Die Fähigkeit, die dein Einkommen dauerhaft verändert

0:00there's probably a misconception that you can woo woo your way to money some of you probably know that that's not true as much as you possibly can balance how can I solve a problem for good so that I can just move on to the next boss rather than having to keep fighting every month to pay payroll or pay myself or make whatever nut I need to make and if you're like wow that sounds like a lot of work like welcome to business every one of the businesses just becomes lessons to ultimately build the asset that matters which is you and so future me knows the difference between how hard I tried and how hard it looks like when I try when I have nothing left in the tank we imagine that these rewards are going to be instant they're just not the issue is that the rocky cut scene lasts like 2 minutes in a movie and it can Last 5 Years in real life there is the thing that you want to do and there's the thing that everyone else thinks you should do and everyone else thinks you should do it's probably not the right thing to do if you can give yourself that blessing of just being like all right here it is clean slate right the now what are we going to do build something awesome all right everybody we're here at Arcadia with Alex hosi the legend himself thanks for coming bro yeah damn see you didn't think this was your crowd this I didn't I really didn't I was like I didn't know if anyone even knew who I was yeah well because the bottom line is as much as we set our sights on our own personal transformation our own growth our own we also care about earning money making money for our family doing good things with that energy that we collect we were just talking about the Tesla battery we want to keep that battery full the battery of our bank account find a way that we can actually affect the world in a positive way and support our own Community our own family in the best way possible so everybody gives a about it a lot of people pretend they don't give a about it but they're lying and so many people I found in the spiritual Community they'll be like no I don't care about money money is the root of all evil blah blah blah and then you have a little business deal that you put in front of them and they get greedy as hell and you're like whoa where'd that come from you know so the bottom line is is that that we all do care even if we care so that our in our desire is to share that money we care and if we don't care that means we don't trust oursel to do good things with the money we make I agree with all of that um it just it's funny uh that red flag that you mentioned is like almost a like decision algorithm that I go off of which is if someone says I value X over money uh in any business deal for me that's always the this person I need to watch out for because being dishonest um it's been true every time not just like oh some like sometimes that it's every time it's been true um just as a side note for you guys um so someone's like I just value this relationship over if we both make money we'll want to keep this relationship right so like just tell me what you want and I'll tell you what I want MoneyWise and if it makes sense then we'll both be super happy and I've um I mean I'm getting like right into tactics on this but let's um making deals as though I'm always dealing with a stranger has always been the best frame that I because now we do deals for a living now for the most part um and then everything above the deal is gravy so rather than trying to factor in the intangibles I just don't Factor them in and say so if I'm I could employ my mother and I would still do the same deal which is like I would do this for somebody of your experience because that way all my downside is covered because this is the deal I would give somebody who's not my mother who I don't X Y and Z and benefit in other ways from and so that way it's like I think that's how you unlock plus plus deals where it's like the very worst case is that this is the same deal I'd give a stranger everything else is just bonus and so that's that's helped me a lot um and even setting that frame at the onset which is I only do deals with strangers in terms of how we do deals because if it makes sense for you and I and our relationship didn't exist then it will make sense if our relationship does exist yeah but if the converse isn't true then it won't work I seen so many different Partnerships develop amongst friends and there's an inequitable value proposition based upon the friends but they're friends so they're like we'll go 50/50 on this deal but actually they can't contribute 50% to the business so it all sounds good it feels good as you're kind of moving along oh this is great we're going to do this together but then one person with 50% of the business needs to do 90% of the work and then over time that just doesn't work because you're going to need to start selling more it and then there's going to be more dilution and then things get inbalance so the impulse is beautiful it's a beautiful impulse share everything evenly if I have a sandwich you have half a sandwich I believe in those type of things but then there's business and business has its own codes and its own rules that also have to be like acknowledged there's probably a disadvantage for the spiritual Community within the world of business that everyone kind of has to deal with um because there's this um I would imagine because I I sit probably on the exact polar opposite side of the world from the spiritual community so this is like the only time I've been in anything close to this seriously I got in here and I was like are we going to talk about like money at all or like any of that stuff he's like no we like making money I was like awesome all right I feel like a little more comfortable um I was like cuz I'm like the if you die nothing happens and everything's meaningless person I was like I don't know if that's going to Vibe with this uh I was like actually like kind of I was like I hope every because when you guys welcome me which I I really appreciate that that meant a lot cuz I was like I'm surprised by that because I felt like most of this room would be like I disagree with all of those things and so um and that's also that's also one of the things that myself and Joe Rogan and a lot of different people stand actually as a disruptive Force saying like no no no all the spiritual stuff all the beliefs and we're going to kill it in the gym yeah and we're going to be Savages in the bedroom and we're going to also make as much money as we can because we trust ourselves to do good with that money so it's like trying to embody this different model of like you don't have to be one or the other yeah you can actually be all of it I love that [Applause] yeah so how do we do it making money yeah um one of the things I was I was I was kind of getting into with the part you were talking earlier about everything is equal um and that perspective is people equate their Equity value with their human value and I think that's where the big um misunderstanding especially people who are getting into business together it's like why aren't we equal like we're both even people it's like but we won't be necessarily even contributors in the economics of the business like I have a 100,000 followers and that's going to be the initial demand for this entire business and right now your skill set is something that I can hire for or at a value of 70,000 a year and so if I can replace you for 70,000 a year it's basically like instead of me taking a loan for myself or some someone else for whatever 7, or $6,000 a month I'm giving you this slice and so $66,000 a month is only worth this percentage of equity relative to the value of the company and so I think Translating that um especially at the onset because I don't know where everyone actually this would be really helpful for me so okay I don't know how I'll just do this the way I would do it and you guys can be comfortable if you want to um so if you don't have a business but would like to start a business could you raise your hand for me okay cool that is helpful uh if you are between like uh that so you have you've made your first dollar and like a 100,000 a year could you raise your hand for me okay if you're between 100 and 250 okay if you're between 250 and a million a million plus okay this helps me a ton in terms of like what to be talking about all right so we were just talking about uh there's my ADD Equity Equity thank you um whenever you start a business you always incur debt and so the question is what type of debt are you going to incur and so you can incur financial debt which is one that people can understand you can incur management debt because you hire people that are under skilled for whatever the opportunity is you can incur technical debt because you don't have the infrastructure to build the business off of and so you want to take on the debt that is easiest to repay as fast as possible and so when you think about that from the onset it's not like we're going to do this thing debt free you're always going to incur debt and so when you think about that you have way more levers to play with in terms of how you want to build the structure for whatever you're ultimately trying to achieve now if your if your goals are to make you know a 100,000 a year or or 500,000 year a million dollars a year you can pretty much do all of that owning 100% of the equity and just developing skills like I don't I don't really really think you need much more than that to do it um and sub a million everything comes down to sub a million everything comes down to marketing and sales is that you have to let people know about your stuff and you have to be able to convince them to give you money in exchange for it unfortunately for what I'm about to say product matters significantly less at that level because you honestly aren't making enough of a dent for the word of mouth to really catch up given how big the world is and I'm saying that from a realist perspective if you just know how to Market and sell you could pretty much scam people for a million dollars a year for the rest of your life I'm being very honest with you and that's and that's why there's a lot of um bad advice that I think is out there from people who make around that because that's true for them and so they're like that's all you need and it's true but I would imagine that this community doesn't want to be that way and so on the longest time Horizon the only thing that matters is product which is how good is the thing that you're ultimately giving in exchange for money and do people feel like they're always on the better end of the deal and I my I've gone like 180 degrees from when I first started in business until today where in the beginning everything I cared about was sales and then I learned that you could like do sales one to many with marketing and I was like this is like sales on steroids this is so much better and I got really good really good at that um but then I realized that it's a Perpetual hamster wheel because nothing stacks and so in order to get credit for the like in order to build something really big you need some you need to be able to get credit for work you did over time and that means that I want to get paid today for work I did three years ago and the only way to do that is to have a product that somebody I sold three years ago is either still using today or it still at least has positive things to say about me today otherwise you're basically always hunting every month to find your next nut or whatever it is and so if you always want to like everyone's going to always work but you won't always accumulate and you can only accumulate by building something that people always have good things to say about and that takes a lot of work and now we build businesses very differently which is let's not let's not put any gas on this until we get everything right until everyone absolutely loves the product can't help but tell other people about it we get referrals every single month we grow without Marketing in sales and then you add Market marketing and sales on top and then that's how you build really big but for and I I'll try and taper this because you can go all the way in the sky and like talk about like how you know trends of like What markets you want to go after or it's like I just want to get to 20,000 a month Alex um and are most people here doing products and services okay if you're doing products and services could you raise your hand okay so that's and is technology the other slice there okay so it's mostly products and services okay so if you're and I'll shut the up whenever keep keep going this is The Sweet Spot baby let's go keep hitting these pitches let's go um if you're if you were I'm I'm always amazed at um and it might be more prevalent in this community uh not doing the math and so I know that there's probably a little bit more woow woo in this room than there would be in rooms that I'm accustomed to just say just on a comparative basis definitely strong W family here representing and so I think there's probably a misconception that you can woow woo your way to money and um some of you probably know that that's not true and so reverse engineering what you actually want the math to look like is probably the first place to start so