The Woman Who Makes Millionaires: Only 1% of People Do This! The PPF Framework Will 10x Your Income!

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/db6a000c2fb0fcb2

In order to be successful, you have to be able to communicate your ideas, who you are, and your point of view. And so I use three steps in every communication that can be used for getting a promotion, laying people off. It could be used to persuading your significant other. Where you're gonna go to dinner that night. And it allowed me to go from being in a room where I couldn't have a conversation with people and crippled with anxiety and fear.
To co-founding two nine figure businesses, helping over 15,000 business owners scale their organizations, as well as helping people unpack the strategies that the top one percent of people use to gain wealth and success that are different than 99% of people who can't create the wealth that they've always wanted. Like they prioritize being respected over being liked. And where else do people go wrong here?
Well, ultimately this comes down to the character of the person. If the person isn't somebody who wants to win, who doesn't sacrifice, you cannot get to where you want to go. Now, of course, you could try to hack success.
But if you did it by putting in the effort, you don't have this anxiety that it's all gonna come crashing down because you know that you could redo it. And it's never burnout inducing. That's a misconception about hard work. You're not a candle.
You can't burn out. What about passive income? Because the idea that you can make income and do food is unbelievably compelling. Well, before you have a million dollars, don't even think about passive income. Instead, use your calendar as a representation of what you find to be important with the goals that you have every single day. But if someone at home isn't quite clear on their goals, what should they be doing? I have a three step methodology for goal setting that I have rolled out to
thousands of people and it's called PPF it has transformed my life
So the first is
Just give me thirty seconds of your time.
Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
And if you enjoy what we do here.
Please join the twenty four percent of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app.
Here's a promise I'm gonna make to you. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're gonna deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're gonna continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.
Thank you.
Uh
Nothing.
For my viewers that have just clicked on this conversation.
What is the reason that you think it's important for them to stay and listen to what we're gonna talk about today and all of the things that you've
Spend your career understanding.
If you are somebody who has
Really struggled.
With working hard.
and putting in the effort and the energy.
But you don't actually have
Wealth.
To show for it.
This conversation
is important because
Wealth should come from
hard work on the right set of problems. And so you have to ask yourself the question, what problems do I work on every single day? And whether you're a team member in an organization, whether you're a leader in an organization, a business owner in an organization.
You should be able to objectively point at my work.
Here.
Generated this result, and so if I'm upset with this result.
Meaning I haven't made the wealth. I haven't
created the income that I want.
it would make sense that where you're spending your time and the problems that you're solving are not tied to your actual goal of
Increasing your wealth.
And when it comes to wealth, I do think that we are in a wealth
crisis across the globe. I think that there is so much
confusion and misunderstanding about
financial literacy and what's actually happening with who is making money, how they're making money, what they're spending their time on.
And so this conversation, I'm
Very much looking forward to unpacking what are the strategies that people use the one percent.
For
There's time.
For their investments, for their skills, for their mindset, that are just different than ninety nine percent of people who can't seem to get ahead and create the wealth that they've always wanted.
And so as you sit here now.
What is your business?
What's the scale of the business and uh what does it do?
Yeah, we lost.
Six years I co founded two businesses that are both
Nine figures today.
One is a
management consulting investment firm. It's called Cardown Ventures, and we help small business owners grow and scale their organizations. So I work with business owners on a daily basis who will be doing three million dollars in annual revenue. They want to know how do I become one of the
Fewer.
That is able to have a five million dollar a year business or a$10 million a year business because they really realize that$3 million a year doesn't actually create financial security.
And that business was started in twenty nineteen. And then our second business, 10x Health, we purchased a
Health business.
back in twenty twenty three.
And today's
helping people all over the world and
It's a nine figure business. So you're on that first business, how many business owners have you worked with?
Total business owners that have come through our programs would be over
Fifteen thousand.
What what are the range of things you're helping them with?
Great question. So there's education. Yeah. There's consulting.
There's services and there's investing. So think of us like the McKinsey.
For small businesses.
We reverse engineer their
Current market.
what they're doing, what their product services offerings are, and we give back to them either in the form of actual services where we will do their marketing for them, we will recruit people for them, we will do their bookkeeping for them. But then we also have a massive events component of our business where we train business owners on
how to hire how to recruit themselves. So they don't need to hire us to do it. I actually prefer it when people don't hire us to do this because I think it's so important for business owners and the leaders inside those teams to actually get the competence in that skill. So if you use yeah of hiring or their books, if if
Business owners don't understand how to read a PL and the importance of a balance sheet. They're always going to abdicate that work.
to somebody else.
And at some point, that is not going to work for them any longer because I don't actually know what that skill is. So I'm trusting that Steven can come into my business. Steven seems great. I know him from church. I'm just gonna let Steven do this, but I don't know that Steven only knows how to do this to a three million dollar business. And I need it to be a 10 million dollar business. There's no
education system that exists for business owners to help them identify that today.
So it was in 2019 you started this business.
Stephanie
Jumped back to twenty nineteen.
What is the difference, like fundamental difference in the principles of how to be successful in business that you know now?
That you wouldn't have known then.
Like what are the glaring principles? I often think that like the further you go down any path
it becomes more and more clear what the like fundamental rules of the game are.
And at the very beginning, uh those are just hypotheses.
So what are the like the fundamental things you've learned about what differentiates those fifteen thousand people that you've interfaced with that are business owners?
Um
Uh make some of them successful and the others unsuccessful.
I ultimately think that this comes down to
the character of the person that is doing
The business.
because if you look at people that you can partner with in business.
It is.
Incredibly challenging.
To make something truly successful.
Even if it's the best business model in the world, you figured out marketing, you've figured out operations, you can scale it. If the person is a piece of shit.
And if the person is not somebody who is ethical and is somebody who's compliant and isn't somebody who wants to win.
To me, those three things go hand in hand because it to me it doesn't matter what the business model is. You could give me a roofing business, you could give me an HVAC business, you can give me a wellness company, a marketing agency.
The principles that I
Thought to be true, many of them have held true over the last six years since twenty nineteen. Many of them are still.
very
applicable around
standard practices for accounting and how you recruit people.
Certain tips and tools help.
With different platforms that you can use for these things. But for the most part, those things actually haven't changed. But what I've learned
painfully over the last six years is
Everything is about the people that you do business with.
And the partners that you choose and the people that you allow in your inner circle. And so that is the case for your own business, but that's also the case for the businesses that we help. And I can watch the most incredible business owner come into our organization. She's
wanting to win. She's excited about what the future can look like. She's gonna take all of the notes and actually go home and implement those things. But if she has somebody in her life
Say it's a spouse, say it's a kid, worse yet, it's an employee that she's paying to help her. Like that's the irony. You pay people to help you.
And yet
when they're actually on your team, they do things that detract from your ability to re achieve your goals and to reach your potential.
That's where I find doesn't matter what the business model is, doesn't matter, you can give all of the books, all of the training, the full playbook to somebody.
They're gonna fail because either they aren't that person or they've surrounded themselves inside their business with people who will just be stops to them and continually stop their ability to grow and to reach for more.
Reducing that person's confidence in themselves and their business stays stuck.
If people are the most important thing for long term success and for business, what are you looking for in people? What makes someone an A player in your view? And how do you
How do you filter them out?
Because a lot of people go off their vibes and if I've learned anything over the last ten years is that we're all riddled with our own biases and insecurities, so we end up aiming in a certain direction, whether that's
For better or for worse.
So what's your process of finding exceptional people?
I use
A three step interview process.
So the three steps for me is a first a cultural interview.
I want to understand.
More so than me trying to get into the technicalities of can they do the work? Are they aligned?
with our organization.
Are they
Goal oriented the best question that you can ask somebody a business.
Before you hire them.
What are their five year goals?
And actually get a real answer. I don't really care what skills and experiences you have, if you don't have goals.
You're I'm not hiring you. You're not allowed to be inside this environment because it's demoralizing for every other person who is here to help.
Chief achieve their goals, the organization's goals, and hopefully the goals of the end customer.
client, patient for whatever type of business. So that first interview really being the cultural grounding point is
of the utmost importance. And then I move straight into a technical interview where I want to get the person as close
to the work as possible. So if you're gonna be a salesperson, I wanna see you make a f a sales call. I'm gonna give you a list of 50 people to call, I wanna listen to you call those people. If you are a graphic designer,
In our organization, we do not do briefs.
We are not the type of people that are gonna say, you get all of this time to be able to think through this whole process and this whole journey, and you were gonna give you two weeks to do this.
For us, we're
turning content constantly because that's the world that we live in for the amount of ad to be created, presentation decks, it can't take a bunch of time. And so if the person when I do a case study interview and I have them actually make a presentation in front of me says that they need
Two days to think about this and they can't assemble some form of a presentation or a graphic for an ad. They don't know how to use Adobe or Canva or whatever the platform is. I
I can't really hire the person because I know that they don't have that skill.
And then the final one is a core values interview, and for me
Our team's ability
To demonstrate ahead of time, ahead of joining the organization, that they actually understand and are in alignment with our core values.
Is essential. How do you test someone's core values?
Well, I asked them to give me
Times where they have
Exemplified the core values that we have.
And they present it to our leadership team.
For the first.
hundred team members at Cardone Ventures, I listen to every single core values presentation. The person can't demonstrate and actually say, Oh, I was able to generate X amount of leads and convert them at Y percentage. They probably don't know what they're talking about.
And they're gonna have a really hard time in the environment. And I do believe that this is the business owner's responsibility. You have to own your culture and your environment. And if you don't and just think that anybody that can come in is going to actually live by what you want to create, you're gonna be
very quickly mistaken because they're gonna create their own environment inside yours and then you've lost control.

