E196: The Most Important Success Factor in Business - Takeaways from the 5 Minute Pitch

Early this year my buddies Steve Chou of My Wife Quit Her Job, Scott Voelker of The Amazing Seller, Greg Mercer of Jungle Scout and I came up with a new show called the 5 Minute Pitch.

All four of us met up last week to film the semi-finals, and it's a little strange to say this, but it's probably the hardest I've worked the whole year. The schedule was so brutal that I wasn't able to touch my laptop for 3 whole days. Imagine that.

The 5 Minute Pitch

The 5 Minute Pitch is a Shark Tank style show where we have 32 contestants pitch us their businesses for 5 minutes, for a chance to win $50,000. Unlike Shark Tank, there's no strings attached, which means we don't take any equity from the company that wins.

Over the next few weeks after the creation of the show, the four of us and a couple of guest judges got together on Skype while 32 companies pitched their business ideas to us.

We narrowed the contestants down to 8 and had them fly to San Diego last week to present an extended pitch, in person, to all four of us plus one very special guest judge who we can't reveal yet (hint: his podcast is in iTunes' top 100 Business Podcasts).

We will be airing the first batch of pitches early next year on iTunes and YouTube.

The finals, which will determine the winner who will take the $50,000 prize, will be held in Miami, Florida during the Sellers Summit.

Most Important Takeaway from the Semi Finals

There is one thing that stood out to me during our filming last week (aside from the back pain from having to sit in the same position for too long) and that is there's one thing all successful businesses have.

The ability to adapt to change.

In business, you don't need to have everything figured out at the get go. You don't need to have everything planned. If you get too buried in planning, taking into account every possible scenario in your head, you might not get around to doing anything at all.

Learn to take action, get early feedback, and use that feedback to steer your business in the right direction.

Being nimble and learning how to ride the tide is the most important skill you need to learn to achieve business success.

If you think about it, so many successful businesses--AirBnB, Lyft, Cisco--didn't have all their ducks in a row. And if you look at their history, they are not the same company as they were when they started.

But they all have one thing in common: the ability to adapt to change.

Even the 5 Minute Pitch didn't start out perfectly. We knew we wanted to do this but the details weren't clear to any of us when we started. But we went ahead and did it anyway, improvising and learning from our mistakes along the way. The result of it is a show that all four of us are excited and proud to present to you.

EcomCrew Premium Opening One Last Time This Year

We've recently been limiting the number of people we accommodate with EcomCrew Premium because we wanted to be able to attend to the needs of every single one of our members, and having too many people sign up prevents us from doing that.

We have a trick up our sleeve for our next reopening on Black Friday, which will be the last time we will open registrations this year. Connect with us on Facebook to be among the first to get updates about our surprise for the reopening.

Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.