0:02 My companies did over $250 million in revenue last year. I broke a Guinness
0:05 World Record for the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time. I did $106
0:10 million in sales in under three days. My mother also died last year.
0:15 And I want to compress everything that I learned this last year into this video
0:20 for you. For 8 years, I've had the habit of texting myself lessons as they came
0:24 up so I wouldn't forget them. And every year, I make one video like this. And
0:27 every year, it is my most listened to podcast that I have. And so this is 2025
0:34 lessons and failures. The first is that fear exists in the fig. And so if you're
0:39 afraid to take the risk, write it down in excruciating detail what you're
0:43 actually afraid of having happen. Like really step by step what happens next
0:48 when you fail. You'll often find it's not that bad when you spell it out
0:55 because it only exists when it's hazy, not when it's crisp. Because when you
1:00 actually play it out, okay, maybe you do go back home. And what does going back
1:03 home really mean? It means that you go back in your old room or maybe you sleep
1:06 on a couch or maybe you sleep on a friend's couch. And so besides the rules
1:11 that you believe other people have on your life that you think you're
1:14 breaking, that is all made up cuz they don't really care that much because no
1:16 one really cares that much about anyone besides themselves. It's all make
1:19 believe. And I think that when you get as specific as humanly possible, but
1:22 like I don't want to I don't want to post this content. What? because you're
1:27 afraid that some unnamed account or some named account will write words on a
1:30 screen that will read that you'll read that will make your your feelings go
1:34 away. Like that's that is what will stop you from achieving your goal. Having a
1:38 stranger tell you to [ __ ] off because you reached out is is the reason. That's
1:42 it. Like you're like I didn't achieve my goals because I was afraid that somebody
1:45 I don't know would tell me that I suck. When you say it like that, you're like
1:49 [ __ ] Now let's say a different version. I didn't achieve my potential. I never
1:53 pursued any of my goals because someone I know, I was afraid that they would say
1:57 that they didn't approve of my behavior anymore. Maybe you shouldn't a care what
2:01 they think or b have them in your life. And so when I decided to launch this
2:05 book, $100 million Money Models, the goal was to do $100 million in the
2:09 weekend. And I made that goal public within the company so everybody knew.
2:14 And one of the people on my team said, "Well, what if we don't hit it?" And I
2:18 remember almost being like disgusted. Like that was like my my physical
2:22 reaction to to when that person said that. And I remember just looking at him
2:26 and I was like, "Dare greatly, motherfucker." Like what's the point?
2:32 Like if we if we [ __ ] up, we die trying. You know what I mean? Like so what? But
2:36 like we're going to still fight like hell to try and make it happen. And so
2:40 the fact that he asked that really just made me think like what does he think
2:44 I'm afraid of? If I if I said, "Hey guys, we're gonna hit we're gonna try
2:47 and hit 100 million." We hit 80 or we hit 70, whatever. I'm like, "Okay,
2:51 boohoo. We made a bunch of money. We got a ton of people books in their hands
2:54 that can help them. What are we going to do? We'll try again next year." Like,
2:58 well, what what if people don't take you seriously? I don't think people are
3:01 going to not take me seriously because people will take you as serious as you
3:05 take yourself. And if you are serious about your goals and your commitment to
3:10 those goals, people can visibly observe. There is no one that will fault you for
3:15 daring greatly. Period. And anyone who does doesn't matter. And one of my
3:20 favorite quotes, like man, it's probably like a top 10 quote for me all time,
3:23 which I have a lot of quotes, is from Marcus Aurelius. He said, "What are you
3:27 so afraid of losing when nothing in this world belongs to you?" And so it's like
3:31 we're here on borrowed time to acquire borrowed assets and borrowed resources
3:36 and at the end of the game, you're just going to push your chips to the middle
3:39 and somebody else is going to take your chair. That's it. Out of coins. And so
3:44 it's like we're just we're just in the game. Like we're just here. We're we're
3:48 renting. We're leasers, right? None of this is permanent. And so the idea that
3:53 we'd fear some permanent outcome from an impermanent existence, the longer I've
3:57 been in the game, the more disgusted I am by that feeling and by someone
4:02 questioning that. And so I share that with you because when that when that uh
4:06 young man said that to me, it was just a great reminder of like we ended up
4:12 hitting the 100 million. We did 106. But like you have to you have to you have to
4:17 believe on some level that you can hit it. And you also have to believe even
4:21 more that you will die trying. And I think that your commitment has to be to
4:24 the effort that you're willing to put forth. And completely divorced of the
4:28 outcome. I believed that we could hit it because all the math made sense.
4:33 But could I ultimately control whether ads got delivered or you know an account
4:37 gets shut down or or you know the the internet doesn't work or there's a storm
4:40 that day and all the power gener of course there are things that could
4:44 happen. So in no way I just want to make sure that I put 100% effort on all the
4:48 things that I can control and then after that you roll the [ __ ] dice and you
4:53 stack as many chips as you can in your favor. And then after that you let the
4:57 cards fall where they will. And so that was a very big reminder for me this year
5:03 was that like nothing great was ever accomplished by someone who was afraid
5:10 to try because of what they thought other people would think or say about
5:14 them. So that was number one. The second one is that I feel like the longer that
5:18 I've been in this game, the more I feel like mental toughness matters more than
5:23 motivation. And so mental toughness comes down to four things which
5:27 obviously when my mother died I had to think through like how am I going to
5:32 respond to this obviously negative event in my life and that she died all of a
5:36 sudden no one thought it was going to happen it was just very fast which in
5:41 some ways I can be very grateful for right she didn't have like a long
5:44 suffering period and so there are four things that I think happen when any
5:47 negative event occurs something against your preferences something bad is that
5:52 the first level is how much bad stuff can happen before you force it to change
5:58 the way you live. The second component is okay something rattles you enough
6:01 that you start you change the way you behave. Once you change the way you
6:06 behave basically how upset do you get? How low do you go? Somebody who's more
6:09 mentally tough would take longer to get upset and then if they do get do get
6:15 upset they do snap. They only change their behavior a tiny bit. That's it.
6:17 So, they're not like, "Oh, I'm going to go start taking heroin and I'm going to
6:20 go cheat on my wife and I'm going to go, you know, drive drunk." They're like, "I
6:24 might have some ice cream tonight." Right? And then once they're on that
6:29 negative path, the next level of our element of mental toughness is how fast
6:35 do you come back, which is resiliency. How fast do you rebound back to where
6:40 you were? Are you somebody who, you know, someone says a cross word to you,
6:44 old school cross, right? bet something mean to you and then you let it bother
6:47 you for a week, you let it bother you for two weeks, a month before you
6:50 rebound. Even if it was a small thing and a small change of behavior, if you
6:55 have low resiliency, it just takes you a long time to get to baseline. And then
6:59 the fourth element is when you do rebound, how much do you rebound? Do you
7:02 just rebound below where you were? Did it per by the way, that's a traumatic
7:07 event. It permanently changed you your behavior. Do you get back to baseline?
7:11 So it didn't permanently change you. Was not traumatic. or you go above baseline.
7:16 You adapt. You're better than you were before the bad thing happened. Which, by
7:21 the way, also traumatizes you. Because for those of you who hear this all over
7:26 social media, translate the word trauma into a permanent change in behavior from
7:33 an aversive bad stimulus thing that happened. So trauma means that you just
7:37 change. You permanently change the way you act when something bad happens. Is
7:42 there a world where you can change how you act permanently? Where you behave
7:47 better than you did before? Yeah. Many of you, many humans, not the current
7:51 generation, let's say a generation or two back, were traumatized by your
7:56 parents many times. Sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a hanger, sometimes
8:01 with a spoon, sometimes with a hand, sometimes with a shoe or a slipper,
8:05 sometimes at your head. Who knows? The point is is that you did something, you
8:10 got smacked, and then you permanently stopped doing that. They traumatized
8:16 you. Was trauma bad in that situation? No. It's only bad if it permanently
8:21 changes your behavior in a way that is against the type of person that you want
8:24 to be or the types of behaviors that you prefer to to act in or do. And so when I
8:29 thought about those things and I was forced this year to like actually define
8:32 like what is mental toughness? People throw this out a lot. like how can I
8:36 measure this? And then if I can measure it, then it means that I can improve it.
8:40 And so when someone says, "Hey man, toughen up or get mentally tougher."
8:44 Now, at least you have four variables that you can think of in your mind. I
8:47 want to take longer for something to change the way I act. If it does change
8:50 the way I act, I want it to change it as little as possible. And if I notice that
8:54 my behavior has changed, I want to rebound as quickly as I can. As soon as
8:58 I notice that it changes, and then not only that, I want to be better for it,
9:02 not worse. And then that's what happens. And the shift that occurs is that life
9:06 starts happening for you, not to you. You become the victor of your
9:10 circumstances rather than the victim. You become the person who's in the
9:14 driver's seat. And the reason that so many people are aversive to that concept
9:19 is because it is so much easier to cast blame outwards. Right? Your power
9:25 follows the direction of where you point blame. So if you say, "I'm this way
9:29 because my mom didn't hug me enough. I'm this way because my dad didn't hug me
9:32 enough." Then guess who actually has complete control over your life? Them or
9:36 your perception of them. But if you said, "I am this way because I am not
9:41 resilient enough. I was not adaptive enough. I was not I didn't have enough
9:47 tolerance to be able to handle that level of stress." Well, then guess what
9:50 you can now do? You can do something about it because you admitted at least
9:54 you were in charge. You were the one in control or you have some control, some
9:59 influence over the outcome of how you act. And so defining this was really
10:02 helpful for me. Obviously going through my mother's my mother's death and
10:07 accident and thinking like what kind of man do I want to be? How [snorts] do I
10:10 want to show up to my family? How do I want to be there for everyone else who's
10:13 going to be at this, you know, at this funeral, extended family, the people
10:16 from my mom's church who are going to be there? Like how do I want to present
10:19 myself? And to be clear, I'm not saying that you that you shouldn't suffer, that
10:22 you shouldn't mourn. I think that people mourn in 100% unique ways that are
10:26 entirely of their own. And for anybody to say that you somehow think someone
10:30 should mourn the way you think they should mourn, [ __ ] you. Real talk.
10:34 People can mourn however they want to mourn. And your choices in those harder
10:42 times can serve as evidence of the type of person that you want to be. So that
10:47 when hard times come again, you can look back and say, "I know I can get through
10:50 this because I got through that." And then it becomes the stack of undeniable
10:55 proof that you're not just saying you are this way. You can prove that you are
10:58 this way. And it's not that you do this to the external world because the
11:00 external world doesn't give [ __ ] and they're not taking track anyways. But
11:03 it's for you because you're the one with the tally marks. You're the one who's
11:07 got the scars to show for it. You're the one who gets to say, "I know I can get
11:11 through this because I have been through worse." And what's really interesting
11:16 that I'll share is that the younger you are in my opinion, the harder life is
11:22 because you have the same hard things that occur to you. 10 out of 10 bad
11:27 thing is a 10 out of 10 bad thing. Maybe your 10 out of 10 is different than
11:29 somebody else's, but everyone has a maxed out pain scale. The difference is
11:33 that when you're younger, you don't have the tools to protect yourself. You don't
11:37 have the tools to respond, and you don't know how to make sense of the world yet.
11:41 And so no matter what you go through now as an adult, I always think to myself,
11:44 there is something for sure that I went through when I was younger that was
11:47 harder than this. And every time I look for it, I find it. And it reminds me
11:53 that one, this two shall pass. And two, I'm still [ __ ] here. And so this year
11:57 had a lot of hardship, not just my my mother's death, but it served as a
12:03 reminder of the things that I can put in my backpack on my checklist of things
12:09 that I can say I have also survived this. So the third thing that I wrote
12:12 down for myself was record-breaking outcomes take record-breaking work. And
12:18 so when I was kind of in the in the thick of preparing for the book launch,
12:22 this launch, the Guinness World Record-breaking launch, right, the guy
12:26 who owned the record before that, Prince Harry, had almost doubled the guy who
12:30 ran who owned the record before that, which is President Obama. All right, so
12:35 Obama was at 800 something thousand. Prince Harry was at 1.4 million. And I'm
12:41 thinking these guys have tremendous resources at their advantage and they
12:46 wanted to have a, you know, tons of book sales and show, you know, show that they
12:50 had lots of people who love them and all that stuff. And I was like, how am I
12:54 going to try and outsell these monarchs literally, right? And it's like, well,
12:58 what are the things that are controllable is the work that we put
13:01 into it. And I was like, well, I don't know how Hard Prince Harry works. I have
13:04 no idea. I've never met him. But I was like, I know that I can work four years
13:09 on something without anyone knowing about it before revealing it. And I
13:14 think about it a lot like the Olympics. So people will train for four years to
13:19 have 10 seconds where the world sees them. And what's interesting is that
13:23 people see those 10 seconds and assume, okay, 10 seconds when they ran, maybe
13:27 it's, you know, a hundred times that for how much they worked. It's just not
13:31 really fathomable for somebody who doesn't even know how to work long and
13:35 hard to think about how much effort that really takes. And so when I was in the
13:38 thick of it, I just kept thinking to myself like, man, this is so much work.
