#990 Andrew’s process for overcoming entrepreneurial stagnation – with Samantha Alford

A few weeks ago, Andrew was interviewed about his inner doubt by Samantha Alford of WomeninBusinesspodcast.com.
I (Arie Saint) thought it was too good not to share with our audience, so I’m publishing it on Mixergy.
Check it out and let’s talk about it in the comments.
Samantha Alford, the founder of the Women in Business Podcast.

Sponsored byWalker Corporate Law – Scott Edward Walker is the lawyer entrepreneurs turn to when they want to raise money or sell their companies, but if you’re just getting started, his firm will help you launch properly. Watch this video to learn about him.
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Andrew: Hey there Freedom Fighters, my name is Andrew Warner, I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the Ambitious Upstart. And here at the home of the Ambitious Upstart, I believe that there are two kinds of entrepreneurs: those who deal with inner doubt, and those who lie to themselves and pretend that they never have any inner doubt.

This interview is for the truth tellers; the people who are aware of their inner issues and want to work to overcome them. That’s what this interview is about. That’s what Samantha Alford interviewed me about for her website, which is called WomenInBusinessPodCast.com.

I liked the interview that she did with me so much that I asked her for permission to publish it right here on Mixergy. I got it, here it is, and as always it is sponsored by Walker Corporate Law. Let me get his logo right here, there it is. Scott Edward Walker is the entrepreneurs’ lawyer.

That means that if you’re running a business that is all yours, if you’re running a startup that is new or young, and you need someone to help you out with legal advice, with business advice, with a structure that will allow you to eventually sell or raise money…he’s the guy to go to. Go to WalkerCorporateLaw.com. Alright, take it away, Samantha.

Samantha: Thanks, Andrew. Thank you so much for joining us today at the Women in Business Podcast. I really appreciate your time.

Andrew: Glad to be here!

Samantha: Andrew, I was really interested in having you share with our audience some of the program and the learning that you’re sharing with your audience and with your followers in relation to the True Mind Program.

And the reason for that is, I believe that women in particular, and there is certainly research that supports, that women in particular have a mentality that holds us back in a lot of ways in terms of our corporate careers.

And what that means is that, for example, where women actually will be applying for a role or looking towards future opportunities, they will tend to look at the list of requirements and talk about what they don’t meet and that will hold them back as opposed to men who will typically say: “Well, there’s a few things I haven’t got experience in there, and I’ll get going.”

So what I wanted to do today was explore with that context of women in the corporate world. Your True Mind Program, we’ll get into in a moment, but what I wanted to do was, perhaps, give the women in our network a bit of an idea of your journey. You have launched a number of entrepreneurial activities in your career, if you like, or your entrepreneurial career that have been extraordinarily successful. And you’ve started at times with nothing.

Andrew: Yeah.

Samantha: And what I want to do is, I guess, is help the women in our audience and our listeners understand, if you like, the journey that you’ve taken, which is a different path in some ways, and yet as far as leadership goes, you’ve really paved the way for leadership in the entrepreneurial space, and you must have also come across your own counter mind and true mind issues along the way. So just your thoughts…

Andrew: It’s interesting that you talk about these limitations. I’ve never thought of myself as someone with limitations. I was someone, especially not self-imposed, I was someone who read biographies of successful people and said: “I’m going to be one of them!” I read magazine articles about what was going on in the world, and I said: “When I graduate from school I will be one of them!” And I started my company, and I remember…

Sony called me up and said: “We want to buy ads in your email newsletters.” That’s where we started. And I thought at the time, that sixty dollars was what I should be charging per day. And I thought: “Great! I will one day be big!” And this guy on the phone said: “Andrew, you have to think a little bit bigger. I’m going to think bigger on your behalf. I’m going to buy all of the ads that you have for sale.” And he bought ads from me at $7500.

I’d never seen a check for $7500 before! He lays it on me! I still, I think somewhere I still have a copy of it, because I was so amazed by it. Because it said Sony at the top, $7500, they bought ads, and I thought…

Samantha: So sorry, sir, you thought that you were someone that was really go-getting, and going to achieve everything you wanted…and yet, you put a price on there that was $60 and they offered you seven and a half thousand, is that right?

Andrew: Yeah. And then the guy said: “I’ll take..” I think he bought a months’ worth of ads plus some or three months, I forget the amount was. What I remember was how blown away I was by that check. I remember showing it off to a friend saying: “Look! I’m really in business now!”

And then at that point I thought: “Still…great! I’m the no-limitation person. If I can get seventy-five hundred dollars from Sony for just a few ads I can grow this business even further. I have no self-imposed limitations! I thought that was for chumps! I’m no chump!”

And then I remember getting into a car with someone, he was another entrepreneur, and he just started telling me: “Hey you know Andrew, you know about this thing called a “Co-reg’?” And I said: “What do you mean a “Co-reg’?” And he started telling me how when someone signed up for his email newsletter he gave that person an opportunity to join other email newsletters.

All it is is while they’re registering for newsletter. Andrew, he said, they could register for other people’s newsletters and those other people would pay you a buck per. And that price, that amount, that revenue could be a $100,000 a month. And at the time I don’t know where we were but that $100,000 suddenly felt like, hey this guy could do it in a month and I’m thinking a $100,000 a year some day and that’s what makes me a go-getter? He’s doing–he’s talking in a month.

And so I started to make phone call and I remember I made call after call and was rejected and rejected and I finally found someone who was willing to buy Co-reg ads from me. Their first check–this is a woman named Susan– her check to me was for three hundred plus thousand dollars. I never imagined that. And then after that it was for millions of dollars and I have still have copies of those.

In fact, I lost those checks but one of my employees from then heard that I was looking it. I was showing her, look, at the time–Crystal, we are going somewhere. Here’s the check. I copied it. She saved a copy of it and she was able to email it to me. But I wouldn’t have had that, because all I was was thinking about this limitation, limitation, limitation that I wasn’t even aware of. And it wasn’t until someone said hey, here’s an issue, here’s another horizon that I started to realize I could go for it.

Samantha: So did you almost get the proof before you got the belief?

Andrew: Once I saw that someone else could do it. Once I was aware that I was thinking too small I realized that there was a whole other world. But, if he wouldn’t have shown me, if either of those guys wouldn’t have shown me, I wouldn’t have even known it was available to me and so I fine that a lot in my life it happens, I find that there are a lot of self-imposed limitations that I’m not even aware of.

Samantha: And how did you become conscious of that. So over time you must have faced that again and again and again as your business has grown, because your success is truly extraordinary and for someone starting out in your space must feel very unreachable. But how did those limiting beliefs or constrains or counter-mind how did that actually register with you when you actually became aware that it was holding you back?

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