Rejected on 3000 Job Applications and Sold Her Phone for Capital

4 MIN READ

September 30, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Where was the switch from mourning and grieving to waking up and turning your assets into your first businesses?

Huda did not want to become a burden to her mother anymore. That was when she started to find a way to generate her own income.

However, she couldn’t find a job. She applied for almost 2000 jobs and not once was she called for an interview. Huda didn’t have a university education. She dropped out quite early.

Her boyfriend at the time helped her to brainstorm. All she had was a laptop, her phone, and her camera. They sold her phone for some extra money.

With what they had, they thought of doing a photo booth business because it was trending at the time. All they needed was a backdrop and some props. With some more help from her boyfriend, they were able to start with a capital of roughly $1000. They used it to buy everything that they needed to start their business.

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Their first client was a pub. Though she was uncomfortable at first, Huda still pushed through because she absolutely needed it to survive. Needless to say, it was a success.

From that project, people discovered their talent. They started getting offers for more event photography gigs. Through them, they met bigger clients. One client in particular that they got in touch with was IHS Markit. They also got to meet other coaches and trainers that work with a lot of bigger companies at the time.

This was when they started asking Huda a lot more questions. They asked if they can do video editing, video shoots for social media, and personal photoshoots among others.

Although Huda doesn’t have expertise in these requests, she would still always say yes, even if she doesn’t know how to at the moment, because she will figure it out later.

This is how they’ve been for the first three years of their business. The main reason why Huda is able to keep their business growth for the past six, almost seven years is because they have the drive, the talent, the skills, and the resources.

How have you transitioned from your previous business to Fempreneur Secrets? Are your two businesses related? What triggered you to follow through with this?

Through Huda’s interactions with her female clients, friends, and acquaintances, She found a common thread. They all had to go through a huge range of challenges as they start their businesses.

The hardships that they face are unique to women only. Most of these things aren’t talked about by men. One of these troubles include what is known as the “Mom Guilt” whereas much as women want to go out and do business, they get guilty of leaving behind their children. They value the responsibility of helping the young grow up.

The first thing that she did was she started sharing motivational quotes in her Instagram account. She wanted to motivate herself and others at the same time.

Because of her posts, she started to gain traction. People began asking her for specifics. She was even got an invitation to be a speaker.

All of these opportunities to speak in front of young women and to share her story came from sharing motivational things on Instagram.

How did you turn your motivational Instagram posts into a business?

The whole idea behind this business is to simply share Huda’s knowledge. Fempreneur Secrets all started as a podcast. At first, she never had the intention of selling anything through it. It was purely a platform to share her knowledge.

As time passed, people started to ask Huda about the things that she can teach them. She began getting inquiries for workshops, coaching sessions, and mentorship opportunities.

Even just being able to inspire one person, be it your mother, or a friend, that would mean you’ve made an impact in their lives. That was the main reason why the business was built.

From Homeless to Success in Business

5 MIN READ

September 25, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

In a bustling and advanced country such as Singapore, what are the chances of a startup entrepreneur making it?

There is a lot of government support for businesses, particularly for first-time entrepreneurs.

As Huda said, first-time entrepreneurs can make it. It’s only a matter of how much effort you put into your business; how much you are willing to grind to get to where you want to be.

Are there more entrepreneurs or professionals in Singapore?

The economy of Singapore is driven by businesses. The more businesses they have, the more job opportunities there are for their people.

With all that being said, Singapore is a very stable landscape for any business development. For Huda, Singapore is a great place to start a business.

You started your first business, Blissful Studios, six years ago. Why did you start up a business in photography and videography? How did you discover it? Is that your passion? How did it come about?

Huda enjoyed the process of photographing her products. She was the person behind styling the models. She was also the one taking the photos. Her drive was there.

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Once she got the camera, she explored photography and the whole of Singapore. She took photos of a lot of things for the sake of experimentation.

In college, she already took part in digital media-related extracurricular activities. She even got into the photography department where she learned even more about Photography and Videography!

This got Huda thinking. She could express her creativity through photos. She explored and learned a bit more, she dabbled in video editing for some school projects, and she enjoyed the whole process. She realized that she had talent and the skills to be incredibly creative.

