Why Most People Don't Win | 1 Hour of Alex Hormozi on Discipline & Mindset

0:00You do what you've been rewarded for doing in the past and you avoid things you've been punished for in the past. That I absolutely agree with to the death. >> But don't you believe even as a child, let's say you could be shaped by your parents. So let's just say you're told by your parents, you are worthless. You can never do anything like that's hard to break. I think as an adult, >> I don't disagree with the fact that they're harder to break. I'm just saying you choose to believe it. There's a choice. Could it also be that your brain is wired in such a way that the the neural pathways all point to you being worthless and you're told that you will amount to nothing? And it's so ingrained that when you become an adult, it's just like these are patterns that are really difficult to break because you've been told your entire life and you believe one thing. And shattering all of that takes a lot of work. So to anyone who has that that paradigm, you're right. It's not your fault.

0:52You're never going to be successful. Now what? Okay. Well, maybe I can do something about it. Okay, great. You know what I mean? Like there's like there's no there's like there's no benefit. You know what I mean? Like if someone like cuz I I get Q&A every once in a while and someone's like can't grow my business because of my kids, right? Like they take up all my time and it's just impossible for me to do the things. Uh, so what would you tell me? They say, "You're right. You're never going to be successful and it's not your fault." And then you can just watch the person just writhe. They're just like, "Well, I mean," and I'm like, "What?

1:27You're going to fight me on the fact that you're going to be successful? Great. The fighter showed up. So, what do we what are we talking about? Do you want my permission to not be successful, or do you want to accept that you're not going to be like, "What do you want?" They're like, "Well, okay." I was like, "Well, yeah, there's your answer." Like, whatever reason you're giving yourself is the very reason you should do the thing. Like if your mom was mean as [ __ ] to you your entire life and she told you you were worthless, that's a great reason to be successful. >> There's just as many people who've had terrible upbringings who became successful. >> Why wouldn't you tell that person who says, "I have kids. I can't be, you know, give the business the time it needs." Why wouldn't you tell that person practically, "Well, you're going to have to structure your day better.

1:59You're going to have to sacrifice some time with your kids. You're going to have to wake up a little earlier. It's going to suck in the beginning. You'll get used to it." Why not go in with that approach? >> Cuz I think that person's looking for permission. I think they're looking for an excuse that's reasonable, that protects their ego. I don't think so. I think sometimes people just need to be told what to do. Maybe they they might know what the answer is, but if you tell them what the answer is, they'll do it and they'll believe it because you're the one telling them, right? >> Well, this person was saying, I I'm not going to be success. Like in the premise they were saying, this person saying, I'm not going to be successful. Here's my excuse. Tell me it's okay that I have this excuse. And I say, you're right.

2:31>> It's not your fault. You're never going to win. >> And then all of a sudden, their whole psyche changes because they want to contrast. They want to rebel against that. And they're like, what do you mean? I mean, I'm totally like, right, cool. So, you agree. So, you are going to win. So, what are we talking about? >> Right? It's like it's it's just this back and forth that people always rebel. >> Um, and I just find I just find that that context interesting because a lot of times if you actually just like put a knife in and just twist and say, "Sure, let's take it to the natural end. You'll never win." Okay, how do you feel now? Great. So, then you making all of that fanfare about all these reasons why it's justified that you won't win. How does that serve you? It doesn't. So, you might as well act as though it didn't matter anyways and do the stuff that is required. Just to be clear for everybody, like I share the stuff that work for me. If if what you're doing is working for you, then I love you. keep crushing it. You know what I mean? Like I I just share this stuff because people ask, you know, I they're like, "How did you do this by this time or whatever and I share my worldviews and they're relatively contrary. Not a lot of people

3:20>> believe as little as I believe about anything really." Um there are a few things that I absolutely believe through and through and then the everything else for the most part I feel is noise. And that has helped me a lot because um it has gotten me out of like you know 99% of the well 99 who knows but like a a vast majority of the content that I see on the internet is there's a lot of fluff. There's a lot of just like just BS, a lot of people giving advice that have never done the thing that they're trying to give advice on. Um, and so it's like when people talk about like, you know, energy and manifesting and, you know, psychology and affirmations and all these things, it's like even even this the statement like have you heard be do have? You heard that? It's like a pretty big in like the personal development stuff. It's like be the certain way so you do the things to get what you want or have the thing, right?

4:02And it has to you have to be the person first then you can to do the things to have the thing, right? That's like a being. Everyone's like be do you have? I think it's complete [ __ ] because being is a function of doing. If we were to say who is this person, we would describe their identity by the things they do. Like he is a carpenter. He's into these things. He does. He takes these actions. That is what creates his identity. How we describe it. So if being is a function of doing, then we can just cut being out, right? So it's just doing and then have. But if the having comes from the doing, then that's an aftereffect. That's an outcome, not the thing that created it. And so the doing creates the having. And so you can cut out the have. And so it just comes down to doing. And so we don't need to like obsess about like am I a good person, am I a bad person, am I a villain, am I an [ __ ] That was the point that we're making at the very beginning of this is like maybe you are an [ __ ] Maybe you are a loser. You can still do the stuff to win and win.

5:01Anyways, if Graham identified as a loser tomorrow, like truly through his being identified as a loser and still made the same video and posted it, it would still crush. And for me, that's actually given me a lot of shelter in hard times, which is like I don't need to be the best whatever. And I don't even need to be in a great mood. I don't need to identify as like some shiny knight hero, but I can still run these ads or make these calls or do these outreach attempts or make this partnership deal and I will still get the end result. And to me, that is very reassuring because it puts a lot more under my control.

5:38>> Do you think that you would do better in that case if you're feeling bad, if you were feeling better about yourself that you would have a better result >> if the exact same activity was done? No. >> Yes. If the same number of if I send the same hundred emails to the same exact people whether I'm in bad mood or good mood, the same response rate is going to come back. >> If you feel like you're in a really great mood, don't you feel like you could craft those emails in such a way that's maybe 1% better? >> And I'm talking about

6:04>> if we just stick to what the doing is because then at that point it's like sh great, we shifted the doing. But like the doing itself can just be done. And I like that a lot because for people who are in hard times, >> it's like you can you don't have to feel confident to do [ __ ] You can still get the result for it. Like you don't need to be confident to go up to the girl. You just go up to the girl and not be confident >> and still ask her out. Basically, what I'm trying to prevent against is the person who's waiting to be in a good mood to work >> because that sometimes that good mood never comes.

6:30>> Yeah. >> What's holding people back from excelling beyond average? Do you think it's talent, belief? >> I think people don't do very much. I think people do a lot of talking about doing and not a lot of doing. And I think it's the doing that does everything. And I think that's the and whether it's lack of motivation, lack of focus, lack of like lack of a hundred different things. Um it just comes down to number of actions taken per unit of time. And I think the vast majority of people just wildly underestimate the volume that's required. And I think that's like I I I hit on this so hard because like like when I'll tell you a story to illustrate the point. When I when I had my first gym, I had a mentor who told me that he got all of his leads off of flyers. And so that's what he did. And so I put out a flyer and I waited two weeks and one guy called me and said, "Hey, you dinged my Mercedes."

7:17And I was like, "It's the only call I got." So I called the men were up two weeks later and I was and he was like, "Hey, how'd that go?" And I was like ready to give I was like, "It didn't work." You know, like and he was like and he like totally took it and tried and he was like, "Well, what was your test size?" And I was like, "Well, what do you mean?" He was like, "Well, what was your test amount?" I was like, "Well, I mean I put out 300 in total." And he was like, "Oh man." He's like, "Hard to know if anything's going to work with 300." He's like, "We test with 5,000 per batch." He's like, "And then once we find a winner," he's like, "We do 5,000 flyers a day." And I was like, "Oh." So, he's doing 150,000 flyers a month for his business. And I had done 300. And this is why like I think the vast majority of people dramatically underestimate how much volume it is.

