👋 Hey there!

🚅 This is issue #34 of The Double E Bullet where I share two action-packed bullets to help you elevate your entrepreneurial journey and take you from founder to fearless leader.

BULLET ONE
​🏆 Failure-to-Success Stories 🏆

I love hearing about business success stories but what many fail to remember is that these aren’t always a straightforward climb to the top.

In many cases, you will have to fail over and over again before you even achieve any level of success, and the resilience that you build along the way is probably what will make you stand out and thrive as a CEO.

Here are my top four favorite failure-to-success stories from a few household-name businesses:

1. YouTube

The site actually started out as a video and dating platform in 2005 but failed to take off. Seventeen years later, it’s among the top search engines being used today and is valued at $23.89 billion.

2. Twitter

They started out as a podcasting company in 2006 but was probably a few years too early. Today it is being valued at $5.1 billion – and who knows where Elon Musk will be taking the company in the years to come.

3. Microsoft

Previously called Traf-o-Data, it failed as an engineering company in the 1970s. Microsoft was founded in 1975 and now has a net worth of $166.54 billion after 47 years.

4. Scrub Daddy

One of my recent favorite success stories, Scrub Daddy was rejected on the TV show, Shark Tank, by all but one judge. Seven years later, it has become one of the show’s biggest success stories with the company being valued at $209 billion.

Failures and rejections are a normal part of running a business and whether you call yourself a freelancer, a solopreneur, a business owner, an entrepreneur, a CEO or a founder… you will experience this one way or another.

All we need is one good hit.

After all, like Michael Jordan once said, “It doesn’t matter if you fall down, it’s whether you get back up”.

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BULLET TWO
​​📱 Hints.so 📱​

The Double E Bullet came to fruition because of my love for apps, technology, and all things productivity. Which is why I have made it my mission to try out as many of these cool innovations myself and share the ones that I like with you.

With the growing popularity of AI and ChatGPT these days, people are now looking more and more into using AI to make their lives faster and easier.

One such tool I’ve discovered is called Hints AI Assistant. In a nutshell, this tool works just like a virtual assistant in that you can tell Hints what you want done, all through chat messages. I use it over WhatsApp but you can chat with via Slack, SMS or even a combination of all three;

For example, you could tell it to create a to-do and put it in your Notion database, block a time slot in your Google Calendar without having to open it, create tasks or update info in Clickup, create and update deals inside of your CRM, and many more. The possibilities are endless and you don’t even have to know how to code to do all these things as it’s all through chat messages. The Hints team recently added integration with ChatGPT so can you ask Hints to suggest topics for blog articles, summarize a video or article by giving it a link and get this – create images from a text description !

When it comes to running and scaling a business, delegation is the best way to go. And if you can’t quite afford to hire a member in your team, this AI assistant is your next best route.

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🧨 DHIREN’S UPDATES 🧨

Reading and listening from other people’s mistakes and failures are among my favourite ways to learn. This doesn’t mean that you will no longer go through your own ups and downs but if you can save yourself from wasting time and money, why not listen and not repeat from other people’s errors, right?

In my 5-week online course, The Entrepreneur Basecamp, I’ve created a program specifically for solo business owners looking to build their ideal business and scale it to 6 figures using my systems. The course includes 10 action-packed sessions with me as well as group discussions with other like-minded solopreneurs.

Enrollment is now open so make sure to grab your slot for this cohort before it closes.

That’s all for this edition! What was your favorite bullet?