Yes, she didn’t have all the skills at the time, but she was learning and improving every step of the way. She even did volunteer photography while she was in college. She had fun covering events.

What inspired her to start a business, however, was a moment of desperation. Huda’s father passed away suddenly during her second year of university. He was the sole breadwinner of the family.

He was Huda’s idol. She looked up to him a lot. He was the reason why Huda even went to university.

How do you feel about all of these things? It seems that you have learned and moved on from what happened, but some people out there might be experiencing the same things. They might be thinking unhelpful thoughts. What advice can you give to them? What were you going through during that time?

Huda was brought dangerously close to the worst side of depression. She did not want to continue with her life, even though she just turned 21 at the time.

For anyone that’s going through something similar, especially in the current environment where there are so many uncertainties like the COVID 19 situation, remember to have faith.

Know that this will be a story to tell; something that you can use to motivate and inspire someone else in the future.

It’s okay to feel down and to mourn. It’s okay to feel whatever it is that you’re feeling, but you have to give yourself a deadline. You can’t be mulling for the rest of your life.

Take the time to mourn. Afterward, you have to tell yourself when you must stop. You have to pick yourself up again because there are people around you that need your help. Even if you’re living alone, you can do so much. Even inspiring just one person in life makes you a valuable person in the community.

Huda’s best tip for those who are experiencing some troubles in life is this:

Give yourself a deadline. Take the time to mourn, be sad, and even doubt yourself. But once the deadline has passed, you have to pick yourself up. You have to be a different person. You have to be better. You will find a way to get out of that situation. Being stuck in your situation is not an excuse to stop bettering yourself.

You just have to be better.

How Can You Find your Brand and Signature Product?

5 MIN READ

September 23, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Can you tell us a bit more about how you help create brands and come up with flagship products?

Doc Williams view signature products as either something that gives a business the reach that they want to be perceived with. That way, the signature product becomes like the lamp that makes you known to people or something the most money in a business.

He does this improving all the products for one to become your signature product which becomes a gateway or the most expensive item in your repertoire.

For Vayner, Doc provided knowledge of podcasting and live streaming.

Doc William created the Gary V Content Model 2.0 and gave it to smaller businesses that aren’t in the fortune 500. He also gave them a clear path on how they can use it to work with Vayner Media.

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He streamlined the workflow needed to structure their content in a way that will make them more money and be more prolific. He introduced and implemented a workflow using podcast creation and live streaming to Vayner Media.

Signature products or services look different from client to client. It’s about what they want to stand out for, how they want to move with their business, and how they want to operate.

How do you identify the “brand” of a certain brand? How do you know what the flagship product is? Are most of your clients people who are lost because they don’t have a brand or a product yet?

For the most part, yes, some of Doc’s clients are lost at the time. When that happens, he focuses on what his audience cares about. So many brands already have an idea or two of what their product should be, but more often than not, they have never asked someone about it.

Most of Doc’s clients can’t prove that they’re product is what their audience is asking for, not knowing that that is where it all starts. People usually think that making an App is the solution when you can use something else that’s already been created. These people tend to fall in love with what they’re trying to do so much that they lose track of what their audience needs.

Just like how Doc created a workflow for Vayner, did consult for AppSumo, and made Apps for his other clients, he just wants to help them get from point A to point B. He provides a figurative vehicle to get his clients to where they need to be.

Doc would do the work by getting a hold of the data, breaking it down, and analyzing how they can serve the audience with what they currently have, and start from there. He also likes doing mini-tests called MVF or Minimal Viable Funnel.

Here, he asks a client or their salesperson to have a real conversation to sell whatever they’re trying to do. If they get to sell it, great, if not, he asks them why not. Doc likes real conversations because usually, how people talk in a real conversation is very different from what’s on their website. He needs to have natural language to see if it’s going to work.

The biggest thing with Doc’s students and other marketers he knows is that they want these huge funnels. Doc, on the other hand, just wants to see how fast they can sell something through natural conversations. If they can’t, they have to explain what went wrong.

This is what Doc does to every single company.

In 2019, Doc talked to AppSumo about what they could do better. He was quick to answer that they were promoting too many deals. Because of that, people become paralyzed.

When people get too many choices, they won’t convert. Essentially, the couldn’t tell the difference between the many choices.

