Your Business Will Only Go As Far As Your Mindset

The Complete Entrepreneur – EP26

 [00:00:00] Michael Gilmore. Hey, has a going everyone. This isn’t a great to be here in this new year and it is a great medium Michelle. I must admit, I want to hear the news. Oh, I’ve become a grandfather. Which just absolutely fantastic. And I must admit I was pretty, pretty excited about that. And little Ella is doing exceptionally well, says mum, and dad’s hanging in there as well.

So, uh, to become a grandfather. Wow. You know, you’ve got some great hair for a reason, that’s for sure. Absolutely. And it’s been an exciting day today on startup club. We have a winner of the P and G venture contest. Um, and it’s actually interesting. Uh, she, um, developed an M a very interesting product. [00:01:00] And, um, so it’s the name of the company is called, uh, lady, lady patch.

Uh, it was Cindy Santa Cruz who won. We did an after show. If you get a chance, um, in your, on Twitter, you can see her reaction. She starts it’s. So. The moment she wanted. It was very exciting. Uh, if you’re on Twitter, you can just search, um, startup club underscore HQ, and you can follow our Twitter account too, and get updates as to what’s going on with respect to startup club.

But that we have actually a little video that, um, we recorded just at the moment she had one and she literally broke down and was crying. It was so such a touching moment to see that Procter and gamble and working with them and, and the, the, the, the achievement that she’s made to get to this point and what she’s done.

So you get a chance to check that out. Michael, I really looking forward to delay [00:02:00] developing a learning mindset. Oh, look, I must admit, like I say this every time that this is one of the favorite times of the week, um, for me, um, down here in Melbourne Australia, Yes. We’re looking at the topic of developing a learning mindset and you’re in the scene right now to the complete entrepreneur.

It’s a one hour show at 5:00 PM Eastern time, every Thursday. And, uh, although we did have last week off, um, for the holidays and things like that, but it is so good to be here. And one of the things we really encourage people to do is to put their hand up. If they want to share a story or share or ask some questions or something like that, put your hand up and we’ll invite you to the stage.

And it’d be great to hear from you. We’d love that interactivity of the customs. First of learning one from another, um, it’s it must admit it’s one of the reasons why I love hosting this show. So. Is hearing [00:03:00] from other people and hear what they had to share a topic like developing, learning mindset. I must admit, like when I was thinking about this topic, it’s something I’m actually quite passionate about and where things are realized over the years is that your business will go as far as you personally do.

Now, as far as you personally develop yourself, that’s as far as your business will go. So how do you develop your yourself further so that your business can go further? How do you develop yourself further so that your, the, your personal life can go further and become more enriched? So what does that mean for an entrepreneur to develop themselves and become an avid learner?

How is this going to impact your business and your, your personal life? And today we’re going to be exploring this great topic and something I think is going to be fabulous. So, um, I, I must me like learning is a. It’s a [00:04:00] real tenant of my life. Um, since I was back in my oh gee, I remember when I was a kid, um, would all my brothers or sisters, they went off to school and I would sit in a box.

My favorite plays a similar box. And I remember teaching myself to read and learning, to read and everything like that. Remember how and why books. I used to love to have my books all about the dinosaurs and that sort of stuff. As every, every young little boy would love to do, but I, I was just learning and I realized the importance of learning.

I’d read history books then, and, uh, I’d read, I’d read anything. I could get my hands on anything. Uh, I remember it was around the time of polo 17 and I read everything about that. Um, and it was all about developing and learning mindset. I didn’t realize that that time, that was the case. Um, and as I went through the years, I began to codify.[00:05:00] 

What I really stood for in my own personal life. And one of those things I really stood for was, was learning is that there really is no such thing as a mistake or a failure. There’s only an opportunity to learn. And it’s what you get out of those instances, which just puts you in a good position moving forward.

And I think that’s really in many respects, what makes a successful entrepreneurs, um, really flourish and go onwards is that they, they have this learning mindset of, okay, we’ve had a setback. How do we solve this? And getting that mindset is a decision that we each and every one of us can make is saying, okay, I’m going to decide to learn from this experience and then solve the problem and the go around it, or I’m going to get through it or over it or under it, but I’m going to go [00:06:00] along and work away at it.

Yeah. So that’s one of the things I’ve found has been, uh, really worthwhile. So it’s, um, developing that learning mindset has been so important for me in my own entrepreneurial career. Um, when I first started from when I first started my very first business, when I was 16 to now, I’m 56. And, uh, so 40 years later, and I’ve been running one business after another.

Have you seen, I’ll call him Michael, do you think it matters? Do you think it matters that you’ve actually learned these things and will these things actually help. Increase your chances of success on your next startup. That’s critical. Um, it really is critical. And the thing that I have noticed, there’s not putting sort of tickets on myself saying I’m more wonderful or anything like that, but there’s nothing like the experience having an experience, but then [00:07:00] saying what the learn from the experience.

I mean, when I did my MBA, uh, back in the nineties, um, one of my lecturers, um, he encouraged everyone. The end of each day is to sit down for 10 minutes for 10 minutes and save yourself with a cup of coffee, a drink or whatever, and say, what did I learn from today? I ended up, uh, I shifted that to the morning actually.

And I, and I, once again, codify that process and that is reinforced things. So I don’t make the same mistakes again, and that I can go forward with that. You can’t call it in your own businesses. You must have. Um, you must have actually, um, felt like that those experiences have put you in good stead.

Absolutely. And you know, it’s been a theory of mine and I’ve been trying to document it and understand it. There was a Harvard business school research study. Now, now let me, let me be clear. You can [00:08:00] learn and you can increase your chances of success on a startup. Here’s the study. The study said that studies demonstrate the study studied, um, a number of successful entrepreneurs.

