How to Build Real Work Ethic — Alex Hormozi (1 Hour Compilation)

0:00My name is Matia. Just to give you some context, uh my fiance and I are planning a baby soon. And if I can't make my business work [clears throat] now, I definitely would be able to with less time and less sleep. So, uh for two years, I've basically worked 12 hour 12 hour days, uh doing everything myself, uh telling my family I'm gonna I'm building the future. But in truth, I I've been pretty much stuck in place.

0:27So I run a marketing agency for realtors and home improvement companies in Slovenia. >> Okay. >> Uh so Facebook ads content and appointment booking. >> I have four clients at total of 3K MR. Okay. >> Last year I made 30K >> and my goal is so in the last 12 months I made 30K and my goal is 30,000 net profit per month. >> Yeah. So let me ask you a couple questions here. Um

0:53>> yeah. Can you do the exact same thing in the US as you do in Slovenia? >> Uh yeah, I guess I could, but uh the market there is at least for the realtors is probably a bit different. Um at least as far as I know. So there would definitely be some changes I would have to make. I yeah I currently make um content educational content for them which I um which is the only like fixed revenue source I have

1:23>> since they pay me a retainer on that. >> And so you help them make content? >> Yeah, I make them content which performs really well. >> But uh then I also do lead gen for them. So >> So you run ads? >> Yes. Facebook. >> What do you And you charge 3K a month? uh no 3K a month is uh like all together for for all the clients. >> So yeah, I'm making I'm making 15 to to 25% on revenue share

1:49>> and some on uh Yeah. >> So I I want to give you the the best piece of advice that I can give you. So right now is all of your content in Slovenian right now? >> Uh yeah. >> Okay. It's not. >> So I I actually I don't make any content if that's what you mean. >> Okay. How do you attract customers right now? >> Uh, cold calling. I've basically had the same clients for the past like six months. Uh, yeah. Because I like I mentally I can't do anymore.

2:19>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, there's a couple things right now. So, number one, the customers what you're charging versus what you're delivering is mismatched. You're not charging enough for the amount you're doing. That's thing one. Thing two is in order to get basically appropriately priced, you most likely want to go after a bigger market. Now, normally I don't say like switch markets and things like that, but you're at the very beginning. And so, it's like what's a 100x force multiplier on the skill set you have? You already speak English, right? Right. So, I'd rather you just like, can we can we cuz like if you sell into the US market, like you can sell $1,500 $3,000 per client.

3:03It's just the dollar stronger and especially for what you're doing. You're doing content and ads, which is crazy. Most people literally only pick one or the other. You're doing both. >> Yeah. So, you suggest they switch to the US? >> I think that's what we need to do long term. Short term, I'd like you to increase revenue. So, how do we do that? So, you're just doing cold calls. You are not making content for yourself, but you are making it for your customers, right?

3:31>> Yep. >> How much additional effort would it be for you? Like, if you're making them content, how can you not make your own content? >> So, that was actually one of my additional questions I wanted to ask if I should >> Yes. Not even a question. 100% you should be doing that. So, what I would do is uh do it in Slovenian and then have it translate and then put the captions in English. That way, there's no accent if that's where you're more comfortable. >> Okay?

3:55>> And I would make the content about you making their content. So, basically, think of it like this. If you were to teach someone how to do everything that you do in your business without them paying you, what would you teach them? That's what you make your content about. >> Okay? Make it in Slovenian and then just add questions in English. >> Not just get No, no. get the VO get get AI voice translation for for the content. Yeah, exactly. Um that way >> would be an issue.

4:21>> Yeah, because I want it to be for now and later. So it might not even be because it's Are you on Instagram? I'm guessing that's where you're making the content for them. >> Uh mostly Facebook. Instagram is not doing that well. >> Okay. So I mean the thing is the additional effort to do on both platforms is almost nothing. You could probably charge them for that too as a side note. But for you, you can take the same thing. Go on Tik Tok, go on Facebook, go on Instagram, post it. Um, make sure that you have the translations in place. I would, um, if you wanted to be, cuz like sometimes the algorithm would be weird. You can have a US page and a Slovenian page. Again, it's not a lot of additional extra work to just duplicate the effort. And so what this does is number one, this builds your content strategy while building theirs.

4:59So we can solve for both today in terms of lead genen and then tomorrow in terms of the fact that you're going to have US customers, which you can charge US rates. And so I honestly just want you to take whatever you're charging, add a zero to it, and that's your US price. >> Okay? Seriously. Now, in terms of tactical, well, that was tactical, but the next piece that I want you to do is Are you familiar with ManyHat? Is that how you have them working leads or getting leads?

5:22>> Uh, no. I I watch the the educational like content you put like two weeks ago. I watch that. So, I actually I'm just basically implementing it for the organic site. So, that's that would be just additional source of leads besides the the ads. Um, so I'm I'm in the process of implementing that. Yeah. >> Okay.

5:47And Okay. So, number one, you make content about helping them make content. And so, you try to replace yourself by teaching the public, the world, every single thing you do to build content. Hold nothing back. I'm telling you, you want to hold nothing back. very specific just for for the for these two niches I guess for for real estate and home improvement.

6:12>> Yes. You want to show them everything. So the automations, the AI that you use, everything that you do to run run the business better, I want you to show all of it because when people see how much work you're doing, they're going to be like, "This guy knows what he's doing and I don't want to do that work." And then they inquire. All right, thing one. Thing two, turn on the mini chat automation so that when you are posting, put a CTA in the first line and the video and then new followers automatically get a DM where you can sort them and say, "Hey, are you here for free stuff? Um, or do you uh like to grow your, you know, real estate, whatever." Um, and then you can start working those DMs as leads. Number three is that from the leads that come in from that US Instagram, uh, change the prices to US by adding a zero and offering the same thing. That's what I would do.

6:58Okay. Um, >> and come up with a sexy lead magnet. Do you have a lead magnet >> for myself? No. >> Yeah. Yeah. Make one for yourself. That's 100 days of content for uh real estate. 100 days of content in 100 minutes. Oof. That sounds great. I like that. 100 days of content in 100 minutes. That's your CTA. >> Yeah. I b I basically have to completely rethink how to actually do content because it's probably very different from for the US market. At least

7:25>> I actually don't think so. >> It's they're sol they're solving the same issues. >> The algorithm is still humans. It's what humans find interesting. >> Okay. >> Because I'll tell you this >> right now. >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> Yeah. Right now the best content that's working is actually about like taxes and um like the the laws. >> Yeah. >> So what's actually allowed and how to do some particular part of let's say selling a house. >> Yeah.

7:50>> So those things are different. >> Those will be different by country. I agree there. But it's not like it's not hard to find out. >> If you have a concept that works, just make the US version of the concept. >> Okay. >> And yes, this is a major departure. But the benefit of what you're doing right now is that if you were super super super far along, it's much heavier to change. But since you're earlier on in the in the course, it might as well shoot for the moon and get it right the first time.

8:16>> Yeah. >> But this still allows you to build for today and tomorrow. You're still going to make your Slovenian content. We're going to duplicate into the US. We're going to add the CTAs in terms of the 100 to one, 100 content in 100 minutes. 100 days of content in 100 minutes. We'll have our new followers that we get and the people who respond to the lead magnet. And when you get a US person, add a zero. >> Okay. Uh so with the current clients, I just keep them as cash flow

8:43>> for now. Yeah. I you gota you got to pay bills and feed the fam. >> Okay. Um so there's Okay. Uh what about for so this is more just specific for realtors. What about home improvement? So uh there I've actually been struggling to do content for them because >> well there are two different avatars. Which one would you rather serve? >> Yeah. Um well I've been serving realtors. >> Yeah. >> More.

