00:00:00
I do a $ 106 million launch. My mom got to see it, which is really cool. She dies four weeks later.
00:00:06
It was just like, how am I supposed to show up right now? So, I write these tweets as notes [music] to self.
00:00:11
>> I'd never heard you talk like that publicly before. >> Yeah. I'm like, what do I need to hear
00:00:16
right now? And I was like, I I'll write that, which is like I just have to keep fighting. And [music] people will judge
00:00:20
how much you love someone by how much you choose to suffer. I don't think the person that you lost probably wants you
00:00:25
to suffer. One of the lessons that I've learned from an entrepreneurship perspective translated into life is we
00:00:30
[music] will get these moments of dissatisfaction or discomfort and be like I'm life sucks. I need to change
00:00:35
something. But my emotional discomfort is not an adequate reason to change what I'm doing. And so there's all these
00:00:40
other skills that are still required to be successful in business. But if I can compress 14 years of business advice,
00:00:45
the first thing I would say is you have to decide whether you care more about your future than what other people think
00:00:48
about your future. Like someone's version of you has to die because everything in the very beginning of
00:00:53
entrepreneurship comes down to one thing which is fear. And it makes sense to be
00:00:55
afraid and it's because we want certainty, but the only way to know is to start. The second thing I've learned
00:01:00
is that the fastest way to build a $10 million business is not the fastest way to build a $und00 million business
00:01:04
because focus and [music] patience are the two enduring competitive advantages because they're so antihuman. And so
00:01:11
this is where entrepreneurs will skyrocket. And I'll unpack that concept. So how are you thinking about your
00:01:16
business, the world of AI? >> I'm a big AI advocate, but people are using AI in the wrong places. like
00:01:21
outsourcing thinking and decision-m to AI is a really bad decision because you will just get dumber. This is the best
00:01:26
asset I've got for now. So, I want to keep it as sharp as I can. Finally, this is like the the absolute raw truth I
00:01:31
could possibly give, which is the single best financial decision that I ever made. And that [snorts] is
00:01:38
this is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many
00:01:41
of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from
00:01:46
the channel randomly. So, favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button,
00:01:51
if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark
00:01:56
on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my
00:02:02
team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to
00:02:08
hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If
00:02:12
you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder
00:02:18
and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that
00:02:22
promise since the very beginning of the D of Sio and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it.
00:02:27
Let's get on with the show. [music] Alex, I I feel like we have to start with AI because it is front of mind for
00:02:39
both I think my audience but also for entrepreneurs that I speak to at every step in the journey whether they are I
00:02:45
was with Adara who's the CEO of Uber the other day um in New York and he that's what the conversation was about AI but
00:02:51
then I speak to startup founders who are trying to build a software company and can't find a moat that is defensible
00:02:57
those conversations are about AI. What is your how are you approaching this as an entrepreneur? How can we use AI to do
00:03:02
the things that are the art the normal functions of the business at a way better, way faster, etc. What I'm seeing
00:03:08
a lot especially with founders or people are starting out is they're using AI to
00:03:12
do a lot of dumb things really fast and they're trying to build companies that the models are going to swallow up
00:03:18
pretty much immediately anyways or already have for super users and it's just going to like become easier. And
00:03:24
the question that I would ask for the entrepreneurs who are you know AI maxing right now and again I think it's very
00:03:29
good to adopt new technology is are you making more money >> just the very simple are you making more
00:03:35
money now and even though you're token maxing [laughter] >> and spending all this tokens like are
00:03:40
you making more money and I had a a business I looked at the other day they had 11 VAS that were doing I can't
00:03:46
remember some sort of like data cleaning work >> VAS >> yeah virtual assistants so lowkilled
00:03:51
labor overseas that was doing work and I think it was something in the neighborhood of like $11,000 a month is
00:03:56
what they were paying for these 11 VAS. And they were doing a good job and it all worked. And they then spent $350,000
00:04:03
to try and create an AI system that would replace what these 11 virtual assistants were doing. But that means
00:04:10
they spent three plus years of costs on what these 11 virtual assistants were doing. And it wasn't even the constraint
00:04:19
of the business. It was just a process they could automate. Not that they should automate it because it's not the
00:04:25
thing that's limiting their growth. And so they still need more customers and that wasn't the thing. This was like
00:04:29
part of their their quote process or something, but that wasn't the limitation. They didn't have enough
00:04:33
demand. >> People are using AI in the wrong places. They're trying to start AI businesses
00:04:38
when they shouldn't start AI businesses. They should use AI in their business. They're trying to advertise as AI
00:04:43
businesses when you should just advertise the thing that your customer cares about, which is the solution to
00:04:47
their problem, the outcome. None of that's changed. But because you got really excited about it, you think your
00:04:52
customers are going to be excited about it. But most people are a lot of people are afraid of AI. Um, so it's not
00:04:56
necessarily even a positive and it's not making you more money, which is the final question.
00:05:00
>> When you listen to someone like Elon Musk, he says that work will become optional in in the in the future. And I
00:05:05
sat here with a couple of experts on AI. Then they kind of explained to me what it is. And from a very simplified
00:05:10
perspective, this machine that has these neural nets in it, which have lots of parameters, basically connections like
00:05:15
the human brain does. And when they train it, the parameters become reinforced to the the ones that made the
00:05:21
right decision. And the ones that made the wrong decision are like basically cut out. Again, I'm simplifying this.
00:05:26
>> These brains, these digital brains are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Um, it's it's like almost inconceivable
00:05:31
to me based on what they've said to me, these area experts, that at some point it isn't able to do a lot of the
00:05:37
cognitive work that people are currently doing. My question really here is like where does the value remain in a world
00:05:43
where intelligence is cheap >> and abundant and um higher one could say and also in a world where robotics are
00:05:52
coming over the horizon too like where is the value I think stakes for example AI can give all of the recommendations
00:05:59
in the world but someone has to own the decision >> and so as of [clears throat] right now
00:06:03
maybe it will in the future AI isn't isn't a citizen of any you know any country it doesn't pay taxes and so
00:06:08
somebody has to be responsible >> it's a liability Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And upside on on the flip side. And to
00:06:13
take this into different domains from the media perspective, imagine Jimmy said Mr. Beast has a video and like Mr.
00:06:19
Beast is going to replace by AI. He's not going to get replaced by AI because if he had a video that said $5 million
00:06:25
and the $5 million wasn't real and the Lamborghini wasn't real, there'd be no stakes.
00:06:30
>> Yeah. >> Like chess, right, has become more popular now than it's ever like than
00:06:34
it's been in recent history. But robots can beat humans at chess. >> Mhm. But no one cares.
00:06:40
>> I think about the F1 as well. You'd still want Lewis Hamilton in the car. You take him out the car, you stop
00:06:44
watching F1, >> right? So humans want stakes. And so there's the compensation side of it,
00:06:49
which is that somebody's going to be responsible. Someone has to risk the money. Somebody paid for the token.
00:06:52
Somebody owns the LLC. Someone is is owns this. And so there is value in the judgment and the assumption of risk and
00:06:59
upside. >> Mhm. >> Which can be money or just the responsibility. From a media perspective, we still have to introduce
00:07:04
stakes into the into the show. Now, of course, there's going to be the fiction world. They're going to be much harder
00:07:07
hit. But if you're trying to do a reality TV show, the real part has to be there.
00:07:12
>> One of the um things that I find really interesting about you is you spend a lot
00:07:16
of time thinking and in a world of artificial intelligence, a lot of people are now deferring their thinking to
00:07:22
these frontier models like chatb or claim or whatever. And um we've spoken about this before, but one of the things
00:07:27
we both agree is that knowing the right questions to ask, clarity of thought, critical thinking, making the decision
00:07:32
is going to be one of the things in a world of AI that's critically important. So my question to you is like how are
00:07:36
you having good ideas cultivating good ideas and giving your space your sort of mental space to be able to think about
00:07:43
problems? >> Mhm. >> What's your practice? >> I'll I'll take this from two different
00:07:47
angles. So first is I think outsourcing thinking to AI as of right now is still a really bad decision if you it's like I
00:07:54
think anybody who's used AI for any period of time knows that you can get it to agree to anything. And that's
00:07:59
frightening when it comes to making decisions. And so every time I'm like you know I think it has gotten a little
00:08:04
better. I'll just give it like a really obvious decision to make. I'll go, "Okay, let's open up uh Claw. Let's open
00:08:08
up OpenAI. Let's look like let's open all of them up and I'll ask the same question to all three and they're just
00:08:13
all over the place." And so I'm like, "Okay, this is still back to my judgment." Right? Number two is that if
00:08:19
you do delegate your decision-m to it, you get dumber. Now, there's all this research. I'm sure you've had people in
00:08:24
the podcast who talked about it, and it's like I for sure like this is the best asset I've got for now, so I want
00:08:29
to keep it as sharp as I can. Do not delegate the hardest work you the hardest thinking work you have because
00:08:34
you will just get so weak so fast. A new idea that sprung into my mind over the last I'd say three to four months that
00:08:39
I've kind of been chewing with is this idea of what happens when you go long. M >> so long-term thinking and how you build
00:08:47
differently today if you just extend the time horizon and then how you can like beat competition just by like instead of
00:08:54
thinking in terms of okay you know founders they always think in terms of 5 years and then exit but what happens if
00:08:59
you think in terms of like 50 years what are the different decisions you make in
00:09:02
terms of the foundational blocks >> and this is why I have these blocks cuz I saw you do something on YouTube with
00:09:07
some blocks before >> could you explain this idea of sort of long-term thinking in terms of
00:09:11
foundations >> we do this exercise in person with entrepreneurs I think it's so powerful
00:09:14
which is if I were to say, "Hey, build me the tallest tower using a series of blocks." If I say, "You have 5 seconds."
00:09:23
You're going to you're right here, right? And that's that's all you got. And you're like, "Oh, it's time. Hands
00:09:27
off." If I said, "Okay, now let's assume we had a little bit more blocks than I could build in in 5 seconds." And I
00:09:32
said, "Okay, what if I said you had 5 minutes? Would you build it differently? What if I said you had 5 days? What if I
00:09:37
said you had 5 years? >> And you have unlimited blocks, >> right?" Yeah. And so what happens is the
00:09:41
foundation completely changes based on the height of the building because of the time horizon you're thinking in.
00:09:46
>> Yeah. >> I had a mentor tell me this um a long time ago and it like really stuck with
00:09:50
me which is the fastest way to build a $10 million business is not the fastest way to build a $100 million business.
00:09:56
>> Even in the fastest way to build a million dollar business is not the fastest way to build a $10 million
00:09:59
business. Like you could probably build a oneperson agency to a million dollars a year pretty quick. One client,
00:10:04
>> right? Yeah. It's just like it's just you could do it really quickly. getting
00:10:07
to a hundred though, you you think about it differently. You would. And so I think um to your point, one of the still
00:10:15
outstanding competitive advantages that you can have as an entrepreneur from a thinking perspective is just thinking
00:10:19
longer. >> Yeah. >> It's really been front of mind to me. It's funny cuz when I started thinking
00:10:23
about, do you know why it is? It's because I told myself in this season of life >> Mhm.
00:10:28
>> that I was going to do the business that I'm running now, which is our holding
00:10:31
company called Steven.com forever. And I immediately noticed that I made a different set of decisions. I started
00:10:36
thinking about the factory I called it which is you know Elon's example of it's building a prototype is easy building
00:10:42
the factory that builds the cars is 50x harder. I started obsessing over the factory which in in part in this analogy
00:10:47
could also be seen as the foundations that we lay to make this durable over the long term. And then speaking of Elon
00:10:53
I look at the decisions he made with both SpaceX which I'm an investor in and Tesla where he was like you know I could
00:10:59
have bought the batteries from Ford but I'm going to make a completely new battery from scratch. you know, um, I
00:11:04
could have used other people's electricity chargers, but I'm going to build the entire charging network across
00:11:08
the United States from scratch. >> And this is someone who was thinking long term. And what happens then is they
00:11:13
have the most durable moat 7 years from now. And and that's so this is that becomes the value of the business. And
00:11:20
actually, it was all a byproduct of just thinking over a longer time horizon. entrepreneurs and startup founders as
00:11:25
you know we like rush to like get the exit raise as much money as we can >> and it looks like you're you're in an
00:11:31
unstable building there. Yeah, >> it looks like that >> strong wind, right? [laughter]
00:11:36
>> I could blow that over. >> Even during the exit process, if it's a fast, you know, company, it's like
00:11:41
you're kind of like just please stay, just everything stay fine. No one leave, you know, like no big accounts go away.
00:11:49
Like you're just like holding your breath for 6 months and being like, [laughter] please just go through. And
00:11:54
then if it goes down to this for like a week or two and they're like, hey, why are the billables down? You're like, uh,
00:11:59
no, it's a it's it's a momentary ble. It was expected. did was actually in our did I not send you the updated forecast?
00:12:03
[laughter] Like it's a whole thing. Um and I'll do it with the drawing because it might be it might be a little bit
00:12:08
easier. But like if you were to build a hundred story building, you'd have to dig way deeper. You'd have to have a
00:12:15
much you'd have you build with different materials going up. And so there's a hundred decisions that get made that if
00:12:21
you're doing a hundred stories versus one, [clears throat] you would you choose differently. And so where it gets
00:12:26
really tough is that people will they want to have it all. And so they say, I want to have the speed of building a
00:12:31
one-story building, but then they get to one story and say, well, actually, I want to get I want to have a 10-story
00:12:36
building, but the foundation wasn't right. And so this is where entrepreneurs will they'll do this.
00:12:41
They'll they'll skyrocket here and then they and then they plateau. >> And [clears throat] then sometimes,
00:12:46
unfortunately, the correct step is that you have to take two steps back, rebuild
00:12:49
the foundation, and then it goes up again. M. >> And so I think to your point, focus and
00:12:55
patience are the two enduring competitive advantages because they're so antihuman.
00:13:00
>> Yeah. So antihuman. So anti- Instagram. I've got no announcement to make this
00:13:05
month because I'm doing boring [ __ ] like hiring. >> Like Basos like the the decision I still
00:13:12
think about this like the decision that he made that he was going to say like I'm going to have a logistics company be
00:13:17
my competitive moat. He's a like he started as a bookstore online and to go from there to like no we're going to own
00:13:25
the trucks and the warehouses and be better at warehouse and delivery than anyone else.
00:13:31
>> That's what we're going to do with our online internet business. >> Like just but like who can unseat Amazon
00:13:36
right now? Really tough. What's interesting as well is that that particular moment there where the
00:13:41
entrepreneur gets this they they come to people like me and you in the street and
00:13:45
they say >> they are I can't get past your bottleneck. Yeah. >> What is it that they should have done?
00:13:50
So many entrepreneurs come up to me, they might hit, I don't know, 500k revenue, a million revenue, and they
00:13:53
come up to me and they go, I don't know what to do. How do I get to 10 million from here?
00:13:57
>> Yeah. >> And I think in part what you're saying is they they should have made a decision
00:14:00
earlier on to build a slightly different type of company from zero. I'll say what
00:14:05
the million-dollar business owner is missing when they're trying to get to 10 is what they would have done differently
00:14:09
is they would have stayed longer in the product market fit phase or trying to make sure that the customers who come in
00:14:15
keep wanting to spend money with them which they either do periodically. So like if you buy a soda that you like,
00:14:20
you keep buying it. It's not like you're on a subscription but you just buy it regularly. On the other hand, there's
00:14:25
subscription revenue which is truly recurring uh like your Netflix subscription, whatever. But they know
00:14:31
that when that customer comes in contact with the business, they're going to stay
00:14:34
and that money is going to keep going, which is what allows it to stack. And so if we think at the most basic level, if
00:14:39
every time you get a customer, they never left, then the business will do nothing but grow.
00:14:42
>> It [clears throat] will either stay the same or it will grow whenever you get a
00:14:44
new customer, it just keeps growing. And the difficulty of the the the $1 million
00:14:48
entrepreneur is that getting to a million dollars, you can do really quickly or 10. And I know that the the
00:14:52
world is like, I can't believe that. I promise you, you can do it if you just learn enough skills. Um, but that can
00:14:56
happen really quickly because it just doesn't take a lot of moving parts to make it happen. Getting to a hundred or
00:15:00
getting to a billion dollars in revenue, I haven't gotten to a billion yet, but I
00:15:03
I feel confident I know what we need to do. The million-dollar entrepreneur is trying to fit a billion dollars of new
00:15:08
sales in in one year. >> Mhm. [clears throat] >> And that's the problem is that at the at
00:15:11
the end of next year, because all the customers they signed up to make their million dollars are gone because they
00:15:17
aren't good enough, they have to go back to the market market and sell and get another million dollars of customers. So
00:15:21
they think, "Oh, if I if I want to get to $2 million a year, I have to go sell twice as many customers." Which is true,
00:15:26
but if we had to compare two companies, let's say we have company A and company B. All right, we got company A, company
00:15:31
B. They both are selling a hundred, you know, new widgets a year. Okay, let's say company B loses all of the
00:15:40
hundred, but they want to double because it's an entrepreneur. He's like, I got to grow. And so he sells 200 people year
00:15:45
two. Well, then let's say he's got $2 million in revenue, and he's got $1 million revenue here. And let's say year
00:15:50
three, uh, he sells 300 units, but he lost all 200 again because he has no stickiness. And so he makes $3 million.
00:15:56
Okay, cool. [snorts] Now, let's say this company A sells 100 year one, they make
00:16:01
a million dollars. They keep all 100 customers. Okay, but let's say that that company keeps the same number of people
00:16:08
they're selling new. So 100 new customers come in this year, but they keep their old hundred. So now they also
00:16:13
have 200 customers and do $2 million. And then year three, they keep their same 100 and then the 100 from year two.
00:16:19
So now they have 300 total customers because they got 100 new and they have three million. So both of these
00:16:24
businesses on paper, your entrepreneur friend comes to you and says, "Hey, I've got a $3 million
00:16:29
business and I've got a $3 million business. Which one do you invest in?" >> Mhm. [clears throat]
00:16:33
Now you and I do this every day. And we're like, "All day we [snorts] do this one, not this one." Because next year
00:16:39
he's got to go and sell 600 new customers. Now, where this gets, you can start seeing this in the financials
00:16:44
because I can tell you that the cost of getting 300 new customers costs significantly more than the cost of
00:16:49
getting a 100 new customers and having 200 customers that are existing and still paying you.
