Being a Serial Entrepreneur

For a lot of entrepreneurs, the dream of running a business is something they’re likely going to do. But for some, operating or owning more than one business at a time, or consecutively owning the business, is a way that those entrepreneurs operate and are called “serial entrepreneurs.”

On this program, Jennifer talks with Creighton Wong about the entrepreneurial journey, what Creighton went through and how so many of us can learn from some of the ideas that he mentions on the program – from learning how to hire properly to setting your pricing and more – there is a lot of value and information contained in this episode.

Transcript (auto-generated and may contain errors)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of MOJO, The Meaning of Life & Business.

On today’s program, we’re going to be talking about serial entrepreneurs. For those of you that don’t know the term serial entrepreneurs, it basically means professionals entrepreneurs who have consistently and constantly are programming and developing more and more businesses that they’re always trying to do.

Some of these businesses ultimately gets sold for millions. If not more, some of the businesses, unfortunately don’t go far, but the curse of the entrepreneur is that they’re always pushing forward. And for those of you that are listening, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about here, but on today’s program, I have a special guest who has actually sold a million dollar business and really excited to have Mr. Creighton Wong on the program today.

Creighton, thank you so much for being on the program. Happy to be here. Good to talk to you. Good to see you. Same here. Thank you. So Creighton, why don’t you let our listeners know a little bit more about Creighton? Give us your history. I mean, you’ve got such a broad history from all the things you’ve done.

And we were talking in the green room before we went live about our law school time and everything else. So let us just get a little bit more of an idea who created. Yeah. I mean, it, it’s definitely an eclectic ex experience, you know, going back to undergrad as a animal physiology and neuroscientist and then heading, heading off to law school before jumping into the entrepreneurial world you know, kind of first started with and insurance business that I helped build to seven figures before kind of going off into some apps and, and eventually into digital marketing and helping other serial entrepreneurs.

In some other ways, you know, in between there just like literally growing up never knew how to ride a bike, never ran around the track. And the next thing I know, knew I was. Competing at the highest levels of paratriathlon even made the, a world championships, got to, got to wear the American flag on my chest out in Budapest, Hungary once upon a time.

And all of a sudden I’m finding myself biking up and down the coast of California. So now decided to be. A digital nomad. So a serial entrepreneur who travels the world. And I affectionately say I’ve been marooned in ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam for the last two years with COVID and the like, so yeah, I’m giving we’re, we’re literally, I think, 12, 12 hours apart, opposite sides of the planet.

Right. And so it’s definitely been an interesting journey for you to get to where you are. So let me ask you though, the journey from being that animal physiologist and neuroscientist to being a digital marketer. And having a stop in law school and practicing law for a few years is definitely one that is not a normal story.

How do you look at that time? And what did the animal physiology and neuroscientist and law background teach you about business and helping you to where you are to. I think the important thing with education I, was given this advice at a very young age. You know, you don’t go to school to learn the thing.

You go to school to learn how to learn and the, the way you critique and analyze things as a scientist is very different. As an attorney and very different, but both of them serve you well and, and help in the business world. One of the things that I really enjoy about digital marketing is it feeds both my right brain creative side in terms of mapping out all the possibilities and different routes that we can go.

To achieve the goal. But at the same time, especially with digital marketing, it’s not woo. It’s not it’s not how you feel. At some point there, you know, for example, we run Facebook ads or we do SEO there’s metrics involved and you can’t fall in love with a campaign or an idea. It has to be supported.

Hardcore evidence that says you’re doing well. You’re, you’re achieving your KPI. Your, your, your goals are being met. There’s revenue coming in. Whether, you know, revenue on ad spend or return on investment, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. The numbers have to have.

So as you look at your journey and what you’ve been doing, you know, like you said, when you went to school, you didn’t go to school to learn something you learned to learn. And so one of the things that you do as you’ve read lots of business books to help you in your learning journey as well, what are some of those books?