You talked about goal setting being an imperative when you're meeting people. What is what is your framework for goal setting?
If s someone at home isn't quite clear on their goals, what
What should they be doing?
I have a three step methodology for goal setting that I have rolled out.
to thousands of people.
And this three step framework has really transformed
My life.
Because it allows me to create buckets for goals.
And the
process is called personal goals, professional goals, and financial goals.
And after having over a thousand of these conversations personally.
where I've interviewed team members and business owners and team members of business owners about their goals. What I can say is I've never found a goal that is outside of those three buckets. But
The challenge many people run into is on New Year's Eve, they start to list out all of the lovely things that they would like to accomplish and who they want to be. And it becomes this very esoteric conversation instead of really prioritizing.
Personally.
What does success look like?
Professionally.
What does success look like?
financially, what does success look like? And what would those targets be in one year from now?
Three years from now and five years from now, because those three
Buckets.
Become
Easy to think about in the short term. One year for most people, super straightforward. They're like, Oh, I'd like to make an additional$10,000, maybe like a promotion here. Three years starts to get a little bit more nebulous. And after having over a thousand of these conversations, five years.
For most people.
They have a hard time thinking with, but the one constant is.
In five years from now.
Guess what?
We're gonna be five years older.
I am thirty two years old today, in five years from now, for certain, I will be
Thirty seven years old.
And so who is Natalie at thirty seven?
She's a fucking badass.
Natalie is
In control.
Of
her environment.
Natalie is able to
Make a lot of financial investments that I'm not in the position financially to make today.
Because I want to be able to
write a million dollar check to charity just because I can.
I'd ideally like that check to be.
ten or fifty million dollars.
And when you say
PPF, personal, professional, financial.
Is there any specific way that I
should write this down. Is it just
Do I just think about
In five years from now, what are my personal, professional and financial goals? And then I write that down on a piece of paper, for example.
Great question.
Ideally personals at the top.
With a bucket for one year.
Three year old
In five year.
Then the next is professional one year, three years, five year.
Financial one year, three years, five year.
And you know you use the word badass.
Uh-huh.
What is the mindset of a badass? Like have you always been like this?
I always wanted this, but today I am this.
At twenty years old.
I was
crippled with anxiety and fear about what others thought of me.
about this decision that I made to be in a relationship with somebody who was
Older than me.
And thinking that for the rest of my life somebody was going to think that
Oh she just
Married her way.
To the top.
Slept her way to success.
She's not actually very smart. She's just
A gold digger.
And she took the easy way out.
And so twenty year old me was actually terrified.
A bean.
In front of people.
Was terrified of
The future judgment.
that would come if I was successful, because I think there was a part of me that thought to myself,
Well what if I am
only successful because
I married somebody who
Is successful.
And all of the thought process that goes around
Well, do I not marry this person and be in this relationship, even though I love them and I think they're the greatest person on earth because what people are gonna think of me, what if I could have the greatest relationship because I'm obsessed with this person? I really think that this person is my person. I had that clarity it.
a very young age. And he's twenty five years older than you, B. He is twenty five years older than me.
So so you were anxious and more concerned with other people's opinions?
Hundred percent.
Did you have the same aura?
I don't think so.
What changed?
What happened?
How did you acquire such an aura?
I think the or came from
Targeting
Getting stats.
That I could prove that
Let somebody
Not see me and my life choices, but actually let them see an outcome. So that first outcome was being able to recruit people.
I wanted to actually have a stat that
I
We've recruited X amount of people, therefore I know how to hire people, I know how to interview them, I know how to onboard them, I know how to create a successful culture because
A result shows that
So
Whether you
Like me, don't like me, think that it was him you can't take away.
The stat, and I became obsessed with
Not
getting things or doing things.
That took me away from stats.
So you needed to acquire
First party evidence.
For yourself about yourself.
So that within yourself you knew
Who you are.
That. You had a a self case for who you are.
That.
And even I guess to for people to do that,'cause I'm sure there's so many people listening that
Or maybe twenty year old Natalie in some way. Maybe a bit shrouded with sort of cer certain insecurities and
Maybe aren't the most comfort confident, maybe a bit anxious, scared about what people might think if they try. What would you say to those people from your experience?
Go all in.
On yourself.
go all in on that weird thing that you're interested in. If it's scrapbooking, if it's
social media.
If it's
recruiting, if you like reading business books, go all in on that thing. And social media has never created
a better time for people to actually
create incredible things based off of their own interests and get those things out to the world. So twenty year old
Anybody.
Anybody who is twenty years old.
should say, This is what I'm interested in. It is one thing. It is not twelve things. And I'm going to go all in on myself.
with this thing and become completely obsessed.
And create my environment around becoming the best at.
objectively the best at this thing.
Does it matter how you look?
I've I've heard you talk about this in a video you made in April, where you're talking about seven steps to transforming yourself.
And you say that you should rebrand your look.
Does it matter?
How I look.
I think it matters a lot to people how they look.
I think people have
A lot of ideas about
levels of acceptance about how they look. And ultimately
You have to decide if you are comfortable with the way that you look.
And I do think many people overemphasise.
how they look and
how they come across. But
If you want to
Rebrand yourself.
And have this new identity, let's say
Somebody wants to go from being
a twenty year old college student that no one really takes seriously and it's kind of dumpy and
Doesn't really
like certain things but can't really articulate why
spend too much time on social media and let's say that person wants to become
A professional golfer.
Well, all of a sudden, in order for me to become a professional golfer
The fastest way for me to be successful becoming a professional golfer is to practice golf every hour of the day and to
assimilate into that environment to look the part and to act the part.
I'm a huge believer in the process of be do have.
It is not.
Have before you actually be that person.
And you do the things in order to have the stuff.
or have the identity or have the
Whatever it is that you're looking to create the
Being a professional golfer, the
Scrap booking business. The
twenty million dollar organization.
And so the first step really is becoming that and
If I really want to change
what my external environment is, I need to get in those rooms and I need to start to understand what those rooms look like. And the fastest way for me to actually be able to do that, as long as it doesn't compromise my moral code, would be to start to look like, dress like, act like that thing that I want to become.
How important do you think communication is?
In terms of like the way that you show up here and the way that you talk.
Do you think that's important?
And if so, what advice would you give
to m to my audience about
Being an effective communicator.
Of course communication.
is the most important thing.
Next to being successful.
Actually, I would say in order to be successful.
You have to be able to communicate your ideas and your thoughts and who you are and your point of view.
And if you
Can't communicate those things.
It will show you.
in your inability to
create the things that you want to have. So what do you do?
When you think about your own communication style.
What are some of the things that you've learned over time that are effective to make people take you seriously to to hear you and to persuade people?
I am
Incredibly present.
In any room that I am in.
And that is a missed skill in a day and age where everyone has a cell phone where they can contact millions of people instantly.
I find that leaders who want to get
Promoted and
And
Yeah.
They don't even think of how unaware they look in every leadership meeting because they are simply
answering another email or not in that room and
My philosophy is if you're in the room and your two feet are there, that is where you have to be.
And so you are an effective communicator if you can actually track with what's happening. If I can track what he's doing over here, and when he comes and talks to me, I'm able to have a
conversation because he's physically in my space. That communication matters.
It's not just the most important person in the room that matters in any room. It's how you present yourself to every individual because you are present in that environment right now.
And
If you can teach yourself
To not numb yourself.
from the environment. If you can teach yourself to really observe the environment and talk to
Whoever it is that's in front of you, communicate with them, even if they're not talking to you.
How we became partners with Grant and Elena Cardone was by sitting at an event with thirty-five thousand people.
And instead of acting like big deals and instead of acting like we were somebody.
We sat there in their audience.
And

Actively interested in what they were saying. Why? Because if somebody is up on stage and you want that person's attention, the fastest way to make them not want to spend time with you.
is to slouch in your chair and is to look down or be distracted the whole time and then when they meet you to come
maybe take a picture at the end of the event, they see you. They're going to know that you gave them no laughs.
You gave them no verbal cues, you were completely uninterested, and you actually made their job harder for them, despite the fact that maybe they're your role model or idol.
I find people are so unaware of their physiqueal presence.
In any room, in a meeting, in a schoolroom, in a presentation, in
a conversation with their significant other.
With their kids?
That if they could just own the space that they are in and be intentional with the human being that's in front of them, it would change everything in their lives. What about how you speak?
how the very the most effective speakers that you've encountered, what it is they do tactically to make sure that people
Hear what they're saying and are persuaded by them.
You know, and there's a spectrum, right? There there'll be these business owners that you meet that are like terrible
communicators and speakers, what are they doing wrong? And then the very best that you meet, what are they doing right?
The more frameworks
Somebody has
to
frame their communication.
I think helps them land their point. So
There's no shortages of frameworks.
on the planet.
My framework.
Is
vision commitment execution. I use three steps in every
communication that I'm
really intentional about and wanting to land. And that three step framework can be used for getting a promotion. It could be used for
laying people off. It could be used to figuring out
Where you're gonna go to dinner that night and persuading your significant other.
So the first step of
The framework under
VCE's vision.
And it's important that vision is first.
Because if you can articulate to somebody
the intention and the why behind whatever it is you're communicating, you're going to get much further than just going into tactics.
And
It's
tactic that you go into, people forget it. People don't remember tactics. They they like the tips, but do they actually implement those things? Oftentimes not, because it's just tactics. So why is this thing important for the individual? So give me an example. I'm on your team and you're trying to persuade me to
Launch Twitch channel.
Mm. To do live streaming.
How how would you
go through this framework to accomplish that goal.
Car Ventures, our mission is to help business owners achieve their personal, professional, and financial goals and or
On a
path to impact a million business owners.
We've only done business with
a handful of thousands. We have a long way to go.
And one of the things I was researching
Is
Which
Because our impact could be greatly amplified by us.
having our message be to this audience to this crowd using Twitch
Vision.
Commitment. There's two steps.
First step, what is my commitment?
I will
Provide you.
Whatever training is the best training to get you set up with an account, to get you the knowledge and education of people who are crushing it in the space, introduce you to those contacts in order for you to be
able to fully launch this and be responsible for it.
Commitment part two.
What it asked for in return is you take that.
very seriously, and with the contacts that you're gonna be meeting, you follow up with them. You ensure that they understand that your intention is to be the best of the best, to learn from their mistakes, but to do this in a way that represents our organization at the highest level possible.
Execution.
So what I see this looking like
is we're gonna get you an account.
I've researched this.
Platform.
I know nothing about Twitch, but I've researched this platform and here are the three people that I'm gonna invest five thousand dollars for you to go and learn from, be mentor by, and
Over the next
Eight weeks.
The target has to be we're gonna go from zero twitch subscribers.
to
ten thousand twitch subscribers.
And
We will check in every single day.
in order to remove any roadblocks in order for this to
Be a successful initiative.
And where do people go wrong here?
They start with the execution. They're like, Oh, we need to be on Twitch. This is what the business owners do to their team. They're like
I came home from this conference, we need to be on Twitch. So figure out what Twitch is gonna look like.
Figure out what the plan is.
We'll meet back, talk about it, just like handle this. I'm super busy, I have to do this thing over here, instead of really tying whatever the thing is that you're asking somebody to why is this important. Oh yeah, it ties back to this bigger thing. It's not just because I'm asking you to learn Twitch, which is likely something that you know jack shit about. You know nothing about Twitch, as do I, but that's
This difficulty in businesses
And in many communication outside of business is you're both trusting.
But
You're gonna do your part in learning about something that neither of you know anything about.
And so you either again bottleneck yourself.
in this communication because you're struggling to understand this thing. You're struggling to understand Twitch and then you feel like you have to become a Twitch master.
People online are gonna love this. No idea.
But you're gonna become like the world's greatest Twitch person when really what you should have been doing is these other things for your business. And this person you should trust enough, but lay out enough steps for them to say, This is why I'm committed to this. It's important enough for me to invest five thousand dollars. That's my commitment.
What I'm asking for in return is your commitment back to me, so that
We're aligned and if I once I have your commitment
I've already given you mine. Let's just hop right into execution.
But so often we job right into execution without first getting the commitment from the other person that they're even interested, and then we wait.
Four weeks.
Or eight weeks or twelve weeks thinking something is happening.
When it is not happening.
And we lose time, momentum, excitement, enthusiasm about growing.
And
our confidence in people that we can actually trust them goes down. I've heard you talk about avoiding phrases like I think, I feel
Um and be more
high conviction and certain with the way that you communicate with people.
Explain that to me.
That honestly might be outdated for me. Yeah.
Because in a day and age where
It's important to share your point of view.
It's not a bad thing to say.
I think this is the right path.
Especially if you aren't certain and it shows
Strength.
and integrity that you are
communicating that you you're thinking this, you you don't know for sure, and you're relying on other people. Now if it is just a filler word,
If somebody says
I think we should do this, and this is the direction that I think we should take Cardone Ventures.
That wouldn't be very engaging. So in that context, you absolutely should not be using these filler phrases of I think or maybe and and adding.
Lack of certainty.
At some level you're playing a certainty game with everybody around you, whether they are investors.
Clients, patients, team members, partners, vendors.
And so using phrases that decrease people's certainty in your direction.
isn't going to help them.
Help you, but if you actually are uncertain.
It is okay to be transparent about that and actually builds trust. I think

