Becoming the Unstoppable Entrepreneur

The Complete Entrepreneur – EP42: Becoming the Unstoppable Entrepreneur

[00:00:00] 

Hey, are you an irresistible force? You think about entrepreneurs in history, like Steve jobs, Elon Musk. I’m gonna throw this in there. Elizabeth Holmes. There are, are irresistible forces. There are entrepreneurs. Hey Jeff, how you doing? I am doing swell. Colin. Yeah. Just mentions, you know, Steve jobs, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes.

 How many of these entrepreneurs were irresistible forces? You just want to be a part of them. My daughter just bought Tesla stock yesterday. She wants to, you know, she wants a piece of that. Like, there are just people who launch these businesses, they have these ideals, they have the vision, they have the charisma.

And then I would actually argue in a lot of these cases, uh, like, uh, [00:01:00] Elon Musk. They don’t even have the charisma, but they have something that attracts people to them. People wanna work for them. People want to, um, you know, people want to invest in those companies. They wanna invest, they wanna work for them.

They wanna buy their products. What is it that these entrepreneurs have? Michael? Is that your topic today? We’re just trying to dissect it. Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s like, um, becoming an irresistible force. So you talked about Elon Musk, um, and what an incredible irresistible force where he has wall street betting against him.

And he still pushes through like with Tesla, but what is it that actually creates that irresistible force? You know, that, um, uh, and, and I, I think I sometimes come back when I think about Kim and, uh, and I, I look at Tesla and what did I do? I went out and I bought a Tesla. [00:02:00] Why did I buy a Tesla? I could have bought a cheaper car.

It probably would’ve even be, been a better car, but why did I buy Tesla? Because I believed in his vision, his great big vision of we’re gonna go and let wrong revolutionize transportation and do good things for the planet. Like why, why do I wear literally wear almost every day, something from SpaceX. I wear something from SpaceX because I believe that we need to become a multi planetary species.

I sometimes think that the, the earth stool force is because there’s something that individuals combine to you. Like you look at like at apple and it created a whole cult of Mac. And are you in the cult or are you not in the cult? It, and, and that began, it became the nucleus of an irresistible force moving forward.

And why is it that people bought into bought into apple in that way where they didn’t bind into PCs? Did they. they really didn’t, [00:03:00] even though PCs are quite often known as being better, um, in many respects, but in terms of more powerful computers, even better graphics of this is better. That’s better, you know what there’s, there’s this core of fanatical evangelists for apple.

So what was it that actually created that? And that’s why, and then, then Michael, just, you have the other side of it, like Elizabeth Holmes and Aran, you know, she created such an exciting company. Everyone to work for people were throwing money at her and it turned out to be a con, right. So where does that line cross over?

Where is it where, you know, what you’re selling is a vision, a future concepts and that’s real, but then where does it cross over to becoming a fraught? And it be, it’s interesting. Like, I think we’re in a different time now. Where after Theranos had collapsed, where we’re starting to think about that. And we’re starting to recognize that some of these [00:04:00] leaders, you know, I just watched the documentary, we crashed with WeWork and that was, uh, Adam Newman.

And, you know, was he a Theran or was he a Elon Musk or Steve jobs? I mean, I don’t know. I think probably more, I think he’s probably more towards, uh, towards the, you know, the real entrepreneur there. I don’t think it was a fraud in any way, but I’m just suggesting, you know, where do we cross that line? Well, it’s an interesting question abouts to ask, and that’s why we’re taking a look at this topic.

On the complete entrepreneur. So for those of you are new to this room, we’re gonna be unpacking. We unpack a lot of great topics and, uh, where we explore not only the business aspects of what it means, being an entrepreneur, but the life of an entrepreneur. And as we pull apart, today’s topic of becoming irresistible for us.

I think we’re gonna have a great conversation. And if you have something to contribute as well to this, or you thought, gee, you know, I got some questions here, then please stick up your hand. We’d love to invite you to the stage because you know what it’s from [00:05:00] learning from each other, where we all can become an irresistible force.

So just before we start to begin, um, Michele or Jeff or Colin, I dunno, which of you would like to share what’s going on with startup.cloud? Oh my gosh. You know, it just keeps getting better. Um, you know, we have such amazing members here on startup club, which, you know, helps us get some great, fantastic speakers.

So tomorrow actually, We have a gentleman who’s coming on. He is actually, um, one of the he’s head of a division of NATO, um, Philip, who is going to be talking about peaceful ways that, you know, conflict can be resolved through technology. And this is literally someone who is ahead of a technology division at NATO.

That’s going to happen at 2:00 PM. [00:06:00] Um, which means that we’re actually moving the serial, um, entrepreneur to one hour earlier at 1:00 PM. But most importantly, I wanna say, um, you know, please sign up for the email list if you’re, if you would like to get emails delivered right. To your email box with these cool speakers, because sometimes it happens, you know, kind of at the last second.

So people like Jeffrey Moore. From chasing the CA um, from crossing the chasm, you know, all the way to the founder of Reebok, Joe, you know, these folks come on, you know, we might know a few days ahead of time, so be sure to sign up for your, for the email alerts. And we promise that we’ll send those out so that you get a chance to join the conversation.

Thank you so much. Thanks very much that Michele, I must admit, like I, um, I’ve signed up for the new, the email alerts and I don’t get spam, which is really nice , which is [00:07:00] great. Cause there’s, um, I’m down here in Melbourne Australia and uh, I sometimes get an email alert and I go, oh my gosh, I need to get up like at, um, 4:00 AM Saturday morning, my time to be able to listen to this person because I, I, I’m just not gonna miss them.

That’s for sure. But anyway, it’s great to hear about what’s going on with startup though club, but I just wanna move on to this topic. Become an irresistible force. Become an irresistible force. And I, I remember when, um, and I’d like to be able to unpack what Colin started if a few minutes ago, but I’d like to sort of share with you a story.