That has helped you get to where you are today? Yeah, so books podcasts, I think it’s very important to, you know, find good ideas that are, are applicable. And sometimes, sometimes they’re on point. Sometimes there are just different ways of thinking. I remember way back when. Gotcha. I think it might’ve been in high school or something like that, or maybe college and rich dad, poor dad came out.

It’s a very simple book, but it was really radical and revolutionary at the time because it was a different way of thinking, especially for somebody like me who grew up around people who were traditional employ. Whether they were working for the local college or, or, or, or an investment bank or, or what have you.

You know, and, and, and, and that one really touched me and kinda, you know, stuck with me. Does it have anything in there that’s nuts and bolts on the how to do it? No, but it did change, help me in terms of changing the way. I thought about things Book that changed the way, you know, I thought about things was the four hour workweek.

It’s just a really good, you know, and again, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff in there that I’ll never use, but just the, the mindset on it. Tim Ferriss has a, has a wonderful way of just challenging the norms and saying, okay, so you said this is true, but is it really true? And. You know, especially as somebody who who’s done a lot of you know, smaller type businesses, it’s like, there’s, there’s a different way to, to go about doing it and to de-stigmatize hiring a virtual assistant, for example.

And oh, by the way, virtual assistants come in all flavors, there are terrible virtual assistants and there are absolutely amazing virtual assistants. So, you know, you’re going to get. The whole nine yards and I’ve had my share of good and bad ones as well. I mean, I think anyone who’s hired a virtual assistant, a VA has definitely experienced, you know, some of those issues, but you mentioned, you know, Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad, poor dad, and Tim verses The four hour work week book.

And they’re definitely great books. And I mean, one thing that I would definitely caution everybody who’s listening is the four hour work week is not actually a four hour work week. It’s done. You know, because somebody, somebody is going to hear that and think I can only work four hours and be a millionaire.

It’s not actually how it’s done. You got to work, right. Not work smart, not work harder. It’s working with. Which is going to help you ultimately get to where you need to be along with having a team that’s going to be there to help you. So, as we look at a team in that regard, what does your team look like?

Yeah. So, so the one other book that I’m going to, or two other books I’ll throw in there one is the E-Myth revisited by Michael Gerber. And really the way I set up businesses in the way I set up teams is, is using his ideas and his thought processes. As the template, you know, there, there are.

Three types of mindsets, really? There’s the entrepreneurial mindset. There’s the technician mindset and there’s the the managerial you know, mindset. And what I, what I found is that it’s, it’s well, I could do it when I was younger, but you know, it gets, it gets a little bit challenging when you’re constantly taking off one hat and putting on another.

So. You know, I try to pair myself up with people who have different mindsets, but are comfortable in those mindsets. And so then we’re always complimenting each other, complimenting each other instead of , instead of duplicating, and then I actually tell all of my clients, when they’re looking at hiring people, I say don’t hire people that have the same skillset; hire for people that have different skillsets, because if I’m good at sales, I can do the sales, but I need somebody to help with the marketing or if I’m good at marketing.

And I think it’s sales. Give me somebody who. The sales side, because if I’m doing the same exact thing as someone else, that’s not going to help me. I need somebody to compliment me. Like you were just saying in terms of taking one hat off and having to put the other one on, if you’re the entrepreneurial and you’ve got management, experiencing know how to move things, you want to hire that technical person, that’s going to be helping you in terms of the way that you build out your team.

Right? Yeah. And, and one of the pieces of advice that I got was, you know, high, higher people who play at the things that are work to you because they’re going to be better at it. Better, skilled, better attitude, better mindset and everything. And you know, that way you’re not getting bogged down in the drugs.

Of things. So, and that’s, you know, that’s where going, you know, now we go backwards into the four hour work week and talking about VA’s and everything there are, you know, for example data collection jobs that yeah, maybe you could do it better than them, but is it really a great usage of your time when you could pay five or 10?

