paradigm shifts? What are the technological changes that are occurring in our society? And is there opportunity that exists within those changes?

And we have to pick and choose which ones we want to get on. Do we want to get on self-driving cars? Do we want to get on the NFT bandwagon, which by the way, when we’ve done shows like this before NMT was the number one thing that came up over and over again, if you’re in the audience and you have an opinion and you have an opportunity or an idea, this is it.

This is going to be an open conversation. Michael, this is going to be fun. Yeah, absolutely. I must admit the thing I tried to look at is quite often with ideas. And then separating your [00:12:00] ideas for opportunities is I began to put my business hat on. Like you said, you ended up vetting them.

And you think, okay automated reality versus virtual reality and NFTs, crypto, all those sort of things you’ve mentioned, which I’d like to dig more into some of these in a minute. One of the things I find is a really big opportunity is quite often the bridge between industries, I call it.

And what I mean by that is that by getting a diversity of inputs into your thinking, like I do a lot of reading on latest physics from fusion to the new space telescope to you name it. So I do lots of reading in physics, in chemistry. I do lots of reading in economics. I love the one you love the web space telescope.

Isn’t that amazing pod. Yeah, absolutely fabulous. So I do lots and lots of reading and I do it in a very formal sense in all the latest, what was going on in the business and [00:13:00] also in a diversity of of industries. And I find that there’s quite often a gap, like something in one industry will spark off thoughts in another industry for me.

And I go, why are they using this thing from real estate that they’ve been doing for so long in, in the cinema industry or something or whatever it is. And I scratched my head and I started saying, yeah, there’s an opportunity. And that’s actually a pretty big one. And I then think, is this something I want to pursue or not?

And the number one thing I look for in an opportunity is it scary? That’s the thing I look for and probably like yourself, and I’m gonna come back to the Skelly as well, like yourself calling Jeffery Michelle, is that one of the things I also like to do is I like to go along and I had this sort of saying is if you want to understand it, become it.

And I remember when the internet [00:14:00] first came, Kermit was commercialized back in the early nineties. And I looked at this and I thought, gee, this looks like an interesting opportunity. I need to understand this. I was in the middle of my MBA at the time. And and I thought to myself, okay, I need a founder, an idea.

So I did that. I found it an ISP. Why? Because I wanted to understand the internet, but understanding at a real grassroots level of, okay, how does this all work? And that experience from way back then is now translate me 30 years later, 30 something years later. And I now have a technical understanding, a business understanding of a lot of what the internet is and how it functions at the really low level from my experiences running an ISP back in the early nineties.

Yeah it’s the same thing with virtual reality. I was one of the earlier doctors or the Oculus rift and I saw I’ve been waiting [00:15:00] for virtual reality come at. So one of the, one of the first things I did was I bought myself an Oculus rift and I began to toy to play with it. I played some yes, some of the games and things like that.

They had on it. And just to try to experience what works, what doesn’t work. I found, I had the joyous experience of motion sickness with with the Oculus riff with what’s one particular game. And I must admit that as a much horrendous experience, but it was just one game. I found out why that game had that I had that reaction to it.

I then began to program it because I to see how difficult is it, the tools there. And I came to the conclusion. It wasn’t the. But it’s really close. And then magic leap, as you mentioned, Collin which is really augmenting reality. They’ve been through serious amounts of money down there in Fort Lauderdale.

And they just done an announcement just recently and I’m thinking, yeah, but have they really [00:16:00] turned the opportunity into something commercial, which is interesting. So Michael, as a startup, as an investor, I’m thinking, ah, I love that idea. I love that technology shift. Do I go for it or do I not go for it?

Do I believe in self driving a Tesla or not? Do I believe in augmented reality or. I think everyone who’s in this room probably has these thoughts. Like we do NFTs, are they really something or not? Or are we just old? Cause we think Anaptys are not really that it are. We do we believe Bitcoin something, how can it actually, function as a currency?

All these things go through your mind. And if you’re in the audience I come on, this is going to be really fun. Come on up. Yeah. It’s an interesting question I asked about there. So things, I think there’s quite often with any sort of major opportunity, like the one you just outlined there it is.

I think it’s a timing issue quite often. And if you’re too early in the Stockholm, [00:17:00] then you’re going to get your hands. If you’re too late, you’ve missed it. So it’s like, how do you time this? Quite often with the opportunity, like w is for instance back when Bitcoin was first around and you’re buying it for 5 cents or something by that.

