WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.320 You're not going to build like the massive, massive fortune unless the thing you sell is good. 2 00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:08.400 And so what happens is most entrepreneurs are promotional, promote too soon. 3 00:00:08.760 --> 00:00:12.000 And then they have to fight this uphill battle for the rest of their existence. 4 00:00:15.280 --> 00:00:18.120 Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more 5 00:00:18.120 --> 00:00:21.360 per customer and how to keep them longer and the many failures and lessons we have learned 6 00:00:21.360 --> 00:00:23.320 along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. 7 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:29.440 Are there particular things that you see me just even looking at an entrepreneur's calendar 8 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:33.840 or you're like, okay, with that, you can tell right away, okay, this is not optimized or the 9 00:00:33.840 --> 00:00:36.160 focus isn't in the right place. Like what types of things stick out? 10 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:42.720 Well, the single commentary that every entrepreneur has to get over over time is really 11 00:00:42.720 --> 00:00:47.760 pushing control. So entrepreneurship is a continual giving up of control at all levels. 12 00:00:47.760 --> 00:00:51.520 And so whatever they're doing is usually the thing that they need to be able to give up and 13 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:54.960 transfer to somebody else in order to get further and further above the business and get more 14 00:00:54.960 --> 00:01:00.160 leverage. And so in the beginning, you have to give up delivery or you have to give up selling 15 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:03.760 or you have to give up promoting. You have to give up something or administrative tasks. 16 00:01:03.760 --> 00:01:07.600 And you look at your calendar and you say which of these things is most easy to replace in the 17 00:01:07.600 --> 00:01:12.080 marketplace and is the cheapest one that I can replace. And you replace the first one that gives 18 00:01:12.080 --> 00:01:15.280 you the most time for at least amount of money. And then you're like, great, now I should fill my 19 00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:18.800 time up with the thing that makes me more money. And fundamentally, that is the game as you just 20 00:01:18.800 --> 00:01:23.280 continue to trade up the time until you have bought all of your time back. And then you can just do 21 00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:28.240 all the highest leverage activities and leverage just being defined as getting more for what you put in. 22 00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:33.200 Now, well, this is a concept that I think when people hear it, they probably will not 23 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:36.880 along. And yet you not both know this. I think so many entrepreneurs struggle with it and struggle 24 00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:40.320 with that relinquishment of control. No one can do it as well as they can. No one can do it. 25 00:01:40.320 --> 00:01:43.760 You know, quite the way they do. What's the answer there? How do you get somebody to the point 26 00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:50.800 where they actually start doing it? Confirmation. This is why you're poor. Like we can, I mean, 27 00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:54.240 you can keep doing what you're doing. It's just you're going to keep getting what you're getting. 28 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:58.160 And so the question is whether you want to keep getting what you're getting or you're willing 29 00:01:58.160 --> 00:02:00.640 to change something. I mean, it's the same as someone trying to lose weight saying I want to keep 30 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:04.400 eating the same diet, but I look the same. You're like, yeah, so you have a diet of time that you 31 00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:08.400 continue to eat or let something else eat your time every single day. And you expect the 32 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:13.120 outcome to look different. It's just not true. And so I think just a very logical breakdown where 33 00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:16.960 someone says, you have to confront it. You have to confront reality and a lot of entrepreneurs 34 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:19.920 are delusional. Sometimes it's a good way. You know, you have to be optimistically delusional 35 00:02:19.920 --> 00:02:24.880 in the certain capacity to be an entrepreneur. But a lot of times that delusion takes control 36 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:28.000 and they believe the false statements that you just said, right? Which is like no one can do it 37 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:33.040 like I can do it. I'm irreplaceable, etc, etc. But like every single human on planet earth is 38 00:02:33.040 --> 00:02:37.600 replaced in a hundred years. Yeah. And the likelihood is that if you were doing it and you're also 39 00:02:37.600 --> 00:02:41.520 doing other things, then somebody doing full time what you're doing will be better than you are. 40 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:44.160 And I can personally