There will be days, especially in the beginning, when you’ll feel like throwing in the towel and simply calling it quits. You will continually get punched in the mouth; you will frequently question whether you have what it takes; and you will likely watch as family and friends lose their faith in you, letting you know in no uncertain terms that they think you are crazy.

But despite all this, I believe that if you can weather the storms and move forward amid the adversity crossing your path, you’ll be in a much better position to win and come out victorious. Regardless of your journey, it’s imperative that to be a successful entrepreneur, you’ll have to overcome adversity and learn how to thrive in times of uncertainty. When the going gets incredibly tough, that’s when you become that much closer to creating transformational breakthroughs. It’s in the struggle that amazing breakthroughs are to be found, waiting to erupt.

Given this theme of adversity, I recently sat down with Lorenzo Marquez, former vice president of marketing for Cosentino and now the founder and president of Marqet Group, a full-service marketing agency servicing the design and construction industry and stone fabrication in particular.

Marquez not only made the jump into entrepreneurship and successfully started his own business, he also overcame an astounding number of hardships and setbacks throughout his journey when the unthinkable happened. Houston-based Marqet Group was growing in exposure, client base, team members and — most important — revenue, he told me. “All of those start-up fears started fading away,” he said.

The team had expanded to ten people in just five months, including graphic and web designers, account managers, copywriters and event and merchandising coordinators. “Things were going the way any aspiring entrepreneur would dream of,” Marquez said.

Then, the night of August 26, 2017, happened. As Marquez told me, “Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas Gulf Coast and completely shattered every sense of security, not only business wise, but also personally as well.”

The next morning, he and his wife and their five children, with the youngest being only three months, plus their dog, had to be evacuated by boat to an apartment complex nearby with very minimal food and water available. The food and water that was available had to be shared by all of the families evacuated from nearby homes. The children were terrified, and, Marquez said, he began to let doubt win the battle in his mind. “My sense of stability and security was shaken to the core,” Marquez said. “The fear of losing everything had now become a reality.”

He and his family experienced the complete loss of their home, belongings, and cars. “Everything was swept away, as our home sat with 5 feet of water inside for close to two weeks.”

Marquez knew that he had to stay strong for his children. Not only was his family counting on him; so were his team members at work.

With his back against the wall, Marquez made sure his family was safe, then turned to his employees and clients. Things were bad there too: His office building was flooded for weeks and employees were scattered, trying to deal with their own losses.

But Marquez refused to put his business on the back burner. Facing the hardest time of his life, Marquez was able to regrow his business and achieve extraordinary heights.

Here are three things that Marquez said he executed on to turn an extreme tragedy into an incredible breakthrough while at the same time growing a majorly successful business. These are three actionable ideas and strategies that you can implement into your own life and business to help you turn failure and adversity into a gift.

1. Feel the fear; then take action.

Fear is real and will always be present in your life as an entrepreneur. If you don’t ever experience fear, that means you aren’t consistently stepping out of your comfort zone and going after your biggest goals and dreams.

Where many people go wrong has nothing to do with fear itself, but with how they react to the fear. As Marquez told me, “Fear attacked me when I first wanted to start my own business; then it tried to completely take over my life when Hurricane Harvey hit. I was more scared than I have ever been in my life, but I also knew that this major adversity carried a monumental opportunity along with it.”

Marquez’s message is, the next time you feel a lot of fear, don’t fight it. Acknowledge that it’s there and then take action. The best way to fight your fears is to use consistent and massive action, even if you feel that you aren’t ready to do that.

Marquez told me, “Looking back on that horrific experience, I can honestly say that the most beneficial thing that I did for both my family and business was to develop the courage to take action despite all the fear that was attacking me.” In other words, breakthroughs occur when you look your fears straight on and develop the courage to take action.

Here are two exercises that have greatly helped me overcome my fears and not let them paralyze me from moving forward.

2. Create a crystal-clear vision.

Vision is everything. If you can’t see yourself achieving it, it will never happen. Not only that, but creating a crystal-clear vision is critical in being able to overcome the short-term disappointments. Marquez told me: “There is no way that my business would have survived if it wasn’t for the clear and massive vision that I created. Every single time I felt like quitting, I pictured my family happy and safe while my business was thriving and serving the community.”

