Latest / The Empire of Wealth / 7 Skills That Turn

Transcript

7 Skills That Turn · The Empire of Wealth

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Speaker 1: I went from a broke 21-year-old failing multiple businesses to
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doing over half a billion dollars in sales by age 27.
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I've also taught thousands of founders the skills that turn
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side hustles into multi-million dollar brands through mentoring. And today,
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I'm on a mission to teach you that process incredibly.
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The truth is, when I was 21, effort wasn't really
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my problem. I was working 16 hours a day, every day,
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on side hustles, and they just weren't paying off. Believe me,
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I was working really, really hard. However, what I didn't
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have was the right skills. And with the right skills,
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I would have made my first million way sooner than
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I did. I don't want anyone out there to make
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the same mistakes that I did and delay the success
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they truly deserve. The first skill that I wish I
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knew was leverage identification. And I'm not talking about some
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complex finance term here. I'm simply talking about understanding where
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your effort actually multiplies. Because here's the trap that catches
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almost everyone when they start out. You think, if I
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want to make more money, I need to work harder.
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When I was 21, working 16 hours a day, I
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was packing orders, answering emails, scrubbing floors. I was grinding
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very hard and I was still broke. The reason wasn't
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that I lacked work ethic. It was that I was
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applying my effort to things that had zero leverage. I
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was trading one hour of time for one hour of output.
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That is a losing game. Wealthy people don't play that game.
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They look for leverage points like places one hour of
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work can produce 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 hours of output.
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You have to look at businesses as a set of
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tools that you can stack. You have capital, which is money.
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You have people, labor. You have code and you also
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have media. When I finally started making real money, it
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wasn't because I worked 100 times harder. It was because
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I learned to write ads. Millions of people used to
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see these ads while I slept. And this is media.
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I used money, which is capital, to buy inventory so
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I didn't have to make things myself. I used 3PLs,
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which was systems, so I didn't have to pack every
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single box. But there is a deeper layer to this
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that I learned the hard way. When I was 25,
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I bought my first Range Rover, which was really a
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massive milestone for me. I can remember just being so,
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so happy from it. But the very next day, I
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woke up with this massive knot in my stomach.
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Speaker 2: It was fear.
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Speaker 1: I was terrified that it could be taken away from me.
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I thought, what if the algorithm changes? What if the
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business collapses? What if I end back up at zero?
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But then I realized something that completely changed my perspective.
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The bank can take the car. The market can take
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the money. A fire can take the inventory. But skills
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are the only form of leverage that cannot be taken
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from me. Unless I get hit on the head and
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I lose my memory, I can lose pretty much all
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of my money in my bank account and I could
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probably make it back very quickly, much quicker than I made.
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Speaker 2: It in the first place.
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Speaker 1: Why? Because I possess the skills that create the leverage.
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That is an ultimate security and a great feeling to have.
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So at 18, instead of asking, how can I make
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$ 100 today? You need to ask yourself, what skill can
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I learn today that will pay me for the next
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10 years? This also applies to how you execute. Many
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people ask me what's my unfair advantage early on. It
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wasn't money.
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Speaker 2: It was just speed.
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Speaker 1: Speed is just another form of leverage. While my competitors
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spent a month planning a launch, debating a logo, and
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worrying about being perfect, which is usually just fear disguised
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as strategy, I would launch in 24 hours. If I failed,
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I failed fast. I got the feedback, I learned, and
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I moved on. And I just did the next attempt
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straight away. By the time they had launched one idea,
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I had already tested 10. That is a form of
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leverage as well. I got 10 times the data for
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the same amount of calendar time. Now, if you're interested
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in learning more about this, I've got a full breakdown
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on this channel on why speed became my unfair advantage
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if you want to go deeper. The second skill I
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wish I knew when I was younger is trend writing
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and market timing. And this is going to sound counterintuitive,
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especially if you consider yourself a creative. Most young founders
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think they need to be the next Steve Jobs. They
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think they need to invent a brand new universe, educate
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the market and.
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Speaker 2: Force people to care.
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Speaker 1: But here is the reality. Creating demand is incredibly hard.
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Writing demand is incredibly easy. I see this time and
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time again with a lot of the mentoring students that
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come through Daily Mentor. They create either a clothing brand
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or they create a different brand that's in like food
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because everyone eats, everyone wears clothes.
