Hormozi Teaches Me Everything He Knows in 90 Minutes

0:02 probably recognize this guy, Alex Ramosy. He's known as the$100 million man, and he's probably the most popular business teacher on YouTube. So last week I flew to Vegas and I asked Alice to teach me the things in his new book, Money Mobs. Uh, how to make money. Thank you. He says that this one concept has made him more money than anything else in his career. How would we improve our business by thinking in money models? So let me walk you through the actual economics of this. If 10% of people buy something that's 10 times expensive, you double your revenue. So the classic upsells, you can't have X without Y. Right. Fries or whatever, right? It's like what you can't have X without Y.

0:36 I recorded the whole session and I want to share that with you here today. Alright, if I reset your bank account. And your followers, change your name and face. I reset you to zero. How long do you think it would take you to get a million bucks in your bank account? Well having lost everything twice, um, I'll tell you what I did. What do your haters get right?

0:57 I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day's all on the road, let's try to get it. I got a new book looking. I read this book and it's gonna st start a little campfire in my head. What's gonna happen from money models. You will love this book. If you liked offers.

1:14 And so a money model is a deliberate sequence of offers. Many businesses have more than one offer. And so it's how do we sequence those in the right way? That accomplishes a financial objective. And so the financial objective for this book and what I try to go for for every business I have. Um is something that I've always called fun client client finest acquisition. And so the reason that we've able to see it. One user pays for the next user.

1:35 Yes, and a slight tweak on that. Okay. Which is um So it's two X. Cak. Plus cogs. Yeah.

1:43 So this is our this is the big thing that we want. So it's basically Gross profit. In thirty days. So I guess I could move this over here, but it doesn't matter. Gross profit in thirty days is uh is greater than uh two times calculus cogs. Let's just explain the terms people don't know. Yeah. Gross profit. So you're not talking about overheads in i in this. Right. So gross profit. CAC, cost for customer acquisition, Cogs.

2:03 What it costs you to deliver the product or service that you deliver. Yep. And what you're saying is my bar, my golden rate, my golden bumper I'm trying to hit is. I wanna take the cost to deliver the service and get the customer. double it and in in thirty days I need to hit be hitting that number. That's my goal. Whether that came on the first offer or what you're saying now is The second, third, fourth thing I sell them along the way, along their their customer journey. It's exactly that. And can you do like a example? Stupid tangible example. Yeah. Yeah. So the the first business I ever did this in was the gym business. And so it's a really simple example because everyone gets it too. So when I came into the gym business, what the vast majority of businesses did is they would run

2:37 uh low ticket like twenty one dollar twenty one days, did they run a free month or free fourteen day trial, whatever. That was the their the the the primary way of getting people in and so let me walk you through the actual economics of this. And so If you have a business, let's say old way, right? Um Someone comes in, let's say you pay whatever, ten bucks a lead.

2:54 Uh that's your CPL cost per lead. And uh then you can convert, let's say you're getting, you know, twenty percent of these people to to start a trial, so that means that it costs you fifty bucks. uh to start a trial and then one out of three of those trials, which is the industry average. Uh convert.

3:09 And typically the conversion for like a boot camp or something like that is gonna be about ninety nine dollars a month, right? That's that's what it costs. And so CAC. Yeah, exactly. There's the first thirty days for Exactly. And so you're you're upside down here. Now, not only that, it probably took you two weeks to like before between when you like got the lead before you got the trial and then twenty one days now, five weeks. And so by the second month, now you're like, Okay, I got ninety nine times two. Now that doesn't even take into account that like that ninety nine's not all free, like there's costs involved there. But let's just say that these guys are amazing and they're running

3:38 a hundred percent, you know, margins. And so it's like okay, so this is gonna take sixty days. For this business. to basically recoup the money. Now the problem is that in the gym industry, especially Many customers leave within four months. And so it's a very tough way to make a buck.

3:51 And so what I kinda came in and started doing was we'd run these challenges and I'd I'd spend the same amount of ten dollar I'd have the same You were here when you started you did the same model initially? No, I saw people doing it. I saw people doing it. And so then it was like a three step permutation. I like I don't even want to tell the backstory, but basically figured it out, tried it out at a gym, it worked at that gym, and then I started my gym. That's basically what happened.

4:15 So Uh same same cost per lead. I would close the same, I get twenty percent. uh of these businesses. So it would cost me let's call it fifty bucks, whatever. Um to for me though. I would offer that fifty dollar

4:27 I would sell up front and I would make five hundred. 'Cause your five hundred dollar offer was a challenge. So you win your money back. So if you lose X amount of weight in X amount of time We get your money back. Now that was the beginning.

4:38 Of the offer. That's an attraction offer. So it's one of the offer types I talk about in the book. And so it's like okay, I got five hundred dollars, but we didn't stop there'cause what are you gonna do after you have your your thing. Well, you need some supplements. It's like all right so then we'd Forty eight hours later, we'd sell two hundred dollars of supplements, call it you know, eighty percent gross margins, whatever. It's like okay, so I get one sixty plus Plus uh five hundred, so now about six sixty. All right, great.

4:59 Now on top of that, it's like all right. three weeks in, it's a six weeks uh six week deal. I would then say, Hey, I'm gonna roll this towards a one year membership. And so boom, we'd roll that over, which is another mechanism that we use. Um and so then I get the one year one year member. Great. На а вік секс. Or between week three and week six, we'd make a second offer and say, Hey, you're already a member.

5:18 Can I just save you some money? And they say sure. And we say, Hey, if you want, what we can do is if you just prepay for the whole year, we'll knock knock two months off. And so then all of a sudden I get about twenty percent of people to prepay for the whole year, which is a two thousand dollar two thousand dollar cash up front. Which if it's twenty percent. And we add all these together. I'm getting about a thousand bucks. Up front.

5:37 In the first same period of time that these guys are getting Ninety nine or one ninety nine. And so my ability to outspend them. In a in a an auction based uh based of tension. on like Facebook or Google search or whatever, it was like unparalleled. And so because of that, I was able to uh not only outspend my competition, but because it cost me like if you're actually doing L T V D CAC on this.

5:57 Cost me fifty dollars to make a thousand. I'm getting twenty to one, thirty to one up front. And so I was actually able to finance the opening of all my locations that way. So I could spend five thousand dollars in ads and make a hundred grand back and literally paint the walls, put the lobby in, buy the equipment, and by the time I actually open the gym, because I do pre-sales for a month or whatever, um, I would actually already be cash flow positive day one without actually having to invest capital. And so fundamentally I will continue to tinker, and this is where I got spoiled or whatever, maybe my belief set changed, is that this was the first model I ever had.

6:28 And so every business I've had since then of like I know there's a way if I just keep tweaking it. Until eventually this thing will print. And then when that happens, you don't need the outside investors because you cash flow getting customers. And so You basically almost like every business I've had has been supply constrained. because I can blow the doors off on the front end because I can acquire customers. And so like this has been the skill that's probably been the largest m you know. contributor to my material success.

6:52 And like Allen went from zero to you know one point seven million a month within six months. Jim Launch went from zero to two point two million a month to twenty months. Prestige Labs zero to zero to one one and a half ish in six. And so like each of them just very quickly just ramped because I could get customers at a profit. And when you look at the actual like where the mechanics of the money happen. As soon as one customer comes in, right?

7:14 One guy comes in. Now if he gives you that two X cac plus cogs. Then it's like okay, well I've paid for him. And I paid for the delivery, but he comes loaded. He's holding this guy by the throat. He comes loaded with my next customer. Right. And so but then this guy brings me two more. And so basically you keep doubling. He comes loaded. Yeah, exactly. And so then at that point, you literally only have to acquire you have to have the cash or the wherewithal to acquire the first customer. And then everything after that is cl is financed by the by the customers. And the greater that discrepancy, the more you don't have to

7:43 even put more capital into the business at all. And so that was a very long as as fast as I could say it, that's that's the that's the that's what we hope to accomplish the good money model. Alright, so A lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like seventeen or eighteen million dollars in revenue. I started it.

8:09 With like Three hundred dollars. My current company, Hampton, does over ten million in revenue. Started it with actually no money, maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that. Nothing. And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars. These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now, you can scan the QR code. Or click the link in the description. Now back to the show.

8:45 I wanna break down a couple of things in here just to'cause I can First of all, this is great. Uh virality rules all. Yeah and and they m they you know the early growth hackers, in fact, there's a book called The Viral Loop. The guy my mentor, the guy who who kind of plucked me when I got to Silicon Valley. He's featured that book because early on he was like scraping hot milk and he realized, Wait. I have no marketing budget, but one user can get me the next user through this thing called the K factor. And then you measure the K factor, it becomes like.

9:12 This is how Facebook and other other businesses grew. You've created a version of the K factor for Um non tech uh businesses that are not gonna grow virally, but you can grow You can finance the next customer through through the existing customers.

9:25 Wanna point out a couple of important things. So the first one was This is what This is kind of book one. So this is you know your hundred million dollar offers book. Yep. And I would

9:35 A key difference here for any entrepreneur is that You're able to charge five hundred dollars. When this guy's probably honestly struggling to even charge$99 a month, I drove by a place that here that was like five dollar entry offer, uh the uh Las Vegas fitness club or whatever. Because you were not selling a member a gym membership, which is a cost to the customer, you were selling a transformation promise. Yep. Right. So you're selling customer transformation, the happy ending. So first of all, what d what are you actually selling? That was a key thing.

10:03 The second was you were then upselling. Upsell one. Of your money. Yep. And you had a good insight here in um the preview your team sent me, which was basically that You wanna sell.

10:14 When the customer pain is highest. Can you talk about that? Yeah. I I'd love to talk about this. Um so basically I think so many people, businesses, et cetera, get They think about that what if the especially services because seventy eight percent of businesses are They think about they have a term that they deliver for a custom, and they typically want to renew when they're about to stop getting paid. Right. Which is typically the absolute worst time to try and renew. It's like an ex boyfriend. Hey, right. It's like how you do it. I guess I'm on month eleven of my tw my annual trial. No, exactly. And so

10:44 There's there's basically five Five five times that you that you wanna sell um uh sell a customer. So Number one I'm just gonna move the second Okay. Number one is uh immediately. Right. So that's like in the same conversation.