guarantee that a hundred people doing full time what you're doing are going 41 00:02:44.160 --> 00:02:51.440 to be better than you are. So that's a little side the side quest here. A lot of entrepreneurs 42 00:02:51.440 --> 00:02:55.920 learn the wrong lessons from experiences. So we talked about having experiences earlier and 43 00:02:55.920 --> 00:02:59.040 you make the lesson, etc. But the thing is that most people learn the wrong lessons. So I'll give you 44 00:02:59.040 --> 00:03:02.320 an example. A small business owner hires the first salesperson. Like I'm going to give up control 45 00:03:02.320 --> 00:03:05.200 of sales. I'm going to give to this person. They're going to start selling. And of course, 46 00:03:05.200 --> 00:03:08.560 the person takes, okay, because they also don't know how to hire a bandage recruit, 47 00:03:08.560 --> 00:03:12.080 train salespeople because they don't have that skill set yet either. But they bring this person 48 00:03:12.240 --> 00:03:16.640 on the person fails, right? There's lots of lessons you can get from that. But one lesson that's 49 00:03:16.640 --> 00:03:21.840 common is that salespeople don't work, right? Or no salesperson can sell like I can. Right? And so 50 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:26.800 then as soon as they have that belief, forever, until that belief has changed, they will not make 51 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:31.280 one money. And the thing is, there's a lot of those salesman beliefs at every single level of 52 00:03:31.280 --> 00:03:38.400 entrepreneurship. But the correct lesson is phrasing the thing that didn't work as deficiency 53 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:44.160 personally, which is, okay, this salesman didn't work. I do not know how to and then insert 54 00:03:44.160 --> 00:03:51.840 the problem recruit, hire, train, manage a salesperson. Great. That's all. Let's go solve that. 55 00:03:52.480 --> 00:03:57.840 And then that is the process all the way up. But you have to admit it. It's like AA, right? 56 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:01.760 You got to make your problem. And until they do and that's where the humility comes into play. 57 00:04:01.760 --> 00:04:05.280 And that's what that's what platoes many entrepreneurs that they cannot admit that anyone else could 58 00:04:05.280 --> 00:04:09.040 do about it. And most people would do about it. And I think it's a much better belief. 59 00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:12.160 They're like, everyone could do everything about it. It's great. I'm not needed. And that's the 60 00:04:12.160 --> 00:04:17.680 point. You want to own the business, not have the business on you. It's interesting. It's so many 61 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:21.600 entrepreneurs, I mean, I don't know if this is direct correlation exists, but it seems like 62 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:24.880 the more successful they are. I mean, when you really start getting up there, eight figures, 63 00:04:24.880 --> 00:04:28.720 nine figures, ten figures beyond, it's like, you start to see greater levels of humility. And I 64 00:04:28.720 --> 00:04:32.720 wonder if to an extent, and this doesn't apply to everyone, but it's always striking to me how 65 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:37.680 someone can still have ego if they have built a business from nothing and just just the humbling 66 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:41.440 process of even building an organization, the lessons you have to learn, how, you know, 67 00:04:41.440 --> 00:04:46.720 just the challenge that you experience, the pain, you know, in many cases that to come out of 68 00:04:46.720 --> 00:04:50.320 that with ego, but yet the ones that know all the answers, have it all figured out, 69 00:04:50.320 --> 00:04:53.680 no, I'm good. I already read that book. I already, you know, I already heard that like they're 70 00:04:53.680 --> 00:05:00.240 the ones that seem to be struggling the most. I agree. I also think that you can have situation 71 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:04.560 until you go. So because there are definitely some very wealthy people who are very successful, 72 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:09.440 who do have egos who are soft made. I can attest to that there are. There are also many, many, 73 00:05:09.440 --> 00:05:14.480 many who are very humble in general, but I think it's also domain specific. You know, if you can be 74 00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:19.200 humble, humble with business and arrogant with women, you can be arrogant with your physique, 75 00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:22.720 but humble, but you know, I mean, so I think I think it's much, it's a little bit more nuanced 76 00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:25.920 overall. That big said, there's totally people who are arrogant and everything they do. But I do 77 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:30.480 think that it's more domain specific and even within the business, somebody might have an ego 78 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:35.360 around hugger there at marketing, but not an ego around hugger there at HR, right? It's a really 79 00:05:35.360 --> 00:05:43.440 comes down to how do they associate their self worth with something? However close the action 80 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:48.640 is to