Hello, everyone. This is Alejandro Cremades, and today we’re going to be talking about
how to become an entrepreneur. Becoming an entrepreneur is a supercritical decision.
Taking that leap of faith and making the decision of “I’m going to say goodbye to my 9 to
5 and going after building my dream” is a really critical decision in your life. This
is not a job title; it’s not a role. It’s literally a lifestyle. Today, we’re going
to be covering everything that goes into it, some of the steps that you’re going to have
to make, and how to make it successful. So with that being said, let’s get into it!
The first thing is to learn what it means. At the end of the day, you need to understand
and familiarize yourself with what it’s going to take to make this thing happen. This
is going to be five to seven years that you are allocating in your life to going after
this, sweat, tears, you name it. You need to understand not only what it’s going to
take, but then also really know what kind of transformation the business is going to
have to go through, and also what kind of transformation you are going to have to go
through, too, on a personal note, because you are going to have to grow those leadership
skills to grow at the same speed at which the company is growing at. Once you’re clear
with that, then you’re going to have a little bit more visibility, and for that, this point
is going to be critical. The next thing is picking a business idea.
Business ideas are just 5% of it; 95% of the success is for the execution, but you want
to grab an idea that is big enough that it’s going to justify all the sacrifices that you’re
going to be putting out on this like, missing out on birthdays, not being with your family
as much. In the end, you want to go for markets that are big enough so that they can provide
a great opportunity for you, and then also for potential investors that you may want
to bring in. Those investors typically are interested in
markets where the opportunities are at least 1 billion dollars or more. If you are looking
at building a hypergrowth business, a billion-dollar business, you cannot go for markets that are
under a billion dollars. Then, you want to build your network. The
network is your network. You want to build the network on, as early as literally having
an idea on a napkin. Here, you want to build different types of networks.
You want to build a network for the money with those investors.
You want to build a network for potential employees.
You want to build a network for the distribution, like potential partners.
Here’s the thing. You don’t want to build the network when you need it. You need to
build it in advance so that whenever you need it, you already know who to call. In many
instances, you see this when doing recruiting and hiring. People, when they’re ready to
get that rolling and delegate to that personnel, like “Wow! Now, who can I call? Who’s
going to help me?” Then they start doing the research, and at that point, it’s too
late. You want to build that network with potential
candidates that you’re going to need later down the line, and with that being said, you
want to have that person ready and available for you to call them whenever you need them.
And for that, you need that network built, and you need to build it early, as early as
possible. The next thing is, you want to organize your
business. You’re going to need legal advice to help you with incorporating your business,
to help you with structuring that partnership with your partner, and here it’s not going
to be a civil or a family lawyer, or maybe your cousin Vinney that studied law in law
school. Here, you need corporate lawyers that can provide that guidance that you’re going
to need to make sure that you’re doing things well from day one.
What I see a lot of people making as a mistake is grabbing either the wrong lawyer or perhaps
not structuring things the right way from day one, and ultimately, that ends up being
a complete catastrophe that is going to lead to something really bad. So, make sure that
from day one, things are clean, and things are organized from a legal perspective.
The next thing is, you want to test your idea. Before you even go to market, don’t think
that “Oh, my gosh, this is going to be amazing. My assumptions are fantastic,” because never
are you going to get it right with the assumptions. The way you want to go about it is you want
to go where your potential customers are going to be and ask them, test them, get the service,
get the product in front of them, try to get some data points, try to get some feedback.
Maybe it’s getting on the phone, maybe it’s doing some surveys, but get as many data points
as possible because that is going to help you in polishing your product and your service
farther so that when you get it to market, you already know that you’re bringing to
market something that people want to use, something that people have been craving for,
and something that people are telling you, “This is going to address my problem, my
frustrations.” That way, you’re playing it safe rather than going and throwing yourself
into a pool that may have no water whatsoever. The next thing is you want to turn your early
adopters into raving fans. At the beginning, the last thing that you want is crickets.
You launch something, and then you’re waiting for people to come. You want to get those
early adopters; you want to give those early adopters fantastic discounts, incentives to
come, and to tell their friends. At this point, maybe it’s influences that have great networks,
and those are great people that you can bring to help you because those networks just get
bigger, bigger, and bigger. So, it makes sense for those early adopters or fans to fall in
love with what you’re doing and essentially turning those into raving fans that are going
to spread the word around the world of what you’re doing and how fantastic is your product
and your service. The next thing is, you need to ask yourself
– obviously, it’s raising money, but you need to ask yourself, “Do I want to build
a billion-dollar business, or do I want to build a lifestyle business that is just going
to be paying for my bills?” If it’s a billion-dollar business, you’re going to
need to raise money. Basically, this means that you need to have
the right packaging, the right positioning for their story, and also that you’re mastering
storytelling. Storytelling also starts with having a pitch deck, a pitch deck that you
can actually grab the template below. A 15-20 slides presentation type of thing that you
can showcase to investors so that they get a good idea and understanding of what your
company is about. Again, I’m mentioning that this is storytelling
because, at an early stage, those investors are really betting on your future. They’re
getting excited with the possibility, and they want to jump in to build the business
with you. That’s essentially what raising money and how you go about it if you want
to build a billion-dollar business. Obviously, if you want to build a lifestyle business,
that’s completely fine, and perhaps at that point, you don’t need money, but again,
you need to ask yourself that question. Next, you really want to scale the business.
If it’s something that is working that you have product/market fit, meaning that people
love it, that it’s flying off the shelves, then you need to understand how are you going
to be able to expand this? How can you take it to other geographic locations? How can
you get more employees to help you, and you can delegate on them? What kind of investors
are you going to be bringing in? What kind of business development deals are you going
to do to help with distribution? So, it’s all about scaling.
I would love to hear what your business is about, what your idea’s about. Leave a comment
below so that I know what it is about. I’m going to review it in detail, I promise. Then,
also, make sure that you hit the Like button and subscribe to this channel so that you
don’t miss out on all the videos that we’re rolling out every week.
Also, don’t forget to check out the fundraising training, which is the program where we help
founders from A to Z with everything related to fundraising, live Q&As, agreements, templates,
a community of founders all over the world helping each other. And I think that you will
find tremendous value in it. Thank you so much for watching.