And it was a story about, um, when I was, ah, I was probably 16 years old. I was an arrogant side. I really was. Um, and I sat down with my brother and my father, my older brother that is, and, uh, I don’t know how the topic got brought out. Um, we were away in holidays. We’re seeing in, in a [00:08:00] caravan, uh, down Wilson’s pro tree.

I can still remember exactly where we were and I kindly explained to them that I was going to beat them at whatever they did. And I an assurance inside that I thought, yeah, I’m gonna go and do this. So if my brother became a great business person, I was gonna go along and become a better. And it, it was when I looked back on that it was like, there was this, this switch went off inside of me that, yeah, I can do it.

I can do this. And it wasn’t because I wanted to beat them and crush them and or something like that. It was just like, it was a, we had a very competitive family, so it was a bit more like banter backwards and forwards and all that sort of stuff and everything. And, uh, and, and we spurred each other onwards.

And one of the things my dad did was he instilled into me that whole sense of whatever you put your [00:09:00] mind to Michael, you can do it, whatever you put your mind to, if you want to become a a, and not only just do it, become the best at it. If you wanna become a, a, a school teacher, that’s fine, then become the best at it.

And he actually trained to be a, a school teacher. He then went trained to become a, a, a minister of a. Um, and he said, whatever you do put your mind to it and be relentless about pursuing excellence. And I, I, for some reason, as a kid, I took that on board. And, um, but I, I had this belief that, yeah, I could, I can do it.

Like if I wanna become an astronaut, of course I could. And I I’d sit down with my, my friends and, and I found in discussions with them, they would put up all the reasons why you couldn’t do something. And I, I must have been, I’d sit there and I’d just get confused. Like, what do you mean you can’t do? You can’t become something [00:10:00] or you can’t achieve something.

So you just gotta put your mind to it. And, and I think my, my, my father and dare saying also my older brother as well for instilling that into me of that sense of, if you really, really want, want it, then you can go after it and just be relentless in your pursuit. Of what you’re actually after and whether that’s true or not, it’s irrelevant.

It was instilled in to me that I could become the irresistible force. So from that point onwards, I, I, I became an entrepreneur. I founded my first business when I was 16 and I’ve been in business for myself ever since, um, and bought sold businesses, raised capital along that journey. And, um, and really in many respects comes to that self belief.

Now that’s a story that, that I had, like, you clearly have a story yourself. I, in, in your life, [00:11:00] there was some, there was some person and it could be, and they made you angry of what do you mean? I can’t do this. Of course I can go ahead and do that. Or there was that some person that crystallized something in your life that’s that you said, yes, I can do.

What 99% of people don’t do. And that’s launched my own business. there’s something inside of you. But the question is that once you’ve launched it is that self-belief, there is that, is that desire to push forward so strong that that IMU object actually does get moved as you push up against it. Cause I know one thing for sure, as soon as you launch any business, you will hit those seemingly imovable objects.

I guarantee it cuz nothing comes easy. That’s for sure. But that’s my story. Colin, before we pack unpack like ums and all the rest of them. Did you have a person in your life that [00:12:00] instilled something in you that caused you to become the entrepreneur? You are? Yes. And he died when I was 14 years old. It was my father.

Um, look, he really created the foundation of who I am. I have a saying called integrity over money. Uh, he actually was an advertising executive, very successful, um, became an ordained minister as well. Interesting. He talked about that. Uh, but one thing I’ve known about business is that people are attracted to those they trust and I’m, and I’m, I’m, I’m talking about not just employees, but I’m also talking about investors here.

I had a challenge about, I don’t know, what was it? Eight, nine years ago. Uh, we had the opportunity to buy a domain extension called.club, but there were multiple bidders on that domain extension. And [00:13:00] we, um, had to raise $7 million in 30 days. And so I put together a document. I contacted 36 of my LinkedIn contacts and I was able to sign up 27 investors.

And I think that’s based on reputation. The fact that I could do that. In a very short order and raised that money was based on the fact that I had succeeded in the past. And people knew who I was. They knew how I, you know, they, they, they, they knew that I was made a certain way. Like this is my medal.

Like this is who I am. I, um, I come across as being a little bit quiet from tier and there and whatnot. I’m not the, you know, dynamic speaker that you might see, uh, you know, with some of these CEOs. But the fact is, I believe in taking care of my shareholders, my investors, and I had [00:14:00] run public companies prior to, to this particular raise and people had made money from that.

And they also were not screwed in any way. And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of companies that raised money, a lot of people that lose a lot of money, but the fact of the matter is, so I, for instance, one of the things I put on that is I’ll work for a dollar, a. Until we make a profit and, and I felt, and I followed through with that, ultimately that that company sold to go daddy last year and all the investors again, made a lot of money, but I think it’s sometimes a longer row to ho.

But if you have the integrity, you , you operate a certain way. You deliver the results. People will follow you. People are attracted to you and investors will continue to fund you. And, and that’s for me, that’s my story is all about being authentic, being who I am and, and, and making certain that everyone’s taken care of first, before [00:15:00] I’m taken care of as an entrepreneur.

And that’s worked well for me, but I have to say it takes a long time to build that kind of reputation. And, uh, it’s not easy to do so. So hopefully that answers your question. Uh, Michael, it’s a little bit of my story and I’d love to hear from the audience too. Like you. You have stories out there too.

Like, what is it that, that attracts people to you? It’s attract, attracted people to your investment, you know, attracted employees to your company or whatever it is. Tell us your story. Come on stage. Let’s make this interactive Michael listening to you. And, uh, Colin makes me think back. So about almost 10 years ago, um, around the same time I first started working with Colin on.club.

I was also working for Humana cloud human. McCloud’s a cartoonist, his company is called gaping void. He and Jason Corman started that company together and they do a lot of work around entrepreneurship, but leveraging art, um, to spread the message and to [00:16:00] spread corporate culture. They’ve worked with, um, universities and Microsoft and Zappos and many big companies around corporate culture.

