We are extremely excited to share with you our first broadcast of the SiteSell Presents series: ENTREPRENEURSHIP with Guy Kawasaki, Mia Voss and Kenneth Manesse Sr. The event took place live on Monday, July 6th and was incredibly well-attended.
Besides getting a chance to hear from such recognized experts as Guy, Mia and Ken, we’re going to tackle questions like:
Should Entrepreneurs Crowdsource Financing?
What Challenges Do Entrepreneurs Face Today?
How Can Entrepreneurs Keep Focused Every Day?
How Do Entrepreneurs Acquire New Customers?
Any Advice For SiteSell Customers And Online Entrepreneurs?
… and more!
Our SiteSell Presents: ENTREPRENEURSHIP Show Page has more information on the broadcast and our fantastic guests.
Don’t forget, we have three other broadcasts in the series: WRITING / BLOGGING, SOCIAL MEDIA and SEARCH. Be sure to check those out here.
Watch the recording of SiteSell Presents: ENTREPRENEURSHIP –
Full Transcript of “SiteSell Presents: ENTREPRENEURSHIP with Guy Kawasaki, Mia Voss and Kenneth Manesse Sr.”
Mike: Hello everyone, welcome to the first episode of SiteSell Presents. I’m your host Mike Allton and today we’re talking about entrepreneurship. And I’m incredibly excited to be joined by three brilliant entrepreneurs. I’ll introduce each of them before I get to the questions for the panel but before I do, I’d like to remind all of you watching live that this is your big chance. If there’s something you’re hoping to learn or hear about entrepreneurship, leave a comment and we’ll try to get to it. With that, let’s say hello to our guests.
0:31 – Introducing Our Panelists
Mike: Guy Kawasaki is the Chief Evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool that I use every single day. Formerly an advisor to the CEO of Motorola and Chief Evangelist of Apple, he’s written 13 books including the Art of Social Media, Power Tips for Power Users, the Art of the Start, What the Plus, Google Plus for the Rest of Us, and Enchantment, the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. Hello Guy, and welcome to the show.
Guy: Hi. Thank you for having me Mike.
Mike: My pleasure. And then we have Mia Voss. She’s a professional show host, interviewer, and video content brand host. She’s produced and appeared in over 300 programs and I have been fortunate to have been her guest on multiple occasions. Her energized interview style brings out her best in her guests, engages and entertains the audience, and always provides infotainment. Hello Mia, and welcome to the show.
Mia: Brother Mike Allton, how are you?
Mike: Fantastic. Good to have you here.
Mia: Good to be here, thank you. Congrats by the way, first show.
Mike: Thank you. Thank you very much. And then finally let me introduce Kenneth Manesse Sr. who is a micro-entrepreneur specialist with over 25 years of business experience. He’s provided help to small business owners and organizations to implement sustainable positive transformation and his approach with CEO’s, executives, managers, professionals, and start-up entrepreneurs gets them to realize personal success and profitability and join the 5%. Hello Ken, and welcome to the show.
Ken: Hey Mike, how you doing? This is exciting. Glad to be here.
Mike: Thank you, thank you very much. Great so now that we’re all introduced, let’s get to it. We’ll start off in a round-robin format giving you each a chance to get a swing at a question and I’m sure at the end we will have abandoned all form and format and throughout the time, certainly if there are questions from the audience I’ll be checking the comment tracker and if any of you see one come up that you want to take a swing at, just let me know.
2:30 – Get To Know Our Entrepreneurs
Mike: So first, I’d love it if I…I mean the audience of course, could get to know each of you better as it relates to entrepreneurship. Can you tell us when it was when you first thought of yourself as an entrepreneur and what that meant to you? And Guy, we’ll just start with you.