00:16:53
>> And so, you're going to see that in the bottom line getting compressed and this
00:16:56
is where, you know, growth at all costs becomes a problem. >> But for this entrepreneur, he spent the
00:17:02
time to figure out how to get all 100 customers to stay. Now if he encounters your distribution or my distribution and
00:17:08
then all of a sudden we say great now I know that I can bring this thing 10,000 new customers then this thing becomes a
00:17:14
billion dollar year business because we solve the most important part first which is that the revenue stays and so
00:17:20
when people build in a rush they don't build a good enough thing and so as a result you scale really quickly and this
00:17:24
is where knowing marketing and sales can be dangerous because the better you are
00:17:27
at marketing and sales the faster you can grow revenue but you get to a point where you you have a certain velocity of
00:17:32
sales I can only sell 100 people or 200 people or 500 a thousand people a month,
00:17:36
whatever it is. And at that point, you either have to always be seeking more distribution because you have a hole in
00:17:40
the back of your bus, but the moment the sales stop, the business craters. And I
00:17:45
would say that that is more common than the alternative, which is that you actually have a sticky business.
00:17:49
>> The other thing people talk to me about when they come up to me in the street,
00:17:51
when they hit that moment where they're doing about a million in revenue, is they say, you know, my customers love
00:17:55
me. They keep coming back, but I've ran out of time. Basically, >> yeah, this is an interesting one because
00:18:00
a lot of times if I have the same response where someone says, hey, I'm running out of time. The first question
00:18:04
I'll ask is, "What's your margin?" If they have really thin margins, they can't afford to get help. That's the
00:18:11
symptom, but not the root cause. The root cause is either that their offer is incorrect in that what they're offering,
00:18:18
the price and the terms of their delivery are too low compared to each other. You're offering too much for too
00:18:23
little, [clears throat] >> or you don't have a marketing or sales motion that allows that value to be
00:18:28
demonstrated to someone. So, they'd be willing to pay a premium. >> On pricing, then how do you think about
00:18:33
pricing? Is it a subjective thing or is it an objective thing? I do I go look at
00:18:36
the market and see what everyone else is charging and then decide that or is it what I feel like I deserve? [laughter]
00:18:42
>> I think what we feel we deserve matters the least in that in that >> I think it's all about what the customer
00:18:46
is willing to pay. And so one of the hardest parts for for newer entrepreneurs is they sell out of their
00:18:51
own wallet. >> What do you mean? >> And so it's like if I have somebody who's really good at fixing cars,
00:18:55
they're like, "Well, it's not that hard. You just, you know, do a little screws here." Like I would I wouldn't pay
00:18:59
anybody for that. Like I do it for free. It's like, "Yeah, but I don't want to do
00:19:02
it, and I would pay you a lot to do it cuz I don't want to fix my car." And so, because it's been easy for you, you
00:19:08
think it's easy for everyone. And because you think it's easy for everyone, you're not willing to charge a
00:19:11
lot for it. >> And so, they get into this vicious cycle of undercharging and having not enough
00:19:16
margin. And then as a result, having to do more of the work and then if they get
00:19:20
more work coming, they don't want to say no. And so, then they basically fill up
00:19:22
their entire plate. that they have no excess capacity but that they can't they don't have the time to train anyone they
00:19:26
don't have the time to interview they don't have the time or or the or the cash right to to afford the next person
00:19:31
and so usually when someone's like I'm overwhelmed if I say do you have a lot of margin then either yeah you're
00:19:38
running 70% margin dude like hire some help if they don't then it's two or three steps earlier where the offer is
00:19:44
wrong the sales motion's wrong which typically they're mispriced >> do you get it all the time where people
00:19:48
say to you um you know Alex I tried to hire someone and they [ __ ] up and so I can't I can't trust trust anybody to do
00:19:53
it as well as I can and the clients love me. >> I think it's ego. >> Yeah. >> I think we want to be special and I
00:20:00
think we like to be needed and I think that it is not the business's job to solve
00:20:06
your emotional needs. >> Mhm. >> The business's job to serve the customers. >> Mhm.
00:20:10
>> And so we are not as unique as we think. If you could go back in time, you could
00:20:14
teach yourself in a tenth of time because you know all the mistakes that you made and the right things that
00:20:17
actually ended up working. So it's like great. instead of taking 10 times as long you did to learn it the first time,
00:20:21
go back as though you were teaching it the right way to somebody else. >> And so you can collapse the time it
00:20:26
takes to teach someone how to do the job. And most times what founders are looking for is a unicorn, right? They're
00:20:32
like, "Okay, uh, I have two employees and I do everything. And so I need to hire someone who's just going to be like
00:20:39
me and just do everything else." It's like, it's not going to work that way. And so I use this little analogy that I
00:20:42
like, which is, so we have our our horn of the unicorn. This is going to be so bad. Here we go. So, we've got our
00:20:47
[laughter] All right. Here we go. We'll give it a little hoof. Maybe a little some tail.
00:20:53
Here we go. And here we go. And we need to have some some sparkle, right? Cuz it's a unicorn special. Okay. Let's go a
00:20:59
little donk there. But they're trying to replace themselves with a unicorn. But there are no unicorns. And we know this.
00:21:03
And so they go through interview and interview and then they never find anybody because they can't find a
00:21:06
unicorn. But if you're like, "How do I find an animal that's got a horn?" Well, you could go find a rhino. Okay, I've
00:21:12
got a rhino. They've got the horn. It's like, okay, and then I need a horse. Well, I can go find a horse and then I
00:21:18
got to find the sparkle. So, I'll get some fireflies for the sparkle and then I'll get a horse for the horse. And so,
00:21:23
just like that, instead of saying, "Oh, I someone has to live my exact life and have gone through the exa exact same
00:21:29
trial and tribulations to figure out all the unique things that I know." It's like, no,
00:21:33
>> they try to find in one person what they can more easily find in three. >> This is relationship advice as well,
00:21:37
isn't it? [laughter] >> Right. Demanding your your partner uh be all things to you,
00:21:42
>> your coach, your uh you know, your guru, your therapist, your biggest cheerleader. Yeah, it's exactly that.
00:21:48
It's it's just and I think in some ways there's an ego element that I think is very reinforcing which is that I'm so
00:21:53
special, no one can do what I can do. And I think that's a very attractive lie that we like to believe.
00:21:58
>> I guess there's also inherent in that um insecurity and fear that you see in these early entrepreneurs that if I hire
00:22:06
another person, I now have the responsibility of paying them. Right now it's me, it's safe. I can control this.
00:22:12
Um, but if I bring on other people, they've got mortgages and families. So now, now it's terrifying. So, a good way
00:22:17
to justify my fear to myself is by saying, "Look, I tried. I can't trust anybody. I couldn't find anybody good.
00:22:22
>> I guess it's just going to have to be me, myself, and I." >> And I think if that's what you want,
00:22:27
like, go for it. Yeah. I just like I I think I think there's I think there's going to be a lot more solreers, you
00:22:31
know, in the in the coming future. There already are. I think it's it's a goal question. What do you want?
00:22:36
>> What mistakes did you make when you started hiring? >> Oh, my bar wasn't high enough.
00:22:40
>> Okay. I think at the most basic level like what is the job like if you remove
00:22:44
everything else what survives and I think holding the standard survives because if you're the one responsible
00:22:50
then you have to be the one who determines what is good enough. >> It's [clears throat] my view that in
00:22:55
every given department the person who's highest up should have the highest standard and if somebody ever gets to a
00:23:01
point where they have a higher standard for ACU than I do they should run it not
00:23:04
me. >> There should be a button just down below here and if it says subscribed you're
00:23:09
already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please
00:23:14
could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm,
00:23:18
you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. Have you seen a
00:23:24
change in the types of questions that you're being asked? Because because the world has changed, people are more
00:23:28
interested in personal branding or business or whatever else. Are people asking you new questions?
00:23:33
>> No, actually, I don't think. Yeah. >> What are the questions that you get asked? I get asked a lot of like, "Hey,
00:23:38
I'm thinking about doing this this thing. What do you think?" I'm thinking about starting this kind of business.
00:23:42
I'm thinking about starting a podcast agency. What do you think? It doesn't matter what I think. [laughter]
00:23:48
I'm like, and so I'll just ask the next question, which is like, well, what have
00:23:51
you done so far? >> Why'd you ask that? >> Well, because the answer nine times out
00:23:55
of 10 is, well, I mean, I haven't I was just thinking about it. I'm like, okay, well then nothing's happened. what's
00:24:01
going on there with those people that come up to you and they say they're thinking about something but they
00:24:05
haven't done anything about it. >> I'm guessing that they want to talk to me about business stuff and so this is
00:24:09
the only business related thing that they can talk about and so that's probably why they talk about it or they
00:24:12
bring it up. Um or they want to feel like in some ways it's kind of like procrastive procrastination or that I'm
00:24:17
going to somehow give them one answer that's going to like finally get them over the hump of starting. But most
00:24:23
people start because one starting feels like this very amorphous thing when when
00:24:28
like I was about to say like has there ever been something that you don't know how
00:24:32
to do? Well, whenever I approach something that I don't know how to do, it always feels
00:24:37
amorphous. It's like this big thing and I don't know where to start. Like how do
00:24:41
like how do I grab onto a piece of it? And so having gone and attacked like these amorphous things like start a
00:24:47
business which actually means nothing. You have to break things down to much smaller steps of action. That's why for
00:24:53
me the most basic thing to start a business is like get an LLC, [clears throat] >> open a bank account, have the ability to
00:24:59
process money, and then ask a stranger if you can do something for them in exchange for money. As soon as you do
00:25:04
those four things, congratulations, you're a business owner. You've already beaten like 95% of people who and you've
00:25:10
also changed your title from entrepreneur to entrepreneur. And I think that is one of the most mo just
00:25:15
like um when when a customer buys from you versus just consuming your free stuff, their identity completely
00:25:20
changes. They're now a customer which means they're far more likely to purchase uh future things from you than
00:25:24
somebody who's not bought something. That's why you know ascensions and renewals are much easier than getting
00:25:27
somebody to buy the first time, right? And so I think to the same degree for us as entrepreneurs or people who aspire to
00:25:31
be an entrepreneur, it's like go make the first dollar and then as soon as you have that taste of like oh this isn't I
00:25:36
I actually grabbed the corner of this thing. I I I understand. And I just got to get them to give me money to do
00:25:41
something. >> Or I can build something and then have them buy it from me and then I have to
00:25:45
figure out how to build more of them, right? If it's a thing. But like that's it at the most basic level. And
00:25:49
everything else is just is is confusion. If you could go back to the starting blocks and whisper something in Alex's
00:25:55
ear when he was starting up advice that would have made the journey easier, more
00:26:00
profitable, whatever. What is what are the sort of layers of advice you would have given him at this as starting
00:26:04
blocks? [sighs and gasps] >> So I've actually thought about this a lot. If I went back in time and I saw an
00:26:10
older version of myself, if he appeared in this room right now, let's say 20 years from now, is looking at me,
00:26:16
my hope is that he would say nothing because it would mean that it worked. Now, if I if I was going back and let's
00:26:22
say that I I I hadn't taken the step and I hadn't been able to to make the jump,
00:26:26
what I say in that instance um is you have to decide whether you care more about your future than what other
00:26:32
people think about your future. Someone's version of you has to die. It's either your desired version of you
00:26:40
or someone else's desired version of you. And the thing is you're going to be with you a lot longer than they are. I
00:26:46
think everything in the very beginning of entrepreneurship comes down to one thing which is fear and justified. It's
00:26:51
it makes sense to be afraid. Like there's a lot of risk. There's a ton of unknown. There's so much stuff that you
00:26:55
don't know. But the only thing I can also say is that it also puts you in the exact same position as every other
00:27:00
person who started entrepreneurship. They didn't know. And the only way to know is to start. and to have faith that
00:27:08
you will not know the way up the mountain, but as you walk up the mountain, the fog starts to clear. And
00:27:14
the fog will always be there, but you'll always be able to see the couple steps in front of you. And so, your
00:27:18
responsibility is to only take the steps that you can see in front of you. That is it. And then once you take those
00:27:22
steps, the next steps will become clear. And I think that's where there's an obsession with knowing the entirety. And
00:27:28
and it's because we want certainty. We want to know that if we do all of these things, it's going to work. And you
00:27:33
don't. You want certainty from a world that will give you none. And if you were uncomfortable with that,
00:27:38
entrepreneurship might not be for real. >> Yeah. >> But I I even say that and I almost I
00:27:42
almost I almost regret saying that because I was so riskaverse when I started like people see the content now
00:27:48
or they see you now and you're so confident and and great on podcast and like but I'm sure the first podcast you
00:27:53
did, you like look at it and you just absolutely cringe, right? I had a video that I put out that was like the first
00:27:58
content that I made that I was like reacting to my own first content and it's horrendous. It's horrible. But the
00:28:03
thing is is that you have to be willing to be cringe. >> You must embrace cringes. You will not
00:28:08
be cool. It will not look good. You will suck and everyone will know you suck and
00:28:12
you will know you suck. >> But again, it's do I care more about their version of me or my version of me?
00:28:18
And am I willing to be a work in progress or am I unwilling to do it because I want to keep my current
00:28:23
station in life? But the thing is is that you're at a local maximum and there's a desire in you probably if I'm
00:28:29
talking to my younger self to be at a higher maximum than I am right now. feel like I'm capable of doing more, but I'm
00:28:35
so afraid of risking this tiny little bit that I've built for myself. But the the the reality is that the only
00:28:41
guarantee that you have of all the paths in front of you is that you stay on the
00:28:45
current path, you will not get what you want. >> Mhm. >> So there is a chance that you get what
00:28:49
you want if you move, but there is zero chance if you stay. And I think those were some of the thought processes that
00:28:55
actually got me to take action was knowing that I for sure guaranteed 100% would be dissatisfied with my life if I
00:29:00
had not taken the shot. and then playing out plan B with excruciating detail. And
00:29:05
I think that's also one of the big ones for fear is that like fear only exists in the vague, never in the specific.
00:29:10
Also, so does confusion, right? So the fear is I'm going to do this thing and I'm going to fail. Fail's not specific.
00:29:19
And I'm and then everyone's going to hate me and then eventually I'm going to get ostracized and die. Like we
00:29:24
catastrophize everything because we're evolutionary beings, right? We're we're we're mammals. But if you really think
00:29:28
what does failure like what does failure even mean? I I I ask someone to buy and
00:29:33
they say no. Is that failure? What if I ask another person? What if I ask a 100 people? Okay. Well, what if I ask 100
00:29:38
people, all 100 people say no? Am I allowed to change what I'm what I'm offering? Yes. Okay. So, you get another
00:29:44
100 people and maybe one of them says yes. Okay. But even in that period of time where you had the hundred people
00:29:48
who all said no to you and let's say you quit your job and so you have no income.
00:29:52
Okay. What are what are the options available to you? Can you talk can you go and sleep on a friend's couch? Can
00:29:57
you go back home with your tail between your legs? Well, it's only till between your legs if you stop trying. If you go
00:30:02
home and say, "Mom and dad, I want to save up some capital so that I can I can extend my runway so that I can go after
00:30:07
this big goal. Mom and dad might be cool. It might be friends. It might be or maybe 10 friends going together." And
00:30:11
and because I split a bedroom, >> so I had a house with six people in it. Um and I split one of the bedrooms with
00:30:18
another guy. I paid 400 bucks a month and I had a mattress on the floor and I was never there. But it was just like I
00:30:22
tried to keep my living expenses as low as possible. And I think one of the big ones especially is that um people are
00:30:27
unwilling to sacrifice their short-term lifestyle and appearances in order to achieve their long-term goal. And so
00:30:33
they're handcuffed to their lifestyle. >> And [clears throat] so you'd be astonished at how little you can
00:30:37
actually live on if you try to live on little. >> This goes to back to the long-term
00:30:40
thinking argument as well, which is like if you think about your status in 10 years versus today.
00:30:45
>> Yes. And I'm I'm willing to take this dip. One of the things you said was really
00:30:50
interesting and I it dawned on me that most people might not realize this about people like you, which is that you said
00:30:55
there's uncertainty all the way up. Now, I imagine imagine an 18-year-old entrepreneur listening to Alex Mosi.
00:31:00
They're going to be thinking, "Oh, he's got everything figured out all the way up." And he's no longer living with
00:31:04
uncertainty, fear, confusion, ambiguity. He's no longer having to think hard about how to solve a problem because
00:31:08
he's got all the answers. But actually, as you described it, in my head, I I imagined all of these this sequence of
00:31:15
almost neverending doors that all just have a cryptic message on on them. And you imagine you go through one door and
00:31:22
there's 10 more and they all [laughter] have you go through one, okay, this was the right one. And then there's 10 new
00:31:27
ones that all have a vague language on them. And you've got to pick which one to go through next. You go through,
00:31:32
okay, you bounced off that one. [ __ ] you took an L. Lost some money. You go through another one. Okay, this was the
00:31:36
right one. And then there's 20. [laughter] actually your optionality is increasing with the more success you
00:31:41
have. So there's more doors and more decisions to make, more uncertainty, which most people don't realize. But
00:31:45
actually, as you were saying, I was thinking, "Fuck, this is exactly what I'm going through now." Like I I was up
00:31:48
till the early hours of the morning with one of my colleagues yesterday night and
00:31:52
we're just figuring out which door to walk through. So this is really interesting because the earlier you are
00:31:58
in your journey, the more specific the advice is because if you do not have a business, the first step is the same for
00:32:04
everyone which is you must start an entity and then you have to have a bank account so that you can exchange money
00:32:09
and you have to have a a way or manner of collecting that cash. Now of course you could have cash business but I would
00:32:14
say most people use credit cards now. So you have a processor, a bank account and
00:32:17
an entity. >> It doesn't matter what business you start that is the first step. Now, as
00:32:21
the business grows, you have more resources. The the nature of the business is different. And so, the
00:32:26
number of doors that are ahead of you are actually multiplied by a huge factor. >> And so, right now, it's actually never
00:32:31
easier to know what to do than when you start. And so, it has nothing to do with
00:32:35
you not knowing. Of course, you know, I just we just said it. >> It's everything to figure out why you're
00:32:40
not doing it. and more specifically whose voice you're listening to that is not yours that you are afraid of
00:32:48
disappointing or afraid of their judgment. And if you can identify that voice cuz and you actually put a name on
00:32:54
it, it's not like, oh, what are people going to think? It's not people. It's probably like two people. And if you
00:32:58
name, you're like, oh, it's just James and Betty. >> Yeah. >> So, this is really real. So, one, when I
00:33:03
was about to sell Gym Lodge, I really I it was actually a very hard decision for
00:33:06
me. Super hard. Um, and when I exited, one of the reasons I almost didn't exit was because there was somebody that I
00:33:13
knew in my circle, not even like a super close friend, that I realized when I got
00:33:17
really clear on whose voice I cared about, I thought that they didn't think that $46 million was enough money, that
00:33:24
they wouldn't think it was legit. [laughter] I'm dead serious. >> Funny to hear. [laughter]
00:33:30
>> He's not going to think he's not going to think I'm legit. It was only when I
00:33:33
was like, am I going to not do this and let him control me? Cuz that's what it is. They control you.
