Lessons for College Students: Internships, Courses, Starting Your Own Business, & More

All right, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. I just want to start by saying you guys are so lucky to be getting this program. This is incredible. Like I said, I wish someone would have told me all this, the whole program that you’re learning, when I was 18 to 22, in your shoes. I’m 36 now, so that’s about 17 years ago. You have a fun journey ahead of you. I’m very excited for all of you, because this is just a great start. The fact that you’re getting this knowledge now, at such a young age, is just super exciting. So to kick this off, feel free to take notes, but I will also be giving you this presentation at the end, so don’t worry, you’ll have all of that. Also, stop me anytime. You don’t need to wait until the end for questions. Just raise your hand and ask questions throughout; the more interactive and engaging it is, usually the better. And I’ll tell you at certain points, “Write this down, take a picture of this,” because there are a few very important slides in here that will help you out. So, a bit about me. I’ve started five companies; the last three have been SaaS companies. Does

anyone know what SaaS is? Yeah, software as a service. Basically, software companies with recurring revenue. If you pay $10 a month, every month, for life, that’s a good recurring revenue model, which we’ll talk about later. I love speaking, I wrote a book on Amazon, I invest in some real estate and stocks, and now I’m a father of three beautiful kids: one, three and five. Yeah, they’re awesome. I never thought my life would be where it is today, which I’ll get into. I was never really a great student in school. I never really applied myself. No one ever thought I would be where I am today, or start any business, let alone succeed in any business. So you have so much potential in you. It’s incredible what you can accomplish when you put your mind to anything, really. These are a few companies that I’ve founded along the way, and I’ll go into the journeys with all of them. But most of the companies I started happened because of a passion of mine, where I loved what I did, or I was

just doing it for friends and family. So to start off with, the first one: fixing computers, computer repair. I loved computers. I was always on computers, and I would fix my friends’ computers and my family’s computers. They’d be like, “Hey, my neighbor needs help with their printer, can you help them?” “Sure.” “You should charge them.” “Okay.” And then that one would refer me to someone else: “You should charge them also.” “Okay.” And all of a sudden it became a business. So what I would recommend is: look for things that you love, that you’re doing already, that you’re passionate about, where you’re helping people and solving a problem, and that you could turn into a business. What a dream come true, to work on something you love doing every single day. It’s amazing. Same thing with the next one, the DJ and events business. In college I was just making mixes for myself, workout mixes for the gym, and then my friend said, “Oh, I love your mixes, you should DJ at the club.” I said, “No way.” “Yeah, just do the same thing.” So I did that. Then, “Oh, you should DJ for this fraternity party,” then for this club, weddings, corporate events, and all of a sudden I had an entertainment company. So life will just sort of push you

in these directions, and it’s important to seize those moments, recognize them and take advantage of them. The last two were more good opportunities that came along the way. There are certain moments in life where you’ll be at a crossroads, and big opportunities will just fall in your lap, and it’s really important that you seize those and get advice from your mentors, your parents, anyone you can get advice from. Luckily, I made a few good decisions in my life that led me to where I am today, but one wrong decision and I wouldn’t be standing here. So those decisions are crucial, and you’ll notice them when they come along. My current business today is DoorLoop. We launched only two years ago, and in two years we have over 100 employees and eight figures in revenue annually. We’re growing really quickly because we’ve done it before, we have a good team, we’re passionate, we love what we do, and we’re solving a problem. It’s also a problem that I had, which we’ll get into. So what is DoorLoop? It’s a SaaS business,

a software business. We are property management software. If you know anyone who manages real estate investments, like renting out an apartment, they can use our software to find a tenant, run background checks, collect rent, all that fun stuff. Cool. So I was always a bit of an entrepreneur as a kid. I’m dating myself now, but when the first CD burner came out (we don’t even really have CD burners anymore) I was probably 12, and I started putting music mixes on CDs, bringing them to school and selling them for $5. Then movies. Then stringing tennis rackets and giving tennis lessons. I’m a big tennis player; I love tennis. Any tennis players here? Pickleball, padel? Yeah, awesome. Then I fixed computers for friends, eventually turned that into a business, and then turned the DJing into a business. So there are business opportunities around you, and I’m sure you’ll find them as you go on your journey. Here’s a fun picture of me when I was first starting off in my DJ days. I don’t do it anymore, unfortunately. I wish.

This is a summary of what we’re going to talk about today. A bit about my journey, to show you where you could also be going. What you should be doing during college, and what I regret not doing in college. Then life after college. For me, at least, I had no idea what I wanted to do after college. Zero clue. I’ll guide you through how I found my way, so to speak. If you’re interested in starting your own business (maybe you’re not, and that’s also okay), I’ll guide you a little there. And if you have family businesses that you’re interested in joining, or you’re not really sure if you should join, I also had parents with a family business, so I’ll take you through my thinking on that. Then we’ll conclude with some personal advice. Where am I from? Okay, I’m not Brazilian, obviously. I was born and raised in New York, and I moved to Miami 21 years ago. So what do they call me, a gringo in Miami? Yeah. But I’m learning some Portuguese. My wife is actually

Brazilian. Her parents are from São Paulo, so she speaks Portuguese, my kids speak Portuguese, and I’m learning. That’s all I know so far. All right, just a quick show of hands: who here has already started their own business? One person. Okay, two, possibly, maybe looking into it. And who wants to start their own business eventually? Okay, mostly everyone. And who plans on working for their family business? Also about half. Okay, cool, awesome. So here’s a bit about my journey. In 2009, I graduated college and had no idea what I wanted to do. Literally zero clue. Yeah, question? Yes, the University of Miami. So I graduated from Miami with a business degree and had no idea what I

wanted to do, and no real work experience. I sort of thought I would go into a real estate business with a family friend. That didn’t work out, and I was like, “All right, I’ve got to figure this out.” So I became a realtor, like everyone else in Miami, and got an internship, and made no money for six months. I was going to talk to you about this later, but I’ll tell you now. I’m the most positive, energetic person you’ll ever meet, and for the first, last and only time in my entire life, I was actually depressed. I was like, “Wow, what am I doing with my life?” The worst feeling is when you graduate and everyone’s like, “Oh, congrats! What are you doing now? What are you doing with your life?” And every day I’m just going to the gym. So it took a while to figure out, but I got very lucky and found a great job at a startup company. That was a crossroads: take that job or do something else. Luckily, I chose that company, and I learned more in four months at that startup than I learned in four years in college. Not to bash college, but you learn a lot on the

job. Real-world experience trumps everything, in my opinion. So I learned a lot there, and from there I was like, “Wow, I love computers, I should probably stick with computers and software and SaaS.” That’s how my journey started, and I just grew from there, which we’ll talk about. So this all looks and sounds great: I found my dream job, started my own company, sold my company, sold another company. It sounds amazing, and looking back it was all amazing, but there were so many hiccups and bumps in the road along the way that I’ll tell you about. Like I said, I had nothing to do after college, I almost gave up numerous businesses, and I just got lucky. So a lot of it is luck and opportunity. Opportunities will present themselves, you seize those opportunities, and you have to have a little bit of luck too, in my opinion. I just got very lucky. Here’s me and my partner when we first started our first business. It was exciting. We were in his basement, just having fun, just the two of us. And fast forward a few years, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, we’re

dying.” It’s midnight, the server crashed, customers are calling at midnight. We were dying. These are some of the ups and downs you have when starting your own business, but it’s fun looking back at it. It makes you who you are today, and it’s always a fun ride. And this is a fun one: this is the end of an email that I wrote to my partner. “Hey, this isn’t working out. We’re both too busy. Let’s come back to this in a year and a half. It’s totally okay.” I sent this letter to break up with the company, and he also sent me a letter to break up one time. Partnerships are very tough. We almost gave up numerous times, but through some luck or faith or something, we pushed on, we persisted, and eventually, about two and a half years after this letter, we sold the company. It was insane. It changed my life, and I almost gave up. So there will be ups and downs, and there will be challenges. We sold the whole company, 100%, completely. That was in February

