Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - Why You Should Fall In Love With The PROBLEM Not The Solution, With Uri Levine Co-Founder Of Waze Episode 291

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  The key to winning in any meeting and *spoiler alert* it happens in the first 10 seconds... Why you must focus on the problem, not the solution   Knowing when, where, and how to take on risk  The secrets to becoming successful in business The most important behaviors of successful entrepreneurs  Resources: Website: urilevine.com  Read Fall In Love With The Problem Not The Solution Email: [e-mail]  LinkedIn: @Uri Levine Youtube: @urilevine5745 Facebook: @Fall In Love With The Problem Not The Solution Twitter: @UriLevine1 Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  Are you willing to take a risk if it means reaching your dreams? Giving up was simply NOT an option for successful entrepreneur Uri Levine when he launched the worldwide navigation app, Waze, which now has over 700,000 million users around the globe. If you don’t allow anyone to judge your ideas, you can explore and develop new skills that may change your life! Plus, success doesn’t happen overnight, so you have to remember to ENJOY the journey! Uri will share how to make the hardest decisions you’ll face, and why sometimes in order to succeed, you need to FAIL a lot. Listen in to discover how you can tap into your own dedication and drive in order to achieve all of your goals!  About The Guest: Our guest today Uri Levine, is very RARE! He’s built two companies that have been evaluated at more than $1 billion, and in his new book Fall In Love With The Problem Not The Solution, he shares how he did just that. As the Co-Founder of Waze, a commuting and navigation app with more than 700,000 million users to date, which he sold to Google for over $1 billion, Levine is committed to spreading entrepreneurial thinking so that others can build their own highly valued companies too!   If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: The Key To Staying Positive When The Unexpected Challenge Inevitably Hits With Heather!  Your FAITH Is Stronger Than Your FEAR! with Heather!  EMBRACE The 4 Phases Of Change With Jason Feifer The Editor & Chief Of Entrepreneur Magazine  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So you're winding down with the podcast. Sounds like you have no plans to leave the couch tonight. Nope, you just want to unzip your jeans, slip on a pair of fuzzy slippers, and rip open a bag of skinny pop popcorn. Because the only place you're going tonight is the bottom of this bag of popcorn. Then the Benaras will never know one is time to quit. One of the most significant behaviors of Antepaneras is the greed, the pressure of their insurides, the never giving up attitude.

And it goes together with the passion and the mission that is totally engaged with this journey. If you look at what is the most important behaviors of entrepreneurs, never giving up is number one. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We've come at diversity and set you up for better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet our guest today. Now, if you don't know what a unicorn is, it's a company that reaches a valuation of more than $1 billion. Obviously, very rare. Our guest today,

Yuri Levine, has built two and in fall in love with the problem. Not the solution. His new book, he shows you exactly how he did it as the co-founder of Waze, the world's leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date, which Google acquired in 2013 for 1.15 billion. Levina is committed to spreading entrepreneurial thinking so that other founders, managers, and employees in the tech space can build their own highly value companies. Yeri, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. Really happy to be here. Okay, I have to tell you right out of the gates that as number one, thank you to Cara

Golden for introducing us and connecting us, but as I went down the rabbit hole of your life and started learning so much about your work beyond the headlines, which you're very well known, and really diving into your thought process. It made me realize something, Yuri, that made me feel upset and emotional. I've been focusing my entrepreneurial life and business on solutions so wholeheartedly that I almost was forgetting about the problem. And I can't tell you how grateful I am to have this interview with you today, because I don't know how it ended up so reverse for me. Do you ever hear other entrepreneurs

feeling that same way? So for a second, I would say many of the entrepreneurs start with the solution. Now, the fact that I think that they should start with the problem is my approach. It's not the only approach. We also need to agree that there are other approaches that work and become successful. But in my approach, when you start with the problem, it's guaranteed that you are creating value once you provide a solution that actually works, right? Because a problem is something that people would like to eliminate. And if you eliminate that problem for them, then you create value for them. And my mission in life, my destiny is about value creation. So it's way easier to create value if you solve a problem than if you start with a solution. Well, I definitely appreciate your different approach. It

