Holding a glass of his Mangria, Adam Carolla took to the stage and greeted the packed room warmly. “I think that the thing that really brings us together is…the booze,” he joked, “But also the entrepreneurial spirit.” Truer words have most likely never been spoken inside the Las Vegas Convention Center.
To be an entrepreneur, you must be strong. It’s a hard and often unpredictable road to success when you decide to forge your own path. Just ask Adam – he broke into terrestrial radio by teaching Jimmy Kimmel to box. He got his job training boxers by using his skills as a carpenter, offering to fix up a gym in exchange for learning how to train boxers. Adam used one set of skills to develop another set of skills which he then used to develop yet another set of skills.
“One of your strengths can feed strength, can feed another strength…” Carolla told this year’s Nightclub & Bar attendees.
Adam also understands customer interactions and creating a WOW! experience. In his opinion, people who have a negative experience, be it while listening to a podcast, checking out a bar or having a sandwich, will talk about it twice as much than if their experience is a positive one. You have to not only deliver a great experience the first time out, it has to be consistently great from then on. Realizing that customers talk, he never spent money advertising his podcast, The Adam Carolla Show. Instead, Adam relied on word-of-mouth advertising and delivered a consistent, fantastic episode each and every time.
It took Adam years to build his brand and find success, and he did so by understanding his strengths, developing them, being proactive and being patient. If you want to do something, you should just start doing it, the comedian, podcaster, actor and Mangria inventor believes. Chip away at it and before you even realize it, a year has gone by. And never forget to ask yourself the following question when presented with a challenge or do or die situation:
“How do I snatch this from the jaws of defeat into the claws of victory?”