WEBVTT

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and building an exceptional product takes a level of work that most people are not accustomed to

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doing. And this has probably been a continuous learning experience of my entrepreneurial career

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is how much work it takes to be good, or rather how much work it takes to be the best.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and

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build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with acquisition.com.

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I always wish pesos, musk and buffet had documented their journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us.

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Please share and enjoy.

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So every year I always like to look back and think about my lessons and failures from the year

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or any kind of big frame shifts that's happened. And this year I had two and I'm just going to

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talk about one of them, which was level of effort. And the big reminder on this was I went to this

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little YouTube meetup of guys who had, you know, from five million to several hundred million

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subscribers on YouTube. So very, very big creators. For whatever reason, they thought that little

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old me would, you know, be cool to have in the room. And what was amazing to me was how much work

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they were putting into every video. And so I'm going to give you some context here for everyone

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who asks because I get on podcasts and I get asked on stage and they're like, how do you make

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great YouTube videos? And I want to be clear, after having been to this thing, I think we make horrible

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YouTube videos. But the amount of effort that went in is that they would, for every video,

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they have a 20 to 30 page brief where they're talking about the scenes, the transitions, the cuts.

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And the first five seconds, they're confirming the thumbnail, opening another loop, presupposing

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multiple ideas so that people have open visual cues that they want to confirm later.

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The introduction is completely mapping to the very clickbaity headline and image, but they don't,

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it's clickbait if you don't fulfill it. It's just accurate if you have an insane thing,

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and the video is also insane. They're like making insane thumbnail that'll get all the clicks,

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and then make sure the video delivers on how crazy that thing was. And the level of detail,

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like one guy pulled up a video and it had 10 million views on it. He's like, I was so pissed because

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these guys copied my exact video and they got 40 million views. And the guy who had the most

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subscribers in the group said, all right, let's play it. And so he sat down, we pressed play,

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and in the first two seconds, he was like, stop the video. He's like, you didn't confirm the thumb.

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He was like, that's it. He's like, I don't need to see anymore. He walked away. And I was mind blown

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because of the level of detail that was being scribed to each of these videos and the concepts.

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And multiple of them would have pre-visits, which is like they spend $20 or $30,000 just to have

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a full mock-up of the video they're going to make before they spend $500,000 fully producing the

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video. And so if you're like, wow, that's a lot of work. That's what it takes to be the top 0.0001%.

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And so to me, it was a great reminder of lessons that I've had earlier in my life. And so I'm

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going to go Quentin Tarotino on you. And the first time that I had this big reframe was actually

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when I was pledging a fraternity, a big disclaimer here, the school I went to, like 50% of people

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were Greek. So it's really like you were social or you weren't social. And the only parties where I'd

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Greek houses, so you kind of had to be. So it's a little different everywhere, but for where I went

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to school, that's what it was. And I remember this, this, this, this occurrence. So every year,

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a pledge cast a pledge, right? And like clockwork, two weeks into the pledging process,

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there would always be a revolt that happened to my year, happened every year after that. People,

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they'd all get together, all the pledges feel that lock arms, they're like, this isn't what we

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thought it was going to be. We thought it was going to be fun. This sucks, right? We don't want to do

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this. And so I got the opportunity to be on the other side of the table as president my junior year.

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And so they had, they asked me to come over the freshman side of the campus because they didn't

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want to come to like home territory. So I walked into some kids dorm room, there's 20 guys in there.

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And I, you know, they're all like, amped up because they're like, fuck you guy, whatever.

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And so I just sat down, I was like, I understand you guys are upset. I was like, okay, just a quick

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question. Who here thought that pledging was going to be easy? And no one raised their hand.

