0:00:06 Today’s episode is sponsored in part by Robinhood Airbnb Shopify RocketMoney NordVPN and Indeed.
0:00:12 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment receiving a 3% IRA match on retirement
0:00:20 contributions. To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold.
0:00:25 Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier with Airbnb’s new co-host network. Mind yourself
0:00:32 a co-host at airbnb.com/host. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your
0:00:39 business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/profiting. RocketMoney is a personal
0:00:44 finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending,
0:00:51 and helps lower your bills. Sign up for free at rocketmoney.com/profiting. You need NordVPN to
0:00:56 keep your credit card details safe, whether you’re shopping on international websites or using
0:01:02 public Wi-Fi. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com/profiting.
0:01:08 Attract interview and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit
0:01:13 at indeed.com/profiting. Terms and conditions apply. As always, you can find all of our incredible
0:01:21 deals in the show notes or at youngerprofiting.com/deals. What is our life razor? What is our
0:01:27 identity defining rule for our life? A razor is a rule of thumb that allows you to cut through the
0:01:31 noise. During the course of your life, the things that you prioritize or focus on will change.
0:01:37 You can reinvent your story at any point in your life. You can’t plan entrepreneurship. The whole
0:01:43 idea of creating a business plan is a joke. You have to go do the thing. Every single time I thought
0:01:48 I was too late, it was still early. And all it took was for me to actually lean into the thing
0:01:52 and just do it consistently every single day. If somebody wants to learn more about how to buy
0:01:58 companies, what do you suggest? I would definitely go and… What is your idea around mentorship
0:02:04 and community with other entrepreneurs? I think networking is dead. What you are really seeking
0:02:27 to do is when you end up getting the best returns. Young Improperters, welcome back to the show.
0:02:32 And today we’ve got an exciting live interview in store for you. And before we get started,
0:02:37 I want to ask you a question. What if building a wealthy life had nothing to do with the amount
0:02:42 of money that you have in your bank account? Well, today, Sahil Bloom is going to tell us
0:02:48 exactly why that’s true. And he’s on admission to define what it means to exactly have a wealthy
0:02:54 life. Sahil is an entrepreneur, investor, and the author of the Curiosity Chronicles newsletter,
0:02:59 as well as the author of the new book, The Five Types of Wealth. In today’s conversation,
0:03:04 we’re going to uncover Sahil’s entrepreneurship journey. We’re going to discuss his business
0:03:09 ecosystem and how he makes his money. And then we’re going to go on to discuss the five dimensions
0:03:13 of wealth besides financial wealth. You guys are going to want to hear this, especially
0:03:18 all my entrepreneurs out there. So without further delay, here’s my awesome conversation with Sahil
0:03:23 Bloom. Sahil, welcome to Young Improfiting Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I’m
0:03:27 thrilled to do it. I’m so excited for this conversation. I love doing in-person interviews,
0:03:31 and I feel like we have so much to talk about. So the first thing I want to ask you, I’m just
0:03:37 going to jump right into it. When I was reading your book, I learned about your life razor,
0:03:42 and you’ve got a personal life razor. So first, I wanted to ask you what is a life razor and tell
0:03:51 us what your personal life razor is. This concept, I came upon originally via the founder and first
0:03:58 CEO of Netflix, a man named Mark Randolph, maybe familiar with. Mark posted this really interesting
0:04:02 thing, I think this is probably about two years ago now, where he talked about the fact that
0:04:06 throughout his entire technology career, extraordinarily successful technology career,
0:04:11 made oodles and oodles of money, built these amazing businesses. The thing that he was most proud about
0:04:17 was that he had this rule that every single Tuesday at 5 p.m., he would leave work and go out on a
0:04:22 date with his wife. He says that what he’s most proud about from his career is not that he founded
0:04:26 these incredible companies or made all this money, but that he managed to do that while
0:04:31 having an incredible marriage and having kids who love him and like spending time with him.
0:04:38 It struck me when I first read that the idea of leaving at 5 p.m. to have dinner with his wife
0:04:44 was not really about any one date or about the dinner itself. It was about what it implied about
0:04:49 who he was as a person, about the boundaries that he was creating, about what his priorities were in
0:04:53 life, and about the ripple effects that that idea created into other areas of his life.
0:04:59 That was where I came to this term in talking to Mark about a life razor. A razor, if you’re not
0:05:06 familiar with it, is the idea of a single point of focus, a rule of thumb that allows you to cut
0:05:11 through the noise when you’re making a decision. For Mark Randolph, he was the type of person
0:05:16 who left work to have a 5 p.m. dinner with his wife. That was his life razor. It was a single
0:05:21 point of focus that, no matter what, allowed him to cut through the noise in his life. Anytime
0:05:28 something came up, he could identify himself as that type of person. If an interesting career
0:05:34 opportunity came up, he could say, “No, I’m the type of person who leaves work at 5 p.m. to have
0:05:39 dinner with my wife.” That is an important part of who he is as a human being. That is something
0:05:46 that we all need to think about in our own lives. What is our life razor? What is our identity defining
0:05:53 rule for our life? Mine is, “I will coach my son’s sports teams.” It’s a similar concept to Mark
0:06:01 Randolph’s in that I define myself as the type of person who is a husband, a father, a community
0:06:07 member, a leader in all of these ways. Being able to say, “I am the type of person who coaches my
0:06:12 son’s sports teams” means certain things about who I am and how I interact with the world around me.
0:06:16 It means that I’ll prioritize family ahead of certain financial opportunities. It means I’ll
0:06:22 be willing to make sacrifices to prioritize those in my life. I encourage other people to think about
0:06:26 that. I walk through an exercise in the book to identify your own, how to come to your own life
0:06:31 razor. It’s a really important way to cut through the noise and make decisions in your life.
0:06:37 Razor comes from shaving off time and saving time with decisions is so important. Do you have
0:06:43 multiple life razors? I feel like I heard you once say that you like to wake up and do hard
0:06:50 things. That’s another life razor of yours. The idea of your own life, of having these different
0:06:55 seasons of your life is a really important concept to me. That concept says that basically,
0:07:00 during the course of your life, the things that you prioritize or focus on will change.
0:07:05 During your 20s and 30s, that is a great time for you to focus on building a financial foundation
0:07:09 for the rest of your life. As I talk about some of the concepts of the book of building a life of
0:07:13 wealth across all of these different areas, that doesn’t mean that your life is going to be perfectly
0:07:18 in balance across these five areas throughout your life. What it means is that you need to think
0:07:23 about all of them as you consider building. But what you’re prioritizing, what you are really
0:07:29 focusing on during any one season will change. What that means is that your life razor may change
0:07:33 across these different periods of your life. Because when you are 20 or when you’re in your
0:07:38 early 30s and you’re really honing in on doing hard things, building a business, building a
0:07:43 financial foundation for your life, it might be something like waking up and doing hard things.
0:07:47 That’s your life razor. Then as you have kids and as you are prioritizing family,
0:07:51 it may become something more like Mark Randolph that you leave to have dinner.
0:07:59 So now you wake up at 4.30 a.m. You take cold plunges. You are a big self-improvement influencer.
0:08:03 You help people improve their lives. But I learned that when you were younger,
0:08:07 you were actually quite insecure as a kid. And so first, I want to ask you,
0:08:11 where do you think those insecurities came from when you were growing up? And what were you like?
0:08:20 I think a lot about the fact that the stories we tell ourselves about who we are are so important
0:08:26 to how we interact with the world. And especially those original stories that you tell yourself
0:08:30 about the type of person you are and your capabilities and your competencies. Those
0:08:34 stories are very hard to break. And so if it is a negative story that you are starting to tell
0:08:39 yourself, you will look around the world and you’ll find all of the information that confirms that
0:08:44 story. And if there’s things that refute that story, you won’t see it. You’ll reject it. It’s
0:08:48 called the narrative fallacy. Humans are storytelling creatures. So we look to confirm
0:08:53 the stories that we understand. I had told myself from a young age, a story that I wasn’t smart.
0:09:00 I have an older sister who was extraordinarily high achieving academically. And at the first sign
0:09:06 of me not being able to easily do that same thing that she was doing, I started telling myself,
0:09:10 I’m not the smart one. I need to find a different thing. I need to be athletic or something else,
0:09:16 but I’m not smart. That bred within me an insecurity that was very, very hard to crack.
0:09:19 And no matter how much my parents told me that it wasn’t true, no matter how much my sister told
0:09:25 me it wasn’t true or teachers, it was the story I told myself and I was not willing to break it.
0:09:31 And it took, frankly, like 30 years for me to finally reject those original stories and truly
0:09:38 create the space for introspection to actually break some of those original stories I had told
0:09:44 myself. So you ended up becoming a collegiate baseball player. I think you went to Stanford,
0:09:50 is that right? And you went into finance afterwards. So talk to us about your early career
0:09:56 and what led you to end up making a big change. The early years of my career were very much spent,
0:10:02 head down, focused on building a financial and sort of experience and knowledge foundation for
0:10:09 the rest of my life. I loved my early years in finance. I went and worked at a private equity
0:10:13 fund, which for those that aren’t familiar, it’s a fund that raises a pool of capital and you go
0:10:18 and buy and sell companies and you make money along the way. It was an extraordinary learning
0:10:22 experience. And when I give advice to young people, what I say is when you are young,
0:10:28 time is the only thing that you have. It is your only asset. You don’t have networks, you don’t
0:10:32 have money, you don’t have experience, you don’t have knowledge, you don’t have any of those things.
0:10:37 And so as a result, you need to take the time that you do have and trade it for all of those things.
0:10:41 Once you’ve done that, then the whole world has opened up to you because now you have networks
0:10:45 and money and experience and you can deploy those into the most interesting, asymmetric,
0:10:50 high upside opportunities. But until you do that trade, you wouldn’t know how to work smart.
0:10:54 When young people say, “Oh, I’m going to work smart, not hard,” you can’t really do that until
0:10:59 you work hard because you don’t have the assets to work smart. So my early career years, I was just
0:11:05 working 80 to 100 hours a week and that was very much the trading time for all of these other things
0:11:12 phase of my life. And it was fantastic for three or four years. And what happened to me was I started
0:11:18 to make money. I started to convince myself that my happiness and fulfillment was on the other side
0:11:24 of some arbitrary financial milestone. Basically, I started marching down the path of, “I’ll be really
0:11:28 happy when I make my first million dollars,” and then I did that. And then it was, “I’ll be really
0:11:33 happy when I make three million dollars,” and then I did that. And I was not happy. None of the things
0:11:38 that I thought were going to magically appear in my life had materialized. It was just this feeling
0:11:44 of disappear and reappear into the horizon. And along that journey, a lot of areas of my life
0:11:49 that are more important had started to crumble. And that was my relationships had started to really
0:11:55 be strained with my parents, with my sister, my wife and I were struggling to conceive at the time.
0:12:00 My health, I was drinking seven nights a week, unfortunately. Mental and physical health were
0:12:05 really suffering. So all of these other areas of my life were starting to deteriorate while on the
0:12:09 surface. You would have said I was winning the game. I was getting promoted. I was making money.
0:12:15 Things were going well from the outside looking in. And I just started to think as I approached turning
0:12:22 30 that if that was what winning the game felt like, I had to be playing the wrong game. And I knew
0:12:26 I needed to make a change. And so it was just figuring out what was that change.
0:12:30 When did you start your newsletter? Was that a side hustle while you were in corporate?
0:12:39 No, I started that the month I left my job. That was in May of 2021. I launched my newsletter.
0:12:44 Originally, I launched it just as a way to send the things I was writing on Twitter, which I had
0:12:49 been writing for about a year at that time. From May of 2020, I started on Twitter because I was
0:12:54 stuck at home. Like a lot of people I was like, during lockdowns, I was stuck there. And I started
0:12:59 writing on Twitter. And then I started sending those out to people via emails in May of 2021.
0:13:03 And that was really the spark of, okay, maybe there are businesses that you can build off of
0:13:07 this stuff, which I’m sure we’ll start talking about entrepreneurship. But that was really
0:13:12 the first lever of all of that. Yeah. And your newsletter is huge now. So how many subscribers
0:13:16 do you have? Now it reaches a little over 800,000 people twice a week, which is such a huge newsletter.
0:13:22 So it’s such an awesome business that you created doing that. So then you ended up wanting to make
0:13:28 a big change. I learned that you wanted to move closer to your parents and you ended up pivoting
0:13:35 your career at the same time. So talk to us about that. I had a single conversation in May of 2021
0:13:40 that really changed the course of my life. I went out for a drink with an old friend. This was at
0:13:45 the time in my life when I had started to question whether I was playing the wrong game. And he
0:13:50 asked how I was doing. And I said, it had started to get difficult being so far away from my parents
0:13:55 who were on the East Coast. Started to see them getting older and being so far away. And he asked
0:14:01 how old they were. And I said mid-60s. And he asked, how many times do you see them? And I said,
0:14:06 maybe once a year. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you’re going to see your parents
0:14:13 15 more times before they die. And I just remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut.
0:14:17 I mean, the idea that the amount of time you have left with the people you love most in the
0:14:23 world is so finite and countable that you can put it onto a few hands is just terrifying.
0:14:28 And so the next day, I told my wife that I thought we needed to make a change. And within 45 days,
0:14:33 I had left my job. We had sold our house in California and moved across the country to be
0:14:38 closer to both of our sets of parents. And in hindsight, that was really the spark that sent
0:14:43 me on this entire journey that has culminated in even being here and talking about this in the book,
0:14:48 because there was a key realization there that a wealthy life may involve money,
0:14:54 but really, it is built around these other things. And no job will ever pay you enough
0:14:59 to be far away from people you love. So true. That was the single greatest change that we ever
0:15:04 made was picking up and moving across the country to live closer to them. And now that number 15
0:15:08 times before they die is in the hundreds. Like, I see my parents multiple times a month now,
0:15:13 they’re a huge part of my son’s life, all of these things. And so that was the spark that
0:15:16 really ended up snowballing into all of these things that have happened.
0:15:21 I have to say, when I was studying you, that was one of the most impactful stories that I read about.
0:15:27 And it really made me think about my decisions because I’m thinking about moving to Austin or
0:15:32 Miami to save on taxes, my whole family’s in New Jersey, New York. And at the end of the day,
0:15:37 do I care about saving $100,000 a year? Or do I want to spend time with my family and just hearing
0:15:41 that from you, you know, 15 times left to see your parents? When you think about it that way,
0:15:48 it’s really eye-opening. And it also reminded me of the fact that my father died during COVID.
0:15:56 It’s okay. But I was really happy that when I was 28, I made the decision to go get my MBA.
0:16:02 And it was in New Jersey, my MBA school. And so I decided that I was going to live with my parents.
0:16:05 And I remember my boyfriend, my friends, they were all like, “Why are you going to live with
0:16:11 your parents that’s so lame?” And honestly, I’m so thankful. I spent two years living in my parents’
0:16:17 house because I got to reconnect with them at 28 years old. And in your book, you were saying how
0:16:22 in your 20s, you end up not seeing your parents. I was like a stranger to my parents by the time
0:16:27 I was 28 because from 18 to whatever, I was just never home. And then I got to reconnect with them.
0:16:31 And then it just made me always want to come home because I felt closer to them.
0:16:38 And then my father passed away like two years later. And so it was definitely the right move.
0:16:43 I don’t regret it, one bit. And I encourage everybody who’s young out there right now,
0:16:47 if you have an opportunity to go spend more time with your parents, go live closer to them,
0:16:52 even live with them if they want you to, to save money and grind and do whatever you need to,
0:16:54 I would say go for it.
0:16:59 Yeah. And look, it all starts with awareness. The fact that you are aware enough to make that
0:17:03 change is a huge thing. We don’t think about time. Like when you’re young,
0:17:07 time is not a thing that ever crosses your mind. You don’t think about the fact that time is your
0:17:11 most precious asset. It is literally the only thing that matters. And when you’re young,
0:17:15 you’re literally a time billionaire. You have billions of seconds left in your life.
0:17:16 I love that time billionaire.
0:17:20 That is the only thing that you truly have. And we don’t relate to ourselves that way.
0:17:25 We don’t actually treat time as that precious asset. And so then we don’t think about it at all
0:17:29 until it’s the only thing that we think about, but then it’s too late, then you’re dead.
0:17:36 And what happens is that life ends up being filled with laders. You spend time saying,
0:17:39 “Oh, I’ll spend more time with my kids later. I’ll spend more time with my parents later.
0:17:44 I’ll spend more time on my health later. I’ll find my purpose later. I’ll pursue my passions later.”
0:17:48 And the sad thing is that later just becomes another word for never,
0:17:51 because those things are not going to exist in the same way later.
0:17:55 Your kids are not going to be five years old later. Your parents are going to be dead later.
0:18:00 Your health won’t be there later. You won’t just magically find your passions or purpose later.
0:18:04 So unless you build those things into your life now, design them into your life now,
0:18:07 you’re just going to regret it later.
0:18:12 So speaking of regrets and getting started, one of the things that I hear you say pretty often
0:18:17 is that it’s never too late to start. And you often kick yourself for not starting certain
0:18:22 things early enough. So talk to us about that. And to all the young people out there listening,
0:18:28 what do you want to tell them? Every single time I thought I was too late,
0:18:33 it was still early. Every single time, over and over and over again, I convinced myself
0:18:37 that I wasn’t going to do something because it’s too late. Oh, you can’t start a YouTube channel
0:18:42 now. Oh, you can’t start on Twitter now. All these things, it’s too late. Every single time,
0:18:46 it was still early. And all it took was for me to actually lean into the thing and just do it
0:18:51 consistently every single day. You are the only one that determines that it’s too late and it’s
0:18:55 made up in your own mind. The reality is if you have energy for something and you are willing
0:19:01 to put energy towards it on a consistent basis to get better at it over time, you’re never too late.
0:19:06 There’s no such thing. You can reinvent your story at any point in your life if you decide to.
0:19:11 But what you do need to do is put the energy into it every single day. It can’t be like a,
0:19:16 oh yeah, I’m half in, half out. You have to go all in on these things. And if you do, it’s never
0:19:21 too late. I totally agree. I remember when I started my podcast almost eight years ago now,
0:19:28 I think seven years ago now, everybody told me I was too old to start a podcast. I don’t even know
0:19:33 what that means. How old were you at the time? I was like, 28 was what, I was like, you’re too old
0:19:39 to start a podcast. I was like, okay. And it turned out I was super early. So, you know, it’s all in
0:19:44 your head to your point. You got to put in the energy. Let’s stick on energy for a bit. Why is
0:19:49 energy so important as an entrepreneur and how can we protect our energy? I think the difference
0:19:54 between time and energy is one of the most important distinctions to understand as an
0:19:59 entrepreneur or just as a human. And the insight here is that we think about time and how we’re
0:20:05 allocating time, but really the way that you allocate your energy is what matters. Energy is
0:20:09 the finite resource that we need to be aware of because you may have 24 hours in a day or you
0:20:15 may have 16 hours while you’re awake. The reality is that you don’t have that much energy. You’re
0:20:20 not just even energy throughout the day. And the things that you deploy your energy into,
0:20:24 especially the things that create energy for you, where you feel really drawn to them,
0:20:29 those are the things that create the incredible 10x, 100x, 1000x outcomes in your life.
0:20:34 We all know this in our own experience. The times when we have generated incredible outputs and
0:20:39 incredible results, it has always been when we felt pulled towards something, when we were able
0:20:44 to put our head down and not even realized time was just disappearing. You lost yourself in the
0:20:49 thing you were doing. We need to tune into that more because when you lean into things that are
0:20:55 creating energy in your life in that way, relationships or business endeavors, that is
0:20:59 what creates the most incredible outcomes in your life. And so in the book, actually, I have an
0:21:04 exercise that I love people to walk through to actually identify the things that are creating
0:21:10 energy in your life. I call it the energy calendar. And all you have to do is at the end of a weekday,
0:21:14 take a Monday, at the end of a Monday, color code your calendar according to whether the
0:21:19 activity created energy, meaning you felt lifted up by it, market green. It was neutral,
0:21:24 market yellow. And if it was draining, if you felt physically drained by it, market red.
0:21:29 At the end of a week, if you do that every day, you have a very clear picture of the types of
0:21:34 activities and the types of people who are creating energy in your life versus draining energy in your
0:21:40 life. After you have that insight, you can slowly reposition your calendar to be focused more on
0:21:46 energy creators than energy drainers. That will change your entire life because you’ll be spending
0:21:51 more of your time on things that are lifting you up on things you are pulled towards and less on
0:21:55 things that are killing you. That will lead to better outcomes. It’ll lead to better relationships.
0:22:00 It’ll lead to an improved business. All of the outcomes we want in life will follow as a result
0:22:04 of leaning into those energy creators. And for the entrepreneurs out there, we’ve got control
0:22:10 over it. And if you’re still working a nine to five, what do you suggest? You have more control
0:22:14 than you think, even in a nine to five. I’ll give you an example. I did that exercise for the first
0:22:20 time when I was still working my 80 to 100 hour week finance job. The biggest energy drainer I found
0:22:26 on my calendar was phone calls and Zoom meetings. And while I could not just start saying no to
0:22:32 those, I was an associate at the time, like I was still pretty junior, I could slightly tweak the
0:22:38 way that I was doing them in order to make them more energy creating by doing some of them while
0:22:43 out on a walk. So what I noticed about myself was that sitting at my desk doing a phone call or a
0:22:49 Zoom is about as energy draining as I can get. But doing that same phone call or Zoom while walking
0:22:54 was very energy creating for me. I love being outside. I’m more present because you can’t
0:22:58 multitask when you’re on a phone call on a walk. And so as a result, I actually show up better on
0:23:02 those calls. Like you and I were doing one, you would notice I felt more present and I feel much
0:23:07 better after doing them. So I took half of my calls, the ones that I was able to, and put them
0:23:13 into walking calls. Now suddenly at the end of a week, I feel way, way different. I feel way more
0:23:17 uplifted by the entire week. I show up better on those calls, the outcomes are better, that compounds
0:23:23 in your life. The insight there is, that’s one example of a way where you would say, “Oh, I have
0:23:27 no control. I’m working a nine to five and normal job.” But you have more control than you think.
0:23:32 You just have to be willing to scrutinize a little bit some of the activities and ask,
0:23:36 “Can I do these a little bit differently than I currently am?” Yeah, I love that. Energy calendar
0:23:42 is such a great hack. Okay, so let’s talk about your entrepreneurship. You have a media business
0:23:47 and I want to stick there for a little bit. Start it off with this newsletter. Talk to us
0:23:52 about how you first became an entrepreneur. What was the first thing you did as an entrepreneur?
0:23:57 I laugh about this a lot because my most entrepreneurial friends, and I’m lucky to have
0:24:02 some incredible friends out there, when you go ask them what their journey with entrepreneurship was,
0:24:06 most of them will be like, “Well, when I was eight years old, I started this lemonade stand.”
0:24:10 And then it was a lemonade enterprise across multiple times. I just dicked around when I was
0:24:14 a kid. I played baseball. I was just screwing around. I didn’t have an entrepreneurial bone
0:24:19 in my body. My dad is a professor. The least entrepreneurial track you can follow. And so
0:24:24 we didn’t have it in our blood in any way. So when I was thinking about leaving my old job
0:24:29 to pursue this entrepreneurial path, that was weird. I didn’t have a supportive family around
0:24:33 that telling me, “Oh, you should definitely do that.” My wife was very supportive, but
0:24:37 to be honest, I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t even know what entrepreneurship really
0:24:43 meant. And if I can do it, anyone can do it because I was not wired for this. It wasn’t like
0:24:53 I was a great risk taker. I’m very risk averse. The insight I have around this is you can’t plan
0:24:56 entrepreneurship. The whole idea in business school, you went to business school. The whole
0:25:00 idea of creating a business plan is sort of a joke. You don’t need to create a business plan
0:25:05 to go launch your first thing. You need to create evidence. You need to create evidence that you
0:25:10 can do it, which is just done by taking a little bit of action. You have to go and do the thing.
0:25:13 You can’t talk about the thing or brainstorm the thing. You have to go do the thing.