13:43 And then I thought to myself like, yeah, no one has ever done this before. So, no
13:48 one has ever done this before. Of course, it will take that much work. Did
13:52 I expect to do something that no one had ever done before with a level of effort
13:56 that had been repeated many, many times? Of course not. The amount of times I had
14:00 to doublech checkck every single email flow from every single potential
14:05 combination. It was 400 pages of copy. There was more copy written just in the
14:10 emails than words in the book. And then every single VSSL, so video sales
14:14 letter, I had six of them. Every single one of them painstakingly crafted where
14:17 I have to say, I got to get it shorter. I got to get it shorter. But I have to
14:19 stuff more in here. I got to get it shorter. How can I put more visuals? How
14:22 can I put more narrative in it? How can I How can I minimize the downside? going
14:25 to express more of the of the upside potential of this particular thing. And
14:29 then as I was creating the slides, right, for for the webinar, I wrote out
14:33 every single word first and then went through multiple passes of editing. And
14:36 then after editing the actual words, every single word that was said was
14:41 prepared. And then those words had to get on the slides. How many? 1,700
14:46 slides. How much AI was used in the making of those slides? Zero. Me.
14:49 Because as of right now, there's nothing that makes slides like me as of yet.
14:53 Maybe there will be. Currently it doesn't not the style I like. And so I'm
14:57 there pasting these things. I was like, "Holy [ __ ] this and then I was like,
15:00 "Okay, well, I also have to have a visual on every single slide." I did use
15:03 AI for the visuals, but I had to go through that and you're like, you're
15:06 like 300 slides in and you're like, "Oh my god, this was 2 days." And you're
15:11 like, "I have I have another four I have another 1,400 slides to make." And
15:15 that's just for the that's just for the webinar. That's just for the first part
15:19 of day one. And then I've got I've got the prep that I have to do for every one
15:21 of the interviews. And then I got to talk to every one of those guys and tell
15:23 them what I'm going to say and then make sure I can steer the conversation way
15:26 that's interesting to the audience and then also still promotes the book and
15:30 the other stuff. And so with each of these things and even when I when I when
15:33 I had the the playbooks, right, when I explained those, I practiced being able
15:40 to walk, say the slide, and position the props at the same time. You think, oh,
15:43 well, that that just looked normal. It was like I had to do it 50 times, a
15:49 hundred times so that I knew that when the the screen would come on, I would
15:53 pull I would reverse order. So I'd put the the letter in my pocket. I'd take my
15:57 hat from underneath my arm. I'd pull it back up. And then I would say, "Business
16:01 owners, money makers, ballers, can't remember what it was. I made this for
16:04 you." And then I transition to the second part. Right? And so at every
16:08 single one of these points, I had to practice all of it over and over again.
16:10 And I was just like I just kept thinking. I was like, "No one will do
16:13 this." I was like, "No one will do this." And the reality is that you will
16:18 not get credit for the work you do. You We have this desire, at least I do,
16:21 maybe on some level, that I want someone to stand next to me when I'm working and
16:26 just be like, "Great job. Great job today, Alex. You worked super hard." No,
16:32 you don't get that. Like, you have to be that person. And so it comes down to and
16:37 I and I say this a lot but it's because it's like it's what gets me through this
16:41 is I always ask myself I'm like what kind of man do I want to be? And so when
16:45 I'm in that I'm like am I the man who will cut the corner? And I'm like no I'm
16:48 going to [ __ ] do it right. And it's like right get back to it. That's it.
16:52 There's no parade. There's no applause. There's no confetti. It's like the work
16:56 needs doing and it's either me or somebody else. And this was a a project
17:00 of love. I was like, this is something that I had wor I mean the first all
17:03 three of my books were actually written at once. So you you want to talk about a
17:07 long-term plan. I began writing these four plus years ago and it was one Mondo
17:11 book and then I thought wouldn't it be amazing if I could culminate the $100
17:15 million series with $100 million launch but each of the three books had to had
17:21 to represent what the concept of the book was about. And so I have had this
17:26 waiting for four years before I could share it. And so I think like I like
17:32 telling yourself in your mind the story that you're going to be able to someday
17:36 tell when you're going through the rocky cut scene allows you to take the licks
17:41 that you're going to take during that period where no one is watching because
17:45 the winning always happens when you're alone. People only get to see it when
17:50 you when you when you demonstrate it. But the demonstration, the 10-second
17:54 race, the one fight, the me getting on stage and doing the presentation, that
17:58 is a microcosm of what it actually takes. And it is one of those
18:02 unfortunate things that no one will ever be able to observe it because the amount
18:06 of time it would take to observe it would be the amount of time it took to
18:08 do it. Unless someone else is going to wait for four years just to see that,
18:12 you just have to guess. And so, no one will ever know how hard you worked and
18:16 no one will ever care. And so you have to create another game or another story
18:21 that allows you to succeed even when no one else cares. Which is why you have to
18:25 be the one who who cheers for you when no one else is watching. Just know that
18:29 no one will understand. And that's okay because you know and you're the only
18:34 person whose respect you need to earn. And you're also the hardest person's
18:38 respect to earn because you know when you're bullshitting you. And so this is
18:42 also me talking to the winners right now. you being the best one in your
18:45 state, the best one in your high school, the best one in your in your in your
18:48 company, in your division, in your department. That's a low bar. I can't
18:52 remember where this quote is, but I think I think Leonard Vinc Da Vinci said
18:55 this actually. I think he said something to the degree of like the curse of the
18:59 winner is not that he he aims too high and misses, but that he shoots too low
19:03 and he achieves his go his goal. And I think that you can't have your own
19:08 respect if you know that you left some in the tank. Which is why going bigger
19:14 and asking yourself, am I capable of this? Is the only way that you can ever
19:19 truly see? And you can only do that if you're willing to fail. Hey, and real
19:23 quick, I spent 200 hours this year just making this one project for you, which
19:27 is the $und00 million scaling road map. And I broke up the stages of business
19:33 into 10 stages. And you can identify where you're at by simply just putting
19:35 in your business information. You go to acquisition.com/roadmap
19:39 and it'll spit out this custom report that tells you what the constraints are
19:42 at that current level and what you need to do to graduate and get to the next
19:45 level. This is our gift to you absolutely free. On the thank you page,
19:48 you can book a call with our team and we'd love to help you uh figure that out
19:53 and ideally get past it. So number four, you have to take care of people who work
19:58 in your company's personal life so that they can succeed in their professional
20:02 life. So, I'll tell you what how this manifests in reality. The biggest one is
20:07 if someone's spouse or significant other is not a fan or supportive of the job or
20:13 the work that they have, they will never achieve their potential. And it's it's
20:18 sad. It's unfortunate, but and it may be controversial for some of you, but I
20:22 have yet to see it. If you have a spouse or a significant other, somebody you
20:25 live with, someone who's like your other person, and they're they're not like
20:29 even if they're neutral, you will not achieve your potential. Honestly, I
20:32 don't even think close, not even close to your potential because I think at
20:36 least I'll just speak for men, being good on the home front allows you to
20:41 have full access to your brain so that you can go after the hunt. Right? If
20:45 you're worried about what's happening at home because you know that when you come
20:48 back there's going to be bitching and moaning or like, "Why are you working?"
20:51 Oh, it's just it's always another another tough season. It's always going
20:55 to be it's always going to be busy. If you have that in the back of your mind
20:58 or in your ear, it's like you start pulling your punches. You start cutting
21:02 out early. You start you start avoiding taking on the bigger projects to take
21:05 the slightly smaller project. You don't set the bigger goal because you know the
21:08 effort that it's going to take to hit it. And so you just say, "Well, this is
21:11 an adequate goal." And I want to be clear, nothing wrong with that if you
21:15 don't want to see how far you can go. And not everyone does, and that's fine.
21:19 But when I think about the people in this organization, I have taken more and
21:22 more attention to making sure that their personal lives are supportive, their
21:27 environment is conducive to them doing the best work they possibly can because
21:32 I want people to be able to do their life's work at acquisition.com. I want
21:36 like think about the record I just talked about. When someone is 85 years
21:40 old and looking back on their life, there are very few moments that you
21:43 actually remember, right? Like you don't remember the vast majority of life. you
21:45 just a couple moments that spit out and like when you get I'm sure when you're
21:48 much older you might only remember like one moment from a year. Think how crazy
21:53 that is, right? And so I got to say truthfully to the team when you're
21:57 looking back on this part of your life, you will be able to say that you made
22:00 history and there's not that many days that you get to do that. And so making
22:05 history though only happens when you've got every single thing aligned and luck.
22:11 And so to think to be arrogant enough to believe that you're going to overcome
22:14 your your conditions that you've set up for yourself and you've got somebody
22:16 who's not supportive versus somebody who does, good luck. But that was just it
22:20 was a it was a big it was a big lesson for me and that I'm paying attention to
22:24 that from a team perspective of who's got supportive uh environments at home,
22:28 who's got supportive spouses, and is there ways that I can help them get the
22:32 support of their spouse so that I can unlock their discretionary effort
22:35 towards the goal. And I will say that making sure that if you do have super
22:39 hard workers in your team, hard workers will run themselves into the ground when
22:43 the goal is big enough. And so they will usually look to you to see when to rest.
22:47 And so you have to be willing to be like, "Take the day, dude. Take the
22:51 weekend, unplug." And then usually, I've just seen, this is me personally saying
22:55 this, I think that when they see it from above or see it from the person who
22:58 they're quote rolling into or responsible for, getting managed by,
23:01 getting led by, they can actually unplug for a couple days cuz they're like,
23:04 "Hey, he asked me to chill out. I'm going to chill out, right?" And I think
23:08 that it's it's your responsibility to have a gauge on where people are getting
23:12 close to cracking and and doullling those out. Number five, think for
23:16 yourself or the world will think for you. So this is one I thought a lot
23:22 about which is to be unique you need to have high agency. And so agency is
23:27 essentially being able to reason for yourself from the things that you can
23:32 observe or have observed. And so at the lowest levels it's being able to say
23:37 that you like a person, a show, a movie that most people don't like. It's
23:41 thinking for yourself. Most people, and here's where it gets really interesting,
23:45 most people pick their identities off the shelf, right? They come they come
23:50 with pre-anned beliefs. They have a set of apparel that they wear. That's that's
23:53 the fashion of this guy. Oh, I'm a hipster, which means I have to have
23:57 gauges. I have to have one of those beanie hats. That's a small thing. I
24:01 wear black combat boots, you know, black things with a chain, whatever. Cuz I'm a
24:06 hipster. And all my beliefs are going to be what hipsters believe. And or I'm a
24:12 I'm a redneck. And so I'm going to have flannel and I'm going to wear a trucker
24:16 hat and I'm going to have jeans and I'm going to have super conservative views
24:21 on X, Y, and Z and whatever. I'm going to live in the country and I want a
24:24 ranch. All right, there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's just that most of
24:28 the time when you pick your belief set and you pick your personality off the
24:33 shelf, the reason that you do that is because you didn't actually reason for
24:37 yourself. Meaning there's probably not a 100% of hipster world views that you
24:43 agree with. There's not a 100% of redneck worldviews that you believe with
24:46 if if you believe in that that if that's you, right? And so if you actively think
24:52 about all the components of your life, which is like what shoes will I wear?
24:56 Why do I pick these shoes? What makes a good shoe for me? Why do I wear these
25:01 shorts? What makes a good short for me? Why do I wear this shirt? As silly as
25:06 that may sound, you choose every single component of your life. And you either
25:09 choose to live it by default or live it deliberately. And the people that are
25:15 interesting typically have multiple components that they reason for
25:19 themselves that get put into one box. And so then when people see them, they
25:23 double take because they're like, "Wait a second. These pieces don't go
25:26 together." And what does that do? [clears throat] It makes you interested.
25:30 And so let's say that you have the body of a meatthead and you dress like a
25:37 redneck, but you quote ancient philosophers and you're also extraordinarily wealthy. That's weird,
25:45 right? That's odd. And so if that's you, then you will probably attract
25:50 attention. And so a lot of people want to live a unique life, but they take all
25:57 their decisions from pre-anned boxes off the shelf, out of the box. And so I
26:01 think that asking yourself, what do I want? And does this thing help me get
26:06 it? Are the questions that begin to lead down the path of agency? Because if you
26:10 approach every component of your life with that lens, you'll often find that
26:14 the things that you took off the shelf don't. the politics you you vote for,
26:19 the people that you the the the sports teams that you root for, all of this
26:21 stuff that you've built your life around, not at all. And so having high
26:27 agency is higher cost in the short term because you actually have to make these
26:32 decisions and also suffer the rejection of decisions that other people who might
26:37 all dress like hipster not agree with because you didn't take the same belief
26:39 out of the box or off the shelf as they did. But it's lower cost long-term
26:44 because you don't find yourself 10 years down the road wondering how you got
26:48 here. How did I marry this person? How did I start this business? Why am I
26:51 dressed this way? Do I even care about this stuff? Why do I vote like that? You
26:56 got here because you never questioned your decisions and just went with the
27:00 flow. You went with what everyone else was doing. But everyone else is unhappy,
27:05 mediocre, overweight, in debt, and divorced. Why would you be like them?
