00:00:00"Your money goals are too small and I will prove it to you.
00:00:02"My name is Alex Guimuzzi.
00:00:03"I run a portfolio of companies at acquisition.com.
00:00:05"They generate over $250 million per year in revenue.
00:00:08"I did a book launch 12 weeks ago.
00:00:09"They did $106 million in a weekend
00:00:11"and I broke a Guinness World Record
00:00:12"for the fastest selling nonfiction book of all time.
00:00:14"So in this video, I'm gonna explain how you need
00:00:16"to rethink your income, your investments,
00:00:18"and savings goals and timelines."
00:00:20And so here's the problem.
00:00:22A lot of financial gurus, even people on this platform,
00:00:24right, and I have no shade, right,
00:00:26will tell you to save $100 a month
00:00:27and they'll tell you that if you do that
00:00:29from the time you're 18 until the time you retire at 67
00:00:31or retire with a million bucks at a 9% compounding rate.
00:00:34And that all sounds great until you realize
00:00:36that when you're 67, that $1 million
00:00:38is gonna only be worth 170,000.
00:00:40So why is that?
00:00:42So just $1 in 1975, right, 50 years ago,
00:00:46has today's equivalent purchasing power of $6.02.
00:00:49That's a 6X difference in 50 years.
00:00:51The main reason, inflation, the dollar.
00:00:54They don't make 'em like they used to, right?
00:00:56And I'll give you a hint.
00:00:58It goes up.
00:00:58So this measurement is conservative.
00:01:00This is based on the last 50 years,
00:01:01not necessarily the next 50.
00:01:03And so if that's the problem, how do we solve it?
00:01:05So this is kind of the new way I think about your goal.
00:01:08Let's say that you had the goal to have a million dollars.
00:01:10Obviously, add or remove zeros as it suits you, right?
00:01:13So some of you might be 10 or 100 or a billion,
00:01:14or whatever you want.
00:01:15Let your heart go wild.
00:01:17But let's say that you wanted a million dollars
00:01:19when you retired so you could live passively
00:01:21on 50,000 bucks a year from investing it into bonds
00:01:23or something that's relatively low risk.
00:01:25And that $50,000 of passive income, oh yeah,
00:01:27that's only gonna get you about $8,000 worth of stuff.
00:01:31Tough to live on that per year.
00:01:34So let's say that you were a little more ambitious
00:01:36and you said you wanted $4 million.
00:01:37If that was your goal, like it was for me,
00:01:40you might want to adjust it
00:01:41and take into account the inflationary reality.
00:01:44So if you want that 4 million bucks when you retire,
00:01:46you probably need 24 million.
00:01:47That's a big difference.
00:01:48Again, that's just because you're thinking
00:01:50in today's dollars, not future dollars.
00:01:51I wanna give you some good news.
00:01:53Compounding is still a thing and it still matters.
00:01:56You probably just need to do more of it
00:01:58and do four important things.
00:02:00So think of this as your strategy to mitigate that
00:02:04so that you can actually get where you want
00:02:07in terms of your savings, your investment,
00:02:08and ultimately the freedom that you're looking for.
00:02:10So consider this the new strategy.
00:02:12So I'll give you the quick and obvious ones
00:02:15that you've probably heard, but in a new way,
00:02:16and then I'll wrap up with what I've actually done
00:02:18to achieve it, okay?
00:02:19So number one is you have to increase your income.
00:02:21So a lot of people think about this in terms of savings.
00:02:22I think it's much more powerful to think about
00:02:24in terms of income.
00:02:24Because if you're not making a lot right now,
00:02:26there's not a lot of room between zero and you.
00:02:28There's an infinite amount above that.
00:02:29Let me put this in real world terms.
00:02:32Even if you don't think that extra thousand bucks a month
00:02:34from flipping stuff online or making content
00:02:37and just getting some AdSense revenue
00:02:38or promoting school and online platform
00:02:41to help people start communities
00:02:42and getting commissions from that, it won't matter, right?
00:02:44If you don't do anything with it, right?
00:02:47But if you take that extra thousand bucks a month,
00:02:49which might not seem like a lot,
00:02:51depending on where you're at,
00:02:52that work might not seem worth it.
00:02:53Like, oh, that's a lot of hustle, I got Uber more,
00:02:55I got a DoorDash or whatever, right?
00:02:57If you invest that extra thousand dollars a month
00:02:59in that same equation,
00:03:00you get $10 million by the time you retire.
00:03:02This is gonna be juicy.
00:03:04A thousand dollars today if you're 18 years old
00:03:06is $80,000 in 50 years.
00:03:08So the money that you make and spend now counts ADX.
