Episode #3 - The Simple Way to Change Your Life Forever
Dale and Coby unpack why having no experience is actually your biggest advantage when starting a business. They introduce five free skills — organisation, communication, problem solving, decision making, and time management — that will transform both your business and your life.
Hello and welcome to the Sequoia Project podcast, the podcast dedicated to talking about the ins and outs, ups and downs of business.
Dale: I want to talk more on the mindset side today. There's a real nice cadence. If someone listens to this, you know, half an hour episodes back to back, there's a nice cadence to it. So I want to talk about this morning. More so like especially the early side of this episode is like, just like how it's okay to think differently. And like just because you don't think like everyone else, or you don't have the same ideas as everyone else or whatever it is, is that's not a bad thing. It's actually a very good thing. Because we get dissuaded a lot, you know, like people go you tell someone your idea and they go, that's stupid. You tell someone a goal or an aspiration you have and they go, that's dumb.
Dale: I think the thing that people especially starting business think their biggest weakness is that they have no experience. And I thought the same thing. Was it similar for you?
Coby: Yeah, I think the fact of not knowing and having no experience, I'm like, well, no one's going to want someone with no experience sort of situation. So yeah, I completely agree.
Dale: Yeah. And that's, yeah, and that's the thing. And I think we see that in the Sequoia project — every single person we've spoken to is like, yeah, like I have an idea. I just don't know what I'm doing. I have no experience. I don't know how to execute it. And they see that as a crutch. They see that as a weakness for me though, in my experience from being there, I actually ended up being one of the things that made me qualified to get into business. The idea is if you are looking to go into a marketplace where people are already doing the kind of service or selling the kind of products that you have the idea for, the best thing you can do to be different to them is how it's done. In the way that you are unqualified, it means you have a different perspective from the people who have been in business doing it for the longest time. And in 2025, the best thing that you can do is to be different. So you are actually as qualified as you'll ever be to be different before you start because you haven't been persuaded by people in the industry.
Dale: I think the biggest thing is what are the biggest free skills that made the biggest difference? That's the thing because you can pay to learn a lot of stuff, but when we're talking about business, we're talking about simple, logical business. So I think that the question is a very critical point. What are the best free things that you could learn in this process that make the biggest difference? And the biggest difference to me is things that impact you personally. I have five for you off the top of my head. The first one's organisation. Second one's communication. Third is problem solving. Four, decision making. And five, time management.
Dale: If you are unorganized, I don't care if you're selling hamburgers or you're selling stainless steel, no one will want to work with you because they don't know what to expect. Second, communication. If you cannot communicate with your customer, if you piss someone off every time you call them, if you don't know how to speak, if you don't know how to reach them and where to find them to sell them your product, you do not have a business. Number three, problem solving. The only reason anyone buys anything from anyone is because they think it will solve a problem that they have. If they could solve it themselves, they would just do it. Number four is decision making. You are now the person that makes all the decisions. Congratulations, you just got a promotion. But if you are scared of making decisions because you might make the wrong one, time will pass and you will get left behind. And number five is time management.
Coby: That's probably going to be one of the best things I can give — back to the big five. Focus on what your number one is. It's going to be different for everyone. You're not going to have to do all of them straight away. Focus on what yours is. It's going to be different to the person next to you, going to be different to the next person in business. Focus on you, focus on what you've got and focus on what you need to work on and then get information around that.