0:01 I've been in business for 14 years. I run a portfolio of companies that last
0:04 year did over $250 million in aggregate revenue. Few months ago, I broke a world
0:07 record for the fastest selling non-fiction book and generated over $106
0:11 million in just under 3 days. Recently, I sat down with a 100 business owners
0:15 where I shared tactical advice that I've learned from the past decade of
0:18 business. So, everything from sales to marketing to hiring to productivity and
0:20 even mindset. And so, I'm going to compress a decade of business knowledge
0:23 that I've learned into lessons that you can use right now. Starting with number
0:27 one, you're not disciplined if you like the thing you're doing. So, I'll give
0:30 you an example. So, I used to work in the fitness industry and I had lots of
0:32 fitness business owners who'd say like, "I'm so disciplined." Because they were
0:36 like, "I work out at 5 a.m. every day. I never skip my my meals or my workouts or
0:40 whatever." But the reality was I would then ask that same business owner, "Hey,
0:42 how have you been doing with working your leads?" Ah, you know, I haven't
0:45 been working them as hard as I should. Blah blah blah blah. And so, I would
0:48 then look at them and say, "You're not disciplined because you only are
0:51 consistent with the things you like." Discipline is about being able to be
0:53 consistent with things you don't like. So, here's me going into more depth
0:57 explaining that exact concept. Do you consider yourself disciplined?
1:01 uh with things I like, >> right? So that's not discipline,
1:07 >> right? And so I bring this up because I obviously have talked to trainers and
1:10 gym owners for a long time. So I I know how to >> Yeah.
1:14 >> I say this because um I just have a lot of people in the community that I ran be
1:17 like, you know, I'd see them posting every day like, "God, I have discipline.
1:20 Up at 5 a.m., like blah blah blah blah." And I'd be like, "You never work your
1:22 [ __ ] leads, bro. >> Like what are you talking about? You
1:26 like lifting. You like boxing. That is not hard." It's like I I there it takes
1:30 no discipline for me to hang out with Ila. Zero. Right. And so because some
1:36 people don't like hanging out with their wives doesn't mean I have discipline
1:38 because I do like hanging out with my wife. It just means that they have a
1:43 shittier life. Right? And so for you it's like you have to this might be a
1:46 muscle that you haven't used. Like you happen to like boxing and so you did
1:49 more of it and people said can you help me? And you said sure. If you want to
1:53 get to where you want to go, your frustration tolerance, meaning your
1:57 ability to do things that you don't want to do without an immediate reward for an
2:00 extended period of time, is going to have to get stronger. >> And the good news is that that's a
2:06 skill. It's not a trait. You can learn it. Which means you do 10 outreaches
2:10 tomorrow and you're like, "This sucked. Nothing happened." And you say, "Great.
2:13 Tomorrow I will do 20." >> And then you do 30 and then you do 50
2:16 and then you do 100 and you keep going. But I promise you, if you do the rule of
2:19 100, which is in that book, >> you do a rule of 100, you and you do
2:23 that for a 100 straight days, your business will grow. >> Yeah, for sure.
2:26 >> I And what's crazy is that people actually fully commit to it. And then
2:29 like way before day 100, they're like, "Holy cow, my whole business has
2:33 changed." But like, you have to commit to it. You have to go all in on it. And
2:36 I say it's 4 hours a day. This leads me to business lesson number two. Most
2:39 already know what to do, but simply don't do it. And the main question is
2:43 why? Well, number one, because of an inability to delay gratification. Number
2:47 two, because they don't fully know how to do something. This is the most common
2:51 reason in more successful business owners. And a business owner asked me
2:54 this exact question. When all the information is available, why are
2:57 entrepreneurs still stuck? And so, this is what I told him. I'd say at the most
3:00 basic level, it's because of an inability to delay gratification. And
3:04 so, if we just think about like why do humans do things in general, it's
3:06 because they're they've been rewarded more for doing what they're currently
3:09 doing rather than changing what they're doing. And I think that makes sense from
3:12 an evolutionary perspective that like more of what you're currently doing is
3:15 safe. And so people once they find another point of equilibrium, it's very
3:18 difficult for them to break out of that even if they're quote like mentally like
3:22 I really wish I could scale. They they want to want to scale but what they
3:26 really want is to do what they're currently doing which is why they're
3:30 doing it. Um and so I think um being able to clearly articulate also like the
3:34 actions. So how is just like such a simple word. It's a short word but has a
3:39 lot of like depth to it which is um if I were to talk to a toddler and say I want
3:44 you to scale a business they would just look at you like what
3:48 um if you were to tell me hey can you scale this business I'd probably say
3:54 yeah I can and so the specificity of a request is inversely correlated with the
4:00 skill of the recipient meaning if you have somebody who has very low skills I
4:04 have to say like okay here's how you turn on a Once you turn on a computer,
4:08 then you're going to open up Safari. What's Safari? It's an internet browser.
4:10 What's the internet? Okay, let's explain what the internet is, right? And then
4:13 eventually you're like, "Okay, we're going to go to Google. What's a Google?
4:15 We'll get there. Don't worry. We go to Google. Okay, finally we're going to
4:17 sign up here. You're going to get an email. Once you have an email, I don't
4:20 know how to type. Great. Let me teach you how to type." And so the thing is is
4:23 like the lower the skill level of the individual, the more aggregate skills
4:28 they have to learn in order to chunk up. >> And so sometimes people hear the word,
4:33 oh, you just need to do outreach. But that is a bundled term that has a
4:37 hundred things underneath of it which is like how do I warm up a domain? How do I
4:40 set you know what's an opener? how do I integrate my you know clavia with my
4:44 whatever right like how do I integrate these tools and so there's a hundred
4:47 how's underneath of it and they'll usually get stuck on one of the hows and
4:54 being unwilling to try because it's so frustrating of like >> I think I think what makes
4:59 entrepreneurship feel slow is that you can try to learn something for a day and
5:02 not have an outcome and then have to come back to it tomorrow and figuring
5:07 things out is by nature a wandering activity which means that if you knew
5:09 how to figure it out then you wouldn't have to figure it out because you'd
5:13 already know it. And so it's people do deal really poorly with uncertainty. And
5:18 so entrepreneurship, a lot of it is just the the ability to tolerate uncertainty,
5:22 which feels very painful the entire time you're in the uncertain period, which is
5:25 what I honestly think a lot of the pain of entrepreneurship is wondering whether
5:29 the investment you're currently making today, the thing you know you're going
5:31 to lose, the money, the time, the effort, the sweat, is going to actually
5:35 pay off to the thing that uh you hope is going to happen. And you don't know when
5:39 it's going to happen. And so it's almost like if you run a marathon, you know, it
5:43 ends at 26 miles or 0.2, I don't know, for you runners. Um, but like for
5:47 entrepreneurship, it's just someone saying run. >> Yeah.
5:52 >> And like, I'll tell you when to stop. And even if you like just that idea
5:55 almost sounds torturous of like just run. It's like well how long? It's like
5:58 run. >> It's like but what if my lungs start hurting? Run.
6:03 >> Keep running. And I think that's what what makes a lot of entrepreneurship
6:06 painful. And then the idea of even me saying this, some of you guys probably
6:09 had your heart rates go up, right? Even the idea of not knowing when something
6:13 is going to end or in other words when you're going to figure it out. A lot of
6:15 people just don't want to start that race. >> And so they know what they're currently
6:20 doing. And it's they get more rewarded for talking about scaling, for talking
6:24 about their goals than they do for pursuing them, which involves a lot of
6:28 uncertainty, f pain, and frustration. So this leads me to the next lesson where I
6:31 want to talk about one of the most important mindset/skills that you need
6:35 to train yourself on if you want to grow as a person and your business and at
6:38 least that's what's helped for me and that's actually self-awareness. So I go
6:42 deep on it right now. The hardest thing for people is judgment which is like how
6:46 do I how do I know to listen to this guy versus that guy right? That's the hard
6:49 part because you will see conflicting advice and if you were to ask two people
6:53 who are both wealthy what someone should do. If you were to ask the Indian
6:56 question what should someone focus on? English might not be the first answer
6:59 from Richard Branson. I don't know. Maybe it is. Um, it also doesn't mean
7:02 that his advice is wrong if it were different than mine, right? Maybe his
7:07 advice is more right. No idea. Um, but I think understanding what is right for
7:11 you given your existing resources and skills is probably the most valuable
7:15 thing, which is self-awareness. And so I think I've always had a decent amount of
7:18 self-awareness which has allowed me to make sure that I'm picking the products,
7:23 services, information that I'm consuming the most of around whatever I believe
7:27 the constraint to be. And then I would say that I'm relatively maniacal in the
7:31 focus that I have around whatever the thing that's limiting me is. And so when
7:35 I got into when I was like, "Okay, we're going to start this family office." I
7:41 think I read 15 books in like two weeks on, you know, different family office
7:45 structures, different investment thesis, um, books by people who ran big hold
7:50 just so I could get some better idea of this stuff. And I would say 15 books is
7:52 not like a huge amount of information, but it was like just to give an idea of
7:55 like I did nothing else besides read. Um, and so if I thought that sales was
8:01 the issue, I think people try to solve a problem one way. I tend to approach a
8:06 problem with like I don't care which one works. I will do all of them violently
8:12 and one of I will I will will my will this thing through. And so if like I
8:15 needed to learn sales, I wouldn't be like, "Oh, I'll read a sales book." It's
8:18 like, I'm going to read many sales books. I'm going to consume all videos
8:22 on sales. I'll hire somebody who's good at sales to teach me and review my stuff
8:26 in real time. And I will keep doing this until sales is no longer my problem and
8:31 then I'll be like more which what's my next issue and then I'll just bomb the
8:33 hell out of that thing. And I think people take too little action around
8:38 what the constraint is. So either they haven't properly identified the
8:40 constraint of their business or they take insufficient action to solve it or
8:44 both. And I see commitment and focus as as very similar like kind of sister
8:48 twins um which is just the elimination of alternatives. And so I think most people are not that
8:54 committed. And so I think I it's really it really comes down to that. Like
9:00 it's one of the one of the things that's really difficult to explain. And it like
9:04 there's a few lessons like from a human nature perspective or from a skill-based
9:07 perspective that are very difficult to see unless you're there. And consistency
9:12 is one of them. So is volume. And they tend to be the two things that are most
9:16 required in order to get to where you want to go. And so like you can't
9:20 witness consistency unless you are also consistent in order to witness it.