And it was what the heck you doing and the tools to actually buy a Bitcoin was funky. It was just crazy. And everyone would be laughing at you and all that sort of stuff. So by an NFT, Michael, I’m trying to, I’m trying to buy my first NMT. I swear to God it’s the same sort of thing yet. I must’ve made NFTs, I think are absolutely fabulous for the.

I’m trying to understand what the value ultimately is for say the investors and whether it’s just a Gregory Ponzi scheme and end up selling that at some point, because some other mug wants to buy K more than you pay, or is there something else underpinning that it’s this artistic [00:18:00] venture for the artists I think is great because allows them to get their act into the marketplace and actually generates revenue from this and everything.

But keys, I think are the first way. What’s our next wave of multiple waves of, as you said, call it tokenization. And it’s tokenization. I think of intellectual property is tokenization of assets. Where did they come prop, but ultimately I am a firm believer that content, whatever that content is, whether it’s music, whether it’s video, whether it is images, whether it’s a re the written word, ultimately content is king, because that’s what people want.

One, the issue is how to best get the value from that content. All right, Michael, I know you’re going open it up to the audience, but I think we’ve discovered the first opportunity to here, how to make it easy to buy it. A T it was very complicated for me to buy start-up club dot, ETH, very complicated [00:19:00] that just making it easy, connecting people from one world to another, I think that’s a huge opportunity.

Oh, I’m that way. Even I look at the domain industry that I’m in trying to buy. I manage a domain portfolio is excruciating for many people. Yeah. And it’s a challenge and it’s or how do you solve the problem of not just managing one website, but if you want to manage a thousand websites, how do you do that?

And have and put in a appropriate manner of sort of management time to be able to extract the value for each one of those. It’s, there’s big challenges out there, but I want to jump across to rich. I’d love to hear from you and your thoughts on where are the opportunities. So rich, welcome to the complete entrepreneur.

Thanks, Michael. Thanks Jeffery. And Collin and Michelle. I just wanted to comment that, I think the Yeah, you were trying to make a distinction [00:20:00] between idea and opportunity. And personally, I think that those are co-joined. And what I mean by that is, is that I think the ideas first, right? And that sort of leads you to understand, you’ve got a gut feel that there’s something there.

And the opportunity really is the vetting of that idea. And then be able to look at that and say, with a structured approach that this idea has merit under these structural conditions and methodologies that confirm for me that there is an opportunity there.

And there’s absolutely rich. Sorry. I completely agree with you. Sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to, make a final comment here that, under that structured approach, there’s a lot of secondary market research that [00:21:00] needs to be completed, by the founder or potential founder and or the team, then there’s primary research that needs to be conducted.

And then there needs to be, an understanding of the competitive, industry structure and the competitors’ landscape and, the growth trends and the pricing models that are out there. And the, the typical, ASP’s for, particular products or services and how that is.

And the types of margins that are derived from that. And then there’s a whole competitive analysis that needs to be done, and understanding, where can you plant your flag? Can you take the high ground? Is there an opportunity there, or are you stuck in the middle? And you never want to be there. All those things need to be considered. And so I think you start with the idea and you go to the opportunity. Absolutely. I agree with you. I agree with you on that. The [00:22:00] challenge I find quite often is with all of the ideas and then all the opportunities is determining which one to then pursue because we have limited resources and limited time.

That’s one question. The other question I have for you rich, is what do you do with a situation like Steve jobs, where he was, where he proclaimed at one stage that the marketplace doesn’t know what it wants because I’ve been told them yet. And so I wonder how a lot of market, a lot of opportunities.

At there, but they’re almost nicer than the market doesn’t even know that it needs to have an apple watch. It doesn’t even know that it needs to have an iPod or something like that. And I wonder like whether in the vetting process, we eliminate some of these incredible ideas and things like that from become even the opportunities because we say, ah it’s who’s going to want [00:23:00] that.

Who’s going to want an apple watch or who’s going to want this or whatever. I sometimes wonder that question. Rich. Do you have anything to add to that?

I think the when you take a look at. Opportunities and if you are, or ideas, if you have, six or seven ideas, it at the top of the funnel and, sorta speak and, you put down your criteria that you have is not the coroner. And one of those is I forget who mentioned it, I don’t know if it was Michael or Jeff.

