IIP036: 15 Best Takeaways From Over 100 Interviews With Top Entrepreneurs

After 35 interviews done so far for Inspiring Innovation Podcast (a cool milestone — if I may add), I have dissected and collated fifteen of the most valuable tips and advice we’ve received from top entrepreneurs sharing their story so far.

Why Stop From Normal Scheduling And Do This Episode?

Actually, it was triggered by a challenge from one of the VIP members who posed a question, asking for a list of the ‘top 10 completely unnecessary mistakes which can make a business fall’.

I thought it was a great idea and came up with another one: highlight the best pieces of advice that all these amazing entrepreneurs whom I interviewed in the show had shared with us so far.

I’ve also been playing with the idea of producing an additional weekly episode — a shorter one apart from the weekly interview — that’ll be showcased on a Monday perhaps (with a co-host or someone). We’ll talk about and dissect the interview episode, extract lessons and talk about it for about 20 minutes or so.

For this episode, it’s going to be a compilation of all those golden nuggets that I also find myself giving to VIP members, to people who email me and friends. I realized that it would be much helpful to list them all down in one place.

So, here are the top 15 take away from 35 interviews:

1. David Janner — IIP033: The Flea Circus, And Making $100,000 A Month!

“Don’t waste time trying to get everything perfect.”

I see this all the time; I get through this loop myself. Trying to get everything perfect — never launching, never releasing, never validating, never getting any feedback from the market — is all a waste of time.

You don’t actually need the “perfect” solution. You need A solution.

On a side note: I often make an excuse that I’m a perfectionist and try to make everything perfect, when actually, the reason I’m perfecting it is because I’m scared. It’s the fear of failure or the fear of success that make us think we need to perfect stuff.

Resist that urge.

1. Dino Dogan — IIP011: How To Get More Attention To You Blog and Make Your Fans Insanely Loyal, With Dino Dogan

He managed to mention Hitler and Steve Jobs in the same sentence during his interview that made some people angry. To know more, you could listen to the interview HERE.

The lesson wasn’t directly from Dino’s mouth, but it was based on his work:

You need to have an opinion and not be afraid to share it and stand behind it.

Having a strong opinion creates polarization — you get supporters and haters, which is great for customer/reader/fan engagement. By sharing your opinion, you’ll be amazed on how much it helps to build your brand, your engagement and respect.

1. Bob Burg — IIP027: The 5 Laws of Success with Bob Burg, Coauthor of The Go-Giver

Bob preached about how to make your product valuable when I challenged him with a question:

In a saturated market where everybody has pretty much the same solution and offering, how do you increase your value?

He said, “The only advantage/benefit you can offer over your competition is YOU.” It’s not your price, it’s not anything else . . . it’s YOU.

What do you stand for?

Whoever you are or whatever makes you YOU — that’s your advantage. That’s the one thing no one can replicate because there’s only one YOU.

1. Sean Platt — IIP007: How Sean Platt Writes An Amazon Bestseller EVERY Single Week

When I asked Sean, “Are you crazy? Why do you release a book every week?”

He answered, “Because people don’t go to church every other week. They go to church every week. There’s a reason.”

The point here is consistency. You need to be there at least once a week so you’re on top of mind. It becomes a habit to spend time with your product … your content … your blog … whatever. Like you guys, you know — at the very least — that we’re going to be together every Thursday (or whatever day you picked for to listen to the show).

The lesson is consistency . . . and at least once a week.

1. John Dumas — IIP008: How To Make 6 Figure Income From Podcasting? EOFire Case Study

John did something that no one has ever done before: he created a daily podcast.

This has created amazing results for him — really mind-blowing results with income surpassing the $50,000 per month after a year of doing it (they just celebrated their anniversary, congrats guys!).

Here’s what I got from John:

“If you believe in something (no matter how crazy it is), even if all the experts tell you you’ve lost your mind . . . DO IT. “

Everybody told John he shouldn’t do it. They told him it was crazy to think of doing a daily podcast. He did it, and now his success cannot be denied.

1. Rand Fishkin — IIP002: From $500,000 Debt to $22.3M Annual Revenue – Story of Rand Fishkin & SEOmoz

This was the episode I launched with.

One of the ways Rand got into such a big debt ($500,000) is wasting his time and money (and a lot of it) on fancy business cards, fancy offices, furniture, equipment, etc.

This is something that makes me crazy: seeing people planning a business and spending weeks to create the perfect business card, the perfect website — the perfect whatever.

And their product never hits the market.

They spend so much time, so much money and effort to create things that the customer doesn’t care about.

It’s the customer that matters, not how you seem to your colleagues in the next trade show when you exchange business cards.

Reality check: Some of the biggest names in the online entrepreneurship world don’t even walk around with business cards. Their business card is their email and that’s it.

Stop wasting effort on that.

1. Lisa Howell — IIP 017: The Little White Lie That Created A $500,000 Business

“You need to give away your secret source again, and again, and again.”

Every time she shared everything she knows, she reached a new level in her expertise. She understands things in a deeper way, could create even more content. Every time she gave away everything she had, she came up with a new product with a new service that was even more powerful and even more prolific to her and to her customers.

So, give your secret source away. It goes back to “it’s all about YOU as the value” and you’re providing the best that you can; that’s the part of what will differentiate you from the experts who think they should hide some of the secrets from their customers.

1. Jaime Tardy — IIP034: Live an Enjoyable Life AND Make Millions, The Story of Jaime Tardy – The Eventual Millionaire

“Stop comparing someone else’s outer life to your inner life.”

