The 8 Absolutes for Startup Success

Built to win. Let’s talk about that today, what makes a startup successful?

That’s what we’ve got to figure out. Today we’re gonna be talking with Jack Silva, and I’m just gonna invite him to speak coming into the audience. Come up onto the stage here.

But today’s topic is all about figuring out why startups fail and how we can avoid that. You know, I often say that the lessons that we can learn from failure or startup failures are the scars of our past that guide us forward on our new ventures. You don’t have to fail. You can actually learn those lessons.

And I think I’m hoping today will be one of those days where we actually can learn from that and figure out because you know, often on these types of shows, you know, in books, we hear how to get rich quick, how to do this, how to do that. But we don’t think about, you know, the mistakes that can be made. We don’t share those mistakes.

And when you don’t share those mistakes, We don’t learn. But yet those are the those are the learning moments. I was asked to do an interview on a national radio show last week for, um, Billy McFarlane. He did the fire conference. This was like the or event f Y. R. E. was out of Bahamas. And I don’t know if you all remember that event or the Netflix documentary that followed it, but it completely blew up and he actually went to jail for four years.

He spent seven months in solitary confinement, which, by the way, because because when he was in jail, He had the idea of trying to do a podcast through the phone system and any anyway, he got seven months of solitary confinement Uh, and it’s just fascinating when I did some research into this particular entrepreneur billy mcfarland He actually believed the day before the event and if you ever saw the documentary, this was a an event They were trying to hold in bahamas And they had invited celebrities, all these people in, uh, to this island in the Exumas, Bahamas.

And they didn’t have enough housing, they didn’t have enough food, they didn’t have enough water, and they did not even have sanitation. The day before the event is going to go live. He still believed he could pull it off. I mean, this was just unbelievable. It’s, it’s, it’s, he really did live in his reality distortion field.

Do you, do we remember that? Where did that come from? Oh, yeah, Steve Jobs. And I have no doubt that Elon lives in that reality distortion field as well. Elizabeth Holmes tried to believe that I, right. I know. Paul and I, I would say we all do at some point. I’m, I’m just putting it out there. It’s kind of how we survive and thrive and move forward.

Just saying there is a difference between being optimistic, selling a vision, and then fraud as well. So Absolutely. We don’t, we don’t wanna cross that line. Not five. We are so lucky today. To have Jack Silva on stage. He is an expert in this area, Jack. We want to hear from you. Uh, but before we do Michelle, what are your thoughts about today’s topic and today’s show?

I mean, I think you succinctly put it and you said, we learn so much from our failures. I would further say you don’t learn unless you’re out there doing things. And you know what, guess what? It’s all about ups and downs when you are actually trying things and how do you, like, get into that mindset. It is really a mindset where you just want to move forward.

For me, I, I feel very fortunate. I had a lot of trauma as a child and I kind of had to learn, like, just, okay, things are going well. You know, I messed up or there was abuse or whatever it is, just like move forward. That’s all you can do is move forward and not retreat. But you know, it is, it’s a mindset, Colin.

I really believe it is a mindset and it’s tough and you really just have to surround yourself with people, honestly, support system that can just help support you in that mindset in a very honest and open way. So that’s how I feel about it. I think it’s a great subject, and I’m looking forward to our members opinions.

Hey Jack, why don’t you kick it off? Like, why did you take this topic on? Like, why are you interested in understanding? The key mistakes that entrepreneurs or founders can make. Colin, I appreciate you having me here. And, and I guess Mimi was part of that as well, but I see we have our friend Giuseppe, who I love very much and appreciate you Giuseppe joining us.

And Colin, thank you so much for asking me to. To share something that I’m so passionate about. And I I’m going to talk in shorthand because we, I’m not going to go too long. I guess we’re going to have open discussion and stuff, but I’ll kind of lay things out here, uh, the way that, that I believe and the way that I live in terms of absolutes that I know that can solve.

The problem of failing in business, the problem of struggling as a person, just, uh, even the problem of, of happiness in life. And it all really, it all really narrows down to these eight absolutes, which I call the, these are, we came up with the eight reasons why startups fail to win. And these are absolutely the eight reasons why startups fail to win.

But these are the eight reasons why. people fail to win and why people fail more than they win. And it really is about capacity. Capacity must precede prosperity and we’re not all born equal, you know, because of genetics, because of family, because of education, because of a lot of things. But when we understand what I’m about to share with you and things that I’ve been living by now for 35 years, It levels out the playing field.

So regardless, if you graduated at an elite college. Are you barely made it through high school? These what I call eight bridges to freedom and happiness are the greatest problem solving devices to help a person, especially a startup and entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are special people. They want to work for themselves.

They don’t want a boss. They want to do it on their own, but it is Michelle about mindset and mindset is 80 percent of success. And strategy and tactics is 20 percent of success. See, it’s all about how we talk to ourselves. It’s a huge pot of success and it’s everything when it comes to happiness. But there’s eight reasons why, and I’ll go through these.

And again, I’ll talk in shorthand, but if you look at any problems you’ve had in business or in life or in life, I promise you, they. All stem back to these eight absolutes. And these are kind of like invisible bridges, mental bridges that we cross every day in our life. The problem is. A lot of people are stuck at many of these bridges.

There’s huge traffic jams at these bridges. The first bridge, the number one biggest obstacle most entrepreneurs have is letting go of fear. And I know Giuseppe can relate to this cause I’ve heard you talk about the fear deal. And do you know that fear is the number one reason why people fail? Fear is also the root cause of unhappiness.

But if we let go of fear, it’s amazing what happens. It’s like a power option in our life. You know, there’s a superhero in all of us, but it’ll never come out if we can’t deal with fear. Fear is again, a lack of personal confidence. And the more things you surrender to fear, the more things that you fear in life.

It’s no wonder why people struggle with this number one reason This is an absolute, if you’re going to be happy, if you’re going to be successful, if you want to a successful startup, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you cannot achieve that. If you struggle with fear, you have to let it go. And fear feeds on itself.

