 sweet hey guys how are you great so I just want to check with them in the right place how many of you are here because you want to make a lot more money by show of hands like nice and high so that's like 20% of you okay cool and how many of you are here because you don't only just want to make money but you actually want to make a lot more impact with your life by show of hands in fact say aye fantastic okay cool so I want to share with you and I figure that if you are here today at fuck up nights number one you're not afraid of swearing and that's great because I swear quite a bit the second thing is this is that you're probably an entrepreneur maybe a change maker a social change agent maybe you call yourself something else a hacker or an innovator or maybe you're aspiring to be one and they're trying to figure out how to grow fast you try to figure out how to bring your gifts your mission to the world in a bigger way in a faster way without all the painful risk and all that so what I want to do today is to really be able to just download to you guys to the tune of about a million dollars worth of lessons in terms of what I've invested in terms of what I've lost in terms of the revenue that we've made and the big big big fuck ups that I've had along the way right because I think some of these things I like to feel I like to believe that my pain has a purpose and hopefully for one or two of you at least who walk out today you learn something from that and then you would make it all worthwhile for me okay so but before I do that you'll probably want to understand a bit because you have this strange guy who's standing in front of you who has like a Muslim name looks a bit Chinese wearing this colorful shirt and you just have no idea who this guy is so is it okay if I share a bit more about myself yeah so my name is Ibram Muhammad I'm a founder of a company called Street Smart University in the last year I've launched an Amazon best-selling book I've spoken in six countries including Germany Thailand Australia New Z not New Zealand Malaysia and and I have the absolute privilege of doing something that I love I asked myself this what do I do every day until the day I die and be happy doing every single day and I realized my one thing is to sit down with business owners and discuss strategy to give them the light bulb to give them the clarity and focus and momentum to move forward faster and so all I've done with my life and my business is structure everything around that so you might have seen me in some of the news features that we've been having for example I've been featured in tech in Asia in Sunday times in 938 life just to name a few but besides that I'm also a father I'm also a husband you might also see that in the past life I was about 12 kilograms a bit heavier than what I am today as well you would see our friend Fazil in the background our junior partner Mark in the who's over there that's on a beach in Bali so I have a great privilege of living a life at least for me I can only speak for myself of meaning of purpose of being able to travel around and doing what I love right but I want to let you know that it was not always this way because if you just saw me three years ago on Christmas night so this is December 25th 2013 you would have seen me like this I was in the boardroom of one of the newest tallest office buildings in Kuala Lumpur in fact you probably see the Twin Towers behind yeah and this was Christmas evening and I was in this boardroom alone wearing my t-shirts and my berms and I was working on a 100-page government proposal and I was there alone the icon was off I was overweight I was burning myself out every day because I was rushing this thing alone all the way until New Year in Kuala Lumpur in a foreign place alone sacrificing my time my health my family and the worst part was after that week we actually didn't get the proposal so we didn't get that we didn't even get the deal and I spent all that time and all that money and do you remember what Fazil my business partner said earlier about us getting into debt this was at that point when we were in partnership we were consultants we were going around doing government deals but we were freaking broke I was freaking broke and I was gonna get married in six months we were 50,000 plus dollars in debt and I had no income and I was like oh my god what do I do what did I do with my life and I got to tell you this the big fuck-up is this because I tried to do all the right things you know like Fazil go to school right he did he just didn't get a certificate okay so I'm corrected but I actually tried to do all the right things so I went to the good schools I went to National University of Singapore I went to the business school I took an entrepreneurship minor I went to Silicon Valley I worked in startups you know what did they tell you about starting a business in the scene you put together a nice little deck you do you do a proposal and at that point I had failed six times in business already in fact for eight years I was struggling and I was insisting upon trying to figure this whole business thing out because I had this moment in national service when I was serving military when all my individuality and all my haircut and all my name was tripped from me and I was just a number and a rank and a uniform staring into a jungle and a new version of Saints is available is this important and I was starting to the jungle and I realized that I needed to do something with my life and at that point in military I had no choice but I knew that I wanted to make a choice and then I decided I had this brilliant idea I'm gonna be a business owner and that led to me failing six times in business I remember one morning going down to the to the basement or to the kitchen of my my family home and my dad asked me that morning in my why don't you get a job what do you get a real job you run what is stop all this filling around to get a job and he proceeded to ask me that question every day for the next one year so I kind of fucked up then because I did all the right things my parents had really really high expectations of me they wanted to be they wanted me to be a scholar and then I became a six-time serial entrepreneur who failed and so there was a big first fuck up and the second thing was this so the second big fuck up was this we finally got around to do it we finally got this idea that hey we were stumbling around doing business and failing and failing and failing and every time I fail I learned oh I shouldn't put my money here I learned that I shouldn't work with this kind