YouTube Business Masterclass 2025 w/ Alex Hormozi & Codie Sanchez

there's an unspoken question in every person's mind that has to First be answered which is why should I listen to you you are truly supposed to be the most Brave person in this entire company so if you're not even willing to get in front of a camera can you ask your employees to do anything when I look at most people's calendar they're just spending a lot of time on $10 tasks and what I've learned is you can't build a million-dollar company running around doing $10 tasks you know if you guys are creating online there's one

thing that I I think is more important than anything else it's do you think you're the hero or are the people that you're serving the heroes so many times we're doing the right stuff we're just doing way way too little of it we don't hire people to grow our business we hire people to buy back our time most people dramatically underestimate the amount of volume and effort that is required to get to where you want to go but if I look back it's really consistency of just showing up and sticking with the plan so the

fact that this opportunity exists right now is literal Insanity to me like we're getting paid now to Market hey what's up Sean canel here with think media bringing you the best tips and tools for building your influence with online video I'm so excited for this deep dive ultimate guide for building your online business Empire with content you're going to be hearing from Top CEOs five of them from our event grow with video live as well as our think media podcast this is a powerp packed sequential episode so of course there's time codes and chapters that

you can skip around in but it's going to build content strategy tips for creating viral content what business owners need to know about building teams creating media media companies so that you can generate more leads clients and sales and all of these individuals have thriving YouTube channels but also thriving businesses so if you're a content creator there's a lot of business wisdom to get and if you're a business owner there's a lot of content marketing wisdom to get allinone super long episode for your next road trip for your next session in the gym or on

headphones because it's a long one right and if you want to skip around check out time codes and chapters but with that let's jump into session number one with Alex heroi so quick backstory I'm going to go through this as fast as possible this is me when I started my business career sleep on the floor I signed my first lease slept on that floor for the first nine months was able to uh get it to that picture on the left in a year then I open a new location every 6 months after that and then

over the next 18 months I met ilila and we did gym turnarounds so we' basically fly from place to place to place and filled gyms up but it was a Hands-On sales model I had at our Peak eight sales guy turn around eight gym every month that became tenuous logistically and we're like I wonder if there's a better way and so from there we packaged our IP for a better gym model into a licensing business and so we were able to grow gym launch which was a B2B business to 2 and a half million bucks

a month Prestige to 1.7 a month which is B to B Toc that was an affiliate based business and it was weight loss and supplements so e-commerce then we scaled Allen into 1.6 million a month which was B to B Toc and we just recently sold that for 46.2 and we just sold that one last year as well which I'm not allowed to say the number but there you go then we started acquisition. comom which right now does about 13 million a month so right now we grow $3 million plus Internet businesses into $30 million

plus sellable businesses that's kind of what we do now and so hopefully you're probably asking this question which is like what does this have to do with growing video or growing with video [Applause] Jack um but I started making video content with three goals so number one was to attract uh internet business owners doing $3 million or more who align with our values uh number two is to help all businesses below our minimum deal size to just grow to the deal size that was kind of the the idea like how do I just get everybody

who's at a million to 3 million or 100K to 3 million whatever just get everybody up above that level so we can hopefully work with them um and then three to create a place where I could document you the best practices of building worldclass companies from my experience and like we're not the Elon musks and the boses and and all that but I wish that those guys had documented what they had done like how cool would it have been to see like the Vlog of Amazon in 1996 right how sick would that have been and

like every day he like yep almost lost the company today like 6 months later almost lost the company again like I thought that would have been awesome so I thought you know I didn't I did a really poor job of documenting everything up to this point and so I was really committed to like all right for this next phase um I really want to do a better job of it so that's the idea lo and behold business is doing $3 million more um started reaching out to us which was awesome right success so I guess

this might have something to do with video uh but believe me when I say that no one as surprised as me about this kind of organic stuff in general because I've never done it before so we're on this ride together all right so here's the goal for the presentation give you a few lessons that I've learned to take you from wherever you are to a little closer to wherever you want to go with this presentation I'm so good at content there's the little man okay great so disclaimer again never done this I also didn't want

to be famous or known for a very long time there's me saying I want to be rich not famous but several experiences changed my mind so I'll walk you through this really quickly so when Kylie do you remember this when Kylie was announced that she was a billionaire well that's what I felt like that day um I was like what am I doing wrong and then the rock you know killing it and then boom he's got a$2 billion plus uh tequila brand that he was able to launch off his organic audience Conor McGregor 600 million

with proper 12 it's probably grown by since now Huda now is a billion dollar brand and so I can be a little slow sometimes but I could kind of read the writing on the wall uh so there's the writing on the wall um but I didn't want to build an e-commerce brand because all those were e-commerce physical products Brands and I was like H it's not my vibe I already did that once and it's not like it's not my favorite of the businesses that we've done so I still kind of like dragged my feet a

little bit and that's when I heard this guy Nomad capitalist who like teaches people to not be US citizens that's not the point but um so you can not pay taxes but anyways um that's when I heard a podcast by this guy and he was like oh yeah I get about 3,000 applications a month I was like holy canol I was like well if I had 3,000 applications a month I would make at least $1 if that were my life and so I realized it could work for B2B not just e-commerce stuff I was like

that's neat and then I heard Neil Patel was doing 100 million bucks a year doing a B2B agency Services all off inbound I was like okay this might make sense and so again I still was like all right so it does work for B2B organic stuff works but I still didn't really want to be famous that was not my vibe and so I met up uh with your friends of ours uh Lisa and Dean graos and we had a conversation that was kind of the last straw here so I was like dude being famous sounds

terrible he was just telling us about how like somebody like shut up his house and threatened his kids and I was like that sounds awful like why no no thank you I'm good I'll just pass on grass and so he's like if getting harassed and attacked is the price I have to pay for the it's supposed to say [Laughter] impact that was perfect um for the impact that I want to have then I'd pay that price every time which totally takes away from the impact of that message um but I was like he's right you

know what I mean like he said if if if if that's the price I have to pay to make the impact I want to have and I pay that price every time I was like all right I need to I need to stopping all right so 18 months ago I started a YouTube channel some of you guys may have anybody seen this the YouTube channel mosy nation and so I built two expensive Studios to launch this thing um I started making three videos a week uh side note important lesson that I learned on a vacation

uh that really one did better than my really fancy one which then taught me that what's inside the content matters more than the rapper So for anybody who's like worried about getting started about making it look right I don't think it matters I mean I think it matters a little bit but it's 8020 so focus on the 80 all right and so I continued my very steady growth for for that period of time which is great recommend um but you know in the first 12 months we earn from 600 to 70,000 subscriber which was cool

um and so things were going smoothly until one day I had to chat with gr Cardone about branding and it reminded me that all the lessons that I learned in business applied to all this organic stuff and so I was on this call with him and I have the full video on my YouTube channel if you want to check it out um yeah he was like bro I'm not even going to try he was like bro pull up your Instagram and I was like okay he's like pull up my Instagram he's like I got 10

times the content is you 10 times he's like bro it's volume bro volume and um I was like that's deep um and so I was like you know I should probably do more uh which is a lesson that I have learned over and over and over again in business and I'll tell you a couple more story about later uh but like so many times we're doing the right stuff we're just doing way way too little of it like I'll tell you a quick story which is not on this presentation but when I started my first

gym I was told that I should put flyers out and so I went uh you know I'm like really you know full of piss and vinegar I was I'm going to go do it so the business owner told me had was more successful than me Etc and so I went I put the Flyers out and then like nothing really happened so I met back up with him a few weeks later and he was like hey how the Flyers work and I was like uh you know I got one guy who called me and said I

picked up his car um that was it he's like well what was your test size I was like H uh I was like well I mean I put 300 out and he was like dude our test size is 5,000 he's like that's what we test with he's like and then we do 5,000 a day I was like oh noted and so it was just a really good lesson and that happens with phone calls like yeah I'm doing I'm going to I'm going to start doing cold calls you make 10 calls every 3 days when you're

feeling motivated rather than doing 200 aisles every day like its Clockwork before lunch you know what I mean the level of effort difference is not like 2X or 4X it's like 50x it's a lot bigger and most people dramatically underestimate the amount of volume and effort that is required to get to where you want to go like dramatically and so those I've so many lessons that this repeated and I was taught yet again in a different sphere that I'm not familiar with that this was true I'm also wearing the same shirt um so I decided

to take his viice and dramatically increase the amount of content that we created in how many places we displayed it right and so before I tell you um who wants to guess how many pieces of content we started putting out weekly after that call 25000 10,000 less than that I would be so much more famous if I put 10,000 out what was that 100 good good guess so we went from seven pieces of content a week I did three on YouTube and then I just repurposed the same three on a podcast um to 80 80

content pieces a week and for scale if you remember the first line that I showed you way before the top of that is that purple line from the first graph I showed you and so pretty pretty cool and so this is what happened in those six months we uh added 300,000 subscribers on YouTube 7,000 followers on Instagram still haven't really cracked that one uh 350,000 on Tik Tok 150,000 buyers which is cool uh on Amazon for the book uh 350,000 followers on Instagram 100,000 on uh Twitter and 400,000 downloads a month on the podcast cool

right so basically 100 a million person audience uh within that six months and because I more of a business guy than I am a quote influencer Creator uh this is what I cared about so the net traffic result for us was web traffic went from basically non-existent to about 100,000 uh unique clicks a month to the site just organically cool uh number two is the subscribers I told you before and then this is one that's really cool for who here runs paid ads can I get a okay some of you cool so this this will

resonate with you so in the businesses that I had at a $25 CPM we were getting $2 million a month in exposure for free not only not free we're getting paid to do it crazy like I'm I'm beside myself still because I think it's insane so the fact that this opportunity exists right now is literal Insanity to me like we're getting paid now to Market like what a world right and so the business result from that is that we get about 400 companies a month at apply for acquisition. comom uh so we can help them

scale um and in that time period We Grew From 7 million a month to 13 million a month um and disclaimer on that is that part of that was just the the companies themselves grew wasn't like new companies um but still a lot in six months and so if you're anything like me you're probably thinking well that's really great for you Alex but what about me which which is why I made section two which is how and how much all right so here's where you come in all right so let's start with how much so

just a reminder here in terms of time I'm not like a Creator full-time so it's like 937 is probably the amount of time that I allocate towards this and so MoneyWise this costs me $20,000 a month to do all right you can scale this down however you want I also don't have a tremendous amount of time that I allocate towards it so I have to compensate with that with money you could probably do this on your own I just I this is how I do it so we have a Twitter editor a YouTube editor a

LinkedIn editor a podcast editor and an IG and Tik Tok editor all right um and there's two of us so times two so it's actually 40,000 a month for the both of us okay the amount of time that it takes me is two days uh per month and four hours per week uh and that is that is what I dedicate towards this and so quick recap I have a daily mind dump which I'll show you how I do it in a second because we're going to show you I'm going to show you the whole model

um I do a weekly Twitter review it takes me like four hours because Twitter is actually really important to how I do stuff which I'll explain later and if you guys aren't on Twitter I actually it's my favorite platform but um we do one day a month of recording and then uh for shorts and then one day a month uh it's usually like a half day I'll do like 4 to8 YouTube videos the ones that are direct to camera and that's it that's the that's the jam so that's the how much that's what that's my

investment that's my cost to do this and so here's the how and so this is the content creation model all right that's the big Visual and those are the Bold bullets fantastic let's start with the first one so so test record inject contextualize distribute so the old way that I used to do content was I would just have this ongoing email thread to myself under you guys have like notes or like a chain to yourself because you probably get ideas you're in a conversation oh I should make a piece of content on that right and

then you email it to yourself and that's how I did it for a long time and the new way is the Twitter way which is uh being blocked by the thing because it formatted weird but uh I post all of those ideas as tweets on Twitter rather than just sending them to myself and so all of a sudden what used to be my inbox is actually just my like tweet thread all right and so I tweet about five times a dayish uh and the nice thing is that Twitter is a very forgiving platform so it's

just like stream of Consciousness and it takes notes you don't have to pick vid you know videos or captions or I like it because it's just thoughts like that's I love Twitter so much for that reason and so I'll post this stuff and I'll be like okay those are the ones that people thought were interesting and then the threads become long format and the shorts become short format or the TW become short format pretty simple step one everyone following with me so long yeah my man and we feel like you could do that all right

doable yes second step is recording right why am I doing both I realized because you're like why you do short stuff um I was kind of against shorts and then I realized that I've never actually consumed anything from Gary ve that's long but I like Gary a lot and I was like ah well I guess that work so that's why I do both uh right and so I think it's a width and depth thing I think the shorts give you a lot of breath I think the Longs give you a lot of depth right and

so there's a visual that I put together that took me too long to to say that same thing great so this is everything that I know about about how to make content that quote goes viral I watched a long like interview with Mr Beast my big practice of trying to learn stuff is go to the person who's the best at it and listen to them because they've already reorganized the information for you hack um and so he's like listen all these guys make this all compliment with their tags and the hashtags and if any you

guys sell that this is not me offending you I have no idea what I'm talking about remember big grain of salt um but he said it's just CTR times watch time that's it you got to get people to click and you got to get people to watch I was like okay that makes sense he's like and that's what YouTube wants they want people to be interested in the content to get the click and then make sure that the content fulfills the promise of the thumbnail cool I was like I can do that and so this

is the general format that I've used for the Longs which is like a hook or a question that I'm answering usually a story that's relevant to answer the question a framework that I've applied to repeat that process and then an explanation of why I think it works that's it and if I want to make longer stuff it's just that process with multiple stories repeating that over and over again the shorts is a hooker question a hammer which for me is my tweet I put the Tweet as the next thing I say because I already know

it converts um and then I have an example and an explanation that's about it that's Alex's million dooll thing there we go fantastic and so this is an example so it's like 28 ways to guarantee poverty or 28 ways to stay poor right so I made this thread got a lot of shares cool 28 rules reprogram mod to be rich in 22 minutes so I have to change the the you know the headline and stuff but the content was identical I just did it in a video right and then the short ones that do well

it's like all right overheard from an ABV SE blah blah blah authenticity is just a fancy word boom I just make a short version of the same thing just saying the Tweet does this make sense okay cool and then I upload it fancy so far all right Tada next one is inject so uh we grew the the podcast actually recently from like 20,000 a month to 400,000 a month and a big part of that was just having called to actions um sounds really dumb but I wasn't doing it so do it and so the way

that we did it was we recorded two versions of each of the call to action so like call to actions to other channels lead madx share a tag if you have a lower ticket product I don't but like or if you know for me I gu have a book it's 99 cents um you know leave a review uh if you want to ask for clients or you know send a question or there's my book there Grant slam offer so I would just record two different ctas for that and then I just inject them into the

content so this is what what it might look like so it's like you have your CTA One content mid roll content uh end off does that make sense so we started doing that with the podcast and it's it started to grow a lot and now we're actually doing it in the rest of the forms of content so you'll see that from me uh because this has been working uh so this is me doing this walking the talk all right the point directions Etc okay contextualize so anyone seen this one before everyone see this like me

that went viral so it's like everybody kind of appears somewhat differently even though it's the same person depending on the setting that you're in right on Facebook you look a certain way LinkedIn you look a certain way Tinder you look a certain way um I had a sales guy who uh was on this is not relevant at all um was on Tinder and uh and he would close every one of his dates uh on buying our supplements um so that he could get he was like it always covered dinner um Savage anyways um just you

know Shooters got to shoot okay so so you have to make this stuff contextual and so this is what we do so this is the same video right it's that same uh Navy SEAL video I made earlier right so that's a real that's a Tik Tok and then that's the YouTube short so it's the same thing you just you just make it match the platform same way you would make your Facebook look different than your Instagram look different than your LinkedIn Etc as long as you just make it contextual I think it it does a

lot better because have you guys seen people just like take literally the exact same thing and post it on the wrong platform I just think it just hurts it and it's just not that much effort to to make a contextual all right last one distribute then we distribute them all right so we went from seven times a week to 80 times a week in distribution that was the result over that six-month period which was a lot of growth awesome and so we 10x the inputs and we got 10x the outputs surprising right so who here

would like 10 times the output well then you can just 10x the input all right good talk um so quick recap all right content creation model test first thing you do make your brain dump into something that's actually generating content so this T this is net zero time for me I was doing it and I just started doing it publicly number two is that once I have the stuff that's winning I record it I record the threads as Longs I record the tweets as shorts from there the team injects the call to action so that

I can direct the traffic whatever way I want to direct it right four and big one on this last injection thing like if you don't do this cuz I wasn't it you you get all of these Impressions and like eyeballs and stuff and you'll get followers but like you don't drive a result um which again sounds silly that I wasn't doing this but I told you at the beginning you guys are better than I am at this number four was contextualize it I just think it works a lot better and then finally you cut it

and increase the volume cool that make sense so far great fantastic so was that helpful Okay cool so that concludes section two how much and how fantastic observations I was going to call it musings but then I thought no one would know what that meant so um I just gave you the like traditional lip service on a Content generation model it's kind of boring and I don't think it's that interesting which is why I tried to get through it quickly because a lot of people describe that as the reason that we grew a lot and

I don't think that's why but I'm presenting it because I would end up getting a zillion questions about it and so that's why it's there I think the real reason that we were able to grow so I'm going to put like my real head on for a minute um is that and again this is my two cents there you go is that there's an unspoken question in every person's mind that has to First be answered which is why should I listen to you and I think it's one of the most profound questions and I think

it influences how people share how people take your content everything it's the frame that the content is consumed in so I'll give you a real example imagine you're talking to a guy you don't know anything he's just like talking about business and you're like oh it's cool and then like 2 seconds later it's like dude that guy's a billionaire all of a sudden you're like right the frame matters a lot Elon Musk makes a a tweet that's like I'm on the toilet and it gets like 500 million shares right this guy's hilarious right it's cuz

it's Elon right and he has a brand that he's established and there's context there and so I think that we should have this question answered for ourselves and our prospects before creating content all right and so imagine for a moment that I had done this whole presentation up to this point and I had a 1,000 person total audience between all of those platforms same presentation how different would that feel right just imagine dude on stage you don't know me and I have a thousand people on Instagram and that's it same presentation you would receive it

differently right right I would cuz I would think it was stupid pointless preachy better than thou full of and if you're so good why don't you do it that's what I would think right and so we have to answer the question why should I listen to you and I think a lot of you are making content from a weak frame and that's just what I see that's just me witnessing it like you know it's like the 18-year-old relationship coaches you know what I mean mean they're they're real you know like they're out there some of

you are here you real right you know or it's like the business coaches that are doing $5,000 a month I don't you know what I mean I don't have a lot of like you know so besides all the stuff that we shared earlier the real reason that I think our audience is growing is that we're talking about stuff that we have evidence to support like that's the real right so all the I said earlier sure you can do that that worked for me you might not like Twitter I like Twitter because it's easy for me

if it's not easy for you don't do it right which is why this worked for me this time right that's the context but I think this stuff is the more kind of Eternal stuff and that's why I was kind of like excited to get to part three uh yes uh and so I think it's about having the evidence for your others and most importantly for yourself right we built these other companies first before ever talking about how to build companies right and so if you're like great Alex nice for you so how do I make

content if I'm just starting out excellent question so there's two frame shifts that I think have to occur do then talk how I versus how to and give versus get all right so let's start with the first one so who here hates this right how to live an amazingly happy life and get everything that you want from somebody who is doing this part-time and is still cutting hair right there's nothing wrong with cutting hair but it probably wouldn't make you an authority on this matter does that make sense some of you are doing this and

wondering why it's not working you're like man my stuff's so much better it honestly doesn't matter it doesn't matter because if I had a thousand people on state like on my followers and I made the same presentation you wouldn't give it like I'm trying like real right and so there's a better way I think all right so this is Alex's crazy content creation model trademark pending all right step one dou step two talk about what you just did I know and then do bigger this is a complex model I know we're getting to it so

here's how it looks in the real world all right hey here's what I did versus here's what you should do feel the difference this is what I did if it works for you awesome if it doesn't work for you no whatat here's 20 of my clients this is the stuff that I'm doing with them right now Rosie was struggling with some skin condition we started giving her magic pills and look at her skin now it's amazing right but like this is what it might not work for you but this is what works for her and

this will work for him this will work for my clients right not what you should do as soon as you point out people hate you because it sounds like you're preaching it sounds like you have an ego and I just don't think people like that and so I think it's also switching from how I other way switching from how to to how I so how to build a massive social media following to how I built the following that I have feel a difference it's really small but really big in terms of how people interpret your

message because it's like thanks I appreciate it I think that what happens is when you say it that way you're like you're you're you're pulling back and saying like hey like I hope this serves you in some way like this is like me opening the kimono this is the stuff that's working right now for me whereas the other way you're at the pulpit commanding giving demand you know demands and and commanding people and I just don't think people like that I mean how many people they entire Instagram femous people shaking their finger at you right

it sucks I hate it right and so I think it's really speaking on your truths rather than claiming to know the truth and I think the here and there's a there's a point I probably make later but I'll bring it up now is that everyone is unquestionably an expert on your own life no one can question that if I say I had oatmeal for breakfast this morning I am untouchable I me was kind of lame but but from the from a factual like no one can challenge me on that like this is what I eat

every day no one's going to be like you Alex harming the planet right they're not going to say that because like that's real that's true no one can touch that right but as soon as I say you should have oatmeal for breakfast you right it's this big of a difference but it makes all the impact in the world in terms of how people receive the message so question who here makes the content because they want want to become famous and feel good about themselves o or who is making stuff because they want it to be

received and help the audience right and so the thing is is you have to feed them and not you and I think if you can make that shift I think in my opinion it will be more effective and so if you look at the biggest influencers in the business space because this is the space that I'm kind of in you look at these guys I mean shoot half these guys are talking here so congrats to the the event it's awesome very honored to be on with them um so that's the accm at work the Alex

crazy content creation method at work by the way um dou talk about the you did which one of these guys made money from their social media following made the money they have from the social media following right and so how many of these people needed the followers none right people like I want to be the next this it's like if you want to be the next that then you got to walk that walk right and so you probably won't be respected as an authority on business until you've achieved Mega success the same reason you look

at your competitors like that guy sucks it's like they're looking at you right and it's because why should I listen to you and so here's the good news because you're like well Alex what do I talk about here's the good news you can become a niche specific Authority so rather than going like here's how to live an amazing life right that's like you've got to be Jesus Jesus can do that Jesus can you can't do that Jesus can do that right so you got to go from here to like I'm really good at helping people

build ATM businesses I'm really good at help people flip houses in Phoenix right because in that little ocean that little Pond you can be king because you got to compete against 20 guys and you got to do you got to walk the talk right you got to do what you're doing you talk about what you're doing that's it you can win in that little Pond and I'll show you how to scale from there in a second but you can do that all right and so this is me when I started so I had a couple

powerlifting records and I liked working out right and so thank you and so the stuff that I did then was about what I was doing then and so you you can't read it but it says how to get rid of stubborn fat on your arms and stomach that's the content I was making that and who was it relevant for just the members at my gym but that was my way of adding value and already had a rapport with them so they're like if I'm going to learn about this identical topic from 100 different people I'd

just rather learn about it from you cuz I like you and I had values-based Rapport not expertise like I had General expertise because I looked the way I looked but beyond that I didn't have a PhD it's not like I did a ton of research I read the same articles and just tried to make it entertaining that was it and I didn't become me mega famous for that but this made me money this made me enough money to you know grow the company that I had at the time and so from there I leverag that

to grow my first gym and then the gyms after that right and then from there once the gyms grew I started making content about how to grow gyms why because I knew how to grow gyms I wasn't like how to scale your sass company you know I mean like how to reach a billion dollar valuation like I I was like I don't know but this is what work for my gyms and people were like dude this stuff works I'm like I know cuz I'm doing I this how I do it like I know it works

this how I do it of course it work I'm doing here's what's crazy so many people are talking about and teaching stuff that a they have never done and B they are repurposing someone else's content and making a version of it some of them are [Applause] you and that's the thing is is like when you start talking in the theoretical and trying to teach something it's how to rather than how I right so if you do the thing then you just talk about what you just did now later on I think it's the the capture

uh capture don't create documents don't create concept but I understand that that takes resources like it takes money to get people around you to you know document your life and all that kind of stuff like that that's expensive but I think just even doing Recaps of like this is the stuff that's working right now for us in this context people are like thanks you didn't have to do that thanks for sharing that stuff that's working for you rather than how to and no if you do it that way you will not gain a mega following

at first but you will accomplish which will set you on the path for you to be broader later so the gym Secrets podcast became the game then I published from the gym launch Secrets book which is how to build a profitable gym to $100 million offers book and the difference in scale was pretty tremendous that's my gy on secret but I still think it's a phenomenal book by the way um to that book and that book's done that in less than a year and that other book's been out like four years and so it's not

bad it's just sequence people try and go out of sequence they try and say like why am I not Tom Billy why can't I'm doing everything Tom Billy is doing except for building Quest oops like that's why what he says is relevant right like you know what I mean because the thing is is like we want everybody here most people seek truth would you say if you're like raise your hand if you seek truth okay so the easiest shortcut for the brain to seek truth is to look at someone who's the most extreme version and

then think okay I don't have to apply a lot of decision- making filtering here because now I can just absorb this because I I can just take this as fact because if Warren Buffett says this is how I should invest I feel okay about about that Source even if he's like save your money spend less than you earn in dollar cost average into the S&P and don't buy gold right like he says that stuff and you're like okay now the stay-at-home teacher who's been saving all of her money could say the exact same thing but

she just forgot to build Berkshire hathway and so the thing is is that and I'm I'm actually very against the whole confidence Mantra of like people being like you got to believe in yourself you got to you have to do things so that you have evidence that you can support why you are [Applause] good you guys are great and this is like my favorite line from The Matrix it's I think in the second or third I can't remember which one it is but Morpheus is up there and he's like I feel truthfully unafraid not because

of the path that lies before me because of the path that lies behind me and I think I think it gives a lot of spiritual strength that because I I got asked on an interview they're like how are you so C I was like you talk about these things like with so much certainty I was like well that's just how I've done it like and it's that depth of experience and knowledge that like no one can question that we built those things that's truth those are the real numbers and so as long as you're not

fudging your numbers right and you just say like this is what it is then of course you're certain right because I think confidence is self-d delusion it's trying to make up for what you don't have evidence for and I think it's a much easier practice to stop pretending and start doing the stuff that you should be certain about and then you don't have to have bravado you can get up like you can walk on stage and people are like that guy built the big the biggest king of water Empire out there my buddy Colin's in

the front and and he built that he doesn't have to have confidence for people to listen to him they will want to listen to everything that he says if that is what they want to do because they'll just go to the person that's done the thing that they want to do so that they don't have to apply a lot of effort in thinking and they can just say I'll do everything this person says right most people people cannot separate information from source so what we do is we just seek out good sources I think wisdom

is built through being able to take from separating information from Source a fool can give you a very wise piece of wisdom or information or a lesson but it's much harder to do that and so the shorthand for most of us is just go to somebody who's an absolute Authority in this thing that has unquestion a reason that I should listen to them and then just listen to them the downfall of that is that you start taking stock advice from your hairdresser I'm not bashing hairdressers right now this just top of mind right and so

you're like I trust you what else you got and then they start talking about things that are not their expertise and then that's when you get in trouble and so to the same degree if you probably have an audience that asking you questions right anybody have an audience that ask some questions raise your hand okay if someone asks you a question that is not something that you have authority on I think you gain more Authority by saying I don't have authority to speak on that and then you gain more respect because because this is what

happens damaging admissions are the single greatest thing that built trust if I say I suck at marriage advice I suck at you know giving happiness advice I suck at whatever but I'm really good at making high returns in the stock market how much more believable that is that than I make really good returns in the stock market and I'm really good at marriage and I'm really and and and when you admit your deficits whatever comes after the admission of guilt or the admission of of deficiency is believed more so if I say hey I really

suck at a lot of things but you're going to believe what I S I say right here that's a sentence structure for persuasion and you can use that in all of the content that you have forever it's also great for negotiating and so anyways I say all this to say it's the path that lies behind you not the path that lies in front of you that will give you the certain that you want to gain the influence you desire and so my Evolution for me was Fitness First and I just talked about this is what's

worked for me people are like Alex how do you eat Twizzlers and cookies all day and have a six-pack and I'm like a genetics B I live at a gym and c I eat this way right and people are like oh so I can have cookies too and have a sixpack and I was like yes and that was relevant for me some people are like super vegan Superstars awesome and they're going to talk about what's relevant for them and the people who follow will be like that's I I Vibe with that cool right and so

