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And so I think what a lot of people need to do is figure out the games they need to play in the

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meantime. And so experts at things don't really have more impulse control. I think it's a fallacy.

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They figure out more ways to win in the meantime.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more

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per customer and how to keep them longer and the many failures and lessons we have learned

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along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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Alex, so grateful and honored for you to join me today because we spent so much time together.

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So it's only right that we actually sit across from each other face to face.

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Just for the audience sake, how have we spent time together, Danny?

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Dude, so many podcasts, so many YouTube videos, like a disgusting amount. Like,

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I'm like, are you kidding? Like, I've spent so much time with you because you're such an

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incredible communicator because you are able to have 10 years of knowledge into three,

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a three-second clip. I'm just like, what is going on? And so I'm learning so much about business,

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about communication, about life, all from you. So thank you so much for being you. And that's

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why we spent so much time together because I continually get value from the things you say.

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Well, I will do my very best to continue that trend even though there's big shoes to fill.

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Well, I mean, it was so funny because one guy, I remember just not being able to talk to one guy

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because he's like, oh, Alex Formozzi, I don't get any value from him. I'm like, all right,

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well, we're just not going to be friends. So that's, yeah, that's, but this interview is about you,

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not my spending time with you. And that is, I would love to start with a psychology assignment

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you had at 19 years old when you had to pick someone who had a psychological disorder and tell the

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story of how they went down that path. Will you tell us? Yeah, sure. So I like many young men,

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had lots of angst and felt like the world was not fair and that I had not gotten what I

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quote deserved and that I thought that my parents could have done a, quote, better job of

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parenting me in general. And I resented them for that. And so I had an intra to psychology course

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and the assignment was, as you said, pick somebody who had any pathology that we had cut, you know,

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studied over the whole semester and then write the story from their perspective of how that pathology

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might have developed, right? And what happened through the course of going through that assignment

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was not what I expected. Because as I went through it, I picked my mother and she's, you know,

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she's been public about, you know, suffering from, you know, depression and ADD and things like that.

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That I picked that and kind of inhabiting her shoes as an immigrant who came here not speaking

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the language and having, you know, a Serbian father who was very authoritative, rightfully so,

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we're talking 1950s, you know what I mean, just different, different times. And what her

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upbringing must have been like and having a split life between being an American at school and,

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you know, getting beat up for not being able to speak because back then it was almost expected

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and normalized it to beat up the foreigners to, you know, then being the first person to,

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you know, first female class at Hopkins to be in that as a doctor. And so thinking about that

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trajectory, I all of a sudden like realized the amount of pressures that she had put on extra,

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that other people would put on her externally throughout her life. And what happened was I felt

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like I understood and blazed Pascal, who's, you know, Pascal's trying to also remember him,

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who's a mathematician and also a theologian. He had this quote that I love, which is to understand

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is to forgive. And I believe that you cannot both hate someone and understand them at the same time.

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And so like if I am very angry with someone, it's become a check for me where I'm like,

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oh, I must not understand something. Like there's something about them or something about their

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experience that has made me not understand why they do what they do. And then you have the

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secondary statement of most people, if you were born with the same genetics and lived the same

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life as that person, you would see the world the same way as they do. And so carried within that

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is this very jarring idea that what if our viewpoint of the world is something that someone else hates

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entirely. And in their mind, we are wrong. And but in their mind, like hard to even really get

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into that and like empathize with someone else's point of view to that degree. But me going through

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that process has actually been one that I've repeated multiple times in my life when I was extremely

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angry with someone. And it's usually around loyalty or betrayals or things like that that happened

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to all humans. But when I started writing narratives around how someone experienced life that would

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make it reasonable that they would act or behave or believe what they believe, all of a sudden

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I felt like I understood. And so in a matter of a few weeks, what felt like a decade of Hayden

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anger directed towards my mother, I went back from school to complete the story. And I remember

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she picked a fight about something I can remember it was. And you know, you have your normal routine

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of getting into a fight with someone. And I just remember having no emotional, I had no adrenaline

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spike. And I just felt very like, it felt like she had hit a button, but the button wasn't hitting

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the normal trigger path that it was supposed to. And so I just remember looking at her and being like,

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I understand. And I'm sorry. And she, of course, burst out in tears. And it was a huge emotional moment.

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But like at the end of the day, it was like, I get it. Like you went through a lot. And I'm sorry

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that you've had to deal with these demons. And it wasn't about me. And I think it's a lot of us,

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we have these like self-centered viewpoint because like we are the center of our own universes and

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therefore expect that everything that has ever happened is because of us, right when we're children,

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we just expect our parents got divorced must be my fault because like you think that way. It's like

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at a base level. And so realizing that it wasn't my fault necessarily that she felt that way. And I

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guess in some way giving her permission to just be who she was and not constantly tell her why she

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shouldn't be this way or why basic her basic existence was insulting to me. Unpacking that

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made for a less contentious relationship because then the triggers were somewhat removed because

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if you understand why someone doesn't speak English and they keep looking at you and making

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noises at you, it's hard to get upset because you know they don't speak the language. And so even

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you can just replace like speaking English with speaking Alex and it works the same way.

