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Welcome back to the game. This is guest spot on Rachel Hollis's podcast.

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Main things I talked about in this podcast are the reality of hard work and sacrifice.

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You can't get around it. Learning from some of our failures and investing in companies

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in the early days of acquisition.com. And I also mentioned a little bit as is the Hormosi way.

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Talk about death to gain freedom of mind. There is a little bit of my story in this one. And so if

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you are somebody who's heard my story, then I would skip forward a little bit. And then you

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can get to DVD stuff that is not my story that you probably already heard. All right, rock and roll.

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Love you. Enjoy. Okay, so I know this is annoying, but I do feel like we have to give a tiny bit

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of your backstory to the audience who has not met you before. Because a big part, I'll just like

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lead you down the garden path in advance. A big part of what I'd love to talk to you about

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today's mindset because what I'm so in love with in your story is how many times it has

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all fallen apart and that you rebuilt yourself. Because I feel like the world is in a place of

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really needing that conversation. So will you take the audience on a backstory of how you got to

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where you are today? Yeah, and I will highlight my exceptional proclivity for finding a way to lose

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everything. You know, pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. Yeah. Yeah.

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The quick story is that I was a management consultant out of college, got to what I would consider

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a rock top experience where I was 22. I owned my own condo on like a pretty nice high rise,

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had a balcony looking over the city. And I was like, is this it? Like I'm just I just do this until

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I die and maybe marry somebody. And I was like, this feels terrible. And so I quit with that whole

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quitting process took me six months from like when I decided that I didn't want to do this anymore

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until I actually quit. And I still think to this day that was the most the hardest decision I've

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ever made. Because I think in the beginning, it's like you you you have to forego what you know

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for something that is unknown. Yeah. And so you you can quantify what you have to lose,

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but not what you have to gain. And I think that's what makes the decision so hard. Now obviously

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in the other side, it's very easy in retrospect. Like I can't believe it took me so long. It's like

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yeah, but you didn't know. Yeah. Right. It's like saying, oh, I should have just, you know,

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invested into the stock market for every year for 20 years. I'd be it's like, yeah, but every

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single time you're about to do it, it's like, oh, but it's down now or it's about to go to like

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there's all this uncertainty. Maybe it's different now, but just for for context for the audience so

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that I don't seem more heroic than I am. I ended up quitting my I'll say quitting my family, not

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hardcore like that, but more so like the harder discussion was getting my family to be on board

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with the idea that I was going to quit my job more so than me quitting like quitting the job

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actually felt like the easy part, the telling everybody else that I was changing my life was the

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hard part. And so I drove across the country. And when I was in it like pathway point, I called my

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dad to let him know that I'd quit my job and you and that I wanted I was going to do this other

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thing. And he was like, well, just come over. We'll talk about it because I need to he'd like

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talk to me off the figurative ledge a bunch of times over the last however many months. And I was like,

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I'm going. And then that's what obviously like he was upset about it. I feel like that's an

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important moment to pause because there are a lot of people listening who have these dreams and

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ideas, but are terrified of the people closest to them and what they will say. And I think and because

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I know your story, I know that culturally it was really important for your dad that you went to

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college and had this amazing job. And he was a sounds like a pretty authoritative force in your

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life. So did you care that you were disappointing him? You finally got to the place where you're like

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fuck it like I'm out or yeah. So the biggest decisions I've had in my life have always been in the

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face of like imminent death or what feels like it. I don't want to like go into this like it's a

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savvy moment or something. But when I say I had like that rock top moment, it was there was a

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period of time while I was in that job where I just hope I wouldn't wake up the next day. And so

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like there's like levels of being sad about things. And I think trying to operationalize sadness,

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like what is sadness? It's a perceived lack of options. That's why I feel so hopeless. You just

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don't know what to do. There's nowhere to like you're like you just feel very trapped. And so

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basically the conclusion that I made was if I would rather not be alive than what I'm currently

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doing, one of our dreams must die. His or mine. And so I think my father's dream for my life had to

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die in order for mine to live. And so I guess upon realizing that it made the stakes of the decision

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so much larger. And at the same time, it made my for lack of leadership give a fuck around

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his perceived judgment of the decision. It minimized it a lot. And so that's what allowed me to

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kind of move forward. Basically, I had to accept the fact that I would be dead to my father

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for an extended period of time. And so I was like, well, I'd rather be dead to him than dead to me.

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And I think that's what that's what allowed me to really make the decision. But I basically went

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into it with I will accept the fact that he will not talk to me again. And I'll accept the fact

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that most of the people that I know will not will not be around me. Now, as you played out long term,

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some people come back, some people don't, whatever. But like in the moment, I had to be I think

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willing to lose it all on the emotional side in order to do what I wanted to do with my life.

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It's funny because I've experienced not the same path at all, but so many times people will

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look at the success that I have now and ask women, especially like how do you convince the people

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who love you that your dream is a good idea? How do you convince them? How do you convince them?

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I'm like, you don't. You prove that you can do the thing you're saying. And then suddenly,

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everyone is like, oh, we always do it. We knew she was going to be huge. And I'm like, fuck you.

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Did not. I just feel like so many nuggets and what you're saying for people who are.

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I'm going to look up a quote, yeah, finding themselves in the same place right now of like, oh,

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I need to convince so and so I need to convince my husband. I need to convince mom and daddy. No,

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you need to stop putting energy into trying to convince those people and convince yourself.

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So Epictetus has this really good quote. Let's go, Stoics. He says, if you're ever tempted to look

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for outside approval and realize that you have compromised your integrity, if you need to witness

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be your own. Okay. And so I think to the same degree, it's like, how do I get my husband or

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my whatever, my kids, my cousin, my uncle, that person who I give all the power in my life to,

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how do I get them to approve of me? How do I get them realistically? You're asking for

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his permission. Yes. Which means that you're actually non-control girl. A million percent.

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And so I think a great frame for anyone who's in the spot is asking for support not permission.

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Number one and number two being willing to accept the fact that they will not support you.

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Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And there is a freedom that comes in that. It's like, I'm just going to go do

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this thing and we'll see how it turns out. But it does free up so much energy for you to focus on.

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Oh, it's huge. It's like you have this massive exhale. Yeah.

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That like I said, and everyone who's had one of these hard decisions that's pending in your life

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whether it's the quitting the boss or telling the husband or whatever it is, it's like as soon as

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you do it, you're like, why did I wait so long? You're like, you don't realize how how heavy it is.

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One of my favorite kind of little isms is the heaviest thing in the world is an iron or gold.

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It's an unmade decision. Yeah. And I think that a lot of people are carrying around too many of them.

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Yeah, there's a great Tim Ferris quote that I steal a lot, which is the quality of your life is

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often determined by your willingness to have tough conversations. And I think a lot of people

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listening probably need to have a conversation like that with their version of your dad. Yeah.

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So you're halfway across the country. You have this call. You're like, peace out. What happens then?

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Then I show up at a gym owners front doorstep because I found them on the internet. Why that?

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Because I had, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to start a business. I had three different

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ideas. So I was either going to do frozen yogurt. I don't know why I laughed. I'm so sorry. No, it's fine.

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It would just be amazing if you were like the king of frozen yogurt. Yeah. And I'm, hey, in a different

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timeline. I wish I was like, in Cincinnati. So I could be like the fro you king of Cincinnati.

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Like I want to have a city associated. Yeah, exactly. Like I want frozen nation. Oh, dude,

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it would have been actually if you guys do a live event, you should do a pop up like that because

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the inside of peeps would know. I can, I can talk about frozen. I know a lot about this. I really do.

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I know. I've heard you. I've heard you give advice to things. I'm like, okay, you could do this

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with any category, actually. Okay. Sorry. So test prep was an option. So test prep was the,

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was the third business. And that one, I was good at standardized tests. So it kind of, and it

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didn't require a ton of startup costs. And so between the three, I actually was leaning towards

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doing first, I looked at the fro you thing. I only had $50,000 saved up and it costs like

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$200,000 or at least that's what I found online. And I was like, I don't know if I can do it.

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And so then I was like, look at me. I'll do the test prep thing. I spent like four months to,

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like basically creating like curriculum and like all the stuff. And I was going to partner with

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one of my professors from Vanderbilt to like do it together. The long story short is that I like,

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I flew back in. I presented all the stuff and I was like, so this is what we'll do. And he's like,

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this is awesome. And then he just like took it and stole it from you. I don't use those words.

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Okay. But you know, I know like he used it and I didn't have it. And so yeah, and so that was,

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you know, we've had some bad luck with partnerships. Yeah. So yeah, I used to tell Laila that her,

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my big red flag with her is that she was into me. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, the big thing,

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I was like, the thing that really throws me off about you. I was actually really just

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hardened at that point because I was like, this was going to be my thing. I had the whole business

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model worked out and everything. And I was always into fitness. And so that was kind of the third,

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kind of third bucket. And you know, the guys that I worked with were like, dude, you do nothing

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to talk about fitness. Like we're tired of you talking about fitness. Just they, they were like,

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we'll chip in to help you start a gym. And so that was when I started looking to the fitness

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business stuff. I found a guy who like had a fitness business like mentorship. And it was for

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gym owners. And so I drove across the country and I showed up at his front door. And he was like,

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what? Everyone has this idea in the movies that people were like, oh my god. Yeah, it's like,

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I've got meetings right now. You can like, hang out at the gym if you want. And I was like, he's

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like, well, where are you staying? I was like, I don't know. And he was like, what do you mean you don't

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know? I was like, I just got here. I was like, there's my car. That's all my stuff. He was like,

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all right, well, you can, you can stay in my place tonight, which is super generous of him.

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And so I stayed up at his place. What city are you in at this? I was in Chino Hills.

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Okay. Someone from Baltimore to Chino Hills straight through 36 hours. I packed all my food.

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Didn't stop. You were the diver and just, yeah, like that astronaut. Okay, great.

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All in. Cool. Yeah. Well, I didn't wear diapers. I just, what I did do, the secret is I just

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didn't drink fluid. And then it's like, I just got my fluid from the food and called him today.

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I'm just being real. I was like, I was, I wanted to, I wanted to leave Baltimore behind me.

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Yeah. I was like, this is, I'm going. Yeah, I wanted to go. And so, anyways, I got there,

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started being basically, I think this is kind of interesting. So I'll bring it up, which is,

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I joined this mentorship for gym owners. I didn't own a gym. I'm also 22, just per

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context here. All right. And this is like a lot of old grizzly, like grizzly dudes, you know,

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who own gyms tends to be the archetype. And I'm like, hey guys, some of the best money I

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ever spent because the first time they had a like a meetup, I was like, yeah, so, you know,

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I'm trying to start a gym. And I'm thinking about this. And they were like, oh, no, you want to

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have, like rent has to be below this. And I was like, well, this is how many square feet? I was

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like, oh, you don't need that. You need this. And I was like, okay, well, this is the equipment.

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I was like, no, that stuff, that brand breaks. This one has just great marketing, terrible product.

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This one, although good, girls will slip and break their shins on it. Don't do it. And I'm like,

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oh, my god, they're like, oh, you know, you should get is these ones. These ones you can get them

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at like these auctions that are like, so they just I saved like $200,000 or probably like three

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years of mistakes from that first, just like all the things that they had made mistakes on. I

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just was sitting there just taking notes at a curiosity where these gym owners who were not going

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to be in the area you wanted to build a gym so they weren't direct competition. Yeah,

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there's so much mad value in that. I started as an entrepreneur as an event planner. And I was so

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desperate. I didn't know what I was doing. And I wanted to find other people who would talk to me

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about the business just like you're saying. And nobody. It was like so closed door policy because

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everyone was terrified of competition. Well, it's total small business. But what I ended up finding

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a wealth of information with were vendors within my industry. So the forest, the photographer,

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the baker, they all knew the best venues, the best people to work with don't talk to these clients.

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You should be charging this much and they became my community. So if you can find that group of people

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where there isn't inherent competition like readily available, I feel like you can find your

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gold mine. And zooming out even one level to push on this for anybody who is worried about like

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helping a competitor out. I have found that a business will fail or succeed based on how good

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the business owner is. And let's say that there are three event planning, you know, business

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owners that you know in an area, there are probably like 500 event planning businesses in that area.

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And you probably will never know any of them. And if all three of you help each other,

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there will just be three good event planning businesses. And the other 497 will not have an

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advantage. And so I would encourage you to disregard the idea that there really is competition.

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And I now, you know, I'm friends with a lot of the people that some people might consider like,

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I mean, like in the M&A world for private equity, it's like, we share a deal flow. Like, hey,

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this is a company that's probably not as much of a fit for me. Like maybe like you might want to

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take a look at it. And I think you just get a lot more out of collaboration. And I think the world

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is significantly larger than most people give a credit for. And so. Well, also if you're an entrepreneur

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and you have that kind of scarcity mindset, you're fucked. Yeah, truly. Like you're only going to see

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the most basic level of opportunity and you're going to burn out. So yeah. So I, so I learned all

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the stuff. I spent three months kind of being like a mini apprentice, just like watching everything,

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soaking it in the the guy who did the sold the mentorship group just allowed me to be his like EA

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essentially. And for free or actually getting paid, I got paid minimum wage. Okay. But, but honestly,

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I think that's a really good tip for if you're listening to this and you don't have responsibilities,

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you don't have a family and you have the opportunity to go apprentice for someone, it is,

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it's a gold mine. And you're going to learn stuff you would never learn otherwise.

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Yeah. Anyway. And I've, and I've repeated this process over and over again in my life. And so I

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think I actually do, I am grateful for the work that I did as a management consultant, which was

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the first job I had at a college, the one that I was miserable at. But I, I am grateful for doing it

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because it taught me the learning process. And so as a consultant, if you want to, you have to,

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like, I'm 22 and I have to go into a room with like four star generals and all these, you know,

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lieutenants and journals and all this stuff, whatever. I have to then go present or compile

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information in a way that has to be better and some interesting insight that they don't know as

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30 year, you know, literal veterans of the career of the, of the path. And so, and you have to do that

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in like three months. And so the process of like rapid learning for a consultant is you go and talk

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to experts. And then you ask them every question you can about what they think about everything.

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And then you say, can you give me like three to five other people who you respect, who you think

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have really good insight on this? And they give you three to five people. And so then you do the same

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thing with them. And then you ask them for three to five people. And so eventually, you kind of like

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map the network of, of like expertise because the same names start coming up over and over. You're

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like, I already talked to Tom already talked to, you know, Jack. And then we, you'd have like 600

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pages of notes. And then you recategorize the notes by topic. And then you pro, and then basically

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you take that and then you just steal the notes down into kind of the clearest like this is what

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the kind of priorities are. And that's how we would go into, you know, how do we, you know, use

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satellites to kill the most bad guys based on resources like between different, you know,

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armed forces like just wild stuff. And I'm 22. And so I was doing like space,

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cyber intelligence for the military back. That was my first thing out of college. And so taking that

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idea though of like experts already consolidate information for you ahead of time. So no one has a

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lack of information. It's everywhere, right? The problem is sifting through it. And so when you go

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to an expert, they've already done a huge amount of the lifting to sift through the information for

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you so that you can just get the best information as fast as possible. And so that's why I was willing

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to pay as a 22 year old to go to this gym mentorship thing because I was like, well, they know more

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about gyms than I do. And I'd rather not waste five years trying to figure it out. If someone's hearing

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this for the first time, how would you tell kids today to properly disseminate the right

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expert to take advice from? Because now anybody with a TikTok is like an expert in the field. And

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it's leading people so astray. So how, I know this sounds super basic, but how can you figure out

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who actually knows what they're talking about? It's a really good question. It's a really good

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question. I'll walk through how I think about it, which is you have, you know, in degrees of

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expertise, right? You have people who, you're, you have your close friends, right? These are the

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worst people to listen to because they have no idea. And they'll just give you opinions. And if,

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let's say, if you're in the, in the wanting to make money space, if they are poor, they will likely

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give you more poor person advice, which is probably not the good advice. After that, you've got,

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you know, strangers on the internet. Above that, you have people who have done what you want to do,

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which I think is at least the first real foothold into this of like maybe some good information

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here. And then you have above that people who have helped people like you get to where you want to

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go and have repeatable kind of like metrics around like how they can do, like how they've helped

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people do that. And then I think that the, the ultimate version of that is someone who has both

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been there themselves and helped other people just like you get to where you want to go in a way

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that's measurable that you can see like, okay, this percentage of people do this, you know, it works out.