I'm not going to be the best nutrition expert in the world but in terms of like my little little feum I can rule that right and then I moved up because I started doing well there and people started asking me hey how are you growing your gym I was like well this is how I grew my gym people were like what about business in general like I don't know I've never R an e-commerce business I don't know about manufacturing I don't know about software I don't know about any of that stuff but I know how

to grow a gym so it only talks about that and the amount of people that that was relevant for this many but for that audience everything right I mean and just for context here there are riches and niches like that company made a lot of money just saying like it made a lot of money and it didn't make me famous at all and so again the question is do you want to be rich do you want to be famous are you trying to serve you are you trying to serve the audience right and then the

last one is like now we've been able to leverage that initial success to build an e-commerce brand to build a software brand to sell those and then now we have a portfolio and so now because we have businesses that span a lot of different areas I can say these are the Frameworks that we use to build all of them I hope this serves you and then people can take that and has anybody used any of the Frameworks that we've for mosy nation anybody who's been there have anybody used those Frameworks to make more money one

person probably [Laughter] not so a big part of that is that you just get better over time and so I said this quote and it went it got shared a lot it's like you're not making as much money as you want because you're not as good as you think you are I'm just being real like I don't know I could have done like the here's my 177,000 content model you know what I mean but like the real is that you're probably not that good yet comma and that's okay like the only person beating you up

is you right and so the only way to get better is volume and the only way to get even better than volume is volume times time because volume you can write this down I don't have this in the presentation but this is like the equation of Life Volume or at least business volume times time equals skill you got to do it a lot of times for a long period of time and you will get better that is a promise you will if you suck today you will suck less tomorrow and eventually one day you will

look up and suck so little that you will actually be good and then people will ask you how did you become an overnight success and then instead of saying here's how you cold call you say here's how I did it I hope this serves you right and you can build that trust that way great Alex so how do I make money if I'm just starting out fantastic all right colon gez always about the money I'm kid I'm kidding Colon's awesome um so here's a couple observations here give away the secrets sell the implementation all right

if you want to build an Enterprise that is valuable this is how you do it you can sell info there's nothing wrong with that but if you want to build a brand give away the secrets sell the implementation all right cuz people like you can give the whole away people still won't do it 1% of people will do it my business model relies on the 1% who do it you I mean so like I I Bank on that but only one% are going to do it so most people need help most people need encouragement most

people need accountability most people need it somebody who's going to act as their virtual Google because they don't want to type it in it's true right and so one of the side notes that I have here is that if you're not afraid of what you're giving away that you're giving away too much you're not giving away enough and so every time I've written a book or I've made like a presentation that ends up going live I always think to myself like oh God I'm sharing everything what will they do they won't need me anymore because

I give them this information they can they don't they'll just keep living their lives and I will become obscure in nothing and I will and I will die right that is what it feels like I mean you you catastrophize but but that's real right it's the it's the opposite though right and there's so many things I feel like that I that I've at least realized for me is a lot of things are the opposite of what you expect it's like you only gain your life by giving it right like you only get trust from others

by trusting first you only get value back by giving value first and so if you're afraid of giving away all the secrets that you have I promise you if you make content that does not contain the secrets 99% of people who are the people who are never going to pay you any ways 99% of people will just think you suck cuz you give nothing so you just make fluff cuz you're so afraid of giving good stuff away that the thing that most people consume is they make one they consume one video and they make a

judgment and say I will never consume a video from this person again what a waste of time and so like my big fear with every piece of content is I would rather make fewer pieces of content because I'm so afraid of somebody taking 20 minutes to consume something after watching a bunch of my stuff watching that one and not actively deciding to stop watching but just just don't get enough for the time that they're like I'll just watch something else they don't say like ah Alex they just pivot a little bit and slowly you fade

away and so I would rather have quality over quantity but quality quantity beats just just quality right but I would personally this is me I would personally prefer to have better stuff and give away as many Secrets as I possibly can to get people to start taking steps towards you because what also happens is if someone goes and uses stuff from the YouTube channel and grows from a million dollars a year to $3 million a year or $5 million a year they don't have questions on whether or not we can provide value because we already

have right and then it makes the sales process dramatically easier because you say what brought you here today and they're like well you made me $2 million a year I love you and you're like awesome want to get to 10 and they're like sure like how do I know it's going to work because it already has right and you can take that it's a totally different totally different frame for the sale okay and so make your free materials better than everyone else's paid materials I heard this from Tony Robbins and I think it's really true

but I think the real reel is that most of your stuff is not better than their paid stuff and so that's why it doesn't work and so talk about you really know which is your special which is your individual thing that you have experienced that no one can challenge your truth all right and so finally you want to play games where if you wait you win because Goodwill compounds faster than money because the longer you can delay the ask the bigger the ask can be the longer the runway the bigger the plane that can take

off of it and so I promise you and this is again gigantic Himalayan grain of salt with the limited experience that I have uh doing organic cuz I've only done direct to jugular paid ads um cold calling you know affiliate stuff straight pitching I've only done that but I can say that this brand is very special to me because I enjoy what we're building and I'm in no rush to do it and you have time and so the longer you can wait and keep walking with people the longer the compounding works in your favor like

it's no coincidence that the biggest people in the business space don't need anything from their audiences right because I think that that compounding process gets interrupted when you do a hard pitch that's my opinion I could be wrong that's my opinion and so the idea is how can we how can we sell without selling right and I think in that way the compounding will happen faster than the revenue would have otherwise increased if you started trying to make the money fast and so the longer you you can delay that the better it's going to be

and then you can understand why all these guys play the infinite game of never even wanting to do that right hook because it's like but next year I'm going to have five times the audience and then a year later they're like but next year I'm GNA have five times the audience right because as soon as you you you you shoot your shot you dramatically decrease the Goodwill and so I think that I've at least adapted and this is maybe just a different way of saying it I know Gary's got uh jab jab jab right hook

just a personal observation that I've had is that you can go give give give give give give get you don't even have to ask people just start handing things to you because if you deposit enough Goodwill in there it just starts coming back and I know that sounds crazy but like the amount of people that DM you are like Hey man can I give you 10 grand for 10 minutes I'm like no I don't do that like how about 20 grand like no I don't do that right the amount of times people inbound and they're

like hey can I have you on my podcast can I have you on my stage can I all these things are happening because you're not asking for anything and it makes people feel uncomfortable it like it makes people feel really uncomfortable they're like how can I buy something from you and you're like you can't they're like and I'm like use the get to 3 million then we can partner right but that's it you know what I mean there's nothing else and so I think that if we can make that pivot and have that patience uh

but like for theying really big picture the reason most people aren't successful is they just can't control themselves like that's it it's impulse control and so there's three things they did this research study that said that Ultra Ultra successful people have three common traits number one is they have a superiority complex they think they're better than everybody they think they they can do bigger things second is that they are they have crippling insecurity of not being enough I like that one hits me and then third one is impulse control so it's they know where they

want to go they have a way they have Way Drive to not be a failure and they stay focused on it because of impulse control and so the idea here is if we can do that we will be more successful and the reason that most people don't make money is because they can't wait 12 months like I had this I have this 18-year-old who was my neighbor and I said I'm going to have you sign a contract that says I want to be a millionaire I was like you got to wait 5 years and you

can't make any money between now and then would you do it he's like yeah I would do it every single person can do that I guarantee you if you delayed your ass for 5 years and you us to provide a value to people for 5 years you'd have bigger audience than you what to do with and you'd be a millionaire in five years probably happen a lot faster than that but if you committed to doing it for five years you would but guess what no one's going to do it and that's why most people aren't

successful and so like we come to these events and you have the models and all the stuff right but people still eat cookies when they're trying to lose weight and so it's a concept of local versus global which is there's a local benefit to eating cookies you feel better whatever the global benefit goes down though because you don't get the six-pack you want if that's the goal and you're counting macros you get the idea right and so most people cannot sacrifice local benefit for Global the sales guys don't want to put the the notes in

the CRM even though that benefits the entire organization because it's a local cost right and so as a side note for operations for a business operation is supposed to bring Global benefit in of the local cost um and so when we're trying to achieve the things that you're trying to do right the local benefit is just make the ask fast the global benefit is the longer you can wait the bigger it can be and so for me I'm like why not wait as long as humanly possible so I'll I'll wrap this up speak from strength

share your experiences to add to the body of knowledge the problem with a lot of the Social Media stuff and and books that are out there now is that the the barrier to entry in terms of what it takes to publish content is so low it's almost not visible right so low and so everybody can produce content back in the day the only way you produce content was like after 30 years of being a researcher you're like this is my entire life's work in one book so I can add to the body of knowledge people

were like wow thank you for that and that's how that's how content was made right and if you wanted to do a direct uh you know a marketing piece you had to edit it and put it on a piece of paper and look at it every single way and know that you're you're going to pay 50 cents for every single person who's going to receive it and you better be damn sure it's beautiful right but people don't want like it's so easy now to publish that most stuff is right most stuff sucks and is a

total waste of time so just try and talk about the stuff that's not a waste of time that you actually know so you can add to the body of knowledge if you say hey this is what I did consider yourself a mini researcher like these are the experiments I ran in my business these are the experiments I ran in my weight loss CL these are the experiments I ran in my Plumbing business just talk about the experience because no one can question that second is that teaching on principles is difficult until you've achieved a material

amount in the field because there are others who will teach it with more depth of experience it's very difficult to teach business unless you're very successful business because there's just another person who someone will listen to more right but no one can question what you have done hey if you got value out of that session can you smash the like button and I would love to hear one of your biggest takeaways in the comments below we're about to jump into how to hide and build your team even if you don't have a big budget whether

you need an assistant a video editor whether you're wondering if you're ready to scale or not and and how do you actually build a media team around you if you're an entrepreneur this is a powerp packed session that we're going to get into but I do want to let you know that some of this content is from our think media podcast if you want to start or grow a YouTube channel and build a thriving online presence I want to invite you to check it out and we have interviews like some of the ones you're hearing

here we have solo rounds all about unfiltered tips for building a profitable YouTube channel I'll link to it in the description below and it's also on all of the audio platforms and we bring you two episodes every single week and so check out the show notes for that and other resources and now let's jump into session number two with Dan Martel first question is who should you hire first like which as a founder and so to Define founders too A lot of people listening to this might be accidental entrepreneurs or they didn't really found anything

they might be in network marketing or they're in real estate or a loan officer and they want to use YouTube to get leads client sales but they're nevertheless the principal right they're they could be the CEO they might not Define them themselves that way but now they need help and they need help with this content thing who do you recommend hiring first it all comes down to like what you're spending your time on right and it doesn't it's actually interesting because the I wrote the book for very specific you know uh 1.2 million in Revenue

12 to 13 employees agency owner like I had a very specific archetype but I wrote it in a way hopefully that was going to resonate with creators Freelancers sea level people at companies directors like at what happens at the end of the day is is like people create value per hour of unit of time right and I start the book by talking about the different levels of trading your time and time for money and then money for money eventually so every person can just look at their calendar and say where do I spend my time

on things and of those activities what actually generates the most wealth or income and what lights me up so to me the best person to hire first is all the things that you don't like to do that you could pay people the least amount of money to support you so if somebody's you know an employee at a company but you're making good money maybe it's having somebody support you in your home right and taking care of the house cleaning and the meal prep and you know supporting you in that way if it's if you're an

entrepreneur for most of the founders that I work with uh it's usually your inbox in your calendar because your inbox is full of you I always say your inbox is a public to-do list for strangers to demand of your time like it's kind of nutty to think about it but if we are back you know 100 years in business and you're on Main Street USA you wouldn't allow a stranger to just walk into your office and demand something from you but yet in today's world that's how we do it so it really depends on the

individual's calendar of where they're spending time and and it's really that that filter of like what's the least expensive thing you hate to do because when you take things that suck your energy out of your life and you start stacking what I call Green activities the ROI on that is not even just like buying the time back it's actually an amplifier to the work you get to do because you go from thing to thing or project to project with a new sense of excitement and passion and that that energy is compounding it's not just more

money but it's also quality of life Peace of Mind happiness yeah so in the book you do recommend that for most Founders it's probably an admin assistant this is what happens is we're taught a bunch of beliefs that are just not true okay and I have a whole chapter called the five time assassins where I try to break down these these beliefs around like you know when I started in business my dad would say stuff to me like you know the CEO they're the Chief sandwich maker and office cleaner and they've got to be willing

to do the stuff to show the rest of the team that they and I don't disagree but at a certain point if that's 10 to 15 hours if I own a CrossFit gym and I'm spending 10 to 15 hours of my week managing the cleanliness of my classes and the space and putting equipment away and instead of coaching where that coaching hour could be worth $100 to $500 an hour why would you do that trade like where what is what are you trying to prove to anybody what I would much rather and I I talked

about this uh bike owner in the book he he owned a bike shop that I go to frequent and he had this belief that he had to be the guy that you know welcomed me at the front door and shook my hand and was like how you doing Dan and knew about my family but at the same time everything I ordered every every time I brought my bike in for maintenance every time I do anything in this business there was always a mistake there was always an issue and I remember thinking to myself it's like

I appreciate you want to do that but what I actually want you to do more is just run your business better and to have any other person that you could just say hey when people walk through that door can you please put on a smile and shake their hand and just get your staff to do that so that you can be in your office and run the company that's actually what your customers want so there's just a lot of beliefs around it and when I look at most people's calendar they're just spending a lot of

time on $10 tasks and what I've learned is you can't build a million-dollar company running around doing $10 task it's just it's mathematically impossible so you share the buyback rate calculation what is the buyback principle first yeah the buyback principle states this and this is the controversial thing is we don't hire people to grow our business we hire people to buy back our time because if you do the first you don't get the second but if you do the second you get the first and it's a I call it a capacity over calendar problem is

a lot of first-time entrepreneurs are just like I'm busy I need to hire people I need to hire a person in the office I need to hire a person in the warehouse I got to hire a support person I need to hire a programmer got to hire somebody to create logos but it's like no you can do those activities because those are like hiring a designer to do logos for you might have to pay him 35 50 bucks an hour but what you're going to still do $8 $10 you're going to run so I one

of my friends in construction and I remember he was overwhelmed and I was just like tell me about your overwhelm and in his explanation of his week I identified that he spent two days a week running around Sight to sight to sight and I'm like dude that's called a runner that's a person you can hire part-time a kid because all you're doing is literally taking equipment from one place to another place and while they're doing that you could be on calls with potential new customers hiring better team members training your team but these are not

things that you do but it's just I think sometimes we just get addicted to the activity it's like email it's like is that really the best use of your time no but at least I know that when I wake up if I just like follow it I'll feel productive but it's a false sense of productivity because it actually doesn't move your goals and dreams forward so the buyback principle is we start by hiring people to buyback time out of our calendar and by doing that then we fill it with stuff that makes us more money

that lights us up and that'll support us having more resources to actually build the business so then you have What's called the buyback rate calculation so people could be thinking well I don't I can't afford to have somebody help me for a lot of content creators they should hire a video editor uh is maybe one of those first things that was what did it for me I was spending when I had a video it took me four to eight hours to edit it when I stopped doing that I recovered a ton of time bananas and

if it was multiple videos I could recover 30 to 40 hours a week by no longer editing video um but what is the buyback rate calculation to maybe determine if you should hire and what you can afford so last night dinner I had an awesome meal with a Creator that's got about 2 million subs and this was the conversation we had and and because they brought it up like I'm a lighthouse not a tugboat and unless you ask me about it I'm not going to but I see it all around me and here's the math

and I don't want to lose people because I'm going to make them do some math right it's essentially your income so whatever you make personally so I always say it's your if your salary it's the profit in your business and then discretionary expenses cuz nobody wants to pay taxes so they put a lot of personal stuff there which is fine but that's still value that you create on an annualized basis no doubt so you take that amount of money and let's just use a simple number like $100,000 70,000 salary 20,000 profit 10,000 discretionary expenses as

a general real thumb then we divide that by 2,000 because there's 2,000 hours in a normal working year when you take weekends away and holidays and stuff most people work 2,000 hours now that'll give you what I sometimes call the value creation score like what is your hour actually producing per year but you can't use that as the number to go hire people because then you're literally just trading you for somebody else which means you'll build a business but then you won't make any money so a lot of entrepreneurs create businesses that they grow to

hate yes because they hire above them my whole philosophy is higher below and that raises you that raises your ability to produce so is it a video editor maybe unless they're spending a lot of time in other areas and there's 10 hours they could buy back at a lower cost out tasking right so it's kind of like you stack so is it a video editor maybe but it may be somebody else first then the video editor or somebody else and that's what I was explaining to this person last night cuz like when I asked him

how much he was making in his YouTube channel like the and he was like well how much would I have to pay a good editor I'm like there's no amount of money that it wouldn't make sense when you're telling me you're spending 30 hours a week editing MH like you're making a lot of money and and when you look at it it has nothing to do with that trade so the formula is 2,000 you divide that that's your value per hour then you divide it by four because I want you to get a four times

Roi on the buyback yeah so if you hire somebody to clean your house and you pay them you know 500 bucks a week because they come a couple times then you've bought back eight hours now what do you do with those new eight hours to go invest in your business or invest in your health or invest in your relationships it doesn't have to be always a monetary thing because the last chapter of the book is actually the buyback lifestyle but I know for a lot of people we need to keep it into dollar and cents

initially yeah and that's how it works so if it's 100 Grand and you divide it by 2,000 then you divide it by four it works out to about $12.50 some people be like well I can't pay anybody to do anything meaningful for $12.50 truth is is you can totally there is so many services today you know back in my day Sean when we both started like you know there was there was Craigslist there was like these sites but now there's literally you can do task rabbit you can do upwork you can do um you know

even just paying somebody deliver stuff to your house versus you driving to go pick it up these are all like little mental things that people don't consider when they actually analyze their calendar and do a Time energy audit that they could be buying back their time but if you're making a lot of the clients I coach I mean they're making half a million a year plus yeah their buyback rate $62.50 yes there's a lot of stuff they're doing in their calendar they should just not be doing anymore but even if you're maybe working let's say

a day job you got some money coming in on your side hustle a lot of people listening to this they're trying to transition to being being a Content preneur yeah you know and so if we were to pick out something let's say they're making $75,000 a year you got to use your net number right you're talking about your net so let's say you can net 75,000 what you're going to do just to break this down I got my calculator out you're going to multi you're going to 75,000 divide by 2,000 divide by 2,000 and so

then that would mean how much you make per hour then divide it by four to get the four times Roi yeah so then you make $37.50 per hour if you net7 when you work right now you're making 3750 that's how much you keep that's that's money then of course you got to deploy that and if you're in the startup phase you have to deploy that on rent or your mortgage or your car payment or whatever but lean and mean because you should be reinvesting in your business so then you divide that by four and that's

nine bucks it could be right around 10 bucks an hour you do have onlinejobs.ph you you can have a fulltime dedicated virtual assistant 40 hours a week for about 700 bucks a month that's that's wild and there's Services we uh recommend things like vid chops or video Husky which allow you to Dropbox your footage and I think they'll edit four videos for you a a month for a couple hundred bucks so this can become incredibly practical so the excuse of I can't afford it is a mindset people have to break it's a mindset it's a

belief busting moment it's a complexity ceiling that they're just tapping against you there's some other excuses what about the one I don't have time though to actually sit down and and figure this out that's my favorite one um and the reason why is like I grew up you know I read the e- myth when I was 23 I went Allin you know I I hired an em certified coach this guy named Bob and then like as a software guy because that's really what saved my life was learning how to write code you know I just