00:03:11But we can't be one-sided.
00:03:12We also need to realize that ADK in 50 years
00:03:14is only worth $13,000 today.
00:03:16So in reality, every $1 you save today
00:03:18is worth $13 when you retire.
00:03:20So for me, this makes making that extra $200 for a gig,
00:03:23where you do a DJ thing, right?
00:03:25Or helping your buddy move or whatever,
00:03:26is actually a $2,600 investment.
00:03:29And it makes it far more worth it for me,
00:03:31or at least when I was thinking through my savings stuff
00:03:33when I was starting out.
00:03:34So number one, we gotta increase income.
00:03:37Number two, and it kinda naturally leads to it,
00:03:38is that you gotta stop spending so much money.
00:03:40Now, on the other hand, right?
00:03:42If you think the $500 belt that you wanted to splurge on
00:03:44doesn't matter,
00:03:45just remember that it's 40 grand in 50 years, right?
00:03:48And in today's dollars, it's $6,500.
00:03:51That $500 belt, with compounding,
00:03:53reverse back to the present, is 6,500 bucks.
00:03:55And so here's something that's even worse.
00:03:57A $500 a month car payment, that's a lease.
00:04:00That three-year lease is 18 grand.
00:04:03That 18 grand in today's dollars, when you retire,
00:04:06is $234,000.
00:04:09Wild.
00:04:1050 years, obviously.
00:04:12And that's just one lease.
00:04:14So even if you make less,
00:04:16it doesn't mean less when you're young.
00:04:19And this is the point
00:04:20that I think really discourages a lot of younger people,
00:04:21is they're like, "I'm not making as much money as I want.
00:04:24I wish I could make more."
00:04:25They wanna flex the small amount of money that they've got,
00:04:28because they've...
00:04:29First off, never flex when you're young,
00:04:31because everybody who's older has way more money.
00:04:33It's just like, you just have more time to accumulate it.
00:04:35You just do, number one.
00:04:36You have more time to accumulate it.
00:04:36Number two, you earn more when you're older,
00:04:38because you have more skills.
00:04:39But the thing that really matters
00:04:40that people who are older don't have, is you have time.
00:04:43And so the value of the money that you make,
00:04:45even if it's half as much,
00:04:47the difference of that last 10 years of compounding,
00:04:49when you start at 18 versus starting at 28,
00:04:51is the difference between a 30X, 33X, and an 80X.
00:04:55Think about that for a second.
00:04:57A 33X and an 80X, in terms of that 10-year difference.
00:05:01And so just because you make half as much
00:05:04or third as much as you wanna make right now,
00:05:06it doesn't mean that those dollars aren't worth more to you.
00:05:08And so I say this to encourage you
00:05:10to make the extra few bucks here and there.
00:05:13Spend, don't spend as much.
00:05:15You go out to the club, just pregame a little harder.
00:05:18And get a soda with lime, all right?
00:05:22You don't have to go crazy with it, all right?
00:05:24So number one, increase income.
00:05:25Number two, stop spending as much.
00:05:27And then putting it in future,
00:05:28dollars relative to today's dollars,
00:05:30hopefully should soften that blow for you.
00:05:32The third is try and make it and save it faster, right?
00:05:37'Cause the money you make now versus the money you make
00:05:38when you're 10 years older, hits harder.
00:05:40So there's obviously a time value to money.
00:05:43So three quick strategies.
00:05:44One, set a watermark, invest the rest.
00:05:47So it's like, I need to have $5,000 in my bank account,
00:05:50everything above $5,000, I invest, period.
00:05:52Or an alternative way of doing it is saying,
00:05:54I have to invest $2,000 every month no matter what,
00:05:57and I gotta make it happen, and then I'll live on the rest.
00:05:59I will tell you that the richest people I know
00:06:01think in terms of the second way more than the first way.
00:06:04All right, which is like, I'm gonna go make that money
00:06:06to get that thing or to make that investment
00:06:08rather than I'm gonna take it out what I got.
00:06:10Just something that I've noticed.
00:06:11Now, either way, just pick a strategy.
00:06:14Now, the next one is that my examples assumed
00:06:18$1,000 per month didn't go up by 3% a year
00:06:21to adjust for inflation and an increase in earning power.
00:06:24So you can absolutely run a separate model for that
00:06:26with your own Excel sheet or your own,
00:06:28whatever AI you use to run a model on that.
00:06:31So if you're like, $1,000 a month,
00:06:33if I do that from 18 until I am 67, I'll have 10 million bucks
00:06:36so you could probably hit your goal or beyond that
00:06:38with just that tiny piece.
00:06:40Now, I gave you, I said I had three strategies.
