Transcription
The key to getting rich isn't what you've been told. It isn't working 18 hours a day or having some perfect morning routine. It's actually about building simple habits. Tiny habits that compound over time and make success almost inevitable.
I'm Simon Squib. I built 19 companies and sold three for more money than I'll ever need. And today I'm sharing the 10 habits that actually made me rich. Habits you can start applying right now to make your life better. So, let's go.
The first thing you need to learn is keep it simple. Our brains, especially when we're building something we love or want to build something we love, will over complicate it. Complexity kills ideas. Simplicity builds momentum. So, here are the four ways to keep it simple.
Start with one clear pain point that you can solve. When I built Help Bank, all I really wanted to do was make sure that was a trusted location you could go to for all your business knowledge and insights. I just focused on business. I just focused on credible knowledge and I made it really simple. That's why it worked.
Number two, cut out every extra feature or idea that distracts you. Amazon started by just selling books. You don't need to make the product from day one have every single feature. If you're building a digital platform, for example, one killer feature can be it. That's all you need.
Number three, focus on earning $1 before you try to earn a million dollars. I know everybody wants to earn a million dollars. I get it. I've earned a million dollars plus. I get how exciting that is. But I've earned a million dollars a month in my career by earning $1 first by earning $1. By taking a product and selling it, be it a service or an actual physical thing, and making $1 profit. Once you've figured out how to make $1, take a t-shirt, put your pattern on it, and then sell it for a dollar profit. Once you've figured out to do that, then you can scale up. Too many people want to scale up from day one, and they don't keep it simple.
Number four on the list, explain your idea to an 8-year-old. Now, my son is eight. When I tried to tell him what Help Bank was, I simply said, "You press a button, you get help. You press a button, you give help." He gets it instantly. People don't have time to listen to your long explanation of what the idea is or what you're trying to achieve. Keep it simple. I want to fix the education system. That's it. I don't have to explain anymore. Right? I think people need to boil their idea down to a sentence. Keep it super simple.
The next thing I want to teach you is do one thing well. The mastery beats the multitasking. It's not as easy as it sounds. And let me go through four ways that I do it.
Number one, pick one product or service and make it world class. WhatsApp started with just messaging, not stories and calls and payments. That can all come later. But you want that killer feature, that thing that people tell other people about.
Number two, avoid shiny object syndrome. Say no more than yes. Quite often we're bombarded with the latest thing. Right now, of course, it's AI. By the time you're watching this video, a year from now, who knows? It will be some 3D reality stuff. The point is you have to focus in on the problem you're solving and the one thing you can do well to solve that problem. So say no to things even if it's trendy or cool.
Number three, create a repeatable system before adding new products. Once you've got this feature working, this thing that people are going to tell other people about, then you can start adding new products and features. But too many people try to do 10 things at once. And that's why quite often some platforms just never work.
Number four, measure progress by results delivered, not busyness. I see way too many entrepreneurs that work 24 hours a day, almost seven days a week, and they say they're working hard, and they don't know why they're not getting lucky. Luck isn't about how hard you work. Luck is about the more risk you take. Everything you do should be about doing one thing well, and it will lead to success if you do it.
The next thing I want to teach you is don't be the bottleneck. I know myself, having built 19 companies, in the early years of building some of my early businesses, I was the reason the business didn't scale. Now, you might not have even started your business yet. But this is a really important thing for you to learn right up front. Don't make the business totally dependent on you. Too many people don't think long term, and you've got to understand if you're the only one working on the business, then the business lives and dies by your day-to-day actions. Make sure you have systems and people that can help you scale it.
These are the four things you need to do to make sure you're not the bottleneck.
First of all, document systems others can follow. Use tools like Notion, Loom video. Make people understand how you do things. Don't make it a dark art or something special, which means no one else can do it.
Number two, delegate tasks where you aren't the expert. Hire an accountant in my case. I'm not an expert. Get a virtual assistant. I'm really bad at organizing. This does cost money, of course, in some cases, but not always. You can just begin the process. You can get automated account software, for example, that are very cheap that allow you to start having this mindset, and as you scale, it will be easier to then replace you and or have people come in and do these things.
Number three, trust your team with small decisions. Freedom builds responsibility. Joe, who's editing this video, I probably won't even see this video before it goes out. I trust him. You've got to trust people because if I don't let him do it, then he'll never take responsibility for doing it. And if he knows it's going straight out and potentially millions of people then see his work, he's also then taking his time to get it right and more importantly applying himself to make sure that he is able to do it. So you don't do it yourself by micromanaging.