They look for scalable ideas, right? Scale is huge. So that should be a criteria that should be looked at under the lens of each of these ideas and said, can you scale it? And then there’s other criteria that you, as the entrepreneur should be using just to, to judge whether or not those potential ideas, make it to the next stage of the investigation.

The apple watch [00:24:00] and, you’re an analogy. There is an interesting one because, right around that same time, or remember before apple watch was even brought out, I remember reading a, an article by a watch company and I love watches. And it said that, they expected their business to shrink because the presence of phones and people just aren’t wearing watches anymore.

The multipurpose Snus of a and capability of it, the apple watch is not a watch. It’s not a watch at all. It’s just happens to be in the form of a watch. So I think that’s the difference. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think I’d agree with you on that. I even look at my own apple watch and and why did I buy, I bought it because I could have four time zones on it.

That’s the sole reason why everything else was like a bonus, but I could have four times better, always on my wrist because I work in [00:25:00] international business all the time. But it’s an interesting one. Like looking at the whole issue of scaling is this idea of scaling. Th the Congress of that, is it nice, but high value is the other one of that.

So is it scalable as an opportunity? Can I go along and enter a really big market and why is that great for an entrepreneur? Because quite often, great big market markets disguise any failings on the way, cause you’re going to be doing a lot of learnings along the way. So if you go to a tiny market, like if you’re selling a new type of no executive jet, it’s a pretty small market compared to if you’re selling a new game or something.

It’s very different scenarios there. So quite often look at the size of the market is one of the criteria I so judge, whether this opportunity is something worth pursuing or not from jump across. Yeah, just to comment of that. I still go back to not to be [00:26:00] the the naysayer in the room, but I still go back to it all depends on what your objective is, right.

If your objective is to create a lifestyle business where you can work from a beach in in Bali and earn X dollars a year doing so then scalability may not be relevant when you’re looking for the opportunity. So I really think, one of the mistakes entrepreneurs often make is, and I’ve been guilty of it.

Myself is going after the shiny object. And you might pursue something because it looks like that big, scalable, great opportunity, but it may not actually. Be a fit for what your personal goals and objectives are. So I really think before seeking opportunities, you need to look within and really understand what is the goal?

What is it, the goal? Now the goal might be to build a unicorn in which case scalability and all these other things are going to come into place. But if the goal is different than that, then the opportunities are going to look different to Jeff. I actually really, I’m glad you brought that issue up [00:27:00] because I completely agree with you on it.

When I found him one of my businesses, the number one thing I looked at was. What did I want in my life prior and use that as one of the criteria is for the business. So one of the things I wanted to do was work from home, why I wanted to be there with my kids, came home from school. I’m sure I can work later on at night when they’re in bed and everything like that.

So I worked pretty hard, but I began to put criteria around what did I want in my life? And I think that’s something that you put your finger on Jeff, which is entrepreneurs. They quite often will chase bigger is always better versus what do they actually really. And is this opportunity going to be, bring them what they actually want out of their life versus, oh, I just need to go along and grow until I explode.

Yeah. And that’s not necessarily the answer, but I want to jump across yourself calling because you’ve grown a lot of [00:28:00] businesses along the way. And is it always a grow until you explode or is Jeff Priya’s finger on something? Here are the entrepreneur needs to really define what they want out of their life, this opportunity and put those power.

The getting mixer such 99% of businesses in the United States are small businesses. 99% of businesses do not scale. Here’s the opportunity. If you can come up with an idea that can scale, you can create a much larger. And what do I mean by scalability? Scalability is all about the ability to drive growth without, without expensive, implementations, et cetera.

Like for instance, let me give you an example. My wife and I own a school. The school has a capacity of 108 people. It’s a $2 billion facility. And with that facility, we can get 108 people in that school. If we want to [00:29:00] expand to another school, it would cost us another $2 million, probably a lot more than that.

That’s not scalable, take an idea like.club. We sold a hundred domain names for $10 and eight. We sold a thousand. We sold 10,000, we sold a hundred thousand. We sold a million. We sold it to GoDaddy for a huge, multiple that scalable. And I’ll say this. I will say that it takes just as much effort.

And actually I would say less, I would say less. It takes less effort to run a large, a larger business or a business that’s can scale than a small business. You’re doing a lot of hands-on work now don’t get me wrong. I think there is an argument. There is a place for every small business in America and every small business around the world.