I just fell in love with the ideas of like repeatable systems and like I read the book work the system by Sam Carpenter checklist Manifesto those are like my you know those are my books here's what I discovered the problem with a lot of like had get somebody to do something giving them a checklist is it takes time because a lot of people are like I don't have time to create these systems I don't know how to create these systems so that's where I came up with this thing called the camcorder method and the camcorder

method a lot of your content creators can appreciate this is I just record myself doing the work and the only thing that's different is I talk out loud about the thinking behind what I'm doing so if I'm processing my inbox I'm like and it's not entertaining right it's me sitting there open up an email and go oh that's by from Bob I know Bob if I search my emails here's my history with Bob so he's asking me for 15 minutes I'm going to go and I look at my calendar and it's like I only do

meetings in the afternoon so I'm going to give him this 15-minute spot or I'm going to send him my calendly link or whatever it is and you just you just talk yourself through doing this I mean a lot of the camcorder method stuff I do today like still this is a process I do on a daily basis is either uh on my iPad using the recorded with the audio so I like draw stuff and I'll record that to the cloud and then just share my iCloud link or I'll jump on Zoom share my screen and

it's just me but I'm recording it on Zoom because it's just so easy and then my assistant can pick it up and put it in a folder and so essentially what I do is I record everything knowing that I'm going to eventually buy back that time and then when I hire the person their first week and it's not glamorous is watching 40 hours worth of content yeah but then they create the SOP they create the Playbook sop standard operating procedure and what's cool about that is they get to watch me do the work so it's

training they get to try to play this of like what is the pattern that I should be seeing in the work and then they document what they saw and through that then I get a feedback loop at the end of the week when I hire them so Monday you start here's a document that's got links to all the recordings on Dropbox go through that create the S so on Friday I get to see how well they understood it so like last night I was talking to this guy and he was like nobody could edit like

me and I go I understand you believe that I would actually run an experiment with you where I'll pay for the editor and all I'm going to do is have him go watch your top five videos and I know a good editor is not an idiot they're going to look at the videos and they're going to go I see how he does this pinch I don't even know this terminology but you know what I mean he's gonna they're going to see it and I'm going to have them write out an sop for how you open

how you transition the music things the volume levels like and they're just going to write it out and I bet they would do something that if you showed a friend and said which of these two edits do you think is a better one they might pick the other person yeah that moment I remember like when you have somebody else produce work and you weren't involved and I say this in the book 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome yeah right but the moment you have somebody actually do work that's better than you would

have done why because that's their only thing they're doing because they can take the time to do it really well it's an unlock for people it it takes that ceiling of complexity and just blows It Wide Open so this is an ego this is offensive to our egos because one of the other excuses is no one can do as good at the work as I can and and as a video editor I struggled with this I actually thought that as soon as I started working with another editor his name was Jay at the time when

we finally got one of his videos ready to release I thought that was going to be the day that my YouTube comments flooded with people saying you betrayed us how dare you not edit your own videos you sold out we are unsubscribing and Dan can you guess how many comments I got when a video edited by somebody else came out on think media as many as you have before and nobody said anything and nobody said anything zero comments and I just remember I've been Ed video since 2003 so I had you know it was one

of my biggest skill sets the truth is two things right no one is as good at the work as I am that's either a myth or if they can at least do it 80% that's 100% freaking awesome because 80% is going to be sufficient in creativity and in content it's also kind of subjective yeah what do you even mean what is a good edit well is is it going to entertain people do people like and and enjoy it um a lot of creativity could be really subjective well and and there's there's a framework I teach

in the book cuz I I did write it for the when I wrote down the 25 people in my life that I love that I knew were struggling with buying back their time I pretty much like used them as like okay what's their objection this what's this okay and one of them was this concept like I'm a creative what I do is very nuanced nobody could do it as good as me so I teach a few Concepts like chunking but the one that people really resonated with was the 10810 Rule and I watch Steve Jobs

do this I watch Gary Vee do this I watch a lot lot of people that we admire build these massive companies that you would argue the product is innovation is creativity it's it's it's it's so musicians and the 10810 rule is this is I'm going to spend the first 10% of a project with the team to really talk about what are we trying to do what is the story arc what is the narrative structure what is the resources we have access to what do we think it should look like and it's Steve Jobs leaving his

office and going with Johnny Ives in the design studio and just saying to Johnny like I think we can get a hard drive that's small enough to fit in the back of our pockets and Johnny going I don't think those exist and he's like go see right or hey what if we did a translucent background on these iMacs or like like lollipop colors and he's like they don't make that kind of plastic go see right it's that first 10% and then you know Johnny would take these crazy requests or ideas and then work with his

team to prototype and to pull out the CNC machine and do foam models and all this stuff and then they would eventually get to a place where they had these finished productss but Steve would still come in at the end that last 10% and polish it right so that nothing ever left the factory floor without his stamp on it so that's what I'm saying to people I'm not saying you delegate and abdicate and just be like I hope it works out yeah it's just take that 80% of the heavy lift in give it to somebody

else and then at the end you can come in and look at the edit and go like oh let's do this here let's do this jump cut boom boom boom boom and then the final product still has your essence in soul and I think that Frameworks has helped a lot of creators go like oh I can see how now I have these different like work streams where I can still be creative using the 10810 Rule and not feel like I'm going to lose that that's super powerful so the first 10% you kind of are maybe

giving the Genesis idea the direction you're giving some wrong ingredients then 80% of the time somebody else is doing the rest the middle 80% and then in the final 10% you're tweaking it but you just bought back 80% of your time yes and so you have massive leverage created there uh we're really on to something I think speaking to creatives because there's a unique resistance to this when it comes to creativity and I think for some uh like the Creator you were speaking to last night many I speak to who they just hold it so

close their creativity but there's an incredible story about Andy Warhol the famous artist right who produced something like 85,000 pieces of unique art in his career and that story really inspired me in the book because it actually made me think about you know what is my art and when I think about these videos it is it is video it is I think I've uploaded over 2,000 videos now we're now doing vertical video and we're doing around 328 pieces of content a week this is all insane there's no way this is happening if there wasn't 18

people working at think media and 10 contractors and systems um but clearly it is not my hand on 80% or even it might be less than that of the work and Andy Warhol was Sim similar this is an actual artist an actual who's doing painting or silk screening break down that story of of of what he did that maybe creatives that have a resistance to like letting go of their creativity might have yeah I mean this is the fun part and it's why I use those examples in the book okay I didn't use Elon Musk

I didn't use Mark Zuckerberg I didn't use all these Tech entrepreneurs I said no let's go to the most creative art forms art yeah Tom Clancy yeah Oprah right these people that you're like oh they're just so Steve Jobs right but how do you do that scale so so here's Andy Warhol and he figured out something when he looked at how he produced his art and what was valuable to the art he realized a few things one me being out with potential buyers telling them the stories of my art and my life that's actually what

makes art valuable there's a great book called Austin um show your work by Austin Cleon yeah um I love it I'm not even an artist per se you know I do business stuff but I love the idea of like understanding what what we do that creates value because that's in in the book I I make this strong argument of like replace your time fill it once you buy it back with things that light you up that actually move your business forward that you would do like the whole part about building an empire is creating a

life that you never have to retire from with unlimited creativity so Andy Warhol saw that hey my time should be better spent talking to customers and coming up with creative ideas to play with so he created this thing called the factory and he had like a dozen interns that he would walk in he would do essentially the 10810 rule where he would be like I got this crazy idea let's do this treatment on these photog this photography or whatever and like do a bunch of variations right and I think that's the if anybody's stuck on

this about their creativity creative output I would actually argue that you will do more creativity I think you'll have more to it's it's like almost like more taste Mak you'll be able to have more to look at you have a team and they're showing you stuff and they're like hey I found this really cool site that lets us get these kind of audio clips and you're like oh and then you as the creative can can be the person that does the remixes right that goes I wonder if we took that audio output and paired it

with this visual treatment how would that look and instead of you having to do it they literally can do it while you go to your next meeting you know you might go close a new sponsor you know do the thing only you can do be on this show right but like the way I think about it and what Andy inspired me Tom Clancy I mean he just so people know Tom Clancy's dead and he still writes best-selling books wow think about that idea he still writes bestselling books he is no longer here on Earth why

because they built a system around his creative output and a lot of people like I remember I only found this out because I watched a pilot I was at the lounge in Toronto at the airport and he was reading this book and it was like thick and I was like wow that's Tom Clancy like he goes yeah it's crazy cuz he's not even alive yeah I go he's not he's like no he died like 10 years ago and I was like and you still read the book he goes I really like the book I like

the format I like the structure I like that type of of writing and they found people that could essentially um replicate his voice and his structure and I think that's the part that it attacks the ego yeah right but I would argue that what I would love for every creative and I've and all the podcasters I've talked to is like I want you to be on air that's your unique genius the way you show up and you you ask questions and you engage with the but as soon as the cameras are done move on and

and build a team that can take all this stuff and then just and then just have it show up on social media show up you know and and support the sponsors do all this stuff and I think that's and then do more of that right like buy back your time to go produce other shows like you're doing like you know and just look at look at this stuff because I think it's I don't know I just can't see a world where somebody's truly about their art and creating that a future where they don't create more

isn't what they want the only bottleneck is they're doing stuff that isn't actually part of the creative process they can't get support on yeah and that story inspired me I actually thought I'm like think Media or goal is to make it like the factory like how do we scale creativity how do we also enroll other creatives you know increase our outputs and what's fascinating is that Andy Warhol it wasn't just the art that he figured out he really developed the skill of business and he develop the skill of systems and so sometimes as YouTube content

creators or as business own is trying to pump out more content we don't think about that as much but that's really where the game is and that's a lot of the value you add in this book I want to go back to just giving us some practical handles for getting control of our time of our week and maybe looking at maybe just some self-awareness of where we're wasting time but also what we should hire first and you recommend people do a time and energy audit a lot of people recommend time audits you add on energy

what's the difference and how much of a window of a time should we do and and what do you think we will discover in that how do we that as listeners well I kind of alluded to it earlier like the energy part is actually the missing piece and especially creatives like if I'm if I'm super creative for two hours and then I got to jump on an hour call with my like accountant man try to get you back into the creativ like it's just so so you know I think what was interesting when you talk

to like you watch uh Dr Dre talk about being in the studio or like they just lose track of time you know I I used to call it art class like when I'd go to art class the Bell would ring and 45 seconds what felt like 4 5 seconds later which was an hour the Bell would ring again and I just lost track of time I would love for everybody to look at their calendar through that lens what would change how would you show up for your family for your team if you were giving yourself

permission because that's what it is it's I'm I'm really trying to convince that's why I wrote the five time assassins it's like I want to give people permission to edit their calendar through this lens and the way it works is and this is the first thing I do with all my private coaching clients is twoe audit every 15 minutes you can get by these little timers if you want or use your phone but essentially every 15 minute goes off and you got to write down what you just worked on and you do that for two

weeks and it sounds like super tedious and it is but it's by Design Because by the second day people are like wow I'm wasting a lot of time but keep doing it get that twoe audit because it gives you enough of a a visual into your calendar to see and then you go back and you highlight green if it gave you energy that you enjoyed doing it or read if it took energy from you and then you scored out a $1 sign over $4 signs kind of like the cost of a restaurant $1 sign is

essentially your buyback rate and $4 signs is kind of like what you normally would have like what you make per hour that you'd have to pay somebody else it's like $60.50 or 100 an hour that might be a $4 sign rating and it's either one or four so it could be two it could be three or whatever and when you step back and you look at this audit this time and energy audit and you grab all the red stuff and all the $1 stuff that's red and you put it into a bucket you get excited

cuz you're like holy moly what if I hired somebody to do that and it might be one person it could be three part-time I call it outasking it doesn't matter how you solve it but you should not this is my argument you should not spend a dollar on paying another person to support you other than that and that is literally that Rhythm I talk about the buyback Loop in the book I run through that Rhythm for me probably three times a year where I'm I'm adding so much to my plate that it does get to

a point where I blow things up and then I have to sit down with my assistant and say like okay let's redesign my calendar through this lens just recently last week I'm I'm involved in a company and I was joining their senior leadership team meeting which is all the directors talking about like strategy and focus you know and after a few years like it started to become yellow and then it eventually became red and I just talked to the CEO and I said I'm probably not going to come to that meeting anymore yeah and you

know what he's like that's cool and and it was just like all of a sudden now I've got this 90-minute window back in my calendar to fill up with things that are going to light me up and green and like do more talk about the book or supporting entrepreneurs or whatever it is and it's just like for me to go from a meeting that's even yellow it just affects my head space and I just think there's so much more output that could be had if people I would argue this is the number like people are

like well how valuable is this I think it's a 3X increase in your output wow a 3X your creativity goes up your ability to to just think about somebody and then just like text them and then all of a sudden there's a clab happening right like I really think that if you go from anything that's red or yellow like in your calendar to just green just doing the things that light you up you will actually amplify because it creates momentum and energy that is a 3X amplifier and I think I saw a piece of content

from you I've heard a lot from our community a myth in hiring and you could tell me if you believe it's a myth they want to kind of do this mindless hiring I just want to hire somebody to even think about everything for me do everything for me and they might think I need an operations manager I need I need to hire a CEO and then they have uh no there's not a lot of momentum yet there's maybe money coming in but what you you're saying no actually flip it like if you just did that

time and energy audit and got rid of just the $1 signs a lot more affordable to go admin assistant obviously than a sixf figureure position by a fourth or a fifth and and and a lot of people think that they just kind of want to dump the whole thing and and they probably can't afford it or would you ALS they're not even to a place of sophistication well that's what's necessary they don't have enough in place I mean I call it the you know in the book I talk about this pain line right most entrepreneurs

when they get to the pain line and it's different stages for different people it could be at 50 Grand in Revenue it could be at 100 300 whatever and at that point they decide to do one of three things I call them the three s's right they either decide to sell hey Dan I don't want to do this I'm going to sell I'm going to go into something else right I'm in I mean in real estate it's like I'm wholesaling I want to go into airbnbs right um or they decide to stall I I made

more money last year right so like they grew this year they grew their agency and all of a sudden they're like hating their calendar their life their time and they're making less money so they're like I'm going to go backwards problem is is your customers aren't going backwards your your best players on your team they ain't cool at Stalin they have a vision for their life they're hoping you're going to support and if they feel like you're not growing they're going to go find some other companies your best people leave but the third one is

sabotage and sabotage is a fascinating one right where sometimes when they hit the pain line you know instead of actually digging in and doing a time and energy audit they do these crazy things like I'm going to I'm going to shut down all my products I'm gonna hire a COO I'm gonna like and I actually step back and I go it's not a logical decision it's an emotional decision and it's a sabotage that's going to give you ground cover to to to to to downsize yeah like it's actually they don't know it but I've just

been doing this for so long I've got like 10,000 hours of watching entrepreneurs make really funny decisions they're hand grenades they literally throw a hand grenade like hire a COO when they can't afford it Andor or they'll hire like I had a friend of mine Nate the other day he's like you know I read your book awesome hiring a salesperson and I'm like oh because I have this whole replacement ladder where I talk about the sequencing sales is fourth out of level one two 3 four I go how many sales calls you do in a

week he's like four you don't have enough like but I'm not saying anything like I'm the lighthouse I'm just like okay you might want to reread the book because here's what's going to happen you hire a salesperson and in three or four months one or two things are going to happen either you fire him because he's not making any money cuz you don't have enough leads anyway uh he's not going to be able to sell at the same win rate you're doing today because you're showing up with so much enthusiasm the person's buying because of

you they will be going from call to call not making any sales because there's not enough volume to create momentum right great salese literally need to do five six calls a day because they need that Rhythm the first calls nobody sells the first call of the day they need to go through it they got to get the ramped up it's almost like an engine turning over and so like people make these Sab taging decisions like you know they read a book and they're like I got to hire a COO it's like you don't even have

an assistant sure like let's start there this complexity is really high yeah but I always look at as like they're throwing a hand grenade in their business to sabotage themselves from not having to do the thing to push through that pain line so that's also one of my favorite chapters the replacement ladder and of course the book will be linked up in the show notes it's pretty wild it's only been out six weeks at the time of recording this over 150 fstar reviews I understand why I got the whole book marked I can't believe that

that that blew my brain and uh and it's just absolute gold I also want to encourage you know like you said you wrote this for those that are very far along on business and there's a lot that listen to this that are at six multiple six and some seven figure earners but a lot of people are also at that beginning stage and I always encourage people to be learning above your weight class you know and to be learning to delegate learning to build a team learning to hire before you're ready you know and thinking about

those things so highly recommend that but what is your advice for those that are in the side hustle or the startup season if you're listening to this people have jumped on this very real opportunity of building a business in the crater economy I think tube filter said 200 million people have earned money in the crater economy uh influencer marketing Hub said I think two million are earning six figures and they they didn't develop software they don't have a product or maybe eventually they have merch or something but it's this I this this new very real

signal fire said this is the fastest growing type of small business 100% the being a content creator and so for those that are in that side hustle startup season you know they're not they probably didn't get funding they're bootstrapping so they have a day job and they're trying to get from there to you know being able to do this full-time from that perspective what what would you say to them Dan one thing pick a budget and just buy back some time like I I really think it's that simple I had a client and they just

couldn't get their heads wrapped around having a house cleaner sounds crazy to any of us that do but it's just like for whatever reason like having a stranger in their home was a tough thing their wife wasn't on board and I just like look just grab 200 bucks hire somebody do it for two months if you don't like it stop but at least you know my friend Brad his dad had this great so saying that said the person with experience is never at the mercy of the person with an opinion if you don't try it's

an opinion it's not facts yeah so I would just recomend recommend doesn't matter what stage you're at just force yourself to go learn the skill of delegating go learn the skill of a camcorder method go learn the skill of having somebody support some element of your creative output right and just realize that that muscle today even though it will be super small and weak the more you practice it the more you invest in it the more it grows as you grow your art your creative your output is going to be on the on the recipient

side of that it's going to benefit from doing that that and there's just no person that any Creator admires from the Logan Pauls to you name it that hasn't figured this out yeah it's part of the equation don't wait too long to figure it out where you grow a business or a side hustle that you eventually hate doing because you haven't figured that part out you have built this YouTube channel you're going to be getting your silver play button soon soon very soon right on the verge of 100,000 subscribers a lot of entrepreneur friends of

mine that are like you really want to crack the code on YouTube um and they haven't what do you think and my diagnosis and I'm sure you have your own but a lot of times they're also not being very consistent there or they are not investing a ton of effort from your perspective what has been your mindset towards YouTube and what systems have you built around your YouTube channel that has led you as much more primarily a business owner growing such a big YouTube influence yeah so the the the thing that's unique about my YouTube

channel is I started it for my two boys like I I moved to San Francisco or San Diego um for the winter months this would have been nine eight eight nine years ago and then I met a bunch of creators like because it's kind of the mecca for like online seminar people my buddy Travis was like you should do video because I had this company called clarity.fm and I did a bunch of speaking and he's like I would love to watch your take on this stuff but that wasn't enough motivation for me it was really

the idea when a friend of mine Todd you know called me up one day and and essentially got diagnosed with the terminal illness and I said dude how do you deal with that cuz he had three little girls the same age as my boys and he goes I already shot the videos and I was like whoa and in that moment I was like well I don't want to find out or it be too late I'm just going to start shooting videos if you go back to the early days of my YouTube channel it was like

how to discover your passion had a you know just in time learning like it was literally like inspired by Max and know my two boys and then over time I just ran out of stuff that I was I was recording for them and then just kept evolving into business advice and and honestly today I take every question I get asked on social media in my inbox and that drives my content really from everything from like how do you raise Venture Capital to how do you exit your company to how do you hire an executive assistant

so the benefit for me of producing that channel wasn't a business focus more of a I just want to answer all these questions and then have a link I can send people to and if I were to audit like if I wanted let's say a million subscribers the two things that I would have done sooner we started doing this recently um is up upleveling the edits right and really adding the dynamicism like there's just a like the stuff that all creators are doing today right watching Mr Beast like just doing what the best people do

like Mr Beast I believe he said like within every M second and a half or three seconds there's there's a there's an edit there's a change there of this so we started doing that the other thing is collaborations right like I used to coach Lila and Alex heroi other residents of Vegas and watching Alex literally just come on the scene cuz we used to talk about this before he ever had a meaningful YouTube channel he had his podcast the game and he did publish stuff but just deciding to go all in and then I watched

what he did which was the cabs do like I don't know if you know this Sean but like I've never done this before isn't this nuts I've never been on another YouTuber's YouTube channel sure I've been on podcast but they weren't YouTubers and what's interesting is I watch Alex do this he came out of nowhere and he was on like 25 different you see this is a thing is platforms are platforms so somebody that watches YouTube if they see you and you have a YouTube channel they'll go yeah right and a podcaster will go listen

like a Joe Rogan listener will go listen to like the Diary of a CEO right that's more podcast based and it's interesting watching even just like content output and media channels like you you see these some some podcasts have huge audiences and then their YouTube channel has like 880,000 Subs it's like but you have millions of listeners it's it's fascinating and and Oprah talked about this one she goes when she left her TV daytime TV show and she started uh her own network she said I underestimated the power of the medium and a time slot

right she owned I think it was a 4:30 p.m. eastern time slot right like Mom's making dinner whatever maybe it's was 3:00 in the afternoon but that's what I would do different is and I'm doing it now is the collabs and the edits and also content that might be a little bit more entertainment than just educational like even Lea Hermos she's actually one of the blurbs on the back because her and I have always jammed on the operation side of things and and my content was very like very busy and now I'm trying to add

a little bit more entertainment to it I'm trying to make it a lot more fun I'm trying to make it broader appeal to people starting off and not just folks that are running eight figure companies which is what I did predominantly because that's those are my customers those are my audiences and how much content do you create in your system for it like when are you shooting and how many people working on I we do batch video we um today and I'll unpack as much as I can know cuz I have a team that manages

it but essentially we shoot probably four to five times a year we batch so multiple shirts changes I jump on they're on Zoom I'm in my office I have two cameras recording me all day long so there's the YouTube content which we we actually shoot and there's an outline for each video and then there's literally I think I I asked my videographer this morning how much backlog content we have to work through is 150 hours wow because I record all my board meetings I record record all my team meetings I record all my coaching calls

I record all my podcast interviews and then the team goes through that identify clips and put them out so um on the back end so my creative director Sam my videographers my video editors I think there's a team of five people part-time some of them just producing content and we're going to be ramping that up quite a bit killer uh amazing and so much nuggets there especially with the batching and recording when you're on podcast are you ready for the lightning round as we land the plane ready probably not but excited yes this is actually

just getting your take on um some different topics uh especially I'm fascinated to hear what you think everyone is talking about Ai and many people are afraid uh they think it's going to be a massive disruptor what's your opinion on chat GPT AI my context is this I've been coding in AI neural nets for a while so I'm deep in the technology and the learning models and there's no um there's very few people I would put uh you know Peter diamandis and a handful of people that are at the Forefront cuz I literally my call

after this I'm on the board of a company that's building essentially coaching AI so essentially in the future generative video generative audio of a coach with their content catalog plugged into GPT I probably lost some people but whatever um Here's my thought every company every role in the world will have a co-pilot AI for their role a video editor will have a co-pilot we're already seeing this stuff it's it's happening at such a pace like literally on a daily basis somebody's sending me a link to another AI tool like rewind. which records everything you say

on your screen and in your office recorded locally so nobody sees it encrypted but then you can literally have perfect recall that's today that's available um the video stuff of like the plugins that allow me to be looking off screen and it resets my eyes like the the amount of so so that's what I call the co-pilot of the work so a lawyer co-pilot AI there's already programming co- it's literally allowing software developers to be three times more productive while they write code cuz as writing you know like type ahead in your email it literally

predicts what you think you're going to write and it asks you and you just hit go and it writes all the code for you so the future of AI for me is incredibly unknown and it's going to be what it's going to be like it's going to be disruptive to a lot of people that are deciding to not lean into it a little bit but the ones that jump on it like GPT and 3.5 which came out in November versus 40 40 is a 100 times better than 3.5 jeez so we're impressed with Chad GPT

today yeah wait do you agree with Elon Musk that thinks that AI is super dangerous danger super dangerous you think it's dangerous yeah I think it's dangerous and what gives me hope open AI was actually a nonprofit that Elon kind of founded with Sam Altman from Y combinator and I knew the whole Genesis story and they've been working on it for six years seeing Microsoft come in and write those kind of checks to like own part of it or whatever the weird financing deal was was concerning but then there's other projects luckily that are competing

against chat GPT that are open source so I'm feeling better about that and if I if I didn't see that I would be super concerned so now that doesn't mean there shouldn't be some level of governance at the federal government level to make sure that the apples the Facebook the Amazon who really have the best opportunity to create you know like General Ai and like some really dangerous potential things to not create um what they need is somebody to kind of think about like driving cars like there's rules about how roads work we need that

for AI or cars will SMH into each other AI has that potential of going from like super cool to absolutely chaotic if it's not properly managed if you had only one social media platform um where where would you invest your time Tik Tok Instagram Facebook YouTube Somewhere Else starting today um the only reason I wouldn't say Tik Tok is because I'm uncertain about how the government's going to respond to it I do think Tik Tok I hope I don't get shadowbanned somehow from whatever who cares there is some government backend stuff that I'm concerned about

as a software technical person um I think Tik to I always like to go to the one that's got the most traction but it's still underdeveloped and Tik Tok is definitely one of those it's just no matter what platform You're Building collect the email addresses build an audience like the the amount of people that have a YouTube channel like Tim Ferris used to be this guy he used to have a Blog I remember meeting Tim and I was like Tim you need an email address it wasn't until RIT seti finally sat him down and said