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And so that's how that little intro to psychology assignment both

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changed my life with my mother but then also helped me unpack anger driven situations that I had

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with other close people throughout the rest of my life. It's really interesting that your

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normal reaction to her wasn't the same and thus her reaction was different to you breaking down

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because it almost reminds me of how Leila, your wife sometimes acts when you get angry, she meets

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it with love. And then you're like, I see what this is, which is very fascinating to speak to

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human beings in our nature of when we meet fear with love in some respect, like the fear dissipates,

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so cool to like make that realization. I think it's just very hard to step out of the emotion

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in the moment. Yeah. And sidestep it and try and get outside or above whatever analogy you want

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to try and say like, okay, would why not understand? And then it becomes a question to solve

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rather than a person to attack. Have you, do you have any other examples, frameworks,

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mental models that help you do that in a quicker way? I mean with with something that's like

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super deep like anger stuff like that, I mean that was years and years, like I think it takes more

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more work to do that. But in terms of frames around decreasing the stakes of a situation, I have lots of

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them. So like, for example, one of them is, you know, if you zoom out far enough, you realize that

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you can't even see the earth. And so when I'm really upset about like, why fire something, I'm like,

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okay, maybe this isn't as big of a deal. You know, and if you if you go back, you know, let's go

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back 20 years, like what thing really bothered me 20 years ago? I probably can't even tell you

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would really bother me 20 years ago. And so I can probably expect that what's bothering me today,

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I'll feel the same way 20 years from now. And so if it's not going to matter, then it probably

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shouldn't matter now. And a different frame would be like, okay, we'll look at the ancient exes. And

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when I say that, I mean like the Romans, the Babylonians, the Sumerians. And in 5,000 years, we will be

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the ancient Americans. And we'll look back on this and we probably won't remember maybe even just

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the leader's names, let alone the day to day strikes that we deal with. And again, if it's

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not going to matter then then it's not going to matter now or shouldn't matter now. Another one

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is the frame of the veteran, which I like a lot, I check out from Dr. Cashy, which is, imagine

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whatever this bad circumstance is happening once a day, once an hour every day for the next year.

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Okay, so that's, you know, let's say it's 12 times a day times 365 a lot of times, right?

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Well, how would you feel on the 2,000th time of that happening? Well, by that point, if you really

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thought about it, you'd be like, well, this is probably, you'd probably just be like, well, this is

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just how this is, this is how life is. And then you wouldn't be up-sippied because you just adjusted

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your expectations, which meant if I could change my expectations on my 2,000th time of my maids putting

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the spoons in the wrong drawer, then I can readjust, and I say that it's somewhat tongue-in-cheek,

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but you can replace that with whatever. You know what I mean? With somebody double-parking you,

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with your boss being short with you. Like, if your boss was always short with you once an hour,

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every hour of every day, in a year, it wouldn't upset you because you would expect that. And so a lot

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of the, like, the angst that we experience at the anxiety, the sadness, the anger, whatever it is,

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it comes from the fact that our expectations are unmet. And so either we can demand that an

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uncarrying universe changes to meet us, or we can change our expectations. And I think that

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if it's you versus the universe, unlike what most of the Americana propaganda will put out,

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the universal win. And so I think that that is one where you surrender to reality through acceptance,

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and you say, like, this is, period. And it's not good or bad, which is probably the sixth frame,

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which is that we have this situation, let's say the spoons one, because it's ridiculous, right?

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Where I say I have this problem, right? And so one of my favorite ways to solve a problem is to

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stop defining it as a problem to begin with. It's the least effortful way to actually solve stuff.

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It's like, is this really a problem? What if this was good? And here's a weird one.

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Is that most short-term problems are actually long-term benefits? So think about this. It's like,

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you've probably heard the story of the man and the boy and the horse. So kid gets a horse,

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everyone says, this is amazing. Kid falls off the horse. People are like, oh, that's terrible,

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because he broke his foot. And then army comes to recruit, but he can't go to the war because his

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foot was broken. People said that was amazing. And so like, you keep going through this cycle,

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and that it's only within the time period that you measure. But over a long period of time,

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we don't know whether the thing was quote good or bad. And if we don't know if something's

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going to be good or bad, then why even bother scrubbing the label to it? Because the only thing

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that we actually know is that it happened. And so I see it a lot like the weather where you say like,

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people will describe a situation like sunny days or rainy days. And they say sunny days like

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their good days and rainy days like their bad days. But if you're in a drought, rainy day comes

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from heaven and another sunny day comes from hell. And on the flip side, if you have a wedding the

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next day, rainy day sounds horrible and a sunny day sounds amazing. And the crazy thing is that

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there's two people praying for the same thing. At the same time, one's going to be upset and the

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other person isn't. And I remember one early, you know, dealings with Christianity. And I was thinking

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about just having a God. I remember praying for good weather because I had some outdoor event. And

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then I thought to myself, man, there's a farmer who's really praying for rain right now. And I was

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like, shit, maybe this is flawed, not to say that praying in general is flawed, but just that

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construct of this, it being my way is therefore good. And I think getting used to not getting my way

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comma and saying that that's okay has been one of the big psychological hacks that I've had in

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my life that have decreased my anxiety levels and my anger levels around responding to stimuli

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that I wouldn't at the onset say was what I wanted. Because I might not know. And maybe today's

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rainy day is tomorrow's sunny day. And maybe sun is neither good nor bad. It just is.

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It's beautiful. What I love so much about what you talk about is like there's a surrender there

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to the moment, whatever it is, but that doesn't negate hard work either. And a huge part of who you

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are and what you present is like, you just need to do more reps for the thing. So it's like, maybe

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you want it to be your way. Just do more of the thing. And so I mean, I think the best example to

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me that really hit at home was with the flyers on the cars. So could you tell that story for people

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might not know. Yeah. So I had a mentor way back when when I was starting my gyms and he was like,

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yeah, we do flyers. That's how we get customers. I was like, okay, so I'll do some of those. You

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see, you should try that. So, you know, print out three inner flyers and, you know, advertising

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was expensive and I was broke. And so 300 was was the appropriate amount of advertising that I

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could stomach. And so we put out 300 flyers and I waited. And then the next day I got a call. I was

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real excited. And as soon as I pick up the phone, I was like, oh, hey, it's like, I got one of your

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flyers. I was so excited. And he says, yeah, you dinged my Mercedes. And I just immediately panicked

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and hung up the phone. I didn't say thankfully you never called back. But that was the only call I

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got from my 300 flyers. And so I called the mentor back and I was like, hey, you you told me to do

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them, you know, think, you know, a decade plus ago and way more entitlement. I was like, hey,

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you told me this was going to work, right? And and I'm and he didn't even respond to that. He was

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like, well, how many do you how many do you put out for your test size? And I was like, what do you

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mean by test size? He's like, well, what was the first batch that you tested on so that you could

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then scale it? And I was like, well, I mean, I put out 300 in total. And he just started laughing.