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I was like, who thought it was going to be hard? Guys raised their hand. I was like,

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won't you look around? Would you think about your feeling right now? I was like, this is what hard

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feels like. And it's such a frame shift because a lot of times we're accustomed to what a certain level

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of heart is and we've defined this level of struggle as hard. But every once in a while you get

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something that comes on top of that and then it feels very hard. But how you reframe that reality

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after I had that conversation with those guys, they all accepted, okay, this is what hard feels

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like. And then the rest of the time they were fine. And they finished the process like everyone

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else does. And so it had, we had a break reality for them in order for them to reframe what hard

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felt like. And so when I went to this YouTube meetup, it did the same thing for me yet again

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in a sphere that I wasn't familiar with. But it reminded me of a lesson that I've known over

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and over and over again that all great things take great effort. And the difference between a good

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thing and a great thing is often 20 times, 100 times the work. And so when you see a video that has

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50 million views on it, you're like, man, that guy's so lucky, right? The amount of thought and work

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and prep and re-recording and editing and post like these guys are making like one video a month

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and they're spending every hour of every day with a 25% team to make one video. And so when you

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think about that versus like, I made a video on how to get Facebook leads, right? Like, of course,

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you're not going to get the same access to talking head in front of a camera. And so it discounts the

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amount of work that is truly required to win. The next time after this pledging occasion that I had

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was I actually went to a law firm in France. You might not know this, but I went and spent a

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whole summer in France as a legal intern. And so French is my first language, fun fact. Well,

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haven't spoken a long time, but my, anyways, all good. I was good enough to go there. And so

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I remember I got, I talked to one of the partners at the law firm and it was this older lady and

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I was like, yeah, I have to do this whole, I have to translate this person's agreement from,

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they wanted me to translate from French to English in legal language. And I was like, Jesus.

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And so I'm working on this thing and I was like, man, this is so much work. And this lady

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laughed at me. And she was like, she's like, you're so young. You don't even know what work is.

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She's like, you've never even, you haven't learned to work yet. And she said it in like a very

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loving manner, but she was just like, you haven't learned what the word work means. And as somebody

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who now has more little bit more experience in the law world, or at least from what I witnessed there,

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people worked around the clock. Well, as France, so not as much. But like here in the US, like people

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work around the clock at law firms and just a level of work, level of output is so much higher that

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she was right. I had no idea. I think my entire like, like one of the months I was supposed to

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translate a contract. And I think nowadays I'll probably be like three days work or two days work,

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right? And with AI who knows. But the point is, is that she reframed what level of effort was required

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to win. And so for example, my book that's coming out, 100 million dollar leads, I spent to this point

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two years and 2,000 hours working on the book. My editor spent 1,500 hours working on the book.

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So together, two people spent 3,500 hours working on one piece of content that we're basically going

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to give away for free, not basically bargaining and with free in multiple ways. Digital formats,

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the hardbacks you got to pay for. But the main thing was the difference between my first draft and

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my ninth draft and my 19th draft, 19th draft of getting this book is what I think is the difference

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between a good book and a great book. And for me, the standard that I wanted to set for this book

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was that I wanted this book to become canon. Meaning when people talk about the great books of

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advertising and marketing and business, they bring up this book. Like in every one of those

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listicles, they're like, oh, this is one of the 10 books you have to read. Like I want it to be

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in that list. And I want it to be in that list not now, but 20 years from now. And so leaving that

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as the standard was a very high bar to me, not just like, can I write 200 pages worth of words

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and put a face and a cover on it? Because I've had a lot of people who saw the success of 100 million

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of their offers and said, oh, I'm going to go write a book. And they wrote it in like four weeks.

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And they're, you know, they're surprised when like they do their launch. And then it doesn't

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sell anymore after that. And they have to spend the rest of their time trying to promote the book

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because the book, the quality of the book doesn't promote itself. And so the thought press I had was

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if I spend two years making an exceptional book, then I won't ever have to market it again

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for the rest of my life because it will market itself. The same thing with the offers book,

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it continues to sell more copies every month after month. And that comes from the product.

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And it's a higher leverage activity to make something exceptional. Even though you front

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load the work, if you spend 10 hours on a video versus one hour, you might actually get 100 times

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the views because of the incremental level of effort. And if you go from spending 10 hours to 100

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hours on the video, you might get another 100 times the views because the level, so there's the

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law of diminishing returns, meaning your incremental unit of effort only gets you an incremental return.