The problem is that if you’re working day in and day out, you won’t be able to see these things. With clients its usually cloudy because they think they know what they’re doing, just like Doc at times. This is why consultants are important. They help do evaluations of the businesses. This is needed because it’s really easy to lose sight of things quickly.

How Doc’s Persistence Resulted in Business Opportunities and Better Revenue

4 MIN READ

September 18, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

I remember when Noah Kagan had an awesome time during that charity bike ride. He even published about it. What kind of guy was he?

Noah is a very chill person. Noah was a busy body, but he was more than happy to take the time to talk about things. He even came in Doc’s show. They’ve been working together for years and right now, Doc acts as a consultant for AppSumo. He’s also built some things, particularly content for them. They also have a new project coming out in the next couple of months.

What’s really interesting for Doc is that Noah tries to surround himself with really smart people. One of them was Ayman which Noah appointed to be the president of AppSumo. He is amazing. He was able to transform Doc’s business through a simple 40-minute conversation.

That conversation restructured Doc’s business into one that was able to make six figures.

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What do you do for AppSumo?

First, Doc gets paid as a consultant. He’s not on the payroll. This gives him the flexibility to provide his true opinion on any product. He doesn’t have any skin in the game. He doesn’t benefit when he says a product is good or not.

He creates a series called Diving In with Doc where he shows how to actually use the products he features. He is also responsible for a number of different user experience improvements, and insights on what people are looking for.

Although Doc Williams gets a lot of the apps for free, he still buys them to ensure integrity of his reviews and case studies.

You’ve mentioned VaynerMedia. What work do you do for them?

In 2017, Vayner sports came out. It was something that AJ, the co-founder of VaynerMedia was starting. Doc knew a lot of people who that tried to contact Gary, the founder of Vayner Media, just so they can be part of his team; But nobody was contacting AJ.

While still working with ESPN, Doc requested that he interview Vayner Sports since they were something new in the street. With a bit of investigation, he found a YouTube video that showed their office number. He called them every single day for almost a year until he was granted an interview.

Doc and the same videographer that did his commercial, Jay, shot a documentary and interviewed AJ. at the same time, he established a sort of contact with AJ.

Other people saw what they shot with Vayner Sports and asked for Doc’s help. The Sasha group, Vayner X’s boutique agency contacted him and wanted to learn how to podcast. They wanted to learn how to do a podcast for their agency, particularly to teach other athletes.

He built their podcast workflow, He presented everything that they needed to do a podcast, and taught them how to do the workflow itself.

Doc and his friend Jay were also responsible for creating the Gary Vee content model 2.0. Gary Vaynerchuk has a team of 30 people behind all of his content. That’s why he can put them out at a significant rate.

Doc and Jay were able to prove that the same amount of work can be done with just two people. The model they created was made to be taught to small teams and solo entrepreneurs os that they will know how to scale their content in the same style.

A lot of people watch Gaty. and a lot of people wish that they can do the same as he is. But they don’t have the same resources. But, if you understand the type of content you need to put out and the purpose of why you’re putting out that content, you can do it.

Many people emulate Gary, however, they don’t think about the purpose and the type of content that he produces. If people use these concepts, they can win. That’s what Doc showed to their team.

How This Guy Worked 40+ Jobs at 33 Years Old

5 MIN READ

September 16, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Please tell us about your moniker, is “Doc Williams” a nickname?

Doc William’s real name is De Kari. Ever since his school days, his name would be butchered because of how unique it is. Later on in his life, people around him started to call him Doc, hence the name Doc Williams.

You are the CEO and founder of Brand Factory Inc. We want to know about your entrepreneurial journey. Were you always entrepreneurial? When did you start Brand Factory? When did you start your first business?

Doc William’s parents were not entrepreneurial at all. They both had their jobs for 20 years, they love going to the same places, and they love routines. Doc was never like that in his life.

His entrepreneurial journey probably started when he was 7 or 8. As a child, he would sell candy and trading cards. One particular memory he brought up was that he was able to sell a first edition Pokemon card for a hundred dollars. At 12 years old, he already worked as a DJ at weddings and at some point in clubs! Doc worked as a DJ all the way until after college.

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Doc’s entrepreneurial journey started very early on in his life. He also worked at least 50 jobs before he eventually got down and serious with his business.

