- Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake
at RobertoBlake.com helping you
create something awesome today.
Today I wanna talk about entrepreneurship.
As somebody who's a creative entrepreneur
running an online business,
and I've been doing this for a while now.
There are a lot of things
that I think don't get said for people
who want to become entrepreneurs
and want to get started.
I think that there's a lot of cheerleading
around entrepreneurship, and that's fine,
I know that positivity and a great mindset
makes a huge difference, I definitely has for my business.
But there are some realities of entrepreneurship
that need to be addressed,
and I think one of them,
one of the harshest ones,
is the fact that not everybody has it in them
to be an entrepreneur.
Being an entrepreneur has been wonderful for me,
it has given me financial freedom.
It has helped me address issues with my anxiety
and depression, but it's also, in many cases
been a trigger for my anxiety and depression
and that's something that's not nearly
talked about enough in the entrepreneur space.
It's really that entrepreneurship is being glorified
and often misrepresented, especially in the media.
Entrepreneurship is a commitment,
it's not for people who don't feel
that they have self-discipline.
You have to establish self-discipline
and be capable of honoring your word and honoring
commitments or you're not gonna be a good entrepreneur.
You can't just wake up one day and decide,
you know what, that's it,
I'm gonna quit my job, I wanna be an entrepreneur.
You have to be smart, you have to be a practical person.
You have to be someone who's capable to being decisive,
and someone who's also willing to learn from others.
Entrepreneurship has a constant learning curve to it,
you can't just settle in and say hey, I've made it.
There's no such thing as making it in entrepreneurship.
And a lot of people don't understand
that it's a constant battle, it's a constant fight to grow,
to succeed, to learn, to remain relevant,
and to completely delivery value and that in a lot of cases,
especially if you're going into a saturated market,
you have to constantly think about how to evolve
and how to differentiate yourself and how to present.
Entrepreneurship is also lonely as hell sometimes.
You really, when you're first getting started,
you can't expect to have the support of everybody.
A lot of people will have good intentions towards you,
but they'll try and talk you out of entrepreneurship
because they don't want you to work yourself to death.
They're afraid that maybe you'll put your heart and soul
into this and it won't be successful,
or it won't move fast enough to support you,
and those are reasonable concerns and fears,
that's why a lot of entrepreneurs have so much angst
because they have a chip on their should
because they remember what it's like in many cases,
to come from nothing, and there's constantly the fear
of things not working out and going back to nothing.
But also there's the fear that are projected onto you
by friends and family and former colleagues
that you just won't make it because the failure rate
for entrepreneurship is ridiculously high.
There are some of you who thinks, well, wow,
that's discouraging, thanks Roberto for killing my dreams,
but I mean, it's not really about that.
It's about giving you the practical,
real world advice in terms of
this is what you're signing up for,
and, again, I think that without a certain
level of mental toughness,
without a certain amount of practical positivity
as a foundation that drives you, that wakes you up everyday,
if you're someone who constantly needs praise,
if you're someone who needs external validation,
entrepreneurship will be very difficult for you.
If you're somebody who isn't an autodidactic learner,
somebody who is a self-educated person
that can learn on their own,
entrepreneurship will be very difficult for you.
If you right now are struggling, you're destitute,
you're in dire financial straights,
entrepreneurship may seem like an exit strategy
for you or a way to solve that problem,
and for some people that's been true,
but a lot of those people are anomalies,
a lot of people are exceptions to the rule
and typically most entrepreneurs fail
their first few ventures.
I'm 33 years old as I'm making this video.
There were times in my early 20s, hell in my early teens,
that I tried to go the path full time as an entrepreneur
and it didn't work out or it wasn't always sustainable,
and a lot of it came down to the fact
that I didn't have the skills yet
and I also didn't have the knowledge and the education
and the experience required to sustain entrepreneurship
and see it all the way through.
I also because I didn't have strong enough skills yet,
didn't have a high enough value proposition
to be able to charge enough money
to make entrepreneurship practical.
If you wanna become an entrepreneur,
what I can tell you is this,
you have to really make a priority in educating yourself
and developing real skills.
You also have to become knowledgeable
about the business world.
There a lot of books that I can recommend,
in fact, 100 books.
I recommend this list that I have in the description
down below called 100 Books that Built My Business.
This bookshelf is not just for show, there is a reason,
and I feel that by reading and learning that way,
every situation, every time I faced adversity,
I wasn't in it truly alone, I was armed
with the knowledge of people who had come before me.
I was armed with the knowledge of people
with decades more experience than me who had already
faced down those problems and I wasn't flustered
because I knew that there was a practical answer
that had a high success rate behind it,
or had real science behind it,
and I was able to execute on that without fear
or without hesitation,
and I don't feel that if I hadn't educated myself,
and if I hadn't learned from others,
that I could've done that.
Now not everyone is going to be able to learn form a book.
Some people it's better for you to learn from podcasts,
I recommend The Smart Passive Income podcast by Pat Flynn.
I recommend Entrepreneur on Fire with John Lee Dumas.
Both of these podcasts have been instrumental in my growth
and I've met both John Lee Dumas and Pat Flynn,
wonderful entrepreneurs,
great human beings more than anything,
and I think that you can learn a lot from them.
Some people consume best by learning from video.
I recommend watching Brian Tracy, or Gary Vanchurke,
these are two amazing entrepreneurs
that I think you can learn quite a bit from
if video content is something that you want to consume.