And if you, you’re not familiar with use cartoons, you should, uh, Google him Google at D void or Google human cloud. But one of. Most popular and most famous cartoons has a very simple statement on it. It says I’m not delusional. I’m an entrepreneur. And, and I think that when you think about this becoming an irresistible force, that’s, that’s what it boils down to for me to be a successful entrepreneur.

You have to be a little bit delusional. You have to believe in yourself and your abilities and your team and their abilities to do things that on the surface, people will tell, tell you can’t be done, or you shouldn’t be doing that. And you have to delude yourself enough. To believe and go forward, but you also can’t truly be delusional.

You have to have some, some grounding in [00:17:00] reality, but I always thought that there’s a reason why that cartoon resonates with so many people. I’m not delusional. I’m an entrepreneur because as entrepreneurs to be that irresistible force, we do have to be a little bit delusional, or certainly we might appear delusional to, um, people who aren’t entrepreneurs and don’t really understand the mindset you have to get into, to create a business from nothing, um, and make it succeed.

So that’s what I think about Michael, when you talk about becoming an irresistible force. Yeah. That’s really interesting. Uh, yeah. Um, both Colin and, and Jeff. Yeah. Being delusional, um, is, is. In many respects. It’s how true. Like I sometimes try to stick back and sort of look at myself at my different entrepreneurial activities.

And I go, geez, people must look at this and say, it’s completely nuts. They really must. Um, but there’s a sense of that [00:18:00] belief of, I think Steve jobs said, it’s my vision that pulls me along. And it, it’s not like he had to push or something like that to get the vision. It’s the vision needs that, that desire for that, that, that, that thing way out there, it just drags entrepreneurs along forward.

And, uh, I’ve often quite often said this on the complete entrepreneur that the entrepreneur in many respects that only focuses on the money. Number one, I think they miss out in a great sense of satisfaction along the journey, but, but number two, to me, money is the outcome. Of a great vision and a, and a great picture of the future.

That’s the outcome, a necessary outcome, very necessary outcome. Otherwise you won’t be sustainable. You won’t get there, but as an outcome, it’s not the goal. The goal is your vision of why did [00:19:00] you actually take this incredible risk when you could have just got a job somewhere? Why did you do that? And you, and it’s been pulled along, you sucked along that journey.

So, Michele, I just wanna come to you just on this question of an irresistible force. So we’re still a time in your life where you said, you know what, there, there was a person or something like that, or an event that crystallized that sense of, of, um, energy on the inside, where you just pulled along by visions.

Yeah, I, for me, it’s, it’s a very, it’s been a very perplexing thing. and I, I’m gonna kind of skip to something else if I can, Michael, you know, when I saw thing this topic come up, can they hear me? Hello? Yes, we can hear you, Michele. Yeah. So when I saw this subject come up, it, it, it reminded me of an article actually that I read some time ago.

[00:20:00] And I, so I went looking for it. Actually, it was in 2016 in the Harvard business review because I had always had this feeling like, oh my God, I don’t know if I could do this. You have to be, you know, like one of those super dynamic leaders, right. That everybody’s just in awe and you’re like this, you know, you’re, you’re Jack Wilsh, you’re, you’re like brilliant in every aspect of your life.

And you can charm board of directors and investors like, like you’re the ultimate personality, you’re the superhero, so to speak. But what really resonated me about this particular study that I read, like I said, it was back in, um, the article was written in 2016 was they were saying that some of the most successful entrepreneurs, specifically CEOs in this scenario were actually introverts and their brilliance was not necessarily [00:21:00] recognizable by their charming personality, but what they found stood out.

in terms of folks that were successful in those roles, they said were three things that I, I would like to share. They showed a greater sense of purpose and mission. Okay. That’s great. Right. They demonstrated passion and urgency. So, you know, for me, I, I, that was really kind of something I had never thought about that made sense, because again, I always thought, oh, you’re bored a great leader.

And you’re the super dynamic person, like the president of the United States or something like this. So when I think about becoming an irresistible force, the, the word irresistible, I’m gonna tell you, throws me off a little bit, because some of the most [00:22:00] successful entrepreneurs, I know I’m, I’m gonna be quite candid.

They’re not irresistible, but one thing they. Consistent and they, and they get results. Um, some, you know, don’t have the love and, you know, cherish this, whatever you know of their, um, staff or others, but they get results. So I think there’s a lot of different ways to approach this. And for me personally, I believe to become a force.

I, I do think you do need that mission and passion, right? And, but most importantly, that you can rally people, whether it be through cohesion of it, just, it, that is an, a tactic, right. Or by them just being fans in love with you to get the job done and get it done in a, in a more successful way than a single person could.

So those that’s kind of my thought, you know, again, I’m just. You [00:23:00] know, I I’ve known CEOs are like, I know that I’m right. And then we’re gonna do it my way. And, you know, gosh, some were right. Some were wrong and then there’s more, you know, some that are like, I’m gonna talk to everybody and we’ll figure it out together.

I think it’s very different for every person. And it’s very different in terms of how they comprise their board, their investors, you know, and their employees. But I think at the end of the day, can you execute and can you be, you know, get the job done. So to me, you know, I strip, I’m trying to strip away the emotions and figure out is this something that is, you know, valid for us all to get behind and can we get it done?

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s interesting what you’re saying here, because it’s not all about having charisma. You know, the reality is the vast majority of leaders in our society. Are highly dominant, highly [00:24:00] influential. If you follow the disk profile, which, um, which means they’re basically social and at the same time, you know, they’re dominant, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re moving the they’re moving things forward, but the reality is some of the more successful, um, entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or bill gates or Steve jobs.

I mean, when you actually see them speak, they’re not actually that charismatic, but yet we’re attracted to them. So this notion that we all live by that you have to be the head of the class, the, you know, the, the, the top, you know, the top in your school of you’re the most social, and everybody likes you.

The high school mentality is, is wrong. You’re right. There is something don’t get me wrong. If you got the, if you are, you know, you can walk into a room and you can command that room. And you’re the star, you know, you’re the show in that room, you know what 50% of businesses show business, right? So I’m not, I’m not saying.

that, that isn’t [00:25:00] important. And if you got it, you got it. And then most entrepreneurs actually have it, but there’s a number of us like Michele and myself who don’t have that affable style. And yet we somehow succeed as well. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s something different. And what is that law of attraction?

