Episode 10: The Top Five Mistakes that New Veteran Entrepreneurs Make

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

Good afternoon, this is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul Podcast and this is episode 10. I sit here and I'm in Southern California right now and I'm looking outside and it's absolutely gorgeous out. Beautiful day and it's a beautiful day to be alive. We're coming up here on Memorial Day weekend and there's going to be a lot of families out there celebrating, celebrating the onset of summer, celebrating the warmth, celebrating family, but most importantly celebrating the memories of our brothers and our sisters that we've lost in defending this country. And I at least I hope that that's the mentality and a lot of people have a problem with celebrating that weekend, and I don't.

We live in a fantastic country here and people want to enjoy themselves. People want to have a good time. They seek excuses to do so. And so if they want to, then fine. Let them do it.

Don't let it bother you. And if you're having a good time out there, for you. Enjoy being alive. Enjoy being here. Celebrate your brothers.

Celebrate your sisters by living your life. And by enjoying your family, embracing them. And by having one of those awesome moments this weekend, and when this Monday comes around, if you want to raise a glass to your brothers, if you want to raise a glass to their memories, then do so. But above all, think about why you're here. Think about why you're still on this earth.

You're here for a reason. You're here because you still have work left to do. That could be a lot of different things. You might have an impact on somebody's life. You might be here to invent something.

You might be here to come up with a new idea. But the only way you're going to do any of that is if you decide to do it. What are the things that I've been trying to move into, given the success of Warrior Soul Apparel, and the fact that I myself, all my life to decisions I've made as far as becoming an entrepreneur. I want to give something back, and I'm going to start to give you guys some of this knowledge here, because I have a lot of veterans coming up to me and asking me about business. I have a lot of veterans who are asking me about starting their own businesses.

And I think one of the things that we have to start doing in this community, more than anything, is spreading knowledge. Providing tools so that we as a class can succeed. So that we as a class can become better. We all have to gain some experience in these departments, so that we're able to become stronger. So that we're able to have a bigger impact on ourselves of course, and in helping out our brothers and sisters in arms, but also in helping out society.

A lot of us believe in a life of service, and for many of us the idea of starting your own business and becoming an entrepreneur isn't service. It's something you do for yourself. It's something you do to follow your own dream, and for a lot of you that's that's pretty alien. Because you know I talked to this one Marine Corps veteran one time that I was coaching as far as setting up his own fitness business. And one of the big problems he had was that he never planned to live past the age of 25.

That's all he ever thought about. You know he he didn't expect that he was going to survive. And I think a lot of us had that mentality. But the fact of the matter is we're here. We're on this earth, we're living.

And because we're still breathing, we've got an obligation to live. It's an obligation to those whose lives were lost. It's an obligation to our brothers who wouldn't want us to be living lives without purpose. And this is why I think entrepreneurship is something that could really help the veteran community. Because what it does, it's not a secret to becoming rich.

Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of work, a lot of suffering that has to happen, a lot of growing that has to happen in order for you to become successful. It's not an instant get rich quick scheme, and it's not some self help secret or anything like that. But it is a way of living life according to your own rules, making your own fate, grasping a hold of your own destiny, and allowing you to live your life as you see fit without having to depend on anybody else, without having to trade your time for money, where you're not going to be able to see your family, where you're not going to be able to do things like read or put time into yourself to improve. It's a way of grasping a hold of your life.

And I consider it a gift. Knowledge about entrepreneurship is a gift and I learned a lot of this the hard way. You know I've had my fair share of failures and I had my fair share of difficulties. I've screwed a lot, I've screwed a lot of things up. But it also allowed me to get out of a place where I was living in my car, where I didn't have anything or any body.

And it taught me that regardless of what kind of problems we have, we are always in control, whether we realize that or not. We are always in charge of our own destiny. We make the decisions that decide our future. And so even if you don't become an entrepreneur, even if you don't start your own business, I hope that some of the lessons that I give you here today and some of the lessons I'm going to give you here in my future are going to help you out. I've started a new website that's under the Warrior Soul brand and while my clothing website is called Warrior Soul Fitness at warriorsoulfitness.com, this one is called warriorsoulecommerce.com, and I'll put that in the show notes on the Warrior Soul Fitness site so you guys can take a look.