There’s a whole talk I do on fear, but that’s number one. And if we let it go, there’s someone special inside of us that comes out. Number two. No, Jack, Jack, slow down. Let’s try to tackle it. I’d love to get. Others on the stage. Let’s tackle one at a time because I don’t want to ram through them. Like because this is really really good stuff Okay, very good.

So fear like I have to say that I am very fearful fearful When I launch a new startup and i’ve launched many startups in my lifetime So you’d think what’s he talking about? He’s been so successful. I am fearful of embarrassment Look, i’m even with the book the book that’s coming out on october 3rd being published by forbes Uh, and the reviews are coming in very nicely.

I’m happy about that, but I stuck my neck out there. I put myself out there after 10 years working on this project and we published the book and I’m fearful. I’m going to be embarrassed. It’s a failure. I’m fearful that when I do a startup, I’m going to lose money and potentially it in my case is a little bit different right now, but it’ll it’ll hurt.

I can see how people would fear losing money and how that could affect their their livelihood or their family. Or the people around them. There are so many things that when you launch a startup, you put yourself out there. And you got the naysayers over there. You may have the yaysayers over here too, but the reality is that fear is there.

Michelle, uh, any thoughts on that? Just your, the whole thing about sticking your neck out and letting the world chop it off. I know it’s one of the hardest things for me. It’s almost like I closed my eyes and just like jump in. But you know, for me, it is also a very difficult thing being a very analytical person.

You know, you don’t want to disappoint the people around you. Like, I can handle it myself. You have people that rely on you. And obviously, that you rely on too. That you want to keep your relationships in a good favor. So, Jack, you know, I, I love that you’re bringing this to point. Like, how do we, you know, make that leap?

Cause it is a leap. You know, there’s so much unknown as an entrepreneur. There, it’s, I’m going to say it’s almost all unknown until you hit that big, you know, gold mine or whatever it is. Like, how do you get past that? How do you not let your fears Totally like paralyze you like, what are your suggestions for us?

You know, Michelle, this is for me, um, something I had to learn and there’s principles when it comes to fear and when we can understand what fear is, when we have a real understanding of fear, then then we have a better control over it. And there’s six principles and the first one is the more things you surrender to fear, the more things that you’re going to fear.

The second is to the extent to which you surrender to fear, the greater your capacity for fear. So fear grows when you give into it. And the third is the greater your capacity for fear, the more you increase the power of that fear in your life. And the fourth, the more you increase the power of fear in your life, the greater, this

To apply yourself. I’ll stop there, but that right there, when you understand fear and the principles of fear, then you can control it and not let fear control you. Because people who live by fear are intimidated by life. I hope that helped. Yeah, I, I, I, That’s so interesting, the whole psychology of that, what you just said, because you just brought me back in a very, you know, almost paralyzing way to my earlier career where I would be working.

And I had this boss that was just excuse me on my ass. And I really quickly realized like the more I became under scrutiny, I literally, I literally, It’s paralyzing. And then I just couldn’t get out of it. It was so like damaging. Like for me personally, you know, to, to address what you’re saying is like that overwhelming negativity and criticism actually hurt.

And then I finally had, you know, a couple of. Really great people to work with, like Colin and some, you know, maybe a couple of other people earlier where they didn’t just dwell, you know, dwell on these like, Oh my gosh, this is horrible. And are you sure you want to do this? Oh my God. Oh my God. You know, like this pandemonium, like, I see where you’re going.

Like that, that’s like a horrible situation and it is a downfall. So before we jump to number two, do Giuseppe, Vincent, or… Nicky, is that right, Nicky? The pronunciation? Or Elvis, do any of you want to… Giuseppe, add to that? If I can tell you, Colin and Jack, thank you so much for all you said before. Now, if I can choose only one of my task tools power that I used in the past to be the person that I am, it’s my file, Colin.

Did you remember that I had 17 restaurants, but I closed the restaurant before? I had 7 hotels in Italy. I closed the first two before. I started to invest in USA. I didn’t speak English. I didn’t have the money because I lost all my money, but I helped myself. I trust in my knowledge and the secret how you can transform your knowledge in the result.

Action. Do you know what Jack say? How many people they never realized nothing in life because they have afraid? First. Opinion, Dr. People, if you made a mistake, I’m sorry. Fuck you, everybody. Because this is my life and no one can tell me what I can and what I can’t do. Because, don’t forget, in Klebaus everybody know me for one thing.

Started from scratch to become a millionaire, yes, but you don’t see Only that. Check how many times I’m working 16 18 hours per day. How many times I’m working Saturday Sunday. How many times people invite me to drink a beer on a Friday night or to go into disco music and I say no. The most important thing is you don’t need to be, you know, be afraid of building mistakes because great people are great for the number of mistakes that they build because it’s experience.

When you build a problem, it’s opportunity. And if you broke some project, you increase your knowledge. Like I said before, I close a restaurant. Do you know who bullies me when I close a restaurant? Who never does nothing in their life. Because the other entrepreneurs, they encourage you. Don’t give up. Try again.

Don’t give up. Try again. When in some city, in some target, in some market, people make money and you don’t, it’s only because you are not ready. You don’t have the right knowledge. You don’t have the right expertise. And that is how you can change your life. Take action. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. And like Jack said, you know, when you want to do something, this is my knowledge.

I can build a mistake, you know, to the back and try again. Dream, everybody talking about dream. I’m here only because I had one dream. But a dream, remember, without plan. is only a wish. Dream is great if you have a plan, if you know very well who you want to be. For this, and I finish to talk, when I listen people, I want to be rich.

Yeah, great. Everybody want to be rich. What is your target? What is your market? What is your expertise? What is your knowledge? What is your how? What is your skill? You can awake one day, you say, I want to become millionaire without you don’t have the answer of this question. For this, yes, FILO is my secret, and don’t forget, the winner is only experienced FILO.

Giuseppe, back to you, Colin.

All right, great. Vincent, you want to jump in, and then we’ll jump to Jack’s number two. Yeah, uh, as such said Giuseppe, as always, I appreciate your shares and your tenacity. Um, I’m actually C Corping my industry that I’ve been planning out. Five years. I created 100 percent by myself and the sardonicism of it is while I’m on conference calls and this, I paint and I self taught.

