This week’s Misfit Entrepreneurs are Sania Khiljee. Sania is a serial entrepreneur as well as social media expert. Sania has businesses in everything from children’s private pre-schools to subscription box services.

She is the founder of Losers to Legends, a social media consulting and education company that started out as a motivational movement on social media and has grown to over 1.5 million followers.

The thing that stuck me most about Sania when we met is how humble, down to earth, and willing to help others she is. I knew I had to have her on to share not just her incredible wisdom and advice with you, but her entrepreneurial spirit as well.

www.SaniaKhiljee.com

@SaniaKhiljee on social

@LoserstoLegends on social

Sania grew up in an entrepreneurial family. But, 10 years ago, Sania was not allowed to be on social media. She had a very possessive ex-fiance that was very dominant over her and would not allow her to be on social media. It took several years to find out why – he was cheating on her using the platforms.

After she got out of that terrible circumstance, she fell in love with social media and its possibilities. She built several brick and mortar businesses alongside her family, but wanted to do something her family had never done before. So, she branched out and created subscription box service using social media and sold it. Since then, she has been teaching others on how to grow their business using social media.

What’s the best advice on entrepreneurship that you got from your father?

• Sania’s dad is very practical
• His philosophy is not “follow your passion,” but “Do what makes you money. Do what drives cashflow. It is the lifeblood of any business. Get that right and then follow your passions from there.”
• Don’t be afraid to be money-minded.
• Another lesson is that he never let work-life balance get in the way. He made time for family each day. It was a priority. P
• rioritize money, but not at the expense of the quality of your life.

At the 11 min mark, Sania talks about work-life balance in a 24/7 world…

• Structure is very important.
• The more you plan, the better you will do, even with the fires that come up.
• You have to always be ready for the unexpected demands of business day to day.
• Ask yourself, “What does a productive day really look like?

What was like going out on your own away from the family business?

• Sania is not a rags to riches story, but a prove your own worth story.
• She had beat imposter syndrome by building a business and selling it herself.
• Creating businesses that make money that were aligned with dreams she had were very validating for her.
• The lessons learned and what it took to be successful are very integral to who she is as a person today.

What did you do to actually create the conviction you now have as an entrepreneur?

• You don’t have to be so polar or a binary decision between one thing or another. You can do multiple things at once.
• Sania still worked in the family business but built her other businesses outside of it.
• Having a side-hustle that you can build to a point where you can do it full time is a great way to go.
  • Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example of this.

What are your best tips on how to grow a worldwide audience through social media?

• Have a focus. Don’t jump around between a bunch of different types of posts.
• As much as you can niche down, you will do better in speaking to a specific audience.
• Get granular. For example, “30 year old entrepreneurs who live in the US and are looking for morning motivation.”
• When someone lands on your page, they should know immediately who it’s for, what it is about, and the content they can count on from it.
• Quality of content is critical as well. 1 piece of viral content can change everything, so every piece you put our should be top quality.
• Consistency. If you are serious about social media – it is 2-3 hours per day minimum across all platforms. Instagram, Youtube, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• It is not enough to just put up content – you then have to go out and engage and attract people back to your pages and take a real interest in you and what you are doing.

Tell us about the 3 hours a day…

• The 10,000 hour rule. If you spend 3 hours a day on social media, within 10 years, you will become world-class at it.
• Sania chooses not to outsource, but to use the time to hone her skills.
• If you do not want to be an expert. You can put in less time, such as an hour a day, and outsource for the rest.
• No matter what, you are looking a devoting time daily.

What about someone that owns a business and only has 3-5 hours per week? Can they maximize their presence online?

• Yes – you can hire an intern or hire an agency that does done for you solutions.
• If you outsource, you may miss out on some of the engagement. If you can still find some time to engage, that is good.

Talk to us about some of the methods you use to grow your account…

• There are paid and organic growth tactics
• $5 per day in social media marketing, such as Facebook ads or boosting posts, can make a huge difference.
• The more exposure you get coupled with high quality content is a recipe for success.
• You can pay for influencer shoutouts. You can pay a little bit to someone with a million followers or more to promote you.
• Engagement with other users in a genuine way costs nothing. Leaving comments and posts on other pages that you like will drive slower growth, but the best followers.
• There are also software available for growth. Automations are touchy as they can de-personalize, but can and do work.
• LinkedIn has a lot of automation as well.
• You should also research times to post across platforms as well as which hashtags. You can study others you admire in your niche. Copy them.
• Social media is a science – doing the right things in a consistent way.

What is a paid shoutout and what do they cost?

• It is when an influencer promotes you to their audience.
• You can pay anywhere from $10-$300 for a shoutout.
• Sania usually pays $10-$20 or does a trade.
• You have to be very careful when paying for influencer shoutouts to make sure people have real followers, not ones they bought.
• You can go to socialblade.com and type in an influencers name to see their growth.
• You want to see consistent daily growth instead of bursts of growth followed by a loss of followers (this is a sign they buy followers).
• You should also look at the makeup of followers and quality of comments to see if they resonate with your focus.

At the 44 min mark, Sania talks about the types of shoutouts she does and others do…

It is generally best to give something free to potential followers or new subscribers

If you could pick only one social media platform to be on, which one would it be and why?

• Instagram because it is where she started
• Data shows Instagram is one of the most lucrative platform and better for organic growth vs. Facebook where you have to pay more now.
• Instagram also has better ability for viral content
• But, you should figure out which platform is best for you and for what you like.

What are ways to make money online from your social media presence?

• Once you have an audience, you can promote your services to them.
• Books, video courses, masterminds, affiliate products you promote, etc.
• Referring business to others and taking a cut – so look for partnerships you can do shoutouts for.

Best Quote: “ Do what makes you money. Do what drives cashflow. It is the lifeblood of any business. Get that right and then follow your passions from there.”

Sania's Misfit 3:

1. Try meditation. 30 mins to an hour a day can change your life. Search “deep-guided” meditation on Youtube. Guided makes it easy for you.
2. Find your focus(es). Find the 1-2 things that deserve your most focus and that are symbiotic to each other and focus on them intently.
3. Approach your sales as being a friend or partner first, then your customer. If you try to sell people right at the start without a relationship, it will make it harder.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Cameron Brown. Cameron is an award-winning composer, international speaker, and founder of Thriving Collective a world-wide movement dedicated to helping people reach their true potential. Cameron has been featured everything from TEDx to ABC and Millennial Magazine. He was born in the outback of Australia and started playing piano at a young age. His story has a lot of ups and downs and twists and turns which he will share with you today.

In 2016, he sold or donated 99% of the things he owned and embarked on a global initiative called the “Impact diaries” to inspire people to make a greater positive impact in the world. And just this year, he official partnered with National Geographic as a National Geographic Explorer.

