WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.480
When I was 27, I had just over a million dollars in my bank account in cash. By the time I was 29,

2
00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:11.840
I had over 20. By the time I was 31, it was more than that. Here's how to get so rich you realize

3
00:00:11.840 --> 00:00:16.240
money was never the point. But first, you have to get rich. There's three strategies and the first

4
00:00:16.240 --> 00:00:22.560
one is building a brand. So I remember this point when I had launched this new product called ALN

5
00:00:22.560 --> 00:00:26.800
at the time which was supposed to be automated lead nurture. We had a big distribution base of

6
00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:32.320
gyms that used our model. And one of the big pain points they had was that they wouldn't work

7
00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:36.800
their leads or it was very time consuming and costly to continue to follow up and call

8
00:00:36.800 --> 00:00:41.440
instead of appointments and remind people to shop for their gym workouts and their sales appointments.

9
00:00:41.440 --> 00:00:49.760
And so we put together this like Zapier Frankenstein product basically that automated the text

10
00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:53.360
based on responses and it was this massive decision tree that took like six months to build.

11
00:00:54.000 --> 00:01:00.080
And when I did the release of this product, some people weren't able to be live for the release

12
00:01:00.080 --> 00:01:04.000
because they had classes, they had sessions, they had whatever. And one of the most interesting

13
00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:08.320
things that had never happened to me before is people started calling into our support team and

14
00:01:08.320 --> 00:01:12.720
saying, Hey, here's my credit card. I know that Alex launched something just like bill me for it.

15
00:01:12.720 --> 00:01:17.760
I'm in. It was the first time my life where I had people just say like, I will buy whatever he has

16
00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:25.200
based on his reputation, not based on anything else. In a word, Steve Jobs describes brand as trust.

17
00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:33.360
And I define trust as predictive power based on past experiences. Just as much as you can trust

18
00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:40.160
someone to do a bad job, you can trust someone to do a good job. And so the idea here is obviously to

19
00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:45.840
build trust that we will deliver on our promises. And so fundamentally, you build that by making promises

20
00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:51.360
and keeping or over delivering on the promises you have. But brand is a big amorphous topic. And so

21
00:01:51.360 --> 00:01:56.320
how do you measure this in dollars and cents? And so there's basically three things that brand

22
00:01:56.320 --> 00:02:03.040
translates to in terms of economics for a business. And so the first is conversion rate. Now,

23
00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:09.440
what does that mean? So conversion rate is the percentage of people who, when presented with your

24
00:02:09.440 --> 00:02:15.600
offer, choose to buy it. And so let's say that you have a bad brand or no brand at all. So that

25
00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:20.560
would mean that bad brand would be that you have a past history. People trust you to do bad stuff.

26
00:02:20.560 --> 00:02:25.760
Right? So you have you have lower than neutral. If you have no brand, then they would act as though you

27
00:02:25.760 --> 00:02:30.960
are some basically it would be based on their experience with other businesses that look like yours.

28
00:02:30.960 --> 00:02:37.360
And so this is also why quote good branding, even if you don't have a history of reinforcement,

29
00:02:37.360 --> 00:02:45.120
can still be important because if you walk talk and quack like somebody who is a scam artist,

30
00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:50.800
you will have people treat you like one. It's not just your experience, but their experience with

31
00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:56.080
people like you. Fundamentally like this is what racism is about. But people prejudge people

32
00:02:56.080 --> 00:03:00.720
because that's how we go through life. If we had to start at zero for every single person we met,

33
00:03:00.720 --> 00:03:05.440
we would use up all of the cognitive load that we have. And consumers like all humans try to use

34
00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:09.520
shorthand. We want to learn based on the things put a label on it, put it in a bucket and not

35
00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:14.560
think about it as fast as possible. And so from a conversion rate perspective, a good brand

36
00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:20.320
means that let's say neutral would be let's say you close 20% of people who you get on the phone

37
00:03:20.320 --> 00:03:25.280
with at a specific price point at negative, which actually get that I'll just put up with zero here,

38
00:03:26.080 --> 00:03:31.360
negative one. And then positive, right? Maybe and this the thing here is that this could go as

39
00:03:31.360 --> 00:03:38.240
high as you want. Like if you have an unbelievable reputation like plus plus plus, maybe you close 80%.

40
00:03:38.960 --> 00:03:43.280
And what's interesting about this is if you look and maybe here it's 0% because no one

41
00:03:43.280 --> 00:03:47.200
everyone hates you. And you basically have to rely on people who don't know who you are.

42
00:03:48.160 --> 00:03:52.320
So basically you just have to keep fighting more. You have to go advertise wider and wider to find

43
00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:57.760
people who have yet to meet you, which is a terrible way to live. Brand gives you an increase

44
00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:01.120
percentage of people who will buy one presented with your offer, just like the guy who didn't even

45
00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:05.920
need to get presented with the offer. Just knowing that I had an offer, he was willing to buy it.

46
00:04:05.920 --> 00:04:11.040
And the reason I use Apple as a great litmus test for this is that I think Steve Jobs is one

47
00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:16.400
of the best brand builders of all time. I mean people lining up to buy whatever his next product was

48
00:04:16.400 --> 00:04:21.680
because of his past history of keeping his promises and over delivering on it. And so number one is

49
00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:27.280
conversion rate. And this is like if you had nothing else, this would be worth it. If you could 4x,

50
00:04:27.280 --> 00:04:31.360
the amount of people that bought your stuff at a specific price, that would give you a material

51
00:04:31.360 --> 00:04:36.720
advantage over everyone else. But branding doesn't stop there in terms of its business benefits.

52
00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:43.520
The second is CTR. Now it's like, okay, how does click through rate? What does that really mean?

53
00:04:43.520 --> 00:04:47.280
So it's actually conversion rate again, but just earlier on in the funnel. Let's say again,

54
00:04:47.280 --> 00:04:51.200
you have eyeballs. You've got people who see your promotions in whatever way you advertise. So

55
00:04:51.200 --> 00:04:55.600
that could be making content. That could be outreach attempts responding to emails. But it's

56
00:04:55.600 --> 00:05:00.160
basically the number of engaged leads. Having a higher click through rate means people take the

57
00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:06.720
first action. They then convert on a landing page or a Shopify page or whatever. They're either

58
00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:10.800
buying a product or they're scheduling a call. And then on the call, they have a higher conversion

59
00:05:10.800 --> 00:05:13.760
rate as well. And so basically you can think about this as conversion rate throughout the entire

60
00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:18.720
process from the beginning to the money. And then obviously if you continue to do a good job

61
00:05:18.720 --> 00:05:24.720
on resales, repurchases, et cetera. So let's say that generically at negative one and then zero

62
00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:31.680
and then plus. Here you might have a 0.5% click through rate. And then here maybe you have

63
00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:36.320
a 1% click through rate. And then maybe here you have something like a 3% click through rate.

64
00:05:36.320 --> 00:05:40.560
And this is super standard. This happens all the time, especially if you're going after markets

65
00:05:40.560 --> 00:05:47.680
that already know who you are. When I launched my leads book, we had never run ads before. And so

66
00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:51.920
this was all novel. And there was a past history of the first book. So the first book has I think

67
00:05:51.920 --> 00:05:56.240
like 26,000 five stars at the point of making this video. There was a lot of anticipation for the

68
00:05:56.240 --> 00:06:04.080
second book. And so the CTRs were like 6% for our ads. And so people were signing up for the book

69
00:06:04.080 --> 00:06:08.160
launch for something like a dollar, which is crazy. And I'd never had anything like that before.

70
00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:12.240
Especially at scale. And sounds like man, these are some of the benefits of building trust with an

71
00:06:12.240 --> 00:06:18.080
audience. Now the third big brand benefit is price point. And so this is one that I think is

72
00:06:18.080 --> 00:06:23.440
probably more commonly touted. And Warren Buffett describes it like this. He says, if you have to

73
00:06:23.440 --> 00:06:28.720
say a prayer before you raise your prices by 10%, you have a bad business. And so the idea is that

74
00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:35.040
if customers love your product, they will be more willing to pay a premium to get it because

75
00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:40.560
they are paying down the risk of buying somebody else's product. And so they buy your product with

76
00:06:40.560 --> 00:06:46.000
the existing promise. And then the extra is basically their insurance that they pay you knowing that

77
00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:52.080
they're going to get exactly what they expect. I can't overemphasize how important it is to

78
00:06:52.800 --> 00:07:00.080
pay down people's risk. Like risk is one of the the three primary levers in terms of value creation.

79
00:07:00.080 --> 00:07:05.280
And so this is why McDonald's for example, even though their product in and of itself is not that good,

80
00:07:05.280 --> 00:07:11.040
it is consistent and consistency in and of itself reduces risk. And people just like to have

81
00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:16.240
their expectations met. Now what's interesting about this is that to meet everyone's expectations,

82
00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:19.280
it means that you'll have to go really high because some people have high expectations,

83
00:07:19.280 --> 00:07:23.120
some people have mediums, some people have low expectations. And so if you want to meet the

84
00:07:23.120 --> 00:07:28.400
expectations of a large percentage of the audience, you will have to try to over-deliver when the

85
00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:31.840
people who are the most demanding you will simply have delivered. Now other people you will have

86
00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:36.400
over-delivered for. But I think this idea of like you're always going to over-deliver, I don't think

87
00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:41.040
is true. I think you just have to try as hard as you can and a larger percentage of people will be

88
00:07:41.040 --> 00:07:47.040
satisfied. So let's say that they have the same base economics. So the cost of doing businesses,

89
00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:53.280
the same between these two businesses. But this business can simply charge 10% more. By doing that,

90
00:07:53.280 --> 00:07:58.640
they basically double the amount of profit that they're able to make as a result of their brand.

91
00:07:58.640 --> 00:08:04.320
There's one more point that makes brand make you even more money. And it just took me way too

92
00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:10.960
long to realize this because I got really good at marketing and sales early and I came at it from

93
00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:15.600
the perspective of like I just need to go find more people. When it's so much more profitable to

94
00:08:15.600 --> 00:08:20.080
find the existing people that you have, the already have done business with and they want to continue

95
00:08:20.080 --> 00:08:24.880
doing business with you. And so I solve now for how do I get people to always want to do business

96
00:08:24.880 --> 00:08:31.040
with me again rather than how do I find more people. The fourth piece is repurchases. And so just

97
00:08:31.040 --> 00:08:36.240
like Apple, like I was mentioning earlier, they have such an amazing system of getting people into

98
00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:40.000
their ecosystem and then buying again and again and again. And it would take a tremendous amount

99
00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:44.400
of effort to get someone to de-connect all of the products they own, their phone, their computer,

100
00:08:44.400 --> 00:08:48.880
their their music, whatever their app stores from their existing ecosystem of digital products,

101
00:08:48.880 --> 00:08:54.000
of digital hardware. The fourth benefit is that not only do you get more people to respond, more

102
00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.280
people to convert at higher prices so you can make more profit, that profit then gets multiplied.