the association they have with their identity and their worth, the harder it is to peel away 81 00:05:48.640 --> 00:05:52.480 from their grip. Like a lot of entrepreneurs who are promotional or product revenue entrepreneurs, 82 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:56.720 don't have any problem outsourcing finance. Like, it's not like they don't have a huge sting 83 00:05:56.720 --> 00:06:01.120 with that, right? But they have a huge problem if someone wants to take over product or take over 84 00:06:01.120 --> 00:06:04.560 promotion or whatever for the business. And so it's because they just derived their self worth 85 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:07.840 from that. And so that's that's why a lot of the entrepreneurship is a head game. 86 00:06:10.080 --> 00:06:14.400 Yeah. And I'm curious. I mean, now with acquisition.com and by the way, 87 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:18.480 if just at the time when you were launching that company and starting it, how much was the domain 88 00:06:18.480 --> 00:06:22.160 by the way? Like was this like a big big investment just to get the domain or was it just 89 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:28.480 just 370,000? Okay. Okay. Obviously, at this point, it's been worth it. But what was your vision 90 00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:32.560 for acquisition.com? I wanted it to be the family office for, you know, 91 00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:36.560 Layla and I to invest our capital into businesses that we believed in with founders that we thought 92 00:06:36.560 --> 00:06:40.960 were awesome. And products that we believe, you know, we're going to help people. And so 93 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:45.040 that's more or less what we've done. And the whole idea was I wonder if we can build a personal 94 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:49.600 brand where people would listen to our content and say, Hey, I want to work with these guys. And 95 00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:53.600 so what happens is that the goal was that it would create a somewhat of a pre filtering process 96 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:57.360 for values because if you can get values alignment, it's a lot, it's kind of like the marriage thing. 97 00:06:57.360 --> 00:07:01.040 Like if we have similar mission, similar values, it's a lot easier to get along. That was a theory. 98 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:06.320 I didn't know if it was going to work. But it certainly has. We get a lot of companies every day 99 00:07:06.320 --> 00:07:11.600 that reach out to us that, you know, we're looking for investors to either buy, you know, a minority 100 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:15.280 or a majority stake in the company to help them scale, which is very much what we do. So we are 101 00:07:15.280 --> 00:07:20.640 we are active in our portfolio. So that's I mean, that's where we make our money is actively growing 102 00:07:20.640 --> 00:07:25.200 the companies themselves and recruiting in great people to help scale the businesses. 103 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:30.960 And it seems like business is kind of like a forever venture for you. And in many ways, 104 00:07:30.960 --> 00:07:35.440 I mean, obviously, you love building businesses, but this gives you a way to scratch that itch 105 00:07:35.440 --> 00:07:40.720 and so many different industries and verticals. And so the best businesses have a compounding 106 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:45.120 vehicle built into them. And most businesses don't, which is why most businesses are not the best 107 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:51.680 businesses, right? And so you can have a compounding vehicle in terms of capital as in like there's 108 00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:56.560 an allocation of capital that exists within the business. Like every time we open up a new facility, 109 00:07:56.560 --> 00:08:00.880 we get 50% on our money. And so the question is, how many times can we open up new facilities? 110 00:08:00.880 --> 00:08:05.760 Like that would be an example. If we have customers, let's say if it's a national thing rather than, 111 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:10.080 you know, brick and mortar locations, if every time a customer comes to us, they bring another, 112 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:15.600 you know, 1.3 customers, then we know that over time, no matter how big we get, as long as we 113 00:08:15.600 --> 00:08:19.440 retain the quality of our, of our deliverable, we will get more and more people who will continue 114 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:23.600 to come to us. The other way to do that would be you have people who always keep selling for you. 115 00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:28.640 So even if you were, let's say, let's say you sell solar, right? It's transactional. People 116 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:33.680 aren't really going to get a second roof. But if you as the business owner know that every salesperson 117 00:08:33.680 --> 00:08:39.120 brings you two roofs a month, then your compounding is on the actual salespeople themselves. And so 118 00:08:39.120 --> 00:08:43.760 you go from having two people who get you two roofs a month to eight people to and every every 119 00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:48.720 month, you keep bringing them on and then they become a consistent production. But the number of 120 00:08:48.720 --> 00:08:52.800 salespeople compounds. And so those are the only ways to build forever businesses. Those are the 121 00:08:52.800 --> 00:08:57.120 types of businesses that we were interested in is in 30 years, well, this thing would be massive. 