In an hour to have somebody else do it. And you can focus in on your higher level responsibilities. Right? So you’re definitely touching on a topic that I’ve spoken about very often. And that’s something, if you for those of you that may not have heard about the 5 21. It’s really an incredible, an idea, credible idea.

And I got this from my coach but the 521 ideas, basically we all want to make a million dollars in a year. Somehow. That’s the magic number that every single entrepreneur wants to get at, at least in order to do that, you need to work eight hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year at $521 per hour. And that’s going to give you a little more than a million dollars over the course of the year in terms of what you’re doing.

And so we’re creating, you were just saying, in terms of hiring somebody for five, $10 an hour to do those, I don’t want to say menial tasks, but not the big picture tasks for sure. In terms of what you’re doing. That’s definitely worth it. Because you can earn $521 or more for the time that you’re spending doing other things.

It’s just like if somebody hires a cleaning lady to clean them, Instead of them cleaning the toilets and vacuuming and everything else, because how much time are you taking to do the laundry, clean the toilet and everything, as opposed to being in a position for you to be thinking about the business, working on the business, not in the business, but how do you build a relationship?

That are going to hope you ultimately get to where you want to get. And so when you think about the 5 21 idea in that regard, you start valuing your time dramatically more. And so the idea of using virtual assistants at five 10, even 25, $50 an hour, if they’re doing the right tasks, that’s going to maximize your

ultimate earnings. And I’m not saying you have to get $521 an hour. I’m saying what you do can has a potential to generate that money. Right? If you go for a coffee date with someone and I don’t mean coffee date, but you meet for coffee with another business person. If that person down the road has the ability to connect you with people that could have easily been worth 521.

So that meeting that you have with them, or like this time I Creighton and I are doing this podcast, we’re doing this podcast because we’re putting information out there that Creighton and I are both being seen as experts in our space. And people are seeing us, they’re hearing us, they’re learning more about us.

And if it makes sense, people may come to us and say, we want to work. So that’s totally worth $521 for that time, because of all of the potential impact that you’re getting. So when crane, you were mentioning that VA, that makes complete sense as it relates the 5 21 idea. Yeah. And I know I’ll put this huge, huge caveat, you know, on, onto this because I know that there’s a lot of people that think that are entrepreneurs or want to be the CEO or the big.

And that’s it. That’s basically, if you want to start your own business or, you know, be the CEO of a startup or whatever at least in the very beginning, you’ve got to be the hardest working guy in the building because you set the tone, you set the culture, you set the leader. Number one. And you got to have some, some sort of expertise, right?

Like if you’re, if you’re doing a SAS business but you’re not an expert in coding, for example, in web development. That’s okay. But you gotta have some sort of expertise in one of the critical areas of whatever business it is, your you’re creating. Because even though. We’re talking about hiring out VA’s as, as a strategic way to build a team and to leverage your time.

You can’t abdicate your responsibilities. It ultimately you want to be the boss with that comes the responsibility that the buck stops with you. Something doesn’t get done. It’s your responsibility. It might not be your. But it’s definitively your responsibility. And I’ve learned that from being involved in successful ventures, I’ve learned that the hard way being involved in failed adventure ventures, that’s the difference between a wantrepreneur and an entrepreneur.

Sure, absolutely. And for those of you that were listening, SAS, if you are not familiar with that term is software as a service. No, that very often we talk in acronyms and right. And so if you are listening and you are not familiar with software as a service, S a S so anyway, as we look at the lessons that you’ve learned, obviously the lesson of it’s your responsibility, no matter what is key, and you have to be an entrepreneur or not a wantrepreneur like we.

But because you’ve been on both sides of the journey, the successful businesses and those, that weren’t, what were some of the lessons that you learned other than, as your responsibility from the failed ventures that you’ve been part of? Yeah, I mean, so, so those are probably the two biggest. You know, the two biggest lessons to learn, right.