103
00:08:59.280 --> 00:09:03.360
So if we have our our neutral example, let's put, I'm going to have to put the other one over here.

104
00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:07.920
Now we already have a higher price point. So we're already making more money than this guy.

105
00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:14.560
But not only that, the next year some of these people might buy again. What do you know? Now our

106
00:09:14.560 --> 00:09:20.800
cost basis is going to go up because obviously they're buying something else, right? But so is our

107
00:09:20.800 --> 00:09:27.760
absolute profit. In those four ways, building the brand makes you so much money that you have

108
00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:32.880
the first step taken towards realizing it wasn't the point to begin with. And so from the

109
00:09:32.880 --> 00:09:37.360
conversion perspective, if you think about those guys you bought at the ALN launch who weren't even

110
00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:42.080
presented the offer, they just found out that I had something to sell. Those are people who otherwise

111
00:09:42.080 --> 00:09:45.200
in a neutral or negative business certainly wouldn't have purchased. They would have either need to

112
00:09:45.200 --> 00:09:49.120
be convinced if they were neutral or they just would have not wanted to buy to begin with if they

113
00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:54.400
were at the negative side of the spectrum. And so that's how you can just demonstrate visually

114
00:09:54.400 --> 00:09:58.640
what the experience of having a higher conversion rate looks like. More people buy when they're

115
00:09:58.640 --> 00:10:04.400
presented with the offer. And I'll give you another really tactical example. So my offer is book

116
00:10:04.400 --> 00:10:10.720
on Amazon. The actual page itself converts at 30%. So basically a little bit less than one out of

117
00:10:10.720 --> 00:10:15.200
three people who visits the page buys the book. Now I think there's a variety of reasons for that.

118
00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:19.760
One of them is that many people who go there got referred via word of mouth which will get to one

119
00:10:19.760 --> 00:10:24.000
of the big compounding things from that later. But the second thing is that even if you don't have

120
00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:29.360
word of mouth, when you have a 4.9 rating and you've got 26,000 people who rated it that,

121
00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:34.640
then you have high confidence that it's going to deliver at least a decent product. And so you

122
00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:39.520
converted a higher percentage. And so the first and baseline way of understanding how brand makes

123
00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:44.880
you more money is the boosting conversion rate. And so let me give you four visual examples of how

124
00:10:44.880 --> 00:10:51.360
branding even came to be. And so back in the day, you'd have bulls and those bulls would originally

125
00:10:51.360 --> 00:10:56.000
be unmarked. And so people had no way of differentiating between their bulls and other people's bulls.

126
00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:02.400
They started branding, literally searing their own logo or whatever into the bull. And so let's say

127
00:11:02.400 --> 00:11:12.000
we've got our Nike bull here. Great. Now let's say that now we recognize that as a logo and we like

128
00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:19.120
that person. If we have that experience, then we're going to treat the cow differently than if it

129
00:11:19.120 --> 00:11:25.760
were unbranded. Now let's say that there's a brand that we don't recognize. We would then treat

130
00:11:25.760 --> 00:11:31.440
this bull like all other branded bulls in that it's a category that we just know that it belongs to

131
00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:36.800
someone else. The third scenario might be let's say that it belongs to somebody that you hate. We have

132
00:11:37.760 --> 00:11:41.760
branding that you recognize and like. Well, then you'd be nice to the cow and take it home.

133
00:11:42.320 --> 00:11:46.880
Branding that you recognize and hate, you might capture the cow, kill the cow and eat it for

134
00:11:46.880 --> 00:11:52.800
yourself or steal it. Branding of somebody you don't recognize but know that in general, it

135
00:11:52.800 --> 00:11:58.000
belongs to someone which would then change your behavior. And then finally, a cow that was unbranded

136
00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:02.880
in general and you treat it like you treat all cows that have no owner. The reason this is important

137
00:12:02.880 --> 00:12:07.440
is that fundamentally the point of branding is to change behavior of the person who sees it.

138
00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:13.360
And all of this is an indication of past experience. It's saying, hey, treat me like you would,

139
00:12:14.160 --> 00:12:17.360
treat me like you'd want to be treated. Treat that cow like you would want to be treated,

140
00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:22.480
which is exactly the point. No, but the owner is communicating something to anybody else who sees

141
00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:29.200
the cow. That's the point. We want to brand our products so that they treat it ideally like

142
00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:34.560
something that people like and love, which might mean that they buy it quickly at higher prices

143
00:12:34.560 --> 00:12:40.160
and over and over again and tell their friends versus not buy it, tell people terrible things,

144
00:12:40.160 --> 00:12:45.200
dissuade their friends from buying it versus I don't know, maybe I'll take a risk on this thing and

145
00:12:45.200 --> 00:12:49.040
then it's going to be the quality of the creative that's going to have to communicate. And this is

146
00:12:49.040 --> 00:12:54.480
again why if you had a really fancy brand and it looks high end, then they're just going to extrapolate

147
00:12:54.480 --> 00:12:59.600
what they know about high end brands in general to the purchase. Okay, this looks like a premium brand.

148
00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:03.200
I understand why they're doing these things, but I don't have history. Now, if you make the

149
00:13:03.200 --> 00:13:07.680
purchase and they have history, then it would shift into one of these two categories. I want to

150
00:13:07.680 --> 00:13:13.120
talk about something that I think a lot of people misunderstand. So there's a concept of the give-to-ask

151
00:13:13.120 --> 00:13:19.200
ratio and I talk about it here in my leads book in the content chapter. And the reason that this

152
00:13:19.200 --> 00:13:24.640
is such an important metric is basically this is a history of reinforcement, is how many times

153
00:13:24.640 --> 00:13:30.080
have you reinforced positively before you ask for something? But this is the part that people miss,

154
00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:34.480
is that, and it's because most people's products aren't that good, their ask in their mind is

155
00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:38.960
perceived as a negative and the give is obviously perceived as a positive. And so you make this media,

156
00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:42.800
you give out this free stuff, that gives you more and more pluses. Some people like to think about

157
00:13:42.800 --> 00:13:48.000
it like a bank account, you add more deposits and then you can withdraw. But when listening to jobs

158
00:13:48.080 --> 00:13:53.520
talk about this, he actually purely talks about it from an ask's perspective. And so he says,

159
00:13:53.520 --> 00:13:57.120
if people buy our product and they absolutely love it, then we have provided more value. We put a

160
00:13:57.120 --> 00:14:01.680
deposit into our relationship. He said if people buy our product and they hate it or it's just

161
00:14:01.680 --> 00:14:06.800
mediocre, then we've withdrawn from that relationship. This whole idea of give-ask many people talk

162
00:14:06.800 --> 00:14:11.520
about this in terms of like content and then monetization, it actually extends all the way through

163
00:14:11.520 --> 00:14:16.800
the business. And in the perfect world, you give in the content and when you ask for money,

164
00:14:16.880 --> 00:14:21.920
it becomes a give. Because as soon as they buy the product, they're like, oh my god, this is

165
00:14:21.920 --> 00:14:26.720
amazing. Which is why for example, I think that like I try to get people to start with the books

166
00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:31.680
because it's the thing that I've spent the most time on. And cost relative to value is pretty

167
00:14:31.680 --> 00:14:37.120
insane. That allows me to give yet again and create a positive history of reinforcing with an

168
00:14:37.120 --> 00:14:44.320
audience. Brands compound over time, not because necessarily media compounds, but media is just a

169
00:14:44.320 --> 00:14:49.280
measurement tool for word of mouth. Because like your audience will grow because people will share

170
00:14:49.280 --> 00:14:53.040
your stuff. Like try and get it down to the people when analyzing these kind of like amorphous ideas.

171
00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:57.440
Like what happens when a brand grows? It means you did a good thing and then that person tells

172
00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:01.760
another person and then that person experiences the benefit themselves and then that person tells

173
00:15:01.760 --> 00:15:06.960
another person. And so the output of the brand is the trust with an audience that grows rather than

174
00:15:07.760 --> 00:15:14.080
logos and color schemes and fonts like it's none of that. It's just how many people trust me.

175
00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:18.320
But the reality of building a brand is that it's kind of like a friendship. Like imagine meeting

176
00:15:18.320 --> 00:15:21.600
somebody and being like, we're past friends. But they said that the first time you met you'd be like,

177
00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:25.760
that's a bit weird. And so building a brand is a lot the same thing. Which is like it takes time

178
00:15:25.760 --> 00:15:31.520
to build trust. And trust is predictive power based on a past history of experience. And so you

179
00:15:31.520 --> 00:15:35.360
have to develop that past history of experience. If you do something nice once for you, you're not

180
00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:38.400
immediately going to be like, oh, I trust the sky with my life. It's like what you did one thing.

181
00:15:38.400 --> 00:15:42.560
You know, but if he does thing after thing after thing after thing after thing for an extended

182
00:15:42.560 --> 00:15:46.080
period and then makes an ask, you're like, well, I kind of owe him one. He's done a bunch of

183
00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:50.640
stuff for me. Right. And so that's the ideas that it just takes a long time. Now here here's where it

184
00:15:50.640 --> 00:15:56.960
gets where there is high arbitrage with brand is that with media and technology, one person can

185
00:15:56.960 --> 00:16:02.960
give to a million people at once in a very small way. And so the idea is, okay, how can I give to a

186
00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:09.360
million people at once over and over and even in a fractionalized manner such that in 10 gives or

187
00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:15.600
20 gives or 50 gives, I've now given effectively three full gives or four full gives to somebody so

188
00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:19.680
that they might be willing to quote, return the favor based on their cultural rules. The second

189
00:16:19.680 --> 00:16:23.920
way to get so rich that you realize that making money was never the point is to know the inputs and

190
00:16:23.920 --> 00:16:28.480
outputs of your money making system. And you want to break those down to the absolute smallest

191
00:16:28.480 --> 00:16:34.160
action. That way you can scale it while sustaining your margins. And so think about it like this.

192
00:16:34.160 --> 00:16:39.360
You have a money making system. You have a box. Now in that box is your general activities of

193
00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:45.680
doing business. So you sell tables, you sell books, you provide services. Whatever your thing is,

194
00:16:45.680 --> 00:16:50.000
is you have a cost of delivering that thing and you have a price that should be above that cost.

