6 BEST Pieces Of Business Advice That Made Me Millions | E103

quick one the dire ceo live my live show my live reincarnation of this podcast is coming on tour and it's coming to a city near you there's a link in the description below put your email address in and i will email you when tickets go on sale can't wait to see [Music] i get so many questions from all of you guys in my dms in the comment section on youtube everywhere so i want to try something new i'm going to start answering some of those questions that i've historically answered privately in public so more of you can gain access to those answers i asked everybody in my telegram community to submit videos of questions that they want answered from me and in this video today i'm going to answer those questions with total total honesty and these questions range across business to personal questions to questions about relationships and mental health and challenges that you're facing so here is the first question you asked me this week my name is daniela i'm 18 and i'm about to enter my first year you need to study economics i have a lot of commitments i'm running a business my business partner i'm making music i'm learning languages and i'm playing sports and i worry that my focus is split how do you suggest i move forward do you think i should grip my teeth and balance everything to the best of my ability or do you think i should prioritize and sacrifice for better quality output despite loving every single thing i'm looking forward to your response thank you so much for listening i think the single biggest lesson that i learned when i was starting off early in my business career was the importance of focus and i had this drummed into me by one of my investors one day when i came to them and presented this new idea which was an addition to the current company that i was building and they hit me really hard with this like verbal whip and told me they said steve focus is everything and that stayed with me i was annoyed at the time because naturally when you're a creative person and a very inspired person as many of us are you have so many ideas and the problem is you can't take on all of those ideas at once and any attempt to do so compromises each individual idea so if you have three ideas and you're giving them 33 of your time each the chance of mastery or success in any of those things is drastically drastically reduced and especially when it comes to business if you're giving anything less than 100 of your focus to your business you you can rest assured that there are very competent probably better funded competitors out there that are giving 100 focus and your time is the only currency that you have so making the decision to invest only a part of your time and focus into what you're doing is a decision to reduce the chance of a really successful outcome and here's another thing so i don't know how solid this is as advice but honestly when you're young and you're broke and you're bootstrapping focus matters even more so for me what i would do and when i think about the 50 years of my career is at the very very start i'd go very very very narrow and i'd try and succeed in something that'll be the gateway if it is successful to me being able to build my resources my financial resources my team so that i can focus on multiple things and that's really the trajectory i've taken in my life i at 18 years old focused on one thing one business idea and really nothing else and when i say nothing else i also mean a lot of personal things were sacrificed i focused on that for the for about seven years in total that business became a success i now have resources to allocate against multiple things that i want to do which frees up more time so i can start companies now and not even be the ceo of these businesses but when you're when you're starting out in life in your career that's not a luxury you have so my advice for young people would be to do everything in your power to focus in business what we do is we operate in sprints which means when you have an idea you assemble a team around it and you focus them for a dedicated and predetermined period of time say three months or six months only on that idea to give it its best possible chance of success and after those six months you assess it and you make very brutal very honest very ego-free decisions whether to continue or not that's how i like to think about focus and projects and how to make the decisions around allocating your time what you really should do if you want to give an idea its best possible chance of success if you want to give djing your best possible chance of successful writing that book or becoming a content creator is you should look at the task and dedicate the next six months to doing that and only that if you allocate time to other things in that period you're reducing the chance of a positive outcome for that one thing and i i tend to see as well especially young entrepreneurs when they have multiple businesses and multiple things they're pursuing in multiple things they're trying to master at the same time as the phrase goes they become the master of none which means they kind of stumble through life never really achieving any real substantive success because they've spent all of their life trying things in a half-assed timid way if you want to be successful if you want to get mastery in anything that matters to you here's where discipline really really matters you have to install into your mind something i call the sunday shelf which is inspiration comes to you you have a new idea when you're walking down the street or in the shower you think that's brilliant that will be a multi-gazillion dollar idea we all do it if you want to be successful don't then add it into your successful idea don't then try and contend with two different