Whether it’s overcoming a personal tragedy as Marquez had to do, or moving forward despite the hardships you encounter in entrepreneurship, a clear vision is the starting point for all high success.

If you haven’t done so already, visualize what your ideal business and life looks like this week. Write that vision down, share it with others, then work the vision every waking moment. There is nothing more powerful than getting clear on what you want your life and business to stand for, then making that that a reality.

3. Develop a strong and positive support system.

Building a business can often be a lonely experience, especially in the early stages. Marquez told me, “I never knew how important a strong and positive support system truly was until my family and I were being rescued by boat when we lost our home.

“As the days and weeks went on, it was the support system that I had developed over the years that ultimately kept me going.” He continued: “It was everyone, from friends and family to customers, who were constantly in my ear reminding me how powerful I am and that my family would without a doubt overcome this tragedy. They really helped me to believe that this negative experience would somehow turn into a positive.”

Marquez is a perfect example of how critical a support system is for entrepreneurs. Not only is building your business daunting and challenging, but that happens amid the hard times of life that also unexpectedly pop up.

The School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo has expressed ideas on why a strong support system is so important and how to cultivate one. Something that has worked exceptionally well for me, personally, is to try to pick one specific support person for each area of my life. I have people to whom I can turn when it comes to business, health, relationships and spiritual support.

The story of Marquez and his family overcoming devastating loss in the face of Hurricane Harvey is just one example of thousands of brave Houstonians who exemplified what true courage and strength look like. Theirs was an example that we as entrepreneurs can all learn from.

What impressed me the most about Marquez’s story is that he didn’t stop growing his business even when he and his family lost absolutely everything they owned. That’s the type of obsession, perseverance and courage it takes to achieve greatness as an entrepreneur.

How has life changed for the Marqet Group since the hurricane? The business just moved into a new 3,000-square-foot office, continues to grow its team and has seen its revenue hit a record high.

The post Turning Hurricane Harvey into a Breakthrough appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

That’s why I’ve compiled a list of the best podcasts for entrepreneurs and executives. You might have heard of more publicized podcasts like The Tim Ferriss Show and Entrepreneur on Fire, but this list covers a wider range of podcasts and includes a lot of new and noteworthy examples, like Powderkeg: Igniting Startups and Breaking Into Startups, that you shouldn’t ignore.

Here are the 24 best podcasts for entrepreneurs in 2017.

Image credit: martin-dm | Getty Images

The post The 24 Best Podcasts for Entrepreneurs In 2017 appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

While this is a bit of an exaggerative description, it accurately captures the common experience that all entrepreneurs share — their journeys as they build something from nothing.

Not all entrepreneurs can relate to high-profile exits, initial public offerings and the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine. Being an entrepreneur is an extremely personal experience that permeates all aspects of life. The ups and downs, highs and lows, successes and failures are all parts of this experience and are what bond entrepreneurs together.

Whether you are an entrepreneur who has taken multiple companies to successful and profitable exits or a first-time founder grinding away through late nights, you all share this journey in common.

And while media tends to highlight the huge successes and massive failures, I often wonder why they miss out on covering the thousands of entrepreneurs who are hustling and living out their journey on a day-to-day basis.

Interestingly enough, within the past month, I came across two online publications that were recently featured on Entrepreneur.com for their Instagram Accounts — HDFMAGAZINE and PRSUIT

While the lineup of all seven accounts is quite impressive, these two brands clearly had an interesting angle.

HDFMAGAZINE (Hustle & Deal Flow), founded by Matt Gottesman, documents the journeys of entrepreneurs (which they call “creators”) from around the world as they’re building their company. In essence, they feature the “hustle” and not the end results of success that many media outlets tend to do.

PRSUIT, founded by Case Kenny, has created an impressive content platform providing “perspective that inspires”. That is, they feature over 400 writers from around the world who are writing about their journeys to success.

I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with the both of them, and in doing so I recognized four key trends about the entrepreneurial journey as inspired by two guys who are personally documenting it.

1. Entrepreneurship is all about the work you put in.

Ask any entrepreneur about his or her journey, and work ethic will surely come up fast. It doesn’t matter where you are on your entrepreneurial journey, consistently and effectively putting in the necessary work is something that all creators and founders can relate to.

Late-night hours, early-morning meetings and weekends are part of this hustle — and is something that unites entrepreneurs.