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And so that's probably from a how I would look for vetting. The second thing is a totally different

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take on this, which is that expect that you will not succeed the first time and that you will need

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to learn from multiple people in order to kind of make it your own. And the easiest kind of visual

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of this is like, if you imagine you've got a bridge and you have to like assemble all these bricks

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on the bridge to get to the other side, it's unlikely that the first person that you talk to will

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give you, let's say there's a hundred bricks to get to the other side. It's going to give you all

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100. They might give you 80 because you know nothing. So it's really easy for them to get you a

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bunch of bricks, but you might be like, wait, but I didn't get a dollar to the other side because the

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dollar's got to walk away the cross the bridge. The dollar can't jump. It's got to walk all the way

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all the bricks. The dollar has no, you know, no jumping ability. And so, so then it's like the next

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person you go to, you know, you pay and get help or you just watch their stuff, whatever. And it's like

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and they give you another 10. So now you're at 90, but you're like, man, I haven't, I still haven't

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made anything yet. And then all of a sudden, you know, somebody gives you the last 10 and you're like,

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this guy's a genius, but really, it's kind of like saying, oh, well, I hate my arithmetic teacher

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because once I learned calculus, I was like, oh, this guy's an idiot. He just laid the foundation.

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Yeah. No, but it's ridiculous. But like, like, I see it all the time on like internet stuff. Like,

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I used to consume this guy's stuff and now I consume this guy's stuff and the other guy's bad. It's like

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you needed this guy to get to this guy. Like, they're the requisites. And so the the meta concept

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for me is directional rather than exact. So I asked myself the question, will this person get

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me closer to my goal or not? And if it is closer, then I will start walking that direction.

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When I get a little bit more information, I'll course correct. And I think that that series of

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approximations is a is a much faster way than trying to have the what I call the fallacy of the

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perfect pick, which is that people will just stay for years trying to pick perfectly when really

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it's like, well, I know it's not that way. So let's go north. And then as we go there,

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we ask more people and they're like, well, it's kind of this way. And you're like, okay,

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it's northwest. And then you start working your way towards it. And that's that's how I kind of

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wander towards my destination. Yeah, I actually love that advice. I was just talking to my husband

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about this this morning. He was at the gym and he's like, man, there's this guy at the gym. I see

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him there every single day, like full on decked out, like those shirts with like the very you

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probably own one, like total gym bro, he has all the equipment and his body never changes.

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I see him every day, his body never changes. And I feel so bad for this guy because I'm like,

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how do you not realize that whatever you're doing is not working for you? And I was like, oh,

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that's a great, that's a great analogy for me to talk to Alex about that. What does that self

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awareness look like to understand? I've started on this path. This is year three of doing the same

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thing. And it's not getting me anywhere. Yeah, it's interesting when you say that my immediate

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thought was a different direction. So I'm a circle circle around. Yeah. So one what's interesting is

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that when I have I have been made a fool of for assuming that my goals are everyone's goals.

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That's real. And so I, so with the guy, because obviously I have a lot, I've spent a lot of time

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in the gym. No, personally, and then business wise, what's interesting is that the reason someone

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buys is not the same as you sold, not always. And so sometimes people come, I remember I was

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having this conversation with a lady was in the same position, right? So she's been here for six

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months. And I'm like, Janet, what the hell? Like you look the same. Yeah. You know, and my,

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she's been paying me for six months. And she was like, I, I, I love coming. And I was just like,

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yeah, but like you wanted to lose weight. You came here to lose weight. You're not losing weight.

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Like, you know, what's going on? And I was almost a little bit aggressive. I didn't have as much,

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you know, tacit knowledge of navigating the situations as a 23 year old talking to a 40 year old woman

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about her weight, right? After her second child, whatever. Yeah. And then it kind of dawned on me.

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I was like, she's not here for weight loss. I sold weight loss because that's what I assume I would

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want. Yeah. But she was here, like, there's a saying we have in the gym world, which is they come

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for the bikini. They stay for the community, right? And so, you know, community is one of the things

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that someone might want. The other is like, some people just like want to feel good. So they just

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want to get their sweat on and they just want to feel good or whatever. Some people, it's, it's their

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penance, right? It's like, I went out last night and I'm going to work out just so I can cancel it out.

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Right. And that's, that's their version of it. And so I have over time been like, if you want to

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come to a hundred events, then you might be coming for a different reason. And so to the same

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degree, I think through like, okay, how a customer derives value from a product or service is their

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choice. Yeah. And so it's been helpful also from a product perspective and thinking about different

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customer archetypes in terms of what their goals are so that we can maximize value across all

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archetypes. Yeah. Because if we only solve for the person who just wants to lose weight, there's

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actually a smaller percentage of people actually want to lose weight versus respond to weight loss

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advertising, which is a different thing. Absolutely. And so it was just, I was like immediately

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where my head went. Obviously, I've dissected fitness goals for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love

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that. That's so real. And it's a really good reminder too. The idea that not everybody is after

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the same goals. But I do think I would love your perspective if you want to give it on if you

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are wanting. Yeah. But you want to raise the revenue numbers. You want to do. And it's just not

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working. But you are working so hard. You're sort of spinning your wheels. Yeah. Typically,

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at least it in a revenue situation. But I would say the same thing for a fitness goal or a

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relationship goal. I think it's more or less the same is that. So under the assumption, and this

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is a big assumption that you are working all the time, which when we look under the hood, I would

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say that that is not off in the case. There's the perception or the feeling that this is hard

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and therefore because it's hard all day, I must be working all day. But those two are not the same

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thing. What does it look like from your perspective, which I know is going to be intense to work really

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hard, like no bullshit. What does it actually take from your perspective? Yeah. I'll probably be

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canceled in the culture that we have today for how I work. I get it all the time. I get a lot of

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hate for it, which is ironic. So I'm like, you don't need to work the way I work. Yeah. I don't

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have to do this. You can do whatever you want. It is a very funny thing about everyone will ask,

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how do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it? And you're like, okay, this is how I do it.

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And people are like, how dare you? That's not a, I'm like, don't, don't do it then. Yeah.

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Don't do it. So I will, I'll give two answers. So the first is that, so really tactically, I'll

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give the tactical answer first and then I'll give the larger answer. So I work seven days a week.

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I take off days when I feel like I need to take off. I don't subscribe to the five day two day setup

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or even like holidays in general. They are almost entirely man-made. The the weekend system is

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only in the last hundred years that that was the thing. And so I reject the vast majority of

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kind of like societal norms for working to the same end. I know that I can work usually pretty well

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about I can work 12s pretty much straight through, but I would say that I usually work from like

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5 a.m. to call it like five, like five to five works fine for me. And on the weekends, maybe it's

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like five to three, something like that. And that works well. If I feel a day where I'm like,

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man, I like, I need a day, then I take a day. Yeah. And so that's, that's just like how I work.

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And I've done that for a long time. And I'm going to guess, I'm reading between the lines here,

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a big distinction is that you enjoy working. Yeah. I love to work too. If I did not have four kids,

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I would legitimately work 18 hours a day, every single day. And I often believe the universe

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put me in this exact scenario because it knows that I would have slowly destroyed myself by working

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non-stop. Because otherwise, like when they finally are grown, buckle up. But I think that's

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the thing that people don't get is if you genuinely love it, if it's so much fun to do because it is,

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assuming you found a path that you're into, it doesn't feel maybe like it might for someone

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else to go work at the bank. Like it feels like something completely different. Yeah, someone will

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take their context and then project it onto your situation and say, I could never do that. That's

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terrible. And because I could never do that, I have to find something wrong with you and your

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character in order to make myself feel okay that I didn't take that step. Absolutely.

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From a little bit also more tactical is I tend to organize my day. For me, I work best in the

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morning in terms of like my brain's freshest. And so I will work use like I call it maker manager

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time. And so maker time is like, there's nothing on my calendar. And I make stuff. There's manager

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time, which is meetings and everything else slacks, whatever. I think that you cannot mix the two

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times. And the unfortunate part is if you want to start something, I recommend like a four four four

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schedule. So it's like four hours of promotion, which is letting people know about your stuff.

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Because otherwise like your biggest threat to your businesses that no one knows who exist.

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Yeah. The second four hours is delivering what you promised to those people who find out about

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your stuff. And then the third four hours is figuring out what you need to do next. Now you can

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change those four blocks about where you do them. The figure out what to do next is probably the

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first four hours. The promotion might be the second four hours and deliver it might be the third

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four hours. But fundamentally, that's how I would divide it out if I were starting out. And then

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the more leverage you get, the more you can have kind of more maker time. Like Laylin, I have kind

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of shadow images or like contrast schedules. So I would say four or five days a week for me. I

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have basically nothing on my calendar. And then I have two days where I just tell our team, I was

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just load me up, just put as many things on my calendar as you can. Because if you think about

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the nature of management, the goal of a manager is to have no blinks based on the calendar and to

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maximize as have as many interactions as possible to make as many decisions as they can to move things

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forward. That's my actual nightmare. And that but that is that is like super like I mean, it's an

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effective. That's how you manage. And so the problem is the alternative is makers where you know,

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a manager has can have time blocks as small as five minutes on their calendar where they can

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they can move things forward. For a maker, the time blocks are you have like two a day.

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And so you're looking at four to six hour blocks is one block. And like there's there's a

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memes about this, but like there's nothing worse than a 10 a.m. meeting and nothing else on the

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calendar. Because it's like, okay, well, that's my morning because you're not going to like really

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get into what you're trying to do. And so because if you're doing maker stuff, you want to lose

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yourself into the work. Absolutely. And so the problem is when makers managers have to work together.

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Because the manager says, hey, it's only five minutes. Why is this a big deal? And the

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and the makers like, well, that's half my day. And so the you have to protect that kind of

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at all costs. And so if you're like, well, Alex, it might be it must be nice to not be able to

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have things on your calendar for many days in a row. First answer, yes, it is nice. Second answer,

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it wasn't always that way. And so what I the reason I I mean, partial that I wake up so early is

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because I come from the fitness world. And it's just like, I think that habit dies hard. But the

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guy that I did that little mentorship with. And I came from a job that started at 10 a.m. So

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there's a totally different like shift for me. And I got to the gym. It's at four. So it was a

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totally different, you know, perspective. And so he worked 12 hours a day. And he had multiple

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kids. But he wanted he was a family man too. And so he just figured out he's like, I need to work 12

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hours a day though. And so he would work four to four. And then you'd go home, pick the girls up

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from school and then have dinner with them and be present and be dad or whatever. And so I would

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get to the gym at four. And so I basically just would know that between four a.m. and noon,

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I would get all of my moving stuff forward done. And then after noon, I just knew my day was shot.

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I was like, I'm just going to be doing fires and doing everything else. And so I think that split

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has worked really well for me. And like to this day now, if for whatever reason something has to

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get booked on the calendar and it's like on an empty day, they book back to front. And so it'd be

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like the first appointment would be at like four 30 in the afternoon. So that I have uninterrupted

364
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time until then. And the second one, they'd be like at four to four 30. And so they they book me

365
00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:59.760
back to front. And so those few things have helped tremendously for getting things done. The the

366
00:29:59.760 --> 00:30:05.200
larger. So I said, that was really tactical in terms of like the work bigger picture. I think

367
00:30:05.200 --> 00:30:09.840
what's really interesting about entrepreneurship is that it is always hard. And I think what makes

368
00:30:09.840 --> 00:30:15.040
it hard is that you don't know the nature of the sacrifice that you will have to make to get to

369
00:30:15.040 --> 00:30:20.880
the next level. Yeah. And so a lot of people and myself included, I always and I still I always like

370
00:30:20.880 --> 00:30:24.480
make this fallacious thinking process where I think like, Oh, whatever I have to do to get the next

371
00:30:24.480 --> 00:30:29.840
level is just more of what I'm currently doing. And it's just what's hard about the next level for

372
00:30:29.840 --> 00:30:35.680
whatever it is is you have to sacrifice something different. Yeah. And so the currency changes to get

373
00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:38.400
to the next level. So it's like you're paying in pesos and then you're paying in dollars and you're

374
00:30:38.560 --> 00:30:42.160
like, I have to pay more dollars. It's like, no, no, no, you have to pay more rupees. So you have to

375
00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:45.920
pay more euros and you're like, wait, I have to pay more. I didn't think I'd have to give euros up.

376
00:30:45.920 --> 00:30:51.120
Like I have to pay. So it's like, you actually, you're the currency of the thing you pay for changes.

377
00:30:51.120 --> 00:30:55.280
And so like in the beginning, you know, the first person you have to conquer is you, right? And

378
00:30:55.280 --> 00:30:59.040
I don't think that ever really ends. But like, you know, you have to get over yourself. And then

379
00:30:59.040 --> 00:31:02.720
the next one is like, you have to conquer the, you know, not being beholden to the desires of

380
00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:06.400
friends and family. But like to different currency. You're like, I thought it was going to be all about

381
00:31:07.120 --> 00:31:11.040
cold calls and advertising. It's like, well, you have to first get over the fact that everybody

382
00:31:11.040 --> 00:31:15.040
is around you. It doesn't want you to do what you do because it reminds them of the risk that

383
00:31:15.040 --> 00:31:18.480
they were unwilling to take. But anyways, but it's like, you have that. And then it's like, okay,

384
00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:21.840
what's the next thing that's going to come? Then you have like the mechanics of the business.

385
00:31:21.840 --> 00:31:25.600
It's like, okay, now you switch into that money. You have to learn all this, all this new language

386
00:31:25.600 --> 00:31:29.200
and all like, it's a whole new field, right? So you start learning that and you're like, okay,

387
00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:33.120
so I think I'm going to have to learn a new field. Well, you have to keep doing that. But then

388
00:31:33.360 --> 00:31:37.920
the next level is like, okay, we'll now have to deal with people. And so you have employees and

389
00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:40.880
you have management. You have all that stuff. And you're like, oh, my God. Okay. So this is a whole

390
00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:44.320
thing. And then like at another level, it's like, then you have legal stuff that starts happening.

391
00:31:44.320 --> 00:31:48.240
And you're like, oh, God. So like it just, it does, but the thing is you have to keep paying in

392
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:55.680
dollars. And then you start now also paying yours. And then you start also pay. And so, and so,

393
00:31:55.680 --> 00:32:00.480
and I think that because most people who I've seen who either quit entrepreneurship or what I would

394
00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:05.600
consider like stop the good fight, they're like, I'm good here, is that it gets to a level. And I

395
00:32:05.600 --> 00:32:08.640
want to be clear, I don't think there's a thing wrong with us. They get to a level like, I don't

396
00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:13.040
really want to pay in euros. Yeah. And I think that's fine. Yep. And I think people mistake my

397
00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:17.360
message. And I'm like, I will talk, I'll talk about what it takes. You can decide whether that's

398
00:32:17.360 --> 00:32:23.600
worth it for you. Absolutely. Yeah. God. So good. I have distracted you from this journey many times.