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And I was like, why I'm like, I'm having this very serious moment,

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internet, I mean, I was like, what are you laughing at? He's like, hard to know if anything works with

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300. And he's like, well, we test with 5,000. He's like, and then if we get a half a percent back,

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he's like, then we're okay. One percent, I'm scaling with the moon one and a half. He's like,

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I'm singing, singing praises. He's like, if you had a half percent on that, he's like, you'd get one

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and a half people. He's like, and that's tough to see with 300. Can't really know if anything's

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work. And I remember thinking in that moment, like, I might have been doing the right thing,

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but I was not doing nearly enough of it. And I think that there's a lot of early on, and like,

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I think that story can apply to a lot of things to early entrepreneurship is like, we can get

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disheartened by our first month of making content that we haven't made money yet from it. But it's

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like not that you're doing the wrong thing. You just might not have been doing it either along

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enough or enough of it, which time is really just also a proxy for doing enough of it. And so,

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I think what a lot of people don't get myself included when I was earlier starting is people

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don't get the amount of volume that it takes to be successful, right? Like, actually, I'll tell you,

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I had a different conversation the other day, so good friend of mine, very successful. And like,

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to the B level successful, right? And so he had a conversation with me. He's trying to

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want to start building a personal brand just because he wants to give back. And he was like,

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dude, why? He's like, your stuff just crushes compared to mine. Like, what am I doing wrong here?

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And I gave him a couple tips and then he was like, well, how much country are you guys putting out

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a week? And I was like, I think we're at like, 350 pieces a week. And he just like, he looked at me and

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he was like, thank you for resetting my minimum standard. And because he's an experienced entrepreneur.

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And so he could immediately translate that into what he needed to hear because he was like,

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me with my one a day. He's like, he's like, I think it's significantly less reasonable that I

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expect to have your outcome with with one 30th of the level of volume that you're putting out.

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But here's the context is that back to that flyer story. He was saying 5,000. And then he said,

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you go to 5,000 per day after that, meaning that in 30 days, you put out 150,000 flyers in that same

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30 days, I put out 300, right? So I was, I was doing one five times, whatever, five times 50,

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one 1,500th divided by 140, 500th of the level of effort that he was. And so a lot of time people

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think in doubles and triples when it's the level of effort, but just like the example I gave with

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the guy who's successful already, it wasn't him doing twice the work. He needed to do like 30 times

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to get that level of outcome. And I will tell you this is that across super successful people

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independent of how they advertise. And this is just specific to advertise, but it works with product

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iteration. It works with editing for videos. If you know two editors, I can imagine I'm looking at my

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my own chief of bread behind me. If you have two editors and you say, hey, how much time did you put

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into this video? The new guy says, oh, I put a ton of time into this video. I put like two hours into

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this. And the experience editor laughs and he's like, so that was the first round of edits that you

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did. And they're like, no, that was like the whole thing. He's like, well, hard to edit anything

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in two hours, right? In terms of like if you had a video, right? And so the the the the huge

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discrepancy between someone coming in who's new and someone who's experienced in terms of how much

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work they expect to do to get an outcome is the difference between mediocre and world class.

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And like the context here, I'm going to keep giving examples because I think it'll maybe drive

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it home. But like my book, the book that's coming out, I put 2000 hours personally into that book.

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So six hours a day from was two years. Every first six hours of every day was writing and rewriting

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and rewriting and writing 19 drafts of the book before it will now come out, right? And people see

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the last book and that book sells 25,000 copies a month with word of mouth alone. There's no paid ads.

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It just and it grows more every month, meaning people who buy the book read the book tell more than

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one person about the book and it keeps growing. And so I have a bunch of other friends who are

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business people who are like, oh, I'll go write a book and I they'll text me and they're like,

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dude, I'm already halfway through started two weeks ago. I don't I don't even need to know.

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I can tell you right now the book's not going to be good because like nothing exceptional

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takes little time. Like great, great work takes great struggle because if it were easy, then it

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means it's low hanging fruit. And if it's low hanging fruit, other people have already done it.

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And it's it's the high fruit that take the ladder that take the climbing that take it in cup

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by thistles and leaves and whatever that's still there for the picking. And the thing is it's like most

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of the big wins in life come from the hard to attain fruit. And the key to most of those treasure

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chests is actually right in front of most people. It's just that there's just a time clock on the treasure

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chest. The key's sitting on top of it and says wait five years and then you can unlock it's in

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plain sight. It's not a secret. It's just the thing that makes it hard is not the complexities

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the consistency. How do you know when something like the book is is ready to go after 19 drafts?

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Why not 20? Why not 27? Why not 127? Because at that point, there was nothing else that I could think

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of that I could do to improve it. So most people will ship something and be like, well,

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because I'll give you the editing example. So someone says this video, I just edited it and I say,

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cool, if I give you two more hours, what would you do? They'd be like, well, I probably do this

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better. I probably do this better. I'll be like, okay, do that. Come back. Come back in two hours.

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I'll be like, okay, if I give you two more hours, what would you do? Well, I'll probably do this

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in this. Okay, cool. They come back. Now here's the trick one. If I give you 20 hours, what would you

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do? Well, shit, I would probably restructure the story entirely to make it really flow, not just

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the surface level edits, but I'd really just rearrange the entire thing to make it way better.

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Okay, do that. Then that clip gets a million views. It's like, there's duct tape and there's

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lipstick that you can put on stuff, but why go from version 18 to version 19? Because probably

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version 18, given the audience I've had, would probably still be a person. But in my opinion,

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the difference between great and world class is so much more effort on the front end,

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but so much more output on the back end, meaning I could spend half as much time on this book,

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right? And I'd probably sell close to the amount of books that I'll probably sell like from

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the event and all that stuff. Like people will buy it, right? But it's the second wave that

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won't happen. It's people will say this book was good, but they won't blow their minds,

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right? Because it'll have just been like enough stuff that wasn't totally broken down all the way,

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the hard work of digesting a concept that takes four days to break down one paragraph.

