Daily Archives: October 19, 2016

How Expert DOJO Is Impacting the Startup World

Our principles

We decided when we opened our doors to not go with the herd and we publicly opposed lean Startup as a methodology.  The startup failure rate is not acceptable to us so we created our own system called “Agile Foundation” to build you a better machine. This machine combines the right community with strong strategic planning and at the core of everything is human centric design.  Our training is now a fixture at virtually every major conference in California, our investor Festivals are the biggest in SoCal and our Academy members are more successful that those who are not.

Success rate

 At the recent Ideas Festival two of our companies won the main prizes and we could not be happier for Healora and PopChest.  Both are great companies with funding and acceleration being rightly offered to them.

Of our other members we have had everything from 500% revenue increases to successful launches.  We don’t always get it right we we always give 100% and our success rate against objectives is at 26% verses 5% outside Expert DOJO.  We have also never failed in a crowdfunding campaign and we are very proud of our latest VeggiDome project.  With the communities support we will continue to make sure our only mission is to leave no startup behind

Why we did not take any outside investment to build Expert DOJO

Our message to you is that you should build a great business and make it revenue sustaining or user validated so you can then get the right investment only if it makes sense.  We leased our space thanks to our partnership with Santa Monica Place, Got our furniture thanks to Cort, built our platform thanks to the incredible web dev firm, Enki and built our brand thanks to the best brander we know Tatyana Luethi.  We took no money from outside and committed to you that this will remain the case for our first two years.  We will always help early stage startup and we will always practice what we preach.

Partnerships

Not only are we bringing the investment market closer to our Expert DOJO members but we are also working with multiple city officials and large private companies to make sure that every resource available is in place to increase success in Santa Monica.  Most recently the SBDC decided to come back to Santa Monica and make Expert DOJO there home.  This is all for you.

Training and startup program

We don’t believe in startup training courses and never have.  Being a startup is not a straight line from A to Z.  Our belief is that we have to use peer to peer support and training in a very structured way.  Our 12 step program covers, market validation, Branding, Business foundation, Business Planning, Development and Design, Team Building, Culture and Leadership, Acquiring users, Securing Investment, corporate culture and how to exit gracefully.  As an academy member check out our detailed marketing course, our market validation course and our success planning courses.  All are to help you succeed in business

Whats next.

• We have added a link on expert DOJO for you all to ask for help when you need it and offer help when that’s your expertise.  Millions of dollars of business is already being transacted on our site so we wanted to make it easier for you – https://expertdojo.com/live-feed/
• Expect to see Expert DOJO TV in Mid August.  Yes, live interactive coaching all day by livestream.  Its going to be incredible – https://expertdojo.com/startup-tv/
• Our next Investor Festival will have Investors from all over the US.  We also have a massive Richard Branson related surprise which is possibly the best startup competition in the world – https://expertdojo.com/events/the-ultimate-investor-festival-3-days-of-startup-pitching-and-engagement-between-investors-and-startups/
• We have 4 cities planned for 2017 to create a global network of DOJOs.

Why you want to join Expert DOJO now 

Up to this point we have allowed our space to be used by everyone but with our growth in members we are finding that there is just not enough space for them.  We are also incorporating more funding opportunities and more coaching so, within the next month or so, we will have an annual subscription only for all new members.  It will be loaded with value but anyone who is on monthly membership prior to this will be able to keep this flexibility and get all the same value.  

Make sure you are an academy member.  Thats where all our love is  – https://expertdojo.com/upgrade/

Want to know how a perfect crowdfunding campaign works – copy the veggidome

When Duncan and Eddie walked in the door of Expert DOJO I saw the potential for a product which the world sorely needs.  Their dream at the time was a special container for vegetable, which remarkably keeps them fresh for 4-6 days. This would solve the worlds biggest food waste problem – we throw out 30% of all the vegetables we buy and that adds up to 40 billion dolars of waste a year.  The problem is even bigger when you look at increasing obesity rates and a danger level increase in diabetes.  Enter the Veggidome, a cookie jar for the kitchen table, which keeps vegtables fresher than the fridge for longer.

The plan to start a crowdfunding campaign was an easy one but the logisitcs, platform and strategy was not.  Neither founder had been in this industry for long so their social influence was small, the veggidome was relatively new as a product and the vegan and vegatarian marketplace was not hat easy to enter.  What they did in the next 3 months though will blow your mind and help you build your roadmap to success,

Why we should treat an entrepreneur club the same way we need a Gym membership

Being an entrepreneur is a lonely and difficult life unless you have partners, mentors, coaches, friends and a roadmap to success.  If you have all these things it is the most rewarding experience you will ever have.  We created the Expert DOJO success club to be as important as your gym membership is for keeping you healthy.  We are with you all the way to help you be successful in your business venture no matter where you come from, what size you are or what your growth aspirations are.  We have created a value proposition worth over $3,000 per month, which you can have for only $100.

The below are just some of the benefits of being a member of the Expert DOJO Success Club.

1. Matchmaking to be introduced to other company relevant to your needs
2. VIP access to our events (all of them)
3. Access to our member only chat room
4. Monthly live stream coaching & mastermind session from our top advisors
5. Start up booth and entry our conferences
6. 15 minute mentor session 
7. Training days once a month to help you grow your business
8. Certain start ups will get to present to our Angel Group of investors

Join now and never look back – https://expertdojo.com/membership/

How Coworking is changing how and where we work

Illustration that shows how co-working is changing how and where we work.

The First Coworking Space Ever? Maybe, but Why?