Number four, ask weekly, "What am I holding up?" Then hand it off. If I'm the bottleneck for this video going out, if they're waiting for me to get back and watch the whole video back and give feedback and I'm not even an expert in editing, so why would I do that? Now, I know people that are making content like this that are doing it and they think that their micromanagement will make the video better. It doesn't. It slows the process down. It doesn't allow you perhaps, for example, to do the volume gain. Don't be the bottleneck in your business. You will kill your business and kill you probably.
The fourth thing I want to teach you is obsession with sales. Way too many people and I think this starts in school look down on sales. It's a huge mistake and everybody can learn sales. Introverts, extroverts, everybody can learn sales and you have to be a salesperson if you like it or not. Frankly, in life you're a salesperson if you like it or not. You want to convince someone to be your partner. You want to convince someone to be your co-founder. You want to convince a client to be. You have to be a salesperson. Sales is oxygen. Without it, your business dies.
These are the four things I want you to understand and how you can be obsessed with sales.
Number one, spend 80% of your time talking to customers. I spoke to someone yesterday. She's got this brilliant product. Absolutely brilliant. She spent 4 months working on the product and it's a brilliant product. It looks beautiful. It's she's explained it well. How many customers do you think she spoke to? Zero. She doesn't actually know what customers need, what they're willing to pay, how they're willing to pay, when they're willing to pay, what they actually need, what they think of the product, and more importantly, is there a market for her product. You've got to spend time with your customers. Get out there and talk to customers.
Number two, remember sales is just problem solving for people. You don't need to sell in the traditional way that you think you do. It's storytelling. You need to say, "This is who I am. This is what I've got, and this is why I think you need it." Now, if you haven't identified that they need it, it's a hard sell. But if you've identified they need it, then it's an easy sale. That's where people go wrong in sales as well. They don't identify, do the people actually need what you're selling, and then they wonder why sales is so hard. So remember, sales is just problem solving for people that have a problem.
Number three, track daily outreach. 10 messages, five calls, two meetings. Hold yourself to account. I know so many people that tell me their product didn't sell in the market, and I ask them, "How many people did you speak to?" They can't actually even tell me. And then when I do get the numbers, often I find they've reached out to them twice and they didn't get a reply on email. Do you know how many emails I get every single day? Hundreds. I might have missed it. I might have not been my priority that day. You know, you've got to have a systematic mathematical approach to daily outreach. And if you do 100 people, i.e. emails, phone calls, DMs, replying people's comments on social media. If you reach a 100 people with every single method, you'll get one customer. It's just that simple. So do the numbers and don't be lazy.
Number four, learn to handle rejection. I always think of Dyson's 5,000 failed prototypes before success. You know, you've got to not only handle rejection, you make something, it doesn't work, which is an internal, no one's going to see it rejection, but you got to handle people saying no to you. Rejection is really useful. It's like customer feedback. If someone's not buying my product, I love to know why. The point I'm getting to is like rejection isn't really rejection. In school, we're taught that somehow rejection is a negative thing. In the real world, rejection gives us knowledge. It gives us insight. It gives us the strength to fight back with better tools, better language, and better systems.
I've got a fifth tip for you. One thing that guarantees you more sales is building a strong online presence. It sounds so obvious, but people don't know how to do it. Customers will Google you before they buy. They will check if your site is professional, and you'll lose sales if you're not. And that all starts with something simple most people overlook, your domain name. The problem, most of the best .com domains are already taken. You either overpay or settle for something that doesn't quite represent your brand and that hurts your chances of making sales. That's why I love this new domain name called .online. .online is the world's second largest new domain name extension and unlike .com, it still has massive inventory and names available. That means you're far more likely to get the exact name you want, which helps you look legitimate and sell with confidence. And with .online showing up in over 500 million searches each month, it can even give you a visibility boost, generally bringing more potential customers and more sales to your online store. You can register a .online domain through GoDaddy, Squarespace, Wix, Namecheap, and more. But if you use the code SIMON and wget.online down below, you get it now for just 99 cents for the first year for a limited time. Check the link in the description and grab yours today. It's a small move that can help you land the next sale.