7:59Like, I mean, right when we started this, you're like, "Sems like you tweet all the time." It's like I post that often on a lot of platforms. Now, tweet Twitter is my my home base for how I where everything is generated from, but like we make 450 pieces of content a week. And so people are like, "Hey man, I've been making content for 90 days." And that would already put them in the top, you know, 1% because everyone gives up. But if you actually made a post every day for 90 days, be like, "It's amazing. That's 90 posts." >> Uh, I do that in two days. And so, but they get there and they're like, "But I'm not Mr. Beast yet." you know, and and it's just and there's just people think that someone else is doing two times or three times as much, but it's more often that they've done a thousand times or like two 10,000 times the amount of work that they have. Like if you count the amount of videos that you've put out in terms of longs and shorts or minutes of content that you've put out over the last four or five years compared to somebody, it's not even it's like it's so so ridiculous the discrepancy. Same thing with sales guys.

8:53They're like, "Hey, I've been I've been selling for 90 days." I'm like, "Okay, so how many calls a day do you take?" And they're like, I end up taking, you know, five or six live calls. I'm like, okay, so you've been doing it for 90 days. You've taken like 400 live calls. It's like, okay, well, this is John. He's closed 4,000 deals. Not calls taken, deals. That's why he's better than you. It's just like there's just a dramatic misunderstanding. And that probably with a 30% closure, he's taken 12,000 calls. It's like he's done 300 times the work you have. Like it's a lot or 30, but like it's a lot more than people.

9:22>> So, how do you compete with that guy? Cuz I bet there's a lot of those guys out there. you start. I mean, I think it's like you just start. And um I think it's like I think a huge amount of the delay that happens when people are starting out is the amount of time it takes for them to realize there is no easy way. So they spend a huge amount of time, they figure out what the what how to do it, and then they spend a really long time trying to figure out if there's an easier way, and then they give up trying to find an easier way, and then they just start the hard way. I'd say one of the strongest mental frames that has gotten me through my hardest times is thinking this will be the story that I will one day tell. And that means the harder it is, the bigger the dragon, the more epic the story. And by consequence, the more epic the hero.

10:10And if you think about the difference between winners and losers, winners define themselves by what they made happen and losers define themselves by what happened to them. And the difficult part of the lonely chapter is that the rocky cut scene lasts 90 seconds in the movie and lasts 5 years in reality

10:33>> with no promise of it ever ending. No guarantee of glory. What's interesting about and I don't again I don't like using the word psychology but I'll say what's interesting about humans is that our ability to endure is very robust if we know that we'll make it out. And so they've done mice studies where they drop the mouse in and then they let it drown and it drowns really fast and then they drop a a mouse in and then before it gets to the point where it drowns they pick it up and then they put it back in. And the second time they put it in, it can last like 20 times longer.

11:10>> Think for the stats of something around will drown in less than an hour. If it's taken out, dried off, and allowed to relax, it'll swim for a day. >> An absurd amount different. And so if I were to say, "Hey, I need you to hold your breath, but I don't tell you how long." 20 seconds in, you might be thinking, "This is stupid. When is he going to stop? Is he going to wait for me to pass out?" And all these stupid thoughts go into your mind. But if I say, "I need you to hold your breath for 3 minutes."

11:41Your lungs might burn, but you can see that there's this end that's coming. The difficulty with personal development and entrepreneurship is that you don't know when the end is coming, but you still need to fight like the second mouse who gets out, gets right off, and gets put back in. And the only certainty that I can give you is that it's the same thing that every other mouse, every other person who got through that period went through. and you won't die. And if you do die, you won't care because you'll be dead.

12:12And so, best case, you win. Worst case, it won't matter. You know, a fun frame with that is when someone says, "Must be nice." You can just say, "Yeah, it is." Or someone says, "Man, you must have exceptional genetics to have the body you have." And it just happens so easily for you. And you're like, "Yeah, it's sweet." And the thing is is that if we think if we were to just say like if we lean into it, right, to some degree by leaning into it, you also eliminate a competitor. If you want to hear my my ugly side because if I just affirm the fact that they think it happened overnight or that it was genetic or whatever,

12:52>> make it more out of reach, >> right? You do what you've been rewarded for doing in the past and you avoid things you've been punished for in the past. that I absolutely agree with to >> But don't you believe even as a child, let's say, you could be shaped by your parents. So, let's just say you're told by your parents, you are worthless. You can never do anything like that's hard to break. I think as an adult, >> well, I don't disagree with the fact that they're harder to break. I'm just saying you choose to believe it. There's a choice. >> Could it also be that your brain is wired in such a way that the the neural pathways all point to you being worthless and you're told that you will amount to nothing? And it's so ingrained that when you become an adult, it's just like these are patterns that are really difficult to break because you've been told your entire life and you believe one thing. And shattering all of that takes a lot of work.

13:40>> So to anyone who has that that paradigm, you're right. It's not your fault. You're never going to be successful. Now what? Okay. Well, maybe I can do something about it. Okay, great. You know what I Like there's like there's no there's like there's no benefit, you know what I mean? Like if someone like cuz I I get Q&A every once in a while and someone's like can't grow my business because of my kids, right? Like they take up all my time and it's just impossible for me to do the things.

14:08>> Uh so what would you tell me? >> I say you're right. You're never going to be successful and it's not your fault. And then you can just watch the person just writhe. They're just like [clears throat] well I mean and I'm like what? You're going to fight me on the fact that you're going to be successful? Great. The fighter showed up. So, why do we what are we talking about? Do you want my permission to not be successful or do you want to accept that you're not going to be like, "What do you want?" They're like, "Well, okay." I was like, "Well, yeah, there's your answer." Like, whatever reason you're giving yourself is the very reason you should do the thing. Like, if your mom was mean as [ __ ] to you your entire life and she told you you were worthless, that's a great reason to be successful.

14:41>> There's just as many people who've had terrible upbringings who became successful. >> Why wouldn't you tell that person who says, "I have kids. I can't be, you know, give the business the time it needs." Why wouldn't you tell that person practically, "Well, you're going to have to structure your day better. you're going to have to sacrifice some time with your kids. You're going to have to wake up a little earlier. It's going to suck in the beginning. You'll get used to it. Why not go in with that approach? >> Because I think that person's looking for permission. >> I think they're looking for an excuse that's reasonable, that protects their ego. >> I don't think so. I think sometimes people just need to be told what to do.

15:08Maybe >> they they might know what the answer is, but if you tell them what the answer is, they'll do it and they'll believe it because you're the one telling them, right? >> Well, this person was saying, I I'm not going to be success. Like in the premise, they were saying, this person is saying, I'm not going to be successful. Here's my excuse. tell me it's okay that I have this excuse and I say, "You're right. >> It's not your fault. You're never going to win." >> And then all of a sudden their whole psyche changes because they want to contrast. They want to rebel against that. And they're like, "What do you mean?" I mean, I'm totally like, "Right, cool. So, you agree. So, you are going to win. So, what are we talking about?"

15:35Right? It's like it's it's just this back and forth that people always rebel. >> Um, and I just find I just find that that context interesting because a lot of times if you actually just like put a knife in and just twist and say, "Sure, let's take it to the natural end, you'll never win." Okay, how do you feel now? Great. So then you making all of that fanfare about all these reasons why it's justified that you won't win. How does that serve you? It doesn't. So you might as well act as though it didn't matter anyways and do the stuff that is required. Just to be clear for everybody, like I share the stuff that work for me. If if what you're doing is working for you, then I love you. Keep crushing it. You know what I mean? Like I I just share this stuff because people ask, you know, I they're like, "How did you do this by this time or whatever?"

