How to Get Paid to EXIST

this is the equation that helped me make my first $1 million and once you learn this equation money will be automatic and wealth will be inevitable I used to have debilitating stage fright but now I get paid to speak all over the world and my rates are available if you look hard enough online so someone asked me how in the world did you get paid so much to speak for 45 minutes and I told them I didn't get paid that much five figures to speak for 45 minutes I got paid that much for 40 years

of my experience what I'm going to teach you in this video is how to get paid not for your time but for your very existence I want you to write down this equation value equals personal Brand Plus unique skills and that's in parentheses times Network plus impact and that is in parenthesis divided by effort your personal brand is how you are perceived this includes your online presence how you show up in real life and your general image unique skills this is the special itiz knowledge that sets you apart from other people this can include technical

or practical so hard skills and what they call soft skills your network these are the relationships and contacts that you have and that you build this can be your peers your mentors your mentees industry contacts and more in your network your followers are also included impact the measurable out outcomes and results you achieve this can be in the form of successful projects satisfied clients Innovations and contributions to your field effort the minimal input that you need to exert to generate significant value this represents an our equation the efficiency and leverage of your contributions so let's

break it down and look at me as a case study my personal brand is something that helped you find this video whether this is the first time you're ever hearing of me or you've been riding with me for a long time my personal brand had a lot to do with you being here most people know me as someone who is a prolific investor I've invested in more than 200 companies in the last decade someone who has my own companies including yacht waterer H runner. and more someone who put on a 2,000 person event nla in

2024 called your first million live where Issa Ray Rich Paul and TLC were just some of the guests a paid speaker an author of two books on major Publishers it's about damn time from 2020 and your first million from 2024 and so on and so forth you know me from one or more of these themes and if you didn't before now you do my skills I've invested in more than 200 companies I know a thing or two about making investments in startups and championing underestimated Founders I have a way of Storytelling that helps draw people

in and I have a strategic Vision that some people say is inspiring so this sets me apart in a lot of ways from traditional Venture capitalists my network my network is really interesting you have people like Mark Cuban who I have a $6 million joint venture with I have thousands and thousands of Founders in my network that I can call upon at any time and thousands of investors that I know and in my close Circle there are doctors and lawyers and authors and teachers and mechanics and all sorts of people who I can call upon

and brainstorm with almost any time and they feel the same way about me there are people in my network who have made millions and millions of dollars in the last few years alone and live lives that I once only dreamed of my network helps me amplify my reach and create opportunities for other people so my impact probably is immeasurable because of so many Investments made and so many people watching and being inspired by the work that I do effort this part is important I have learned to strategically Focus my effort by focusing on high impact

activities I also have learned a lot of boundaries and how to say no to 90% of what is offer to me make sure you are a subscriber of my YouTube channel and that you hit the like button right now when you hit the like button what it does is it tells YouTube in the algorithm that people are interested in this video and that they're watching a lot of it and then that helps it get seen by more people there are more Impressions and then it's my job to make people click and to keep people interested

so it'll help me out so much if you hit the like button right now and subscribe more than 60% of the people who watch my videos do not subscribe to my channel so if you don't want to miss a video if you're getting any type of value from this and if you want more people to learn this equation hit the like button and subscribe all right I want to teach you how to apply this equation in your life starting today first thing you're going to do is invest in your personal brand and I mean invest

money and time and if you don't have a lot of money spend more time if you don't have a lot of time spend spend more money your job is going to be to cultivate a compelling and authentic image so said another way you're just going to be yourself in front of more people this starts with some self-reflection you're going to start to understand what some of your strengths are your values your beliefs what you hold dear what is true about you and what makes you unique and before you say there's nothing that makes you unique

I guarantee you there is you start with points on board because there's only one of you in the entire world this introspection this looking inward is a crucial First Step the next part of the personal brand is consistency in your messaging ensure for instance that your online presence is consistent across all of social if you have a personal website if you have a LinkedIn if you have a YouTube if you have anything online try to keep it consistent now we know we use different platforms for different parts of ourselves and we contain multitudes but if

someone visits a different page they should see the same person maybe just a different mood and one hack I learned from a guy named Ryan Hoover who runs product Hunt is that you should keep the same image consistently I have an image that is eight or nine years old on my Twitter account and I refuse to change it because if I change it I'm disrupting that personal brand that I have created I'm disrupting that person personal brand that I have cultivated for so long content creation share your knowledge and experience and wisdom with other people

through content like a YouTube channel I have videos on my channel that teach you how to start a YouTube channel why you should start one and how you can actually get paid to promote your company or brand you also want to engage with your audience once you have one that's all part of your personal brand you'll noticed that I do that so much and I've been doing that for more than 20 years and there are people who have been following me for those 20 years or for 10 years or five years and it's because I

responded to a comment or liked something that they posted or retweeted reposted shared their stories that is really how you cultivate your audience they become part of a community that you're building next you want to enhance your skills you want to Stack your skills you want to identify where there may be skills gaps you can take online courses you can take online quizzes to help you with that things of that nature you can read different job descriptions in your lane and see what you're able to do and what you're not able to do at a

job that pays you more than you get paid now that's one way to understand what skill Gap you may have you're going to do continuous learning online courses going to events you're going to get certified if you need to and there are really unlimited way that you can stack your skills I still do this every single day I read I watch a lot of YouTube videos that are tutorials educational in my Lane in what I'm interested in and I'm always trying to get better and smarter and better and smarter every single day because when I

was broke I had no money I was on food stamps 10 years ago or so and I was trying to raise a venture capital firm that now I have backstage Capital when I didn't know if I was going to eat what I did know is that I could learn every single day and nobody could take that away from me so that was an empowering thing for me is to know no matter what's going on in my life I can learn and be better than the day before you also want to do practical application don't just

