Transcript
00:00:00I just did an experiment two weeks ago where I posted a video from this very office just using
00:00:05my iPhone partially as a proof point to my own team of like we don't need all this other shit
00:00:09if the stuff's good people find interesting and valuable and if the stuff's not good we put as
00:00:15much polish as we want on it doesn't matter and so I would encourage you to think as little as
00:00:20possible about production and as much as possible the content that's inside of the thing that you're
00:00:23posting and when you do that you will probably do a lot better so with that being said we're
00:00:28gonna do Q's and A's and so let's ace some Q's or maybe I'll Q oh swap some swap my mic out let's
00:00:34swap mics out mic is swapped all right here we go what do we got senor we're gonna do we're gonna
00:00:43do Q's and A's can I put this right here yeah you can I'm gonna put this right here you gonna say
00:00:48how does Zavante? Zavante he's my my my guy who figured out how to do the live stream because I'm
00:00:52a boomer unk I think as far as he's older than I am now how old are you?
00:00:58Am I so dude I thought black of a crack that's what I was that's what I was thinking man
00:01:04I thought you had me I thought you were like in your 40s that's how you carry yourself yeah it's
00:01:07mature all right what do we got I operate a not safe for work video content business that has grown via
00:01:15organic content how can I build my company when I'm not allowed to post ads on normal platforms
00:01:21how can I hire in this type of business too without HR risks what was the first part I operate a not
00:01:30safe for work video content business that has grown okay so you operated not safe for work content
00:01:37business and the difficulty is that you can't post on platforms that type of content all right so
00:01:44believe it or not the solution here is you just build a personal brand that is called adjacent to
00:01:52not safe for work content so this would probably I think the technical term I just learned this is
00:01:55lewds not nudes so basically like content that is called provocative but doesn't show skin and there's
00:02:02tons of that type of content but at the end of the day what people want is they want a character that
00:02:06they find interesting and what I would encourage you to do is make content about that character if
00:02:12you're the head of social media for that thing that basically tells the depth of story honestly just
00:02:16like anything else right and so the fact actually in a lot of ways I think the not safe for work
00:02:22component so let me let me give you a different different example here so there's plenty of
00:02:29people who are you know famous actresses that they're you know like a nude from them would go crazy
00:02:34viral on the internet that's what TMZ and all these tabloids were kind of dedicated for right I was
00:02:38trying to catch them in the wrong moment or catch them on the beach whatever and so they have a
00:02:43huge amount of interest in not safe for work content right um without having to make not safe for work
00:02:49content and so it is a fundamental misconception that you need to make the type of thing uh to
00:02:54get the interest for the thing and so basically you just need to do the same thing any other
00:02:58influencer would do which is make content about the stuff you find interesting uh about you and be
00:03:02interesting and then as a result people be more interesting in you know not safe for work stuff
00:03:08yeah that was racy I had to like I was like how am I gonna answer this in a way that's not
00:03:12not provocative all right let's do uh let's do the next one at what point should individuals enjoy the
00:03:19fruits of their labor and live the life they work so hard to get to
00:03:29so what you ask is a personal question about risk which is at what point is it correct to consume the
00:03:37difficulty or the impossibility of answering that question definitively is because none of us know
00:03:40when we're going to die and so if you were going to die tomorrow you behave differently than if you're
00:03:44going to die in a week or if you're going to die in a year or you're going to die in 10 years right
00:03:48and since we do not know when we're going to die we plan differently because the the timeline that we
00:03:52have to work with um dramatically changes our behavior right um and so basically it's how much
00:04:01of that do you want to consume today versus tomorrow and i think to some degree it's how much of your life
00:04:06do you want on consumption versus investment like how much am i going to delay gratification in the
00:04:10future versus enjoying gratification today um and i do not think that there is a correct answer to that
00:04:15question because it is entirely a personal uh thing now me personally um i mean i think nirvana is you
00:04:23want to find a way to enjoy the game that you play that also builds something for the future and i think
00:04:30when you do that then you kind of you can in some way serve two masters all right let's uh let's do
00:04:37do another let's do another one do you feel like do you feel like private equity has been a force for
00:04:43good or a force for bad in regards to the life and spending power of the average american consumer
00:04:50all right this is a really really interesting question because i think you attempt to make a moral
00:04:55judgment on creation of profit and so to argue against private equity in my opinion is to argue against
00:05:03capitalism and so if you think that private equity is bad private equity is also just another term for
00:05:09private ownership and so do we think that private ownership has been overall good or overall bad
00:05:14well all we have to do is look at places that do not allow private ownership uh or capitalism and do
00:05:20we think that people have more good in those societies versus the ones that have more free markets and
00:05:23more capitalism and the argument for me is pretty stark black and white in terms of capitalism is
00:05:28better for people in general in terms of average living conditions that being said it does not mean
00:05:33that it is a perfect system it is an absolutely imperfect and flawed system and it is also the
00:05:38best one that we have right now and so i think what people struggle with is that they want to have a
00:05:42perfect world and because they do not have a perfect world want to damn the one that they're in
00:05:51these are some heaters these guys these are these are some great great preguntas let's that's spanish
00:05:56by the way for question all right let's go for the next one you always talk about learning before
00:06:02earning building skills and connections before focusing on money how do i know when i've learned enough
00:06:09and it's time to actually start earning so this is another question of delaying gratification um
00:06:18at what point do i have a sufficient amount to start now there's some people who started their
00:06:21first business and they're like i learned you know on starting my my business um
00:06:28i think it depends on the opportunity you're pursuing and also god it's a really good question um
00:06:34i think it depends on the goal so if you want to be a trillionaire i think learn like
00:06:46it's a really good question finding the right moment okay here we go i've better answer for you
00:06:52it's not about when it's about the conditions okay and so instead of thinking i think that i'm going to
00:06:57spend three years doing x y and z to learn uh and then at this point in three years i'm going to begin
00:07:02learning it's more what conditions would have to happen in my external or internal environment
00:07:08uh that would create the maximum likelihood of success of whatever my next endeavor i plan on
00:07:13uh pursuing is and so if i wanted to pursue a smaller endeavor the likelihood that i would be
00:07:18able to acquire those skills faster it goes up and the next question is to what degree are the
00:07:24skills that i'm learning going to transfer over to the opportunity that i'm trying to pursue
00:07:28meaning if i want to uh get into a small social media marketing agency that does lead gen for plumbers
00:07:34if i work at a small social media marketing agency that does lead gen for plumbers the likely that
00:07:38i'll be able to transfer the skills that i learned in that thing to whatever i want to do next super
00:07:42high if i want to then start a sas platform uh from there that doesn't serve agencies and doesn't serve
00:07:49plumbers uh and doesn't serve me as the customer the likely that you cross over those skills is lower
00:07:55and so i think the idea is that um i can't remember what vc firm does this but i really
00:07:59wholeheartedly believe in it which is that they only invest in founders that are the customer
00:08:03because i think there's something incredibly wise about trying to solve your own problems
00:08:07thank you so much oh there we go get the full yeah get the full doubt let's get the delts in there
00:08:12there we go maybe get some good lighting um and so tldr we want to make a list of what skills you
00:08:19think are going to be required to pursue the opportunity and we want to pursue those in an
00:08:23existing opportunity on someone else's pay where you get paid to learn and then once you feel like
00:08:28you've checked off an understanding of the component parts then you can start now do you need to do that
00:08:35no because the big flex here what's the fudge factor between what what if i have 80 knowledge
00:08:39and 20 that's not your figured out factor is going to be your ability to bridge that gap so you could
00:08:45conceivably if you have a really strong figure the out uh muscle start with zero and still figure the
00:08:50out the whole discussion here is how do we minimize risk and maximize likelihood of success
00:08:57that was a good one i didn't really think through that one that was a great question
00:09:01let's do it what are the best businesses to start you've seen with very little upfront capital
00:09:08and why okay so big picture if we think about what types of like when we think it's something
00:09:14businesses to start because i think it's very heavy just think what do i sell much easier all right
00:09:21so am i going to sell stuff physical products am i going to sell pens right am i going to sell software
00:09:27am i going to sell um which is bits right am i going to sell uh service like work of some kind
00:09:34and so if i know that these are the different kind of buckets of things that i can sell
00:09:38then the ones that don't cost money is typically going to be stuff cost money so we can't do that one
00:09:45if you need a physical location that costs money and so it's going to probably be you're going to
00:09:50acquire skills and either use those skills to create a digital product which is either media-based or
00:09:55software-based that does something which you can do that for free or basically free or you do you have
00:10:02a skill and you use that skill and sell that skill to other people who don't have that skill and so when
00:10:07we're thinking about who we target if you're selling either those conditions is that you want to sell
00:10:10to people who either don't know how to do the thing don't have time to do the thing or don't have the
00:10:14desire to do the thing and so those are the three components of who we want to serve and we want
00:10:19to serve the person who has the most amount of money who doesn't have the time knowledge or desire
00:10:23so that we can charge the most for what we do but either way there's tons of businesses that you can
00:10:28literally there's an infinite amount of businesses that you can start that cost no money to start
00:10:36i've heard you say that sales is one of the most important skills to learn how do you measure whether or
00:10:41not you've learned the skill of sales output baby very simple output can you get people to give you
00:10:48money that's it like have you gone to strangers and asked them to buy your thing if they bought
00:10:53your thing then you have learned how to sell if a higher percentage of people give you money after
00:10:57you ask them then you have learned how to sell better than you did before and so i think a lot
00:11:01of these questions ultimately like what's what i would encourage you to do and this is a more challenging
00:11:06skill set is can i boil down my question into math is there a way because oftentimes we discuss these
00:11:13amorphous things but we're really talking about probabilities we're talking about percentages
00:11:17probabilities how likely is it and when you talk in those terms then it's much easier to determine
00:11:21whether it's a good decision or not and so is my close rate of getting people to buy my thing low
00:11:27then i probably need to increase my skill set how do we increase our skill set find people who've done it
00:11:31well so you can see the behavior that is good modeled for you and then also role play aka practice doing
00:11:38the correct behavior the third element which i'd say if you have the ability to do it do it have
00:11:42somebody who understands the correct model and can give you feedback in real time on your own behavior
00:11:47which will then speed up the loop which is fundamentally why every sports team has coaches
00:11:50and trainers and all that kind of stuff good one though these are good y'all are y'all are heating
00:11:55up today you guys are cooking cooking with gas as the as the kids said all right what's the next one
00:12:01i'm a tech founder how would you go about finding ideas in the current economy if you do not have a
00:12:07product yet so really good question start with the customer don't start with the product figure out
00:12:15what someone wants and then go try and solve that and there's a number of different ways to solve
00:12:20it and um there's a great book by not by elon but about elon's process called the algorithm um i'm
00:12:25getting my whole team or i think most of my team already has read it it's a four-hour audiobook you
00:12:29can consume it in two hours so think about it's like a two-hour podcast but the the premise is very
00:12:33simple there's five steps i'm not going to break them down but what we what you want to do is think
00:12:39how do i solve this problem in the absolute most efficient manner possible and then do that entire