Turns out the catalyst for all of it is my painting. So, hey. Um, you never know unless you take the jump. Like what’s that, uh, cliche? Miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take? I believe cliches are like cliches because people do them too much or too little. So, why don’t you fail, learn something, and keep going.

If you’re not, what are you doing? Very good, you know, I appreciate, again, I always love talking about… These absolutes and I, Giuseppe, I think you’ve heard me talk about this, especially this next one. And I know you’ve talked a lot about this on clubhouse talks as well, but you know, once you let go of fear, life becomes so much more incredible, but then you have to go on to the next absolute.

This is like a mental bridge that we always cross every day. When we get up out of bed, we do have to let go of fear. But then once we let go of fear, we have to go to the next bridge in our life, which is. Your plan. What is your plan? Do you know why most people struggle in life? Because they don’t have a solid plan.

They change their plan every week, every two days, they stick to a plan for a week or two and they’re constantly changing their plan. The problem with the plan that most of us think is the great plan of all is the plan to make lots of money. And that’s not true. Capacity must precede your plan. And for that to happen, you have to have your priorities straight.

You’ve got to have your values straight. You see, because your plan is like a map. And the way I see it is when I look at my hand, I see five fingers. You look at your hand. You see, but when I say fingers, I don’t see five fingers anymore. And I’ve been doing this for years. I see the five most important things I need to do today.

And these are the five most important things that nothing will distract me from today. And it isn’t just making money. As a matter of fact, that’s not number one on the plan. Number one on the plan is my thumb. When I see my thumb, I see my spiritual development. I start my day every morning with personal development, spiritual development, whatever you do in the morning.

Start your day with some mindset exercises, with some soul therapy, with some stuff that’s going to help you and prepare you for the day. So when I look at my plan, I look at my hand and my hand, there’s only five things I need to master in my life. And number one, every morning when I get up, it’s my personal development.

And then when I look at my index finger, that’s my, when I look at my index finger, that’s my family. Do you know how many successful entrepreneurs have neglected their family? And they ended up going through three divorces, four divorces. They’re miserable. They get all the money, but they can’t keep their family together because they don’t have a balanced plan.

So if we’re going to be successful, if we’re going to win more than we lose, especially startups, when you get a startup going, what do you do? You dedicate all your time to your business while you neglect your spiritual life, you neglect your family and you go through a divorce. This is very difficult to be a winner.

When you can’t handle relationships. When I see my middle finger, I’m not flipping you the bird, but I’ll tell you, that’s my fitness finger. How important is fitness? If we’re going to be successful entrepreneurs, I mean, how many people do we know got all the money and lost their health, you can’t buy it back in many cases, so you have to, when you look at your plan, you can’t just think of making money, you just can’t be thinking about success in terms of.

Money and things that you can have. No, you have to look at your plan in a balanced way. You have to have your fitness, your family, your, your social, your, uh, personal life or your, your, your, your, uh, spiritual life, your family life, your fitness life, and then. The ring finger, my favorite finger. I’ll tell you, it is my business life.

I love my business. I love it. I could do it all the time. And I did that and it messed things up in my life, but it’s not my first priority anymore. You see, so my ring finger is my business life. It’s my financial life. It’s, I love being in my office and working, but it’s a balanced plan. When you’re going to, if you’re going to have capacity for success, you better have a balanced plan.

And then the pinky finger, the small one, that’s my social life. You got to keep in touch with your friends. You just can’t neglect all your friends. So when you look at your plan, I want you to look at your plan differently. I want you to look at your hand and you say to yourself, okay, what’s in my hand.

Some of you may need to change what’s in your hand. And some of you are only playing with two fingers. You’ve got three other fingers you got to work on. You don’t just have one life. You have five lives. You have your spiritual life, your family life, your fitness life, your business life and your social life.

So look at your hand as you’re planned and play the hand you have. And if you have to change some things, change it. I hope that helps. Well, do you think Elon Musk like literally, uh, does all those five things? I don’t think so. Uh, I’m just throwing that out there, Jack. I’m not, I’m trying to like, you know, be a little bit, um, that I think you’re right in the long run.

Balance is important for everyone’s life, but there are moments in time. As an entrepreneur, you can go all out on a particular venture or contract or sale or whatever it is. So it, in the long run, I’m agreeing with what you’re saying on number two, but in the short run, I’m sort of, I’m sort of, Coming at with a different thought, but can you talk about short run versus long run?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is the way that almost everybody thinks, including Elon, because now he’s struggling with his fitness life, but he wants that bad. He’s got his family life down. He’s a very good family person, but Elon, Elon is working on his fitness life. And you know, something, what happens is if you can’t practice this stuff before.

You have the success. It’s very difficult to practice it afterwards. And meanwhile, health problems, finance, family problems, you know, all the stuff. And, and, and you can never quite find happiness when you don’t have a balanced plan. I remember making, in my early, late In my twenties, late twenties. And I started making more money than ever.

I was, my plan was unbalanced. All I was doing was working. I was neglecting everything else I was making money, but I just wasn’t happy. Something was wrong. I couldn’t quite figure it out until I realized you have to have a balanced plan and that gives you capacity for more success with your business, more success with your family.

So the quicker you can get that balanced plan down. I mean, come on, you can start an exercise routine and take 10 minutes a day and do 10 minutes of exercise seven days a week. That starts your exercise plan. You can have coffee or tea in the morning with your wife before you get to work every morning, like clockwork that starts your family life, you know, your relationship with the wife before you leave and you don’t see her all day.

So this balanced plan. Brings happiness and the happier you are, the more success you’re gonna have. I hope that helps with this.

No, absolutely. I mean, it’s, I’m with you on this. Like, I, I, um, about 2017, uh, there was a group of entrepreneurs who I meet with, it’s called, it’s an organization called eo, and I meet with them every month and they virtually had an intervention for me. I was a workaholic and they. Came out and said, you know what?

You’ve got to learn how to live a more balanced life or you’re not going to make it. And I did change after that. And I got a CrossFit coach and, uh, working on my diet. I’m not perfect there yet. All right. Don’t shoot me. Uh, but the fact is, you know what? You’re right. Balance is probably one of those things.