Tim you have to collect an email on your blog traffic and eventually he did it now he has a 2 million person email address wow when you have a 2 million person email address and you own that then Tik Tok decides government shuts Tik Tok down no worries I'm going to go launch the next thing and I'm GNA I have the access to the audience so I think like yeah I think Tik Tok would be the one if I if I wasn't concerned about the government I'm a big fan of Instagram I still love Instagram

stories I think there's a lot of opportunity YouTube shorts are really fascinating so yeah it'd be a tossup between Tik Tok and YouTube but regardless lead like collect an email and build a relationship with your your audience Business Insider just dropped an article that said why it's always a good time to start a business despite inflation layoffs and a possible recession Americans created 10.5 million businesses in the past two years according to Census Bureau data and that momentum is expected to continue in 2023 despite inflation layoffs and recession fears what is your take on the

current state of the economy entrepreneur actually called this the year of fear and uncertainty yet the ambitious and Risk Takers are still stepping out what what is your thought of the current economic state with inflation shrinking back going on offense what's your take two things all business economy value Creation in the world has nothing to do with the economy and has everything to do with mindset like it's just that simple they're they I think I looked the other day 5.1 trillion dollar of the economy exchange hands today 5.1 trillion go get a piece of that

yeah go figure out how to do it that has nothing to do with the economy that has to do with your psychology your mindset your habits your beliefs your your char traits the second thing is um this guy Keith R boy very well known in Silicon Valley was early at PayPal and square he was a COO of square he one of the top investors he said this to me I met him in 2008 and I said um you know Keith when I look at like the Googles the paypals and all these other companies Facebook they

were all started in a downward economy why do you think that is and he said it's very simple he goes during those downturns you have an increase in IQ per square foot I said what do you mean he goes if we would have started PayPal today in 2007 2008 all the smartest people the the Sam the Sam lekins and the the max this and all these people they mention Reed Hoffman Elon Musk they would have been doing their own thing they would have been in y comat they would have been this accelerator they would been

doing stuff because the economy was compressed we had the ability to attract worldclass Talent so the IQ per square foot went up and that's why you see literally their stats around the best companies are started in a downward economy it also allows you to because people are like that are will to join this like crazy idea when the economy is not good you're attracting a certain type of person that when the market comes back it's a slingshot effect so I tell everybody like over the next two years giddy up if you're looking to start I

would start right now where maybe Labor's cheaper I mean I went for the last five years hiring people I felt like I was on the receiving end of what have you done for me lately I want three times more you know per year and now it's like oh now it's fair m and I think like this is a great time to start and build a foundation and a platform to take advantage of next upswing and that's that's just a reality that's the stats hey I hope you've been enjoying this content creators guide to building an

online business Empire coming up next is ilila Heros and she's actually going to be revealing her content creation secrets and a lot of stuff on the mindset needed especially if you're a business owner should you be the one on camera is it important you build your personal brand or is there another way to approach content creation if you just want to drive sales if you want to get more leads and it gets very tactical and it's a very power pack conversation so we're going to get into that in just a second but I do want

to ask you a question are you thinking about starting or growing a YouTube channel specifically if so we have something cool happening right now where you can actually get the number one bestselling YouTube strategy book in the world YouTube secrets for free all I ask is that you pay shipping if you go to yts.com you you can enter your info and I'll mail this to you uh and there's a couple other bonuses that come with it you know right now as far as the Creator economy goes that's speaking about the space of personal Brands content

creation YouTube channels Goldman Sachs research revealed that in the next two years it's going to double the total addressable market and so even though competition is super Fierce there's still massive opportunity to grow your personal brand start creating content but you're going to have an advantage if you have better strategies this is the up updated second edition this book covers the seven C's of YouTube success which is the foundational framework and then it also goes into some new and updated tactics in the second part and so uh we'll link to that in the show notes

or you can go to yts.com to grab your free copy of YouTube secrets and with that let's jump into session number three with Lila Heros 282,000 subscribers on your channel Ila 5.4 million views in just the last 30 days and so your growth has just continued to multiply what is the number one lesson you've learned over the last year about creating successful content you know it's funny I look back at like I think a lot of the times especially with content I find myself wanting to change a lot because just like it's it's funny it's

like almost I forget the same principles of business and other areas of life sometimes I don't apply them to content because it's probably the newer thing for me um but if I look back it's really consistency of just showing up and sticking with the plan because I don't think that I realized the amount of skills that I was going to pick up if I just stuck with it um like my ability to articulate things my ability to understand when somebody's asking me a question what they actually want to get out of me uh my ability

to build rapport with an interviewer my ability to know what kind of content is going to do well on Twitter versus LinkedIn versus YouTube not saying I've mastered those things but I think that just doing it and sticking with the plan that I have of committing to doing content no matter what the result um that has yielded me more returns than any like strategic change that I have made um just continuing to use the feedback from the content how I feel about the content watching myself in the content to apply to the next time and

then just trying to do a little bit better like 1% better every time what's the untold weight of being consistent at content and the Practical day-to-day that people wouldn't understand that you carry and I would mean like you wake up in the morning on a shoot day is there anything rushing through your head like self-doubt or is there anything rushing through your head of like you maybe could do the op CEO stuff because you've built that muscle but to be consistent the resistance you have to overcome what's the emotional pressure honestly like what really happens

is that most of the time when I have a shoot day something in the business blows up like we joke that it's like oh did something and it's like the amount of times like I mean you know we have a portfolio we have all these businesses like two shoots in a row something I get a text like 10 minutes before I'm going in some huge legal thing right and I'm just like and all I want to do is cancel the shoot and just go handle it you know I had another shoot day where you know

I had a huge employee issue happened like 20 minutes before the shoot and I was like and it's somebody who reports to me and I need to handle it but I couldn't and so it's like I had to send somebody else to do their best and so so what it is is that when you're actually running the business and then you've got to go make content go on a podcast speak on stage whatever it may be it's that there are things happening and you are completely aware of them and you really just want to cancel

what you've got in front of you to go handle them the thing is is that if you did that every time you would never make any content and so that's what I have found is that in the beginning like the very beginning I did cancel content consistently because of these things happening until I realized that it's never going to stop happening and if anything the resistance is only going to get stronger because our business is growing quickly and so there are more things happening there are more I would say like fires that I have to

put out because I think I look at a CEO as Chief firefighter um and so I just have to learn how to be patient which is in my opinion the definition of patience is just knowing what to do in the meantime which is just go all in on the content and get so into what I am doing that I forget about this giant fire that's burning behind me does that mean sense 100% and have you always had the mental toughness to perform under pressure or was there a particular time in your life when you didn't

and how did you grow it I think that it I have had the ability to remain poised when there's a lot of happening and when I'm stressed and I think that I've gotten a lot of that practice through running the business and showing up on a meeting with hundreds of employees and remaining poised and not letting them see how stressed I am because what good is that going to do that I can say I'm stressed but I don't need to show it and so I think that has translated over but it was slower than I

thought and I think because when your skill of being on camera you know working off whether it's a script or it's ad hoc or whatever is low then it kind of affects your ability to hone in on other skills at the same time because you're putting so much of your attention to this skill that is low that it's hard to also recruit these other skills from a different area that can transfer so I don't think I was particularly good at in the beginning I think that I could watch a video and be like it's clear

that I do not want to be making this video it's clear that I'm stressed in this video it's clear that I think if you look at my early shorts for example like I did not want to be making that content I was like let me get 100 shorts in one day and let me get the out of here because I'm busy you know and so I think that now I've really leaned into probably just using it as an opportunity to do something that I'm proud of after like it's not like oh I'm going to be

super stoked like I hit every single thing perfectly but it's like if I were watching these videos I wouldn't have no idea that these things are happening to this person I think it was last week I had uh food poisoning the day before so I was vomiting all night and then I was exhausted and I texted the team and I was like I'm going to try and get through today but I just want to make you guys aware if I seem off this is why and we're in the middle of the shoe and I'm finishing

a video and I can just feel it I was like I'm going to throw up and and I was like I will not throw up until this video is done and then the moment that the video finished and we got the clip I was like I will be right back and then I went and threw up for like 15 minutes and then I fixed my makeup and came back and then I was like we got to finish and they were like you sure and I was like yeah because you're all here two of you flew

in everyone's cleared their days like just got to do what you got to do when it comes to the weight of carrying the Ops and the CEO responsibilities and then speaking podcast content what's your why for even investing in it for even taking the time to deal with that pressure and allowing that fire to maybe not be put out for a while because you've scheduled the content why are you that committed to content you know it's interesting because I think at this point I start to see the reward from it because my skill has gotten

better I've gotten more comfortable but in the beginning it just it didn't even feel that way I would even say each month it starts to feel better and better I think because I'm just really determined on some level to be able to provide an example of what I always wish I had had and I tell people this a lot I'm like make the content that you want to consume and so like that's kind of what I'm doing I kind of wish that I had had somebody who had it's like I am the person that 10

years ago I wished I had and because of that I want to keep putting out the content for probably some like weird nostalgic like that is what I wish I had had and I would like to be that for other people uh whether it be true or not it is something that motivates me a lot to think about and when I'm talking to people in a lot of my content that's who I'm thinking about is like me 10 15 years ago what would have been helpful for me what would have been content I would have

wanted to watch and that would have made my life better and so I always keep that in the back of my head because I think there's a lot of times where you can want to indulge in the selfishness in the moment of like I'm tired I'm exhausted I've got other to do like this is not how I'm making money with sponsorships on content you know what I mean but when I anchor with that which is like well you did all that in your last business and you still felt like there was something missing and I

think I can anchor to that which is like what was missing was that I wasn't sharing anything I was learning with anybody else and so to a degree it felt selfish because I could be helping other people if I just put an extra 20 % of my effort into something and I think that's what I remind myself of now now I will say at this point there's probably a lot more reinforcement like if you do it long enough your content starts to itself starts to reinforce you because you're like I know what's going to hit

I know this I know that right but for the first couple years did did did not feel that way at all you know and I think um there's still times when it doesn't but I think that's what got me through it for the most part is just remembering why you started and having that reminder because I think that's who I talk to in most of the content so you personally don't need sponsorships you don't need AdSense um you've got acquisition. comom and a lot to do but you also acquisition. comom invests in companies what percent

that you acquire or jump on are doing content well when they start um none none of them are are they actively creating content and not just doing it well or they're not committed to creating content like more of our businesses than not don't create any and and do they not need to or would from your opinion do you say one of the ways we would grow the company is is you should consider this and where I'm going with this is is there a framework to help a business owner determine if they should invest in content

yes so I'll put it like this if a company comes to us and the way that they acquire customers and build their brand is not propelled by content and they are smaller then I think that it would be probably quite the burden on the business to suddenly start saying you need to start making content because they've got something that is working is it what I think is absolutely best no but I think that if it's working let's keep doing it let's do more of it and then once we have bandwidth we have some team members

in place and we have more momentum in on these other things that we're doing to grow the business then let's say hey we've got excess resources let's put it towards this thing I think it's a matter of sequence um you know if somebody starts a business and it's working really well and they're not making content I think that trying to stretch yourself 50/50 between two things when you have no help is probably not the best idea regardless of it's content or something else and so for me it's more of a matter of sequence of like

okay once we have excess resources and we have excess time and we have skill on the team to take over these other things that do work well so that they can maintain those things and if not even just grow them then I would say let's look at adding in content and so I also think that to that degree I'd think through well what kind of content is it content around the company because I would say that like two of our brick and mortar chains for example the founders don't make content but we make content around

the brand right of the chain of it's a lot of like client testimonials it's a lot of like you know walking into the locations and showing them around and saying like this is what we have and like it's a different style than like what me and Alex do right and so I don't tell the founders like hey you should make personal content I'm like hey this would be really cool if we captured this in the studio if we we did this or like how about when you know customers are walking in we're showing these lines

or like just stuff like that so I think the next question is like should the business make content or should the person make content which I think is absolutely a caseby casee basis because some Founders in our portfolio for example I think less than more like maybe two uh would have the natural they have enough of a base level skill set that making content wouldn't be such a stretch and it would probably do pretty well off the bat whereas a decent amount of them don't have that base level of skill and I think we just

need to hone in on like hey if they don't even have the skill yet of like running a really great meeting for their entire team and like showing up as a fantastic leader then why would I think that they could like speak to an audience on Instagram well it's actually a very transferable skill and so I look at that which is just what's the return on effort and is that what's best for the business right now it's not that I don't think they would ever make content but at what point and I love making content

and I think it's a great way to grow a business I also think that there's just a sequence for everything and you have to solve for like what is most important right now that if we were to do this one thing it would grow the business the most if that's content cool let's do it if it's not content let's not try and do content too let's tackle what the constraint is right now so probably would you agree with this that most businesses in the proper timing should build bu they should build their business's brand and

if they can use content for acquisition they should yeah personal branding might not be for everybody do you agree with that I'll put it like this I think personal branding is just showing who you are so if you're a shitty person it's not going to do well for you if you're a great person it's going to do really well for you if you are a likable person it's going to do great for you and at the same time there are people who are shitty people and have great followings because they're polarizing so I guess that's

a thing it's just not my thing I'll put it that way like I wouldn't want to make content of people just on me all day sure it could get views sure but like I don't know part of me is like that wouldn't be fun so what would you say to the busy business owner listening to this that does want to create content but says I'm too busy it is a great excuse for people who are scared and they're nervous to be like I'm just too busy to do it I mean I said it to myself

for years like and to be truthful like I still feel like I'm too busy to do it like every single day that I have a Content day I'm like oh my God if I had to stay back this is what I could get done and so what does that mean for me it means that a lot of times I don't take days off you know what I mean like I mean Alex and I were talking about it like we have not taken a full day off since before Thanksgiving and that's just the season I'm in

and so I think for people who are going to do it you just have to ask yourself this which is it's not that you're too busy it's that you have something that you would have to give up in order to make the content are you willing to do that or not is it worth the trade and so for me having a one less free day and knowing that I'm going to probably work on the weekend is worth the trade for some people it's not and I just think you to ask yourself that question and be

real about it so instead of saying this that you don't have time it's actually just I actually have chosen to do something else instead because when people say for example right I don't have time to work out so you're just sitting doing nothing right it's you're doing something else instead of working out yeah so if you're not making content you're doing something else instead of making content maybe you're scrolling on Instagram maybe you're thinking about making content and sitting there ruminating about how terrible or how good it would be like you're doing something else in

place of making content so what is that thing and that thing that you're doing instead is it worth the tra you're hitting on like limiting beliefs and you get to coach really high level successful people including things like maybe it's just fear making excuses what are those most common things that you actually think if we could self-identify and fix those we could Propel so much faster highle successful CEOs or operators Founders that Sim similarly are are the the biggest common themes that maybe you're unlocking in people you're coaching through acquisition. comom there's a difference between

people who are good and people who are exceptional so good CEOs I would say that a lot of the time it is fear and they're just fearful of what people are going to think whereas I think in the exceptional operators or CEOs it's that they are truly gassing it and so they don't they feel guilty pulling resources from their team to help them make content because in some weird way they feel like they're so self-sacrificial that they don't feel Justified making personal content or taking resources from the company that could be put elsewhere and sometimes

there's a mix of the two and so I think it's just I mean I make most Decisions by just providing evidence and stating facts which is is you know if we look at for somebody for example who's more of the self-sacrificial one um it would just be looking at what would be the return on effort of making the content versus a marketing funnel uh direct response Etc and so like the argument I might make to that person is that yes we have direct response marketing and we have um paid marketing but how much could we

lower the cost of acquisition if we also had organic marketing because what we've seen is that in our companies that have both organic marketing and paid marketing that's the ones that get the best return and their C is significantly lower like like four times lower because what does somebody do when they see an ad for a company they go and Google it and then they say oh let me go look at them and Snoop around you know it's the same as when someone applies for a job they're not just like oh I'm going to apply

and yeah oh yeah not going to Google that like it's like you obviously put it in Google and you're like let me sniff around and see what the they do you know and like sneak up on them and so it's the same for advertising and so it's just I make the argument to somebody that if you did this I think that we could get reasonably we could reduce CAC by you know 3 or 4X and so that is a I would say like for somebody who's really exceptional making a logical argument like that is compelling

whereas somebody who is fearful of what people will think I think it is much more of an approach of reminding them that they are the leader of the company and that if they are not going to confront fear and overcome it then who will like you are truly supposed to be the most Brave person in this entire company you set the bar so if you're not even willing to get in front of a camera can you ask your employees to do anything that's the way I look at it it's like you won't even get on

a stage in front of 50 people and you ask them to do what and so for me something that's always propelled me is just I will never ask others I will never put them in a situation more uncomfortable than one I've ever been in which means I really want to put myself in some uncomfortable situation because I want to make sure that they grow as well and you cannot you cannot expect other people on your team to grow by putting them in lesser conditions than you were in so if I put my team in a

condition that is stressful and then I try to buffer the stress by making it actually not quite as bad as whatever I had to experience don't actually make it any better for them they don't get they don't gain the skills that I got and so I think that that's a another way to look at it is like you're the one setting the bar and everyone's going to follow from there and so are probably the two things that I would say uh have to work on with different different styles of leaders yeah so strong so this

podcast is speaking to a lot of creators that are rarely good at being CEOs and I can imagine us clipping this because one of the most common if we actually now kind of focus on Creator businesses yeah creators that had some success on YouTube they've grown and then they start getting tired they start getting burnt out and they lack the skill set of leadership hiring team if you're coaching a creator that has that momentum I think it was Colin and Samir called it an inverted pyramid that also the Creator is the business right and so

that individual now though but now they're feeling overwhelmed they got all this pressure on them they're trying to keep it up and we've even seen this recent uh Matt Pat quit YouTube after one of the biggest YouTubers another six or seven 4 million Subs 7 million Subs mainly being I can't keep up this pace I'm exhausted um and and with due respect they've probably saved millions and they they can retire and maybe it's some people lik in content creation to sports maybe you only have depending on the pace of it a certain number of years

before you wear out but I also I don't believe that I think that you're maybe building wrong but you don't even have the skill set because you're a Creator but how do you be a CEO what how would you coach somebody through maybe figuring out what they need to put into their life whether adding skills or adding the right people or partnering in the right ways if you were coaching a creator that wants longevity and doesn't want to burn out and figure out the next level of building out their Ops yeah I think it's an

interesting question because you have to make a decision like when you say that for example this uh quote by um Kobe Bryant comes up to me which he talks about most of the players and he's like once they get a certain amount of money or they hit a certain amount of fame or whatever it is they kind of just check out and he's like this is going to be it was some quote like this is going to be so easy for me because that's not why I do this at all and so I think for

people who resonate with that like myself and they're like I want to acquire the skills because it's not about the money it's not about the fame it's not about this it's actually about I would say in a really weird way this is going to sound interesting it's about having a different relationship with hard and so like I don't need to make content you know what I mean like Alex makes enough content for acquisition. comom I don't need to do it um but for me it's about doing things that are hard and so whatever skill I

do not have if I want to acquire it because I think that it adds to my I would say like life resume of what I want to be able to do and be capable of and skill set then that's that I think that that's a very small percentage of people that want to be able to do a lot of things like I look at people like I mean an interesting Arnold Schwarz The Rock like people are like very good at multiple things but like those people have a hunger that most people do not have and

I think if somebody has to ask the question how do I get the skill to do both you're already because if you have to ask that question I wake up in the morning it's not even a thought I'm just being like I'm being dead serious right now me and Alex like when we want something when I want to be good at something when I want to be exceptional I don't have to engineer and write down my damn goals I wake up and it's all I think about I'm out to win and so if you don't

wake up like determined that you will win no matter what do not try and do both for most people what most people should do is they should find somebody with those skills and they should say hey you know what instead of getting really good at doing all this business stuff why don't I just get really good at finding one partner it's like it's the same as can you just find that one person to marry find that one person to partner with in business but put all your effort into understanding what a good partner looks like

what a good partnership looks like and the partner for you rather than trying to find the skill of doing both because you're not going to beat this person who literally will not stop and so if you don't have that drive or you wake up every morning and you're like out to kill then you need to find a partner because I do think to a degree it's like 1+ 1 equals 11 a great partnership can do so much more than like trying to grit your way through getting the skills when you're not really that motivated and

so I would say that that is 100% what I would suggest those people do I have talked to a lot of really big creators with like you know multi8 fig followings like celebrity status and the amount of people who try to take on the business and half asset because it's not what they're about that's not why they got into this they didn't get get into to content to be a business owner they got into content because they liked making content and honestly I think they like the notoriety they like the fame they like the feedback

from the audience and that's cool just do more of that and so I think that in those instances they need to focus in on understanding what makes a good partnership and I think it's incredibly similar to what makes great marriage and I can tell you this after observing like partnering with lots of companies and having like a marriage having friendships when I look at a partnership that works well is not one person that is more powerful than the other I actually think those are set up to fail and I think that what they do is

eventually when if somebody is more powerful than the other person eventually especially if this person starts to it changes the D Dynamic and then there's resentment and so the best Partnerships in my opinion are when two people who are equally powerful in different domains come together and make an agreement to bring their skills to the table so then it's it's essentially if you look at like negotiation it's you have something I want and you have something I want and I would like to trade so that we can have we can give it to each other

and so I think that in those instances a content creator would need to look for somebody who is equally as competent in in the opposite domain and so you have to be able to one have the self- awareness to understand how good are you at making content how many followers do you have because if you've got I don't know only let's just say 20,000 followers like you're not going to partner with Elon Musk let's just be real he doesn't give a so but if you're Mr Beast I mean Mark Zuckerberg picks up the phone for

Mr Beast Elon Musk talks to Mr Beast and so I would be thinking it's it's kind of the same as dating like I'm say say I'm an eight where's my eight you know what I mean yeah and so I think that's what people have to do because what I've seen is that like for example I have people who come to us and they're like hey I really want a partner and I'm like but you're a three it's just not going to work and so it's like people need understand that are making content they need to

be able to have the self awareness to diagnose like what am I on a scale of 1 to 10 like how hot of a girl at the bar am I and then Okay cool so what's my pool look like over here of people who are in business that I could attract and I think once you really understand the type of person that you would work well with and that you would have an equitable exchange with that's when you have the unlock and then you start going to town and trying to figure out trying to find

the person there's probably some fear that comes up because there's like a quote that says the problem with Partnerships is most of them sink uhhuh and maybe because this is such a native territory or unknown territory that creaters are they're tired they're overwhelmed they're desperate I've heard uh one person I trust Say Never partner out of insecurity uh never partner I mean probably never partner out of the wrong reasons you you following what you're saying um if people were thinking about wanting to go a little bit deeper on figuring out finding the right part partner

and here's a specific question for you if you are are already established let's say you got a million followers you got a million subscribers brand deal money coming in let's say you've got multiple six figures coming in but you're also in a partner is coming to you is 50/50 outrageous what they start thinking I'm going to partner with somebody I've built this over the last five years seven years 10 years I'm established but I do need this whole other skill set for the person listening what does a partner mean am I giving them Equity am

I just paying them a lot when you say partner are we now coming into this obviously the terms the unique situation could vary greatly but for those fears like they maybe rush into it give up too much make a bad partnership and now they're they have huge regret and actually this is kind of common because maybe it's the old you know rappers and record companies creators are largely ignorant because they're really good at being creators but there could be a lot of they're unsure of these details I think it's a really great question um I

think there's different ways the partnership could look I would say that it depends on again what is Equitable uh and so how would you value the skills that the person's bringing to the table and so for somebody who's already making money I think there's a couple different ways that you could do it um you know a lot of Partnerships when something's already established um you can just form a new company where you each contribute 50% of your current assets to it and that creates the hund of the new thing right I tend to say okay

so ideal scenario is that it is 5050 because here's the thing it's really hard for me when people say they're like but I've built it to here right because guess who hears that all day every day me uh they're like but I've built it to 3 million and I'm like yes and I will build it to 100 so one I don't give a about $1.5 million dude yeah but two I care about what we're going to make thereafter and it is fair if it's 50/50 if not I should own more you know what I mean

and so I think it's understanding what got you here won't get you there um if you have to give up 50% of a very small number to get 50% of a much bigger if you have to give up your 50% and trade it of the very small number to take the chance that you might get it of a very big number maybe it's worth the trade the reason that I think it doesn't work out most of the time is because this is what people do they're like I really need a partner and because now they're

thinking about it they go to some event and they meet some guy and he's like dude we should partner and you're like wow available like if you look at most marriages how they occur it's literally like you're like I really want to get married and then the next guy you date you just are like yeah this is him it's not actually that he's the right person to marry it's that he's conveniently appeared into your life at the right time and so a lot of people get into Partnerships in business because of timing and because of

convenience not because of any sort of decision-making and then people say Partnerships are bad I'm like well of course you have what in what premise did you make the decision can you show me one piece piece of paper to which you wrote out if this partnership makes sense never never they can never show me a piece of paper cuz guess what they write jack down and I'm like when I'm looking at a partnership I have spreadsheets full of like 10 tabs 15 tabs of decision- making like Frameworks to put together like an analysis of should

I partner with this person or not you know okay and so I think a lot of the times we take an emotional or a um either people don't think at all and they're just like this is convenient or they take a very emotional approach to it was like I really like this guy it's like okay well do you have 50% like him is he going to be able to take you to 100 million has he ever taken anybody to 100 million has he even taken a business to 100 million before you know like if I

were a Creator and I already had income and a business person who has say for example built a business to 100 million before and I have I'm making you know let's say 400 Grand a year off of my content and this person says hey give me 50% and I'll build the business to attach to the content I do that deal all day MH because guess who hasn't taken their content to 10 million views right but hey this business guy thinks that he can help build it to here like sounds like a good deal and so

I think that when you start you need to stop counting other people's money and start counting yours and the moment that you count other people's money in a deal like well if I make this much he's going to make this much off the deal yes and that's the point like if you want to succeed more you also need to be the type of person who wants everybody else involved with you to succeed more as well and you should be happy happy giving them more money and if you're not then it's probably not the right partnership

I think that there's not it's an interesting cuz it's like an art and a science which I think you need to one get along with the person well enough that you want to spend time with them right but the second piece is you need to understand like what's their mission what are their values and then the next piece is that do they have complimentary skill set which is just like are they as good at business as you are at content in my opinion if they are that's an equitable trade the problem is that most people

don't spend the time assessing to figure out if that is true like just like I would um if if I'm looking into investing in a company and partnering with this CEO I'm going to run background checks I'm going to ask to talk to three people as references I'm going to look at I'm going to do a social media sweep I'm going to do audits on all their financials to make sure it's not BS if they've claimed that they've made a certain amount of money I'm going to find a way to verify it like I'm going

to go through the whole ringer because it's a partnership and I want to make sure that what they say is true is true just because I don't know I don't have any evidence to prove it thus far just their word most people just don't do that kind of diligence though and I think it's just because they say oh I don't know how and I'm like okay well you can Google it and figure out half of it but or just do what I just said right there is it a good or good idea or bad idea

for couples to start a business together such a tough question um it doesn't matter about the couple it doesn't matter if you are a couple or not I think what's more important is do you have complimentary skill sets you know like Alex and I talk about this all the time because we see people who are like in business together and it's awful it's just like atrocious oh yeah okay it's just like it's the law of convenience they're like but you're here yeah like and you'll do what I say so come and do my business and

be my partner Lea can't she be like you oh my God kill me so I think a lot of times what it is is that because somebody doesn't know how to find a good business partner they say oh what if my spouse became my business partner but that person has 7 years less of experience and no complimentary skill sets to you I mean I would just look objectively if this person was just your friend would you be like hey hey John that works with Jimmy John's like do you want to be my partner even though