00:06:43I gave you two of them, I said, invest the rest, right?
00:06:46Or invest first and then live on the rest.
00:06:48Either way works, invest first and spend the rest
00:06:50or invest the same amount every single month
00:06:53and then increase it over time.
00:06:54All three of those are fine, totally fine.
00:06:56And honestly, if you just pick any of them, no problem.
00:06:58It's like, if you're literally the type of person,
00:06:59what's funny is that like, I see entrepreneurs,
00:07:01I see people all the time.
00:07:02Like, people wanna know if they're gonna be successful.
00:07:05Watching these videos and actually taking action,
00:07:0899% of the time like that, that's all that actually meant.
00:07:10Like the fact that you care enough
00:07:12to actually change your behavior
00:07:13is the big green flag indicator.
00:07:16You're gonna tweak over time, you're gonna learn other stuff,
00:07:17but actually doing something about it
00:07:19is what will separate you from everyone else.
00:07:21Let me give you the fourth strategy, all right?
00:07:23Which is what I actually did, all right?
00:07:27So I'm obviously not 67 and I have more than $10 million.
00:07:30I made my living expenses as small as humanly possible.
00:07:35All right, so protein shakes, Chipotle, I split a bedroom.
00:07:39All right, so I lived in a house and I had six roommates.
00:07:42And then within one of the rooms, I split the room,
00:07:44like college style, like dorm style,
00:07:46because it was cheaper, right?
00:07:49And I was never there anyways, I was working all the time.
00:07:51I owned a used car that I paid for outright.
00:07:54So the only thing I had was my car insurance, that was it.
00:07:57But the actual, I had no car payments.
00:07:58I haven't had car payments in a very long time.
00:08:00Like buy a used car that's 10 years old,
00:08:03that's in good condition, pay 10 grand for it,
00:08:05and then just like never have a car payment again.
00:08:07And then I invested my money, pause,
00:08:11in learning to make more money.
00:08:13You want to increase your income, right?
00:08:15But how do you really do that?
00:08:18Because when you factor in that it's one of the only things
00:08:20strong enough to break the cycle
00:08:22is that you just have to make more.
00:08:23So think about it, like if you spend $2,000
00:08:26having someone help you learn how to sell,
00:08:29ideally a place with some sort of placement assistance.
00:08:32I remember for me, I spent $750 per hour for eight hours
00:08:36to have a guy who really knew how to do ads
00:08:38at a higher level.
00:08:39'Cause remember, this is a guy who's going to charge 750,
00:08:40not your buddy, right?
00:08:41You might be able to just buy him Chipotle
00:08:42and he'll do it for you, right?
00:08:43But to have somebody who actually taught me
00:08:45how to run ads at a high level.
00:08:46Those eight hours, that tutoring,
00:08:48that skill that I was able to learn
00:08:49from that one-on-one tutoring made me hundreds of millions.
00:08:53Not just hundreds of millions, literally.
00:08:56Now let's take the other example I had a little further.
00:08:59Let's say you invest that $2,000 in learning that skill.
00:09:03And that $2,000 takes you from a $30,000 year income
00:09:06to a $90,000 year income.
00:09:07And post taxes, at least in the US,
00:09:09that's about $75,000 a year,
00:09:11assuming you live on, let's say 2,500 bucks a month,
00:09:14because you're living lean.
00:09:15That's $35,000 per year, after taxes, after expenses,
00:09:20that you can invest on for the rest of your life.
00:09:23So that $2,000 one time gave you a permanent $35,000
00:09:28per year increase in investable income.
00:09:30That is how you get the absurd returns
00:09:33that can get you out of the cycle.
00:09:34And so put this in perspective, if you did nothing else,
00:09:37and you invested the $3,000 a month, roughly,
00:09:41that alone would get you to $31 million in 50 years.
00:09:44And that's with zero raises, zero new skills,
00:09:47and zero increase in opportunity.
00:09:49You literally just doing the exact same thing for 50 years.
00:09:51And so the idea here is like,
00:09:53you want to use compounding to your advantage.
00:09:55And the way to increase how much you can invest
00:09:57is to make more, spend less.
00:09:59And in the short term,
00:10:01where you will get the highest returns,
00:10:02actually over the long term where you get the highest returns
00:10:04and the short term, is in skills.
00:10:06But people are so afraid of investing money in skills.
00:10:08And I really want to dive into this
00:10:09because I truly want to help.
00:10:12So yes, you can absolutely achieve financial freedom.
00:10:16If you live under your means,
00:10:18you invest the difference into increasing your income.
00:10:20And then once you have the amount
00:10:21that you need to compound to your number,
00:10:23you can just let the compounding work.
