Disrupt You Book Summary & PDF
Disrupt You book summary key ideas:
- How specific strategies that help companies flourish can also be applied at an individual or startup level to help anyone achieve success and lasting prosperity without needing to raise funds from outside investors.
- Why fast speed to failure is every great entrepreneur’s Ammunition.
- Why as entrepreneurs, we need to not only create value, but also capture value.
- Why as entrepreneurs, there is little difference between obstacles and opportunities.
To learn more, listen to the interview with Jay Samit above.
Download Disrupt you PDF interview transcript here.
Mani: [1:57]
Wow, Jay! What an intro, I am really excited to have you on the show. Welcome!
Jay: [2:01]
Thanks for having me, my pleasure!
Mani: [2:03]
Thank you, so let’s talk about the book, but before we talk about it, let’s talk about your story. What led you to write the book?
Jay: [2:10]
So, Disrupt You was really my 30-year journey and looking back and what have I learned that can make the path easier for the next person trying to become an entrepreneur, and to be honest, when I got out of college my goal wasn’t to be an entrepreneur. I bought into society’s implicit social contract, get good grades, go to good university and live happily ever after. And I got out of college when there was a recession, and there were no jobs. So you have two choices that point: Say your life is over, or figure out how to make a difference. And so I wanted to create special effects like George Lucas did in Star Wars, and I had no computer background, no equipment, and no connections, but I went out and printed business cards for a dollar, saying that I worked at a special effects company, I didn’t even make myself boss of this mythical company, but with a little bit of hustle and walking around and whatever, next thing you know you have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business. You don’t have a clue how to do it, and then you go about hiring people with the actual talent that would rather be employees than owners. And that led me on a path of, you know, working to create the first auction that became eBay, or working with Reid Hoffman on Linkedin or ooVoo where all these giant technologies used by billions. As well as I’ve been an intrapreneur running new divisions from scratch for people like Sony, and EMI, and universal big, big companies. And so I’ve seen it from both sides, I’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars for start-ups. And when you look around and so many people that you know that became billionaires, it wasn’t that they went to the right schools, it wasn’t that they had the right connections, so you start looking “What did they do differently?”. And 70% of the world’s billionaires are self-made. They got the same 24 hours in a day that you and I do, but they’re looking at the world through a different lens, so Disrupt You is really to show anybody how to do it and it’s much, much easier today. You have in your pocket a device that connects you to 6 billion consumers, you only have to reach them once, all you have to be right for a nano second to become a billionaire and so this is that story and this is that process.
Mani: [4:26]
Wow, and uhm definitely this book has so many great stories that show how to disrupt yourself. Let’s get into the book a little bit, let’s try to understand from a 10-thousand feet overview perspective. What are we gonna learn from the book?
Jay: [4:42]
So, Disrupt You is in three sections, and everybody wants to change the world but no one realized that it starts with changing yourself and so much of your childhood was people telling you what you can’t do and each one of those limitations just start to internalize and if you really think that you’re not going to be successful, congratulations you’re right! So, at the end of the day if you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’re right.
So, if you can learn that not only taking a different approach and how to use visualization on all the tools, it briefly talks about the science behind it. You can actually change your physiology, your attitude can rewire the wiring of your brain. And so, the first third’s about that. Once you realize that you’re malleable that you’re changeable, *inaudible* that big business world is suddenly seem much more accessible, and so I break down the value chain of how business work from research and development, on marketing and sales *inaudible* and show people that the big mistake most people do is they try to, you know, go out with a new product and change something, and they try to take the whole value chain on. In today’s world, just focus on the place where the most value is created that you can capture and defend. And so, when you start looking business that way, you’ll suddenly see a world of opportunity. And then the last third, is really my favorite part of the book. You’ve made money, you’ve figured out life, and you’re really looking for something more, and I believe the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose, what if you take those same tools of disruption that you used on yourself and on business and go on for some big problems, whatever problem you want: Education, clean water, the environment, the world’s got plenty of problems and the only people that are gonna solve them are entrepreneurs. So the last third is how to apply it, and some amazing stories of, you know, people that took on the banking industry with only $27 and changed micro-lending, you know, just tons and tons of stories of people that are just regular folks. And it’s meant to inspire, it’s meant to support, and I’m humbled, I have to tell you, I’ve had a wonderful career and it’s great to pay back and I teach a course of how to build up a high tech start-up for university students, I had two students in the class, on the first year they did a $150 million dollars. So it’s very teachable, but what’s rewarding is to hear back people from dozens of countries around the world how one story, one chapter, one idea changed how they were thinking about their business, changed their career. I had an amazing note yesterday from a gentleman in Pakistan that literally brought tears into my eyes. He was making $70 a month, and by reading the book he has changed just within a couple of months, he was the leading guy in his field, making tons of money. Literally, why do I take that idea that somebody is doing in the U.S, and I’ll just do it here. He didn’t have a dime to his name. And you know, i think he would have been successful and figured life out on his own, but to give you the credit for just being that one push that made it that much easier. So that’s why I do this.