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Like my team laughed about this, actually my CEO of gym launch. I send him there's one page in the

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book that special. I'll just leave it at that. And I send him a draft of that page and I read it

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to him out loud. And offhandedly, I was like, yeah, I've spent the last 20 hours on this over

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the last two days on this one page. And he didn't say anything about it, but he then made a clip

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about that because to me, that's how long it took me to write every page. If you do the math,

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like I spent 10 hours basically on every single page in the book. And so for him, he was like,

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thank you for resetting my minimum standard. And so a lot of times, I think if you looked at the book

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and what it'll probably do afterwards, it seems significantly, it might go later, this is a huge

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to say my buddy, Michael, he said, if people saw how much work I put into my art, they wouldn't think

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it's as exceptional as it is. And so a lot of the exceptionalism is that people see the output

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not the input. And so people said, if I said, hey, I spent 2000 hours on this book,

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maybe it's not that exceptional when you think about it like that, right? But it is exceptional

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compared to people who put 50 or 100. And so if I put 20 times the work into a book and it becomes

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three times better than other books, my outputs input ratio on the front end is way worse than theirs.

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But I would rather spend two years building an exceptional product and then let all the customers of

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that book spend the rest of their lives promoting it for me than spend two months making a decent book

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and then have to spend the rest of my life promoting it because no one else wants to do it for me.

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Real quick guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything.

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And so the only ask that I can ever have are you guys that you help me spread the words we

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cannot more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products and have better

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experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review

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and share this podcast. So the single thing that I have to do is you can just leave a review,

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but take 10 seconds or one type of the thumb to the absolute world to me and more importantly, it may

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change the world for someone else. Yeah, it reminds me of how Steve Jobs thought of the iPhone.

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You're thinking about the same thing for writing a book, which to me is a revolutionary concept,

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but make sense. Another thing that I love about what you discuss is like how your own bar for

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excellence continues to rise year over year. How what you would have accepted as great work a year

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ago, five years ago, 10 years ago was much lower. And that gave me some peace for some reason.

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Could you talk a little bit about that? The more you do, the more you realize you can do.

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And so it's like you proved to yourself in some way. Do you get a positive reinforcement

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loop that like if I spend an extra 50% longer on this, I get even more positive feedback. And so in

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some ways, you could say that I've just become addicted to that loop, which is that the more obsessive

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I become about anything, the more positive feedback I get on a longer time horizon. And that's the

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part that most people struggle with, which is like think about this for a second. I spent two years

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writing and editing this book years. And it could also flop.

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It could. You never know. It could flop. No, I'm going to be tweeting it every second. It won't flop.

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But it could flop. But most, and I think this is like this is a muscle. It's a skill that you

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develop over time. And so I don't, if you would ask me 10 years ago, there is no way. And I mean

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this isn't me like trying to, trying to post around this like there is no way. And I can say this

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confidently that I would wait for two years for anything. I wouldn't have waited two years for

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anything. Just I couldn't do it. There's no way I could do it. And so you know the marshmallow test

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that people talk about with the kid and one marshmallow, two marshmallows, right? Well, what's interesting

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about that is that I would love like a third test of this. And maybe someone he can send it to me

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if they've done this. But it's how long can you make the kid wait for the marshmallow?

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Because we have a binary of, okay, wait 15 minutes or wait 30 minutes. And if they eat the marshmallow

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in the 30, they're not long-term thinkers. And if they have some level of impulse control. And if

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they wait 30 minutes, they get they get the second marshmallow. But what if you said you have to wait

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a day to get the second marshmallow? What if they said you had to wait a month to get the second

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marshmallow? How many kids wait now? And at some point, the kid starts to death. So like,

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though, the analogy blinks, right? Or it's no longer the leads or foot off. But like you can still

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take the concept and apply it, which is I can almost guarantee that the kid that can wait a month

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to get the second marshmallow will win no matter what it whatever he does. And it's because the

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amount of input that they're willing to do before getting a result far exceeds everyone else's.

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You said before that, you know, you couldn't, it would be impossible for you to wait two years

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for anything 10 years ago. That implies that you were able to increase the amount of time that

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you were, you became more of a long-term thinker over time. How can somebody listening to this

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become more of a long-term thinker intentionally? You have to figure out what to do in the meantime.

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Like, patience isn't actually active. And this is a big finding for me,

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was that people like be patient. It's a terrible directive. Because no one knows what to do when you

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say be patient. Right now, I'm being patient for every other thing in my entire life, except for

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this podcast. Because time is elapsing. And other things are going in progress. I have long-term

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10-year goals that right now I'm being patient for by being on this podcast with you. And so I think

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what a lot of people need to do is figure out the games they need to play in the meantime.

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And so experts at things don't really have more impulse control. I think it's a fallacy.

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They figure out more ways to win in the meantime. So if you've been on a treadmill and you see

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30 minutes, right? And then you, and then you're like, you get five minutes in and you're like,

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okay, only five more five minute chunks, right? That is in a nutshell what an expert does when

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they approach a project. They don't try and think I'm going to run 26 miles, right? If they're running

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the marathon. They say, how do I break this into a chunk that I can manage, right? And then what

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they do is they create more ways to win. And so in those two years, it wasn't like I just sat

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and suffered for two years. And then the book's going to come out, right? I would have many, many

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victories along the way that would happen. Oh, we just destructed this whole this chapter. I just

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rewrote it again. And it's killer where I just got this beautiful visual that just completely

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explains this thing with three, three shapes. And it just, you know, it explains the whole concept,

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right? And so you get these little mini reinforcers. And then you have the long loop of reinforcement

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that is for me that I have now learned over and over again is that the longer the more time I put

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into something, not necessarily longer, but the more time I put into something, the fact that time

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elapses is secondary. The more time I put into something, the better it is. And what happens to

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is when you're built working on projects, you're working on anything is that if you work on it over

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a longer period of time, you have more time for creative solutions to come to you to the problems

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that you're thinking through. Like the best launch I ever did in my life so far was actually

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a prestige lapse myself in my company. And it was because we actually plan it for a year.

