Sean Hopwood is the CEO of Day Translations, a thriving translation and localization company operating in over 100+ languages worldwide. He built it from scratch by going door to door asking people if they required translations, and today he has a fully remote team from all over the world and is helping individuals and companies expand their operations abroad. He has worked with Fox News, TED, Bayer, Facebook, HBO, AT&T, and more.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Elon Musk
- Steve Jobs
- Jack Ma
- Ratan Tata the founder of Tata Group
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I was basically blissfully ignorant. I just kept going forward. I didn’t know all of the possibilities or problems that can happen on the rise up. And every time a problem rose up, I just fixed it. I started my business with no money at all but I found that there is always a solution to everything. I guess the biggest difficulty I had was starting with no money and having to work round-the-clock. I had a job at the time I started my business… I would go to bed at four o’clock every morning and then I would get up and work again at eight in the morning. So, I got about four hours of sleep a night for a couple of years. So, I guess the main thing I had to do was overcome all the work I had to do plus the lack of knowledge. I didn’t have a lot of support; I didn’t have any investors but in the end it’s a good thing because”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life Book by Dr Spencer JohnsonFavourite Quote:
- “Spring into action, lest you wither and despair”
- “I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair” Alfred Lord Tennyson
Recommended Online Resources:
- Google LLC – is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
- Twitter, Inc. is an American online news and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets”. Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but on November 7, 2017, this limit was doubled for all languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
- Baidu Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence, headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian District. It is one of the largest AI and Internet companies in the world.
- The Economist – World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance
- Bloomberg delivers business and markets news, data, analysis, and video to the world, featuring stories from Businessweek and Bloomberg News
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“do something you love and have compassion. Always be willing to adapt and adjust. Be willing to admit that you are wrong. But bring on a team of people who complement you. If you are very disorganised person, bring on more organised people. If you are a very quiet person, bring on some very verbose and loquacious people who are willing to speak to customers. If you are a very financial oriented person, bring on a more creative person. Bring on people who complement you because obviously as an entrepreneur you probably don’t have skills in every single thing. So bring on people who are better than you at things you are not good at”…[Listen for More]
More About Sean Hopwood:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“I just wanna let them know that they didn’t break me.” Pretty in Pink
Other Quotes From the Chat with Sean Hopwood:
- “I always say I do wish I had a mentor, which I didn’t have. I do wish I had that. I wish I had someone who could help me. I wish I maybe have some kind of Angel investor to help me”
- “Hard work is the secret to success. Constant improvement and innovation, constant learning, introspection and the ability to change ”
- “If you start your own business you start to think okay you get a big head and like wow, I did all this I must be a genius, I must be a really good businessman, I must have wonderful business acumen. But you can have that confidence while also having humility and I think it’s very important to keep that humility when you are doing a business. So, you can constantly have that understanding in the back of your head that you always have to improve. They might be somebody out there just starting their business who knows more than you or who has more drive than you”
- “You can’t wait for things to change… You are living life now, take the action now… There is always an opportunity to make money. Or there is always an opportunity to do something… Don’t wait for something to happen to you, make things happen. Don’t wait for destiny to take control, take control of your own destiny ”
- “As an entrepreneur you have to realise you have to take action. Stop worrying about these details and stop making excuses… Take action”
- “I am the kind of person that likes to always do the opposite of what others are doing”
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