27:12 And so the only way out is by turning in words and saying, "What do I want? And
27:16 does this thing help me get it?" And if the conclusion that you come to is
27:20 different than everyone else's, great, because you don't want to be like them.
27:23 So you should hope to find discrepancies between what you decide and what other
27:26 people decide because it means you have begun the path of thinking for yourself.
27:29 Maybe you like a movie that your friends don't like. Instead of saying, "Oh, I
27:33 mean, it's okay." Don't hold back. Be like, "I think it's a great movie."
27:35 They're like, "Well, you're an idiot." You're like, "Okay, I like that show.
27:39 That show's trash. Okay, don't watch it. Like, that's it, right? Oh, why do you
27:44 wear such lame shoes? Why do you wear jean shorts, Alex? Why did you wear the
27:48 little sandals for two years that I wore that were really weird because at the
27:51 time that those shoes served what I wanted. I wanted cuz I was at the beach
27:54 a lot cuz Leila and I were traveling and so I was like, I want something to go to
27:56 the gym. I want something to go to the pool. I want something to go to the
27:58 beach. I want something that can climb. I want something to go to a restaurant.
28:00 That's why I was close to close to shoes. It gets me everything I want.
28:04 Great. Alex, it doesn't look cool to who? Who does that look not cool to?
28:09 Girls, I'm married. I don't give a [ __ ] Who does that not look cool to? GUYS,
28:13 WHY DO I CARE WHAT THEY THINK, RIGHT? I I don't even know how to say it any
28:15 different. Like, why would I care about any of that? They're not walking in my
28:19 shoes. Quite literally, these are comfortable. And if you don't like them,
28:23 wear whatever shoes you want, right? [laughter] And so I think that when and
28:27 this actually has a tie into marketing which I think is important which is like
28:31 if you want to make content you want to you want to build a brand of some kind
28:35 the brand has to get built from the bottom up. You have to reason from that
28:37 perspective. What do I want? Does this help me get it? And when you think that
28:41 way you'll actually be able to build a unique brand because no one will have
28:44 the same exact life experience as you. And when you do that is what creates the
28:47 unique combination and you'll be able to defend why you believe what you believe.
28:50 Because if you cannot explain why you believe what you believe you believe
28:53 what someone else told you to believe. and you never questioned it. Number six,
28:57 a hard conversation up front can save you millions of dollars and years of
29:02 life. So Rockefeller said this, which is a friendship founded on business is
29:05 better than a business founded on friendship. So the big thing here is I
29:11 used to say I used to hear people say I only can do business with people via
29:16 handshake. And people that I just met when I was really young were like oh if
29:19 we have to draw a contract I don't want to do a deal. And I was pressured into
29:24 doing handshake deals when I was younger with people that were quote more
29:27 experienced because I didn't want to seem, you know, disintegrous or
29:31 unintent, right? A dishonest person. Oh, I need a contract. And then I just
29:34 realized they were complete scoundrels and full of [ __ ] And so then I went the
29:37 other extreme, which was like everything has to be in contracts, which I think by
29:41 and large would serve you really well for anybody who's starting out your
29:45 first 10 years in business. If you do 10 years of business with someone, you will
29:48 be able to get to the point where you can have handshake agreements. But you
29:53 do not extend trust to someone who has not earned it. And I think that there's
29:58 different levels of this. If an employee comes to the business, of course, like
30:01 you you have to extend trust, right? But if we're talking a business partnership,
30:05 well then like we should have a track record here. We should have a a large
30:09 data set of behavior that I can look at in different circumstances where I know
30:12 that you will behave in this way. And so for me, trust is believing that the
30:16 person will act in ways that are that are similar to the way they have
30:18 continued to act in the past, right? They are consistent. And I want to be
30:22 real with you for a second. So I said this year was a tough year. I had eight
30:27 lawsuits this year, right? And most of them were at the very beginning of the
30:30 year and I dealt with almost all of them. And here's the part that people
30:35 won't tell you. All my lawsuits have been with people who were friends of
30:41 mine or friendly. And if you're like, "Huh? Well, I can't believe that he
30:44 would get in arguments over his friend. What do you think divorces are? Right?
30:48 Like, we humans think that we're somehow immune of like, "No, I'm really cool
30:52 with this guy. We're best friends. I don't think we're ever going to get an
30:55 argument." Okay. Well, consider this. People who sleep with each other for
30:59 extended periods of time make life commitments to each other half the time
31:04 end it. So, if you think the most important relationship in your life
31:07 where you're sharing everything with this person, you're committing to
31:11 forever, half the time it ends, maybe, just maybe, write down a [ __ ]
31:16 contract. And the reason that I I honestly had a lot of these lawsuits is
31:19 because, and the thing is is it takes years for these things to come due,
31:21 right? Like you have a business thing that was 6 years ago and then the thing
31:26 finally really starts to make money and then you have a conflict, right? And so,
31:30 you have to deal with all the uncomfortable stuff upfront. And I just
31:35 so strongly encouraged you to like those contracts. I avoided hard conversations
31:39 and was like, "Ah, we'll figure it out when it gets to that." And we both
31:41 didn't want to talk about those things. We didn't want to we didn't want to mess
31:45 up the friendship. It's like, bro, if you think you can't have a hard
31:47 conversation when there's no money on the line, just just assume that you will
31:52 be in a lawsuit for many years. Just assume it. And if you're not willing to
31:55 have that hard conversation up front and you willingly will go into having
32:00 multiple years of lawsuits on the back end, then you deserve it, right? And
32:04 it's so avoidable and it's likely that it's not going to work out because one
32:07 or both of you can't have hard conversations, which is required for
32:11 success. And so I unfortunately have the scars for this one. The contracts that
32:15 I've done in the last couple years are significantly better than the ones that
32:18 I did six, seven years ago, but those are the ones that are coming due now.
32:21 And so the time that you should have great agreements was 20 years ago. The
32:25 second best time is today. So just start with the frame of like, hey, I want
32:29 everything in in writing just so we have no misunderstanding so there's no
32:33 unspoken expectations because the last thing in the world that I would want is
32:35 that I would disappoint you because you expect me to do something that I was
32:38 unwilling to do or that I didn't know you wanted me to do. And so you can
32:41 approach from that perspective and then you have to say, "Hey, what happens if
32:45 you don't want to be a partner with me anymore? What happens if I don't want to
32:47 be a partner with you anymore? What happens if you die? What happens if I
32:49 die?" Right? Right? What happens if we disagree on where we're going to put the
32:52 money? Right? What happens if we disagree if we're going to sell? These
32:55 are all things you have to talk about. And so, you either do it now when
32:58 there's low stakes or you do it at the end when you both have high stakes. And
33:01 I can promise you it's much better when there's low stakes. So, there's a really
33:04 cool concept. I think Shiron said this and I really like it. He said, you can
33:09 you can see what level of friend you have by the things that you talk about
33:14 with them. So, he had five levels of friends. I really love this. And I would
33:18 use this as a litmus test for thinking through the quality of the friendships
33:21 that you have in your life. The lowest level of friend is someone that you can
33:25 only talk about the past with. Oh, the good times we used to have. Oh, remember
33:30 high school past, right? The next level friend is somebody who just talk about
33:32 other people with. Oh, how's so and so doing? How's Let's talk about that
33:35 person. Let's talk about that person. Aka kind of gossiping. But that's what
33:39 it is. Level two. Level three friend is someone that you can talk about ideas
33:43 with. Oh, wouldn't it be cool if Oh, isn't it amazing? You can dream, right?
33:47 ideas, concepts. The fourth level of friend is how you can tr somebody you
33:51 can do stuff with, you can talk those ideas and actually execute, you can take
33:55 action, you can do things together, etc. Fourth, and then fifth is friends that
34:00 you can make, lose, and spend money with. And I believe that because for
34:05 whatever reason, money is just one of those subjects that I think it just
34:10 shows how I mean, it shows how someone behaves around a reinforcer and what
34:13 someone values. It just kind of cuts through the crap of everything. And so
34:16 like Shiron for example is our president. Shiron and I have done deals
34:20 together for like five plus years and we really started almost as to use the
34:24 Rockefeller quote like we are a friendship founded on business and it
34:28 has worked out great compared to most of the businesses I founded on friendship.
34:31 And so we've just done lots and lots of deals together. We've had ups, we've had
34:35 downs. We've made big calls and I just have seen him in all the ups and downs
34:38 of those years and he's seen me and we've been like let's do more stuff
34:42 together because it's so rare. And so at this point, could I have a handshake
34:47 agreement with Chiron? Yes, totally. And we do have them on lots of different
34:51 deals. On the really big stuff, we still write it out. Why? Just so we're on this
34:55 literally the same page. And so I was just reminded of that this year, and it
34:59 would be I'd be remiss to not say what I learned from the eight lawsuits that I
35:02 got in this year. Those are my big takeaways is that know what level of
35:06 friend you're with. Make sure that you put everything in writing, and you want
35:09 to frontload the discomfort. Number seven, do more than what is required. So
35:13 I said this was a legal year and so part of this was looking into compliance and
35:17 other things that are kind of risks for any business as you get over a certain
35:20 size because the bigger you are the bigger the target that's on your back
35:24 and so if you wish for success you also wish for the pains that come with
35:26 success and as much as many people want to say like ah champagne problems or
35:29 rich people problems they are problems nonetheless and I promise you they are
35:33 still painful and so I would say you want to go above and beyond. So what's
35:37 interesting is you also want to become educated right ignorance is not defense
35:42 real if you don't know a law exists it does not exclude you from the
35:46 consequences of it and so in realizing that you have to be proactive in
35:50 learning the laws of everything that applies to you which is there are a lot
35:54 of them and now with AI they can summarize some of these things but like
35:58 I almost I got like a a law degree this year on public private I just had a lot
36:02 of law that I had to go through and what I will say is that as much as people
36:05 might you know poo poo it I think buying By and large, most laws are written with
36:10 one, good intent, and two, when you really follow the letter of the law, it
36:15 kind of makes sense. And so, I want to crush everyone and play by the rules.
36:20 And so, once you know the rules, then you can you can almost play with more
36:24 freedom because you just know where to avoid, right? Or what to what to
36:28 basically you have to know what the rules are. I don't want to say so you
36:31 can bend them or break them because obviously that's we're talking about
36:33 law. So, just leave it there. But you got to know the rules of the game that
36:37 you're playing and the law as far as we're talking about business. Those are
36:40 the rules of the game. And so, how can we get into the game and try and win? We
36:43 don't even know the rules we're playing by. And so, that would say that to me it
36:47 was like a a big thing that happened this year that I would encourage you to
36:51 just look at the laws that apply to your specific business or industry or
36:55 partnerships and be very well acquainted with them to the same degree. Also,
36:58 rereading the contracts that you have in like your employment agreements, your
37:01 partnership agreements. It's just good to know like what what what tools do I
37:05 have at my disposal right now and what expectations are do I do other people
37:08 have of me that I'm unaware of and that was hugely enlightening and also that
37:11 has just allowed me to sleep so much better and knowing these things has
37:16 allowed me to take what would otherwise be very stressful I mean imagine eight
37:19 lawsuits a lot of lawsuits right something that would have otherwise been
37:21 very stressful and say okay I understand the variables we will take these actions
37:26 I don't need to have any more cycles on this next thing cuz that's where the
37:30 lawyer the lawyer stuff will eat up your bandwidth It eats up your shower time.
37:34 It eats up your dinner time. It eats up when you're staring out the window, when
37:36 you're driving in the car. That's the cost of being in legal battles. But if
37:40 you can minimize the cost of that by saying, "I understand where the conflict
37:44 is, and I know what steps I'm going to take and I have documentation to provide
37:49 these things, you can you can actually circumvent the vast majority of the pain
37:52 and suffering that goes along with, which gives you a significant strategic
37:55 advantage when you're in extended conflicts." All right, so next one. This
37:59 one is probably a little bit more around my current stage of life, but this is um
38:03 I mean that's what this is about. Right now, I'm shifting the way that I'm doing
38:07 work, which is pretty significant. And so, I will first put the disclaimer out
38:10 there that you want to model the rise, not the you know the the the peak part.
38:15 So, to use an example that people can understand, you're not like, "Oh, I want
38:18 to get rich, so I should fly private." Don't fly private to get rich. It's
38:21 something that people do once they are rich, right? If you want to get tall,
38:23 don't play basketball. It's just that tall people play basketball. Very big
38:28 difference. All right? And so this is the first year in my life where I hit I
38:34 hit my financial goals. Acquisition.com crushed it. Portfolio companies crushed
38:38 it. Launch crushed it. Like we did really well this year. This was the
38:41 biggest financial year that I've had in my career, including the years I've had
38:46 exits. And in light of that, I actually feel for the first time in my life that
38:51 I have enough. And I know that sounds ridiculous to some people. How could
38:54 this now be the enough number? But I would say that I have always had bigger
38:57 goals than most people. But I also feel like I know when enough is enough for
39:01 me. They just happen to be bigger than most people's goals. I do not have a
39:04 permanently moving goal coast goalpost. Like for example, I tend to be a little
39:07 bit more muscular than most people are. But I got to a point where I was at 245
39:12 and I was like, "This is a bit much. This is pretty big. I don't need to do
39:15 more than this." Now, some people are like, "Oh, he's got to get bigger.
