Entrepreneur revolution, p.7
Entrepreneur Revolution, page 7
Your inner entrepreneur is OK with sitting in the tension of uncertainty. The entrepreneur knows that resources show up when they are needed and normally not beforehand.
Entrepreneurial people believe that they have access to any resources that exist on the planet, whenever they need them, and that they only need to have the right conversation to get them – this means you have to pick up the phone and start having conversations.
To begin this task, simply pick up the phone, send some emails and arrange some meetings. Begin the conversation without knowing where it will lead you.
The entrepreneurial empire builder is OK stepping into the unknown and having an adventure. The empire builder sees the whole world as a stage and everyone as a fellow player in the game of life.
The entrepreneur isn't scared, but the monkey and the reptile get terrified if they think you're not able to survive, or if there's no money for the little luxuries later on in life. If they feel threatened, the reptile and the monkey will do everything they can to hold the entrepreneur back.
CHALLENGE 2: GET YOUR MONKEY A BANK ACCOUNT
Set up a new bank account and put at least 10% of all the money you earn into that account. This ‘monkey account’ helps you to feel OK about taking risks, and will eventually stop you from needing to do boring, familiar tasks. Don't touch that money; its purpose is nothing more than to become part of ‘your wealth’. This automatic wealth-building plan will be an essential key for keeping the monkey and the reptile off your back.
After the success of our first dance party, Marcus and I were thoroughly convinced that we were going to be successful entrepreneurs. We talked endlessly about how, one day, we would have expensive cars, big boats and houses all over the world. We were planning out our dreams and we were excited.
Marcus's dad, Vac, took us aside and gave us some interesting advice. He said, ‘be sure to put 10% aside and then you can go blow the rest on whatever you want’.
It was shocking advice coming from an adult. Weren't we meant to invest it all, or pay off some debt (not that we had any), or save it up for a distant rainy day?
Vac was a clever businessman, and this was good advice: enjoy our earnings whilst putting aside 10% of everything into a separate, wealth-building account. He said, ‘if you just keep 10% of everything you earn, you'll build wealth. Having wealth puts you in a position to make better choices with your life’.
The monkey and reptile brain are risk-adverse. The monkey thrives on repetitive things and loves a system that just works on autopilot. The monkey will feel very safe about money if it knows that there's a repetitive system in place that stashes money aside.
As you step into the Entrepreneur Revolution, well-meaning people around you will tell you how risky it is to go and do big things like start a business. Having a safe stash of money, that just keeps growing, helps you to reason with your monkey and reptile brain.
You need your monkey and reptile brain to feel safe that this money will not be used by the entrepreneur for any ‘risky dreams or schemes’. The money you put aside can never be used for business, spending or risky investments. It's for boring stuff like cash, property, tracker funds and blue-chip shares.
The monkey and the reptile need to know your future is being taken care of, so this account will please the part of you that's conservative and safe and concerned about your long-term survival.
I set up a special account with my bank called ‘the monkey brain account’ and 10% of my earnings went into it from the start.
To this day, these earnings sit around in boring investments – nothing too sexy, nothing too risky. I keep about 3 months of living expenses in cash, and then put the surplus into boring investments that I won't touch. The purpose of this money is to ‘have money’, not to spend one day. So many people imagine that one day they will have money, but they are unwilling to hold on to any money when it arrives. I can assure you, if you find it hard to save a little bit when you are starting out, you will find it hard to save a lot when the numbers increase. The more money you earn, the faster you will discover ways of spending it that you never knew existed. That is why, from your first income in business, you must put aside 10% as your automatic strategy for accumulating wealth over time.
After that, it just keeps ticking along automatically and it works. I bought one set of shares for A$12 and they were at A$45 the last time I checked. I put some money into a fund that always seems to go up by 5% a year. I hardly look at it and it always shocks me to see how much it adds up to over time. It makes me feel very calm to know that I have money to fall back on if I need it.
The other thing to note is that when you put a bit of money aside, you don't miss it. I have lived on yachts, had penthouse apartments, travelled the world, eaten in the best restaurants and driven prestige cars, and never found myself unable to do something because of my savings strategy. In time, you'll see that your entrepreneur plan is going just fine without your little monkey money.
This money is not for spending at a later date, this money is for having. If you imagine that one day you will have wealth, then you can either wait for a massive payday to come and hope that you magically know how to handle it or you can begin building wealth every month and adjust to it as it grows. I've seen that people who get the big payday often lose it quickly, and people who build wealth slowly keep it for longer.
I've also experienced that when you have money, your reptile and monkey brain are more trusting of your entrepreneurial ideas – having money will open you up to a bigger vision.
CHALLENGE 3: STOP SPENDING TIME WITH PEOPLE WHO BRING YOU DOWN
Start making friends with more people who inspire you. Spend more time having conversations with people who bring out the best in you. Stop hanging around people who drag you down. Make a list of people you currently spend a lot of time with and decide who can stay and who might need to go.
