How to Get Good at Anything | 1 Hour of Alex Hormozi on Learning Any Skill

0:00Why is it so hard for people to compound their skills? [sighs] >> So compounding skills, I'm trying to think of how I clearly define it for for the audience. Um I would probably say it's when multiple skills when used together uh create an outized outcome compared to either of the skills used independently just so we have a basis for talking. Um, but beyond that, um, I think I think part of the difficulty is that you do not know what you're going to yield and and the perspective change that's going to occur after you have a new skill that you don't have yet. And so it's like if you understand accounting and then you learn e-commerce, it's like, oh, this makes like you you don't know what you're going to know. It's a very unknown unknown, right? Similar similar context we were talking about earlier. Um and so that's in terms of like why do I think it's difficult people to imagine the upside potential of having um multiple skills that stack together. I give this example all the time but like you think about like Jay-Z, right?

1:04>> Yeah. >> So in the beginning he might have had a base level of like call it rhythm. Um that was like his what maybe he was naturally inclined that way. Um and then he started developing you know beats and that was a skill that he you know figured out and then he started you know rapping. Um, and then that became a skill. Um, and then from there he learned how to uh promote. And it's like, okay, that's that's a much more valuable, you know, he if he only knew how to promote and uh didn't have rap, like he would it wouldn't been nearly as valuable of a skill, but having both makes him super successful rapper. But then after that, it's like, okay, well then he had to learn how to recruit other uh artists and musicians. And so it's like, okay, well, recruiting is a different skill than promoting, you know, publicly. And doing deals is another skill. And so all of a sudden it's like these skills when stacked together become a label, right? And then that becomes the next thing that he's able to do. But a lot of times like you can only you can only uh and this is Steve Jobs, but you can only connect the dots in reverse. And I think the one thing that I would say is consistent among the people that I that I frequent who are hyper successful is that they're just intensely curious about things in general. And so I'll see um somebody who's a billionaire have a conversation with somebody who makes I'm just I'm only using money here as a you know to to show the stark contrast, but you know somebody makes $80,000 a year, you know, fixing lights, whatever. And they'll find a way to extract information from this person and be like, "So how does that work? So tell me more about that."

2:31Um and they'll still be able to at the end of that conversation be better off than they were prior. And I think they're kind of blood hounds for for knowledge. >> Um, and I'd say that that is that is probably like just something that I have witnessed. But like why is it so difficult for people to to do compounding? There's the obvious answer which is patience. And the other is that they don't understand the upside. >> How do you balance compounding of skills with becoming a master in one skill?

2:58>> It's really good. Well, you know, um I would say that the difference between those two things um is really just comes down to how narrowly we define the domain. So it's like let's say you want to be a quote master at business. It's like well there's so many skills there. It's like you got marketing, you got sales, you got recruiting, you got finance, you got like there's so many things >> compounding becomes part of the master. >> Yeah. It's like so which Yeah. So where where where is the the skill versus going, you know, super deep on biotech right now in the world of biotech? Um and going deep on anything, it feels like you're still like the deeper you go in something, the more you feel like you don't know anything.

3:35>> Um and I certainly feel that way constantly. >> Curse of ignorance, the curse of knowledge. I I was like, I I have this uh we have this big marketing that's going to that's going to why my my next book is going to come out and I have some some big plans for it and I think it's going to do big stuff. Um and I was already like playing out like what I thought I'd be able to say afterwards, which is like this is my letter to the internet. I still don't understand marketing that well. Like I just feel like there's so much that I honestly have no idea about.

4:01>> Is it because you don't understand the details or are you still missing some of the bigger picture areas? >> I think it's just like there's so many things. It just like when I think about what has gotten me success with marketing has been like there's probably maybe like 15 rules that I pretty much follow and the rest is just like let's like the amount of times that I've been like this is going to be a winner and it bombs and something that we do in 5 seconds as like a last second thought ends up being the [snorts] the home run advertisement or you know an email that just crushes compared to another one. I just I have I I have been I've been wrong so many times that I have like zero ego when it comes to marketing.

4:39[laughter] >> It's interesting because a lot of people will discount and say that's just probabilistic, but it isn't. When you put out a new video, >> Yeah. >> hundreds of thousands of people are telling you this is a 5.2% clickthrough versus 7.2. It it is not probabilistic. It's just the wrong answer. >> Yeah. >> Meaning there's some kind of ignorance debt there. >> Totally. How could how could there be an ignorance debt after you've done something so many times?

5:03>> That's what drives me drives me nuts. But like so to to this point though, it's like um so I see prediction and control as the same thing equals equal opposites at the same point. Like if you can if you could predict something with absolute certainty provided you have influence over the variables, then you can control the outcome, right? And I see that as like intensely cool. Um, but like for a let's say a sales conversation, right? If we have one person here, I do believe that there is something that could occur that would create a 100% closed rate process. The problem is it just might not be worth creating that process because some people might have to go back to their childhood and re-educate them on, you know, elementary math in order to get them to understand this concept or whatever it is, right? So, there's a certain amount of education that has to occur in order to get someone to change their behavior or at least the way that we want. I'm going to loop this back to the the marketing thing. Um but I see like sales is just increasing the likelihood that somebody purchases right within a conversation.

6:01>> And so marketing serves more or less the same function just done one to many. The amount of variables that exist in marketing >> I don't think anyone has even come close I mean maybe I AI will but like human beings like I don't think any any humans have come close to quantifying every single variable that exists. And so we can say here's 15 things that I know always work like fast will pretty much always beat slow.

6:26>> So you can control like 70% of the of the probability and then there's 30% >> varian that's ex exactly. So it perfect. You you you got to exactly where I was going, which is like it's if there's a thousand variables, it's like maybe the the 15 that we know that are the chunky ones, it's like maybe that gets us 60% of the way and then we still roll the dice and it's just our downside's truncated. And I think it's just over time you just continue to move up the median. Um at least from a concept from an organic content marketing perspective, but the same thing, you know, same thing with with paid ads, just different different beast. said another way, in the land of the blind, the oneeyed uh man is king.

7:01So you are the oneeyed man. >> Yeah. [laughter] Just willing to take >> which is a high compliment. >> Yeah. Yeah. Honored. >> So there's compounding of skills. There's also the compounding that occurs to somebody that sticks to a domain. >> Yeah. >> Why do people systematically underestimate that? And why can't people stick with one thing for many years? >> Man, these are these are all hard hitters. So I think that um luck surface area is something that uh it's a very you know catchy term but basically uh if you have if you have if you think about I'm going to draw little analogy and I think it'll it'll make sense but like if you think about intelligence as accuracy and determination as the number of shots you take uh as you're shooting a target then it's great to be intelligent.