PRSUIT founder Case Kenny says that “entrepreneurs we interact with pay no attention to the hours they are working. They simply put in the work necessary to progress their visions. When you are chasing your passion, the hours mean nothing  — because you are truly enjoying your journey and know that your time will ultimately pay off.”

2. The journey is something that unites all of us entrepreneurs.

Because we can’t all relate to regular nine-to-five jobs, societal norms or working in environments that suppress our creativity, entrepreneurs do not want to feel alone. We’d rather gravitate towards each other in order to feel our version of “normal,” which is quite the opposite to the general public.

What ends up happening is pure collaboration. We not only support each other, but we share our resources, promote our ventures and introduce our networks.

In essence, we’re not concerned with the end result but the road ahead of us, and we do so by helping each other grow through it.

“Taking a leap of faith takes courage,” says Matt Gottesman. “You don’t know the outcome, and most people are not willing to take that leap. What creeps in are all those negative inputs from others who are not willing to do what you are. So, the next best thing is to associate yourself with people who are — and they will grow you just as you grow them.”

3. The lessons are in the details.

You will never know how to successfully manage a company unless you experience and embrace the finer details of running it. And you can’t do that without fully immersing yourself in the details.

Ask any entrepreneur how they have learned the skills and know-how they now possess, and they will tell you that they learned from doing. Trial and error. Success and failure. That is how you learn.

You learn the skills necessary from the ground level, not just from reading books and studying the craft. Entrepreneurs know this and embrace the experience.

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” Kenny says. “Entrepreneurs check their egos at the door and acknowledge that they don’t know everything. What they do know, however, is that if they try and dive in headfirst, they will find out. Entrepreneurs need to be fearless in their pursuit of experiences that will progress their visions. The only way to know what you don’t know is to try.”

4. The journey is what makes you great.

When media looks at the successes of most entrepreneurs, they’re looking at the end product. The fact is, what made that end product or outcome was a culmination of sleepless nights, daily sacrifices, countless adjustments and numerous character-building obstacles.

A successful person, whether it be an athlete, entrepreneur, actor or business person, is created during all the finer details from the lessons mentioned above. That is why you see the person standing before you. The journey was through the training in order to become great.

Where do we go from here?

With the rise of social media and Internet platforms that allow us to document our endeavors in real time, it would be most appropriate to say we’re heading into a newer storytelling generation of creativity and entrepreneurship.

I, too, find comfort in outlining the day-to-day details in my Instagram and SnapChat accounts (@matt-mayberry). I want people to see the actual work as it’s happening and not think of me as only an end result. It’s about demonstrating the work — and not glorifying my successes.

I believe the more you can document the hustle, the more you can impact others who are watching. That’s how I see serving my purpose.

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur.com

The post The Power in Documenting the Journey appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

Some of the biggest difference-makers to ever live were entrepreneurs. They were creators and self-starters who found a desperate need in the world and came up with a solution to ultimately make the world a better place. Here are three reasons why entrepreneurship is the greatest:

1. There is no ceiling as to what you can do.

There is absolutely no ceiling as to what you can do when you choose to be an entrepreneur. The only person in charge of you is yourself, and that includes your level of achievement and the difference that you make in your industry.

In a company and corporate setting, everyone has job descriptions and has to report to someone. When you make the daring adventure to go out for yourself, you don’t report to anyone but the person looking back in the mirror. In a company and corporate setting, creativity sometimes can be locked down, which can be very frustrating.

Entrepreneurship and changing the world requires extreme creativity at all times. There is nothing in the way as to what ideas you can get working on and how you go about your everyday business. You get to experience the wonderful feeling of being free and most important, yourself.

2. You can make a greater impact.

You can make a difference wherever you are with however much or little you think you have, regardless if you are an entrepreneur or not. As an entrepreneur though, your ability to change the world and create a movement to make the world a better place is extraordinary. A trait of all majorly successful entrepreneurs is creating something that was once missing in the world.

This isn’t to say that everyone who walks down the path of entrepreneurship is going to become the next Albert Einstein or Mark Cuban, but an example of what could happen is your small business has the potential to fill a major void in your local community.

You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to make a difference in others or in the world, but entrepreneurship does give you the opportunity to make a greater impact if you find what’s missing and create something to fill that void.

