It doesn’t matter how old or how young you are in achieving success. Hard work and passion play a vital role in it. Jeet Banerjee, one of the most successful young entrepreneurs, shares his journey from getting fired and quitting jobs to becoming an entrepreneur at a young age when people are still undecided on what path they are leading in life. As Jeet widens his knowledge and experiences, he passionately helps other entrepreneurs to make their dreams come true. Be inspired and get to know the formula on how you can achieve success.

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Becoming A Successful Young Entrepreneur with Jeet Banerjee

Our guest is Jeet Banerjee. He is a 25-year-old serial entrepreneur, a TEDx speaker and a digital marketing consultant. He began his entrepreneurial career at the age of seventeen and since then has launched over ten businesses, has sold two companies for a profit and has grown numerous other companies. He speaks at events all over the world and helps other entrepreneurs get their dreams kicked off. Jeet, thank you for joining us and joining our tribe of mentors here.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

You’ve been through all of these businesses. What inspired you? You’re a super young man and you got started even younger when most people have no clue what they’re going to do. You got started at seventeen. What sparked this entrepreneurial spirit of yours?

I grew up in a traditional family and household. When I was fifteen years old, my dad came barging into my room one morning and he was like, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I think you need to go get a job if you want the latest video games or if you want to go to the movies with your friends or whatever it is. I will pay for the bare necessities such as a roof over my house, clothes, food and all that good stuff.” As any fifteen-year-old, I was super bummed out and I started applying to a bunch of different jobs after school to earn some pocket money. I’ve pretty much over the next two years held any minimum wage job that a teenager could get. Anything from door-to-door sales, telemarketing, cleaning floors, tutoring and assistant. I did almost every single job and one thing kept happening over and over again. I kept getting fired or quitting from every single job.

I held twelve different jobs in a span of two years, which was something unheard of especially for someone working ten hours a week. My senior year of high school rolled around, I turned seventeen and it hit me like, “I’m supposed to apply to college and my whole plan in life is to get a business degree, work a corporate 9 to 5 and everything was going to be great.” Here I was, unable to work ten hours a week. I became terrified of the idea of having to do that for the rest of my life. I made this conscious decision where I was like, “I’m never going to work for anyone ever because it purely sucks.” At seventeen, I was like, “I’ve got to do something to prove to myself that I don’t need a job ever again.” I set out and made the decision to be an entrepreneur and work for myself.

Fast forward many years until now and you’re helping other entrepreneurs get their dreams kicked off. You’ve sold multiple companies in that span of time. You’re essentially broadening and spreading your knowledge and your experience. What are you working on these days and what can we learn from you?

One of the biggest projects that I’m working on that aligns with my passion, which is helping other entrepreneurs get jumpstarted and stuff like that is a company called The Income Incubator. What I do with that business is it’s an academy, almost like an alternative to college where we teach people instead of handing them a degree or a piece of paper when they’re done. It’s more so giving people actual tangible skills or actual tangible knowledge that they can almost implement immediately. I teach them seven different business models that I’ve had a lot of success with over the years. I show them how they can replicate it, find their own products, find their own mobile apps to create or whatever it is that they’re interested in. That’s one of my biggest passion projects. I’m locked in the mode of trying to give back because when I started out as an entrepreneur, there were a lot of other entrepreneurs before me that were there answering questions for me. They were offering mentorship, providing courses, videos and all this great material that enabled someone like me to achieve success. I want to pave the way and give others the same opportunities that were once given to me.

I hear that from a lot of very successful entrepreneurs who have had been successful and sold multiple companies. Now their basic needs are taken care of for the rest of their life. As long as they don’t make any stupid moves, they’re never going to have to worry about money again. They figure out pretty quickly that that’s not a fulfilling life. They decide to give back in some way. This is a great way for you to give back to the rest of us. I’m excited to bring some of your ideas to our audience. Especially these days, Gary Vaynerchuk talks a lot about it. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. It’s the hot thing right now. He believes most people aren’t cut out for it. What do you think about that?

I do agree with it. From the outside looking in, a lot of people think entrepreneurship is extremely easy. It’s something they can add a label and then a couple of days later start a business and everything’s going to be rainbows and flowers. One of the biggest things that I tell a lot of people as well that go through the process is before I even take them through the process of helping them create a business, I try to make sure that their mindset and their work ethic is up to par to be successful as an entrepreneur. The biggest thing that I ask people oftentimes that tell me, “I want to be an entrepreneur,” is like, “How long are you willing to work 100 a week for without receiving a dime?” The answer to that question oftentimes tells me more than I can ever know about somebody in terms of whether they will be a successful entrepreneur or not.