122 00:08:57.120 --> 00:09:02.480 And if that's true, then all we have to do is wait. Yeah. And it seems like you're especially 123 00:09:02.480 --> 00:09:07.440 passionate about great products, products that, you know, do a great job to almost, they do the 124 00:09:07.520 --> 00:09:11.760 marketing for you. And then ultimately scaling through customers, customers referring other 125 00:09:11.760 --> 00:09:18.320 customers. It's easier. I mean, so it's selfish. It's just it's a lazy man's way of doing it. 126 00:09:18.320 --> 00:09:23.680 It's long term lazy. It's short term effort. But it's long term lazy because think about this 127 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:30.480 way, I could spend two years perfecting a book, right? And making it amazing and really put a 128 00:09:30.480 --> 00:09:35.360 pouring my heart and soul to it. And then after that two years, release it. And then for the rest 129 00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:40.000 of time, have people who buy the book tell other people about the book. And so I spent two years, 130 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:44.960 but then from that point going forward, customers market everything for me and everything that comes 131 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:50.400 in off of the book is profit, right? The flip side is that I spend two months writing a book that's 132 00:09:50.400 --> 00:09:55.520 decent, but not great. And then I have to spend the rest of my life promoting it. And that in 133 00:09:55.520 --> 00:10:00.080 so doing, I also get lots of people to find out that I have a mediocre book. It just makes less 134 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:04.640 sense that the thing is is it just takes so much more time to front load that effort to make an 135 00:10:04.640 --> 00:10:08.640 exceptional product or service that most people aren't willing to do it. And so most people's 136 00:10:08.640 --> 00:10:13.280 products, like the real big, obvious answer of why people don't make more money is they're just 137 00:10:13.280 --> 00:10:18.880 not that good. And specifically from an ego perspective, they're just not as good as they think 138 00:10:18.880 --> 00:10:24.960 they are. So how do you, I mean, is there a balance or how do you know when something is ready? Like 139 00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:29.200 essentially, if you're trying to make something perfect that you can run into procrastination, 140 00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:32.320 I'm seeing this right now. I'm working on a second book. I didn't know I didn't know anyone 141 00:10:32.320 --> 00:10:35.200 read the first book. It turns out a few people read the first book. So now I'm trying to make the 142 00:10:35.200 --> 00:10:38.560 second one, you know, even better because now like, okay, people are going to read this thing. 143 00:10:38.560 --> 00:10:42.080 I know you're working on your next book as well. At what point do you know, okay, this, 144 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:47.440 this is ready. Oh, and for me, there was nothing left to do. Like anything else that I would add 145 00:10:47.440 --> 00:10:51.680 or subtract to it would make it worse. Now, that's not always the case. You know, I mean, with a 146 00:10:51.680 --> 00:10:54.960 product, like a book is a very defined, literally has bookends, right? There's beginning and 147 00:10:54.960 --> 00:10:59.040 isn't. But if you have a software product, for example, I share those more from a conceptual 148 00:10:59.040 --> 00:11:04.400 perspective as an ideal. But like, the idea is to have a consistent cadence where you're 149 00:11:04.400 --> 00:11:10.080 approving the product on an ongoing basis, right? And so, but the thing is just front-loading that 150 00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:14.160 because until you have the product market fit, until you have a certain percentage of people who 151 00:11:14.160 --> 00:11:19.440 are or bringing their own friends to try your thing, it's still not right. And so what ends 152 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:22.480 up happening is that, especially if you have a promotion driven entrepreneur, so somebody really 153 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:26.560 understands how to market and sell, this is where it almost gets dangerous. It's just that 154 00:11:26.560 --> 00:11:30.640 you can make a few million dollars, 10 million dollars, being really good at marketing 155 00:11:30.640 --> 00:11:35.520 sales. And so, you could become a multimilater doing that. It's just if you're not going to build 156 00:11:35.520 --> 00:11:40.720 like the massive, massive fortune, unless the thing you sell is good. And so what happens is most 157 00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:46.000 entrepreneur promotional promote too soon. And then they have to fight this upheaval for the rest 158 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:49.440 of their existence. And the thing is is it gets reinforced because they get better and better at 159 00:11:49.440 --> 00:11:53.920 marketing. And so they market more and more and more and more. At some point, especially if it's 160 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:58.880 like D to C, so like, you know, directing to work products, you go into colder and colder audiences 161 00:11:58.880 --> 00:12:03.520 who are less and less likely to buy your thing. And so your cost to acquire continues to rise over 162 00:12:03.520 --> 00:12:07.920 time because also advertising costs only go one way, which is up, just the cost variable. And so 163 00:12:07.920 --> 00:12:12.160 you've got multiple forces that are going against you that are decreasing your profitability. 