2018. And then a year and a half later, we started the next company. Who bought it? Private equity, yeah. A private equity firm from San Francisco named Alpine Investors. We were getting a lot of pitches to sell the company, because when you’re number one on Google for whatever you’re doing, you get emails all day long. They’re just trying to buy companies; they’re emailing thousands of companies. We responded to a few of them. We said, “We’re not ready to sell, but let’s get some information.” Then we were like, “Wow, these guys are pretty cool.” We had a number in mind that we wanted to sell the company for, and we said, “We’re not there yet. We’re 12 months away from that.” They said, “No, we can get you there,” with something called a buyout, getting creative. We were like, “Wow, okay.” We took the chance and sold the company, and it was the best decision we ever made. Yeah? So his question was: did you do your own valuation? Pretty much, in SaaS, the multiples depend on how much revenue you’re making. If you’re making $2 million to $3 million a year in

recurring revenue, you’re getting two to three times multiples. We were probably in the five to six times multiple range, so we knew what we could get. But we also had mentors and brokers. If you’re going to be selling your company or raising money, you’re going to need help. We hired very expensive attorneys, consultants and accountants. When you’re at that stage, you probably have decent money already, so you hire the right people and they walk you through it, which is important. It’s a whole different topic, but you want to have the right people by your side for sure, especially legal and accounting. So, don’t give up, basically. This is sort of what happened with most of the companies. Three of them were failures. But as you fail and fail and fail again, you pick yourself back up and keep learning. Everything’s a learning experience. You might not even categorize the first two as failures; we made some money, but it was nothing to write home about. And then eventually you hit major success, and when you hit major success, you just repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. It just gets easier

and easier and easier once you know what to do the first time around. My partner so far has had three major successes, three in a row already, because you already learn what to do. Which is why it’s very important that you work for other companies, not only family businesses: other companies, internships, whatever you can. I’ll keep talking about that a lot, because you get more well-rounded and you get experience from so many different companies. You want different viewpoints on how different people do things. Very important, and we’ll get into that also. So why did I start my own companies? First, I had a passion for doing something, and I was solving a problem. I loved DJing, music, computer repair, whatever it was. I love computers. I could be on a computer all day, until 6 a.m., pulling all-nighters, which I’ve pulled many of and don’t really recommend anymore, at least at my age. If you can have a passion and solve a problem, those are going to be your two best things. Because I wake up every morning psyched to go to work, excited to

take on the day, excited to learn new things. I love what I do. I love the people I work with. Which is probably the number one lesson I’m going to give you today: you have to love what you do, you have to be passionate about it, and you have to have energy for it. The minute you wake up in the morning and think, “Oh, I have to go to work again, I don’t want to go, I’m dreading it,” that’s it. You should quit the job, change careers, whatever it is, because you have to love what you do. Here’s a story. I went to the dentist’s office recently, and the receptionist says to me, “Oh, you’re going to New York? Wow, that’s so exciting. I wish I could go to New York.” She was maybe in her 50s and had never visited. “Oh, you love what you do? I’m so jealous. I hate my job and my life.” Like, what the heck? Oh my gosh, that’s horrible, to hate what you do in your 40s and 50s. There are other businesses out there. Being happy in life is more important than making more money. So being happy,

having energy, loving what you do and having passion is probably the number one piece of advice I’ll give you, for sure, all day long. This is the early days of one of the companies. Basically, I started my companies on nights and weekends while I had a full-time job, and that’s usually what I recommend. You have some stability, you’re making some income, you can support yourself. On the side, I was fixing computers. I would leave my day job at 6 p.m., and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. I’d be fixing computers for clients, and then maybe at 10 p.m. I’d DJ for an hour or two. It was crazy, but I was doing what I loved, and it didn’t feel like work. I was loving it. I had two or three different side businesses, and eventually one of those businesses made more money than my full-time day job, and I was like, “Wow, this is cool. Maybe I should do this full-time.” Luckily, I had a mentor who pushed me to do that. I quit my job and moved full-time into my own business, and when I focused full-time on my own business, it exploded even more. That’s advice I

give a lot of people. If you want to start a company out of college, sometimes it’s good to get a full-time job, make some money, and get started on the side, as sort of a side hustle. We’ll get into a few more things later. People ask me, “How do you have time to start a side business while you’re in school or going to work?” The way I like to think of it is that your day and your week are split into three blocks of eight hours. Eight hours you’re sleeping. Eight hours you’re in school or working. And then eight hours you have free time. What do you do with that free time? Obviously you eat, maybe you exercise, but you might have six hours left. That’s the time to work on your side business, to hustle, to do whatever else you want to do. It’s also important to prioritize friends, family and your social life, but you have a lot of time. For me, it was sleep, work, and then the third of my time that was free, I kept working on my side businesses. Today I have more of a work-life balance, so the free time I take is actually free time, but that’s a different story. So

the lesson for the first part of this is: be persistent, and don’t give up, especially if it’s your dream. We almost gave up numerous times, but I’m really happy that we didn’t. Any questions so far? Awesome. All right, so, college. Everyone here is in college except for one person, right? Oh, is that you? Okay, the special one. That’s awesome. It’s amazing that you’re getting this advice right now. In college, you probably don’t know what you want to do in life yet. You might have an idea. The way I used college, and I probably should have done a better job at this, was taking many different courses and seeing which ones I loved. I loved business law. I was like, “Wow, I love business law, maybe I’ll be a lawyer.” Then years later, I started a legal software company. Then I took a marketing class and fell in love with marketing, and I changed my major to marketing. I started off in computer information systems, computer coding, and didn’t love that

so much, so I went to business management, and then to marketing, because I kept taking different classes until I found what I loved. So my advice to you is: use college to try different things and find out what you love, what classes you love, what gets you excited. A big one, which I did not do and regret not doing: getting an internship. Number one, obviously, it’s work experience. You’re learning and you’re putting it on your resume. But it’s also about figuring out what you want to do in life. I was 22, I’d graduated college and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I only started figuring that out at 22, and it was really difficult. But I had a lot of friends who were doing internships and other classes during college, so when they graduated, they had a job lined up, they knew what they wanted to do, and they were already off to the races. So use these next few years to figure out what you want to do in life and where you want to work. And if you have family businesses (I’m going to talk about this too), get an internship at your family business. If it’s unpaid, it doesn’t even matter. Just try to find a

company that you like and could work at, and try different departments of that business. If you’re lucky enough to have a family business, and it’s a big business with multiple departments (sales, support, marketing, whatever it is), say, “Hey, can I work here for two months? Can I do two weeks in sales, two weeks in marketing, two weeks in something else?” Try everything and see what you like. You’ll find that you love one department. Maybe you love marketing like I did. You’ll find out pretty quickly what you love, and it will lean you in the right direction in life and save you a lot of time after college. This is my own quote, and a lot of people might not agree, but personally, for me, work experience trumps anything. You’re going to learn so much on the job. Real-world experience trumps everything in life, especially in internships. Now, I think all of you are in Brazil, so I don’t know if you have these websites there, but there are probably similar ones. I went to Craigslist, I went to internships.com and my college recruiter, and I started looking.