I think about this a lot.
Um because I I find myself writing out emails and messages where I've written I think
In them.
And I
I'd say ninety percent of the time change it to I believe.
Well.
And I think there's something.
different about that framing. Whenever I write I believe it feels it's still appreciating that this is a belief that I have and I don't have certainty on this hypothesis, but
There's something high conviction about the phrase
I believe we're going to blah blah blah blah and I believe that'll happen. It feels much better than I think.
Mm.
I think I feel like
It's a bit flimsy.
I'm agree with you. But when you say it like this
It makes me connect.
to you because it actually feels like it's a stream of consciousness that you are thinking something. Yeah. Instead of in an email
Usain, I believe, is much more authoritative.
I would
I would caution leaders
When it comes to
using words like I believe or being certain
About
Really
ensuring that you are certain or you really do believe something, especially as
Your business grows.
If you're doing a million dollars and now you have a ten million dollar business and all of a sudden you have a a layer of leaders around you.
It can become an echo chamber.
And the more certain you are
Or at least you
Seem to be a little bit more.
the less likely people are going to
push back on you.
when you might actually need them to
Collaborate and you weren't so certain, but you came off with such certainty. And I find that that's a balance that leaders have to find as they become more competent in their.
zone of genius and as they get higher up in organizations or start their own organization themselves. If they aren't
Really.
communicating what things they aren't certain of
But they're waffling on. Um
It it can cause
Unnecessary.
Durance.
You talk about
Mastering your calendar as well, in central t transformation. Why is why is this so important and what does that mean?
Well, if you want anything in life
You actually have to spend time
to get that thing.
Things don't just magically manifest into people's lives despite what the internet tells you.
So
In order to
For me to
have the relationship that I want to have, I actually have to invest time with
My significant other. It's not just gonna magically happen that I'm gonna have an amazing marriage. If I want to have great friends.
Акціе spend time with my friends.
And so your calendar is a reflection and a representation of what you find to be important and
Is in alignment or out of alignment with the goals that you have every single day.
So if I have zero time being spent on generating revenue inside my business.
It shouldn't surprise me at the end of the year that I'm doing the same amount of revenue that I did last year. Why? I spent zero time on the one thing, aka revenue generation.
In order for it to grow.
So
For me, my calendar and I teach business owners this every single day, you have to look at it
Every day. You you have to start to align your time unless you want your life to be
Something that just
is a story of luck.
I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in having a life of luck because I think that actually l leads to a significant amount of self doubt and uncertainty. Oh, just because I'm lucky, I'm I'm gonna leave something to
to being out of my control.
Just because I I happen to be at the right place at the right time. Of course, there are those components. I have been at the right place at the right time throughout my career, but
The way that you control where you spend your time gives you the most amount of
At that.
to the opportunities that you want, if you have goals and aspirations to have a different life than you currently have. And to me, still to this day, I want to have a different life in the future. And I imagined a more enriched version of my life at 40 and at 50 and at 60. And I think if people were really honest with themselves,
They want a different version of their lives.
Two. I don't think someone listens to this podcast.
or watches the show without wanting to be
something different or to have something different, whether it's relationship or different
health situation or different income, different friends. I mean how many people?
would want different friends like
Badass friends to do cool shit with.
Well, how do you get that? Okay, I would need to actually reverse engineer.
Using my time and what I do every single day to get me closer to people who are doing those similar things. And so that might actually take me making sacrifices for two years in order to be able to be around people, to be able to give value to people who'd be interested in being my friend.
And it sounds a little
Strategic.
But it is, because you don't just get great people in your life because you happen to be at the right place at the right time. You get great people by doing great things because great people want to spend time around other people who are doing great things. And the only way that you can certainly know that you were doing great things without getting lucky or happening to look a certain way so that you get invited into certain places.
is by managing and really creating your own time.
What about hard work in this equation?
You know, people talk a lot about work life balance and I think a lot of people want
Won everything.
We wanna
You know.
get to forty, have the y have the great family, have
great relationships, have a great business. I mean, that's an ideal outcome for all of us. W what would you say to people about
the concept of working hard and how critical or or unimportant that is.
Working hard is the most important thing.
You cannot get to where you want to go.
If it's truly something that is
Unusual.
Or out of the ordinary.
Without working hard.
And
You could
Try to hack it.
Let's say somebody happens to be
Beautiful.
I guess you could get
The yacht.
And a relationship.
Because you're beautiful.
And somebody is willing to
Be in a relationship with you.
Because
You're a good person.
But
I've met those people.
And those people have
crippling fear and anxiety.
Because they don't actually know what their place is and they don't know they didn't do
what was required to have the thing.
So going back to like be do have
People who win the lottery, they have all the money.
People who inherit wealth, they have all the money.
This was my fear. I was gonna have money because
I'm connected to m my husband.
But I didn't do
The work.
And become the person that created the happiness until
I did.
Do the work.
To become the person to have the thing. So now that I have it, I can actually have it.
And when you are able in life to have things that you want because you did it in the right order.
You don't have this anxiousness, you don't have this anxiety, you don't have this worry or fear that someone's gonna take it from you, it's all gonna come crashing down.
Because you know that you could redo it.
If I want to be badass Natalie.
At thirty two.
Mm-hmm.
How hard am I gonna have to work?
in my twenties and I want like very specifics like
Yeah,'cause peop everyone has a different idea of hard work. I think if you ask anybody if they work hard, I think a hundred percent of the population will say, Yes, I do.
But actually there's like levels to this shit.
So
How hard do you work?
If we look at
uh an average week.
Why are you smiling?
I'm never not working.
So
However many hours are in a day.
Everything in my life is optimized.
to the work that I do.
Every single thing.
Because the work that I do is important to me. And I'm in a phase of my life where I really do believe that the work that I'm doing.
can change my life. It can change others' lives. So it would be selfish of me to not spend every minute thinking about what I can do in order to help move the work that I do that I'm passionate about.
What what do you have any hobbies?
Anything you do to
When you're not working.
I love a facial.
Facials are great.
That's the extent of
Hobbies.
I don't have hobbies.
I I I truly love
What I do every single day.
I get to work with the backbone of America.
I get to work with business owners who need my help who are very confused.
And so I feel a huge sense of responsibility.
Every single day.
to actually make decisions that if I had Sarah looking over my shoulder, listening to how I'm talking to my husband, and Sarah works with her husband, like would she actually
think, oh, she is the person that she says she is because of the way that Natalie showed up to this conversation. And
If you have
This responsibility.
And
I would recommend anybody like manufacture.
In every way possible.
Responsibility. Put more responsibility on yourself. Feel the weight of responsibility because.
It's important.
And there's nothing wrong with responsibility. We should want responsibility because people who have responsibility, what does that mean?
They're able.
To respond.
Well.
I don't wanna be unable to respond to anything. I want to be the first phone call when somebody is having a crisis. I wanna be the first phone call when somebody is celebrating something, I want to be
capable and able to respond, and so the idea of hard work.
to me it's just a it's a requirement
Because I have responsibility and anybody who is trying to shortcut the hard work
You have to figure out almost how to gamify it for yourself and

