If I was dropped in a brand new city, and I had to change my name, and no one could Google me, and all I had left was my confidence and my entrepreneurial spirit, here's what I would do to go from zero to multi-million in the first 12 months. On Diary of a CEO, one of Steven Bartlett's favorite questions [music] is this one. >> If your objective was just to become rich now at 33, what strategy would you deploy?
Again, I'm going to take away your contacts. I'm even going to take away everything you know. [music] So, you'd have to go on the journey of acquiring new information.
What would you do? >> So, here's what I want to do. I want to walk you through what I would do if I was starting completely from scratch.
[music] As in, you drop me in a new city, and you change my name. My name's Mark Smith. If you Google me, there's nothing there online.
Now, for starters, this is not some theory. This is actually exactly what happened to me 20 years ago. 20 years ago, I arrived in London.
I knew absolutely nobody. I had to start from scratch. I had a suitcase.
I had a credit card. I didn't have any connections or contacts. I didn't have a name that people could Google.
And I had to start from scratch in London and launch [music] a business. And what happened is 12 months later, we'd done 4 million pounds worth of revenue. I had launched a [music] business, and I'd launched a business in a big way.
In fact, 12 months after we launched, I filled the London Palladium theater with over 2 and 1/2 thousand people. And the following week, we made over 600,000 pounds in 1 week. And that was around 12 months after I'd landed in Heathrow, and it was my first time above the equator in my entire life.
So, here's what I do to this day in the first couple of weeks. So, the first thing I would do is I would schedule a dinner party that would be happening 3 or 4 weeks into the future at a very, very nice restaurant with a private dining area that could seat about 10 to 20 people. And one of my first tasks is to fill [music] that private dining room with as many influential people that I can possibly get to in that city.
I'm going to find those people on LinkedIn. I'm going to find those people on Instagram. I'm going to reach out to them, and I'm going to say, "I'm new to this city.
I'm bringing together a group of very influential people. It's private dining. [music] I'd love you to be there.
You'll meet some interesting people. I'd love to introduce myself, and I'd love to share with you what I'm up to now that I've arrived in the city. I'm probably going to reach out to 2 or 300 highly influential people expecting [music] to get 10 to 20 people to actually book and turn up.
Now, these are people who've spent the last 10 or 20 years building their brand and their reputation in the city. They have extensive networks, [music] and my job is to get myself into that inner circle as quickly as I possibly can. So, [music] my strategy for doing that is a private dining experience.
So, why would they say yes to coming along to that? Well, for starters, it's a nice dinner at a nice location, and it's not just me they're going to meet up with, it's the most influential people in their market. People at all levels respond to the fear of missing out.
No one likes the idea that a nice dinner party is happening with a new person in [music] town, and they're going to be the only one who wasn't there. Now, here's the other thing. I'm doing this with what I call with or without you energy.
With or without you energy means I'm running the dinner party with [music] or without you. I'm inviting people with or without you. You can turn up or not, that's totally fine.
I'm not needy. I've already made a list of 200 to 300 influential people in the city, and I'm just going to be inviting people until I've got 20 people who've said yes. Now, I've actually done this strategy in Dubai, in [music] Austin, in LA, in London, in Sydney, where I've actually reached out to groups of people I don't know, and I've just invited them to a dinner party.
I always pick a nice restaurant with a private dining area, and I start inviting all the most interesting influential people, and [music] guess what? Pretty quickly, they all pile in. Just a quick interruption, I'm running a workshop that I think you want to be at.
It is a workshop on the five-step process for becoming a key person of influence in your industry. There's a reason that we do it live and it's not pre-recorded, and that is because we're going to interact. There's all sorts of workshop activities that we're going to do live.
You're going to get so much value out of this. There'll be a link below. Register right now.
Come and join me for a 90-minute Zoom workshop where I'm going to be live on there. We can interact, do Q&A. It's a lot of fun.
You'll be doing it as a shared experience with about 100 different entrepreneurs from around the world, and everyone gets so much value. You'll be so glad that you did. One of the best things that you do all week, maybe even all year, maybe in your entire life.
Anyway, [music] I'll see you soon. All the best. Now, at this point, I don't have a business or a product idea.