A lot of people are like, “100 hours? No, I can’t do more than 40.” Some people will be like, “I need to start getting paid within two weeks. That’s my limit.” If you think like that, it’s very tough to become an entrepreneur and be successful. Whether it’s me or whether it’s a lot of the other very successful entrepreneurs that are out there, some of us have been through it all. We’ve been through the ringers without getting paid, falling flat on our butts over and over, facing challenges, and going through failures. It sometimes took years and for others, sometimes it took them decades before they ever saw any monetary success or success in general. I definitely think it’s something that’s for the very few, but it has become appealing to the many. As people go through the process of becoming an entrepreneur, you quickly weed out the ones that aren’t cut out for it.

The title of the show is Passive Wealth Strategies for Busy Professionals but in reality, we all know that there is no such thing as passive income or passive wealth 100%. You have to put some work in and you’re talking about 100 hours a week for years on end. If you’re looking to accomplish big things, that sounds like a reasonable proposition. You have to put the work in to make it happen and then you can turn it off and things will become passive. In your opinion, once we’re putting in those 100 hours a week without getting paid, we’ve been doing this for months or we’re past year two, year three, and we’re not getting paid yet. At what point do we say, “Maybe I’ve got the wrong thing here or maybe I’m not the guy for the job or maybe I’m crazy?” What do you think about that?

Whenever I’m creating a business model, my idea that’s enabled me to launch all the businesses that I have is I always try to fail fast if I’m going to fail. Because to me it’s like, “Why fail in a year if I can do it in 30 days?” Whenever I try to launch a business, I try to quickly validate whether it’s a successful business model or not. I try to tell people this all the time like, “If you launch a new business and you put some marketing in place and you do all the right things that you think you’re doing and nobody is biting, then you’ve got a big problem with your business model.” Something isn’t right somewhere. It’s almost insanity to keep trying to do the same thing or keep trying to take the same business model and over and over find different ways to promote it or find different people to sell it to or whatever it is.

From my experience, every business that’s ever been a rock star hit for me has always been like as soon as I push it out to the public, I’m either getting sales or I’m getting engagement. I’m getting some metric that tells me like, “This is exciting. People are interested in it.” What I like to tell people is you’ve got to fail fast and do it quickly. If I’m not succeeding as an entrepreneur, it’s probably one of two things. It’s either my business models suck or I’m not putting in the effort. I’m doing something wrong from a personal standpoint that is hindering or limiting my success in the entrepreneurial world. If you assess both of those things and you’re constantly focusing on changing, improving and tweaking both models constantly as you go through the process, I feel like anybody can be successful.

If you’re having a hard time being able to reflect, stop yourself and be critical of either of those things, then it might be a time to put the white flag in or throw the towel in. If you can’t be your own hardest critic when things aren’t going right, then it’s going to be extremely tough for you to be successful as an entrepreneur. You don’t have bosses and you don’t have colleagues. You don’t have anyone else that’s going to give you the cold hard truth. You’ve got to be that voice in your head that tells you that all the time.

I appreciate that you dialed it down to either the business plan sucks or I’m not putting in the work. I’m not doing the work properly. There’s something about my implementation of the business plan that falls into either one of those. Many of us and myself included, we’re pursuing real estate as part of our strategy in terms of wealth-generation. For the most part, this stuff is defined. It’s been done by others in the past in different models for hundreds of years. It’s changed over time. The financing structure changed over time but people are making money from real estate pretty much as long as money has existed and property ownership has existed. That second component of taking responsibility for their results is so important. You might feel like you’d been putting in 100 hours a week, but has your psychology been in the right place to set you up for that success? Do you get into anything that may be a Tony Robbins style type of success mentality? Is that part of your formula at all? Are you an adherent of any of that information?

A little bit. One of the biggest things that I look at because one of the things I said earlier is about the 100-hour thing and I want to be clear with everyone. I want to mention one thing that sometimes a lot of people tell me like, “I’ve been working so much day and night. I’ve been doing everything that you told me in terms of the hours.” Sometimes hours aren’t necessarily the best measurement of productivity. I know some people and within my businesses and the culture that we put in within it, my employees don’t necessarily have set schedules. It’s like, “We need to get X, Y, Z done now. If you get it done in two hours and it’s done right and well, you can go home and do whatever you want.”

A person might take ten hours to do it the right way but to me, time isn’t necessarily always the best measurement of productivity of what’s being done. If you can launch a multimillion-dollar business by working five hours a week, for example, more power to you. That is amazing. Not everyone can do that, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a failure because you’re not achieving that 100-hour goal and vice versa. Someone working 100 hours a week may not be putting their time and effort and all that attention in the right place. It’s a lot also about finding different ways to measure the productivity that goes in it. In terms of my success mindset and stuff like that, it’s not always about how much I’m working, but what I’m working towards and the measurable goals or results that I see from the work that I put in.