I you know I get a lot of inbound questions of like I just want to make a millionar a year how do I make a million dollars in 90 days which is a terrible question to ask um but if you just look at number of units you need to sell and I break things down into to days and weeks because that's a lot easier for me to comprehend and so it's like okay a million dollar a year is $20,000 a week okay so divided by seven so three grand a day okay well how do I do three grand a day um I we do Investments based on like the world's simplest formula which is just number of units sold multiply by lifetime value that's it and so if we want to grow the company we either need to sell more units or we need to make people worth more that's it like everything else really just over complicates it and so if you're in the beginning and you're doing stuff and if you look at your calendar in terms of how you spend your time because that's the asset that you're going to be spending the most of in the beginning if it's not contributing to either getting you more customers or making them worth more then stop doing it like you're wasting time like literally you're just spending time because right now if you if you work every hour of the day and you're not making more money you're working on the wrong stuff and that's like at the at the most basic level and if you can accept that then it's like great then now I have room to to improve because if you're not making any money that means you can probably eliminate 90% of the you're doing and nothing's going to matter because you're already not making any money so that that's that that stuff clearly isn't working right um and so uh getting the more customer side is really about just letting people know about your stuff and so I wrote the you know I just recently came out with the leads book and it was to try and simplify this for everyone and if you are starting out so if you're sub a million there's there's eight ways well if you're at a billion there's still eight ways uh to let people know about your stuff four of them you can do four of them use other people for so you can just tell people that you already know about the thing you have and you cannot be a scumball about it and just say hey I'm starting this thing you know any who be interested in it and nine times out of 10 when you ask someone like that it's way lower pressure because you're not asking them for it but on the flip side n nine times out of 10 they're like actually I am kind of interested in something like that and so they're like screw my friends uh tell me more about that thing and then you actually get a more meaningful conversation where you could probably help them right and that's like the cheapest thing that every single person can do but people are like I'm so afraid of talking to my friends but you're just asking them if they know anyone and a lot of people still don't know like where do I go for that it's like well right now every single person here has a means to contact probably at least a thousand people that's like super conservative and when I challenge an audience with that often times someone's like well I don't pull out your phone search contacts export into it Excel that's list one list two is you go into all the old emails and Gils and yahoos you've ever had and look at every message you ever sent export those sent messages into list two go into social media all the different social medias you have look at followers all of those give people have given you permission to contact them now most social media are like that with the exception of YouTube but like Twitter you can DM people Instagram you can DM people Tik Tok you can DM people if they're following you um and you can export all of those into a list and so just like that if you took all your followers all your friends on Facebook all your your DM contacts your emails your contacts on your phone you put them into one list you probably pretty pretty decent sized list and so I am a big fan of violence in terms of action and in general um and take a violent approach which is okay I will reach out to a 100 people per day and that takes about five hours and if you're like wow that sounds like a lot of work like welcome to business um like and if you're starting out it's welcome to business and being broke at the same time it is what it is and so the asset that you have right now is time and you got to spend as much as you can on it and so make making sure that okay if I'm putting five hours a day it's 20 20 Outreach attempts per hour and that's very inefficient the better you get you'll get dialers and Automation and technology that can help you do that stuff faster but if you're like I'm poor and I don't understand any of this start with that and that's your first five hours of the day I especially when I had less means I started doing that around like 4: or 5 in the morning and then I'd be done around 10ish and then at that point I'd start my day and so your job as the founder in the beginning is always promotion like that's the job is let people know that you exist because right now you're just in obscurity like no one knows like it's only exists in your mind you have to make it exist outside right see a little spiritual [Music] okay they know the audience right yeah so there's thank thank you for that and there's uh I want to I'm double click on a few things he said one is one of the deep spiritual principles which actually you talked about without knowing it is there's a Keta word which is a medicine language um you that's largely associated with iwasa communities and the word is iy and the word is reciprocity and so one of the things we believe in that lineage which I studied when is that this is a universal law of the universe that reciprocity that there is a natural give and take that when you're in accord with that give and take things are going to be a lot easier like a lot more fluid for you it's actually going to help so when you're giving there's a natural impulse for someone to give back and it's just actually a law of the universe and when you are selling cheap or taking advantage of people you're going to be acting in accord with that reciprocity and actually there's going to be some aspect of yourself which will make yourself fail because you'll feel like you don't deserve it because you know you're eyy your reciprocity is off right so finding that right level of relation reciprocity that's the way it was with Anna I knew every time we sold an Alpha Brain for $30 that they were getting a $30 worth plus or even more worth of that of that supplement they were getting so when people ask like oh you know you're selling so many and just how you feel I like yeah every single transaction every customer service transaction iy is we have a positive account balance and whenever I can I'm just depositing in that account balance and it's proved to be you know where the universe itself and people and myself always feel in right Accord so I think that's one of these principles that's it's a crossover principle it applies to business and it applies to this more kind of spiritual mindset as well and the other thing that I really want to you know double click on is you kind of know when you got something that people really want you know like if you're hitting up your close friends and you're trying to offer your service or the thing that you think is awesome and you really have to convince them like oh come on like and and they're like ah yeah I don't know like ah yeah you know I'll try that when I get a chance and blah blah blah it's probably not the thing but I remember like the most successful things I had alphabrain of course was one of those we had a sample batch we gave it out to a few people who are curious and then they couldn't stop hounding me to get more of my sample batch right I was like yeah like we got a little more there'll be I'm actually out like I'm sorry like you could just feel it you could feel the demand coming in and of course that ended up you know extending out to the whole rest of the world you know and so there's another you know I'm I'm starting another supplement company actually now and there's another product we've been exploring a lot of different things people like yeah I tried it I thought it was good you know like caramel apple flavor was kind of weird for me but blah blah blah but then there's this one that we got it I'm not going to share what it is but there's this one thing we got and our whole team is like yo yo you got you got any more of those samples you got you got any more of those samples bro and I'm like oh we got a winner here we got a winner because I'm not having to convince my homies to take it they're like they're hounding me like hey can I can I dip in that private stash you know and so and that's the same with Services too you know it's like when you know one of the things that I don't do as a business but I was apprenticed in a particular type of bodyw work I don't have to Hound my friends if I want to offer them some body work they're like yeah when now sure like well don't you want to eat dinner they're like nah it you know what I mean so like when you know you have something good it'll be reflected to you by your inner circle and then when you feel that really like uphill like it's uphill like come do this healing come do this thing and it's like hard to get your friends to do it it's probably going to translate to being hard to get the world to do it and I will double click back on uh on uh giving out free samples you know what I mean like the like from a from a products perspective you're you're giving it out for free and so fundamentally you're incurring a cost to give this thing to somebody and in your mind you're incurring this huge cost cuz there's also all the time of formulation and and and getting the the right cap size and like all that stuff and and you're giving them out and the person just receives it in two seconds but they don't know that it took you five months to put that whole thing together and so you feel like you're like you need to love this right um but I think that you do it kind of effortlessly just from me just from the five seconds of me just saying this um is that you're also giving without a lot of expectation and the only expectation you have is that you tell me that it sucks like just you serve me better by telling me it blows than by lying to me and so this is also just like one of eight ways of talking to let people know about your stuff is letting friends know I just start there because it's the cheapest and easiest um but with uh Services you can do the same thing but the nice thing with Services is that you can change it kind of in real time based on feedback and so asking someone if you can do something for them uh you can change what you're asking to do for them until they're like yeah I would love that can you take care of that for me and then all of a sudden you can see the interest their eyes let up they engage with you and you're like okay maybe maybe this is right but the whole time though and maybe this committee will love this aspect is that if you give without reciprocity um you only get you because like the sorry give without expectation uh then anything you get back is just bonus if you're giving in order to then you will always be let down and that's like that's just hard to take but it's just reality and so I think the the more you can do that I mean the reason I built my brand in this way was just on the thesis that if I gave more stuff that was better than everyone else in my mind I'm sure there many people who do better things um for free that eventually I had no I have no Monet you know like there's no monetization master plan it's just eventually uh an opportunity would come up that would make sense and so U and it has worked out that way but you me the amount of people that you know asked me to do X Y and Z for for a quick you know whatever money dollar uh is a lot and it continues to increase but it's because they can see that there's this Goodwill deposit um in audience and it's just that the audience size just starts really small and it grows and when I was uh starting out one of the easiest frames of mind that helped me get through kind of like the shitty the second way of letting people know is letting people know publicly when you post stuff on social media for free um is that when I would see like I would click and see the little views and it' be like 17 views um I actually imagined a room like this so I was like well if I would get in front of a room of 17 people or 22 people and they wanted to hear something that I had I was like that would feel fine I'd be like oh cool they like it's like a class presentation and so just framing it that way is like in the real world rather than like looking at Instagram and social media metrics as and comparing those metrics to Mr Beast but just comparing it to the real world I was like oh this is actually making an impact and so that actually got me through a lot of the early uh because what lot people don't know is like my podcast I was telling the beginning of the story earlier um I made I made podcast for I'm now on my sixth as of July I think my sixth year of making podcasts for the first four and a half years uh I average two to 3,000 downloads a month and that's okay there's you know nothing wrong with