At this point, I'm building an influential network as one of my very first things that I'm doing. What else am I doing? Well, in those first couple of weeks, I have to get some basics in place.
Number one, I need a bank account. So, I'm going to reach out to the biggest, most impressive bank in the area. So, when I launched in London, I opened an account with [music] Coutts Bank.
If I was launching in America, I'd try and open an account with JP Morgan. I'm going to try and get a bank account with a big, impressive, business-focused bank. >> [music] >> And most of these banks, most people don't realize this, but most of these banks have an entrepreneur division.
They actually [music] have an up-and-coming entrepreneurs division where they have entrepreneur events, they have entrepreneur mentors, their bankers are extremely well connected. These are banks that are very focused on getting to know the most impressive and most [music] successful entrepreneurs in any given area. I need to know which bank is most aggressively doing that, and then I need [music] to sign up with an account with that bank.
Now, when I'm doing that, I'm going to ask to meet the entrepreneur bankers. [music] I want to have as many meetings as they're happy to have, and I want to talk to them about who's succeeding, what ideas are working, what are they noticing. I want to find out as much information as possible, and I want to see if they want to invite anyone to my dinner party, [music] and I'm going to invite my banker to the dinner party as well.
In fact, they may even sponsor it. Depends on how good I am at pitching at that point. The next one is I want to do the same with an accounting firm and a law firm.
In every city, there's an accountant and a law firm that is very focused on entrepreneurship and growth and investment. I'm looking for lawyers and accountants that are very used to working with investment, working with entrepreneurs, working with the top angel investors. [music] They already host events, they already have good great networks.
I want them to know that I'm the new kid in town. Okay. Now, at this point, I've spent absolutely no money.
It costs no money to reserve a table at a restaurant. >> [music] >> It costs no money to open a new bank account. It costs no money to get on the books with a lawyer or an accountant.
At this point, I'm not spending any money at all. I'm just building the relationship and I'm opening up and becoming a new client with all of these providers. Now, here's where I might spend some money straight away.
I'm going to look for a membership organization. In every city, there is a private members organization. Could be a golf club, could be a polo club, or a tennis club.
Could be a private dining club, could be a private members club. There's going to be an exclusive members club and I'm going to put my name on the list to join that exclusive members club. I want to find out where do the investors and the entrepreneurs who are succeeding already meet up?
At the very, very least, it could be a co-working space that is the top co-working space where you'll find the best entrepreneurs [music] co-working, but ideally it'll have a bit of a social element to it as well. It probably has pools and tennis courts or something like that. That's [music] where I'm going to meet the right people.
So, what am I doing? Step one, I'm just laying foundations for my network. I want to have in my network, I want to have people who are already succeeding.
[music] I want to have uh people who can help me to succeed. I want suppliers and service providers, but I want to have that network of people who are successful entrepreneurs and successful investors [music] and I want to start moving and shaking and getting those people in a room with me. Now, there's a psychological element to this for a lot of people that they don't feel that they belong in these rooms.
And guess what? 99% of people have that exact same feeling. And here's the funny thing.
[music] As soon as you start organizing a dinner party, as soon as you start showing up to a private bank ready to open an account, people assume that you're the 1% of entrepreneurs who does belong in that area. So, [music] as soon as you start moving in these circles, people accept that you belong in these circles, especially if they've never heard of you before. So, I'm going to be meeting people at a dinner party in 3 weeks from now and I'm meeting all these interesting people and of course they're going to ask me, "Daniel, what are you here to do?
What business are you setting up? " So, I'm going to need four things that are very, very important when you're launching any business. I'm going to call these four things chaos.
Concept, audience, offer, sales. I need a high-level concept of what I do and how to pitch that. I need an audience that I'm trying to get [music] in front of.
That's the ideal customer persona. I at least need to have a basic idea as to my offer. What is it that I'm going to be selling?
How much is it? What sort of packages are available? So, I got to put together an offer, and I have to have some sort of a sales process or a sales pipeline so that I can take early registrations of interest if people are interested in signing up to that.
So, [music] chaos, concept, audience, offer, sales, those are my first four things. Let's break it down. The first one is concept.