I found an internship after college. And now this is also where we find interns to work at our companies. There are many ways to find internships. And by the way, you’re so lucky: after COVID, everything’s remote. The whole world went remote. Before, you couldn’t get an internship with a US company; you’d have to move here. Now you can probably get internships or jobs with any company in the entire world. That’s incredible. Your generation has access to every company in the world, which is just unbelievable. So don’t be afraid. If there’s a company you want to work at, say Nike, apply. You could work remotely. It’s not a big deal. Don’t be afraid to apply. So this is probably my number one biggest college regret: I did not work on a business idea in college. I had some side things, for sure, but I was taking business classes, like I’m sure most of you are, marketing classes, entrepreneurship classes, making a business plan,

and I should have been working on a business that I could have launched myself, like my DJ business, for example. I should have been doing that in my first and second years of college, because I knew I wanted to do it. So use your classes, your assignments, your homework and your tests toward your own business idea. Start your own business now. It costs nothing to start a company, you’ll get real-world experience, and you can use your classes to fuel that growth. What services did we offer? Okay, good question. His question is what services we provided with the DJ business. At first I was just DJing frat parties, bars and clubs. Then I went to Craigslist, found five companies to work for, and started doing weddings. I started learning weddings, and I thought, “Let me take the best things from these companies: how they get

leads, how they sell to clients, how they organize everything.” I was learning from all these different companies, and when I was ready, I said, “Let me start my own business.” So I launched my own business. Then one day people called and said, “Oh, I want musicians,” or whatever, “do you have that?” I said, “Yeah, sure.” I just said yes to everything. It’s important not to turn down opportunities. For me, that was a big turning point in the business. People would say, “Do you have a band? A drummer? A wedding planner? A photo booth?” Whatever it was, it didn’t really matter. I would say, “Yes, of course, we have everything.” “Okay, great, send me an invoice.” And then I’d go figure it out, and now I had a photo booth. So I said yes to everything, and it worked out. Eventually it grew to where I couldn’t do everything myself. Then someone gave me really good advice that I’m going to share with you: be the least important person in your company. That’s really hard, because in the beginning it’s going to be all you, and

that’s fine. But eventually, as you grow your company, the company can’t rely on just one person. Imagine the CEO of Itaú went away for a year and took a vacation. Sorry if you’re here; I apologize. He’s not here? Okay. So imagine he took a one-year vacation. Would the bank crash? No. Because yes, he’s important, but he’s not the most important. One person shouldn’t be able to destroy the whole business. The business should run without you. So try to make sure the business runs without you. Right now, I have work today, but I’m able to be here because the business is running by itself without me. I could do whatever I want and everything is still running perfectly fine. So that’s my first piece of advice. And back to your question, eventually the business grew, I started hiring people, and it just grew from there: party planning, entertainment, DJs. Yeah, you had a question? I didn’t hate the coding classes. I’m sort of a developer myself, but I just didn’t enjoy coding until 5 a.m.

Yeah, great question. His question was: if I didn’t enjoy coding, then now that I have SaaS software companies, who is the developer? And that’s also important, because you have to realize your strengths and weaknesses. While I probably could have built it and coded it myself, it’s not my expertise, it’s not what I love doing and I’m not the best at it. So I partnered. I loved sales and marketing. I knew how to build websites and market and sell the businesses. I was good at sales, but I didn’t love the technical side of building the software. So I partnered with someone who was the CTO, the chief technology officer. We were 50-50 partners. I did the sales and marketing, and he did all the development. Which is great, because when you’re trying to build a software business, the number one hardest thing is finding a developer. It’s super hard, and they’re also super expensive, and you

probably don’t want to outsource to one of those countries where you’re not going to get good results. So my advice there, if you want to start a SaaS company, is to partner like I did with a good developer. 50-50 is always the fairest thing. You do sales and marketing and whatever else, and they’ll do development and maybe something else. Good? Yes? How did I market my SaaS companies? All right, wow, great question. How much time do we have? In the early days, when we had no money, we did grassroots, organic efforts. We did a lot of, I don’t want to use the word SEO if you don’t know what that is, but a lot of blog posts, a lot of organic marketing, a lot of organic content, so people would find us. Maybe posting on social media. We used our network, family and friends. A lot of free tactics: going to events and shows, whatever it was. A lot of free things to try to get customers in the early days. Eventually we moved to a paid model, where

we started advertising with Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook ads and so on. Today we spend over $500,000 a month just on Google Ads. It’s incredible, because it works. Obviously you won’t have that money in the beginning, but you can grow slowly. For me, my secret to launching every company and growing it quickly was to make ourselves look bigger than we are. When people were searching, let’s say they go to Google and type in “property management software,” they’d never heard of us. We’re brand new; we launched a week ago. So my strategy was to be number one everywhere: number one on Google Ads, number one on all these directories. If they’re looking at the top ten results on Google, we were four out of the ten. That was always my strategy. It costs money to be number one everywhere, but when people were searching, they’d say, “Oh wow, DoorLoop, what is that? They’re number one here, number one here.” They kept seeing us over and over: “Let me check them out.” So that was always my strategy. It’s an expensive strategy, so

it works if you raise money or have money to invest. That’s the strategy in my current company, but before, it was more organic: blog posts, social media, stuff like that. Now, the one thing I would warn all of you about is social media, because this whole generation is all about social media, and it’s free and it’s easy. You want to make sure that every single thing you do, whether it’s blog posts, advertising or social media, you can track the results. I have friends who will spend years on it: “Oh, I have 20,000 followers on TikTok or Twitter or Instagram. Wow, look how big we are.” I say, “Great, how much business did that bring you?” “I don’t know.” “How many people signed up from Instagram?” “I don’t know.” So how do you know if it’s worth it? You’re spending four hours a day on it; it’s a waste of time. Whatever you’re going to try, make sure it’s trackable. Have trackable links, whatever it is, and make sure you’re not just wasting time on social media if it’s not bringing in results. Great question.

Anything else? All right, so to summarize: during college, try to work on a business, try to figure out what you want to do, get an internship, maybe work with your family’s company. Those were the lessons I wish someone had taught me during college. And then after college is where the fun begins, because now you’re in the real world. That’s it. No more long vacations. Well, you can, but mostly you need to find a job, find a career, find what you’re going to be doing in life. Number one, which I’m going to keep saying over and over: do what you love. Find your passion and do what you love. I already gave you the dentist example, but it’s really so important. It’s probably my main lesson today: you’ve got to do what you love. I love this quote: “Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life,” because it won’t feel like work. Last night I was in the office until 10 or 11 p.m., and it didn’t feel like work. I loved it. I could have kept going until 5 a.m. You have to love what you do, because you’re going to be putting in the hours, the nights and the weekends.

