Lessons - How to Turn Your Vision Into a Multi-Million Dollar Reality | Simon Squibb - Serial Entrepreneur & Investor

In this lessons episode, explore why so many people feel trapped in unfulfilling careers and afraid to ask themselves what they truly want. Learn how to break free from the fight or flight mindset that blocks creativity, understand why following a passion leads to long-term success, and discover how taking imperfect action can reveal the dream worth pursuing. You know, you ask a lot of young entrepreneurs like what's your dream? And I think that a lot of the people that I've watched your content absolutely love it, and some people that you interview, they have like a really good idea of what their dream is, but this group, this cohort of people that we're speaking about, I don't think they ask themselves that question regularly. I think they just are, again, sort of golden handcuffs to their job, their chain to this life and this lifestyle that they've created. And I think that the question, what's your dream is scary because it insinuates that there could be an alternative life that could be living that is actually fulfilling to them and that they've wasted so much time. So when you first ask yourself the question, what's your dream? If you find yourself in the situation where you're trapped and your expenses are high, you're going to go through these steps, you're going to reduce your expenses, you're going to be a little bit smarter about your money. But where do they even start? And I mean, this has been like the theme with your content. This is the name of the book that you just launched and wrote. But it's a very scary question for some people. So where do they start when they ask themselves that question? What's your dream? Is, you know, there's different concepts like Iki guy and Venn diagrams of what you're good at and what the world needs and all these different formulas for finding out your dream. Somebody's never asked themselves that question before. Where do they go? Well, if we're talking about a 40 year old who doesn't know the dream and they need to find it, I would argue that they're caught in fight or flight and they're created part of their brain, which was probably very active when they were five years old, has slowly been squeezed out of them and they become very practical and they can't even think of their dream. So the only way to activate your creative part of your brain and come up with your dream is to get out of that trap, get out of fight or flight. Now you can do it two ways by working your way out and financially reducing your costs or psychologically saying to yourself in some sort of like meditation, I'm rich. I've got all the money I need. Now what would I do? And try to take yourself out of like, Oh, I've got no money. I've got to pay the bills at the end of the month. I've got to pay the car finance. I've got to pay the electricity bill. That will not, that part of your brain, that fight or flight part of your brain will override everything. You cannot think of your dream when you're caught in that. So you've got to get out of it and you either do it but actually financially freeing yourself or getting your brain into a relaxed state to allow you to figure out what your dream could be. Now, if you fall into another camp where you actually know your dream, you're lucky enough to know your dream, just fucking do it. And do it before you have regret because regret is the worst thing you can ever have in life. Do not have regret. You just have to do it. Jump. Go. Do it now. Give yourself, you know, if you've got kids and stuff, you know, give yourself a one way. Prepare the ship. But go because you will not be living for long. Go for it now. Worst is it's an experience and the good news is if you've got a good job now, you can get a good job later. You know, go for it. Take a year. Try and you'll be shocked how far you can get in a year. Give yourself that time. And at least if you try and you fail, you at least won't have regret. How do you know if it's the right dream, though? How do you know if you're on the right path? And this is, you know, Kevin O'Leary speaks about this a lot, right? You know, when a business idea is bad, you have to take it behind the barn and shoot it. And a lot of people don't shoot their business ideas quickly enough. And they keep on pursuing this dream they have when it's no longer serving them. And I think that that's a fear that people have too. What if I make the wrong decision? What if my dream, there's no market for it? How do you think through that? Or maybe you're a believer that any dream, if you stick with it long enough, you can make it a reality. So I think you're talking about failure here. You're talking about the fear of failure. Yeah. That's that's really what you're talking about. And so because let's say you think you know your dream and you go out there and execute it. And one of two things happen, either it doesn't work. And that's that's just business life. Sometimes ideas don't work. Or it's not actually your dream. So I had that, by the way, I started a gardening company at 15 years old. That wasn't my dream. But I did need money. And luckily, I forced myself to start a business. And I discovered that I like marketing, not gardening by trying stuff. Now, this is why I think it's so important to fix the education system because the younger you are, the easier this is. No doubt. Okay. If you're young, like I was 15 when I started my first company, I can start a gardening company waste a year and go, that's not my dream. Right. So the younger you start, the more chance you have of like figuring out what it is that your dream is. Right. So I asked my three year old, what problem do we want to solve? It took him four years to even have a comprehension, have any sort of answer. Now it might be that his real dream is not to stop the sick extinction. Right. But at least he's thinking. If you start thinking about that, maybe who along the way discover his real dream, if that isn't actually his real dream. Right. You've got to start young. Now if you're starting older, I hope you at least know what you like doing and what you don't like doing. That's a good place to start. So if you like fishing, try to go into a business that involves fishing. At least then, the worst case scenario, if it's not solving the world's biggest problems, you're doing something you love every day. And that is success. It's so true. I think that also I'm a big believer. I fall into the camp of if you take action, if you have something you love, if you take action, I'm a big believer. If you find a way to stay with it for a long enough period of time, you will find a way to become some version of successful at it. I mean, you have to be smart. You have to learn from your failures. You have to, I mean, the