Ways of
I guess creating pressure and responsibility to keep yourself going through it because sometimes it is
frustrating and overwhelming and
Never burn out inducing, though.
And I think that that's a misconception about
Hard work.
I don't know.
successful people who are still in the game.
Who are burnt out.
Buy a long day.
The the response isn't
Burnout.
They're
The response might be
I want to go do something different for a minute.
But
My business partner, Grant Cardone.
who I am obsessed with and that was one of the greatest partnerships I could have
ever done in my entire life.
He says
You're not a candle.
You can't burn out. A human being cannot burn out.
Because you are not a candle. So
Can you feel moments of
Pressure, stress.
Yes.
I don't take any of those moments as being a bad thing. It's not a negative to feel overwhelmed because you have responsibility. People depend on you, people are reliant on you to do something great.
Why do people say, Do you know I was doing this thing and I got burnt out? So I that's
What is that?
The thing that people do
Is not actually leading to where they want to go.
So if I thought that it was going to require me to work out two hours a day in the gym and only eat chicken and rice.
And never have any of the things that I love.
To never get a six pack.
I'm not gonna do that.
But if I think that by doing this work
That's gonna be hard, and I'm gonna hate, and it's gonna suck.
that I can actually get what I want and my life would be changed because I'd actually have a six pack and I'd feel confident and be able to buy the clothes that I'd want and I'd just be part of the very small percentage of the population that has one.
Then
The process of me
Going to the gym early at five o'clock.
Before my kids get up.
wouldn't burn me out. I would recognize that this is a step that's necessary to get to my goal. And at which point when the goal is there,
You might change your mind and you might have a different goal, but
When people win
They are rarely burnt out at that moment.
I've watched
Business owners sell their businesses for
Hundreds of millions of dollars.
Uh
I've watched them get hundreds of millions of dollars in their bank account.
And
That feeling of celebration and joy.
happens to stay around for a little while until that thing kicks in, which is that individual's potential.
Two
help somebody to solve more problems, to be able to make a larger impact.
And so that end goal does end up
moving the goalpost ends up moving. And there's actually nothing wrong with that. Despite the world wanting to tell you that there is something wrong with the fact that you're moving the goalpost.
I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
And you only really get burnt out if you don't see how
the sacrifices that you're making are actually going to lead you to the six pack.
If you're gonna be overweight forever.
Then of course I'm just gonna eat candy and chips and all the things that I love to eat.
But
I do think I can get a six pack. So I'm willing to make some of these sacrifices here and there because the goal
isn't going to allow me to get burnt out because I'm gonna be so freaking proud of myself by the time I reach that goal. At which point I'm gonna change it to a different goal and it's gonna be just as interesting and exciting of a game for me to play at that point in my life.
We we talked about responsibility earlier and y you work seven days a week all the time, but only take time off for facials.
Yeah.
There's a the I I know my audience well enough to know that
Some of them will be thinking, That's all right for you, you haven't got kids. Totally.
How do you respond to that rebuttal?
For people that have
Yeah.
Lots of other responsibilities.
They're right.
You can have kids.
And
Be a great parent.
And also work.
A lot.
And so then your hobby, instead of me getting a facial
would be you actually spending intentional time with your kids, but I would ask them this question.
What is the appropriate amount of time to spend with your kids?
How much is that?
What would make you feel good about how much time you spent with your kids?
Is it two hours a day?
Okay, great.
Two hours.
Focus time, dedicated time, not four hours.
Half of that.
On television, on social media, making calls, making dinner.
No, that that that's not workable.
Two hours.
Make sense or three hours.
Whatever that person's
Goal is
With the amount of time that they want to spend
Being an active
parent being somebody actively involved in that person's life.
But
We tend to just use these excuses o I have.
Sick parents.
Oh, I have
Kids. Oh I have
And
I find that very successful people happen to have all of those O I have's.
And
Many of them, not all of them.
But many of them are able to figure out, Okay, I'm gonna spend
This ninety minutes at the hospital.
fully locked in to my dad right now.
My dad doesn't actually need me for six hours.
My dad needs me for ninety minutes.
That time is precious. It's blocked off. I'm making the time for that.
And then outside of that, it is working.
In order to build the life that you want, because guess what?
Your dad is going to pass away.
If your dad passes away in a year from now and six years from now, the amount of time that you spent with him
needs to be important enough for you to make that time.
And I would hope that everybody makes the amount of time that is necessary for them to feel like they did their job as the child, did their job as the caretaker, whatever the role is.
But at what point are you going to use other people's circumstances?
to stop you from doing what you want to do and creating what you want to have.
And
For the parent who is very intentional with their kids.
And and
Дозна кідца за
I am
All four.
spending as much time as is required for you to be a good parent.
It's that I find that the
Other side is far more prevalent.
Which is
I'm using my kids, I'm using my family, I'm using my circumstances, I'm using my education, my lack of experience as a reason for why I can't do this thing.
And when I find people
Because I work with
people all day, every day. When I find people like that, the fastest way to handle that
Like
Hey Sarah.
Let me see your phone real fast.
Say well, give me your phone.
And
I'll open up the screen time.
On her phone.
And if the screen time on our phase
Three hours of Netflix or an hour and a half of Instagram.
Like just
Reallocate that time.
to the thing that you wanna go build. Use your calendar, use your time.
For building the life that you actually
Want to have instead of saying, Oh, I have kids, while also being distracted with your kids and not being a parent, whatever that definition for you is, a parent.
To them.
I don't think that kids are negatively impacted by watching their parents work their asses off.
I think that that is an inspiring way to grow up. I had two parents who worked their tails off, and I do think that I am
Part of the way that I am because I had such incredible parents who worked hard and who prioritized their own goals.
And their own success.
А сам яр.
And
I would also argue it should be more important than I am.
Just because you're a parent shouldn't mean that your kids are the most important thing in your life and you have to over index on spending all of your time there.
What matters more being in your view, being
Happy.
and content with your life or being successful, even if it comes at the cost of contentment.
They're the same thing.
They're not different. I do not find success and happiness
Uh on two polar
Opposites.
I am happy when I
create things and when I can see in the physical universe that I've done something that
I wanted to do.
Whether that's
Driving revenue, hiring people.
helping a business owner, that is when I I am the happiest when I am doing the things that are part of
Becoming successful.
So if Sarah who's scrolling on Netflix is is content.
And happy.
She's not content or happy, though.
How'd you know?
Because what is she watching? Is she watching selling sunset and watching other people live their lives and touring these gorgeous homes and having these fancy things that Sarah
У сівлифот.
She could have those things.
If she really actually believed that.
For a second.
And
These are the steps.
That are part of getting there.
I do believe
That she would choose actually having it.
Versus
Watching it.
I guess it depends uh
what it comes at the expense of. Because I know a bunch of billionaires and
Mm.
They're not amongst the happiest people I know. Sometimes.
I mean there's the odd one or two that I think are really, you know, really happy and content.
But then I've got friends that, you know, live in my home town who I think are probably happier.
And that never, you know, have a nine to five job, et cetera.
And I would say they're probably happier.
Hm.
So if
So that the house in my mind doesn't strike me as being
The source.
Yeah.
Everyone's happiness, even though for
For you and maybe even for me.
Mm-hmm. Maybe that is the pursuit of those things gives us some kind of stability. Mm-hmm.
Because of our own trauma and our own wiring and our own insecurities, et cetera. But for Sarah, maybe
She had such a cushy, lovely
Upbringing and she felt so safe and secure and that she didn't she wasn't
Without
Mm.
But maybe she's like perfectly happy just vicariously watching Netflix and
Moking her dog.
I refuse to believe that that's possible.
Really?
Yeah, Sarah is
Slapped in the face as soon as she leaves that nice little escape that she's created for herself of Netflix.
Of all the things that she can't have and that she can't do and the experiences she can't create for herself that she could never give to people around her.
Because
She was distracted and not actually building what she wanted.
To build.
Maybe that's what she wanted to build though.
A life of watching other people's lives on social media, Netflix. People like watching movies and stuff and
They like
scrolling and you know, they they like cooking and then do a bit of crochet, then walk the dog and spend time with the kids. People people like that.
I when I was younger
You know, when I was like eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty five, whatever.
I didn't think it was possible. I thought that everyone was pretending.
Uh.
But they
You know, that they were happy. But as I got older and as I started to realise that I'm a bit fucked up.
It became more and more clear to me that actually
Had the circumstances of my earlier life been slightly different.
I wouldn't be the way that I am. And I wouldn't want the things that I think I want. And I wouldn't get the contentment and stability from the pursuit of things.
And so
It's plausible if you even look at your siblings, you go, Well, how are we all so different? Like you know?
Why why uh
Why am I working seven days a week every single day?
And some of my siblings choose not to.
'Cause we have we have different wiring and we get happiness from different things.
And some of the things they do, I go
I'd hate them.
I hate that.
My brain would be going crazy.
Thinking about email.
You don't think Sarah can be happy?
I don't think Sarah's happy watching Netflix and on social media. I think that there's a deep sense of
Insecurity.
And
Lack of contentment.
That's guised as
I'm happy.
And that's
Guised as or
Covered of
It's almost like a
A facade.
I'm going to
Say that I'm happy.
But the realities of our economy.
And the realities of her financial situation
Create dependencies.
For Sarah.
It creates dependencies.
And with those dependencies.
What I found is that
The things that you are dependent upon.
At some level you will end up
Presenting.
If I'm dependent upon my one customer in my business and they make up eighty percent of my revenue, sure, it's great when I sign that deal.
It's really sucky when that
Customer ends up being a jerk.
Because now I'm dependent upon them.
eighty percent of my revenue until I'm
not dependent upon them because I've diversified my revenue and I've been able to bring on other customers because I was able to market my business and
acquire an audience.
And so with Sarah
I would ask.
If you the median household income is around
Sixty thousand dollars.
shy of seven thousand dollars a year.
What is Sarah dependent upon to be able to afford the Netflix subscription?
And when she scrolls on TikTok shop and wants to be able to be like everybody else who's living these cool lives doing these
glamorous influencer events, or whatever she's into, whatever is so captivating to her that's making her watch this instead of
go out and do those things. Apply the makeup.
How many makeup tutorials?
Do women watch without ever even applying the makeup or using
the tools and the products.
Just because they're distracted. I'm wondering if this is a consequence of the internet.
This this perspective. Like because I I I was in my head I was skipping back through the through fifty years and then a hundred years, and then I was going back further. I was like, Oh, you know, what's human what what's the human sort of wiring a thousand years ago?
when wealth didn't exist. Like wealth was
What you could carry.
There was no such thing as bank accounts or money, so I was as wealthy as what I could carry. And actually, maybe as I think Naval said this before, that the only currency back then which still p persists and actually wealth is just a proxy of is status. Status has always meant survival. It means that I get the resources, I get the mates, but wealth is isn't this construct that actually the mind understands.
But in the last twenty, thirty years'cause of social media.
We've all been sort of
I guess wide in a way to believe that.
material possessions like the yachts.
or the follow account.
Is
Of utmost importance.
Mm. Maybe it's just a proxy, like
I belong to s I belong.
And I'm I'm not a
Risk. Maybe it's a proxy of status.
I think it's a proxy of survival.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I'm I'm wondering if like
If we've just been wired for the last twenty years to believe that
We need
These things.
Because of the
environment that we're in. But actually like prehistorically it doesn't make sense that we would we would care about
We w so pursuit I think is like really hardwired into us. So it's like we wouldn't have these cameras and all in this house and stuff. So clearly my ancestors were like wired to pursue things and to build, but
They were also most certainly wired to depend.
Like I think this is might be be one of the real problems with society at the moment is that
We're all pursuing independence.
Mm.
You know, like I I think this is a bit of a problem.
I think about this quite a lot, actually.
like the decline in faith and the decline in community institutions and the decline in people having kids and family. I'm like, we're really becoming really individualistic, and I'm not sure that's
Within our
Nature.
See, I think survival has to depend upon other people.
It's not just my survival. Once I've handled my survival
the amount of money that I make.
It instantly goes to
The problems.
To come with other people's survival.
Whether that's
A family member.
A group of friends.
And how far out that expands.
I don't think that changed two hundred years ago or two thousand years ago.
the ability to accumulate things to better prepare yourself in a harvest.
Better prepare yourself in a in a time of a drought.
to actually sustain and and make it through to really survive. And the more contacts that you have,
The more you are setting yourself up to survive, the more people who know you.
Even though it's a little bit of a status symbol, it's actually a survival mechanism.
for you.
Because
millions of people across the globe, at any point in time that you have a problem, you've built enough trust and credibility with them for them to be interested in helping you. So it's actually a survival point. Now of course you can run the spectrum of the survival and say, well, is the additional millionth follower or the additional two million followers actually leading to more survival?
I would argue that
Potentially.
But
What else could you be able to impact if you were thinking about the survival of you?
Of your family, of the people that
depend on you, your team that's here, like you are
creating abundance so that other people can survive through what you have created and you pursuing your own survival and then having the second order be
The group around you, family.
the employees, the other groups that you are part of that you contribute to in whatever ways you do. And then those
concepts go further out to what can you actually be responsible for for its survival.
sort of s one's survival and one's prosperity is resulting in us
having going through a genetic d extinction.
Because people are not having kids anymore.
So Sarah scrolling on Netflix with her four kids is actually
Genetically surviving.
And all these people that are focused on independence and how much money I can make.
They're genetically becoming extinct.
Fascinating.
I'm basically playing devil's advocate with myself,'cause if you observe my life, clearly this is a massive contradiction. But um but it's something that's been front of mine for me at the moment is
is this idea of like dependents and independence. And obviously I'm approaching the season of life where I'm gonna have kids
And there's gonna be trade offs that I have to make.
Uh that I do make but
I guess we shall see what happens.
Do you think people respect you a lot more now at thirty three than they did
When you uh
In two thousand nineteen.
Of course they do.
What
Should someone do.
that is looking to earn the respect. Some someone that feels like they're continually disrespected. There's something about them, there's something in the way they carry themselves.
that what that they continually feel like people are disrespecting them. They might work in a business or, you know, they might be low down in a company, or maybe they're not. Maybe they're just someone who's gone through the corporate world and they're continually disrespecting. What would you say they should do?
To to earn people's respect.
The first thing somebody has to do in order to earn respect.
is to decide that they would rather be respected.
Than liked.
That trade off is made.
too often we're in a situation when the right respectful thing to do is unlikable.
We don't choose
The right respectable thing to do. We prioritize being.
Liked.
And so when you make that decision.
To be respected and to
not prioritize what everybody thinks about you, you can then transition into the second step, which is
You have to get stats in the area that you want respect in.
If you're low in an organization or you have different
people around you who don't respect you for a variety of different reasons.
What is the area of your expertise that is undeniable?
It's proof. It exists in the physical universe. It's not just because you had an idea or you think you can be an entrepreneur or you'd like to be

Someone who gives people relationship advice. I'm sorry, but if you're not in a relationship
And you don't have a stat of being able to have a good relationship, and you can't have a spouse that's like, wow.
This person's great. I love being around this person. You probably shouldn't be giving that advice, and that's why you don't have respect in that area. So I don't think respect is a overall life respect. You need to have respect in the different compartments. It's not just Steven is a respectable person altogether. That's that's a facade to me.
You might not be respectable in certain areas. I sh maybe shouldn't respect you in certain areas of your life.
But other areas, I would think areas that you've prioritized.
You are incredibly respectable in the
And
You prioritize getting stats and proof in those areas to
Earn people's respect.
whether they like you or not, because you have something to prove for it.
Has that been a journey for you, this idea of
Caring less about being liked, because you talked about that earlier as being really central to your sort of early twenties, et cetera. It was so hard for me to not
want to be liked. I had a mom growing up who
Was a medical doctor and just
Was the world's most sweet, kind, thoughtful person. She would sit down at a party, and every single person in that room loved her.
immediately. She just had this aura about her.
And so I watched my mom growing up as a role model and somebody who still to me today is a role model.
And she really emphasized.
how important it is to ask great questions and to be engaged with other people.
And what I
Lost in that process is
Well, if I'm always asking other people
And
And trying to get other people to like me, and it's always that flow.
Like what do I actually think about myself because I'm so focused on overaccommodating
others. And so if you're trying to flip this
For yourself, you're trying to go from
I overindex on being liked.
And not so over indexed on being respectable and
liking what I think about myself, you really have to go out to your three year version of yourself and your five year version of yourself, because no one is going to get clear on that for you.
Besides you.
And once you put that stake in the ground saying this is what I want to be known for, this is who I want to become, this is who I imagine myself being, this isn't a manifestation practice. It's a I'm gonna decide who that person is, and then I'm going to like myself.
At 20, at 30, at 70, because I'm acting in accordance with the way that I view myself in the future, and I'm going to become the person that.
I want to be.
Have you found that you've had to
reinforce and protect your
Boundaries.
In order to earn that respect.
Do you find that people try and test you?
Of course they do.
I work with
hundreds of team members every single day.
to
Have
Their own
points of view and their own perspectives on what they want the work

our culture to look like.
And
I think I've had to wrestle with this so much.
Because
I want to create an environment where people can be successful.
My definition of leadership is making other people's success easy.
So if I'm gonna be a leader.
Going to make other people's success easy. How would I go about doing that? What type of environment would they need to be in in order to actually make their success easy?
compared to their alternative, which is going down the street and trusting that some other leader is going to make them
more successful. And so I really wrestle with
Who I need to be and what the boundaries are that I set for myself.
And one of the things I've gotten so much criticism of
uh online was when I
publicly shared a TikTok about
firing somebody because I found out that she was cheating on her significant other.
And
The other person also had a significant other and as soon as I found out about it
I terminated both of them immediately.
And it's so shocking to people that Wait, someone was cheating with someone in the company. Yeah.
Oh, and they both had partners outside of the company. Both had partners outside of the company.
As soon as I caught wind of it, it wasn't even
Like a a split second.
Decision.
Well, I guess it technically was a split second decision. It was like I I can't have this in my environment, especially somebody
Close around me, people trust me.
And should trust any leader to help them mate.
their success easy. Am I making people's success easy by
putting inside that environment.
People who

erode the values of the group.
No.
Success for most people isn't getting a divorce from their significant other.
Success for most people looks like figuring out how to
Have the success in their professional.
wives and in their financial lives while also being able to have a spouse.
I wouldn't want my husband going out to work.
And being in an environment where the company was just fine with people cheating on each other, lying to each other, and not having a code of ethics, doing drugs. Like none of that is something that I want inside my environment, because it's my job to make people's success easy. One would say that's none of your business what they're doing when they go home.
That is my business, first of all.
Because
It was with each other.
Yeah.
But they're not doing it at work.
Well.
There was a
Not to get into the specifics of the particular event, but it happened to be around work.
Related. But if it wasn't at work, you still, I would fire the person immediately. So you fire someone for cheating. Absolutely. On their partner. Absolutely.
I can't have cheaters if they're gonna cheat on the person that they're supposed to spend the rest of their life with, do you think that they're cheating on their work?
Do you think that they're gonna cheat on our clients?
Do you think that they're could have the ethics and morals and judgment to not be so distracted with their own personal ethics situation that they can actually focus and do a good job, that person in any environment?
is a liability to the environment.
So complete liability.
Some people have
You know, things in their personal life which
are very different to the way that they show up professionally though. People do all kinds of things in their personal life. It's terrifying.
'Cause listen, the way that I see it is if I expand the scope of my
Uh
Concerns. I'm gonna get fucking nothing done.
So if I start, you know, go going into uh who they who they
at home with and and in bed with and what's going on in their personal life. Unless they bring it to me, obviously when you're the founder and the CEO people bring you stuff and they say, look, this is going to impact my work.
But um
Uh.
Founder, I don't wanna be
I don't wanna
Be them.
Government of your fucking personal situations as well.