195
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.080
And then that discrepancy between those two things is how you make money. And you spend that

196
00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:59.120
wheel as many times as you can. Where this gets important is you have to understand the inputs into

197
00:16:59.120 --> 00:17:04.960
this system. And you have to break it down to activities. And like I can't explain to you how

198
00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:10.800
incredibly powerful this is to both understand this for yourself and explain it to your team and

199
00:17:10.800 --> 00:17:15.520
be able to revisit it on a regular basis because the inputs will change. And so for example,

200
00:17:15.520 --> 00:17:21.040
if I were to say, Hey, Alex, what do you do? What are the inputs in the acquisition.com when

201
00:17:21.040 --> 00:17:26.320
you making system? There's many things that occur in acquisition.com, but you as the founder or

202
00:17:26.320 --> 00:17:31.440
the entrepreneur, you're basically pushing the first domino over and then there's many subsequent

203
00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:34.800
activities that happen after. And sometimes there's two or three dominoes that are occurring that

204
00:17:34.800 --> 00:17:38.800
you're pushing. But what happens is when we describe what we do, we use lots of amorphous words

205
00:17:38.800 --> 00:17:45.200
that have very little connection to what we actually do. And so for example, my inputs for acquisition.com.

206
00:17:45.200 --> 00:17:53.280
So I script stuff. Okay, cool. I record. That's something that I do. I check in on status of stuff.

207
00:17:53.840 --> 00:18:01.360
I review things and give thumbs up or feedback. I review deal metrics for deals that we're considering

208
00:18:01.360 --> 00:18:07.440
doing in acu.com or acu ventures, which is our venture. I'm going to start it. I present to the

209
00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:12.880
team when we have kind of like new direction that we're taking. When we when we look at this, I also

210
00:18:13.600 --> 00:18:20.640
review port co metrics and decide where the money goes, both within acquisition.com and then

211
00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:24.800
within the portfolio companies. And when I say money, I say generically like the resources that we

212
00:18:24.800 --> 00:18:29.040
have. So we're going to allocate this person here. We're going to allocate these resources here.

213
00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:33.920
And so this is like what it actually is and this is today. Now these things shuffle over time.

214
00:18:33.920 --> 00:18:38.800
But you can notice here that these are me describing actual activities, right? So what you need to do

215
00:18:38.800 --> 00:18:42.960
is now if I'm going to look at this, there's going to be some things that feed them this machine and

216
00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:47.120
then they're going to be some things that are me actually doing the stuff in machine. Big picture,

217
00:18:47.120 --> 00:18:51.600
we've got these feeders that feed into this machine and then we kind of have what I would consider.

218
00:18:51.600 --> 00:18:55.760
These are all the things of delivery, right? These are how I how the actual machine works and makes

219
00:18:55.760 --> 00:19:00.400
money. The reason that defining the inputs is so important is that many times when you look at

220
00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:07.200
what you actually do, you aren't doing things that drive an increase in number of customers or an

221
00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:12.480
increase in LTV. If you think about this, like this is the LTV, this is the number of customers.

222
00:19:13.040 --> 00:19:20.160
And you can basically drive growth in only those two ways. And so you have to dial in what is

223
00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:24.880
actually the thing that makes money here. And whenever you have a deadline, for example, all of a

224
00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:28.640
sudden your ability to focus gets really clear. And I think the reason for that is because you have

225
00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:33.520
no time to waste. And so most people do like spend like 90% of their time on stuff that doesn't

226
00:19:33.520 --> 00:19:37.920
actually drive the needle. And then only 10% of the stuff when they actually need to make money,

227
00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:41.840
that does it. But what would happen if you actually spend all of your time on the inputs that

228
00:19:41.840 --> 00:19:47.520
matter most? For example, I write two emails a week for the most you minute, which is what I send

229
00:19:47.520 --> 00:19:51.520
to the to the whole list, which is kind of like very tactical business concepts. It's very high

230
00:19:51.520 --> 00:19:57.680
leverage for me. It takes me about an hour-ish per email that I send. And that is something that

231
00:19:57.680 --> 00:20:01.120
drives awareness, it drives business, it drives value, it drives portfolio companies, it drives

232
00:20:01.120 --> 00:20:07.200
everything, right? And so that's an input, right? And so it's betting very clear on most of the things

233
00:20:07.360 --> 00:20:12.400
that people do that are just not that. And so whenever you scale an input or like the inputs that

234
00:20:12.400 --> 00:20:16.240
you have in terms of your money-making system or the inputs of what you do in order to feed that

235
00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:23.040
system, you essentially have three options for scaling. Option number one is you can automate. So

236
00:20:23.040 --> 00:20:27.360
you can get a machine to do it. All right, now some things are very difficult to automate. AI

237
00:20:27.360 --> 00:20:32.480
can automate a lot. Now sometime in the future there will be an AI version of me that can probably

238
00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:36.160
make content better than I can. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. But that would be something

239
00:20:36.160 --> 00:20:42.000
that could happen. The second is that you get other people. So that means that I'm having somebody

240
00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:47.040
else then make this content for me. Now there's, I want to be very clear, there's degrees here,

241
00:20:47.040 --> 00:20:50.320
a lot of people like to think in binaries. It's like, okay, well, can I get somebody else to

242
00:20:50.320 --> 00:20:54.560
script this stuff? Can I get someone else to check in? Can I get someone else to record review and

243
00:20:54.560 --> 00:20:58.560
give feedback? So then the only thing that I would have to do is record. Yes, of course I could.

244
00:20:58.560 --> 00:21:02.080
And so the idea is you don't necessarily need to replace every single part of what you do,

245
00:21:02.080 --> 00:21:05.840
but you can just basically chunk down the inputs into, okay, this one someone else can handle,

246
00:21:05.840 --> 00:21:11.280
this one someone else can handle. And then the final component of this is that you can do one

247
00:21:11.280 --> 00:21:18.480
to many. Now what does that mean? If this is already a very leveraged acquisition system, right?

248
00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:22.560
Because it's me, one to many, you're watching this, it takes me one time to say it, but many people

249
00:21:22.560 --> 00:21:27.200
can see it. But if you had a one-on-one method of reaching out to people say cold outbound as

250
00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:31.840
your way of getting people in or maybe you get affiliates one-on-one, then you're either going

251
00:21:31.840 --> 00:21:35.680
to have to automate that way of getting affiliates one-on-one, you're going to have to get a team

252
00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:39.440
of people to do it, or you're going to have to switch to a mechanism that allows you to continue

253
00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:44.160
to do it, but do it to many people at once. And so I think through this whenever I have to kind of

254
00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:48.160
scale any kind of delivery or marketing is, is this something that I can get other people to do?

255
00:21:48.160 --> 00:21:52.240
And this also works on the back end, right here. So it's like, okay, can I get other people to review

256
00:21:52.240 --> 00:21:56.720
portfolio metrics? Can I get other people to decide where the allocation is? Again, these things

257
00:21:56.720 --> 00:22:01.200
are very high leverage for me, meaning I don't have to put a lot to get a lot from it. And so it's

258
00:22:01.200 --> 00:22:06.960
worth me developing that skill set even deeper rather than potentially delegating it. But long-term,

259
00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:11.840
in my opinion, every business can be delegated. It's just that you have to find stars, and you have

260
00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:16.960
to find people who are better than you, and oftentimes that's tough. Like, could Steve Jobs delegate

261
00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:21.200
being Steve Jobs? Well, I don't know. I mean, they have yet to really make anything as good as

262
00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:26.560
what he made. You know, if Elon died, would all of the companies do as well without him? I don't

263
00:22:27.520 --> 00:22:33.040
know. And so that's where it's like, okay, he gets a lot, he gets, he has to automate or get other

264
00:22:33.040 --> 00:22:37.280
people as many people as he can to do all the other stuff, and the stuff that matters most to him.

265
00:22:37.280 --> 00:22:43.120
Like, for example, he says, all my companies have zero marketing, except for the fact that they have

266
00:22:43.120 --> 00:22:48.080
the most popular men, like in history, being the person who's running them. And when I say

267
00:22:48.080 --> 00:22:52.320
popular, I just mean it from an absolute perspective, people know who he is, and that when he,

268
00:22:52.320 --> 00:22:56.880
when he makes a tweet, a gazillion people see it. And so if we were to, we probably could add this

269
00:22:56.880 --> 00:23:02.320
up and see what his total impressions are per month, both directly on X, and then also in terms of

270
00:23:02.320 --> 00:23:07.440
shared volume of the amount of pages that share his interviews and the Rogan stuff and YouTube.

271
00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:12.320
And so like, there's no marketing department because they have a one-man marketing department that

272
00:23:12.320 --> 00:23:19.680
in and of itself is worth, I mean, billions of dollars. I see everybody as an individual contributor

273
00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:26.000
at the most basic level. Like, everyone does things, and they are just either directly tied to

274
00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:31.680
some sort of outcome that gets customers or makes them worth more, or they are not. Right? And so

275
00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:35.040
I would encourage you, this is especially for, this is me talking specifically to business owners

276
00:23:35.040 --> 00:23:39.040
right now. There's three, there's three questions that will frighten every person that you asked

277
00:23:39.040 --> 00:23:43.600
them to. Number one, what do you do? And they will use amorphous terms, and you're like, no, no,

278
00:23:43.920 --> 00:23:49.120
not analyze. What do you do? Like, what does that mean? Right? And so they can define it in a way

279
00:23:49.120 --> 00:23:55.760
that like, okay, you look at numbers on an Excel sheet and you try, and then you see if some are

280
00:23:55.760 --> 00:24:02.400
above a certain threshold or below it. Okay, got it. So that's what you do. Now, do you know what I do?

281
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:06.640
Or what we do is a business. Now a lot of times people can't even explain it back to you, and they

282
00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:09.360
work for you. So if they certainly can't explain it to you, they're definitely not doing something

283
00:24:09.360 --> 00:24:13.520
necessarily. It's going to help it. And then here's the third question. How does what you do

284
00:24:14.320 --> 00:24:20.720
help what we do? And it ties what they do to the outputs of the business. And so fundamentally,

285
00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:26.560
so whenever Lail and I get overwhelmed, right, because it happens all the time, you basically

286
00:24:26.560 --> 00:24:28.960
clear your plate, and then you add more stuff to your plate, and then you're like, oh man, I'm

287
00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:31.920
overwhelmed, and you clear your plate again. And that's, honestly, I think a lot of that is

288
00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:37.760
just like entrepreneurship. And when we look at our plate, what we do is I look at every single

289
00:24:37.760 --> 00:24:41.920
activity that I'm doing on a weekly basis. And I say, how does that tie to how we make money?

290
00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:48.240
And it's trying to understand what are the inputs that I'm pushing into our money-making system?