There's not a lot up there yet but I'm going to be adding more and more information week by week. And I'm going to give you everything I can, all the knowledge that I can for free in that blog, and in my weekly newsletter, and in the free ebooks that I'm going to give out. I'm also going to be putting together some classes. I've got two classes in the queue. One's a free class called Ecommerce Basics, and that's basically going to teach you how come to up with your own business ideas.

How to start to think about your website, what you're going to want in it, and how to identify markets that you can work with. And the reason why I put this class together is because there's a lot of you who really want to get into business. There's a lot of you who really want to become entrepreneurs. But at the same time a lot of you are having hard times figuring out ideas. Well, I'm going to teach you how to use your own experience, experience that you've had already in order to begin to think about what you want to do for a business.

And then the second class I'm going to put out is a class on building. It's going to teach you how to build your own online business from scratch, and how to do it with the least cost possible to yourself. There's a lot of predators out there that are going to try and get you to spend a lot of money on web development and on marketing. And I'm going to teach you a lot of the things that I learned over my time. I'm going teach you some things that I've learned from making my own mistakes and uselessly spending money on things that business didn't need.

So I'm going to teach you how to create your business from scratch, how to bootstrap yourself, and how to get something going that's going to contribute to you fulfilling your dreams, while also giving you something that you love to do every day, and that you'll love getting out of bed in the morning to do. So those of you who are interested in that stuff, you can check that out. I'm gonna put a link to a sign up page on the show notes and if you guys want to check that out you definitely can sign up for my free newsletter. I'm going to send you that free class and I'm going to send you my free eBook. And then on top of that one of the other things I really want to do here with this podcast, with my YouTube channel, and with my blog is to give you guys more stuff as it relates to fitness.

A lot of us, we think so much about the future, about our family security, about being happy, but none of that can happen unless we're in good health. And I spent an enormous amount of time as a personal trainer and a nutrition coach researching things that can help all of you. And this is not something I'm looking to charge for. What I'm looking to do with this is to spread health and fitness amongst the veteran community. So a lot of the things that I used to do for a living, like putting out videos on fitness and nutrition, like creating programs and things like that.

I'm going to start, I'm going to start putting a lot of this stuff out for free on the Warrior Soul blog and on the Warrior Soul email list and on this podcast. And so this Tuesday I am going to be interviewing two doctors who've worked with something called the ketogenic diet. And if you didn't know, there's a lot of research and experimentation going on right now that's looking at the way that hormones and insulin impact veterans in their recovery from things like PTS and traumatic brain injury and depression. And so be on the lookout for this show because there is going to be a lot of information for you there. On top of that I'm going be putting out a blog on five different things you can do with your own fitness and nutrition that can lessen the impact of lessen the symptoms of TBI, PTS and depression.

And that's going to be out this weekend along with a little video. So my main mission again with this company is to get you all to live your best lives, and I want to start doing more things that are going to allow you to do so. And any suggestions that you guys ever have, please hit me up on the live chat on the Warrior Soul Fitness site, I'm always there, or you can just hit me up on email at info@warriorsoulapparel.com. Let me know what you want to hear, let me know what kind of shows you want me to do, and I will do those for you. Today what I want to talk about, and we're going go back to business for a second, is five mistakes that veterans make in starting their own businesses.

The reason why I want to do this is because I have so many veterans coming to me telling me they want to start their own online businesses, they want to start their own brick and mortar businesses, and they're looking for guidance. Because there is information out there on the web, but a lot of it's highly disorganized, and it's really hard to find set steps and things that are actually going to give you the advice you need to avoid the mistakes that you can make in starting your own business that can cost you tons of money, and actually cost you your happiness. Because when you get into entrepreneurship you put your life into it. And this is something that I think a lot people don't understand. In this society where we expect everything to come quickly, a lot of people think that entrepreneurship is a key to getting rich.

It's really not. There is so much work you have to put into it. There is so there there's actually a lot of suffering you have to do to do it. Where you are going to be in the process of learning a new craft, right. You might already be good at the technical function of what you're performing, right.

So you might be the best gunsmith in the world, you might be the best personal trainer in the world, you might be the best financial analyst in the world, but there's a whole series of different techniques that you have to know in addition to your technical expertise to actually be a good business owner. You know things like marketing, things like managing your business' money, things like creating content and engaging your customer and understanding what the customer wants. And a lot of people don't understand that when they get in a business, think of it in terms of the employee mentality where you're just good at your job and the business will come. You'll get your paycheck every month. It doesn't work like that.