Is you know, especially in the beginning, you are going to be forced to wear all the different hats. And especially in the beginning before you can give away any piece of the business, you know, to a partner, a VA and employee you, you’ve got to know what the heck you’re giving away. So the.

If things aren’t turning out the way you want it, you at least have an idea of what you’re talking about. Why isn’t this quitter campaign bringing in millions of dollars? Well, maybe it’s because you hired a person that really doesn’t know. And because you don’t know, you don’t know that that person doesn’t know and you know, so on you know, so on and so forth, I think one of the other lessons that’s really, really important.

You know, I think people like being employees because there’s a lot of security in there, right? Like every two weeks you’re going to get you’re going to get a paycheck for, for, for your job. And, and that’s pretty steady and that there’s there’s comfort with it. I had a, an uncle of mine who worked for the.

Us postal service. And I said, why would you do you know, like, why would you do that? And then, you know, more, I thought about it as like, it’s completely scripted. Like if he does this, he gets that. And it’s, it’s literally like, it’s just. In the entrepreneurial world, it’s an absolute mess. And from a mental and emotional state, you’re going to go, I’m feeling high on top of the world.

And then, you know, feeling like, oh my God, the world’s crashing in on me. And you’ve got to you’ve got to embrace that. You’ve got to live in the moment. You’ve got to be able to you know, enjoy the good and the bad. But I think one of the skills that’s really, really important is when you hit, you hit the crest, you know, don’t, don’t get too high with yourself, but especially if you hit the trough, if you, if you get down to not stay there and to be able to let that go.

And, and, and March forward because, you know, you’ll have this, oh man, if I could just close that, that one deal, that that’ll change the trajectory of everything that we’re trying to do. Or, or all of a sudden it’s like all those things that you’ve wanted to afford, that you’ve been pushing, putting off, you know, to grow the business.

Now you can, now you can purchase or, or what have you, but don’t get too hot. Definitely you, you you’re, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get low, just don’t stay low. Absolutely. And those are definitely great lessons to keep in mind. So let me ask you, as you look then at the successful ventures, right? That million dollar insurance company that you were helping and the other.

You know what you’ve been doing lately with the web marketing, the SEO and the digital marketing and all of that work. Some of the things that you learned on the successful side that really helped to make it a success. And what are some of those things that the people listening? I mean, they learned the lessons.

That they have to make sure they’re not doing from the failures, which is really important to pay attention to those. But what are some of the things that you did different on the successful side? If there’s something that you can put your finger on that really helped other people listening. So from, from a true entrepreneurial standpoint, right?

If you have your own product and your own service that you’re pushing out there I think one of the reasons. Challenges that everybody goes through is pricing, pricing of the services, pricing of the you know, of the product. And especially with services you gotta get over, whether am I worth this or am I not worth this?

You know, some people don’t like, they don’t think that they’re worth something. And if you don’t think. The old imposter syndrome. And boy, if you come in with imposter syndrome mindset the the guys that will take advantage of you will find you and they’ll try and bargain you down and bargain you down.

One of the best lessons that I learned is, a lot of times you hear the term “productize,” productize your service, and you know, here you go. And here’s what it is. No, take it or leave it, especially on, because what a lot of these guys will do is they’ll test you and they’ll, they’ll be like, well, you’re only putting in this many hours and they’ve got it.

They’ve got an idea of what they want to pay you per hour, but they’re not taking in the totality of the business. Well, you know, it took me this much to you know, put all of my marketing out there and then to get you in the nurture, you and put you in a. And, and all these other expenses. And to me, one of the best things was what’s where’s the risk being taken, right?

So if I come to you and I said, Hey, look, I’m gonna, I’m gonna build you this thing. And you know, or actually this, this is the best example. You know, somebody comes in and says, Hey, look, I’m going to do your.

And is going to cost this, this much amount of money and you sit there and if you start thinking about it, it’s like, well, it didn’t cost them that much time and stuff, but you don’t care because you’ve productized it and it just needs to be done. And if your guys get it done earlier and you make more money, that’s fine because the risk is on you.