In this new model that you’re pursuing in educating people and how to get their entrepreneurial dreams kicked off, are you doing any filtering in these people to qualify them for whether or not they’re willing to put in the 100 hours? You said time isn’t necessarily the best indicator but whether they’re willing to put the 100 hours in. Whether they will focus on being effective with their 100 hours and essentially get the work done one way or another and not goof off for 100 hours a week and pretend they’re working and being productive. How do you screen them? I’m interested to hear your process or your eye for figuring out whether or not someone’s got the it factor to be a successful entrepreneur.

The first thing that we do within our academy itself is we’ve got an application process. We have them fill out a bunch of different questions that we asked them. It’s not open to the public or anyone can walk in and sign up and start joining the academy. We want to have serious and committed people that are part of it. We always have these students come in and fill out a form. My team and I will screen that form. If we have any doubts or certain questions that we want to ask them, we’ll shoot those questions towards them. Overall, the biggest thing that we look for in terms of that is what mindset do they have?

We try to put them in situations or ask them questions that are similar to the challenges that you will face as an entrepreneur, but maybe not putting in the exact words of being an entrepreneur. We’re asking them questions like, “The last time you faced a challenge, what did you? The last time you dealt with a problem and you couldn’t find a solution to it, what did you do?” A lot of those answers tell us a lot of things because a lot of people will be like, “I had a problem and I got frustrated and I just ignored it eventually until it went away.” Other people might be like, “I did a lot of research. I tried to look online. I tried to even think of potential ways that I could solve that problem because I’m sure if I was dealing with it, other people were dealing with it.” Those kinds of answers give us a lot of indication because as entrepreneurs, we’re constantly running into problems, dilemmas and challenges.

For us, it’s not like we’re going to give up or we’re going to stop and turn the other way. It’s like, “If there’s an obstacle in our way to get to where we need to go, how do we get around it? How do we climb that obstacle? What solutions can we create?” From getting a basic questionnaire from a student, we can quickly tell who’s ready for that entrepreneurial mindset and ready to rock and roll and who may not be ready at that moment. They may need to continue working on themselves to develop the right mindset, the right work ethic and the right approach before they can be ready to start a company.

I appreciate that as you were answering the question, you said essentially The Obstacle is The Way. You alluded to that concept. That was a fantastic book. It showed some of these and reflected some of these ideas that you’re mentioning. If there’s an obstacle there, you have to find a way to deal with it to be an effective and successful entrepreneur or leader in any type of business. As far as background, are you primarily dealing with Millennials? Are you finding that the Millennials to Gen Z are the ones that are interested in being entrepreneurs the most? Are you reaching to some that maybe are a little bit older generations, the 30s, 40s or 50s that are coming to learn from you? What’s the landscape of entrepreneurial education?

When it comes to my academy and stuff that we do here, the majority of our audience maybe 85% to 90% is under that 30 to 35 range. That’s probably because I’m on the younger side. I’m 25 years old. Maybe more people feel comfortable or can relate more to my teaching methods and the way that I approach things. I do have some students that are well past 35. Some of them are a little bit older. We had a student that was super interested in entrepreneurship. She was a great candidate. She was fifteen years old or fourteen turning fifteen. It’s something crazy. Her parents were super excited because they thought she was a great candidate. I talked to her and I thought she was amazing. I see a wide spectrum in the age category but for the majority of it, I’ve seen under that 30 to 35 range.

What is the best investment you’ve ever made?

The best investment that I have ever made personally was in terms of educating myself. When I made the decision to become an entrepreneur, I knew nothing. I had two options essentially when I hit roadblocks and obstacles, giving up or spending money to learn those things. Whether it’s learning how to do my accounting and my taxes, how to hire people or how to develop a good culture within the business. I always looked for different resources whether it was taking courses from other people, buying books or doing all these things. I’ve been an avid person that loves gobbling up as much knowledge as I can. That’s what’s enabled me to achieve a lot of the success that I have. It’s taking perspectives from people from all different ranges, whether it’s sports, music, business itself and consuming all the material and content that they create. The best investment I’ve ever made is educating myself to learn from a variety of different people.

Education is so important and there’s so much to be learned out there. When it comes to business, I don’t know about your school experience. I learned nothing about business especially in high school and earlier, but certainly not in college. I had a lot of catch up to do and I still do. It’s a great thing to learn that you’ve been able to find out all the information you need to grow your business by being educated. What is the worst investment you’ve ever made?