They looked at those that were serial entrepreneurs. And those that were first-time entrepreneur entrepreneurs going public. So we have a situation here where they’re actually going into a public market. So, you know, they’ve gotten pretty successful at that point. There was a 30% chance of succeeding in the venture.

If they ha were successful in prior ventures. Now 30% sounds pretty low, but remember, these are startups in contrast, first-time entrepreneurs showed only 18% chance of succeeding with their startups. So what’s the difference between the first time and the seasoned entrepreneur. The fact that they’ve almost doubled their odds of success to get that startup off the ground.

And, and I, and I would say it’s all about learning. So I think [00:09:00] that study itself proves that entrepreneurs can increase their chances of success with a startup by learnt listening and learning. And I think clubhouse, I think the leading, you know, books out there with, uh, authors, like, you know, Jeffrey Moore who we have coming on next week onto clubhouse or, um, Jim Collins, I think learning, listening increase your chances of success for your startup.

Yeah. And I might add to that when I think about learning and a learning mindset, what pops into my mind is curiosity. What I have found that, you know, the people that I admire that I find are always thinking of the new things. And let’s say an air quotes learned is they’re very, very curious people. Like they don’t just accept things.

So I think there’s [00:10:00] something to be said about obviously being very open-minded, but having this innate insatiable curiosity.

Uh, look few, be curiosity is one of the key things I think that entrepreneurs need to develop is that mentality of being just curious, curious, curious of, I wonder, I wonder. And in fact, one of the things that, uh, I would encourage every entrepreneur to do is to set aside time in their schedule every single day.

Just to be curious, be curious about the other industries, be curious about signs, technology, be curious about something that is not in your normal, in your normal mode of, uh, researching for your business. And the reason why I suggest this is that what I find is that when I’m learning about another industry, I suddenly think, you know, what, [00:11:00] they solved a problem, very similar to this, and I can bring it into my context.

And, and that happens all the time, um, where some other industries solve something or, or it suddenly opens your mind up to other possibilities because we can get so much in a rut in, in our, in our mindset and our thinking and learning is all about getting out of the rat and experience, exploring the forest off the road and the mountains off to the left or something like that.

It’s exploring those things. And that’s what it’s about, but doing it in a, in a mental sense, for instance, um, uh, in, in my. Um, between Christmas and new year, I read a couple of books. Um, I read Elon Musk’s book on space X. I read Elon Musk’s book on Tesla. I wanted to learn about those two things. What, what was the drove those two credible companies I then said, oh, I think this is [00:12:00] pretty interesting stuff.

I’m going to research. Um, I had a research, but, but, um, at rockets and how to make rockets and that sort of stuff, I was being curious. And I discovered this, this guy and he was on YouTube and, uh, an amazing individual. Um, he would, he had a D he has a degree in music and, uh, so he was quite successful in what he’s doing in music.

And he decided he wanted to get the rockets five years ago and he just began reading and he was just reading and reading. And now he’s got a rock. Um, so five years later he builds these incredible, incredible model rockets. And his goal is to launch as a, as an amateur, as such is to launch a rocket into space and to, um, uh, have a satellite orbiting the earth that he actually runs and all that [00:13:00] sort of stuff.

That’s his fault. That’s his aspiration. So far, he’s been got up to about 130,000 feet, which is not bad. Um, but you know, it’s, they’re inspirational those things, but I wouldn’t have come across that if I wasn’t curious. And so Michelle, I think you’re so right in that is just having that curious mindset of, I wonder, I wonder and look, look around at different things into the future and that sort of stuff.

So I’d ask you to call it. I used to. Of course, I’m still curious. Of course, I want to continue to learn. Um, I joined an organization. Yeah. And you’re very successful. Right? You just you’ve, you broadened a number of companies to become publicly listed. You’re just, um, um, spearhead, a.club moving forward and the lesser of staff.

And you’ve now sold that off [00:14:00] and you’re telling me, you’re still curious. Well, I’ll tell you one thing. Uh, I’m working with shell right now. We’re trying to run a media company called startup club on clubhouse. And I don’t have a lot of experience on that. So what I can do is I can listen and I can learn.

And I was just talking to Michelle right now about 20 minutes ago, but I wasn’t even thinking about this topic. And I was saying, Hey, we need to start connecting with the other club leaders on clubhouse so we can develop best practices. How much money does that cost me to do. But what can I learn? What can I learn that they’re doing well, that I can apply to startup club or we can apply to startup club?

What is it that we can, we do well that we can share with them? That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about. I belong to an organization called EO. I’ve been in that, that organization for 25 years. I surround myself with other like-minded entrepreneurs who also have their own businesses and we help each other launch and run, [00:15:00] uh, companies.

And I have to say, I don’t think I would be nearly as successful without my EO group, without the people that I meet every month. There’s eight of us that meet. Um, and we really get into the details there, everyone here in this room, everyone who does a startup has an opportunity to surround themselves with good people.

And I will, um, say you can do that on clubhouse. Which I think is great. And I think everyone should do that. Try to get involved as much as possible, but I also think you can get involved in a local incubator. We run an incubator here in Fort Lauderdale, um, or an accelerator, um, or something similar to that.

Um, however, there’s a much larger center located that just launched about three months ago in so Florida called the Allen Levann center. And you can actually Google that the Allen Levann center, they put $15 million [00:16:00] into building this floor on the top of a unit, a university library at, uh, Florida, Florida Atlantic university.

And, um, it’s phenomenal. The facilities are phenomenal. The people you meet are phenomenal. The support is phenomenal. Earlier today, I was in a session and I ended it by saying, you know, I’m going to quote Hillary Clinton here. It does take a village. When it comes to a startup, it takes a village, surround yourself with good people.