that um but it stayed there for the entire time but for me I was like I'm giving a keynote every month all right that's not bad you know three you know three times a week I do that in total and that the all of those together is a keynote every month and I was like that's not bad so if I had to talk for a full day because that's pretty much what a month of podcast was I was like for a keynote that's a worthy trade and so I think if you can reframe it that way it can get you through the early the Early uh the early rise and comparison comparison is such a is such a challenging thing to deal with because you start comparing yourself to the people that you follow and the people that you like you can get in some really negative psychological feedback loops like I remember my podcast kind of plateaued around 2015 2016 at like 25,000 30,000 people and it was just stuck there and I got like kind of hella discouraged and then somebody goes hey when was the last time you went to a basketball game man I was like oh yeah you know I went to a Lakers game you know a little while ago I like how many people are sitting there I was like uh I don't know 20,000 they're like yeah yeah your podcast is reaching more than that and I was like imagining that Stadium I was like oh you're right why am I why am I being disappointed it was because I was looking at Rogan's numbers I was looking at Tim Ferris numbers and these are my homies you know so I was like well these are my friends and they're killing it and I'm stuck but that perspective shift shifted everything and it like reinvigorated my love for the podcast and it's important to yes look out at the field and be aspirational about it but comparison is is really the root of all difficulty one thing I say is competition is sacred comparison is profane you know what I mean like compete go out there compete set your sights on some of those people and be like all right like I think I got the goods I'm coming for you in the in that loving friendly competitive way same way I'll come at it on the basketball court I'm G come for you I'm a come for your ankles you know like let's go and and then at the same time but not getting lost in that comparison which then demoralizes you and then puts you into a state of inaction I actually really like this topic a lot um and I won't I won't spend too much on it but the Nuance of comparison I think I find really interesting uh because I find comparison to be an exceptional tool it's the Judgment of the comparison that hurts right so it's like I can say that Rogan is doing better than me period and that's objective there's nothing wrong with that he's doing better than me he's got more more listeners all that stuff it's where it's like he's doing better than me and therefore I suck is the it's the second part I think that that people get in trouble with so like I love comparison from a measuring tool perspective just not as a judgment tool and I think that's been helpful for me because then I can like look at everyone's stuff and say what is he doing better than me because one of my one of my big rules in business is that if someone's making more money than they're better the game of business in some way and that has served me really well because a lot of people don't like to well I don't like what they do it's like okay well do they make more money than you yeah but they're not what are they doing better than you because they're making more money than you and the nice thing in business is that it's a it's a very objective game like you can see how someone's doing objectively like they're doing better and so it means that they're doing something or they did something prior to that point better than you did and I think dissecting that like the reason that I'm on this stage right now is because Kylie Jenner was on the front of four orbs when she was 20 and when I was 27 I felt like really cool like I was I I think I told him just under 20 million that year personally and I was like I'm good at business and then she was a billionaire and she was a girl and she was eight years younger than me and I was like what the and so now I did feel terrible um but I was like she is doing something she understands something that I don't understand and at that point it was brand I didn't get it I was super transactional with business which was just like I was all about like conversion optimization how much like what our CPM like cost per impression how much are we spending how much we making like what are conversion rates across the whole process like where can we do more upset all that kind of stuff like it was all Quant and when I saw her just like overnight become a billionaire I questioned kind of like my fundamentals around business and it was that and then the Rock and then Clooney and then Conor McGregor and Huda Beauty all of these people starting these billion dollar Brands overnight that I was like I don't understand brand and so that's what actually launched me into doing this it was only because of that and it was but I think if if there had been a flip side of like well it's just because Chris Jenner's her mom and whatever to protect me like my ego then I don't think I'd be here and so I think it is valuable to compare um and be able to pull out like what what they're doing better than you and then just looked at that objectively like I'm not saying I want her brand but I can see what she did and then emulate that in my way or at least that's how I see and and prove it if you believe you're better go prove it yeah you know like that's the reality so many times you know you'll get this and people I mean people do it with me all the time you know they'll be like oh yeah must have been nice with Daddy's Money my dad my dad went insane when I was 30 like literally lost his mind you know like and I started on it at 31 and there was not a dollar that came from my family or came from my parents but my dad was a very successful Commodities Trader he's written about him books and things like like that people don't know the story but they want to say that I was successful because oh it must have been Daddy's Money must be nice must be nice and then you get all of these things where people try to discredit your success based upon their own things because they don't want to look hard at themselves and say maybe I could have done that too you know maybe I could have raised I mean I raised a 100 on it started as a ultimately a ninef figure business it started with I scraped together $110,000 from one my best friend bod and another investment banker who I'd done a lot of work with and working with other companies and making pitch decks for them and just helping them out and neither one of them even looked at the business plan but they like they love me and they're like yeah bro and like are you into this and I was like yeah I'm into this and we never had a series a we never raised any other money we just grew it from that amount of money to a n figure business and that's just actually how it went now I'm not going to discredit the my father implanted psychological ideas because he made his own money he started with a $330,000 account turn turned it into 40 million as a Pioneer in Futures Trading so he believed in himself and he gave me that belief and that is a privilege that I had a model of somebody who said Son like if you're good enough you'll be able to make it but that's what I got and and that's invaluable granted yeah but people will always try to discredit what you do because they don't want to look hard in the mirror and say I could do that too like it's possible for me I really like this a lot um no I do I really do the uh because the because the the must be nice perspective is actually one of my favorites um because there's I feel like if you're playing like chess right they're like making a chess move at you like must be nice and they they want to discredit whatever it is but I I've um I spent a lot of time trying to think about like the right what's the right answer um and at least for me it's been um you're right and then you just keep living your life you know what I mean so because like at at the end of the day like let's say all of My Success I owe to my Father which I came out as a sperm so sure um you're right and and to the same degree I was born in America I was born as a man both my parents were there for the first 5 years you know what I mean so like sure you're right and because at the end of the day like the the stuff needs doing right and so like to build a business of this size these are the activities that create that and so you can be an absolute douchebag you can be a white guy a black guy girl in Pakistan whatever and if you do those things you get the outcome if more people find out about your stuff you will make more money fight me if right it just like there there there I I try and make bets on the objective truths and so like for and I'm I'm circling back to money here we're get back to it um if you want to you want to win on plans that don't require luck and so if more people find out about my stuff I'll make more money okay if more people like my product and tell their friends I'll make more money if every person who bought my product told at least one other person I would never need to advertise ever again so if that were the actual problem why would I not put all of my emphasis on solving for that like that alone because if you accomplish that one thing you're done and so people spend a lot of time on the logo the brand the website the colors the whatever when it's like how do I make it so good that people a are like oh my God I have to get this and let me tell my friends about it after I've consumed it and if that's where you put the disproportionate amount of your energy you'll get a leveraged return and so I talk about leverage a lot because I just believe the game of business about leverage and to Define leverage it's the difference between what you put in and what you get out right so if I do if I if I DM people one-on-one I put a certain amount of effort in I get some something out if I use a dialer that does 10 times the amount I put the same amount in in terms of effort but I might get 10 times back so that technology gave me leverage right if I can borrow someone else's money to start a business 10 times bigger right off the betat that's leverage right it's just the difference between what you put in and what you get out and brand for example the reason I think it's a a worthwhile Endeavor to invest in it is because if you build it one time then you can use it multiple times so it's the idea of um build once sell twice so if you can build things that like I mean you spent a long time on alpab brain and the work that you did on the onset of alpab brain continues to pay dividends to this day that's a high leverage activity in those early years you put a lot in but then there was significantly more on the tail and so the rush is ultimately what kills most people because they're so concerned about like I need to make money tomorrow and I can appreciate the short-term need for that if any of you guys know my story um I get that but as much as you possibly can balance how can I solve a problem for good so so that I can just move on to the next boss rather than having to keep fighting every month to pay payroll or pay myself or make whatever nut I need to make and so building a brand works like that in terms of if more people my reputation can spread on its own then I don't need to do more advertising to get more customers and so I'm gonna I'm going to hit the the eight real quick just because I think it'll be helpful for for you guys but you can reach out to friends oneon-one you can reach out to strangers one-on-one that's cold calls cold DMS cold messages whatever you start with friends cuz they're a little nicer all right go to strangers you can post content publicly or you can run paid ads those are the only four things that you can do to let other people know about your stuff and so right now if you're like the majority of my day I'm not making money and I'm not doing those four things you're you're you're not going to make more money like those are the only four things that one person can do to let other people know about their stuff period now the more leverage is getting other people to do that stuff for you and so version number one is that you get your customers to do those core four for you they tell their friends they tell Str strangers they tell their Audience by posting about your stuff leaving a review leaving a testimonial whatever or now they're probably not going to run ads for you but those are the four things that that customer could do on your behalf you could get uh an employee to do that so you hire some you say hey I've got this system where I reach out to this many people are cold cold email as many people are cold call this many people I make this amount of content can you I'll record these videos can you edit it and cut it so I can do more right so you get some time back so now you just record and then they do all the cutting and distribution so you get more for what you put in leverage you can hire an advertising agency to either make content for you or run ads for you right those are things that there's also cold outbound agencies that do that as well you can hire an agency to do it and then finally you