ideas and give 50 to each put it on the sunday shelf and see if it nags you the great ideas will sit there on that someday shelf and they will nag you and if it nags you for long enough six months for a year then maybe it's time to take action but my mind has a someday shelf on it that has hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of things on it and if something sits there for more than a year more than six months and it's still screaming at me and it doesn't dissolve away and collect dust on the sunday shelf and disappear into the back then i pull it forward and i put a plan in place to give it the sprint it deserves to resource that idea and give it its best possible chance of success hiya stephen my name's chloe and my question to you is what do you believe to be the most important character trait that a person has to possess in order to achieve a hugely successful business i would love to know in terms of character traits to build really successful businesses i kind of think of it in stages and i think of it in stages of the business's life the question here is about the character traits it's not about skills or talent or resources it's about character so at the very start of launching your company the most important character trait is self-belief is believing that you can because businesses they feel like mount everest at your doorstep and they look like incredibly daunting tasks that you typically don't have a ton of experience in overcoming right you don't you've never climbed to mount everest before you don't have the resources you don't know how to get up there you don't have the experience to rely on so there has to be somewhat an extreme level of delusion self-belief to even want to start doing something you've never done before and then when it comes to creating really innovative things you're bringing something into the world that even the world hasn't seen so that's where having a belief that this thing can exist and having that self-belief is also incredibly important this is just kind of the inception point of the business and when you go out into the world and you start telling people about your amazing business idea and how successful you think you're going to be and that you're going to be able to change the world in some type of way or solve a problem in a new way you're going to get tons of positive feedback from your friends maybe but also a ton of resistance whenever one of my friends starts a company and they ask me for one piece of advice i always say the same thing i say there's gonna become a day in your company where things are just awful where it's so unbelievably painful i've never seen it not happen so i can say would say it with such a high degree of conviction that it is going to happen to you so let's not argue about you know how we stop it happening because it will find you at some point let's start thinking now about what it takes to overcome that day it requires a ton of resilience it requires a ton of self-belief um it requires a certain temperament where someone defaults to logic and reason and not emotion because when emotion arrives in on that day then your decision-making will go down and you'll make really bad poor decisions that often exacerbate the problem but the first encounter of the 35 packages of [ __ ] will build evidence that you can overcome and i think that will compound in your favor over time i think self-belief and resilience are probably the number one and number two character traits of anybody that wants to be wildly successful in business and then quite honestly everything else is outside of character traits i mean of course it matters to be really really nice of course it does that's that's a a factor that will increase your probability of success of course it matters to be you know have a great sense of humor but i think those two are at the very core of what it takes to be successful especially when you're a startup and then everything beyond that is quite often luck it's quite often outside of your control especially in industries like technology and when you're building products because the question then becomes okay i was resilient i had belief but does the market care and is their product market fit do people want to use my website my social network my app do they want to use my product that i've invented and that's somewhat outside of your control however what is in your control in that phase let's call this phase two of business is your humility and ego which will often show up stubbornly trying to prove that you were right and entrepreneurs like me in the past have been too romantic about our initial hypothesis about how we thought our product was going to be used how many people would we would use it the problem it would solve and you look at your product and you see clearly in the data that people are using in a different way they want a different thing that is outside of your original thesis your original hypothesis and some people at that moment they'll stubbornly try and push their original idea their hypothesis into existence let's increase the marketing let's educate the user base but really if you're humble enough and you're not attached to your ego you're attached to the outcome and success of the business you'll say let's pivot let's change what we thought was true to fit what we now know is true and that's where i think humility and and a little bit of experience because i think experience generates humility comes from you know when i sit here on the podcast i speak to people like tom from monzo and other founders of these massive companies that have disrupted industries one of the things they consistently say to me is i now know it was 10 times harder than i thought and we were like 10 times wrong in our initial hypothesis about how this business would play