What is it, what is that? I’m curious to hear what Ron’s gonna say, but you know, what is it that these entrepreneurs have that get people to follow them into the abyss and to launch a new TLD, like a.club and fight for 10 years? I mean, what is it that they have, Michael? Yeah. I, I think you both bring up some really interesting things.

I just wanna jump down to Ron here, Ron. It’s great to have you on the complete entrepreneur. Thank you. Um, and if you’re a person, the audience, and you’re saying, yeah, I’ve got something to contribute to this conversation. Please stick up your hand. Just like Ron has Ron over to you. How do you come an irresistible force?

Well, I I’ve had six successful ventures. One of them went [00:26:00] from nothing to a billion dollar acquisition. And what’s unusual about these ventures is none of them re required heroics, courage, struggle, intense, hard, grueling, hard work. They were all essentially successful because of the radical venture strategy that I built that was just utterly compelling.

One of the, the, the venture I was just talking about as a sales training program, many of you may know of it called professional selling skills. It was adopted by half of the top 500 corporations. Every we, we didn’t sell to training directors. We bypassed the designated purchase center, which was training directors.

We sold only to CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies. They had to pay a licensing [00:27:00] fee to train everyone in their company, a million dollars in today’s dollar licensing fee. So the whole thing was radical. Unconventional, not incremental, not conventional wisdom, not best practices radical. That was the key now radical doesn’t work unless all the sub strategies protect and balance each other.

So for instance, you can’t just bypass the training directors. Unless, you know how to get to the CEOs and the CEOs. Aren’t interested in making decisions, unless you charge a million dollar licensing fee, which is a CEO level decision, and you better be selling a money making black box. So they want valid research.

And, and so on in terms of the characteristics of entrepreneurs, [00:28:00] I’ve done those studies on this, but I can talk a little bit about myself. I’m not charismatic. I think in, if you, if you Google professional selling skills, uh, uh, Xerox learning systems and so on, you might find my name mentioned, but I was never famous or charismatic.

Uh, I was just the guy behind the scenes that built a terrific strategy. Uh, and I think that is the key to every success I’ve had. They’ve all been radical strategies. They’ve all defied conventional wisdom. The latest that I’m passionate about if you measure in terms of what I spend most time on I’m building I’m, I’m the co-creator and co-owner of a pre pre-launch venture [00:29:00] called how to have big creator breakthroughs at will with ease quickly.

It’s a creativity method and a learning system. Do I have to have discipline to work on this? Not a bit. It’s my playground. All day long. I’m in love with it. I just am. I’m just creative all day long. I’m using our methods on myself. I’m laughing about it and I’m playing with it. I, when I work with my col uh, collaborator, um, Stefan Senco, I mean, we have these three hour phone conversations, kept collaborations and, uh, we both have the experience that, you know, like we’re having a breakthrough every 15 minutes or half hour.

And the whole thing is play. It’s the most fun I have all day long, none of this discipline kind of thing. [00:30:00] And I’ll stop there. Yeah. It’s interesting Iran, like hearing your story there. It’s fabulous. And, um, and I, I think when you look at when, when business as such becomes play. It transitions across. Like, I look at myself very similar to you where, um, like my wife, she she’s a nurse and she, she may be working on the weekend and I, I get some of my friends say, oh, you could do whatever you, like I say, yeah, I can.

So what do I do? I sit down my computer and do I do some coding? Why I’m having so much fun. Yeah. I’m, I’m just, I’m a pig mud. And I did love what I do. And people say, how can you possibly go do some, do some work or something like that. And I go, the most fun thing I do in my life is actually building and creating.

And it does something on the inside where [00:31:00] something that wasn’t there and now is. And you look at it at the end of the day or something, you go, wow, I did that. And I, I must admit I get a, such a buzz out that, um, and bingo, it pulls me along. And so people sort of say, oh, you’re going to work. And I, I never go to work.

I only go and have I only go and play. And there’s some aspects of what I do in play is not really fun. Of course there is. Yeah. But I just have, I have so much fun in what I do. Um, I, I love it. And in a part of that, I think Ron is the essence of the forest. And I wanna separate out something. I wanna explore this with you, Ron, for a second.

The difference between a business being a irresistible force. And the individual entrepreneur being the irresistible for us businesses can have strategies and all that sort of stuff and great sort of ideas and all that sort of thing. [00:32:00] But how about the individual entrepreneur and we’ve discussed so far?

Is that it doesn’t, it’s not about your charisma. It’s about there’s something inside the individual entrepreneur, which makes them an irresistible for us where other people then say sign on to what they’re doing. Other people want to go and have and play with them as such. So what is it, uh, about the individual?

Can you comment on that at all, Ron? Yeah, I, I think, I think it, it would be nice to think that it’s my personality relationship stuff, but I think my ventures have been successful because. People wanted to buy into the mission to the idea. Um, so for instance, one of my ventures is tele session corporation.

I founded that we ran 4,000 telephone conference [00:33:00] discussion groups, kinda like this. Um, George Silverman is fond of saying that, that I, that I invented social audio when I ran the first such telephone conference groups and the idea there was, and, and I’m, I am talking to your point, Michael, about what’s the driving force that, you know, had staff want to join the company and clients want to invest in investors.

And so on the idea was that word of mouth. Could finally be harnessed instead of just thinking of word of mouth as working, because a seller didn’t pay for it. It had to be a, you know, a friend, a relative, a client who you could trust. So I, my idea was, well, wait a minute. What if we ran [00:34:00] objective unbiased conferences, uh, rigorously moderated to not be promotional?

What if we assembled groups of people who were all in a, in a field like high prescribing doctors or large acreage farmers, or, you know, various populations. and what if we promised them that there would be no pitch, there would be no presentation. There would be no, the sponsor who was paying for it, wouldn’t be there wouldn’t have any control whatsoever over the agenda and the content.

