Bootstrap Your Dream with Mukesh Alex Vaidya: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Imperfect Action. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down how to bootstrap your dream. To drop these value bombs, I have brought to Mukesh Alex, Vadia, and the EO Fire Studios. Mukesh is a software professional turned author of fiction and nonfiction books. His book, Bootstrap Dream, is how to start a tech company from scratch, and it will inspire millions, Fire Nation.

0:34We'll talk about how for startups, it's important to build a good culture, how if you follow your passion, you can leave behind a legacy, and technology disruptions that have happened in the world are spearheaded by Startups Fire Nation, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Mukesh and our sponsors. Success Story, hosted by my friend Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversation on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

1:06In a recent episode, Scott brings Kate Bradley on the show, founder and CEO of Lately.ai, to discuss the best ways to use AI to create content. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Mukesh, Alex, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:47Thank you so much, JLD, for having me in this amazing podcast, Fire Nation, as a guest. I'm a great fan of this podcast and you are one of the true inspirational stories which I follow religiously. Thank you. Frankly speaking, this is a virtual fanboy moment for me. Now, coming to one thing I believe about becoming successful is that if you are good at something and if you are genuinely ready to share that knowledge with the world, you will become massively successful. This is an era where information is at everybody's fingertips, yet it is misinformation and lies which is spreading fast. we need more knowledge evangelists to spread true knowledge across the world.

2:30Even if you study history, you can find that this is true. Ancient civilizations flourished when there were knowledge evangelists in the society, like Mesopotamian civilization or Roman civilization or Vedic India. All these civilizations flourished when there was a culture of sharing knowledge. But unfortunately, when obscrutinism started creeping into the society, all these civilizations declined. So this is a fact I think may not be everybody is agreeing with, but this will make people massively successful. So Mukesh Alex, we have a lot of great content to get to today, like a lot of great stuff.

3:10So give us a really quick rundown of your story. Yeah. As a kid, I was in love with words and books. I had a passion for writing. Then I had this thing called formal education, which conditioned me like it does to everybody else to find a job and settle in life. I started my corporate IT job with IBM in 2004. But when years passed, I had this feeling like the Neo in Matrix movie felt there is something wrong with the system. And I felt I am not belonging to where I should be. it was at that point I realized that in fact I am a slave to monotonous routine called corporate life then this COVID came COVID-19 came and I got plenty of time to read and think suddenly I reignited my passion for writing and published two short fiction books the second book the secret of Hiram hit Amazon bestseller list on fifth day of launch wow finally that moment came when you realize what fulfillment means.

4:16I know you understand that feeling very well. And this episode actually helped me plan my exit from corporate career and follow my calling. That is writing. But at the same time, over these years, I have accumulated a lot of experience and knowledge about software industry, which I don't want to go into a waste. So now I am also coaching startups to become successful. This is my story. Well, let's talk now about that software movement that you just mentioned. How can Fire Nation join this massive software movement and actually make a dent in the world? What is your recommendation? There is a saying like software is eating the world.

4:58This is an interesting usage, actually. This was used by Mark Anderson on his famous why software is eating the world article in Wall Street Journal. During that time, he predicted that over the next 10 years, he expected a lot of industries to be disrupted by software. With the new world beating Silicon Valley companies is going to do the disruption in most of the case. This was a time when the stock market was hammering down technology stocks. Now we look back, it seems Mark had a crystal ball to see the future. In the last decade, almost every industry was disrupted by technology companies.

5:41Let us take examples like Uber, Lyft. These companies actually gave a run for money for the traditional taxi and delivery companies. Airbnb did the same for hotel and motel industry. free online brokerages ate into the traditional brokerage volumes. So in a similar way, traditional television distribution is on the verge of being replaced by over-the-top media platforms. Now we have this COVID-19 situation which is forcing every industry to go through digital transformation. And there is what we have a technology hero called blockchain, which is going to do the same thing for next 20 years or so, what internet did for the last 20 years.

6:29So the writing is very clear on the world. Software will continue to eat the world. In such a scenario, the best thing an entrepreneur can do is join the movement or left out. The best way is bootstrapping your dream by starting up a technology company. So I love how you're talking about this movement and how it's literally taking over the world. But the reality is, let's talk about some specifics about how a startup can disrupt an entire industry. Because Mukesh Alex, we need to disrupt. We need to really make a movement. We really need to make a name for ourselves in this loud, crazy, busy world.

7:10So how can a startup disrupt an entire industry? There are three kinds of innovations. sustaining innovation, efficiency innovation, disruptive innovations. So this sustaining innovation improves the existing product and we get a better product. Efficiency innovation finds new efficient ways to produce product and it frees up the capital. But the interesting disruption is disruptive innovation. It is the most interesting one. It disrupts established ways. It creates new market and it creates new value networks. If you look at technology disruption happened in the world, it is spearheaded by startups.

7:51Blockbuster might have never come up with the OTT platform. Netflix did that. These startups always jump into this uncertain environment and untested waters. And it eventually changes the way we see the world. Whether you look at social media or whatever it is, everything is started by startups. So anybody who is venturing out to do a startup in an uncertain environment, they will come up disrupting and end their industry. They can disrupt and end their industry, actually. I mean, Fire Nation, follow this plan. Follow these tactics. Disrupt an industry. Don't just blend in. Be the disruption. We have so much more value coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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9:52Thought Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDx talks. Thought Leader is not affiliated with TED or TEDx, but they're able to get these results because their founder, Taylor Conroy, is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EO Fire guest. You might be thinking a TEDx talk sounds great, but where do you start? Taylor has put together a free training that's going to teach you how to land a TEDx talk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more.