really was very enlightening for me and incredibly helpful. So I know it's going to be for everybody today as well, a very, very different approach. I want to start with your upbringing and how when people maybe hear that Steve Wozniak wrote the forward to your book or some of the incredible people that you spend your time with, people only see those headlines and those incredible numbers that you've produced with the companies you sold, but you didn't necessarily grow up that way, is that correct? You know, of course, at the end of the day, having successes, the result of a very long journey, right? And in the Rora Coaster journey, and in the Howard journey, with many failures, well,

this journey. And once we realized that, then we, you know, we look at success and we say, okay, this happened in a space to a second, it's not. It's hard work. And so for a second, I would say, and part of it, of course, is luck. But I would define luck as opportunity meets readiness. And readiness is hard work. Well, you've been putting that hard work in for a very long time. Did you know at a young age, you were going to be so much into the entrepreneurial world? Looking back, absolutely yes. But back then, no, I didn't. I don't even think that there was a definition of what an entrepreneur is, right? But the reality is that the entrepreneurs

here may be a lot of skills, but in particular, different personality. They will be troublemakers. They will not accept anything for granted. They will challenge many things. They will take apart toys in order to see how it works, right? And so they will have different behaviors that when you look at them today, you can actually identify them back then. I will simply try to make her. That's it. Well, we live in an interesting culture today, and thank you for making that point because I've made this point many times. I'm 48 years old.

And when I was a kid, entrepreneurial journey wasn't a thing. You were expected to go to corporate America and rise through the ranks today. It's so fashionable and trendy to be an entrepreneur. And the flip of it almost is I feel like today, everyone is supposed to have a side hustle. Everyone's supposed to be an entrepreneur, and the way that you're describing how you see entrepreneurs, you don't think that's the case that everyone should be starting their own company.

So obviously not, right? There are people that believe well, if we say that this is a rollercoaster journey, and I think that I heard the best expression to define this rollercoaster journey, but by being a whole bit from a recent whole bit of intricate to from, and he used to be a CEO of a startup, and he was once asked whether or not he was sleeping well at night at a CEO and said, oh yeah, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 12 hours in Prague. This is the reality of the roller coaster journey. And this is something that we need to realize.

There is one part that people don't appreciate. The attitude towards risk and change is different for entrepreneurs. They are looking for the change. They want to change things. They want to change the world. They want to change. They want to change things. They want to change the world. They want to change. They want to create an impact. And they are willing to take the risk because not all of them are successful.

In fact, most of them are not. And the reality is that many people are risk-averse. They don't want to take risk. They prefer to go into corporate America or they prefer to have stability rather than rural co-star journey. And therefore, not everyone should be in the panels and it doesn't feed all the people. One of the things that I found really interesting that you had attributed some of your ability to take on risk and your strength and resilience stemmed from your childhood with your father.

Can you share a little bit about how your father impacted you? You know, I think that was at the time, I, you know, no one realized that, right? And when I would come to my dad with a crazy idea, he would say, why don't you give it a try? And the most important part is that you were just encouraged to try something, you know, that we hadn't done before, right? And obviously in many of those cases, it didn't work, right? And there was no judgment

because the encouragement to take risks or to try new things or to do something, even if it's crazy, but actually go and do that has to be supported with the no judgment. And this is how you create a lower fear of failures, right? Because every time that I try something, there was no judgment, right? If it didn't work, it did not discourage me from the next time to try something even crazier or something completely different. And usually the way that we grow our kids

is totally wrong in that sense, right? We expect them to bring A plus. And if they bring F, then we punish them, right? And this is totally wrong. We instead of expect them to bring A plus. And if they bring F, then we punish them, right? And this is totally wrong. We instead of encourage them to try new things and fail, we essentially discourage them. And they become afraid to fail. And if you're afraid to fail, then you're not going to try new things.

So true. And even the way that you're explaining raising children, my career in corporate America was very similar. Yes, Heather, go try to change it and innovate, but no surprises. Don't allow for any opportunity to drop any balls. Make sure we're still going to hit the P and L balls for the quarter.

And as long as you can do it within that window, everything is fine. So there are all these, like you're saying, judgments and conditions that are really opposing the opportunity to innovate. So how do you, as an entrepreneur, even with that background, with your father supporting you to try things and embrace failure, how do you know when you start a company or start a concept that, okay, this is gone too far, it's not working, I need to give up on this now.

