Alex Hormozi's Best Advice on Getting Rich | 1 Hour Compilation

0:00I convert motel, hotels to apartments, extended stays. >> Cool. >> Crosses Sunbelt states. Um on track for 14 million revenue this year. Small bed 2.1 net >> um real estate high opex. >> Sure. >> Um would like to be at around a 30 million. >> Do you have LPS or you fund it all? >> Yeah, we have a regggd 506 fund. >> Okay. >> We partnered with a keyman who is now kind of keyman risk. Good friend of mine, Richard Wilson of Family Office Club.

0:28>> Okay. Um, what I want to do next is create a hotel brand. >> Okay. >> Specifically on the adaptive reuse side. Because you have all these empty garbage, crappy hotels, motel. >> Yeah. >> And they don't want to pay the pips that Marriott, Hyatt, Rison want them to pay. So, I can come in and say, "Look, I'll take over." >> Yeah. >> I'll take care of all your operations. Don't worry, I figured all that out. I'm on my

0:56>> teenth property. >> Sure. Um, here's what I just need you to do. The issue with that is I'm battling a lot of other buyers and it's hard to get in. It's hard to be the first guy that sees the deal, right? Um, the gatekeeper of these properties are brokers, agents. >> So, that's what's stopping me. I I believe I know what I need to do, but I I I need a little bit more validation, get over my analysis paralysis, but I believe I need to be that thought leader in this space.

1:24>> Okay? And if I my thought is if I am the thought leader in the space they'll kind of come to me. You know before the key man was raising all the capital. >> Well now I'm raising all the capital. >> Okay. >> When you say they'll come to me. Who? >> Uh those who have hotels motel that want to convert them into apartments where I can buy. >> So not the investor side but the >> actual Yeah. I need pipeline. Correct. I need I need a pipeline. >> Okay. >> Um pipeline problems

1:49>> all day long for me. >> Okay. So I I feel if I have a channel or some sort of content distribution and it's a blue ocean strategy. In fact, there's only one other guy in here that's actually doing something similar to me. >> I don't know where he's at, but I just spoke to him. >> There he is. Anyways, you're on his podcast. So, um that's what I believe and I kind of want that validation. >> Well, I'll I'll zoom out for a second before giving you the immediate like cool, which is the problem that we're solving is just deal flow.

2:19>> Yeah. >> Right. Right. And so, kind of like I was saying earlier, like thought leadership is a path. It doesn't have to be the path. If it's the path that you want, cool. But when I think about this, I think about um basically what is the the highest reward, lowest risk way of accomplishing whatever the problem is, right? Um and so for you, if or if I'm picking for anybody, it's like what is your existing skill set and what has the highest overlap with that skill set so that I have the highest likely it's going to work. So if you were like, you know what, I've done face to face forever. That's why it's like, you know what? Let's let's let's do the the conference strategy as as a as a good as a good strategy for the fundraising. If you're like, I understand media, I like social media. I want this like deep inside my heart. Then I'd be like, well, I'm not going to stop anyways. You're going to do that anyways. Uh so go do the quote thought leadership and make content. Um if you had a if you know, if Ashley was here and she was like, you know what, we're going to I know how to run ads for you. Then like if that was your background, they'd be like, well, let's just run the paid site. So, like you could absolutely run an ad that just says, "Hey, if you're a motel owner and you're looking to sell, um, I'd love to talk to you." And you can just generate leads that way. It works fine. Like I was looking at I wanted to do um a deal in the payment processing space like a year and plus ago. Maybe some of you guys saw this, but like uh I ran ads just for like, hey, payment processor is doing between 30 and 300 million a year.

3:34Like, hit me up if you're like interested or whatever. And I think we got 13 qualified companies for $6,000 in spend like on the phone, which is absurd, right? If you think about it from a deal flow perspective. And so I only say that um this is going to be worth explaining. So let's let's not use a red mountain.

3:58That's a little bit bloody. Let's go blue mountain here. All right. Blue ocean, blue mountain. There we go. All right. So, we have our, you know, big prize and let's assume that it's money for the sake of this conversation. Um, there's going to be, you know, this way and then there's going to be this way and then there's going to be this way. All of them get up the mountain. And so, I think where the quote analysis paralysis kicks in is that you're like, which one is best? And I call it the fallacy of the perfect pick is that you think that there's a perfect pick and there just isn't one. There's trade-offs on all of them.

4:34like you're going to be and the where where you get in trouble is where you well the there's two big places you get in trouble. One is here at the base of the mountain trying to figure out which one to do and then you spend a year there when a year on any of them on the low side you could have been here on a year here versus a year here. You could have been up the mountain further than you are here just because you waited. And the thing is is that the longer you wait at some point you would have literally got to the top of mountain on any of them but the waiting was the cost. The second part where you in trouble is here or here where you're like, you know what, this other path, you know, kind of looks a little bit different than this one and it looks like that one also goes up the mountain and that one looks less steep. So then you go over here, but you're like, [ __ ] this one's less steep, but it's slower.

5:15Or you're on the other one that's slower, and you're like, but this one's more steep. And then you get there, you're like, [ __ ] this is way steeper. And so there's always trade-offs that happen in any of these paths. But if you want to be, you know, a thought leader, um, just just recognize that it's going to take time. Like I would say give yourself 18 months before you determine whether or not this was a good idea and you have to commit to that. Like when I started YouTube, the vendor that I had um he made a video about it. Um the first call I had I said I'll do this for 10 years and if after 10 years it's not working I'll stop. And he was like in my entire history I have never heard anyone say that. He's like it's all like how do I get leads in 90 days? And so the fact that you're in a business that is capital aggregation and you're and you're building you probably do have a longer time horizon anyways just go on the nature of the business. Um but I would encourage you to if you are going to do the quote thought leadership thing stick to what you know don't try and be the next Gary Vee or the next me or the next whatever because like you're not going to beat me at being me but you will beat me at being you. And so I would just like only talk about the things that you have the track record for and that will that will necessarily narrow the content that you talk about.

6:22But the thing is is that social media, you've probably heard this, has shifted to probably interest based media now with interest graphs with the algorithm. And so if you want those types of leads, you have to make that type of content. And the thing is is the algorithms are getting so good. Like my if you look at my discover page, it's just metal fabricators and u I was going to say gym equipment. So it's gym equipment too. Uh and comedy. Those are like that's what I consume. I consume gym [ __ ] gym equipment, and I consume comedy. That's that's my whole thing. And the thing is is that metal fabricators are notoriously bad advertisers. And so on my discover page are like 13 like videos of metal fab guys being like, "Look at this cable accessory I just welded." I'm like, "This is cool." It gets served to me because I'm that audience and I'm a I'm a great lead to have uh for that stuff. But like just don't be afraid if you see you have like a hundred views. I see tons of videos have 100 views, 200 views, 500 views and I'm exactly who they want watching.

7:16>> And so if that guy, that metal fab shop guy was like, "You know what? you know, six things about marriage. I'm like, I don't [ __ ] care. Like, why do I care? Why am I listen to this guy, right? I I just want to buy metal metal stuff. So, just show me the metal stuff. Um, and so I would just say like if you are going to do the motel thought leadership stuff, stick to that. >> Awesome. >> I'm not a paid spokesperson, but I'm going to speak for all the entrepreneurs. You put together an amazing group here, not just of entrepreneurs that you c curated, but the acquisition team. We've learned so much. So, thank you for that.

7:42>> Thank you. So uh my company is Bio Accelerator. We're one of the top stem cell companies in the world. Uh right now that's what we're known for. We're actually a biotech platform. So we have a lot more behind the scenes. Uh so what we do right now, what we sell for revenue is our services, our healthcare services and stem cell and exoome. Uh we're 24 million. We want to be at 250. >> Okay.

