620: 9 Rules to Scale Any Side Hustle

0:00:03 – Nine rules to level up any side hustle.
0:00:05 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here.
0:00:06 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show,
0:00:10 helping you take back control of your earning power
0:00:12 so your income doesn’t have to stop when your day job does.
0:00:15 Today we’re talking about scaling up your side hustle.
0:00:18 We’ve got a lot of episodes on zero to one
0:00:21 part of the equation, which is honestly probably
0:00:24 the harder part, wheeling something into existence
0:00:26 and getting it off the ground, not an easy key,
0:00:29 but today we’re talking about the next stage.
0:00:31 We’ve gone from zero to one, now it’s time
0:00:33 to go from one to two to 10.
0:00:34 Well, how do you do it?
0:00:36 We’ve got nine rules to go through.
0:00:38 Listen in to see which stage you’re at today
0:00:41 to see where you need to focus your attention next.
0:00:43 To help me with these is a special guest
0:00:45 who knows a thing or two about scaling.
0:00:47 He’s done it with multiple businesses,
0:00:50 including flipping over 100 houses a year,
0:00:52 sometimes without even seeing the houses,
0:00:56 scaling, automating and selling an online education business.
0:00:59 It is the latest venture and online platform and podcast
0:01:03 from MillionaireUniversity.com, Justin Williams.
0:01:04 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.
0:01:06 – Hey, Nick, what’s going on?
0:01:08 What’s up, Side Hustle Nation?
0:01:10 Before we dive in real quick, Nick, I just wanna say
0:01:13 I started listening to your podcast just over a year ago.
0:01:16 We had taken some time off, we sold our business,
0:01:19 and honestly, it was hard to get back into
0:01:21 the business world after taking some time off.
0:01:22 There was a lot of demons in there,
0:01:25 and I found your show and started listening to it,
0:01:27 even though your show was for Side Hustles,
0:01:31 and in a way, people getting started and getting going,
0:01:33 it gave me a lot of inspiration to keep going,
0:01:35 and I just appreciate what you’re doing.
0:01:38 So being here is pretty exciting.
0:01:39 I mean, you’re one of the rare podcasts out there
0:01:42 that both get the guests to really share
0:01:44 everything that’s going on in their business,
0:01:46 but it’s also real down-to-earth.
0:01:47 You never get that icky feeling
0:01:48 when you’re listening to you,
0:01:49 and I just recommend it to you, everyone.
0:01:51 You’re like a mentor to my kids.
0:01:54 So anyway, huge fan, thank you for everything that you’ve done.
0:01:55 – I’m gonna put that on a bumper stick.
0:01:57 You don’t get that icky feeling.
0:01:58 If that’s an endorsement, I don’t know what to do.
0:01:59 – No, it’s so true, right?
0:02:01 Like, you just don’t get that,
0:02:02 like a lot of times I’m listening to something,
0:02:03 I get a lot of value,
0:02:04 but there’s kind of the back of my mind.
0:02:06 I’m like, what’s really going on here?
0:02:07 And you’re just so down-to-earth,
0:02:09 and I just really appreciate what you’re doing.
0:02:11 And on behalf of everyone,
0:02:13 I’m sure who’s listening feels the same.
0:02:15 You’re doing a great work, so thank you.
0:02:18 – Well, very much appreciated that makes my day.
0:02:20 So if you’re listening and we’re doing three rounds
0:02:22 with Justin today, we’re doing the nine rules of scale,
0:02:23 or nine rules to scale.
0:02:25 We’re doing a donate a business idea.
0:02:26 He says he’s got a good one for us.
0:02:27 Stick around for that.
0:02:29 And then we’re doing the triple threat,
0:02:31 a marketing tactic that’s working now,
0:02:33 a favorite new or new to him tool,
0:02:35 and the best book of the last 12 months.
0:02:37 But let’s kick it off with these nine rules.
0:02:38 What’s rule number one?
0:02:42 – So the first rule that we have is intent.
0:02:45 Now, I almost didn’t use this one because it sounds obvious.
0:02:46 Like, of course you have to have intent,
0:02:49 but what I found is the number one reason
0:02:51 and the way that we have scaled,
0:02:52 all the business we scaled is because
0:02:54 it was our intention to do so.
0:02:56 In our minds, we were always asking,
0:02:58 how can we do this better?
0:03:00 How can we do more of this?
0:03:01 How can we automate this?
0:03:04 How can we get more done with less time?
0:03:07 And what I found is most people who haven’t scaled
0:03:08 their business or aren’t scaling their business
0:03:12 for side hustle is it’s not their intention to do so.
0:03:15 Kristin Armstrong, who’s one of the best women cyclists
0:03:18 that’s ever cycled, she said we either live
0:03:21 with intention or exist by default.
0:03:24 And I just see so many people going throughout their lives
0:03:26 and they don’t have an intention to change things.
0:03:29 And they just kind of are reactive
0:03:30 to things that are going on in their life
0:03:33 and they don’t really get the places that they wanna go.
0:03:35 So number one is intent.
0:03:38 Your brain is an insanely powerful tool.
0:03:39 If you give it a problem to solve,
0:03:41 it’ll usually go to work doing it.
0:03:43 So first of all, you gotta have that big vision.
0:03:44 You gotta know where you wanna go.
0:03:48 You gotta have the intention to want to grow and scale.
0:03:50 And that’s rule number one.
0:03:52 – That’s a really powerful one.
0:03:53 I’m kind of with you.
0:03:54 Do you even include that?
0:03:56 ‘Cause it’s almost so obvious
0:03:59 and almost woo-woo of the power of positive thinking.
0:04:01 If you believe it, it’ll start to come true.
0:04:02 – Totally.
0:04:04 – But we’ve heard from so many entrepreneurs,
0:04:08 if you don’t have this vision of where you wanna go,
0:04:08 how are you ever gonna get there?
0:04:11 I’d like trying to do Brian Scoodemore
0:04:12 from “1800 Got Junk.”
0:04:14 He called it his painted picture vision
0:04:16 of like, hey, five years down the road.
0:04:17 This is what the business is gonna be doing.
0:04:18 This is what it’s gonna look like
0:04:19 from a branding perspective.
0:04:21 And then just kind of working backwards
0:04:24 to get from the reality that is today,
0:04:25 how do we make that happen?
0:04:27 I love this line of we live with intention
0:04:30 or exist by default.
0:04:32 And I find myself guilty of this as much as anybody.
0:04:34 So this is not like preaching from on high,
0:04:38 but like you’re going through the motions day to day
0:04:40 and you feel like kind of just in maintenance mode
0:04:42 and like you described it reactive
0:04:44 versus driving your own agenda forward,
0:04:46 living with intention.
0:04:49 I often feels like, well, I’m too busy chopping down trees
0:04:50 to sharpen the saw.
0:04:51 And she kind of gets stuck at that.
0:04:55 Like anything that has worked for you exercise-wise
0:05:00 or other resource-wise to get clear on this intention
0:05:01 or where you wanna go.
0:05:03 – I always start with the goal.
0:05:05 Often it’s a money goal, it’s a number goal.
0:05:08 For example, when we started flipping 100 houses a year,
0:05:10 I remember we were at a wild buffalo wings
0:05:12 with a bunch of other investor friends.
0:05:14 And together I started counting up how many houses
0:05:16 we had all flipped collectively that past year.
0:05:17 And it was just over a hundred.
0:05:22 And I said, I wanna flip 100 houses just my business alone.
0:05:23 Everyone laughed at me.
0:05:24 They thought I was crazy.
0:05:26 – Yes, like a house every three and a half days.
0:05:27 Like how does this even happen?
0:05:27 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:05:29 And up until that point,
0:05:31 we definitely hadn’t done that many, right?
0:05:34 But I just thought, why can’t I do this?
0:05:35 So I started thinking about it, how can we do it?
0:05:36 How can we do it?
0:05:37 It started with a goal.
0:05:39 Also wanted to get to a seven figure income.
0:05:41 So it was constantly just working those numbers.
0:05:42 How can we get there?
0:05:43 How can we get there?
0:05:45 And then I mean, we’ll kind of go through,
0:05:47 I don’t wanna like, we’ll go through the rest of the rules,
0:05:48 right?
0:05:50 We’ll share like what,
0:05:51 how we’re gonna help them get there essentially.
0:05:54 So rule number two, should we move on to it?
0:05:55 – Yeah, let’s do it.
0:05:56 – Okay.
0:05:57 Rule number two is eliminate.
