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Summary
Ready to understand the steps you have to take to make your business as successful as possible. Learning how asking “why” is critical to your success in every stage of business and could be the difference maker you need right now. Rebecca Bent, another serial entrepreneur, calls in to give her tips on how you can make money right away when starting your own business. Rebecca provides you with insights about the importance of being honest with yourself. Oftentimes you hear the word, “failure,” and you think it’s horrible and are fearful of it. Rebecca talks about developing a relationship with failure, or lack of success. It needs to be something positive, like, here’s an opportunity to go in and say, okay, it’s not working and why is that? That doesn’t mean that the business is going to necessarily fail. We have to figure out how to make it work. This episode will enlighten anyone who is looking for a solution to a struggle in their life.
Full Transcript
Josh: This is Josh Felber on the Whatever It Takes Network. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to ask the question, “Why?” Steve Jobs, when he first rolled out the iPhone, if he would have never asked why, we would not have the iPhone today. It was the original little flip phones out there and everybody was comfortable and happy with them and Steve Jobs asked, why could we not have a better phone? Why could we not have a phone that could enhance our daily productive lives?
Elon Musk from SpaceX and Tesla, if he would have never asked, why, we would not be working on rockets to send people to the moon and to outer space.
When I was 14 years old I started my first company. If I would have never asked why, I would have never accomplished what I had. There was a computer. I loved computers growing up. I had a Commodore 64 … dates me. I had a Commodore 64 and it was an awesome little computer but then they came out with the Commodore Omega. It was a really high-speed graphics, gaming and productivity computer. I just had to have one, but I only had around $400 saved up at the time. I thought, man, there’s got to be a better way. How can I get this computer for a cheaper price?
Doing a lot of different research and everything, I was able to figure out if I go out, set up a business, I can set up my wholesale account with the company and buy it at wholesale. I went through all the process, got set up, my dad helped me get a vendor’s license and, lo and behold, they approved me as a vendor to buy and resell their computers.
I spent my $450 that I had to buy the first computer and then, all of a sudden, all my friends were like, man, this is awesome. We want one of those. Throughout my whole high school sessions I bought and sold computers and accessories, everything else. If I never would have asked why, how can I do this, I would have never been able to put myself in that position.
I think so many times in life, you, even myself, we’re held back and that piece that’s holding us back is fear. I know you’re thinking to yourself, how can I get out there and do this and start asking that question, “why?” That fear is holding us back. It’s that fear of rejection, of failure and fear of being accepted or making a mistake. In life, the only way that we’re able to grow and to challenge us is to make mistakes.
Google makes hundreds of failures. Amazon, Jeff Bezos, says he wants his guys to fail because that’s how they’re coming to come up with new ideas and new, different, innovative processes.
We have to really ask ourselves why. Why can’t we start doing this today? What happens is, I think, is that vision gets suppressed. We lose that vision. We lose that excitement. One of the things that we really have to push ourselves is being comfortable with the uncomfortable and pushing ourselves outside of that comfort zone. The only way we can really start doing that is by asking that question, “Why?”
I want you, whether you’re venturing out on your entrepreneurial career right now, maybe you’ve owned your business for several years, is to step back and ask yourself, have I asked why? Why am I doing this? Why can’t I go out and change the world? Those are the questions that are going to catapult our business, create massive success and create action within our business and around us.
It was a funny story the other day from my kids, were like, “Dad!” I travel a lot for work and they ask me all the time, “Dad, why do you have to go to California?” or “Why do you have to go to New York?” Then I’ll start explaining to them and then they just start drilling me with more and more “why” questions. I think we lose that as we got older, we lose that innate kid in us to ask that “why.” That’s what makes you curious and that’s what makes you want to learn more and grow more.
What I want to do for you today is, I want to challenge you, to find that inner kid in you, to start asking that “why” and go out there and start changing the world. One of the things that I really want you to think about when you move forward with this is, don’t just take what initially comes to you, just let your mind flow free. Put down on paper, put down what you want to focus on, why you want to do it.
By doing that and getting that in writing, you’re going to start to really engage your mind and propel yourself forward. Don’t hold yourself back. Start asking that “why.” Keep moving forward with the entrepreneurial growth and success for your business. I want you to do this. Challenge yourself today. Keep pushing yourself forward and moving towards success.