Guy: Yeah, so I don’t have this great story that I had a lemonade stand at nine, and all that kind of stuff, and delivered papers and all that. I had a really sort of normal, if there is such a thing, a normal, lower-middle class upbringing. I probably really got hooked on the concept when I attended Stanford in Silicon Valley and when you come to Silicon Valley from Honolulu it’s kind of an eye opening experience. If you’re from Hawaii, you think you know, the top of the career in Hawaii is you manage a hotel or you manage a retail store or something and then you go to Hawaii and you see people running, I mean you go to California and you see people running Intel and National Semiconductorr and HP and all that and all your horizons open up. And so it’s probably at Stanford that I decided I wanted to start a company and join the Silicon Valley thing.
Mike: Cool, very cool, and Mia, how about you?
Mia: Dude really, you’re going to make me talk after Guy Kawasaki? I’m just going to sit here and like whatever he said. So I call myself an accidental entrepreneur. Definitely I think anything I’ve done has been like, oh that might be a good idea. I was working full-time. I started as an insurance agent when I was 18 and I actually loved that industry. I thought it was so fun and then I moved to New York City and got kind of distracted by shiny bright lights like you do when you’re in your 20s. And then when I moved out to Colorado in ’95, dabbled a little bit working in the architecture industry, more as more of an admin type of thing, and then this accidental job came together of me becoming a building inspector, which I still do by the way. I remove the tiara and I put on a hard hat, seriously. Yeah, guess that one, right Guy? But that business, they just kept hiring me back. “We know you’re picky and you type fast.” Why don’t you come with us on these job sites and help us pick out flaws in buildings?
5.00
Mia: And I started doing that in 2001 and finally in 2003 when I kept getting hired consistently, I said all right this must be it. But I also figured out after the crash in 2009, that I really was just more a well-paid sort of employee because I didn’t have a business plan in place that actually worked while I wasn’t working. So I was working my ass off going to job sites and all these cool places and I had a little bit of a business plan set up, so that was kind of when I knew I was an entrepreneur, was when I started getting hired consistently, if that makes sense.
Mike: Cool, all right, and Ken?
Ken: Well, living in Southern California, it’s all about catching waves and not that I’m a surfer or even pretend to surf but what ended up happening way back in the 80s, there was this huge wave that started and I was just lucky enough to get on the wave. The wave was, at the time, auto-detailing. And in Newport Beach, California this guy opens up, (look at Guy he’s laughing he knows what I’m talking about), this guy called Steve’s Auto Detailing opens up right on PCH down in Newport Beach, and this huge wave starts. And I get this friend that gives me a call, hey listen, I’ve got this Honda Prelude. Now if you can even remember what those Honda Prelude trunks were, they were about the size of, you know, a small, small suitcase, so out of the back of his car, we started auto-detailing. And that wave literally was the thing that kind of pushed me into entrepreneurship and it was really at that time, I was like, man, I really love this stuff. I really love doing this kind of work and that was the beginning for me and literally after a couple years of getting that mobile auto-detailing into a permanent location and really starting to see how business works, I got bit by the bug. So, for me, it was that first wave that I caught. That’s how I got started in this whole entrepreneurship and then for the next five years I tried to learn how to spell entrepreneurship. I mean that’s a hard word to spell, let’s be honest.
Mike: More of those French words.
Mia: It’s that “eu” that gets you every time, right?
7:30 – Should Entrepreneurs Crowdsource Financing?
Mike: It’s interesting because the one thing I didn’t hear any of you say was, well I just went to Kickstarter and floated an idea and got $25,000 and that’s how I started my business. What do you think about that? It seems to be all the trend these days, come up with an idea and get some money before you have a real business. Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think that’s a recipe for long-term success?
Guy: I think it’s fantastic. I think Kickstarter and Indiegogo are great developments. It removes barriers. It democratizes fundraising. It’s non-dilutive. It proves that people want to eat the dog food, not just invest in future dog food, and I think that because of the lower cost of entrepreneurship with cloud-based computing, free tools, open-source, social media, it’s much easier and faster and cheaper to start a company and for the several hundred thousand dollars you might need, Kickstarter and Indiegogo is a much better was for most people than venture capital.