10:58 Um the second one is after basically some sort of activation point. Next you have your halfway. Just because like you're like, why halfway? Because it's halfway and that's why it works. You have your last chance at the end. And then you have milestone.

11:17 Which is which can happen kind of anywhere in here, but basically. they have something occur. So this is something they do, this is something that happens. So the action item for a company here is map this for yourself. Yeah. But if you're like, Okay, well, which of the five do I do? You wanna sell at the point of greatest deprivation, not the point of greatest value. Sometimes the point of greatest value and the point of greatest deprivation occur at the same time. Not always, though. So I'll give you my simple example, which is like if I go to a the best steakhouse in the world and I have a steak and I'm like, this is amazing, and then the waiter comes back and says, Hey, would you like another steak, I'd be like,

11:48 I'm I'm good. And they're like, What you didn't like the steak? And I'm like, No, the steak was great. They're like, Why aren't you getting another steak? I was like, I'm good. They're like, Well, if you if you like the steak, you'd get more steak. And the thing is that so many businesses are trying to sell and upsell that way. They're like, wow, my customers suck, they're so cheap. It's like, no. So at that point I might have a I might have deprivation around something that's sweeter and lighter, and that might be the right time to offer dessert. Right. versus more of that other thing. Now

12:11 Um The Deprivation occurs at the same time as value creation when the first loop of value that gets created creates the next problem. So if I help you get leads, And you get leads and then you're like, Holy shit, I'm overwhelmed. If I say, Hey, would you like me to help you work those leads? Then it's a very natural upsell where greatest value and greatest deprivation at the same time.

12:31 If you are a business that doesn't have that type of I'll just I'll just speak broadly, if that doesn't occur in your business or on a short enough timeline. Then that you You don't want to sell at that time.

12:43 Right. And so that's basically what we we strive for. And that's why I've always been uh of the belief like when someone comes in with red hot pain, that's when you sell, not when you offer your trial. And so for uh let's take I you can use the gym. We can use a different business if that maybe maybe that'd be nice. If you can. What would you Either

13:00 Either or a money model. Uh you know, you can either walk through a money model or you can walk through this for another business. Let's do another example. Sure. Let's say you have a uh an SEO agency, whatever. So if you can actually we can use one of my real businesses. Okay. So we have this business somewhere.com. We basically help you find talent. That is overseas. So we help businesses where you're like, I really want a developer, but I'm not trying to pay hundred percent. Did you invest in that too? Yeah. Okay, got it. I thought it was okay, got it. Yeah. So we we own this business. Somewhere dot com.

13:28 So for example, I got my assistant through this, uh, you know, I'll hire developers, graphic designers, data analysts, whatever you need, there's talent is everywhere in the world. Hard to find. They put boots on the ground in different locations. So South Africa, Philippines. And they have hundreds of recruiters in each of those areas to find Who's the best one percent in each of those locations to come work for you? This season. Right. Great business, great margins. Love it.

13:48 Uh happy first happy owner. Yeah. Exactly. Okay, so now what's the problem? So Today the way our money model works. Mm-hmm. Is

13:57 Customer. Basically listens to Sean's podcast. So we'll just do this. Uh or they follow on Twitter. Yeah. So we get leads from one place, exactly. Not ex not exactly fully, but that's a a bulk of it. And they come in, they book a call.

14:11 And on that call we try to sell them. Um a contingency based Which says. If We find someone

14:21 Pay us. um a fraction of their salary. Now they're so low salaried typically because you're getting talent from different regions of the world. That will come out to let's say And I'm at maybe six K per customer. And what we do

14:35 Is that happens And then we stop and we go fishing again for the next one. Yeah. Okay. Help us with our money model. How would you if I took if I read this book and I want to go help Nick improve this business. Yeah. Um, how would we improve our business by thinking in money models? Yeah. So the question would be like, do we need so if I'm looking at this, right? We have attraction offers.

14:56 So it's like do we have a big demand issue? Or do we have an L T V issue, which might be Up sells. Do we have a conversion issue which might be down sells? All of the above. Everything can be improved. Or do we have a continuity thing? Right.

15:09 And so there are Different structures that lend themselves more to one versus the other type of type of problem, right, that we're trying to solve. And so Like For an attraction offer if you're like, you know what, let's get a shitload more, you know, phone calls in the door.

15:24 I would say hey. I just got This uh absolute savage. And I would put like this is the dude. All right, this guy's a fucking god. Whatever. Now Who here wants him?

15:37 And I would say the the business that uh like we're gonna do a raffle. And everybody who who submits to win this guy now obviously gotta be Ethical and lawyer. But assuming that you're not a fucking idiot, right? Uh, this is this is the guy that you're gonna get. And you have to be a business that's like this in order to qualify. Cool. So they're gonna enter their information in order to get to the raffle so they get this guy. Now you're gonna say

15:59 We will pay for this guy for a year. as our as the deal, as the big giveaway. Not only is he amazing, we'll also pay for him for a year. And so that makes a huge you'll get a gigantic amount of demand. But what's beautiful about it is that The demand is for your most expensive or ideal product. And so that at that point the person like every single other person who opts in is a qualified lead who say, you know

16:18 We can't give you Carlos, but we can give you so and so. And You uh we'll give you a partial scholarship, we'll give you a partial win, whatever, and you knock whatever off, ten percent, twenty percent off. And then you roll that right into the continuity. So that would be an example of an attraction offer that you could attach to that existing thing. From an upsell, downsell perspective, it'd be like and there's five different ones. That's just one that I pulled out. That's a giveaway.

16:42 Yeah. Yeah. And so like the just for everyone's just l listening, the the the weight loss version that I had was something called Win Your Money Back, which is a different was a different mechanism. Right. So there's there's five different ones that I think that work exceptionally well for bringing people in, depends on the type of business. And so for yours, there's bikes quite free. There's a bunch of different versions, but like think this makes the most sense. Cool. We use a giveaway. All right. So then upsells and downsells. So um with Down so I'll I'll start from down cells.

17:07 So you can have feature down sells, you can have free trials, you can have payment plans. Now for your particular business, payment plans doesn't probably That doesn't really make sense because it's a continuity thing, anyways. And so it's like, okay, we have free trials, which you kind of have with contingency. So it's like that part's that risk is kind of um averted. But from a downside perspective, they might think, Okay, well, I can't afford six. Now that's a business decision more than anything. I like to think of feature down cells. So I can get you somebody who's maybe not as PHD level, whatever, but we can do it for three K a month. And that person might give you more opportunities to say yes. That would be the downsell component. From the upsell perspective.

17:40 There's there's four different upsell structures that I like. The classic upsell is you can't have X without Y. Right. Which is like you can't have fri you can't have a Coke without fries. You can have a burger without fries or whatever, right? It's like what you can't have X without Y. And so it's like you don't want to buy this big, you know, this big framed art without insurance. Yep. Right. So there's always a you can't have X without Y. And so uh the So for here, because they said yes.

18:00 Naturally. Just say yes to this next thing. Exactly. In order to make your first decision an even more sound. And this is why the whole deprivation thing that I was saying earlier is so important, where like supplements in'cause some people are like, Well I don't want to sell them something else. It's like, Well, you just created this new problem that they weren't aware of, which you will now make them aware of, which is oh, sometimes these guys flake out. Whatever. And so we have insurance that we can offer for for this type of thing. So Me just shooting from the hip here. Um

18:25 I was running through the different things. Right. They m a lot of companies are not set up to pay people all around the world. We can manage that for you. Yeah. And we'll do it for you for five hundred bucks a month. Yeah. We'll take care of this because you're gonna you're gonna build out a remote team here all around the world. You don't want to be doing compliance and payroll and foreign exchange and tax reporting. Yep.

18:45 We take care of all that for you for we have a we have an accounts team that does that. Perfect. And so that would be the natural upsell that you do you tack on. And so some people and I'll I'll just make this point. A lot of business owners will will think, Well, why don't I just include that in the main offer? So I'll just say in my experience It's A lot of times as as bad as this may sound, it's easier to get the second yes after you get the first yes.

19:07 And so Like It's like well, maybe if I included that, they'd buy it at six seven thousand dollars a month. It's like yeah, but you might also just raise your price to seven thousand dollars a month and then do it again. Right. And then still have it. And so'cause I mean I the amount of gyms were like, you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna take the challenge system and then just include the supplements. I was like Or you could just do it the way that I've already tried a hundred times. Like, believe me, if I could sell more up front, I would. It works better this way. And I had this whole psychology around it, which is like you have these different wallets. In my mind, I d it doesn't work this way. But like it's like

19:34 Um my grandmother used to say this thing, like I would go there and probably like your family like overfeed she'd have she'd have enough food for ten people when I go and see her on my own. And I would just she would stuff me to the gills. And one time went there with my dad, and she has she and I have different languages, so she's tough to talk to. But she said something under her breath after she walked away, after I was like dying. And he cracked up. I was like, What did she say? And uh he said, Well, you said you were full. And she said, Well, your your your main stomach's full, but your dessert stomach is empty. Yeah. And so it's the same idea here where it's like, Well, their person wallet has been spent. But they're

20:06 their tax avoidance operation pain what a pain in ass isn't. And that one's still full. So we can still tap that one. And so if we're if we're drawing this, it's like okay, so we've got payroll as our upsell. Cool and You'll know your services better than I do. Um, but it's like, okay, so we have one or two things that we can include in the upsells. Um but the mechanism of doing it is part of uh like part of the money models book. And so the X without Y

20:27 Um the way that we probably present it. So each of that whole section is a lot more on the scripting of it. Okay. So it's like, hey, what a lot of people do is uh they do this. Do you know anything else, do you? And so when we say that, everyone says yes by saying no. And by that it's like you get eighty, ninety percent take rates on the upsell. Rather than saying, Hey, do you want

20:44 It's a it's a it's a binary it's a different question, right? Now they have to dis consider a purchase. And so All of them have like tiny little little repositionings that work really well. But that I think would make sense. Like you'd say uh that's a that's the classic upsell. There's rollover upsells, there's uh which is one of my favorites, there's anchor upsells. Um Which an A Corps it would be like

21:03 Let's say Uh you're like, okay, if you want Uh Nick will go find the person for I'm just making it up, right? And he'll do it uh for fifteen thousand dollars up front and you know, ten thousand dollars a month. Now at that point they're like shit. It's like that's a lie. It's like

21:19 Or if you're good with the exact same work being done by someone that Nick trained, we can do it for one third the price. And it's like Oh yeah, that's fine. The anchor is is part of it, but there's also like um What you want to anchor and so the way I learned this was actually at a Salt Lake City uh suit place. So go in.