9:25 So like you can't see me come to the gym every day at 4:00 a.m. unless you were
9:30 there every day at 4:00 a.m. And you can't see me work all day unless
9:34 you were also here working all day. And I can say it and it takes 2 seconds. But
9:38 when you witness it and you see it every single day, it has a different impact.
9:42 And I think that's what what a lot of people miss out on. And like I talk
9:46 about volume a lot and I repeat it so many times and I talk about focus so
9:49 much because like those are the things that really separate the people who end
9:52 up winning and the amount of volume that it takes is just so much more than
9:56 you're prepared for. And I think if people really knew how much volume and
10:00 repetition it took they wouldn't begin. And so I don't even think it's a bad
10:03 thing that people don't understand because like if you really saw how far
10:06 away the goalpost was you'd be like I'm not I can't do it because you can't do
10:10 it. You couldn't even comprehend that because you're so far away from that
10:13 type of person or that level of entrepreneur who'd be able to do it that
10:17 it seems unfathomable, but you think it's a couple steps ahead of where you
10:19 are and then you get a little bit of better and then you realize it's
10:22 actually this much further. But then you get a little bit better and then you
10:24 realize it's this much further and then eventually you start to realize like
10:27 when you look back at how much you did in order to get there and then you're
10:31 like, "Oh, that's why." Now, let's expand on the topic of distractions a
10:35 bit more because if you were to boil down most of the business wisdom that's
10:38 out there, it's probably just two thing, which is focus and patience. So, I want
10:43 to share some tactical advice on how I personally stopped getting distracted by
10:46 all the shiny objects and new ideas that I have because every entrepreneur has
10:49 enough new ideas to kill their business. So, I want to provide some examples to
10:52 drive that home and give you my thoughts on how I approach new ideas. I'll tell
10:55 you a story. I was talking to a friend of mine. Um, he just inherited a billion
10:59 dollars. His father was in private equity. he now manages their family
11:02 office. And so I was talking to him about acquisition.com and school and
11:06 some of the other things and he was like, "Yeah, man." He said, "Sometimes
11:09 the most profitable thing you can do is wait." >> And so I think that um that might be the
11:16 most profitable thing you can do. Like doing nothing is something.
11:19 >> It's an action. I mean, [ __ ] I mean, how much willpower does it take to not
11:22 start new things? >> A lot. >> Right. And so I think you should give
11:26 yourself credit for like I you're banking goodwill with the business.
11:30 >> Yeah. Um Jeff Basos had a a speech recently that he did in Italy. Some of
11:32 you guys I shared a story of it for those you follow my Instagram. Um but he
11:37 talked about his his rate of releasing the work. And so basically he said if I
11:41 had 30 minutes I could write a 100 ideas on the whiteboard that would destroy my
11:43 company. >> And so you have you you absolutely have enough ideas to kill your business.
11:48 >> So what we want to do is prevent that from happening. And so um this is super
11:52 tactical but for everybody because this is like really really really
11:56 dramatically changed my trajectory as an entrepreneur. I have a lot of ideas,
12:00 which is like I kind of scratch my itch of ideas because I get to idea about
12:02 other people's businesses and then I go home and then Leila's like, "Do you want
12:04 dinner?" And I'm like, "Yeah." But I forgot that we have a business, too. So,
12:08 I wasn't allowed I didn't I didn't I didn't have a way to mess that one up,
12:14 right? And so, and so and so what I do is I have I honestly have a document
12:18 that's called Alex's big list of ideas. >> And every time I have an idea, I totally
12:22 flush it out. I I put, you know, I put a link on the dock to another doc that has
12:25 a big memo that has like, "This is how it work. this is what we'd make, this is
12:28 how blah blah blah blah blah blah. And then I keep living my life and then when
12:34 I finally see the team looks like they have smiles on their faces, like they're
12:37 well-rested, they have a glint in their eye, then I pull back out my big list of
12:41 ideas. And what's interesting is that like some of the ideas that I'm like,
12:43 "This is going to be huge." I'm like, "That's why would I think that's a good
12:46 idea?" Um because you get so emotionally charged and sold on the idea while
12:50 you're in the process of the idea, in the throws of the idea, but when you get
12:53 a little bit of space, you're like, "Oh my god, this is how other people would
12:55 hear this idea." And I agree with them. I think it's a terrible idea.
12:58 >> But every once in a while, um I'll give you an analogy from uh um the Sandra
13:02 Bulock movie with the the offensive lineman. Remember that one?
13:07 >> Blind side. So she said that I actually think about this a lot with ideas. She
13:10 said if you like a shirt, she's like, you know, don't buy it, but if you go
13:13 home and you're still thinking about it, you know, a week or two later, like you
13:17 should probably go back and grab the grab the shirt or whatever, right? And
13:21 so I think about that with ideas. Like if I'm able to like I have this fear,
13:25 what if I forget the idea? If I forget the idea, it wasn't that good of an
13:28 idea. But the ones that like keep you up at night, that keep gnawing at you,
13:31 those are the ones that like I'll flesh out more and more and more, but I still
13:35 have to release the work at a rate that the business can handle. And so then it
13:38 gives you respect for the output capacity of the business. And then what
13:42 ends up happening, which you real like you realize as you scale up, is that
13:47 manpower is almost always the limiter >> is talent. Which is why you see the the
13:50 billionaires on stage and they're like, "Guys, you just got to get a good team,
13:53 you know, find good people and get out of their way. But the issue is that good
13:57 people don't want to work for you, not you. Entrepreneurs in general. And so
14:01 that's why like we have to go through this kind of bootstrap phase sometimes
14:05 where we have to prove that we can earn the right to get true A-level talent
14:11 because if you had the best AI person in the entire world, you could have a
14:14 multi-billion dollar company within the next six months. The problem is that guy
14:18 doesn't want to work for you. >> And so it's like who do I who do I need
14:21 to become and what do I need to build in order to get that level of talent to
14:24 come with me? And so we actually like a lot of in my opinion a lot of the
14:27 entrepreneurial journey is creating the proof that then allows you to attract
14:32 the talent that's required to build the next thing >> like the level of talent we were able to
14:35 attract after we sold gym launch versus while we were scaling gym launch night
14:39 and day not even close and so I see that as the trajectory and what also ends up
14:42 happening is that you end up becoming like a collector of talent um and so the
14:48 like and if you do write by people throughout the entire process what
14:52 happens is the stars stay around and they come with you from thing to thing.
14:55 And so all of a sudden the bench of stars just keeps getting bigger and and
14:57 they don't want to work with other people because they're like, "We we have
15:00 a great team. We have a great culture. We know how we do things here." And so
15:04 in the beginning of your career, you have no stars. You're the only star. And
15:08 then and maybe you're a half star, right? Um but eventually you'll get one
15:12 other star and you're like, "Oh my god." But the reality is like if everyone
15:15 thought like, "Man, if I only had 10 of these people, I could be 20 times
15:19 bigger." You will get there. It's just it takes way more not stars that you
15:22 thought were stars that you then have to fire and replace with another person
15:25 that's also not a star to get another person to then replace with another
15:28 person that's not a star. And I fundamentally believe that the reason
15:31 that you can scale so much faster the second time or third time around. Who
15:35 here has been uh who here this is not their first business. Can you get raise
15:37 your hand real quick? Okay, cool. Keep your hands raised. Um if you if this is
15:43 not your first business and this this business you scaled faster than the
15:46 businesses you did before, keep your hand raised. Right? And like why why is that? It's
15:52 not like the physics of business changed. It's just because your pattern
15:55 recognition improves. And in order to get the pattern recognition, it's like
15:57 you have to just get punched in the face a bunch of times with shitty people. And
16:01 so like for me, like I know a vertical stack of what a a salesdriven org looks
16:06 like up to a few hundred sales guys. Like I know what that stack looks like.
