The New Secret Superpower for Entrepreneurs
30 days i want you to imagine
that you have 30 days
until you lose everything
your house your
cars your family
everything
that wasn’t supposed to be me
but it was i’m going to tell you how i
got there
so you never have to
in my 20s they called me the golden boy
because everything i touched turned the
gold
at the time i was working in sales for a
50 year old plastic packaging company
i got an idea for a new division i
brought it to senior management
they said yes and we did
i grew that to 45 million in annual
revenue
in less than five years
i got really good at bringing new ideas
to life
and making them wildly successful
from there i became the ceo
of the first digital portrait studio
chain in the united states
when we brought it in the franchising
things really started to take off
before long i became known as one of the
young guns of franchising
that’s me no gray hair trying
to look cool
we were growing millions upon millions
in revenue
ranked one of the top 15 hop franchises
by entrepreneur magazine
by year five i had this formula for
success
all figured out i felt
unstoppable the only thing is
i wasn’t prior to one of my upcoming
board meetings
i reached out to a board member to
review my plans
for the upcoming quarter now this wasn’t
anything new
is that i’d done this over a dozen times
before
now at the board meeting we get together
i lay out my plans for the upcoming
quarter
everyone gets excited i go and implement
and then everyone’s happy
this time was different
this time they told me no
i didn’t understand i was truly confused
maybe they didn’t understand the plans
that i laid out
this is when i was reminded that i was
not an entrepreneur
but a chief executive officer
implementing
the direction of the board of directors
i worked for them i wasn’t blazing my
own trail as i had convinced myself that
i was
so a little voice inside my head right
there said
dave it’s time it’s time to start
something on your own
speak up right now and resign and give
them 90 days notice
so i did and the golden boy
became a real entrepreneur i was so
excited
to finally be able to live my life on my
terms
to do what i want when i wanted
i was free i was free of red tape
i was free of obligations
and oh i was also free of revenue
i started with a sizable safety net
i was putting all the time in
the creativity was there the focus was
there
the revenue wasn’t there
one month became six months
six months became 18 months
and before you know it i went from
having
everything to being hundreds of
thousands of dollars
in debt cards got canceled
the creditors started calling
and when i stopped answering their calls
my dad called to let me know they were
calling him
looking for me
things got so bad
i had to go to my young daughter and ask
her for money from her babysitting just
so we could pay our mortgage
things got so low as a parent
when your daughter is asking you if you
intend on paying her back
this entrepreneurship thing wasn’t
working for me
i had 30 days to turn things around
or things were going to take a major
turn for the worst i knew something had
to happen
i just didn’t know what it was
so i decided to take a day and go spend
it in the woods
just think so went down to the
chattahoochee
and i just sat there watching the river
go by
and all of a sudden i got a vision
i got a vision of a hero of mine growing
up
a mentor a guide my grandfather
i call them papa jules
now even though he had been gone for so
many years the conversations
that we had were so vivid in my brain
papa jules was a successful salesman
for most of his career until one day
he wanted more so at the ripe
age of 50
he and my grandmother sold their house
and their possessions
and they put it all in a new business
now he had so much success that by year
two he was able to get the financing
that he needed
to accelerate his growth forever
here’s me in front of the building he
was able to buy
in year two
i loved hanging with papa jules
he was an open book and he would answer
any of the questions that i would ask
so i asked him lots of questions
i remember one day asking him
how at 50 were you able to
give up the safety and security of a job
and start all over
and he thought and he paused
and he came back with one word
collaboration
he was able to leverage his skills
and the relationships and the skills of
others in order to make it all
happen papa jules told me
a lot about collaboration and i used
these
skills when i was in corporate america
however when i went off on my own
i forgot all of this i looked as it was
all
on me and that all my previous successes
were a solo effort
far from the case
that day in the woods paid off big time
it reminded me of the one thing i was
missing
as an entrepreneur and the one thing
that i needed to do in order to turn
everything around
collaborate
we see signs of collaboration everywhere
these days
in sports in business in comic books
heck even successful criminals
collaborate
in the movie ocean’s 11 collaboration
means that you can’t steal from a casino
unless you have the right team members
in place
how about superheroes when the earth was
facing
impending doom nick fury
knew that no one superhero alone was
going to be able to save the planet
so he created a team that included
iron man captain america
hulk thor black widow
and hawkeye who together are
