Another lesson that I’ve come to learn along the way, I never expected to be a foundation of my beliefs. I was watching a YouTube video of billionaire investor Chris Sacca (yes he invested in Twitter, Instagram and so many more start-ups impossible to list). What really got me going in his most recent interview with PandoDaily in 2012, was that so many times in life he was able to ‘fake it until he made it’ . Now what does that even mean? Read onward and we will explain…
Read More About Chris’s Bio Here- Inspirational
Chris first talks about being a multi-millionaire stock investor. Here’s an example of where he says he had faith in what he was doing and became successful, but let it go overboard and ended up taking himself out. What Chris did, was he invested in one or two main stocks during the time just before the Silicon Valley bubble burst in early 2000. He was doing so well and started with about $80,000 in government money that he invested, that he was supposed to pay back for school loans. This money invested in those two stocks, made him upwards of $12 million. All his friends thanked him and he let the accolades go to his head. He stayed in the market and lost it all, eventually going down $4 million. He goes on to say that he started thinking he was more brilliant than he was, and he should have gotten out of that market. Good thing he’s a smart kid and was able to do what he did next.
Chris started moonlighting with extremely weird and unusual gigs, mostly through craigslist and Elance. But the next example is the one I want to focus on, because it’s what a lot of entrepreneurs need to do these days. Chris went ahead and started a business, called the Salinger Group. He goes on to say that it was nearly just kind of a joke. He was the CEO, of a group that literally did nothing. It started out as business consulting (something of which he had no experience in), transformed to law and other areas of business consulting.It ended up legitimately being a real business and made him a large amount of money.
Now this would have been impossible had he not said “Yes, I’m a consultant”. The truth is- nobody really knows what you are what you are. I cold called hundreds of businesses in my city and told them that I was a top-tier writer and eventually landed a few contracts. This contract still today pays me and it’s how I started my business. Don’t be afraid to say that you are something, and learning along the way. Are you going to really wait until you get that masters degree, to start doing what you love. You’ve got nothing to lose, but you’ve got a lot to learn. Nobody ever wants to pay that guy that doesn’t know anything to do their work, but what really makes the difference between the guy that does know something, and doesn’t know something, isn’t that much.
What do you want to start a business in? What do you want to be? Well, congratulations you are that! You want to be an IT consultant? Call some companies and say that you’re the best IT consultant in the area. It’s a hard lesson to learn, and it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but you have to do this! It’s going to save you. This is just another tip, number two that is, with more to come!
P.S- I plan on doing a lot more with this segment and offering coaching packages for it on future dates. Please contact me ASAP to talk about this in more detail…