Why Entrepreneurship Is More Than Just Business? | Tanvir Ahmed Teyder | TEDxDhanmondi

Key Concepts

• Brutal Acceptance and Accountability: Acknowledging one's current situation without delusion and taking full responsibility for it.
• Ego Annihilation: Overcoming pride and the pretense of knowing everything to be open to learning.
• Marketplace Observation: Identifying opportunities and understanding what others are doing in the market.
• Negative Guarantees: Focusing on the negative consequences of inaction rather than the potential success of action.
• Smallest Steps: Beginning with manageable actions that can snowball into larger achievements.
• Environmental Control: Structuring one's surroundings to minimize distractions and encourage desired behaviors.
• Identity Shift: Recognizing that achieving new goals requires becoming a new person.
• Learning 10,000 Things: Understanding that success in one area often requires mastering numerous seemingly unrelated skills.
• Genuine Competence: Developing a high level of skill through consistent practice and learning.
• Giving More Than You Get: Providing exceptional value to customers, exceeding their expectations.
• Cause and Effect: Understanding that outcomes are the result of specific actions and inputs, not luck.
• Saying No: Prioritizing goals by declining distractions and commitments that do not align with them.
• Long-Term vs. Short-Term: Recognizing that difficult actions in the short term lead to easier lives in the long term, and vice versa.
• Serving Others: Focusing on providing value and genuinely caring for people as the foundation of success.
• Thinking for Yourself: Critically evaluating information and not blindly following the crowd.

Personal Journey and Motivation

The speaker, Stan, begins by sharing his personal background, highlighting his parents' divorce when he was in fifth grade, which led to financial struggles. This situation motivated him to become self-reliant. At 18 or 19, he began learning digital marketing and design from the internet, using a barely functional laptop. He emphasizes that his ability to learn for free was contingent on his English proficiency, which inspired him to later found "English Bully," an online education business aimed at helping others leverage English for free online learning and earning.

Entrepreneurial Success and Financial Growth

Stan details his entrepreneurial journey:

• Early Career: He worked as a social media marketing manager for Delivery Hub, a startup, earning 18,000 taka. His strong performance led to international clients from New York, securing design contracts and significantly increasing his income.
• Financial Milestones: Before starting university, he was earning between 60,000 to 120,000 taka per month, enabling him to cover his North South University tuition.
• English Bully Growth: He founded English Bully from his apartment with just a laptop and internet. Over three years, the company grew to over a million followers with no external funding.
  • Revenue: He generated over 1.5 crore taka, with 11 crore 16 lakh 60,000 taka from website sales and around 40 lakh from other sources.
  • Daily Income: His daily income reached 30,000 to 50,000 taka.
  • Content Strategy: He posted only six videos, which garnered 360,000 subscribers.
  • University Period Earnings: By the end of his university tenure, his monthly income was 13 lakh 31,000 taka, exceeding his total university tuition of approximately 10 lakh taka.

Core Principles for Success

Stan outlines a framework for achieving success, derived from his extensive reading (over 1,000 books) and learning from successful individuals:

1. Brutal Acceptance of Your Actual Condition and Taking Complete Accountability

• Key Point: Acknowledge your current reality without self-deception, especially during difficult times. Avoid projecting a false image to others.
• Argument: True progress begins when you accept that no one else will fix your situation but you. This acceptance fosters accountability.
• Supporting Evidence: Stan's own experience of financial hardship and his decision to take responsibility for his future.
• Actionable Insight: Look in the mirror and admit, "I am young and I don't know everything, and that's okay. This acceptance is the starting point."

2. Killing Your Ego and Finding Mentors

• Key Point: Suppress pride and the belief that you already know everything. Actively seek out individuals who have achieved what you aspire to.
• Argument: Ego prevents learning and growth. Mentors offer invaluable guidance and information.
• Supporting Evidence: Stan sought out successful online education business owners who were generous with their knowledge.
• Technical Term: Mentors: Experienced individuals who provide guidance and support to less experienced ones.