That will get you through the long haul. Anyone else on stage want to add to that? There’s Jarrett just joined the room, I can see as well, that’s pretty cool. Yeah, if you don’t mind. Yeah, go ahead Vincent. Real quick, I went all in for five years. Uh, October 1st, 2018, I started this endeavor. And um, working 12 to 20 hour days every day.

Minus 26 days since then. And I’ve lost myself, but I can honestly say I came out. I can say I’m satisfied with my life. Um, but just even a couple weeks ago, I had to come to the realization that I had done what I had done. So it’s very important to, self awareness is so tricky. Um, so I guess I’ll just, uh, say the, I don’t know who the heck said it in the first place, but check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Uh, maybe in a beautiful disaster, but, uh, it could have been just a complete disaster if I didn’t… Yeah, I mean, these… These are absolutes. There really is no way around not taking care of yourself. If you want to be successful, you better take care of yourself because you’re going to need a lot of energy and you better have good relationships with the family because that just wears on you.

So this is another mental bridge we all have to cross every day. When we get up in the morning, it isn’t just about making money. So when we keep our priorities straight, those things that we value the most, and there’s only five of them. You don’t have one life. You’ve got five lives. You need to master.

And certainly your fitness is part of it. Your mindset. I love the spiritual development, our personal development. You know, Jim Rowan was my personal development. He was my personal mentor, my personal counselor for 13 years. He helped me to get my head straight on this for those that don’t know Jim Rowan, just a great guy.

Okay. So that’s number two. Can I go into number three? Yes, absolutely. Let’s hit it. Okay, so number three. Now, these are like mental bridges. Every morning we get up, guess where bridge we start at? Bridge number one. And guess what we gotta do? Cross that bridge, and then we gotta cross bridge number two, and then bridge number three.

This is a big one. And this is what I call another power option. And there’s only two power options out of these eight absolutes. Number one is let go of fear. Number three is be teachable. Humility, humility. Do you know when you’re teachable and you have no fear, you become the superhero that’s in you.

You become the winner that’s in you. Teachability is huge. Teachability helps with capacity. Teachability is something, listen, I’m more teachable today in my sixties than I was in my twenties. No doubt. I’m more teachable today in my sixties than I was in my thirties and forties. And you know, teachability, the flip side of that coin is humility.

And I’ll tell you, teachability, we can never stop learning. You know, once you think you know it all, you stop learning, right? Giuseppe, you know, that Giuseppe is not here, but so teachability. We have to listen. You may not like the way I come across. I come sometimes across a little strong. I come, you know, maybe you don’t like what I’m saying, but Hey.

Don’t focus on that. Listen to the message. I’m saying, you may not like the sound of my voice, but it messes you up. Maybe you just don’t like it. Right. But hear my message because what I’m sharing with you are absolutes. There is no way around it. You won’t find people that are successful and happy. And especially people that start up new companies.

You don’t find people that. Are not teachable. These people are teachable. They want to learn. They want to grow and they’re always learning. They always want to learn more. So I hope that you understand that. And maybe we could add some more from the audience. You can ask questions on that teachability part.

But this is a power option. You have to be teachable if you want to be successful. podcast.

It’s a very popular one, Colin. What, what is it called? It’s, um, you should know. What is it you should know. Something you should know. And they were actually, Jack, honestly, you’re hitting it on the nail. They were talking about the difference between people that can grow and it all, you know, it all kind of boiled down to They just wanted to learn they were just like examining and looking at studies like why is a doctor in the middle of her or his career more effective than a, you know, one that has obviously more expense experience, excuse me, and it was just like the willingness to receive information and improve and learn.

So Jack, you know, you’re, you’re really onto something. And by the way. I like your delivery method. I find it very refreshing. I feel that you’re very direct, and I appreciate that. Oh, thank you very much. I’ve had people say it differently, so that’s why I bring it up, but I appreciate that, Michelle, very much.

So yes, teachability. Listen, if you have teachability, you, I’ll tell you what. These are all like invisible assets that I’m sharing with you. Do you know what the true wealth is in life? It’s what I’m sharing with you right now. This is where all your wealth is. It’s not the car you drive. It’s not the house you live in.

It’s having this understanding, this mindset and understanding these mental bridges. We have to cross every day because There’s no way around this folks. You better be teachable. Cause if not, you will be disciplined in life. You will have challenges that you won’t overcome because you were arrogant. And that’s the opposite of teachability is arrogance.

So, so tell us. How do you get past that self doubt? Cause I, I think you’re right. A lot of us, not everyone, we manifest that self doubt in a very arrogant mannerism. So how do we break that down? And how do we get past that? Jack. That self doubt is really fear and it just goes back to fear and the greater your capacity for fear, the more things you’re going to increase the power of fear in your life, the more things you’re going to increase self doubt, you see, and Giuseppe said it taking action.

This is what also helps to remove self doubt. And the more you increase the power of fear in your life, the more you increase the power of self doubt in your life, the greater your failure to do things in your life. Now, here’s the thing about self doubt. It’s just an emotional breakdown because it’s irrational.

It’s irresponsible. Actually, self doubt is a sign of arrogance because you’re not teachable. So, arrogance is the enemy of success. Arrogance is the enemy of building a successful business. This is why most businesses don’t win because they’re led by arrogant leaders. I hope that helped.

Okay, so you’re saying that if we are behaving in a mannerism, you know, internally, Uh, I feel like it’s being aware, right? I’m just trying to like break this down a little bit. Yes, what I’m saying is when you’re not teachable… You’re, you’re not only being arrogant, but you’re causing all of these things that are holding you back and disconnecting you from happiness, success, and all in capacity for growth, you see?

Yeah, so if I’m like a super whatever, you know, we all have arrogance in some way. Maybe not. It’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a bit of protective mechanism. If I can just, even if I don’t say it out loud. Realize that I do need other people and that, um, not listening. Other people is hurting myself. Then I can kind of like break through and move forward.

That’s how I move forward. That’s exactly right. And you know, you’re fine when kids grow up, if they struggle with taking leadership or they struggle with taking authority from their parents, they also struggle with taking authority from the coach. They also struggle with taking authority from the police officer.

