Setting Up For Startup Success

You’re listening to Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. Serial entrepreneur secrets revealed. Today we’re going to talk about what makes a startup successful. Oh my gosh, this is such a cool topic. I’m waiting for my, um, co host Michele Van Tilborg to join us. Uh, we have broken all the records when it comes to a brand new book hitting.

The shelves shadow. Nice to see you there. Today’s show is about what makes a startup successful Yeah, we’re gonna get deep into that. We’re going to figure that out We’re going to try to understand that tomorrow I’m delivering a keynote of in front of 300 people at Ignite for Ignite Boca Raton around this whole topic Of what makes a startup successful you’re listening to start scale exit repeat Serial entrepreneur secrets revealed and you may be questioning Why has the title changed if you’ve been listening to this?

In podcasts in the past, you’ve been hearing that our title was Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. Now our title is Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. So we’re basically fusing the title of the podcast With the title of the book. We have on stage right now, Mimi, who is our, uh, blogger.

She’s our writer, our, our chief editor of Startup. Club. If you haven’t already done so, check out Startup. Club. She does a phenomenal job of putting together articles, summarizing shows, etc. She just posted up there the link to Startup. club and there we have our co host, uh, Michele Van Tilborg as well.

And today we’re talking about what makes a startup successful. Cause this is a code, this is 30 years as a serial entrepreneur, 10 years writing the book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. And two years, the staff of six, including Mimi and Michele, we interviewed over 200 people to put this book together with one premise to try to crack code of what it takes to make a startup successful.

And I’m telling you now, after all that time, after all that experience, after all those interviews, we have figured out There is a formula and we’ve documented that formula in the book. Start scale, exit, repeat. Now, is it ever evolving? Absolutely. Is it ever changing? Absolutely. Does technology change it?

Absolutely. I was called in to a session. Uh, or session. I was called in, uh, by someone in 2012 to go to MIT to teach a session on what makes a startup successful. What was I doing over and over again to start, scale, exit, repeat? And this, the, uh, the session was the Masters of Entrepreneurship program put on by Vern Harnish and Patrick Thien at the time.

It was 2012. And I was asked to go in and said, why, you’ve succeeded so many times. What is it that you do over and over again? So I got on a plane, flew down a little bit nervous, quite frankly, just broke my leg skiing, that probably didn’t help. So I hobbled in with crutches. In front of this big lecture hall and I’m walking in on stage and here I am talking to 60 entrepreneurs by the way Very hard to get in the program.

They had to have over a million dollars of revenue They had to apply for it Explain the reasons and they only accepted a small percentage of people into this program and I was trying to explain to them How to start scale exit repeat so it forced me to look at the patterns it forced me to look at my last Uh, 12 years, my last 20 years.

So at that point, I guess, 20 years of my career and it forced me to look at that and say, okay, what was it that I did over and over again to succeed? And I began to realize that each stage of the company, start, scale, exit, repeat, that I actually had a different story, people, money and systems. That story changed dramatically from start to scale, and even exit and repeat.

That people changed from start to scale, exit, repeat. That the money that you need to raise, the type of money, and how easy it is, by the way, to raise money, once you are in scaling mode. Uh, and then the systems that we needed to implement and this didn’t come because I had some theory about it. This was actually real life stuff.

And then we spent the last 10 years doing that over and over again at an incubator here in Fort Lauderdale that Michele and I co run. And then, and there’s Jack there. Jack and Shadow. It’s awesome, Jack, that you’re here. Um, then we learned an incubator and the company, we began to expand more and more companies and then we decided to Hey, why don’t we start interviewing people on clubhouse?

Jack, for instance, there down, down in the, in the speaker, he’s going to come on stage in a second. He actually introduced us to, uh, to Joe Foster. Joe Foster is the founder of Reebok and the founder of Reebok. We learned a lot of lessons from him and I had, we had a lot of chances to interview him. I’ve interviewed him now about six times.

We spent a lot of time together and we’ve really, he really helped sort of complete the book in my opinion. I think he was probably, he and Patrick Thien were probably the two figures in the book that I talk about the most. Uh, maybe you, Michele, or, or, or even Jeffrey Sass. So maybe four figures, I’d say that four, four figures in the book.

So we discovered that there’s these patterns that exist to start, scale, exit, repeat. And at each stage, you need to dramatically change your approach. And if you can figure that out, you could actually increase your chances of success. Wow, it’s incredible that when you put your mind to it and you set up the right circumstances with the right people, the right funding, the right systems, you can scale, you can exit, and you can repeat.

After my trip from MIT, uh, we launched a company called Dot Club, and we scaled that, Michele took it over, we sold that to GoDaddy. And there were other companies I had at the time as well that have been growing. But we continue to learn lessons from every single company. What were some of those big patterns that we saw?

I’ll start with catching a wave. So if you go back to the 90s, we launched a company called Internet Direct. It was an ISP, Internet Service Provider, that was connecting to the Internet. And we became the largest company in Canada providing these services. Think about that for a second. The largest Internet provider in Canada.

Yeah, we went public. We launched that too. Um, we also launched a web download site called 2COWS. And then we sold 2COWS in the late 90s. Now 2COWS was a download site because before downloading you had to get a diskette or a CD ROM. Even before CD ROMs, but in the late 80s you had to have diskettes. And you’d buy these diskettes at the shows or the stores and you’d go home and you’d install them on your computer and you’d set it up.