164 00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:16.720 And unless you have a concurrent force or something that's going in parallel with that growth, 165 00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:20.800 which is your customers bring you other customers to decrease that cost of acquisition, you eventually 166 00:12:20.960 --> 00:12:24.480 had a plateau where you can do lots of revenue and not a lot of profit and you can't grow from 167 00:12:24.480 --> 00:12:27.200 there. And that's where sometimes you have to have hard car rescues with the entrepreneur, but 168 00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:31.360 like this thing just isn't good enough. And we need to maybe dial back a little bit. And so like 169 00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:36.880 the original idea of getting your first acquisition channel going, whatever it is, is not to then scale 170 00:12:36.880 --> 00:12:40.640 that. The idea is that you get enough customers in that you can get feedback, continue to improve the 171 00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:45.360 product. And then once you get enough people referring and bringing friends, which is my lit mistest, 172 00:12:45.360 --> 00:12:48.960 for it is good enough, then you scale it. Now, you still consistently want to make it better, 173 00:12:49.040 --> 00:12:54.000 better, better, absolutely. But lit mistest is, am I getting referrals? Once you have that, then 174 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:57.920 all of your marketing efforts from there on out are going to be enhanced. And then that's what's 175 00:12:57.920 --> 00:13:01.600 going to allow you to outcompete your competition who wasn't so long-sighted and always just wanted 176 00:13:01.600 --> 00:13:07.440 to make the next buck. Real quick guys, if you can think about how you found this podcast, 177 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:12.080 somebody probably tweeted it, told you about it, shared it on Instagram or something like that. 178 00:13:12.080 --> 00:13:16.800 The only way this grows is through word of mouth. And so I don't run ads, I don't do sponsorships, 179 00:13:16.800 --> 00:13:21.040 I don't sell anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you 180 00:13:21.040 --> 00:13:25.680 or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing. So if it was a review, 181 00:13:25.680 --> 00:13:28.640 if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me and you'll throw some good 182 00:13:28.640 --> 00:13:33.760 karma out there for another entrepreneur. Speaking of competition, how do you view competition? 183 00:13:33.760 --> 00:13:38.480 I mean, I remember you mentioned the story of the gentleman that screwed you over early on, 184 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:42.160 although at this point, you know, I almost feel sorry for them, right? Because if they kind of hung in 185 00:13:42.160 --> 00:13:46.160 and things were probably gone much better for them, just seeing your rise. But it seemed like you 186 00:13:46.160 --> 00:13:50.160 never were vengeful about it. You know, you always just had to move forward. And I imagine just 187 00:13:50.160 --> 00:13:54.240 in your different businesses you've had your dealings with various competitors, some say, you know, 188 00:13:54.240 --> 00:13:58.400 the steeper the climb, the sharper the knives, like what's your thought on a competition? 189 00:13:59.200 --> 00:14:03.680 So, you know, one, I love this quote. I think the first time I heard it was from Rick War as a pastor, 190 00:14:03.680 --> 00:14:09.120 he said, anger is like tricking poison and hoping the other person dies. And so it just like, 191 00:14:09.120 --> 00:14:12.640 it doesn't serve you. So many times, I think many of us have had these experiences where you just 192 00:14:12.640 --> 00:14:17.200 obsess about being angry at someone and how could they, how dare they? And most of anger comes from 193 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:21.200 ego. Go back to the humility thing, which is like, I just, you've filmed it fundamentally to you 194 00:14:21.200 --> 00:14:26.480 deserve better, right? If you don't think you deserve anything, then a lot of times it can diffuse 195 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:30.640 a lot of the situations because you're like, well, in 500 million years, this probably won't matter. 196 00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:35.680 And if you scale out wide enough, the earth doesn't look like anything but a speck of dust or even, 197 00:14:35.680 --> 00:14:38.880 you can't even see it. And so it just gives a little bit of perspective on how much this is really 198 00:14:39.680 --> 00:14:44.000 from a competition perspective, there's an obsession with small business owners around competition. 