7:55But if I had to pick between unlimited shots and perfect aim, I would rather have unlimited shots, [laughter] >> right? And so the idea of the luck surface area there is like if we're shooting at least in this d like this general d eventually one of my my arrows is going to hit the target and and on a long enough time horizon one of them hit the bullseye. And so the advantage of sticking with things is that you tip luck in your favor. You just are around for more things to occur. and by basically the same concept of of this there's a certain level of variability um that's going to always occur just within business chance whatever but if we're there the whole time it's like we give we give luck time to happen

8:37>> rather than like if if you try to quote time things it's like you're you almost never get it um but if you're there the whole time then luck occurs and so and those those lucky breaks are the ones that typically like define people's careers um it's just you just don't know when it happens I And Oggovie talked about this all the time where he said like um you know I've wasted uh you know 90% of my advertising dollars. He's like I just don't know which ones right like to say it's like the vast majority of the things that we do in our careers are not going to actually make a meaningful difference and then a very small percentage make all the difference in the world. You just don't know which one it's going to be which means that you just want to maximize the likelihood that it occurs.

9:12>> But in business >> you internalize once you get a hit you internalize there. You're like, "Oh, I said this line in the sales script. Now I could scale it across all my sales people." Totally. >> You do know in this in most cases of business, it just you don't know when your next knowing is going to come. >> Yeah. The next big breakthrough. And I think that's like kind of that that truncated downside risk. It's like um I used to say this a lot, but like the bottom floor of the building of your opportunities continues to get higher.

9:40So, like when I >> when I quit my job when I was in my early 20s, my plan B if my gym didn't work was going to be I was going to drive Uber and strip. >> Yeah. >> Um and so that's a pretty, you know, that's that was kind of a baseline, you know, floor of the building. Once I learned how to sell, I was like, "Okay, well, the absolute worst case scenario here is I can keep my clothes on and I don't have to work, you know, 18 hours or I probably still work 18 hours, but now I can sell cars, right? I can sell something that's like high high velocity. I could I could probably make $400 $500,000 a year just being top top car salesman. Okay, so that's now my baseline. And then once I learned how to advertise and get leads, then it was like, oh, okay, multiple millions of dollars a year is kind of like the baseline. It doesn't really matter what place I'm going. If you know how to market, you know how to sell, you can drive business. You're a rain maker fundamentally. And so it so like the bottom floor of that building. Um because like when people are like, you know, if you lost all of your reputation and all these things and you had no money, like what would you do? I'm like, I've had that happen twice and I'll tell you what I did. Like I don't have to do as a hypothetical. I'll tell you exactly what I [laughter] did, right? Like I went to a business owner and I said, "Hey, I'll bring you business. Let me keep whatever I kill and then you get customers for free." And most business owners say, "Sure, zero c sounds good."

10:47And then that's it. And I've done that. I've [laughter] done that's what I did both times. And I was able to just restart and generate cash quickly. Um and that was a few years into my career. Um that was after I already had the marketing hat. Uh so I didn't have to go back to, you know, doing car sales or something like that. So, >> I've heard you use this analogy of levels. Once you learn how to pass and beat the level one boss and the level two boss, you could quickly get to that level three and then you start from there.

11:13>> Yeah, it's tough because um I think to circle back to the question you had earlier about why do people struggle with this? And I think it's because you get it's it feels good to win, right? And and losing sucks. And so if you know how to beat level one, two, three, and you get stuck on level four, there's a big part of you that after a sustained period of time of not beating level four, you're like, you know what, I'm just going to start a new character and I'm going to play the game slightly differently this time. And you and then the thing is is you have a rapid feedback loop of things going well because you're probably better. And you go you breeze through one, two, and three again, but then you hit four and then you're still there. But now four is hard because you're still battling level four on the other one typically because you us because most people don't completely stop doing one thing. They try to chase too many. If I said I want to get good at foul shots. All right. So foul shots probably have different parts associated with it. There's probably going to be I have to measure the distance and I could probably say what percentage of my shots did I hit within the box. Okay. What percentage of the shots did I get within the hoop? What percentage of them did I get in altogether? Right? Um, and then within that I could probably say, "How many times did I finish my follow-through?"

12:22And like, I don't know anything about basketball, but I would be like, "Okay, am I finishing above my head?" Because that's where I want the followrough to be. And where is my shoulder position? Am I twisted? Am I straight up? Am I squared with the basket? How many times did I do this? And so, you might hear this and be like, "Wow, this sounds overly complex." It's like, well, welcome to winning, right? We have to break things down. And you have to think about yourself in some ways like a child because our ability to learn gets worse over time right we are less plastic but our skill at learning so rather our horsepower at learning is worse but our skills at learning can get better all right so how how do we how do we reconcile this if our skills get better then it means that we are better at at at being specific about the thing that we need to change right and if you are not specific about those things you will wander for a long time why you were not getting good so you have to quantify to the highest degree possible. And to be clear, you'll start quantifying things in the beginning and then you'll get better at describing them. But if you do not track, you do not care period on anything. In any skill worth learning, if you aren't tracking it, you already demonstrate that you don't care. What when you think about a good writer or a great writer, an unstoppable writer, what comes to mind and what separates the amazing writers versus everyone else other than the work? saying the work people do thousand put 2,000 hours into a book. What

13:44>> sure >> makes for an unstoppable incredible writer? >> I don't think there is something else. >> I I I'll qualify this which is that the work needs feedback. >> So you gain proficiency with expert eyes giving you feedback on the work you do. Because if I I'll give you the content example. If I post a short every day for for 10 years and I don't change what I'm doing and I just post the same thing, I might not make any progress. And I know people who've been doing who've done made content for 10 years and they have the same size following, right? Because they don't learn, they don't improve.

14:20Like >> I'm going to rewind real quick on this is that the work is required for you, not for the output. Somebody who naturally gets it on the first try, who really just understands it. And this is an easy example. If if if if Mr. Beast's account got cancelled tomorrow, he can start another one and get it to millions and millions of dollars because he has the skill. And so it's not that the output requires him to go work for five years in order to build the following. His skill required him to work for five years to get the skill, but then the output does the work after that. And so like the the time delay that people talk about like myself included when I'm trying like this is where nuance of advice comes in, right?

15:04Where it's like I tell people, hey, I want you to do 100 reps every day. I don't want you to do the same 100 reps every day. I want you to get better with all the reps. And if you haven't looked at the end of the day and said, "What could I do better? How could I improve?" And if you don't have somebody on the outside eyes being like, "Hey, you stumbled here on this call." Or, "Hey, when they said this, let's drill this. Let's let's do this a couple times." That's how you get better, right? Right? So, you have to be willing to do the work and get the feedback to improve.