A good example of this was when I met Lisa Howell during a mastermind group. I couldn’t help but think how most people would kill to be in her position. But behind it all, Lisa was devastatingly miserable at that time for reasons you can find out from my interview with her.

My point is, we were all judging people’s outer life and comparing it to our inner life — our business as we saw it — but we need to remember that there’s not necessarily a correlation between what people and what their business looks like on the outside and what is happening on the inside.

1. Joel Runyon — IIP029: Getting Unstuck, Doing The Impossible, And Cold Showers – With Joel Runyon

It used to make me nuts and really depressed looking at how far other people had gone compared to me within the same time frame. And then I heard an interview with Joel Runyon, who I had in the show a couple of weeks ago.

“Never look how far you are from your ultimate goal. Look at how far you’ve come.”

This was one of the moments when everything changed. I just started seeing things that way. And every time when I’m still frustrated on how far I have to go in my journey to reach my goals, I look back and say, “Okay, what have I achieved in the last three months . . . six months . . . a year . . . two years . . . three years?” and I’m always amazed. We don’t give ourselves enough credit for the progress that we have been achieving and doing.

1. Antonio Centeno — IIP020: From USA Marines To World Leading Style Expert For Men

While talking about networking and more, Antonio mentioned something that really worked well for him:

“You need to reach out to market leaders when you can help them, not when they can help you.”

That’s the best way to create strong relationships with market leaders.

In Antonio’s case, when he heard Pat Flynn (from Smart Passive Income) was going to give a talk at some event and Pat posted the clothes that he’s going to wear for it, he (being a style expert for men) thought Pat could do better.

So he created a video explaining what he thinks Pat should wear, and why and how he matches stuff, etc. He sent it to Pat (privately for free), not expecting anything in return.

Reciprocity had its way.

It came back (big time) and Antonio has been rocking it since.

1. Amy Porterfield — IIP013: How To Be Resourceful At All Times, With Amy Porterfield

Amy has made an art in making her competitors her close friends: When someone is a better fit for one of her colleagues, she’ll lose the sale and refer it to them, understanding that there’s enough fish in the ocean for everybody.

She has made friends with everybody in her niche. Everyone is referring to her all the perfect customers because they know Amy can serve them best and vice versa. Not only is it a much happier way to do business, it’s actually a lot more prolific.

1. Mike Michalowicz — IIP031: How To Grow Your Own Giant Pumpkin, And Become A Successful Entrepreneur

Mike learned something after creating successful business. He looked into growing ginormous, world-record-breaking pumpkins and applied what those farmers were doing in business.

“Crop away or weed out the weak pumpkins and invest everything in one pumpkin.”

How does this apply to business?

Figure out who are your best target customers (who do you want to work with and who would be the most prolific and the most fun customer to work with and focus only on them). It doesn’t have to be a specific person; it can be a person type or a company type. The concept is to figure out who’s your biggest pumpkin and serve them like no one else. Find out what’s on their wish list and make it rain for them. Crop any customer that doesn’t fit that vision.

1. Srini Rao — IIP023: Confessions Of A Corporate Misfit

“The only way to have huge success in your life is to start doing things that may fail.”

No one has ever succeeded in something that was fail-proof. Do something that may fail; get out of your comfort zone and you’ll achieve amazing things.

And start listening to BlogcastFM!

 

1. Pat Flynn — IIP 004: From Unemployed Architect To Earning $50,000 Monthly Income

“Use your unfair advantage. Solve that problem that no one else could. Pack it nicely and offer it to the world.”

Pat considers his unfair advantage as a knack to being able to really explain complicated stuff in a simple manner that people just understand. He does that a lot with his sketching or doodling on whiteboard videos.

We all have our unfair advantages. We just need to figure out what it is and use it.

1. Stacey Ferreira — IIP006: Making $1M From A Single Tweet. Stacey Ferreira, MySocialCloud

“Everyone has great ideas. Execution is the only thing that matters.”

You can have as many ideas as you can dream of, but if you never take action or never execute, it really doesn’t matter.

Last but not least — taking a shot on Chris Ducker’s words, “You need to always under-promise and over-deliver” — I’m going to over-deliver with one bonus tip that I live by, day by day:

16. Chris Ducker — IIP003: How To Do More, Work Less, And Help a Food-Poisoned Girlfriend: Learn How to Outsource.

“When something you try fails, dust yourself off and try again.”

Entrepreneurship isn’t meant to be easy; otherwise everybody would have been doing it. Everybody would have been having a wonderful life.

The point is… it’s only those who handle the failure and look at failure as just feedback from the market, saying it wasn’t what it needs or wants that makes it. It is rejection — yes — but it’s a lot better to know and carry pivoting on until you make it.

There was a recent Harvard statistic says that over 90% of businesses that do succeed and prosper after the first 5 years aren’t doing the exact thing they started with. They change. It’s the part of their journey.

Don’t dread bad results; they are a lesson to be learned and to improve. As long as you’re learning and fixing, you’re still making progress. Dust yourself off, keep your head held high, and try again.

I’d really be happy to hear what you think. Leave a comment below and let me know if I left out some golden nuggets or which of these did you find most helpful — please let me hear your thoughts.

If you think these lessons are powerful and can help someone, I would really appreciate and be very grateful if you could share it via Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.

Until then, take massive actions!

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Stay awesome,
Meron

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

Transcript

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