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Other companies, other projects, I, because I was impatient, was like, let's do this in 12 weeks,

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right? And I hear, and I can quote the contributors, you got to break shit and move, you know,

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I mean, I do all that. But you don't work really well. When we had thought through every contingency

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in every scenario, and we were completely staffed up, and we had done a beta test, and we had done

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a five times bigger beta test, and we had ran processing through. We made sure paths were on time.

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We made sure we had inventory tracking that was automated. We made sure that we had the right

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ratio between customers, you know, service people and the number of tickets that we're going to get

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bought. We knew we had supply chain lined up so that we could ramp up at a 10X or 20X month over

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month type of scaling because we're going to thousands of locations, right? Like that doesn't happen

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in a week. And so like great, great triumph takes great sacrifice. Just is what it, like there's a

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quote in a BF Skinner who's a behavioral psychologist, and he starts one of his books, he says,

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many variables exist and therefore many variables must be studied. And it's just about the context

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of human behavior. And so a lot of people want to make these idioms or these truisms that are like

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one plus one equals two is like the human behavior has a lot of variables. And so everyone wants to

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have the shortcut. And he just was like many variables must be studied. It's just like you can't

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shortcut the work. The work has to be done. And so I think kind of like that level of acceptance to go

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full circle with what we were talking about earlier is like we have this expectation that we want

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this amazing big outcome. And we aren't willing to put in the level of work required to make that

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outcome. And so it's interesting like corollary and this is like if you want to double like if you

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want to double output outcome, you might have to work five times harder. And if you want like a

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triple output, you might have to work 10 times harder. And you're like, wait, there's there's an

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inefficiency there. And it's like the answer is yes. But there's also an asymptote on the other side.

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So let me give you an example. So if I said Olympic spreading, right? These guys trained for four

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years to shave a tenth of a second off their runtime. And let's say one guy works twice as hard

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as everybody else. And he just gets one tenth of a second faster than the second place guy.

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Right? So he wins the gold. The other guy wins the silver. What is the material difference between

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first and second? Everything. Everything. And so even though the results, there's a diminishing

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return of the results that you get from the input that you put in in terms of work, there's an

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outsized return on each diminishing increment of improvement. Because teaching a high school kid how to

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run with good form, they probably in one training session will make more improvements on their running

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than an Olympic caliber runner will make in the last four years of their running. But which one

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matters more? The last four years, right? And so I see the same thing there. It's like if I want to

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create a right one of the best business books of all time that people will put into the canon,

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which is my ultimate goal, like my team is that it's like when people make the list of like these are

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the five books you have to read, I want all of them to be books that I've written. Not because it's

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me thing, but just because I want that to be the level of quality that that we put out, right? And

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in order for that to happen, I might have to run for four years every single day to get this much

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better. But so that the first book, not the third book that someone says is the book that I wrote.

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Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. What have you learned about yourself from writing this most

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recent book? The work needs doing. It's just like there's no way around it. It just has to be

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confronted. And I think it just comes down to that is you just have to confront the work. And a lot

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of people put a lot of extra things between them and the work that they try and romanticize,

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they try and create superstitions around it. They have all these fancy rain dances that they do. But

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at the end of the day, the work doesn't care who you are. It just cares that it gets done.

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And I think in some way, that's one of the great equalizers about product. Is that in a lot of ways,

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and this will probably be triggering to some people, but it doesn't matter who you are.

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In a fitness example, 500 pounds is 500 pounds. It doesn't care who you are.

369
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Like anyone like Arthur can pull the sword from the stone if you're strong enough.

370
00:34:14.080 --> 00:34:18.880
And so there's a level of work that has to get put in to learn how to run ads.

371
00:34:18.880 --> 00:34:23.920
A level of work has to get put in to learn how to do call calls. A level of work that has to

372
00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:28.560
get put in to learn how to be patient when someone's angry with you, or how to run a team,

373
00:34:28.560 --> 00:34:34.720
or how to stick your projects in a sauna, or whatever it is. And it doesn't matter whether you're

374
00:34:34.720 --> 00:34:38.880
old, you're young, you're male, you're female, you're black, white, Asian, whatever, right?

375
00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:44.640
It just needs doing. And I think that a lot of people waste a lot of time not starting.

376
00:34:45.440 --> 00:34:49.120
And so I've told this analogy before we've probably heard it, but I'll say for your audience,

377
00:34:50.720 --> 00:34:53.600
there's a study, there's probably a lot of studies been done with this, but you can become

378
00:34:53.600 --> 00:34:58.960
proficient in any skill in about 20 hours. So playing the piano, riding a bike, whatever,

379
00:34:59.040 --> 00:35:03.440
20 hours of concentrated effort gets you proficient. It's the largest gain in skill

380
00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:09.040
improvement is 20 hours of concentrated effort. The problem is, is that people will wait a decade

381
00:35:09.040 --> 00:35:14.160
to start the first hour. And so you'd be amazed at how much progress you can make if you cut down

382
00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:19.600
the time between when you acknowledge the work and when you start doing the work. And I think that

383
00:35:19.600 --> 00:35:24.960
over time in my career, what has happened is just that my delay between what I really, I need to do

384
00:35:25.040 --> 00:35:30.000
something and when I start doing it has just shrunk so that I can get to the gain and proficiency

385
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.720
that much faster. And then if you think about that over 10 years, right, where one guy goes nothing

386
00:35:34.720 --> 00:35:38.880
and then he starts another guy does 20 hours and 20 hours and 20 hours and 20 hours and 20 hours and

387
00:35:38.880 --> 00:35:43.440
20 hours. By the end of that decade, they're not even recognizable. They're not even the same

388
00:35:43.440 --> 00:35:50.560
stratosphere. Yeah. When you think about a good writer or a great writer, an unstoppable writer,

389
00:35:50.560 --> 00:35:56.640
what comes to mind and what separates the amazing writers versus everyone else, other than the work,

390
00:35:56.640 --> 00:36:03.600
saying the work, people do thousand, put 2000 hours into a book. What makes for an unstoppable,

391
00:36:03.600 --> 00:36:11.040
incredible writer? I don't think there is something else. I'll qualify this, which is that the work

392
00:36:11.040 --> 00:36:18.960
needs feedback. So you gain proficiency with expert eyes, giving you feedback on the work you do.