9:08>> So then just focus on realtors. There's more than enough. >> You don't need two avatars. There's two different offerings, two different customers, two different businesses. >> And just go after the US market. >> Yep. Okay. So, >> a big change, but yeah. >> Last point, focus on realtors. >> Just pick. >> Okay. >> Cool. >> Cool. >> Appreciate you. >> Thank you so much. >> No, you bet, man. I know it's going to be it's it's uh you're in a hard time, but that's a very clear plan.

9:37>> Okay. Yeah. >> All right. >> Thank you so much. I've been watching you for a long time, so >> I appreciate you, man. >> There is a group of people that just spend their whole life reading books. Yeah. >> Posting about it, etc. they never take the jump. Parrots versus practitioners is the best way to learn being a practitioner. >> This is widely known in the education space but not as much in the the content world. But there are two types of uh education. There is procedural and there is declarative. So declarative knowledge is knowing about something. Procedural knowledge is knowing how to do something. So a simple example would be okay I understand how private equity works, right? Like that you can you could talk about it. You can explain how, okay, they take some debt and then they have this arbitrage and they get this enterprise value multiple, whatever, but you've never done a deal.

10:21And until you've done a deal, you will not have procedural knowledge of knowing how to actually do a deal. And so, you can read a 100 books on sales, but you will learn more about actually selling from your first hundred sales calls. >> And business is the same. >> Yes. And so the idea in my opinion for most people is that if you want to rapidly learn, you want to rapidly do those 100 repetitions as fast as you can so that you can suck a hundred times in a row and find the 10 that did that sucked the least and then say, "How do I suck least on the next hundred?" And you keep doing that so many times until eventually you suck so little that you're actually good.

10:54Hard work. Yes. And I think, you know, this is actually really interesting because it ladders up to because there's two types of creators. You've got entertainers and you have educators. At least that's how I separate it. The point of entertainment is to maintain the attention of the audience. That is it. So the point of an entertainer is to literally just keep people watching. The point of an educator is to change someone's behavior. And so if you uh if you want content to do well in either of these buckets, fundamentally, at least in the education space, you're selling time. So education is I spent all this time doing this thing to learn these four things that I can give to you so that you don't have to spend this time learning it. And so education is actually if said differently what you do is you buy time.

11:42So when you buy it's the only thing it's the only way to actually buy time today. So if you want to basically time warp into your future you have to buy education so that you can buy all of the life experiences from all these people and then not pay for it in your life. you pay for it with less time by consuming what they have or some money or some combination of those things. And fundamentally, we usually pay with the currency that we value least. And so, interestingly, a rich person values their time more than their money. And so, they're willing to pay with money to get time back. A poor person will often pay for their time and drive around to 10 different gas stations to find the one thing that's 10 cents cheaper or drive to 10 different grocery stores to to use whatever whatever coupons. are valuing their time over their money in that instance. And so back to the the educator, if you want to be certain or have confidence in any endeavor, you have to do so much volume of activity that it would be unreasonable that you would suck.

12:41And if you were to write out the equation of like, okay, how many public speeches would I need to give for it to be unreasonable that I would suck? Is it 10? Is it a hundred? Is it a thousand? Write the number that you're like there's no way that I would suck after this many. And then all of your effort gets really narrowed. Commitment elimination of alternatives focus turn down quality and quantity other things to just doing that. And then and the key part of this is not just to do the thousand but after every 10 or every 20 looking at the top 10 or 20% and saying what did I do well there and then because you have to have the feedback loop otherwise it's not just doing a 100 reachouts you have to do 100 reachouts and then look at what worked and then do more of what worked. And so for the the parrot versus the uh practitioner uh component of this, even if you're starting out, you can have confidence in what you're doing because you derived the solution and you can actually answer why you do something.

13:35>> So if you cannot explain why you believe what you believe, it's not your belief, it's someone else's. And so most people I would say parrot the vast majority of the things that they say because and to be fair that's how humans learn. You're 5 years old you say what's that? They say bull and you say bull. You paired it back and there we go. Right? But when it comes to uh skills you can describe what other people have said before. But if something goes wrong or what about this condition, you won't know what to do.

14:05But if you derived it from the ground up and there's a there's a great uh portion of this in the Y cominator community that you or the Silicon Valley community that you probably heard. It was maybe like three or four months ago. It was like founder mode. Did I did that get to the UK? >> It was from um Brian Chesky. I actually messaged him about it after. >> Oh yeah. It was like it was it was awesome. Right. And so the basically the tenant is that the founder always has special powers in the company because you know what built it. >> And so that is basically at its core the practitioner versus parrot. The people who came later are paring why you do what you do, but you know what conditions you were in when you made this rule and also you know how to break it and when to bend those rules. And so if you build something when you built it from those repetitions to distill out the few truths that exist, you'll know why those are the truths. Like I'll give you a really simple example. So if we, you know, we've tried to learn YouTube and we've gotten better over time. Um, but in the beginning I did this massive review and I figured out that the the videos that we had that had three things at the beginning, proof, promise, plan, was the videos that did the best. And so then all of a sudden we said, okay, all videos have to have proof, promise, plan right at the beginning, the first 30 seconds. Great. So we started doing that for a while. And then we looked at the outliers among those and we were like, oh well, we also in some of the ones that did really well also had some sort of visual picture of of this plan. All right, so it became proof promise plan picture.

15:25Then we kept looking and we found out over more repetitions that if we also include some sort of pain or problem that's being solved that also helps. So proof, promise, plan, picture pain. And so you're like, wait, if you keep adding to this thing, it's going to get really long. No, sometimes you can check multiple boxes with one thing. And this becomes the elegance of creation. Like how can I how can I check off three of these boxes with one sentence, right? And so that is, by the way, for if you're like thinking about this, you're like, do they really think about this when they're making videos? Yes. And that is the difference between a 10,000 view video and a million view video. And it's it's understanding that level of nuance across the entire thing that creates expertise. And also when you're like, "Oh, this video flopped." When you're a beginner, you're like, "These videos in general don't work or content doesn't work." Rather than saying, "This video didn't work and here's why because we did three of the five."

16:14And so it's like all of the I mean the devil is in the details and you only you only you meet the devil himself by doing the unreasonable amount of work and then it becomes it goes from uninformed uh lack of knowledge to informed optimism because first you're like I can make videos and get rich. Then you realize that it's really hard to make videos that people watch. And then finally you start to develop a framework of this is how I make videos that people watch. >> I own a premium nail salon in San Antonio, Texas and we do 1.5 million revenue from one location. I would love it to be at 4.5 uh at some point,

16:49>> but I think this is not the goal. What's stopping me is actually me. Uh I'm the person who is trying to be all over the place. What I was trying to do, I was trying to well not I was trying I am trying to build an empire pretty much an ecosystem. I'm an influencer on social media and I do really well. Um I'm trying to educate nail technician, build an ecosystem, right? Educate them how to do what we do. Then uh help them to build the brand on social media, use our products, our gel line and then eventually when they get to the point when they are ready to open their own nail salon, come to us and we will help them to um open a profitable nail salon.

17:27So my question is um how can I structure and manage these multiple layers without losing momentum or focus >> for your mind? Yeah. >> Yeah. And uh without burning out if that's >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're doing too much >> because one um someone told me that I cannot do that and I have to pick one lane. >> So I think everyone would be well served differentiating a vision from your plan.

17:53>> So if I were to say, hey, I need you to defend this little area around you, you could probably do it pretty okay right now. If I said you have to make sure that no one can come in this room, but you got to guard that door and that door. Probably be harder because you got to run further and further. If I said you have to make sure that no one comes in the parking lot and the entire premise of this building, it'd be a little bit harder. If I said this entire block, it'd probably be close to the edge of where you'd be able to do it.

