MBA2330 The Fastest Way For a Beginner To Be Successful in Business + Free Ride Friday

0:28。 We're giving away the$100 MBA, our practical six-part program guaranteed to make you a better entrepreneur. To win our free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. It's that easy. In today's episode, you'll learn the fastest way for a beginner to be successful in business. When you're starting out, when you're beginning on this journey of entrepreneurship, you might feel like you're way behind. mind. You have no following. You have no email list. No one knows your name. You have no customers.

1:03You're not sure how to get traction and how to get successful as soon as possible. Well, in today's episode, I'm going to give you my advice from my own experience on how to fast track your success. If I had to do it all over again, this is the advice I'd give myself or anybody else I care for, for that matter. And I know it works because I struggled trying a whole bunch of other stuff before that just didn't work. And once I implemented this, things started to move. Things started to change. I started to see some success. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. You know how some people say that it's more about who you know than what you know in business?

1:41Well, I really love this saying because this episode has a lot to do with those two concepts, who you know and what you know. In my opinion, they're both important. Who you know gives you opportunities. Building your network, getting introductions, you're going to get opportunities in the process, but you might get an opportunity and blow it because you don't know what to do. And that's why what you know is just as important. And they work hand in hand. So let's talk about what you're practically going to do to get successful as a beginner every day, every week, every month, every year even. And let's start with who you know.

2:19You have to actively build your network. You have to actively meet people. You have to make it your job. Just like you're going to work at a company, you got to make it your job to meet new, interesting people, the high quality people in your space. I'm not saying just go to any party you're invited to. No, go to the parties, the meetups, the conferences, the events, because this is going to open up an opportunity for you to meet interesting people doing interesting things that you can learn from and serve. This is the most important part. The whole point as a beginner to network and to meet people and go to events and go to conferences is to meet people so you can help them, so you can work for them for free.

3:02I'm not talking about work for their company for free, but that would be nice and interesting. But I'm talking about actually doing something of value for them so you can build a relationship. Listen, relationships are all about give and take. And it's your job as the beginner to give first. Don't go into there and say, hey, I want to pick your brain. Hey, I need your help. Hey, can you mentor me? People are busy, right? They have their own problems, their own issues, their own pressures. They don't have time to just give it away for no reason. That's why you got to go first and you got to give value to them.

3:34Let me give you an example. Back in 2014, I went to a conference called New Media Expo in Vegas. I was just starting out. I haven't launched this podcast yet. I was like six months before that. And prior to that, I have been building businesses for about 12 years. Most of them failed. Some of them did all right, but I haven't really built my business chops yet. I wanted to get to know people that have done it and are doing the things I want to do. So I went to this conference and met a lot of very, very interesting people who now are like my close friends. who are doing incredible things in business.

4:09But more importantly, when I went to this event, I didn't want to waste this opportunity and just be an event goer and just go to these sessions and be a passive learner. No, I wanted to be part of the action. And I wanted to add value to those people that I looked up to. At the time, I was part of an online business community. And I reached out to the founders of that community. And I said, hey, I know you guys are going to this conference. I know a lot of people from our community are going to this conference. And you think it'd be cool if we organized a meetup and I'm happy to organize it for you that we all can get together and meet each other in person.

4:44This request to help this offer is an easy hell yeah for them because I'm giving value to their community. I'm doing all the work and it's just a win win for them. They're like, yeah, sure. That sounds great. Do it. And that's exactly what I did. I organized a very informal meetup where we just all met and had a meal together. There's about 30 or 40 of us, and I met some really interesting people. And because I'm the one who organized it, and I was emailing people and organizing the whole event and the venue, there was a reason for people to come up and talk to me. And I got to know them, get their contact, and I added value to the people that I wanted to learn from.

5:23This didn't cost me anything other than energy and time. And as a beginner, I had plenty of that. People paid for their own meals and made their own way to Vegas. Another example is about a week after we launched this podcast, The$100 MBA Show, I wanted to really establish the show and talk about it with other podcasts. At the time, an event called Podcast Movement, which is a huge podcasting conference in the U.S., was launching. It was the first podcast movement, and I wanted to get involved. Now, I knew that I was just a week into this podcast. I had very little success, very little track record in the podcasting world.

5:58And it'd be foolish of me to assume that I can speak on stage, especially giving very little time warning or heads up to the organizer. But I wanted to add value. So I said, hey, I'd love to do any job at the event that you need me to do. Something that maybe most people don't want to do. And that job was hosting a panel. You know, all of these conferences you have the panelists and the panelists speak, and those are the important people. Well, somebody's got to host that panel and ask the questions and take questions from the audience. So Nicole and I, we're happy to do that. We've got our way to the conference, help the conference out.

