Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Darren Lee - CEO and Founder of Voics | Building Your Influence With Podcasts

Transcript

Darren Lee - CEO and Founder of Voics | Building Your Influence With Podcasts · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Most guys talk a big game in their under-front-end,
• 0:02
  advertising their staff,
• 0:03
  but a fulfillment and success is not there.
• 0:07
  Darren Lee, after working with Fortune 500 companies
• 0:11
  and building a successful career in FinTech,
• 0:13
  Darren took a leap into the world of podcasting.
• 0:16
  His show Kick Off Sessions didn't just make it to Episode 3,
• 0:20
  it saw to over 35 million views and 200 episodes,
• 0:24
  landing in the top 5% of podcast globally.
• 0:27
  And most people in our space don't care but the customer.
• 0:30
  So you give people what they want so you can give them what they need.
• 0:32
  If you know how the game is played over here,
• 0:34
  you should be zigging when everyone else is eigen.
• 0:36
  Customers will actually stay with you,
• 0:38
  even if you don't get that greater results if your experience is high.
• 0:42
  How could I possibly tell you how you should create
• 0:44
  your thumbnails and your design, your production,
• 0:46
  if I'm not doing it for myself?
• 0:47
  Best case study can only be yourself.
• 0:49
  Doing things like that creates a different experience.
• 0:52
  But here's the real story.
• 0:53
  How did Darren turn his passion into a platform for growth?
• 0:56
  In this episode,
• 0:58
  we explore his journey from launching Kick Off Sessions
• 1:01
  to scaling his podcasting success
• 1:03
  and how he's helping others transform their shows
• 1:06
  into powerful tools for influence and revenue.
• 1:08
  Most people are not truly interested in what they're talking about.
• 1:12
  They're not even interested in the guest.
• 1:13
  They're taking it as a selfish pursuit,
• 1:15
  solve your own problems,
• 1:16
  actually turns out that's incredibly valuable to somebody else.
• 1:18
  Sometimes you have to pay your water to make the change.
• 1:21
  Any hired beliefs like that,
• 1:22
  then you truly don't see yourself doing forever.
• 1:24
  What are you doing right now?
• 1:26
  If you've ever wondered what it takes to build a scalable
• 1:28
  personal brand through podcasting,
• 1:30
  this is the conversation for you.
• 1:32
  A lot of young guys say they're doing.
• 1:34
  They're not actually doing it.
• 1:37
  Welcome to success story.
• 1:39
  I'm your host, Scott Clary.
• 1:40
  The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network.
• 1:44
  I'm also a big user of HubSpot products.
• 1:46
  They've supported the show for over three years now.
• 1:49
  And for all entrepreneurs out there,
• 1:51
  I need you to go back to a time and place
• 1:53
  when building businesses as tough as it is,
• 1:56
  can be sometimes a little bit fun.
• 1:58
  When you're marketing, it should be fun.
• 2:00
  But marketing is not so fun anymore
• 2:02
  because it's very time consuming.
• 2:04
  It's very difficult.
• 2:05
  And it feels like there's just a lot of friction.
• 2:07
  Content was simpler to make.
• 2:09
  Leads were easier to capture.
• 2:11
  And we weren't all spread so thin.
• 2:13
  As marketers, as entrepreneurs,
• 2:15
  the bottom line is that marketing used to be fun.
• 2:17
  It's not so fun anymore.
• 2:19
  But with HubSpots newly launched to marketing and content hubs,
• 2:22
  I've been using it myself.
• 2:23
  It brings a little bit of fun and creativity back
• 2:25
  into marketing for your business.
• 2:26
  They're going to generate better content.
• 2:28
  They're going to generate more leads
• 2:29
  and next level results,
• 2:31
  which really make marketing fun again.
• 2:33
  So with tools like Content Remix,
• 2:34
  you can turn existing assets into all new pieces
• 2:37
  with just one click.
• 2:38
  Lead scoring helps you shine a light on the leads
• 2:40
  that are most likely to purchase
• 2:42
  and analytic suites they built out
• 2:44
  will help you with reports, KPIs,
• 2:46
  and just a gold mine of AI powered insights.
• 2:48
  It's quick to get your results.
• 2:50
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• 2:51
  It connects all your teams and your data.
• 2:52
  So put the fun back into your marketing funnel
• 2:55
  with HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free.
• 3:08
  There, and I'm excited you're here.
• 3:09
  I'm very, very excited.
• 3:10
  It's going to be a lot of fun.
• 3:12
  So we're going to take this in a whole bunch of different
• 3:14
  places and directions.
• 3:16
  But just to start it off,
• 3:17
  to like sort of set the frame,
• 3:18
  you've interviewed a lot of really interesting people.
• 3:21
  So it's going to be like a,
• 3:23
  maybe like, have you thinking one to kick it off?
• 3:25
  What are some things that people have said on your podcast
• 3:28
  that have basically changed your life?
• 3:33
  What are some of those like,
• 3:35
  you ask them on a question and they drop some wisdom
• 3:37
  and you're like, oh shit.
• 3:40
  That's such a good question, man.
• 3:43
  I think it's a smaller moment that people don't realize.
• 3:46
  You know, it's not at the big gas,
• 3:47
  not the famous gas and so on.
• 3:49
  So one guest in particular is guy called Ned Phillips.
• 3:51
  Madam Singapore became very close.
• 3:53
  He's pretty much like a father to me.
• 3:55
  He made me realize that it was less to do
• 3:58
  at like being super experienced,
• 4:00
  having all the years experience waiting
• 4:02
  to become successful, to be successful.
• 4:04
  His approach was just more, it's just the action.
• 4:07
  Most guys were not taking any sort of action,
• 4:09
  especially younger people.
• 4:10
  He was able to make me realize that almost anything was possible
• 4:15
  once we actually said what we were going to do, right?
• 4:18
  Because these guys were experiencing sales.
• 4:20
  They were around for many years
• 4:22
  and he was looking down and lost kids.
• 4:24
  He's in his mid 50s, 60s, going on to 60 soon.
• 4:28
  And the only gap between where he was
• 4:31
  and where I was was actually doing the work.
• 4:34
  You know, and this is what a lot of young guys say they're doing
• 4:38
  but they're not actually doing it.
• 4:39
  Why do you think that?
• 4:41
  So I agree with you,
• 4:42
  but it's hard to unpack as to why people aren't doing the work.
• 4:47
  Because it seems like everybody is like,
• 4:49
  seems like everybody online is hustling at least.
• 4:52
  But what do you mean by not doing the work?
• 4:54
  So there's a big difference between marketing, sales,
• 4:56
  and then what happens in the back end.
• 4:58
  So this is the big thing in the online space,
• 5:00
  especially where I'm situated in.
• 5:03
  It's the fact that most guys talk a big game
• 5:06
  and they're under front end advertising their stuff,
• 5:09
  they're good on marketing, they're good on their funnels,
• 5:11
  but the fulfillment and actually
• 5:14
  creating a great product business,
• 5:16
  like you've done, and success is not there.
• 5:20
  So taking that lesson from him in particular,
• 5:23
  all the things, the real boring stuff
• 5:25
  about building great products, great offers,
• 5:27
  great businesses is focused on the person.
• 5:30
  But most people in our space don't care, but customer.
• 5:34
  So interesting.
• 5:35
  I actually have such an issue.
• 5:37
  I love, I love it, Russell Brunson's built.
• 5:41
  And I love, I really do.
• 5:42
  I think he's an incredible entrepreneur, not joking.
• 5:44
  But what he's built is he's created the ability
• 5:49
  to market and sell for people that are not technical.
• 5:52
  Of course.
• 5:53
  And you can spin up landing pages and funnels overnight.
• 5:56
  And that is a blessing and a curse for entrepreneurs.
• 5:58
  As is all technology, I mean,
• 6:01
  when Tobias Luke built Shopify and then he enabled drop shipping,
• 6:06
  I mean, then you get a whole bunch of entrepreneurs
• 6:07
  and I don't have to worry.
• 6:08
  It's like unsophisticated people are now able to build businesses.
• 6:13
  And that's again, blessing and a curse.
• 6:15
  And with all technology that allows
• 6:18
  less sophisticated people to build even more incredible businesses.
• 6:21
  But I do find that with that
• 6:25
  unlocking of access to entrepreneurship,
• 6:28
  you get a lot of bullshit and with drop shipping,
• 6:30
  you drop shipping, shitty products from overseas.
• 6:34
  And if you are good at sales and you are good at marketing,
• 6:39
  it's very hard to differentiate for the average consumer.
• 6:42
  What's good and what's not.
• 6:44
  And then I see a lot of coaches and people creating online courses and all that.
• 6:48
  This is a whole dude.
• 6:50
  This is an entire rabbit hole.
• 6:51
  I actually think half the reason why I was so adverse to
• 6:58
  you don't really know my whole story.
• 6:59
  But when the business was acquired about four years ago,
• 7:05
  I didn't build a course or I didn't do consulting or I didn't do anything.
• 7:11
  And I think the main reason was I was so scared of putting out like a half-ass product.
• 7:17
  And I was so scared of like letting people down.
• 7:21
  But it's so funny because I actually had like real-world lived experience in building businesses.
• 7:26
  But for me, there was like a lot of imposter syndrome there.
• 7:28
  And I didn't want to be perceived in the sense like I had this.
• 7:32
  It was like such a negative adverse reaction that clicked funnels.
• 7:36
  Coming from like a sass world.
• 7:38
  It was like, what is this?
• 7:40
  What is this garbage?
• 7:41
  So it looks, it looks scammy.
• 7:43
  Like even looking at a click funnel's website for me was just looking like,
• 7:47
  this is garbage compared to what an actual business funnel should look like.
• 7:51
  And I just didn't want to, I didn't want to build something in that space.
• 7:54
  But I mean so many people do and so many people are good entrepreneurs.
• 7:59
  But like to your point, a lot of people don't focus on great products.
• 8:03
  Which is ultimately in my mind what differentiates good entrepreneur versus
• 8:07
  scammy sales and marketing.
• 8:09
  So how do we fix like, I mean, there's no fix.
• 8:12
  I mean, fix is like an ethics question at the end of the day.
• 8:15
  But for entrepreneurs listening, what should they focus on so that they don't have
• 8:22
  chargebacks, churn, lose customers, flash in the pan success?
• 8:26
  This is something that I'm incredibly, incredibly conscious of.
• 8:29
  Because similar to yourself, I've come from a software background.
• 8:32
  Yeah, you were, it's Accenture.
• 8:34
  I was at Revolut, I was at Fintech company, right?
• 8:38
  And I was focused on product that, so for context, I was working in trading,
• 8:41
  trading product, customer experience, real detail UX UI.
• 8:45
  So I come from the lens of delighting a customer, creating basically an experience
• 8:50
  for customer and keeping them sticky, right?
• 8:52
  Whether you're selling services or products, we want people to come back
• 8:55
  and stick with us, right?
• 8:56
  That's where a retainer works all well.
• 8:58
  And that's why we're trying to keep clients for as many years as possible,
• 9:02
  because we just have a good experience, a good relationship.
• 9:04
  The first thing I usually focus on is, can you actually solve
• 9:10
  what you say you're going to solve for that specific customer?
• 9:13
  So service or even product is very important.
• 9:16
  How much people went to work with you and went to buy your product at the enterprise level?
• 9:20
  That maybe they weren't best suited for the enterprise level.
• 9:22
  Yeah, they could have paid you $5,000 a month,
• 9:25
  but maybe the $99 a month would have been better.
• 9:27
  So it's almost like creating the solution that just fits that customer profile specifically.
• 9:32
  And that way there's no resentment, there's no grudge, okay?
• 9:36
  And this customer will appreciate that you have that well-situated for them.
• 9:40
  So let's give an example for us.
• 9:42
  We're doing full done for you management of podcasts.
• 9:45
  There's some people who just don't fit that well.
• 9:47
  Let me give you a pro, let me give an example.
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  Our service might be like, say, $5,000 a month.
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  There's some guys who are getting started as an entrepreneur that can't afford it.
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  They shouldn't do it.
• 9:56
  They shouldn't be taking it to credit card to do it,
• 9:58
  but most people will sell it to them.
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  That's the problem.
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  Most people will take the cash, spend one or two months, get a horrible feedback,
• 10:06
  the customer will churn, their business will dip, right?
• 10:09
  Whereas what I've been trying to situate on is like,
• 10:11
  who can we actually serve and solve problems for?
• 10:13
  Because then you don't have imposter syndrome,
• 10:15
  then you're actually living in alignment with what you can serve and what you can do.
• 10:19
  And you can build a better experience.
• 10:21
  So let's just say in that example,
• 10:23
  something that I've learned myself is that not everyone can afford a service.
• 10:27
  Some guys can, some big entrepreneurs, your tech companies can.
• 10:31
  What else could we do?
• 10:32
  Could we serve those same clients who came into the ecosystem differently?
• 10:36
  Could we do some consulting?
• 10:38
  Could we do some coaching?
• 10:39
  Could we do some self-paced education?
• 10:41
  Could we build an education platform?
• 10:43
  That's cheaper.
• 10:44
  And the amount of people that you can surprise and delight in that experience
• 10:49
  is huge.
• 10:49
  Those prospects become customers,
• 10:52
  those customers become raving fans and those raving fans,
• 10:54
  bills your brand.
• 10:55
  Yeah, right?
• 10:56
  That's what actually builds a brand.
• 10:58
  We have some people that started with us with $249.
• 11:01
  And then they've maybe ascended into different products.
• 11:04
  They've gone into consulting.
• 11:05
  They've paid for some of our done-for-you services.
• 11:08
  But they just enjoy being in the ecosystem.
• 11:11
  We have client success managers.
• 11:12
  We have myself that comes in and gives a lot of help and value in coaching.
• 11:15
  We have a production team that run with them.
• 11:18
  Compare that, okay?
• 11:19
  That's just one example.
• 11:20
  To the quick cash, go through my funnel,
• 11:23
  buy your product, no customer success,
• 11:25
  and it's up to you and there's no refunds as well.
• 11:28
  That creates such a bad atmosphere, right?
• 11:31
  And I'm speaking with one of my mentors at the moment
• 11:33
  about this.
• 11:34
  We're going back and forth.
• 11:35
  So this guy, Layton, 50s as well,
• 11:39
  we are helping him build a business.
• 11:42
  So we do a grow partner style work as well.
• 11:44
  We're real coming and we'll build offers and businesses.
• 11:48
  Bear in mind,
• 11:48
  clickfunnels created the word offer, right?
• 11:50
  So we would basically build that in conjunction.
• 11:55
  But what's been very important here is the fact that
• 11:57
  because my alignment is much more geared towards long-term,
• 12:01
  infinite game and so on and so forth,
• 12:02
  we can be a bit more delicate with the language,
• 12:05
  the tonality, the speech,
• 12:07
  how it's portrayed, right?
• 12:09
  Because as a result,
• 12:10
  you bring in a different customer.
• 12:12
  Now, everyone knows from the image.
• 12:14
  I increase the lifetime value,
• 12:15
  which is exactly the LTV of a customer
• 12:18
  that I don't think people focus on.
• 12:20
  And I would actually as we're having this conversation,
• 12:22
  it's interesting, I just had a thought.
• 12:24
  And then I wanted to keep going.
• 12:25
  But it seems like all the tools
• 12:27
  that have come out to support entrepreneurs,
• 12:29
  predominantly the flashiest tools
• 12:31
  have focused on solving the sales and marketing problem.
• 12:34
  Absolutely.
• 12:35
  And I actually,
• 12:36
  maybe I was a little bit harsh in my assumption
• 12:40
  that entrepreneurs just want to focus on sales and marketing.
• 12:45
  Maybe it's because the tools that support
• 12:47
  up and coming entrepreneurs
• 12:49
  are just focused on sales and marketing.
• 12:51
  I do not know how good Shopify
• 12:54
  or ClickFunnels does of educating
• 12:57
  entrepreneurs that use their platform
• 12:59
  on how to benchmark what customer success is
• 13:02
  or a CSAT score or a net promoter score.
• 13:05
  Or like, you know these words
• 13:07
  because it comes from this world.
• 13:09
  Or what good, what even good product is,
• 13:11
  or good service, or good delivery,
• 13:13
  or turn or any of the things that actually
• 13:16
  really help an entrepreneur understand
• 13:18
  if the customer is delighted at the end of the day.
• 13:20
  So you give people what they want
• 13:22
  so you can give them what they need, right?
• 13:23
  When we were building a lot of our products
• 13:25
  or actually like stand on products,
• 13:27
  I would hop on calls.
• 13:28
  Remember specifically,
• 13:29
  you're building out a coaching offer.
• 13:32
  I did 50 calls in a week.
• 13:34
  I got on a call with someone who I knew had problems
• 13:38
  with their podcast.
• 13:39
  And I would say,
• 13:39
  what are you struggling with right now?
• 13:41
  They would say, design,
• 13:43
  thumbnails, production,
• 13:45
  copywriting, I would write all of it down.
• 13:47
  And they would say,
• 13:49
  can we solve it?
• 13:49
  I would say, yes, we can solve it.
• 13:50
  Because I was giving them what they want.
• 13:52
  So I would build around their problems
• 13:55
  and then had this crystal clear,
• 13:58
  very simple framework that people could use
• 14:00
  that would actually solve their problems.
• 14:02
  Compare that to putting a square picture
• 14:05
  a circle hole,
• 14:06
  creating something that nobody wants.
• 14:08
  And then you're selling someone
• 14:09
  the dream like the dream outcome, right?
• 14:11
  And the dream outcome then is not achieved as a result.
• 14:13
  So I think there's much more of an elegant way
• 14:15
  you can go about doing this.
• 14:16
  And effectively,
• 14:18
  you're everyone rolls from the image
• 14:20
  that your business is a reflection of you.
• 14:21
  But people don't realize
• 14:22
  that your customers are also a reflection of you.
• 14:24
  And this is something I've been so conscious of lately
• 14:27
  that when I look at people that I've worked with
• 14:29
  or other businesses,
• 14:31
  I can click quickly see around their ecosystem
• 14:35
  what they're like as an entrepreneur.
• 14:36
  Because you can see their customers are they emotional.
• 14:40
  Are they, you know, jumping off the handle?
• 14:42
  Is there issues?
• 14:43
  Is there mistakes?
• 14:44
  Is there bugs in the software?
• 14:46
  Because these guys have come in
• 14:48
  and started playing a finite game to an infinite game
• 14:52
  and they're solving the wrong problem effectively.
• 14:54
  So I think these things don't look like problems
• 14:56
  in the short term.
• 14:57
  Sorry.
• 14:58
  When you're building this in the short term,
• 14:59
  it looks like, oh, it's fine.
• 15:00
  We're just rolling out a product, MVP, all that stuff.
• 15:03
  But it's a long tail effect.
• 15:04
  And that's why I think it's funny
• 15:05
  when you look at new entrepreneurs
• 15:07
  because the first 12 months is driven off ego
• 15:09
  and then 18 months in there is the realization
• 15:12
  how difficult it is.
• 15:12
  And 24 months in you realize
• 15:14
  that you know absolutely nothing.
• 15:16
  Like absolutely nothing.
• 15:17
  But that's the growth opportunity right there.
• 15:19
  And it's even internally, right?
• 15:20
  That's when you've developed more,
• 15:21
  you know, we've been sitting down talking
• 15:23
  for the past couple of minutes.
• 15:24
  And you know, I can see that you're like a humble guy,
• 15:26
  you know, you've sold the company
• 15:27
  because you've gone through it
• 15:29
  and realized that I still know nothing.
• 15:31
  And that's the way I approach it.
• 15:32
  And just to complete the circle on this,
• 15:35
  in the kind of online space,
• 15:37
  why I have a little bit of an issue
• 15:39
  where it is the fact that I don't understand
• 15:41
  how someone can make so much money
• 15:42
  and make more money and become more egotistical.
• 15:45
  If anything, me is the running
• 15:47
  the way I approach it is the opposite.
• 15:48
  The more that we've had success,
• 15:51
  I realize that damn, there's so much more
• 15:53
  that we don't know.
• 15:55
  But I think the logic behind this
• 15:58
  is the fact that no one,
• 16:01
  the common knowledge is that people don't buy
• 16:03
  from someone who doesn't have conviction.
• 16:05
  So if you don't have conviction
• 16:07
  that you're going to be able to solve the problem
• 16:09
  or you know best or you've the best funnel,
• 16:11
  then why would someone not buy from you?
• 16:13
  I think that's wrong because of the fact
• 16:15
  that that only works to someone who's actually insecure,
• 16:19
  who's trying to buy from you because they don't know,
• 16:21
  they don't know themselves.
• 16:22
  But if I could say like, look,
• 16:23
  this is what we work on.
• 16:24
  So we've helped.
• 16:25
  This is the world we've created.
• 16:26
  This is the opportunity.
• 16:28
  This is how we can help you.
• 16:29
  Someone who is well grounded will say,
• 16:32
  okay, this makes sense for me.
• 16:35
  And this is playing infinite game versus a finite game.
• 16:38
  I think that's the concern that entrepreneurs have
• 16:40
  when they put something out,
• 16:42
  and then they see their competitors being flashy
• 16:45
  and promising the world.
• 16:47
  And they kind of, like when you play in a space,
• 16:50
  you know who's real and you know who's full of shit
• 16:52
  quite quickly.
• 16:53
  But you get frustrated because you lose customers.
• 16:56
  So I kind of want you to give entrepreneurs
• 17:01
  maybe some very simple or tactical tips.
• 17:04
  When you are launching a great product
• 17:07
  and you know it's a great product
• 17:09
  and you feel like you're being outmatched
• 17:11
  on the sales and marketing front.
• 17:12
  By somebody else, shitty your product.
• 17:15
  But they know how to really say the right things
• 17:19
  or just show up in a way that maybe a product focus person
• 17:26
  doesn't understand how to show up.
• 17:27
  What is the, how do you compete?
• 17:29
  So that you don't devolve to these shitty sort of
• 17:33
  gotcha sales and marketing tactics
• 17:35
  that we're sort of talking about
• 17:36
  that creates this shitty customer experience
• 17:39
  where customers are buying, they have remorse,
• 17:42
  they want to refund, they're not getting it.
• 17:43
  You know that that's the average customer
• 17:46
  that goes through your competitors' funnels dealing with.
• 17:48
  So what do you do?
• 17:50
  I think if you know how the game is played over here,
• 17:53
  you should be zicking when everyone else is zicking.
• 17:56
  You imagine that a few times.
• 17:57
  I've seen your content, what does that mean?
• 17:59
  So if everyone is like running the same level funnel,
• 18:01
  the same level landing page is the same level offers,
• 18:03
  and you're familiar with that,
• 18:04
  it's good just to completely avoid it
• 18:07
  and do something completely new.
• 18:08
  So if they're running their specific landing page,
• 18:10
  don't have a landing page.
• 18:11
  If they're doing loads of sales calls,
• 18:13
  have no sales calls, have a different approach to it, right?
• 18:16
  There's different ways we can slice and dice it
• 18:18
  so that you are not becoming into that crowd.
• 18:21
  The biggest problem with this I find is that
• 18:23
  a lot of guys are trying to fit in their running agencies,
• 18:26
  they're running consulting, they're running coaching,
• 18:28
  they're running SMA.
• 18:30
  But it's like a shitty copy of the other person.
• 18:33
  It's a rendition, right?
• 18:34
  Yeah, that's why people try to always imitate others online,
• 18:37
  whereas the category of one will actually just have
• 18:40
  his own principle and process to this.
• 18:42
  So let me just show you how I walked through this process.
• 18:45
  So when we built the agency in the beginning,
• 18:47
  there was a very common way to build agencies,
• 18:50
  but I didn't go through those programs.
• 18:52
  I didn't go through that process at all.
• 18:53
  I just intuitively worked off these customers
• 18:56
  have a specific problem.
• 18:57
  I can get to them this way through outbound, through outreach.
• 19:02
  Outreach doesn't really work.
• 19:03
  Maybe I could do something different.
• 19:04
  Maybe I could send them loom videos.
• 19:05
  Maybe I could show up their door.
• 19:06
  Maybe I could do something unique.
• 19:07
  I was basically utilizing my own intuition
• 19:10
  as to how to solve the same problem.
• 19:12
  Now, we still have a good product.
• 19:14
  We still have a good way to do it,
• 19:15
  but you don't need to follow everyone else's voice,
• 19:18
  giving you another example.
• 19:19
  I was early on writing on LinkedIn.
• 19:21
  Around 2020, 2021, I would honestly say
• 19:24
  one of the first people in the entrepreneur community
• 19:27
  to be writing on LinkedIn.
• 19:28
  It was from Justin Welch, where I learned from.
• 19:30
  He was like first.
• 19:32
  And I remember quickly, I quickly learned that like,
• 19:34
  okay, this is really sparking.
• 19:36
  When everyone said that was a bad idea,
• 19:37
  when everyone said it was cringey, and it was walk,
• 19:40
  and you should be on Twitter and on Instagram,
• 19:42
  I was still writing on LinkedIn.
• 19:44
  I still have a small audience,
• 19:45
  but I have a very engaged audience
• 19:47
  that people would like to trust me.
• 19:49
  They see a lot of social proof, and they come inbound.
• 19:51
  Most people that want to work with us come from that.
• 19:54
  It's a unique mechanism.
• 19:55
  I have a unique way of doing the same thing as everyone else.
• 19:59
  So developing that in a kind of unique identifier
• 20:02
  is completely unique, right?
• 20:03
  Even our example, when everyone's running ads,
• 20:05
  we're recording podcasts, right?
• 20:07
  Some guys have just ads businesses.
• 20:10
  We're doing something that's unscalable.
• 20:12
  I've had mentors telling me in the past that, you know,
• 20:14
  maybe you're recording too much podcasts,
• 20:16
  but the intangible benefits of what we're doing today
• 20:19
  is you can't measure it, right?
• 20:20
  It's a unique way to do it.
• 20:23
  But at the same time,
• 20:23
  we're putting in a seven hours of trust
• 20:25
  that people can develop with us to work with us.
• 20:27
  They see that there's a unique way
• 20:29
  to work with us in front of it.
• 20:31
  And the backend, then, to have that unique mechanism as well,
• 20:35
  I think it's down to the team, right?
• 20:37
  I've been very focused on building a winning team
• 20:40
  and excellent team, a team of people
• 20:42
  that get it, like it and trust it.
• 20:44
  And I think my one mechanism for building a team
• 20:47
  is that people must want it, they must get it,
• 20:50
  and they have the capacity to do it.
• 20:51
  So this is from traction, ideally.