00:33:39
>> And I think when you say it in those terms, it feels like much heavier, like I'm letting my mom or my uncle or my
00:33:44
brother or the the coworker John control me >> because I that's how much I care about
00:33:49
this guy's approval. I care I have to care about my approval more. >> I want to say say this in more detail
00:33:54
because I think it's it's important. The person that you see in front of you is not the person who who took the leap to
00:34:00
start the business. I belabored that decision for 6 months. I had almost like a pre-anned answer and people were like,
00:34:08
"Oh, so what do you do with your career?" Oh, you know, I'm consultant like to do a business school and then
00:34:10
someday start my own business. It was like I I could say it in my sleep, but the someday start my own business. When
00:34:15
I tried to think a little bit more first principles, I was like, "Okay, well, in
00:34:19
what way is this business school going to help me start a business?" And when I looked at the starting salaries of
00:34:23
business school, it was like $120,000 a year after you went to a good business school. And I thought to myself, well,
00:34:28
it cost me $60,000 a year and I can't make money during that period. So I'm going to lose$120 for sure and at the
00:34:33
time I was making $50 $60,000 a year. And so I was like, so it's $240,000 is my call it my opportunity cost in two
00:34:40
years. Do I think that I can take the money that I had saved up and in two years get to $10,000 a month? I was
00:34:46
like, I think I can do it. And so that was part of the reason that I ended up not going to business school and it was
00:34:51
because of a question on the business school test was how will a Booth MBA help a short and long-term goals? And I
00:34:56
just sat there for three days trying to answer it and I realized I was like I don't know if it will help my long term.
00:34:59
>> Interesting. >> So I mean it's good that they have those questions because they actually forced
00:35:02
me to answer it. Now back to the the six months I read I I was probably reading no joke a book every two days cuz I the
00:35:11
job that I had had high seasons and low seasons. And during low seasons I basically just read books and they were
00:35:15
almost all self-help books. And I got to this point after reading however many of
00:35:19
them that I looked back at my life and realized it was exactly the same. And I thought, "Oh, if I don't do anything, my
00:35:25
life's not going to change." And so I had this idea that if I just keep reading these books, somehow my life was
00:35:31
just going to change. And that was like one of the realizations that I had. I had a friend who was also in a white
00:35:37
collar, you know, job like I was. And every night we'd probably get on the phone for 2 to three hours and talk
00:35:42
about how we were going to start a business. And I had this I had this this IKEA carpet that I bought that was a a
00:35:46
cowhide carpet. And the spot where I'd walk back and forth was like worn out on the cowh high because of how much I
00:35:52
would just pace in my small uh flat just going back and forth just talking about
00:35:57
the ideas that I had to start a business. Every time I wanted to start it, I would tell my dad I want to start
00:36:02
the business and he he would be like, "Let's let's not be unreasonable here." He's like, "You've got a good job." He's
00:36:07
like, "You're following the plan. You did Vanderbilt in three years. You had good grades. You got you were going to
00:36:11
do two years here. Then you go to one of the top IV, you know, NBA schools. Like
00:36:15
it's you're good. Don't like this is part of it. This is part of it. Right? >> I acted with such cowardice that I had
00:36:22
to I had to drive halfway across the country before I could call my dad to tell him that I that I had quit my job
00:36:29
and that I was going to start a business because I knew that if I had done it while he was there, he would talk me out
00:36:35
of it because he had already talked me out of it a bunch of times. >> Why was he doing that? I I learned a
00:36:39
little bit about his background over the last couple of days. I've got some photos. I mean,
00:36:43
>> ah that's right. Dear G. >> And I think there's context in his own story which
00:36:48
>> completes the picture. >> So whatever people see of my success I think in a lot of ways what my dad
00:36:54
accomplished the more I think about it is bigger. My dad fled during the Iranian uh revolution right and then he
00:37:01
went to go to uh France to become a doctor but he didn't speak French. And so he had to go try to go into medical
00:37:10
school and take Orgo in a language that he didn't understand. And so he failed two years in a row. His brother was
00:37:15
like, "Go to Belgium, start fresh, go to a new place." And so he ended up uh getting all the way through medical
00:37:20
school. And then he met my mother in medical school and then they came back to the US. Now his medical degree didn't
00:37:26
transfer to the US. And so he had to get a US fellowship in order a residency or
00:37:30
whatever. But no one would take a Middle Eastern guy who had a super thick accent
00:37:34
who was fresh out of medical school and there was all these US-based people here. And so for two years he ran X-ray
00:37:38
slides. He finally gets a residency and then he decides when he comes back to Baltimore, which is where my where where
00:37:43
I'm from, that he's going to instead of join the practice that my mother had with her father. He was going to go out
00:37:50
on his own, which is pretty ballsy, right? He didn't have foreigner, didn't have anything. And so he asked to find
00:37:56
out how much a construction cost for building your own surgery center. And it was like $250,000 then, so it was a lot
00:38:01
of money. He didn't have that. And so he looked at all the legal requirements for
00:38:05
what what it entails to be a serger center. And then he went to Home Depot and built a surgery center that met all
00:38:11
the specs and got it inspected so that he could have his own surgery center in his practice. Then right as his practice
00:38:16
was starting to work, my parents got divorced. They changed the the locks on the door cuz he had like a separate
00:38:21
thing. His patients show up and they didn't know where to go. It was an ugly divorce. And so then he's he's starting
00:38:28
his own and this is when he was talking to me then. So fast forward now. He's like, "I've been in practice for, you
00:38:33
know, 20, 30 years, whatever." He's like, "Those years, I didn't even think about him." I think I was like, "I feel
00:38:39
like I'm not moving fast enough. I feel like I need to need to do these things."
00:38:42
And he's like, "Dude, a year, two years now." He's like, "It's nothing." He's like, "When your mind, you're not even
00:38:47
going to think you're not even remember it." >> The the honest truth of the matter is
00:38:51
that I really desperately wanted to prove that I could do it on my own. >> Who did you want to prove that to?
00:38:58
>> I don't know. Everyone. Me, him, the world. I remember being terrified about the idea of winning the lottery. Sounds
00:39:06
really weird. [laughter] When I was in college, I bought a Super Bowl ticket because it was like a billion dollars or
00:39:10
something. I was like, "Let's do it for fun, whatever." And I and I remember having this this moment right before the
00:39:14
the number was going to get called of sheer terror of what if I win because I was like, I will never be able to prove
00:39:20
that I I have the medal, that I can do it. And so, and of course people would say that now if someone wants to give me
00:39:26
a billion dollars, I'm happy to use it. Because to be fair though, because I already have this I already have the
00:39:30
status and the track record that I that I built this. >> And this also the reason that like when
00:39:34
I started my my business like I didn't take a loan like I used my own money that I had saved because I I wanted to
00:39:41
be mine and I knew I would know. And I think yeah, my dad had absolutely perfect intentions. He gave me what I
00:39:46
believe to be for vast majority of people probably pretty good advice. Mhm. >> It just wasn't the advice that I needed
00:39:53
for the goals that I had. >> There's an interesting thing because people like me and you make business
00:39:57
content and we talk about entrepreneurship a lot. >> Um I I often wonder if we're leading
00:40:01
some people astray in the context of some people actually should take that advice. Some people shouldn't become
00:40:06
entrepreneurs. Um and how does one know if entrepreneurship in its broad definition is for them or not or like
00:40:12
working in a company having you know having a great job is for them? It's funny. We were I was doing this show
00:40:18
once and I said to the producer who was just off camera. I said, "Um, do you think I'm happy?" So, this is this is
00:40:25
someone who gets to see who's has seen me for six or seven years behind the scenes every day since we're on my
00:40:29
kitchen table. Has been there with me every corner of the world, the the best and the worst of times. I went, "Do you
00:40:34
think I'm happy?" He went, "Yes." He said it quickly. And then he and then I said, "Would you want my life?" And he
00:40:40
he couldn't have said no more violently. So much so that it was almost defensive.
00:40:44
[laughter] He was like, "You're having" And then I do you want would you like my
00:40:46
life? He goes, "No." And he was like, and and he was like laughing. He would not want my life, but at the same time
00:40:53
thinks and believes having seen me behind the scenes for 7 years that I'm happy. And in there, I think you have
00:40:58
something which is the the sort of subjectivity of of of journey like is this your journey? How does one know
00:41:05
listening to this now if they should be an entrepreneur or not? >> So, I'll give a couple frames because
00:41:09
decision-m is what probably both do with a lot of our time. So, one is what's the
00:41:13
goal? what do I want to have happen? >> Everyone says the same things here. They
00:41:16
say, you know, I want freedom to make my decisions. I want, you know, financial freedom.
00:41:19
>> Then we have to be specific. And so, just like fear only exists in the specific, goals have to exist in the
00:41:24
specific in order for them to be real and for you to make accurate decisions. >> Mhm.
00:41:29
>> And this is why I'm so obsessive about language and like observables and things
00:41:32
like that. So, what is one is what do I what do I actually want to have happen? And then number two, what does that
00:41:37
change about my actual daily life? on this first point. Funnily enough, I said to you freedom
00:41:43
>> and then I immediately realized that the least free person in the [laughter] >> dude this gets okay this is great. So I
00:41:50
think about this it's the freedom to choose >> but I think people stop at freedom.
00:41:55
There's this almost fetishization of independence and keeping your options open and m and options maxing right for
00:42:02
your life. But all of the best parts of life come on the other side of exercising an option and and walking
00:42:09
through a door. But in so doing, leaving the other doors that you could have walked through behind. And so the secret
00:42:15
to getting a life you want is making a commitment. But you will not get all lives you want.
00:42:21
And so at some point you have to sit at the precipice and you have to make a trade. And you have to say, I want this
00:42:26
more than something else. That means I know I'm not going to get this and I choose to say that I want this more.
00:42:33
And I think this is where people just sit at the crossroads. And that is what takes the majority of time. Not just
00:42:38
getting into business, but also when you're in business, people will sit at the crossroads of like, what type of
00:42:42
company do I want to build? What type of product? And what type what what type of
00:42:46
business do I want? And we sit there and I when I see people get stuck, it's almost always unmade decisions because
00:42:52
unmade decisions can last forever. >> Whereas if you're in if you're in a trial loop of feedback, feedback,
00:42:57
feedback, like you'll figure it out, like you'll move. But if you're in an unmade decision, it could sit there
00:43:02
forever. And that's that's like the freedom to choose. We have to choose. Are you seeing this sort of new
00:43:10
generation that have grown up with all the tools to start their own business that we're in this personal brand era
00:43:16
where everybody can make content and build a brand and then do like panel talks for a living or sell like ads on
00:43:21
LinkedIn? Um, >> what what is going on here? this sort of younger generation under 30 now
00:43:29
keeping their options open wanting freedom. If you compare that to say maybe my dad who you know one job did
00:43:36
that career for 20 30 years of his love 40 years of his life it's a very different world we're living in. There
00:43:41
are more people starting businesses than ever before. I know since co there's there's at least in the US the stats
00:43:47
that I looked at recently it's like there's been more new businesses per quarter. It's been growing really
00:43:51
aggressively at least in the US and so more people are starting businesses. And so I think that lowering the cost of
00:43:57
entry has gotten more people across the line. I think having more access to information has gotten more people
00:44:01
across the line. But why aren't why isn't everyone going across the line? I think there's a couple things. One is to
00:44:08
your point earlier, I don't think it is for everyone. And so I think the issue there is one of motivation. They have
00:44:14
too many carrots, so good things keeping them in their current position and not enough sticks or bad things getting them
00:44:22
out of their current position. And I think um I think it's a it's a Tony quote, Tony Robbins quote, which is uh
00:44:28
the pain of staying the same has to be greater than the pain of change. >> And I [clears throat] think that
00:44:33
when that happens and it could be the pleasure of change could be has to be greater than the pleasure of staying the
00:44:38
same. E equal opposite, but I think most people are in that slice, there's pain and so you will change the moment it is
00:44:46
more painful to stay the same. I've spent the last decade building and investing in companies and so often the
00:44:51
conversation around marketing budgets follows the exact same pattern. The budget gets approved but then the
00:44:56
results don't come back and most of the time the creative pitch and the offer is
00:45:00
fine. The problem lies with the audience. Ads reach people who will never buy or refer nor do they have the
00:45:07
power to sign off anything at all. And this is why so much budget gets wasted. LinkedIn Ads, who are sponsor of this
00:45:13
podcast, lets you reach them specifically by job title, seniority, company size, industry, the skills that
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your next one just by going to linkedin.com/diary. Keep this to yourself. Terms and
00:45:46
conditions apply. For the last couple years, I've been working on something that I realized every podcaster
00:45:51
listening to this, but actually probably every creator listening to this might just need. Podcasting is difficult for
00:45:56
many reasons. And one of them is that these hosting platforms don't give you much information. And also because
00:46:01
they're so fragmented, you kind of have to go through every single platform, uploading it to YouTube, and then taking
00:46:06
the same big old video file and uploading it to Spotify's platform. It takes huge amounts of time. And that
00:46:11
friction means most of us don't do it. That is the problem we set out to solve. And so we built something called
00:46:16
Flightcast, which you can find at flightcast.com. And today, Flightcast is also one of our show sponsors. And some
00:46:22
of the world's biggest podcasters are now using our platform to run their shows because it gives you an edge. It
00:46:28
saves you time. It gives you analytics most people won't typically get. It allows you to use AI to be more informed
00:46:34
on your show and it has growth tools that other hosting platforms don't have. So podcasters that are using Flightcast
00:46:40
have this unfair advantage. So go to flightcast.com/doac. Now do you think life rewards you
00:46:48
somewhat proportional to the hardness of the problem that you solve? >> So I think um a hard problem doesn't
00:46:56
necessarily guarantee that it is a valuable problem. Mhm. [clears throat] >> Like if you run a marathon very hard, it
00:47:00
doesn't necessarily make you more money. So like there's lots of hard things that
00:47:03
are out there that will not turn into monetization. >> The second thing is I think it depends
00:47:08
on the size of your goals. >> And so if you want to be a millionaire, you do not need to solve a hard problem.
00:47:14
You just need to do a little bit better than other businesses that are wildly underserving their customers, which I
00:47:19
promise you there are plenty. You can just have a pool cleaning business that just cleans better than the other guy
00:47:24
and like shows up on time and all you got to do is knock on doors and ask if they want to switch because their
00:47:29
current company probably doesn't pay attention to them. >> One of the things that, you know, a lot
00:47:33
of founders, entrepreneurs are thinking about at the moment is producing content.
00:47:36
>> We're living in in in an interesting time where a kid in Mumbai or a kid in Manhattan can both produce content using
00:47:42
LLM, uh, AI. They can produce videos. Theoretically, if you imagine any rate of improvement, they're going to be able
00:47:47
to make videos, photos, churn out your quotes. They could use your quotes, change them a little bit, and have an
00:47:52
agent post them for them. Where is the moat in content? Where you think about, if you think about supply demand
00:47:58
dynamics, there's fixed demand. The Financial Times did a report saying that time spent on social media is starting
00:48:04
to dip a little bit since 2022. For younger generations, for older generations, it's still sort of like
00:48:09
going up or flat, but for Gen Z's, it's like starting to come down a little bit.
00:48:13
So stagnant demand, tsunami slop coming in of AI content. >> Yeah. >> Huge supply shock. Every unit of content
00:48:21
itself is going to become less valuable. Therefore, um and the algorithms are getting more violent or I should say are
00:48:27
becoming more um someone with 10 million followers can get 2,000 likes. Back in my day, 15 years ago, when I started on
00:48:33
social media, if you had a million followers, you got a million a million likes or a million views, should I say.
00:48:37
What's the game of content in such a world? Everyone's everyone's making content now.
00:48:41
>> To your point, what's the mode? Um, reality is the moat. >> Reality is the moat.
00:48:46
>> I'd say the number one biggest business influencer I think on the planet is Elon
00:48:51
Musk and he happens to own the biggest business on the planet be the richest man. Uh, Jeff Bezos, huge business
00:48:59
influencer because he has Amazon. Warren Buffett probably the number one investing influencer. Like people fly
00:49:06
around the world and when he when he talks, everyone listens. And so even if a teacher in De Moines
00:49:12
Iowa word for word quotes Warren Buffett and let's do one better let's say makes
00:49:16
even better advice than Warren Buffett does is still not going to get the same views because they just forgot to build
00:49:21
Berkshire Hathaway and have a hundred years of track record. And so what I'm saying there is that when reality is the
00:49:30
mode it means that your brand is the mode. It means your reputation is the mode which can only happen in reality.
00:49:34
Now, that said, I do think it's going to affect different types of content differently. If you're in the world of
00:49:39
making fictional whatever stuff, then yeah, I think it's going to hit I think AI is going to hit you much harder. But
00:49:44
even then, there's still going to be the the standard holder. Somebody has to determine that this slop is too sloppy
00:49:50
[laughter] and that you still have to work really hard to make the AI make exactly what you want and have it at the
00:49:57
caliber that you want it to be at. >> Have you made any changes to your content because of everything that's
00:50:01
going on with algorithms and AI? Yeah, I'm focused on only doing things that only I can do. [clears throat]
00:50:08
>> Most people can't get hundreds of business owners to fly out in person every month that are all million-dollar
00:50:14
plus business owners to seek advice on real business problems at 3 million, 5 million, 10 million a year, 500k a year.
00:50:24
Most people don't have that. And so I can demonstrate expertise in a live and interactive fashion, in a way that other
00:50:29
people can't do. I think that live is something that I mean AI maybe in the future we'll have some AI avatars that
00:50:36
can go live but at least in the short to medium term I think live is good. I think IRL as in like it's actually real
00:50:44
people talking which is we talked about the scaler fail show that we just launched. It's real entrepreneurs and
00:50:49
there's stakes [laughter] involved. I think that is something that is not going to be replaced. But if we think
00:50:55
about content on this continuum all right let's make this continuum risk. When I say risk it's the risk that a
00:51:03
consumer has in consuming the content and executing on it. And so if we differentiate entertainment and
00:51:09
education is entertainment the point of the content is to be consumed. It's the only objective of entertainment. The
00:51:14
point of education is to change behavior. >> Right? So that's our that's our split.