out than i originally realized throughout all of this as i've said multiple times in my podcast from day one to the day that you exit the business for a 500 billion dollars sales is everything sales is every single touch point and also especially as your business gets bigger and bigger and bigger it's incredibly important to be self-aware because there's going to be a million things that you're actually not that good at that need to be done within your business there's going to be a million things whether it's finances or you know typing into excel sheets or it's creative or it's whatever and so many entrepreneurs i know especially young inexperienced entrepreneurs that i know fail late in the day their business explodes at first and then plateaus and then declines because they didn't realize that they needed to put in place another ceo because for them the ego here of replacing themselves and giving someone that very prestigious very lauded title wasn't worth it i can also think of the opposite i can think of companies like jim shark like huell like tarla grace beverly's business where those founders have said you know what there's someone better to run the company it's super successful i'm going to get out of its way and i'm going to spend all of my time doing something else that i'm uniquely positioned to do this is an incredible incredibly important skill and even in the companies that i found now i say to myself am i really capable of being the ceo is that really where i should be playing and in the two businesses that i founded since leaving social chain i am not the ceo because that is not what i'm best at and i'm more attached to the outcome and the success of that business than i am of having that title which might get some brownie points from people that don't really matter anyway you know i hate i hate powder i hate mixing powder with water i hate protein powders that you have to mix with water up until now and um obviously he'll sponsor this podcast so i'm tremendously biased but that's a that's a true story i've never been able to use the like my protein powders that you mix with water because i always think they taste absolutely awful up until hull released their brand new protein flavor the amazing thing about all of these proteins is there's 20 grams of protein you get all of your vitamins and nutrients 26 of those and as huel always is it's nutritionally complete and if you are someone that's trying to go a little bit lower on the calories it's only 105 calories so when i wake up in the morning especially i've been working out a lot lately come downstairs quickly blend it together in my nutribullet drink it's 100 calories and then my next sort of main meal because i'm a breakfast skipper will be at lunch time highly recommend it um and i shouldn't say this because i don't have any approval to say this but there's some amazing amazing flavors coming in the ready to drink range that i've been lucky enough to try um and one of those is my new favorite flavour so stay tuned hey steven hop all as well so my question is with regards imposter syndrome have you any feedback regards how to deal with that have you experienced it yourself and just how to go about like getting out of that mindset and acknowledging that you are potentially as good at your role as what people think you are and you're not bluffing it or fluking it and so on thank you so here's the thing i think we all feel deep within us the same feeling any time we're in a position that feels a little bit outside of our comfort zone sometimes that feels like a little bit of nerves in your chest for example when i go up on stage and i know there's 10 000 people behind the curtain of course i feel that in my chest of course i have that tingling that sensation that they call butterflies however i don't interpret it as being fear as being a signal to escape or to avoid the scenario my interpretation which has grown over time and our interpretations are influenced by our beliefs the stories we tell ourselves based on the evidence we have based on our experiences and my evidence my interpretation tells me that i'm ready that this feeling is normal and i'm supposed to feel this way people sometimes because of their experiences and the evidence that's created and the stories that's made them believe about themselves will tell themselves that that feeling is fear that they should run that they are ill-prepared that that feeling is there because they aren't competent enough to complete this task so what i'm saying is we all get the feeling but the story we tell ourselves is ultimately what creates what some people call imposter syndrome for me if you look at my life i've kept myself one step outside of my zone of comfort for my entire life of course i've never been a dragon on dragon's den no one in their first year has been i'm looking to my left and seeing peter jones who's been there for 17 odd years and deborah meade and to my right who's been there for 15. i am new however i'm supposed to spend my life in situations where i am an imposter that is the sign of growth if i'm ever spending too long in a room or situation where i don't feel to some degree like an imposter i am in the wrong room and if i am to grow and growth is an incredibly important part of being stimulated and motivated and being fulfilled i have to change rooms for me in my life i've spent my entire life trying to escape my zone of comfort and keeping myself one foot outside of that zone of comfort when you do that what you find is that zone of comfort expands you take one more step and it expands again every person that's ever done anything for the first time whether it's ed sheeran singing to a group of people before or barack obama doing one of his speeches or usain bolt running in a track when they first started they were