Don’t Remember the Alamo | The Entrepreneurial Mindset Needed to Succeed – A Knowledge Bomb
Show Notes
200 Texans died while fighting to defend the Alamo and the liberty of Texas, however once YOU DIE you are dead because this life is all we have. Clay breaks down why it’s important to not be loyal to business models that couldn’t possibly work.
NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.” – Jack Welch (The former CEO of GE who grew the company by 4,000% during his tenure)
NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Entrepreneurship 101 is find a parade and get out front of it. Find a problem and then charge people for providing them with a solution.” – Doctor Robert Zoellner
THE STORY:
Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas, United States), killing all of the Texian defenders. … About 200 Texians were then stationed at the Alamo.
In December 1835, during Texas’ war for independence from Mexico, a group of Texan volunteer soldiers occupied the Alamo, a former Franciscan mission located near the present-day city of San Antonio. On February 23, 1836, a Mexican force numbering in the thousands and led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. Though vastly outnumbered, for 13 days the Alamo’s 200 defenders–commanded by James Bowie and William Travis and including the famed frontiersman Davy Crockett–held out courageously before the Mexican invaders finally overpowered them.
https://www.history.com/topics/alamo
For Texans the Battle of the Alamo is a symbol of their resistance to oppression that they constantly faced from the Mexican military as they struggled for independence.
FUN FACT – “Past statistics have shown that in the U.S. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.” – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201202/the-high-failure-rate-second-and-third-marriages
FUN FACT – “78 percent of the men interviewed had cheated on their current partner.” – 5 Myths About Cheating – https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-cheating/2012/02/08/gIQANGdaBR_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.05ab54a87466
FUN FACT – “17 percent of couples are content in their partner.” – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/contemplating-divorce/201709/are-you-among-the-growing-number-unhappy-married-people
FUN FACT – “75% of employees steal from the workplace and most do so repeatedly.” – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/employee-theft-are-you-blind-to-it/
FUN FACT – “9.4 percent of the population—had used an illicit drug in the past month.” – https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-trends
NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them — those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn.” – Robert Greene, Mastery
FACT – “4 to 6 million people, would be considered problem gamblers, people whose gambling affects their everyday lives.” – https://www.livestrong.com/article/119442-gambling-addiction-stats/
FACT – “One in eight American adults is an alcoholic.” – https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/11/study-one-in-eight-american-adults-are-alcoholics/?utm_term=.92dda665f4b9
FACT – The average American watches 5 hours of TV per day. – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-survey-media-viewing.html
FACT – “ The average American spends will spend more than five years of your life on social media.” https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/306136
FACT – “Facebook has 50 minutes of your time each day.” – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/facebook-bends-the-rules-of-audience-engagement-to-its-advantage.html
FACT – Here’s another disturbing stat: This tally seems to increase daily, but by one study’s count, the typical smartphone user interacts with their phone around 85 times per day. And this often includes middle-of-the-night checks for work emails and new “likes.” – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/startup-your-life/201801/why-your-smartphone-is-destroying-your-life
NOTABLE QUOTABLE – ““I don’t think modern science has good answers here. I think that modern world is actually really bad. The modern world is full of distractions. Things like Twitter and Facebook are not making you happy. They are making you unhappy. You are essentially playing a game that’s created by the creators of those systems, and yes, it can be a useful game once in a blue moon. You are engaging in the dispute, and resentment, comparison, jealousy, anger about things that frankly just don’t matter.” – Naval Ravikant (Naval Ravikant is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. He previously co-founded Epinions (which went public as part of Shopping.com) and Vast.com. He is an active Angel investor, and have invested in dozens of companies, including Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Stack Overflow and Wanelo.)
