About this Video

• Video Title: Professor Reza Satchu’s Masterclass in Small Business Creation
• Channel: Reza Satchu
• Speakers: Professor Reza Satchu, Shandra (India), Jo (Portugal), Jambo (Kenya), other unnamed participants.
• Duration: 01:07:51

Introduction

This masterclass focuses on the founder mindset and its application to building successful businesses. Professor Reza Satchu uses his personal experiences and anecdotes to illustrate how commitment, judgment, and embracing uncertainty are crucial for entrepreneurial success. He emphasizes the importance of small, incremental commitments ("small C commitments") over grand, overwhelming ones, and frames the entrepreneurial journey as a continuous cycle of learning and impact.

Key Takeaways

1. The Founder Mindset: This mindset prioritizes trusting one's judgment to commit to a path, even amidst uncertainty. It's about a series of small commitments leading to significant growth and impact.
2. Learning through Consequential Decisions: Professor Satchu defines learning as making consequential decisions one is accountable for. This process hones judgment and fosters exponential learning.
3. Embracing Uncertainty: Uncertainty is viewed not as a risk to avoid, but as an opportunity for significant learning and growth. He encourages participants to recalibrate their risk assessment, acknowledging both potential downsides and significant upsides.
4. Small Commitments, Big Impact: The masterclass highlights how seemingly small decisions (stopping the car, picking up the phone, knocking on a door) led to the creation of substantial businesses and significant personal impact.
5. Commitment as a Superpower: Commitment is presented not as a sacrifice but as a vital skill for both entrepreneurial success and personal fulfillment. It's essential for navigating challenges and achieving long-term goals.

Here's a transcription of the first ten minutes of the video, based on the data you provided:

[0:00] of Courage all of these things [0:06] right willpower mindset all of these things are things that will block you uh [0:12] in a very honest way right lack of money self imposter syndrome so there are all [0:18] these things that come up right and if you if I asked people you know it would be some version of this okay which is [0:25] the first part is sort of you know a lack of knowledge no domain expertise no founder market fit a quest for perfect [0:32] information right I have a phrase which says that any idiot can make a decision with perfect information but of course the problem is is we always want more [0:39] information before we make a judgment High opportunity cost lack of confidence you guys many of these are in the chat [0:47] uh how could my idea possibly be good enough right how can the idea that I have that I've spent you know that I [0:54] have no history or experience on could it possibly be good enough okay and how [1:00] could it be possibly true that larger companies with more people and resources did not think of this idea okay and so [1:07] ultimately what I would say is what all of these things come down to is a fear [1:13] and inability to trust your judgment to commit okay committing to your judgment [1:18] is a hard thing right meaning all of you feel it you all sort of have these ideas you think there may be something there [1:25] but ultimately you talk yourself out of it sometimes for good reasons and sometimes not but it's really because [1:32] there's a fear and the fear may come from a lack of confidence a lack of information whatever it may be but there [1:37] is a fear okay so what I want to talk to you about is a mindset um that may help you overcome [1:46] this fear and to over time trust your judgment to actually commit to a path [1:51] that enables you to build something of consequence okay okay so this is uh the [1:59] way I think about how I think about the founder mindset um and certainly it's the way I think about [2:04] my life and how I've taught I've been teaching now for 20 years um how I taught my [2:10] students which is at a very high level the hardest judgment any of us need to [2:16] make on a Founder path is the decision to commit okay because of course what [2:22] that means is you're committing to a risky path you're forgoing other options [2:28] which you know in this age um we all want to preserve options and [2:33] we're committing and the reason one needs to commit is because it's [2:40] impossible to build anything of consequence without committing right it's like going into war with two hands [2:46] tied behind your back and so not only do you learn what you're capable of when [2:52] you commit but this thing called Magic happens when you commit right which is [2:58] that things happen precisely because you have committed okay and this doesn't [3:03] happen all the time it happens over time and so the question is what is that magic right what is that magic well it's [3:12] the things we talked about it's learning and I'll give you a definition of learning in a minute uh resources [3:18] conviction confidence credibility it's all the things that we are so nervous [3:23] about these things all start to increase precisely because we commit and [3:30] ultimately with these things we can have an impact that we want right and so at [3:37] its core what the founder mindset is all about is this desire to get to trust [3:42] your judgment to commit to something such that you benefit the magic of learning resources conviction confidence [3:49] and credibility and you can have the impact that we all desperately want right the impact on our on the ones that [3:55] we care about whether that's ourselves our family our community our country or the World okay so what I'd like to do is [4:02] take a step back um and talk to you a little bit about um sort of my life and [4:09] how this founder mindset has uh helped me uh and what I'd say is I don't [4:16] pretend to be living a life that um is [4:21] similar to yours today but I can say that in some ways it might have started [4:28] uh that way okay so I was born in Mombasa Kenya in [4:34] 1969 um you know we immigrated well we emmigrated there was a point in time when Ed Amin was throwing out the [4:41] Indians from Uganda and so uh so we were very lucky to kind of win the lottery [4:48] and 255,000 Indians were led into Canada sight unseen um uh you know neither of [4:54] my parents had gone to college um my dad didn't work for the first three or four years my mom was a secretary we moved [5:00] seven or eight times uh when we came to Toronto um by the way if I could see anyone I'd call on a Kenyon and and say [5:06] Jambo Barako and I'm hoping that we have a Kenyon in the crowd um uh so so the [5:11] point being that you know my childhood was an interesting childhood and that the first time that I left Kenya was to [5:16] go on a plane to go to Canada um and and um uh and three things happened to me [5:25] early and a big believer that things that happened in your childhood um both the good things and the bad things um [5:31] have a lot to do with what happens to you in the future and the three things sort of uh large things that happened to me was one obviously immigrating to a [5:38] new country was jarring two was remarkably the Mombasa education system was greater than the Toronto education [5:44] system and I skipped a grade and the third thing is is um my parents made an [5:50] interesting decision which is unlike most imigrants to a country where you hang out with your immigrant community [5:56] so if you're a Greek coming to New York you're going to hang out with the Greeks in New New York uh if you're an Italian [6:01] coming to San Francisco you're going to hang out with the Italians um they cut us off from our community really it was sort of a sink or swim mentality and so [6:09] what was interesting was I I you know there were a lot of obstacles as a child [6:15] and what I've learned um because I know many of you um have gone through many [6:21] obstacles and are going through obstacles um and I don't pretend that my obstacles are greater than yours I would [6:26] just say that they felt like obstacles to me uh is what I've learned is as a [6:32] kid when you go through obstacles um there's two ways to respond [6:38] to that right it can cause lots of pain uh and you can feel um like the world is [6:44] really against you because you had to go through all these obstacles or perhaps you can look at it [6:49] in a very different way which is you had the privilege of overcoming obstacles [6:54] not of your own choosing okay you had the privilege of overcoming obstacles not of your own [7:00] choosing early in your life okay such that you learned a tremendous amount [7:06] about yourself okay you learned how resilient you were you learned what you could overcome such that as you grow up [7:13] things that seem material to others seem immaterial to you because of the [7:19] trajectory that you've had okay so I would encourage those of you who who've [7:26] gone through obstacles in their childhood um to think hard about how they might have benefited you this is my [7:33] family and this is where we grew up in Toronto on the second floor so this is um there's nothing particularly [7:39] glamorous about this um but the point is is um I would encourage you to think [7:45] about your childhood and not I don't look at that apartment building and think about how miserable it was [7:51] although it was pretty miserable what I think about is wow we started from amasa [7:56] Kenya we got to this place where we' never seen snow beforehand and lived in this building and learned a tremendous [8:03] amount about at a young age about what I might be capable of okay um so early on [8:09] in my life um I started thinking about this mindset and I didn't have it [8:16] necessarily framework like this but I didn't have very much in the way of [8:23] resources uh and I didn't have very much in the way of conviction or confidence um so I was very focused on how can I [8:31] learn as much as possible because that is something that I thought I could compete [8:37] on and so of course the question then is you know I said okay well okay well this is the founder mindset I didn't have it [8:43] laid out at the like this when I was younger but certainly this is I always [8:49] thought one day maybe I can have impact I wanted to be able to trust my judgment [8:54] to commit to something so that I could found something and at that time it was absolutely to have money and power and [9:00] all these things but ultimately to have freedom um and so I focused on learning [9:07] and so the question I asked I ask is how will you learn the most right meaning learning is such a odd word meaning of [9:15] course you want to learn so is learn what is learning is it like reading a book is it listening to people like me [9:22] what is learning and so my definition of learning is the following okay and I [9:28] know it's like I believe this to be true it's how I've LED My Life um my definition of learning is [9:35] making consequential decisions you're accountable for okay and the reason it's

Note that some timestamps might be slightly off due to variations in speech speed and potential editing in the video itself.