You've got to really be reaching out to your customers and providing a really good customer experience to all of them. So these are just five different things that I've come across, that I've experienced as a veteran entrepreneur, and that I've seen from people who've come to me. And the first one is this, you've really, really got to decide if you're going to be a charity or a business. Now, especially recently with the two wars that we fought, and all the new veterans coming home, everybody wants to help. Right?

So every business that veterans own seems to have some sort of charity component, and I've done that too. But what I've learned is that you have to decide whether or not you're a charity or a business. And the reason is because when you start a business it's going to take more time than you think and it's going to take a lot more money than you think to become successful. It's going to be a while before you can earn enough revenue to even pay yourself, let alone giving out money to a charity. And so the biggest thing I can convey to you is this, you can donate money.

You can give money to charity. You can help the cause. But first, if you're a business, you have to decide that you are going to make a profit. Profit. You have to go out there and you have to make that profit first.

Once you're making a profit, then you could donate your money to charity. Then you can donate a percentage of your income to charity. But first and foremost you have to give that business some lifeblood and that comes in terms of funds. If you don't want to become a business owner and you don't want to make a profit, then what you could do is you can open up something called the 501c3 and that's a federal designation, a tax designation for an organization that is charity. They have specific tax benefits to open up that specific organization.

And those types of organizations do not make a profit. They donate any additional money that they make off of their activities to charities. And so that's something that you can consider. I don't have any experience opening up a five zero one(three) but there there are places you can go and look on the IRS website that can help you do that. And that's perfectly honorable if that's what you want to do, but you have to understand that that's not a business, that is a charity.

If you're opening up a business then you are specifically, by definition of a business, looking for a profit, and that's what you're going to pay yourself off of, that's how you're going to live, that's how you're going to keep the business alive. And the other thing about profits is this, probably in the first three to five years of being in business almost all of your profits are going to go toward improving that business, toward growing that business. That means they go back into marketing, that means they go back into hiring personnel to help you, that means that they don't go to things like buying cars or you know buying material objects that you're not going to use in your business. The big reason for that is that you have to understand one) that any money that you spend off of the business that isn't going to growing the business that's not a business expense, the IRS is going to take a huge chunk of that. So you've got a plan on spending at least a third of what you earn on taxes.

And if you've got a good accountant you can find ways of writing a lot of things off. But those two things, one, find a good accountant, you're gonna need one. And two, making sure that you're putting the money back into the business so you can grow, so that you can scale. So that eventually it's not just you running the business and you trading your money for time, but you managing, guiding, leading the business so that it can grow, so that you can do more good. Like donate more money to charity, or create jobs.

And if you ask me about where the need is right now, I'll tell you this, I think that there's a lot of really good charities out there for veterans. Some are better than others, and we've seen a lot of that in the media. What we really need right now are jobs. What we really need right now are people who are willing to act mentors. For veterans who want to learn about business.

For veterans who want to gain experience. And so if you can do something where you can hire more vets and you can teach them what you've learned, then that's going to help us in addition to all the great charities out there in the long run. That's going to help us to become stronger. That's going to help us to become more experienced and it's going to give us a better footing in this society and allow us to have more say. One in our own fates because we're going to have more veteran business owners out there, But two, in giving us a greater presence on the national scene.

It doesn't help us when there are so many unemployed vets out there. It doesn't help us when there are so many veterans out there who are looking for work who can't find any. And the more on the job experience we can get these guys, the more we're hiring these guys, the more we are contributing to the productivity of this great nation, the better off we're all going to be. So the big idea I'm trying to suggest to you here is that don't shy away from creating your own prosperity. Because when you're in a good place in life, when you're in a better financial state, when you have a business that's very successful, that's when you're going to be able to help more people.

That's when you're going to be able to hire people. That's when you're going to be able to mentor people. That's when you're going to be able to contribute your knowledge and give away some of the things you've learned to help our brothers out. I think that a lot of us shy away from trying to do something good for ourselves, because we think it's selfish. Because we think that that's greedy.

But the reality is that this country is highly based. Well it's entirely based on the capitalist system, and we know the capitalist system to be the best system for providing freedom, and for providing individualism. And if that's what we believe in, then we have to practice it ourselves. And we have to show that it is the best system. And we have to use our prosperity, use our success to help others. But the only way we can do that is if we can find success in the first place. And this is going to lead me into the second tip that I have. And this is the second thing that I see as a mistake amongst new veteran business owners, and that is this. You've got to provide really, really, really good content.