0:25:19 And that was all I did. I started writing the newsletter in May of 2021. And there was no
0:25:25 monetization plan. There was no strategy to it. I just started writing it. And by the end of that
0:25:31 month, I had 15,000 or so subscribers. And I sent a text to a founder of a startup that I knew
0:25:36 and asked if he would want to sponsor one. And he said, sure. And I think he gave me $500 to
0:25:40 put out the first sponsorship. And that was this little bit of evidence that I created that I was
0:25:46 like, oh, man, okay, so I’m sending one a week and it’s making me $500. What if I send two a week?
0:25:51 Now it’s going to be $1,000 a week, $4,000 a month. I was like, man, if I scale it,
0:25:56 if I grow the new, like I started to see a path. And I don’t know if you know the ancient poet,
0:26:04 Rumi once said, as you start to walk on the way, the way appears. As you start to walk on the way,
0:26:09 the way appears. And I love that because what it reminds you, especially as an entrepreneur,
0:26:14 is that you cannot figure it out standing still. You start to walk and then the path becomes clear.
0:26:19 And so that was really the story for me. With anything that I’ve done, it’s been,
0:26:24 I start moving, I start doing something, whatever bad version of it looks like. And then the answer
0:26:30 start to become clear to me. Yeah. So it goes back to following your energy. You followed your energy,
0:26:35 you found the evidence, you tried to replicate what was working, and then you felt more comfortable,
0:26:40 you probably got more motivated because you saw some success and it gave you some more motivation
0:26:46 to keep going and going. Motivation is a byproduct of movement. Yeah. Your energy that you put out
0:26:51 into the world literally creates it. So the whole idea of you need to be motivated to act is actually
0:26:55 the inverse. You need to act and then you become motivated. So you mentioned that you’re not
0:27:00 naturally an entrepreneur. We’re opposites. I’m the type of person who is creating businesses at
0:27:06 four years old. I’m jealous. I’m jealous. I’ve always been an entrepreneur. So not being naturally
0:27:11 an entrepreneur, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people listening in that want to be entrepreneurs,
0:27:16 but feel like I just have always worked a regular job. I’ve never even thought about being an
0:27:21 entrepreneur, but I want the freedom. What do you think the hardest obstacles are going to be for
0:27:26 them and how did you overcome your hardest obstacles? The single greatest obstacle I have
0:27:31 faced and that I think most people face when they dive into the entrepreneurial journey is
0:27:37 they overcomplicate what it means to be an entrepreneur. All it means is that you are going
0:27:42 to solve problems for people. You are going to create value for people via solving their problems,
0:27:49 and you will get paid. You will receive value in return. Overcomplicating that, thinking about
0:27:53 all of these things around structure and business plans and all of these big questions that you
0:27:58 can get bombarded by on social media is actually losing sight of the most important thing. The
0:28:02 most important thing is just figure out how to create value for other people. If you do that,
0:28:07 you’ll receive value in return. All it comes down to is that it is identify a problem,
0:28:12 create a solution, and then scale that solution. The more scalable the solution,
0:28:17 the more money you will make. If you distill it down to that and deconstruct it down to that,
0:28:22 it actually feels quite simple because then it’s one of those three things that you need to be
0:28:25 thinking about. When you’re starting and you’re trying to find your journey and what you might
0:28:30 be interested in, all you need to focus on is identifying problems. Literally take out a notepad,
0:28:34 walk around for a week, and just write down every problem you perceive of the people around you
0:28:38 that you’re interacting with. That’s literally the first place I would start if I wanted to go
0:28:42 create a new business and I didn’t know what to do. Just identify problems. Then once you’ve done
0:28:47 that, start to think about solutions. How might you be able to solve that problem for that person,
0:28:51 whether it’s with a service or a product or something you can put out? Then think about
0:28:54 how you would scale that solution. How would you reach more people? How would you make the solution
0:28:58 more scalable through the internet, through social, through whatever it is, whatever means?
0:29:04 But that’s what it all comes down to. That is what stalls a lot of people is they overcomplicate
0:29:10 it so then they do nothing. Once you have your business idea, it’s all about focus and consistency,
0:29:15 putting in the reps, getting the work done. When you work a nine to five, you’ve got a boss telling
0:29:21 you it’s used with priorities, spend your time this way. You know what to do. You might even be
0:29:25 taking over a job from somebody else who does exactly what you need to do. As an entrepreneur,
0:29:31 you need to create your day job. How do you recommend that people go about that when they’re
0:29:35 used to so much structure? You have to create your own structure. I think what you’ve hit on
0:29:40 there is actually the biggest challenge for most people when they actually do start, when they do
0:29:45 take the leap and they’re diving into it is you’ve known historically exactly what you had to do at
0:29:49 all times of the day. You knew what meetings, what work you had to do, what emails you had to send,
0:29:55 and now no one is telling you what to do. I think the first activity I would go through is to actually
0:30:00 create a clear routine and structure to your day. I do that straight into the calendar because I
0:30:06 think that your energy will really flow with what you put onto your calendar. Your priorities are
0:30:11 really just an outflow from your calendar. Keith Roboy, the famous investor said, “Don’t tell me
0:30:16 your priorities. Show me your calendar.” I love that quote because it’s true. You can’t say your
0:30:20 priorities are building a business and then your calendar is a whole bunch of busy work meetings.
0:30:23 You need to have time on their structure to actually work on the things that matter.
0:30:29 Structure your day. Become a disciplined routine person for a period of time where you
0:30:33 really break down your day according to the type of activity that you’re going to be doing during
0:30:38 that window. It’s called time blocking. It works really well. It doesn’t need to be down to the
0:30:44 minute, but have windows of time. If you know, for example, that you are very creative early in the
0:30:49 morning, wake up and have a block of time for creative work. If part of your business is going
0:30:54 to be creating content to drive the top of funnel like it is for us and you’re most creative in the
0:30:57 morning, you should probably have a window of time in the morning when you are focused on creating
0:31:02 content, creating things that are going to drive that top of funnel. Have a window of time when
0:31:07 you’re going to be processing emails and doing basic management tasks like invoices or meetings,
0:31:14 whatever those might be. But have real structure on a daily basis and then you won’t feel that
0:31:20 anxiety and aimlessness that naturally happens. I’ve written this before that stress and anxiety
0:31:28 feed on idleness. When you take action, when you have movement, you literally starve them of the
0:31:33 oxygen they need to breathe. When in doubt, you just have to act. You have to have that clear
0:31:38 structure so that you know you’re doing something throughout the day. I feel like time blocking
0:31:45 on your calendar is just such a life hack. I’ve now scaled this to my team. You’re probably familiar
0:31:51 with Leila Hermosi. She’s got this thing called Monday Hour and Chill. Monday Hour, One Hour and
0:31:56 Chill or something like this. They have an SOP online if you guys want to find it. Basically,
0:32:01 it’s like for one hour a week, you sit down with your team and everybody time blocks their calendar,
0:32:07 color codes it based on the activity and then shares it with their manager. It helps me see,
0:32:13 okay, why are you working on this for three hours? You shouldn’t do this or you need to take a break.
0:32:18 You have no breaks in your day or you’ve got too many calls and it just helps you see what
0:32:22 everybody is working on because to your point, you can have to do lists and project management
0:32:27 tools, but if what’s not on your calendar doesn’t reflect that, you’re not getting what you need
0:32:32 to do done. I feel like it’s such a great hack that you brought that up. Yeah, that works well.
0:32:36 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
0:32:43 Yeah, fam, do you ever wonder why some businesses do incredible and skyrocket with their sales while
0:32:48 others just flounder and barely survive? Well, I can think of some common denominators of the
0:32:54 successful businesses that grow sales well beyond their forecast such as Feastables by Mr. Beast or
0:33:00 even a legacy business like Mattel. They both have a desirable product. They both have a strong brand
0:33:06 identity and influencer driven marketing, which is the future. But sometimes the thing that goes
0:33:10 overlooked and that’s not talked about often enough is the magic that happens behind the
0:33:16 scenes with the business behind the business. The technology that makes selling and buying
0:33:23 easy for everyone. And for millions of businesses, that business that’s powering them is Shopify.
0:33:30 Nobody does selling better than Shopify. It’s the home of the number one checkout on the planet.
0:33:36 Shopify is not so secret. Secret is shop pay, which boosts conversions up to 50% with payment
0:33:44 plans. That means way fewer cards go abandoned and way more sales get done. So if you’re into
0:33:48 growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to keep up and sell wherever
0:33:54 your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web in your retail store, on your social media feed
0:34:01 and everywhere in between Shopify’s got you covered. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify.
0:34:06 Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that Mr. Beast, Mattel and yours truly use.
0:34:12 Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting. That’s all lower case.
0:34:18 Go to shopify.com/profiting to upgrade your selling today, shopify.com/profiting.
0:34:24 Yeah, fam. When I first started this podcast, believe it or not, I had an all volunteer team
0:34:30 to help me out. But as my business took off, I needed to hire a lot of new people and fast.
0:34:34 It soon became overwhelming. I had to sort through piles and piles of resumes,
0:34:40 conduct countless interviews. You know how it goes. And then I discovered the easiest way
0:34:45 to hire the right people quickly. And that’s indeed. When it comes to hiring, indeed is all you
0:34:51 need. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you
0:34:56 stand out and hire fast. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your
0:35:02 relevant candidates. So you can reach the people that you want faster. And it makes a huge difference.
0:35:08 According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications
0:35:14 than non-sponsored jobs. One of the things that I love about Indeed is that it makes hiring all
0:35:18 in one place so easy because they don’t have to waste time sifting through candidates who aren’t
0:35:23 good fits for my company. Plus with Indeed sponsored jobs, there’s no monthly subscriptions,
0:35:29 no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed? In the minute I’ve
0:35:34 been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide.
0:35:39 There’s no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this
0:35:46 show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/profiting.
0:35:51 Just go to indeed.com/profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
0:35:58 on this podcast. Indeed.com/profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
0:36:03 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment, receiving a 3% IRA match
0:36:09 on retirement contributions. The privileges of the very privileged are no longer exclusive.
0:36:14 With Robinhood Gold, your annual IRA contributions are boosted by 3%. Plus,
0:36:19 you also get 4% APY on your cash and non-retirement accounts. That’s over 8 times the national
0:36:24 savings average. The perks of the high net worth are now available for any net worth.
0:36:29 The new gold standard is here with Robinhood Gold. To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA
0:36:36 contributions, sign up at Robinhood.com/Gold. Investing involves risk. 3% match requires
0:36:42 Robinhood Gold at $5 per month for one year from the first match. Must keep funds in IRA for five
0:36:48 years. Go to Robinhood.com/Boost. Over 8 times the national average savings account interest rate
0:36:55 claim is based on data from the FDIC as of November 18, 2024. Robinhood Financial LLC,
0:36:59 member SIPC. Gold membership is offered by Robinhood Gold LLC.
0:37:07 So it’s the start of the year right now. This is going to come out in February,
0:37:11 but we’re talking now in January. And I learned that you have this annual tradition
0:37:17 of asking people for advice. So talk to us about this tradition. How did you get started with it?
0:37:23 And how has it evolved over time? I have always been someone that is rather reflective. I try to
0:37:30 accumulate insights and wisdom from people who I feel have a lot of it. And I’ve been very fortunate
0:37:35 to have a number of mentors and people in my life, many of whom are significantly older,
0:37:39 some of whom are just a little bit older, but who have unique experiences and have
0:37:45 taken the plunge in different ways in their life. And I like to, on an annual basis,
0:37:50 create a reflection exercise where I go and ask them, what advice would they give to their younger
0:37:56 self at whatever age I’m at? I kind of started when I was around 30. And I asked a whole bunch of
0:38:00 people, what advice they would give to their 30 year old self? What do they wish they knew then
0:38:09 that they know now? And it ends up creating this incredible map of how to live a life and a beautiful
0:38:15 life. And so I share some of it in the book in this upfront section of, especially from this one
0:38:21 year on my 30th birthday when I did it with all people that were 80 and 90 years old, actually
0:38:29 like 100 year old. And it created this incredible clear vision in my mind of what matters and what
0:38:33 doesn’t. The things that I was stressing over and how I need to just be able to look through those
0:38:37 and see the bigger picture, see the real true north of what we are all trying to drive towards.
0:38:40 And how did it end up influencing you to write this book?
0:38:47 It was a huge part of creating this idea of the five types of wealth, of thinking about the fact
0:38:52 that money was an enabler to a lot of the ends, but it was not an end in and of itself. In other
0:38:58 words, money is a tool, but not the goal. And it brought to light the fact that there were really
0:39:04 four things that kept coming up for everyone. It was time, people, purpose, and health. Those
0:39:08 were the four things that everyone really focused on. And again, money was an enabler to some of
0:39:14 those, but it wasn’t really an end in and of itself. And that ended up creating and being
0:39:19 the early structure and skeleton of this idea of the five types of wealth. Financial wealth is one
0:39:24 of the five types of wealth that is very important. But these other four of time wealth, of social
0:39:29 wealth and of mental wealth and physical wealth are how that all got rounded out into this new
0:39:35 scoreboard for your life. I want to stick on one of the types of wealth, time wealth, because I
0:39:39 feel like that’s one that I haven’t really heard of. And so I’d love for you to break that down
0:39:46 and how do we build it? Time wealth is the freedom to choose. It is all about having the freedom to
0:39:51 choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, when you trade it for
0:39:56 other things. And it all starts with what we were talking about earlier, which is an awareness of
0:40:02 time as your most precious asset. I often ask young people, would you trade lives with Warren
0:40:08 Buffett? Think about it. Would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He’s worth 130 billion dollars.
0:40:12 He has access to anyone in the world. He flies around on Boeing business jets. He has houses
0:40:16 all over the place. He reads and learns for a living, but you wouldn’t trade lives with him
0:40:22 because he’s 95 years old. You would never trade the time you have left for 130 billion dollars.
0:40:29 So you know your time has incalculable value. And yet on a daily basis, how much time are you
0:40:34 really wasting? Scrolling on TikTok, flipping around on your phone, comparing yourself to other
0:40:39 people, worrying about little busy work tasks, urgent things that don’t really matter, that
0:40:44 aren’t driving you forward. We all do that. And so creating an awareness of just how important
0:40:49 your time is, just how precious it is, is what allows you to then say, okay, I’m going to take
0:40:54 this really seriously. I’m going to deploy my precious attention and energy into the few things
0:40:58 and into the few relationships that really matter, that are really creating those outcomes in my life
0:41:03 that I want. That is what time wealth is all about. It’s about deploying your attention and
0:41:08 energy into the few things that really move you forward that really matter. I love that. Is there
0:41:13 any sort of activity that you recommend to figure out what our priorities are? Yeah, there’s a few.
0:41:17 And a few are shared in the book. The energy calendar is a great start for figuring out
0:41:22 where am I getting my energy from so that I can focus in. There’s another one that actually comes
0:41:28 from Warren Buffett, where he asks you to create a list of your 25 priorities in life. Go write down
0:41:34 all of your priorities. And then he says, okay, now you have to circle only five of them. And you
0:41:38 have to go and try to figure out on this long list of things you’ve just written down, what are the
0:41:43 five things that actually matter? So now you have a list of five things circled and 20 things that
0:41:48 you didn’t circle. And what he says is the five things you circled are your true priorities.
0:41:53 Those are the things that you need to put energy towards. The other 20 things are your avoid at
0:41:59 all costs list. Because every single ounce or energy that you put towards those is just a
0:42:03 distraction. All of those things are just a distraction pulling you away from the things
0:42:07 that are really going to drive the outcomes, the things that really matter. And so it’s a critical
0:42:12 exercise for thinking about that exact thing of what does really matter and where do I need to
0:42:17 avoid the distraction in life? Because that’s where we really get lost on these journeys is we get
0:42:22 pulled by the little shiny object that’s floating over here when the thing right in front of us is
0:42:25 the thing we need to hammer in on. I love that because it just goes to show that there’s things
0:42:31 that you might want to do that seem really exciting that you would love to do if you had the time,
0:42:35 but you’ve got to be able to say no, even if it’s something that you kind of want to do.
0:42:42 And as entrepreneurs and as ambitious people in particular, we have a bad, bad tendency to take
0:42:46 on too much. And when you take on too much, you aren’t actually getting more done, you’re getting
0:42:50 less done because you’re pulling yourself away from the thing that’s really going to create the
0:42:55 incredible outcomes. And so there’s a moment in every entrepreneur’s life, anyone who has achieved
0:43:00 extraordinary success when they realized that actually they figured out what the one thing was
0:43:05 that really mattered and they were going to put all their energy into that one thing and just keep
0:43:10 chipping away at it over a long period of time. The whole idea of like, I’m going to have 15 income
0:43:15 streams is a little bit of a farce because every single one of those is like you’re going to have
0:43:19 a little bit of attention on each one of those rather than, okay, I’m going to have a lot of
0:43:25 attention on two or three things that could be the really big one. Social wealth is another one of
0:43:31 your elements when it comes to the new scoreboard that you’re putting out in your book. And as
0:43:34 entrepreneurs, we can really suffer with our relationships. I remember when I first started
0:43:40 my company at media, I worked for four years straight. I lost a lot of close friendships,
0:43:45 we’re friends again, but I wasn’t talking to my best friends. I was with somebody for 10 years
0:43:52 and we broke up and like just a lot of relationship shambles that I had to take a lot of time to like
0:43:57 proactively rebuild in the last two years, right? And I had to basically start from scratch.
0:44:02 So talk to us about relationships and in the context of entrepreneurship, what we need to keep
0:44:09 in mind. There are going to be long periods of loneliness on your entrepreneurial journey.
0:44:17 And that’s okay. That is a necessary cost of entry to the personal transformation that you
0:44:23 are trying to create in your life because literally what happens is you start changing and growing
0:44:28 as you were with the things you were building, the things you were focusing on and your environment
0:44:33 that you previously existed in has not changed. And so there comes to a moment when it feels like
0:44:37 you are actually speaking a different language than the people that you used to be close to.
0:44:41 And they will not understand the way you were living and the things you were doing.
0:44:46 And they may belittle you, they may tell you to be realistic, they may laugh at your ambitions.
0:44:52 Taylor Swift once said, “The worst people in the world are the ones who make you feel bad for
0:44:56 being excited about something.” I think about that all the time. There are people that have
0:45:02 done that on your journey. We know who they are. So that period of loneliness before you have
0:45:06 attracted new people, because you haven’t quite gotten to the place where you’re going, you haven’t
0:45:12 attracted your new environment yet, is long and sometimes really painful. But understanding that
0:45:18 it is the cost of entry for building the life you want allows you to feel empowered on that journey.
0:45:22 Understand this is normal. This loneliness is actually a normal part of my entrepreneurial
0:45:27 journey. That’s an important mindset shift that I have had to have and that I’ve shared with people
0:45:33 along this path. All of that being said, the understanding that your life has seasons is
0:45:37 critical here. You actually articulated it really well in describing your own journey, which is
0:45:42 you went through this really focused part, this focused season as you were building the foundation
0:45:46 for the rest of your life, building the foundation with your business, which you’ve now done. And
0:45:50 you are now in a season where you can rekindle these new relationships and build this incredible
0:45:56 social wealth. That is exactly how life works. Your 20s, early 30s, maybe into your 40s are
0:46:01 really spent building this foundation. And that’s okay for social wealth to exist on the
0:46:06 back burner during those times. It doesn’t mean you want it to completely shut off. It would still
0:46:12 be great for you to be able to cultivate family relationships or one or two close friends during
0:46:16 those periods, still send the text, still do the one annual trip, do the little thing, the tiny
0:46:21 little investment that compounds, but you don’t need it to be the primary focus of your life
0:46:27 at all times. The important realization there is that the exact same way we know that investing
0:46:32 a little bit in financial wealth compounds into the future, the exact same principle holds for
0:46:37 social wealth. You can invest a little bit in social wealth and still have it compound into
0:46:42 the future. The little text that you send, the one coffee that you get with the old friend,
0:46:47 the birthday with the parents, all of those things are tiny little time investments that really do
0:46:52 keep those relationships flowing in a healthy way into the future. You don’t need to be the
0:46:56 social butterfly life of the party during those years when you’re head down. It’s just true.
0:47:01 And that’s okay. You can feel liberated by that idea of these seasons coming and going.
0:47:06 One of the things that really impresses me about you is your huge network, right?
0:47:11 We were talking offline before this interview. You just had dinner with Cody Sanchez yesterday
0:47:17 and you always meet all these awesome people. What is your idea around mentorship and community
0:47:24 with other entrepreneurs? I think the networking is dead. The concept of networking implies a
0:47:31 transaction that is not conducive to building genuine relationships. What you are really seeking
0:47:38 to do is build genuine connection with people. If you go into a new interaction with someone,
0:47:43 trying to get something out of it, you will never build a real relationship with that person.
0:47:47 Especially if that person is ahead of you. If it’s someone that has achieved the things that
0:47:52 you’re looking to achieve because everyone can pick up on that. It is very blindingly obvious
0:47:55 when you interact with someone that just has their hand out. They just want something from you.
0:47:59 Now you experienced that on the other end of it. We’ve been that way in our own lives.
0:48:06 It is such an important idea to say as you go into an interaction with someone for the first time,
0:48:10 how would I interact with this person if I assumed that I was going to know them for the next 50
0:48:15 years? Think about that in your mind. How would I interact with them? I would not be transactional
0:48:18 with that person because I’m going to have to spend time with them for the next 50 years. I will
0:48:24 probably really start to listen. I will really lean into understanding who they are as a person,
0:48:28 creating a map in my mind of the type of things they’re excited about, the values that they hold.
0:48:33 Those would be the things I would focus on. I would try to create value for them so that they felt
0:48:37 connected to me in some way. Approaching relationships in that way where you are really
0:48:43 genuinely seeking to give with no expectation of return. That is when you end up getting the
0:48:48 best returns, which is the funny paradox of relationships. When you give with no expectation
0:48:53 of return, you get the best returns in life. I have found that time and time again. Some of my
0:49:01 mentors that have provided extraordinary value in my life are people that I didn’t even know
0:49:05 they were impressive when we first met. I just wanted to be friends with different people. I
0:49:10 was trying to learn from the people that were around me and it ended up sparking these incredible
0:49:15 relationships because there was no networking in mind. It had nothing to do with a transaction.
0:49:19 It was just I genuinely want to get to know people. Yeah, and like you said, people can feel
0:49:24 that, right? Immediately, especially people who are very successful because again, it’s very lonely
0:49:29 at the top. They are used to just having people come with a handout. If you want to stand out to
0:49:33 those people and if you want to build those connections, you have to be the opposite. You
0:49:37 have to be the person that comes with the thing. You’re providing the value. It’s the same as
0:49:43 when people are trying to do cold outreach to get a job or to connect with someone. Come with
0:49:50 some value and it’s not that hard to figure out how to create value. If I was trying to meet you,
0:49:56 I could probably spend an hour doing some research about you and identifying a couple of areas that
0:50:02 I know from you talking about it on podcasts or trying to focus on and build in your business.
0:50:06 I could do a little bit of research, figure that out, and then I could try to work on
0:50:10 some sort of proposal or solution to that problem that you were facing. Maybe you’re saying you’re
0:50:15 trying to build your podcast network and you’re trying to reach new potential podcasters. I could
0:50:19 reach out to some of them, create some sort of connection there, recognize that I could make
0:50:24 an intro and now I would come to you with some level of value. You would take me so much more
0:50:28 seriously. Then if I just came being like, “Hey, I’d love to meet you. Pick your brain,” right?
0:50:35 Totally. Jordan Harbinger was my early podcast mentor and when I first started podcasting,
0:50:40 he was like top of the food chain. He knew everything about growing pot. He knew so much
0:50:46 more than me and I really wanted him to be my mentor. I remember I would just every once in a
0:50:50 while message him on Instagram. He came on my podcast. We kind of stayed in touch and I would
0:50:56 just give him growth strategies. Hey, I just tested this new platform and I got paid this much per
0:51:01 subscriber and it retained this much and I would just give him all this little information. Then
0:51:05 finally, he was just like, “You really know what you’re talking about and you keep giving me really
0:51:13 good advice. Let’s hop on a call.” Then one day, he was like, “Hala, my scriptwriter bailed on me.
0:51:16 I think you’re really good at this stuff. Can you write me my ad?” I was like, “Sure,
0:51:20 I’ll write you your ad.” I didn’t say, “Oh, it’s going to cost this much. I need this or that.”