00:12:44process manually and then once you've done it manually over time you will be able to simplify and automate
00:12:49different steps of it so you can increase your margin and increase the effectiveness of the
00:12:52solution you have for a specific customer and sort of says like and this is why i think the question
00:12:56of like what business should i start go one level deeper which is what thing should i sell which one
00:13:00level deeper is what customer problem do i want to solve once you once you figure out the problem you
00:13:06want to solve then figuring out what product or way that you want to solve it is much easier
00:13:10and i'll give you one more kind of like filter for this the reason that so many of you have trouble
00:13:16figuring out what business to start is because you're trying to pick from infinity
00:13:19you need your mind needs constraints and so said differently if you've heard of the jam experiment
00:13:25so they had two different supermarkets they had 24 types of jam out and they had people they free
00:13:30samples and then they asked people to buy a jam and then they had a different table at a different
00:13:34supermarket that same supermarket that only had i think three jars or six jars of jam and the three or six
00:13:39jar of jam table the much lower amount sold far more jars of jam so why is that so it's the paradox of
00:13:46choice which is the more choices we have the more difficult it is to make a choice and the more
00:13:49likely we think that it is that we're going to regret the choice we made and we're also going to second
00:13:53guess the choice right we're going to think wait maybe i should have done something else right and so
00:13:58the reason that i think steve jobs started the first ipods as black and white is because he understood
00:14:02this basic psychology and i think they made mistakes by having all these different colors which i think over time
00:14:05they turned back down and so we we approached the problem of creating a business the same way which
00:14:12is if you had two businesses to pick from you'd be easy it'd be easy for you to pick one or the other
00:14:16and so with that you'd be like i'll walk you through the experiment look at two businesses doesn't matter
00:14:22what they are look around the room look around your wise you're driving here's two businesses which of
00:14:26those two businesses would you rather do once you answer the question because you'll be able to pick that
00:14:30pretty easily the next question is why and so once you have the why then that starts to give
00:14:35you your own preferences of what you're really looking for do you want in person do you want
00:14:38remote do you want a digital business do you want a service business do you want uh your physical
00:14:42products uh do you want to work five days a week do you want to work seven days a week do you want
00:14:46to work two days a week do you want to work only in the mornings uh do you want to have a big team
00:14:49do you want a small team do you want like there are a lot of questions that you'd be able to answer
00:14:52um that if you answer that then very quickly you just narrow down the universe and so all of a sudden at the
00:14:57very end you might have two or three options to pick from rather than infinite and then you'll actually
00:15:01be able to make a choice and you'll feel confident about the choice because you understood the filters that you put
00:15:05in line in order to make the decision so hopefully that helps unconstrained thinking very hard to do
00:15:11let's do another another another hey alex 22 from kazakhstan for two years i've relied on anger
00:15:20energy drinks sugar and heavy metal to stay productive it got results it's hurting my health
00:15:27how do i build natural discipline well all right i'm like all right let's let's cool the jets here
00:15:34for a moment like you drinking energy drinks okay so you're drinking calorie free energy drinks that
00:15:40have caffeine so basically you're drinking caffeine all right well as long as it doesn't interfere with
00:15:44your sleep and you do it before you know nine or noon you're probably okay there i think uh you
00:15:48said nicotine nicotine there's people kind of split on i'm a big nicotine user i'm not saying you should
00:15:53um but there's a bunch of benefits that people have had i started using before it was cool
00:15:57um on top of that uh i think it helps with my add uh beyond that uh i think you just have to look at
00:16:04like your health stuff as in like you need to sleep well and if you sleep well then that's going to be
00:16:11like the 80 20 like sleep well work out don't eat crap if you use some stimulants in order to be
00:16:17stimulated and it doesn't interfere with your sleep or other components at work i think you're all right
00:16:22man i think a lot of it is just judging like somehow you have labeled your current activity as bad
00:16:27and i would kind of say like according to whom like what like what are we defining healthy as like if
00:16:34you can define healthy then you can define a level of work that does not interfere with that definition
00:16:41and there's plenty of people that i know that work incredibly hard that are also extremely healthy
00:16:45brian johnson for example the healthiest man alive he works all the time but he's incredibly healthy
00:16:53now some people say well i don't want his lifestyle fine but he has dedicated his lifestyle to health and
00:16:57so like i think a lot of it is like i actually don't even know i think you were just judging yourself for
00:17:03doing something and say why why can't i do it when it is harder i think you've aligned your conditions
00:17:08to increase the likelihood that you take the action that is desired and that is a good thing so do more
00:17:13of that as long as it doesn't interfere with other goals you have another question i'm a wedding
00:17:21photographer bad at delegating photo editing tried before hated results redid almost all how can i
00:17:29learn to trust the people i hire such as editors okay so first let's just define trust so trust is
00:17:37basically a history of a positive reinforcement with a person so for example and we started this this whole
00:17:43thing with that if you got something and then did a good job with it i would trust you more than if
00:17:48somebody hasn't gotten anything or got something and a bad thing happened right and so if what you're
00:17:53asking for is how do i trust someone which is how do i give them the opportunity to earn my trust
00:17:58meaning how do i give them the opportunity to do a good thing so we want to maximize the likelihood of
00:18:02success and so in it's most likely that you've been giving people tasks with a very small likelihood of
00:18:08success because you haven't give maximize the conditions around them so that they can win so that you
00:18:12could feel good about yourself so that you could say that somehow only you can do it because you are a
00:18:17special snowflake but i promise you you are not a special snowflake because you learned everything
00:18:21you learned as a human which means other people can learn it too and if you are good at teaching
00:18:24you can teach them that skill as well and you can maximize the environment around them uh to increase
00:18:29the likelihood that they're also going to be successful too and so this means that you need to train better
00:18:33and you need to train more robustly and likely you are not you are explaining and not giving them trial
00:18:39attempts meaning you need to say if this then that so do this thing and then have this outcome happen and
00:18:46then giving them feedback in real time if you give feedback to people enough times they will understand
00:18:51how to do it and then you will trust them more because you have evidence that they can do it
00:18:55and so i think what if i were to translate what you asked into what i think actually is happening is
00:19:01how do i get people to do exactly what i want without giving them any instructions and the answer there is
00:19:07you don't you're asking them to guess and then someone get it right i think that was the issue hope that
00:19:13helped another do you feel like private equity has been
00:19:21you often discuss how our actions come from our environments but you also discuss the value of
00:19:27reframes how do you decide when to use reframes versus environmental factors to influence your
00:19:33behavior why not do both like i want to win i don't really care whether it's because i have magic
00:19:43crystals in my pocket or i'm in synchronicity with the universe or because of vibrating at a higher
00:19:48frequency or because i removed everything in the room and only had a keyboard and a screen which made
00:19:52working the keyboard and the screen the most likely action that i had and so at the end of the day
00:19:56like why do we care i think you should just do whatever maximizes the likelihood of success i don't
00:20:03really pick at all i think some things are more emotive meaning more emotional and i think in those
00:20:08situations i think reframes tend to be easier to employ uh basically it's like a reframe can help you once
00:20:14you have you have an emotional outburst that's internal uh whereas i would think about environment
00:20:20more as how can i change the likelihood of me taking an action so if i've already tripwired i'm a little
00:20:24angry a little frustrated or something it's like how can i reframe this versus how do i make sure
00:20:28that i show up every day at the gym different but using both hey alex i've had a web design agency for
00:20:37five years but ai websites are killing my business should i do another business this is so interesting
00:20:44i had a guy who came out here and asked this exact same question and he said that he had a fear that
00:20:51ai companies were going to destroy his business and yet when i asked him how much are you using ai
00:20:56building your websites the answer was we're not and so the thing is there's always a bell curve in terms
00:21:02of adoption and if you are losing sales because of people using ai to build their sites then that is
00:21:08one thing but i think there's a more likely scenario which is that you just don't know how to get
00:21:12customers and you're blaming ai for it but there's plenty of people plenty of people with money that
00:21:18don't know how to use ai which has only increased your leverage in terms of your ability to create really
00:21:23valuable stuff for not a lot of time which i think means that you actually there's still in some
00:21:29ways there's more opportunity now than there was before if your real name contains sounds that most
00:21:38english speakers can't pronounce correctly would you keep your real name for your personal brand or adopt
00:21:43an easier name why i think it's up to you i think it's a good question uh i met a guy literally yesterday
00:21:50who did this exact thing he's a it was an indian guy who had a really long hard indian last name and then
00:21:54he just changed his last name legally to the the nature of the work that he did so imagine it was like
00:21:59alex carpenter wait a second alex smith alex wait a second people used to do this they used to change
00:22:09their name to what they actually did for a living alex gardner no yeah this is the oldest time so if you
00:22:17want to change your name to something that you think is more associated with the brand that you want to
00:22:20have people have done it for hundreds of years um and if you want to keep your own name because you're
00:22:24like this is really special to me then do it like i it's your name it's whatever you feel cool with
00:22:28i don't think there's i don't think there's a right answer there at all
00:22:33that was an interesting one history lesson that was fun
00:22:37oh let's uh let's cook shall we shall we cook some more with some more gas another i know you say
00:22:44don't switch businesses every time it gets hard but how do you know if you're just hitting a wall
00:22:49you need to push through or if the business itself is just not going to work out all right if another
00:22:56business of the same kind exists and is much bigger and more successful than yours then you simply do
00:23:02not have the skills yet yet to make it work it does not mean that this business is impossible
00:23:09or can't be done the only time this is a small minority of circumstances where something where
00:23:15it makes sense to push sorry pivot like change the nature of the business is where something has never
00:23:21been done before and you're trying to be the first one to do it and you don't know if people actually
00:23:25want the thing but if you're like hey i have a dry cleaning store and should i push or should i pivot
00:23:30well dude if you want to do dry cleaning there's plenty of successful dry cleaners you want to do
00:23:33longer there's plenty of successful longer you do hvac tons of successful hvac you want to do
00:23:37you know garage doors there's tons of success garage door people and so like i will almost always first
00:23:42look around and say is there anybody who's doing a version of this business that's doing well
00:23:46if the answer is yes then what are they doing that i'm not doing and then i just try and
00:23:50reconcile the differences between their actions and mine and so my first step is always to replicate
00:23:55before i iterate now to be clear if you want to create a one of zero company that's never been
00:24:00done before then you also incur the risk of you might not have product market fit which is that we
00:24:04don't know if people actually want this thing but if you're going into a market that already exists
00:24:08and saying like hey i want to help people lose weight if that market exists right and you're
00:24:12like i want to do it in a different way i want to do it online with coaching okay well yeah that
00:24:15exists i want to do with supplements that exists i want to do with peptides that exists i want to do
00:24:18with you know med spot or cool sculpting like there's a hundred if i want to do with ashwaganda group
00:24:22i don't really care there's a zillion ways that you can do it and are already proven and so i
00:24:27would say for 99 of you guys it is just you do need to push more and the pushing part is the is is