00:51:18
Now entertainers will get hit harder than educators will. The entertainers that have stakes
00:51:25
involved will be able to maintain that mode by still focusing on IRL real stakes real stories. Now in the
00:51:31
education world of risk, let's put something that's really low stakes. There we go. So, we've got beauty on
00:51:38
this side. If I have an AI influencer >> who does a makeup tutorial, I don't think the risk is super high that if,
00:51:45
you know, if the tutorial is good that a girl's like going to not use the tip that they made in the thing. I think
00:51:51
that's pretty likely. If you go maybe a little bit riskier, let's say I have some personal finance
00:51:57
stuff. Well, what's the cred? So, the credibility in beauty is beauty. the credibility in personal finance is
00:52:05
do you have personal finances? Right? So, who's the number one uh influencer in personal finance? My opinion, I think
00:52:10
it's Dave Ramsey. He also happens to be I don't think he he calls himself this, but I think he's a billionaire. And he's
00:52:15
got a massive I think he's public $300 million a year of revenue that he's done. And I think there's some other
00:52:21
newer newer age people. Uh I think Vivian 2 is is she's a personal finance person. I think um Erica Coberg touches
00:52:28
in this. She's the legal legal gal. Um, anyways, all this to say, all of them have more credibility. Like, if you just
00:52:36
start giving out tips on how to save money, there's no credibility. Reality, there's no reality. You have nothing to
00:52:42
back it up. >> Mhm. >> Now, we keep moving further. Let's say business where if you make a wrong call,
00:52:47
you could lose your business. Here, you lose some money. Here, you lose a bad day of makeup. So, the risk goes up. the
00:52:54
riskier or the higher the consequences of being wrong, the more people are going to, I think, double down on
00:53:01
credibility of source. >> What's interesting is I also heard as you were describing flying these 100
00:53:07
business owners out to Vegas is I heard scarce, hard and scarce. And I still thought a lot about these two words as
00:53:15
sort of the pillars of my own content strategy, which is >> with an LLM, yeah, a kid in Mumbai could
00:53:20
churn out a video. Um, but the reason why we have, you know, somewhat of a moat here still is because it is hard to
00:53:28
shoot on nine cameras. It is hard to bring Alex Hermosi here. It is hard to get Alex Hozi to say yes to doing this.
00:53:36
[laughter] It is hard to get Michelle Obama or JD Vance to say yes to doing this. So, there's it's hard from a
00:53:40
production perspective, but also from like to accomplish this is hard. And then what you described, I heard a lot
00:53:46
of the like I heard hard and scarce. who can bring a hundred entrepreneurs to Vegas who are all successful in their
00:53:51
own right and and have them ask you questions. So that's great content for us to watch. It's like really impossible
00:53:57
to to >> very hard. If I had only had a $46 million exit, I don't know if I would
00:54:01
attract the number of entrepreneurs that that we do now. But now that we do 250 plus schools, a billion dollar plus
00:54:08
company, it's like I have credibility that the the the YouTube the content right is not like I we we I still do
00:54:17
business. >> You know what I mean? We have chains of brick and mortar that that we're
00:54:20
involved in. I just don't talk about it because it doesn't it's not relevant for
00:54:22
most people. >> Let's look at the opposite then as well just to show people what the opposite of
00:54:26
hard and scarce or of this approach is. What types of content should we all kind
00:54:30
of stay away from now? So I think commoditize tips and tricks um when you have no again like proof is in the
00:54:38
pudding reality is the moat. It's basically the opposite of that. So if you are posing if you are pretending if
00:54:43
you have no proof um that you are good at this thing and again this is on the education side then there's a big I call
00:54:49
the big uh wispy. Why should I listen to you? Right? Why should I listen to you?
00:54:54
And if you can't answer that question for say a prospect, you know, prospective customer within the first
00:54:59
like couple seconds, >> they'll just listen to somebody else because the reason that credibility
00:55:03
matters so much is that it's actually lower effort to consume information from somebody who's an authority. And so if
00:55:09
I'm if I'm listening to somebody who doesn't have proof and I'm listening to investing advice, I have to really think
00:55:13
like, is this true? Does this make sense? If I'm listening to Warren Buffett, I don't have to think that. I'm
00:55:17
like, I'm sure he's right. Now when someone's like, how do I get into this? You do what no one else can do. Well, if
00:55:22
you are getting in, then document like document the proof of effort. So, you can do pro you can have proof of outcome
00:55:29
just like what we do, right? What you do. >> But then there's when you're starting,
00:55:33
there's proof of effort. Jimmy's first viral video is him counting to like a million. It's proof of effort. When you
00:55:39
have nothing else, you have time. You have work. If you want to make if you want to say, "Hey, I want to I want to
00:55:43
get into into sales stuff." It's like record your entire day of you selling. And then when you overcome something
00:55:49
that's really good, that's real life with real stakes, clip the moment, right? And show yourself. It's like, I
00:55:55
took 22 calls today. Let me tell you the best moment. I did a I did a 12-h hour day. In 3 minutes, I'll give you the
00:56:01
best moments. It's like people want to deal. >> And so I think about that as a compression of time. And the reason that
00:56:06
people listen to the people who are further ahead who've done all these things is because we can compress time.
00:56:11
Mhm. >> You say, "Hey, you could try and figure this out on your own, but if I can
00:56:14
compress 14 years of business advice into 37 minutes, that's a good deal." Do >> you know what it reminded me of? Seven
00:56:21
or eight years ago when I used to have, you know, big clients, Uber, Coca-Cola, whatever around the world. Um, we used
00:56:26
to do a lot of like social competition, social media competitions, and I used to
00:56:29
have this mental framework for the perfect competition. And I I I remember the day that I when I first heard of you
00:56:34
and you were coming on my show, and I was looking through some of your writings, and you almost had an
00:56:38
identical framework. >> Yeah. So the the core so each of the books has one core concept and then it
00:56:44
breaks down how to use it etc. But the value equation comes down to what's the outcome
00:56:51
and some outcomes are worth more than others. If I can help you cut your hair versus I can get you to be in perfect
00:56:55
shape. Perfect shape is worth more. If I can get you be a billionaire versus perfect shape, billionaire is worth
00:57:00
more. Right. So we have outcome and then we have perceived likelihood of achievement.
00:57:06
>> Perceived likelihood of achievement. Okay. So this is the Okay. Interesting. Yeah,
00:57:09
>> it's the inverse of risk. >> Yeah. >> How likely do I think it is? And then we have on the downside of
00:57:15
this, we have um time delay. [clears throat] How long is it going to take me to get
00:57:21
the thing? And then we have effort. >> Is this sacrifice? >> Is this effort and sacrifice?
00:57:29
>> No, different. >> Yeah. So effort is all the things that you have to begin to do as a result of a
00:57:35
decision that you don't want to do. sacrifice all the good things that you have to stop doing as a result of a
00:57:40
decision. So, if I get into fitness, I have to stop eating the stuff I like and I have to start eating stuff I don't
00:57:46
like. I have to start waking up earlier, I can't sleep in as much. Uh, I have to
00:57:49
be sore where I wasn't before. >> Um, and so that's my effort and sacrifice piece. The time delay is,
00:57:55
okay, if I can get in shape in 3 minutes versus getting in shape in 3 months or 3
00:57:58
years, >> okay, >> the outcome is am I getting in shape or am I being a billionaire? And then how
00:58:03
likely is this to happen? Mhm. >> Because on some level, like if I buy a PDF of a fitness program for $19 or I
00:58:08
pay $3,000 for a personal trainer to train me in person three times a week, my perceived likelihood of achievement
00:58:14
of buying the PDF versus personal trainer is much higher. >> Mhm. >> Now, the effort and sacrifice is
00:58:19
actually going to be relatively fixed. But this is the part that goes up. Now, the time delay if done right should also
00:58:24
be fixed there. But this is what explains the difference in value on a product level. But the value equation
00:58:29
works for everything. Just like just like consuming content. Yeah. >> What's my outcome? I think I'm going to
00:58:33
learn some [ __ ] about investing. How likely is it that I think he can provide value or if I consume this? Pretty high.
00:58:38
What's my time commitment of consuming this? If I'm going to watch a 4-hour video, fewer people do it than a
00:58:42
three-minute video, >> right? And then um you don't really actually have to do any work when you're
00:58:46
just purely consuming content. But if I wanted to take action as a result, then that's that's another part of it.
00:58:51
>> But it's still going to cost me 20 minutes, which is a sacrifice. I could be watching Netflix.
00:58:54
>> That's true. I think if we're using consumption of media as the thing, the effort and the time delay basically, are
00:59:00
we talking time delay to outcome? I'm going to be rich. Um or am I? Yeah, the time is always going to be a component.
00:59:06
What's interesting is that having looked at a zillion different offers over my life and thinking about value. Um the
00:59:12
one that I think is most slept on is this one. >> How quickly they can accomplish X
00:59:18
outcome. >> If you want to get into a business and just completely disrupt it, do look at
00:59:21
what everyone else is doing and do it half the time. You can do that in just about any business because there will
00:59:25
always be someone who's willing to pay a premium for that. >> Goes back to what um Jeff Bezos said
00:59:29
about betting on things that won't change. >> Yeah. that that like that his whole
00:59:33
mantra around that has been one of my like I would say one of my true pillars of like how do I plan for the future.
00:59:38
>> Give people context on that for those that haven't never heard Jeff talk about
00:59:40
that and what that means. >> So he I think I saw it as an interview that he did and they said so given X Y
00:59:46
and Z what do you think about the future? And he said you know I don't really think that much about what's
00:59:50
going to change. He said I spent a lot more time trying to think what's not going to change and then we bet really
00:59:55
heavily on those things. We believe that customers will prefer cheaper prices 10
00:59:59
years from now just as much as they do now. We believe that customers will prefer more selection to less selection
01:00:05
10 years from now as much as they do now. We believe that if customers can get something in two hours, they will
01:00:09
value that more than if it takes them two days. We believe in that. We can bet in that. And so he just thinks about
01:00:14
these elements. And if we're thinking about the like the value equation, how easy did they make buying? It's one
01:00:20
click. How fast does it come? It's almost immediate. You have a history of buying from them. So, and this is also
01:00:25
where the reviews come in. How likely is it? Well, if it's a fivestar with 5,000
01:00:29
reviews, it's pretty high. If it's got a one and a half and it's got two reviews,
01:00:32
I'm probably not going to buy it [laughter] even if it's the same product just because of our perception of it,
01:00:36
>> right? And then the outcome is what I'm willing to do for the price, right? And
01:00:39
I think about this time delay component because of one thing that kind of loops over the whole conversation at this
01:00:43
point is that >> people will abstract the value of a positive future outcome to zero if it is
01:00:50
long enough in the future. >> True. Even if it's guaranteed, >> you can guarantee that you will be rich
01:00:55
if you invest, you know, $100 a week or $200 a week, whatever into into an index
01:01:01
fund, right? Pretty much. And if you do that for 30, 40 years, you you will be fine.
01:01:08
>> Because it's 30 or 40 years and because the latte is today, the discount basically takes it to zero. There's two
01:01:15
lessons that I think that are really, really hard to learn. And I think um Williamson talks about this with like
01:01:19
unlearnable or unteachable lessons, things like that. Lessons that are difficult to observe unless you go
01:01:24
through them. One of my one of the guys who worked for me, he said, "You know, I
01:01:27
consumed your content for, you know, years." He said, "But seeing you at the office at 4:00 a.m. every day when you
01:01:34
don't need to do this at all." The consistency of it, he's like, "I I don't see that in the content. I mean, I I see
01:01:41
the output of that." And one of the things with consistency is that you need to be consistent in order to witness
01:01:46
consistency. Like you can't even you can't even observe cons like even if I did a time
01:01:52
lapse that takes 10 seconds of me doing you still don't perceive it. So there's there's the consistency piece and I
01:01:58
think the other one with with regards to the long-term component >> is patience.
01:02:03
>> Yeah. Also to be to fair focus because um Shiron my partner says this. He says
01:02:08
um people only see the choices you made not the options you had. And so you can't really witness focus.
01:02:15
You just see winning. >> And so to the same degree with patience again, you only see the win. Like if you
01:02:22
look at a marathon, people are there at the beginning, they're there at the end.
01:02:24
No one's here in the middle. >> Yeah. >> Cuz it's the only fun part. The content
01:02:28
of a marathon would be the the intro and the exit. Like you'd literally make it into a clip that's 30 seconds. It'd be
01:02:32
like, yay. And then maybe a couple mile markers and it's like, wait, we compressed this. What a what a bargain.
01:02:36
Great great return on time. You can't really witness patience unless you've literally followed it from the beginning
01:02:41
which of course you'll have your OG people who are with you the beginning of Driver CEO and they've they've seen the
01:02:46
patience start to play out but it's one of the things that like one of the the the ultimate gifts that I would hope and
01:02:51
the equal opposite of this is Steve Win I think talked about how his the best thing in the world is that someone comes
01:02:56
their first time to one of his casinos bets big and wins. It's the best thing ever. The worst thing that can happen is
01:03:02
that the first time they come they lose their money cuz then they never gamble again. And so it's like they he wants
01:03:06
that big reinforcing event up front because then you can become a gambling addict, right? And so to the same
01:03:11
degree, my my hope for like my kid in the future or or anyone who's trying to start out is that they have something
01:03:19
that happens in their life where they're rewarded for delaying the outcome and having a big jackpot as a result of the
01:03:26
consistent effort where they they delayed the reward. M >> because as soon as you do learn that
01:03:31
lesson, you see how big the big can be when you wait. >> Yeah, it goes back to what we were
01:03:38
saying about long like long termism as a strategy. But also, yeah, like I only needed to look at that graph, the
01:03:45
compounding returns graph once, actually looking at my own audience growth and seeing that I did a thousand posts on
01:03:50
Instagram and reached 1,000 followers. And then in my last three, when I had 7,000 followers, I gained 300,000
01:03:57
followers in three posts because carousels had dropped in Instagram was rewarding everybody for carousels back
01:04:02
then. And me seeing that graph and then going, "Oh, it's slow then it's fast in success." And then starting the diia and
01:04:08
for 3 years nobody [ __ ] listening. And then all of a sudden it was like it was just [ __ ] crazy. It just went a
01:04:12
vertical line up and go, "Oh, it's the same Instagram graph I saw all those years ago." So actually, you know, it's
01:04:18
slow then it's fast. But most people if you've never experienced slow, you think, "Oh, I'm inadequate. I [ __ ] up.
01:04:24
I'm dumb." >> But you now you have that religion. >> Yeah. There are mistakes of picking the
01:04:29
wrong path, but I think there are more mistakes of abandoning the right path. >> How would you how do you know though?
01:04:34
>> So there's a handful of I think entrepreneur questions that are eternally unanswerable. Mh.
01:04:39
>> Which is when do you push and when do you pivot? >> Like how much risk do I take on?
01:04:43
>> Mhm. >> Like should should I consume or invest? Well, you don't know when you die.
01:04:48
>> True. >> Right. And so with the push and pivot one, the best answer that I have to this
01:04:52
because I I get this one a lot like, "Hey, it's really hard. Should I should I pivot the business, change it, or
01:04:56
should I try and like push through?" My actual answer is if you had a fundamental assumption that you based
01:05:01
the business on that has been proven untrue from your business activities, I think it makes sense to pivot. If none
01:05:08
of your original thesis are incorrect, it's just not happening as fast as you want or as easily as you want, then you
01:05:14
push. >> What's interesting is like the nature of being a founder as well on that is going
01:05:19
earlier than the world. Like when you think about outside success, like everyone understands space now and
01:05:23
they're like, "Oh, we can do reusable rockets now. We get it." >> But being being the first guy
01:05:28
>> or the first woman um I think is really the essence of a founder. They go earlier than than the world's current
01:05:34
available evidence. And thus there needs to be some kind of framework that you have. One of my frameworks which I've
01:05:40
never articulated before and I don't even know if this is going to sound correct but it's just always guided me
01:05:45
is um do I believe that I'm offering even a tiny group of people scarce value? So when I started the direo I was
01:05:55
making Facebook videos with people like Ja. We we could get tens of millions of views on Facebook watch back then. No
01:06:00
one was mentioning it. So, I remember this made this video about relationships that did 33 million views. Bad guy, no
01:06:05
one would mention it. No one like no one. And then I started this podcast called The Dire in my bedroom. I got
01:06:10
went to Apple, bought this microphone for $100, plugged it into Garage Band, tried to edit it myself, uploaded it,
01:06:15
and like my two best friends, the look on their faces in the office, Ash and Oliver. When they listened to it, they
01:06:22
had never reacted to me like that ever before for the Facebook videos I've made. And then when I didn't upload the
01:06:27
next week, Oliver Yonv came to me and said, "When's the episode coming out?" For me, that that was it.
01:06:34
>> Yeah. >> For me, I was like, I've done something here that's delivered scarce value to
01:06:37
the world. So much so that one of my best friends who's very honest with me is asking me when the next one is. And
01:06:41
so now I follow that. So when I'm thinking about the bets we make on the future, I'm obsessed about finding
01:06:45
things that are delivering scarce value even if they're unscalable. >> I think you bring up a really good point
01:06:49
about the unscalable part because so two two parts of this. But one is people will not do things. I see I see
01:06:57
beginning entrepreneurs say they're like, "Well, that's not scalable." And I'm like, "You're broke.
01:07:01
>> Yeah, >> you're broke. It's okay. You can you cannot be scal. You can just make money.
01:07:04
That's okay." But it also assumes that your future self with more skills and more resources won't have the ability to
01:07:11
figure out how to scale it. >> Yeah. >> And most things are like we're building cities in the middle of the [ __ ]
01:07:16
ocean. If you're starting a business, and this is where you have to not sell out of
01:07:21
your own wallet, is and that's the the nature of the offers book is start with the most absurdly valuable thing you
01:07:27
possibly can. So, whatever price you want to charge, add one or two zeros to it. Okay? And it's like, that's crazy. I
01:07:32
agree. Crazy. What would you have to do in order for that to be worth it? And then you list out all the things you I
01:07:39
mean, well, if I was going to get somebody in shape, I' i'd probably go to their house. I would I would help them
01:07:42
grocery shop. I would I would drive them to the gym and back from the gym to make
01:07:45
sure that they actually did it. for 100 grand, is it worth it? And they're like,
01:07:49
well, it's not scalable. [laughter] >> It's like, well, you only need five. >> And I [clears throat] think when you're
01:07:54
starting out, there's huge value in having unscalable services because one, you'll get better customers because
01:08:00
you're going to be charging much more for something that's a little bit more premium. And the value of talking to
01:08:05
people richer than you will do more for you than what you are doing for them. >> Mh. So like they will shift your
01:08:11
worldview which is why like a lot of people like caddies who talk to all these millionaires when they're when
01:08:14
they're playing golf it's like they learn so much from the people like how do you make your money like they learn
01:08:19
so much worldview of oh I shouldn't be thinking this way I should be thinking like this. So one is you get that. The
01:08:24
second is that you are able to practice the unscalable thing. >> Yeah. >> And then you can figure out how do I how
01:08:32
do I take the scarce value okay this is not scalable. Fine. We can let's just say it's not scalable. Okay. Are there
01:08:39
elements of this that are scalable that I now know because I've done it rather than because I thought about it because
01:08:45
your thought experiments and I'd say for myself too are pretty terrible. Like our
01:08:49
ability to predict the future is pretty god awful. And so we think we know what it's going to be like and we usually
01:08:54
have no idea. [laughter] And so and so it's like go do it. You'll collect way richer data that no one else has done
01:09:00
because it was unscalable. And then you can actually create something that's more scalable, that is unique because
01:09:05
you actually went through it. And from a this is getting a little bit more businessy, but from a branding
01:09:10
perspective, saying, "Hey, I have a handful of clients that pay me $2,000 a month to do this premium thing." For
01:09:16
those of you who can't afford that, I now have this thing. You've already anchored high. They see you as the
01:09:22
person on the hill because you deal with these unscalable, my private clients. And then you can have like you look at
01:09:27
the Tesla model of start with the Roadster and then you have the Model S and then you work your way down to the
01:09:32
masses. And so I'm a big believer in price as high as you can. Make the very premium thing first. Let that be high
01:09:40
cash flow, high margin, low scalability so that you can then have the money to start working your way down
01:09:46
>> to more people. Well, if I was to forensically analyze your business >> now, and then I brought in Alex who
01:09:53
started that business on day one and I go, look at how unscalable all this stuff is that he's accomplished. I
01:09:59
actually would make the case from what you were just saying that actually the essence of value creation in business is
01:10:04
solving problems that didn't look scalable. >> I was just thinking about even the diio
01:10:08
process here from the minute you leave like so right now the team in there that are doing the testing, they're actually
01:10:12
making you a book as as we speak. They take they took photos of us while we were sat here. And when this interview
01:10:17
ends, they're going to walk in and hand me the book. I'm going to sign it and pass it to you. That book is going to
01:10:20
contain quotes from fans that loved our last conversation. They're currently printing them off on Polaroids. They're
01:10:24
writing it. When this conversation is done, we're going to test your name 300 times using ads to see how to introduce
01:10:29
you. I know Alex is going to win cuz you're a big you're a big name now. But you think about when we started the
01:10:34
podcast. Imagine me there with on Garage Band [laughter] with $100. >> That's not scalable.