00:10:25You'll realize quickly that you get higher return
00:10:27on learning skills than anything else.
00:10:29So then you put as much as you possibly can into it.
00:10:33And so for many of you haven't had that reinforcing cycle,
00:10:36that one time where you spent money
00:10:37and you made more money back.
00:10:38I was very fortunate that the first thing
00:10:40I ever spent money on, I made more back.
00:10:41And so I got very addicted to buying money,
00:10:44basically trading money for skills
00:10:45that I would immediately be able to make more money
00:10:46and increase my income.
00:10:47'Cause it does, don't get me wrong.
00:10:49I mean, a lot of places it's successful.
00:10:51It's still a cheaper alternative
00:10:53to learning realistic real-world skills
00:10:55than like higher education.
00:10:57So if you were to spend a hundred thousand dollars
00:11:00on courses in coaching, for example, or tutoring,
00:11:04which is how I prefer to do it, by the way,
00:11:05after doing some research as in like look online,
00:11:08like make sure people have good reputations,
00:11:10make sure they have testimonials of people like you.
00:11:12And they have many, many of them,
00:11:13they don't promise too much, right?
00:11:15I'm convinced that your life would change
00:11:16far more than a hundred thousand dollars of higher education.
00:11:19And I do think you can learn a lot of stuff your own
00:11:20to be very clear when I was coming up.
00:11:23But the thing is like,
00:11:24this is me trying to provide whatever value I can
00:11:26in terms of like my path.
00:11:27Is that I was just always willing to pay for speed, right?
00:11:30Speed and the time value of money is something
00:11:32that I think people just wildly underestimate, right?
00:11:34Like if you can increase your income
00:11:36for like you get your five-year increase in income
00:11:38in one year, the difference is the value of that learning.
00:11:42And I just, I don't know why people don't get this.
00:11:44I think Charlie Munger and Warr Buffett had a little moment
00:11:47where he was like, if people weren't wrong so much,
00:11:49we wouldn't be so rich.
00:11:50And I think, so I'm trying to like,
00:11:52I've never really understood it.
00:11:54And so maybe you guys can help me understand it.
00:11:57I think the big reason is that people are afraid
00:11:59of spending money and not getting anything back.
00:12:00I think that's the big fear.
00:12:01I think another part of it is ego saying,
00:12:04I don't need anyone's help.
00:12:05I can figure it out on my own.
00:12:06And here's the reality.
00:12:07It's like, you can figure it out on your own.
00:12:10The question is whether you want to figure it out
00:12:12in the amount of time it would take to figure out.
00:12:13Like I'd rather just have somebody already derived calculus
00:12:16to just teach me how to do it, right?
00:12:18And the thing is, is that with good feedback,
00:12:20you can get your goal significantly faster.
00:12:22You will always lose until you learn.
00:12:25Then you win.
00:12:27That's how winning works.
00:12:28But you have to be willing to lose in order to win.
00:12:31And so I have a relatively extreme stance on this,
00:12:33which is that I will spend,
00:12:35when I was coming up, I lived on basically nothing.
00:12:38And I spent all of my money.
00:12:41And it essentially meant like I almost had no savings
00:12:44for like years and years and years,
00:12:45because all my excess cash, I just gave to people.
00:12:48And for sure, I had people who were like,
00:12:50that wasn't worth it, that wasn't worth it.
00:12:52But I tend to always come from the perspective of like,
00:12:55how can this make me better?
00:12:56How can I get an ROI on this, to like do the opposite of that?
00:13:01And so this is like, you will make mistakes
00:13:03and you will buy things that don't immediately work.
00:13:06But I think of skill acquisition like a bridge.
00:13:11So let's say that you're on this side and you're sad,
00:13:16because that's how bridges work.
00:13:18You're always sad on one side.
00:13:19And then on this side, you have dollar signs fries,
00:13:22which means you're happy,
00:13:23because money brings happiness, obviously.
00:13:25All right, and so here you're sad,
00:13:27maybe we'll cross your arms 'cause you're super sad, right?
00:13:30Most people will look at this bridge and say,
00:13:32well, I bought this one
00:13:35and I know how to do this one already and this one.
00:13:38Why can't I get across?
00:13:41It's 'cause you got missing links.
00:13:42And so let's say you buy something else
00:13:45and you get some tutoring and then it adds this brick.
00:13:48Was it a waste of money?
00:13:50Well, you still can't get across.
00:13:51It's a waste of money, no.
00:13:53Just like your arithmetic teacher wasn't a waste of time
00:13:57before you learned calculus or before you learned algebra,
00:14:00you need one in order to get there.