They also struggle with taking authority from the boss. And these are the people that struggle the most in life. All right, Colin. What do you do? Yes. It’s all about you’re this way, right? Yeah. So I wanna hear what you think. Like I love this. I love this number three because this thirst for learning and the fact is we have a lot of people today here in the audience.

Uh, some of them, by the way, are not members of Shut Up Club at the very bottom there. If you want to join it, just feel free to click the, uh, I don’t know how you join the club anymore. But anyway, try to join the club. Uh, there used to be a house on top. You could click it and join the club. I’m certain there’s a way you can do that on the app.

I’ll figure that one out. A new update just came out yesterday. But this thirst for learning and the fact that everyone’s here and is listening and learning. And in the book… That’s coming out on October 3rd called Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. We have learnings from over 200 interviews. By the way, a number of them were conducted on Clubhouse.

And, uh, we’re captured those interviews and It’s, uh, it’s not only my own experiences over 30 years, um, 10 years writing the book, but also the, uh, the interviews of over 200 people. Actually, the number of people who actually made the book were probably about 50 or 60 interviews, and they were authors, experts, and serial entrepreneurs.

If you have the ability to learn, then you can fail without the financial disaster. And I know when you go back to my 20s or any entrepreneur goes back and said, if you just read this book and had this idea in your head before you did that stupid move, you might have saved a lot of money. And the reality is you can save a lot of money.

You can be a more successful entrepreneur. We can learn from our failures. The failures of our past are the scars that guide us through our new ventures. And I truly believe in that. We are entrepreneurs. We are human beings. But we are not perfect. And we’re type A personalities. Which means we think we’re perfect.

But we’re not. The more we listen, the more we learn, the more successful we can become. We’re like an AI, but just not as smart as ChatGPT. We’ll leave it at that, right? Well, it’s only as smart as we are. AI is only as smart as we are. That’s what I’m going to run out of time. We’ve got to get through eight, so number four.

Yeah, yeah, but we have a few other people on the stage, Jack. Who hasn’t gone yet? Is Emon gone? Or Shadows? I’m sorry, who’s next? Shadows or Emon? Iman. Iman was up first. Yeah, thank you so much. Absolutely. Hello everyone. Thank you, Michelle. Actually, one of the things I was, first of all let me introduce myself.

This is Iman, all the way from Cairo, Egypt and I’m a business developer and business and product developer. So basically I was a lecturer in the university. Uh, in the business school, then I shifted my career. So what I have here to say is, uh, in 2016, I’ve made the research and, um, exactly the reasons why startup fails, especially within the first two years.

And the amazing part of it was. Uh, everyone like, um, the gentleman was saying right now, it’s we’re, we’re thinking that we’re perfect where the subject matter and whatever idea we have, we know how to do it, but basically this is not business. This is not business. If you are going to make, um, to, to invent something, to, uh, do a broad, um, create a, uh, a one of a kind service or whatever it is.

Okay. That’s amazing. But you know how to market this, you know, how to sell it. There is. Two sides of the coins, the side of the innovation and creativity and the other side of the business in the market and scaling and ideation and, uh, everything around the business, the practical side of things. So, uh, this is what I wanted to add for everyone who starts new.

You want to know what your why is, who you are, your capacity, uh, do you have a roadmap in mind? If you have funding, put in mind that you have to see the whole picture, but you have to take action as well. Both, uh, and this is not an easy journey, and it’s fine. completely fine to we’re not failing. I do have a suggestion for her other word, which is fall down because as a human being, we’re falling down every single day.

And we hold our mommy’s hand and We stand up again, clean the mess, cry a little bit, and go on, the next step. So, um, this is what I wanted to say. Expect the falling down, but expect that you are going to stand up again, stronger. Uh, expect that there is a lot of, um, challenges, and watch out your, your, um, men, your, your mental speech with yourself, because this is the most important.

Sound to hear. It’s the, the, the, the, uh, whisper in your mind. So is about how you talk to yourself and what you’re saying to you. You’re gonna have those, uh, uh, a lot of challenges. They are not struggles, they are challenges. And, uh, as, as a balance side, you, you will be having a lot of opportunity. To balance those challenges.

So thank you, Michelle. I hope I’m not, uh, I didn’t talk too much. So back to you. No, not at all. And I love what you said, like how we speak to ourself internally. That really is so important. You know, my husband always says that like, don’t like talk negative to yourself. It’s so true. It really is so true.

We have to be so careful about that. Right. Yes, that’s right. Like we said in the beginning, it’s 80 percent mindset and it’s all about how you talk to yourself. Even that was very right. Very nice. And so true. That’s an absolute, if you talk terrible to yourself, you’re going to get terrible, terrible results.

If you beat yourself up and don’t build yourself up, you’re not going to be a happy person and happy people just aren’t successful. So let me go on to number four. This bridge is a big one. There’s a huge traffic jam at this bridge. And we all have to cross it every day. And it’s the momentum bridge and momentum means consistency being consistent momentum is where everything changes.

Momentum changes you. Momentum is motivation and momentum is discipline. See in, but discipline is painful until it becomes a habit. And then becomes a lifestyle. So we have to be very consistent. We have to get momentum with letting go of fear. We have to get momentum with mastering our plan and our plan is in our hand.

We have to have momentum with being teachable. You just can’t be teachable one week and then unteachable the next month. You have to be consistently teachable. So this bridge number four, the momentum bridge is when everything starts to change in your life. But you’ve got to stay consistent. And the best time to be consistent is when in your mind, you say to yourself, I don’t want to go to the gym.

That’s the best time to go to the gym in your mind. You say to yourself, I want to tell this jerk off and you don’t, you handle it a little more, you know, with little more respect and you’re nicer to people. So momentum is very important and it’s all part of this. Success equation. Startups fail because the leaders aren’t consistent.

They can, they, they consistently change their game plan. They’re not consistent. They don’t get momentum and you have to be consistent to get momentum. So that’s number four. You guys want to talk about that?