Cameron has a developed a very compelling and unique way of speaking and teaching through what he calls Multi-Sensory talks where he speaks to audience while mixing in playing piano and a complete video experience embedded in.

Cameron credits all of his success to the incredible impact that curiosity can have on your life and we break that down with him in this episode.

www.ThrivingCollective.com

@AskCameronBrown on social

Cameron says he’s had a number of big defining moments in his life. One of them was in mid-2010 when they heard screaming from his neighbor that her son had just killed himself. He and another went running through the house and found the deceased. Cameron remembers most taking care of the siblings and pretending like nothing was going on, playing with them to keep them occupied, but to then see the father come home with a look of helplessness and the rest of the family. Cameron took away some very important truths from the experience. First, not one should ever have to go through that type of experience. Second, that there are others ways out and that there had to be a way to help people that are going through these tough times.

With a couple months, Cameron had enrolled in his first coaching course on personal development to help people. He learned a lot about himself and started to help people have breakthroughs. This grew and allowed him to start working with businesses to help them overcome their biggest challenges around the country.

Cameron’s work and other experiences lead him to ask 2 really important questions:

1. What do I really want to experience out of this life?
2. Am I really living?

The answer to the 2nd question was “no.” He made significant changes to his business to allow him to live more fully and begin to enjoy all aspects of life instead of just being focused on work.

He traveled and had had adventures, tried new things, met new people…and this really made him realize that life really is about experiences and he decided to find a way to blend helping others and companies with doing through a great experience.

What is the most important thing you have learned on your journey to this point?

• Earlier on, it would have been about taking responsibility for your life.
• Today, curiosity is the most valuable thing to nurture because it takes you into the unknown and helps to grow as a person.

Pay attention at the 9 min mark as Cameron talks about the benefits of curiosity in our lives and how it serves as the gateway to creativity and innovation.

At the 13 min mark, Cameron answers the question” How did the music side come to be in your life and how does it work with what you do?”

• Cameron’s favorite question to ask is “If it all ended today, what would the one thing you would regret not doing?”
• For Cameron, this was having a grand piano on stage while giving a talk. He set out to do it and visualized it daily. 3 months later, it was reality.
• Music often gets around the conscious mind to the subconscious and opens us in different ways.

Talk to us about the process of manifestation – how does someone go from visualization to get the real result?

• First, you must believe it is possible to achieve what you desire.
• One you believe, you can visualize.
• Then practice G.O.Y.A. Get off your ass! Take the inspired action.
• Be relentless in your pursuit.
• At the end of the day, it is about your being in alignment with who you want to become.

What did growing up in the outback of Australia teach you about how to succeed in life and business?

• The power and potential that technology has to allow to achieve things we would not necessarily be able to achieve. Because of growing up in a rural environment. Cameron took his singing lessons by phone because there wasn’t a singing teach in town.
• The value of time by yourself. As entrepreneurs, things can get lonely. Learning to be ok by yourself is a great skill to learn.
• The power of the mind to drive creativity.

What should people know about maximizing technology in their lives?

• We are already hybrid beings. Things may not be in us, but our phones, tablets computers, etc. are extensions of us.
• We have an operating system and it is either performing at its best or not. Our lives are the same and we must upgrade as technology allows us.
• You can choose how you can use or not use technology to upgrade your operating system.
• Things that hold us back are the scrolling through the social media feed or surfing the net or responding to every notification that comes up on our phone.
• To maximize your life, first audit and look at what areas you have that you don’t feel like you are in control.
• Can you use technology to close the gaps? Can you schedule “sprints” of uninterrupted work? Look at how you can create space in your life to make sure the technology does not run you.

Other advice?

• We have to prioritize ourselves and not the external world dictate who we are or what we do.
• If you don’t fill your calendar, someone or something else will.
• Treat yourself as your very best client. You wouldn’t cancel time you have with them.
• The first thing that goes when we get busy is our time for ourselves.

What are the 3 Impacts?

1. We make an impact on our lives
2. We make an impact on others’ lives
3. We make an impact on the planet

The big insight is that you can be succeeding in your business and taking care of others, but if that is out of alignment with taking care of your environment – then what you are doing in the other 2 areas, you can still have a negative impact.

• Doing even the smallest things can have an impact.

Tell us about curiosity and being comfortable with being uncomfortable…

• Curiosity is one of the most valuable and least used skills we practice
• The quality of your life will be in direct correlation with the amount of uncertainty you can handle
• Outside of your comfort zone is the unknown, a sometimes scary, but untapped unknown with endless possibility. Curiosity can bridge the gap between these two areas.
• Audit your believe systems to see which ones give you more level of certainty in your life vs. keep you from doing what you could do.
• Curiosity allows you to dream up what you could do. Ask yourself, “What could I do?”

Listen at the 44 min mark as Cameron really dives deep on curiosity and curious language and tonality…

What is Meercat Syndrome and why should people understand it?

• It’s the same as shiny object syndrome
• You get to into all the things you can vs. picking a few and focusing intently on them
• This is how curiosity can get you stuck, so you have to beware seeking too many opportunities and not focusing and acting on a few.

Best Quote: “Become comfortable with being uncomfortable.” 

Cameron's Misfit 3:

1. Responsibility. You must take responsibility because those who take responsibility get to create the change. Those who blame stay with the pain.
2. Courage. Develop the courage to go for what you believe in – even in the face of fear. You have to become and make peace with the worst case scenario - nothing can hold you back.
3. Curiosity. Learn to nurture your curiosity as a skill. It is the bridge between where you are now and infinite possibilities.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Heini Zachariassen. Heini is the creator and founder of the widely popular app, Vivino, which provides users with any wine's rating, review and average price. It is also the world’s largest wine community, claiming more than 31 million users.

Vivino’s been featured, well, just about everywhere and in every publication from Entrepreneur to Forbes to INC and on and on.

The interesting thing is that Heini started Vivino with no experience at all in the wine business. He has a varied background in software development and mobile innovation and as an entrepreneur, had had success in a few other ventures, but as he says he was a total outsider.

And that is one of the major topics I want to discuss with him today – how being an outsider can actually be the best thing for your business and success.

www.Vivino.vom

Heini was born in the Farrow Islands in the North Atlantic. Basically in the middle of nowhere. He grew up there and moved to Denmark when it was time for college. Heini says that he was always entrepreneurial, and his father was a “super-nerd,” so the whole family was into technology.

When he left college, he wanted to start a business. He found success after a few small enterprises with a software security company. The company did well and still exists, but he wanted to create something more fun. So, about 10 years ago, he noticed that there was no way to judge wine. There was no rating, no information, etc. He started building something really for himself and the idea was to create a web-database for wine.