00:24:36is doing the repetitions with a feedback loop so that you iterate your way to success and so the key
00:24:43is not to do a thousand of the same thing is to do a thousand iterations so that by the time you do your
00:24:49thousandth iteration it is now good you suck in the beginning and you want to suck less over time not do a
00:24:55shitty thing a hundred times in a row and say why didn't it work
00:25:00have for someone who stutters what's happening there you guys try to try to try to try to double
00:25:08time me i see that by the way we're experimenting something new because we thought it'd be more
00:25:11engaging rather than me just squinting at the screen trying to read these uh the comments uh fast
00:25:16enough my team's pulling out the great questions um and then just having them read uh with ai kind of
00:25:22cool all right shoot hi what advice do you have for someone who stutters but wants to start a business
00:25:28because it's hard to talk to people and close sales really interesting um well a couple different
00:25:36scenarios here so one is there's plenty of businesses that don't require a talking person to make money
00:25:42so there's e-commerce there's digital businesses all those things you can do uh without being the person
00:25:47who's actually you know doing the selling option one option two you can hire somebody who can do the
00:25:51sales for you um option three is you can practice to try and get rid of the stutter um i'm not saying
00:25:57you know possible i'm i'm a stage five stutter i don't know that how it works um but it is not an
00:26:04impossibility um if what you're asking for is permission to keep trying because it is hard
00:26:10then think about how amazing the story will be when you actually succeed and then you would
00:26:14just say like dude i was able to make i was able to sell people with a stutter so if you think if
00:26:17you think like you're worried like i couldn't even get the s's out right and so uh and maybe don't sell
00:26:22stuff that begins with us pro tip your content is so valuable to watch how would i go about finding
00:26:31a mentor to help me on my path well i think we can delineate a couple things so first is there are
00:26:40people who give you information so think about the sources of truth or sources of information all that
00:26:45stuff's readily available on the internet for free i think what you're asking for is someone who can give
00:26:49you feedback right so someone who can train you in some way either one-to-many or one-on-one
00:26:53um that basically you can take an action and they can say change this try it again um and there's a
00:26:59lot of different ways you can do that you can hire vendors for that you can hire what i mean a vendor
00:27:02or mentor whatever you want to call it uh there's coaches for that there's sales coaches there's you
00:27:06know insurance sales coaches there's like i'm a big advocate of getting training like i'm an advocate
00:27:13of trying to hire an expert who is good at the thing to give me feedback so that i can shorten my curve
00:27:17to get to where i want to go um and i think there's like there's a couple perspectives on this which is
00:27:23that people i think some people with egos hate the idea that they want to pay for help i think that's
00:27:29silly um but that's up to you uh i don't want to have to figure everything out i would happily take
00:27:34the answers from someone else like this is not school you can pay someone for the answers to
00:27:37the test and then just take the test and ace it and so i like that um the other perspective
00:27:44is that sometimes you pay someone and you didn't get what you wanted out of it and there's probably
00:27:48three core problems that could have happened from that so number one is they promised something that
00:27:51was too big right that's on them uh the second is that you did not do the work right so that's on you
00:27:57um or you had unrealistic expectations that were independent of their promises and so in either of
00:28:05those scenarios you're going to be dissatisfied and so i would say that when i pay anyone for help
00:28:10i always make it my objective to make sure that it is not my fault and so i do that by promising the
00:28:17person and i say it is like i will be your best student that because there there is no way like
00:28:22i will follow this to the t and i will do more just in case because i want to rule out any possibility
00:28:28of failure on me and i will expect nothing and so when you when you approach education that way
00:28:35the likelihood of success is really high and i would say that i've been probably the number one student
00:28:39in anything that i've paid for which is a pretty bold claim but i think it's true um
00:28:47and the approach that i've had is just absolute violence um is that i will i will be religious in
00:28:54my adherence to the steps that they outline and i think what makes one person successful in a program
00:29:02compared to another person is the other skills that they have that the person who selected did not
00:29:08qualify so what does that mean so let's imagine that um to start a program of any kind you need to
00:29:14know how to read and you need to know how to write well if you've never read before you might get accepted
00:29:20into a program but then reading is a requisite which means the likelihood that you succeed is low but
00:29:24they didn't include it because they thought it was implied now there are skills that are like reading
00:29:28and writing that are more nuanced that people who teach and are not as competent at teaching do not
00:29:34know how to select for and so in so doing they sell people and sometimes people win and sometimes they
00:29:39don't now over time and i've heard this story a hundred times and so have you which is i bought four
00:29:44courses and then on the fifth course i made all this money but the thing is is that each of the other
00:29:47courses still gave you skills you just didn't have all of the skills to create the outcome
00:29:52and so let's say there's 20 skills the first one taught you four the next one touched four next one
00:29:55touched four and the last one taught you the last you know four that you needed and all of a sudden
00:29:58you made a dollar so you attribute all of your success to the guy who gets you the outcome but each of
00:30:02the other things that you that you went through still contributed to it it just wasn't enough to get
00:30:07you off across the finish line and so this is why i i have a tremendous respect for teaching in general
00:30:12because i understand the difficulty of getting someone across the line um but i also think that there's just as much
00:30:16responsibility on the students sake of like how bad do you want it and do you just want to have an excuse
00:30:20to prove that that you're right woe is you the universe is out to get you no there's no way to be
00:30:27successful like sometimes people set up games where if they win the prize they lose and i would encourage
00:30:33you to not play those games
00:30:38heating up we're getting spicy today spicy tuesday taco tuesdays is it taco tuesdays we should start
00:30:45doing taco taquito well taquito too you know i haven't done any spanish today i'm gonna get a little
00:30:49spanish let's do uh uh that's other question please another hi alex my name is everest i'm 26 and i've
00:31:05been running a tutoring studio for the last year but i'm stuck getting into dollar per hour battles
00:31:11how would you craft a non dollar per hour offer for this niche i'm gonna smoke this sell to gold
00:31:17sell to gold all right so i will say this until i die sell to gold said differently if i have a lady
00:31:24who's in front of me and she wants to lose weight i'm like you're 180 you want to be 150 you want to
00:31:28sell you want to lose 30 pounds i think it's going to take us 30 weeks and so our weeks are whatever
00:31:34100 bucks a week times 30 three thousand dollars so side here you get you lose your 30 pounds and if you
00:31:39don't i'll keep working with you until you do bingo bingo now in this instance in a tutoring situation
00:31:45right well what if they don't do the homework well then why don't we make a contingent on them doing
00:31:49the homework uh what if they don't x right and so here's the thing if you sell to gold think about
00:31:55what are the requirements or what amount of volume or what amount of actions would be required that would
00:31:59make it unreasonable for this person not be successful so said differently when i was trying to ace the
00:32:05gmat which is the kind of like the sat for for uh business school um i found this study when i was
00:32:12trying to figure out the most effective study habits for for doing the gmat and had this big
00:32:16meta-analysis that basically just proved of all the different study methods there was a direct one
00:32:21to one correlation with the number of problems solved and your score and as soon as i saw that i was like
00:32:26done i'll just do all the problems in every book and that's what i did and i aced it and i got above
00:32:32harvard's gmat score and so and to be clear i didn't start there i had i gained like 200 200 points
00:32:37or whatever on my on my gmat score just by i saw that one graph and what's interesting is that there
00:32:42are so many because there was this lie that we were told which is that like it's it's it's a measure
00:32:46of intelligence it is not a measure of intelligence it's a test is a measure of your ability to take a test
00:32:51which is a skill like anything else and so you should learn how to take tests if you're going
00:32:56to be measured generically on your test taking ability duh so back to the tutor if we know that
00:33:04we want someone to get an a and let's say you're they're at a b level or a c level we say what activity
00:33:09would be required in order for them to get that and then you sell to gold now the person is going to
00:33:13say wait a second you're going to charge me five times more than somebody else will i'm like right
00:33:17what they're going to do is they're going to say i'm going to spend an hour a week with your kid
00:33:21and then i'm going to give them homework which they're not going to do and then in 12 weeks
00:33:24or 12 hours right of 100 bucks an hour uh you're going to be dissatisfied if you work with me we're
00:33:29going to do way more work with your kid but i'm going to force feed the success through them and i
00:33:35will drag their ass across the finish line because they they will have no choice but to succeed unless
00:33:40they literally get to the test and then choose not to win but they will do the problems in front of me
00:33:46and if it takes a smart kid 100 problems and a dumb kid 300 problems to learn because rate of learning
00:33:51intelligence we just got to do more and so there is a certain volume of work that will make it
00:33:57unreasonable and so here's what gets more interesting we can select how much work someone
00:34:01we think is going to have to do based on their initial assessment that's why we do assessments
00:34:05so if the girl who wants to lose weight is 175 pounds and wants to get to 170 there's less work
00:34:11to do if they want to get from 175 pounds to 130 there's more work to do if you've got a 200 gmat
00:34:16and you want to get to a 700 a lot of work to do if you're at a 650 you want to get 700 a lot less
00:34:21work to do and so we have to gauge the gap between where they are and what they want and then how much
00:34:26work would it take for it to be unreasonable for them not to do it and then we sell to go period
00:34:32and you make the the work conditional on the guarantee bingo bingo all right let's do it next ademas otro
00:34:42i run my parents business but own zero percent i want to scale it but don't want to build something
00:34:47i don't own how would you approach getting equity ask bro like how do you think you're
00:34:54going to start a business of your own if you can't ask people right just ask them say hey uh
00:35:01like one of my my biggest frame for having hard conversations is tell the complete truth so the
00:35:06same way you're asking this question to me ask that to your parents hey i really want to scale this
00:35:11business but i don't want to scale a business that i don't own no equity in how do you think
00:35:15or my favorite question what would it take for me to eventually own half or me to eventually own 100
00:35:21and now you can have a conversation and then they will name a price meaning what it would take
00:35:26and then you get to determine because what it takes assumes success it assumes accomplishment of
00:35:31whatever you want and then reverse engineers a price tag which then you can choose to say is this
00:35:35reasonable for me or not if they come back and say well we've always wanted you to own the business
00:35:39and i think that if you work in it for the next 10 years we'll give you uh you know 10 a year
00:35:42for the next 10 years then you're like either that price is worth it to you or not now you might say
00:35:47well and you have to make that calculus for yourself do i think in that same 10 years i could build a
00:35:50business of greater capacity um without having to get their permission to do all the things that i want
00:35:55to do if that's true then prove it and if it's not true then don't complain but either way they
00:36:00will stay at a price and then you will pick whether you want to what you want to make the better
00:36:03but just state the facts tell the truth and say that to them like i'm telling you the best thing
00:36:08to do is ask the hard real question that you would ask me to them i've got this employee who's been
00:36:13showing up late and they're you know they're taking all these coffee breaks and i don't know if they're
00:36:17doing anything say that to them hey you've been showing up late and you've been taking all these
00:36:22coffee breaks and i don't know if you're doing anything help me help me understand what you're
00:36:27doing so that i don't have to ask these thoughts just say what you're going to say when you talk
00:36:31behind someone's back tell them just remove the insults just state the facts we're cooking today
00:36:39i'm feeling it oh it's a heater all right we got a heater coming mr moza if i know we're just apes
00:36:46on a small floating rock in the middle of the universe and nothing really matters are morals good and bad