Because if you guys don’t do the good, do a good job and they have to redo it or something. That’s your cost. And so summit, anybody wants to bargain you down off of what you’re worth and what’s your, what’s your margin is just be like, okay, this is fine. What you’re going to pay me by the hour. And now you’re going to take the risk that if this project goes long, if this project exceeds whatever the timetable or, or, or what, whatever.

The risk is now transferred to you, the client, you’re going to pay me more for this and everything, because what I found, what almost every entrepreneur goes through is, you know, that person that you, you just give off shocks and you give them the, the, the, you give them the special deal. They ended up being the biggest headache and they ended up sucking the most amount of time.

And and boy that, that puts you in the low load. You got to get yourself down. Right. And so, as you were mentioning what you were saying, it brought a couple of points. You know, out, in terms of we’ve all heard the locksmith that comes to help us get our car unlocked because we locked our keys in the car.

He comes, it takes him two minutes to open up the car and he gives us a bell for 150. And we look at that bell and we’re like $150. You were here for two minutes. It’s not the two minutes that I worked on your car. It’s the years that I learned how to get into your car without ruining anything in your car to open up your car so that you can get your keys and get on with your.

Yeah. And so it becomes important to think about it from that perspective. We’re not paying for, you know, say it’s a thousand dollars a month for the work that somebody is doing. It’s not, well, they’re only working for three hours. It’s how long is it going to take you to do that work? Right? If it takes you 25 hours to do the exact same thing where someone else is doing in three, how much is your time?

That’s the first thing. Second thing also to keep in mind when you are dealing with pricing is don’t discount. What you’re doing. You’ve got upsell, cross sell and down sell opportunities that you have with what you are doing, where you can offer a different package. As I create and was saying product ties yourself.

Right. So if somebody wants to buy a platinum package or they want to buy a bronze package is going to make a very big difference in terms of what somebody is going to be getting and where somebody wants to be. If you’re going to offer the platinum package for the price of the bronze, be prepared to be putting in many more hours and many more headaches without getting compensated for what you’re offering.

You know, if your bronze package has three hours worth of work and your platinum has 50, think about what that’s going to be doing, right. Have a down sell opportunity that somebody who’s not willing to cover your rate that you’re looking at, you can still go into and just take pieces out of your program.

That you’re going to be in a position to better ultimately get the. To sign up with you. And eventually one day they may become that platinum client, you know, giving you that platinum investment. But as we look though, crane, in terms of other areas and your entrepreneurial journey, there’s so many things that you’ve been going through and so many paths that are yet to be explored.

Where do you hope to see your. Journey. And the next say two to three years, because in the internet world, that’s a lifetime. That, that is a lifetime. So to wrap up right before I, I will say this too. Yeah. Charge what you’re worth, but you better be able to deliver, like, just make sure you deliver. And, and that includes also turning down prospects where your service isn’t a good one.

And everything. I do see too many people out there that are just whatever customer comes in. That’ll pay the bills they’re willing to take on. If it’s not a good fit, it’s not a good fit. Middle it’ll end up badly for everybody. In terms of myself, I mean, in, in a couple of years here, so from a digital marketing standpoint I mean, I think this pandemic has created an incredible, incredible opportunity for a lot of people.

And what I mean is right, we just went through the great resignation. People are sitting there saying, I don’t think that I want to continue working the job that I was working, getting paid, what I was getting paid or putting my, you know, putting my livelihood in the hands of other people. And so.

There’s still this, this fast thing called the internet where somebody can carve out their own little space and, and, and make, make a really, really good living. And so there were a lot of people who were hurt financially from COVID, but there were also a lot of people who made a pivot and Are doing much better, both financially and personally, because they’re doing something that they they enjoy and they love.