21:40 A friend of mine sets up a private suit appointment with me. Now I'm not balling. I have like ten thousand dollars my name. So I'm like he's like, you gotta have a boss suit if you want people to take you seriously. This is many years ago. Obviously, I've really listened to this advice. Um And so I go in there and the guy's like all right, I'll get you and he asked me what do you want? I said a boss suit. And so I'm twenty three or twenty four, something like that. And so he puts this suit on me and he's like, What do you think? I was like, Oh, I look awesome.

22:02 And then I uh I looked at the tag and it was sixteen grand and I was like I I think I turned white. Right. And I was like hold and I think he saw me like just like freak out. He's like Hey, he's like, Do you care about the brand? And I was like

22:16 No, not at all. And he was like I got you. And so he the thing is is that he had his lineup already picked for me. And he just pulled the second one, put it on me. He's like, What do you think? And I didn't even look in the mirror. I just looked straight at the tag and it was two grand and I was like, Thank God. I was like, Okay, I can like my friend's not gonna be embarrassed that he sends this poor, you know. His his mugle, his nonmatch folks over.

22:38 And so anyways, I ended up checking out then he was like, Well you want You can't have this without that. He's like, Well, you want to make sure that you have the little pocket thing and you want the socks, whatever. So I ended up leaving for twenty five hundred bucks. And I remember after I left, I was like, I spent five times more than I had budgeted for this thing. And I realized I was like, Oh, but the key part wasn't just that there was something expensive. Number one is that you actually have to sell it as in, because sometimes people put anchors, but they don't really like commit to the anchor. If you just say it and then immediately like don't even acknowledge it, then it's just like this is this thing we put in the sales process. I don't know why it's there. That's dumb. You have to commit to it. Cause the thing is 10% of the time you have a whale and they fucking buy it. And you're like, holy shit.

23:13 But the other ninety percent of the time, the key is that the thing that differentiates the anchor from the core offer. is a very negligible thing. And so for me the brand didn't matter. Or like he might be like, Do you care what kind of wool this is? I'd be like Now somebody might. And the reality is they probably don't actually. They just always buy the most expensive thing. Like Layla just always asks what's the most expensive thing, and then she just buys it. That's how she rolls, right? She just always wants the best shit. Yeah, whatever.

23:40 But the thing is you want to have a model that allows for that. And if ten percent of people buy something that's ten times expensive, you double your revenue. So it's still worth it. And that that's why the acre should be super fucking high. And so that's an example of a different type of one. But this one uh is a is a classic upsell, which would be positioned the way I said, which is a a no-based, a no-based yes. We covered the downside with a feature downside. And then continuity. Now you already have a continuity business, so there's no real point to like saying how do we how do we do that?

24:03 But one of the like there's a different mechanisms that I use in that uh on that side, but one of my favorites is like something called a wave fee. So this works really well with expensive stuff. So we would say hey, um for us to go find this person. It's uh it's ten grand up front. Uh or

24:19 I can waive it if you commit to a year. And so you just waive the fee, but you get the commitment. And you and the thing is it's like oh if you're not sure, then just pay the ten, you get it's month to month. No no sweat. And so with that also you say and we would stack it. So we'd be like, Okay We're gonna waive the fee, we commit to a year, and if for some reason doesn't work out with Carlos, we'll get you m we'll get you another Carlos within ninety days or whatever, no no cost. And so then it's like the ins so you You decrease cost and you decrease risk.

24:45 with the continuity and commitment. And we create artificial pain in the moment. Now what happens if they're like hey six months in, I want to cancel? It's like no worries. Just pay the fee. Right. That I waived for the commitment. So it actually creates a very simple contract, which is like

24:57 You just gotta pay that on the way out the door. So it also increases stick. So that's like it has like three prongs to it that makes it but it's very easy to understand and very elegant. And so that's one of the continuity mechanisms that I use. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know, HubSpot helped Tumblr solve a big problem. Uh Tumblr needed to move fast, they were trying to produce trending content, but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign. But now

25:21 They use HubSpot's customer platform to email real time trending content to millions of users in just seconds. And the result was huge. Three times more engagement and double the content creation. If you want to move faster like Tumblr, visit hubspot.com. All right, back to the show. When I'm looking at a business I'm running through

25:39 the different mechanisms that we you do like okay, we're having issues, we're having a lot of friction here. Right. Now I'm guessing'cause you're selling continuity on the front is probably not a huge deal. Right. Or but maybe churn is. I don't know. But here it's like okay, which part of this process needs to get lubricated? Is it we need to lubricate people going in the door? And that's where you'd use a raffle or giveaway or sweepstakes or something on the front end. Or it's like, you know, I like The thing is is they're signing for six, but we need them at ten. It's like okay, well then we need to put more lubrication here. Or

26:07 You know what, we're getting all these unqualified eighty percent of the leads that are coming in are unqualified. We make the business decision, we still we wanna sell to these people. Okay, we have a gross product. uh a gross margin probably gets sufficient. uh that still makes sense. We still have eighty percent gross margins on this inferior product. Okay, how do we present it? And that's where the downside would actually become really key. Um so I had a business That I um close friend of mine had.

26:27 And what we did was For the down cell, uh He we basically the super high ticket thing that we were selling. He's a uh a PhD for health stuff and he does all this like really weird health stuff for people. I'll just I'll just if you have a problem, he's the last person you go to and then he fixes it. That's his whole thing. Okay. And so um what we did though is we created a downsell that re upsell people. And so they'd

26:48 they'd get sticker shock and he would say, No worries, um If you want, I can do it for, you know. Two thousand dollars less. Um, but I just won't include a guarantee. And so then people were like

26:59 I kinda want the guarantee. And then they'd re-up sell themselves. Right. And so the guarantee is worth that two thousand to me. Which actually gets to show you. So then there's there's becomes the art, I talk about this in the book, of How much do I decrease price? versus how much do I decrease value? And so the play between those two Uh, if you if you the more you study the customer, the more you understand which components they value the most. And so typically when I'll create a uh a downsell structure,

27:22 I'm gonna think, okay, the first downs I'm gonna give is actually to re upsell the main thing. Now if they really can't, because they they Clearly said no, even though it was a big a big issue, then I say the next one I'm gonna do is gonna be a tiny thing. With a large decrease in price. Right. So the first one is like small decrease.

27:39 Big drop in value, you know what I'd rather have the main thing. The next one though, I'm gonna have a bigger drop in price with a smaller change in value. At that point, price is actually the same that's the stock. Right. And so then it then I it's basically how do I ethically lower my price. without saying I'm selling different things to different people. That way I can change the terms rather than ch saying'cause I I never discount. But I will change terms. Like Oh no.

27:59 They got something different than you, which is why they pay less. If you want, I can give you that. That's fine, but you just won't get what they're you're getting now. And so that's so that's a little bit of a brief overview in terms of how I think through creating these. But you can see right now, like if you were to do just even like A raffle once a quarter. It's like that would probably feed all your leads for the next

28:16 Whatever. Yeah, it and I think one of the best parts about this is Every business has some version of this, right? This is a different way of looking at a funnel. Yeah. Um But the cool part of what it y what I think you're you're doing with your books is you're basically taking the parts of the funnel.

28:30 Yeah. Getting leads through the door. being able to actually sell the first thing. Sell the first thing to them. Sell and how do you string together things to maximize the value you're getting for every that hard earned lead. That you already, you know, paid for and busted your ass for. Yeah. And um one of the things I like about this is that You've basically codified.

28:48 a lot of what the best people do, but they do it in their business, then they get rich and then they sort of relax. Right. Like I don't need to go back, I don't need to even label what each of these things were, but you've sort of looked at it and said, Okay Let's call that I an attraction offer. What are five examples of those that I've seen? And then then you're on the lookout for'em. You see it in this business and that business and you start to put it together. So I think that's very, very valuable even as a Uh

29:09 A structured way of brainstorming. Because I think most people in their business most most founders will understand. Yeah, I got it. I need I want to get more demand and I wanna make more money per customer. But these vague wishes. Yeah. And I think the the key is to sort of not be most people. I have this like rant about most people. I'm like you know.

29:28 We try to fit in. That's our nature. Yeah. But it's like Most people in America are overweight or obese. Most people don't like their job. Most people get divorced. Most people don't have enough money to you know to pay for an emergency uh pr procedure. You don't want to be most people, yet you want to fit in. It doesn't really make sense. And so I'd love to understand from you where you see a lot of entrepreneurs. Yeah.

29:48 When it comes to money models What do you see as like What are your most people's that you're seeing? If we just drew kinda like here's how most people are doing this. And if you just made these sort of one or two Tweaks, you're now not in the most people bucket anymore.

30:01 You're operating in a different way, your business can have a higher chances of success or be worth more. I would say not enough. Entrepreneurs are students of business. And they're students of

30:10 The thing. And so I'll give I'll give an example. So like I will never claim to know more about remote work business or HVAC or plumbing or whatever, but like people fly out here not for that, but because I've very good understanding of the variables that create money. And so it's like okay, how can we arrange these variables and then we will fit like you said the payroll thing. I was like, Okay, great. You have a thing. I'm not gonna be the one who immediately knows that. Right. But I'll be like, there's a slot here that we're missing, right? And so One is they're not big enough students of business.