0:06:00 Essentially, the way this works is you wanna write down
0:06:02 everything that you’re currently doing
0:06:05 in your business and your life.
0:06:10 And you just wanna start getting rid of anything you can.
0:06:13 I’m all about having multiple streams of income.
0:06:15 But if you’re spending a lot of time
0:06:17 doing some things that you’re not getting great results,
0:06:19 you might wanna just let those things go.
0:06:22 Peter Drucker said, there’s nothing so useless
0:06:27 as doing efficiently that which shouldn’t be done at all.
0:06:29 And I don’t know about you, Nick,
0:06:30 but there are a lot of times where I’ll find myself
0:06:33 working on this project and it’s taking a ton of time
0:06:35 and energy and I’m getting frustrated.
0:06:36 And I just sit and think about it.
0:06:38 And I think about my long-term goals.
0:06:41 And I’m just like, do I need to do this?
0:06:43 Like, is this even something that matters
0:06:44 or is it important right now?
0:06:47 And sometimes I’ll just eliminate it completely.
0:06:48 – What was an example for you?
0:06:52 – When we started Millionaire University,
0:06:55 Tara and I were doing everything.
0:06:58 We thought we had to have our social medias dialed in.
0:06:59 We were doing the podcasts.
0:07:01 We were trying to collect emails.
0:07:03 We were doing blogging.
0:07:05 We were doing Twitter threads,
0:07:07 which now you have threads, threads.
0:07:09 Like, we were trying to do it all.
0:07:12 And it was fun for about a week.
0:07:15 And then it started to get exhausting and overwhelming.
0:07:17 And we were like, what are we doing?
0:07:19 We don’t even have to have a business,
0:07:21 but we’re doing this business ’cause we got bored
0:07:22 and we weren’t fulfilled.
0:07:25 So we started a business and now we were just working
0:07:28 and working and working and not enjoying
0:07:30 anything that we had done.
0:07:31 So we just came to the realization,
0:07:34 okay, what is the one thing that we wanna focus on?
0:07:36 And it was the podcast.
0:07:38 We still did some social media stuff,
0:07:39 but it was very limited.
0:07:41 We didn’t worry about any other metrics.
0:07:43 We just worried about growing our podcasts.
0:07:46 We weren’t getting traction in anything.
0:07:49 Here we had Bill, other successful businesses.
0:07:51 We had pretty good cash flow coming in
0:07:53 and we were just working our guts out
0:07:56 and not getting any traction because we were spread too thin
0:07:57 and weren’t really getting anywhere.
0:08:01 – Is that the deciding factor of if I’m not seeing traction
0:08:05 in the combination of I really don’t enjoy doing it
0:08:06 because the counter argument would be like,
0:08:08 well, I’m not seeing traction, but I only gave it a week.
0:08:09 I gotta put in some breaths.
0:08:11 I gotta put in some time here to grow an Instagram audience,
0:08:13 to grow a Twitter audience or something like that.
0:08:17 – So I think it’s a combination of both, right?
0:08:18 We decided what are we best at
0:08:20 and what do we enjoy the most?
0:08:21 And let’s put everything else on the back burner.
0:08:24 Doesn’t mean we’re not gonna go back to it at some point,
0:08:25 but let’s put it all in the back burner
0:08:28 and really double down and focus on what we enjoy the most
0:08:30 ’cause it gives us the most energy
0:08:32 and what we think we’re the best at
0:08:34 so we can really focus in on it.
0:08:35 And that was the podcast.
0:08:37 And the truth is, even at the beginning,
0:08:39 we weren’t getting a lot of traction in the podcast.
0:08:41 We had done several podcasts in the past
0:08:44 and we thought this is like our fourth podcast.
0:08:45 We’re gonna kill it.
0:08:48 And we published it and it was crickets.
0:08:51 Like, we had several episodes ready.
0:08:52 We built this website.
0:08:54 We were excited for having to reach out and be like,
0:08:56 yeah, a million university guys are gonna change the world
0:08:58 and nothing happened.
0:09:00 It was so disappointing.
0:09:01 And even after we limited other stuff,
0:09:03 it was still crickets.
0:09:05 But after focusing on that one thing,
0:09:09 just growing the podcast numbers in any way we could,
0:09:11 creating the best content we could for the podcast,
0:09:14 we did start to see traction to the point today
0:09:16 where we now in the past 30 days
0:09:19 have over 260,000 downloads.
0:09:21 And it’s just, everything has changed.
0:09:22 Now we have traction, we can go back
0:09:25 and start to do some of those other things over time.
0:09:27 – Yeah, I feel like there’s a certain pressure
0:09:30 to be everywhere and try all these different channels.
0:09:33 But the brands and creators that you see doing that
0:09:35 likely have a team in place.
0:09:36 So they’ve been doing this for years
0:09:38 where they really honed in the systems for it.
0:09:39 – 100%.
0:09:40 – And if you’re trying to do that as a side hustle,
0:09:42 you’re just like, oh my God.
0:09:44 And then that’s the reason I’ve had such a hard time
0:09:49 indicating the time to short form social platforms.
0:09:52 It’s like, I’d so much rather to create long form content
0:09:53 that’s gonna be around for years.
0:09:54 – 100%.
0:09:56 – Than come up with this thread
0:09:59 that may or may not get any traction or eyeballs
0:10:00 that is gone tomorrow, even if it does.
0:10:02 I guess it’s just kind of a weird,
0:10:04 and one of the things that I eliminated early on
0:10:07 that I felt was very necessary in the business
0:10:08 was the email opt-in form.
0:10:10 I had like first name, email, right?
0:10:12 And some people would not fill in the first name.
0:10:14 It was like an optional field.
0:10:16 But I would, I still remember doing this in Aweber
0:10:18 copying and pasting this email.
0:10:21 And sometimes it would be like John Smith at yahoo.com.
0:10:22 It’s like, okay, I’m gonna guess
0:10:23 that this guy’s name was John.
0:10:24 So I’m gonna put in John.
0:10:26 And like, just so it would show up
0:10:29 like more personalized in their broadcast emails.
0:10:31 It’s like, if somebody didn’t care to put in their name,
0:10:34 like, I don’t know, the cumulative hours
0:10:35 I’ve probably spent doing this
0:10:37 in the name of a more personalized experience.
0:10:40 But that was something that has long since been eliminated.
0:10:41 So that’s rule number two,
0:10:44 eliminate what is not getting results
0:10:46 or driving you towards that intention.
0:10:47 But what’s number three for us?
0:10:50 – Rule number three is automate.
0:10:52 So you want to take that same list
0:10:53 that you had all those things on,
0:10:54 you eliminate everything you can
0:10:57 and also eliminate things in your personal life.
0:10:59 They say the average person consumes
0:11:02 about eight hours of media per day.
0:11:04 So imagine if you can just cut that in half.
0:11:06 But if you’re at four, cut it to two.
0:11:08 I’m not saying don’t watch any TV
0:11:10 or like I would be a hypocrite, right?
0:11:11 Or Netflix or anything,
0:11:13 but just cut that in half.
0:11:15 It’ll buy back a lot of your time.
0:11:18 So then you’re gonna take that list of what’s left over
0:11:21 and number three and four kind of go together.
0:11:22 You’re gonna write down,
0:11:23 you’re gonna figure out what you can automate,
0:11:25 which is number three and then number four,
0:11:27 which is delegate.
0:11:28 So you’re gonna look at this list
0:11:29 and you’re not gonna think,
0:11:31 can I automate or delegate these things?
0:11:35 You’re gonna think, how can I automate and delegate
0:11:37 everything on this list?
0:11:38 Now you wanna start with the things
0:11:41 that take the most of your time
0:11:44 and you feel like would be the easiest to automate
0:11:46 or to delegate.
0:11:49 So for us, for example, when we were flipping houses,
0:11:53 we spent most of our time making offers on houses,
0:11:58 fixing up houses, managing contractors, that sort of thing.
0:12:00 So some of the things that we did
0:12:03 was we hired an assistant and we trained her
0:12:05 our exact criteria for making offers.
0:12:08 And then she later trained our agents
0:12:10 and we had all these agents out making offers,
0:12:12 which we gave them authorization to make offers
0:12:15 on our behalf based on our criteria.
0:12:17 And they were making hundreds of offers
0:12:20 without us even knowing anything or seeing the house
0:12:23 or seeing that number until one got accepted,
0:12:26 then we would briefly go over it and review it,
0:12:27 make sure it was good.