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So less and less return every time. But here's the counterlaw to that, which is that you get exponential

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returns the better you are. And so what's the difference between the best Olympic runner in the

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world and the second best? 10th of a second. And think about all of the diminishing returns they

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had to do for all the practices and all the things. But what's the difference between being gold and

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silver in terms of life? Everything. And so even though they both had diminishing returns,

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that little bit, that extra bit of quality that might have taken the number one guy another year

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of training to get this much out, the real world difference is everything. And so one of the

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mindsets that I've had and continue to be reinforced is how much work there really is. And it's

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difficult when you're younger to appreciate how much work can go into a single project simply

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because you haven't had that many years to work yet. So a 15 year old cannot have worked on

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any project for five years. It's impossible. And so when you're 30, you can have spent a decade

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building one thing. But you can't really have done that when you're 20. And so that is where I think

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people who are older have a real advantage over the young. I'm not saying forever because obviously

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younger people get older too. But they have that advantage because they know what it looks like

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when it's hard, when you have to keep putting in more hours every day to make the 16th version,

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the 17th version, the 18th. And you think why didn't you just publish the 18th because I didn't

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think it was as good as the 19th was. And the 19th version of it, as it currently stands,

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I can't think of anything else that I can do to it. And I wanted to leave all of my heart on the

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field and say like there's nothing else I can do. Like this book is as good as I have the ability

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to make. Now, whether the market agrees is a separate question. But in terms of where I feel like

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my output of like what my best work is, the work is done. And I think, and part of my fear is that

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as my quality standards continue to grow as I as my tolerance for mediocrity continues to go down,

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how much work I have to put in for what to for it to be my best for there to be nothing left

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to do or to work on continues to expand. Which is why I think some of the biggest projects are the

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ones that take the longest. The reason why some of the biggest business tycoons talk about people

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underestimating what you can do in a year and overestimating how some of the biggest business

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tycoons talk about people overestimate what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they

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can do in a decade. And so switching my perspective to the amount of work that I can do in a decade

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to accomplish something big actually makes the big things more accomplishable. Because everybody

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tries to make a best selling book in 90 days. What best selling book was written in 90 days? Not many.

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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 can

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not 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

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

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review, but take 10 seconds or one type of a thug that would mean the absolute world to me and

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more importantly it may change the world for someone else.

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And so looking at the achievements and then reversing what was the price tag of that achievement

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in terms of hours of effort and work and repetition? To me has made these very

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distant things achievable because it's like, oh, I can now count because at least my mindset has

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shifted enough that I can count in five year increments. I remember when I brought on my first

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YouTube editor, he was a vendor in the very beginning because I wanted to just get somebody to

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hold me accountable to making the videos. I said, you know, my goal is to make three videos a week

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and I hope that within a decade, I'll have a million subscribers. And I was like, it won't really

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matter if I had a million. I was like, but I feel like if in a decade, I don't have a million,

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then the marketplace will have told me that the video is not that valuable. And six months later,

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we ended up bringing a lot of the team in-house and I got on call with him and he said, I just

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want you to know that the perspective shift that you had on that first conversation with me,

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he said, I have never once had a client in my entire life say that. He's like, they're always

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asking, like, how do I get 200,000 subscribers in 90 days? Like, how do I get my videos to go viral?

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And you were like, yeah, I'm just going to keep making videos for a decade and hope that

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it works. And the reason for that, that exact goal was because I heard a podcast of a guy who said

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he was getting 3,000 applications a month for his service business. And I was like, man,

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3,000 applications a month. I was like, that's a lot of applications. All of organic content,

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all of YouTube videos. So I looked at his channel. And I think at the time, he had like 300,000

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subscribers. And I was like, man, that's pretty wild. And then I clicked View First Video.