Mani: [7:57]
That’s right. Let’s jump into the book itself. Let’s try to understand from an ambitious entrepreneurs’ perspective. Let’s talk about the most important ideas for an entrepreneur, for the ambitious start-ups, for the guys who are making it or trying their very best to make it happen everyday. What would be the key components of that?
Jay: [8:23]
So, the first one is which I was talking about is it doesn’t start with looking externally, it starts with looking internally. You know, in my personal story which I was honest about.. I didn’t talk ‘til I was 5, I struggled my whole childhood to learn how to read, I was dyslexic. And in my generation, that means “You’re an idiot”. I mean in first grade the teacher divide you into three reading groups “The Eagle, the hawks, and the mud hens” You know, when you’re a mud hen your life is over right? Goes into the corner with the other losers. So you start internalizing and expecting you can’t. And left traumatically thinking that “I’m not good at Math, or I can’t do this, or I’m not an engineer or whatever I might be.” Let’s wait a second, how much code did Steve Jobs, the creator of Apple, the most successful company of all time.. How much code did Steve ever write?
Mani: [9:11] Nothing..
Jay: [9:12]
Not one line.. He can’t read code, he’s not an engineer. Okay? So, you can backfill with other talents, you can make your dreams come true but again, the difference between a dream and a goal is a deadline. You know, and how to work backwards on that goal and fill in the missing pieces, so it’s really very important for entrepreneurs to understand that they can get out of their comfort zone, which then leads to the second most important thing, which is culturally so different in different countries which is the Spear of Failure, and when you are afraid to fail that means you’re afraid to try. And if you won’t try anything, you won’t get anywhere. There’s a huge difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying stuff that you find out doesn’t work, congratulations, that’s learning, that’s growing, you’re building your business. You know, the symbol of the genius is the light bulb, you know, Thomas Edison’s light bulb.
He tried 10,000 things ‘til he figured it out. Failure is throwing in the towel and go “Well, it was me. I can’t make it work.” And when I lecture in India and Russia and some other countries where the culture are different, you know, if a young person comes out of college and says “Mom, I’m going to be an entrepreneur.” They hit him on the head with a frying pan and say “No, go get a real job.” and so they never try to really getting used to that failing is part of the process, learning when to pivot, learning when to keep going and when to give up, and we talk about that in Disrupt You!
And it’s very important, and so many examples like, i mean you know, most household names that you can think about like Heinz Ketchup or Henry Ford or Walt Disney, all went bankrupt before they built their billion dollar company.
I had guys that I had worked with at the very beginning of my career they had a genius idea “ Hook up traffic lights to a computer, to reduce urban congestion.” Hello, genius, no brainer. It was the 1970’s the city planners were like “What are you talking about a computer? Get out of here.” So, Traf-O-Data, the first company of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, failed! How different would the world be if Bill Gates and Paul Allen said “You know, this business thing isn’t right for us. Let’s go get a job.” Their second company Microsoft did $17,000 in its first year. You know, that’s not bad. And then they went on to be two of the richest people in the history of mankind.
So, it happens to everybody. And the pivoting part of it, is so many business sound like they made sense and then don’t, but then when you look at the data, when you look at what doesn’t, that’s the moment where you’ve gone farther into the woods, farther into the jungle than anybody else. And that’s where you get the insight that nobody else travel that far to find out. And you know my favorite example in the book, 10 years ago broadband was just coming along, 3 guys sat down and said, “Oh my God, Computer Dating? We’re gonna revolutionize it. Instead of still pictures, there’ll be videos, you could see their personalities, their accents, we’re gonna make a fortune.” So they had a site called “Tune In, Hook Up” and you could go and look at these videos and no one wanted to date these ugly losers. There goes their business they didn’t count on that but they looked at the data, and rather than giving up they said “Wait a second, nobody wants to date the guy in that video, but everybody wants to show that video to their friends and say “Oh my God, can’t you see that caliber people have to choose from how awful it is?” So they changed the name of “Tune In, Hook Up” to “YouTube” and they became billionaires in the first year in business without raising one dime.