8:08>> Uh actually 500, but I was sandbagging for this. Um um but there's a lot of things stopping us. One of them I'm I'm afraid that has been uncovered is our level of expertise possibly including me. Um I think we're doing better than anybody in the world. I'm biased obviously, but we're kind of pioneering an industry. So there's no real great blueprint. Um that's my excuse. Um but um I've I've raised capital uh both for this business and my previous real estate career, but it's been in small chunks of like 5 million, 10 million, 15 million

8:40>> like formal rounds or like friends and family. >> Um both like so for this this company I seeded it angel seed and then uh series A. We're on a series B right now. That's about my level of expertise. Okay. >> Um but when we really need to get out to scale, we're going to have to get a lot more money. And I'm noticing and starting developing these relationships that it's a much different conversation when you start asking for 100 million versus 5 or 10. >> Yeah.

9:04>> Um so I guess my question gets down to um what are what would be a good suggestion knowing that I don't want to leave the company and get kicked out yet? >> Well, how much equity do you have left or like do you have >> uh 65%. >> Okay. So you still have a good chunk. Okay. Um and then 35% is all investors or their team. Okay. >> I have some Yeah. team members also. Okay. >> Key key players. Yeah. Chief medical officer, stuff like that. >> So, is the issue that you've had the conversations and people are saying no to the higher valuation in order for you to get the capital you need?

9:35>> Yeah, a little bit of that because really I we're we have a lot of technology that hasn't it's been proven in our clinic and it's ready to, you know, basically scale if I could get the money for the manufacturing to build the extra laboratories and and so I don't want the valuation to be squeezed so much that it squeezes me right out of >> uh a power position. So yeah, that's that's kind of the issue.

9:58>> Do you do the existing investors who have come in so far, do they have because like you can absolutely maintain control and still be a minority shareholder. Like Zuck has 100 to1 voting rights. >> And so if there's a business that requires more capital, but they still trust you, but understand that it requires more capital to get to where you want to go, >> then you can still maintain the control you want as long as they buy you.

10:23>> Yeah. the people we have right now are like that. Um, you know, we have some professional athletes and celebrities, a lot of people that were like really good patients of ours >> and they Yeah. and then they wrote us checks, but they're not really big funding partners. >> Yeah. Um, so fun. I mean, this is just a sale. >> It's all it is. And so I would I would encourage you to probably think less about this sound really less about the facts and more about the story. Now, facts do make great for great stories.

10:52Um, but the question that we have to answer is like what would you need to see in order to believe? And so if I'm talking to like so when we're thinking like if we're about to let's say we want to raise a round in 2026, right? I'm having this conversations now with 10 times the amount of potential kind of like uh investment partners to understand what they're what each of them needs to believe or needs to see in order to feel confident to make the bet.

11:20And once I have that kind of big list, then I can narrow that down to like, okay, this guy's unrealistic. This guy's unrealistic. This we can do and it's going to cost us this much. And so sometimes it's a tiny race to just get this one need to believe to be believed, and then you can ladder into this other thing. And so I I think about it as like I want to go find my customers, find out what they want, and then build the thing they want. Now, to be clear, that's not like trying to derail the vision, like you don't want to build some another person's company, but it's typically they're all going to just try to uh pay down risk. That's all they're paying down, right? Or want you to pay down for them? Um, so from a control perspective, that's super manageable. If you did it today, it's like maybe you lose half the equity that you have, but now you have a company that you raise. How much cash do you need [clears throat]

12:07>> uh to finish this round? 5 million. But we want to go out and raise in 26 27. And what what And you want to raise that at what? A billion at >> No, half a mill. Half a bill. >> Okay. 500 million is what you want to raise it at. So you you want to sell 20% and get 100 million in cash. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um they're they're there they have to see basically what risk are the people who bought in at 20 or what's your current valuation? The last round

12:35>> 50 million. >> Okay. So that's a 10x difference right in valuation. What risk did the $50 million round take on that they are now rewarded for with the $500 million round? That's a question I don't know. >> Uh I mean in my mind we've derisked this more than any other platform on the planet, but there's still a lot of regulatory risk. >> Okay. >> So there's a lot of unknowns that the 50 million round didn't know like in in the sense that now Florida and Utah and some other uh states are starting to change their thought process on stem cell. So it's starting to look more derisked in that from that point point of view I guess.

13:11>> So directionally the only has there been any technological change or sales velocity change or avatar ch like has there been any new finding that fundamentally changes the game because again I'm trying to help build the story here because that's all we're selling here is that we raised at 50 now we're raising at 500 and the reason is >> Oh yeah we'll have a lot of reasons. Yeah because with that that Yeah. [laughter] Sorry I guess I wasn't understanding. Yeah, we're we're going to build a laboratory that we've already proven our technology that we've been delivering for years and we're just going to be able to scale it. So I think

13:43>> and that wasn't there at 50. >> Yeah. >> And that was not there at 50. >> That was not there in 50. >> Okay, great. And so to me it's like these are the this is what has changed and now fundamentally changes the nature of the business. >> Mhm. >> That is that is it. So it's like this is a $10 billion business. There are three more assumptions that have to be proven true. we proved this one right, which is why we are now because it's they're all discounts on a 20 billion dollar business of the likelihood that you actually achieve that like at least that's that's the thinking process most VCs or at least good VCs come in with is like they're only making money on billion you know multi multi-billion dollar companies and so it's how many assumptions do I have to believe will be true and the fewer assumptions that need to be true the higher the valuation because the higher likelihood and so if we're like this was actually the riskiest of the the four that have to happen and that's why we have the biggest step up um in our valuation because now it's just a capital constraint not a assumption constraint like we've already we've already deconstrained this and from the regulatory risk perspective all the directions are pointing green not red

14:44>> that's how I'd position it >> okay >> it is for sure a pitch though >> yeah I get uh kind of in the weeds of the nuts and bolts and then people just their eyes glaze over >> they don't know the science >> they just want to know that they're going to make a lot of money and so it's going to be a sale on you and a sale on the story. >> Okay. Yeah. Thank you. >> I was just like, do not be a scientist for the pitch. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I I'm not. So, >> yeah. I was like, we could help you with that if you need it.

15:10>> Yeah. Don't invest in Dogecoin. Don't even invest in the S&P 500. Invest instead in the SME 500. Invest in you because you will always beat a 10% return in the stock market. And if you think that Dogecoin is going to out compete your personal growth, you're never going to win. Anyone can get rich fast as long as you're willing to make no money for a long period of time while you work to get good enough to get rich fast. And so I told you I'll tell you that story. The story goes like this. A guy is actually using this as a sales close to an audience. He wrote a million dollars on a whiteboard in front of an audience. And so then he called out to a lady in the front row and he said, "How much do you make, ma'am?" And she said, " $50,000."

15:53and he said, "Okay, well, right now you pay reality $950,000 every single year for not knowing how to make a million dollars." And when I saw that, I realized that the value of the skill of making a million dollars is the difference between what I'm making and what I could be making. And people wildly undervalue how much more they could be making once they have a skill.

16:21And so if you're the type of person who can actually follow instructions, show up on time, smile, be able to fail and keep going, virtually all education will net you a positive yield. Because let me ask you a question. Would you pay $950,000 to make a million and be able to make a million every year? Well, that would be an insane deal. You pay it once and you get the skill forever. So every year after that, you make a million dollars a year. Well, of course you should. Now, once you make the million dollar a year, are you willing to give a 100% of what you make to make $10 million a year? Of course, you should. And that's why education is by far the highest return.

