Three Great Tips for Entrepreneurs

In this video, Matt reacts to another entrepreneur’s tips he would give to those starting. You might be surprised about what Matt actually thinks about these tips.

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this new series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video: 

Top three qualities I think you need to be a successful entrepreneur. You need to fail fast and you need to learn from your mistakes. That’s number one number. Two is you need to become a huge reader. Reading is like a complete hack to downloading other people’s mistakes and learning from those without you having to do it yourself. Number 3 is build systems around yourself because you can’t do all the time for yourself. You have to have good people around you. You have to have good systems that’s what’s gonna carry the weight in the long run.

Matt’s Reaction: 

Okay, three good tips for being a successful entrepreneur. uh first tip is fail fast, which you know ideally you don’t fail at all. But I think the point there is figure out if something’s not working and switch right. Don’t keep banging your head against the same broken wall when there’s a door 2 feet down that you could be walking through. Right, so that’s what he’s talking about is figure out when something isn’t working and what you need to change to make it work. And I think this more applies to people who are trying to invent new products or you know in product types of businesses. You hear stories all the time about you know somebody’s been working in their garage for 10 years to try to invent the perfect you know dehumidifier or spackle remover or whatever. And then they finally emerge from the garage 10 years later and realize nobody really wants it anyway. So failing fast in those kinds of situations is key. Knowing what who you’re gonna sell to, who the customers are before you even start inventing something is really the way to do that. But the point is well taken and learn from your mistakes is another the second part of that first tip, which is also key. Don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over or you, of course, will keep having the same bad results over and over.

The second thing he said was read. Again I agree there’s lots of good knowledge. It doesn’t if you’re not a big reader, like I love to read I love books, but there is a YouTube video out there for everything. And chances are there’s one there’s 10 or 15 or 20 so whatever you’re trying to learn and get more knowledge on and be more experienced with. Definitely don’t you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can go and learn from books. You can learn from watching videos just make sure that the person you’re listening to or the people you’re listening to have been down the road. They know what they’re talking about and they’re giving you good advice. That’s not always easy to do which is why books are a little bit more of a good signal, right. If you can go find a book in a bookstore on Amazon that’s not just an ebook it means a publisher read it, an editor read it, and there was enough audience. Enough people thought that was good advice that hopefully that’s a good quality signal. Anybody can put up a YouTube video. Ha ha, example here right here right. I would say I do know what I’m talking about but there’s plenty of people out there that don’t. And you may not be able to tell the difference so you know reading books about how to do well on business is a great strategy. 

The third tip was build systems and have good people around you. Even if you’re a solo operator it’s good to have a standard operating procedure, a checklist, a way that you do things so you can be repeatable. And then as you figure out ways to improve the process you update those procedures. But then the great thing about having that is when you hire your first person you already have a system for them to use. Here’s how to do this. If it’s a window-cleaning business here’s how we clean the windows. We start here, we do this, we do this, and then at the end you clean up, and then it’s done. No matter what the business is there should be  standard operating procedures. It doesn’t have to be super formal but the more you have systems, the easier it is to bring people on and have them be successful. Set expectations, know who you need to hire cause you know what you need them to do. You hire the right people, you make sure they’re doing what they need to do, and you continue to grow the business. Because yes a one-man business or one-woman business you’re gonna get tired. You wanna take breaks, you’re gonna wanna take vacations, things in life are gonna come up that prevent you from working every single day, and if the business is only you then you’re not gonna be able to keep it up. So the goal should be to grow the business using systems is a great way to do that. Have people that help you, have people that help you grow, and then you can achieve much more for them and for you than you could on your own.