[music] I've got three tests that I think about when I think about a good concept. I call it passion, problem, payment. Passion is is this something I'm drawn to?
Am I interested in this? Problem, is there's something that I think I can solve or add value to [music] in this space? And payment, is there an available budget?
Is there available money to be spent? Am I talking to a customer who's got money? And what I'm trying to do is find a good balance because if it's all about the money, I'm going to come off as an opportunist.
If it's all about the passion, I might come off as a struggling artist. The best business ideas combine passion with [music] payment with a problem that needs solving. So, that's what I'm looking for.
I might use AI tools to help interview me and answer questions about that. I might go and ask some of the people that I'm meeting about what they're noticing and basically try and fine-tune some opportunities. Right, I'm going to approach it from all three angles.
I might just think, "Okay, if I'm only interested in the money, what are the big money things at the moment? If I'm only interested in the problem, [music] what are the big problems at the moment? If I'm only interested in the passion, what am I the most passionate about at the moment?
" So, I'm going to have to do a bit of work to come up with that concept. I'm going to use AI to help me synthesize that into a business concept. [music] Now, once I've got that concept, I'm also going to produce using AI a business plan, a financial forecast, uh a market analysis, all of that sort of stuff.
I'm going to get AI to spit out all of that so I've got the basics of what it is that I'm going to be building. >> [music] >> And then finally, I'm going to work with AI to perfect my 30-second pitch so that I can pitch my concept when I'm meeting all these people. >> [music] >> So, audience is about having an ICP, an ideal customer persona, and the type of audience that I want is an audience that has money to spend.
I want to make sure that I'm talking to a high-value niche market. A niche market is a specialized market [music] that has money to spend because they're either high earners or they have existing budgets that can be redeployed to a better solution. So, my ICP could be scale-up software companies or my ICP could be dental clinics or my ICP could be the top financial planners in any given location.
The third thing is to create an offer and the way that we create an offer is by creating a brochure. AI can help me with that as well. I can actually create [music] a version one of a brochure.
I can ask AI what is it that my ideal customer wants to achieve? What outcome are they looking for? How could we package that up into a solution?
It doesn't really matter if I can deliver it at this point. I just need to be directionally correct [music] that I have an offer that would be right for that ICP and that I've packaged that up into a slide deck, a landing page, and a brochure. So, I'm going to put together an an initial offer and the offer could completely change over the next couple of weeks, but I want to have a starting point.
And the S stands for sales process. So, we've got concept, audience, offer, sales spelling chaos and we've got the sales process. Now, the sales process for a new venture is nothing more than a wait list.
A wait list is that people join the wait list or fill in the expression of interest. They answer between five and 10 questions and that way they're on the wait list. And one of the things that I'll do is I'll just follow up and have conversations with people as I'm trying to figure out what it is that we're up to at this particular moment.
What I'm not doing here is I'm not setting any of this in stone. These are all what I would call directionally correct decisions, [music] right? I'm just moving in the right direction so that I have a vague description as to what I'm working on.
Now, if I'm a little bit vague, most people assume that I'm a little bit vague simply because I don't want to reveal everything that I know and that I'm in what would be called stealth mode and they assume that I know a lot more, but I'm saying a lot less. And you know what? That's fine for them to think that.
Even if I don't know a lot more, they they're not going to assume the worst about me. They're just going to assume that I'm sharing a little bit of the time. And that's totally fine at this point.
Step three is I'm going to have a a party and there's a couple of things that I want to achieve at my dinner party. Number one, I want to put together a high value board of advisors. I want to have some key people of influence who associate themselves with me and with my business.
So, the board of advisors is going to be one of my major pitches that I'm going for. I'm going to be saying, "Hey, look, we're going to be doing this thing that [music] relates to data centers. I'm looking for a board of advisor.
I'm looking for people who would end up being in paid roles within my company. They may get shares, they may get cash and day rates. " But what we're going to do is put together a really high quality board of advisors.
Anyone who knows anyone within that space, I'm really looking to put together a board of advisors for this particular project that I'm launching. The next thing that I'm trying to achieve off the back of my dinner party is some key roles on my team. So, the board of advisors fills in a role called the key people of influence.