Mani: [12:57]
And that’s Chad Hurley, the crew. Wow, and what to really say here is that failure is part of success, it’s part of the process and in the sense we’re gonna have to change course, we’re gonna have to adapt, we’re gonna have to figure out in order to get where we want to go, rather than let one failure or two failure stop ourselves.
Jay: [13:20]
It’s all about how you look at it, I mean one of the things that I talk about, when I talk about the value chain is billions upon billions of dollars are spent in scientific research at universities, at big businesses, at NASA and everything. Let me define the scientific process, scientist have no idea what they’re doing. That’s not putting them down, that’s the scientific process, they’re trying to discover something that they didn’t know. They’re not saying “How do I make a piece of metal that will make a better razorblade?.” they say “How do I come up with a new alloy” and they go “Wow, I made up a new metal. I wonder what people would do with this.”
So the people that commercialize things, the people that turn these things into opportunity, the entrepreneurs, there are websites that you can go at, NASA has 1600 patents up there that you can take, go start your business. Every university patents tons of stuff and has nobody trying to commercialize it.
And you know, some of the other fun stories in the book, during World War 2, South-east Asia was controlled by Japan, so nobody could get rubber. You need rubbers for tires, you need it for this, for that, you know the war effort needs rubber. So our best scientist at Westinghouse, General Electrics, all these big labs in the U.S. have to make a synthetic rubber. They’re spending a fortune, I don’t know what it was in the 1930’s and 40’s dollars, but they’re spending a fortune. One guy came up with something that has the same viscosity, the same stretch, same everything, they nailed it except for one thing, it wouldn’t hold a shape, it was just goop, it didn’t fall apart, it didn’t do anything. And the war ends and they had spent millions upon millions making this worthless goop. And this guy looked at him and said, “Do you mind if I take that?” he goes, “Sure, we failed.” And he put it in a bunch of plastic eggs, and they have sold 300 million eggs of silly putty. Gutenberg, people think Gutenberg invented the moveable type in the print, as if he’s like Doc Brown in back to the future, this whole, fully formed, “I’m going to revolutionize printing and change knowledge and education in western civilization, and give birth to the Renaissance.” Nothing can be further from the truth. What actually happened was somebody, 500 years ago, realized that we could use grape press, the thing that you squeeze to make olive oil, “Instead of making olive press, we could make a bigger one for grapes and then it’ll be easier to make wine, you don’t have those people standing on barrels of stuff, you know, dancing like ‘I love Lucy;. Well, so many people bought wine presses, and 500 years ago, Germany was making more wine than they are today for a heck of a lot less people, and everybody in the wine business went bankrupt.
Now you can get it used, crappy wine press for next to nothing. It’s a big piece of equipment, it’s got a big press, we’ve all seen the pictures. That’s when Gutenberg says, “You know, I think I can take that failed wine press, put my little wooden letters in it, and I got moveable type printing. So we’re re-using things, changing things, looking at business from a different aspect, and so much of what we do today wasn’t designed for what it’s meant to, an entrepreneur took something from one field and said, “Oh I can sell it over here.” And I discovered that earlier in my career, in my 20’s, I got involved in a project where all this big corporations had spent hundreds and millions of dollars inventing optical display technology, and they couldn’t find a use for. And I’m like, “I don’t get this, why did you make it if you don’t have it?” and next thing you know, we’re doing corporate training and kiosks and everything, then eventually it became successful with the CD’s and DVD’s but it’s just amazing how much we could do, and it’s just one example, so getting over that fear, getting over that failure.
Mani: [17:16]
What you just said, the example of Gutenberg and the example of the optical, it’s basically capturing value, that was the key component that they did rather than just letting the value be used in that frame of reference, they’ve moved it over to the other side and said, “I can actually use and capture this value in a much better fashion.