0:51:26 I just did it. Sent it to him before I knew it. We were taking calls. He was my mentor and that
0:51:32 was that. We’re the closest industry friends. You really do, like you said, have to try to provide
0:51:38 some value and try to actually connect with people. Yeah. That is something that in hindsight,
0:51:44 people will call you lucky. You’re so lucky for having Jordan Harbinger be your mentor and be a
0:51:49 connection that you have. There’s no luck involved in that. You were hustling for a year. I say this.
0:51:55 I’m like, “You are one year of focus away from people calling you lucky.” You putting in focus
0:52:01 daily effort for a year led to the luck that other people see on the surface. It’s just the truth.
0:52:04 You continue to put forward the effort. You continue to put forward the hustle, the energy,
0:52:10 the motion, and now the lucky thing happens. Yeah. But then when you do secure the mentor,
0:52:14 it can help you speed along so far. Because then once you trusted me and was like, “Okay,
0:52:18 you help me. I’m going to start giving you some insights of how to rank your podcast,
0:52:23 how to do this, how to do that, really helped me.” You talk about something called a brain trust.
0:52:32 What’s that? Similar idea. Basically, the idea is that mentorship is a fading or dying concept.
0:52:36 It’s funny. We just talked about mentorship. I would argue what we’re really talking about is
0:52:42 more the brain trust. A mentor, in the traditional sense of the word, is the idea that you would
0:52:48 identify a single person who was going to be your mentor. They were going to help you navigate all
0:52:51 of the challenges in your professional career that you were going to face, and maybe your
0:52:58 personal life as well. That is a crazy concept because it implies that there is a single person
0:53:03 out there who has all of the answers that can help you navigate the terrain that you are facing,
0:53:09 that their map will match your terrain. It implies a really high level of commitment on
0:53:14 that person’s part to be willing to do that. It sounds like a big burden. If you go ask someone,
0:53:18 “Will you be my mentor?” Oh, that sounds like a lot of work, especially if it’s someone high
0:53:24 up that has a demanding job or demanding path. I think of the concept of the brain trust as
0:53:31 the 21st century alternative to the 20th century idea of mentorship. A brain trust is a group of
0:53:37 people from different backgrounds and experience sets that you can call upon for advice or guidance
0:53:41 about different areas of your life. They are people that have ideally domain expertise in
0:53:46 these different areas that you can turn to at different inflection points in your own life
0:53:50 and journey. The origin of the concept is from Pixar. They do a brain trust for every movie
0:53:54 that they are creating. It’s a bunch of people that aren’t involved in the creation of the movie,
0:53:59 that pressure test and help make the movie better along the way. They make sure that the storyline
0:54:04 is good and that they’re tugging on hard strings the right way, all of those things. You can develop
0:54:08 a brain trust for your own life. It doesn’t need to be formal. No one needs to know they’re even
0:54:13 a part of your brain trust, but they’re people that you go and call upon whenever you’re facing
0:54:18 whatever challenge, who have that unique set of insights, who have that perspective and who are
0:54:23 willing to tell you the truth, give you the hard feedback along the way. You know what’s funny?
0:54:28 Psychologically, people love to give advice. If you don’t overstep this, if you’re not asking
0:54:33 somebody a question every day, but it’s somebody that you respect, that you want to have in your
0:54:38 life and you’re asking them some advice, you connect with them and that actually probably
0:54:43 strengthens your bond over time and makes sure that your network is warm and all the people that
0:54:50 you want to keep warm stay warm. It’s an easy way to naturally stay in touch with people that you
0:54:54 want to stay in touch with. Someone that you have connected with once or twice and you want to continue
0:54:59 to foster the connection, the relationship, the same way you did with Jordan, it’s an easy way to
0:55:05 say, “Hey, this thing came up. Have you ever faced anything like this?” You create a natural
0:55:10 touch point and it could end up being like once a quarter or once every six months. It doesn’t need
0:55:15 to be so often because they’re not your only person. You can turn to other people along the way,
0:55:20 but it’s been a great practice for me and the people that I would consider to be on my brain
0:55:25 trust, I’ve just gotten so much value from them over the years. Let’s move on to financial wealth.
0:55:28 So, we talked about your business ecosystem a little bit. You’ve got a media business,
0:55:33 you’ve got a holding company, you’ve got a fund, right? So, talk to us about the different elements
0:55:39 of your business and how you prioritize them. So, the media business I think of is existing
0:55:44 sort of over the top of everything. It’s a little bit of a halo in that it provides value to all
0:55:49 the other businesses. It is a self-sustaining business that is profitable and as we all know,
0:55:54 media businesses can be very profitable and very high margin. The media business functionally
0:55:59 today is newsletter and book. There are a few other things that exist in there and there will
0:56:04 be more things that get added there post the book, but it’s really just been those to date.
0:56:12 The holding company is a number of partially owned businesses that have CEOs that are running them.
0:56:16 And these are businesses that I am involved in at a board or strategic level, but not on an
0:56:21 operational level on a day-to-day basis. The entire idea there was to create businesses around
0:56:27 things that I could naturally drive value to via my media platform. So, things that I have
0:56:32 sort of a unique set of experiences in that I can naturally drive leads towards. So, it would be
0:56:39 like newsletter businesses or design development businesses, other things within those spaces.
0:56:46 Those all have profitable financial profiles. So, none of them have been like money losing
0:56:51 venture-like investments. They’re all profitable from day one, largely bootstrapped. A couple of
0:56:55 them have been things that we’ve seeded, but generally speaking, bootstrapped and they shoot
0:56:59 off distributions every single month and their cash flow straight up back to the holding company,
0:57:03 which is great because then you can reinvest across different things. And then the venture fund,
0:57:08 I raised that in 2022. I had worked in the world of investing for the first seven years of my career,
0:57:13 mostly later stage private equity stuff. This is all early stage technology companies. So,
0:57:19 I raised a $10 million venture fund from a whole bunch of LPs and investors and have been investing
0:57:24 out of that, have made 50 or so investments and will likely raise a second fund here in the next
0:57:32 year or so. We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hey, YapBam. I’ve been
0:57:37 counting down the days to Valentine’s Day because on that day, I’ll be speaking at Funnel Hacking
0:57:44 Live alongside Tony Robbins. I’ll be speaking next to Tony Robbins, YapBam. It is such a big deal for
0:57:50 me and I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect red dress. It took a while to find exactly what I was
0:57:57 looking for, but I finally found the perfect dress and it was in my size on an overseas website.
0:58:02 Everything looked good. The pricing was good and then I went back to checkout and the price
0:58:10 was different. It was jacked up and then I remembered NordVPN. NordVPN for the rescue.
0:58:16 I could just switch servers, refresh the page and just like that, the price dropped. Turns out,
0:58:21 retailers can use your browsing history or location to jack up the prices,
0:58:27 but NordVPN keeps them on track. When it comes to finding the perfect outfit,
0:58:32 I don’t settle. I want designer. I want the best of the best. And if you’re like me, you need
0:58:37 NordVPN to keep your credit card details safe, whether you’re shopping on international websites
0:58:43 or using public Wi-Fi. Don’t let sneaky pricing tactics or security risks mess with your online
0:58:49 shopping experience. Get the best deal and get what you want. To get the best discount off your
0:58:55 NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com/profit. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year
0:59:01 plan. There’s no risk with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode
0:59:10 description box and that’s NordVPN.com/profit. I really want to dig deep on the holding company.
0:59:15 It’s really interesting to me. Something that I learned that you do is you tend to use vendors
0:59:20 that you actually use that you might like actually pay. You try to turn those cost
0:59:24 centers into profit centers. And I just thought that was so smart. So walk us through how you
0:59:30 actually invest in these companies. Do they exist already? Are you creating these companies?
0:59:35 What’s the structure typically look like? I remember coming across the case study of Amazon
0:59:43 web services in maybe like 2018, 2019. And for those who aren’t familiar with that story, basically,
0:59:48 Bezos, as they were building Amazon, the bookstore and the e-commerce platform,
0:59:55 had to build an extraordinarily large platform of compute power basically on the back end to
1:00:00 power the entire e-commerce business that they were doing. And so they built this whole back
1:00:04 end thing that was a huge cost center for the business. And what they realized was that there
1:00:11 were a lot of people, as the technology ecosystem grew, that needed that type of enormous compute
1:00:16 power. And so they started renting it out, effectively charging people to use this
1:00:21 extraordinary compute power that they had created. That became an enormous profit center for Amazon
1:00:26 now in the hundreds of billions of dollars. That is a separate company called Amazon Web Services.
1:00:32 That idea sparked in me whether there was a micro, micro, micro version of that same thing
1:00:36 that I could adopt in my own world, where things I was spending money on on an ongoing
1:00:40 monthly basis as a creator and as a business person could be things that I could turn into
1:00:46 profit centers for my business. So turn my cost centers into profit centers. And that has been
1:00:51 an overarching mental model of how we’ve approached our different businesses that we’ve launched.
1:00:56 The first example of that was a newsletter business where I was paying a team to manage
1:01:01 the back end of my newsletter. So I decided all I want to do is write the newsletter. I don’t want
1:01:05 to deal with lead magnets. I don’t want to deal with paid ads. I don’t want to deal with segmentation,
1:01:09 funnels, any of those things. I’m just not good at that and I don’t really care. So I’m going to pay
1:01:14 someone to do it. That team turned out to be really good at doing that. And so I went and partnered
1:01:19 with them and a friend of mine who is a founder of a business called Kit, which is a newsletter
1:01:25 sending platform. Yeah, ConvertKit. And we partnered to launch this as a business. I continue to pay
1:01:30 them every single month to do the back end of my newsletter. And now it is also a massively
1:01:35 profitable business. I shouldn’t say massively. It is a very profitable business where we serve
1:01:39 the back end of newsletters for some of the largest newsletter writers out there in the world,
1:01:44 turning a cost center for me into a profit center for me. Similar versions of that across
1:01:50 different areas of my business have materialized over the last two or three years. Content agency
1:01:55 business, design development business, video businesses, embedded talent business that if
1:02:00 you need to hire offshore talent into your business will do that. And it has become a really cool way
1:02:06 of coming up with the ideas for the things because I can see them on my own P&L. I’m looking at my
1:02:10 P&L. I can see what I’m spending money on and thinking, okay, is there a way where I can actually
1:02:15 own the business rather than just having this be a cash outflow every month? Yeah. I feel like
1:02:20 entrepreneurs that come from the private equity space like you and Cody Sanchez, you’ve got such
1:02:26 an advantage over everyone because you really know how to buy companies. So just walk us through
1:02:32 the process of how you’re actually doing this. Are you just investing in these companies or just
1:02:36 buying these companies? Are you creating some of these companies? It could be any of those. So it
1:02:41 depends where you catch them in the life cycle. In the case of the newsletter one, that was a
1:02:45 brand new business. That was a guy I was friends with who was just doing this on the back end for
1:02:50 me as a consultant. And he was just an independent freelance consultant doing it. Got it. And I said,
1:02:55 we should productize this and make it into a service and a real business. And so we founded
1:03:00 that from the ground up. There are examples now of businesses like the design development business
1:03:06 where you can make an investment both in cash and then also in the form of your platform. So
1:03:11 when I say that, what I mean is I can drive a lot of leads to these businesses via my platform.
1:03:16 That is a form of investment in this person’s business that they’ve already started. And so
1:03:22 you can do a combination kind of structure of cash plus my energy, my platform, audience,
1:03:26 distribution, if you will, that you can kind of invest in it. The third way that you could
1:03:31 do it is just go buy a business. And Cody obviously does that. I will do more of that
1:03:35 in the years to come at the holding company level that will sort of use holding company cash flows
1:03:40 to go buy bigger businesses. And we can raise quite easily probably anything up to like $50
1:03:46 million to go and buy a bigger business if we saw something that was really exciting where we felt
1:03:51 like we could really bring unique value add to the table. If somebody wants to learn more about
1:03:56 how to buy companies, what do you suggest? There’s a lot of resources out there now for learning
1:04:03 about buying businesses. I would definitely go and read a bunch of the books that exist about
1:04:07 private equity on like the more traditional versions of private equity. There’s a great
1:04:12 book called King of Capital about Steve Schwartzman, who was kind of the first person within private
1:04:16 equity world that really built Blackstone, which is a huge private equity fund. Cody obviously
1:04:21 has a new book out about buying smaller businesses and sort of main street businesses, which is a
1:04:26 great resource. But there’s plenty of free online resources that you can go and look at and find
1:04:32 about investing in buying businesses. And again, the thing to think about is are there creative
1:04:38 ways that you can do it? And if you have a platform or if you have built some unique distribution or
1:04:43 some unique strategic perspective, or if you have a unique SEO capability or unique paid
1:04:49 marketing capability, there’s a way where you can actually invest via your energy rather than cash.
1:04:55 So the art of the deal, if you will, is really about identifying what is that unique edge that
1:05:01 you might have to make this business bigger than it is today, where you can invest that into the
1:05:06 business in addition to or instead of any upfront capital. And I love that you take the approach
1:05:10 of being a customer first, so you really can see how well the company performs if they’re really good
1:05:16 and then you invest. I just think that’s so smart. It opened my eyes of like, oh, maybe I can invest
1:05:21 in XYZ vendor. Yeah, I mean, you probably have, I bet there are 10 businesses that you’ll think of
1:05:25 over the next month now that you have this in mind that you’ll see and say, oh, I could probably
1:05:30 actually like invest in this or be a part of it and drive business into it. That as just an idea
1:05:37 comes from Peter Lynch is this very famous Wall Street legend who wrote this book, I think it’s
1:05:42 called One Up on Wall Street. One of the best investing books of all time. It’s sort of a legendary
1:05:47 one. And one of his best investments of his career was he invested in Haynes, the underwear company,
1:05:52 and he invested in it because his wife came home from CVS or something and she had picked up a pair
1:05:58 of Keynes pantyhose and she was raving about it to him. And so he was like, oh, I’m going to go pick
1:06:02 up some shares of that company. She was raving about this like tiny little company and he ended up
1:06:07 making like an a hundred X return on this public market investment. And so the idea there was
1:06:12 like invest in things you love. If you uniquely love an experience or a product, it’s probably
1:06:16 going to be something that ends up being profitable. So speaking of investments, you’ve got this barbell
1:06:21 strategy when it comes to your investments. Can you tell us about that? The barbell strategy
1:06:27 as a model says that on a risk spectrum, if you think about the most risky things on one end and
1:06:32 the least risky things on the other end, that you want to be weighted on both of those ends.
1:06:36 So I basically want to have a handful of things that are highly risky. And for me, the highly
1:06:41 risky things are investments in myself and in my own businesses. And then on the other end,
1:06:47 it’s going to be super boring, basic stuff. For me, stock market index funds. I don’t want
1:06:52 things in between that I don’t really understand. My whole goal is I really only want to invest in
1:06:57 things that I can really touch and feel and understand. And so the riskiest stuff is always
1:07:02 going to be creating your own businesses. And the fun thing about that as risky is that you
1:07:08 actually control it to an extent versus me investing in, let’s take another really risky
1:07:13 thing like crypto. I don’t control the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever. I don’t control.
1:07:18 And so yes, it might be a great investment, but I have no ability to influence the outcomes.
1:07:21 I have a high degree of ability to influence the outcomes of my own businesses,
1:07:26 things that I am actually driving. And so I would prefer to invest my time and energy into
1:07:31 things that I have some degree of controller over. And if I don’t have a degree of control over them,
1:07:36 I want them to be super safe and basic and boring. And so that’s why for me, the best
1:07:40 plan is that it’s the personal things that I do that I have control over on the riskier end.
1:07:45 And then I’m putting money in the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund on the other side.
1:07:51 So let’s go back to your five types of wealth. There’s a lot of balancing that needs to go on.
1:07:57 And I learned that you used to drink a lot. You decided to cut back on your drinking,
1:08:03 but you’re not totally cutting drinking off. You still actually drink in some social situations.
1:08:10 So you are basically balancing your physical wealth with your social wealth and doing trade-offs
1:08:16 sometimes. So maybe talk to us about some examples of trade-offs between the different
1:08:24 types and how we can think about balance. All of life is about deciding the price you are willing
1:08:32 to pay for the things that you want. And what I would argue is that to perfectly optimize
1:08:38 any one area of this, you would need to completely shut off every other area.
1:08:43 And some people do that. And most people that do that do it to perfectly optimize financial wealth
1:08:48 at the expense of every other area of their life. They lose all their relationships. Their health
1:08:53 goes to hell. They have no clarity of mind. They’re stressed all the time. They have no time,
1:08:58 freedom, and they make a lot of money, but an extraordinarily high cost to these other areas.
1:09:03 What I try to find is what is the place where I’m able to build across all of these things,
1:09:08 where I am able to build great big businesses, but not at the expense of not being able to spend
1:09:13 time with my wife and son, not at the expense of not having time to work on my body or take care
1:09:18 of myself or have the freedom to take my son in the pool at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday. I’ve written
1:09:23 that before that the wealthiest I ever feel is when I’m able to take my son swimming at 1 p.m.
1:09:28 on a Wednesday. Because it implies that I have the freedom to do that, that I have a business
1:09:33 that’s big enough, that’s working where I’m able to have free time. I don’t have calls all of a
1:09:37 sudden in the middle of the day. I can go do that. You are always going to face these trade-offs,
1:09:42 and what you need to decide is what trade-offs are you willing to make. Not the ones that people
1:09:46 tell you you should make, not the ones that the normal path says are the ones that matter,
1:09:52 but what you truly care about. If all you care about is building an enormous business,
1:09:55 that’s great. I’m happy for you, and you should build your life around that.
1:09:59 But the point in the book and the point that I’m trying to get across with everything that I do
1:10:05 is you get to decide. You get to define what matters to you in your own life, and you have to
1:10:10 ask these questions, and then take action to build your life around those things. It’s no one else’s
1:10:16 job to tell you what matters to you. You get to decide, and that I think is the really important
1:10:21 critical message in all of this. It’s just I want people to identify and really think about
1:10:24 what matters to them, and then go build their life around those things.
1:10:29 I love this conversation. The last thing I want to touch on on your book is mental wealth.
1:10:33 I know that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with their mental health. Actually, on average,
1:10:39 we’re more likely to suffer from depression, loneliness, ADHD. There’s a lot of mental health
1:10:44 issues in entrepreneurship. It’s just an uncertain, risky thing to do, and it’s very stressful.
1:10:49 So what advice do you have for entrepreneurs in terms of building their mental wealth?
1:10:55 Create more space in your life. Create deliberate practices around space.
1:11:00 The idea of space comes from Victor Frankel, who is the famous Holocaust survivor, the author of
1:11:06 Man’s Search for Meaning, and he has a quote where he says that our power exists in the space
1:11:12 that we can create between stimulus and response. Entrepreneurs in particular live in this constant
1:11:17 loop where stimulus is coming in and they’re immediately responding to it at all hours of the
1:11:22 day, at all times. That is a very dangerous place to be because it makes you reactive.
1:11:26 Everything in your life becomes a reaction. There’s just things coming in and you’re immediately
1:11:32 shooting things out. You find incredible power and presence if you can just create a little bit of
1:11:38 space between the two. That can be found through a five-minute walk in between meetings or a 15-minute
1:11:44 walk after lunch or taking one day per month to just zoom out and go journal for a few hours at a
1:11:50 coffee shop or just making sure you give yourself one evening a week where you’re not going to work.
1:11:56 Creating a little bit of space in your life has dramatic, dramatic effects, but you have to be
1:12:00 deliberate in how you structure it into your life. It can’t be something that’s floating in the back
1:12:05 of your mind. To the point earlier on time blocking and structuring, put it on your calendar. Actually
1:12:10 have a window where you’re going to create space. You cannot be on your phone scrolling during that
1:12:16 time. It needs to be truly shut off and just give yourself that freedom to just turn off.
1:12:20 For a short window of time and you’ll experience incredible benefits.
1:12:22 How do you do that? What’s your schedule like?
1:12:26 Five-minute walks in between meetings. If you have a bunch of 30-minute meetings on your calendar,
1:12:31 make them all 25 minutes. This is actually scientifically proven. Microsoft did a study
1:12:36 where they put EEGs on people’s heads and had them go through a set of back-to-back meetings
1:12:41 or a set of meetings where they had a five-minute break in between each. The people that went through
1:12:47 back-to-back meetings saw stress build up steadily across the meetings and performance deteriorated
1:12:51 across the meetings. The people that had a five-minute break, zero stress build up and
1:12:57 consistent performance. It makes an enormous difference with a tiny intervention. 25-minute
1:13:02 meetings instead of 30. Honestly, all that happens is you remove the banter about the weather that
1:13:05 meetings start with. You just can get rid of that. You’ll be more efficient. You’ll get it done.
1:13:10 The second practice, which I walk through in the book, is once a month or once a quarter
1:13:16 at a minimum. Do what I call a think day, where you give yourself a four- to eight-hour window
1:13:22 to step out of your normal ecosystem, go into a new environment, whether it’s at a coffee shop,
1:13:28 or rent an Airbnb, or go to a hotel, or go to a spa, do something. Bring a journal, bring a pen,
1:13:32 and walk through. I have eight question prompts in the book. Walk through some of those question
1:13:37 prompts that force you to zoom out and just look at the bigger picture of the things you’re doing,
1:13:42 professionally and personally. That will naturally create this incredible ritual for
1:13:46 space in your life. If you do the micro level of the five-minute breaks and if you do the macro
1:13:50 level of a think day once a month or once a quarter, you’ll get a ton of benefit.
1:13:57 I find when I step back and do a strategy day, you call it a think day, I call it a strategy day,
1:14:02 my stress and anxiety as an entrepreneur just melts away. Suddenly, it’s like all these open
1:14:06 loops, all these things should I do, this should I do that. You make decisions, you have your road
1:14:11 map and you could just action on it instead of worrying about things so much. I’ve always thought
1:14:17 that you have stress when there’s a gap between your present reality and your expectations,
1:14:23 but in particular, when you don’t have a plan to bridge that gap. That strategy day or that
1:14:28 think day allows you to create that plan for bridging the gap and then it just becomes about
1:14:32 execution. You’re an entrepreneur. You know you can execute. You know you can show up and be
1:14:37 disciplined and do the thing every day, do the hard thing. It just allows you to create enough
1:14:41 space to create that plan and the stress, as you said, melts away. This is a perfect way to close
1:14:46 out. We can bring it up right from the beginning. We were talking about waking up and doing hard
1:14:51 things. Talk to us about your morning routine and how it structures your day. Yeah, I’m an early
1:14:57 riser. I have a 90-year-old man schedule. I go to bed at about 8, 15, 8, 30 and I wake up at 4.
1:15:02 I love the early morning hours because I’m partially because it’s the only time of day I get
1:15:06 when there’s no stimulus. There’s nothing coming in. My kid’s not awake yet. I have a 2.5-year-old.
1:15:11 He’s not up. You’re not getting emails. No one’s texting you at 4 in the morning. I get this two or
1:15:16 three-hour block just to myself. I first thing out of bed, get into the cold plunge. I have no idea
1:15:21 if it has any health benefits, but it definitely has cognitive benefits for me. I get an incredible
1:15:25 energy boost from it and definitely a mood improvement from it. The dopamine, I think,
1:15:31 really does impact me. I get out of the cold plunge and I’m usually at my desk by about 4.45
1:15:36 or so. I always do a writing block to start the day. That’s when I feel most creative. This book
1:15:41 got written from about 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. over the course of two or three years. After that,
1:15:46 my son is awake. I would do breakfast with the whole family and then I go into my workouts from
1:15:51 somewhere between 9.30 and 11.30. Amazing. It’s working really well for you.
1:15:56 We’ll see. Okay. In my show with two questions, I ask all my guests. It doesn’t have to be
1:16:00 related to what we talked about today. What is one actionable thing our young and
1:16:03 profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?
1:16:12 I would create an evening three to five-minute journaling ritual. This reflection, I think,
1:16:17 really helps you make more money, allowing yourself to just pause and reflect a bit.
1:16:22 And the thing I do is I call it my one, one, one method. You write down one win from the day.