17:00You can learn how to make a million a year for probably close to $200,000 a year. And you're like, "Well, well, where where do I spend that?" You'll spend that on conferences. You'll spend it on seminars, and it'll likely be in 2,000 to to $5,000, sometimes $30,000 chunks. But for some reason, you're willing to spend this on some academic who hasn't been in reality for 20 years cuz they're on tenure and thinks that the world uh is just going to hand you stuff because that's their reality because they're government funded. Or you can pay money to people who live in real private businesses who do this stuff for a living. And here's the thing, I have never paid for education and not gotten more than what I paid for. Now, I don't want to conflate that with the fact that I've paid for things that I didn't think was worth that money to other people, but I always ask myself, okay, number one, how can I become the best student who's ever gone through this? How do I become this person's number one success story? And I've told every program, every partner, every vendor that I've ever worked with, I will be your biggest success story.

18:07And so, the reality is once I am their biggest success story, is that because of them or because of me? And I think that's a choice that you get to make. Am I going to be the number one success story or do I want to be right and prove that they're not good? Well, congratulations. Maybe they're not that good. Well, what does that leave you with? No skills and less money. If you choose to succeed anyways and say, "What can I learn from this person?" Because I've learned just as much from bad people as I have from good. Because a lot of times getting good is actually the removal of bad. And so if you find out other ways that people do a terrible job, it's also a wonderful way of figuring out how to not do a terrible job. And so if I want to create a product that's exceptional and I say, let's say I want to put a phone, a camera, the internet, email all in one place, if you remove all of the stuff that sucks from all of those things, what you're left with is an iPhone. Most times you can always get more than what you pay for when you invest in you. So let's get really tactical. if you really want to double down on you, which will by far I mean, think about this. 10% improvement is the S&P 500. So, you're saying that you could take, okay, let's be real. Let's do let's do real math.

19:17So, let's say that you've got $10,000 saved up. Okay? Let's say that's what your savings is, which by the way makes you like a top 40% American, FYI. So, let's say you've got $10,000 saved up. You could put in the S&P 500 and have that $10,000 be 10,900 one year later. Or you can spend that on something that can triple your earning capacity and next year instead of making let's say $50,000 a year, you make $100,000 a year. Well, which of these increases the $50,000 plus increase is more than the net of the 900? because you lost the 10. You spent the whole thing. Here you invested it. Here you spent it. But did you spend it or did you invest it in asset you could control? And so I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the extra 50 and put the 10 in. And then what do I do next year? I'm going to take this 50.

20:18I'm going to ask myself, is there anything I could put this $50,000 into? So I could put in the S&P 500 and I could go and add myself an extra uh $5,000 $55,000 whatever. Let's say I get 10% that year. Okay, so I get 55,000 this year. Or I could put that 50k into 10 five 10k things or two 25k things and all of a sudden take my earning power from 100k to 250k.

20:44Wow, what a deal. But I'm going to lose the whole 50 again. And so the thing is is that on my way up, I basically took my savings and I spent it almost every year on education because why on earth would I want the future to take longer to get to me? When you buy skills, it's the closest approximation to buying time. And so there's this big thing like you can't buy time. False. You can buy the future at a discount. And you buy the future at a discount by buying the skills required in order to get there faster. And so if it could take you 5 years if you did it on your own or it could take you one year if you paid four different people to help you out with each step of the process. Why would you not want to pay all of the money you have to get to there and then have four years of gain with that new baseline?

21:29You now are living four years 5 years into the future. It's like you skipping from being 20 to 25 and you getting the earning power at 25 plus but now you're just 21. And then when you're at that point you pull the next 5 years for it. And when you're 22 it's like living like you're 30, right? Like now at that point though, you might spend all your savings yet again. And this process has been one that I have consistently done for the entirety of my career. And it just gets to a point where you can't even spend the money. And so my very controversial advice is spend all your money on education for as long as you possibly can until you can't even spend the money because you're making too much of it.

22:05And so how do you become an expert? You do more repetitions than anyone else in a narrow field, which also means you fail more times. How has your investment thesis evolved over time and what is it today? >> It is unsurprisingly obvious. Um, it's like someone it's like sometimes I'm sure some of you guys have had something that like I said four years ago or that you said or heard from somebody else four years ago and then you're like, man, I ended up just doing exactly the opposite of that and now I realize why that makes sense. So Warren Buffett's like, "I used to buy terrible businesses at fabulous prices versus fabulous businesses at fair prices." And fabulous businesses at fair prices is a better deal. Um, I pretty much wanted to make sure that that was true. Um, [laughter] uh, and so the first 24 months of acquisition.com, we did 24 deals in that time period, and I pretty much gave back or lost the money that I invested in all of the deals minus three. it just wasn't worth it. And then the few it was 8020, right? Like the few the few champions that were there are great businesses and we have great relationships with the founders and they continue to keep growing and crushing it. Um, and so that was that was that piece. I'll also mention that like if you're a really good entrepreneur, it's tough because a business that with an entrepreneur who's not necessarily as good as you are, you will constantly want to jump in and be like, "God, I'll just do it."

23:31Right? On the other hand, if you have somebody who's as good or better than you, they're not going to want to give you much. And so that's something that was I had to realize. And so most of the really good businesses that I've invested in have been ones where it was like at a higher valuation than I wanted and I had less equity than I wanted and I had to put up all cash for the deal. And then me helping was just assumed with the fact that I would want to get a good return on my investment rather than it being like some sort of consultingish services related um deal.

24:03So we write all checks now. That's how we like that's the the TLDDR is we just write checks. >> Just a quick followup. When you say you write all checks, you mean you're just buying out the owner entirely? >> No, not always. Not always. But like we just like you got money, we got equity. That was the deal. Everything above that is me just wanting to help out of the goodness of my heart, not because there's any expectation. >> Very interesting. >> I have had um some of the biggest banks that you've heard of things like that out to this headquarters um to see what we have going on and they've been like this is insane.

24:33>> What do they look for? >> So what they want is what every investor wants, which is what, you know, I I tried to set out to do in the very beginning, which was um they want proprietary deal flow. So, they want people who want to specifically do deals with one person. So, it's not like they're shopping. They're like, I want to do a deal with you. And ideally, you have some sort of captive market or niche. Um, and so for acquisition.com, we are kind of low midmarket in terms of what what companies or businesses are kind of attracted to my stuff. And so, it's typically the business is doing like between one and $100 million a year. And so, and this was kind of the thesis of acquisition in the beginning was like, okay, everything's sub a million. There's tons of people who pro, you know, help people get their first customer, a few hundred thousand in revenue, first five clients, things like that. Like there's tons of kind of like the coaching consulting, whatever, you know, coaching course world is there.

25:20Then if you go like 100 million and up, then you've got like Mackenzie Bane, BCG, uh, Deote, PWC, EY, like a lot of these Gartner, like all these kinds of consulting firms that deal with like kind of above there, but there's just not a lot in like the one to 100 million range. And what's interesting about that particular range is that that's where a huge amount of like alpha is created in terms of investing returns. And so like for example, if you have a business, this is probably going to lose half the half the [laughter] audience, but if you have a if you have a business that's doing call like $3 million in IBIDA or profit, right, per year, and you can make a handful of tweaks and get it from 3 to 8 million, the $3 million IBIDA business might be worth $12 million.

26:01maybe the $8 million eBay of business can probably get somewhere between like 80 and $100 million in a sale. And so it's like you have a a a huge multiplier effect that increases once you get above about $5 million in profit and especially as you approach 10 where you now become uh a target for institutional grade investors. So that because they can write they have to put to work hundreds of millions of dollars and so they basically become the customer of buying the product which is the business that you created. And so our thesis of acquisition.com was like, well, we want to get people right before they're at that that level, buy at really small prices, make the changes in the business, and then capture this huge upside.