30:38 Uh number two is A lot of times it's like, Well, this is what everyone else does, to your point. Uh and so like, well, I'll give you an example. I had a a guy who did um Guard services, right? And so they they staff like buildings like this, right? With With guards. And so uh he had huge cash flow issues because he's paper thin margins, but it's super sticky, people stay forever. Um, and it's very commoditized in terms of competing for bids.

31:00 And so, you know, after talking for you know extended period of time, I was like, Okay, well, why don't we just Say that people pay quarter at a time and pay up front. It's just oh yeah. He's like, Well, no one does that.

31:10 And I was like, so let me give you the best overcome of the world. Someone's gonna ask you and they're gonna say, Well, everyone else does it you're like, We've just always done it this way. That's all you have to say back. That's all you have to say. It's always why's how we've always done it. Right. And as crazy as that is, that is still the number one overcome. Yeah. There's one still the number one overcome. Like when I used to ask for credit cards on the phone for someone to show up for, you know, training or a trial or something. Like most places do not do that.

31:33 But they'd be like, Well, why do you need my car? I'd be like, This is how we've always done it And then they're like Oh okay And so there's always like it's so funny how some of these little lines just make huge differences in your life. It's like we're all so used to processes. Stupid pause. That are stupid. From management. And they're like, Oh yeah, retarded. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And so Um, so one is but like when I I had to spend probably thirty minutes with him to just like Just get him to just Be okay with asking for the money.

32:03 Getting paid quarterly, number one, and getting paid before you do service rather than after you do service. And so I mean Everyone's usually throws around the word first principles, but it's like Very few people actually think from first principles. Like what prevents us from doing this? And I think that's that's like this is the constraint, cash flow. Then like what are all the things we can do? Can we change payment terms, which is the first thing you're gonna do if you have cash flow issues? Can we push our stuff out and at thirty always? Right. Like how can we change this cash flow balance in our business?

32:29 What's the money model of acquisition dot com? So this is really interesting. So it's so hard for me because what I have to write about. is not The rules that I have to live by. And so my favorite movie in the world is uh is The Matrix, like many people's

32:44 Um, but there's the line in the Matrix when Neo's looking at Morpheus and he says, So you're telling me that I'll I can dodge bullets? He says, I'm telling you that when you're ready, you won't have to And so All of the things that I write about, like even like s selling tactics and things like that. They assume you have no brand.

33:01 And so like when you have a brand You have so much demand. And so little supply. That you can set your own terms. I can have zero attraction offer and make the

33:10 The absolute worst offer in the I don't have to make a grand same offer at all. Because I might say, I don't want to deliver Much at all. I will promise zero. I will guarantee nothing. And like uh but because then that'll still give me less operational constraints on the back end. And so At the end of the day, like the reason I have the the two parts of my logo are this is a lever.

33:29 And this is supply and demand. And to me, those are the two biggest the two biggest forces in business. And so like if you have I always thought it was a whale's tail. That's exactly. Um but like those are the two of the strongest forces in business. And so All of these things are to help lubricate or create or channel demand when you have little. When you have an ocean of demand

33:50 It's hard to lose. And so the model that we have is Very different. It's almost like a ward away model. of like we you know we invite entrepreneurs out here who we think are interesting Uh, we look at the business and then we say, Hey, change these things, call us in a year.

34:05 Um And that's that's basically what we did. We took our diligence process that we were doing for multiple years, and I was like What hap the the the catalyst for it was that we had we getting all these thank you emails. So all these founders come in from my content or whatever and they'd be like you know, they took we my DLT took six calls, and was like at the end was like

34:23 Listen. These two metrics suck. Do these things, see how it works for you or give us a call. And they were like, This was the most valuable process I've ever gone through. And then I was thinking like That cost me a lot of money. Right. And so I was like, Well, what if I just charged for diligence functionally and then I got

34:39 I then I could actually staff it better and all these other things. And so That's functionally what we do from the advisory practice that then feeds the deal side. So you have the content. Which creates the brand. Yeah. What you did is you turned your

34:52 Cost into whether it's a profit center or break even, I don't know, but You know, something like this. This is your workshops. Yeah. What did you call it? You called it something else just now? Advisory practice. Advisory. Okay. So there's your advisory. Yeah. And you you say, Okay, pay us five grand, come over here. But then you do have an upsell here to like more advice. So we just do so basically from there it's

35:12 This is how we basically how we see cr value creation. And so we say like this is our framework for creating value. If you like this, Happy to help you. If you're like This is cool. I'll go do this. Awesome.

35:23 Uh but the the consulting side's true consulting it's it's one thing like They come, we identify the constraint, we say, Okay, okay. Well, we're gonna go look at comps. We're gonna look at the different as as strategies of people who are bigger. We're gonna say this is the funnel and this is the offer we think you should do. And we say, This is all you have to do when you do that. Call us. And so it's it's a hundred percent from

35:43 Uh point to point. It's not like a ongoing thing. It's literally one time consulting. Um and that's the quote that's the quote up so. And then at the bottom here you have the equity side. Yep. But you're like great, the p private equity side, right? Yep.

35:56 You can buy the businesses that and the venture arm now, which we do a lot of. And Venture. Okay, gotcha. Um Interesting. When you started How much of this was figured out as you go?

36:07 A hundred percent of it. Uh Grandmaster Plan, visionary. Well there's turtleneck. Some things were master. Yeah, right. The the big goals for Master Plan, the All of this mechanics was absolutely like figured out as you go. Like the books and how they've all been structured. has been a five plus year plan. And you'll you'll see

36:27 But what what I do with the launch and and why. Um it's gonna be awesome. But uh it will it will It will all be revealed. Um But like the mechanics of like the prices and like how we do that, like that was very much born from like I am currently spending money on this team. We have way more demand than we have supply. maybe if I can generate more revenue here, I can staff it better, I can get more luck surface area, because I can look at more of these deals. Cause you've probably d seen this. Like some companies look terrible on paper. And then you meet them and you're like, oh, these guys are awesome. Right. And so we had to do so many like

36:58 I mean We'd we'd probably talk to one percent of the papers that we c that would come in. And I was like, I know we're missing stuff. Right. And so that was that was basically the thesis behind this. I mean I think it it was brilliant. I was like Wait a minute So he's basically Gets paid for people to come and open up the kimono, they get value too. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing it. These are not dummies, these are business owners. Like they they shouldn't be making good decisions. But I was like, wow, that's a Yeah, the median size is is four million. So it's not like they're not small business. It's median. So like there's plenty of like tons of good businesses. Every every every time we have a workshop, top one's usually between

37:29 thirty and a hundred, you know, and there's plenty in the eight, like every single I don't think we've ever had one that doesn't have multiple eight figure companies. I wanna play a game with you. Do we have the uh the game here? Oh what is the uh what is the game? So the game was this. Raw.

37:44 Okay, so So this is gonna be a game. That we're calling. Make it or take it. All right. So you're gonna have to shoot. I know I know you're not.

37:55 They get a bathroom. We're gonna pick it up for this. So You're gonna take a shot. Okay. I think we'll Set that as the benchmark here.

38:05 Did you make it? You're off the hook. Okay. You missed it. You have to take it with one of the tough questions that I was like, I really like Alex and I was like W uh what do people want? So I ask people, what do you want on episode? This guy puts out a ton of content.

38:18 You know, I'm not just going here to get views like well, yeah, let's do something new, let's do something fun. And so they were like Ask him some tough questions. So I said okay, let me think of some tough questions, but let's make it fun. How we do it. First shot. Uh go for it and then you get uh miss it, you I ask you the question? If you make it Yeah, you can ask me the question. That's fair. Or I burn the question. Uh up to you. So this is the question I have. Okay. Perfect. So the question is

38:42 What do your haters get right? What do my haters get right? Meaning All you know, y you get criticism as anyone does. Yeah, c some criticism is fair, or there's uh components of it that's fair. So what do the haters get right?

38:59 Steroids is one, you know, he's just you know, he's here for the money. I would say from like the the f philosophical angle You know, I say there are people who are like Uh You know the

39:11 say that like Alex is in a life and I'm like, Well yeah, I'm yeah, pretty open about that too. You know, so it's like they will use a fact as an insult and I'll be like, I agree. Right. So that's I think that qualifies. I think that's one, right? Like intending it as a hate of comment. Yeah. But you're like, yes, and I agree. I agree. Yeah. And if you if only you knew And I'm open with that. Yeah. No, because if you guys see that like I'm here seven days a week. Like I work All the days until I cannot work and then I take a day and then I continue to work again. And I

39:38 I work twelve. out hours most days. I'm usually five to five. Um for six. And so it's Is that a temporary thing? Are you like, Yeah, I'm in an era of my life where that's what I want to do, or you're like, that's who I wanna be? It doesn't feel this doesn't feel like a push for me.

39:51 Like if I if I when I'm pushing, I work third shift, which is I work eighteen. If I do that for an extended period of time. That starts to greet at me, but like twelve is like That doesn't yeah, like five to five. Five to si I'm like, I still feel like I've got plenty of time. So like chill out and do whatever.

40:07 Alright, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over two hundred thousand companies. Shouldn't be surprised, because I use it myself for not one, not two. But I have eight different Mercury accounts. So I have seven for uh different companies that I'm a part of, and then I have uh my own personal account'cause now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. Uh, and the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder, it's an entrepreneur. Um, you could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past. And didn't like all the different rough edges and and annoyances and decided to, you know, actually fix it himself.

40:43 And really any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency, well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers, and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury's great. Highly recommend you check it out. And uh thank you for sponsoring the show. For more information, check out Mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Yeah, okay, yeah, make it or take it. Next question.

41:10 What I got? I love it. Uh All right, if I reset your bank account. And your followers, change your name and face. So I reset you to zero. Basically drop you in another drop you in another life, not another country.

41:22 How long do you think it would take you to get rich again? And what's rich. Rich would be let's say To make a million bucks. Get a million bucks in your bank. A year.