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If I'm thinking of starting a business in twenty twenty five
You know you've spoken to
Thousands and thousands and thousands of business owners. Uh online probably many millions of business owners.
When we think about that initial period of like
coming up with the idea and picking what to work on.
Is there any advice you'd give people based on the success and failure you've seen about what they should aim at, what they should work on, especially in the context of like twenty twenty five when so much in the world is changing so quickly?
If they can
Use the frame.
If any business owner
Or potential business owner.
Could think about.
Starting a business.
From the standpoint of
Where is there
The greatest.
Chance.
For me to be successful.
That is the best frame to use.
Unfortunately.
most do not use that frame and they base it off of their existing experience and the skills they have.
If
It was not based off of existing experience or skills that somebody has. I think great AI is going to be the great leveler.
Because
Nobody has a lot of experience in AI.
Nobody knows in small businesses across America how to hook up automations and start working with assistants to be able to put small businesses onto a CRM system or an operating system that connects to their financial software that allows the business owner to make great decisions. No one has done this at scale because it didn't exist. And so if I was
starting a business in 2025, I would absolutely look at how do I help business owners who have an infinite budget for things that actually work to make them more money solve problems that are real to them. And the problems that are real to the 35 million business owners in the United States of America.
that they don't know how to use AI. They are terrified of AI, and they're going to either put their head in the sand,
Or
Assume that somebody who is young
Is going to create the solution for them, when somebody instead who is experienced could have
A
Eight?
Maybe even a nine figure business.
Over the course of the next eightin to twenty four months.
really figuring out how to
help solve these problems because it makes the business owner
to that business incredibly sticky. The customer is always going to be there and they would be on the front end of something that nobody has experience in.
So do you think a lot about the speed in which that market is growing when you think about where to
Set up shop and start a business. Of course.
The market
Growth is
Everything.
'Cause if you want to start a
Paper business in
twenty twenty five.
You would have to be a
The best.
paper business and really have a unique
positioning
to make that
Successful.
When you could do something less well.
And be much more successful because there's just more opportunity in the growth and there's less players in markets.
So the growth allows for innovation, the growth allows for new entrance and
As I mentioned with AI, uh there's just
An unprecedented opportunity in front of people right now, but I'm also very excited about service-based businesses.
Rufers, plumers, електричин.
H VAC.
All of those businesses.
The core of the business doesn't get disrupted by AI until robots.
But those business operations are
Ripe.
For somebody to come in.
I don't care if you're fifteen years old or if you're fifty years old and get paid
Tens of thousands of dollars per client to implement very simple solutions that really do solve problems for those businesses.
Using AI. Using AI.
Yeah, I've heard you talk about when you
described the six most profitable businesses that you think will be around in twenty twenty six. We've talked about AI businesses, talked about home services. The other one was hybrid wellness clubs. Mm-hmm.
Why is why is health
Such a a a big prediction.
prediction for you in terms of profitability and a good place to set up shop?
There's growth in the health space after COVID, the whole world changed and their priorities changed as it relates to health.
the statistics I read recently about alcohol sales connected to like nightclubs, it's just
It's not what it used to be, because instead of wanting to go out late and party and do all sorts of things, people are actually prioritizing.
their health and providing them with solutions
For
Optimizing their health.
Is
just it's continued to grow for
ever since Covid and it's going to continue to grow with
different types of amenities at gyms with different types of
technology that people are inserting into what a traditional I one time I recently went to a
uh facial.
My favorite thing, my hobby. I went to get a
sixty minute facial and they integrated Ivy services into that facial.
Experience.
Well, what else could you do?
That allows somebody who is sitting in a chair for
Sixty minutes.
To add
revenue to that business that's connected to their health and well being. Those types of
Innovations are happening in small markets.
All across the world.
And why did you say in that video?
Petra.
People love their pets and people will spend money on their pets. People will spend more money on their pets than they'll spend on their kids, and then they'll spend on themselves.
I mean, if somebody has a dog, I recently talked to somebody who told me that she was doing
Reiki.
With
Her twelve.
Dogs.
mean it's just the the level of
interest that people have in taking care of their pets. I think what's happened in that marketplace specifically is as
Business owners and
High income earners.
Make more money.
And they do have these pets, these things that are dependent upon them that aren't yet.
Children.
They
Want to spend their discretionary income on
Making that
Pooch.
That is their new best friend.
Fido.
comfortable
Making him
B
Well, through all sorts of offerings because I feel bad, and it can actually pay off my guilt by providing Fido with.
a caretaker and nail polish and
EMF
you know, therapies.
And the other the other thing that I've I think is particularly pertinent to the experience you've had is um so many small business owners will come up to me and say that they
Uh
They won't say it like this, but what they're describing is that they're a bottleneck in their own business.
There are maybe, I don't know, a million in revenue. I mean most people that come up to me say this exact same thing.
They've reached about a million in revenue in total and they don't know how to scale beyond their
Typically like service based businesses where someone's doing a service for a client.
And uh what would what do you say to those people when you've encountered them?
In your your company.
Welcome to being an entrepreneur. This is not a unique set of challenges. This is an expected
set of challenges. The statistics show that the challenges that business owners
Face.
At that.
break point of
taking what they are doing that is working.
And transitioning that.

having other people help them.
is part of the process, and so there is nothing wrong with this business owner.
It's just that they don't technically know how to
Train somebody.
To do what they do well, that then allows the business owner to focus on the business owner's primary role. And that primary role should be to generate revenue. It shouldn't be.
the dentist being in the person's mouth. You cannot have twelve dental clinics and still be the person that is
Helping the person.
floss and making sure that they're flossing.
Right. Mostly hygienics help.
dentist with that, but you have to get out of
Die
doing of your business and you have to get into the scaling of the operations of your business. And those are just skills that you don't currently have. And what is that skill? What is the core skill there?
It's a tactical skill.
And the skill is
Opening up their calendar.
Looking at what they do every single day.
Duplicating
Through process creation.
what it is that they do that makes them a special snowflake.
in their mind. Cause every business owner
Thinks that they're the only person that can talk to their customer. They're the only person that their clients will listen to. Nobody is ever gonna be able to service their patient like them. That's what they think. And so they create those conditions instead of saying, No, I'm gonna objectively look at where I spend my time. And out of all of the things that I do across a 50-hour work week,
There are specific things that are not the highest value for me to continue to do, but I would have to train somebody how to do that thing flawlessly. It is not about hiring somebody who's going to know how to do that thing. That's where they fail and then they lose confidence because they think some magical unicorn.
Employee is just gonna come into their lives and take this thing that only know they know how to do and actually be able to do it. Of course they can't. So it's this reinforcement they have instead of structuring it.
To say
out of these things.
These are the specific
parts of the business that I want to remove off of my plate so that in three months from now I do not touch these processes. In order to do that, I'm going to document what I do.
ideally using a framework like vision commitment execution, so that it doesn't just get reduced down to steps, but so that team members can understand the why behind it, what the organization is committed to, what the team member needs to commit back to, and then actually execute on whatever that process is. And instead of just handing that person
Those items in an onboarding and
m maybe never checking it again.
You're gonna go through a four-step process. First, you're gonna tell the person what they're supposed to do, aka the process. Ideally, then you show them what they're supposed to do so that they can see how this applies in real life. It's not just something on a document.
Then you're going to let them do that thing.
And you are going to coach them and provide them feedback on doing that thing. So when you can see that you've properly trained somebody and you've
switched your mindset from just assuming that
adults learn the same way that we used to learn when we were children, which is just by
picking it up and figuring it out.
You're gonna give them a full structure, tell me, show me, let me, coach me, on the most important things that they need to be onboarded with. And then you are going to actually measure that they're able to do those things in the way that you were able to do that. So that that role inside your business.
is handled.
And then you just do that over and over and over again.
So often when people are having this conversation with me about
This. They say, Oh, I tried that and I brought someone in and they fucked up and
And so yeah, I'm not I'm just gonna do it myself. That's like the rebut that I always get. It's always people saying, Well, I tried that, I trusted someone, they fucked me over, so
That doesn't work.
What responsibility can they take?
In the interview process.
What responsibility can they take in the onboarding process? Did they actually show
that person what they were supposed to do? Did they ensure that the person knew what to do? Do you think most people are bad at hiring?
Course they are.
People are terrible at hiring.
Where do they go wrong? Like, what are the biases that they
And end up consuming that process that make them make a bad decision.
I don't think they really understand what the work is that they're trying to get that person to do.
So they Google a job description.
They
chat GPT or use Grok to put a job description that isn't actually connected to the real outcomes.
in the role.
I can imagine if you posted for a marketing position inside your business, for you marketing.
Looks like.
lots of different things. Yeah. For the average business owner. I'm just gonna I need somebody to help me with marketing. They don't even know what they're hiring for, yeah. No. So then the person comes in with a certain set of experiences
And they are going to drive based off of their experiences.
Whatever they think the outcomes are for their role inside that business, because the owner never took the responsibility to say, This is how I'm gonna objectively measure was this person successful based off of the fact that the marketing that we do for our plumbing business that's doing eight hundred thousand dollars of revenue is actually email marketing. So what if I don't know the right type of marketing? Cause I'm a plumber.
I don't know about fucking marketing.
So I'm gonna be very easily duped by someone that tells me that they know marketing.
What do I do to

Minimize the probability of me being duped.
Well, the good news is if you are a plumber currently
And you're doing let's say eight hundred thousand dollars of revenue.
You figured out marketing for eight hundred thousand dollars of revenue.
So the first thing in order to not be duped would be
Ensuring that the person that you're bringing on can at least do what you are doing and they can duplicate what you are doing.
Now, once they've demonstrated to you that they can take on those tasks for that 800,000, they are competent, they understand the business, they understand who your customer is because you forced them to, because you documented what you did did to get the first 800, and maybe that's even referrals. Great, what is your referral process? And how then, once they've been able to
master what you created a model for.
I like to call this the four Ms.
Model, mimic, master, multiply.
The business owner can first create the model.
Of what they're doing today that's generating the eight hundred thousand dollars of revenue in their plumbing business. I take a model.
I have the model.
This is what we are doing for
Email marketing inside our business.
Then I move into
Seeing if they can mimic
What is the behavior?