Let’s be I’ll be quite Frank. I do totally agree. You want to build a lifestyle? That’s it. And by the way, there are a lot more defensible, local and whatnot. But when you start giving it to these global companies, they tend to be a little bit more competitive. But I’ll tell you this, it takes as much [00:30:00] effort to run as a large company or a small company or a small business.

It takes the same amount of effort. And if you can come up with, if you’re sitting there in the room today and you say, you know what, I’m going to come up with. And here’s my idea, and my idea is scalable and defensible, and you can do that and you can deliver it and you can build greater wealth. Then I think go for it.

I think that’s what I’m, that’s my message. I know Jack, you’re in the message there. The camp of we’re having a debate here, you’re in the camp of keep it small. I’m in the camp of it takes the same amount of entry to keep it small as it does. I’m definitely not in the camp at all of keep it small Collin I’m in the camp of knowing what your objective is first, so that you do keep it small.

If that’s what you’re looking for, or you do look for that big scalable opportunity, if that’s what you’re looking for, but not just grab something, because it seems like an opportunity because it may or may not fit your [00:31:00] family, your lifestyle, your goals, your objectives, et cetera. That’s all I’m saying.

I’m not saying keep it small. Yeah, I’m gonna jump across to Patricia in a second. But just beforehand, Jeff, I think that the interesting thing with it’s not keep it small and it’s not like this is keep on growing and scale and scale and scale it, it’s not those two things. I think the key thing you said is what is your objective?

What is your objective as an entrepreneur? What are you trying to achieve for your life is so true, but also along the way of life, you may change your objective. That’s okay. I would highly recommend you’re not chopping and changing every day, but it’s like your objective may change. You may discover you to make, put your toe in the water and go.

I’m not sure where the, I want to run my own business for instance, and discover you completely love it. And the business is exploding around you and you thought, oh my goodness, I never thought it’d be. [00:32:00] And you may decide to change your objective in that process, or you may decide to constrain your business.

Why? Because you want to have some different things that a lot. So I think you both were saying a really good wisdom there, but just before we should pursue that a bit more. I’d love to get Patricia. I’d love to hear from you and welcome to club. Has you got your party popper at there? So it’s great to have you here.

So if you welcome to the stage of the complete. Thank you. Hi. Every thought you’ve shared has been fantastic and I’ve much enjoyed listening to you just wanting to time in with a personal example and on the topic of timing. So timing from the perspective of the entrepreneur is one thing, but timing from the perspective of market readiness is another.

And I’ll give an example. That’d be not making much sense at first, but so I’m a I’m a lawyer I’ve been in the legal business [00:33:00] for over 20 years. I have negotiated thousands of contracts in that time, and I came up with a way to automize, to automate maybe half of the negotiations. And I’ve suggested that to.

Some businesses and, people around me and the market was not ready for it. They did not see the advantage of investing time into an idea like that. And it didn’t it didn’t develop into a business for me. So not at that time. So all this to say that you may have a great idea, but if the market is not is too conservative or is not ready for the kind of change that you want to bring the kind of solution you want to bring to an existing problem.

Your idea may not, not materialized. It’s a balancing act of, wanting to, bring something, put something forward, but making [00:34:00] sure it’s the right timing for yourself. And for the market you’re targeting. I completely agree with you there, Patricia, that you really put your finger on one of the issues or one of the things you need to use to get those ideas that I had a similar experience, where I had a fabulous idea back in the 97 an online advertising sort of system.

And it was probably 10 years ahead of its time. I didn’t realize. At that point in time, it was so far ahead. And and with the result, it didn’t resonate with the market. So that’s the thing you got put into the mix with these vetting, the ideas is the timing, but also the market preparedness to receive your product or service.

You’re talking about really good point there. Yeah. So anyway, algebra jumped down here to Swiss. It’s great to have you here on the complete entrepreneur and to hear from your thoughts on this [00:35:00] topic of where are the opportunities. Yeah, good evening, everybody. Thanks for having us up here. So to just a bit of background I moved from banking and I went into the telco sector and I think one of the things that we learned is, different different business models and how those can be expanded amongst each other.

So just listening to Michael and Jeffrey, I think it’s a pyramid of thinking would come to opportunities. And, the first one we usually start with is objective, right? So the objective interpreneur it’s pretty different if you want to, exit off the five years or is this a, like a passion company that you’re trying to build and you’re trying to be the CEO for if right.