So, you know, from my standpoint, obviously, I mean, we, we provide everything from, you know, SEO to email marketing and paid advertising I mean, the one thing I always look at is what’s the fit. Like, who are you? Who is your target market? What are you, what are you trying to accomplish? And, and then you find the fit for that.

And quite frankly, sometimes it’s not a fit because some, some of these guys are on a really, really tight budget and I’m like, okay, let me sit down with you. I’ll give you a little DIY advice and everything. And then, you know, at least to get the ball rolling, but I, I see a lot more businesses opening up a lot more opportunity for people to work remotely work online.

You know, whether it’s opening up a Shopify store, whether it’s putting their services, you know, to work for a company, but they they’re able to work at home. You know, that’s what I see and I see my role in it. At least for the companies that are looking to grow their awareness and their visibility online and ultimately their sales that’s something that I can help with.

I have another venture and you know, what I’ve, what I’ve found is I was, I was working for a lot of startups and Of course the startups ask for money. No, they’re looking, they’re looking for money and, and you know, because I’ve, I’ve actually networked and worked with quite a few venture capitalists and everything.

I started facilitating those introductions. So I, I see that as, as part of you know, kind of a spinach. Business where, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m I play matchmaker. That’s what I call myself a matchmaker with the with the startup or the clients project that’s looking for funding, you know, pair them with the right person who can either provide a debt or equity, venture capital, whatever.

And that’s definitely an incredible way to look at the progression in terms of where you’re going and what our listeners can possibly take from that as well. So, Creighton I understand that you have an offer that you’d like to make as a special gift to our listeners. Yeah, just you know, reach out to me.

Jennifer, I’ll put, put all my information down below and, you know, re reach out to me if you’ve got a business and you’re looking to, you know, grow online happy to do, we do a full-blown audit on the, on the business. We go through you, your business, your vertical, your competition, all that kind of good stuff.

And we’ll make some recommendations for you. We’ll do that free of cost for you. You know, hopefully you’ll find enough value with it. And if we’re a good fit, we’d love to work with you. But like I said, I, I, you know, I, I just find it best to be, you know, open and honest about it. If, if the DIY route is going to serve you best right now go the DIY route.

You know, if there’s a, if there’s a better channel that I don’t provide go use that channel.

And that’s definitely incredible. When you think about the value that you’re getting from cranes expertise and being in a position to really hear from an expert where you are. Lacking what you’re doing well in terms of your digital marketing efforts and how you go from there. And so as we wrap up our conversations that I on the serial marketing, sorry, serial entrepreneur ventures that are out there, there’s so many opportunities for you to be thinking about in terms of what you are doing, where you are.

Where you want to be sometimes, especially in the beginning, it’s best. If you focus on only one thing that you don’t try and say, I’m going to go out there and I’m going to be offering 20 different services and pro products. And what have you, because ultimately it’s not going to end. Right. You only have one brain to focus on everything that you need to, you need to build up one venture before you move on to the next, and then you move on to the next and you move on to the next, if you’re doing it.

And you’re jumping from piece to piece, the time that it’s going to take you to move between each of those focuses is going to really harm. There’s a study that says it takes about 45 minutes to get back to a focus point where you were when you were initially interrupted. So think about that as you’re trying to think, well, what do I need to do?

If I’ve got three ventures and I’m managing, where do I go and how do I manage it? And so really pay attention to what you’re trying to do and what your ultimate end goal is in terms of want to. On that note, Creighton, thank you so much for being my guest today. I really appreciated you being here. I hope our listeners definitely are going to take a ton of value from what you shared with.

And go back again, listen to the episode again, especially the lessons that Creighton learned on both the success side, as well as the, not along with the books and the learning opportunities that Creighton mentioned, because when you have the right education and the right guide guidance and mentorship, to help you, that’s really going to give you a huge boost in terms of what you’re looking at and where you can ultimately get.

Until next time, this has been another episode of mojo, the meaning of life and business and here’s to your success.

Connect with Creighton on LinkedIn, Facebook and on the web at exponentialclients.com.