Ken: I also believe that what Peter Drucker says, “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” And on these platforms you can immediately find out in the marketplace if this is a viable product or service. And before you empty your 401, borrow all the money from your relatives, you get an opportunity to really take a look at the marketplace and say is this idea viable? And let’s face it. If you can get people to say they’re willing to pay for that, then you’ve got a customer started and then it’s just about the launch.
Mia: And I’ll tip in on that too. I think the only caveat I would add though is that I think people just have to make sure that they’ve got the purpose down because the only thing that I was kind of like “mmm” when you asked that question was at times it can just seem, you don’t really go through the pain of having skin in the game so to speak, so I just think you have to make sure that you’ve really got your purpose down and okay, this is what I want to do. But I do also like the idea that you can fail without as much, like losing your 401k and things like that. And on the other part of it too I like is that with everybody else having skin in the game, they’re watching you, and they’re like hey, are you on the up and up? Are you doing this the right way? And they can give you good feedback on it too.
10.00 – What Challenges Do Entrepreneurs Face Today?
Mike: Yeah no doubt. Now Guy and Ken, you both mentioned some of the things that are different today like there’s availability of cloud and other internet social media things that are available to entrepreneurs, what do you think are some of the unique challenges that entrepreneurs face today that maybe they didn’t face ten or even five years ago?
Guy: I’ll let my colleagues go first. I need to think.
Mia: I think visibility. The same thing I was just saying, right now you have this visibility and you have…I actually got to talk before Guy! I’m actually going to soak this up for a second… I think visibility has allowed you to have a lot more transparency. We didn’t have that as much so you could sort of fail quietly without as much fanfare except for the people around you. So I would say that, more than anything, you’re kind of out there than it used to be when you could just have this quiet thing. But on the flip side you’ve got the bull horn that you could use to just blast that out when you’re doing really well.
Ken: And there’s no doubt about it. You’ve got to be marketing in the times that we live in. And for any business to thrive in today’s marketplace, you’re going to have to, not only consider, but make part of your plan social. I mean, Mike you and I have talked and we’ve gone at lengths with ZMOT [Zero Moment Of Truth] and why it is that people buy now and more importantly, the landscape in which we get out information, we actually find the product or service that is the right product and service. It’s all about now who you know and who’s got the product. Obviously people still buy from people, so being social and having your social platform set up for success is key in these times that we live in.
Mia: Preach it.
Mike: Guy, are you there? We don’t have a video feed for you.
Guy: Yeah I’m here. I don’t have anything valuable to add. I have meaningless crap I could add, nothing valuable.
Mia: Your meaningless crap is other people’s treasure though Guy, you know?
Guy: If I could only monetize meaningless crap.
12:37 – How Can Entrepreneurs Keep Focused Every Day?
Mike: Well it’s been said that what gets scheduled gets done and I know Mia is fond of talking about GSD [Get Stuff Done]. So what if anything, do you do to keep focused and productive each day?
Mia: A lot of alcohol. It’s really great. Just kidding – I think meditating, how about you guys? I start with that.
Ken: Well I’m a fan of, if it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist. So, everything that I do is about capturing it first in writing. And for me that’s the start point for everything I do. A number of years ago I was introducing to the idea of you plan the work, and then work the plan. And if you don’t have a plan in writing, there’s nothing to work. You’re just flying by the seat of your pants. It’s about being very intentional and for me it’s about being very purposeful with the work that I do so for me, it’s at the very beginning, you’ve got to have it in writing. And I’m not talking about a business plan because at the end of the day, a business plan you may need if you can prove that your business is profitable but you need to be very strategic in marketing and also in your intentions each day about the work that you’re doing. So that’s my two cents.