291
00:24:48.240 --> 00:24:53.760
And are there things on here that are either too indirect or just not actually driving anything

292
00:24:53.760 --> 00:25:00.720
at all? And so for example, I took over a department recently and I canceled all meetings that

293
00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:06.320
were recurring, where people were just sharing data. And the main reason was that that data

294
00:25:06.320 --> 00:25:13.040
was not being used to change behavior. And so either the data is not correct or useful,

295
00:25:13.040 --> 00:25:20.800
or we need to learn how to do something about that data. And so if we spend all this time going

296
00:25:20.800 --> 00:25:26.640
over data and do nothing about it, then that time is completely wasted, both in the collection,

297
00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:31.600
storing, and analysis of data, but then also the reviewing it with a team of people. And so

298
00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:38.160
unless something changes what we do, we don't need to track it. And so this gets you much more

299
00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:43.920
targeted on the few things that matter. And so a friend of mine has social answer about,

300
00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:50.960
he's a public CEO, he talked about this at length, but he basically posits that for every company,

301
00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:55.680
it's one tenth of the employees that are actually creating the majority of the economics

302
00:25:55.680 --> 00:25:59.200
in the business. There's a core team that really is the one that moves the whole machine.

303
00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:02.640
And a lot of the rest of the people are there more or less for the ride. The idea is,

304
00:26:02.640 --> 00:26:06.400
what is it that those ten people do? What are their inputs that drive this machine?

305
00:26:07.040 --> 00:26:14.320
And I think that being able to identify what those activities are, not the general

306
00:26:14.320 --> 00:26:19.600
Morphus words, but what the actual activities are like, is it writing an email? Is it writing ad copy?

307
00:26:19.600 --> 00:26:26.800
Is it filming? Is it filming content or filming ads? Is it reaching out to a certain amount

308
00:26:26.800 --> 00:26:33.360
of people? Is it reaching out to customers? Is it hopping on a certain number of calls, sales calls?

309
00:26:33.360 --> 00:26:37.680
Like all of these are activities that will drive revenue in the business. You basically look at

310
00:26:37.680 --> 00:26:42.480
a lot of other stuff that many people fill their counters with, and the majority of it doesn't make

311
00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:48.800
money. And if the point of a business is to generate a profit through providing value to a marketplace

312
00:26:48.800 --> 00:26:53.360
outside of the cost of delivering that value, then you want to put as much into the value

313
00:26:53.360 --> 00:26:57.920
creation as possible as it's little into the cost basis as possible and do it as many times as you

314
00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:03.440
can. And everything that's not those things ultimately detract from the efficiency of the system.

315
00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:09.280
I'll give you three major money sucks that people do that are not this. So number one is they will

316
00:27:09.280 --> 00:27:13.840
work on projects that are not going to drive the main objectives. So it's like they want to reorganize

317
00:27:13.840 --> 00:27:17.840
a sauna in some way, right? Or whatever your project management thing is. Okay, we have this massive

318
00:27:17.840 --> 00:27:22.640
reorganization fine. Okay, great. Now it's taken up a lot of time. Or you redo your entire website,

319
00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:26.160
which takes you a ton of time. But is it really the constraint of the business? Is it the thing that's

320
00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:30.560
going to generate money? Or should you just split test your headlines on your landing page, right?

321
00:27:30.560 --> 00:27:36.000
Like there are other things that will drive more customers. And so basically like I can give you

322
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:41.280
a list of a thousand things that you could do to grow a business. The question is which one of them

323
00:27:41.280 --> 00:27:47.600
will grow it the most. Most people spend time on activities that they enjoy that drive very little

324
00:27:47.600 --> 00:27:51.520
business to the business, but they can mentally masturbate to the idea that they're being productive

325
00:27:51.520 --> 00:27:57.280
because it's business-ish, right? It's related to business. And so it's like it's almost like

326
00:27:57.280 --> 00:28:02.240
they're doing like arts and crafts and hobbies while they're doing business. But those aren't the

327
00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:06.880
main drivers. The second thing is that they spend too much time on meetings. And this is a really

328
00:28:06.880 --> 00:28:11.360
common one, which is that people are social. People like to talk to each other. And so if they get an

329
00:28:11.360 --> 00:28:15.200
excuse to do it, they will do it. And one of the most frightening things in the entire world,

330
00:28:15.200 --> 00:28:19.520
which I recommend you do, is actually look at how much everyone makes per hour. So look at their

331
00:28:19.520 --> 00:28:25.360
annual pay divided by 2000. And then look at a meeting when you have 10 people on it, right?

332
00:28:25.360 --> 00:28:31.520
And then all of a sudden you're like, I paid $500 for this meeting. And if you went out to dinner and

333
00:28:31.520 --> 00:28:34.960
took everybody to dinner and then you paid $500 for dinner, people are like, oh my god, thank you so

334
00:28:34.960 --> 00:28:39.760
much. So generous of you. It's like every meeting is that. And so unless you can show how this is

335
00:28:39.760 --> 00:28:44.000
going to generate us $500 plus, now mind you, you need to get a return on that. So you probably need

336
00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:49.440
to get something like four or five times that amount of money from that meeting. Then you probably

337
00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:55.760
just shouldn't have it. And where this gets really, really nasty is, once your business gets big

338
00:28:55.760 --> 00:29:00.000
enough, employees in general start meeting with each other. And so it's like you're not even involved.

339
00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.560
And these, these losses are occurring on a regular basis. Sometimes people call it time theft.

340
00:29:04.560 --> 00:29:09.120
I don't think the intentions there, but I do think that the end result is still the same, which is

341
00:29:10.080 --> 00:29:13.920
that. Hey guys, real quick, this podcast only grows from word of mouth quite literally. There's

342
00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:16.960
no other way to grow a podcast in word of mouth. If there's some element of this that you think

343
00:29:16.960 --> 00:29:21.120
somebody else should hear or be relevant to them, it would mean the world to me. If you shared this,

344
00:29:21.120 --> 00:29:25.920
via text, via Instagram, via DM, via whatever way you like to share stuff with people you love. Thank

345
00:29:27.920 --> 00:29:31.200
the business becomes less efficient and bears more cost to deliver the same product.

346
00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:38.000
The third big kind of like hole that I see a lot of times is people who spend an in-ordered

347
00:29:38.320 --> 00:29:42.720
amount of time on data that doesn't change what they do. So I'll give you an example.

348
00:29:43.680 --> 00:29:49.840
I could track what the temperature is of every room that I walk into. I could track the amount of

349
00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:55.520
words that I say on a meeting. I could track, I mean, you could track anything, right? Some people,

350
00:29:55.520 --> 00:29:59.360
especially small business owners and sometimes even on your team, will just love to show you all

351
00:29:59.360 --> 00:30:03.840
these excel sheets of all this data that they've tracked. It takes a huge amount of time and they

352
00:30:03.840 --> 00:30:08.160
get all these percentages and all these ratios and then you just have to ask the question,

353
00:30:08.160 --> 00:30:15.120
why should I care about this? How does this change what we do? I ask this question over and over

354
00:30:15.120 --> 00:30:18.880
and over again because so many people love to be like, oh no, we're data-driven. It's like,

355
00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:23.680
are you data-driven or are you data distracted? Basically, and this is the limit test. This is the

356
00:30:23.680 --> 00:30:29.200
very easy limit test. If this number goes up, does it change what we do? If this number goes down,

357
00:30:29.200 --> 00:30:34.240
does it change what we do? If this number changing doesn't change what we do, we don't need to track it.

358
00:30:35.120 --> 00:30:38.320
When you ask that question over and over again because people are like, well, we want to keep an

359
00:30:38.320 --> 00:30:42.960
eye on that. I'm like, why? Let's take it to the natural extreme. Why? The world is increasingly

360
00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:48.400
quantified and being able to with automation and software and wearables, like there's so much

361
00:30:48.400 --> 00:30:52.720
technology out there that wants to quantify everything because they know that people have an obsession

362
00:30:52.960 --> 00:30:59.200
with data. But not all data is useful. And so most businesses, you can figure out the metrics on the

363
00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:03.200
back of a napkin and figure out if you like it or not. That back of napkin way of running a business

364
00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:09.440
in my opinion is an exercise thought discipline of the entrepreneur. If you know the clear inputs

365
00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:15.280
that drive the business, which for you might just be, I have to script, record, and edit content.

366
00:31:15.280 --> 00:31:20.080
It could be, I have to script, record, and edit ads. It could be, I have to do a certain amount

367
00:31:20.080 --> 00:31:24.240
of outreach attempts or manage a team to hold them accountable to doing these outreach attempts.

368
00:31:24.240 --> 00:31:28.560
Like there are certain number of things that actually drive the business. If the data that you

369
00:31:28.560 --> 00:31:35.120
collect does not change what you do with your inputs, then you don't need to track it. And so

370
00:31:35.120 --> 00:31:38.800
you can reverse engineer this to figuring out first what are the inputs that actually drive the

371
00:31:38.800 --> 00:31:44.960
output. And then secondarily, what data would change how I do these inputs? If you find out that

372
00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:48.640
the CTR dropped on your ads, then you would probably change your hooks, you change your targeting.

373
00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:53.920
That would change what you do. So it makes sense to track that. Like number of tags on a social

374
00:31:53.920 --> 00:32:00.480
platform, you could track it. Let's say it goes up in general over a month. What are you going to do?

375
00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:04.960
Now you might say, well, I'll make more of the content of me that month. But if you made a variety

376
00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:08.800
of different pieces of content, would you then have to track a daily and see if there was a spike?

377
00:32:08.800 --> 00:32:16.000
Okay, I got more tags in this. Okay, okay, wait, stay with me. How does getting more tags translate

378
00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:20.080
into us making more money? Because I can show you, like, I can show you a number of people who get

379
00:32:20.080 --> 00:32:25.040
lots of tags and lots of likes and lots of views that don't make more money. And so again, it's not only

380
00:32:25.040 --> 00:32:31.200
like maybe it tracks to what we would do, but does that track to us making more money? And I'll give

381
00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:35.840
you a three step or that was that I had recently. I was talking to a specific manager of one of our

382
00:32:35.840 --> 00:32:40.800
platforms. I said, what do you do every day? And so we listed out all the things you did. And then I

383
00:32:40.800 --> 00:32:46.720
said, okay, how do those things that you do every day grow this platform? And that was a very different

384
00:32:46.720 --> 00:32:52.000
and probably more difficult conversation. And I was like, okay, now let's say that all these things

385
00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:58.320
that you do does grow the platform. How does growing this platform grow the business? And so this is

386
00:32:58.320 --> 00:33:04.400
what you need to walk through with your own, your own self, right? Of what do I do? And what is that

387
00:33:04.400 --> 00:33:07.600
effect? And does that thing that it affects affect the business? Sometimes it's direct, sometimes it's

388
00:33:07.600 --> 00:33:11.920
indirect. And so you have to basically walk through as many of those steps as you need to.

