Entrepreneurship is ‘100% about helping other people’

Photo credit: Vendela Media.

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with The Jay Kim Show where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with top entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original show transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

Chris Brogan is one of the very first bloggers that ever existed. This was back in the 90s before anyone even knew what the internet was. He is the CEO of Owner Media Group, a New York Times bestselling author of eight books, and a highly sought-after public speaker. Tony Robbins had Chris on his internet series, Money Master. Forbes also listed Chris as one of the must-follow marketing minds of 2014 and put his website on the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs.

Chris, through his company, provides education and tools for aspiring entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground.

Who is Chris Brogan? How do you make a living?

“I run a small company called Owner Media Group. We do a few different things. […] We also work with smaller and independent organizations [by] giving them courses and webinars to help them with strategy, systems, and tools for what we call the modern business.

“I’ve worked with some of the biggest companies in the world like Google, Microsoft, Coke, and all those kinds of people. But I also work with people who run their own little design shops, holistic veterinarians, and a guy who runs a fence company. A lot of what I work to solve is very much the same for both [types of companies]. [The question] is, ‘How do you grow your business and reach the kind of people you hope to serve?'”

Are there ever days where you’re just like, ‘Screw it. I’m just going to do nothing today?’

“Yeah, 100 percent. One of the beauties of the kind of life that I’ve built for myself is that I can choose how I want to spend it.

“I don’t spend a lot of time with my feet in the sand [drinking] Mai Tais. […] Very few people end up on that beach next to that other person with the Mai Tais, you know?

“I like to show people there’s a way [they] could actually run a business that serves other people, and that [this] service to the other person is the real core tenet of the business. […] What separates me with a lot of […] the internet marketer-types is that every single time I talk about business, it’s all about service; it’s all about [asking] how do you find somebody that you want to serve and how do you help them grow?

“My version of ‘do what you love’ is really [serving] the people that you actually want to work with and be around. I think that’s why I gravitate toward these guys who run fence companies and things like that.”

You were one of the first bloggers. Could you tell us about your history and about the trends in the future? 

“I love these moments because I get to be like old man Brogan because I got into the online world way back when it was bulletin board services. [Back then], your computer would plug into a modem and you would dial a very distinct phone number. [Only] one person at a time could log in and leave a comment on a message board somewhere.

“[Now], if […] you’re tweeting something like the Grammys, and you’re like, ‘What is CeeLo Green wearing?’ […] Millions of people message you back. [Back then it was] like you dial in, you wait for it to connect, you go to the right file, and you type in ‘What is CeeLo Green wearing?’ [Then] you hang up and you wait for someone else to dial it in and voice their opinions.

“[…] I was raised in the Northeastern part of the US called Maine. Maine’s small and semi-rural; there’s not a lot going on. The conversations that were around me when I was younger were really getting kind of old, you know? The things that people wanted to talk about were: which was better, Van Halen or Led Zeppelin? Did you like Camaro or Mustang? Were the Red Sox ever going to win a World Series? That was pretty much the three questions, and then maybe we’d talk about the weather.

“None of those conversations were interesting. I wanted to talk about superheroes and how Batman could beat Superman, and ‘Isn’t Star Wars cool?’ When I got online, I was able to talk to people all around the world. That’s actually what brought me through to everything else I ever did in life […]. I just thought, ‘Wow. It’s so neat that we could connect with people around our interests instead of around our proximity.’ That [idea’s] been [present] through […] all the work I’ve ever done.

Was there a moment in your life where you’re like, ‘You know what? I should’ve done this?’

What’s your final piece of advice for an aspiring entrepreneur who might be struggling?