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Speaker 2: So therefore they think, hey, I'm going to create a
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brand with this.
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Speaker 1: Then they look at some big name luxury brands and
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they're like, I'm going to copy this marketing.
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Speaker 2: I'm not going to have any discounts on my website.
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Speaker 1: I'm not going to differentiate the product in any way.
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I'm just going to make the product way better quality
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and then nothing sells because they're not riding a wave.
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They're trying to copy massive brands with huge budgets and
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decades of branding experience and branding budgets put behind them
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and nothing sells.
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Speaker 2: Now, compare this to one of my old brands, Calming Blankets.
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Speaker 1: Calming Blankets did $ 10 million in its first proper year
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of trading, the first 12 months when we had stock.
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And the reason it worked wasn't because I built some
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elaborate and really, really creative brand. And it also wasn't
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because I was a marketing genius. It worked because I
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didn't have to convince people that there was a problem
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the product could actually solve. At the time, people were
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already talking about sleep and talking about how weighted blankets
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could actually help with proprioceptive inputs because there was studies
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coming out there. Weighted blankets were already starting to get
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cultural traction. People were actively looking for relief. It didn't
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need me to create the demand. I just needed to
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show up with a product that fit the moment. When
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you ride a trend, the market pulls you forward. You
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don't have to convince people they need the product. You
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just have to convince them that yours is the one
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that they should buy. So in short, if you don't
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have millions in budgets or you haven't got this really
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unique scientific process or product being developed over time, you
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probably shouldn't be creating a trend. You should probably be
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trying to ride one. And you're probably wondering, how do
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I do this? This brings me to the sub-skill of
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being observant of small things. Most people wait for a
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trend to be very, very obvious. But by the time
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the public is talking about it, the opportunity may be gone.
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You need to train yourself to spot the weak signals.
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I'm talking about being really, really observant of small shifts
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in human behavior. What are people complaining about in the
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comment sections? What are new words that they're using to
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describe their problems? What specific feelings are they chasing? You
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need to start noticing what people are emotionally responding to
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before they can articulate it. Before the Udi, my wearable
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blanket brand really took off. People weren't just buying warm clothes.
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There was a subtle shift towards comfort, safety, and staying in.
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Self-care was becoming a mainstream conversation. Home started to feel
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more important than going out. That wasn't obvious at the time.
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It showed up in very small signals. And because we
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noticed those early, we could position the product properly. Pay
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attention to the small things because that's where the real
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opportunities start. This leads me to the third skill that
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I wish I knew when I was young. Circle of
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competence expansion. If you're young and ambitious, the harsh reality
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is at your age, you probably know almost nothing. And
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that actually isn't the real problem. The problem is that
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you think you know everything. Let me give you an
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analogy that completely changed how I think about this. Imagine
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someone moves to a small town in Japan for a
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year on business. By the end of that year, they
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feel like they know the entire town. They know where
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all the good restaurants are. They know the main streets.
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They feel confident. Now compare that to someone that has
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lived in that same town for 60 years. They know
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what weather patterns are happening. They know which streets floods
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when it rains. They know the history of all of
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the buildings. They know which businesses fail and why. That's
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the difference between surface level competence and deep competence. At
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18 years old, you're the person who just moved to town.
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You might have learned some things, you might have read
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some books, you might have watched some videos, but you
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don't have the depth yet.
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Speaker 2: And more importantly, you don't even know what you don't know.
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Speaker 1: There's a psychological phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
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Speaker 2: You've probably heard of it.
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Speaker 1: It basically says the less you know about something, the
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more confident you are. When you first started learning a skill,
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you climb this peak of confidence. You think, I've got
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this all figured out. But then as soon as you
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start going deeper, you start to actually drop your confidence
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because you realize you know less and less as the
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more you learn. That valley is where most people quit.
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But if you push through, eventually your confidence starts to rebuild.
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Except this time, it's based on real competence, not ignorance.
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I've lived this pattern so many times. When I was 18,
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I thought I knew everything about Instagram. I'd run multiple accounts,
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pulled strong engagement, and even sold pages and made my
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first $ 30, 000. I thought I was an expert. But looking
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back now, I knew nothing. I didn't understand retention strategies.
