Life is all about perceptions 😇

Hi FTF Friends 👋🏼,

I hope you are keeping well.

'What is Five Things Friday' (aka FTF).  FTF is a short weekly dose of inspiration; this email captures five things I encounter in my startup journey. This includes, the books I read, blogs, podcasts, favourite productivity hack, startup strategy, quote I'm pondering, smart tools and stories.

This is an exciting post about my last week

🔥 Using fear to my advantage

🚀 Learn to pitch your billion dollar idea

🤩  Showcase of how I build things

🤔  A new perspective on the life of giving than taking

Fear is your biggest strength and enemy.

FEAR was my biggest challenge getting into a startup as a temporary resident, international student, and immigrant with no business history in the family.

Being uncomfortable with uncertainty and the fear of the unknown, I always choose the safest option at hand - a corporate job with 6 figure salary, comfortable surroundings and a secure career. I realised I have been seeing fear in the wrong way. Fear is your weapon as much it is your enemy.

I have met countless individuals, friends, colleagues, family - who aspires to do great things, build a great relationship, become financially free and make an amazing life for themselves and their loved ones.  But they don't do anything.

Why?
FEAR of Failure | Fear of Disappointment |Fear of Death | Fear of being embarrassed | Fear of being judged | Fear of losing control | Fear of losing money and list goes on...

Please do me a favour and watch this video below (4 mins only) and share your comments too (below)

Pitching your Startup

Over the last month, I have been pitching MyGigsters at different forums such as investors, business leaders, government regulators, angel investors, marketplace, users and fellow startups.

It is crazy, most days, I am pitching the startup more than six times in a day. It is fun 🤩

You pitch your startup for different outcomes, e.g. investment, new employee, business partnership, joint venture and more. In this post, I want to share my learning and experience in pitching for business investment.

Must have in your pitch deck

• Tell the story
• Show the bigger picture - How big is the problem
• How are you doing to solve
• Why now
• Why you and the team are best to solve this problem
• How will you earn money
• Show that you have figured it out and your plan to achieve
• Ask what you want to ask 💰

At the start, I was unable to paint the billion-dollar business picture to my investors. My mind was limiting me to a few million, and I lacked the confidence to share the world domination plan 😁. But I learnt, through trial & error, including rejections, that investors need to see the confidence in you as the founder who has got this grand plan with grit and resilience.

I have a link to my sample pitch deck template (I have removed business-sensitive information) for reference.

Sample - MyGigsters Pitch Deck for FTF readers – Presentation (16:9) by Benjemen Elengovan

Canva

Be smart about meetings.

For ages, I have struggled with planning and scheduling my meetings. I would randomly populate my calendar with loads of meetings from all across the galaxy. Most of those meetings were unnecessary, too long than required, distracted, the wrong person in the meeting and had no clear agenda.

How CEOs Manage Time

Time is the scarcest resource leaders have. Where they allocate it matters—a lot.

Harvard Business ReviewMichael E. Porter

Now I have a fixed and shortlist of people who can get direct access to my calendar. The rest can connect using an online meeting booking tool called Calendly - Free online appointment scheduling software.

If you haven't heard about calendly yet, then 🤔  you are not paying attention to whats happening around you

Calendly is an amazing tool to help you organise your meetings and automate the entire appointment booking process. You can link your existing email calendar account and tell Calendly when you would be available in a week and the duration of your meetings (30 mins or 60 minutes.

Calendly will prepare a unique URL for you to share with your attendees. They can automatically find time in your calendar and book a meeting.  Most important, you can get started quickly with an ALWAYS FREE account - https://calendly.com/.

First-Time Founders 🚀 - a new initiative

A new initiative to support fellow first-time founders in my network. This group is born from my own experience building a startup as a first-time founder with no prior experience running a business and being an immigrant and international student in a new world.

The questions that most First-Time Founders have?

• 😩 I have an idea, but what are the first few steps to take?
• 💰 How can I bootstrap or raise money at early stages?
• 👋🏼 How can I find co-founders or team members to work with?
• 📕 What are the legal requirements of setting up a business?
• 🏆 How can I learn from others' mistakes and build a successful startup?
• 🚀 How do I build and launch a product? And more...

The objective of this group is to create a supportive and safe space for First-Time Founders to connect, learn and share their experiences. "Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much" - Helen Keller.

What can you expect in this group?

• 🎙 Access to tips, tricks, hacks, and tools to get you started
• 🤝 Safe and support peer to help you navigate through the decisions of the startup world
• 🔥 Build accountability and embrace purpose-driven entrepreneurship
• ❤️ Work with other founders, find your next co-founders, share your service and more...

Interested in joining? - Click 👇

Facebook Groepen

First Time Founders heeft 45 leden. Welcome to the First-Time Founders Group. My name is Benjemen, a tech startup first-time founder based in Australia. This group is born out of my own...

Facebook Groepen

I have got something even more special for you 🤩

I have decided to share behind the scene of building this community from scratch, and in others words, you will be able to see how I am building this while I am building this.    

A new series of posts will be published to showcase all the steps, tools, tricks, strategies, lessons, failure and success (The whole picture) behind this new initiative. So stay tuned for more posts on this.

This book is a must-read if you are thinking about an online business 👇

The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
This book is a game-changer if you are thinking about starting a side hustle and online business. Highly recommend it to those early stage founders who want to get started. I would definitely recommend a hardcover.

Quote, I'm pondering 📖

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not a daily increase but a daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity - Bruce Lee.

Well, that's all for this week. 😁

I hope you like my FTF posts. Please share your feedback, suggestions in the comments below, and I would write things that are most interesting and valuable to you. Also, if you think anyone in your network will benefit from these posts, please share.

Take care and be safe. 👋🏼