One thing Heini notes is timing. They hit it right on for timing with smart phones coming online and giving people the ability to take a picture of a label and get instant info and a rating. A few years earlier and that would not have been possible, so timing was huge in the success of Vivino.

Talk to us about how being an outsider can help you in succeeding as a business…

• Heini was definitely an outsider.
• The priority was building the solution for the average wine drinker.
• He found that when he talked to people in the industry, they thought alike and were kind of a “herd mentality.”
• He found that what made the product win was creating a product more for the masses and not the connoisseurs.

Talk about launching the product…

• When they launched, there were 600 other wine apps, but more geared to the wine expert.
• Most people are more casual around wine.
• They wanted something that was easy, could help them quickly, and know they are getting a good deal.
• They wanted to find a way to empower people in their ability to choose

Over 30 million users, what can you teach us about how to grow and build an online community?

• There are no silver bullets.
• The Vivino group has been extremely product focused.
• Early on, they released the product quickly, but then really listened to the feedback and actioned it.
• The continuously improved for 2 years.
• Make sure to have your priorities right. Your only priority is getting people to absolutely love your product.
• You must know your core user. You can’t please everyone. So, focus on the core and make them raving fans.
• Keep things simple for people to use and engage your product. You can always add to it, so don’t give too much to start.

What ways did you market and gain visibility as you began to grow?

• One thing that has helped was building the app around something that people are sociable and enjoy – win. It makes it relatable.
• Be careful with spending too much time promoting the product early in the beginning. Pour that energy into the product. Your users will be your best marketers

Are there any mediums that you promote through that work better than others?

• Be humble. Targeting smaller blogs with loyal followers was very helpful for them.
• This works well when you are in niche and can be a big fish in a small pond.

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about growing and scaling a business?

• Things change a lot.
• Your role as a founder changes a lot.
• See it as a layer cake
  • When you start out, you do everything
  • Then you begin to take slices out and give them to others to take one
  • Slowly you get to where you are focused on what you are best for in the business
• You will have to hand duties off.

Talk about replacing yourself in the business….

• First you start as a manager as the company grows
• Then you become a leader of leaders
• At some point, you will grow to a point where someone out there will be a better CEO for the future growth of the company.
• You must be willing to let go.

At the 24 min mark, Heini talks about what he looked for when he wanted to replace himself and find a CEO to take the company into the future.

What have you learned from raising capital?

• If you have a free, community-based product, it is very hard to succeed without raising funding vs. a product you may sell business to business.
• Raising money is hard, but the hardest part is building something that millions of people can use.
• There is plenty of money out there, but you must build something that can have a huge footprint and has a path to profitability
• Investors don’t invest in ideas – they care about what you’ve built.
• Many times, your first round will come from your network and people you know.
• Check out Heini’s YouTube channel Raw Startup to hear him talk more about this topic.

Do you have any critical habits that you practice and contribute to your success?

• Sleep and a good rest routine is important.
• Commuting to work on a bike giving exercise, but also shutting out the noise and allows you to think and come up with ideas.

Other advice?

• A lot of successful entrepreneurs that do well have a little bit of insecurity about how they are performing which spurs them to keep over-performing and making sure they are winning. Don’t rest on your achievements.
• Always believe in your luck.

Best Quote: "Always believe in your luck."

Heini's Misfit 3:

1. Always build something. When we are building something in our lives – a business, a garden, a relationship, we find purpose and meaning.
2. Think big, but start small. Little steps lead to the big picture.
3. There are no naysayers unless you choose to hear them and believe them.

Misfit Nation! Welcome to the Misfit Entrepreneur 2018 year in review where each year I attempt to boil down all of the incredible, useful information, strategies, and tips that our guests have given on the show into less than one hour for you…with a few surprises thrown in.

It’s impossible for me to go over every single best piece of advice from these amazing people and that is why I urge you to take some time and go through the Misfit Archives to see which episodes resonate most with you. In doing this episode, my goal is to spur ideas – to give you a lightning strike that propels you down a path of action to better improve yourself, your life, and your business or career in 2019!

But, before listening, I want to tell you something. I want to say “Thank YOU.” Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support of the show and thank you for sharing our message. Without you and the amazing feedback members of this audience give me every week, it would not be half of what it is. Because of you, in just over a year, this show has reached hundreds of thousands of people in over 70 countries. I am truly humbled and in awe OF what we’ve done together and I am excited about having an even bigger impact with your help in 2019.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, and I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did creating it for you!

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Marcus Aurelius Anderson. Marcus is best-selling Author, TedX speaker, Entrepreneur, and coach who is best known for teaching people how to harness the gift of adversity.

I have had the chance to meet and spend time with Marcus and I was blown away at his insight about life, business, and how to maximize potential.

And the story of how Marcus came to be who he is and teach what he does is one of the most powerful that I have ever heard and I know that you will learn a tremendous amount from him.

www.MarcusAureliusAnderson.com

Marcus started out going to chiropractor school, was married, and following the typical life path. All at once, he got a divorce and lost a strong male role model in his uncle who was a special forces veteran. This caused Marcus to re-evaluate his life and do something he had always wanted to do deep down, join the special forces.

The only problem the cutoff age was 35 and Marcus was older than that. But the recruiter spoke with him and saw his passion- and how good of shape he was in, so he signed a release to allow him to join.

After the first two weeks of training, he could see that he could do it physically and new his mentality would carry him through. He got placed with the 10th Mountain group.

He was having these symptoms that he was writing off to just the hard work he was doing, but in reality he had a C5 nerve root that was compressed in his spine and the disc exploded while he was sleeping leaving him waking up paralyzed from the neck down in his barrack bunk.

He was bedridden, divorced, and had nothing.

It was at this low point where everything started for him.

To come back from things, Marcus had to be operated on and he flatlined on the operating table twice during the operation. After the surgery, they didn’t expect him to walk unless he could in just a few days or he wouldn’t ever walk. Days turned into weeks, then week’s to months. He was bedridden for 3 months and was full of anger.

How did you recover?

• The realization that the anger was not helping him
• Being angry at himself, his circumstance and everyone around him was holding him back and not letting him be able to move forward.
• He looked for something to offsite the anger. For him that was gratitude. He took himself out of the equation and asked “Where is the opportunity in this adversity?”

At the 11 min mark, Marcus talks about the realization and understanding of what would have happened had he been deployed with his team and his injury happened and how that gave him a very positive perspective and helped motivate him. In fact, he sees the whole experience as making him lucky.

It was once he saw his adversity as a gift and found joy in his realization, he began to get feeling back in his fingers and toes.

