Billionaire Founder: No One Tells You This About Starting A Company | Ankur Jain

Mutli-Millionaire CEO: The Simple Steps to Self-Made Success | Everette Taylor

If you've been wanting to buy a business for years, get your ticket to Main Street Millionaire Live. You’ll learn how to find the right business for you, make deals, evaluate them, finance them, and own the upside: https://contrarianthinking.biz/MSML26_BDYT [https://contrarianthinking.biz/MSML26_BDYT] You've got a product idea. Maybe you've even built the thing. But now you're stuck on the part that actually matters: getting people to give you money before you've spent a fortune building inventory, hiring a team, or raising venture capital that'll own your company before you do. Everett Taylor is the CEO of Kickstarter, the platform that's helped creators raise over $8 billion and launch everything from billion dollar companies to side hustles that print cash. He came up through the mailroom, got stabbed working a parking lot, and built his career by learning how to sell himself before he had anything to sell. Now he runs one of the most creative funding platforms in the world and he's breaking down exactly how to raise money without giving away equity, how to pitch without sounding desperate, and why most people fail before they even start. In this episode, you'll learn: * Why selling yourself is the first skill every founder needs and how to build confidence even when you're starting from zero * The pre-order pyramid: exclusivity, urgency, value, timeliness, and trust, and why video is the number one thing that makes or breaks a campaign * How to calculate your real costs so you don't lose money on every sale and why you need a 25 to 30 percent buffer for the things you can't predict * The biggest mistakes founders make when pitching: not being concise, not building trust, and not understanding the difference between pitching VCs and pitching customers * Why raising venture capital means giving up control and how pre-orders let you test demand, keep equity, and build a real business on your terms ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: How to Raise Your First 100K Without Connections (00:00:52) The Self-Selling Framework: Marketing Yourself Before Your Product (00:03:54) Mental Toughness and Emotional Regulation: The Two Traits You Need (00:08:24) Pre-Orders Over Venture Capital: The Kickstarter Advantage (00:10:21) The Pre-Order Pyramid: Exclusivity, Urgency, Value, and Trust (00:13:41) The Video-First Rule: Why Great Campaigns Start With 30 Seconds (00:17:11) The Biggest Pitch Mistakes: Get to the Point or Get Lost (00:20:20) When to Bootstrap vs When to Raise Millions (00:23:02) The Venture Capital Trap: Why a 250M Offer Got Rejected (00:26:29) Cost Management and Buffer Strategy: The 25-30 Percent Rule (00:32:46) Surprising Success Stories: 28M Board Games and Comic Book Empires (00:37:49) The CEO Playbook: Mental Toughness, Humility, and Rolling Up Your Sleeves (00:40:43) Remote Leadership: Trust, Aggressive Goals, and Performance Management (00:43:26) The Kickstarter Turnaround: Rejecting Mediocrity and Rebuilding Culture ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal [https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast [https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod [https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod] MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct [https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez [https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez [https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez] OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID [https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID] 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp] 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN] 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ [https://resibrands.com/] 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk [https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk] 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