You’re going to be hustling, especially in the early days of your business. And someone already gave you this warning, but I’ll give it again. This is a great book, probably one of my favorite books. Shawn Achor has one of the top ten TED Talks online, and the book is The Happiness Advantage. Long story short, here’s what he says, and I want to caution you here. Many people think, and you might think, “When I have money, when I become successful, when I become a millionaire, I’m going to be happier.” And I can tell you it’s not the case. It doesn’t happen that way. What he found is that success does not create happiness. It’s the reverse: happiness creates success. If you’re generally happy with where you are in life, if you’re a happy person, you will be more successful. Think about it: happy people do better in sales, happier people are usually more successful, they find better jobs, whatever it is. So really focus on your happiness, and when you focus on your happiness,

doing what you love and finding your passion, success will just happen. Okay? But I don’t want you to think you’ll be happy when you have more money in the bank account, because I can tell you from personal experience. We’ll talk about goals soon, but I’ll share this now. I had a big goal for when I turned 30. I’ve probably never shared this with anyone, so I’ll share it with you and only you, and we’ll cut it from the recording. One of my goals was to become a millionaire by 30. Great. And then at 30, I sold my company and reached that goal. I’ll never forget that day. It was probably one of the top five happiest days of my life. You refresh the bank account, refresh again, and boom, the money comes in. You’re like, “Holy... wow, I did that.” That was PracticePanther, the last company, in 2018. And in your head you have all these visions: we’re going to move here, we’re going to buy this, we’re going to do everything. And what did we do? I went to dinner with my wife. The next day I came back to the office, sat at my desk, and was like, “That’s it? This is it?” It was 24

hours, and it was gone. I went back to my normal routine. I didn’t buy that extra house. I didn’t go on that trip. I didn’t travel the world. So you have visions of, “When I hit this, I’m going to do this, I’m going to be happier,” but I’m telling you, it doesn’t make a big difference. You just go right back to your normal lifestyle. Some of you might not, but at least that’s what I did. It doesn’t change your life. There was a famous study on how much money brings you more happiness. This was back in the day, so the numbers might change with inflation, but they found that when you hit $75,000 a year and can support yourself and you’re financially independent (maybe for you that number is $100,000, whatever it is), you get to a certain level of happiness. It climbs and climbs, but once you hit that number, maybe $75,000, maybe $100,000 a year, your happiness doesn’t really go up much more if you make $120,000 or $200,000. I don’t know if you guys know who Biggie is, but: “Mo Money Mo Problems.” And it’s so true. It doesn’t really make you that much happier. So just keep that in

mind as you think about it: money will not bring you more happiness. Now, finding your dream job. This is a funny one for me. Getting a job is all about timing, momentum and energy. When it’s slow, it’s slow; when it rains, it pours. What does that mean? I have so many friends and family who are always looking for jobs, and they tell me, “David, I’ve been applying for six months, I send 50 resumes a day, nothing’s working, nothing’s clicking.” Maybe they have one interview here or there. It’s funny how in life you go through these energy curves, whatever you want to call them. When it’s slow, it’s slow, like in life in general, and you can’t find a job, whatever it is. But then it rains and it pours. Last week, I was trying to hire someone. The guy had been looking for a job for five months, and I thought, “Great, this is easy, we’re going to close him, no problem.” We made him an offer, and he says, “You’re not going to believe this, but in the last two days I had two other offers too.” When it rains, it pours. Five months with no job offers, and within a week, three job

offers. Now he gets to choose the company, and now we have to fight for him. That’s just how it happens in life. So don’t get down on yourself when you’re trying to break through, whether it’s your own business or looking for a job, and you feel like you’re in a slow rut. Don’t worry. It’s all about energy and momentum. Things will shift, they will get better, and before you know it you’ll have three job opportunities and be like, “Wow, exactly like David said.” It’s weird, but this is how it happens. I also like saying this, because when you’re not busy, your mind will just kill you: “I can’t find a job, I’m a loser, what am I going to do with my life?” So it’s important to stay busy and do things. If you’re looking for a job, probably the best thing you can do is get an internship. It’s much easier to get an internship, and at least you’re working, you’re doing something with your life, you have hours to fill, and things will naturally work themselves out. You’re busier. And it’s funny, because it’s best when you’re looking for a job but don’t really need that job. If

you’re in a current job and looking for another one, they know, “Hey, I’ve got to pull them out of their current company. They don’t really need this job.” Employers can sense when you need a job, when you’re hungry, when you’re desperate. So it’s better not to be on that side of the fence, so to speak. Any questions about job hunting and all this stuff? Okay, awesome. All right, so, starting your own business. There aren’t that many slides in here, so if you have questions, stop me and I can go into more detail on any of these topics. I think the first question you have to ask yourself is: why? Why do you want to start your own company? Let’s go around the room quickly. Just shout out: why do you think you want to start your own company? Give me some reasons. [A student answers; partly inaudible. His family has a company, and he has sisters.]

[The student continues; partly inaudible. He describes feeling pressure and wanting to be excited to be part of his family’s group of companies.] Amazing. So if I understood, basically what he’s saying (and I actually talk about this later) is that if you have family businesses, obviously your family wants you to be happy, but they also want you to work in the business and take it over one day. It’s probably their family legacy. Maybe it even has their last name, which is your last

name, so you take it over. What he’s saying is that in the family business, it sounds like you had an opportunity to either join the regular business or start your own section of the business. Yes? [The student adds, partly inaudible, that he could always come back, and that he feels pressure to have his own.] Love it. Great mentality. So what he’s saying, and I highly agree, is: number one, if you want to try doing your own thing, start your own business and prove to yourself you can do it, no problem, you can definitely try that. And it’s nice to know you have the backup and security of falling back on the family business if it doesn’t work out. You know you could always go back to the family business. I love that. I totally agree. Yep. Okay.

[Another student notes that with this cushion, you might not be as hungry.] Yeah, and it’s true. When you have that backup, you might not be so hungry to make it work yourself, which is true. So my advice on that: a lot of you have parents with family businesses. You can ask, “How can I innovate in their business right now?” I’m going to talk about this, but you don’t need to just follow the status quo and do the same thing they’re doing. Maybe you can innovate and start your own startup company within their business, and that’s probably the best case. And by the way, you’re forging your own path. You’re going to prove to yourself and your family, “This is what I can do. I want to try it.” If that gets you excited, do it. What he’s saying is there’s a health side that he could start in his family’s business, and I love that, because you can branch off and start a side company within that business, but you’re off to such a head start, because the company is probably already big and established. You have resources, you have help, you’re not on your own, you’re not alone. So I love that too. That was

great. Any other reasons? Yeah? [A student says he wants to be pushed to the edge; partly inaudible.] For sure, I agree. Yes, it’s fun. Like us, we almost went broke many times. Those are what I call the stressful periods of your life and your business. I have a friend right now who is on the verge of closing his business and getting a full-time job, and that stress is good stress. He’s got three kids: “I need to pay the bills, I need to make this work, I have three months of savings left, this needs to work.” That’s really good stress, because it pushes you to be creative and work really hard, and eventually he’ll figure his way out of it. So yeah, very

good stress. Totally agree. Yes? To be your own boss and make your own hours? Yes: freedom, flexibility, your own schedule. Love it. All great reasons, and I have a few too. Like you said, obviously some people just want to make money. Solve your own problem. Work for yourself, be your own boss, have your own freedom. Change the world. This is the guy on the screen. Does anyone recognize him? Simon Sinek, yes. Awesome. If you don’t know him, Simon Sinek... I don’t think I have a slide on him. Yeah, the circle, the “why.” You know it, okay, awesome. Simon says, “Start with why.” If you haven’t watched his TED Talk, it’s the number four most popular TED Talk right now: Simon Sinek, “Start With Why.” His whole thing is: why do you want to start your company? Why do you want to do this? Be my own boss, make a lot of money, these are all fine. These are all good reasons. Whatever it is doesn’t matter, but find your why, because it’s going to drive you every single day. Okay?