00:36:53even real i mean i think you asked a philosophical question obviously um i think that if you believe
00:37:01that there is nothing then you would make the argument that there are no morals from an objective
00:37:05capital m perspective now there are absolutely rules of behaving in in society that will increase
00:37:10the likelihood of reward and punishment as you live as a human being and so as much as we can say and this
00:37:16is why i think there's there's low utility in the question it's one of these things where like
00:37:21introspection is a modern invention right like if you look at you know way long ago right like there
00:37:28weren't therapists until like 100 years ago and so we we struggle with these types of questions because
00:37:33we have too much time we don't have to worry about food we don't have to worry about shelter and so we
00:37:37we plague our minds with things that that don't really matter and so even though we might make the
00:37:41argument that none of it matters neither does the question and so then the question is what like
00:37:47what is the relative utility that i'm going to get from answering this and so unless it changes something
00:37:51about your behavior in a meaningful way then it's really not worth wasting the revolutions on and
00:37:56so i think there is a a real there's a there's a real case for productive questions it does the
00:38:03answer to this question is it going to change my life in some way and so for many of you because
00:38:07some of you guys are forget my french ask holes uh you ask questions and then there's always more
00:38:14questions right and you you you get the answer but then it changes nothing about your behavior which
00:38:19actually means that you ask questions as a form of procrastination and use the answers as a form of
00:38:24entertainment but real and so we should only ask questions where the answers will change our behavior
00:38:34and so for you know the individual who asked this question um are you realistically going to go because
00:38:40people people straw man this and say well if there's no good and evil then i'm going to go around you
00:38:45know mogging the streets and lighting things on fire it's like yeah and you will be stopped in short
00:38:49order with men with guns and they will win and so it will be short-lived and is that really worth it
00:38:55probably not and so what do we what are we asking about will it change anything for you probably not
00:39:02because you're probably not gonna take this question do anything with it um and so for those types of
00:39:05questions i kind of just keep living my life and move on hope that helped
00:39:12all right let's just begin cooking with more guys hey alex i need your advice desperately
00:39:1918. medical school don't feel like i belong here magnetized towards entrepreneurship
00:39:27okay then leave dude i thought there was a question coming leave leave so i'll ask the question that
00:39:34you're not really asking which is you're afraid of leaving because someone who's not you will make
00:39:39you feel bad for it because if it were only up to you then you would leave so it means that there are
00:39:44other people's rewards or punishments that are basically acting as tipping the scale on your
00:39:50behavior and so my way of d when i have something that i want and i am not doing it i ask myself
00:39:57who is influencing my behavior in a way that's aversive to my goals and so what's really interesting is
00:40:02that when you feel like you're you feel this tension where you're like hi this can have conflicting
00:40:05priorities right it's very normal right i want to be really healthy i also want to be a great dad i also
00:40:10want to be a great spouse i also be good for a community i also be good for the environment i also
00:40:14want to work on my personal growth right like and i have to do all of that in in 12 hours right or
00:40:20whatever however you're awake well they're conflicting priorities i want to do right by me i want to do
00:40:27right by my siblings i want to drive on my parents i'm gonna be right by my friends and they want different
00:40:31things and so at some point you have to decide a priority of reinforcers meaning you might decide that your
00:40:38family means more to you than your business and that is okay and you might decide that what you think
00:40:43about you means more than what your parents think about you if you can get what you think about you
00:40:48and what your parents think about you to be aligned you won't have any hesitation but when there's conflict
00:40:53one of them has to win and i would encourage you to do the one who's going to be with you the longest
00:40:58which is you felt that one felt that one shall we cook with coal instead this time let us cook with
00:41:09coal bad for the environment but it's okay no coal was made or heated or cooked in the making of this
00:41:14answer all right let's go alex how do i convince rich clients to hire me when my case studies are all
00:41:20from lower end small businesses bro great question so i'll give you a tactical answer um which is
00:41:31you just basically need to decrease the risk for them and so people don't buy because of risk period
00:41:37that is why they don't buy and so they either buy because they don't buy because price they don't buy
00:41:40because of risk they don't buy because of work right it's one of these things so it's either
00:41:43you're asking too much of them in terms of what they got to do you're asking taking too much risk
00:41:46ensures the outcome which is going to be relative to the price so what we can do is we can sync the
00:41:51price to zero okay i'll do it for free we can sync the work down to zero i'll do it all for you
00:41:57and so then the only risk they have is that the outcome won't happen which we've tried to reverse
00:42:00as much the risk as humanly possible the way that the person who did my clips when i started doing shorts
00:42:05got me i think i was like his first account or second like not a lot right the way he did it was
00:42:11he just said hey i already see all this youtube video that you got i will clip them into shorts
00:42:18you don't have to do anything don't pay me please just let me get permission to post and in the
00:42:25meantime if you don't give me permission i will send you the clips and then you can post them yourself
00:42:29and i was like okay man like if you want to go make some make some videos and send them to me
00:42:35and i'll take a look at them and if i like them i'll post them and that is how it started
00:42:39and so i was he punched way above his weight class because he made a truly risk-free offer for me and
00:42:45then as he made more and more clips and they were good i said i'll give you posting permission so that
00:42:49you can post uh from the stuff that i had and then as those did better he was like you know what if you
00:42:53actually made some shorts yourself rather than me repurposing stuff it would do even better and so then
00:42:57one day a quarter he flew out and we'd record a hundred shorts in a day and then that became the
00:43:01next 90 days of content or whatever that's how we did it and so every little bit that i gave him he
00:43:06did well with right so you know to whom much is given much is expected and also to the same degree
00:43:11if you steward someone with a little bit and they multiply it you give them more right and so he did
00:43:16a lot with the little that i gave him and so i kept giving him more and he kept multiplying it
00:43:19and so you just want to get a shot and so i think the big mistake that people are making
00:43:25you specifically in trying to get these richer customers is you're trying to have them take all
00:43:28this risk on right you're like i want you to pay me all this money i want you to do all this work
00:43:31and i want you to take all the risk that's not going to happen well that's ridiculous now once you
00:43:35have enough case studies once you have enough proof then you can say listen i have no doubt that i can
00:43:39that i can help you i have i have a track record and when you have a track record then you can
00:43:43charge the premium prices boom this is fun this is good we should do this again sometime we should do
00:43:49this tomorrow i won't be able to do tomorrow i have an event tomorrow but so just soak it up next one
00:43:55hi alex i've tried a few things and failed and now i'm honestly scared to start again
00:44:00how do you know when to keep trying versus when you're just repeating the same mistakes
00:44:05well i think the last part of your question is actually the most important one which is are you
00:44:09repeating the same mistakes or are you generalizing starting a trying a business in general as a mistake
00:44:16so what we want like one of the hardest parts about making mistakes is we have to learn the
00:44:19correct lesson from the error so said differently if i hire a salesperson and the salesperson doesn't
00:44:24work out do i learn the lesson that sales people don't work do i learn the lesson that all employees
00:44:29suck or do i learn the lesson that i do not know how to pick hire manage train and maintain a productive
00:44:35salesperson if you extrapolated either the first two lessons then you probably learn the incorrect lesson
00:44:41from the actions you took or the error that you made if you take the second or the third excuse me the
00:44:45third uh solution which is that i do not know how to xyz that creates this outcome that is something
00:44:51that is under your control and so fundamentally then it comes down to how to learn how to do that
00:44:55it's like well you watch videos you can hire help you can have people tutor you there's a lot of
00:44:58different ways you can learn stuff um but i think being very clear about what is missing in your
00:45:02business uh because when people are telling me that like my business didn't work it's so interesting
00:45:07because like all businesses like if you've seen a future version of the business that you have or
00:45:11somebody else who has the exact same business as you then we already know the business works so it just
00:45:15means they're doing stuff that you're not doing so let's figure out what they're doing and then go do
00:45:18that and again we replicate before we iterate so don't get cute and try and make it unique until
00:45:23you've at least duplicated another person's level of success at that point you have not earned the
00:45:28right to say now i can be cute now i can try something because i've done enough for iterations that i
00:45:33think this might work a little better and you'll be right or wrong and if you're right you'll make more
00:45:36more money than that and if you're wrong you'll go backwards and then you go back to doing what you
00:45:39did before and that's the game and you basically keep doing that step until you die all right 1492
00:45:46columbus that's what we got live we cook it all right next one hey alex i'm 16 years old and can
00:45:53you please tell me how i could go from zero to million by 18 years old so i could prove to my family i
00:45:59don't need to go to college yes reverse engineer what a million means so is a million in revenue
00:46:07is it a million in profit is it a million over the two years is a million in profit over two years
00:46:11just a million in revenue so number one quantify the goal really discreetly so let's just say that
00:46:15by the end of 24 months from now you want to exit velocity meaning your monthly revenue run rate
00:46:19is 83 000 a month all right so that puts you on peace for a million dollars okay so if that's the goal
00:46:25then we have to sell enough units per month that it equates to 83 000 a month and so let's say that
00:46:32you want to sell a two thousand dollar a month uh thing to business owners to help them get leads
00:46:39so let's say you run meta ads or you do you clip content for them or you manage their reddit uh you
00:46:44know reputation online pick something uh and say okay if i have to get to uh 83 000 a month let's just
00:46:52call it 84 keep it keep it nice and simple math wise i've got two thousand dollars a month per customer
00:46:57then i need 42 customers in order to get my 83 000 a month okay uh in order for me to get 43 customers
00:47:04uh what do i think uh my churn on that subscription is going to be let's assume it's small business owners
00:47:09if it's a small business owner i'll tell you that the rule of thumb is probably going to be about five
00:47:12months it's going to be the uh the expected lifetime so call it 20 churn again i'm not saying these are
00:47:17good numbers i'm saying that's what it's probably going to be so that means that you have five months of
00:47:212k that's ten thousand dollars total in lifetime value for a customer and so your sales velocity
00:47:26which means how many people you need to sell per month has to equate to ten thousand dollars time
00:47:31or rather eighty four thousand dollars divided by the ltb the customer so if i have eighty four thousand
00:47:36divided by ten then i need to sell eight point four units per month which is two per week if we will
00:47:41round up we can say three per week and so then we say okay if we have to sell three units per week at
00:47:46that price point um how many outreach attempts does it take me to get an appointment and we'd say maybe
00:47:51it's let's say it's 100 hours attempts to get an appointment that would be pretty high let's just
00:47:55say it's 100 to get one okay of my opportunities how many of them do i close uh i close one out of four
00:48:02opportunities okay which means i need to do uh 400 to get one of those sales and i need three so i need
00:48:081200 outreach attempts uh per week in order to get my goal and so if i have 1200 outreach attempts per week
00:48:16and i've got six days that i'm gonna be working let's say you take sunday off then you can do 200
00:48:20outreach attempts per day and then you wait
00:48:25that's the game and so i think many of you have these goals but you have not actually broken down
00:48:30what does it take from a numbers perspective and keep going down to from the number to my daily activity
00:48:35that's it you just have to connect what you do to this number and then it's just math
00:48:42rock and roll how to do the things you know you should do i am struggling with discipline oh no