18:18>> Right now, you're trying to protect an entire block, but it's just you. >> And so, you have your social media side that you're doing. You have education and stuff, which is the actual delivery of whatever you're selling as your marketing machine here. and then you have a brick-and-mortar store that has clients and, you know, new employees and all this stuff, right? >> I don't think the vision for what you have is wrong. I do think that it would it would make more sense for you to just franchise the model out and then use your media as the lead genen to have people just directly buy franchises and nail salons from you.

18:49>> As long as you nail the model, >> nail it. H >> uh yeah, I think I think I nailed the model. Um >> what are your margins? >> Um so we are at 25% of profit. you haven't nailed the model. >> Um, so we um it's pretty hard to increase the margins to make more profit. >> I went to go buy a nail salon. I've done a shitload of diligence on these. Like I I don't care what the business is. You can for sure make it better.

19:15>> Number one. Number two, the reason that I'm more hesitant around the model is that you're an influencer. >> And so do a lot of people come from your social media into the salon? >> Uh, no. So well, well, yeah. Yeah. Well, we I never I never spent uh a dime on ads uh in five years. >> Can I prove something to you then? >> So, a normal brick-and-mortar business that runs paid ads will typically expect somewhere between 10 and 30% of their total revenue going towards new client acquisition.

19:44>> If your model were great, then sorry, if your model if you didn't have your social media and the model had to exist on its own, which is what you're going to try and sell to people, remember, >> right? then your margin would be zero. >> Well, we are teaching nail technicians how to build their own brand as well because we offer >> But you still have a salon, right? That's the 1.5 point.

20:09>> Yeah. Yeah. But clients, they come uh not because they saw us only on social media, of course, because of word of mouth. We offer an exclusive service, something that no one else offered. But the salon, just so I'm clear, is the salon a nail salon training school or is the salon like you do people's nails? >> We do people's nails. >> Okay. Yeah, I'm still I'm still I stand by my first thing. >> Okay. >> Okay. So, we have to improve the model >> a lot actually.

20:35>> So, we would like you need to get the model to call it 30 or higher >> and it not be dependent on your your social media to get customers in. And so I would know that you had a good model if you said we can't accept new new new nail customers because all of my techs are fully staffed and I have no more chairs and so I'm thinking about do I expand this location or do I do some virtual thing? That would be the questions you'd be asking me if the model was nailed.

21:03>> Well, at the moment we are fully booked. My issue is >> you're a big social media influencer, so it's it's different. No, I'm being real. Like >> but I was not social media influencer all the time, you know. >> So were you completely booked out before you a social media influencer? Okay. I still don't like the margins. >> So I would say about 50% goes towards the labor to cover nail technicians paychecks to cover manager to call the re to cover the receptionist. And I perfected over the time because it used to be 70%.

21:32>> Uh 70% of uh the revenue went towards the yeah went towards the labor only. So we were not profitable. Then I perfected a little bit increased the prices twice and it got better. So, and so far it works for nail technicians because they make really, really good money. >> Yeah. And that's the only way nail salons work, by the way. >> Um, >> man, I know so much about nail salons. Um, [laughter] I I don't I want to pop the hood and like get really deep, but it'll be not useful to anybody else here. Um,

22:03>> long term, I think the play is this needs to get more nailed. I just want to keep saying nailed. Um, needs to get more nailed. And then we need to basically we need to pull you completely out of it so that it truly runs on its own actually. And then you'll put more and more time on the social media side so you can create a national sales motion >> to sell people this model >> and then you'll have a banger of a business. >> Okay?

22:28>> Like you're you're like you're you're you're close. You have like a couple pieces that are missing, but you have a very valuable infrastructure. You have the right pieces. You have ultimately the product >> franchise sales. uh you have a good product and you already have a demand generation machine. So you have the pieces. We just need to like tweak some of these things uh so that when they connect money pours out in big chunks on the other side. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you. >> But you're you're super close though.

22:54>> So but do you think it's even possible to manage like multiple like being a coach, being a salon owner and >> Well, I want you to just erase the word coach from your vocabulary. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So fundamentally, you're going to be an educator online, >> and then when people say they want to work with you, you're going to say, "I have this $250,000 franchise. You're welcome to buy it, and then I will help you because I will get a percentage of sales forever." >> And then you'll be super incentivized, and it'll be really high quality people, and you'll make plenty of money.

23:21>> And if you do that well, which does take some ops, >> um, then you will have you will be able to scale using other people's capital. I mean, fundamentally, franchising is just a it's it's just a capital play. so that you can open up a hundred locations or a thousand locations over the next 10 years um and build something that's really big and really special. So I think you have a lot of the pieces. >> Uh I was thinking about franchising but I don't know if it will work because we offer extremely detailed work and it's really hard to control the quality. So I feel like someone someone who runs that franchise has to have exactly the same knowledge in this particular technique as I have. But

23:58>> training >> training >> and that sounds like a hard thing. >> It is. It is. >> But you get what I'm saying where I started with. >> Mhm. >> Like that's your hard problem. >> Okay. >> And then you'll get paid $100 million for solving it. >> Okay. >> It's solvable. The good news is that you're AI proof. >> So like there's always pros and cons with all this stuff. Like in your business and now there's also like robots that'll come in and start doing nails and you train them once and then you're good to go. Like the thing is we like this is happening now just for everybody. The next 5 years is going to be [ __ ] nuts and all of business is going to change. It's going from you know I mean imagine the internet coming again, right? Like that's kind of what's happening. And as soon as AI reaches bot like humanoid robots um like you you will literally train one of these staff techs one time and then they will do it perfect every time and then your optimist you can finance for $200 a month.

24:54and it works 247. >> Yeah. >> So, like there are changes that are going to be coming down the line. I do think that you being really really good at training um nails and the reason that I was going to buy the nail salon um the chain that I was going to buy was because of this. So, if you have a service-based business, they had a gamified system for getting the girls up to six figures a year, which was huge for girls who just like didn't even have high school diplomas. Like, they were loyal as hell. The, you know, they took care of the customers. The customers never left. They priced accordingly.

25:24They were running 43% net margins. They had five locations. Um, and they were doing more revenue than you're doing >> and so per location. And that was against across multiple not with the founder magic with no social media influence. >> So that's why I'm saying like I know there's a whole bunch more inside of your business that we can make better. >> Gotcha. Okay. Thank you so much. >> Yeah. >> Final thing I wanted to ask you about. So I think I think I heard you say in one of the interviews that you've had six-pack abs since the age of like 16

25:50>> or something something like that. Um, >> if I still got them. >> No. Oh, love it. [laughter] >> Still got them. >> I I've had six pack abs on my kind of annual bucket list for the last several years and just never really gotten there. Is there like a single resource? >> Is it lack of knowledge or is it lack of knowledge or motivation? >> Motivation. >> Okay. Well, that's that's a totally different thing. You know what I mean?

26:16Like you might you might also want to be a trillionaire. You might want a lot of things, but like if you don't want it enough, it doesn't matter. I think it's just more accepting that you're not going to have it because you're not willing to pay the price. And that's fine. >> What is the price? >> You want to be motivated. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> What is the price of a six-pack? It's not that hard, though. That's why I'm like, >> yeah. >> Um, and everyone is who's listening is like, "Fuck this guy." Um, I don't know. I've counted my macros for 20 years.

26:40Have you? Okay. Uh, so go away. Uh, but but it's just calorie deficit. You know what I It's just it's like >> there's tons of people in Africa who have six packs. They just don't see the sign of status there. It's just everyone's everyone's skinny. You know what I mean? And so six-pack is purely body fat percentage. That's it. It's just body fat percentage. It just means you eat too much. That's all. >> And a six-pack plus being jacked is progressive overload protein. I've seen one of your videos where you sort of break break that down. And then to get to six pack abs, you just sort of calorie deficit and while training broadly it's lit.