399
00:32:23.600 --> 00:32:28.240
But certainly, I don't we're all together. But for those people who are building or don't know

400
00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:34.640
the story, I don't want to miss out on this. So how do you go from working for that guy? No,

401
00:32:34.640 --> 00:32:39.760
this is, no, I love this. My favorite kind of conversation because we're offering these nuggets along

402
00:32:39.760 --> 00:32:44.960
the way. And I'm the one interrupting you. It's not your fault. But how did you go from being

403
00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:50.720
essentially an assistant to this guy to starting your own gym? So I'll speedrun this. So I, you know,

404
00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:55.520
I took all the advice that I could, I found a place that was 45 minutes from his place, maybe an hour

405
00:32:55.520 --> 00:32:59.200
from his place in Huntington Beach, California. So Chino has done a beach like, I'm not competing,

406
00:32:59.200 --> 00:33:04.720
right? For that. For anyone who's worried. And I, I didn't have enough money to pay for two runs.

407
00:33:04.720 --> 00:33:09.440
And so I slept at the gym, which seems like more hardcore than it felt. I just felt like it was

408
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:14.240
like a fun adventure. I was 20 or something. I also put a gym. But started the gym. I found out

409
00:33:14.240 --> 00:33:17.680
two weeks before the gym happened. I was supposed to have a partner who's going to be 50, 50 with me.

410
00:33:17.680 --> 00:33:21.360
He backed out. So then all of a sudden, I was going to have some savings. But I had already signed

411
00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:28.320
the lease. So I was like, all right. So all of my savings are going into this. And so I had, basically,

412
00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:35.360
the $50,000 that I had went into the gym. And I had basically no money. And rent was $4,972 a month.

413
00:33:35.360 --> 00:33:39.840
And I never made money before. Not really. I only found this out a year later that I looked at my

414
00:33:39.840 --> 00:33:46.480
processing for my first month of business. And what was settled post fees, like not ink payment

415
00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:54.000
plans, what actual cash was processed was $4,972. I found it out a year later. I never pulled up my

416
00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:58.800
processing stuff. That's amazing. Yeah. So I slept at the gym. And I went to this little thing two

417
00:33:58.800 --> 00:34:03.200
weeks earlier that was this new marketing thing that was cutting it just 2013. It was called Facebook

418
00:34:03.200 --> 00:34:09.120
ads. And so I ran over to a two day workshop on Facebook ads in 2013. And that is honestly,

419
00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:14.000
if I had not gone to that workshop, I don't know if I'd be here. Now on to one level,

420
00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.840
we'd be like, well, I would have tried again. I would have maybe, but having a big massive first

421
00:34:17.840 --> 00:34:25.040
loss would have sucked. And so I learned Facebook ads. And I started running ads. And it worked. And

422
00:34:25.040 --> 00:34:30.480
by month nine, I had managers and trainers and all that stuff. And it worked out. And by month 15,

423
00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:35.760
I had my second location. And every six months after that opened a new location, I started, I decided

424
00:34:35.760 --> 00:34:38.960
I wanted to do a turnaround business. So I was like, you know, I'm really getting filling these

425
00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:43.120
gyms up on. I could fill the gyms faster than, than I could build them. So it's like, you know,

426
00:34:43.120 --> 00:34:46.080
be easier if I just went to gyms that already existed and just filled them up and just figured out

427
00:34:46.080 --> 00:34:52.240
something around that. And so I spoke on a stage for show like what I was doing with my gyms.

428
00:34:52.240 --> 00:34:56.320
And to this day, kind of weird, I've never been more bombarded afterwards, which is weird,

429
00:34:56.320 --> 00:35:00.720
because it was such a, it was like at not a huge stage. And like, I had people for two days

430
00:35:00.720 --> 00:35:06.400
around me nonstop. And I got like, was it a conference for gyms? No, it was like an internet

431
00:35:06.400 --> 00:35:12.160
marketing conference. And so, and, but there were fitness people there. And I had 120 people

432
00:35:12.160 --> 00:35:17.440
give me their contacts information. I've never had this happen. One guy gave me his credit card

433
00:35:17.440 --> 00:35:21.360
and just said, charge me and tell me what I get later. And I was like, I have my gym owner.

434
00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:26.080
I don't like, I have gyms. Like I don't like, I just got asked to speak. So. And so anyways,

435
00:35:26.080 --> 00:35:30.160
I got home and I called the guy up and I was like, do you really want me to charge the cart? And he

436
00:35:30.160 --> 00:35:34.480
was like, yeah, so I charged the card for $5,000. And he was like, what do I get? And I was like, I

437
00:35:34.480 --> 00:35:39.680
don't know, but I'll make you more than $5,000. And so it just so happened that he had a gym that

438
00:35:39.680 --> 00:35:45.040
he was about to open. And I was like, perfect. I'll fly out and I'll launch a gym for you.

439
00:35:45.040 --> 00:35:49.680
And so that was when gym launch was born, flew out to his gym and launched a gym and launched a

440
00:35:49.680 --> 00:35:53.680
couple others in the area while I was there just reached out to people and was like, hey,

441
00:35:53.680 --> 00:35:57.280
want me to just send more people to your gym? And the deal is I get to keep the money and you get

442
00:35:57.280 --> 00:36:01.440
to keep the customer free. Like that sound like a pretty decent deal. And people suggest to that.

443
00:36:01.440 --> 00:36:05.680
I started doing these launches, started working out. The guy that I did that first launch with

444
00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:09.120
was like, hey, man, we should do more of this stuff together. I'm a really good entrepreneur.

445
00:36:09.120 --> 00:36:13.120
And I was like, oh, cool. I'm young and I have six locations, but I am insecure. And so I don't

446
00:36:13.120 --> 00:36:17.520
value that. And so I was like, yeah, I should partner with you. And he said, yeah, but here's the deal.

447
00:36:17.520 --> 00:36:22.160
I have, you know, I'm a little illiquid right now. And so, you know, my credit's a bit weird,

448
00:36:22.160 --> 00:36:26.400
divorce, you know, misunderstanding. You should sign in personal guarantee all the stuff and fund

449
00:36:26.400 --> 00:36:30.400
all the new locations and we'll just split it 50-50. And then you can also work them. But like,

450
00:36:30.960 --> 00:36:35.200
I'll come behind you and, you know, operate them. So I ended up being like, okay, this launch

451
00:36:35.200 --> 00:36:40.320
thing works. So I sold my six, put all the cash into this new launch and go model where he was

452
00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:44.960
going to come behind me. And the first gem crushed the launch that we were going to do together.

453
00:36:45.520 --> 00:36:51.520
And one morning I wake up and all the bank count is just empty. And I was like, hmm, that's not

454
00:36:51.520 --> 00:36:56.080
good. I was just a deposit straight to him and I was like, that's weird. And so I hit him up and I was

455
00:36:56.080 --> 00:36:59.120
like, hey, like what's going on? And he was like, hey, I was just taking my hat. And I was like,

456
00:36:59.120 --> 00:37:03.920
that was all of it. And he was like, well, I figured you're just skimming. And I was like,

457
00:37:04.720 --> 00:37:08.400
so you're accusing me of stealing? I was like, you haven't even been here. Like,

458
00:37:08.400 --> 00:37:12.480
first off, you have a minute. So I go like, what? And so I was like, I'd never been accused of

459
00:37:12.480 --> 00:37:17.760
anything. Like I was like, I can't even imagine this. And so I had a, I had a mentor who I was talking

460
00:37:17.760 --> 00:37:21.840
to at the time and he was like, might have been misunderstanding. He was like, print out the bank

461
00:37:21.840 --> 00:37:25.200
statement, go line by line and just show him where all the expenses were. And I was like, okay,

462
00:37:25.200 --> 00:37:28.640
I'll do that. So I print it all out. I highlight everything. I annotated it and I like went to go

463
00:37:28.640 --> 00:37:32.480
meet with him. And I remember being like, let's just figure this out. I've got the stuff. We'll go

464
00:37:32.480 --> 00:37:36.320
through it. And he pushed it off. And he's like, I don't need to see that shit. And as soon as

465
00:37:36.320 --> 00:37:41.360
that happened, I just remember like my stomach drop was like, oh, I just got robbed. And I was like,

466
00:37:41.360 --> 00:37:47.920
oh, fuck, because I had my six gyms. So like, it was years of work that went into this new thing.

467
00:37:47.920 --> 00:37:53.360
And then it was gone. And I was like, what do I do? Anyways, very stressful time for me. I got into

468
00:37:53.360 --> 00:37:59.520
a head on a DIY collision. Walked away 60 miles an hour. Yeah. Walked away. Layla picked me up

469
00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:04.560
from prison or jail or whatever, whichever one it is. You were drunk. You were drunk. I was drunk.

470
00:38:08.320 --> 00:38:13.760
I was at a low point. Yeah. You might consider. Yeah. And so she was like, hey, you know,

471
00:38:13.760 --> 00:38:18.240
we're dating at this time. We're six months into dating. Plus her heart. Yeah. And she came with me

472
00:38:18.240 --> 00:38:22.560
a month. So a month after we met, I was like, I'm going to do this launch thing. And up mind you,

473
00:38:22.560 --> 00:38:26.720
when she met me, I have multiple gyms. Yeah, your question. I'm fresh and just got off stage.

474
00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:30.320
All these people wanted to business with me. I'm, you know, I'm the man. And then, you know,

475
00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:33.440
fast forward six months, she's coming out with me to do these launches, because I wanted her to

476
00:38:33.440 --> 00:38:37.600
learn how to do it so that we could, you know, do more of these together. And she was like, hey,

477
00:38:37.600 --> 00:38:42.720
we should, we should go back to doing that thing that worked instead of this whole partner thing.

478
00:38:42.720 --> 00:38:48.000
And so Layla went and launched a gym in Hawaii. I had to keep this gym running, but I didn't

479
00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:52.160
want to sell any more customers because it was clear that he wasn't going to run it. And so I had

480
00:38:52.880 --> 00:38:58.480
to watch the very small amount of savings that I had left go to payroll and rent, but I couldn't do,

481
00:38:58.480 --> 00:39:01.840
I couldn't generate sales because if I sold, then I'd have to keep, I'd have to keep pushing out

482
00:39:01.840 --> 00:39:08.640
when I would close the gym. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal

483
00:39:08.640 --> 00:39:15.440
listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling

484
00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:21.600
or a map. It's breaking, scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business.

485
00:39:21.600 --> 00:39:25.120
So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you got customer success, you've got

486
00:39:25.120 --> 00:39:29.760
IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance, and we show the problems that emerged

487
00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:34.400
at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it

488
00:39:34.400 --> 00:39:39.360
personalized to you since about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions,

489
00:39:39.360 --> 00:39:44.720
it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours

490
00:39:44.720 --> 00:39:48.480
of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you,

491
00:39:48.480 --> 00:39:53.200
which will probably be about 90 minutes. If that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com

492
00:39:53.200 --> 00:40:02.080
forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D-Map, roadmap. I ended up closing the gym and basically losing

493
00:40:02.080 --> 00:40:06.160
everything else that I had at that point in paying for all refunds and things like that.

494
00:40:06.160 --> 00:40:09.520
But everyone talks about harder just to start a business. Much harder to shut one down.

495
00:40:09.600 --> 00:40:14.880
My God, so hard. Much harder. I had Layla write the check so I was like, I can't do it. This is

496
00:40:14.880 --> 00:40:20.720
years of my whole everything I have. Anyways, Rebecca zero again. You can consider that big failure

497
00:40:20.720 --> 00:40:25.120
number one. At this point, we're starting to launch business. We're going to go all in on this.

498
00:40:25.120 --> 00:40:31.200
She's like, focus, please, because I also had a car practice agency, a dental agency. I had

499
00:40:31.200 --> 00:40:37.200
the launch business and I had my six gyms. When I had the DUI, my mentor was like, your stress will

500
00:40:37.200 --> 00:40:42.960
kill you. From the beginning of this, I said, I only make my decisions when confronted with a

501
00:40:42.960 --> 00:40:48.160
parent death. This was the second time that I made one of these big decisions, which is I basically

502
00:40:48.160 --> 00:40:54.400
ended all my partnerships. I was partnered with a guy on a couple of locations back home.

503
00:40:54.400 --> 00:40:59.760
I said, hey, I'm out. Then I talked to the people I was partnered with on the car

504
00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:03.520
practice and the dental agency. I was like, I'm out. The problem was that I was the one that

505
00:41:03.520 --> 00:41:06.640
was bringing all the business in. They were like, what were we going to do? I was like,

506
00:41:07.680 --> 00:41:12.720
your half, you know, I like to figure it out. Those all failed eventually, which was sad,

507
00:41:12.720 --> 00:41:17.360
but I was out. We started the new launch business and so Laila was like, okay, this is what we're

508
00:41:17.360 --> 00:41:21.920
doing. I'm going to get all my friends from high school to quit their jobs and we're going to

509
00:41:21.920 --> 00:41:26.080
all end on this. She got her six friends from high school to quit, all of them to quit their jobs

510
00:41:26.080 --> 00:41:30.960
and join us in this like, we're going to launch gyms now. Of course, because I'm dumb,

511
00:41:31.920 --> 00:41:36.000
I was like, yeah, we'll go from one to six a month immediately because I also got to make

512
00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:40.960
up for last time. We would be here if I hadn't been an idiot. So we have to start there. We had one

513
00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:45.280
we had one month in between when I basically lost everything and when I set up these next launches

514
00:41:45.280 --> 00:41:49.360
and when her friends were going to quit. And in that month, one gym came up and I was like,

515
00:41:49.360 --> 00:41:54.480
this is perfect. Like this will replenish the bank account so that we can fund these new launches.

516
00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:58.640
And so a launch for context would make about a hundred thousand dollars in a month. A guy hits me

517
00:41:58.640 --> 00:42:03.200
up out of nowhere and says, Hey, I saw you speak at this thing years ago. I've got a newborn baby on

518
00:42:03.200 --> 00:42:10.080
the way and a two month old. And I need a job. And do you have anything in sales? And I was like,

519
00:42:10.080 --> 00:42:14.160
well, I have this gym thinking about launching. And he was like, I can't really travel. And I was

520
00:42:14.160 --> 00:42:19.280
like, okay, well, this is where it is. And he was like, that's 10 minutes from me. Oh, cool.

521
00:42:19.280 --> 00:42:24.080
Crazy. Like you met me at and not there. Like just random. I was like, all right, this actually

522
00:42:24.080 --> 00:42:27.040
might work because he could just because it's all day when you're set like when you're doing a launch.

523
00:42:27.040 --> 00:42:31.360
Like it's, you know, 12 hours, 14 hours a day of sales all day long. And so I was like, if I get

524
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:36.000
the 14 hours back, I could build all the materials that I need for this, for the real business. And

525
00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:41.280
that could be great. And so we launched a location. It does awesome. The guy crushes it. We do a

526
00:42:41.280 --> 00:42:46.080
hundred thousand dollars in sales. But what's weird is that all of a sudden, I'm like, where's the,

527
00:42:46.080 --> 00:42:51.200
where's the money? Like I'm spending money on ads. I'm looking at the the payment processor and the

528
00:42:51.280 --> 00:42:57.280
it's, it's saying successful. But there's nothing coming in. And so I call Heartland, which is

529
00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:01.760
my processor. And I was like, Hey, like it's too, my deposits come on Tuesdays. Like I've been doing

530
00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:06.080
this for many years. Like why is it not there? And they're like, Oh, it might have just been like

531
00:43:06.080 --> 00:43:10.640
something. I don't know. It'll come next few days. Didn't come next Tuesday. Nothing again.