You've got to provide really good knowledge, really good value for your potential customers if you want to succeed in today's s world. You know we're undergoing an amazing revolution in business right now, and that's almost like an information revolution. You're listening to this podcast and you're listening to it entirely free of cost. And you're gaining whatever value this podcast provides. When you watch a YouTube video by me or by anybody else, you're watching that YouTube video for free and you're gaining the value off of that.

When you look at Instagram, you're going through Instagram and you're either getting entertained or you're gaining some knowledge from looking at those posts. My point is this, if you want to succeed in today's business environment you need to be creating content that is going to give your customers some value. What I've been seeing a lot from new business owners and from particularly you know accounts in the veteran community, is this kind of tendency to not do anything original. If you look through Instagram and you look through the military category accounts, I think about, I'd estimate about 80% of them are accounts that claim to be accounts for Special Operators. Operators.

Now if everybody in the military who is a Special Operator was operating one of these accounts I'd be a little bit worried about the War on Terror and the War against ISIS because I don't know what these guys are doing, but I know that most of these accounts aren't actual special operators. They're people who are putting operator stuff on the accounts and a lot of it's really fun to watch. You know we get a kick out of that kind of stuff. But at the same time, what kind of value are we giving if that's all we're giving out? Why not do something different?

Why not do some motivational stuff? Why not do some educational stuff? Why not do some things where you're actually going to be teaching people over your Instagram account? Know, why not do something more than funny military memes or or you know trash humor? And again I love that stuff just as much as you guys do.

I sit here and laugh my ass off sometimes at some of the memes out there, and I've put some memes out there like that myself. But at the same time what I figured out is that if we aren't doing something to give value with our accounts and value that's a little bit different from what everybody else is doing, then we're really falling into the crowd. And we're not differentiating ourselves and we're not giving potential customers any reason to follow us. We're not giving anybody any real reason to follow us except to you know sit there and entertain themselves for a few minutes. And that's fine but I'm starting to see you know the same meme about 10 times in a row through different accounts.

What it is, is that people are copying each other's posts, reposting them, and some of them aren't giving any credit, some of them are. You know, and it's fine if you're re sharing somebody's post, if you're regramming somebody's post, but if that's all you're doing is stealing memes off other people and then reposting them on your own page, you're not doing anything to stand out. Get creative, you know, give them some value, give them some nuggets from your own experience, right? If you've got a fitness account, give original fitness tips, show people the things you're doing, right? If you've got a clothing account, well you probably don't want to put out knowledge about printing shirts, but maybe you can give some knowledge about things you've learned by being a business owner.

Maybe you can give some knowledge about things you've learned about productivity, about living your life. You know, maybe you can give something out there that's going to help somebody to live a better life for themselves. Give, give value, give knowledge. And if you are looking to entertain then be original. You know, I look at Ranger Up's Facebook page all the time and they're my competition.

I absolutely love that brand. I think they're awesome. Nick Palmisciano is one of my idols, but I can't be them. I can't imitate them. I can't do the same things they're doing, because then that wouldn't differentiate me and my brand.

Right? I also look at a lot of awesome Instagram accounts. Jahadi Fields, one of my favorite Instagram accounts on Instagram. He's got some awesome funny stuff up there. But again, I can't beat him and I can't repost everything he's doing.

So if you're out there and you're trying to sell something, and all you're doing is reposting, rethink it man, you know. Get in there and get creative, right. Figure out something else you could do. Come up with your own humor, come up with your own jokes, and come up with your own value that you can provide. And if we do that, then one, you're gonna have a better business, you're gonna have better loyalty amongst the people who follow you.

You're gonna have people who are willing to sign up for things like your email list, where you're going to have a lot more control over your marketing. And you're going have people who are going to become a lot more loyal to your brand. I get emails from veterans every day about the knowledge I provide and about the things I've done. And that's worth more to me than selling a million shirts. Right, I didn't do this to become rich, did this to do something I love.

And of course I have to make money doing it, but at the same time that's not the only reason why I'm doing this business. I could still be in the fitness business and making more money. I made a lot more money as a trainer. At the same time, I didn't love it as much as I love this. So if you're doing this, the more creative you are, the more value you're putting out, the more love you're gonna have for your customers, and for what you're doing.