resources that we have access to now are unlimited podcasts, books, YouTube videos. But if you stay with something for a long enough period of time, you'll find a way to be successful at it. I think that the X factor and even like, you know, you mentioned like when you were 15, you had no interest in gardening. And that was like in theory, if you did that for 20 years, you'd find a way to become successful at it. You'd find a way to make money. You'd find a way to build teams around you. You'd find a way to scale. So I think that a lot of this is also not jumping into something and assuming that it's going to happen in the next two to three months, finding a way to give yourself some runway and some time. And I think, you know, it's cliche. And people don't like me saying this, but, you know, it's not about filling a market gap. It's about doing something you enjoy because follow through is 99% of the reason most people are successful. They just kept going. You know, and I started a creative agency in Hong Kong, you know, in China, there was probably about 15,000 companies doing exactly the same as what I was doing. And the reason I became successful at it is because when I enjoyed it, and too I followed through, you know, I got it on the financial crisis after financial crisis and problem economically again, and again, and again, we pushed through. And you know, we were just there at the finish line. And so a lot of time, you know, that's why I say, if you're doing something you love, and people hate me saying this for some reason, they're like, no, you should pick a business where you're filling a market gap. Well, yeah, sure, if you want to make a quick buck and you hope that you can sell the company and all that. But if you actually want to build something you love, you will win if you do. And that's what that's the secret source. It's just that simple, you know, and if you do like fishing, go build a business in fishing. You know, you like to keep going when it gets tough because you enjoy it simple. Why do you think people hate and get angry when you say that? Is it because like I don't understand, like it just makes it makes a lot of sense if you can find something you love because when the motivation runs out, by the way, when the motivation runs out that that you need to get started when that runs out, you need something else to pull you through all the difficult things that are going to inevitably happen when you're an entrepreneur. And I think passion is a huge piece of that. But I don't know why people get so angry. I think, you know, when I think about the people that are actually getting angry about it, sometimes it's a combination of things. It's they didn't do that. So they've got a life that doesn't involve doing what they love and then maybe they've made money. So I'm not saying you can't make money not doing what you love. I'm saying why not combine the two. So a lot of us have survival bias. Right. And I'm a victim of this. Like I survived thanks to entrepreneurship. So I believe all my heart that that's the thing that people need to learn. I happen to think I'm right and it's got nothing to do with survival bias. But we all have that. I think a lot of people, they have a life where they maybe did build a business that was in a niche. And it was about making money and they did it. Again, I see a lot of people in the property business like this. But if you actually dig a little deep, they've had three divorces and they're not really that happy and they've done something for 20 years, but they don't enjoy it. And they've done it because they make money. And it's fundamentally made them more miserable. Again, I know a lot of people like this. So, but they have that like, well, no, survival bias. They're like, no, I built a business and I don't like this business, but I've made money out of it. And yeah, I have to overcharge nurses for rent, you know, but so what? I made money. You know, like, so you don't need to do so. So I think there's definitely survival bias problem. That's one type of hate that I get. I think the other type of hate is really a combination of ignorance and lack of action on their side. So a lot of the time people don't, they don't think that their hobbies can be businesses. They've actually come to believe what they've been brainwashed that these are just hobbies and you can't make money out of it. Someone said to me, I want to be a dog walker. How am I going to make money out of that then? I'm like, well, how much money do you need to make each month? Like, what is it? What is lifestyle business? And what is a job? You know, like, actually, you can do a dog walking business. You can do a dog grooming business. You can do a dog product business to the people you were once dog walking forward. Like, you know, what type of lifestyle do you want in that business? And if you like walking, I promise you I could come over business model for it. So people don't that their hobbies can be businesses because again, they're not taught business in school. People don't put business models around their hobbies. And so they just think it's bullshit. But it's just just ignorance. It's it's lack of education around how business works. So their default is to say, that's not possible. How am I going to make money? I like playing. I like watching Netflix. Someone said to me the other day in a comment, how am I going to make money out of that? I'm like, well, there needs to be a Netflix review channel like what's good on Netflix? Because every time I go on Netflix, I don't know what to watch. And if it was a good YouTube channel, telling me what was good and why, I'd listen to it. And they're like, oh, yeah, I could do that. I guess. Yeah. Yeah, you like to sit around watching Netflix. And here's a business model for you, you know, and I just just think it's because again, school system doesn't teach you to do what you love. What it does is exactly the opposite. School system says, right, you're not very good at history. You need to double down on that. You've got a D in biology. You need to do more with biology. And that general world is completely the opposite, right? So I do not care about accounts and finance. So what do I do? I hire a great accountant in every company I start. I can read the numbers. I don't want to be bothered by them. I want to make sure we're collecting the money and we've got a cash flow problem, of course, but I don't want to be bothered with that stuff. Now I could go and spend five years learning accounts like the school system told me, or I can just hire someone that loves all that stuff. And so I think that's the thing. School system again is at fault because it says learn what you're not good at. And then learning becomes painful and then you get put off learning. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.