39:17 Always got to get bigger. I don't have that." I was like, "There, this is
39:21 enough. This is I'm more muscular than most people even want to be, but I am
39:25 muscular enough. And so to the same degree, I probably have bigger financial
39:29 goals than most people have, but I have finally achieved the things that I
39:32 wanted to. Now, what am I going to do with the business? It's not like I'm
39:33 going to end them. It's just that the way that I'm playing the game is
39:37 changing. And so, I'm I'm relaying this, so this may seem like flashing news, but
39:41 I am now shifting to planning my personal life first and allowing
39:45 business to fill in the cracks. And I have such strong reinforcement cycles of
39:50 having worked for so long, so many hours that I just I have to unlearn how to
39:54 work all the hours of the day. I wish I could say it's discipline and all that
39:57 stuff. It's like I've been rewarded and reinforced for doing this for so long,
39:59 but it really is less effort for me to work all day than it is to stop working.
40:02 And so that's kind of the the path that I'm in right now. And when I observe the
40:06 people who are going from you know a billion to 10 billion or 10 billion and
40:11 beyond you get past a point where you will be compensated for the quality of
40:15 your judgment not the quantity of your work. And so I feel like for the first
40:19 time my life I have crossed that threshold for me is that there there is
40:23 significantly higher leverage in my ability to pick and make correct bets.
40:28 And if that becomes the highest leverage work that I have, then I have to
40:34 reorient my life in a way that maximizes the quality of my decision-m which means
40:39 that I probably will travel more. Why would traveling help the quality of my
40:42 decision-making? Well, I'll gain more perspectives, more filters, more
40:46 positions to consider a decision through. I will probably see more people
40:49 than I have seen in the past because their perspectives will also help color
40:54 and shade in the edges, give more dimension to the decisions that I'm
40:57 trying to make. Me, I'll probably try and I'm trying to prioritize sleep a
41:00 little bit more. Now, I've I've never not prioritized sleep. I just like I
41:04 sleep until I can and then I work, right? But I will probably be more
41:07 proactive in doing some of those sleep hygiene things that are a little bit of
41:10 a pain in the ass that can get you that 10% or 20% more. I'm going to be doing
41:14 that now. I will probably have more time that I will unplug on the weekend so
41:19 that I can let my mind wander so that I can think of kind of out of the box
41:23 ideas. And this happened just recently, like two weeks ago. I I had my EA team,
41:29 they've they've changed my schedule a little bit so that there's even more
41:31 free time than there was before, which there was already a lot of free time.
41:35 But free time for me does not mean that nothing's happening. It just means
41:37 there's nothing planned. And so because I had two days like back toback, I
41:41 believe having an empty schedule allows me to do that which matters most. And I
41:45 believe that the time of the CEO or the time of the founder is the most valuable
41:49 asset or resource in the business. And so why would I not want the best
41:53 allocator of the most expensive asset to be me? And so that's how that's how they
41:58 have blocked for me so that I maximize my free time. Now in that free time, put
42:03 together a deal that will make us more than we probably did in entire revenue
42:06 this year. And I did it in basically one day with six and a half hours on the
42:10 phone calling different people just because I had slept well. I had the high
42:13 I had the lowest resting heart rate I ever had. And I had the best like sleep
42:18 score I gotten in it was a record in my entire life. It was the best. Well, the
42:21 score would only go to 100, but like my resting heart rate and my HRV were the
42:25 highest and lowest respectively they'd ever been. And I was like, I feel like I
42:30 can see color today. And that quality of decision-m at this point is the best
42:35 strategic decision for me. And so in some ways, maybe I still have the same
42:38 objectives and I'm now just orienting my life to now do the next version of what
42:42 success looks like or what I have to change in order to become the person who
42:46 can lead this company to where where I think it can be to help the most people.
42:51 And so that is what you will see kind of going forward. And I have not I have
42:54 been in the stage that I was at from how I worked for the last 14 years. So this
42:58 is a pretty significant change for me. But I will be putting my I'll be
43:02 planning my life first and then business will fill in the cracks. So really
43:05 powerful frame that I've been thinking about a lot has been what do you want to
43:09 have happen and what increases the chances of that happening. So here's the
43:14 next lesson. Two frames for reconsidering the hard decisions and
43:20 conversations that you have to have. So let's say someone does something that
43:23 you don't want them to do. They say something bad, something happens, right?
43:28 something that I you have an innate reaction which is that typically it's
43:32 something called it's a it's a countermeasure right so if someone
43:35 punishes you in some way you want to counter punch them back you want to
43:39 counter control you want to punish them so that you want to punish them even
43:43 more so that they dare not punish you right but when we think about these two
43:47 questions which is what I want to have happen what do I want to have happen and
43:50 number two what increases the odds of that happening often times your initial
43:55 reaction to what you want to do is almost antithetical to what you want to
43:59 occur and what increases the chances of that happening. And so, for example, if
44:02 someone says something bad to me online, I might have the immediate desire to go
44:07 punish them publicly, right? What do I want to have happen? I would like this
44:11 person to move on with their lives and forget that I exist. That would be what
44:15 I would want to have happen, right? Realistically, what increases the odds
44:18 of that happening? Does me interacting with them, reinforcing the fact that
44:22 they said that increase those odds? No. I increase the likelihood that that
44:26 person hates me even more and does even more to try and damage me. So that would
44:31 make my problem worse, not better. And so that is just a two-step decision
44:36 frame that I continue to use more and more and more, especially with
44:40 interpersonal relationships. Hey, this employee is doing a bad job. I want to
44:44 yell at them. What do I want to have happen? I want them to do a good job. Do
44:46 I think yelling at them will increase the likelihood of that happening? No. I
44:49 think they'll have more anxiety and they'll probably decrease their
44:51 performance. Okay, so that's not going to work. What do I want to have happen?
44:55 Okay. Can I reward or publicly give them status for the one thing they've done
45:00 well so that they can see some positive loop and then maybe they will do more of
45:03 that thing? That probably does increase those odds. So, I'll do that instead
45:06 even though I want to punish them for being a [ __ ] right? And so, what's
45:09 interesting is that when I ask myself those questions, the thing that
45:14 increases the odds of me getting what I ultimately want rarely is what I want to
45:19 do or at least is rarely my initial gut reaction. And when I look at how most
45:23 people live their lives, they live their lives from gut reaction to gut reaction
45:26 to gut reaction and then counterreaction. And they're just responsive. All they're doing is just
45:31 like they're like seaweed in the ocean. They're just moving and they have no
45:34 direction. They're just constantly going back and forth, right? And they're never
45:37 getting what they want. And they think that life is chaotic. But when you
45:41 actually ask yourself those questions, you typically can guess, no, I don't
45:44 think that's actually going to increase the likelihood that happens. I think
45:46 that person is going to hate me more if I do that. Right? Then why will you do
45:51 it? Right? And so often times when you have those when you use those two
45:55 razors, one of the most common things that comes up and it's now become an
45:58 inside joke for for me and some of my friends is doing nothing at all is often
46:03 the most productive thing to do in those situations. And so it has now taken on
46:07 this inside joke of the heavyweight champion of the world, which is that
46:10 there's all these different potential actions and the heavyweight champion of
46:14 the world is do nothing. And that one almost always wins because what should I
46:18 probably do? Keep doing what I'm doing. keep on my business, focus on my
46:22 marriage, focus on doing good work, and ignore the rest. And what's interesting
46:26 is that it is physically efficient but emotionally painful. And so that is one
46:31 of the I would say one of the one of the the artifacts that I've collected this
46:34 year. So number 10, more better, new. Now, this isn't going to be a new
46:37 concept for anyone who's listening to my stuff, but I will have a slightly
46:40 different take on this. New is incredibly risky. And so this is the
46:45 best analogy that I've I I visualized this year that I'm probably going to
46:47 take with me for the rest of my life, which is I want you to imagine here we
46:52 go. Actually, look at this. If I have these these candies, all right, and I
46:56 throw them all over the place. If I keep doing this, how likely is it that all of
47:01 them are going to end up in the exact position, separated by color and stacked
47:06 together? Very unlikely. I would have to hit refresh and keep doing that many
47:12 many times until eventually all of these are lined up, stacked up on on each
47:16 other super nicely in a way that's organized. Right? This would take a lot
47:20 like could it happen? Of course it could. It is statistically possible. Is
47:25 it likely? No. And so when you think about this, this is six pieces of candy,
47:29 right? There are variables within your business that create the business that
47:34 works, right? And so when you have your business and it is stacked, it is
47:38 working, it is generating revenue, the likelihood that you changing one of
47:42 these variables makes the building or makes the stack or the business better
47:49 goes down. And the taller the stack is, the more evolved your business is, the
47:54 more bricks in that building have been properly placed. And so the higher the
47:59 likelihood the next move is the wrong move if it's something different. So
48:02 I'll give you a marketing version of this. If you have something called a
48:06 control and you have a variant when you run a split test, AB split test. If you
48:11 have a control that you've run 36 split tests on and it has won 36 of those, it
48:16 is the number one control. The likelihood that you changing that
48:21 resulting in an improvement is low. And so if you think about your business as
48:24 it currently stands is there's many different ways to align these variables.
48:27 Almost all of them are not profitable businesses. You happen to have one that
48:32 actually works. And so if you have that then the highest risk adjusted move that
48:36 you can make is that you do more of the thing that already works. I will keep
48:39 doing more bricks in this order because that has worked before. Right? You might
48:44 try and do better which is a tiny variation off of what you're currently
48:50 doing. But something truly new rarely works. And so and it also usually takes
48:56 the most resources. And so for us, if we're going to do something new, I give
49:02 myself one new thing a year. One. So what was the one new thing this year? It
49:05 was the book launch. That was this year. Next year, you'll find out what it is,
49:09 right? But I get one. And it's because I know what the tremendous drain of
49:14 resources is. One big thing, one new thing. And so I would say that the
49:17 bigger the companies that we have, the more resources we have, the fewer new
49:21 things we're doing. Because when you when nothing works, you want to hit
49:25 refresh as many times as you can. You want to do lots of new [ __ ] cuz
49:28 nothing's working. But as soon as something works, then you start to have
49:32 direction. You want to have less and less deviation from that, unless you
49:35 really believe there's an existential risk that would require you to change
49:38 everything, which is significantly less likely than you really think it is. In
49:42 fact, I would say many business owners will destroy their businesses in reality
49:46 for problems that they have manufactured artificially. Problems that have not
49:49 even yet occurred because they are afraid of them happening when in reality
49:53 when that problem happens, it's not going to happen overnight. And you're
49:57 going to have some some some heads up probably. And for those of you who are
50:01 old enough to have businesses during co so if you had business at least for at
50:05 least for five years, right, or six years, you know that you'll survive.
50:09 you'll adapt just like you always have. And so do not try and change the
50:13 business to solve problems that do not exist because there is more than enough
50:16 problems that absolutely do exist today that you should be solving. And so going
50:20 back to more and this has been something that's been just I feel like I've got
50:23 another layer of paint on the more better new is that often times the
50:28 highest return question is why can't I do more of the thing that's working?
50:32 Now, there's usually a much deeper, harder problem that you have to solve
50:35 once you do the easy moores, but there's always a way to do more than you
50:39 currently are. And it's just that once you realize that the level of difficulty
50:43 of what it takes to do the next more is harder than doing something better or
50:47 new. So, instead of you bucking up and and and saying, "I'm going to focus on
50:51 this very hard problem," you then distract yourself with reasonable
50:55 problems that no one will blame you for solving. Because the biggest risk to the
50:59 business is not like a stupid decision because those are unlikely to actually
51:03 occur. The real risk to your business is the second, third, and fourth most
51:06 profitable things that you could do rather than the most valuable thing that
51:10 you can do. This was a very important lesson for me this year. And so when you
51:15 get clear on what the harder question is that you need to ask of why can't I do
51:19 more and now it's getting hard for me to do it. Then we have to remove every
51:23 distraction that you have that makes you think about anything besides solving
51:29 that problem. That's it. And sometimes the answer to that hard problem isn't a
51:36 one week, a 4 week or 4 month solution. Sometimes you realize that your culture
51:40 is [ __ ] and you have to fix the culture and that's going to take you 18
51:44 months. And when you're 6 months into it, things will feel worse than they did
51:48 when you started. But it doesn't make it any less of the correct decision for the
51:51 business. It just means that your reinforcing event or the reward for the
51:56 work that you're going to have is far in the future. And it doesn't mean that 6
51:59 months in you should now change course because it hasn't started working yet
52:03 because you knew when you started and you realized that this was the true
52:06 constraint of the business that this was going to be a long and painful road
52:09 ahead of you. And so you do not want to then solve try and come up with a new
52:13 solution when the first solution never had time to bear fruit because sometimes
52:17 the most productive thing you can do in the business is give time time. Let the
52:22 solution actually work. This has been a very hard lesson for me many times as an
52:25 entrepreneur and I just want to pass it to you because many of you guys have
52:29 many half-built bridges. You you had a way to get across but you knew it would
52:32 take four months but one month in you were still suffering. You thought well
52:35 maybe I'll do this but it's like you never let the first bridge get finished.