When I was 21, I sold my first company. I decided that I was going to be a part-time on the side like an Angel investor. I started taking people throwing me ideas. The worst investment that I probably ever made was thinking that I had the skills to be an investor and to be able to invest in a couple of companies. I ended up investing in a couple of companies without having any clue of what it took to be an investor, how to play that role, how to properly judge concepts and businesses and things like that. I ended up losing quite a good chunk of money doing that but it was a valuable lesson.

You can make money back later. The lesson is a valuable part there. What is the most important lesson you’ve learned about investing?

The most important lesson that I learned is to never invest in something that you don’t know about. One of the biggest reasons why I lost a lot of money investing in the companies that I mentioned was I invested in a biotech company and a company that was doing some high-level server stuff. I never knew anything about those industries or those niches. This guy tells me something about an industry and niche I don’t know about, but it sounds like a great idea. He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about and he did a good job of selling it to me. I ended up investing in them. Later on, as problems and things arose, I didn’t know what was going on because I was uneducated and uninvolved in those industries and niches.

The biggest piece of advice I can give to people is people are always going to give you crazy tips like you go online and you will see on forms and stuff. People would be like, “Go and buy this crypto coin or go and invest in this stock.” I see many people, whether it’s friends and family of my own that I know. They will blindly invest in something without any clue. The biggest thing that I’ve learned over the years is if you don’t know about it and you’re not heavily educated in it, don’t invest blindly because you’re not going to know what’s going on when you do.

I love that you mentioned crypto especially we’re past the peak, which happened in 2018. I had many people coming to me saying, “I’ve got this awesome coin. You should buy some.” I’m sure I’m not alone in that. There are many people wealthier than me that we’re getting approached with these huge opportunities to buy into these coins that ended up being total vaporware or scams or have gone completely to nothing. A lot of people were taken for a lot of money because of that particular industry that didn’t even exist before. I don’t think anybody can credibly say they understand the crypto market. How can our audience get in touch with you?

The best way to get in touch with me is through my personal website, JeetBanerjee.com. It’s got my social media links, email, blog, all the stuff I’ve done over the past few years. People can feel free to get in touch with me however they wish.

Do you have any parting pieces of advice, wisdom or guidance from your specific area of experience? Something that would relate to our audience as they work on generating their multiple streams of income and building that passive wealth generation that they’re seeking.

The biggest piece of advice that I can probably give to somebody that’s thinking that way already is along the lines of the concept of working smarter and not harder. Whether when it comes to investing money and putting your eggs into different baskets and things like that. A lot of people have this perception, “Every income stream that I create is going to require me to work so much harder for me to do many more things.” One of the biggest things that I’ve learned over the years is delegating is amazing. You can’t be Superman and do everything even though you want to. As long as you can figure out what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, things you don’t like to do and plug-in people for those things, that will not only keep you sane but it will keep your investments safe and secure.

A good example I will give for that is a couple of years ago, I got into rental properties. When you get into that, you’ve got renters, you’ve got to manage them, their needs, collecting rent and any issues that may come up. Initially, I thought I was going to be Superman and I was going to do all of it. Quickly, I found out I didn’t know what I was doing. It was a lot of work and time that was taking away from my real revenue generating stuff. The best decision I ever made was hiring a property management company to go in there and do all this stuff. I’m making a little bit less off my investment, but everything is being handled so much greater and I’m able to scale and grow. That’s probably the biggest piece of advice I’d give to people. Oftentimes, when they invest their money and they’re looking for yields and returns, they become shy to hire people to help manage those things. It’s a great thing and it will allow you to not only create more income streams but keep your sanity.

As an apartment investor myself, I have no interest in dealing with tenants, toilets, termites, trash and all the other crap that you have to deal with when you own rental properties. That’s why I invest in large deals where we use third-party property management. They handle all that stuff and we collect the cash flow. Spending some money, hiring the right people and working smarter, not harder, those are all great advice. Thanks again for joining us. To everyone, thank you for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, on iTunes or wherever you like. If you’re enjoying this show, bring someone in. Invite someone that you know in your life that could use advice and guidance on how to get to multiple streams of income and passive wealth generation going. Thanks for joining us. We will catch you on the next one.

Important Links:

• Jeet Banerjee
• The Income Incubator
• The Obstacle is The Way
• JeetBanerjee.com
• Jeet Banerjee’s blog
• iTunes – Passive Wealth Strategies for Busy Professionals

About Jeet Banerjee

Jeet Banerjee is a 25-year-old serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker and digital marketing consultant. Jeet began his entrepreneurial career at the age of 17 and since then has launched over 10+ businesses, sold 2 companies for a profit and grown numerous other companies.

Currently, Jeet speaks at events all over the world and helps other entrepreneurs get their dreams kicked off.

• Here’s How »

• passivewealthstrategy.com