I've been in business for seven years you've been working at Jimmy Johns you don't know how to do anything it's like totally well he's here yeah he's he's here you know what I mean it's just like they just don't know how to find people and so they just go with whatever's convenient and I think a lot of people do that with their spouse in and then say cool now let's get into business together you have to look at all Partnerships the same is it an equitable trade you know and I think that Alex and I

are constantly and we talk about is it Equitable trade and we will make comments at times when say the business is more like Leila heavy versus Alex heavy we'll make little comments back for like I feel like you're pulling the weight right now I need to step it the up right because it's like normally what happens is there's a stress on one of us and then goes back to stress on the other goes back and forth and we're always like trying to make sure that we're like if one of us is leveling up our their

skill set the other one is too and it motivates us to keep doing it together um and so I think for a lot of people that are married one never get into business with your spouse out of convenience it makes no sense it's going to set you up for resentment i' say two is if you're considering going into business with your SC spouse write a job description for yourselves Alex and I I've probably Rewritten cuz I he doesn't WR them our job descriptions so that we have Clarity 8 to nine times in our business career

so it's like minimum once a year and we change our titles as well to make it easy for us to understand like there's a reason that I'm CEO and he's founder because I am CEO and he is founder there's a reason that in gym launch we were co-ceos because we were running it together there's a reason that at one point he was CEO and I was coo because that's what we were doing and so um I've never treated our Business Partnership differently because of our marriage we treat it as it should be which is an

equitable trade of skills and two people that have the same Mission the same values but have complimentary skill sets and I think that a lot of people again it's just they make the convenience Choice and then you end up resenting each other or being or regretting it a lot later because a lot of times what happens is they also don't have the communication skills within their marriage to talk about hard stuff and so then they're like dming me on Instagram saying like hey like my husband's actually really bad at this like what do I do

and I'm like yeah well like that's tough because if you can't talk about the hard then like what's going to happen in the business yeah you know it happens all the time how would you recommend someone try to unwind like what is their steps out if their spouse isn't the right person or the cuz cuz unfortunately 33% of people listening to this just was like oh my gosh you know I might have partnered with my spouse out of convenience or for creators this happens a lot one Creator I see I mean I could it's massive

one Creator is the talent on camera and it's maybe natural for the other person to be like the manage or manage emails brand deals or whatever so it happens kind of organically in Creator businesses because there are many couples you could step all the way into like family vlogging and it's a whole you're technically are a show of your whole family so that you see tons of couples but if they're if it's not working the kind of people who DM you is there any hope what are your next three moves to get out of uh

to at least try to say okay hard conversations whatever it is to get out I look at it as pain now or pain later if you do not have the conversation then you set yourself up for resentment because it's not working for either of you and so when there's a discrepancy in in value contributed in any relationship one person resents the other and so I think resentment is the number one killer of a marriage and in my opinion I would do anything to avoid that including any short-term hard conversation I think you just have to

ask yourself if I do not have this conversation what does my life look like in 5 years what does my marriage look like in 5 years and the lik hood that this person magically becomes the best partner ever on their own valtion without you trying to coers them into doing so is probably pretty low and so I think you have to honestly you have to be honest with yourself which is like this problem that you've been avoiding the reason your business probably isn't growing that you continue to let year after year or month after month

Fester you need to confront it and if you actually gave a about your marriage you do it now because if you want a chance at a long-term strong marriage then you have to confront those conversations in the present and so I just look at it like that which is like in the long run is this going to make my life my business my marriage better or worse and if there's a short-term like local cost but Global cost is actually it's going to improve I would make that trade all day and I think a lot of

people are just they're constantly um I would say like trading short-term comfort for long-term dysfunction both in their businesses and in their marriages and so you just have to shift the frame in your mind every time you choose short-term comfort in your marriage or in your business partnership you're also setting yourself up for long-term dysfunction and you will not achieve your goals and so I think people need to be real with themselves about it because instead what they do is they tell these stories they're like oh no no no she's going to change or he's

going to change he's going to figure it out he's going to no this is like it hasn't changed for 2 years so what is likely to happen is what has happened all we have is evidence we cannot bet on someone's potential and so if we want to make a change and if you're going to do it eventually you might as well do it now I I don't know except for that people don't have a sense of urgency about wasting their life and efforts let's talk about brand you are very intentional at building acquisition Doc's brand

Alex is building his brand you're building your brand and you are very thoughtful about the power of brand what do you think the importance of brand is in business and in this social media content creation space and let's take it here in this Guru space it's interesting you said that CU like as you're saying it something's running through my head which is like I put all of my effort into being a company worthy of a good brand I do not put a lot of effort into thinking about what comes out on the other side because

I think that when I look at a company's brand I think of just displaying to the external world what exists internally um same with a personal brand like I think that the more that I work on myself and I'm proud of who I am the better I will show up in content because I'm proud to make the content because I'm proud of who I am you know the more effort that I put into building an amazing team culture and business the more I'm going to want to talk about it because I'm proud of it and

so I actually think that if people put more effort into I would say like the product rather than the marketing they would have an easier time building their brand for um themselves or their business because you can make claims that are true versus trying to dress up something like trying to put lipstick on a pig and I think a lot of people are trying to put lipstick on a pig and it's like why don't you just go do the hard work and then it makes it easy you know what I mean so people are spending

time thinking about their website and their logo and the color scheme and those types of things but you're saying do the inner work and build something substantial where do you see the merger of those things do you think about the Aesthetics as well or do you just think about the substance I'm much more substance driven and I think if anyone looks at our stuff they can probably see that um I think Aesthetics is fairly easy like I know how to do design I know what looks good and bad I care more that the value of

what I am doing in my business is substantial than I do about spending 3 hours designing something now of course we are hiring a designer right now because but it's been three years you know what I mean and so for me the thing is is like I wouldn't want like I wouldn't want like somebody who's out of shape is not going to do a bodybuilding competition yeah okay because they know that they look bad on stage so why would somebody who has a shitty business Market their business talk about their business make content about their

business they're like it's going to come off as fake because it is it's not like you're the overweight guy on stage and so go lose the weight and get in shape and then get back up on stage because right now we're at a period of time where fake doesn't last and people can see when you're fake because people who aren't fake carry themselves differently like I think people can sense Poise when I meet with somebody like my uncle for example he started this gas and oil business in Iran and then after uh doing that then

the uh regime came in and they threw him in prison because they just if you they want to throw you in prison they throw you in prison he's in Iranian prison for eight years then he escapes he goes to the United States he then decides because he's like these people I'm going to start it all over again he snuck back into Iran restarted the company became an a oil and gas billionaire and it was uh they had headquarters in Iran Russia and the United States and Canada when you walk into room you don't even have

to ask are you successful do you like this guy the vibe he gives off it is Untouchable like completely unfuckwithable and I think that we're coming to a day and age where that is really hard to hide because of the amount of content that is required to dominate platforms and so I would say go do that work first go become that unfuck with a B guy and it will make everything else easy it's just like in business if you you have a bad product you've got to gas Marketing sales CS Finance like it's a 10

out of 10 effort on all those things if the things you're saying are not compelling because you're not actually who you say you are then you have to do all the Frills and think of all these crazy Hooks and all these claims but like oh I kind of got to move this here or say this because it's not actually true but oh if I position it like this it'll make it seem that way it makes it that much harder but if you can just walk up and be like this is what I do this is

how I do it this is who I am think how much easier it is to make content when you don't have to think about how to position it how you're looking oh did I say this did I not say that oh I don't want to let them know about this you know what I'm saying yep when you're creating content um what's your daily routine and what's your daily routine in general shoot day what time do you get up uh I wake up whenever the stress wakes me up Sean uh that could be anytime uh like

today I think I got up at 4: um and so then I worked for a couple hours maybe like two and then what do you drink first thing in the morning Gator zero um do you drink coffee yeah I drink coffee after I have after I hydrate hdate immediately or do you do like the thing that people say like wait 90 minutes I don't do that on purpose um I don't listen to any of that stuff but um I like I just drink a Gatorade and then probably like an hour later I have like a

half a cup of coffee and then once I finish like a I would say like two units of work which is 2 hours then I go on a walk so like content days I don't lift um because that would just not I don't think that'd be good um so I usually just do cardio or walk and then after I do that I come home and I shower and then I grab all my clothes and then I come to the headquarters and I have my hair and makeup done and while I have my hair and makeup

done I usually do two or three meetings um and then I head down and just do stuff back to back with like usually like 30 or 45 in between when you got up and did those first two hours of work though that was you get up you get some stuff done uh emails fires whatever and then once you lock into content you lock in what how long do you batch I would say that probably the max is 7 hours how do you stay sharp mental focused do you have to grow that muscle for someone it's

incredibly leveraged to do that but for someone seeing that that's really smart if you're very busy that can get you ahead you could maybe create a month's content in a day but also what are you a superum how do you do seven hours of batch production I mean people used to go to school for eight hours people work a job for 8 hours yeah um I think that if you are doing things if you are working on the skill of getting better at content it is exciting to do things back to back because you can

do one video recognize what you could have done better and then 30 minutes later you get to implement that and so I always look at it like that it's like a game it's like how do I get better each time I could have been sharper here I could have said this here okay this next round I'm going to do that and so when I'm doing my content days I'm constantly thinking what could I have done better in the last one that I can do better right now and so I actually think it's really advantageous because

the feedback loop is just tight you know if I'm making one video a week I have to wait seven days to make the next video better but if I make four in a day I can make each one better right there and by the end of the day how much better am I than that person who has to wait a month and so I actually think I'm all for just compressing the time it takes to do something by doing a lot more volume in a shorter period of time because not because I'm like some superhuman

but because I thrive off the feedback I'm getting and being able to implement it quickly so I'm not thinking about anything else going on if I'm just focused on how can I get better than I was an hour or two hours ago you know the same goes for when I'm rehearsing speeches for example I will rehearse a a speech probably if it's a long speech four times back to back if it's short there was one I did that was it was a 15minute speech and I rehearsed it about 40 times back to back Alex and

Trevor were there and we were just they were queuing me because we knew what I needed to like get right about the speech and it was just I was just up there for six and a half hours just over over say that again go back say it again go back say it again but by the end I sounded like a a professional speaker that had said that 2,000 times and so if you compress the period of time in which you hone in on a skill I think that that skill expedites much faster than if you

were to spread it out over a longer time Horizon and so it's like you're going to do the Reps you might as well do them in a fashion where you get more out of them are you thoughtful about your nutrition that day is there certain things that help your mental Clarity and or weigh you down if you were to eat too much or anything like that cookies no uh I do eat cookies um I I don't like to eat a lot when I'm like filming just because I mean like there's been times where the food

is bad like have you ever had a time where like you're at an event and then you eat something and you're like that was not that was like spoiled and now I'm like going to throw up and my pants yeah that's happened to me before so I'd rather not do that in front of people um if I do that's your problem not mine but uh I'm good with it no I'm kidding so I usually eat like a protein bar and then drink a shake and I'm I'm good I don't need to most days I don't

eat until like noon or 1 anyways so it's like if I just have a shake yeah and maybe a protein bar if it's like getting later I just usually eat more at dinner so that helps me on all work days let alone content is super convenient to just not have to think about it or or stop and plus I feel more energy when I haven't eaten as much so in your opinion if you were a content creator what is the most ethical way to build a $1 million per year online business ethical so you took

out only fans I kid um that's actually the most lucrative side hustle right now the stat just came out out of is it really girl reach out to me day I kid you not and she's like will you could do a collab with me on only fans and I was like is this a joke and she was like No And I was like wait what I like with the audacity um yeah super interesting um if I want to make a million do honestly if the goal was only to make a million I would probably build

up my audience um to a point where in endorsement alone of a singular product I would make a million in commission I think that that's the easiest lightest path of least resistance for a lot of content creators is to find a business that fits really well with what you like you know like for Alex for example like if he were to partner with like a no strip company then it would be easy he already figure collab maybe annual because then they sponsor your it's super simple one relationship they sponsor sponsor your year you focus on

what you want and it's something that's organic to you you know the reason I said nose strips is because he already wears them there's product placement in every video and so I'd be looking at people saying like well what shows up in every video no matter what are you always drinking an energy drink are you wearing a certain kind of jewelry are you always wearing some kind of makeup I'd be thinking that and then thinking how can I go all in on one partnership where I get a disproportionate amount of commission because I dedicate myself

only to this product for this period of time and I think that singular Focus like here's the thing if you go to someone's page on say Instagram or YouTube and they have three different links you can click what's the likelihood you even click one but if I go to somebody's page and there's one link with one call to action what am I going to do I've seen this on in so many businesses they have oh here's my thing with my seven links okay off like SE 43 links in their link tree yes and so a

lot of links there so many links it's the thing you confuse the intent of the person coming they say I don't understand what is it like and because there's too many options it's the option Paradox they just do nothing and so you lose leads through that way and so it's like one you decrease your your throughput of the the leads from your content and then you distribute that decreased lead flow from like to like five things versus like if you had one CTA and it went to one piece of uh like one product you would

get more lead flow to that product and a higher uh intent of the person clicking so there's more people that can are going to buy and so I would just do that like personally if I were to ever choose a thing it would be one thing and I would endorse the hell out of it and I think that's easy for people because then you don't need to partner with a business person to build your business because like okay so like for some makeup blogger like are you really going to make makeup better than you know

whatever the I'm not even going to say it because I'm going to get smashed for something but like you're not going to make it better than HUD Beauty you're not going to make it better than Sephora or than like tar or or Mac like you're just not and so like let's not kid ourselves they have a thousand makeup scientists making the best blush possible for your face and so like if you're not going to do that then like I would say partner with somebody who can't you know what I mean yeah do you feel like

there's a lack of female representation in your Niche I don't know many women who make content about larger businesses I actually have tried to find them so if you have know of any I would like to know who they are do you have any idea why that is um I think a lot of women so there's uh if you look at like stats I think it's like 50 it's like something like the the rise of like women with small businesses it was like 55% of business owners are women but their business is below like less

than for sure a million in Revenue I think it might have been like even less than 500,000 a year in Revenue so there's a lot of females in the business space but it's the small business space from what I can gather so like I would imagine that my advice is like I'm talking about like having a team of 100 people people like it's irrelevant to me like I'm just trying to sell this product or whatever you know what I mean MH uh I don't know if it's under represented um or it just is small yeah

you know what I mean I I truly don't know um I mean I do know that from the the females I do know uh it can be difficult at times because uh my advice is mostly applicable for a male audience because if you look at larger businesses more of them are run by men and then you have to ask yourself well out of that audience how many men are receptive to a woman's advice and how many of them and then also because Alex and I are Partners how many of them are going to look at

me and just immediately discredit me and say oh it is Alex it's just a fake or whatever and so it leads down to a much smaller pool of people who are interested in my opinion which I don't care I'm good with it that's just reality I just I think that might be what it is have you dealt with online harassment and trolling specifically geared at you being a female yeah yeah yeah stalkers uh DPS uh what's a DP you know what it stands for you know my brand I'm not going to say it okay sorry

I actually I literally don't a d pick oh oh oh okay I I dude I not I'm done I really didn't know I'm sorry I would not try and get you to say that uh I was just like d dog something like yeah okay uh yeah it's actually weird I you know me and Alex talk about it because I'm like E I get like so many weird messages yeah and he's like it's none and I'm like well I think you're just scary so women are like oh he's kind of scary like I don't I feel

like I don't get any either maybe it's what I put out there but I just want I mean I I bring that up too because there's so many uh female crators listening to this and I think harassment I mean it just I mean it it sucks I think it could be a resistance of like man I put myself out there do I want to deal with the BS coming my way of the stuff that can happen as well as some legitimate fear from stalkers I was just talking to one Creator who has been very intentional

to build a different name and a brand name so her maen name does not get out there for different reasons so I'm I'm kind of coming at it from that angle like thinking how you manage those situations I'll be honest I just got personal security so uh I I know have a guy who's with me all the time prior to that it I never let stop me so I'll put it that way it's like I'm like you've just got to do this and it's just part of it's just the cost of the goals that I

have and that's fine but I think that you have to take precautions like don't own things in your own name don't put your business under know don't have your personal address out there put everything in like a a different LLC I think a lot of people don't know you can do that like you can have a different LLC that does not have your name on it own all your stuff um so that people can't actually stalk you in terms of messages that people send and and inappropriate things people say online it definitely shapes things that

I do I think I'd be lying if I said it didn't I would I mean like I think my team knows like even the way that I dress when I make content is different than how I dress normally is different than how I dress when I'm out with my friends like I probably dress much more girly and less conservative but because I don't like the things that people say about me online when I don't I try not to but then there's the whole like you want to try and be yourself so it's like I still

struggle with some of those things I think you have to have an accurate depiction of your level of notoriety so you know weirdos and people who message you stuff like that can even happen to women who don't have huge followings um I think that if it comes to a level where people are showing up where you live and you know coming to your place of residence or place of work or sending you very expensive gifts maybe you need to consider like hey the cost of the goals I have maybe that means that I do need

to live somewhere secure with security maybe it means I need to get security maybe it means and so you know for me the decision was at one point okay well a lot of people are like you should not live in a city you should live in a house in like the middle of nowhere with like you know armed guards and all that stuff and I was like yeah I get that um I don't I don't want to I don't like living in the suburbs it's not for me and so what's the cost of that if

I want to be safe is like maybe I hire somebody who's like a full-time employee who is security and so I think that's probably very unrelatable for most people that are listening to this right now doubt but um I I say it to I guess explain that it is a priority to me not because I'm actually scared because I'm not not really scared but because I listen to people that are ahead of me and people that are ahead of me have said these things by the time something happens it's too late so getting security or

taking SEC like precautions against these things you only do when there is not yet been an incident so to prevent an incident for ever happening you want to take precaution ahead of time and I think the basic stuff is you know paying a service to make sure that your phone number and your uh address are not online there are services that will literally daily swipe it and clear it off of all websites you can Google it and look for it um and make making sure that you don't own things in your own name I think

those are the two best things you can do along with you know uh if you do not have the means or the desire to have security then making sure that you don't post things that indicate where you live you know unfortunately people a lot of people know the area that I live in and where our building is so people do show up um and so because of that and because I am lazy and choose not to and do have the means I hire security if you do not then if I didn't have the means I

would never post and let people know even clue of where I lived yeah that was a little bit of a tangent nobody's ever asked me that before so hey I don't really that was really good advice all right as we as we land the plane uh your first upload on YouTube was two years ago what advice would you give to yourself looking back now to Young Leila at the start of your content creation journey to not look at it like something that I have such little experience with but to find evidence of all the air

of all the skills that I do have that translate over to content and ask myself how could I leverage those here you know I think an example for me is I've been doing one-on ones with employees for seven years before I started making content one-on-one interaction I'm very good at so like this style works great for me I would have just started doing more of that from the getg go some people maybe they are good at public speaking so then maybe they're very good at speaking one to many leverage that uh some people people are

very good at asking others questions like maybe you're the person that everyone thinks you're a fantastic listener and that you ask great questions start your own podcast and have guests on I think I'd be looking much more at like what are my what are the skills that already exist that I have and how can I use that to be the base of my content rather than try and fit in a Content box so I would have rather built my own box faster which I think I do more now uh rather than just trying to fit

into a box of what I see other people doing so strong all right final segment it's the repeat after me segment so I'll say the sentence okay you say it and then finish it you ready oh okay uh one habit that helped helps me as a content creator is one habit that helps me as a content creator is writing down my thoughts uh in a note to myself on my walks every day about the content that is top of mine for me and that I want to make so I don't ever try now I have

a running list of all the content that comes to mind and then I can kind of Flesh it out right there because sometimes when you think about it afterwards it's kind of gone from the moment the best way to build your confidence on camera is to get on camera the best way to build your confidence on camera is to be on camera more one book I recommend every business owner read is one book I recommend every business owner read is why am I oh my God I see the title the CEO um oh my God

the great CEO within Matt mochery yes I was mixing up the title with a Mackenzie book um yeah it's a really great book because I think it's very tactical which I think a lot of people know I like tactical stuff um and so he has a lot of really great stuff in there that actually I found the book and was like I feel like I have all the same views as this guy it was great uh if you want to be successful one habit you should start in your 20s is if you want to be

successful one habit you should start in your 20s is constantly having a skill that you are working on intently singularly focused on building one skill skill after skill and eventually you will have a lot of them if you want to attract a top 1% man I recommend if you want to attract a top 1% man I recommend being a top 1% woman that's all I've got for that I don't even know all right last one uh the number one reason business owners should start creating content is the number one reason that business owners should start

creating content is that a lot of business owners see their business as they see their product that they create but they don't see their business as a product and if they see their business as a product and they Market it by creating content then they will get a lot more out of something that already exists coming up next we're about to get into session number four of the ultimate guide for building an online business Empire with content of course all of the people we're learning from are legends that are crushing it on multiple social media

platforms and are some of the most influential entrepreneurs that are using YouTube to grow their businesses grow their personal Brands and coming up next is actually Cody Sanchez and this is a powerful conversation that took place at our event grow with video live that happens in Las Vegas she has been blowing up on YouTube and social media and of course with some of these individuals you think like they're not really content experts they're actually more business owners you know she's invested in 50 businesses and is doing all kinds of uh different projects and local businesses

and laundry mats and all that kind of stuff but look at the numbers like if you add up her over a million YouTube subscribers and what she's doing on multiple platforms these entrepreneurs have figured out how to be operators how to create content how to run their businesses and then also how to crush the algorithm how to really actually Stand Out get noticed and so this is an exclusive convo you're going to love it and if you're interested in details about our event with guest speakers like the people in this video as well as incredible

experience learning networking it's called grow with video live uh the next one is not scheduled yet but jump on the waight list and so you'll be notified in the past we've had people like Gary vaynerchuk Dave Ramsey Patrick B DAV David Alex Heros Cody Sanchez go to grow withv video.com or we'll link to it in the description down below it happens in Vegas and we will notify you when the next one happens and when you're on that list you know we're not going to blast you with any marketing stuff well I'm sure we're actually going

to Market some stuff to you but like it'll just be for being notified when we launch our early bird tickets so you can get the best pricing the best seats all of that stuff and be notified and um you're going to love it it's called grow with video live and it happens in Las Vegas okay let's jump into session number four with Cody Sanchez I invest in Main Street companies the likes of which you use every single day and now I talk about it on the internet and we do it in three components we have

Main Street holding company which is where we hold all the assets we have uh contrarian thinking Capital which is Venture Capital fund and then we have contrarian thinking media which is the stuff that has all of our courses and community and uh the social media that maybe some of you guys follow online yeah well recently you crossed a million subscribers I did on uh on YouTube yeah totally congratulations cross platforms it's it's zillions and billions uh across platforms but um you know we're here at Grow video live and everybody in the room is wanting to

create content they've Maybe started uh already creating content there's some huge channels here millions of subscribers and some people that are just getting started here's my first question for you why content um Nal rant came up with this idea that I really thought highly of he was the founder of angelist and a bunch of other uh companies and I remember seeing this years ago he basically said there are layers to um what's called Leverage in the world and the very first uh lever was Labor right it was first just work if you wanted to get

more done you had more workers more employees back in the day slaves and then the second lever uh that created more wealth than labor ever did in some ways was capital and so that was like when the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds the titans of us industry were created was right about the same time the banking laws changed to allow them access to other people's money capital and then we've had the most recent one which is code right so the ability for Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to create an army of Labor and an army of

capital in the form of robots but you know code online right and then I think today the most democratized easily accessible way for all of us to get access to the next lever is audience and so you know for years I had run a I had run a large Latin American Investment firm at a company called uh First Trust and we had a billion dollars in assets under management I remember specifically talking to the CEO of that company we were walking along um the beach at the Montage in California and I was trying to explain

to him this idea I'm like listen I got us to a billion using your way and your way was like steak dinners you know shaking hands knowing the centers of influence going into to government institutions and asking for permission to manage our money that's how we got here if I want to create the next 10 billion the way to do it is not to shake hands the way to do it is create something once and distribute it continuously through the internet and Jim is the man and we're still very close and he's still more of

a billionaire than I am so uh he's doing a few things right but he disagreed with me he was like categorically no if you're going to be at this firm we will We you cannot get on TV you cannot go and talk about this online you cannot create newsletters and he said and I'll never forget Cody at this firm we get rich quietly and um and I sat with that for a long time and now that I'm pretty public I understand why he might say that there's a lot of downside to be in public um

but at that point I said Jim if I disagree with you and I want to go this other direction with my part of the company I owned part of the Latin American Division what are we going to do and he said uh if you want to play poker you need to get your own chips and so so yeah and you know what he was right he was right and so thankfully he in all for all intents and purposes said either start rolling or get off the boat so I got off the boat and yeah you

guys have all probably had a moment where you did that right where other people told you you shouldn't be creating online content this is ridiculous uh why do you think you can are you a fake Guru online all of the things and if you haven't heard those yet just wait uh and yet um he reached out to me maybe a month ago and uh and said you know I think it's really incredible what you're doing what are the next steps Etc where do you think this is going to go and I kind of chuckled and