26:38>> If someone read all your books, listen to your podcast, listen to today's podcast, what are they going to unblock that's been tripping them up, keeping them behind or holding them back? >> I think they would have clarity on what actions were required to get what they wanted. And then at that point they would only have to just think like why am I not doing it which is a separate conversation but there's a lot of confusion I would say around like what are the things that are required in order to create a business in order to create an income. I would say that I'm an objectivist and so I just look at what are the things that are observable and I think a lot of time people spend inside their heads trying to think about manifesting and energy and all of this stuff when it's like we got to let people know about the stuff we have. We got to have something to sell and we got to make sure that what we're charging costs less than than it costs to deliver it. And we try and do that as many times as we can. And so each of those pieces obviously has frameworks behind them, but they're all tied to one thing, which is just what actions are required. And that's been the single pervasive frame in my life that has made navigating reality significantly easier for me cuz I was very confused coming up and I was like, I don't know what any of this is.

27:43And I read all these self-help books and and I felt more confused after the 10th book than I did on the first book. And then it was just like, okay, what do I have to do? And then that is kind of what has started this journey for me. >> What's that number one misconception you hear when people are thinking about building a business, making money, changing their financial situation? What's the number one thing you hear and you go that's the issue? >> I think the conflate sequence is probably the first and biggest thing because a lot of people who are wanting to make money believe that the making money comes from investing and investing is the last thing you do, not the first thing you do. And so one of the things is they'll look at people who are at the end of their careers and say, "Okay, well these guys are making all these, you know, these bets, right? I if I if I just bought this memecoin or I just bought Bitcoin in 2013, I'd be super rich." But it actually doesn't take into consideration what a decision-making process like that would create, which is if you took a swing at every type of Bitcoin because you can't just say, "I would only pick this one." You'd have to say, "I pick every single super long shot." It's like, we probably would have lost them 99 of the other bets.

28:41>> And so it's like we have to take it in aggregate. And so I would say making active income cool again uh rather than the passive bet and really just gambling um is probably the the first thing that that people mess up is that they're they somehow think that working or active income is not scalable when in reality the people who have the most money typically have tremendously high incomes. And it's because of the excess of cash flow from that income are they able now to make big swings with riskier bets that sometimes pay off and sometimes don't. But you can't take those swings unless you have more cash coming in from the things you do every day.

29:15>> You know what? No one's ever said it that well, like from everyone I've spoken to. And I'm so glad you pointed it out because I completely agree. I have so many friends who when they saw the rise of crypto or whatever it was, jumped in with a large sum of their life savings >> because they heard of a friend of a friend of a friend who'd made a killing. >> Put it all in there. A week later it dropped by like 10k. They pulled it all out. The next week it went up double like and and it was just a mess. And so many of them lost like 10 20 30 40,000 dollars.

29:51>> And it's all because you're thinking that's the way to get there >> and it's cooler and it's smarter and like you're a genius if you And you're right. Actually, everyone I know that's made >> amazing money on any of that already had tons of money and it was play money for them. Yeah. So it just changed into this. So what's happening there? Why is it that we've been led down this thought process and how do we get out of it? >> I mean I think it's fundamentally the something for nothing fallacy of like how can I get rich quick? How can I do it really easily? And um basically the more it feels like luck is usually where you should have your first red flag. If you I mean I have a belief that if you control all the variables then you can predict the outcome. Now, we don't always control all the variables in any given situation. But the greater number of variables we control, the greater influence we have over the outcome. And if you're getting into something like this and you're like, I actually don't even know what the variables are. Then it's like, you are you are 100% gambling. And so this is your life savings. Would you put it on black at the casino? Probably not. This is really not that different than that. Except at the casino, you have no nods at least right here. It's like you have no idea.

30:55And typically by the time especially genpop uh kind of retail investors find out about something it is the peak and it is too late. And so you have to be at the very beginning of these if you want to be speculative which I wholeheartedly am not a big fan of speculative investments in general because it's basically the greater fool theory which is what they call in the investment world which is just like we just keep selling to the greater and greater fool until sometime somebody is the greatest fool of all and then it drops right and so I prefer to think about instead of thinking of investments and active income I think of just money per unit of time and that kind of takes out this binary or what I would consider a false binary of active and passive and think well and I I I feel like I prove this pretty clearly which is we live in time and we collect money in that period of time and so fundamentally all we want to do if we want to increase our income is just think what are we earning per unit and this is where again bad piece of advice is like never sell your time it's like okay well if someone gave you a billion dollars for an hour would you not sell that I would right so it's a question of how much is your time worth and then that creates a much more actionable uh decision-m framework of is this worth it or not and to ladder up to the active versus passive. It's [sighs] how active is it versus how passive is it? And it's my belief that nothing is passive because there's always going to be a certain amount of if you're doing it right. Let's say if you you made one passive investment. If you're doing it the right way, you probably should have looked at a hundred deals and all of that took time and all of that takes diligence. And then after doing all this analysis, then you decide to make this investment. And so to say that it's passive, it's like it doesn't take into account all of the research that goes into ahead of time, which is absolutely still work. Now, after the investment, sure, but there's still time that you're trading. By first breaking that idea of like if for in order for me to get rich, it must be something that I don't trade my time for, I think is like big myth number one. So, if we assume that, then we say, okay, I have to trade my time for money because money comes in over time. What are the things that I can trade my time for that will get me more than I'm currently getting, which is a much more solvable problem that also is significantly less risky. And so, especially when you're trading time, we have some. And so we don't we really just risk the time to be like I would I never wanna I don't want to sell my I'm not a I'm not a slave. It's like calm down. We're it's a voluntary exchange.

33:07And if it's and here's the thing is if you don't think the price is worth it then don't make the trade. And that's one of the beauties of capitalism is it's two parties both saying they'll be better off. And so fundamentally I would say the focus of the the content the stuff that I put out is how can I equip people with the skills so that when they trade that time they get more for it and then continue to trade up and up and up for the rest of their careers. >> Yeah. I mean that is that's actually such counterintuitive advice to what I feel has been spreading on the internet for the last two decades of every conversations around passive income. I feel like every one of my friends is addicted to figuring out how they can make passive income and those [clears throat] are the same people that are not making

33:45>> any more money than they already were. But it's this addiction and obsession with if I figure this out then I won't have I can quit my day job and whatever it may be. >> Yeah. And I I've had influence. So the my neighbor is um is he owns uh Panda Express and so last time I checked they did $3.7 billion in revenue and they have about a 27% net margin. So he took home $935 million in personal income not investment income. And so people see his investment portfolio, which is impressive as you can imagine. He's been doing it for 45 years. And so that starts to add up, right? But the thing is he can only take these kind of bigger swings or bigger bets because he has this very regular cash that they spent 45 years building. And I would say that what's interesting is that you can build something very big in about 5 to seven years. And the problem is that I think most people spend that same 5 to seven years reliving the same 30 days over and over again, jumping from thing to thing to thing. and never actually getting the root set so that they can pay down. How much would you price an MR web design business and do you think it's still viable in 2026? Yes, I 100% think it's viable in 2026. I Okay, I'm going to say this for everybody cuz I get these questions all the time.

34:59The opportunity of 2026 is taking what was formerly a very high operational complexity, high headcount, high coordination business and doing it with sub agents and agents throughout the business. And so for example, heavy people businesses like legal, heavy people businesses like accounting, heavy people businesses like marketing agencies and SEO. These are all businesses that have virtually limitless demand. Every business wants more businesses. Every business has to do taxes. Every business has to do legal [ __ ] right? You every business has to do these things. And so, you know, you already have product market fit. The issue is the operational complexity of scale. And so, since you know getting customers is not hard, if you say, "Hey, I can help you get more customers." It's not difficult. The issue is delivering on that once you saturate your existing capacity. And so, you have to think no longer, and this is the transition of 2026, is no longer a rolesbased expansion. you have to switch it to a workflow-based expansion. Meaning, instead of having an organizational structure, is there a camera that's on for above me?