Yeah, how true, how true is surround yourself with good people and it’s great having good people here, um, on the complete entrepreneur. Yes. We’re talking about developing a learning mindset of you’re in the audience. You’re sort of saying, yeah, I got some questions to ask or, uh, I’ve got a story to tell you about how just learning really transformed my business in such a way, then please stick your hand up.

We’d love to invite you this, that, and the stage to hear from you. But in the meantime, [00:17:00] yeah, it’s, it’s one of the things I I’m amazed at is the, not the amount of resources available to us nowadays. Um, I, I remember when I launched my very first business many, many years ago, um, you basically had, I had the library and.

And I would go to the library and I’d read up RK. So what’s the same cold I go to manage stock, or I heard this thing called marketing. How do you do marketing? Um, and I know we just read books, uh, and I’d read one book after another. And then as, uh, uh, managed to get some money in my pocket, I ended up going to bookstores now, which is just go along and get heaps of books by every weekend, be buying the books, just to read.

And there’s so many resources online now as well. So, Jeff, do you find that when you look back at your own. Sort of business career and everything like that. What are the things that [00:18:00] really crystallized your thinking in terms of developing this learning mindset? Was it resources or like, what was it that really, really triggered things off of you yourself?

I think, um, Michelle really hit the nail on the head with curiosity. I mean, I’ve always been someone who’s been curious and always looking to read, uh, and stay on top of the new things. And I think when, when you think about a learning mindset today, it’s actually. Not just something that’s desirable. I think it’s essential for entrepreneurs because of the pace of things today, versus when I started out in my career.

So I’m, I’m the oldest person on the stage. And I’ll say that, you know, when I was younger, things moved at a relatively slow pace compared today because there was no internet. There was no, you know, if you wanted to research something, you didn’t pull your phone out of your pocket. You have to go to Hawaii library and sit down and look things up on index cards.

So things moved in terms of [00:19:00] advancements at a slower pace. So you could start your business, uh, and pretty much have blinders on. As long as you were educated and informed about the industry, you were. You could probably chug along and be successful. That’s not true today. I mean, we live in a world that moves at internet speed.

You know, every day there are developments that can affect your businesses, tra trajectory. And if you’re not of that mindset to keep learning, to keep aware, to know what’s going on, what’s changing, you’re going to be left out of opportunities or you might be passed by. By competitors who are more informed of what’s going on, and that happens with every aspect of your business.

You know, I’m a COO I’m on the marketing side of things and, oh my gosh, every day, there’s new, uh, ad tech technologies coming out. There are new platforms emerging that create advertising opportunities. Um, and if you’re not staying on top of those things, if you’re not learning every day about them, you’re [00:20:00] not going to be keeping yourself in a position to keep your company moving forward at the same pace as the world around you.

So I think it’s essential to have that learning mindset. It’s essential to take time, to read trade magazines in your industry, to stay on top of the news what’s happening culturally, because all of these things have an impact on your business. And you’re thinking no matter what industry you’re in. So you’ve got to be learning every.

In my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. Um, Jeff will tell you what it’s, it’s, it’s all about. How do you, how do you methodically do this and it’s being committed to your own self-development I think is that, how do you, how do you just allocate that time? Because, oh, you should be doing something else. No, it’s it’s it’s the classic Stephen CONABIO.

Is it important? Yes, it is. Um, is it urgent? Well, now it’s not really urgent, [00:21:00] but it’s, but it is. And yourself is not urgent, but it is important yesterday. Yeah. I also think Michael too, if you, if you get in that learning mindset that we’re talking about, it’s exciting. It helps encourage your passion because when you’re interested in learning, when you have the curiosity, as Michelle said, when you then discover something or learn something new, it’s a shot of dopamine.

It’s exciting. It gets your juices flowing. You know, you read some article and you’ll learn something new. You’re running into the office next to and say, Hey, did you hear about such and such? You know, we could do that. We can use that technology, or we can, you know, we can be inspired by what this company is doing.

So learning is, is, is really, you know, you want to be a complete entrepreneur. Learning is one of the things that’s going to make you a complete entrepreneur. That’s going to make you a better person. Absolutely. Jeff will tell you it’s, um, having that learning. Could [00:22:00] really just like, it’s like turn the lights on in the room when it’s in the middle of the night, turn lights on somebody.

Every, you could see everything is like, oh my gosh, you see, I’m amazed as a number of people who walked through life and they say, oh, I just can’t come up with that business idea. And I’m sitting there thinking I didn’t have enough time for all the business side. The reason why is because over decades I put into myself, I’ve just learning, learning, learning, and learning, learning.

Yeah. And, um, so the, the challenge for me, I find is work out which idea to pursue and which one not to pursue. And, uh, and then how do you execute on that? And what did I learn in previous businesses that I can now execute better in this new venture or something like that? Yeah. And my, my wife has said, said to me, she said, look, if you ever sold your existing business, what you’re doing, um, then let me tell you within 10 minutes, you’d [00:23:00] have another one going so true.

Yeah. Because it’s, it’s learning and just came back to resources. Like I think that the, one of the sad things that the internet has ended up doing, and it is that we now have curated news. In other words, you get the news you want to see. Um, and they say, well, why is that sad? Isn’t that a good thing? Cause it’s all customized to me, but there’s something about turning the page in a newspaper and going, oh, I didn’t know that before.

Why? Because it wasn’t curated for you. It was on page four and you read this article and you’re, oh, that’s really interesting information. Yeah. And you could have break out of that. Almost the, those walled gardens that the likes of the Googles and the Facebooks and all that sort of stuff is created around us and to break out of them so that we can have this.