How to Rewire Your Brain to Hate Procrastination

If you've been saying you want to buy a business for years, your next move is here. Get your ticket to Main Street Millionaire Live and learn how to find deals, evaluate them, finance them, and own the upside: https://contrarianthinking.biz/MSML26_BDYT [https://contrarianthinking.biz/MSML26_BDYT] You've been planning to start that business for months. Maybe years. But you still haven't made the first move. Here's the truth: you're not lazy. You're stuck in a neurological loop that's hijacking your brain before you even realize it. This episode breaks that loop and gives you the exact protocol to rewire your brain for execution instead of avoidance. In this episode, you'll learn: * The procrastination equation: why your motivation equals expectancy times value divided by impulsiveness times delay, and how to solve for the variables that are killing your progress * The four traps that disguise procrastination as productivity: planning theater, research mode, waiting to feel ready, and the future self illusion * Why your brain's anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex fire less when you procrastinate and how that becomes your default wiring * The shrink, specify, stack protocol: how to make tasks so small your brain stops fighting them, anchor them to exact moments, and ride existing habits * Why Phil Knight sold shoes out of his trunk before he built Nike, and why I launched my newsletter on a random Tuesday with zero plan * How James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes over 15 years and why refusing to stay stopped is the only skill that matters ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: You're Not Lazy, You're Stuck in a Neurological Loop (00:01:05) The Procrastination Equation: Why You Don't Start (00:02:48) Your Brain Is Wired to Avoid: The FMRI Study (00:04:19) Trap One: Planning Theater and the Artifact Illusion (00:06:08) Trap Two: Research Mode Is Mental Masturbation (00:08:04) Trap Three: Waiting to Feel Ready Is Biologically Impossible (00:10:10) Trap Four: The Future Self Illusion (00:11:51) The Fix: Shrink, Specify, Stack Protocol (00:11:57) Move One: Shrink the Action Until It Feels Stupid Small (00:13:23) Move Two: Specify With Implementation Intentions (00:14:45) Move Three: Stack It on Something You Already Do (00:15:30) The Real World Example: How One Sentence Became a New York Times Bestseller (00:17:13) The Rule for Missed Days: Don't Make It Bigger (00:17:52) The Dyson Story: 5,127 Prototypes and 15 Years of Failure (00:18:21) The 51 Calls: How Cody Bought Her First Business (00:18:59) Closing: Every Action Is a Vote for Who You Become ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal [https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast [https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod [https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod] MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct [https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez [https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez [https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez] OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID [https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID] 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp] 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN] 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ [https://resibrands.com/] 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk [https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk] 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

How to Be More Successful Than 99% of People | Malcolm Gladwell

If you want to get ahead of 99% of people, stop doing what 99% of people do. As every great founder will tell you, ownership is what builds real wealth. Come to Main Street Millionaire Live to learn how to buy the right business for you: http://info.contrarianthinking.co/msmlbig-deal [http://info.contrarianthinking.co/msmlbig-deal] What if everything you've been told about success is backwards? Malcolm Gladwell has spent decades challenging the obvious. He's the bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink, and David and Goliath, and host of the Revisionist History podcast. In this conversation, he breaks down the counterintuitive strategies that separate the top 1% from everyone else. From why you should be a big fish in a small pond, to why remote work killed his career before it started, to why the best hires don't think anything is hard at all. In this episode, you'll learn: * The running partner rule: why your mentor should be one step ahead, not ten * How constraints build strength and why too much comfort kills resilience * The feedback framework that works: compliment first, then fix, and why you have to customize criticism person by person * Choking vs panicking: the two types of leadership failure and why most leaders fail from overconfidence, not incompetence * Pulling the goalie: why we wait too long to take the risk that could save us and how to lower the cost of failure * Why ideas are cheap, execution is everything, and the muse doesn't exist ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: The Big Fish, Small Pond Strategy (00:01:06) The Class Rank Advantage: Why Top Third Beats Bottom Third at Harvard (00:04:00) The Running Analogy: Find Your Training Partner One Step Ahead (00:06:05) The Mentor Myth: Why You Don't Need Malcolm Gladwell's Phone Number (00:07:36) Colleges Are Overrated Status Machines: The You Variable (00:09:37) Desirable Difficulties: The Coddling Problem and Building Resilience (00:12:31) The Interview Question You're Asking Wrong: Hardest Thing vs Happiest Thing (00:15:56) The Pleasure Principle: Why Great Workers Love the Work, Not the Break (00:17:01) Remote Work and The Washington Post: Why Malcolm's Career Wouldn't Exist Without the Office (00:20:12) The Feedback Framework: Compliment First, Then Fix (00:35:45) Choking vs Panicking: The Two Types of Leadership Failure (00:37:28) Leadership Depends on Context: The Air Force vs The Startup (00:42:48) Pulling The Goalie: Cliff Asness and The Risk You're Too Scared to Take (00:57:58) Ron Popeil and The Showtime Rotisserie: Marry Invention with Explanation (01:01:08) The Housing Crisis: Why We're Building Wrong and Zoning Ourselves Into Poverty (00:53:04) Ideas Are Cheap, Execution Is Everything: The Muse Doesn't Exist (01:05:24) Closing: The American Way of Killing and What's Next ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal [https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast [https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod [https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod] MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct [https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez [https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez [https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez] OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID [https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID] 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp] 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN] 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ [https://resibrands.com/] 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk [https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk] 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Billionaire Founder: No One Tells You This About Starting A Company | Ankur Jain