0:12:29 We had a 14 day inspection clause.
0:12:30 – Yeah, I was gonna say,
0:12:31 there’s a certain level of trust in there,
0:12:32 but as long as you have like-
0:12:33 – Oh yeah, 100%.
0:12:34 – Yeah, get out of jail free here.
0:12:37 – Yeah, and then we had just a couple of contractors
0:12:40 that we worked with and they had the people they worked with
0:12:44 and we would use the exact same materials for every house.
0:12:47 The decision making went out the door.
0:12:49 We were buying similar types of houses
0:12:53 and we’d use the same color paint, same type of finishes.
0:12:54 And then another thing that we did,
0:12:56 we realized we were spending a ton of time
0:12:59 working with contractors and coming up with
0:13:01 the beginning would have like three people
0:13:03 go to the property and come up with these different bids
0:13:05 and would haggle back and forth.
0:13:07 And I was sitting down one day and looking at these bids
0:13:09 and I was like, you know, at the end of the day,
0:13:11 they’re all ending up about the same place.
0:13:13 So why don’t we just start there?
0:13:17 And we came up with a list that had every line item
0:13:20 that the contractors would do
0:13:22 and we came up with a pre-agreed price
0:13:25 and we had our contractors agree to that ahead of time.
0:13:27 So we no longer had to do multiple bids
0:13:29 or it’s no longer any haggling.
0:13:31 We knew exactly what we were paying for a house,
0:13:33 for paint, for like the square footage of the house.
0:13:35 We knew what we were paying for flooring
0:13:37 based on how big the flooring was.
0:13:40 It was all laid out, it made it very simple
0:13:42 and really stayed a lot of time in that way.
0:13:45 – Okay, yeah, so rule two, three and four,
0:13:47 eliminate, automate, delegate in that order, right?
0:13:50 There’s no sense in automating or delegating stuff
0:13:52 that doesn’t need to be done in the first place.
0:13:53 – 100%.
0:13:55 – By figuring out, and even if it’s something as simple
0:14:00 as sending an email, like I have found certain triggers
0:14:01 would necessitate sending an email
0:14:03 to another member of the team.
0:14:05 It’s like, okay, well, the trigger is
0:14:08 that file is delivered back from the editor.
0:14:09 So now I need to send a note to the writer
0:14:11 that it’s ready to summarize.
0:14:13 Like, oh, if they’re uploading it
0:14:15 to a specific folder in Google Drive,
0:14:18 like, okay, make used to be Zapier, but like make.com,
0:14:21 like can automatically send that email trigger,
0:14:23 that task notification system,
0:14:25 or it could automatically add tasks to Asana.
0:14:27 Even if it’s just individually,
0:14:28 it only took a couple of seconds,
0:14:30 but like now you just don’t have to think about that.
0:14:32 And then delegating that to somebody else on your team,
0:14:35 the combo platter of automation and delegation
0:14:37 can be super powerful for me.
0:14:41 It was bookkeeping tasks years later than I should have,
0:14:43 where it’s like every PayPal notification
0:14:44 would come through.
0:14:46 It was kind of like the dopamine hit of like,
0:14:48 I made some money, I got paid, I better go log this
0:14:51 in my up to the minute accounting spreadsheet, basically.
0:14:53 It’s like, oh my God, the task switching costs
0:14:54 of all this sort of thing.
0:14:55 – 100%.
0:14:58 – Just having a bookkeeper that can tap into your accounts
0:14:59 and just create that summary for you.
0:15:01 More with Justin in just a moment,
0:15:04 including how he’s delegated himself off his own podcast
0:15:08 and more rules to scale your side hustle right after this.
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0:16:18 So in our house flipping education business,
0:16:20 essentially the way it worked out,
0:16:21 it was like, what were all the main things
0:16:23 that we needed to do?
0:16:24 We needed a tech guy who needs someone
0:16:27 who was constantly making offers and funnels
0:16:28 and sending out emails.
0:16:30 So we brought on a guy to do that.
0:16:32 And then it was essentially coaching.
0:16:35 So I initially did the coaching myself,
0:16:38 but then brought someone on to help with the coaching.
0:16:40 And over time, brought on other coaches.
0:16:44 Eventually, our COO was one of our first
0:16:46 high level students.
0:16:47 We got to the point in the business
0:16:51 where I was no longer needed in my house flipping business
0:16:53 or my education business or my coaching business.
0:16:56 And I would show up to events and just kind of talk
0:17:00 a little bit and record stuff and just kind of hang out.
0:17:02 And eventually when we were ready to sell the business,
0:17:06 it was an easy exit because we weren’t needed anymore.
0:17:09 – It makes it more sellable or makes it sellable
0:17:11 in the first place, it’s not reliant on you.
0:17:13 But it’s interesting too with the podcast,
0:17:15 in fact, it’s rarely you behind the mic
0:17:17 from how it started to where it is today.
0:17:20 – Yeah, so the same thing with our podcast now.
0:17:22 It’s like, what are the main things that we focus on?
0:17:26 What are the main levers and it’s create podcast content?
0:17:27 I always use you as an example.
0:17:30 I’m like, is our content as good as Nick Loper’s content?
0:17:33 If it’s not, we got to keep working on it, right?
0:17:34 So that’s kind of the gold standard
0:17:36 is we’re always trying to improve the content
0:17:39 and then we’re trying to grow our numbers, right?
0:17:41 And I’ll get into that in the upcoming ones.
0:17:42 But yeah, you’re right.
0:17:44 We’re to the point where Tara and I,
0:17:45 who Tara’s sitting over here,
0:17:48 but we rarely even show up on the podcast.
0:17:50 So we’ve created this podcast
0:17:53 that has over a quarter million downloads per month.
0:17:55 If I want to show up, we show up.
0:17:56 But my goal is to create businesses
0:17:59 where I don’t have to be a part of.
0:18:01 If something happens to us, ’cause the truth is,
0:18:03 there are some days where I don’t want to do anything.
0:18:05 There are some days where I feel super motivated
0:18:06 and want to talk.
0:18:08 And I like to run businesses in a way
0:18:11 that I don’t have to be involved if I don’t want to
0:18:12 or I can’t.
0:18:13 And that to me personally
0:18:15 is kind of like the ultimate true freedom.
0:18:16 – Yeah.
0:18:17 Was there any pushback from listeners?
0:18:19 It’d be like, who’s this new guy?
0:18:20 Ask him the questions.
0:18:21 – No, so the way we did it,
0:18:23 and this was pretty similar to how we did our coaches,
0:18:27 was the first person I brought on was Brian Gehran,
0:18:28 who–
0:18:29 – Side hustle show guest, yeah.
0:18:31 – Yeah, I heard on your episode.
0:18:32 So I reached out to him.
0:18:34 I was like, hey, you are awesome.
0:18:35 Can I interview you?
0:18:36 So we kind of built a relationship.
0:18:37 And then I asked him, I said,
0:18:39 hey, do you want to help me interview people on the show?
0:18:41 And of course he was excited to do that
0:18:42 ’cause it gives him notoriety.
0:18:44 We pay him a little something.
0:18:45 We give him a little bit of equity.
0:18:48 You know, we kind of made it this win-win situation.
0:18:51 There wasn’t pushback because they had already heard from him.
0:18:54 And then I think I, I don’t know if I interviewed him again
0:18:56 or the first couple of times that he interviewed someone,
0:18:58 I did the intro and outro.
0:19:01 So I helped the guests kind of get warmed up to him.
0:19:04 You know how you watch a TV show or a series
0:19:05 and if a new person just comes in
0:19:06 and you don’t know who they are,
0:19:08 you’re like, hey, who’s that?
0:19:09 What’s going on?
0:19:11 But if you kind of get warmed up to him over time,
0:19:13 you’re like, okay, I like this person.
0:19:14 I can jive with that.
0:19:17 So I did the same thing with the other two hosts that we have.
0:19:20 I was people, you know, Eric Fisher,
0:19:22 who he’s been on the show a couple of times.
0:19:23 I’ve been on his show.
0:19:26 – Long time podcaster, beyond the TV list.
0:19:28 – I know, long time, man.
0:19:31 So I usually like to have the audience hear them
0:19:35 a few times before I let them just kind of go on their own
0:19:36 and do their own thing.
0:19:39 We have not had any pushback.
0:19:41 I still listen to every episode.
0:19:43 I’m kind of like quality control.
0:19:45 There have been some episodes that I’ve sent back
0:19:50 and said, hey, we got to get more details on this one, right?