01:10:39
>> It's not scalable. I use this this this frame a lot which is that you are trying
01:10:44
to solve tomorrow's problems with today's resources >> and it's a fallacy. It's ridiculous. You
01:10:50
don't have the money. You don't have the skill. You don't have the connections. You don't have the resources. You don't
01:10:52
have the experience and the track record. But future you will. But the hard part is future is a stranger.
01:10:58
>> Mhm. >> And so I think we make a lot of this content to try and approximate as
01:11:02
closely as possible to just pull the first step for someone to take to say believe like you will figure it out.
01:11:08
Like as long as you do not quit, you'll win. Like you just have to not stop. That's
01:11:13
basically it. You just have to not stop. As long as you get feedback and you take
01:11:16
the feedback and you improve and you do that a long enough time horizon, you win.
01:11:19
>> Let's be So just to be clear that you're not saying pursue a bad idea all the way
01:11:23
and just never be stubborn about the pursuit of a bad idea. You're saying iterate your way.
01:11:28
>> Yeah. We have to get feedback. >> Yeah. I mean, if you want to have a doggy skateboard and you pitch a hundred
01:11:34
dog owners on the doggy skateboard and then none of them want it and you're like, "Well, I really believe in this
01:11:38
doggy skateboard idea." And then you bring them the doggy skateboard and then they really still don't want it. You
01:11:44
probably shouldn't sell doggy skateboards. >> So, you should quit the doggy skateboard
01:11:47
business. >> Yes, but you shouldn't quit business. >> Okay. The other >> I think it's local versus global.
01:11:51
>> Even [clears throat] if you just reframe failure in that way, it makes it way
01:11:53
more palatable. Like you figuring it out is a lot of failures. I mean, how many failed episodes, failed headlines,
01:11:59
packaging, you forgot to turn the mic on and did the whole I'm sure >> someone came and stole the [ __ ] hard
01:12:05
drive with the audio on it. It's like [laughter] >> there's there's going to be hundred of
01:12:08
those. But as long as it doesn't become a global failure of I'm no longer doing this, then you're good.
01:12:15
>> One of the smartest things a business can do is build like a bigger company without actually hiring like one. But
01:12:22
the problem we all face is that most companies don't have every skill in house. So when I look at the businesses
01:12:26
seeing real success today, the consistent pattern with all of them is how quickly they move. They bring in
01:12:32
specialists with skills in emerging areas to keep themselves ahead. Even in our company, we spent the last year
01:12:37
pulling in talent across areas like AI native strategy, no code builds, and product workflows. And we find this
01:12:43
talent through our longtime partner Fiverr Pro. Their premium service only shows you vetted talent. So you've
01:12:49
always got the safeguard that anyone you pull in to help you with a complex project has the skills that you're after
01:12:55
and will deliver to the same high standards as your internal team. And most importantly, they'll keep up with
01:13:00
the pace. It's a simple strategy, but it lets us stay agile without compromising
01:13:04
on quality. So if you need these kind of skills in your business, head to pro.fr.com to find pioneering talent to
01:13:09
fill your business's gaps. That's pro.fr.com. One of the great fascinations I have and
01:13:15
almost one of the unteachables is self I think it's self-awareness. >> Yeah. I say judgment. Yeah.
01:13:20
>> Judgment again. Yeah. Because I have you ever had someone come up to you and say
01:13:25
something grandio. They want to go to the moon. Let's say hypothetical and you look at them and you go you're not a
01:13:29
spaceman. Do you know what I mean? [laughter] And how do you how do you what how do you then give them that
01:13:34
advice which is like raise one self-awareness. Know what you're good at and what you're bad at. I think what
01:13:39
people are trying to get at is a an understanding or more accurate understanding of base reality.
01:13:45
>> And the people who are achieving the things that you want to achieve and you haven't been able to fundamentally if
01:13:50
you're doing stuff and what you want to have happen is not happening your model of the world is either incorrect or the
01:13:56
variables you have are incorrect. >> How did you cultivate a more accurate vision of reality?
01:14:01
>> So I'm practice I'm a big believer in behaviorism. >> What's that? operant conditioning which
01:14:07
is basically how you train machines how they figured out how to train AI which is reinforcement training is the exact
01:14:12
same way you train humans >> okay >> and so when you see yourself as the subject that is being trained then we
01:14:19
can make better predictions of will people buy will people take this offer let's say I've got a grandpa and he
01:14:27
doesn't want to take his medicine and the medicine the doctor said was going to extend his life by 10 years okay the
01:14:34
nurse is at home with me and she's going to try and give grandpa the the pill. And he says, "It tastes like [ __ ] I
01:14:41
don't want to have it." He just brushes her away. She comes back, she throws her
01:14:45
hands up and she's like, "You lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink." Right?
01:14:50
>> The operationalist or the behaviorist would say, "No, you've made many other options the more likely option than
01:14:55
taking the pill." And so what we need to do is make the pill the nicest and easiest option available to him. And so
01:15:02
the first thing you would do is you'd crush the pill up. And then I would say, "Okay, let's put it in some lemonade.
01:15:06
Put it in the in the fridge, make it ice cold. >> All right, I'm going to bring out some
01:15:10
peanuts that are salty, and I'm going to put it in front of the grandpa, >> right? And then I'm going to come out
01:15:15
with a, you know, a chess board or a back gammon board, and I'm going to sit in front of him, and set it all up and
01:15:19
say, "Hey, I know you said you wanted to play back, and I've said no the last three weeks.
01:15:24
Here's the lemonade. Do you want to play? If you finish the lemonade, we can play." How likely is it that grandpa now
01:15:31
drinks the lemonade? >> Super high. But at the end of the day, we just we didn't persuade. We arranged
01:15:38
the conditions to maximize the likelihood of the outcome that we wanted. What people miss is that the the
01:15:44
amount of attack vectors that people who succeed approach a problem with is orders of magnitude greater than someone
01:15:52
who is starting out. Is they're like, I talked to three people and that was it. And they said they didn't want it. And I
01:15:57
I tell this this story because it was it was one of those big moments for me, which is I I had a mentor. He said, "You
01:16:03
should put some flyers out." That's how he advertised. He had a big chain of 22 locations. And I was like, "All right,
01:16:07
I'll put some flyers out." I put 300 out. Um, and then nothing happened. Uh, well, one person called and they said,
01:16:13
"I digged his car." And then I was like, "Thank God." He didn't I didn't have any
01:16:17
money. Um, so he called me up or I called him like a week or two later and he was like, "Oh, how'd the, you know,
01:16:22
how' the flowers go?" And I was like, I was ready. I was, "I'm gonna show you." Yeah. I'm gonna show you. Dude, nothing
01:16:27
happened, man. And he didn't even like I was like I was waiting for him to try and fight me. like, "Well, what was your
01:16:32
test size?" I was like, "Hm." I was like, "I put out 300 flyers." And he was like, "Yeah, it's tough to know
01:16:41
if anything works at 300." He's like, "We usually put out 5,000 um per test batch until we know it works." He said,
01:16:47
"Then we do 3,000 a day after that." And so he was doing 150,000 flyers a month and I put out 300.
01:16:56
And so as much as people don't think that like it's like work harder, it's the the volume of activity and output
01:17:04
that people who are a hundred steps ahead of you really is often times 100 times more. Now it seems unfathomable
01:17:10
because you're looking at the top of the hill and like how do I get there? But you start by making one
01:17:14
>> and then you learn through how painful the inefficiency is. Like when you're editing that you're doing the split test
01:17:19
for the headlines 300 of them at a time. >> You learn because you're like this is so
01:17:23
painful. It works but my god is it painful. that that is what motivates you because you want the payoff but you
01:17:28
don't want the pain to figure out ways to make it more efficient. And then when it becomes efficient, you did the scarce
01:17:33
work that no one else wants to do because no one even knows it works as well as it does.
01:17:36
>> And then all of a sudden you have that um you have a scarce competitive advantage over everyone else.
01:17:43
>> At the very top of that, I heard this idea of like doing and listening at the
01:17:46
same time. And this sounds very simple. You're talking about reinforcement learning being the way that you tune
01:17:50
yourself to reality. But you've even said yourself once upon a time you were doing a lot of listening books.
01:17:55
>> You were reading and there wasn't much doing. Some people just do the doing and
01:17:58
no listening. >> Yeah. >> And and so they don't tune. But this sort of like doing and then sort of
01:18:03
reinforcement learning based on the outcomes is how one cultivates their self-awareness. That's actually the most
01:18:09
accurate definition I've ever heard of like that's actually how you get more in tune with the world is through painful
01:18:14
sometimes feedback >> data. >> And then the other thing I heard was you talking just about like just believing
01:18:19
in human incentives. >> Yes. And and this like it it sounds like a [laughter] it took me 10 years to just
01:18:26
s settle on the simple idea that humans don't really behave outside of their incentives unless they're psychopaths
01:18:32
and that's like why they go to jail because they acted outside of social incentives. They like killed someone or
01:18:37
something. Actually, when you think about team building or customers, the first question should be why aren't
01:18:41
they? It's like what are the what what are the incentives in which they are making their decision? And you talked
01:18:46
about that example there of giving someone the gamin board and some >> you're changing his incentives. Yeah, we
01:18:51
just need to move the levers around. And so it's like if you're not selling well
01:18:54
to get to a business situation. It's like you haven't made buying from you the most convenient, nicest option.
01:18:59
>> It's such an important way to think like you offer someone a job and they say,
01:19:02
"No, I don't want the job." >> You can think lots of things, but actually if you just reason it down to
01:19:07
the the first principal incentives, what what was and you could it could be a seesaw like kind of like your value
01:19:12
trade here. >> What did I offer them? Um what did it cost them? >> Yeah. >> And was that net positive? So I have
01:19:20
this. So I write all my persuasion like this. This is this is how we do it. So we say uh plus plus minus uh minus plus
01:19:30
minus minus. All right. This is the easiest way to write copy. The easiest way to think about marketing. If you do
01:19:36
the thing, you get more good stuff. >> If you uh don't do the thing, you get more [snorts] bad stuff. Mhm.
01:19:46
>> If you do the thing I want or so you don't do the thing, you get less good stuff. And if you do what I want, you
01:19:52
get less bad stuff. And so this and this are our persuasion elements that we say
01:19:58
to do the thing. But we also have to like call playing the don't, which is like, hey, also we have these situations
01:20:05
of let's say that you don't sign up for my fitness program. Well, that means that you're not going to have these
01:20:10
times with your kids in the future, right? more good less good stuff, right? You're going to have more health issues,
01:20:16
more bad stuff. >> And the people who you care about, who you want approval from, aren't going to
01:20:22
give you that approval that you so desperately yearn for. And so we just pingpong between these persuasive
01:20:28
elements, but all they are is saying more good, less bad if you do the stuff I want.
01:20:33
>> And as a as someone who employs hundreds of people now, this is kind of how I
01:20:36
think about behavioral change in a group big group of people. You can you can stand in front of the team and say,
01:20:40
"Hey, everybody adopt AI by the way, please. Please adopt AI. But their incentive structure is to do their job.
01:20:47
>> Mhm. >> And have you read the innovators dilemma? It's one of my favorite books
01:20:50
of all time on the subject of >> No, but I'm familiar with it. >> Talks to the same thing as well, which
01:20:53
is just humans just act inside their incentive structure. Want to change humans, change their incentive
01:20:57
structure. A lot of people who are delusional when they start out think that they're going to change people.
01:21:04
>> And I think one of my favorite market I think Gary Halpert said this is a copywriter. Um he said we don't want to
01:21:11
create demand. He said we want to channel it. >> It was just it just is such an interesting nuance. He's like that
01:21:16
demand like the demand needs to be there. We just need to just carve a little bit of that river and point it
01:21:21
towards us. >> And I think when you're thinking about for you with the show, the attention is
01:21:26
there. The attention is being spent every second of every day from every human. >> And so we're not going to create
01:21:31
attention. >> We're going to channel it. and we're going to make our option the nicest most
01:21:36
most convenient option compared to alternatives. And then it's really just getting into the very gritty details of
01:21:42
who I need to make this for. Then you get into avatars and subsegments and markets because what makes it attractive
01:21:47
to one person might not make it attractive to another. And that is why probably one of the highest leverage
01:21:51
decisions that you make with the business is who do I serve? >> Do you have to be intentional about that
01:21:56
when you're starting a business or offering any product to anyone, whether it's content, do you have to at the
01:22:00
start decide who it's for? >> Yes and no. which is a terrible answer, but to start, you just need to get
01:22:05
anybody to give you money. You have then met the requisites for being an entrepreneur. You've accepted money from
01:22:10
a stranger. Congratulations, you have a business. Most businesses that I encounter, especially in services,
01:22:15
because it's 80% of at least in the US, 78% of all businesses are service based.
01:22:19
Typically, it starts with accepting all money from everyone cuz you're like, "Oh, I do podcast agency stuff." Oh, you
01:22:24
have a Oh, you want to start a Yeah, I could help you, too. Like, because they have a pulse and a credit card, and one
01:22:29
of those was the requirement for being a customer, right? [laughter] And so you you take what you can get,
01:22:35
right? But you quickly realize that it becomes very difficult to scale that. And that's okay because you had to do
01:22:40
what you need to do to survive and get started. And that's fine. But usually between 1 and 3 million, you have to
01:22:46
make a decision where you say, "Hey, in order for me to scale this now that I have the resources and the experience
01:22:50
and the skill, I can say these customers are easier to deal with and pay us more
01:22:55
than these customers." Mhm. >> And if I didn't have to serve 10 different types of customers and I only
01:23:00
had to serve one type of customer, it would make the operations on the back way easier because I could start
01:23:04
templatizing and start systematizing what our delivery is. And on the front end, if we're advertising people,
01:23:09
instead of saying we do advert your podcast agency for everyone, we say we help doctors generate patients using
01:23:15
podcasts. >> It's like, oh, all of a sudden the correct customer knows that this is for
01:23:20
them, right? Okay. And so now we're attracting the right people and then those people are the ones that we
01:23:25
already figured out through trial and error and feedback are worth the most. And then we have a more scalable product
01:23:30
because we don't have to make 10 things for 10 people. We make one thing for 10 people.
01:23:34
>> Right? Cut once, sell twice, right? Sell twice. That's the idea. Not cut once,
01:23:38
sell once. >> I almost hate this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Um, are there
01:23:42
any obvious businesses that have emerged in your point of view because of what's
01:23:47
going on in the world that a young person that wants to cut their teeth should probably be aiming at? 15 years
01:23:52
ago for me, it was starting an agency. I think that opportunity is a little bit saturated now, if dare I say.
01:23:58
>> I think that the nature of agencies has changed. I think you like if you want to
01:24:01
do like a Reddit reputation management now, that's kind of a more emerging offer because Reddit's become a bigger
01:24:07
and bigger platform and people look there. Like I think the the old school meta ad agency might be harder to crack
01:24:12
into than some of the more newer opportunities that exist and clipping agencies things like like those things
01:24:17
are still opportunities right now I think. So if we have beginner opportunities and then we have what I
01:24:22
think are great opportunities that are let's just say non just AI because there's the obvious answer of like start
01:24:26
an AI thing and automate for small businesses and yes you should absolutely do that and there's lots of money to be
01:24:30
made there. Great. Okay. >> Outside of that what's not going to change? What can you bet on? I'm gonna
01:24:35
bet that humans are going to want to still want to look beautiful in the future as they do now. I think people
01:24:43
are going to want to stay young looking and so I think the longevity med spa look a certain way peptide all of that
01:24:51
world is going to crush and is already crushing right now. there's a huge supply demand issue. Believe it or not,
01:24:56
I think uh wealth um advisers I can because I see so many businesses and the ones I pay attention to are the people
01:25:02
who are making more money than I think their skill level >> um would canote right would would would
01:25:08
make sense for like on the flip side I say like if I see somebody who's who's doing $20 million a year as a restaurant
01:25:13
I'm like bro you could probably do 200 million a year in a different business. Um, I had a conversation with a gym
01:25:19
owner that was doing $10 million a year and it was a service-based gym, not uh a
01:25:23
facility elasticious gym, which is different. Like a crunch fitness is just like use the equipment, whatever. But a
01:25:28
true service based gym, which is either personal training or semi-private training, really hard business to scale,
01:25:32
easy to start, hard to scale. And he was like, "What do I think?" You know, what
01:25:34
do you think the the opportunity is for me? I was like, "Honestly, dude, you could take your exact skill set because
01:25:38
you've got 100 employees and you're trying to deliver an amazing experience, but with low skilled labor, you have to
01:25:44
maintain culture. There's all of this stuff that you have to It's like if you took that same skill set and just
01:25:48
applied it to a superior vehicle, you'd make more. Now, you might not want that and you might be happy with your
01:25:54
existing business, which keep on just know that it's a harder it's a harder business. So, all that to say, I think
01:26:00
wealth is a big bucket. Um, wealth related services are still crushing. Insurance risk is still going to exist
01:26:07
in the future. >> Mhm. >> So, there's going to need to be insurance. People are going to to to
01:26:11
fractionalize risk, which is what insurance functionally does. The longevity looking nice is one and then
01:26:17
anything that's not cool has like a discount applied to it is always something that's very interesting to
01:26:22
look at. It's kind of like trash. Like no one wants to be like a so what do you do? It's like I I'm in trash you like it
01:26:27
just it doesn't have the same gravitas as I'm a doctor except that guy could be a billionaire, [laughter]
01:26:32
right? And so if I look at like oh I I do you know I do waste management for old people like you know human fecal
01:26:39
matter. It's like there someone's got to you know like someone's got to figure something out, right? And so those are
01:26:43
the types of businesses where it's like look where no one wants to look. Look at
01:26:46
look for things that people would not want to say at parties. There's usually big opportunities there if there's
01:26:51
obviously money where I said owe people because right now it's so wealth is so concentrated on the I did my favorite
01:26:57
video of the year. I I did this breakdown and because it was my favorite video I think it got like 300,000 views.