1:16:25 That’s something that you feel good about that went well. One point of stress,
1:16:29 tension, or anxiety, something that was bugging you that you need to get off your brain and onto
1:16:33 the paper. And then one point of gratitude, something you felt grateful for during the day.
1:16:38 It takes three to five minutes max and it forces you to recognize a win and just feel
1:16:41 better before going to bed at the end of the day.
1:16:45 I love that. What would you say your secret to profiting in life is and it doesn’t have to be
1:16:52 financial? My relationship with my wife and son, for sure. I get more joy out of seeing him grow
1:16:56 and the relationship that he and my wife have than just about anything else in the world.
1:17:00 That’s so sweet. And where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:17:06 Well, you can find the book anywhere. Books are sold and more information at the5typesofwealth.com.
1:17:09 And then I’m at Sahil Bloom on every major platform.
1:17:13 Awesome. Sahil, it was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting
1:17:24 podcast. Thank you. Wow. So many thoughtful insights from Sahil. And I especially enjoyed
1:17:30 how he thinks about time. Time is truly your most precious asset. But when you’re young,
1:17:36 it’s also your only real asset. It can take years and years to accumulate money,
1:17:42 connections and knowledge. And there’s no good shortcuts to acquiring those things.
1:17:46 But when you have time in your back pocket and if you hustle and you work hard,
1:17:52 you can trade time for all those things and more. You also have the freedom to choose how you will
1:17:57 deploy your time. And if you want to make the most out of that freedom, then lean into what
1:18:04 energizes you. Like Sahil put it, motivation is a byproduct of movement. In other words,
1:18:09 you need to act first and then you will become motivated. And the energy you put into the world
1:18:16 now is what will fuel your future efforts. Even if you’re rich in time and filled with energy,
1:18:21 the entrepreneur’s path can still be an extremely lonely one. You may lose friendships,
1:18:27 squander relationships, burn bridges and more bad things may happen for a while. Believe me,
1:18:33 I’ve been there. But in the big picture, over time, you’re building a foundation for your business
1:18:38 and for the rest of your life. Just be aware of the tradeoffs and what you’re compromising
1:18:45 along the way. And remember, hustle is just for a season. Don’t put off spending time with your
1:18:52 parents, your loved ones or friends for too long. Part of what makes time so precious is an understanding
1:18:57 of its limits. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you
1:19:02 listen and learn to profit from this conversation with Sahil and consider it time well spent,
1:19:07 then please share the wealth and this episode with somebody who will find value in it too.
1:19:12 And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something, then why not drop us a 5-star review
1:19:19 on Apple Podcasts. I love to read your reviews. I read reviews every single day and nothing helps
1:19:24 us reach more people than a good review from you. And if you’re a new listener of Young and Profiting,
1:19:29 make sure that you subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. If you want to watch
1:19:34 us on video, you can find all of our episodes up on there. I’ve been doing a lot more in-person
1:19:39 interviews with Mel Robbins. This interview with Sahil was in person, so go check out
1:19:45 all of our awesome videos on YouTube. You can also find me on Instagram @yappwithhala or LinkedIn
1:19:50 by searching my name. It’s @halataha. And of course, I gotta shout out my YAP team. I’ve got rock
1:19:56 stars at YAP Media. Everybody is hustling and working so hard. You guys are the best. This is
1:20:12 your host, Halataha, a.k.a. The Podcast Princess, signing off.
1:20:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:06 Today’s episode is sponsored in part by Robinhood Airbnb Shopify RocketMoney NordVPN and Indeed.
0:00:12 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment receiving a 3% IRA match on retirement
0:00:20 contributions. To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold.
0:00:25 Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier with Airbnb’s new co-host network. Mind yourself
0:00:32 a co-host at airbnb.com/host. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your
0:00:39 business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/profiting. RocketMoney is a personal
0:00:44 finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending,
0:00:51 and helps lower your bills. Sign up for free at rocketmoney.com/profiting. You need NordVPN to
0:00:56 keep your credit card details safe, whether you’re shopping on international websites or using
0:01:02 public Wi-Fi. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/profiting.
0:01:08 Attract interview and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit
0:01:13 at indeed.com/profiting. Terms and conditions apply. As always, you can find all of our incredible
0:01:18 deals in the show notes or at youngandproffiting.com/deals.
0:01:35 Hey, Young and Profiters! Welcome to episode five of the Yap Creator series presented by OpusClip.
0:01:39 In this series, we’re diving deep into the art and science of content creation,
0:01:43 how to create, connect, and thrive as a modern-day content creator.
0:01:47 Today we’re going deep into something that every content creator should master,
0:01:52 understanding, and adapting to audience preferences. This is the heartbeat of effective content
0:01:58 creation, the foundation of building a loyal, engaged community that feels connected to you
0:02:03 and your brand. In this episode, I’ll break down why analyzing audience behavior is so critical,
0:02:08 and I’ll give you actionable strategies to help you understand your audience and their preferences
0:02:14 better. We’ll feature podcast guests like Ken Okazaki, Neil Patel, Julie Solomon,
0:02:19 O.S. Perlman, and I’ll even share with you how we use audience insights at Yap to create content
0:02:28 that’s relevant and impactful. Let’s get started! First things first, before you can forge a
0:02:33 meaningful connection with an audience, you need to figure out who they are. As a content creator,
0:02:38 understanding the balance between a broad and niche audience is crucial for growing your engagement
0:02:43 and your business. Broad content allows you to reach a wider audience and potentially increase
0:02:49 views and revenue, while niche content creates deeper and more meaningful connections with a
0:02:54 dedicated community. The key is finding the balance that works for you, and whether you’re
0:02:59 marketing a product, a service, or just yourself, it’s useful to start by thinking in terms of
0:03:04 your TAM, or your total addressable market, but just how big or small should you start?
0:03:09 This is what Neil Patel, an expert on digital marketing, told me about how he approaches
0:03:18 a potential audience. What makes a good audience market to me is a big TAM. So, assuming you find
0:03:21 something you’re passionate about by just through trial and error, you’ve got to make sure you’re
0:03:27 focusing on a big TAM. Everyone says the riches are in the niches. That’s far from true. If you
0:03:31 look at the majority of the large corporations out there, like Tesla’s, Automotive, right?
0:03:36 People need cars in this world. If you look at Microsoft, everyone needs software to run these
0:03:41 computers and digital devices that we’re on. If you look at Google, we’re relying on search for
0:03:48 anything and someone organizing data and feeding it to us in a very organized fashion. If you look
0:03:54 at Apple, we need all these hardware pieces that they’re selling from, headphones to cell phones
0:03:58 to laptops, right? These are large markets. If you look again, look at the biggest companies
0:04:04 in the world, they’re going after large markets and not niches. So, the key is to go after a big
0:04:09 TAM. Now, you can start in a niche if you want and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you need
0:04:15 to make sure that you can expand that niche into a large market because the amount of effort it takes
0:04:22 to market a business, whether it’s on LinkedIn or any social platform or even SEO, for a niche
0:04:27 compared to a large market is almost the same amount of effort. Sure, it’s harder in a large
0:04:32 market. It takes longer to see results, but it’s the same process in the same time and energy that
0:04:37 you’re putting into it. So, might as well go after something big because it’s very unrealistic to be
0:04:42 in a niche and being like, you know what? I’m going to dominate this niche and gobble up 100% of the
0:04:50 market share or even 20, 30%. That’s very hard to do. But on the flip side, it’s easier to say,
0:04:56 hey, I’m going to go after this multi-billion-dollar market and I’m going to gobble up 0.1% of it,
0:05:00 right? You gobble up even something small. That’s enough money where you’re generating
0:05:04 millions of dollars where it’s meaningful, right? For example, if it’s a $10 billion market that
0:05:11 you’re going after, you gobble up 0.1%, that’s big enough to create amazing life and a business.
0:05:15 So, you’re saying you need a big, sort of more broad market. You don’t want to get
0:05:20 two in the niches because they’re really hard to find. That’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
0:05:25 When you’re a marketer, you want to find your audience in mass. You want to target them in
0:05:29 mass. That’s how you’re going to target them in the cheapest way, the most effective way.
0:05:33 If you have to find 10 people here, 10 people there, it’s like you are just going to exhaust
0:05:40 yourself and it’s going to be very expensive. Exactly right. You need to go after a big market
0:05:46 so that way you don’t have to have frequency issues of like, oh, I’ve shown my ad to 500 people.
0:05:50 All right. How many more people can you show? Well, that’s my only audience or even 10,000
0:05:56 people. It’s not enough. You need to go after the masses. Yeah. So, I know that you have a formula
0:06:01 for marketing that you talk about. Could you break that down for us? Sure. So, number one,
0:06:07 go after a really big tam. Once you have a big tam, then if you want to do well, you need to take
0:06:15 an omnichannel approach from LinkedIn to Facebook to Instagram to WhatsApp marketing through text,
0:06:22 through email marketing to SEO, to paid advertising. It doesn’t matter if you like paid ads on Facebook
0:06:27 or not. If it’s profitable, it’s profitable. You got to keep leveraging it. And then from there,
0:06:31 you got to figure out how to add in the upsells and downsells, because if you look at marketing
0:06:36 over time, it continually costs more and more. So, you got to add in the upsells and downsells.
0:06:40 In other words, build that funnel, figure out how to generate more revenue from that same customer.
0:06:45 And if they’re buying more right at purchase, it allows you to spend more money on marketing,
0:06:49 as well as figure out a way to generate reoccurring revenues.
0:06:56 However broad or narrow you go with your potential audience and whatever channel
0:07:01 you reach them through, remember that you are ultimately the one picking your audience. That’s
0:07:08 right. Your audience is your choice. And building an audience is really its own kind of a business.
0:07:13 In fact, none other than Mr. Side Hustle himself, Nick Loper, shared with me how he now considers
0:07:19 building an audience on channels like YouTube to be one of the most promising side hustles around.
0:07:26 Something that I read of yours that I thought was really interesting is that you actually consider
0:07:32 a side hustle being growing an audience, right? You call it an audience business. So talk to us
0:07:37 about why having an audience in itself can be a side hustle with multiple avenues.
0:07:44 Yeah, this is probably tier three. Tier one services, tier two products. Tier three is this
0:07:50 really flexible hybrid content-based business, audience-based business, where it could be a
0:07:55 social following, it could be a blog following, a podcast following, a YouTube following.
0:08:02 And once you have people paying attention, the entire playbook opens up. Sure, you could sell
0:08:06 services, you could sell products, you could sell attention in the form of advertising or affiliate
0:08:11 partnerships. But it really is a powerful place to play. And that’s really where I spent the bulk
0:08:16 of my side hustle and entrepreneurial time over the last 10 years to try and figure out how to get
0:08:21 more traffic, how to get more listeners, how to get more email subscribers and play in that space.
0:08:29 Because the scale is almost infinite, right? It takes, as you know, the same effort and energy
0:08:35 and investment to create an episode, a podcast episode that 10 people listen to or 10,000 people
0:08:41 listen to or 100,000 people. And so it’s a really unique platform in that way and the same thing
0:08:49 with social content or video content. Whatever content arena you decide to play in, it’s not
0:08:54 just enough to turn up and churn out content. Julie Solomon, who’s the queen of influencer
0:09:00 marketing and an expert on how to break through on platforms like Instagram, explains the critical
0:09:05 distinction between simply creating content and producing content that genuinely drives results
0:09:13 with your audience. When it comes to Instagram, because that’s really been my platform of choice
0:09:18 since 2013. So I have been there through the ups and downs and the in-betweens. And I think that
0:09:25 where most people get it wrong is that they get so lost in having to have to do it a certain way
0:09:33 or trying to beat some kind of system or some kind of algorithm. And what I have noticed throughout
0:09:38 a decade plus of supporting people on Instagram and coaching them in order to build a brand
0:09:45 invisibility there is that, yes, it’s important to understand things like hashtags and SEO and
0:09:51 viral hooks and all of those kinds of things. But really at the end of the day, it just comes down
0:09:59 to do you have value-based content that is specifically talking to the person whose problem
0:10:06 that you solve and are you showing up as an authority and as someone that can educate them
0:10:13 as being that solution provider as consistently as possible. And most of the time, people aren’t
0:10:17 doing that because they’re so focused on these things that really just don’t matter at the
0:10:26 end of the day. And that’s why I have a lot of people that will come to me and it’s wild
0:10:31 that they’ve got tens, if not hundreds of thousands of followers and they make no money.
0:10:37 And I’m thinking, how do you have all this and you don’t make money? And it’s because
0:10:42 maybe they figured out a way to go viral or maybe they figured out some kind of
0:10:48 giveaway process to gain a following or maybe they did some collabs. But because they weren’t
0:10:53 creating that value from the get-go, because they weren’t thinking about, what do I specialize in?
0:10:57 What is my offer? Why do I want to pick up this phone and post something every day?
0:11:01 It’s like they completely missed the boat. And before they know it, they’re three months in or
0:11:05 three years in or 10 years in and then they come to me and they’re like, Julie, I don’t understand
0:11:12 how I’ve kind of been trying to grow and piecemilling it together and maybe I’ve gotten to a thousand
0:11:15 followers and nothing’s happening or maybe I’ve gotten to a hundred thousand followers, but still
0:11:20 nothing’s happening because I’m not making any money. And so what’s happening here? And so I think
0:11:25 that for growth on Instagram, you really have to think about that through line. Are you just
0:11:31 creating content just to create content? Because that is just a hobby or are you actually creating
0:11:36 content to solve a problem for somebody, to be of service to someone, to be a solution provider
0:11:40 for someone? Because that’s how you actually end up monetizing it. And those are two completely
0:11:45 different focuses. Totally agree with that. And also from a sponsorship perspective, it’s also
0:11:50 important to think of this because if you’re just creating mindless content that’s going viral,
0:11:56 maybe you’re reposting viral videos and you’ve got this huge broad audience, but nobody knows
0:12:01 what you stand for. You’re not the actual influencer. Your content went viral. You didn’t
0:12:06 necessarily go viral. Your ideas and your products and services didn’t necessarily go viral. It’s
0:12:13 just content. And so it’s hard to get brand sponsorships when you actually are not an influencer
0:12:18 and your content just went viral because there’s no way to really describe your audience. It’s hard
0:12:23 for brands to understand who they’re targeting exactly. So that’s something else to think about.
0:12:29 Yeah, I call those people cold creators that they are showing up to create content, but there is no
0:12:34 warmth behind them focusing on building the know, like and trust. And we even see this with a lot
0:12:40 of massive influencers out there. You think about, you know, Charlie, I can’t remember her last name,
0:12:44 but she was on Dancing with the Stars. Her family had a reality show. Her and her sisters went viral
0:12:50 on TikTok. And now it’s like, not only is there, all they talk about is how their mental health is
0:12:54 just like all over the place. They can’t show up. They can’t be consistent. They’re not happy. They’re
0:12:58 not fulfilled. But a lot of the brand deals that they’ve started to do, whether that’s product
0:13:01 lines that they’ve launched or what have you, have now been pulled off the shelves because
0:13:06 they’re not converting. And the reason why is because they didn’t take the time to build that
0:13:10 know, like and trust with their audience. They didn’t take the time to really build a brand
0:13:15 around the reputation that they wanted to have. They were just creating content for the sake of
0:13:20 creating content and, you know, doing it on TikTok and blowing up, but now they don’t have anything
0:13:25 to show for it. And there’s a lot of creators that that has happened to over time that have gone on
0:13:31 to maybe get a Sephora, you know, makeup deal. But then a year later, they don’t have any makeup
0:13:39 in the stores and it’s because it can’t sell. So how do we figure out exactly what will resonate
0:13:45 best with our target audience? To truly connect with that audience and create content that genuinely
0:13:50 serves their needs, you need to understand what interests them, what drives them, what thrills
0:13:55 them. Understanding what your audience wants is the foundation of creating content that stands out,
0:14:00 even since the dawn of time when early humans were telling their first stories around the
0:14:06 communal fire. Of course, nowadays, most of our audiences are online, but we can still learn a
0:14:11 lot about how to shape and respond to an audience from those who are gifted performers and make
0:14:17 their living by delighting live audiences. The magician and mentalist, Oz Perlman, is one such
0:14:22 performer. And he shared with me some fascinating insights into how he uses deep knowledge of
0:14:31 human behavior to read an audience. Every show is different, which is great because every audience
0:14:35 is different, right? Think about it. If you’re watching a movie, the movie is always the same,
0:14:40 versus what I do is not like watching a singer or a band where, you know, they can change the song
0:14:45 a little bit, but it’s still the same song. For me, everything I do involves audience interaction.
0:14:52 My show is the audience because like if I’m doing a show for a thousand people, 50, 60, 100 of them
0:14:55 will be a part of it. At some point, I throw frisbees around the audience, we hand envelopes,
0:15:02 we pick people out of the whole crowd. I’ve done arenas before with 10,000 people. And what my
0:15:07 show is all about is audience reactions, watching someone’s face and that shock and that amazement,
0:15:12 and sometimes that just absolute silence. When you’ve done something that seems impossible or you’ve
0:15:17 told them something, there’s no way you could have known or anticipated. And that’s really the
0:15:23 product I’m selling is very memorable moments, usually with a lot of emotional impact. And so
0:15:28 it’s helpful in certain parts of everyday life. But it’s funny because not as if I can just walk
0:15:33 into a real estate negotiation and be like, I know their bottom line. I know how much money
0:15:38 I’m saving like it works in certain ways. It’s helpful. It’s an edge, but it’s not the same. It’s
0:15:45 a facade. You know, it’s an entertainment pursuit because in my shows, I’m the director.
0:15:48 I get to call the shots in a certain way. So I wish I could tell you, I’d go to the poker table
0:15:54 and just make millions. Funny enough, a lot of casinos, they have people trained in what I do
0:15:58 going against me. They’re the ones who are making sure that I can’t cheat.
0:16:03 Got it. Got it. And that reminds me of something that I’ve also heard you said,
0:16:07 where you say that your profession is more like a comedian than it is a magician because you’re
0:16:12 actually feeding off the audience and not just like doing the same thing over and over again.
0:16:18 Totally. And it’s hard to practice what I do. So a magician, think about it, can practice,
0:16:22 like I use an example of a card trick. You can practice a card trick at home in front of the
0:16:28 mirror for days, weeks, years, and perfect the moves that are required. Same thing with a juggler,
0:16:34 let’s call it. But a comedian has to tell their joke. He or she tells their joke. And the only way
0:16:40 you know if it’s funny is if an audience reacts. The audience is your canvas. So the exact same
0:16:44 thing applies. And that’s the reason right there, why there’s so much fewer mentalists than magicians.
0:16:51 Because the learning curve is so steep, you can’t get better without first bombing. So you need to
0:16:56 be bad and start doing it and getting better and better with audiences. And a lot of people don’t
0:17:01 have that stomach. They can’t deal with that level of rejection over and over and not be good for years
0:17:11 at times. The audience is your canvas. I just love that. And it’s just as true for an online
0:17:17 audience. The best online content isn’t just a one way broadcast. It’s a conversation. It’s about
0:17:22 give and take where we’re tuning into what our audience really wants, what resonates with them,
0:17:27 and what keeps them coming back. In other words, you’re not creating content for yourself. Just
0:17:32 like Oz Perlman, you’re responding to what your audience is telling you, even when it’s through
0:17:39 nonverbal cues like likes, shares, and comments. Every interaction is a signal and your audience
0:17:44 is showing what they relate to, what they’re curious about, and sometimes what just isn’t clicking.
0:17:50 At times you may bomb just like a stand up comedian or a live performer might. The magic happens when
0:17:55 you take the time to interpret these signals and respond to them. That’s when your content goes from
0:18:01 good to great. But figuring out an audience, of course, takes time. Perhaps nobody I’ve spoken
0:18:05 to knows this better than my good friend, the entrepreneur and the host of the Social Proof
0:18:11 podcast, David Chance. David is one of the hardest working people I know. And as you’ll hear,
0:18:15 he knows his audience down to their daily routine and their habits.
0:18:23 So I have to ask you, for anybody who’s starting their YouTube journey now,
0:18:28 like you said, you started in 13 years ago or something like that. But 2023, it’s a whole
0:18:32 different game. You’re still crushing it. You still know how to get views and all of that.
0:18:35 So how can we get more engagement on YouTube, more views and subscribers?
0:18:43 One, you have to be good at it. It’s not like, I don’t have a one to three step
0:18:51 for someone that’s not good. That doesn’t ask good questions or put up amazing content or
0:18:53 come out with shareable stuff. There’s nothing I can do for you.
0:19:02 You have to practice the craft. It’s really cool because for two years of actually doing the podcast
0:19:08 and putting it on YouTube, I wasn’t thinking money for 10 years. I mean, while I was doing,
0:19:16 so I started 2010, I didn’t start monetizing until 2020. For those 10 years, I’m not even
0:19:21 thinking that YouTube makes money. I never even thought about it. My only thing was,
0:19:28 are people liking this content? Are they sharing it? Are they commenting? And I was focused on
0:19:35 having a good show and being a good interviewer and being engaging. So that’s where I’m blessed
0:19:40 because I came before the era of jump on YouTube to make a million dollars.
0:19:48 I had time to perfect my craft. One, you just have to be good at it. I don’t care if you’re
0:19:55 super consistent. You have the best camera, best lighting, best, if the content isn’t amazing,
0:20:03 it’s not going to work. Practice your craft. You really need to find a niche that you’re passionate
0:20:10 about and that other people are passionate about. You have to brand yourself around this conversation.
0:20:16 So I brand, my whole world is branded around podcasting and entrepreneurship. One, I’ve been
0:20:22 doing it for 10 years or longer than that, my whole life really, but this whole podcasting thing,
0:20:27 in entrepreneurship, my whole world is that. My bio says it. If you talk to me long enough,
0:20:33 we’re going to talk about podcasting or entrepreneurship. That’s my brand. So I have
0:20:38 a niche. I have an audience. I know all the things that my audience is struggling with.
0:20:44 That’s how I can tell you, all right, so you got to stop stopping. You got to stop.
0:20:48 One of the worst things that can happen to an entrepreneur is a little bit of success because
0:20:53 other people see that little bit of success and they start inviting you to their thing that they’re
0:20:58 doing and it’s going to take you off path. The reason I know that is because I’ve been through it
0:21:03 and I’ve been coaching entrepreneurs for the last decade on this space. So I know my audience,
0:21:07 I know exactly what they’re going through. So you need to know your audience know exactly what
0:21:12 they’re going through. You for sure need to be consistent. So the best way to do that is
0:21:18 have a consistent day that you record, whether it’s every Wednesday, every Thursday,
0:21:24 we record our podcasts every Wednesday for sure. Now somebody can’t do Wednesday and
0:21:28 they’re a big enough guess. We’ll do it on Thursday or do it on Tuesday because I’m on
0:21:33 studio. So it’s cool, but I have a specific day that we record. We have a specific day that we
0:21:40 release and it’s consistent. If you think of your favorite shows growing up, it wasn’t sporadic when
0:21:47 they delivered the content. It was the same time, same day every single week because people put their,
0:21:53 they put your show or your content into their life. So I’ve released my podcast at seven in the
0:21:58 morning because I know there are people going to work and I want them to listen to my podcast on
0:22:04 their way to work because I want them to be inspired. I want them to be motivated and this is
0:22:09 their thing. It’s in the routine. If anything ever happens, like there’s a misfire on the
0:22:15 scheduling or something like that, I get messages. Hey, you ain’t released this episode? What happened?
0:22:20 What happened? What happened? I’m like, whoa, let me find out what’s going on because they
0:22:31 I show into the framework of their lives and you can’t disappoint or you’ll break trust. So if you
0:22:36 say every Monday at seven o’clock, it’s going to release and sometimes it’s at seven, sometimes at
0:22:42 two PM, sometimes it releases on Tuesday. Sometimes it just doesn’t release that week.
0:22:47 You’re breaking the trust because now I can’t trust you to put this in my schedule anymore.
0:22:56 So yeah, and also looking at the trends, studying your craft, studying what’s working in your
0:23:02 industry. And yeah, I think if you put all of those together and you’re good at it, it will grow,
0:23:09 period. If you want to have a detailed understanding of your audience like David,
0:23:14 you need information. And today, the best tools for understanding audience preferences
0:23:20 is our data and analytics. It might not sound super glamorous, but trust me, these numbers are
0:23:26 gold. Engagement metrics like views, likes, comments and shares reveal what topics and
0:23:31 formats your audience is drawn to. By analyzing these patterns, you get insights that might
0:23:36 otherwise go unnoticed. Data doesn’t lie. If you’re not looking at your analytics,
0:23:41 you’re missing out on a treasure trove of information that can help guide your content strategy.