Jay: [17:37]
Like Napster showed everybody how to steal music. Took the $40 billion dollar music industry down to $20 billion in two years, wiped out the business. But they unlocked value, they didn’t capture anything for themselves, they didn’t make anything.
Craigslist destroyed the newspapers, newspapers for these big thick things for those too young to remember each in history, but they made all their money off that little classified ads in the back, 2 cents is the cost to $200 that no one ever read but it’s the only way they could communicate. Well, Craigslist wiped that out but they didn’t capture any of that value. The real genius is that when you can figure out something that disrupts but you can capture that piece that you want. So a good example would be Waze, nobody’s looking at maps anymore, nobody’s printing maps, nobody’s getting map, nobody actually cares what the path is on how you got there. Waze figured out how to use data and tell you for today and at this moment, “Here’s your quickest route, and the car next to you has a different route.” they’re not gonna get disrupted in the same way because that data is always live, that’s the innovation that ables to capture that audience, and that’s it’s about.
Mani: [18:49]
Yes, so let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the big idea here which is you’re talking about in the book. There’s a value chain and there are different components of a business that different components where you can actually unlock value, but not only unlock value but capture as you said. So let’s first understand the whole lay-out in a business in terms of 5 different…
Jay: [19:11]
So it all starts with an idea, research development or whatever comes with it, then you have production, you have to make the ‘thing’ even if it’s a digital ‘thing’, or a physical ‘thing’, then you have to figure out the marketing, you have to make demands for it, how does the world find out about it. Distribution whether it’s customer acquisition digitally, or physically how do I get it onto retail shops. And then you have the customer service and all the other things that go around it.
You don’t necessarily have to own all those pieces of the pie, you just have to figure out for you particular product “Where is the value created?”.
So an easy example for the people is when you think about the diamond. Okay? Turns out diamonds really aren’t that rare, there’s tons of ‘em, but one company has a monopoly and bought up all the mines and back a hundred years ago you could get down on a knee and propose to a woman with any kind of ring, it could be a ruby or a sapphire, it could be a pearl, or it could just be a ring.
Nowadays, good luck proposing without a diamond and that was all because of one marketing campaign by a company named De Beers which coincedently owns all the diamond mines. And when they finally found in an African nation that was undergoing civil war, a diamond mine that they couldn’t control, then they started a second ad campaign, the Blood diamonds, and conflict diamonds.
And those are bad stones, don’t buy those bad stones, you know, we just exploit our workers, whatever, but now let’s pretend for a second that you’re in a lab, you were able to make the super compressor thing and you can put a piece of coal in there and make a synthetic diamond. Now you don’t need a diamond mine, you don’t need manufacturing, you don’t need this or that. And you can solve for all those various pieces.
So it’s really what’s the piece that you need, so in the case of the diamond, the real thing that they captured and held onto was they created demand. Okay? They created this cultural ‘diamond is forever’, and ‘diamond means love and nothing else would do’.
And so they spend all their money doing that and they are such a cartel that all of their officers are not allowed to set foot in the U.S. because they lost an antitrust lawsuit and so they said, “Okay, whenever we visit the U.S. we’ll just sell diamonds here.”
Mani: [21:37]
So now let’s talk about the new age company, the businesses that are now getting to billions of dollars.
Jay: [21:45]
Let’s talk about Uber. So, Uber is so fascinating, let me deconstruct this from a Disrupt You point of view. Everybody knows that Uber is replacing taxis, and everybody knows is gonna go to self driving vehicles and get rid of the drivers. But here’s what you’re missing on Uber, today Uber has 1 million drivers, let that sink in for a second, that’s a lot of people. 1 million employees that never met their boss, that never went to H.R., that never talked to a co-worker supervisor, they report in and sign up through a piece of software. If there was an earthquake in San Francisco and Uber Headquarters fell over, Uber work will continue to work because there’s a million people working for Skynet, okay? So if something is complicated transporting humans which is which is harder than transporting, you know, Coca-Cola, or a sack of potatoes because humans talk back and humans might not be who they say they are and everything else. If you can automate that within the next 5 years 50% of all white collar jobs in North America will be replaced by software.
Mani: [22:55] Within the next 5 years?
Jay: [22:57]
5 years, and that’s a McKinsey number, okay? And I think they’re being conservative. And then the drivers get replaced, so the number one most common job is the truck driver, “Bye bye truck drivers.” and there’s also Drone ships, so “Bye-bye”, you know cargo ships needing people, etc. So we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people that will not have jobs.