inexperienced and incapable so you should expect and welcome that feeling it's a feeling you're supposed to have if you're somebody who wants to spend your entire life growing and progressing and learning which are all things conducive with fulfillment you should always feel like an imposter if you're not i would assert that maybe maybe you're playing it too safe maybe you aren't challenging yourself enough so for me what people call imposter syndrome isn't evidence that you're in the wrong situation one that you aren't supposed to be in it's clear proof that you're in the right one you're exactly where you're supposed to be i'm i'm supposed to spend my entire life doing things that make me feel somewhat like an imposter that is the answer to a happy fulfilling progress full life where i'm striving forward i'm trying things i'm challenging myself and i'm pursuing goals that are worthwhile we should all feel impostor syndrome so if you're not then it's time to challenge yourself more hi steve my question to you is starting off in an industry in my case healthcare and medicine how do you approach someone at more senior level and at level that you want to be at to ask them for mentorship or to be able to help you along the journey that they've been on is there anything that you could say do or offer them that would make them more inclined in taking you on board thank you so much the answers to these these complex especially professional questions as it relates to asking people and progressing are always so simple yet we complicate them and that would be my answer genuinely it would be the person you're speaking to put yourself in their shoes how busy are they what are their interests what do they want what could you say to them to make them give you something very precious to them which is their time and like if you can't answer that question i i you know oh it makes me slightly concerned because that's an inability to put yourselves in the shoes of somebody else and that is life that is sales that is every single day that is empathy so say there's somebody at the top of my organization and i want them to mentor me or there's someone even outside of my organization and i want them to be my mentor the first thing i do is i you know if it really helps you actually pretend to be them write it down on a piece of paper what their life looks like let's just do steve barlet you're asking steve butler to mentor you so steve bartlett's day is he has an unlimited things that people are asking him to do he's getting thousands of dms on social media they're all asking him for stuff they're asking him for time to go for a coffee to pick his brain to be on his podcast to speak at their event to do their show whatever it might be so that's probably a really dumb place to join the noise super saturated um probably you know he's probably got a pa defending those inboxes we're not gonna [ __ ] try that that would be a stupid thing to do let's find the least saturated channel probably quite honestly probably the post or probably you know look at his channel hierarchy probably twitter there's probably less people there a channel where he's he's um he's showing like he's responding more but there's there's less people competing there for his time so we might go for the post or for twitter so let's now pretend that you've got his attention you've sent something in the post you've written a tweet you've written a twitter dm you've got his attention once you have his attention you need to convert it and to do that you need to understand his psychological incentives you have to know what i want you have to solve a problem that i'm looking for you have to appeal to my ego you know steve oh my god i've listened to every single podcast right you have to understand the dynamics of my life i know you have absolutely no time i am this person right and that's an appeal you're making to maybe my empathy to my care i am this person i'm 18 years old one day i hope to you know build a business like social chain because i've listened to every single one of your podcasts it would literally be my dream if i could just stand in the background of one episode one time i promise i won't say a word it would literally change my life right so what you've done there is you've appreciated you're not asking me for much you've hired you've appreciated the fact that i'm busy by saying i'm just gonna stand in the background which means you're asking me for zilch nothing and then you might end up by saying and off the back of it my friend works at this newspaper or this magazine or has this blog i'm gonna write a full transcript of my experience this would be and then again you're telling me that i'm gonna get something in return right and then i look at it as a proposition you've touched my ego you've made me you know care through empathy you've asked for nothing in return of my time and you've offered me a reward which is you're going to put it somewhere you're going to write it somewhere you're going to help me by extending the reach for me that's kind of the broad structure of a perfect cold email asking for something from someone that has no you know right to give it to you is incredibly busy and is being asked a lot the worst possible case scenario let me give you the worst possible case scenario hi steve uh someone mentioned you the other day which means that you don't know who i am and you've not bothered to do your own research um i want you to mentor me uh let me know when to start and then you've ended that with the let me know when to start or whatever which is a total presumption and sort of disrespect and disregard of my time and my ability to make that decision and then yeah and also what you've done with that message because it's so short and ill-conceived you've proven to me that you're lazy