Dear Andrew: A Letter to a Young Entrepreneur

Dear Andrew (and to every new and young entrepreneur),

Last week I got this text from you:

Later in the conversation you asked me this: 

Today, in answer to that question, I wanted to write you a letter in the form of a post so you can be prepared for our meeting later today. I also decided to share this post with the world and I'll explain that in just a moment. 

You are one of the young people in this world that I care about the most and so I am going to be honest, brutally honest at times, but it's with the goal of making sure that you have the best leg up on success that you possibly can. I also think that doing things in a public way holds us accountable. It holds us accountable to deliver results.

In this case this approach is two fold:

1. You deserve the best advice of anyone I know. I won't half-ass my advice here, and I'll make sure it not only benefits you, but benefits the rest of the world. There's a lesson here: When you can provide value for free, do it. It comes back to you one hundred times over. 
2. Just as important, you will have something available for the foreseeable future that you can reference as a guide. It won't get lost in email somewhere, or threaded somewhere back in a text message conversation. It will be here, you can print it, and you can look it up in the future and share it with others.

So with that explanation out of the way, we'll dive right into the advice that I'm going to give you. Later today when we meet in person we'll be able to discuss this all. I believe that I write a lot better than I speak, even though I've spoken to thousands of people at many conferences over the years, and they think I do alright, I prefer the option to prepare my thoughts in writing. 

1.0 Introduction: Getting the First Things First

Being an entrepreneur is hands down the most amazing experience anyone can undertake. It's a journey of ups and downs, rapid learning, rapid success at times, and more often than not, rapid failure that can teach you more than any other schooling situation in your life. 

Here are the three first things first lessons that you should write down and focus on. From these points all success comes over time:

1.1 Be Early and Be First

Today I woke up at 3:15 am. I don't always do that, but during any important season of production, or on any important day, like today, I wake up early and get started early. In my personal research I have found that every successful entrepreneur wakes up at least an hour earlier than required, often two or three hours earlier. 

During this time these successful people do the following things: 

1. Exercise
2. Read
3. Meditate
4. Write
5. Complete priority tasks that don't require real time interaction with others

Today that is exactly what I did, and it's what I do every day that I wake up early. I've competed work in each of those five areas already and it's only 5:35 am at the moment. 

Being first is critical in business. The sport of business, according to Mark Cuban, is an never ending game, and he believes it's the ultimate competition. I agree with him. While you don't always need to be first to enter the marketplace (sometimes that is a terrible idea), you do need to be first in the following scenarios: 

• The first to call the lead back
• The fastest to respond to communications
• The first to read about a new technology or business process
• The first one to the meeting
• The first person to solve a problem
• The first person to see the problems coming and create the solution
• The first person to ask for advice and then act upon it instead of doing nothing
• The first person to jump in a do the work

Those are just a few of the things that come to mind when I think about being first. In short, if you wait to long, sometimes to long can be a matter of seconds or minutes, the opportunity to do the right thing will be lost. Someone else has already jumped ahead of you and handled the issue in the right or wrong way. 

Warning: 

Choosing to be first will mean you make a lot of mistakes too. That's ok though, in fact, it might be a blessing in disguise. We'll talk more about mistakes later, but for now, just commit to being first, and don't let the mistakes bother you. Be first. Always be first. Be faster, be better, be smarter, know and do more!

1.2 Stay Ahead of the Curve (learn more than everyone else!)

There are so many valuable lessons that I have learned over the nearly two decades of the entrepreneurial journey I have been on, that it's hard to nail down a few of them, but this one definitely makes the list. Staying ahead of the curve and learning more means:

1. Reading more books than anyone else in your marketplace (or listening to audio books).
2. Listening to more podcasts than anyone else in your marketplace. I recommend you check out Entrepreneur on Fire. 
3. Reading more blogs and email newsletters than anyone else in your marketplace.
4. Watching more videos and tutorials than everyone else in your marketplace.
5. Asking for and getting more advice than anyone else in your marketplace.

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur you have to be a leader. In order to be a leader, you must read, learn, and grow faster than the rest. 

I believe that there is only one leader in every thousand people (if we're lucky). Putting that into perspective that means there are only about 300,000 or so in the United States today and seven million leaders in the world total. 

A great leader is someone who stays ahead of the pack, learns more, serves more, and sets an outstanding example. Leadership is a lifelong skill that you'll have to constantly develop, but as an entrepreneur, you are definitely going to have to be a leader if you want to achieve success.