“So wait a second, you took a left-turn Jay, you’re telling me this dystopian horrible future,” No, I’m telling you the greatest opportunity ever. You’re gonna have 2.3 billion people that need to come up with new businesses. How can they utilize this technology?
You could start a small business with very few people and have global reach, you’re one click away on your phone from 6 billion consumers, you only have to be right once to be a billionaire. So that’s the opportunities on how to look at that. And so Uber, and you’ll see a million business plan, “Uber this, uber that”. When I do big audience speeches, I bring out an electric drill, and I ask “How many people have a drill? And everybody raises their hand and they’re real obnoxious to go, how do you keep more than one? Okay? According to the drill manufacturers association, in the life of owning that drill, you will drill for 15 minutes. If you’re gonna own something for 15 minutes, does it make sense to own it? Well, what if Amazon or somebody delivered it in the morning, “zit-zit-zit” picked it up, you know, and you running drill for 3 to 8 hours, right? Well, most of the time you’re not in your car, most of the time you’re not using the lawnmower, etc., etc.
So the sharing economy is this new 40 billion thing, which is just like Uber and software, and all kinds of things and services, that are much more efficient. So now we’re gonna go to manufacturing and consuming to networking and sharing which is also good for the environment and uses less natural resources, etc., etc. So tons of opportunity.
Mani: [24:58]
So the reason why this is happening now because information has become or the possibility to exchange information or the cost of the information to travel have become almost to nothing.
Jay: [25:15]
The infrastructures of places, it’s 90% cheaper than it was 10 years ago. Play fun game with me for two seconds and everybody listening play the same game. It doesn’t matter what you make in dollars, or cents, or pounds, or whatever percentage, I want a percentage answer. What percent of your monthly income do you spend on digital goods today? Just give me a number, don’t think too long.
Mani: [25:41] Maybe, 10-20%?
Jay: [25:45]
10-20%, okay. When I do a big crowd most people are 5%-10%, I will convince you in the next 60 seconds not only you’re wrong but the majority of your income goes to your digital goods. So let’s define digital, is it fair to say that which is not physical? Okay, so rent is not physical, mortgage is not physical, health insurance is not physical, your cell phone bill is not physical, you know, getting here with me? You know, netflix isn’t physical, the cable bills aren’t physical, your internet hook up isn’t physical, books are no longer physical unless you really want a good one, but you can get it differently. So the whole point is, if the majority of our GDP is now 1’s and 0’s anybody can hook into it, you can now be living in North Platte, Nebraska, or South America or, Timbuktu and compete with anybody anywhere else, alright? Bitcoin currency now flows seamlessly. You have an opportunity to solve massive world issues and reap those rewards.
There are no gatekeepers, no borders, no limitations and the infrastructure is all built for you, you just have to tap in.
Mani: [27:05]
Yeah, it’s like the infrastructure that has come alive now has basically made it all possible way more than what was possible 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago.
Jay: [27:21]
15 years ago when I launched a digital download store, we had to have a whole half of floor with racks and servers I called them ‘winky blinks’ because they don’t know what they did and there’s one guy that works for you and he said, “I need more winky blinks”, right? Then “what’s this gonna cost me?” and i need more air conditioning products, etc.. Amazon had the same problem, they were getting so big they built this huge data center and then some genius said, “Hey boss, Jeff, we had extra capacitor, we can turn this into a profit center.” and everybody else said, “Whoa, we don’t wanna run this thing.” So yeah, you can tap into any cloud, you can literally run an empire with just a phone, and so what problem do you wanna solve?