You become just like the people you have regular conversations with. These people determine the dominant ideas you ponder, the opportunities you notice and the resources you can access. Your peer group normalises a level of performance and if you don't like the results your friends have, you had better consider spending time with people who live the kind of life you aspire to.
When you look at the list of people you spend the most time around, if you do not have many people who inspire you, you're better off spending time out networking in inspirational places trying to find some.
Today I'm fortunate to spend a lot of my time with very inspiring people. I talk regularly with people who run exciting, fast-growth enterprises, people who lead charities and people who've achieved remarkable things and continue to address meaningful challenges.
Most of my insights come from an ongoing conversation with a peer group of successful entrepreneurs and leaders.
One of the reasons I dropped out of university was because I realised that most people I spent time with were playing small. At the end of my first year in university I became aware that most people I met were struggling to survive. I remember talking to a Finance lecturer who shared the fact that he and his wife were really struggling to pay the rent. This scared me. Why am I learning Finance from a guy who's struggling to pay the rent?
I could see this was only going to make me believe that playing small was normal.
So I decided to set out and find some mentors to shadow. I figured that if I could spend time with wealthy, dynamic, inspiring people, I might actually figure out what they do differently.
It was a frightening move to leave my friends and peers. I was afraid that I would be alone and wouldn't fit in with another crowd. My parents were both the first in their families to have a university degree, and now I was going to become a ‘dropout’.
When I was 19 years old I went to work for a friend of a friend named Jon, a successful businessman and marketeer.
Jon's company promoted and ran events all over Australia. He had a big house on the water, a vibrant family and he was engaged in meaningful work. He wore casual shorts and sandals most of the time, woke up when his kids did, played lots of games with them and was great fun to be around.
When he asked me to join his team of ‘inspired sales legends’, I laughed, because it was a very different way of explaining a job compared with the door-to-door roof insulation company sales team I had been working in at the weekends. They simply called me a ‘door-knocker’.
The other people who worked for Jon were all interested in achieving big, exciting and meaningful things too. The inspired conversations began and my mind tuned into all sorts of new opportunities.
I went from having regular conversations about grocery bills, rent and university deadlines to goals, dreams, plans and revenue targets. I was employee number four in Jon's start-up and I got the chance to discuss every aspect of the business with him. I learned more in my first month with Jon than I had in a year of university.
I was hungry to learn, so at every opportunity I asked Jon if he could teach me about sales, marketing, finding suppliers, conducting meetings, building a team and running a business. He happily taught me what he knew and a mentor relationship evolved. The lessons began flowing fast.
He taught me a lot about business and he also taught me how to shift my mindset from the broke university student to someone who was comfortable with larger sums of money.
CHALLENGE 4: CARRY CASH
Carry £1000 on you at all times. If £1000 isn't enough to make you a little bit uncomfortable, carry the amount you'd love to earn in a day.
One day, my new mentor Jon asked me how much money I considered to be a lot. After some thought I replied, ‘There's not much a guy can't do on A$1000 a week’.
He laughed, and said that if I was only making A$10,000 worth of sales a week (I was on 10%) then he wouldn't keep me on his sales team. To Jon, A$1000 wasn't a lot of money. It was the bare minimum I could earn before he would fire me – this excited me no end.
Noticing my reaction, he asked me to do something quite strange, which had a powerful impact on my life.
Jon asked me to get my hands on A$2000 and bring it back to him. I told him that I had A$100 in cash, A$500 in the bank and a limit of A$1000 on my credit card. He said, ‘go ask your dad for the rest or something, just bring me A$2000 tomorrow’.
I somehow got my hands on this vast sum of money and brought it back to him. Without much of a care he took it off me, stuck a bulldog clip on it and said, ‘carry that in your pocket at all times’.
It was wild. I was walking down the street feeling that, at any moment, a gang of ninjas would jump me and steal my entire net worth. I was nervous and excited all at once, and my hand never left my pocket for the first few weeks (better safe than sorry).
Then, one day, something strange happened. I was walking past a jewellery store and I saw an Omega watch. It was awesome!
‘It's A$2000, you can't afford that’ I said to myself. ‘Wait a second… I have A$2000 in my pocket. I can afford it if I want it.’
After a brief conversation with my entrepreneur brain, I realised that, even though I could afford it, I would choose to wait until I had earned it. I decided that when I had turned over A$1 million in my own business I would buy it as a reward. That felt right, and it also made me feel empowered that I had made this decision on my own rather than feeling powerless in view of the watch's price tag.
Over the following 12 months this became a regular occurrence. I would notice something I thought I could not afford and then realise that I actually had enough money in my pocket to buy most things.