16:10 I know what an SDR looks like. I know what an SDR manager looks like. I know
16:13 what a closer looks like. I know what a closer manager looks like. I know what a
16:16 a director of sales looks like. I know what a VP of sales look like and they
16:19 have different archetypes and they have different skills and they have different
16:23 behaviors. But if you've never done it, then you hire a VP of sales and he sucks
16:26 and you hire another VP of sales and he sucks. You hire another VP of sales and
16:29 she sucks and then all of a sudden one comes in and you're like
16:32 >> you don't suck. >> This is amazing. And then from that
16:36 point going forward, either that person comes with you or you know exactly how
16:39 to pattern match and so you find the person really fast. And fundamentally
16:42 every level of the business, it's kind of like bricks, right? like keep putting
16:46 these level of bricks as you scale. The problem is that only one of those bricks
16:49 prevents you and sometimes for years because you are lacking this hole and
16:52 you don't know what it looks like when it's right. >> And that's one of the big issues. And so
16:57 the goal is like how can I how can I be willing to have a hard conversation
17:00 which means that I might like this person as a person but they're not doing
17:03 their job. And how quickly can I can I can I close that gap so that I can
17:06 replace them with somebody who's good. The hard part is that we don't like
17:08 having hard conversations. >> Yeah. And so it's like I mean I do like
17:12 the quote like the distance between where you are and where you want to be
17:15 is the number of hard conversations you're willing to endure
17:18 >> and a lot of people just aren't. So to ask answer the original question of like
17:20 why don't people do what they want to do. A lot of them just can't have a hard
17:23 conversation. Real quick check this out. So if you aren't sure what strategic
17:27 competitive advantage you should be doubling down on. Um I'd love to invite
17:31 you out to one of our scaling workshops uh that we have here in Vegas at our
17:34 headquarters and my team can actually work with you on it. But before you do
17:38 that, you can download our free $100 million scaling roadmap um where you can
17:41 plug in your information and it will give you basically your step where
17:45 you're at in the scaling process and ultimately give you the things that you
17:47 can help get to the next level. But like I said, if you want help from my team,
17:50 you can book a call after you download this. It's free and we'd love to uh see
17:53 if we can help you out. This leads me to the next lesson. The person with the
17:56 longest time horizon wins. Fundamentally, there's so much competition. some of the only alpha
18:01 that's left over, meaning arbitrage of value, exists for people who are simply
18:06 willing to wait and endure longer. So, let's expand on that. So, I think the
18:09 person with the longest time horizon wins as long as that time rise isn't is
18:14 is reverse engineered to some level of reality. So, I think Elon is the richest
18:17 man in the world right now because he has wanted to build rockets, wanted to
18:21 build cars, and wanted to go to space since he was like seven. And so, he has
18:24 wanted to do this one thing his whole life. And he said it in his I don't know
18:27 if you guys seen this like his Zip 2 like when he was like hadn't even sold
18:31 his first company he was like I think cars are really cool like electric cars
18:34 can you imagine and like rock like he's talking about this then like this has
18:36 been what he's wanted to do his whole life. Um I would say for me I would say
18:42 that my time horizon is not as long as Elon which is probably why I'm not as
18:46 rich as Elon. Um but for me it's like I can probably see like call it 3 to five
18:51 from now. Um, and I plan for that. And beyond that, I'm like, I don't know. I
18:53 might be in a different person, different life, who knows? But that's
18:56 kind of as far away as I can see. It's very difficult to have vision when you
19:01 have bills to pay. >> And so, you have to get that situated
19:05 first in my opinion. You have to get your like personal stuff figured out.
19:09 And then you'll buy yourself breathing room to think further.
19:14 >> Yeah. >> So, in that case then, am I thinking 3
19:18 to 5 years? No, I think you figure out how to like go to a million dollars a
19:21 year and like don't worry about anything else. >> Say that again. I'm sorry.
19:24 >> I think you think, how do I go from 100K to a million? That's my whole focus. And
19:27 you can do that in a year. >> Yeah. Um >> and like when you do that, because the
19:33 thing is is when you do that first level of going to like, you know, 100 to a
19:36 million or 100 to 300, whatever the number is, right? You will have more
19:39 resources and more skills. And so what happens is your vision of the board will
19:43 change. You'll see the way the game's played differently. Mh.
19:46 >> And so I see the people who are like the best at the game as the people who see
19:50 reality the most clearly. >> And so if you've been doing something
19:53 for a long time in your business and it hasn't been getting you what you want,
19:57 it's usually because you don't see reality as clearly as clearly as you
20:00 think you do. You see distortions. And so I think as people go up up wealth,
20:04 it's because they actually are better at predicting what's going to happen, which
20:07 is why they make more money than other people. And so that's why I see
20:10 entrepreneurship as one of the best sources of personal development because
20:14 you get slapped really quickly to find out whether you were right or wrong. So
20:17 I want to quickly talk about AI. It's a hot topic. Some people are very excited.
20:19 Some people are very scared. And some people think it's going to replace
20:22 everyone and everything. And so I'm going to share my views on AI as the
20:26 next portion of this TLDDR. AI is not going to change the fundamentals that
20:30 make business business, but it will change the tools available to the
20:34 players and sometimes in the future even the players themselves. There's
20:39 opportunity more now than ever before because the leverage of the opportunity
20:43 has increased. And so if we define leverage as the difference between what
20:45 you put in and put what you put out, if you can get more out for what you put
20:48 in, then you have higher leverage. And so with AI, this is where they'll be the
20:52 first, you know, one person billion dollar companies, 10 person billion
20:55 dollar companies, etc. And so people who have um more a more AI enhanced
20:59 business, which the business that you're in does have more of those levers, then
21:02 yeah, they will get more for what they put in. Eventually, if they're like,
21:05 "Well, no one will do it because AI can do everything." Well, if you take AI to
21:10 the natural extreme on an AI can do anything that a human can do, then you
21:12 can say that about literally everything. And so, I don't think it's super
21:18 productive. And so, I reverse it to what what will this knowledge change about my
21:23 behavior. And so, my perspective or I take the position that
21:27 since the dawn of time, it has been man plus tools against man plus tools. And
21:32 right now we just have man plus better tools. And so nothing has really
21:35 changed. Until the day it is man against machine and the machine wins. And so
21:39 until we get to the day where we're going headtohead against machines, it's
21:44 still the same game it's always been, just more fierce. So I want to shift
21:47 gears here a bit and talk about one of the most important components which is
21:51 sales and pricing. So there are a few concepts that I want to cover. The first
21:54 concept is how I go about pricing a product. The fundamental principle I
21:56 follow is either sell extremely expensive to a select few or something
22:01 super cheap to everyone. The middle is where people die. And so fundamentally
22:04 big picture, if you will sell something that is not scalable, then you want to
22:07 sell with the absolute highest gross margins to the people who can afford
22:11 that ticket, which makes sense to sell to people who have lots of money to get
22:15 the money from them. On the other hand, there's tons and boatloads of people who
22:19 have very little to no money. And so if you're going to serve those people,
22:22 whatever char whatever price you charge, if it's even moderate, it's going to be
22:26 a huge percentage of their income or their savings, which makes them very
22:30 needy, very hard to serve. And so the only way to serve that customer is
22:34 develop a product that is truly scalable, truly unlimited scale. And
22:37 that is when you serve the people who have small ticket things. Let me give
22:40 you more context on the thinking process. I prefer I think it's a higher
22:44 you you maximize likelihood of you making more money if you are a service
22:49 provider to go up market and sell to people who have more money and then
22:52 eventually you can create a business that can retain customers um that has
22:57 almost zero incremental cost of adding additional customer >> and then in that instance you absolutely
23:03 can sell to the masses Amazon sells to the masses right there's not I'm not
23:05 saying Amazon is a bad business it's exceptional business right um but they
23:11 also had to raise $680 billion dollars of capital in order to build it. And so
23:14 what happens is entrepreneurs who are under capitalized and underkilled think
23:18 okay I'll just serve the masses with this thing but I don't have I don't have
23:21 the capital and I don't have the skill in order to actually scale it. That's
23:24 the issue. And so for the vast majority of quote unscalable businesses or less
23:27 scalable businesses that require humans. That's where I prefer to say okay well
23:29 if you're going to do the same work you might as well get paid 10 times as much.
23:32 Great. Because there is an audience of people that would pay you 10 times more
23:36 because they just don't know you exist. The reason the reason that it's so tough
23:40 to service the bottom end of the market is that for them the small amount of
23:43 money is a huge percentage of their income or their savings. And so they
23:48 will have the expectations of someone who gives you their life savings.
23:52 >> And so there's almost nothing that can satisfy, >> right?
23:55 >> And so you will you will drain your reputation and you will drain the morale
23:58 of your team because there will never be something that is enough.
24:02 >> And also those tend to be the types of people who want you to promise
24:06 everything in order to get your $10, right? Right? And I I I prefer not to
24:10 live my life that way. I prefer to say you will get I would prefer to set my
24:13 expectations at zero and then you have be pleasantly surprised rather than
24:15 promise the world and never be able to fulfill. Now the next sales concept I
24:18 want to talk about is one of the most common mistakes I see entrepreneurs
24:21 make. So fundamentally they don't have an issue with how they're selling it or
24:25 what they're selling but actually it's when they're selling it because the
24:29 right offer at the wrong time is still the wrong offer. And so this is why
24:33 sales timing is so important. So let me explain on this a bit more. You want to
24:35 make sure that we sell at the point of greatest deprivation, not the point of
24:39 greatest value. And so, this is one of the big mistakes that people make when
24:41 they're trying to sell stuff is they actually sell at the wrong time. And so,
24:44 I'll give you an example. So, if we go to a restaurant, you order a steak, you
24:47 have an amazing steak, and I say, "Awesome. How was it?" You say, "It was
24:50 great." I say, "Awesome. Would you like another steak?" And you're like, "No,
24:53 I'm good." And I'm like, "Why wasn't the steak good?" You're like, "Yeah, it was
24:56 great." I'm like, "Then why don't you want another steak?" And you're like,
24:59 "Cuz I'm I'm good. It was I'm" I'm like, "So, you didn't like the steak?" And
25:01 you're like, "No, I loved the [ __ ] steak, dude. Like, back off." Right.
25:05 Right. And so, and that's because like the offer is right, the timing is wrong.
25:10 >> And so, if I wanted to sell two steaks, what I would do is say, "Hey, sir, how's
25:13 it going?" You say, "Great." I'm like, "How hungry are you?" And you're like,
25:15 "Dude, I'm [ __ ] starving." And I'm like, "Guy like you, you're going to
25:19 need two steaks." That's when you sell two steaks. >> Yeah.