Mia: I love strategic plans and then the process maps that comes with it. I’m a huge nerd for process. That doesn’t mean I’m always into doing it but I like having it written out. I had to have a process for Google Hangouts because they were so intricate that having this process map that I could just do, boom, boom, boom, and get through. Evernote has been awesome for me. And Mike, every time we’d had those shows about tools (drink), we loved it. Because everybody has these different tools you could use and everybody’s brain works differently so it’s good to hear what works for them. Evernote I absolutely love and I know you too.
Mike: Yeah, I’m in Evernote every day because blogging obviously is really important to me. Every idea that I have for a blog post or great idea I have for a marketing strategy, a campaign that I want to run, it all goes into Evernote and kind of evolves from there.
Guy: Well I hate to tell the three of you but I’m just like the total opposite of all of you. I have nothing written down. I have no plan. I operate kind of totally ad-hoc.
15.00
Guy: After the third email from somebody I finally get around and do it. What keeps me on track at all is that I have four children and two are in private school and two are in college so that I know every day I have four tuitions. And that just keeps me going.
Mia: That’s called an incentive plan, Guy.
Guy: That’s right, that’s right. When my kids are all gone, God help me because I’m really not going to do anything.
15:36 – What Or Who Do You Read On Entrepreneurship?
Mike: That’s funny. One of the things that people tell me every day that I’m supposed to be reading. I’m supposed to be reading articles, blogs, books, what do you guys think about that? Are there particular entrepreneurs within the entrepreneurship field that you like to read? Do you think that’s a good idea?
Ken: I’ll take a jump on that because a long time ago I was introduced the idea that leaders are learners. And as soon as you stop learning, you stop leading. And so some 20 years ago, one of my coaches told me, “Listen Ken, you need three things; you need to follow thought leaders.” And that’s one of the reasons why I started following Guy Kawasaki. And then he said you need to talk to your mentors. And third, you need to hire a coach if you want to get some traction fast. So thought leaders, mentors, and coaches and always be learning. That’s for me one of the things that I’m just so consumed with and that is what are thought leaders saying? What is Guy saying? And I follow his stuff. I mean, I want to be in the know. So and then for me, mentors, people who are having success in my industry, in my field; I’m talking to them on a regular basis. And then if I ever get stuck or if I needed to get to the next level, hire a coach. Those are the three things that I’m making sure I’m always doing.
Mia: Spend some money on yourself, right?
Ken: Best investment in town.
Mia: Hey Guy, just to let you know, everybody on the Periscope says he’s got Peg Fitzpatrick. He’s going to be just fine. That’s from Ileane Smith.
Guy: That’s true. I was going to say that. So much of my efforts have to do with social media and so much of my social media has to do with filling the content, feeding the content monster, so every day I need to find a lot of good stories so I am reading veraciously. I am reading my Facebook timeline, my Google+ timeline; I have Alltop organized by specific topics. Almost everything NPR puts out, I think it re-shareable. So as a result of my need to fill the content monster, feed the content monster, I am reading veraciously. It’s all I ever do really.
Mia: I read The Martian because of you by the way.
Guy: Isn’t that a great book?
Mia: That’s amazing and they’re putting out the movie too. I remember, that was last year when you were on the show and you’re like read The Martian and boom. I got right into Amazon and read it.
Guy: No kidding, The Martian, I think I enjoyed that book more than any other book in my life, really. I hate to tell Shakespeare and all these other people but man, The Martian is the one that really. I love that book.
Ken: Guy, for the people who don’t know, talk about APE for a minute because that’s right on point for the show too.
Guy: So APE is a book that I wrote. It’s called Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. And it’s basically, I self-published a couple books and I learned so much about self-publishing that wasn’t really out there, documented. So with Shawn Welch we co-wrote a book about how to self-publish a book. Not just write it, not just publish it, but also market it and it really helped a lot of people because the publishing business in very much in flux, completely democratized also. Now you don’t have to suck up to New York publishers. I mean, you can publish your own book. And that is a really great thing. I mean, that’s like, everybody has a printing press now. It’s not just Gutenberg. It’s a whole new world out there.