• 20:54
  The idea of an interaction is that you want people
• 20:56
  who are truly about it.
• 20:58
  So the guys that work that I've been hiring,
• 21:00
  you know, not everyone works out for sure,
• 21:02
  but ideally they love podcasting.
• 21:05
  They're about it.
• 21:06
  They really truly love it,
• 21:07
  that they're willing to upload the podcast
• 21:09
  at two o'clock in the morning,
• 21:11
  hate the client call it five o'clock in the morning,
• 21:13
  make the adjustments that majority of people won't do.
• 21:16
  And that's what becomes a category of one, right?
• 21:19
  And it's also having a unique experience,
• 21:21
  and I'll keep going back to this point,
• 21:22
  but how we've been doing this in the beginning
• 21:24
  is that customers will actually stay with you,
• 21:28
  even if you don't get that greater results,
• 21:30
  if your experience is high, let me give you an example.
• 21:33
  We work with some companies and certain niches
• 21:36
  that are a little bit drier, okay?
• 21:38
  It could be real estate, multi-family,
• 21:41
  HR, payroll.
• 21:43
  Are they sexy industries?
• 21:45
  No, no, they're not.
• 21:46
  But we create an experience for our clients
• 21:49
  that makes them feel special.
• 21:51
  We do reporting, we do a lot of nice reporting,
• 21:55
  elegant reporting, we do a lot of coaching,
• 21:57
  a lot of personalization.
• 21:59
  We make them feel which they are special to us,
• 22:02
  and they help us, and we help them.
• 22:04
  And I think that's a unique experience
• 22:06
  that most people, the scaler bros will tell you not to do,
• 22:10
  because it's not scalable.
• 22:11
  My friend, I literally will travel across the world
• 22:14
  to a workshop with someone who's not even a client,
• 22:17
  who's just a prospect, because I love it, I'm about it,
• 22:20
  and I'm willing to show them in person.
• 22:22
  I've literally sat in the office rooms for hours, for free,
• 22:26
  because I'm willing to do the unscalable stuff
• 22:29
  that builds scale into your business, you know?
• 22:32
  I think that's actually a really smart idea,
• 22:33
  because doing the stuff that doesn't scale
• 22:37
  is the actually, in my opinion,
• 22:39
  the only competitive advantage that you have against somebody
• 22:42
  that's a $100 million dollar public trade company.
• 22:47
  Have you heard about Brian Chesky on that?
• 22:51
  I know, I know Brian Chesky, but I don't know his thoughts on,
• 22:53
  I know that the scalable, or doing the unscalable,
• 22:57
  that's a Paul Graham.
• 22:59
  So Paul Chesky has this thing about,
• 23:01
  he's a specific word for it,
• 23:02
  but it's about being in the detail.
• 23:05
  So he would be in the UX UI meetings
• 23:10
  about some random button on the customer success page,
• 23:13
  and he would be there changing the color of the buttons
• 23:16
  for a two and a half hours and a entire team.
• 23:18
  And like, this is the reason why Airbnb is a size of it is,
• 23:21
  he's like obsessed with the tiny details,
• 23:23
  and I think we go back to, you know,
• 23:26
  what truly creates like a unique product, unique business,
• 23:30
  is being in that detail, right?
• 23:32
  Being that obsessed.
• 23:33
  Exactly, but being in the detail though, right?
• 23:35
  Because Eric Sue talks about this personality test you can do.
• 23:40
  I think it's called you personality or something,
• 23:41
  personality you, and it will give you a good idea
• 23:45
  of like where you are, what type of leader you are,
• 23:47
  what type of entrepreneur you are.
• 23:49
  But if you have a low attention of detail,
• 23:52
  this doesn't mean you just leave it,
• 23:53
  it means that you actively work on those things.
• 23:56
  Like an example, for myself,
• 23:58
  as like a leader in our company,
• 23:59
  I actually have a low level of empathy,
• 24:02
  but I've recognized it, and I've been working on it,
• 24:04
  I work on my relationship,
• 24:05
  I've hired guys who have high empathy, low logic,
• 24:09
  so that these guys bring in a much better culture.
• 24:12
  Now, you need to have that awareness of yourself.
• 24:15
  Now, we're not a nine-figure business,
• 24:16
  but we're a seven-figure business,
• 24:17
  and we're doing well as a service, seven-figure business.
• 24:21
  At the same time, it's not just me,
• 24:24
  and it's not just sales that will get to the next level.
• 24:28
  It cracks, it breaks, there's so many issues.
• 24:31
  That I think we all can spend more time looking at,
• 24:35
  to try and improve, right?
• 24:36
  We can all start taking much more of an inward look at ourselves,
• 24:39
  at our company, at our clients,
• 24:41
  and think, am I building the right ship,
• 24:45
  or am I building something that's completely not an alignment
• 24:47
  with who I am and who I want to be?
• 24:48
  I think that's, and I think that,
• 24:50
  I mean, one more point, just to reiterate how important it is,
• 24:55
  surrounding yourself with people that also championed that vision,
• 24:59
  and those ideals, I think is actually incredibly important,
• 25:02
  because then you start to create this board of advisors,
• 25:07
  or this group within your company,
• 25:09
  that forces you to act in the right way,
• 25:13
  and to be the right kind of entrepreneur.
• 25:15
  Those guys are going to war with you.
• 25:16
  Yeah, so you don't want to let them down.
• 25:19
  That's a thing.
• 25:20
  So as a solo printer, it's very easy to make shitty decisions,
• 25:24
  but all of a sudden, when you have to justify it,
• 25:26
  these incredible A players that you've hired,
• 25:29
  that are high value, high moral, high ethics,
• 25:34
  high focus on customer, all of these types of,
• 25:36
  these personality traits that makes for a good person,
• 25:40
  when you do have the opportunity to make that shitty decision,
• 25:43
  you're not going to make it anymore,
• 25:44
  because you surrounded yourself with all these incredible people,
• 25:47
  which I think is just like a safety mechanism
• 25:49
  to make sure that all your decisions are aligned towards the right target.
• 25:53
  I love that, man.
• 25:53
  I think as well that a lot of guys,
• 25:56
  you know, they have their idea with their business,
• 25:58
  they have the product that they have,
• 25:59
  but they don't really think about these small nuances,
• 26:02
  but this is what builds culture, right?
• 26:03
  Well, you're a company, the people that you have,
• 26:05
  these are people that you'll go to war with effectively,
• 26:08
  and even some of our team members are quite young,
• 26:11
  but if you're in early stages,
• 26:15
  and you can't afford huge A players,
• 26:18
  you can find guys that you can develop
• 26:21
  and give them so much of your own experiences,
• 26:23
  and I think a lot of people that have worked with us,
• 26:25
  they like it because I'll give them one to one attention,
• 26:28
  will have calls and so on and so forth,
• 26:29
  and I'll teach them about where they want to go to
• 26:31
  and put them on a career trajectory.
• 26:33
  So I think there's different ways to slice and slice it
• 26:35
  as a leader you want to hire people that are great,
• 26:37
  whether you can afford it or not,
• 26:39
  and then offer them your own consulting and advisory,
• 26:42
  but then at the same time, if you're young
• 26:44
  and you're trying to get into the space,
• 26:45
  I think there's nothing wrong with being an employee, right?
• 26:47
  If you want to partner with someone and work with someone,
• 26:49
  so be it.
• 26:50
  There's a lot of merit to doing that,
• 26:52
  especially smaller companies, a given example,
• 26:54
  like we have a lot of young guys
• 26:55
  who will become great entrepreneurs,
• 26:57
  but in the early stages, they love learning
• 26:59
  how all the parts of our business work together,
• 27:02
  and now that we've developed into more products,
• 27:03
  more services, they're excited about it.
• 27:06
  They get up and they want to go for it.
• 27:08
  We are now doing much more things
• 27:10
  and they are doing much more things.
• 27:12
  So there's much more advantages
• 27:14
  than just showing up and getting a job done.
• 27:17
  Well, I actually think the best people to hire,
• 27:19
  I've thought about this a lot.
• 27:20
  The best people to hire are people
• 27:21
  that would be entrepreneurs in any other circumstance,
• 27:24
  just for whatever reason right now, it's not in their stars,
• 27:29
  it's not their risk profile, whatever it is.
• 27:32
  But they could be that entrepreneur,
• 27:34
  it's just, this is not the time for them to do that.
• 27:37
  So for whatever reason,
• 27:38
  that's an opportunity for somebody who is taking the risk,
• 27:41
  build their own company, is an entrepreneur.
• 27:43
  So find a way to find those people,
• 27:45
  and then also to your point,
• 27:46
  you have to know where they want to go,
• 27:47
  so that they don't just flake on you like in two, three years,
• 27:50
  because if they want to go do the wrong thing, that's fine,
• 27:52
  but you should be aligned and moving towards that target together.
• 27:55
  I like that, man.
• 27:56
  Last point I'll say on this is,
• 27:58
  you know, sometimes people don't know where they want to go,
• 28:01
  but you also want to enable them.
• 28:03
  So if you've ever read leaders eat last,
• 28:05
  talk about circular safety.
• 28:06
  So I've got 180 with this with my own kind of leadership style,
• 28:09
  which was before I thought I was about getting work done
• 28:11
  and working hard and all this stuff,
• 28:13
  now it's about putting people in their best seat
• 28:15
  and allowing them to almost develop their own career with you.
• 28:18
  So I give an example, my CEO, who was recently promoted,
• 28:22
  young guy came from Goldman Sachs,
• 28:24
  knew his stuff, really knew everything,
• 28:27
  and for him, he didn't really know where he wanted to go.
• 28:30
  So I wanted to help him see that,
• 28:32
  and he wanted to have a better career with us.
• 28:34
  So it's about creating that space,
• 28:37
  allowing him to do his best work,
• 28:38
  and allowing him to develop as an individual too, right?
• 28:41
  And maybe in a couple of years' time,
• 28:43
  he'd want to go build something, and that would be great.
• 28:45
  Versus this short term mindset,
• 28:48
  that unfortunately a lot of our businesses are best off, right?
• 28:52
  I love it.
• 28:53
  And also, you know, actually one more,
• 28:54
  this is, this was actually meant to be a very quick question.
• 28:57
  No, I love this, though, you guys are passionate about it.
• 28:59
  And I think that's important.
• 29:00
  And I think that, and it shows, by the way,
• 29:03
  it really does show, which is,
• 29:05
  it's good vibes isn't entrepreneur
• 29:06
  when you are passionate about this particular topic.
• 29:09
  But the last thing I think you'll know it is,
• 29:11
  and maybe you have a thought on this,
• 29:14
  is when you have people that are focused on,
• 29:16
  like, turning and burning through customers,
• 29:19
  you'll notice it with their own employees as well.
• 29:22
  There's going to be like this culture of high pressure,
• 29:25
  close the deal, get them to mortgage their house,
• 29:29
  if they can't make the payment.
• 29:31
  And it's just going to be a shitty culture all around.
• 29:35
  It's going to be a shitty culture internally and externally.
• 29:38
  So I think that it's, I mean, it's just,
• 29:42
  if you find yourself in those organizations,
• 29:47
  maybe that's not a good fit for you, I don't know.
• 29:49
  But the point is, I see that it's not just external facing.
• 29:53
  It's never like, oh, we turn and burn through customers,
• 29:56
  we have like a 1% retention, and simultaneously,
• 30:00
  we have like the best balance
• 30:01
  and we have the happiest workforce.
• 30:04
  It always seems to be this systemic problem,
• 30:07
  top down usually, with how they just look at
• 30:10
  performance and money and revenue,
• 30:12
  and they're optimizing for the wrong KPIs.
• 30:14
  Oh, it's, and the thing is,
• 30:17
  that kind of called, you don't need to have that kind of culture
• 30:19
  to be a successful entrepreneur.
• 30:21
  In fact, I would argue that to be a successful,
• 30:26
  however you want to define that,
• 30:28
  usually it's by, okay, so since you want to be able
• 30:32
  to stay in the market for a long enough period of time, right?
• 30:37
  Excuse me, and most people,
• 30:39
  most people that want to stay in the market
• 30:40
  for a long enough period of time,
• 30:43
  that churn and burn internally and externally
• 30:44
  is not a great way to build a company.
• 30:47
  It is building a company that will go to bad for you
• 30:50
  at any time of the day,
• 30:51
  not saying that that's the expectation
• 30:53
  that should be the, the fact that you don't want
• 30:55
  your whole team waking up at five in the morning.
• 30:57
  The point is, you want somebody who will go to bad
• 30:59
  for the customer if there is a massive outage
• 31:02
  or something hits the shit his defend
• 31:03
  at five in the morning.
• 31:05
  And then when you have a team like that,
• 31:06
  you're also gonna have customers
• 31:07
  that are gonna stick around for the long term.
• 31:08
  And it'll actually be easier to build a business.
• 31:11
  You can build a business both ways,
• 31:14
  but it'll be much easier to build a business
• 31:16
  when your customers stick around for the long term.
• 31:19
  Your employees stick around for the long term.
• 31:21
  They're not burnt out.
• 31:22
  They don't feel like, again,
• 31:25
  they're doing things that like,
• 31:26
  fuck with their moral compass every single day
• 31:29
  when they go into the office.
• 31:30
  I don't need a sustainable way to build a business.
• 31:33
  And I think that's really the, for entrepreneurs,
• 31:36
  you have to figure out exactly what kind of business
• 31:38
  you want to build day one.
• 31:39
  And then never delineate from that.
• 31:41
  And then don't, if things aren't working,
• 31:44
  there's a solution and the solution is
• 31:45
  to not be a shitty entrepreneur.
• 31:47
  It's a problem has to be solved,
• 31:48
  but to emulate people that seem to be moving faster
• 31:53
  or seem to be doing things in a less than ideal
• 31:57
  or ethical way is not the way to do it.
• 31:59
  That's my two cents.
• 32:00
  A great one, I agreed.
• 32:02
  I know I have, listen, I pulled like, so it's so funny.
• 32:05
  So I went on, I went on your threads.
• 32:07
  I, you know what I wish?
• 32:08
  Dude, so many people have mentioned my threads, but I love your threads.
• 32:11
  It's actually very good.
• 32:12
  A lot of good ideas that I went on your threads.
• 32:14
  And I was looking at all the different, like,
• 32:16
  sort of the ideas that like hit home with people.
• 32:20
  Because I mean, that's a great litmus test
• 32:22
  for whether or not it's good content.
• 32:24
  But one of the things that you mentioned is actually,
• 32:26
  I think it was one of like the highest liked posts
• 32:30
  on your Twitter.
• 32:31
  So you flew 16,300 nine kilometers
• 32:33
  to interview Justin Welch.
• 32:35
  And this can sort of bleed into a conversation
• 32:38
  about podcasting and what good content is.
• 32:43
  But why did you do that?
• 32:45
  Why was it necessary to fly so damn far to interview Justin Welch?
• 32:49
  And I mean, you've flown and you've traveled for other guests too.
• 32:52
  But for somebody who's just starting to create content
• 32:56
  or just starting the podcast, you're like, well, fine, fine.
• 32:58
  That's the case, I'm never going to start.
• 33:00
  So how do you figure out what type of commitment
• 33:04
  or type of travel is actually worth it
• 33:06
  versus can you emulate great results virtually, et cetera?
• 33:10
  The problem is everyone was getting so used to my content.
• 33:15
  It's not unique.
• 33:16
  It's not novel.
• 33:17
  It's not different.
• 33:18
  Everyone looks the same.
• 33:19
  Everyone's in a studio.
• 33:20
  It's black.
• 33:21
  It's all the same.
• 33:23
  And as a result, why would I want to do something that's the same?
• 33:26
  To get the result to no one else has to do things
• 33:28
  no one else is willing to do.
• 33:29
  And I got caught in this continuous loop
• 33:32
  of recording online, recording Dubai,
• 33:35
  maybe show up with Singapore,
• 33:36
  saying the same questions, doing the same stuff.
• 33:38
  And it was just like, everything was the same.
• 33:40
  I wanted to do this because it's a creative pursuit.
• 33:43
  And for me, learning those skills and trying different things
• 33:46
  puts me at some of my comfort zone.
• 33:47
  It's a 101 growth.
• 33:48
  Anyway, it's doing things at your comfort zone.
• 33:51
  I've always enjoyed traveling to industry people anyway,
• 33:54
  because it's like I'm putting them in their best seat.
• 33:57
  And I thought, well, if I could do something
• 33:59
  that no one else has quite literally ever done,
• 34:01
  and if I can keep repeating that model,
• 34:03
  I'll create a new standard and a new way to do it.
• 34:07
  I think the high quality, insane production
• 34:09
  was obviously pioneered by Chris Williamson.
• 34:12
  I think for money ways, I've kind of pioneered the fact
• 34:15
  of doing these crazy trips.
• 34:17
  Like I've literally recorded 15 podcasts
• 34:18
  in the past 10 days all across America, dude.
• 34:21
  Like literally all across America.
• 34:23
  And we just got good at repeating the process.
• 34:25
  But the reason being is because it created a whole new experience.
• 34:29
  I think for guests, they feel much more respected
• 34:32
  but recording their hometown or pretty close to it.
• 34:34
  It creates a better relationship.
• 34:36
  And also it stops you from being still.
• 34:39
  Like everything runs down, man.
• 34:41
  Your hooks runs down, your headlamps runs down,
• 34:43
  we're so used to going back inside the mean curve.
• 34:47
  And I think why did I become an entrepreneur
• 34:49
  is because I was so sick of doing the standard stuff
• 34:51
  and a tech job or whatnot.
• 34:53
  So why not do the stuff that no one else is willing to do?
• 34:57
  And I think as well, it's allowed me to create
• 35:00
  a new standard for myself.
• 35:03
  Because how could I possibly tell you
• 35:05
  how you should create your automobiles
• 35:07
  in your design, your production,
• 35:08
  if I'm not doing it for myself?
• 35:10
  And I think the best case study can only be yourself.
• 35:13
  And I've always tried to focus on doing that.
• 35:16
  So I started out quite small when I lived in Singapore
• 35:20
  recording in studios in Singapore.
• 35:22
  And I would fall in love.
• 35:23
  Is it when you first started your show?
• 35:24
  I started off my show in actually Ireland originally.
• 35:26
  And that was all remote.
• 35:28
  That was all putting together on my iPhone
• 35:30
  and all this kind of stuff, which we can go into details too.
• 35:32
  But when I moved to Singapore,
• 35:33
  that's when I started getting to the studio.
• 35:35
  As you can see, I'm very interested in equipment and whatnot.
• 35:38
  So I fell in love with that process.
• 35:40
  But I didn't have the guests in Singapore.
• 35:41
  I had good guests, but not great guests.
• 35:43
  And then I flew to Dubai
• 35:45
  and I started creating a standard for going places
• 35:48
  and setting up and doing a week of recording.
• 35:50
  And then lo and behold, the market adjusts.
• 35:53
  Everyone starts doing it.
• 35:54
  Everyone says that they created this.
• 35:56
  So I was like, OK, that's that.
• 35:58
  Could I do something that's even more crazier?
• 36:02
  Could I fly from Bali all across the world to New York?
• 36:06
  Could I set up, get a studio built and record
• 36:09
  with Saho, Loom, Justin Welch, Ireland More,
• 36:13
  all in the space of our two days?
• 36:15
  And we did it.
• 36:16
  And it looked fantastic.
• 36:17
  And it created such a stronger relationship
• 36:19
  with the audience and even with the guests.
• 36:21
  So I think that's the stuff that, again,
• 36:23
  it's zicking whenever I'm so zicking, right?
• 36:25
  You've created a beautiful experience here.
• 36:27
  It's in your home.
• 36:28
  It's very personal.
• 36:30
  That's just unique.
• 36:31
  I have never done, I never really.
• 36:33
  It is, it's very unique.
• 36:34
  Maybe it's common in the US, but especially where I'm from,
• 36:37
  which is much more transient, you know,
• 36:38
  people are going to come in and travel and stuff.
• 36:40
  It's less common, especially less common in Asia.
• 36:43
  So I think doing things like that
• 36:44
  creates a different experience.
• 36:46
  A big shout out to HubSpot and the HubSpot podcast
• 36:49
  network for sponsoring success story.
• 36:50
  If you enjoy success story, you're
• 36:52
  going to enjoy a ton of podcasts brought to you
• 36:54
  by the HubSpot podcast network, including Hustle and Flowchart
• 36:58
  hosted by Joey Fier.
• 36:59
  The Hustle and Flowchart podcast with Joey
• 37:01
  is all about how to build a business.
• 37:03
  So it gives you the freedom and fuel for your life.
• 37:06
  You're going to join Joey as you discuss his systems,
• 37:08
  mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies for entrepreneurs
• 37:11
  and really anyone to enjoy the process of being in business
• 37:15
  and having fun.
• 37:16
  This isn't for entrepreneurs looking
• 37:18
  to build a billion dollar business.
• 37:20
  It's for somebody who wants to build a lifestyle,
• 37:22
  somebody who is looking to build systems that work.
• 37:24
  Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts.
• 37:28
  I think that what I'm trying to pull out
• 37:30
  is for an up and coming creator, how
• 37:35
  do you decide when it's time to start investing in that kind
• 37:39
  of production?
• 37:40
  Good question.
• 37:41
  So I think in the beginning, it's just about going zero
• 37:43
  to one with your ideas.
• 37:45
  So whether that's on Zoom, which I still don't recommend,
• 37:48
  but whether it's recording online, right?
• 37:49
  Just something simple, something simple to go zero to one
• 37:52
  is always important because you need reps, right?
• 37:54
  My first 10 podcasts were at home with a HP laptop
• 37:58
  and my iPhone camera.
• 37:59
  That was zero to one.
• 38:01
  Yeah, that was zero to one.
• 38:02
  Now, I was getting frustrated in that process
• 38:04
  because I knew, as you can tell, I can speak, right?
• 38:07
  I'm just an Irish speaker and we talk all the time, right?
• 38:09
  So I can talk all day.
• 38:11
  But I got frustrated because I knew I liked this,
• 38:14
  but I knew I wasn't good at this.
• 38:16
  So it's a very important delta there, right?
• 38:18
  Which is like, I like it.
• 38:20
  I can see myself doing this, but I'm not good at it yet.
• 38:22
  That variance creates.
• 38:23
  I see you didn't have an ego right out of the gate.
• 38:25
  Dude, I know a lot of people that do.
• 38:27
  I still look at my episodes and I just think that like,
• 38:30
  I just saw much areas of improvement, right?
• 38:31
  But especially in the beginning, the delta was so big.
• 38:34
  You know, someone could have looked at it and said,
• 38:36
  I shouldn't be doing it.
• 38:37
  I'm a loser, X, Y, and Z, all those kind of excuses.
• 38:40
  But now what's happening is we have this new environment
• 38:43
  whereby you can record on stream here online.
• 38:46
  You can record a very good setup.
• 38:48
  Your laptop camera in Mac is as good as like your iPhone.
• 38:51
  Anyway, you can also use your iPhone.
• 38:54
  So I think you should utilize what you have around you.
• 38:57
  In all aspects of life, whether you're building software,
• 38:59
  content, you utilize resources you have, right?
• 39:02
  So if you don't have a lot of money,
• 39:04
  which I didn't have, I was just using that basic setup.
• 39:07
  I think my entire podcast per episode could have cost me $50 less.
• 39:11
  It was like, it was like your stream yard cost,
• 39:14
  your Zoom cost or what?
• 39:14
  Yeah, and I was editing the episodes,
• 39:16
  you know, just pretty much pulling down
• 39:17
  in case I messed up, just publish.
• 39:19
  Those reps are super, super valuable
• 39:22
  because you can't skip the shit phase.
• 39:26
  You have to go through the shit phase, right?
• 39:28
  And there's no one that skips that.
• 39:30
  Whether you want to, you know,
• 39:33
  manufacture it and gloss it up in a studio and stuff,
• 39:36
  you're still missing the point and you're still missing this.
• 39:39
  I've seen a lot of guys who've transitioned
• 39:40
  from YouTubers into podcasts
• 39:42
  and the feedback that I've got is the fact
• 39:43
  that a lot of these guys don't know the nuances of recording.
• 39:46
  They have the videos, they have the camera,
• 39:48
  but they don't have the skills.
• 39:49
  The patients are speaking, they're listening,
• 39:51
  active listening, interaction,
• 39:52
  all these small nuances of what a conversation is,
• 39:56
  they still don't have the reps to be put in.
• 39:57
  So you don't need to do that.
• 39:59
  You definitely don't need to do that.
• 40:01
  It's only until you have a systematic process,
• 40:04
  a strategy that aligns your podcast,
• 40:06
  content pillars that aligns your values
• 40:08
  to your product, your service,
• 40:10
  all that strategy taken care of,
• 40:12
  and then you may have an idea of growing the podcast.
• 40:15
  You might be exploring with clips and thumbnails
• 40:17
  and designers and you're writing content for LinkedIn,
• 40:19
  maybe Twitter, or maybe Instagram.
• 40:21
  And if you're not getting success,
• 40:24
  then it's time to, okay, maybe set things up.
• 40:26
  That in my first recommendation always is people
• 40:28
  is that if the content is dialed in,
• 40:31
  your strategy is right.
• 40:32
  So let's say you started off with a sales-american podcast,
• 40:34
  your background was in SaaS, your product,
• 40:36
  you knew what was going on in the front end.
• 40:38
  And if you're still not growing
• 40:40
  and the podcast strategy is set up,
• 40:43
  then you can step into a studio,
• 40:45
  drop the $50, drop the $100 for an hour,
• 40:47
  and just elevate that up.
• 40:49
  I just spoke with someone this morning
• 40:51
  who's coming to work with us soon,
• 40:53
  and they already have all the bells and whistles.
• 40:56
  And they already just need to fix the strategy.
• 40:58
  So my kind of model for this is like,
• 41:01
  especially if you're not seeing progress,
• 41:03
  is there's only three different variables.
• 41:05
  The strategy, you grow, and you've monetization,
• 41:08
  but it's actually an equation.
• 41:10
  You strategy plus growth is monetization.
• 41:13
  As part of every equation,
• 41:14
  if you don't have one variable, it doesn't equate, right?
• 41:17
  So I see a lot of people who start out like me,
• 41:21
  no idea what to do, no idea what to do.
• 41:24
  So the strategy is all over the place.
• 41:26
  Doesn't matter what you want to draw on it,
• 41:28
  any clips doesn't matter, honestly doesn't matter.
• 41:31
  So we need to kind of take it back to the basics,
• 41:34
  really dial that in, doesn't matter what your camera looks like,
• 41:36
  dial in your strategy,
• 41:38
  and only when that is really dialed in,
• 41:41
  you can think about growing it.