Well, 2Cast sort of broke that model by allowing you to download software through something called the internet. Then in 2000 we had broadband. Broadband exploded and we launched a cloud computing company called Hostopia which we took public in 2000. And later in 2008 sold it to a Fortune company. At this point, unfortunately, I committed to that fortune 500 company and worked for them for three years.

Wow. That was, it was like going to jail. It was like a jail sentence. Jack, trust me. It was like, like you go into like your fricking work. And now I was at the top of the company. I reported directly to the CEO. I was the CEO of my company, which is a subsidiary of that particular five fortune 500 company.

And every week we had a meeting, I had a personal meeting with the CEO for an hour a week. And. You know, it was great experience, but I learned about a lot of negative things I learned about, but I also learned the way they think. And I was also in charge of buying companies. So I got to buy about 15 companies while I was there.

And that was pretty cool too, because I got to learn the way that big companies think the way that, and so that’s where exit comes in as well. And then following that in 2020, 12, after I left, we launched a company called dot club. So we had a regulatory change. where you could actually register the domain extension dot club to compete with dot com and dot net dot org.

And this is a global organization that opened this up in 2010. We saw the rise of social media. We also saw the rise of micro brands in the 2010s. We launched some companies, some e commerce companies, Here in the incubator, including paw. com, P A W dot com. And then in 2020, guess what? Now we’re on one of the biggest paradigm shifts of our lifetime.

AI is going to be absolutely huge. And we’ve invested in AI companies here in the incubator. One in particular called Pencilla, which is coming out, which is a, an AI, it’s basically your, uh, your AI marketing staff for 99 a month. It replaces them all, or adds to a small business who couldn’t afford to have that marketing staff.

And that’s, uh, something that we’re implementing, but I’ll tell you this. Every other company, even including the school that my wife and I own, that company, we use AI to create blogs. I’ve used AI to do contracts. It’s unbelievable. It is a true paradigm shift. I will make the statement that there will be more millionaires minted from the advent of this paradigm shift than any other technological shift in history.

That’s it. I mean, there’s so much opportunity. We have here. That’s just one chapter Michele I can keep going on and on and on but what makes a startup successful one is identified patterns And I looked at those opportunities for entrepreneurs to get in on a, on a, any paradigm shift, a technological shift.

Jeffrey Moore, who we interviewed for the book, calls it a inside the tornado. So crossing the chasm inside the tornado, catching that wave. And the specific techniques we talk about in the book about catching that wave, including make it easy and deliver the fastest. And then we’ve got, there are like 20, 30 other things that you can do to help your startup success.

Michele, I don’t want to hog the mic here. I guess I am hogging the mic, but if you wanted to pitch in, what are your thoughts on this whole concept that a startup can catch the wave, yet these big companies, they seem to, they, they, they’re very risk averse. When I was working for that company for three years, they were very risk averse.

I learned that every time someone tried to rise up in that company. Who was entrepreneurial would, would, would one day make a mistake and have a failure and then get shot. You weren’t allowed to fail. And you know what? That’s not the environment that can succeed in bigger companies or in any company.

You need an environment where you can encourage people to take risks, mitigate them, of course, but take risks. And then if they fail, what do you think, Michele? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Like it’s not a safe space. And, and I’m going to ask you, why is it that startups are phenomenally known for innovation versus large corporations?

There’s a reason for that, Colin. I’m just going to say that. And there’s a reason that large companies will form specific departments, call it R& D, call it whatever you will, is there’s a lot of issues. You know, good or bad, but I think we need to build, whether a big company or a small company or a startup or medium, whatever it is, we need to build a framework where there is a safe environment.

I’m not saying that everyone should be, you know, taking the risk in a company. Everyone should be trying new things all the time. I think it is. There’s a whole strategy behind it. I’m going to say that I think, you know, where you set up. Projects, you set up people. It’s, it’s, it’s all about the framework and how you position it within your company.

And I think there’s a lot of, you know, the need to test and try things, you know, while keeping the current business going. So it’s, I think people need to approach this, how they do their regular strategic planning, call it. Yeah. And the next concept I sort of jump into in the book is. Pick an idea that can scale.

So I mentioned earlier, my wife and I, we own a school in Fort Lauderdale. We hit 110 students, uh, about four or five years before the pandemic. Um, and we hit 110 students, and we said, we said, well, how can we grow it anymore? Like, we’re completely at capacity. So you see, we investigated, we talked to a contractor, and we said, can we add a floor to the school?

He said, yeah, you could do that, but it would be like, X millions of dollars. And you’d need to acquire more property for parking. Uh, you’d have to buy neighbors and whatnot. And then the next thing we said, Okay, well, can we buy our neighbors out and maybe turn that into a school? Well, there’s regulatory issues with that, and it still costs millions of dollars.

Then we began to realize that, you know, if you pick and choose your business, um, scaling a business can be very complicated if you have high infrastructure costs. But yet, if you pick an idea that can scale from the beginning, you don’t run into those high infrastructure costs. And so in the book, we actually have a scalability rating for your idea.

You know, how scalable is your idea? Now I understand that the more scalable, and I talk about this in the book, this phenomena, that the more scalable the book, the idea is, the bigger the competition. If you’re going to launch a global, scalable business, bigger competition, it’s much bigger competition. But I will also add this, Michele, and it’ll be interesting to get your opinion on this one.