After a year of physical therapy, Marcus was able to walk again.

Besides learning how use your mind and bend adversity to your will, what is the most important thing you learned about yourself and the human spirit?

• The human spirit, body, and mind is much stronger than we give it credit for.
• We are only as strong as the adversity we overcome, but most people never push themselves in any of those capacities and stay comfortable, so they never learn what they are capable of…
• We have to learn to stop our mind from shutting us down when we reach the unknown in our lives.
• We must ask and expect more from ourselves.

How does someone push themselves to grow to their next level?

• It is difficult for us to push ourselves, we need help either in the form of others to push us or having a coach or trainer.
• Adversity is an adversary and fuel for finding out what you are made of in overcoming it.
• Pushing slightly past a limit is a little victory and every time you do, you grow. The little victories matter and we must discipline ourselves to seek them and relish in them.
• Seek micro-adversities
• Find the gratitude and joy in it all

Can you expand on how people can put habits in their lives to push them and stretch them over their adversities?

• Create micro-adversities. For example, Marcus fasts twice per week to work on his willpower and control.
• At the end of the day, look back on your day and ask what adversities you ran into and what the opportunity is in them. Self-reflect while you brush your teeth.
• Push yourself to where you hear the little voice in your head want to quit…and then talk yourself through and power through it. Each time you do it, it gets easier.
• Use your fear to push you.

How does someone get “unstuck?”

• Challenge your beliefs and ways of thinking
• Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own – Bruce Lee
• Seek wisdom for yourself and challenge yourself to execute in some way on it.
• Go out and find ways to be uncomfortable.
• The things you are avoiding are what will grow you and help you get unstuck.
• Taking some sort of action at all will make a difference vs. not doing anything.

What do you see that consistently holds people back from reaching their potential?

• People are held back by their belief systems and their self-worth
• What you believe about yourself and your value directly impacts your potential and ability to get to their next level.
• People ask themselves, “What should I be allowed to do this? Or Why am I better than others in my area of value?
• They should be asking “Why the hell not me?” There are so many people out there that are not good at what they are doing, but have the audacity to fall on their face over and over again and end up succeeding where others give up.
• If you are going slow enough that you can control, you are not going fast enough. If everything is easy, you are not asking enough from yourself.

How do you teach people to train and program their mind to become who they are meant to be?

• Using the Adversity Scale where 10 is the worst thing you’ve ever been through and 1 is heaven on earth.
• At some point, you’ve reached a 10 in your life
• You need to ask yourself about your 10’s and put it in perspective, is it really that hard or that bad? Could you push yourself even further?
• Most people operate in a zone 2-4 on the scale
• If you look at the value you deliver and how it can solve problems on the scale, you can re-evaluate the value for what it really provides and thus the worth of you for delivering it
• Focus on “quality” value. High standards for everything.

At the 31 min mark, Marcus explains what the “Inner Warrior” is and what it means…

• It means having a mission, a set of objectives to accomplish
• It is the indomitable spirit to be great and succeed on the different missions in your life from your work to your family, relationships, etc.
• The mission is inevitable, it’s not if, but when, but more importantly for you, it’s how well and what level it is accomplished at.
• Focus – If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority
  • There are 3 things that derail people:
  • They don’t have urgency
  • They don’t have a goal or objective worthy of pushing them forward They don’t have even idea of what they want to do
• Solving those 3 issues helps you to move forward
• It is about doing all the right things that allow you to be in the right place at the right time

What are some topics from your book, the Gift of Adversity, that you don’t usually talk about, but feel are important?

• No matter how successful you get, there is still struggle, there is still adversity
• It’s not supposed to be easy. Adversity is the indicator of things being worth doing or not.
• Parkinson’s law is important to understand. The law states that the amount of time you have to get something done is the amount of time you will take – when in fact, you don’t have to take that time. If you have 2 weeks to get something done, you don’t have to take 2 weeks, it may be done in one day. This helps you to move exponentially faster on your objectives.

At the 44 min mark, Marcus gives his 3 steps to help someone in their entrepreneurial journey...

1. Know exactly what your goals and objectives are.
2. Ask yourself repeatedly if what you are doing in the moment is helping you reach those goals or holding you back?
3. If what you are doing is not helping your reach your goals and objectives, how can you course correct to put your energy and effort into something that is?

Best Quote: “The body doesn’t tell the mind what to do, the mind tells the body what to do…”

Marcus's Misfit 3:

1. Urgency – you don’t need more time, you need a deadline.
2. Have tunnel vision and focus on your mission or objective.
3. Work to be present in everything you do – beware multi-tasking.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Chris Krimitsos. For many, Chris needs no introduction as the founder of the Podfest Multimedia expo, the world’s premier conference for all things podcasting and new media.

Chris is also the founder of the Tampa Bay Business Owners organization, CK Media Productions, and is a speaker and consultant. But, more than anything Chris is a master at creating and facilitating successful events. He’s has facilitated over 2000 successful events and recently started a podcast focused on helping people learn the secrets to creating and putting on great events. It’s called the Conference Cashflow Podcast.

I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time with Chris and I am amazed how our philosophies and principles are so similar – so there is a lot we can talk on today, but I want to focus first on what you can learn from Chris about how to put on a great, successful event.

www.Podfest.us

www.chriskrimitsos.com

Chris grew up in New York and had a lot of inspiration from his uncles. They came as immigrants with nothing in their pockets. They worked hard, got into the restaurant industry, and were very successful. He would learn from them and started his first business at 13 years old selling candy. He was serial entrepreneur ever since. He moved to Florida in the mid 2000’s and invested in real estate. He was fortunate to have exited before the crash.

Chris then got into production and produced two live TV shows. After some success, he started a group known as the Tampa Bay Business Owners. After growing it substantially, he sold it. He then started Podfest and is now its 6th year.

Why should people consider doing events as part of their business strategy?

• There is something about today’s day and age that life events can do that things like social media cannot.
• Coming together with people of the same interests is something people crave.
• It is also a great way to drive business and create income.

Putting on over 2000 events – what would you say are the critical elements someone needs to have to create successful event?

• You need an audience that is hungry for the information.
• You must be very specific about you are teaching and the topic of the event.
• If you can’t describe in 4-5 bullet points what they will walk away with, the there is an issue.
• The best speakers are not always professional ones, but great subject matter experts.
• Make sure to have early bird pricing and then raise your rate as you get closer to the event.
• Never set up more chairs than you have tickets sold.

At the 10 min mark, Chris gives two case study examples on how to pick speakers and find the right ones.

