4 Things You Need to Do for Your Business Now

Over the years I’ve worked with some of the greats.

Tony Robbins, Richard Branson and Russell Brunson, to name a few.

After I spent some time with them, I came out with a new game plan.

I picked up four new things that I needed to do for my business not just to survive, but to thrive and generate more success in the modern business world.

Today, I want to share them with you. Let’s jump right in.

#1. Get an Advisory Board

During my awesome trip to meet Richard Branson, he said to me, “You know, you’re probably paying a lot of money to those TV executives that you hired.”

He was right, because some of these guys were making $250K, $300K, $350K and I had a half dozen of these guys. I also had people from the magazine and the newspaper industry.

Richard continued and said, “You need to get a new dream team, a new advisory board.”

I sit on about 20 public companies and advisory boards. In exchange for doing monthly, quarterly and various agreements, I sometimes get a little piece of equity in the process.

And what can a great team of advisers do for you?

They might help you as tech advisers, some might help with their notoriety as celebrities and influencers and some might help you as digital marketers.

You also want advisers who can help make introductions to new executives, specifically recruiting executives, to help you raise capital.

#2 Raise Capital

This is very important. You need to raise capital.

I’ve raised probably about $300 million for my own companies over the last 15 years.

How do I do it?

Well, frankly, you need to understand how to talk to investors. It’s not easy. Every single investor is different.

You see, what many entrepreneurs don’t realize is what their investors are really looking for. They just shoot them their business plan. This is a mistake.

Most investors want to know if the company is profitable and if the profits are guaranteed!

It comes down to one question:

“Hey, is it profitable?”

There is another type of investor who wants to know that there’s exponential growth.

Let me explain.

When I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg, a good friend of mine, on my podcast, she shared with me the story about Facebook. She talked about how she and Mark approached investors in the very beginning:

We had no money. We were raising capital. We had a million users on Facebook and we were meeting with a big investor named Peter Thiel, and Peter could write a check for $100 million if need be, but we were pitching him for a $5 million investment.

So when they sat down with Peter, they didn’t say that they had any profits. Not only were there no profits… there were no sales.

So how do you pitch an investor to give you $5 million if you have no sales and no profits?

This investor that wanted exponential growth.

So Mark said, “Peter, I’m not here to tell you about profits. I’m not here to tell you about sales. I’m here to tell you that with your $5 million, we’re going to go from 1 million users to 5 million, maybe even 10 million users.”

And Peter said, “If you can get to 10 million users, I’ll give you the $5 million — and I want 10% of your company.”

They did that deal. And what do you think 10% of Facebook is worth today? A lot of money. I mean, hundreds of billions. It’s unbelievable.

#3 Embrace Digital

We all know digital works, but it’s how you execute it that matters. You need to create solid content and videos.

I feel very lucky because I started shooting videos 35 years ago with Arnold Morris when we sold the Ginsu knife. We were doing 30-minute videos.

Now we’re doing 10–45-second videos. Overall, the world of embracing digital has become very, very powerful.

#4 Build Your Brand

Later on in my conversation with Richard Branson, he said to me, “Kevin, you’ve done some pretty cool things, like how you created Tony Little’s brand, Billy Mays’ brand, Jack LaLanne’s brand, George Foreman’s brand and brands for all these other people. You crushed putting them on TV every day. Thousands and thousands of times. But who did you forget?

“YOU.”

I then said, “I didn’t think I needed to build my brand because I was making enough money.” But guess what? Sales dry up and the money dries up.

Well, the guys I created the brands for did very, very well. So I said, “I need to do what? Build MY brand?”

Would you have the courage to build your brand if you had mentors and my dream team to help you?

When it comes to building your brand, there’s a lot to unpack. If this applies to you, come back Thursday — I’ll do a deep dive into creating your own brand.

Talk to you then.

Sent from a Shark,

Kevin Harrington

Sent from a Shark,

Kevin Harrington