15:28Like the works on you more than you work on it. And I think that's the piece that people miss. Like my prescription like of doctor money um of of working is for the for the person's skills, not because I care about the fact that you made 10,000 phone calls. I care about the fact that you got the rich buy time, the poor buy stuff, ambitious people buy skills, and lazy people buy distractions. [music] As much as these seem like four different groups, it's really like you have these [music] pairings. Rich people use money to buy time. Ambitious people use time to buy skills. And the reason it's ambitious people is because generational wealth isn't transferred through assets. It's not transferred through stuff. It's transferred through education. [music] It's transferred through skills. And so there's this Sanskrit proverb that I love. If you have a good son, you don't need [music] to accumulate wealth. If you have a bad son, there's no point in accumulating wealth. And so the idea that you're going to pass on your wealth to a child who doesn't have the skills makes it irrelevant because fundamentally either it is a good son who has skills and then if the son has skills then whether you transfer the wealth or not makes the wealth itself irrelevant. And I find that there's so many things that are like this in wealth creation that you don't understand until you're on the other side of it because the answers that you're looking for are not in your newsfeed. They are not in the distraction. And so the vast majority of lazy people that I have encountered continue to distract themselves because the difficulty of looking at themselves in the mirror and saying I am inadequate is too painful.

17:01And so instead they would rather watch fluff videos on the internet that make them feel good and tickle their ears rather than confront reality that they are just not good enough. And so they consume the stuff that's like I am worthy. I deserve these things. In other words, entitled to them, which by the way, if you feel entitled to something, then when you get it, you are never grateful because you thought you deserved it to begin with. We know that gratitude, for example, is something that increases your subjective well-being in life, which is that you enjoy life more when you are grateful for what you get. Which means that you have to, by very definition, expect nothing, which means you're entitled to nothing, which means that you deserve nothing. In reality, you are worthy only of the things that you currently have because you have already got them. You have proven that you can work a minimum wage job, so you are worthy of the compensation of minimum wage. And as much as this is painful, and I'm sure this will get clipped a hundred times to show me as some evil rich guy, I'm willing to take that hate for the few people who will hear this message, and decide to change the way they act. You can be ambitious and distracted, which keeps you poor. When I started out at my peak, I had nine businesses because I heard seven income streams make you wealthy, but it doesn't. Seven income streams just spread you seven ways. And I had nine. I was like, "Well, seven good. Nine must be better." To give you context, I had a chiropractor agency. I had a dental agency. I had a gym turnaround business. And then I had at the time six location. So there's nine where it is. Boom. And I had partners in each of these businesses. I was still the one who was required to rain, meaning I was the one who was required to sell customers into all nine. If you are required to work inside of the business, then you can only really do one job. And so when people hear that someone has seven income streams, it's because they own assets that generate that kind of income. But in order to gain the cash to then buy the assets that create the cash flow, it requires time and focus. Let me make focus real for you. Focus is a very amorphous term.

18:54Focus is measured by the amount of things you say no to. And inversely, you could measure it by how few things you say yes to. Meaning the most focused person says only yes to one thing. Some of you guys may have seen the interview that I did with Amjod and Replet, the CEO, uh the founder of Replet. We talk about how learning works. AI has to get trained on data. We have to clean data and say good, bad, good, bad, good, bad over and over again. Once AI can learn in the real world, the feedback loops are significantly faster.

19:25And so it's first party data. It's it drove in the road here and then all of a sudden someone honked and it got feedback and it went back in the lane, right? And so at a certain point you'll stop relying as much on modeling all the people who are doing better than you at the thing. And then you will start to do a tremendous amount of volume. And then from your volume you will look at your so let's say this is the volume we did.

19:49This is all of our reps and we say okay what made these different from all these? What is the difference? Now there is for sure a difference because these are the top 10%. You might only be able to identify one or two differences. So you will take the things that you find different and then you will do another set of many repetitions where you'll do this and then you'll have a top 10% again. And on here you'll get another inference of why that's the top 10%. And then oh but wait there's more. We will then go taking all those inferences and then we have our top 10% again. And here you get the idea. Your idea and observation density will increase like coats of paint. Every time you go over it, you will learn one more thing. But I would say that the key to learning is observation. Once you ha once you can observe the differences between current and ideal and this is honestly the gap people like I get the compliment often that Alex breaks things down in such a simple way. It's it's really just looking at the world through the lens of analysis of observation and saying what is different about these things and looking at it almost as an autist where there is no meaning behind anything just simply this person extended his hand that person extended their hand this person nods when that person talks when that person stops talking this person doesn't nod why doesn't this person nod when that person's talking oh okay people determine that this person has more influence the person who nods when the other person is talking. Okay, if I want more influence when other people talk, I should nod and then occasionally interject. Yeah, sounds good. That's interesting. Go on, tell me more about that. Okay, great. So then I could start observing that. What else does this person do? This person when he asks for things takes a step back. This person doesn't. Okay, so when I ask for things, if I want to increase likelihood of compliance, I'll take a step back. And so it's these observational differences which separate. Have you ever heard of the concept of skill stacking where it's like, "All right, I'm never going to be in the top 1%, but I can be in the top 5% in five different areas that overlap.

22:02What do you think about that?" >> I'm a a a hardcore uh advocate. So, I won my my number one YouTube video of all time that >> Okay, interesting. [laughter] I I I got that from uh Scott Adams, but it makes sense that you also had that. I probably also watched it during my binge and uh planted it in my notes. It's so important because what happens is this is kind of like we were saying earlier where the more skills you have, the more opportunities you can see. And so that's where these disperate skills can connect and then you can see kind of through lines where no one else can see them because if you only know how to do one thing,

22:33>> it's it's very limited in terms of number of things you can do. But if you're very good at, you know, math at the beginning and then it turns into, okay, well, I'm good I learned how to bookkeep and then I learned how to do accounting and then you learn how to do insurance, then you learn how to do tax, then you learn how to do M&A, all of a sudden that stacked together becomes unbelievably valuable. And so, but if you just learn, and this is where I think it gets interesting, is that you want to learn skills that are complimentary. Um, now in retrospect, you know, Steve Jobs is like, "Okay, well, I learned calligraphy and it turned into the fonts, you know, for Mac." I would say, you know, the secondary question is,

23:02>> would Mac have been successful if it didn't have fonts? >> I I was just going to say, I don't think the the iPhone is a result of him knowing what sans serif means. Yeah. >> Um, but what people don't know is that he studied he was super into computers and super into hardware from the time he was a child. And so um learning skills now if you learned more about supply chain that would probably be beneficial for that business right and so learning those uh you know now there are some generalizable skills they'll apply to just about any business because there's the core product and you want to learn as much as you can about whatever that core skill or core thing that you're building is but then there's all the things that will always be true for every business and so this is kind of what I would consider the difference between learning the game of business versus the product itself which is probably if anything if you look across all the different businesses that exist the product's really the only differentiator the rest of it's the same you're going to have marketing of sales like you're going to have HR, you're going to have legal, you're going to have financing. All these functions are there. And so you can guarantee that you have to learn all those things if you want to get in the game. Right? Now, which one do you start with? You're not going to start with finance because you have no money to count.

