“You have never been qualified as you are today to start a business,” Max Borges
When in business, focusing on what you are good at and ensuring you have a great team is vital for growth and sustainability. Today, our guest Max Borges has the first-hand experience of running a business and insists that success is inevitable when people focus on doing what they are best at and surround themselves with people who can do things better.
Max Borges is an entrepreneur who in 2002 founded the Max Borges Agency – a tech-focused public relations firm. By studying the habits of business and strategy icons, he built his agency to more than 50 employees and $10 million a year in revenue. Max is also a tech investor, author of How To Be Fan-Fucking-Tastic! and host of the Unconventional Genius Podcast. Max lives in Miami Beach with his wife and three children and listens to heavy metal.
In today’s episode, our guest will discuss the importance of leaders focusing on their strengths when running their businesses and why it is crucial to eliminate any limiting beliefs and practices that hinder leaders from thriving.
You can find his book: How To Be Fan-f*cking-tastic!: Practical advice on how to stop sucking at life and start being Fan-f*cking-tastic!- https://amzn.to/3vwPJhJ
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- 19 years ago, a company offered me a freelance gig which I took but only took me four hours a day. [2:52]
- I got another freelance gig and rented a small office and hired some part-time help and then continued getting more clients and then slowly stepped it up. [3:18]
- I felt I needed to make money while I can, and I have since made money for the last 19 years straight. [4:25]
- For the first four years, we did any kind of marketing work we could get. [4:42]
- After four years with ten employees and a million dollars in revenue, I realized I was stuck with too much and couldn’t grow. [4:55]
- I had to figure out how I could scale the business. [5:21]
- I read three books that all had a similar message: figuring out what you could be the best at. [5:27]
- I made a list of all my happy clients and who did not require me to get involved and that my employees were handling without my input. [5:45]
- I also made a list of my clients that were sucking me in and was requiring me to get involved. [5:58]
- What I realized is, fortunately, the first list was about 70 percent of our business were consumer tech clients that we were doing media relations for. [6:09]
- The other 30 percent were clients we were doing everything else for but took 90 percent of my time. [6:20]
- I realized if I just did consumer tech relations, I’d have almost nothing to do, which would then free me up to work on my business and not in my business. [6:26]
- I was nervous because I was not sure it was the right decision but that year we grew 74 percent and continued growing over the subsequent years. [6:50]
- It got easier to run the business because now I got to do more business-building activities instead of business operating activities. [7:31]
- You also have to focus on hiring great people that can focus on doing some things better than you. [9:18]
- The most important thing you can do if you are building any professional firm where you are selling expertise is to commit and dedicate the time to hiring and developing great people. [9:47]
- It is also essential that you believe in people’s potential, and I believe that people have far greater potential than they realize. [12:00]
- I spent a couple of years collecting quotes which I published into a book, and so far, the response has been great. [14:23]
- One of the quotes is, “It is never too late to start something great”. [16:30]
- Many people think they have to start a business when they are eighteen or nineteen, but a lot of people start their business later in life. [16:40]
- Commercial Break [19:05]
- One of the quotes I have in my book is “life is an open book test”. [19:54]
- In real life, we are constantly being tested, but we always have the resources to tap into in real-time whenever we want to. [20:23]
- It also crucial that we surround ourselves with people who are experts in various fields who I can turn to for mentorship. [20:54]
- It is not about what you know; it is about what you can figure out quickly. [21:35]
- Rocket science is not rocket science anymore. [22:07]
- Another one of my favorite quotes is, “don’t follow rules that don’t exist”. [23:32]
- There are so many things that we do because we think it is a rule, but it is not really a rule. [24:17]
- People are not afraid of failure; they are scared of humiliation and that people will laugh at them. [27:25]
- We must do things that challenge us to strengthen that muscle of being fearless. [27:45]
- Figure out what you can be the best at, and that will be your sweet spot.[31:05]
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