00:48:56because you have enough discipline to finish the question um so i'm gonna guess the question because
00:49:08you didn't have enough discipline to actually say it um bro just align the environment to make doing
00:49:19the right thing the easiest thing and so if you want to not drink don't go to the bar if you want
00:49:26to not scroll on instagram then get an app or delete the apps that you have from your phone
00:49:33entirely that that that you're distracting yourself with and so like the key to being focused is to
00:49:39remove all distractions not to use more willpower willpower doesn't work willpower is a myth not really
00:49:45a myth but like just for the purpose of what we're saying don't worry about that try to not use your
00:49:50willpower and still win anyways and so like the thing is is if you want to win no matter what we
00:49:55have to make the right choice the easiest choice because you're going to have because willpower does
00:49:59actually diminish over time that's why you make bad decisions at the end of the day not the beginning
00:50:02of the day right we're freshest in the beginning not at the end when we're decision fatigued beat up
00:50:06right we make mistakes and so the idea is well if i have to win in all environments then i need to
00:50:11in under duress under fatigue still be able to perform and so in that condition how do i maximize
00:50:17my look of success which is remove everything else that's an option at that moment
00:50:22and so you have to basically make your life boring so that the work becomes interesting
00:50:31for that period and that period can be defined as that the hours you work it can be for that season
00:50:37of your life or for the work year and then you take off in the summer whatever but during the constraints
00:50:42of when you want to achieve the thing you remove everything that is not the thing and then the thing
00:50:46becomes the most important thing that you have in front of you interesting right that was a good one
00:50:52all right let's do it another one of my employees asked for a 25 000 raise from 100 000 salary however
00:51:01he hasn't added enough value how would you structure his comp growth plan to 125 000
00:51:08without making him feeling bad oh i think that you have some beliefs that we need to break so if
00:51:15someone asks you for more money you can say no but you just say no and explain why and
00:51:22i think more importantly explain how to get even more so you said you wanted 125 i want to give
00:51:26you 150. the issue is that i need you to make the 150. is that feeling reasonable yes okay and so what
00:51:33you're currently doing is yielding this amount of money and in order for the business to maintain
00:51:38profitability so we can continue to grow so that you can have career growth and a trajectory in a much
00:51:42larger business because that's what the future version of this business is is bigger than it currently is
00:51:46we need to basically align what you do to increasing more revenue now what i think is very
00:51:52valuable is that a lot of people who ask that they you know they watch the tick tock and it says
00:51:57you know go ask your boss for more money sometimes they should ask for more money because maybe
00:52:01they are being underpaid but a lot of times maybe they're being appropriately paid maybe they're
00:52:04being overly paid right but we have to break down is tying what they do to how the business yields
00:52:11business outcomes how does what you do make the business money and if they can describe how their
00:52:17activities generate the business money by the way huge value add if it like by the way if you guys
00:52:23don't know what how what you do makes the business that you work in money you will not make as much
00:52:28money as you could if you did understand how it worked because then you can describe when i do this
00:52:34churn goes down which means ltb goes up and if ltb goes up we make more per customer
00:52:39we make more per customer the assistant that's more without having to acquire more great if you can just
00:52:43articulate that which is by the way we're learning the language of business that's what i'm asking to do
00:52:48and so you need to give the person or tell the person the skills that they need and what activities
00:52:54they must do that if they do those activities these outcomes would happen and if these outcomes
00:52:59happen then their request is reasonable right or beyond reason you'd happy to pay it because every
00:53:05business owner and i would start with this frame which is that every business owner will always pay
00:53:09for a fraction of future earnings that they have not had what they will be reluctant to do is give a
00:53:15percentage of money that they are already making for work that did not contribute to it
00:53:21all right what did i i care a lot about my long-term girlfriend my stats go down when with her
00:53:29she is cheerleader and wants same life and very smart should we try business partner route or break it off
00:53:36imso 50 50 50. tough tough um really tough because you have conflicting priorities so what that means is
00:53:52you have multiple things that you want and in wanting those things uh they are interfering with each other
00:54:00which means that you have two options option one is that you can deem uh one of those two things business
00:54:06or cheerleader girlfriend the priority and you say i know that my stats are lower with her and i am okay
00:54:12with that trade because i value her more than the business outcome option one option two i value my
00:54:18business outcome more than i value my relationship with her and so i will cease having a relationship with
00:54:24her in the hopes that i will find somebody else who i can have a good relationship with and get the
00:54:31business outcome and so the idea is that um it's a question of and or or it doesn't need to be or um
00:54:38and so what i would i would before you do this though because let's say let's say you're in the second
00:54:41scenario because the first scenario is easy you just say that your business goals aren't important to you
00:54:45in the second scenario before breaking up what i would encourage you to do is very specifically say
00:54:51what you do in these situations decreases the odds of my success and the lifestyle that you
00:54:57have told me that you want and so i'm having a lot of difficulty serving two masters i want to be a
00:55:04good boyfriend to you based on your requirements and i need to be a good business owner based on the
00:55:09market's requirements now the market's requirements are not negotiable yours are and so is there a world
00:55:15what would it take for me to be able to do this in the business in that environment under those
00:55:23conditions would you still like our relationship and want to continue to date me if you can establish
00:55:29that up front these are the rules of engagement i'm going to work uninterrupted for 10 hours a day
00:55:33and i'm going to work six days a week that being said outside of those business hours i'll be fully
00:55:37dedicated to you and you'll have my full and undivided attention if that works bingo bingo we got
00:55:42above and sometimes there's actually a very strong argument for that it's like you can actually check
00:55:45out fully switch gears and i think that's great uh for the people who can do that like i've seen tons
00:55:50of very successful business people who have that type of type of dynamic um but i think what you need
00:55:54to have is very clear expectations and boundaries around what what her requirements are to have a good
00:55:58relationship and then what is required by your definition in this season for your business to be
00:56:04successful and making sure that those are her requirements and the requirements of the business
00:56:07ideally do not conflict if they do conflict you have to pick one that's warm born
00:56:13one all right what would you say to a bunch of kids who want to start a marketing agency together
00:56:23eight people in total no stop just an idea and desire not sure who will be there till the end
00:56:36uh tell me you have a terrible idea with that tell me you have a terrible idea um
00:56:45if you're just like we're eight buds and we're going to start this thing together and you haven't
00:56:48thought about what your skills are and you already know that some of you guys aren't going to be there
00:56:51until the end i think we have to ask the question of like why we're doing this to begin with if you
00:56:55are like man i just want to do something with my friends and like go play video games like go to
00:56:58amusement parks go go drink beer you know like go go do friendship um but i promise you the relationship gets
00:57:04far more complex when you introduce money and you likely won't have those friends for a very long
00:57:08time and you will permanently lose the friends uh because when money gets involved the likely that
00:57:12you lose the friendship goes up dramatically um because all of a sudden somebody is getting paid
00:57:16on something that they didn't deserve and that can be very tough and so fundamentally when we're
00:57:20looking at business partnership we want to see does the person have skills that i don't have they
00:57:23have money that i don't have do they have time that i don't have and so we want to make sure that
00:57:27the people that are around you that are going to be your partner um contribute their share towards the outcome
00:57:34and those are going to be the three normal ways that someone is going to pay uh into the partnership
00:57:39to yield out a contribution now is it going to be perfect no um and in the future it has to be
00:57:43reconciled you want to get as close to you know close to ideal as you can some people develop more
00:57:47skills and become more important that's the nature the nature of things um but i think that having
00:57:52kind of like eight equal partners or something that is probably a pretty bad idea because the
00:57:56likelihood that you guys have uh truly complementary skills uh or different time requirements or different
00:58:02capital requirements is probably low and so i would think that this is probably not going to work long
00:58:06term that being said if you want to like get together do a moving company for the summer or an
00:58:09agency for the summer that's fine i would just say that this is a project that we're going to end at
00:58:12the end of this period of time then we're going to renegotiate based on who we think is actually going
00:58:16to do this there you go all right let's get a spicy one let's get something interesting let's get
00:58:23something that with a little stirring of the pot shall we in continuation of the discipline question
00:58:31what if you can't eliminate distractions for example you need internet access to work
00:58:36but then i just end up watching youtube oh no
00:58:44first off you can block sites so i don't like you can block apps you can block sites if you actually feel
00:58:51like you you you can't control yourself in that environment again it's just like this is like the
00:58:56fact that you asked that question is really frightening for me because it's like this is solvable like
00:59:01this isn't like i didn't need to tell you that answer and so like i think i think a lot of people
00:59:07are asking questions just because they want like a hug you know they want to high five like what do you
00:59:11want me to say here do you want me to say you know what man you're right youtube's too distracting you have no
00:59:18chance so the way your life is right now is how it's always going to be so you know enjoy that right of
00:59:25course not it's ridiculous you got to change the change and so we just want to maximize the odds and
00:59:30of course i mean you started the premise of like some things you can't eliminate you started the
00:59:33internet but then you said youtube it's like that's a straw man right of course the internet yes okay
00:59:38eliminate some of the other stuff that you have but if you really need to on the internet it's what
00:59:42are we using the internet for is it for research do we need it just because we need to process words
00:59:47we need to type shit okay like what are we actually using the internet for you might be able to actually
00:59:51work airplane mode if you're actually that worried about it like there's always little things that you
00:59:55can do because you might only need it for a specific period of time i have a timer that i use that's on
01:00:00my desk that i time my tasks with because i know if i have a clock in front of me the my speed of work
01:00:06probably triples i stay on task when i can see that there's a clock that i'm timing myself even though
01:00:10there's no jury or judge or executioner to determine whether i did or not i see that there's a clock
01:00:15i'm like i gotta stay on task that's how i manage myself i'll give you one more tip and this is for
01:00:20people who have a little bit of add uh you can get a work buddy and so uh basically if you work better
01:00:26with somebody else like you actually are both more productive uh it's a great way of keeping each other
01:00:30their own task a little pro tip all right go ahead i'm a software engineer turned entrepreneur i started
01:00:42a luxury dating app how would you market a product like this you started a luxury dating app so you want
01:00:51rich people um i mean it's going to start with billionaires only depends how high you want to go
01:01:01there's only 3 000 people in this app they're all billionaires and most of them are married
01:01:04um so it's really just for rich people to have affairs uh no don't do that um you're going to want
01:01:10to start with keystone partners meaning we want to have big strong brand associations early and basically
01:01:16you need to either do it for free or give some sort of incentive for those people maybe they get
01:01:19preferential uh you know like mating matching or whatever uh that can help them find a better mate
01:01:26because if they are in the market then they would want that and so i think that you basically want
01:01:30to get 50 you know ish people who are your perfect avatar that have some sort of clout uh to begin it
01:01:37right and then over time you have the people who are the seeders of the brand and then everyone else