The only reason why Doc had to keep switching jobs and businesses was because he wasn’t successful.

How did you come up with the concept of Brand Factory? How did you land on the idea of wanting to help companies find their brand and flagship products?

After Doc left healthcare, he wanted to open a gym because he was into Cross Fit at the time. He loved it. He used to compete in Kettlebell Sport. However, he was terrible at running a brick and mortar business. He soon burned out as he wasn’t really fit to run a business at the time.

The videographer who filmed Doc’s first commercial for his gym told him about the Arnold Sports Festival, a reality show by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Doc ended up on the show and took third place in the competition. That event was the opportunity of a lifetime because he was able to connect with some athletes with fairly good followings. Doc started to ghostwrite for them in order to build funnels.

A bunch of other people began to approach Doc and ask him to ghostwrite for them as well. This led to the realization that he was good at building up personal brands. He can do it just by listening to their voice, finding out what makes them unique, and what products people wanted to hear from them.

That’s when the idea of Brand Factory began to flourish.

He started out by working with athletes and entertainers. That meant there were a lot of egos that can be tiring. It’s hard to have an honest conversation with them, especially those that are used to people kissing up to them.

Doc mentioned all of this to his wife. He mentioned that he wanted to make brands for other people. What she said basically gave birth to their business. Doc’s wife said:

“Entrepreneurs go in, brands come out… Brand Factory.”

That’s when it was named and the rest was history.

How long has it been since you’ve founded Brand Factory?

It has been three years since Doc founded Brand Factory. Now, he has another company called Toolkit where he does the same thing but is laser-focused to work only with fitness entrepreneurs.

Doc also worked with Appsumo. This one started over six years ago, near the time when Doc began building digital businesses. During the time, he would take advantage of AppSumo deals to build and Frankenstein the businesses of his clients. Some of his clients would even ask him what deals he should buy from AppSumo.

Soon he wanted to work with them directly. Around the same time with Brand Factory, Noah Kagan, the founder and CEO of AppSumo was holding a charity bike ride. Doc used this opportunity to fly to him just so he can meet Noah and the rest of his team. Once they got connected there, Doc worked with AppSumo ever since.

Three Things Every Leader Needs to Know to Lead Through a Crisis

4 MIN READ

September 11, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

A lot of people and businesses have been shaken up by this pandemic. I want to know how you’ve been leading your team through this. Can you share a little bit about that?

Leaders should show up and be accessible and available. They should not hide or run. They should make it clear that if there’s anything that they’re team needs, he is there.

According to Adam, this is what your people, your customers, your stockholders, and your whole organization needs. They want to know that you will be there for them.

Adam has been in a lot of interviews since the Coronavirus crisis hit. And that led him to conclude that at the moment, everyone wants to know how to lead during a moment of crisis.

In almost all of them, Adam would emphasize three points.

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First, he thinks that leaders should be trustworthy. They should be honest, truthful, and transparent. Leaders need credibility. When leaders say something, everyone in the organization believes them. Everyone in the team should know that when the leader says something, it is truthful.

Second, leaders need to be communicative. They need to be out in front. In the current situation of the world, it’s very easy to hide under the covers. To duck and run.

As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Now is the time for the tough to get going.

Lastly, leaders need to be flexible. They need to be nimble like every entrepreneur. One of the first things you learn as an entrepreneur is the importance of managing change.

When people have jobs, things can be kind of steady and stable. You’re doing almost the same things every day.

As an entrepreneur, you’re constantly managing change. As a leader, especially one in a moment of crisis, you have to be highly prepared to adapt and pivot on a moment’s notice because the environment that you were in yesterday can be completely different today and tomorrow.

The only way that people can adapt is by having a mindset that is open to change.

How has your mentorship, personal growth, and coaching helped your leadership style?

Adam has his own podcast named Thirty Minute Mentors where he talks one on one with some of America’s most insightful people about leadership.

He has always believed in the power of mentorship. He has been a huge beneficiary of great mentorship because he has had many great mentors in his life.

Adam also mentions a concept that he calls “Mini-mentors”. It’s something that he has written and spoken about.

Mini mentors aren’t like the traditional mentors that you go out to lunch with once a month or someone that has a lasting and powerful impact that you think about regularly.