532
00:43:10.640 --> 00:43:14.320
And I was like, Okay, this has been two weeks. Like what's going on? So I call back up. And they're

533
00:43:14.320 --> 00:43:18.240
like, Oh, the person you talked to you probably didn't know. You're doing, we're doing an annual

534
00:43:18.240 --> 00:43:21.920
review of accounts. And I was like, I've been with you for like five years. Like what do you

535
00:43:21.920 --> 00:43:27.120
mean in your view? And they're like, guys, just a new policy. But when I was like, okay. So now

536
00:43:28.080 --> 00:43:32.640
the next Tuesday hits. And so there still hasn't been anything. This is now Christmas Eve.

537
00:43:33.600 --> 00:43:40.640
And I'm now at Layla's parents house because I've lost everything. And I'm a winner. And I get on

538
00:43:40.640 --> 00:43:45.680
the phone with them. And I was like, I am not getting off the phone until you send me the money.

539
00:43:46.000 --> 00:43:50.880
I was like, it's, it's, it felt weird being like, it's my money. But like, it was my money. You

540
00:43:50.880 --> 00:43:55.760
know, like just take your fee and deposit it, whatever. And they were like, well, we've seen some

541
00:43:55.760 --> 00:44:01.760
regular activity. And the issue was one, we'd done all those refunds at the gym that I had had

542
00:44:01.760 --> 00:44:08.400
that I had to shut down. The second issue was that I was processing payments for different

543
00:44:08.400 --> 00:44:14.000
states and areas out of my local gym processor. But I didn't, I didn't know how this work does

544
00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:20.000
20 something, right? It's like, I'm processing transactions in Virginia in a gym in California.

545
00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:23.520
And it just like didn't make any sense. And so they're like, we're going to, we're going to shut

546
00:44:23.520 --> 00:44:27.680
your account down. And we're going to hold on to all of this for six months. And I was like, that's

547
00:44:28.320 --> 00:44:32.720
what do you, what do you, how, I was like, how is this legal? Like I was like, this is like theft.

548
00:44:32.720 --> 00:44:37.360
I was like, just, I was like, if you need to keep some of it to cover whatever, like, fine, keep it.

549
00:44:37.360 --> 00:44:41.520
But like, give me, like, give me, give me half, like, give me something. Yeah. And they said,

550
00:44:41.520 --> 00:44:46.880
no. And so at this point, I had $23,000 left in my bank account from the, the launch that Laila did

551
00:44:46.880 --> 00:44:54.000
to cover our asses during all the refund period. I owed $22,000 in commissions to the sales guy

552
00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:58.560
for sales that I had not collected on. Yeah. And so it was kind of one of these like moral,

553
00:44:58.560 --> 00:45:04.800
like, what do I do? And so I sent him $22,000 because he was the guy with the kid and the baby

554
00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:08.560
and whatever. I just didn't want to give myself the opportunity to not, I just was like, just send

555
00:45:09.280 --> 00:45:13.040
that was the screenshot that I have $1,000 left in my bank account in December of 2016.

556
00:45:13.040 --> 00:45:17.120
I'm sorry, December of 2016. So I still have that screenshot because I was like, remember this.

557
00:45:17.760 --> 00:45:25.120
And so that was tough. That was the second time that I kind of lost everything. Big mistake there.

558
00:45:25.120 --> 00:45:29.920
And then, so then, you know, Laila has all of her friends quit her jobs, but I have no money.

559
00:45:30.560 --> 00:45:37.360
So they all quit their like real jobs to do this with me and I have nothing. And so this is when

560
00:45:37.840 --> 00:45:42.080
I told Laila that I thought that she should probably leave me. It would be a wise choice.

561
00:45:42.080 --> 00:45:46.240
I was like, this is probably not going to go well. Statistically, this is really low likelihood.

562
00:45:46.240 --> 00:45:50.240
Like I can appreciate, like I still have some brain power. Like I don't think this is going to work.

563
00:45:50.240 --> 00:45:53.920
But I was like, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm going to do it, but I don't think it's going to work.

564
00:45:53.920 --> 00:45:59.440
And so I still had my gym credit card that had $100,000 limit on it. I went to go turn on the ads

565
00:45:59.440 --> 00:46:04.240
because there's for New Year's. So it's 26th is Eve, right? I was like, we can make it all back.

566
00:46:04.480 --> 00:46:12.960
You know, like, come on. And so we're, we're, so here we are. So I turn on all the ads the next day

567
00:46:12.960 --> 00:46:16.400
after getting off the heartbreaking call on the 24th and the 26th is when I turn all the ads on.

568
00:46:17.040 --> 00:46:24.240
And I was like, I'm going broke at $3,300 a day of money that I don't have

569
00:46:25.040 --> 00:46:27.520
to make this work because I have six guys hotels, airfare,

570
00:46:28.160 --> 00:46:34.400
pretty amps for food, and then marketing spend for the location every day. And that was

571
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:37.840
shoestring. Like those guys were living in hovels. I'll just put it out, I'd be honest. Like they

572
00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:42.640
were young dudes too. And they, they, they suck it out. But within the next, you know, month,

573
00:46:42.640 --> 00:46:46.960
we made exactly the amount of money that my credit card bill was. So I basically broke even,

574
00:46:46.960 --> 00:46:50.320
but like we had payment plans that were coming after that. So I was like, okay, this could work.

575
00:46:50.320 --> 00:46:55.200
The next month I, I made like an extra, we did like $100,000 the first month.

576
00:46:55.200 --> 00:46:59.360
The next month, we did like $107 or $80 or something like that. And I was like, this might work.

577
00:46:59.360 --> 00:47:02.240
I made like $30,000 or $40,000 a profit. Like, holy how? Like this will work.

578
00:47:02.800 --> 00:47:05.840
The next month, we did another a little bit more and made a little bit more profit. I was like,

579
00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:10.400
this, this could be a thing. But then all of a sudden, Layla hits me, like she,

580
00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:15.360
she's half my shoulder one morning. I'm working early. And she was like, she just turns her laptop

581
00:47:15.360 --> 00:47:21.520
towards me. She was like, what's this? And it was just, it was just like this never-ending waterfall

582
00:47:21.600 --> 00:47:27.520
of negative transactions. And I was like, what's going on? And so it turns out that the Jim

583
00:47:27.520 --> 00:47:32.800
owners that we had sold all these people into, we had one guy get on a chair inside of his gym

584
00:47:32.800 --> 00:47:37.680
and just say like, this is too many people. I can't handle this. Just refund and go home.

585
00:47:38.320 --> 00:47:41.280
And we'd already left the, like we'd already launched the gym, filled it up and our guys

586
00:47:41.280 --> 00:47:46.400
on at the next gym. But like the way business works is that you don't run 100% margins. And so if

587
00:47:46.560 --> 00:47:52.560
you have to refund 100% of your sales, you had costs, like the credit card company will take 100%,

588
00:47:52.560 --> 00:47:56.720
but you had costs that you spent that you don't have that money. So that happened. And then

589
00:47:57.760 --> 00:48:01.760
we're got around and then the second Jim owner did that as well. He did a little bit more cleverly.

590
00:48:01.760 --> 00:48:06.400
He said, hey, I saw how much you paid that guy. I'm the one delivering the service. Refund with

591
00:48:06.400 --> 00:48:10.480
him. You can sign up for me for half after I already paid the price of basically the cost of

592
00:48:10.480 --> 00:48:13.280
our customer, paid the commissions, paid the marketing, paid the hotel for the sales guy,

593
00:48:13.280 --> 00:48:16.640
all that stuff. And so I learned a very important lesson, which is that you need to control the

594
00:48:16.640 --> 00:48:21.440
money and the delivery. And so that was my big lesson there. Yeah, I just heard, I've been listening

595
00:48:21.440 --> 00:48:25.760
to your stuff forever and I just heard the story of the other digs. I was listening to the audiobook.

596
00:48:25.760 --> 00:48:32.560
No, no, the audiobook from the newest book. And I was like, oh my god, how many times have they

597
00:48:32.560 --> 00:48:40.400
been wiped out? Which is such like brutal inside of it, but such a superpower. Like if you actually

598
00:48:40.400 --> 00:48:46.080
look, because I think about this with you guys from like this was not that long ago to where you

599
00:48:46.080 --> 00:48:52.560
are today. And I think you have the super skill of moving fast because you've got your ass kicked

600
00:48:52.560 --> 00:48:57.920
so many times. And the difference is you're standing back up. You have the knowledge of why it went

601
00:48:57.920 --> 00:49:05.760
wrong and you're moving forward at a quicker pace. But how the fuck do you stand back up? I don't

602
00:49:06.080 --> 00:49:10.400
know. Millions of times you feel like you've been screwed over. Yeah, I think it's always been looking

603
00:49:10.400 --> 00:49:16.880
at the dome. I call it, which is like the the other path. So I teach I teach this with sales too,

604
00:49:16.880 --> 00:49:21.120
which is that like someone will present with some sort of obstacle. And a lot of times it's like,

605
00:49:21.120 --> 00:49:24.560
I mean, you can obviously overcome the obstacle, but I think it's a lot more powerful to be like,

606
00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:27.920
I understand this is your concern. But what about all the other things you could do that aren't this?

607
00:49:28.960 --> 00:49:32.400
And it's just selling against the dome. It's like so like the biggest competitor in fitness is

608
00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:36.800
not the guy down the street. It's the couch. Like that's who you're competing against. For me,

609
00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:44.560
like in these situations, it was like this sucks. But the alternative is what? Like I stop. And like

610
00:49:44.560 --> 00:49:50.400
that was just like not really an option. I used to repeat this off to myself a lot, which is like

611
00:49:50.400 --> 00:49:54.320
you'd be amazed we can accomplish when you have no choice. And so just like wasn't a choice,

612
00:49:54.320 --> 00:50:00.160
it wasn't on my on my my menu of things that I could do. And I was like, I'll just try again.

613
00:50:00.160 --> 00:50:06.400
Yeah. You know, I'll just try again. Yeah. In 2020, I had my business was based on live events,

614
00:50:06.400 --> 00:50:15.680
which is a brutal time. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great. Had 60 employees had, you know, four huge events

615
00:50:15.680 --> 00:50:22.240
on the docket for the rest of 2020 and just slowly, yeah, just absolutely wiped out. And

616
00:50:22.640 --> 00:50:30.240
truly swear to God, the reason that I could stand back up and go again is for kids. Yeah.

617
00:50:30.240 --> 00:50:34.320
I'm the person who supports my family. Right. These are my kids. I got to take care of them.

618
00:50:34.320 --> 00:50:39.600
There is no other option. Yeah. Because there is a sort of wounded part of me that would have

619
00:50:39.600 --> 00:50:44.480
loved to just been like, fuck all this. Yeah. I'm going to take what I have and go, I don't know,

620
00:50:44.480 --> 00:50:51.840
live on a farm and just be okay. Yeah. But that that like you got to you got to find something

621
00:50:51.840 --> 00:50:57.440
in you. And honestly, if you don't have something that's easily accessible, create something,

622
00:50:57.440 --> 00:51:01.440
create something in your own mind, create an enemy, like prove the girls from middle school wrong,

623
00:51:01.440 --> 00:51:06.560
like prove your parent wrong, like do something to make yourself stand back up. Because it's like,

624
00:51:06.560 --> 00:51:11.440
God, you might be so close to a breakthrough. Yeah. And if you walk away now, you're never going to

625
00:51:12.160 --> 00:51:17.120
know. Yeah. See a lot of it is like chapters in a book where like, this isn't where I want the

626
00:51:17.120 --> 00:51:21.600
story to end. Yeah. And so we just get to it's like, I think if you continue, it's like, I'm just

627
00:51:21.600 --> 00:51:25.200
going to keep writing. Like we're just going to we're going to add another chapter. And another

628
00:51:25.200 --> 00:51:30.640
chapter has, and here's the interesting thing is that regression to the mean is normal. So like

629
00:51:31.200 --> 00:51:35.600
if things are good, it's likely that they'll be less good in the future. Yeah. If things are bad,

630
00:51:35.600 --> 00:51:41.040
it's likely they'll be less bad in the future. And so I'm like, okay, well, things are, I mean,

631
00:51:41.440 --> 00:51:46.000
it's hard for things to get worse than this, but like, you know, I have high probability that it'll

632
00:51:46.000 --> 00:51:51.360
get better. Yeah. And I think Joe Morgan has this really great way of framing it, but it's like

633
00:51:51.360 --> 00:51:55.440
a lot of video games, you kind of like wake up as a character. And then you have a backstory.

634
00:51:56.080 --> 00:51:59.440
But then it's like, at that point, you decide what you want to do with the character. Yeah.

635
00:51:59.440 --> 00:52:03.360
And so in a lot of ways, it's like, this is just my backstory. And in a very like weird,

636
00:52:03.360 --> 00:52:08.960
you know, weird way, it's like the past doesn't exist. And so if I started at zero,

637
00:52:09.680 --> 00:52:13.600
I'd already started at zero before. And I've started zero multiple times now. And so it's like,

638
00:52:13.600 --> 00:52:18.800
I know what to do because I've been at zero before. And I was really excited the first time I was at zero.

639
00:52:18.800 --> 00:52:22.800
Why should I be heartbroken now? Yeah. Except now I have way more experience than the kid did

640
00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:26.720
in the beginning. So I probably have a way better shot than he did. And he was stoked. So why should

641
00:52:26.720 --> 00:52:30.560
I be stoked? Yeah. That's sick. There's a friend of mine, Brooke Castillo, you might know her.

642
00:52:31.360 --> 00:52:35.760
She has a really good question on like bad situations, which is like, how could this be awesome?

643
00:52:36.400 --> 00:52:40.880
So it's like, I'm about to get divorced. How could this be awesome? I'm about to get sued.

644
00:52:40.880 --> 00:52:46.480
How could this be awesome? Like in what in what storyline or what timeline would this terrible thing

645
00:52:46.480 --> 00:52:51.760
be awesome? And what do I need to change about myself and my surroundings so that that becomes

646
00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:55.840
the pivotal moment to basically become the foundation for the next thing? Yeah. And so yeah,

647
00:52:55.840 --> 00:53:00.560
I'll close the loop for everybody. We ended up basically having to make $150,000 in profit in the

648
00:53:00.560 --> 00:53:06.160
next 30 days. And I never made $150,000 in profit ever in a month. I worked 48 hours, asked

649
00:53:06.160 --> 00:53:09.760
Laila. I said, you know, she was had these side clients that she was doing fitness with because she

650
00:53:09.760 --> 00:53:14.160
had a personal training business before that. And that was basically paying for the groceries. Laila was

651
00:53:14.160 --> 00:53:17.840
basically supporting. So like, Jim much was making all this revenue, but like no profit. And like,

652
00:53:17.840 --> 00:53:21.920
making money just losing everything, making money losing everything. And I was like, how long does

653
00:53:21.920 --> 00:53:24.720
that take you? And she's like, I don't know, four hours a month. She's like, why? She thought I was

654
00:53:24.720 --> 00:53:28.640
like attacking her. And she's like, why? Like, hey, it pays for her food. And I was like, I'm not

655
00:53:28.880 --> 00:53:32.080
saying it's bad. I was like, four hours. That's not bad. You're making four grand a month. I was

656
00:53:32.080 --> 00:53:36.720
like, you know, four hours 40. And I was like, we did 40 hours. It'd make 40 grand, you know,

657
00:53:36.720 --> 00:53:41.760
it's a week. That's not bad. Right. And so I like took a bunch of prescription stimulants and like,

658
00:53:41.760 --> 00:53:46.080
didn't sleep for two days and banged out like one of the best sales letters. Like Adderall. Yeah.