00:14:01You need their stepping stones.
00:14:03And so what happens is,
00:14:04is that you get this other one from the sixth thing you buy
00:14:07and then the seventh and then the eighth and then the ninth.
00:14:09And then what happens is you say,
00:14:10oh, this guy who taught me this ninth thing,
00:14:13that guy is the truth.
00:14:15But the reality is that the reason
00:14:16that some people get outcomes and some people don't
00:14:19by going through the same thing
00:14:20is the skill gaps that exist in someone's skillset
00:14:24are what create different outcomes with the same education.
00:14:29And so the problem with an inexperienced teacher,
00:14:32and this is very common in the alternative education world,
00:14:34is that they will accept money no matter what.
00:14:37But if I were to teach you Spanish six
00:14:39and I'm very good at Spanish,
00:14:41but you've never taken Spanish one through five,
00:14:43am I a bad Spanish teacher
00:14:44or are you just not good at Spanish one through five?
00:14:47What should have happened is I should have said
00:14:48to buy Spanish six,
00:14:50you gotta go through Spanish one through five.
00:14:52But the thing is,
00:14:53is many of these alternative education businesses
00:14:55only know Spanish six.
00:14:56They don't even know how to teach Spanish one through five
00:14:58or they never had before and never thought about it
00:15:00because they get one out of five people get a result.
00:15:02So they say, this is good enough.
00:15:04Everyone else didn't try.
00:15:05And to be clear, there's definitely people who don't try.
00:15:06I don't wanna say that's not true for sure.
00:15:08But there are also people who do try,
00:15:10but just didn't have the missing links.
00:15:11And so part of the process
00:15:13of going through the alternative education world
00:15:15is having the perspective of a collector of skills.
00:15:18And as long as I see myself as the asset,
00:15:20I'm always going up.
00:15:21And once I have all the pieces together,
00:15:23guess what follows?
00:15:25The dollars start walking across the bridge
00:15:29and they keep going into your pocket.
00:15:31There's your pocket, there you go.
00:15:33And so to me, this is what I mean when I say like,
00:15:36invest your money into income earning skills.
00:15:39If you can trade the skill for money and you can learn it,
00:15:43can you imagine something that's more valuable?
00:15:46We just did the math on getting $3,000 a month extra
00:15:48from one skill.
00:15:49Imagine adding 10 skills.
00:15:51Imagine that sales guy says,
00:15:52you know what that $3,000 a month extra,
00:15:53instead of saying, I'm gonna invest that three,
00:15:55I'm gonna spend six my next two months of it,
00:15:58and I'm gonna spend it on learning how to run ads.
00:16:00And you know what?
00:16:01And so I'm gonna spend another two months
00:16:02on learning how to do that.
00:16:05I just always saw the money that was left over every month
00:16:07as like, what skills at the store do I need to go buy?
00:16:11And then I would just go buy them.
00:16:13But one of the big unlocks that I had in my career
00:16:15was that I went to an event and there was a guy who was there
00:16:18the event was for everybody who was doing over eight figures
00:16:21is what it was for.
00:16:22So everybody's 10 million and up.
00:16:24And at the time, Layla and I had just started making money.
00:16:27I'm talking like within the last 12 weeks
00:16:29and everything just started taking off, right?
00:16:31I finally got the last piece of the connect.
00:16:33And so we were doing three or $400,000 a month.
00:16:36I can't remember, but it was almost all takeout
00:16:37'cause it was just me, Layla,
00:16:39and I had one assistant over at Kitchen Table.
00:16:40Like that was the business.
00:16:41And we just got married.
00:16:42I was like living large.
00:16:43And when I said living large, like I spent no money
00:16:45but I just felt not poor anymore, which was great.
00:16:48So it was like, go to this thing.
00:16:50I was like, I don't even know if I should be here.
00:16:52I'm definitely not making that.
00:16:52They're like, oh no, you're going to be way past that.
00:16:54And I was like, I'm glad one of us believes that.
00:16:57I was just trying to ride this rocket with both hands.
00:17:00And so anyways, everyone goes through their presentation
00:17:04and the first guy who got up,
00:17:06'cause I remember he was like busy.
00:17:08And so he like, I can't, he either want to go first or last,
00:17:10doesn't matter.
00:17:12And he gets up there and he starts by saying like,
00:17:14so we did $35 million in revenue last year.
00:17:16And I was like, what?
00:17:20$35 million?
00:17:22Like, I was like, one is dope.
00:17:25I was three months into making, pacing higher than that.
00:17:29But I never actually like really had it happen,
00:17:30at least from an income perspective.
00:17:32He gets up there.
