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Stoked had a pretty awesome fundraiser the other day. It was a big departure from the other events that we do. We really focused on who was there and switched up the type of venue.
Although it wasn’t as financially successful as previous fundraisers, I always look for the “seed of equivalent benefit” like my boy Napoleon Hill says.
Here are the top 10 things I learned from this event:
- Always be myself
- Do what feels natural
- Meet new people and treat them like they’re an important family member
- Trust your gut
- Speak from your heart
- Do the hardest things first
- What you think is useless others find valuable
- Ignore the haters even if you’re one of them
- Learn and adapt quickly
- There’s no such thing as an unprofitable experience
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What do you do when you have 30 minutes of a millionaire entrepreneur’s time?
You ask him mad questions! That’s precisely what happened last week.
I’ve been looking for a mentor for a while. I haven’t had one in 6 years!
AND I’m in the business of mentoring!
It all came down because a new foundation for Stoked has a program where they match their board members with their grantee’s director. Someone like me.
They happened to match me up with the one skier on their board. He’s a fairly young CEO for a major development company.
For a guy who does deals in in the US and China, he got 26 days of skiing!! Insane. When I first met him he had just come back from a heli trip.
I digress.
He’s definitely one of the more successful people that I’ve been in touch with. So at my first meeting I wanted to ask him htf he makes it happen, how he spends his time, what are his motivational tips.
Here’s what I learned from him:- Pick good people and train them.
- Sometimes it takes employees a while to find their grove.
- He focuses and executes on his strengths. Ie. He’s a deal maker type of person. He’s not the management CEO.
- His job is to grow business, build products, get financing, structure deals.
He ended up giving me a worksheet that will figure out what to do with the extra profits he brings in. He gave me a template.
In all, my first mentoring session was good. I have to work on my assignment that he gave me with the worksheet.
One of my questions that I had for him was “What if you don’t have all financing in place to make deals happen?” His response basically was, “I’ll always make things happen, so deals will get done.”
Glad to see my thinking was validated.The above picture is that of the Freedom Tower. I love how amazing it looks and is an example of the spirit of business and entrepreneurs.
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Do you ever hear opportunity knocking and you’re hesitant to open the door?
- Maybe it’s a job
- A relationship
- A chance to travel
- Starting a business
- Doing freelance / side projects
I’m not talking about any ole opportunity. I’m talking about genuine opportunity that could change your life trajectory.
Of course there are reasons not take advantage of an opportunity. Maybe it’s too expensive. Perhaps you say, “I need to do something first.”
For me, I fall into a trap of saying “there is always next year.” I’m never ready receive an opportunity this year.
Whenever opportunity presents itself and we shy away from it, our brain tells us that we’re not ready.
We’re actually scared and are fearful of what it means. You might tell yourself, “I ain’t scared of no opportunity!”
Actually YES, you are.
There is fear of the unknown. There’s fear of failure. Fear of being exposed.
To overcome the fear associated with opportunity, we need to assess certain things. Here’s a checklist that I recently went through.
- Who am I and what are my long term goals?
- Is this opportunity in line with the answer to question #1?
- What will I gain/lose by taking on or passing up the opportunity?
I came up with this process when I was evaluating signing a lease to a new office for Stoked.
I knew I wanted to get a new office this year and get a space to call our own.
We’ve been subtenants of other companies for 7 years!
I’ve been looking at office spaces for the past few months, but they were either in a bad location or crappy condition.
But I found a space and fell completely in love with when I first saw it. It was a little bit bigger than our space now, but not as big as I wanted. It is the same price as our current space.
Quite frankly a place like this comes very rarely. I debated for so long. One night I couldn’t sleep, because I was evaluating it so hard. I came back to the questions above.
These are my answers:
1. As the founder of Stoked, I want to surround myself with highly motivated community of creative individuals who want more out of life and mentor the next generation of youth to succeed.
2. Yes, because, I seek a space in which myself and my team are inspired to create daily.
3. What we gain: A new office in which we are the sole tenants; We can build it out to our needs; We can eliminate the need for outside storage; a neighborhood of creative people. What we lose: leaving the neighborhood in which Stoked was founded; the security of being a subtenant; It’s just scary to leave familiar surroundings.
Along with a few other questions that I answered, I decided to pull the trigger and sign the lease! We move in May 1. I’m Stoked! The picture above is the door to the actual office.
Is there an opportunity in front of you that you’re fearful of? Can answering a few questions make a difference? Let me know!