The third thing I want to talk about is studying those who have already found success. If you want to be in business and you want to get into this crazy entrepreneurial world, what you're going to find is that this is the closest you're ever going to come to being parachuted behind enemy lines with nothing but a folding knife. And I'm serious about that. No, it's not combat. It's nothing like combat or anything like that.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that when you get into a new business and you become an entrepreneur, it's like stepping into a job with absolutely no support whatsoever from anybody else except for yourself. The only way that you're going to find the knowledge that you need to get through is by willingly going out there to find it. That means you have to read. You got to read interviews from people who are in your industry.

You know I've read almost every interview that Nick Palmisciano has done. You've got to look at what they're doing, you've to study their websites, you've got to read books about people, read biographies about people who've been in your industry, you know. When I was looking to learn about e commerce I read the biography about Jeff Bezos, The Everything Store, and I basically examined everything that Amazon did because they're the best in e commerce. I read the Shopify blog daily, I've read hundreds of books about e marketing, about internet marketing, about creating sales letters, about developing sales pages. And that's how I learned how to do this.

Don't have a business degree. I, you know, my degrees are all in political science, international politics, and the school of hard knocks, you know. I know everything there is to know about fitness and nutrition from my personal training experience, but everything I've done in business has either come from experience or by reading about other people who've done it. While I think experience is one of the best ways you can learn anything, here's the thing about experience. If you only learn through experience, then you're gonna make a lot of mistakes.

You're going to find that you're going to be spending a lot of time and money trying to fix those mistakes. But if you study others, if you simulate through reading their stories, then you can figure out what a lot of those mistakes are going to be, right, and you could save yourself a lot of time and by avoiding those mistakes, because there's somebody out there who's already gone through them. You know, when we think about battle, right, and battle leadership, General Mattis is an avid reader. He kept a copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations with him at all times while he was in command. He had a reading list that all of his officers were expected to read prior to the invasion of Iraq, and that reading list contained stories of prior military and that occurred in that area throughout history, and stories about the mistakes that battle leaders had made there throughout history.

And that was a man who understood that if all you do is learn through experience, you're going to pay the price in lives and in time. For you there are no lives at mistake at stake in business, there's only livelihoods. So it's a little bit easier when you know limbs and lives aren't on the line, but at the same time you're dealing with your future here, and it's important. So you've got to do everything you can to learn. So read, read as much as possible.

The books I'd recommend reading right off the bat, and foremost, if you're looking to get into business. One, I'd recommend reading The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. Something you definitely need to pick up. I would recommend reading Dale Carnegie's book, the, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And I'd recommend reading Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, right.

And that'll give you a good baseline to work from. But don't think that that's the only, those are the only books you need to read, you need to be reading constantly. I read every morning. Even books on war and leadership, Sun Tzu's Art of War, there's so many business insights that you can take from that. It's not even funny.

Read all of this stuff. And that's one of the reasons why I created the Warrior Soul Reading List on the Warrior Soul Fitness site where I provide links to books from Amazon. I do get a small commission off of that, but really what I'm doing there is curating a list of books that you guys can use to find your own success. And whether you buy them from that or not, I don't really care. Can go to amazon.com on your own and get all of them, but books are a way of providing so much and so many opportunities for growth, so many opportunities for a better life.

You really, really need to invest in your own personal education. You don't need to go to college, you don't need to to pay anybody to sit in a class, you can do this right from home, right from wherever you are. You can even, you don't even have to, if you don't like reading you don't even have to read them. Now we have audio books with the Audible app. You can get books from there, But whatever you do invest in your own self learning.

The fourth mistake I see a lot of veteran entrepreneurs make is in not learning enough about technology. Completely taking the building of their own website and the management of their own website out of their hands or not having a website at all. Let me spell this out for you. We live in a highly connected world right now. We live in an era where the yellow pages are dying.

The old things like billboards and, you know, flyers are becoming less and less relevant. If you're not on the web right now, it's almost like you don't have the credibility you need. I remember you know back twenty years ago when the internet first started coming out, people almost were of hazy about it. They almost didn't trust websites. And there's a lot of people still like that, especially in the veteran community.

Know, I deal with people all the time who are like, Is this site secure? But here's the thing, the only way people are going to find you now these days is through a Google search or by seeing your page on Facebook or by seeing your account on Instagram. You're not going to be able to get enough people to make you any sort of profit by just putting an ad out there in the yellow pages. And even if you are making a profit by doing that you could make a whole lot more if people could find you on the web. So you've got to have a website even if it's a really simple one.

