The 2 Reasons Your Business Isn’t Growing
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 7th, 2023
Today, we’re diving into two biggest obstacles every entrepreneur needs to tackle: obscurity and credibility.
We’ve all been there when you’ve got an amazing product or service, but it feels like nobody knows about it. It’s like shouting into the void, right? Well, that’s obscurity, my friend.
It’s the first hurdle you gotta clear. Because no matter how incredible your offering is, if people aren’t aware of it, they can’t buy it. It’s as simple as that.
Once people do know about you, you gotta establish credibility. They need to trust that you can actually deliver on your promises.
Think about it…would you buy from someone you didn’t believe in? Probably not.
Overcoming obscurity and building credibility are the keys to success. And let me tell you, it’s a journey. Take my business, for example.
At Invictus Capital, we raise capital from investors, and our minimum investment is a whopping $50,000. That’s a big deal…and I take that responsibility seriously.
To attract investors, we’ve had to overcome obscurity and make ourselves known. But we’ve also had to build credibility, proving that we have the knowledge and expertise to help them achieve their goals.
And let me tell you…it’s not easy, but it’s essential.
It’s all about doing what you say and being true to your values. It’s about consistency in your actions and behavior.
And that’s something people notice over time. They pay attention to how you talk, how you act, and how you grow.
So, whether you’re just starting out or have been at it for a while, focus on overcoming obscurity and establishing credibility.
It’s a powerful combination that can take your business to new heights.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“If my values say that I put other people first and that I prioritize their wants and needs and you see over time that I am consistently acting in accordance with that, then you could also say I have integrity.'”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
The biggest obstacle that all entrepreneurs have to overcome, well, it’s actually there’s 2 obstacles. You have to overcome obscurity and credibility. And this is especially pronounced in the world of investing and in real estate, let’s say, where you’re trying to raise capital from investors. But it’s the same with any kind of business that you might have. If you’re trying to sell a product or you’re trying to sell a service, the first thing that you have to overcome is obscurity. Because it doesn’t matter how great your product or your service is, if Nobody is aware that it can transform their life. Nobody can buy it from you. The second hurdle that you have to overcome then is credibility because if I know who you are, but I do not believe that you have the ability to help me on my journey, then I’m not gonna buy your product.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:45]:
Okay, so those are the 2 things that all businesses have to overcome obscurity credibility in the beginning The biggest hurdle is credibility becoming known because you’ve heard people say it’s not about what you know It’s about who you know, and that’s completely bullshit because I’m sorry if there’s kids in the car, by the way. I’m so sorry. Because it doesn’t matter who you know, right? I know Oprah. I know Barack Obama. But because they don’t know me, they can’t actually help me. Now, if Oprah showed up on my doorstep, and she’s like, Anthony, can you help me? I’d be like, yeah, I can help you, Oprah. But, she doesn’t know me, and I don’t know her, so the likelihood of that happening is very, very low. So more important than what you know, or even who you know, is who knows you.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:30]:
And this is where overcoming obscurity comes into the entrepreneur’s journey. If you want your business to succeed, you need to spend a disproportionate amount of time on becoming known and becoming visible to your target audience, the people that you could best serve. So that’s first principle, overcome obscurity. Second is credibility. Why should I do business with you? And I think about this 1 a lot because in my business at Invictus Capital, we raise capital, our minimum investment is $50, 000. So for an investor to come work with us, they need to give us a minimum of $50, 000. That is a ridiculously large sum of money and I am aware of how much that is and how impactful that is. And that’s just the minimum that people come invest with us.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:24]:
It’s not uncommon for somebody to come and invest 250, 400, 000, 600, 000. We’ve had Investors invest up to $3 million with us, okay? And that only happens because, 1, we overcame obscurity in their minds and they learned who we were, and then we built credibility. They believe that we have the ability to help them to solve their problem, and they trust us enough to give us their money. It’s a sacred responsibility that I take very, very, very seriously. But in that world where the minimum investment is so high, it’s even more important for us to establish rock solid credibility. Now, how do you do that is 1 of the questions that many, many people come and they ask, like, how do you actually establish credibility? Well, what I’m doing right now in this podcast is 1 way of doing that, right? Putting out this content, even though it objectively doesn’t really have anything to do with how to invest in real estate or how to build, um, you know, a certain type of business or like, it’s not the thing that the investor who is coming to vet me is necessarily going to watch and be like, I trust this guy now. But if you look at the string of content that we’ve put out over the last 3, 4 years and you start to create a narrative and you start to see consistency of behavior, consistency of thought, you start to gain more trust. Because in my mind, the way that I define integrity is just you do what you say.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:44]:
Like I know what you are going to do. Like I can predict your actions with a high degree of probability and certainty. So if I know that you are going to act in accordance with your own set of values and morals, which tells me, Let’s say that you believe that you always need to put yourself first. Now, if you don’t take care of yourself, nobody else is gonna take care of you. Well, I then know that you are gonna act in accordance with that. And if you do act in accordance with that, you put yourself first, well, that’s not a lack of integrity. You do have integrity. It’s not necessarily in my best interest, your integrity, but you are being consistent to your values, okay? On the reverse side of that, if my values say that I put other people first and that I prioritize their wants and needs and you see over time that I am consistently acting in accordance with that, then you could also say I have integrity.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:34]:
And maybe that means you would be more interested in working with me than the person who’s self-interested. But regardless, I believe both people have integrity because they’re doing, you know, they’re acting in, they’re acting consistently with their set of values. Now, whether or not they tell you what their values are and that they’re gonna act that way, probably unlikely. Right, the person over here says, I’m only gonna act in my own self-interest, probably isn’t gonna tell you that. So you’re gonna have to ferret that out by paying attention to how they behave, how they talk, how they act over time. And content like this can help you do that. You know, because you can go back and you can look in content that I created in January of 2020 and compare it to content that I’m creating now. And you can say, okay, is, is he saying the same things? Has he grown? Has he learned? Has he completely changed the narrative? Has he flipped the script? Is he inconsistent from what he was saying then to what he’s saying now? And I can’t really marry the 2 anymore.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:23]:
Or is he, is he changing the narrative, but it’s because I can see the thought process. I can see how he’s owned his mistakes over time and said, you know, I used to think this, but now I think this because this proved me wrong. And when the information changes, so does my opinion. That’s a great John Maynard Keynes quote. When the information changes, so too does my opinion. That’s a great quote. I love that 1. Anyways, okay, so those are the 2 things that we all have to overcome as entrepreneurs, as investors, whatever.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:51]:
We have to overcome obscurity and we have to establish credibility. Now to see how when these 2 things are taken in conjunction, the effects can be very, very powerful. If all you have is the ability to overcome obscurity, but you don’t necessarily have a ton of credibility, what you end up with is like a Grant Cardone. So a Grant Cardone, I don’t know if you guys, if you follow him, if you’re aware, but if you’re in the real estate world, you probably have seen him. He’s like a guy out there, very vocal on social media, a couple million followers. He raises capital from retail investors, very similar to us, but how he does it is fundamentally different. And a lot of people within the industry would say, well, he’s overcome obscurity, but he does not have credibility for a lot of reasons. Now that’s not to say that he isn’t very, very successful and that he is still able to raise a lot of capital.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:41]:
I think he’s a good example of somebody who is still able to thrive just by overcoming obscurity And that can be enough in many, many cases to build a very successful business is just to be well known enough to be infamous. And his famous quote is he’d rather be known than loved, like, or something like that. His goal is not to be loved, it’s to be known. Yeah, that makes more sense. And he’s able to raise, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. So that’s 1 side of the spectrum. Now, the other side of the spectrum is what happens when you marry the ability to overcome obscurity with extreme credibility. And when you do that, you get somebody like Warren Buffett.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:19]:
Everybody knows who Warren Buffett is. He’s overcome the obscurity. And he has impeachable credibility to the point that he can’t take more investors. He refuses, Like at this point, he’s got billions and billions, tens of billions of dollars at his disposal. And that’s the difference between being just, you know, known and having overcome obscurity and having overcome obscurity and having rock solid credibility. So it’s orders of magnitude difference. And that that’s really the goal that we should be striving for is to, you know, overcome obscurity and establish credibility and marry those 2. I think that’s just a better way to do business and go through life.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:01]:
But in the beginning, the obscurity is the thing that you have to overcome, which is why Grant Cardone is so much further along on the journey than people you know, maybe who have better credibility, but they have way more obscurity. And we know plenty of people like this where it’s like they’re way better operators way better judgment The deals that they bring to the table are way way way better But they don’t have nearly the visibility that a grant cardone does and as a result he gets more money He gets better he gets more Deals done his business is bigger, okay And And the reason I share this dichotomy is that I think there’s a lot of people out there who just focus on putting up the best product and service and like that credibility. I’m going to be the best professional that I can. A lot of artists fall into this trap then where they think, you know, I will build it and they will come. And they don’t put enough time and energy into figuring out how do I overcome obscurity. And then they’re frustrated because they ostensibly have a better product than say a Grant Cardone. But he gets all the business because he is known. So which is more valuable in the beginning or at any point in the equation? Well, the overcoming obscurity, because the best product in a vacuum is going to fail.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:12]:
It will not succeed. So the visibility, overcoming that obscurity is the most important first step that you have to then take. But you don’t want to just live in that place because otherwise you just become the Grant Cardone. Right. And there’s an interesting synergy here that as you become less obscure, if you can layer in that quality product that can help you overcome further obscurity, like at an even faster clip. And so that’s really the goal that we’re aiming for. So those are 2 ideas. I hope this brings you maybe a new way of thinking about building your business and just like trying to Strip it down to the most simple elements.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:48]:
And of course, there’s a lot of different aspects that we could still unpack and talk about. But regarding where you are in your journey right now, I encourage you just to think, okay, what do I need to do to continue overcoming obscurity and establishing credibility? Think hard on those things and then let it guide you into the future through your marketing, through your product design, through your customer relations, through your hiring, through your training, all of it. And hope this brought you guys a little bit of value. Thank you for being here as always. I can’t wait to see you back around these parts tomorrow, but until then, stay hyper-focused my friend.
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