3. Marketplace Observation and Starting Something

• Key Point: Analyze the market to identify opportunities and understand what others are doing. The crucial first step is to begin.
• Argument: Identifying a viable market (e.g., English learning in Bangladesh) and taking action is essential.
• Example: Stan identified the English learning market as a significant opportunity.
• Actionable Insight: Start a business, even if it's small, in a market with potential.

4. Thinking in Negative Guarantees

• Key Point: Instead of seeking 100% assurance of success, focus on the negative consequences of not taking action.
• Argument: The human brain is wired to avoid negative outcomes. Framing decisions around avoiding failure is more motivating than chasing uncertain success.
• Methodology: Write down what your life will look like if you don't take action (e.g., continued financial problems, dependence on others).
• Supporting Evidence: Evolutionary psychology suggests humans are motivated to avoid starvation (a negative guarantee).
• Example: Stan's product, a 5,000 taka English learning program, sold over 3,488 units, demonstrating the demand when the negative guarantee of not learning English is considered.

5. Taking the Smallest Step

• Key Point: Begin with the smallest, most manageable action possible.
• Argument: Grand ambitions can be overwhelming. Small, consistent actions build momentum and lead to larger achievements.
• Example: Inspired by Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life," Stan started by cleaning his room. This led to making one video or learning one skill daily.
• Concept: Snowball Effect: Small actions accumulating over time to produce significant results.

6. Controlling Your Environment

• Key Point: Structure your surroundings to minimize distractions and facilitate desired outcomes.
• Argument: Your environment significantly influences your behavior and ability to achieve goals.
• Examples:
  • Weight Loss: Removing unhealthy food from the fridge, deleting food delivery apps, joining a nearby gym.
  • Work Productivity: Removing a TV or game consoles from a workspace, making the workspace more appealing than the relaxation space.
• Personal Application: Stan's room is minimalist (bed only) to avoid distraction, while his workroom is more appealing to encourage work. Motivational quotes by his bed prompt him to start his day productively.

7. Identity Shift: Who Do You Need to Be?

• Key Point: Instead of asking "Can the person I am today do this?", ask "Who do I need to be to get the job done?"
• Argument: Personal transformation is necessary for achieving new results. It's about adopting the identity of someone capable of achieving the goal.
• Supporting Evidence: Brian Tracy's "100 Laws of Business Success" emphasizes this identity-based approach.
• Example: Stan, who initially struggled with Bangla, adopted the identity of someone who could build a successful English learning platform, leading him to work 12 hours a day for six months in isolation.
• Actionable Insight: Focus on the required actions and mindset, not current limitations.

8. Learning 10,000 Other Things

• Key Point: Success in any endeavor requires mastering numerous skills, many of which may seem unrelated.
• Argument: The expectation of mastering only one skill is a common misconception.
• Example: To build a successful online English learning platform, Stan needed to learn video marketing, website building, hosting, domains, accounting, human psychology, and finance, in addition to English teaching.
• Case Study: Restaurant failures are often attributed to owners knowing only how to cook, neglecting essential business skills like stock management, branding, and system formalization.
• Concept: Interconnectedness of Skills: Diverse skills are often necessary for the success of a primary goal.

9. The Process of Learning: From Hard to Easy

• Key Point: Learning is a continuous process of tackling difficult tasks until they become easy, then moving to the next challenge.
• Argument: This iterative process, practiced by highly successful individuals like Warren Buffett and Elon Musk, builds genuine competence.
• Methodology:
  1. Identify a new skill needed (e.g., building websites).
  2. Acknowledge its difficulty.
  3. Persistently practice until it becomes easy.
  4. Move to the next new, difficult skill.
• Example: Stan's progression in art: drawing basic objects -> cartoons -> coloring -> human anatomy -> value and lighting -> perspective -> landscapes. What appears as "talent" to others is the result of consistent, hard work.
• Quote: "Things don't automatically change. Changing your life is a very deliberate process."

10. Listen Only to People Who Successfully Did What You Are Trying to Do

• Key Point: Seek advice and learn from individuals who have already achieved your desired outcomes.
• Argument: External advice, even from well-meaning individuals (like parents), is only valuable if they possess relevant expertise. Emotional reactions should not override logical assessment of expertise.
• Supporting Evidence: Stan learned from successful online education entrepreneurs, acquiring their books and courses to replicate their results.
• Actionable Insight: Identify the causes and effects of success by studying those who have achieved it.