Yes, please do. So it’s like going to the gym. If you go to the gym day one, and let’s say on the Richter scale and the Richter scale starts at zero to the top is, is, is 10 and you go to the gym day one, this is the momentum scale and you go day one, call it Monday and you haven’t gone to the gym for three years, five years, 10 years, but you go on Monday.

The question is when you go to the gym on Monday, do you have momentum? And the answer is no, but when you go to the gym on Tuesday, you get some momentum going on. You’ve now moved up to 2 on the Richter scale of momentum. And then when you go to the gym on day, on, on the, on the next day, on Wednesday, right?

You’re now consistent for three days. You’re still at 0. 2 on the Richter scale. But if you stay consistent for a week, you’re going to gym every day. You haven’t missed a day. You’ve moved up from 0. 2 on the Richter scale to 0. 8 on the Richter scale. Now, there’s one thing we don’t want to do when we gain momentum.

We don’t want that to slide back down to two. So we’ve got to stay consistent. And when we stay consistent, what happens all of a sudden we’re at 0. 10 on the Richter scale. And we look in the mirror and it’s like, wow, I’m looking good. And it seems like it happened overnight. But it didn’t. It happened because you’ve stayed consistent for three months, and that’s because of momentum.

From momentum comes change, and that’s how you change your body, that’s how you change your attitude, that’s how you change your business, that’s how you change your relationships. A day at a time, a conversation at a time, a good thought at a time. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense, Jack. And, uh… You know, one of the things that I did in 2006 was get a CEO coach in 2017.

I got a CrossFit coach, uh, and it made all the difference because a coach can bring in accountability, commitments, transcendence, they can help you push beyond your comfort zone and. You’re right about the momentum that it can gain by doing those systems, by doing it correctly. Like the one thing about bringing in a CEO coach, I found was that he was able to apply a lot of systems to scale your company that are not naturally intuitive to an entrepreneur.

I believe intuition plays a very big role for entrepreneurs in the startup phase. But in the scale phase, it’s a whole different beast. Any thoughts on that?

I totally agree because accountability increases when you have a serious accountability plan, like a coach, someone you’re accountable to. It increases your odds of success to like 95 percent chance you’re going to make it. But if you just have like a thought, I want to start a business. You’ve got like a 10 percent chance to be successful.

But if you back that up by a serious accountability plan, you’ve now increased your odds of success to 95%. Now, what does an accountability plan really do? It keeps you consistent. I hope that helps. Honestly, you’re saying so many things that are resonating. I, again, I, I love your directness and I think that’s so accurate.

It’s, you know, about accountability to yourself and to your team. But before we get too much further. We have some other folks that have joined us, some other members on the stage. Shadows, I don’t think you’ve had an opportunity to go and we’d love to hear what you have to say. I just wanted to share that over the last year or so, I’ve been on a bit of a personal journey.

And in that personal journey, I’ve learned a couple of things about fear. Um, one is that when people have directed unsolicited negativity towards me over, over my lifetime, it wasn’t really about me. It was their fear being sent at me. Once I realized that, I also realized that those negative messages that I absorbed, that’s their fear.

So I need to release that fear in order to be me. And I’ve started doing that. And I’ve also started being more consistent in daily practices than I’ve ever been in my life.

Shadow, that’s awesome. And you’ve found more happiness because you’ve done that. These absolutes bring happiness. You know, most people think they’re happy and they’re really not. They’re just stimulated by things. Happiness is something you never lose. And you never lose happiness because happiness is something you’re, you learn.

And so being consistent is part of happiness. Do you know people that can’t stay consistent are not happy people? How could you be happy and you can’t like stay consistent with anything you say you’re gonna do. It’s very tough. So that’s good stuff. I appreciate you speaking up. Let’s go to number five.

Can we go to number five? Yes. Okay, number five. This is a great one. I love this one. Number five, this is a bridge we all have to cross every day. Unfortunately, there’s a huge traffic jam at this bridge. And the only way you cross it is you’ve got to cross it and get to the other side. And the only way you get to the other side is when you have it, when you’ve done it.

And that’s you have to personally love what you do for work. You at least have to like it. I mean, can you imagine going to work every day and you don’t like what you do? Do you know most people, they don’t like what they do. They only go to work because of the benefits. They go all their career, 40 years of work and, and they go to a job they don’t like.

You know, I love what I do for work. So you have to have this. Personal love for work. Now, maybe you don’t, but maybe you could do something on the side, start a little side gig, find something you love. Right. And that’s going to bring you so much happiness, but having personal love for your work. That’s one of the reasons why startups fail.

They don’t really love what they’re doing. They’re just in it for the money. And so. You really do have to love what you do for work and everything becomes so much easier. And as a matter of fact, this is like the crossroads, bridge number five and six. This is the crossroads from being a mature person and an immature person.

And if you don’t love what you do for work, it’s going to be tough to have a happy life. Can you talk on that? Hey Jack, I think you could have written this book as well. Cause I have a whole chapter on. Loving what you do, having a purpose for your business. You know what? It’s very exciting at the beginning, but the reality is it’s a roller coaster and it’s a 10 year journey.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said, uh, my company is an overnight success. It just took 10 years. You know, the reality is it takes a long time. It’s a roller coaster. And unless you love it, you ain’t going to stick with it. You know, one thing is I love King Charles Spaniels. I love dogs and I’m involved in a, in a, a fairly large dog company called pot.com.

Uh, if I didn’t have the passion for it, I don’t think I would’ve stuck with it ’cause it was a fricking rollercoaster ride over the last five years. I mean, massive growth, big problems with shipping. The whole thing was, was it was up and down, up and down. But we continue to launch new and and more innovative products on that company and that site.

I just get such a kick out of interacting with the people who run the company. And that same applies for, for every business that I’ve been involved with. If I don’t love it, I ain’t going to do it because this life is too short. No doubt. And I’ll tell you, I just got lucky. I found what I loved at 25 years old and I’ve just loved it.

Actually. I love it more today than I did even when I was 25 years old and it’s, I wish. For all of you, especially those starting up a business. I wish that you find a business that you love. Like Colin said, because that’s like a big chunk of the battle. And remember, these are absolutes folks. There’s no way around this stuff.