and that you're not creative and that you're probably not someone that's going to bring much value to my life and that's genuinely how it works in my life i swear to god i get dms from young people they literally say r letter r space there any jobs go in you've you've perfectly ruled yourself out with that message of ever working for me ever because you've told me that you're both uncreative and lazy in only a couple of words it's a remarkable thing to achieve with such few amounts of words you've told me you're lazy and uncreative you will never work for anything that i do in my entire life if i ever see that message it shows that you don't actually give a [ __ ] either like you didn't even go on the website to see if there were jobs going or you didn't you know so that's the that's the antithesis of creativity attention to detail care and ultimately success and you know for some [ __ ] reason people still do it what are the three things that you would look out for to know that you're on the right path for success so the first thing is definitely enjoyment if you're not enjoying it especially an early stage when it's going to be most difficult then the chance of you being successful is somewhere below one percent that is the single most important thing are you enjoying it if the answer is no then honestly you should quit because it's only going to get more difficult and the thing is we also tend to shy away from things we're not enjoying we tend to procrastinate away from them because they create psychological discomfort so if you're not enjoying it you're probably also going to do a pretty shitty job in it it's hard to show up for something every single day that you're not enjoying the second thing is at the very start of your business there's not going to be a ton of evidence that it's going well there's probably not going to be a ton of revenue probably not going to be a ton of users but there will be evidence of progress evidence that you're getting better evidence that you're making marginal gains and for me and even with this podcast i don't necessarily look for results today or more viewers or more downloads or more revenue what i'm looking for is is this thing getting one percent better week over week because it only then takes 100 weeks for us to be 100 better and that means we're moving in the right direction and lastly i would say you're looking for some kind of validation of your hypothesis so in the context of this podcast my validation would be am i getting feedback from people and from the data that they are enjoying the format and the concept are they coming back next week there might not be thousands of people yet there might just be 10 but are those 10 people inviting one more and making my audience 11 people and there's always some evidence even at the very very start of your business especially if you've built it in a lean way just to test your hypothesis that your hypothesis is being validated that your product does have market fit that people are enjoying the content you're creating and that can act as a tailwind to create it belief to create enjoyment and motivation which will spur you on to carry on going so to summarize are you enjoying it are you making marginal gains i.e progress and lastly has your hypothesis shown some evidence that it is correct is there product market fit are people enjoying what you're making are they coming back again hey steven and again um nice to uh hook up with you um my question is um i've been watching a lot of podcasts a lot of motivation does help me a lot um i've struggled over the years with anxiety depression i've gone through a bit of about a bit lately and just wondering where you get your motivation from um what makes you tick um and what makes you get out of bed every day um i'll get there i'm looking for other avenues and uh you're inspiring me every day and uh just wanted to know really what motivates you and drives you so it's kind of ironic that within your question lives the answer to your question you said at the start of that that you listen to this podcast it gives you value and it's helped you that's the reason why i get out of bed in the morning purpose and so for me the thing that drives me in any sort of discipline or pursuit or ambition or hobby that i have it's very very simple and i've said this many times before it has to be a worthwhile goal that's challenging that i can pursue with people i love and what you said about how this podcast has helped you is the reason it's worthwhile to me of course it's challenging it takes tons of my time the production takes a lot of effort but it's a worthwhile challenge so it's one worth pursuing and lastly i get to do it with people that i actually love and that's just a real fundamental thing about human beings because you can be pursuing a goal that means the world to you a goal you love a goal that feels incredibly worthwhile and meaningful but if you're doing it with people that are toxic in a toxic environment it then becomes unworthwhile it loses its enjoyment and the people you're pursuing a goal with are intrinsically attached to the motivation to pursue it so the thing that gets me out of bed and the the prism in which i make my decisions through in my life is is this a worthwhile goal worthwhile is totally subjective it's how it makes you feel inside here is it a challenge because the science says if something isn't challenging you your motivation will decline and are you doing it are you pursuing it surrounded by people you love that'll make it a way more enjoyable way more sustainable pursuit thank you for all of your questions and if you want to put a question to me the details on how to do that are down below in the description i hope you enjoyed this new segment and i can't wait to answer your question next week [Music]