393
00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:24.400
Because if I'll give you the content example, if I post a short every day for 10 years and I don't

394
00:36:24.400 --> 00:36:29.040
change what I'm doing and I just post the same thing, I might not make any progress. And I know

395
00:36:29.040 --> 00:36:33.600
people who've done made concept for 10 years and they have the same size following, right? Because

396
00:36:33.600 --> 00:36:38.400
they don't learn, they don't improve. Like, I'm going to rewind real quick on this. Is that

397
00:36:40.560 --> 00:36:48.560
the work is required for you, not for the output. Somebody who naturally gets it on the first try,

398
00:36:48.560 --> 00:36:55.360
who really just understands it. And this is an easy example. If Mr. Beast's account got cancelled

399
00:36:55.360 --> 00:37:00.800
tomorrow, he can start another one and get it to millions and millions of hours because he has

400
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:06.400
the skill. And so it's not that the output requires him to go work for five years in order to build

401
00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:11.600
the following. His skill required him to work for five years to get the skill, but then the output

402
00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:17.040
does the work after that. And so, like, the time delay that people talk about, like myself included

403
00:37:17.040 --> 00:37:21.200
when I'm trying, like, this is where nuance of advice comes in, right? Where it's like, I tell people,

404
00:37:21.200 --> 00:37:25.360
hey, I want you to do 100 reps every day. I don't want you to do the same hundred reps every day.

405
00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:29.280
I want you to get better with all the reps. And if you haven't looked at the end of the day and

406
00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:32.640
said, what could I do better? How could I improve? And if you don't have somebody on the outside of

407
00:37:32.640 --> 00:37:36.480
eyes being like, hey, you stumbled here on this call or hey, when they said this, let's drill this.

408
00:37:36.480 --> 00:37:41.120
Let's, let's do this a couple times. That's how you get better, right? So you have to be willing to

409
00:37:41.120 --> 00:37:46.080
do the work and get the feedback to improve. Like, the work works on you more than you work on it.

410
00:37:47.200 --> 00:37:51.600
And I think that's the piece that people miss. Like, my prescription, like, of doctor money,

411
00:37:53.040 --> 00:37:59.040
of working is for the, for the person's skills, not because I care about the fact that you made 10,000

412
00:37:59.040 --> 00:38:03.040
phone calls. I care about the fact that you got better 10,000 times.

413
00:38:04.480 --> 00:38:08.960
How many sales calls do you think you've been on in your life? I've closed over 4,000.

414
00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:15.760
Oh my god. So what? At what close rate? Well, mine were in person. Before the days of the

415
00:38:15.760 --> 00:38:19.760
telephone, not really. Like, I was, I had all my cells, almost all my cells were in person,

416
00:38:19.760 --> 00:38:26.480
but from a form of volume perspective. Do you think that that is a major contributor for why you

417
00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:32.400
are such a good communicator? An incredible communicator, I would say? I think it's part of it.

418
00:38:33.200 --> 00:38:38.800
Things part of it. But you know, it's funny. A friend of mine saw some of my old gym lunch content.

419
00:38:39.600 --> 00:38:45.360
And they were like, dude, have you like taken speech lessons? They're like, I saw an interview with

420
00:38:45.360 --> 00:38:49.920
you like in your garage and you were like, oh, yeah, I mean, I don't know. Just do shit and make

421
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:58.240
money in my own way if you don't want to work. And so, and so, and at that point, I'd already close

422
00:38:58.240 --> 00:39:02.080
4,000 sales, right? Interesting. But I'll give you something that that will probably just,

423
00:39:02.080 --> 00:39:06.880
you know, discourage some people. I don't think that the sales skill I had necessarily translated

424
00:39:06.880 --> 00:39:13.600
into the content skill. I had to get 4,000 reps here. And so when I say that we make 350

425
00:39:13.600 --> 00:39:17.520
pieces of content every week, I have a lot of reps. And here's the beautiful part about content,

426
00:39:17.520 --> 00:39:23.440
in my opinion, is that you get such fast feedback cycles. You can immediately see what happens and

427
00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:28.000
what work and what didn't, right? And then you can learn, you can get better. And not to get in

428
00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:32.640
the nuances of like, don't being algorithm chaser and things like that. But at least from a skill

429
00:39:32.640 --> 00:39:36.080
perspective, content is one of those games that you can get really good at really quickly.

430
00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:39.280
Sales, you have really fast feedback cycles. You know, if the person buys, you can see if they change

431
00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:42.400
the body language, whatever, like, oh, I shouldn't say that next time or, oh, that worked.

432
00:39:42.480 --> 00:39:46.640
Like, I'll say that again, right? Um, where the problem that she gets in in this learning cycle,

433
00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:50.000
sometimes you learn the wrong things. Sometimes the person was ready to buy it because their friend

434
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:55.120
Sandy preferred them. And then you do something fancy and then she says, yes. And it wasn't because

435
00:39:55.120 --> 00:39:59.440
of use. You she bought despite you, right? And so then you get false data. And this is where I get

436
00:39:59.440 --> 00:40:04.880
like skill acquisition gets really interesting. Um, but overall, I think the reason that I became

437
00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:11.840
quote more articulate is because I have just committed time to doing this. Yeah, but that seems

438
00:40:11.840 --> 00:40:17.360
to be a recurring theme. Yeah. I've six years of podcasts. Yeah. The first four years,

439
00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:24.720
that like, I just looked at a graph at like yesterday, I looked at a graph. And the day that we sold

440
00:40:24.720 --> 00:40:32.160
gym lunch, um, is like the day it's, it's like a straight line because I stopped. So I started

441
00:40:32.160 --> 00:40:36.080
taking all the excess attention that I had from going to the business and taking a portion of that.