389
00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:16.560
And the more steps you have to jump through to be clear, the more indirect it will be. And the

390
00:33:16.560 --> 00:33:23.520
higher risk you have that the work is wasted. If you want to get so rich that you question the meaning

391
00:33:23.520 --> 00:33:28.720
of making money, then the first thing you can do is make sure that all of the work that you do

392
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:34.400
makes you more money and stop spending time on things that make you nothing, although they are

393
00:33:34.400 --> 00:33:41.120
fun distractions, which leads me to the third way of getting so rich that you realize that making

394
00:33:41.120 --> 00:33:47.280
money was never the point, which is get other people to advertise for you. I remember the first time

395
00:33:47.920 --> 00:33:54.240
I ever had someone else sell for me. So I had to go home for Christmas. This was the first year

396
00:33:54.240 --> 00:33:59.920
of owning my gym. And this is why I was still going home for the holidays. And while I remember

397
00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:08.800
I was driving home and I got a call and I had hired this sales gal and I had taught her my script

398
00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:13.440
and we were still running ads even though I was the one selling. And I was the one who had done

399
00:34:13.440 --> 00:34:18.960
every single sale since the beginning of the business. And she sent me a text that was like,

400
00:34:18.960 --> 00:34:25.120
oh, I went two for four. And I remember I got so emotional in the car while I was driving that

401
00:34:25.280 --> 00:34:31.520
I felt like I almost had this like pullover because I like I got got choked up because I was like,

402
00:34:31.520 --> 00:34:36.960
oh my god, like this could actually work without me. And it was like the first time where I realized

403
00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:43.200
that like this could actually be a thing. Like it's not just like Alex working really hard and I have

404
00:34:43.200 --> 00:34:48.320
to make the money if no one else makes the money then like it transitioned. It was the first like

405
00:34:48.320 --> 00:34:53.680
leading indicator of transitioning from a job to an asset. Once I had that loop, I got really addicted

406
00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:56.800
to it. I was like, man, I wonder if there are people who could train without me training. I wonder

407
00:34:56.800 --> 00:35:00.640
if there are people who like, and I just looked at all the things that I did and and that that

408
00:35:00.640 --> 00:35:07.280
obsession has not really ended since then. You have to get other people to advertise for you in

409
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:12.080
order to have more leverage. Okay. So leverage is about getting more for what you put in and fundamentally

410
00:35:12.080 --> 00:35:16.800
like in my opinion, all of entrepreneurship is mastering leverage. It's why it's core to our logo

411
00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:21.040
for acquisition.com. This is a full group because all of us have the same inputs at the base level

412
00:35:21.040 --> 00:35:24.720
which is time. And so the people get the most for the time, the ones who get the most money for

413
00:35:24.720 --> 00:35:30.400
their time by doing activities that generate most revenue per minute or second, right? Imagine I had

414
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:36.240
to just get customers. What's some point I would max out the amount of hours per day that I could

415
00:35:36.240 --> 00:35:42.320
spend doing it, right? Like if I, no matter how efficient I get, I'm going to have to trade time

416
00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:46.720
to get it. If I'm doing on an inputs outputs that are directly correlated, one-to-one ratio, I can do

417
00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:50.720
the the ratio faster, but I'm still going to have that that connection. I can be more efficient

418
00:35:50.720 --> 00:35:54.000
in terms of getting better at that skill, but as long as the base metric is still there,

419
00:35:54.000 --> 00:36:00.080
I will be kept based on hours per day, right? And so I'll walk you through four levels of this.

420
00:36:00.080 --> 00:36:04.880
So walk you through four levels of this and I talk about this in my leads book which is second half

421
00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:09.200
which is talking about lead getters. All right. So basically at the very, at the very beginning,

422
00:36:09.200 --> 00:36:16.320
imagine that you are getting leads for your business. Okay. So this is just you. All right. And so let's say

423
00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:21.840
you get a hundred leads a day that you're calling or you're reaching out to or whatever, right?

424
00:36:21.840 --> 00:36:25.600
Now you can do this. Now your work's going to be high and your throughput's going to be fixed.

425
00:36:25.600 --> 00:36:31.280
There's nothing more you can do to it. Now the next level here is that you do this thing,

426
00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:37.520
but then instead of getting leads, you get a lead getter, meaning you get other people to advertise

427
00:36:37.520 --> 00:36:43.760
on your behalf. And so functionally, instead of getting like you reach out to a hundred people,

428
00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:49.120
you then get someone else. Here's someone who's not you. Ta-da. Let's make him smiley.

429
00:36:49.120 --> 00:36:52.960
There you go. He's smiling. He's very happy to make you money. Okay. So this person now

430
00:36:54.000 --> 00:37:01.200
spends their time getting you leads. Okay. So we just had to do this once and then this created

431
00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:09.120
this node, how I like to think about it, of lead generation, right? And so boom, this one day

432
00:37:09.120 --> 00:37:13.920
created this node ongoing. So who's more efficient, the guy who just continues to work here,

433
00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:18.400
or the guy who works gets one person and then that person works on their behalf and doesn't even

434
00:37:18.400 --> 00:37:22.720
have to do this. He still gets the same output. All right. He's sticking with me like look at our

435
00:37:22.720 --> 00:37:29.440
return here. Return was a hundred versus 300 in terms of units of effort versus return,

436
00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:33.840
but here we're getting way more and every single month this guy does more. We still keep getting

437
00:37:33.840 --> 00:37:41.760
a higher return on this initial base. Now let's say that the next month you do this and you get

438
00:37:41.760 --> 00:37:48.560
another guy and this guy gets you more leads. So now you're working the same amount you were before,

439
00:37:48.560 --> 00:37:52.960
but now we've tripled the amount, well here we've doubled it because you're getting lead getters

440
00:37:52.960 --> 00:37:59.200
first, but the third day you would have tripled it, right? You keep getting more leads via these other

441
00:37:59.200 --> 00:38:04.560
people that you've been attracting. And so there are different types of lead getters that you can

442
00:38:04.560 --> 00:38:09.680
bring into a business. You can bring employees into a business. So imagine I recruit somebody

443
00:38:09.680 --> 00:38:14.480
and then I pay them to help me make content. I recruit somebody, I pay them to help me make media,

444
00:38:14.480 --> 00:38:19.920
right? Of course you can do that. The alternative is that you can go recruit an agency who does this

445
00:38:19.920 --> 00:38:23.920
work on your behalf and the only real difference there is just the nature of the pay relationship,

446
00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:30.400
but it more or less works the same way. Now I will say this, the businesses that grow the fastest

447
00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:34.880
will typically have two different types of lead getters. They will have the lead getters that come

448
00:38:34.880 --> 00:38:39.920
naturally from their existing advertising activities. And so you let's say are continuing to

449
00:38:39.920 --> 00:38:46.560
advertise to get customers, but these customers now become lead getters on your behalf. They then

450
00:38:46.560 --> 00:38:52.080
are the ones who are bringing more people into your world. And that is what will end up compounded

451
00:38:52.080 --> 00:38:59.040
because over time, you can't scale media indefinitely. Like at some point, like you will get such

452
00:38:59.040 --> 00:39:04.320
diminishing returns that it won't make sense anymore. You have to eventually rely on word of mouth.

453
00:39:04.320 --> 00:39:08.640
Mind you, this is if you want to get super rich. If you want to just get medium rich, like you can

454
00:39:08.640 --> 00:39:12.480
make $10 million just knowing how to market and sell and just find people who don't know who you are.

455
00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:17.760
You can absolutely do that. But I'm trying to talk about getting mega rich. And so you have to get

456
00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:24.160
leverage over basically lots of other people in a decentralized manner. So if you get employees

457
00:39:24.160 --> 00:39:27.920
or you get agencies, those are centralized. Those are people you have direct relationships with.

458
00:39:27.920 --> 00:39:33.920
You have to scale those relationships. If you had affiliates, which are other businesses that

459
00:39:33.920 --> 00:39:39.760
basically operate independently that have your customers and then send you business, or customers

460
00:39:39.760 --> 00:39:45.200
that operate independently and then bring you more business, that decentralizes the activity so

461
00:39:45.200 --> 00:39:49.760
that they continue to advertise on your behalf far beyond your ability to manage them.

462
00:39:49.760 --> 00:39:55.840
If I had to, if no one shared the content that we have, it would be very difficult to grow a brand.

463
00:39:55.840 --> 00:40:00.640
I would have to go one on one and you can do that. It's just tough. Right now, the people who don't

464
00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:03.600
understand social media. So like sometimes you've seen like these old school business guys,

465
00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:08.640
like who you haven't realized, like the world moved on. I see them all the time. And they will do

466
00:40:08.640 --> 00:40:15.920
one to many. They'll just do like a circuit of in-person events. Now that's because they

467
00:40:15.920 --> 00:40:19.360
realize that they have to get more leverage. So they just try and attend as many of conferences

468
00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:23.600
as they can. And it totally is effective. It's just a different way of doing things. Now,

469
00:40:23.600 --> 00:40:28.480
if the LTV is high enough, you can still make a tremendous amount of money in that setting.

470
00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:33.920
But if you are a business to consumer business, you're typically going to need a decentralized

471
00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:39.280
manner of acquiring customers. So like for example, school needs a decentralized manner. Like we have

472
00:40:39.280 --> 00:40:45.600
to have affiliates, which last year, 55% of all of our customers came from affiliates or referrals,

473
00:40:45.600 --> 00:40:50.320
right? People with on the platform referred other people, which is awesome. And so we're like,

474
00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:53.440
you know, like, hey, what if we actually like tried to do this little harder? And so we're doing this

475
00:40:53.440 --> 00:41:01.440
here, right? The whole point is you can either do it and you will get capped or you can find a

476
00:41:01.440 --> 00:41:06.320
system that allows or enables other people to do it on your behalf. So let's say the two biggest

477
00:41:06.320 --> 00:41:10.720
mistakes that people make for trying to attract leadgetters. So either referrals or affiliates

478
00:41:10.720 --> 00:41:16.000
specifically is number one is that their product simply isn't good enough. Imagine you go to a

479
00:41:16.000 --> 00:41:20.640
restaurant and the sandwiches are mediocre or soggy or not that good, right? And then they say,

480
00:41:20.640 --> 00:41:26.640
hey, we'll give you 50% off your next sandwich if you tell your friends to come here. We were like,

481
00:41:26.640 --> 00:41:31.840
I mean, I just, I don't want to tell my friends to come here. It's just not that good, right?