01:01:43approximates that and says i want to be like them or i am like them i associate them with cool stuff
01:01:47or i want to date people like them and then as a result i will join your platform um but typically
01:01:53wealthy people want exclusivity and so um i think somebody's already succeeded at this it's an app
01:01:57called raya or raya i don't know how to pronounce it but r r a y a um i would model what they did and
01:02:03they've done a really good job at basically being like super famous or super rich people in their own
01:02:08exclusive group and you have to apply and it's very it's legit from what i understand of like a lot of
01:02:12people get denied um but yeah so basically it should be by application people should get denied
01:02:18and you ask for how do i create an exclusive thing you have to have something worth joining
01:02:23which means you have to get those first people that's what makes people want to join and you have
01:02:26to keep the bar high so that the people who come in add to the network rather than diluting it
01:02:33and then wait a long time is really hard all right next one at sugar underscore mama underscore 23 asks
01:02:42why can't i get a job i have a master's oh that is the entire question um because you think that the
01:02:50fact that you have a master's somehow requires a business to give you a job that would be where i'd start
01:02:57um if i could remake education i would have the master's degrees only apply to departments that
01:03:03they would be in because you probably want to get a master's in order to get a job if you want to get
01:03:09a job you will work inside of a department and so are we working in marketing are we working in sales are
01:03:13we working customer success are we working in tech are we working in finance are we working in legal like
01:03:18where are we working what department are we working in um and that would make if you want to get into
01:03:22private market as in capital normal privately owned businesses um then you want to be able to describe
01:03:27how what you learned will help the business make more money and so again i would encourage like if
01:03:32you have a master's whatever you might be able to get on the interview but that's not going to get you
01:03:36the job and so of course there's interviewing skills but i i so strongly encourage anyone who is looking
01:03:41for a job to be able to clearly articulate what they do and how it interacts with the metrics that a
01:03:49business wants to drive that's it if you can describe that you will set yourself apart from many other
01:03:56candidates and you will be more likely to get roles that are meaningful what other wild ass questions do
01:04:04we have here i'm good in tech i've worked and interned with big fortune 500 global companies i'm just having
01:04:13analysis paralysis of starting my own business since this tech market is actually so bad what to do
01:04:19okay
01:04:27trying to pick from the entire universe of very very impossible trying to pick between two things
01:04:32much easier so we need to take all of this and make it small how do we make it small we have to add
01:04:37filters right if you're looking at 1200 products on a shopify page right what are you going to do you're
01:04:41not going to look at all 1200 it would take you way too long and it would be overwhelming so you say okay
01:04:44well i want this size i want this color i want uh i want something that's a top i want it to have
01:04:50straps and all of a sudden you have 13 items to pick from right and so you want to take the same approach
01:04:54to figure out what what possibility you want to go there and then when you have the 13 there in front
01:04:58of you at some point you just got to roll the dice you got to jump right and i think that it is very
01:05:02important for you to understand that just like you have a quote analysis paralysis in order to pick a
01:05:06business at every single step in entrepreneurship there will be multiple options in front of you that you
01:05:11would uh be able to take in order to solve a problem and no one is going to tell you whether
01:05:15you did it right or not until after it has happened and so if said differently if it takes you
01:05:22more time to make the decision then it would take you to just do the decision and find out
01:05:28then you should just do the decision and find out and then you will know
01:05:34wonderful answer you mentioned you think chick-fil-a has one of the best business models
01:05:40what would you tweak in their model to improve their revenue i mean honestly i would just look
01:05:45at what raising canes doing um i would take what they have and just limit the menu even more probably
01:05:55that's i mean that's probably it i mean they already have i mean they're probably one of the
01:06:00most successful you know brands of all time um like how to how do you mess with uh something that's
01:06:07worked so well yeah i mean that's probably the only thing i would consider doing is like maybe i'd limit
01:06:12the menu a little bit more make it a little bit easier um for the staff to get trained up uh have
01:06:16fewer fewer decisions for a customer to make um as raising canes has proven and has just destroyed
01:06:22um that's about it otherwise i mean big fan of chick-fil-a
01:06:27good book by the way wealth is it worth it by s truett kathy his story of chick-fil-a a little read
01:06:34do you think gen z are still competent enough for business or at reliable workers i think there are
01:06:41humans that are reliable independent of age right and so this idea of like gen alpha gen z gen w gen you
01:06:48know x whatever who cares um you have people and there's stuff that needs to get done and people
01:06:54who have skills in order to do it i have very little i put very little weight in terms of generations i
01:06:59think these are also labels that we apply to blocks of years arbitrarily you know i'm actually a gen z
01:07:07millennial hybrid okay you know it's not like you're a you know a werewolf vampire hybrid with split dna
01:07:13it's like you've got a mom named mary and a dad named david and you went to school just like everyone
01:07:18else did and some technology changed in the meantime and you either had the skills to learn the technology
01:07:23or you didn't i don't think the basic drives of human have gone away i've met some absolute savages
01:07:28who are gen z and gen alpha and i've met some absolute duds and that goes all the way up
01:07:38i'll actually say this you know this generation doesn't want to work as hard this generation has
01:07:45it so easy well what the did you think was going to happen if our whole goal was to make it better
01:07:51for the next generation we wanted to make it better and want to make it easier than we had it we right
01:07:57and so if we actually accomplish that objective then it means that there's going to have less hardship
01:08:01for someone to go through isn't that the point right and so in either way either you make the
01:08:08argument that maybe they did get softer and whose fault is that ours and if they didn't get softer
01:08:13which again there are spikes if we're looking at generalities maybe but i think it's more so that
01:08:19there's people they just work differently then they work not as hard i think it's more likely they just
01:08:23don't want to work hard for you it's like saying there's no good girls out there it's like there's
01:08:30tons of good girls out there there just probably aren't good girls out there that want to date you
01:08:33so let's look inwards because that we can control
01:08:38all right what else do we have what other preguntas do we have what their q's
01:08:43need potential a's i have no promise of a's to be clear disclaimer no a's are promised only q's
01:08:49and spicy takes hmm we've got a comment saying your spanish is especially good today ah
01:08:55molto grazie that's italian
01:09:02muchas gracias all right that was spanish with italian accent
01:09:09okay let's rip thanks for your answer on chick-fil-a i'm listening to this while in a raising canes
01:09:15drive-through lol cooking with oil that's what we were doing we're cooking with with beef fat or chicken
01:09:23fat i don't know what they cook with probably corner probably a canola it's chrisco is it bro
01:09:32dude they are filthy all right let's go hey alex i'm trying to get into content production but i have
01:09:39no skills i could make videos about so i'm stuck trying to be entertaining slash funny like you
01:09:44which is tough and makes doing volume tough any thoughts what was the first part hey alex i'm
01:09:51trying to get into content production but i have no skills i could make videos about i'm stuck trying
01:09:57okay so you're saying you're not good at stuff and you want to make content
01:10:02so either you have to do a volume of content looks let me let me zoom out for a second good content
01:10:09gives people a return on their time all right so it happens one of two ways either they get a return
01:10:14on their time in that they would have been bored and now they are entertained version one so they're
01:10:18distracted by your content the second way is they get a return on the time in that they could have tried
01:10:22to do try to figure out how to code a thing but then your tutorial saves them time and so in either
01:10:29situation people want to return and so for you if you have no evidence that you were good at the thing
01:10:35then you want to do a lot of work and then show the work that you did and then demonstrate your
01:10:39learnings from that work so for example if i wanted to say hey i made 100 pieces of content
01:10:43here's what i learned from it make 100 pieces of content that suck of those 100 pieces of content
01:10:47suck one of them will be suck the least of that one that sucked the least you can then make a video
01:10:52about that one that sucked the least and what you learned from it and so fundamentally there's always
01:10:55an iterative process that we can apply that still makes what you have interesting and so this
01:10:59is the concept of documenting what you're doing um but i would encourage you also to do a lot of
01:11:03stuff that isn't necessarily recorded and then talk about the lessons that you learned in those actions
01:11:07so if you do 100 cold calls day one of doing 100 cold calls and then you do a time lapse and then
01:11:11at the end of the doing 100 cold calls you describe what you learned from those 100 cold calls i'll bet
01:11:15you that that series would probably be pretty good and if you do 100 days of cold calling 100 times a
01:11:20day and you do those 100 pieces of content i will bet you that by day 100 you will probably be in a pretty good
01:11:25spot right both your content will be improved and you'll probably be better at cold calling and so
01:11:30you're there's always a meta that can be applied uh when you don't have uh skill you can always
01:11:36demonstrate the the effort and the lessons that you learn in real time that still give someone a return
01:11:40on a short that took you five hours
01:11:46all right how would you build a powerful personal brand as someone striving to reach peak physical
01:11:53form before a possible third heart transplant in the next one to two years
01:11:59those seem not to be apparent conflicts so it's like i want to reach peak physical form and i want
01:12:07to build a personal brand i mean you could build a brand around how you're achieving peak physical
01:12:13form before your third heart transplant and maybe avoid the third heart transplant i don't know third
01:12:17heart transplant what are we kidding me hold on third i don't even know that even the more than
01:12:24two i didn't know one one's a lot two's two's a lot two's a lot three three's insane
01:12:33bro i mean there's content right there geez
01:12:39three
01:12:42what'd you do to the first two whatever you're doing is not working oh my god
01:12:50yeah i mean i would make content around how you're trying to i mean shoot make the third one a keeper
01:12:55holy cannoli and hopefully this is giving you a laugh
01:13:00i heard laughter is good for the heart studies science that's right take it home the more you know
01:13:10all right what's the next one
01:13:15we're cooking today we're getting spicy all right what do we got for the 18 year olds whose loved
01:13:20ones don't share their vision how do you really bring them along instead of losing them for that
01:13:25period in your life i like i think some of this is is words which are really important meaning bring
01:13:33them along versus losing them i think that catastrophizes the reality of the situation fundamentally they
01:13:40will disagree with the actions that you're taking i think that if you are still polite and still
01:13:43respectful and then you choose to live your own life because you're an adult i think that you will also
01:13:48gain some respect from them for at least pursuing your own path rather than trying to do whatever
01:13:51they're telling you to do um and so you will bring them along you don't need to say you for not
01:13:59believing in me you can just say hey i'm gonna do this love your support and if you don't want to
01:14:05support what i'm doing please at least support me and if they don't want to at least support you
01:14:08then maybe you have a slower and less frequent communication cycle with them am i doomed i don't
01:14:16you might be doomed
01:14:21but basically you got to do that's going to get you what you want and if they disagree with you
01:14:26be respectful to them if they want to disrespect you and decrease the likelihood of you hitting your
01:14:30goals then i would say you can distance for yourself for a period distancing is again an amorphous word just
01:14:36means don't contact as much don't see as much don't respond for as long um and then in the event that
01:14:42you know once you become successful uh by your means if that means that they're going to talk to
01:14:47you then you will then have to deal with the fact that like they didn't want to talk to you in the
01:14:50meantime and that's kind of tough um and so i would encourage you to quote bring them along and i think
01:14:54the way you do that is you just don't necessarily need to talk about that stuff that's a non-therapist
01:14:58answer which is like if there's 20 topics we can talk about and one of them we get into fight about
01:15:02just talk with the other 19.