Last Monday on the 31st of August 2015 I decided to offer our Expert DOJO 8,000 square foot workspace in the prime real estate area of Santa Monica to be used by the entrepreneur community at no charge.  For a long time I had resisted the notion of being called a coworking space because my deep belief was and is that coworking spaces do not improve an entrepreneurs chances of success, it just seems that way.  As a company dedicated to success coaching in the entrepreneur field I wanted us to be thought of as more than just a space, but last week I changed my mind and offered our coworking space at no charge to the entire entrepreneur community.  I hope my story will make you think differently about how you run your business.

New high tech companies fail at a rate of 98%.  That means that in every 1,000 person conference there are 20 people in the room who will make some money.  Most everyone else will lose.  When I compared this number to the Israel tech scene I saw that they have technology eco-systems with success ratios over 30%.  The reason for this is not just excellent coaching, tight partnerships between the private and the public sector, a close knit community and a better entrepreneurial education at an earlier age.  It’s something much more primal than that.  It’s how powerful a community can be when it believes that the sum of the parts are more than anything we can do alone.  It’s the highest form of conscious capitalism and here in America we have never needed it more than we do today.

When I formed our Expert DOJO Success Academy we went to one of the biggest property companies in LA and asked them to serve the community in a location where they would normally put a high priced restaurant.  They showed how much they cared for the community by providing us a location at a fair rent.  When we went to Cort Furniture and asked them provide furniture for our entrepreneurs they gave it to us without a thought for payment.  Now that we have the most beautiful coworking space anywhere in LA we are giving it to the community it was always destined for.  We make plenty of money from our coaching services (https://expertdojo.com/membership/) because we are good at success coaching.  Cort sells and rents lots of furniture because they are good at what they do, and the Mall will stay as profitable as they have always been for the same reason.  Our other partners who care about this community are Microsoft, Enki, Benchmark email and so many more.

Our dream is that the entrepreneurs who use our space will help everyone they meet in our space and outside, so we can turn 20 successful entrepreneurs in a room into 100 and then into 200.  More importantly, as entrepreneurs, everyone of us can look ourselves in the mirror and our families in the face and know that we made a difference to our whole community.

For those of you out there who feel this is tree hugging nonsense you will be interested to know that our enquiries and sales for our coaching services spiked at an all time high the day we made this announcement to the community and you should also know that this is not a one off action in a far away place.  We are part of a movement which will go through schools, prisons, veteran associations and everywhere else we can find to make our world just a little better for us all.  By joining this movement you multiply our impact on society and on your own business.  You can see why we exist at https://expertdojo.com and you should contact brian@payitfrowardlabs.com if you have any questions or just want to show support to our community.

Why every entrepreneur needs a mentor

When we started our first business we had a good concept but were two degrees away from a killer start up.  It took us 3 years to find the right path and it was all from a casual conversation with a mentor.  I have bitter sweet memories of that moment because, although it saved my business at the time, I wished I had sought out this advice 3 years earlier.

As entrepreneurs we are on a journey and we believe that this journey has to be a solo path to find our own enlightenment and success.  Anything less than success is failure and what should be a beautiful time in our lives, becomes a ritual trial by fire.  That trial by fire is fueled by our own egos and arrogance and us men suffer from this much more than our female counterparts.

At Expert DOJO I believed that our mission was to provide a marketplace for all business to help each other grow until my good friend and mentor Alex Capecelatro sat down with me and explained that what the world really needs is a great mentor and tool site to help make entrepreneurs stronger.  The difference between this conversation and my first business conversation is timing.  Alex put me on the right track in my second month and I will always be grateful for the great advice he gave me and the time he saved me.

At expert DOJO we provide experts and mentors who will help you get on the right path for no cost because they want to pay it forward to you.  Seek out your Alex – https://expertdojo.com/members/  and put your ego aside to really listen to all the beautiful journeys out there.  Enjoy the ride.

Why our Pay it Forward Labs event is so important to entrepreneurs everywhere

At Expert DOJO many years ago we decided to launch an event which was totally focused on the environment we wanted to create rather than to promote ourselves.  We called this event Pay it Forward Labs after the movie that inspired so many people around the world.

The basic principle was that being an entrepreneur is hard and doing it alone is even harder.  We had seen so many events where people just collected cards and spoke about themselves with little gain, that we decided to flip the networking concept on its head by focusing on giving instead of taking.

The principle was that we would provide everything an entrepreneur could want – live bands, access to funding giants, great people to network with, drinks and the most beautiful venue in town.  We then only asked for one thing. We asked that every person who started a conversation did so with the intention to help the person they were speaking with.  The result was astonishing.  Within a year we were hosting the biggest monthly event, not only in California but in the USA.  When we expanded to San Francisco and New York we got the same response and the events became so big that they were almost impossible to manage.

Our learn from this whole process is that deep down we want to help our fellow human and we love the deeper relationships that this brings with it.

We will continue to grow these events and stay a part of this vital entrepreneur community that we love so much.

Entrepreneur training classes at Expert DOJO

Right now we are hosting up to 15 entrepreneur training classes every month at Expert DOJO, as well as many more online.  We do this to help turn entrepreneurs into experts.  We want every entrepreneur to succeed and education is vital in his process.  A link to all our classes are here, as are all our evening events so you an find funding partners, co-founders and new clients – https://expertdojo.com/events/ .  All we ever ask our entrepreneurs to do is to pay it forward to the rest of the business community, as we are stronger as a whole.  We look forward to continuing to grow with you all.