659
00:53:46.080 --> 00:53:51.200
Oh my god. One of the best sales letters I've ever written. And it was, and it was, it was Laila's

660
00:53:51.200 --> 00:53:54.640
story of how she lost 100 pounds and then did a fitness competition. She was like, this is

661
00:53:54.640 --> 00:53:59.680
ridiculous. She's like, this is so heart wrenching. And you don't even know my story. She's like,

662
00:53:59.680 --> 00:54:04.000
I would, you know, I was like, I was like, my thighs are rubbing together because I was overweight.

663
00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:07.920
And I was like, and I would always wear the cover all like when I was on the beach with my family

664
00:54:07.920 --> 00:54:10.800
because I didn't want anyone to see it. I would always be in the edge of pictures. I just tried

665
00:54:10.800 --> 00:54:14.880
to think of all these like terrible moments. Anyways, I started running as to it. She started,

666
00:54:14.880 --> 00:54:18.880
we just started doing the sales and doing like a thousand bucks a day in sales. And I was like,

667
00:54:18.880 --> 00:54:23.280
okay, at this point, we had eight sales guys because I had to sell more to start to, I had to keep

668
00:54:23.280 --> 00:54:26.400
selling more every month to cover the refunds from the month before if these gym owners were doing

669
00:54:26.400 --> 00:54:30.640
this because I didn't know a way out. So that was how I started doing that. And then that's when it

670
00:54:30.640 --> 00:54:34.320
was actually really stressful because I was like, I have to just keep selling more to cover refunds

671
00:54:34.320 --> 00:54:38.400
from the month before like this is not sustainable. And so that's when we started doing this.

672
00:54:39.120 --> 00:54:42.640
A thousand bucks a day. I was like, great. I could take eight guys, bring them in. We can do 8,000 a day,

673
00:54:42.640 --> 00:54:47.680
almost all profit. We could get 150,000 dollars a profit. So I got really excited. And so I ate more

674
00:54:47.680 --> 00:54:50.080
gems that were supposed to launch the next month. And I was calling them up and I was like, hey,

675
00:54:50.720 --> 00:54:54.640
we're out. We're changing our model. Like, you know, wish you the best. And that's when, you know,

676
00:54:54.640 --> 00:54:59.440
I said, I'll just I'll show you how to do it, rather than me flying out there and doing it myself.

677
00:54:59.440 --> 00:55:03.840
And then the guy was like, well, how much? And I said, I just picked a big number because I wanted

678
00:55:03.840 --> 00:55:08.080
to get him off the phone. I was like, $6,000. And he was like, $6,000. He was like, done. And I just

679
00:55:08.080 --> 00:55:12.160
remember, I just remember like floating out of myself being like, because I'm used to selling

680
00:55:12.160 --> 00:55:17.840
memberships here. Like I'm just making $300, $400, $500 sales, $200 sales. Like that was that. So

681
00:55:17.920 --> 00:55:24.000
me adding is me 10X or 12Xing what I'm used to collecting was like, just like an unfathomal number.

682
00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:30.640
And he said, yeah, I was like, holy shit, six grand. And I had seven more calls that day. So then I

683
00:55:30.640 --> 00:55:34.880
was like, okay, he's like, what when do I get my login? And I was like, it was Friday. I was like

684
00:55:34.880 --> 00:55:41.840
Monday. And so, and he was like, okay, cool. Call the next guy, same conversation. And he was like,

685
00:55:41.840 --> 00:55:46.320
how much? And I was like, eight grand. And he was like, yeah, done. And I was like, holy shit.

686
00:55:46.320 --> 00:55:50.960
And so by the end of the day, I collected $60,000. And I was like, and Laila came in from doing all

687
00:55:50.960 --> 00:55:54.480
these sales, doing weight loss sales. I was like, how's your next job? So two for two. And I was like,

688
00:55:54.480 --> 00:55:58.160
that's awesome. And I was like, I think, I think we're still in the gym business. And now she's like,

689
00:55:58.160 --> 00:56:03.840
you just told me, yeah, you just told me we're going all in on queen transformation. Which we called it.

690
00:56:03.840 --> 00:56:07.440
Like you heard this whole sales letter. You sold me on how we're not doing the in person thing.

691
00:56:07.440 --> 00:56:10.640
We're doing the online thing. And I was like, yeah, I think we were just doing it wrong.

692
00:56:10.640 --> 00:56:14.080
Yeah. I then called back all the 30 plus gyms that I had done turn around four. And I was like,

693
00:56:14.080 --> 00:56:16.880
hey, I remember I just made a hundred grand out of your gym and you're really upset about it

694
00:56:16.880 --> 00:56:20.080
because I'm just some kid and you're an experienced demonstrator. And I still filled it up.

695
00:56:20.080 --> 00:56:25.200
Want me to show you how I did it. And they were like, yeah. And so I just went back at 30 more sales.

696
00:56:25.200 --> 00:56:31.440
And I was able to cover the $150,000. And basically refunds I was going to have to pay for within 30 days

697
00:56:31.440 --> 00:56:37.920
and got like back to neutral back to zero. Yeah. I was I was 150,000 was poorer than zero. Yeah.

698
00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:44.720
I just wanted to get even. And so yeah. And so then and then that's when that's when gym lunch took off.

699
00:56:44.720 --> 00:56:49.920
And so that's when it. So I'll give you the I'll give the rest of the story is that is is less fun.

700
00:56:49.920 --> 00:56:52.960
The last one. It's like we went from you know, zero to four and a half million a month.

701
00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:57.760
The fact that you just said it's the less fun part. I mean, that probably says something about your

702
00:56:57.760 --> 00:57:03.200
psychology. But actually this is the this is the victorious moment is that it went on to be very

703
00:57:03.200 --> 00:57:08.480
successful. You guys launched a supplement brand as well. Did you sell both of those? Are you still

704
00:57:08.480 --> 00:57:13.680
retained? Yeah. Okay. So you sold those together. Now you're in acquisition. Will you tell us a

705
00:57:13.680 --> 00:57:17.360
little bit about that? Yeah. Hopefully the audience is bored of tears. Are you kidding? They are

706
00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:21.680
peeing their pants right now. They love this conversation. Laila and I had probably taken about 40

707
00:57:21.680 --> 00:57:26.400
million distributions from gym launch during the time that we owned it. And then the sales were 46.

708
00:57:26.400 --> 00:57:32.240
And so we had a decent enough amount of money to start like a family office. Well, from from

709
00:57:32.240 --> 00:57:38.080
investing perspectives like that's small like after we need about 50 to like really start a true

710
00:57:38.080 --> 00:57:41.520
family office. Got it. Otherwise, it's like fractions different. You know, I mean, we're like,

711
00:57:41.520 --> 00:57:47.120
I think we can we can do this. And so we started making investments in companies that were when we

712
00:57:47.120 --> 00:57:50.160
started this, it was going to be e-learning businesses to try and basically run the same playbook

713
00:57:50.800 --> 00:57:55.280
that we did with gym launch. It turned out that was not a good model for a variety of reasons.

714
00:57:55.280 --> 00:58:01.280
We have now just transitioned to taking larger and larger stakes in companies. And we now really

715
00:58:01.360 --> 00:58:06.000
just look for revenue retention, which is the only thing that we really care about. And then because

716
00:58:06.000 --> 00:58:09.120
we know how to do the marketing sales. And so it's like we just want to find products or services

717
00:58:09.120 --> 00:58:13.440
that people never want to stop buying. Right. And I will tell you for anybody who's listening to this,

718
00:58:13.440 --> 00:58:18.400
one of the big pieces of advice that I can give you is that instead of trying to find a product

719
00:58:18.400 --> 00:58:24.640
and then being like, how do I get people to not stop buying this? Just find stuff people already.

720
00:58:24.720 --> 00:58:31.600
Don't stop buying. Yeah. That's so real. It's like, I promise you that there's nothing that you

721
00:58:31.600 --> 00:58:35.840
can do to a gym membership to get someone to stay more than their insurance or their internet.

722
00:58:37.600 --> 00:58:42.960
Yeah. Just like just it's just it's just the it's the dynamics of the service or business. And so

723
00:58:42.960 --> 00:58:48.880
and that that that took me probably like two years to learn. Yeah. So there's you know two years

724
00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:53.840
and two in one minute. Well, and I think e-learning in a lot of ways. I know this is going to feel

725
00:58:53.840 --> 00:58:59.440
maybe harsh for people who are in the e-learning business tends to be trendy. So certain things will

726
00:58:59.440 --> 00:59:05.760
spike and become more popular. Yeah. Become more popular. Something that blows up in 2020 or 2021

727
00:59:05.760 --> 00:59:10.320
might not be relevant in 25. Yeah. And I've heard you guys talk about that that you're interested in

728
00:59:10.320 --> 00:59:14.000
businesses that are retaining profit and not just hitting a certain revenue goal, which is so

729
00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:17.840
crucial. So that's a big learning in the last couple of years. How long have you guys been doing it?

730
00:59:18.640 --> 00:59:24.080
The first deal is 2020. Okay. Okay. So it's been a it's been a hot minute. I feel like I would say

731
00:59:24.080 --> 00:59:27.440
like investors usually are like 10 year cycles. So I'm like halfway through a cycle. Yeah.

732
00:59:27.440 --> 00:59:31.040
Basically learned I mean learned a lot. Most of the things I learned will probably not be

733
00:59:31.040 --> 00:59:38.080
interesting with the audience. But yeah. Let's steal some mind set. Yeah. No, no, no. I would love to

734
00:59:38.080 --> 00:59:41.600
steal a bit from your brain too because I've heard you now and I really want to encourage the

735
00:59:41.600 --> 00:59:46.800
audience. Your podcast is fantastic. And I feel like you guys do a great job of doing so many

736
00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:50.960
different types of content, which I love because it's not all going to be relevant to every type of

737
00:59:50.960 --> 00:59:56.480
business owner. But what are some of the biggest mistakes you see new business owners make or the

738
00:59:56.480 --> 01:00:04.240
most common questions you get in that new bees. I'm pumped for this. Great. So there are five that I

739
01:00:04.240 --> 01:00:10.480
see that happen on a regular basis. Great. And they come from apparently impossible choices over

740
01:00:10.480 --> 01:00:16.640
compensation of employees structurally. It's like for example, I've got you know, I've got people

741
01:00:16.640 --> 01:00:23.600
at my car practice clinic and I pay the therapist 50% of revenue. Tough to scale. Underpriced my

742
01:00:23.600 --> 01:00:26.960
facility. I'm using brick and mortar. But this works for you could be digital. It doesn't really

743
01:00:26.960 --> 01:00:32.080
matter. I'm at capacity and I'm not making profit. Yeah. That's a price. Yeah. Yeah.

744
01:00:32.080 --> 01:00:36.080
A million percent. But with each of them though, there's an apparent rock and hard place scenario

745
01:00:36.080 --> 01:00:39.680
though. If I pay people less, I'm going to lose all my therapist and I'm going to lose my business.

746
01:00:39.680 --> 01:00:44.480
If I raise my prices, I'm going to lose all my customers. And next one is woman of the red dress.

747
01:00:44.480 --> 01:00:51.040
So more commonly known as shiny objects. Chasing multi rabbits and catching none and spinning

748
01:00:51.040 --> 01:00:56.480
your plates because if you're at least backtracking the story there, like I had a car practice

749
01:00:56.480 --> 01:01:01.360
agency, a dental agency. I had six jams and I was doing a launch business. I made no money.

750
01:01:01.360 --> 01:01:05.520
I mean, I made revenue, but I didn't have enough attention to go deep enough on anything.

751
01:01:05.600 --> 01:01:10.160
So all I was doing was pure fires all the time, which is one of miserable existence. But

752
01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:13.040
too, you just make way less money. Yeah. And the guy you're competing against who's beating you

753
01:01:13.040 --> 01:01:16.080
is only doing that. Yeah. And that's the thing. And I think it's actually, believe it or not,

754
01:01:16.080 --> 01:01:19.600
actually think it's arrogant to believe that you can do multiple things and beat somebody who's

755
01:01:19.600 --> 01:01:25.600
only doing one. That's so real. I'm on a book tour right now. And I do a Q&A at the end. And

756
01:01:25.600 --> 01:01:30.240
this woman stood up in, I want to say Toronto. And she's like, I have a business and I'm doing this

757
01:01:30.240 --> 01:01:33.920
and I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this. And I was like, can I tough love you

758
01:01:33.920 --> 01:01:37.280
right now? Yeah. And I said, you don't have a business. You have a bunch of side hustles.

759
01:01:37.280 --> 01:01:41.520
Yeah. Sure. Um, none of these things are connected. You got to pick one. You got to go all in.

760
01:01:41.520 --> 01:01:46.480
And a lot of people need to hear that. I never thought about it as ego, but you're exactly right.

761
01:01:46.480 --> 01:01:51.440
Like, why are you the one person who can successfully navigate 10 businesses at once? Of course you

762
01:01:51.440 --> 01:01:56.800
can. Well, Elon does it. And it's like, well, he's a million staff members. Yeah. And he,

763
01:01:56.800 --> 01:02:00.080
yeah, we wouldn't even talk because he's an alien. So it doesn't really matter. But like all

764
01:02:00.080 --> 01:02:04.480
of his mere mortals. And this, I'll tell you this little framework. So if you're like, well,

765
01:02:04.480 --> 01:02:09.680
Elon did it. It's like, well, did you, you know, drop out of whatever Ivy League school that you

766
01:02:09.680 --> 01:02:16.480
he dropped out of and then code from scratch, zipped to when you were 21. No, you didn't do that.

767
01:02:16.480 --> 01:02:19.520
So you're probably not Elon. Yeah. Well, I'm going to be the next Warren Buffett. Did you buy your

768
01:02:19.520 --> 01:02:27.760
first stock at age seven? Did you make a huge purchase right after Pearl Harbor got bombed when

769
01:02:27.760 --> 01:02:32.560
you thought the nation, like when people didn't know. Do you know Charlie Munger? Like, do you,

770
01:02:32.560 --> 01:02:36.640
are, no, you are not. No, it's like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to have a hold co and, you

771
01:02:36.640 --> 01:02:42.400
know, 30 years old. It's like, with love, let's be real. I say this was so much love. And I'll

772
01:02:42.400 --> 01:02:49.120
take this on myself too. If you were a phenom, we'd know it by now. Yeah. If you were a genius,

773
01:02:49.120 --> 01:02:54.320
we'd already know. So just to assume that you're going to work hard like a lot of other people

774
01:02:54.320 --> 01:03:00.240
and find a way. If you were those people, we would already know. There's this great quote.

775
01:03:00.240 --> 01:03:04.160
I was a little nervous. I was on my run this morning. I was like, Jesus, I hope I don't accidentally

776
01:03:04.160 --> 01:03:09.520
quote Alex to Alex. I listened to so many podcasts, but I heard this thing the other day that was like,

777
01:03:09.520 --> 01:03:14.400
if you're the guy, you don't have to tell anybody you're the guy. Like, if you're her, you don't

778
01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:20.560
have to tell anybody you're her. We already know. So yes, good advice. You're not Elon. So pick one

779
01:03:20.560 --> 01:03:26.160
freaking thing. The next is over expansion. I just opened my second location. And I'm just

780
01:03:26.160 --> 01:03:30.880
talking brick and mortar terms with the supplies for everything. And it's it's almost like the

781
01:03:30.880 --> 01:03:37.200
shiny object one except you the businesses are interrelated. And it was the correct next step,

782
01:03:37.200 --> 01:03:41.920
just not now. And so typically over expansion is actually a function of being under talented.