Action Steps:

Make sure you commit time each day for personal development. Read or listen to a book, podcast, or blog post every day for 30 minutes to an hour. Mix up the content a lot. Learn about: 

• Financial management
• Sales
• Product development
• Legal matters
• Patenting
• Venture capital
• Programming 
• Acting, television, and production
• Broadcast media
• Writing and publishing a book
• Direct marketing (Often called MLM)
• Financial investing

Those are just a few of the things that I read about all the time. There are thousands of more options. Dive in head first and learn everything you can. As you get more adapted to learning all the time, start to speed up the playback of audio and video (I use MySpeed on the computer, and the built in controls of Audible or iTunes podcast player). You should also learn to speed read, it's not that hard, and in The 4-Hour Work Week, author Tim Ferris teaches you that plus so much more valuable content. This will allow you absorb more information faster than everyone else. Be first at devouring the content.

1.2 Constantly Practice Execution of Your Ideas

Last week I was talking to my karate instructor Tony and he shared an idea with me about how he wanted to create a website for car enthusiasts. I won't go into the details here, because it's his idea, and it's not relevant, but I will tell you what I told him. 

After hearing about his idea, I told him a prototype model of the website, with extremely limited functionality would cost around $10,000 and the full blown idea he described would cost at least $50,000 and possibly up to $100,000 to execute well. Tony wasn't in the position to invest all that money himself, but I said something that you should remember: 

"When we are serious about our ideas, we find the money."

That thought leads me to the real point of this section. If you want to be successful, then you must get very good at executing your ideas. As an example of what I mean, I'll share with you one of my products that I started nearly two years ago. 

Copywriter Today

For the past 15 or so years that I have been building websites, the biggest barrier or pain point that I have found with my projects is that my clients have no idea what content to write up for their new website that we are building for them. It doesn't matter if it's the about us page, the services, page, or a simple contact page, often business owners don't have the time, or are very self conscious about their writing. 

Many months ago, I was running a very small mastermind group. I had hoped that dozens of people would sign up for the group, but only three did, and of those, only Lisa from System Savvy Consulting actually engaged in the mastermind. The mastermind was a low performing idea, not a failure in my mind by any means, but a low performer at best if I look at the revenue end of it.

I mention Lisa because she was a huge reason that Copywriter Today took off and she's a fantastic lady to work with. I've engaged with her personally for time management consulting and I highly recommend her when you get to that stage of your business!

As we neared the end of the mastermind I happened to think of an idea after hearing about WP Curve's business model on The Foundation Podcast. I thought that it would be fun to create a business where people paid a low monthly subscription price for myself and a team of writers to write all their content. This would solve the problem that I had faced for years (solving your own problems is a great place to start with business ideas), and it would also provide a recurring revenue stream for my business. Recurring revenue is the single most important financial thing an entrepreneur should focus on in my opinion. 

So now we get to the application part of this point, about constantly practicing execution of your ideas. This is what will differentiate you from the unsuccessful wannabe entrepreneurs and make you into a real entrepreneur. This is what I did with Copywriter Today.

First of all - I got on the phone with Lisa Mallis and pre-sold the concept to her. We'll get into sales more later, but just remember that you should sell an idea, and ideally get paid for it, before you start working on it. Also remember it's so much easier to sell to an existing client than a new one! That's an invaluable lesson in itself.

After Lisa said she would give the service a try, I immediately created a payment form and order form using Wufoo. I launched a website and basically copied everything from WP Curve. As a great coder friend of mine says, good coders code, great reuse. I have taken that line to heart since the first time I heard it sever or eight years ago. 

When I say I immediately created the site and payment and order forms, I mean immediately. I created it and launched it within 48 hours if I remember correctly. Then Lisa signed up and I got to work. I was the only writer at that point, so I turned orders around for the first month or so for every new customer that came on board. 

"Execution of an idea is what makes you successful, not the idea itself."

That is the bottom line. While not every idea I have had has succeeded, none of the successful ideas would be here without definitive and rapid execution. As I write this, Copywriter Today is a six figure a year business that an investor just valued at $350,000. I also have to thank Ryan Cote of WP Amplify and Mark Contorno from Creeklife. They are both huge supporters of all the ideas that my team and I at tEkk3 put out and are still some of our favorite customers today. Thank you guys!