0:23:46 At YAP, we regularly review our analytics to spot trends and highlight what’s working.
0:23:52 It’s about more than just knowing which episodes are posted well. It’s about understanding why.
0:23:57 If a specific topic or guest sees a surge in engagement, that tells us that our audience is
0:24:01 interested in that subject and we might explore it further in future episodes.
0:24:06 And we’re not just looking at the numbers. We’re looking at the why behind the numbers.
0:24:10 What was it about this particular guest or topic that hit the mark?
0:24:13 Was there something in the style or the format that people responded to?
0:24:19 By digging into these insights, we can adapt and evolve our content to meet our audience’s
0:24:24 preferences. On the other hand, if certain themes or styles consistently underperform,
0:24:29 it’s a sign that we may need to rethink our approach or pivot. Analytics is not just about
0:24:34 measuring success. It’s about learning, adapting and evolving based on the hard evidence. It’s
0:24:39 like having a compass that guides the direction of your content. But you have to be willing to
0:24:44 act on that feedback you get from your audience. And next, we’ll learn how you can harness feedback
0:24:52 to create even better content. Flexibility is crucial in content creation.
0:24:57 You don’t need to change who you are, but you can refine how you present yourself to meet your
0:25:02 audience where they are. One of my favorite examples of using data and feedback to know your
0:25:07 audience better was shared with me by video marketing expert Ken Okazaki. Sometimes meeting
0:25:13 your audience where they are means literally knowing where they are, even if that happens to be on
0:25:24 the toilet. So fun fact, and I’ve heard you talk about this a few times. 80% of men and 69% of women
0:25:28 use their phone while on the toilet. And you’ve taken this data and created something called the
0:25:32 toilet strategy. So what is the toilet strategy and what does this data tell us about how we should
0:25:37 be conducting video marketing? Yeah, I should probably look that up. I don’t know if the numbers
0:25:43 have gone up or down. A couple of years ago, I wrote that book. But I don’t know about you, but I
0:25:53 happened to use my phone in the toilet. And when I realized that there’s that huge percentage,
0:25:56 because that’s kind of like literally your downtime, right? So that’s when you’re like,
0:26:00 you know, you’re checking messages, linking to social media. And there’s a couple of things
0:26:04 going on here. And right now, it may seem obvious. But when I first presented this at a conference,
0:26:07 everybody was like, oh, my, you know, smack my head, like, that’s, that’s so obvious. Why didn’t
0:26:14 I think of it? But when your audience is in the toilet, you have to, well, put it this way, tune
0:26:17 your videos as if you’re speaking to someone on the toilet. So there’s a couple things going on.
0:26:22 Number one, you, you want to make sure there’s captions on every single word, because when you’re
0:26:26 in a public bathroom, it’s very rare that you’re going to want the speakers blaring while you’re
0:26:31 in there, right? So immediately someone’s going to mute, if they can’t hear you, or read you,
0:26:34 then they’re going to skip off, right? So that’s rule number one. Rule number two about the toilet
0:26:41 strategy is the length. There are so many times on where I’ve seen a video, I thought this is great.
0:26:45 And then what we’ve done is eye tracking tests. The first thing we look at is the title to see
0:26:50 if we want to stop the second one is the person’s eyes. The third place we look, believe it or not,
0:26:56 is the play bar to see how long it is. And that’s through eye tracking data. And if the video is
0:27:01 too long, like you probably want to spend five minutes in the bathroom max, if it’s a 20 minute
0:27:05 video, what happens is this is a great video, but I don’t have 20 minutes to see Safer Later,
0:27:10 which by the way, nobody ever goes to the Safer Later video and actually watches them. It’s,
0:27:16 it is a black hole where things go in and never come back out. So you never want to get Safer
0:27:20 Later. So there’s the length, you want to keep it, you know, two minutes max. Nowadays, it’s under
0:27:25 a minute. It keeps getting shorter. Oh, the third thing is really the big title on top. Now,
0:27:31 that’s kind of changed because nowadays, with the way TikTok format videos have really taken over,
0:27:36 the algorithm chooses what shows up. It’s not what you subscribe to. So it doesn’t matter
0:27:42 quite as much, but I think it’s quite effective on some platforms where the thumbnail is going to
0:27:46 be much more prominent than the actual video itself. For example, YouTube.
0:27:55 The toilet strategy might be an extreme example, but it shows how responding to data and feedback
0:27:59 you’re given about your audience can allow you to transform your content in a way that will
0:28:05 connect even better with them. At Yap, we’re always actively listening to feedback. We read
0:28:09 comments, look at engagement metrics, and keep an eye out on the formats that are doing well.
0:28:14 For instance, that we’ve seen that our audience really responds to a conversational style and
0:28:20 interviews. So we integrate that into more episodes purposefully. And if a certain topic, style, or
0:28:26 format isn’t resonating, we’re not afraid to just switch it up. Think of adaptation as a cycle.
0:28:31 You put out content, gauge your response, and then adjust. And if you do this over and over again,
0:28:37 and turn up for your audience on a regular basis, you will acquire some powerful insights from them.
0:28:41 And their feedback will not only help you improve existing content,
0:28:47 but it will also help you generate bold new ideas. Now here’s Ken Okazaki again with more.
0:28:55 If you don’t show up, things don’t happen. And that’s when success builds on success.
0:29:00 And that’s when people start realizing, hey, this person is a pillar in this vertical,
0:29:06 in this niche, in this industry. And the more they hear you, the more they want to hear about you.
0:29:10 I’m not going to go into too much detail here for the sake of time, but the rock stars are the people
0:29:19 who, in a nutshell, you’re no longer pushing your content. Your audience is pulling the content
0:29:24 from you. The demand for it is greater than your effort to push it out there. You’re getting
0:29:28 more people to share it. You’re getting people requesting to be on your show. You’re getting
0:29:32 so much engagement that you’ll never run out of ideas because you could just look at the comments
0:29:40 and use that for your content ideas. And that’s that feeling of getting pulled. And once you reach
0:29:46 that, there’s a lot of people who just realize that there is this, I guess it’s like the flywheel
0:29:52 type of feeling. And that’s flow. And that’s where that’s where I want all my clients to get.
0:30:00 This willingness to evolve shows your audience that you’re paying attention and that you respect
0:30:05 their preferences. It’s a win-win. You’re creating content that’s meaningful and relevant. And your
0:30:10 audience feels more connected to you because they know their feedback genuinely matters.
0:30:15 When you understand your audience, it transforms your entire approach. You’re not guessing, you’re
0:30:20 responding. And that makes all the difference. When you approach content as a partnership with
0:30:26 your audience, you’re building something powerful, a loyal, engaged community that trusts you and
0:30:34 wants to come back again and again. Now, adapting to your audience doesn’t mean starting from scratch
0:30:41 every time. At YAP, we’ve streamlined this process with OpusClip, a tool that analyzes your raw footage,
0:30:47 pulls in the best moments, and assigns a virality score to give you an idea of how viral each clip
0:30:53 might be. Here’s how it helped us with one of our biggest viral videos yet. When we released my podcast
0:31:00 interview with communication expert Matt Abraham, we used OpusClip’s AI to analyze the hour-long
0:31:06 conversation. It identified emotional peaks, keyword hooks, and moments where viewer curiosity spiked.
0:31:11 Instead of guessing which clips would work, OpusClip highlighted 12 high potential moments
0:31:17 ranked by their ability to peak curiosity. We chose the top five clips, like Matt’s descriptive
0:31:24 moment. My team turned them into a 30-second intro, and the result? 50% more viewers stayed past the
0:31:30 30-second mark, leading to a better watch time and a much greater reach. The video now sets at over
0:31:37 123,000 views and counting, making it one of the best-performing videos on my channel. If you’re
0:31:43 not using tools like OpusClip to test and refine your content, you’re missing on a great opportunity
0:31:48 to stay connected with your audience. OpusClip helps you get the most out of your content by
0:31:53 highlighting the moments that resonate most. Instead of guessing, you’re making informed
0:32:01 decisions that keep your strategy aligned with your audience preferences. Well, yeah, fam,
0:32:07 that’s it for episode five of the Yap Creator series. By paying attention to engagement, using
0:32:12 data to guide your strategy and creating a feedback loop, you can build a stronger connection with
0:32:17 your audience and keep your content fresh and relevant. And if you’re ready to do this and
0:32:22 to take your content to the next level, try OpusClip today. You can let OpusClip help you create
0:32:31 awesome videos that will drive engagement at opus.pro/clipanything. That’s opus.pro/clipanything.
0:32:35 Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll see you in episode six, where we unlock the secrets of
0:32:40 content creation with the focus on how AI is changing the game.
0:32:50 [Music]
0:32:53 (upbeat music)
0:33:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:06 Today’s episode is sponsored in part by Robinhood Airbnb Shopify RocketMoney Nord VPN and Indeed.
0:00:12 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment receiving a 3% IRA match on retirement
0:00:20 contributions. To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold.
0:00:25 Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier with Airbnb’s new co-host network. Mind yourself
0:00:32 a co-host at airbnb.com/host. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your
0:00:39 business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/profiting. RocketMoney is a personal
0:00:44 finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending,
0:00:51 and helps lower your bills. Sign up for free at rocketmoney.com/profiting. You need Nord VPN to
0:00:56 keep your credit card details safe, whether you’re shopping on international websites or using
0:01:02 public Wi-Fi. To get the best discount off your Nord VPN plan, go to NordVPN.com/profiting.
0:01:08 Attract interview and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit
0:01:13 at indeed.com/profiting. Terms and conditions apply. As always, you can find all of our incredible
0:01:21 deals in the show notes or at youngerprofit.com/deals. This is going to generate magic, and there will
0:01:26 be more agents than there are people. The future is sooner and stranger than you think. You co-founded
0:01:32 Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleiman, and you’re really creating companions for people. We moved
0:01:37 from the computers being the bicycle of mind to AI being the automobiles of the mind. Let’s figure
0:01:41 out how we want the technology to evolve, how we’re going to use it, how we use it together,
0:01:46 how we use it individually. Human beings will be replaced by other human beings using AI,
0:01:50 and in some cases by AI, but there will also be a bunch of new jobs created too.
0:01:55 Why are you so optimistic about AI? Because I think AI is going to be the,
0:02:07 the future is already here, it’s unevenly distributed.
0:02:18 Yep, gang. Welcome back to the show. Today, we are playing part two of my episode with Reed
0:02:24 Hoffman. Reed Hoffman is an incredible entrepreneur. He’s the co-founder of LinkedIn and Inflection
0:02:29 AI. In part one of this conversation, we focused on entrepreneurship, so if you haven’t heard that
0:02:35 yet, make sure you stop and go back and listen to that one first, especially for an entrepreneur.
0:02:40 We talk all about Blitzscaling. We talk about his early failures as an entrepreneur,
0:02:44 and he uncovered so many gems in this conversation, you don’t want to miss it.
0:02:50 If you’ve already heard that one, go enjoy part two of this episode on AI, where we’re going to
0:02:58 learn everything that he believes AI will bring to our future, including our own personal AI agents.
0:03:02 It was an incredible conversation. You guys are going to blow your mind with this one.
0:03:06 So, without further delay, here’s my conversation with the incredible Reed Hoffman.
0:03:12 AI is definitely transforming the world, and I know that you’re doing a lot in AI.
0:03:16 So, let’s start talking about that. When did you first get interested in AI
0:03:22 and realize its potential impact? In one sense, my undergraduate major at Stanford
0:03:26 was artificial intelligence. It was called symbolic systems. It was kind of the earliest
0:03:31 undergraduate AI major, but then I concluded the time wasn’t right, and I went off to do other things.
0:03:39 And then, it was discussions with a set of different people. Demesis of a city mind,
0:03:46 Sam Altman, Elon Musk, relative to open AI, and some other things that, okay, actually,
0:03:51 in fact, now is the time. And the particular thing wasn’t so much the invention of an algorithm.
0:03:58 A lot of the fundamentals of the kind of algorithms that are being used for the magic of today,
0:04:01 there’s been a bunch of inventions, but the fundamentals were already somewhat there.
0:04:07 What the transformation was, was essentially scale, compute, and learning machines,
0:04:13 and data to learn from. And it was like, oh, this is going to generate magic. Actually,
0:04:17 none of us are quite sure exactly all the kinds of magic that will come out of it and what
0:04:24 will happen once it’s GPD 5, for example. But we know we’re going to be able to create things
0:04:30 that are capabilities, cognitive capabilities, that have never been seen before.
0:04:36 And that simple ways to parallel the metaphor is like, well, actually, in fact, every single
0:04:40 computational device isn’t going to no longer have an interface in a manual. It’s just you’re
0:04:47 going to talk to it, right? Or everybody’s going to have multiple agents and assistants for everything
0:04:54 they’re doing, whether it’s podcasting, or writing, or analyzing, or speaking, or comprehending.
0:04:59 And all of this stuff is going to help. Or another way of putting it is anything that has
0:05:04 any computational units at all is going to become much more intelligent.
0:05:11 All of these things come from this scale, compute, learning revolution. And that was
0:05:20 probably 2014, 2015, was when I really got the vision hit me fully. And I went to my partners
0:05:23 at Greylock. And I said, hey, look, I think we’re going to still make a bunch of money doing the
0:05:28 script of stuff. I did a few things in Bitcoin and other things. So keep doing it. But I’m going
0:05:34 to focus entirely on AI, because I think AI is going to be the next wave. And I want to start
0:05:39 working on it right now. And I love how you’re so optimistic about AI. I’ve interviewed so many
0:05:47 people about it, Mo Gao Dat, Mustafa Suleiman, Fei Fei Li, just everyone from people who started
0:05:51 a long time ago on it to the new guys. And everybody kind of has a different mix. Like,
0:05:55 some people are really positive about it. Some people are pretty pessimistic. Why are you so
0:06:01 optimistic about AI? And can you give us some counter arguments to what pessimists typically
0:06:06 say? I’m familiar with every single pessimist argument. And the frequent thing is something
0:06:12 along the lines, like, let’s take the most extreme. Can you guarantee me that we won’t deliberately
0:06:17 or accidentally create terminators? And you go, no, I can’t guarantee you. Oh, then it’s really bad.
0:06:22 We should have a cautionary principle. And you’re like, well, that’s if you thought that the only
0:06:26 thing here was creation of terminators or not. So like, for example, take this is called existential
0:06:31 risk. Let’s take existential risk. Existential risk is a basket. It’s not just are there killer
0:06:38 robots or not. It’s also nuclear war, asteroids, pandemics, climate change, a bunch of other things.
0:06:44 So you say, well, if we create AI, is the basket, well, yes, we may add the terminator robots as a
0:06:49 negative possibility. But is the basket of risk get better or worse? And I think it just gets better,
0:06:53 because it’s the only way I can think of to solve pandemics. I think it’s already helping
0:06:57 in questions of advancing certain technologies around climate change.
0:07:01 There’s just the stack of things where you go, just creating it is better.
0:07:08 Next thing is people say, well, what about jobs? You say, well, okay, there’s basically,
0:07:14 I think always in the transition, there’ll be difficulties and challenges and navigating
0:07:18 that transition is one of the things I’m most focused on. But it’s just like the industrial
0:07:24 revolution with the loom and everything else and moving to the power loom. And we’re going to have
0:07:29 that. That’s going to have a disruption in society. There’s going to be challenges with that,
0:07:36 guaranteed. But on the other side, like when we look at our entire lives today of societies that
0:07:40 have middle classes and prosperous societies, it all comes from the industrial revolution.
0:07:47 So the other side of that will very much look like the similar kind of amplification of what
0:07:51 we’ve had here. Now, you say, what does that mean for jobs? Now, obviously, we know we need them for
0:07:56 economy and people’s sense of purpose and sense of commitment. And you say, look, what we’re going
0:08:01 to have is all this transition by which we have amplification intelligence. The thing I described
0:08:08 my last book before super agency impromptu, which is AI means amplification intelligence.
0:08:14 And so human beings will be replaced by other human beings using AI. And in some cases by AI,
0:08:18 but there will also be a bunch of new jobs created too. And just like we didn’t have a chance to
0:08:24 really envision in the future, we have to believe it’s going to happen. Now, if you said we’ve now
0:08:31 created our science fiction paradise of Star Trek, and no human beings need to work anymore,
0:08:37 what happens? By the way, that’s called a good circumstance, and we’ll figure it out. And we’ve
0:08:44 had societies like European and other nobility, where there was entire groups of people, classes
0:08:49 of people who didn’t have to work. And we may do with our lives. So even if we get there, so I think
0:08:54 that it will be difficulty in transition, but like an amazing outcome. And then you say, well,
0:09:00 why are you so passionate and so positive about this? Well, today, we have line of sight to creating
0:09:07 on your smartphone, a medical assistant or tutor that is better than your average doctor and is a
0:09:13 tutor on every subject for every age. We just need to make that available to every human to help
0:09:20 people, the eight plus billion of us around the world. Just by having access to a smartphone. I
0:09:25 think that’s one of the things that I think is super important. And that’s what we’re, like all
0:09:33 the doomer and gloomers, essentially are delaying that future. And that delay has a huge cost in
0:09:38 human suffering. Oh my gosh, I loved everything that you just said. It’s just so interesting.
0:09:42 And I feel like it ties a lot of things together that we’ve talked about on the podcast before.
0:09:50 So a lot of your book is talking about human agency, right? And the concerns around AI and
0:09:55 human agency, you talked about it with jobs, right? And the fact that you don’t think it’s
0:10:02 going to necessarily be a bad thing. If AI takes some of our jobs, it’s going to add new jobs,
0:10:06 will maybe become more artistic or whatever as humans and figure out our time in other ways.
0:10:11 But when it comes to human agency, can you talk to us about how technologies in the past,
0:10:17 like the telephone and cars actually had similar things so that people can understand that we’ve
0:10:23 gotten through this before? Thank you for reading the book and asking questions from it.
0:10:28 So look, what people don’t realize is every new major general purpose technology has a discourse
0:10:33 that’s very much like parallel to the one we’re having today, which is this new technology is
0:10:39 going to destroy society. When cars came out as like, oh, men, because it was mostly
0:10:44 men, wage earners back then, are going to stop getting married and everything else,
0:10:47 because they’re going to be saving up for the car and it’s going to destroy our institutions of
0:10:57 marriage. And these are dangerous for what happens in the streets. Similarly, for example,
0:11:02 when the phonograph had to be pitched, it had to be pitched as it’s going to be used for church
0:11:08 music, right? Because it’ll help people to like have church music at home because the kid like,
0:11:12 well, what are people going to do this with? Are they going to be distracted or are they going
0:11:16 to be sitting on their couch just like television doing nothing and television going to destroy
0:11:22 society, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so, and matter of fact, we had this discussion around
0:11:29 smartphones within our memories. And so the thing to remember is to say, yes, it’s going to completely
0:11:34 change the future. It’s going to change the future in the way that we experience our agency, how we
0:11:40 think of ourselves as kind of operative agents, what we’re capable of doing, what other people
0:11:47 are capable of doing. But that change has thus far always ended up being very positive. Now,
0:11:54 the transitions have been difficult. The printing press, which was described as, oh, it’s going to
0:12:00 destroy human cognition by reducing the ability of memory. It’s going to create a whole bunch of
0:12:06 misinformation. The true tellers in society, which in those days were priests, are going to be
0:12:11 undermined. And of course, since we as human beings are very bad at these kinds of transitions,
0:12:16 it led to nearly a century of religious war. So you go, okay, the outcome can be really good,
0:12:21 but what do we do about the transitions? Now, one of the things I’m pointing out in the AI context
0:12:25 and part of the reason for writing super agency and part of the reason for doing this is to say,
0:12:29 well, in fact, we can use both the lessons from the past, these technology transformations,
0:12:34 and we can use AI to help us. So you say, well, shoot, my job is now going to be done with a
0:12:42 human using AI. Well, can the AI help me learn to be that human with AI? Can the AI help me figure
0:12:48 out which jobs would be good for me with the AI helping me to do them? Can the AI help me with
0:12:53 the transition? And so what we need to be doing is learning from the past and these lessons and
0:12:58 transitions, and then deploying the technology to help us do that. Because one of the amazing,
0:13:02 unique things about AI is it’s the first technology that can do that. Previously,
0:13:06 you were like a doc worker, I was like, I’m a big, strong person. Well, that doesn’t help
0:13:11 me learn how to use a forklift, right? And now the forklift is there. And now the fact that I’m a
0:13:15 big, strong person doesn’t really matter, right? So my competitive edge in this job doesn’t matter.
0:13:21 It’s like, well, but now we have a forklift that will go, Hey, sit here, give me direction and
0:13:25 doing the following things. Here’s the ways that we can work together. Here’s the things that you
0:13:29 need to watch out for in terms of how to use me and what kinds of things to do. And here’s the
0:13:34 places where as I currently understand it, I’m going to be bad and need help and you can help me
0:13:40 with. And now I can do the job transition. So that’s the kind of thing that I think is why
0:13:45 agency is so important to focus on. And if you look at most of the things that people critique
0:13:51 about these technologies, including AI, including smartphones, including cars, is it’s this change
0:13:59 in agency, whether it’s like privacy or working jobs or, or capabilities by the state, by the people
0:14:04 that then get people to be highly concerned. And you’re like, well, actually, in fact,
0:14:10 if we go through it, if we do it in the right way, it’ll be magical, I think anyway, but it can be
0:14:16 less suffering on the path to being magical and better navigated if we do it the right way.
0:14:21 So when you say super agency, basically what you’re saying is we have human agency
0:14:27 with AI, they’ll be helping us become better humans. And that’s why we have super agency.
0:14:31 And then AI itself is going to be able to do things on its own, right? So can you talk to us
0:14:37 about how AI will have agency? And then how do we imagine humans actually interacting with AI?
0:14:41 I talked to Mustafa Suleiman, who I know is your colleague, and he told me like every human’s
0:14:46 going to have an AI companion, and it’s going to help them, you know, go on job interviews,
0:14:49 start companies. So talk to us about those kinds of concepts.
0:14:54 Part of what freaks people out a little bit is we are going to this agentic universe,
0:14:58 where all of a sudden, as opposed to having phones and PCs, which we’ll still have,
0:15:02 we’ll have agents. And by the way, we’ll have more than one. We may have one that we’re,
0:15:08 you know, particularly the hollow read ongoing companion always, you know, always around us
0:15:12 and helping us with things. But there’s going to be a suite of them with kind of different
0:15:16 specialties and different engagements. And by the way, you’re, you know, your office is going to
0:15:21 have one, your working group is going to have one, and probably your podcast is going to have one,
0:15:25 et cetera. And we hear fairly soon and people say, well, if they’re agentic, does that take my
0:15:29 agency away? And the answer is no, the same way that when you work with colleagues and you work
0:15:35 with employees and everything else, that expands your agency, that doesn’t take it away. So the
0:15:40 agency is, I think, extremely important here. But by the way, a lot of it’s kind of the mindset.
0:15:45 Like if you, if you think of your smartphone is, well, here’s the way that everyone can get to me
0:15:50 all the time when I don’t really want to. And here is this microphone and camera that’s following me
0:15:56 around. And I don’t know what it’s doing. Oh, gosh, I’m, I’m, I’m essentially going, oh my god, my
0:16:01 agency is being slaughtered. Whereas I go, no, here’s the way that I can stay in communication
0:16:05 with a bunch of the people I can call out to people I can be heard from people sometimes
0:16:09 when I want, sometimes when I don’t, but I have choice over that. It helps me navigate and never
0:16:14 get lost. Right. So yes, it always knows where I am. But that also knows how it helps me never
0:16:18 get lost. And so therefore it can be an amplification of my agency. And it changes
0:16:24 what the landscape of my agency is. And so I think that’s part of what’s so important about
0:16:29 thinking about this new, a genetic revolution. Now, some of us will also be the, hey, I talked to
0:16:35 my agent and I say, hey, I’m going to go to Rome, figure out what a really good itinerary is, book
0:16:40 anything that’s really important to book early, you know, etc. And it comes back to me and does that.