I [00:24:00] didn’t know that moment. And versus they’re trying to always tailor things for us and curated and make it just about you. And that’s really bad. The downsides to that, um, it’s, it’s going to a bookstore and picking a book off the books off the shelf, just because the cover looks good, buy it and then read it.

Not because you think the words look good or anything like that on the back jacket or something, but just cause the cover looked awesome. And you just go along and buy it. I remember many years ago I bought a book called the fifth year. And it by an author called Peter singy, fantastic singe, his exact pronunciation, absolutely amazing book.

And it talked about developing a learning organization such no more than just developing you as the entrepreneur to be learning [00:25:00] is how do you develop your business into a learning organization so that everyone in the business has a mindset of, I need to learn so that I could do my job more effectively and get out of that, or this is the way we’ve always done it.

Therefore, we need to go ahead and do it in the future. I’m not sure if Michelle, have you come across that at book called the fifth discipline, um, in your business travels. I don’t think I have. Who was the office? Peter singy, S E N G E or sins. Uh, it’s a fantastic book. It’s quite can be quite technical in radiant and talks about a learning organization.

There’s an even better book, which is the handbook on his book, which is a whole lot of training organizations. You can take your teams through or how to develop that learning mindset. Um, [00:26:00] Yeah, that’s a really cool book. And in fact, I’ve got a, my shelf just here, it’s called the fifth discipline field book with Peter singy, S C N G E.

Um, and it really is that strategies and tools for building a learning organization. And it’s an outstanding book if you’re sitting there in, in the audience there and you’re saying, okay, what’s a good walk for me to read, take a look at that one, because it really is just awesome. Awesome. But yeah, it’s developing that mindset.

Isn’t it? Isn’t it. Michelle, you talked about generosity and I was just thinking about the other side of the coin for being curious, like Jeff was saying, and he is, he’s one of the most, you know, date people. I know. How do you balance and I’m, I’m gonna shoot this at Jeff. How do you balance that curiosity?

Like with just [00:27:00] information overload. Like I get like add, like, it’s just like, I’ll save a million articles. Like you seem very focused, Jeff. Like, how do you manage that efficiently? Yeah, it’s a, it’s a good question. I’ll have to think about it. I mean, I think w you know, Michael referred to before, you know, having time set aside, time for learning what I’ve been doing, you know, I have certain, um, newsfeeds and things that I check out and I kind of do it as part of a routine.

So like I do it as part of my morning routine, in addition to exercising and journaling and meditating. I also take a few minutes to go through some news sources and some, uh, things that I curate to just look for articles. The other thing I do, so I don’t get distracted is, um, when I’m going about my business or browsing or come across an article or something that’s interesting, or the topic I want to learn.

I’ll call rather than stop what I’m doing and read it, then I’ll clip it. I have a, a remarkable two [00:28:00] tablet, which is like a note book, uh, an electronic notebook tablet. And there’s a wonderful, um, Chrome plugin for it. Where if I see any webpage, I’m on it, I want to read it offline. Later. I click on that plugin and it actually clips the article and sends it to my remarkable device.

So then when I’m sitting at home in the evening or on the weekends, and I want to catch up on things, I open up my tablet and I almost have a personally curated magazine of articles that I’m interested in. And then I could read them at my leisure. And so I condense the learning into those types of reading sessions and I find that to be more efficient and easier to stay focused on it than just doing things, you know, haphazard.

Yeah. That’s a great idea. I’ll have to try. I don’t have a remarkable nor do I work for them, but I I’ve seen you do that. Actually. I didn’t realize that’s what you were doing. That’s a great tip. Thank [00:29:00] you. Yeah. The other thing I find Michelle is that, um, I don’t get stressed about, um, about not reading every article that comes across my desk as such, uh, I don’t worry about it.

I allocate the time in the morning. That’s my time. Um, where I really input into myself like this. Um, um, sort of a bit like what Jeff was saying is that if I find something really interesting, I just market and say, okay, that’s my time tomorrow. Uh, I want to read that in depth, um, and not bought that that’s really worthwhile.

Um, it’s great to hear Jeff. You’re doing something very, very similar to me and, um, and it just works, uh, cause you’re right. You can get information overload if you don’t watch it. And uh, and you sort of end up thrashing rather than achieving. The whole idea of learning is to learn also not just about new things, but learn [00:30:00] about yourself.

And I think that’s the biggest adventure in life is learning about yourself. What makes you tick? What makes you tick as an entrepreneur? Why do you get excited when you go to work or do you get depressed when you go to work? Um, what is it about your business? Why did you start your business in the first place?

I wondered the core fundamentals. One of the things I’m getting really challenged by in all the different business sort of ventures I’m involved faulting is what is the core fundamental of each of those businesses? What is the core driver of each of those businesses? And they’ll really learn about that.

And so if you’ve got a problem or anything like that, you’re trying to wrestle with these, how does this problem relate to the core fundamental, for instance, in, in, in one of my businesses pack logic, we manage, uh, good over 7 billion requests to our servers every [00:31:00] day. And we wrapped that traffic. So what’s that core fundamental?

What is it that we do? We wrapped traffic. That’s what we do. And I can put it in all sorts, different ways of how do we make money from that and everything like that. But fundamentally, what is the core fundamental we wrapped up. Yeah. So it’s, it’s coming down to that call it colon, just in your own experiences of your different businesses.

Did you ever try to drill down to what is that core competency and what did you learn from that experience with trying to get down to that and did it impact your decision making further, further onwards in the, in the life of that business? The key, I mean, there’s a lot of things that, you know, impact your decision-making.

