🔑 #1 - Enduring Ventures Shareholder Summit

Last week, Xavier and I hosted our yearly Enduring Ventures Shareholder Summit in beautiful Eden, Utah.

There was a lot of talk of “luck” in business. If you spend enough time around successful business people, the honest ones will attribute much of their success to luck, and it’s true.

Let’s talk briefly about a few strategies on how to increase your “luck”.

Luck is found at the intersection of where “preparation” meets “opportunity”.

Opportunity presents itself to every business, and every person (certainly some more than others). If you are prepared when opportunity strikes, you’ll be able to ride a wave of luck.

Here are some ways you can prepare for luck:

read more. Find books that you enjoy, but make sure you’re reading books that have stood the test of time. History, Biographies and good business books help train your pattern-matching engine. The more stories of success and failure see, the better you will become at spotting good opportunities when they come around.

get mentors. Similar to books, good mentors have trained themselves over time to identify good and bad opportunities. They should have a well developed radar to guide you in the right direction. Make sure you’re finding mentors (multiple, not one) that have proven personal success, ideally in a field that you’re interested in.

I’ve personally been very active in my life about finding mentors.

shoot for the moon (“if you miss, at least you’ll land in the stars”). Take action immediately towards your intended goals. And then encourage yourself to take another step towards the goal every day. You may not achieve your intended goal, but you will meet amazing people along the way who will respect you for taking action.

Increase your “surface area of luck”.

If someone throws you a baseball, are you more likely to catch it with your hand or a baseball glove? A glove of course! That’s because the surface area to catch the ball is much larger.

Think of “luck” as balls flying overhead. You need to find a way to increase the surface area of your glove to catch luck. Here are some ways to increase the surface area of luck in your life.

Be Curious. When you meet new people, get curious about them. In every conversation, you have with someone try to learn something from them. Everybody has something to teach you, so challenge yourself to find out what that is.

Network - networking gets a bad reputation. Networking simply meets connecting with other people and being curious about them.

I encourage you to attend in-person events through Meetup.com or Eventbrite in areas that interest you. It can be hobby, academic, or work oriented. But get out there and meet people.

Other good places to meet people: Twitter (DM some people you admire to tell them!), Facebook Groups, and Reddit.

Join an industry Mastermind - a Mastermind is a group of people in similar roles, or similar industries that get together once a month to learn from each other. Joining a Mastermind allows you to learn from other people’s experiences, and build close intimate relationships that are otherwise hard to create as an adult.

You don’t have to do all of these things. But push yourself to try a couple of them to see what feels right to you. The more you put yourself out there, the more chances you have to get “lucky”. You’ll be uncomfortable sometimes, but it’s ok. It’s all part of the process.

I’d like to call out two examples of people who increased their surface area of luck last week.

Our shareholder summit was capped at 40 people. Last minute we had two drop-outs, so my cofounder Xavier posted on twitter offering the spots to our community. Diliana Dimitrova and Reece Elmer were the lucky two who picked up the spots.

They put themselves out there, pitched their story to me and my partner, then traveled to Utah to attend this event. At the even they had a chance to spend 3 days with CEOs from our companies, and some of our amazing investors. That’s a lot of intimate time with people that are normally hard to reach.

✅ surface area of luck increased!

They may meet a future business partner or investor which can change the course of their career. This has happened to me (how met my business partner and investors), so I’m a big believer in working hard to attend these types of small events.

🔑 #2 - On Pitch Decks

If you’re planning on raising capital, it’s important to tell a good story.

Early Venture Capital investors will be looking for answers two main questions from your story:

• How big is the opportunity you’re presenting them?
• Are YOU to be the one to make it happen?

Your goal during the presentation is to establish, and reinforce your reputation over and over again from a variety of different angles. You’re often meeting the investor for the first time, so they don’t know you. But they need to trust you enough to write you a check for a lot of money.

The best way I’ve seen this done is by planning your presentation in information pairs. What I mean by this is:

1. show a slide about your vision, or how big your plan is
2. follow it with a real-world example of your achievements (examples of achievements include: traction with customers, a demo of your product or your specific experience in this field)

By pairing your vision story with a real-life example, you’re anchoring in the mind of the investor your ability to achieve your goal, and thus achieve your business plan.

The other important element is you have to brag about your life achievements. Bragging sucks. But you have to do it so that investors trust you. You can brag in a way that doesn’t seem douchy. Present information in a clear manner about your life achievements and avoid grandiose statements.

🔑 #3 - Reminder to Uplift Someone Near You

Last night I went to the Pitbull concert. It was amazing. I’m not sure what a religious experience feels like, but maybe we got close last night.

My partner Samantha worked with him on a movie and said he’s a delightful human to work with. I love it when superstars are also kind and nice to work with. I’ve heard my fair share of horrible celebrity stories.

Pitbull’s story is incredibly inspiring. He’s relentless at his pursuits.

His parents were Cuban immigrants in Miami. His father was a drug dealer, and he grew up with foster parents and became a drug dealer as well. After his music debut in 2002 (Lil Jon discovered him), he has gone on to sell 25 million albums, 100 million singles and has 15 Billion views on Youtube.

His net worth today is $100 Million. He’s also an active philanthropist in the Latino community and has built a dozen schools.

Why am I talking about Pitbull in this newsletter? Life is complicated and can feel hard at times for anyone. Pitbull is a good reminder to be involved in your local communities, to motivate others around you to be the best version of themselves, and not take yourself too seriously.

Plus we all need reminder to dress funny and dance sometimes. 😊

My two favorite Pitbull lines:

“find a way to turn a negative into a positive”, and

“any day above ground is a good day”

Love or hate his music…his energy is and positive attitude is contagious, right?

Reply to let me know which of the keys 🔑 you liked most: 1, 2 or 3!

Have a wonderful week!

~ Sieva

PS: Have you been to any good concerts this year? I’d love to hear about it

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