• Make sure you speaker is relatable to your audience. You cannot have a disconnect with your audience and your speaker.
• You always want to have someone that is a step ahead of your audience, but not 4-5 steps ahead.

Talk to us about the size event, what do people need to know?

• Starting out smaller is good and “big” when you are starting out is 20 or so people.
• You can do meetups 1x a month and then once a year do a larger event of 100 or more.
• Look what is happening in the local area, see if there is a need that is being underserved, and then create your event to serve it.
• You have to watch your expenses closely.
• Don’t go “free.” At minimum, have a contribution amount of $10 or so and make it optional.
• You want to have value on what you are doing. You can then graduate to fee based.
• Once you establish a following, then you can do larger events at $50 to $100 to attend and so on.

How do you promote and get people to come to an event?

• For local events, the simplest way is to make sure you have the city name in your title of your event.
• There are 3 very simple ways to get traffic:
  • Setup a Meetup Page which you can invite people to.
  • Sell your tickets on Evenbrite and use their marketing expertise.
  • Setup a Facebook event page and spend $50-100 targeting people in the local area.

Best secrets to make an event memorable?

• People show up for the education, but they come back for the collaboration.
• Make sure to leave room and breaks for people to connect and collaborate. Create an experience.
• For local Meetups, 1x a month is a good cadence with special workshops that are a premium.

Are there any big “don’ts” for events?

• Be very careful not to overpay with hotels and watch your food and beverage minimums
• If you can get the room for the value of the room and not do food and beverage, if you don’t need it.
• Make sure the hotel is right for your needs. Smaller hotels will charge just for the room and it will cost a couple of hundred dollars for the day

If someone would like to speak at an event, what should they do?

• A lot of promotors these days that work with millennials don’t want to be approached by a representative – they want to be contacted by the speaker themselves.
• Promotors are doing the best they can to fulfill their audience needs, so make sure you know what the audience is looking for.
• If you do get selected – make sure your presentation is beautiful and clear with more pictures, so people can see it and understand it.
• Make sure you give the audience what they are looking for, not just what you want to share.

What are your feelings on the current state of podcasting and what does the future hold over the next few years?

• Podcasting has really just started growing.
• 30% of the US is using podcasting, but are not “powerusers.”
• A lot more money is coming into the space to advertise and fund content.
• We will see growth like we haven’t seen before…

Any specific things people should watch and follow in podcasting?

• Podcasting is on demand audio that is searchable through the internet.
• It can be SEO and content rich.
• You can use podcasts for some many things – ways to market your business, fill a need, focus on a very small niche.
• Don’t look at it as an interview show, look at it as searchable content.

What are some critical habits that you believe all entrepreneurs should practice in today’s world?

• Being present in the moment.
• Using time effectively – focus and not waste it.
• Be very conscious to remove all time-wasting distractions from your work life that you can.

What is your best advice for an entrepreneur starting out?

• Design a future that is worth living into.
• Spend time visualizing that future.
• Make sure your why is big enough that the how become irrelevant.

At the 33 min mark, Chris talks about how to manifest your future and your why…

• Burn your “why” into your brain by visualizing what it is you are going to live into. What you intently focus on will become reality.
• Visualize while in motion if you can.
• Your why centers around the reason you are doing what you do – know what achieving your success looks like and how you celebrate it. This is really celebrating your why.
• If your why is strong – you will break through any issues with the how.
• Where do you want to go? What does it look like? Taste like? Smell like? Sound like? Etc. Go that deep…

Best Quote: "Design a future that is worth living into..."

Chris's Misfit 3:

1. Keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars

2. Make sure you have a future that is worth living into

3. Monitor your self-talk and how you are programming your brain

Hello Misfit Nation! Welcome to another edition of "Lessons for Hannah!" In November of 2016, we introduced a new format that we are putting alongside our regular episodes called “Lessons for Hannah.” Hannah is my daughter and one of the main inspirations for the Misfit Entrepreneur. I wanted to have a place where she could go and learn from her daddy and his Misfit friends throughout her life….even after I am gone. If you haven’t listened to the first episode of "Lessons for Hannah," I urge you to as it gives some more background and tells the amazing story of how Hannah came to be in our lives.

"Lessons for Hannah" are short, very useful, and sometimes comical lessons, that I have learned which I want to share with you and give to Hannah to help in your lives. Because I want Hannah to have these for her life, I’m going to speak as though I am talking directly to her. These episodes are a lot of fun and if you think there is a lesson that we should include in these episodes, please don’t hesitate to send it over to us at support@misfitentrepreneur.com. We’d love to share it.

This week’s Lesson for Hannah

I want to talk to you about faith. Faith in god, faith in yourself, and faith in the goodness of others. If you look up faith in the dictionary, you get several different definitions, but the overarching meaning is to believe in something or have confidence in something without necessarily having the proof that it is yet true.

Faith is essential to success in life. Many times, the things we manifest in our minds or the dreams we have are not yet true. We can see them in our imagination so vividly, but yet, they do not exist. It is faith that keeps up going to make them a reality. Now, there are different kinds of faith as I mentioned at the beginning of this message. The first, and I believe most important one, is faith in god. You’ve heard me talk before about the miracle that any of us are even alive. In fact, the chances are 10 to the 2.5 millionth power or about as close to impossible as you can get. Taking that a step further than even the chances of you being alive is the even smaller chance that you were meant to be with your mother and I. When I think about this and think about all the amazing things we get to experience in our lives and the divine works that go into it, it is easy for me to have faith in God.

I know deep within in my soul that there is a creator and that I am blessed by them beyond belief – not because of the accomplishments we’ve had in life and the things we are able to afford and do (although those are incredible blessings too), but because I have you, your mother, our family, and our friends. God has given us a great book of life to live and equipped us with the abilities to write it. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that because of my faith in God things will turn out in the best way they are supposed to, in good times and in bad.

Aside from creating your own faith in God, you must have faith in yourself. You are more capable than you will ever know. I feel one of the most tragic traits of human beings is the incredible ability for many of us NOT to live up to our true potential. We make excuses for it or let things get in the way of our dreams, but the truth is many of us don’t have the faith in ourselves to truly go after what we know we are capable of. It goes beyond fear of failure to more of a fear of what happens if we succeed? Because we know, if we succeed, that we will need and want to continue to operate at those levels and beyond. We know that it would mean holding ourselves to a much higher standard. And it also means that people will judge us more based on actions and/or inaction and this can paralyze people and hold them back from achieving greatness. This is why you must develop faith in yourself to go beyond these things. An undeniable faith in the ability to reach your potential, dreams, goals, and aspirations is what has propelled us throughout time.

