Episode 373: Seeking Investment for Your Startup
When launching a new startup, seeking investment can be a key factor in success. This allows for a more personal investment and can help kickstart the business.
In this episode, Adam and Jamie answer 10 insightful questions related to business challenges. From seeking investment for startups to building an authentic brand and navigating tough economic climates, Adam provides quick, sharp, and valuable responses in 30 seconds or less.
Gain essential tips into various aspects of business, including marketing, sales, and growth strategies.
Show Highlights:
- Seek investment for startups from family and friends initially, then consider approaching banks.
- To get ahead of the trend, avidly consume information and stay updated with industry news.
- Don’t let a saturated market deter you from starting a business; focus on finding your niche and target audience.
- Embrace challenges while growing a business by staying passionate about your work.
- Building an authentic brand involves being true to yourself and appealing to your target audience.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: Welcome to shotgun business questions. And what we do here is we take your questions and we answer them on the podcast. So perhaps you haven’t submitted a question, but where this is going to be awesome for you is you can broadly expand your business knowledge Very, very, very quickly to allow you to understand all sorts of different areas of business, whether it is finance, struggles, personal brand, marketing, sales, and so much more.
[00:00:28] Let’s jump in. We’ve got 10 amazing questions from our network that we’re going to dive into. I’m going to answer every single one of them in 10 minutes. 30 seconds. So 30 seconds to give you some amazing answers. Let’s jump in. See how it goes.
[00:00:43] Hi everyone. So today I’ve got Jamie back with me. Uh, this is his second or third episode he’s done with us. Now he’s gone and crowdsourced these amazing questions. We’re going to be answering them in 20 to 30 seconds. I’m in the very, and Jamie’s got a timer in front of them. So we’re going to give quick, sharp, fast 30 second answers to your business challenges.
[00:01:03] Make sure if you’re a new watcher and you haven’t watched before, You can get your questions on a future shotgun business answered by commenting them right now. Any challenge you’ve got in a business will help solve. In the meantime, Jamie, let’s jump in what we got, buddy.
[00:01:16] Jamie: Yeah, for sure. We’ve got so many great questions that have come through.
[00:01:19] And the first one at is where would you go and seek investment for a new startup?
[00:01:24] Adam Stott: So in a new startup, and we’ve got the timer running. Uh, first people, when you are an early business and no one knows you, and you’ve got no track record, the first people that are gonna give you money are the f and f, the family and friends.
[00:01:34] So you’re gonna go and talk to your family. You go and talk to your friends, you can tell ’em about your idea, and hopefully they’re gonna back you. Now, if f and f is off the table, you’ve got no friends, you’ve got no family, I feel for you. Right? Hopefully you have. But if they don’t want to invest and you don’t want to get them invest, because that’s too messy, then the next step is the banks.
[00:01:51] You’re going to have to ask the banks to back your business. And there’s two, well, there’s three options in 30 seconds.
[00:01:56] Jamie: Amazing. Now the next one ad is what strategy should we consider to get ahead of the trend?
[00:02:02] Adam Stott: Hey everyone. Hope you’re enjoying the podcast. We’ve got a free training that I’m doing right now online from the comfort of your own home called stand out brand.
[00:02:11] What this does is it shows business owners how to get noticed on social media. stand out, get more leads and get more sales. So if you want to make more money in your business, head over to Adam stop. com forward slash SOB. That’s Adam stop. com forward slash SOB and join us on the free three day workshop.
[00:02:33] Stand out brand strategy. Should we consider to get ahead of a trend? Well, it depends on what trend. It could be a market trend, a sales trend. It could be a million different things. Uh, but one thing you can do if you want to be ahead of the curve, Is you can do what Warren Buffett does and he reads for five hours a day every single day.
[00:02:51] I mean, you could go on Apple news and literally read 25 newspapers, headlines every single day. What’s going on in the world, especially the world of business and find great ideas. There’s a good tip in 30 seconds. Amazing. Now the
[00:03:02] Jamie: next one from one of our listeners is she’s saying, I’m just starting up.