01:27:03
But like [laughter] but what I did was really interesting is that I took wealth in the United States
01:27:08
and I had a had it represent $100. 100% of wealth is $100. If you looked at it, right, and you had a circle for all, you
01:27:16
know, 100 people at different percentiles, right, there's like $2 in the bottom 50th percentile.
01:27:23
>> The bottom 50% of people has roughly $200 >> of the hundred in wealth. >> Wow.
01:27:27
>> It's crazy. And then you've got your next 40 and I think that was like $27, something like that. Then you have your
01:27:35
next 9% which has like $36. And then the top 1% has 31. Hopefully the math maths, but it's
01:27:44
somewhere somewhere in the neighborhood. And so when you look at that division and then you're like, who should I
01:27:49
serve? Many people who are starting out are here and the only people they see are
01:27:57
here. And so their view of the world is not accurate. And this is why they stay broke because
01:28:05
they try to sell to other people who have no money and then assume that no one has money.
01:28:11
>> The [snorts] interesting thing I noticed and I think anybody that's ran a service
01:28:14
business will be able to relate. >> Yeah. >> Is when I started out I was selling to
01:28:19
startup founders who had an app idea whose marketing budget was approximately $10,000 and I was asking for $10,000
01:28:25
>> per year. [laughter] >> And they were watching me. They were counting every download they got on
01:28:31
their apps. And slowly we managed to move up. And the remarkable thing is, this is a crazy thing to say, but it was
01:28:37
easier from a client management or a client account management perspective to deal with Coca-Cola than it was Dave
01:28:43
with his dating app idea. Coca-Cola, who would give you potentially six figures in budgets, um would would be a little
01:28:50
bit more casual than Dave with his dating app idea where he'd put his mortgage on the line. [laughter] But
01:28:56
it's not it's not easy to move up because to get that meeting with Coca-Cola to be able to present to them,
01:29:01
you got to earn it somehow. >> So, it's all well good saying it, but the reality of getting up there is they
01:29:06
they think more about credibility, track record. They'll they'll work with people
01:29:10
who are highly credible and who who they can see a reality behind. >> And so, it's not there's nothing wrong
01:29:16
with starting to sell the friends and family. But the the goal, again, that's if your goal is to make more money with
01:29:20
the business should be to move up market. And if you look, so this is kind of interesting, something I've noticed.
01:29:28
>> If you look at the price of a service, and this is specifically for service businesses,
01:29:33
>> the price of the service almost has a one to one correlation with how advanced
01:29:37
the business and business owner are >> just as a forcing function because in order to go up in price, like a service
01:29:46
business done well means you did a good job. You have more demand than you have supply. And so what do you do when
01:29:51
supply and demand crisscross? You go up in price. And so you continue this loop.
01:29:55
And as long as you continue to deliver more value than you're charging for, you continue to have more demand. And you
01:30:00
just keep lading up. And this is why price is such a strong signal for value. Which why when you're starting out, it's
01:30:06
hard to hear us say, "Hey, add a zero to your price tag. Add two zeros to your price tag." Because if someone comes to
01:30:11
me and says, "Hey, I want to do all of your social media management for $2,000 a month." I'm like, "Dude, you can't
01:30:15
even handle me." >> Like you could like even if I said yes, you can't. it. The math doesn't math.
01:30:20
There's no way you can do it. And so if someone comes to me like the minimum I'm
01:30:24
probably going to be willing to spend is I don't know 15,000 a month for a vendor. Like the minimum I could really
01:30:28
possibly and it' be probably a smaller shop and I know the founder is probably still integally involved. I'm fine with
01:30:33
that cuz I'm okay with some founders like being good and basically me seeing them as a fractional employee that I'm
01:30:37
paying less and that works fine. All that to say like you want to have your price go up. One because you serve
01:30:42
better customers, two because you have better margins. Three because there'll be less headache and four because it's a
01:30:46
signal of how good you are at what you do. And the best businesses and business owners will know, oh, this is for me.
01:30:52
You signal to them that you like you want to go out market, but you have low market prices. There's um there's
01:30:57
something called the Van Wesson door pricing analysis. You might have heard of it. It's from the 1970s. I do this
01:31:01
most times when I launch a new offering. And so there's four questions you ask. Number one, at what price would this be
01:31:05
so expensive that you wouldn't even consider it? >> Mhm. >> Number two, at what price would this be
01:31:10
so cheap that it would be impossible that it would be able to be valuable? It it'd be too cheap. At what price would
01:31:15
it be right at the edge? you'd have to really consider it, but you'd end up buying it. And then at what price would
01:31:20
it be a bargain, a good deal? And so when you actually take a scatter plot to this, and now I have to I used to have
01:31:25
to do these manually. Now you can literally just take the data and put it right into AI and say, "Hey, run a van
01:31:29
western drug analysis on this, which is amazing." So you can get it in six minutes. Um, and so you get these
01:31:34
there's four points on the graph if you have the scattered dots. And so you have the point of marginal cheapness
01:31:42
which is basically beyond this point the majority more people will think it's too
01:31:46
cheap to be believable. >> Okay. And above this price it's too expensive to be considerable.
01:31:52
And so what you can find is you can do area under the curve to see at what price would I make the most money if I
01:31:58
had a higher friction sales process. >> Mhm. [clears throat] >> And if I wanted people to simply
01:32:02
purchase it. So if I wanted to have an automated sales process where my range is. And so there's a range in there
01:32:07
where it says, "Okay, right here is the point where you'll make the most number of sales." Now, you'd have to factor in
01:32:11
margin, like gross margins of the product. But you can guess like this is how when you want to launch a shampoo,
01:32:17
this is how they do it. And so we can price it precisely. >> Is it a bell curve or is it
01:32:24
>> Oh, yeah. >> So is it like a >> Yeah, but sometimes it's so interestingly sometimes you have double
01:32:29
gaussians that'll happen >> because it's different customers. So when so when I run these, I ask those
01:32:35
four questions, but I also ask for the customer stats. So then I can slice it by saying, what do the rich customers
01:32:41
think? What's the pricing curve for them? What's the pricing curve for poor customers? What's the pricing curve for
01:32:45
home services? What's the pricing curve for? And so then you can get really really accurate with initial pricing.
01:32:51
Of all the ideas that you've put out into the world, what are the the sort of headline ideas or questions that you
01:32:57
found to be most compelling to people? Almost all the core concepts in this book come down to figuring out who you
01:33:04
want to sell, what you want to sell them, and how to get them to buy. And most of my content focuses more on
01:33:14
acquisitions since the vast majority of small businesses, say 1 to 50 million, >> not always, um, but I'd say 70% of
01:33:22
businesses, this is rough estimates, that come through our doors are demand constraint. They could use more
01:33:26
customers than they than they have. 30% are supply constrained. The phone's ringing, but they just don't have enough
01:33:32
account reps. They don't have enough technicians, whatever it is. And so, what's really interesting about this all
01:33:38
of these books when taken in aggregate is that every problem is a marketing problem.
01:33:45
And I'll and I'll sell you on this idea. So, if we were to think about a business
01:33:49
as okay, we've got lead genen, right, as activity number one. We've got nurture as number two. We've got sales,
01:33:59
uh, we've got, uh, onboarding, and then we've got retention, ascension, right? Getting them to keep
01:34:06
paying and getting them to buy more [ __ ] Now, this is the demand side for customers, right? Everyone hopefully
01:34:12
everyone's kind of aligned with that. Now, if you're supply constrained, >> which means
01:34:17
>> which means that you uh have more customers than you can handle, more people are interested in your stuff.
01:34:21
Let's say you're the solarreneur and you're like, "How do I like there's only one of me, what do I do?" like you're
01:34:26
supply constrainted. If you had unlimited view, you you could make more money, right? So, what's the equivalent
01:34:32
version of this? On the supply side, you have application generation and then you
01:34:36
have application nurture. >> What does that mean, application nurture? >> Basically, we're working these leads.
01:34:43
Yeah, we have these applicants. We need to get them scheduled. We need to get them booked. We need to make sure that
01:34:47
they're not getting lost in the process, you know, like how how quickly can we line these interviews up, all that,
01:34:50
right? We have the interviews themselves, which is the sale, right? And then we have onboarding like you do
01:34:58
for a new employee. And then you have retention. And then the ascension is they're grow they're going up, right?
01:35:04
Are are they are they are they moving up? Which means that you just treat humans the way you treat humans in a
01:35:09
pipeline in a business. And so if you have a demand problem, but you know how to get employees, then do the stuff that
01:35:18
you get to get employees to get more customers. If you know how to get customers, but you don't know how to get
01:35:24
employees, use the exact same process, which means who's writing the copy for your your ads
01:35:31
and your promotions and your outreach temps. Well, somebody probably should take a look at if you haven't looked at
01:35:35
this, by the way, and you're a slightly bigger business owner, you will be horrified by the outbound messages that
01:35:40
are getting sent on your behalf to people. You'll be horrified by the job postings that your company is putting.
01:35:45
You're like, "No one would respond to this. How would you think this would work?"
01:35:48
>> Very funny. From a nurture perspective, the leads aren't getting worked. No one's following up. We're not giving
01:35:54
them any materials to sell them on our just like you would with a prospect. Like, why don't we have case studies?
01:36:00
Why don't we have a video sales letter that tells tells the whole business? So, every person who comes to
01:36:05
acquisition.com watches a VSSL for me and it's a 13-minute thing of just like here's how the business works and it's
01:36:11
this is our real estate arm. This is like and it shows everything and like I'm giving proof and this is John and
01:36:15
John's an employee and John loves it here, you know, whatever. And so then in the interview itself, it's like, do you
01:36:20
have a script? Well, you have a sales script. Why would you not have an interview script?
01:36:23
>> Mhm. [clears throat] >> Pre-anned questions. Do we roleplay this? Well, we roleplay this. Isn't this
01:36:28
just as important, if not more important? Is there more leverage on getting one 10 out of 10 talent person
01:36:32
than just one customer? Yeah. On the onboarding, are we just do we have any process? Do we have 30 6090 of what
01:36:38
what's going to happen over the next 30 60 90 days and what is required for them
01:36:42
and what information they need to consume so they can become proficient? And then once they are onboarded,
01:36:48
what's their what's their career path look like? How do they like one of my favorite questions is when I have
01:36:53
somebody I really like, um I say, "What would it take for you to work here forever?
01:36:57
What would it take? Just tell me what it would take." I can say, "No, just tell me what it would take." And then I can
01:37:02
start moving the pieces around to figure out how I can get this person to stay forever. But the same thing happens if I
01:37:08
have a a customer that I like a lot like, "What would it take for us to be your your sole provider forever?" Mhm.
01:37:12
>> Especially this because I know you have more enterprise experience sometimes saying, "Hey, let me be the sole
01:37:16
provider. Let's get let's go exclusive. >> Let's lock in a three-year contract and
01:37:20
I'll give you these other things for free if we lock it in." >> And I'll never work with
01:37:23
>> Yeah. these three competitors. Yeah. And so almost all problems in business can
01:37:28
be solved by more people finding out about your stuff either to work for you or to buy from you,
01:37:33
[clears throat] >> which also means that you probably have ongoing marketing to your customers. You
01:37:39
think there shouldn't be ongoing marketing to your team and employees. Do we want our customers to give us
01:37:43
referrals? Yeah. Do we want our employees to give us referrals? Do we have a incentive for people to bring
01:37:48
referrals? There's a great story. A friend of a friend had a had a $10 millionish dollar a year business. He
01:37:54
talked to somebody in the exact same space as him uh who was way further ahead. And he uh he was in business that
01:38:00
had like agents uh that work from like kind of like a brokerage. And the mentor told him, "So, what's the incentive that
01:38:05
you have for your agents to bring more agents?" He's like, "Oh, I you know, I pay him 500 bucks if they bring a new
01:38:10
agent on." He was like, "Okay, what do you make on a productive agent per year in gross profit?" He was 250,000 a year.
01:38:17
Productive agent, gross profit. He's like, "So, you're only willing to spend $500 to make 250,000?"
01:38:26
He's like, "What would you spend for 250,000?" He was like, "I mean, I don't know, 50 grand." He's like, "Yeah, so
01:38:31
why don't you make your incentive 25 to start?" So he took his incentive from $500 for referral to 25,000
01:38:39
and he took his company from 10 million to 400 million. >> Yeah, it's crazy. [laughter] I think
01:38:44
about this a lot. Even with like recruiting, like people like, "Oh, head hunters cost a lot of money." I'm like,
01:38:48
"Fucking hell." For really exceptional talent, it's almost it's always a deal. It's always a great deal. Going back in
01:38:55
time, if I were to give the the like what has changed about uh me then versus me now is that my standards for talent
01:39:02
are significantly higher and my tolerance for letting someone be mediocre and stay are lower. I think
01:39:09
probably all the entrepreneurs I've ever interviewed would say that exact thing.
01:39:12
I remember one particular entrepreneur who's built 100 billion dollar business publicly listed. He said, "At 20, I
01:39:18
thought hiring mattered. At 30, I thought it was kind of important. At 40, I've realized it's the single most
01:39:22
important thing." and this is a guy that's built hundred billion dollar publicly traded company and I was like
01:39:27
but it's funny because that's what all of them say. >> Yeah. But I this is a broader
01:39:31
relationship advice lesson which is just the best and worst decisions you'll make
01:39:34
in your life are people and I mean I look at I look at some of these things here and I go I mean it's true for you.
01:39:40
>> Yeah, I know right. >> This is a photo of your lovely wife. >> Nugget Zone. >> You think about the variance of your
01:39:46
outcome if you had chosen someone else. >> I do think about that. I do think about
01:39:49
that. It's probably the single best financial decision that I ever made was marrying
01:39:57
Ila because and this is this is no shade to any any any relationship that exists of mine or
01:40:06
anyone's you know people optimize for different things and I'm not saying I optimize for finances. I'm saying, but
01:40:10
within that lens, she was just down and she believed in me a lot of times more than I believed in
01:40:21
myself. And I think I think that's all anyone really wants or at least for me that I that I wanted was and the thing
01:40:30
is is that hasn't stopped as the stakes have gotten higher. I remember there was
01:40:34
this business that I was that I was working with and I was going to meet with the whole team and I was like this
01:40:38
is like a really tough problem that they're asking me to help with and I was like and she just like cut me off and
01:40:44
she's like good thing you're the best at it and that you're going to give them more help than anyone else could and
01:40:48
it's just like whether that's true or not it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. And so I I also say this
01:40:56
to people who are starting out is just like I I do not have perfect um self-security. You know what I mean?
01:41:03
Like I wouldn't say it's imposter syndrome cuz that's not true. But like I have doubts of like I don't know if I'm
01:41:08
going to be able to solve this. I mean I hope I am and I keep working on it but like I don't know
01:41:13
>> and as the the problems become more complex and have higher stakes, it's like this is harder and will cost more
01:41:19
if I fail. Um the pressure feels the same. I would say the only difference is that we have more resources to to to
01:41:26
handle them. Mhm. >> And so in a lot of ways, when you're starting out, it's kind of like fighting
01:41:32
a bear with your bare hands, but when you're further down, it's like trying to slay a dragon, but at least you have an
01:41:38
army. >> Mhm. >> And [clears throat] so the foe is bigger, but your resources are bigger,
01:41:43
too. And in some ways, it's almost easier later than it is when you start. But you only earn the right to face
01:41:50
those foes by going through the earlier stages when you didn't have the resources because you learn the grit,
01:41:56
you learn the scrappiness. And I think that like it's a it's a right of passage and Ila was willing to go allin and I
01:42:04
would say that like if anything kind of like a jockey bet u for VCs like you bet
01:42:09
on the horse not the jock or sorry the jockey not the horse. when she saw me, I had, you know, a handful of gyms and it
01:42:15
wasn't like I'm Alex Herozi the, you know, whatever I am now. I was just a gym owner and I was 26 and I worked
01:42:21
really hard and she was like, I don't know where we're going to go, but I know Alex is going to work tirelessly to get
01:42:28
there and she just always believed. And I think that if like I think the person that you were married is either going to
01:42:34
increase the likelihood that you hit your goals or decrease and you just need to decide whether that's important to
01:42:41
you >> if you were single. >> Yeah. >> Do you think you would be as successful as you are now?
01:42:47
>> I wouldn't be as successful because number one, there have been plenty of moments cuz I don't struggle with
01:42:53
anxiety. I struggle with apathy. Um not caring. Why do I even bother doing this?
01:42:58
We already have enough money. Who cares? Ila in a lot of ways has bigger dreams than I do. Um I have [clears throat]
01:43:05
always had big goals for finances, but at a certain point um and I think I hit this kind of like last year for me,
01:43:10
which is weird because I always like people always like when is enough enough? And it's kind of like working
01:43:16
out. Um I got to a point where I was like almost 250 and lean and I was like this is more than enough. I I'm going to
01:43:22
come back down. [laughter] And so I've had bigger goals than most people for my fitness or muscles or whatever. Um, I've
01:43:28
had bigger goals than most people for money, but I also was like at that point when I hit it, I was like, I think this
01:43:34
is enough for me. And Leila was like, it was never about the money for me. It never was. And I think that's why our
01:43:40
dynamic worked really well. But she's always cared about the team um, more than anything. And she's like, I her
01:43:47
dream when she and I met was to build a place that people love to come to work. And if you do that and it also has a
01:43:54
good business model behind it, marketing and sales and pricing and all this other
01:43:57
stuff, it's like you end up making a lot of money. >> But I would have probably taken my foot
01:44:01
off the gas earlier if it hadn't been for Ila. I think I would have struggled more operationally. Uh because Ila is
01:44:09
Ila will never get the credit that she deserves. Um but Ila is Ila is the is the pure is a pure operator. like
01:44:16
unbelievable leader that talent that I probably wouldn't have been able to either get or keep stay because of her.
