Written by Canon Wing

I teach entrepreneurs and organizations the proven action steps to stand out within their market, improve the perceived value of their business, and better connect with their audience through naming, branding, storytelling, and communication platforms.

January 10, 2022

4 Things the Top 1% of Companies Don’t Want You to Know (Because Anyone Can Do It)

Today we are answering the question on every entrepreneur’s mind:

How can my new Business Come Out of Nowhere?

I’m going to give you the 1 of the 4 things that the Top 1% of companies are hoping it takes you a long time to figure out because these things are infamous for creating barriers that discourage entrepreneurs from boldly moving forward, and disrupting their industries with exciting new innovations.

Watch the full episode to learn all 4, and get ready to hit the ground running! So let’s do this.

Number One: You don’t need to have a lot of money, a lot of experience, or a college degree to be successful.

But you DO need a great idea, some start-up funds, a solid prototype, and a stellar business proposal.

In 2011, the founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel paid 20 students under the age of 20, $100k each to launch their entrepreneurial careers. But there was a catch: If they wanted to qualify for the grant, they had to drop out of school to get it. It’s called the Thiel Fellowship, and a LOT of people weren’t happy about it. Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, announced that it was, “the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade,” and he also claimed that it ‘sent the wrong signal’ to a broader society.

And one of the “signals” it sends is that higher education isn’t the only path to success.

Theil argues that a college education is grossly overpriced for most people and responds, “How did we ever get to the place where we have a one-size-fits-all society? I think we need more diversity and some genuinely different paths for people.”

As of today, the most successful recipient of the Thiel Fellowship was 19-year-old, Mark Zuckerberg.

College degrees are useful! And having a college experience can be amazing and life-changing. But that moment in time where it was absolutely necessary for a person to have a college degree in order to be successful in business—that time is over.

A survey done by Guidant Financial discovered that 30% of entrepreneurs don’t have college degrees, and only 18% of entrepreneurs have Master’s degrees in business.

An entrepreneur with an idea that is going to be of service to the world, make it a better place, make people’s lives better—they have a drive to pursue the ideas that matter. And in today’s business climate, pursuing those ideas doesn’t always mean spending loads of time and money in the classroom.

So if you have that great idea, start creating opportunities for yourself to generate start-up funds. Create an amazing business proposal. If your innovation is a product, start putting together your prototype. If your innovation is a service, start your own surveys, gather information from your ideal audience to show potential investors that your service is needed and that there’s interest.

Try to keep in mind in these beginning stages that your idea just has to work perfectly once for one person, and then you start scaling it from there, one person at a time.

Some of the most vital parts of building a business are free. You can start building your brand, start connecting your brand with your ideal individuals, and start circulating your brand name throughout your community through acts of service. Many of the foundational aspects of branding building require learning some techniques, more than it requires spending a lot of money. And I’ll put a link in the description below to take you into more step-by-step detail for how to build your brand using the 10 Landmarks of Branding.

Thank you so much for joining me! Watch the full episode to learn the other 3 secrets the top 1% don’t want you to know! Number 2 explains why there has NEVER been a better time to quit your j-o-b! Don’t miss out. 

If you enjoyed this blog post, I release new videos every Tuesday and Thursday on FB and IG, so follow me, or subscribe to my YouTube channel, and keep treating these episodes as a masterclass for becoming an Inspiration to Millions with Branding. And as always the way to becoming an Inspiration to Millions starts with our motto: Love What You Do and Love How You Do It.