0:16:44 And you go, well, that’s really awesome. And you say, well, is this going to mean that the
0:16:49 travel agents don’t have a job anymore? I said, well, actually, in fact, travel agents will change
0:16:54 because it’ll be AI plus travel agent. But like, you know, it might be a little bit more along the
0:17:00 lines of, here’s the things that’s normally seen, like, go see the Sistine Chapel in Rome, right?
0:17:07 But it may be, oh, you’re the kind of person who would really like to do the after hours tour.
0:17:13 And this is the way you do it. And maybe agents don’t know that much about the after hours tour.
0:17:17 Maybe there’s a midnight bike ride that might be really good that, you know, doesn’t necessarily
0:17:22 know about. So there’s ways that these kind of the pulling things together. And by the way,
0:17:28 these agents will be making predictions off all the data, which is a lot more than any of us have,
0:17:33 about what things will be really good for us. But it’s like, for example, play with chat,
0:17:39 GBT and see what kinds of things are rights. And at least every time I’ve used it so far,
0:17:45 and I suspect this will also be true of GBT five and GBT six, I can always add something interesting
0:17:54 to it. I can change it, I can make it sharper, more distinct, etc. And that’s kind of a mode for
0:18:01 thinking, well, why will I always have a role in the things that really matter is because I’ll figure
0:18:06 out how to add something to it in a useful way, even as it gets much more powerful. Now, if you
0:18:10 look at it today, like one of the things that I’m a little always bemused by is people say,
0:18:15 I saw two articles in one day earlier this year, which was all that AI is good for is faking homework.
0:18:21 AI is going to destroy all jobs. And you’re like, okay, part of that’s like right now, you’re like,
0:18:25 look, there’s a very long way away from all this implication that everyone’s talking about. I mean,
0:18:30 there’s some that’s right here right now, that’s really spectacular. But there’s a long journey,
0:18:35 a long path, a long role for human beings to be participating in various ways and to be evolving
0:18:43 and changing. And I for one, look forward to that path. I have to say, thinking about agents is so
0:18:49 mind blowing. And when I think about AI, and all the talks that I’ve had, a lot of people talk about
0:18:53 it as being like a great equalizer. And we were just talking about how humans are not going to
0:18:57 work and everything like that. But I’m competitive, right? So like as I’ve been going through these
0:19:00 conversations, I’ve been thinking about like, well, how am I going to be the best version of me?
0:19:06 How am I going to be like a better entrepreneur and compete? But now as I’ve thought about it more,
0:19:12 I realized you have to be the best trainer of the AI. I kind of imagine everybody being an
0:19:18 entrepreneur, having agents that work at their personal company, basically, you basically have
0:19:24 to be the best at coordinating your agents and figuring out how to like mobilize all that AI
0:19:29 and all your AI support. And so smart people are going to be smarter at that, right? And creative
0:19:34 and innovative people are going to be more creative and innovative when it comes to their own agents.
0:19:38 And so I just feel like a lot of people are probably worried that there’s not going to be any
0:19:44 room for them to your point as humans. But I really think it’s going to be how you manage your AI.
0:19:49 Exactly as you say, in addition to training, it’s also deploying, organizing, executing,
0:19:56 strategizing all of the above. And that’s part of the reason why with super agency and the other
0:20:00 content that I’ve been trying to get out there and people’s hands like, start playing with it,
0:20:05 start exploring, because you want to start building the muscles. It’s kind of like, hey,
0:20:09 what is locomotion going to look like now? We’ve just invented, we’ve moved from the computers
0:20:15 being the bicycle of mind to AI being the automobiles of the mind. All right, let’s all go learn how
0:20:21 to drive, right? Let’s figure out how these things work, how we want the technology to evolve, how
0:20:26 we’re going to use it, how we use it together, how we use it individually, and getting engaged with
0:20:30 it is really important. And that’s the most central thing. And again, part of the reason I called it
0:20:36 agency, because it’s like, own your agency and go do it. And part of the super agency is when
0:20:42 millions of us all start doing that, it benefits all of us much more than just even the technology
0:20:46 benefits each of us individually by ourselves. Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break
0:20:53 with our sponsors. Yeah, Pam, do you ever wonder why some businesses do incredible and skyrocket
0:20:59 with their sales while others just flounder and barely survive? Well, I can think of some common
0:21:03 denominators of the successful businesses that grow sales well beyond their forecast such as
0:21:10 festivals by Mr. Beast or even a legacy business like Mattel. They both have a desirable product.
0:21:14 They both have a strong brand identity and influencer driven marketing, which is the future.
0:21:21 But sometimes the thing that goes overlooked and that’s not talked about often enough is the magic
0:21:26 that happens behind the scenes with the business behind the business, the technology that makes
0:21:32 selling and buying easy for everyone. And for millions of businesses, that business that’s
0:21:40 powering them is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. It’s the home of the number
0:21:45 one checkout on the planet. Shopify is not so secret. Secret is shop pay, which boosts conversions
0:21:52 up to 50% with payment plans. That means way fewer cards go abandoned and way more sales get done.
0:21:59 So if you’re into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to keep up
0:22:04 and sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your retail store,
0:22:09 on your social media feed, and everywhere in between Shopify’s got you covered.
0:22:15 Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that Mr.
0:22:22 Beast, Mattel, and yours truly use. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/profit.
0:22:36 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment, receiving a 3% IRA match on retirement
0:22:41 contributions. The privileges of the very privileged are no longer exclusive. With Robinhood Gold,
0:22:48 your annual IRA contributions are boosted by 3%. Plus, you also get 4% APY on your cash and
0:22:53 non-retirement accounts. That’s over eight times the national savings average. The perks of the
0:22:58 high net worth are now available for any net worth. The new gold standard is here with Robinhood Gold.
0:23:05 To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at Robinhood.com/Gold.
0:23:10 Investing involves risk. 3% match requires Robinhood Gold at $5 per month for one year
0:23:17 from the first match. Must keep funds in IRA for five years. Go to Robinhood.com/Boost. Over eight
0:23:22 times the national average savings account interest rate claim is based on data from the FDIC as of
0:23:30 November 18, 2024. Robinhood Financial LLC member SIPC. Gold membership is offered by Robinhood Gold
0:23:37 LLC. Yeah, fam, when I first started this podcast, believe it or not, I had an all-volunteer team to
0:23:43 help me out. But as my business took off, I needed to hire a lot of new people and fast. It soon
0:23:49 became overwhelming. I had to sort through piles and piles of resumes, conduct countless interviews,
0:23:54 you know how it goes. And then I discovered the easiest way to hire the right people quickly,
0:24:00 and that’s indeed. When it comes to hiring, indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job
0:24:07 posts seen on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With sponsored
0:24:11 jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the
0:24:17 people that you want faster. And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored
0:24:23 jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. One of
0:24:28 the things that I love about Indeed is that it makes hiring all in one place so easy because
0:24:33 I don’t have to waste time sifting through candidates who aren’t good fits for my company.
0:24:38 Plus with Indeed sponsored jobs, there’s no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts,
0:24:44 and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed? In the minute I’ve been talking to you, 23 hires
0:24:49 were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. There’s no need to wait any longer.
0:24:54 Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored
0:25:01 job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/profiting. Just go to indeed.com/profiting
0:25:05 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
0:25:11 Indeed.com/profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
0:25:20 So I know that you co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Selimon, and one of your big missions
0:25:26 there is to create companions that have high emotional intelligence for humans. It’s not a
0:25:32 workplace tool. You’re really creating companions for people. Why do you think that’s important
0:25:36 and what gap did you see in the AI world? Why did you get on board with that?
0:25:39 So that’s how we started with Inflection. And part of that was because we said, well,
0:25:43 what’s the world that we see that necessarily people don’t see that could be a very good product
0:25:50 to create? Entrepreneur 1, right? And we said, look, this agent, eugenic world coming, there’s
0:25:54 going to be more agents than people. Everyone’s going to have an agent that’s their own personal
0:26:00 agent that they have trust with and is on their side. And what are the key attributes of that?
0:26:04 Because if you look at even the very earliest of how other people were thinking about agents,
0:26:08 they were thinking about information processing and work. And we were thinking about this as
0:26:14 a trusted companion for how you’d operate. And so EQ is as important as IQ. So we trained the
0:26:20 Inflection Model Pi, personal intelligence on this. Now, we’ve since then, we spoke about
0:26:26 pivots earlier, we’ve pivoted the business. The consumer application of that is now being run
0:26:31 as part of things that Microsoft’s doing. And what Inflection the company is doing now is providing
0:26:38 that same kind of best in class IQ, but also best in class EQ to businesses that want to deploy
0:26:43 this within their ecosystem, to their customers, to their products and services. So it’s shifted
0:26:48 to kind of a more of a B2B model where the Pi agent is more the kind of exemplar of one of the
0:26:54 unique models that Inflection has that it can deploy for your particular business challenges.
0:26:59 So it’s a classic startup journey in addition to being in an interesting evolution of the AI
0:27:05 things. And when it comes to having good EQ, I know obviously AI is not conscious, right?
0:27:08 So how do you actually train it to have empathy and things like that?
0:27:13 Part of what you’re doing when you’re doing the training of an AI is you’re training it
0:27:18 to say it’s this prompt completion, like what do you say after this is said? And part of what
0:27:22 you’re doing both in data and in post training is you’re saying, okay, here’s the kinds of things
0:27:29 that count as good saying. So you have a whole bunch of humans who are running the system through
0:27:34 and saying, okay, to prompt one, like you say, the person says, how’s your day? And says, well,
0:27:40 my pet died today. And is it why respond A or respond B? Which one’s better response? And then
0:27:44 human beings respond to that. That’s part of how it gets aligned with our beings, part of how it
0:27:48 gets to kind of an EQ. And you’re partially telling your human beings who are training this
0:27:55 where you want to nudge and prompt the responses to so that they’re essentially doing the training
0:28:01 for this. And so if it said, for example, option A, oh, that’s too bad, you should really look up a
0:28:09 grief counselor. And option two was, oh, that must be really hard. Oh, my gosh, is there anything I
0:28:13 can do to help? I feel for you. Or, you know, probably wouldn’t say that just because it’s an AI,
0:28:16 but it’s like something else because you don’t want to make false anthem or worse thing. But
0:28:21 it’s like, look, I’m certain that connecting with friends or other kinds of things, how can I be of
0:28:26 most help? And shouldn’t you want to have a conversation about it? That would be the kind
0:28:34 of thing as all B is better than A, right? And so then by that, it learns how to have empathetic,
0:28:40 kind, compassionate conversations. Because you can do that even without necessarily being
0:28:44 compassionate or empathetic yourself, because as you noted, it’s not conscious. And by the way,
0:28:49 there’s bunch of human beings who are also not there empathetic, who learn to be more empathetic,
0:28:52 just by, you know, kind of, okay, this is the way you do this.
0:28:56 It’s really cool what you guys are doing at Inflection AI. So one of the things that I wanted
0:29:02 to talk to you about was trust when it comes to AI, because I feel like a lot of people are worried
0:29:07 about misinformation. There’s so many deep fakes out there. People are just worried about trust
0:29:12 when it comes to AI. So what are your thoughts around that? Look, trust is in, unfortunately,
0:29:18 short supply these days, generally, not just for the AI. Trust in institutions, trust in
0:29:23 democracies, voting systems, other people’s intent, you know, other kinds of things. So trust
0:29:27 is challenging. Now, the way that I think it’s going to be very important to build and maintain
0:29:33 trust with AI is for the people who are building it to be very clear about what their goals are,
0:29:39 what they’re doing, what they’re doing to try to build and maintain trust. Part of the reason why,
0:29:45 of course, my encouragement with super agency is for people to go try it because as they begin
0:29:48 to try it and learn what kinds of good things they can do, what kinds of things are going to be
0:29:53 empowered, that will be the kind of thing that builds the kind of positive trust in these kinds
0:30:00 of circumstances. And my advice to individuals encountering these things, like, you know, a
0:30:03 classic suspicion is say, well, big tech companies who are trying to make a lot of money are building
0:30:07 these things and they’re trying to make money from you. And I was like, well, by the way,
0:30:11 trying to make money from you is usually offering you a product and service you really like that
0:30:15 really is something that you come back for that you keep using. That’s good for you. That’s the
0:30:21 goodness of modern business. So you go, okay, so which things should I trust these AIs on or
0:30:27 which things should I not? And the answer is, well, if you generally should and you should
0:30:34 understand that company is trying to have you as a lifelong loyal customer that generally speaking,
0:30:37 most of them are smart about doing that. So they’re going to try to make it good.
0:30:42 If it’s something that’s particularly important to you cross-checking, it’s important. Like, you
0:30:47 know, when I go to GBD4 and get a prompt, then I go, you know, huh, that doesn’t really make full
0:30:52 sense to me. I’m going to go look at this a little bit more. Because it’s like, okay, if it said
0:30:57 something about like, yeah, your lab, your, you know, your black lab can eat that mushroom. It’s
0:31:04 like, nah, I really want to know. Yeah, double-check that. You know, so, and so you, you know, that
0:31:09 kind of thing. And by the way, over time, these will get better and better for how it operates.
0:31:14 And so I think that’s the kind of thing, but I think that’s the only by engaging and using,
0:31:22 having dialogue, having that dialogue match our experience over time, being accountable as creators
0:31:27 and companies for, you know, here are the things that we want in the use. And here are the things
0:31:32 that are still under development. And being clear about that so that people have a sense of, okay,
0:31:37 I understand it’s not perfect, but it could be really good for me. I feel like we’re in this
0:31:44 transition period where humans that have a specialized expertise right now are at such an
0:31:49 advantage. So for example, I have a podcast network. And I’m probably one of the most knowledgeable
0:31:55 people about monetizing podcasts. And I write a newsletter that I write personally with all
0:32:01 my industry knowledge. And sometimes I’ll just be like, well, what would chat GBT say? And then
0:32:08 it’s all wrong. And it’s just so basic, right? It’s so basic. It’s kind of wrong. And then I just
0:32:14 love it because I’m like, okay, people are getting my newsletter, which is this human experience that
0:32:20 they can’t get anymore. And it’s making me feel like I actually am more valuable. I think it will
0:32:25 transition where that might not be the case in like two years, but I feel like we’re in this
0:32:30 transition where specialized knowledge from humans is actually like really desirable.
0:32:37 Broadly, yes. And part of it’s obviously that specialized knowledge being evolved with how
0:32:42 you’re figuring out how to use like you made this comment earlier, how you use these new
0:32:48 tools really effectively. And so even with a depth of experience, the early involvement with open AI
0:32:55 and all that, I constantly am asking questions and trying to use a number of these tools myself
0:33:00 for real things, not just like create a sonnet for my cousin’s birthday or any of this kind of
0:33:07 stuff, but it’s also things like investment analysis or market trends or other kinds of things.
0:33:12 And frequently, just as you said, you know, like, ah, that’s not very good. Okay, fine.
0:33:16 And sometimes I go, I iterate on it. And sometimes I go, oh, no, no, I think that’s just not very
0:33:21 good right now. I’ll use it for other things, but using it constantly. So I have, I’ve enabled the
0:33:28 voice agents on my phones so that I can point my camera at things and talk to chat, GBT about
0:33:35 the thing I’m looking at, say mushrooms, right? And so, and you know, that kind of thing as a
0:33:41 way of understanding it. And I do think that human specialized knowledge creativity will even grow
0:33:46 with a premium, but it will grow at a premium in the use of the tools too. Like you can’t just buy,
0:33:51 like, I am genius. I don’t need AI. It’s like, no, I am genius because of the way that I use AI
0:33:57 to be an extra special genius. We were talking about deep bakes before. And I came across this
0:34:04 interview of you interviewing your own AI on your YouTube, you call it read AI, and it’s an
0:34:09 AI video avatar of you. Talk to us about how you felt in that interview. Did you learn anything
0:34:16 from it? Did you help you realize anything about AI in the future? It came about primarily because
0:34:21 I was like, look, here’s a technology that everyone’s so skeptical about. Our name for it is deep fakes.
0:34:31 It’s kind of like if your name was disaster, okay. So I was like, okay, but can I imagine that there
0:34:36 would possibly be good things that could work with this? And I was like, well, let’s explore because
0:34:41 we should. And let’s share the exploration. So we’ll have this kind of interview and conversation.
0:34:46 And as I said at the end of the interview, I thought I was going to hate this because I’m not
0:34:51 one of those people who talks to myself in a mirror. I was like, am I going to feel schizophrenic?
0:34:57 Am I going to feel self and grandizing? Am I going to feel like I can see all these different ways
0:35:03 that I could possibly hate this thing? And actually it was more interesting as kind of a palette and
0:35:08 exploration. Like if you said, well, I only want to talk to read AI, so absolutely not. But what I
0:35:14 want to talk to read AI sometimes and doing these things and have that as a way of having a dialogue
0:35:20 with myself and also showing what’s good at, because once I did that, one of the things I
0:35:25 realized is after I made that, I was off to go give a speech at the University of Perugia
0:35:30 in defense of an honorary doctorate. And I sort of wrote out the speech. And then I went, you know,
0:35:37 I could actually have read AI, give this speech. And I’m only really fluent in English
0:35:43 in all of these other languages, ranging from Hindi to Chinese to Arabic to all these things.
0:35:50 And to give the speech in those languages where people are much like, it was bizarre listening
0:35:56 to me, my voice, speaking Hindi or Chinese fluently. It’s like, what would I sound like
0:36:00 if I were speaking Chinese? Now, one of the things that my French friends told me is my
0:36:05 French sounded like Canadian French. And you know, I don’t know what the story of that is.
0:36:10 How is this? Is there more data audio samples of Canadian French or somehow it goes, well,
0:36:16 you’re North American, so we’re going to make you from Quebec rather than Putty? Who knows?
0:36:21 But it was humanizing. I thought I would really dislike it. And it was humanizing. And it started
0:36:25 making me realize just as I say to other people, hey, you should use the technology to get a sense
0:36:30 of it and to reinforce your own agency with the technology. It was like, that was me doing that
0:36:35 with that. And we continue to do new things with read AI. Probably one of the funniest ones
0:36:42 was the number of different press outlets that asked, we’d like to do an interview with read AI.
0:36:48 It was like, oh, that’s interesting. Cool. Yeah, it’s so cool. I feel like in terms of
0:36:52 content creation, I’ve got a lot of creator entrepreneurs that listen to the show. I feel
0:36:57 like AI is totally going to change the game. Even with me, I have my AI voice if I’m sick,
0:37:05 or if I miss a commercial, we can use my AI voice as an intermediate step. I’ll always rerecord it,
0:37:10 make sure that it’s me. But it’s really close to my voice. People really can’t tell. And we’re
0:37:15 working on my AI video. And to your point, people probably think I’m crazy creating my own deep bake.
0:37:20 But I want to be able to scale myself. And this is the future. And you just gave me such a great
0:37:26 idea in terms of the translations. People love to watch content all over the world, and not everybody
0:37:33 speaks English. Not only do I speak English, but also people most emotionally resonate with content
0:37:38 that’s in languages that they are native to. And so most people are native one language. Sometimes
0:37:43 they’re native a couple, but it’s within the languages they’re native to, which roughly means
0:37:48 languages they learn complete fluency before they were 12 for the vast majority of people.
0:37:54 It’s a human connection. If the person says, oh, I’m hearing this in Chinese, it’s warmer,
0:37:58 it’s smarter, it’s more engaging, et cetera, if Chinese is my native language.
0:38:03 I do feel like people who have a lot of content out there have a very unique advantage
0:38:08 going into the future because we can actually create these avatars with ourselves because
0:38:15 we have all this content. Absolutely. We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
0:38:22 Hey, AppBam. I’ve been counting down the days to Valentine’s Day because on that day,
0:38:28 I’ll be speaking at Funnel Hacking Live alongside Tony Robbins. I’ll be speaking next to Tony
0:38:34 Robbins. Yeah, fam. It is such a big deal for me. And I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect
0:38:39 red dress. It took a while to find exactly what I was looking for, but I finally found the perfect
0:38:46 dress. And it was in my size on an overseas website. Everything looked good. The pricing was good.
0:38:53 And then I went back to checkout and the price was different. It was jacked up. And then I remembered
0:39:00 NordVPN. NordVPN for the rescue. I could just switch servers, refresh the page,
0:39:05 and just like that, the price dropped. Turns out retailers can use your browsing history or
0:39:12 location to jack up the prices, but NordVPN keeps them on track. When it comes to finding the perfect
0:39:18 outfit, I don’t settle. I want designer. I want the best of the best. And if you’re like me,
0:39:22 you need NordVPN to keep your credit card details safe, whether you’re shopping on
0:39:29 international websites or using public Wi-Fi. Don’t let sneaky pricing tactics or security risks
0:39:34 mess with your online shopping experience. Get the best deal and get what you want.
0:39:40 To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com/profiting. Our link will also
0:39:45 give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There’s no risk with Nord’s 30-day money-back
0:39:51 guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box, and that’s NordVPN.com/profiting.
0:40:00 One last question for you on the future of AI. So you’re obviously at the forefront of this.
0:40:04 You’ve thought a lot about it. You’ve written books on AI. So I just want you and you can take
0:40:09 your time with us because I think it’s very interesting. How do you imagine our world to be
0:40:13 five, 10, 20 years in the future with AI? What do you imagine the world to be like?
0:40:18 Well, one of the things that’s a great way to look foolish in the future is to make overly
0:40:25 specific predictions, partially because the usual principle I used to say in this is the future is
0:40:30 sooner and stranger than you think. And so people thought in the ’80s, we’re going to get AI, but
0:40:33 if we didn’t get AI, we got the internet, we got mobile phone. Well, maybe now we’re going to get
0:40:38 AI. I mean, we’re going to get what shape of AI is the interesting question. What I think is
0:40:44 the minimum guarantee is there’s going to be, as opposed to computer interfaces or phone interfaces,
0:40:52 we’re going to have agents. And agents are going to be the primary mode of navigation. What we
0:40:58 describe in super agency is an informational GPS. So in this entire informational digital world,
0:41:04 we’ll do that. And there will be more agents than there are people, especially when you consider
0:41:10 even though there might be just one agent, Pi, that’s kind of then instantiated with what remembers
0:41:15 out of its conversations and interactions with Hala, what it understands, remembers in its
0:41:20 conversation, interactions with Reed, et cetera, et cetera, this kind of this flow of agents. Now,
0:41:23 one of the things that I think people haven’t really fully tracked yet, but I think what we’re
0:41:28 interesting is how agents end up talking to each other. Because when we have that many agents,
0:41:32 part of how you and I are going to coordinate, like we say, hey, what should we talk about in the
0:41:39 podcast? Well, one of our preps will be your agent, we’ll talk to my agent. And they’ll kind of go,
0:41:43 well, you know, these topics will be really good. And, you know, hey, when you ask a question this
0:41:47 way, it’ll be great. And when you answer it this way, it’ll be great. And that kind of thing,
0:41:52 or this could be a really new interesting thing to try. And that will be part of the world that we
0:42:00 will be in. And I think that part of that will then make the premium on thinking creatively,
0:42:06 thinking differently. You know, as you mentioned, we’ll be much higher. My guess is, for example,
0:42:12 if you go back 30 years, and you told someone there would be these jobs called web designer,
0:42:18 data scientist, other things, they go, what are you talking about? You know, crazy person from
0:42:23 the future. And I think that’s another thing that we’re going to see even more of, which is like,
0:42:28 oh, didn’t realize that was going to be the job. Huh. And that’s cool. Those are some of the things,
0:42:35 but I try not to make overly specific predictions because usually there may all put it this way.
0:42:38 William Gibson, science fiction author, has a really good quote, which is,
0:42:43 “The future is already here. It’s unevenly distributed.” He’s been a great neural mancer,
0:42:47 it was the internet, everything else. Now, he was being asked in an interview,
0:42:54 “How did you see the future?” And he’s like, “Look, thank you for the compliment. But by the way,
0:43:00 if you read neural mancer, sure, I got AI right. I got the internet right. I missed the mobile phone.”
0:43:08 And so that’s the kind of thing that we’re always looking for is that surprise and delight moment.
0:43:13 And who knows with AI to your point, like, we have no idea what we’re going to see.