Um, the more scalable makes it More difficult, more challenging, but yet it takes more effort to run a small business. My wife runs a school of 16 teachers and 76 parents. It takes her more effort to run that small business than it did for you and I running a micro global brand called Dot Club. And I’m just curious what your thoughts are on that, Michele.

Well, I think I look at it a little differently. I hear you about scalability, but what I’m thinking about as you were saying that is, you know, how much can you automate? How much can you take that intellectual property, whatever, your processes, your thoughts, and automate it. And you were using your example of, um, chem in your school.

Well, gosh, I think it’s kind of difficult because I, I think it’s mostly preschoolers. Um, to automate like teaching. So, it’s thinking about, I’m thinking about WordPress. Remember when we visited them, Colin in San Francisco? Here they are, this massively successful international company. They have like over 20 percent of the world’s websites are on some kind of WordPress platform.

But what was different about them is that they were Able to automate and build this infrastructure that they can scale. Okay. Now, if you contrast that towards, you know, the school, which is on the far end of the other spectrum, it’s like, that’s not a very automated solution. And I’m thinking about Paul, like how we have huge initiatives.

To do distribution. Oh gosh, it’s hard in the beginning. Trust me. But once you get all those listings and you really learn algorithms and all this kind of things and you automate, then you can scale, scale, scale, scale. So I think of it that way, Colin.

Yeah. And I think the next thing to think about is a moat, right? And that’s the next chapter in the book is how do you create a moat? First of all, if you can, if you, if you haven’t picked your idea yet, can you think of an idea that can be defensible? Now, and that’s when you want to start thinking about these things.

I know it sounds strange. Like, even on ideation stage, if you can think about, can it, does it catch a wave? Is it scalable? Does it have a moat? For instance, club was a great example of this. This is an alternative to com, net, org. And we were able to create, um, one, it was scalable. We had unlimited inventory.

You know, I mean, unlimited, maybe not unlimited, but com sold 120 million. We were able to sell a million domain names. Not too bad, right? Uh, so it’s scalable. Was it defensible? Well, guess what? Amazon and Google, they each applied for group and team. That didn’t affect us. See, if you wanted a club, if you want Wine.

club, or you wanted, uh, you know, uh, I’m just trying to think. If you want Jack. club, don’t keep bugging Jack down there in the audience. Gotta come on stage, Jack. If you want Jack. club, well, there’s only one Jack. club, and he’s here today. That’s it. So you’ll pay for that and whether it’s 9 or 10 or 20, it doesn’t matter.

Um, the reality is if you can pick an idea, that’s the first point. If you’ve already got your idea, how do we defend it? And there’s some really cool techniques we talk about in the book. Whether it’s become a laser beam, like a very focused in your small niche. Um, whether it’s patents, you know, you got to do the typical legal stuff, but you know.

You know, we talk a little bit about that in the book, about protecting trademarks and patents and stuff like that, but that’s pretty typical, that’s pretty obvious. Ah, but another way to establish your, um, self, your moat is to have a brand, and paw. com is an example of that. P A W dot com. We’ve established a firm brand that no one can touch.

No one can sell products on paw. com but us. So, and we have over a million customers. So now we’ve established something there. Right? We’re not just an Amazon reseller out there. The next is distribution. If we can distribute paw. com through every channel out there, that when we have a product idea, of course we’re going to patent those ideas, and we’re going to trademark those ideas, and we’re going to copyright those ideas.

But when we come out with an idea or a product, we’re going to distribute it through our distribution channel. And we have faster distribution. Once those relationships are established. We can distribute our pet products faster than any other companies out there, even if they try to copy us. And by the way, if you don’t have the distribution, they do.

If you’re not on Amazon, they will be. They will copy you if you are successful. So distribution is a defensive mechanism. You need to defend your products. There have been so many companies copying paw. com’s products. It’s unbelievable. But you can defend it. Curious about that, Jack. Curious about that. We have another, uh, Mizra is coming on stage too.

Uh, and, uh, curious about that, Michele. Uh, Michele, if you could also moderate today’s session as well. I’m trying to focus on the content. Yeah. So we’re moving through here. Um, you know, let’s just take a pause. We’re nearly halfway through. I’d love to hear from Jack, like, what are your thoughts on the subject?

I, you know, I know you have a startup. You’ve probably had several, like, what are your thoughts? You know, on what it takes to make startup successful, Jack, Michele, Colin, thank you guys so much for having this room first and foremost. And I want to just do a quick reset real quick before I kind of get into this, because I want a lot of people in this room.

Uh, guys, we’re live in the startup club. This is, uh, the number one club for entrepreneurs. If you’re in this room and you’re getting any kind of value out of this, one way to, you know, you know, give back is to, you know, hit that little share button at the bottom down there. and share this room with other people and just ping some people in here and share this information.

You know, uh, today we’re talking about the number one bestseller book that Colin wrote, start, scale, exit, repeat. And I will tell you for me, uh, you know, one chapter that, you know, I’ve been kind of stuck on been kind of reading it is, you know, finding, and I think this is so critical and this is why I love clubhouse.

Uh, and why I love you guys is really finding the right distribution sales channel, you know, chapter 22. I think this is a big one for a lot of people, um, because a lot of people have, maybe they have a good product, but they don’t really have the right distribution or sales channel to really take that product to the, to the people that they’re trying to reach.

And I think that, you know, the apps like, you know, Clubhouse, right? Social media nowadays, you have, uh, distribution channels that, guys, they’re free. Right, like I don’t know about you, but like my dad always used to tell me he said if it’s free It’s for me, right? And it’s like, if we can, you know, number one, we have a community here.