mastering it and once somebody is at mastering something inside
A plumbing business for
$800,000 a year that it's generating. They can then start to tweak and add things in. And maybe we're gonna also try one other thing. We're gonna try.
Instagram marketing because we know that our
Plumbing clients are on Instagram and we're gonna have this strategy here. So now I'm going to be able to add to that.
At which point when a team member can go through those first three Ms, model, mimic, master, and
Then they're in a position to multiply their role because
If they really did master something, the results would show that to indicate that the business is ready for them to add potentially a marketing coordinator underneath the marketing manager that can then go through those first three steps of the process while the team member
Who was once responsible for those things is no longer doing those things, but is being additive to additional types of marketing inside that business.
The the other thing that I often wonder is if people aim too low.
With
Talent.
Especially like earlier stage founders.
They tend they tend there tends to be a bit of insecurity there and they don't want
someone to come in and tell them what to do.
In a particular domain.
Because
I think the further I've got in my career, the more I've sought out people that are like significantly smarter than me and I see that as the game, but in the early innings of my career
I think I was
Hiring people I could manage.
Do you think you weren't as successful when you were hiring people you could manage?
Because now you're able to bring on talent to
Help you.
bring on whole new lines of revenue, whole new partnerships.
business opportunities, manage those things.
Yeah.
In the early innings of my career, I was parti particularly aiming at young people that were like my age or younger,'cause I was what I was what, twenty?
So I'm like how how the hell am I gonna bring in a forty five year old that's been doing this for twenty five years and get an
and be able to tell them anything. Which is what the which is was the fault in my thinking, because I thought my job was to tell them what to do and to give them the vision. And but actually as I I think got more secure in myself, I realized that the game is the inverse, which is
Try and find truly exceptional people that know things I don't know.
and create the conditions where their knowledge is
Adds to the
hive mind of the decisions of this organization.
And actually that's what we need. We need new thinking, new experiences.
I think that's important.
Once you reach
thirty million dollars of revenue.
But until
You as the founder.
Can generate
Something that you can prove.
Works.
And you can replicate what works.
You
Open yourself up.
too significant risk.
And the stats.
Show it.
the m the majority of businesses, ninety seven percent of businesses fail within ten years.
So
By trusting or thinking that you're gonna bring on somebody who's smarter than you, you're not
actually taking on your role to say
This is what I wanna build. This is what I've built so far. Before
you will be additive to this environment. I need to make sure that what we have built so far.
The eight hundred thousand of revenue, the two million dollars of revenue, the ten million dollars of revenue.
I need to first make sure that you can do that.
Because if you can't do that.
And we can't duplicate.
what we're already doing that works well.
We don't know what is the right idea to bring in because there isn't a f a core understanding of what
makes this business run today. And the last thing that you want to do is bring on a leader.
Let's say your business is doing$10 million of revenue, and you think that there's somebody out there that is smarter than you who's going to entirely change your sales process. Maybe you weren't the best salesperson, you hired a salesperson on very early, they've tapped out in their ability to add additional salespeople and really properly run a sales team.
Well, as soon as that's happened and you're gonna bring on this external person.
It would be great if they could add twenty million dollars of revenue.
But if it's through some different product and different service and different way.
That disrupts what got you to ten million.
You're not at ten million any longer.
You're right.
eight million or seven million, and there's real slip back. And to me, that's more of the reality that I see, which is the slip back because the business owner doesn't know enough about the core parts of the business to decide.
how the business is run, what the core offer is.
To have the confidence to then bring on people who are additive that can't break the business.
So you think we you should approach with caution because there's risk associated with
on boarding people that might be expensive and
Um
know too much about uh I guess
Be ab I guess it goes about to being duped.
Be able to jeep you by
You not fully what they're saying and what they know.
And they can't dupe you?
If you know what you are already doing.
If you're really willing.
to
Model.
What is currently being done.
And they are willing to be
humble enough to come into your environment and learn the reasons why. This doesn't have to take years. This can take a handful of months. I'm not talking about like stifling innovation for quarters and quarters or years and years to make sure that they like really are indoctrinated with the way that the organization works. Absolutely not. That wouldn't work. The way you have to do it is quickly
Assessing
That they understand the way that things work inside your current business. We just recently brought on a new C suite, um within the hand first handful of weeks.
I can tell that he's picking up on what our core business d has does.
And
If I didn't think that.
It would be hard for me to trust some of his recommendations because
I brought on a C Suite member earlier this year who had all these fanciful ideas and this
You know.
The the big names
And you think that they're gonna bring on all these things, but they can't actually
contextualize what their experience is to the core business because they don't understand the core business. And then it ends up
Disenfranchising the team members that they're responsible for working with.
And
I have seen more often than not that trusting
too early on without that founder getting the necessary skills.
ends up in
The luck.
Scenario instead of this was a strategy because I knew and had certainty about what was going on and I'm good with what my four walls are. This is what you are going to bring that is incredibly to that core business. But that rigor and that discipline has to be there from the founder first. Interesting. Yeah.
It's really interesting.
And I think part of my bias is because I've been there before, I would never s
start a a new business now without aiming extremely high with the talent, but that's actually because
I'm harder to dupe now.
So if you have to pay someone a huge salary, for example, and give them a huge package, whatever.
I'm better able to assess whether they are worth it and what their ROI is gonna be versus the start of my career where
Hiring someone on
And taking such a big risk on someone.
I didn't have enough data to understand if I was being duped or not. So it was a lot of faith and trust and well, they worked at this incredible company, so m they must be good.
And I've s I've also seen that completely backfire as well.
Um, you talk about these ten steps to becoming a millionaire in a video that you made, uh
In December in twenty four.
And there are a couple of things that I wanted to
To pull out here.
So you outline outline this ten step process to becoming a millionaire within a year.
And one of them is researching what jobs millionaires have.
Then rate your interest and skills in each and pick one to master.
The other one is cut out friends who drain energy or don't stop your goals.
Study the ten most successful people in your field through podcast videos and books.
Use every moment to build skills, follow only millionaires on social media and eliminate all distractions such as Netflix and Doom Scrolling.
Be willing to invest and go into debt.
As without investment knowledge, you will stay broke.
Attend events with successful people.
Research will be attending.
Master selling yourself, your customers, and your team members daily.
On this point of selling.
Is there anything on this subject of how to be a great salesperson that we haven't talked about?
That you think is important.
Whether it's selling yourself or selling your ideas or selling your business or
One of my favorite quotes.
From Grant Cardown.

You are sold.
You will sell.
Oh, okay. So to the extent in which you believe something is the extent you'll be able to make others believe in the thing. Mm-hmm.
So if you're not sold on yourself.
On your business idea.
on the product that you're selling for the company that you work for?
On
getting another department to work cross functionally with you, if you aren't really sold
On that you will not sell.
But
I think it goes a layer deeper.
Than that.
Oftentimes because
It's easy to look at I'm not selling the product inside my business.
Maybe I'm a team member, I'm I'm in sales and
I'm not.
hitting my quota this month of cars that I'm supposed to sell.
And I'm like, Well
Like I don't really feel good.
about the fact that I sell cars. Like I this car is a piece of crap. I
Course, I'm not selling the car. And you can get very critical of the thing and rationalize why you are not good at sales.
But if you really do take a step back.
Why did you choose to sell cars?
In the first place.
Why is that?
The thing.
That you said I'm going to spend my time and energy being sold on.
You could have chosen lots of other opportunities, and you actually being sold on the PR firm that you wanted to work at, instead of taking the sales job that you got and
Not confronting the PR.
rejection that you got.
landed you in this place where you're unsold and then you're critical of your environment and you're critical of the product and then you think you're not good at sales.
When really
You just needed to go back to that thing that you were actually sold on because you sold yourself on why you thought for you that was your opportunity. Then you just missed the target. And instead of being unreasonable about the target, you became reasonable and started selling something you didn't believe in. And then you think that you're not good at sales.
And so the reasonableness
In yourself.
In what you want to be doing is actually why I find that salespeople
Can't sell.
It's not about their inherent skills.
If I can get them sold on the product, of course I'm gonna get them sold on the product. I help business owners across the country get sold on getting their team members to sell roofs. I believe that somebody knocking on the door and selling roofs is the most important thing for that team member. I am sold on the fact that they're working for a roofer who cares about them. So I'm like
Hell yeah, let's get on the roof.
I've was on a roof.
About a month ago and then was on another roof two months ago because I literally helped these business owners
train their sales team members to sell roofs. And these sales team members aren't naturally interested in roofs. They didn't wake up one day thinking like my life's dream is to sell a roof.
But what are they sold on? They're sold on the opportunity to potentially join this roofing company to go from one location
to two locations, three locations, five locations, because the business owner has created that vision for them and the salesperson can sell themselves on the skill that they have to
Understand how to sell a roof, maybe not the sexiest thing, but
But that's a stepping stone in order to be a future expansion partner with this business owner because this opportunity exists. So how do I sell a roof? If I'm on that roof with you and you're trying to train me to sell the reef better.
How what are you saying to me?
Well, ideally you're knocking on the door of the homeowner. Okay. I knock on the door. You knock on the door.
Yeah. And you go through if there was a storm, there's all sorts of ways that you can sell roofs. But let's say that there was a storm nearby or recently that hit that area and you could go the easier route, which is going through insurance because that roof is completely then paid for. But then you'd need to go up on the roof and or use a drone to look at the real damage because
That
In and of itself.
is a sales skill.
somebody going up and pointing out the problem that that person has that they do not know.
In that moment that they have helps the person feel confident in selling that roof. So it's just as much a part of a process.
To go
walk the roof or to fly a drone over that roof to see the damage, as it is a selling mechanism for the salesperson because you're not just selling somebody a roof that doesn't need a roof. They actually have a problem. And then you would educate that
sales individual on the
damage that that can do long term, the value loss of that property, and if you can sell the salesperson on why that homeowner deserves to know that their roof has something that insurance could pay for that could get fixed for them.
Within a handful of weeks, that doesn't erode their biggest investment that that person has likely made in their life, their home, all of a sudden I have an army of salespeople who are interested.
in selling roofs because they're sold not just on the fact that it's a roof, but the impact that that work makes on the person that they're selling and ideally the opportunity that they have inside that company to be freaking great at selling roofs.
So you you pointed out the problem that they have, you've then assigned a cost to that problem, how much it's gonna cost them over the long
Time or short term.
And then you
Pose the solution which is