36:02>> Yeah. >> Okay. So, instead of having an organizational structure that looks like this, where you have, you know, people that report to people that report to people, for sure, there's going to be components of that for the near-term, but the long term is that each of these people actually do these activities. And these activities when you stack them together become one very long workflow that turns attention into money. That's the inputs and outputs of the equation. And so all of these little dots you need to reorganize. And each of these are agents and sub aents that are trained on how to do specific workflows. So, for example, this what we're recording right now, we already have a mega prompt and multiple sub agents who can clip these clips in real time. So, rather than me needing an extra 10 people to manage the shorts that come from this, the the mids that come from this for the highlight channel, the stories that the the team will take, all of that stuff is now being automatically done. All right. And so the last thing that's happening now is that we've got one guy who reviews all the clips where the AI listens to what's the hook, what are the interesting moments, what are the kind of the payoffs of the clip, and it's collapsing them into multiple clips. So if I have a 7minute clip with somebody, it's going to say hook one. And this is V1 of the clip, hook two, second version of clip, hook three. And we can take all of those and run them as trial reels or on YouTube shorts. We can take the best performers, and then we can put them on Instagram or whatever. But all of that is happening. And then the only thing that the the the editor has to do is just like make sure that it sounds right, the captions all make sense. And for me, I already know that it's on brand because I'm talking about businessto business owners. So I know it's already good. And so that's that is the process. And in the old way of thinking, we'd be like, "Oh, we're going to have to stand up a whole department in order to handle her hotline." But in the way of the future, what we're talking about here is we have to think in workflows. Which option would Alex choose? A one-on-one support $99 a month community that reduces the price and support after reaching 10 plus members.

37:59reduces the price. Well, that penalizes early movers. So, I wouldn't want that. You want to incentivize early movers. Um, or a $25 phone community without one-on-one support, only courses and group calls. Um, 500 people in my free community. My niche is coding. So, I think that so I I put a video out that's recently done really well and it was actually targeted at school. So, this is I made that community as a rant as response to some of these calls uh which is do the unscale. Let me see if I can pull this up. I think all of you guys should watch it because it will it will help you out. Um, but in the in the spirit of what I'm talking about, uh, let me see here. Alexi, I just want to show it to you guys so you can see where it is. Okay, do the unscalable. So, I'm going to share my screen real quick.

38:43This video right here, do the unscalable. This was for you guys. So, the TLDDR answer is I would do the 101 and I would probably do it as one to one to small group. That's what I see is the best model for most people. So do $99 a month, maybe do $2.99 a month. You probably get away with it if it's coders. Um, and do that as like one on six and have it in little cohorts. And so if you do one on six and you do that 45 minutes every other week, something like that, um, that can get you if you worked call, let's say you did two days of calls a week and you worked for 10 hours on each of those days. Actually, let's do let's do eight hours for simp simple math sake. Uh then that means that you're going to get [ __ ] three hours brings you four s no nine yeah three so nine hours we'll do nine hours for simple math. So that's going to be 12 sessions time 2 is 24 * 2 is 48 because it's every other week. So 48 sessions times six people. Uh so 48 * 6 call it 50 * 6. So 300 people at 300 bucks a month. That's $100,000 a month group.

39:50And so that's still working two days a week. So that means you can work the other five days a week just promoting the community and maybe having one day that you dedicate to like putting stuff inside that's valuable. Like that's a simple model. And I think a lot of you guys like real talk some of you guys are trying to think about scale and you've got like 10 members in your group. Like deliver like crazy and then think about scale later when you have the resources to scale. Like ah that's not scalable.

40:16Like what are you afraid? Are you upset about making a million dollars a year doing that like with no employees? Like boohoo. Okay. >> That visual of life as this like bloody game of tugof-war where like most people their hands just get too >> cut to keep holding on to the rope is like it's in it's stuck in my head. >> Yeah. >> It's that's really powerful. >> Yeah. It was tough.

40:40>> So I'm I'm the first 100 grand is the hardest. And I know that that sounds like an unfathomable amount of money. It took me five years. Like I get it. So like you just have to save it one dollar at a time. Like that's like that's what it is. Now obviously I talk about other things like there are smarter ways to make money for sure. Like if you can sell expensive stuff you can just move the decimals.

41:07Like I mean like the thing is is it is factually true. It is spiritually false. And I don't even believe in spirituality in general, but like it is it is tough to sell a $10 million building and make a million dollar commission or a $500,000 commission when you are broke as [ __ ] It is very like it is like you would have to become a different person, which is why most people's first sale is not that. But is it technically possible? Yes. A lot of people watch YouTube and the internet for complex money-making skills and they haven't even mastered showing up on time. And so it's like they want to go straight to calculus, but they don't know how to do simple addition. But the thing is is that like simple addition is foundational to that. And none of the other stuff will matter unless you can do the basics. But the basics doesn't make them less important. Usually they're the foundation of building which make them arguably more important. They just are simpler to understand but not simpler to do. And I think that's the big disconnect a lot of people have is that they think they because they understand something conceptually that they feel like they have already mastered the skill which are two very different things. And so one of the most common traits that people who are poor have is that it's always tomorrow. And so they never talk about anything in terms of today. And so it's about starting tomorrow, the diet tomorrow, the diet on Monday, next year, my New Year's resolution. It's always it's always pushing off. So rather than uh delaying gratification, they delay pain.

42:40And so rather than trying taking pain now for pleasure later, they take pleasure now and pain later. And so they flip the equation. And so they're surprised when today is later from yesterday that they're in pain. Because if if last week you were like, I'm starting my diet this week, then it is now this week and you've delayed the pain to today. And that means that the body you have right now is the result of the delayed pain that you are now forcing yourself to endure. And so they're somehow surprised when the bill comes due that they pushed off from the past. And so the first lesson of getting out of poverty is two words. It's my fault. It's I have to own that. And I think my fault you can kind of extrapolate to right now. Not like you basically have to own everything that passed to this moment. So, all the pain that I've gone through, all of the Mondays that I've missed, all of the diets that I've skipped, all of the savings I haven't made, all of those are not my dad's fault, my mom's fault, my circumstances fault, the country I was born in's fault, the zip code, any of those things fault. It's just mine. And the thing is is that people have this belief that because they have a strong argument for why it's something or someone else's fault, that that somehow helps them.

44:01And it just doesn't. Because whatever you cast blame to is where you also cast power to. And so if I say I can't succeed because my mom didn't love me, guess who controls me? My mom. And so if you also like replace my mom with a race, a gender, a political party, whatever the thing like I can't succeed because of Trump's laws. I can't succeed because of the radical left, because of wokeism, because of whatever. You actually give that thing more power in your life than you give yourself. And so it's completely it the thing is is that and this is what's so deceiving about it is it's very it's very um self-fulfilling is that you get more evidence and you get more confirmation.

44:47You get more evidence, you get more confirmation and the more your life sucks, the more you're confirmed that you were right. But like, do you want to be right about the fact that your life sucks or would you rather like there's a there's I think it's an old Zig Ziggler saying he said you can either be right or you can be rich. And I mean it's simple but this is what he was getting at is that you can say you know what you are right. Your dad kicked the [ __ ] out of you whole life and you don't have any confidence because he told you you're a piece of [ __ ] every day. You're right.