41:32 Uh and what would be the approach. So you're you're back to to nameless, faceless Alex Alex. Yeah. Well, having lost everything twice, um, I'll tell you what I did, uh, which was I find a local business. That's typically a service that I think um I can sell for a lot of money. Um and they're typically undercharging. And so I will say, Hey

41:51 How cheaply will you let me sell? Basically if I if I send you a hundred customers. How cheaply would you do it that would you charge me to do that? And so I get an agreement on price from them. And then I sell for whatever the hell I brought you volume. Yeah. What's the lowest you could deliver the service for that volume. Yeah. And so let's say it's a backcracker, let's a chiropractor, whatever, and I say, okay. Um, how much will you crackbacks for at the absolute cheese? And he says, twenty five bucks a session. I say, Okay, cool.

42:14 So I can sell packages of 10 for two fifty and you're cool with it. And he says yes. So I'm gonna go and sell packages for three grand. Right. And I'm gonna make the spread. And it's because I know how to sell and how to get leads. Right. And so I mean, this is what I did. I mean, obviously I did in the gym space, but it that's that's what I did when I lost everything. I just went to gyms and said, Hey Um But for them I could I negotiated zero. So like You already have all your cost basis. I'll just add you customers and then after the first month. Exactly. So I would I would take the first the five hundred bucks. I'd say, like, I get to keep that. And then after six weeks you can convert my memberships are all yours.

42:47 So zero cack for you. I take all the risk, I do all the work. Right. And that's and then I would I did about a hundred grand. Every twenty one days doing that. Is there a better or worse type of service business that you'd go for? Like knowing what you know now. I for sure do healthcare. Healthcare. Oh my God. Healthcare means what?

43:02 White lab coat. Anything. Any service it does. Like pseudo I call pseudo medical. Okay. So that's where like I mean that's why I like teeth whitening. That's we have a chain of twenty eight twenty eight stores. Like I love pseudomedical stuff. So Uh laser you know, uh laser laser skin stuff, laser hair removal, uh, you know the the Chemical peels

43:22 Um I love all that stuff. Like the the beauty medical like intersection. You you can just sell your eyes out. What's the why you love it? Because of the demand, because it's huge supply demand uh inequality. So there's uh if you see if you look at the stats there, it's insane. Like the amount of demand of like boomers and all the stuff you like wanna stay young. And the supply side on it is so low. And the reason I know this is because every single Medzball that walks in these doors.

43:46 Is killing it. And I talk to the founders and I'm like Whoa. And I'm like, so how do you market? They're like, we just kind of like open up, we just we just announce that we're there. Yeah, no. They're like, yeah, we have a phone number, people just kinda come in. I was like, They don't know. That's not that's not how it works. That's not how most people are. That's how crazy the supply-demand difference is. And they don't think about pricing. They like they think about nothing. They just and they make you know, forty percent they have no idea. And so that's why I would do it. Like a hate signal for you. Yeah. That's yeah, a hundred percent. When I've when I see a lot of people who don't know what they're doing, all making money, I'm like, okay, there's something there that's good.

44:16 Um and so That's what I would do'cause that's what I did do. Right. Thank you. Let me get another question here that I wanna do'cause I got a couple. Yeah.'Cause it's like if you need to make a hundred grand to a million bucks, you could do that. Like if you just if you know how to generate leads locally and sell. You just get a service business that agrees to take customers for a price and then you just sell. As much as you can.

44:36 All right. Go ahead. Well then you can ask you what are we doing? Uh, what did you get most wrong in the past three years? Okay, I'll tell you this. I started with a bit of a

44:48 portfolio approach. Mm-hmm. So I kinda had this thing where I was like I don't want to operate. These guys are operating well, I can add a bunch of value. Similar to what you guys do private equity or whatever. And I took minority stakes. Yep.

45:00 In uh several companies. That have done well. But basically when they do well and I add value I just sit there wondering why the hell don't I own more of this company? And I realized that I could have

45:11 made more and really simplified my life with one great business. Like it doesn't take many great businesses to get to the next levels of wealth. Business can be worth hundred million, five hundred million, like they can get very big. And so I would have been better served. Doing less. And I got it wrong. I thought that I was being I thought I was playing the game at a bit of a higher level.

45:29 Uh When in actuality, if I just kept it simple. Yeah. picked one of those business or built one one great business, I could have done Better than I did. Spreading my focus.

45:39 uh with less work. I made the same mistake. Yeah, we did we did twenty four deals in twenty four months and then we consolidated down to five. Yeah. Like you j it's the it's I mean it's eighty twenty. Power law applies. It's still rules, yeah.

45:53 All right, let's do the next one. All right. All right, now I've got now I've got my move the the benchmark. I usually ask it, whatever. All right, I was gonna ask you uh this one's funny. Should entrepreneurs should successful entrepreneurs get a premium? Um Should've tough. As a as a frame. If it's your kid.

46:11 It's my kid uh well if they're my kid then they're gonna have my money. So yeah, I'd say yeah, get it. I mean um For me, I ha I asked Layla. Basically it's like when you you want to pr you want to have a prenup in the when You have somebody who doesn't want to sign a prenup.

46:26 Like that's like that's the only that's the only way I can say it. Um, Lila and I Um, I thought I was like rich when I met Layla, which I wasn't, but like I thought I was rich. Um And I said, Will you sign a prenup? and she was like, Sure. Like I don't care. I don't want your shit.

46:42 And so we were on the way to the courthouse to get it the notarized or whatever. And in a dramatic flare, I uh tore I tore it I tore it and threw it out the window. Um Because I like she sh it was so not a thing. She was like, I don't want your shit. Like it's fine. And I believed her and Like

46:57 We've built everything together. So Um But I think That is very risky advice. And so I would say the vast majority of people should have like should strongly consider it. Romantic. I like it. All right, here we go. I'm gonna give you one more Okay, I like this question, so I'll I'll do this one.

47:12 Oh perfect. Bumped in and out I know. This is an easy one. This is actually not that tough a question. Um If you could only follow on X, meaning if you had to slim your content diet down bodybuilder mode where it's like chicken and broccoli or whatever. Mm-hmm. Who's your chicken and broccoli of your content diet? People you genuinely

47:30 You genuinely value what they're putting out there on uh I think maybe Twitter's one of your big platforms. It is. I mean Elon would be one. Um so I have two more two more people to to to use. Oh.

47:44 Um You know what's weird? I'm actually I've totally like use Twitter like a Like I just like let it serve me whatever. Right. And so I just like love all the thread. Yeah. I just like kinda like just let it feed me whatever. Um I'm trying to think about the other accounts that I would be like Oh if I would

48:00 I'd miss them if I didn't see them. Right. It's actually hard it feels like a m two or two years. Two or two years. Um Naval would be one. Okay, Naval's a good one. Um No, the others I mean, I would cheat and be like The news aggregator, so it's like oh at least I get all that. But I wouldn't actually pick that.

48:17 Um You know how who actually think it's really good concept? Anker from Carrie? Okay. Yeah, I actually like his stuff a lot. Interesting. Yeah, I like his stuff. That probably my second one. Oh, George You know I I love George Mack's stuff. Yep. George Mac. Although I'd I'd cheat, I'd be like

48:33 Just text me to think. No, George's really good. I actually really like George's stuff. Yeah, as now as I'm thinking about it, it's like say help, let's get stuff out. Um Obviously Williamson puts good stuff out. So like yeah, now that I'm I'm thinking through it's like I have like this blank, but no, I like I think George George just has some of the most unique takes. And I think that's why I like his stuff a lot. Yeah. All right. Well thank you for playing. Make her take it. He took the tough questions. Promozy hot hands. Hard questions.

48:58 Yeah, the the three you know, the biggest errors, man. That's uh 'Cause it's like which ones cost me the most and then which ones did I miss the opportunity the most. So it's like I have uh it's like I killed it, like Just based on the

49:11 Like I I I felt I've really beat myself up on this. I have missed more hundred million dollar Net gains. and multiple hundred million dollar net gains than I have made. Which makes me really angry.

49:22 Um But then I thought about it and I was like, You always say no to more deals than you say yes to. So you're always going to miss you're literally going to miss more winners than you have. But like it but like ever I can tell you all like it's like I say their names before I go to sleep at night. Like I've Like one of them Stark. And some of them I'm like I should've like.

49:42 This one was in the like I there's no like there was a gym franchise. Like buddy of mine, I've known him for years, he's been in the business for 30 years, he finally went on his own to start a franchise. Um, and then I I was like, We need to do the business this way and he's like I just I just wanna run a fair'cause I was like, dude, let's just privately own'em all. It's a great model. And I was like, I'll fund the whole expansion.

50:01 And He's like, I've already sold forty units, like I you know, I don't want to foot back and And so I ended up like not doing the deal and he'll exit for probably a hundred twenty million. Um, and this is in three years. And I I was gonna it was for fifty percent of the company. And I was just like He was a friend. It was fitness for j I was like

50:20 There's I should not have missed this deal. You know what I mean? Uh, there's a content creator that I that I love and have followed for More than ten years. Um talk to them. You know, we had a uh we were gonna get a thirty three percent stake in the company.

50:34 And From the time that I we said no to the deal. I'd say twenty four months later. They're now probably a hundred fifty million dollar company. And it's just like I have a I have like

50:44 Four or five of these ones that I'm just like I should like that was Like that one I said no because I knew the amount that He

50:52 he slash they wanted from me was gonna be more than I wanted to Like I They it was like I think they saw it as like an aqua hire and I was like I'm not gonna Like I will

51:03 Do this, but I'm not gonna dive it. Uh, I had a moment like this in uh in Silicon Valley I was yeah. I thought I was t saying my big miss. Yeah. I was like I forget which one it was. Maybe it's like Calm or something. I was buddy with Alex and Yeah. raising a probably like a four or five million dollar valuation. It's now two billion. Right. So I I could have easily written a check into Calm.