Now, this is also important when starting your own business: finding your unique value proposition, or unique selling proposition. This is called a UVP, but basically it’s the reason you are better than anyone else doing what you’re doing. In our case, for example, we started a property management software company, but there are 50 other competitors. So people ask me at trade shows, “What do you do?” This is what we do. “But why are you better than everyone else? What’s unique about you?” We have our spiel, but you need to find out what makes you unique, what makes your business unique, why you’re better. So why do you want to start your own business, and why is it going to be better than all the other businesses that already exist today? And one more thing when starting your own business, which I don’t know if I have here: it’s important to see if there’s a need in the market for it. It’s going to be very rare that you come up with some brilliant new idea and start a whole new market that no one’s ever thought of. Maybe you will, but there might not be a need for it. So

every time I start a company, people say, “Property management software? Isn’t there a lot of competition?” “Yeah, there’s a ton.” “Isn’t that bad?” “No, it’s amazing.” Because what it tells me is that there’s so much demand for what I’m doing, there are so many customers, the market is so big. With so many competitors, I just want a little sliver of the pie. It’s a big pie; we can all eat and be happy. So that’s one. And number two: how can I do better than my competitors? That was always what I did. So I love competition. Don’t be afraid of competition. It will push you, it will make you hungrier, it will make you better. It elevates everyone. Competition is good. Anything else? Yeah? All right, so two tips before starting your own company. Obviously, try to work for someone else to learn as much as possible. I would never have been successful in my own business had I not worked for a few companies before starting my own. In the beginning, I had those two failures. I didn’t know what I was doing; I was just winging it.

Back then, Google also wasn’t so popular, so there wasn’t a lot of information out there. Today there’s a lot of information, but try to work for other businesses or do internships first, because you’re going to learn a lot. And number two: take a lot of notes when you’re learning, like you’re taking notes now. When you’re working for a company or you have an internship, take notes. What are they doing? “Wow, that was really smart. They did this campaign, this promotion, this sales email,” whatever it is. Just take a lot of notes, so when it’s time for you to start your own business, you have a playbook of ideas ready to go and you just hit the ground running. If it worked for them, it could probably work for me too, right? That’s what I did. I had a list maybe nine pages long of just ideas and ideas and ideas, so when I started my company, I had my business model ready to go, and it was much faster. Now, I already told you this: I like to start on nights and weekends. You can build a business plan, which is really important. There’s a lot of free software online to build business plans that will get you thinking about how you’re going to sell, how you’re going to be better, all these sorts of

things. And then again, hopefully you’ll make enough money to quit your day job, or really make this into a full-time passion or hobby. And I told you this already, but I’ll put it up again, because it’s very important to me and I really focus on it now. What does being the least important person in my company mean to me? It means not doing everything myself. In the beginning, you’re going to do everything yourself, of course, because it’s a one-person show; it’s just you. But eventually, as you grow, you want to delegate and let go. That’s the only way you’re going to grow. You can’t hold on to everything. You have to delegate and let go, or outsource. Has anyone ever heard of the website Upwork? Yes. So write that down: Upwork, U-P-W-O-R-K. Anything you ever need to get done for yourself or your business is on Upwork. There are millions of freelancers around the world who can do anything. Even when I started my own business, I thought, “It doesn’t really make sense for me to spend three hours writing a blog post when I could hire

someone for $10.” My time is worth more than about $3 an hour. It’s not worth it; I’m going to hire someone. I’m not the best website designer, so let me hire a website designer for $200 to build me a website. That’s how I did everything. I didn’t do everything myself. I outsourced a lot, and until today we outsource a lot on Upwork. And I delegate everything. Everything that comes to me, I just delegate, delegate, delegate. Otherwise I can’t get anything done, basically. Okay. Obviously I’m biased, but I recommend, if you’re starting a business, trying to find one that’s your passion, obviously, but also a recurring revenue or SaaS model. It’s great. The reason I like it so much is that with my computer business or my DJ business, every month I would start from zero. Every month I had to make new sales and close new clients, and every month the bank account reset to zero. Let’s say I sold $5,000 this month. Great, I made $5,000 this month. Next month I was at

zero again, and it sucked. But with recurring revenue, if I sign up ten people this month and they pay me $100 a month, I made $1,000 this month, but next month, on the first, I start with $1,000, and the month after, I start with $2,000, then $3,000. It grows forever. That’s the beauty of recurring revenue businesses. And you’ll probably notice the whole world is shifting to this model. Everything is a subscription today, because the world caught on. This is where the world is heading, so I would highly recommend you focus on this too. Any questions about software and SaaS businesses? Good? Yep. Okay, so SaaS is just a fancy word for software as a service. You don’t need to know exactly what that is; basically, it’s any software company that charges on a recurring revenue model: $10 a month forever,

$5 a month forever. You’re just paying the same amount every month. You’ve heard of Spotify. Spotify is $8 a month; that’s a SaaS business. Netflix is $10 a month; that’s a SaaS business, because they’re charging $10 a month forever. You sign up to Netflix, they made a sale, and it’s $10 a month for the next ten years. You’re never leaving. That’s why it’s so valuable. They’re not just making $10 off you; they’re making $120 a year off you for the next ten years. You’re not worth $10; you’re worth thousands of dollars to them as a customer. That’s why it’s so valuable. Yes, question? So the question is: how do you develop your ideas for the business you’re going to start? Great question. In the beginning, I didn’t develop them. I was just fixing computers for my friends and family, and they said, “Oh, you should fix it for the neighbor and charge him.” All right, a business was born out of nowhere. “Oh, you should DJ this party.” “I don’t want to.” “You should do it, and I’ll pay you $100.” Okay, a business was born. So

I never had those ideas; they just came to fruition. “Oh, you’re good at tennis, can you give me tennis lessons?” Okay, now I have a tennis lesson business. A lot of the things you’re doing right now, you’re probably really good at, passionate about and skilled at, and you can do them for people. There are so many businesses that all of you could start today without even knowing it. So that’s number one. And number two, the other companies: how I started those. PracticePanther was a software business. At my first job out of college, I did really well, and after two years I left to do my own business. Then the founder of that company came to me and said, “Hey, I just sold my company. I want to start a business with you.” Cool. So he had the idea and brought me along. I got very lucky there. And the second one, DoorLoop, we started together. We both had the idea. We were both real estate investors, so we were solving our own problem. What happened was, after we sold that company, we

started buying investment properties to rent out, and we said, “I don’t want to deal with this. Let’s find software to manage these rental properties.” And then, “Oh my gosh, all this software is so bad. What’s going on? We could do it better.” It was a problem we were trying to solve for ourselves, we knew we could do it better, and we just did it better. So the first two businesses came from a passion, and the second two came from trying to solve my own problems, basically. Great question. Yep? Sorry, go ahead. [A student describes wanting to start something but not knowing how to begin; partly inaudible.]