45:17But in order to be rich, you need to let that go. Because every day you say that I'm not successful because of this, it means because this now owns you. And for me personally, that realization that the thing that I hated most in the world, the things that I blamed for why my life wasn't the way it was, I was their [ __ ] And just realizing that um made me angry. But through that anger, I was able to say, "Well, [ __ ] them." Like, I will succeed despite the fact that my dad said this or my mom said this or Barack Obama said this or Trump said this or the woke left says what? Despite that, despite the fact that the chips are stacked against me. I'm 24 years old, earning $600 a month as a licensed engineer in the Philippines. Okay, cool.

46:04I'm responsible with money. Great. I save and invest 70% of my income. Badass. That's also insane, by the way. Saving four. So, you're living on $180 a month in the Philippines. That is that is that is next level. That is that is impressive. That is Dude, you're taking you're taking Mosy Meals and Mosymobile and living cheap to an entirely You are You are S tier on cheap living. You are god mode. So, kudos to you. Um, I want to earn north of $20,000 a month within three to five years, no matter how.

46:35Okay, great. Put put yourself in my situation. Take into consideration the position, the Filipino accent, etc. What would you do to get there? Okay, this is awesome. So, number one is you have to gain access to US markets. Number two, the accent doesn't matter as much if you're good. Basically, the better you are, the less the accent matters. The worse you are, the more it matters. Okay? Because it is a small but somewhat material, you know, factor. It's it really just comes down to trust. Um, are people going to trust somebody who's foreign as much as they're going to trust somebody who's who's call it English or native speaking? No. But it doesn't mean they're not going to trust you. It just means you have a slight disadvantage. Um, but let me let me paint it to you differently. Is there somebody who's in the US who can then move to the Philippines and then make money? The answer is yes. Which means that there's nothing that really fundamentally separates you from that person besides your accent and the way you look. Now, there are there any Filipinos who are Americanborn who were in the US, started making money online, and then moved to the Philippines. Well, then that means that they look exactly the same as you, and they have access to the same internet as you, and they also have access to the same customers. The only differences between you and them is your accent. And so when you say take into consideration the fact that you're Filipino, I will fully take it into consideration, which is that I do not think it matters that much.

47:48I think being good is what matters. And so I think what you need to do is find a problem that is very valuable for somebody else to solve. Now you are a licensed engineer. So is there a way I mean moving locations is the obvious thing because I'll tell you this in the US um I guess it depends on what kind of engineer you are. Uh but if you're like an electrical engineer, my god, you can print money here. Um but uh if you can't do that, then I I think you you need to in some way remove the licensed engineer from your your box of tools that you have available to. Let me let me give you an example what I mean. I did this um thing with Barley who just mentioned earlier where he asked he said, "Hey, open up this uh suitcase." And it had a number between $1,000, I think, and $100,000. And based on the amount of money in the box, uh, how much basically what business would you start? And it's a trick question because if you have $1,000 or $10,000, neither of those amounts of money really change what business you're going to start because you're just going to sell something that doesn't cost money to start, which is going to be skills and services. And so the f So my point here is that your licensed engineer component is like that $1,000. It's this thing that is something that you spent time on, but is also not relevant. What we need to do is you need to learn a a marketable skill which you either can go B2B which is finding ways to make businesses more money which is typically how do I help them market or how do I help them sell or how do I have them deliver in a way that is better faster cheaper on the consumer side anything that a consumer wants. Now, is there anything that stops you from uh recruiting influencers to promote a product that you like that you can drop ship from somewhere else in the United States and have them promote it for free and then get a cut? Is there anything that prevents you from doing that? No, there's not. And is it the way that you want to build a business that's going to be millions and millions? No. Can you make 20 grand a month? Absolutely.

49:41And so my point is that I think that in some ways you've given yourself constrained thinking and in so doing prevented yourself from seeing the zillions of opportunities that exist because you have access to the internet. It was the same thing I had a guy who asked me um he had a cafe in the middle of nowhere uh and had 120 person town that he had a cafe and he was trying to scale it and he's like well how do I scale this cafe and I was like dude the answer is you don't you use this thing called the internet which is what you're talking to me on right now and through that internet you gain access to the entire world.

50:09So, the world is global. I would stop seeing the fact that you're a Filipino or that you have an accent as um a a disadvantage. Not because it isn't, but because it doesn't serve you. Who you compare yourself to, not who you spend your most time with, will be the highest predictor of how much you make. And so, we are motivated by the things that we lack. And so, if you're very hungry, it's because you lack food. If you lack sleep, you're very tired.

50:36You're very motivated to sleep. And so if you want to be motivated to make money, it's not enough to not have money. You have to have a desire to make a lot more money. And the strongest way to create that desire is to visually see the people who are making far more than you. And so it's about who you compare yourself to, not who you spend time with. Fundamentally, the richest man in the world only spends time with people poorer than him. But he continues to get richer because he's comparing himself to the future version of himself. That's his reference point. That's his reference group. And when you start out, there's real people. As you evolve, it becomes imaginary. I heard this quote from one person to another when I was walking through the street. And he was talking about buying something that was a no a no return investment. Let's call it a big toy. And he said, "There will always be time to make money later." And I remember hearing that and thinking, "That's what someone who's poor says."

51:34And so to be clear, I think if you want to enjoy life, by all means do it. This video is about making more money. That's the stated objective. And so that's what I'm talking about. And so the idea that you're going to spend now, work later is the fundamental crux of poverty. And so you have to break that with all your heart. And when you have those people around you, and this was a toy, but it could be let's go out. We It always comes under the guise of yolo. We have to live life. But everyone who says that assumes that getting better and learning is not life and is not living. And for me, the purpose of my life is to learn as much as I can and pay down ignorance as much as I possibly can and squeeze the last drop of potential out of me that I can.

52:24And the way that I do that is through learning. And so for every person that asks you to sacrifice working now so that you can have fun now, just make sure you know the trade you're making. I'll be real with you. There's no perfect way to live your 20s or even your 30s. You either end up an unerskilled 30-year-old or 40-year-old or an underlived 30-year-old or 40-year-old. And so fundamentally it's not either or but knowing the trade-off and living with the consequences because you can't do them over. And on a personal note, I sacrificed or said differently, invested my 20s in order to have lots of skills and underlived.

53:07But in that same time period, I built to where I am now. And I genuinely am very happy with where I am now in life. And I would not redo those years to have quote lived more because the real secret is as I was doing it I loved the game. And so some of the best moments of my life when I look back were some of the moments that I felt like I was struggling the most because it was when I underwent the most growth. And so it's interesting because the pain that you go through in the moment often becomes the purpose that you look back on in your life. And so the idea that we want to avoid pain so that we can live today, I think conflates reality because when you look back on your life, a lot of times those are the things that define you. And so we should be seeking those out, not running away from them. So if you're not sure who you compare yourself to versus who you spend time with when you're about to make a big decision, the people who come up in your mind, who you're weighing their opinions on your decision, those are your reference group people. The people whose opinion you care about. And so if all your friends, for example, are billionaires and they all sacrificed their 20s, got rid of their friends, got rid of their material belonging, spent all their time working for free so that they could learn this big skill set and then doubled down in their late 20s and then made it big by the time they were in their 30s and 40s.

54:22Those people, if that was your reference group, if you're thinking about leaving home, what do you think that reference group is going to say? For sure. And because of that, you're out the door. And so whenever you have these frictional moments where you are like, I think I should do this, but whoever that person is, whoever that voice is, if they don't have what you want, don't listen to what they say. Only listen to other people's opinions about your life if their dreams for you are bigger than yours. Let's say you have two businesses. All right? One that does I'm going to use some math. You can remove zeros if it hurts your eyeballs to think of more zeros. All right? Let's say you've got a $10 million year business over here topline. $10 million business over here doing top line. So 10 and 10.

