Making Something From Nothing: Terry Ouzounelli Of Greek Entrepreneurs On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
You can’t have all the answers beforehand. Take action and you’ll figure everything out along the way. Just get started!
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Terry Ouzounelli.
Terry Ouzounelli is an ex-military officer, entrepreneur and author from Greece. She graduated from the Hellenic Military Academy and served in the Greek Army as an officer for eleven years.
She had an interest in philosophy and spirituality from a young age and through her own entrepreneurial and self-growth journey has achieved semi-retirement and financial freedom.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my story!
Well, I am not responsible for my childhood, so I am not talking about that, but I’m happy to share my mistakes, failures, choices, and decisions I’ve made during the adult life that led me to the person I am today.
I studied at the Hellenic Military Academy Evelpidon for four years and I served in the Greek army as an officer for eleven years. Although I loved my job as a military leader, I was often doing a second job to be able to afford a more comfortable life. You would find me managing hotel reservations, delivering food, doing short commercials, dropping a few lines as a background actress, serving drinks at local bars, and even dancing! But what is certain, is that I was extremely hard-working. The type of job didn’t matter to me. I didn’t want to put myself in a position of struggling financially. Nevertheless, as you can easily understand, after a few years I was exhausted. I needed to find another way to make money.
In the beginning, I started a bunch of side hustles and types of online businesses and most of them failed. That didn’t bother me at all. I learned, acted, and failed. Again and again.
Starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur had never crossed my mind.
I started Greek Entrepreneurs as a side hustle, like with everything that I had done so far. I am not a person who takes things seriously and this wasn’t an exception.
However, after a while, things got serious. And when I say serious, I mean that Greek Entrepreneurs had exponential growth and everybody in Greece and Cyprus was talking about it. Within two years, I had helped over 2,500 people start investing, trading in the Stock Market, and making passive income. The most interesting thing is that until now, I have spent zero dollars on marketing. This is because my clients saw tremendous results in their lives and suggested my products and services to other people! This is when I understood that things got serious. I was officially an entrepreneur.
You don’t choose to become an entrepreneur. People decide that for you.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
It may sound pessimistic at first, but the more you dive into that realization, the better your chances of succeeding are. The most valuable lesson that I’ve learned is that “you are on your own. No one is coming for you.” Don’t expect any support from anyone to start working on your dreams, success, ideas, business, whatever that might be, even yourself! Stop waiting and procrastinating and act now! Let me give you an example.
As a Greek, I may be biased, but if you want to study philosophy, you have to start with ancient Greek philosophy. All other types of philosophies throughout the world are influenced by ancient Greek philosophy (I explain more about that in my book Catharsis: the reason why you are here). The ancient Greeks imagined opportunity as a head that had hair only on the front side, while the back side was bald. According to them, if an opportunity was presented to you, you would have to grab it by the hair because if you didn’t do so, it would be too late to grab it after it passed by you since you would be looking at the back side which was bald, thus you wouldn’t be able to grab it.
That’s what you should do every time. Grab each opportunity the time it shows up. Act quickly.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Oh my God, where to start with? As an author and a bookworm myself, I have read a lot of books that have helped me tremendously in many areas of my life. I usually read books from the self-help and business genre. I strongly believe that you can’t succeed in anything unless you work on yourself first. And of course, everyone should be constantly working on themselves because no one is perfect and nobody can claim that they know it all. You may be the best version of yourself right now, but there’s always room for growth and more knowledge. That’s why I focus on reading self-help books frequently.
Two of the best self-help books that I have read are Letting go by David R. Hawkins and Breaking the habit of being yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza.
One of the best entrepreneurial books I have read is Unscripted by M.J. DeMarco, which helped me grow my business massively.
Of course, my own books, Catharsis: The reason why you are here, The Silence of the Sheep, and Mastering Wealth: The Escape from Modern Slavery, have also helped me during my self-growth journey because you grow a lot by writing too. I remember that I ended some chapters in tears. I was happy, proud, and relieved.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Ok, I’m going to disappoint many people again. That’s not my intention. However, sometimes, uncomfortable facts and the truth are way more beneficial than inspiring quotes and sweet talk.
There are no ideas.
Or let me rephrase that so it’s more easily understood. There are no unique ideas. We all have the same ideas because we are all one, as the ancient Greek philosophers believed. Stop thinking that you’re better than everyone else, smarter, more talented, more knowledgeable, or whatever. Stop thinking that your “unique ideas” will make you successful. In other words, stop dreaming and start working.
That’s the ugly truth. Nothing but work can guarantee results.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Of course at least one person or in reality, many people have had the same idea before! Even if you don’t believe in what the ancient Greek philosophers believed, that we are all one, take the rational approach. It is mathematically and statistically impossible that your idea is unique.
But what can you do about it?