783
01:03:43.360 --> 01:03:47.920
And so yeah, someone just got punched in the stomach right now. So I was just like, oh, I needed

784
01:03:48.400 --> 01:03:51.920
that. And so and when I say under talented, there's two two components that one is there's you,

785
01:03:51.920 --> 01:03:55.680
right? The other side of it is that the talent on your team is just insufficient. And so like,

786
01:03:55.680 --> 01:03:59.120
could you have gone to the second location? Could you start that second product line or the

787
01:03:59.120 --> 01:04:04.480
second service line? Absolutely. If you had enough bandwidth for you, which you can only get back

788
01:04:04.480 --> 01:04:09.520
with somebody else who's good, right? And so that's it's usually a who issue for over expansion.

789
01:04:09.520 --> 01:04:15.040
Number five is you're serving too many different types of customers. And I want to be clear,

790
01:04:15.040 --> 01:04:18.480
it's super normal in the beginning for you to have one qualification for customer, which is credit

791
01:04:18.480 --> 01:04:23.840
card and pulse. So I guess it's too very normal. The problem is as soon as you start selling a little

792
01:04:23.840 --> 01:04:27.520
bit more, you're like, oh my god, I have to do like I have so many different things that I have to

793
01:04:27.520 --> 01:04:30.560
deliver. And this guy's a little bigger. This guy's a little smaller, but my product's not that,

794
01:04:30.560 --> 01:04:35.280
whatever, you have to pick. But and obviously this again, these are rock and hard place nearest,

795
01:04:35.280 --> 01:04:39.520
but this is half my business is this type of avatar. At some point, I'm going to get I'm fast

796
01:04:39.520 --> 01:04:43.200
running a little bit, but usually it's one in three million is where you have to start being like,

797
01:04:43.200 --> 01:04:47.840
I have to be narrow on my avatar and my avatar. And the fear is and for each of these, the fear

798
01:04:47.840 --> 01:04:52.800
is logical and also wrong. And that's what's really interesting. So like so Roy Sutherland,

799
01:04:53.360 --> 01:04:57.600
big app marketer that I love, he's chairman of Ogoby, he talks about psychological and logical

800
01:04:57.600 --> 01:05:02.480
solutions. And so like, for example, if I want people to like the elevator ride better,

801
01:05:02.480 --> 01:05:06.480
said people complaining, for example, that the elevator ride is too slow, you could think,

802
01:05:06.480 --> 01:05:10.880
okay, we'll have to reinstall a new elevator that has a bigger engine and make it go faster,

803
01:05:10.880 --> 01:05:14.240
right? And that would cost us lots and lots of money. And alternative is just to put mirrors

804
01:05:14.240 --> 01:05:17.840
inside the elevator so they can stare at themselves and then no notice is the fact that it's slow.

805
01:05:18.880 --> 01:05:22.960
Psychological solutions. And so what's interesting is that like all logical solutions,

806
01:05:22.960 --> 01:05:27.920
if you have a logical problem, sometimes you have to use a psychological solution rather than

807
01:05:27.920 --> 01:05:31.440
logical ones because the logical ones have already been tried and don't work. And so when you have

808
01:05:31.440 --> 01:05:35.280
the apparent rock and hard place, there's usually a different way around it, which is that like,

809
01:05:35.280 --> 01:05:40.640
how could this be awesome? So what if when you change your compensation structure, your team feels more

810
01:05:40.640 --> 01:05:44.560
at ease because the business actually has a profit and has a chance for expanding so that they

811
01:05:44.560 --> 01:05:49.120
can have a career path? Yeah. What if that was how you positioned it, which is, I've walked,

812
01:05:49.120 --> 01:05:54.240
I've had to do this myself, but also for other people, if you're underpriced, it's like, well,

813
01:05:54.240 --> 01:05:58.480
what if when I raise my prices, I attract better customers. And because I have more profit,

814
01:05:58.480 --> 01:06:03.920
I can attract better talent. And I can ultimately provide a better service. And they're lower maintenance.

815
01:06:03.920 --> 01:06:09.120
And like all of these things cascade down from this higher price. If I focus all of my attention

816
01:06:09.200 --> 01:06:13.920
on one thing, I remember I met a business owner who was telling me, I don't call it all the

817
01:06:13.920 --> 01:06:17.920
businesses he had. And I was like, and I knew roughly, I think how much money he was making.

818
01:06:17.920 --> 01:06:22.960
It was not a ton. And I think he had 78 things that he was involved. It was the biggest thing I've

819
01:06:22.960 --> 01:06:26.960
ever seen. And he couldn't name him on. He's like, I have an excel sheet that has them all.

820
01:06:26.960 --> 01:06:30.640
And I think he was doing about eight figures a year, which I know some people were listening.

821
01:06:30.640 --> 01:06:34.560
He's like, oh, that's a lot. I promise you, between 78 businesses doing that would be

822
01:06:34.560 --> 01:06:39.120
unbelievably stressful. And who knows what the profit is, right? And so then I said, if I had

823
01:06:39.120 --> 01:06:43.680
a magic wand, and I said, which of these 78 is the one that you're like, this is the one,

824
01:06:43.680 --> 01:06:47.520
this is my baby, this is the one that I think could go all the way. I was like, do you know which one

825
01:06:47.520 --> 01:06:51.040
it is? He was like, yeah. And I was like, if I waved a magic wand and I cut the other 77 and you

826
01:06:51.040 --> 01:06:53.760
just did that, I was like, how easy would it be to double the business? You said, oh, my God,

827
01:06:53.760 --> 01:06:58.480
I could do it in my sleep. And I was like, then why don't you do that? That's, you know,

828
01:06:58.480 --> 01:07:03.760
like how you handle that one. The over expansion is, and this is the tough one, you either got to

829
01:07:04.800 --> 01:07:10.720
and it usually happens that that same like million, two million-ish level. And I have a theory around

830
01:07:10.720 --> 01:07:15.040
it, which is that if you think about the cost of talent, right? So let's say you have a 20%

831
01:07:15.040 --> 01:07:18.080
margin business and you're doing a million dollars a year, so you're making 200,000 dollars

832
01:07:18.080 --> 01:07:24.800
a year in profit. You either have to work double time or you have to not have a profit and bring

833
01:07:24.800 --> 01:07:29.520
someone in who's really good. Those are basically your two choices. And they're both tough because

834
01:07:29.520 --> 01:07:32.880
to open a separate second location, yeah. Right. And so like that's, I mean, by the way,

835
01:07:32.880 --> 01:07:36.160
this is why you get compensated as a business center outside returns because you take outside's

836
01:07:36.160 --> 01:07:41.520
risk. That's why we get paid what we do because we're willing to lose it all. Right. And so,

837
01:07:41.520 --> 01:07:47.360
but it's, it's, it's usually right at that size, one to three-ish because your margin is almost equate,

838
01:07:47.360 --> 01:07:54.560
equates to one or two good employees. And so you have to make this bet. And or you just work like

839
01:07:54.560 --> 01:08:00.240
crazy. It's one of the other. And so when you're in that over expansion area, it's like you just have

840
01:08:00.240 --> 01:08:04.640
to work like crazy and then train someone up or you have to bring someone in and then obviously,

841
01:08:04.640 --> 01:08:08.960
they can, they can help you take it over. The third path is that you just accept the fact that

842
01:08:08.960 --> 01:08:13.040
you don't have who you need. You cut the, cut the short-term loss for the long-term gain so that you

843
01:08:13.040 --> 01:08:19.680
can get the one location or one product or service right so that I like this framework of

844
01:08:19.680 --> 01:08:24.240
called scale zero, which is like every business that I've had that's been exceptional has been a

845
01:08:24.240 --> 01:08:27.840
business that I didn't start to become a business. They became, they were things that I just was

846
01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:31.760
like, I'm just going to make some money. And then, and I don't want to work a lot. And when I do

847
01:08:31.760 --> 01:08:36.720
that, because you actually solve for zero ahead of time. And so you're like, I'm solving for something

848
01:08:36.720 --> 01:08:41.600
that is super profitable that doesn't take a lot of time. It's like, well, shoot. Then why do I

849
01:08:41.600 --> 01:08:46.240
do a ton of that? And that's what ends up happening. Whereas every time I've been like, I want to just

850
01:08:46.240 --> 01:08:50.080
build a huge business. I was like, I end up building something that doesn't like actually work.

851
01:08:50.080 --> 01:08:53.520
Yeah. And so it's just very weird that every time that like when I look back on my life, the

852
01:08:53.600 --> 01:08:58.480
times that I've like, I've had to make money or wanted, you know, to make money and not build a

853
01:08:58.480 --> 01:09:03.440
business is when I build a business. When I build a business, I don't make money. Yeah. Yeah.

854
01:09:03.440 --> 01:09:08.080
Just kind of like interesting. So that's that's solving the over expansion issue. The

855
01:09:08.880 --> 01:09:13.920
avatory issue you solve with data, which is you look at all the customers you sold up to this point.

856
01:09:13.920 --> 01:09:18.080
And you're like, okay, look at the top 10% and say, what did these people have in common? And so I

857
01:09:18.080 --> 01:09:22.000
think about it in terms of demographics. Like, what do they look like? Where they from? I think

858
01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:24.640
about in terms of psychographics, which is like, how do they think what are their beliefs and

859
01:09:24.640 --> 01:09:31.760
values? And then I think about actions. So what things did they do while a customer that other people

860
01:09:31.760 --> 01:09:36.640
did not do that caused them to be successful? And so then I start selecting for those people in the

861
01:09:36.640 --> 01:09:40.800
advertising and the offer so that we just only get those people. And so if you're in that spot,

862
01:09:40.800 --> 01:09:46.400
my recommendation is you don't have to kill your business. Just start advertising only to the one

863
01:09:46.400 --> 01:09:52.160
avatar, which is usually the higher up avatar. I'll just give you that it's probably it's probably

864
01:09:52.160 --> 01:09:56.080
the guy who's that's probably the the one that you have fewer of, but better better. It's probably

865
01:09:56.080 --> 01:10:01.840
that one. You advertise to them. And what happens though is that you will still get the the minos

866
01:10:01.840 --> 01:10:07.040
that are coming, but you'll get a greater proportion of the better ones by just say, I'm only working

867
01:10:07.040 --> 01:10:11.120
with these better ones. And you can basically slowly shift the percentage of the pie so that

868
01:10:11.120 --> 01:10:15.120
a small and small percentage of minos until eventually you can, you know, maybe when you're at 80%

869
01:10:15.120 --> 01:10:18.800
you just say, I'm not taking minos anymore because of distraction. I just want to work with whales.

870
01:10:18.800 --> 01:10:24.800
Yeah. And so that's the transition there. The bonus sixth problem that small business owners

871
01:10:24.800 --> 01:10:30.240
have is no data daddy as I like to call it, which is that they don't know anything about their

872
01:10:30.240 --> 01:10:35.040
business. Yeah. And so I mean, if you've seen like Shark Tank or anything like that, like the

873
01:10:35.040 --> 01:10:38.960
thing that they always tell me was like, just know your numbers because you can't if you don't

874
01:10:38.960 --> 01:10:42.720
know what to do. It's because you have no data. And so the actual constraint of the business isn't

875
01:10:42.720 --> 01:10:46.560
the action you need to take or rather, the action you need to take is to get the data. Yeah.

876
01:10:46.560 --> 01:10:51.680
Because when you have really clean data, the the the next step actually is usually pretty obvious.

877
01:10:51.680 --> 01:10:54.640
So you you look like a genius from the outside because you're making these good decisions

878
01:10:54.640 --> 01:10:58.480
and the business continues to grow, but you know that deep down it's just because you collect good

879
01:10:58.480 --> 01:11:03.200
data. Yeah. And so it's like, you know, you just you should be able to know what happens from

880
01:11:03.200 --> 01:11:08.560
click to close and from close to renewal. And you should know what all of the metrics are between

881
01:11:08.560 --> 01:11:14.480
those steps. And I mean, at the most minute level, because that's where all the alpha to use

882
01:11:14.480 --> 01:11:18.800
an investment term, like that's where all the huge gains in business growth come from.

883
01:11:18.800 --> 01:11:23.280
It's like, okay, let's say we've got, you know, a 2% CTR on our ads fine. We've got a 20%

884
01:11:23.280 --> 01:11:27.920
conversion or landing page. Okay, it's a little bit low, but fine. And then we've got a 7%

885
01:11:27.920 --> 01:11:34.880
schedule rate. We're like, oh, okay. Well, we could probably go from 7 to 30. And if we did that,

886
01:11:34.880 --> 01:11:40.640
we would 4x the business. Oh, that feels like that's worth tackling, right? But you're like, I

887
01:11:40.640 --> 01:11:43.920
don't know how to grow. You don't even know that's the thing. It's like, I don't know what to do

888
01:11:43.920 --> 01:11:47.840
because you don't know what the reality is. You don't know what the holes are. Given just to

889
01:11:47.840 --> 01:11:51.840
break it down to a basic level in case people don't know some of the the terms that you're using.

890
01:11:51.840 --> 01:11:57.680
So I'm imagining like you own a small town coffee shop. Sure. And you, you know, you've done your

891
01:11:57.680 --> 01:12:01.120
best, you're you're you're just getting things done. You're making sure there's enough coffee,

892
01:12:01.120 --> 01:12:06.320
are the muffins there? You're just doing the like the things of running your business. But you hear

893
01:12:06.320 --> 01:12:10.800
you're talking right now and you're like, I don't what data? What would I need? So for example,

894
01:12:10.800 --> 01:12:16.560
what is the average what's the average tally for each customer that comes through? You know, if you're

895
01:12:16.560 --> 01:12:20.640
like, Oh, I have no idea. Okay, well, if you have no idea, you don't know how to improve those numbers.

896
01:12:20.640 --> 01:12:26.320
So if you find out that the average person who comes through spend $6 and well, here's a easy

897
01:12:26.320 --> 01:12:30.880
hack. What if I train the people who are at the cash register to ask if every single customer

898
01:12:30.880 --> 01:12:34.400
would like a muffin to go with their coffee? What's the percentage of people who increase and

899
01:12:34.400 --> 01:12:40.080
suddenly it's 1050 per person and you're increasing the value of that interaction. But if you don't

900
01:12:40.080 --> 01:12:46.240
have those specific data points, you don't know what to push on. Again, I was at this mastermind

901
01:12:46.240 --> 01:12:50.000
this week and they would do hot seats. So people were, you know, talking about their business.

902
01:12:50.800 --> 01:12:56.240
And I'm not in the mastermind. I'm just there as a as a speaker. But every person who would ask

903
01:12:56.320 --> 01:13:00.720
they'd ask questions to they'd say, you know, how much did he make last year? And they'd say, we did

904
01:13:00.720 --> 01:13:07.200
between. And I'm like, you don't know your numbers. You didn't do between an entrepreneur knows

905
01:13:07.200 --> 01:13:13.680
exactly down to like, Oh, man, we really wanted to do two million, but we did 1.73. Those are

906
01:13:13.680 --> 01:13:19.600
our numbers this year. There's no between the average person pays almost. I'm like, Girl, you don't

907
01:13:19.680 --> 01:13:25.920
like you're stretching. So knowing that kind of information, like you said, helps to figure out

908
01:13:25.920 --> 01:13:32.000
what to actually move against. Like, for instance, if you can get, if you can book 20 calls and you

909
01:13:32.000 --> 01:13:36.320
know for a fact that you're really good at closing, you can close 50% of those customers. So great.