[00:03:06] Everyone says I’m going into something that’s saturated. Should I listen to them?
[00:03:11] Adam Stott: Um, really, really good. The bottom line is it doesn’t matter if it’s saturated a lot of the time because they say that you’re going to be a personal trainer. There’s millions of personal trainers out there, but it’s the personal trainer in front of you or local to you or someone around you that you’re going to use.
[00:03:27] When you talk about saturated, it matters at a broad scale. If you’ve got ambitions for your company to be a, uh, A four billion pound company, then a saturated market is going to be difficult. But if you are looking to do a hundred thousand a year, then saturation doesn’t matter. So depending on the size of your business, it is a concern or isn’t.
[00:03:44] And as a startup, it’s not so much of a concern.
[00:03:46] Jamie: Okay. And question for ad, what’s been the biggest struggles that you’ve experienced while growing big business events?
[00:03:53] Adam Stott: Well, I’d actually say the, um, Growing this business, big business events has been an easier business to grow, and there’s a lesson in that.
[00:04:00] I’ve had multiple other businesses, businesses in marketing, businesses in automotive, businesses in servicing, businesses in paint work. What I like about big business events is I love the business. I’m passionate about it. So yeah, of course, there’s been challenges, challenges like building team, challenging like getting known, challenges like building brand and all the usual challenges.
[00:04:19] But the difference is, if you love what you do, it doesn’t really matter. Cause you too much for a challenge and a problem. So I’m going to say do what you love. Exactly. And now question
[00:04:27] Jamie: five, how do you build an authentic brand? Okay.
[00:04:31] Adam Stott: So,
[00:04:31] Jamie: so
[00:04:32] Adam Stott: a big one, get the timer, right? Better get the timer on to that because it’s more than a phase.
[00:04:38] How do you build an authentic brand? I think the authentic part is it’s just be yourself, just be who you are and people, some people will love that. Some people will hate that and that’s okay. And this whole point of building a brand is that a brand appeals to um, your people, your people that you want to reach and it doesn’t appeal to others.
[00:04:57] So I think the answer to that in a very short space of time is just be yourself. Don’t pretend to be anyone you’re not. Just be yourself and live your, your version of you and your best version of you. Now another
[00:05:07] Jamie: question that you don’t want to go too broad in but how do you succeed in business?
[00:05:12] Adam Stott: Oh, these are like, I mean, 30 seconds, how do you succeed in business?
[00:05:17] I’ll answer that in five seconds for you. Find someone that already has and get them to tell you how to do it.
[00:05:22] Jamie: Yeah, nice. That
[00:05:22] Adam Stott: is like the only answer. That is the bottom line, because otherwise you can spend a decade guessing. And that’s the whole reason this business exists, to help other people. Other businesses out there not to have to go through the process of trial and error.
[00:05:35] That’s basically why we exist because, um, I’ve done that trial and error thing. It’s very difficult. It’s very, very painful. Nine out of 10 businesses fail. And if you work with somebody that knows the path, you don’t fail.
[00:05:47] Jamie: Great answer there, Ed. And, uh, I completely agree with it all. Now, number seven is name the most common reasons, reasons that businesses don’t grow.
[00:05:57] Adam Stott: Okay. So the most common reason businesses don’t grow is they don’t know how to market their business. And if you don’t understand, well, first of all, it’s marketing. If you don’t know how to market your business, that’s a big, big, big problem. Because you never can break free from referrals from repeat business.
[00:06:12] So marketing is one. The second reason businesses don’t grow, because some people figure out a marketing, and I know great businesses that figured out marketing, but they don’t figure out people. So they don’t then learn how to scale a team. All right. So marketing and people is very, very important. Then sales and then marketing.
[00:06:30] Then cash, then execution. All of these different things lead on to one after the other, but we’re going to run 38 seconds already. So this is a bit longer, but the bottom line is marketing is what gets your message out there. People help execute on the message. And of course you need cash to keep growing and grow further and further
[00:06:48] Jamie: and building a strong branding aspects around that and everything else.