23:55>> Yeah, good point. >> Right? So, it's like we have to start these things in sequence. And so, typically, it's going to be um either you decide to learn the business from the outside or you learn from the inside out. So, what that means is like, okay, I have to learn how to promote. I have to let people know about stuff. I have to learn how to get them to give me money. So, I have to learn to sell. Um, and that's kind of like if you just know those two things, if you literally only know how to promote and know how to sell, you will be able to feature yourself for the rest of your life. If you just know those two things. Now, from the product side, it's like, okay, well, I can build this thing and then I'll have to learn how to market and sell it. You can you can go either direction. Um, but at the end of the day, you will have to do all those three things um at a large enough level uh sorry, at a deep enough level in order to get that first dollar across. And that's like those are the the core deficiencies that

24:38>> two-year super fan at 19. I've consumed all your content. >> Uh thousands of cold calls, pushing seven figures. How do I get in a personal relationship with both of you? Didn't expect that one. >> That took a twist. >> Sorry about that. I would have ignored that one had I read the whole thing. >> Uh get to 50 million. >> That's not even true. >> I know it's not true. >> I don't know either. >> I don't know to be honest with you, man.

25:03Actually, there is a way which is like if we have a role and you're like, I want to spend five years learning and lead something, you can apply for a role at ACQ. That's actually the the way. >> We were with our team most of the time. >> Yeah. Oh my god. By a lot. I mean, we have like like 18 exits on on the team. Like we have a lot of people who started business, founded businesses, sold them. >> Uh what mistakes do you think most people make when it comes to hiring?

25:28>> Oh man. Um, >> or maybe you could say maybe answer it differently. I'm hiring for about six or seven roles. [snorts] >> What mistakes you think I I'll I'll likely make. >> Well, what's the role or what are some of the roles? >> Yeah. So, we could say uh what's like a really a salesperson? That's a that's a simple one. Um, but I'm hiring other roles. So, I'm hiring um chapter leads. So, we have 13 chapters that we uh my business is based in and we're having hiring people to manage each chapter. I mean the easy answer is settling but it's so tough because there's there's trades because these things don't exist outside of time you know it's like I have to fill this role and I want to find somebody espec if obviously for us at the sea level because that's what's top of mind for me it's like I have to have somebody that when I'm on the phone with them I'm thinking I have to have this person and if I don't have that but I'm like man I really need this role and so if if I'm thinking from the like I really have to fill this role angle it's like usually not the right person. If I'm thinking like, I don't even care if I have a role for this person. I have to get them in. It's usually the right person.

26:29>> Are you willing to pay them more than you originally thought was reasonable? >> Yes. 100%. Not even a question. >> Have you ever Have you ever been like, I got to come up with enough money? Like, I hope I can get enough sales to afford this person, but I have to have them. >> I haven't had the second part because we're super cash flow positive company, so like that hasn't been a problem. I mean, fundamentally, as long as I can just pencil out the ROI of the role, then yeah, I'll do it. I mean, it's just a return on capital. What's what what's your desired return though?

26:55>> Amazing. [laughter] >> Oh, yeah. >> Well, it's like I mean it's I still >> Google sheets allow you to put amazing in equals amazing. >> Mind it. >> I think I think the highest returns on capital we get as entrepreneurs is talent. >> Like full stop. Like what where else do you get 10x 20x you know returns 100x returns uh and and and can do so reliably. Like talent is one of those places you can do it. But we'll also say that typically the higher up the org, the higher the arbitrage.

27:23>> Are you fast to fire? >> Uh we continue to get faster. I'll say that. I think we get faster. I would say that um our firing practices do somewhat uh rely on the constraint. So like sometimes, you know, Leila says this, but like some fires aren't aren't kitchen fires. They're like the the trash can in the driveway is on fire. It's like it's a problem. like we'll get to it, but it's not the thing that's limiting the business. And so, if we have somebody who's not as good as they should be, but they're not in a role that's right now like limiting the company, it's probably not going to be our first priority to to to to take them out. But as soon as that becomes the constraint, then it like quickly gets unearthed and then it gets handled.

28:04>> Have you ever uh followed Dave Portoy Baral Sports? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Like you know, he's quirky, right? He's crazy. >> He uh one of his jokes, but it's not a joke. who's like, "I don't fire people." He's like, "I just I don't want to fire people and if they're a loser, I'll just keep paying them and they're going to sit in the corner and be a loser, but I don't fire anyone." And uh I kind of thought that was hilarious. It's funny because he's a content company and he can make content out of it and get ROI out of like just making fun of someone who wants to fire. But I was like shocked that that would be his take on it because he seemed like a pretty brutal guy. Not a brutal guy, but he seems like uh very blunt and he has no problem firing people. And he was like, "I do. I suck at it. I don't like the confrontation. I don't like people feeling bad. It's I just don't do it.

28:45I'd rather lose money. And uh when I asked you about firing, >> I thought that you were going to be like, "Yeah, like I fire fast." But I sensed a small bit in your voice where it sounded like potentially you were slow to fire because maybe I'm I'm I'm reading too much into your sentiment or your tone of voice, but it was like >> I just don't like it. [laughter] >> Well, I don't think anybody likes it. I think we're we're fast to fire if it is the constraint of the business and clearly that person is the one limiting us. like we will not sacrifice the company's growth and the opportunity of all the people who've trusted us with their careers to to not have a you know a comfortable conversation. There's also levels of this and so like let's say there's like you know uh red, yellow, green, right? If someone's like well green they're great fine. So basically you got maybe like yellow orange red let's use that as the three levels for me. Like if somebody's just not doesn't have the complete competence but is not like they can still do their job but they're not doing it as well as they should and they're definitely not going to grow and they can't take on new opportunities then that to me is like a yellow. If they're like for sure like they can't actually do their their their role right now that's an orange. If red is like you can't do the role right now and that thing is required for us to grow. And so that's that's kind of like I would say like we it's it's it's a combination of like what does the business need um and how incompetent is the person? And so the rates of firing I think would depend on both of those things. Obviously we want to like in a perfect world we get everyone out who's not a fit as soon as humanly possible.