16:10And I share my worldviews and they're relatively contrar. Not a lot of people believe as little as I believe about anything really. Um there are a few things that I absolutely believe through and through and then the everything else for the most part I feel is noise and that has helped me a lot because um it has gotten me out of like you know 99% of the well 99 who knows but like a a vast majority of the content that I see on the internet is there's a lot of fluff there's a lot of just like just BS a lot of people giving advice that have never done the thing that they're trying to give advice on. Um and so it's like when people talk about like you know energy and manifesting and you know psychology and affirmations and all these things it's like even even this the statement like have you heard be do have you heard that it's like a pretty big in like the personal development stuff it's like be the certain way so you do the things to get what you want or have the thing right and it has you have to be the person first then you can to do the things to have the thing right that's like a big like be have I think it's complete [ __ ] because Being is a function of doing. If we were to say who is this person, we would describe their identity by the things they do. Like he is a carpenter. He's into these things. He does. He takes these actions. That is what creates his identity, how we describe it. So if being is a function of doing, then we can just cut being out, right? So it's just doing and then have. But if the having comes from the doing, then that's an aftereffect. That's an outcome, not the thing that created it. And so the doing creates the having. And so you can cut out the have. And so it just comes down to doing. And so we don't need to like obsess about like am I a good person? Am I a bad person? Am I a villain? Am I an [ __ ] That was the point that we're making at the very beginning of this is like maybe you are an [ __ ] Maybe you are a loser. You can still do the stuff to win and win.

17:55Anyways, if Graham identified as a loser tomorrow, like truly through his being identified as a loser and still made the same video and posted it, it would still crush. And for me, that's actually given me a lot of shelter in hard times, which is like, I don't need to be the best whatever. And I don't even need to be in a great mood. I don't need to identify as like some shiny night hero, but I can still run these ads or make these calls or do these outreach attempts or make this partnership deal and I will still get the end result. And to me, that is very reassuring because it puts a lot more under my control. Do you think that you would do better in that case if you're feeling bad, if you were feeling better about yourself that you would have a better result?

18:41>> If the exact same activity was done, no. >> Yes. >> If the same number of if I send the same hundred emails to the same exact people, whether I'm in a bad mood or good mood, the same response rates going to come back. >> If you feel like you're in a really great mood, don't you feel like you could craft those emails in such a way that's maybe 1% better? And I'm talking about >> if we just stick to what the doing is cuz then at that point it's like sh great we shifted the doing. But like the doing itself can just be done. And I like that a lot because for people who are in hard times,

19:08>> it's like you can you don't have to feel confident to do [ __ ] You can still get the result for it. >> Like you don't need to be confident to go up to the girl. You just go to the girl and not be confident >> and still ask her out. Basically what I'm trying to prevent against is the person who's waiting to be in a good mood to work >> because that sometimes that good mood never comes. >> Yeah. >> You want to achieve a goal. You're either going to have to accept boredom or pain. And the bigger the goal, the more of both you'll get. When I started my gym, I actually lived with six other people in one house. This is like off of beach town. Think like sand everywhere, people everywhere, dirty dishes everywhere, not enough room in refrigerator for food. Cooking was an absolute mess. Almost all of them had dogs. So, a couple had two dogs, another couple had one dog, another guy had a dog. Four different dogs in the house.

19:54And they were like all marking territory. It was horrendous. And I was splitting one room with a guy with a bed, like two beds. My bed was on the floor. His bed was, you know, elevated cuz he uh he could afford that at the time. And I would sleep with a fan on my face. I couldn't hear anything. That was my secret. Like is the fan like you there's like the wind over like that's all I could hear. The thing is is like I was doing that when I was making like 20 grand a month take home. There's always trade-offs. And the trade-off for me of living in that condition was that I could invest in the dream and build the business that I had at the time. Now, I could look back cuz I ended up losing everything, you know, a few years later.

20:29You know, you get this negative cycle of like all of that suffering was for nothing. But it wasn't for nothing because I learned all these skills along the way. You also can't operate from the perspective of like I might lose it all in the future, which means everything I do today is not worth anything because like you're going to lose 100% of everything the moment you die. So trying to say that you might lose something in the future as a reason not to do something is ridiculous. You're going to lose everything at some point. You cannot wish for both strong character and an easy life because the price of one is the other. When I think about pain, I think about what thing am I paying for right now? And is that thing something that I want? And if so, it reframes the pain as the price of the thing that I want. This is super interesting is they've done research on this where they have somebody who like accepts like shocks. they can like opt out at any point. If you have the same man who's getting shocked and then you tell that man in the other room, every shock he takes, his family doesn't have to take. His threshold of pain like quadruples. This may seem like some quote mindset whatever. But the thing is is like the bigger your goals, the more pain you're going to endure. Whether you want to or not, it's the price. And if you can endure four times more pain than someone else, I don't actually think that it feels four times more painful. I think it feels the same level of pain, but you have this padding that makes it feel worth it. Give a man a purpose and the ability to achieve it and he will crawl over broken glass with a smile.

21:56That broken glass, like how can you have a smile during the pain? It's because of what the pain itself represents. Now, I'm going to get get a little bit into behavior because I think it's it's valuable. I talk a lot about reward and punishment, but those are kind of more colloquial terms. When it comes down to behavior, it's actually reinforcers. A reinforcer can be negative, meaning it can be something that's aversive. So, for example, if I know that every time I hit my hand with a hammer, I'm going to grow muscle. Hitting my hand with a hammer or taking the shock for my family means something positive, which is that I'm protecting my family. I'm helping my country. I'm I'm doing something that I deem meaningful. The pain itself can become a positive reinforcer because you know you're making progress towards the thing you want. Now you might think of that and be like well I don't want to have the pain. The thing is is that when you're going through it if you have this frame it isn't as painful. In a lot of ways it's like we are our own sculpture that we are working on. And as we chisel away we also get to reveal the type of person that we want to become the traits and the behaviors and the belief sets that go with the man or woman that we're trying to trying to grow into. And so I wrote this story, I want to say a year ago, maybe two years ago, that related to this that I just want to share with you. So imagine you're talking to the creator of the universe about the person that you want to become. And so you say, you know, I want to be courageous. And the creator replies, then I will give you monsters that terrify you. That way you can conquer them. And you say, well, I want to be patient. And the creator replies, then I will make you work harder and longer and nothing will come easy to you. That way you can learn to wait. Or like, okay, well, I want to be wise. And so the creator says,"Then I will give you failures that will crush your spirit. That way you can learn the value of judgment." Then you say,"That sounds like a hard life. Can you give me a good life?" And the creator replies, "Just like we measure the quality of a blacksmith by the strength of his steel.

23:43I measure you by what you are at the end, not the fire and the hammer that it took to make you." A good life isn't an easy life. A good life makes you into a good person. And that, my child, is a hard life. It's about who we become doing the work more than the outcome from the work itself. And I love this and this is a reframing of proverbs, but the work works on you more than you work on it. Like in all labor, there is profit. Meaning we always benefit from work. Even if the thing that we work on gets destroyed, even if you went bankrupt, even if you know that relationship didn't work out, even if that partnership falls apart, the work you did is eternal because it changes you. For those of you who don't know, who are new to my channel, I lost everything five years into my entrepreneurial journey and then I made a little bit more and then I lost it all again. But the thing is is that I had this idea that oh, I have to start from scratch again. But that's not true because you can only start from scratch once. Every time after that, you start with an experience. A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion. and you transition from the second to the first the moment you begin working because you're no longer somebody who has an opinion. And as soon as you know what that truth is because you've been there and you've actually done it and you have the scars to show for it, then their opinions matter significantly less. I'll give you a different reframe that I've had for redefining pain as it relates to other people, which is you can summarize just about every hateful comment on the internet into one thing. He lives his life in a way that I would not prefer.