00:17:33And after he gives this whole presentation,
00:17:35he was in the e-commerce world.
00:17:36Someone asked him, so where you're at now,
00:17:38like what are you doing to invest in your education?
00:17:40Like, what are you doing to invest in learning?
00:17:42And he said, I made a decision a long time ago
00:17:43that I would have a learning budget.
00:17:45And so every month, whatever percentage
00:17:47you're comfortable with, he's like, you know,
00:17:48maybe it's 1%, maybe it's 5%, maybe it's 10% of my income.
00:17:51He said, I forced myself to spend it.
00:17:53And I spend it in a way that's testing something
00:17:56that I think is cool.
00:17:57And so that might mean like,
00:17:58he's like, I'll test a new ad strategy,
00:17:59knowing that it probably won't work,
00:18:01but I'm willing to lose that money
00:18:03to continue to experiment and stay ahead.
00:18:04What's crazy is that I went to that thing, I heard him.
00:18:08And then for me, I was like, okay, well,
00:18:10I'm going to go experiment with my income.
00:18:12And so remember, I wasn't spending much money
00:18:13and I had a lot of income.
00:18:15And so I took like, you know, 10%.
00:18:19So I think it was like 300,000 a month.
00:18:20So 10% would be 30,000.
00:18:21And so I was like, I'm going to increase our ad spend
00:18:23by a thousand dollars a day.
00:18:24And we were spending like 400 at the time.
00:18:27So I went from like 400 to like 1400 a day in ad spend.
00:18:30And that is when Jim Launch went from 300 to 480 to 780
00:18:36to a million, to 1.2, to 1.5, to 1.7 something,
00:18:40to 2 million, 2.2, that was months.
00:18:43Because as soon as I saw that happen,
00:18:45it was like, oh my God.
00:18:47And so part of me literally just being willing
00:18:49to lose the money, unlocked my ability to spend more money,
00:18:53which scaled the company.
00:18:54And so once I had that, obviously,
00:18:56a very reinforcing event for me,
00:18:58I was like, where else can I spend money like this?
00:19:00Like, where can I, can I buy access to a room?
00:19:03Can I pay for somebody's time on one?
00:19:05Can I go to the event?
00:19:06Like I did everything because every time I went, I made more.
00:19:09And that's what I want for you.
00:19:12That's really it.
00:19:13Is that like, you're going to need to make more money
00:19:14than you think.
00:19:15It's going to take longer than you think,
00:19:17but you can make it happen significantly faster
00:19:19if you learn skills that pay today.
00:19:22And I'm willing to pull cash from my future forward.
00:19:26And even though I know that thousand dollars
00:19:29is worth $13,000 in 50 years, I know that that $2,000,
00:19:32if it can make me an extra $2,000 a month,
00:19:34will be worth something like, well, just let's just say a lot
00:19:38out of a lot of zeros, a lot more than 13X in 50 years.
00:19:41I think people don't want to spend money on skills
00:19:43because there's lots of pain on both sides.
00:19:45So it's like, I have to, I know what I'm giving up.
00:19:47So I'm giving up money.
00:19:48I am giving a certain money away
00:19:53that I have immediate utility for,
00:19:54for the hope that after I give up even more time and effort
00:19:59and go through failure to learn this thing,
00:20:01I will have something that I'm not sure of
00:20:03will be better that I cannot define yet.
00:20:06So it's just a lot of uncertainty.
00:20:08And I will say this,
00:20:09that if you want to get in the entrepreneur game,
00:20:10like you just got to get comfortable with uncertainty
00:20:12because the game of entrepreneurship is risk and time.
00:20:16That is the game.
00:20:17So if you're like, where do I,
00:20:19where do I look to find these skills?
00:20:21All right, so I'm going to just give you places.
00:20:22So number one is like, let's just start with,
00:20:25let's go up the money ladder here.
00:20:29All right.
00:20:30So at your base level, what stuff's free and only costs time?
00:20:34This is where you've got school communities
00:20:37that are online that are free to join.
00:20:39You've got forums online that you can go look through
00:20:42where people are teaching each other stuff.
00:20:45You've got YouTube videos like this
00:20:47where plenty of people have done deep dives,
00:20:49masterclasses, et cetera.
00:20:50Like if you want to learn sales,
00:20:51like you can probably go through my sales,
00:20:53I think it's like eight hours or something like that
00:20:54of just all my sales trainings.
00:20:55You just go through it, it's free.
00:20:56You will get more help and you will move faster
00:21:00if you have someone who can give you feedback.
00:21:02My like effort plus feedback is the loop, right?
00:21:05Because if you have feedback only from the environment,
00:21:08you might take very little action because you're so unsure.