0:19:52 But the goal is eventually where
0:19:54 I don’t have to do that quality control.
0:19:56 – Okay, so that’s rule number four, delegate.
0:19:58 How do you delegate the items on your list?
0:19:59 How do you make the business?
0:20:01 Ultimately, it doesn’t have to be today,
0:20:04 but someday in the future run without you.
0:20:05 What have you got for number five?
0:20:08 Number five is come up with your de-riskify plan
0:20:10 or your risk mitigation plan.
0:20:13 De-riskify is just kind of a fun word I came up with.
0:20:15 So this was actually pretty huge for us.
0:20:16 And it’s something that I don’t think
0:20:18 a lot of people think about.
0:20:20 I think the first few are kind of a little more obvious,
0:20:23 but I think the main thing that holds people back
0:20:25 from taking action on their dreams
0:20:28 and starting their side hustle or their business is fear.
0:20:31 It’s the fear of what people are going to think of them,
0:20:32 the fear of failure,
0:20:34 the fear of what if this doesn’t work out.
0:20:35 And I think the thing that keeps people
0:20:40 from growing or scaling their business is fear of risk,
0:20:43 fear of what am I going to lose?
0:20:45 So one of the things that happened
0:20:46 before we started scaling our business
0:20:50 was when we first started in the real estate game,
0:20:52 it was in May of 2007.
0:20:55 And for those of you who know your real estate history,
0:20:57 that was not a good time to get into real estate.
0:20:59 But we started out doing a thing called wholesaling,
0:21:02 which essentially was we would put houses under contract
0:21:05 and then we would sell the rights to that contract.
0:21:06 We never actually bought the house.
0:21:07 So we weren’t risking any money,
0:21:10 we weren’t risking any repairs or anything like that.
0:21:12 A couple of years later,
0:21:14 when we went to flip our first house,
0:21:16 I was scared to death.
0:21:18 The thing is we weren’t even using our own money,
0:21:20 we’re actually using one of our investor’s money,
0:21:22 but I was so afraid to lose his money.
0:21:23 And we made it through that deal,
0:21:26 but it caused me to not want to buy any more houses.
0:21:28 So we got into rental properties.
0:21:30 And I learned rental criteria
0:21:31 and learned how to understand cash flow.
0:21:33 And we just went to town.
0:21:34 And in a four month period,
0:21:36 we ended up buying 12 houses,
0:21:38 which was more houses than we had bought
0:21:39 in that shorter period of time.
0:21:41 It was really exciting.
0:21:42 But we got to a point in our life
0:21:44 where we were way out of money.
0:21:45 Our investors were out of money,
0:21:47 we didn’t know how to pay the bills.
0:21:49 So kicking and screaming,
0:21:50 we had to sell some of those houses.
0:21:52 And we ended up selling four of those houses.
0:21:56 And from selling those four houses within a couple of weeks,
0:21:58 we made more money than we needed to pay our bills
0:22:00 and all our expenses for over a year.
0:22:03 I’m not just changed everything for us.
0:22:05 I was like, wow, what if we could do this every month?
0:22:07 What if we could make more money
0:22:10 than we need for an entire year every month?
0:22:11 So we ended up selling the rest of the houses.
0:22:14 At the same time, we started buying more houses,
0:22:17 but that also met that rental criteria
0:22:18 and it just helped us go to town.
0:22:20 I no longer had that thing in my brain,
0:22:22 that limbic brain, that lizard brain,
0:22:25 the fight or flight that was getting so afraid
0:22:27 of taking action because I didn’t know
0:22:28 what the end result was gonna be.
0:22:29 I was afraid of losing money.
0:22:31 So I was stuck in my tracks.
0:22:32 I didn’t have that anymore.
0:22:33 ‘Cause I was buying houses,
0:22:35 I was flipping rentals essentially.
0:22:37 I had a plan B, I had a plan A, plan B.
0:22:39 If something didn’t work out,
0:22:41 then I would end up with the hundred rental properties
0:22:43 that I initially wanted in the cash flow
0:22:44 that I was looking for.
0:22:46 So that combined with the systems
0:22:48 and all the things that we’ve been talking about
0:22:51 just allowed us to really take off in scale.
0:22:53 From there, we got a JV partner who put up,
0:22:54 this guy had deep pockets.
0:22:56 It wasn’t like the other guy that I was borrowing money from
0:22:58 who this was his retirement.
0:23:00 This guy understood the risk
0:23:02 and we were able to go to town.
0:23:03 – Okay.
0:23:05 I have a plan B that is still acceptable to you.
0:23:07 I think probably makes sense.
0:23:09 First is like the Warren Buffett thing,
0:23:10 you make money when you buy.
0:23:12 Like I’m gonna do the forced appreciation thing
0:23:15 and sell this to another investor.
0:23:17 Let them be the long-term holder of this thing.
0:23:18 But I’m gonna get my money out quickly
0:23:20 as a way to de-risk the whole operation.
0:23:23 I think about what’s probably on a lot of people’s mind
0:23:26 for the last nine to 12-ish months
0:23:28 in the world of online businesses,
0:23:31 algorithm updates and AI and stuff.
0:23:33 Like how do I de-risk my business from AI?
0:23:35 Whether it’s diversifying traffic sources,
0:23:37 whether it’s building an email list,
0:23:39 whether it’s selling your own product,
0:23:41 how you get to compete in an AI first world,
0:23:44 the answers may look differently for person,
0:23:46 but that’s number five here is this de-risk plan
0:23:48 or come up with your de-risk if I plan.
0:23:50 – And it’s gonna be different for everyone.
0:23:51 The truth is I don’t know about you,
0:23:53 but the number one thing people tell us
0:23:55 ’cause we ask our audience like,
0:23:56 hey, what’s the number one thing you’re stuck with?
0:23:57 And it’s always money.
0:23:59 They’re like, I don’t have enough money.
0:24:01 And you know this, I know this.
0:24:03 You don’t really need a lot of money to start a business.
0:24:04 There’s so many different ways
0:24:06 you can start a business with little no money.
0:24:09 So it really depends on your situation.
0:24:11 And we could talk about this for hours, right?
0:24:14 You love service businesses, I love service businesses.
0:24:16 There’s not a whole lot of risk in going out
0:24:18 and trying to get these clients for a service business.
0:24:21 – In most cases, right, it’s like the startup costs
0:24:24 for almost anything that we talk about
0:24:27 would be sub $500, or there’s some creative way
0:24:29 to make it such that it is,
0:24:31 that it’s within reach where you’re not having to take out
0:24:36 a second mortgage or something to get something off the ground.
0:24:39 And when you’ve kind of minimized your downside exposure
0:24:42 and you’re taking a swing at something with some upside,
0:24:44 with some scale, it’s only a matter of time
0:24:47 before something hits and erases all the losses.
0:24:49 ‘Cause the first thing may or may not be the one
0:24:52 that actually works and having the wherewithal
0:24:54 to be like, well, that doesn’t make me an abject failure.
0:24:56 It just means that idea didn’t pan out.
0:24:57 So okay, on to the next thing.
0:24:59 So definitely keep your risks low,
0:25:01 keep your goals high and get after it.
0:25:03 So all right, that’s number five, the de-risk plan.
0:25:05 What have you got for number six?
0:25:08 – Number six is what I call the $60 an hour rule
0:25:09 or the three X rule.
0:25:12 If someone can do something like a service business,
0:25:16 whether it’s cleaning, I know you did painting,
0:25:18 whether it’s gutters, curbs, trash cans,
0:25:21 car detailing, yard, tree removal, all that stuff,
0:25:23 power washing, parking lots.
0:25:24 I’m just naming all kinds of stuff.
0:25:29 If you can come up with one of these businesses
0:25:32 and you can make at least $60 per hour,
0:25:34 you can scale that.
0:25:37 Because then you just hire out the labor
0:25:40 at $20, $25 an hour, then you focus more
0:25:44 on getting the new clients, you hire out the labor
0:25:46 and that’s how you can scale those businesses,
0:25:48 also known as nail it, then scale it, right?
0:25:51 – Okay, so this would be like an agency model,
0:25:53 like this is the cost of labor ratio
0:25:54 that you would like to see.
0:25:57 You wanna have the final price be triple your labor cost.
0:26:00 – Exactly, so my son, for example, he just turned 18
0:26:02 and he’s trying to figure out
0:26:04 what he’s gonna do in life, right?