01:15:08practical non-therapy advice from alex
01:15:13all right let's do the next one am i doomed i don't have skills but can't get a job to learn
01:15:18because no companies are hiring fresh graduates right now no companies on earth whoa that's crazy
01:15:28i guess the fresh graduates that we hired i guess we don't exist i guess we are not a company
01:15:34i think that the statements that you're making are absolute because you have not succeeded as
01:15:39quickly as you wanted and then are extrapolating the fact that it is impossible but here's the good
01:15:44news is that if it's hard for you it's hard for other people and if you have more or higher
01:15:47frustration tolerance meaning that you can tolerate difficult longer and you can get punched in the
01:15:51face more then you the pool of people that you were competing against as time goes on narrows because
01:15:57other people have fallen out because they've given up hope and so uh yes i think that you can absolutely
01:16:02negate uh inferior odds with superior volume of work and so if your acceptance rate let's say into a
01:16:09company is uh one percent likelihood then you need to apply to 100 places now to be clear you just
01:16:15submitting a resume not putting a cover letter not taking any outreach not trying to talk to somebody
01:16:19um at that place from a cold call cold outreach cold email to show that you're putting the extra work
01:16:23in uh that will dramatically uh increase the odds of success but if you're doing none of those things
01:16:29if you're doing none of those things uh to to make it work then you should expect that you're going to have
01:16:35inferior outcomes and so the big the big highlight here though is stop saying that no companies are
01:16:43hiring freshmen they are probably just not hiring people who are not putting all of the work in
01:16:50for enough time period to meet the needs of the business and you need to go above and beyond to
01:16:55break out of the mold so if everyone else is not putting a cover letter you put a cover letter if
01:16:59everyone else is not reaching out or trying to find somebody else who works at the company to just say
01:17:02like hey can you at least give me an interview um then that's the extra work that you do to make it
01:17:07more likely that you're going to win and by the way that never stops like following the process
01:17:13is important and also doing above going above and beyond and that's going to happen for customers
01:17:18it's going to happen for business owners like that never ends
01:17:23all right
01:17:26so i'm a fresh graduate that just got a job and i just started a new sdr
01:17:32wait slash cold calling can you give me some tips please wait there's a freshman who got a job
01:17:38there was a company that hired a freshman what that's impossible because no companies are doing
01:17:44it no company that that's improved like broke the laws of physics crazy all right so you're fresh sdr
01:17:52and you started on the call floor by the way there's a job um maybe maybe they're not hired for the job
01:17:59that you're applying for um but just about every like if you're like i i can't get a job try doing
01:18:05door knocking try door knocking and selling solar they'll take you like they'll take you in and if
01:18:12you go close sales they'll pay you like of course of course there's jobs if you need to take a job that
01:18:17has higher risk then take a job that has higher risk because right now you're not getting paid anything
01:18:20anyways right might as well learn some skills and maybe get paid a lot um anyways i digress so sdr
01:18:25um i'll give you the same exact advice that i gave jacob who was my 15 year old neighbor when he
01:18:31started as an sdr at gym launch i said number one find the number one guy on the team and sit next to
01:18:38him and listen to everything that he does and then do everything he's doing and just do twice the volume
01:18:45that's it i said just do whatever the number guy does and just double it so you'll get the feedback
01:18:50and iteration loops in terms of skills of the right way to do things by modeling success and then because
01:18:55that person is better than you you can't just do the same amount of work as there because then they're
01:18:57advancing faster than you or at least they have more skill and they're doing a lot of reps so that
01:19:02you'll never be able to catch them so this is like kobe doing two days or three days when everyone
01:19:05else is doing one a day right you can't you can't catch up if you're doing the same amount of work
01:19:09you got to do more work to catch up and you have to work like you were coming from behind because you are
01:19:19that one had smoke on it that one cooked a little bit that had some sizzle all right let's do another
01:19:25question another cue your wife and your life do you think having your wife in your life has been
01:19:33essential to the massive success you've achieved mine changed my life oh that was it uh yeah i think
01:19:43i think i would have been successful financially without layla because i was successful financially
01:19:46without layla before um i think the degree of success and the speed of the success um i can't play out
01:19:52another life but layla absolutely the longer we have been in business together the more i think the
01:19:58success um well i would not have achieved the level of success that we have at this rate um for two
01:20:06main for two very i'll give you two very tactical reasons why i should give you three um number one
01:20:12layla's decision making um paired with my kind of ideation has been the combination that has made
01:20:19everything work and i think that in a lot of ways she makes more decisions than i do in the business
01:20:23on a daily basis and some of the decisions that she makes i would not have made and her decisions were
01:20:28better and so i would say from number one she would she has helped me avoid many calamitous mistakes
01:20:36that would have probably set me back many years um number two
01:20:45layla is exceptional at managing and leading people and that is probably a larger deficiency for me
01:20:51than it is for her um and so we would not have been able to attract a level of talent that was required
01:20:55to pursue the level of opportunity that we going after today um if it had been just me i think that
01:21:01because i also don't think i would have had the level of track record to attract a little talent either
01:21:05and so if you look at the company like i would say the company is by and large more loyal to layla
01:21:08than they are to me um because layla is the one who actually like leads like the company from
01:21:14a day-to-day perspective internally um i think the third reason and this is one that will probably
01:21:19surprise a lot of you is that layla i think actually has bigger aspirations and dreams than i do
01:21:25and i had material goals that i wanted to hit and i would say that in the short term i was more
01:21:32motivated to hit those goals than she was but in the long term as we surpass those goals like beyond
01:21:38needing money for anything else her desire to make an impact and her desire to more importantly build
01:21:44an environment that people love to work in um has been a greater contributor to our continued growth
01:21:51and i would say like pushing and striving uh to do more and so i think those are the three reasons why
01:21:56um i would not have had the level of success that we have had um if i had done it alone or would not
01:22:01have happened on this fast of a time too elegant well said giving myself feedback all right
01:22:12let's get let's get a little let's get let's get weird let's get a weird one we got a weird one
01:22:16see if we can find a weird one oh they're they're they're nodding so this one's going to be the wind
01:22:24up in the pitch all right let's hear it are aliens real all right go ahead how tf do i get a house i know
01:22:38you will answer why do you want a house and yeah i want one so uh interesting because the assumption
01:22:46that you had about my response is uh to question your desire um i think it's good to question our
01:22:52own desires but less productive to question someone else's right um that being said uh you want what
01:22:58you want so if you want a house you want a house um i would say it is probably valuable to break apart the
01:23:04uh under underlying needs that you're trying to satisfy is it a saddest thing for you is because you want
01:23:08shelter is you want an investment what is it that you want is it because you want to invest for your
01:23:11family whatever it is that being said um the question that you ask is a financial question of
01:23:17like how do i save up the amount of money to make a down payment on a home and then uh how do i make
01:23:22the monthly payment going on thereafter which then reverses to how do i make a certain amount of money
01:23:28uh and how do i save a certain amount of money and so the saving comes from not spending and making
01:23:31more than that for an extended period of time and i think the rest of my content covers how to make money
01:23:35so i think the house is actually kind of a a um a placeholder for an income and saving goal
01:23:44which if you want an income goal do more that that makes money um uh and spend less of it when you
01:23:52make it and i know that's probably not the answer you wanted but also what answer would you be looking
01:23:55for it just comes down to money so what other would do we have i wasn't gonna get into political nature
01:24:04of home ownership in this environment
01:24:09you guys digging this this is our what is it day five of our of our day 30 for 30 or something like
01:24:14that don't ever ever watch uh was it was it e 30 for 30 was that a espn yeah i used to watch that i think
01:24:23was tuesday nights was 30 for 30. it was no maybe wednesdays i used to watch that when i was in the
01:24:30fraternity back in the day and i would drink beers and pre-game watching 30 for 30. um just as a fun the
01:24:37more you know about back back in the day alex all right what other uh what other ones we got these
01:24:42are fun this is good all right what else we have solo founder of ecom business gained traction with
01:24:47muslims quickly but is on pre-order and self-funded religiously anything tied to interest loans or
01:24:53excessive debt is no-go best way to scale
01:24:59so the scaling is actually a rate issue so as long as you're making sufficient profit with the business
01:25:04then you should be able to reinvest the profit that you're making into new and additional inventory
01:25:11the difficulty is just if you let's say you 10x in one month just hypothetically you would not be able
01:25:17to have sufficient cash flow from the last month's called profit of sales unless your profit was you know
01:25:21insane uh which is probably unlikely um so you you you ask a math question which is that what is the rate
01:25:30of growth that you can cash flow and what you need to do is basically control your sales to control
01:25:36growth if you truly have that kind of like product market fit so that you could say okay um let's say
01:25:42that our net free cash uh you know per month is you know whatever 20 of of our revenue it's like right
01:25:49right so the max we can grow and let's say that our our uh you know buying more inventory takes three
01:25:54months to um to materialize uh we basically have to plan for 12 weeks out we can have 20 growth in 12
01:26:02weeks and then that becomes our kind of uh model for how we need to grow but it is solvable if the
01:26:08question is um do you put yourself at a disadvantage uh the answer is yes sort of because if you wanted to
01:26:14you could raise money right so that's not debt uh it has no interest you could just sell a portion of
01:26:20your company i'm sure investing is probably allowed um and you sell a portion of your company and then
01:26:25that capital goes into the business so you can buy more inventory and so then you have a partner and
01:26:28maybe that partner is distribution or they have cash or they have help or whatever and so there are
01:26:32for sure other ways and so this by the way is very common for a business that has a lot of capital
01:26:36expenditure not to see that e-commerce is one of them it is a business that does require capital to scale
01:26:39but there are other businesses that require capital to scale and typically in those businesses people
01:26:42bring on investors so they can get additional cash they can pull the future forward like for example
01:26:47if you're like i want to build a billion dollar you know beverage dispensary right it's a very capital