199 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:49.760 And I would say that like most small business owners look at other small business owners 200 00:14:49.760 --> 00:14:53.760 and see them as competition, but like they are not competition. Usually both people just have 201 00:14:53.760 --> 00:14:58.080 shitty products, which is why they have small businesses. And so I would say obsess over your 202 00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:03.520 customers, not your competition, the competition takes care of itself. And as an aside, it's interesting 203 00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:07.520 because again, this is kind of a more of a small business owner perspective, but like the private 204 00:15:07.680 --> 00:15:12.720 equity in the investment world, if they see three companies that serve a similar avatar, they just 205 00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:16.880 buy all three and combine them. And so like as much as you might have a blood feud with this person, 206 00:15:16.880 --> 00:15:21.520 like the person who's a level up from you, just sees it as three different cultures that serve 207 00:15:21.520 --> 00:15:25.440 the same avatar with slightly, you know, slight differences. And then they merge them into a much 208 00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:29.280 bigger company that has, you know, obviously it doesn't always go that way. There's cultural 209 00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:33.760 differences, blah, blah, blah, etc. But I think just seeing it like that, I see so many competitors 210 00:15:33.760 --> 00:15:38.880 who like, you know, wanted to kill each other. And even even in the gym world, there was a guy 211 00:15:38.880 --> 00:15:42.800 who was, he considered himself to be a competitor of ours. And I reached out to him and he thought 212 00:15:42.800 --> 00:15:47.680 that I had some like ill intent and like now we're decent friends. He's like, I always hated you. 213 00:15:47.680 --> 00:15:52.960 And I was like, yeah, I didn't think about you. Well, it's these one way, you know, like obsessing 214 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:57.760 over things that are having only in the entrepreneurs one. And I think that that is the biggest cost 215 00:15:57.760 --> 00:16:02.320 of competition is the obsession of whatever else is doing rather than taking that same obsession 216 00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:06.560 and applying it to your customers. And that would make you more money. Yeah. I've heard you say, 217 00:16:06.560 --> 00:16:10.240 like, I know a lot of this is a mental game. People thinking about, well, what's someone going to 218 00:16:10.240 --> 00:16:13.840 think of me? What are they going to think of my decisions? My choices. If I do this, if I go left, 219 00:16:13.840 --> 00:16:17.680 if I go right. And I think you said something on the lines of, you know, one day you're going to pass, 220 00:16:17.680 --> 00:16:20.400 it's, you know, there's going to be your funeral. And then, you know, there's going to be people 221 00:16:20.400 --> 00:16:24.720 who don't make it just because something came up that day. Yeah. There would be people want to eat, 222 00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:30.000 people who are arguing over who gets what most of the people that you met your entire life are 223 00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:34.880 going to make it. And so, like, and I mean, it's kind of like, I mean, I made this tweet and it 224 00:16:34.880 --> 00:16:38.640 would really viral. But, you know, the queen of England died, I think, like eight or nine months ago. 225 00:16:38.640 --> 00:16:43.440 Now, you know, she had massed more wealth than 99.99% of the population. She was a monarch for 226 00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:48.640 70 years, which has to be at close to a record. She did it as a female, which is even more amazing 227 00:16:48.640 --> 00:16:53.680 from the times that she came in to power and whatnot. And whoever's listening to this problem is 228 00:16:53.680 --> 00:16:57.600 in thought about the Queen of England. And she was, you know, one of the old time goats have just 229 00:16:57.600 --> 00:17:01.280 like success if you want to define it that way. We're so self centered that we assume that 230 00:17:01.280 --> 00:17:04.640 everyone's going to cry when we die, but most of us won't even be remembered for six months. 231 00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:09.120 And so, I think we have all this irrational fear around taking bigger swings, doing the things 232 00:17:09.120 --> 00:17:13.440 that we want to do, making whatever dreams we have real or at least giving it a shot. We play 233 00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:17.200 these these videotapes in our minds of these future scenarios where people who aren't thinking 234 00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:20.560 about us are saying things that they're not having been thinking because they don't care about 235 00:17:20.560 --> 00:17:25.360 you and they think about themselves. And so it's like, no one's thinking about you. And I think 236 00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:30.400 getting over yourself is a really good way to be able to have more personal freedom in the choices 237 00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:36.480 we make and take on big risks. Yeah. And I want to get your take on on AI. I know you've posted 238 