25:18That's it. Everything is he lives his life in a way that I would not prefer. To which I respond, yes, I do live my life in a way that most people would not prefer. And they live their life in a way that I would not prefer. And that is why it is their life and they can live their life the way that they want to live their life, the way they prefer it. And I will live my life the way that I prefer it. They cast these stones at you as though it matters. My dad told me this when he was going through his divorce. He said he went through this like divorce conference and the the speaker on stage said to somebody in the audience, he said, "Hey, here's a ball."

25:48And he threw it to him and he said, "Okay, throw it back to me." So he caught the ball. He said, "Now I want you to imagine that this ball is a steaming hot pile of" And he threw it to the person again. and the person caught it. He said, "Why would you catch it?" And so the lesson of that is just because someone hurls at you doesn't mean you need to catch it. You don't need to choose to participate. And I thought that was a really interesting frame. People can hurl whatever they want. It doesn't mean that they have justified a response or that you need to accept it. And that little reframe of, oh, I live my life in a way that other people would not prefer. Well, that makes sense. I'm not trying to live the same life as them. So, of course. And then they say, he made trade-offs that I would not make. And I say, of course. Of course I did. Why is this Why is this somehow an insult? When I was making those trades in the earlier days, I didn't know when I would be successful or if I would be successful. The only thing that I knew for sure was that I wasn't going to stop and that was it. I know I can just not stop and that's something that I can commit to and that's controllable. I think a lot of the big gift of hardship is that it doesn't define you, it reveals you. The benefit is that you get to see who you really are and you make that decision yourself every day. I have this perspective on loyalty which is that like you cannot say that you are loyal until your loyalty is tested. You cannot say you're patient until your patience is tested. Otherwise, it's an opinion, not an experience. You can't say that you handle hardship and that you're emotionally resilient until you've had something to be emotionally resilient about. The gift of the hard time is to give you proof of who you are so that the rest of your life you get to know that you did that and you get to tell that story and relive that story to yourself for the rest of your life. And to me that gives the hardship memory dividends that pay forever until the day you die. I'll tell you a story. So I went to a school in the SEC and you know some of the SEC schools are renowned for hazing and and and aggressive stuff and so I I was you know going to join a fraternity and you know obviously they uh they you know build up how hard you know pledging is going to be and all this stuff right and I called my dad to to talk about it and he just said remember there is nothing that they can do to you that is harder than what you've already been through and it was a great reframe because I remember the times you know like when you know things would be quote hard during that that season of pledging and I would just think about the things that I had already survived the things that I had already been through at that point and it made what they believed to be suffering appear childish. I was like, "This is cute." But for the people who were present in the moment rather than being able to relive through their memory dividends, using it as a shield for my emotional affect during the moment was like, "All right, I have these eight weeks where I have to stand here before you apparently give me a stamp of approval. Fine, then I will do that." I live my life in ways that you would not prefer. [laughter] And that carried me a pretty long way.

28:39>> I think you would you answered this question which was how do you filter all the information? What's changing? You answered it from the point where you have already figured that out because now you're like what should I make a video on? You've already decided I should make a video. I don't think anyone's getting to that. >> I think honestly most people are so overwhelmed like should I learn clawed code this new thing that's been buzzing recently or should I learn

29:05>> NFTTS or crypto or whatever. Um, how do you trust that what you've decided on is the right thing to do and that you don't need to go back and >> check. You know, >> I think what you just said was like the the operator word that Sam said was trust. And so I think the the scattered brainness comes from a place of fear is I'm afraid I'm going to be left behind. I'm afraid my stuff's not going to be relevant. I'm afraid if I don't learn how to code I, etc., etc., etc., right?

29:38I have a belief. I trust that when something is significant enough that it actually affects my business, I will change. Until then, I will continue to do what I know works, which is that I will gather attention. I will point it in a direction. I'll make a compelling offer, and then I'll deliver on that promise. And so, fundamentally, like, especially most of y'all here are below a million bucksish, somewhere in that neighborhood.

30:06What makes you money is letting people know about the stuff and then delivering the stuff and making the stuff you have to deliver. Those are the only components of the business because for those of you who have a conversion mechanism that's automated like the about page, there's no like real sales motion. You just point it there. If you do have a sales motion, you have a sales call or you do a webinar or whatever, you'll have that extra step that's in there. But that is usually a very curated. You don't need to remake your sales script. You don't need to remake your webinar once you know this is the thing that converts.

30:37That's just kind of like a performance that either gets, you know, automated or you just do it on a weekly basis or whatever. But what are the inputs and the outputs of the system? The inputs in the system are more people knowing about the stuff, which means paid ads and content by and large for most of you guys. That's the input. We have this automated conversion for many of you. And then delivery also for many of you is relatively leveraged in that like there's recordings and maybe you do one call a week. If you have 10 times the people on that call it still probably works pretty okay. And so pretty much everyone here should be spending the lion share of your time promoting. And I don't say like in a shilly way. I'm saying like let people know about your stuff and do it in a and go two levels deeper. Spend more time on the problem in and then let that come out in the content or the ads. And that's what's going to to create the differentiation.

31:28So yes, like right now my my my simple advice is if you have I don't know what let's assume you work a 12-h hour day, you can shrink it down to whatever hours you work. I know we had the French guy who was like I don't like working more than four hours per week. Uh it's too much. [laughter] So yeah, right. Shrink that down according to you. But I just like first four hours of the day I'm promoting. Uh next four hours of the day I'm I'm building the stuff. And then last last one I'm delivering the stuff that I built. That's that's the just third third and just set a timer and stick to that block. Like don't like have like some fire camp like you have if you know what you do every day because it shouldn't be a surprise to you. There's slacks, there's decisions, there's whatevers, but many of you guys don't have like massive teams you have to deal with either. And so like if it's not that, it is a distraction. And so if you think about f like what is focus? Focus is doing is doing one thing which means that anything that's not that thing is less focused. Like the most focused video game player would not sleep, would not eat, would only play video games. As soon as they introduce any activity that's not playing video games, they become a less focused video game player.

32:36Now, you can't be 100% focused because you'll die because you need to drink water, you need to eat food. So, it's like, okay, well, what degrees of not focus can I introduce into the system? But fundamentally, that is it. Like, the ultimate productivity hack is no. Is this you seem to understand this problem, right? Are we getting at it like the Are we >> Oh, good. >> Why do you think these people just endlessly scrolling and not doing anything? Like what is going on in their mind?

33:05>> You're talking about consumers >> just you seem to know what we're talking about. Like people do this. They they're trying to figure out what's going on. What should I do? And they never quite figure it out because every day it changes. Right. >> Right. >> And so they never are like I'm this is it. I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna ignore everything and I'm just going to do it. They don't do that. Like why not? >> I think just speaking from personal experience, we try to learn as much as we can >> and consume as much as we can and then we listen to somebody who's a YouTube expert that says do this. Then we listen to a copywriter that says do this.

33:35>> And at the end of the day, I know deep down that everything does work if you just do it for long enough and get good at it. >> But we we get into this circle of >> Did you did you used to do this sort of thing? I used to do more of it. Not not to this extent. >> I had a gym. I was like, >> but you read books and like I read >> I read books around specific problems though to be real. >> But I remember you saying something too where it's like you were reading all these self-help books. Oh, that was before I started business.

34:02>> But even just in general, the concept of reading all these self-help books and at some point they all end up contradicting each other. Totally. And you're like, "Oh, I'm in the same exact spot. I just need to [ __ ] pick one and do it." But I think picking that one gets tough for >> all a lot of us. I'll I'll give you a a a wonderful piece of advice that even very high level entrepreneurs will forget. So, it's something we need to be reminded of more than taught. But it's like you will do something and as soon as it begins to work, do not stop doing that thing until it stops working. Do not stop doing that thing because you fear it will stop working, do not stop doing that. Like if it keeps working, you keep doing it.