910
01:13:36.320 --> 01:13:42.160
If I get more calls, can I close more just for anybody who didn't understand. This is great. And

911
01:13:42.400 --> 01:13:51.040
for I'll just say that for if you're if you're sub a million in revenue, the answer is almost

912
01:13:51.040 --> 01:13:57.680
always more. And there's a math reason behind that. And so like improve, you know, because if

913
01:13:57.680 --> 01:14:01.360
you're sub a million and you are actually, you know, making doll, you are making sales and you

914
01:14:01.360 --> 01:14:05.520
are making your profit, you have priced it such that you haven't, you're not selling $5 bills

915
01:14:05.520 --> 01:14:10.960
for $4. Let's assume that that's true here. All right. If that's the case, I'll give the simplest

916
01:14:10.960 --> 01:14:15.120
example I can, which is that if I have one salesperson who works for me and let's say that guy does

917
01:14:15.120 --> 01:14:20.320
outbound and he generates, you know, business for our IT services, whatever, I could probably try

918
01:14:20.320 --> 01:14:25.360
and take his clothes right from 30% to 40%. I could probably do that. How much time would that be?

919
01:14:25.360 --> 01:14:30.240
How risky is it? How likely is it to happen? We can go through all that. But it would probably be

920
01:14:30.240 --> 01:14:35.200
better just hire a second sales guy to do the outbound because that would have a high likely to

921
01:14:35.200 --> 01:14:40.960
double in my business. Now later on when you have 20 sales guys, you then have to see, okay,

922
01:14:40.960 --> 01:14:48.080
if I'm at, you know, we're at 30 to get to 40, okay, that would be a 33% improvement in revenue.

923
01:14:48.080 --> 01:14:52.400
If we made, if we just got everybody to go from, you know, 30 to 40, okay, that sounds reasonable.

924
01:14:52.400 --> 01:14:58.000
But the alternative would be to get that same increase with 20 guys that have to hire seven more

925
01:14:58.000 --> 01:15:03.600
sales guys. And so then you look at the risk adjuster return from each of those actions and say,

926
01:15:03.600 --> 01:15:08.640
okay, well, I think there's a higher likelihood that I could just improve the sales guys from

927
01:15:08.640 --> 01:15:14.880
30 to 40, then onward hire train recruit seven more productive sales guys that are at the same

928
01:15:14.880 --> 01:15:19.680
KPIs the rest of the team. And so you'll actually notice that it's a little bit of a pinball or

929
01:15:19.680 --> 01:15:23.520
like an accordion where it's like you'll do more and then you do better and then you more and then

930
01:15:23.520 --> 01:15:27.520
you better. But in the beginning, you're usually just not doing nearly enough. And I'll give you this

931
01:15:27.520 --> 01:15:32.640
littleism that I end up repeating a lot, which is that volatility is a symptom of low volume.

932
01:15:33.680 --> 01:15:39.760
So if you're like, man, you know, it's worth of mouth. And I, you know, I get I get a sale every,

933
01:15:39.760 --> 01:15:46.160
you know, every every month I get one or two sales that come in. So the reality is that there's

934
01:15:46.160 --> 01:15:51.200
a certain amount of advertising that is occurring. So a certain amount of people are telling other

935
01:15:51.200 --> 01:15:55.440
people a certain amount of posts on Facebook, a certain amount of outreach attempts that you make

936
01:15:56.240 --> 01:16:01.600
are creating one to two sales per month. The businesses that are doing one to two sales a day

937
01:16:01.600 --> 01:16:06.080
are doing that amount of advertising activity per day. Yes. And so I'll tell you the

938
01:16:06.080 --> 01:16:10.560
story because I think it'll it'll resonate with the audience. So when I was younger when I started

939
01:16:10.560 --> 01:16:14.560
my gym and there was a period of time where like Lee cost went up because some Facebook changed

940
01:16:14.560 --> 01:16:19.360
whatever. I talked to a mentor of mine and I said, you know, how are you advertising? And he was

941
01:16:19.360 --> 01:16:26.160
he had 22 locations and it was tannin stuff. And he said, I use flyers. And I was like, okay, I'll

942
01:16:26.240 --> 01:16:31.920
use flyers. I'll try that. And so I printed out flyers and I put 300 flyers out on cars or

943
01:16:31.920 --> 01:16:36.320
or whatever. And you know, I waited to go collect my money. And one guy called and he said,

944
01:16:36.880 --> 01:16:39.360
are you the guy who put the fly on my car? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, you dinged my

945
01:16:39.360 --> 01:16:42.880
Mercedes. And then I was like, oh, and I try not to, I just like, and he never called again. Thank

946
01:16:42.880 --> 01:16:47.040
God. But anyway, I called my mentor back. And I was like, hey, and he's like, hey, how the how

947
01:16:47.040 --> 01:16:50.960
the flyers work out? And I was like, I was ready to like give him like a talking to. I was like,

948
01:16:51.040 --> 01:16:56.240
it didn't work. Huh? You know, like, what are you going to say about it now? And he took it really,

949
01:16:56.240 --> 01:17:00.480
he was just like really great. He gave me a lot of grace. He was like, wow, what was your test

950
01:17:00.480 --> 01:17:04.480
size? And I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, well, what'd you test? Like how many

951
01:17:04.480 --> 01:17:09.360
did you put out the you test first? And I was like, well, I put out 300. And I was like, 300.

952
01:17:10.080 --> 01:17:16.000
And he was like, oh, man, we test with like 5,000. And I was like, oh, he's like, and then after

953
01:17:16.000 --> 01:17:23.840
that, we do 5,000 a day. So he was doing 150,000 flyers a month. And I thought that 300 was a

954
01:17:23.840 --> 01:17:31.760
campaign. And so a lot of times when you're starting out, you have such a dramatic misunderstanding

955
01:17:31.760 --> 01:17:36.880
of the sheer volume that people who are ahead of you were doing. So like, most immediate us,

956
01:17:36.880 --> 01:17:43.840
we put out 450 pieces of content per week. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. It's 60 or 70 a day. I can do

957
01:17:43.840 --> 01:17:50.000
the math somewhere in there, right? And so when people are like, well, I won't even get into

958
01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:56.960
the like must be nice. But like, you're making one post a day on Instagram. And you have seven.

959
01:17:56.960 --> 01:18:03.360
And I have 450. And I've also been doing it longer. And so I have 450 a week times years. Yes.

960
01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:10.240
And so we like, it is a volume game. And in order to accumulate more volume, you have to

961
01:18:10.240 --> 01:18:17.040
allow for time to pass. You know, hypothetically, could I get to a thousand a day? Probably.

962
01:18:17.040 --> 01:18:20.080
I'm just, we're just not there yet. And I'm sure five years from now, I'll look back and be like,

963
01:18:20.080 --> 01:18:24.640
I remember when I was doing 60 a day, well, God, I was so cute. You know, give myself a little

964
01:18:24.640 --> 01:18:29.200
note. But also just to give people a frame of reference. Yeah. How much has social grown for you

965
01:18:29.200 --> 01:18:34.240
in the last five years? Yeah. You're in the millions now. Yeah. And I swear when I started

966
01:18:34.240 --> 01:18:39.520
following you. So 10 K on Instagram. Yeah. Like you've grown so much. Yeah. I think we have like

967
01:18:39.520 --> 01:18:45.200
13 or 14 million. Yeah. Yeah. No big deal. Yeah. I mean, who's got it? But yeah. No. But

968
01:18:45.200 --> 01:18:50.400
and I like to bring this up, which is that just like Rich was saying earlier with like, you'd know

969
01:18:50.400 --> 01:18:54.400
if you were the guy or you know, if you were the girl, I think we're making this for everyone who's

970
01:18:54.400 --> 01:18:59.200
not that. Yeah. And so I didn't have a clip go viral. And then all of a sudden become

971
01:18:59.920 --> 01:19:04.560
this person. Right. This was a deliberate choice that I was like, I'm going to try and do this.

972
01:19:04.560 --> 01:19:09.760
Mm-hmm. I started by making three. I mean, I started in July of, well, if you on the podcast,

973
01:19:09.760 --> 01:19:13.280
like my, so this is actually kind of probably the coolest thing I think about my story,

974
01:19:13.280 --> 01:19:18.080
hopefully, in the future that will be called is that 90 days after I had lost everything

975
01:19:18.800 --> 01:19:24.720
the last time, clarity on dates, 90 days after lost everything the last time is when I started

976
01:19:24.800 --> 01:19:32.720
my podcast. And so one, if you're like, I'm at zero, like, what do I have to say? Well, there's

977
01:19:32.720 --> 01:19:38.480
that number two. My rule was that I only talk about things I know. And so the first 300 episodes

978
01:19:38.480 --> 01:19:42.080
are just like how to run a gym because that's all I knew. So I was called gym secrets. And it was

979
01:19:42.080 --> 01:19:45.600
like, and I had six locations. So I had some stuff that I like I could talk about, but I just

980
01:19:45.600 --> 01:19:49.440
didn't go into topics. I was like, I just this one, someone walks in. This is how you know, like,

981
01:19:49.440 --> 01:19:55.200
I just talked about I knew. And for years, it was at, you know, 100 pot, you know, downloads.

982
01:19:55.200 --> 01:20:00.000
And then it went to, I think it took like four years to get to like 2000 downloads in episode.

983
01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:03.680
Not a lot of people were listening to gym secrets. I bring this up because

984
01:20:04.480 --> 01:20:10.400
the whole thing is documented from zero to here. And I think that's like that. I think to me,

985
01:20:10.400 --> 01:20:14.880
that's like the coolest thing. And so, you know, a couple years ago, I started doing the YouTube.

986
01:20:14.880 --> 01:20:17.920
That was like my next big commitment. I was like, I'll make three YouTube videos a week. And

987
01:20:17.920 --> 01:20:21.360
then I had a guy randomly to reach out to me and say, Hey, these shorts things are going to be

988
01:20:21.360 --> 01:20:25.920
a thing. And he was like, you already have longs. I'll just take the stuff you already have and

989
01:20:25.920 --> 01:20:30.880
make them into shorts. And then that did really well for us. And then we're like, and then we started

990
01:20:30.880 --> 01:20:35.120
bringing it in house. And that's pretty much what we've done ever since it's just do more, do more,

991
01:20:35.120 --> 01:20:39.600
do better, do more, do better. And we just keep doing it. I keep referencing this thing that I was

992
01:20:39.600 --> 01:20:43.760
at this week, but they're everyone's trying to figure out the next marketing hack. Like what's

993
01:20:43.760 --> 01:20:47.920
this thing? And how does it? I was there to speak about books as I've had a lot of successes

994
01:20:47.920 --> 01:20:52.560
a writer. And they were like, what do you, what do you do? And I was like, well, you show up for

995
01:20:52.560 --> 01:20:58.000
your audience every day for 15 years. And you just provide a shit ton of value again and again,

996
01:20:58.000 --> 01:21:01.920
and again, and again, and again. And every once in a while, I like, Hey, guys, I have a book.

997
01:21:01.920 --> 01:21:07.600
Yeah. And then everybody buys it. That's my whole plan. That's what we do. And the master plan.

998
01:21:07.600 --> 01:21:13.280
Exactly. Like I just, I don't, I've never figured out ads. I don't know how to, I don't have a funnel.

999
01:21:13.280 --> 01:21:18.160
I don't have, and I was like, but what is the book a lead for? And I'm like, nope, just readers,

1000
01:21:18.160 --> 01:21:24.800
just trying to, you know, have, but I, that's, don't commit to something if you aren't willing to

1001
01:21:24.800 --> 01:21:29.600
give a decade. Because I really don't know any other way. Yes, could you have something go viral,

1002
01:21:29.600 --> 01:21:33.840
can something pop off unexpectedly? Can you hit a trend right when the wave is cresting?

1003
01:21:33.840 --> 01:21:38.960
Absolutely. But I don't know how you have a long term play. If you're not actually trying to

1004
01:21:38.960 --> 01:21:42.640
provide value in a real way, I think. So this is, this is just something that I feel like I've

1005
01:21:42.640 --> 01:21:46.160
seen across a lot of business owners, because I talked to many of them. That's basically my,

1006
01:21:46.160 --> 01:21:52.080
my full-time job. It takes about five years to figure something out. And it takes about 10

1007
01:21:52.080 --> 01:21:55.120
for you to properly realize the success that you were hoping for in one or two.

1008
01:21:56.720 --> 01:22:00.400
So just like, just as a, as a baseline for anyone who's listening to this is like, you're like,

1009
01:22:00.400 --> 01:22:04.320
okay, you know, let's see, you have some corporate job that's, you know, you make $150,000 a year.

1010
01:22:04.960 --> 01:22:10.560
You will for sure make less money for the next two, three years that now you might make revenue.

1011
01:22:11.120 --> 01:22:16.720
Very different than what you're taking on this. You might start making sales, but you imagine that

1012
01:22:16.720 --> 01:22:21.120
it's you're going to immediately like that one that revenue is profit and it's not. And that you're

1013
01:22:21.120 --> 01:22:26.640
going to immediately have more time. You're going to have less. There's all the, to be fair though,

1014
01:22:26.640 --> 01:22:30.480
sometimes it's good to be ignorant of it so that you take the jump. But it's, it's literally just

1015
01:22:30.480 --> 01:22:34.160
harder. It takes longer and you make less for a while. Yeah. And I say this as somebody who was

1016
01:22:34.160 --> 01:22:38.240
a management consultant before this, like I had saved $50,000 or else $20,000. I knew it was just

1017
01:22:38.240 --> 01:22:44.080
because I made decent money and I was prudent with my spending. But it took five years before like,

1018
01:22:44.080 --> 01:22:48.400
we figured out the gym launch thing. Now, I had the locations that made money, but then you make

1019
01:22:48.400 --> 01:22:54.880
mistakes and you will lose things and you will take back steps. And so I think, you know, I talked

1020
01:22:54.880 --> 01:22:59.360
to a really close friend of mine last night and he said this and he said, you know, in my, in my

1021
01:22:59.360 --> 01:23:04.240
20s, it was all about the destination. And he was a Goldman Sachs guy like for those who don't know,

1022
01:23:04.240 --> 01:23:08.880
it's probably one of the most prestigious investment banks guys there make $10, $20 million a year

1023
01:23:08.880 --> 01:23:16.480
at the higher levels like very smart people. And very a type A driven area. And he said in my 30s,

1024
01:23:16.480 --> 01:23:21.520
I realized it was about the journey, right? He said in my 40s, I realized it was about the company.

1025
01:23:22.880 --> 01:23:26.080
And so I was like, I can't wait to see what it is when it's 50s. You know, like, you know,

1026
01:23:26.080 --> 01:23:31.680
but like I just, I really like that process. And so I think if you solve for forever, you can go

1027
01:23:31.680 --> 01:23:36.080
for a very long time. Like when I started YouTube, I told the vendor that I was working with. I was like,

1028
01:23:36.080 --> 01:23:41.600
I'll make a call whether I keep doing this in 10 years. Yeah. And he was like, he, at six months,

1029
01:23:41.600 --> 01:23:45.280
I was the fastest growing, whatever that he'd had. And he said, I just want you to know that I've

1030
01:23:45.280 --> 01:23:50.480
never in my whole career had anybody say that they were going to do this for 10 years. He said,

1031
01:23:50.480 --> 01:23:57.040
everybody's always like 30 days, 90 days, if they're like, you know, long-term thinking or whatever.