It was all gonna be their interaction’re swapping their ideas. On the assets and liabilities of any given product or service? Well, the participants thought, well, that’s nifty. I can get word of mouth, but they, of course their attitude was well, can this be true? I’m very fond of [00:35:00] the idea that if someone is skeptical, skepticism is your friend because skepticism is cousin to curiosity.

So somebody will participate in such a session. And by gosh, it is an objective unbiased discussion. It is bringing up all the negatives and positives of the product. There is no pitch, so they keep coming and then the sponsoring company sees we aren’t kidding that they have no control. They can buy word of mouth as long as they don’t exercise any control over it, their product or service just has to be good enough.

So, you know, there, you have some, what gave life to that? Why did people want to join that? They liked it. It was, it was, um, honest marketing that it was radical truth marketing that everyone, the sponsors [00:36:00] and the participants and everyone involved, heard the same story. It wasn’t some trick, it wasn’t a manipulation.

It was thoroughly honest. It was just exactly what it claimed to be. And so people could fall in love with it and join it and, you know, be passionate about it. And then, and I’ll stop there, Michael. Yeah. Once again, wealth of experience there, Ron, in, in what you’re sharing and it, it, there there’s so much, I find in this topic of how to become an irresistible force, there really is like, you are listening to the complete entrepreneur.

And if you’re new to this room, we love having people up on stage and just share their stories on the topic and everything. Or if something peaks your in interest, then come up on the stage, ask the question, um, that you may have, you know, because from all the learning from all of us that we can actually move forward as entrepreneurs.

[00:37:00] But anyway, yeah, the other thing I began to think about in entrepreneurship, and we’re gonna come to F in a second, I is this, this question and the, the question is in today’s modern age, where are the next adventures? and, and I, I, I look at that and I sort of say, well, I re in back the 17 hundreds and 16 hundreds and all that sort of stuff.

You had the likes of the Christopher Columbus’s or the, or, or, um, James Cook who discovered, well, the Australia. And, um, you had all these people jumping on ships and heading across the ocean disappearing for like 12 miles to two years and everything, or, or they’re gonna climb, or you got Edmond Hillary in the, in the, the, um, 19th century who, who, sorry, in 20th century, who, who climbed Mount Everest, you know?

And, um, and you had all these different things of exploring the African jungle [00:38:00] or, or whatever. And there was this outlet for exploration discovery. Um, we, we stuck some in on the moon. We all these great things. But if you’re a young person nowadays, where are the adventures, where are those adventures? And, and I would pause it.

The adventures are actually, and the desire to have adventures are absolutely there still. And the adventures are in entrepreneurship, right. And being an entrepreneur is what it is. And that, that desire on the inside to make a difference that you just don’t want to go silently into the night, you know, and disappear, but you actually wanna make a difference.

And, and I speak to young people, um, and I see it in their eyes, you know, they just want to make a difference. They wanna make a [00:39:00] difference. And, uh, and they have that drive, but they don’t know where that drive needs to go. Many of them, because all the adventures are being done. As far as they can work out.

Oh no, no. Talk about it. Remember? No, not all the admits have been done, but I, I know, I agree with you with that, Ron. I agree with you, Ron. I remember when I, I, I, I was asked to speak at my son’s school and, and to their business class and I, and I set up the, the back and the teacher was talking. Um, and, uh, and I, I, I finally sort of like, it was my turn to go out the front and the older you respects, the teacher they’re boring as anything.

And I began to open up the adventure of business. And I could see the light go on in these kids’ eyes. And so with the teacher’s permission, I said, look, can we run a, a, a, um, like a project? [00:40:00] And she said, yes, what’s the project. I said, the project is, is developing a business plan. And, um, I’m coming up with new ideas and everything, and I’m gonna put a cash prize up for the best business plan.

And it was amazing just like no one cash prizes. You’re doing schoolwork. You can get a cash prize. That’s a motivation, trust me. But the next thing was, uh, just to see the business plans coming forward. Um, at the end of a few weeks, as we went through, like had a constructed business plan and everything, it was just phenomenal.

Um, so like you were just saying then Ron was no, no, no. There’s many adventures there absolutely is I, to me, there’s an infinite amount of adventures out there. And is that, is the adventure a part of becoming the irresistible force? Oh, yeah. Is that what it is? And, and there, and there can be a thousand Musks, maybe a million Musks.[00:41:00] 

And, and if you’d like, I, I, I will give you my sketch of how Musk became Musk. What there is that explains a person who’s the wealthiest person on earth and who is a, a million times wealthier than the average American. Do you know that a million times wealthier than the average American? How can that be?

Was it, was it, uh, genetics? Was it IQ? Was it, um, force or intimidation? Uh, well, you know, no, there’s, there’s no indication at all that it’s anything, but his skills and brilliance, but still. If you like me to, I’ll say how it can be a millionfold. I know people consider that a very strange puzzle and they they’d like to understand that puzzle [00:42:00] and I’ve been working at it cuz I too wanted to understand it.

Yeah. It’s it’s it’s a really interesting question there, Ron. Um, so how do you think Elon Musk did it then? Musk is, I mean, this came out of this, uh, project to how, how to have big creative breakthroughs that, well, what we did was we, we identified some 30. Skills and attitudes just to, so you know what I’m talking about?

Things like, uh, optimism, confidence, ambition, feeling at choice, being in touch with one’s values. There are 30 things like that. And that, that we think are the most leveraged. And we looked at how much effect each of them can have. So let’s suppose [00:43:00] you’re a person of tremendous optimism, but you’re not ambitious.

Wouldn’t adding ambition,

multiply your wealth. Say tenfold. If beyond wherever you were beside being optimistic you with me here, you just take optimism and, and you add to your skills stack ambition. And so on. And if you play that game over and over again, and if you imagine, as you add each thing to the mix, you find things that are so leveraged that it’s easy to imagine that they would have a tenfold effect on your overall success.