• 41:43
  You know, you can think about growing it,
• 41:45
  because you think about it,
• 41:46
  all these clips in short form and even content writing,
• 41:50
  that wasn't really around when we got into the game in 2020-2021.
• 41:54
  It was always based on the quality of the content.
• 41:57
  So I think even though a lot of these additional stuff
• 42:01
  is valuable, it can often be a distraction.
• 42:04
  Because at the end of the day,
• 42:05
  if you're a video is very good,
• 42:07
  and the content is very good,
• 42:09
  it's going to find the right people.
• 42:10
  You're going to get your toes and true fans,
• 42:11
  maybe we'll take you 12 months, 18 months,
• 42:14
  but that process isn't place, right,
• 42:15
  because you did it, I did it,
• 42:18
  took me a much longer.
• 42:20
  Yeah, it's interesting, right?
• 42:22
  Well, I think that, I mean,
• 42:23
  what you've basically just said
• 42:24
  is the way that you build a business,
• 42:26
  is the same way that you build a podcast.
• 42:28
  It's product first.
• 42:29
  It's product first.
• 42:30
  Talk as market fit, is what I call it.
• 42:32
  Talk as market fit.
• 42:33
  I love that.
• 42:34
  So nerdy.
• 42:35
  Talk as market fit.
• 42:37
  No, it's when you focus on the wrong thing,
• 42:38
  when you focus on the bells and the whistles,
• 42:41
  and you have a shit product,
• 42:43
  or a shit podcast,
• 42:44
  or you don't feel comfortable interviewing,
• 42:46
  or whatever it is,
• 42:49
  you're just going to attract people
• 42:51
  to something that's a little bit below par,
• 42:53
  below standard,
• 42:54
  and then they're not going to be sticky,
• 42:56
  because there's going to be a better version out there.
• 42:58
  Some of the best shows in the world,
• 43:00
  like you mentioned,
• 43:01
  yeah, now they have high production value,
• 43:03
  but if you go back to before they invest
• 43:06
  at X thousands of dollars per interview,
• 43:10
  I don't even know what Chris Williamson does.
• 43:12
  I'm sure it's quite expensive,
• 43:13
  because he has like full production value, right?
• 43:16
  A production done for every single one of his interviews now.
• 43:20
  And he does like some remote on site,
• 43:24
  where he like has a videographer come in,
• 43:26
  and there's like this beautiful lighting,
• 43:28
  and it's shot in 4K,
• 43:29
  and like it's just phenomenal,
• 43:30
  the background's phenomenal.
• 43:32
  Before he did all that,
• 43:33
  if you listen,
• 43:35
  he improved himself dramatically as an interviewer,
• 43:38
  and a conversationalist.
• 43:40
  So much before he did any of that.
• 43:42
  And it was only when it's funny,
• 43:45
  if you actually go back and listen to his first episodes,
• 43:49
  he was kind of just like a bro shooting the shit.
• 43:51
  So him as a person has evolved over his journey, right?
• 43:55
  And you can go episode zero,
• 43:59
  episode 50, episode 100,
• 44:01
  you can hear how he evolves as a person.
• 44:04
  So he's probably doing it consciously at some point,
• 44:06
  probably for part of his journey,
• 44:09
  he was doing it very subconsciously,
• 44:11
  but now he's consciously trying to ask better questions,
• 44:14
  do better research.
• 44:15
  And now he feels comfortable investing
• 44:17
  in all this high production value,
• 44:19
  and I'm sure there's a whole marketing campaign
• 44:23
  and routine behind what he does,
• 44:25
  but it wasn't like he invested in that first.
• 44:28
  And I think that sort of the one thing I always like
• 44:31
  to really drive home with entrepreneurs,
• 44:34
  podcasters, creatives, whatever,
• 44:36
  is like find a way to make what you're doing very sustainable,
• 44:40
  so that you can sustain doing it for an unreason,
• 44:43
  this is a hermosy, unquote,
• 44:45
  where if you do it for an unreasonable amount of time,
• 44:48
  then it's really unreasonable for you
• 44:49
  to not be successful at it.
• 44:52
  But if you over index on spending thousands of dollars
• 44:55
  on cameras and studios,
• 44:58
  and you're putting out 50 pieces of social per day,
• 45:01
  that's not sustainable.
• 45:03
  For most people that is not sustainable.
• 45:05
  So that means you're going to burn out,
• 45:07
  you're going to give up,
• 45:08
  because you aren't focusing on the fundamentals first.
• 45:11
  And I think that what we're talking about really is just
• 45:12
  like focusing on the fundamentals.
• 45:14
  And I guess that is really, that's a really good,
• 45:19
  a really good idea to dive into.
• 45:22
  What do you think stops so many people
• 45:25
  from being great conversation lists,
• 45:28
  asking great questions, being active listeners?
• 45:33
  It seems like these are all just things
• 45:35
  that you should do to communicate properly anyways.
• 45:38
  But when I listen to most podcasts,
• 45:40
  it feels so forced, it feels like question answer.
• 45:46
  And I'm going deep, I like this.
• 45:47
  Yeah, I mean, these are not the podcasts that we listen to,
• 45:50
  because I'm listening to Chris Williamson,
• 45:52
  I'm listening to Steven Bartlett with the idea of a CEO
• 45:55
  where he's making people cry every day,
• 45:58
  listening to Joe Rogan, who's an incredible conversationalist.
• 46:01
  Alex Friedman has his own strangely robotic style
• 46:05
  of interviewing, but they've all found ways
• 46:07
  to pull out incredible insights from people.
• 46:10
  So what makes a good podcast or conversationalist
• 46:14
  communicator?
• 46:16
  Excellent question.
• 46:18
  I think most people are not truly interested
• 46:21
  in what they're talking about.
• 46:23
  And they're not even interested in the guest.
• 46:24
  They're taking it as a selfish pursuit.
• 46:26
  They're starting a podcast for themselves, for their business,
• 46:29
  but they're not really focused on who they're interviewing
• 46:32
  and why they're trying to get that insight.
• 46:34
  So it's almost like they're asking the basic questions,
• 46:37
  getting basic answers, and they're not taking that extra step
• 46:41
  to truly fall in love with their guests, details,
• 46:45
  their story, their journey, their research,
• 46:47
  and find a unique angle.
• 46:49
  So Rick Rubin says that listening is not trying to think
• 46:56
  of something to say next.
• 46:58
  And it's also not trying to think of something intelligent
• 46:59
  to say it's truly listening to what someone is saying,
• 47:02
  and then judging your next words based off aggregating
• 47:05
  that information, synthesizing it,
• 47:07
  and then learning what to say next, okay?
• 47:09
  So you have an idea where to use conversation,
• 47:12
  but if I was to say something, X, Y, and Z,
• 47:14
  you would say, okay, let's go ABC from here,
• 47:16
  because you're truly listening to that.
• 47:18
  And dude, I'm reviewing these podcasts.
• 47:20
  I'm seeing all these podcasts.
• 47:21
  This is exactly what we're focused on is that
• 47:23
  we may have a hypothesis like a product
• 47:25
  for how something should turn out,
• 47:27
  but the end result will be totally different
• 47:29
  if you allow that process, the actual listening process,
• 47:32
  engaging to be very much more natural and organic.
• 47:36
  The whole reason why we're here
• 47:38
  is because this is a natural conversation.
• 47:40
  If it wasn't, we'd have an automated bot on 11 labs
• 47:43
  that would run a conversation for us.
• 47:45
  But people that are listening are here
• 47:46
  because they're here for the story, not for the product.
• 47:49
  They're here for your insights.
• 47:51
  What are you gonna ask me?
• 47:53
  How am I gonna interact with these questions?
• 47:55
  That's what creates something that's unique, right?
• 47:57
  And if we look at the traditional stories of podcasts,
• 48:00
  they're logical, they're just telling me
• 48:02
  what happened when you were 16
• 48:03
  until you become a multiple person.
• 48:05
  Which I hate.
• 48:06
  I hate those.
• 48:07
  But you know what you can do.
• 48:08
  Even when people bring me on their show,
• 48:10
  they're like, I want to do origin story.
• 48:11
  I'm like, I don't want to do origin story.
• 48:13
  Exactly.
• 48:14
  I'm tired of order to do the story.
• 48:14
  Well, that's the whole point
• 48:15
  that Russell runs an approach, right?
• 48:16
  You should be sort of secure origin story
• 48:18
  after telling us so much.
• 48:20
  So the way that you can kind of flip that
• 48:22
  is a finally unique edge within the story, right?
• 48:25
  So let's say, for example, you sold your software.
• 48:29
  I don't want to know.
• 48:30
  I don't need to know all the details you went through
• 48:32
  with the letter of intent, the buyer, getting the payout
• 48:36
  and what you did with it.
• 48:37
  What I'd like to find out is the feeling you had
• 48:40
  when you saw the bank balance change as positive,
• 48:43
  as a negative, everyone says negative.
• 48:45
  How did you not make you feel?
• 48:46
  Because you pick a moment in time
• 48:49
  and that's effectively what good conversations is
• 48:51
  that we drill into a specific moment of time.
• 48:54
  Let me give an example.
• 48:55
  Just be taking notes for this.
• 48:56
  Oh, man, trust me, man.
• 48:57
  So when you're, this is from story worthy
• 49:00
  by Matthew Dix.
• 49:01
  Matthew Dix is someone I always recommend
• 49:02
  checking out.
• 49:03
  He's a great guy for your show as well.
• 49:04
  He's based in Connecticut.
• 49:06
  He says that when your groundwater comes back from vacation
• 49:09
  and she says, oh, we went here and then we went here
• 49:12
  and then we went here, you're bored to death, okay?
• 49:14
  You're bored to death.
• 49:15
  They ate at this restaurant.
• 49:16
  They went to this beach and so on.
• 49:17
  But if they said that, they sat at a restaurant
• 49:20
  and in that restaurant, some guy was choking
• 49:22
  and then the waiter came over
• 49:24
  and the waiter was 160 pound.
• 49:26
  But the guy that was choking was 280 pound
• 49:27
  and the waiter brought her back to life.
• 49:29
  That's an interesting story, right?
• 49:30
  You're super, you feel in the moment.
• 49:33
  You feel like you're in the Italian restaurant.
• 49:35
  But most guys cannot tell that story elegantly.
• 49:38
  So someone like Dorogen, he's a great listener.
• 49:41
  He allows the guest to elaborate on his ideas
• 49:45
  but he'll drill into a specific moment in time.
• 49:48
  I think this is where we move from this monologue,
• 49:52
  this, this, this, to a much more of an engaging story, right?
• 49:55
  And this is kind of the problem with B2B stuff.
• 49:57
  B2B stuff is very vanilla, it's very dry,
• 50:00
  it's corporate tone.
• 50:01
  But you have to remember that corporations
• 50:03
  are trying to be more human
• 50:04
  and you're trying to be more in a corporations.
• 50:06
  We're just chilling here.
• 50:07
  I'm just wearing like a shirt
• 50:09
  that I got my company printed on.
• 50:10
  It's like $20 and we're just chilling.
• 50:12
  You know what I mean?
• 50:13
  We're just like having fun, we're engaging.
• 50:15
  It's much more natural.
• 50:16
  That's what gets people involved in the story.
• 50:18
  But do you not think that?
• 50:20
  So yes, agreed.
• 50:22
  But I'm curious why if there was no cameras rolling,
• 50:27
  that seems to be people's default setting.
• 50:30
  Will you just describe,
• 50:31
  seem to be a pretty default setting for most people?
• 50:34
  Why when I turn on cameras,
• 50:36
  it's like they go into this performative mode.
• 50:39
  And they, and it's, it's, it's so frustrating
• 50:42
  because you probably feel this is a podcaster.
• 50:45
  You will finish the podcast.
• 50:47
  And then you'll turn off the cameras.
• 50:49
  And then all of a sudden they turn to this different person.
• 50:51
  And they're like actually somebody
• 50:52
  who I actually would want to talk to.
• 50:54
  Yet for the last hour and a half,
• 50:56
  you were the most boring ever.
• 50:59
  And I know that that content was subpar.
• 51:01
  So, good point.
• 51:04
  So as an interviewer, yes, makes tons of sense.
• 51:10
  I can, I can, by the way, it's ironic that you say that
• 51:13
  because like you won't see this on camera.
• 51:16
  How many notes are right down?
• 51:17
  But I write down probably like three or four pages
• 51:19
  of notes per guest.
• 51:20
  I probably look at this like once.
• 51:23
  Like I, for the past six years,
• 51:26
  I have never really looked at the notes that I write down
• 51:28
  and yet every single time I do it,
• 51:29
  I write down like four sections,
• 51:32
  like 10 questions per section is a whole intro here.
• 51:34
  You learned them in two to two.
• 51:36
  It could be, I think it's more prep.
• 51:37
  So like I understand all the different,
• 51:41
  you know, vectors of your life
• 51:43
  and what you've accomplished and all the different things
• 51:45
  that you could talk on, but very rarely do I,
• 51:48
  and actually the less that I look at this,
• 51:50
  I consider that a better podcast.
• 51:53
  Oh, man, I was so much to say on this.
• 51:55
  So, okay, go ahead.
• 51:55
  So, wait, wait, what was I just asking you?
• 51:57
  I was asking, okay.
• 51:58
  So as a, anyway, talk about that first,
• 52:01
  but then I want you to help me understand
• 52:04
  as a guest, why do I freeze out?
• 52:06
  It all connects.
• 52:07
  It all connects, right?
• 52:08
  So the research you do is not the time you spend
• 52:13
  in front of a laptop, looking at the notes.
• 52:15
  It's not an exam, right?
• 52:16
  When you write down on your notes,
• 52:17
  it's not like an examiner comes in.
• 52:19
  An examiner doesn't know what the words you didn't write
• 52:21
  on your exam paper, okay?
• 52:23
  They just see what you've written there.
• 52:24
  It's the same with your notes.
• 52:26
  When you've done a bit of prep yesterday,
• 52:27
  and maybe a day before this in the podcast,
• 52:29
  though that preparation actually starts to feed
• 52:32
  into your subconscious.
• 52:33
  So you have some conscious books up here.
• 52:35
  When you're sleeping, you're recovering,
• 52:36
  you're resting, you're learning the different nuances.
• 52:39
  So I would advise you to actually show up without notes.
• 52:41
  The reason being is because I used to show up
• 52:43
  with lots of notes, and it would get people to freeze up.
• 52:46
  It was like an interrogation.
• 52:47
  I was like an FBI officer, right?
• 52:49
  It was just pointless.
• 52:50
  When I was creating a reality TV show
• 52:51
  that was just not natural.
• 52:53
  And I had fallen into that trap,
• 52:54
  which is happy to admit, and I've revert to that.
• 52:57
  And the reason being is because guests feel under pressure,
• 53:01
  they feel like they're there to get caught out.
• 53:02
  They feel like they're, it's not a natural conversation.
• 53:05
  If you show up with this.
• 53:06
  If you show up with your notes,
• 53:07
  if you're a bit more robotic and so on,
• 53:09
  the way that I've kind of reutilized it now
• 53:11
  is that we hit record.
• 53:12
  Usually I'm working in a studio with a team.
• 53:14
  I tell them deliberately just to run the cameras
• 53:16
  continuously, run the audio continuously.
• 53:18
  We sit down, we talk as if we're already been talking,
• 53:20
  and we set the scene beforehand.
• 53:22
  I will always record somewhere, if it's in person,
• 53:24
  with a studio that has like a bench or something beforehand.
• 53:27
  I'll always invite the guests to go sit down here,
• 53:30
  we'll talk with some random stuff.
• 53:31
  As you can tell, like my interests outside of podcasting
• 53:34
  are like dogs, the gym.
• 53:36
  That's basically my interests.
• 53:37
  I love sharing these kind of random stupid stories.
• 53:40
  Living all over the world.
• 53:41
  Yeah, literally, just like random stuff, right?
• 53:43
  And I just tried to be the person.
• 53:46
  I try to be the host that I'd want to be interviewed
• 53:49
  when I'm a guest and then vice versa, right?
• 53:51
  So then we sit down, the only difference
• 53:53
  is that we've popped in a few lights and the camera.
• 53:56
  So I want to try to put them into their best seat.
• 53:58
  It's kind of like back to employees, right?
• 54:00
  Putting people into their best seats
• 54:01
  that they feel natural and relaxed.
• 54:04
  There's different ways to ramp conversations.
• 54:06
  You've done it in a very good way today,
• 54:07
  which you pick like a moment in time.
• 54:09
  I used to come in very hard over the top.
• 54:11
  I now lead with much more of a Joe Rogan style,
• 54:14
  which is what just kind of roll into the conversation.
• 54:16
  Okay, what's up?
• 54:17
  Yeah, no, not even that.
• 54:18
  I would just have the cameras running
• 54:19
  and we're already talking with something
• 54:21
  and then like a slowly trying to do like a Chris Williamson
• 54:24
  kind of open where I have an idea that I lead with.
• 54:28
  You can cut into that though.
• 54:30
  This is what's interesting.
• 54:31
  When the cameras are running, they can just run
• 54:32
  and your team can stare at the moment in time whenever.
• 54:36
  You can't revert that.
• 54:37
  The reason being is because even today,
• 54:39
  like I'll be honest, as you're clicking on the cameras,
• 54:42
  you just get slightly anxious.
• 54:44
  I don't know why because you just say something stupid, right?
• 54:46
  So it's every second in time,
• 54:48
  I'll give you an example.
• 54:49
  If you're in school,
• 54:50
  when you're think back to when you're in school,
• 54:53
  and let's say you've introduced yourself,
• 54:55
  if you're the first person at the table,
• 54:56
  you say, oh, I'm dying late,
• 54:57
  I'm from Ireland and so on.
• 54:59
  But if you're the tenth person,
• 55:00
  you start getting so anxious, right?
• 55:02
  Because every single person is going around
• 55:03
  and that's the feeling of when people come on as guests
• 55:06
  and they tense up.
• 55:07
  So we need to almost like get them to be much more relaxed
• 55:10
  that it's much more natural,
• 55:12
  but that's 100% on the host.
• 55:14
  It's like the host brings in the experience,
• 55:16
  has to make them feel much more relaxed,
• 55:18
  and then they'll slowly start to evolve.
• 55:21
  The second set of that as well is I focus way less on logic
• 55:24
  in terms of tell me what happened, tell me the story,
• 55:27
  tell me this and much more focus on the emotion and the feeling.
• 55:31
  Because true the feeling, you'll tell the story,
• 55:34
  but the story is going to be told from a different angle.
• 55:38
  Instead of I did this, it's I thought this.
• 55:40
  And when someone can open up,
• 55:43
  that's when we start having a much more bigger dialogue,
• 55:46
  and to complete the circle is where I would add in my own story.
• 55:49
  You know, I'll add a lot of ideas of us getting married,
• 55:52
  got married quite young,
• 55:54
  about my experience building businesses,
• 55:56
  horrific failures I've had in businesses,
• 55:58
  and when I start sharing those things back and forth,
• 56:00
  people are like, this guy's actually a human,
• 56:02
  he's not a human.
• 56:03
  You get that unless you tap into emotion.
• 56:05
  Exactly, right?
• 56:06
  So it's less based off logic.
• 56:08
  And that's when we kind of run up these longer conversations
• 56:11
  because the idea is that regardless,
• 56:14
  we're going to be able to give the actionable voice anyway.
• 56:16
  It actually will inherently come.
• 56:18
  But if you just wanted the logic, you'd Google the answer.
• 56:22
  You're here for the story, for the emotion.
• 56:24
  And true that vessel,
• 56:26
  you become pulling out the stories and the lessons
• 56:28
  and so on to foreign insights.
• 56:30
  Well, I've thought about this a lot.
• 56:31
  I thought about like, why do people listen
• 56:34
  to one podcast versus the other?
• 56:36
  And it's interesting in that whole perspective,
• 56:38
  it's shifted as I've built this show,
• 56:41
  is at the beginning, I tried to get the best guests on,
• 56:44
  like the biggest names,
• 56:45
  then you realize very quickly that actually doesn't do
• 56:47
  anything for your show.
• 56:48
  What do you think that is?
• 56:49
  Why do I think that is?
• 56:51
  Because that guest is on 20 other shows.
• 56:54
  And the reason why you have opinions, I see.
• 56:57
  No, no, no, it's a good idea.
• 56:58
  But that's a good point.
• 56:59
  I feel like the guest is on 20 other shows.
• 57:01
  And the reason why people come is for the host.
• 57:04
  Ah, that's such a good point, so.
• 57:05
  And this is actually why I've started thinking
• 57:08
  about doing more solo stuff.
• 57:10
  Because I'm like, okay, so people like me,
• 57:13
  people that listen to success story,
• 57:14
  are listening to my point of view,
• 57:16
  my perspective, the way I ask questions,
• 57:19
  how I engage with my guests.
• 57:22
  And then at the end of the day, if they like me,
• 57:23
  why not double down on that?
• 57:25
  Because that's really the only unique identifier.
• 57:28
  Like, yeah, maybe, okay, you get a nice little background,
• 57:30
  like people like look at you as like semi professional
• 57:35
  because you have a nice YouTube channel.
• 57:36
  It's the optics.
• 57:37
  Yeah.
• 57:38
  So why do they stay?
• 57:39
  I know exactly.
• 57:40
  I know, yeah, so you're correct, 100% correct.
• 57:42
  And what you're correct is,
• 57:43
  you know, you're familiar with Imangadze?
• 57:45
  Yeah, of course.
• 57:46
  So Jack Hopkins, who I'm good friends with,
• 57:49
  Imang and Voys Jack at the beginning of his journey
• 57:54
  and Jack grew incredibly fast.
• 57:55
  He's a huge YouTuber.
• 57:57
  And the whole idea was that people attached to his story
• 57:59
  and his unique approach.
• 58:01
  So people come for him no matter what he's doing.
• 58:04
  Fitness, boxing, business, dating.
• 58:07
  The people came for his perspective on it.
• 58:10
  And I met Jack in Bali, but a year ago now,
• 58:13
  and he sat down with me and my channel was much smaller at the time.
• 58:15
  And he was like, you need to get out of the frame.
• 58:17
  It's first time I met the guy.
• 58:19
  He's like, you need to get out of the frame of this guest.
• 58:22
  So Justin Waller is on this podcast.
• 58:25
  You need to get into the frame of what is down
• 58:27
  Lee going to ask Justin Waller.
• 58:29
  People need to start thinking about you from that lens.
• 58:32
  Because now it's not just another podcast with this guest.
• 58:36
  So changing that angle and changing our frame is so important.
• 58:40
  And the way we do that is by getting the reps in,
• 58:43
  getting the receipts, you build businesses,
• 58:44
  I build businesses too.
• 58:46
  I can have a unique response to a guest's insight, right?
• 58:51
  And I think I call this like the treat the one ratio,
• 58:54
  which is for every three questions I ask,
• 58:56
  let's say like short to sink,
• 58:58
  I'll add one bit of insight.
• 58:59
  I could be 90 to two minutes long.
• 59:02
  And that level of business.
• 59:03
  I like it.
• 59:04
  I love how formalized you are with this process.
• 59:07
  Because we need to have a ratio.
• 59:09
  I feel like I'm just shooting from the hip now.
• 59:11
  I'm humble of bringing a podcast around my show.
• 59:14
  No, no, no, I think you're doing this intuitively, right?
• 59:17
  It's just the fact that we need to put them back
• 59:19
  and put the guests in a position whereby they can speak
• 59:22
  and elaborate on their ideas.
• 59:24
  But we also have to get into the point
• 59:25
  where it's not interrogation.
• 59:26
  If I can switch it from being an interrogation
• 59:28
  to actually adding a lot of value,
• 59:30
  every three or four questions,
• 59:32
  then the guests can take a break,
• 59:34
  you can have a sip of coffee, you can chill,
• 59:37
  and then it creates much more of a dialogue, right?
• 59:40
  And I've been on shows, even on shows too,
• 59:42
  where it's just like question, question, question.
• 59:44
  That leads to the audience journey
• 59:47
  because there's no unique,
• 59:49
  it's not about what's staring my ass, right?
• 59:52
  People are not there for that.
• 59:53
  So the more that I've kind of developed myself,
• 59:55
  we can talk about the development side.
• 59:57
  So now I have to ask about your emotions,
• 1:00:00
  all the times you fail.
• 1:00:02
  But you mentioned Chris Williamson's development.
• 1:00:03
  So I actually have some insight on this.
• 1:00:06
  Yes, of course, he developed individually.
• 1:00:08
  He gave up alcohol, he tried different stuff.
• 1:00:11
  Before he even moved to the US,
• 1:00:12
  he had that process running, okay?
• 1:00:14
  He was doing different stuff.
• 1:00:15
  He was in all the life hacks and the health hacks and all this.
• 1:00:18
  But he was also getting coaching on his speech.
• 1:00:20
  And he was going to a speech therapist
• 1:00:22
  that was helping him ask better questions,
• 1:00:25
  have a better connection between his mind and his mouth,
• 1:00:28
  all this kind of stuff that he was working on in the dark,
• 1:00:30
  which he only revealed about a year and a half ago
• 1:00:32
  on Mike Tarsan's podcast.
• 1:00:33
  So by doing that, that just uplifts him as an individual
• 1:00:39
  and people want to be interviewed as a result.
• 1:00:41
  And I remember Mike Tarsan asking him on a podcast,
• 1:00:45
  how are you getting such some of these guests?
• 1:00:48
  And he would say they listened to the show
• 1:00:50
  and they liked the show.
• 1:00:51
  And now four and a half years later,
• 1:00:53
  people who I've interviewed once,
• 1:00:55
  now actually listened to my show on a weekly basis.
• 1:00:57
  Dude, so many of these guys could be huge,
• 1:00:59
  like huge businesses and they're coming in
• 1:01:01
  to look for actual answers for me.
• 1:01:05
  And it's a crazy phenomenon.
• 1:01:06
  It's crazy change.
• 1:01:08
  Am I more accomplished in these guys?
• 1:01:09
  Nope, have another more experience?
• 1:01:10
  Nope.
• 1:01:11
  But they're here for the story, the connection
• 1:01:13
  and also to see someone who's working hard, right?
• 1:01:15
  Because I think in a world of like mediocrity,
• 1:01:18
  someone who's obsessed.
• 1:01:19
  People...
• 1:01:20
  It stands out.
• 1:01:21
  You would like to get that going.