Along the way, there are some that just do not back down. Their faith in themselves creates the burning desire, an un-extinguishable flame to achieve greatness. History is riddled with examples of this for us, from Jesus Christ to the founders who wrote the Declaration of Independence and then mustered their faith to fight until they made the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident” ring throughout the world, to the soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy and defeated the most evil empire ever in the Nazi regime, to completing the “impossible task” of landing a man on the moon. Behind it all was faith. You too are capable of greatness when you have faith in God combined with an undeniable faith in yourself.

Lastly, have faith in the goodness of others. In the world we live in with media all around us coming from all directions this Is hard. It’s hard mainly because the majority of things reported or shared on a large scale are negative or divisive. I’m here to tell you that that is not reality. The reality is every day, almost 8 billion people, get up and are looking to better their lives with their families. The overwhelming majority of people are good and know right from wrong. And every day, there are far more acts of goodness and greatness than there are of negativity or wrongdoing. Those things just don’t grab attention as much as the shock of something terrible. Let me give you an example to put this in perspective. Every day, there are well over 100,000 plane flights taking place all over the world. Pilots encounter all sorts of things when they fly, many of which the passengers never even know. In fact, every day pilots all over the world, make decisions that save their passengers lives and prevent a disaster – but you never hear about that. You hear about maybe one flight per year or every other year that was a tragedy and it is plastered all over the news for days. Think about that – one flight out of millions upon millions – when all the while heroes are saving others.

It is the same with people. Heroes are all around us. We are heroes in some way, if not every day, probably every week. Have faith in people. Have faith in the goodness of the human spirit and understand that while there will be failings of it and bad things will happen – there is a lot more good in this world than there is bad.

Hannah, I could go on this topic for hours and hopefully, if you mother and I have done our job somewhat well, you already have these faiths instilled in you. Embrace them, make them yours and use them to help you in reaching your full potential in your spiritual life, your contribution to the world, and with your fellow man. Remember, faith backed by committed action can achieve great things.

I love you,

Daddy

Best Quote: “Faith is essential to success in life. Many times, the things we manifest in our minds or the dreams we have are not yet true. We can see them in our imagination so vividly, but yet, they do not exist. It is faith that keeps up going to make them a reality."

Misfit 3:

1. Faith is essential to success in life.
2. Aside from creating your own faith in God, you must have faith in yourself. You are more capable than you will ever know. We are heroes in some way, if not every day, probably every week.
3. Have faith in people. Have faith in the goodness of the human spirit and understand that while there will be failings of it and bad things will happen – there is a lot more good in this world than there is bad.

121: Tap in to Your "Brave" and Breakthrough to Your Next Level(s) with Jena Rodriquez This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Jena Rodriguez. Jena is a brand, business, and Brave strategist and the founder of Brave Masters – a firm committed to boosting brand clarity, growing profits, and helping business owners capitalize on the natural abilities.

Jena’s personal story is pretty incredible. She went from bankrupt and over 700 thousand in debt to creating a million-dollar business. She’s gone on to help her clients do the same helping increase their revenues by upwards of 800% or more.

And today, I’ve asked to come and share some of her best strategies and secrets of how you can take yourself to your next levels.

www.Bravemasters.com

www.Bravemasters.com/BraveFB

As an entrepreneur, over a 12-year period, Jenna went from bankrupt to success. She was in corporate as a controller before starting her business. And as she says, she took a lot of risk in her first business by buying a storefront. She made $300k in her first year but was over $700k in debt. After a year, she ran into the problems of being to pay her rent, her employees. She either had to quit or get back up on the horse.

She had to close the store and file bankruptcy. She was somewhat relieved but was not sure what to do next. She partnered with her husband on a business together and off they went.

She learned some valuable things. First, what she truly wanted and didn’t want which was to be an employee, but to work for herself and create her true freedom. Her big decision was to “stay in the game.”

Nowadays, she runs the business and her husband has his own business. She helps people to unleash their “brave” and help them to succeed in their business.

What does it mean to be “Brave” and be a “Bravemaster?”

• You are willing to make the hard decisions
• You are willing to be uncomfortable
• You are willing to get up every day and do what it takes
• Say “yes” and then figure it out
• Facing life head on and creating it the way you want to create it.

What holds people back the most from unleashing their “Bravemaster?”

• Self-awareness. Practicing observing your thoughts and actions on a daily basis and taking responsibility for it.
• People don’t take the time to become “hyper-aware” to when they are not brave.
• A lot of people let circumstances dictate their life and in order to become a bravemaster, you have to overcome this.

How did you figure out the secret of self-awareness and control of your thoughts?

• Get help! Study books and those that have already figured it out
• Seek out mentors that have this understanding as a discipline and learn from them
• You can hear the concepts, but until you make the decision to act on things and make it part of your daily life discipline, you won’t truly get it.
• Get help where you need the most support. This is what high performers do.
• Remember, we don’t know what we don’t know. Bring the awareness to the conscious of your mind.
• You will learn that you will need to be forever a student and play the long game.

Is there a BRAVE framework that you teach others? If so, can you share it?

• Belief in self/possibility
• Resilience
• Action
• Vulnerability
• Expansion
• Define how you will approach your days. Create it and take 100% responsibility. Be intentional.
• Reflect on the miracles at the end of the day and the production you’ve had.
• Things will not always go your way, but controlling your thoughts and being careful not to resist, but to persist is important.
• It is much more how you respond to the circumstance than the circumstance itself.

At the 30 min mark, I ask Jena about her business. You’ve generated 100’s of thousands of dollar speaking from stage. How do you do that?

• She only started speaking from stage 5 years ago
• She took commitment and action to become a speaker
• She has released a course on what she did called the “Brave Speaker”
• She mastered the art of the structure of the talk: Where do you connect? Where do you offer content? How do you invite and convert them to more?
• Missteps people make is that they deliver a lot of content and don’t connect.
• The other part is to master the follow-up and follow through.
• The 4 C’s moving people to be able to decide:
  • Capture – Getting their attention and owning the stage – getting people to engage
  • Connect – This is all about story. Your “from…to”
  • Content - Transition to what you are going to share/teach/present, etc.
  • Convert – Bridging the gap and inviting them to your offer to solve the problem. “Imagine if…” Then you can give a fast action incentive…

You teach “3 Simple Steps to Make Money in Your Business Now.” What are those 3 steps?

• Focus on getting visibility, getting leads from the visibility, and then having compelling conversations
• It is not about selling. It is about interviewing people, finding the right fit for you to help.
• You must be willing to get highly visible and market yourself

What are the most important actions that people should be doing with their branding and branding?