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:39.920 a bit about this. I want to get your perspective now. I think when you post it one time, it's about 239 00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:45.040 chat GPT-3 and now we're GPT-4. Maybe, you know, we'll be on to the next one soon enough. Like, 240 00:17:45.040 --> 00:17:48.000 how do you think? I mean, if a lot of people listening to this podcast, they're 241 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:52.320 they're running a law firm professional service-based business. Like how do you think it'll impact 242 00:17:52.320 --> 00:17:57.520 those types of businesses? It will. It will impact those businesses. I'll just say my 243 00:17:57.520 --> 00:18:01.600 two cents, which is the people who will win. I mean, this isn't even my quote, but like, you're not 244 00:18:01.600 --> 00:18:05.840 going to get replaced by AI. You'll get replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI better than you. 245 00:18:05.840 --> 00:18:11.920 And that's like the short to medium term. I mean, AI is scary, man. I think it's a big black box. 246 00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:15.760 I think humans are exceptionally better predicting outcomes. I mean, even if you had asked two 247 00:18:15.760 --> 00:18:18.880 years ago, which jobs AI is going to take first, people would have said blue collar would have been, 248 00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:23.120 you know, drivers, laborers, etc. And it actually went all the way to top to the most creative 249 00:18:23.120 --> 00:18:27.360 jobs. I went to, you know, video images and design and text. And so I think we're really 250 00:18:27.360 --> 00:18:32.240 bad at predicting what's going to happen. From a risk-adjusted basis, you know, the investment 251 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:36.080 feels not worth it. And I know that that's really contrary and I'll say this way. It's like 252 00:18:37.280 --> 00:18:42.240 AI has the possibility to really amazingly improve humanity. And we know that technology 253 00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:46.400 does not change our subjective well being one bit. So we were just as happy and unhappy as we 254 00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:50.880 were if anything, we're a little bit less happy with more technology. And on the downside risk is 255 00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:56.720 all humans are gone. And so the upside is we're just about as happy as we are now. And the downside 256 00:18:56.720 --> 00:19:00.720 is we're all not here. And so for me, if I were just to look at it from a risk-adjusted basis, 257 00:19:00.720 --> 00:19:04.240 I probably wouldn't make that bet. That being said, the cat is out of the bag and now we have to play 258 00:19:04.240 --> 00:19:08.640 the cards without. And so I think for everybody who is listening, it would be who you to spend your 259 00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:14.880 weekends learning how to prompt the engineer staying up to date with the new plugins and overlays 260 00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:19.920 and auto GPT and baby AGI and all these things that are coming out. Because if you aren't, 261 00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:24.960 your competitors are and the thing is the scale and speed of these is so robust, it would be able 262 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:30.400 to compress progress that used to take years and two weeks. And so if someone has a little bit 263 00:19:30.400 --> 00:19:35.280 of an edge, it might be a lot of an edge really quick. So don't sleep on it. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's 264 00:19:35.280 --> 00:19:39.520 it's the rate of improvement that's that's in almost like the unchecked rate of improvement. That's 265 00:19:39.520 --> 00:19:44.560 either the most exciting or in in some cases the scariest aspect of it. And yet like you said, 266 00:19:44.560 --> 00:19:48.720 I mean, the cat's out of the bag. At this point, it's, you know, it's here and just learn and leverage 267 00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:53.360 it. What about any other skills that you believe like just are valuable for people to develop? 268 00:19:54.400 --> 00:19:58.880 I think having the mindset that character traits that are desirable are not actually traits 269 00:19:58.880 --> 00:20:02.800 their skills. Because if you were to say like somebody who is honest or someone who is persistent 270 00:20:02.800 --> 00:20:06.160 or someone who is loyal, you're like, well, what does that mean? Well, it means that somebody who 271 00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:11.760 acts in this way and under these circumstances. And so if you can act in this way to these 272 00:20:11.760 --> 00:20:15.600 circumstances, that means you can expose yourself to these circumstances to act a certain way. 273 00:20:15.600 --> 00:20:21.200 And that means you can learn it. And so traits are learnable. You're not born with them. You learn 274 00:20:21.200 --> 00:20:25.760 them. You reinforce them over time. And then you become different. I use quotes here because you 275 00:20:25.760 --> 00:20:34.880 behave differently. And so I think I'll leave with this. Intelligence is a rate of learning. 