I know you want to do like an exercise something tangible, for people listening. So, I’ll give you one that’s in the book, and by the way before I forget, it’s my gift to your listeners if anybody wants a copy of the Companion Workbook that gives you all the exercises to do once you read the book. It’s 40 pages, it’s my gift to you free just go to jaysamit.com look at the shownotes and the link will reach out to me @jaysamit on twitter, but here’s the exercise, in 30 days from now, you will have a billion dollar company idea and the ability to know how to get it funded and what to do, you’ll have better deal flow in any BC, and all you have to do is this: Today, write down three problems that you have in your life, okay? First simple thing to do, because all the entrepreneurs looks at obstacles and turns them into opportunities, solve problems for million people, you become a millionaire. But you have to do that everyday for thirty days. So, the first day is easy. And when you have problems, “Oh I was in traffic today before I got on this interview, traffic was the problem, etc.” Well, you know, the guys in Waze where two kids sitting on Tel Aviv in traffic saying, “Wait a second, the phone company knows his phones, and his car minds in line, telling him to go left, or to go to right, that was the basis of Waze, right traffic. So as you go through your month, you’ll start seeing things that you didn’t realize were problems, you just accepted that’s the way it is. And I’ll give you one of my favorite ones from one of my readers, it’s not on the book: Have you ever stood there and said, “Oh, did I take my pill? Wait, I think I took a pill after breakfast, I don’t know, I don’t want to overdose, etc.” Everybody has this problem. So I took one of these ‘Happy Meal watches’ you know, one of these 5 cent digital watches put it on a pill bottle, when you close the bottle, set the countdown clock to zero. So when you look at the bottle and go, “Oh it’s been four hours, I didn’t take it”,”Oh it’s been three minutes.”,”Oh yeah, right before I got on the phone i took it.” Solves it. You have bluetooth to that and now grandma doesn’t have to remember, you can call grandma and go, “Grandma, you didn’t take your medicine at lunch.” “Oh, thank you” And she figures out how you knew she stopped taking *inaudible* and so you call.
But anyway this whole ecosystem. So now, we got a bill gone before congress to mandate these leads, because there are only a few cents more than a regular lead, because now that we have the ‘Obama Care’ you can save hundreds of billions of dollars by having people get healthier quicker and save lives from overdoses. One simple exercise of your 30 days. “I forgot to take my pill.” So, do this for 30 days and I guarantee you when you look at those 90 ideas at the end of the month. You’ll prioritize on 2 axises, 1. What affects the most people? Okay?
You know, I wish there was a better handle grip for trapeze. Yeah, there’s not much people that are trapeze artist, probably not a good idea to focus your life on it. On the other end, What are you passionate about? Take the intersection of, “Well, I’d really like to help people not overdose and get healthy quicker and that affects hundreds of millions of people, bingo, there’s your business.
Mani: [31:21]
Got it, so it’s a really great exercise to do. You said, do it everyday for the next 30 days and then prioritizing it and figuring out…
Jay: [31:31]
And it starts off really easy but then you have to look around and look at everything in your life of what did you just put up with in except, that’s what it goes back to disrupting yourself. So much of what we just internalize is ‘that’s the way it is’ ‘that’s the way it’s always done’ nothing’s the antithesis of entrepreneurship, “this is how we’ve always done it.”, right? And that’s the process and so I’ve heard amazing stories. I actually was on a radio show, where the two hosts really loved this, I said, “Okay guys, I’m gonna comeback in 30 days I wanna give a price to which one of you two came up the best, and one of them took it half seriously, the other guy now is launching his business. He came up with a killer business idea, and he had the background and everything, but he wouldn’t have gotten into it, had he not started really struggling for “I don’t have any problems left.” And you know you’re lying to yourself when you think you have a perfect life. The more problems you have, congratulations the more likely you’ll become successful.
Mani: [32:34]
Yeah, as you said in the book, I guess Mike Michalowicz said, there’s little difference between obstacles and opportunity. And that’s what you’re teaching here, that we need to attack each other’s obstacles as an opportunity. And so that is one exercise, but we usually get to three exercises for our listeners to really get into it, to really learn. What could be the couple other exercises?
Jay: [33:01]
So, the second one is I referred something in the book called the Zombie idea. So, more entrepreneurs are hone by praise than criticism. The second you start building your business, coding your code, making your app, whatever it is, opening your restaurant, you’re already spending money and you’re going to find out after the money spent the mistakes that you would have known after you spent money, you’d have more runway to continue working. So one of the next exercise is, find 10 potential customers. Not grandma, not your wife, not somebody that wants you to succeed. Ask them to kill your idea, ask them to absolutely tell you why it sucks, why it’s gonna fail, you want people to be plain out nasty, because what they’re doing is letting you iterate in your head not after you spent money, and seeing that, and once you can go to those 10 people, and they can no longer find something wrong with it you what’s called a Zombie idea, something that can’t be killed.