It’s bigger than just like a distribution channel. This is a community, right? And like when you can, you know, basically link up with other entrepreneurs, other people that have went through the fire, other people that probably have failed, right? They can teach you. They can help you, they can guide you. And I think that’s really important for an entrepreneur out there because, you know, for me, I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 12 years and I have failed many times.

And, you know, I met Colin maybe, I don’t know, maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago now. And I think that sometimes in life, that’s what we need. We need those people in our life that are going to empower us one, but really give us the right information, you know, really point us in the right direction.

And I think that’s what we have here in the startup club. We have a community of number one, like minded people, but it’s bigger than just that, right? Like it’s bigger than just the book because the book is really a symbol of the community. And I think that if you want to get out there and you want to, you know, be a successful entrepreneur, and I’m pretty sure everybody that’s in this room wants to do that.

It’s really about, for me, it’s really about the people that you’re, you’re working with on a daily basis, the people that are in your ear, right? Because let’s face it, you know, I was talking to one of my friends yesterday and they’re an entrepreneur. I’m actually in New York city right now. And one of my friends is up here and they’ve been in business for about 10 years.

And right now, you know, it’s no secret that, uh, you know, things are just pulling back and they’re really stressed out. And I think that who you connect yourself with to in these times, right? To push yourself through these, these tough times to keep going. You know, to persevere is really important. So that would be my advice to anybody out there that, you know, what makes the start startup successful is really, uh, the people that you surround yourself with, the people that are going to empower you or disempower you, right.

I don’t know about you guys, but like in my life, I’ve also surrounded myself with some people. Maybe they, they didn’t empower what we had going on. Right. So it’s like, you, you gotta be, you gotta be careful of who you’re. Who you’re listening to. Right? Who’s, who’s got your ear. And I think that, I love what Colin always says.

Colin always says, and this is in the book as well, right? Like greatness clusters, right? That was one thing that I really picked up from Colin when I started hanging out with Colin, was like, greatness does cluster, right? And Colin talked about Joe Foster. He talked about, you know, some of the other relationships that he has and like, that’s one thing that I found out is like, you’ll never be hated on, right?

By like successful people, right? Like successful people will tell you like, Hey, you could do this. You got to keep going. Unsuccessful people will tell you, you won’t, you won’t make it. Right. So I think that greatness really does cluster who we surround ourselves with is vital. If we want to, you know, make our startup successful and that’s kind of my two cents.

I love what you guys are doing. Shout out to Colin guys. If you’re not following Colin, you should follow Colin. I would also follow him on Instagram. Well for the book start scale XRP on Instagram head over there If you haven’t picked up the book This is a little shameless promo because I’m reading the book and the book I’m telling you the book is like a Bible I’ve been calling it the entrepreneur Bible because every chapter that you read It just has like so much value.

So make sure you grab the book. Make sure you follow the column. Make sure you follow all the beautiful people in the room as well, because like Colin says, greatness clusters, and you want to be a part of that cluster guys. So shout out to the startup club. Shout out to Colin, shout out to Michele, Mimi, everybody.

Merza, how are you doing, pal? Good to see you. I haven’t seen you in so long and just really grateful for every single person that’s in this room. That would be my two cents. All right. Awesome. I love that. Cher. And just, you know, to add on to what Jack’s saying, like there’s so many ways that you can surround yourself with others, and it is so critically important who you associate with, and how you’re, you know, conducting kind of like, let’s just say your conversation.

So, You know, we here at Startup Club, we, we’re here to help and we’re so happy for all the members that join and hopefully that you’re getting something from this, um, but without further ado, let’s get to, I hope I’m saying your name, right? Mirza,

love to hear what you’re, what you can say about, you know, what makes a startup successful. Mirza, thank you so much. No, you said my name very beautifully, very accurately. Uh, Jack, wonderful. To see you, brother. It’s been a long time. Hey, Mirza! What’s up, pal? So you’re in New York City, and it’s so funny. We gotta get lunch.

You here? Yeah, I’m not in New York City. I’m, like, in Arizona right now. Oh, man. Missed ya. How long you gonna be there, brother? Uh, till about the end of the month. Okay, so then I’m gonna be back. Let me connect with you on the back channel. And, um, I’ve been following Colin. Colin, um, Uh, always drops the gem of wisdom and I’m gonna buy the book and I just love the idea about start, scale, exit and repeat.

See, at the end of the day, uh, we, uh, I have, I had so many startups in my life. So many startups since I was a little child. But the, what makes you, you all have ideas, ideas are on dime on dozen, right? But it’s all about the execution of these ideas. It’s all about, but you begin with end in mind. You find an unmet need.

You find the product market fit or service market fit. Before you do marketing, you start with the market. Who’s your market? How big is the size of your market? And where is your dream customer? Where is your dream buyer? Where is your dream prospect? What, what, how can I, what is their problem that they’re facing?

How I can provide them solution. We are one click away from 7. 8 billion people. That’s the world population. Half the world population is already part of online global conversation. World biggest problems are world biggest business opportunities. You solve problems for a million people. You become millionaire.

You solve problems for a billion people. You become billionaire. You become a unicorn. So what is the product and what is the service in online space or offline space that you can order, offer to your market? How can you. Find your dream customer, dream buyer, create a customer avatar and come up with irresistible, unbeatable, juicy, jaw dropping, unique, rejection proof, high pursuit value offer.