27:13>> I mean truly that is it. And so like I hit every muscle group, do it three times a week, add weight or reps over the bar over a long period of time. That's all you have to do. And then eat less than you burn. Do that for a long period of time. You'll gain muscle, you'll lose fat, and then you'll look up after 18 months and you'll have a six-pack. Like it just that's it. >> Yeah. When people are signing up to the weight loss programs or or like a gym program and stuff, presumably they know this. So like is it that like the motivation gap, the accountability gap, like what is it that is the the the quote secret source that makes someone lose?

27:46>> Yeah. So to your to your point even of alternative education in general when you say hey you could learn the stuff on YouTube etc etc. The issue that we're solving for is not that it's not a knowledge gap. The issue is an accountability gap is that people don't do stuff like that is the primary issue with all humans in general is that they will not endure short-term discomfort for a long-term achievement. That is it. You hack that you hack success. That's all it is. And so it's just how can I how can I make it more inconvenient for them to not follow than to follow it. So I can still lean into their humanity and just say how can I make it more uncomfortable for them to not follow it.

28:17And that's an element of that is accountability is that someone says hey bad boy um you had a cookie when [laughter] you shouldn't have. You feel bad feel bad I'm punishing you cuz like the only way to change you only have two things you can do to change behavior right you can reinforce or you can threat. You can punish. That's it. You have carrots and sticks. That is literally it. And so currently they're getting reinforced by their, you know, by their current way of living. So think about it this way. What does not having six-pack do for you? It does something for you cuz you keep buying it.

28:47>> What does not having a six-pack do for me? >> Yeah. Cuz you choose something else over a six-pack. So what does that do? >> The food the food just tastes too good. And I know that I Yeah, >> but it's probably not. >> And I get a McDonald's drive-thru at like midnight and I know it's bad. And like >> could be convenience. Convenience. And then the story you wrap around like I'm an entrepreneur. I need to just do things on my own time, etc. Right? So, I think if you if like it's unpacking those things of just trying to find your own [ __ ] and or if it if it's meaningful for you cuz like I understand why it wouldn't be. I was on this podcast and I got an argument with the this the spokesperson. He's like, "Don't you agree that every entrepreneur should be working every day?" And I was like, "No." And he it did not go the direction he was expecting. He looks at me and he expects I'm going to say that. I'm like, "No." Like, "What are we solving for? If you just want to live a long time, then just walk. Walk and don't eat a lot.

29:32Like, that's all you have to do." Like, literally it. That's all you have to do if you don't live the longest amount possible. Like I am going to live a shorter amount of time because I have more muscle mass. I'm shortening my life by being how big I am. So it just depends on what's what problem we're solving. But given how you look now, you could you could look fit in 12 months. Like you could look like a person that people are like, "Oh, wow. This guy works out." Because you don't have a baseline of fat that you really have. I mean, you do you have you have body fat, but like you're not you're not overweight. You're just you have your body composition is poor.

30:05Not poor, but you know what I'm saying. It's not it's not what you want. >> Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah. >> Nice. So, figure out what you want. Uh find out what the prices and just be willing to pay that price and >> Yeah. Or don't. Which is also fine. I don't buy everything that I see on the shelf. If it were free, I'd want it, right? Maybe if I were, you know, a hoarder of some sort, but like we like like the thing that everybody has is we all have a wallet with the same dollars in it. We have $24, right? And so it's like everything has a ticket on it and we're just choosing to spend that dollar whatever we want. Now $8 we got to spend on on sleep. It's like okay well now I only have you know $16 left. I'm like all right well what does this cost? Well this costs a dollar a day. It's pretty every day I'm committing to a dollar of my $12 or whatever my my $16. It's a big cost. Does it make sense?

30:49>> Coming back to the six-pack example again like how much time effort do h how many dollars do you pay each day to maintain the six-pack? >> Minimal. I have a passive income body now. >> Okay, fine. >> I already Yeah, this is this is passive dividends. I don't need to do much to maintain this. To get to here is much harder. To maintain here is easy. I mean, think about this. How much effort does it cost you right now to maintain your current body? >> Oh, zero. Absolutely. >> Right. That's how it really does not take like unless you give your body a reason to eat muscle, it's been a lot of resources to to build it, right? And so you can have minimal stimulation on a weekly basis to maintain contractile tissue and provided you're eating sufficient protein, your body will take the protein it needs from your intake rather than its stores of protein which is your muscle.

31:33>> I mean you if you watch the video there it's like you just shoot a pound a pound a day. >> And so a big thing that richer people do is that they will act with urgency. And I would say this is just not even richer people. This is entrepreneurs specifically that I'm making this video for is that they act with urgency. All right? And so you can tell in some ways how how successful someone's going to be by how quickly they do things. The gap between thoughts and action. And so this is something I personally work on a lot, which is like how quickly between when I make a decision to do something does it actually occur. And you can improve your potency as a person, how powerful you are by decreasing the gap between thoughts and action. Like if you think about the hypothetical extreme of this, the god figure if you will, thoughts and reality are one and the same. He thinks planets and universes and they appear.

32:17And so that would be the ultimate demonstration of power in my opinion. And so we can approximate that. We can get as close to that as we can by shrinking the time it takes between when we think and when we decide and then when we ultimately do. When you don't have any more information to collect in order to make a decision, then you make the decision. And you make the decision by eliminating alternatives. So like literally the word decide comes from decadere, which is Latin for to cut off. And so the question is what thing are you eliminating by making the decision that you're going to make? And a really easy tactical thing is is whenever you say I'm gonna get this done by the end of the week, ask yourself, can I get it done by the end of the day? And that seems like a very small hack, but that increases your pace of progress by 7x.

32:56And so if you hear that, you're like, wow, 7x. It's like, yeah. And for that reason, there are people who are working 100 times faster than you. And I think that this is a really good cultural thing which is uh you can just say end of day not end of week and not end of month end of week. So in each of the instances this is a 4x increase this is a 7x increase right and you can even go end of day goes into end of hour. Now this is one that I talks about a lot and she's a master operator is that she heard this from a mentor. She said, "If it's a 5-minute task and you have 5 minutes, do it now." And so the amount of times where I'm like, "Hey, we should do this thing." And then literally in 60 seconds it's handled by Ila, like while I'm just walking around talking just like shooting ideas out there is baffling.

33:44And so her speed of like that's a great idea, it's already been, you know, delegated out. Like she doesn't keep things on her plate. And so there's this big falseness that I think is propagated by a lot of the social media world because it feels good and to get lots of shares because it gives people permission to be lazy. It gives people permission to tell themselves that they're great just the way they are. I wholeheartedly reject that entire notion. The idea that they sell you is that you're young. You've got time. And I think that is false because all this does is extend how long it takes you to remember that number one, tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Like I just looked at my newsfeed this morning and I there was a guy that I knew who's my age and he just died of stomach cancer. Really sad, really nice guy. Wife and three kids into fitness, really in shape, just a freak thing that happened. And so the assumption that you've got time assumes that you know you're going to live forever, that you know you're going to live to 100. And we know that that's not true. And let me put this in perspective. Three out of 10,000 people live to 100. And so everyone has this assumption in their mind that they're like, "Yeah, I'm at 50, so I'm going to make it to 100." Yeah. Well, you've got a 3 and 10,000 shot at doing that. Very unlikely. More realistically, you'll die at the median, which is 74 for men in the US, which means that at 37, you're actually at the halfway point, just in years. But if you adjust for the increase in speed of time, so the same reason that your kid at 5 years old thinks that something takes forever when you say it's going to happen next year and when you're 40 something that happens next year feels like you blink your eyes and it's there is that when you're five, one year is 20% of your life. When you're 40, one year is 2 and a half% of your life. And so it very much in real way is nine times faster than it is for your 5-year-old. And so it's my belief that as we get older, we don't become more patient. Time just moves faster. And so if you adjust for that time speed, your midpoint isn't 37.