[00:06:51] Absolutely. All right. What do you got? What do you got? What do you got? Eight add is when delving deeper into a niche, and do you really feel like you need to dive deep into a niche? Do you feel like a niche is important to
[00:07:03] Adam Stott: have when selling products? So this simplify this because there’s a lot of confusion around, uh, niches and a niche or whatever you want to call it.
[00:07:12] But the bottom line is what we’re looking to do. People buy from people. They’ll always buy from people and you’re selling to people. So it’s better to first of all, start off with an identify. Who is the person that I am looking to reach? Who is this product or service that I’m going to create going to be amazing for?
[00:07:30] And that’s where I would like to start now that goes layers deeper. So first of all, one layer would be business owner. The second layer would be service based business. The third layer would be medical clinic service based business. And now we’re three layers deep and you can keep going deeper and deeper and deeper into those layers.
[00:07:50] But you have to essentially settle where your product and market match becomes perfect. So if you go perfect medical doctor for perfect product for medical doctors, fantastic. And then the only question is, is that market too small to allow us to grow to the ambitions we want to grow to? bit longer than 30 seconds, but got the point across the thing, right?
[00:08:12] And also
[00:08:13] Jamie: diving into the problems that they have, what solution you provide for that and digging deep into that. So moving on, what are your top three do’s and don’ts for live video? 30 seconds
[00:08:25] Adam Stott: for both then. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go. Sorry, for live video. For live video. Oh, live video. Okay, great. Pretty simple.
[00:08:31] Do engage, right? Make sure that you’re talking to the audience like I’m talking to you right now and make sure you leave us some comments about what we’re doing, even though we’re not on live video. Secondly, do look through the camera and instead of speaking to the camera, speak to the person on the other side of the camera.
[00:08:48] So as I look at the camera, I don’t look. Uh, the camera, I look behind the camera and I see Sally. I see Dave. I see the people I’m trying to help. I think it’s another really good one, right? Uh, do, uh, make sure that you, uh, we’ve said engage, uh, do make sure you smile. That would be my third one. Actually.
[00:09:04] You’ve got to smile. You’ve got to be friendly. Um, very, very important to put a smile on and make sure that you’re in a good mood before you, you go and start your filming, because that’s going to come across, you know, if you’re not in a good mood, you can often tell. So that’s very, very important to make sure you do those three things.
[00:09:20] God, that was longer than 30 seconds, wasn’t it? Don’t. Three don’ts. Okay. Don’ts would be, um, don’t, uh, sit there, um, without any energy, it’s energy, right? So don’t come to it with low energy. So you need to make sure you’ve got higher energy. Uh, what you are like on camera, um, does not come across. So you need to be 10 times more animated than you think you need to be to actually make an impact.
[00:09:46] So don’t be sitting there like this, expecting the message to come through the camera. Don’t use crappy audio. Audio is important. Nobody wants to watch a video where they can’t hear what’s going on. It’s flickering in and out. Uh, and, and don’t go and do it with a dodgy internet connection. I mean, that’s another typical, but if you’re cutting out every five minutes, no one’s going to listen.
[00:10:07] So I think they almost went a minute each. Obviously, if that wasn’t a shotgun question, could have probably added a lot more value in that place. But if you want to hear more about video, Uh, video presenting content creation. Tell us in the comments and we can work on that too.
[00:10:20] Jamie: Yeah. Amazing. And some of those don’ts, would you feel like there’s some things that you’ve maybe tripped up on in the past with you?
[00:10:25] Oh, I’ve done all the mistakes. Yeah,
[00:10:27] Adam Stott: every single mistake that you can imagine. And, and of course, no one’s perfect. You’re always a work in progress. I think the most important do. is get started.
[00:10:37] Jamie: That’s the
[00:10:38] Adam Stott: most important do. Um, and, and do get started without worrying about the don’ts because you’d be better to do it badly than not to do it.