34:34>> Repeat successful actions. That was a success. We should repeat that. We should do that again. But we did it yesterday. Do it again. Aren't they tired of it? Did it work? Yes. Do it again. I I'll tell you the most extreme version of this and like why I'm like so I did the book launch right the second day there was all this juju about like uh you have to have a rep pitch is a different presentation all this type of stuff. I I was so adamant about this that I was like no I think I can give the exact same presentation again same exact presentation and more people will buy because I believe that it is about asking again more like it worked so I will do it again and so I did the exact same presentation day two and we had did like $25 million in sales day two same presentation now you're like but would it be different people tons of the same people

35:24>> they just watched it again we watch reruns of shows that we already know happened and we think oh we I have to somehow come up with a new business model every week. If you have something and it works and you make money from it, then you have an input output equation. And so then it's like great h the real question becomes how can I actually do a hundred times the inputs? Now part of that comes from work ethic. The other part comes just leverage. What kind of systems can I put in there so that this one piece of content gets put in 10 places? That kind of stuff. But like school has one of the simplest business models in the world.

35:59Promote [ __ ] Point to page. Cha-ching. Deliver [ __ ] >> [laughter] >> And I repeat the [ __ ] out of that on every single I'm like look they have a Instagram link in bio about page money [laughter] >> again and again and again and again and again and everyone's still like what do I do >> but it's the so like so when we look at that which of those has volume the conversion is there's no real volume there maybe there's a split test if that the delivery most of you guys has a fixed delivery in that it's like I do a call a week I do some sort of Q&A or breakdown or review for a pickup guy or I do a a page breakdown for Evelyn or an ads breakdown, whatever. Right? That's it's a fixed backend. It's an automated conversion. The only thing the only part of the system that actually you have to do is the input is the ads. And when I say ads, I mean in the formal sense, advertising. Let people know about stuff. That means content and paid. And now that content and paid are merged, it's just content and finding the good content and then putting more money behind it so more people see it.

37:03That's it. >> Traffic, conversion rate, churn, like one of those things might be the problem. >> Maybe all. >> Maybe all. >> But I swear most people don't even start it. So yeah, but we've talked a bit about this too. It's like maybe this term for it is too nerdy, but like first party data. >> Mhm. >> Cuz I was telling Horoszi once in one of our calls that I was like, "Shit, I don't even know when the last time I read a book was."

37:31>> Yeah. It was like two years ago, which seems crazy, right? If but um when I when I was younger and I didn't know what was going on, I would read a lot and I would take a lot of calls. I would consume a lot and that's because I didn't have anything to do to test if it worked or not. I was trying to figure out what I should do, right?

37:55So, I was like all over the place. And then when I finally figured out, okay, I'm gonna do this, then I did it. And then if it worked, I would be like, okay, now I'll just make it keep working or and if there's a problem, I will seek information to solve the problem. And then I was consuming less. But then the more I got, the further on I got, the less the more first party data you have from doing it. And that's obviously so much more accurate and relevant to you than third party data, which is other people cheering what they think worked for them. Do you do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. And I think that once you get that first party data, you can totally tune out a lot of things.

38:40Like you can tune out everything that's going on because none of that if that matters, it will touch the first party data, right? Like you'll see a movement and you're like, "Oh, maybe that is important." But if it doesn't, who cares? And is this making any sense? >> I endorse this message. >> I love figuring out the my favorite thing to do is like I can completely ignore that. I don't give a [ __ ] Like that is what I'm trying to do to everything basically because I'm trying to figure out what can I ignore. Um and I try to ignore a lot really and I

39:19>> should I repeat >> it's signal versus noise regarding the the earlier question finding out what is signal what is noise and once you get more first party data the signal becomes stronger the noise becomes smaller right >> yeah you'll do stuff and then either your >> conversion rate will be a problem and then you consume a YouTube video about conversion rates and you're like okay that gives me like six things to try And until you try those six things, there's really no point in consuming more stuff because you just need to try the six things. And I will say um Leila says this a lot. Uh which is just like a great reminder for me. She's like don't change things when a solution is on the way.

39:57So like we will we'll be mid split test on a price thing and be like man our turn is a problem. It's like we're we're running the test right now. So why should ch it's like dude we're we're mid-flight like unless we land the until we land the plane if we change mid-flight everyone dies and it was complete waste and so some things just take time is that you just have to let a certain number of repetitions certain number of posts certain number whatever occur so you can actually get feedback on that data which I think is the sec once you get into the first party world that becomes the next issue is like you want to try too many things even with the data that you have and then that's where strategy becomes important because strategy is prioritization of resources right and so you have 20 I mean how big I mean the school list of like things that we can do with the platform is longer is very long

40:42>> there's 2,000 new ones each day um from you guys thank you [laughter] >> and so you have to pick and so that to be fair like that at the absolute core in my opinion is the core of entrepreneurship is being able to choose I have these very limited resources and time money energy and there's a hundred things I can do but which of these hundred things that if I were to implement has the highest likelihood of yielding the biggest outcome For [snorts] most people, you don't have enough data for it to even make sense.

41:09>> Like ask again. >> That's why it's not a feature in school. By the way, >> uh you know, you are not going to implement AB testing for about page. >> It's just not worth it because we see how much traffic most people get and we see how schizophrenic their behavior is. And [laughter] we see people think that their about page change bombed after five clicks, right? like and they change it four times in a day with like 20 clicks and I'm like and they want to AB test it.

41:39I'm like no, [laughter] you need to leave it alone for at least a week with your amount of traffic, right? And I've got this method I use and I still use it internally at school. We don't even run a lot of AB tests and we've got a shitload of traffic, right? I call it cowboy testing and I just change it and watch the number to see if it goes up or down. >> [clears throat] >> And a lot of the time, a lot of the time I can get away with that [ __ ] [laughter] And when it's more sensitive, like very sensitive, I'll run an AB test and properly set it up. And I'm still continuously amazed at how hard it is to make something that can beat the control that um I think most people don't really understand the the actual underlying mechanics of an AB test. And if you don't understand that, you're just going to create more noise.

42:32>> We ran 16 AB tests on the school games. 14 of them lost. >> I'll put it this way. This is another way to look at it, right? So, we've got the signup page for school. We send an enormous amount of traffic to that page. So, it's obviously very important. We've tried so hard to like make it better. Most of the time we make it worse in an AB test, right? However, if we try a different random creative on meta, it can work five times better. So, like the leverage in the creative is so much more powerful than the leverage on the the page. It's insane.

43:08>> I think okay, this is a I want to continue down this. The earlier on in the funnel that you are, the bigger the leverages in terms of the throughput. So, if you change your your CTRs on your ads from 1% to 2%, you double the whole business for you to do for you, you're probably not going to double the conversion of your page. It's just it's just very unlikely. You might get a 10 or 20% lift maybe if it's a really good, you know, improvement, but you could. But the crazy part is like you absolutely can get a double or a triple in convers in in CTR on the ad side and that can get paired with if it's a really good creative you might get double or triple the conversion rate and your CPMs might be one6th of what they are and so all of a sudden you have an 18x improvement and there's just nothing downfunnel that gets you that kind of gain besides maybe a 10x or 20x in price or something like that but like for the actual mechanics it's very rare and so like these are the biggest levers in the business are going to be price all the way at the end because you can you can make that kind change and then the the pure volume of creative on the front.

44:09>> Most people don't have about page conversion problems. It's what we see is they mostly need more traffic or they need a fixed churn. >> Yeah. >> Um but you know if your about page doesn't convert you do have an about page problem and that is possible. Um >> so for example uh we had monthly subscription which is $9 and then we added premium and it was only yearly price uh for 77 and our conversion to yearly uh rate was like 20%. And then we add VIP which was 20 249 per year and we we thought that we're going to increase the uh uh the RPU but our premium conversion rate dropped to 5% because we added third tire. So my point was like I want to test like different types of uh about page. Uh so one of them like just uh uh normal and uh premium and the second one is just for VIP for example.