51:22 Disregarding the fact that at the time I had no money, was not angel investing. There's many reasons I missed that, in addition to just not thinking it was gonna be a winner. Yeah. Um, but besides that, I I was telling some story about one of these one of these misses and I thought I was like Sounding cool because I missed it. And literally I just got big dogged by this guy in Silicon Valley. He was just like he's like

51:40 Okay, welcome to Silicon Valley. He's like, what are you talking about? Everybody, anybody has Baskets of these. Are you kidding me? You want to start? Like I could How much time you got? Facebook number one, Uber's first and second round. Exactly. It's like, oh I wrote the check, I missed did the date. You know, how many different versions of this? And he but he said something smart. You know, he was first he was like, Shut up, basically. He's like, Shut up. You think this is like A really cool, unique story. Yeah. Not only is this not cool and unique, it's actually just a standard cost of entry if you're gonna play this game. Totally. So like what are you talking about? But the second thing he said was he's like, I think you're taking the wrong lesson from this. Focusing so much on what I missed out on. Yeah. Versus what the root cause analysis of

52:18 Why didn't I do this? Oh, okay. I've and actually since then changed this where it's like actually a lot of these misses were like Deals I liked, I wanted to do, they wanted to do it. We just didn't chase or kind of follow up enough to like make sure a transaction goes through because Doing a deal takes a sprint at the end. And then we actually like operationalized a bunch of those. Once we once we got over ourselves into the kind of weird ego of missing. Uh it you know, life got a lot better for us, but it I had to I had to learn that the hard way.

52:44 But that's that was probably a big one. I um and then a lot of my big misses have been like strategic mess ups. Like one of the big a like one of the biggest errors I ever made at Gym Launch was I started Allen, the software company. And I should have built a CRM for gyms. And that was like I had the right idea. What did Alan do if it wasn't it just it worked leads,'cause the biggest pain point they had was working leads. CRM wasn't a pain point from a monetization perspective. If I had put them all on the platform, then I would have thought all their metrics, I would have been controlled revenue. There's so many things. And so like

53:16 That was like that was probably a three hundred million dollar miss. And so like that sucks. Like I've it that that's probably like my biggest strategic miss I've made. I'm like I literally allocated capital to build technology and I built the wrong one. Right. Like but I didn't know enough. I mean I was twenty seven, you know. On the other side, what are the biggest hits that have happened post

53:35 The gym launch and whatever. This building. So this was like an unexpected like wow, this was way, way more alpha than I would've would have been. What do you mean by that? Like the literally the real estate value, or you mean just the serendimity of the fact that I bought this building before we Did any like it was just like I just wanted a place of a gym. So like I was like I'm gonna I'm gonna buy a big building and Um, Layla was like we don't like We're all remote.

53:57 And we have like, you know, with the on on the just the pure Hulk Co, I think at the time we had like fifteen employees just on the investment side. And I was like And so and so anyways I was like I really want this building'cause it was the it was old UFC building, just kinda cool. Um I was like, I will figure out a way that it will pay for itself, right?

54:14 And so The only reason the advisory practice got stood up was because I was like, Well, we have this space. I was like, Let's just I'll make a post to see if anyone wants to come out. And then that's what sprung that's like there's huge demand for that. in person versus remote stuff and

54:29 So then it was like great. So we meet all these businesses and we generate cash flow. So it's like both things. But like this for sure, like that whole thing would not have happened if we didn't have a vote. Like zero chance. I wouldn't have done it because I it was just like I have the space. Let's try. I just would never have taken that leap. Right. So that was probably a huge like Didn't guess it was gonna be a win win.

54:48 That's probably like the biggest the biggest one that's like that. Plus I mean you've got like you know, Michael and a bunch of the other guys who are here all the time now, which I think it was very tempting and very easy to be fully remote. Yeah. And I think remote works.

55:01 Remote works. Yeah. But in like the business Olympics. the people who are serious about it they're gonna be together. They're gonna be colocated. Uh you know, like I paid Diego I was like Move across the country. I'll pay you more, just live as like the rule is here's a five minute radius from like where I live. Yeah. Pick a place. Yeah, that that's the only rule of coming out here. And because

55:21 There's you know, you can't really replace that. Oh, totally. We're eighty so now we're eighty percent in person. And so I think we're at like Ninety ish employees, something like that. Um And so the only thing that we allow as uh remote is infrastructure. So HR well actually HRs here. So like but uh finance uh can be remote.

55:39 Uh certain tech roles can be remote. Um Legal can be remote. This has actually become my favorite podcast question. I don't know if you have a good answer to this because I think you're so locked in and focused on what you do. But it just what are you what are you like really interested in late?

55:53 Like what are you very obsessed with lately that's not your core um day to day work. Meaning not like a hobby. But just like just I'm kind of fascinated by this, or just I keep reading about this, or I keep wanting to meet people in this Do this thing. What what's that thing? I only have two.

56:08 And they will not be s well one's the tried answer just like I'm reading up on AI just like you are and I spend a ton of hours looking into it. Um, the other thing is completely unsurprising is that I'm actually really into gym equipment. Like I I like my Instagram is Jipment. Are we talking like novelty gym equipment or what do we like like kind of like I get all these like Your neck cracker machine. Mine's like commercial, like giant industrial stuff. Yeah, like like the stuff that you see at gyms. Like, and why are you so interested in that? What's what's get me interested in it. Well, if you if like if you train hard, like you start to notice that like some some machines are better than others and like why are they better? And then you start looking at like force curves for like okay, where does the you know, where's the tension the highest? And then it's like does it correspond with where hypertrophy is maxed out for like the range of motion for the muscle?

56:52 And like Just the like what's the feel of the of the of the equipment and the range of motion and the adjustability and And like what like what kind of bearings are they use? Like you can get you can go like pretty far into this, yeah. Um And so I'll say this, there's the there's this a new thing that came out. It's called the Vulture. I'm not

57:08 Sponsored. Um by Beyond Power. And I think that I think in Think ten or fifteen years. Gym equipment will look very different, and it has not changed for a very long time, and it's because

57:21 Uh Basically magnetic resistance hasn't And so like a vulture, for example, is a it's like a brick it's literally the size of a brick. It's this big. It can get to two hundred pounds of resistance, right?

57:32 But not only that, you can do single pound increments, which is amazing for strength work'cause like most people the Like side note for anybody. A lot of reasons you get stuck at a at a at a machine or on dumbbells is because the percentage jump is too big. Like girls with dumbbells it's like the worst. They go from twenty to twenty five pounds for a girl. It's a twenty percent jump in in in in weight. And so they just can't make the jump, so they just get stuck. Whereas like the perfect gym would have literally a hundred dumbbells that are

57:58 one pound, two pound, thund four pound, all the way up. And then you can make those progressions much easier. So anyways, it goes single pound increments. You can also change the eccentrics. So you can have it be way harder on the way in versus the way out. Uh the next thing is you can change the curve. So you can make it like Uh really hard at the front. So for any kind of pulling movement, you want heavier here'cause you're stronger here, lighter here. On the flip, if you're doing pushing movements, you want to be lighter here, you know, heavier hair.

58:19 And you do that by just telling it the movement. You can change the curve. Uh and so Because it's a European company, by the way. I I don't know. I I Somebody sent me this. They were like'cause I was buying the do f the Bow Flex like adjustable like Two dumbbells, but you can do all these weights.

58:36 He's like, I really want to get it, get these. And I th I just probably new one. It's probably Nubow. Okay, maybe that was the one that's probably what it is. But yeah, the the best ones right now are the Repslash Peppin'. adjustables, they go to one twenty and they're all metal. There's no plastic. Anyways, I mean like I can talk with it. Um But that is probably my uh but I'll I'll circle I'll close the loop on the on the vulture thing. The reason I think it's so interesting is that

58:58 Like all the selectorized pieces you see, stacks of weight, right? You put a pin in it, there's the stack. Those they take up so much room because you have to have room for you have to balance the the piece of equipment from when people are moving it. Um, and the stack takes up a huge amount of space, and from a shipping perspective, it's so expensive to ship four hundred pounds plus the machine. Right. And so it takes more square footage, it's more expensive, it has smaller increments, you can't change the strength curve. There's all these reasons. And so

59:23 They find like the tech is finally there. Where I think that there will be a next generation of machines where they will only have the electronic. Yeah, exactly. And you just literally plug it into the wall. And the thing is the square footage will be smaller, the actual machines will be cheaper. Because th this is Vultures of Gen One.

59:40 As soon as the Like in five generations it'll be two hundred dollars. Right now it's two thousand for the brick. But It'll be cheaper than weight. As soon as it's cheaper than than mass based iron. Yeah. As soon as it's cheaper than mass based wire, there's there's basically no point. Right.

59:56 To having Mass based resistance. So I I get very excited about that stuff because I think it's gonna be really cool for gyms'cause I I mean I obviously come from that space, but The amount of things that you can now be able to do as a gym owner now. I don't own a gym right now. I do own a gym, but just not commercial. Um

1:00:11 There's so many more things you can do with customers that like your ability to do like true hypertrophy training in a large group setting. when you have that type of resistance. It's safer, you can't get hurt on it. Like there's all these things that are beneficial for it. So I think that That's my that's my tenure call. Yeah. Uh I think it'll I think a huge amount will be Mag Dickers. It'll be cheaper for gym owners. They don't break as often, incremental all the reasons I said, and it's less space.

1:00:37 Dude, that was a sick answer. That was the one I was like, I don't even know if I'm gonna ask him, I feel like I feel like he's gonna tell me like I really liked writing this book and I'm like, Oh okay, well great. No gym equipment. Have you seen my gym? No, I have to show you. Okay, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, you'll you'll see it and be like, you're geeking out on AI, anything like Yeah, I use it a lot. Um I use it I mean I feel I I'd just say I'm ashamed. I use it all the time and I am ashamed it.

1:01:02 I'm my use cases. I know I should be using it better, which I think Many people feel that way. But I feel like at all levels everyone feels like they should be using it more. But uh there should be a word for like AI guilt. Yeah. I think Elon has AI guilt. You know what I mean? So uh I would say like

1:01:20 I'm the the most interested part that I'm in for like where I'm focused on AI is actually um phones,'cause obviously I come from the sales background and so That use case. Like I want a phone call or what do you mean by phone calls? Customer support calls. Like right now we have uh we have fully implemented

1:01:37 Um AI support. And it's crushing. It's doing so it's like it's amazing. So right now, over ninety percent of all tickets are being resolved entirely with AI. Which is I mean, you have any commerce but multiple, right? Like It's so it's amazing. And like The like w I'm getting I'm getting these thank you emails like you guys rock. Like this was two minute response, like you guys are on it and like the whole thing's AI. Right.