You’re going to have to deal with this. And the sooner you realize it, the better you can deal with it and master. This is like a self development. This is like self awareness. You, when you, you, you fix yourself, you don’t have to lean on others when you know this stuff you, because what happens when you lean on others and they walk away, you fall, but when you become like a self functional human being, it’s because.

You understand these absolutes and you understand loving what you do for work is a big part of success and happiness in life. So here’s number six, number six, and these are bridges we have to cross every day, every day you get up and go to work, right? You’re going to love your work again. Next day, you got to do it again.

Every day you start at the beginning of the bridge, you’re going to cross each bridge every day. Number six, this is a big one. I would have to say, this is another huge, this is a big traffic jam at this bridge. You have to have impersonal love for all people. If people can mess you up, if circumstances that they create can mess you up and get you all twisted, it’s going to be very difficult for you to build a successful business.

And this is why most startups fail. Because they have people problems. You see, you have to have this in personal love for all people. Yes. Even the jerks, you know, let the jerk be the jerk. You don’t have to change them. You just have to change yourself. So this in personal love for all people, let me tell you what it does.

It’s so empowering and it solves almost all problems you will ever have in business. Do you know most problems in business come from people? And when you’re good with people, you know why you’re good with people? Because you have impersonal love towards people. Do you know, like when we deal with people, right, what do we do?

We get someone that does something wrong. We react, but you don’t react with love. What do you react with anger? Right. Negativity, right? No try. Responding with impersonal love. Don’t react, respond with impersonal love. This will set you miles ahead of the competition. When you create this culture in your business where impersonal love is so important.

I hope that helps.

It’s just strange that we use such similar language in the book. I talk about pay your people with love. Ownership and freedom. And when I talk about love, I’m talking about recognizing greatness, recognizing their achievements. I’m talking about, uh, understanding their hobbies, who they are as people. I’m talking about understanding where they want to go in their life, how they want to develop, how much money do they want to make by a certain date.

What is it that you’re doing? To support them. I often say you need to wrap your startup around your employees lives instead of how employees who go to Fortune 5000 companies wrap their lives around those companies. It’s the opposite you need to do and that gives us an edge as founders in a startup because quite frankly, we cannot afford to pay.

employees, talented A players as much as the Fortune 5000 company. So we have to do those kind of things. They don’t, it doesn’t cost you money to recognize greatness. It doesn’t cost you money to understand, uh, your employees life and their hobbies and what makes them, what motivates them. It doesn’t cost you money to help develop a career path for them, for them to be successful.

And they appreciate that. And those are the kinds of things we need to do as startup founders. I know we’re running out of time. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s just, this show is amazing. Yeah. We’re going to keep going though. Cause we got some good stuff. If you just understand this bridge, number five, personally love what you do for work and in personal love for all people.

And you imagine in your head, two circles, the circle to the left is. Love what you do for, for work in the circle to the right is in personal love for all people. And you put them close together, they’ll overlap. And what’s in the center there is what I call success. Self esteem. When you truly love what you do for work and have been personal love for all people, you get what’s called.

a character tune up. It’s called success. Self esteem. This is what the law of attraction is all about. Do you know when you do, when you have these two characteristics, these two amazing things, you’re, you now have a relaxed mental attitude was before. Maybe you were frantic. You now have stability of thinking.

You can handle things better. You have composure. You have confidence. You make good decisions. You feel like you have control over your life. You feel like. You have a sense of destiny. That’s going to be incredible. And you know that I can is more important than IQ. And you have this poise, this sense of like self control and you know, he who conquers himself conquers, right?

And so this impersonal love and love what you do for work, it changes your character, not your personality. Cause you don’t need to change your personalities, but some of us, some of you need a serious. Character change. And so master these things. Just understand. These are only eight absolutes. And if you master these and make these the most important things in life that you master every day, you will become the greatness that’s in you.

And that super person that’s in all of us comes out. When we practice these eight absolutes, which I call eight bridges to freedom and happiness. Okay. Number seven. And then we’re closing up number seven. The bridge number seven is a big one. You’re going to be tested. You’re going to be tested every day.

You’re going to be tested. But when you understand what I just shared with you, you’ll pass the tests that face you with flying colors. And there’s only four tests you’re going to have to deal with. Number one is your own thoughts. Do you know our own thoughts test us? Hey, we just talked about it, right?

It’s all about how you talk to yourself. Most of us, we don’t talk to ourselves nicely. If you talk to your children that way, you’d be like put in jail. You got to be nice to yourself. Your own thoughts are going to try to destroy you. But if you understand what I just shared with you, you’ll pass thought testing.

Because when you have impersonal love for all people, guess who else you love more? Yourself. You’re going to be tested by people. People testing, thought testing. People are going to test you. But when you understand what I just shared, and you cross these bridges every day, Your character changes. People go like, man, Jack has changed, huh?

Right? And you’re also going to get system testing, system testing. I mean, we’re always going to be at work, especially system testing. There’s always something else to learn, right? That goes back to teachability. And the fourth test is going to be disaster tests, death, COVID. I mean, talk about disaster. You know, some of us handled it great.

Others fell apart. And it’s how we handle our tests in life, which will determine our success in life. And so you can say, Jackie, I understand all this stuff. I got this stuff down. But if you can’t pass your own thought testing, you don’t have it done. If you have a problem with people and they aggravate you when you go home and you bitch about it to the wife, you’re flunking the test.

So I hope that helps. That’s number seven bridge. The testing bridge and you’re going to be tested for your own growth. If you take away the testing, you take away the prosperity, you take away the success. So embrace testing. And remember testing is going to test your momentum. Testing is going to try to make you inconsistent.

Don’t be inconsistent. Are you flunk the test? So that’s bridge number seven. And then the last bridge I’ll go right to this one. Bridge number eight. This is the ultimate. The winner’s bridge, you know what the winner’s bridge is at the end of the day, you got through the day and you feel so good about yourself and you go to bed at night and you sleep like a baby.

I believe most people can’t sleep at night because they’re struggling with one or more of these absolutes. Very difficult to sleep at night. If you have fear all the time, very difficult to sleep at night. If your plan sucks, very difficult to sleep at night. If you have a problem with people, but when you go to bed and you sleep well, and you’re, you go to bed feeling like a winner, guess what happens the next day, you look forward to going out.