55:00Okay. Which business do you want? Well, you need more information, right? Of course. Now, let's say that both businesses are 10 million uh topline, two million bottom line, $8 million of cost in both. Now, which business do you want? You still need more information, of course. Now, let's say that of this 10 top 10 topline, $2 million bottom line businesses. This one, the owner is running 80 hours a week is c like every day of the week they're working uh and is required to work. Different than choosing to work as a side note, but I won't get into that for now. The second business, the the owner never is there and just owns it like you would own a stock on the stock market. Now, think about which of these business owners is richer. Now, at the onset, you'd think, oh, well, they're both the same topline, both same bottom line. But the difference is actually very dramatic.

55:47And so, let me explain. So, this guy, first guy, very frustrated entrepreneur Fred, he makes $2 million a year and then he pays his 50% taxes and he makes a million bucks left over. Then he lives his his living expenses, whatever. Maybe he's got a family. Okay, he takes home five uh $500,000 he can put away. So, he's getting richer at $500,000 a year roughly in terms of his net worth. That's a slow way to accumulate cash. Now, don't be me wrong, $500,000 is a lot of money, but I'm just saying big picture. Now, this guy, let's call it, so we had frustrated Fred and let's call it wealthy William. Sounds very, you know, fancy fancy. So, this guy has an entire team that actually runs the business uh day-to-day without him. And so he just owns it like he owns the paper stock of a company. And his business right now trades at six times profit. Meaning somebody would be coming would be willing to come in and write him a check for six times $2 million which is $12 million. And so of these two guys, this guy adds $500,000 to his net worth every year. This guy has a business that is worth $12 million. This guy's way richer. But check this out.

56:49Now, let's say that both of these guys work, you know, figure out a way to make the business make an extra $500,000 a year in profit. So, they go from 2 million to two and a half, two million to two and a half in profit. That's what happens here. Now, here's where it gets extra sexy. This guy after he makes his extra extra 500,000, let's say that uh he pays his 50% taxes and that $250,000 after taxes goes straight to him. So, he goes from taking home 500 to 250. He doesn't doesn't change his living styles. All right? So he he all the extra money he's he just he saves. So he starts making $700,000 $750,000 in savings per year. Okay. After taxes.

57:25Neat. This guy, the $250,000, sorry, the $500,000 that comes in after taxes, he gets a 6x multiple on. And so he actually gets another $3 million added to his net worth. So his 12 million becomes 15 million. And this is the game of wealth. This is how you get wealthy. It's very very inefficient to become wealthy off of regular income because it's taxed to oblivion and you're it it just there's zero multiplication that occurs on it, right? You don't get 10 years of work. You get one year divided by two after taxes. So the difference is like a 20x difference between a valuable company that can sell for 10x versus one that can't. Now hopefully I've sold you a little bit on the idea of why this is worth doing. Now let's walk through the steps of actually doing it. So the first step of actually taking it from frustrated Fred to wealthy William is you do a self- inventory. So what that means is that you actually list out everything you do, literally all of it.

58:22All right? And then you turn each of those uh checklist items into something that someone else can do. And you want to get as granular as humanly possible. And this is how you get out of the day-to-day without breaking the machine. And so I'd say the step even before this, if you don't even know what you do, what we have people do is run a time study. So time study, real simple. You don't need any like fancy technology for this. You just take an Excel sheet and you write times on one side every 15 minutes and you simply put in a timer.

58:51You turn your timer and every 15 minutes you just note what you did. It's very simple. Now, some of you might think, "Wow, I could never that sounds like so much work. It's like you literally have a timer and then you write one word down every 15 minutes." What's crazy about is it'll be the most productive week of your life. Every time I do a time study, I think I should do this every single week and I don't. But you certainly will be really productive because you're going to improve to yourself that you're super productive. I'm just telling you that's what'll happen. So anyways, you can also by the way do this with your team. If you're like I have a key man risk over here. This person is super valuable to the business. I have to have less dependency on this person. You walk through this process. So you do a time study then you get the list of stuff.

59:26Great. Now we have this list and we can break it down into component parts. This is the kind of list of everything, right? And what we want to do is we want to start building little processes or in installing people. So it's either a project, a process or a person. It's going to installed in each of these little slots next to it. So you have all the list of things and then you have all the people or process or project. Okay? So pro project is a onetime thing which sometimes creates a process or you have a person who does this thing on a continuous basis and you probably have people on your team who are underutilized. Some of these slots you can just be like I think Angela can do this. I think Tommy can do this. And you can start slotting them. Then you'll have your red, yellow, green. And so my red, my green is I can give this to somebody. So I'm going to look at my team, teach them how to do it. They get this. My yellow is there's a one-time uh project or process that I have to install here, but I can do it and I know how to do it. The red is where it's something that I either don't know how to do or there's a person that I know I need to have, but I don't have. And so I solve these in green to reds because the greens you can get out quickly. The yellows is the next level that you can do with a little bit more time and then the reds is like once I've done my greens and yellows I can move on. Now the way to think through this is having so in in in addition to this list is like okay these are the things I'm doing there's also the decisions you're deciding on right and so as these this time of documentation comes up we want to start saying if this then that these are rules of behavior right there are decision trees for common scenarios and I'll give you an example so when I uh so prestige labs was the first physical products business that I started supplement company and I remember uh the the manager of the support team saying, "It's really hard to get new people on."

1:01:07And of course, I like lost my I was less patient than I am now and less polite. And I was like, "How hard could this be?" I was like, "Change my change my uh change my address, change my card, change my flavor, change my billing cadence." I was like, "Cancel, refund. What else do we have here?" Right? And when I said it like that, uh, you know, Leila pinged me and was like, "Don't be rude to people. They're trying to win and you are making it look really bad and don't do that." So I will tell you the story because that's what happened.

1:01:35Um but fundamentally it's just if this then that somebody will come in and say I would like to change my card. This is how you change your card. Someone will say I would like to change my flavor. This is how you change the flavor. I would like to change my billing cadence from once a month to every two month. This is how you change the billing. It's just if this then that. The more complex the roles, the more one-off the scenario. The more duplicatable the job, the more people you have in a specific department or function, typically the more standardized the questions become.

1:02:01All right. And so once we have that, then we can say, "All right, there are all these questions that come in. Some of these questions require approval. Okay, somebody has a bad night stay at our hotel. How much money do I normally give them in credit or do I give them a gift card to our restaurant or something like that?" Well, we decide that under $500 or under $1,000, under $10,000, depends on the size of your company, under $100,000 sometimes, uh this person can act uh independently without your supervision. Now, of course, you still have financials and at the end of the month, something looks out of whack. You can go check it out. So, I'll give you an example of that. So, uh, we like to over, you know, overd deliver, have people have an amazing experience if they come out to our headquarters. And so, I let people do surprise dinners.

1:02:47And so, my team, like if they see two or three people that they think would like jive well together, we tell them, "Hey, we made a reservation at this nice place. Uh, go there." And so, it's like a nice surprise and delight thing. And so then [laughter] then I got like the bill at the end of the month and uh we were spending $250,000 a month in fivestar dinners and I was like well guys listen I mean I love uh our our clients but the question is is this actually generating true value and so it it turned out that that was not something and when we removed that thing it didn't change anything about our our happiness scores or reviews or anything like So I was like, okay, so I say this because there's going to be a feedback loop and you're going to mess up. But understanding like what is the amount of money that I'm let able to let someone make a decision on their behalf and you can also put a cap on it. So it's like you can make decisions under $500 in total up to 5,000, right? So that gives them 10 shots to mess, you know, fix something uh in the business.

1:03:40>> We provide social media marketing and financial influencer management for publicly traded ETFs and stocks. This year we're on pace for 2.7 million and we're going to keep about 700,000 of that. >> Okay. >> I see a multiffold problem, but I know you wanted to sum down to one. The biggest problem that I came in with, I think Frank has largely helped me with, which is I have incredible uh top-end talent, really, really amazing people in that operations management. But in the secondary level, it's a huge drop off.