And underneath those I’d probably say is timing, infrastructure and costs. Now I think something we, we started to learn now with with Facebook’s move to the metaverse is there is a psychology to this, right? And for those of us who are on the lower end, if we don’t have the resources to prime, the markets, the timing could really be 10 years.

You don’t have enough cash to burn for the next 10 years. [00:36:00] So you can see something is coming. It’s a great idea, but it’s just not ready for it. Now what Facebook is probably doing at the same, I think last year they put about $10 billion into it. And the strategy now is going to pour a lot more money into it.

So there’s an idea they have, whether we like it or not, they will force the metaphors to work right now. I think it’s probably this there’s too many smaller ones, but money will probably win this one. And then you get infrastructure. So if I’m looking at the partnerships which have probably formed.

Five, 10 years I’ll use Facebook as another example, again, is they used to have the next million customers, you move away from the USA to Europe and they say, you go to Africa. So it’s a geographical problem, right? If you look at who’s our access to internet, who’s our 4g, et cetera. It wasn’t big enough of a market for them.

So what they do, they speak to, your Vodafone’s, your orange Deutsches and say, how about you guys put the infrastructure there so people can access Facebook. So you get some weird partnerships that go along. [00:37:00] Now they have enough money to burn until the users come online. And you speak about scaling and yeah, there’s a cost to scale.

Now it’s two ways, right? And your objective is, are you trying to flip this and exit or you’re trying to stay right. And if you get too big too quickly, you could find the company that you started is something you not really a part of a, not significantly in the decision. And I think another theme he touched on is like a developing entrepreneur.

Some people don’t have a lot of resources when they get into it and maybe they want to flip the first two ideas, but you do get to a point where you’re saying, you know what, I’m willing to put half of what I’ve got to develop. Something that doesn’t exist. And for that, I’ll stay in for the long run. Now in terms of the opportunities are you a pioneer is done in so many different and it’s gonna be a lot harder, or you can just look at the business models.

So if I had to throw one up, I’d say for example, you just look at, Airbnb. If I said the wedding, the divorce rate is like 52% give or take. [00:38:00] So people are getting married like pretty much every weekend. Is there an app where you could just going on and say I’m looking for a photographer, I’m looking for a venue.

I’m looking for, a cake maker, et cetera. So those type of models tried and test it. They already work very scalable, but is that something that somebody wants to do for the rest of their life? That’s an objective, right? So I think there’s different frameworks that we coming up with as we go along.

But these things are all interlinked. You brought out some fabulous points there. And there’s one I want her drilling a little bit more into is that, or encourage entrepreneurs to, to get to they focus in many respects from even national to international. And I even look at my own business there.

And you mentioned Facebook and how they opened up international markets. So lesser stuff, which is really quite clever in some of the things they’re obviously doing that. But my own business is one of the things I said was I need to be international through the auspices of the internet. I can be, I can [00:39:00] have as much of a presence online as.

And that was my mentality. Yeah. As I can be really big in the international world, in my market. And to have that international mindset with a result, probably 99% of our clients are international. And it’s a really interesting thing, but I want to come back a little bit to looking at what are some of the opportunities like we’ve mentioned crypto and NFT and VR and augmented reality and 3d printing Colin or Michelle, have you looked in the 3d printing?

Is that really an opportunity or is it just a poetry? And they would say, yeah, sure. Yeah. 3d printing. I’ll believe it when I really say it. I can tell you my daughter’s into it. She’s really into she’s. She worked at 3d printing factory for a year. She’s got a 3d printer. Printing stuff nonstop. I, I do think that, [00:40:00] take applications like jewelry, personalized jewelry, personalization, but there’s opportunities.

There. There’s definitely opportunities. There are opportunities everywhere, I think 3d printing is one of them. And it’s something that we have, I think it’s all about meeting demand, solving a need solving a problem and 3d printing does that in, in multiple areas.

You can do models. You can really do a lot with 3d printing. So I’m starting to see that, that’s one of those technologies that can really make a difference and be an opportunity for entrepreneurs. Michael, I know you’re a big science fiction fan, but it makes me think of star Trek.

I think it is very few futuristic and there are applications, people are building houses at the most basic level right now you can quickly build a prototype. So I also see that there is a huge future. Obviously there needs to be probably so a lot of evolution there, but it [00:41:00] is viable. And I actually think it’s very environmentally friendly.