0:43:19 I’m excited to see it unfold. Okay, so I end my show with two questions. I ask all of my guests.
0:43:23 The first, and you can just answer however you’d like, doesn’t have to be about anything we talked
0:43:29 about today. What is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become more
0:43:36 profitable tomorrow? So to become more profitable tomorrow, I guess I won’t say literally tomorrow,
0:43:45 right, since one day, 24 hour. I would say the important thing, you know, and this is kind of
0:43:48 part of how I think about the world, the important thing is to be thinking about what do you think
0:43:52 the environment your business is going to be in in one, three, and five years? And what do you
0:43:55 think that environment is going to be changing based on patterns of technology? What do you think
0:43:59 that’s going to be changing on patterns of competition? What do you think that’s going to
0:44:05 be changing in patterns of how you deliver your business, supply chain, et cetera? And so by looking
0:44:14 at that probable guess, how do you run the experiment today that informs you about which big choices
0:44:19 you need to make in that one, three, and five year timeframe? The experiment won’t necessarily make
0:44:25 you profitable, but the experiment may give you the thing that either gets you to more profit or
0:44:32 also helps you navigate the changes, which things are the new living creatures and which
0:44:37 things the dinosaurs in the future market. Great advice. And what is your secret to
0:44:42 profiting in life? And this can go beyond financial profiting in all aspects of life.
0:44:46 Fundamentally, part of why in the startup of you, I said life is a team sport,
0:44:49 because the startup of you is actually advice I give to entrepreneurs,
0:44:54 refactored to individuals being the entrepreneur of their own life. So it actually applies to
0:44:59 founders, applies to CEOs, applies to executives, applies to people working. But it’s the question
0:45:08 about life being a team sport. It’s you are amplified by your team. It’s more fun. You learn more,
0:45:14 and they help you in both upside and navigating downside. So the most fundamental thing,
0:45:18 life is a team sport. And now we’re going to have agents with our team.
0:45:24 Exactly. Amongst our team. Yes, with our team. We’ll also have agents, and everybody will have
0:45:30 agents. Reed, this has been such an awesome conversation. I really appreciate all your time,
0:45:33 all your wisdom. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
0:45:40 Well, LinkedIn. I post just about everything there. I also have readoffman.org and this year,
0:45:45 Publishing Super Agency. Amazing. I highly recommend everybody go get Super Agency,
0:45:50 also get Blitzscaling. I love that book as well. Reed, thank you so much for your time today.
0:45:53 Thank you for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:45:55 A great pleasure. I look forward to our next conversation.
0:46:05 Okay, guys, that’s the second installment of my two-part conversation with the amazing Reed
0:46:10 Hoffman. He had so many great insights about how we should think about AI and where it’s
0:46:14 headed. And I’ve got so many takeaways from this conversation, but here’s my most important
0:46:20 takeaways from this chat. First, big picture. New technology changes industries. And that’s
0:46:25 what AI is going to do, and that’s what it’s going to do to your industry. So you need to get in
0:46:30 front of it and ask, what does this technology mean for my business, my product, or service,
0:46:37 and how will we operate as a company to get ahead of this? Technology also breeds fear and paranoia.
0:46:43 And the conversation that mean Reed had about the potential harms of AI is one that society has had
0:46:48 for all the other major innovations as well, from the printing press to the smartphone.
0:46:53 People are always scared of new technology. And we should be having these conversations,
0:46:58 but like Reed said, we should also recognize that most of our fears about these innovations
0:47:04 actually don’t come to pass. And we live in a better world because of them. And the world we
0:47:09 could live in, thanks to the advances in AI, could be truly transformational. As Reed put it,
0:47:16 if we do it the right way, it could be magical. Put simply, AI means amplification intelligence.
0:47:21 We’re going to be having AI agents on our phones and devices that become our personal
0:47:26 assistants, our tutors, our medical and financial advisors, and so much more. We’re going to be
0:47:32 having capabilities at our fingertips that we can’t even imagine today. We can’t even foresee
0:47:37 what the future is going to be like. And when you think about who’s going to thrive and flourish
0:47:43 in this world of super agents, it’s going to be the people who have managerial experience.
0:47:48 It’s going to be the entrepreneurs, young and profitors. We are the most equipped to handle
0:47:54 this AI revolution because we’re creative, industrious, innovative. We know how to manage,
0:48:01 delegate, motivate. We know how to let go of control. We know how to handle this young and
0:48:07 profitors. AI is going to multiply what you’re capable of. It is not going to replace you or
0:48:11 your business. We’re going to ride this wave, young and profitors. Thanks for listening to
0:48:16 this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listen, learned and profited from this
0:48:20 conversation with the legendary Reed Hoffman, please share this episode with somebody who’d
0:48:26 love it. And guys, I’ve been loving reading your reviews. So many of you are leaving reviews every
0:48:31 day on Apple, Spotify, Cast Box, Player of Fame, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
0:48:37 And it just means the world to me. I love to read your reviews. It makes me feel motivated.
0:48:42 It’s great for our social proof. And I’d love for you guys to drop a review and help spread
0:48:47 this podcast by word of mouth. Young and profiting is a gem for all the entrepreneurs out there.
0:48:52 Please tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues, tell all the entrepreneurs in
0:48:57 your life that they’ve got to listen to Young and Profiting Podcasts. If you guys like to watch
0:49:02 your podcast’s videos, I’ve been doing all this amazing YouTube content. My YouTube channel just
0:49:07 hit 50k subscribers, which is much smaller than my audio channels, but I’m going to invest super
0:49:12 heavily into video this year. And I just interviewed Mel Robbins in person. I interviewed Gary Vee in
0:49:18 person. I just had Sahil Bloom in person that didn’t come out yet. So I’m doing so many more
0:49:24 in person videos. And I absolutely love it. It’s making me a better interviewer. It is just so
0:49:29 much better for chemistry. And I’ve just been really digging it. So check out YouTube for all
0:49:34 the video content. If you guys want to follow me on social media, I always post like fun stories
0:49:40 about my life on Instagram @yapwithhala. Put a face behind the name. Why not? You can also find
0:49:45 me on LinkedIn. I’m hard to miss over there. Just search Halataha. And a big thanks to my YAP
0:49:51 production team. If you guys don’t know, I have an award-winning social media and podcast agency.
0:49:57 It is my podcast agency that runs this podcast. I also have a podcast network that gets me
0:50:03 sponsorships and gets 30 other podcasts in the business space, sponsorships as well. We’re
0:50:07 crushing it on all sides. And I’m so thankful for my team. I literally have the best team in the
0:50:15 world. We’re so picky about who we hire. So we’ve got the A+ team at YAP who puts out A+ work
0:50:22 and that’s why we got A+ Money in the Bank. This is your host, Halataha, aka the podcast princess,
0:50:30 signing off.
0:50:34 [Music]
0:50:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:06 Today’s episode is sponsored in part by Robinhood Airbnb Open Phone Rocket Money and Indeed.
0:00:11 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment receiving a 3% IRA match on
0:00:13 retirement contributions.
0:00:20 To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at Robinhood.com/Gold.
0:00:24 Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier with Airbnb’s new co-host network.
0:00:28 Mind yourself a co-host at Airbnb.com/host.
0:00:31 Open Phone is the number one business phone system.
0:00:35 Build stronger customer relationships and respond faster with shared numbers, AI, and
0:00:36 automations.
0:00:42 Get 20% off for your first six months when you go to openphone.com/profit.
0:00:47 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions,
0:00:50 monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills.
0:00:54 Sign up for free at rocketmoney.com/profit.
0:00:57 Track, interview, and hire all in one place with Indeed.
0:01:01 Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profit.
0:01:03 Terms and conditions apply.
0:01:20 As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.
0:01:22 Welcome back, Young and Profiters.
0:01:26 Have you ever wondered what separates successful small businesses from those that struggle
0:01:27 to gain traction?
0:01:32 Today on YAP Classic, we’re showcasing an interview I did with Donald Miller, the host
0:01:38 of the Business Made Simple podcast, as well as a bestselling author and CEO of Storybrand.
0:01:43 In this episode, we unpack the secrets of building a thriving entrepreneurial venture.
0:01:46 This conversation was back in 2023.
0:01:50 It was the third time that Donald came on the show, and he had so many incredible tips
0:01:52 for building out a small business.
0:01:57 We talked about everything from crafting the perfect mission statement, when to be financially
0:02:02 transparent with your team, and why most businesses fail today.
0:02:06 He also explained why you should think of your business as an airplane.
0:02:10 Okay, gang, make sure your seats are back and tray tables are in their full upright
0:02:17 position because this episode is about to take off.
0:02:21 So Donald, my team tells me your new book, How to Grow Your Small Business, has already
0:02:25 sold more copies in a pre-sale than any other book that you’ve ever written.
0:02:27 So that’s incredible.
0:02:29 And I think it’s a hot topic, right?
0:02:30 The economy is not doing so well.
0:02:32 I think a lot of businesses are struggling.
0:02:34 So let’s begin there.
0:02:36 Why are so many small businesses failing?
0:02:40 Well, I’ll tell you how it all started for me, and it started with failure.
0:02:44 So failure is only a bad thing if you let it take you down, but if you let yourself learn
0:02:46 from it, you can get somewhere.
0:02:52 I actually, 11 years ago, lost all of my money, my entire life savings, and a bad investment.
0:02:54 I had paid off my house.
0:02:55 I sold my house to buy another house.
0:02:59 The other house sold, so I was sitting on a pile of cash, put it into an investment,
0:03:04 woke up one Monday morning, and my entire life savings was gone, and it was devastating.
0:03:13 11 years later, I had a $17 million company with more than 50% profit, 30 employees, and
0:03:15 life was very, very different.
0:03:19 And one of the main reasons it was different, and one of the main reasons I think businesses
0:03:26 either succeed or fail, is I 100% took 100% ownership of my career and my life and my
0:03:27 business.
0:03:31 Everything that negative happened, I took ownership of, everything positive happened,
0:03:32 I took ownership of.
0:03:34 I didn’t trust other people to make me money anymore.
0:03:40 And by that, I mean agents and speaking managers and the market, none of that stuff.
0:03:42 I took ownership of it.
0:03:47 And so as you talk about the economy struggling, that’s the economy.
0:03:49 Your economy is different.
0:03:55 So the economy has factors like trade wars with China, the war in Ukraine, all those
0:03:57 kinds of things.
0:03:59 Your economy is hardly affected by any of that.
0:04:03 It might be slightly, but most of us is hardly affected by any of that.
0:04:05 It’s actually more affected by our attitude.
0:04:10 And if we take ownership of our economy, our economy can do incredibly well.
0:04:16 So as I went from $0 to $17 million, I did a rough count, Hala.
0:04:22 I think I did 572 things wrong, and I did six things right.
0:04:26 So the book, How to Grow Your Small Business, is about the six things I did right.
0:04:30 So the book really walks through, and I turn those six things into six steps that you need
0:04:35 to overhaul your business and optimize it for revenue and profit.
0:04:39 And I just laid it out so nobody has to make the 570 mistakes that I made.
0:04:40 Yeah.
0:04:44 And I love your work, Donald, because you always just tell things in a way that’s easy
0:04:45 to retain.
0:04:46 You write so clearly.
0:04:47 It’s no fluff.
0:04:48 So I was reading through this book, and I’m like, “This is great.
0:04:51 I want to align everything I do with my business for this book.”
0:04:55 Because I also have a small business, so I really relate it to it.
0:04:57 Let’s go back to this question of why businesses fail.
0:05:02 You talk about an S-curve in your book, and essentially it’s a growth pattern that a lot
0:05:03 of small businesses fall into.
0:05:07 So can you explain to us what an S-curve is and what we need to look out for?
0:05:11 Yeah, well, the S-curve explains why most businesses fail, and they actually fail because
0:05:13 they succeeded.
0:05:15 And here’s what I mean by that.
0:05:17 Nobody gets into business to run a business.
0:05:20 Nobody, not a single person in the history of the world has ever started a business because
0:05:22 they wanted to run a business.
0:05:24 They started a business because they loved their customers.
0:05:26 They loved a product.
0:05:28 They wanted to be financially free.
0:05:30 That’s why we start a business.
0:05:35 If that business takes off, the business owner then finds himself doing something that they
0:05:38 never thought or never even imagined or didn’t realize they were going to have to do, and
0:05:40 that’s run a business.
0:05:43 So the S-curve is you love this product.
0:05:46 It starts taking off, and you start going up and up and up.
0:05:48 And then all of a sudden, you’re hiring people.
0:05:49 You’re firing people.
0:05:51 You’re trying to figure out health care benefits.
0:05:53 You’re dealing with customer service.
0:05:58 All of a sudden, you’re taken out of the sweet spot you were in when the business grew, and
0:06:01 you’re put into a different role, and that role is running a business.
0:06:03 And almost none of us have any education.
0:06:08 Even if you got a master’s degree in business, you don’t know how to run a business.
0:06:11 Most master’s programs train you to be chairman of the federal treasury.
0:06:12 They don’t train you to run a business.
0:06:14 And so we don’t know what we’re doing.
0:06:17 And because we don’t know what we’re doing, customers realize it.
0:06:21 Our products aren’t as– the quality’s not as good as it used to be.
0:06:24 The relationships we used to have with customers are now strained because we’ve turned those
0:06:26 over to account executives.
0:06:30 We ended up falling on hard times a little bit, so we ended up giving 90-day terms to
0:06:33 a customer in order to get bigger profits.
0:06:37 Then we ran into a cash flow issue, and you know what happens after that.
0:06:39 You just kind of– you bomb.
0:06:41 So that’s the down part of the S-curve.
0:06:46 Now that’s where those 65% of businesses, that’s where they crash when they hit the ground.
0:06:49 The rest of us, though, we do something.
0:06:51 We figure out how to run a business.
0:06:56 We figure out how to install the systems and processes that are necessary in order for
0:07:01 a business to not hit the ground, but actually come back up and start climbing again.
0:07:05 Those are the 35% of businesses that actually make it and go on to make millions and millions
0:07:06 of dollars.
0:07:11 So those systems and processes are what this book is about.
0:07:15 It’s the six systems and processes that you need to install in your business in order to
0:07:17 avoid crashing your business.
0:07:22 It will teach you how to run a business so that it is a predictable, dependable revenue
0:07:23 machine.
0:07:24 I love that explanation.
0:07:27 Thank you so much for covering that.
0:07:31 Before we get into the six steps, I want to talk about your experience, because we see
0:07:32 you now.
0:07:35 You’re leading a $17 million company, like you were just saying.
0:07:37 You’re hosting one of the most popular business podcasts in the world.
0:07:38 You’re a business guru.
0:07:42 But when you first started your business, you were actually drowning in your day-to-day.
0:07:45 So I want to do a little bit of comparing contrast.
0:07:49 What was Donald like day one or year one of his business?
0:07:50 How did you spend your time?
0:07:55 And then let’s contrast to this to Donald now with his six steps, all the knowledge,
0:07:56 all these…
0:07:59 We’ve had so much experience since then, and you have a whole framework around running
0:08:00 a small business.
0:08:04 So what was your day-to-day like year one versus now?
0:08:10 Well, about six years ago is when my business really experienced a transformational moment.
0:08:12 It happened in my driveway.
0:08:16 Before then, I’ll get to the driveway in a second, but before then, I was what I call
0:08:18 diving for dollars.
0:08:20 We were just trying to find money anywhere I could get.
0:08:21 If you paid me to speak, I’d go speak.
0:08:24 If I could get a book contract, I’d get a book contract.
0:08:27 I put out an online course and people would buy the online course.
0:08:29 Anything I could do, I would do.
0:08:33 And that started getting very successful, true to the S-curve, the initial rise in the
0:08:34 S-curve.
0:08:38 And we got to about three and a half million dollars or something like that.
0:08:42 People were loving my marketing framework, the StoryBrand framework.
0:08:48 We were consulting with giant brands, Procter and Gamble, Ford Lincoln, even the NSA in
0:08:49 the government.
0:08:51 We began consulting with.
0:08:52 Everything was going really well.
0:08:55 I had a mentor who is still a very good friend.
0:08:57 His name is Bill.
0:09:01 And Bill scaled up his company, his father’s company, into the billions and then took some
0:09:04 of that money and bought other small companies and was mentoring some of those CEOs.
0:09:07 He didn’t buy my company, but he was mentoring me nonetheless.
0:09:08 And I mentioned him.
0:09:10 I’d love for my business to get to 100 million.
0:09:13 We were standing in my driveway after having met for a couple hours.
0:09:17 And for the first time in my relationship with Bill, he just kind of looked at me a little
0:09:18 bit puzzled.
0:09:23 He knew that the $100 million number was really big and he didn’t think I was going to hit
0:09:24 it.
0:09:26 That’s the first time I’d ever seen that expression in him as he looked back at me.
0:09:29 And I said, Bill, what’s going on?
0:09:35 He said, Don, in order to hit $100 million, you are going to have to quote, professionalize
0:09:36 your operation.
0:09:37 That’s what he said to me.
0:09:42 Now, I’d never heard the phrase professionalize your operation before, but it rang absolutely
0:09:46 true as it’s ringing true to almost all of your listeners right now.
0:09:50 What it said to me was what Bill said to me basically was you’re making it up.
0:09:51 You’re making it up as you go along.
0:09:52 And he also said this.
0:09:57 He said, Don, if you leave this company, the company’s going to go down because you haven’t
0:10:03 installed the systems and processes necessary for somebody else to come and buy this company
0:10:05 and run it, right?
0:10:10 And that rang so true to me that I spent the next about three to four years figuring out
0:10:15 what the systems and processes needed to be and how the company needed to run.
0:10:20 And the framework that I came up with is actually really simple.
0:10:22 And that’s kind of what was missing in the market.
0:10:23 Everything was very complicated.
0:10:28 It took more time to sort of professionalize your operations through other systems than
0:10:29 it did to actually build your company.
0:10:33 You spent more time working on your company than you did catering to clients, which doesn’t
0:10:34 work.
0:10:35 You lose money that way.
0:10:37 I wanted it to be really simple.
0:10:41 And the metaphor that I came up with after I did all this stuff, when I was trying to
0:10:46 sort of have a controlling idea to bring it all together was the metaphor of the airplane.
0:10:51 And every airplane has, every commercial airplane has six very important parts to it, and they
0:10:53 have to work together.
0:10:54 The leadership is your cockpit.
0:10:58 The people in that cockpit need to enter data into the flight computer that says where
0:11:00 this airplane is going.
0:11:02 Everything is reverse engineered from that leadership in the cockpit.
0:11:08 The right engine is your marketing, and that marketing needs to produce thrust to get the
0:11:09 plane moving.
0:11:10 Left engine is your sales.
0:11:12 It needs to produce more thrust to get the plane moving.
0:11:15 Your products are your wings of the airplane.
0:11:17 Those need to be in demand and profitable.
0:11:21 The wings need to be big, light, and strong in order to get lift.
0:11:24 The body of your airplane is your most expensive, heavy part.
0:11:27 That’s your overhead, and your overhead needs to stay lean.
0:11:31 That’s why when you get into a smaller commuter plane, you’re ducking your head because they
0:11:35 need that thing to be small, and they’re squeezing you into those tiny seats.
0:11:40 And then the fuel tanks of your airplane are your cash flow.
0:11:45 And if you can actually keep the six areas of your airplane in proportion to each other,
0:11:46 you’re going to do just fine.
0:11:48 And it’s the same with business.
0:11:52 In order to get a business off the ground and keep it from crashing, you’ve got to enter
0:11:54 the right coordinates into your flight computer.
0:11:55 Those are going to be economic coordinates.
0:11:58 You got to clarify your marketing message and run a really good sales funnel.
0:12:00 That’s going to get your ride engine humming.
0:12:03 You’ve got to be able to invite customers into a story and close deals, and I’ve got
0:12:06 a formula for you to be able to do that in your sales.
0:12:11 You’ve got to have products that are extremely profitable and in demand.
0:12:12 Those are going to be your wings.
0:12:16 You’ve got to manage your team so it’s lean, efficient, and productive, which is an incredibly
0:12:18 hard thing to do.
0:12:20 That keeps your body of the airplane small.
0:12:24 And you’ve got to get very clear optics on your cash flow so you never run out of cash
0:12:28 or get surprised by a tax bill or can’t make payroll.
0:12:31 If you can do those six things, your business is going to do just fine.
0:12:35 Holly, you’ve interacted with as many business owners as I have.
0:12:40 I’m sure there’s times when you’ve walked into a business and they have a really nice
0:12:45 facility and they’re handing you all sorts of swag and 20 minutes into visiting their
0:12:46 business.
0:12:50 You have no idea what they do because they can’t state it clearly and you’re asking yourself
0:12:54 how in the world are these people making money and you realize they’re not making money.
0:12:58 They’re actually just living off private equity or venture capital money and all they’re
0:13:02 doing is living off somebody else’s dollars and this plane is going down.
0:13:06 It looks successful but it isn’t successful.
0:13:11 I have zero interest in helping anybody listening to the sound of my voice look successful.
0:13:13 I have no interest in that.
0:13:18 I have enormous interest in you opening up your bank account and seeing a ton of money.
0:13:19 That’s what I’m interested in.
0:13:24 And so these are the basics of how to actually run a successful business without lying to
0:13:25 ourselves.
0:13:26 This is how it has to be done.
0:13:27 Yeah.
0:13:31 And so back to my original question, I guess when you first started your business before
0:13:34 you had the six step framework, the business really revolved around you.
0:13:37 That’s why you were drowning every day.
0:13:38 Too much.
0:13:42 So what’s the problem when you can’t actually be pulled out of your own business and the
0:13:44 business revolves too much around the owner?
0:13:47 Well the problem is your business isn’t worth anything.
0:13:51 You know, if somebody comes to buy your business, one of the first questions they ask is what
0:13:52 happens when you leave?
0:13:59 What somebody wants to see if you want to value your business at 45678X EBITDA is they
0:14:04 want to know that you can go to Turks and Caicos and lay on a beach for two months and
0:14:07 never answer your phone and the business gets stronger.
0:14:08 That’s what they want to know.
0:14:14 So the problem in my life at that time was this business depended completely and totally
0:14:15 on me.
0:14:20 I was the guy who was actually necessary for this business to go and grow.
0:14:26 Today we have close to 800 certified facilitators, coaches and guides who go out and teach these
0:14:27 frameworks.
0:14:34 Now if I left, we would need a new host for our podcast and that’s about it.
0:14:37 We would need a new host for the podcast and quite honestly I think we could find a better
0:14:40 one pretty easily but I’m not willing to give up the job at this point.
0:14:46 So we’re way further along than we were about four or five years ago.
0:14:51 So with this analogy of the plane, I’d love for you to explain the rule of proportions.
0:14:55 Why is it that we sort of have to look at everything at the same time and make sure
0:15:00 we’re being balanced and not just focus on one area and another area at a time?
0:15:04 Let’s look at the airplane and talk about the airplane analogy as a decision-making
0:15:05 filter.
0:15:09 We know that we’ve got a good sales team, there’s a couple of people who are selling
0:15:10 a lot of stuff for us.
0:15:15 It’s really great but we’ve got this product and we’re getting many calls.
0:15:18 Customers can’t figure out how to log in or something like that and the sales team is
0:15:19 answering those calls.
0:15:22 That’s a common problem in a small business.
0:15:25 So we decide, okay, we need a customer service representative.
0:15:28 The customer service representative is for a really good one, you’re going to pay between
0:15:31 $60,000 and $80,000, you’re going to be right in there.
0:15:35 You want somebody who can grow and manage a customer service team so you’re going to
0:15:38 go ahead and spend a little more money on that.
0:15:43 That money, you’ve got to say, “Okay, is that money going to the right engine, the left
0:15:44 engine?
0:15:48 Is that money going to the wings or is that money going to the body of the airplane?”
0:15:51 A normal customer service, they’re going to save you some sales, they’re certainly going
0:15:56 to save you some negative chatter but it’s pretty hard to put that money on the wings
0:15:58 or the right engine, the left engine.
0:16:02 So what we’re going to do is we’re going to say, “Well, we’re going to pay you a base
0:16:09 salary of $50,000 but we’re going to give you some incentives for every retainer purchase
0:16:15 that is a subscription service that sticks around, who we know calls you and talks to
0:16:20 you or emails you or chats you, we’re going to give you 10% of that and we think you can
0:16:27 save X number of sales a year, which is going to get you to between $65,000 and $85,000.