of people or I learned I shouldn't do this thing right but we had to do it by trial and error it was so expensive it was so painful I burned so much money fuzz and I got together we said what if someone actually taught these things like for real and that's what you call our company Street Smart University and you're like oh wow that's brilliant what if you made it to the app I bet everyone to download it and we actually went out to pitch start-up slap was the first place that we pitched and then we went on and we pitched at start-up Singapore we will semi-finals we pitch at echelon Asia we will semi-finals we raise seed funding from known angel investors and then one year later everything fell apart because we burned through everything we had no customers and we know where our business model and our income was going to come from right sounds like a familiar story most businesses even the ones that get funded and get lauded on the on the news fail you know just ask these guys they've been around for a while we've been in I was from any West so we've been an in the incubator for two years before we got our office where we are today and in that incubator in that little house that we've been housed in for two years we saw maybe about 40 plus companies go through the gates and today only us and one other company survive right that's that's the reality right so so for most people the dream of entrepreneurship ends up becoming a nightmare and then that's what we saw that's why we really started this so we successfully pitch for money but we didn't know what through the money if you don't know how to make money if I throw you money you're gonna just amplify that problem these guys are like yeah they know it right so the last fuck up is this we we I don't have the time to tell you this but we turn the business around right so we we were we went from fifty thousand dollars in debt we did I was super motivated because I was gonna get married I was like super motivated like I got to do whatever it takes we started doing everything knocking on doors and telemarketing and like everything and then we did like a hundred and thirty K of revenue in six months and then the year after we tripled the revenue so we went like like that super fast but you know sometimes we tend to forget why we are doing why what we do so I was like all hustling this is this term right today hustling for my business and I think I started to forget the real meaning of why I do what I do and I just want to tell you a story of why I do what I do and it's a bit personal because it's from from my family and my history and I think every one of us has some sort of baggage that we bring as well and I remember one day I actually experienced I witnessed domestic violence at home when I was a kid and I remember going up to my mom's room and she was sitting by the window she was looking out and she was crying and then I I was like I was a teenager I had no idea what to do I felt so helpless but I knew I had to reach out and I went up to her like I was silent I didn't want to say but she turned to me and then she looked at me and she said Imran it's it's all my fault and I knew just then I knew that no matter what it is hate violence is not the solution to anything it doesn't create anything nothing beautiful and I resolved that one day that anything I do would be out of love anything that I do would be out of love and that's why I do what I do but don't you guys realize that sometimes the thing that we want the most is a thing we push away and I found myself with the love of my life the mother of my child I told her you don't get me you don't get this big entrepreneurship dream you don't get me and I pushed her away we called off a wedding and I don't know for yet for the young guys we tend to think like especially with the young guys when we're running a business it tends to be very macho very ego driven but you guys have no idea how strong we are you guys have no idea no idea and I and she came to me and she said I need you I'm hundred percent committed and no matter what you say I'm gonna be here and that turned me around that love from a woman turned me around and that reconnected me with why I do what I do but I really almost fucked up we called off the wedding like we feels really close and we called it back on like one month before it was crazy yeah we we we yeah it was crazy so what happened thank you you have to thank my wife I don't know whether she's around I think she's putting the baby to sleep but being able to activate this car of myself I know I don't know every one of you and I don't know why you're here but I do know this we don't start a business to feel stress we don't start a business to manipulate we don't start a business to feel constrained we don't start a business to pretend to be someone who we're not so why do we keep trying to do that I decided that I'm not gonna be this freaking guy in a suit dancing around in boardrooms for old men I decided and that's why I turn up the way I do and that's what's allowed me to go and travel around the world hold Tony Robbins hand pose with Gary Vaynerchuk and just amazing stuff like simply because I just refused to be held by limits that most people hold themselves by and I just believe that if you are able to do that for yourself you live a much much much happier life let's not talk about money as well so this is why I do what I do and this reconnects me every single time you know like being here in this moment I know I'm living my purpose to be able to share to be able to do to be able to give my message my passion but there's this duality the moment I step out I'd be like so where's my family where's my kid right and that's all my life is family business family business family business I think there's very little life work balance I think for me it's just all life and if I were to leave with you guys three golden rules today is this number one is create a right support what Fuzzil mentioned about having the right mentor is super nail on hit stop doing things by trial and error stop trying to think stop trying to believe or fake yourself that you're so arrogant that you can know it all how is that possible it's not right at the moment I realized that at the moment I just sought people for the expertise we just move so much more and I stopped pretending I stopped pretending to be good at Facebook ads I stopped pretending to be good at building websites you know I stopped pretending to be all these things that I'm not and I just focus on what I'm really really good at and once you have the right mentors once you