First of all Thank You for having some interest in this course and I promise to help you attain your goals.
I am glad that my Facebook status – ” I have a goal to make 5 people rich this year” really grabbed your attention. We all have a burning desire to be successful in business or rich so that we can provide for our families and live comfortably. I don’t know how you feel, but I have never believed that one can become rich or build wealth by sitting in a cubicle, or an office for that matter, slaving at a job they don’t really like and are not passionate about. How many company employees do you see on the Forbes 400 list?
The primary path to riches is, and always will be, entrepreneurship! Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Forbes 400 List, most are entrepreneurs, if not families of entrepreneurs.
MARK CUBAN
Now the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and HDNet, his riches came when he launched audio and video portal Broadcast.com with college buddy Todd Wagner. Sold to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion in stock.
MARK ZUCKERBERG
This 25 year old entrepreneur launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Left school for Silicon Valley later that year; bagged an initial $500,000 investment from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel and now some estimates put Facebook’s value at $6B and consequently Zuckerberg’s net worth at $2B.
MARTHA STEWART
Founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, once named the most powerful woman in America by Ladies Home Journal, she started a catering business in 1976, that would later lead to a cookbook and eventually more publishing and TV deals and Stewart is now reportedly worth $970M.
***
Now, these people may seem like gods, working in some other stratosphere, but at one point they were just a regular people like you or I. Mark Cuban was an employee, who hustled from job to job, Mark Zuckerberg was a college student and Martha Stewart was a homemaker. How did they actually attain success? All of their stories are different but what they do have in common is that they took their individual destinies in their hands and took action, created something that people wanted and craved, and made a business of it. They took action because they believed that they could be successful.
I have had the opportunity to be around and work with many entrepreneurs in my life and the one trait that I think is the most important ingredient, that separates the successful from the not so successful, is belief in self.
“Whether you believe you can do something or believe you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
I am sure you have heard this quote before but for me this old phrase stands at the core of my belief system, especially as an entrepreneur. Everything truly begins with you and your attitude towards your life – today and in the future. I also love, in the book, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napolean Hill, the very first paragraph of the first chapter Thoughts Are Things reads:
“Truly, “Thoughts are things,” and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches or other material objects”
If you want to be successful, you have to think and behave as successful people do and for the entrepreneurs like the ones above, thoughts are perhaps the most important ingredients to attaining success or riches. If there is one thing that I want you to remember as we move through this year, it is that all journeys toward success begin in our thoughts; it begins with what we think is possible for ourselves. There are enough people out there who will not believe that you will be successful, the least you can do is be on your own side. Take a look at the picture below, live it, breathe it, eat it for breakfast, snack on it, sleep with it at night, internalize it. We will work on this in the weeks to come.
Courtesy of Ivan Amezcua
With that said, it has been about a few weeks since I put that message on Facebook and I have received great feedback and interest from all of you guys.
I have only posted the responses that came to my wall but there were far more people who replied to me via message on Facebook and my personal email. I know that to some folks the message looked strange, weird or almost foolish but I really meant what I said. I really want to make some people rich this year (or at a minimum start you on the path to unlimited success). Is this possible? Sure it is. Will you be one of those people? Only time and your effort will tell. At a minimum, this un-course and this year will set you on the path to being successful or rich, however you define it for yourself.
So I guess that at this point you may be asking yourself well how are we going to do it. So this is my offer: if you are willing to work hard; be creative; commit to truly believe in yourself, work towards a goal even though other people may think you are crazy, then I will commit myself to helping you achieve your goal. This year you will either start a new business or enhance your existing business.
What I will do here is provide you with the tools to become a successful entrepreneur which includes: start-up advice /guidance, introduce you to stories of successful people, assist you in developing your ideas for a new business or to expand your existing business, help you to model out successful behavior and inspire you to ultimately take action towards your own goals.
What This Is Not About, I Promise!
Just a little story behind my Facebook status: somebody reached out to me soon after that status message appeared and told me that if those people did not make money or weren’t successful with me then I should send them over his way. I can still do that right now, so if you are interested in selling insurance and other financial products to friends and family let me know and I will give you his information. On the other hand, if you prefer to be creative and believe that you have something special to give to the world and would like to try to make a living off of it, then this is something that you will definitely appreciate.