3. Dreaming is at the focal point.

The focal point of entrepreneurship is dreaming. Without dreams and hopes for the future there is nothing. I have witnessed thousands of men and women who gave up due to the hustle of bustle of life and will unfortunately die without those dreams and hopes realized.

As kids we all have dreams and things we want to do when we get older, but somewhere down the line when we reach adulthood, we start to lose sight of our kid-like ability to dream. Entrepreneurship rekindles that soft spot in your heart and gives you that same feeling as when you were a kid.

If you’re not innovating, dreaming and constantly looking to expand who you are and what you’re doing, it will be difficult to win in the long game in the world of entrepreneurship. Instead of carrying out someone else’s dream, the entrepreneur builds a team around them to carry out his or her vision.

There is nothing easy about entrepreneurship. There will be plenty of challenges along one’s journey, and those challenges never get any easier even as you become more successful.

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur.com

Image credit: Thomas Hawk | Flickr

The post 3 Reasons Why Entrepreneurship Is the Greatest appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

We see a lot of these at the college level. At some point during the college football season, a highly ranked team will go down at the hands of an underdog team. That win will be the talk of the whole country, and everyone will be in shock as the highlights are replayed over and over on ESPN and other networks for the subsequent week.

These upsets during football season should remind us of the simple truth that applies to building businesses, organizations and whole cultures and ultimately becoming more as people: the importance of simply showing up every single day.

The reason why upsets happen in sports as well as business, the reason people fail to become their best version of themselves, is because people forget to “show up” every day. You will always have the number-one or the second-ranked team in the country being beaten by a smaller-division team because that top team forgot to show up that particular day.

Its members will have let their record, their past achievements and the praise heaped on them by the media get in the way of their executing and treating that specific game as if they were 0-0.

The same thing needs to happen when we build businesses, embark on massive goals or improve an area in our personal lives. Showing up every day and treating each new day, project and task as if your life depended on it is a surefire way to make sure you get better at what you do and move in the right direction to where you want and need to be.

Here are two ways to help you make sure you show up every single day.

1. Create a contract with yourself.

This piece of advice really works. I can attest that it has made a great difference in my own life by motivating me to show up and improve upon what I did the day before.

Have some fun with this: Craft a couple of paragraphs stating that you will show up and give everything you have. How you word it is up to you, but just the act alone of crafting a contract with yourself will have an incredible psychological effect. After you craft this contract, you should laminate it and put it somewhere where you’ll see it multiple times a day.

The real work will come at the end of each day, when you have to be 100 percent honest with yourself by looking at your contract to see if you’ve lived up to the words that you wrote down.

I have talked and written about this advice, but a book that I highly recommend for greater detail about creating a contract with yourself is the The One Day Contract: How to Add Value to Every Minute of Your Life, by Rick Pitino, head basketball coach at the University of Louisville (and cowriter Eric Crawford). It’s a phenomenal book that chronicles how Pitino started using a one-day contract for himself and his team before they won their national championship.

2. Pick one key area that you are going to get better at every single day.

When I was a former linebacker, in both college and the NFL, we would always pick one key area to focus on for that specific day. After a couple of months, I noticed what a great impact this was making on me in becoming a better player overall. I then adopted this same practice into my personal life. Every day, I would focus on one key area and put on my list whatever was that day’s focal point.

The results were phenomenal. So much so that I still maintain this habit even now that I am away from football. For example, if you’re in sales, maybe you are working on getting better with cold calls one day, and then the next day you are working on improving your communication or prospecting skills. Whatever you do for work, find one key area to get better at every day.

It’s amazing what can happen a year from now if you pick one thing to work on and get better at each and every day. Over time, you will notice a drastic difference, not only in the results you begin to see, but how you approach each new day.

The reason why this practice works is because it’s not overwhelming yourself with 1,000 different areas you need to work on, combined with your already hectic schedule.

Showing up every single day of your life is critical when it comes to the success of your business, organization and individual success. Just when you think you’ve made it or don’t have to work as hard, someone, somewhere is already gaining an advantage over you and working to surpass you.

Champions show up every day, whether that occurs on the field, on the court or in the boardroom. Showing up may help you be one of them.