And I think that, you know, I really, I really think it’s important to surround yourself with a really good team, um, and to spend the time to do the strategic planning that you need to do for your business. And I really [00:32:00] care. I don’t care if you have an idea, you know, it’s important to bring people together, put them in a room, people you trust people who are not going to be naysayers.

People are going to say this idea has some. Have you thought about this and you make that idea stronger and better. Um, I know I’m inviting a few people up from the audience here. This is really a conversation we want to have with everybody here in the room. If you, if you’re in the audience and you want to share with us your ideas or how you learn about your idea or what you do to strive to improve your entrepreneurial skills.

Because I think that’s what it’s all about here today, right? It’s like, we’re trying to figure out how do we become better entrepreneurs? How do we master that trait? Because it is a trade. It is something you can learn. And if you’re in the audience, please don’t please raise your hand, come join us on stage.

Just have some fun. And let’s talk about that. And Colin just real [00:33:00] quick to add, you know, it doesn’t have to be on an individual basis when you have your startup, you can have a culture of learning, um, which is really good. So, um, you know, when we have our weekly strategy meetings@paul.com, we set aside 10 minutes, um, where we share an article that’s just of interest.

It could be something from our industry. It could be e-commerce related, it could be pet related, whatever. And we spend 10 minutes as a group, just talking about the article, what is it inspiring us? What do we learn from it? Are there things that we can apply to our own business? So the, the, um, mindset of learning is not just on an individual basis, but we try to do it as a team, uh, each week.

I think Jeff, I think that’s a fantastic, um, uh, habit to get into doing something like that. Uh, we do something very similar. We call it the water. Every week we get [00:34:00] together and people share about what they’ve been working on and what’s what, um, on some ideas they may have and that sort of stuff. Um, and it it’s, it’s, it’s transformational, um, those sorts of events.

And so test what you’re doing there, but Daniel, Daniel, it’s great to have you on the complete entrepreneur. I’d love to hear your thoughts on developing a mindset and what have you got to share? Share. Hello everyone. Hi Coleen. Thank you for bringing him up to the stage and hi, Michael and Michelle and Jeffrey.

Um, it’s a pleasure to be here. Um, you know, I’ve been listening and you, you were employing when sane, uh, console learning, uh, will help, will help a lot on shaping on your mindset. Like reading books, reading articles, um, studying successful entrepreneurs too. Like you say, Michael, you went ahead and read about, you know, Tesla and the space X and you know, [00:35:00] those kind of, uh, behavior and heavy.

Uh, you know, keep learning from other people is, is key. Right. Um, and you know, I personally, I like to do that as well. Like I read a lot, I buy some, um, startups, books, entrepreneur books, and we gotta be up to date because especially how with how technology evolves from year to year. You know, some sometimes if you, if you don’t read, what’s, what’s hot at the mom and you may miss out on opportunity.

So, um, I totally agree with you on, on stay or keeping up to what’s new and, and also reading and learning. So being open to learn escape. And, um, so that’s, that’s, uh, that’s my, my, my 2 cents. And to answer that question, you’re saying you bring that up, Daniel. Um, I remember reading a book in [00:36:00] 1996. It was called crossing the chasm by Geoffrey Moore.

And I am bringing that up, not because Jeffrey Moore’s coming on next Friday on the clubhouse. So those is a shameless plug because it is incredible that we have one of the top five business authors in history coming on to our startup club. And, um, but I learned about the, the, what he described as the technology adoption curve and the challenges that new technology companies face when they launch, when they launch a product.

And then as the product becomes more mainstream, how a tornado effect occurs and you see explosive growth and I’ve applied those theories to almost every company that I’ve taken public or I’ve sold in the last 20. Twenty-five 30 years and, um, incredible results. And I often will look back to the few [00:37:00] books that made a big difference in my life and crossing the chasm by Jeffrey.

Maura was one of them. Yeah. That’s interesting. You say that call on. Yeah, there’s an author, Tom Peters, um, and two ex McKinsey and co consultant. Um, and he really challenged my thinking one day when I was reading one of his books and it was, when was the last time you cannibalize your revenue line? In other words, to move forward, you quite often may have to have to, uh, destroy your current revenue.

And one of the challenges for tech companies as a constantly, um, uh, potentially, um, kind of lives in their revenue lines. And that has really stuck in my mind, but that, so Daniel here’s question for you. What’s a really good book you’ve read recently. Um, you know, it’s like good question. [00:38:00] Um, I really, I really like, I read one recently about, uh, negotiating and, um, never it’s an old book, never split the differences.

I liked that one a lot. Then there is another one that I got a, um, can remember the name, but, uh, I’ll, I’ll pull it out from my list, but I saw about an entrepreneur. Um, when you create a startup, when you create a new company, not to the book is about not being, um, The person that does everything at the same time, because you ended up burnout.

So I’m not, um, I’m trying to come with the name out. I’ll remember it, but I, um, that one is one of the books that I, I, I recently read, uh, never split the difference. Um, and that’s about negotiate in basically, but, um, but yeah, I’m, I’m constantly reading books about, [00:39:00] um, solve development. Like I like, um, author, like John Maxwell, um, like, uh, talent is never enough.

I sometimes have read books that are, you know, 20 years all like, you know, um, like a think and grow rich. Um, And sometimes I go back to books that I already read, like just to remind the concepts, because sometimes, you know, we tend to forget all those, you know, key gems that are on all those books and we come back to do the same mistakes.

So, um, but those are the books that I wrestled read. And I, and I really, I really liked those, but. But yeah. What about what I would like to hear other people with what books I recently read and I took notes on that book call in crossing the chasm. And, um, and, and can you please mention Michael, the one that you’ve just mentioned as well, because I couldn’t [00:40:00] take note on that one.