52:38 And so in a real way for me, I realized that I needed to build a brand. I've had
52:41 I'll give you two examples of this. So one early days of gym launch, Leila and
52:46 I realized that we had an entire tier of directors that were not competent
52:53 enough. And so over the next 12 months, we had to turn 11 out of 11 directors.
52:57 Very painful. And when you turn directors, what do you think you also
52:59 have to do? Sometimes you have to turn the teams underneath because they had a
53:02 low bar. And so they brought in a lot of low bar people. There was obviously some
53:06 good people they brought into, but like very very painful process. Kind of
53:10 killed morale for that whole year. But we knew that we weren't going to be able
53:13 to grow the business because the level of skill of that team was not sufficient
53:18 and we our bar was too low and unfortunately we can't fire ourselves
53:21 and so we had to do the next natural thing. That was very painful. 6 months
53:26 into that culture is worse and we haven't turned the whole leadership
53:29 team. Was it the wrong course of action? No. Should we change course? No. But it
53:33 means that you have to learn to suffer because sometimes the correct growth is
53:35 the most painful path because the highest leverage move often is the
53:39 hardest problem that you're not choosing to allocate attention towards solving.
53:43 In a more recent one, I was at 30 to 40 million a year for 3 years for gym
53:47 launch. And the big aha that I had was that I needed to build a brand and that
53:53 took years. And so when I went into it, I was like this I will have to keep
53:55 doing this for many years before I'm going to bear any fruit from this. And
54:00 my income when I made that call went down for the first two years by a lot.
54:04 And so I think you have to be willing to stomach that period of time or you will
54:08 never be able to do the real solutions that are really going to move the needle
54:11 because most business owners will do the second, third, fourth thing, the
54:14 incremental improvements rather than the order of magnitude changes that
54:17 typically take order of magnitudes in terms of time and effort. So number 11,
54:24 it's okay to just make money. So hear me out. There's something that I like to
54:26 call the third marshmallow fallacy. And so it goes like this. So many of you
54:28 guys have probably heard about the research study of like, okay, we they
54:32 videotaped kids and they said, we'll put one marshmallow in front of you and then
54:35 if you wait, you know, whatever, 10 minutes, we'll give you a second
54:38 marshmallow. And the kids that wait, you know, 10 minutes, they're more
54:40 successful in life because it's, you know, proxy for your ability to delay
54:44 gratification. Okay. What's interesting about that is that people then assume
54:47 that delaying gratification is always the best course of action. And this is
54:51 why this is a very interesting lesson. If you delay gratification indefinitely,
54:56 then you will work your entire life for nothing because you have delayed
54:59 gratification and then you will die. Said differently, if you were the ant
55:04 that always saves up your money for the winter and you keep saving and keep
55:07 saving, keep saving and then you die, you have a big stack of crumbs that you
55:11 will never have done anything with. And so the question is no longer like once
55:15 you have learned to delay gratification. So this will be me talking a little bit
55:18 more to the winners in the room. Once you have learned to delay gratification,
55:22 you then have to learn the even harder task of the appropriate time to accept
55:27 gratification. Real. So this is incredibly difficult especially for
55:30 winners because in the earlier part of your career you be you get reinforced
55:34 you get rewarded for delaying gratification. And often times it is
55:39 there is a dose relationship as in the longer you delay the bigger the outcome.
55:42 So you just continue to learn to delay more and more and more. But there is a
55:46 time where it comes to reap because you cannot sew forever. And so I was having
55:51 a conversation with a friend of mine who was like, "Hey, I don't want to do this
55:53 thing because it's not going to add enterprise value." But the amount of
55:56 money that we were talking about for this particular deal was like hundreds
56:02 of millions of dollars. And I wasn't even that confident that the the other
56:05 thing was going to happen and it would be like 10 years in the future from now.
56:10 And so we need to allow some risk adjustment for outcomes to make their
56:17 way into the decision. If you can get paid today versus getting paid in 5
56:22 years, there is a value to that money because you have five more years of
56:25 being able to use those resources to acquire more resources. And so I would
56:30 say that something that has shifted in me particularly was that it's okay to
56:35 make money. Like you can also just make money for the sake of making money. And
56:39 I think that's fine. And I'll say this differently, which is like in a business
56:43 perspective, let's say that you have a service based business or you have a
56:48 software business, whatever. And you don't want to sell your own time
56:52 one-on-one. Totally okay. And you you don't want to do it because you do not
56:56 want to get any revenue that doesn't have a high multiple. Okay, that's fine.
57:00 Well, let me tell you the story. So, when I started my first gym, I had one
57:05 personal training client who paid me in cash every month. He paid me about
57:08 $4,000 a month in cash for personal training. I did it was like 90 minutes a
57:11 day, 5 days a week. So, it was a lot of personal training. But that guy giving
57:15 me that cash every single month, even though it was not scalable, it was not
57:19 something that I could sell someday. That money paid for me to eat, right?
57:23 And it allowed me to delay gratification on the rest of the business. But
57:27 somebody who would be a purist of like, well, you shouldn't you should eat even
57:30 more [ __ ] you should, you know, you should suffer even more during that
57:32 period of time would have said you shouldn't have taken that distraction.
57:34 You should have just worked even more in the business. But I just I don't I don't
57:40 think that's true. And so I I say this only to the winners. If you're somebody
57:42 who's never learned to grat delay gratification, you've never learned to
57:45 save up for the winner, you can't you still overspend your income, ignore this
57:49 entirely. But for those of you who are the savers, who do always live under me
57:53 of your means, who are willing to delay thing one year, 5 years, 10 years, you
57:57 have to then also be able to make the decision when do I ask, when do I reap?
58:02 And I'll give you one more example and then I'll move to the next point, which
58:05 is this is super common in content creators, and I think this is why I
58:09 ended up writing this. I've seen a number of creators, I remember I had a
58:13 conversation with a guy who who said, "Hey, I have this Twitter following that
58:17 I've built over the last however many years." And I said, "Okay." And he said,
58:20 "I would like to better monetize my following." And I said, "All right.
58:24 Well, how many times do you like do you do you like what CTAs do you have? Do
58:27 you you know what do you what do you tell them to do?" And he's like, "Oh,
58:31 nothing. I never want to sacrifice the goodwill I have with my audience." And I
58:35 was like, "Okay, why did you build this brand to begin with?" He said, "Well, I
58:38 wanted to make money." And I said, "Okay, how do you expect to make money
58:42 if you never ask for it?" Because he had been taught, I have to delay. I have to
58:46 delay. And to be fair, of course you have to delay. But at some point you
58:50 have to make the decision now is the time. And to be clear, it doesn't mean
58:53 that like now he has to ask every single day. It just means we have to begin the
58:58 process of reaping. And so for you forever seers, and I put myself in that
59:01 bucket of always wanting to under under spend and and always delay to the
59:05 future, there is a line that you need to be able to draw for yourself for today's
59:09 the day. I will begin reaping now. And I think that is it is a it is a entirely
59:13 personal question because it's also fundamentally answering the question how
59:16 much do I invest versus how much do I consume. I think the answer to that
59:19 question is entirely individual but I think most of us can agree that invest
59:25 forever consume nothing is probably not the way and consume everything invest
59:29 nothing is also probably not the way and so it's somewhere in the middle where
59:32 you will have to pick what's right for you but it is in the middle somewhere
59:35 which means you will have to consume at some point you will have to reap and you
59:39 need to know that it is okay you might also die and so you know there's that
59:43 too lesson 12 this is a small tactical one just a great reminder for me from uh
59:48 from business which is the book launch. Clear beats clever in all things, right?
59:52 You will need to repeat yourself until you die. No one cares. No one is
59:56 listening. And so I had so many people were like asking like what was the the
59:59 secret behind the launch. It's like I made 5,000 ads that pretty much said the
60:02 same thing. Like that was it. And still most people didn't attend the launch,
60:06 right, of the book. And we still broke the records and and and and did all the
60:10 sales and donated all the book. We did all that stuff. And still the vast
60:13 majority of the people that I have in my audience, one, didn't even find out
60:16 about it. and two even if they did find out about it didn't come didn't even
60:19 register and the few that registered still most of them didn't come so like
60:22 you have to think about this in terms of percentages if I if I have a 100 people
60:25 who register for something less than half will show up if I have a thousand
60:29 people who find out of something on an ad less than 2% of them will even click
60:34 right so you you're you're dealing with such small percentages that the idea
60:38 that you want to be clever in any way is ridiculous and I would say that the
60:41 longer I've been in business the more I I emphasize clarity over cleverness I
60:47 take I I emphasize simplicity over complexity. How do I make this as simple
60:51 and as clear as humanly possible? And I think that is that effort of continuing
60:55 to learn to compress what you're saying and get it simpler and simpler. And that
60:59 is where it becomes elegant and that is where it becomes effective. And I would
61:03 say like that that is just a great it was a lesson that I was reminded of. I
61:06 had a friend of mine we were talking we were jamming back and forth. He had a
61:08 massive campaign for his company. He spent a day out here with me and we were
61:11 going through everything and his team had this had this really complex
61:14 marketing structure. He's a phenomenal marketer. And uh he's like, you know,
61:19 Alex, what do you think? And I was like, I think instead of having 10 things
61:22 you're selling, I think you should have one thing and give 10 reasons for it.
61:27 And he was like, yeah, I agree. And so he simplified everything down to one big
61:32 benefit and 10 reasons for that thing and had the highest converting campaign
61:35 he had ever done uh in the history of his company. And he has a very
61:38 successful company and it's been very big. He's done it for a very long time.
61:41 And after the day, he came up to me and was like, he's like, "Listen, I wanted I
61:45 wanted to bring He's like, "My team has heard me say this so many times. They
61:47 needed somebody from the outside to say it." He's like, "And I didn't want."
61:49 He's like, "You got to be the bearer of bad news instead of me." [laughter]
61:53 And so, but like just just as a little moniker that you can remember for
61:56 yourself in terms of writing copy, in terms of making sales pitches, in terms
61:58 of writing emails, making content, whatever it is, one big idea with 10
62:03 reasons rather than 10 big idea with reason, one reason each. I'll leave it
62:07 at that. Which this segus naturally in to lesson 13, which is this year the
62:11 offer is still king, just like it was last year, just like it was the year
62:16 before that. The offer still matters more than everything. And so we um have
62:21 begun the process of donating um a lot of the books from the launch and we
62:27 basically made the offer pretty simple. One of the variations that we've test,
62:28 we're testing a bunch of different variations, but one of the variations
62:31 was like, hey, just pay for the shipping of three books and you'll get all three
62:36 books and uh just pay for the shipping of them. And so, right now, I actually
62:40 lose money, like literally lose money on that, even with the books being prepaid.
62:45 And still, and what's what's crazy though is that the metrics that I've
62:49 seen from that offer in that funnel are better than any that I've ever seen in
62:54 my entire career in marketing. And the reason I find that to be so interesting
62:59 is that like we we whip that together so quickly and it's working because it's
63:04 the offer stupid. Like how do you make an offer so good people feel stupid
63:07 saying no? It's in the [ __ ] sub headline, right? And so I'll give you a
63:11 couple more tidbits that I've I've kind of like gathered together for myself.