1:01:58 And so I'm like that. It's obviously the text based side is there. But Like it's weird because the if you look you like Grok Four, I'm sure you got the upgrade or whatever. The voice keeps getting extremely bad. Like I Grocks the one I use for voice. Um it's the only one that I do voice stuff with. I do the all the other stuff with the other ones.

1:02:15 Um But I'm like Why like It's so close.

1:02:20 Like the latency is so close that I just I that's the use case that I'm waiting to crack. Like we've been working on one for a year now. And the latencies but it's it's still like it's It's like not it's not good enough that I'd be like I want to waste money on, you know, leads for it to call.

1:02:37 But it's like maybe it's six months, but that's the one that's the one that I have my most finger like on the pulse. Yeah. That's great. Um Yeah, I dude, I hired an AI tutor. Like basically every week'cause I'm like it take it's a full time job to keep up with no advantage. So I said, I'm gonna sit down I was like, I'm paying five hundred dollars an hour. Yeah. What you're gonna do.

1:02:55 is you're gonna come with a list of like blow my mind point one. Blow my mind point too. But I get to drive. Yeah. Right,'cause like you you set it all up. But then like I get to be caveman. This is how I learn everything. I pay you guys$750 an hour and I said

1:03:09 Just explain to me how you're doing this and then I'll learn it. Literally coaches are like coaches for adults. Yeah. Is this like I don't know why there's maybe an embarrassment factor or like a lack of imagination or creativity. Um I think it's just like massive underrated. I started money. Also, like the difference. So it's like engineering, right? Like they had like 10x engineers. There's been like a average coach, a good coach, and like the best coaches. Is these orders of magnitude jumps and how good they are. So the other thing people do get wrong is they just Take the first coach that they have.

1:03:37 be really promiscuous and like you know go date around and like go find a coach that will just like rock your world because whether it's fitness or food or what I have like probably six or seven coaches. Like In rotation right now in my life. For AI or in general? I have AI. No just general. I've AI. I've a I got my food girlfriend, she calls me every morning, helps me think about like how am I gonna eat today. Yeah. Uh, and helping me like uproot all my bad habits through that.

1:04:01 Uh I have my personal trainer who does like a very specific like functional training thing that I I I like and I I do. Yeah, a basketball coach. And there's people like, Are you going you're not going to the NBA, what are you doing? It's like Well I love playing basketball. I decided like Being better at basketball is not sucking. I can go to cardio or I can have like an NBA trainer train me. Oh, it's awesome. It's way better than just doing cardio. And you know, so why might why would I not do that?

1:04:24 So I just have a bunch, but like It's it's become to the point where it's like comical. It's like I'm just like looking for an excuse. Like that I mean, what other coaches can I add to my piano teachers, everything. I'm such an advocate of this. Um For anyone who if we're still even rolling, but um They've all left. Yeah, they've all left. Yeah, we're gonna have to hang it out. No, but like um I think the some of the highest RA money you can spend is one on one tutoring.

1:04:46 Like just like like every time I really need to learn something, what you said like I just I'm like I will pay you a huge amount of money to just sit with me and it's just a little bit more. Which by the way is the killer AI use case, right? So like that's gonna be the thing where once we get it I I forget what it's called. Have you heard like the Bloom Two Sigma? Thing. Basically there's this long term studies, people want to fix education. So if rich people fund like how do we do it? And then they go do the research, and they're basically like the number one way to get like an actual two sigma, which is like standard deviation jump in outcome.

1:05:13 is one on one tutoring. Problem is it doesn't scale. So we they wrote it off. Yeah. So for the last thirty years, we've just been like Well, we know the thing that works. Doesn't really scale. It doesn't sc you know can't be affordable. So we'll try all these other things. But it's like, hey, wait a minute. It's better. That's now that's now viable, and so let's see what happens, you know. Are you in Austin? No, I mean barrier. Barry is a barrier. Alpha School. Yeah, because Joe yeah, so I talked to I talked to Joe about Alpha School.

1:05:37 And um I mean the the stuff they're doing is wild. But the the issues that they're encountering. has nothing to do with Education. Yeah. It's everything to do with policy. Right. Such a pain. But it's like Okay, two hours a day, we're moving at twice the speed. So that's

1:05:50 That's So one fourth the time, twice the speed, they're moving at eight times the speed of a normal school And Their scores are top ninety eight percentile. So it's like

1:06:00 Eight times the speed. And the quality metrics there. And then the other six hours of the day is the kid just learns whatever they like. They code apps, they do public speaking, they do budgeting, they learn all these other life skills. And it's just like God.

1:06:12 Uh did you hear did you see that clip by um Alexander um Wang? Hopefully I didn't Scale. Yeah, yeah. Which clip was it? Well, he's like, I don't want my I don't want to kid until it's not. Until it's native. And I was like, man. That was one of the more insane statements I've ever heard. That's the good weird of Silicon Valley is you're running to peop Very bad. batshit insane stuff with a straight face and then you're like, wait, am I insane? Or is he insane? I can't tell. Yeah. He's pr he's probably right. Yeah. But he's crazy. He has way more context on this, which is what scares me. It's like when you have one of those, it's like

1:06:43 Yeah. You have to know so like if we have the same information. You might be crazy by my standards. Right. But if I assume that you are intelligent and can make good decisions, then it means you know something I don't know. And so that's what that's what frightens me from the AI. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But like Peter Thiel had a great one of the the great Peter Tele like sort of insights was when he was went around and he was like university is a bubble and he was basically saying like

1:07:06 You have to look at university as a bundle. Yeah. Education. Great, sure, ten percent. Yeah. Babysitting. Uh you know, m you know maturation uh maturation of eighteen to twenty two year olds is what what's there, social.

1:07:17 There's a insurance policy for parents where you're like, I don't know, just go to college, I feel like that's what I needed to do for you. And there's like a filtering thing, which is like Well, we trust that Harvard filters you, so we yeah, we'll just trust their filtering process. Yeah so like college does all these different jobs. Yeah. And his take was basically like. If you want to disrupt it, you don't just disrupt the whole thing. You have to unbundle the bundle and figure out what to do. And so like

1:07:40 I feel like this is just such a common business thing, which is like Oh, healthcare sucks. This sucks. It's like sucks. Cool. But until you've realized that that thing is actually a bundle, uh, you really have no shot at like upending it in any way, right? You gotta take one part of that bundle and just 10x that and figure out a way where the other stuff doesn't apply to you because you didn't promise that. And if you can do all that, like it works, you know? Yeah. Like you know, the way I think about what you do is you're a teacher on YouTube, which is not a surprise to you, but like People think of YouTube as like either A social media. Okay, maybe another it's just it's content, it's entertainment.

1:08:11 Right, but like Did I get little kids? Miss Rachel is the best pre school teacher. In the world. Yeah. She has thirty four million preschool students who watch her on her app. Great. Like that she's the best teacher, therefore she should get Listen.

1:08:24 huge outsize number of students. Totally. And like Khan Academy was a great teacher. Yeah, there's you're a great business teacher. Like I literally look at YouTube like it's a high school. There's just c classes to offer. Like I can go to David Sterner and get the history of entrepreneurship. That's a An elective I decide to take. And like you're basically like business one on one or business whatever. You know, business fundamentals. Yeah. Um and it's like great, I can go take business fundamentals with my professor, you know, how does he and like I think when you start to look at YouTube as also a bundle of music and entertainment and education, then you start to think about how I might use it differently than the average person. Right. Because like Both you and I probably wish we started on YouTube 10 years earlier. Yeah. Uh and it was the people who saw YouTube as more than what others saw it that actually got that advantage. Yeah. No, I think that's really good. Yeah, I think the it reminds me of the Naval quote that I like a lot, which is technology, um

1:09:09 Democratizes consumption and consolidates production. And so it's like which means if you're the best in the world, you get to do it for everybody. Right. And so Yeah, I actually I think about that a lot when we talk about our channel, which is like how do we how do we just make this the best business content, you know, possible. Um

1:09:24 And that's I mean, that's the whole goal. It's like if we just keep doing that. Then we'll be okay. I think it'd be a I mean a pretty damn good job of it. I appreciate it. I'm curious how you do this,'cause at one point in time, I think I've even talked about this on the podcast, I was like, I think he's

1:09:37 Great and smart. But then The problem with YouTube. Yeah. Because the goddamn views are public. Yeah.

1:09:43 Is they give you an outer scorecard to use. Yeah. It may not be the one you want, right? And it was like I I remember once I looked at your channel and it was like if you're broke Do this. Yeah, yeah. If you don't have enough money for Chipotle, do this. And I was like, dude, he's just gonna attract broke people. It's the opposite of what he kind of like wants, you know, or like it's easy to optimize because guess what? There's more broke people who are more desperate that are on YouTube with a bunch of time to kill. You're gonna get two million views on the Broke Guy video. But like

1:10:06 I'm never gonna click that and you probably want Some people like me clicking some of your content. Totally. And so like I think that's the challenge with YouTube overall is like if you take their metrics, As your metrics, you might have a big problem. It's a hundred percent it's uh so yeah, it's it's a thousand percent a problem.

1:10:21 Um, and we I'd say we just we'd put as many controls in place as we can and it's still tough. And so right now Here's where it gets like Let's let's peel layer back. Yeah. So where gets really interesting is that If I make six videos, this is our actual cadence.

1:10:35 Five of them I want to be Business first, business deep, whatever we want to call it. And then one out of six, I say I'm okay to just like make it wide. Brutally honest truth about whatever, right?

1:10:47 That one video We'll get more views than the other five together. And so then How much does that actually weight the brand? So even if I actually think about my input. Production versus consumption. Right. So if I actually put my inputs like I might have

1:11:00 A fifty percent philosophy brand. And fifty percent or you know, uh motivation, whatever you want to call it, right? Like mindset, et cetera. And then fifty percent business E. But in terms of my production, it's ninety percent of my time is business. It's just like Doesn't get the reach.