Thank you. Yeah. It’s interesting. You mentioned that my interest in science fiction. Yes. I love the science fiction book. But one of the reasons why I love science fiction is quite often there. The profits of. They’re the ones that go along and push the thinking around technologies and things like that way of the future.

And when you read the books, what’s the movies or anything like that, you think, you know what? I think we can do that right now. Like you look at the 1960s, captain Kirk communicator, compared to a phone nowadays, the phone is so much more capable compared to his communicator. But if you look at the form part, it’s about the same.

Yeah. It’s it’s really interesting things of that juxtaposition between science fiction and business, and a lot of great ideas to be [00:42:00] able to thinking aren’t you, I just don’t see any ideas. I would encourage you go long, read some science feature of fantasy books or something like that and read them from the perspective of business opportunities.

And you’ll suddenly go, oh, I didn’t even think of that. I didn’t think of this. I didn’t think of that. But anyway, so yeah. So I really want to listen to Michael, like a lightsaber. Yeah. I want a lightsaber too. I always wonder if you turn it on and you actually tapped on the shoulders, you turn around, you slice them in half it’s about that.

Like not too good there, but 3d printing. I love 3d printing. How much demand? I’ve been really watching this market. And the thing I’m trying to work at is where is the value in the 3d printing? I don’t think the value in 3d printing is actually the device. I don’t think the value is in, even in the printing of the things.

It just 3d printing. I think the value is in the content and the design or the [00:43:00] functionality of the thing that is being. And this is where I come back to. Is that one of the things about 3d printing I find is you’re scaling manufacturing, unique manufacturing. And if you can go and have a design, like you, you mentioned jewelry a few minutes ago to call him if you can scale a design and you can have lots of people download a particular file and they can then print it on their 3d printer.

Then the value is in the design. It’s not in the actual piece of material being made, which is really interesting because it means that the designers of this world, I bet to come into the room. Where before to actually get your jewelry out there. Everything incredibly hard. We use jewelry as an example, crippling hide, and to breaking the Mac it’s once your stuff suddenly is going to be blown wide open, the issue is what’s the timing as Patricia [00:44:00] said before, but so 3d printing as our tackled, a couple of others here crypto is crypto really the end of the financial system, or is crypto something just AI?

It’s been great. It’s been like a casino and it’s going die out or it’s crypto is going to just take everything to the next level. Is that a big opportunity or we just go into the casino. Last question. So Colin, is it a casino crypto? Okay. I own six Bitcoin. I admit that. I think there’s a real opportunity.

I think it’s actually, I’ll tell you why I own six Bitcoin. I own six Bitcoin because it’s an insurance policy. What happens if, look what happened to ruble? I’m not, again, I’m not saying that the U S is going to do anything crazy. That’s going to crash their currency, but look what happened to the ruble.

So is there an opportunity to store some of your money as an insurance policy in Bitcoin? I think so. [00:45:00] Is there an opportunity to Ethereum or do they have utility? I think so. I actually bought into Saul selenium as well, because I think the gas fees are too high in Ethereum. And because of that, there’s opportunity exists for smaller transactions that you need to trade.

Will there be more of that kind of crypto? Yes, it will be will. The blockchain is like I talked about earlier, tokenizing real estate. I think that’s an opportunity. There’s huge opportunity there, but there’s also huge risk. We talk about NFTs, these cartoons, these that sell for half a million dollars or $250,000 of an ape.

I’m going to be a broken record when I talk about this, but I don’t get it. And I get Bitcoin, I get a store of value. If you don’t get Bitcoin, you don’t understand what the U S currency is. It’s piles of paper with a promise behind it. Bitcoin is a deflationary instrument with with a it’s a deflationary instrument that is on the internet that you can transfer money or value to easier than gold.

And that’s what the Russians are doing. And that’s what the [00:46:00] people there want to do because they just like, Hey, I can just transfer that. So I see the value in that. I see the value in that, that I think it was environmental issues. I think Bitcoin ultimately can solve those problems, but I’m not going to go there right now.

But for the most part, that’s what we’re dealing with. And. Yeah. If jeez don’t don’t get me started. Okay. Yeah. I must admit when the whole crypto way of hit one of the first things I did was I dove into the market looking at like, where are the risks and everything off that span that the risk there was a huge amount of risk say in the fact that the exchanges may get hacked.