63:14 The reason we're able to break the record is because the bundle for
63:18 donating 200 books were so strong and so compelling which I spent two years
63:21 building. The next thing is that whenever you have components of an offer
63:25 or bonuses that you're going to include in any kind of offer, any service, any
63:30 anything, right? Each bonus should be worth more than the entire value of the
63:35 thing you sell. I believe that most buyers are single issue buyers, like
63:41 singleisssue voters, is that they keep listening until they have that one
63:45 light, that one key, that one unlock, that one reason why that say that was
63:50 worth it. And so if you ever try and put an offer together where you think, oh,
63:53 the aggregate of these things is worth more, you have already lost. And if the
63:58 bonus itself is complex enough that you have to explain it, delete it. Because
64:02 the most expensive part about you explaining different components of the
64:06 offer is the mental real estate it takes up to actually explain it. And so if
64:12 something is worth saying, make sure that it's worth saying. And when you
64:17 also build offers in this way, it forces you to think even more about how can I
64:20 make this more compelling? How can I make it simpler? How can I make it more
64:23 compelling? And each one of them has to has to carry their weight. And by doing
64:28 that, you'll create a more operationally efficient business. Number one, and your
64:33 offer, I like to use this as my kind of um my like razor for making a good offer
64:37 is that the offer should be textable. Can I text to someone? And then them
64:42 say, "Yeah, I'm in." And that's just a great way like you you've got this much
64:47 screen and that many words to to say the essence of the entire offer and if you
64:51 can't fit it there, it needs to be better or it's too long. And so that has
64:55 just been really valuable for me. And I've had that I've had that reinforced
64:59 this year several times. Obviously, we had the the the offer at the launch. We
65:02 we're donating the books on the back end, but even within the portfolio
65:06 companies, I mean, the reason I think that the offers book will always outsell
65:09 the other books in general. I think money models out selling now cuz it's
65:12 new, but like I think long longterm offers while it sell is because like if
65:17 you nail the offer in a lot of ways, nothing else matters. It's just getting
65:21 it right is so hard. But there's nothing that you can do that can make your
65:24 business have a have a bigger step change in your business's revenue and
65:30 profit than really making the offer better. And it's like again, I think on
65:35 some level people have an understanding of like what things cost. And the reason
65:39 that I think that book bundle works so well was because they know it cost me
65:44 they know I'm losing money. Like people can they know that three hardbacks cost
65:50 more than $15. They know that. And so shipped, right? Like even one $15 is a
65:54 crazy deal. Three is absurd, right? And so they know that. And so it's like
65:59 people assume that like I think Ogulvie said this. He said people think they're,
66:03 you know, the the prospect is an idiot, but she's your wife. And it's like we we
66:08 we talk to these amorphous masses, but it's like they're real people who are
66:11 intelligent who can make decisions and they know when something smells off and
66:16 they know when something is a good deal. And so like you can only do so much
66:20 dressing up with the copy and the words and the persuasive elements because at
66:24 the end of the day, you should be able to make the pitch by just stating the
66:27 offer and shutting the [ __ ] up and pointing to how to pay and people should
66:33 buy. The rest of it is just is dressing, right? It's just tweaks. It's just
66:37 improvements. But the biggest improvement overall is going to be what
66:41 the thing you sell is. So sometimes we need to be reminded more than we need to
66:44 be taught. And this year was a a wonderful reminder for me of like can
66:49 like it's the offer stupid like make it better. A nice little reminder for me
66:52 for how to make ads work. So this is a little bit more tactical artifact. Right
66:55 now it's about volume of different creative. We did you know a,000 or 2,000
66:59 ads I think before we even started. I think it was 3,000 by the time the
67:01 launch happened. I can't remember. It was in the thousands. and the way that
67:04 advertising is moving in general, it's going to be about hyperpersonalization.
67:07 So with AI, you can create way more permutations much faster. And so I think
67:10 we're going to have personalization at scale and that's 2026. That's I mean
67:14 right now it's end of 25, but like I'm just calling this right now. I've
67:17 already seen crazy returns that we're seeing in the portfolio with this across
67:21 all the companies. Like this is the future. like you need you need to be
67:25 able to create lots of creative and what's more important is you need to be
67:29 able to create the machine that consistently self proliferates the
67:34 creative. So it's like how do I get the customers to make creative that gets us
67:38 more customers then make more creative. That's the that's the process you want
67:40 to install in the business rather think oh I have to just keep building the
67:42 team. I mean, there's elements of that for sure, but this is like it was a
67:46 great lesson for me this year and what I'm taking into next year is like we
67:50 have to build the self-licking ice cream cone and hyperpersonalization is going
67:56 to be I mean I mean I'm saying 2026 but I don't think I don't think it's going
67:58 to go back. So I think that's going to be the future. So less 15 side quests
68:03 can make the main quest. So what do I mean by that? So, if you were a very
68:08 like I hate even using this term, but like visionary founder, if you're
68:11 somebody who like has lots of big ideas, big dreams, you're always like thinking
68:13 shiny objects, you have a little bit of ADD, little touch of the of the ad,
68:18 right? Sometimes you have to find things for yourself to keep distracted to not
68:24 break your main business. And because sometimes, especially the bigger your
68:27 business gets, when you're smaller, literally ignore this advice. But if
68:30 you're bigger, it just takes like it might take a year for a big initiative
68:33 to happen because it's it's turning the Titanic versus turning a rowboat, right?
68:37 And so I have found it useful for me like the books for me are obviously
68:41 they're I find a way to make them additive to my overall, you know,
68:45 business acquisition.com, but they take time from me, but that time I think
68:51 gives me thinking space and also allows my team to just continue to get better
68:56 without me like blowing things up. And so I tend to prefer large change from a
69:01 emotional level, from a logical level, I prefer, you know, incremental, etc. But
69:05 it's like how can I how can I have these how can I scratch my new itch? Well, I
69:08 have to do things that don't drain, this is the key, that cannot drain resources
69:12 from the main thing. The side quest only helps if it allows the main quest to
69:16 succeed even more, not if it distracts from the main quest or pulls any
69:20 resources from it. And so for me, writing books is that thing. For you, it
69:22 might be something else. But I think I've I've grown more and more okay with
69:26 the idea that like some things will take time within the business and me having
69:29 something to do in the meantime can actually increase the likelihood that
69:32 those things succeed and in some ways it's a way of passing the time while
69:35 things are painful and uncomfortable. So the next one which was a great lesson
69:38 for me this year was um delegation is the price of scaling loss of control
69:43 right and so I believe that the the the spiritual path of entrepreneurship is a
69:46 consistent relinquishing of control and so we were employees at some time likely
69:52 for many people and then you stop doing that and then you decide to start a
69:55 business and you typically do that because you want to quote have freedom
69:59 and so then you say I will have complete control but in order to have true
70:03 freedom you actually can have no control you have to accept that's true freedom
70:07 Right? And so at every level, in the very beginning, you do everything and
70:09 then you say, "I'm going to have somebody who helps you with this." So
70:11 you give a little control and then the next level it's like, "Okay, well the
70:14 doing I've I've delegated, but the management, no one can manage like I can
70:17 manage." And then you give the management away. And you're like, "Okay,
70:19 well no one can direct or lead like I can lead." Then eventually you give the
70:21 leadership away. And then it's like, "Well, no one can think of the vision of
70:23 the future like I can." And then eventually maybe there is somebody Steve
70:27 Jobs wasn't able to be replaced, but many of us aren't Steve Jobs and are
70:31 replaceable. And so delegation is the price of scaling, losing that control.
70:36 And so hardworking people, and this is what's really interesting about this,
70:39 hardworking people have a hard time coming up with non-h hardworking
70:42 solutions. And so this has been particularly difficult for me because
70:45 like I I will look at problems and say, "Oh, I wonder if I can outwork this
70:49 problem." When Bill Gates talked about this saying, "It's really good to have
70:53 lazy executives because they will try and think of non high energy ways to
70:58 solve problems." And so the hard worker won't feel like delegating because they
71:04 want to feel useful. And it's incredibly difficult. But if you draw the line, you
71:08 have to say that you will not do anything in order for it to scale
71:11 because otherwise you will absolutely be the limiter of your own growth. And I
71:16 don't think we are as special as we think we are. And so you might kind of
71:20 just have to give up some profit in the short term, but you'll make more in the
71:25 long term. And so this has been kind of like a thingy process for me, which is
71:29 at this point the razor I have is if it requires me, it doesn't work. That's how
71:33 I think about it now. And so I use the term internally from my head and Leila
71:37 and I talked about this scale zero. Like we have to scale me down to zero so we
71:41 can scale it up to infinity. Otherwise I will always be the limiter. And so this
71:46 is kind of just like a a a great reminder or artifact that I've gotten
71:50 from the year is scale zero. And I've been reminded this at at at this level
71:54 now is that nothing can rely on me because the business is just too big.
71:58 The other little little tidbit I'll I'll add in there as well is if you're at
72:01 equilibrium within your business, that means that like your supply and your
72:04 demand are fixed. Like I can't I can't take in more customers because my
72:08 supplies like I my team can't handle it, but I also don't have more demand,
72:11 right? So it's like what do you do when you're at equilibrium? When I was in my
72:14 earlier part of my career, I would have said increase demand and then force the
72:19 team to, you know, pull from the cracks and then with the ex extra cash flow,
72:23 you'll be able to afford, you know, the the next person you need to hire. That
72:25 was what I would have said probably the first 10 years of my career, 12 years of
72:29 my career. And I would say that I have flipped that thinking probably this
72:32 year, which is that I would say increase supply. And I'll explain why. When
72:36 you're at equilibrium, whatever your next step is, you're going to have to
72:39 bear a cost. And the cost will either be your reputation or your profit. And so
72:43 if I increase demand, the cost of that increase will be my reputation because
72:46 my team will probably not be able to deliver at the same quality they
72:49 otherwise would have because they are overextended. If I increase supply
72:53 first, then the bandwidth of my team will improve and in the short term they
72:58 will have to train this new person up which will be a cost in the business. So
73:01 I'm going to almost have a double cost. They have to train this person up and I
73:04 have to bear the cost of the person to begin as well. But once that's done, I
73:09 will have dramatically increased the capacity of the business which will then
73:12 give bandwidth back which will then allow us to push to fill up the demand
73:17 side. And so the reason that we were even able to do the book launch this
73:19 year, we actually originally were going to do it in February, couldn't do it
73:22 because we didn't have the bandwidth and then were able to do it in August
73:26 because 90 days prior we hired four directors and leaders in the business
73:29 which expanded the capacity of the business so that we could do the launch.
73:33 So that was the that was just some of the lessons of this year from that. So
73:36 next one was just real estate in general. So I you know Sean and I have
73:40 done a lot of real estate deals together for the last 5 years. I would say we
73:45 will buy a few hundred million in real estate this year. I'll get the exact
73:48 number probably in a future video because we have a couple deals pending
73:52 as the as the year ends. But what was very interesting is that I have a much
73:56 better understanding of the tax uh laws around it. So this was a big W for us. I
74:00 haven't talked about real estate in general despite having done a lot of
74:03 deals over the last 5 years with Chiron because I didn't feel like I had the
74:06 credibility. And so I will probably and Shiron will probably as well next year
74:10 will probably talk more about ACQRE. So, ACQ Real Estate because we have now
74:13 gathered a significant amount of resources there that I think you guys
74:17 would probably like that and I certainly have enjoyed it because it was something
74:21 that I felt like was a deficiency in my skill set in terms of investing that I
74:24 wanted to rectify. And so, I've talked about it in many, you know, many years
74:27 ago. I've talked about in some videos of like very tiny deals that I did, $50,000
74:31 deals that, you know, didn't work out as well. And I was like, I don't know what
74:34 I'm doing. And so, that is when I basically enlisted help and I got people
74:37 who were more experienced and I did what I always do and just try to learn from
74:40 them. And it has been incredibly enlightening and I very much understand
74:44 the appeal of it now. And so it was a it was a huge deal, huge W for us this year
74:48 and look and I think will be a compounding vehicle for us in the
74:52 future. I mean this is a a lessons video for the year for me and so I'm grateful
74:55 that we we took all the steps that we did this year in order to do it. Next
74:59 one. Best ROI in business. All right, pay attention to this one. Best ROI is
75:04 still talent. So the cost and return on talent. So let me get deep on this. you
75:08 have how much does it cost you to get the talent and then how much will that
75:11 talent make you and so I had a dentist who came and was like hey I have the
75:15 specialy dentist they're really hard to find blah blah blah and I say okay well
75:18 how much does a dentist make you in gross profit per year and at his
75:21 facility he made $700,000 in gross profit per year per special dentist I
75:25 was like okay that's gross profit I said okay fine and I said so if you just had
75:30 and I think he was doing $4 or $5 million a year in profit something like
75:34 that and I said okay so what's the problem he said well I can't find any of
75:37 these dentists? And I said, okay, well, how much money are you spending, you
75:41 know, with on recruiting or marketing? And he was like, I don't know, like 2500
75:45 bucks. And I was like, okay, so let's hear me out. I said, if I had an
75:49 investment that that I said would cash flow $700,000 a year, what would you be
75:54 willing to to pay one time to buy into that investment? He was like, I mean, if
75:57 I knew it was going to be 700 grand a year, I mean, 700. And I was like,
76:01 "Right, so you should be more than happy to spend 50, right, on a head hunter or
76:07 150 on a head hunter to go this get this level of talent." And if you and he
76:11 needed four to hit his next goal, which he had, which is like to double the
76:13 business or something. And so I said, "All right, let me ask you this." I
76:17 think he had 4.6 million I think was his profit. I said, "This year, if instead
76:21 of making 4.6 6 million in profit. You made 4 million and then you got you
76:26 spent the 600 to get four guys at 150 each for head hunter to go get that
76:29 talent and maybe have relocation bonuses, whatever. Would that be worth
76:32 it? And he was like, "Well, when you say it like that," I'm like, "Right." And so
76:36 I still to this day believe that especially in the age of AI where every
76:42 star employee who can use technology gets even more leverage, the return on
76:48 talent is is even better than it's ever been. And so when you see Meta paying
76:53 these hundred million dollar bonuses and stuff for these single individuals,
76:58 you're like, they're crazy. Or they know something we don't know, which is that
77:01 they might still get a billion or two billion or five billion in value from
77:05 this one person if they can unlock it. And so I think about this from two
77:09 angles, like a micro and a macro perspective. So on a micro level, when
77:13 you bring someone in, you get time back. It's work that you don't have to do that
77:16 you now get back. Phenomenal. On the macro level, the higher the level of
77:20 talent, the more it's impossible for you to have their lifetime of experience. I
77:26 can't live an AI coder's last 20 years, right? Or last 10 years. I can't go do
77:31 that. So, all I can do is spend money to go buy that lifetime of experience and
77:35 then apply it into my business. And so, fundamentally, the the bigger the
77:38 business gets, the more it's about assembling the talent that then builds
77:42 the business than it is about building the business. And your rate of business
77:48 growth will be limited by your ability to learn because no one will come work
77:53 for you who is better than you. And let me put my caveat on this. No one will
77:57 work for you who is better than you at everything. For sure, many people work
78:00 for me who are better than me at their specific functions. But they know that I
78:05 have depth in some things that my depth is as good or better than their depth in
78:10 their specific thing. And so excellence attracts excellence. And so if you want
78:16 more A players, you need to become an even deeper A player. Because at the at
78:22 at the most simple level, if you had the five best teammates in the entire world,
78:26 you would have one of the most valuable businesses in the entire world. That
78:30 would be that would be reality. Elon's superstar skill is that he's so good at
78:37 engineering that he can attract the best engineers and as a result, he can build
78:41 the best engineering based companies. That's his secret. And so he's not
78:46 actually running six different companies. I mean, he obviously makes
78:50 his key decisions in those areas, but a huge amount of decisions, I would argue
78:53 the vast majority of the decisions physically couldn't be made by one man
78:56 because of the size of all six of the companies. And so, the only way that's
78:59 accomplished is by having such a strong brand by being so good at what you do
79:02 that the best in the world want to work for you. The problem is that you're not
79:05 the best in the world. And so, they don't want to work for you, which means,
79:09 as always, we are the problem. We are the limiter of the business. next set of
79:12 lessons for me from this year. So, A players will make you rich, but here's
79:15 the downside or the hard part about A player culture. A players cost more per
79:20 headcount, but not not in actuality. So, let me give you an example. If you had
79:25 five eights and five sixes on a team, what really happens is that the sixes
79:29 pull down the eights, and now you just have a bunch of six sevens. Anyways, the
79:35 smart move is to fire all five sixes, and what happens is your eights become
79:38 nines, and you never needed the sixes to begin with. And that is something that
79:41 I've seen over and over and over again. I had a team of 14 sales guys at one
79:46 point and we had a cancerous there was a one guy was stealing some other guys
79:49 knew about it. It was bad. And so we ended up cutting I think from 14 to six.