Now I know a lot of veterans out there, they're kind of iffy on starting their own websites, they're kind of iffy on social media. But the biggest thing you have to learn about owning a business is that it's not what you're comfortable with that matters, it's what your customers are comfortable You know people are going on the web. People have social media accounts. People usually look at their social media accounts upwards of 20 to 30 times a day. So you have to understand that customer behavior if you're going to want to succeed.

So get yourself on Instagram. Get yourself on Twitter. Get yourself on Facebook. You know, I'm a huge fan of the Jocko Podcast. And I guess prior to actually having that podcast and prior to going on the Joe Rogan show, Jocko Willink didn't have a Twitter.

Know, and and Leif Babin, you know, with their business Echelon Front, they had their book out. But now they're getting so much exposure from him having a Twitter account, from him having an Instagram account, from him having that podcast, that, you know, there are books everywhere. Everybody's talking about Extreme Ownership now. And Jocko Willink is becoming almost a household name, not only in the veteran community, but in the civilian community too. I mean business leaders, CEOs, people who are into personal development.

You know Tim Ferriss had Jocko on the podcast. Brian from London Real had Jocko on his podcast. Sam Harris had Jocko on his podcast. The guy is going everywhere and their book is thriving because of it, and their business is thriving because of it. And you should learn lessons from that.

You know, and don't shy away from it. I mean, a lot of us get intimidated by the idea of starting our own website, but you can do so easily through website builders now. Shopify, I run the Warrior Soul fitness site off of Shopify and it's inexpensive, it's really easy to use, and it's remarkably flexible. At one time I had a WordPress account and that site crashed all the time, I had to get in there with code, and it was way too complicated for me, but Shopify hardly ever crashes, there's a million different apps you can use and when you start it I think for like $29.99 a month you get your site up, you get your blog, you get your online store, you get your point of sale set up and you can do your web hosting through them. And I'll put a link for Shopify on the show notes for this podcast, but there's so much you can do there.

You know and study my website. Look at what I'm doing with Warrior Soul Fitness. Look what I'm doing now with Warrior Soul Ecommerce. And look at sites like Ranger Ups. Look at sites like the Jocko Podcast website.

See what other veteran entrepreneurs are doing and see what other civilian entrepreneurs are doing because those techniques are out there, right? When we're in the military there are set battle tactics that we use because they work. Well, in getting into business there are set tactics out there that people use because they work. So study those, get them up there, and don't pay a web developer $5,000 to start your site for you. And that figure is not a joke.

There's web developers out there who charge so much for their services. If you're able to get a site up for minimal cost to you at the beginning, and you start earning money, and you start making a profit off your business you can hire a developer down the line and make sure you get a good developer. But for now get it started and make sure that you have the control over your site that you need Because I'll tell you this, used to have somebody managing my website and it sucked having to call them every other day to change something on the website for a sale or to add a discount or to add a new product. If you're in charge of your website you can add products like that, you can add services like that, and you can make sales in seconds. So get out there, learn that stuff, and at the minimum expose yourself to it, right?

At least know that it's out there, at least know that there's tools you can put in your toolbox that you can use to grow your business, to scale yourself, and to get more opportunities to get yourself in front of potential customers. On top of that, learn social media. You know, and every time a new social media platform comes out, experiment with it. Snapchat just came out a couple of years ago and I thought it was just an opportunity for people to send dick pics to each other and phone sexed without anybody knowing. But there's a whole another side to it and so many businesses are getting on there.

Think Ranger Up is on there all the time. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are snapping their whole day. And so I've been experimenting with that. I'm not the best with it, but I'm working at it and I know it's out there and I know that if I continue using it, I'll get better at it and then it could be a good opportunity for me to use for marketing and for my own social media and provide more value for my customers. You know Instagram, when that first came out I was like dude Instagram why are people posting so many pictures of themselves.

I just didn't get it. But Instagram was one of the tools I used to build my fitness business and it made me a lot of money without spending any money on marketing. And I pretty much own, I pretty much owe my entire life to Instagram being in existence. Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Without those three platforms I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today.

Because those platforms gave me opportunity to do marketing for free. So get on these platforms. If you're scared of shooting yourself on a video or you're shy then you have plenty of opportunities to write or take pictures on Instagram. But I also suggest making videos if you can. Learn how to talk.