442
00:40:36.080 --> 00:40:41.600
I mean, like, I'm going to learn this skill. And so it's straight line grew after that. But it was

443
00:40:41.600 --> 00:40:47.680
like four years of flat ish, nothing because realistically, I don't think I took any feedback

444
00:40:47.680 --> 00:40:52.480
from my podcast. I just consistently made the podcast. So there's an element there where I'm like,

445
00:40:52.480 --> 00:40:57.760
I like, I say this and I'm not saying it to preach. I'm saying because I lived it, right? Like,

446
00:40:57.760 --> 00:41:04.480
I made a podcast for four years and didn't grow, right? I did like 400 episodes before it actually

447
00:41:04.480 --> 00:41:09.520
like started growing. I got the same 2,000 people who listened every month. That's monthly listens,

448
00:41:09.520 --> 00:41:15.280
not daily monthly listens of 2000, right? And then I was like, I'm going to try and learn this.

449
00:41:16.000 --> 00:41:21.280
And then I started trying to learn it and trying to get better. Yeah. And one of your core skills

450
00:41:21.360 --> 00:41:28.800
is being a good learner, I feel as well. So this is a good, I appreciate that. And I'm going to

451
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:32.400
segue into this for the audience is that I think there are skills like and there are meta skills.

452
00:41:32.400 --> 00:41:39.200
So meta skills are skills that help you learn skills, right? And so like being a good writer is a

453
00:41:39.200 --> 00:41:42.400
meta skill for communication in general. So if I'm a good writer, I'll be getting it writing

454
00:41:42.400 --> 00:41:45.360
copy, we're getting writing emails, we're getting writing captions, I'll be getting it right

455
00:41:45.360 --> 00:41:50.000
scripting tweets, I'll be good at making sure like all of those come from one skill, but it's a meta

456
00:41:50.480 --> 00:41:54.480
skill, right? If you get it reading, it's like, well, then I can absorb a lot of information. So

457
00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:59.120
I can then learn how to write copy, I can learn how to make ads, I can learn how to all of those

458
00:41:59.120 --> 00:42:04.720
things faster. And so in my opinion, the education system should only be on meta skills so that you

459
00:42:04.720 --> 00:42:11.520
become like a stem cell for knowledge. Is that how do we get the person so that they can become

460
00:42:11.520 --> 00:42:17.200
anything, right? Like we don't need to teach 17th century Aztec literature. We should do is teach

461
00:42:17.280 --> 00:42:22.320
people how to learn and then let them learn whatever they want to learn because people all get

462
00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:27.040
interested in something and just and then when they have the skills, then they can get good at it

463
00:42:27.040 --> 00:42:32.720
and then they can make a living doing it. Okay, a hundred million dollar learner. What are some of the

464
00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:40.960
chapters here? Learn, um, repeat successful actions, get feedback from people who are further

465
00:42:40.960 --> 00:42:47.520
add than you, expand the time horizon that you measure your output on, but shrink the time horizon

466
00:42:47.520 --> 00:42:53.200
that you measure your inputs on. So measure what you do today faster, but measure what happens from

467
00:42:53.200 --> 00:43:00.480
what you did today longer. That's it. Like find people ahead of you, figure out what they did if

468
00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:05.120
that's what you want to learn, do the inputs and measure them quickly, short term, get feedback,

469
00:43:05.120 --> 00:43:09.760
and then don't and then wait a long time until you get the outcome that you want. But I would say

470
00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:15.520
instead of optimizing for the outcome, I optimize for progress. And so a lot of my team knows this is

471
00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:22.320
that like, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a quick story. So when I got into, when I started to start

472
00:43:22.320 --> 00:43:26.720
making content, I hired a YouTube agency or whatever because I didn't know anything about any of

473
00:43:26.720 --> 00:43:30.000
the stuff, right? Like nothing. It's kind of, it's funny because people were like asking me to talk

474
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.880
about content and like I didn't do this to you. And so anyways, I get on the phone and I said,

475
00:43:34.880 --> 00:43:41.600
hey, just so you know, I'm committed to doing this for 10 years. And he was like, what?

476
00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:46.880
And I was like, yeah, I was like, I will, I will follow the system that you outlined for 10 years

477
00:43:48.560 --> 00:43:54.000
before I need to see an ROI. And he was like, that is the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my entire

478
00:43:54.000 --> 00:43:58.720
life. He's like, and, and that was the first conversation and it was fine or whatever, right?

479
00:43:59.200 --> 00:44:05.440
And I told him after that, I was like, to be clear, I was like, I want to make progress. I want to see

480
00:44:05.440 --> 00:44:10.240
that our videos are doing better, you know, month over month over month in general, not this video

481
00:44:10.240 --> 00:44:13.920
to the next video, but month over month, I want to see that like, if I'm putting attention to this,

482
00:44:13.920 --> 00:44:20.480
that we're getting better. That's all I want to see. And so six months in, things started really

483
00:44:20.480 --> 00:44:26.000
cranking, right? And I think nine months in, I ended up saying I'm going to bring the whole

484
00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:31.360
team in house and we had an amicable and amicable party, right? And on the last call that I had with

485
00:44:31.360 --> 00:44:36.800
him, he said, I just want to share something with you that has changed my life. And I was like,

486
00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:43.200
what? He said that first call. He said, I have never had anyone in my entire life. Friends,

487
00:44:43.200 --> 00:44:48.720
family, mentors, ever talked to me about a 10 year time horizon for anything. He's like, every

488
00:44:48.720 --> 00:44:53.680
client I sign up is like, I need to ROI in 90 days or I'm not going to pay you or, or like, if this

489
00:44:53.680 --> 00:44:58.720
doesn't make me money in a month, like, I'm out, right? And he's like, and it completely shifted

490
00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:04.880
the way that I have approached my business, just seeing how you approached YouTube. And I

491
00:45:07.040 --> 00:45:11.440
have been in the business game longer than I've been in the content game. And so some of those

492
00:45:11.440 --> 00:45:15.120
lessons have carried over for me. And so I'm like, of course, it's going to take a while. I'm competing

493
00:45:15.120 --> 00:45:19.120
against, you know, Mr. Beast, and I'm not saying competing against him. He's, he's amazing, right?