As every great founder will tell you, trading time for money is a losing game. Ownership is how wealth actually gets built. Come to Main Street Millionaire Live and learn how — http://info.contrarianthinking.co/msmlbig-deal [http://info.contrarianthinking.co/msmlbig-deal] What if the smartest money move you could make wasn't raising venture capital at all? What if taking the wrong check, even a big one, could kill your company before it ever had a chance to win? Ankur Jain is the billionaire founder and CEO of Bilt Rewards, an $11 billion company that's rewriting the rules of housing, hospitality, and how millions of Americans build wealth. He started by solving a problem everyone ignored: why doesn't paying rent help you buy a home? Then he spent 18 months fighting regulators to change the law. No revenue. No product. Just belief and a refusal to quit. Today, Bilt operates like a network of mini startups inside one platform, caps teams at 25 people, and only raises money from customers who actually want the product to succeed. In this episode, you'll learn: * Why raising venture capital too early is the fastest way to lose control of your vision and chase the wrong metrics * The $10 billion problem rule and why solving massive pain is the only path to a billion dollar solution * Why most companies die from indigestion, not starvation, and how to stay focused when opportunity is everywhere * Why hiring your best friends isn't risky, it's the smartest move you can make, and how to build a culture where A players never leave * The 90 day forcing function that weeds out bad hires before they spread and why managers are a waste of space * How Ankur spent 18 months fighting to change federal housing law with no revenue and why that patience built the foundation for everything ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: The Problem You're Solving Better Be Worth It (00:00:47) The Capital Trap: Why Traditional VC Money Will Kill Your Vision (00:04:10) The Customer Is Your First Investor: Kickstarter Over Sequoia (00:09:07) The Immigrant Grind: Watching My Parents Build from Nothing (00:11:03) The Sleep Test: If You Wake Up Happy Without It, Don't Build It (00:12:57) The Crisis Reframe: What Has to Be True for This to Be the Best Thing That Happened? (00:14:25) Build With Your Best Friends or Don't Build At All (00:17:45) The 90-Day Filter and the 25-Person Cap: Keeping the Startup Mentality at Scale (00:26:31) No Managers, Only Owners: The Pod CEO Model (00:28:37) The Hook vs The Platform: How Built Evolved from Rent Rewards to Hospitality Empire (00:52:02) The 18-Month Regulatory Bet: Building Before We Knew It Was Legal (00:46:14) Pessimists Sound Smart, Optimists Make Money: Why Entrepreneurship Should Be Fun (00:59:01) The Partnership Playbook: Solve Their Problem, Not Pitch Your Product (01:01:51) Closing: The One Thing Eight-Year-Old You Needs to Approve ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal [https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast [https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod [https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod] MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct [https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez [https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez [https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez] OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID [https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID] 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp] 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN] 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ [https://resibrands.com/] 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk [https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk] 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky) | Eric Jorgenson on Naval Ravikant

(Note: we had a technical issue that affected the first 12 minutes of Eric’s camera feed, so you’ll see a bit more wide cam than usual in the beginning. Our apologies!) Why is it that people with half your talent and twice your luck seem to be winning all the time? Because they understand leverage. And you're still trading hours for dollars. Eric Jorgenson spent a decade studying Naval Ravikant, one of the most influential entrepreneurs and thinkers in Silicon Valley, and distilled his wisdom into his classic book “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”. In this episode, we break down the exact frameworks Naval used to build wealth, happiness, and freedom without getting crushed by the game everyone else is playing. In this episode, you'll learn: * Why leverage is the only game that matters now and how code, media, and capital separate the rich from everyone else * "Productize yourself” — the two word formula that unlocks specific knowledge and makes competition irrelevant * Why hard work is overrated and judgment is the real multiplier that creates 100X outcomes * The four types of luck, from blind to built, and how to engineer serendipity into your destiny * Why rising above status is the ultimate form of freedom If you're an owner and this conversation about leverage resonates with you, learn the profit levers to find hidden cash in your business in my free Masterclass → https://contrarianthinking.biz/4cEHuZI [https://contrarianthinking.biz/4cEHuZI] ___________ [FLIGHTCAST_CHAPTERS] ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal [https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast [https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod [https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod] MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct [https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez [https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez] 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez [https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez] OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID [https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID] 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp] 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN] 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ [https://resibrands.com/] 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk [https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk] 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u [https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]