25:21 >> Before you've had your first bite, before you're full. When you're at point
25:24 of greatest deprivation. Where people get confused is they're like, "Hey,
25:28 people got a lot of value. That's when I want to sell." The point of greatest
25:31 deprivation and the point of greatest value only sometimes intersect when once
25:36 you've created the value, you create deprivation around the next thing.
25:40 >> And so the motivation for any person to take action on anything is the amount of
25:44 lack they have. Deprivation. You're incredibly motivated to sleep when
25:46 you're exhausted. You're incredibly motivated to eat when you're starving,
25:48 incredibly motivated to [ __ ] when you're having, right? And so the idea is we
25:53 want to extend that's why in a pitch it's all about the pain. It's like how
25:56 can we agitate the pain? How can we extend where they are to where they want
25:59 to be and make this gap bigger and bigger and bigger? For us in a monetary
26:03 world, which is what you sell in, the gap isn't physiological.
26:09 It's um it's perceived. And so, we have to build up the perception of
26:12 deprivation. And if any of this is like sounds like too complex, just stop me.
26:16 But basically, when you get around people way richer than you, you feel
26:18 poor. >> And then when you feel poor, you get motivated to get richer. If you're the
26:23 richest person in all the people that you know, you have no motivation because
26:27 you're the you're the richest man in uh not Babylon, but the poor part of
26:32 Babylon, the hood of Babylon, right? Do you do you know what I mean there?
26:33 >> Yeah. >> The next sales concept I want to talk
26:37 about is how do you sell without giving away all your secrets? Right? A lot of
26:39 people are afraid when they make content, well, what if I give away all
26:42 the secrets? Like no one will have anything to buy from me, which is the
26:45 exact opposite because 99% of people are never going to buy from you, but they
26:47 will judge you based on the quality of your free content. And so the idea is
26:51 like give away all the information and then sell the implementation. So many of
26:55 you guys sell um information education media related stuff. Um where people
27:00 make mistakes where they're like how much do I teach versus how much do I
27:03 pitch, right? The issue is not understanding what kind of information
27:07 you should teach at each stage. And so there's two types of education. There's
27:10 declarative knowledge and there's procedural knowledge. This I didn't
27:13 invent this. It's just education system last 100 years but people just don't
27:18 talk about it. So um uh declarative knowledge is knowledge about something.
27:23 This is what you use to sell. Procedural knowledge is about how to do something.
27:28 This is what you sell. If you use this to try and sell stuff, people will walk
27:32 away with a shitload of to-dos and they're like, I'm good. >> Mhm.
27:35 >> What you want to talk about is all the things about how it works, about the
27:40 outcomes, about what is possible. teach how how it works conceptually, not so if
27:46 I say I'll give you an example. Hey, you have a business, you're doing $2 million
27:49 a year. If you go from two million to five million, you cross over the
27:52 institutional threshold. At that point, your multiple goes from three to seven.
27:56 And so, you go from having something that might be worth $4 million to
28:00 something might be worth $35 million just by adding another $3 million in
28:03 revenue. And here's why that is. Because institutional buyers, blah blah blah
28:06 blah blah. Me explaining that, people are like, "Whoa, that is really
28:09 interesting. I didn't know how all that worked. I didn't teach how to do it. I
28:14 teached about how it works. >> That still is incredibly valuable
28:16 because the what's really nice about declarative knowledge is that everyone
28:21 gets value from it because you just have to be there to get the value.
28:25 >> When you teach tactics, you have to do the tactics to get the value, which
28:28 means they can't do it with you. They have to go and then do it and then they
28:31 would extract the value, right? So, it's at a delay, which means they don't want
28:34 to buy right now. And so, whatever you're teaching, you want to be
28:37 predominantly declarative in nature. Let me teach you about this stuff that you
28:40 aren't aware of. This is where breaking beliefs around specific uh I think like
28:45 this is the old model. This is the new model. I'm not teaching you here's how
28:48 you set up a domain. Here's how you warm it up. Enzo, right? Here's how you have
28:52 an AI agent. Here's how you personalize the f like we're not teaching that.
28:55 We're saying did you know that if you go from not personalized to personalized
28:59 this is the increase? Whoa. I'm not gonna I'm gonna show you that's how it
29:04 works and then I will sell you how to do it. Mhm. >> That's what you separate. Again, secrets
29:09 implementation. The next sales concept is about training your sales team. So,
29:12 this happens a lot where you've got maybe three, four, five guys, let's say,
29:16 and you've got one guy who's a star and he sells half the volume or she sells
29:20 half the volume and the rest of the team sells the other half. Often times, that
29:25 one star suppresses the rest of the team, number one. Number two, doesn't
29:29 follow the scriptor process. And so, scaling that team becomes very difficult
29:32 because there's no consistency across reps. And so one of the things that a
29:35 lot of business owners want to do is like, man, if I only had six Sarah or
29:39 six Shauns, I'd be good to go. But there is a way to get six Shawns or six Sarah,
29:44 and it's by breaking down what they do into significantly more detail than you
29:48 probably have, and then training far more frequently with far faster
29:51 reinforcement cycles to actually get that to be duplicated. Now, that might
29:53 have sounded like a lot of big words. So, let's dive into what that means. And
29:57 the big thing with sales training that I think the vast majority of businesses
30:01 underestimate is just how much training is required to make a truly world-class
30:05 team. I think 90 So everybody who has the sales handbook can kind of get you
30:08 guys have my schedule for how we onboard and how we train. And I think for many
30:12 people that's a big belief breaker. It's hard for people to comprehend exactly
30:15 how much we train at acquisition.com. It's a shitload. Um and so to give
30:19 context on that, our sales team trains every single day. Every day. And they
30:24 all role play every single day. And every week they have a one-on-one with
30:27 Game Tape, with their manager of what they specifically need to work on and
30:33 like that muscle. And like do you know how to train like do you know how to
30:36 train a salesperson? >> Um I would say no. >> Okay. So you train sales people through
30:43 like role playing until your eyes bleed because fundamentally it's the fastest
30:45 feedback loop that you can give someone in terms of training anything. So they
30:49 say something and so the way that we train is number one is you have to
30:52 memorize a script. And so the way you memorize a script is you put the script
30:55 in front of someone, they print out a second script, and then they read the
30:59 script out loud, and then they black out one of the words, and they read it
31:01 again, and they black out another word, and they read it again. And by the time
31:03 you've blacked out every single word, you've said the script for as many times
31:06 as there are words in the script, and you tend to [ __ ] know it. And so then
31:10 you're staring at an entirely blacked out page saying the entire script.
31:13 That's how you memorize a script. Once you can breathe the script, which is
31:17 what we call it, once you can breathe the script, then we practice the role
31:21 playing component, um, which is us going back and forth. And so when you're
31:24 reading the script with someone, we have a hand up with heads nodding. And the
31:28 first time someone's going to go through a script, we're going to say, "Hey, just
31:30 to be clear, we're going to interrupt you probably like 50 or 60 times by the
31:33 time you get to the end of it." That's okay. The worst way that do people do
31:37 role playing is that someone they go through a whole roleplay or someone just
31:40 says the script. That's the worst way. The second worst way is that you go
31:43 through it and we quote roleplay and at the end the guy says all right so you
31:46 know at the beginning you could have done this a little bit different and you
31:49 know you kind of said this a little bit bad at the end you probably should have
31:52 offered it like this. No one's going to remember that. It doesn't matter. It's
31:55 way too late. The reason that superstition happens is because you
31:58 change something and then you immediately get feedback. And so once
32:01 someone does it, we call it locking it in. So it's like they mess something up,
32:05 we say, "Hey, stop. Try it like this. Do it again." They do it. If they get it
32:09 right, we say, "Great. Lock it in." That means do it again. Do it again. Do it
32:13 again. Keep going. And so that's how we trill the script so that every person
32:16 delivers the script the same way. The vast majority of sales teams have a
32:20 script. It's loose. No one really pays attention to it. And the way that they
32:23 recruit sales people is that they just hire a bunch, see who sticks, and then
32:28 let the rest go. Exceptional sales or which I consider us to be, can take
32:33 anyone to be a savage. It's just a question of how much effort
32:37 we're willing to put into somebody. As long as you know how to train the skill
32:40 of sales which ski sales is so trainable as a skill um that's the feedback loop
32:44 that has to get created. So the first step for you is we have to observe the
32:48 salesman and then we have to document the words they say and what they do.
32:52 Once we have that that becomes the basis for the memorization and then the role
32:55 playing becomes making sure they execute that and I always want adherence above
32:59 everything. So we are like the New England Patriots in terms of how we run
33:02 the sales team which is the process is above everyone. No one's better than the
33:05 process. And the way we position that is like thousands of sales calls, thousands
33:10 of hours have gone into like men died and gave their lives to give us this
33:13 script. You were not better than the script. And so you say the script
33:17 because we know these words close people period. And that's the approach that we
33:20 have and that's the difference that we give to the process. And so if you have
33:24 a star salesperson, one of the difficult parts is that that person tends to be a
33:27 cowboy, right? Does whatever he wants as long as he clos deals. That is a
33:31 cultural issue. it will be a cancer long term if he's a primadonna and so most of
33:37 the time I would rather have a team of all eights closing on a 10 out of 10
33:40 process and that team will always outperform a team that has one star and
33:44 no process. Okay. Now in this next section I want to talk about influence
33:47 and branding and the reason this is so important is that fundamentally branding
33:51 is building a history of positive reinforcement with a large audience that
33:54 ideally has a high likelihood of purchasing from you in the future. And
33:57 so think about branding as pre-programming sets of behaviors. And
34:03 so if I have a a cold audience and then you have a branded audience or people
34:07 who have an association between you and the thing that is good, right? Then
34:10 these people are going to be far more likely to take a desired action, right?