I was like you know you kicking me out the door was the single best thing that could have happened to me because now we have a holding company that does hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue we own dozens and dozens of companies and we have more attention in one email I sent than his entire company and that is the power of the internet wow [Music] W you graduated early from Arizona State University with a degree in journalism Harvard of the West really did you learn any lessons from journalism that you apply today when

it comes to creating the content you create yeah I mean curiosity beats intellect almost any day of the week how many intelligent humans have you met that could not threat a needle through a hole like there are so many people who think that being intelligent is the key to success and if you actually look at many different data sets what you find is that the smartest people in fact those at the far end of the curve have some of the lowest levels of success AKA uh wealth relationships happiness index and so um if I could

take one skill and transport it to just about anybody else it would be curiosity and if you're curious and then you learn something and then you iterate on that thing and then you innovate on that thing then you eventually win and so journalism I think taught me two things journalism I originally applied to invest in because if you want to be a good investor what do you essentially doing you're trying to ask questions to see if people are lying to you or not in order for you to give them money or not like that's kind

of what investing is do I believe what I'm being told and if I believe what I'm being told should I allocate resources or money to this thing and uh what's interesting is that's what journalism does you go and you ask hard questions to find answers and I think when it comes to content um one of the reasons we've had some success I think there's two reasons actually the main reason is I'm really curious I just cannot imagine a world in which we are given this incredible Cranium we all have with these neurons firing and we

don't try to squeeze every bit of information out of this life that we humanly can like how sad a world if we do not try to take the the things that in my mind God gave us and apply them to the maximum amount possible I hate that idea and so I think that's one reason we've been successful and the second reason is because um you know if you guys are creating online there's one thing that I I think is more important than anything else you know forget the Instagram re versus the Tik Tok versus the

hook versus the first 30 seconds it's do you think you're the hero or are the people that you're serving the heroes are you the Luke Skywalker or are the people that are watching your videos the Luke Skywalker and I remember reading some parts of this originally from Storyteller brand Donald Miller Story Brand Story brand and when he said that to me it hit because when I'm on a stage like this I don't actually think it's about me I think it's about how do I meet as many of you because the bigger Ripple is not Cody

gets bigger the bigger Ripple is what what think easier for me to do there's 600 people here in this room right is it easier for Cody to get 600 million followers or would it be easier for this crowd cumulatively to get 600 million what's easier the lad you guys right so how much more powerful are my ripples if what I can do is influence others to live incredible lives to get bigger to create greater and I can just be like the little Yoda whispering in the ear of the heroes which is all of you and

so you know I have a book coming out this December Sean was incredible and and a very early supporter of it um which I take very seriously so thank you um and they tried to put I remember they did this mockup and if you guys you've seen what books look like and it's like a book mockup and I have all these photos from different things that we've shot and so they sent me the mockup and it was like Cody Sanchez you know on the cover and I I was like delete this immediately absolutely not this

book is not about me it is about everybody who wants to be the thing that we are talking about in this book and I think think if we all remember that then we have audience that has real connection as opposed to try to become a celebrity and the only thing that happens when you try to become a celebrity is you eventually become cringe and so that is what I want to stay away from in just a second I want to learn about your spark content formula but I want to hang on the journalism for a

second because you won an award you did some work that really impacted some of the ATR with sex trafficking can you tell that story yeah um so where I started creating content I guess but I never would have thought about it that way back then was uh I graduated a year early from Harvard of the West and due to the crazy curriculum I had I had some free time and so I decided to partner with something called The Howard F Buffett Foundation which is Warren Buffett's son for print journalism and my last name Sanchez uh

I'm Latina and I lived in Arizona at the time that's where I was raised and what was fascinating is um we were given a grant to cover stories along the US Mexico border with this idea of like what happens at divisions that human create humans create like what happens at these divisive points and so I've crossed the border actually illegally like I can't even tell you the number of times with um with human traffickers and individuals trying to cross the border and this was in 20078 something like that um writing stories about what it's really

like down there and um and what was interesting is uh I met this one guy whose name was NE Fuentes and uh he had crossed the border I'm going to mess up the number but he was 18 17 or 18 years old and he had cross the border like over a hundred times and not like back and forth because he wanted to like a hundred times but couldn't get in like kept getting kicked back and I remember sitting down with him and talking about like what is it that drives you to be here like what

other way could we get you here and it was like sort of at that moment where I realized man if we are given probably one of the biggest gifts out there in the world which is the ability to be a citizen of America and we have the ability to um to produce at the highest level of which we are physically capable like there is no real foot on your neck of progress in this country sometimes I think we might be trending towards that but today right now there's just about nowhere better in the world if

you want to produce in a capitalistic Society no better place and so feels me and I think it's our duty as content creators to to push that forward and so when I was writing those stories about human trafficking and and nef Fuentes and when I saw what happened to to women in a pra who are being murdered it's called la de the city of death uh because every single day women would be found strewn across the border in the city of El Paso across from El Paso um which is called Warz and um and I

would go to the morg and I would uh identify body parts like how many people were actually killed so like you know if a woman is in six parts are we noting that as six women are we sure that's not just one and um and when I was watching all that I thought God what is the difference between me and them my last name is Sanchez I'm a young woman they worked in the things called Maki lores along the US Mexico border which is basically like Warehouse factories for like Lowe's or Home Depot down there

and they would get shipped in from southern Mexico to sort of these Shanty towns to work in these these warehouses and it was a much better life for those women there than down south more pay more opportunity except for this pernicious violence that that we've never been able to find out hundreds of women are murdered every year in uh waras or found murdered I I imagine the number is actually quite higher and so what I realized in that moment and I think one of the big reasons that I'm into content today is I do not

think we should get rich quietly I think the difference between getting rich quietly and getting rich together is actually we make more money and we have more impact not less and I think the difference between me and those women was simply I was born in American citizen with the ability to earn and what if we could teach more people that so that's why I'm loud on the internet and why I'm pretty Mission driven and I I think maybe what I would try to proze or or tell to all of you is like the world the

world is full of self-help books as business cards we don't need more of those the yes the world is full of YouTube channels touting 21-year-old morons who are trying to tell you how to live your life I want the confidence of a 21-year-old life coach could you imagine a life coach I'm 37 I would never be a life coach I barely got it figured out and so I just think if we're going toate cre content online we need to make sure we're doing it for a reason we need to make sure we stand for something

we need to make sure we're serving somebody else and not ourself and that is how we can feel good about it and not go down the like you know porno Rabbit Hole of chasing clicks and clickbate which eventually ends at you know you porn and so we don't want that we want to create things that matter that last through the text of time and so um it started at human trafficking but it's transcended all the way to why does it matter that we each are rich and how can we talk about that align so for

you guys I would say what is that mission for you because you all uniquely have something to share every single human does and make sure that what you share matters isn't just chasing number of views on videos and I've met so many billionaires Sean I'm sure you have too like by now like most of them aren't happy you know most of them aren't very happy and uh and I had a friend that ran a family office for like a name that you would know one of the richest guys in the world and I remember one

day I was asking him about it he was telling me some ridiculous stories and then I was telling him my plan and how I want to build this billion dollar company and he stopped me and he goes I wish you not one more Penny than $299 million and I said well that's rude because I'd like more than that and he said I said why and he said because past that point you get into a sea of sycophant where you start to believe the things that you don't even really know to be true and nobody tells

you one way or the other and so I know there are a lot of people online that say I want to be a billionaire my purpose is a billionaire that's not deep enough guys because once you get there you're going to realize it's just the next billion and the next billion and the next billion and one thing that I will say is I am so tired of seeing content creators be be more concerned about their own skin and what people will think about them than speaking the truth how many of you guys have seen that

you know they won't get into politics they won't get into pushing back they won't get into saying the truth because they don't want to mess up their views and I think that if you have the unique ability to get attention on the internet you should use it as a Force for good and uh that's what I'm trying to do but often fall far short of so this is very inspiring and now if we get technical um and you have a formula it's called a spark content formula I love this and you kind of could you

walk us through that sure uh I don't remember all of it so read it for me first all right so you could write this down five steps spark number one is speak to a specific Persona so one of the interesting Parts about how we do content at contrarian thinking is I have a team of people who are really good at Technical and we have a belief that every time it's called the rule of three every time you do things more than three times it has more than three steps you should write it down and create

an sop which is called a system and process for it and so the spark formula how we actually use this these processes get framed inside of contran thinking on our best days but not always so that the people who um are new to the team realize how we do content and so one of the things that I think is really important for you and your team as you get bigger you'll have a bunch of people who are kind of like your mini voice in some ways they're repackaging content they're pulling stuff together and every so

often something awful will have happen to you like I remember one time it was like President's Day I think or it was it might have been Memorial Day which would have been worse it was like Memorial Day and the picture that got posted was like Cody in a bikini with like a Theodore Roosevelt quote and I was like who's who's getting fired here because this is not this is not what we're trying to do and so um so the spark formula's ideation and origination is the fact that we have these Sops and processes that have

everything that we do inside of them but um as you can probably tell from now I work a lot from G uh from gut as opposed to um technicality and so when I say speak to a a specific person I think the easiest way to start when you are growing a channel is if you go out and you want to be I don't know if she's relevant anymore but like Emma Chamberlain where she's just like laying in her bed kind of talking about coffee or like whatever else happens in the world in her day with

no particular Niche it's really hard to grow if you want to grow faster you actually do the counterintuitive thing which is you skinny it down I want to talk to in my world people who want to buy laundromats think about how small that Niche was that I started in laundromat buyers I don't even know if there were people on the internet that did it but I thought it was interesting it was my specific Niche then I go okay maybe car washes maybe boring businesses in general maybe people who care about business maybe people who care

about community and business maybe people who care about an impact on the world through community business see how it kind of branches out so in the beginning you go really specific and then after you've gone specific you get an allowance from your Heroes your audience to go wider but in the beginning they haven't given you that allowance they don't they don't know if if they care about you yet so you got to get permission for them to care about you what's the next one number two platform proficiency oh this one's interesting like you'll see Tanner

running around tier Tanner is my head of production and what we realized in the beginning uh is that running a Content business is not that dissimilar from running an investment firm in a lot of ways it's a lot of um feedback loops Based on data and uh getting better at using signals to determine next steps which is very similar to investing actually and so what we realized is we have an idea and that idea has to be served differently on every single platform and then a lot of people talk about repurposing that's like sort of

old news Gary Vayner you know made that very normalized but here's what I think they left out I think each platform has a personality and you need to understand who you're serving on each platform and so maybe you guys have already talked about this but like Tik Tok is like you know your 17-year-old kind of nephew right that's Tik Tok he's got add he's also a little angry sometimes but sometimes he wants to be inspired he'd like you to dance I mean yeah Tik Tok okay so if I'm going to serve something to Tik Tok

and I don't pay a lot of attention to that platform for personal like decisions like it is a great platform I just I don't support the ethics and morals of it but if I was going to serve Tik Tok aggressively I would think would my 17-year-old kind of cousin like what I'm about to create am I speaking specifically to him because you know many of you are probably parents and and and Friends of of young people the way that you're going to communicate something to a 17-year-old nothing else withstanding as opposed to 45-year-old is very

different right and so that's Tik Tok then we've we've got Instagram which I always kind of think of like you know young like 30-year-old mom with a couple kids likes pumpkin spice latte matching outfits suede boots and uh and how do I get to that because uh you see who has the most engagement on the platform and it's like Mom bloggers Crush that platform like there's one that I love her name is Danny Austin if you guys know her and she's created multiple brands on top of it she kind of does these goofy dances everybody

loves the kid content okay that's Instagram and then we've got Twitter which I think about like Twitter I think about Twitter like maybe you know slightly disgruntled Tech Bros and real estate entrepreneurs that never quite achieved what they wanted to achieve and um and when I think about it that way I'm really thoughtful on how I serve platform and I'm going to like the most base like almost bad negative connotation of each platform because I do think if you understand people's pain points you can better serve them if I go to their highest self your

highest self is very easy to serve but we often don't sit there especially on social media platforms and so when I go to Twitter I just know that um you know it's going to react differently than Instagram Instagram's going to be probably a little bit nicer um than Twitter and then YouTube I think is the one place where there's like a lot of separation of audience in a big way and you can have totally disparate types of people and so there it becomes a lot more about what does the algorithm serve up for the first

30 60 90 seconds how do you title thumbnail and package and then are you serving your current audience but are you sprinkling in a little bit more of what your next audience is and my friend Kim um cop she's also a great follow on Instagram but she she does merchandise for like the biggest celebrities out there and she was try she was explaining to me how she thinks about YouTube which is she thinks about it like I think the guy's name is like Shawn Mendes singer right you guys know who that is okay so Shawn

Mendes uh the other day it was funny I like saw a video of him dancing and he was singing and I sent it to Kim I was like oh this kid's pretty good he's probably going places she's like you idiot he's like huge on the internet apparently um I don't know anything about pop culture so anyway she was explaining to me that Shawn Mendes typically speaks to like the Taylor Swift audience it's like you know 10 to 20-year-old young girls they're in love with him you know a little bit teeny boppy well sea had that

audience served right one of the biggest names in the world on it but sea which typically happens with creators and artists wanted to like sophisticate a little bit right so I don't know if you guys have ever had a video and you're like even Mr Beast he's like yeah I want to serve the 15-year-olds but I also want to be taken ser seriously philanthropy channel right and so he went from serving these teeny boppers to then uh serving what he really wanted to do which he's like I want to be a serious artist I want

to be like John Mayor and so because of that he started flipping a few of the things he did with his channel but he had to do it really slowly because if right away he went from teeny bopper to you know sort of like middle-aged uh timeless music listeners he would have lost this audience entirely and never got to this audience and so that's that's what I mean by platform specifically number three always show up and you talk about input versus output what does that mean ah game of numbers um I've never met anybody that

got a million followers from one video and um and so I think you know if you have to choose between quality and quantity choose quantity it's easier uh if you have to choose between acting slowly acting fastly act fastly you'll have a higher uh you'll have a higher data set and feedback loop coming back to you and uh if you're going to play this game realize it's almost just like any other job in the world which is that you have to show up consistently you can't wait for the Muse you have to continue to execute

at a high level or you are very easily forgotten about we all are and so um first like in in our business first you have to like you yourself have to figure out what do I want to talk about who am I what do I want to cover in this world and then you have to think about okay how can I start covering in that in some way shape or form so that's like systems and processes and then you have to think about okay now that I know what I want to do I know how

we're going to do it how can I do it consistently and then after you get to it consistently you can say how can I do it exceptionally but I think a lot of people skip steps in between those four do you remember when you posted your first video well I posted my first YouTube video like three years ago probably uh and then I stopped for a year so there's Cody talking out of two sides of her mouth uh um and then I came back to it I think about like a year and a half ago

I think as our anniversary and uh and I only came back to YouTube Once I knew what I wanted to talk about how we were going to do it with consistency that I committed to doing it and then hope we're still I think getting to the point where we're trying for exceptional but we're not there yet and when you did that first video or when you first started what was it like compared to the the tech getting it done compared to like the operation you're running now oh yeah well I mean the first the first

piece of content I ever created so there's the lowest barrier of Entry ever if you guys want to was a newsletter so it required basically no technological proficiency it required no ability to film videos or edit them to to be honesty I have no idea how to edit a video Zero idea like if you told me if you got rid of my whole team right now and they were like go edit this video I would create zero content um I don't know how to edit uh let's see I don't know how to find you know

trending sounds on Tik Tok I don't know how to post on most channels uh the only place that I post myself natively every single time is Twitter um I batch almost every single thing that I do uh but my eyes are on every single piece of content we create uh ideally and sometimes it happens but I get mad like nothing goes out without my review of it even today and we create thousands of pieces of content a year and and I run another company so it is a big commitment from that that standpoint but um

I just say that because I think it's important for you to know like you can you can have different unfair advantages my unfair Advantage was um I've worked for a long time in finance I know a lot about investing I I have ideas these ideas and Frameworks and formulas are interesting I think and then I have proof I've been doing this for a while like before before I got in the internet you know telling you guys about making money and finance I'd actually made money and IID built things and then the third is that I'm

still building them live with you and so you get to see real time you get to see past time and you get to see uh professional proficiency those were my three examples now I you could have a totally different skill set which is uh maybe you don't have crazy ideas maybe you don't have professional proficiency maybe you don't build in public right now but you're really good good at editing videos you're obsessed with the craft and you love making content or maybe you're great at finding viral sounds so I don't think there's like a perfect

there's no perfect soup right some people like gaspacho some people like chicken noodle soup both of them can be exceptional you just have to be really honest with yourself and self-aware about what are you are you the gaspacho or are you the chicken doodle soup and if you try to do all of it you're just going to drive yourself crazy speak toour specific Persona platform proficiency always show up uhhuh number four relieve pain points forget about vitamins we're in the painkiller business break it down it's a good line isn't it um so there's an old

saying uh that we used to to say in finance which is that um people want to take vitamins but people actually take painkillers and so um if you think about that with content I think you have to you have to put yourself in the user's shoes and so when I think about what we create I realized something the other day which is we are in the most competitive business that exists in the world right now content why it's permissionless anybody can do it I simultaneously have to compete with Mr Beast giving away a million dollars

with uh you know whatever the Rocks 24 pack and whatever new movie he has coming out with Trump and the presidential election with the news that comes out every single day like what other industry do you have where your competitors are literally the top of the attention takers in the world it's uh it's a really interesting model and we think that it's not that competitive because it's not that hard to start there's no Capital expenditures money up front you know there's no real barriers to entry so you can just get going um but but don't

don't be confused for one second that this game is incredibly competitive because it is and so when I think about what I serve our users I obsessive like my team will tell you I'm I'm maniacal about it because I think every moment that somebody spends with our content is me taking a small piece of their life tiny little moment because we only get so many of them and if they are going to give me that tiny little moment I better give them back something worthwhile I better give them back something that maybe could create more

moments in their life and I never want to give them junk food which is both fattening and calorie deficient uh simultaneously I want to give them something that can actually fuel them and so because we take that really seriously I think people watch our content a lot because I maybe there's this trust that I am actually going to deliver on the most valuable thing that they have which is their time number five keep repackaging oh yeah well we kind of touched on this a little bit which is um you know you you guys will have

I use Twitter a lot because Twitter's like my thoughts so I'm you know kind of randomly as I'm going tweeting ideas things that are happening and I I don't really consume anything on Twitter I don't really consume news uh very often I do it in specific segments but I'll I'll post a lot on Twitter about what I'm thinking at the current moment and then I like to use Twitter as a feedback loop so what um what are people resonating with why do I use Twitter it's the the easiest type of content to put out you

know it's simply words put out immediately also it's highly sharable so Twitter people can share stuff a lot as opposed to so you just engage get engagement with your own audience on Instagram and so I find that Twitter is an interesting place for ideas to spark ah look at that little pun um and uh and so with that I will then take those tweets and you'll see them like layered throughout different types of our content those tweets will turn into Instagram reels those Instagram reals if I have a deeper thought on it I might flush

that out and put those into part of our YouTube videos I like to put some of the tweets at the bottom of our emails and so it's not I don't do it like some do which is they're like every piece of content must become 10 pieces of content the truth of it is when you look at most channels performance there's an 8020 rule in everything in life right paro's principle the best things that you create will be outside drivers of your return uh which is probably right in the realm of of 8020 and so I'd

rather find the real gems and then repurpose those so strong so I looked up some of your top videos and I'm curious ious some of the things you think about in YouTube when it comes to packaging yeah and so let's see uh let's talk about the million viewed videos anything your thought um do you remember making a video a year ago I bought land for 10K and makes me $1,500 a month that got 1.5 million views any thoughts on that video or just thought thoughts on the 8020 rule some of the ones that blew up

and you know it's you look shocked there's a tent that is making 1,500 a month in the thumbnail like what goes into your prod process for creating that's a good video viral video over a million views um a couple things so I already told you I have to feel like the video is going to serve the audience right so that's base level I have to feel like on YouTube in particular we have we have an avatar we talk to we have a human every day that I talk to on YouTube that I'm trying to serve

and that is anyone who feels like we call him working John and for working John who is he he is uh somebody who wants more out of his life probably located in the US who is a builder and a doer and a charger but feels like he hasn't quite hit the Financial Freedom numbers that he wants he's looking for the things that will allow him to focus more of his time on the things that he loves as opposed to more of the time on the things that he has to do and so when I'm when

I'm youtubing I'm thinking very specifically can we help this person so the videos where we've done poorly is like we did a video we actually pulled it we need to repackage it somehow but we did a video that was like um here's how these like celebrities made their money and I thought it was interesting because I was breaking down all of the influencers businesses and like who makes the worst and why do I like this business versus that business this audience would probably really like it you'd be like wait why do you think you know

Reese Witherspoon's business is better than the rocks and the Rocks is actually better than teramana which is George Clooney and like what makes those businesses difference and what are the multiples on those businesses it's kind of interesting if you're creating content you really want to understand what's the highest Roi that I can put in front of my audience that you know can make me money but also serve them um but working John doesn't give a and so you know I have to make sure that sometimes I just serve myself in videos which is okay you

need to create things that you love um but every time we don't go viral is because I haven't made it accessible enough I haven't made it look like it's possible for them I haven't made it uh believable enough so like show me the proof show me the data and I haven't really served that audience and thought about what their highest and best use was and um every time I do that we have a viral video and every time I forget it we don't that's incredible now you're in the top 1% of content creators for entrepreneurs

entrepreneur content creators um very inspiring it's obviously that's such a niche within a niche and so to hit a million subscribers and like business advice and boring businesses um and so I'm curious if you can rattle off the top top of your mind how much time weekly do you spend and then you know for it might be more advanced building out a media company what kind of roles are on your staff and how do you delegate editing researching do you have researchers what how's it kind of break down yeah it's a really good point that

you started out with Sean which is um the business Niche is incredibly small and Entrepreneurship Niche is incredibly small and I'm like force functioning people to care about business most people don't care uh my mom watches my videos and she goes that's cute you know I I liked that part uh like what do you like she's like all of it you know um so you know you do have to realize that the games that you play have repercussions and the repercussion of me thinking that Business and Entrepreneurship is really important and everybody should have ownership

in something and it will change their life is that I probably will never get as many views as a Kardashian wnab be applying 13 levels of lipstick so you just got to decide what you want to do you know if you want to go really viral easily um I say easily none of it's easy but if you want to go really viral like makeup uh and Beauty channels have like 8X the level of Engagement of most other channels they also sell almost more products than any other channels so when you think the Kardashians aren't that

smart you're wrong they're incredibly intelligent they apply the fact that they know that these channels are going to hit and then create Brands around them and so I just don't think the world needs another one of those I think there are plenty I'm happy to buy from them it's like not my jam but I have actually started I don't actually really care very much about clothes or makeup or any of that stuff and you might be like but Cody your face is painted like a clown today what do you mean you don't care you have

so much lipstick on and part of the reason is is because I've realized this is like a um it's something that I've I've done because I understand it now but not because it's my natural state I realized that to reach women we have they have to see things that they want of the life that we have and so they're not as inspired by a big bank account and this is gross generalization some of us are but they're not as inspired about a big bank account they're not as inspired about huge level of businesses they're like

are you happy you know do you still feel feminine you know are you in your husband happy too and then also can I be more financially free and so I've I've started to realize like oh okay kind of ma this this personal brand really does matter because if it's up to me all I want to hear from somebody is the tactics I don't really care about anybody else but again the content's not for me it's for another and so um I think that was a really important point you guys should really think hard about what

your Niche is because sometimes these smaller niches are really hard to grow um the as far as a media company is concerned so contrarian thinking overall I want to build this you know you're you're bringing a guy that I have a massive amount of respect for which is d Dave Ramsey um and Dave Ramsey is incredible because Dave Ramsey has had something probably the rarest thing that somebody online has had what do you guys think it is longevity uh Dave Ramsey has been doing this game forever and um he's done it in a way that

hasn't degraded his reputation he's done it in a way that shows categorically that he's helping people and cares about them he's gone through periods of controversy like we all will who on the internet but man the guy has legs and so I have a lot of respect for him and I want to build a similar company for the Next Generation I want to build a media company and we're plowing millions of dollars into it to help people not just save this is where I disagree with Dave I think saving your way to Millions is really

really hard actually I don't think that the data shows it it is much easier for you to earn more and thus get out of debt that way than it is for you to save your way out of debt very hard now both can exist and should and I'm very glad that a man like Dave Ramsey exists in this world but I want to have a little bit of the Counterpoint which is how do we all get true agency and ownership and so when it comes to How I build my team I'm building it with the

idea of we just got an office in Austin Texas um the office and Studio thank you the office in studio is the first phase we're going to turn that into a compound overall we are Hing aggressively if you get you guys can see the roles if you go to contrarian thinking. you'll see we have a whole segment on team what you'll also see there that's important is we have something called the contrarian Creed which are 13 principles that we drive as a company 13 because we don't believe in luck we try to make it and

um and at the company you'll also see what it means to be part of of this company we're very Mission driven and I think Dave's done an incredible job of that so when it comes to my time you know I believe in like integration and not separation and so this week I think I had five speeches because I'm working on this uh book coming out that's abnormal but in between the five speeches we're doing like a very big uh acquisition which part of my team is working on and I'm on phone calls we've got a

huge uh product launch that we have coming out in like June or July which is a SAS business I bought that we're going to grow and so we're kind of documenting all the things I'm doing in the beginning I shot one day a week I had all the scripts prepared I like went through all of them and that worked and then as we got bigger I realized why would I just try to come up with content when I can document as opposed to create and so the cool part about is if you if your if

your content is authentic to you you you're probably already doing the thing that you're creating content about right so now there is some packaging and changing you need to make but the best creators are the ones that are like I'm building an aquarium also there's a camera and so that's how we should be with what we're doing I'm buying businesses also there's a camera and that is also a way I think to not get burned out you're talking about contrarian thinking you're building a media company but you're also building a personal brand what is your

thought personal brand versus Media company and how people should approach that with maybe their personal goal if they're a business owner and wondering if they should get on camera and the power of personal brand is it right for them um in my opinion personal brands are easier to grow uh humans like and follow humans we do not naturally like and follow logos and so uh I took an easy path the easy path was build Cody and then build contrarian thinking and um I'm not sure that's the right path honestly if I if I was better