• 1:01:22
  Literally, how your channel stood out
• 1:01:24
  when I was like looking at,
• 1:01:25
  when I was, when I just first discovered you,
• 1:01:27
  and I'm like, should you have water?
• 1:01:29
  Oh yeah, okay, cool.
• 1:01:30
  When you, yeah, when I first discovered you,
• 1:01:31
  your channel stood out and I'm like,
• 1:01:34
  I mean, like you don't have millions of subs,
• 1:01:36
  but I'm like, there's like zero doubt.
• 1:01:38
  I would not bet against you.
• 1:01:40
  It's the best way to put it.
• 1:01:41
  Have you seen that post-Spoisson whole bloom?
• 1:01:43
  Yes, yeah.
• 1:01:44
  Oh, dude, that is the best thing ever.
• 1:01:45
  It's like never, ever bet against someone who's obsessed.
• 1:01:48
  Yeah.
• 1:01:49
  And dude, that's actually been the thesis behind,
• 1:01:51
  that quote has been the thesis behind nearly
• 1:01:53
  everything that I've done.
• 1:01:54
  I just tell.
• 1:01:55
  Yeah.
• 1:01:55
  Which is, you physically, you know,
• 1:01:58
  there's a thing in the markets which is like,
• 1:01:59
  you don't lose the trade unless you sell, right?
• 1:02:02
  I genuinely take that approach to everything
• 1:02:04
  I do even in business, right?
• 1:02:05
  Because we've had horrific things happen
• 1:02:08
  and so on and so forth.
• 1:02:09
  But...
• 1:02:10
  Well, you're an agency.
• 1:02:11
  Exactly.
• 1:02:12
  You're an agency business, they're taught.
• 1:02:13
  Exactly, but at the end of the day,
• 1:02:15
  you know, the longer you stay in the market,
• 1:02:17
  the more mature you become,
• 1:02:18
  the more mature you come on the podcast.
• 1:02:20
  I've had a few podcasts here,
• 1:02:21
  pull out, I've paid the money and whatever.
• 1:02:23
  It doesn't work out.
• 1:02:24
  You know, these things happen.
• 1:02:25
  What do you mean?
• 1:02:26
  Like I've booked studios in the past
• 1:02:27
  and guests have pulled out an error before.
• 1:02:30
  Oh, they've just like bailed on you.
• 1:02:31
  Yeah, exactly, right?
• 1:02:32
  But when you're younger and you're more mature,
• 1:02:34
  you have much more of an emotional reaction
• 1:02:35
  that you're like, oh, this happens and that happens.
• 1:02:37
  Whereas I've flown places before a podcast
• 1:02:39
  have pulled out complete waste of time as a result.
• 1:02:41
  Oh, my God, lose it.
• 1:02:42
  But I'm just like, I'm like, dude,
• 1:02:44
  this is the game we play in the,
• 1:02:46
  and the risks we play, right?
• 1:02:47
  It's just paired of the kind of evolution.
• 1:02:49
  Yeah.
• 1:02:50
  Is that if you're playing at a higher level
• 1:02:51
  in the game content business stuff,
• 1:02:53
  these are going to go wrong.
• 1:02:54
  Of course things are going to go wrong.
• 1:02:56
  And that's a level of maturity.
• 1:02:59
  So I think when you look at my approach
• 1:03:00
  or I look at your approach,
• 1:03:02
  I'm like, this dude is about it
• 1:03:03
  and he's just all in on it.
• 1:03:04
  That's right.
• 1:03:05
  Well, you know what's so fun?
• 1:03:06
  So I want to learn about things
• 1:03:08
  that haven't worked out in your business
• 1:03:10
  because there's probably been millions.
• 1:03:12
  But you asked me like, what do you,
• 1:03:14
  I came up with what you said before we started recording.
• 1:03:16
  Like, what do you do now?
• 1:03:17
  Or like, what's your phone?
• 1:03:18
  And I'm like, it's like kind of like this.
• 1:03:20
  Or you said like, what else do you do?
• 1:03:23
  And I mean, I've tried a few things,
• 1:03:25
  but at the end of the day,
• 1:03:26
  like if things are working,
• 1:03:28
  it's kind of triple down on it.
• 1:03:30
  Like it's very rare to get something that's working.
• 1:03:32
  Yeah.
• 1:03:32
  It's like, it's very hard to get product market fit
• 1:03:35
  for anything you're doing.
• 1:03:37
  So when things are working, in my opinion,
• 1:03:39
  like, don't fuck with it.
• 1:03:41
  Because I've tried to launch businesses
• 1:03:43
  since the exit.
• 1:03:44
  Like I've been tried to do other stuff,
• 1:03:46
  trust me, I've tried to do a lot.
• 1:03:47
  I tried to, I didn't even mention this.
• 1:03:48
  You had tried to launch private equity firm.
• 1:03:50
  Didn't work.
• 1:03:51
  I tried to do a CPG company,
• 1:03:53
  which is like the sub one company.
• 1:03:55
  Didn't work.
• 1:03:56
  Try to do a mastermind.
• 1:03:58
  Didn't really work.
• 1:03:59
  I've tried to do a lot of stuff,
• 1:04:01
  tried to invest in startups,
• 1:04:02
  lost like 100% of my money.
• 1:04:05
  So I've tried to do stuff.
• 1:04:07
  And I think that's what people listen.
• 1:04:11
  Regardless of how much money I've made in my life,
• 1:04:16
  it doesn't automatically, it's so funny.
• 1:04:20
  Just because you make money
• 1:04:21
  doesn't mean you're good at anything else.
• 1:04:23
  So it doesn't mean you're good at investing
• 1:04:24
  or good at starting a next, like you can be,
• 1:04:26
  you can, you can take your learnings and run with it.
• 1:04:29
  But there still is a massive learning curve.
• 1:04:31
  There's gonna be tons of failure.
• 1:04:32
  And halo effect.
• 1:04:33
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:04:35
  So just because I was good at one thing at one point in time,
• 1:04:38
  doesn't mean that anything else that I try
• 1:04:39
  is ever gonna be good again.
• 1:04:40
  Like I have to go through the reps.
• 1:04:43
  This podcast has been six years in the making.
• 1:04:47
  So yeah, now I have like a couple of nice cameras,
• 1:04:50
  whatever, it's like it's,
• 1:04:52
  but it's still six years that I put into this thing.
• 1:04:54
  So again, I sort of live by my own rules
• 1:04:56
  where I got to stick with different
• 1:04:57
  unreasonable amount of time until I'm good at it.
• 1:04:59
  And the reason why I like this
• 1:05:01
  versus building an individual business
• 1:05:04
  is because this is building one of the four kinds of leverage.
• 1:05:06
  I'm building leverage, right?
• 1:05:08
  So then when you have, when you have massive leverage,
• 1:05:13
  then I could launch it again and again and again.
• 1:05:15
  And then I don't have to, or I don't even have to launch it.
• 1:05:19
  I'm gonna take equity positions,
• 1:05:21
  things that are already working.
• 1:05:22
  Because now I'm not company's media leverage.
• 1:05:26
  That's such a good point.
• 1:05:27
  So I don't even have to play,
• 1:05:29
  find zero to one product market fit.
• 1:05:31
  I can say you have a consumer product,
• 1:05:33
  you have a B2B product, you have a B2C product,
• 1:05:35
  you have a SaaS product,
• 1:05:36
  I'm gonna take two to five percent of your company
• 1:05:39
  for X million impressions
• 1:05:40
  and I'm gonna be your marketing for the next X years.
• 1:05:44
  Well, that's why all these influencer-style businesses
• 1:05:47
  are the best sister in the beginning.
• 1:05:50
  Now, difficult to sustain, we can talk about that too.
• 1:05:53
  A lot of those guys are flashing the pans
• 1:05:54
  because they don't have the operations,
• 1:05:55
  they don't have the good right partner and so on and so forth.
• 1:05:57
  But of course, the world is built around influence and authority.
• 1:06:00
  And it's something that I'm so incredibly,
• 1:06:03
  incredibly big on because of the fact
• 1:06:04
  that influence is not millions and millions of people.
• 1:06:07
  It can just be your toes and true fans.
• 1:06:09
  And that can get you to your first million,
• 1:06:12
  your first 10 million.
• 1:06:13
  So for us, I had small levels of leverage with my podcast
• 1:06:18
  and how it spun off into the agency was people like this
• 1:06:21
  would say, what do you do with the camera
• 1:06:22
  and how do you run these conversations
• 1:06:24
  and how do you get the guess
• 1:06:25
  and how does it benefit your business
• 1:06:26
  and we have a podcast, could you have a look at it?
• 1:06:28
  So I did all my work for free in the beginning
• 1:06:30
  and then I was like, okay,
• 1:06:31
  can you come in and help us produce it?
• 1:06:33
  Can you help us grow it?
• 1:06:34
  It was all natural and organic.
• 1:06:36
  And that was a leverage piece.
• 1:06:38
  I had a lot of leverage in there.
• 1:06:39
  So I went to my first five, 10, 20 clients,
• 1:06:42
  just naturally and organic to the point that
• 1:06:45
  when you run into the challenges of growing
• 1:06:47
  and scaling an agency, which there is a lot.
• 1:06:49
  Agencies are tough, dude.
• 1:06:50
  But especially to go to build an agency to age figures
• 1:06:53
  is literally like, it's so difficult to do.
• 1:06:56
  So there's other ways to supplement it,
• 1:06:58
  which is kind of how we're doing it now.
• 1:06:59
  To the point that when we did launch a coaching offer
• 1:07:02
  for an education business, it was so highly leveraged anyway.
• 1:07:07
  We delivered from us, was that it was easy?
• 1:07:08
  We had the prospects, we had the people,
• 1:07:11
  we had people that were engaged,
• 1:07:12
  we had people that wanted to turn into advocates
• 1:07:13
  and true fans and evangelists.
• 1:07:15
  They built the brand because I had stayed
• 1:07:17
  so narrowly focused in the podcast space.
• 1:07:21
  So yes, we talked about audience and content growth
• 1:07:23
  and so on and sales within the podcast space for our offers,
• 1:07:27
  but it's always been to do a podcast, you know?
• 1:07:30
  That's where it's interesting even chatting
• 1:07:31
  with someone like yourself who has more experience than me
• 1:07:33
  is the fact that you don't need to be,
• 1:07:37
  the best way to example is you don't need to be a 10 out of 10
• 1:07:40
  to coach someone who's a one out of 10.
• 1:07:41
  If you're trying to learn golf,
• 1:07:42
  you don't learn golf from Tiger Woods.
• 1:07:44
  You learn from someone who's a true or a four out of one
• 1:07:46
  out of 10 in your local golf course.
• 1:07:48
  Well, I could say that learning from somebody
• 1:07:49
  who's a three or four out of 10s
• 1:07:51
  actually a better person to learn.
• 1:07:53
  Exactly.
• 1:07:54
  Because they just experienced where you're at.
• 1:07:55
  Exactly. So does the empathy.
• 1:07:57
  So there's no, they're not out of touch.
• 1:07:58
  Exactly.
• 1:07:59
  And then you can ascend to that ladder,
• 1:08:01
  go to become a tree out of 10 and learn from someone
• 1:08:03
  who's on a tour seven out of 10.
• 1:08:05
  And then it's only Tiger Woods who's coaching the nine out of 10
• 1:08:08
  that can become the 10 out of 10.
• 1:08:10
  So this is where we try to, we kind of move into,
• 1:08:14
  okay, helping people what we've experienced with.
• 1:08:17
  So you could help a lot of SaaS founders, dude,
• 1:08:20
  because you've been there in Donut.
• 1:08:21
  Maybe you don't want to do it,
• 1:08:22
  but there's an opportunity there for you
• 1:08:24
  because you've been true to struggles.
• 1:08:26
  So it's interesting.
• 1:08:28
  It's a different way to frame how you can help people,
• 1:08:31
  how you can serve people and get to the next level.
• 1:08:33
  But yes, there's been a ton of issues,
• 1:08:35
  a ton of failures.
• 1:08:36
  I can even give you some details
• 1:08:37
  into some things I was doing when I was younger.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah, go for it.
• 1:08:40
  Because I think like, again, this,
• 1:08:42
  the whole audience, they're all entrepreneurial,
• 1:08:44
  if not entrepreneurs.
• 1:08:45
  So building an agency is not easy.
• 1:08:47
  But I've had conversations about it before.
• 1:08:50
  I mean, I spoken to Eric about it a lot
• 1:08:52
  because he does it at scale.
• 1:08:53
  But if you ever talk to Eric,
• 1:08:55
  like his first versions of, I think it's single grain.
• 1:08:58
  Single grain.
• 1:08:59
  They were just shit.
• 1:09:00
  Like they were horrible.
• 1:09:01
  And he thought he knew what he was doing.
• 1:09:02
  He did not.
• 1:09:03
  And it was very tough.
• 1:09:05
  I mean, Eric's another really smart guy
• 1:09:07
  to listen to and learn from.
• 1:09:09
  But just to show the evolution of a person,
• 1:09:11
  because I actually want to learn about the stakes you've made.
• 1:09:13
  I want to learn about how you grow as a human, as an individual.
• 1:09:18
  But to show you how far somebody can come,
• 1:09:23
  and this is more just a comment on people
• 1:09:25
  that have been in homeostasis in maybe a nine to five
• 1:09:29
  for like the past 10 years.
• 1:09:30
  And they're scared of entrepreneurship.
• 1:09:32
  So Eric started off.
• 1:09:33
  I think he acquired it, single grain, yeah.
• 1:09:37
  And then it flopped basically,
• 1:09:39
  because he thought he was like God's gift of marketing.
• 1:09:41
  And it was not happening.
• 1:09:43
  He eventually figured it out.
• 1:09:44
  Now Eric is so good at what he does,
• 1:09:47
  that he arbitrages marketing agencies,
• 1:09:50
  buying them in Europe at a certain multiple,
• 1:09:54
  and then selling them in the US for a better multiple.
• 1:09:57
  So he literally arbitrages private equities
• 1:10:00
  through marketing agencies.
• 1:10:02
  That's how good he's gotten at the marketing agency game.
• 1:10:05
  And like the past, it has to be under 15 years.
• 1:10:08
  16 years?
• 1:10:09
  So, or 16 years.
• 1:10:10
  It's been a while since I had that interview with him.
• 1:10:13
  But yeah, it's just wild.
• 1:10:15
  Like how you can evolve to think that at the beginning,
• 1:10:18
  you couldn't even manage one.
• 1:10:20
  And now he makes money off buying and selling.
• 1:10:23
  I actually asked him about that too,
• 1:10:24
  about the buying and selling process.
• 1:10:26
  Because it's such a difficult game, right?
• 1:10:28
  He knows all too well about it.
• 1:10:29
  It's very difficult.
• 1:10:31
  Just give me a bit of insight.
• 1:10:32
  Like so, like people kind of look at Vox as a whole
• 1:10:36
  and they think like, okay, just like got lucky, you know,
• 1:10:39
  because there's probably a lot of other.
• 1:10:42
  Why don't people say that?
• 1:10:43
  Because I don't, I don't think that.
• 1:10:45
  So a lot of the guys that run these production houses
• 1:10:48
  are a lot older.
• 1:10:49
  They've been in film.
• 1:10:51
  They've been in the video game.
• 1:10:53
  They've been in the audio game, specifically.
• 1:10:54
  They're audio engineers.
• 1:10:55
  They've run big companies in the US.
• 1:10:57
  They've worked in Hollywood.
• 1:10:59
  They've worked in New York on video production,
• 1:11:00
  and so on.
• 1:11:01
  I didn't do any of that, right?
• 1:11:03
  So a lot of these guys have like,
• 1:11:04
  Is that what that tweet came from when you said,
• 1:11:06
  you're like the biggest fraud?
• 1:11:07
  Yeah, effectively, right?
• 1:11:08
  There's a lot of the bigger agencies.
• 1:11:10
  It goes with 40, 50 employees who, by the way,
• 1:11:13
  I guarantee you're probably doing more revenue
• 1:11:14
  than I'm, because a lot of them are dwindling down, right?
• 1:11:17
  Because these agencies are not in the mood.
• 1:11:19
  They can't move pretty well.
• 1:11:21
  A lot of these guys have a lot of background pedigree
• 1:11:25
  and they've worked on shoots, motion shoots,
• 1:11:27
  and so on and so forth, whereas we just,
• 1:11:29
  I just realized that that was a super unscalable
• 1:11:31
  to do in-person stuff.
• 1:11:33
  The focus on post-production was a lot faster and easier, right?
• 1:11:36
  So that's what people kind of look at that concept.
• 1:11:40
  However, I've been in the game for a lot longer
• 1:11:42
  than just a couple of years, right?
• 1:11:44
  So I started out when I was like 16, 17, dude,
• 1:11:47
  and I was running parodies back then.
• 1:11:49
  So I was running, this was the old days of attention,
• 1:11:52
  marketing, and getting in the door.
• 1:11:54
  So you're...
• 1:11:55
  You're going to miss Christmas games.
• 1:11:56
  You're going to Irish people, right?
• 1:11:57
  What do they do?
• 1:11:58
  They parodies all the time.
• 1:11:59
  I was running mystery tours.
• 1:12:00
  Have you ever heard of this?
• 1:12:01
  No.
• 1:12:02
  Well, I mean, there's like a ghost tour?
• 1:12:03
  Oh, no, you're going to love this.
• 1:12:05
  I have no idea.
• 1:12:06
  It's where you book a double-decker boss
• 1:12:08
  and you sell tickets for the boss,
• 1:12:10
  and then you drive people around until you end up
• 1:12:12
  in like a bear or a nightclub,
• 1:12:14
  and basically everyone just gets pissed in a boss,
• 1:12:15
  effectively, right?
• 1:12:16
  So you sell tickets for the boss.
• 1:12:18
  I was like 17 years old doing that,
• 1:12:20
  and I was running this all around Ireland.
• 1:12:21
  So I was like, what's the drinking age in Ireland?
• 1:12:23
  18.
• 1:12:23
  Oh, good.
• 1:12:24
  All right.
• 1:12:25
  New like 17, 18.
• 1:12:26
  So I did that initially, and I was like, right,
• 1:12:28
  what's the concept?
• 1:12:29
  People need something.
• 1:12:30
  They want something.
• 1:12:31
  It's high desirable.
• 1:12:32
  It's like fun.
• 1:12:33
  It's entertainment.
• 1:12:34
  We'd run things on like Facebook and software.
• 1:12:36
  Just like a post on Facebook.
• 1:12:37
  That worked.
• 1:12:38
  Then I said I was running bigger events.
• 1:12:40
  So I was running proper club events at that point then.
• 1:12:43
  That was really good, but it was like,
• 1:12:44
  it wasn't a reliable way to build a business
• 1:12:47
  and to maintain a business.
• 1:12:48
  And it was kind of shady, and you're like,
• 1:12:50
  oh, I do whatever you want to be doing this,
• 1:12:51
  but I was doing like 18, 19.
• 1:12:53
  And then I was really into the scene of music.
• 1:12:57
  I sold really into like house and technical music
• 1:12:59
  all was for the past 10 years.
• 1:13:01
  However, what I noticed was when I was living in London,
• 1:13:04
  fashion in London around clubbing is huge, huge, huge, huge.
• 1:13:08
  So I was really at the early stages.
• 1:13:10
  This is 2016, 2017 of 90s clothing being brought,
• 1:13:16
  being like a resurgence.
• 1:13:18
  So I saw urban outfitters.
• 1:13:20
  I saw a few other vintage brands.
• 1:13:23
  And I thought, huh, I used to go to all these raves
• 1:13:25
  and people used to spend so much money on their clothes
• 1:13:28
  at two or three hundred dollars on their outfits.
• 1:13:30
  Why not just be the person that sells rave clothes
• 1:13:33
  to rave kits?
• 1:13:34
  So I would buy all these boxes from the set of Italy,
• 1:13:39
  like the highest quality vintage clothing you can imagine.
• 1:13:42
  Like all the stone island, Nike, Adidas from the 80s, 70s,
• 1:13:46
  and I'd house them all in my bedroom.
• 1:13:50
  So I had these huge boxes in my bedroom.
• 1:13:52
  I'd sell everything to Shopify, direct to consumer
• 1:13:55
  from the website.
• 1:13:56
  That's awesome.
• 1:13:57
  And it was flying out the door.
• 1:13:59
  Like I couldn't keep going.
• 1:14:01
  I was going to say that it seems like a really,
• 1:14:02
  outside of being like a business
• 1:14:05
  that could have cash flow issues.
• 1:14:07
  Oh, because that seems like a super expensive business
• 1:14:09
  to start.
• 1:14:11
  So I'd buy the, I'd buy the boxes.
• 1:14:13
  You'll find it's interesting.
• 1:14:14
  So the way vintage clothing works is that you get different grades,
• 1:14:17
  A, B, C, depending on quality.
• 1:14:19
  So you get a box, not knowing what's in it.
• 1:14:21
  It's like a lucky dip box, right?
• 1:14:23
  And then you get this stuff on a Friday
• 1:14:25
  and you just sell it for the next rave,
• 1:14:27
  for the next parody and so on.
• 1:14:28
  So I had a lot of like stock, okay?
• 1:14:30
  And this would cost me a couple of thousand dollars
• 1:14:32
  of box and I was buying them every week.
• 1:14:34
  At that point, we were making a lot of revenue
• 1:14:36
  but we're spending it all on stock management, right?
• 1:14:39
  I'm getting the stock in, running ads and so on and so forth.
• 1:14:42
  Bear in mind, I was modeling all the clothes to myself.
• 1:14:45
  Oh my God.
• 1:14:45
  Everything myself was modeled from, from my balcony, dude.
• 1:14:48
  Oh my God.
• 1:14:49
  From my balcony.
• 1:14:50
  So this was running quite well.
• 1:14:51
  I was running, I was working in a vest and bagging at the time.
• 1:14:54
  And during this, I was making more money in a week
• 1:14:57
  than I'd make in a month, working as an intern
• 1:14:59
  as an investment bag.
• 1:15:00
  So I was obviously detaching from reality
• 1:15:02
  with what was possible and so on.
• 1:15:04
  Until revenue or profit?
• 1:15:06
  Revenue.
• 1:15:06
  Revenue.
• 1:15:07
  Okay.
• 1:15:08
  We hit, of course, cash flow problems.
• 1:15:11
  Basically, just couldn't acquire customers as fast as
• 1:15:13
  how much we were spending, how much money we were having.
• 1:15:16
  So that was my first, like, real internal explosion
• 1:15:19
  of running a business.
• 1:15:20
  And that was all done in person, in stock and everything
• 1:15:24
  because I realized that when you're shipping a four pound
• 1:15:28
  or five pound stone island jacket, winter jacket,
• 1:15:31
  it's going to cost that a money, right?
• 1:15:32
  So massive failure, but a huge idea in terms of, again,
• 1:15:37
  attention, what do people want, solving pain for problems?
• 1:15:40
  Yeah.
• 1:15:40
  And one of those effectively selling was status.
• 1:15:42
  Everything that I've been doing has been selling status.
• 1:15:44
  It's been, it's a parodies.
• 1:15:45
  It's another thread that I wrote down.
• 1:15:47
  Everything has to do with status, right?
• 1:15:48
  So whether it's a parody, whether it's a rave,
• 1:15:50
  whether it's clothes, everything went back to status.
• 1:15:53
  So I've been doing this for quite some time at this point
• 1:15:55
  and realized that I had no authority,
• 1:15:58
  I had no influence while I was paying for attention,
• 1:16:00
  paying for businesses.
• 1:16:01
  But I still didn't know my lesson.
• 1:16:03
  So then when I moved to, when I was in a censure,
• 1:16:05
  I was trying to like get my money back together,
• 1:16:07
  trying to sort out different things.
• 1:16:08
  I was living in Dublin and I just came back from traveling
• 1:16:11
  and I'd spent so long, again, perting in Asia,
• 1:16:15
  that I realized that if you lose your passport,
• 1:16:17
  you're screwed, okay?
• 1:16:19
  So I was trying to build a digital passport app,
• 1:16:22
  super VC backed.
• 1:16:23
  I was standing inside Dublin airport,
• 1:16:26
  interviewing people, going through the terminals.
• 1:16:27
  I looked like an airport, like a risk effect.
• 1:16:30
  Did you raise for this?
• 1:16:31
  This was a plan.
• 1:16:32
  So I'd walk around asking people what they use
• 1:16:34
  in a passport app and it was really well validated.
• 1:16:37
  People really wanted to use it.
• 1:16:38
  Huge legal issues, huge regulation issues.
• 1:16:41
  I was gonna say that seems like a lot of a
• 1:16:42
  a key product to overcome, but.
• 1:16:44
  Did all the wire framing,
• 1:16:45
  did all the prototyping,
• 1:16:46
  myself bearing mine in my kitchen,
• 1:16:48
  I did everything myself, everything myself.
• 1:16:50
  Went to get funding because I was nobody.
• 1:16:52
  I didn't have authority and influence.
• 1:16:54
  I couldn't get funding.
• 1:16:56
  So this is when I realized, okay,
• 1:16:58
  I'd done all this stuff for money years,
• 1:17:01
  made money, lost money, made no money,
• 1:17:03
  lost more money and so on and so forth.
• 1:17:04
  And that was a time that I shouldn't be trying to build.
• 1:17:09
  I should be trying to listen and learn.
• 1:17:10
  And that's when I found that a podcast space,
• 1:17:12
  which was much more like patience game,
• 1:17:14
  playing the long game, getting the insights.
• 1:17:17
  Everything that I do now has come from the 200 to the lessons.
• 1:17:20
  Every single thing that I've learned
• 1:17:22
  has come from the 250 episodes I've recorded
• 1:17:24
  because they were the things that I needed
• 1:17:26
  at that point in time,
• 1:17:28
  whether it's mindset, practical business, logic,
• 1:17:30
  fitness, health, whatever.
• 1:17:32
  That was what I needed at the point in time
• 1:17:33
  and that's what I'm utilizing now.
• 1:17:35
  And that's what I'm even doing now.
• 1:17:36
  Interviews I have now are often solving my own problems
• 1:17:39
  because the problems from me are not unique
• 1:17:40
  they're for everybody else.
• 1:17:41
  But I just think it's an interesting observation
• 1:17:43
  because when I had made all those massive mess ups,
• 1:17:46
  yeah, I wasn't journaling the mistakes
• 1:17:48
  and all this kind of stuff,
• 1:17:49
  but it's at a subconscious level
• 1:17:50
  I was learning what was wrong.
• 1:17:52
  So that if you think about it,
• 1:17:53
  we'll kick off sessions,
• 1:17:54
  which became books accompany.