[00:10:45] So version one is better than version none, as we would say. Yeah. Make sure
[00:10:49] Jamie: you’re always fighting forward and moving forward with it. Absolutely. Last but not least, the question here is finding, finding this economic client climate very hard at the moment as what we are selling is non essential. How do we find the right potential clients?
[00:11:06] Those that might have a bit more money to spend than those living on the breadline.
[00:11:11] Adam Stott: That’s the first thing I’d say, put the timer until we’re there. Uh, first thing I’d say is you, you cannot ever blame the economy for what’s going on in your business. It’s proven, it’s physically proven that the richest companies in the world have started in the hardest economic, economic times.
[00:11:27] So the best companies in the world. So you don’t, you can’t blame the economy. First of all, that’s a mindset. Uh, why is this economy economic challenging times? Well, for some people it is, for some people it isn’t. So you have to have that mindset of, I create my own economy. That’s the first thing. And you do.
[00:11:43] That’s why you’re a business owner. A business owner says, I create my own economy. And they go out there and they make things happen no matter what is going on in the economy. And they are creative because an entrepreneur is a creator, first of all. And that’s actually my main concern with the question, because if someone’s going, well, if the economy is a problem today, the fact you had no time is going to be a problem tomorrow.
[00:12:04] The fact that you didn’t have the right people is going to be a problem the next day. The fact you can’t get the right staff is going to be a problem the next day. If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me. So that’s my first tip that I would say you’ve got to go and you’ve got to make it happen no matter what the economy is.
[00:12:18] And the second part of the question is how do I find the right customers? Well, you need to aim big, go after your top people, go out there and draw up a top 50. These are the top 50 companies, the top 50 people, the top 50 brands that I want to be working with, and you need to go and attack them. And you need to keep talking to them, keep going after them until you get them.
[00:12:36] Which again is the case if it’s meant to be. It’s up to me. Focusing on their magnetic message, expressly to draw in those particular types of people. I think if we were able to do this in longer than 30 seconds stints, I mean that was longer, then we can talk a bit more tactical, but I think the shotgun business is bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, but we can certainly talk about how do you build and craft amazing messages on the next, on another episode and tell us in the comments if that’s one that really appeals to you.
[00:13:01] Good stuff, so yeah, are we all done there? Look, that is our shotgun questions for today. Uh, we’ve answered 10 really good questions from the audience. These questions are coming from your comments, from your emails in. If you’re, if you’re in a place where you can’t write a comment because you’re driving, maybe you’re in the car, you’re listening, you’re on the treadmill, if you are, good for you, running, right?
[00:13:23] And you can’t ask the, ask the question. What you can do is you can drop a podcast question in, by email to info at bigbusinessevents. co. uk. That’s info at bigbusinessevents. co. uk. And you can ask your question and you’ll get covered on shotgun business. And we’ll be able to help you. If you’re an avid listener, we really appreciate that.
[00:13:44] We appreciate the fact you keep coming back, keep listening. Let us also know in the comments, do you have a challenge? Do you have a problem? Do you have a fear? Do you have an observation? Do you have something that you could do with a little bit of helping? If you do, it’s best to participate because remember the people that participate the most get the most.
[00:14:03] So go and tell us in the comments or drop an email in. We’ll be more than happy to help you. And I look forward to seeing you. On the next episode of business growth secrets podcast. Thanks Jamie for being on today. Been amazing. Hi everybody, Adam here, and I hope you love today’s episode. Hope you thought it was fabulous.
[00:14:21] And if you did, I’d like to ask you a small favor. Could you jump over and go and give the podcast a review? Of course, I’ll be super grateful if that is a five star review. We’re putting our all into this podcast for you. Delivering you the content, giving you the secrets. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please go and give us a review and talk about what your favorite episode is.
[00:14:41] Perhaps every single month, I select someone from that review list to come to one of my exclusive Academy days and have lunch with me on the day meeting hundreds of my clients. So if you want that to be you, then you’re going to be in with a shout. If you go and give us a review on iTunes, please, of course, do remember to subscribe.
[00:15:01] So you can get all the up to date episodes, peace and love, and I’ll see you very, very soon. Thank you.