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I didn't understand algorithmic behavior at scale. I barely understood
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content psychology. And because I thought I knew everything, I
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stopped learning. I stopped asking questions.
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Speaker 2: I stopped improving.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't until I failed a few times that I
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realized I was operating at surface level. And now, many
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years later, I'm starting to feel like maybe I know
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a little bit about Instagram and I'm actually starting to
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get quite good. But it took staying in that craft
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for years to build that confidence. And here's the thing,
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that depth of circle of confidence is what allows you
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to make way better decisions. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger
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have always talked about this in the past. They only
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invest in businesses that they deeply understand. Because when you
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deeply understand something, you can see patterns that other people miss.
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You can spot opportunities other people don't see. You can
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avoid mistakes other people make. But if you're constantly jumping
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between different things, you never build that depth. And I
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see this with young founders all the time. They'll spend
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three months trying to build a social media agency. They'll
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see something making money with e-commerce, so then they'll pivot there.
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Then they'll see someone crushing it with AI automation, so
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they'll pivot again. And they wonder why they're not making
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any progress in any area. They are restarting their circle
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of competence every single 90 days. They are perpetually stuck
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as this tourist in the town. Now, I'm not saying
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you shouldn't explore things early on. You need to test
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things to find what you enjoy. But once you find
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a domain that works and you start making a little
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bit of money, You need to stay there. You need
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to resist the urge to chase the next shiny object.
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The fourth skill I wish I knew was iterative market learning.
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There's a dangerous misconception that winners never quit. It's just
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not true. At least not where it matters. Winners quit
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bad ideas all the time. They just don't quit the domain.
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If you're in e-commerce, you stay in e-commerce. You don't
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jump to crypto or AI because something didn't work. But
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inside that domain, you need to be ruthless with ideas.
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Early on, I spent years working on a range of
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weighted toys and it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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This wasn't some lazy test. I didn't just slap a
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product up there and see what happened. I put real
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thought into the concept. We designed these beautiful characters. One
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of them was Kakapo, this flightless parrot from New Zealand.
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We gave him a little rocket helmet and this beautiful
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backstory about him wanting to be the first flightless bird
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to land on the moon.
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Speaker 2: It was cute. It was thoughtful.
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Speaker 1: I was 100% proud of this concept and thought it
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was going to work. And that confidence was exactly what
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made it dangerous. Because when it came to be honest
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about the unit economics, about the actual financials of the business,
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I didn't realize that it.
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Speaker 2: Was completely broken.
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Speaker 1: The product cost was way too high and customers weren't
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willing to pay what it needed to cost. But instead
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of killing it early on, I held on. Not because
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the numbers made sense, but because I was emotionally invested.
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So I kept going and that's the sunk cost trap.
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You start confusing effort with progress. You start treating past
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investment as a reason to continue instead of information telling
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you to stop. Eventually, I had to swallow my pride
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and shut it down. The market doesn't care how much
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you've spent. It doesn't care how hard you've worked. It
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only cares whether people are willing to pay a price
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that makes sense for the product.
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Speaker 2: But notice how I didn't quit the game.
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Speaker 1: I took everything that I learned, supply relationships, advertising skills, operations,
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and applied those to future opportunities. in e-commerce that's how
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progress actually works you need to learn the difference between
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two situations if you're getting no signal at all no
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sales no clicks no interest that's structural failure no amount
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of persistence will actually fix that you need to kill
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it but if you're getting some level of signal and
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the numbers just don't work that's not failure that's iteration
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that's pricing that's positioning that's optimization the best founders are
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the ones that can do the fastest feedback loops in
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these situations While a bad founder spends six months perfecting
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one idea, a great founder tests 10 ideas and lets
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the market decide. But keep in mind, even once you
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do find that winning product through iteration, you run into
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the next problem. Even a great product is useless if
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nobody knows it exists. That's the next skill. Attention engineering
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and format adoption. Most people think attention comes from being original.
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That they need to invent a style that nobody has
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ever seen before. But algorithms do not always reward originality.
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Algorithms reward proven formats. Here's how it actually works behind
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the scenes. When a user engages with a specific format,
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say a specific type of reel or a carousel, the
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platform stamps that user.
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Speaker 2: It says, okay, this person consumed.