The fifth thing I want to teach you is start with people, not products. So many people pitch products to me. You've got to start with people. You've got to start with your personal story, your personal dream. Reason it matters to you. And these are the four ways you can start with people, not products.
Number one, find a co-founder and partners who share values, not just skills. I always think skills can be taught, especially if someone has a natural attribute to a certain thing. If they're good at accounts or they're good at sales, you can always get better at those things. And actually you want to get better if your business has a purpose beyond yourself. This start with people not products isn't just about your external marketing. This is all also about your internal fuel. Every single business I've had that's been successful in the 19 companies that I've started, 12 of them have been with co-founders and those ones have been the most successful. I'd rather have 50% of something successful than 100% of something that fails.
The second thing I want to tell you is build a network before you need it. LinkedIn, local meetups, online communities. If you know your problem, you should build your network up around people that are either doing a similar thing, solving a similar problem, or care about that problem. Start building your network now. Whatever you're thinking of doing in the future, you can build your network now. If you're at university now, you can build the network you're really going to use in the real world. Now.
The third thing is ask customers what they truly want. I always like the story of Dropbox. They started by showing an MVP demo video before they built any of the product. They just simply did a video explaining what Dropbox would do. And hundreds of thousands of people signed up to their mailing list, which proved that people wanted that product. And once they had proof that hundreds of thousands of people wanted the product, then they could easily raise money. They had proof that people were going to buy it when it was built and then they raised money and then they built it. So I think people need to go and ask customers what they want. I would say this also means people. Who do they want to work with? Who do they resonate with? You might have seen Mark Zuckerberg recently having a complete makeover because they did research and realized that people don't like Mark Zuckerberg. They tried to make him hip and cool and a bit more modern man. Now I don't think that worked, but the point is you can see why they do it because the smart people realize it's the people in the company. People buy from now. That's why this influences doing so well. People are buying from people not brands anymore. So you want to make sure you understand what they want, your customers want. You're going to find it's also going to be certain types of people, authentic people going forward.
Number four, surround yourself with mentors who've done it before. I always tell people you actually don't need mentors in the traditional sense. You don't need to go get someone like me to spend hours with you every day or worse someone that's charging you to be their mentor. Forget all of that. If there were people out there that you admire, there are people out there that think you can teach you something. There are two things you can quickly do. One, you can follow their content. They're probably putting information out there like I do for free. You don't need me as a mentor. You just need to watch all my videos. The other way to do it is don't ask these people to be your mentor. Okay? It's going to trip you up. They're going to say no. The best thing to do is ask a question, one simple question of the person you'd like to mentor you. Give them a chance to help you once because most people will reply to one question.
Number six, don't rush to raise investment. Shark Tank and Dragon's Den has got you brainwashed into thinking you need to go get an investor. Someone's going to give you a load of money. It's a mistake. Please think carefully about this. Don't be fooled by TV shows. Money doesn't fix a weak idea. And money from the wrong people can destroy your business. So, these are the things to do before you even think about raising money.
Number one, prove demand by selling before building. Tesla got pre-orders years before cars were delivered. It was easier, by the way, for him to raise money when he could prove that there was demand for his product. But if you've got demand for your product, you often don't need to raise money.
Number two, bootstrap for as long as you can. As soon as you have an investor, they're going to have an objective, right? Get their money back, make profit. Bootstrapping allows you to step by step build something and know that it's something you want to work on. By the way, maybe you do it part-time initially, for example. Maybe you get one customer, look after them, and and take care of that one customer and take your time. Don't rush. Bootstrapping is such a wonderful word. I'd love it to be more mainstream than raise money.
Number three, only take investment when you know how to multiply that investment. In other words, if you know by spending $1 you can make three, sometimes investment can be worth it because you can scale up that that income stream quicker. But if you don't know yet that spending $1 will make you three, you're going to spend $1 and have to give away equity. And equity is your freedom. So as soon as you give equity for that $1, it's the most expensive way you could ever, ever, ever make your business grow.
Number seven, advice is only as good as its source. And there are three things you need to consider.
Number one, ask, has this person actually done what I want to do? So if you're trying to make content and make it work, I've done it. I get millions of views every day on my content. So, you could ask me about that and I actually know about it, right? You have to make sure the person you're asking this knowledge from has actually done, check they've done it.