That's myself and the other people who are the senior people, the associate key people of influence that I'm going to enroll. But I also need someone who's going to be my head of growth. I need someone who's going to be my head of product or what I like to call delight, which is creating a product that people love.
And I'm also going to need someone who I call my head of performance. I used to call my head of operations, but I've given these new names now that represent these roles. So, I've got the key person of influence or the key people of influence.
I've got someone in growth, someone in performance and someone in delight. At the center of all of this, we're going to have AI that runs everything. So, we're going to have a virtual team, couple of people who are the key people of influence on the board of advisors, someone in growth, someone in performance, someone in delight.
I'm putting together that team. As soon as I've got a credible team, my goodness, are we away. At this point, it's very sensible that I could be talking to investors.
If I need investors, I could be raising money. I could be doing strategic joint ventures and partnerships. I've got someone who can open doors.
I've got someone who can seize an opportunity and run with it. Things are starting to take shape. Now, at this point, people are asking, "How much have you spent by this point?
" Well, we actually have hardly spent anything. We might have spent some money in joining a membership. We might have spent some money hosting a dinner party for 10 to 20 people, which could be a grand or two grand and maybe that could even be sponsored by the bank.
We might have spent some money just opening an account with a bank, which could be a couple of hundred or maybe even a thousand dollars. Not huge amounts of money. All I'm doing at the initial stages is that I'm getting people to sign on so we can put their name on this so that we can get the funding, so that we can launch the business, so that we can start getting customers.
So, we're all working together to either raise investment or do a launch campaign, and everyone gets paid once we launch or once we raise investment. Now, a lot of people put their name to something if it's a really cool project without the money up front. If they feel confident that this is going to get across the line, they're excited because there's money, there's shares, there's all sorts of reasons why they would actually just put their name on it at this point.
I'm doing most of the work, but I'm putting together a team where I've got some names and faces on my team. Now, keep in mind the first people I put onto the team is the associate key people of influence. And the associate [music] key people of influence lend credibility, which is why a head of growth would join, why a head of performance would join, or why a head of product or delight would join.
Also, these people might agree that they're willing to do half a day a week initially, or they're willing to [music] have a team meeting once a week. Initially, they might say, "While we're in launch mode and startup mode, we're committing ourselves to three or four hours a week, and we're going [music] to get paid when we launch. " A lot of inexperienced entrepreneurs think that you have to hire an amazing team, and you have to pay them all up front.
Simply not [music] the case. Even if you did hire someone, it's typical that you pay them at the end of the month anyway. So, you've actually got 30 days before you have to pay someone.
Depending on how confident you are, you could even raise the money in those 30 days. And here's the other thing. The reason I feel confident about this is cuz I've been doing it for the last 20 years, and that's the point of this video.
To share with you what would I do if I've got the confidence, or what you might do if you've got the confidence. I'm not sharing with you what someone who doesn't have the confidence would do. I'm sharing with you what I would do if I had nothing but the confidence.
Okay, step four is I want to have a launch event. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to schedule 90 days into the future that I'm going to have a big launch event, and the launch event is going to be online and offline. So, I'm going to have an online version, I'm going to have an offline version.
And [music] the goal is that in the online version, we're going to get something like 500 to 1,000 people show up to an online live event. And the offline version, we're going to have something like 100 to 1,000 people show [music] up to the uh live event. So, we're going to have a big launch because when something's launching, people get excited about it.
They get They want to know what's happening. And in the 90 days leading up to the launch, this is where I can start to engage people. I can get people to join wait lists, I can get people to uh buy tickets, I can get affiliates to start promoting the launch event.
Um all of those sorts of things. Now, one of the things that I've done in the past is [music] once we've gotten clear about the offer as to what we're going to launch and what we're going to offer, and once we're clear about the ICP, I will do deals with joint venture partners and affiliate partners. And I'll say this, I'll say, "We're having a launch event, and tickets are $100, but your people can have tickets completely for free, and any one of your people who shows up, we will pay you the $100.
" So, they can attend for free, they don't have to pay for the ticket, and that $100 that goes to you as the person who invited them along. Now, people lose their mind for this offer because if they invite 1,000 people, they can earn $100,000. I personally would be pretty happy to spend $100,000 if someone want is willing to put 1,000 people in a room.