It, you easily it. You easily get to a million. You easily get to a multiplier of a million. The average, the average wealth of an American is [00:44:00] approximately a hundred thousand dollars and must exceeds a hundred billion and a hundred thousand versus a hundred billion is a million. So then the next puzzle people wonder about is yeah, but as you said, Michael, he, when he is speaking, he’s a mischievous guy.

He’s playful, he’s stirs. Um, but he claims he has Asperger’s, uh, he sometimes stutters, um, he doesn’t look like he’s some, you know, God genetic, God of, of, no, it must be something else. It must be his mindset, his skills and his attitudes. But then the, then people ask the question. Yes. But how come all the forces array against him, some of the biggest competitors in the world in government and so on.

How come that doesn’t destroy him? [00:45:00] Isn’t that a puzzle? And I think the answer is the guy is tremendously fall tolerant. We know the concept of fall tolerant in the world of computers and other, and other things that are digital. You can have a system that is very resilient, very robust, very fall tolerant.

And that comes down again to skills and attitudes. So we see Musk over and over again with major forces or raid against him. And he keeps coming outta winner, he’s fall tolerant, then people say, yeah, but look, it isn’t worth being that wealthy. And you know, okay. Maybe his wealth correlates with his accomplishment, but I don’t wanna be that wealthy because look, maybe you maybe, uh, Steve jobs, the, the story is that.[00:46:00] 

He abandoned his daughter. Uh, and there are many stories like that about, and a story about Musk would be he abandoned his family to sleep on the factory floor for three years. Uh, oh, he’s, he’s had four marriages. Uh, so you know, what’s going on there? I think what’s going on there is this simple case of it’s not quite envy.

It’s, it’s like an ordinary person. And, and all it takes is, you know, out of hundreds of millions of people, all it takes is a few thousand to say, I, I feel demeaned and humiliated that this guy could be that accomplished and that wealthy, and I’m just average. And they wanna find an explanation for their averageness.

So they look for Musks feet of clay [00:47:00] and they look for something like, oh, he’s abandoning his family by sleeping on the factory floor. Do you really think that, I mean, this guy who can afford teachers who has founded a brilliant school, Hey, Ron. Uh, yeah. Well, I think, I feel like, I feel like we should be, uh, sitting around a campfire right now and having, uh, um, smoking something.

But anyway, um, I think the untold story of Elon Musk are, is that he’s able to get great people surrounding him. So we don’t talk about that. I haven’t seen that in the literature. I haven’t seen that in the media, but it’s not possible to launch SpaceX and to launch the, um, uh, Tesla and to launch the solar company and to launch the boring company.

Unless, I mean, he cannot be doing it himself. Indeed. So he has to be hiring great people around him, great people around him. So yeah, he sets the [00:48:00] tone. He’s the pace car sets the tone. And then what you’ve got is a company of great people. And those people, we don’t know their names yet. We will know those, know, those names, know, know their, know their names over time.

Yes. But we don’t know them yet. And, uh, I think that is the secret sauce, which creates a momentum. Cuz if those, if his people can deliver at SpaceX, if Steve’s jobs can deliver at Pixar and they can deliver good movies, then we’re gonna have more movies and more people are gonna wanna work for Steve jobs.

And then if Steve jobs can deliver at apple, you know, I don’t get me wrong. I do believe it starts from the head down. But I think his ability to attract great people, but also choose people for certain roles to run those companies is what makes him so successful. And that’s the untold story. I think it is critical [00:49:00] factor.

Yeah, he he’s, uh, he’s famous for his hiring practices and getting superstars, but look, look at the numbers there. He has over a million employees. What if we ask ourselves, what about the top thousand of those million? The most brilliant managers and creators. What about the top 10 or a hundred of those?

Surely they are trained in his creative methodologies and his attitudes and they have proven skills. I’m just supporting you, trying to support you to the Hilter Colin. I think you’re, you’re dead on, but then some people think it’s a mystery because why don’t we know about these people? And the, I think the answer is well, Musk Musk is a very clever guy.

He wants the PR focus to be on him and his brilliance. I think that’s a winning strategy, [00:50:00] but yes, I think he couldn’t possibly be this accomplished without whatever it is. A thousand other Musks that are working under him.

Yeah, it’s interesting. You’re bringing this up, Ron and, and also Colin. Um, I recently watched a, um, interview with Elon. Um, it was on, on the, uh, Ted, the Ted talk. I saw that. And the, yeah, the, the, the couple things I, I got out of it, one was he talked about his 2018 year where it was like the hardest year he’s ever had in his life and everything like that.

And one of the things he mentioned was it became because everyone was trying to bet against him that he mentioned that it was really hard to hire great talent, cuz people did great talent. Didn’t want to come and join him just in case he went down and that sort of stuff. And he, he actually mentioned that, um, The other thing.

[00:51:00] Um, he mentioned, um, I was reading his biography. My wife gave me the, his biography for Tesla at also SpaceX for Christmas. And I read them both in like three days, um, uh, great books by the way. But he, he mentioned, he said something to a reporter, one time, they said, well, how is it? You’re so brilliant. And he said, I read books.

And that was his answer. And he said like, how, how did you learn how to create rockets and that sort of stuff? He said, there’s a great book on rockets. It’s about 800 pages and I read it and he said that he just dove into it and has this learning mentality. And you are right Ron, this iterative of development.

You, you look at the way, for instance, his Starship is being developed down at Boca Chica compared to say the, the, um, was the atomist, which is NASA. And the Starship down at Boka is like launching up crashes. Okay. They [00:52:00] learn how not to land it. They launch it again, crashed, launched again, crash, launch it again and lands perfectly.

Yeah. And they, that goes through this iterative development cycle where they’re not scared to fail. And he it’s more than just mass. He’s built that into his whole sort of, um, uh, his, his whole philosophy of business is inculcating as organizations. So with the result, people, um, had the Liberty to fail and that’s incredibly liberating.

