Oprah’s annual “Favorite Things” list<\/a> \u2014 “it’s just like a total black box,” he said \u2014 until he spotted an opening on LinkedIn. A junior editor at Oprah Daily had posted about popcorn, so Moore sent her a cold message. She replied, requested a popper, and eventually helped get the product in front of Oprah.<\/p>\nAn Oprah Daily editor told Moore that the team considers about 15,000 products each year before Oprah makes her final selections. In 2024, Popsmith made the cut.<\/p>\n
After the list was announced, the company sold out of every popper within weeks. Popsmith went on to sell out three more times over the next five months.<\/p>\n
As an entrepreneur, “there’s a pressure and a will to win,” Moore said. “There’s an endless drive that just never goes away. I wake up hungry, and I will not stop.”<\/p>\n
Developing the entrepreneur mindset<\/p>\n
Like Moore, Ray has a refusal-to-quit mentality. He views entrepreneurship as a highway without an off-ramp \u2014 no Plan B waiting at the next exit.<\/p>\n
“If there is no exit, then there’s just one path,” he said. “And you just have to get through it.”<\/p>\n
That doesn’t mean every business will succeed. In fact, many won’t. But Ray believes entrepreneurs need to be willing to take risks, potentially look foolish, fail, and move on to the next idea if necessary.<\/p>\n
Often, he said, fear of failure \u2014 and other people’s judgment \u2014 is the real obstacle.<\/p>\n
At the core of his mindset is a willingness to care less about both.<\/p>\n
![\"kyle]()
<\/p>\n
Kyle Ray is the founder of Geek Window Cleaning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Kyle Ray<\/p>\n
“If Geek fails now, I’m going to look stupid, but it’s like, ‘Okay, cool. What’s next?’ Like, I don’t care,” he said. “And the earlier you can develop that carelessness \u2014 the ‘I don’t care if I look stupid’ or ‘I can fall flat on my face. I am still going to go for it’ \u2014 I think if you get to that point, anybody can go out and be an entrepreneur.”<\/p>\n
That mindset can be learned, he said. Like any other skill, from swinging a tennis racket to ballroom dancing, it takes time, consistent work, and patience. Ray recommends three steps:<\/p>\n
1. Start with books. They’re cheap \u2014 or free at the library. Ray’s top picks include “Inner Excellence” and “Can’t Hurt Me.” Moore prefers biographies of entrepreneurs and business leaders, from Warren Buffett and Richard Branson to John D. Rockefeller.<\/p>\n
2. Find someone who is already doing what you want to do at a high level. Then ask questions, Ray said: “What are you doing that I’m not? What am I doing that’s preventing me from breaking through?”<\/p>\n
3. Join a mastermind or hire a coach. Ray has multiple.<\/p>\n
“When there’s something I don’t know, or I need to learn, I start to look for coaches,” he said. “It’s like a wormhole, right? If you can find somebody that knows something about where you want to be, they can help you collapse time and just jump forward to that spot.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A traditional job typically comes with a regular paycheck and benefits \u2014 a measure of stability and predictability.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,270,7667,158,377134,108340,2066,33191,33332,377135,377132,377133,23841,6208,1599,2384,1975],"class_list":["post-900103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-business-insider","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-failure-is-not-an-option-mindset","tag-kyle-ray","tag-money","tag-moore","tag-oprah","tag-oprah-daily","tag-popper","tag-popsmith","tag-product","tag-risk","tag-team","tag-time","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}