• 1:17:56
  When people come to interact,
• 1:17:58
  they have the social proof,
• 1:18:00
  they know what's happening.
• 1:18:01
  There's a trust,
• 1:18:02
  there's the authority,
• 1:18:03
  there's the influence,
• 1:18:04
  everything that I had lacked was there.
• 1:18:07
  It was primed.
• 1:18:08
  So all I had to do was just high conversations.
• 1:18:10
  People and I said,
• 1:18:11
  this is what we do.
• 1:18:12
  This is what we do it.
• 1:18:13
  And it was just like,
• 1:18:14
  it was just so natural, so natural, so easy.
• 1:18:17
  Even to this day,
• 1:18:18
  when we get on calls to people,
• 1:18:19
  like any case study you need is just to start with me.
• 1:18:24
  That's always the best case study, right?
• 1:18:26
  So all the gaps that I had in my youth
• 1:18:28
  trying to figure it out,
• 1:18:29
  have all kind of compounded to this point in time,
• 1:18:32
  which is when things come much more organically and naturally.
• 1:18:35
  I have a question on that.
• 1:18:37
  That's so interesting.
• 1:18:38
  Why you chose to start a podcast
• 1:18:41
  after you did a super product heavy business,
• 1:18:43
  and you tried to do adventure back business.
• 1:18:46
  Because I have a reason as to why I started a podcast,
• 1:18:50
  I never thought it was gonna be for the money.
• 1:18:52
  Same.
• 1:18:54
  I thought it will make money,
• 1:18:56
  and at some point in the future, I can productize it.
• 1:18:59
  But when I started this, I was building a company.
• 1:19:02
  So it wasn't like, for me, it was a very safe bet.
• 1:19:06
  I already have money coming in.
• 1:19:08
  Like I don't need to worry about money for the podcast.
• 1:19:10
  But you killed the potential adventure back
• 1:19:15
  passport business.
• 1:19:16
  You started a podcast first.
• 1:19:18
  And was there like, I mean,
• 1:19:19
  because like I just try and think of the mindset
• 1:19:21
  of a creator who starts a podcast,
• 1:19:23
  what are the reasons for doing it?
• 1:19:25
  It's such a good point.
• 1:19:26
  So for me, it was much more,
• 1:19:27
  I wanted to listen and learn.
• 1:19:29
  So I knew I had to gap.
• 1:19:30
  I couldn't be paying for it.
• 1:19:31
  So this was like an education tool for you.
• 1:19:34
  Everything, everything's been educational.
• 1:19:36
  Every you weren't concerned about money to bridge that gap?
• 1:19:38
  No, not at all.
• 1:19:39
  Because I was working in trading at the time.
• 1:19:41
  You're still working at the time.
• 1:19:42
  So I was working in trading at the time.
• 1:19:43
  And it was just purely educational.
• 1:19:44
  And I was able to find my way out of that system,
• 1:19:47
  where out of that process,
• 1:19:49
  learn what I needed to learn.
• 1:19:51
  Interview people that would be thousands of dollars
• 1:19:54
  to consult with, right?
• 1:19:55
  And get that access to information.
• 1:19:57
  It was only as I launched when I realized that it was a mess
• 1:20:01
  with YouTube over here, audio over here,
• 1:20:03
  back then the whole thing was a mess up.
• 1:20:05
  But I thought initially maybe we could build a product.
• 1:20:08
  I would try to initially build a SaaS product
• 1:20:09
  to house everything together.
• 1:20:11
  So video, audio and everything.
• 1:20:13
  That was one thing I tried to build.
• 1:20:14
  Second thing I tried to build was a,
• 1:20:17
  another kind of notion variation,
• 1:20:19
  which I'm still actually considering to the state, by the way,
• 1:20:22
  just basically I'll wait to aggregate everything.
• 1:20:24
  So that's what I was thinking initially,
• 1:20:25
  because I knew it was a mess.
• 1:20:26
  It was just a complete mess.
• 1:20:27
  Your workflow was just the podcasting.
• 1:20:29
  Podcast industry, it's just sort of fragmented.
• 1:20:33
  It's so fragmented in contrast to posting on Instagram,
• 1:20:37
  posting on Twitter, posting on YouTube.
• 1:20:38
  It's all over the place, which is why
• 1:20:40
  there's such a high failure rate, right?
• 1:20:42
  Such a high failure rate in podcasting
• 1:20:43
  because it's so complicated.
• 1:20:45
  There's so much miniature, smaller things.
• 1:20:47
  Again, to keep it sustainable, to do 100 reps.
• 1:20:49
  If you can't do 100 reps, don't do the first rep, right?
• 1:20:51
  So I quickly kind of saw that,
• 1:20:54
  and then it just broke it into helping consulting.
• 1:20:57
  The reason why we have an agency is very interesting is
• 1:20:59
  because when people would ask me for help on their podcast,
• 1:21:02
  I could tell them what to do,
• 1:21:03
  but if I couldn't do it for them,
• 1:21:05
  it would make no sense, right?
• 1:21:06
  Because they didn't have the skills,
• 1:21:08
  the gap between where they were and where they are,
• 1:21:10
  it's the skill, it's the Delta.
• 1:21:11
  So if they're not designers, if they're not editors,
• 1:21:13
  if they're not copy-raters, they can't write it.
• 1:21:15
  So it was like, that might just give it to me.
• 1:21:16
  I'll just do it for you.
• 1:21:17
  So we started very humble from that beginning,
• 1:21:19
  and then it was only until I could get better employees,
• 1:21:22
  better writers, better designers, better editors,
• 1:21:24
  when the agency said, are running async.
• 1:21:27
  I said, the higher people who are much further on me,
• 1:21:29
  does that make sense?
• 1:21:30
  So again, you solve your own problems.
• 1:21:32
  I literally solved the problems that I had run in the podcast,
• 1:21:35
  that became valuable to other people.
• 1:21:36
  And again, it's a classic grant to knowledge
• 1:21:38
  because I thought it was easy when we got up and running,
• 1:21:42
  actually turns out that's incredibly valuable
• 1:21:44
  to somebody else.
• 1:21:45
  And this is actually the problem.
• 1:21:46
  So so many of my friends, as I'm sure yours too,
• 1:21:50
  I've asked like, how do I start?
• 1:21:52
  I've sent SOPs, my exact process, every single tool I use,
• 1:21:57
  for free.
• 1:21:58
  I mean, some of them are really close friends.
• 1:22:00
  Just send it to them, zero podcasts have been created.
• 1:22:04
  You want to tell you what happens?
• 1:22:06
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:06
  I know exactly what it is.
• 1:22:08
  These are smart people too.
• 1:22:09
  These are not idiots.
• 1:22:10
  These are people that have built and sold companies
• 1:22:12
  in eight figures, some of nine figures,
• 1:22:15
  like very smart entrepreneurs.
• 1:22:17
  Sometimes you have to pay your wallet to make the change though.
• 1:22:20
  Sometimes you have to pair it with your money mentally
• 1:22:23
  to be like, I'm going to go work on this.
• 1:22:25
  Because if you're thinking of it
• 1:22:26
  and you're getting great advice from a good friend
• 1:22:28
  like yourself, they're not willing to make that change
• 1:22:30
  until they actually put the cash down.
• 1:22:33
  And these guys are multimillionaires, right?
• 1:22:35
  But it's still the same principle in practice.
• 1:22:37
  And then the other aspect then is it's a gap.
• 1:22:41
  What we do looks easy, right?
• 1:22:43
  This is a yeah, record, upload.
• 1:22:45
  But these small micro things that are happening in there,
• 1:22:49
  that's what all adds up.
• 1:22:50
  And especially if you're in your turkeys or forties,
• 1:22:53
  which again is kind of the entrepreneurs that we work with.
• 1:22:55
  They have kids, they have businesses, they have a wife,
• 1:22:57
  they have all this other stuff.
• 1:22:59
  So it's like, yes, can you do it?
• 1:23:01
  100%, 100%.
• 1:23:03
  But will you actually do it?
• 1:23:05
  That's the question, right?
• 1:23:06
  And whether this is an interesting observation.
• 1:23:10
  So when we had the done for you approach for so long,
• 1:23:13
  it was like, yeah, here it is.
• 1:23:15
  If you want us to do it, okay, if you don't want us to do it, okay.
• 1:23:18
  But now you have to meet people where they are in their journey.
• 1:23:20
  We go back to customer experience.
• 1:23:22
  Some people want to get started.
• 1:23:23
  They want to learn, feel more in control.
• 1:23:26
  So we teach them some people want to do it themselves.
• 1:23:28
  We give them resources.
• 1:23:29
  Some people want to done for them.
• 1:23:30
  And often people will figure out the process,
• 1:23:33
  how it's done with you and then allow you to do it for them, right?
• 1:23:36
  So that's kind of so interesting.
• 1:23:38
  It's an ascension model, right?
• 1:23:39
  And that's not intentional.
• 1:23:40
  It's just a way to be able to serve different people.
• 1:23:42
  So that people who complain that they don't want to do it anymore,
• 1:23:46
  you have an option for them, right?
• 1:23:49
  So that's where I would say like we're less an agency
• 1:23:52
  more immediate company.
• 1:23:53
  There's just so much stuff in the ecosystem, right?
• 1:23:56
  And it's like, we have like lots of stuff going on.
• 1:23:58
  There's so many different pieces to a podcast.
• 1:24:00
  You have an issue articulating the value of building leverage
• 1:24:07
  because I would assume if I was selling this as a service,
• 1:24:10
  I would have, I have had not, because I don't sell it,
• 1:24:15
  but I have a hard time getting somebody to buy in
• 1:24:18
  the concept of doing this for six years.
• 1:24:21
  And I'm like, what has it done for you?
• 1:24:23
  And I told you how much money this makes.
• 1:24:25
  Six years in business, that's kind of a shit amount of money
• 1:24:28
  for any objective business.
• 1:24:31
  Six years in business, you should be making
• 1:24:33
  probably over $10 million.
• 1:24:35
  Answer is maybe five and 10 if it's like a, if you're struggling,
• 1:24:39
  but most businesses after five, six years,
• 1:24:42
  if you're still doing them, you figure out some samples
• 1:24:44
  of product market fit, you can repeatedly drive,
• 1:24:46
  you know, you figure out your customer acquisition costs.
• 1:24:49
  You can, you can build a system that allows you to have
• 1:24:53
  mid to high seven figures in revenue.
• 1:24:55
  Go, go, go, go, but for podcasts, again,
• 1:24:59
  you are playing the infinite game.
• 1:25:01
  The money that comes from advertisers for this show is small.
• 1:25:04
  It's very small compared to what I could be making
• 1:25:06
  building a business.
• 1:25:07
  But if I execute my playbook, and I do what I sort of mentioned
• 1:25:12
  earlier on this show where I may be a small equity positions
• 1:25:15
  or whatever it is, and then also the stages that I get on
• 1:25:19
  and the people that I get to speak to and the relationships
• 1:25:22
  that I build and the opportunities that come from all the
• 1:25:26
  adjacent items, like I can't put a value on that,
• 1:25:30
  which is why I'm going to do this till the day that I die.
• 1:25:32
  I don't really care about the money that comes in from advertisers.
• 1:25:36
  But that's a very hard value product to articulate
• 1:25:39
  to somebody who wants to start this.
• 1:25:42
  Now I think there's better ways to do it,
• 1:25:44
  and you probably, or different ways to do it,
• 1:25:46
  you could productize immediately.
• 1:25:48
  If I had a high ticket product and you were my ICP,
• 1:25:51
  my customer profile, I could be selling,
• 1:25:54
  I could be building rapport with you,
• 1:25:56
  and on the background of this podcast,
• 1:25:57
  I could be selling you a product or service.
• 1:25:59
  I could be including you as my content marketing
• 1:26:01
  if I'm doing like B2B or any kind of business.
• 1:26:03
  So there's a whole bunch of different ways to do it,
• 1:26:05
  but what do you think is the best way to look at,
• 1:26:10
  should I start a podcast?
• 1:26:11
  If someone's going to ask you that question,
• 1:26:14
  what's your answer?
• 1:26:16
  It has to be complimenting the business in the back end.
• 1:26:18
  Otherwise, you're not going to justify putting in the time
• 1:26:20
  or the cash.
• 1:26:21
  So I'm just crazy.
• 1:26:21
  Yeah, you're building an ecosystem of this is your brand.
• 1:26:28
  You get me.
• 1:26:28
  And any product that you want to build in the back end
• 1:26:31
  is based off of this, you get me.
• 1:26:33
  So that's the broader play.
• 1:26:34
  You don't need to have the product in the back end right now,
• 1:26:36
  but it's almost having that brand.
• 1:26:38
  So you take me example.
• 1:26:39
  I didn't have that two years, three years.
• 1:26:41
  Very similar, actually, the way we started this.
• 1:26:43
  Similar journey, right?
• 1:26:44
  But it's building brand equity.
• 1:26:46
  And brand equity is intangible,
• 1:26:48
  and it's also very difficult to quantify, right?
• 1:26:52
  But people who play an infinite game
• 1:26:53
  understand the value of brand, understand the value
• 1:26:55
  of building a longer term connection
• 1:26:57
  with your audience and your customers,
• 1:26:59
  without looking for direct response.
• 1:27:01
  The whole idea of direct response marketing,
• 1:27:03
  the funnels, Russell Brunson, all that kind of approach
• 1:27:06
  is that you're looking for one penny in, two pennies back out.
• 1:27:10
  Whereas what we're doing here is much more
• 1:27:12
  of a longevity play that we could build this offer
• 1:27:14
  to get a ten years time.
• 1:27:15
  Who knows, right?
• 1:27:16
  But it all starts and just meeting each other today
• 1:27:17
  and seeing what happens.
• 1:27:19
  But it's understanding that that's a lever.
• 1:27:20
  So the question I get asked by some clients
• 1:27:23
  is what's it offer, okay?
• 1:27:26
  And we try to quantify what it is an offer
• 1:27:28
  and we try to see which metric are we optimizing for.
• 1:27:31
  So let's say if it is a specific company,
• 1:27:34
  could be a real estate company,
• 1:27:35
  we could be optimizing for leads, right?
• 1:27:36
  So are optimizing for leads?
• 1:27:38
  Yes, do we have a mechanism to get leads to engage with us?
• 1:27:41
  No, how would we do that?
• 1:27:43
  Build a few lead magnets and so on to four.
• 1:27:45
  That's one side, right?
• 1:27:46
  Which we would build.
• 1:27:47
  The second side of it then could be, let's say,
• 1:27:49
  just brand awareness.
• 1:27:51
  You wear the company like the future by Christo.
• 1:27:53
  He's looking for broader brand awareness with his podcast.
• 1:27:56
  People will come in and work with his courses
• 1:27:58
  and his tutorials and workshops as a result.
• 1:28:00
  Two different ways to do it.
• 1:28:01
  So it's almost unifying what that metric is
• 1:28:04
  on the backend initially.
• 1:28:05
  It could be just views and what in one aspect
• 1:28:10
  or it could be sales, right?
• 1:28:11
  Because if you have a product stack
• 1:28:13
  that's conducive towards that,
• 1:28:15
  you can create podcasts and sell products
• 1:28:17
  on the backend, true it.
• 1:28:19
  It can all be done, everything works,
• 1:28:21
  but all this is just a vessel on the front end.
• 1:28:23
  You can write tweets, make sure it's,
• 1:28:26
  you can stick your head up to this window
• 1:28:27
  and scream until customers come in.
• 1:28:29
  They're all vessels to get attention,
• 1:28:31
  but it's understanding what attention is,
• 1:28:33
  what is it, the driver that we're trying to optimize for,
• 1:28:36
  and then just doing it, right?
• 1:28:37
  I think the reason why people maybe feedback
• 1:28:40
  that you're getting is like, oh, I don't know what's it all for,
• 1:28:43
  is because they don't think about that initially.
• 1:28:45
  And that's when they record the seven podcasts
• 1:28:47
  to spend 20 hours a week working on it,
• 1:28:49
  have no idea what they're doing,
• 1:28:51
  and then think damn, this is too much, right?
• 1:28:54
  Whereas we have a specific client at the moment,
• 1:28:56
  which the woman is an individual,
• 1:28:59
  and that's kind of solar pranora businesses doing really well,
• 1:29:03
  a couple of million a year in revenue.
• 1:29:05
  And when we launched a podcast,
• 1:29:06
  she was so surprised because all of her clients were listening,
• 1:29:11
  all of her prospects were listening,
• 1:29:13
  her audience are LinkedIn were listening,
• 1:29:15
  so it's like how do you quantify that?
• 1:29:17
  Well, those customers now see you in a different light
• 1:29:21
  from just helping them with the business,
• 1:29:24
  they're paired up the broader ecosystem.
• 1:29:26
  And dude, you'll be very, very surprised.
• 1:29:28
  Like, I would say a lot of my clients
• 1:29:30
  end up listening to our podcast
• 1:29:32
  because people who actually pay for services and products,
• 1:29:36
  they want to get more, so they're more interested
• 1:29:38
  in the whole ecosystem.
• 1:29:40
  And as you can probably tell from this conversation,
• 1:29:42
  that's a huge area that I'm really focused on
• 1:29:44
  is building a strong brand, providing a lot of free content,
• 1:29:48
  and then having a lot of very solid products on the backend
• 1:29:51
  that advanced that mission, you know?
• 1:29:54
  And it just depends on where you are in your stage of your life.
• 1:29:57
  So if you are someone who's a busy entrepreneur
• 1:29:59
  or you sold a company and you're in your turdies
• 1:30:01
  and forties and you've a lot of other commitments,
• 1:30:03
  well, then you work with someone, right?
• 1:30:05
  You get what you've set up, you work with a few VAs,
• 1:30:08
  a few EAs, like why are you suffering in silence, right?
• 1:30:11
  You know, that defeats the purpose of leverage.
• 1:30:15
  Does that make sense?
• 1:30:16
  Yeah, it does make a lot of sense.
• 1:30:17
  The way we kind of situated with someone that,
• 1:30:19
  let's say who's engaged with us is that,
• 1:30:21
  one, get your time back,
• 1:30:23
  Dan Martell 101, right?
• 1:30:25
  Get your time back, go back to what you want to do,
• 1:30:28
  go back to focusing on the business,
• 1:30:30
  and two, build a strong brand that can actually increase your revenue, right?
• 1:30:33
  The way we increase your revenue is going to be different.
• 1:30:36
  If you're someone like yourself, it's sponsorships,
• 1:30:38
  people who pay guests, we can all buy that too,
• 1:30:40
  orders the business operations,
• 1:30:44
  leads, sales, and so on and so forth.
• 1:30:46
  I would bet that if somebody's having a hard time
• 1:30:52
  quantifying the value of a podcast,
• 1:30:54
  I think for somebody who does have a business,
• 1:30:57
  if you've started a podcast,
• 1:31:00
  I would make a very strong bet that if you looked at
• 1:31:05
  when you start that podcast,
• 1:31:07
  and you compare that to the sales velocity,
• 1:31:11
  how long it takes somebody to first discover your company
• 1:31:15
  to come through from very top of funnel cold,
• 1:31:18
  all the way through to close,
• 1:31:19
  I would assume that your sales velocity decreases,
• 1:31:22
  because you have this vehicle that is the most high-trust,
• 1:31:26
  building medium possible, in my opinion.
• 1:31:30
  So I think that it'll be very hard to track a direct conversion,
• 1:31:36
  but I think you look for other customer behaviors
• 1:31:40
  that sort of signal that without a podcast,
• 1:31:45
  they're consuming content, they're going to your website,
• 1:31:47
  they're going to your social,
• 1:31:49
  they'll eventually speak to a sales rep.
• 1:31:51
  I would assume that with a podcast,
• 1:31:56
  by the time they get to a sales rep,
• 1:31:58
  they're much more likely to close quicker.
• 1:32:00
  You could track that.
• 1:32:01
  Definitely track that.
• 1:32:02
  It's almost like a referral from your content, right?
• 1:32:04
  Because yeah, because I think that if you look at the average
• 1:32:07
  customer, they're gonna do 70 to 80% of the research
• 1:32:09
  before they buy, before they even talk to somebody,
• 1:32:11
  talking about enterprise B to B,
• 1:32:13
  or just higher ticket items.
• 1:32:15
  Okay, so let's say they're coming in
• 1:32:17
  and interacting with you and touching base.
• 1:32:19
  What's the alternative?
• 1:32:21
  I always say to people, if you're not creating content,
• 1:32:23
  what's the alternative?
• 1:32:24
  You're paying for attention, you're paying for everything.
• 1:32:27
  So you have this opportunity whereby you pay with your time,
• 1:32:31
  or you create a system, or you hire a team,
• 1:32:33
  and you run content for you for your business,
• 1:32:35
  or you pay for business.
• 1:32:37
  You only have two options.
• 1:32:38
  So it's like, oh yeah, it could spend more time
• 1:32:40
  doing X, Y, and Z.
• 1:32:42
  You still need customers.
• 1:32:44
  You still need marketing.
• 1:32:45
  I think it's very funny too when people say,
• 1:32:47
  I wanna take a break, right?
• 1:32:49
  I wanna take a break.
• 1:32:50
  I'm like, a break to do what?
• 1:32:52
  Because your business still runs, right?
• 1:32:54
  What do you need a break?
• 1:32:55
  Well, that's a signal that they don't understand the value.
• 1:32:57
  Exactly, but I mean, take a break in general, itself.
• 1:33:00
  Or whether it's running their business, their content,
• 1:33:03
  their offer, their sales,
• 1:33:05
  we wanna slow things down internally.
• 1:33:08
  What else are you going to do?
• 1:33:09
  You're running a business.
• 1:33:10
  It's like you sign up for this.
• 1:33:11
  It's almost like if people are not working.
• 1:33:12
  That could be a much bigger problem.
• 1:33:14
  100% expectations are not properly set
• 1:33:17
  when you started this thing.
• 1:33:18
  And you just realize that you made yourself a very,
• 1:33:20
  you built yourself a very high-paying job.
• 1:33:22
  100% as opposed to a business.
• 1:33:23
  And then that's more indicative of,
• 1:33:26
  you gotta build systems and processes
• 1:33:27
  and hire people and scale yourself.
• 1:33:29
  So you're not just working under 20 hours a week.
• 1:33:34
  But it's interesting, right?
• 1:33:35
  Because most people don't think like that.
• 1:33:37
  It's something that we realize as entrepreneurs too
• 1:33:40
  that yes, there's obviously sacrifices and so on,
• 1:33:42
  if you're made.
• 1:33:43
  But if you're not gonna do the work,
• 1:33:45
  then why are you doing it in general?
• 1:33:47
  And it's something that you need to be realized with,
• 1:33:49
  your sales process, your ecosystem,
• 1:33:52
  or even the companies you wanna work for.
• 1:33:53
  If guys are complaining that they're not gonna go
• 1:33:56
  the extra mile or get back to you on a Saturday with an email,
• 1:33:59
  they shouldn't be entrepreneurs.
• 1:34:00
  They should not.
• 1:34:01
  Which is why most people I feel like
• 1:34:03
  have a really incorrect version in their heads
• 1:34:06
  about entrepreneurship is.
• 1:34:08
  Dude, I literally swear, swear on my life.
• 1:34:10
  I spent 16 hours yesterday building a landing page,
• 1:34:13
  preparing for four podcasts.
• 1:34:15
  And then at 10 o'clock last night,
• 1:34:17
  I was like, we got this podcast in the morning
• 1:34:18
  and I said, preparing for the 10 last night.
• 1:34:20
  I swear, I swear on my life.
• 1:34:21
  I know.
• 1:34:22
  Yesterday morning, I had to write all my news letters
• 1:34:23
  because I was behind on everything
• 1:34:25
  because of recording podcasts.
• 1:34:27
  I used you right on a Saturday,
• 1:34:28
  edit on a Sunday, I couldn't, I had to write yesterday,
• 1:34:31
  and I had to go into everything else.
• 1:34:33
  And it's like, what's the alternative?
• 1:34:35
  I stopped producing my news letter
• 1:34:36
  and I stopped getting sales.
• 1:34:38
  It's like, there's no alternative.
• 1:34:40
  Exactly.
• 1:34:41
  But when you are in entrepreneur mode,
• 1:34:43
  like this is why you do have to find a way
• 1:34:46
  to systematize as quickly as possible.
• 1:34:48
  Because if you don't,
• 1:34:49
  you're gonna add more stuff on,
• 1:34:50
  it's all gonna fall on you.
• 1:34:51
  But I mean, this is entrepreneurship.
• 1:34:54
  Yesterday, we're recording in 4K now.
• 1:34:57
  I have to figure how to transport
• 1:34:59
  and send 4K footage to all over the world, right?
• 1:35:03
  Which is a pain in the ass.
• 1:35:04
  I know.
• 1:35:05
  And I went through like five different
• 1:35:08
  file sharing services.
• 1:35:09
  It took me like six hours in the afternoon.
• 1:35:11
  I did that lots more.
• 1:35:12
  I'm signing up for, I was like,
• 1:35:13
  sync, pCloud, Dropbox, Box.
• 1:35:17
  Nothing I want to camera with the name of.
• 1:35:18
  Google Drive, and I'm like, okay,
• 1:35:20
  so how do I not go bankrupt?
• 1:35:22
  Send in like a terror bite and stuff.
• 1:35:24
  And like this is just my afternoon,
• 1:35:26
  I had to cancel the gym.
• 1:35:28
  And then I had to like cancel basically everything else.
• 1:35:30
  I was doing yesterday
• 1:35:30
  because there's been five hours researching
• 1:35:32
  all this dumbass file sharing.
• 1:35:34
  And I was using all these AI tools
• 1:35:36
  to rank all the different features and benefits.
• 1:35:39
  It's just like, this is life though, dude.
• 1:35:41
  This is life.
• 1:35:43
  I mean, this is the game.
• 1:35:45
  What's, and I mean, this is like, you know this
• 1:35:48
  because you do all this, this crazy shit too.
• 1:35:50
  Oh, oh yes, what was it?
• 1:35:51
  Dude, I spent two weeks doing that, can I do it?
• 1:35:53
  Thursday.
• 1:35:54
  Thursday, my web hosting site ground.
• 1:36:00
  For some reason, even though I didn't send out
• 1:36:02
  any emails all week, so it's actually, I was in Boston.
• 1:36:05
  I actually, my voice is still like,
• 1:36:07
  hoarse from speaking so much at this conference.
• 1:36:11
  But I was in Boston and then site ground sends me an email.