45:07Can't you can you cowboy test it? >> I think you just did. >> Yes. So, you know what works better? >> Uh, no. I mean, if I got two tires, the uh conversion to premium is really high. But if I run three tires that so the conversion to premium is uh is not so good. >> So, which one works better? >> The first one, but I already got a lot of VIP people in the group, right? >> Maybe do the first one. Uh, so what should I do with the people who already bought the VIP for yearly?

45:36>> I don't know. Um, keep keep them or cancel them, whatever you want. >> Also, to his point, first party data, [clears throat] right? Like you can you can read like, hey, having a high anchor works in a lot of scenarios. >> Why Vegas, >> Texas? >> Good question. Yeah, that's a big one. Um, yeah. I mean, so I told Leila we were in Texas and we were in Austin and I was like not the biggest fan of Austin. Super political and like I just like I'm Green Party of Green Party is capitalism party. Like I'm that party.

46:08Um, >> you just don't really give a [ __ ] about anything else. >> I have like I have very middle of the path, you know, like beliefs. Uh, like very common social, you know, socially do whatever the [ __ ] you want, you know, capitalism wise like >> Yeah, by and large >> that's kind of how I am too. People call me a fence sitter. Do you ever been called a fence sitter? >> Never once to be honest like I never [laughter] have been. Um >> well people probably never ask you like supercharged questions.

46:34>> No, I just like I just don't I like you know obviously there's there was a decision for us of like media wise like do we want to get into politics? And I was like no man I want to talk business and only thing that I'll ever do is like if if something affects business I'll mention it. But it's more like here's how you can capitalize on this like oh like big beautiful bill there's like you know new elements for real estate that are depreciation for for real estate professionals which is actually really interesting. It's like okay so how can you use as a business owner to like offset your to your income like okay that's that's cool. Um but like the other side of politics like most of my politics is tax is tax related.

47:06>> Yeah. And and and when you're when you're capitalism focused and like personal business growth focused then there's really only one option out of the two. Especially if you have a successful business. Yeah. You know, >> it's hot here. >> It is hot here. [laughter] It's dry though, which is better than wet and hot, which is Texas heat is way tougher than this. Georgia heat, like all that stuff. >> Super tough. Like this is super like this is fine. And it's it's like 100 days of the year and then the other >> whatever 200 and something are like great.

47:32>> I can't believe you didn't like Austin, man. >> Again, it was like so it was super political and it was like super blue and super red and there's always all this conflict and stuff. Also, the weather is tough. I think it's way worse than than Vegas. And so Leila and I the year that we sold we um we took one way tickets just from place to place to place for the whole year. Um which was awesome. It was like let's stay in Denver but like we just like stayed in Denver until we were like I'm good on Vendor. Let's go Salt Lake City. And then we like went there. >> Did you do Cleveland?

47:58>> No I didn't do Cleveland [laughter] the hard streets of Cleveland. Um no. Then we went to Vegas and we stayed here for like two or three weeks and I was like I don't feel I was like I like it here. And so we had all our stuff in Texas and I just was like let's just leave it. Whatever. let's just rent a condo here on the strip. And so that's what we did. And then um it's been four or five years, >> I guess. How do you not get sucked into the Vegas lifestyle cuz man, I like I like I have withdrawn 10K every day for the past well four days now. Yeah.

48:28>> And it's all gone. >> I think I think entrepreneurs are super gambly, right? I think we gamble a lot. I just gamble in different ways. I just want to have like house. I want to have house odds, >> you know? So, it's like if we put the launch on, we spent probably, I don't know, >> 10 $15 million before even the launch even started. Probably more. I don't know >> how >> um ads, the books themselves, like there's I'm 21. I'm broke. Supporting my mom with cold calls I hate. I want to learn uh AI and creative. How would you escape? All right, man. I'm going to answer this for you right now.

49:02Number one, stop saying you [ __ ] hate them. All right. Like, do you think the rice farmers in China 2,000 years ago, shout out to China, uh, 2,000 years ago who were providing for their families were like thrilled about having, you know, bending over all day long. Calm down. Uh, and and and taking up rice, you know, one rice patty. I don't really know how rice is farmed, but something like that. Yeah. Little little fingers at a time. They have small hands. Anyway, a tremendous amount to be gained from realizing that you're doing something for people you care about, right?

49:33um like you're doing this to provide for your family. Like I don't know if there's really a higher honor than that. And so when you're going into it, I'll tell you a little parable about this. So you might have heard this is the parable of the stone cutter. So guy walks up and there's three three guys kind of hammering at stone. So he goes up to the first stone cutter and he says, "Hey, you know, what are you doing?" And he's like, "Uh, it's backbreaking work. I'm just hammering stone all day. It completely sucks." He's like, "Okay."

50:01The second guy he goes up to and he's like, "Oh, what are you doing, sir?" And he says, 'Well, I'm providing for my family. He's like, "Okay, that's cool." And that guy seemed a little bit more upbeat than the first guy. He goes to the third guy and he says, "Hey, what are you doing?" And he says, "I'm building a cathedral that's going to last generations." And the the moral of the story is that the work was the same. The only difference was their outlook on the work. And I think that if you change your outlook on the work, the work itself becomes significantly more bearable because even if you play out whatever version of the business that you want to start is the vast majority of your day is not going to be doing [ __ ] you love. It's just not right. Um there's just a lot of stuff that's like and I only say this as somebody who literally did this. I was in the make money career as a management consultant which you then go to business school and become a banker finance and you make money whatever. And so I said you know what I'm going to do something I love.

50:52I'm going to do fitness. Everybody tells me I've been into fitness my whole life. I was competing at the time. I was like, "This is what I'm into." So then I go and I say, "I'm going to start a gym." I said, "That that's what would make this real." And I start a gym. And as soon as I start a gym, which is literally fogging my passion, following my dream. I then realize that I have to sell memberships. I have to mop the floors. I have to clean equipment. I have to, you know, I have to I have to market. I have to, you know, billing, pick playlists, all this nonsense that I that I had no interest in. And so what happened is that as I followed my passion, 80 90 95% of what I was doing every day was not the thing that I thought it was. And so for almost everybody, if you think you're going to follow your passion, it's going to be literally doing the one thing that you love every day. You're beside yourself for two reasons. One, it's not going to be. And two, if you literally did the same thing that you like every day, you're going to stop liking it because you adapt to it. The reason you like it now is because it's rare. It's a special thing that you get on your terms, on your time, and you do it for no money. And the thing is is when you start, people are like, I would do this for free. It's like, yeah, but you wouldn't do it all day every day for free. At some point, you'd stop because the reinforce because that's how humans work. If there were one secret, we would all do it. The point is that things have to change and we expect that things are going to stay the same and then we're somehow upset that life doesn't treat us the way we expect it to. And so, to the young man who's broken 21, one, I think you should double down and get really good because you can absolutely get out of this poverty through the sales cycle. Number one. Number two, if you want to say, you know what, I'm I'm going to do the sale thing and I'm going to go all in in terms of my dedication to it. I'm going to spend uh, you know, 8 hours, 10 hours a day. When you're on for sales, I want nothing else on your calendar. I want you to fall in love with the process. I want to fall in love with the craft. I want you to sharpen your sword. That's what you're doing. You're sharpening the skill set. And whether AI takes it over or not in the future is irrelevant because you learning how to sell will be core to everything you do in life. Now, with the other hours of the day, I'm saying say 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., 5:00 p. p.m. to 9:00 p.m. All right, you got eight hours that you can play with plus weekends if you want. In that time, go learn the AI stuff that you want to learn that you said you were interested in, and stop sitting on the sidelines and use the sales skills that you're practicing, cold calling, and go get yourself some [ __ ] business.