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur.com

Image credit: Shutterstock

The post The Importance of ‘Showing Up’ Every Single Day appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

The one thing I love most when talking with them is their stories. I find it amazing how a great majority of people will call them lucky or reference a saying that we hear all too often, “Well, it must be nice,” when in reality for most of them there is nothing nice and easy about what they had to go through to get where they are.

Entrepreneurship can at times feel lonely. Going into business for yourself can feel like you against the world. At times you may be on top, and then in a second you are struggling to put a roof over your head.

I recently sat down with Joe DeFranco, the founder and owner of DeFranco’s Gym in Austin, Texas. For almost two decades, the best athletes in the world have been coming to DeFranco to get them ready to dominate their sport. DeFranco and I didn’t sit down and talk because of the long list of professional athletes that flock to him every offseason to train, but because of the empire that he has been able to build from the ground up.

Here are three things that you can implement into your own business that can help build it into a thriving and successful empire.

1. Be a master of online marketing and social media.

It’s amazing how many business owners and entrepreneurs still don’t fully use the Internet and social media to their advantage. One of the quickest and most cost effective ways to get your name and company out into the marketplace is through the power of social media. A lot of people dabble in social media and content marketing, but not a whole lot actually take the time to master it and really discover its extraordinary power.

When I asked DeFranco how we was able to go from training athletes in a 500 square-foot storage closet and barely being able to pay the bills into the huge international brand that he has today, his answer was simple: “The power of the Internet and learning everything I could possibly learn on social media and content marketing.”

Get serious about not just dabbling in content marketing and the power of social media, make it your personal business to be a master of it.

2. Don’t just follow, but live your passion.

We always hear the advice of how important it is to follow your passion, but following your passion isn’t really enough. You can follow the things you are passionate about, but if you don’t actually execute and do everything in your power to live that passion, it does you no good. Following and living a passion are two completely different things. One is just moving in the right direction while the other is immersing yourself into something that ignites you.

The successful entrepreneurs that make headlines and change the world don’t just follow their passions — they live it every waking moment.

“I will never be outworked and a large part of that is due to the fact that I didn’t just follow my passion, but promised myself from day one that I am going to live my passion,” DeFranco says.

When you live your passion, you give yourself an enormous competitive advantage that no amount of money can buy.

3. Be you.

One of the most powerful characteristics, at least in my humble opinion, is authenticity. The reason why is because it lets your customers, prospects and everyone else out there know that you are real. The brands that forget the human touch or forget that business is and will always be about people are missing a major component of what it takes to win.

Joe DeFranco discovered the power of authenticity when he was outright about money issues because he was doing so many favors for past clients who were retired and struggling but still wanted to train with him.

“Just by me sharing some personal experiences like struggling to pay the bills and really just being myself did more for my brand than any marketing tactic or plan that I have ever thought of in the past,” he says.

Maybe you aren’t struggling to pay your bills, but being able to open the human side of your business will create a brand identity that people want to be associated with. People like to buy from those they trust. The power of authenticity is incredible.

It’s my hope that these three things will help you in the effort of building your empire just like they have benefited Joe DeFranco for so many years.

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur.com

The post Joe DeFranco From Struggling to World Renowned appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, said in an interview: “Kodak or Blackberry — pick your favorite company in the last few years that’s gone from a 100 million market cap to 5 billion. And ask yourself, ‘was playing it safe actually that safe?’ I don’t see evidence of that.”

Even billion-dollar companies need to pivot in today’s world.

A smart pivot can save struggling companies, create growth opportunities in a related yet new direction or be the breakthrough that allows for the domination of an industry. In the dizzyingly fast pace of modern business, learning to quickly adapt through a well-thought-out pivot is essential. Responding intelligently to changing demands allows the more adaptive businesses to flourish.

Pivoting could mean a business changing its focus to something completely new, using research to help identify a fresh target audience or test a new product line. What is most important is that the change is efficient and wise.

Joe Liebke, founder and CEO of LUXPADS, a leading international vacation rental company, describes it as “a directional change that is based on experience and knowledge gained from a previous position.”

A successful pivot lies in a leader’s ability to execute his or her new plan with as much insight and passion as he or she had for the original business. This is exactly the approach that Liebke is taking by pivoting with his new venture Villaway.