One of my other favorite entrepreneurs on YouTube
is Marie Forleo
like her content is phenomenal,
I really think of her in many ways as the Oprah of YouTube.
Aside from learning from other entrepreneurs,
I think you need to learn
some of the fundamentals of setting up a business.
I also think that you need to understand
more about personal finance.
There are, again, plenty of books in my list
that I recommend that could definitely help you with that.
I also think that you need a plan.
I think you need a vision
for what you want to accomplish as an entrepreneur.
Why are you doing this?
Because the drive and the desire to make money,
the drive and the desire to provide for your family,
it's important but it's not enough,
it's not enough to sustain this very challenging,
this very difficult thing,
and so I would say that you philosophically
have something bigger than yourself
that you're trying to accomplish
and you need to think about who you're trying to serve
when you create a product or you create a service.
It has to serve a specific group of people,
you have to have a niche,
but I also think you need to have a cause,
you need to have a higher why.
Simon Sinek has a great book called Start With Why,
I think you should follow that advice.
Finally, one of the last things I'm gonna tell you is,
uh, and this one should probably
should also be its own video,
is I think that you need to understand
how to prioritize as an entrepreneur
if you wanna be productive.
I don't think that signing up
for 12 and 18 hour days is for everybody,
and I don't think everybody will get the most out of that.
What I do think is that if you overwhelm yourself
with a to-do list of 20 things,
you're going to be exhausted.
You should always pick three to five things,
and you should only put three to five things
in front of yourself at a given time.
And then, you shouldn't tackle the hardest thing first.
There's a common knowledge kind of thing
that everyone likes to just do the hardest thing first,
because then it's all downhill from there,
and I don't agree with that all,
I think you do the easiest thing first,
get a win under your belt,
get something that makes you feel good
and satisfied and accomplished,
and you checked one box,
that's gonna help you,
and then you tackle the next thing,
and then you're seeing progress,
so do the easiest thing first,
and then level up from there
and tackle the hardest thing last
because now you're tackling it with all these other things
behind you, you're motivated, you're pumped up.
It wasn't as hard and draining as you thought it would be,
and you built yourself, you worked up to this,
it's not unlike working out in the gym,
you build yourself up,
you don't go ahead and drain yourself and go all out
the first go, I mean that's just wildly impractical,
and it's gonna be demotivating for you.
And then, one of the last things,
and I know I just said that was probably the last thing,
but one of the last things I really wanna leave you with,
because we talked about motivation,
is the importance of motivation.
There are a lot of people that cry out and scream
about everybody with the motivational speakers
and all that jazz.
Look, I grew up as the son of a Marine,
I grew up in military towns,
I can't tell you how valuable morale is
in everything you do.
If you don't have morale,
if you don't have the confidence,
if you don't have the motivation,
if you don't have some sense of purpose
that is driven by the desire and the,
a sense that this is going to work out,
this is going to be okay, this is going to be practical,
this is going to have some net benefit.
If you don't have motivation,
and you don't have optimism,
then you have already lost.
The thing that is gonna defeat you,
I actually asked Gary Veynerchuk,
a tremendous entrepreneur about this,
I asked him what's the biggest barrier
to success in business?
I asked him whether it was a lack of time
or a lack of capital because there are the two big anxiety
points that most people have around entrepreneurship.
Oh, I don't have enough time.
Oh, it costs money to make money.
And you know what he told me?
He told me that the thing and the reason
that there are a lot of people that are gonna lose
and that the biggest barrier to success
is a lack of optimism and he's 110 percent right,
he usually is.
Without positivity,
without a good mindset, without optimism,
every task that you're going to do
is going to be harder, it's going to be more draining,
it's gonna be less effective
and it's gonna be less efficient.
But when you have positivity in your corner,
when you have a great mindset in your corner,
and when it's based in something real,
then, it's much more difficult to actually lose
and it's easier to approach everything
with a sense of vigor, with a sense of purpose,
and it's easier to go all in.
It's easier to go on the offensive when you feel that.
So, I would encourage you to consume things
that pump you up that are uplifting
and stop listening to all doom and gloom
and stop listening to all the negative headlines,
and I would say focus on your work,
and focus on positive thinking, positive energy,
and again, not based in some raw-raw cheerleading fluff,
but in reality.
I think that that is probably one of the most helpful things
that I could ever tell you about entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is hard,
it's not for everybody.
But, if you're willing to make a commitment,
if you're willing to educate yourself,
and if you're going to build a positive mindset,
then you have an actual shot at success.
And I would encourage you to take that shot
as many times as you possibly can.
Anyway, that's it for this video,
entrepreneurship has changed my life.
It has made me happier and healthy
and more free and in control of my life
than I've ever felt at any other time.
And I want that for more of you.
So, if that's something that you're into,
I have a whole playlist for anyone who wants to build
and grow their business, especially using online tools,
and on this channel I cover a lot of things
that could help you
whether it's how to market yourself more effectively,
how to handle your brand identity
and visual branding in terms of design
and print materials and digital materials,
or whether it's tips on public speaking
if you think that that could help grow your brand
or help get you more access and build your network.
So, there's a lot of stuff like that on the channel,
maybe you should subscribe and check it out.
Anyway, like this video if you like it,
don't forget to subscribe,
check out the other awesome content on the channel,
as always you guys,
thanks so very much for watching,
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today,
maybe even a business or two.
Take care.