They’re people who you might talk to once a year or every other year, but they’re someone that can add enormous value to you in that one interaction. This is what Adam tries to do in his show, the Thirty Minute Mentors. He brings the best possible network of mentors to listeners because that was invaluable to him and his success as a leader.

Everyone learns differently. Everyone develops differently. Some people learn by picking up 300-page books and breezing through them. That was never the best way for Adam, but there were some books that he loved reading such as those by David Halberstam and Malcolm Gladwell.

The best way for Adam to learn has always been to pick up the phone or meet someone for lunch and just pick their brain. That’s the style of learning that he is trying to bring to his audience.

His podcast is usually set to last at most thirty minutes. However, one of his challenges is that there, he interviews literally the most successful people that he can think of.

Why You Shouldn’t Always Follow the Footsteps of Successful People

4 MIN READ

September 9, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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One of the ways that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially startups, validate their ideas is through the lean startup model by Eric Ries. Are you familiar with this model? Were you able to practice this for any of your businesses?

Unfortunately, Adam and his brother weren’t knowledgeable enough at the time to do so.

Right now though, he is a very big believer in the model. He believes that companies should follow that model. For Adam, one of the things that he’s learned through experiences is the importance of running one as lean as possible.

When they started their businesses, they did everything the wrong way. For starters, they started by pushing 10 ideas at once. That is not the way to do it.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you shouldn’t do that. People ask Adam all the time how he was able to build three businesses. His best advice on the matter is for people not to follow in his footsteps.

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Rather they should take their best ideas and focus on it.

You advised people awhile ago to focus on just one idea and the rest will follow through. Your third business, Velo Solutions, is an offshoot or a product of the first two ideas. It validates and reinforces your advice. Is this what happened with Velo Solutions?

This is what happened to Velo Solutions. And even with that happening, Adam is still a believer in less is more when it comes to business ideas, especially for early-stage businesses. People should just focus on one idea.

You should pick your best idea. Don’t get distracted and pull yourself in a hundred different directions. Have confidence in yourself and your best idea, but don’t start off thinking that you can successfully scale all these different businesses at once because that is difficult.

What do you guys do with Velo Solution?

With Velo Solutions, Adam and his team work with businesses and nonprofits of different sizes. They build generally sophisticated technology solutions for their clients. They create complex systems that the run of the mill development team generally isn’t capable of doing.

Oftentimes they come in when the incumbent team has been displaced or if the current client realizes that they need to take the next one or two leaps up. They tend to create creative and strategic work. An example of their work would be the creation of a new revenue stream for clients that can be connected to their original businesses.

They try to marry their technical expertise with whatever it is their client is trying to create in their business.

With everything that is happening in your life, are you still the ones that go to clients to ask them what they need?

Adam is not the one that talks to clients. For him, it’s important to know your own strengths and weaknesses as well as the limitations of your time.

He is not the one who is talking with clients or who goes over the roles and responsibilities. It is delegated to the right people.

As a leader, Adam believes that it is important to understand who you are and what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. He thinks it’s important to bring people around you who are much, much better than you in all the areas in which you need talent.

For Velo Solutions, they need incredibly good software developers. That’s not Adam because he’s not a programmer. What he does have is his strong knowledge around recruitment that when paired with his brother’s strong technical expertise, lets them source the absolute best developers that they can find.

They’ve been able to bring in the best and brightest to their team.

As a leader, you must understand that not only can’t you do everything by yourself, you shouldn’t do everything by yourself. You are not going to be successful if you’re doing everything on your own.

How Differentiating Your Product Leads to Success

4 MIN READ

September 4, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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Excerpt

Today’s guest is Adam Mendler. He is an entrepreneur, a public speaker, a coach, and a consultant. He is the CEO of the Veloz group.

When you started the Veloz group, what was the first product or service that you guys went into?

The first business that Adam was able to get off the ground is currently their biggest business– Beverly Hills Chairs.

When they first started, they had a lot of ideas for a lot of businesses and they started to push them. They spent their first year and a half trying to turn these ideas into companies. The time came when they couldn’t do it much longer because they’ve burned through their savings. That was when they started to focus on the two businesses that were closest to being monetizable.