• Brand is who you are and what you stand for. What are you transforming in the world.
• Branding is how you are sharing that
• Brand is step #1 and most people don’t focus there
• Brand integrity is very important – audit yourself throughout the year to ask yourself if you are being consistent in your branding.
• Are you hitting expectations? You must be consistent across all mediums of your brand

Best Quote: “WE make or break us. Not the circumstance.” 

Jena's Misfit 3:

1. Create your day at the beginning of the day and take control.
2. Take 100% responsibility of your life.
3. Brave is a practice and success is a choice, not just a journey.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is my good friend, Dov Baron. Dov is considered the leading authority on Authentic leadership and is one of INC Magazines Top 100 Leadership speakers. He’s been featured everywhere from Oprah to the Wall Street Journal and has been consulting, advising, and speaking on leadership for the last 30 years. He has spoken in front of everyone from Fortune 500 companies to the United Nations and the State Department.

Dov is also the founder of Full Monty Leadership and the Authentic Speaker Academy on Leadership. He is a multi-time bestselling author and is the host of the Pursuing Deep Greatness TV show and the number one leadership podcast on Itunes, Dov Baron’s Leadership and Loyalty Show.

What I love most about Dov is that he doesn’t mince words, tells you how it really is, and gets results. So, he is just the person I wanted to speak to you about leadership and life on this show.

www.fullmontyleadership.com

www.DovBaron.com

Dov’s personal email - Dov@dovbaron.com

Dov was born into abject poverty in London in a ghetto. His mother shipped him off to rabbis because he had “visions” as a kid. He started studying spiritual works with the rabbis and then later traveled the world studying with spiritual masters from all different areas including Buddhism, Hinduism, and others.

He was very interested in psychology, but also studied quantum physics. In the 80’s he started speaking and had a knack for it. He was on TV, radio, newspapers. But, he was an adrenaline addict and In June 1990, while freeclimbing a rock face and fell from 120 ft. up landing on his face…or as he likes to say, he “fell 12 stories and landed on my ego.”

His life as he knew it was over and he went through a very deep, dark depression, had many reconstructive surgeries and came out the other side as what he is today.

Who is Shishu Sharma and what did you learn from him?

• Shishu is his wife’s uncle

• Dov dedicated his last book to him

• One of the chapters of the book is about being a CRO – Chief Relationship Officer

• Dov spent a considerable amount of time with Shishu before he died of cancer discussion what really mattered

• The #1 thing was the realization of how important relationships are and how he missed out on many of the ones in his life.

What is your biggest takeaway from learning this from him?

• It wasn’t any changes as much as what he learned underscored what he believed about how relationships are the most important thing in our lives

• Relationships tie everything together

• Once you realize this, you have to invest in them and ask for help

How did you get out of your depression after your fall and how did it lead to your understanding of authentic leadership?

Dov tells this story at the 14 min mark…

• Authenticity is what you know about yourself

• What we know about ourselves is an evolution

• Many people think they know themselves, but they don’t

• When Dov fell, his identity got smashed to pieces as well

• “There is no back, there is only forward…”

• He would put on the “happy face,” but deep down he struggled to find who he was truly going to be because that person was gone.

• At times he became filled with rage

• He came home one night to find his cat dead and holding the cat, fell to ground weeping, not for the cat, but for the realization that he had hit bottom and had to move forward.

• From there, it became about finding his purpose and how he would serve.

Your identity is not what you do, but your purpose…

At the 17 min mark, Dov answers the question, How do you teach people to find their true identity and purpose?

• People mix up mission statements and purpose – or even passion • Purpose is emotional – it calls to your heart and your soul

• Passion is transitory – when you were 15, your passion was different than it is today

• Your purpose is not transitory. Your purpose is the fuel that goes into the vehicle of your passion.

• Purpose runs through everything

At the 20 min mark, Dov gives an exercise of how you can find your purpose…

• Imagine what your Short statement eulogy would look like – what is that one statement you would want someone to say about you.

• Now imagine what people are whispering in the back of the room – does it echo what is being said in the front? What is it you fear they would whisper in the back of the room?

• Whatever that whisper is tells you your fear and gives you the insight you need to understand who you need to become to live your purpose. •

Your purpose is not your career, but your career can be the best vehicle for your purpose.

What are the characteristics of a notable leader?

• If you want to be a truly outstanding, authentic leader, you must have courage

• You must have courage to be curiosity

• Courage + Curiosity + Love is needed

• Love is critical – great leaders love their people. Because if you don’t, someone else will

• Don’t be afraid to love and truly care (it’s not romantic, it’s platonic)

• You must also be willing to be vulnerable – vulnerability is not a weakness, it is a great strength. You must be willing to show your humanity

What creates loyalty?

• What is the difference between a great friend and an acquaintance? Vulnerability

• When you see people in their faults and love them anyway

• The same goes for you – you’re vulnerability endears people to you

What is the soul of leadership?

• For Dov, the soul of leadership is service. Being there to serve.

• To ask what it within a person is that can be a blind spot or that they need support in overcoming them and then serving them by helping them.

What does purpose matter more than profit?

• From research done between 1991-2001, it was shown that profit changes dramatically when you have purpose.

• 90% of consumers expect companies to act responsibly

• Companies that purpose driven are on average more than 1600% more profitable than companies that are not purpose driven.

• In today’s age, being meaning drive is critical for a company.

• Purpose drives profit.

What is the hero’s journey and how does it relate to this?

• Being a leader is a heroic journey.

• Leadership starts with self and you need to be heroic about it.

• The treasure you most want is hidden in the cave you most fear and you must have the willingness to step into it.

• The treasure is soul – it is your most authentic self, the whole of who you are.

• Many people have everything they want except that “one thing for them…”

• Life is defining you or refining you – that is the choice

• You can’t be a victim and you must be open to life refining you

What are the elements of a great story?

• The answer is the hero’s journey

• Read Joseph Campbell’s, “The Hero’s Journey”

• Read “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”

• Before there was writing, everything was passed on through story

• For a story to work, it has to involve the listener

At the 44 min, Dov tells the story of how he got into speaking…

“If you are going to be the best you possibly you can, you cannot do it by imitating someone else. Your hero’s journey lies in being truly yourself…”

Dov asks you, “What are your taboos? What is it that you don’t think you should talk about? Why? Are those hindering you and not letting you be who you are?

Best Quote: “There is no back, only forward. Life is either defining you or refining you. It is your choice.."

Dov's Misfit 3:

1. Get to know yourself by taking on the heroic journey of self-inquiry. How do you know who you are? Are these principles still true not matter what you are going through?