And
I guess you're trying to frame the solution relative to the cost.
So that the solution is not.
Bigger.
Or more costly than the
the cost of having a bad roof.
Earlier on you mentioned um
This
phrase which I've not heard before.
It was just before we started recording you talked about a women's wealth transfer.
Yeah.
And when I asked you what was front of mind for you at the moment
Y you referenced that you were thinking a lot about the women's wealth transfer.
What is this?
The women's wealth transfer.
between twenty twenty five and twenty thirty.
Looks like.
Just
These are US stats.
Ten trillion dollars are in the hands of women right now.
And between now and twenty thirty, that number is going to go up to
Thirty trillion dollars.
So this wealth is going to
Balloon.
And when you think about the implications of how this wealth transfer happens.
It's not just
Cash that is given to women all of a sudden because they're making more money. There's a transition because of
Differences in life expectancy in partners, a man and a woman, there's about a on average. Yep.
And it's about
Five and a half, six years.
So women
Our left
with
Assets, not cash.
Like
Homes.
Businesses.
Portfolios, investments.
Bank accounts that
oftentimes they were left out of the conversation with the financial advisor.
And they don't actually know how to operationalize, how to manage because
Up until
As recent as fifty years ago.
The women weren't even allowed to
open bank accounts without their husband or their father until that passed in the eighties. And so
The wealth is actually moving towards women, but women today
Feel less financially
Able due to
content creation. There was recent study done by a company called
Lvest.
Where they analyze the amount of
Manifestation content on the internet.
created by women creators, there's twelve times as much
Manifestation content.
From women creators as there is
Investing and equity.
content or seventy percent of women feel more overwhelmed
With
Financial information.
After consuming the content because it's a tip or trick or hack that is being shared, instead of a real
system and process for how do they take something and systematize or operationalize this business that has equity, but then there's trucks maybe that they're inheriting, then there's debt on this business and
It's just a brand new conversation. And as women get more financially
literate as they get more financial opportunities, there have to be more ways for them to be
in these conversations, they have there have to be more ways for them to
Understand how to navigate.
What opportunities didn't exist structurally even up until as recent as
twenty, thirty years ago. And so I'm passionate about this because I see this incredible.
Time where
I help people.
Every day.
Understand how to grow businesses.
and be competent in businesses. So as
The total wealth transfer takes place over the next
twenty years.
From baby boomers to the next generation, that total wealth transfer is about 124 trillion dollars.
How do I equip women to feel confident?
with the decisions that they're making to
not just fire their
financial advisor, which seventy percent of them do after their spouse dies within the first year.
And actually no before this
Catastrophic event takes place.
How they
control the money.
how they feel confident with the money so that once they have it, it is not in moments of
panic and stress and frustration that they're having to figure these things out. They already feel like they are equipped with conversations about
What is a P L.
And how do I
uh understand what's happening with my four oh one K and still some of these
Concepts are just
out of sight, out of mind, and traditionally held by male roles in a household. So what would you recommend
people do who find themselves in that situation where they're they are financially illiterate. You used the word earlier on financial crisis. Is that dovetailing into the same thing? Is that because people is that the financial illiteracy point?
For me the financial crisis is how few people are actually making enough money to make ends meet.
The financial crisis is
That there are so many businesses
thirty five million in the US alone.
And yet
Less than
Two hundred thousand.
Make more than a million dollars.
And if
Less than
two hundred thousand make.
A million over a million dollars.
And the average margin of a business is eight and a half percent.
You just
You're circling the drain as to how much money people are actually making. It seems like there's so much money because of social media. And there are team members who work in organizations that make more than$60,000 a year, but people are actually making less money than I think society believes because of the proliferation of content creation.
And so this crisis to me is has much more to do with how do we get people skills that they need.
with our life expectancy
In total looking like it's going to be longer.
based off of the different treatments that are coming out due to AI in healthcare in genomics.
What do you think is the most important financial information the average person needs in this regard?
I think the most important financial information is actually that
Money.
Matters.
And if money matters.
How are you spending your time?
Today.
Tomorrow.
The next day.
To get skills and to do things that generate money.
And if you can align your time.
with making more money instead of thinking that it's some fixed resource or there is some scarcity around it.
You could actually increase
The the top line,'cause you you can save your way to the bottom.
But
you get to the bottom there's no abundance in the in the bottom
So what are the skills?
Like
If I was somebody that was trying to earn
More money today.
I would go on to
one of the AI platforms and say
This is the set of skills that I have.
These are the set of interests that I have. This is the current
job that I hold.
What I do for work.
And my goal is to increase my income.
Between now and
twelve months from now.
buy a hundred thousand dollars. What are the specific skills and the associated syllabus
for each week if I carved out two hours a day for me to learn that you could put together for me.
So that I can actually get skills that would demonstrate that I'm able to make more money. And I think that message is missed when people talk about investing and 401Ks. Sure, you can make your six percent, your eight percent, your 10%.
But what can you actually control? And what does every individual have the ability to control? Their skills and how they exchange those skills for.
Problems.
Okay.
They're solving in exchange.
Earning more income.
And then they're able to invest and and do all of those other things, but those things are anciliary. They are not the main thing. The main thing is you need to get skills. You are going to live longer. Wake up, smell the roses. The world is going to be a very long place that you're going to inhabit.
for the next potentially hundred years on average. So let's get comfortable with learning more, understanding what our stops are to learning, so that we aren't scared as the world changes of having to acquire new skills.

Before the Director was what it is today, it was just an idea. And it started with me, a cheap plug-in microphone, and my
Mac right here. And I have to say, when I first had the idea for the diary of a CEO, my thinking was that the world might want to see into the diaries of some of the most interesting, successful people really in high places that were doing interesting things. So now after recording that first episode under my duvet, I sat on my Mac, which is from our sponsor, Apple, and spent hours editing.
And eventually uploaded it and honestly, I thought that would probably be it. But a couple of my friends said they enjoyed it, so I kept on recording. And over time, the microphone has changed and we now have this incredible setup here. But the thing that has stayed the same is I'm still using the Mac.
Even today.
My entire team across our studio still uses the Mac. Our first few episodes maybe had tens of people listening, but now tens of millions of people tune in all over the world, which is still absolutely crazy to me. So if there is an idea that keeps tapping you on the shoulder, this is your sign to start. Your great ideas start on Mac.
And you can find out more at Apple.com slash Mac.
I did something at twenty four years old that has had a profound impact on my life. I set myself the challenge of posting every single day on my social media channels. And at the time I was doing it to grow my following, but it had this profound impact on my life, and two remarkable things happened when I did that.
I manage to learn faster because every single day I'm capturing what is happening to me and trying to distill it down into something that I can share with the world. But more remarkably
It led me to building a following of many millions of people. And that's the basis that I use to launch the Dire of a CEO. And that's why I want to tell you about our sponsor today, Adobe Express. They are the platform that I use to make all the posts across my LinkedIn and across my Instagram. It's a couple of clicks, and you don't need to be an expert. And that is why I love using it because I'm not an expert in graphic design. It's accessible.
To use for all of us, even if we don't have the technical prowess to design great things. So if you want to start compounding both your reach and your knowledge like I did at twenty four years old, then head to adobe.ly slash Steven and get started with Adobe Express. That's Adobe.ly slash Steven.
Steven.
People
Love talking about passive income.
Especially on YouTube and the internet, that everyone wants passive income. The idea that you can make income and do fuck all is unbelievably compelling. I would like some passive income. What is the reality of this? Because there's a real obsession with figuring out ways to make passive income. I want to earn money when I sleep.
Um
What is the reality of that?
Is that is that a thing? Is that possible? Is that something I should be aiming at?
You should aim at that once you have a million dollars in.
Your bank account.
Before you have a million dollars.
Don't even think about passive income. You have you have no asset to actually earn passive income off of.
And your time is much better spent learning how do you
get your first million dollars than it is through
passive income and thinking how you're going to earn a percentage on the principal that you've invested. If you make sixty thousand dollars a year,
Medium wage.
United States of America.
She makes sixty thousand dollars a year.
Eight percent on that.
isn't gonna s get you to financial freedom.
So don't figure out how to crack eight percent to maybe I'm gonna get 15% returns because the principal is still so small. The 60,000 is so small. What do you have to do?
Actually, learn how do I make my income 160,000. But what's wild once people learn how to do this, and the skill of learning is like.
It's the greatest drug on planet earth.
Because you learn how to do something and you become competent in it. And as soon as you get there, you're like, Oh my gosh.
If that's all it took,
For these people that I used to think were special to
earn an additional hundred thousand.
And now all I have to do is do that same process again to go from where I'm at.
to be able to earn 1.6 million, do a 10X.
Sign me up because you get this confidence from learning how to do things. And so passive income is great at a certain stage of life.
And at a certain stage of financial protection, but it is not it is financial protection. It is not.
For the people who are saying, I wanna go build something, I wanna grow something, I wanna create something, it is a
It is to me almost the opposite of survival, actually. It's your backup plan. It's your rainy day fund in case.
Shit hits the fan.
And I'm not opposed to
Having a backup plan.
It's good to have a backup plan, but 99% of your time should be focused on how do I make the first plan go frickin' right and do everything I can today to control plan A.
But you talked about acquiring skills being the key thing there.
Um, obviously the world is changing quickly because of AI and all the skills that
A lot of people once acquired in university, you know, accountants, lawyers, um
Podcasters, I guess.
um our skills are quickly being replaced by
intelligent machines and systems that can now do what we do. And when you look around the corner at what's going on in robotics, I think NIO, the robotics company this week,
put on sale their first humanoid robot, which can move through the physical environment and do things. And when I combine these two things, I can combine intelligence with the ability to
manipulate the physical environment.
I go, Where a where are humans gonna
Gonna be in all this.
Because
It is conceivable, it's perfectly conceivable to me.
The
Much of what?
we employ people to do these days will be redundant.
In the in the near future. Mm-hmm.
And that's not to say that there won't be new jobs, but
It's a difficult time to be um
investing heavily in any particular skill set. Well some particular some skill sets because they're
They go they're becoming invalid in
No time at all. Like even as a writer. So like I've written two books and I enjoy the process of writing. I considered it to be one of my edges. I was like I'm quite good at writing. So
That's useful. You can build a powerful brand, you can send good emails, you can convince people, uh investors, whatever it might be. But even now I'm like, fuck it, everyone's got like AI now, uh chat GPT, so they can just
Produce AI slot. And they can literally just say write it like Steven.
Or write it like Natalie.
So the edges are are going. What is the edge of the future?
In your V.
What is the edge?
What is the skill I should double down on that the robots and AI aren't gonna steal from me?
I think the only skill that we can actually double down on in a world of AI
Is the skill.
Uh
Learning and adapting.
Because we cannot predict.
What the world is going to look like in
twenty forty.
We do not know what robots are aren't going to be capable of. I'm not as bullish on this. I watched Elon.
Have a
interview over the weekend about
his take on AI and he said that it's a
Supersonic Tsunami.
in which he proceeded to explain that supersonic is traveling at the speed of sound
And a tsunami is a
Wall of water.
And so if you
Think about
That being AI.
It's coming, it's here, it's fast. And of course he benefits from everybody believing all of those things with all of the companies and
I am a pro Elon person. I I love what he has built. I love his mind.
But I think that we're further away than people
Think.
But it is still
Coming.
And so the only hedge that somebody can have is the ability to adapt.
and learn and what AI should be used for with every individual.
is the ability to learn.
Acknowledge what you don't know.
That is the greatest strength somebody has. Really be comfortable saying
I do not know.
How to read a PL.
I don't know how to read this legal contract. I don't know anything about AI and what
I've heard an LLM.
Uh I don't really know what it is or agency, what's the difference?
And be able
To convince yourself why that is the most important skill for you to.
Push past that barrier.
Of learning something new that is so uncomfortable because then the names are new, and you feel like a frickin idiot, and then you think everybody is smarter than you, and that you're just some fraud to push back.
on that and to have some resilience through it to say, I'm going to adapt through this. I'm going to get to the other side and learn so that I concretely can have confidence that I can change in any environment.
Based off of what's needed of me in that environment, and I will add value to that environment regardless of whatever the external circumstances are. That is the only choice.
There is no alternative choice.
Are you scared about AI?
I'm not scared at all. I'm pumped. As you can tell, I'm really excited because
I used to feel dumb.
I used to feel like there were things that these smart
People knew that I didn't know.
And
My entire
Outlook on life.
Changed.
A handful of years ago when this got launched because
AI
Has taught me in
Two years.
What I would have had to go
to school for
and would have had to get a degree in still to just find out that most people who went to school for those things and had degrees in them missed something critical and important.
And so
For me and I think people like me.
And I don't think there's anything particularly special about
who I categorize as people like me.
It is a
Unprecedented time.
to
Lean into this reference of
Information that can specifically tutor you on what you don't know.
to actually equip you. We've never had this opportunity before, and it's not specific to you with your gender or your race or your age. It's accessible.
And so I'm beyond excited because anything that comes up that's like
Oh, this just changed the whole dynamic of the business. Guess what? I have AI to help me.
Understand that and to help me.
get whatever skill I need in this new world, same thing that
People 100 years ago had to do. Same thing that 2000 years ago people had to do. They just didn't actually have a tool to help them understand what was happening to then learn what.
Needed to happen from them, whatever they had misunderstood Csar.
in in in order to actually get to the other side with
Real skills.
Nathalie, what do you think is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to what you know about who my audience are and what they're interested in?
I think this is a connected subject.
But I would want
Anybody in the audience.
Whether you make
Sixty thousand a year.
A million a year.
A hundred million a year.
to actually have the belief in themselves.
That they can learn anything that they want to know.
And that there isn't actually a barrier there.
That exists.
Because if I could get people to really believe that
Their entire life would change due to the access.
that they have today, due to the tools that they have today.
And so taking that confidence
That I can walk into any room.
With any big shots.
With
Anybody who
know something about a particular subject matter that I know nothing about and
Feel
totally comfortable being that environment because
You can prep yourself, you can learn about it. And life is so beautiful because you get those experiences and you don't have to be scared of them.
You can learn and you can understand, and there's nothing that's wrong with you to where you can't. And there's no special privilege or special.
characteristics that somebody has
That you don't have.
In that
You can learn anything. Did you used to think there were special characteristics or some kind of genetic
G genius
gene that these people at the very top had and
And how how did that change once you
We're in rooms with those people.
Of course I thought that there was some genius button that somebody
clicked at birth before
coming out of the womb where they just got to be special and they got to understand things. I really struggled.
Growing up with remembering numbers. Numbers were so challenging. I would just reverse the numbers and then they wouldn't stick in my brain. And I thought I was stupid for.
So much of my life.
And
For anybody who
also struggles with that.
What you would
Come to find out being around
Lots of people.
successful or unsuccessful people is everybody has
that thing. So the faster that you can attack it.
And get yourself comfortable with numbers. What I realized is like that was just a story I told myself because had I ever spent
An afternoon.
On a Sunday.
with my extra time.
Actually trying to get better at remembering numbers.
No, I hadn't. I just used it.
as an excuse
And successful people just limit the amount of excuses that they allow themselves to believe for why.
They aren't successful.
They take the limitation that they have.
And either they so over index in the strength and they ignore that.
Or they realize that that limitation is actually at a point where it is limiting them.
So they have to attack it and take the time to get better and shore up that area to then be able to springboard.
From there.
There's also a I guess another layer to this, which is men tend to rate their own performance higher than women do.
Even when their actual performance is equal.
And there's a bunch of different studies that cite this. There's one famous study that people always talk about, which might not be I think might be refuted now, but it said that men apply for a job when they meet sixty percent of the listed qualifications, while women only apply when they meet a hundred percent of the listed qualifications.
Which in part as it relates to top jobs um in in Europe
People think that this is part of the reason
why men are more likely to be in full time top jobs.
Um because they that overconfidence
means they're more likely to apply
And therefore more likely to
Um
I guess convince pe other people and more likely to get the job.
So there is something there seems to be a difference in genders in terms of
The need to feel ready.
And the need to feel qualified.
That's so real to me.
Yeah.
That is so real to me.
I
Get to work with the
People every day and
I will
Have
A personal, professional, or financial goal conversation with
team members who are in the exact same role. Let's say they're an account manager.
One will be a female, one will be a male. The woman is like
a rock star. She like the clients love her and she's so good and she just has like this little like
Magical spark.
So I'll be sitting with them with their personal, professional and financial goal conversation and
The woman will say.
Oh, I'd like to go from making eighty thousand dollars a year to maybe in a year from now
Making ninety thousand.
And
The next hour I will have a conversation.
With a guy.
who is not as performant as she is.
And he will say.
Yeah, making eighty thousand a year.
think in the next three years I I should be up to two hundred, two fifty.
I've had this happen over and over and over. So I watch this in real time.
And
My
go to in that.
Is
To sit down with the girl.
And to say I want you.
to imagine.
What your life is going to look like.
In three years from now.
So if you're
thirty five years old, you're gonna be thirty eight years old.
What does life look like? Who are you spending time with?
How much money are you making?
Have you traveled?
Do you have a spouse? Do you have kids? Like w what does life look like? And what I want you to do, if you don't have an account already, is I want you to get
Hooked up with Pinterest, and you were gonna create a board, and you were just gonna go through all of these incredible things that you could have in your life that you actually want.
Not the stupid things. Like the things that you like.
If my life could include that
It would change my life. I would love to have that life. For me that would have been
Full sequence.
S.
Because if you can't
Do that.
You're of course gonna be stunted in what you're going to do in order to get there.
If it was a man who was struggling with that, though, I'd do the exact same thing. That to me is the real job of a leader is to inspire people enough, not about who you are and all of your accomplishments, but to actually have them see that they could have the life that they want.
through the work that they do every single day and tying those two things together and being ruthlessly honest with them when they do things that hold them back. And
remove things that are in their way.
Natalie, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for.
And the question left for you is um a fairly well known question actually. It is
What would you do?
If you knew you would not fail.
If I knew that I wasn't gonna fail.
I would just like I'd fix world hunger and I'd fix all of these things.
But like short of
thinking that I could solve those particular problems.
It's it's selfish to not have those goals and dreams.
I just think for my actual life today.
I really believe in
Preach and
to my core.
I feel act out that
I
take massive action towards goals that do seem
unbelievable or unreal to me.
And right now the the set of goals that I have.