What made your two winners stand out? What makes them special?

In the United States, the largest office furniture company is called Herman It’s a billion-dollar company that is famous for its signature chair, the Herman Miller Aeron Chair. These cost $1,200 a chair. It’s the most popular chair ever made. Even with such a high price, companies really want that chair.

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What Adam did was, they came in and identified that they could build a business that caters to the customers who want that chair but don’t want to pay as much money. That led to them selling refurbished Herman Miller chairs and refurbished Steelcase chairs from other top brands.

Adam learned in business school that he should not create demand, rather he should address it. With his business ideas, he would be addressing this demand that already exists while also doing so in a differentiated way. That same $1,200 chair, he sells for just five to $600. That’s 50% of the original cost.

How did you port that idea to custom tobacco? You mentioned that they’re pretty much similar. Are you saying that there’s this demand for custom tobacco, too?

With Customized Tobacco, Adam got their market wrong. Their market for Beverly Hills Chairs was small to medium-sized businesses that don’t want to pay full retail. People that were looking for something that could help them save money.

Foor Briarmont&Co., they initially built the business thinking that their core customers were hardcore cigar smokers. Those that love nothing more than to hang out at the cigar shop or their porch, or with buddies and just having a smoke. They couldn’t be any more wrong.

The hardcore cigar smoker did not like what they were offering at all because they were very loyal to their brands. That’s not what Adam was providing. He was offering the experience of creating your brand and creating your custom cigar. Most cigar smokers don’t care about that. Instead, the business resonated strongly with gift-givers and event planners.

Adam’s old design for his tobacco website was catered to their initial target audience. It had a more old school feel to it. It would make users feel like they visited a cigar shop.

How a Strong Company Culture Will Help Your Business Survive Crisis

4 MIN READ

September 2, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

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What’s the difference between the 150 people in your first business and the 25 people working with you right now? How do you lead them?

In his last business, Bryan took pride in the fact that he will never ask someone to do something that he hasn’t done himself. He built that business from the ground up. All of the services that they executed, the sales work, the way they answered the phone, the accounting, and everything else, he had done before he delegated it.

In his recent company, however, he’s a decent front end programmer, but he’s not an expert. He had to delegate his work because he was simply not knowledgeable about it. It’s harder because he has to trust the feedback that you’re getting.

Bryan’s role right now is to inspire his team and to help them gain better knowledge, character, and leadership.

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Do you have leadership programs running in your company right now?

Bryan and his team try to identify who wants to be a leader because a lot of those engineers don’t want to be. Of the 25 current team members, they are trying to keep it down to five direct reports per manager.

Fortunately, the team is still small enough where he is still able to keep his hands on a lot of it.

Right now he’s able to stay with his team leads and build a personal relationship with every single person on the team. 25 is a good size for a team, but they’re still growing. Bryan believes that they will outgrow it and they just have to deal with it when it comes.

A lot of businesses have been stumped by this pandemic and a lot of economies have slowed down to a halt. How about you? How’s your business doing? What’s your projection for this year despite this pandemic?

Bryan explained that right now, they’re in a $15 million runway. They’ve been doubling every year for the past five years before the pandemic came in.

Thanks to his experience of surviving the 2008 recession in the U.S., Bryan was already braced for this kind of scenario to happen. Heresy for half of their sales to evaporate. Luckily for them, they’ve held stable and they’re still growing.

Bryan mentioned that it’s not exactly because they’re doing great but rather because grass doesn’t stop growing and people would let the grass grow above their heads.

People don’t want to deal with a landscaper in their front yard so the concept of Green pal just makes sense for them.

Bryan braced his team and told them that they just have to figure out how they’re going to get through this together. He promised his team that when they get through this five years from now, they would be bragging about it. They’ll get their business through COVID and it will feel good.

Not a lot of people will be able to say that during the time of a global pandemic, they were growing their business and thriving.

What is something that you want to tell the people who are in a rut right now that will help them get through this?

Hopefully, entrepreneurs and business owners have a good culture in place along with sensible trust between their team.

If you can honestly say that yes, their situation sucks but your culture is good, then lean back on that. Bring everyone together as a family and believe that you will get through it together. Yes, it’s going to make some sacrifices, and as the leader, you have to try and figure out a way to not take a paycheck. Do whatever it is that you have to do to lead through the crisis.