10:29Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for this free training and get your message out of your head out of your heart and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com. Mukesh Alex, we are back and I want to now talk about the biggest challenge that you see startup entrepreneurs facing. I mean, I love the fact that you're coaching startup entrepreneurs and you're helping people in this amazing software movement, but what is the biggest challenge you're seeing these entrepreneurs face? Every entrepreneur want to become a success story, But if you look at some statistics, you can see that 90 % of the startups fails.

11:10But we have stories like Airbnb and Netflix, which are massively successful. So the question is, is it possible for a startup to replicate similar success? Is it possible for a non-technical person to start a technology company? So what my research and experience shows is that it is possible. So one of the main reasons for people who fail is because they don't have a proper mender. So there are three facts. One is money, the other one is mender and the other factor is time. So it is very difficult to find a good mender. So this is where the Bootstrap Dream book comes into picture. Bootstrap Dream is my mission to help millions of startups to become successful in the next five years through my book.

12:04Actually, in mathematics, you know that formula solves a problem. In a similar way, all these successful startups are actually following a formula. So my book is talking about that. So I think Fire Nation listeners will greatly benefit from reading my book. So Fire Nation, we're going back to the biggest challenge that startup entrepreneurs face. Money, mentors, time. Money, mentors, time. These are three things that we struggle with as entrepreneurs. I can tell you firsthand experience. I struggled with all three of these things. I struggled with money. I struggled with mentors or lack thereof.

12:45And of course, I struggle with time. I mean, I'm a human being after all. So you did mention the bootstrap dream and how you really help entrepreneurs with this. Give us some more details about the bootstrap dream that you haven't yet shared. Bootstrap dream actually talks about from ideation moment to exit from the startup. Even I'm talking about that. So it is talking about how to evaluate an idea, how to validate an idea, then how to build a minimum viable product, how to follow startup strategies, how to build an ideal team, how to found a co-founder. then there is a thing called culture. So for startups, it is very important that you should have a great culture.

13:39So I'm talking about how to build a great culture, how to build a great team. So it is a kind of a comprehensive gate for anybody who is going to read that book. They will greatly benefit out of it. So let's talk about Steve Jobs, about Jeff Bezos, about It's Elon Musk. Why should Fire Nation imagine their name next to those people? Yeah, these are all people who had the passion to start. These are people who have ventured into uncertain environment and they followed their passion relentlessly, irrespective of all the failures they have faced. So, if you look at Steve Jobs, he has democratized computing.

14:29He has democratized computing. Earlier, computing was monopolized by technology behemoths like IBM, Deez and HP. But Steve Jobs and Apple did something which is very unimaginable during that time. Now for a few hundred dollars, people can have a machine which is a million times powerful than a 1969 Apollo mission. So, the same thing can be done with the latest technologies like blockchain. For example, let me say, what is actually blockchain can do? Look at banking industry. What is this banks actually do? Bank is, suppose that there are two individuals who want to do transactions. They don't trust each other, whether it's a business or whether it's an individual.

15:35They don't trust each other. So they call this third party called bank. So this banking is actually very inefficient and there is a transaction cost. There is a time. But if you use blockchain, one person can trust another person and they can transfer money between them. They can create smart contracts which will execute itself. So this is going to create a trust actually. So actually what internet did is that it has democratized information. Blockchain is going to democratize trust. So what it means is that myself Mugesh Alak sitting in Kerala can do a business with John Lee Dumas sitting in Puerto Rico through a mobile phone.

16:39So we can trust each other through this technology. This technology will enable us to trust each other. We can transact money with the zero cost. We can have smart contracts which will execute itself. So this kind of change is going to happen into the world. So there is an enormous potential for entrepreneurs to venture into this and become the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. Fire Nation, these are incredibly exciting times. I mean, listen to what Mukesh Alex is talking about. I mean, this is the future and the future is now. So Mukesh, Alex, give us the one big takeaway that you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we talked about here today.

17:29Share with us how we can connect more with you. And of course, pick up your book, Bootstrap Dream, and then we'll say goodbye. For Fire Nation listeners, if you can visit mukeshalex.com slash fire, you can download the first chapter of my book free and you can read that book you can read that chapter and understand what is there in store for you so my my advice is that if you follow your passion you can leave behind a legacy so that is the biggest takeaway from this conversation, I think. Fire Nation legacy. It's all about the legacy. And as Mukesh was talking about earlier, the right mentors, I mean, you are Fire Nation.

18:18The average of the five people you've been spending the most time with, you've been hanging out with M-A-V and J-L-D today. So please keep up that heat and head over to eofire.com and you can just type Mukesh Alex, That's M-U-K-A-Y-S-H space A-L-E-X in the search bar. And his show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about here today. Check out Bootstrap Dream. You get the first chapter for free at the URL that Mukesh shared that we'll also have on the show notes page. And Mukesh, Alex, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

18:59Thanks so much, JLD. I'm really humbled to appear in this show and it's a great honor for me. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Mukesh Alex. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Well, then check out my free podcasting course where I teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. Visit freepodcastcourse.com and I will catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. success story hosted by my friend scott d clary is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals success story features q a sessions with successful business leaders keynote presentations and conversation on sales marketing business startups and entrepreneurship in a recent episode scott brings kate bradley on the show founder and ceo of lately.ai to discuss the best ways to use ai to create content listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts.

19:57Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.