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Don’t Confuse Your Business With Your Identity, with Edward Elliott, Ep. 13

Sep 28, 2017

When it comes to running your business effectively you want to learn from people who have done it themselves. But you also want to listen carefully to the lessons they’ve learned along the way. That’s what enables you to improve upon their success and avoid their mistakes as you build your own business. Today’s guest is Edward Elliott, an amazing entrepreneur who build a business right out of grad school that he later sold for $80 million. If you want to take your business to the next level, Edward is a guy who can help you do it. Listen to this episode to hear his story and the tips and strategies he’s learned. He's passing them along to you so you don’t have to learn them the hard way.

When Edward saw the future coming, he convinced his university to back his idea.

While he was still in grad school, Edward Elliott was working alongside a professor and another student to commercialize some ideas they had, but it wasn’t until he was about to wrap up grad school - in 1998 - that Edward and a partner started driving around North America with a big screen TV in the backseat of their car trying to convince companies that they’d seen the future and were going to be the ones to make it a reality. What did the big screen TV have to do with it? You’ve got to hear Edward’s story to believe it, and once you hear it you’ll see what a visionary he was.

A business is a vehicle you create to achieve a certain outcome. It’s not who you are.

If you’ve spent a lot of time building a business it naturally takes up a big place in your life. The blood, sweat, and tears it takes to build it can create an emotional bond between you and your business if you’re not careful. Edward Elliott explains that in his case, it was hard for him to break that bond when the time came. He didn’t want to. He didn’t think he should. But everyone around him could see it was time. What happened? Edward finally took their advice and moved on to other endeavors… and he learned a significant lesson about himself in the process. If you don’t take the time to listen to this episode you could wind up walking the same path Edward did and making the same mistake he made.

Why emotional decisions don’t have a place in business.

When you become invested in the success of a business endeavor it’s easy to lose track of what’s really important. Edward Elliott says a business is a vehicle you design to take you where you want to go - and that’s the thing you can’t lose sight of. When you do, you begin to make decisions out of emotion - what you feel about the business - rather than out of what is best in the particular circumstances you face. Emotional decisions have no place in business and in this episode, Edward explains why and what happens when you allow your emotions to call the shots.

He sold the company he started in grad school for $80 Million.

It turns out Edward Elliott did see the future. So much so that after 8 years of hustle he and a partner built a huge business that provided services to major companies like Wal-Mart. It was a long hard road that wound him up right where he wanted to be, with an asset worth selling. In the end, Edward walked away with an $80 million check to show for all his work. Find out how Edward and his partner created such an amazing business and what he’s doing today to help business owners build their own successful business, on this episode of Just The Tips.

Outline of This Episode

  • [1:11] Who is this guy, Edward Elliott? A TRUE serial entrepreneur.
  • [2:54] Edward didn’t want a job, so he created a business.
  • [5:40] When he saw the future, Edward convinced his University to back his project.
  • [12:45] Lessons learned from the hard work of door to door sales.
  • [16:20] When the big deal came through: what then?
  • [22:26] Two reasons Edward had to pull himself away from the business.
  • [27:22] Things Edward wishes he’d known sooner.
  • [31:33] How others made Edward’s toughest decision for him.

Resources & People Mentioned

Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

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