Ken: And Mike, just to piggyback on that, what Guy said, at a 30,000 foot view, I started to learn very quick in business and that is this: I didn’t have time to start to question with how. I really needed to start to question with who. And like Guy said, when I started a question with how, how did I do this? How do I learn this? I figured this all out and when I pivoted my question it started with who.
20.00
Ken: Who’s already doing this? Who knows how to do this in this space? Who are the people that are finding success? And then start following them or like, when Guy put the book out, I was the very first one that asked to be part of the tribe that was able to look at it and stuff like that, because I wanted to know what he had learned. I wanted to figure out, okay, he’s already figured it out, he’s already spent the time, energy, and effort. Now I can capitalize on that and because of who, looking for the people in the industry that have already done that, I can find entrepreneurship and speed up a lot faster instead of trying to figure it all out. I just don’t have time anymore. I mean I’m 50 years old but that’s a different story altogether. But if I could figure out who first before how, it’s a quick way to success.
Guy: Seriously, how do you figure out who though because there are a lot of people who are full of shit and nobody exactly says I’m full of shit. Everybody says they’re an expert, so how do you separate the experts from the full of shit people?
Ken: Isn’t that a good one? First of all…
Guy: Because I might be full of shit. I might have fooled you.
Ken: Well to go back to the idea of thought leaders, mentors, and coaches; my mentors are the ones that have literally over the years have been the reason why I’ve found any success. I’m not the smartest person in this room. There’s no doubt about it. What I like to say is the only grade I got straight A’s in was kindergarten. So after that it was all downhill but I learned early on in entrepreneurship how to ask the right questions. And how to ask the right question was, who is finding success in this and who can I learn from going back to leaders or learners. And knowing that thought leaders like yourself, and Guy I consider you a thought leader because you have not only the knowledge but you have the experience. And those two things, you know a lot of people have knowledge without experience so they can… it’s the kind of people that use the words but you’re in the wrong context. The people that have the experience are those that have the knowledge and the experience. So to answer your question, I look for those two things, track record, obviously, the experience of people that have been in business, that know how business works, that are operating in business right now because things happen so fast, and change happens so fast. The people that are still in business right now are seeing the things that are happening, marketing, social, all of those things, so for me, to answer your question Guy, it’s about experience and knowledge and I look for those two things.
Mike: I couldn’t have written and published APE last year. As a first-time author, who would have bought it? They’re buying it from somebody who’s got a dozen books under his belt and they’re like okay yeah, he obviously knows what he’s talking so that makes sense.
Mia: I loved Enchantment [“Enchantment, the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions” by Guy Kawasaki]. Can I jump in on that too? The way I choose to, because a lot of people just love to share things that are just based on it’s kind of cute, wow I just want to share it just to get the attention of the influencer that’s written the content, but what I go for is my A-listed people like you Mike and all of you guys. I love following what you’re doing so I’m kind of going to my small team of people. I love their style that they have anyway so if they’re reading, Yifat Cohen, I kind of follow where she’s going, so it’s a little bit of cheating but it’s more like if these are what my friends and my influencers and my A-team people are reading, that’s who I want to follow and they don’t have time for the bullshit. So they’re going to be reading people that they love their content.
23:58 – How Do Entrepreneurs Acquire New Customers?
Mike: Right, and like I said before, that’s exactly why we’re here because I know you guys know what you’re talking about and the audience wants to learn from us. It’s kind of that short-cut that Kenneth was talking about. Along those lines, Nicholas Cardot had a question, let me see if I can bring it up here, he says, “What are your primary marketing strategies for your online businesses? How are you acquiring new clients or customers?”
Mia: Work in progress. WIP.
Ken: Well I think it’s all about the move, isn’t it? I mean, if you’re going to be in business, you’re moving people and if you’re using social, the idea of social is moving people. It’s about moving them from the relational to the transactional. And that’s what a lot of the things that we see that people who are having success with social do and that is they are not doing social, they’re being social and that process. I mean at the end of the day, people still buy from people.