Success is Where Preparation Meets Opportunity
I cannot do much about the opportunity or the timing of that opportunity, but as long as you show a great level of commitment to your success, I will work with you to uncover business ideas that fit your passions, lifestyle, background and resources and as for the preparation, if you stick with this you will be prepared to meet that great opportunity.There is no systematic way to become a successful entrepreneur or to become rich, every entrepreneur has a different story. Some of the entrepreneurs we will talk about and see were homeless at one point, living out of the back of their cars, some never graduated high school or college and some even have ADD or are dyslexic. But despite all of these things these entrepreneurs have been able to fight through to realize great success in their lives. In addition to that they have some similar traits and we will study and try to model those over the first part of this un-course.
What We Will Cover
This is a 52 week course (wow, that is a long time) but it really isn’t, for most entrepreneurs success did not happen within a year or maybe even two years, it happened over several years and probably over the course of several other failed ideas and businesses. The goal of this course is to show you what I know and expose you to the teachings of other successful entreprenuers. I think the best way to learn is by seeing what is possible and what others have accomplished, learning from their mistakes and applying their knowledge to your own opportunities. I promise not to bog you down with theory but show you how things work in the real world with real entrepreneurs. The first 12 weeks of the un-course will be fairly intensive and we will cover a lot of ground (see below) and it may feel like a lot, so go at your own pace but try to keep up with the readings and the assignments. The second part will be customized to your opportunities, resources, level of commitment, stage of business, etc. We will focus on executing on the business idea(s) we generate and vet in the first part of the course, we will launch products and services, start selling to customers and listening to customer feedback and concentrating on earning our first dollar or landing that first client or customer. Please note that there are assignments that you will have to complete in the first part before you are able to move onto the second part of the course, I will let you know which ones are mandatory for the second part of the course.
Some topics we will cover in the first 12 weeks:
- Are You Stupid Enough To Be A Successful Entrepreneur?
- Idea Generation Techniques
- Evaluating Your Ideas
- The Mental Game: Get Comfortable With Being Crazy and Curious
- Studying The Market
- The Numbers Game
- Start-up Strategy
- Get It Out There – Earning Your First Dollar
- Business Plans or the Business UNPlan
- Reigning in Resources
- Leadership
- Managing A Growing Enterprise
We are going to get right into it!
Your Tools:
- If you don’t already have one, open a gmail account. go to http://gmail.google.com and sign up, ask me if you need assistance and I will send you an invitation. We will be doing a few things on Google’s platform including: Your Entrepreneur Journal – “entrejournal” where you will keep your thoughts and feedback on the course and what you are experiencing and ways you think I can improve the course, and your assignments (yes assignments)
- Get a Skype account, go to skype.com and download the software and add me to your contacts – “jareburn” is my username, we will use skype for one-on-one conferencing
Assignment 1:
In a document (powerpoint or word) or by video (4 mins or less) tell me about yourself, here are some items you should include:
- your passions
- topics that you know way too much about (does not matter what)
- if you had your way and money was not an issue what would you be eager to wake up and do
- your work experience – you can include your resume or your bio
- list all of your online links – facebook, linkedin, etc and or personal / business websites
- list your best personal or professional victories – could be landing a big account, making a certain amount a year, completing college or culinary school
- list your favorite people, places and things
- your biggest fears
- biggest hangups
- strengths and weaknesses
- if you know why you were put on this earth you can tell me as well
- why do you want to be rich?
For this assignment feel free to be creative and be as detailed as you can. You can submit it to me at jarel@jarelcockburn.com. Please understand that all the information you submit to me will be held in the strictest confidence and will not reused or sold in any way.
This assignment is meant as a self-assessment and personal exploration, this will provide you with a starting point for your new venture or expanding your existing business.
As always, I live on feedback so feel free to let me know how you feel about the materials. Is there something that you like me to cover that is not on the list above? Let me know if the comments or by email. Don’t like anything I have talked about here, tell me why.
If you are already signed up for the course email list I will be sending extra little goodies for you during the course, so stay tuned. If you are not on the list but would like to participate in the course, find out how here.