So the price that they’re paying in exchange, what is the value that they’re getting? So that’s what turns any startup into stay up. At the end of the day, it all boils down to your lead generation, your sales and marketing. That’s an engine. If you’re attached to any product or service in online space or offline space, that’s a difference between a six figure business versus seven figure.

So it’s all about lead generation, you double your leads, you double your business, you double your revenue, you double your, it’s all about leads generation and how you are going to convert those leads into customers acquisition, their conversion, their retention, and their expansion towards sustainability and how Colin said so beautifully, towards scalability of your business.

So distance of thousand miles starts with one baby step and and people don’t people don’t have business problem I would I would piggyback brother Jack’s point people don’t have business problem They have personal problems that reflect is in a business So we as a forward thinking visionary entrepreneur, we have to weaponize ourself daily with our mindset with our spiritual rituals Which are physical fitness We’re the spirituality, we’re the relationship.

Nature gives you these relationships, but you gotta nurture it every day. And then, and then you need to be there. I ask myself every morning, what compels me to be service driven? I have to be obsessed with my customers. I have to be obsessed with my customers to take care of their needs. Whether in the form of product, whether in the form of services, and all my team is powered up, empowered, and charged.

to provide them utmost value. And once you have high perceived value, you can outrank, outsmart, outlie, compete your competitor out there. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about your offer and your lead generation. And that is a never ending cycle. So that’s what delineates between somebody who’s not doing It’s not the stuff that we don’t know that’s a problem these days.

It’s the stuff that we know and we are not able to do. That’s the problem. It’s all about execution and i’m gonna quote my grandma. My grandma used to say that Um, son do the work it works if you’re an entrepreneur you have to do the work No matter what regardless of how you feel regardless of your excuses regardless of your conditions weather condition market response you have to do continuously Some mundane things.

Do the work it works. Do what is required. Do what you’re supposed to do. Things are not gonna work. You as an entrepreneur have to make them work. You have to pay the price. You have to earn it. It’s an earned skill, not a learned skill. You have to get out of your own way and you have to fight for it because no one is coming.

No one cares. Daily rent is due. Daily clock resets to zero. And you’re as good as you challenge yourself and that the thrill that we get as an entrepreneur when we are scaling system, when we are doing something, getting everything you can out of everything you got, when we all have resources, how resourceful you are.

But two engines, if you master those, sales and marketing, continuous lead generation, that has to be a non negotiable. That has to be hygienic, daily standards that you’d never compromise. And your customer focus, client focus, buyer focus, obsessed. If you have these rituals, you can create money out of thin air.

You can be matchmaker between buyers and sellers, and you can take any startup. From startup to stay up and I’m going to land my plane with the one a few example Product market fit service market fit is very very important. Do you see this air Airbnb? You know, you always have to test your validate your idea in the marketplace They had little couch that they tested with the customers.

The guy with the Zappos who sold the shoes for the billion dollars. He never had the web. He never had a warehouse. It was just freaking catalog. But then he was able to validate, market, verify that idea, and then he got so many orders coming in, so he had to create the, he never had a backend. We all use like SaaS software as a service based Dropbox.

Dropbox was just a freaking video. There was no business behind that. The guys came up with the idea. Hey listen, we’re gonna put this idea on the crowd sourcing funding website. And hey listen, we are building a file sharing site, like platform and everything, and you’ll be able to share your files and folders in a secure manner.

And there was no product behind that, but 70, 000 plus people subscribe to that. Now you have a customer list. Now you have buyers. Now you have an irresistible offer and they work backwards. So always begin with the end in mind. Find an unmet need. Always find your marketplace. Your dream customer, dream buyer, dream avatar.

And what is the product or service that they want? Make the, that process, product or service so irresistible that, I mean, um, Hormozy says so beautifully something that you make them an offer, they feel stupid saying no to that. Once you have these rituals, these ethical principles of persuasion, in your content, in your digital world, you can pretty much take, scale that thing to a billion dollars, I’m telling you.

This world used to be very local and linear, mathematically, now the same world is global and exponential. Your one click away from 7. 8 billion customers, love and respect. Wow. I, I, I, I’m so inspired by just listening to you there and I love the sayings you said. Startup is stay up. Is that what you said?

From startup to stay up. I like it. It’s not just startup anymore. You’re staying up. And then you begin with end in mind. I don’t want to be in the business. The best way to sell your business. It’s when it’s, it’s peak performer business, it’s on a, on a growth trajectory, then you can 10x, I mean, you can apply that philosophy to anything.

That’s how you make wealth. There’s a kitchen income, there’s rich income, there’s a wealthy income. So you start something, you make it valuable in a marketplace, and then you can 10x sell them, right? Like, uh, I mean, uh, let’s say I’m going to give you an example. If you have an Amazon FBA brand, right, that is doing like 10, 000 a month gross, and you’re netting 300, 3, 000 profit, right?

You multiply it by three and a half years of multiple, and the asset value of that digital brand is basically six figure. You can sell it. I’m just giving you a hypothetical example. You can 10x your EBITDA. Right? So what is EBITDA? It’s basically fancy way of saying that how much your, your, your net profit is after the taxes and everything and everything.

And then that’s the value. That’s how rich people are becoming rich. And I want my company to be acquired by Google. I want my company to have, or I want to be empowered to the point where I’m doing mergers and acquisition. That’s where the wealth is. That’s the game that big boys are playing. Um, I hope I make sense.