0:26:06 And he’s been fixing phones
0:26:07 and he’s been doing a few different things,
0:26:09 but he’s gone to the point where
0:26:12 he can make $100 an hour fixing phones.
0:26:14 So now he just has to improve his marketing,
0:26:16 he has to be able to get more clients
0:26:19 and then he can hire people to do the driving
0:26:21 and to do all these different things,
0:26:23 like all the different things that we’ve been talking about
0:26:25 that will allow him to focus on
0:26:27 his highest and best use of time
0:26:30 and ultimately be able to scale the business.
0:26:32 – Yeah, this is one where in the context
0:26:35 of SEO and online business, like, okay,
0:26:38 based on this projected keyword volume
0:26:41 or traffic volume, if it ends up hitting
0:26:43 and this projected affiliate ad,
0:26:45 it’s like really hard to kind of try to figure out,
0:26:46 well, what’s this page you’ve gotta make
0:26:48 if it gets to the first page of Google,
0:26:53 let’s say it does and say it is gonna make $1,000 a year.
0:26:55 Best case scenario, like, okay,
0:26:57 so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to pay somebody $300
0:26:59 to write that article for you and then
0:27:00 allow them to repeat. – Exactly, yeah.
0:27:02 – And it’s like a timing of cash flow, in this case,
0:27:03 like you’re gonna earn that $1,000
0:27:06 over the course of 12 months, hopefully, you may not.
0:27:08 So that’s where the risk comes into play,
0:27:10 but that’s where you can kind of pencil in,
0:27:12 well, okay, what’s my labor cost
0:27:13 or what’s my potential labor cost
0:27:15 for whatever model that I’m in?
0:27:17 – And then you start to buy back some of your time
0:27:19 and then you’re able to do the whole
0:27:21 think smarter, not work harder, right?
0:27:23 You go from labor to leadership
0:27:25 and that’s how you really go.
0:27:27 You become the rainmaker, that’s what you focus on.
0:27:29 And then you eventually can hire someone
0:27:30 to help you with that marketing,
0:27:34 but you’ve increased your customer base pretty significantly
0:27:36 and then hopefully you have repeat customers
0:27:37 and so on and so forth.
0:27:40 – Rule number seven is the marketing flywheel.
0:27:43 How can you creatively get customers for free
0:27:45 or even get paid to acquire customers?
0:27:47 That’s coming up along with Justin’s business idea
0:27:49 donation and more, right after this.
0:27:52 – Yeah, so this one, I have lots of titles for it,
0:27:55 the marketing flywheel self-liquidation offer
0:27:56 or break-even funnel.
0:27:59 Russell Brunson often refers to the break-even funnel
0:28:01 and that’s kind of how he grew ClickFunnels,
0:28:06 was he created a webinar and spent X amount of money
0:28:09 to get people to register for the webinar,
0:28:12 sold the webinar for like $1,000
0:28:14 plus six months of ClickFunnels.
0:28:17 And the whole concept is you are,
0:28:18 you’re making money by acquiring customers.
0:28:21 You’re acquiring customers for free.
0:28:23 And he talks about how he would sometimes talk
0:28:25 to venture capitalists and they would ask him,
0:28:27 what’s your cost to acquire customers?
0:28:29 Like, oh, no, we acquire them for free.
0:28:31 We make money when we acquire customers.
0:28:33 I’m like, wait, this doesn’t work for my numbers
0:28:36 and my algorithm and it totally throws me off.
0:28:38 But understanding this concept,
0:28:40 once again, I think so many people
0:28:42 who want to get into business think,
0:28:44 oh, I got to have this big, huge tech idea
0:28:47 and invest millions of dollars
0:28:49 and most businesses fail and all this stuff.
0:28:52 And it’s like, no, like you just have to figure out
0:28:55 one of these models that work for you.
0:28:58 And for us right now, we’re just focused on
0:29:01 how much does it cost us to acquire a new listener?
0:29:04 And it took us a year to build up to this,
0:29:06 but we’re at that break-even point.
0:29:10 That it cost us about six to eight cents
0:29:12 to acquire a new listener.
0:29:14 And we’re making about six to eight cents
0:29:16 for every new listener.
0:29:19 So if someone listens to just one more show,
0:29:21 we’re spending a dollar to make $2.
0:29:23 And the goal is to keep growing that.
0:29:25 I have these different numbers where
0:29:28 I know we could make 10 cents per listener
0:29:31 and even up to like 15 cents per listener.
0:29:32 If and as we continue to do that,
0:29:34 these numbers get better and better.
0:29:37 And then over time, you could add on programs,
0:29:38 different things you’re selling.
0:29:40 We don’t have any of our own programs at this point,
0:29:42 but we’re all ready to that break-even
0:29:44 or make money point, right?
0:29:47 There’s a thousand different add-ons you can make to that,
0:29:50 to where you got your money making machine essentially, right?
0:29:52 And that’s the whole goal of business.
0:29:54 For every dollar you put in, you’re making $2 back,
0:29:58 $3 back, how can we make that number bigger and bigger
0:30:01 that every dollar we invest, we’re making more and more back?
0:30:02 – Yeah, that’s fascinating.
0:30:04 We’ve heard from newsletter operators.
0:30:09 Well, if every, I mean, there’s very elaborate equations
0:30:10 that could start to go into it.
0:30:12 But it’s like, well, what’s a new subscriber worth to us?
0:30:14 Does it make sense to pay $2 for a subscriber
0:30:16 if they’re gonna open 50% of the emails
0:30:18 and they’re gonna stay on the list for nine months
0:30:20 and they’re gonna be exposed?
0:30:21 Like, oh, okay, we’re gonna make $5
0:30:23 from that one subscriber on average.
0:30:25 So yeah, we’re happy to pay two bucks for it.
0:30:28 And so this is, on terms of the podcast downloads,
0:30:31 this is just, on average, we have two or three,
0:30:34 four ads per show at this CPM.
0:30:36 So every download is worth to us,
0:30:38 six to eight cents or six to 10 cents.
0:30:39 – Yep, yep.
0:30:41 I’m constantly looking at the numbers
0:30:43 and analyzing numbers and just seeing,
0:30:46 oh, if we pull this one lever
0:30:47 and we spend this much money,
0:30:49 what does that do to our bottom line?
0:30:50 – Yeah, that’s really interesting.
0:30:52 Like, only very recently started doing
0:30:54 any paid podcast promotion.
0:30:57 And it’s interesting to look at like,
0:30:58 the cost per download metrics
0:31:00 or cost per subscriber metrics.
0:31:03 Yeah, I never really thought about it that way.
0:31:04 And then, yeah, if you have a potential guest,
0:31:06 could you share the cost with that?
0:31:08 ‘Cause they’re getting some promotional benefit out of it.
0:31:10 But yeah, what platforms do you like
0:31:11 in terms of going out and buying listeners?
0:31:14 – So at the beginning, we had an agency that we hired
0:31:18 that was connecting with a lot of other podcasters,
0:31:20 but it was costing us like several dollars
0:31:22 to get a download.
0:31:25 Then we started going to the podcast players
0:31:29 and we started to get a lower amount.
0:31:31 But one of the gotchas, something you wanna watch out for
0:31:33 is what we didn’t realize,
0:31:35 ’cause we just didn’t know what we didn’t know,
0:31:37 until we were starting to work with an agency
0:31:39 to get sponsors for us,
0:31:41 was one of these podcast players,
0:31:42 a lot of the places they were promoting to
0:31:45 were in countries that sponsors just being on it,
0:31:48 they just weren’t paying for those areas.
0:31:51 So we got to a point where we had like 20% in the US
0:31:53 and our agency was like, that’s not gonna work.
0:31:55 So we had to go back to the drawing.
0:31:57 – It’s like Facebook ads, like, oh yeah, it’s cheap
0:32:00 if you wanna advertise to a non-US audience.
0:32:01 – Totally.
0:32:02 – Gotcha, gotcha.
0:32:03 – But then we found the right players
0:32:07 and if you invest enough, certain players,
0:32:09 the amount just goes up depending on
0:32:11 like how many people are bidding on it, right,
0:32:13 or buying the ads.
0:32:16 And then there are other players that you can negotiate
0:32:19 with the podcast player.
0:32:21 We’ve done such a high volume at this point
0:32:24 where we’ve gotten some of the players to come down
0:32:27 or like, hey, we’ll keep buying in volume,
0:32:28 we just want a good deal.
0:32:30 We mainly buy like the US,
0:32:31 but then they’ll throw in other places
0:32:34 like Canada, Australia, UK.