Now, the one thing that I always put into the deal is I put it into the deal that depending on the size of the affiliate payment, it will be a period of time that we can pay that, [music] and it's dependent upon us being able to sign them up as a client and get the cash flow going so that we can make cash flow payments. So, I tell people that we're going to do this up front. I tell people, [music] "Here's how it's going to work.
We're going to have about 100,000 worth of affiliate payments. We're going to pay those out over the next, say, uh 90 days, and then we'll >> [music] >> make payment one in 90 days, payment two will be 90 days after that, payment three will be 90 days after that. " So, we're going to be paying people out uh quarterly as the money [music] comes in.
And the thing I've found is that on a good deal, people are happy to do those kind of deals. Not everyone's happy to do those deals, but if I talk to enough people, I'll find enough people who are happy to do those deals. One of the reasons that the launch event will also fill up is because of the associate key person of influence.
If I've got a good group of people who are the associate key people of influence as speakers, as panelists who are going to be there, a lot of people are going to show up. So, if I can get the right people there, that's going to create the buzz. The other thing that I might want to do is find a really good big-name speaker.
Now, with that big-name speaker, I can also attract sponsors. Because once you've got a big-name speaker, you can find sponsors. So, I'm not the only person who wants to be in a room with all these people.
That bank might want to be in the room, that accounting firm, that law firm. Uh there might be all sorts of other non-competitive organizations that would also like to be part of my launch event. If I know that I have to spend $10,000 on a speaker, I could have four sponsors who each put in three grand, and now I've got [music] some money for speaker, and I've got a little bit of money on top as well.
So, I can get the whole ball rolling with a few sponsors who come in because they've seen the quality of the speaker who's going to be there. [music] Step five, a bit of an optional step. Depends if you want a lifestyle business or a performance business, but this would be to get some investors.
If I do get investors, I'm creating a valuation that is reflected in the value of the shares. So, for example, let's say I raise $500,000 for 10% of the business. That means that if I also want to allocate another 10% of the business to other people such as influencers, speakers, associate key people of influence, if I do that, I've already established that 10% of the business is worth $500,000.
So, there might be five amazing people that I want to do a $100,000 contract with. I could now say, "Hey, look, we can give you $100,000 worth of shares at the same valuation as our investors come in. " So, now I've used 20% of the equity of my company to get $500,000 worth of cash and 500,000 worth of services that I want to have in the business as well, and I still own 80% of the value of the business.
So, there we have it. There's the first 3 to 6 months if I'm launching something new. I've got myself into a network of high-value people.
I've found myself some associate [music] key people of influence. I've got a few people on my team. We've got a launch event.
We've got some sponsors. I'm part of a membership or a network, a good place to meet people. I might have brought on some investors.
I might also have enough sales to launch the business without but you get the gist. These are the first things that I'm going to be doing in the first 3 to 6 months. And you also get the gist that you don't [music] have to spend a lot of money if you've got things like clarity around the vision.
If you've got clarity around your concept, your audience, your offer, your sales. If you've got credibility in the form of key people of influence. If you can pitch yourself like a key person of influence.
Now, the whole purpose of this exercise is not to say that you could do this. It's to say that I could do this because I've got the confidence to do this. I've done it enough that for me this seems like a pretty easy plan.
Some of the people who look at this will say I could never do this and that's totally fine. What that means is that you need to build the confidence. You need to be around an environment where this stuff becomes the normal stuff to do.
Now, here's what I want you to do. I want to invite you along to one of my live workshops where we talk about positioning you as a key person of influence who would have that confidence. Give you the pitching skills, publish some content, build the name and reputation around you.
Get some associate key people of influence who sign on to be part of your business. >> [music] >> Right? Some of those things would be really, really powerful.
You may not want to do all the things I just talked about but you could do some of the things that I talked about that would help move your business forward. So, if you'd like to come and join me for a live event, come and ask questions, learn a little bit more, there'll be a link below. It'll be a live event.
It's coming up soon. Click and register and I look forward to seeing you there. All [music] the best.