• 1:36:14
  We've disabled your email for your domain
• 1:36:18
  because we found that we're getting a lot of 550 errors,
• 1:36:23
  basically meaning that your email is getting sent
• 1:36:25
  to like, non-real email addresses,
• 1:36:28
  like you're spamming people basically.
• 1:36:30
  And I'm like, I haven't sent an email like all week.
• 1:36:32
  Like, I don't have anyone on my team sending emails.
• 1:36:34
  I have no automation setup right now.
• 1:36:36
  What is going on?
• 1:36:37
  Why is my email just shut down randomly
• 1:36:39
  on a Thursday morning?
• 1:36:40
  Like the emails that I get, and I'm sure you do too,
• 1:36:43
  just like the random shit, it's just day in the life.
• 1:36:46
  It's left feels stuff, right?
• 1:36:48
  That's why like all year, your morning routine,
• 1:36:50
  your plan and stuff just means nothing at the end of the day.
• 1:36:52
  Sometimes, dude, I had the exact same thing
• 1:36:54
  with like a counting literally last week.
• 1:36:56
  We're just saying we're going back and forth
• 1:36:57
  that they're like, oh yeah, there's like some accounting fee,
• 1:37:00
  you know, like these companies that work
• 1:37:01
  for all your accounts.
• 1:37:03
  I was like, what the hell?
• 1:37:03
  I sent this to you like two weeks ago,
• 1:37:05
  and then that went on for ages,
• 1:37:07
  and then the email was there.
• 1:37:08
  And it's just like, this took like three hours,
• 1:37:09
  does that make sense?
• 1:37:10
  And it's something so simple.
• 1:37:13
  And I have to pay some extra random fee,
• 1:37:15
  and then you're like putting in your credit card.
• 1:37:16
  So like, I'm always able to just really well,
• 1:37:18
  which is, you know, when a company's growing really fast,
• 1:37:21
  a lot of the employees want to get paid more,
• 1:37:23
  to get part of it.
• 1:37:24
  But they did not share in the risk.
• 1:37:28
  They did not share in all the pain and the uncertainty.
• 1:37:32
  That's what you're getting, right?
• 1:37:33
  So like when I'm setting these like accounting emails
• 1:37:36
  on like Saturday evening,
• 1:37:38
  what are people that didn't share in that journey, right?
• 1:37:40
  And yes, you want to reward your employees
• 1:37:42
  like well and so on and so forth.
• 1:37:43
  But I think it's just interesting
• 1:37:44
  because it's not just about like running the funnel
• 1:37:47
  and getting the product and so whatever.
• 1:37:48
  It's all those small changes, right?
• 1:37:52
  And you go back to the button, right?
• 1:37:54
  The button and SaaS.
• 1:37:55
  You can look at that button for three hours.
• 1:37:57
  You can be tinkering it and everything.
• 1:37:59
  And that's what makes people click on the button.
• 1:38:00
  She's been three hours working on it.
• 1:38:02
  It's not just creating the button.
• 1:38:03
  So this is all intangibles, right?
• 1:38:07
  This is all intangibles.
• 1:38:08
  One more story, one more story.
• 1:38:10
  So for that CPK company that we tried to bring to market
• 1:38:13
  that did not work, we were sued.
• 1:38:16
  And by the way, they don't talk to you about like employees
• 1:38:18
  generally hopefully do not get sued.
• 1:38:21
  Entrepreneurs, like you can sneeze and you'll get sued.
• 1:38:25
  Hopefully not, but it happens.
• 1:38:26
  We were sued for not, it was like an ambulance chaser
• 1:38:32
  looking for ADA compliance, like accessibility compliance
• 1:38:35
  on websites.
• 1:38:36
  So what they would do is they'd find websites
• 1:38:38
  that were just set up that did not have like proper
• 1:38:45
  like ADA compliance.
• 1:38:46
  So like usually on websites they'll have a little button
• 1:38:49
  that says you can click this button and then it'll read
• 1:38:52
  the text to you, change the text size, make it so it's easier
• 1:38:55
  to see a lot of websites don't have this.
• 1:38:59
  And what people do is they look for them.
• 1:39:02
  And then they partner up with a lawyer.
• 1:39:05
  You've any better to be doing.
• 1:39:06
  And then they go after them and they sent like legal letters.
• 1:39:10
  And they, and because ultimately you're not going to go
• 1:39:13
  to court, they try and get you for like, I think the amount
• 1:39:17
  was like, if you get fined, plus lawyer fees,
• 1:39:20
  it could be like 50 grand.
• 1:39:22
  So they're like, let's just settle.
• 1:39:23
  It's just, let's just settle for like a tiny $15,000.
• 1:39:26
  And you're like, you don't want to go to court.
• 1:39:28
  And you don't want to do it.
• 1:39:29
  This is a business.
• 1:39:31
  They're doing this as a business basically.
• 1:39:33
  I mean, you're not incorporated, but like it's a strategy
• 1:39:38
  because you go to the person's name who sends you this letter,
• 1:39:40
  you go to the lawyer and you'll see about 50 different lawsuits
• 1:39:43
  for different businesses.
• 1:39:45
  Just trying to target websites that don't have ADA compliance.
• 1:39:48
  So the point is, all the BS, you could ever think of.
• 1:39:53
  And even the BS that you couldn't think of is going to happen.
• 1:39:57
  Do you think that I woke up one morning and I was like,
• 1:39:59
  I want to make my website inaccessible?
• 1:40:02
  The people?
• 1:40:03
  No, of course not.
• 1:40:04
  But when you're building this out, and you really just
• 1:40:06
  haven't gotten around to it because there's a thousand other things
• 1:40:08
  you're trying to figure out like how to sell a fucking product.
• 1:40:11
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:40:11
  Then all of a sudden, this comes in.
• 1:40:13
  Oh, great.
• 1:40:14
  Now we're down $15,000.
• 1:40:15
  We don't want it.
• 1:40:16
  So it's like all this stuff, all this risk, all this BS.
• 1:40:21
  One step forward, one, two steps back, you know?
• 1:40:24
  But again, so that's why like in the infinite game,
• 1:40:28
  you can only lose by exiting the arena.
• 1:40:30
  So all of these small things increased the likelihood of people
• 1:40:33
  saying, if this I'm gone, you know, I'm too embarrassed.
• 1:40:37
  I don't want to do this anymore.
• 1:40:39
  And it's like, it wasn't about the products.
• 1:40:41
  Even though it is, it's about all the other stuff
• 1:40:43
  that you're staying in, they're re-inaffirmed
• 1:40:45
  and certainly and whatnot.
• 1:40:46
  I saw a great clip of this.
• 1:40:46
  But it hardens you.
• 1:40:47
  It creates like mental calluses.
• 1:40:49
  It really makes you, it makes you
• 1:40:51
  can handle future situations.
• 1:40:53
  Because I mean, hopefully it'll never happen again.
• 1:40:55
  I'll tell you right now, my website's ADA compliant.
• 1:40:57
  Like as fuck, like I got all the right buttons on there.
• 1:41:00
  Like you hope it never happens again, but at the end of the day,
• 1:41:04
  it just makes you a better entrepreneur.
• 1:41:07
  And I don't, do you know who taught all this?
• 1:41:09
  No.
• 1:41:10
  He's a big following.
• 1:41:11
  He runs a publicly traded holding company.
• 1:41:13
  So what he does is he acquires companies.
• 1:41:15
  And he puts them in a pub co.
• 1:41:17
  And he gets shit on all the time
• 1:41:18
  because his stock price going up and down.
• 1:41:21
  People have lost a lot of money and made a lot of money.
• 1:41:23
  It's like publicly traded company.
• 1:41:25
  But he's like, I had a conversation with him.
• 1:41:27
  And he was like, the lawsuits and the stress
• 1:41:31
  and the emails that I get daily,
• 1:41:35
  every single one of those instances
• 1:41:37
  would give my younger self a heart attack.
• 1:41:41
  The things that happen daily.
• 1:41:43
  He's like, and one of his companies is they create technology
• 1:41:49
  to support C. Iron Dome in Israel.
• 1:41:51
  So recently, that's a very hot topic.
• 1:41:55
  Like we have armed guards in the front.
• 1:41:56
  We have metal detectors.
• 1:41:57
  I've had death threats.
• 1:41:58
  It's like the stuff that you deal with as an entrepreneur
• 1:42:01
  is just wild.
• 1:42:03
  Absolutely wild.
• 1:42:04
  I don't have any stories like that.
• 1:42:07
  But there's no there's no end to the game, right?
• 1:42:09
  With infinite levels of bullshit and stress.
• 1:42:12
  It's a problem solution.
• 1:42:13
  Yes.
• 1:42:13
  They're an enemy cyber problem.
• 1:42:14
  You have another enemy cyber problem.
• 1:42:16
  When a solution, it creates a loop for another problem.
• 1:42:19
  Right?
• 1:42:20
  Even last night, and I think that's funny.
• 1:42:21
  And I got observation you made was the fact that,
• 1:42:24
  you know, you get used to the problems.
• 1:42:25
  Like I had an issue with like a site yesterday.
• 1:42:28
  It was like a factory setting, like a deep underlying setting.
• 1:42:31
  When I went wrong, I didn't act from like a motion
• 1:42:34
  and they were like, Oh, God, I need to explain that.
• 1:42:37
  I kind of looked at it.
• 1:42:38
  It looked like a problem.
• 1:42:39
  I can probably see before I fixed it and moved on.
• 1:42:42
  Now, maybe someone else would look at that
• 1:42:44
  and think, Oh, God, it does a massive issue here.
• 1:42:46
  I just had gone through a similar problem before.
• 1:42:49
  And I was, okay, done.
• 1:42:50
  Stuffed easy at night.
• 1:42:51
  That makes sense.
• 1:42:52
  So I think there's a there's a part of that journey,
• 1:42:55
  which is important, which is like when I was younger,
• 1:42:57
  running all these parodies and waves and events,
• 1:43:00
  everything that would have happened negatively
• 1:43:01
  would have really affected me.
• 1:43:03
  We're just like, now it's like, okay, just get on with it.
• 1:43:05
  Yeah.
• 1:43:06
  Or hire people who are also, you can trust, right?
• 1:43:08
  Like I think the biggest thing for me now is that
• 1:43:11
  when I'm doing these tours and I'm traveling a lot
• 1:43:14
  and I'm meeting people, we have a very solid team
• 1:43:16
  that keeps everything running and not just running,
• 1:43:19
  but also progressing.
• 1:43:20
  People are getting better results, improving.
• 1:43:23
  We're getting more people into our ecosystem
• 1:43:25
  because it's, it's a maturity, right?
• 1:43:27
  And I think that's my one thing against solar entrepreneurship,
• 1:43:31
  which is like how to build leverage
• 1:43:33
  of solar entrepreneurship on a fulfillment basis,
• 1:43:35
  unless it's purely product and marketing.
• 1:43:38
  But I don't know, I hear it all to now.
• 1:43:40
  What do you think?
• 1:43:42
  Build leverage on fulfillment?
• 1:43:43
  Yeah, it's just like the solar entrepreneurship kind of play.
• 1:43:47
  Like you're trading dollars for time or time for dollars, excuse me.
• 1:43:50
  Kind of, but the way that it's positioned
• 1:43:52
  is that if you have a good content engine
• 1:43:55
  like Justin Welsh's model, I guess he's very much
• 1:43:57
  an outlier of the success of it, which is like,
• 1:44:00
  you just create content that content follows into product,
• 1:44:03
  the product is self-paced.
• 1:44:05
  I think it depends on the product you sell.
• 1:44:06
  Yeah.
• 1:44:07
  So I feel like the product that you sell,
• 1:44:10
  I mean, what Justin Welsh sells is education.
• 1:44:14
  And of course, it's real.
• 1:44:15
  And that's as close to SaaS as you're ever going to get.
• 1:44:18
  So this is the same as Jack Butcher, by the way.
• 1:44:21
  So it's build one cell forever.
• 1:44:22
  So can you scale that?
• 1:44:25
  Yeah, I believe you can.
• 1:44:27
  I believe that, I mean, I believe that you can scale that infinitely.
• 1:44:30
  I think that there's no cap on how many times you can sell a course.
• 1:44:35
  I think that when you bring an agency component in,
• 1:44:37
  or anything where there's literally like time allocation required,
• 1:44:41
  to fulfill, that's when you run into scaling issues.
• 1:44:48
  I mean, you can also build a bigger agency.
• 1:44:50
  I just think that I think that it's just about like your margins,
• 1:44:54
  your EBIT, your profit.
• 1:44:55
  I think that it's just going to be more complex to scale,
• 1:44:59
  but you'll have a bigger mode.
• 1:45:01
  So Justin, I don't think Justin's mode is his personal brand.
• 1:45:06
  That is it.
• 1:45:07
  So someone else, who's a charismatic, well-spoken dude,
• 1:45:12
  builds an audience on LinkedIn, launches a LinkedIn course.
• 1:45:16
  Justin does no longer has a mode.
• 1:45:20
  That's the only concern.
• 1:45:22
  So it can scale infinitely,
• 1:45:24
  but it can also be like the, it can be disrupted very easily.
• 1:45:30
  An agency business, every time you sell a customer,
• 1:45:35
  you have to fulfill.
• 1:45:36
  You have so many people working so many hours to fulfill
• 1:45:38
  on that customer's whatever they purchase from you.
• 1:45:41
  So it's just going to take a lot more for someone else to do that.
• 1:45:45
  Good point.
• 1:45:46
  You can still leverage Justin's mode for your own company.
• 1:45:51
  You can be a follower to yourself.
• 1:45:52
  That's exactly right.
• 1:45:53
  Justin could launch an agency,
• 1:45:54
  and then he can make himself a little bit more redundant.
• 1:45:58
  That's an interesting point.
• 1:45:59
  But also, sorry, just last thought on this very quickly.
• 1:46:02
  All these, he doesn't want to build anything more.
• 1:46:07
  That's the X factor.
• 1:46:09
  He wants this kind of business.
• 1:46:12
  He does not care that it does not have a big mode around it.
• 1:46:15
  He does not, this is all the things we spoke about.
• 1:46:19
  That actually isn't his focus.
• 1:46:21
  His focus is lifestyle.
• 1:46:23
  That is what he is optimizing for.
• 1:46:27
  So is optimizing for lifestyle the smartest business move?
• 1:46:32
  It depends if that's what you care about.
• 1:46:34
  If you don't care about lifestyle,
• 1:46:36
  then I would say that what Justin's building
• 1:46:38
  is not the smartest mode.
• 1:46:40
  My question on that is more so,
• 1:46:43
  if you weren't making all the money that you're making,
• 1:46:46
  would you still be optimizing for what?
• 1:46:47
  You say you're optimizing now?
• 1:46:49
  If you aren't making all the money that you're making.
• 1:46:52
  So let's just say, let's just use Justin as an example,
• 1:46:54
  but not looking at him specifically.
• 1:46:56
  Say someone, Tom has a five million year content business.
• 1:47:01
  But, and now he's optimizing for lifestyle.
• 1:47:06
  But if he wasn't making five million a year,
• 1:47:08
  and he was only making,
• 1:47:09
  since that was $1 a year,
• 1:47:10
  would he still be saying he's optimizing for lifestyle?
• 1:47:13
  Because you wouldn't have the cash that you need
• 1:47:14
  to upload.
• 1:47:15
  So that's why everyone needs a number.
• 1:47:18
  You have to know your number.
• 1:47:19
  But do you get the number?
• 1:47:21
  So that's the last one.
• 1:47:22
  I think you can work backwards from cost of living,
• 1:47:25
  how many trips you want to take in a year?
• 1:47:27
  What's your rent to your mortgage?
• 1:47:28
  What kind of schools do your kid,
• 1:47:30
  do you want your kids to go to?
• 1:47:32
  Do you care about like owning a $500,000 car,
• 1:47:37
  $500,000 watch?
• 1:47:38
  Do you care about flying private, flying commercial?
• 1:47:41
  Like you can build your number.
• 1:47:43
  Good point.
• 1:47:45
  I don't think anyone really does that.
• 1:47:46
  Very few people do that on one size.
• 1:47:48
  No one does that, man.
• 1:47:49
  Because everyone's just like,
• 1:47:50
  I need more and more and more and more.
• 1:47:51
  What's more?
• 1:47:53
  Like most people,
• 1:47:54
  most people would be just fine living on 50 grand a month.
• 1:47:59
  50 grand a month, yeah.
• 1:48:00
  50 grand a month is a lot, you say it,
• 1:48:02
  but I mean, a lot of people make a lot more than that.
• 1:48:04
  50 grand a month, I mean like in high-tech states,
• 1:48:07
  that's like 25,
• 1:48:08
  instead of like private school,
• 1:48:10
  instead of mortgage,
• 1:48:11
  like in New York City,
• 1:48:13
  it's a lot, but it's not a lot.
• 1:48:14
  Yeah, I get to.
• 1:48:15
  And if your spouse doesn't work,
• 1:48:17
  it's a lot, but it's not a lot.
• 1:48:18
  So, but it's not crazy.
• 1:48:20
  It is, right?
• 1:48:21
  But if you live in a town of like 3,000 people,
• 1:48:25
  and you don't have kids,
• 1:48:27
  and you just like the nature or whatever.
• 1:48:30
  So that's, that's what you've got to do this exercise.
• 1:48:32
  So that's my problem.
• 1:48:33
  So on paper,
• 1:48:36
  we make a lot of cash,
• 1:48:38
  I don't spend any of it
• 1:48:40
  because I don't have a high cost living.
• 1:48:42
  So, I don't spend anything.
• 1:48:43
  I really don't care to, by the way,
• 1:48:46
  I hate fancy restaurants.
• 1:48:48
  Like I just say that like very, very high-end restaurant.
• 1:48:50
  Yeah, good food.
• 1:48:51
  Give me more steak, dude.
• 1:48:52
  Don't give me.
• 1:48:53
  So, Gina,
• 1:48:54
  so Gina was Michelin star, I can't stand it.
• 1:48:55
  I like, I like just like really good food.
• 1:48:57
  That's all I care about.
• 1:49:00
  I don't fly private.
• 1:49:01
  I follow business her first.
• 1:49:03
  If I made more money,
• 1:49:06
  I thought about this a lot.
• 1:49:07
  If you're gonna fly private,
• 1:49:09
  first of all, it's like insanely expensive.
• 1:49:11
  But you also don't want to do like the BS planes.
• 1:49:13
  You want like nice planes.
• 1:49:15
  I don't want like some fucking tiny...
• 1:49:16
  Shalmo.
• 1:49:17
  Yeah, like I see some people flying private
• 1:49:19
  and like he's like shit, tiny jets.
• 1:49:21
  I'm like bro, just fucking go fly Delta first.
• 1:49:23
  Like or go fly like like Emirates, like first cloud.
• 1:49:26
  Like you don't have to do this to yourself.
• 1:49:27
  Like it's not that cool.
• 1:49:28
  So funny.
• 1:49:29
  I'm six too, bro.
• 1:49:29
  I don't want to be like sitting like this in that.
• 1:49:33
  That's so funny.
• 1:49:34
  But even with the number, right?
• 1:49:35
  You know, even for ourselves,
• 1:49:36
  so like we're married, no kids.
• 1:49:39
  We haven't like a really nice house.
• 1:49:41
  Maybe you figured how much you spent like per month?
• 1:49:44
  Dude, when I'm home, when I'm home,
• 1:49:48
  probably no more than like including rent and stuff,
• 1:49:51
  probably less than I think I'm on.
• 1:49:53
  That's because you live overseas though.
• 1:49:55
  Yeah.
• 1:49:56
  Okay, so rent, rent alone in some cities would be like 10k.
• 1:49:59
  Exactly.
• 1:50:00
  But again, that's a decision, right?
• 1:50:01
  So let's, so let's not talk about like American specifically
• 1:50:05
  because I know there's like a lot of opportunity here,
• 1:50:07
  good New York, Los Angeles itself.
• 1:50:09
  But let's say you're based from like Ireland, UK.
• 1:50:10
  Yeah.
• 1:50:11
  My advice is immediately get out of those countries
• 1:50:14
  because they're declining countries, 100%.
• 1:50:16
  UK, Ireland, the company declining.
• 1:50:17
  They're just small-minded, backward countries.
• 1:50:21
  And if you're living in London,
• 1:50:22
  you're spending 15 grand a month and a half.
• 1:50:23
  Yeah, and it's shit, right?
• 1:50:24
  Like the place you're living in this shit,
• 1:50:26
  it's a bad, it's dangerous.
• 1:50:28
  I'm almost gonna stop.
• 1:50:29
  So my recommendations get out of there.
• 1:50:31
  Where you can go is you go to Asia,
• 1:50:33
  you're going to Dubai.
• 1:50:34
  I looked at Dubai.
• 1:50:35
  We were going to move to business there,
• 1:50:36
  but my business is based in America.
• 1:50:38
  And we're going to move to business to Dubai.
• 1:50:40
  And then I was just like, do I even want to be there?
• 1:50:44
  Because you can't be there 12 months of the year,
• 1:50:46
  because it's so hot.
• 1:50:47
  It's like 120 degrees for like four months of the year.
• 1:50:50
  Also, it's not really not fun.
• 1:50:53
  Like, you know, I'm not a guy that's going to be
• 1:50:54
  in the beach club, right?
• 1:50:55
  So it's like, that I really want to do that.
• 1:50:57
  Some of my mates, their parents are like
• 1:50:58
  9,000 USD a month, and it's like average.
• 1:51:01
  Yeah.
• 1:51:02
  Two beds, okay?
• 1:51:03
  So it's okay, it's not great.
• 1:51:05
  And I guess all to myself,
• 1:51:06
  do I really want to do that?
• 1:51:07
  I've lived in Singapore.
• 1:51:08
  Singapore is pretty similar to like LA or Coswise.
• 1:51:12
  And then in Bali, I just have a really good
• 1:51:13
  center of living.
• 1:51:14
  So I've a huge house, low cost of living on my dogs there.
• 1:51:18
  I've businesses there, great gyms, great restaurants.
• 1:51:22
  My center of living is really, really good.
• 1:51:24
  So if I want to come to Miami, I can spend a few weeks here.
• 1:51:28
  I can spend a few weeks at our places.
• 1:51:30
  So it's kind of like understanding again, that number,
• 1:51:33
  but not utilizing that number to be really high
• 1:51:35
  for some reason.
• 1:51:36
  Like does that make sense?
• 1:51:37
  Like you don't get more fulfillment from spending
• 1:51:39
  more money on random stuff, something.
• 1:51:41
  Exactly.
• 1:51:41
  So when I said 50 grand, now it was more just like a,
• 1:51:45
  it was like a benchmark for most people to be like,
• 1:51:47
  okay, I can build a business that makes 50 grand a month.
• 1:51:50
  Justin's, Justin's as like 1.2 million, right?
• 1:51:53
  Here.
• 1:51:54
  A year.
• 1:51:55
  He has no expenses, 100 grand a month.
• 1:51:57
  Okay, congratulations.
• 1:51:59
  It's already double what I just said.
• 1:52:00
  So imagine you had an extra 90 grand a month
• 1:52:03
  per year for living overseas.
• 1:52:06
  And he's similar to me in the fact that he doesn't have kids,
• 1:52:10
  right?
• 1:52:11
  So that's what he's building a lifestyle business
• 1:52:13
  because he doesn't need the cash.
• 1:52:15
  Whereas when I'm in May to Ned, who I mentioned before,
• 1:52:17
  know his two kids were in university in the US.
• 1:52:20
  He was based in Singapore, you know,
• 1:52:22
  he's seven bedroom house in Singapore.
• 1:52:24
  He was CEO of a company called E-Trade.
• 1:52:26
  He was making like 75K a month of CEO.
• 1:52:29
  I know E-Trade, that's a big company.
• 1:52:30
  He was CEO of the company.
• 1:52:32
  And he was, you know, burning through all the cash
• 1:52:34
  because he has a family, right?
• 1:52:35
  So, bro, you can spend 50 grand at live for a table,
• 1:52:40
  close to the DJ booth one night.
• 1:52:43
  But again, it goes back to like,
• 1:52:44
  what do you care about that?
• 1:52:45
  Exactly, right?
• 1:52:46
  But even if you're optimizing for family
• 1:52:47
  and, you know, I recommend most people
• 1:52:50
  to do like building like a well-oiled family,
• 1:52:52
  even if it's just you and your spouse,
• 1:52:53
  which is our scenario,
• 1:52:55
  that you don't need all those bells and whistles,
• 1:52:57
  like you've a nice watch.
• 1:52:59
  I'd actually like to get a nice watch soon,
• 1:53:00
  just like a collectible, you know?
• 1:53:01
  It's like 12.
• 1:53:03
  Yeah, it's not.
• 1:53:04
  That's not expensive, right?
• 1:53:05
  Does that make sense?
• 1:53:07
  No, obviously, everything is in perspective.
• 1:53:10
  But I just think that if you have that frame,
• 1:53:13
  which I think is really nice,
• 1:53:14
  so you said for your number,
• 1:53:16
  it allows you to build a much more calmer business.
• 1:53:19
  So that's why I like my career a lot
• 1:53:21
  because my career is by building cal,
• 1:53:23
  elegant, systematized businesses.
• 1:53:24
  Which is...
• 1:53:25
  Yeah, it pulls over a million,
• 1:53:26
  it pulls out like three.
• 1:53:27
  And more, I need to do like a little bit now,
• 1:53:29
  to do a lot more now.
• 1:53:30
  Yeah.
• 1:53:31
  Bro, it's a course and a community at the day, right?
• 1:53:33
  And I have a lot of respect for what he's done and what he's built.
• 1:53:35
  But the reason I'm saying this is because
• 1:53:37
  his lifestyle,
• 1:53:38
  similar to Justin,
• 1:53:39
  similar to mine is that I can be here
• 1:53:41
  and I've spent a lot of money when I've been in Asia,
• 1:53:44
  I've been in America for the past few weeks,
• 1:53:46
  pseudo super expensive,
• 1:53:48
  which tells very expensive for anything decent.
• 1:53:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:53:51
  But I'm going to talk to myself, okay, it's September.
• 1:53:54
  I'm what you're going to do for September.
• 1:53:55
  I won't be back here for a while.
• 1:53:56
  I don't mind, right?
• 1:53:57
  Because when I go back to living in Asia,
• 1:53:58
  it's going to be chill.
• 1:54:00
  But there's two ways to look at that.
• 1:54:02
  I don't go back there, I'm going to go, oh, God,
• 1:54:03
  I'm not going to make a lot of money.
• 1:54:04
  I'm going to go very cheap.
• 1:54:05
  I still want to push on a lot.