30:08Um it's just that sometimes some people do turn it around uh with good feedback and coaching and that probably happens half the time. Like I guess asking myself the question like why do I feel bad about making this decision and then trying to make sure that I'm not acting in the global bad for local good like local versus global. Like I think about that as like my way of trying to break through that like terrible feeling you have when you're like I have to let this person go. It's like well if I don't I'm choosing short-term comfort over over long-term discomfort. And I think most of life can be boiled down to people doing that over and over again is they take the local whim. They take the short-term win for the global loss. It's like if you do that enough times, you get a global a global catastrophe. And so that's what I try to avoid. And I just put the the greater good as the frame um as my like little my little spirit spiritual armor, if you will, of going into it knowing that like this person might get upset. Um, and this might even, you know, dramatically inconvenience this person's life in the short term, but like I owe it to the other zillion people who also have put their, you know, their careers, their their their lives in in, you know, my hands to a degree from a decision-m process. Like, I owe it to them. Uh, thoughts on the best type of sales for you to get into experience. Volume, brother. Volume. Every single phenomenal marketer that I know personally started with a high volume sales position. I know guys who started in high volume cold calling number one. I know people who done uh high volume doortodoor. I know a guy who uh sold at a car wash, sold 200 cars a day walking through the door. You want something that gets you as many feedback loops as possible. That is my biggest my biggest piece of advice. The reason I'm a big fan of people who sold in fitness is because in fitness so many people are trying to lose weight. You can like you can take a 100 calls at like you can you can see unlimited amounts of people if you're trying to sell weight loss. And so my recommendation if you're trying to get into it is don't worry about what you're earning. W worry about what you're learning and you want to get as much volume as you possibly can in the shortest period of time. I mean how do you figure out what you're good at?

32:05>> Yeah. Because there's volume and then there's also reflection on the volume. And how do you get better at the reflection portion? >> Yeah. So it's volume times feedback loops. So if you think about skill acquisition in general, now this is relatively well documented but like you do the like if I want to learn any new skill. So rather than saying like what am I good at? I think it's sometimes more valid to say like what do I want to get good at now people have quote proclivities or they're like oh I'm naturally predisposed to these things maybe but you can't control your genetics and maybe you don't know um and maybe it was just a nurture thing that earlier on I remember I had this and I will loop around to the answer but um I was in college and one of my favorite professors uh he taught a class called systematic inquiry which is basically like how do you ask questions and answer them which is great um and he he's a super nurture over nature guy in terms of like his his thought process around the world. And I tend to skew more in towards the the the the nurture side as well. And he said like all the things that you guys think you're naturally good at, you're not naturally good at.

33:00You just got good at them earlier. And so I was like, I've always been really good at languages. And I was like, I don't I feel like that's something. And and he just looked at me and he was like, I mean, do you have a parent that speaks another language or there's someone in your life? And I was like, oh yeah, both my parents are bilingual and I spoke French as my first language. And he was like, why are we even talking? It was like such an it felt so because I didn't see the I was like it was so natural to me that I didn't even think about it but the the very first my existence was two languages and so incorporating third or even seeing English differently was something that quote came natural to me but it was just like I had a different skill set that was repeated earlier on and so um to the original question in terms of skill acquisition it's like you have a volume of activity that you're doing so if I want to learn how to you know play the trumpet it'd be like I'm going to play the trumpet for an hour and then I'm going to look at other people who play the trumpet and compare what my notes sound like to compare what their notes sound like. And the fastest way to do that is to have an expert tutor. Like I'm a huge fan of tutoring. Um it is the fastest way to learn. Uh the second fastest is in small groups. And the third is to join a community of people who already have the same skill and then you can basically learn through osmosis.

34:07Um and when I say learn through osmosis is just learn through observation of the small skills and skills that they do on a regular basis that increase the likelihood they get what they want. But if you like if I'll say one thing. If you if you want to learn something, whatever it is, the fastest thing to do is go into a community of people who already know how to do that thing. Well, it's the barnown fastest thing. You'll get many different feedback groups from many different sources. You'll be able to tease out what are the the few truths rather than the mysticism that's kind of associated with that whole space because every space has my mysticism around it in magic. But there's usually a few core truths that that are always true amongst all people.

34:47for the skill. That makes a lot of sense. >> I believe that anything can be trained. So that's like a human belief of mine. I do think it will take much longer for some people than others to be clear. Like I think you could take someone down syndrome and make a neurosurgeon. It would just take probably more resources than anyone is willing to do. >> And so basically if you break down any skill and so this is actually just because I'm excited to talk about training because it's something I like a lot. But the more skilled the individual, the bigger the instruction.

35:11So if so I I just now I'm a coowner of school and so I said listen I'm gonna promote school that's what I'm gonna do. That's the instruction. It's not like hey Alex can you send emails and this is how you send an email and can you make content and this is how you want to write a hook and this is hey and when you run ads do you think it like no no no like you can I can have one direction. Someone say hey can we start a company around this? They can give a vague directive but I have all the subs skills so that I can say yes I can do that and I can execute on it. >> Right >> underneath of that it's like okay now you've got somebody who just understands content markets when understands sales whatever. If you have a closer, you say, "Hey, go sell this thing." Right? But at the very basic level, every skill has subs skills underneath of it. And so it's like, "Okay, turn on the phone, hit this button, then hit this but like at the like if you're going from the bottom up." And so it's really just how much are you willing to train someone to get them to be proficient. And so I just believe that you can break down skills to that level so that anyone can do it.

36:02And it just comes down to the resources of the institution of whether or not it's worth investing in that particular person. Got it. That's how I see it. And so I do think that anyone and the thing is is that if you're an individual salesperson or you're getting into sales, you're the institution making the investment. And I sure as hell hope that you believe that you're worth the long-term investment of learning the skill because it works with everything. Right. Right. And so like if it takes you a year longer to become a top rep, who cares? >> Yep. Y >> that's how I see like maybe some guys can do it in a month. It might take you two years. Again, who cares?

36:29>> Yeah. I think people come in with building blocks. Meaning like if if I I were to come in and and do a sale, I have a I'm going to succeed a lot quicker cuz my building blocks and it might not just be building blocks from sales. Like sometimes you could see the building blocks from somebody saying, "Oh, okay. This person was in sports, that means they're going to be a lot less emotional to when somebody says no," they come in with a bigger building blocks than maybe somebody that wasn't in sports. So you have to look at all those on the learning curve. But two things, number one, when you said uh investing into people, so I'm going to shift this now more into a leadership and training conversation for a second.

36:59>> Who do you decide? Because there's a lot of people that say, you know, work with the people that are willing to learn, etc. If I'm a business owner, if I'm a sales leader, who do I decide to, you know, who do I decide to work with? Because I personally, me, I work with people that show up and they get results and they keep progressing and they constantly get results. I think some people defend people because sometimes, you know, the person's trying or, you know, they're a good person or whatever the case is. And I'm like, but are they [ __ ] making [ __ ] happen? >> We work with people in the organization that make stuff happen. Now, it might not just be money, but are they progressing it? You know, are they getting more booked meetings? are they, you know, is their contacts going up, etc. So, who do you decide as a leader to put your attention on when the sales team is so big?