No, you do. And, uh Whether it’s Google or whether it’s another Fortune 500 company, we all want, that’s the end game as well. I love the do work, it works. Do the work, it works. Do the work, pause, do the work, pause, it works. Do the work, it works. I love that too. And also, Jack, if it’s free, it’s for me. I love that phrase.

And one of the things that If you want to increase your chances of success at a startup, one of the things you can do is join incubator. And I know they exist all across the country, all over the world. And a lot of them are free. The one that I teach at is the cohort at the Allen Levan Center in Fort Lauderdale, there’s 10 speakers.

I’m the first speaker. And as the first speaker, we set up a. Uh, for sticky note business plan, and this is in the book, and we talked a lot about it last week because the entire show was on the four sticky note business plan. We won’t go through that today. Uh, but I do believe that every entrepreneur needs to instead, uh, ready, fire, aim, ready, aim, fire.

And you can do that by simply spending 30 minutes to do a very short business plan. It’s not hard to do grab the book. And by the way, the book is on sale. I’m not trying to sell here where we don’t do this for money. The book, we’re not consultants. We don’t do master classes. We don’t have any of that.

The book is simply something that we put out because we want to give back. And this weekend, uh, we’re doing a show. I’m doing the keynote tomorrow in Boca Raton with 300, 300 attendees. And we decided, uh, Forbes agreed to lower the price to 1. 99 for the, uh, e book, for the e book. Uh, but if you do want to make the investment, the physical book is something, uh, that you will absolutely blow you away.

It’s, it’ll make, it makes reading fun again. But let me go back to this free. If it’s free, it’s for me. Right, Jack? Uh, and One of the things we interviewed a lady on this show, it’s about four episodes back. If you’re in podcast, uh, and you’re want to listen to it, you can search for serial entrepreneur secrets revealed.

And Her name was Bridget Weston. She was the CEO of score with 10, 000 volunteers run by the U. S. government, the SBA small business administration. And we interviewed her about four or five weeks ago. And she disclosed to us that the chances of increasing your success can go up by as much as three times.

If you have a mentor, if you join an incubator, your chances of success. If you share your ideas with others, I often say try to create an advisory board. By the way, it doesn’t cost you anything. That’s why I’m sticking with Jack’s statement, if it’s free, it’s for me. You know that cohort we do at the Allen Levan Center at NSU?

It’s absolutely free. You just apply, it’s free. You can go there. Ten weeks. You don’t just go through the strategy session with me. You also learn from the best of the best, uh, how to perfect your pitch. That was in the book as well. The lady who’s in the cohort also was the one I interviewed for the book.

She won multiple, multiple prizes, uh, uh, pitch competition prizes for her startup. Uh, we also, you also meet lawyers, accountants, everything. It’s just a full thing. And then you eventually end with a final pitch to it in front of real angel investors. Uh, they help you connect with government funding. It’s absolutely free.

You know what? It does take a village to raise a startup. Okay, and that is a fact we you’re not alone and at a minimum the fact that you’re in clubhouse You’re in startup club. You’re listening. You’re coming on stage. You’re learning. You’re sharing. That’s important And by the way, there’s a lot of shows on startup club where you can come on and share your challenges You can come on We do an open mic on LinkedIn live Once a month and entree once a month where we just do an open live start start scale exit repeat Oh my open mic And we just let anyone, if you have a question or you’re stuck or whatever, you can come talk to us as well.

Look, I, I’ve enjoyed today’s session. I know we’re, we, we are continuing to go through a lot, covering a lot of space. We’re trying to figure out what it is that makes startups successful. And I think we’re getting there, you know, after 200 interviews, a community on club. I don’t think the books, Jack, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat could have happened without the community.

Uh, we had the community of Clubhouse help us put this book together. And Jack, you were part of that. Uh, any thoughts about, like, how the community played a role on StartScale XRP? By the way, which became a number one bestseller, even yesterday, again, we hit number one bestseller for the third or fourth time this month.

We only launched, uh, what, a month ago? A month and five days ago, I guess? Yeah, we’re about Yeah, October the 3rd, October 3rd, we don’t have the audible out yet. The audible is going to be coming out in about a week, we believe it’s about eight weeks. We wait, but Jack, any thoughts on the, on just the community and what, because you’ve been really involved in, in the clubhouse community.

Yeah. So, you know, I think if you break down the right, like what does community even mean, right? Like community is like a group of people basically in the same place have in particular, you know, they have commonality. And I think that that’s what, you know, start scale extra repeat is, is like the people that are picking up that book, right?

They’ve either started a business, they’re trying to scale the business. Maybe they’re trying to, they’re like, I just went out of the business or maybe they want to do it all over again. Right. So I think that’s the whole thing is like, you know, when you’re able to attach yourself to a community of like minded people, people that are, you know, maybe they’re a step ahead of you or maybe even there are a step behind you.

Right. It’s like every, you know, everybody becomes stronger because of this community. And that’s why I love. You know, the startup club. That’s why I love the book. You’re really helping people come together, you know, and really take their life to the next level. And I think sometimes in life, what I’ve learned is like, sometimes in life, all people need is a push, right?

Or a pull. Sometimes some, some, some people in here need a pull, right? But I really think that, you know, the, As, as I get bombarded by New York’s finest, we believe you now you’re in New York. Yes, you can hear it now. So I think that the community, you know, community is everything, you know, and I, and I’m really proud to be a part of this community and really proud of you, Colin, and what you’re doing, you know, to really, you know, pull people together.