Learn how to talk in front of a camera. Learn how to speak. Learn how to present yourself. It's good practice and even if you put it up there and nobody watches then it's just good practice talking about your business and getting information out there that somebody might come across. So do it and a really good book for you to read and then I don't know how many of you follow this guy but I think he's awesome, he's extremely popular Gary Vaynerchuk Jab Jab Jab Right Hook.

If you want to learn about social media get that book. It is so useful. He explains every platform, he explains the style of every platform and techniques you can use in order to improve your social media game. The last thing, the last big mistake I see veteran entrepreneurs make, new veteran entrepreneurs, is overworking themselves. And this happens because they try to take everything on at the same time and do it all themselves.

And I definitely fell in this category. When I first started Warrior Soul Apparel, mean there was a good year that I wasn't getting more than three hours of sleep at night, and I'm still pretty bad at it. Right now I probably get about four and half five hours of sleep at night. But it's because I've always had this tendency to kind of take charge of everything, to own everything, and to really, you know, put my nose to the grindstone. And I had that since the time I was in the Marine Corps.

But for the long run it's not sustainable. You can't do that forever. You've got to learn about everything in your business at first and when you first open up you're going to have to be doing a little bit of everything. But down the line you're going to need to take on some help. You're need going to hire people And one of the things you can do rather than doing a lot of your administrative tasks is you can hire a virtual assistant.

You know there's websites like oDesk or Fiverr. Fiverr can help you with a lot of your graphic design stuff. Or you know if you want to and this is a really good idea, put an announcement out on some of the veteran forums. See if there are any graphic designers, accountants or you know different people who can help you along your way that are willing to work with you virtually over the internet. Know and if you do it over a system like oDesk or Fiverr then there's good ways of reviewing who these people are.

They have a star system based on reviews and the quality of their services, and I've used them a lot from time to time. But don't shy away from from that. And they'll also save you a lot of money, you know, you've just got one single thing that you've got to get done, and you don't have time to do it, you go to one of these sites, you hire somebody, sometimes that person comes from outside the country, most of them speak English really well, and you can get that one single task off of your plate for the day just by paying somebody $5 to do it. And it really helps with your own productivity and by saving your time you're able to do more things that are going to make you money. And by saving your money you're eventually going to gain enough money to hire a full time person.

And like I said that's one of my goals I eventually want to hire a whole team of veterans to help work this company. But I wouldn't be able to do that if I wasn't doing things to grow the business and if I was doing things like spending $5,000 on a web developer. So that's what I wanted to cover with you guys today. Again I'm just going to repeat everything I just said, You got to decide if you're a charity or a business and if you decide you're a business you have to focus on your own prosperity so that you can help others down the line. Do that by either donating money or creating jobs.

Creating jobs for veterans and other people here in America. Know, the business is supposed to do that. We're supposed to create employment opportunities in this economy. The second thing is lack of originality, doing the same thing everybody else is doing and through that not providing enough value to the customers you're trying to attract to your business. So get out there, do something original and provide as much value as you can to your potential customers.

The third thing, not studying what other people have done, not reading, not committing to a program of self learning. If you're going to be in business you need to learn as much as possible and you need to do as much as you can through simulation. You're going to need experience as well, but the more we learn before we actually go through the experience the less mistakes we're actually likely to make. The fourth thing is technology and shying away from social media. In today's economy, in today's world, and in this business environment if you're not on social media you're really shooting yourself in the foot.

Get on social media no matter what business you're in, no matter how local you're in, get on there, opportunities will arise for your growth, and it's just really good practice for getting your message out there and getting more people to know understand your business, and giving customers more accessibility to you. And then the fifth thing is doing too much yourself. Not taking breaks, allowing yourself to get overworked, right. You need to realize that you are a human being and that there's only so much you can do in a day. So get yourself some help, hire people, use virtual assistants, and don't be so hard on yourself.

Set achievable goals, smash those goals and then set more. And so that's just something I wanted to go over with you today. Again on Tuesday we're going to be talking about health and fitness and the benefits that the ketogenic diet has for those of us who are suffering from things like PTS, TBI, and depression. Wherever you are this weekend, you know, I hope that you are enjoying your family. I hope that you're enjoying being alive.

I hope that you're feeling the sun on your skin and that you're breathing in the fresh air. And I hope that you're enjoying the freedom that you helped to provide for this great country. So have a great Memorial Day weekend, and I will be talking to you next week.