[The student continues; partly inaudible. He describes a problem he wants to solve and feeling unsure about starting.] Okay, so a lot of people have that. Basically, you’re afraid to start because, number one, you probably don’t know where to start or what you need to do next. And some people are also just afraid to fail. So the question is, “I want to start my own business, I have some ideas, but I just haven’t done it. What do I do? Where do I start?” The first thing I would tell you is to try to find someone who can help you, a mentor who can

guide you along the way, who’s done it before. They can tell you, “Oh, you want to start this business? Do A, B and C,” and get you going. The second thing I would tell you is to make a business plan. Go to Google or ChatGPT: “How do I make a business plan?” It’ll tell you. You’re doing research, just like a school project. Where’s the competition? How are you going to be different? What are you going to do differently? How are you going to start the company, market the company, sell? You’ll get all these things down. But then it’s important to start. Too many people plan for so long that they never actually start. It’s scary, because there’s so much to do, but you have to start small, with baby steps. You can’t do everything at once; you’ve got to start somewhere. I’ll give you an example. I have a friend who wanted to start a travel agency. You go to his website, say you’re looking to travel to Brazil: “I can help you book your flights and get you the best deals on hotels. Come to my

website.” He told me, “I want to build this company. What do you think? I’m going to integrate the back end with Kayak.com and American Airlines. It’s going to cost $50,000, and it’s going to take a year to build.” I said, “What are you doing? You can start the business today.” He said, “How?” You have a form, a Google Form. When someone wants to book a trip to Brazil, you send them the form: Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What do you like doing? How long do you want to go for? How much do you want to spend? That’s your MVP. MVP stands for minimum viable product. You can build a business today, in an hour. You don’t need to spend a year building it out or spend a lot of money. So try to find your MVP: what’s the easiest way you could build your business today, for free? So he did that, and then he had customers, like me. I was a customer. I said, “I want to book this trip,” filled out his Google Form, and within a day he gave me everything. I didn’t need it to be automated. I didn’t care if it was on a fancy website. Just help me out. That was his minimum viable product, and from there you’ll make money

and you’ll start growing. You’ll build the website eventually, but you can start early. I want to give you one example of this: Google. Google has all the resources in the world. They can do whatever they want and spend whatever they want. I was lucky to meet one of the founders of Google X, one of their teams that works on crazy experiments, like the balloons that deliver internet to Africa, or Google Glass. Has anyone heard of Google Glass? Yes. Pretty much, they’re glasses you put on that have a computer inside. You can see a screen inside, and you can look at your pictures, see your calendar, surf the internet, take videos, whatever. So how long do you think it took to build the first prototype of Google Glass? How long? Hours? Three years? A month? Okay. And how much money do you think it cost to build the first prototype?

$100,000? How much? $7,000? Okay, it’s random. Okay, you’re right: a few hours. You know the story? That’s not fair. Okay, a few hours. What Google could have done, and how you might think about building an idea and a prototype, is: “Wow, let me go to China, let me put a chip inside, let me start building it.” It’s going to take years and cost a lot of money. That’s not what they did. They wanted to build their MVP and their prototypes. So what did they do? They found a free pair of glasses that cost $10, no prescription. They put them on people, and they had a projector, and they said, “Imagine what you’re seeing here is in your glasses.” That’s it. That was their prototype. It took a few hours. “Now, here’s your dashboard. It shows your pictures on the left and your calendar on the right.” And they had a computer with a PowerPoint. “If you want to see your

pictures, what do you do? Use your hands.” So the person wearing the glasses would go like this, and someone would press the keyboard: next slide. “Oh, my pictures, cool.” “Now, how do you go back?” “I go back.” Okay. That was their first prototype. Now, what happened? After four minutes, people started doing this, and they said, “What’s going on?” “I don’t know, my arm hurts.” “Okay, that’s weird. Why?” What they found out is that when you’re raising your hand and doing this for four minutes straight, your blood flow gets cut off and you get tired. Imagine if they had spent years building this, only to find out that people couldn’t do it. But in a few hours, they got rid of that idea and tried a different one. It just took a few hours. So my advice to you, when you’re thinking about a business to build: think of the simplest thing, the Google Form. What can I do right now, for free, to start this company, get clients and make money? And you want to get early beta customers and testers to tell you what they want. The number one book I recommend (I don’t know if I have it on here), the number

one book, write this down, if you want to start your own company: The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries. He pretty much teaches you everything I just told you: MVP, minimum viable product, just get going. The thing I see people getting stuck on the most: they call me for advice. “Yeah, this business, I’ve been building it for three years.” “Amazing. Wow, awesome. How many customers do you have?” “No, we haven’t launched yet.” I’m like, “So what have you been doing for three years?” “Yeah, we invested $1 million into it.” “How much money did you make?” “Nothing yet.” “What are you waiting for? Just launch. Just go beta.” You could have 30 launches. You could have a beta launch and another beta launch. Just launch. What normally happens is they’ll wait three years building and building, then they launch, they’re excited, they hit go live, and nothing happens. “Oh man, what a waste of time that was. I thought the customers wanted this, but now they’re telling me they want this. We just wasted six months building this for

nothing.” So listen to your customers and get feedback. That’s the most important thing I can tell you. Just launch your MVP, basically. Any other questions on that? Cool. Failing is learning. I failed numerous times, and we keep failing. Ninety percent of startups fail in their first, I think, three years, and something like 98% fail in their first five years. Most companies fail, and that’s okay, but every failure is a learning opportunity. Look at the positive, see what you can learn, and pick yourself up. You will get stronger, and you will improve with every single failure. There are many reasons you might fail, and a few are on here; it doesn’t really matter. It’s perfectly fine to fail. Just keep learning. I wish I had started all these companies earlier, at your age, because I would have learned so much. You don’t have a lot of risk right now. You don’t need to support a family. If I start a business and fail, with no savings, I have kids to feed and a family to

take care of. I can’t take these risks right now in my life. I mean, I can, but most people can’t. It’s really hard to take a risk in your 30s or 40s when you have bills to pay. But right now, you probably have no bills to pay. You can fail, and you should be trying a lot of new things right now, in your teens and twenties, for sure. Now, there’s a lot on this slide, too much to explain, on how to succeed. There are so many ways to succeed, but like I told you: just start, just launch, build your MVP, just get going, get some early customers on board and listen to them. That’s probably the number one thing I can tell you. Just launch, find some early customers and listen to them. What do you want? What can I build for you? What do you need help with? And you’re going to see they’ll just tell you. Okay. Now, this is a funny one: the less I work, the more I get done. I say this, and it’s so true, because

in my early days I would do everything. I worked 15-hour days, nights and weekends, seven days a week. Work, work, work. Now I work eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, and I get more done and the company grows more. Why? Because it’s not relying only on me. I delegate as much as I can. Before, I’d be the one building the website until 5 a.m., writing the blog posts, doing everything. Now I outsource the website, I outsource the blog posts, I outsource the logo, I outsource everything. I have a team that does X, Y and Z. And it’s cheap; Upwork is very cheap. It’s $50 for a logo, $200 for a website. It’s not a lot of money. You could probably build it yourself for free, sure, but just remember this: be the least important person as you grow, and try to let go and do less. The less you do, the more you’ll get done. As a business owner, you need to focus on delegating. And it’s funny: before I had a wife, family and kids, I had more time. I could work 12 to 14