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And it had been eight years earlier. And so I was like, okay, well, if I do what this guy did,

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and I do the same level of effort for eight years, then maybe I can get something that

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does 3,000 applications a month. Because my thought was, if I have a business that service

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business that has 3,000 applications a month inbound for free, I'll probably be able to build

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a hundred million dollar revenue company might be valued to half a billion to a billion. That was

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kind of my reasoning. But one of the things that's been the gift of working with people who are

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significantly wealthier than me now, who have the B next to their name, is that all of them talk

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about significantly longer time horizons. And they talk about it that way, not because they think

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that it has to take that long, but because the amount of work required to build something

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amazing and huge just takes time. And one of my favorite quotes from Warren Buffett is,

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you can't sleep with nine women in a month and expect to have a baby. Like, it takes nine

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months to make a baby no matter how many women you impregnate. And I love that because sometimes

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the work just needs doing. And the level of effort reminder that I had from that meetup

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was a reminder of how much room we have to improve in everything that we do in the market in the

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media side. And so that was very inspiring for me rather than it being something that made me

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feel insufficient. I mean, sure, like it made me feel insufficient in that, like, I know we can do

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better. But in a lot of ways, I'm like, I saw all the different ways we could improve. And that

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gave me this huge time horizon of how much better we can be. And the work that I know other people

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won't be willing to do to keep up. And so in a lot of ways, you can see the work that you're

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willing to do to make something great as the competitive mode that other people won't be willing to

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cross. And so I'm going to give you, I'm going to, I'm going to wrap this up with a real-world

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example. Good friend of mine wanted to get into a sales recruiting company, right? Just like

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everybody in the fucking sun. And so he's like, yeah, I want to recruit sales guys for companies.

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And I was like, okay, well, how are you going to be different than everyone else? And before

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you had time to answer, I was like, let me tell you, actually have exceptional salespeople.

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Because if you think about what the fundamental truths are, right? If you had a sales recruiting

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business, and every salesperson that you had was an exceptional salesperson, do you think that

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you'd have trouble finding business? No. Okay. Well, then if only one thing had to be true. And

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then that, if that one thing were true, everything else worked, why would you not focus all of your

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effort on that? I'll tell you why. Because people are in a rush. So their first few sales guys would

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probably be pretty good. And they'd give them to companies. And those companies would be happy and

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ask for more. But because they hadn't built the infrastructure yet, they then go find a few more

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people, don't do quite as good of a job. And they give it to those people. Now, those people might

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not be dissatisfied, but they're like, they might not look for more salespeople from them. Now,

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use the testimony from that guy to get a couple more customers. Now, that demand comes up. And the

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next people that you bring in, you put a little bit less effort. They're just not quite as good as

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the second round of people. And you see where this is going. Eventually, you sell too many people,

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too quickly, your quality drops precipitously. And then eventually, you're the exact same as

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everyone else. And so the amount of work that it took to train and recruit those first people,

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the ones that you absolutely wanted to make sure had to be good, is the level of effort. That is

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the hard work that has to be confronted. That is the problem to be solved. That's the one that has

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the 10 or 100 million dollar price tag on it. Because I like to think of problems as puzzles with

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a price tag, which is, okay, like I'll talk to our portfolio companies and say, hey, I think this

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is what we need to do to get our enterprise value from like 20 million to 100 million. And they're

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like, dude, that's going to be tough. And I'm like, well, good thing we're going to get paid 80

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million dollars to solve the problem. I was like, makes you feel a little better, right? And they're

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like, well, yeah, when you say it like that. And so I encourage you to think like, what's the price

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tag? What's the treasure at the end of this thing for doing it right? Because you know what the cost

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of doing it wrong is you're going to be like, everyone else and you're going to struggle and you have

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a rat race, you're going to price compete. And it's going to be vicious and you're going to have

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thin margins and it's going to blow. And that's what most people's businesses are. But if you

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were that first guy and you had that amazing sales guy and you give them and you sell the recruiting

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services, right? And let's say it takes you another two months to get another three good guys.

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So what do you think you're going to have trouble selling those three guys? No, of course not.

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And what's going to happen is you will be able to constrain supply and demand will increase.