52:57And then realize that it'll still be miserable because work is hard. And all you have to do is reframe it just like the third stone cutter and be like, maybe it isn't miserable. Maybe I'm doing something that I find meaningful because I choose. >> And this is that lean-in mentality again. It's like, look, it sucks. It's shitty. You're tired. Everybody says that you're leaving your friends behind, leaving your family behind, betraying your culture, betraying whatever expectation it is that they have on you. You need to do something that most people aren't willing to do because, as we've said, the average American is obese, in debt, and divorced. Like, is that really Oh, brilliant. Fantastic.

53:30I'm in the [ __ ] center of the bell curve distribution here. That's really congratulations. And then the other side, stop complaining about the results you didn't get from the work you didn't put in. Okay, so you didn't lose weight this month. Did you follow your diet? Well, I did for half the month. Okay, so is it any surprise that you didn't lose any weight? How's your content creation game going? Well, I I you know, I spent a lot of time planning for the podcast that I'm going to release or for the Instagram that I'm going to start or from the Substack that I'm going to begin writing on. Okay. And what did you actually do? It comes back to like the work doesn't care.

54:06>> Yeah. Charlie Mer in one of his seinal speeches, he talks about how to guarantee failure. How to make sure that you are a failure. And he inverts the the concept of success. It's like, what could you do to make sure that you were a failure? It's like, well, you would definitely get involved in drugs, drinking. He says, was it leverage liquor and women? That's, you know, the Charlie's Charlie's big one, right? [laughter] But one of the ones that he has, I think he has seven in his in his in his speech, is consistency. He's like, you have to make sure that you're inconsistent. He's like, because if you are consistent and you have none of the other attributes, he's like, it's you still might be successful. He's like, it's it's very tough for people who are consistent to not be successful. And he makes an an especially pointed point about consistency because in my opinion it's one of the most difficult of the virtues for humans to do because we're so attracted to novelty. And so like I mean I used to deal with this with you know people on their diets all the time. I remember I ran gyms. And so someone would come in and I would always ask the question so have you been following the meal plan? And then they would say yes.

55:10And so then I started changing the way I asked the question. So I'd say out of the 21 meals that you were supposed to eat how many of the 21 did you have exactly the way was on the meal plan? And then they would be like, "Oh, I mean, at least half." And they would say it as though that was a mark of success. And right now, the meal plan could be your content plan. It could be your It could be your showing up to work on time plan. It could be the time that you want to put towards your side hustle. It doesn't really matter. But if there's one muscle that you can flex, it's learning to do the same thing over and over again. Like one of the one of the values that we had at gym launch is do the boring work. Because boring is what makes you rich, right? It's it's it's it's writing the follow-up sequence to your to the purchase page that you don't feel like doing, but you know you should do. It's running the split test for the 10th time. It's it's actually going through and prepping for 20 minutes before you have the meeting because

56:03>> Yep. Yes, sir. I sell remodeling services uh to commercial property owners and tenants. We do about $2 million a year. Uh we'll do $2 million this year and I'd like to do $100 million by 2025. Uh, >> by 2025, >> $100 million >> from two from two. >> Okay. I mean, hey, no, it's all good. It's all good. >> By the end of 2025, at the by the end of 2025. Um, I'm stopped by the lack of capital. Uh, so I currently take residential remodels to fund commercial contracts due to net 90 waiting terms.

56:32They've been slowed drastically due to extremely high interest rates on Lone Shark, short-term lending, and high overhead costs. >> Okay. And so the thing that's stopping you is cash flow. >> Yes. >> Okay. [sighs and gasps] Okay. Um, man, the thing that threw me was the 100 million thing. Um, just and I and I want to be I want to be clear like I'm all for for thinking big. The it's it's it's really I don't know of a single business in your space that's gone from two to 100 in 13 months. The reason I bring this up is because sometimes you can shoot yourself in the foot for a decade because you're trying to go from two to 100 in 12 months. And every strategy that you try and go from two to 100 fails because you want to do it in 12 months, but if you did it in 10 years, you'd for sure hit it.

57:16>> Does that make sense? >> Got it. >> So just as a just as a as a as a frame shift. Um in terms of the cash flow, so you have these you have these commercial remodels. So that's like a building like this, correct? Or >> correct. >> Okay. So you do you you remodel these these types of buildings. Uh but then you do residential because cash flow is faster. >> Yeah. Correct. >> For those pieces. Okay. So, um, and I'm guessing you said that you've maxed out your lending. >> Lending isn't exactly available to me, and the lending that is is extremely high interest rates.

57:44>> So, it sounds so the the biggest thing with this type of business is like you can solve it with payment terms. And so, this is where like the sale has two components to it. And everybody who's had a sales team before knows what I'm talking about, which is like it's one thing to close the sale, it's another thing to actually [ __ ] collect the money, right? like they said yes. It's like oh you have the car and they ran it like oh no he'll be back with the car but he said yes and you're like all right like let me explain how sales work. Uh and so I think that uh I actually had to fix this with a a reference to a guard services business and so it was like industry average in that business for example to um to pay like net 30. So the guard does this work and then they remit payment, right? And so basically what I'd recommended for them was to say, "Hey, we just bill quarterly upfront." So we bill and then you get three months of service and then we bill. So they're always 3 months ahead of cash flow requirements. Now, I can understand that there's industry industry standards and norms, but part of that is why you want to be better. So that like if I'm looking at two contractors and one has, you know, slightly different payment terms, but I really want to be with that guy more, then I'm going to go with that guy. And if you think that you're a commoditized service, then I think you're missing the boat, right? Like you want to show how you're not the same as everyone else.

58:59And so I actually think this is a sales issue when it comes to payment terms more than everything else. And so you can obviously solve this thing with like AR lending and things like that, but it's probably a payment terms and sales thing, which is like what would it take and sometimes I ask that question in the sale. What would it take for for you to put that, you know, half down? >> So I've I've only been in business for about a year and a half. Okay. Um, so most of these super large clients are I'm foot in the door. So whenever I walk into a place like Amazon and they say that they're going to give me a job to, you know, remodel a warehouse, um,

59:33>> I I don't know I don't know how to tell them that they need to pay me not on their terms, but on >> Yeah. Well, I mean, if you go if you go hunt whales, then you will be on like you'll be you'll be catering to to their terms, right? Um, but again, I actually think what I said at the very beginning was the main thing. you are cash flow constrained because of the arbitrary expectation of growth that you're putting on yourself. That's so like basically do you actually have a problem or do you have a problem based on the timeline that you've created for yourself?

1:00:03Does that make sense? >> Mhm. >> So basically the business has grown. You've been doing this for like whatever a little bit more than a year, right? So going from zero to that in in 12 or 14 whatever it was months is a is a big W, man. Um, and I think that like you just keep doing that, you'll be just fine. It's just that like you need to let some of that gross profit that you've booked out that's in AR fall through. And I think like if the business model fundamentally works in terms of profitability, so I'm not I have time to dive into that, but in terms of looking at the gross margins, which hopefully you have done, if the margins work, then it's just like cash flow comes to timing. And as long as you're not like worried about losing losing your ass, cash flow constrained businesses, the only limit to those businesses is the rate of growth provided the gross margins have been set up properly. And so that's why I said originally I do actually think the biggest problem is the expectation thing because if I said you can get to 100 million in 10 years, would you want to do it?

1:01:00>> Sure. >> Yeah. Then I think you'll be fine, dude. Like you went from zero to 2 million. You got to let some of that money flow through and then you be like all right well if I grow at I mean just look this is the nice thing is that this is an Excel sheet problem and so it's not a real problem like you can solve for what like I told that story yesterday about cash flow projections you can just solve for how much cash flow do I have how much does it take me to get a new customer what's the average value per customer okay how much can I expect out to grow if I grow at 30% I'm going to go negative on cash flow if I go at 10 I'm upset at myself because my father never will say I did a good job and so at 20% though I make money and my father doesn't talk to And so that's probably a nice sweet spot. Does that make sense?