00:21:11But if you can take lots of action
00:21:13in an artificial environment and get feedback,
00:21:15you can go through a hundred loops
00:21:16rather than one a week you can do a hundred a day.
00:21:18And that's where you get so much better, so much faster.
00:21:20Like the reason that I got so good at sales
00:21:23was because I started selling
00:21:25in the early days of Facebook ads.
00:21:27And so I was doing 20 plus in-person consults per day.
00:21:30And I did that for years.
00:21:31And so that kind of exposure, that kind of feedback loop,
00:21:34like I got good.
00:21:36The first sales training I actually bought and purchased,
00:21:38I actually purchased for my team.
00:21:39'Cause I was like, I don't know how to teach this stuff.
00:21:40Right?
00:21:41And it took many years for me to get that.
00:21:42And then when I saw their teaching that I was like,
00:21:44oh, I can make a better version of this.
00:21:45And then that's what got me into learning,
00:21:46like basically learning how to teach.
00:21:49But that's the first year here.
00:21:50The next year is like, I would say like the,
00:21:53call it $10 to probably like $200 per month type programs.
00:22:00Again, school has stuff on this.
00:22:03Programs out there that are kind of like,
00:22:05they call them like low ticket communities.
00:22:07These are great 'cause like communities
00:22:09already aggregate a lot of the information for you.
00:22:12And so these are places to go.
00:22:13They usually have some education
00:22:15and some sort of feedback mechanism.
00:22:16And you might not be able to get individualized feedback,
00:22:18but you will be able to see people getting feedback
00:22:20from the same position as you.
00:22:21And you'll be able to extrapolate a lot of that information.
00:22:23The next is kind of like, I would say the next year
00:22:24is kind of in that call it 500 to call it $2,000,
00:22:29maybe $3,000.
00:22:31This is where you're going to like typically go through
00:22:33a DIY or DIY plus some sort of feedback, right?
00:22:38So this is kind of like your lower level coaching-ish
00:22:43type stuff that's there.
00:22:45This is the beginning of where things become
00:22:46a little bit more valuable.
00:22:47My preference, like when you get like at 5K and up,
00:22:52you know, 5K to call it, you know, 35K,
00:22:56this is where you're going to get the vast majority
00:22:57of your in-depth stuff.
00:22:59You're going to have some level of in-person
00:23:00that'll typically be included in something like this,
00:23:03where you actually like meet people.
00:23:05There's also going to be some sort of education
00:23:07plus feedback.
00:23:08And this is where, honestly,
00:23:11this is where I spent almost all of my money.
00:23:15And so I spent up the ladder
00:23:16because I wanted to get there faster.
00:23:17And so I think in some ways,
00:23:18my impatience decreased my action threshold enough
00:23:21that I was, I ended up being a high ticket buyer,
00:23:23even though I wasn't, I didn't have high ticket money.
00:23:25But this is kind of just an idea of,
00:23:28and like these sometimes also come with like,
00:23:30kind of like communities.
00:23:32And I think the big thing that really like,
00:23:35what helped me more than anything
00:23:37when I spent this kind of money,
00:23:38was getting around people who were way ahead of me.
00:23:41Like, I just have this fundamental belief
00:23:44and maybe I can give it to you that
00:23:45if another human can do something, I can do it.
00:23:48And so when I saw these people that was like,
00:23:49I don't think they work harder than me.
00:23:51I don't think they're like smarter than me from,
00:23:53I mean, sure, there's plenty of people smarter than me,
00:23:55but like, just like, it's not like they're doing,
00:23:56you know, advanced calculus here.
00:23:58Like, they might be smarter,
00:23:59but the work that is required that they're doing
00:24:01to make more money than me
00:24:02does not require superior intellect.
00:24:03And so in seeing them and like physically being like,
00:24:06these are real people.
00:24:08It took a lot of the magic away.
00:24:11And then I was like, okay, I just gotta learn more.
00:24:13Like, I gotta figure out what these guys are doing.
00:24:14And then me being around them and me,
00:24:16I made more money from these experiences
00:24:20by serving everyone else in the community
00:24:22and trying to basically treat all of them as my teachers.
00:24:25And so I'd pay my 30 grand or whatever it is to get in.
00:24:29And again, this takes time to get there,
00:24:30but I paid 30 grand to get in.
00:24:31And I would just say like, I'm good at sales.
00:24:33Let me review your sales scripts.
00:24:34Let me review your sales calls
00:24:35and I'll show you like our sales process that might help.
00:24:37And I would just do that to everybody.
00:24:39I would do four, five, six hours of work.
00:24:41And people were like, dude, this is way too much.