You know, for a second, I would say that entrepreneurs will never know one is time to quit. One of the most significant behaviors of enterprises is the greed, is the pressure of their arthritis, and they're never giving up attitude. And it goes together with the passion and the mission that is totally engaged with this journey, right?

And so, if you look at what is the most important behavior of entrepreneurs, never giving up is number one. There are probably more to that, but never giving up is the most critical one. And then the winner will never give up. They simply don't have that in their dictionary. National security experts are warning. Our aging power grid is more vulnerable than ever. January marked a third time a power station

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NetSuite.com slash monahan to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. NetSuite.com slash Monahan. Did you ever feel when you were starting ways that, oh my gosh, this, the challenge ahead of us is so big. I feel like I want to. I'm just not going to allow myself or that idea never going crossed your mind. You know, the journey starts with falling in love with the problem, right?

With really falling in love and actually defining that mission as your life mission point. And what happens, well, the journey is that number one, you don't remain in love forever, right? You hopefully you change that into other passions and other you'll tell you, but you don't remain in love forever. The number two is that you face challenges that you had no clue that are going to, you know, show around the corner. And number two is that you face challenges that you had no clue that are going to, you know, show around the corner. And what happens is that you get your perseverance from two factors. Number one, the mission, you know, helping drivers to avoid traffic change. It's a big task, but it's also a mission. And when you have that in your mind, you feel like, you know, this is

my mission in life. This is exactly what I'm going to do. The war is going to become a better place if I'm successful in that. And I'm ultimately that. The second part is your teammates. So they sign up for your journey and they want to go into this journey with you. And you are committed to them the same way that they are committed to you. And so the team and the mission are the one that actually helps you to go through the hardship and the challenging periods of this journey. And look, all the startups have hard times, right? A lot of hard times. A lot of hard times is an understatement.

Yes, and I think people oftentimes lose sight of that because they only see the glossy highlight reel on social media, which can be so challenging. I'm so interested in ways, obviously, because it's such a well-known acquisition and such an incredibly successful story. What were some of the more challenging times that maybe people aren't as aware of? I'll go back to ways, but I wanted to suggest something, right? So, when a startup starts, they have a problem that they would like to solve, or they

have some vision in their mind, and then they're going and building their product. The first part of the journey of all the startups is to figure out product market fee, which means that you create value to your customers, right? To your users or to your customers. And if you don't create value, you have no reason to exist, right? So you either figure out product market fee or you will die as simple as that. Now, the journey to figure out product market feed is rather long, but we never think that you never heard of a company that did not figure out product market feed. They simply died.

That's it. And you never heard of that. The journey is rather long to get there. It was five years from Microsoft. It was 10 years from Netflix. It was 10 years from Netflix. It was three and a half years for ways. It's always a matter of years that you're in this period of time. You have two options. You don't figure out product market feed or you die. That's it. In every day that you're not making progress towards figuring out product market feed,

you're actually making progress towards your death, right? And obviously, this is not good. And so people are not aware of the journey prior to figure out product market feed. The interesting part is that when you think of very successful companies, and you ask yourself, what is the difference between, any of the applications that I'm using every day

on my phone? Searching Google, watching Netflix, using Uber, using ways, whatever it is. What is the difference between the applications that I'm using today? In the first time that we have used that, in the answer is that there is no difference. We are searching Google today the same way

that we search Google for the first time in our life. We are using ways or Uber or Netflix or whatever, the same way that we did Google for the first time in our life. We're using ways or Uber or Netflix or whatever, the same way that we did for the first time. So once a company figure out product market feed, the value that they bring to their customers does not change anymore. There are many other things that are going to change. They will go into the next phase of the journey to figure out business model, they will go into the next phase of the journey to figure out business model, they will go into the next phase of the journey to figure out growth.

They will, you know, change the product multiple times in the back end in order to support bigger, addressable market and better performance and so forth. But from the value proposition, nothing is changed. Now the reality is that no one knows what happened between the time that they have started and the time that they figure out product market fit. In all the companies had a lot of issues throughout this journey. Sometimes they were unable to raise capital because the race capital at the beginning and they started to build the product and then there was not enough traction.

The product was not ready yet and then it became really hard to raise additional capital if you don't have traction. And so, so this is something that I think that all the companies that I've heard have experienced, including by the way, Google, we don't think of Google as a company that struggled at the beginning, right? But they actually were unable to raise capital. And they approached Yahoo at the time andiyahu to acquire them because they were unable to raise capital. But in the end, we ask how much? And they say, they're $2 million.