And doing it even better. The winner’s bridge is the objective. Every day, we want to make sure we go to bed feeling like a winner. Most people go to bed feeling like a loser. And it’s no wonder why they wake up in the morning and they don’t look forward to…

Hello, um… Jack, we lost you. Thank you, folks. Yeah. Are you back? I think the app. Yeah, my lights in my house. My lights in my house are blinking. Oh, okay. I’m back. All right. Where did you lose me? Um, just like wake up feeling like

that’s the perfect place to lose. Literally the loser spot, the loser spot. You’re going to bed as a loser, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that’s the deal folks. I hope you enjoyed the talk. Eight bridges to freedom and happiness. I’ve taught this around the world. I’ve lived by this for over 35 years. In these absolutes, there’s no way around it.

You want to go to bed at night feeling like a winner? Cross these bridges every day that I just shared with you. And you won’t, you won’t get it. You won’t get it right away. My life’s just bleh. You won’t get it right away, but you’ll get it. Stay consistent, stay consistent, and this will change your life and you’ll have more winning startups.

You’ll have more success in your life because you are what you think you are, not the car you drive or the income you make, but how you think will determine your success in your business. That’s all folks. Yeah, well, it’s like eight shows in one hour. Okay. I feel like we should have broken it up to eight shows.

But, uh, you know, you’d be happy to have you on, uh, running your own show, even if you did one a month on take one topic a month and do a show on, on startup club, become a leader. We’d be really. We really enjoyed it. I know we’re going over time here if there’s someone else on stage who wants to add something to this conversation, we’ll spend a few minutes doing that, and then we’ll close it out.

We, uh, we normally hold it to about an hour, but wow, I think it was eight shows in one. I think we all got an MBA in the psychology of entrepreneurship over the last… So if you’re on stage, you want to add something else to this conversation, let me know, flash your mic right now. Um, otherwise we’ll, we’ll, we’ll begin to close it out.

All right. So thank you very much, Jack. Uh, by the way, if you’re in the audience and you’re not a member of the club, cause I could see it down at the bottom. There’s a number of people are not please join the club. I have followed everybody in the audience. Just, you know, I am trying to follow as many.

Startup club members as possible and if you felt there the information that you got on state from the individuals on stage Feel free to follow those individuals as well because this is a community. This is all this is a club this is all about connecting with each other and really really enjoyed That inspirational hour long talk from Jack.

Jack, any final comments before we close out?

Jack might be off there, but uh yeah, he might be, oh no. Vision Z I think was flashing his mic. Colin. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. I just wanted to add real quick, appreciate.

It’s way in the matrix. I know it. Go go for it. Yeah, it’s

been a matrix brother, but I wanted to add real quick to what you had mentioned. Some, something new that I had never heard and just the level of passion that was behind the words. I even wrote him down was, you know, personal life. It’s probably, this is gonna stick with me. I just know it. It’s gonna stick with me.

And I know it’s gonna stick with a lot of those, uh, here in the audience and on the stage. I had never heard that before, but he, he worded it so well, right? Your personal life, your social life, your fitness life, your business life, and your spiritual life. And you got to prioritize which, in which order you prioritize.

Those it’s up to you, right? But I, that’s an incredible way of looking at, uh, looking at your priorities. That’s awesome, Jack. Yeah, I loved his candor. I really did enjoy his style. So thank you, Vision C. And Jack, you were blowing up there. Like, I don’t know if you can talk now and see if it works. Yeah, I have a storm going on here, a terrible storm.

So my lights in my house are going on and off. A terrible storm in my neighborhood. Lights are going on and off in the house. So that’s why I’m, I’m losing connection. Well, thank you very much, Jack. Uh, it’s been an incredible show. We’re going to close it out right now. Uh, just a reminder, uh, the book that we’ve been working on, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, comes out on October 3rd.

This is a project, 30 years as a serial entrepreneur, 10 years writing a book, over 200 interviews from experts, authors, and serial entrepreneurs, and it looks like it will be a bestseller according to the information we’re getting from Forbes in the first week. Jack, I know you also have some very cool stuff.

So, can you just share your website before we close out here? Uh, yes. I will share my love of my life. It’s called Smoothie Texts Daily. I am a smoothie nut. My business is distribution. I love smoothies. That’s smoothie text dot com. Smoothie text dot com. If you love smoothies, subscribe to this awesome service.

That’s texts with a, it’s plural, not singular, and you’ll get a smoothie text every day for the rest of your life of the most delicious smoothies you’ve ever had. And with just a push of a button, it’ll be at your home in just a couple of days. No logging in, no credit cards. It’s so amazing. Smoothietexts.

com. Subscribe. It’s a free subscription. Takes two minutes to subscribe in every day.

Wow. We lost him again. We lost you again, Jack, but smoothie.

I was trying to pin it. I didn’t have a chance to do that here, uh, but go to smoothie text. com and check it out. I thought there was like four or five. I went there last week and are like four or five really cool programs that you can look at and what an incredible hour and appreciate everyone coming on stage and the whole startup club and we survived.

Didn’t we? Clubhouse upgraded and we’re still alive. We are still alive. Startup Club continues to grow. We’re alive and cooking. Literally. Awesome. Can’t get enough. Alright, so we’ll see you next week. Next week we’re going to tackle, we have an expert author and a very best selling author. She is one of the most successful people in the world of AI.

And she’s going to join us next week. And if you don’t know this, you can go to Startup. Club. And sign up to our mailing list because when we have these authors come on, uh, people like Jack, we like, like to let you know in advance, but the app doesn’t let us do that. So if you go to startup. club, sign up to the email list, that’s when you can know when we have, uh, big shows or big events coming online.

And next week we got a big AI event, so we’re looking forward to that next Friday, 2 o’clock Eastern. You’ve been listening to Serial Entrepreneur, Secrets Revealed, my co host Michelle Van Tilburg, I’m Colin C. Campbell. Thank you very much Jack Silva for joining us and everyone else on stage and those in the audience.

We’ll see you next week. Thank you.