It’s be not only easier to then fund, but you got built in 10 customers that you’re dying for. Okay? And the easiest example of this, is that there was Ray Krok, nobody believed in the fast food, hamburger, McDonald’s model, but he went to meet packers, it’s basically guys. “If I get this right you know how much more meet I’m going to sell? And how much meat you’ll make, hamburgers will be affordable for the masses?” That’s where he got his capital from. So, it’ll lead to strategic funding opportunities as well, so that’s another great exercise.
Mani: [34:37] And the third one..
Jay: [34:36]
I’d say one of the greatest exercises is really be honest with yourself, and stir there nearer. And what is it that scares you? Fear is not real, Okay? You’re in the woods, there’s a bear and he’s coming at you. The bear is real, fear isn’t. Whether you’re afraid or not afraid, the bear is still gonna eat you or not eat you, but if you’re gonna be using your mind and your energy worrying about. Too many people are afraid of tomorrow and spend today rethinking yesterday’s mistakes but they’re not using their energy creating the ‘now’, being in the present, solving and doing. Too many people get stuck in their business instead of on their business. So if you can really just focus on one fear, you know, like it amazes me because I spend my life speaking around the world and if you’ve enjoyed today’s thing, I have a TED talk that just came out and I’m very proud of it, called ‘It’s Time to Disrupt You’ but one of the biggest fears people have is public speaking, so get out there and go speak at a conference. There’s tons of opportunities. Get over it, you’re not gonna die. No one shoots you, no one throws things at you, this isn’t you know, medieval times. And when you overcome that, you are a different person, right? So stop boiling your own kryptonite, and realize that there’s nothing that you can’t achieve. I mean, I learned this in the most basic way. I went to UCLA, a college with 20,000 undergraduate women, a lot of gorgeous women. I was a young teenager, and I said, “There’s a young, gorgeous girl over there. If I ask her out and she laughs and she turns the other way and she says ‘No’, I’m right back where I started, I’ve lost nothing.
But if she says ‘Yes’ and life is full of that opportunities” and I will tell you, when you get older, when you’re in your 50’s, or 60’s, or 70’s, or whatever oldest to you, you’ll have more regrets for the things you didn’t try than to the things that you tried and failed at. You wanna live life without regrets, if you really wanna start this process then be honest with self disruption. Ask yourself just this one, painfully honest question, “Are you living life? Or just paying bills until you die? You don’t get to live forever, but what you create in your lifetime can, the impact you can have on the world can.
The idea that people in their 20’s can create something like Facebook used by billions daily, that’s an amazingly inspiring thing and any of us have that in us and if you keep it and you’re afraid of it and you take it to the cemetery with you, you’ve cheated yourself not only of success, but the world of your creations and that just doesn’t seem right. And there’s so many minds, each of us has a different paths, each of us has been exposed to different things, each of us can see something that the rest didn’t, and that’s your opportunity for success to find that unique space that you’ve looked at longer, worked harder, failed more to get to, right? And you’ve read the book, my book says, “Pat me on the back” “Oh, Jay doesn’t make any mistakes.” No, I’ve failed more than everybody and I celebrate what comes out of the ambers, and how many times I’ve made millions off of the Phoenix, and that’s to me is the excitement. I mean, when someone tells you ‘No’ it doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means you’re not gonna do it with them.
Mani: [39:03]
Yeah, I think you said that the only thing that you require for success is two things..
Jay: [39:12]
There’s only two things you need to succeed, Insight which is what we’re talking about to get out of that 90 day exercise and Perseverance. Everything else can be hired, right? The only person that can ever stop you is you.
There’s no gatekeepers blocking access to cash, I mean crowdfunding, Elon Musk just crowdfunded $14 billion dollars in order, without one T.V commercial, right? Can you imagine the meetings taken place in Detroit going, “How does that guy get that many advance orders? Why are we spending millions of dollars on T.V commercials when this guy is not spending even a dime?”
Mani: [39:52]
Just for everyone’s reference, he’s got 400,000 pre-orders for the next tesla coming up.
Jay: [39:58]
Right, which no one has seen, touch, or test driven and it is phenomenal. And the only reason I don’t have a pre-order, because I haven’t been over there yet, is because I don’t have to be the first guy to get it.