Second, take advice from practitioners, not theorists, which basically means people that are actually in the trenches. That's why I always hate consultants. You know, they'll talk about how to fix a company or how to grow a business. They've never done it. I've done it. I've gone into companies and turned them around. I've built businesses from scratch with no money. I'm a practitioner and that's important because theorists will always tell you the theory. ChatGPT can tell you the theory, but theory is in the real world, it's very different. Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face, as they say, right? Take advice from practitioners.
Number three, test everything in the real world. Not enough people take an idea or a theory like I said earlier and go and ask a customer for example. You've got to test it. I think people don't realize how important it is to ask a customer, would you eat this? Too many people have heard the story about Apple and Steve Jobs who was a genius. Steve Jobs said people don't want a keyboard Blackberry. They want one button. That's what they want. They want onscreen tap instead. Now, he was a visionary. He's like the 1% of the 1%. But nearly every single example otherwise, you don't try to guess what customers want. You go and ask them.
If you're getting any value from this video today, these 10 points are all in my book. I put another 20 in here. I also talk about how to remove subconscious bias. The things in your subconscious you believe so strongly that are stopping you following your dream, you need to read them in this book and they will help you remove them so you can push forward and make your dream happen. The link to buy this book is down below. I'm using all the proceeds from this book to fund dreams and build platforms like HelpBank.com and make videos like this that bring you value for free.
Number eight, build around purpose. This one is one of my favorites. So what does it mean? Money fades, purpose lasts. I said earlier, I don't manage people, I manage purpose. So, these are the four things you need to think about to build around purpose.
Number one, ask yourself, be really honest, why am I really doing this? I built a comic book business, for example, and I thought, wow, there's no DC and Marvel Comics business in China. And I'm in China, and I see how well DC and Marvel Comics are doing. I'm going to build a Chinese version. But I did it for the money. I did it because it sounded cool, right? Comic books were cool. But I wasn't really passionate about that problem. Take today, for example, where I at 15 years old left the education system and it did not prepare me for the world we live in today. It's not preparing you. I am fired up. That's why for the last 5 years I have been working on this every single day. For the last 5 years I have done something to help fix that problem and you will not stop me until it's done. I will not stop. So you have to ask yourself the same. Dig deep. Be honest. Find it. Find that purpose and it has to be bigger than making money.
Number two, align your business with your values. So for me, I always feel like these courses that are being sold online, people promising you the world, these property gurus that promise you you can get rich from property, sell you some course and tell you to buy a house and change the locks and rent it out to a nurse who can't afford it. This business model is right, it doesn't align with my values. Now the people that do it, it aligns with their values. They're happy to charge 8% to a nurse. I can make money buying property and renting out. I'm not saying you can't make money from it. I'm saying it doesn't align with my values. So think what aligns with your values and be honest, right? Dig deep again.
Number three, share your story. People buy into you, not just the product. And I feel like I'm proof of this, right? My origin story tells you why I'm doing what I'm doing, and it makes it all make sense, right?
The fourth thing you need to do is let purpose guide through tough decisions where money tempts shortcuts. And it's not just money that will tempt you. I remember when I was building Fluid, I was about 3 years in and it's tough. It was tough. I was competing against big companies like Olga and they were trying to kill us as an organization. And we were up and coming and we were doing well and so they would literally do all sorts of weird things to try and, you know, take us out. But one day someone came to me for a job who worked at one of these big companies and he said to me, "I will bring my client list. I have all the pricing of how that my competitor prices and all I need is to hire them and they can give me all the insights to my competitor." Right? I didn't hire them. I don't want a shortcut. I spent 15 years building Fluid until I sold it Price Waterhouse Cooper for more money than I ever need. I I don't want a shortcut. I would never sleep well at night. I don't think it's correct. And it wasn't my purpose to build it quick and and destroy another company. My purpose was to bring value to people and help them in their businesses. Do not take shortcuts. Please build around purpose.
Number nine on my list is the economic future is community. The value of community has never been more important in an AI world. Community is what's going to separate you also from the big companies. The big companies don't know how to do community. Now community is not a new word. And these are the four ways that you can get community inbuilt in your business in a very simple fashion.
Number one, build a community of early supporters and use tools that are free like Discord and Slack and even WhatsApp groups. If you're doing a running club, for example, in your local area, anybody you see running, get their information. If you're trying to win a war and you go out as a single soldier, you're going to die quick. The way to win a war is with an army. But you just want to focus in the one thing, fix the education system in my case that you all care about.