If you wanna become an irresistible force, like there’s one of the things for your team is give them the Liberty to fail. If you punish someone every time they make a mistake. Okay. Guess what? They’re never gonna go way out there on your behalf as a team member. They’re never gonna try to push the envelope.

They’re never gonna drive forward, um, [00:53:00] and really fully express themselves because you punishing them every single time they, they make mistake. Cause they’re not gonna kick a goal every single time. He, he says he fires people who won’t take risks. Well, absolutely. You’ve gotta take risks. Yeah. But anyway, I just want to come to F and thank you for being so patient here, Pfizer being great conversation so far.

Um, we we’re discussing the topic of become an irresistible for us. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Yeah, sure. Uh, first of all, uh, I will be happy to join, uh, you guys, as you are most senior, uh, persons and, uh, I am a younger person who is going to become, and I think, uh, resistible force. So. Uh, firstly I will, would like to as, uh, [00:54:00] uh, to tell about my introduction, my name is Han and I’m Amazon service provider.

So, uh, I think, uh, everyone must have to take a start. Like I, uh, just put, uh, very ambitious to, uh, join you as a speaker because I don’t think so that I am the person that is in the match to speak with you guys. So, uh, uh, I think, uh, to become, uh, irresistible force, uh, in the field of eCommerce or any type of entrepreneur, we have to, uh, take a step, uh, mover, uh, uh, step forward.

So. Uh, the first point to become an irresistible force in my mind, uh, is that to, uh, uh, uh, step forward in that direction, uh, of, uh, the field in which [00:55:00] you like. And the second thing, uh, uh, is that, uh, if you wanna be a entrepreneur in any field in which you want, uh, you have to pay, uh, uh, or sacrifice your time, uh, to learn the skills and qualities, uh, to, uh, compete other guys in the market.

So these are the two points that, uh, comes into my mind in the first flash and, uh, hopefully. It’s enough as interview it as I’m new in this room, not a problem. Pfizer, it’s great here from you. It really is. And your thoughts on that, take it a step forward towards your vision and becoming passionate about it, um, is so important and then put time into it.

Yeah, I, I, I must admit I’m a strong proponent in learning. How, how do I become irresistible force? [00:56:00] Um, maybe not to the level of El Musk, I’m still working on that by the way. Maybe it’s that, but an irresistible force in the area I’m in. Uh, let, let me tell you, I, I do it through three things. Number one is, um, uh, I tell the truth.

I tell the truth to my staff. I tell truth to clients. I, I be fanatical about searching for truth. When there’s a problem in the business, I want to find the. There’s no point solving a lie, you wanna solve to the truth. And so I’m constantly seeking the truth of a situation, uh, whether it’s, uh, it’s looking at technology, whether it’s looking at business processes, uh, whatever it is I want to get to the truth.

That’s number one. Number two is I, I go and, um, develop trusting relationships, relationships that [00:57:00] go into the future because, you know, it’s those relationships that go into the future, which will help carry me forward. Um, but I don’t do it with an ulterior motive of, I just want have developed trusting relationships because what I can get out of it.

And that’s why I hate the term networking, by the way. Um, I despise the term networking actually to me, it’s not about what you can get out of it. It’s what you can contribute to the people around you. And, you know what I’ve discovered something amazing that wouldn’t, you contribute to people and to the lives of people around you, whether they’re clients, partners, um, your team or whatever, and you are consistent in contributing to them, an amazing thing happens.

You just automatically start moving forward because people want to bring you forward as well, because it’s not about you. It’s about them. The third thing, and the most important thing that I found is learning is to be [00:58:00] fanatical about learning. Absolutely do everything you can to learn, not just learn about your industry or whatever you are doing, but learn external to that.

Go along, take up some strange hobby or something like that. And you’ll be amazed of how this cross pollination from one thing to another and you’ll, and you’ll suddenly realize, you know, what. This other industry solved this problem. How did they solve that? The only reason why you knew that is because you learned about it, be forever curious and learn.

And I found that those three things had put me in such good stead moving forward. Um, and they, it, it means that with, particularly with learning is that every single time I encounter a problem, I, I literally look at it as a learning opportunity and I think, okay, how can I learn from this? Cause what I don’t wanna do is be on the mirror, go round where I’m Reen encountering the same problem over and over and [00:59:00] over again.

I wanna be off that mirror, go around and I wanna be going to the next sort of next sort of thing. So it’s like the classic line of, I prefer the roller coaster rather than the mirror go around. It may have ups and downs, but Gee’s a lot more fun. And, um, it’s, it’s a really interesting. Um, journey when you have a learning mindset.

Um, I, I wanna come back to say, um, uh, to yourself, Colin, like you’ve been listening, um, for like the last hour to Ron Pfizer and myself and Jeff, Michele, and I has anything really crystallized for you in this conversation about becoming irresistible force? Yeah, look, it is, it is a challenge, but every single entrepreneur, every single startup, all of us need to attract, we need to [01:00:00] attract employees.

We need to attract customers. We need to attract investors and we do that and I will say this nothing motivates more. Than success. So that’s, that’s a key principle and success doesn’t necessarily mean financial numbers. It could be the way you sell your vision. So outta the gate, you’re a startup, you’re in the audience.

You’re just getting started. Now you need to be able to articulate that vision. Now we don’t wanna do it in Elizabeth Holmes way. That’s how I sort of started this session today. We wanna do it in an Elon Musk way, where he talks about self-driving and you know, maybe he doesn’t deliver, but he’s able to convince people that it will come eventually look, success.

Everybody wants to be part of success. The second thing I will say is that entrepreneurship is a trade. It is something that you need to learn or anyone can learn. And when you do learn it, you can become better at it. And you can sharpen your [01:01:00] sword. You can get better and better and better, and you can sharpen your sword in a particular industry.

You know, entrepreneurship is fairly universal, but then you can focus on a particular industry. Michael, if you wanted to hire someone to run your te your new domain extension, you know, your new dot Michael, who would you, who would you hire? I mean, there’s a few people around the world, but there’s also some people on the stage, Michele, Jeff, and myself who ran, ran.club.