1032
01:23:57.040 --> 01:24:02.560
And I was like, I just figured if I do so much of it that it would be unreasonable that I suck,

1033
01:24:03.360 --> 01:24:08.160
I'll probably be better than average. Yeah. And so there's a certain amount of volume that's

1034
01:24:08.160 --> 01:24:12.800
required to get good. And so my approach has always been like, violence is the answer, which is

1035
01:24:12.800 --> 01:24:18.640
just just just unbelievable amounts of execution. And just trying to get just get, I remember I read

1036
01:24:18.640 --> 01:24:22.320
outliers when I was in college, I think, which is Malcolm Gladwell's book. You talk about 10,000

1037
01:24:22.320 --> 01:24:26.960
hours. It was such a pivotal book for me to read because it's set the bar for what I expected

1038
01:24:26.960 --> 01:24:30.400
volume to look like. Yeah. And so it's like, well, if I want to be a master, something like I,

1039
01:24:30.400 --> 01:24:35.920
one, I have to start now, like, oh my god, I'm so old. Yeah. But secondly, the part that I thought

1040
01:24:35.920 --> 01:24:39.600
was really interesting was that like Bill Gates, he considered like a genius or virtuoso

1041
01:24:39.600 --> 01:24:46.160
coder at like six or seven years, whereas some people would take like 10 or 12. And so that one little

1042
01:24:46.160 --> 01:24:52.080
nugget for me gave me the realization, they're like, oh, I can cram. I can take 10 years of normal

1043
01:24:52.080 --> 01:24:58.800
work and cram it in four or five. Absolutely. And so that's where saying like, you know, I have the

1044
01:24:58.800 --> 01:25:05.040
the rule of 100 for people who are starting out for getting the first customers. So you make,

1045
01:25:05.040 --> 01:25:10.720
you know, 100 outreach attempts per day, you spend a hundred dollars in ads per day, or you make

1046
01:25:10.720 --> 01:25:16.960
100 minutes, you work for 100 minutes on content and you post it. And if you post it is the key.

1047
01:25:16.960 --> 01:25:23.440
That is key. Get it out of your draft folder and on social media. And I'll tell you why you have to

1048
01:25:23.440 --> 01:25:27.120
do it in a second. And then you do that for a hundred days. And I promise you, if you do that,

1049
01:25:27.120 --> 01:25:31.600
you will have a customer. Yeah. Period. You'll have a customer. And what's crazy is that I get, I get

1050
01:25:31.600 --> 01:25:37.040
these screenshots of people who are like, holy shit, dude, I'm on day 31. And like, and they

1051
01:25:37.040 --> 01:25:40.720
show me their stats on like TikTok or Instagram or whatever. And they're like, and look at the leads

1052
01:25:40.720 --> 01:25:44.320
that they're like, they just do it. You know, I mean, and like if you actually counted out and you

1053
01:25:44.320 --> 01:25:49.040
actually do the whole like I've never to this day had somebody do the full hundred all three and not

1054
01:25:49.040 --> 01:25:53.600
have customers. Yeah. And the reason you have to put it out and do the do the outreach test the ads

1055
01:25:53.600 --> 01:25:59.200
if you're going to do ads or just do or do the content is that the only at least the my favorite way to

1056
01:25:59.200 --> 01:26:06.720
learn is to do a huge amount of effort, a lot of repetitions and then look at the data of the

1057
01:26:06.800 --> 01:26:11.840
last hundred and say, were the top 10% what are these having common? Okay, my next hundred are going

1058
01:26:11.840 --> 01:26:16.400
to be just like those. Yes. And then you do a hundred more of that. Yes. And then because of

1059
01:26:16.400 --> 01:26:20.800
variability and variety of life, you're going to have another top 10% of those and say, what did those

1060
01:26:20.800 --> 01:26:25.120
have in common? How do I do more of that? Yes. And this is the process of learning that you won't get

1061
01:26:25.120 --> 01:26:30.800
in any course because it'll also be specific to you. Can I also add something to for people who are

1062
01:26:30.800 --> 01:26:35.840
using social media as a way to talk about their business is to make sure that you're paying attention

1063
01:26:35.840 --> 01:26:43.200
to the right metrics because there's such a hustle for views. Yeah. Not all views are created

1064
01:26:43.200 --> 01:26:47.280
equal, not all followers are created equal. And you could get a million views on something that will

1065
01:26:47.280 --> 01:26:53.120
not be relevant to your business at all, but will create sort of vanity metrics that make you believe

1066
01:26:53.120 --> 01:26:57.680
that your channel's really successful. But if it is not making you money in the way you want to make

1067
01:26:57.680 --> 01:27:03.360
money, it's not the right video. It would be better to try a different style different approach

1068
01:27:03.440 --> 01:27:08.080
long form versus short form like change it up to get the right kind of customer because there's

1069
01:27:08.080 --> 01:27:13.440
so much content. And now telling people how to game the algorithm and it's not actually serving you.

1070
01:27:13.440 --> 01:27:19.760
No. As a as a visceral example, if I go up to a stranger and slap them and then

1071
01:27:20.720 --> 01:27:24.720
like I will probably get a lot of views. Yeah. Does that increase or decrease the like that someone

1072
01:27:24.720 --> 01:27:29.200
will purchase something for me? Probably not. Right. It just sounds like it's just I can sometimes

1073
01:27:29.440 --> 01:27:33.440
just like asking the just the simplest question. When you look at this meme that you're posting,

1074
01:27:33.440 --> 01:27:36.160
does this increase or decrease the likely that someone's going to buy for me? Right.

1075
01:27:36.160 --> 01:27:39.760
In all likely, it just does nothing. It doesn't either. Wasted your time. Yeah.

1076
01:27:39.760 --> 01:27:43.920
Because he spent nine hours trying to make that one video. Right. And so that's always been our

1077
01:27:43.920 --> 01:27:47.760
little mistest in terms of basically what we're I think what we're really teasing out here is

1078
01:27:47.760 --> 01:27:51.440
the difference between getting views and building a brand and building the brand is what are the

1079
01:27:51.440 --> 01:27:55.760
what are the pairings and associations that I want people to associate me with? And that's the people

1080
01:27:55.760 --> 01:28:01.520
that I appear with. That's the subject matter that I discuss and everything else that is that

1081
01:28:01.520 --> 01:28:06.240
surrounds that one of the values that I have that come through in the content. And I will say that

1082
01:28:06.240 --> 01:28:12.720
me personally, the more I just try to think like, and this is probably useful, if you have a

1083
01:28:12.720 --> 01:28:16.080
customer that is your favorite customer and if you don't have a customer think about who that

1084
01:28:16.080 --> 01:28:22.960
customer might be, make content for them. Yeah. And if you just do that, you will be already

1085
01:28:22.960 --> 01:28:28.240
like in the top 10 percent. Yeah. For real. I want to talk to you forever, but I want to be conscious

1086
01:28:28.240 --> 01:28:32.720
of your schedule and a very busy day that you have ahead of you. I just want to say one more

1087
01:28:32.720 --> 01:28:37.440
thing to you before you wrap up. I know you talk a lot about not really caring about your legacy.

1088
01:28:37.440 --> 01:28:42.080
Sure. Which is fascinating. But whether or not you care about what it is, it's going to be really

1089
01:28:42.080 --> 01:28:46.960
big and it's going to be really impactful. As someone that you don't think I'm your demographic,

1090
01:28:46.960 --> 01:28:52.800
but I receive a lot of help from you and have for years through the books, through the podcast,

1091
01:28:52.800 --> 01:28:56.800
really want to encourage listeners to go check them out. So whether or not you care that you have

1092
01:28:56.800 --> 01:29:01.280
a legacy you do and you help a lot of people with what you do and you don't have to help people

1093
01:29:01.280 --> 01:29:06.480
the way that you do. So I am grateful for your time and your wisdom and I know the audience is too.

1094
01:29:06.480 --> 01:29:11.280
So thank you for being here. Well, I appreciate it. And I would love to respond if that's okay.

1095
01:29:12.080 --> 01:29:16.800
If it ends up sucking, you can take it out. This has been something that I think is so

1096
01:29:16.800 --> 01:29:20.720
interestingly in the last 24 hours, I had like two massive accounts trying to like take a tax

1097
01:29:20.720 --> 01:29:25.840
at me because of this. No. Yeah, no, it's fine. Not to be. My world view allows me to deal with

1098
01:29:25.840 --> 01:29:30.400
these things. Right. But also people who create content just shitting on other people's content.

1099
01:29:31.200 --> 01:29:36.000
Hardly agree. Yeah. Hardly agree. And I feel like I can actually like make this as a value. I will

1100
01:29:36.000 --> 01:29:42.080
not make content that insults people. Yeah. Same. And I think there's and it's probably useful

1101
01:29:42.080 --> 01:29:46.080
for anyone who's listening to the difference in insult and criticism. So criticism is a

1102
01:29:46.080 --> 01:29:51.360
discrepancy between actual and desired. Hey, Sandy, you didn't show up. You haven't shown up on

1103
01:29:51.360 --> 01:29:57.120
time three days in row. The expectations that you set up. You show up at 9 a.m. This is criticism.

1104
01:29:57.120 --> 01:30:01.920
And because of that, you're a lazy piece of shit. That is an insult. And so basically making a

1105
01:30:01.920 --> 01:30:07.600
judgment is where insults come from pointing out to an observable discrepancy is what criticism is.

1106
01:30:07.600 --> 01:30:11.360
For those of you who are like, how do you do with criticism? So we'll make sure that it's criticism

1107
01:30:11.360 --> 01:30:17.840
and not insults. Yeah. I had multiple people insult me. It's fine. I survived about this. And I

1108
01:30:17.840 --> 01:30:22.640
really want to take the opportunity if you'll allow me. I'm just the ultimate believer in freedom

1109
01:30:22.640 --> 01:30:31.600
of choice. And many people, there's both sides of this. On one hand, there's many people who don't

1110
01:30:31.600 --> 01:30:39.040
start because of out of fear of what other people are going to say about them. And that ends up

1111
01:30:39.040 --> 01:30:45.120
paralyzing them. And so when I talk about death and the fact that most people will move on in

1112
01:30:45.120 --> 01:30:48.960
weeks, not years. And like they're going to go from the funeral and go to a pizza place and they're

1113
01:30:48.960 --> 01:30:52.080
all just going to like have dinner. And then they're going to like go to school the next day.

1114
01:30:52.800 --> 01:31:01.280
It's crazy, but it's also reality. And I think in minimizing that, for me, when I

1115
01:31:01.280 --> 01:31:05.600
stay this message, it's so that people, it decreases the perceived fear around taking the action

1116
01:31:05.600 --> 01:31:08.240
and potentially failing. Yeah. No one's going to care anyways. Yeah.

1117
01:31:09.600 --> 01:31:20.080
On the other extreme, I think that there are many people who want a legacy. And I tend to take a

1118
01:31:20.080 --> 01:31:25.600
universe look at it, which is, you know, if I try to make it real, I say, okay, do you know who your

1119
01:31:25.600 --> 01:31:32.320
great, great, great grandfather is? You probably don't know their name. And they're the reason you're

1120
01:31:32.320 --> 01:31:39.760
here today. And so that's not that long ago. Yeah. And so we have this. And I think it's just,

1121
01:31:39.760 --> 01:31:47.280
we all have a desire to matter. We all have that. And I, in my life, that obsession handicap me,

1122
01:31:47.920 --> 01:31:54.960
which is why I make so much kind of countering that, which is that I think I've had a deep-seated

1123
01:31:54.960 --> 01:31:59.840
fears around judgment of others and things like that. And so I have to constantly remind myself that

1124
01:32:00.640 --> 01:32:06.400
these people will not even be at my funeral. Yes. And like if they're not going to talk about me

1125
01:32:06.400 --> 01:32:12.240
at my funeral, why should I give them the power to speak over me in my life? And so it's, that's

1126
01:32:12.240 --> 01:32:17.200
the essence of what I'm getting at. And I can understand that when I make these comments about how

1127
01:32:17.200 --> 01:32:21.600
people at your funeral are going to argue over your belongings and that they're going to talk about

1128
01:32:21.600 --> 01:32:26.560
the food and the venue. And some people aren't going to make it because something came up because

1129
01:32:26.560 --> 01:32:30.960
they were busy. Some of the people that you love and care about today aren't even going to be

1130
01:32:30.960 --> 01:32:34.800
there. Yeah. Because they haven't even been there in 20 years in your life. And your friend's

1131
01:32:34.800 --> 01:32:38.720
family won't even know to have invited them. And does it even matter if they're invited? Because

1132
01:32:38.720 --> 01:32:43.280
you're already dead. Yeah. A lot of people get very triggered by that. And I think it's because

1133
01:32:43.920 --> 01:32:47.920
humans have a fear of death and that makes sense. But I think that for me,

1134
01:32:48.880 --> 01:32:57.280
trying to use death as my ultimate motivator, insofar as if I can embrace the idea that I will die

1135
01:32:57.920 --> 01:33:04.560
and I will eventually be forgotten. Now everyone's like, we're 10,000 years, 100,000 years,

1136
01:33:04.560 --> 01:33:07.920
eventually. Yes. Right. There'll be a start. You know, the son will have a mega death in

1137
01:33:07.920 --> 01:33:13.760
who knows, right? Like whatever. And and when I mean, who are we really paying attention to the

1138
01:33:13.840 --> 01:33:20.160
people in the 1100s? Are we really? You mean like, okay, there's six people who even have one book.

1139
01:33:20.160 --> 01:33:25.200
You know, I mean, like, okay, maybe, right? And that's not that long ago, right? The reason I saw

1140
01:33:25.200 --> 01:33:31.200
for like or try to really look death in the face and become comfortable with it is because

1141
01:33:32.160 --> 01:33:38.240
if I can accept that as zero, then everything that I get to do in my life is free range.

1142
01:33:39.040 --> 01:33:44.320
It's called launch. I can I can I can I can make my own way. And I think that that has been

1143
01:33:44.320 --> 01:33:49.520
something that has given me tremendous freedom of action and agency around being able to

1144
01:33:50.960 --> 01:33:55.920
make up my own demo. Yeah. For my own life. Yeah. And I think that that is why I hit on that. And I

1145
01:33:55.920 --> 01:34:00.080
and I push on that button because that's also because I have so many people who messaged me being like,

1146
01:34:00.080 --> 01:34:04.400
I was borderline suicidal. And when I when I really thought about it, the way you broke it down,

1147
01:34:04.400 --> 01:34:09.600
it was like all these people that I that I I cared so much about their opinions. Like they don't

1148
01:34:09.600 --> 01:34:13.440
even they're not even going to remember me. Yeah. Like they're they're they're they're going to have

1149
01:34:13.440 --> 01:34:18.880
like a couple jokes too soon about my death too soon, bro. Yeah. Like they're going to say it. Like,

1150
01:34:18.880 --> 01:34:24.480
you know, like, it's going to happen. And I think that that allows me to not take my failures as

1151
01:34:24.480 --> 01:34:32.160
seriously or my successes. Yeah. And I think if that idea resonates with people. Yeah. Take it.

1152
01:34:32.160 --> 01:34:36.080
And if it does it ignore it. Yeah. Like it's so simple. I'm good with it. Yeah.

1153
01:34:36.080 --> 01:34:42.800
You're like through this idea. Yeah. By all means. Yeah. Well, I am grateful for you in your work.

1154
01:34:44.320 --> 01:34:48.480
And yeah. And thank you so much for coming on the show. Seriously, this was such a treat.

1155
01:34:48.480 --> 01:34:54.560
Yeah. Instead of leaving a legacy, try living one.