25.00
Ken: So we buy from people we know, like, and trust. We’re on social media platforms where it’s following again, the know, like, and trust and those are the people we’re going to buy from. So for me, it’s really about am I providing and we can all go through this. We’re providing value. That’s one of the things about social. Are we giving something that is more than just our opinion but based on our experience? Are we communicating, “Hey listen, this does work.” This book APE is going to help you solve that problem. That’s why you need to check it out and buy it. So that’s for me how social works. It’s about the move.
Mia: I think it’s definitely also the authenticity that you bring so if you’re always being very clear about you’re not blowing smoke up anybody’s ass, because, I can say that, right Mike? Because I just did. You’re always going to be very authentic and if you’re a cheerleader for something you’re going to be really consistent about it and then you do have the know, like, trust factor. I love that though moving from relationship to transactional. That is a little bit of a slippery slope so I think there’s also something to be said for always having a consistent message, what it is that you do, and then you can kind of ebb and flow with what’s popular. Like right now we’re doing Periscope and we’re doing these different things of trial and error just to see what works to get attention, get your message out there without being too promotional. That’s a balance.
Mike: Guy, do you have anything to add?
Guy: Yeah for me, the question started off with about getting customers and stuff. And for me social media is just such a game changer because it’s basically fast and free and it’s everywhere and it’s also a meritocracy because you could be a Fortune 500 brand and you really can’t buy social media credibility. Now don’t get me wrong, paying for Facebook promotion is effective and obviously the deeper pocket can promote more, but unless you want to cross the line and start buying likes and followers, it’s all about the quality of your posts. And I think that is a good thing because I could never buy a Super Bowl commercial but I bet you I can post better than most people who are running Super Bowl commercials. So that’s why I love social media. I think it’s such the great equalizer.
27:32 – Final Advice For SiteSell Customers And Online Entrepreneurs
Mike: That’s an excellent point. At SiteSell, every one of our customers are entrepreneurs. They’re all working hard to build a business for themselves and kind of transform their corner of the Internet. So what final advice would you have for someone today given the incredible amount of choices that we were just talking about, the opportunities that people have to create and build a business online.
Ken: That’s a tough one. I’ll take a swing at it. You know, at the end of the day when we buy something and we take the money out of our pocket, that hard earned dollar that we spent all week earning, we want to know that we’re giving it to somebody or for a product or service that is really going to give us the benefits of that. And if you’re going to launch out into business, the one thing that I say that you need to be an expert about is your buyer. And when you become an expert of your buyer, you’re really knowing that your product or service really just fits them and really gives them value, really gives them something that is going to solve their problem, that is really going to at the end of the day change their life, then you’ve done something with your life and your business that so many people hope for and that is, to coin a phrase, ding the universe. You literally have…
Guy: Ken, Ken, Ken, it’s not ding – dent.
Ken: Dent – sorry. I’m an Android guy, sorry. Anyways, it’s really about… your business is not about you, it’s about your customers, about solving their problems and giving them benefits. That at the end of the day, if you become an expert on your buyers and really know them and can really solve their problem and give them a huge amount of value, your products give the benefits that you say that they do, then you can really do something in this space of entrepreneurship that can not only benefit you and your family, and your lifestyle, and leave a legacy
30.00
Ken: but at the end of the day really causes people to say, you know what, Mike Allton has the products and the services that are genuine, authentic, and really do work. I recommend that people go to SiteSell and start there because that, at the end of the day, is what this is about and you’ve done your homework Mike. We know that. We’ve talked about that, and more importantly, we know that the product is going to do and deliver on its promise. So that’s for me, what I see it as.
Mia: Boom. I like that.
Mike: Guy, anything to add there?
Guy: No, what else can I say? I think it’s all about empowering people and that’s what I want to do. That’s why I live. So I want to empower people with my writing, my books, my presentations, and let everything else get sorted out at the end. But that’s what I do.