482
00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:36.800
And imagine this, let's level up from a soggy sandwich to just like a mediocre sandwich. If they say

483
00:41:36.800 --> 00:41:40.640
you get 50% off your sandwich, if you get somebody else, are you still like, are you going to refer

484
00:41:40.640 --> 00:41:45.680
somebody's for a mediocre sandwich? Like, I don't know, probably not. And so the big thing is,

485
00:41:45.680 --> 00:41:51.120
is people try and jack more into the incentive when like the most efficient thing to do is just make

486
00:41:51.120 --> 00:41:55.520
the product better because you want to get it so that they, this is just my, this is my two

487
00:41:55.520 --> 00:42:01.040
cents on this. I want people who are like, I'm about to refer all my friends because your product

488
00:42:01.040 --> 00:42:05.120
is really good. Is there some sort of incentive that you have that I can get paid for it? It's like,

489
00:42:05.120 --> 00:42:10.320
I want people who do already want to be doing this anyways and then maybe reach out and ask so I

490
00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:15.120
can just lubricate the incentive system more so than go from zero to one. I want to go from like one

491
00:42:15.120 --> 00:42:19.920
to end. Like, I was going to refer people already, but with this incentive, I'll refer everyone,

492
00:42:19.920 --> 00:42:24.880
right? Like, that's, that's where this really gets magical rather than trying to use the incentive

493
00:42:24.960 --> 00:42:30.160
as the zero to one. And I think me too, like me personally, I also probably in my earlier day spent

494
00:42:30.160 --> 00:42:34.720
too much time on like, how do I give you even crazier incentives rather than how do I just make

495
00:42:34.720 --> 00:42:39.840
the thing better? So that's thing number one is like, if people don't want to refer your product,

496
00:42:39.840 --> 00:42:43.680
it's typical because the product is not that good. And so like we can obsess, you can read every

497
00:42:43.680 --> 00:42:47.360
referral book in the world you want, but it's always going to still come down to how good the sandwiches.

498
00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:53.840
The second is, if you had to ignore the first point, right? Because like, these are like,

499
00:42:54.880 --> 00:42:59.760
these points operate independently. I think that it's better to have a better product. But if you don't

500
00:42:59.760 --> 00:43:04.000
have a better product, how would you still try and get referrals? Well, you have to make a crazy

501
00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:08.800
good incentive. And I think that most people think their incentive is good, and it's just not that

502
00:43:08.800 --> 00:43:14.400
good. Like, you're giving 20% to somebody or 50% off the next sandwich. It's just not that good

503
00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:19.520
of incentive. Now, if I said, if you get a friend here to try my sandwich that's mediocre and I'll

504
00:43:19.520 --> 00:43:24.240
give you sandwiches for life, I'll probably get people to prefer more people to get sandwiches,

505
00:43:24.640 --> 00:43:30.800
but the thing is, it can't be so big that people are like, hey, just eat the damn sandwich for me

506
00:43:30.800 --> 00:43:35.200
so that I can get this incentive. Because then you're circumventing the whole point of this.

507
00:43:35.200 --> 00:43:38.640
The point is that they buy the product, they try the product, they like it, and they buy it again.

508
00:43:38.640 --> 00:43:42.560
Right? That's the point. And so a lot of times we try and jerry rig our way around

509
00:43:43.600 --> 00:43:47.600
solving the main thing, but the core economics of every business are always going to come down

510
00:43:47.600 --> 00:43:51.760
to how good the product is. And so this is something that has taken me way too long to realize.

511
00:43:51.760 --> 00:43:55.360
And I think the reason it took me so long to realize is I got really good at marketing and sales

512
00:43:55.360 --> 00:44:01.760
early. And so that was my, that was kind of my, my foray into into the business world. Like, I mean,

513
00:44:01.760 --> 00:44:07.600
obviously had my gym, but I, you know, the first offer I ever really ran was still the greatest

514
00:44:07.600 --> 00:44:12.480
offer that's run in the gym industry for the last like 12 years or 13 years. Like, I wrote a rocket

515
00:44:12.480 --> 00:44:18.880
as my first try. And so in some ways, like, I got lucky on my first shot. I did what most people

516
00:44:18.880 --> 00:44:22.960
would do, which is like, I had a very fast feedback loop reward for doing that. So I did more of

517
00:44:22.960 --> 00:44:27.760
that thing and I did it harder to do it better. You can only spend the marketing wheel so many times

518
00:44:27.760 --> 00:44:30.880
because at some point you will run out of customers. And if your sandwiches aren't good, you'll have

519
00:44:30.880 --> 00:44:35.680
just told the marketplace very quickly, very aggressively, that your mediocre. And that's what you

520
00:44:35.680 --> 00:44:40.880
want to avoid. And so like, I remember hearing people talk about this who were further ahead of me

521
00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:44.800
saying, like, marketing is just gasoline. It'll just like, let it'll do whatever you're doing

522
00:44:44.800 --> 00:44:49.360
faster. So like, if you suck, it'll just let more people know that you suck faster. The problem is

523
00:44:49.360 --> 00:44:54.880
that it doesn't take into account numbers. Meaning like, you can tell a lot of people that you suck

524
00:44:54.880 --> 00:45:00.480
really fast and still make a profit. And this is fundamentally why I think like the education

525
00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:05.040
space, the information space gets a very bad name. It's because like, if once you know how to

526
00:45:05.040 --> 00:45:10.880
market and sell, you absolutely can make millions of dollars. And you can deliver a pretty bad product,

527
00:45:10.880 --> 00:45:15.360
which I try to do my very best to try and reverse that trend and give a very good product.

528
00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:20.640
But big picture, I am a product of the alternative education space. I didn't learn all these things

529
00:45:20.640 --> 00:45:24.960
from college. I learned these things from other business owners who taught me specific skills

530
00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:29.520
that I was able to cobble together and piece together into building businesses that made money.

531
00:45:29.520 --> 00:45:33.840
But the thing that I didn't learn until much later, and honestly, the best people to consume

532
00:45:33.840 --> 00:45:39.200
product stuff from is in Silicon Valley. Like, listen to software people talk about product. They

533
00:45:39.200 --> 00:45:42.320
are obsessive about product. And there's a reason that some of the biggest companies in the world

534
00:45:42.320 --> 00:45:46.240
are all product-driven tech companies. And it's because product gives you the most leverage,

535
00:45:46.240 --> 00:45:52.160
right? Because if you think about it, you can like, you could conceivably not do any promotion.

536
00:45:52.160 --> 00:45:55.840
You have to do enough to get the first users, of course, right? But once you have those first

537
00:45:55.840 --> 00:46:00.320
users, if those users then continue to advertise your behalf, these, so like, this is where you get

538
00:46:00.320 --> 00:46:05.440
the most leverage. What people don't realize about referrals is that they typically are not like a

539
00:46:05.440 --> 00:46:10.160
one-to-one ratio. So it's not that like every person refers a person. It's typically like one out

540
00:46:10.160 --> 00:46:14.960
of 10 people refers to 10 people. And so we have these kind of like micro influencers within their

541
00:46:14.960 --> 00:46:19.040
network that they have enough trust that people will listen to them. Like, if Alex goes and get

542
00:46:19.040 --> 00:46:23.280
sandwiches, like, I'm a bit of a stay-in-which, uh, a fishy notto, if you will. I do, I do love

543
00:46:23.280 --> 00:46:28.160
me a good sandwich. And so if I'm like, do this place is great. Um, I don't give compliment, I don't

544
00:46:28.160 --> 00:46:31.840
give cheap compliments. And so if I say that, then a lot of people are like, well, one, he's had a

545
00:46:31.840 --> 00:46:35.680
lot of sandwiches too. He doesn't say that most sandwich shops are good. And he has the means to buy

546
00:46:35.680 --> 00:46:40.400
whatever sandwich he wants. And so he probably has hiked his, his recommendation carries weight,

547
00:46:40.400 --> 00:46:44.560
right? And if I recommended a sandwich shop in the past and it was good, then they will even be

548
00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:49.200
more likely, this is where bread comes in, more likely to listen to my referral again. The problem

549
00:46:49.200 --> 00:46:54.880
for the business owners is that we don't know which guy is going to be the 10. Like which of the 10

550
00:46:54.880 --> 00:46:58.640
is going to be the one guy. And so that means that you just have to over-deliver for everyone

551
00:46:58.640 --> 00:47:02.720
understanding that nine out of 10 aren't going to be the person who's the magic referral.

552
00:47:02.720 --> 00:47:10.000
I got very lucky with my first store. I think in the first 10 customers, one of the customers that

553
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.880
I signed up in that first two weeks, I think brought me like 20 more customers. And I'm telling you

554
00:47:14.880 --> 00:47:18.320
for a small business owner, like it was, I mean, it was like the difference between making red and

555
00:47:18.320 --> 00:47:23.360
not making red. And it was a nurse who knew all these other nurses and hurt, she brought her

556
00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:27.040
hair stylist and she brought her friends in. She brought other nurses from work in like she

557
00:47:27.040 --> 00:47:30.800
brought everybody in. She brought her, like she brought everybody in. And I was like, man,

558
00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:36.720
this is so cool. You just want to look at what happened with that person that happened on accident

559
00:47:36.720 --> 00:47:41.600
and do it on purpose for everyone. So that one that next super referer comes in, you're ready.

560
00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:49.440
The third big mistake is not reinvesting. And so I'll explain what I mean by this. So if you

561
00:47:50.160 --> 00:47:53.040
decide that you're going to have a referral strategy or an affiliate strategy is the

562
00:47:53.040 --> 00:47:57.040
primary of getting business, which I honestly think that you should figure that out with a business,

563
00:47:57.040 --> 00:48:00.480
like it is the way that you create a compounding business that is viral in terms of its acquisition.

564
00:48:01.440 --> 00:48:05.680
And as you scale any company, especially B2C, you need word of mouth. And at the very least,

565
00:48:05.680 --> 00:48:11.120
the nice thing is that word of mouth for product also translates into retention. So if somebody

566
00:48:11.120 --> 00:48:14.480
refers somebody to you, the likelihood that they stay and continue to pay you is pretty high.

567
00:48:14.480 --> 00:48:18.160
And even if someone doesn't refer to you, if you structured something that was so good that most

568
00:48:18.160 --> 00:48:22.000
people do refer, the likelihood that people who don't refer still continue to stay and pay

569
00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:26.320
is still also high. And so you end up solving for both acquisition and retention with the same

570
00:48:26.320 --> 00:48:30.880
core activities, which for me is like high leverage. If you fix the product, you get more customers

571
00:48:30.880 --> 00:48:36.960
and you get the customers who stay to buy more. But once you find an affiliate system or referral

572
00:48:36.960 --> 00:48:41.680
system that works, it's just letting it go on autopilot. And I think that is a mistake. And so

573
00:48:42.640 --> 00:48:48.720
like I mentioned earlier, like school, for example, we did a lot of things this year to promote it.

574
00:48:48.720 --> 00:48:52.720
And then we saw that 55% of our customers came for affiliate since they were like doubling down.