can get Affiliates which is just other businesses that already have your customers and so Affiliates also work like influencers so like Rogan would be an AFF now he had equity and whatnot but fundamentally somebody who already has your customer base they've already done all of the work to assemble everyone they already have everyone's attention and then you make and this is why the uh the the thing that we started with is with deals um you make an agreement that makes sense and so maybe you do have a friend that has a medium-sized following treat them as though they weren't your friend and ask them to treat you like you're not friends and then if you can still come to a deal then you'll both then you'll both benefit because you would have done it anyways with a stranger and so those are the four ways you can get other people to promote your stuff and so right now if you're not using the core 4 because you can use the core 4 to get those other ones so you can use the core 4 paid ads Outreach posting content to get employees you can use those to get Affiliates you can use those to get agencies you can use those to get customers and then that's the cycle so you use those four get customers and then those customers use the core four to get you more customers use the core four to get Affiliates who then get your customers and then it goes in around and around do this making sense okay so if you're not spending your time doing that you are not spending your time trying to build your business what about for people who are listening right now and they're like damn I don't know if my product's that good I don't know if my services that good and they're thinking like I think I got to go back and id8 and figure this out yeah like what am what what are you what advice do you have for that type of person so there is a baseline of promotion that you have to have because if like again like let's base this on absolutes if no one knows about your stuff you will make nothing ever so someone has to find out about it so you have to promote first you have to let people know that you have a thing now scaling that promotion you only want to do when you know the thing's good but in the beginning you will have to let people know and you have to accept the fact that it won't be as good and the reason I'm a big fan of the samples is that it lowers the stakes especially on your personal uh reputation and so you're like hey I've got this new service that I'm trying out can I try it out like can I can I give it to you can I can I gift this to you please right now if no one wants to take your free thing that's great feedback like this is probably not something they're going to pay for right but but if people are willing to take the free thing there's three ways you can make money from somebody you give away for free number one is that they become a paying customer awesome they're like hey uh I've given this to so many people that I actually can't take the Demand anymore and so I have to put a pay wall up because I just my time's limited and people get that of course well I am willing to pay great version number one version number two is they say you know what I can't financially whatever right now but I think this is awesome and you're like great can you leave me a review and so then they leave you a testimonial case study whatever so that you can then use that to get to another customer um and uh the third way I have in my book but I forgot what it is but it's in there um but that's but the but basically they can leave you a review they can send you a referral or they actually I think I just called two as one they can they can get you another customer as a referral yeah so they leave your review get you another customer or they themselves become a customer for you and all of those come from you just giving something for free and so if you're like okay well my sucks fine give it to them for free and then ask them for feedback and that's so if you you want to make a trade it's like listen I'm not going to charge you I just want honest feedback on how I can make it better that's it and if they like it review if they don't like it personal review not public review and then you spin the wheel of iteration and like if I can drill this into everyone's mind like you're not going to get it right the first time like I love the I mean I love the matrix it's my favorite movie of all time but he says like everyone Falls the first time when they're talking about Neo trying to make the big jump and like I just think it's so true with with the business stuff is like everyone Falls the first time and everyone has this idea that they're they're going to be Jeff basos on their first swing and like almost every entrepreneur with the exception of basos and Zuck have many a a graveyard of failed attempts but they're not really failed attempts they're like oh yeah that's when I learned that this thing was really important so then my second business I did this better and that one did better than my first business did but then your second business you're like oh I didn't understand this part and then you make your third business and so like every one of the businesses just becomes lessons to ultimately build the asset that matters which is you and that's at least how I see it which is that like the friction we get from the marketplace only serves to build who we become because the end of the day we're going to die everyone's going to forget about us it's not goingon to sorry this is me sorry um yeah and and it's not ultimately going to matter whatever accumulation we have here and so I I see that as my uh my impr progress Journey so that I can get rewarded for the actions that I'm doing despite not necessarily having uh like money manifest see there you go uh in front of me immediately right [Laughter] and that's that's at least the the framework that I have with it but if your sucks give it to more people and ask them for feedback and then just ask him what do would take to suck less and eventually it'll be good one of the things that has really been helpful for me is there was a time when I was trying to develop like this mouse trap that would be valuable not an actual mouse trap using that as an example something some widget some service that would be beneficial to this Niche audience that I was imagining existed and that never worked the only thing that ever worked was do I want to be a customer of this now like what do I want now the alpab brain was born out of a conversation with me and Joe Rogan what supplement would you like the most because I had a couple other failed supplements they worked for me but I was in this kind of unique position I like no I'd like an allnatural cognitive enhancer an utopic it's like all right great we're going to make one because I wanted one too so I was a customer and I'm still a customer I think I got a alpab brain in my in my pocket right now right for my for my talk coming up it's in my other pocket but regardless trust me I was a customer yeah I was a customer and that's one of the important things and then it's not only are you a customer now you can also go back in time and be like man when I was 25 what would 25-year-old Aubrey really have loved because you have that data and you know it you know that if you would have bought this when you're were 25 then maybe that's your audience that's okay or maybe your H your hypothesizing like what is the me of tomorrow or 5 years from now or three years from now what does that person yeah really want but using yourself as a guide and then not only using yourself as a guide but then also if you're going to be the founder of this you got to actually embody and represent what that thing you're selling on its slogan our tagline was total human optimization if I was a lazy fat slob and I'm trying to Market a company about total optimization people look at me and go like really bro like really because you have to have the clout also to represent that so if you're offering even a service you know about regulating your emotions but your emotions are all over the place maybe that's not the right service for you like find what you're actually competent at and then say like all right what could have helped me get more competent if I would have offered that to me five years ago Etc you know and that's also it it's sometimes it can work I do know some people who sell you know weight loss supplements who are about 100 pound overweight and it's like you know but they still are able to do it so it's not that it always fails but to me that's the shest guideline to be like all right what's your core competency can you prove it you know do you have the evidence you back it up and are you a customer or were you a customer or will you be a customer and all of those have to hit the checks I agree wholeheartedly with all of that um I would I was I was just I would I would honestly make the same three points in a different way um just to add color or Texture to it so number one is why combinator if you're familiar with them they're like pretty big investors in Silicon Valley and now one of their stipulations is that they want Founders to have lived with the problem for 5 to 10 years so whatever the problem that is you're trying to solve you're like man I just wish this didn't suck this much and if you've really lived with it like I've had breathing problems for my whole life and so like I've always like thought like if I were to start some sort of business around that that would be one that I've tried every Solution that's out there and I can tell you the pros and cons and I would want to become which is point two for you is like I'd want to become a customer of that business from a from a tactical perspective so point two um this is this is Services specific what I'd recommend doing is giving way more away uh than would be reasonable to charge for so you start with the kitchen snc and you basically keep adding things to how much you're willing to do for someone until eventually you're like in their house cooking them dinner and you're like okay would you do this they're like yeah fine and you're like okay now I can I can start trimming things from this and thinking okay there's a hundred things that I could that I am I committed to doing for these first five people it turns out 80% of them they don't really care about and I can actually charge the same price and eliminate 80% so it's like get the yes and then work backwards because sometimes it's a lot because with physical products you basically have to keep iterating on the product until you get the yes with Services you can just keep adding and then when you get the yes work backwards and so that's just a tactical thing and so give you a story about that is when I was starting in the gym business um I kept trying to sell memberships and it just like really didn't work well for me now that probably because I sucked at sales and I I didn't really think Jim members was that valuable myself I was a cheap skate um I like I know 50 bucks a month um you and me sister uh and so so but then I was like well what do they really want I was like what they really want is to lose weight they don't really care about the gym they just want to lose weight and so I was like well what would actually for somebody to lose weight and I was like well I was like What if I texted you every morning just to make sure that like you were you were on point what if you you could send me all your meals every day and I would I would like make sure that they were matching and what if uh like when you go out to eat uh I'll give you a list on how you can do that at restaurants and like what if can I drink I'm like you can if you do it on this this way and what if uh and and and when you work out do you want me there with you yeah that'd be awesome okay I'll do that and then so I started adding all these things and supplements that you probably want to take along the way and I had this big amalgamation of stuff that everyone needs because whenever you're solving a problem there's always one another problem that's going to happen if you actually solve it but there's also like a 100 micro problems so if someone joins a gym it's like well they're like shoot I don't have gym clothes uh I don't know how to buy the right food I don't know how to cook the food I don't know how to store the food I don't know how to make the food taste good I don't know how to work out I don't know like there's all these other problems and so it was thinking forward of like how could I solve all of them and that becomes this huge thing and then I started offering that and people were like yeah I'll do that and I was like great but I was able to charge way more than I did before because I was actually solving the problem rather than selling a commoditized solution that they could price compare me with somebody down the street and so that was point to is give away the kitchen sink and then trim down to make it profitable because in the beginning you're not worried about that yet you want to get people to actually want to buy your and then you can worry about the profit and then um the third point that you made uh was about legitimacy so I see this on the content side too and I'm sure many of you guys see this which is you know the girl who's an emotional wreck giving emotional advice or the couple that you're like and