35:37It's closer to 21. And so this is also why in my opinion when you think back on your life, you have so much meat in the first 20 years. So much stuff happens, all these material life events. And it's because in that time period, it was half of your life. And then after that, everything happens real fast. And so what you have to realize is one, tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Two, nothing is going to be easy. Just get over it. Every time you think, oh, this could look just get immediately skip to it. Oh, that's not true. there's something I don't know about that. Just skip to it.

36:04The faster you can train that muscle that as soon as you have this FOMO, just slow down and realize that you don't know enough. Three, it takes time to get good. There's no one who's good at anything that was immediately good at it. And the people who are immediately good at it, I remember telling a professor, I was like, you know, I've just naturally been good at languages. He was like, when you were a kid, did you have multiple languages in your household? I was like, well, yeah, I'm bilingual. And he's like, what are you even talking about? Like, you literally started with that. So, of course, languages are easier for you. And so the thing is is that the people who have things that come naturally to them, they just only came because they forgot the work that generalized to the new skill.

36:37Once you realize that it takes time and repetitions to get good, then you also realize that the sooner you start. >> I'm a father, single father. I got two boys here and um Oh, my name is DJ Kristofferson. There we go. >> I sell people to people. I'm restarting my virtual staffing company. Cool. >> And we're currently at zero revenue. It's just a matter of getting started. Okay. >> And so we're really confident in that. My question is on a a more of a personal one. So, I'm a single father um in a serious relationship and she's not a business person at all. Very sweet and supporting, but what would you say would be some things to prepare her for when it comes to

37:12>> So, your spouse or not spouse, your partner is stopping. >> My my partner, I mean, she doesn't live at the house yet. She's it's long distance, but it's coming together, but it's getting really serious. >> Okay. preparing her for being married to a um a type A. >> I think you should give her a try before you buy. >> Yeah. >> Seriously, >> how do you mean? >> So, fly out, spend two weeks with me. I'm not going to cater to you. I'm going to live my life. If the way that I live my life, the way this works, this is how it's going to be. If you like that, let's rock and roll. If you don't,

37:42>> I don't want to change. >> Yeah, that's true. That's perfect. No, [laughter] I love it. That's That's great. Thank you. >> crushed it. [laughter] >> I see the most important relationship that you have as you with your goals because your goals are really just a reflection of yourself. And so I don't want to, especially if I were single, I wouldn't want to sacrifice my relationship with myself essentially for someone else. The recommendation that I gave was what I would give myself, which is be you. And if the way that you want to live to maximize the likely that you do what you want to do with your life is this way, then rather than try and compromise where both people don't get what they want, try and see if there's somebody who actually just like really loves the way you live. That felt like the easiest first step is like just have her come out and just don't accommodate.

38:30Like live the way you'd want to live. And if she's thrilled about living that way, then you have a very high high chance of this thing working out because you have little effort. You're not pretending to be someone you're not. You're not putting on a show. You're just being you. And if being you is enough that she's stoked, then you probably have a good life ahead of you. Now, if she comes out and it's not the case, then at least you didn't have to wait two years to find out after you both stopped acting that this is how you really are. And so, I see the goal as how do I get as far forward in the relationship as possible of what would it look like if neither of us acted and then let's just behave that way. And if it still works,

39:08>> what does like a day in the life look like for you? Oh, it's I mean I could share my screen, but it's it's it's uh I I I work on my own stuff until about 1 most days. Um so usually 5 to 1 is Alex time to do whatever. Um >> 5:00 a.m. to 1. >> Yeah. >> Uh cool.

39:30>> Um and then usually from 1 to 4 1 to 4:30ish is when I do meetings and then um that's it. go to the gym, eat, and then I'm done. >> Sounds pretty chill. And where are you based at the moment? >> We're all over right now. Uh the hub is in Vegas, but we're here. We're all over. Yeah. I mean, we travel a lot, so it's kind of like this is our in between when we're traveling spot.

39:57>> I remember you just talking to me about like how you like your office to be very like sparse and not overly fancy and stuff. And that's one of the things that really I I really vibe with with in your in your videos in that you seem to ex except until recently. Uh you seem to just be filming on some shitty webcam and just like spouting knowledge and it's just like mind-blowing cuz you haven't got the and there's like a charm to the jankiness and it's just like whoa [ __ ] I'm I'm I'm getting the real truth without any of the production value that like normally gets in the way.

40:27>> Yeah. >> Again, was that deliberate? Is that just accidental? Is that just how it's ended up being? >> I mean that's how it started. You know what I mean? Like I'm a big I'm a big believer in just start and you'll the path illuminates as you walk you know I mean we now have I mean I started without a media team so I just clicked record and I would send it I mean I had my media team at gym launch but it wasn't it that business wasn't built on content it was built on outbound and paid ads. So I just said you know cl you know clip it put a thumbnail on it and post it on my YouTube. I don't even know how to upload them just to I show you how silly it was. I was like, "Just upload it." And so I would just put it in a Dropbox and they would upload it.

40:59And then that was um that was what I did for the first, I don't know, 6 n months. And then um we hired somebody to uh actually do recordings with a camera. Um and so he's like, you know, if we did it like on the couch, it would look a lot better. I was like, okay, that's fine. So it took the same amount of time for me. Now I just had some more people who could who could help. And it has shown despite, you know, as much as I would lament, you know, I would love to just do it like this. The, you know, the audio quality is better, the video quality is better. Um, and the newer videos definitely do better from a objective standpoint. So, some people need to, you know, can't focus as long and so they need a little bit more um happening. And so, we can now, again, the whole point is to make it available to everybody. So that means that people who don't have the attention span, I need to make something available for them, too. Um, so I'm just going to do my best to I'm just not going to [ __ ] and moan about the fact that like people's attention span's short. Like some people are like, I I can't cover anything in 60 seconds. I'm like, there's a hell of a lot you can cover in 60 seconds if you know what you're saying. So, you know what I mean? Like I I'm just not just I'm just not one to complain about what it is what it is.

42:07And so I will do my best to match, you know, providing value to the context that Here's something that's taken me way too long to learn. Staying focused is like beating addiction. It's not a one-time victory. You have to fight it all day, every day. Then wake up and do it again tomorrow. Because the thing that's going to distract you is going to change every day. The thing that's going to trigger your addiction to distraction is going to keep morphing and changing its form so that it can steal or rob you of your future. And so you have to be adaptable in knowing that you have to fight it every day. And so it's not good enough to just say, "I was focused for this week." You've got to wake up on the eighth day and the ninth day and do it again. And so you remember that guy who uh got rich dropshipping and day trading and uh buying crypto and wholesaling all at the same time? Yeah. Me neither.

42:58Focus. To win in business, you need to be able to say no without remorse and hear no without a loss of enthusiasm. Which means that you have to keep feeling rejection, keep failing and keep going while being willing to reject basically everyone else. And that seems so counter because you're right there and you're like, man, I don't want to reject this person because I know what it feels like to be rejected. You need to be able to maintain this discrepancy so that you can create the space to do the work that needs doing. So there have been a couple of lessons that I have learned over and over again in my career. I've had to relearn. So it's a lot like a like a fine wine. It's like it it gets better with age and there's more nuance to the flavor. So I think focus is not a are you focused or not.

43:47It's how focused are you? And you can measure someone's focus by again the quality and quantity of things that they say no to. Which means that as you get better, more opportunities will emerge. Which is interesting because people who start out can't see opportunity anywhere. And it's because they have so few skills. And so there's very few opportunities for them. When you have a lot of skills, there are so many opportunities that are in front of you that you feel like you're missing out.