37:37>> So, I I'll do two layers here. Got it. >> So, when we because we we deal at the at the company level. And so, the first thing I did like when we scale the the 40 person sales team was go bring in an exceptional sales director. >> And so, identifying an exceptional sales director because I think depending on who's listening, what they're looking for, an exceptional sales director is somebody who in my opinion is basically a sales operator. And so the best sales directors aren't even necessarily even selling because they have to basically sell the conviction of the whole team.

38:02They run the culture and the training of the sales team. And so they have to be somebody who genuinely cares about people and they have to be willing to repeat themselves over and over and over again and sometimes play therapist and get someone out of a cold streak and be willing to roleplay until their eyes bleed. Got it? Because that in my opinion is what makes an exceptional sales direct. They have to understand how to train and motivate. underneath of that in terms of what what reps are we going to put more resources towards for me it's following the playbook and so it and I think this is this is holding business owners and you know the people who are quote running things to a higher bar which is my entire objective like our sales team is you follow the script period now if you don't close and you follow the script you have won in my eyes and if you followed up based on the cadence that we have and you said the things you were supposed to do you could close no one for a year and I would be fine with it Because if everyone is having that happen, then I need to change the script. Got it? That's on me.

38:55And so my first objective with a sales team is adherence because then I have a controllable. The vast majority of sales teams have 10 guys selling 10 different ways. And that's why for most businesses it is about recruiting good sales people because they just give the directive sell and then they have a one-on-one once a week and say, "Hey, yeah, just build more rapport and you know, like uh you know, just get your energy up and like it just that doesn't help people." Whereas saying your first 5 seconds the call, you're introducing yourself poorly. This is the script. Try it for me. Uhhuh. Again, raise your voice at the end and try it again. Okay. Five more times. Great.

39:32Next question. And so we want to drill one part of the script until they can breathe it and then we move on to the next part. And for us, the one-on-one serve as the training function. And so like I don't know a better way to tr like in in my opinion training comes down to shadowing in terms of game footage because I think the most expensive thing that someone can do as a business owner is waste leads on an inexperienced rep. It's bad for your reputation because they botch things. It's super expensive because you lose the opportunity of making money.

39:59Everything sucks. And so I want them to train on as many old recordings as humanly possible. And so I want them to watch 60, 100 hours of footage, game tape of other guys doing great job selling so that they they're they're thinking about the script in their in their subconscious. Right. Got it. Do you show them the negatives on the scripts too or no? Just positives. >> I prefer to do positive because I want to train them on what to do rather than what necessarily what not to do. >> Um and so we focus there. Then when they do get on the calls, we only have them take half third schedules because we don't want them to, you know, quickly, you know, bomb the first day and then like I have to deal with headsp space stuff. just you're going to take a couple calls and then we're going to review both the calls with the manager and they're going to go over okay and this is key. We say let's watch it pause. What do you think you could have done better?

40:43>> I'm not going to tell you because if I tell you're going to you're you're going to be like this sucks. I'm like because if I yell at you you think I suck, right? And we do the same thing with the team. If the team's on the call and we do game tape as a team, which we do like once a week with the whole sales team, everyone, if the team comments, it's on what you did well >> and then you get to comment on what you could have done better. And then it's the manager's job on your one-on-one to then say, "Okay, Daniel, you needed to work on your rapport building." Or, "Hey, you're really soft on the close here." Or, "Hey, you're really struggling with uh the uh I need more information part, so let's let's drill that." Okay, I need more information.

41:16When you say, "Oh, what's your main concern?" Well, okay, now we can go into it, right? Sure. And so we want to drill in the most minute level what they need to say and then do it over and over and over again so they say the same words every time. And then what happens like the the performance of the team once you get that culture if someone comes in and tries to go they're like dude this guy's not following the script >> like get this guy out of here like he's the joker >> and so that way we can control the variables so that we actually can have a sales system and by doing that we can really teach sales. That's how I live.

41:48>> If you're ever going to explain anything, only explain via analogy, which is absolutely imprecise, but way more effective for getting people to understand what you're talking about. >> Yeah. So, I just like don't talk about science. Just no one [ __ ] cares. Just go analogy. Um, and talk about So, the difference so good content is declarative, not procedural. Meaning, you want to talk about stuff, not how to do stuff. So think about talking about what is possible or what the problems are with an existing thing rather than um this is how you like you know we do two two pills a day and like as as soon as you get grand you lose everyone. So you just want to talk conceptual in your content.

42:32From a training perspective, a lot of times we think we need to like explain how something works to someone rather than when then just teach pattern matching. >> And pattern matching is significantly faster to train and just as effective, >> right? Because in the 95% of cases where like patterns will just always match, they can just run the playbook. Um, and then in the 5% that don't, they can go to you and then you just create another pattern for that and you can train them on it. But like most of the time, like you don't need to explain how mitochondria work or whatever, right?

43:07It's just like the biggest cost that you have is ignorance. So every single month you've got your rent, you've got your food, you've got your clothes, you got your car, you got whatever else you spend, and you think that's my fixed costs. years ago, I was sitting in the audience and I saw a man write a million dollars on a whiteboard and he called someone from the audience. He said, "How much do you make per year?" And they said, " $50,000 a year." And he said, "Would you like to make a million a year?" And the person said, "Yes." And then he put a minus sign and he said, "Did you know that it's costing you $950,000 per year to not know how to make a million dollar a year?" And it was such a light bulb moment for me that I realized that the cost of ignorance is the difference between what your goals are and what you have today. Because if you knew how to achieve your goals, the difference is the value of that education. And conversely, the difference is the cost of that debt of ignorance. And so the number one priority in my life has always been to pay down ignorance as fast as I possibly could using whatever currency I needed to. So if that was relational capital that means using my network or doing favors for people or paying money which is the least efficient way of doing it.

44:17I would try and find a way that I could pay down ignorance to achieve the things that I wanted so I could get the information so I could get the learning. When I started um I paid to get into rooms. So I paid $25,000 $35,000. And you're like wait I don't have that right now. I get it. Well you pay $10,000 was the first thing I ever bought that was information based. That's what I was the first thing I ever invested. And how was I able to do that? Because I had saved for two years and I'd saved 50 grand up. And so for me, I was like, "Okay, this is the direction I'm going in. I'm going to invest in learning." And when I got in that room, the first room I was in was a gym owner room, and I didn't have a gym. And I paid to be in that room so I could start the gym the right way.