0:32:37 So we’ve been able to literally like 3x
0:32:40 the amount of listeners that we would be getting with them
0:32:42 because we’ve worked out deals, we’re buying in bulk.
0:32:43 We know they’re good listeners,
0:32:46 we know we’re getting paid well for them.
0:32:47 But yeah, another one I really like,
0:32:51 this isn’t a podcast player, but it’s called Podroll.
0:32:55 Podroll is amazing because you can get a great CPM
0:33:00 by allowing other podcasters to do what’s called a feed drop.
0:33:02 I don’t wanna get too technical too into the weeds here,
0:33:06 but doing a feed drop is where another podcaster
0:33:10 can put their episode in your feed.
0:33:14 And Podroll has a platform that facilitates doing this.
0:33:16 So initially we got doing Podroll
0:33:20 ’cause we’re like, oh, you can make $50 to $100 CPM.
0:33:22 But what we realized is we wanted to be
0:33:24 on the other end of that,
0:33:28 where we’re paying $50 to $100 CPM
0:33:31 for people to listen to our show
0:33:34 because it sounds like a high CPM,
0:33:36 but they’re actually listening to your show.
0:33:38 It’s not just someone hearing a one minute ad
0:33:42 on someone else’s show on your podcast,
0:33:43 they’re listening to your show.
0:33:44 So you get the downloads
0:33:47 and then you get some people that stick with you
0:33:48 and that’s how you can grow.
0:33:51 So that’s been huge for us.
0:33:52 It gets pretty exciting.
0:33:54 Man, I know we’re talking about podcasting,
0:33:56 but you can do this like you said with an email list.
0:33:59 You can do it with, I know I would say a blog,
0:34:01 I know there’s been a lot of stuff with the updates
0:34:04 and whatnot, but it’s just all about,
0:34:06 and I guess that gets us to our last one,
0:34:07 which is, oh no, there’s two more.
0:34:08 (laughs)
0:34:11 I’ve been talking too much.
0:34:13 Anyway, I’ll save that, but you can do this with anything.
0:34:15 – Yeah, figuring out what that marketing flywheel is,
0:34:18 what that self-liquidating offer may be,
0:34:21 if that may be possible in your industry or your niche.
0:34:23 Like how can you acquire customers for free?
0:34:25 I think it’s a creative marketing thought experiment,
0:34:29 if nothing else, to figure out where our customers at,
0:34:31 how can I set this up in such a way
0:34:33 that it doesn’t cost me anything
0:34:34 to get that next lead into the funnel,
0:34:36 that next person into the pipeline there.
0:34:37 All right, that’s number seven,
0:34:40 the marketing flywheel or the breakeven funnel.
0:34:41 What have you got for number eight?
0:34:43 – So number eight is you wanna understand
0:34:47 the velocity of money and returns and how they work.
0:34:48 And this might sound simple,
0:34:52 but I’m telling you, most people do not understand it.
0:34:55 In fact, I read something earlier that said,
0:34:59 two thirds of American adults cannot pass
0:35:02 a very basic financial test.
0:35:04 We just don’t learn this stuff in school,
0:35:06 but the velocity of money basically says,
0:35:09 for example, we started flipping houses,
0:35:13 we were making anywhere from 15 to 20%
0:35:16 on the money that we invested into a particular house,
0:35:19 it would take us about four months to flip a house.
0:35:21 So there’s 12 months in a year,
0:35:24 we could essentially turn that money three times.
0:35:27 So essentially, if you’re making 10 to 15%
0:35:29 and you’re doing that three times a year, that’s…
0:35:30 – It’s probably more than that.
0:35:32 – I think, yeah, I messed up these numbers.
0:35:33 – 45 to 60.
0:35:35 – Yeah, 15 to 20% are the numbers.
0:35:38 You make 15 to 20% on your money
0:35:40 and you do that three times a year,
0:35:44 you’re making 45 to 60% annualized.
0:35:46 – Yeah, nominally, I’m sure there’s like
0:35:48 some other velocity time component
0:35:50 or time value element to it too.
0:35:52 But right, it’s like, okay,
0:35:53 how quickly can I get a return on it
0:35:56 and how often can I lather and repeat?
0:35:57 Is that my understanding?
0:35:58 – Yeah, exactly.
0:36:00 We were making 15 to 20% per house,
0:36:02 we were doing that three times a year, given money,
0:36:06 and that was 45 to 60% for the year.
0:36:09 So what we did, I mentioned this JV partner,
0:36:12 I went to this guy, this guy had deep pockets,
0:36:14 millions of dollars, knew the real estate game,
0:36:15 was just kind of retired.
0:36:17 And I said, hey, here’s our track record,
0:36:19 here’s all the houses, here are the numbers we’re getting.
0:36:21 Would you be interested in putting up the money
0:36:22 and we split the profit?
0:36:24 And he took a look at it and he’s like,
0:36:25 heck yeah, it took a little more than that,
0:36:27 but essentially that’s what it came down to.
0:36:29 And he essentially gave us a blank check.
0:36:32 So we now knew we had the systems to buy the houses,
0:36:34 we had the systems to fix up the houses,
0:36:37 we just needed more money, and that was our money.
0:36:39 And that’s the other thing that helped us really grow.
0:36:42 ‘Cause his return, all he did was he’s like, okay,
0:36:45 so I’m gonna make anywhere from 22 and a half
0:36:48 to 30% annualized, that’s a heck of a lot better
0:36:50 than what I’m making and anything else I’m doing.
0:36:53 Since that time, I’ve talked to a lot of different people
0:36:55 and done this with a lot of different businesses.
0:36:59 We talked to a guy that had like a grass-fed beef business,
0:37:01 so he raised cows essentially.
0:37:04 And he was like, oh, I wanna do more of this,
0:37:05 I just don’t have the money.
0:37:07 And I’m like, okay, how much does it cost you to buy a cow?
0:37:09 How much does it cost to feed the cow?
0:37:12 Like, what are all the expenses that go into that cow?
0:37:14 How long does it take till the cow gets slaughtered?
0:37:17 I hope anyone listening, it gets too offended by this,
0:37:20 but how long does it take till you’re able
0:37:21 to essentially sell the cow?
0:37:23 We broke the numbers down
0:37:26 and it was like 100% annualized returns.
0:37:28 I’m like, dude, I’ll give you all the money you want.
0:37:31 And I said, a better thing to do though
0:37:33 is now that you know that you can make 100%
0:37:36 annualized return on the money invested,
0:37:38 just go borrow it at 10%.
0:37:39 – Okay.
0:37:41 – And then you’re essentially making 90, it’s arbitrage,
0:37:43 right, you’re taking other people’s money,
0:37:44 you have the system in place
0:37:47 and you’re making a killer return on that money.
0:37:49 – Yeah, this is an interesting one.
0:37:50 And I think about it,
0:37:53 most often in the context of an e-commerce business
0:37:55 or a physical product business,
0:37:57 okay, I’m gonna buy 500 bucks of inventory,
0:37:59 sell it next month for 600.
0:38:01 And now I’ve got $600 worth of inventory
0:38:02 and I can sell it for 750.
0:38:05 And then kind of like, continue to level up
0:38:06 and multiply your money.
0:38:08 But like, how, you would think about it
0:38:11 in context of inventory turns coming from the car business,
0:38:13 like how much inventory is in our parts department right now?
0:38:15 It’s always like the dealers wanted to know
0:38:17 like how many millions of dollars are we sitting on parts?
0:38:18 Like, what has it sold lately?
0:38:20 Do we really need this sitting on the shelf?
0:38:23 Like, could that money be better deployed elsewhere?
0:38:25 And it’s like, okay, this could really apply
0:38:28 to any business that has an investment component
0:38:31 to a cost of labor or a cost of goods type of aspect to it,
0:38:33 like cost of houses in a flipping type of business.
0:38:36 – You’re right, e-commerce is a great example.
0:38:37 You just essentially run the numbers.
0:38:39 If the numbers make sense
0:38:41 and you can either bring on a JD partner,
0:38:43 if you don’t wanna take on the risk,
0:38:46 but usually you’ll find that the cool thing about business
0:38:49 is if and when, like you said, it’s hard to get started.
0:38:50 It’s hard to get that inertia,
0:38:51 hard to get that thing going,
0:38:53 put that thing up into orbit.
0:38:56 But once you do, a business typically will pay you
0:38:59 significantly more than you’re ever gonna make
0:39:02 in any other kind of investment,
0:39:06 which then allows you to get the investors coming to you.