44:11But the real opportunity is actually in solving the problems in front of you. I was able to in my opinion become another order of magnitude greater in terms of entrepreneurship which I would just me measure by wealth once I was able to learn to say no and accept that I would not be able to pursue the many things that I know I could crush because once you realize how much actual work it takes to make something good, you realize how few things you're actually going to be able to do in your entire life. And so this is why picking becomes so important. Right now the things that you're going to have to say no to are really the distractions and kind of in some ways easy. Say no to fantasy football, saying no to drinking beers with the boys, going out with the club, whatever. But in a year from now, once you have more skills, there will be more opportunities. You're going to have multiple $10,000 a month income opportunities that you're going to have to say no to to stick with the one that you have. And then once that thing becomes a $100,000 a month thing that you're doing, you're going to have to start saying no to multiple $100,000 a month opportunities. And here's the thing with opportunities that come up.

45:16They only show you the upside and not the downside. You have to know where the skeletons are buried. You have to know where the bodies are. If you don't know, and I've gone through this this this visual because I think about it every single time I have to walk through not doing something. You are here. You see this new opportunity here. Then you understand the downsides here. Then you live the downsides. Then you experience the upside. then you achieve your goal.

45:43And so this is the starting point. This is called uninformed optimism. This is now informed pessimism. This is the value of despair. And this is where most people quit. But what they do is they don't even quit because they don't want to say they quit. What they do is they start another one of these things and they say, "Oh, this is now my uninformed optimism." And then, "Oh, now I understand this more." But the thing is is that they never actually get through to this upside. And so they just keep jumping from thing to thing to thing over and over again. And so the reason it takes so long is because you're in a rush. Big things don't happen on small timelines because you have to start from zero over and over again. And if you actually stick with it, it's actually the shortest way to get to where you want to go. It just takes longer than you think. Must be easy for you to say is probably something that you might think by watching this or listening to this. And I like to tell this story because in July of 2017 is when I started my podcast. And it was 90 days after I lost everything the last time.

46:45And from that point until now, it's taken that period of time to get to over a million downloads a month. And for the first three years, and I was making multiple podcasts, so we're talking 3 400 episodes. For the first few years, I never really cracked 3,000 downloads a month. And so I could say, man, why is this taking so long? But the real real is that it took me that long to get good. It also being extra real took me that long to have proof on the outside that what I was saying was true on the inside. And right now, no one who listens to my podcast cares that it took me seven years to get here. They just cared that it's good today. And so people quit here when things get hard because the thought of something being hard forever is unbearable. They think that this line is just going to keep going this way forever. But it's not because once you fully understand all the bodies where the skeletons are hidden, then you can actually start solving them one by one. The thing is is that that distraction only is distracting because you don't know what sucks about it. You might think you know what sucks about it, but you don't know what sucks about it. And so the big difference is you have something called declarative versus procedural knowledge.

47:59And so there's two types of learning and this is actually formal. This is uh this is from academia. So you have declarative knowledge which is knowing about something. So if you go memorize a fact or you you you learn how private equity works, right? This is knowing about. The other type of knowledge is procedural which is knowing how to. And so a lot of people mistake declarative knowledge for procedural.

48:26And so they mistakenly think that if they watch 10 videos on doing a private equity deal that it means they understand how to do a private equity deal. Or they watch 10 videos on cold outbound and they think it means they understand how to do cold outbound or 10 videos on sales and so forth. But you're never really going to learn how to do it until you do it. And so you're going to learn more from your first hundred cold calls or 100 cold knock on doors than you will from a hundred books or videos that you watch. But I have good news.

48:57Nothing hard lasts forever. There's only three things that can happen. You either quit, it gets easier, or you get better. So no matter what, it always ends. You only lose when you quit before you see it all the way through. And I think that's incredibly encouraging. So no matter how hard whatever it is that you're doing is, which by the way just means that your expectation doesn't match reality. But no matter how hard it is, you either quit, it gets easier because something changes externally or you get harder. Something changes internally. But no matter what, it will end. Think about it like you're you're mining for gold, right? You're you're chiseling away underground and you've got this pile of gold. You don't know how far away it is, but it's underground and you're digging towards it. This difficulty of swinging the the the pickaxe can end when one, you walk out of the mine and say there's, you know what, marketing doesn't work. Sure.

49:48[snorts] The second is that all of a sudden you hit a soft patch and then you're like, "Oh my god, I'm digging so much faster now. This is great." And then you get to the gold or you just start swinging the axe harder because you get more muscled. You get more efficient with your movements and you just keep chiseling away. Even if it goes from dirt to rock, you just keep chiseling away at a slower pace, but you eventually break through and get there. >> I sell tech and operations consulting to law firms. Mhm.

50:15>> We started about 6 months ago and um >> we have our enterprise clients and we have other ones that are 36 to 80K and they have a 300 to 600K packages and we need to figure out which one has the highest LTV to CAC ratio and which one you can convert most easily. So what is the issue? >> That's correct. Um essentially well first of all I have no idea what I'm doing. Okay. Um started about six months ago.

50:37>> First step. [laughter] >> Thank you. Um, second thing I think we just have a fulfillment issue and so my question is at what point do we consider productizing the service? Um, from what I understand that's kind of what you've done with Gym Launch. >> Yeah. >> Um, at what point would it be worth doing doing that if at all? [sighs] >> You said you wanted to sell this eventually, right?

51:04>> Yeah. >> Yeah. I wouldn't do that. Okay. >> Yeah. So, you have the same issue um that Justice has, which is like, I have this hard thing in front of me. Can you tell me there's an easy way? >> I think >> the easy way will create a business that's significantly harder to sell. And so then you'll be at that point and be like, how can I sell this business? I'll be like, you can go back in time and not do this,

51:29>> right? >> So, like basically, you're in a high you're in a high skill service business. It's a professional services business. Most professional services businesses are supply constrainted. It is easy to sell high-end professional services if you are good at what you do. It is hard to find other people who are good. This is the trade. But if you build a firm like that, you build a very valuable company.

51:57>> And and another just on a side note, um again, I don't know what I'm doing. Um I got I got um 500k in in investment coming in soon. >> Why? >> Um it's been my my boss just wanted to >> Are you taking investment? >> Um I don't So we haven't finalized this yet, but I'm considering whether to do it or not. Would that >> No, >> you don't see any point in >> Why do you need money?

52:22>> You You don't run a capital expensive business. >> Like what are you going to use the money for? >> I guess to hire great people. But the business model should be able to hire great like you're not a tech like there it's it's it's very rare that you need to bring on outside capital far rarer than most people expect. If you want to build a platform, you want to build school, yeah, you got to do that because you need to get zillions and zillions of users and you have to build this exceptional product before you monetize. So yeah, someone's going to front the money on the bet that it's going to be worth a lot more later. Your business makes money today on work it does today. And if anything, you can sell the work before you even have the person. And so like you you you have a negative cash flow cycle. You have no you don't have to like front inventory for months ahead of time. You don't have to do any of that. So you have a service business. So we just need to make the business make money. You're already profitable. I'm assuming,

53:11>> right? So you don't need the 500 grand. You have deals that are worth 500 grand, right? >> Yep. >> From what you told. Yeah. So why would you like why would I give a chunk of the way to the company to have somebody who's permanently going to be involved in my business for the cost of one deal? >> It's like just sell another deal. >> Gotcha. work a little extra on your own time and then not don't take that guy's money and just have the money. >> Okay. >> You know what I mean? >> And and you you absolutely think then it shouldn't be, you know, because I feel like I'm creating extra problem that I otherwise wouldn't have to have being the the whole high skill talent thing if I just went down the productized route.

53:43You think it's really >> When you say productized, you're talking about the 36 to 80k price point. Yes, >> that's fine. I'm okay with that. >> But again, it's going to go back to what I originally said, which is we just have to look at the LTV to CAC between both of the different avatars. If the LTV C is literally the example I was just saying if you have a $100,000 thing that cost me 30 and I make 70 or something that cost $10,000 that cost 100, I'd rather just sell six more of the 10K things provided I have the ability to sell that. So it's like I want to find something that has really good revenue attention, really good gross margins. I have that then I can just sell the [ __ ] out of it. And then I'd rather just sell five times more of that than trying to come up with the uh you know hightouch one that's going to like is a more immediate ticket today but it's going to quickly uh I'm going to quickly get constrained. So I'm basically pushing out my constraint based on what problem I'd rather solve today. So the question back to you is do you think you can so what are the gross margins on let's say the average on the 36 to 80k is uh 50,000. That sound fine? Yeah.