at Brand building I would obsess on making contrarian thinking bigger which is going to be the next stage I mean how do you guys know I'm not good at Brand building somebody triy to spell contrarian like immediately off there's like six vowels in there there's like four RS I mean it's I should have one word instead I have two words one's really hard to spell and there's like 13 eyes between them and so um if I was to do it again I would obsess on what my name was not my name but my Brand's name

and I would make it short and piffy and really thoughtful uh I would complet in the beginning I completely disregarded that that because in finance nobody cares you know you guys go to Merill Lynch and Morgan Stanley and you know bar and nobody really even knows um how to spell be and so it didn't matter to me but now I do think it matters easier to grow a personal brand harder to grow a business brand but the business should Outlast you as a person and unless you've created that you have only created a very public

job for yourself not a real business and so the next stage of what we're doing is really building out the contrarian thinking Media company as a whole and with that comes we now have two newsletters um we're about we just launched a podcast the podcast is called the big deal podcast um that can transcend past Cody we have multiple social media channels and now we have social media channels for the podcast and um we need to do a better job of the overall company brand building and I think if you guys are in it don't

forget that because it is the only thing that will help you eventually create a business not a job that transcends the time and hours you work in it so Goldman Sachs research said that the Creator economy the total addressable Market could double in the next 3 years that right now it's about $250 billion uh industry and that it's going to be a half a trillion dollars by 2027 and this Creator economy a little bit different where yes there's maybe some entrepreneurs that start creating content but then in and of itself it's its own business in

some cases Yahoo fin said the crater economy um is the fastest growing small business type uh Wall Street Journal was talking about how YouTube is the most consequential technology in America and they were talking about it's the healthiest internet economy it's not the perfect internet economy but how many people make jobs the fact that YouTube gives 55% of the revenue yeah is unlike any other platform Tik tok's trying to figure it out they might be gone in a few weeks who knows they might be banned um but even the Facebook bonus program and anything nothing

compared to the money you can make on YouTube I'm curious just your thoughts for maybe strategic advice this is you've got you're building the aquarium in a cameras on and many here are doing that they want leads and clients and they're going to growth hack their businesses but also a lot of people here want to be content creators your thoughts on making money and earning money from content creation you shared something you said Target groups with cash curiosity and consistency what do you mean by that one I think making money from content purely is a

terrible idea terrible idea let me tell you why it's the lowest form of Roi you can have uh it is more volatile than women on the Vegas Strip I mean this is a terrible way to live your life um because the platforms change all the time algorithms change all the time uh it's expensive to produce great content and you are taking like a percentage of a percentage of a percentage on on a platform when you're providing all the lead flow I mean YouTube is like you know what YouTube is you know what you're doing when

you create YouTube videos when you create YouTube videos you are creating ads for YouTube to use to grow their business to sell more things to people you're like you're an ad agency basically and so um I don't like that model because she's a finicky mistress and because I take such a low percentage of the takehome and so I think if you're like I hate to generalize it by age but if you're really young and like you want to mess around on this platform you can make meaningful money when you're young on this platform when you

already have money if you don't need money but you just like creating stuff online great you could do it for that reason otherwise it's a terrible way to make money um and instead I would make sure that I had something to sell somebody or I had some Revenue stream that was not dependent on the content gods and the other reason why I believe this a lot is because remember what you're doing you're in you you've basically become an attention collector when you're creating content and what a more dangerous game to play than have to chase

attention in order to pay your mortgage and I think that's really scary and is why news media Outlets have had the situation that they've had they had to go down the rabbit hole all the way to lizard people exist because they were chasing attention and so what could be more inflammatory than lizard people um although having met some people in Washington I don't know maybe um so that that's my takeaway there it's not a great way to make money YouTube is the best um but I wouldn't do it for that reason I would take that

money I would put it back into content but I would first find a better way to drive revenue and there's so many ways to do it take 100% of the pay home for the attention that you get as opposed to a small percentage from YouTube and so you're saying make sure you have a business that's not just based on ads but have a product have a service and or or partner with people who have businesses products and services own a portion of those earn into a portion of those businesses if you're not a good operator

don't try to operate a business but maybe have something else that is a little bit more consistent than YouTube Revenue so while you're hot go try to partner with if you're an accounting YouTuber go partner with an accounting firm and say Hey I want to put you as a sponsor in all our videos not just for a dollar amount but I want to actually earn a portion of your business and distributing uh equity in that business and for that I won't promote anybody else I'm just going to promote our thing and we can grow it

together and you basically become the distribution engine or the sales engine to somebody's operations and product engine so you don't have to build the business but you need a business that can drive revenue for it could be an events business you know it could be something else that allows you to offset the gods of the internet do you read your comments on bad days um yeah I mean it's such a I don't really read them on Tik Tok um I don't read them on YouTube Shorts YouTube shorts are mean yeah uh bunch of meanies on

there uh they're like must be nice your husband being rich like he's in the military you guys like please do your homework um so so I don't read those like I'll do it for Signal not noise because I'm not a masochist completely um I will read YouTube comments because I'm kind of curious about what they thought of the video if they've spent a lot of time there are we doing it right or wrong I will I will read some Twitter comments I find those not as high signal to noise I will read comments on videos

that go really viral just to make sure like some sometimes we'll have a video go viral and be like great this video is so good and then I look at the comments it's like I hate you I hate you I hate you and you're like oh that's why I went viral um so I'm I'm thoughtful on it but um what I found about negative feedback is one you guys this is I'll tell you a little secret that I've never told on the internet so I have only ever once trolled a troll back have you guys

ever trolled a troll no it's smart I hear her but anybody who has anyway so I troll the troll back and I thought thought it was funny I thought it was really funny it was some guy and he called me I don't want to say who he called me cuz he's actually a nice guy but he called me like a name a comparison of somebody else of a person that I don't think that highly of and you know was like Cody Sanchez is the ex of X and um I didn't like that comparison and so

I did the responsible thing which is double click on his profile and see exactly what's going on in this guy's life and uh and determined that he you know kind of sporadically flipped houses somewhere and so I wrote on there on his response something to the tune of um I hope you own more real estate in real life than I do in your head right now rentree which is like was a little mean and then and I said uh but if not boy do I have a course for you oh Don't Clap here's the sad

part here's the sad part there there are literally human beings who will make it their life mission to just chirp at you MH and if you do this you're going to find some of them and this guy's one of them like he went kind of nutty I kind of thought about maybe I had to get a restraining order he posts this crazy stuff on Twitter on the time he started asking me for feet picks in the DMS while like saying this stuff publicly um and so it just became kind of a nuisance and so while

I thought I was quite clever it's really not not worth it you know how they say don't engage with the trolls I truly think unless you find and even if you think you find a perverse pleasure from it upfront it's not worth it and I honestly think we have to be a little bit nicer to the trolls sometimes because these guys live miserable lives with absolutely no relevancy where the only place online they can punch up is by tweeting at somebody who's doing while they are actively not and so ignore the noise and even when

it feels like you would have a better comeback let the trolls live under the [Applause] bridge was a good was a good line though so I'm so excited for your book coming out thank you and um we actually want to hook up everybody at the conference with Cody's book for free we'd love to cover that y thank you Sean so you uh I think we have a QR code and then if you do miss it now just to get some information so we know how to send it to you and where to send it and

then um there's also some QR codes on the back tables so in case you miss it now or you want to get that uh but tell us about the book what's the uh the all the details so you'll know we're going to uh talk about the book's title the book's cover I'd love you guys to choose it with us we're going to post it on Instagram and get feedback I have like three versions of the cover I'm working on right now uh the book will come out in December uh I believe the the release date

is like December 3rd so save your calendars we're going to do like a crazy big thing for it you'll see it um and then we're playing this game which is the most ridiculous game of all time um which is trying to hit the New York Times bestseller list which is hard there's like Wizards back there that sort of like bless you or don't and um so anyway so we're doing uh a big push in June for pre-orders for it so I'll share afterwards like did we hit it did we not here's what we did did

this work in case you guys want to write a book you can steal my homework um but the the book is about all the things we talk about which is this idea of can we take back our communities by owning small businesses how do we do it how do we do it without being millionaires why is it maybe easier than ever to do it right now and what are the repercussions if we don't uh which is that we become renters at best and squatters at worst in a world where the few own everything and we

ask for permission and so um I hope the book is a mixture of a big idea with stories that get your brain rolling and simultaneous ly real tactics on if I want to go from a to owner to Empire Builder to hold coowner exactly how to do that amazing so we want to make sure that we can hook you up with that so you'll see if you have that information where they could send it and then even being a part of the process I love that we get to be involved in that and uh so

take advantage of that you just did a post and you gave some advice for entrepreneurs four things you said find God get to the gym go on more walks and raise your prices now break those down in no particular order um listen I uh I don't profess to to for if my mom knew that I was telling people to find God she'd probably she'd probably think I was possessed I was a hell of a child um but the truth of the matter is is that I think that when you have a why and a reason

and a faith whatever that may be um this game of life which all ends in death for every single one of us gets a little bit easier and if you guys have ever been an entrepreneur or a Creator you know that there's a moment where you will sit head in your hands in the dead of the night wondering what the hell to do next with no idea the answer to that question and uh I tell people a lot that the most important thing that you can ever do is be an owner I don't tell you

it's easy because it's not but it is the most worthwhile Pursuit you can have and so I say find God because you need a reason to do the hard it's only through the hard you will find the incredible but I do believe that it's much easier when you can work like it's up to you but pray like it's up to somebody else and the mixture of the two is powerful so that's one um the second one is you know I saw this meme that I can't get out of my head and the meme was essentially

it was like this frazzled guy with like crazy hair and red bloodshot eyes and he's like praying and like looking up at God and he's like God is this the biggest struggle that you've ever put in front of me and then it was like God looking down at him and he's like no bro like go outside get some vitamin D and put down your phone and I think that that is often the case for most of us it's like you we need strong bodies in order to have strong minds and for some reason there's an

attack on both of those um and then the the third that I think about you know continuously is is the third about walking outside yeah go walk outside yeah so I answer both of those and then the last one uh raise your prices now we analyze thousands of small businesses every year A Main Street holding company if you're ever thinking about selling any type of business you can go to Main Street holding company you can send the business to us and we will analyze if we might want to buy it and if not we could

also give you a place where you could sell the business with other people and um and what I am fascinated by continuously is that almost every business that comes to us is underpriced I I don't I don't know if I've ever seen a business where I thought man the prices on this didn't make sense for the business to run and so um there's a guy by the name of Patrick Campbell who's a friend of mine he's on Twitter and um he works a lot on this idea of pricing and so whenever I have a new

business that's struggling with the pricing model I typically go to him and say how should we how should we mess with this a little bit and he he has a couple of Frameworks that I like which is one raise your prices when now raise your prices when often raise your prices when you only have one level you need at least five and five doesn't mean that you need front leaning pricing you could have different layers that nobody can see but what's astounding to me is that most people their prices are a reflection of what they

think their value is so take a deep look on what you think you're worth can you believe you are worth more and can you deliver on that worth and if you can raise your prices Cody Sanchez final question if we want to make these next 12 months our best 12 months we definitely want to create cont cont but we're all trying to build a business leveraging online and we also want to build strong families and make an impact what are some parting words for really building some mass of momentum in this next 12 months you've

done the first thing I always say which is get in rooms where other people's Tuesday is your dream day you're here there's a truth that is shown both by the data and both by our feelings which is that uh most things in life are contagious energy money belief opportunity and it's pretty wild bunch of data supports that if you are overweight and you hang out with people who are extremely fit more often than you hang out with anybody else your likelihood of becoming fit actually increases if you hang out with the opposite the same is

true the same is true with money you know one of my favorite uh mentors Bill Perkins um who wrote di was Zero you know he did me maybe the biggest favor I've had somebody do me in the last three years which is we were walking along his like Compound on Lake Austin and he I was explaining some of my ideas ideas I thought were really big like we're going to change the world with these ideas and as we're walking along you know have you guys ever had like you you you come home you're really excited

tell your spouse or your girlfriend or boyfriend something you're like so excited you explain it to them and they just all over the idea do that ever happen just me um so anyway I'm walking with Bill I'm all excited Bill kind of stops and looks at me and he goes do you think that you have been around small business for so long that small has infected your thinking I was like and young Cody young idiot 21-year-old wannabe life coach Cody would have probably pushed back on him you know I would have been like what do

you know yeah I'm going to do this don't tell me what to do but more evolved Cody thought huh if a guy who's worth a billion dollars and I am not yet worth that with many aspects of the that I want says that maybe I need to listen and so I said I'm not sure bill but let me think about it and as I thought about it I realized he was completely right my idea was too small it was too safe and so if you're going to change anything in the next 12 months I believe

which is why it's one of the first products we created at contrarian thinking it is all about the people you surround yourself with the likelihood I watch we've taught 3,000 people live how to buy businesses in person versus 5,000 people going go through courses who do you think buys businesses more person people the community why is the information different no the information is exactly the same why do you think these people also buy 2 to 3x larger businesses than these people because they have other people around them that are telling them to do it it

is why I categorically disagree with people who say that we shouldn't build communities when we are creators if you want to achieve something if you want to buy a business you're an idiot if you don't in into a community where you can do that today if you want to grow content you're an idiot if you don't get into a community of content creators it is the fastest way to steal somebody else's Energy Information and confidence and so if you were going to do nothing else I would say get in the room where other people are

already playing the game that you want to learn to play well coming up in session number five we have Cody Sanchez again and we've saved the best for last she's talking all about changes for Content creators but let me just propose a toast and say cheers for making it this far in the video seriously uh clearly you're committed to your education to learning to building your online uh business I can tell we probably be friends because I'm a goal getter like you ambitious you know wanting to learn always get better and improve so I really

appreciate your time and your investment in this video if you've been getting value and you haven't hit the like button um definitely do that subscribe all that kind of stuff we're going to get into this session with Cody Sanchez in just a second but I do want to give you a heads up if you're specifically thinking about starting a YouTube YouTube channel and you want some help at think media our company we actually have a coaching program and you know it's kind of like going to the gym you know if you are going there buying

your own there's great YouTube videos there's courses there's books and you could read them and then try to go motivate yourself to get in shape and make progress but if you get a personal trainer you're always going to get the gains faster plus you have the accountability to show up because now there's somebody there waiting for you for the scheduled time and so that's kind of what our YouTube coaching program is all about not only are you getting the best information are you getting a playbook for getting views getting subscribers and reverse engineering your goals

because often times viral is not the target leads and customers is the target getting the right viewers not just the most viewers and so if you want to apply and see if you qualify it's definitely not for everybody um but if it's a good fit you can go to viral video coach.com and apply for our one-on-one YouTube coaching program we have incredible reviews people are loving it and it definitely will help you if your goal is to build a personal brand get leads clients sales from YouTube and find your way to stand out in a

competitive Marketplace that I'm sure you feel so anyways if you want to check that out viral video coach.com all the different cool resources and all of our guests in this video will link up in the show notes below so check all that stuff out and now let's get into session number five with Cody Sanchez she's talking about changes coming for Content creators algorithms and there was some insights that really shock me because there's some differences that are happening some of the old things on YouTube on social are not working anymore and she posts a lot

of content every week like hundreds of pieces of content across all these platforms and so they have a lot of data that's going to be pricess for you in this final and fifth session let's cut over to Cody Sanchez so how did you see the current economic climate whether that's inflation potential recession impacting business owners and also those that are making a living and aspiring content creators going into 2025 well let's just say this I think that Baron rosile said perfectly he said buy when there's blood in the streets even and especially when the blood

is your own and I think that's what we're coming into in my opinion we are going to be in a really hard economic cycle and with every hard economic cycle there becomes a lot of opportunity so you know we know that before let's call it 2005 2004 influencers and people talking on social media were nowhere near as prevalent as they are now and now more often than not we hear people talk about there's too many of them they're everywhere it's noisy is it too hard to grow on YouTube lot now is it too late to

have a podcast are there too many people and something actually wonderful happens during recessions which is the committed persevere and and the uncommitted change paths and that's a gross oversimplification but I do think that in any Market environment a recession is a period of coing to allow for more progress and so from an economic standpoint sort of interesting if you were to look at any economic boom and bust cycle or what's called an expansion or a recession uh cycle those that weather recessionary or downturn periods they end up making 9x more profit after they've weathered

one of these recessionary storms and 3X more revenue and so I think there's a lot of reasons to be really positive about even a dark time you're an investor in over 50 companies um do you think we're in a recession are you feeling a recession right now yeah I think we are um I think the way that we have out you know I think the way that we have historically looked at recessions is slightly outdated and so we have precise economic indicators which tell us if we have you know three quarters of you know X

level of growth plus Unemployment uh claims go up plus uh GDP growth stagnates in some way shape or form then we have a recession um but the moral of the story today that we're seeing is that I haven't talked to very many small business owners that don't say it's harder out there right now than it's been probably since 2010 or so and they might make as much money as they did last year but with a lot more effort and that especially in in election year where we have a the costs for acquisition of clients goes

way up because uh the politicians are spending billions to get your vote um it feels tougher out there right now and I don't think that that's necessarily A Bad Thing to at least be honest about yes it is tougher no that does not mean that we can't make more money than we want to this year what is the mindset that you have going into Q4 and q1 as a business owner and then also contextualizing that to content creators um they and say that because of holiday shopping of course there's that boom in the fourth quarter

for different types of businesses and then there's this whole new year new you and a lot to leverage strategically during this season how are you talking to your team those businesses and business owners you coach and how do you think about this particular time of the year a couple different things yes you always want to draft off what's happening in the cultural conversation around you whether that's Black Friday or the holidays for instance or even the election you can outkick your coverage by drafting on things that are already getting attention which you see a lot

of uh influencers do I mean hell the daily wire was built entirely off of reaction videos to start with right so reacting to something that goes really really viral catching some of that virality and growing um I think though that we should look at it from a different perspective obviously I acquire businesses for a living that's what I've done for a really really long time but I think in a period like we have right now we are going to be able to buy businesses even as content creators in a way we never had before content

creators historically weren't the best at making money that's changed now we have a lot of very sophisticated content creators at making money where I don't think they're sophisticated yet is realizing that your audience right now the people who watch you are your form of capital AKA investors so they are giving you money in the same way that investors do and then you get use that money to do things like Acquisitions which is how the richest people in the world are made AKA private equity for instance all largely done through uh acquiring things that already exist

I'm curious coming into a Q4 in which we might have some recessionary issues will there be more things for us to acquire out there you know can we acquire our podcast vendors who do the production for us a boring business you know can we go out and acquire a competitor who's going to close up shop because they're kind of tired of being an influencer and we could buy their email list and this is how I am pushing content creators to think about acquisition today that word acquisition is typically paid ads right um but instead of

giving all your money to Facebook meta etc for a potential lead uh what if you could actually buy the entire email list that people had to spend years building up instead and that's what I'm curious about right now and to to be frank doesn't matter what time of year you do it yeah I love this concept and you spoke at our event a few months ago and you were hinting at these ideas from your new book Main Street millionaire which there's a bunch of cool stuff that you're doing and we'll link to that in the

show notes but I would love for you to go a little bit deeper because you threw out a concept that I'm hearing nobody else talking about that content creators could be having a mindset of acquisition um and you're kind of famous for saying hey buy a local laundry mat you know get a boring business like that which certainly could be a move for a content creator listening to this but now you're kind of shining a light that that might not be exactly what you'd encourage maybe an influencer to do but can you acquire the podcast

production company can you unpack this that if a content creator is listening to this how they might be thinking and what some of the possibilities could be um using your contrarian point of view sure so um Main Street millionaire the idea is simply this all around us are businesses forcing right now that we can't even see because it's sort of like the Matrix before you know it's there uh until you've taken the red pill you kind of go through life like everybody else does acquiring a client or a subscriber one at a time right and

it's a grueling monotonous consistently long process we've all been there as content creators my point is I like to steal people's homework who have already done more of the work than I have and so when I was in private equity and finance for 10 plus years I watched these guys and I watched how they didn't have any brilliant ideas they didn't have viral one-off videos you know they didn't have a crazy startup to pursue what did they have they had a knowledge of money and a knowledge of deal making or how to acquire things and

for Content creators I want us to have the same thing because I think that we are the new version of capital you right now are the newest version of capital with the most precious of all Commodities people's attention and because of that I think we need to think differently so for instance I needed a new video production team uh my videos weren't performing that well and uh I had two guys kind of running them so I was thinking like like a poor person thinks let me tell you the difference between how rich people think and

poor people think poor people think I have a problem how do I solve it how do I solve x problem kind of wealthy people think I have a problem who do I get to solve it so who's my who not my how really rich people think I have a problem how do I buy the Solution that's almost guaranteed for it so it's how who buy and what I realized is with my video problem I was thinking like a poor person I was like H how do I fix this I don't really know and then I

was like who could I have fix it so I hired a couple vendors had them you know go out on each other see which one performed the best then I was like wait a second I'm going to actually do this whichever the is the vendor that is best I'm going to Aqua hire them so I'm going to buy that vendor's business because most of these businesses that do video editing are small and I am going to bring on all of those video editing people into my company through a quote-unquote acquisition where the only way I

buy them is by saying hey this is a rocket ship you want to get on my rocket ship I can be bigger than you can you can be bigger with me and I can have a dream so big that it envelopes both of us and because of that come on with me and I'll pay your salary over the course of a year and I will pay you more than you made in your current role um but you will come on under under me and by the way you get to say that you had an exit

because I bought your company that's called an aqua hire and so I think more content creators should be doing stuff like that and I did the exact same thing when I um bought part of a company called viral cuts and so you guys could do the same way I bought viral Cuts uh a portion of it with my friend Sam par and viral Cuts is essentially short form video editing at scale I needed it for a bunch of my businesses they needed small uh short videos done team couldn't handle it all and so I said

to the founder Hunter hey I want to own X percentage of a company let's say 25% of the company I will own 25% through future Revenue I drive to you by giving you additional leads and for that I will take 25% of the company plus a 25% distribution every single month above XYZ Revenue level and Off to the Races and now we have viral cuts and so because of that I don't actually have to fulfill the service so I don't have to edit all the videos and take care of it run the business Hunter does

because of that I don't have to figure out the how to my video problem that's Tanner who I acquired from that business those are just two examples of how content creators can do un un untraditional Acquisitions so what would you say to the objection though that okay well Cody has um all this wisdom and experience and money to buy businesses and I'm maybe a mid to um you know a solo Creator I have a few people helping me I might even be doing pretty well six figures a year multiple six but like buy a piece

of a company or buy an entire company or even I'm mainly working with contractors pay someone's entire salary could it be possible to invest in this recessionary time in other businesses without having a lot of capital it's a great question it's the number one question people ask first they say is this possible then I show them some examples and they say is it possible for not much money and then they ask is it possible for not much money and I've never done this before can I actually do it and so the idea in Main Street

millionaire is let me break that down for you 10 steps about how you can acquire any sort of business using 21 different methodologies in order to use I hate to use this term too much but other people's money really what I call creative financing we always want to have a win-win I don't like the sticky guys that say buy this business for zero dollars and no time and go on the 4our work week not going to happen it is going to take you some time and you're going to have to learn upfront but for a

$30 book you can start doing transactions that formally only private Equity does and how do you do it without a lot of cash well viral Cuts is a perfect example this is only really relevant to content creators I only coming on Sean's podcast and saying this particular aspect of it which is if you apply the Main Street millionaire methodology to audience instead of bank account you have the same thing you have the same thing as private equity guys who have a lot of capital you have attention the problem is you might not know what your

attention is worth and you don't know how to do a deal yet to structure attention for Equity but the second that you figure out how to structure attention for Equity you'll never have to use your cash again you think the Rock invests in companies let me tell you what no I'm with an agency right now UTA one of the biggest talent agencies in the world I've talked to CIA I've talked to them all and back when I used to run a private Equity Firm we had a bunch of what's called cpg products consumer package Goods

these were a lot of them were in the hemp in cannabis space so we walked our little tootsies down to ca uh this big huge uh management company in order to talk to bad bunnies uh who's a Latino artist talk to his agent and team now Bad Bunny wanted his own cannabis string so we owned I don't know maybe 40 companies at the time or something like that and he wanted to own a piece of one of our companies in order to put his name on it and direct his audience to that brand now when

we went in we gave this presentation here are the brands here's what you think they gave their presentation here's Bad Bunny here's all the attention he would bring and at the end we said okay well how much do you want to invest and like at what valuation and they were like that's cute no no no we don't invest you pay us literally they wanted us to pay them for the right to have Bad Bunny and use his name and for the privilege of his distribution and we did one of those deals not with Bad Bunny

but with somebody else and they happen again and again and again and in this day and age low-level content creators can do the same thing with not huge businesses like we had our businesses were doing 20 100 $200 million do a year but if you don't realize the power of your audience I think you're missing out on deals left and right and all over the place and instead you're chasing gummy Bill gummy bear sponsorships ag1 sponsorships for you know $2.99 per post so is this kind of like you just mentioned if we're doing brand deals

and sponsorships we're maybe getting the short end of the stick if they give us a couple thousand do or some kind of affiliate split and what you're saying is think about actually leveraging your influence in looking for Equity looking for some kinds of deals that you could do um and there's so many crater economy startups it's a massive space Goldman Sach research said that the crater economy is going to double in the next three years the next three years are going to be the best three years in the crater economy from about $250 billion a

year to half a trillion dollar industry people are trying to get different SAS platforms off the ground there's U things like carrot with a k a credit card for uh influencers based off their audience to solve their cash flow problems because they understand uh influencers and so there's all these different creater economy startups are you saying we should be thinking about kind of partnering acquiring and thinking a lot bigger than just doing as you mentioned just a one-off deal with ag1 absolutely I mean if you think about it why would and I like ag1 I'm

friends with cat the CEO so I don't mean to to pick on them I think they're a great company but take any business take any supplement business for instance in order for them to pay you a dollar they have to think that the LTV the lifetime value of the customer so what the customer is going to be worth for them is anywhere from 10 to 30X your dollar so every time they give you a dollar they are making 10 to 30X so inherently uh you are not taking home the biggest portion of the pie except

here's the problem you as distribution are the most important piece of the pie and the difference between you and Facebook and um Instagram and you know Tik Tock is that they understand their value and content creators on average don't you know I certainly didn't I had to go create an entire model uh and and we have it in the book where you can basically see what your value is how valuable are your skills in order to increase what I call your expertise to equity but bucket which this would fall into in order for you to

get paid for deals without you having to put money down and um you know if you don't have an audience at all there's ways to do it with your time so Sweat Equity with your experience and knowledge so if you're an accountant to help somebody do an accounting acquisition um but if you're a Creator there's a way to do it with your audience and the smartest creators are doing this every single day and the problem is is that they gatekeep how like Logan Paul love the guy he would never tell you how he got that