Number two, give more than you take. Share free resources, insights or tools, contacts, everything you can. You know, if you look at some of the most successful people right now, like Alex Hormozi, he's just sold 3 million books. It's because for years he gave, he gave, he gave, he just showed value to people. You have to do it sincerely. This can't be a trick. You genuinely need to want to help the people in your community. But don't give and take. Give without take.
Number three, create spaces where people connect. Online challenges, in-person meetups. People don't just buy, they join. So, if you can get people connecting in the real world, it can be incredibly powerful. And I'm I'm telling you this stuff. I've done it. I built a multi-million pound business multiple times thinking this way.
Number four on the list, let the community shape your next product. LEGO's fan base were kind of the inspiration behind the Star Wars LEGO. Right? There were a lot of people that love LEGO and love Star Wars. They were making Star Wars LEGO. They were literally making Star Wars didn't even exist in the LEGO universe. It was the fans that gave LEGO that idea, right? 99.9% of businesses, you should build it based on what your community are asking for. And therefore, you need to listen and you need to give them tools to experiment. Let them have your IP. Let them use your trademark. Don't be too precious. Let the community show you where you should be going with your product.
The final thing I want to teach you today, please hire for heart, not skills. I cannot tell you how many people I've seen fail because they hired people that were not passionate because skills can be taught and passion allows you to learn those skills. So, how do you hire for heart, not for skills?
Number one, look for attitude, hunger, and alignment with purpose. Now when I started this platform 5 years ago, I worked with a lady called Talia who was absolutely amazing and her partner was doing a startup and it was and he was struggling. So she understood the struggle of a startup founder and how difficult it was. Also at the same time her father had just been laid off after 20 odd years working in a company. They just let him go. That's it. He suddenly had no job. So she saw both sides and and and therefore her heart was in what we were doing. She cared about the problem that we were working on, helping people that were just discarded by a company after 20 years to find purpose, to find something they love and start again. But equally at the same time, she saw how hard it was for her partner who was doing a startup to get the help advice from people that had actually done it like me, right? So, she really believed in it. And she worked so hard for years and years on this business. At the beginning, by the way, she wasn't particularly confident. If she's listening to this, she she'd agree she wasn't particularly brilliant at her job. She told me she was literally sitting in a merchandising business before staring at a wall all day. Her desk was in front of a wall and she hated her job. She wasn't an inspiring skill set, but she had heart and she got so good at her job. So, I know this from personal experience. You got to have heart, not just skills.
Second thing you got to look at is ask character-driven questions in the interview. I always love the question like, "If I gave you $10 million, what would you do with it?" And and I think it's really interesting to get into the almost like moral code of someone and try to understand what what makes them care about what they're working on because it if it's money all you're going to get every 6 months is give me more money and it's draining.
Number three, promote from within when you see loyalty. So for me like probably loyalty and honesty probably the two most important traits. So in my team there's a guy called Ben for example. Been with us a couple of years now. He has heart. He's always honest and he's incredibly loyal. He's been offered jobs left and right since he's worked with me and this channel's blown up. He's offered jobs all the time, but he sticks at it with his even though he's been offered double the salary and he's been offered this and he's been offered that. And I think that that is someone you just got to look after and you got to promote them and you got to figure out a way to help them get better and better and better. There's a book called 48 Laws of Power which is by Robert Greene. That book was designed to show you the people that do the opposite. What they try to do is not promote you. They try to keep your skills down so you still need the person you're you're talking to, the boss. You still need the boss. I promote people. I look at people and I think, okay, they're loyal, they care, they have heart. How can I promote them? And you need to do the same if you want to be successful.
The fourth thing I want to teach you, the final thing, build culture first and skills will follow. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. You can have strategies all day long. Great. You know how you're going to achieve something, but you need the why you're going to achieve it. I just interviewed Simon S.K. If you haven't watched that podcast, you should because we talk about this subject. And in an AI world, it's going to be even more important that it's linked to humans. That the culture matters. And what what matters inside the company is how can we lift each other up. Everybody in my organization over time will get equity. That's that's part of our culture. I cannot tell you to go start your own business. And then people that work for me don't own their own business. So your culture has to match your your rhetoric. Please focus on culture and skills will follow.
Thanks for listening to this. I hope you got value. If you did, give us a subscribe. Give us a comment down below and let me know if you have any questions. I will read the comments myself. Thank you for listening.