Success Advice
6 Valuable Lessons a 19-Year Old Learned from Reaching Out To Millionaires
This valuable advice is shared by a young aspiring entrepreneur by the name of “Vincent Nguyen“.
Through his successful experience Vincent will teach you how to contact millionaires and highly influential people to take your ventures and ideas to the next level.
How To Successfully Network With Entrepreneurs & Millionaires
Just a month ago, I saw the greatest opportunity in my life present itself.
It was linked in a tweet, strangely enough. Sean Ogle changed my life with a simple tweet.
When I read through the entire page I only had one reaction.
Holy crap!
There was a company based in the Philippines that was offering an apprenticeship that would make my life. The work itself sounded fun and I felt qualified enough to go after it, but what caught my attention were the extra side-benefits.
The person who was chosen would be able to move to the Philippines for the first 6-months. Cool, everyone likes to travel. No big deal right?
There’s more. These guys were going to pay for pretty much all of my expenses while I’m there. Housing, bills, food, and maids. Everything. They didn’t cheap out either because it’s a huge house.
On top of all that, I’d be getting paid for my time there along with the chance to earn even more and work with them full-time if all goes well.
As a 19-year old who has been working in their niche for less than a year, I felt like I’d be buried by the competition. There has to be thousands of people who saw this and wanted it. I was sure they’re more qualified than me.
I almost ignored it. I almost listened to my own excuses, but I couldn’t let this slip past me without a fight.
I studied what they were looking for in a candidate and started wondering if there was something I could do to blow them away.
“You’re going to be reaching out to a ton of people.”
There it is. My opening. That’s what I’m going to leverage for my application.
I felt like I was getting hotter and hotter. Maybe it’s because I was getting excited or someone lit a light bulb above my head like in the cartoons. I don’t know. All I knew was that I had an idea that would grab their attention right from the start.
They wanted a connector. What better way to prove I am one than to take advantage of the mandatory video they wanted alongside the written application?
I made a long list of 40-50 successful entrepreneurs, authors, and internet marketers I could reach out to for help.
I cold-emailed Michael Hyatt, John Saddington, Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin, and several others, asking them to record a short video testimonial for me. All I asked of them was to record themselves, say their name and something along the lines of “Vincent reached out and connected.”
The challenge was that most of these people have never heard of me.
Why would they care to do me a favor?
The Result?
Out of 47 people, 16 agreed and sent me their video. That’s almost 40%! The rest either wished me best of luck or didn’t reply, but nearly half said yes!
When I turned in the video to the marketing company, they were floored. In fact, they loved it so much that they had shared it among their secret circle of entrepreneurial buddies. My chances were looking really good.
Thanks to this creative journey, I ended up befriending a few of the entrepreneurs I reached out to.
None of this would have happened if I bought into my own excuses. I was telling myself things like they don’t know my name. I’m too young. No one would take me seriously. What if I look like an idiot?
The list went on for miles. I could have just moved on and told myself that nothing could come of it, but I went for it. I got famous influencers to vouch for me and the company is telling me my chances are looking good. The Philippines is becoming something that can be a part of my life for the next year.
Most importantly of all, I learned several valuable lessons from this that provided insight into how other people worked.
1. Rejection doesn’t take anything from you.
In a lot of cases, the worst that could happen is that you don’t get what you wanted. No one comes and collects the things you love then locks them away. You don’t lose anything.
At least when you get outside your comfort zone and make a leap of faith, you give yourself a fighting chance. If you don’t try at all you’ll end up failing anyway and you’re stuck where you were by default.
2. People are more willing to help than you think.
When I first had the idea to reach out, I was scared. I thought for sure I’d get a 0% response rate. After all, who am I to just email someone like Michael Hyatt and ask for help?
I didn’t tell him what I did, where I’m from, or anything that would woo him. I politely told him the situation, how much it’d mean to me, and that’s all. He was more than happy to get in front of a camera to do this and that’s what amazes me. Michael, along with 15 others, took time out of their day to help someone they didn’t know.
3. When you’re genuine, people will want to help you.
You don’t always have to offer something in return to get help. I didn’t swap favors or promise to pay them back in the future. That’s sleazy. People see right through that sort of exchange.
Instead, I was honest and transparent. I didn’t hide anything at all. Everyone I emailed knew that I was the only one to benefit from this and I knew it too. Why hide behind a thin veil?
4. You can connect with anyone.
Sure, a few people ignored my request, but that’s okay. The fact that nearly half got back to me means a lot and should inspire you to get in touch with a person that you look up to.
There are some people who are more difficult to get ahold of, but that doesn’t put them out of the realm of possibility. I didn’t reach out to Obama or anything, but there are ways.
5. Creativity has more definitions than one.
I used to think I wasn’t creative just because I didn’t know how to draw, paint, or do anything artistic. I equated creativity with art and determined that I wasn’t creative.
But creativity is the ability to do things differently that others haven’t thought of before. It doesn’t always come from a whim. Instead, you have to be intentional and brainstorm ideas. It will get you noticed and is worth the effort.
Don’t count yourself out. You’re probably more creative than you give yourself credit for.
6. Taking action is far better than getting stuck wondering what could have been.
So the next time you see an opportunity come by and you start believing your own lies, remember what could happen. Remember that you can put 100% into what you want.
Even though the final decision hasn’t been made yet, I learned a lot through this whole process.
What’s the worst that could happen when you decide to go all in?
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Success Advice
How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements
Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.
Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.
There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.
Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.
Embed the strength of AI and ML.
AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.
Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.
ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses.
In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.
Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities
Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased.
Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information.
Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place.
In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.
Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development
You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.
You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.
Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.
Developing key skills to achieve goals
Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.
Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.
Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.
Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.
Development/Coding Knowledge
Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.
Hacking proof framework
There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.
Communication Abilities/Soft Skills
Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:
Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.
Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.
Agile Implementations
It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.
- Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds.
- Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
- Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
- Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them.
- Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.
- Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
- Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
- Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.
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