01:44:23
Like I think that if there was like a a divorce in the business, I think the vast majority of people would [laughter]
01:44:30
>> I'm serious. Like I I know I like self-awareness. I people know what I'm good at
01:44:35
>> and I know people are loyal to Ila >> because she's just there for people. Um,
01:44:43
and so for those reasons, I don't think I would have I don't think I would have kept my foot on the gas. Um, I don't
01:44:47
think I would have been able to operate nearly as complex of a business as we currently have. And on the inevitable
01:44:51
like troughs of my motivation, she was the one who kind of carried me. >> A lot of people be listening now and
01:44:59
they might be listening with their partner, maybe they're listening alone, and they're thinking, you know, my
01:45:03
partner isn't all that supportive of me. And dare I say, some people will be listening now and think their partner is
01:45:09
actually against >> Yeah. their ambition. What do you say to those people? Figure out what you want. Like, we have
01:45:19
to make trades. How do you Do you know what? It's tricky because some of those people might say, "Right,
01:45:26
[ __ ] it. I'm going to dump her or him." >> And then they pursue the business for 2,
01:45:30
three years. They become successful and they're lonely as hell >> and they look back and go, "Do you know
01:45:35
what? That was actually my insecurity and my shame that drove me to do this. But I've I've now I've got the mansion
01:45:41
and I'm here alone. I should have she was a good girl. He was a good guy. >> I speak only from the pers perspective
01:45:48
of how do you align the conditions to maximize the the business outcome. That's where I come from in terms of how
01:45:55
I'm speaking about this in terms of maximizing subjective well-being and your happiness. Um those factors are
01:46:02
completely different. And so I think Arthur Brooks has this just this amazing visual example that I love, which is
01:46:08
imagine two scenarios. One of them is that you drive your brand new Ferrari to a three-star Michelin restaurant. Um,
01:46:15
and you have the corner corner booth eating the best food in the world looking out of view alone or piling into
01:46:22
your beat up, you know, Camry, uh, going to a Denny's with your five best friends. Which one is the one you think
01:46:29
you're going to enjoy more? It's obvious. It's obvious it's the second one, but we live our life like the
01:46:36
first. And so I think if again it comes down to what you want. If you're like this girl, guy, whatever like satisfies
01:46:44
so many things, like you will not find the perfect person cuz you're not perfect. And so it's just what on the
01:46:52
stats of this person am I willing to make trades on? Am I willing to have somebody who's maybe not the most
01:46:58
supportive of my career, but maybe they're supportive of my subjective wellbeing? Maybe they're supportive of
01:47:02
my of my extracurriculars, maybe they're supportive of my spiritual journey, whatever. They might just be supportive
01:47:06
in different ways. And so again, it's what do you want? And I think people I had a my my first boss um or last boss
01:47:14
rather said this thing to me and it's really stuck with me. She said, uh figuring out what you want is 99% of the
01:47:22
work. She said the easy part is getting it. And I thought about that a lot because I was like, no, the hard part is
01:47:27
getting it. And it's like, no, it's like it's how many layers deep did you figure
01:47:30
out what you really want? And I think that's because when you when you really know what you want, then it's then you
01:47:36
just align the world to go get it. >> It's very hard to know what you want. >> Yeah.
01:47:41
>> Because there's all these near-term temptations. There's this external noise. There's Instagram telling you
01:47:46
that you want this. >> Yeah. No, you need this. Yeah. So being able to drown out all of that noise and
01:47:51
get to some kind of signal and also to your point about sacrificing everything you could have had,
01:47:58
you know, 2 3 4 5 we want the upsides of all paths without the cost of each. And
01:48:04
so it I just >> this is the why I still believe that decision-m which is this the least sexy
01:48:10
topic of all time but still the most important decision-m is the highest leverage thing that you can do in life
01:48:15
making good decisions. >> And is there I mean we've talked about frameworks. Is there any framework for
01:48:20
making a better decision as it relates to what we're talking about here? >> I think it's answering the first part
01:48:25
which is what do I want to have happen? >> What do I want to have happen? Yeah, that's um even that that's you know I'm
01:48:32
probably speaking from experience here because when I was what 20 years old was it 20 or 19 I Mark no friend of mine
01:48:39
mentor of mine gave me this diary and I remember the first page I wrote in it what I wanted and what I wrote
01:48:44
>> was before the age of 25 Range Rover Sport to be my first car million dollar six-pack girlfriend I'll throw up
01:48:50
there's picture of it on the screen and I actually took a photo of it in my Range Rover at 24 years old as like a um
01:48:56
but did was that actually what I should have written Well, I think it's probably what you
01:49:00
wanted >> and then you updated your wants because you got it >> and then you found out that you wanted
01:49:05
different things. >> Sure. >> Fortunately there my time horizon was quite small so I could figure out in
01:49:09
three or four years without any without any like damage that that was not the right thing to write down. But some
01:49:14
people orientate their lives to like I need to become a let's say billionaire >> and the sacrifice to use one of your
01:49:21
words along the way is family, friends, mental health, health. And then you get there and you gosh,
01:49:30
I can't turn back time. I can't rebuild relationships. I can't call my mom now. She doesn't answer or she's gone.
01:49:35
>> So that's kind of why I always pause on this question of what do you want? Cuz I
01:49:37
think we're actually like, as you say, like terrible at knowing. And I don't know a better way of knowing
01:49:42
>> than getting in than deciding whether you want it or not. >> I think um one of the one of the
01:49:47
interesting things with wanting is that we only want what we don't have. >> Mhm.
01:49:52
>> You know, [clears throat] uh people who don't have kids want to have kids. People who have kids remember the times
01:49:56
they didn't have kids. People who were single want to get married. People who are married, you know, reminisce about
01:50:00
the times they get single. But I see that as inherently human, which is that we only remember good and not bad. And
01:50:08
that's a beh So that's a behavior thing. That's not a So like the reason that when you get drunk and then you're hung
01:50:13
over the next day and you say, "I'm never going to drink again." And then seven days later you drink again is
01:50:15
because punishment fades. Reward sticks. Which is why you go back to the old girlfriend and you still long for them.
01:50:21
Even though when you get back, you're like, "Oh my god, I heard she was crazy. What [laughter] was I thinking?" Right?
01:50:26
But it's because we only remember the good, which is good to know and I think evolutionary because it's like you
01:50:30
remember you got berries there, but you don't remember the sacrifice. Like all to the same degree from like pregnancy,
01:50:34
horrible experience for many women. Not all, but many women. and it's a horrible
01:50:38
experience. >> But then you get this reward at the end which is this baby and then that just
01:50:43
like fades away and then you're like you know what I want another baby. [laughter]
01:50:47
>> Speaking of babies, Alex. >> Yeah, >> there you go. You gave me a jump off point.
01:50:51
>> Leila's pregnant. >> Yeah. >> How how long till the baby arrives? >> Four months.
01:50:55
>> Four months. >> Yeah. Exciting. >> What are all the feelings? I can see some [laughter] a mixture of feelings on
01:51:01
your face. >> Um I'm stoked, you know. Uh I'm stoked. Uh, I'd say I have elements of
01:51:10
fear mostly that I I want to do a good job, you know, being a father. Um, >> I can see, Alex, that you're scared.
01:51:20
>> I can tell because I know you're I've sat here probably for 10 hours over the
01:51:24
last I don't know how many years. I'll tell you what the issue that I've been struggling the most with which is
01:51:30
how do I define a good parent >> and how do I define a good child or a successful child which then just gets
01:51:38
into sort of a meaning of life question which is why I think it's so difficult but like I'll take the parent one for
01:51:43
example if if we define a good parent as a successful outcome for a child one in
01:51:51
what domains >> right is it a billionaire who's lonely and sad is that had a successful
01:51:55
outcome. I don't know. Um, but let's just assume the world's version of success, and I won't enumerate it.
01:52:02
How many people who have all that success had bad childhoods? >> Mhm. >> Do we now call their parents good
01:52:09
parents? >> Can I can I posit something? And I've not I've not had kids either, but what
01:52:14
would happen if you removed both questions? >> Oh, just like I'll just take it as it
01:52:18
is. Well, I I'll say it's very I it would I I almost want to say it's impossible for me [laughter] because of
01:52:24
control. you like to be able to control your outcome. >> I want to know what I'm doing. I want to
01:52:27
know where like I want I ask what do I want to have happen so that I can align all of my life to try and make that
01:52:33
happen. And so if it's like and even even the question of like what is a successful child is is it a child who's
01:52:40
happy? >> Mhm. >> Many people would say I just want my kid to be happy and that's fine.
01:52:44
[clears throat] >> Is it my child is the maximum makes the maximum impact on society? different
01:52:50
upbringing [clears throat] >> and like the trades that we make at the beginning, I probably won't be able to
01:52:56
have a kid who has both or at least the degree to which I can steer. >> So, I have um three other siblings. I'm
01:53:02
the youngest of four. >> Yeah. >> And one could theoretically say my parents were were a constant. The
01:53:06
environment to some degree was a constant. There were slight changes. >> Us four.
01:53:10
>> You've got this me the youngest, this crazy like entrepreneur, didn't go to university, blah blah blah. Got Jason,
01:53:16
super genius at school, rewrote the textbooks to make them smart, smarter, works in this business, now my business,
01:53:21
mathly, rewrote the like on the front of the newspapers. Kevin, smarter than all
01:53:25
of us, savant level genius. Could said to me when he was younger that he could learn any language in four four weeks
01:53:30
fluently if you gave number one in the world in Runescape at one point. People would watch him online play super genius
01:53:36
um decided he doesn't want to go into world of work. And then my sister who you know I think she qualified as a
01:53:42
lawyer um and she's worked in hospitality and stuff. All of us extremely different. My parents were a
01:53:49
constant environment was a con constant. I say all this to say that maybe just like running experiments as we do in
01:53:54
business. [laughter] Maybe like the job and you know Jeff Bezos talks a lot about this is to like stay out of the
01:53:58
business of the output >> and focus purely on the input because you you know some of the questions you
01:54:02
were saying there were like what do I want them to accomplish? Are they happy? These are all outputs.
01:54:06
>> No for sure. Um, you can't. The other thing that I notice when I interview executives, I always ask them, "Tell me
01:54:10
about your kids." >> And they tell me about the kids. And I go, "Are any of them the same?" I always
01:54:13
ask the same question and they go, "No." >> We've got this one who won't stop bouncing off the walls. This one that's
01:54:18
an empath and is like super shy. >> Did you do anything different? No. [laughter]
01:54:23
So, like, you know, I think you you'll almost probably be guaranteed to miss expectations and be let down if you get
01:54:29
involved in the output. >> Yeah. So, obviously there's nature nurture, there's kids who are going to
01:54:33
have genetic predispositions for different things. So let's say that's half and then the other half is the
01:54:37
nurture or environment. Now that is still something that I'm not going to be able to control 100% anyways because you
01:54:42
guys did have different environments. You grew up in different grades talking to different people, having different
01:54:46
teachers, went to different universities, like the older siblings. >> Yeah. There's Yeah. All of those are are
01:54:50
variables. And so in some way it's a bit of chaos of you can't you can't control.
01:54:56
But if we if we eliminate all control then what's the point? And so I I still come I come back to the like well I'm
01:55:02
going to try and control the controllables. >> Yeah. inputs >> and right but if I have if I'm so it's
01:55:08
like I need to know where I'm going the output in order to direct my car but what I'm focusing on a dayto-day is I
01:55:16
need to shift gears I need to drive the car I need to fill it up with gas me focusing output is not going to get us
01:55:22
there any faster but I have to know where I'm going and so this is again what I'm struggling with now to be fair
01:55:26
I cannot figure it out and the kids can come either way [laughter] he's not going to wait for me to to
01:55:31
figure this out and I'm sure maybe someday he'll look at this podcast and be like my god, dad. Jesus. Um,
01:55:35
>> you know what's interesting? The car analogy I think might not be apt because
01:55:39
I I I know I was trying to find another analogy and the one that I stumbled upon
01:55:42
was a a plant growing a plant in your house. >> You put the seed in the in the the soil
01:55:48
and you might think I really want this to be six foot and I really want 100 leaves, but you [laughter]
01:55:54
all you can do is water it and give it sunlight >> and it's going to be what it's going to
01:55:58
be. >> Yeah. I mean, you can please be six foot, please be a football player or whatever, but you can control the input,
01:56:04
which is the water and the the sunlight. >> It's funny because like my my immediate
01:56:08
situation goes back to the grandpa story, which is like, well, I could put it in front of the I could put it in
01:56:12
front of the sun or I could put it in a shitty [laughter] room. I could like I could determine how much I'm going to
01:56:16
water it, what kind of soil it's going to get. Um, like there are other variables that like and so again, I
01:56:21
would be like, do I want to grow the tallest plant? Do I want to grow the plant that has the most fruit? Well, I
01:56:25
would either prune the plant or so that it would grow taller. Like these are all
01:56:28
things. Now, can I change whether it's going to be a peach tree or an apple tree? No. That's going to be based on
01:56:32
the seed that I plant and that I [clears throat] don't have any control over. >> But there are some things that I can
01:56:36
control and of those things that I control, I would like to know what I'm optimizing towards [laughter]
01:56:43
>> and I'm sure that this will just be a wonderful lesson in humility for myself
01:56:47
and it'll [laughter] be great and people laugh in the comments for sure. Um, but
01:56:50
yeah, I like [clears throat] I to ask me like what we were talking about earlier.
01:56:56
I would say like one of the the foremost things that I love the most about Ila is
01:56:59
that Ila has never tried to change me. She's like that's Alex. Like you can want him to be a peach tree or an apple
01:57:06
tree, but like he's going to be Alex. He's going to dress that way. He's going to and if tomorrow he feels like shaving
01:57:11
his face and having a fumchu, he's going to do that. Like I'm going to try and optimize to the degree that I can to
01:57:16
equip the, you know, my son and hopefully future kids um with as many skills as possible to get what they want
01:57:23
out of life. And I think that's that's what I would say that I that's where where I have settled on is I'm going to
01:57:29
use all the resources I have to give them as many skills as I can to handle life. And if I can do that, then if they
01:57:37
want to go to London or they want to go to LA, at least they'll have the skills to get there. Um, that's as far as I've
01:57:45
gotten. >> I can't wait to see. I saw this quote that you you tweeted. >> Oh. >> And there's two quotes you tweeted that
01:57:51
I was very curious about. The first one which took caught me off guard. I think I actually texted you when I saw this
01:57:56
was this one. Do you want to read this one out? >> Yeah. >> So, this was February 2025. At your
01:58:01
funeral, friends and family will argue over who gets your belongings. People will talk about the food and the venue.
01:58:06
Your life will be summarized in two to three paragraphs. Conversations will shift from your life to their lives.
01:58:10
Your friends will drive away thinking about what's next on their to-do list. Some people won't be able to make it
01:58:14
because something came up. And most of the people you know today won't even be there. You're going to die. People move
01:58:20
on in weeks, not years. do what you want. >> Why is that so important to hear? >> I think about death
01:58:31
probably multiple times a day. Um, and I think that that's actually been positively correlated with subjective
01:58:38
wellbeing. I mean, older people are incredibly aware of the fact that they're going to die. And I think that's
01:58:44
what allows them like I look at so there's a I'm sure you've seen this, but there's this graph that shows how people
01:58:49
rate their subjective well-being over their lives. And it's a smile graph, which I think is ultimately hilarious.
01:58:54
But kids are really happy and then they just become they get more and more responsibility. And then your peak
01:58:59
unhappiness is like 45 to like 55 somewhere in there. It's like it's the crunch. You're taking care of kids.
01:59:07
You're taking care of parents. You have a career. And to be fair, in some ways it's good because you're at your peak
01:59:11
earnings. So you're making your most people are making their most money in this window and but they also need to do
01:59:17
it. But there's they're very stressed, right? they're stressed really thin and then as they kind of get into 60 65 70
01:59:24
and when I think about each of these two extremes on the child side and the elderly side and elders are often a lot
01:59:30
like kids if we think about what like they they rely on other people. They're mostly just like they play games like
01:59:38
[laughter] in each of these situations they have very little responsibility and they don't care about what other people
01:59:42
think. If you have if you see a toddler go out with like a tutu and cowboy cowboy boots is because like they don't
01:59:46
care what other people think. And when you're at the end of your life, you're like, I'm going to die, dude. And one of
01:59:51
the things that I've been very obsessed with is is borderline but probably accurate is I'm trying to think, how am
01:59:57
I going to see the world when I'm 80? And how how fast can I can I get to there now? Cuz I care more now about
02:00:04
what other people think than I will when I'm 80. And I just want to pull as much
02:00:07
of that forward as I can because when I see those 80-year-olds, I'm like, that guy does not give a [ __ ] And I'm like,
02:00:12
I really want that. And so I I write a lot about death because it's I like these tweets are notes to self. They
02:00:20
like they are not it is not a it is not from a pulpit that I say those. These are um as a self-help to to Alex when I
02:00:26
write these things because it's like I probably when I was writing that in Feb, oh yeah, February 25. So February 25,
02:00:32
the first quarter of 25 was the hardest quarter that I've had personally in eight years. You tweeted this at the
02:00:41
same time. >> Yeah. I haven't felt this miserable in years. Shit's just hard sometimes. You
02:00:46
have tough seasons, bad losses, and what makes it harder is you don't know when it'll end. But know it will end. So for
02:00:52
anyone going through it right now, you do the only thing you can do. Keep fighting.
02:00:58
>> I text you when you tweeted that because I had never heard you talk like that
02:01:02
publicly before. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, it was it was a really tough quarter for me. I mean, mind you,
02:01:07
I don't have kids, so that variable wasn't there. But every other variable that probably could have gone quote
02:01:14
wrong was actually, ironically, outside of business. Business was fine. Uh, but it was just everything else.
02:01:20
>> Um, and >> what do you mean by that? >> So, I say we were making plenty of money. Yeah. Um, but I had I think I had
02:01:28
nine lawsuits that were open at that at that. It was a lot. It was nine nine open lawsuits. Um, and they all like it
02:01:34
was like and they were all different like uh ex employee investment that two or two two or three were investments
02:01:41
that we had made that like one of them got caught and stuff and then was like are we going to get pulled? It was just
02:01:45
all this just stuff. Um just a lot. Um, and and then Ila uh had a like I think I
02:01:53
told you she um she had a really horrible she like tore her colon and so that's been it's like it's like an
02:01:58
18-month recovery and so she was in the thick of like going through the pain of that before about to get the surgery and
02:02:04
so it was just like everything sucked and Bill Aman had this really great interview where there's a snippet that I
02:02:11
ended up seeing which was he was he had just lost like a billion dollars. he was
02:02:16
getting divorced and there was like one other thing. I think there was lawsuits because of the billion dollars,
02:02:20
whatever. And and he said when you're going through that that those rough patches, he said he focused on the only
02:02:26
thing he could do when he's like you can't you're not going to solve this in a day. Like it you can't finish it. And
02:02:30
I think that's what that's what's so painful about it is you have this open loop that whenever it whenever something
02:02:35
reminds you of it, it's like you get into this loop again of like rumination and just like a what if it goes wrong
02:02:39
and catastrophizing. And he's like, "You just have to take one bite at a time and
02:02:46
then every, you know, month or two months, you can look back and be like, I made some progress." And he's like, he
02:02:50
just focused on making progress and chipping away at the problem. And I think that was more or less the approach
02:02:56
I had, which is kind of like the the two feet in front of you, like what are the
02:02:59
things that I can actually do right now? I will do those. And sometimes, and I remember in that season, a lot of what I
02:03:04
was thinking about was so I wrote, so when my mother passed uh this year, I wrote an article for myself. Yeah. Um, I
02:03:11
wrote an article for myself about mental toughness and it was because I wanted to, of course, it's not like be mentally
02:03:16
tough when your mother dies. That's not the point. It was like, how am I supposed to show up right now? That was
02:03:21
kind of like the the thought process I had. And so I basically here this so I saw it like this, which is
02:03:31
bad thing happens, right? There's these vectors of what happens as a result. So you have how long or how many bad things
02:03:45
have to happen before you change your behavior. So let's imagine this line is how we're acting. How many bad things
02:03:51
have to happen in order for us to change how we act? Are we shorter with our spouse? Do we not pay attention at work?