Prime deal done he would never tell you how much he paid for it and yet that is how they are making their money because they know at some point one we will all no longer be relevant me included uh at another point at any given moment our audience could die down which scares me like every day all the time uh I want to like I want to keep hard charging but at some point you could just become irrelevant or a Content platform could shut you off in which case you need to have recurring income that

is not tied to your relevancy which is what a business does otherwise we all just have jobs as creators we don't actually have businesses and I want you guys to have ownership that is lasting and continues to pay you even if you don't show up to your job well this is Shifting my thinking and think media podcast we're going to dive into some um of Cody's social media tactics and insights and lessons um but the book is Main Street millionaire and I think you could see that um this is needed to think different and if

you want to check it out check out show notes um the link in the show notes U Cody here's a question for you um who do you think obviously there's probably people we don't all know but there's kind of like the main entrepreneurs on YouTube specifically who do you think is getting the most views right now uh on on YouTube I mean I guess I would go towards uh Mr Beast and I mean entrepreneurs okay he's an entrepreneur so is Logan Paul and stuff I guess I mean the guys like you know Alex Hermos or

Gary ve and stuff and uh not to put you on the spot but I actually am teeing up your expertise because I did some research I'm just curious like if you were to think in the last 30 days like uh yeah who do you think's up there I love that you know this and I don't that's so embarrassing shows you know more I know more about Acquisitions than anything else yeah I don't know I would guess Alex and Ila friendable of ours um yeah Lila did 2 million uh views in the last 30 days Grant

Cardone did uh right under 4 million I threw think media in there I don't think we'd be classified as that we're more YouTube we did four million Gary's at five million Dan Martell 7.2 come on and and I'm kind of separating out podcasts because some of these podcast impact theory was blowing up 13 million Simon squib is crushing it right now 15 million and um and then modern wisdom and Diary of a CEO I'm kind of putting them the side they got pretty big numbers but Cody Sanchez Alex rosi did 23 million views in the

last 30 days but you did 26.5 million views on YouTube in the last 30 days and I know those numbers are always changing and at any given moment different people have viral videos um and Nod to Patrick B David who's definitely gone political so that's a whole different deal but they're over 107 million just on value tainment so that probably if we thought about the entrepreneur channel it's up there but I was kind of Blown Away you did 26 .5 million just on YouTube you're on multiple platforms I think it's clear you've cracked the YouTube

code what's one thing you think you've done differently on YouTube that's really helped your channel take off especially recently with the numbers you're getting let's be really I'm going to tell you tactical and then I'm going to tell you um like gut feel so um why do I think that we do such big numbers on the channel I think that we won really only talk about the things that we actually think that we're experts in so what you'll find with our channel is it's a lot about buying businesses doing deals building big businesses I've been

doing that for 15 years and so one differential one differentiator I think is like only talk about the things that you actually know and if you don't know anything now that's okay because you can talk about your journey to knowing and you can get huge views for that I think Simon squib is a good example of that he's like not necessarily talking about all the stuff that he knows he's just showing you his journey of asking people questions that's real and I think in this day and age people are like I don't trust anybody I

don't trust any out there and so they can kind of like sniff it out if you're not doing that um the second thing that gut feel on me is people are tired of influencers and people online who stand for nothing I think that is why Pat Patrick uh Patrick Bet David has such big numbers right now too at least they know that he takes some hard stance and I don't know about you Sean we've talked about this before too but I am so tired of influencers online who seem to Waffle all over the place with

what their stances are and they only talk about things that see seem to serve them and it's a lot of i i i me me me blah blah blah I think what you can see with us on YouTube is like we put a little heart we put a little Mission into these things so we're talking about bringing back Main Street and doing Acquisitions not exactly atome entertainment and simultaneously we're talking about the fact that if you don't do this the big guys own everything and they they ask you to like it and so there's like

this Mission behind it and we are starved I think for a society with people who want more than money we like give me purpose in this life and so I think that's a big reason why maybe me and Patrick and and Chris Williamson and and Simon too we're like it's not just about the views it's about do we stand for something bigger than that and I think that shines out and it's actually very scary to do and we lose followers all the time from from taking stances that people don't like but I'm like it I

didn't make all this money so that I could just become everybody's like Wallflower not interested from a technical standpoint on YouTube the stuff that I think is really working right now is I don't think the clickbait works as well anymore um in fact we test lots of different titles every single time all your audience knows this already um but what we found increasingly is people are more interested in the reasonable than the unrealistic and so they actually want to hear the stories that now we talk about a lot which is like I don't want to

hear how to make a billion dollars I'm never gonna make a billion dollars shut up they want to hear about I want to make my first thousand or $10,000 a month in a way that feels real to me not drop shipping on Amazon and so um I think that real verse or rational vers unrealistic is really important and then on top of that I think it is a massive obsession with brand when they come to our Channel I hope they get exactly what they think they're going to get which is stories about Main Street millionaires

which is ways to buy businesses which is ways to do deals which is ways to make more money in a way that feels a little bit heartfelt reasonable and mainy and you don't see on my channel a lot of jumping around anymore into 4502 other things than that they're like I want to come back for this show this is what I subscribed to I want to unpack some of these things do you think for the Creator that's like man stand for something but what if I get cancelled number one number two um do I need

to talk about what my parents or grandparents would say listen at the dinner table never talk about religion or politics do I need to bring this stuff into my content and are you saying that's you know more or less essential to stand out in a 2025 world I think um um I think people won't trust you if you don't show them that you if you don't show them who you really are and so um I think it's so easy to peel back the layers I mean this is a funny short story Sean so I um

I did a speech I'm doing a bunch of speeches right now for the book I typically don't do a ton of speeches I did yours because you supported the book and it was amazing and I did one for a person that I was like shoot once I got there you know have you ever gotten into a speech I I kid you not there was a Ferrari already in a conference room in like a Hilton I was like oh no I should not be here this is not a good idea I do the speech the guy's

got planes on his Instagram he's got watches on his Instagram he's got checks and their numbers on his Instagram like he's getting mailbox money or something and this hasn't paid me like three months later you know whatever the amount was that he was supposed to for the event in the books and so it's not so much that you have to take a hard stance it's that we have a a high problem with a low trust culture today and so you don't have to talk about politics or religion but if you're like I'm obsessed with raw

milk I know it's more illegal than guns in Texas but I drink this bad boy like it's going out of style like tell the people that give them something real don't do the Bentley Lamborghini blah blah nonsense because that doesn't signal trust anymore that actually signals that you have so little to say that you need a third-party logo to back you up and so that I think is the difference between the two yeah there's a big Trend where people are using the word authenticity and transparency ugv said that only 18% of consumers believe that social

media influencers are truthful so it sounds like we need a new game plan going into 2025 hopefully it was always the same game plan but it's I mean you're saying less clickbait because I mean people are kind of burnt out and maybe there's a maturing to social media they're looking for the reasonable your brand which also is going to be what people trust you to be you know there's this verse in the Book of Proverbs that says a good name is more desirable than great riches and what's a good name well a name is is

Nordstrom a name is Ferrari a name is these different brand names and the name is Cody Sanchez what's your name mean and so if someone's wrestling with this maybe just a few final thoughts about how somebody could maybe rework their brand or not that they need to rework it but like um sit down and get a fresh perspective of maybe a few prompts of man okay I really want to lock in who am I what question should I be asking for who am I what do I stand for and how might I might position myself

and maybe even a video I should make is there a video idea or a topic I should hit or stories I should tell I don't know if that inspires anything but just anything for maybe getting my brand aligned to this trust recession that we're living through yeah if you want people to trust your advertising marketing you need to show not tell and so a good way to do this for instance is you could say hey uh my business will get you 300 new clients within 48 Hours sign up with us right here crazy stuff happening

in the background Ferraris planes okay great that might be 2020 version of marketing but a great brand instead would go watch me try with this stream I just met on the street to see if I can get new leads for his business with my business 60 seconds let's do this you're going to show them live what you're doing it's why we go on site to Main Street millionaires businesses and we say okay this guy says that he made $30,000 this month with a trash truck let's see if that's true and if you think about some

of the biggest business uh YouTubes online right now it's like uh Chloe Abrams right huge apostrophe if true it's not called huge there's like a little skepticism that she's inserting on the The People's behalf and so you want to show not tell so for instance you know if you're like oh does Cody own businesses which ones are they I'd be like oh well right over here this is pink so you can see the little hat over here here's our window washing business it's literally right behind me you can't see it but over here is is

that one painter that's our painting company that we own that I have right behind me um you know and then if you think about the brand that you show up with when was this weird era where everybody had like uh light up like neon signs behind them like everybody and and a dark background and instead I was like who is who am I at a deep level well I'm from Arizona cactus cactus uh I I Believe In Justice and freedom this is my grandfather he was a federal magistrate I can't get my I don't know

my right or left um this is my grandfather he was a f Federal magistrate he's right behind me I believe in America and individual citizens in your ability to be the producer of your life and so there's the flag that my husband flew uh over his base uh when he was in the Middle East you know here's our logo over here with me and my that me and my dad branded because I'm from Arizona and it's on a tree that I planted with him uh at our very first house a billion years ago that we

ended up having to cut down um and then planted our logo on top of it so it's like everything we do is a reminder of who we are and it doesn't mean I'm not going to up and say things wrong wrong and I have a terrible memory Sean so like a lot of times I'll be like oh well last year and Chris will go my husband that was three years ago babe you know so you can still mess up but remind yourself who you are and so for listeners what Cody just did was this even

this is such a practical tips you just gave your very background for this interview is brand is values is stories and is different and true to you it is really easy to maybe fall into the uh pattern of just trying to look like everybody else sound like everybody else so these have been such powerful insights about how people are craving authenticity transparency we need to stand for something and this is going to be a huge key with all the changes happening for standing out in 2025 and Beyond quality versus quantity there's a lot of pressure

to just create more and more and more and more uh especially for smaller creators they see a media company like you or even think media and there's quite a bit of volume coming out but do you think that there actually on social now there could be value in creating less higher quality content and when does more just become a waste of time here's the problem with quality versus quantity in the beginning you don't know what quality is so how can you produce higher form less versions of things in order to overcome the quantity problem which

is just more the only way you get quality is by massive unreasonable amount of quality or quantity for a period longer than you can imagine and so I do believe for most people you have to start with the quantity game this is The Game of Life and success which is difficulty for a long period of time however once you have figured out what quality means to you and you need to Define quality is quality number of views is quality uh conversions is quality something that you individually think is beautiful uh is quality something that your

very particular subset of subscribers finds beautiful or useful and once you have defined quality and you have determined that you can hit that quality then you could do less but in the beginning I do believe it is easier to do more than less for that reason um there are very many instances of this not being true I mean every time I I think about this conundrum I go back to like the Casey niat he did do massive quantity though video a day for a very long time before he figured out what quality was and so

I think I ER on the side of pain AKA mass production for a period of time it's also interesting Casey has expressed many times that he actually pushed himself to the very verge of burnout in depth uh death death uh and that he also it was it was both because his even physical fitness and I would say mental Fitness he was editing shooting and editing sometimes eight hours every single Vlog for a string of hundreds of days which I kind of maybe want to come back to that balance of hustle culture but you mentioned for

a long period of time I know there's no magic number but if you were to give us a number if I'm going to commit to Something in fact if I'm around New Year's I'm starting a new channel I'm I'm wanting to get into this content creation game I'm wanting to also get into this Main Street Millionaire game and even think about how much time it takes to really make something work but let's focus on content a year do I do I need to put my head down and grind and experience the pain in your words

two years what do you think well they say that businesses are like a baby and I don't see why content is any different in the first year of life with your baby you're kind of figuring things out and trying not to murder the thing in the second year of Life the thing is now a little bit more alive itself um but not totally independent in the third year of life that thing is trying to murder itself um and so I do think for the first couple of years in any business it's normal to expect some

pain and massive Joy because there's nothing more wonderful than owning a business and being able to control your outcome if that is the game you like to play um so I I do think it is multiple years um of you learning your craft now you might say well Cody you came on the scene three years ago your business doesn't appear to be a little self- murdery three-year-old and at that case I would say God depends on the day you guys it totally depends on the day every single one of us who has a business that

looks really shiny on the outside I can promise you one thing we are a carefully held together series of narrowly missed disasters and that applies to even the big guys because we have all this overhead it costs us a bunch of money to do this we're sitting in a studio and an office I own with a bunch of employees so the game only gets more complex actually um and I think if you see it like that then you kind of know what to expect and it doesn't have to be so miserable because you know what's

coming but um if I hadn't spent you know 15 years in finance giving pitches and presentations and speeches to Big institutional investors would I be so good at YouTube I don't know um I think skills stack on top of each other and it is going to take a while but it's okay you guys because guess what we're not curing cancer we're doing Tik toks we're okay like I chuckle my little titties off and every time somebody says I'm so burnt out from doing Tik toks I'm like we don't have real jobs this is this is

like a this is a fake job the only thing that sucks about this job is when you turn your life into content that to me is really tough like if you're like doing relationship content and then your relationships going sideways you know if if every single day of yours has to seem like an adventure in order for your content to work well woof but um if you don't love your business right now I think the question is like can you pivot to something else that you love you're not trapped and the first video you make

doesn't have to be the last video you make your words are like food to my soul like business is like a few narrowly missed disasters on a day-to-day basis and even I've I'm a small town kid call it Dropout and so we have like 31 W2s right now and I'm like and we've been running one% profit margins and I'm like that I'm like at least we have profit and and in the past and and especially in a digital business 30 40 50 is very common we've also been on offense we've been hiring we're getting things

in place we're being strategic but that's not low stress Cody Sanchez what's your advice for me in this exact moment it's not low stress I two thoughts that I have one if you're running a 1% business for a period of time you either need to have a goal line at which point you model out that when we hit X we will get to 30 or 40% margin uh and you need to have a strong belief in that backed by data at least some some thoughtful data in order for you to not stay in the pain

cave 1% is pain cave yeah and um no business owner can run at 1% for a long a period of of a long time and enjoy the ride I've been there before too some of my businesses are still there right now totally normal um but that is one so you know deadline data and a determined path to get to 30 or 40% if you keep going along and you hit that deadline and you're still at the 1% number that it's not that you need to do more you need to do different and this is where

I think sometimes the hustle people get it wrong is they're like just keep going just keep going it's like no no no business model analysis time there's many games we could play you could be a pickle ball player earning not a great salary no chicks just kidding I hate pickle ball but people love pickle ball so I like to pick on it so if you know if you're going to go be a professional pickle ball player you're not probably going to make the most salary you might like it you're not going to get huge Fame

but maybe it's easier to become a pro uh than if you go and play baseball baseball is going to be extremely highly paid there's um however a lot of competition and so you have to pick the game you're playing and if you're in a low margin long-term business you need to add a new Revenue stream and the revenue stream because you are an attention uh Creator too means you need to make sure that you are doing the most you possibly can to mon monetize your eyeballs to the level of your values so I don't believe

in like churn like squeezing every dollar out of my audience it's never been our way um but I do believe that when I put something in front of our audience I want to make sure that my employees and my business is getting funded fully through it at which point you might need to say okay well sponsorships they're not making us enough Revenue so I need to either increase our prices um or I need to add a revenue line that might be Equity plus distributions of a business uh and so that's what I would play around

with great advice uh going a little deeper there's such an emphasis on just bigger bigger bigger more views viral when social media it's like viral like viral is the only thing as big of audience size as possible as many views as possible do you think though that sometimes there's too much emphasis in that area and that creators of all sizes could be focusing more on depth with their Community but also other areas like maybe or customer experience yeah here's why you shouldn't only care about views and how much attention you get because the number one

websites that are visited in the world are porn sites so if you want to get the most attention out there straight path to porn and I don't think most of us want to do that and so if you realize okay extreme level porn uh Other Extreme level poverty we need to pick somewhere in between and that is a unique mixture of uh what I call the left and right or so in every business you typically have a quality metric and you have a quantity metric so the quality metric is the metric that kind of like

it it pulls your business back from massive growth or maybe from massive views and that might be like Cody's gonna keep her shirt on when she's talking about business Acquisitions maybe if I took my shirt off we'd get a lot less views or more views I don't know but we would probably go a little bit more viral but I'm not going to do that because my quality or says no the quantity or says says okay we want to get as much as possible and so these two have to argue between the two of them in

order to have a healthy business every single business has this this is revenue versus expenses um this is views versus conversion for instance followers versus conversion and so I think we need to ask ourselves what are you actually trying to accomplish most of the reasons why the really really rich are unhappy are because they haven't actually defined what would make them happy and so they chase money for long time and then they get there and they realize oh God it wasn't just money I was after I actually wanted something else so I think for creators

it's really important you know in in investing we think about something called our dealbox which is I only want to buy the perfect business for me it has like 14 questions we ask uh people to determine what type of business would make you happy would get you to your goals well how many creators sit down and go all right what is my Creator dealbox what what would make me happy if I saw my life in three to five years according to these set of questions and that's what I think you should do and it's it's

how I make sure that even if we get 26 million views on YouTube um it's doing something that I like and so every single time we do a video and we're going to film it I will say um what is the easy uh percentage for this video so one through one through 10 can't use seven how easy is it to film then I'll say how what is the fun level of this video 1 through 10 can't use seven uh in order to film what is the conversion level of this business does it get us to

our monetary problems 1 through 10 can't use seven and then lastly what is our brand alignment of this video one through 10 can't use seven so if we look at those four things and a video is really easy to do really fun to do converts highly and is on brand bam we're doing that video if the business is if the video is really hard to do but hits all other three maybe we're still going to do it if the business hits the three but is like negative fun because where I'm at in life I'm probably

not going to do it so a lot of times the team has crazy ideas like they asked me to do some of the Simon squib stuff we run around and ask people how much money they make and what their dream is and I was like no that sounds awful no thank you thank God Simon exists um but you get to ask yourself what your dealbox is and set it and then you won't have to have the daily fatigue of reasing yourself what I should film or not such great insights and questions to be thinking through

I mentioned coming back to this idea of of hustle culture Casey neistat hundreds of Vlogs pushed himself though to that verge of of burnout and this is a massively divisive uh conversation because there's some people that are so anti- hustle culture but then there's this fundamental principle that if you don't actually put in the work and outwork everybody else what do you think the tension is between this and is there a point for the person that is just grinding and grinding and and grinding trying to win that way that it's hurting sustainability and business growth

I mean I think that that there's a there's a formula to making money and the formula goes like this how much risk are you willing to take how valuable are your skills how good is your mouse trrap so the way in which you make money and how much pain are you willing to tolerate and I think those four things typically drive to your bank account and so your bank account is a direct reflection of the problems that you solve the uh pain you're willing to take the risk you're willing to take and the bigger problems

you solve the more money you make in the bank the more risk you take potentially the more money you make in the bank and so that's how I think about it and I think we got to be honest about that the cool part is is that when you're young pain and difficulty doesn't feel like pain and difficulty it feels like Adventure and so I do think Young creators have an advantage in a lot of the ways in that you know worked at Goldman Sachs for like barely two years I hated it it was during the

financial crisis and um and yet I was working like 708 80 hours a week and it didn't feel that hard and it didn't feel that hard because I was like learning so much it was like a fire hose and I knew that after two years I really wanted to be out I was like I'm gonna do this job for two years I'm gonna learn a ton then I'm gonna go do something else and so I think you have to ask yourself what's your deadline there's always a light at the end of the tunnel and then

on top of it um I think that a lot of times why It's a Grind is we really do you you know three things like if you're struggling in your business right now it's because one you haven't picked a problem big enough to solve and so you're never going to make enough money on it your problem is too small it's two you might have a team but you have a team of equals as opposed to weakness offsets so as you hire new people you shouldn't hire new people just for tasks that need to be done

you should hire for tasks you don't want to do uh that they uniquely want to do that takes some of the misery off your plate and then the third thing is have I set an operating system in place in order for me to actually achieve my goals consistently with processes and procedures and that part sounds super boring to people but the problem is most businesses are just a series of repetitions and check-ins continuously and so content's no different it's like is the video edited is the thumbnail there is the title right have we gone through

the six iterations why didn't you do this last time we did it the next time you have a lot less suffering when you systematize everything because then you don't have low-level decision fatigue of all the things that should just be like an airplane pilot he checks it off the list gets done every time there's zero stress so I think a lot of content creators are really stressed because they have no process and if you don't have any process then you're like like why am I giving feedback on this video for the 450c time because you

don't have a process I have one final question for you but I want to make sure people can um take action if they want to go to the next step so um what right now do you want to shout out and of course we will link all of this in the show notes um I think the most important thing is what I'm shouting from the rooftops which is MSM book.com like Mainstreet millionaire book.com my belief is that we do not have to do everything the Hardway we'd have to spend time UPF front learning how to

steal other people's homework which is what you do through acquisition so if any point in your bus you've one thought God I'd like to grow faster or you thought I would like to have more clients in groups as opposed to singles or you've thought my business is motoring but how could I take it to the next level I Want More Humans to learn Acquisitions I have never met somebody who learned to do deals and regretted it uh it is applicable to every sector of your life and I think there's a series of businesses out there

where creators can become more powerful than the biggest private Equity firms and I think that's why like the Kim Kardashian of the world with Sky are so scary to the big guys because they actually fear you creators with attention a thing a bunch of middle-aged white dudes on Wall Street are never going to get they'll never be able to compete with you for that and you used to have to go through agents to do deals now you can do deals direct you used to have to go through Hollywood to do deals now you don't need

them at all so the only next level of the game is once you get the attention are you schlepping gummy bears for hair growth at you know 110 the price that they're getting or do you own part of your distribution the future is bright in the crater economy two final questions I'm curious who do you think is the greatest living entrepreneur greatest I mean God it's hard it's hard for me to not say Elon Musk I mean how can you see what Elon Musk has done and not be staggered which I know is not that

popular online but think about some stats here here for a second on my man Elon not that he needs to be pumped up lately 60% of all satellites in the sky right now starlink 80% of all rockets that have taken off this year starlink he has beaten government contractors and the actual government in the space race and then oh by the way because he has the Max uh ownership of risk plus pain tolerance he has not only started a rocket company but now has Tesla and Twitter he's taking on freedom of speech he's taking on

government entities he's taking on the mainstream media and he's taking on the automotive industrial complex and so um you know one of my life lessons is that I will always at least listen to those who have a bank account that is bigger than I do because they probably have learned something I haven't yet we there's no such thing as a perfect human does not exist never met one actually one you would like this one of my pastors said to me he goes listen there's no such thing as a perfect church and if you find one

don't go there because you'll it up he didn't say it up I added that but it's true and so it's the same with business people all of us are so flawed I am such a flawed bipedal monkey running around trying to figure it out but um I learn from the greats and so I think elon's mine lots of insights and lessons from Elon an inspiring individual the plane is land ending and we're going into 2025 what's our mindset that you'd give to creators what advice would you give to creators considering this world of discontinuous change

and economic uncertainty what's our game plan for moving forward you know one of my mentors told me something that has stuck with me for a long time whenever I'm really struggling with something and something is difficult I repeat these words which is accept allow appreciate take action Let It Go and so as we're coming into 2025 when something happens to you that you don't like I accept Okay this is happening right now I allow that to be the actual reality as opposed to fighting it then I take some sort of action to see if I

could I'm sorry then I appreciate I go thank you I I know there's something to learn from this I'm going to figure out what it is thank you for any difficulty that I have then I take action and say okay given X I need to do y action and then I let go of any anything else if there's nothing else that I can do I just let it go and this idea has helped me through a lot of difficult times because I don't know about you but often I will worry and worry and worry about

a thing that never comes and so if I can instead accept allow appreciate take a little action and Let It Go turns out I'm still breathing we're all okay so even though we've just learned five deep dive sessions about how to build an online business Empire with content the next missing piece is a step-by-step system for getting views on YouTube I actually have a seven-step system and you can watch a video on it that's under 10 minutes entirely for free if you click or tap the screen it'll take you over to that video if you're

at the end of this video You're a legend can you hit the like button my name is Sean canel your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and uh click the screen I'll see you on that other video it's super short you you'll love it