Action Steps:

If you have an idea, figure out how to execute on it quickly. As Richard Branson shared in a post recently, most of his business plans started on a napkin or envelope. Keep your planning simple, execute it quickly, and let the marketplace validate your ideas. Don't be fooled into thinking you have to write crazy long business plans or financial projections. That stuff comes later, after you see if the idea floats.

A final P.S. on this point is that no one will ever remember or focus on your failures, near successes, or near failures, so neither should you. Hurry up and fail at your ideas so you can get to the successful one. Learn from the mistakes, but don't let them define you. They aren't you, they are learning experiences. In my first large business I was temporarily a millionaire and just a short time after that filed bankruptcy for just over a million dollars personally. That mistake has nothing to do with being a successful person. I am successful, not my businesses, so when you encounter small or large failures, remember this. Being an entrepreneur takes very thick skin at times. Don't let failures, or other people judging you discourage you. Do what you have to do to get through all the bad ideas to the few good ones. 

2.0 Entrepreneurship: Creating and Selling Value

Now that we have the introduction of first things first handled, we can get into the day to day life of an entrepreneur. This is where you make the money after you've executed your idea. I'll also touch on more of the idea phase because it's a constant cycle you go through even after having one or many good and financially profitable ideas.

2.1 Where Can You Create Value?

When it comes to being successful, the single most important definition of entrepreneurial success is how much money you have in the bank and are generating on a daily basis from your ideas. In order to generate that cashflow, you have to convince other people, consumers and business owners, to part with their most valuable possessions: time and money. If you're going to do that, then what you're asking them to trade those assets for has got to be incredibly valuable to them.

The good news is that what you're offering doesn't have to be valuable to me, or to the guy down the street who owns a gas station, but it does have to be incredibly valuable to a group of people who fit your customer profile. Remember the story of how I started Copywriter Today? I realized that there was a problem: people couldn't or didn't like to create their own written content. 

In order to test this assumption of mine, I pre-sold the idea to one customer. Looking back I'd recommend pre-selling to a few people at least, but at least I had one customer! Since I had an idea and found that people were willing to give me their time and money to use it, I knew I had created something of value. 

Creating value starts with investing in yourself. That's why learning and staying ahead of the curve are in the introduction here. You can't give what you don't have. So if you haven't been learning anything, how could you create something of value? 

"The single best investment you can make in your business is taking time to invest in yourself."

Remember that quote. I don't know where I first heard it, lots of successful people say it, and it's true. How do you invest in yourself? By reading, but also by gaining experience through taking different jobs early on, and by executing on your ideas constantly. 

Right now you probably don't know what your "destiny" as an entrepreneur is, and that's ok. You aren't going to know what it is until you find it, and the fastest way to find it is to try new things all the time. Right now you're young and without any kids. You don't have to worry about eating SpaghettiOs out of a can or Ramen noodles if your job or business venture fails. You'll survive. I did and so will you. Don't let failure ever stop you from trying to create something that is awesome and of value for the world around you.

You may make a lot of money and you'll lose money as an entrepreneur too, but you can never make the millions that you deserve (and you do deserve them) unless you get out there and try. You also won't go anywhere or create any value if you don't constantly and aggressively invest in your personal growth.

Where can you create value? 

Now that we've talked about what value is, start to think about how you can create value. Right now, even with your limited experience and knowledge, there are a few areas that you have something unique of value to offer. Take time each day to write down your ideas. On the days you don't have ideas, force yourself to think of something, at least one thing. 

It doesn't matter how small, large, silly, or sophisticated the ideas are, write them down. While I am realist and don't tell young entrepreneurs that they will probably become the next Mark, Steve, or Bill of the technology world, it is possible. Anything is possible and your job is to first get good and idea creation. 

Once you have ideas let's talk about them each week for a few minutes. Bouncing ideas of other entrepreneurs is a good starting point. It will save you some time in the important phase of idea extraction and pre-selling to customers. Those are important steps, but very early on, you may waste time if you jump from all your ideas straight to the customers. I can show you some shortcuts and share some experience (wisdom) with you. 

Once I share my insight, your job is to act on my input after taking time to apply it to your own life.

There are two terrible things you can do when getting advice:

1. Do everything the person giving advice tells you to do
2. Do nothing the person giving advice tells you to do

Anytime that I see someone I am mentoring do either of these things, I immediately cut them off. Both routes are terrible ideas. You must take action on the advice a mentor gives you, but not all of it. That would be foolish personally and also would prove to me you're a fool. At the same time, you must not ignore the advice completely and keep coming back for more. This is a giant insult and a waste of my most valuable asset, my time.