34:14 And so branding is the action that we do as businesses to make those associations
34:18 to increase the likelihood they comply with our requests. Aka, they do what we
34:22 ask them to do when we ask them to do it, which is like, "Hey, go check this
34:25 thing out." or hey, go buy my thing or hey, go schedule a call or hey, check
34:28 out my next video or hey, read this email. Whatever it is, you have to build
34:33 a history of reinforcement that shows that the last time they did something
34:35 good, something good happened for them, which makes it more likely that it
34:38 happens in the future. So, I'm going to break down a four-part framework in
34:41 thinking about this so that you can gain influence, not just reach and views for
34:45 you and your business as an entrepreneur. So, there are there are
34:50 four components of influence, right? You have SPCL, special is the easy way to
34:54 remember it. You have status which is the number of reinforcers that you
34:58 control. The stuff that people want you control that. The second is power which
35:03 is say do correspondence which is when I tell someone to do something if they
35:06 follow those instructions a good thing occurs. You gain more influence. The
35:11 third is credibility. So is there a third party world that proof that what
35:16 I'm saying is true. And then fourth is likeness. How similar are they to me?
35:22 Now, in this audience, it's mostly men around my age. Not all, obviously, but I
35:27 have a prepoundonderance of dudes around my age. Um, and so that's because
35:31 likeness is a strong influence on that. Ila talks about many of the same things
35:34 that I do, and her audience is 54% female. >> Is it like, and if I were to talk about
35:39 her stuff, I'd probably still have more men, right? >> Um, and so, okay, you're like, "All
35:44 right, I understand that." And so, how do we reverse engineer? And I'm going to
35:46 talk about each of these in a little bit more detail, and then we'll talk about
35:48 how to apply to video. Okay. >> So, from the the the status perspective,
35:54 each of these operate independently, but can also be combined. When you have all
35:56 four, it's significantly more influential. And so, a kid who has a
35:59 trust fund and a kid who doesn't have a trust fund, somebody who's rich
36:02 inherently, didn't earn it, but just is rich has more influence than somebody
36:06 who doesn't. Now, do they have the most influence? No. But if that person was a
36:10 trust fund kid had or sorry rather somebody who had a lot of money and gave
36:14 you 10 stock tips and out of the 10 stock tips all 10 worked and you made
36:18 money on all of them on the 11th stock tip the likelihood that you would follow
36:22 their request is high >> if they had credibility it's okay do I
36:27 have proof that these things occurred outside right now some of these boxes
36:32 can check multiple things and so if he gave you stock tips and they worked and
36:35 then he gave you and then he gave you another stock tip he has credibility he
36:39 has power and he has status. If he said, "Here's another investment that's not
36:42 stockreated. Here's a real estate investment." He no longer has
36:46 credibility, but he does have power still because other things you generally
36:49 have listened to have worked, not specific to the thing that he's talking
36:52 about. And then finally, if he looks like you and he talks like you and he's
36:55 your twin brother, much more likely that they're going to listen. And so in any
36:58 of these situations, if it's just a dude who looks like just like me, I'm more
37:01 likely to listen to him than an old lady. I'm just more likely to. If
37:04 somebody has credibility around the thing, oh, I scaled a sales team. I'll
37:07 give you a different example. If I scaled a company to a billion dollars
37:10 and I had zero equity in it, but I was the CEO, I would have credibility. If I
37:13 was also the founder and had all the money, I would also have status. Now, if
37:17 I've never given you any advice in the past, I have no power over you. If I
37:22 then gave you advice and it worked, then I have three of the four. And if you
37:24 look like me, I have all four. Right? And so, the idea is that if we want to
37:27 gain influence, we want to have as many of those loops demonstrated as often as
37:31 possible in the content that we have. The reason I start every video with, "My
37:35 name's Alexi. I have an acquisition.com. This portfolio last year over $250
37:38 million a year. And the reason I make these videos is so I can help you do XYZ
37:40 so we can eventually blah blah blah." All right. I do that because I'm trying
37:43 to demonstrate these things as fast as I can. I try to demonstrate status,
37:47 credibility. The power occurs from how good the advice that I give is. And that
37:50 is if I had to pick one of the four to have, it's that one. It's how well can
37:55 you give people directions in order to get something good to happen. So, uh,
37:59 some of you guys have heard of Martha Stewart, hopefully. Um, Martha Stewart's
38:01 a goat. I have a tremendous amount of respect for her. She was the original
38:05 influencer, one of the first ever. And everyone was amazed that she became the
38:09 first self-made female billionaire. No one talks about this. First self-made
38:13 female billionaire. Why? She literally gave women instructions
38:17 for years on how to do stuff. And then they followed those instructions and
38:20 then good things happened. >> They made the cake. Exactly. And then
38:22 everyone said, "Ah, you're amazing, mom." And they do that over and over
38:25 again. So when she says, "Buy my book," they're like, "Of course I'll buy your
38:28 book. every other thing that you've told me to do has worked for me. Now, one of
38:31 the best ways to have strong influences by building a strong brand, which I
38:35 covered earlier. And so, fundamentally, let's go more tactically into how to
38:40 build one. So, so what is brand, right? Brand is the association we make between two things
38:45 through an outcome, right? That's what brand is. So, thing you don't know,
38:49 thing you do know, you put thing you don't know next to thing you do know. If
38:52 you have positive associations, these positive associations transfer until
38:54 eventually you don't need to have this thing anymore. Positive associations
38:57 maintain. That's what branding is. Fundamentally, it's teaching its scale.
39:02 So like if I brand the the so this is a tree, right? And if I say tree to a kid
39:07 over and over again, they will associate the sound with that thing. And so then
39:11 eventually they will say, "Oh, that is a tree." And so branding will have
39:15 occurred, right? It's teaching. And so what happens is you have your existing
39:20 brand, right? And then you have the new association that you want.
39:26 And we have some people that may get left behind and say, "I don't like this
39:30 new association." And then you will have some people that you will gain as a
39:33 result of the new association. This would be an even trade. The ideal
39:40 branding move would be like this. We lose this, we gain this. And so
39:45 whenever you change a brand from anything, you will always lose some and
39:49 net others because any change will get some people to say no and other people
39:52 to say yes. And the goal of good branding is that we net more than we
39:55 lose. And so for me, if we think about the elements of brand, we have reach. So how
40:02 many people, you know, see it? We have influence, which is uh the percentage
40:06 likely they comply with their request. Will they do what we ask them to do? And
40:09 there was direction, which is like you can have influence and then it's against
40:13 you, right? Like Trump has super high influence and polar just both sides,
40:19 right? Like people are like, "But he changes people's behavior."
40:22 >> So if they see it, they're either I hate him or I love him. But either way, their
40:25 behavior changes, which means he has influence, right? And if a lot of people
40:29 have that, then it's even bigger brand. Your parents have super high influence,
40:33 very small reach. So all of our parents here, or most of your parents, if you
40:37 didn't have parents, sorry. Um, but let me tell you how parents work. Uh, so for
40:41 most people, parents have super strong brand for you for very tiny reach. So in
40:46 other words, you'll have a strong brand when you have large reach, high
40:50 influence, and in the right direction. So let me explain what happens when you
40:54 build a strong enough brand, right? And so but like but that's but that's
40:57 exactly the point. This is like once the brand gets high enough, then you can
41:02 just make the offer with no promises and say, "Hey, every other thing that you've
41:05 bought from me has been good. You'll like this, too. Trust me." And then
41:09 people will buy. And as long as I keep that promise, the next time I have a
41:12 thing, hopefully you'll still want to get it. Um, and then that cycle
41:16 continues to reinforce. And so that is the brand loop. It's like what other
41:19 what what you say about you, what other people say about you, and then finally
41:22 what the customer thinks about you after delivering the product. At that point is
41:26 the final the final point. So like said differently, if you're going to go see a
41:29 movie, you see the advertisements of the movie first. And then you're like, "Huh,
41:32 that looks interesting." And then a friend of yours sees the movie and
41:34 they're like you're like, "Was it good or bad?" And they're like, "Oh, it was
41:36 good." You're like, "Oh, okay. Now I'm way more likely to see it." But then
41:39 when you go to the movie, you don't really care what your friend said.