Using the knowledge gained from his previous venture, Luxpads, Liebke focused on emerging trends in the way people want to experience upscale travel, essentially creating an AirBnB for the jetset. Rather than letting the opportune moment pass by, Liebke decided that Villaway has to be the leader in the field and dominate the luxury vacation rental marketplace.

So, what are the four secrets to a successful pivot?

1. Timing

You have to listen to what the market is telling you to decide when a pivot is the right move. This is something the self-aware entrepreneur needs to keep in mind. Half the battle with a successful pivot is picking when the time is right.

Liebke says “too many people fall victim to over analysis and they miss market opportunity.”

Reacting quickly is key. All business must change and owners must react if they want to stay current with their audiences and be competitive within their industry. The worst thing for a business is to become stagnant and irrelevant.

In the case of Villaway, the team behind it assessed the situation within the travel industry and felt the agency model wasn’t adequately serving the needs of property owners, managers or the guests. So they created a unique platform that connects the property managers directly to guests. This new approach to more efficiently manage luxury property might be the disruptive model that changes the way things are done.

History abounds with pivots that have changed whole industries. Remember when HBO used to play movies made by others? The traditional model of cable television was dying, so it made a pivot by producing its own content and now it is a juggernaut in the media world. A well-timed pivot can be worth billions.

2. Learn

The ability to learn, or “validated learning,” is one of the key strategies that must be adopted by business owners when pivoting. One of the foundations of this strategy is the need to understand new problems at their core. This helps to guide the business venture.

Luxpads’ experience as an agency taught its leadership the challenges and shortcomings of the current agency model. They knew they could create a viable solution by climbing vertically to a managed distribution business model by controlling the quality of product and partner members via the Villaway platform. Learning from relevant business experience helped inform the decision-making process.

You need to assess what is acceptable risk to make a change, your capacity to make that change, measure the cost and then weigh these against the potential rewards. Relevant experience should also be used to guide future learning. Knowledge is key. There is no excuse for ignorance if you are considering a pivot to a new market.

3. Adapt

A strong business leader is always assessing, measuring and adapting to the marketplace. This is the best way to create sustainable growth when making a pivot. By adapting to the market you place yourself in the best position to take on the new regulatory and financial risk-management challenges that come from rapid growth.

The window of opportunity opens only briefly, so the confidence in your team, resources and ability to execute are key measurements in evaluating a decision to pivot. Adapting to new market developments is the only way to ensure success, especially when timing is a consideration.

The success of a new business model depends on the ability to adapt to fast-changing marketplace conditions.

In the case of Villaway, Liebke says, “Our business puts us in the balance of technology, travel and real estate. These are all very dynamic and change frequently, so we have to pay close attention to all the market movers.”

This dynamism also permeates the tech world, where product cycle development gets faster every day. Instagram used to be a virtual check-in service, but it quickly adapted. Had its leadership stopped assessing their business, they never would have made the change they needed to grow.

4. Ride the wave

Pivoting was originally a sporting term, and many analogies have been made about pivoting in business and sports.

“I would draw the analogy of riding a wave. You have to sense and feel your position in relation to the wave as it is always changing,” says Liebke, a former nationally ranked surfer and surfboard shaper. “If the waves slows, speeds or changes shape, you can pivot off your back foot to reposition yourself depending on your strategy for the ride.”

This analogy suggests the importance of responding to market developments, the feel of the wave, as a catalyst for your decision to pivot. Assessing the right time to make a pivot and how you respond to the wave of the marketplace is then dependent upon having the passion and the knowledge gained from previous rides.

A successful pivot is a dynamic maneuver, leveraged from a previous position that optimizes your momentum and direction for the most positive outcome, whatever the objective might be. This applies to both surfing and pivoting. With a keen sense of timing, learning and adapting you might just make the right pivot and ride a wave to a whole new level of success.

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur.com

The post The 4 Secrets to a Successful Pivot appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

That might come as a shock, as you would expect having a 300-hundred-pound, angry, big and very agile offensive lineman trying to take your head off every single play would be difficult on you. Of course, football, and most sports for that matter, weed out the weak, undetermined and those who have no discipline at all. However, in my eyes, entrepreneurship is the true test of mental strength, guts and courage.

A great majority of entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners fail. We have been hearing that for a while now, and if it isn’t some news source or latest research telling us how hard it is to make it in entrepreneurship — family members and friends are sure to give you their input on how you are out of your mind for even contemplating bringing an idea of yours into the marketplace.