This rule is just one of the many contradictions of life and business that you must learn to balance. It's good to recognize this phenomenon of contradictions early on in life so you aren't puzzled, stressed, or discouraged by them. They are everywhere so get used to it and move on. I don't know why and no one else can truly explain why we have them. It's probably to keep things in our giant universe in balance, that's my guess, but who knows.

I've said a lot in this section, but it's all important. Reread it again when you have time in a few months and you'll see more lessons pop out at you. Experience heightens our awareness and helps us learn more from previous resources. The important thing to do today, is take action. Find and idea quickly, and then execute on it!

2.2 Pre-Selling Your Idea

Now that you've nailed down your business idea, there are three critical steps that you should take immediately:

1. Create a Sales Sheet

A one page sheet is the ideal. This sheet will outline with a few short words and simple graphics what you aim to offer your new customers. Use plain language that says exactly what you aim to do. You don't need to be a fancy copywriter to make this work. That fancy marketing language can come later. 

2. Learn a Few Simple Closing Techniques

Recently I have been listening to Brian Tracy. He is an excellent sales trainer. Go on Audible and buy Close That Sale!: The 24 Best Sales Closing Techniques Ever Discovered. It is an hour and fifteen minute presentation that will teach you everything you need to know about closing deals. Here are two keys points to listen for in the presentation: 

• First sell the 10 minute appointment and don't try to sell over the phone only.
• Then do a demonstration of your offering, in person ideally, if not via screenshare or video call.

Write a short script or set of notes to help you present your idea. Sometimes more than a sell sheet is needed, but if so, make it a few pages, less than 10, that explain visually and with words what you offer. 

Practice your pitch a few times by yourself, and then practice with a friend. You won't get it perfect, so don't worry, just make sure the closing technique you are most comfortable with is in there from the Brian Tracy audiobook. 

3. Sell Your Idea!

Once you have learned about closing, it's time to do it. Remember to execute quickly! You're probably going to be scared. There are still times after nearly two decades of presentations that I get nervous, it's a part of the entrepreneurial life, so embrace it and move on. You will never make a single dollar as an entrepreneur unless you know how to sell, so get on with it. 

Sell your appointments and then show up a few minutes early. Be respectful of other people's time, and make sure the core of your presentation is 10 minutes or less. If you've practiced your presentation and get to the closing part, be brave and ask for the sale! That's what the close is all about. 

I'll help you write the presentation and we'll come up with a profitable pricing model, so don't worry about the fact you're selling something that doesn't exist yet. That's how nearly every billionaire in the world made their first sale too, so you're in good company. One part of the presentation that we'll be sure to include is that if for any reason your customer is not 100% satisfied, you will refund their money completely. This does two important things for you and your business: 

1. It lets your customer know that they are not risking too much. You are promising to give them their money back, and since it's in writing, they could also sue you or take you to small claims (which is unlikely, but they could if you didn't make good on your promise).
2. It puts a lot of pressure on you to deliver and do whatever it takes to make them happy. You can't really afford to be out the money and time, so this will make you laser focused on what you have to do next. 

I'd recommend you make somewhere between 10-50 presentations. If you're lucky you'll sell five customers and that's enough to get started. Aim for five customers before you move on to the next step. If you only get one, you can start the business, like I did, but we should evaluate that further then. If you only got two customers pre-sold and you weren't confident the idea was a good one, you can refund the customers before doing any work or spending any of the money, so you're safe there. You'll also want to give yourself adequate time to deliver your solution.

"Always under promise and over deliver."

It's a good rule to live by and will keep your stress levels lower. Stress is a part of the entrepreneurial life, so learn to manage it early on. If you think you need 30 days to create and deliver the solution to your customers, tell them it will take 60 days to give yourself adequate time. In exchange for being an early adopter, offer them a great discount. If you ultimately want to sell your product or service for $500 a month, let them have it for $250 a month. They deserve to be given an amazing deal because they are first investors in your business. 

Once you've pre-sold five customers, it's time to get to work. You've proven that your idea is valid, because someone actually parted with their time and money for it. I cannot over emphasize this point enough. 

"Unless someone actually gives you money, you're idea isn't valid."

Don't ever start working on a new business when a few people say "Yes I'll buy that" and never give you the first payment. You could spend months, or even years, and thousands of dollars on a stupid idea. I have watched way too many wannabe entrepreneurs make this mistake even after I've warned them about it. DO NOT START A BUSINESS WITHOUT PAYING CUSTOMERS! I was laughing as I wrote that yelling line, but it's so true that you cannot afford to overlook it!