they're like come to our love workshop and you're like I don't know if I want to and so um I'm just a big advocate of proof over everything because your message is consumed within a context so like Elon Musk can tweet like shits are awesome I'm on the toilet and it'll get a million likes because but if you tweet that you probably won't right some people be like are you okay does someone steal your phone right um but it's it's consumed within that context and so I would say that the context on a on a on a scale from one to 100 of the message 90% of the message is your background 10% is the actual thing that you're saying and so I'm not I'm I'm not an idiot when it comes to the fact that like I had to go build a $100 million net worth have a $50 million exit all these other things before people listen to my podcast I made the podcast for five years no one gave a but then when I had objective proof then people went back and listened to five years of podcasts on road trip straight through like this is gold and then they told people but they couldn't consume the message because there was no context around it and so I would say solve for context and then the message kind of takes care of itself because also when you do have the proof you also will have the pudding because you got there and so you do know how to get there whereas if you are on the journey and I think there's an element to like documenting something like hey we're working on our relationship is very different than come listen to me for my relationship it's I ate this for breakfast I thought it tasted good versus this is what you should have for breakfast it's Nuance but it's different and so um if you're on the come up I would stick to how I rather than how to and it will protect your reputation when you're making this content because no one can no one can shake a finger at you you're like I'm just saying what worked for me you can do whatever you want this is what worked for me and I think that will help you get over some of the creation block for those of you who do choose to make content to advertise your stuff um and it certainly has help has worked for me one of the things that I think I really like about what I've heard you say on other shows before is that we can look at anything as a trainable skill we can look at anything as a trainable skill and one of the probably most beneficial skills that I've had that has been absolutely you know invaluable and inextricable from my success is the ability to make friends the ability to make friends and somebody think oh well that's just natural that's just you know just you're just born with it h well yes there's some certain attributes that some people have certain personality traits Etc but actually learning how to make friends is also a trainable skill and part of that trainable skill like how did Joe Rogan and I get to be friends well I realized early on that people were interested if I had vast experience or unique novel things stories I could share things that I could talk about so by the time I met Joe Rogan I was let's see I met him when I was like 28 so I was 10 years into my own psychotic journey and I heard him talking about psychedelics and I was like damn I got a decade's worth of experience I can tell them some crazy stories and we can talk about that and it was hella hard to get that first meeting I had to come up with all kinds of different reasons and advertising this Fleshlight on his podcast and I was like and he was like this is so weird but there was no podcast advertising so I recogniz I was like we we should meet for coffee to talk about he's like really no you can just I'll just send you the check like I like no no no like let me for coffee because I trusted that if we met yeah that we would become friends I trusted that so I I bet the whole thing on even willing to lose a deal nope no deal unless we just meet for coffee well that coffee turned into a three and a half hour dinner turned to him inviting me on the podcast turned to a two-year friendship that two-year friendship turned into a Business Partnership and that was one of the ways that I was able to be successful and it's still one of the ways in life today is I trust that through all of the different experiences the challenging things that I've done the interesting books that I've read becoming a really interesting person a person that someone wants to hang out with and also knowing how to navigate and regulate my energy so that I'm bringing a s super like positive fun competitive whatever Vibe into a situation so that my presence is additive to their experience with me and that's something that not only is somewhat natural but also I'm constantly cultivating and I think for people out there who want to know like how do I build a network like Aubrey how do I have all of these friends that you can do stuff well build Mastery Mastery is irresistibly attractive like I will talk to the world you know foot pingpong Champion if they're the like I see those on Instagram I don't know my Instagram feed is always like people doing the craziest I'm like whoa I will have lunch with you like you were playing soccer ping pong and you're killing it you know like if you've done something like put yourself through the path of Mastery I'm going to want to hang out with you maybe that friendship won't last long but there's something to training that skill so that you can become a friend to anybody that you meet I love all of that I do I agree with all of it um okay so this might be really valuable for you guys right now there's the person you are and there's probably hopefully the person you want to be and there's a gap right we agree on that okay so that person that you want to be has traits and has skills that you don't have right and I think that traits have been a word that we use as shorthand for bucket of skills and when I say it that way it I think it'll help make more sense and so we might make the argument that you were more charismatic you would make more money let's say that that was that was the argument we were going to do we're like okay for whatever profession I'm in that would be true to me okay fantastic be charismatic what does that mean and so right now if so the more skilled you are the more General a command can be given to you and you can still be effective so someone can at this point say hey Alex can you start this business and I would say sure that's a very General command now one level below that it might be like can you advertise this product and I would say yeah I can do that one level below that would be do you think you can make a post that people would click on to buy this thing and I would say yes and we can keep going down but the point is that if you have a skill set that you want to attain and you don't know how to attain it it's because you are using a bucketed word that represents many smaller skills and so I'll use Charisma as the example so if we say this guy's so charismatic you have to ask yourself or at least I ask myself why well I describe him as charismatic because when he walks in the room he greets everyone immediately he uses people's names he shakes their hand and he makes eye contact when someone's talking to him he makes eye contact and he nods his head when he talks he looks there and he looks at them and he bounces back and forth um he asks questions up to the other person about themselves when he's talking now that's like seven things if I said do you think you can nod your head when someone else is talking and keep eye contact you'd probably say yeah I can do that say great that's one of seven skills that it takes to master until eventually people will describe you as charismatic and so if you don't understand how to do something you just need to break it into a smaller chunk because like we teach toddlers how to speak by approximating sound it's like and then they they're like they and you're like clap clap clap clap clap clap and they're like ah and then we keep doing it until eventually they're like M and you're like yeah right and so that's their first word and then you start comparing things between what they know and what they don't know and making an association you say bottle right and then they're like bottle and so they like they can see with their eyes something they know and then they don't know the word and so that's how we teach things and so if we consider I like to think of myself as a toddler from a learning perspective persective because it allows you to take your ego away from a skill so a lot of times the skills that we need to learn are on the other side of just kind of like humbling ourselves and saying you know what if someone said go advertise I don't think I would be able to do it it's like okay well let's break it down into six things do you think you can message someone I can do that well that's that's a component of advertising do you think you could make a post that talks about something that's interesting maybe okay well do you think that you could ask a question in the beginning of a video that someone would find interesting yeah I can do that okay well then after that question we then would make some sort of explanation around why we ask that okay I think I can do that right okay then at the end we want to reward them for the ultimate thing that we asked them to begin with great well great if you record that and you post it that's a piece of content okay I can do that and so the reason that like I write the books that I do and I try try to try to make the content in that way is that if you can if there's something that a trait you want or a skill you want and you don't understand how to get it it means you just need to break it into smaller pieces because if you break it down low enough you'll be able to do it and then when you have that this is I'm I'm going to full 180 here so remember when I talked about the beginning about you just need to figure out how much money you want to make every day right I need to make $3,000 a day okay that means I need to sell this many units well then you connect that and you sell this many units to whatever activity or input you have to do because if you look at your calendar in terms of the things that you actually have to do with your time then it gets a lot easier to plan and allocate because your time's your only resource especially if you're starting out and so it's like I need to make 100 DMS because that will get me one customer and one customer is worth $200 great that means that if I do this every day I'll make $6,000 this month okay based on the economics will will those people buy again next month if so then great then next month I do 12 next month I do 18 at that month I hire somebody who who's going to do it for $3,000 a month and then I can keep stacking and then now I've got one person doing the same thing and the business keep stacking I'm like wow I'm a businessman right but that's the idea is that like I I believe in in breaking things down to the absolute lowest level so that you can make it manageable and then the more skilled you become the more you can bucket all of those activities like if someone's going to say hey Alex go Advertiser if Aubrey's like hey I want to do this this thing with you this new supplement do you think you could write an email and this is the headline for the email and this I'd be like I got it like I'm good you know what I like understood um but if you was talking to somebody who is Super Junior that's probably how we would describe it but the only instance is that you are the person who's Junior in this conversation and you are the one talking to yourself and that's that's the Gap what is this person that I want to become have in terms of skills and traits can I break those things down into individuals and then can I break that into activities that I can do on a daily basis and does that ladder up to the amount of money that I ultimately want to make if so great but stopping let's go let's go there's and there's certain traits that people think also that you just have you don't have one of those would be humor right humor well humor is something that some people have a natural Affinity towards they're just kind of naturally funny they've probably been funny for a while maybe they had a funny parent I don't know what it is however there's improv classes that are available in every City that help you think fast think in unique ways and actually practice you practice being funny and like this idea of like oh he's so funny and of course everybody wants somebody around who's funny because if you're hanging out and someone's funny then the whole energy of the environment raises to another level so your energy is actually cultivating another positive energy feedback loop because you're creating laughter in the space so go to a improv class practice being funny yeah and then you get more funny and then you find that meeting you know somewhere out there and something's going on and you come up up with that funny thing or you improv this little skit and then you get a couple people laughing and then the people gravitate more towards you and they're like oh and then all of a sudden that friendship kind of can blossom off of this thing where you just have given yourself well I'm not that funny well okay work on it you know get better you know like there's there's very few things that you