Because I think that, especially right now, right. There’s so many people that are, you know, they’re, they’re an entrepreneur. Right. They’ve glamorized being an entrepreneur and, you know, 2023 and it’s anything but, you know, glamorous. Right. And I think that sometimes when you’re going through the entrepreneurship, you’re trying to do your best and you just get, you know, you’re like, man, I’m at my end.

You know, but when you have a community that kind of reminds you, brings you back to your core of like, why am I doing what I’m doing? Right. Why do I wake up every morning? Why do I go through the stress? Why do I invest my last dollar? Why do I do these things? Right. And it’s like, that’s what we have here is we have a community of people that, you know, when you look to your left and you look to your right, you get inspired.

And I think that that’s what, you know, at this time, right now, 2023, we need. We need, we need inspiration more now than ever. I believe personally, I can only really speak for, for myself, but I know that we need inspiration, um, because the world is just, you know, you just seems like you turn on the news or you listen to the radio and it’s, you know, it’s a lot of negativity out there.

Right. And you say, well, what is, what is the future look like? Right. But what I know is I know that, you know, entrepreneurs, it really, it’ll never be the government that, that comes and saves people. So we’ll always be entrepreneurs. And the reason why. Cause we can go faster. Right. And so I really love the community here.

I really love each and every single person that, you know, took time out of their day to be in this room with us. That to me is what community really means. It’s just a like minded group of people that are pulling in the same direction that maybe pick each other up, pull each other up, but one thing for sure, we ain’t gonna let each other give up.

Right. And I think that’s really important. And Hey, you know, we’re getting towards the end here. We’re about 13 minutes to the end of our. Let’s say event slash podcast, because we are also a podcast here on, um, you know, all the popular Spotify, Apple, et cetera. We like to think of, you know, startup club is the epic, the center of it.

And then we broadcast it on the podcast as well as we put it on the website. Of course, everything is free and we have all of our transcripts, et cetera. So don’t forget to visit our website, but I just want to announce this. We are actually, I think it’s going to end tomorrow, Colin. We do have a special flash sale of the book on Amazon right now.

It’s 1. 99 to get the Kindle version of Start, Skill, Exit, Repeat. So, if you’re interested in exploring it, I think it’s like a very, very good price. And we’d love for you to try it. We’d love to get your interview. But most, most importantly, we’re thankful that you joined the session today. And we’d love to, um, you know, interact with you.

So please, like, just sign up for the email. Our email list is on www. startup. club. If you have any suggestions, you’d like to be a special guest or anything like that, just feel free to email us at hello at startup. club. Colin, I know that was a bit of a pitch. Um, you know, we have one more person here on the stage before we end.

We have about 12 minutes left. Please, we’d love to hear what you have to say. Um, okay. Thanks. Thanks, Michele, for bringing me up. Um, I really just want to say that I appreciate what’s going on here. Um, I love the energy and I sincerely want to thank everyone who has spoken. It’s really awesome to be here.

Um. This is like my second time being here and I’m really loving it. Um, what I had initially was a question, but it seems like we don’t have a lot of time left. Um, yeah, but go for it. Go for it. Yeah. Oh, okay. Cool. Um, yeah. So actually my question is about the whole approach to, you know, um, startup or.

starting a startup business, right? Um, so I think that it’s could be okay for some people, um, or anybody to, you know, actually, um, experience what I, what I, I, I used to think as the experimentation stage where you are, you know, actually just, you know, try stuff without. Really, um, you know, putting a lot of, uh, hope on it, but rather giving yourself, um, the opportunity to learn something.

So you fail, um, but you learn stuff, right? So that’s, that’s. That’s kind of, uh, the question I have right there is, is, is this actually okay? Uh, do you guys think that it makes sense for someone to, you know, for instance, just go ahead and do something, you know, without really having, um, a lot of, um, hopes and a lot of plans, you probably have like your nine to five, you know, but.

You know, you just want to use that opportunity to gain some experience and probably, um, the end game will be to, you know, just learn something, gain some skills. All right. Awesome. That is a great question. And I love your humility as you approach this question. I’m going to let others on the stage chime in, but I’m going to say, you know, we all have different appetites for risk.

And there is nothing wrong with jumping in and trying things like that’s half the battle, my friend. It’s getting started. Okay. It might be more than half the battle, but just like know what your level of risk is. And I’d love to hear call and talk a little bit, you know, we don’t have much time, but there is, you know, there is methods to help you along that a process.

He has a concept of stage Gates to help you get started. So, Colin, why don’t you help Austin out a little bit here in the last. 10 minutes or so of our podcast. Yeah. And I see, uh, we have, um, Muhammad Ali coming into the room as well. But, uh, that being said, chapter two of our book is ideas to action. And what you said there, Austin, about working is something I actually recommend.

And it’s gonna sound counterintuitive. Okay. I actually recommend that people get a job in an industry they love. And when you’re in that industry, You want to keep your, you want to be aware, you want to be aware of the opportunities, the bottlenecks, the problems in that industry. My son just graduated from architecture and he wants to launch a startup.

And I said to him, I said, well, you know what you might consider getting a job. In that particular industry, and when you’re in there, you can see opportunities. You might see a formula that you can replicate in a different environment. The fact is, if you’re sitting at home playing, watching Netflix and playing video games, you’re not getting exposed to new opportunities.