79:54 And those six guys closed more deals than the 14 real. I've also had to do
79:57 this on the on the media. I mean I've had to do this in a lot of different
80:01 teams over the years where I have to just massively take an axe because
80:04 culture runs a muck. There's a bad leader. they lower those standards and
80:07 then you got eights with sixes and then the eights start acting like sixes too.
80:11 But then when you get all the bad ones out then all of a sudden these eights
80:15 rise to the occasion and they're like we just only want to play with A players
80:20 because A players will self-manage but everyone has to be an A player otherwise
80:23 they'll say oh that's accepted and either they'll lower the bar or they'll
80:27 leave. And one of the difficulties of this is that your definition of an A
80:30 player will change as you get better. what I thought was an A player when I
80:34 was in, you know, when I owned a gym was somebody who was making $50,000 a year.
80:38 And I was like, "This is the [ __ ] This guy is the man. This is a player." And
80:42 then I had my first $75,000 year play, then my first $100,000 year, and then
80:45 first 200, and my first 400, then my first million, then first multi-million.
80:48 And at each level, I'm like, I didn't even know they made people like this.
80:51 Right? And so, your definition of what good looks like will always be better.
80:54 And this is a quote from Shiron. He said, "The best talent is always in the
80:57 future." And so, we always want to make room. We want to build a business that
81:02 has a vision that's big enough that their big dreams can also fit inside of
81:05 it. And I'll just say on a tactical level, I I this has just almost become
81:09 my razor. I have yet to find an A player that I don't immediately know as an A
81:12 player within the first 14 days. It just hasn't happened. And so I I think what's
81:17 really happening for me now is that like my tolerance for not A players has just
81:22 gone down. I just I can just say like I'm sure they're okay and I'm sure we
81:25 could give them time and I'm sure they could become a seven and so what? it's
81:29 they're not going to be an A. Why bother? And that that is a hard culture
81:35 to enforce because people don't want to let other people go. Hey, this person
81:38 just changed their jobs, etc. And some people might say, "Oh, you're not giving
81:41 them a chance." I want to be clear here. It depends on the level of who you're
81:44 hiring. If you're hiring very low low wage employees, um, and the training is
81:47 really fast, that can be different than maybe somebody who has to ramp up. There
81:50 are elements of this, but you can still see leading indicators in terms of
81:55 character and work ethic almost immediately. And those are the reasons
81:59 that most people get fired, not because of kind of the day-to-day skill stuff,
82:03 which leads us to the next one, which is money attracts talent. Culture keeps
82:07 talent. And so, hear me out. You need to be able to pay enough that a players
82:11 will will ride the ride, right? You must be this tall to ride this ride. But
82:15 whether they'll want to keep riding the ride will depend on how good the ride
82:19 is, right? And so financial incentives are absolutely important for attracting
82:25 them, but in my opinion, not very important at all for getting the most
82:28 out of them. The non-financial incentives will become significantly
82:32 stronger than the financial ones because the financial ones are too infrequent.
82:36 So if we think about how behavior works, behavior is reinforced in the moment.
82:41 Latency beats intensity every day and twice on Sunday. The reason that that
82:45 one drug is more addictive than another is purely based on how quickly you feel
82:48 good after you take it. That is how addiction works. Why are inhalants so
82:53 addictive? Because you it's immediately in your bloodstream. Why is Facebook or
82:57 these social media things so addictive? Because the red light happens
83:00 immediately. It's not because a red light is inherently this crazy thing.
83:03 And to the same degree, nicotine is not a super strong drug, but it's immediate.
83:09 That's why it's so addictive. And so if we think about addiction as a way of
83:13 changing behavior, then we think, how can I get someone addicted to the right
83:17 behaviors in my business? And the way that that addiction would happen is you
83:20 have to have reinforcers within the way the business works that happen in real
83:25 time. And are any of those financial? No. And so we have to be this high to
83:28 ride this ride. You have to have you have to pay well enough that A-level
83:31 people are there, but you still might not get true A-level performance unless
83:36 you have an A culture. And so when you have a team of A's, they will
83:40 self-manage and they will continue to reinforce each other for being A's. And
83:45 if you've ever been on a winning team, it's more fun than being paid well. And
83:49 on a losing team, if you have to ask somebody when they're in the Super Bowl,
83:53 how much do you have to pay to try hard to win this game? No one. They would do
83:59 it for free because winners want to win more than they want to make money. And
84:02 that's what makes them winners. Money is what will get them in the door, but
84:05 winning is what keeps them there. So next little tactical lesson,
84:10 decentralization wins. So we are we are big advocates of decentralization. I
84:13 would say that we've taken this as a as a Warren Buffett, you know, a feather
84:15 out of his his hat. I believe that people need to stay focused shared
84:21 resources, split resources. And so our goal, especially in terms of how we're
84:24 running the company, is that as fast as possible, we want to allow functions to
84:27 be self-sustaining and ideally from day one, right? And if not, we need to look
84:34 at that investment from holdco. Something that has to get paid back as
84:36 fast as possible so they can become independent. And so this is a little bit
84:39 more of an operational thing. But the way that I think about this is like kind
84:43 of like revenue lines. So I do not like centralization. I want I want
84:47 independent leaders who own their own P&Ls so that they can stay completely
84:52 focused on making that thing win. And the times in my career where I have
84:56 quote gotten distracted has actually been I distracted my own team from
84:59 winning because I told I took resources from here and said oh we're going to
85:02 also pursue this opportunity but I didn't increase infrastructure. And so I
85:06 think this is honestly like this will this is one of the big reasons why I
85:10 finally feel like I figured out how do we go from a few hundred million to a
85:15 billion a year in sales. Like this is like this is for the more advanced
85:19 business owners. This is the big unlock is that you have to think of business of
85:22 businesses. You have to think a team of teams, right? And so it's not like, oh,
85:27 Amazon is this one business. Amazon has many revenue lines and they function as
85:32 basically just many businesses under the brand of Amazon. They have the same
85:37 culture. They have the same ideals. They strive for the same ultimate outcome and
85:41 they're aligned in that way, but the actual doingness of AWS versus the
85:45 logistics business versus the private label business of Amazon, all of those
85:49 are very different. And so each of them has CEOs in their own right. And so
85:55 Acquisition.com now we have two two revenue lines outside or three revenue
85:59 lines outside of outside of the portfolio. And I guess that's not even
86:02 true. There's more than that. Well, each of them to that point each of them has
86:07 their own presidents and leadership team. And so that is the big mistake
86:11 that I kept trying to make is I kept thinking I had to make this business
86:15 bigger when in reality like humans can only manage so many humans, right? And
86:20 so things eventually split off and become their own units of business. And
86:25 it's very difficult for a CFO of a holding company to know how much
86:29 frontline customer service person needs to spend at this particular company.
86:33 They're too far away. And so that's why I don't like centralization if you're
86:37 building a very large business. And I would say that with with with the this
86:41 the exception of software from a shared services perspective because basically
86:46 the operations of that scale, you know, better than just about any other kind of
86:49 business. But the way that revenue lines are are imagined within the software
86:53 world is basically feature sets. And so you have a team that's in charge of
86:56 these features and it's kind of like a director, a CEO of this feature, a CEO
87:00 of this feature. So it still more or less works the same way even if the
87:03 revenue is consolidated with one membership or something like that. But
87:06 if you have a service business, typically the revenue will not be
87:09 consolidating that way. You'll have different lines of of services and
87:12 different pricing associated with that, different sales teams, different
87:15 marketing, but it's still brand will still be the same, but the leaders and
87:18 what they're selling and how they deliver will be different. And so that
87:22 is a huge unlock for me. And it is like I feel like we're finally I mean we've
87:25 been doing this now, but this is me kind distilling down that crystal so that
87:28 future me can be like what was I thinking right then? That's what I was
87:31 thinking. And that I think was the the big um the big W. I'll give you a couple
87:35 tidbits on the leaders to do that. You need leaders who can who can drive the
87:39 revenue lines and are incentivized on bottom line. And if they need you, they
87:45 don't deserve the incentive. If they need you to drive the revenue, then they
87:48 are not the driver. You are still the driver. If you really want to build
87:51 something big, you have to be able to find people who are exceptional,
87:54 compensate them well, and get out of their way. Now, you've heard people say
87:58 that. I've heard people say that, and I I I want to say this in a way that
88:00 somehow I can like make it real because it's real for me now. It's the the thing
88:05 that I was missing was the was a pattern recognition on what high quality talent
88:09 looks like. That was what I was missing. If that person actually here's a
88:12 different way to think about it. Here's a good one. If you have a $100 million
88:16 business, you might have one or two founders or three founders who have nine
88:22 figure founder, you know, skill sets. But the people who are going to run
88:25 within that is the next tier of people are all call it eight figure or
88:28 multi-figure entrepreneurs. And so in order to create the $und00 million
88:32 business, you might have two $25 million entrepreneurs and then and then five $10
88:36 million entrepreneurs who run the next tier. And then underneath of them,
88:40 you've got many sevenfigure entrepreneurs, right? And so it's almost
88:45 like the aggregate of the the aggregate revenue in the business is the added up
88:48 potential of all the skill of all the players within it. And that was just a
88:54 bit like if if you don't think that your head of sales could go do sales and like
89:00 if your if your person in marketing couldn't start a marketing agency, then
89:03 they're probably not that good at marketing, right? And so that's that's
89:07 kind of the thinking process is like if none of the people that you have could
89:10 go do it on their own, then you probably don't have good enough people. And
89:13 that's the thing because you have this fear of like, oh, what if I if I bring
89:16 somebody in who can do it on their own, they'll just steal my stuff. It's like
89:19 or if you don't bring them in, you will literally do it for the rest of your
89:22 life. We have to create the vision and the opportunities that are big enough
89:24 and this is where the design this is your job. How to create the
89:27 opportunities are such that it still makes more sense for the person to work
89:31 here because they can have uncapped earnings. So there's a difference
89:34 between like somebody needs to own the whole business, which the biggest
89:37 business in the world, no one owns the whole business. Well, I mean to my
89:40 knowledge, right? The biggest I'm thinking like okay, publicly traded,
89:43 whatever. I'm sure there's some secret Arabian oil factory that I don't know
89:46 about, right, that one guy owns. But like for the vast majority of
89:49 businesses, many people own them, right? But what's more key is that someone has
89:53 unlimited earning capacity. And I think that's the key. That's how you can get
89:58 the A players. And if they are true A's, they'll [ __ ] light up because the
90:02 thing is is it makes sense because the return on effort is higher because of
90:06 the aggregate infrastructure that has already been built from the brand
90:09 recognition, from uh the reputation, from the the delivery mechanisms that
90:12 you might have in place. that person it's like they're like I don't even want
90:15 like let me just let me cook let me crush what I'm really good at and be
90:19 able to do that at a higher level than I could do if I did it on my own because I
90:22 couldn't even use my whole superpower to the greatest degree that I can because I
90:25 would get bottlenecked much lower along the line doing something else that I
90:29 don't want to do. So huge unlock for me and for the bigger business owners that
90:32 part was probably the most valable for you. Lesson 22. So I'm 0 for 12 on
90:35 executive assistance but I'm hoping to be one for 13. Maybe should be lucky
90:40 number 13. I I had my first kind of like world class EA and so I will just do my
90:43 very best to describe it. I'm early so I'm almost I'm almost hesitant to make
90:47 this because I'm like this is like oh I'm in love and and then you're like
90:50 you're like how's that girlfriend of yours? It's like oh you broke up you
90:53 know whatever it's terrible. So take this with a gigantic grain of salt but I
90:57 I do think that this one work out and I'll and I'll tell you why. She's a
91:00 psychopath and I think I had normal people and I'm not normal. And so I
91:05 needed I needed a psychopath and I realized that the number one thing that
91:07 I mean I we've said this in the interviews but I still I still wasn't I
91:11 had never actually experienced on the other side. I knew it in theory but I
91:16 hadn't experienced it which is speed over everything. I needed someone who
91:22 will always respond to me within 60 seconds no matter when I message and I
91:26 will go for hours and hours and hours with nothing and then the moment I
91:31 message you I need full resources full attention because in that moment you are
91:36 my constraint and I needed someone who had more competence general horsepower.