can't train yourself up to that you want just height yeah and then you know there's but then there's also like all right how do I appear with that kind of largess largess of presence and being and that's also trainable you know like like literally all of these things even your physical attractiveness you know they've even done studies about how you stand how you present yourself I've seen a lot of people who look a lot of different ways but you just look at them and you go wow that person is beautiful right and it's not actually the VIS that they're wearing and all of these people chasing all this Instagram filter Beauty to me I'm like that's not beautiful to me to me in my eyes I don't see that like I see yes I recognize that there are you know physically attractive traits and qualities but beauty is something that also can emanate from within is a skill that you can actually train yourself to actually be participatory in to the highest degree possible so all of these different disclaimers of why you can't be this or do this throw all that out the window whatever you want you can train that skill I really believe that I'm going to piggyback on that with with violence um so um so like Vol the the reason I want to bring that up is because one of I'll tell you the story because I think it'll it might hit home so when I was starting my first gym um I had a mentor and I wanted to advertise and get people to find out about my gym and he had a bunch of tanning salons and I was like hey man like how do you how do you get people in the tanning salon he's like oh we just put flyers out and I was like oh duh I'll go do that and so I putting out 300 Flyers because you know paper was expensive and I was broke um and so we put out 300 flyers and uh you know I get I get back to the gym and I was like 300 Flyers 300 members I was like boom I'm going to be full and uh I did get a call and it was a guy and he was like hey did you put this fly on my car and I was like I did as a matter of fat kind sir um and he was like you scratched my Mercedes and I just I remember just like immediately panging up the phone like I didn't even think about it it was like a it was like I don't have the money for this and uh thank God he never called back but that was the only call I got from my 300 flyers and and so I called I called the mentor back up kind of pissed off I was like hey man like he's like oh how'd that Flyers thing go I was like I'll tell you I was like it went terrible I didn't no one I was like I spent money on the Flyers and you know we went out there put them all out and I was like and I all I got was a call from a pissed-off guy and he's like well how many did you put out I was like I put out 300 he was like 300 like yeah 300 he's like oh not you can't really know anything off 300 and I was like what do you mean he's like I mean we test with 5,000 just to like see if any if like one flyer is good or not he's like and if it's good we do 5,000 every day I know and uh I heard that and I and I felt like such a pansy and um I remember thinking to myself that was 150,000 Flyers a month that he was putting out to Market his business and I I was calling him to get pissed off at him for the fact that my 300 didn't work and so there's this big misconception when you're starting out about the volume of effort that is required to win and one of the the fastest shortcuts is to get around somebody who's already doing that level of volume because you just you you you leap frog levels right I remember I had a a guy and I was doing just for context on that math I was doing one 5,000th of his effort so a lot of people were like oh he he doesn't work twice as hard he was working 5,000 times harder than me and so like people can't comprehend that because everyone's like special Snowflake and whatnot but from an output perspective it was it was it wasn't I was I was a rounding error I literally was rounded to zero in terms of my level of effort and a lot of the beginners that see who are getting getting their business going when I say beginners I I I I'm how do I say that the right way um making less than a million bucks I'm still including that in in this kind of concept with with volume is that it takes so much more volume and for so much longer than you expect and so the best thing to do that I found is to find people who are actually succeeding at that level and find out how much volume they're doing and then then double it and the reason I say double it is because they're probably better than you at it like if I make 100 phone calls and you make 100 phone calls and assuming no reputation whatever I'll probably be better than you at it why because I did it for a long time right that's all I did for a very long time to get people into a gym and so my skill gives me Leverage What I get back from what I put in so I put 100 calls in you put 100 calls in I get 10 appointments you get one or zero more leverage but if you do 200 you'll be able to start catching up to me in terms of skill you'll start getting better and better and better until eventually you're also getting 10 and now you're getting 10% of 200 now you're getting 20 right you're getting more than I am but you have to put that extra like there's the work that you do to match someone and then there's the work that you do to catch up and I think that frame has been helpful for me when I was coming up because um I don't know where everyone's at in terms of their their family their life whatever but I remember looking at I had a mind you I started really young well really young nowadays isn't young but I was 23 when I started my gym and there was a competitor down the street and I remember seeing him on Facebook like post a picture of him and his wife and his kids and I was like yeah I was like he's enjoying his time I was like I'm calling right now I was like I'm getting ahead of him now I'm competitive like that um and so I I kind of like those Rocky cut scene days but the issue is that the rocky cut scene lasts like two minutes in a movie and it can last five years in real life yeah this is this is something that I think we lose sight of we think of that we imagine that these rewards are going to be instant they're just not you know they're It's a Grind and it's not only a grind and if some business just seems to pop off and take off what you're not seeing is the countless failures that happened for 10 years prior so that gave them the leverage so that when they started this new thing it just took off right so it's like there's no getting around that amount of effort and that amount of work and again you can disclaim and say all must be nice or you could say like huh interesting what did that person do to get them in that position to be that way how did brella get to be as funny as he is how did he get to be on wilding out and clown and everybody else out there well he's got the Reps he's got the reps to do it he's put in the time and effort and yes yeah keep going keep going yeah and you guys are going to get to hear him who's Bella get him uh but that's like that's the fundamental thing and and so I want I want to shift gears a little bit because you have a really powerful tool it's a tool that I use as well and the tool is a psychological tool and the psychological tool and I'll let you explain it is you actually talk to an older version of yourself to give yourself the kind of guidance and the pep talk or whatever it is that you might need so tell us how you came to that practice okay so first off if we're looking at you like who here could use advice on something in their life right I mean right everyone everyone could use advice and so if I'm looking at a source for advice I want three things I want competence I want context and I want alignment so like if someone's uh competent and they have context but they're misaligned that is a recipe for getting they know they like know exactly what they're doing they know exactly what would hurt you and they are not aligned with you like it's a great way to get destroyed and so one of the issues that I saw with a lot of modern like uh therapies Etc was that I felt like the incentives were misaligned and I would often spend a lot of time trying to I would spend 90 minutes trying to provide context for one decision to somebody who might not even be as competent as me within whatever the regard was and their alignment was for me to come back again next week and so I was like I'm missing two or all three of the three things here and so that just felt like a broken model to me and so I was like okay well then what would what would it look like to have somebody who has all three and so I stumbled upon this um so the psychological principle called the Solomon Paradox and so King Solomon as you know um biblical figure known for his wisdom and his wealth but what was interesting about him as a character was that he also had a personal life that was in shambles so he was known for like cheating on his wife and party and he sent somebody you know somebody his son was a mess and he died and all all this stuff and so it's like how can this man be so wise and yet the other side of his life is a mess and so that's why they call it the Solomon Paradox is that people would come to him because his advice to other people was so good but he wasn't very good at following it for himself and so they've now proven this that when they whitewash someone's own life they literally feed them back the stats about their own life just as a whitewashed character so they don't need know they're reading about themselves and they say what do you think this person should do they give better advice than what they actually do as the person that they're describing and so it means that we give better advice than we follow and so I thought about that and I thought well most of the time I feel like I know what I should do but I'm just a pansy about it or I want someone else to tell me but I don't have the alignment I have to provide context and I have the same three issues and so I was like what if what if I could talk like is the ultimate version who would have all three of those things would be end of game Alex right 85-year-old me that's accomplish the things that I want to accomplish who embodies the traits that I want to embody and what would he say to me in this particular instance cuz he already knows how the game finishes now nine times out of 10 he's like off this doesn't matter but he's a dick anyways um just treats me like a kid he doesn't understand um um but the way that I do it is that every Monday the first hour of my week um it says Solomon on my on my calendar and for whatever reason I call him Solomon even though it's me in the future um and it's basically I do it like a chat DM now I don't think you need to do it that way you could probably do a voice memo you could do a video you can do whatever you want but for me I'm a I I think through writing that's why I like writing books and things like that and so I basically it's me and then I hit enter and then he's like well tell me about this and then I do this he's like well why do you think that and then the nice thing too is that when I sometimes my session's seven minutes like I just get to the answer and it's like all right that's it and often times it's um I'll tell you one story hopefully it'll it'll resonate with someone here so I had this really big thing that I've been building up to it was like a multi-year project and all this anticipation all this you know excitement around it and um it happened and then there was something that just like didn't go the way that I wanted it to go so I was very disappointed about this but the thing that happened was actually now everything's ultimately under our control but um this one was a promise was made by a vendor and they had you know said that they would do that and based on the decision making criteria that I had at the time which is that other people had done the same thing that I had done with this particular vendor I felt like it was a reasonable decision just to have trusted this vendor to be able to do their job they didn't and so it cost me about $15 million um and it it was real money not like uh I hypoth like it it sucked and so I had to like I had to like work through this and so I had the session with Solomon and um he knew the amount of time that I had put into this project and he said I am the product that you were building not the thing and he's like and I and I know what you put into that and I am satisfied that is enough and that was like it it like I was like okay that was it and so for me that kind of I believe in nothing [Applause] um and so for me that's it's like those are and like the thing is you can be absolutely real at least for me with Solomon because like there's zero ego there he knows if I'm bullshitting you know he's like come on I'm like ah fine and so um I usually keep going until I get to actually a resolution which was that like I am the product and I am satisfied and that is enough and the thing is is that to be fair his satisfaction is tough because he knows if I could have tried harder and so one of the tough Parts is like Bea like so I'll say this to everybody who considers a winner in the room once you start winning it's easy to impress other people and so the only way to raise the bar is like well then how do I impress me and so