0:39:07 That’s what I believe.
0:39:09 And I don’t think most people should go out
0:39:10 and raise a ton of money
0:39:13 unless you’ve experienced in that kind of thing.
0:39:14 But if you’re not that experienced in raising money
0:39:16 and growing a huge business,
0:39:18 now at first, then scale it, right?
0:39:20 Go start that e-commerce business,
0:39:24 go start that SaaS business, whatever that thing is,
0:39:26 and then start to get some proven numbers.
0:39:27 And if you can come to someone like me
0:39:30 and you can show, hey, these are the things I’m selling,
0:39:33 this is how much I’m making, these are the returns,
0:39:35 I’ll give you the money, no problem.
0:39:36 No problem all day long.
0:39:38 – All right, well, you may be getting some calls after this.
0:39:39 – Sounds good.
0:39:42 I’ll collaborate Velocity of Money number nine
0:39:44 on the nine rules of scale, go for it.
0:39:48 – So number nine is the aggregation of marginal gains.
0:39:51 Also referred to as like the compound effect,
0:39:53 but essentially the aggregation of marginal gains,
0:39:56 many people know about it from the book Atomic Habits,
0:39:58 James Clear and his blog.
0:40:02 It essentially is from the British cycling team
0:40:05 back in the day for like a hundred years, they were horrible.
0:40:08 They only won like one gold medal in that time
0:40:11 and they brought in this guy
0:40:14 to be the new manager of the cycling team.
0:40:17 So his name was Dave Brelsford.
0:40:18 The way he did things is most people came in there like,
0:40:21 all right, we’re gonna make this huge improvement
0:40:23 by doing this one thing, it’s gonna change everything
0:40:25 and it just wasn’t working out.
0:40:28 So he was all about this thing that we’re talking about,
0:40:31 the aggregation of marginal gains.
0:40:34 And he just said, if we can take every little component
0:40:37 of what it takes to be good at cycling
0:40:40 or to make you faster, whether it has to do with the bike
0:40:42 or the athlete, then we’re just gonna do that.
0:40:45 We’re gonna make 1% improvement each day
0:40:48 as much as we can in all these different categories.
0:40:50 And within five years,
0:40:52 the British cycling team just started dominating.
0:40:54 They started winning almost every gold medal.
0:40:57 They started winning Tour de France’s,
0:41:00 which they hadn’t done previously in that hundred years.
0:41:01 And it just changed everything
0:41:04 and he was just focused on the one small thing.
0:41:09 That’s what I would invite everyone who’s listening to do.
0:41:10 We’re in the information age.
0:41:12 You’re literally listening to a podcast.
0:41:14 There’s so much information out there.
0:41:17 I love like swipe and deploy, see what people are doing
0:41:19 and just be like, oh, let’s try that.
0:41:21 It’s the different industry, but I can try it here.
0:41:23 We try it out, we test it out,
0:41:24 we keep going with what’s working.
0:41:27 We keep trying to improve the things that aren’t working.
0:41:29 I’m constantly talking to my team
0:41:31 about how can we improve the podcast?
0:41:33 How can we get more numbers?
0:41:34 How can we improve everything that we’re doing
0:41:36 just little by little?
0:41:39 And as you do those things over time,
0:41:41 you’ll see a huge difference in your business.
0:41:43 – Yeah, there’s 1% improvement every day.
0:41:46 It’s like, it doesn’t make a huge difference.
0:41:47 It may not even be noticeable,
0:41:50 but you know, over time, it really does start to compound.
0:41:53 And that’s like Einstein’s eight wonder of the world,
0:41:54 compound interest and all this stuff
0:41:56 where it really does start to lead
0:41:59 to some exponential growth over time.
0:42:01 But the trick is doing it consistently,
0:42:05 making it a habit, some, the compound effect for number nine.
0:42:08 Let’s move on to round two,
0:42:10 the donate a business idea round.
0:42:11 What have you got for us here?
0:42:13 – So I have business ideas every day.
0:42:16 As I’m sure you do as well.
0:42:18 But the idea, and it’s related to all the things
0:42:19 that I’ve been working on combined
0:42:21 with different things that have been happening in my life.
0:42:23 So recently we traveled the world for nine months.
0:42:28 As you know, we were in Rome just a couple of months ago.
0:42:30 And as we were in Europe and these different places,
0:42:32 we were doing all these tours and some were okay,
0:42:34 but some of them were kind of long and a little boring.
0:42:36 But it was almost like a necessary evil.
0:42:38 I felt like I’m glad I’m doing this tour,
0:42:40 but I’m kind of bored and it’s a little long.
0:42:43 And I thought, you know, there needs to be something
0:42:45 called 10 minute tours or something like that.
0:42:47 And I know they have audio tours,
0:42:49 but I was like, what if there was like a podcast
0:42:50 that had like a tour,
0:42:53 then my mind got going to like a history lesson.
0:42:54 And maybe it’s longer than 10 minutes.
0:42:55 ‘Cause now that I’m thinking about the ads
0:42:57 that you can put in, maybe it’s a little longer
0:42:59 so we can put more ads in.
0:43:02 But you have 30 minute to 40 minute lessons
0:43:05 and there’s so many lessons you could do on history,
0:43:06 just in Italy alone.
0:43:08 ‘Cause we were in Italy for like 38 days.
0:43:09 I’m like, you could do a lesson on that,
0:43:11 on that, on that, on that, on that.
0:43:13 Part of the reason why I had this idea too
0:43:15 is I know another guy who has a history podcast,
0:43:17 but he does it himself.
0:43:20 And his returns are bigger than ours.
0:43:22 Just because there’s a lot of business podcasts
0:43:25 and he invests in his podcast
0:43:26 and the amount of people that stick
0:43:27 and the amount of money he has to spend
0:43:30 to get more listeners are significantly higher
0:43:32 than what ours are.
0:43:33 So I was taking all these ideas.
0:43:35 I was like, I don’t know a lot about history,
0:43:36 but I know there’s a lot of people out there
0:43:38 who do know a lot about history
0:43:39 and they’re probably not making a ton of money.
0:43:42 I thought you could reach out to them
0:43:45 and then Tara made an ad for our podcast the other day.
0:43:47 And we got this great guy with a great voiceover voice.
0:43:51 Just, you know, just sounded amazing.
0:43:53 And I was like, you get the person who writes these things,
0:43:56 get the person who’s gonna record them
0:43:58 and then just work with different podcast players
0:44:00 and promoting these.
0:44:03 So this guy, once again, he spends all day creating this.
0:44:05 You could tell he works really hard on them.
0:44:07 I was like, man, you could put this thing together,
0:44:08 bring the people together.
0:44:11 You could pay them equity, so there’s no cost.
0:44:12 Or if you have a little bit of money,
0:44:14 you could just pay them whatever they would get paid.
0:44:16 It didn’t ultimately make more money.
0:44:19 – Yeah, or it may even be like an AI voiceover artist.
0:44:21 – 100% yeah, I was thinking of all that too.
0:44:24 I was like, you could probably do some AI stuff.
0:44:27 You could probably do, especially like AI online
0:44:29 is kind of tough because you have Google
0:44:31 like crawling it and everything.
0:44:34 But podcasting, no one’s crawling podcasting, right?
0:44:37 So you could even create these lessons through AI.
0:44:38 You could record them yourself
0:44:40 or you could have someone else record them.
0:44:43 But then the same idea, like for every dollar you spend,
0:44:44 you could easily make two back.
0:44:47 And you could essentially have this thing be,
0:44:48 you could be a big part of it
0:44:50 or you could just kind of outsource it to different people.
0:44:53 And anyway, I’m just sitting there at the Coliseum
0:44:57 at the forum and I’m like, this guy’s kind of boring,
0:44:59 but people need these lessons.
0:45:00 They’re incredibly valuable.
0:45:02 And I think it would just take off.
0:45:05 Anyway, if I had more time, I’d do it, but.
0:45:07 – Yeah, that’s the business idea donation
0:45:10 audio history lesson or audio walking tours.
0:45:12 We’ve been on some that were incredible.
0:45:14 We had this British guy in Barcelona
0:45:17 who was just like so into the history of the city.
0:45:20 And here we’re going from the fifth century to the 15th.
0:45:21 – That’s awesome.
0:45:22 – Right across the street from, you know,
0:45:23 and he was really into it.
0:45:26 And he told us that the FCE Barcelona logo
0:45:27 was like those four red stripes.