There might be some situations where it’s just too dire. If that’s the case, be real with your team. Don’t sugarcoat it. Don’t be a salesman. They will respect the candor and they’ll be able to tell quickly if you’re being real or not.

A Prophet Among Us

2 MIN READ

August 31, 2020 By Sean Leave a Comment

I have shared this to many friends in the speaking industry who ask me for validation on if it will last or hold water in light of the many online trainings and in-house speakers that an organization might have.

But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” – Mark 6:4

I have seen even in my own organization how people take lightly my own teaching. And yet when I speak outside of my own organization, I am regarded and honored. My teachings on stage are sifted like wheat by the audience who are eager to learn from me.

I’ve been reading the book of Ezekiel lately and I came upon this verse.

“And when this comes to pass—surely it will come—then they will know that a prophet has been among them.” – Ezekiel 33:33

I felt strongly about it as there are numerous trainings, opportunities and upskilling that I try to provide people – especially in my own organization. It is such a sad thing that the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt” is true.

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If you are reading this and your organization invests in your personal growth, please do me a favor and take complete advantage of it. They are doing it for you – so that you will grow and become better and perhaps pay it forward someday to others.

It will surely make you better. It will also make your organization better. Of course, in the end, it will make our world a bit better.

Because only after these things come to pass will you know that there has been a prophet in your midst.

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Where was the switch from mourning and grieving to waking up and turning your assets into your first businesses?

How have you transitioned from your previous business to Fempreneur Secrets? Are your two businesses related? What triggered you to follow through with this?

How did you turn your motivational Instagram posts into a business?

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In a bustling and advanced country such as Singapore, what are the chances of a startup entrepreneur making it?

Are there more entrepreneurs or professionals in Singapore?

You started your first business, Blissful Studios, six years ago. Why did you start up a business in photography and videography? How did you discover it? Is that your passion? How did it come about?

How do you feel about all of these things? It seems that you have learned and moved on from what happened, but some people out there might be experiencing the same things. They might be thinking unhelpful thoughts. What advice can you give to them? What were you going through during that time?

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Can you tell us a bit more about how you help create brands and come up with flagship products?

How do you identify the “brand” of a certain brand? How do you know what the flagship product is? Are most of your clients people who are lost because they don’t have a brand or a product yet?

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I remember when Noah Kagan had an awesome time during that charity bike ride. He even published about it. What kind of guy was he?

What do you do for AppSumo?

You’ve mentioned VaynerMedia. What work do you do for them?

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Please tell us about your moniker, is “Doc Williams” a nickname?

You are the CEO and founder of Brand Factory Inc. We want to know about your entrepreneurial journey. Were you always entrepreneurial? When did you start Brand Factory? When did you start your first business?

How did you come up with the concept of Brand Factory? How did you land on the idea of wanting to help companies find their brand and flagship products?

How long has it been since you’ve founded Brand Factory?

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A lot of people and businesses have been shaken up by this pandemic. I want to know how you’ve been leading your team through this. Can you share a little bit about that?

How has your mentorship, personal growth, and coaching helped your leadership style?

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One of the ways that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially startups, validate their ideas is through the lean startup model by Eric Ries. Are you familiar with this model? Were you able to practice this for any of your businesses?

You advised people awhile ago to focus on just one idea and the rest will follow through. Your third business, Velo Solutions, is an offshoot or a product of the first two ideas. It validates and reinforces your advice. Is this what happened with Velo Solutions?

What do you guys do with Velo Solution?

With everything that is happening in your life, are you still the ones that go to clients to ask them what they need?

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When you started the Veloz group, what was the first product or service that you guys went into?

What made your two winners stand out? What makes them special?

How did you port that idea to custom tobacco? You mentioned that they’re pretty much similar. Are you saying that there’s this demand for custom tobacco, too?

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What’s the difference between the 150 people in your first business and the 25 people working with you right now? How do you lead them?

Do you have leadership programs running in your company right now?

A lot of businesses have been stumped by this pandemic and a lot of economies have slowed down to a halt. How about you? How’s your business doing? What’s your projection for this year despite this pandemic?

What is something that you want to tell the people who are in a rut right now that will help them get through this?

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