learn you also want to implement so you can volunteer to do something for someone you can take on a new project you can do something that other people get paid to do if you're just learning so you can become The Apprentice for yourself there are a lot of options there too that we should think about when we're thinking about stacking those skills think about when you're trying to learn a new language you can learn a lot in the textbook and on the app but until you're talking to someone who speaks that language it doesn't click

all the way that's what you want to do with all types of learning while you're learning keep receipts you want to be able to later on say what your credentials are say what you've learned it doesn't have to be oh I went to this college it just needs to be that you know certain things that you created a school for yourself this is what I did and this is how I made my first million and Way Beyond your network you are going to build your network starting today one main way to do this if you

haven't started building your network I talk about this another video where you can have a five or six person dinner maybe you invite 10 people to it and half of them say yes they come to the dinner you introduce them to each other you have everybody go around the table and say who they are and what's important to them and then you Foster conversation and at some point during that dinner you're going to say there's one ask that I have and you're going to talk to them about maybe one challenge that you have do not

ask them for money because you just met them or you it's not the right time but ask them does someone know a mentor does someone know the answer to this question I've had does someone know how I should approach this challenge because I'm stuck and that's going to be the beginning of an outpouring of help for you because you're fostering that with other people they're going to want to reciprocate that so don't expect anything that same day do this have it be a cool experience and then somewhere in the universe it'll come come back to

you you might want to join a professional group I have worked with Chief before for women Executives that's a good example there's so many other examples I know that afrotech has an executive program I know there's so many places you can go but you want to join these it doesn't have to be for corporates either it can be for entrepreneurs it can be for teachers it can be for writers there's so many places they're all over the internet and all you need to do is vet talk to a few people who are already in the

group and ask to join and obviously some of these cost money and if you can't afford it right now what did I say before if you don't have a lot of money use a lot of time so maybe there's a bartering thing that you can do or maybe you're simply going to raise and earn that money by doing other things and that is going to be your aspirational next step it's important to engage and contribute during these different social activities I know for some people that can be difficult but honestly even if you offer someone

help oneon-one and not in front of a big group it's going to come back tenfold to you it's so important that you engage it's just like being online you know the algorithm rewards you when you like other people's content and when you watch other people's content and you're not just someone who is on a platform only trying to get likes and Views so the more you contribute to the ecosystem system whether that's online or in person whether that's for a social platform or for a group you're in that is going to really reward you in

the end make sure that you follow up so if you meet someone and you have a great conversation with them try not to drop the ball there that's why it's important not to try to meet as many people as possible when you go to conferences or concerts or events you're trying to meet one or two people that you have a true connection with that you can then follow up with impact for your impact you want to set clear goals if you think about me 10 years ago I said I want to invest in 100 companies

led by underrepresented Founders by 2020 now my Venture fund backstage Capital reached 100 companies in May of 2018 because I had that Clear Vision and that statement of what I wanted to make happen in the world yours doesn't have to be that big it doesn't have to be that impactful just yet but if you have something where you say this is a milestone that I want to do this is why I say write your own headlines in my first book it's about damn time there's a whole chapter about writing your own headlines giving yourself that

North Star another thing you're going to do which is also part of effort is you're going to identify high impact activities things that over index on outcomes for less amount of time or effort and make sure that you prioritize things that align with you align with what you want and what you want the world to look like again you're going to measure and document you're going to keep the receipts because what you're going to do with that later you're going to use those earned achievements in so many ways for instance maybe you'll write a book

of your own or if you already have a book maybe there are two or three more books in you but it's that lived experience that impact and that documenting that gets you there so the big one is effort if you can get the effort right and calibrate it to be optimized you're going to be unstoppable just what I said about impact you're going to optimize for high impact lower effort and this is not because we're going to be lazy this is because the more leverage we have the more we'll be able to do in our

lifetime and impact the world you want a high Roi return on investment when it comes to your time and your effort one way to do this really well is to delegate and Outsource there's a book called buy back your time by Dan Martell that I want you to pick up or listen to the audio version as soon as you can and this will show you how to take back your life buy back your time so that you can focus on only the highest impact activities you're also going to use technology and tools and yes even

AI to collapse time we are very fortunate people we live in a very opportune time where things take so much less time to accomplish than they have in the past so you're going to turn those tools that you may be afraid of right now into a jetpack I said before that one of the things that has helped me make my first million and Beyond is creating boundaries for myself I used to have no boundaries whatsoever now I have strict boundaries who I speak with who I spend time around whose energy gets to be around me

what I say yes to and what I say no to these are so important I'll give you a quick example a few weeks ago I had a three or four week stretch of travel appearances paid speaking all sorts of things that were a high responsibility for me that I was excited to do but I found myself so burned out because I have been on the road for six months this year alone so I said to myself I can't do that at the highest quality and standard that I feel like I should and even though it

was going to disappoint some people I knew that at the end of the day I had to do what was right so I cancelled three to four weeks of really fun activities I'm talking about Essence fest can lion traing all over the country but I instead sat at home worked my butt off from home watched a lot of TV and refreshed I got a lot of rest and now I look forward to the months of travel that I have for the rest of the year and I'll be a better person for it this is all

about continuous Improvement we talk about improving our videos on YouTube by 1% every time we post we talk about Improvement here and there what about Improvement of ourselves every single day how can I be better today than I was yesterday and I look forward to being better tomorrow than I am today so again your personal Brand Plus your unique skills multiplied by your net work and your impact and then divided by the effort