276 00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:40.080 It's a speed. How quickly do you learn? And then you have to define learning. Learning is same 277 00:20:40.160 --> 00:20:46.000 condition, new behavior. So if I say, Hey, when I show you this red thing, I'm going to slap you. 278 00:20:46.560 --> 00:20:50.080 And I show it. And then I slap somebody. And then I show it. And then I slap them on the third 279 00:20:50.080 --> 00:20:53.840 time. I show it to them. And they duck, right? Same condition, new behavior. They've learned 280 00:20:54.480 --> 00:21:00.080 somebody who's smarter. I show it once. And on the second time, I go to slap them and they duck. 281 00:21:00.080 --> 00:21:06.080 So they have more intelligence. And so if you want to be smarter, the key is to change your 282 00:21:06.080 --> 00:21:13.600 behavior faster. And so I think in that way, it operationalizes knowledge. Probably a lot of 283 00:21:13.600 --> 00:21:18.480 lawyers are big readers and they love, you know, the mental masturbation of like consuming stuff. 284 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:23.040 But if your behavior does not change after you go to a workshop or seminar, you listen to this 285 00:21:23.040 --> 00:21:29.440 podcast, if your behavior doesn't change, you learned nothing, which means you are not that smart. 286 00:21:30.080 --> 00:21:33.840 I love it. I love it. What's the day in the life like right now for you? I mean, you don't have 287 00:21:33.840 --> 00:21:39.600 any hobbies. You don't golf. Like what? What are you up to? Just business stuff for the most part. 288 00:21:39.600 --> 00:21:44.160 I mean, you know, today I was talking to buddy of mine who works for public CEOs and I was 289 00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:47.680 bouncing some ideas off of him in terms of like our investment thesis and kind of our portfolio 290 00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:53.600 strategy. And then I had a meeting of portfolio auto. So it's just like looking at some of the companies 291 00:21:53.600 --> 00:21:57.360 that we have and some of the issues that are coming up and kind of how we're going to resolve them 292 00:21:57.360 --> 00:22:01.520 and allocate resources around those and a meeting with a book manager for the next book launch 293 00:22:01.600 --> 00:22:05.280 that's coming out just making sure that our order quantity is a right and then we have the right mix 294 00:22:05.280 --> 00:22:10.720 you know, between you know, paperback hardback, you know, is the is the shipping guy ready in terms of 295 00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:16.320 like what's expected volumes, you know, from there I have this podcast. And so it's a mix back for 296 00:22:16.320 --> 00:22:20.560 me for me, mostly my mornings are working on one big thing for a very long period of time. So the 297 00:22:20.560 --> 00:22:24.960 book was my first six hours every day for the last two years. That's that now. So now it's just 298 00:22:24.960 --> 00:22:28.160 getting into the kind of the promotional cycle for that book and making sure it gets printed in 299 00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:32.720 shifters and all that kind of stuff. Once that book launches, I'll probably be allocating all of my 300 00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:37.760 first six hours of the day to some other very big project. But that's funny. I work on very few 301 00:22:37.760 --> 00:22:43.120 things for a long time. Yeah. And it seems at this point like your motivations perhaps have changed. 302 00:22:43.120 --> 00:22:46.000 I don't know if you're running away from anything at this point. I don't know. You're trying to prove 303 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:49.520 anybody wrong. Like what's what keeps the fire burning? What keeps you excited? What keeps you 304 00:22:49.520 --> 00:22:53.280 energized? I mean, it's it seems like it's not the money. You already have that. So what what keeps you 305 00:22:53.280 --> 00:23:02.000 going? I like it. I think it's it. I just like it. What I look forward to doing. I write books about 306 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:05.440 business. I draw pictures about business. I make videos about business. I do business all day. 307 00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:08.800 I enjoy it. It's what I enjoy doing. And I just happen to be fortunate in the thing that I like 308 00:23:09.360 --> 00:23:14.320 happens to be, you know, valuable tool marketplace that exchanges money. If I liked gardening, 309 00:23:14.320 --> 00:23:17.840 I would be out of a super duper garden. I know I don't know if I'd make as much money, but I would 310 00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:23.600 not. But that that's pretty much it. I'll leave with this. I had a mentor really early on in my life 311 00:23:23.600 --> 00:23:27.680 and I had a really good weekend, right? And I just everything was like perfect that weekend. I was 312 00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:32.400 telling her how how my weekend had been. And she was like, I'm pretty sure the key to life is 313 00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:36.160 stringing as many of those days in a row as you can't. And it just kind of stuck with me because 314 00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:42.640 it operationalized improving subject to well-being, which is like, if I do the things that I like with 315 00:23:42.640 --> 00:23:48.320 the people that I like, as many days in a row as I can. I'll probably end up okay. And that's 316 00:23:48.320 --> 00:23:58.560 pretty much what I've tried to look.