have the right advisors once you have the right team once you have the right people around you family support is super super super important then you create that support because entrepreneurship and business is freaking chaotic it's chaos every day you're pulled around with one thousand one decisions and a hundred fire fires to fight right so you need to have the right support around you it's crazy to jump into the deep end people do one of two things they either stand at the edge and say oh wow look at the pool it's so beautiful I wish I could be in and they didn't they do nothing or they jump into the deep end with no training with no maybe a bit of research with no lifeguard with no mentors with no support and you know you don't want to be either of them you want to have the support around you the second thing is this because entrepreneurship is so chaotic every single day is so chaotic and you know there's the ups and downs you want to control your focus and your state every single day so what I do is I wake up early I set my intention I do meditation I do a daily exercise and stuff like that so these are the things that keep me on point in fact it's the only time of the day that I fully control because today when I come here after I walk out there's probably a bunch of you there's gonna like pull me for attention or questions or just to connect and I have no control over that but I know when I wake up when I have my black coffee with coconut oil and my and I meditate and I do this I do that I can hundred percent control my state and I walk out feeling a million bucks so you need to control your focus in a state daily remember why you're doing it know exactly where you're going and the last one is this and I think some people are asking about fucking up and whether you whether they learn something about it it is it is all just newness if you're afraid of starting out or if you're afraid of failure just know that it is newness and we forget that we are this kid that learned how to walk and we forget that we're this kid that learned how to ride a bike that once we didn't do it and now we do so it's all just newness but we have this primal instinct to equate it to life-threatening situations when it's not it's just business the worst case scenario is you go back to your job and for some of you you're already in your worst case scenario right let's just be real right that's the worst that could happen right so it's just newness once you understand that business just like anything else is a skill and you can embrace it and the faster you embrace it the faster you learn the faster you implement the faster you get feedback the faster you tweak because the feedback and the failures are not permanent neither are they labels or failure they are just feedback the more you see it as feedback and you tweak and you tweak and you tweak and you tweak and you tweak that's what happens you you suddenly get a six-figure business is something get a half a million dollar business and and then you can do that fast so those are the golden rules that I have for you. I just wanted to check with you guys because normally I would either speak for a couple of hours or for a whole weekend how many of you would actually like me to help you with your business one-on-one because this is what I want to do for just a handful of you guys who would like to have a chat with me. Okay cool so if that's you and I like it there's just a handful of you guys what you want to do is to connect with me on Facebook you can find myself on Facebook let's have a nice mutually beneficial arrangement where you connect I'll give you some advice we'll talk about your business but also share with me on my Facebook wall what did you like about my presentation today it will help me a lot it will help others a lot as well because if you know that you benefited from this then we know that there probably tens or hundreds of thousands of people that need to see this more as well and that's what I live for and I don't want to be shy about that and the last thing is we will have that chat I'll spend about one hour with you and we'll have a chat seriously about your business so that's it I love you guys thank you for being you and thank you for being here spending your time and your life with us I'd like to open up a question one thing I did was this I looked at all the things that weren't working and I told fast cut toxic people toxic activities things that weren't working things that weren't profitable cut but we invested cut cut so the first thing I did was I became hyper aware of what was costing me all this pain and then I cut everything from that so we cut toxic partnerships we kicked out a CTO that wasn't working and we gave him lawyers letters like we just did whatever we need to do to cut off cleanly then the second thing was we were like okay so what the fuck do we do now right but we made an intention to do something different and you know what I think surrendered pitously someone came to us and they said hey you guys been around street smart university I've heard of you guys you guys seem to be good at online can you build an e-commerce site for us and you're like no no no that's not what we do and they said we have $11,000 I said I'm your guy I'll do it I'm your guy right and and we started this whole web division they created websites for companies and we started with an $11,000 contract when I had no company no branding no proposals nothing and from the first day you're profitable that's how we started and then I figured that if there was one person in the world with this pain willing to pay for a solution there would probably be a handful of others and then I said hey fast mark let's let's grab back together a bunch of guys I have a few people in my team I just launched out on Facebook I said I'm looking for a few good men and then the guy in the yellow station mark hey say hi mark so mark mark runs a web agency today especially on around lead generation for businesses he was the first one that message commented he said yes and then and then I took him and a few bunch of other guys we literally went to like a place like Arab Street Katong and I said go and we just knocked on doors for six months that's all I did I just knocked on doors I had no I had no sophisticated marketing plan or campaign I didn't know all the stuff that I knew today about branding and media and online idea I had no idea but I knew I was freaking desperate and I think once you really know what you want and that the result is non-negotiable you'll go out and do it so that's how we turn that around yeah