54:40>> Okay. So, let's say 50k is the average price. What's the gross margin on that? >> Not too sure. We Okay. Yeah, we're quite early on. So, >> yes, >> half of that. >> Okay. And then with the 200k thing that you do, what's the gross margin on that?

55:04>> 50%. >> That's gross margin. So, you're running thin net margins because that means you're starting at 50 and then you got to pay everything else. >> Yeah. I mean, at the moment, um, we we are getting this fulfilled by a really expensive, um, highly certified guy that's been in the >> outside of the business. You're basically white label selling his stuff. >> Um, we do what we can on the inside, but we we accepted quite a few projects. So,

55:29>> Okay. Um, so then the followup question is, can you more easily sell four times as many of the low touch as the high touch. >> Yes, >> then do that one. If your gross margin's the same and you can sell more than four times as many on that one, then do that one. Basically, we're just looking at number of units sold times gross margin, the one that makes the most money.

55:54>> Gotcha. So, I think it always just comes back to the point of the the LTV Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Consistency is the rarest of traits and I think the reason it is so rare is because you cannot observe it without at least having some level of consistency. Think about that for a second. How can you observe consistency? You c it's very hard to do, right? You can't see somebody coming like you have to be at the gym every day to see someone at the gym every day. Which is why like when people come to acquisition.com all of a sudden they get this gigantic boost in their skill set, their productivity, their output because they're around everyone. Like when you show up at acquisition.com at 5:30 in the morning, the parking lot's full.

56:41Like we're here to win, not play. We want to win. And so I think I would ask yourself the question, if there if I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I could do a hundred times more than I'm currently doing, I would hit the goals that I have. Then I would then ask the question, great, what resources are required? And then following up to that, is it worth it? And if the answer is yes, what's stopping you? I uh I love this stuff. I'm just so passionate about more. Like you can't and you can't even do like more for one day is not enough.

57:17like we had to be consistent with the amount of ads we're making for a very long time to get the volume. So you can make five posts on all the platforms in one day, but you got to wake up tomorrow and you're at zero again, right? One of the things that I think is so magical and so amazing about like sales teams is you have a week and everyone's trying to to up the tally and win the week, but what happens on Sunday morning?

57:44Back at zero, baby. back at zero. You have to be consistent. You want to win the quarter, you got to bring it every day, right? And I don't I don't pretend to know what what it is that separates people, you know, from the people who can people who can't. But I would say that one of the biggest ones is like it's a decision. It's a decision. You decide that you want to go pro. You decide you want to make this. You want to you want to be legit. And the thing is is that you have to do it for you because no one will see the amount of work. No. Like if you want credit for the work, you've already lost. You can get credit for the outcome, but you will never get credit for the work. Like you have to accept that real. You have to accept that you will never get credit for the work. If anything, you will get you will get criticized for the work. The people around you say you work too much.

58:32They'll try and pull you away from the work. But the work needs doing. >> So I'm curious where those opportunities are today because it seems like every few years in hindsight you could look back and be like that was the best time to do that. What are what's going on today that people aren't recognizing the potential in? Well, >> I think there's micro and macro opportunities. So, like from the macro perspective, I think we've had like three big ones. So, at least in my lifetime. So, it's like we've had internet, uh, which is like kind of opportunity number one. Uh, opportunity number two is kind of like web 2.0, which is social. Um, and then opportunity 3 is AI now. So, there's the three macro ones. Now, underneath of that, it's kind of like, well, Facebook ads was kind of like a like an opportunity kind of like within that.

59:13And then like Google search was an opportunity like all of those are kind of like sub uh kind of like micro opportunities like I think like Tik Tok shop right now um a lot of people are kind of kind of like in that Amazon of 2013 [clears throat] 134 like I know a lot of people who are who've really never done much and then just like within 60 90 days are doing a million a month >> and it's just because there's a huge supply demand uh discrepancy between the amount of influencers that are there that want to make money and the amount of products to sell and they will just continue to populate it until eventually it becomes a stabilized market, but it's like when those when those market those land grabs occur, that's when there's typically outsized returns to be had.

59:49>> What do you think people need to be able to capitalize on these opportunities? >> I think you have to have skills. [laughter] >> Just straight up. >> Yeah. Like you just have to have skills. Like I remember it was really funny like um our first ever conversation that we had um I was like, "Man, if I had your amount of following, I was like, I'd be a billionaire." Yeah. >> And I saw that as a supply demand um like and even so like when you asked just a few minutes ago like you know what's the what things are there now?

1:00:17Like I still kind of see social media still thinks there. I still think that opportunity exists for people if you're good. >> But maybe it's less so than when Instagram came out in 20 whatever year it was. Uh when you could just like just post pictures of you on the sunset and have like a million followers and and people would just buy because you just had this insane reach. But I saw it as a as a as a the fact that we could still this the fact we could still advertise ourselves and get paid to do it is still mindboggling to me that that like opportunity exists. Like you can build a brand and get paid to do it,

1:00:48>> which I think is insane. >> Okay, so now it's arguable that you have his brand, if not even a bigger brand. >> Are you Did you accomplish that goal? >> I I won't be public about what our stuff is valued at, but I think that >> we've done well. >> Yes. Yeah, [laughter] >> the classic answer that makes that makes a lot of sense. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't want I don't want to make uh claims around things market values for enterprise value for ill liquid assets like private equity investments and you know companies that are owned really depends only on the time that somebody's going to buy it.

1:01:20Um, 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, "What have you learned about yourself from writing this most recent book?

1:01:43The work needs doing. It's just like there's no way around it. like it just has to be confronted and I think it just like it just comes down to that is you just have to confront the work and a lot of people put a lot of extra things between them and the work that they try and romanticize. They try and create superstitions around it. They have all these fancy rain dances that they do but like at the end of the day the work doesn't care who you are. It just cares that it gets done. And I think in some way that's one of the great equalizers about product is that like in a lot of ways, and this will probably be triggering to some people, but like it doesn't matter who you are. Like in in a fitness example, 500 lb is 500 lb. It doesn't care who you are. Like anyone like Arthur can pull the sword from the stone if you're strong enough, right?

1:02:38And so, like, there's a level of work that has to get put in to learn how to run ads, a level of work that has to get put in to learn how to to do cold calls, a level of work that has to get put in to learn how to be patient when someone's angry with you, right? Or how to run a team or how to stick your projects in a sauna or whatever it is, right? Um, and it doesn't matter whether you're old, you're young, you're male, you're female, you're black, white, Asian, whatever, right? It just needs doing. And I think that a lot of people waste a lot of time not starting.

1:03:09>> And so I I've told this analogy before, but you've probably heard it, but I'll say for your audience. Um there's a study, there's probably a lot of studies been done on this, but you can become proficient in any skill in about 20 hours. So playing the piano, you know, riding a bike, whatever it 20 hours of concentrated effort gets you proficient. It's the largest gain in skill improvement is 20 hours of concentrated effort. The problem is is that people will wait a decade to start the first hour.

1:03:35>> And so you'd be amazed at how much progress you can make if you cut down the time between when you acknowledge the work and when you start doing the work. And I think that over time in my career, what has happened is just that my my delay between when I realize I need to do something and when I start doing it has just shrunk so that I can get to the gain in proficiency that much faster. And then if you think about that over 10 years, right, where one guy does nothing and then he starts and another guy does 20 hours and 20 hours and 20 hours and 20 hours and 20 hours and 20 hours. By the end of that decade, they're not even recognizable.