494
00:45:19.120 --> 00:45:21.920
But like, I'm competing against guys who've been doing it for 10 years. Of course,

495
00:45:21.920 --> 00:45:25.600
a better than I am. Why would I expect to be those guys, right? But I'd like to be better

496
00:45:25.600 --> 00:45:30.000
in a month or two than I am now. And as long as I have a path towards that, I'm satisfied.

497
00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.080
And I will continue on that path because if I can draw the line between now in 20 years from now,

498
00:45:34.080 --> 00:45:39.200
then it is a good outcome. And I think that, that being able to draw the line and say, like, I just

499
00:45:39.200 --> 00:45:43.360
want to see that I'm getting better, that's all that people in my opinion should focus on. Now,

500
00:45:43.360 --> 00:45:47.680
if you're not getting better and you're doing the inputs and you're putting the real time into

501
00:45:47.760 --> 00:45:51.920
the thing, then it means you need somebody to give you better feedback. Because you don't, like,

502
00:45:51.920 --> 00:45:56.640
if you don't know why you're not not doing better, like if I say, hey, editor, make this video

503
00:45:56.640 --> 00:45:59.440
better. And they're like, I don't know what to do. That's when you need someone to say, like,

504
00:45:59.440 --> 00:46:03.040
here's six things that you can do better. And then they're like, oh, so you need the awareness.

505
00:46:03.040 --> 00:46:06.720
You need someone to be able to get to bridge that knowledge gap so that then you can bridge the

506
00:46:06.720 --> 00:46:14.240
effort gap. When was the first time you realized the importance of putting in progress,

507
00:46:14.880 --> 00:46:21.120
leading to a long-term result? I mean, what comes to mind for me initially is the gym teacher

508
00:46:21.120 --> 00:46:26.560
who took you under his wing with lifting weights. But is there something else that comes to mind for

509
00:46:26.560 --> 00:46:32.640
you? If I, if I gave you an answer, I'd be making it up. I think I've always mentioned progress.

510
00:46:32.640 --> 00:46:38.320
You know, I just want to know I'm getting better. Yeah. Makes sense. Which of your earliest jobs

511
00:46:39.200 --> 00:46:43.360
are playing the biggest role in your current day-to-day?

512
00:46:46.560 --> 00:46:52.160
I mean, realistically, none of them. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I cherish my time as a

513
00:46:52.160 --> 00:46:59.600
blended tender at Smoothie King. And, you know, as an orthodox Jewish caterer and as a, you know,

514
00:46:59.600 --> 00:47:07.280
fur coat, brush her in a warehouse. But, you know, none of those things realistically taught me

515
00:47:07.280 --> 00:47:11.280
any skills. Now, I learned through observation to see what some of them were doing. But I would

516
00:47:11.280 --> 00:47:15.680
honestly, when I tell stories about even the fur coat dealer, some of those things, I actually

517
00:47:15.680 --> 00:47:21.200
had to learn business later and then retroactively look back at that situation was like, oh,

518
00:47:21.200 --> 00:47:24.800
that's what they were doing. Like, I didn't even have the context to make the judgment at the time.

519
00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:29.120
And like, I remember, like, in the Smoothie King, I was like, we would do the sale tally within

520
00:47:29.120 --> 00:47:34.480
the day and it was like $2,000, $3,000 every day. And it never even registered for me. Like,

521
00:47:34.480 --> 00:47:38.320
I never even thought of it as money. It was just like the number. And there was certain amount

522
00:47:38.320 --> 00:47:41.120
that I had to write. That was cash. And I put that in the safe. And then a certain amount that I

523
00:47:41.120 --> 00:47:44.400
was like credit cards and you put it in you to tally it up with the cup counter or whatever

524
00:47:44.400 --> 00:47:51.040
at the end of the day. And I'd be like, I didn't think about that being a million dollar business

525
00:47:51.040 --> 00:47:54.800
or what the revenue run rate was or what the margins were. Like, I didn't think about any of that

526
00:47:54.800 --> 00:48:01.280
stuff. I was just trying to make smoothies. And so I'll do a tiny segue for the audience here is

527
00:48:01.280 --> 00:48:09.360
that like, I reject the concept of being a born entrepreneur. I think that we get better at

528
00:48:09.360 --> 00:48:15.040
things that we are reinforced for doing, period. And the natural born entrepreneurs are just

529
00:48:15.040 --> 00:48:19.440
typically people who got reinforced for doing entrepreneurial type behaviors earlier. So like,

530
00:48:19.440 --> 00:48:24.640
I was a very security different person for most of my life. So like, I just had jobs. And then I

531
00:48:24.640 --> 00:48:29.440
went to college. And then I got a white collar job that had prestige around it. And the most

532
00:48:29.440 --> 00:48:32.400
terrifying thing in the entire world for me was putting that job. It took me six months to quit a

533
00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:39.280
job. And I was 22 or 23. And I had $50,000 saved up. And I was petrified. And to this day,

534
00:48:39.280 --> 00:48:42.560
it was still the most afraid I've ever been in my entire life was putting that job, which is

535
00:48:42.560 --> 00:48:47.280
ridiculous to me now in retrospect. But it was because I had never been rewarded for that.

536
00:48:47.920 --> 00:48:52.000
So it was such a huge change in behavior for me from following the chart and path because I've

537
00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:58.080
been rewarded over and over and over and over and over and over and over again for doing what I was

538
00:48:58.080 --> 00:49:03.920
told. Makes sense. So I think in some ways, the guys who did fail out of school and things like

539
00:49:03.920 --> 00:49:07.120
that and then became entrepreneurs, it's like, well, they never got rewarded for following the

540
00:49:07.120 --> 00:49:10.880
directions. I had been rewarded for following the directions, which is why it was so much harder for me to