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Speaker 1: that type of content, if you post using the exact
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same format as that person has watched, the algorithm will
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instantly know who to show it to and it has
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a roadmap. You're drafting off data that already exists. If
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you try to invent a brand new complete format, the
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algorithm has no idea who wants to see it. And
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don't get me wrong, it can work. But if you're
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starting from zero data and it can be very, very
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expensive and take a lot of iterations to work. This
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is why early on, sometimes I suggest that you don't
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actually need to be super creative.
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Speaker 2: With the format. You should copy what's working out there.
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Speaker 1: And when I mean copy the structure, I mean really
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look at the pacing, the music choices, the text layer.
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I don't mean go steal the content itself because you'll
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get in legal issues. Your creativity will need to go
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into the message, not the container. This is why copying works.
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You aren't stealing content, you're borrowing distribution. But you need
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to make sure that you don't fall into this trap.
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You have to copy what is working now, not what
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has worked six months ago. If you look at a
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big creator and try to copy a format that they've
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been doing for a year, you will fail. That format
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is now saturated. The algorithm is bored of using it.
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There's too much supply and not enough demand for that format.
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Using outdated formats makes you invisible by default. You need
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to find what's trending this week and execute on it quickly.
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Now this just doesn't apply to social media. It applies
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to things like products and trends too. When I launched
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the Udi, the creatives were designed to look ridiculous on purpose.
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Speaker 2: We leaned into absurdity. Why?
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Speaker 1: Because boring products don't get shared. Virality isn't about you,
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it's about the customer. People share things because it benefits them.
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They share things to make themselves look funny or cool
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or to signal their identity with their friends. The Udi
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wasn't just a blanket. It was a giant, cozy, ridiculous statement.
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Sharing it made the customers feel like they were part
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of something. So when you are designing your product or
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your ads, don't just ask why would someone buy it.
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Ask someone why would they share this. Find the formats
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that are winning right now, adopt them and use them
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to get attention. This leads into the sixth skill, persuasive
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outcome framing. You can master every other skill on the list.
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You can engineer attention. You can identify leverage. You can
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have the perfect product. But this, if you fumble this
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one thing, you will stay broke. I see founders often
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look at their analytics. They see the clicks, people are
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landing on their page, they're interested, but nobody buys.
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Speaker 2: And the immediate.
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Speaker 1: Reaction is to blame the algorithm or think the product sucks.
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But 99% of the time, the problem is actually much simpler.
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You haven't made them feel safe. See, most young people,
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most young entrepreneurs try to sell through logic. They think,
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I need to list every single specific situation so the
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customer knows it's good. They list the type of fabric.
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They list the type of stitching technique. Don't get me wrong,
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these are important things. Specs matter, but they play a
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different role. Features don't create desire. They remove doubt after
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the desire is already there. Nobody wakes up wanting reinforced stitching.
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They want to feel warm, comfortable, or confident in the
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decision that it's not going to rip. We were driving
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hundreds of thousands of people to the site, but we
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hit a ceiling on conversion on a one-size-fits-most product.
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Speaker 2: I was incredibly frustrated.
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Speaker 1: I thought, the product is viral, everyone loves it, why
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aren't lots of people checking out? So instead of guessing,
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we ran a survey on the people who didn't buy.
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We asked one question, what stopped you from purchasing? I
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expected them to say the price was too high, which honestly,
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lots of people will say that no matter what product
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you're selling. But it was far less than I thought
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it was. The number one answer was I wasn't sure
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that it would fit me. Now, this sounded crazy to me.
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We had one size fits most plastered around the whole website.
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It was literally the first bullet point on the site.
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But I realized that one size fits most doesn't remove
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actual doubt. It actually started to create a little bit
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of doubt. When a customer reads that, they instantly think, okay,
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but what if I'm not the most? Like, what if
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I'm the exception? What if I look stupid in this?
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That is a perceived risk. And perceived risk kills sales
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faster than high prices ever will. So all we did
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is we changed the framing at the point of decision.
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So even though that we had that first bullet point
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saying one size fits most... We then also put that
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across the entire website.
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Speaker 2: It was on the homepage. It was on multiple different pages.