Why is it that most entrepreneurs fall short, or even worse, never even get off the ground? I had the wonderful privilege to chat with entrepreneur, New York Times-bestselling author and mega hustler Gary Vaynerchuk this week to find out what you can do to not fall into the very crowded space of wannapreneurs.

Here are three reasons as to why most entrepreneurs fall short.

1. No faking it

As Vaynerchuk says, “So many want to be experts in a field they never learned, experienced or mastered themselves.”

One of the worst things you can do is enter a space you know absolutely nothing about. Vaynerchuk was in the wine business and learned, studied and practiced what he preached long before he ever claimed to be an expert.

What’s something you’re really great at and actually know a lot about? Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses.

2. Work ethic

This is one of my favorite topics because I have the same point of view as Vaynerchuk on this point. Maybe it’s being a former athlete that has something to do with it, but I truly love the dog days, the work, the hustle. Whether you follow Vaynerchuk on Twitter, Facebook or watch the value-packed GaryVee show, you will know that Vaynerchuk is a major hustler and preaches the importance of having a ridiculous work ethic.

“Way too many people aren’t putting in the hours but want the results as if they’re working 18-hour days for 10 years straight,” Vaynerchuk says. “The fact of the matter is this: Way too many people aren’t reaching their biggest goals in life because they lack in hustle.”

3. Watch the puck

Wherever I go and speak, I always talk about the importance of having a vision and taking the time to get really serious about your legacy.

“There needs to be an aggressive need for anticipation to where things are going,” Vaynerchuk says.

It’s also important to understand that where you are now has absolutely nothing to do with where you can be five, 10 and 15 years from now. Having a long-term vision is what’s going to help you overcome some of the hardship and tragedies that you definitely will eventually experience as an entrepreneur.

Whether you love or hate him, Vaynerchuk is an incredibly successful entrepreneur who we all can learn something from. He understands what it truly takes to dominate the marketplace and take your business to the next level.

I hope you don’t let these three reasons be why you don’t succeed as an entrepreneur. You have what it takes. Be a master of your craft, work ridiculously hard and get serious about where you want to take your business 10, 20 and 30 years from now.

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur.com

The post Why Most People Fall Short at Entrepreneurship appeared first on Matt Mayberry.

Just as a football coach needs to assign specific players to a position, entrepreneurs need to follow suit when looking to grow their business to take things to the next level. Every employee must have a role, and everyone must play their part. The key is to assemble a team that believes in your vision.

I often see entrepreneurs try to do it all on their own. This is a huge mistake. When something means so much to us, we can be hesitant to let others handle important duties or contribute to our masterpiece. However, you can stunt your growth, innovation and sales rate if you don’t start enrolling others in your vision.

Here are three tips on assembling a world-class team:

1. Fully believe in your vision.

It’s incredible how many entrepreneurs and business owners hire people who aren’t completely sold on their vision. This is extremely toxic and will do more harm than good. Whether you are looking to hire full time, or you’re just looking to delegate a project, make sure the candidate fully believes in your vision and where you want to go. Just as a football team needs every single player to believe they’ll win the Super Bowl, you need the same type of commitment and unity.

2. Fill in the weaknesses.

You are the captain of the ship and the main visionary. A big pitfall many entrepreneurs come across is spending an enormous amount of time on activities that aren’t their strong suit. Finding someone who is a master at something you may lack skill in is essential. This not only saves precious time, but ensures a fabulous job gets done. A quarterback isn’t going to handle a kicker’s duties and vice versa. The same goes for you and your business. Stay in your sweet spot and assemble others to fill the other positions

3. Look for the hustle DNA.

One of the worst decisions I ever made when it came time to assembling a team around me was paying too much attention to resumes and overlooking what mattered most, the “hustle DNA,” as I like to call it. You want to be able to form a team of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. The hustle DNA is now one of the first things I look for, because it can’t be taught. My philosophy is if you are a relentless worker who never settles for mediocrity and wants to make a tremendous difference in the marketplace, I can teach you the technical aspects of my business.

Once you’ve assembled your dream team, nothing should stand in the way of advancing your vision.

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur.com

The post Build a Strong Team to Carry Your Vision appeared first on Matt Mayberry.