44:51When I paid to the $25,000 room, it was an internet marketing room. And guess what? I didn't have an internet marketing business, but I paid there so I could try and learn how to do it the right way rather than try and start it the wrong way and have to fix it. And so, I think a lot of people wait too long to try and learn. I always want to grab my future and pull it towards me. And so I was willing to spend as much money as I had available to me to make those bets because it was a bet on me and I knew I would never lose that. You can't lose you. You always have diamond hands on you. Like till the day you die, you've got you. And so the thing is about investing in education is that sometimes the lessons you learn aren't the lessons you expect to learn, but you learn them nonetheless. And so sometimes you go into an education thing and you don't get what you thought, but you still get something and it was still more than what you paid. And so when I went into those rooms, I'd already used up all my money to get in the room. So, I was like, "Okay, what else do I have?"

45:38And so, at the time, I knew how to sell. And so, I just went to every single person in the room and was like, "Can I help you sell stuff?" And so, they'd be like, "Well, sure, my sales team sucks, or sure, my my script sucks, or sure, my offer sucks, or I don't know how to overcome these objections." And so, I would spend an hour, two hours, three hours on the phone with these people training their teams, writing scripts. And they were like, "Dude, thanks so much. This is way I can't believe you did all this." And the thing is is that if you're going to pay for help from someone, pay in full.

46:08Don't halfass a free gift. And so if you're good at something, you're good at a skill, you're an accountant, you don't do one page of someone's taxes. If you're going to do a favor, you do the whole thing. You treat them like they're a paying customer. And then they will respond as though you have paid them. And so it will be like you've given them money and then you will get that reciprocity. And at the time when I did those favors for all those people, I didn't know what I was going to ask for.

46:33I just knew that I would need someone's help in the room. And I'd rather have more phone numbers I could call for help that owed me one than none. And when I wanted to make a webinar, I called one of the people who's good at webinars. When I wanted to run ads, I called the guy who's really good at running ads. When I wanted to uh figure out funnels and landing pages and stuff, I called the guy who was really good at funnels and landing pages, cuz each of those guys wasn't good at what I was good at. And so we are able to barter, which by the way still to this day is the most efficient form of trade because Uncle Sam don't take any piece of it for us or them. Skills are typically chunked up or chunked down. So basketball, so people like he is good at basketball. They're saying he has many skills as it relates to this thing. Now within basketball, you've got dribbling, you've got shooting, you've got passing, right?

47:20These are subsklls underneath of basketball. To the same degree in business, you could be good at business versus good at marketing, good at sales, but good at product, good at hiring. All of these are subsklls underneath of those larger skills. Now, if we were to go uh even deeper than that, we also have generalizable skills across domains. So, if I have great hand eye coordination, I might be better or learn something faster, like I will learn how to shoot faster, but I'll also learn how to play ping pong faster. I'll also learn how to serve a tennis uh serve faster because I have generalizable skills. And so a specific skill is a skill that does not generalize across domains. Now, when you have more specific skills, the the am it's more a degree to which it generalizes rather than does it generalize or not. So I could have that eye hand coordination thing, which would pretty much generalize to anything that I use my hands and my eyes, which is a lot of stuff, right? But would would uh would shooting the specific skill uh generalize over to I don't know chess?

48:22Probably not. It's like well you're using your eyes and your hands but not really. It's a lot more about decision-m right? And so are there are there closer ones? Would it would that go uh better for beer pong? Probably. That would generalize over my foul shots versus beer pong probably does generalize to a great degree. Not 100% but decent. And so the reason this is important is that people like language matters. And so some of you will say,"I want to get good at business, Alex, but business is not something you can get good at. It is a bucketed term that has many skills underneath of it." And since we just defined what skills are, which is adaptive chains in behavior, you start something and you do three or four things in a row that get an outcome, right? Business has marketing. And guess what? Marketing is also a skill that is an adaptive chain. And so you basically have to keep chunking down until you finally figure out the the the skills that you can quantify in terms of behavior.

49:26And so this goes all the way up and all the way down. Like reading, writing, and speaking are are are generalizable skills that will apply to everything. Learning in and of itself is a skill. like your ability to learn, your ability to figure it out, right? And so, back to this little example I have here, many of you want to learn more stuff, but because you have not broken down the thing you want to learn, you stare at the screen and keep searching, hoping that you're going to get some recipe.

50:00But the recipe is that you have to keep breaking it down into smaller and smaller constituent parts so that you can get it into an understandable unit that you can change your behavior within. You have seasons of earning and you have seasons of learning. I had this kid who reached out. He was 18 years old. Said he was going to edit videos for us. When he came in, he said, [music] "I want $100,000 a year as an editor as a starting job." His reasoning was that somebody else had offered him that amount of money. I want to make this statement because I think it's logical and also stupid. If you're optimizing for your earning potential in your 20s, [music] you're missing the [ __ ] point. This individual had the potential to be on a team that has a massively globally recognized brand [music] in terms of media and from there learn how to be way better than they currently are and then become a creative director at another company or at one of my portfolio companies. like that is the career path and instead was comparing that to something that he would make $100,000 a year and be the only person in the department and no one there knew anything about media and so he wasn't going to learn, he was going to earn.

51:06Whereas somebody who got into the big leagues and learned 10 times the skill set, then 10 years later is either starting a multi-million dollar company or heading up a multi-million dollar division in a billion dollar company. and the potential is so much wider because 10 years from now someone says what's your experience? It's like well I I worked at a real estate firm and I made their social media content. Who gives a [ __ ] Whereas if you're like I worked for one of the biggest media companies out there. Everyone will give you the job offer. And that is when you can choose to earn over learn. But people make the trade too soon because they compare themselves to people on social media and think that the 0001% is the norm. [music] Whenever you choose to earn rather than learn, you're right hooking life and saying, "I'm no longer going to develop and this is good enough." And so, if a $100,000 a year is actually good enough for your long-term goals, then do it. [music] But I would imagine that it probably isn't for what you really want to do long term. And I'm using 100, you know, six figures as a as a placeholder. It can be whatever number you want. When you make that decision that you're no longer going to learn, that's when you stop growing your [music] potential to learn more. I say this because that's what I did. I had a white collar consulting job for defense contracting. I had a top secret clearance. I had everything that looked good on paper. space, [music] cyber intelligence. I had a two to threeear path clearly for for getting an MBA at an Ivy League school and then decided [music] to drop all of that and start working for $13 an hour at a gym after I graduated magnetic ladi in 3 [music] years from Vanderbilt. I know what I'm asking people to do and I'm not asking them to do something that I wasn't willing to do. And I think that I might have even a more extreme version that most people are having to [music] live with. Trying to say like, well, I can't figure out what I want is a really paralyzing place to be that I think a lot of young people are in. is like I want to find my passion. But the big misnomer is actually a language issue [music] which is that people say they want to find their passion rather they want to build it or create it or learn it. And so like I can promise you that if you're good at something you'll like doing [music] it. And the only way that you get good at something is by doing things that you suck at. There are naturals. What I would determine as a natural is someone who observed not consciously but still learned. So I'll explain.