Yeah. The one I mentioned, where’s the fifth discipline by Peter Senge. and there’s a handbook that goes with that. It’s a fantastic book. The other thing I sometimes will do just to get inspired is you go back like, uh, get a, um, a really, really old electronics magazine or popular mechanics or something like that magazine.

And just read some of the really old ones, because there’s a whole lot of ideas and there’s old magazines, which were not possible back like 50 years ago, but they’re possible now. And then like there’s so many great ideas and that sort of stuff, and it can be quite inspirational, but, um, I just want to move on to Julie, Julie.

It’s great to have you on the complete entrepreneur where you’re talking about developing a learning mindset, Julie, welcome to the stage. Thank you, Julie. Shay access show. Um, oh, let me start with, let me share a story. Story of [00:41:00] thirst, actually. Um, this mindset thing, when I started, I was kind of with a group of financial people.

So I went to their seminar, they have weekly seminars, so I went out and then they have books suggested readings. So I started with that, but then I bumped into my coach. Now I have a coach. I have a business coach. So when I have my publishers, my other coaches. So I realized, um, when you at different stage, you set different goals.

You really need to have a coach, somebody to do accountability with and put you on different mindset. Even it’s still just regarding the readings or it just like kind of a round table discussion because we had a fight. So he didn’t really, he didn’t really want to talk to me right now. There’s a couple of days, but then usually I call him [00:42:00] and then we have a little discussion, just run a, you ask me like, um, what did I read today or the other day?

Or what’s that issue that’s bothering me and stuff. And then how’s the family, or just like, there’s a, you just go on and ask me questions. And it goes through kind of like a checklist. So that’s kind of the accountability part kind of, when you go to the gym, you have a buddy and you have accountability as certain goes, you need to move.

And my coach has also. Fitness coach. He’s the Chagall master. So we do fitness together. So when he did the cold down, the ice bath donkey asked me to try it out. I got another ready yet. So he asked me other days. So that’s at different steps. I take to make myself better and set different goals at different days or different weeks or something.

And, and he’s even today ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Julie, you’ve raised a [00:43:00] really big issue there, which is it’s sometimes it’s quite good to get a business coach, which will not only hold you accountable, but also to challenge your thinking. Colin, I know you’re a strong proponent of having business coaches. Um, did, you’ve had one in your, your business life as well.

Have you found they’ve been, uh, it’s been really worthwhile. In fact, they challenge the way you think and help you learn it rather than getting lost in the trees. Eh, let me say this in 2006, I’m running a small publicly traded company. Um, the revenues start to flat line, uh, come the end of the quarter, the, um, the targets that we were aiming for, we, all of a sudden we found out we missed we, I was blindsided.

Uh, the wheels were coming off the bus, the, the board of directors were starting to turn on me and I realized I was in trouble. So I called up a friend of mine and I’ve [00:44:00] been following Verne Harnish who has been on this, um, startup club. He’s an author of the book called scaling up. And, uh, his partner was Patrick Theon.

And with Patrick thin, um, I called him in and he became my CEO coach and the company. We began to turn it around by implementing system. That he taught, um, that he brought to the company systems like goal setting, annual goal setting, quarterly goal setting, individual goal setting. We began to turn the company around astronomical growth, sold it to a fortune 500 company.

Um, a few years later. And today the S that Patrick Dean is still my CEO coach on all my companies. If you have a coach, it will take yourself to a new level, a CEO coach, but it will also take your executive team to the next [00:45:00] level as well. Um, and I do that now, Jeff sass is here. He convinced me to get a coach for CrossFit.

So I do CrossFit three times a week, and I have a coach. And I have to say that’s a little more painful than, than getting maybe I dunno, maybe it’s not, but, uh, but the fact of the matter is you got to. It makes a difference. And what Julie said about accountability. That’s so true. It’s so true. Like it’s, it’s, it’s like you have this outside accountability to your organization.

It makes a difference. Oh, how true they are calling and really do appreciate your input there, Julie. Franco’s when it come across to you now, um, we’re talking about developing a learning mindset. Love to get your thoughts on this topic so we can all learn. So Franco, uh, welcome to the stage. Thank you, Michael.

Appreciate it. Um, just, uh, I guess it’s it, you know, it’s interesting. Collin mentioned [00:46:00] systems. That’s, that’s something actually that I, um, encounter this week on clubhouse, just, uh, learning and trying to understand. Um, I guess it really, from, from a developing side, I really do enjoy, um, self-development I think that’s kind of like at the top of my, um, you know, my to-do list every day, you know, every day, wake up with a, with a grateful, uh, uh, attitude.

Um, so that pretty much what, what I do personally is, um, I stay informed, right? I stay informed, I read books. Um, I read, I actually just completed a challenge. Um, the last couple of months it’s called a seventy-five hard and it was pretty much, pretty much doing about six things every day. Um, that ranged from working out twice a day, reading 10 pages, um, every day, drinking a gallon of water, um, taking a progress pictures, things like that.

It’s really not, it wasn’t a fitness challenge. It was more of a mental challenge to get [00:47:00] these things done every single day. Before you go to. Uh, and that’s something I, I took on and, and I really wanted, I felt the first time I did it, I felt on day 66, because I forgot to take a picture. Um, I know it sounds silly, but it’s just, you know, it’s the accountability that I took onto myself to say, you know what, you know, I could easily say, you know, no one’s watching me.

There’s nobody holding. You know, it’s just yourself. That’s, that’s the biggest part about this, this program. Um, and I said, you know what, the next day, you know, your mind tells you, you know, what, you just take a day off or, or you’ve been doing this for a while. And it’s, it really starts messing with your mind a little bit.