575
00:48:52.720 --> 00:48:56.720
We're like, how can we make this even easier? How can you lubricate the process? How can we remove

576
00:48:56.720 --> 00:49:01.280
steps? How can we give them more training? How can we, you know, like, how can we just make this even

577
00:49:01.280 --> 00:49:05.280
higher likelihood that people who already have a low threshold because they like the product? We

578
00:49:05.280 --> 00:49:09.760
just lower the activation they need even lower so that more people can hop over and bring business

579
00:49:09.760 --> 00:49:14.480
our way. I told you at the beginning, that would give you three ways to get so rich that you'd

580
00:49:14.560 --> 00:49:19.360
realize that making money was never the point. And so the first way is that you build a brand. And

581
00:49:19.360 --> 00:49:23.920
the translation of that into making money is that you get more people to click on whatever you do

582
00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:28.080
for your advertisements. You get more of them to buy. You get them to buy at higher prices. You get

583
00:49:28.080 --> 00:49:33.040
them to buy more times. All of those compound into lower cost per customer and more lifetime

584
00:49:33.040 --> 00:49:37.760
value per customer, the two primary ways of growing a business. The second way is that you track

585
00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:42.000
your inputs and outputs so that you do more of the things that actually generate more customers

586
00:49:42.080 --> 00:49:46.160
and get your team to do more of those things that actually generate more customers or get them to be

587
00:49:46.160 --> 00:49:53.120
worth more and basically remove everything else and avoid all the mistakes that and pitfalls that

588
00:49:53.120 --> 00:50:00.000
people get time sucked into that don't actually move the needle. The third is getting a higher

589
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:03.760
leveraged way to get customers, which is getting lead getters so that they can get customers on

590
00:50:03.760 --> 00:50:09.040
your behalf. And basically every Mando business you've ever seen has this. And if you're like, man,

591
00:50:09.040 --> 00:50:13.920
Alex, that's hard. Welcome to becoming super rich. There's a reason that not many people have it.

592
00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:18.320
And so you have to find ways to get leverage and the strongest way is to build an exceptional

593
00:50:18.320 --> 00:50:23.040
product. The second strongest way is to have an amazing incentive. And then the third best way

594
00:50:23.040 --> 00:50:26.560
is that when you have a great product or a great incentive that you reinvest in the thing that's

595
00:50:26.560 --> 00:50:32.720
making it work. And when you do all three, you will make the amount of money because you have this

596
00:50:32.720 --> 00:50:37.760
amazing brand. You know the inputs that generate those types of returns and you will continue to

597
00:50:37.760 --> 00:50:42.320
reinvest in higher and higher leverage ways of getting customers to get you more customers.

598
00:50:42.320 --> 00:50:47.680
So that eventually it's decentralized that it grows on its own without you. It becomes a monster

599
00:50:47.680 --> 00:50:52.960
that you have to feed rather than dog that you have to pull by the neck to grow. They say this in

600
00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:57.120
Y. Commodore. I just love it, which is in the beginning a startup feels like pushing a boulder

601
00:50:57.120 --> 00:51:01.440
up a hill. And then as soon as you get product market fit, which is where the customers tell other

602
00:51:01.440 --> 00:51:04.880
customers about the product, you start getting referrals and then we'll start spinning.

603
00:51:04.880 --> 00:51:09.040
It feels like you're chasing the boulder down the other side of the hill running after it.

604
00:51:09.040 --> 00:51:14.080
And so I love that visual because that's where you want to get. And to be clear, it's painful on both

605
00:51:14.080 --> 00:51:18.800
sides. It's just most people would prefer the pain on the other side of the hill. I remember when I

606
00:51:18.800 --> 00:51:25.280
was in college, the power ball lottery had gotten over a billion dollars. And so I went and I bought

607
00:51:25.280 --> 00:51:30.240
a ticket with my girlfriend at the time. And it was more just because it was like fun. It wasn't

608
00:51:30.240 --> 00:51:35.360
because I thought I was going to win. But when the drawing actually happened, I remember having

609
00:51:35.360 --> 00:51:42.960
this moment of sheer dread where I was like, what if I win? And the dread was that if I won, no one

610
00:51:42.960 --> 00:51:48.880
would ever, I would never have had a shot to prove that I was good enough. And that the only reason

611
00:51:48.880 --> 00:51:52.720
I was successful was because of luck. And even if I built success with the cash that I got from

612
00:51:52.720 --> 00:52:00.640
the lottery, it would basically be meaningless. And so now you could talk about all the self-work you

613
00:52:00.640 --> 00:52:04.240
want there. Well, you should take a billion dollars, someone offered you a billion dollars. Yeah,

614
00:52:04.240 --> 00:52:10.720
I think you should. But I still wanted to have the shot of being able to prove that I could do it.

615
00:52:10.720 --> 00:52:15.760
And I really wanted to prove it to me. I think more than anything else. And when I did lose,

616
00:52:15.760 --> 00:52:22.000
I remember feeling relieved. Of course, I didn't hit the billion dollar power ball. But selling my

617
00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:27.520
company for a material amount of money, so much that I didn't have to work anymore, it did help

618
00:52:27.520 --> 00:52:35.520
me realize that making money was never the point. It was just a way of measuring whether I was doing

619
00:52:35.520 --> 00:52:41.120
a good job in the thing that I was building. And so it's over basically an entire year of me being

620
00:52:41.120 --> 00:52:46.720
relatively sad because I didn't know what to do. And so sadness is, as I define it, a lack of

621
00:52:46.720 --> 00:52:49.760
perceived options, which is you don't know what to do. It's why I feel so hopeless. You don't know

622
00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:52.880
what you don't know what actions to take, which is why you just want to stay in bed and do nothing.

623
00:52:54.080 --> 00:52:59.280
Anxiety, by the way, is the exact opposite of that, which is you have many options in no priorities.

624
00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:02.720
That's why it's like you have many things you could do, but you don't know which one to start with.

625
00:53:02.720 --> 00:53:08.240
And so for me, it was definitely sadness at that time. Hard work for me was the goal. And so I want

626
00:53:08.240 --> 00:53:12.720
to take this quick second to make this point, which is that I get a decent amount of flack for

627
00:53:12.720 --> 00:53:19.040
talking about how I work. And I want to be clear, do whatever you want. I just know that when I didn't

628
00:53:19.040 --> 00:53:24.880
work, I was very sad. And when I work, I'm much happier. And so I work. And if you don't,

629
00:53:24.880 --> 00:53:29.360
aren't that way, then that's amazing. Like you won. You know what I mean? I talk about what worked

630
00:53:29.360 --> 00:53:33.120
for me. And I talk about that because it would have been helpful for me to hear somebody else who

631
00:53:33.120 --> 00:53:38.720
was like me say these things. Like it will be hard regardless. I mean, I think a big part of

632
00:53:38.720 --> 00:53:45.600
the suffering that I've had has come from thinking that things should be different than they are.

633
00:53:45.600 --> 00:53:51.360
Like I should be happier. I should be like I think most of human discontentness comes from

634
00:53:51.360 --> 00:53:56.000
thinking we should be happier than we are. Like we just have the expectation of the universe that

635
00:53:56.000 --> 00:54:02.480
that life should always be happy. But it's like it's so rare that that occurs. And I've gotten

636
00:54:02.480 --> 00:54:08.720
significantly more feel goods out of looking back at what I've done and being proud of myself.

637
00:54:09.360 --> 00:54:13.200
And I think that that's something that I can kind of chew on day after day after day, even if what

638
00:54:13.200 --> 00:54:18.480
my day to day is isn't always funny games. You know what I mean? Like if I have to report

639
00:54:18.480 --> 00:54:22.000
to the piece of content because I'm like, oh, okay, we got to do that. Then I do it. You know what I mean?

640
00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:27.040
But and I'm okay with that. But it's because I like the output of that. I like the amount of

641
00:54:27.040 --> 00:54:31.440
businesses that I see that have come to me like, dude, I had my job. I read your first book and I made

642
00:54:31.440 --> 00:54:36.160
$100,000. I read the second book. We got $2 million this year. Like I love that stuff. And I'll die

643
00:54:36.240 --> 00:54:43.360
and no one will care. And we'll all move on in weeks. And that'll be it. And so I live this way

644
00:54:44.480 --> 00:54:48.960
because when I looked back on the years when I was at this point, I knew I didn't need to make

645
00:54:48.960 --> 00:54:53.360
any more money. I looked at the happiest moments of my life when I looked back. And the happiest

646
00:54:53.360 --> 00:54:58.400
moments was when I was going through it was like when I was working. And I had this very, there's

647
00:54:58.400 --> 00:55:03.040
this saying that I really like a lot, which is like, you're always going through the good old days.

648
00:55:03.120 --> 00:55:06.960
When I was going through it, like, you know, I could tell Leila like, man, remember when we were

649
00:55:06.960 --> 00:55:11.200
like broke a shit and trying to make this work. It's like, yeah, it's like you look back

650
00:55:11.200 --> 00:55:16.160
nostalgicly on those moments. But like during the moment, it's tough. But when you look back,

651
00:55:16.160 --> 00:55:20.640
it's actually like some of the fondest memories you have. And so reframing the fact that like all

652
00:55:20.640 --> 00:55:25.200
of my fondest memories were during my hardest times, I then was like, well, shoot. Maybe I should

653
00:55:25.200 --> 00:55:31.280
reframe how I see hard. Maybe I should pursue hard things. And so that's what became my kind of

654
00:55:31.280 --> 00:55:36.480
my life thesis, which was hard work as the goal. Like I want to leave nothing in my tank. I want

655
00:55:36.480 --> 00:55:40.880
to leave on empty, right? I want to have nothing left. Like those are the days that I enjoy the most.

656
00:55:40.880 --> 00:55:46.080
Is that I work at the end. I'm like, I know I can look back on my day and be like, I moved all of

657
00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:51.280
these things forward. And to me, that's meaningful. And to other people, it might not be. And if you're like,

658
00:55:51.280 --> 00:55:55.520
why don't want to work? They're like, don't. It's like, by all means, don't for the love of God. Don't do

659
00:55:55.520 --> 00:56:01.600
whatever you want. If I had one big message, it's like, do whatever you want. The Queen of England

660
00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:05.520
died a year ago or whatever it is. And you haven't thought about her. But she was like one of the

661
00:56:05.520 --> 00:56:09.920
most significant female monarchs of all times. She was one of the wealthiest people to ever exist.

662
00:56:09.920 --> 00:56:13.840
And you haven't thought about her until me saying this right now. Think about your great, great

663
00:56:13.840 --> 00:56:17.360
grandfather. You probably haven't thought about him until right now in this moment. And no one's

664
00:56:17.360 --> 00:56:21.120
going to think about you either. Like it takes three generations for you to be completely forgotten.

