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A seven-figure income doesn’t start with a business plan; it starts with a mindset. I discuss how to create a millionaire mindset in this episode with my guest, Cole Vandee.
Cole is a strategic marketing mind behind more than 300 million dollars in found revenue generated for clients ranging from celebrity coaches to DTC brands in the pet industry. With his unique perspective to bridge the gap between what’s working now and what the future marketplace will demand, Cole has catapulted several brands to 9 figures and beyond.
The Early Pathway to Cole’s Millionaire Mindset
While Cole’s life isn’t exactly the normal rags to riches story, he grew up in the American Midwest on the border of Illinois and Iowa on the Mississippi River in a small farm town. Success in his town, or even the rest of the country for that matter, wasn’t anything like what we see on the Internet today. Success in his hometown was more along the lines of having a sixty-thousand-dollar home. You work at a factory making 18 bucks an hour. You drive a pickup truck. And that was considered wealthy for the most part where Cole grew up.
There were a few outliers that owned local businesses and were doing better than most, but nothing like we see today with YouTubers, TikTokers, and internet celebrities.
Cole had a burning desire because he believed more was available for him in this life, but he didn’t know exactly what that meant or what it felt like. He chose to go into sales because it provided a virtually unlimited paycheck because of commissions. If Cole worked really hard and got really good at what he did, he could make as much money as he wanted. That seemed to be the path to follow at the time.
You have to start somewhere, right?
The Beginning of the Path to Success
Cole took on a few random sales jobs. He sold auto parts for a while and then moved on to selling Cutco knives door-to-door. Then he got into car sales but didn’t love the industry. He knew he was there to learn how to sell cars, take care of customers, and then move on to do something better. Cole was bridging the gap between not having a resume and having a resume to be able to get a job he actually wanted.
Rather than continuing to add to his resume, Cole quickly moved on to owning his own businesses. He started many different companies. A lot of them failed. Reflecting, Cole says that most of his companies have failed at this point. He’s only had a handful of things that have actually worked; but those few made all the difference.
To date he’s been a part of many companies that scaled up from zero to millions of dollars, millions of dollars to tens of millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars.
What Most People Don’t See or Know About When it Comes to Creating A Millionaire Mindset
Cole believes the most important thing is to understand that your favorite, more mature business gurus out there that are very successful today got to their first million dollars without the internet. They weren’t doing it with paid ads. They weren’t relying on funnels. They weren’t relying on marketing efforts. They weren’t relying on Instagram views or anything else like that. They were picking up the phone and talking to human beings and making money with them and then moving on to the next human beings and making money with them and so on.
The Starting Point of YOUR Millionaire Mindset
When Cole reflects and compares himself to other people that have gone on to build multimillion dollar organizations (and some that have gone on to billions), it’s the same mindset across the board. It’s an audacious belief that you’re going to make it work.
When you look at it as an investment on paper, starting a business is the worst possible thing you could ever do. Almost every single business that starts will fail. Of the ones that do succeed, most of those will fail within the next 12 months. Of those that make it that far, most of those will fail in the following 12 months.
So, when you look at it on paper, if you were to go to the casino and you put down a thousand bucks and you had a 0.0002% chance of making that thousand dollars back, let alone a profit, would you put your money down? Most people would say, “Why would I ever do that?”
But when you run the numbers on new businesses, that’s what the odds are. On the surface it doesn’t make any sense. There must be a little bit of a delusion to believe “I’m going to make this work.” Even though you don’t know how, you don’t have experience, you don’t necessarily even have a roadmap. No one’s really encouraging you. You must have some very intense beliefs that you’re going to make it work.
You Need to Do Something You’re Passionate About
Steve Jobs mentioned in quite a few interviews that if you’re going to go into business, you better be passionate about it. You’re going to have days where you think the entire world is against you. You’ll feel like the world wants to beat you down and make you fail. It’s those days where you must have great reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Business is like war in many respects. If you don’t know why you’re in the middle of that war, you’re going to want to give up. That means leaving your business. That’s where Cole believes most businesses end up failing.
A lot of people preach about becoming passionate about something in life. Figuring out what to be passionate about can get you spinning your mental wheels. What are you passionate about? It’s about betting on yourself and being passionate about being great at something. You need to know that taking the next step means finding the gap between solving a problem helping people in some way and then finding a solution to that problem. Having some strong, undeniable, unshakable reason to do it is a huge starting point for those that end up becoming successful.
We also dive into topics including:
- Why your early perceptions of money are really about running away from something; not moving towards something.
- How to start running towards the life you want.
- How to avoid chasing the wrong purpose.
- How to get and keep traction after getting over your initial hump when you’re getting started.
- The income numbers and plateaus when people stop trying and how to rise above them and keep going.
- Why in order to change your money mindset you need to find something outside of personal goals and needs to get ahead; you need a clear purpose that is greater than yourself.
- How to discover how much you need to make to feel fulfilled; it’s about more than the dollar amount.
- How to discover and connect to your bigger purpose.
- Why at the end of the day we all want to help somebody and how to find your somebody to help.
- What you mentally need to do and who you need to be once you hit a seven-figure income to maintain it.
- Why, once you hit a certain revenue level, you can’t afford to stop and you must keep growing.
- The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create and maintain a millionaire mindset.
…and more golden nuggets of advice!
You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”
About My Guest
ranging from celebrity coaches to DTC brands in the pet industry. With his unique perspective to bridge the gap between what’s working now and what the future marketplace will demand, Cole has catapulted several brands to 9 figures and beyond.