2.3 Deliver Your Products and Outstanding Service

Now that you've created your idea, pre-sold it, and have a small amount of working capital to start with, it's time to deliver on your promises. Since you now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your idea is validated with real dollars, you can move forward with confidence and invest your most important asset, your time, into your business. 

It's important at this point to remember a few guidelines: 

1. Focus on "Shipping" the Product

I believe it was Seth Godin, one of the most brilliant minds and entrepreneurs of our day, that said once:

"Ship early and ship often!"

What he means is that you must get version one out there as quickly as possible. Seth was saying this years before The Lean Startup (a very good read as well) became popular. There are some important reasons why you need to get your first version out quickly. Here are a few:

• Giving customers early versions lets them provide you realtime feedback. Feedback about your idea should come from the real end users, the people who invest in your business, so you can make it meet their needs in every way possible.
• If the idea for some reason needs to pivot or change completely, and you're listening, your customers will tell you. 
• You won't get lost in stupid details that don't matter. You'll be forced to focus on the basics and get that done. 

There are many reasons to ship version one as fast as possible, even when it's rough or buggy, so just make sure you do. Deliver early! Even if that means you are making second and third round presentations before you are fully functional. You need this customer feedback as early as possible. 

2. Document Everything as Efficiently as Possible

One of the first books I read about being an entrepreneur is to this day one of the most influential on my career. Today it's called The E-Myth Revisited (a newer version than the one I read) and it should go on your must read now list as well. The author Michael Gerber talks about how technicians, people who do the work, get the "entrepreneurial itch" to start their own company, but they miss the boat on business processes. 

If you don't create processes, systems, and procedures in the proper way, you will simply be a solopreneur who can never scale your business up and truly achieve the great wealth you deserve. One of the best applications of the principles in this book is right in front of your eyes right now. Heather has worked for years to create detailed and outstanding processes at Emeth Gymnastics. Early on I created almost all the technical and management tools you use to this day with her help and now Amos runs the whole operation on a foundation of systems and procedures. You can learn a ton from observing this after reading The E-Myth. It's ironic it's almost spelled the same way as Heather's company.

In my own business life, Copywriter Today is a success because it is all systems driven. We have a team of around 15 people now, and we are able to create a higher quality product than our competitors, at a lower price, and it's extremely profitable for us. This is all due to the fact that I created the business with written procedures, processes, and systems software that cut out the waste, improve communication, and allow me to monitor the business nearly effortlessly. 

While I spend an hour or two a week selling Copywriter Today, I do absolutely nothing operationally in that company. It is truly a cashflow business. As an aside on the subject of cashflow, you must put Rich Dad Poor Dad on your list of reading. It will teach you about wealth and financial management.

Be Efficient

It's important that you create good documentation and systems in order to scale up your business, but I have an important warning: 

"Never let planning and systems interrupt execution and delivery!"

When we get scared, we will use anything to avoid doing the work. Steven Pressfield's book "Do the Work" is an excellent motivational read. It talks about how we are afraid of success. I believe this is true in nearly every entrepreneur. Read that book. It's a short read and will give you tons of ammunition to use against the monster named resistance. 

So when it comes to documenting processes along the way, be efficient, get the work done, and come back to your documentation and systems later. You will be constantly improving them, so get a rough guideline in place now. This will let you bring on your first team member later on with some framework of what they need to help you with.

3. Ship Your Product - Get Feedback

You need to get your product or service live and in the hands of your customer on time, so make sure that happens as soon as humanly possible. Staying up overnight, working weekends, and missing other less important events is what it takes to deliver early on, so do it and get it out of the way. Every entrepreneur has done it, so put your time in and do the work. 

Once you deliver the product ask for honest feedback from your investor customers. Here are some things to ask: 

• What is your first impression? 
• Is there anything you'd like to have us add in the next round of developing our service or product? 
• Is this something you'd recommend to a friend? Why or why not?
• Now that you're using our product or service, what else can we do to help you? Are there additional products or services we can offer? 
• Is there anything at all about this process so far, or me personally, that you want to comment on?

Those types of questions will start the conversation. It's your job to listen to what they say, and then really figure out what they're saying to you. Sometimes people are clear and give great feedback and sometimes they say one thing, but there is actually a more important message in their words. 