hours a day, so I would do a lot of things that weren’t important. But now I only have eight hours a day. I need to come home, put my kids to sleep, be with my wife, whatever it is. So I don’t have that time, and my eight hours a day are really important now, which means I only focus on the most important things. That’s where a lot of business owners mess up. I had a friend call me on the way here. He started his business a week ago. “How do I trademark my business?” I said, “Why is that important? You don’t need a trademark now. You need to get clients. You need to do marketing.” “Oh, how do I build processes?” I’m like, “For what? For your zero clients? Just get clients.” It’s the most important thing. I think I have this here: every day, you want to focus on your MIT. MIT stands for most important task. Every day you have one most important task, and usually it’s figuring out how to get clients. What are you going to do today to get clients? If you make t-shirts, that’s not

going to get you clients. A trademark is not going to get you clients. Focus on something that gets you clients and builds the business. And there’s something else: the BHAG, your big hairy audacious goal. Set a crazy goal for yourself: “I’m starting the business today, and in a month I’m going to have five clients.” Wow. When you have a goal like that, every morning you wake up and ask, “How am I going to get five clients? Will a social media post get me a client? Maybe. Will going to this event get me a client? Maybe. Will making a t-shirt get me a client? No.” For example. People get caught up doing the wrong things when starting a business, so focus on the things that will bring you revenue. Who’s heard of the 80/20 principle, the Pareto principle? 80/20? Okay. Pareto’s rule. Not Da Vinci.

Okay, say it again. You’ve heard of it? Okay. One of my favorite books ever is called 80/20 Sales and Marketing. What a great book: 80/20 Sales and Marketing, by Perry Marshall. The 80/20 rule applies to everything in life, and I’ll give you some examples. Eighty percent of the results I get in my business come from 20% of the things I do. What that means is 20% of the things I do bring in 80% of the results. The majority of our revenue right now comes from Google Ads and blog posts. Those two things, that’s it. Eighty percent of the revenue comes from two things. So I need to focus as much time as possible on those two things, and everything else is a distraction for later. When I first launched this business, I knew those were the two most important things. Not social media. Social media

might be important for your business, but for mine it wasn’t. Not this, not that. People were like, “You don’t have t-shirts, you don’t have business cards, you don’t have social media?” No, it doesn’t matter, because Google Ads is the only thing that matters to me right now. So focus on the 20% of things that bring you 80% of the results. Now, it’s hard to know: “David, what’s the 20%? I have no idea.” So it’s important to track everything and feel out what works. “Oh, I went to this event and it worked, let me go to more events. I tried Facebook ads and it worked, let me do more Facebook ads.” Try to find out what works, and then just go all in on it. Okay? 80/20 applies to literally everything in life. Here you go: 80% of what you do will be a waste of time, and 20% of what you do will bring in 80% of the results. In my last few companies, I wasted a lot of time doing things that didn’t bring results, and now I only focus on the things that bring in results. All right, any questions before we get into family business? Good? Okay, cool. All right, so, family

business. Obviously an important topic; many of you have family businesses. I had a family business. This is me and my father at the family business. My dad was always an entrepreneur too. He had a jewelry business in New York; he was a diamond wholesaler. This is me, maybe at 13, going to a trade show in Las Vegas, the JCK show, and working with him in the family business. Back then it was fun, it was cute, I was just helping out. But as I grew up, I asked myself, “Should I work in the family business?” Obviously he wanted me to, but he never pushed me. I have three sisters, and he wanted them to as well. For me, I didn’t love looking at diamonds all day long. And this was years ago, before e-commerce exploded. So I thought, “I don’t really love looking at diamonds all day,” and it wasn’t really for me, but I tried it. I worked there. Looking back today, I could have innovated. Sure, maybe I don’t like looking at diamonds, but most

of our parents are very old school. He had no website. If I were to work in the family business today, I would take it online. I would open up a Shopify site, go e-commerce, go worldwide, sell everywhere. There are things you can do in the family business that don’t involve doing what they’re doing. You don’t have to do what your parents are doing. You can start a side business within your family business. I have a friend who did exactly that. He worked for his dad as a jeweler, started an e-commerce website, and now the whole company sells online. It’s amazing. So you can carve out your own side business in the family business. Always think about that, and always think about how you can innovate. Now, I highly recommend at least trying to work in the family business, because it’s a great opportunity to get real-world experience, obviously. And like I said before, if there are multiple departments, try to work in all of them to see what you love. The cool thing about working in multiple departments is that if you ever want to run the whole company one day, take it over and be the CEO, working in every department is going to

help you dramatically, because you’ll know the whole business, you’ll know everyone, and you’ll know how the whole business runs. Most big companies have leadership programs where future leaders have to work in every department, so they know how the whole business runs. So I love that: try to work in as many departments as you can and find what you love. Also try to see how you can innovate. Are they not online? Can we take them online? They’re not in the US? Maybe I can bring them to the US. There are so many ways you could take the business in your own direction. And there are so many stories of generations of people who took over their parents’ businesses and blew them up even more. Here’s one. Does anyone know what company this is? No? This guy started this company in the late 1800s, and his son said, “Dad, these are really ugly wooden toys. No one likes them. They’re not so good. We should make them plastic.

We should make them plastic.” “No, no, no, no.” Eventually the son took over and made them into plastic, and what happened? It became Lego. If you look here, it says Lego, backwards. The original Legos were wood, and they didn’t do well. The son took over, and everyone knows the story of Lego. Lego is humongous right now, a multi-billion-dollar company. This is the son, and he took over and just transformed the business. So maybe you could transform a business a bit too. I was looking last night, and there are so many examples of people who took the family business to new levels. So don’t feel like, “I need to start my own business because I have to prove myself.” No. You could prove yourself in your family business, for sure. Don’t worry. And I like this one, because when you come into the family business, obviously they have their ways of doing things: “This is how we’ve always done it.” It might not be the best way, and maybe you could challenge

it: “Hey, how come we never did this? Should we try that? I think we should try that.” And the important thing is that when you work for other companies, not just the family business, you start learning from them: “Oh, that business did it that way. I think we should try that.” So always try to change and innovate as much as you can, okay? And work for other companies. Now, I already said this before: your family, your parents, obviously want you to continue the legacy, but they also want you to be happy. Your happiness is the most important thing. Whatever makes you happy, trust me, that’s the most important thing for them too. And a big warning: prioritize family over business. What does this mean? It’s sometimes very hard to work in the family business and work with family. Very hard. Some families do it really well, and some families hate each other. There are so many stories on Netflix now (I think maybe Gucci, whatever) where the families hated each other, sued each other. Horrible stories. Just horrible. And the

business dies because the family didn’t get along. Trust me, it’s not worth it: having success but losing your family relationships. It’s just not important. So maybe you join the family business, but “My parents are so annoying, I hate my parents, they hate me, we’re fighting a lot,” or it’s your siblings, “I hate my brother, I hate my sister.” It’s not worth it. Trust me. It’s really important: family over business, always, all day long, forever. You never want to lose a family member or hate a family member. It’s going to make your life miserable. So, very important. Any questions on family businesses? Okay, awesome. So, personal success. These are the last few slides, with some personal tips on how to succeed personally. Number one: I definitely worked a lot of long hours in the beginning, but I did not prioritize my health, and that was a big mistake in my 20s. When I hit 30 or 31, I burnt out and had a lot of health issues, and still today, six years later, I’m

still trying to get back the energy I used to have. So make time for your health. Don’t just kill yourself, because you will burn out. Burnout is real. Health impacts are real. I was a big tennis player: five days a week, gym, tennis. I hit 22, started working, and stopped exercising. I stopped doing anything for ten years. Nothing. It’s probably the worst thing you could do. Stay active, stay fit, stay healthy. Don’t give up on your friends or family; stay in touch. It’s important, because the more you exercise and the more you stay in touch with friends and family, the better your business will do. You’ll be sharper, more creative, and you’ll be able to last longer. It’s important to think of your business not only as a sprint but also as a marathon. You have to be able to last five or ten years, and you won’t be able to last if you burn yourself out. Very important. Number two, back to your question of where to start: just move. Move fast. Don’t get stuck. Don’t let anything get in your way. Just go, go, go. When you hit a roadblock, plow through it. Don’t get stuck anywhere; just keep moving.