When we come back I’m going to bring you Rebecca Bent, masterful entrepreneur who knows what it takes.
Welcome back, now we have Rebecca Bent with us on the phone. She’s a serial entrepreneur and I’m excited to talk with her today to learn a little bit more about what she’s doing and how she’s helping businesses.
Rebecca: Hey, how are you?
Josh: Awesome, Rebecca. Thanks for joining us.
Rebecca: Thanks for having me. I really love what you’re doing. I think it’s fantastic, because we all know that everybody’s business can use help. I don’t care how successful you are, everybody could use help.
Josh: For sure. Definitely. I’d love to learn a little bit more about what you’re doing and how you’re out there changing the world in business.
Rebecca: I own a few small businesses. When I first started, I really focused on food because I was a cookbook writer, so it made sense for me to dabble in food businesses. I owned two of those but, as I went along, I discovered that I had a knack for telling people what to do, so I ended up becoming sort of what you would call, I guess, a coach to small businesses.
They would offer me to come into their businesses, take a peek around and to give them my honest assessment about what I felt was working and what I thought wasn’t working. That slowly grew into a business and, in some cases, I was actually hired to be CEO of businesses and to run them for more than just a few months …
Josh: That’s awesome.
Rebecca: Which was a lot of fun. Yeah, because then you can really dig in there and make a bit of a mess, all the while knowing you’re going to clean it up later.
Josh: Right.
Rebecca: Because of that, I’ve just gotten into so many different things. One of my latest projects that I worked on over the summer was I ended up producing a full-length feature film because I went on the set, they asked me to come onto the set. I did, and the first thing, you know, I can’t help myself, I noticed everything. I was like, maybe you should do this or maybe you should do that and, before you know it, they’re like, hey, could just hang out with us and help us make this film a success?
Josh: That’s awesome.
Rebecca: It’s like I kind of fall into trouble and then help the people around me as much as I possibly can.
Josh: Awesome. When you were a kid, did you know you were going to be an entrepreneur? What was your passion? What was your dream?
Rebecca: I did. You know how kids will go to the puppy store or whatever, the pet store, and they see a puppy and they’ll buy it? I did the same thing, except I went to a store and I bought a rabbit and, within a day, I talked to my dad, I’m like, listen, we could make money. I could get another rabbit and they could make babies and then we … so I started my first business raising rabbits and selling rabbits when I was like six.
Josh: That’s awesome.
Rebecca: From very early on, I was wheeling, dealing and trying to figure out this concept of, how do you make money? Then, of course, later realizing, how do you have fun when you make money?
Josh: That was like mine. I started my first business at 14 years old and I think it’s just part of what makes and entrepreneur special.
Rebecca: Yes, without a doubt. Without a doubt.
Josh: What have you found over the years with the different businesses and everything that’s been like your key ingredient to success?
Rebecca: I knew we were going to talk and I thought about it. If I had to distill it down to just a few things. It didn’t take me long to come up with what I think, honestly, is one of the most important things small business owners need to ask themselves, or they need to assess.
I think they have to learn to be honest with themselves about what’s not working. Oftentimes you hear the word, “failure,” and you’re like, oh, my God, it’s so horrible. For me, I think you need to develop a relationship with failure, or lack of success. It needs to be something positive, like, here’s an opportunity to go in and say, okay, it’s not working, but that doesn’t mean that the business is going to necessarily fail. I just have to figure out how to make it work.
To learn how to listen to the business, which most people don’t do. They listen to their friends, they listen to their spouses. You’ve got to listen to the business and you’ve got to hear what’s not working and you’ve got to be honest about it so that you can then do something to turn it around.
Josh: Right, and I think that’s what so many people experience, they have that fear of failure and that it’s such a negative thing. That’s what holds them back of really pushing through to that next level of success.
Rebecca: Fear is one of those things, it can really get in the way of every part of your life. If you’re listening and you’re like, oh my God, I’m afraid to do this, honestly, that’s the next thing you need to do. Fear also blinds you and it makes it really difficult to see vision.