02:03:56
Like what how many bad things if somebody the perfect perfectly mentally tough person would be able to have an
02:04:01
unlimited amount of things happen to them and then their behavior would remain the same
02:04:07
from purely from that perspective. The next issue is okay well let's say that you're not a perfectly mentally tough
02:04:11
person and something crosses your tolerance threshold and then your behavior changes and so we have this
02:04:18
next measurement. So we have how long and how much can you handle? We have how deep do you go when you fall? How how
02:04:25
badly do you change your behavior? Do you just are you short with your staff or do you get into heroin?
02:04:29
>> No, like how bad how badly do you fall? And then the next piece is how long does it take you to recover,
02:04:38
return back to original function? And then the part that I added to this is and then when I return back to original
02:04:43
function, am I better than I was before? Do I am I the same as I was before or am
02:04:49
I permanently worse? >> In what dimension? resilience or happiness. >> So I I basically have term one, term
02:04:56
two, term three and then this was I term this as adaptability which is how how do
02:05:04
you respond after a bad thing happens? Do you get better the same or worse? >> You have tolerance
02:05:11
I think this is fortitude um which is how much bad stuff can you handle before it hits you. You have resilience here,
02:05:20
which is how long does it take you to return to baseline? And then you have tolerance, which is how how low do you
02:05:26
go? And so through mapping these four vectors of behavior, I was able to look at myself during this harder season. And
02:05:35
this was such a mind [ __ ] because think about this. I do a $106 million launch.
02:05:40
My mom got to see it, which is really cool. She dies four weeks later. I realized the goal, we talk about
02:05:46
long-term, right? $100 million, $100 million, $100 million. The goal of the books was to have $100 million at the
02:05:51
end. The offers book was an offer so good people sell stupid. I gave it away for free, made it 99 cents, gave a
02:05:55
course with it. No one had done that. Um, and it was an offer so good leads. I did a huge gigantic launch, but I didn't
02:06:01
monetize because I just wanted to show what having crazy advertising for something would do. And I used all the
02:06:06
stuff in the book to advertise the book. >> This book's about monetization. And so,
02:06:10
I had an amazing offer and crazy advertising and a money model behind it, which is why I made $100 million on a
02:06:15
weekend. >> Mhm. So, this is a multi-year project. And so, I I get to have this this moment
02:06:19
of like all these things come to fruition. And then my mother dies 3 weeks. It was the 19th, right? So, yeah.
02:06:25
Literally a month later. And so, a freak accident. >> Yeah. And so, I'm I'm just like, what
02:06:32
how am I supposed to like what am I how do I think through this? And so, I wrote
02:06:35
this for myself to think, okay, how am I supposed to show up? And also one of the
02:06:40
things that I found really interesting was that people will judge how much you love someone by how much you choose to
02:06:45
suffer. And why does how much I suffer have anything to do with how much I love someone? And I don't think that the
02:06:52
person, if you did lose somebody, I'm sorry. Um I don't think the person that you lost probably wants you to suffer.
02:06:58
And so we have this this idea that we need to suffer to prove our love, which I was like, "Well, that's an assumption
02:07:05
I'm coming in with. Do I reject that?" I was like, "Yeah, I think I reject that.
02:07:08
And so bad thing happens that crossed my threshold. How low am I going to go? I was probably not like the most thrilled
02:07:16
about life during that period. But I thought, well, what can I do? What are my controllables? Well, I'm still going
02:07:20
to record content. I'm still I'm still going to help businesses cuz I feel good when I help businesses. Why would I stop
02:07:26
doing that? Well, I'm still going to work out cuz I feel good when I work out. Why do I Why would I stop doing
02:07:30
that? >> Did you have motivation though? Were you motivated in the sort of cliche sense of
02:07:34
the word? Did you feel like it? I would say yes, but not for the reason that people think. I was motivated for two
02:07:39
reasons. One, because I don't think she would want me to stop. And number two, because those things made me feel better
02:07:46
and I felt bad and so I wanted to feel better. >> I tried to change as little about my
02:07:51
life as possible and that is what got me through that. And now some people say, "Oh, you need to take time to mourn."
02:07:58
It's like, why does the way I mourn have to look the way you mourn? And why do why is is there a right or wrong way to
02:08:03
mourn? She must have been so proud of you. >> She was. She was. >> We talk a lot about your dad, but we've
02:08:09
never really spoken much about your mom. >> No, I don't. She's a sweet lady. >> Yeah, she always she always believed.
02:08:32
And so I think this last one right adaptability which is in what world can this make me better?
02:08:42
Like how can how can this loss make me better? And also, by the way, like this trauma, bad thing happens, you're
02:08:56
permanently worse, right? And so it's like, what would that look like? What would me growing from this look like?
02:09:03
And I think part of that was proving that I can continue as my way of honoring her
02:09:12
and her memory. and I'm going to continue to try and pursue the the path that she knew I started pursuing when I
02:09:23
left home when I talked to her when I when I left, you know. Um, and so like what's changed between then
02:09:31
and now? I'm just closer to where I was trying to go and I don't think she would
02:09:35
want me to abandon that path. And so I just you keep fighting. You had that conversation with Tony
02:09:42
Robbins which I found to be amazing. It's fantastic conversation. I spoke to him about it actually. Um I wondered if
02:09:47
it had changed you in any way. You talked to him about happiness. You you'd said that you know you'd said some
02:09:50
similar things to me that happiness had never been a high priority for you. >> Yeah.
02:09:54
>> Did that conversation change your perspective at all on happiness? [snorts] >> I would I would love to say that it did.
02:10:03
Um because I think it would be like a better sound bite. Yeah. Um, not really. >> So, where are you now on the subject of
02:10:13
happiness? Are you are you happy? >> I have a tough time with that. Mostly because I just I don't really even know
02:10:19
what it means. Um, because like there's some people that you like, do I feel joy? Of course. But you can feel joy at
02:10:25
a at a funeral. >> Are you excited by your life? Are you excited about life on a daily basis?
02:10:30
>> Yes, I'm I'm intensely interested in my life. I'm very fascinated by the things
02:10:35
that I work on. Does it feel good to be you? >> Sometimes. I think I think >> more days than not.
02:10:43
>> Probably. One of the things that Arthur Brooks has been really helpful you you
02:10:46
know his stuff. Um and he talks specifically to strive and I'm like stop talking to me. [laughter] So strivvers
02:10:52
he defines as people who like you are strivvers. They're they're high achievers. And what's really interesting
02:10:56
is he describes what the childhood of a strive is. He's like almost to a tea. This is what it is. He's like, it's
02:11:02
typically an immigrant parent or something like that where they're trying to do a good job and they basically
02:11:08
withhold approval only when the kid does a good thing. And then what happens is the kid learns that love is earned and
02:11:15
then you learn that loop. You're reinforced for that loop. And then you do win more and you earn more love. And
02:11:19
then you get into the big wide world and then you're like, how do I get more of this drug, this love drug, which means I
02:11:24
need to earn as much as possible? I need to earn as much as possible. So you just
02:11:27
get addicted to the loop of working. And so I find this really fascinating. But the other part of of of his work that
02:11:35
has been actually in some ways very like grounding for me is about half of your subjective wellbeing is genetic
02:11:41
>> half. And so and to be clear like I'm I'm super blessed. I have a lot of good
02:11:46
things that have gone for me. My mother's side of the family tree has a lot of tough mental stuff. Uh very bad
02:11:52
stuff. But they're also really brilliant in some ways. I think to myself like maybe I'm just maxed out on my 50 and
02:12:00
I'm crushing it. But the thing is is like I don't know because like we don't you know if if you're if you're born 7
02:12:07
feet tall everyone can see it. >> But some people are born probably one foot tall in terms of happiness and they
02:12:11
learn to play basketball really really well at one foot and people are still like oh he's only one foot tall.
02:12:16
>> So I don't I don't know how to judge how well I'm doing. I would say that I have
02:12:19
been way worse than I am now. I aggressively want to keep living. And to me that's a that's a really strong
02:12:26
indicator for me. Um and to answer like Albert Kamu is one of my favorite philosophers. Um and he has this quote
02:12:33
that I I love which is what is the meaning of your life? And his answer to that is the reason you don't kill
02:12:40
yourself. And it's it sounds dark, but a lot of very dark things can be flipped into very light things, which is that
02:12:46
when you ask someone that question, they'll typically answer like, well, I mean, my my kids, my wife, the people
02:12:51
that rely on me, and it's like, right, that's why you're alive. And that thing can also change because
02:12:58
like if you asked me 10 years ago, I'd have a different answer than I do this this time, and maybe in 20 years it'll
02:13:02
be different. One of the remarkable things I learned from doing this podcast is a real appreciation for people's
02:13:08
predisposition as it relates to mental health and the way that their mind is with them. Like growing up, I thought
02:13:13
everyone's mind was like mine as you do. >> And then for, you know, you stumble across this thing called podcasting, you
02:13:18
start interviewing people and going, "What's going on in your brain?" [laughter]
02:13:21
>> And then they they play it to you and you go that they can't possibly be telling me the truth. It can't possibly
02:13:26
be the case that there's other people. And I remember sitting here with um a comedian who told me that inside his
02:13:31
brain there's a voice that literally roots for his failure. That literally tells him he's he's pathetic, he's going
02:13:36
to fail, he's terrible, this was terrible, you've embarrassed yourself. And I thought, gosh, isn't that crazy
02:13:41
that there is like a mental health mindset privilege which most of us don't even acknowledge the privilege of. And
02:13:49
when you speak, I it's fascinating to me in the same in the same way that I might
02:13:54
assume that it's fascinating when you hear someone answer the question, "Are you happy?" and they just go, "Yes, of
02:13:58
course." >> Yeah. Right. [laughter] >> Like, is that really curious to you when you hear people say, "Yes, I'm I'm
02:14:01
amazingly happy." >> Yeah. >> Is that curious to you? >> Um, sort of. I think when when I hear
02:14:06
someone say that, like probably my immediate gut response before I even like think about my response um is well,
02:14:13
they probably haven't even defined what happiness is and they just wanted to give an easy answer. [laughter]
02:14:16
>> Interesting. Like that's like that's what I immediately think. But like I >> it's like
02:14:24
>> this is like the the absolute as as raw truth as I could possibly give to anyone
02:14:28
which is that like I I am very proud of the things that I've done up to this point in my life. Like I I can look back
02:14:33
and be like I'm proud that I did that and I and I feel that sense of accomplishment and I and I what is the
02:14:38
emotion attached to proud? >> I don't is is pride itself an an emotion? >> I don't know.
02:14:45
How does one experience pride as an emotion? Is that like a feel >> very full? I'm like very happy that I
02:14:50
did these things like the books that you have in front of you. I'm incredibly proud of.
02:14:53
>> If it was a facial expression, how would pride look? >> Yeah. >> No, >> no, not for me. I mean, I'm just it's
02:15:01
it's very soulful for me. Like, I'm I'm very filled by this work and that's why >> that's why I keep doing it. And I know
02:15:07
that when I die, I think the thing that will actually the the only thing that I think has a chance of living on past me,
02:15:12
past when people even know who I am is these books. >> My YouTube videos are going to
02:15:16
disappear. Like all that stuff will go away, but I think I think these books will survive. And I write them that way.
02:15:21
Like I write them kind of thinking that like the people who read this will not know who I am.
02:15:25
>> Should people come to you for happiness advice? >> No. Go go go find somebody who's really
02:15:30
happy. Um the here's actually here's what's really tough though, right? is that no one knows base what someone's
02:15:36
base level is and that's what's so tough. >> I think I asked that because one I think
02:15:40
a lot of people assume that this work learning how to be financially free and to build a business
02:15:46
>> is in service of this north star which we all agree upon which is happiness. >> Yeah.
02:15:50
>> So one would think okay what's the point building a business and getting a $100
02:15:53
million deal or whatever if it doesn't then lead to the happiness payoff. And if you're telling me that you're not the
02:16:00
person to come to for happiness advice, I go, "Well, then what's what's this then? Why do I need to do this if this
02:16:05
is not going to make me do you see what I'm saying?" >> Oh, I totally see what you're saying.
02:16:09
Which is why bother pursuing this to begin with. >> Yeah. If it's if you're not promising me
02:16:12
happiness as the north star. >> Yeah. I won't do that. >> Okay. >> Many people will sell you happiness. I
02:16:17
will not be one of them. Um I try to sell quantitative things. Like I know that if more people find out about your
02:16:23
stuff, you will make more. If you have a better way of monetizing and a faster way to bring cash forward, your business
02:16:28
will grow more. If you have an offer that's so good people stupid saying no, they won't say no and they'll say yes.
02:16:32
>> But you make no promise or guarantee where that would lead you in your life. >> No, that's to me like that's beyond my
02:16:37
scope. >> Fine. >> Like I know. Yeah. And so I I enjoy the topic of of the happiness stuff because
02:16:44
I I love amorphous topics. [laughter] Um, but the the conclusion that I said I started with when you asked about the
02:16:52
Tony thing was I at least my it is my worldview which could be wrong that human beings our internal feelings are
02:17:01
like the weather. >> Mhm. There's sunny days and there's rainy days and there's rainy seasons and
02:17:06
there's sunny seasons and we go through them all. And even if things get better,
02:17:12
our baseline adjusts so that yet again cuz like if we think about a year, I actually give this example to my sales
02:17:18
team. So if we think about this as a year and we have all the days of the year, half the days are going to be
02:17:25
above average and half the days are going to be below average. And every month you're going to have a bottom 10%
02:17:32
day three times because you have 36 days per year that are going to be bottom 10%
02:17:38
days for no reason purely because law of large numbers and you're also going to have three days per month which is
02:17:45
almost one a week. That's going be a top 10% day of the whole year. Pretty impressive. But it's one a week almost.
02:17:50
Right. And so I think about this variability a lot because when I'm having a quote bad day because I have
02:17:56
them I have I have them all the time. Um and I just think this is probably just the bottom 10% day.
02:18:02
>> And like and [clears throat] I think the the one of the one of the lessons that
02:18:05
I've learned from an entrepreneurship perspective translated into life is my emotional discomfort is not an adequate
02:18:12
reason to change what I'm doing. And so we will get these moments of dissatisfaction or discomfort and be
02:18:18
like I'm life sucks. I need to change something. And if you don't like your life in general, change something. But
02:18:24
if you don't like your life today, maybe don't break up with your wife. >> Maybe give it a day. Right? And so I
02:18:31
think again, I come from the entrepreneur perspective, which is that people will have a bad day and then
02:18:35
basically take it out on their business and then change a bunch of things and then destroy what they're with this
02:18:40
fledgling business that's getting going because they had an emotional need that they could not tolerate. And so that's
02:18:46
why this graph has been so valuable to me, which is is my bottom 10% day a big enough thing for
02:18:52
me to change my behavior. If I determine that I can have a bad day and still do good work, that is a good day. Alex, we
02:19:00
have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it
02:19:04
for. Funny question. What would you do if you believed that super intelligent AI, better, faster, cheaper, etc. than
02:19:10
the best humans at everything was just a few years away? Mhm. What would you do?
02:19:28
On the business side, I would build as much real world proof as I possibly could and as much track record with as
02:19:34
track record with as many customers as I could so that I could reinforce a brand
02:19:39
that would give me some differentiation in that future marketplace. So you'd focus on building a stronger brand
02:19:44
>> from a business perspective. >> Why? >> Because I think in a world where everyone has access to a super
02:19:49
intelligence. Um what are the things that are going to like will people still care about reputations in the future?
02:19:56
Probably. And so I see that as something that won't change. Distribution will still cost money. Like those things I
02:20:02
think those things will be true. Might be less, but it'll still cost. And typically if again because there's
02:20:07
there's still marketplace dynamics. Not to get into the the weeds on this, but from an entrepreneurship
02:20:12
perspective, I would continue to build trust and distribution. From a personal perspective, I would think really hard
02:20:18
about what it means to be human and why I'm here to begin with. >> You going to buy a farm one day?
02:20:29
>> I'm It's not out of the equation. Um I mean, Leila's Ila's super gung-ho on that. So,
02:20:35
>> on a ranch. >> Yeah, we almost did. We almost bought one actually the first time we sold.
02:20:40
>> Where do I direct? So, if people want to learn more from you, you've got your
02:20:43
YouTube channel where you've just started this brand new series which is really interesting. I'll link that below
02:20:46
as well for people that um want to watch it. It's kind of like a Dragon's Den Shark Tanky format where you're bringing
02:20:53
entrepreneurs, they're competing for $100,000 um through this knockout series of
02:20:57
episodes. Very interesting. These four books in front of me, there's another one over there, but these four here that
02:21:02
from the hundred million dollar series have all sold more than 5 million copies since inception. You've actually broke
02:21:09
the world record for selling so many copies of this book. This one. >> Yeah. >> Um in the short sort of a 24-hour period
02:21:16
or something creative like that. >> 2.9 and 24. >> Staggering. I'll link all of these books
02:21:21
below. They are essential reading for anybody that's wants a cheat code. um probably a decade worth of decade head
02:21:28
start into the world of business. Um explained in a phenomenally accessible way with literally your drawings.
02:21:34
>> Yeah. >> Inside them. Um and the thing that I think has made these books so successful
02:21:38
and become the bible for many entrepreneurs, startup entrepreneurs, but also entrepreneurs that are looking
02:21:41
to scale through different seasons of business is is just it's so um actionable. A lot of books are like
02:21:49
highly philosophical and there's lots of jargon and stuff. These are like this is
02:21:53
what to do. this is what to do. And I I think ultimately that's the most valuable thing. So, thank you for
02:21:59
writing these incredible books. Is there anything else that people should know about that you're working on or thinking
02:22:02
about before we tune up tune out? >> No, just grab the books. I'll link all of them below. Alex, thank you as
02:22:08
always. Um I love talking to you, not just for because it makes great content cuz I can learn so much and I've written
02:22:13
so many notes down here from just bouncing off you that I'm going to go apply in my own business. So, thank you
02:22:17
as always. I really appreciate it. Thank you very YouTube have this new crazy algorithm
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where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the
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