And I very success straight to you guys. So, but what did we do though? Michael? Why, why did we do that? And why would people trust us to do it again? I’m, it’s all, abouting that sword, it’s all about being a great entrepreneur and understanding all of the aspects of entrepreneurship and running a business, but at the same time, uh, narrowing in, on industry being, becoming the best in the world at that particular industry, that particular niche.

Yeah. And if you’re the best, nothing will hold you back. And it doesn’t have to be in a huge space. It can be in a very small space. It could be in a [01:02:00] small community. It could be in a small town, but you gotta be the best at what you’re doing, period. Yeah, I, I would agree with you on that, Colin, everything you said there, but you asked an interesting question of me, who would I hire for a dot Michael or such?

And so, and, and I would immediately go to you, Jeff and Michele, and maybe not for the reasons you think and, um, yes, you have an enormous amount of expertise and that’s important, but there’s the reason why I would go to you guys is because your genuineness and I can trust you that you’ve been genuine over the years.

You’ve never gone along and, and, and, and, um, told me of some sort of Feary or something like that, or whatever. You’ve been genuine in everything you’ve shared and you’ve been consistent at it. And there’s something about consistency. It it’s like when I was on a platform, one [01:03:00] time I’d been interviewed at a conference and they asked me, how, how do you, um, how do you write a successful blog?

So I I’ve been writing for many years and I said, it’s so easy. It’s so, so incredibly easy. They said, well, how do you do it? And you see it, like the, the audience is all beginning to lean forward. They’re expecting some sort of like, is it SEO? Is it some sort of marketing campaign? Like what, what is it? And I said, it’s so incredibly easy.

And, and they’re right, the edge of their seats. And they, they finally interviewer says, come on, tell us how you did did it. And I said, I wrote two to three articles a week for 10 years and you can see everyone went, oh my goodness. And there’s something about the consistency of, uh, in that case. And there’s a consistency of the relationships.

And even the way you guys conduct yourself, even in the complete entrepreneur and you hear the wisdom [01:04:00] which comes from experience and it makes you at it makes you attractive. It makes me think, uh, I have things that go through my head for instance. And I say, I wonder if there’s a business idea, we can all work on together.

That’s what happens. And I think that’s one of the interesting things about being entrepreneur is attractiveness is not physical or anything like that. It it’s the engagement. It’s the engagement with others around you. And there’s nothing like, uh, if you’re ever at a conference, there’s people in the room and you happen to see Colin, Jeff and Michele seeing the bar.

The best thing you can go is, is go over to them, sit down and just spend an hour, buy them some drinks and talk. It’s a great time. It’s one of the, some of the best times, uh, you can possibly ever have. And on that particular note, uh, we’re gonna be winding up this week’s complete entrepreneur [01:05:00] become an irresistible force.

It’s one of those topics. I really wanna come back to you. Cause I don’t think we came to grips with it. We talked a lot about it, but we haven’t really dug into what does it mean to be irresistible for us? Uh, so I’d love to come back to this. I dunno about you guys. Michele, what do you think? Should we come back to this topic?

Yeah, I, I love this topic and I think we can definitely drill down and I’d love to hear, you know, more people come on the stage and tell their stories. Cause you know what, it’s really not about us talking, even though we love talking and having you guys, all the members as an audience, we really wanna hear what you think and what your experiences are.

So thank you for attending today and thank you, Michael, for hosting this show. Thank you for your words there. Well, let, um, Michele, can I say it’s been a great time and I just want to thank, um, my fellow moderators today for the [01:06:00] incredible insights and also for both Ron and fires and who bravely put up their hand to come to this, to this day to share their wisdom and their questions as well.

Uh it’s it’s fabulous. Having people come from the audience. Pleasure, pleasure meeting you all. Thank you. Good to see you, Ron. Yeah. Ron, we really appreciate you on today cuz you really delivered the goods today. Thank you. Yeah, you certainly did. Ron and I look forward to seeing you next week. That’s for sure.

And speaking of which, this is the complete entrepreneur and it’s run at 5:00 PM Eastern time every single week. And we explore what it means to be an entrepreneur, not just the business aspects. We try to dig in deeper of like, what are the foundation stones of entrepreneurship? What are the emotional challenges we may go through?

What are the joys we go through? What are the highs and the lows, all those sort of things. And the reason why we do it is for those, those of you in the audience. [01:07:00] We’d love seeing you come each week. Um, and it’s an absolute joy to see you in the room. And uh, I just wanna thank you very, very much. For everything you do just by being there, it’s an inspiration.

So thanks very much for that. Um, next week we’re gonna be taking a look. Well, we may actually open this up a little, a lot further. What does that mean to be an irresistible force and where’s that come from? And, um, we’ll pursue that probably a little bit more because there’s a lot of questions I’ve gone this topic, um, to the really need exploring.

I imagine you do as well. So I look forward to seeing next week 5:00 PM Eastern time. Thanks a lot. Have a wonderful week. And may you be unbelievably successful in all you do? God bless. It’s awesome, Michael, and we’ll see you tomorrow. We have the deputy director of NATO coming on at two o’clock Eastern.

See you there on the show on startup club. Yes. It’s happening here. Live. We are [01:08:00] making history tomorrow, two o’clock and uh, we bumped up the show, the Sierra launch entre one. O’clock we’re talking about catching the next big break. How did we do that? So great show today, Ron. Again, FAAN thank you for coming on stage Jeffrey, Michael, what a great show.

Yeah, Colin, thanks very much for that. And I, I must have made you making me get up at 4:00 AM in the morning to come and listen to the guy from NATA. Cause I’m really, I’m interested too. Like I was a bit skeptical. I was like, uh, do we wanna be talking about military stuff on startup club, but his angle seems to be really all about.

AI and innovation, how we can create more peace in the world by using those technologies. So it’s gonna be interesting. Yeah. I more for that is this as long as we don’t get sky net in the process, take care, everyone. All right, bye.