One thing that also an entrepreneur needs is, they need to have vision. They’ve got to have that passion to see things through. Times can be tough and things do happen. Life is that way. You’ve got to have the vision and the perseverance to push through it. Oftentimes, fear will damper that. Got to get rid of it. You’ve got to learn how to become friends with it.
Josh: What are your two key points that you use to kind of bust through that failure and to push past it that we can share with everyone?
Rebecca: A couple of years ago I was on this radio show. It was so much fun except, honestly, I had that little fear factor thing going. My producers forced me to do improv. I’ve got to tell you, I think improv is perfect for everybody. It makes you deal with yourself in the moment. You’ve got to get up on stage, you’re sweating like a pig and you’re like, oh my God, I have to say something, I hope it’s not stupid. You have to learn to deal with yourself, in the moment. No one’s there, it’s just you.
That’s one of the things I do. I’m constantly looking for those moments where I’m on my own and I’ve got to produce in the moment. Improv, I think, is great. Another thing I think is great is, find another area of your life, probably not the business that you’re in because sometimes it’s like too close and it’s too hard to see it, but go find the thing you’ve always been afraid of. Like maybe when you were a kid you were afraid to act or you were afraid to ride a bike, I don’t think I was really afraid to ride a bike, but you know what I’m saying. You have to face it.
You’ve got to set it up, make the date, and you’ve got to face it. I think that that brings people a lot of courage and a lot of sense that they can achieve something. If you can take the feeling of achievement from one area, you can sort of shift it back into the business, which is where, of course, you want to feel it.
Josh: For sure. That’s awesome. Those are two great nuggets of wisdom that we’re able to really share with everyone out there. What was the major moment in one of your businesses that you knew, hey, this is my vision, it’s my dream, and it just all of a sudden exploded and really became a reality for you?
Rebecca: For me, there’s one moment that really sticks out. I’m from Maryland. I was born in Baltimore and I grew up crabbing and fishing. Then I moved to the city and I sort of forgot about that part of my life. I have three kids and I wanted them to experience that. I’m in the city and I wanted them to experience that and I ordered some hard crabs. When I got the package, I had all these comments, like “This is wrong, this is wrong.”
Josh: Hey, Rebecca, we’re going to finish this story. We definitely want to hear what you have to say with this, it’s some great information I think you’re pushing out to us, but we’ve got to take a quick break.
Welcome back. This is Josh Felber on the Whatever It Takes Network. We have Rebecca Bent and, Rebecca, we had to interrupt you real quick earlier on this story you were telling us from when you were a child, and would love to finish wrapping up with what you had to say.
Josh: You said originally when you were a kid you used to …
Rebecca: I did. You were asking me, when did I know? I knew when I had gotten that stuff from another business and I had all these opinions and all these ideas. I picked up the phone, called the president and I gave him a piece of my mind. I said, “Listen, I could make your stuff so much better.” He took me up on my challenge and I was like, oh, crap. Wait a minute, that’s not what …
I’ve been in business with these guys now for over 11 years and we continue to grow 25% every single year. We’re the largest online purveyor of Maryland seafood. I think that’s when you know, when you have the opinion, you’ve got to step up to the plate and you’ve just got to say it. Then, honestly, you’ve got to sit back and let it happen and you’ve got to listen to the things that are working and the things that aren’t working. You’ve got to push and pull, you’ve got listen and you’ve also got to talk. You basically just have to do everything to make a business work and be willing to do it.
Josh, wait. I obviously read about you on the Internet and everything like that, but tell me when was the moment that you felt that this is your calling, this is what you wanted to do?
Josh: Mine was when I was 14 years old I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins. I just knew in my head, I didn’t really know what entrepreneurship was yet, but that’s what kicked the light bulb on for myself. Then just starting a computer business at 14, just because I wanted to be able to buy this awesome computer, not paying retail price for it, kind of kicked off my whole entrepreneurial experience.
Rebecca: Amazing. Did you ever get discouraged when you were on your journey to becoming the great businessman?
Josh: There have been lots of discouragement over the years but you get into those hard times and that’s a little bit about what our show is today about, the “why” and asking those right questions, whether it’s why you’re doing something or asking that question of why, being able to figure out what you need to change to make it better, to make a business and everything.