41:42 You're going to make your own call on whether you like the movie or not. And
41:45 so that is the reinforcement loop that occurs with brand. It's just that most
41:48 people Where's my Where's my homie? Where's my Where's my Indian guy? Where
41:53 you at? Yes. So the reason that the you keep doing more offers is because you
41:57 say it's great. You get a handful of testimonials because if you sell a
42:00 thousand people, you can get 10 people to get a good result because they're
42:01 going to get a good result no matter what because there 10 out of a thousand
42:04 are going to have something good happen. So you get your 10 results and then you
42:07 convince people and then they buy and then all of a sudden those people say,
42:11 "This sucks." And so then you have to start all over again saying this new
42:13 thing is amazing and great and then get your 10 testimonials from your beta
42:16 group because you can take a 100 people and 10 of them are going to get a
42:19 result. You talk about the 10 results that are good. This is obviously lying
42:22 in advertising by the way. Um and then you go to sell the product and it sucks
42:26 and then you just do that loop forever. And that is what most internet marketers
42:30 are doomed to do. The next principle is arguably one of the most important if
42:35 not the most important to scaling your business. It's figuring out how to solve
42:38 your main constraint. You can think about constraint from a quantitative
42:42 perspective as the area in the business where you will get the highest returns
42:45 on effort or improvement. If you think about it from a manufacturing
42:47 perspective, it's going to be the bottleneck. So if I've got a four-lane
42:51 highway that goes into a one lane and then to four lane, what's the limit of
42:54 the business or the rate of cars going? It will be a one lane highway. So I
42:58 could make four lanes into five lanes, it's still not going to change the total
43:01 throughput in the system. And so the idea is we have to focus on that
43:04 bottleneck. And the thing is, and the reason the theory of constraints is so
43:07 powerful is that every business has just one constraint. But the reality is that
43:11 most business owners are not working on that constraint. They're working on
43:13 something they believe to be the constraint. Or even more commonly,
43:16 they're just working all day long, not even thinking about the constraint is
43:19 hoping the business will grow. So, I'm going to share a six-part framework for
43:21 thinking about constraints to help you identify any constraint that you have in
43:25 your business. This is a a newer framework um that has only come from
43:31 doing like 10,000 Q&As's. um was thinking through like what is the
43:35 actual decision tree that that I go through in order to do this and it turns
43:39 out there is one um and I'll walk you through it but basically this is the
43:42 deconstraining meta framework that we use as a company um that you can apply to your business
43:48 over and over and over again and I I walk through this for me so if I'm like
43:51 what should I do next I like I'll just go through this so the fundamental
43:56 question that we always have to answer is why can't we do more Right? And
44:05 the answer to that question or like the if I say, "Okay, who here would like to
44:08 grow their business?" Um, everyone probably raised their hands and I'd say,
44:11 "Great. Um, so why don't you do more of the thing that you're currently doing?"
44:16 Now, 10 20% of the time they're like, "Oh, I I just didn't really think about
44:19 that." And I'm like, "Great. Well, do that first." And the reason more is is
44:25 is almost always the best um action to take is because it's the highest
44:29 riskadjusted return move because it already is working. And so the
44:32 likelihood that more of the thing that already works will also work is super
44:38 super likely. Whereas um if you think about how many times you tried before
44:41 you actually got this thing to work, whatever your thing is, how many
44:44 failures you had, it's like there's an unlimited amount of ways that something
44:48 doesn't work. There's a finite amount of ways that it does. And so you taking
44:52 experimentation is a very high likelihood path of things not working
44:56 like new almost never works and something worth like new almost never
45:02 works. And so that is why more is a significantly better return on assets if
45:05 you look at risk adjusted. Now there's going to be reasons that
45:08 someone says well I can't do more because and then there's going to be
45:12 five reasons that someone does not like can't do more. And so, um, the the first
45:18 common one is I can't do more because of my market. I can't I'll write them all and then I'll
45:24 we'll go through them. Um, I can't do more because of my market. I can't do
45:28 more because of metrics. I can't do more because of my model. They're all We call
45:34 these the Mosy 6 because they're all M's. There we go. Um, I can't do more
45:42 because of money and I can't do more I can't do more because um I'm in a you
45:55 know, some of you guys might have seen that clip where the guy was like, "Hey,
45:59 I want to make my lounge make more money." And I'm like, "Okay, well,
46:01 where's your lounge?" And he said, "In the middle of the Sahara Desert." And I
46:05 was like, "Okay, well, that's probably not a good idea." And he's like, "So, I
46:07 should advertise more?" I was like, "No, that's just a terrible idea in general."
46:12 Right? Like, he's like, "So, I shouldn't be in the Sahara Desert." I was like,
46:15 "Dear God." Okay. Um, I'm kidding. Uh, he was a champ about it. But this is a
46:21 real constraint rarely. Like, if you actually live in [ __ ] Kentucky, and
46:25 100% of the the customers you service are in [ __ ] Kentucky, then yes, you
46:29 will be limited by [ __ ] It will absolutely limit you. But you could also
46:32 like do more of that in another market, right? So it's like sometimes it just
46:35 takes a one degree of thinking of like okay well I could just duplicate this
46:40 somewhere else right um this is a you'll see how cool this model
46:44 is in a second um but we're just talking about from the customer's perspective so
46:49 uh it's likely that you are not contra I I service chiropractors and we're B2B
46:53 okay great how many customers do you have 100 okay well there's 50,000
46:57 chiropractors so do you feel like you're really limited by your market do you
46:59 really feel like you've saturated the market of chiropractors no one knows you
47:03 exist right And so we need to advertise more and then we go back to that. Right?
47:07 The next issue is I can't do more because I don't even know what more is
47:11 because I don't have any metrics. Okay. So we have a data constraint. So we have
47:15 to figure out what you're currently doing before we can do more of it. So
47:19 that should be kind of some common sense. So let's get data. But then that
47:22 becomes the constraint. Okay, great. Once as soon as we have data, then we
47:27 can go do more. The next issue um that'll come up of like why can't I do
47:31 more? It's like, well, I'm just not sure my current model is really what I want
47:35 to be doing long term or like if this is the best opportunity vehicle for the
47:39 skills that I have. And there's a lot of like this like what do I do with my life
47:46 that, right? And the the model issue really comes down to like
47:50 one of the most common things that that I'll end up responding with is features
47:54 versus bugs. is that like so Suzanne Shifflet who was my CFO um at Gym Launch
48:02 phenomenal lady phenomenal CFO um she used to say Alex I've been doing this 38
48:09 years and all businesses have [ __ ] she was from deep south um she was awesome
48:15 and the point was that like every business has something that's hard
48:18 about it and so we often want to switch opportunities because the thing that's
48:21 hard about this business another business doesn't have that thing that's
48:25 hard. It just has another thing that right now you didn't realize is easy for
48:28 you because that's not a component of the business. So said taken differently
48:34 like at one extreme if you do if you're in the cleaning business cleaning homes
48:38 finding people to clean houses for is really not hard. People are very happy
48:42 to not clean and pay someone else to do it. On the other hand, finding talent
48:48 who want to clean houses and are competent and show up on time and don't
48:52 steal and speak English and are honest and blah blah blah blah blah, right?
48:56 Really hard. Now, flip that the other way. Finding people who want to talk
49:01 about fitness and want you talking about this morning, right? Who want to talk
49:04 about fitness, who want to talk about helping people, tons of people will do
49:07 it and they'll do it for free. The problem is no one wants to sign up for
49:12 fitness services because no one wants to wake their ass up in the middle in the
49:16 morning and go to the gym, right? And so like all businesses have components of
49:19 the business that are difficult. There's going to be some businesses that are
49:21 more supply constraints, some that are more demand constraint, but they're all
49:23 going to have constraints. Otherwise, if there were a business that had truly no
49:27 constraints, then every business would just that of that industry would all
49:31 just be gazillion dollar businesses. But they're not because sometimes for short
49:35 periods that is true. And then what happens? lots of competition emerge and
49:38 then you have a constraint. Now we have pricing pressure etc. And so the idea
49:41 that like you're going to find the perfect business and it's just like one
49:44 degree separated from your current one is probably not true. It's just that the
49:47 hard problem that you have in front of you is the thing that you get
49:51 compensated for solving. Like that's the game. And so the way that I frame this
49:59 is like if I solve this problem, if I have my cleaning business and I figure
50:03 out how to have a recruiting engine and a training engine that can take somebody
50:06 who's low skill talent and get them to be proficient in a way that's more
50:10 efficient than my competitors, then I have an extra 10 or 20 or $50 million of
50:14 enterprise value that gets added to my business. All of a sudden, that feels
50:17 like a much more desirable problem to solve if I know I have a $50 million pot
50:22 of gold on the other side. And so rather than just saying like, "Oh, this sucks."
50:25 It's like, "Well, for $50 million, I'd be willing to solve it." And so, for
50:28 some reason, that just tends to perk me up a little bit. Okay. Um, but
50:33 fundamentally, all all businesses have [ __ ] All businesses suck to a degree.
50:37 And almost all businesses, if you stick in them for a long period of time, you
50:40 can become exceptionally wealthy. Like the guy who owns the building that I
50:44 live in, he's my neighbor. He owns Panda Express. If you were in this room and he
50:49 says, "Hey," he got up and said, "Hey, I um I own a fast casual Chinese
50:54 restaurant. We sell Kungpow chicken and general styles chicken and spicy pine,
50:58 you know, sweet sweet, you know, you know that new one, the one that they
51:00 came out with like five, six years ago." Anyways, um and you know, chicken
51:06 teriyak and you know, we've got five locations and you know, each location
51:10 does $3 million a year topline. Um we run 27% margins. Some people in this room would give that
51:16 guy advice. You should teach other people how to how to sell chicken. And
51:22 that would be terrible advice for him because what he should do is keep doing
51:26 it for 45 years and then do 3.7 billion a year in chicken sales with 27% net
51:30 margins and take home a billion a year in cash every year and do it taxfree
51:35 because he owns all the dirt and the real estate. It just took him 45 years.
51:41 And so I say this because like most of the goals that you have are probably
51:45 attainable just not on the timeline that you gave yourself. And so like even something like think
51:51 about how shitty of a shitty right of a business model that is. Who wants to
51:55 scale brickandmortar fast casual lowskilled labor business? Most people like I don't want to do that
52:06 right canes decad billionaire owns them all. So like is it a super? I don't
52:11 think you can scale that. Yeah, you can with work and skill and time. And so I
52:15 think that's the piece that like everyone is so concerned about getting
52:18 really rich in the next 36 months that almost all vehicles can get you super
52:24 rich in the next 36 years and many many orders of wealth along the way. Um we
52:29 just don't think in those time horizons and I think that is maybe one of the
52:32 bigger things that I can give you around model. So why can't you do more? I don't
52:37 know if my chicken shop is uh you know the be best opportunity vehicle. Well,
52:39 if you keep doing it for 10 years, you'll probably be better than most
52:43 people who do chicken shops and if you keep leveling up in the game of
52:46 business, the people we compete against. So, if you are in a low opportunity
52:49 vehicle market, here's the advantage. Your competitors typically not that
52:52 sophisticated. If you want to go after AI, whatever, then you're competing
52:56 against the best capitalized, smartest human beings on the [ __ ] earth.