1:01:37Thank you very much. Yeah. Shoot. Yes, sir. >> I end these podcasts with a challenge. Ask the guest for a challenge of the audience to do something and take the action from the hour and a half we've spoke. Does a challenge come to mind? >> Define the input output equation that gets you closer to where you want to go and then 10x the input.

1:02:02So, whatever your thing is, like if you're like, I want to be an editor, I want to be an agency owner, I want to be a whatever, whatever the thing is, the first thing you have to do is figure out the input output equation, which is what do I have to do that will get me closer to where I want to go? Step one, if you can't define your input output equation, then you need to define your input output equation because otherwise you're working for no goal. Once you define that, then do 10 times more. This is the flyer story. Like you probably you might be doing the right stuff. You might be working out, but you're working out five minutes a week and being like, I don't know why I'm not losing weight. It's like, you're not even close. You're like, no, I think I need to double it to 10 minutes a week. It's like, no, you're not even close. The thing is is in fitness, we have some context, right?

1:02:43But in business, you have no idea. And that's the big disconnect is that people might be doing the wrong the right stuff, but doing the wrong amount. They're doing way too little of it. And they think you they think in doubles, not in orders of magnitude, as in 10x, 100x, but like the like you want to make a hundred times more money than you are, you need a hundred times more input. Like hold on, I'm I'm going to hit this home real quick because this is this is this is important.

1:03:10I have right now 10,000 times the input that I used to used to have when I was running my gyms. I just have leverage on my input. And so, for example, I could do 200 cold calls a day. I could double that to get to 400 400 cold calls a day. I could also do 200 cold calls a day to get someone to recruit for me.

1:03:38And then that person starts, sorry, I I'm going to rewind real quick. So, I could do 200 cold calls a day and get a certain amount of sales. The next level is I could go get somebody to do those 200 phone calls for me and then I make the same amount of sales, but that don't do anything. More leverage. Another leverage above that is I go call do 200 phone calls a day until I get a recruiter and then that recruiter brings me a new person every week. And then every week I get another added 200 phone calls per day that keeps stacking and the number of customers that comes from that. But what did I do there? I made calls for a week to get one recruiter.

1:04:13And then from that point going forward, every single month I get more and more sales. And so that's three levels of leverage. They're more than that. And so what you unlock in the game of entrepreneurship is leverage. And the way that you un unlock leverage is through relinquishing control. And so the tough part about the entrepreneurial journey is that the thing that got you to quit your job is the very thing that you have to stop doing. And so what happened is you felt out of control and so you quit your job so you could take complete control of your life. And when you're self-employed, you take complete control. You are you hunt, you kill, you produce, you do everything, right? And then the thing that you got the big massive reward for because you quit your job, you started making money, living life your own terms. You now have to unlearn that and you have to say now I'm going to give up control again. [snorts] And then the rest of the journey is unlearning the control that you so hardcore were rewarded for on that first action.

1:05:13Because in the beginning you have to give up doing production or doing delivery right on the back end and then you have to give up doing admin work and then you have to give up doing sales and then you have to give up doing marketing then you have to give up doing management then you have to give up doing leadership then you have to give up doing financing then you have to do like you have to give up all these things until eventually you're like but I'm not needed and then you have to give up the desire to be needed by your business

1:05:38>> because many people make their business to to fulfill personal desires ires, but the business doesn't need to do that. It doesn't exist for you. It exists for the customer. You're not required. You think you are because it makes you feel more important. And so that's the unlearning experience. And that's where leverage comes from. And so right now to answer the question, the challenge for the people is figure out what the input output equation is and do 10 times more. And if you can figure out how to do 10 times more, figure out how to do a hundred times more. And the secret is that if you're trying to do if you have less than $100,000 in savings and you would like to have $100,000 or more in savings, these are the things that I would recommend doing. And that means that you have to check out your ego. It's your ego is gone for this. All right? You don't care what other people think because they're not going to be there in 10 years. All right? Cuz you have a whole new group of friends that are way [ __ ] better and cooler. So one, stop eating out. Discount groceries only.

1:06:30That's if you're super poor. If here's my caveat. If you know how to make money, you already have a base level of skills, then eating Chipotle and whatever, whatever you can, door dash it in so that you can keep working. The moment I realized I could make $500 every 30 minutes by selling, I was like, "Oh, I'm never buying I'm never cooking food or grocery shopping ever again." Anything that was less than $500 an hour was was now immediately outsourced.

1:06:55Right? But this advice is for people who are super broke. Okay? So, if you don't have the skill set yet at all and you're struggling to just get things going, then you need to be completely on the defensive so that you can have enough money so that you can start taking bets. Because the only way that you're going to get ahead is that you have to make bets. You got to make bets on education. You got to make bets on opportunities. You got to make bets on inventory. You got to make make bets on software. You want to start a Shopify store. You want to start a school community. You want to start something. It's still going to cost some money, right? You might have to buy a camera. You have to buy some software that helps you edit videos.

1:07:29like there's some expenses. All right? And so having a big stockpile allows you to be patient. The the more money you have, the longer you out you can think because you don't have to worry about tomorrow. You know that next month and the month after and the month after taking care of because even if you made no money, you've got enough. That's how you can start thinking long term. People are like think long term, think longterm. But like unless if you have payroll and you've got or you've got rent or you've got you've got groceries to pay, you can't think long term because you're in survival mode. And so I'm trying to get survival to be as low as humanly possible for you so that you could get into thrive mode, but it's all relative. If you make 40 grand a month and spend 40 grand a month, you're going to be in the same survival mode. But if you make 40 grand a month and spend four, you're going to have you're going to have every month you make 10 months worth of income. And so in two months, you've got you've got 20 months saved up. You're good. And then you can get super aggressive with that other 36 and start really betting to to double down.

1:08:20All right. So, here's the very broke five, six things that you can do to immediately spend way less. One, stop eating out. Discount groceries only. Two, stop buying new clothes. Go to Goodwill only. Three, only attend free friend events. All right, so think of what I just said. Think about all the events that friends will tell you to come to. Weddings, bachelor parties, uh birthdays, um just nights out because it's Thursday, whatever. Only attend free friend events. And if they don't support your goals, they are not your friends. Think about that. If I said, "Hey, I've got this goal." And I said, "Hey, there's this human being and he wants to get you to not have the goal."

1:08:58Would you describe them as a friend or an enemy? Think about it. Some of you, some of the people in your life that you call friends are actually your enemies. You just don't know it. Now, four, take the rest of the time that you have to A, apply to jobs that make more than your current job. B, pick up side hustle work. C, learn skills that you can trade for a higher hourly rate than you currently do. When I say trade, I mean you make more per hour than what your [clears throat] current current skills pay you. All right? And then five, find the hardest worker in the room when you enter that new job or that new place. And then double their level of input. So if they knock on a 100 doors, you knock on 200.

1:09:39They make a 100 dials, you make 200 dials. Right? When I had Jacob, my young neighbor, I gave him this exact advice. And he was expected to on his team do a $100 a day, he did between 300 and 400. And so, guess what? He got better faster. And then once you follow all of those steps, this is what you need to do next. Wait 36 months. And this is what I mean by patient with your outputs, impatient with your inputs. And the crazy thing is that you can change your life in one decision. I can get drunk, drive in a car, and change my life forever. Right? I can happen like that.

1:10:13But it can happen just like that the other way. It's just that the outcome's delayed. That's the only difference. You can change your life today in this moment by making these decisions and and your life path will have veered. You will have changed direction. Your tree of of life will move. It's just that it takes time for that new direction to bear fruit. Whereas you can poison the fruit in a second. You can kill a tree real fast. You just can't grow one real fast. But it doesn't mean that if a seed's planted and you're watering it, it's not growing. If you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling road map that I've used to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 10, and 0 to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out.

1:10:55Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you. And uh enjoy.