Rebecca: You know what? I’m curious to hear what you think about this. One of the things that I tell people is, you’ve got to listen to the business, right? That’s one thing. A great way to hear that is through your customers. You hear this phrase, “Customers are always right,” but what do you think about that? Do you think that’s true, that customers are always right?
Josh: I think you need to listen to your customers but the difference is, a lot of people listen to their customers and let their customers dictate control of the business. We still need to maintain control of the business but definitely listen to our customers in a general sense.
Rebecca: One of the things that we do in the seafood business, and we can do this because it’s just the nature of the business because it’s food, we actually have these huge events and we have our customers come. We go around, we talk to them, we eat with them, we drink with them and we listen to what they have to say. There’s going to be some people that are going to say, oh, you should do this better, that better, and it seems so outlandish, like too far of a stretch for our business but, I have to tell you, to me, everybody that’s using my product has something to say and I want to hear it.
And then it’s just a question of, I go back to my business partners and we sort of distill it down to, what did we hear most or what are the things that we think we could really get from it. When you don’t have a business like mine where you have food and you can bring people to the table, how do you go out and get that feedback?
Josh: We’ve used different things over the years in the variety of businesses that I’ve owned. In the gyms, we’re able to get feedback right from the clientele that way, similar to with the food and everything. Others businesses that are online and some of the businesses I consult with as well, we’ve done online surveys and different things. When people love your products they have a tendency to write in and say, hey, I love this, but it’d be really cool if we could see this or XYZ with it. You’re able to capture that as well without being right there with them, with your seafood business and everything as well.
One of the things, Rebecca, that we want to do with the show is, our whole premise with this show, is to really empower people staring their businesses. Maybe they’ve recently started a business, and to help push them to that next level. What’s one really major success that you’d want to share with our listeners today that they could take away from this to help move their business forward?
Rebecca: I think the most important thing is to learn to listen to your business. Imagine the business as a living, breathing entity and it has something to say. Then to listen to it and then to be honest with yourself about what’s not working. There’s a million things that are going to work and there’s a million things that aren’t going to work and you’ve got to figure out what’s not working and then how to fix it. Then take the steps to fix it.
I hate that all too often people, like I have said earlier in the show, they listen to their partners, they listen to their friends but they don’t listen to the business. It’s got something to say and it will provide so much information if you’re just willing to put the ego down and listen to it.
Josh: For sure, and that’s what, like you said, listening to your business and I think just a lot of people are scared to hear what they’re going to hear.
Rebecca: We talked about fear before and failure. I was still curious, so I was imagining, I know what I do, what I need to do to get around fear, but what do you do when you’re totally afraid and you feel that sense of failure? How do you recommend that people get through it?
Josh: For me personally, I’ve always been around fitness so whether it’s going for a run or workout or something, it just kind of clears my head and really gets me dialed in and focused. Then being a student of Tony Robbins over the years, I kind of just worked in an empowerment mantra to myself.
Rebecca: Like rituals and stuff? You mean like you…. so that you kind of like get yourself ready for …
Josh: Yeah, or just certain things that I’ve done over the years that I’ve engrained in so, whatever my routine, and then I anchor it so maybe it’s squeezing my thumb, then it brings back those feelings of empowerment.
Rebecca: Wait. You squeeze your thumb? That’s what I do. You like squeeze your thumb with your nails and be like.
Josh: Yep.
Rebecca: Keep yourself focused.
Josh: Yep, it gets you …
Rebecca: I didn’t realize anyone else did that.
Josh: That’s kind of my anchor to get me dialed in to whatever I’m going to do. What was the best piece of advice you’ve ever received that’s really helped you 10X your business and taken it to the next level?
Rebecca: It’s a little controversial. I don’t know, am I allowed to swear on this show?
Josh: Yes, sure. Whatever you want to say.
Rebecca: The best advice I ever got was, “Don’t be a bitch,” and it was from a woman. That’s worse, I think. Obviously I’m a woman. In my mind, I had this idea like, I’m going to be this powerful woman, I’m going to come in and get out of my way. I was being a total bitch to everybody and it was awful. It was awful for me, it was awful for them. I still remember this woman sitting me down, she was an even bigger bitch than I was. She was like, you’re just too nice. You’ve got to stop being a bitch. No one’s going to follow you. No one’s going to take the bullet for you. Who are you kidding?
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