1:04:06>> I sell CFO advisory. Really? Um, >> sell that CPA, CFO advisory, super expensive, B2B, it's probably sticky. You're probably operationally constrained though, so keep going. >> Yeah. In tax planning. Yeah. >> Um, we will do probably about 2.9 this year. >> Amazing. I would love to be at like 20 million. >> Okay.

1:04:27>> Um but what's stopping me? I have we've made all this stuff. I have two books. I have fire my CPA. I have taxfree millionaire. I've made all these courses. I don't know what to do with them. I don't know how to market. I don't know how to advertise. I've never done any of this. >> Well, you're doing three million a year. >> All organic. >> Yeah. I mean, you're obviously not marketing shitty. Um so, you've got all this stuff, right? You got these books, you got these courses, you make content.

1:04:56>> Yes. >> Okay. So, you are marketing. >> Well, I've never put them out there. Like, I don't know what to do with it. >> Wait. Huh? Okay. Hold on. So, you've got all this stuff in your back pocket. So, you've got tax-free millionaire book andor course. You've got fire CPA book andor course. And you make content about tax accounting [ __ ] >> Yep. >> And so people come in and buy your tax accounting [ __ ] right? And you're trying to get to 20.

1:05:23>> Yeah. >> Do people turn out? >> Well, I've never tried to sell anybody on the stuff that I've made. >> Well, but we don't need But like, forget, let's erase those for a moment. >> Those are not real things for the purpose of our conversation. >> If you didn't have those things, what would you do to grow the business? >> People call our office and they come in and I sell them for monthly service and I get referrals for

1:05:49>> in person or virtual. Yeah. Okay. But you're local. >> I'm local. We have a bricks and mortar. I have a billboard, >> but most I do. Yeah. But most of our clients are are are not in Texas. >> Okay. Hurt. Okay. So, they're coming from the content. They call up. You guys sell them. Whatever. >> Referrals. Yeah. Absolutely. >> And what are you growing at annually? >> What am I what >> growing at annually? >> Uh last year I was 2.2. >> Okay. It's great. Yeah. Super good. So, whatever. 30 35% annual growth. It's awesome. Okay. So, what's the um So, you you want to get to 20 and I'm guessing you just don't want to wait like seven years to get to 20 at that compound rate.

1:06:24>> Yeah. >> Right. So, as long as you're keeping customers, when I said do they churn, that's what I meant. Like, are they stay do people stay with you? >> The people that are on monthly stay a lot more than the people that come in just for a onetime tax plan. >> What's the um this will be fun for you. Okay. >> So, what's the I'll give you like some some business accounting. Um what's sales velocity right now? I don't know what what >> how many units a month do you sell >> uh on the monthly reoccurring?

1:06:51>> Yeah, >> there's probably about 190 clients. >> Now, how many do you sell every month? New >> Oh, new ones. We're We've closed down for new sales because I'm trying to figure everything out. So, nothing right now. Nothing. >> Well, that will not grow the business. That for sure. That [laughter] >> there's my Yeah, I'll be here all day, guys. Uh [laughter] okay. So, so you have a goose egg there.

1:07:15Okay. But okay, you have this other stuff. Why do we care? >> Well, that's what I want to do. Like, I like the products. I like to educate. I like to be in front of the camera. Like, I want to do all that. >> Okay. Well, what's wrong with the business that you decided to stop selling stuff for? >> It's [ __ ] hard. That's why >> it's re No, like to fulfill on it. And >> you could always just start a business where you sell everybody else's stuff. >> Um, well,

1:07:41>> you didn't get my joke. You missed it. Okay. And what I'm trying to get to now, like AI, what you were saying is going to completely obliterate our industry, which I'm really excited about. Yes. Because I want to dive into it. I want to leverage AI tools and even overseas partners doing low-level stuff. Okay. >> Um because people in our industry are really slow and outdated. >> Yeah. >> But all of these are not things that you would solve with marketing.

1:08:07>> You're supply constraint. And so you're like, how do I market more? I'm like, you can't even take people. Well, I want to market like for courses and to buy my books and things like that. >> You have a valuable business right now. >> No, I I I do. Yeah. >> No. Why are we Why would we start another business that's not >> That's what Ed told me. But I I want to do that, too. [laughter] >> Yeah. I mean, like like I make the content I continue to repeat and I get I get my my memes made of me of like Alex just going to say shit's hard and hard things are hard and hard hard and it's because it just never stops being hard.

1:08:39It just always sucks. Like the course thing will suck too. You just don't know it yet. Ask the course people. They'll tell you it sucks. >> That's great advice, [laughter] >> right? They're like, "It sucks." Yeah. Customers aren't sticky. They'll expect you to do everything. They're like, "I'm not a taxfree millionaire already and I bought your $17 course. Like, [ __ ] you." You know, like >> like that's, you know, that's what's going to happen.

1:09:06>> But you have you have a service that people aren't turning out of. I'm guessing. >> No, they're not. Yeah. >> I mean, some, but they're pretty sticky. >> Yeah. No one No one who no one who has bad churn stops selling. I'll say that. [laughter] So, like the fact that you're comfortable enough that you're like, "Oh, we don't need to take customers for a while." Like, I'm sure your stuff is better than you think. Um, but I think that we have to think basically you're supply constraint and so we just need to fix the supply constraint of your business because if I said, "Hey, we found a way." What are your margins right now? about 20 25%.

1:09:40>> Okay. So, if we said, "Okay, let's see if we can find um offshore talent that can give your existing team two or 3x leverage." So, you don't have to increase internal headcount, you can increase external headcount, and then when AI comes in, you can basically wipe those guys off the map and then fine, right? So, it's like, yeah, they don't have jobs or families. Uh [laughter] >> they're overseas. They're not real. Um I'm kidding. So I know half you guys are overseas. That was a joke. Um but yeah, so I think that we need to create operating leverage. We have to look at basically how the service are being delivered so that we can figure out how to get each person two or three more, you know, X in terms of their ability to deal with customers. Um probably there's a little bit of tech that's missing because this is for everybody.

1:10:25Everybody, every entrepreneur I talk to is like I want to be AI first, right? And then you're like using Jeff GP for emails. Like that's not how you're AI first. Um, the first thing that you have to do in order to have an AI first company is you have to be a data first company because AI works with data. If you don't have data, then there's no [ __ ] AI. So, you have to have complete data first from your approach and have an architecture in place so that you know all the elements of the business from data and then we can put the AI layer on top to put reinforcement training in place in order to actually train it to do stuff. So if that's where you want to go, which does have tremendous operating leverage and like just for everybody this is the once in a generation move right now. So 25 years ago cloud computing came out and then you know software went from CDs to cloud and that and then all of the software companies and all that boom was the last 25 years and all the billionaires were made. The next boom is this right? And so we're early and so the hard of this is like, well, the pieces don't all fit together perfectly yet. And it's like, well, that's the figure out that we make lots of money from, right? Okay.

1:11:25>> So, I don't think the solution is you selling a course because you just happen to have recorded it. I think that we need to fix the supply constraint first and then you'll use all those things as marketing assets to increase demand when the time comes. So, save those in your back pocket. There's nothing wrong with them, but I want to look at the model. Increase operating leverage. That'll probably also increase margin. start making this number more than zero. >> Okay, >> which I promise you can take this to the bank. If you make that not zero, you will grow faster. Um, you will make more money if you sell people. Uh, and then I think from there, so it's like increase operating leverage through offshoring, add in data layer. Once the data layer is there, then we can add in the AI component that further increases operating leverage. Once you put the remote team in, you'll then be able to sell again. If you get to the point where you're like, I've now reached my new 2 or 3x capacity without even marketing, then great. If you do need to market more, then use the assets that are in your back pocket to go do more delete gen like four or five steps, but that's 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.