$2 million. Not $2 billion. Not $2 trillion, just $2 million. And Yahu said, no. So you look at it today and you say, big mistake, right? We actually don't know that. For a second, I would say there are right decisions or no decisions. Because when we make a

decisions, we don't know what it would be like if we would choose a different path. So we don't know what would have happened if yeah, I would have said yes. We simply don't know that. We want to believe that Google will remain whatever it is today, but that part we don't know. So all the companies struggle at the beginning and the way is journey was pretty similar. Now we started in 2007 and the real magic of ways is that we the drivers crowdsource everything that is being used by the application. So we, the drivers generates graphic information, okay?

And we get that. We generate the information about speed traps and accidents and additional information we get that. We generate the information about speed traps and accidents and additional information we get. We the drivers creates the map. So when we started, the map was a blank page. There was absolutely nothing on the map. And the first driver drove, we collected from the device

the GPS data. And if we take this GPS data and draw that on this blank page, we're starting to get something like look like all the roads of this person row and all the terrains of this person there and so forth. And if we started to take that from a lot of drivers, we are getting something that looks like a Mac and we and built the software to create the Mac out of this date. And the Mac at the beginning is not good enough. It takes time for the map to become good enough. And during this period of time, we had no fraction, because everyone liked the story.

We the drivers are going to help the rest of the drivers to avoid perfection, so you are ready to sign up to this mission. And then you try it, and it's not good enough. And so you give up. And we're trying that again and again and again. and every time we were doing exactly the right thing. Right? So we spoke with the drivers, we understand what didn't work for them. And we build the next version, knowing that we address all the issues. And we know that the next version is it. And it's not. And we're doing it all over again, whole year of iterations.

And until it eventually become good enough. And that was 3.5 years from the day that we started until we were good enough to the level that you would download the app in LA. And you'll say, wait a minute, this is awesome. Or this is good enough for me. Or this is actually valuable. When we think of product market feed

in bringing value to your customers, there is only one metric retention. People are coming back. If you create value for them, they will come back. If you don't create value for them, they will not come back right? It was really bad. It was embarrassingly bad. And it's evolving, improving, evolving, evolving, improved the whole year of iterations until it became good enough. And this is really the reality of figuring out product market feeds and it's an iterative process. Now I caught a journey of failures and the entire startup is a journey. Now if you think of what does it mean journey of failures, the entire startup is a journey of failures. Now, what does it mean journey of failures? Then I want you to think of the following, right? And these are two critical conclusions.

If you are afraid to fail, then in reality, you already fail because you are not going to cry. Albert Einstein used to say that if you haven't failed that because you haven't tried anything new before, if you will try new things, you will fail as simple as that. The immediate conclusions out of that is that wait a minute, if I'm with you to fail multiple times, then the faster that I fail, I actually increased my likelihood of being successful because I still have enough time and enough resources to try something else. Make another attempt, another version, else. Make another attempt, another version,

another improvement, another attempt, another version and so forth. In the faster that you do that, you actually buy yourself enough time for another attempt. Now, it's quite obvious that if you're going to make more attempts, then you increase the likelihood of being successful as a simplest, this is really important. So once you realize that this is your journey, then you actually have an opportunity to go and improve in the process of building your startup, in the process of figuring out product market fit, in the process of later on figuring out your growth strategy. Because in many cases, I asked people, so exactly, how are you going to go to the market

with that? And they will tell me, I'm going to put Facebook ads. Okay, maybe. And if it doesn't work, then they don't know. The reality is that if you will build a marketing plan with 50 different actions that you're going to take, what I would say is, okay, now you have 50 different experiments that you're going to make until you find one that does work. And this is the beauty of this year. You're looking for one thing that does work.

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by listening to the millionaire university podcast. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Find the millionaire university on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. So, Yuri, one of the things that's so interesting about your journey is the unlikely, this I would think of, you know, having one uniform start up and selling a company for 1.1 billion

and then doing it the second time for you. And I'm just so curious, was it something that you felt like, okay, I've seen this, I know the roadmap now, I can apply it multiple times, I know how to go out and identify, or was it still a journey of, I'm gonna go out and test and try different things for you. So that's the journey, that's the journey, try different things for you. So that's the journey.