53:01 Depends where you want to play, right? All businesses have [ __ ] Okay, the next
53:06 one is like, why can't I do more? I can't afford to. Now, this is where it
53:09 gets a little bit hairier. Harrier in that there's more splinters underneath.
53:15 So, you can't do more because leads cost too much. You can't uh do more because you sell
53:22 too few. You can't do more um because your LTV is too low, right? LTV is too low, sales is
53:30 too low, or leads are too low. Now, this is where it takes more question
53:32 answering and kind of pattern recognition to figure out which of the
53:36 problems is because all you know right now is I can't afford it, but you might
53:39 not be able to afford it because you don't make enough per customer rather
53:43 than it being inherently some marketing problem. This happens common where you
53:46 have a business that has a front end but no backend and they're like, "Man, I'm
53:51 making sales but I have no," they don't know that they don't have a back end.
53:53 They just know that they're not profitable um as a business. But it's
53:57 like, "Oh, dude, you have a you have a break even or slightly break even
54:01 acquisition process. Now sell the thing to all those people." Oh, and now this
54:04 is amazing business. It's just like you were just missing a piece of it. That's
54:07 an LTV issue. Or maybe it's a churn problem. It's like, "Hey, we're acquire
54:10 customers. I think it cost us too much to get customers." It's like, "No, dude.
54:12 You turn out in three months. It doesn't like it doesn't matter what the cost of
54:15 acquisition is. Like you need to fix churn." Um, which then has lots of hair
54:18 on. Is it a messaging issues, avatar issues, an onboarding issue? Like
54:22 there's things underneath of that. If it's um I can't afford to to to
54:27 advertise more to get more people um because my leads are too expensive. It's
54:31 like well are they too expensive? Now there are instances where like we have
54:34 good like let's say you're in insurance, right? And so it's like okay our LTVs
54:38 are already almost given to us by the insurance companies. Uh we close 30% of
54:42 people you get on the phone with. It's just like our leads just cost too much.
54:45 Okay, in that instance like their leads cost too much. So then there it's like
54:48 all right we have to increase quality quality of creative increase quantity of
54:51 creative. we have to look at um CRO within the funnel. All of these things
54:54 we have to see if we can have better lead magnets from an offer perspective
54:57 to generate the lead. It's like okay all of a sudden all those things can drive
55:00 down the lead cost and all of a sudden this business prints and then you have
55:03 the the middle of the sandwich there. The lead costs are fine. We're making
55:07 enough per customer. We just can't close a barn door if we had if it had a handle
55:11 on it, right? And so then we have to look at messaging. We have to look at
55:14 scripting. We have to look at um price points if we have to. We have to look at
55:17 the follow process. We have to look at the training process. just with the
55:19 onboarding and compensation for the sales guys or or if it's a webinar
55:22 whatever it is right what's the messaging that we're telling to get
55:24 someone to take their wallet out and give us money but each of these things
55:28 so if we say okay if I solve all of those things so let's say you're like I
55:33 can't do more not because I have enough people in my market I have the metrics
55:36 to know that like what I'm doing is working I'm fine being a plumber I have
55:40 like the lead costs are fine we closed the amount that we're supposed to our
55:44 LTV is good I just don't have enough technicians to go and do the HVAC
55:48 services or do do the plumbing or I don't have enough coaches to do my back
55:51 end or I don't have enough whatevers. Right? Then you have a manpower
55:55 constraint. Here's the cool part about And by the way, I did the order wrong.
56:02 These should be like this. Metric should It's a cycle. It goes back to the top. So, I don't
56:13 have enough manpower. Great. What do you do to get manpower? Okay. Why don't you
56:18 do more of that? Well, I can't do more of that because I don't have metrics
56:23 around how I recruit talent. Okay, great. So, let's say we solve the
56:25 metrics. All right. Well, there's not enough talent in my specific market for
56:31 HVAC whatevers. Okay, fine. But maybe there is. Okay. Well, um I'm not sure if
56:39 the offer that I have for the guys is compelling enough. Okay, I can't afford
56:43 to. Okay. Well, how much do you make per HVAC rep or per per coach or per
56:48 whatever? Well, I make this. Okay. Well, then do we have a issue that we need to
56:52 change in terms of the business uh to fix our acquisition of talent or the
56:56 acquisition of talent's fine because the business works? Okay, great. And so,
56:59 this whole thing, you just repeat it again on the other side. So, this is
57:03 just how you deconstrain anything, whether it's supply or demand. So, I
57:07 want to dive a bit deeper into the last M that I talked about, which is
57:10 manpower. making the right hires and be able to train them is one of the highest
57:12 leverage things that you can do as a business owner. Now, one of the most
57:15 common push backs I'll get is, well, they can't do what I can do. So, if you
57:19 want someone to do something and they're not doing it, I want to share a
57:21 framework that might help. And I call this the management diamond. Now,
57:26 I'll give you the little management diamond um that I do for employees,
57:31 which is a really good framework for having hard conversations.
57:36 But if you want someone to do something and they're not doing it, you have like
57:39 four or five reasons that they're not doing it. Right? The first is they just
57:43 didn't know that you wanted them to do it. Most common, hey, did you do that
57:47 thing? And they're like, what thing? You're like, damn it, I didn't write it
57:50 down, did I? Okay, so we have to write it down. We have to we have to put a
57:53 deadline on it. Fantastic. So now I say, why didn't you do that thing? They say,
58:00 well, I didn't know how to do it. Okay, well fine. So they didn't know how to do
58:03 it. Now let's say we train them. So, I told you that you needed to do it. You
58:08 know how to do it, but um you didn't know when I was going to do it by Oh, I
58:13 need to do that tomorrow. Okay. So, I knew that you needed to do it. You knew
58:16 how to do it. You knew when to do it. The next is you have something that's
58:23 blocking you. So, I knew that. I knew how. I knew you wanted to do it
58:26 tomorrow, but you also told me to do three other things. Which one did you want me to do?
58:33 And then finally you get into this which is that I didn't want to do it which in my
58:40 experience is the first place that we go to as entrepreneurs and typically the
58:45 last one that's reality. Most people I have found when they have a job prefer
58:49 to keep it. And I've also found that most people prefer to feel like they're
58:52 doing a good job at their job. And so it's usually one of these other issues.
58:56 And so this provides a really good framework for having those
58:59 conversations. Now, the reason I bring this up is because we can also have
59:03 these conversations with ourselves. I know I need to do more. Why am I not
59:07 doing more? Did I not know that I needed to do more? Well, now I do. Okay. Do I
59:12 not know how to do more? Oh, I don't know how to do more. Great. Well, now I
59:15 have something to attack. That becomes my to-do. If I don't know how to do it,
59:18 I know what to do, which is to figure out how to do it, right? Um, is it not
59:23 urgent enough? Right? Or is there something blocking me? I would go
59:26 recruit more people for my HVAC company, but right now 80% of my time is dealt
59:31 with these customer service issues that are coming up onesie twies all day.
59:34 Okay, great. How much does it cost to replace the onesie twoosy thing? Cost me
59:39 $60,000 a year. I have 400,000 in profit. Am I willing to go from 400,000
59:43 to 3040,000 in profit in order to get 80% of my time back? Yes. But that means
59:47 I'm going to make less money. Yes. Today, but then I'm going to get 80% of
59:50 my time back so that I can then focus on how to figure out how to do more. And so
59:54 it's just it's taking second and third order consequences down to their natural
59:57 end and then ultimately being like okay this is what I need to do. I literally
60:01 went through this process. So post launch for me I was like okay I have
60:06 this bandwidth back. What's the next constraint of the business? And for me
60:10 it was six questions down for me to be like that's what the issue is and that's
60:14 what I'm focused on. And so right now 80% of my time is dealing with that
60:18 constraint which is I'm heavily recruiting executives right now. That's
60:22 what I'm doing with my time. yesterday at four executive meetings and I have
60:25 follow-up notes and and connections afterwards that I have to do. That's
60:27 what my time's right now because that's the constraint of the business. And then
60:30 once that finishes because those people get onboarded and they do a good job,
60:33 I'll go through this again. Now, one of the most common limiting beliefs
60:36 entrepreneurs have is that no one can do it as good as they can. But this
60:38 eventually creates something called keyman risk. And this is the next
60:42 business principle that I use. And so, fundamentally, every business, if it's
60:46 relying on any person, whether it's the entrepreneur or otherwise, it's that
60:49 person is going to be keyman. Now, this is a double-edged sword because the
60:52 better you get at something, the more keyman you are. And so, the more you've
60:55 invested in yourself, in some ways, you become a liability for the business as
60:58 much as you are an asset. But this applies across the board. And so, the
61:02 only real way to pay this down, I'll explain in this little clip. So, one of
61:07 the big issues that especially like when you're coming up, the problem is that
61:10 everyone here we like we had to learn all these different things, right? We
61:12 had to learn marketing, we had to learn sales, we learned product, we learned
61:14 hiring, we had to learn all this different stuff, right? And then we we
61:18 want to hire one person who's lived our entire lives and then expect them to
61:22 work for us for a fraction of what we pay ourselves and are barely even
61:27 willing to keep doing what we're doing, >> right? >> One of those.