00:24:43Like, that's what I wanted the reaction to be.
00:24:44I want people to be like, dude, this is way too much.
00:24:45You didn't have to do that.
00:24:46And I'm like, of course I didn't have to do that,
00:24:48but I want to learn what you got.
00:24:50So like, the thing is, is I always knew
00:24:52that if I gave six hours, somebody might give me one.
00:24:56The thing is, is their one hour was still more valuable.
00:24:56I already know my stuff.
00:24:57So six hours to me is just like, okay, it's six hours,
00:24:59whatever, but if I get one hour of that guy's time
00:25:02and he can teach me one little thing that I could use,
00:25:04like I was just a collector.
00:25:05I was just a little golem of skills.
00:25:07I was like, ooh, this guy does affiliate marketing.
00:25:09I was like, I don't even know what that is.
00:25:10Let me go learn about that, right?
00:25:11And that was the way that I approached these things.
00:25:13And so most people are too cheap with their time,
00:25:15even though they're poor.
00:25:17And so it's like, you aren't making any money.
00:25:18I'm like, what else are you doing?
00:25:21Right?
00:25:22Like, what are you doing with your time?
00:25:23If you've got the time, give it to somebody else
00:25:25and they'll probably give you something back.
00:25:26And the thing is, is in that time they give you back,
00:25:28they're going to compress a year of learning
00:25:31into an hour or two, right?
00:25:33Like I had years and years of sales
00:25:35and I was able to dramatically improve someone's sales process
00:25:37'cause I could just apply that
00:25:39and they would get the benefit and it was free for them.
00:25:41So they loved it.
00:25:42But for me, when they took a year of AdSense training
00:25:44and say, hey, this is how I would apply it to your business,
00:25:46I was like, thank you, amazing.
00:25:50And then I could just skip, and I could ask those people,
00:25:52hey, of all the different programs that are out there,
00:25:54all the different courses, all the different,
00:25:55I was like, who's got the best stuff?
00:25:56And they're like, oh, well, this guy's thing's okay.
00:25:59This thing is a really good in-person event.
00:26:00And so they would already sift through the mess for me.
00:26:03And I would just take, I'd be like, great,
00:26:04I'm going to go to that guy and then I'll go learn that thing.
00:26:05And I think as long as you don't get disenfranchised
00:26:08with an early loss or like, hey, you buy something
00:26:11and it doesn't work out the way you hoped it would,
00:26:13like no one of these things will make you rich.
00:26:16But consistently choosing to invest in learning skills
00:26:19and giving first in those communities
00:26:20and getting as much out as you possibly can
00:26:23by giving more than everyone else
00:26:26is how I think you'll get what you want.
00:26:28My books are free on my podcast
00:26:29so you don't have to spend any money.
00:26:31But if you want hardbacks,
00:26:32because these are meant as reference copies,
00:26:34you can have all three of my hardbacks for free,
00:26:39because a lot of entrepreneurs at my book launch
00:26:40donated 3.6 million books.
00:26:43And so they donated these guys.
00:26:44I will match or double their donation of books
00:26:47to anybody who wants to learn.
00:26:48That's for all three books, right?
00:26:49So if you want that, that's my gift to you.
00:26:53So you can just go grab them while the supplies last
00:26:55if you feel like spending dollars.
00:26:56If you don't, it's fine, go watch the rest of my stuff.
00:26:59And the books are for free on my podcast
00:27:01so you don't have to like spend anything.
00:27:02And if you are a business owner and you're more like,
00:27:05I'm stuck, I'm stuck, what do I do next?
00:27:08Like that's the big skill deficiency.
00:27:10It's probably more complex than one thing
00:27:13or one like tiny tactic.
00:27:16It might be a strategic thing that we have to do.
00:27:18And so looking at our portfolio companies
00:27:20and the companies we advise,
00:27:20we basically broke it into 10 stages of scaling
00:27:23across eight different functions.
00:27:24You got product, marketing, sales, customer service,
00:27:26IT, recruiting, HR, and finance.
00:27:28And with each one of these levels,
00:27:29there's a clear problem and a clear way to solve it
00:27:33and what it needs to look like to graduate to the next level.
00:27:36And so our little system will take in your information
00:27:40and then basically match you to this
00:27:42and then give you the customized roadmap
00:27:44for your current level.
00:27:46This is free, this is a free gift.
00:27:48And if you want to have
00:27:49one of these kind of more in-person experiences,
00:27:51you're welcome to come out to our headquarters
00:27:53and book on the thank you page
00:27:54because we're really good at what we do.
00:27:56Just look at the reviews online and I wanna help.
00:27:59So that's that and rock and roll.