So I thought, okay, I need an air gap device. There’s something I can plug into a USB port. Okay. Next thing I did was I went out and bought some, a board XRP, Bitcoin, Ethereum, things about that. Cause I just wanted to know what it was like. Had someone solved the difficulties, understanding how this will work.

I then transferred a roll into my air gap device and to be quite blunt with you, I just forgot about. 18 months later or the, [00:47:00] oh, that’s right. I’ve got some of these things. I looked at the prices that holy crap, I just made it 500% and I said, yeah, I map, I was quite happy to take my cash yet.

I did something. So when I put just for fun, I put something, some money, some Bitcoin on a USB drive and not a lot about at the time was about a couple hundred bucks. Now it’s probably worth like a thousand or 2000 and it’s around my house and I can’t find it I’m serious. This is what happens.

Yeah. That’s the reality of cryptos. But yeah, it’s an interesting opportunity to say, I want to jump down here at your Rodney, where are the opportunities? Where are the opportunities for you? What are your thoughts on this topic is great to hear for you. Welcome to the stage of the complete entrepreneur.

Thanks for the opportunity. I believe opportunities are based on, ideas turning as opportunities based on the environment. Like I will take the example [00:48:00] of crypto, like you were saying, just before I hopped on in, in the us, they have made it. And the Western world, I would say I’ve made it fairly easy for people to purchase crypto.

But back in Africa where I’m from, it’s a pretty difficult. If you’re in Africa, you have the idea of having a centralized, let’s say like an exchange or something where you can actually get crypto. It’s brilliant in that environment. But when you move over to the us, it’s something else completely. Now you have to do something special for your idea to.

Both the others in order for you. I’ll take another example. Back in Africa, I started a content writing company and was going on world and everything because it was one of the only content [00:49:00] writing companies, which actually provide written content for social media and all that. But when I moved to the us, I noticed there are like thousands of these companies.

So my idea was really an opportunity because I changed my environment. So I think the environment has a very big role to play in making your idea, an opportunity then talking about where are the opportunities now? I will say blockchain technology is one of the hottest markets right now. There are a lot of opportunities.

Let’s this tokens there’s NFTs and everything, but I think the plumbing just using the blockchain, just the foggy to have peer to peer transactions, just the fog. You can avoid the middleman. I think there are many [00:50:00] opportunities. You just need to look for a way to exploit those opportunities.

Find the problem and try to solve it. If your idea can do that could be a huge opportunity for you. Yeah, look, I think you raise a really interesting point and the fact that quite often you can get an opportunity or if you study a country or a nation or region, and you look at the different opportunities there they’re seizing and you can translate them into a different sort of context, maybe that’s geographical or across industries and so forth.

So I mentioned previously, and it sounds to me like that’s what you saw in your experience, Rodney. And that’s a, it’s a great thing to a great point to raise there. So we’re at the other opportunities like habit in just in business processes like Amazon selling or drop shipping. I, they still big opportunities to do drop shipping or do you plug in Alibaba [00:51:00] and push on a whole lot of.

The opportunity is color. Oh, of course. Jeff and I are involved in a number of e-commerce companies. Paul.com Ellington’s I’m involved in a third one called hip optical, which is an edgier version of Warby Parker. Let’s be quite Frank. There is never been a better time in history to launch e-commerce company and Shopify has made it so easy.

It costs virtually nothing. And I don’t work for Shopify or anything like that, but it’s cost virtually nothing to launch it. If you have an idea, look, launch it on Etsy, take your product, put it on Etsy, take your product and put it on Amazon. Take your product and put it on your own website. We’ve never had an easier time in history to launch a company.

You’ve got Shopify, you can outsource your support. You can have virtual assistants in Philippines. You can. Developers, if you need two out of the not a big crane right now, but other, out of India and other jurisdictions, like this is the reality is it’s [00:52:00] never been a better time to take advantage of opportunities.

And I agree with you. And I think one of the interesting things is that soon as you got a Shopify shop, you’re international and I’m not, I don’t get any any kickback from Shopify at all, either. I think there’s some really interesting things around that whole model. A challenge quite often is getting the right traffic.

So people then purchase your goods or services and things like that. So other ones, opportunities, ice made a quick list. How about freelancing your skills or print on demand or affiliate marketing or app creation online courses or having your personal CFO? One of the things that And myself I struggle with is that like Cain, all your bills and everything like that.