6:30And because of that, because we were, quote unquote, part of the conference, we got to meet people. We went to dinner together with the people that were part of the conference, other speakers. And it allowed me to meet and learn other people. Why is this important? Because the more people you know, the more people you can observe and see how they meet other people, how they talk. Business people talk about business. They talk about deals. They talk about what they've done. They talk about promotions. They talk about the products they're launching. You're getting free mentorship and free education on what success looks like.

7:02So you can go back to the lab, go back to your office, go back home, and build your own version of those things for your business. So we focus on who you know. So your job is to look out for any conferences you can attend, any events, local, national, international, and see how you can add value to somebody at that event or beyond the event. The next part is what you know. And as a beginner, you don't know a lot. And in fact, you don't even know what you don't know. And I actually equate it to like somebody who's starting out at the gym. Maybe their end goal is to be a world champion bodybuilder, but they haven't even put in one workout in yet.

7:42They haven't even put in one rep in. They haven't built their muscles yet. and knowledge, business knowledge is like a muscle. You gotta grow that muscle. So you gotta put in the reps consistently every day, just like a bodybuilder would go to the gym every day and put in a hard workout day in and day out for years to become a champion. To be successful in business, you're gonna have to do the same when it comes to your knowledge. Now, there's a lot of ways you can learn. You can watch YouTube videos. You can listen to podcasts like this. You can take online courses. You can take training, in-person courses.

8:15You can work for a company that does what you do. But here's the fast track. There are two things I recommend that you should do every day that can help you improve fast. I'm talking about most bang for your buck. The first thing is reading books, self-improvement books, mindset books, biographies. I have found that books actually give me the most benefit, the most return on investment of time and effort than any other medium. And the reason why it does that, because there's a lot of thought and deliberation that gets put into writing a great book. And that's why I try to read every single day till this day.

8:54I started this habit back when I started in entrepreneurship as the best habit I ever picked up. Even if it's just 15, 20 minutes a day or 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes before you go to bed, that's plenty. If you like audiobooks, listen to audiobooks while you're commuting. It's huge. And the other thing is that most people don't read books. They're on their phone, they're watching reels on Instagram, or even watching videos on YouTube, and that's just how they consume information. They think this is the best way to consume information. I'm here to tell you that your competitive advantage is doing things that most people don't do, which is read.

9:25So make it a part of your habit so you can build that muscle. The second thing I recommend is podcasts. Why do I recommend podcasts? It's because you can listen to a podcast, whether it's a founder story with a podcast like How I Built this or interviews like with the Jordan Harbinger show or Entrepreneurs on Fire or the interviews that we run here and there or a lesson-based podcast like this one. You can listen to the knowledge. You can build your brain in a concentrated way while you're doing other things, while you're working out, while you're walking, while you're commuting, while you're folding laundry.

9:59It's a great maximizer. And the thing about podcasts that are great is that they can focus on the content and give you as much value. With videos, I've found, they're trying to make it as entertaining as possible. So a lot of time is wasted trying to entertain you and put images and do different effects and make it fun and funny and all that kind of stuff. But podcasts are usually just pure gold. So who you know, what you know, combine them, make it a part of your life every day. And it's going to help you become successful faster because not only will you have the knowledge to build a better business, the knowledge to be able to market and to sell and to do customer service properly with your team, entertain your customers and all that.

10:38But you also will be ready when opportunities open up to you because of all the people you meet and the people that you work with and people you've helped. So if you say, for example, start a podcast, you have plenty of people you can reach out to to have as guests because you put in the work to network. When you run a webinar or want to do a partnership or something like that, you have people that you can reach out to. This combination is killer. Thanks so much for listening to The$100 MBA Show. I hope today's episode helped out. If it did, let us know in a rating and review because, hey, it's Free Ride Friday.

11:08If you leave us a rating and review, you can enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday and win a free ride. Let's announce this week's winner of Free Ride Friday. And the winner is The Only Dandy. That's the handle on Apple Podcasts. And The Only Dandy says, small business appreciated. Five stars. I appreciate this podcast a lot. Thanks for all the good tips. Well, thanks so much for leaving your review. You are our Free Ride Friday winner. Just email me over at omar at 100mba.net so you can claim your free ride to the$100 MBA. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw.

11:45Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Business is all about compounding. Compounding your wins, compounding your money, but also compounding your knowledge and relationship. The more you know, the more people you know, the greater your influence, the greater the chance of success, the more options you have to grow. The more options you have when you get stuck or need help. One person at a time, one book at a time. These things matter. They count and they add up. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then.

12:18Take care.

12:27Thank you.