91:41 So I will say this for for all of you guys who are who are founders who who
91:45 who you know have schedules and whatnot. One, I think you should be the one who
91:48 manages your time. In terms of who's doing the blocking and tackling, that's
91:52 separate. I think you can outsource that. But who makes decisions on your
91:55 time? If your time is your most valuable resource, why would you want anyone but
91:59 the person who's the best allocator of resources, aka you, to be the person
92:03 who's who's choosing how that time gets spent. So thing number one. Two, I think
92:09 speed above everything. Now, also above everything is general intelligence. And
92:13 I think this is something that I I did not I did not appreciate. I did not
92:17 screen for as much and it was a mistake and I found this by accident. My current
92:22 is very intelligent. And so as a result I trust her decision-m to a much higher
92:26 degree and I feel like my ability to actually give true tasks that I do that
92:31 come up that require horsepower. I can actually give them and be like just do a
92:35 first draft and I can get 80% of that done and then I can tweak rather than
92:39 having to just truly do everything to Novo. So the next piece that I think has
92:42 been really helpful is whether you are a maker or manager, plan your time
92:47 accordingly and live and die by that. I've had some of the most productive
92:51 weeks of my life by finally for the first time in so long. I actually feel
92:55 like I'm ahead, which I've I haven't felt that in such a long time where I'm
92:59 I'm actually proactively time blocking my time. That's all the free time that I
93:02 have, but blocking it for what project is being worked on each of these time
93:06 slots. and she's keeping track of all my ongoing projects and knowing what loops
93:09 of like, hey, when are you going to close the loop on this? When are you
93:11 going to Hey, by the way, this this followed up. And so, I'm sharing this so
93:15 that for those of you who are like, man, I really need executive assistant. Pay
93:19 more than you expect, look for someone who's more intelligent and say speed is
93:23 non-negotiable and have them watch the maker manager video because I think that
93:26 will give a huge amount of context to how you work your life. And so, for me,
93:30 that that was a huge a huge learning for this year. Next one is if there's ever a
93:35 problem in an organization or a department or a line of revenue, look at
93:40 the leader. And here's the here's the rule. The leader is always the problem.
93:46 Not sometimes. The leader is always the problem. So if a function is mediocre,
93:51 it's because the leader is mediocre. Period. Full stop. No questions. So it's
93:57 either the leader and the team or just the leader. But it's never just the
94:01 team. So, if the leader is mediocre and then they brought in mediocre people,
94:04 it's the leader and the team. If the leader is mediocre and you've got a
94:07 great team, the leader will turn the great team into a mediocre team. And so,
94:11 I had a conversation with a business owner the other day and he had four
94:15 locations. Two of them were doing well, two of them were doing poorly. I asked a
94:19 zillion questions to finally get the the the the fun fact, which is that he had
94:23 somebody in the company who was running them, who was a longtime friend, and
94:27 also, we'll just say an addict. I'll just say that. and every day was coming
94:33 up to work messed up, inebriated, whatever you want to say. And he was
94:37 asking me for tactical business advice when I was like, there is no tactical
94:41 business advice. There is nothing that will matter because every no one will
94:44 listen to somebody who they're like, well, why don't you show up to work
94:48 sober? Why don't we start there, right? No one will respect. Imagine that guy
94:51 coming in and being like, hey guys, let's pick up the pace. What? Like what
94:55 are we talking about? And so it's like all these questions about like pricing
94:58 and sales. Dude, none of this matters until we fix the leader problem, right?
95:02 But the thing is is that's obviously an extreme example, but it happens at every
95:06 level. If your your media team's not working well, the leader, if the if if
95:11 your sales team isn't good, the leader, the question is after you pull the
95:15 leader out, is the team also screwed? Got a 50/50 shot there. If they had a
95:19 low bar and brought in low bar people, that sucks. Now, if you have, now it's
95:23 like, well, what happens if you had a bad team and you put a good leader in
95:26 place? Have you ever seen a good coach turn around a bad team? Pretty sure
95:29 there's a ton of movies about it. Yes. If you have a great leader, they can
95:32 turn a great they can turn a mediocre team into a great team. So I I think I
95:37 spent too much time early on my career trying to find pinpoint problems.
95:40 Straight up there's a problem with a function leader the issue. Just solves
95:45 it. This is so much faster. So there's a razor for you. Lesson 24. In the world
95:49 of AI, your brand is your mode. All right. Now this is not going to be news
95:52 to some of you and for some of you this hopefully hopefully it's news to none of
95:56 you. Um, but if it is news, welcome to 2026. So if if if that's the case,
96:00 because services and and and products can become increasingly commoditized and
96:04 listed goals and content, things like that are are easy to reproduce, how can
96:10 you build a brand, right? So branding, the act of it is who and what you
96:14 associate with that is what will matter. And so in a world of AI, you have to be
96:18 thinking about this. And so if you're a local business, for example, your brand
96:22 will be mostly word of mouth and the reviews about you online. That's what
96:26 the reality is. But just about every other business, it's that plus all of
96:31 the content that you're making publicly, right? And so this is just the the the
96:35 most to the point version of this that I can give you, which is as always, give
96:39 away the secrets, sell the implementation. People do not want to do
96:42 the work for whatever it is that you're showing. Whether you're showing them how
96:45 to fix toilets, they'll just call you to do their plumbing. If you're telling
96:47 them how to fix relationships, they're still going to call you to help them fix
96:50 their relationship. If you tell them how to fix their business, they'll call you
96:52 to help them fix their business. Right? People do not want to do the work or
96:57 they don't want to do it alone. Key, myself included. I will always pay to go
97:02 faster and decrease risk so they don't have to do backtracks. Like I get the
97:06 DIY. I will consume something and be like, "This person clearly knows what
97:09 they're talking about. I will pay to go faster and I will pay to have you take
97:13 this generic thing, make sure it's applied to my business so that it's
97:16 right because I don't want to pay the tax of ignorance." And so if you know
97:20 this to be true, then the question is if I want to build a brand in 2026, I want
97:26 to think about what are the curated associations that I want to make that
97:30 will reinforce the position that I want to have in my prospect's minds. What
97:35 things do they like that I want them to think of me when they think of that? And
97:38 so that's what we want to do. So what do you think we're going to do? I'm going
97:41 to do a lot more business fixing next year and I have to build a lot more
97:44 infrastructure in order to do that. But it's going to be demonstration of skill,
97:48 right? What's something that very few people can do in your market that you
97:52 can demonstrate better than anyone else? Do that. Do as much of it as you
97:55 possibly can. Do it until your eyes bleed because the market won't even know
97:57 you exist by the time you're getting tired of it. So on the on the the talk
98:03 track of brand, brand has to be constantly reinforced. So you need to
98:07 keep pushing the envelope to stay relevant. Something is only a big deal
98:13 if you make it one. No one knew about the launch. No one. I have almost 20
98:18 million or 17 I don't even know what it is. Between 16 17 between 16 and 20 I
98:21 haven't checked in a while. 16 and 20 million followers or subscribers across
98:24 all different channels or whatever. The vast majority of people did not know
98:27 about the launch. Didn't even know about it. And I tried really really hard. And
98:32 in order to stay relevant, you still have to keep going bigger and bigger.
98:34 Like why would I do the launch? It's like well I got to like it's like just
98:40 because like Chris Bumpstead when he won the first Olympia, it doesn't mean he's
98:43 done. It's like we got to win the Olympia again. You got to maintain the
98:46 title. You gota It's like that's why it's defending the title, right? So, you
98:50 have to continue to and I think this is what's lost in some people's like it's
98:53 like, man, the climbing the climb is so tough. It's like, no, man, holding the
98:57 tops way harder than climbing it, right? And there's always levels to the game.
99:00 And so, it's like once you once you get your title, whatever your title is for
99:03 you, it's like you have to keep taking on new title bouts to keep defending the
99:08 belt. And maybe the stages keep getting bigger, right? In business that like the
99:11 stages can only keep getting bigger. I'll tell you a failure that I had
99:14 around the launch. I think on the PR front, I had planned for a big PR kind
99:20 of blastoff on the back end of that and basically that that fell flat. Not
99:25 basically the the PR firm that I had I didn't have really any attention to put
99:29 towards it and I saw it as it was a miss. It was a miss. Like how many
99:33 articles did you see about some like some internet person doubling the world
99:39 record? Not that many. and that like that would totally have been fixable if
99:43 I had just had queued up a bunch of PR and I just I just didn't. So that was a
99:46 miss. That was a miss for me. We'll do better next time. Next one. The greatest
99:49 risk to the business is that you don't feel like doing it anymore. This is
99:53 super real. So the reason that people like most businesses don't actually run
99:57 out of money. The founder runs out of will. And so like you have to you have
100:03 to get you have to have the frame shift to it has to be worth suffering for. And
100:07 I do think that making money is a component of it. Like I had somebody the
100:10 other day who was like, "Hey, I'm thinking about switching this business."
100:13 And that's how most businesses die, right? The entrepreneur just switches
100:15 and says, "It's not worth it for me anymore." I said, "If this thing made 10
100:18 times the money, would you keep doing it?" And they're like, "Hell yeah." I'm
100:20 like, "Would you look at this other business?" They're like, "No." I'm like,
100:22 "Well, then dude, let's just fix the business." Right? So, making more money
100:26 can help, but I will say kind of like the electroshock therapy. If it made 10
100:31 times the money, it will help in the short term, but not forever because
100:35 plateaus are often the ones that stay in it the longest. So, what do I mean by
100:40 that? Like they it's like the shrinking and the growing are the ones that are I
100:45 think the most painful. The plateaus, people can just stay in them for years
100:50 because it's just like not painful enough to quit, but still very painful.
100:55 So the ones that grow fast are in lots of pain and eventually they don't need
100:59 the money anymore at all. And so those are very like if you've grown a lot and
101:03 made a lot of money really quickly, you then stop wanting to be in all the pain
101:07 that this tremendous growth provides you because you're like I don't need to do
101:11 this anymore. And so on the flip side, the ones who are shrinking or are very
101:15 volatile deal with the most pain obviously. So you have the same
101:18 volatility and pain of the of the growth guy except you also aren't making money.
101:22 So that is the most pain that you will be in business. And so what we're
101:26 solving for as entrepreneurs is something worth doing, right? Having
101:31 something and I think that the most powerful thing that has helped me is
101:36 having something outside of yourself that the business acts as a vehicle that
101:42 you drive towards. And so some of so for some people that's like some societal
101:45 impact that you want to make. That's some problem that you want to solve. For
101:48 me it's the person that I want to become. But like that's very easy to say
101:52 and I've heard many people say it. Their actions don't align with that. So
101:56 whatever that thing is for you and it might not be that you want to become
101:58 this person, but whatever that thing is for you, it's like it has to be real
102:02 because and you have to you have to fix the business to allow you to to achieve
102:08 that thing because once you make all the money that you want to make, you have to
102:11 have another reason to do it. And so that is why entrepreneurs not wanting to
102:15 do it is the greatest risk to the business. And I think that like I have
102:18 to always keep that front of mind like the thing that will like I have to be
102:21 willing at this point for acquisition.com to do some things that I
102:25 just want to do even if it's not in the business's best interest because it's in
102:29 my best interest and if it's in my best
