This past weekend, I attended the Thrive: Make Money Matter conference in San Diego. I’ve come up with a list of things and my top 3 actionable takeaways:
- I got to meet Michael O’Neal, host of the Solopreneur Podcast. He was a great guy to chat with, I told him I wanted to be the Solopreneur Hour/Smart Passive Income/etc. for Asian Americans with EntreAsians. He said he liked that name better than Asianpreneur and introduced me to another Asian podcaster and entrepreneur.
- It was so humbling to meet so many successful entrepreneurs, but also very encouraging to me to see the ones who were still struggling to even start, and ones that were so very unhappy with their current corporate job. It made me feel good about about being one of them who actually left the corporate world but also motivated me to help them get to my point and beyond.
- I almost ran over Pat Flynn in the hallway. I wish I had, because then I could’ve stopped and got a selfie with him!
- Malcolm Gladwell take note: I feel like the average height of the big shots at this conference were shorter than average. Michael O’Neal, Pat Flynn, Tai Lopez, even Cole Hatter were my height or shorter. In the book Outliers it showed taller people were paid more in the corporate world. I’d like to think in this world, physical image is less important than results.
- The people at this conference were much less “linear” than the people I’m used to being around. They’re hustlers, fly by the seat of the pants, think outside the box types. Which can be good, but can also be annoying. Speakers wouldn’t follow a script and ramble for an hour, it was never close to being on schedule, lunch wasn’t long enough, and they would do last minute ideas. The staff and volunteers no doubt had to scramble like crazy to implement some of Cole’s last minute ideas… I would find him hard to work with. That said, give credit where it’s due… they pulled off a great conference. It’s probably just that I sit somewhere in between corporate stiff and all-over-the-place entrepreneur.
- Pencils of Promise, the charity the event was benefitting, has a great model. For each $25,000 you raise, a school is built. You get your name on the plaque. It gives people a very concrete goal with concrete results.
Top 3 Actionable Takeaways:
1. Make Money Matter. What it means to me: Get EntreAsians going as a purpose driven business.
“Make Money Matter” was the theme of the event. Since we’re all entrepreneurs or want to be, we need to make money. But why not bake a cause into the business model to make the world better? Cole Hatter created the event in honor of two of his friends who passed away too young, to help others achieve their goals and help the world become a better place. The classic example is Tom’s shoes, which donates a pair of shoes for every shoe purchased. For me, this is EntreAsians, which helps Asian Americans find fulfillment through entrepreneurship.
2. The Time Multiplier. Do things that will save you time in the future. What that means to me: Look at outsourcing some of the tasks that I have not done or take up my time that would bring value to my business.
This was a talk by Rory Vaden, author of Take The Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success. The low hanging fruit for this may be hiring help for running my Amazon store. I recently came across a service called Freeeup, which is like Upwork except they’ve already picked out the best candidates. When I signed up, the CEO of the company talked to me for 15 minutes. Now that’s hustling. I’ll start by giving them a try.
3. Remove things that you’re tolerating or annoying you. What it means to mean: Clean and organize my work area and apartment.
Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books gave this thought in his 2 hour talk, and the best tip he gave was regarding not being able to find scissors when he needed them. He went out and bought a dozen scissors and put them all around the house.
The conference was worth going to, and I got a lot of knowledge and inspiration out of it. Hope to see you all there next year!