Audio Transcription
Get ready to enter the thrive time. Show on talk radio. 11 70. All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back for another exciting edition of the business conferences thrive time show on your podcast download. And today we have yet another knowledge bomb. These are 10 minute epiphany’s that, uh, hopefully will provide you a nugget of knowledge that you do not get in college. Today’s show is titled, don’t remember the Alamo. The entrepreneurial mindset needed to succeed. Don’t remember the Alamo. Robert, do you remember the Elmo? I remember watching a Davy Crockett really as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember, uh, it was, uh, it was a movie and I remember the fight of the Alamo in that movie. And so that’s whenever he said he and the Alamo, I think of that movie. Davy Crockett. Are you confusing the elbow with the animal? With Rob Schneider? That’s right. It wasn’t. No. Okay. So here we go. So this is the story of the
following. A 13 day siege Mexican troops under President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anta got a lot of words in his name. There was an assault on the Alamo mission near San Antonio. Dave Beck Song, Modern Day San Antonio, Texas, killing all of the texts and defenders, about 200 dudes were stationed at time, so in December of 18, 35 during Texas’s war for independence from Mexico, a group of Texas volunteer soldiers occupied the salad and they began to take a seat during attacked by Santa Ana and the da did the fighting, didn’t stop for 13 days. These guys, imagine this, you are in the Alamo to the Alamo in San Antonio. Texas is not that big. You’d be like being in like a middle school and you are being attacked on all sides by thousands of people and there’s 200 of you. It’s like 200 versus many people think it’s like 200 versus 5,000 and these homeboys fought for 13 consecutive days and they killed thousands of the invading Mexican troops.
They were led. They were commanded by James Bowie Williams, Travis, and he also had the fame frontiersman who was a real person, Davy Crockett, and they fought for 13 consecutive dates. Bombs going up everywhere. Explosions happening everywhere. People dying everywhere and for 13 days they fought and they knew that if they didn’t escape right away, like if they didn’t bail out right away, like before they got attacked, they would die there, they, they knew going into it. Hey, if we don’t get the crap out of here, they’re sending thousands of troops and we’re definitely going to die because we’re not going to have any reinforcements anytime soon. We’re going to die. If we decide to start this fight, we’re gonna die. You know? That was the mindset that Martin Luther King Junior had when he decided, when he decided to stand up for civil rights, he was willing to die for the idea. That’s the same idea that Abraham Lincoln had. He was willing to die for the idea, die for the idea to end slavery. Abraham Lincoln willing to die for. That’s X. Ronald Reagan willing to die to end communism in Russia and the former USSR. He’s wanting to dive that idea and I wouldn’t want to tell you this because I really care.
Hello?
I would never die for my business conferences. I’m out. I’m tapping out. Don’t remember the Alamo. Get outta there. The business just exist to serve you. Turn. You see so many people. They’re like, Oh man, I’m going to try for my business conferences. I remember this years ago, there’s a guy I know fairly well and he’s like, I’ve come up with this app and what this is gonna do, it’s gonna revolut and he’s 100 percent. We’re talking to disruptive over two and a half million dollars in into this APP. And he still will not listen to anybody because nobody wants the APP. Right? There was a client about six months ago, we worked with. They’re based in Canada and he wanted to create an APP to replace Airbnb. He’s like, there’s all these, there’s all these Canadian homes up here. People want to rent them out of there by the boundary waters.
And uh, what we do with the APP is it allows people to stay in other people’s homes. Don’t you know, and uh, it’s going to be great a. and I’m like, dude, you would be competing with airbnb. Do you? Do you not see mean? Oh, I know. But airbnb, I mean as a lot of flaws, a lot of user problems. I’m like, dude, it’s a billion dollar company, right? Oh yeah. I asked the guy, not kidding. I said, how much money would you be willing to spend a week to market? The company was, I probably could do a thousand. Oh my God, thousand dollars. This is like the Alamo. This is like, you go in against Santa Ana, you’re going to die. You’re going to spend all of your money. I said, how much money do you have saved? He’s like, well, my job. I mean if I spit, I got it.