And, and I, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. So I said, you know what? Next day I started from day one. And that’s pretty much what happens if you don’t do one of those things. And I started again and 75 days later, I completed the challenge, I believe about two weeks, three weeks. Uh, and it felt amazing.

So I, from that, I think I’ve created a multiple habits that, that, that, that are, that I feel like are sticking now. And from eating [00:48:00] healthy, you know, eating good food, what you’re putting in your system. Um, I think that’s big. Uh, we’re working out almost every day, just, you know, and then it’s nothing crazy.

It’s just something like that. So, um, I’m in the constant, you know, curious to learn more about anything. Love, love that stuff. So, um, that’s pretty much what I’m up to. Well, let me say Franco, congratulations on completing the challenge. Um, it’s a great thing to actually do to actually set a goal and accomplish it.

And I think that, um, my guess it’s through that process, you’d learn a lot of things about yourself and also you learned a lot of things about, um, but, uh, what you can do, what you can achieve, um, on a journey when you really put your mind to it. So how does it feel to actually have completed that? It feels amazing.

I feel that there’s nothing in front of me now. That’s, that’s going to stop me. So now I [00:49:00] really just need to kind of get focused on, you know, my goals, again, just kind of shifting the narrative, because again, I, I can meet everybody on this stage and in the room. Um, it’s, it’s really, I know it’s cliche to say mind over matter, but it really comes down to that.

There was. Um, you know, part of the program was just doing a workout every two workouts every day, and one had to be outdoors. So either had to go for a walk or run. Um, and really, you know, sometimes, you know, I have, I have a full-time job, so, you know, I, I would get things done and I will have to schedule my day to make sure that I fit in everything, eat healthy.

Um, and sometimes, you know, you have things to do and I will get home say 1130, 12:00 PM at night. Um, and I’ll get on my bicycle and just go ride for 45 minutes. Um, and it’s really something I feel accomplished. Uh, but now it’s, I feel like now it’s it’s game time now for me, it it’s now really focusing on.

Entrepreneurial side and really, you know, focusing on that and [00:50:00] it’s not easy, but, uh, back to what Colin was saying about systems, um, just really quickly, I, you know, it’s interesting when you hear other people talk about it. And previously I, in my head, you know, in my mind, I thought systems only apply to companies and, you know, creating systems.

And I understand that because I come from a corporate background, however, I did not, I did not see how it can apply to yourself. Um, so now that I’m making that shift, I’m really seeing how you can almost audit yourself, um, as a system. Uh, and I, and that’s what I picked up this week and I’m going to kind of take that and work on myself.

Yeah. I remember doing what we, we actually implemented something called the daily sales huddle in our organization. And I actually emulated this from the investment bankers, uh, who took our company, public RBC was the particular company. Right. They actually had twice a day meetings with their team. Um, [00:51:00] so what we would do is every morning we would meet with the top salespeople or all the sales people.

Sorry. And we would ask them three questions. Um, question number one, you know, what was your top priority today? What was your success yesterday? Number two. And are you stuck? And let me tell you this, the most important question of the three was what was your number one success yesterday? So Franco, when you say, does it affect you?

I had to show up the meeting every fricking day and say, yeah, yesterday I actually called the CEO of these telecoms to connect with them, to get a deal. I had to show the team that I was delivering the results as well, daily sales huddle. And I think the best person who describes the. Uh, on the internet is Verne Harnish.

He’s done a great job. You Google daily sales, huddle, Verne, Harnish, nothing [00:52:00] will change your company more than doing that. Yeah, I agree with you on that one, call him. It was nothing like every, it’d be a leader to, to change your mindset because you’ve got to perform in front of your team. It’s a, it’s a big, it’s a big challenge.

That’s for sure. But, um, you’re listening to the complete entrepreneur. We’re talking about developing a learning mindset. We’re coming close towards the end of our time together today, but I’d just like to get through to Sadie. Sadie. It’s wonderful to have you, um, in the room with us on the stage. And, uh, if you could just, uh, share what you have to share about make it a bridge so we can skip across the Christian next.

That would be great. Thank you. Welcome to the stage.

Uh, Sadie, it looks like you’re not there. Um, we’ll go across the Christian then Christian. Welcome to the [00:53:00] stage.

It will call me out. I’m very happy to be here.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much for that Christian. We’re happy that you’re here as well. We’re going to be moving on right now then. And one of the questions I ask myself all the time, um, to force my mind into a learning mindset is the question why I ask her all the time. In fact, I’m a noxious to my family, obnoxious to my business partners and noxious to stop everything I said.

Let’s say, well, what we do, we do it this way. I say, well, why do we do it that way? Or why are you still doing that? Why can’t it be done better? Um, why are competitors doing it this way? [00:54:00] And, and ask the question, why is, is it really, is to drill down to why don’t we do it? You know, why is your keyboard got 40 across the top there?

Q w E R T Y. You know, it was originally designed to slow down tophus because on the mechanical arms of keyboards, they’re G they’re jamming. Cause they’re learning to talk too fast. So a, an engineer came along and said, let’s make it slower. We’ll put the E in an awkward position and let’s put the you and the I and the O and the other awkward positions to slow these type of stamps.

And today we’re still using the QWERTY keyboard. I only wish the divorce keyboard would really take off, but sadly it hasn’t, but you know, it’s why do we do these things? Um, why do you do the things in your business? And that question of why is this? It is, like I said, it can be quite a noxious, [00:55:00] um, brain to really ask the difficult questions.

For instance, I talked about before, how, what do we do? We, we manage traffic. We wrap traffic in one of my companies. And why do we do it that way? Is there a better way of wrapping the traffic? Kelly Maxima increased the yield on the traffic we’re getting, why did we do it like that? Is it because we’ve always done it that way?