61:30 >> Yeah. So we have to break it into parts. And so I give the analogy of the
61:33 unicorn, right? So like you're a unicorn in your business. You looking for
61:37 unicorns is probably not a productive activity. But if you wanted to create
61:40 something that was an approximation of a unicorn, it's like, okay, well, I need
61:43 the horn. So, I can go find a rhinoceros and I'll I'll get the horn part. And
61:47 then, uh, but that body is not going to work. So, I got to go get a horse. It's
61:50 going to be a white horse. It's not going to have a horn. Well, fine. I can
61:54 get the horse. But then, what about the magic pixie dust, right? So, then I got
61:57 to get my fireflies and I can add those on. And so, I just bolt on the horn of
62:01 the rhinoceros onto the horse and get some fireflies. Is it as good as you?
62:07 No. But it'll be pretty good. And so if the business requires somebody who's as
62:11 good as you to run, then the model doesn't work. If the business can work
62:15 with somebody who's half as good as you, then you're always going to sacrifice
62:19 some margin in order to scale. >> And so I'll say this differently. One of
62:23 the terms I use is scale zero. And so the goal is like how can I get so let's
62:28 say that let's say hypothetical math. If I do something, I make $20 million a
62:32 year and it's 50% margins and I'm heavily involved in a whole bunch of
62:36 [ __ ] right? If I hire truly all the people that I need, maybe my margin goes
62:42 from 10 million to four. Let's just be extreme here. But I do nothing now. But
62:48 now that company can then go from 20 to 40 and I can make eight on 40 and it
62:53 requires zero of me. And so again, it's this a lot of times we have our ego tied
62:56 to because you said it, you're like, I got to this and as soon you're like and
62:59 then as soon as I'm there, there's this, you know, like and so it's because you
63:02 have this tie for whatever reason that like if it's not this number, you suck
63:05 or whatever that is for you. And so we need to be able to give up some of that
63:11 profit in order to break your your the activities that you currently do into
63:14 component parts. The activity of doing that is we do time studies. So you look
63:18 at what you do in a current week and then you start parsing out. Okay, you
63:21 could take the entire time study, plug it into GPT, and just say, "Hey, what
63:27 roles uh if I were to replace 100% of these activities, what if this is the
63:31 smallest amount of roles that could replace all of them and give me the job
63:35 description and names for those?" And it's like, okay, well, actually, you do
63:38 things. You do some HR [ __ ] and you do some uh marketing stuff and then you do
63:43 some sales [ __ ] Okay, great. So, you need one of these, one of these, and one
63:45 of these. And it's like, cool. How much is that going to eat in my margin? I'm
63:47 going to cut half my margin away. Okay, am I willing to do that? so I can
63:50 actually have something that works. And the first time you hire them, two out of
63:53 the three will suck because you don't have pattern recognition. And then one
63:56 of them will be okay. And then you'll hire again and it'll take you six months
64:00 to figure that out. And like, but that thing is is that once you get there
64:02 though, you will finally be able to get to 500 or million a month or whatever
64:06 the next stopping point is. And then you'll be like, "Fuck, I don't know how
64:08 to hire this next person." And then you'll fail for a while and then you'll
64:11 get it. You just can't stop. You can't stop trying. >> Just look at what you do.
64:14 >> Mhm. >> Like what do you spend your time actually doing? what you think about all
64:19 that stuff doesn't really matter. All that matters is like I communicate these
64:23 people in these ways. I make these decisions. So fundamentally you're most
64:26 of the time you're going to be making decisions or you're going to be doing
64:30 some sort of individual contributor activity. Those are going to be the core
64:33 elements of what you do, right? If you want ideating then maybe that's going to
64:36 come here and then we'll make a decision about it, right? But most small
64:39 businesses don't need more ideas. They need more execution. And so we just have
64:44 to break what you do day-to-day to the buckets, the constituent parts of what
64:48 they are and just take all the mysticism out of it of like visionary and the
64:51 energy and whatever. It's just like you do this stuff. This stuff makes money.
64:54 We need other people to do that stuff. So I want to move on and talk about
64:58 culture. So a lot of entrepreneurs throw this word around and they don't even
65:01 know what it means and so that they want to improve something they can't define
65:05 which makes it very hard to improve. And so I will walk you through how I define
65:09 culture in this clip and more importantly how to improve it.
65:12 >> So and I I bring that up because many times we as entrepreneurs will say I
65:15 really want to fix this thing and then we say cool then what's that?
65:18 >> It's like very hard to fix if we don't know what it is.
65:19 >> Sure. >> So I define culture as the rules spoken
65:23 and unspoken that govern reinforcement in an organization. >> So what are the rules if that like and
65:28 then what is a rule? A rule is a conditional statement of if this then
65:30 that. >> So if you do this then you will get rewarded. If you do this then nothing
65:34 will happen. and if you do this then you'll get punished. So culture is a
65:39 series of rules that govern what happens good stuff bad stuff when you do things.
65:44 >> And so the reason that culture I think is so difficult for people to transpose
65:47 from one to the next is that there's so many rules that govern behavior within
65:50 an organization that people are like you just got to be around there and like
65:54 soak in the culture which really just means you need to observe many rules and
65:59 conditions of reinforcement occurring uh over an extended period of time to
66:02 understand how the rules work here. >> Yeah. >> Right. And so as a result, people just
66:07 don't codify the 100 plus rules of behavior. Um, and so there's kind of
66:11 like I would say two paths that you can do. I would say my preference and then
66:15 what's probably the easier faster one. So my preference is actually codified
66:19 all and say like what are all the things that make us us? And of course you're
66:22 going to have your values and whatnot, but I see values as chunked up rules. So
66:28 if I were to say I have 200 rules of behavior that I want to say these are
66:30 the things that are rewarded, these are the things that are punished. Okay, how
66:33 can I chunk these into three statements or three bulleted words that when
66:38 unpacked would mean that if I believe this to be true, this is the set of
66:42 behaviors that will go along with it. That's that is how I would approach um
66:47 this type of thing. If you want to do the fast fast and dirty way, you have
66:50 the three values and then you just try to describe them the best way you can
66:54 and that's how value should be created. Um, but I do prefer the like let's do
66:58 more of that work and say like how are all like how do we like and think about
67:02 when you're thinking about these rules think about the conditions where
67:05 behavior exists and it'll be much easier for you to think about the rules of
67:09 behavior. So it's like within a meeting, what are all the rules of a meeting,
67:15 right? So maybe at acquisition.com, if you're not talking, you're muted. That's
67:18 a rule. And if you talk while you're in a meeting and you're not talking, like
67:21 you're not talking to everyone else, like that's like close to grounds for
67:25 termination. >> Um just because it means you're not paying attention while you're here, then
67:28 like you know, what are we doing? >> Uh so it's like one of things. So it's
67:32 like what are all the conditions in which we interact? What are the rules of
67:36 engagement around those interactions? And then that codifies up to three, you
67:40 know, three statements that should chunk up what culture means to you. And then
67:44 when you have that as the limus text when you go and transpose that to the
67:47 new location, one, you want to make sure that the leader does actually adhere to
67:52 those sets of rules and um behaviors. And my my way of doing this would be to
67:58 take the the biggest culture champion here and move them there, provided that
68:02 culture can still reinforce itself without that leader. Death creates
68:05 clarity. A business owner asked me about what I meant by death creates clarity.
68:09 And I want to leave you with this message. >> Death creates clarity.
68:11 >> Yeah. >> What are you clear on today? >> I think it creates a forcing function
68:19 around prioritization. And I think that I mean it's the ultimate razor of like
68:29 will this matter? And I think that writing I think writing my mother's
68:35 eulogy was really valuable for me because if anyone here has written a
68:38 eulogy or an obituary or anything like that, you get to see what's included and
68:42 what's not included. And a hilarious amount of the things that we stress
68:45 about in life are not included. Also, a hilarious amount of the things that we
68:49 strive to achieve are also not included. And so when I think about and I think
68:54 Charlie Munger is the first like he's the first person that I know said I'm
68:56 sure plenty of people have said it beforehand but um I love the concept of
69:03 the reverse obituary or the reverse eulogy of like what would Alex's eulogy
69:08 be? It's only going to be 500 words to a thousand. That's how long eulogies are.
69:11 Which by the way you're like wow that's not that long. Um cuz people are there.
69:16 They're busy. It's you know it's r it's rush hour. they got places to be and
69:21 you're not trying to take too much time and so you have to write it out. And so
69:26 usually like the accomplishments we have like if I really think about like what
69:29 the you know the Alex funeral is going to be no one's going to give a [ __ ] about how
69:35 much money I made or anything like that. No one like imagine Titan of Industry,
69:39 right? Like some people want to be cover of Forbes or whatever it is. It's like
69:43 when you go to that guy's funeral, you know, they don't start with like he
69:47 was a titan of industry. Okay, fine. That was one sentence and that was that
69:52 covers 40 years. Great. Uh but then they're going to transition to two
69:55 things which is what I saw as the common theme which is service and character.
70:01 And so in thinking about like what what are the things or what are the causes
70:04 that I that I deem meaningful enough to serve and then what traits uh do I need
70:11 to exhibit in order to become the person capable of serving them at the highest
70:15 level. I think everything that we do between now and then or at least for me
70:19 is in service of that eulogy or that obituary. And I think that's the I think
70:23 that's the reason that you know death creates clarity at least for me. When
70:27 you have those nice moments it's like