the avengers using the power of
collaboration
they were able to save the earth
my mission to create an unbelievably
successful marketing company
my unprecedented threat 29 days
until certain doom
i knew i needed to create my own team
of superheroes so i did
and here we are well i cannot reveal all
the members of my team today
i’m going to share with you a few on my
team
i’m batman
michael is alfred batman’s right hand
he takes care of all the behind the
scenes operations to make sure
everything is flowing
smoothly maddie is wonder woman
she takes her golden lasso takes charge
and secures
thousands of followers on social media
for us
and our clients alex is
iron man he manages millions of paid
traffic monthly for our clients
focusing in on increasing roads which
means return
on ad spend lauren
is superwoman one person
handling the roles of many with great
enthusiasm
anna is the black widow a highly skilled
strategic assassin
that can slay any task we throw her way
jen our project manager is storm not
only can she manipulate the weather
she can manipulate our projects to make
sure that they’re done on time
and with perfection and together we are
well we don’t have a cool name like the
avengers but you get the idea
doomsday was averted
my team made everything to me the only
thing i lost
was the feeling of being alone
i made a decision right then and there
that i was going to share this
entrepreneurial superpower
with entrepreneurs around the world and
i started sharing
the five things that you need to know
in order to tap into it
trust in order for you to have true
collaboration
you must have trust you must trust your
teams to make decisions
and trust your teams to make mistakes
to make them own them
to share them with the rest of the team
members
once your team is comfortable with this
they’re ready to accelerate things
forward
acknowledge there is nothing quite as
powerful
as being able to look at your team
members and being able to say
i see you they’re more likely to go the
extra mile
because the work they do is simply
being acknowledged
appreciation authentic gratitude
goes farther than you can measure
it’s one of the things that is important
to make sure that you have
a dedicated enthusiastic and
hard-working
team purpose
your purpose becomes the compass by
which you guide your life
make decisions and attract those
that are aligned with you as a leader
it’s important for you to share your
purpose with your team
and the passion that you have behind it
when you do this effectively it is as if
a beautiful choir
is singing in harmony
passion has the power
to shape the view of the world that
others may not have seen
over the years i’ve had an opportunity
to mentor
thousands of entrepreneurs and i’ve
witnessed
firsthand the power of collaboration
and the impact of tapping into it has on
their mental well-being
as well as their success
that’s one of the things that motivated
my team and i
to create the competition it’s designed
to help entrepreneurs use collaboration
to accelerate their results
they start with an idea and then using
our process we help them
assemble their team of superheroes
the goal to have a company that is
generating revenue
or ready for funding in 90 days
while the competition is a competition
what i love about it most is that when
entrepreneurs
harness that power of collaboration
they’re already winning
stories of new entrepreneurs
using this new superpower for ultimate
success
are popping up everywhere
russell brunson is an entrepreneur
that had zero investors and zero track
record of success
building a software company yet he had a
wonderful software idea
now at this point he sounds like any
entrepreneur that has a great idea
what separates russell out from everyone
else
is how he tapped into the power of
collaboration
in order to create wild results
russell found todd a coder he shared
the vision that he had
todd said i’m in so they decided to
partner and collaborate on it
now todd went to work coding
while russell wrote a book and created a
sales and marketing plan
his sales plan was simple people would
buy his book
and then they would upsell into a
software
his execution was brilliant
he sent personal video
messages to his 100
dream collaborators he invited them
to participate in the launch of a
software company
now if they chose to do so they would
get
10 for every book sold
and if people bought the software they
would get commissions for life
and the person who referred the most
book sales
would get his red ferrari
he went all in on collaboration
and it paid off big time
he sold lots of books he sold lots of
software
all from those 100 personalized
messages he built his team of
superheroes
over a dozen people left what they were
doing
to join russell and todd in founding
click
funnels one of the fastest non-venture
backed
technology companies to reach a hundred
million in annual sales
in less than five years
i want to encourage you to create your
success story
in the world of business there is tons
of competition it’s fast-paced
it’s relentless and at times
it can be pretty scary
the new entrepreneurial secret
superpower
is not a secret anymore it’s
collaboration
so if you’re thinking off jumping off on
your own
don’t instead find attract and build
your superhero team tap into the power
of collaboration
so you can win the competition
thank you