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What happens then? Your price can go up because if you only have so much quality, people will always

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pay for quality and what happens there? You have more profit per recruit than other people. That is

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how you become a premium brand. Everyone wants to position themselves as premium but doesn't want

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to do the work of being premium because at the end of the day, you can position all you want. The

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product is ultimately going to be the thing that creates their reputation. Ford, like Elon must

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talk about this. He's like, Ford can go talk about how they're the highest quality and they're

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reliable. He's like, but ask the marketplace. No one describes Ford as high quality and reliable.

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The marketplace tells you what your brand is based on the quality of the product and building

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an exceptional product takes a level of work that most people are not accustomed to doing.

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And this has probably been a continuous learning experience of my entrepreneurial career is how much

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work it takes to be good or rather how much work it takes to be the best. And the difference between

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the guys who have 20 million subs and one million was an ocean, me being at one million and some of

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the guys being at 20 or 50 or 100, the level of effort that they put in every video I honestly think

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is probably 100 times the effort that we put in these videos. And to be fair, I think the effort

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we put into these videos is a hundred times more than a lot of the guys who have 10,000 subs

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on their channels. And here's the tough part is that the work precedes the outcome. And so if we

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start, let's say tomorrow, we snap our fingers, I triple my my my media team so that we can actually

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start making these Hollywood level production videos. Well, we're going to start putting those

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out and it still make take time for us to reap the fruit of what we've sowed during that period of

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work and all the recruiting and all the training and all the hiring and all the onboarding that we're

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going to have to do for each of these teammates to get them up to speed and then actually start

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increasing our output. It's going to take time and effort, but a lot of people want to shortcut

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that and I'm telling you, it is the character trait of being able to to confront and push through

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the work that will ultimately unlock the level success that other people only wish they had.

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And final thought I'll leave with is as you get better, you become more aware of how much work

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there is yet to be done. It's only a beginner who asks beginner type questions. When I get

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questions like, how do I get to a million dollars and 90 days? I already know that the person's

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never going to get there because of the constraints that they put on the question itself. And so the

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better you are, the more areas of opportunity you see where you can improve. And so the more

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deficiencies you realize you have. And so this is the classic Dunning Kruger effect, which is the

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more expert somebody is, the more they realize they don't know. And so the long, like if right now you're

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like, this is all I have to do that it probably means you don't know enough because the more aware you

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become of the deficiencies you have, the endless amounts of improvement that you know that you can

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squeeze out. And in my experience, big products, amazing media, exceptional work, doesn't have silver

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bullets. It has hundreds of golden BBs. It has many tiny incremental one percent, two percent

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returns that when added together become exceptional. There is a UK bike coach who took over the team

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and they were dead last when he took the team over. And just like John Wooden, the you know,

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arguably one of the best basketball coaches of all time, started every season by training all

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of his new players on how to put their socks on was that by getting one percent improvements on

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every aspect. So that bike coach, he got slightly lighter bikes. He got slightly more aerodynamic

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helmets. He had different types of pad, so they didn't have bruising in their crotch from all the

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time that they're on the bike. He like had different types of shoes. He made sure that they were

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hydrated certain amount. And every one of these tiny things just prevented some people from getting

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injured, prevented it added more people getting a little bit, you know, shaving seconds here,

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shaving seconds there. Two within a few years, they were unbeatable and they won six world championships

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after that. For me, the worst team and he did no silver bullets, just hundreds of golden

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BBs. And the work that needs to be done, the level of effort to build the amazing YouTube video,

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the amazing influencer brand, the amazing business that you want is rarely one thing because if

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you were one thing, everyone would do it. But it's a lot of little things that it just takes time

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to check off the list. And that's what takes a decade is building something that you've checked

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off a thousand small BBs on the list. And then people look at you and say, hey, how can I do that

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in 90 days? And for me, I define having done enough work, which is one of the hardest questions

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to answer because you always think to yourself, like, it could be better, right? And you may not know

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this, but Jared Tolkien, the Hobbit, he actually never submitted the draft for the Hobbit. He worked