Record the conversations if you can, or take notes. Whatever you do, create a way for you to be able to review the feedback now and in a few weeks. Spend time thinking about it and more ideas will come to you. 

Just like I shared before, it's your job to implement some of the feedback (advice) you are getting, and ignore some of it. Don't be foolish on either end of that spectrum just like we discussed earlier. When you implement a good idea, thank the customer and give credit to them publicly when you can. People deserve to be appreciated for the value they give you, and this will bind them to you and your company in a really positive way.

After you reflect on the feedback over time, you'll get more ideas, and you'll get to start this entire exhilarating process all over again!

3.0 Wrap Up

There are so many more things you are going to have to learn on your entrepreneurial journey, it would be impossible to write them all down here, but I hope we'll talk about them someday soon. Here are some notes for the right time:

• Focus on customer retention. It's a very important lesson to learn and awhile back I sat down with Michael Elliott's dad. After that I wrote this post.
• Focus on profitability out of the gate. With the exception of your first 3-5 pre-sold customers, aim for net profits on the product or service itself of 50-70% depending on your industry. It is almost never worth doing a job and losing money. 
• Recurring revenue is king. Read The Automatic Customer as soon as possible and base all your business models around this.
• Take care of yourself first. Without you there will be no business, no paychecks to hand to your team, and no value added to the world. Pay yourself first no matter what. When you are faced with the choice of paying vendors, staff, or debtors before taking a reasonable paycheck for yourself this is an indicator of serious issues in other areas of your business. If this happens, be ruthless and cut out the problem areas and people immediately. 
• Hire efficiently and wisely. Fire quickly. If you want to know how I hire my team, here's a good post that I wrote recently. This brings me the best talent at the best price and saves me tons of time. 
• Automate everything you can. I invest time in this area of my business constantly and I reap the benefits daily. 
• Your friends won't understand your entrepreneurial life. Don't worry. You're fortunate to have a family full of entrepreneurs, so we get it, but other people like going to work, getting a paycheck, and having a ceiling on what they can achieve. Employees will never be owners, don't worry about it. I wish employees understood these 5 things about being a business owner. 
• Have backups of everything and have a backup plan. Bad things are going to happen, be prepared. 
• Always watch your money personally. Even if you hire a bookkeeper or accountant someday, look at your money every day, spot check transactions, be wary. People are people and they will steal from you if bad things are happening to them. It doesn't make them bad people, it just happens, and it's your job to watch out for it.
• Be noisy. If you aren't constantly promoting, selling, talking about your business, and recruiting new customers and staff then, your competitors are going to knock you out. 
• Become a good writer. Leaders need to write in order to influence those around them.
• Become a good public speaker and speak about your business anytime you can.
• Read The Dip by Seth Godin. Know when you're in a cul de sac or just in a dip that you need to push through. Create barriers of entry to be on your team.
• Read MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins. You'll learn a ton and one big take away is that you can live the rich life of your dreams today, you just have to do it. 
• Read every book by Malcolm Gladwell, he will make you a smarter man.
• If it moves, try to make money on it. That's half a joke and half true. Look for opportunities everywhere.
• Read over your writing out loud, it saves errors and will keep you from making a few silly grammatical mistakes.

I'm going to stop now. I've been writing for over three hours and I think that this short guide will get you well on your way to success as an entrepreneur. I promise you that if you follow this process you will fail sometimes, you may even fail frequently, but you will ultimately achieve lasting success as an entrepreneur. This is the shortest and most successful path I can recommend to anyone starting a business. 

I will be here to support you and help you along the way no matter what happens. Learn from your failures, keep a positive attitude, and remember, you are successful independent of a single business or idea. It's your attitude and focused efforts that you can control. With enough persistence, and somewhere around 10,000 hours of learning time invested, you will find what you're looking for. The money, freedom, happiness, and exhilaration that every entrepreneur feels. 

Love always, 

Your brother Gabe

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Gabe Arnold creates affordable long term marketing and technology solutions for businesses of all sizes. He has over 15 years of experience in writing, technology, and marketing campaign creation, and management.

Gabe has worked with over 1,000 startups as well as hundreds of established businesses over the past decade to help them achieve their goals. He is passionate about connecting businesses with the best possible solutions in marketing and automation. Gabe helps business owners like you reach their full potential. Contact Gabe here, or follow him on Twitter.

P.S. We recently launched our content marketing webinar, and I would love to have you attend! It's totally free and you'll learn everything you need to know about becoming a rock star content marketing machine. Register by clicking here.