And here’s number three, which I told you about: your MIT. It’s all about focus. You only have maybe ten hours a day, so you must focus on the most important things. And Upwork, outsourcing: delegate as much as you possibly can so you can get more done, faster. Someone have a question? Yeah: B-H-A-G stands for big hairy audacious goal. It’s your big goal: “I want to be a millionaire at 30,” or “I want to have five clients by the end of this month,” whatever it is. That’s your big goal, and we’re going to talk about goals. So don’t burn out. If you lose your health, you lose everything. Another entrepreneur told me this once, and it stuck with me forever. He said, “I prioritize a few things in my life: health, family and business.” In which order? Health was first, over family. Why? He said, “If I don’t have my health, I don’t have anything. I lose my family, I lose everything.” So he prioritized health over everything. For me, health is very

important in my life today too. All right, setting goals. This is something I took from someone else. I walked into someone’s house one time and saw a sign on the mirror in his bathroom: $10,000. I asked, “What’s that?” He said, “That’s my goal, and I need to hit it by April 1st.” It was a goal with a deadline. I said, “Wow, why?” He said, “I want to have $10,000 in my bank account by this date, and I look at it every single day.” I thought, “Wow, that’s genius.” So I did the same thing. I put a Post-it note on my computer monitor: $10,000. I also had it on the ceiling of my room, so I’d see $10,000 every day when I went to sleep, and in my bathroom mirror. I had $10,000 everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, and I became obsessed with hitting this goal. I’d go to lunch with friends: “What are you ordering?” “No, I’ll get the $2 pizza. I just want to save money and hit my goal.” You don’t need to be as crazy as I was, but have a goal. It’s very important. And also have a deadline for when

you want to hit that goal. It can be a monetary goal, or it can be launching my business, building my website, getting new clients, getting an internship, whatever it is, by a certain date. Put it everywhere, because it really helps. Eventually I hit that goal, and then it went to $50,000. You just keep upping your goals, and upping and upping them. This was awesome for me. In my 20s, having goals helped me more than anything else. Like I said, I was a nobody. I can’t believe I’m standing here talking to you. I never had good grades. No one thought I would be here. If I can do it, so can you. I was no one special at all, really. I’m telling you, I never thought I would be where I am today, and if I can do it, you can do it. There are so many people who start businesses even later. I think Ray Kroc was in his 50s when he started McDonald’s. You can start anytime, but right now, you can do anything. You have no idea what you’re capable of. It’s incredible when you commit yourself. I only started

committing myself after college. Even in college, I couldn’t have cared less about school and grades. Only at 22 or 23, when I started working, did I fall in love with what I was doing. So love what you do, follow your passion, work hard, and you can honestly achieve anything. It’s incredible. Anything. Lastly, people always ask me, “How can I be more successful?” The most successful people are the most coachable, and they’re always asking, “How can I improve? How can I get better? How can I do this better?” I just want to call out, sorry to call you out, Flávia: Flávia’s son, Bruno, works with me at my company, and this is why he’s so successful. He’s the number one salesperson in the whole company, out of 15 people. He could walk around with an ego: “I don’t need your help, I know what I’m doing.” But he keeps asking us, “How can I improve? Can I do anything better?” He’s the most coachable. If someone who was lower than him told him, “You should do this,” he wouldn’t brush it away. He’s always learning. You have to

have that mentality. You don’t know anything. Always learn from everyone around you, and always try to improve. This is also a great question to ask your manager when you’re working: “How could I improve? What could I have done better?” Yesterday I did an interview with someone, and someone else was on the call. After the interview, I asked him, “Could I have done anything better on that interview?” He gave me some advice. “Great, thank you so much.” You have to put your ego aside and always ask how you can improve. Okay. Maybe you want to take a picture of this. These are some of my favorite podcasts about business. The first one is really cool: he interviews people who have built successful businesses, and they share all the information. Entrepreneurs on Fire is also really good; I like that one too. And this next one is also really important. These are all my favorite books. There are probably 20 or 25 books on here. I read a lot of books, and this is probably the next big tip I would give you.

I knew nothing when I was 18 or 20. Nothing. And even today, I still feel like I know nothing, because I just learn by reading books. For me, that’s how I learn. Maybe for you it’s audiobooks, podcasts, webinars, YouTube; it doesn’t really matter. Just consume information. You’re going to learn. It’s incredible: you’re in a generation where everything is online. All the information, anything you ever want to learn, you can learn within hours, at the click of a button. It’s incredible. So learn, but also take action. At the end of reading the book or watching that webinar, whatever it is, take action and apply it to your own business. That’s what I would always do. At the end of a book, I would have notes: “These are 20 things I got from this book that I’m going to do in my business tomorrow.” Make sure you also take action. Question? Yeah: how do you find your mentor? Great question. Your mentor can be someone you’ve always looked up to, family, family friends. You just ask them, “Hey, you’ve been really successful.

Can you mentor me? I have some questions. I want to start a business. How did you start yours? Can you guide me along the way? This is my idea; what do you think?” So that’s one. The second way: go to Google and find a mentor. There are hundreds of websites that match you up with mentors. Hundreds. I don’t know how it is in Brazil, but I’m sure it’s similar. In Miami, in the US, we have incubators that connect you with mentors. An incubator is where you say, “I have an idea, I want to start it,” and you go into an incubator program. They help you launch your business, give you resources and connect you with mentors. They have a forum where you can ask questions, or a Facebook group, whatever. So look up Brazilian incubators, Brazilian mentors. It’s easy today; they’re everywhere, which is great. All right, I’m going to skip all these. By the way, there are some more slides in here, and in the slide notes there’s

some more information if you’re interested. So, some final closing thoughts. This was an important one for me: having trust and faith that everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out. If something really bad happened yesterday in the business, which it did, because things always happen, I push it away. It happened. There’s nothing I can do about it now, and it happened for a reason, and it’s probably a good reason. I don’t know what it is yet, but everything happens for a reason. Have faith. It’s so important. You won’t get down on yourself, and you’ll have a much more positive mentality. And this one is important for you: fail early, fail fast, fail often. You’re still young. You have the ability to fail. Failure is good; you’re going to learn from it. Don’t be afraid to start and fail. It’s okay. I failed multiple times. It’s okay. Read books, obviously. Do what you love, find your passion, and you will be successful. And whatever happens, enjoy the ride. Thank you again.