53:05Many of us we we're going to learn a lot of our stuff not consciously. When you were a kid, when you're a toddler, you learn from your surroundings. You when you were two years old, you weren't like, "Huh, what observation is papa doing today? I will I will observe him and I will model his behavior." No. All you did, and here's a wild thing, is that if you see someone get rewarded, you will automatically want to do that. What do you think testimonials are? It's modeling.

53:32Oh, that person is like me. They got what I want. their behavior was they bought this thing. I will therefore buy this thing, model what they did to get what they want. There's two types of things that you can learn. And so if you're trying to pay down ignorance, you got to know what you're buying. So you can learn about something, something that exists that you didn't know existed. And then you can learn how to do something. And so one is called declarative knowledge, knowledge of existence. The other is called procedural knowledge, which is knowing how to do it. And so if I explain to you that private equity exists and this is how you can buy, package and sell a business for a lot of money, now you know about it, which is a prerequisite for learning how to do it. And so when you buy into access to networks, to people, to relationships, the primary thing that you're learning is learning about things that exist. They're going to tell you tax strategies, investment strategy, marketing strategies, sales strategies, business models that you haven't heard of. That is what you learn there. But if they tell you those things, you leave and you get excited.

54:33But then you're like, "Well, shoot. How do I do it?" Which is the second thing that you learn how to do, which is the how part. And so when you're going into any kind of investment, whether you're investing time, you're investing trade, you're doing some work for someone so they do work for you back, or you're investing money, you better be sure what you're buying. And the interesting thing about those two types of knowledge is that the declarative knowledge tends to teach you things that you didn't know existed. It's the unknown unknowns. That is why some of these are the biggest breakthroughs. When you get into those rooms with someone making 10 or 100 times more than you, they see the world in a different way. Whereas when you go for how to, it's more predictable what you're going to get because you're specifically trying to learn how the skill is. You know it exists and you just need to clarify the steps to getting there. And so just delineating what you're trying to learn will help you actually learn it. So the first time I learned declarative knowledge was that Facebook ads existed. That was in 2013.

55:26And so I learned how they how they worked and I learned just enough to make them work. So I learned declarative knowledge that they existed and I learned how to do them in one weekend. Super valuable. Now I was able to ride that skill set for a couple years until I was like you know what I need to learn how to do this at a bigger scale. I wanted to go national with started gym launch do the turnarounds and so I was like I need somebody because I had only run local ads which by the way are much easier than national style ads. And so I tried to go all around asking people for help. And at this point, I had probably used up the relational capital that I had before. So, I called a bunch of agencies. All of them said they were going to charge me too much money that I could afford. And then finally, I just asked one guy, "Hey, instead of your monthly rate of $5,000 a month," which I couldn't even come close to affording at the time. I was like, "Can I just pay you per hour?" Now, of course, he said, "I don't trade my time for money."

56:13Except, of course, he works overtime and then he gets money later, but sure. Anyways, he doesn't trade time for money. And I said, "It's America. Everything's got a price." And he said, "You know what? 750 an hour, I'll do it. And I was like, done. Now, mind you, 750 an hour was still a ton of money for me. And so, I showed up like it was Harvard on steroids for these calls because I I would prep for the call. I had my notes out. I recorded it. I was like I had two people in the room be like, "Make sure I don't miss anything, right?" And so, I would go and I had him first document the process of what he did to run ads as though he were me. Then, I had him demonstrate it. So, he clicked the buttons so I could see what he was doing. And I had him stop and explain to me each of the steps so I could put it into my little checklist, too. And then finally, I duplicated in front of him, which means document, demonstrate, duplicate. I then did it in front of him to make sure that I was doing it right.

57:03And so once I did it right, and I did it right multiple times in a row, and I didn't need him to to to correct me while I was doing it, that's when I had mastered the skill. It took me eight sessions. So, it took me eight hours. And I would strongly recommend if you want to quote do anything then just look at the jobs they have available and try and do that. So rather than just go in like empty just be like oh you have a data entry position I'll do that for you and then in all of the extra time that's where you try and have lunch with people that's where you try and basically build your network within the business so you can start leveraging like relationships to gain more skills and then you can start you know moving your way in and learning what you want to learn.

57:38>> What about applying to businesses that don't need your help or aren't hiring? One of my things I always thought it was great to approach places you'd want to work and just say I'll take on any role. >> I think it's like I think it depends on >> depends on the visibility of the company. So if if the company has like a really big social media presence, they have so many people doing that that the supply demand of people asking for that specific thing is super not in your favor. If you went to a business that's not based on that, like you go to an electric, you know, like an HVAC company, you probably could find some work there that they'll let you do. And so I think it's again it's like try and shoot where like the big the big arbitrage in life is finding supply demand discrepancies uh that are in your favor and so you have a supply of work they have a demand. Now if there's way more supply so many people offering it then they can dictate their own terms and if they don't need it then they don't need it.

58:29>> The single greatest skill you can develop is the ability to stay in a good mood in the absence of things to be in a good mood about. >> I think that tweet has been my theme for 2025. Um, it's been it's it's funny cuz that was the most shared tweet I've ever had. Um, and it was it was like it's it was almost um [sighs] not the opposite of iron. It was fitting, right? It was completely fitting for the year. And it's been because like this year I've had a just I would say a series of unfortunate events um that has occurred and it's really tested my tools, right? tools in the tool belt um for reframing reality so that I can make my experience less you know miserable. And so I thought about that it's like if I were if I were to boil everything down um of all the skills that you can learn if everything that we do eventually becomes irrelevant then the single greatest skill that you can develop is being in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. And so one of the other frames on this is most people don't question someone who's in a bad mood.

59:36Like I'm just in a bad mood. So it's like well if you can be in a bad mood for no reason it's like you might as well be in a good mood for no reason because that one at least serves you. And so I've been trying to exercise like cuz there's on one degree there's like let's count things to be grateful for. On the other side it's like why do I have to have things to be grateful for in order to be in a good mood? Like why is trying to find things a requirement of being in that mood? Like can I not find things and still choose to be in a good mood? Because I've certainly not had things to be in a bad mood about and been in a bad mood.

1:00:07>> And so I've been trying to flex that which is like sure we can find things to be grateful for. And when those things pop up, yes, and of course it's a pra, you know, it's a practice. You get better at it. But like what if I can just be in a good mood? And so I've just tried to try to break that that relationship between the two because then it makes it contingent on something that I can find. >> How successful have you been at that? mediocre. If you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling road map that I've used to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 10, and 0 to 100 plus. And so, you can click here and you can check it out.

1:00:41Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you. And uh enjoy.