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Speaker 1: We also started using multiple models to show how inclusive
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our product actually was. We ended up seeing an instant
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lift in conversion and we made probably millions of dollars
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because of it. You have to understand that when someone
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is on your site, they're always looking for a reason
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to say no.
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Speaker 2: They're always looking for a catch.
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Speaker 1: Your job is to systematically dismantle their fear. If you
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look at the best copywriters in the world, they all
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use the customer's language. When I started, I would try
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to sound professional. I'd use big words to sound like
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a real business. But if you go through your customer
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support tickets or read the comments on your social media,
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you'll see specific words that your customers keep using. They're
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the words that you need to use. So this brings
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me to the final skill. This is the final boss
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of entrepreneurship. And honestly, it's the one that separates the
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people that would dream about being rich and the ones
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that actually get there.
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Speaker 2: Now you have these skills. You have the leverage.
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Speaker 1: You have the converting offer that makes people feel safe
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to buy. This is the one that gets most businesses
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from a million dollars to 10 million dollars.
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Speaker 2: It's you.
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Speaker 1: You are the bottleneck of your own business once you
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start to find success. The seventh skill is realizing that
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you cannot outwork the system. You have to stop acting
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like a solopreneur and start acting like a real company.
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I remember when I was really trying to ramp up
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my social media brand. I had a social media team
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of just me and one person and he was also
19:19
a creative. We both loved making cool stuff, but we
19:22
were so disorganized. We were constantly chasing our tails. We
19:26
were working incredibly hard, but we couldn't get past posting
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one short video a day and maybe growing 200 followers
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a day if we were lucky. I realized that I
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was the bottleneck because I was trying to be the process.
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I was the one approving every edit, writing every caption,
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and checking every thumbnail. I then hired an operations coordinator,
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someone who didn't care about the camera angles, but cared
19:48
deeply about spreadsheets and definitions. it changed everything overnight we
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went from posting one video a day to posting 10
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videos across all platforms we ended up growing thousands and
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thousands of followers every single day with just one extra
20:01
employee and a couple of systems with 10x the output
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And that brings me to this massive mindset shift. Most
20:07
founders view hiring as an expense. That cuts into profits.
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They think, if I hire this person for $ 80, 000, that's $ 80, 000
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less for me. If you genuinely think that you can
20:18
build a business to eight figures on your own, you
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really have to start seeing every single hire as more leverage.
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If you hire someone who's already done the thing that
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you're trying to achieve, someone that has the base level
20:29
of knowledge, They don't come to you asking what to do,
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they'll come to you with a new strategy. Bill Gates
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once said, he'd always choose a lazy person to do
20:37
a hard job because the lazy person will find an
20:40
easy way to do it. That is essentially what an
20:42
A player does. They build systems because they refuse to
20:46
do manual labor forever. So how do you actually remove
20:49
yourself without the business collapsing? I use this very simple
20:52
way to decide what I should hire and what shouldn't
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touch my time. Whenever something lands on my plate, I
20:58
ask three questions. First, should this exist at all? A
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lot of founders think that they have a growth problem
21:04
when in reality, they have a focus problem. They're busy
21:06
doing things that don't move the business forward. If something
21:09
doesn't matter, it gets cut. Secondly, does this actually need
21:13
a human? If a software or automation can handle it,
21:16
I want it handled once and never thought about again.
21:19
And third, if it does need a human, does it
21:21
need to be me? If it's not in my highest
21:24
value work, I don't touch it at all.
21:26
Speaker 2: I hand it off.
21:27
Speaker 1: But delegation isn't about dumping tasks. Delegation is about building clarity.
21:32
If I do something more than once, it gets documented.
21:35
I create a note, a checklist, or just a short
21:38
loom video. Because one clear process can save thousands of
21:41
hours over time. You don't want to build a job
21:44
for yourself. You want to build an asset. You want
21:46
to control when you work. You want to control where
21:49
you live. And you want to own what you create. Eventually,
21:52
it's all about people. And you just got to keep
21:55
removing yourself. If you master these seven skills, you aren't
21:59
just going to be rich, you're going to be free.
22:01
And honestly, if you want to go really deep on
22:03
exactly how to structure your team and build these systems specifically,
22:07
I did a full breakdown on creating a business that
22:10
runs itself. You can check it out on my channel.
22:12
It's completely free. It's on this video now.