1:04:07>> And I think it's largely because I've never put out a traditional job application, website posting, anything. Everyone's pretty much reached out to me and come on in. So we don't have that big application pool. So I was curious just as we dive into that. >> So you create social like so you create like an Instagram for >> I can give you more context. >> So right now this ETF industry is very complex because it's compliance focused right and they want to target retail because they see that for the first time ever as of last month there's more ETFs in the world than stocks and there's more retail investors than ever that own these ETFs. So the industry I'm looking at and I think it's going to explode over the next three years.

1:04:41>> And speaking of which uh the revenue I like to be at is 20 million. Okay. uh per year and I do think it's very reasonable within this industry, but it has to get an S player, which is part of what I'll talk. >> So, what do they pay you? >> So, my average client right now pays $20,000 a month and I work them through uh I work them through the channels that their compliance department is willing to work with, which is why it is so peacemeal because different compliance departments are willing to do different things. Some of them will touch Instagram, some won't. Some of them will touch Twitter, some won't, etc. Yeah.

1:05:08>> So, uh, the first part was on >> you like post as them and just say like, >> you know, the weather is warm, but the deals are hot. You know, like, >> uh, pretty much I mean >> by [laughter] >> more so what it is is nobody knows that these tools exist. They don't know how to use them. They don't know what they're for. And also, I think they just want to build trust with someone like ourselves, right? We have a couple million of our own followers and then our influencers have tens of millions of followers. And so, they want to hear from somebody that they >> So, you have an influencer network. >> Yes. About 100 influencers.

1:05:33>> Pumps ETFs. It's a strong word for it, but yes, we educate the public about the >> Of course, we educate the public. >> Yes. Education, entertainment, fine line, triple C, compliance, customers, >> you're good. >> Clients, uh, sorry, >> content. Um, so yes, I think for me right now, I see a huge opportunity. I see a lot of people that want to come in, but I need incredibly high-end talent because they have to be able to adhere to the compliance side of this.

1:05:56We're working with companies that are worth 60 billion plus, and I just see a big drop off from the top [snorts] level to the lower level. And I'm curious how you work on those mid-level managers or people that really have to get the execution in the hiring side. And then I have the one other side of the company which is this is such a compliance laden area and it's such a legacy industry that I'm trying to get an S tier client. I need one S tier client. I need a Vanguard, a Black Rockck, somebody to come. >> But I am 27 years old, right? They are not looking to work with people like me.

1:06:24They're not used to it. They don't understand targeting retail. And I am running a giant education campaign to people that are 30 years older than me. >> Uhhuh. and I'm trying to figure out how to blast it through their brains that this is going to be their best ROI. >> Yeah. The age thing I think you think about more than anyone else does. So, I would just like erase it from your brain. It doesn't matter at all. Like it just doesn't matter. >> Um like I was in the gym industry and the average person that was like buying from me was a gym owner like age 40 and I was like 26. So like I just don't I just don't think that's a thing. I think if you demonstrate competence, which it seems like you are, the only person who believes that stuff is you. Um, so that's thing one. Um, I do think there's probably an element of you might you might be mispriced. You also might be underpriced. Um, like you have these $60 billion companies, $20,000 a month is like a not even a rounding error, right?

1:07:15>> So, it's the last two months I've basically tripled prices or at least doubled. I was selling at an 8 and a halfk a month package. I then went to 15k, but then people just kept hitting me up. So, I said, "Okay, it's 20. It's 25." And I feel like every meeting I go into, I just raise prices by 5K. >> Yeah. Yeah, I think we do that. You could also just skip to 100 if you want. But um if you're going to get there eventually, you might as well get there now. Um well, it's like they might not take you seriously, you know? It's like how do I take it seriously? Just be like it's a million bucks a year.

1:07:43>> So the other piece within that, and that's the question I have for you is metrics. It's a very complex industry when it comes to metrics because there's no perfect way to track that when we do marketing. Those are the dollars that are flowing into the ETF providing AUM. It could come from advisors. It could come from other people talking about it. We can provide social media metrics, how many people tuned in, how many people listened, how many people clicked the link. We cannot say the sale was done here. I'm curious how you think about that. >> I would just think about it in terms of revenue per earned media. Like I would be like for you to reach retail investor CPMs would be somewhere in the neighborhood of call it 30 bucks or 40 bucks. we reached 3 million, you know, people. And if you were to pay for that, just like I if you sold yourself more as cheaper impressions that are to the correct audience, then you become more of a media company and less of a services business. And I think that would be the right way to price because they'll just see you as a channel.

1:08:36How did you how do you break through though to the S tier right now? The best advice that I've gotten was actually from somebody here who said basically poach somebody from one of these firms who has all the connections and go in. >> That feels like that's going to be a, you know, a 300 $400,000 a year hire. Yeah. >> Um that's very different than where we work with right now. So I'm just curious about that. >> You might not charge enough so that you can make more money so that you can attract the talent that can come in and then bring those people with you.

1:09:05Yeah, I do think you're underpriced for who your avatar is. I think I would position it as you are a channel that is because they're trying to get they want more exposure and so it's like I will give you that exposure and instead of saying like the reason I'm I'm saying this is that you're not I don't want to position like I'm doing services and getting paid $100,000 a month. I'm saying instead of paying Meta $100,000 a month for ads, you're going to pay me $100,000 a month and you're going to get trusted people who are going to talk about your product which is way more valuable than just you saying you're great. It's like show some stats of like somebody saying you're great is way more val is five times more valuable than you saying you're great. Great. So every dollar that you're giving me you're g that hundred to $100,000 comparison as long as this these audiences are correct which you'd say look they are all financial influencers whatever these are the correct retail audiences and so this is way higher uh value than this. So I want to compare myself to Meta not to a marketing agency or services.

1:10:01That's how I'd position this because you're getting them all this free exposure. Free, right? They're paying for it and they're just paying for it in bundles. And so like you're a media company, not necessarily a services business. And I would just reposition that way. >> It's a good way to think about it. Right now, the deck's focused on showing, hey, we started campaign here, we ended it here, here was the AUM movement. >> No, that's a marketing agency. I would say like, you want to reach this many people, we own these audiences, we will give you access to these audiences for this amount of money.

1:10:29>> Got it. That's how I would position it. And yeah, you can get the um you can go get talent from those top places like Fortune 100 and things like that. Um it is one of the better acquisition strategies. A good friend of mine owns a big marketing agency and that's how he does it. >> What about the mid-level talent? Because they're not going to come. >> That's just straight up ads. You just need to learn how to run ads. >> Fair. >> Like good oldfashioned in like if you guys are looking for mid-tier and and bottom tier. um it's going to be ads for both of those basically manager and and one level down obviously referrals would be ideal but if you don't have that then it's going to be those two um the top end of manager into director and you know VPs etc it's almost all through outreach and so that's how that's kind of how it splits like you could technically do it from an ad um ads for highle people can work if they're done in industry groups industry job postings. So like our general counsel exceptional, we posted on two general counsel specific uh posting sites and then uh you know Liz came in and so you can get the higher level talent, but it's not going to be on the mass mass because they're not looking there, right? So it's going to be head hunters or super specific for the high level which you don't need. Um but the the mid-level and below you can just do you can just just run ads and you'll be fine. And if they're not, you're not getting bites, it's because it's the same as a marketing campaign.

1:11:54The offer isn't good, the funnel sucks, the headline isn't good, the copy needs to be improved, all of that stuff still applies. It's just the same marketing on the other side. Perfect. Thank you. 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. Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you and uh enjoy.