Mia: So I’ll go on a take on what Kenneth said and make it even more simple. I think if you can figure out what lights you up, I mean figuring out that I had to have fun in everything that I do really made my life a lot easier and then if you can match that, what lights you up and what’s your Big Why or your big pain-point or something you saw with other people, you’re winning. I mean that’s my boiled down, dumbed-down version of it.
31:33 – What Our Guests Are Working On And Where To Find Them
Mike: Great, no that’s fantastic just from everyone. So what I’d like for each of you to do is just share real quick before we leave what it is that you’re working on today and where people can find you and what they should do. And Guy, why don’t you go first?
Guy: Yeah, so right now I’m the Chief Evangelist of a company called Canva out of Sydney, Australia. It is an online graphics design service. So think of it as a fast, free, and easy version of Photoshop. Basically we’ve created all kinds of designs and templates in advance and when I started my career in the Macintosh division [at Apple], I was trying to democratize computing. And now, I’m going to end my career democratizing design. So I want to enable people to create great designs quickly and cheaply. That’s what I do.
Mike: It is really is awesome. I mean you can look at this show, this whole series – every graphic I made with Canva, and I’m not a graphic designer.
Guy: Oh really? Cool.
Mike: Because, yeah, you put me in front of Photoshop and three days later it wouldn’t get any better.
Mia: Canva was made for you and me Mike.
Mike: It was. Thank you Melanie [Perkins, founder of Canva]. Ken, final thoughts?
Ken: Yeah, it was interesting. I was sitting here listening to Guy a minute ago and going back to this thought about leaders are learners and stuff, one of the things I heard Guy say and it was interesting because when I think of leaders, here is the thing that I recognize in leaders and that is that they have the ability to inspire you. And it was interesting as Guy was kind of talking, he talked about that. And so if people are not following Guy, obviously they need to but it’s interesting that he said that he looks to do just that. Figure out ways to inspire more, to help more people, and those are the kind of people that you really want to have as a thought leader, have as a mentor, hire as a coach, because they are the people who are going to invest in you. And that’s important for any business. For me, I didn’t know a lot about entrepreneurship. I shared that I caught a wave but hey, let’s face it. At the time I was young. I was just 18 years old. I really didn’t understand business. I really didn’t even understand what was happening. It was happening so fast. And now fast forward 30 years, having five different businesses in four different industries. I’m starting to see that for the first time, now at 50, how business works and to me that’s the key. So many people get into the driver seat and think they are It. Turn on the radio, get the window down, look at me, I’m an entrepreneur. And one of the things that happened to me, and again, my story was that I got into the driver’s seat too soon and I really didn’t understand how business worked. I was focusing in on marketing, what we call the two big gauges, the marketing and the profit growth, kind of like your RPM’s and your miles per hour. But I didn’t know about the other five gauges that for me were more important and if anybody has had kids, and have taught their kids how to drive, you know you’re going to get the telephone. “Hey dad, the car doesn’t start. It’s not moving. It’s making these weird sounds.”
35.00
Ken: That was my big ‘aha’ because I realized then that how business works, those five other gauges like you think about your car, the five gauges that really are going to help get you to your destination, your gas gauge, your water gauge, your oil gauge, your alternator gauge, all those things are really the five things that are more important and what we see now is over the last twenty years that entrepreneurs that understand how business works, that understand the five things, we call them the five mindsets. They’re the ones that join the 5% faster. So this is what I do now. I help entrepreneurs understand strategic, systemic, inspirational, duplication, and service style leadership, so that their business cannot just start but thrive. At the end of the day Mike, 70% of our economy is ran from micro-entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs that have one to five employees. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, they kind of get stuck there. They want to get to the next level but they’re stuck there, so we help them transition out of the micro into the small business and so if you want to have a hundred or five hundred employees, you can make that shift. So that’s what I’ve been doing and that’s what I love and I also love Canva because we use that for all of our clients and for everything I do to because again I’m not the smartest person in the room and I don’t have time to learn Photoshop either so I love the product Guy, good job.