I'm
very confident that I'm not going to fail at.
And I'm spending time doing those things in order to get myself as close as possible to the woman that I want to become. And I could change my mind and
a handful of months or a handful of years once I've achieved those things, but
I guess I already actually do think that I'm living my life short of
Solving world hunger and like
World peace.
That I'm doing everything that I know how to do to make an impact.
on the world.
I noticed that um you know, I've had a bunch of conversations on this show with people like Evi
Comports who is the uh the
The secret service agent.
And you have a lot of similarities to her.
I think because of the directness in which you speak, and I think part of the resonance is
People want to know how to
be taken seriously in this world.
And I think they they they look at you and see someone who is
Like them in many ways.
Or at least how they aspire to be.
But is taken seriously in a world that is often hard to be taken seriously in, especially as a woman. Especially things like the finance industry and investment industry. It's hard to be taken seriously.
It's hard to be respected. And so people I think people have a deep sense that they are being
being diminished, they are like misunderstood, they're not being heard. And so they when they hear someone that speaks so
clearly and with such conviction as you.
Um they they want to learn how to do it.
Mm.
Is there anything in that regard that we've
We've left off.
'Cause I was I was I was on your YouTube channel and I was looking at some of your recent videos and one of the recent videos
B.
has been incredibly to people is this exact point, which is the one percent secrets to make anyone respect you instantly.
Is there anything within the subject of that video?
And I was looking at the comment section, it was
A lot of people talking about how they feel
Someone has disrespected them or
That they feel like that's the same.
Ben ik nood.
Or not heard. Is there anything you'd say to those people?
Been
look down upon being not taken seriously.
is actually your superpower.
And you have to convert.
The energy
Uh
that frustration.
into
What are you going to do in that environment next time?
I went to a charity event.
was about a decade ago now, and I remember being mortified because I was in this
career pivot where I was making the decision to
work with Brandon and the
Your husband. My husband, yeah.
And the proverbial
question of like
Well what do you do?
came around to me.
And I fumbled.
The question. And for the rest of that night, and it was actually a charity trip, the person just didn't take me seriously. And they were somebody that I wanted to respect me, and I was so pissed off at myself.
That I messed it up, that I hadn't created something and
twenty two or years old that was more impressive that
they would take me seriously. And so I made it my mission.
between that point
And the next year when we would go on that trip.
for them to take me seriously and I had to look at
What do I have to do? What do I have to create?
In order for somebody to take
A twenty four year old, seriously. What did you have to do and create?
While I launched a podcast.
And I
had to work on this communication skill'cause I was terrified to communicate.
I used to not be able to communicate.
Like this.
I had a
horrifying experience I was in my early twenties.
Where
I
was supposed to present this new leadership program that was being rolled out of this organization.
And I was nervous ahead of time, but was fairly confident in the material that I was presenting and I walked up to the front of the room.
And I was the first person to speak. It was eight o'clock in the morning, and I got through five minutes of my hour long presentation. I turned around to the presentation screen to point out something and turned back to the audience, and in that moment.
I was instantly.
Petrified.
The nerves took over.
Every fiber of my body, I could not control what I was saying. My thoughts and my words did not connect.
And I proceeded to give the rest of my presentation that was supposed to take
an additional fifty five minutes in seven. And then I sat at the front of the room while everyone around me was talking about all the different components of the things I was supposed to be highlighting because I just
couldn't articulate them. And from that point
For about
Four years.
I was unable to have a conversation with people that
had a a larger group than
Four five because this disconnect for me happened.
And this anxiousness.
Took place.
And
I had to work on this skill.

Learn how to communicate. And so I launched a podcast, and the only topic that I felt comfortable talking about at that point, I didn't have some business expertise. I wasn't.
naive enough to think that somebody who was gonna listen to me at the wise age of
twenty-three or twenty-four, my early twenties, and how to run a business. So what did I know at that point?
And what was a problem that I was seeing? Well, I was actually around a group of people who were
in age gap relationships and having all these conversations in secret.
But wouldn't publicly talk about it. And so I started a podcast where I was talking about
What it's like being
Uh
third marriage and being a stepmom and how did we tell our parents and what are tools to navigate something that
Feels really crippling and almost embarrassing to somebody who is a high performer.
And I proceeded to have that podcast every single week. And I made it my mission that year to make a toast at every single meal that made sense for me to make a toast at. So that I worked out this skill.
of communicating.
And working out the skill of communicating is what allowed me to go from being in a room where I couldn't trust myself to even introduce what I do to showing up the next year and having made progress on my communication and saying, hey, I
I know that you didn't take me very seriously last year, but this year
I would never say it like this, but
This year I've built this
Cool thing and I actually have this blog that has thousands of readers.
every single month that is generating this revenue. And you, Mr. Oldman
might not have taken me seriously, but I could probably help you in your business do the same thing because I know that you don't know anything about this.
So I gained a skill in that process and was able to talk about the skill that I knew was my angle.
The top comment on that video is being nice destroyed my life.
I can understand.
Course it did.
The second comp
Comment is a friend.
To all is a friend to none.
People really resonate with the
Topic of
Being liked versus being respected.
And
People give up their goals in order to be liked, and they give up
What they believe that they
can actually accomplish in
thinking that it's okay to go all in on themselves in order to be
W liked. And so
That message I know really resonated with people because I start out the video by talking about the difference between respect and being liked and really making that a choice and it's an act of choice, not a
passive thing that just happens.
I wonder why that is. I wonder why so many people are
Really focused on the
The idea of being liked.
They don't want to be disliked and they want to be
Liked but
In their pursuit of being liked, they feel like they're self sabotaging in some way.
Like they're disrespecting themselves. So then they end up wanting to be okay with not being liked.
Mm.
The answer.
Yeah.
In that vicious loop.
You have to choose who you want to be liked by.
And if you choose that you want to be liked by people who are respectable.
You're not gonna lose.
If you choose that you want to be liked by your co workers because they think it's cool to shit on the company culture.
Or to
pretend like they're working, but not really care.
Then
Of course you're gonna get stuck in this vicious cycle because you actually
want to be respected, but you're choosing to be liked by somebody that is not
Respectable.
And
I think when you
Find yourself in a position where
People who are respectable do actually like you.
You start to like yourself a little bit more because you've made sacrifices. You have to have made sacrifices in order to drop the person that you were.
to become this different version of yourself.
And
That process is so painful because you shed your identities and you shed people that you thought you needed to be dependent upon. But as soon as you shed that and you
S like a butterfly. You metamorphosize into this new person.
you will repeat that process over and over again because of
The confidence that it brings you and you like yourself, and when you like yourself
There's nothing better on this planet. I love my husband, I love my team members, I love my parents, my brother.
There's there's no amount of
There's no greater joy that I have than
actually being my own best friend. And I don't say that from like a
Just gonna hold your hand and we're just I'm just gonna be best friends with myself. I am brutally honest with myself about what I am bad at, what I am good at.
And I don't
over index either way. I'm just honest with myself because I want to like me. And when you like you,
because you've put in work that you have to do.
to not lie to yourself about what you want.
Then
The world is
opened for you to pursue whatever opportunities because
You like yourself and you're good with yourself, and that actually attracts more people who want to do cool shit with you because
Most people don't like themselves and they're not their own best friend and they think that that's silly, but they are so mean to themselves. And I get that because I used to be so mean to myself and so critical. Nobody would ever say.
To me.
What I would say to myself, I would never say to a friend of mine, or even my worst enemy, what I used to say to myself.
And I I had to work on rewiring myself.
To understand why I was so critical and why I was so mean to myself.
to stop doing that and to stop acting that way that then allowed me to
work on the things and fix the things I didn't like about myself. For instance, used to watch way too much reality television. I hated that I watched as much reality television as I watched, but I loved all of the real housewives, everything on Bravo.
But it made me feel crappy.
Because I liked their lives instead of liking my own lives. My own life.
And when you like somebody else's life and you're
living into something that you don't feel good about.
Do you end up
Being really rude to yourself.
For obvious reasons. You're not creating the thing that you want. You're just circumventing, you're like shortcutting it. And that stuff to me is is just as powerful.
And maybe even just as harmful of a drug as
Hard drugs and alcohol because it's escapism.

Leslie, thank you.

And I'm very excited to sit again with you in uh
some point in the future and get an update on your
PPS.
I appreciate it.
Thank you. Please keep doing what you're doing.
Appreciate you.