So ideas are everywhere. That is a fact. But we have to be looking for them. We have to be aware of them. We have to begin to see them and we have to have a passion for those ideas. So if you, if you get into an industry, you love, even if you’re being paid less than you might be comfortable with, but yet you’re learning and you’re experiencing or you’re seeing ideas that can come to you.

That can be a great way of finding ideas. When you find the idea, chapter two is ideas. Uh, ideas are everywhere as chapter number one. Chapter number two is idea to action. Uh, there are some things you need to take, and there are many cases in history where people have come up with ideas, including myself, that were billion dollar ideas, but didn’t act on them, and they should have, or we should have.

But in any case, I know we have Mohammed Ali on stage here as well, would be happy to listen, to hear from you, uh, in regards to, um, uh, your story, or your question. Hello guys, how you doing? Uh, my, my, my question is, uh, how do you start up at anything? Uh, for, for example, English, uh, you know, uh, my, I am not, uh, am Arabic native speaker, so my English is in, my native speaker is in my language.

First language. Uh, your, uh, your, your native SD cards, so your English is good.

So my question is, if you want to learn a new language, how do you start at it? What steps you must follow to achieve it at English, at learning English, or anything? Well for that. Uh, I mean I think that exposing yourself like to environments like this is a way to really learn English, just listening and learning and communicating and participating.

And I’m going to extend your question a little further into how do we learn the language of entrepreneurship? How do we learn to become a better entrepreneur? How do we learn that? And I do believe a book like Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, which we spent 10 years writing, two years with six staff interviewing 200 people.

Uh, I do believe that the effort that we put into this book can make a big difference. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars for a masterclass. You know, we have over 130 pre recorded episodes on your favorite podcast channel. You can go to any podcast channel or just search on Google for Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed.

And I’m telling you, if you listen to every one of those podcasts, You will get an MBA in entrepreneurship. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on these masterclasses. Now, don’t get me wrong. Many of them are good, especially when you start getting into the high verticals, like extreme verticals.

Okay, so I’m not gonna, I don’t want to discourage education or masterclasses. I actually do believe in some cases they make sense. We don’t offer them. We don’t do that. All we do is, is, is just try to give away information as, as cheap and free as possible. You know, that’s why Michele said we, we listed the book for 1.

99. Or not we, Forbes did, sorry. Our publisher listed it for 1. 99. For a very short period of time. Uh, the ebook, uh, and the book itself is something if you’ve never read a book in a long time, talk about English. This one, we made it simple. This is not a, an academic textbook. This is a, a very simply written book, designed for entrepreneurs with A DHD.

It’s got 58 chapters, 200 colleges, 30. Eight illustrations. The book has been something that this team has worked on for years to give back. The fact that it’s being sold for a dollar 99 tells you right away, this isn’t about the money that is not. And by the way, number one, bestseller. on Amazon. I know we went to number two today.

We went number one yesterday, number two today. You know, we’re fighting for number one, number two position on starting a business in America, but we’ve been number one now this month for six or seven days of the last 30 days for starting a business in the United States on Amazon. This is an opportunity to get something that really can help you, not only with your English, but also with the language of entrepreneurship.

And I will end the show with this. I will end the show with this. I’m actually literally pulling the book up right now. Always remember that your title is not CEO or co founder or executive. It’s always entrepreneur. That is the job. Entrepreneurship is a trade like any other. And continuous learning is the key to achieve better and better results.

Where are you on your journey as an entrepreneur? What is the next thing you need to do so that you can start, scale, exit, repeat? We have special guest speakers coming on next week. Uh, Mimi has set them up. We’ve got about six or seven authors, experts, and serial entrepreneurs already pre booked for the next six or seven weeks.

Really more than that, I guess eight weeks. And, uh, if you’re not going to know about it, unless you go to startup. club, www. startup. club, sign up to that email list, and we’ll let you know about the speakers. Some of the speakers we’ve had on this have included speakers like. Our very good friend, Jack Matthews, of course, uh, like, uh, Joe Foster, the founder of Reebok, Jeffrey Moore, who wrote Inside the, Inside the Tornado, Crossing the Chasm, Vern Harness, who wrote Scale Up, John Mullins.

Who wrote the customer funded startup? Uh, Sheil Manat, who was one of the initial investors in this particular platform. Uh, we’ve also had, uh, billionaires on here, like, uh, Bavit, Bavin Turki, who’s a two, two time unicorn. That the gentleman who sold the artist shaving the gentleman who sold boxy charm for a half billion dollars These are all episodes that you can go back and look at on The pot your favorite podcast channel, uh, look for serial entrepreneur secrets revealed We open this up by telling you the name is evolving the name of this podcast and this show is now start scale exit repeat Serial entrepreneur secrets revealed.

We’re fusing them together. We’re creating one title for both the book and the podcast. You can always reach me here, Michele, as well. Thank you very much Mimi. I don’t think she gets enough credit because she is the one who put the website together and has done so many great articles and blogs and has really made Startup Club what it is today and she’s now been with us for like almost two years or something like that.

So we really appreciate the hard work you do Mimi. Thank you very much everyone. Uh, please feel free to follow me. I am trying to follow all of you. I got blocked at 2, 500. I sent a message to Clubhouse to say, can you, can you, can you open up my friends to more than 2, 500 people? Because quite frankly, Every one of you in this club, I want to follow.

I want to connect with, I want to make a contact because we can help each other. As, as Jack said, this is all about the community. Thank you very much. We shall see you next week.