• 1:54:07
  It just allows me to build a camera business, you know,
• 1:54:10
  and optimize for the right clients,
• 1:54:12
  turning their own clients,
• 1:54:13
  not looking for a quick cash, you know,
• 1:54:15
  because I don't need the money
• 1:54:17
  and that's the big difference I'm all people have is up.
• 1:54:20
  But I also didn't need the money in the beginning too.
• 1:54:22
  It's like, you know, we're similar.
• 1:54:23
  I just eat chicken and rice and go to the gym, right?
• 1:54:25
  Like, you know, I'm not going to be in these clubs.
• 1:54:28
  I'm out in the clubs.
• 1:54:29
  I'm out in the party scene.
• 1:54:30
  I'm not rentin' those tables.
• 1:54:33
  I'm off buying Daytona's.
• 1:54:35
  So what am I, why don't you join the money on?
• 1:54:37
  I think that's why people have to do it.
• 1:54:39
  I think it's very toxic in Miami,
• 1:54:41
  because, man, dude, it's so, I don't really understand.
• 1:54:46
  This city is a little bit wild.
• 1:54:47
  I see more, you know, in R.M., like Richard Miller.
• 1:54:50
  I see more $500,000 watches walking down the street
• 1:54:53
  than I've ever seen in my life.
• 1:54:55
  And I know for a fact that the people Miami
• 1:54:56
  are not rich with the people in New York.
• 1:54:58
  I don't see a single R.M. in New York.
• 1:55:00
  So what are people trying to optimize for in the city?
• 1:55:03
  I have no idea.
• 1:55:04
  Status.
• 1:55:05
  The stupid fucking game to play, because you'll always lose.
• 1:55:07
  You'll always lose.
• 1:55:08
  Because the second you think your $500,000 watches
• 1:55:11
  is something cool, you'll go meet a billionaire
• 1:55:15
  who's flying a 737, you feel like a fucking idiot.
• 1:55:18
  So I just mean like there's, you could never win a status game.
• 1:55:22
  So why not play a game that you're actually happy with?
• 1:55:24
  As opposed to, again, you know,
• 1:55:26
  trying to impress people don't even give a shit about you.
• 1:55:28
  It's zigging whenever I'm so sagging.
• 1:55:29
  Yeah.
• 1:55:30
  This is accent approach, right?
• 1:55:31
  So I think that that actually, oh, go ahead.
• 1:55:32
  I have a funny thing on that.
• 1:55:34
  So I like watches, I guess like R.M.'s,
• 1:55:36
  I like observing them, I like going in,
• 1:55:39
  checking them out and so on.
• 1:55:40
  And whenever I'm trying to people watch as I always joke,
• 1:55:41
  being like, oh, yeah, this is mine.
• 1:55:43
  It's my dog.
• 1:55:43
  Yeah, it's on you.
• 1:55:44
  And it's just funny.
• 1:55:46
  It's just different, right?
• 1:55:47
  Even when I'm living in Bali, I don't wear shoes.
• 1:55:49
  I just like, I go around places I don't wear shoes.
• 1:55:51
  People like, you don't wear shoes?
• 1:55:52
  I'm like, yeah, I don't need shoes.
• 1:55:54
  Because it's like, that is a very Bali vibe.
• 1:55:55
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:55:56
  It's just different.
• 1:55:57
  And it's just like, oh, okay, when, you know,
• 1:56:00
  because we just don't have to play those games, right?
• 1:56:02
  It's the games we guess up.
• 1:56:03
  It's again, it's a counter trend.
• 1:56:05
  If everyone's buying a dead Hona,
• 1:56:07
  you don't need to buy the dead Hona,
• 1:56:09
  you can go, look, a different approach.
• 1:56:11
  You can go buy whatever F you want.
• 1:56:13
  But I think that people don't do enough work on themselves
• 1:56:15
  to understand what they actually want.
• 1:56:16
  In security.
• 1:56:17
  So then they default to what society tells them they should have.
• 1:56:22
  And that's why I think entrepreneurship is a matrix.
• 1:56:25
  100% is because you've given up the nine to five to work seven
• 1:56:28
  to nine p.m.
• 1:56:30
  And now you're playing a different game.
• 1:56:32
  It's a status game all the time.
• 1:56:35
  So it's always like, get there,
• 1:56:36
  first 100 km on your first million a month and so on.
• 1:56:39
  Especially the online business space is definitely,
• 1:56:41
  again, my am is prime for it, prime there and Dubai.
• 1:56:45
  It's just based off status, you know?
• 1:56:48
  So, but I think that's a very toxic game to play.
• 1:56:50
  Yeah, because you end up building an amazing business.
• 1:56:53
  But then don't get any don't have the appreciation or value it yourself.
• 1:56:57
  Yeah, that makes sense.
• 1:56:58
  And this goes, but this isn't saying, oh,
• 1:57:01
  you know, you have to begin your mind and you're learning and so on.
• 1:57:04
  So for and you're for you forever have like a beginner mindset.
• 1:57:07
  This is like genuinely having zero self, like love, I guess,
• 1:57:13
  to appreciate what you've done and what you've built,
• 1:57:15
  because you spend most your time trying to impress people don't care.
• 1:57:19
  Very sad.
• 1:57:20
  Very sad. I wonder why.
• 1:57:22
  This is not just me like asking this as a question.
• 1:57:25
  I really have no idea why online entrepreneurship turned into this.
• 1:57:32
  So I should go point, man.
• 1:57:33
  Because like Silicon Valley isn't this.
• 1:57:36
  You go look at somebody who's sold the company for seven, eight, nine figures.
• 1:57:43
  Even billionaires, they don't, they don't look like clowns.
• 1:57:46
  So I think it's just because a lot of guys when you were younger.
• 1:57:49
  So a lot of the bigger guys and I wonder, you know, the guys you see when
• 1:57:53
  they were younger, they were making good cash.
• 1:57:55
  So that's a man, Sebastian, Georgia, who just interviewed, like Luke Belmer,
• 1:58:00
  all these guys, those are like, those are like, oh, G.
• 1:58:03
  Yeah, they're like the top of the market, right?
• 1:58:05
  Yeah.
• 1:58:06
  But they kind of set a precedent that like this was normal, right?
• 1:58:09
  They're like running.
• 1:58:09
  God, he looks like he's dressed like all money all the time.
• 1:58:12
  And that's intentional, right?
• 1:58:13
  He's trying to, so he looks like James Bond.
• 1:58:16
  Yeah.
• 1:58:16
  So Luke Belmer doesn't, he doesn't, he's much more natural based on RM, right?
• 1:58:21
  Yeah.
• 1:58:21
  But what I'm trying to say is like that ecosystem is really inspiring to people because
• 1:58:27
  it shows that it's possible.
• 1:58:28
  So it's good to open up the world, but it shows a, it's some, so basically that makes
• 1:58:33
  it seem easy, okay?
• 1:58:35
  And as a result, you have some people who are insecure, who flashed numbers, you see
• 1:58:39
  the screenshots on Twitter, which is like Porsche 911, a Daytona watch, a chick from
• 1:58:45
  like only fans and a, and a shop before a screenshot, right?
• 1:58:49
  Yeah.
• 1:58:50
  And then that makes it look super, super possible.
• 1:58:54
  Oh my God, that's funny.
• 1:58:55
  So when you have people who do not have the receipts, they actually haven't done the
• 1:58:58
  work.
• 1:58:59
  They start living through that lens, say that they're making it up.
• 1:59:02
  Yeah.
• 1:59:03
  They're actually making it up.
• 1:59:04
  So that's why people with the loudest voices are probably the guys that are making the
• 1:59:07
  least amount of money and they're proving that, man, I've seen that time and time again.
• 1:59:13
  And it's usually from areas in security, people that were friends with me ended up turning
• 1:59:16
  into that.
• 1:59:17
  And it's just trying to play a status game.
• 1:59:19
  Now, as a result, you have this massive disconnect from people who are actually successful,
• 1:59:24
  who are unplugging from that game.
• 1:59:25
  Yeah.
• 1:59:26
  And then there's people then that are trying to flash that game and this gets amplified
• 1:59:30
  in areas like this.
• 1:59:32
  And now there's kind of red pill, kind of community approach, which is like, you know,
• 1:59:36
  you can't get the girl until you get the 100 KM one.
• 1:59:39
  And then the girl that you get is actually an only fans chick.
• 1:59:41
  And then it's like, she's only with gang with guys because they actually have cash.
• 1:59:43
  And it's crazy.
• 1:59:44
  It's really bad vortex.
• 1:59:45
  I can't stand red, but I don't really understand it at all.
• 1:59:49
  I think red pill plus money.
• 1:59:50
  That's what that's what Twitter money is.
• 1:59:52
  It is though, but it's so stupid.
• 1:59:55
  So stupid.
• 1:59:56
  But like if you think about it in contrast to like what relationships are, at least met
• 2:00:00
  when I was at the very set of my journey, we built together.
• 2:00:03
  She supports me.
• 2:00:04
  I support her.
• 2:00:05
  You know, it's much more of a natural organic thing, whereas like I think the whole
• 2:00:08
  idea of like go making money, go make your bag and then go get the girl.
• 2:00:11
  Yeah.
• 2:00:12
  I just think it's awful, but especially your summer like here, or Dubai, but then there's
• 2:00:16
  like in red pill, there's like, uh, like he's like undertones of like this respect.
• 2:00:22
  Oh, and sometimes like, and sometimes overtones too, which is just is a whole other, it's
• 2:00:26
  a whole other thing that yes, so there's, and I also find what pisses me off is people
• 2:00:32
  adopted into their content strategy, because they don't have an identity, because that
• 2:00:37
  makes sense.
• 2:00:38
  When you don't have an identity, you'll be given to people that do have identity adopted.
• 2:00:41
  One of my biggest issues with Chris Williamson is that he adopts red pill into his content
• 2:00:46
  strategy.
• 2:00:47
  And again, I think it's so much smarter than that, but he brings it in.
• 2:00:51
  And a lot of my favorite podcasters that I listened to growing up, it sort of inspired
• 2:00:55
  me to do this shit.
• 2:00:56
  They turned into red pill or politics.
• 2:00:58
  You took the words that I met.
• 2:00:59
  I was going to say about politics.
• 2:01:00
  So like all politics and stuff.
• 2:01:02
  So I would actually, I would go a little bit of self-righteousness and this could
• 2:01:05
  be controversial, controversial, it's like politics, red pill, and then adding in religion
• 2:01:11
  into it as well.
• 2:01:12
  Because if I'm now my newfound, my newfound religion, which is great, you can do whatever
• 2:01:17
  you want.
• 2:01:18
  But if you start inserting that into what things should be or shouldn't be, create a huge
• 2:01:23
  dilemma.
• 2:01:24
  What what it's marketing, right?
• 2:01:25
  We have our tribe, we have the tribe, the regains, we chose stones that everyone
• 2:01:28
  ever against.
• 2:01:29
  That's how these people blow up.
• 2:01:31
  What is it?
• 2:01:32
  It's outdated.
• 2:01:33
  Yeah, exactly.
• 2:01:34
  That's what we're going to get to this because bear in mind, if someone blows up, that means
• 2:01:38
  that the counter side is that some people are giving out about it, right?
• 2:01:42
  So if you blow up because you build a great business, you look great, you're healthy, you
• 2:01:46
  have people that are the opposite of say, oh, you don't need money, right?
• 2:01:50
  The opposite of people blowing up about a religion argument is that it's causing controversy
• 2:01:55
  between religions.
• 2:01:56
  Yeah.
• 2:01:57
  Right?
• 2:01:58
  So that's an example.
• 2:01:59
  There's also relationships to red pill example and as a politics example, Democrat Republican,
• 2:02:02
  right?
• 2:02:03
  Tate did, which is very strategic is, yes, all the matrix is manufactured.
• 2:02:07
  It was based off kind of real examples of what happens in the system, right?
• 2:02:12
  But Tate did something very interesting, which is that he got people to wake up in terms
• 2:02:18
  of like, yes, you do need to take control of your life.
• 2:02:21
  You need to take responsibility, which is a great message, of course.
• 2:02:25
  But you have guys that were not ready for the message that took it further, let me give
• 2:02:29
  an example.
• 2:02:30
  That's where guys go down the red boat route and then they say, oh, well, then I should
• 2:02:33
  do this and do this.
• 2:02:34
  It's like, dude, one, you're not Tate, you don't have that influence on authority.
• 2:02:37
  And two, you're missing the point, you're missing the point of it.
• 2:02:41
  So Tate was actually influential on my character because he because made me realize that like,
• 2:02:45
  I need to take more responsibility for everyone's happened in my life, right?
• 2:02:48
  Which is a great message.
• 2:02:49
  Which is a great message, right?
• 2:02:50
  And of course, other things got blurred and whatever.
• 2:02:53
  You don't even need to say that, right?
• 2:02:54
  It's an obvious thing.
• 2:02:56
  But it's like, like this conversation today, you take the things that you are most helpful
• 2:03:00
  for you and you disregard the rest.
• 2:03:02
  Well, for me, Tate was like, he's a great marketer, and his and his conscience strategies
• 2:03:07
  phenomenal.
• 2:03:08
  He's got to does the same content strategy as Tate as well.
• 2:03:11
  And now I'm learning that strategy and I told you have a separate video editor guy.
• 2:03:15
  Now he's doing that.
• 2:03:16
  And he's cranking out like whatever 7 to 10 clips per week and we're going to ramp it up
• 2:03:20
  on all these different, like all these different, like, whatever channels.
• 2:03:25
  Yeah.
• 2:03:26
  All these different channels that aren't like my main channel, right?
• 2:03:27
  And he's driving people back.
• 2:03:29
  But dude, I know what a guy said started that here.
• 2:03:31
  Yeah.
• 2:03:32
  You know, Logan Forsyth, media scaling.
• 2:03:33
  Yeah.
• 2:03:34
  I know them.
• 2:03:35
  I met them at a conference in Orlando.
• 2:03:36
  Yeah.
• 2:03:37
  Definitely speak to them.
• 2:03:38
  If you're interested, I literally just prefer it someone to Logan yesterday.
• 2:03:41
  Yeah.
• 2:03:42
  Yeah.
• 2:03:43
  So like that sub account approach.
• 2:03:44
  Yeah.
• 2:03:45
  They're definitely one of the best in the world.
• 2:03:46
  They're doing it.
• 2:03:47
  Yeah.
• 2:03:48
  I'll chat with them.
• 2:03:49
  I have a guy doing it now, but I'll chat with them.
• 2:03:50
  But yeah.
• 2:03:51
  So I mean, it's so.
• 2:03:52
  So okay.
• 2:03:53
  So I have a question.
• 2:03:54
  I have an actual question.
• 2:03:55
  As a creator.
• 2:03:56
  We're just being shoot.
• 2:03:57
  It's good, though.
• 2:03:58
  It's good.
• 2:03:59
  As a creator who's looking to start when you look at all the examples of people that kill it
• 2:04:05
  with political content, religious content, red pill content.
• 2:04:09
  So you dive into it.
• 2:04:10
  Go ahead first.
• 2:04:11
  Or should you stay away from it?
• 2:04:12
  Absolutely.
• 2:04:13
  Avoid like the plague.
• 2:04:14
  Because you don't want your brand to touch just something that you don't even believe in.
• 2:04:18
  Like most people's beliefs, they don't really believe it.
• 2:04:21
  Like the red pill stuff.
• 2:04:22
  It's like, it's like a trend that someone goes through when they're going to break up.
• 2:04:26
  Same with like any hard belief like that that you truly don't see yourself doing forever.
• 2:04:32
  Why are you doing it right now?
• 2:04:33
  You know, so politics is a great example.
• 2:04:36
  Even I thought many people that were advisors in a company just had to stay out of it when you're in America.
• 2:04:40
  Because you don't want you don't know enough about it.
• 2:04:42
  Right.
• 2:04:43
  It's awesome.
• 2:04:44
  People that know the least about it are most vocal with anything in life.
• 2:04:47
  And two, you don't care.
• 2:04:49
  So if I don't care about it, why on earth would I go talk about all the time?
• 2:04:53
  Am I interested in US economy?
• 2:04:55
  I'm interested in the sub factors from it, but am I interested in the main thing?
• 2:04:59
  No.
• 2:05:00
  So it's almost like you don't want to attach your brand to it.
• 2:05:03
  Stick to your own core values.
• 2:05:05
  What are you?
• 2:05:06
  What do you believe in?
• 2:05:07
  Who are you as an individual?
• 2:05:08
  Are you truly an honest person or truly a kind person?
• 2:05:11
  Is that your brand stick with those elements?
• 2:05:14
  And yes, is your business based on a few different levels of content pillars?
• 2:05:18
  Lean into that.
• 2:05:19
  The first thing that I do whenever I'm working with someone is it's a pyramid.
• 2:05:23
  I'm not pyramid.
• 2:05:24
  It's like a schema effectively, which is like our content pillars are broken into personal experiences.
• 2:05:29
  Who we are, what we've done, our achievements.
• 2:05:32
  Then we have our tactics and techniques of what we do.
• 2:05:35
  So let's say for us it's content specifically podcasted specifically.
• 2:05:38
  And then we have how to go.
• 2:05:40
  So how would I do X?
• 2:05:41
  How to do what?
• 2:05:42
  How to do Z?
• 2:05:43
  That's it.
• 2:05:44
  Anything outside of that is not allowed to be talked about.
• 2:05:46
  So I will often catch our clients talking with things that are outside of this framework.
• 2:05:51
  And I'm like, not in that you're talking about as one benefit in the brand, benefiting you or actually contributing to revenue.
• 2:05:57
  Because we've built out the schema.
• 2:05:59
  How we should look.
• 2:06:00
  And if you're over here talking about relationships and X, Y and Z.
• 2:06:03
  Just to jump on some stupid ban.
• 2:06:05
  Exactly.
• 2:06:06
  Now, however, relationships could be a value of yours.
• 2:06:09
  So again, we're married.
• 2:06:11
  I think marriage is a very important framework and value to me.
• 2:06:14
  I play long-term games, long-term people.
• 2:06:16
  I told you we're starting a couples podcast too.
• 2:06:18
  So yeah, exactly.
• 2:06:19
  Yes.
• 2:06:20
  And I also like trying with other guys that are also married because like we both have similar views on like longevity.
• 2:06:26
  That's an important part of my brand.
• 2:06:29
  And that's an important part of my business because it just shows I'm serious about stuff.
• 2:06:33
  Right.
• 2:06:34
  Versus multiple why is multiple girlfriends talk about what's happening on any fan that's like, we don't need to talk with this.
• 2:06:41
  You're literally wasting your time.
• 2:06:42
  And that's if you go back to the value of content.
• 2:06:44
  Yeah.
• 2:06:45
  Is there a value in doing this?
• 2:06:47
  Is there a value in creating a podcast?
• 2:06:48
  Yes.
• 2:06:49
  If it's all with the right stuff.
• 2:06:50
  So my thought on this.
• 2:06:52
  And then I think that the last thing I want to talk to you about is just like some of the like the growth strategies that have worked best for you and your clients.
• 2:07:01
  It's very interesting.
• 2:07:02
  But the last thought on this that I have at least, maybe you can comment on it, is when people jump on these trends.
• 2:07:09
  These like highly controversial trends.
• 2:07:13
  I think it's a losing strategy for most because there will always be somebody that's willing to sit.
• 2:07:19
  There will always be somebody who's willing to say something more audacious or more controversial.
• 2:07:24
  So true.
• 2:07:25
  And you can never win that game.
• 2:07:26
  And it's not a game trust you ever want to play.
• 2:07:29
  And I'll give you, I'll give you an example of something that I just discovered like last week or maybe I won't name the podcast.
• 2:07:35
  It doesn't really matter.
• 2:07:37
  But there's a podcaster who again, everybody won't know the name.
• 2:07:43
  And he's more recently.
• 2:07:46
  I like them a lot.
• 2:07:47
  A while back.
• 2:07:48
  Didn't listen to her for a lot period of time.
• 2:07:50
  I tuned in again because somebody flagged me on something that he said.
• 2:07:55
  And he asked questions that are very much focused on like race.
• 2:08:00
  Like explicitly focused on race.
• 2:08:02
  Like asking, asking questions about which race does this worse or which race does this better.
• 2:08:09
  Dude, and I was listening and I'm like, bro, what the fuck happened to you?
• 2:08:14
  But the answer is, well, he found out the controversial content gets views.
• 2:08:21
  And he found out that not many people are willing to ask these questions.
• 2:08:27
  No shit because they're fucking insane questions.
• 2:08:30
  But the thing is he asked these questions.
• 2:08:33
  And now this is like a thing that comes up a lot.
• 2:08:36
  And I see him asking these questions.
• 2:08:39
  And I'm like, listen, now he's beating everyone else who's not who's not willing to go that far.
• 2:08:45
  So now to get more virality, are you going to start asking like racist questions?
• 2:08:50
  Like I would hope not.
• 2:08:52
  But the point is you can't win this game.
• 2:08:54
  It's a game that nobody should ever want to win.
• 2:08:57
  But if you dabbled in red pill and you dabbled in all this other stuff,
• 2:09:03
  someone will just take it to the next extreme.
• 2:09:05
  And what's funny is I've worked with a lot of the bigger growth operator agencies who build products or evil.
• 2:09:13
  And the number one thing that they don't focus on is people who do reactionary videos who react to things.
• 2:09:20
  They react to a trend controversial topic, what not because it doesn't build a brand.
• 2:09:24
  Yeah, because you'll pull in a ton of use.
• 2:09:26
  And people will look at it.
• 2:09:27
  Oh, that's controversial.
• 2:09:28
  And things move on with their life.
• 2:09:29
  You don't stick to those videos.
• 2:09:31
  You see those videos.
• 2:09:32
  It doesn't build the cult.
• 2:09:34
  Right. So if you think about it, all of this is the antithesis of what a podcast is.
• 2:09:39
  It's sitting down, having a conversation, learning with someone.
• 2:09:43
  I would say I would say the format of podcasts is super conducive to learning, upskilling, becoming a better version.
• 2:09:53
  Yeah, because that's what context does.
• 2:09:56
  Context allows you to be able to do that.
• 2:09:59
  And mostly, but I'm doing that though.
• 2:10:01
  No, do you get me?
• 2:10:02
  Yeah.
• 2:10:03
  So that's where we had to kind of.
• 2:10:04
  So when I saw a lot of this stuff in 2022, 2023 kick up, it was something that I had to really, really hold in on.
• 2:10:10
  Even with our clients, even when we were asked to make certain videos, certain intro.
• 2:10:15
  It's like, okay, yes, you want to improve retention and so on.
• 2:10:18
  But we don't want to be seen as like the latest, like controversial thing.
• 2:10:22
  Yeah.
• 2:10:23
  Right.
• 2:10:24
  Touching on the thing you mentioned before, podcasting ecosystem is super fragmented.
• 2:10:28
  A lot of different things you can do.
• 2:10:30
  Audio video to social to newsletter to pay to collaborate.
• 2:10:35
  Like there's a million different things that you should be doing.
• 2:10:39
  If you've sort of gone through this podcast journey and your shows evolve and, you know, you do all the marketing shit for it.
• 2:10:45
  But that's super overwhelming.
• 2:10:47
  So if you can drill down into the things that kind of work the best and as a marketer, I hate that because you do have to test everything.
• 2:10:54
  But just from what your experience has been, what are the things that actually move the needle the most or the answer could be nothing.
• 2:10:59
  The answer could be doing it for a long period of time.
• 2:11:02
  But I think there was one show that you work with.
• 2:11:04
  It's in my nose, but I'm not going to check it now, because I can't remember what I can't remember where it is.
• 2:11:08
  I'm not cheap.
• 2:11:09
  But there's one show that you grew to like 100,000.
• 2:11:12
  To a bunch in a month that way as well.
• 2:11:14
  But it was very quick, quick, all relative.
• 2:11:18
  But what was like the one lever that worked.
• 2:11:22
  So we don't do any ads.
• 2:11:25
  We don't do any paid.
• 2:11:26
  You don't do any paid at all.
• 2:11:27
  No.
• 2:11:28
  Why not?
• 2:11:29
  For audio or video.
• 2:11:31
  For every.
• 2:11:32
  Okay, why not?
• 2:11:33
  I think the retention is very low on paid.
• 2:11:37
  So if you think about what paid is you're driving people to a product or awareness.
• 2:11:44
  If the retention is low, which it is like YouTube ads specifically, the retention could be like one second, two seconds.
• 2:11:50
  So it's big number or engagement.
• 2:11:53
  If the content isn't validated, it's basically like pissing away money.
• 2:11:57
  So instead I try to build a content flywheel, which is all organic.
• 2:12:01
  So everything is organic.
• 2:12:03
  And what that would entail is.
• 2:12:05
  So again, we focus on the strategy, making sure that those content pillars are dialed in.
• 2:12:09
  It's a revolving system.
• 2:12:10
  It's very, very dialed in on that.
• 2:12:12
  Every piece of content from there is of high quality.
• 2:12:15
  So let's say the air in a studio.
• 2:12:17
  We have Greg Wally production number one.
• 2:12:19
  Second, then it's going to be your thumbnails.
• 2:12:21
  We're actually actively working on making sure the CD or is incredibly high.
• 2:12:25
  The design is almost like a, almost like a painting.
• 2:12:28
  Right?
• 2:12:29
  Just to give context.
• 2:12:30
  So the caveat is YouTube YouTube.
• 2:12:33
  Yes.
• 2:12:34
  But this just feeds into everything else.
• 2:12:36
  Okay.
• 2:12:37
  So that's going to be the packaging, the writing, the content writing.
• 2:12:40
  The writing is actually going to be engaging.
• 2:12:42
  It's like a piece to get our thumbnail and so on.
• 2:12:44
  It's for entitled.
• 2:12:45
  And that's actually done before you start recording.
• 2:12:47
  So again, we the strategy is making sure the episode is.
• 2:12:49
  We know what we're trying to achieve with the episode.
• 2:12:51
  Yeah, it changes so on.
• 2:12:52
  But there's a bit of an idea there.
• 2:12:54
  This is when we go on the actual flywheel then, which is your newsletter.
• 2:12:57
  We're building.
• 2:12:58
  You're building the email list.
• 2:12:59
  You're building the lead magnets.
• 2:13:00
  You're pulling them into.
• 2:13:01
  I would pick one or two different platforms.
• 2:13:02
  I've always focused on LinkedIn business content.
• 2:13:04
  We could focus on Instagram.
• 2:13:05
  I would almost leave TikTok.
• 2:13:06
  You know, we've.
• 2:13:07
  I nearly never focused on TikTok ever.