Someone’s just going to solve that problem. That’s going to be solved so that I can just pay one person, get a statement. And my water rates, my council rates, my electricity, or my utility, all those sort of [00:53:00] crappy my life is taken care of down to the guy who moves my grass. Yeah. I just want to have that solved.

So I went on my personal CFO, right? Michael, it’s all about the problems, solving problems, save money. That’s it. That’s what you, and there was the opportunity. It’s it’s yeah, I agree with you. It’s solving problems for people. And I just find I would pay to have my life more simple, so I don’t have to think about things individual.

And so I’m a marketplace for different sort of goods and services. Yeah. I just, I do the market research of one. I start with me and I think there’s just so many things that like influencer marketing, like people say, oh, that person’s got like a million followers. I care about the, person’s got a million followers.

I care about the 50 people who got like 20,000 followers age. And how do you consolidate them? Do you now have a million followers? Yeah. And then how do you monetize [00:54:00] that? Or virtual assistants or ebook riders or dog walking. Is there a way of scaling dog walking or housekeeping or tutoring? There’s this, it just goes on and on, on and different ideas and things like that.

It comes to the mix. Like I came up with an idea. I would just sitting down with my notebook. I thought, you know what? Search needs to be revolution. And people said, I’ve mentioned that to a few people that said, what do you mean you had to go up against Google? Yeah. Why not

That yet? And I think you, you touched on something calling me a few minutes ago. What’s the fact that there’s never been a better offer, a time in the history of humanity for entrepreneurs feel to take ideas, test them quickly and to find out where the whole merit or not. And it’s an incredible time we live in.

And I just want to encourage all entrepreneurs out there. There’s a huge number of opportunities, but the challenge is how to personally assess [00:55:00] which one you should pursue, which comes back to what Jeff said before. Is that what are your. You’ve been listening to the complete entrepreneur and we’ve been talking about this great topic and where are the opportunities?

And I think in many respects, they come from inside of each and every one of us, those opportunities. And they may come from in the middle of the night, or they may come from you’re staring at a sunset, or they may come from times when the chaos of everyday living, whatever it is, we’re surrounded by opportunities.

And the issue is how can we actually go along and seize those opportunities. But it’s been a great conversation. It really has. And I’ve enjoyed it. And you guys so Colin, what’s going on with startup.club? I was going to say Michael, I think the best way to seize those opportunities to learn how to execute on them.

Tomorrow at two o’clock Eastern, we have Bob Turk who has launched multiple unicorns, him and his brother. I think three unicorns. This is incredible story. [00:56:00] He’s coming on to talk to us tomorrow. Two o’clock east. It’s going to be an incredible show, join us tomorrow looking forward to seeing it and we’re going to learn.

What does it take? What is, what do these serial offers do? What are these, what does a serial unicorn entrepreneur do to do it over and over again? And that’s, what’s happening tomorrow? Two o’clock Eastern on the startup club. Yeah, that sounds great. To be able to hear from someone like that and get them on the show, that’s going to be a pack that I’m sure that but anyway, next week on the complete entrepreneur, we’re looking at the secret to a happy entrepreneurial life.

And I think that’s going to be really interesting. Being entrepreneur is one of the most restful jobs anyone can decide to pursue. How can you achieve success in both your personal and business life? So you can lead a happy life. And that’s where we’re going to begin to unpack and pull apart. What does it mean to be happy to genuinely be happy as an.

Or are entrepreneurs [00:57:00] potentially unhappy, cause they’re never satisfied. This is going to be a great topic. I’d love to see you here at 5:00 PM Eastern time next week. I just wanted to say thank you very much to my fellow moderators, Colin, Jeff, and Michelle for today. And for rich, Patricia Swizz and Rodney for your wonderful input, really loved hearing from you and for all of you in the audience right there, it’s been great having you here and being, participating in the conversation just by being there.

If you see one of the people on the stage, you think, you know what I want to hear more from this person, then please just click on their pro their image and follow them because you know what? You may be amazed of what you’ve discovered on that journey. And it could be a business opportunity for you even with them.

I already followed rich Swizz and Rodney, and by the way, Patricia, I’m your fourth followers. So welcome to club. I’m doing exactly the same thing. Call calling. So it’s [00:58:00] been really good having everyone here. I’ll see you next week. Bye BMEs at time on the complete entrepreneur.

Thanks all. Have a good one.