future me knows the difference between how hard I tried and how hard it looks like when I try when I have nothing left in the tank and so like that Delta is what Solomon pushes me towards and so like because I get the question a lot which is like okay Alex how do you still stay motivated I'm sure you have stuff like that um and for me it's because that has been the game is like how do I close that Delta because like I think I'll die and I don't think people will remember and that's okay but I'll know at the end how hard I tried and that is what I've been trying to make my w which is like leaving with nothing left and so that's what I like really really try for and I feel like Solomon is aligned with that and he holds me accountable in a way no one else can cuz like I could talk to a therapist and say all the things that I did they like you must have tried hard but like I know I could someone and we can do that with our friends too we can we can enroll any one of our friends into believing our story especially we're in like a relationship conflict we talk to a friend we can enroll them in our belief system so easily you know it's so easy to get other people enrolled but if you really and you can even enroll yourself that's the tricky part if you're not careful you'll enroll yourself in your own story but then if you really go beyond that and then go into your own version of Solomon some part of you really knows some part of you really knows what the real truth is like what really happened and that I think is also one of the key components to really loving yourself what you said is like and that is enough and like that feeling of yeah you gave it everything man and that was that was enough and of course that's the best that's the best of you that'll say that but will also hold you accountable it's what Don Miguel Ruiz calls ruthless self-love it's like ruthless it's like you could have given that more you could have stood you could have stood more firm on your beliefs you could have had more courage you could have hustled harder you could have tried more you could have given it another chance you could have done that you know and so get after it get after it like really like that's that's the wi wisdom that we all have the availability to tap into if we use this kind of device I also think that Solomon has been like the frame of Solomon has been especially powerful because it removes external judgment to a large degree like imagine telling your 85-year-old self I mean like imagine it like I so sometimes this is a weird a weird fun gratitude thing if you're into that um I've struggled with gratitude like people like I write a journal I'm like I yeah like right now it's like can you guys name 10 problems in your life right like I I got 20 right but it's like named five things that are good I just stand there and I'm like I am alive uh like and so a really fun one for me has been imagining Solomon reborn as myself in a present moment so it's weird and trippy but you're like you wake up and I'm next to my wife and I'm like I remember when she was this young I'm like look at us we're just kids and I like look out the window I'm like man I remember when Vegas looked like this it was before all the flying cars and and then um I wake up I'm like Oh my back doesn't hurt my knees don't hurt like man it's nice to be young and like it's a it's a very weird experience to just imagine what life would be like as 85-year-old you and then actually live through that um and 85-year-old me doesn't give a about what Susan thinks about my decision right and so a lot of times um and I've gotten better at this as you know I've gotten older and whatnot but um um I remember when I was trying to sell the company uh we were trying to sell the company uh I had I was like really not sure if I wanted to do it or not and I was like why am I hesitating like what's like why am I what what is this and it's like well what are what will people think but it's never people it's like two people and then you name the two people and then I was like do I really want John's opinion to be the reason that I and I was like that's dumb but it's like as soon as you name it then it's like becomes real rather than this amorphous thing and Solomon just makes me name he's like you really don't want to become me because of Tom he's like no you should do that do it I mean he's a dick you know but you know lovingly ruthless self love yeah and so um I I I also should think it's a really powerful frame for getting around like there's the thing that you want to do and there's the thing that everyone else thinks you should do and if everyone else thinks you should do it's probably not the right thing to do one of the uh another another thing that I've used before in my life is very similar to that and it's imagining that I got beamed into my body and my life right now as like a fresh new Consciousness that came from another Came From Another Dimension and I beam in and it's I use this when I'm really kind of in a shitty mood or like down on myself or whatever and I kind of look around I'm like wow look at my wife that's awesome I'm like wow like I can ball that's cool you know like oh wow my house is beautiful and and like all right well maybe there's these things that I don't like well I can fix that you I can fix that I can I can work harder in this area I can bounce back from this but we get saddled by all of our past regrets our past grievances all of this baggage that we carry because we're blaming our self of the past and then holding oursel as the person who made that mistake rather than the person who grew and evolved from that mistake but if you could come in clean slate and just go all right where am I at oh I'm I'm at Arcadia damn this is cool what am i g to do I'm gonna have a blast and then I'm gonna after this I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna figure some out and I just heard Alex Orosi I'm I'm gonna grow my business I'm gonna make some money like all right I can do this because you lose that history that keeps you saddled to what you once were but you're not that person like herac cidus said one of my favorite quotes no person steps in the same river twice because it's not the same river and they're not the same person you're the person who grew and evolved and learned from everything you did so if you can give yourself that blessing of just being like all right here it is clean slate WR the now what are we going to do build something awesome be something awesome I love that because there's um these to the river thing slaps that was great um so I was involved in this lawsuit a few years back and and it was something that I invested a lot of time in um was like a really big amount of money and I was right at the you know right at first you're like I feel wronged right it's like the immediate like that's not fair whatever and I played it out through a Solomon frame and he's like all right well what changes about your life if it goes the way you want it to go and if it doesn't go the way you want it to go I was like well if it goes the way I wanted to go I'll be young wealthy Happ happily married and have a little bit more money from this lawsuit he's like what if it doesn't go the way you want to go he like I'll be young married less work because I won't be working on this thing anymore uh and yeah he's like sounds like a win-win bro it was just very weird because like a lot of like my dissatisfaction was only about the expectation that I had of what I thought I deserved rather than like what is it going to change about my life and I remember like especially if uh if I ever get into a pansy mode about being super sad about something it's like well I had nothing and was pretty happy too and so the worst case is like that and that wasn't that bad and so just like how much is it actually going to change my life I think the reason that I I the reason I talk like the reason I think developing frames like this is so powerful is that the vast majority of the time the things that limit Us in business is not knowledge like I used to sit down with women all day long because that's what I did for the weight loss stuff um and I'd be like Susie let's be real he'd be like I just don't know what to do be like n do you and they would just look at me like did he just say that i' be like what do you think's gonna because they be like tell me about the program I'm like what do you think it's going to be I'm like they're like I don't know I was like well do you think you're going to eat donuts all day they're like well no I'm like do you think you're going to move more than you do now they're like yeah and I was like all you're on the right track I like and then like I tease out the point I'm like knowledge is not the issue you're going to stop eating you're going to move more right that that's not the problem right the problem is that you're not doing it so let's tackle that right now like anybody like if you guys are in the like I want to grow my business phase learning to like that stuff straightforward let more people know about the stuff give them should in exchange for money and you like what do I give them give a lot of people free things until eventually somebody comes back and says I want more of that like that's it but it's like why are you not doing that and I think a lot of times the frames like this like Solomon frame and whatnot are to hopefully uh de baggage you or whatever release the weight uh that you're carrying around Tom who's like did you do you DM my wife did you DM my wife about your business they like [Laughter] yeah and so like a lot of times like um the the like absolute acceptance frame has been super powerful which is like must be nice you're like it is because it like it just it just melts people like if you're in these like you know like you get in a comet war or something and they're like it's because your dad gave you everything you're like you're right and so it's just because we have this fear of being labeled something by somebody it's like well I don't label me that but if you do that's cool CU you're going to die eventually so why but if you're going to die eventually it means it don't W matter either so like fine then I can use it both ways and so like that's just been really helpful for me just because like like my ultimate expression of myself in terms of like solemn and me is just absolute agency they like I do what I truly want to do um um now obviously that's not hurting people things like that but like that I do it without fear and I think that's that's I think that's what I really spend a lot of time trying to tackle which is like what am I afraid of and it's not like the big the monster and whatnot it's usually just judgment or rather perceive judgment from people who aren't thinking about me um and then it comes from a combination of discounting the value of their judgment and increasing the perceived value of Solomon's judgment and I think that like over time if I can just keep sliding more and more marbles into just gaining Solomon's opinion or Solomon's approval I think it's a better version of me and so I just see it as a as a Continuum rather than a binary of like I am this person or I am this person it's just like I'm more this person today and I'm going to keep sliding more marbles onto this side until most people describe me in this fashion I love what you're saying too about how to deflect those kind of comments and judgments that come in in this more yes and model your dad gave you everything like yes and he gave me way more than you possibly could ever imagine CU he gave me beliefs and he gave me a field of value and he gave me a lot of these things that you will never even quantify so yeah you're right you know and yeah yes and yeah you know rather so instead of trying to combat people and getting in this this battle you know just like yeah and this will be really fun for you guys so like if I were if if we like transitioned into Q&A or something like that I'm not saying we do that but if if we if that were to happen right someone would get up and say well here's why that won't work for me special reason B whatever right and so I've just CU I've done a handful of Q&A now um and I've just realized it's been more powerful to just say like you're right next question and then they're like it's like no no this is the reason that I can't succeed and you're like yeah you're right you'll never succeed so and then they're like well yes I will and you're like great so here the fighter showed up great you were fighting on the wrong side right it's like it's it's silly though but like we like we we do this contrarian thing for no reason to like to give ourselves excuses but like if someone were to say you're right you'll never succeed you're like what the yes I okay great then you don't have any questions so move on right like it's just this this is like conf it's just Conflict for no reason and so I think that right now if you have certain excuses because like right now there's probably a reason that you're like whatever it is is the reason that I am not winning and I used to call this because I I do a lot of sales training stuff too um I call it the reason close but it's insane how effective this is because it's so silly sounding whatever the reason they say is just say and that's the perfect reason you should do