01:26:53intensive business and let's say that you're you have one beverage dispensary right now and you do
01:26:5610 million top line and two million dollars of a profit there's nothing wrong with that business
01:27:00and let's say that each each new market you're guaranteed to make that money but it costs you
01:27:04eight million dollars to start one right so that'd be a 25 return invested capital which is not terrible
01:27:08it's not great but it's okay and but that would mean that every you know four years you'd be able
01:27:12to i guess five with taxes if you had a c corp um you'd be able to start a new location and that
01:27:17means that and then after that your rate would double and after that your rate would double um
01:27:21but it just means that it takes time so the only way that you can get around that is that you would
01:27:24raise capital so that you could open up 10 in that first year and then you basically do the
01:27:27arbitrage on uh how much is my is the time of my life worth uh so that i can trade percentages of my future
01:27:36earnings for more earnings today that's the trade
01:27:44hey alex serious question i fell into a business as a psychic giving advice i'm making enough to live
01:27:51but i feel bad because i don't actually have psychic powers is this okay
01:27:58i would have i was wait i had it fully loaded to be like uh well you should know the answer this question
01:28:07but at least she admitted it right at least you admitted it um if you're looking for a rationalization
01:28:13i don't want to i don't want to give you a rationalization um but i'll say this no i won't
01:28:20say this i won't say this um i think that it is very likely that you have other skills that have
01:28:26allowed you to make this business that you could advertise and sell ethically by not um deceiving
01:28:33deceiving your customers and so uh the first rule of business and marketing for us is state the facts and
01:28:39tell the truth and i think that what you probably are pretty good at is just like life coaching and
01:28:45therapy and i think if you did that rather than say that there's mysticism behind and you have psychic
01:28:50powers you're probably able to help like i'm assuming that your customers are okay like isn't that they
01:28:55are happy with the services but what you feel bad about is that you are lying and so i would discourage
01:28:59you from lying but i would encourage you to help customers and so just state the facts and tell the
01:29:03truth about what you're actually doing and i'll bet you if you told the patients that you have patients
01:29:08customers that you have right now or clients that you have right now um some of them might be turned
01:29:11off but i think if you just said listen sometimes i just tell you what i think and sometimes i don't
01:29:15think it's psychic are you okay with that great and then every time you're like i don't think it's
01:29:19psychic at all i think i'm just helping you out and you're good with that and sometimes the answer is
01:29:23just yes and some people will say no and that's okay you'll find other customers that are okay with just
01:29:26that and in that transition you'll have gone from being an unethical business owner to an ethical
01:29:30business owner and great you've done it so the tldr is you have some skills that are making customers
01:29:37happy all we need to do is state the facts and tell the truth about those skills really are
01:29:42and then just advertise that and then you won't have this issue and i'll bet you you'll grow a lot
01:29:46faster because you won't be holding yourself back because you won't feel bad about it
01:29:50that was a tricky one a little minefield right there
01:29:55all right what else what else you guys got let's get some fastballs or a curveball perhaps
01:30:01maybe a spit-based knuckleball you guys having fun in this office this office uh get up this is my
01:30:07this is it for those of you guys who are joining you're like oh look this is this is it this is the
01:30:13the billion dollar office right the i don't have uh fancy lights or actually really pretty harsh lights
01:30:19um yeah this is where i work every day these are all my books there's the things i'm very proud of
01:30:25that's been a lot of my life writing and they are i keep them around because they make me feel good
01:30:29because i know how much work i put into them which by the way if you haven't read the books
01:30:33fucking read the books they're free all right they're free on the internet if you want hard copies
01:30:36you can get them but they're free just google it all right what do we got if neural link was proven
01:30:42enough and good enough would you put a neural link chip in your brain to become super hormosy
01:30:49yeah i mean the premise that you started with is it proven is it safe um because then you ask the
01:30:54question would i take an advantage versus not taking advantage that's safe that sounds like a asking will
01:31:02someone take a risk-free upside um and so to me it's fine um maybe in the future like we'll find out
01:31:09that it is not exactly risk-free and that there are more significant traits um but yeah i'm all for
01:31:15personal growth of all kind what is the weirdest business slash business model you ever saw that was
01:31:23actually huge what are the weirdest businesses out there but work tremendously i don't even want to say it
01:31:29because it was so good that i don't want to like i don't want to blow the business owner up because
01:31:33he paid me a lot of money for help and so i'm i'm not going to but there are some wild businesses
01:31:38out there that absolutely print money all right um there's so many i mean shoot i met a guy yesterday
01:31:47who sells luxury doors like how do you get into that business another guy yesterday does uh tree removal
01:31:54just stumps and stuff just removing trees makes millions of dollars a year the door guy millions
01:32:00of dollars a year like i've seen guys who sell fasteners millions of dollars a year like everything
01:32:06that you look around like you look around this room everything that you see there's a business behind it
01:32:11and even within that there's multiple businesses like there's a paint company there's painters there's
01:32:15people who do drywall right there's a e-commerce company that does this wallpaper you know whiteboard
01:32:22thing you know these uh there's a there's a company that does folders right there's a printing company
01:32:27there's a company that sells the ink to the printing company there's a company that sells the raw paper
01:32:30materials to the company that does the print there's a binding company there's a three you know a third
01:32:35party logistics company that uh will actually that bind and ship right that stuff to an end location
01:32:40there's a company that installs cabinets there's a company that gives them the base wood there's
01:32:45a company that gives the glue that glues this like cover of the wood on it like all you have
01:32:50to do is use your eyes there's business everywhere
01:32:59interesting one though i really want to tell you the one that that was wild i'll just say it was sexual health
01:33:05and yeah i'll give you i'll give you the big answer so sexual health and it was a specific subpopulation
01:33:13that that needed some medication and the guy got some sort of licenses to administer this medication
01:33:20and he was getting several thousand per year to administer the medication i think like monthly or
01:33:28something like that to the customers and so he had something like 80 net margins doing like 30 million
01:33:36dollars a year out of one brick and mortar store like absolutely printing 3 000 square feet like 10
01:33:44employees crushing so like there are there are i mean i've seen i've seen you know dick enhancement doctors
01:33:53that are making you know 30 million bucks a year selling dick pumps that are surgical that are 100
01:34:01grand that you know add girth and length like it's just they're like there are so many businesses i'm
01:34:08just thinking about this because they're weird because they're sexual health but like there's so many
01:34:11different things there's so many different ways to make money like the big rule is just state the facts
01:34:15and tell the truth like don't not be psychic and claim your psychic now to be clear if you're buying from
01:34:19psychic on some level like all right you know maybe maybe you might need a psych check too right but uh
01:34:25but like
01:34:29my teeth find me they're like dude what are you doing uh that they're like this is why we have to edit so
01:34:34much this is why we have to censor i know this is why we get up nice things all right rip it let's do
01:34:39another weird one hey alex i'm hey alex i inherited my dad's weapons manufacturing company got kidnapped
01:34:52by a terrorist group had a literal change of heart long story and came back wanting to pivot the entire
01:34:58business away from weapons against my board's wishes while wearing a metal suit to work most days
01:35:04how do you convince stakeholders to let you kill your most profitable product line for something unproven
01:35:16what does anyone else think that was absolutely insane
01:35:23uh i mean i guess the question is why do we need to kill the proven thing can't we just take profits and
01:35:30then reinvest it in the new thing and then try it out i mean it sounds like you need to make a bet
01:35:37do you need to bet the entire company probably not if i was a stakeholder i'd be like hey let's keep
01:35:41making profit and then we can try this other thing out that's okay um it's really rare that you truly
01:35:46need to bet the entire company um if you have a superior thing it doesn't mean the other thing is
01:35:50like just because something is inferior another product is inferior business model or revenue line
01:35:55is inferior doesn't mean that it's not productive and so say differently if i have something that
01:35:59gets me four to one and then i find something else that gets me ten to one i should try and do four
01:36:03to one and ten to one right now if the ten to one opportunity requires all of the resources of four
01:36:09to one we have to put something called a risk-adjusted return which is that we are it's ten to one we
01:36:13think but it's not proven and so it's like what is our success likely is it 20 is it 50 and so we have
01:36:19to be really realistic and so of course there are business use cases or studies that have been done where
01:36:24you know kodak you know didn't make the jump or blockbuster didn't make the jump to you know
01:36:28streaming and whatnot so there are those stories and we love to tell them because they are so rare
01:36:33but far more often people kill good businesses because they get bored and have a shiny object
01:36:38idea that they think is better but if this is a business that you inherited from your father
01:36:43then i'm going to guess that you didn't build this business based on what you just said which means
01:36:47you probably don't have the knack right off the bat for knowing exactly how the market is because you
01:36:51weren't the one who built it let's be real for a second like you didn't build this thing
01:36:54and so to say that you know better than the board who's probably been there for a long time like of
01:36:59course there's the situation where like the board's out of touch blah blah blah blah but like you also
01:37:03have to show some respect the amount of reps and experience and time that they have spent while you
01:37:07were just a child building this business um and so i think that what you need to do is just like give
01:37:12them evidence and then make a an appropriate size bet and if they don't believe you at all
01:37:18then you can start your own company and do it your way
01:37:24this is also still the most absurd story that is that is probably the most absurd question that i've
01:37:29ever gotten was it jesus christ i was like i was like that is the most absurd plot that is like the
01:37:35most absurd thing i've ever um actually kind of funny when you think about movie plots as
01:37:45as uh as q a questions like that that was insane if i yeah i'm the only one yeah i missed that one
01:37:52just like that see i'm taking these questions seriously all right i'm trying to actually answer
01:37:57these and i'm getting trolled uh no it's great that was uh that was something okay what else we got
01:38:04all right so friends family countrymen lend me your ears um i hope this was an amazing 34 30
01:38:13and uh i will see you in the next daily live stream stay awesome bye
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