That's the journey. So once you realize that this is the journey, then you can actually build a systematic approach to build more and more successful startups and successful companies based on that, right? Because, and this is really important, right? If you don't know that this is the journey, then you're trying to build something different. Like you're trying to shortcut some of the phases of the journey. You're trying to sell product that is not ready. Now, the problem with selling product that is not ready is that it's not ready. And instead of focusing on what is really important, you are actually trying to do multiple things

at the same time. Whereas this is actually a sequential process. If you don't figure out product market fit, it's useless that you will sell that, because you don't bring value to your customers and they are not going to like it. And so the systematic approach, and my book is speaking about, it's a cookbook for entrepreneurs, right?

It's how to build a startup from scratch, from including all the phases, all the development phases. And hopefully by doing that, I will help many other entrepreneurs to become more successful. And if this is the case, then that actually makes me very happy. And it makes me very happy

because there is more identity, than the one that everyone knows. But there is another strong personality of me, of being a teacher. And I feel equally rewarded if I build stuff myself, or I help someone to build it. And therefore I ended up with mentoring many of my CEOs

and guiding them. And this is why I wrote the book for me. This is a fulfilling my destiny of creating value to multiple entrepreneurs and increase their likelihood of being successful. And as a result, makes the world a better place. Absolutely. I love the way that you approach that.

OK, so with your book and looking at this system, and like you said, it's like a cookbook handbook for entrepreneurs, one of the sections of the book starts off with firing and hiring, which I thought was interesting the way that you stack that instead of the logical hiring and firing. Can you get into a little bit of insight on that? You know, obviously you're not the first one that comment on that. The publisher actually told me when I sent them the, you know, the proposal, they say, no, no, these should be hiring and firing. And I say, no, it should be hiring and firing. And I said, no, it should be firing and hiring.

And the reason is that firing is hard decision. Hard decisions are hard. Highering is easy decisions. And in the beginning of that is, my dials with many entrepreneurs that they are start up failed and ask them why? What happened? And so about half said, the team was not right. And I kept on asking, what do you mean the team was not right?

So we had this guy not good enough and this guy, so not good enough was something that I heard quite often. And I don't think that I, and I don't have a reason that I heard less often, but also quite often is that we had a community key solutions, right? Something that I actually called the ego management issues, right? And then I asked them the most interesting question,

when did you know that the team is not right? Now, all of them knew within the first month, they said, wait a minute. If you knew within the first month that the team is not right, then you did it, do anything. The problem was not that the team was not right. The problem was that the CEO did not make hard decision.

Now, the biggest challenge is startup is a small organization, right? And just imagine small organization with 10 or 20 or 30 people, and there is someone that shouldn't be there. Shouldn't be there because they don't feed, because they weigh on their performing, doesn't matter what the reason. If there is someone like that in a small organization, everyone knows. Everyone knows and the CEO doesn't do anything. That's the nature of the

business. And therefore, you know, what the conclusions of the chapter, by the way, is very powerful. On every time that you hire someone new, mark your calendar for 30 days down the road and ask yourself one question, knowing what I know today would I hire this guy. Now, if the answer is yes, then I should go and tell them that. Tell them that you are very pleased with the hiring. But if the answer is no, fire them immediately. Fire them immediately because you're doing yourself a favor, you're doing the organization a favor, you're doing a favor for the rest of the team, and you're doing a favor for that particular person, because they are already set on a trajectory of not being successful here, and they do deserve to be successful.

And therefore, you really want to fire them fast, and this is why I said firing and hiring. First, learn how to fire then learn how to hire. And why are so many of these CEOs having a hard time firing someone if they know they're not right for the company? Look, firing is an emotional event, right? It's really hard. And in particular, firing people that are, you know, you made so many efforts in order to hire that person and you find that they don't, that they don't feel right. You look into when I fire someone that they just hired, that means that I made a mistake in the hiring, right? And people don't like to admit them,

they're mistakes, right? And so this is becoming maybe an ego management. When you speak with this is becoming maybe an ego management. When you speak with her and here is what happened, right? If you fire someone that you don't fit, the team member will come to you and say, thank you, it was about time, right? But when I would ask you, when did you decide to fire this person? What I heard from all the CEOs that I spoke with,

it was too late. Therefore, I encourage CEOs to make decisions, to make hard decisions. Now, the issue, and this is really interesting, we mentioned earlier, the most important behavior for an end of the binaries is perseverance, right? Is the never give up. The most important behavior for a CEO,

making decisions with conviction, making them fast. And it's perfectly okay that you're going to make a decision. And three months later, you realize that this is not where we should be going. And you make a new decision that goes to a different direction. But if you don't make that decision, and during these three months, you are still hesitating, then what happens is that the team does develop mistrust, but they don't know if you know where to go, because you never tell them that this is where we're gonna go.

