Back by popular demand, I am excited to announce the return of an entrepreneurial online course, and it might be just what you needed to jump-start your year of greatness for 2020.
What is Founders Five?
I have grown Founders Live from a small event in Seattle to a thriving global movement currently spreading across multiple continents in a short 3-year period. Through this process, I’ve learned a thing or two about starting and growing a brand and want to help others launch their dream companies as well.
Founders Five is a 5-week Mastermind course to help develop your founder mentality and startup philosophy. The goal is less about launching something by the end of 5 weeks (you may already be running your startup) but more about diving deep and learning what it takes to thrive in the world of entrepreneurship. My goal is to equip you with the tools and thought processes to better navigate your path, so you leave the course with more confidence and conviction. With traveling more than 23,000 miles and living in almost 20 cities and talked with over 1,000 people this year alone, I know something about conviction and hope to help you find yours too.
To make sure we all get the most out of it, this course is open to a limited amount of people and offered for a limited time. We hope you join in and use this fall as a launch pad for your entrepreneurial journey.
Quickly Sign Up Here!
Dates – The course will run 5 weeks, from Oct 11th — through the 17th of Nov.
Cost – $500 for the entire 5-week course. Normal pricing starts Oct 4th.
EARLY BIRD PRICING of $300 AVAILABLE UNTIL Oct 4th.
What’s Included?
- One online livestreamed and recorded hour-long group discussion per week (Mondays, timing dependant on your time zone). A recording will be available if you cannot make the live talk.
- Weekly course content provided to read, listen and watch
- A weekly assignment to complete in relation to the weekly topic
- Estimated time investment each week – 4-6 hours
Results and Benefits
- Discover your inner entrepreneurial energy, founder mentality and starting point for your founder journey.
- Understand the Founders Five and how to navigate and improve them.
- Meet and closely connect with a core group of founders at the same spot as you are in your journey. That means me as well!
- Discover new resources and develop a learners mentality to help you stay sharp after the course.
- Leave the course with a more holistic view of yourself as an entrepreneur and confidence for the path that lies ahead.
RESULTS – A previous course participant recently won a Founders Live event in their city, has seen encouraging market responses to their product and is now fielding podcast appearance requests!
Recommendations From Previous Participants
The Founders Five course is just what I needed to start accelerating my already existing early-stage startup -and me as well. An excellent source of education and advisement, indeed acres of diamonds for your venture. Nick expertly guided us through a 5-week course choked with valuable discussions amongst classmates, study content, and video and podcasts from entrepreneurial experts. If you are launching the next great company, please join Founders Five and meet Nick Hughes! You will not regret doing so. – Stephen
Being a solopreneur, it can be easy to put on the blinders and charge ahead to each milestone, rarely taking a step back to evaluate the steps and tools needed for longevity. Founders Five forced me to evaluate the foundations of the current growth and provided learnings to help my company achieve scalability. The resources were focused and insightful, yet varied in their delivery. Regardless of where you are in the entrepreneurial journey, there is value in the program to help you move forward. – JB
“Founder’s Five set me on a massive course correction that saved me from the brink of founder burnout and helped me learn to love my startup again. Nick has an incredible ability to inspire passion and growth while also telling the hard truths that get people out of their own way of success. I would recommend this course to anyone who is ready for a seasoned, successful, and totally in-tune leader to shine light on why their startup is not where they want it to be and help them literally craft a real plan to get it there. The positive ripple effect this course has created for myself and business will serve me for a lifetime.” – Melissa
Requirements
- You seriously desire and put in the effort each week to position yourself as a successful business owner.
- ONLY CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE IF YOU ARE SERIOUS AND READY TO MAKE THIS YOUR FOUNDER LAUNCH PAD.
