Last month, I received a message from a well-known entrepreneur with over 500,000 followers. He wasn't pitching me—he was asking if he could speak at our next summit. This wasn't luck. It was the result of a strategy I've been deploying for years.
There's a moment that changed everything for me as an entrepreneur. It wasn't a viral post. It wasn't a lucky break. It was sitting in a room with eight other business owners, realizing that the challenges I thought were unique to me were universal.
When people hear that we launched four virtual summits in less than two years—and that our fourth one came together in just five months—they usually ask: 'How did you do it without spending tens of thousands of dollars?'
There's something irreplaceable about bringing people together in real time. The lessons I learned from hosting hundreds of events have shaped everything I've built since.
Complexity is the natural state of things. Simplicity requires active effort—and it's a competitive advantage.
I said those words hundreds of times in 2012. I believed them completely. A decade later, I have a more nuanced view.
Before I became the Hope Man, before Synergy Collab, before HOPE.dev—I was a young entrepreneur trying to figure out how to build a business through network marketing. What I found was something more valuable: lessons about human connection that would shape everything I built afterward.
I was twenty-two years old, standing in a mall parking lot, terrified. This was my introduction to cold prospecting—and the lessons have shaped every business I've built since.
Before Synergy Collab, before HOPE.dev, I learned the Credibility Triangle—a framework for building trust that applies to any industry.