But you know, how much money he’s going to be able to save knowing exactly out of 400,000 vehicles to scale for that, how many blue, green, gold, whatever the color is, how many have want the radio, how many don’t, I mean this would be the greatest custom manufacturing ever, 14 million dollars in orders in one day. And it doesn’t just have to be for that, go on Kickstarter, Kickstarter is exactly what we are talking about, we’re finding the 10 customers, “Oh I just found 200,000 customers that are willing to do this.” And it’s not just the things that can make the headlines, so I don’t know if everybody can see behind me, it’s a 10×18 foot magic poster, I payed my way through college as a magician, I am a member of the Magic Castle,
that’s my hobby, my passion. There are magicians that come up with a new little deck of cards that they want to print with some new little special or whatever, and they go on Kickstarter and I go, “Guys, here’s a trick that you can do, if 200 of us get it, you know, we all get it.” You know, absolutely! People crowdfunding all kinds of stuff, we’re going through a world of mass production to custom production. 3D printing can be metal, can be human organs, noses for transplants, vegetarian beef, right? “Hello, pork!” I mean, there’s amazing things that are being done right now that printers can do. One of my favorite examples, let’s talk about solving problems and having a purpose in life at the same time, imagine, heaven forbid, you had a small child missing a limb, because they grow so fast, you can’t afford getting ‘em a several thousand dollars prosthetic hand until probably they’re like 13, 14, 15 which means all of those formative years, no one’s playing catch with them, no one’s calling them in P.E. class, they feel being left out, all those things are being embedded into them seeing their potential. Now you can 3D print a hand for a couple hundred dollars, but an entrepreneur here in town did something better. He went to Disney and he got a license to make Ironman hand, Frozen princess hand, Star Wars hand, now you can go for getting ‘less than’, to ‘cool and more than’, now you can feel pride, you can be included. And what do you think would be the outcome being outside and being able to tie your shoes, the difference in those people’s lives by that 3D printing. Now the guy that made the 3D printers didn’t say, “Oh, I’m making this device to change prosthetics in the lives of children.” He said, “We can now form goop into shapes, it’s up for you the entrepreneurs to decide what that shape is.”
Mani: [42:51]
That’s right, so he created the value but you are now capturing the value in some ways, in a different way.
Jay: [42:57]
And changing lives. I mean and that’s the greatest balance of getting all the pieces that gets you going in the morning.
Mani: [43:08]
Yeah, well very inspiring Jay, thank you very much. And just for our listeners, where can they learn more about you? Where can they learn all that you have to offer and find the book and all that stuff?
Jay: [43:23]
So, I’m easy to find anywhere on social media but I have a website, JaySamit.com, if you click there you can get the 40 page workbook, you could see my TedTalks, other speeches, you can follow me, I’ve got a hundred thousand entrepreneurs that follow me on Twitter, I tweet motivations several times a day, I have a lot of fun with it, it’s my creative release, and through that I’ll share where I am speaking around the country and around the world,
I’d love to hear from people and engage with them. The books are now out in 7 languages, if my voice doesn’t annoy you there’s an audio version, 9 hours of my voice in your head.
Mani: [43:59] I listened to the audio.
Jay: [44:01] The voice doesn’t leave you, but it’s fun hearing it from the author, isn’t it?
Mani: [44:06]
Yeah, it is. I like that because there’s more emotion involved as the original author speaking because they know the reason behind why they’re saying something, why they’re saying the things they say.
Jay: [44:22]
And again I went to the fans and said, “Okay do you want, you know George Clooney? Do you want a real voice? Or do you want my voice? And overwhelmingly that’s what everybody said, so I locked myself in a studio and that was a lot of work. But you can reach out to me, I am here to help, here to serve. My *inaudible* is this, as I said earlier: When you look at what’s happening in the U.S., in our cities, Ferguson and Baltimore, and everything, and when you look at what’s happening in Europe right now and the economies, and look at ISIS, this isn’t race, religion, or culture, this is massive unemployment for 2.3 billion millennials. So, unless we learn how to start businesses, how to create, how to solve and overcome obstacles, the stability of nations goes away, and the countries with the highest unemployment, are the ones that are having the revolutions, and it’s not because people believe in this ideology, or in that ideology, it’s because they lost hope and the ability to see a path to raise their children to have a family, to feed themselves and so entrepreneurs are the only ones who create jobs. So let’s go out there and change the world.
Mani: [45:30] That’s right. Thank you very much Jay, it’s been a pleasure.
Jay: [45:34] Thank you for having me.