The Founders Five – Course Overview
1. Tenacity Mindset
2. Connecting and Communicating Effectively
3. Problem / Solution Thinking
4. Hacking and Prototyping Your Product
5. Growing and Scaling Your Business
1. Tenacity Mindset (10/14 – 10/20)
Building a successful startup is hard. Living life as a founder – at times – can be even harder. The first step to a successful entrepreneurial journey is embracing the requisite mindset and perspective to accomplish the impossible. In this first section, you will learn the fundamental perspectives of how to view the world around you, and your life circumstances specifically, in order to place yourself in the best mental and emotional position for success. Entrepreneurism is a full-contact sport and survival of the fittest is the name of the game. It’s best to view this first week as mental bootcamp and preparation for the following weeks ahead which cover more tactical and practical aspects of entrepreneurship.
2. Connecting and Communicating Effectively (10/21 – 10/27)
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know that matters.” Although it’s hard to determine the correct attribution of that quote, we believe it applies 100% to startups and entrepreneurship. At Founders Live, we add something else: “It’s not only who you know, but it’s how you treat those who you know that matters the most.” With our addition you will see that connecting with people is important, but more important than that is how you do it, how frequently you do it, and how sincere you do it. In this second week, we’ll jump into the strategies, tips and to do’s to grow your network and maximize your personal brand so you can rise above the fray to be seen, heard and talked about. In today’s noisy world we all must learn how to find our unique voice and figure out the best way to share it with others. Through the teachings of this week, you will hopefully see the path to a place where people approach and want to meet you, rather than the other way around.
3. Problem / Solution Thinking (10/28 – 11/3)
Once you have embraced your founder mindset and you’ve discovered your unique voice, it’s time to figure out how you want to impact the world. The question is, what will you do? Unfortunately, most successful startups aren’t some idea that was sparked in the shower which started with a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” Nope! Forcing a solution on a non-existent problem doesn’t lead to success. The most successful companies start because a problem was discovered by people living their own life, and then they set out to find a scalable solution which is 10x or 100x better than the current offering. And in the end, it is something that is validated by others in the world as a problem those people also experience. During this third week, we’ll help you learn how to evaluate markets and ideas to find problems and processes, then on to discovering unique solutions so that your endeavor is one which leads to success. We guarantee you’ll walk away looking at the world at least a little bit differently.
4. Hacking and Prototyping Your Product (11/4 – 11/10)
Now that you discovered a problem and you think you have a unique solution, it’s time to start creating workable prototypes and getting them into the market for early customer validation. One problem: you might not be technical or you lack the capacity to create a working solution. Game over, right? Not at all! In this section you’ll learn how to creatively hack and prototype an early product to hit the market as quick as possible. You will also be provided many different options and directions to go if you choose to outsource or bring on a team to help you build your first version of a product. You’ll learn early success is due to the combination of problem/solution validation, customer/user acquisition, traction and growth in the market, and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metric growth through the early months of your venture. You may be asking “How do you get all those together and aligned?” In this section we’ll walk you through how to quickly and easily take your solution to market to test, observe and iterate initial market responses.
5. Growing and Scaling Your Business (11/11 – 11/17)
Yes, it’s time to grow! Once you hit market traction and people are starting to adopt your product or service, it’s time to put processes and systems in place to scale your growing enterprise. In this last section you’ll learn the strategies and processes to take your concept and turn it into a thriving business. You’ll wrestle with questions such as, What’s your Big Hairy Audacious Goal? What’s the purpose and Core Values of your organization? What are your 3-5 year goals? What are your yearly initiatives? What are the 5 most important priorities do you want to accomplish this quarter? How will you track your weekly progress? Do you need to hire a team to help you grow? Who will you hire? What will they be doing? What are your business financials, the funding strategy, and revenue models? Don’t worry if you don’t have the answers to all these questions, that’s what this 5-week course is here to help you answer.
I am excited to hold this course here on Founders Live and hope it is something you think is a good fit for you. If so, quickly sign up at the link below with your contact details and we’ll provide you with the next steps. Early registration ($300) ends Oct 4th. Full Registration ends Oct 14th.
So Entrepreneurial 