Is there a better way of doing. And these questions are things which are going to provoke. Um, some quite interesting responses I find from people when you begin to ask the why, but what’s good to do is have a big whiteboard or pink sheet of paper and ask the questions. Why did we do this? And as you write the answers up on the board, you can then begin to say, well, well, why do we do that answer [00:56:00] and so forth?

So if I was to say something to yourself, Jeff, as an example, um, why does poor.com do what it does then, then you sort of say, Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Why do we do it the way we do it? Why are you doing it the way? I’m not asking you to answer the question, Jeff right now, but it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting, um, avenue of thinking you ended up in go going down.

Yeah. So this is one of the things I find it’s been really useful. So what are the other things you do to force your brain to, to open up and to accept that maybe there’s other possibilities. So Michelle, I’d love to come back to yourself. What do you do that will like try to drag your brain out of that rock into maybe there’s another way of doing this?

Well for me, and this might sound odd, but [00:57:00] I need rest and I need physical activity. So for me, when I’m stuck in a rut, I need to get a good night’s sleep. My body’s trying to tell me something. You know, go for a long, hard workout. That’s what helps me.

Yeah. Let me say one of the things I do is I have a shower. If I’m, if I’m stuck on a problem, I need to create a break. I just go never shout. And, uh, and I just sometimes will stand in the shower and I’ll just be thinking and suddenly that that idea will come, which will solve the problem. How about yourself?

Call it? What do you do to get yourself out? Or you’re rushing, you’re thinking I have a glass of wine. I relax. I just sorta like, you know, okay. I’m having a glass of wine and then we sit around and we start talking about things and next thing you know, we get the next big idea. I mean, I don’t know.

Sometimes you can’t pressure yourself to do it. Right. Um, I know I want to say this though. [00:58:00] We have in three minutes with Procter and gamble or Proctor and gamble, venture series, um, lessons from the edge and we’re going to hit. Stories that will make you, I mean, I’m serious. They’re going to make you cry.

The guests we have today on the show, and that starts in three minutes. Um, so everyone, I know, I know, I know. I’m hoping everybody here can join us for that show because it’s going to be phenomenal. Um, I do have to jump off and start the room, but uh, come join us. I mean, I’m telling you, this is going to be the number one show you listen to in clubhouse.

And I’m sorry, Michael, it’s going to be the number one show of the, of the month, at least, or maybe the year to complete entrepreneur course. Yes, of course. So I have to jump off great show. Michael Daniel, Julie Franco, please cup. Thank you for jumping coming on stage, right? I mean, that’s what this is all about.

This is all [00:59:00] about a community and sharing and I wish we had more time to hear more of your ideas and your thoughts. Really really liked the fact you did that and enjoy it. I’ll see you all next week on the complete entrepreneur. Michael, I’m not closing it for you. Yeah, fantastic. Thanks a lot for that call.

And then I’m sure there’ll be a whole lot of people hit across there to second, but I think just to wrap things up, yeah, we’ve done some amazing. So trying to begin to unpack this whole idea of developing a learning mindset, and I think we’ve scratched the surface. It’d be a good topic to come back to it because there’s just so much in that or of just ideas and techniques and what do we do?

It’s like, how do you do things such as relate anything to anything? And what is that the, that the creative tension between those two points. Um, and is there an entrepreneurial opportunity in doing and looking at that, but there’s lots of things that are going to be going on, um, on the complete [01:00:00] entrepreneur, as we take a look, what it means to lead the life of an entrepreneur, but next week, let me tell you, we’ve got a great, great topic.

It’s called the prophetic honorable. More often than not entrepreneurs see problems and opportunities that other people do not see with the right skillset. This prophetic insight is a gift that can propel you or your business. If the future that you foresee, this is more than dreaming. This is, this is for seeing the future.

Um, that they’re there to be created. That’s what we’re going to be taking a look at next week is what does it mean to be a prophetic entrepreneur? And I think there’s going to be a really interesting one as we begin to unpack that, um, like Colin said, I just want to thank everyone who came on the stage.

It’s just great having you here, Daniel, Julie Franco. Uh, it was fabulous having you. I just want to thank all of those people in the audience. It’s been great having you here with me, feel free to go along and, and follow [01:01:00] me. And so you can, uh, come be informed. Next time we’re doing the complete entrepreneur next week, 5:00 PM Eastern time.

And I look forward to seeing you there. May you have a wonderful week in your business and in your life? God bless you all. Thanks so much. One question. How do we, how do we get to Colin’s room? Is.

That’s a great question. If you look at Collin’s profile, if you search for him, you’ll be there. If you go to start-up club, if you click on the link above, it’s pinned above to start a club, you’ll see a schedule of events and you’ll see it there. Um, and or if you just go to start-up club right now in clubhouse, it should be there.

Um, and what’s happening now.

Alright, sounds good.

Yes. Um, I’ll suggest everyone to click on the start-up [01:02:00] green house on top of this room, um, and followed this amazing club, uh, run by Michael calling the they’re amazing successful entrepreneurs. So I suggest everyone to follow the moderator and the. And thank you, Michael, for, uh, giving me the opportunities to come into stage.

And I found the book is the E-Myth. That’s the last book I read about. That’s a great book. That’s a really good book. And also there’s a shit. There’s a followup to that called the E-Myth revisited. Oh, I think that’s the one that I got. I totally, oh, the E-Myth revisited. Yeah, there’s the E-Myth. And then there’s the E-Myth revisited.

I’ll hang around here for about a minute more often. So I don’t close out the rooms so that people can click on the link at the top. And, uh, so I’ll be here for another minute and then I’ll close out the room. Awesome. Sounds good. And I’ll be going to callings also after this one is close as well.[01:03:00] [01:04:00]