0:45:30 He’s like, that was like the king’s bloody fingers,
0:45:31 like running down a-
0:45:32 – Oh man.
0:45:35 – Dude, I will never look at that logo the same way again.
0:45:37 And then we’ve had other ones where you’re kind of like,
0:45:39 yeah, I’m getting something here,
0:45:41 but he’s the bar now that everything else
0:45:42 is measured against.
0:45:43 And it’s interesting.
0:45:45 But yeah, this could be an interesting one
0:45:48 hiring historians to write or repurpose lessons.
0:45:49 Maybe they already have it.
0:45:51 Could I license these from there?
0:45:52 And then hiring a voiceover artist
0:45:55 or using some AI voiceover to, you know,
0:45:57 be the voice of your podcast
0:45:58 might be interesting to play around with.
0:46:00 – And you could do the same thing with science
0:46:01 or any subject, right?
0:46:05 It goes on and on, but just, yeah, look into mine.
0:46:06 – Yeah, yeah, you gotta scratch your own itch
0:46:08 from these boring tours.
0:46:10 – Yeah, exactly.
0:46:11 – All right, round three is the triple threat.
0:46:14 This is, first off, a marketing tactic
0:46:15 that’s working for you right now.
0:46:16 Could be this pod roll stuff,
0:46:18 could be something else you got in mind.
0:46:20 – Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve kind of went through that.
0:46:23 It’s just working with the podcast players
0:46:25 to promote the show.
0:46:27 And we have our numbers pretty dialed in.
0:46:29 Like I’m pretty aware of what it costs us
0:46:30 for each pod player.
0:46:31 If that doesn’t work, I reach out to them
0:46:32 and try to negotiate a better deal
0:46:34 or we focus on other ones.
0:46:36 And then from that, like I said,
0:46:38 we’re gonna leverage it into working more
0:46:40 with podcast swaps and all that.
0:46:42 So that’s kind of our main focus.
0:46:44 At some point, we do wanna launch a program,
0:46:47 but we’re just trying to hang in as long as we can.
0:46:48 ‘Cause once we do that,
0:46:49 it’s a whole nother thing to take care of.
0:46:51 We’re just trying to generate a bunch of cash
0:46:54 ’cause cash will allow us to hire more people
0:46:56 and just keep that flywheel going.
0:46:57 – Right, yeah, if you can get somebody to tune in
0:47:00 for multiple episodes, they join the email list,
0:47:02 maybe they eventually buy the to be determined
0:47:04 future product.
0:47:04 – Totally, yeah.
0:47:05 – There’s a lot of good things that can happen.
0:47:07 – And it could be an affiliate marketing
0:47:07 at the beginning, right?
0:47:09 There’s so many different options.
0:47:12 – A new or new to you tool that you’re loving right now.
0:47:15 – For me, this might sound kind of boring
0:47:17 and not that exciting.
0:47:19 I just love my Google calendar.
0:47:22 That is my second brain.
0:47:24 Anytime I have an idea, a thought,
0:47:25 I put it in my calendar.
0:47:26 If I have to do, I put it in there.
0:47:28 And then I just either delete them,
0:47:30 like eliminate, automate or delegate.
0:47:32 That’s my list, right?
0:47:34 So every day I’ll have my list of top priorities.
0:47:36 I’ll check it out the day before,
0:47:39 make sure it’s what I wanna do for the next day.
0:47:39 And I’ll either delete it,
0:47:42 I’ll move it over like sometimes months away.
0:47:43 Sometimes it felt like a great idea
0:47:45 and then it’s not anymore.
0:47:46 But I’m always trying to figure out
0:47:48 how can I systematize this, how can I do it?
0:47:51 But I use the Google calendar but not that sexy
0:47:52 but I use it all the time.
0:47:54 It’s my calendar of where to go,
0:47:56 where to be, what to do.
0:47:57 It’s what I live by.
0:47:59 I never wake up and don’t know what to do
0:48:01 ’cause it’s always there.
0:48:01 – Very good.
0:48:04 Not a new tool but a very useful one at that.
0:48:05 So I like that one as well.
0:48:07 It’s like, and I find myself too.
0:48:09 I’ll block off that time and be like,
0:48:10 it’s not important right now.
0:48:12 I’ll punt that off until next month.
0:48:13 But it’s in there.
0:48:13 It’s kind of a reminder.
0:48:14 – Yes.
0:48:15 – You thought this was important at one point.
0:48:16 – Exactly.
0:48:17 – Is it still?
0:48:20 All right, so that is the tool
0:48:22 and a favorite book from the last 12 months.
0:48:24 – So in getting ready for this,
0:48:29 I re-listened to the book Procrastination on Purpose
0:48:31 by Rory Vaden.
0:48:33 He also has a good TED Talk on it
0:48:35 and he kind of talks about the focus funnel
0:48:38 and he does go over, I don’t know about you
0:48:39 but sometimes I’ll teach something
0:48:40 or talk about something
0:48:43 and I almost forget where I learned it from.
0:48:44 So as I listened to that again,
0:48:48 I was like, oh yeah, he talked about the eliminate,
0:48:51 the automate, the delegate
0:48:54 and then he goes as far as to procrastinate on purpose,
0:48:58 right, if it’s not a priority now and then concentrate.
0:48:59 That was a pretty good read, I thought.
0:49:03 He talks about ROTI return on time invested,
0:49:06 which is a lot about what we’ve been talking about
0:49:09 and how that’s like the best investment you can make
0:49:11 is working on your business instead of just in your business
0:49:14 and it’ll pay you back dividends for time to come.
0:49:15 – Yeah, return on time.
0:49:17 You start off doing the 10 dollar an hour things
0:49:19 and you graduate to the $100 an hour things
0:49:22 and then hopefully you graduate to the $1,000 an hour things
0:49:23 and I like this.
0:49:25 I have not read this book Procrastination on Purpose
0:49:28 but we’ll link that up in the show notes for this episode.
0:49:30 You can just follow the link in the episode description
0:49:32 and I’ll get right over there.
0:49:33 Millionaire University.
0:49:35 Justin Williams, thank you so much for joining me
0:49:37 and be sure to check out the podcast,
0:49:40 check out the website at millionaireuniversity.com.
0:49:44 Any parting words of guidance before we wrap up here?
0:49:46 – I would just say take action, that’s what everyone says
0:49:50 but take action and then after you’ve taken action,
0:49:52 don’t just keep taking action.
0:49:55 Start to think about how can I use leverage?
0:49:56 How can I grow?
0:50:00 How can I implement the things that we’re talking about today
0:50:01 so that you can really get to the point
0:50:04 where you’re making more money with less time
0:50:06 and once again, I want that to sound like cheesy
0:50:09 or like woo-woo or fake, but you really can.
0:50:11 The same things that helped us get to the point
0:50:13 where we were flipping 100 houses a year,
0:50:15 also gave us more time because if we were the bottleneck,
0:50:16 if we were the one doing it,
0:50:18 there was no way that would have happened,
0:50:20 same with our education business.
0:50:22 So just take action but then start thinking about
0:50:25 how can I take that next level of action
0:50:27 that will give me to that next level
0:50:29 and just keep living a life on purpose?
0:50:32 – Yeah, it’s such an interesting distinction between
0:50:33 how can I make extra money, right?
0:50:35 I’m gonna go solve this problem
0:50:37 and then flipping the switch to be like,
0:50:39 how can I be a business owner?
0:50:43 And trying to fire yourself from the doing stuff
0:50:46 and promoting yourself to the CEO role
0:50:47 and it’s a different set of questions.
0:50:49 I think it’s really interesting stuff.
0:50:52 So again, MillionaireUniversity.com, check out the podcast.
0:50:53 I was an early guest on there.
0:50:56 Brian was my interviewer for that one.
0:50:58 I think that’s a good one to start with.
0:51:01 But big thanks to Justin for sharing his insight.
0:51:02 Big thanks to our sponsors
0:51:05 for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:51:08 As always, you can hit up SideHussellNation.com/deals
0:51:11 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:51:13 Thank you for supporting the advertisers
0:51:14 that support the show.
0:51:15 That is it for me.
0:51:17 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:51:18 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:51:21 the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
0:51:22 So fire off that text message.
0:51:24 Hey, I think you’ll like this episode.
0:51:25 Hey, I think you should check this out.
0:51:27 Until next time, let’s go out there
0:51:28 and make something happen.
0:51:29 And I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:51:31 of the Side Hustle Show.
0:51:32 Hustle on.