this they're like I can't sign up for this weight loss program because my husband husband doesn't support me you're like the reason that you should sign up for this weight loss program is because your husband doesn't support you I you know I can't do this because I don't have the time it's like that's the perfect reason to do it it's like I can't do it right now because this a really busy cool I don't have it because I don't have the money for that it's like well that's the perfect reason you should do it it doesn't really matter like whatever reasons you have are basically irrelevant because the doing just needs doing and it doesn't really care if you have a reason or you don't have a reason or if you're a good person or a bad person or what you think about yourself because like really shitty people can still win and I I'll tell you something that's kind of weird for me but like for a very long time I considered myself a very bad person um and maybe somebody here has a similar belief but like I had that internal feeling about that which was like um I feel like I feel like the bad guy I feel like the villain and a very freeing thought for me was that like I can still do the stuff that successful people do and still win anyways and that was kind of cool for me because it it was like oh this is still under my control like it's not like only the good guys win like bad guys can win too I identified as that and so um I just like boiling things down to behaviors because everything else I find to be completely distracting which to be fair is probably why I've been I would say on the other pole which maybe when you go all the way around we're in the same spot from a 180° spot you know perspective but I I have spent very little or zero time thinking about manifesting and thoughts and psychology and like all of these things at least as as I understand it in this community and I could be totally wrong but I'm saying as I see it um because I just never felt like it mattered because if you do 100 reach outs more people will find out about your stuff whether you said affirmations in the morning whether you wooed into existence whether you it's like it doesn't matter and so just focusing on the behaviors and the activities that I needed to do has just been my absolute razor to cut through the noise and if you have that frame you will also be able to basically throw out 90% of the that you hear every day on your newsfeed from people who haven't been there and never did it anyways because they have to fill lots of fluff in their content because they have no sub because they don't know the actual activities that did it and so if you get to the end of something all right this is I'm going to go on a little thing here so I'm going to find two terms that I think are very meaningful so learning and intelligence so intelligence I'll start with that well fine I'll do learning first so learning is same condition new Behavior so if I showed you all a red card and then I slapped you You' be like whoa and I don't say anything and then I show you a red card and then I slap you'd be like whoa and then I showed you a red card and then you duck same condition new Behavior you learned intelligence is rate of learning it's a speed it's how like if I if I show you that and it takes some person 10 times for them to duck and one person the second time they duck the second time person is smarter they're more intelligent than the 10 time person and so a lot of you here I'm looking at you think you're really smart but you go back home to the same condition and you do the exact same thing so how smart are you Red Card slap you don't change and so by defining it that way it actually makes intelligence under our control and so if you I'm sure you wanted to grow to some degree by coming here for this whole event and obviously you guys here today but if you leave here and your behavior does it change in the same conditions it means you learned nothing and I think that's been a really powerful frame for me because if I go somewhere I'm like what Behavior will I change from this and if you go somewhere and there is no behavior that changed then maybe you shouldn't go there anymore or maybe you should change one of the two because either that didn't give you anything or you're not receiving anything right and so um that has been helpful for me in terms of how I consume information which is like will this change anything about my behavior no no well then either this wasn't valuable or I need to change something I remember there's a there's a story that um when I was working for so I had a you know kind of a boutique marketing company and again I've already mentioned it so my stepdad is the founder of flashlight and so know yeah I know it's crazy right and so I was helping him out with his marketing and he brought me into the office one day and he fired me a couple times actually which was rude I just felt like um must be nice yeah but he brought me in right before he fired me the last time which I'm super glad that he did but he brought me in and he goes you know what he just brings me in to to like a meeting into his office which eventually became my office I took over his whole building right and that's right and he goes you know what Aubrey you will never be successful without me and I go that is a dick thing to say and I'll be like mark my words and I remembered that I remembered him saying that and our relationship was strained for some years because I was like that is a up thing to tell your stepson and finally you know and actually I was sitting shiva for my father who passed and I brought my stepdad because my stepdad knew my father and I brought him in and we were just sharing it was just me and him and say hey man it's one up thing that you said you know and uh you brought me in that office day and you said you'd never be successful without me like why'd you say that and he goes because I knew you were a fighter I knew you were a fighter and I knew if I said that to you you wouldn't rest a single minute until you proved me wrong and I was like God damn God damn and it was so like for him to to to have that awareness and know that that that was exactly the right thing he could have been like you're going to be so successful I've seen how hard you work you're a hard worker you're going to do it that wouldn't have accomplished a fraction of what that one thing and he knew he was going to have to bear the price he knew that I was going to resent him I was going to hate him for a little while but he knew that that would Propel me because he knew me and he told me he was like I watched you I was a Bas you know I was a basketball player and our cross toown rival was the buoy Bulldogs buoy bulldogs and just a route crowd I mean the bench was right on the stands and they they like literally spit on you when you're on the it was like Savage we hated each other and I remember I like I shot an airball that day and they were just I was like team captain and they were just ripping into me and I was like you guys and I just went on a tear I just went on a run scored like 10 in a row and one foul I'm at the free throw line they're chanting airball airball and I just take my time and I look over at the visitor stands and I just winked at him and swished it and he's like my stepdad recalled that and I I don't think about that that much it's high school basketball you know I remember that moment he was like when I saw that when I saw you after all of the whole crowd turned against you and you went twice as hard and you just wouldn't be stopped and then you looked at all of those people who were chanting in unison airball and you just winked at him and you hit that shot like I knew you were a fighter and I knew that's what would bring the best out of you it's not everybody pumping your tires but someone to say that you couldn't and I was like like thank you you know like thank you Steve like thank you for that gift and so many of these people so many of these detractors that you have you know you can look at it like I can't believe they're saying this I can't believe they're doing this or you can go thank you watch me watch me yeah bro any uh any closing words you'd like to leave the people here with any uh any final final sentiments Ricky and Devon need to go somewhere for sure um I don't know what would serve you guys the best but um I talk about this thing in my book called the rule of 100 and so I'm just going to close on something tactical I already gave you the learning thing which is if you don't do anything different when you go back to the same condition you've learned nothing and that's probably not what you want which means you probably should change your behavior the rule of 100 is pretty simple um you do 100 primary actions every day until you get to your goal and the the hard part is figuring out what the 100 primary actions are and so so those 100 primary actions if you're in a business is probably going to be some level of promotion and that might be promotion to get an employee like you can use this stuff to get customers you can use it to get employees you can use it to get Affiliates you can use it to get influencers you can use it to get agency whatever it is but set a timer kitchen timer Works five bucks and do the 100 reach outs do the 100 minutes of content spend $100 a day on ads whatever it is um and start your day with that and if you ever look away to your phone or you go to get a drink of water you go to the bathroom like pause the timer and see how long it actually takes you to do it because I found that a lot of times my fear around doing some of this stuff is it makes it feel I think this is a Lela quote that she says but it's like fear is a a mile wide an inch deep and so it looks like it's an ocean but you take a step into it and you realize it's really shallow and so so we have these fear of rejection fear of making content of making the post of whatever it is for a bad comment but when I started quantifying things based on the amount of time that it was going to take to do whatever that action was then it's like all right my 100 is going to take me 2 hours and 15 minutes or it's going to take me 3 hours and 12 minutes on average all right it's 7 all right I'll be done at 10:15 and then you just crank the timer you start and so a lot of times there's been a lot of you know recently and I I like to speak out against it um a lot of woo woo around these extended morning routines and things where people like have to prepare to work they masturbate about the idea of working and I'll tell you the best morning routine is the one that gets you to work fastest and so like the work needs doing and the faster that you start the faster it will be done and so everything that I've do before that moment is just actually elongating that time and so if it if I'm it's 7:00 now it's like well if I do an hour of prep and then I still have 3 hours and 15 minutes of work it's like I just want to start and I think if you can just confront the work and disassociate the long-term reward for the actions that you're doing and reassociate the work with Solomon or whoever that person is that you want to be as you chopping the wood or sculpting the marble of the person that you want to become giving yourself that basket of skills and traits that they eventually lad up to then every day you feel like you are crafting that Masterpiece and the the thing that I'm spending the most of my mental energy on right now is defining winning by level of effort and so I can only win I only get to win if I if I leave nothing in the tank and by doing that it's like it's going to take longer awesome I'll have less in the tank tank oh it's going to it's going to be even harder awesome I'll have a bigger opportunity to empty my tank because that's the only way that I win and so I think if you can redefine it that way um the external winning takes care of itself really easily and so that's that is my parting words is that if you don't change your behavior you learn nothing and that is tactically what I would do if you don't know what to do is start at first thing start a timer and do not stop until the timer is done let's go let's go there go and and I love that as a I love that as as The Parting words and I just also want to say like for people who claim they don't have enough time just take a gander at your screen time calculator on your phone take a gander and then come up with that excuse to somebody while showing them your screen time calculator on your phone you're right you're never going to be successful you know so fundamentally like we all have more capability than than we need to like Steven pressfield when he asks about how he writes he says I just sit in my chair at 9:00 every day or whenever whenever he ends up starting and that's just where I am I show up that's that's what he talks about in turning pro that's how you turn pro you just show the up you put in the effort you do the work and the results will come love you guys let's have a great time thank you Alex thank you guys thank you thank you guys thanks for tuning in to this video make sure you hit subscribe follow me at Aubrey Marcus check out the Aubrey Marcus podcast available everywhere and leave a comment let me know if this video resonated or what else you would like to hear from me in the future thank you so much …