- Good morning, believe nation.
Today's message is start with a spark.
Over to you Bono.
(cock crows)
(rap music)
- Now when we started out,
we couldn't even play our instruments.
We really couldn't.
We formed a band before we could even play.
And we were 16 and we didn't know where we were going
and we just decided to go there together.
It was just four of us in the kitchen,
in Dublin City in Ireland
and Larry Mullen Junior, he's the drummer in the group,
he started only, he just kind of pinned a notice
to the notice board in school,
we're starting a high school band
and we got started and actually reluctantly.
I didn't even know if I wanted to be in a band.
And when we started to play together,
when we started writing songs together,
I don't know why but we felt we could,
we could make a living out of it
and we felt that, it was something special, a spark,
that was different
and between us and a lot of the other bands
that were starting then.
We just felt we had a spark
and we started with that little spark
and we've kind of fanned it a bit.
Now it's a flame
and I suppose a bit of a forest fire right now.
- Most people aren't happy with the spark.
Most people expect instant success as an entrepreneur.
They expect that lots of entrepreneurs have success
and I'm talented and I'm smart,
why can't I figure this out?
And my business should work in the first six months.
I fell into the same trap.
When I started my very first company, I was 19.
I became an entrepreneur
with my first kind of real company I guess.
I thought it would be a lot easier than it was.
I saw the articles and the magazines
and the shows talking about these successful entrepreneurs
and I thought I can do this.
Everything else that I had done that I applied myself to,
I had success with, so I can do this too.
And I failed over and over and over and over again
and you realize
and for those of you who've been in business,
you know it's way harder than you think it's going to be.
And a lot of people just quit too soon.
A lot of people give up once it gets hard
because the spark isn't enough.
We all have the spark
but to turn the spark into a fire,
you need to work it and work it
and work it and work it and work it
and the thing that gets you through
is the absolute passion for what you're doing.
If you can find the thing that you love doing,
that you would do even if you weren't getting paid to do it,
then you have to find a way to keep going.
Even if it doesn't make sense.
Even if you've lost all practicality.
Even if everybody around you is telling you
that you're crazy and stupid.
If it's inside here,
you have to keep finding a way to keep going.
Maybe you take on part time jobs.
Maybe you go work for somebody else, whatever it is,
you have to find a way to keep going.
If you've lost interest in it,
it's not exciting for you anymore,
it was just something that you were trying
to make some money off of,
then you should quit
and move on to something else.
But if you find that spark,
and you think that this is something
that I really, really have a passion for and want to do,
then you have to find a way to keep going,
don't quit too soon
and turn that spark into a fire.
So the question of the day today is, I'm curious
What's your spark?
What the thing that gets you excited?
What's the thing that gets you motivated?
What do you love about your business?
Leave it down in the comments below.
Super curious to find out.
I also want to give a quick shoutout to David Espejo.
David, thank you so much
for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word.
It really, really means a lot to me
and I hope you're enjoying the read.
So thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is.
Much love and I'll see you guys again tomorrow morning
for another Shot of Entspresoo.
♫ I wake up every morning
♫ Entspresso keep me going
- So do you have any advice
for someone who would like to start doing creative writing
but has no idea where to start whatsoever?
- [Neil] Depends.
Are you the kind of person who..
Do you read a lot?
- I read a lot, yes.
And I write snarky emails
but (crowd laughs)
that's about it. - Have
- I've been told they're very good.
- When you say creative writing,
do you want to write fiction?
Do you want to write humorous essays?
There's an awful - Fiction.
- [Man] I would think.
- You want to do stories?
- Yes - Okay.
- [Neil] So my advice is start writing stories.
- Just like do it.
- Really, it's almost as simple as that.
It's start writing, so pick a style.
Pick a theme.
Look at the kind of
You're not expected straight out of the hat
to be a brave and original voice,
producing fine and wonderful fiction.
It's much more like the first pancake
on the griddle,
which is going to be this weird black messy thing
that you either give to your dog or to a child.
(crowd laughs)
You try to convince him, yeah it's nice.
You write.
You finish things.
You start the next thing.
You write that.
You finish it.
Somewhere in there, you get reasonably good.
And - Do you give these to people
- [Man] Or do you just.
- Yeah.
The point, I always found that I would always learn more
about what I'd done the moment I saw it in print.
Or the moment, these days,
probably the moment you see things up on the web.
But yeah, show 'em to people.
But the most important thing when you're just starting out
is write the next one.
Assume that you have a million words inside you
that are absolute rubbish
and you need to get them out
before you get to the good ones.
And if you get there early, that's great.
That was really my biggest advice.
- [Man] Alright, thank you.
- Read everything you can.
Read outside your comfort zone
and write a lot.
- Let's talk about that initiation of the dream.
How did that start and how'd that come about?
- I'd started a business before
that I raised four million bucks of other people's money,
started a web marketing company,
went boom and bust with the first dot com boom and bust.
I knew I wanted to make it as an entrepreneur
and start another business
but I had no idea what I wanted to do.
And so for inspiration, I went surfing.
And I planned a five month surf trip around Australia
and Indonesia.
The inspiration came before I even left.
I wanted to capture photos of myself and my friends
that I was going on the trip with,
while we were surfing out in the water
and no camera existed that allowed you to do that.
And so I set out to develop this wrist harness
that I could put a single use disposable camera into
and surf with it.
And I didn't even mean it to be a business idea.
I just wanted to document my experience on this trip.
And as soon as I got it working well,
the light bulb went off and I realized,
oh my God, there must be so many other surfers in the world
that want 6something like this .
- So you sewed it with wrist straps essentially.
But how do you go from wrist straps, which are very simple,
to hardware and to actually developing a camera.
- I wanted to use higher quality cameras with my wrist strap
to capture higher quality photos
but every camera that I would use with the strap surfing,
I would break the camera.
Because cameras weren't designed to be used
during rigorous activities like surfing.
And what I ended up doing was I spent two years
gong to trade shows, the camera trade shows around the world
to look for a camera that was close
to what I would want to design.
After a year and a half, about a year,
I found it.
And
got the manufacturer to agree to make the modifications
and begin building the cameras for me.
I actually did the deal
without ever needing the actual company.
It was all email.
I had one phone call
where we could barely understand each other
because of language barrier.
- Were they Chinese? - They're in Chen Zen.
- I wired my $5,000 for the tool to
the mold to be made
cause it was actually cheaper just to wire five grand
than to fly over there, meet them,
have a business trip
and I just figured okay, well just go for it
and they ended up being legitimate
and we were profitable from day one
because it was just me, one employee.
We just had no overhead
and rolled one good production run into another
and slowly scaled it
and the Go Pro that everybody knows today
has been built on $265,000 of capital.
- [Narrator] Japan beer and German beer
but no China beer.
So was curious and I typed China.
No China.
No data.
Came back to Hangzhou
with one dollar in my pocket,
scared, worried
and I came back
and I said I want to do something called internet.