And so one of the most important behaviors making those decisions with conviction. Now if you are in this position, and you're looking for tools to make those decisions, I can suggest you few tools to make those decisions. I can suggest you few tools to make those hard decisions. And when I was young, one day I came to my data and I told him, look, there are two options or two alternatives path for me and I don't know which one to choose. So he reached out to his pocket and got a coin out and said,

I'm going to flip the coin. And before the coin drops, you're going to make the decision. Now, we call that God's feeling right, but God's feeling, let me define that for us. It basically takes all of our experience in making a decision with a swift. Now, the thing is that if we have the experience, that decision is very likely to be correct. If we have no experience, that decision is very likely to be correct. If we have no experience, then obviously we have no guts failing and we don't know.

But if you have guts feeling, make that decision is the right decision. I have one of the CEOs that told me here secret of making decisions. He is telling himself, assume that there will be a new CEO instead of me here. What decision that person is going to make? And this is where we disengage from the past and we disengage from our emotions. And obviously, this is the right decision. Not making a decision is a big mistake. Making a decision that is wrong, you don't know that it's wrong because you don't know

until you go into this path that it doesn't serve you. And you don't know what would have happened if you would choose a different path. You know that fresh produce is the best produce. That's why at Crogr, we invest in local farmers to bring you seasonal picks that taste fresh from the farm good, like sweet corn, refreshing watermelon, and juicy peaches. So whether you're a delivery lover, a picker-upper, or you shop in store, your local produce always tastes 100% fresh. Or you get a 100% refund guaranteed. Croger, fresh for everyone.

What role or what advice can you give people when there's a lot of concern with uncertainty in the economy? Is there a recession when people start questioning things and maybe start attributing excuses for performance or a reluctance to move into a business? What advice can you give entrepreneurs around the economy? into a business, what advice can you give entrepreneurs around the economy? So look, entrepreneurs are in the journey of seeking to create value. That has nothing to do with the economy. But this has to do with the problem you're trying to solve or with the product that you're building that creates value. And it has nothing to do with the economy. However, I will say that in the current economy, raising capital is harder. It's way harder than it was a year ago or two years ago. And it was, you know, similarly harder when it was, you know, 2008 or 2009 or so. And we will keep on having

waves in the economies and ups and downs and so forth. And the main thing that changes is actually the ability to raise capital. For a second, I would say, good companies will be able to raise capital during the recession, during prices, during everything. The less good companies will have hard, hard-earned time. And raising capital to begin with is not necessarily an easy task right in any economy. You know, in my book, I say that building a startup is a roller coaster journey. And I called raising capital, a roller coaster journey in the dark. You don't even know what's coming.

And part of it is that because you're using your guts feeling in a place that you have no experience, right? So if you're first time in the Benet raising capital for the first time, you think about as investors as customers and they are not. They have different agenda and they have different state of mind in the way that they are approaching. So the first thing that you need to do is understand

how do they think? And then it's gonna make your life easier. One of the heat takeaways that I had over the years is that after the ways acquisition, I actually left nearly the day after and I built more startups instead. But then I had multiple downloads with the VC communities and one of them was actually pretty surprising to me. I said with one of the partners at the large VC and asked him, how long does it take you to decide if you'd like the entrepreneur or not?

And we were sitting in a small meeting room and the guy is looking at me and then looking at the door and looking at me again and says before they sit down, that's exactly the face that I had. Exactly this is the face that I had. Exactly. This is the face. It's shocking. Let me ask you that, right? You go on a date. How long does it take you to decide if you like the date? Pretty quickly, you know. Okay. You go and interview and you can be

date for the position. How long does it take you to decide that you like the new candidate? Right away, you now. Right away. So we have our first impression. Our first impression is exactly using all the experience that we have, using our guts feeling and making that, creating that impression. We may be not saying it yet, but we all have that. And then we might have a few more minutes to let that first impression sink or to change that. And after a few more minutes, let that first impression sink or to change that.