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on it for a decade. And it was one of his colleagues who stole the manuscript and then submitted it

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on his behalf in order to get it published because he said it wasn't done yet. And then it ended up

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becoming the big success that it was. And so for me, I define when the work is done and when one of

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two things happened, one is that any additional effort makes it worse. Like, if I'm adding things that

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shouldn't be added or if I'm cutting things that shouldn't be cut, that's where I'm like, there's

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it is down to its simplest and most pure form. Whatever the work is. And if you think about a software

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that way, it's like, how can I make this simpler? How can I make it easier to use? How can I make it

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faster? Now, things like software because the world changes, it has to constantly evolve. But

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something like a book, at a certain point, like it has been packed in, there's no more space in

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the crevices for more knowledge based on my skill set. In 10 years, I'll probably read this book and

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be like, oh, my God, I can improve a million things. When I read the offers book, I almost blow my

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brains out because I'm like, oh, my God, I can improve all these things about it. But we get better,

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right? And we get better through doing work because when I wrote offers, I hadn't had another

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2,000 hours of writing with continuous feedback in front of me. So I'm 2,000 hours of work better.

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Now that I was that, the second way that I know that it's good enough is actually from a macro

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perspective, which is, if my work, the amount of time I put in to get an incremental return in this

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one thing, yields me less than me taking that same level of effort putting to something else that

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ultimately achieved this goal, that's when I say the work here is done enough for the ultimate goal.

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And so that's when you go chunking up and chunking down goal. So for example, if I was that

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biker, maybe my like off the track time, like right off the start is like something I was improving.

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At a certain point, how much time I have to do in improving that, I might have another aspect

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of my game that is weaker relatively. So then I take the effort that goes there, put it in my

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hills or whatever. And that will overall improve my bike racing time. And so whatever the goal is,

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it's reversing the constraint and knowing that whatever my incremental level of effort is compared

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to somewhere else I could put it will get me more output. So whenever it no longer is the biggest

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bang for buck, I shift to the next thing that'll be the biggest bang for buck. So in writing the book,

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first it was making sure that all the content was there. Then it was making sure that we edited it

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to its shortest possible form. Then we edited it for punctuation. Then we made sure that it was

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below a third grade reading level. And so each of these things, like why finish the punctuation thing?

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Well, now I could probably work more punctuation, but I think it would be more valuable for me to go

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through the reading level and lower the vocabulary. And that's how you kind of shift through, even though

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the overarching goal is to write the best book ever, I might, in a micro perspective, finish the work

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to be done in this narrow sliver. I think all of this comes down to working on yourself versus working

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on the project, seeing yourself as the output of your work rather than the thing you're working on.

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So it's like, I worked on becoming a better writer. The output of that work was a book. And I will

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continue to work on becoming a better writer because I'm not done. The book is done, but I'm not done.

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And so on my journey, my first book was, you know, Jim Launch Secrets, which is a manual on how to

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make Jim some more profitable, is not as good as 100 million offers. Now, my idea, I think it's a very

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good book. I spent a lot of time on it, but it's not as good. It's probably, it's also just not as wide,

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like not nearly as many people want to learn about how to make their Jim business more profitable.

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But I've, in part, of becoming a better writer is making things that you think will be palatable

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to more people. Like I think the next book I write will be palatable to even wider audience,

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because it'll be about sales and influence. Whether you have kids, whether you have your

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doing it for employees or doing it for sales, the influence and the persuasion component of it

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is going to affect everyone. So it'll be a wider, bigger book. And so for me, I am the output of

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the work I do rather than the thing that I'm working. So I can see progress every day rather than

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thinking like the book isn't published yet. And I spent two years on it. Like that is a very long

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trough for most people. Like most people can do anything for 90 days. So like we're going to

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book for two years is tough, right? On the 17th draft being like we need another draft. That can

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be hard, you know. But it's hard if you're measuring it based on the book. It gets easier if you're

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like I'm better at writing now than I was on draft one. And so I'll be better at draft 18.