It doesn’t matter! Even if there are a lot of people or entrepreneurs that have implemented that idea and have turned it into a business, this doesn’t prevent you from starting your own business, based on the same idea. Again, what will make your work, business or project stand out is your personality, the way you present your work and how you can help or improve other people’s lives. As long as the value is provided, as long as you see the smiles on people’s faces, as long as you see them thriving using your products or services, you don’t have to worry about any competition. Besides, in entrepreneurship, you can’t have all the answers beforehand. You start, implement, improve, adjust, change, fail, succeed, adjust again, change again, and so on.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Don’t worry or get stuck in the details. There is only one purpose for your business: to serve people. Never think about profit, money, numbers, logistics, or anything else, at least in the beginning, before you get started. I’m not saying that they are not important, but what is more important is the customer. I can’t stretch this enough. As long as you care about your customer and you do your best to solve their problem or add value to their life, the rest are not even issues. You will figure them out.
Let me share with you my personal (and embarrassing) experience regarding this. When I first got started providing financial services and education, my website sucked! It was the worst website you can imagine. As I was on a tight budget in the beginning, I did everything myself, including building the website and linking all my products and services. It was terrible. It was a mess. And I wasn’t smart enough to see what was going on and adjust, or maybe I wasn’t skilled enough as an entrepreneur to adjust.
I had that embarrassing website for two years, having a few thousand people visiting and logging into my website every month. Sometimes the servers crashed and the website wasn’t functional at all!
But again, my stupid and stubborn personality didn’t let me see that something was wrong.
I started seeing the problem when I listened to the feedback, which I encourage you to do, as it will provide you with extremely useful information about your work that no other tool can.
People were consistently saying that my products and services are excellent and have transformed their lives, but some people also mentioned that the website sucked.
I remember one email from a client that had purchased a lot of my investing and trading courses saying: “Guys you can’t have the best courses in Europe and such a crappy website, it’s really annoying”.
Although I got a bit defensive in the beginning, I now appreciate that email deeply because it helped me understand what I needed to do to scale my business. It helped me see what I refused to see.
For the next four days, I worked non-stop and didn’t even eat or sleep properly. I wanted to get it done as soon as possible. After four days, I had a new, professional website that was easy to use.
My students noticed it immediately and they thanked me for improving the website saying that it’s much better than the previous version! Why didn’t they say anything sooner? Why didn’t they tell me they were struggling with navigation? I wondered. Wait, what? Did I start listening? Suddenly, I realized that I needed feedback. No more ego from now on. Only happy customers.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?
The 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company are:
- No one is coming for you. Don’t expect support from anyone. You want to belong to the 1% of the population, right? Then why would you listen to the 99%?
- Don’t think that you’re smarter than anyone else. Always work on yourself, learn, adjust and improve.
- Success won’t happen overnight. It takes time and patience.
- Self-growth and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. Be the person you want to become and then success will manifest in your life.
- You can’t have all the answers beforehand. Take action and you’ll figure everything out along the way. Just get started!
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Again, just do it. Stop thinking for a while and do it. Start today. Not tomorrow. Whatever that might be, don’t get caught up in the details and worries. You will figure it all out along the way. Starting something new, something that you’ve never done before, like a business, might seem challenging in the beginning. If you combine it with the voice in your head that will do anything to prevent you from taking action, you will never get started and that idea will remain just that, an idea.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
Although hiring a coach or consultant is extremely beneficial for a beginner, as you will get a ton of knowledge and learn from their experience (that you don’t have yet) and speed up the process at the same time, it is not easy for anyone, especially if they are on a tight budget. Many people start a business out of desperation, they may have nothing, they can’t even afford to pay their monthly bills, so hiring an expert is impossible for them. I don’t want to discourage those people. There are many successful entrepreneurs that started from scratch, alone, with zero money and resources and they succeeded because they believed in themselves, they were committed, disciplined, and hard-working. It is possible for anyone.
In conclusion, if you can afford it, hiring a consultant will help you achieve your goals faster. If you can’t afford it, you can still start working on your own, but keep in mind that it will require more effort and time.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
This decision depends on a few factors, like the available capital that the entrepreneur has, the profit margin of their company, future growth potential, and which phase of the Business Cycle we are in. For instance, right now that the Markets are running out of liquidity and interest rates are increasing, VCs are tighter about deploying their capital.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Success came as a result of my caring for other people and not the opposite. My priority is and has always been helping other people, inspiring them, adding value to their lives and seeing the smile on their faces.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Thank you. What I would really like to become a worldwide movement is catharsis. Trying to reach enlightenment and wisdom, as the ancient Greek philosophers did, can bring happiness and freedom to your life. Catharsis applies to everyone and it’s the doorway to happiness and freedom. With catharsis, anyone can live a life beyond their wildest dreams. I describe the catharsis process in detail in my book Catharsis: the reason why you are here.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I really admire Suze Orman. She’s an extremely talented, successful and inspiring woman! Even if I had just five minutes to spend with her, I would listen carefully to what she’d have to say and keep notes.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Thank you so much! The time flew by so fast and I enjoyed this interview a lot!
Making Something From Nothing: Terry Ouzounelli Of Greek Entrepreneurs On How To Go From Idea To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