And after a few more minutes, it's done, right? If we, if we're not ready, if we don't think that this is right, then it's not the same with investors. Now, if you think about it, then you would say, okay, wait a minute. I need to start with the strongest point at the beginning, because maybe by the time I will get there, the investor already lost his attention, right? Maybe they already made a decision. And so I have to start with the strongest point at the beginning. Whatever it is, right? It might be, the problem is big. It might be the traction that I have. It might be the team that I've built. Whatever it is, start with that. The second really strong conclusion that I had is that I spoke with many entrepreneurs

that invested in C-Brown, right? So the first funding of the company. And asked them, why did you decide to invest in this company and so forth? And what I heard was really consistent. I like the CEO, I like the story. I like the CEO, I like the story. Now, if this is the case, then there are two immediate conclusions. Number one, CEO needs to go by herself to the first meeting with investors.

Because if there are other people, the other people are going to take away some of their attention. And you don't want that. If you want to shine, and if you want to shine, then you need to be solo performance, right? That's it. The second part is that you need to learn how to tell a good story. And telling a good story is not about facts.

It's about creating emotional engagement. You want to get to the level that the investor wants to be part of the story. And the story has two aspects. One of that is about market, product, solutions, and so forth. And the other one is about your ability to deliver. They need to believe that this story is worth solving. This problem is worth solving. This is something that is worth to go into this journey.

And the second part is that they want to believe that you can actually deliver. And these are the elements of the story. Now in many cases, and this is where I go back into the name of the book. A story about the problem is way easier to be told in a story about the solution. Just imagine that we are back into 2007. And I'm starting ways, and I'm coming here,

and I'm telling you, I'm going to build an AI CrowdSource-based navigation system. Now, the reality is that you don't really care. And if you all will tell you, I'm going to help you to avoid traffic jams, then you do care. And this is about speaking about the problem and about the customer, and not about the solution. I didn't even say the word about the system. Now, this is really easy to judge. If an entrepreneur will continue and start their story with our system or our product or our company is, then they focus on the solution. If they will start with the problem that

we address is, or this is the value that we create for you, then they focus on either the problem or the customers, and this is way better story to be taught. Oh, it's so powerful. Where else is important to be leading with a problem through the business journey? You know, the problem is the North Star of your journey. When you have a North Star, you are going to make less deviations. You're going to make shorter deviations out of the course that you want to go. And the result is that you increased the likelihood of being successful. So there are three elements for that, right?

Number one, the mission is to find. Number two, the North Star is easier to create the plan and execute upon. Number three, the story that you tell is way easier. Well, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, certainly maps out how any entrepreneur has the steps that they need to take in order to become successful from somebody who's done it multiple times. And you involve storytelling in the book, which makes it so much more interesting, relatable, and powerful. So, you Yuri, where can everyone find your new book?

Obviously on Amazon, it will be on the stores, all the stores in the US, or Barnes and others, and so forth, on my website, relevin.com. And yeah, this book, I won't believe that this book is going to create so much value for you, that it will simply increase your likelihood of being successful. Now there is an ask at the end of the story that is basically saying the following. If this book was valuable for you, if you took an insight and implemented

that and it turned out to be valuable for you, then paid forward, then find someone that you can guide or help and make them even more successful. I love how your Norr star is just making the world a better place and helping others. Yari, thank you so much for writing this book and thank you for all the work that you're doing. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Fall in love with the problem. Not the solution. Go get that book now and I will see you next week. I hope you're enjoying this episode so far. I'm Jennifer Cohen, host the top ranking business and entrepreneur podcast, Habits and Hustle,

apart the YAP media network, the number one business and self-improvement podcast network. So, most people live the life they get and not the life they want. And I'm here to change all that. My goal with each episode to give you the habits and hustle tips you need to show up to your life better, bigger, and bolder. Tune in now, and I'll not only help you answer the questions like, what do you want most

in life and why don't you have it, but we'll also help you make it a reality. I also pick the brains of top thought leaders on how they've gone to the top and the advice they have to help you get there too. Head over to Happets and Hustle. Once you've done listening to this episode and get one step closer to boldness, one episode at a time. This summer, go to the movies,

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