11. Developing Genuine Competence and Giving More Than You Get

• Key Point: Strive for excellence to the point where random strangers are impressed. Provide value that significantly exceeds the cost.
• Argument: Competence is the foundation of respect and success. Customers are drawn to superior value.
• Examples:
  • Stan's early videos were "terrible," but after hundreds of iterations, he created an 8-hour 47-minute course on English basics that became the highest-viewed in Bangladesh, earning praise from strangers.
  • A hypothetical phone manufacturing business competing with iPhone would fail if it offered a worse product at a higher price, regardless of effort.
  • His 9-hour course was bundled with a free 400-page ebook, demonstrating giving more than expected.
• Concept: Value Proposition: The perceived worth of a product or service to a customer.

12. The Nature of Money: The Customer Always Wins

• Key Point: Money is exchanged for value. For a transaction to occur, the customer must receive significantly more in relative value than the money they pay.
• Argument: This principle explains why businesses succeed or fail. It's not about trickery or shortcuts, but about delivering exceptional value.
• Example: A 5,000 taka English learning product is valuable because the ability to speak English offers benefits (e.g., better job prospects, university access) worth far more than 5,000 taka.
• Critique of Mass Media: Movies and TV shows often promote delusions about business (trickery, shortcuts) that contradict the fundamental principle of value exchange.
• Actionable Insight: Never do good work for free indefinitely. Offer value for free initially to demonstrate competence, but charge for significant value to sustain the business.

13. Thinking for Yourself and Understanding Cause and Effect

• Key Point: Critically evaluate information and make decisions based on logic and evidence, not popular opinion or emotion. Understand that outcomes are the result of specific actions.
• Argument: The world operates on cause and effect, not luck or personal feelings.
• Example: A billion people believing gravity doesn't work doesn't make it true. Similarly, emotional desires don't alter physical laws.
• Methodology: Identify the necessary inputs (actions) to achieve a desired output (result).
• English Bully Inputs: Creating a free 9-hour course, posting regular content, building trust, running targeted ads, having a 5,000 taka product, and selling 200 units per month to achieve 10 lakh taka income.
• Concept: Causality: The relationship between cause and effect.

14. Saying No to Everything That Isn't the Thing

• Key Point: Ruthlessly prioritize your goals by declining commitments and distractions that do not serve them.
• Argument: Focus is paramount. Saying "yes" to non-essential activities detracts from achieving core objectives.
• Example: Stan would decline social invitations if they interfered with his business goals.
• Actionable Insight: Be firm in your rejections of activities that pull you away from your primary focus.

15. The Nature of Being Young: Emotion vs. Action

• Key Point: Youth is characterized by strong emotions but often a lack of practical skills. True progress comes from learning and action, not just emotional reactions.
• Argument: Destroying things is easy and often driven by emotion. Building requires knowledge, skill, and deliberate effort.
• Analogy: A group of young people can easily burn down a building (destruction), but they cannot rebuild it without extensive education in architecture, engineering, and construction (creation).
• Core Principle: Things worth having are hard in the moment but lead to an easy life long-term. Bad things are easy in the moment but lead to a hard life long-term.
• Examples:
  • Health: Eating fast food is easy now, but leads to long-term health problems. Exercising is hard now, but leads to long-term health benefits.
  • Education: Reading and courses are difficult now, but lead to lifelong skills and opportunities.
• Outcome of Hard Work: By automating his business and becoming self-sufficient, Stan achieved a passive income and became "not a victim to life."

Conclusion and Key Takeaway

The speaker concludes by emphasizing that successful individuals and those achieving outlier results are not lucky. They possess knowledge the average person lacks, take actions the average person doesn't, and operate at a level of effort the average person doesn't comprehend. The core takeaway is to learn as much as you can from genuinely successful people, adopt their mindset, and take complete accountability for your life. They view the world differently, are not victims, and do not blame or hate others, as doing so relinquishes power. The ultimate message is to ask, "Who do I need to become to save myself?"