• 2:13:09
  So having Instagram as your secondary or LinkedIn as your primary.
• 2:13:17
  And then bringing all of that content across because if you think about it,
• 2:13:20
  if you're struggling to get views and downloads, you can get that organic traffic
• 2:13:24
  by telling stories on LinkedIn, telling stories on Instagram,
• 2:13:26
  building up much more of a framework.
• 2:13:28
  You might not even have to release clips.
• 2:13:30
  Because you can do this all with having your clips just on YouTube.
• 2:13:33
  And on LinkedIn, you're writing.
• 2:13:35
  Stories, lessons, insights from the podcast from you specifically.
• 2:13:40
  And that's the flywheel model.
• 2:13:41
  My favorite rate.
• 2:13:42
  And it's almost a combination of seeing which sticks best.
• 2:13:45
  It could be LinkedIn.
• 2:13:46
  It could be the newsletter.
• 2:13:47
  And just doing more of it.
• 2:13:48
  Right.
• 2:13:49
  Because we're not trying to get.
• 2:13:50
  Millions of millions of views.
• 2:13:51
  We're trying to get the right people to the right audience.
• 2:13:53
  So we have some podcasts that are doing a couple of hundred views a week.
• 2:13:56
  A couple of thousand views a month.
• 2:13:58
  But those views are the right ICP.
• 2:14:00
  Okay.
• 2:14:01
  So that's how we're kind of growing it.
• 2:14:03
  And if you want to put flames on a fire, then we just do more of it.
• 2:14:06
  So that's how I've just never explored the ads approach.
• 2:14:09
  Maybe it works.
• 2:14:10
  Maybe we've experienced with that.
• 2:14:11
  And maybe some insight on that.
• 2:14:12
  But for me.
• 2:14:13
  If we can get the strategy dial,
• 2:14:15
  then then all of those key verticals on the road sides can really expand aggressively.
• 2:14:20
  Now, you don't need to do more content with that.
• 2:14:22
  Right.
• 2:14:23
  Because think about what LinkedIn is.
• 2:14:25
  Think about Instagram.
• 2:14:26
  It's their platforms that are going to help you push your content forward.
• 2:14:29
  So for me, it's much more about lean operation.
• 2:14:33
  We have like maybe 10 people per team.
• 2:14:35
  And then it's about dialing in those processes,
• 2:14:38
  making sure that everyone knows what the business is.
• 2:14:40
  Everyone knows what the content is.
• 2:14:41
  Everyone knows what the content pillars are.
• 2:14:43
  So we're pulling not just fun stuff,
• 2:14:45
  but the right stuff for them.
• 2:14:47
  You don't have any issues moving the audience away from all these platforms into a RSS feeder YouTube channel.
• 2:15:03
  Good question.
• 2:15:04
  I view it slightly differently.
• 2:15:05
  I view like in the ecosystem that.
• 2:15:08
  That's such a good point.
• 2:15:09
  So in the ecosystem, some people want to listen to the podcast.
• 2:15:12
  Yeah.
• 2:15:13
  So we want to watch a podcast.
• 2:15:14
  Some people will want to highlight a clip of 10 minutes.
• 2:15:17
  Some people can only consume clips.
• 2:15:19
  And then some people will have nothing to do with audio and video.
• 2:15:23
  And they'll just read your newsletter.
• 2:15:25
  They'll just see your post on LinkedIn or just see your tweet and Twitter.
• 2:15:29
  But you have to scale up to serving everyone on different verticals.
• 2:15:34
  So as you mentioned to me about my threads.
• 2:15:37
  Most people think threads are stupid.
• 2:15:38
  I think it's great.
• 2:15:39
  It's a great platform.
• 2:15:40
  Great organic reach on it.
• 2:15:41
  Yeah.
• 2:15:42
  A lot of those insights are what I'm talking about today.
• 2:15:44
  It's the same concepts and principles.
• 2:15:46
  So you got to serve people where they're at.
• 2:15:48
  Right.
• 2:15:49
  Yes, we can have we can index on YouTube.
• 2:15:51
  Yes, we can index on whatever platform you want to.
• 2:15:54
  But if you can find more people with the same content,
• 2:15:57
  then why wouldn't you bring that same content there?
• 2:15:59
  Right.
• 2:16:00
  And that concept of like repurposing is oversimplified,
• 2:16:04
  but it's not executed well.
• 2:16:05
  Right.
• 2:16:06
  Yeah.
• 2:16:07
  So it's almost like we need to have one true source of truth,
• 2:16:10
  which can be your platform podcast,
• 2:16:12
  which builds your newsletter.
• 2:16:14
  And then all of the content from there is elastic.
• 2:16:17
  It'll expand into six, seven posts on LinkedIn,
• 2:16:20
  20 tweets and so on.
• 2:16:22
  But if it's not growing, it's a content issue.
• 2:16:26
  If your content is good, you need to do more growth.
• 2:16:29
  Right.
• 2:16:30
  So I wouldn't launch a ton of clips.
• 2:16:32
  Unless I knew the episodes were really good,
• 2:16:34
  we'd have to go back and change and iterate it.
• 2:16:36
  If we are running a ton of clips and we're not seeing success,
• 2:16:39
  we go back to the content.
• 2:16:41
  Right.
• 2:16:42
  It's probably the podcast America fit.
• 2:16:43
  It's going back around that that a circle.
• 2:16:45
  So I just think that people are not putting more and up
• 2:16:47
  and more time into thinking really about the strategy
• 2:16:51
  and about the actual growth mechanisms.
• 2:16:54
  They're too focused on one or two folks and others.
• 2:16:56
  And if you're doing both and they're both running really well,
• 2:17:01
  then it's your opportunity to monetize it.
• 2:17:03
  And you can do it often.
• 2:17:04
  We dial all of that in first.
• 2:17:05
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:17:06
  Because how can you get people to your offer
• 2:17:08
  if you don't have the growth?
• 2:17:10
  And how can you get people to buy your offer
• 2:17:12
  if the strategy is wrong?
• 2:17:13
  And I understand now because now when you mention that,
• 2:17:16
  how are you getting people to your offer?
• 2:17:18
  You just said it.
• 2:17:19
  How are you getting people to your offer?
• 2:17:21
  You're not building a podcast,
• 2:17:23
  the sake of building a podcast.
• 2:17:25
  You do not need 10 million downloads a day on your podcast.
• 2:17:28
  What you do need is an offer.
• 2:17:30
  And if people discover your offer via LinkedIn
• 2:17:33
  or your newsletter and they buy your offer,
• 2:17:35
  that's a mission accomplished.
• 2:17:37
  And it's from the vessel, right?
• 2:17:38
  Yes.
• 2:17:39
  So it's like we focus on a podcast,
• 2:17:42
  but then the podcast then becomes everything else
• 2:17:44
  because the same podcast that you're releasing
• 2:17:45
  will still become everything you're doing
• 2:17:47
  on all different platforms anyway.
• 2:17:48
  Yeah.
• 2:17:49
  Right. So where do you want to show up at your face
• 2:17:51
  but the parasocial relationship is totally up to you?
• 2:17:54
  But if you don't want to do it,
• 2:17:55
  you have to pay for it.
• 2:17:56
  Right.
• 2:17:57
  So this is our opportunity to stop paying for attention,
• 2:18:00
  create a vessel, a content strategy
• 2:18:03
  that's very much aligned to your business,
• 2:18:05
  and then just run it every single day.
• 2:18:08
  So then you can increase the volume,
• 2:18:10
  daily posts, two posts a day, three posts a day,
• 2:18:14
  whatever.
• 2:18:15
  But if you know what's working,
• 2:18:16
  then you don't mind investing the money.
• 2:18:18
  Exactly.
• 2:18:19
  You can ramp it up the further.
• 2:18:20
  Right.
• 2:18:21
  But then there's also a diminishing part of returns
• 2:18:23
  for individual accounts.
• 2:18:24
  So yes, the sub account is a good vessel.
• 2:18:26
  No, I haven't.
• 2:18:27
  I have an experiment with it.
• 2:18:28
  But there is a point whereby
• 2:18:31
  I give an example.
• 2:18:33
  We have some podcasts that come to us that
• 2:18:35
  have come from the very big shows
• 2:18:37
  and they've been worked on by the very, very big shows
• 2:18:39
  but they're exhausted.
• 2:18:40
  They're doing a podcast a month
• 2:18:42
  and they're just absolutely fried.
• 2:18:44
  So what we do is we take them down to half the volume,
• 2:18:48
  eight to four,
• 2:18:49
  and focus on the four really good quality episodes.
• 2:18:51
  And then that's it.
• 2:18:52
  They're only recording weekly.
• 2:18:53
  Yes, you might be able to ramp it up a little bit more,
• 2:18:55
  but that just keeps it sustainable.
• 2:18:57
  A hundred reps.
• 2:18:58
  Yeah.
• 2:18:59
  And for a longer term horizon.
• 2:19:00
  I love that.
• 2:19:01
  All right, dude.
• 2:19:02
  We've gone through a lot today.
• 2:19:03
  I appreciate this.
• 2:19:04
  A lot of fun.
• 2:19:05
  Okay, I'll ask a couple like rapid fire to close this out.
• 2:19:08
  But where should people go connected to you?
• 2:19:11
  Anywhere, dude.
• 2:19:12
  YouTube.
• 2:19:13
  Darnily.
• 2:19:14
  Okay, easy.
• 2:19:15
  I'll put stuff in the show notes.
• 2:19:16
  Let me know.
• 2:19:17
  What's one thing that you're learning about right now
• 2:19:21
  that I haven't asked you about.
• 2:19:24
  That's really interesting.
• 2:19:25
  That's a good question.
• 2:19:27
  One thing that I've recently,
• 2:19:28
  a big insight,
• 2:19:29
  I've recently learned is that.
• 2:19:31
  Guesterboard.
• 2:19:33
  Right.
• 2:19:34
  Guester usually board.
• 2:19:35
  And there's sick of being asked the same thing,
• 2:19:38
  which is what I'm just trying to go super like counter trend
• 2:19:41
  with all my preparation,
• 2:19:42
  all my notes.
• 2:19:43
  Just completely unique.
• 2:19:45
  Whatever never do.
• 2:19:46
  That's why you don't like notes.
• 2:19:47
  Yeah, because I did it for so long.
• 2:19:49
  And I noticed that the more notes I had,
• 2:19:51
  the more I became everybody else.
• 2:19:53
  So it was like, let's just do something that's very counter trend.
• 2:19:56
  And let's just chill.
• 2:19:57
  We're literally just chilling now.
• 2:19:58
  Yeah.
• 2:19:59
  And allowing things to happen naturally,
• 2:20:00
  because I didn't do that for a long time.
• 2:20:02
  And if I was to go back and.
• 2:20:03
  Share my best episodes,
• 2:20:05
  it would be things that were much more natural like that.
• 2:20:07
  A genuine curiosity and inquisitive.
• 2:20:10
  Like you're a super inquisitive guy.
• 2:20:11
  Like you're listening,
• 2:20:12
  listening closely.
• 2:20:14
  You analyze people.
• 2:20:15
  This is not an offer.
• 2:20:17
  You know.
• 2:20:18
  You know what I think it is.
• 2:20:20
  I think it's like stop being so selfish.
• 2:20:22
  Yeah.
• 2:20:23
  I don't think it's a podcast problem.
• 2:20:24
  I think it's like a bigger ego problem.
• 2:20:27
  Yeah.
• 2:20:28
  I think people just don't give a shit about other people.
• 2:20:30
  I think that's the issue.
• 2:20:31
  I think that.
• 2:20:32
  I think Joe Rogan is genuinely interested AF
• 2:20:35
  in whoever's sitting across table from it.
• 2:20:37
  Yeah.
• 2:20:38
  If you people blame their phone,
• 2:20:39
  they blame the restaurant waiter
• 2:20:41
  who's coming in interrupting them.
• 2:20:42
  But it's not.
• 2:20:43
  It's like,
• 2:20:44
  that's where I love podcasting general,
• 2:20:45
  because you can be genuinely just stuck in the moment.
• 2:20:48
  I love it.
• 2:20:49
  I love it because very rarely.
• 2:20:51
  And like I might fall too.
• 2:20:53
  Like when I'm having conversation with somebody outside
• 2:20:55
  of what we're doing right now.
• 2:20:56
  Check out my phone.
• 2:20:57
  Like I'm watching TV at night.
• 2:20:59
  I have TV.
• 2:21:01
  I have computer.
• 2:21:02
  I have my cell phone beside me.
• 2:21:03
  Like I have three screens in front of it.
• 2:21:05
  So much information.
• 2:21:06
  So much right.
• 2:21:07
  So you can't focus.
• 2:21:08
  Your brain's like scattered all the time.
• 2:21:10
  So writing and interviewing people are like the most
• 2:21:14
  therapeutic things I've ever done.
• 2:21:16
  I love it.
• 2:21:17
  Yeah.
• 2:21:18
  What would be the biggest misconception about podcasting
• 2:21:22
  if people believe it's not true?
• 2:21:24
  Oh, we can go all day.
• 2:21:25
  It's a lot.
• 2:21:26
  We can go all day.
• 2:21:27
  So the biggest thing is that I had some of the bigger agencies
• 2:21:30
  in the beginning of it telling me that you couldn't make money
• 2:21:32
  from a podcast.
• 2:21:33
  And I realized that it was not to do with the podcast.
• 2:21:35
  It was to do with entrepreneur.
• 2:21:36
  People can't make money from podcasts.
• 2:21:37
  I actually just bought entrepreneurs.
• 2:21:39
  It's so fun.
• 2:21:41
  Because you can make money doing anything.
• 2:21:43
  So the 11 standard side you can scale that if you
• 2:21:45
  if you put the big enough lemonade stand.
• 2:21:47
  It's nothing to do with the vessel.
• 2:21:50
  It's to do with you.
• 2:21:51
  Like people who don't make money suck and make money.
• 2:21:53
  It's simple.
• 2:21:54
  It is true.
• 2:21:55
  There are some people that are phenomenal making money.
• 2:21:56
  Of course, so they touch something they make money.
• 2:21:58
  Dude, you could put some guys in the desert in Arizona.
• 2:22:02
  Yeah.
• 2:22:03
  Take off their pants, hand them a cell phone.
• 2:22:04
  I guarantee you they make 100 K like 20 hours.
• 2:22:06
  One of my one of my really good friends.
• 2:22:08
  One of my really good friends, his name is Joseph Martin.
• 2:22:10
  He's a small boxy charm for $500 million massive exit.
• 2:22:14
  But like this story that he doesn't tell you maybe tells on some podcast.
• 2:22:19
  But when he was I think when he was in college,
• 2:22:21
  he was making like two or three hundred thousand dollars a month.
• 2:22:24
  Like running traffic through AdWords or some shit like that.
• 2:22:27
  Then his first business was.
• 2:22:30
  His first business was a like a wholesale merchandisers liquidators business where
• 2:22:35
  you take like truckloads of like merchandise.
• 2:22:38
  His business was like just casually making 10 million dollars a year.
• 2:22:41
  And then he then he turned around while he was building that started boxy charm
• 2:22:45
  because that's so many excess and so much excess inventory of beauty goods
• 2:22:48
  that he actually turned that into it.
• 2:22:50
  Like some people are just very good at making or not just making money because that's like it sounds cheap.
• 2:22:56
  They're resourceful.
• 2:22:57
  They're resourceful and they see opportunity.
• 2:22:58
  And they aggressively pursue opportunity when it's working.
• 2:23:01
  And I think that that's a it's a skill that you can learn.
• 2:23:05
  And it's something that even as a as a successful I put that in air quotes
• 2:23:08
  because I've had some success not compared to what he's done.
• 2:23:11
  But as a successful entrepreneur,
• 2:23:14
  it's something that I still have to learn.
• 2:23:16
  So even though there was an exit that I started doing all these businesses.
• 2:23:21
  None of them are working.
• 2:23:22
  Now the podcast is working.
• 2:23:24
  And now I'm doubling down on that.
• 2:23:26
  And I think that that's actually like you start to.
• 2:23:29
  It's like shiny objects syndrome, but.
• 2:23:32
  What do you do until you final works exactly and then you just focus on that.
• 2:23:37
  I think that's I think that and then I think that.
• 2:23:39
  More people have to focus on that and.
• 2:23:42
  I'm always a fan of saying sick with something until.
• 2:23:45
  Like doing it for an unreasonable amount of time until it works.
• 2:23:48
  But the caveat is you're not.
• 2:23:51
  Doing the same thing over 10 years.
• 2:23:54
  So you're sick with something for 10 years.
• 2:23:56
  Your year one version of it is going to be very different than year two
• 2:23:59
  and you're three and you're five and you're 10.
• 2:24:01
  You're all going to be these like permutations of the first thing.
• 2:24:04
  But it's going to be you learning and iterating and evolving over those 10 years.
• 2:24:09
  That will allow you to be successful.
• 2:24:11
  So evolutions.
• 2:24:12
  It is evolution.
• 2:24:13
  Last thing that I love to ask is you go back.
• 2:24:17
  You're already young.
• 2:24:18
  So it's kind of like not that you're young enough.
• 2:24:21
  Whatever the question is if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing.
• 2:24:24
  What would it be?
• 2:24:25
  Probably to quit alcohol earlier.
• 2:24:28
  Really?
• 2:24:29
  Yeah, I quit alcohol two and a half years ago.
• 2:24:31
  Yeah.
• 2:24:32
  And so that was the you went there was supposed to have 500 days.
• 2:24:35
  Yeah.
• 2:24:36
  Two and a half years now.
• 2:24:37
  So I was like 900 days.
• 2:24:39
  Some shit.
• 2:24:41
  Yeah.
• 2:24:42
  It was just a waste time.
• 2:24:43
  It was a distraction.
• 2:24:44
  Like it was just pointless.
• 2:24:45
  We just didn't lose a priority when I was younger.
• 2:24:47
  It's a soul big in Ireland that it becomes indoctrinated into society that you have to do it.
• 2:24:52
  If you don't do it, you're a loser.
• 2:24:54
  And I was like, I could just be where I am plus 10 steps ahead.
• 2:24:58
  We're just soft drinking earlier.
• 2:25:00
  I had no problem.
• 2:25:01
  I didn't have like any abuse issue.
• 2:25:03
  But probably if you spoke to someone I probably did from a medical perspective, right?
• 2:25:07
  Because everyone in Ireland drinks a lot.
• 2:25:08
  But it was just a hinders progress.
• 2:25:11
  And it is used as a mechanism to suit, celebrate commiseration.
• 2:25:17
  Congratulations.
• 2:25:18
  Every single emotion it is used as a vessel just to distract yourself.
• 2:25:23
  Yeah.
• 2:25:24
  So if you are not successful and if you are failing, it is now a excuse to be able to take it easy and chill.
• 2:25:30
  And don't worry about it.
• 2:25:31
  Because go for a beer.
• 2:25:32
  Whereas if I just stopped drinking and if I just.
• 2:25:36
  If I stop parodying doing all that dumb stuff, I'd have figured out all the stuff that I figured out later on earlier.
• 2:25:42
  You know, it's so funny because I used to be so against.
• 2:25:45
  Like this sober movement.
• 2:25:46
  I'm like, how cool is not going to like really hurt you that much.
• 2:25:50
  I used to drink every once in a while.
• 2:25:52
  But I actually haven't drank in like, I'm sure like three or four months.
• 2:25:56
  Because I get so frustrated when I'm not clear and focused and high energy.
• 2:26:01
  And I didn't even mean to stop drinking and just like, I just.
• 2:26:04
  I definitely don't need it for like feeling comfortable in social situations.
• 2:26:09
  In fact, I'm already too much sometimes in social situations.
• 2:26:12
  Like I just give no fucks.
• 2:26:14
  So like alcohol doesn't help that at all.
• 2:26:16
  You completely sober.
• 2:26:17
  And then I'll still be able to like have fun out of party and chat with whoever the fuck I want.
• 2:26:21
  But for me, it was just energy levels and clarity of thought.
• 2:26:25
  Now I have his fridge right there full of a whole bunch of drinks.
• 2:26:28
  If anybody wants to drink, I have a drink with them, no problem.
• 2:26:30
  But it just it was just like not a net positive.
• 2:26:33
  It like there was literally zero positive.
• 2:26:35
  I think that if you are like super introverted and scared about the, you know, social.
• 2:26:42
  You can make an argument for a little bit of a positive writing the taxi behavior.
• 2:26:45
  You can actually quite fix for sure by going out and being more social more often for sure.
• 2:26:49
  And like it's also as you mentioned there, the other effects, right?
• 2:26:52
  So I felt like shit from drinking drinking so much.
• 2:26:56
  And I was foggy for two, three days and all this.
• 2:27:00
  Also being fat too.
• 2:27:01
  Exactly.
• 2:27:02
  But I was also like again, my way of training went down.
• 2:27:04
  I stopped training as much.
• 2:27:06
  I also became more anxious.
• 2:27:07
  I just, my sleep got really bad.
• 2:27:09
  I seemed like three or four hours of nice.
• 2:27:12
  Lots of negative things.
• 2:27:14
  I could just be startled by just stop drinking.
• 2:27:16
  So you may want to have a drink for your first child or you sell a company or whatever that is.
• 2:27:21
  But if I know that it's toxic for me.
• 2:27:24
  Yeah.
• 2:27:25
  Then why would I do it?
• 2:27:26
  And I'm the perfect case study of when you give it up and the benefits.
• 2:27:29
  So I was doing nothing on my life.
• 2:27:31
  Just going through the home drum.
• 2:27:33
  Do whatever else was doing in the ninth five I gave up.
• 2:27:36
  And I was able to solve the problems that I need to solve in the moment continuously.
• 2:27:40
  Yeah.
• 2:27:41
  When the weekend came around, it wasn't about when was I going to drink.
• 2:27:43
  It was going to be like, I have to get this done.
• 2:27:45
  This done this done.
• 2:27:46
  Yeah.
• 2:27:47
  Perfectly fine.
• 2:27:48
  Because I get more.
• 2:27:49
  I get more.
• 2:27:50
  What's the word I'm thinking of energy energy validation.
• 2:27:54
  Just like net feel good from on a weekend.
• 2:27:58
  Like doing work.
• 2:27:59
  Yeah.
• 2:28:00
  Or like spending time with you know or like going out.
• 2:28:02
  Like but like not having to.
• 2:28:04
  If I drink it's like I feel like the weekend's gone.
• 2:28:06
  Yeah.
• 2:28:07
  And I feel like I jump from like my weeks are tough.
• 2:28:10
  Weeks are like non stop.
• 2:28:12
  And I feel like weeks are like just sort of blurring into each other.
• 2:28:15
  And I actually just feel drained.
• 2:28:17
  Not from like the liquor from like the little from the lack of.
• 2:28:21
  Time sober when I'm not working like balls to the wall.
• 2:28:25
  Yeah.
• 2:28:26
  And also you fall behind.
• 2:28:28
  Yes.
• 2:28:29
  You do fall.
• 2:28:30
  Yeah.
• 2:28:31
  You enjoy your work.
• 2:28:32
  Yeah.
• 2:28:33
  As do I.
• 2:28:34
  Like I don't I'll jump on a podcast on a Sunday afternoon.
• 2:28:36
  When you act from a stable position though you know solid position.
• 2:28:39
  Yeah.
• 2:28:40
  So I think that's when you're.
• 2:28:41
  When you're behind you do irrational things.
• 2:28:44
  Yeah.
• 2:28:45
  You act from a piece of anxiety.
• 2:28:47
  Yeah.
• 2:28:48
  Okay.
• 2:28:49
  Second podcast going on alcohol.
• 2:28:50
  We could go on.
• 2:28:51
  I have no doubt.
• 2:28:52
  It's very because I actually hate the I hate.
• 2:28:54
  Like all or nothing in black and white.
• 2:28:56
  I don't believe life is like that.
• 2:28:57
  And I do not like when people are like I can no longer eat this.
• 2:29:01
  And I can no longer drink.
• 2:29:02
  I'm like you.
• 2:29:04
  You are setting yourself up for failure.
• 2:29:06
  And I don't like that personality type.
• 2:29:09
  To me it's.
• 2:29:10
  It's too extreme.
• 2:29:11
  I like people to do things for the right reasons.
• 2:29:13
  Not just because.
• 2:29:15
  They're tying into some like cultural norm of drinking or not drinking.
• 2:29:20
  Do it for you.
• 2:29:21
  Do it so it fits your schedule.
• 2:29:23
  I think it's just a healthier way to go through life.
• 2:29:25
  100%.
• 2:29:26
  I'm not drinking anymore because.
• 2:29:28
  I wash the podcast and now there's a whole sober movement.
• 2:29:32
  That's not a good reason to never drink again.
• 2:29:34
  And also you don't have to talk about it every time you're at a party.
• 2:29:37
  It's also annoying as fuck.
• 2:29:38
  Yeah.
• 2:29:39
  No one cares.
• 2:29:40
  No one cares.
• 2:29:41
  So do things for the right reason and do things so that they're sustainable.
• 2:29:44
  I mean people do it for like health and wellness.
• 2:29:46
  I've been working out.
• 2:29:47
  And in this fitness game.
• 2:29:48
  I mean I used to be a much better shape than I announced.
• 2:29:50
  I don't like troll too hard.
• 2:29:51
  But I used to be in like you know really good shape.
• 2:29:54
  I'm talking like stepping on stage almost for like bodybuilder competition shape.
• 2:29:59
  Not anymore.
• 2:30:00
  I used to play a lot of sports.
• 2:30:01
  But.
• 2:30:02
  I've been working out since I I don't know.
• 2:30:05
  Like.
• 2:30:06
  Well working out gym working out like 14 15.
• 2:30:09
  Like.
• 2:30:10
  So like hockey and then sports used to coach tennis play rugby used to play soccer.
• 2:30:15
  So I've always been working out or around it.
• 2:30:19
  And the people that lose weight look good turn into lifestyle.
• 2:30:23
  It's not about extremes.
• 2:30:24
  It's about doing it again for as long as you possibly can.
• 2:30:28
  So I think that that's just a healthier attitude when it comes to like diet.
• 2:30:31
  You take on whether or not you're drinking or not.
• 2:30:33
  Just find a way to do it for the long term.
• 2:30:35
  Sure.
• 2:30:36
  Yeah.
• 2:30:37
  School boy to finish.
• 2:30:38
  I think so.
• 2:30:39
  Awesome.
• 2:30:40
  Appreciate it.
• 2:30:41
  Appreciate you so much.
• 2:30:42
  That was a lot of fun.
• 2:30:49
  You