665
00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:24.400
Where you see pictures of your relatives and you don't know anyone in the picture. They're just

666
00:56:24.400 --> 00:56:28.160
humans to you, right? And we're going to be humans to other people. And so I think in some way,

667
00:56:28.160 --> 00:56:32.320
it actually, it's a really nice like humanitarian angle, which is that like in four generations,

668
00:56:32.320 --> 00:56:36.560
like one, everybody who's in your progeny is so far removed in terms of gene pool,

669
00:56:36.560 --> 00:56:40.240
that they've been mixed with other people so much. They are so much greater, not you than they are

670
00:56:40.240 --> 00:56:45.200
you, that like, it's just humans. Like in some ways, like we're all family not to get all

671
00:56:45.200 --> 00:56:51.200
come by on you, but like in a lot of ways we are. And so I'm good with making stuff that helps

672
00:56:51.200 --> 00:56:57.200
a bunch of people. And using whatever unique genetic predisposition I have, which is like I'm

673
00:56:57.200 --> 00:57:01.840
willing to work for a long period of time. I don't lose focus very easily. I can keep kind of working

674
00:57:01.840 --> 00:57:05.840
for extended periods of time without losing energy. And so like I do that. And there's some people

675
00:57:05.840 --> 00:57:09.600
who are painters and there's some people who are musicians and like they contribute in their way.

676
00:57:09.600 --> 00:57:13.920
But I think that I will always have respect for anyone who works their ass off. I was talking to a

677
00:57:13.920 --> 00:57:18.400
friend the other day and he brought this up. He's like, hey man, I think your content is sounding

678
00:57:18.560 --> 00:57:23.680
like a little hardcore right now. And when people meet you in person, he said like the number one

679
00:57:23.680 --> 00:57:29.600
thing they tell me is like he's a lot nicer than I thought he was. And he's like kind of funny

680
00:57:29.600 --> 00:57:34.000
and cracks jokes and stuff. And I heard that. And he was like, I think when you started out like

681
00:57:34.560 --> 00:57:40.960
the content, like people think that you just do this to make money now. And I also say that to

682
00:57:40.960 --> 00:57:46.000
be clear, so that I have brand coverage, which is if I just say I'm only here to make money,

683
00:57:46.080 --> 00:57:50.480
then no one can get ever upset that I make money. I think where people get in trouble is where

684
00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:53.840
they're like, I only do this because I want to love humanity. It's like, well, if you do that,

685
00:57:53.840 --> 00:57:56.880
then never make money. Fine. Just give it all away for free. Like you basically set yourself

686
00:57:56.880 --> 00:58:02.160
up for a trap to be destroyed later. So that's why I say that. Now is it possible to both make money

687
00:58:02.160 --> 00:58:06.960
and do things that help people? Yeah, I think that's the nature of capitalism. Like when I had this

688
00:58:06.960 --> 00:58:10.640
period of time right here where I was like, what am I going to do with my life? I originally

689
00:58:10.640 --> 00:58:14.160
thought I was going to start a charity. That was my whole that was like going to be my whole angle.

690
00:58:14.800 --> 00:58:18.800
And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that charities were not sustainable. They

691
00:58:18.800 --> 00:58:23.200
can't feed themselves. You have to keep always asking for more money, really begging people for

692
00:58:23.200 --> 00:58:27.200
money so that they can like care about your cause. But basically it's an inefficient allocation

693
00:58:27.200 --> 00:58:31.920
of capital. Like you take from one side, you give to another, but in order for something to be

694
00:58:31.920 --> 00:58:37.040
sustainable, it has to, it has to have a cycle. Right. And so then I ended up reading this book by

695
00:58:37.040 --> 00:58:40.560
John Mackie called Conscious Capitalism and to be really clear, I think only read the first third

696
00:58:40.560 --> 00:58:44.480
and knows like this is whatever. Anyways, I like, I was like, I get the point of the book.

697
00:58:44.480 --> 00:58:48.560
So basically it's just that in order to have something be sustainable and needs to benefit

698
00:58:48.560 --> 00:58:53.200
all stakeholders, it has to, it has to benefit the investors, it has to benefit the employees,

699
00:58:53.200 --> 00:58:57.200
it has to benefit the environment, it has to benefit the customers, it has to benefit everyone.

700
00:58:57.200 --> 00:59:04.400
I essentially like read derived capitalism from base units of like, how do I do good,

701
00:59:04.400 --> 00:59:07.920
how do I do good in a sustainable way? Oh, I need to have a business that does good,

702
00:59:07.920 --> 00:59:12.240
but because it does good, it generates a profit, because there's value to all stakeholders.

703
00:59:12.240 --> 00:59:15.440
And so fundamentally, like that's why I had this whole like, okay, well, then I'll just give

704
00:59:15.440 --> 00:59:21.200
lots of value here, which then will create these businesses or attract businesses to then invest in.

705
00:59:21.200 --> 00:59:25.280
And then that will be the cycle. And so I would encourage you to like, if you can think about it,

706
00:59:25.280 --> 00:59:29.280
like I get when you're broke, like it's very hard to think about other people, but you will end up

707
00:59:29.280 --> 00:59:32.640
getting to that point. Now everyone's numbers different. Some people are like, I just want $10

708
00:59:32.640 --> 00:59:36.080
million. Some people just want $1 million. Some people want a billion dollars. Like everyone's

709
00:59:36.080 --> 00:59:40.960
different in terms of your, in terms of your requests of the universe. But I will say something

710
00:59:40.960 --> 00:59:46.560
that Basel said, which is that small expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so like, if you

711
00:59:46.560 --> 00:59:51.120
shoot small, you win small. And so if shooting, if shooting is going to take the same cost either way,

712
00:59:51.120 --> 00:59:54.880
it's going to be hard, and it's going to take time and years and effort, I think Peter Steele said

713
00:59:54.880 --> 00:59:59.920
this. He said, if you want to compete, open a restaurant in Chicago, right? Like there's,

714
00:59:59.920 --> 01:00:03.840
if you want, like you can just do that if you want. If you also want the monetary goal,

715
01:00:04.800 --> 01:00:10.320
which I just like, because it just shows me how, how, if I'm improving in the game. And back to

716
01:00:10.320 --> 01:00:13.840
what my friend was saying at the very beginning, he said, I don't think a lot of people understand

717
01:00:13.840 --> 01:00:19.760
that you just actually just like love business. I think that's it. Like I just so happen to have

718
01:00:19.760 --> 01:00:23.840
phone and love with something that rewards financially. My litmus test for this is that I actually

719
01:00:23.840 --> 01:00:29.760
don't have tremendous affinity for any one business. Like I'm not like, oh, I love, I love sneakers.

720
01:00:29.760 --> 01:00:35.680
I love, I love insurance. I love whatever, I love software. Like I, I just kind of like love

721
01:00:35.680 --> 01:00:40.960
business. I think trying to fit myself into a box calls me a lot of pain and suffering. When I

722
01:00:40.960 --> 01:00:45.840
think about the, the moments where times stay and still, it's when I'm talking to a business owner

723
01:00:45.840 --> 01:00:49.040
about their business and about how it works. And I get to ask like a million questions and like,

724
01:00:49.040 --> 01:00:53.360
oh, what are the margins on that? Oh, and like when I ask questions, they're super invasive because

725
01:00:53.360 --> 01:00:57.360
I'm just like, how much profit do you make? I like, what do you return to Antsbet? Like what's

726
01:00:57.360 --> 01:01:01.040
your conversion look like? What's the like? I ask all these things and some of the things I'm like,

727
01:01:01.040 --> 01:01:04.880
I'm trying to steal their stuff. I'm like, oh, I have no desire, but I just want to understand it.

728
01:01:04.880 --> 01:01:08.320
I think that's why I write books about this stuff. I make videos about this stuff. I draw pictures

729
01:01:08.320 --> 01:01:13.440
about business because it's, it's what I love. And it just so happens to be something that makes

730
01:01:13.440 --> 01:01:18.400
money. If I were, if I were playing video games all day, no one would care. And it's just because

731
01:01:18.400 --> 01:01:22.000
there's a wider percentage of people that can play video games all day and people understand it.

732
01:01:22.000 --> 01:01:26.240
It's just that fewer percentage of people understand that I would work all day and talk about business

733
01:01:26.240 --> 01:01:30.400
all day. Because why would you ever want to do that? Well, it's just like, I feel like I have this

734
01:01:30.400 --> 01:01:36.160
very odd endoint, like I have this like, I have this like business fetish that, and I remember

735
01:01:36.160 --> 01:01:40.560
because I was very obsessed with fitness for like over a decade. I was, I competed, like I was

736
01:01:40.560 --> 01:01:45.200
very in the fitness like, and I'm a pretty obsessive person. And so enough that the people that I worked

737
01:01:45.200 --> 01:01:52.000
with were like, dude, like please quit here and, and, and start, start something fitness related.

738
01:01:52.000 --> 01:01:54.640
And so I ended up doing that because they were like, dude, I can't hear you talking about fitness

739
01:01:54.720 --> 01:01:59.680
anymore. Like it's so annoying. The thing, here's the crazy part. Is that like two weeks into starting

740
01:01:59.680 --> 01:02:04.320
the, the fitness business I had once I had my gym? I realized that I loved business more than I

741
01:02:04.320 --> 01:02:08.800
loved fitness. And I love fitness a lot. And I still, I still work out to this day, but I loved

742
01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:13.280
business even more. And that was weird for me because I was like, I'll never like anything more

743
01:02:13.280 --> 01:02:18.800
than fitness. There's no chance. And until I found it. And so if you are fortunate enough to love a

744
01:02:18.800 --> 01:02:22.240
specific problem or love a specific avatar, by all means, like my hope is that you just lose

745
01:02:22.240 --> 01:02:27.200
yourself to that romantic love and just go all in on it. I am hardcore, I'm willing to be hardcore

746
01:02:27.200 --> 01:02:32.320
in my content, even for the sound bites, even though I know it makes me look more binary, more black

747
01:02:32.320 --> 01:02:36.480
and white than I really am. Because I think that for the younger version of me that was out there

748
01:02:36.480 --> 01:02:40.080
that was like, I felt very misunderstood. I felt very lonely. I was like, I just want to work all

749
01:02:40.080 --> 01:02:44.160
the time. And I want to work on weekends and I want to work in the morning and I want to work

750
01:02:44.160 --> 01:02:48.160
while I'm awake, basically. And it's because it's the thing like it's the thing I'm into. I had a

751
01:02:48.160 --> 01:02:51.520
lot of suffering when people would judge me on it. And it would tell me that I was doing something

752
01:02:51.520 --> 01:02:56.160
wrong and that like I was unbalanced or like, and it's really tough when you don't have the

753
01:02:56.160 --> 01:02:59.360
proof to show that you're good at it yet. And that's what it was for the fun. I mean, like these

754
01:02:59.360 --> 01:03:05.440
are years guys. Like this isn't, this isn't like six weeks, six, like these are years. And I started

755
01:03:05.440 --> 01:03:11.520
here, right? Like this years. And so I bring this up because like you might be on year three,

756
01:03:11.520 --> 01:03:16.640
year three is before this graph even starts for me to put this in context. Like this is your

757
01:03:16.640 --> 01:03:22.960
four for me. Like 26. This was your four. I started 22. And so I bring this up because like

758
01:03:23.680 --> 01:03:29.760
you're not on the wrong path. You're just early.