About a thousand extra months and I’m willing to do it for years. Why? Like, why? Why are you willing to die for an APP that makes possible to rent homes in the Canadian near the Canadian boundary waters? You know, Jack Welch once wrote, he’s the famous former CEO of Ge who grew the company by 4,000 percent. He says, face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. That is so powerful. A Dr. Robert Zellner. Uh, this is, uh, Dr Robert Zoellner, a notable quotable. This justin entrepreneurship one. Oh one. He said Clay Entrepreneurship one on one is you have to find a parade and get out in front of it, find problem, and then charge people for providing them with a solution. That’s it. That’s all it is. Voted problem. Chart people for the solution. That’s entrepreneurship. But Robert, how have you seen people come in with an idea that could not possibly work? They don’t have the money to fund it. They don’t have that. Can’t do it. Yeah. And a lot of times there’s not even a need for it. And so we have done assessments with businesses. I’ve done assessments with businesses where we’re going to the assessment, discovering more about their business, you know, branding, marketing, sales, all that. You realize that the idea, I don’t know if anyone wants this, I don’t know if anyone needs this.
Two is you know what this means? It means that this pain doesn’t work at all.
You’re Kinda there going, ah, I don’t hear it. We’re to
coach you, but I can’t. Ethically you take your money, your idea’s not going to work. Yeah. Where were people are trying to offer a service? Um, I remember one guy, he wanted to do a power washing company and I’m not kidding. He said that he would not power wash for you unless you prepay like a lifetime membership or at least a year. So imagine that you get a person knocking on your door. Hey, would you like to have your home power washed? You’re thinking, well maybe you know, how much is it? They go, we have to prepay for the year. So a typical power washer. 300. So be 3,600. I know I just met you, but just give me a check. I mean how would you, how many doors do you have to knock on? Yeah, I was going to tell you, I don’t know if you knew it, but if you prepay for 30 years, it’s a 30 year plan.
This, I swear to you, this was a real thing. Prepay for a 30 year plan for like $90,000. I guarantee we’re gonna it’s guaranteed for life. Yeah. Are you kidding me? I’ve got a question to get their home power wash 12 times a year. Let me. This is crazy. I don’t know what, what he was smoking. So impressive. Um, I got a question because. Yes, absolutely. If there’s not a need for the product or service that you offer, then you’re not going to be successful because they’re not a need for it and you’re not gonna be able to sell anything by an Oxi fresh franchise by top canine. Walk away from it. Get out of there. But how do you know when you’re in the trenches of starting a business and you’re trying to get that first deal and you’re running everything and everything seemed so hard and you try not to be the first one to ever do anything.
You know? Just find somebody is already doing something and do it better. Don’t, don’t go out there and try to reinvent the wheel. It’s too painful to reinvent the wheel. I mean, if you’re a school teacher and your pay sucks, just to understand you chose the wrong profession. You’re a teacher. I mean, teachers don’t get paid well why? People spend more money on dog training than they do on private tutoring. True Story. That blew my mind when I discovered that. That’s not my opinion. That’s just how it is. I mean, people honestly don’t value public education, which is why we pay basketball players $23, million dollars a year and we played teachers, we paid pe teachers. Nothing. You can go protest, you can get upset it, but you chose the wrong profession. Go get a different degree. I mean, it’s just what has to happen.
I mean, Bill Campbell, the best business conferences coach of all time was a college football coach and was a teacher and you decided you want, I want to make some more money. So we switched and went into a different career and now bill Campbell, coach Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos of the founders of Google. I mean, so look about Bill Campbell, former teacher turned business coach. Unbelievable. So again, you might be upset with reality, but it doesn’t change reality. I mean, 75 percent of employees steal. That sounds terrible, but the US chamber confirms it. CBS News confirms it. Seventy eight percent of men cheat on their spouse. It sounds terrible, but it’s. That’s the reality. Eighty percent of people lie on their resumes. Nine percent of the American population is on drugs up. Why do I say all that? Because it’s just reality. It’s not mean. It’s just how it is. I mean, 100, eight people as an alcoholic, the average person’s watching five hours of TV a day. That’s just how life is face reality as it is, and then make a plan to make it better, but you’ve got to face reality as it is. Don’t remember the Alamo do not tie for a failed business idea. Three, two, one, boom.