1:11:15 And so it's actually one of the things that frustrates me in some ways'cause like If I like if I get stopped on the street. I'm always curious like what was the you know, what was the thing. And so but like business owners for me'cause like I see the people walking the door and you have to

1:11:31 They are more more listening and reading. Uh in general. And like we have the we have a whole series we do called Cash Cows, which is kinda like what we did with the Hermosia Hotline. But I have them in person and then I do the whole the whole thing and it's like an hour. And those ones right now average like

1:11:46 A hundred and fifty thousand, maybe two hundred thousand views per video. But like A brutally honest. Million like it's just like I can do like We can I we can do it right now. And like I know like I know exactly what we're gonna say and it uh but the

1:11:59 But When I asked Who here likes those who shows up. They're like, please keep making those. Right. And so I have I I keep asking them just because I need the reinforcement. No, because you need an inner scorecard. No, I need something. The outer scorecard is only gonna tell you one thing. s instrument like an antenna yourself to get the signal that you're actually looking for. In a way that's not necessarily biased, but If I don't put up an antenna, there is no generic antenna for this, you know, like

1:12:23 Also a little a little tiny thing um that may be maybe helpful useful, but um we actually just this quarter switched our metric. So we used views as basically the way that I did it before was like We will make content about these topics and then as long as they're within these topics, then we will maximize views. So that's the that's the constraint, and then maximize within that constraint. We have now switched to subscriber count, uh subscriber birth, even though subscribers matter zero. Right. It's just yeah, it doesn't matter for distribution, but it's a great loyalty. Exactly. It's a quality score of like I thought this was valuable enough.

1:12:53 that so now I can still do the same constraints on Um on the content. But then use the subscriber the'cause that gives us the because Subscriber still has baked into it some element of reach. But

1:13:04 If you if I make a brutally honest video, I'm not gonna get the same amount of subscribers I am as like thirteen years of business advice, like one of my best videos ever. That's but hardcore business. Yeah. So anyway, just it's something that we've switched to just this quarter. I um I I have uh I can't figure so I I I basically figured out what do I want.

1:13:21 Which I can't measure. So first was what do I want? I was basically like I created it but like you know you know in popularity they have the Q score? Okay. So I basically was like, Give me the Z score. What's the Z score? The Z score for me is a trust score. So I was like, All right. Probably should have been a T score. I think about it. But it was the Z score, which is basically I realized that all content, what you actually want is Number of people reached.

1:13:40 Times the quality of the person reached. Sure. Times the depth of their trust in you. Sure. And basically that's the equation you ultimately care about. So like you can reach a lot of people on TikTok. But if they're just like You know, if they're not the people you're trying to do, like to attract. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it's you have to discount factor'cause you're not

1:13:57 Second variable's not very good. And then the third, which is like how much do they actually trust you? Not like They watch that piece of content or they like that thing or they w hate watched it. You're like, Yeah, I got views, but like actually they're like this guy's an idiot or like and I hate this guy, right? So

1:14:11 That's why uh that's why I wish existed. Now that's never gonna exist. So I had to back channel it. So I said If uh if I make a thing. Do I want to go put it in my favorite group chat? Mi myself being like I made this guy's. Because there's a lot of shit I make that can get pot that's popular that I would be I would cringe putting it there. Yeah. Cause they'd be like, bro, what the fuck is this? We don't need this or care about this like

1:14:34 What is this for? Why did you put this here? Versus other things. Like I did this one thing that went nowhere viral virally. Uh there's like I spent like two months just studying the process of creativity. Yeah. I really realize with AI is like productivity values going down and creativity values going up. So I was like, how do the most creative people in the w world work? I've studied Elon and all those guys, but I actually have no idea how, you know

1:14:54 Signal and Picasso and all these other guys, how they operate. So I study that, I put it together. And I put it out there again, went nowhere could put, but I've like internalized these lessons deeply, so it's still a win. But that was the one where if I put it in my group chats. Yeah. My most successful peers

1:15:10 We're actually like, dude, this is actually sick. Like I actually have I didn't know this, I took this, I needed this, blah blah blah. So I've had to use basically like my own cringe factor of like do I wanna put this in there or Would I feel like kinda stupid doing that. Would I would I feel like I need to soften it with some context and some excuses uh to put it in.

1:15:29 Yeah, that's um I think I mean w I think what you hit on is like such a painful part of of creating content is that the entire the reinforcement system leads you away from the actual business goal. I mean if you if you do this for business, which I do, like it leads you away from your business goal, which makes it very You just have to have a lot of discipline of like

1:15:48 This is the stuff I'm gonna make and it will underperform and that is okay. And it gets harder when you when you get When you know how to make the stuff that really hits. From a views and all that stuff perspective. The more you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean But you know, that's I mean, this has been uh it's probably at one of the largest vocal points that we have, uh as for our brand. And I I feel like it's an accordion. It's like You know, if we we do just hardcore hardcore business content. Um and then we'll be like

1:16:14 All right, let's let's make a little bit of personality stuff, let's show a little bit, and then it's like, Oh, that did great and we're like then we're like, Oh fuck, we're way too wide and then like so I think we just kinda oscillate. One thing I wish you did more of just my personal request was that You did something like a short or something. You were just talking about your figure you wear. You're talking about your shoes. Right. And I bought those shoes. And then you're Darwin outfit. And l and so yeah, so yeah, you call your Darwin outfit, you're like, I can wear this in the rain and a pool, and then I can get out of the pool, go to a restaurant, and it works. I can go for a hike tomorrow. And um

1:16:46 You know, I think that's great,'cause first of all it it first of all it didn't feel like I'm trying to be the Kardashian, so it it didn't feel like you were trying to show me something. It was just like Oh, you wanna know like something I do in my life, here's something I do in my life. Yeah. Um what I thought was interesting about that was A it was a good find. You actually put real like your own nerdiness into like

1:17:04 Doing something for your own lifestyle. So it was like it it meant something. Uh, but B, every time I wear those shoes, I think of you. And there's something to physical anchors in a digital world that like actually matters. I'm a huge believer in that side note. So I think this is like a little sauce there. And I think the other part of it was. Um I so so m my I like made a mission for the year, like a Masoge for the year.

1:17:25 And like I thought it was like it should have been about you know business or like getting in great shape or whatever. But when it was like Oh I know what I want to do. I was like, I wanna learn to jam out on the piano.

1:17:33 I was like and so I just made that my mission and I took it like incredibly seriously and like had a great time doing it. And so Just yesterday I just turn on I've just turned on a live stream on Twitter was like, I think they have this feature. I was live doing myself doing like a piano practice. Not even like a performance. I was just like fucking around like

1:17:48 Trying to learn these songs. I'm not good. I've been doing it six months. Dude, I got so many DMs from like, again, the same thing, like the people who I don't want to send my content to, because I'm like, You're a billionaire. What do you How to get rich. From a guy ten times less rich than you. Yeah. But I got them being like Dude, I've been wanting to practice. I love it. I love how you made time for this. Is that what you which one did you get? What room is that? Who's that teacher? How'd you find her? Do you think a teacher's better than the apps? And I got so many of those.

1:18:11 That was like there's something to the lifestyle content when it's really like gen. I could try to a gym quibbet, for example. Like you can probably see that I like I'll light up when I talk about it. Exactly. It if it if it genuinely lights you up and it shows it's like for other successful people who I don't like, I've read all the books now. I don't really need a lot of like How to grow my business. I'm actually pretty good at that. Sure. And so like one cool way I thought your lifestyle stuff worked was It attracted me to that where I probably wouldn't watch like ten of the other videos, but that one I was like kinda interested in. Really interesting. From a different angle. And I think you you kinda turned the spigot off on that, I'd notice. Uh but like

1:18:42 My re personal request is give me ten percent of that back. Yeah. So this is the the dichotomy that has to be managed, which is the the the thumbprint of the creator, in my opinion, should be the representation of their current life, which means it can change. Right. And so it's like I spend maybe it's like 10% of my time is fitness oriented. And so like maybe 10% of my content should be fitness oriented. And then probably 80% of my time is business oriented, then maybe 10% of my time is philosophical, and maybe five. And this is now a hundred and five, but uh is is relationship whatever, right? And so it's like that that's my mix, and maybe in a different season it'll change. And so

1:19:15 The content should be I always think of this like should be glass. It should be like when someone meets me, it's exactly as they expect. Presentation, yeah. The only thing that fucks that whole thing up is the algorithm. Yeah. Because I can absolutely make that that that thumbprint it's just that this one We'll get 10 times the views. And so then if you're trying to manage the mosaic of your brand with all the little all the little shorts as tiny little squares. It's just that you can't control how big the square is in the middle of the fucking face that you're trying to build. So that makes sense, but that's what I'm saying. Like those that thing about your shoes didn't get a lot of views, but it made an imprint on me. And I would say like I would carry more weight than like a thousand random views. Tim Ferriss said this once. He's like,

1:19:53 Do I want ten thousand random people selected at random somewhere in the world to like my stuff? Yeah. half of Davos to be like to really respect what I do. Exactly. One's a big number, one's big tr one's big value, right? Like which one do I want?

1:20:06 Yeah. I think there's something similar there, and also like You know you were talking about like They have different wallets or different stomachs. Totally, yeah. It's like I only have a certain wallet or stomach for like educational business contract. Me reminding myself I need to do more at work. Yeah. Right. But I actually have other wallet share to give you Interesting. On another area. My fitness wallet share. You could get some of that. You could get some of my outfit wallet share or my relationship wallet share as an entrepreneur dealing with you know busy but relationships, right? Like So think of it maybe w with your own analogy.

1:20:36 Yeah. No, I really like that. That's I mean So it I

1:20:41 We need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. Yeah. So I'm with it. All right. We should kind of function. Thanks for having. Thanks, dudes. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never looking back. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're gonna like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

1:21:08 The number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion dollar moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist, and with billion dollar moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders, and she looks for what she calls the unexpected. Leader Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like my first million. Check out billion dollar moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again. Billion dollar moves. All right, back to the episode.

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