All of a sudden, I was in the driver's seat. I had the power over the things and not the other way around. I had lost my emotional charge on them, I had also lost my charge on the idea that A$2000 was a lot of money; it's just how much I carried in my pocket.
This activity quickly surfaced my hang-ups about money. I realised that I had a fear of being taken advantage of if I had money, I had a fear of people judging me, I had a fear of losing it, I had a fear of being irresponsible with it and a fear of only being liked because of it. In the process of carrying it, I examined those fears and let go of them.
Prior to engaging in this challenge I also struggled to talk to people about money in my sales conversations. I would deliver a flawless presentation and make a clear case as to why we could deliver value, but then I would shy away from talking about the price because I personally had hang-ups about money. After carrying cash for a few months, my non-verbal communication changed and I confidently talked about our fees as though it was pocket money – because for me, it was.
It's almost impossible to go ‘reptile mode’ when you have a wad of cash in your possession. The reptile simply won't register a survival situation unless it's worried about immediate survival issues. With cash in your pocket, you won't be worried about your immediate survival. If the reptile is calm, you also won't be as susceptible to juvenile promises of easy windfalls.
In the first year working for Jon I went from earning A$800 a month, as a broke university student, to earning A$12,000 a month doing something that I considered fun; plus, I was living in a gorgeous beach location. Few people take this sort of a jump so quickly, and I believe that the A$2000 in the pocket was a big part of that shift.
Carry cash so you don't ever feel your survival is at stake. It will also allow you to confront your issues around money and recalibrate how much your brain thinks is a lot. This activity will do more for you than reading all the money books or attending all the money seminars.
CHALLENGE 5: EVERY WEEK TAKE SOMEONE NEW TO LUNCH
Take two new people out to lunch each week and pick up the bill. Have no fixed agenda, talk about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It's not a sales meeting or a meeting to look for partnership opportunities, it's just a warm, friendly chat over lunch.
I was told that I needed to build a good network of people around me who weren't customers, clients or old friends. To help with this, I had to select two new people a week to take out for lunch at my expense. This was tough in the beginning, but wonderful later on.
Initially, I couldn't think of anyone who would want to go to lunch with me, who I would be willing to pay for. I was stalemated by my lack of confidence and my lack of money.
But I had to come up with two per week, so I just started asking people who I would never have thought would join me for lunch. Business owners, investors, accountants and occasionally an attractive girl if I was feeling particularly brave.
You'll be surprised at how many great people respond favourably when you say: ‘Can I take you out for lunch next week, it's on me, I don't know you well enough but I'm sure there's plenty of good reason we should be talking.’
To my amazement, people I invited were always quite happy to go out to lunch. I listened to their stories, got great advice, fresh ideas and found myself learning all sorts of new things. I learned to connect with people and discovered what people are going through in life beneath the surface.
I never went with an agenda, I simply showed up to talk about life and listen to their stories. I would often run ideas past people, ask them what books they were reading or if they had learned any life lessons I should know.
Without trying too hard, I was developing a network and I was able to start introducing people, which made me feel even more valuable.
Often I would get introduced to people as well. I would get referrals, opportunities and advice. Taking people out to lunch wasn't an expense, it was making me money.
When I got on the phone to make a sales call I had all sorts of stories to share and I was speaking from experience and a genuinely inspired place. People would listen to me talk about lessons I'd learned from others, and I made a lot of sales.
The reptile brain fears people it doesn't know. It believes that a new person is probably unsafe or untrustworthy. This subconscious belief will hold you back in business, because entrepreneurs have to meet new people all the time. An entrepreneur needs to be able to quickly connect with someone, build trust and find common ground to discuss. Without the ability to talk to strangers, you are limited to a very small pool of opportunities, but when you open up to new people you open up to new resources as well.
When you begin to do this, you will find out very quickly that taking people out to lunch makes you more money than it costs. Having a network builds your net worth more than almost anything else.
CHALLENGE 6: TUNE OUT FROM THE NEWS
Give up on all news. No papers, no radio, no TV, no news websites. Feel free to Google specific stories that relate to what you do, but avoid news as a form of entertainment.
On the weekends I would walk down to the local cafe on the beach and order breakfast and a juice and read the newspaper, to catch up on the rest of the world that I had missed out on while I was busily building my little empire through the week.
It was terrible: war, death, accidents, failing businesses, crashing stock markets, rising interest rates, rapists and murderers. This stuff was everywhere!
Well, it wasn't everywhere; a lot of it was happening in other parts of the world. Very few disasters were happening in my little beachside township, no murderers had killed people I knew personally and none of the wars were taking place in my local area.
When I took stock of this fact I realised that almost none of the news was relevant to my life at all. These events were going to happen with or without my involvement. Even though I was aware of these news stories, I wasn't going to reactively do much about it, other than to ride the emotional highs and lows of the story.