2. Be deeply curious about everything.

3. Love without limits. Leave the taboos behind.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Christopher Lochhead. Chris is a retired, 3-time CMO, entrepreneur, and co-author of Play Bigger and his latest book, Niche Down. He started his first business at 18 and has been called a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company and “Off-putting to some” by The Economist. He is a keynote speaker, a blogger, and is a founding board member of the non-profit, 1 Life Fully Lived. One of the things he is best known for these days is being the host of the highly popular Legends and Losers podcast.

As he says, “I’m a dyslexic paperboy from Montreal with Scottish roots. Over thirty years in business I earned a PhD from the school of hard knocks, drank a lot of whiskey, experienced the bliss of winning, the pain of failure and learned how to laugh about the whole thing.

One thing about Chris is that he doesn’t mince words, he’s direct, and doesn’t put up with any BS, but man can he teach you a lot about how to succeed in business and in life.

www.LegendsandLosers.com

Chris grew up in Montreal, Canada in what he calls a “struggling, but loving family.” He got thrown out of school at 18 and found out he is dyslexic as 21. He went on the find out that he has a lot of “learning differences.” At 18 years old, he didn’t have a ton of choices, but one of them was to start his own business – no so much as a way up, but a way out. By the time he 28, he had sold his companies to groups in Silicon Valley and came to live there full time. He went on to become the CMO of 3 publicly traded companies, the last one, Mercury Interactive, which was sold to HP for $4.5 billion.

Since then he has done advisory work for venture back startups, wrote Play Bigger, and for the last few years, he has been focused on the Legends and Losers Podcast and writing his latest book, Niche Down.

Most important lessons about life and business you’ve learned to this point?

• We get tricked in life to thinking the pathway to success is about fitting in when in truth it is not true.
• Legendary people, the Misfit Entrepreneurs are original, unique, they take new ground, and they are different.
• In a world that teaches us to fit in, highly successful people make their place in the world – not find their place in the world.
• Life works best for us when we are being us – not trying to be or fit into something we are not.

How have you learned to unleash your Inner Misfit, your genius, over the years?

• “Follow your passion” and “Hustle, Hustle, Hustle” are some of the dumbest pieces of advice given to people.
• Having the courage to stand out, follow your difference and use it to create the life you want is hard for people to do – but it is what they need to do.
• Mercenaries vs. Missionaries: When things get really tough, Mercenaries tap out, but Missionaries will crawl through whatever is needed to reach their goal.
• Work on big problems that you care about and that really make a difference in the world.

“If you can create or design yourself to be the person or entrepreneur you want to be, by definition you are going to be painting your own painting.”

• The reason “Follow your passion” is such stupid advice is that is can send you down this path of what is my passion instead of asking “How can I truly make a difference…”
• Also, if you follow your passion in something everyone else is following, then you most likely won’t be able to stand out.

At the 11:40 mark, Chris gives an example of what this means and why niching down is so lucrative in today’s world.

• “Hustle, Hustle, Hustle” is idiotic because as an entrepreneur or innovator, if you need to be told that it will take hustle or grit, you are already in trouble.
• It is a pre-requisite to be able to hustle

It is the person who designs and ultimately dominates that niche who become successful.

• The big mind-twist is that it is niche that makes the brand. It’s the niche that makes the company. It’s the category that makes the person – not the other way around.
• If you are hustling in a niche that is already being dominated by someone else – you are hustling in a niche that someone else owns, will always be compared to them, and be at a strategic disadvantage. You are playing their game and competing for at best, a piece of the economics.
• You must “hustle” in a niche that you can design and dominate

At the 19 min mark, Chris answers the question, What are the most important things you have found about how to niche down?

• What creates a new niche is either taking an existing problem and redesigning or reimagining it or looking at a problem that nobody really thought of…
• Example of an existing problem is AirBnb redesigning where we stay when we travel, and an example of a new problem is a “Sushirito” to the problem of being able to have Sushi on the go.

“We are at the beginning of a niche-nado”

Is there a set of steps that someone can take to find their niche?

• Chris makes note of a book called “Thinking Wrong,” and uses the idea of it to look at the opposite of everything you know about a business/product/service, etc. to blow open new thinking. For example, create a bike that doesn’t work in any way. Start by doing this.
• In a way, we are living in the 1800’s when it comes to boom in technology that we are about to go through. Today’s solutions will cause tomorrow’s problems. Ask yourself, “Of all this cool new stuff, what problems will this create that can be solved?”

Points from Play Bigger that are relevant to entrepreneurs?

• Design your own category. Most entrepreneurs focus on designing a product and business around it instead of designing the category.
• The Magic Triangle is when you get product, company, and category design to come together. This is where the magic happens and you get an AirBnb.
• On average, the category leader earns 70% of the market cap in a category.
• Go after being a “Big E” entrepreneur

Can you go deeper on the Magic Triangle?

• As entrepreneurs, we fall in love with our product or solutions. But people don’t want to buy solutions, they want to buy problems (really the removal of them – so their focus is on the problem.
• Great category designers are evangelists, but not for their product, but for their category.
• Using Salesforce.com as example. First design a new type of product. In Salesforce’s case, it was CRM
• Second, build and design a new type of company. Salesforce started the idea of SAAS or subscription.
• Third, teach the world to think in a new way. Salesforce showed the world a new way to think about software. It was a complete 180.
• The big AHA is to fall in love with the problem and not the solution.

What else is important from a marketing standpoint to help businesses standout?

• Over 90% of the work done on branding is a waste of time
• At its core, branding is all about yelling and screaming about who I am or what I am.
• We get thousands of marketing messages a day and we don’t have a context for it, it doesn’t matter to it.
• The way the brain works is category first, brand second
• At the 44 min mark, Chris gives an example of how you fix the brand first problem.

You’ve got a keynote on how to create a Legendary Life. Can you give us a little taste of how to do that?

• First, you must make a decision about who you are going to be in your life
• You can design your life and create it. If you don’t believe that, then you live legendary.
• The biggest way to have a legendary life is to co-create the life with those that you want to partner with to do so.
• The greatest reward in life is to co-design the life with the ones you love and then live out that design.

Who has been the most surprising guest on Legends and Losers and why?

• Entrepreneur, Author, and Speaker, Will Little, who is also a convicted killer. Chris never thought that he could be friends with a convicted killer. But, it is who Will became in jail and since coming out being a force for good that makes him so unique.
• Bill Walton, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. A conversation with him is unlike any other.
• David Saxe – Co-founder of PayPal and Yammer. Incredible insight into how to sell a company. He unpacks the difference between a product hook and a value proposition.

Best Quote: “We become known for the niche that we own…”

Chris's Misfit 3:

1. Follow your different...
2. The #1 thing people say they are afraid of in life and business is public failure. There will be a ton of it. It’s called “Losery.” Embrace the Losery…
3. The most legendary people have the most courage. Tap into yours.