Guy: Thank you. I didn’t mean to turn this into a Canva commercial.
Mike: That’s okay.
Mia: We’re all “Canvangelists” Guy.
Guy: Thank you.
Mike: So Mia, what are you working on and where can people find you?
Mia: I am working on three things so as you guys know, I actually am doing video as based on doing two years of shows so I’m putting together short, fun, interview-style videos for clients who are afraid to get in front of the camera because you know that’s the number one fear, is speaking in front of a crowd. A version of that is video. And then I’m also helping people set up their own broadcast now with the “How to Give Great Video” product which is fun. And then speaking of 50 and so apart of my 50 in 2015 right here, I am doing “Mia on the Go” so I’m launching a new website, which is Mia on the Go. I’m spending a month down here in Austin, eating and drinking my way through Austin and having experiential adventures and I’ll be putting out interviews and Periscopes for the people that I talk with and then I did Italy for three weeks about two months ago and that was fun and I think I’m going to La Hoya. So I’m kind of going, I’m doing an RV trip from Denver to Toronto and it’s just Mia on the Go, so that’s it.
Mike: But you’re not actually in Greece now?
Mia: I’m not actually in Greece but what was fun is I was able to create a product that I can take with me because I can do videos for clients using Google Hangouts because I can still be me on the go and still make my money because momma loves shoes.
Ken: Hey Mike, can I just say something? I know we’re obviously here on for SiteSell but what Mia said was so important. If people didn’t hear that and that is that marketing in the times that we live in, video is so important. And if somebody is struggling with that, reach out to Mia. She’s got a handle on that and she really understands it, she gets it, and more importantly, I’ve done some work on the back side of stuff, and I’ve seen Mia work and worked with some of the stuff that she’s done, and that is important for business, to get out there, kind of like Guy was saying. The C-suite is no longer behind the curtain or up in an Ivory tower. It’s being social. It’s being attainable. And video does that so for those entrepreneurs that are thinking about what step they need to go with social, contact Mia. I mean it’s important for business. It really is.
Mia: Thank you, brother man.
39:13 – Facebook Video Tip From Guy
Guy: Can I give a tip on top of that tip?
Mike: Yeah.
Guy: So my tip on top of that tip is if you’re going to do video, be sure you upload it natively to Facebook. Don’t just upload it to YouTube and embed your YouTube video in Facebook. You should upload natively… you’re disagreeing?
Mia: No I’m like, yeah, preach on it. I love that it counts as a view after three seconds, Guy.
Guy: From my experience, is that if you upload a video to Facebook natively versus embed the same video via YouTube, it’s like four or five times better in terms of Reach if you upload natively.
Mia: It is and I’ll tip on the tip, you also should upload it to your business page and you can add a call-to-action on it and then share it to your personal page. Boom, good tip.
Guy: I don’t have a personal page.
40.00
Mia: Well honey, you’re Guy Kawasaki like really. Come on. That’s awesome.
40:07 – Thank You!
Mike: Cool, well this has been fantastic. That’s it for the show. I want to humbly thank you guys, Guy, Mia, Ken; you’ve been so generous in sharing your time and wisdom and I also want to thank everyone in the audience for listening and I hope you’ve learned as much as I have and I want to just invite you to join us next Monday when I’m going to be here with Demian Farnworth, Wade Harman, and Kevan Lee, to talk about one of my favorite topics, writing and blogging. All right!
Guy: And Bane wants to say goodbye too.
Mike: Goodbye Bane. Thanks everybody.
Mia: I love him.
Ken: Thanks.
End Transcript
Author information
SiteSell
SiteSell is a privately held Canadian-based company that helps everyday people start profitable online businesses.
| Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | YouTube | Pinterest |
The post SiteSell Presents: ENTREPRENEURSHIP with Guy Kawasaki, Mia Voss and Kenneth Manesse Sr. appeared first on The SiteSell Blog.