0:16:28 What did we just do?
0:16:33 We just put a big chunk of that person’s salary out of the body of the airplane and
0:16:38 out onto the right and left engine and we can spend a lot more money on the right and
0:16:41 left engine than we can on the body of the airplane.
0:16:45 Whenever you go into a business and they’ve got this great facility with really beautiful
0:16:51 furniture and all sorts of great swag, everything that I just mentioned is the body of the airplane.
0:16:55 Really what you’re looking at, and you can see it within about 10 minutes of a conversation
0:16:59 with a business owner, what you’re looking at, imagine, “Hala, let’s say that you and
0:17:04 your friends are going to do a great week in Hawaii and you buy the plane ticket and you’re
0:17:10 at the airport, you walk out on the tarmac and that plane has a giant body, two tiny
0:17:19 little wings, some little rubber band propellers on each of the wings and fuel is pouring out
0:17:21 of the fuel tanks onto the tarmac.
0:17:22 Are you getting on that airplane?
0:17:23 No.
0:17:24 No.
0:17:28 That’s what so many businesses look like and people don’t realize it’s happening.
0:17:32 The way I hired my uncle, well, we clearly need a new logo and some swag.
0:17:36 Well, let’s create this website that isn’t very clear and doesn’t actually close sales
0:17:38 and is kind of passive aggressive.
0:17:42 All those decisions are how you engineer a really horrible, horrible airplane.
0:17:47 If you look at every single business in history that has crashed, what you’re looking at is
0:17:49 an airplane that wasn’t engineered very well.
0:17:50 I love this analogy.
0:17:55 It really does help you give a framework to kind of think of it intuitively and I’m sure
0:17:59 that as you’re making decisions, if you learn this framework, you’ll start to remember these
0:18:02 things and not try to make your plane crash.
0:18:04 Do everything you can to keep it flying.
0:18:05 That’s right.
0:18:06 I agree with you.
0:18:07 That’s how we got there.
0:18:10 In 17 million, there’s a lot of people listening who have a bigger company than that.
0:18:14 We’re still very, very committed to growing this one to try to get to that 100 million,
0:18:18 but the way that we will get there is we’ll continue to engineer a really great airplane.
0:18:22 If you’re on my sales team or my marketing team, you’re probably going to be paid a little
0:18:24 bit more than if you’re in the body of the airplane.
0:18:27 Even anybody in the body of the airplane, we’re trying to figure out how to incentivize
0:18:32 you to actually have you participate in the profitability of this business so that you
0:18:34 can make more money.
0:18:37 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
0:18:38 Yeah, Pam.
0:18:42 When I first started this podcast, believe it or not, I had an all volunteer team to
0:18:48 help me out, but as my business took off, I needed to hire a lot of new people and fast.
0:18:52 It soon became pretty overwhelming because I had to sort through piles and piles of resumes,
0:18:55 conduct countless interviews, and you know how it goes.
0:19:00 Hiring is a pain, but then I discovered the easiest way to hire the right people quickly.
0:19:02 I found Indeed.
0:19:05 When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.
0:19:09 Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites.
0:19:12 Indeed’s sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire fast.
0:19:16 With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,
0:19:19 so you can reach the people you want faster.
0:19:21 It makes a huge difference.
0:19:26 According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications
0:19:28 than non-sponsored jobs.
0:19:33 Plus, with Indeed’s sponsored jobs, there’s no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts,
0:19:35 and you only pay for results.
0:19:37 How fast is Indeed, you ask?
0:19:41 In the minute I’ve been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed
0:19:43 data worldwide.
0:19:45 There’s no need to wait any longer.
0:19:48 Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.
0:19:52 Some listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your job’s more
0:19:55 visibility at indeed.com/profiting.
0:20:00 Just go to indeed.com/profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about
0:20:02 Indeed on this podcast.
0:20:04 Indeed.com/profiting.
0:20:05 Terms and conditions apply.
0:20:08 Hiring Indeed is all you need.
0:20:10 Hello, young and profitors.
0:20:15 The start of the new year is the perfect time to get organized, set goals, and prioritize
0:20:17 what matters most.
0:20:21 For me, a top priority this year is my financial wellness, which feels more important than
0:20:22 ever.
0:20:27 The richer I get, the more cheaper I get and I want to save money and just see my money
0:20:28 stack.
0:20:30 And thanks to Rocket Money, my goals feel achievable.
0:20:35 They show me all of my subscriptions right in one place, and they help me easily cancel
0:20:39 ones that I forgot I’ve been paying for, which happens more than you think.
0:20:43 Rocket Money also pulls together all of my spending across all of my different accounts
0:20:48 so I can clearly track my spending habits and see where I can cut back.
0:20:53 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions,
0:20:58 monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.
0:21:02 With Rocket Money, you can easily create a personalized budget with custom categories
0:21:07 to help keep your spending on track, and you’ll get alerts if bills increase in price, if there’s
0:21:11 unusual spending activity, or if you’re close to going over budget.
0:21:16 Rocket Money will even negotiate lower bills for you and deal with customer service so
0:21:18 you don’t have to.
0:21:23 Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled
0:21:29 subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app’s premium
0:21:31 features.
0:21:36 Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.
0:21:45 Go to rocketmoney.com/profiting today, that’s rocketmoney.com/profiting, rocketmoney.com/profiting.
0:21:49 Hey app bam, launching my LinkedIn secrets masterclass was one of the best decisions
0:21:54 that I’ve ever made for my business, and I didn’t have to figure out all the nuts and
0:21:57 bolts of creating a website for my course.
0:22:02 I needed a monthly subscription option, I needed chat capabilities, I needed a laundry
0:22:07 list of features to enable what I was envisioning with my course.
0:22:12 But here’s the thing, all I had to do was literally lift a finger to get it all done.
0:22:17 And that’s because I used Shopify.
0:22:24 Shopify is the easiest way to sell anything, to sell online or in person, it’s the home
0:22:26 of the number one checkout on the planet.
0:22:32 And Shopify is not so secret secret as Shoppay, which boosts conversions up to 50%.
0:22:37 That means way fewer cards get abandoned and way more sales get done.
0:22:41 If you’re into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell
0:22:45 wherever your customers are scrolling and strolling.
0:22:49 On the web, in your store, in the feed, and everywhere in between.
0:22:54 Put simply, businesses that sell more sell with Shopify.
0:22:58 Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use at YAP Media with Shopify.
0:23:03 Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:09 And that’s all lowercase young and profitors, that’s shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:22 Go to shopify.com/profiting to upgrade your selling today, shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:23 So let’s dive in.
0:23:26 You gave a great overview of the six steps.
0:23:30 Leadership, marketing, sales, products, overhead, and operations.
0:23:32 And the last step is cashflow.
0:23:33 So let’s dive into some of these steps.
0:23:38 I want to dive into leadership, which you say is the cockpit of the airplane.
0:23:42 And leadership is basically in charge of getting everybody to an end destination.
0:23:45 Your business needs to have a clear mission.
0:23:49 And so a lot of people, they don’t have a clear mission, right?
0:23:50 That’s something that they’re missing.
0:23:52 When they first started, like I’ll give myself for an example.
0:23:56 I have a company, Yap Media, we scaled to $7 million in three years.
0:24:01 And this year, we’re on track to do $8 million, which is amazing.
0:24:03 And so my company is doing great.
0:24:08 And when I first started, it was a team of volunteers, and we were so tight, and everybody
0:24:12 had a mission, and I was hand training everyone, and everything was great.
0:24:17 And then year one, it was like, boom, we blew up to 60 employees, and it’s like all of a
0:24:19 sudden, like things weren’t as smooth anymore.
0:24:22 Like we’re still running a great business, but it just wasn’t like before, like things
0:24:26 used to just like happen like magic, because we were so aligned.
0:24:28 Everybody had the same values, all that kind of stuff.
0:24:31 And so now I’m actually resetting my organization.
0:24:36 I just went through a whole workshop where we set up new core values.
0:24:39 We’re having a new mission, all these things that you talked about in your books.
0:24:43 I’m like, oh my gosh, this is just so relevant to everything that I’m doing right now.
0:24:45 So let’s talk about mission statements first.
0:24:49 You say there’s three components that make up an effective mission statement.
0:24:53 I love this ’cause I’m literally developing my new mission statement now.
0:24:58 And the first component you say is containing three economic objectives that you can actually
0:24:59 measure.
0:25:03 So I’d love to understand why three, is it only three, can it be more than three?
0:25:07 Why three, and why do we need to have some measurable objectives in our mission?
0:25:13 I think the best formula for a mission statement is we will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:25:16 We will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:25:21 If you can, write that down ’cause it really will align your entire team.
0:25:25 The X, we will accomplish X, are three economic objectives.
0:25:30 And the challenge is, we’ve gotta figure out the three ways that we make money the most.
0:25:33 What are the three ways that we make the most money?
0:25:39 Most businesses somewhere fall in line in that Pareta principle of 80% of their money
0:25:41 comes from 20% of their products.
0:25:44 80% of the money comes from 20% of their audience.
0:25:46 It’s almost true for every business out there.
0:25:50 Almost 20% can usually be defined with three economic objectives.
0:25:56 Now, I only give you three, not because you only have three or because I only want you
0:25:57 to have three.
0:26:02 I give you three because the human brain has a limitation and it’s usually three priorities.
0:26:06 It’s very hard for a brain to prioritize more than three things.
0:26:08 It can do four, it cannot do five.
0:26:13 So three is very important, not because any other reason other than your brain’s just
0:26:15 not gonna focus on any more than three things.
0:26:19 So you want to figure out one of the top three ways you make money, then you want to have
0:26:21 numeric goals.
0:26:25 So when I say we will accomplish, here’s my, here’s our actual mission statement if business
0:26:26 made simple.
0:26:32 We will have 500 certified coaches, 900 certified marketing guides, and 18,000 people inside
0:26:34 of our online platform.
0:26:35 That’s it.
0:26:41 Buy January 1 of 2024 because every small business owner deserves an education in growing
0:26:42 their business.
0:26:46 So here’s what’s really cool about the three economic objectives.
0:26:49 The second we stated and wrote in our mission statement the three economic objectives, we
0:26:50 had a filter.
0:26:54 It was the next day we were in a meeting and we were about five minutes into talking about
0:26:58 an initiative when somebody raised their hand and said, “Hey guys, this doesn’t have anything
0:27:00 to do with our three economic objectives.
0:27:01 Do we still want to do it?”
0:27:04 And everybody in the room just went, “Actually, no.
0:27:08 We’re wasting our time because those are the three ways that we make the most money.
0:27:10 We’re talking about something that’s actually not going to make us much money at all.
0:27:13 We just had a customer bring it up and we’re trying to answer the customer question.
0:27:16 We need to just answer the customer’s question saying, “Actually, we’ve decided not to do
0:27:17 that.”
0:27:18 So you get a filter.
0:27:24 That alone will cause a massive forward thrust in your organization because now everybody
0:27:27 in the organization is trying to support three things.
0:27:30 Then the Y, we will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:27:32 The Y is actually your deadline.
0:27:35 I recommend setting a two-year deadline.
0:27:36 You can go three years.
0:27:39 Anything beyond three years is not going to motivate anybody.
0:27:46 So we set our goal over a year ago and now we’re about 10 months away from hitting it
0:27:48 and we’re on track to hit it.
0:27:52 So what a deadline does inside of a mission statement creates a sense of urgency.
0:27:54 You say, “Don, mission statements don’t have deadlines.”
0:27:55 You’re right.
0:27:59 Most large corporations don’t put deadlines in mission statements because those corporations
0:28:03 have mission statements written by lawyers on behalf of shareholders.
0:28:05 You don’t have a team of lawyers and you don’t have shareholders.
0:28:10 You have the luxury and it is a crazy luxury that you should take advantage of of writing
0:28:12 a new mission statement every two or three years.
0:28:15 And usually in your mission statement, all you’re going to do is adjust X and Y and that’s
0:28:16 really it.
0:28:19 If you don’t like it as a mission statement, just call it a goal statement and let these
0:28:22 two statements be parallel to each other.
0:28:23 Finally the Z.
0:28:25 We will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:28:26 Z is the Y.
0:28:31 It’s the reason that you’re in business and it’s usually customer-centric.
0:28:32 We are doing this.
0:28:37 You’re going to accomplish these three things by January of 2024 because and then you want
0:28:41 to state the problem that your customer has and how you’re going to solve it.
0:28:45 That mission statement aligns your team and first of all, it’s memorable.
0:28:49 Every single member of my team knows that mission statement where most people write
0:28:51 a mission statement and nobody remembers their mission statement.
0:28:53 Even the person who wrote it can’t remember it.
0:28:56 If you’ve forgotten the mission statement, you’ve forgotten the mission.
0:29:02 So that mission statement is really, really key and it’s the first part of your leadership
0:29:03 statement.
0:29:05 Those would be the economic coordinates that you’re entering into the flight computer.
0:29:06 Yeah.
0:29:10 I really like this framework because I think giving some measurable things that people
0:29:13 can align to, it helps people understand their progress.
0:29:17 Like, guys, we are way off our target and we have only this amount of time to get there
0:29:19 and we better hustle and step on the gas.
0:29:25 So I feel like it gives people a measuring stick in terms of how they’re doing towards
0:29:26 the mission.
0:29:29 We’re usually, like you said, missions are usually like vague and fluffy.
0:29:31 They’re just sort of like directional.
0:29:35 This is like very specific, which I think anything more specific is going to get people
0:29:37 closer to an actual goal.
0:29:38 That’s right.
0:29:42 And then you align your team around those objectives and people know whether or not
0:29:43 they are winning or losing.
0:29:49 When you actually state three economic objectives, your whole team knows in real time whether
0:29:52 or not you’re hitting them, whether you’re behind them, whether you’re ahead of them.
0:29:56 And by the way, if you’re behind them, it bothers everybody, which is exactly what
0:29:57 you want.
0:29:58 You want this bothering everybody.
0:30:02 So they’re going to come to you and say, “Hey, can we either adjust the economic objectives
0:30:04 or what’s our plan to fix them?”
0:30:08 Or if you didn’t have economic objectives, nobody would even know that there’s anything
0:30:09 wrong with the business.
0:30:14 And you wouldn’t have those, the instrument data on your dashboard to be able to know
0:30:17 that you’re actually flying upside down and heading straight toward the ground.
0:30:21 So those three economic objectives are, you’re not always doing well with them, but if you’re
0:30:25 not doing well, they still serve you because you know you’re not doing well and you’re
0:30:26 not confused.
0:30:27 Yeah.
0:30:29 So this is really good advice.
0:30:32 How about getting this mission statement to stick within the organization?
0:30:38 Let’s say you’ve got over 20 employees, you’re not able to one-on-one explain it to everyone.
0:30:43 What are the ways that you can distill this information to get it to stick with your workers?
0:30:49 Well, one of the absolute hardest things to do is to get a team aligned around the economic
0:30:51 objectives of the organization.
0:30:53 And we have a framework.
0:30:57 It’s actually on chapter five of the book to help you do that.
0:31:01 And the framework is five meetings that you want to have with your team.
0:31:04 And some of the meetings will happen every week, some of the meetings happen almost every
0:31:06 day, some of the meetings happen once a quarter.
0:31:11 But those five meetings are the all staff meeting, the department stand-up, the personal priority
0:31:18 stand-up, the quarterly performance review, and then you will have an occasional revenue
0:31:19 meeting also.
0:31:23 The three economic objectives and the mission statement need to be talked at about during
0:31:25 every all staff meeting.
0:31:29 You actually open up the all staff meeting with those three economic objectives.
0:31:32 That happens on Monday, once a week.
0:31:34 Then the next meeting is your department stand-up.
0:31:38 The three economic objectives get repeated at the department stand-up.
0:31:43 So you are instilling these economic objectives in every single team member.
0:31:47 Then also at the department stand-up, the five priorities of that department which have to
0:31:52 serve the economic objectives are also discussed and the team in about 15 minutes discusses
0:31:55 whether or not they’re hitting their five priorities so that we can hit these economic
0:31:56 objectives.
0:32:00 Not only that, but in the personal stand-up that every single employee has with their
0:32:05 department leader for about 15 minutes, they discuss their five priorities that serve the
0:32:09 department’s five priorities that serve the three economic objectives.
0:32:15 So you are constantly, constantly, constantly meeting, talking about what the economic objectives
0:32:19 are, what your department is doing to hit those objectives, and what every person is
0:32:21 doing to hit those objectives.
0:32:26 And if you actually install those meetings into your organization, it’s impossible to
0:32:30 forget where we’re going and why you’re so important to actually help us achieve where
0:32:31 we’re going.
0:32:34 What about the business owners who are scared of being like transparent?
0:32:37 Because I could imagine that there’s a lot of business owners that are like, “I don’t
0:32:42 want to talk about our financial goals or what we’re making, especially with like maybe
0:32:45 the lowest level employees and things like that.
0:32:46 What would you say to them?”
0:32:52 I personally am a fan of not hiding the numbers, not hiding how much money we’re making, not
0:32:54 hiding how many orders came in.
0:32:55 I don’t want to hide any of that.
0:33:00 The reason that small business owners don’t like exposing the numbers to their team members
0:33:04 is because it exposes the fact that the company is making millions and the team member is
0:33:09 making $40,000, and all they see is that disparity.
0:33:14 But the way you actually get around that or get over that is you actually give the entire
0:33:16 team a really great economic education.
0:33:21 So you actually say, “Look, we’re making $2 million this year.
0:33:24 Our overhead is about $1.2 million.”
0:33:29 That means there’s $800,000 left, and we’re going to give half of that to the government.
0:33:32 So that’s $400,000 that’s left.
0:33:35 We have to put X amount in our rainy day fund.
0:33:40 So at the end of the day, this is about what I make, and this is about what you make.
0:33:45 But if you can help us make more, and if you have ideas to help us make more, your salary
0:33:47 will go up as well.
0:33:53 And I just love teaching all 30 of my employees how a small business really, really works.
0:33:55 They by the way, know.
0:33:58 They pretty much know exactly what I’m making, which is a lot of money.
0:34:01 They also know that we are incredibly generous with that money.
0:34:05 They know that we bought a building that houses the business.
0:34:06 That building is incredibly expensive.
0:34:11 Yes, it’s an asset that my family will be able to own 50 and 60 years from now, but
0:34:12 I don’t get that cash.
0:34:16 I bought that building so that we could all live inside of this building.
0:34:18 I just don’t hide the numbers.
0:34:22 And then if somebody gets upset about that and resents that, they don’t belong on my
0:34:23 team.
0:34:27 Or if they get upset about that and resent that, I sit them down and I say, “Would you
0:34:29 like to run a business?”
0:34:33 Because if you leave me and you run a business, I will do everything I can to help you, because
0:34:35 I want you to experience this too.
0:34:37 Let me tell you what also happens.
0:34:39 Everything stops with you.
0:34:41 If that business fails, it’s your fault.
0:34:43 The government doesn’t come for my employees.
0:34:46 They come for me if I don’t pay taxes.
0:34:48 Somebody slips on a banana peel in my parking lot.
0:34:49 They don’t sue you.
0:34:50 They sue me.
0:34:55 And I just want you to know there’s an enormous amount of risk in starting a business, but
0:34:59 if you can make it work, it’s worth it and I will help you do it.
0:35:03 But at this point, you work for me and I need you to produce more.
0:35:06 With that conversation, why not just tell them the truth?
0:35:11 I think one of the reasons that Americans feel like victims, especially the generation
0:35:15 behind me and the generation behind them, are not going to make as much money as their
0:35:19 parents is because they don’t actually understand how money works.
0:35:21 And I want to teach everybody I can.
0:35:26 This is how money works and I don’t want anybody excluded from being able to participate.
0:35:30 It’s high risk, it’s high stress, but if you want to go for it, I’m all for you.
0:35:31 Let’s go for it.
0:35:32 I’ll help you.
0:35:33 I’m Donald Preach.
0:35:34 That was great.
0:35:37 So let’s talk about core values, sticking on leadership.
0:35:40 So like I said, I’m doing a lot of core values work.
0:35:42 We just came up with our new values at Yep Media.
0:35:46 So we’re scrappy hustlers, we’re obsessive with excellence, we step on the gas.
0:35:47 Together we win.
0:35:50 We have all these different headlines that we created for our core values and we did
0:35:53 a lot of work around it and I’m really excited to roll it out.
0:35:57 And you talk about similar things in your book related to core values and how everybody
0:36:01 needs key characteristics defined for your team members.
0:36:05 So why do you think core values can help you unite a team and how can they help leaders
0:36:08 actually make decisions more quickly as well?
0:36:12 One of the great things about core values I think is it helps you define an aspirational
0:36:13 identity.
0:36:15 This is who we’re going to be.
0:36:19 We’re going to be people who love our jobs, we’re going to be people who care about each
0:36:21 other, have each other’s backs.
0:36:24 Those are core values and so when you point to core values, you’re basically pointing
0:36:27 to what’s expected if you were going to work here.
0:36:31 Now one of the downfalls of core values is they’re always vague and if somebody says
0:36:33 our core value is integrity.
0:36:40 If you caught a bank robber in mid bank robbery and you said, explain to me why you’re doing
0:36:41 this.
0:36:43 I promise you they’re going to defend their integrity.
0:36:46 These rich people have all the money and I’m taking it to whatever.
0:36:49 They’re robbing a freaking bank and they think they have integrity.
0:36:50 So it’s just too vague.
0:36:55 So I like core values but more than that, I like two other things.
0:36:58 Key characteristics and critical actions.
0:37:03 Key characteristics are the characteristics that you need to have in order for us to hit
0:37:05 our economic objectives.
0:37:08 If I run a pet store, I need you to love pets.
0:37:15 If we run a software company, I need you to obsess about the easy, simple user interfaces.
0:37:17 And so now I know who to hire.
0:37:19 I’m not just hiring somebody with integrity.
0:37:21 I’m hiring somebody with integrity who loves animals.
0:37:28 So those key characteristics are more true to your team than they are to anybody else.
0:37:32 It’s where you actually dial down into the uniqueness of your culture.
0:37:35 Now critical actions go even further.
0:37:39 Critical actions are the things that we are all going to do together to hit our economic
0:37:40 objectives.
0:37:48 If I have a restaurant and one of my economic objectives is we’re going to sell 35% for
0:37:52 every client for our customers to come to the restaurant, 35% of them are going to get
0:37:53 a dessert.
0:37:54 Well, we’re at 15%.
0:37:58 So what we’re going to do is we’re going to say our critical action is we ask every
0:38:02 single person eating have you tried our world famous brownie.
0:38:06 We’re going to ask every and so as soon as you make that a critical action, guess what’s
0:38:08 going to happen to your brownie sales?
0:38:09 They’re going to go way up.
0:38:14 So if you have three core values, three critical actions and three key characteristics, your
0:38:16 entire culture changes.
0:38:21 If you go to Chick-fil-A, a fast food place in the American South and they’re spreading
0:38:24 all over and you say thank you, they say my pleasure.
0:38:25 That’s a critical action.
0:38:30 When somebody says thank you, a critical action is you say my pleasure and you position yourself
0:38:35 as the servant of the person that you’re actually talking to in a humble way.
0:38:39 Those are the sorts of things that create a culture and you need at least three critical
0:38:45 actions that one, stimulate your bottom line and help you achieve your economic objectives
0:38:51 and two, actually support and empower your culture to be defined.
0:38:55 You say there’s three kinds of leaders that you normally find at the top of successful
0:38:58 small businesses, the artist, the operator and the entrepreneur.
0:39:02 I thought this was fun because I have three main executives on my team and I thought we
0:39:05 each fit in those buckets and I thought that was exciting.
0:39:07 So tell us what those mean.
0:39:09 That’s why you’re doing so well.
0:39:14 Normally if your business gets past four or five million, you need to have three people,
0:39:18 three personalities and they’re very different, helping you run the team.
0:39:23 So once your business gets past, again, three or four million, these three personalities
0:39:27 are necessary in order for the business to actually grow.
0:39:31 And this is what, if there’s three people on your leadership team, I hope you have one
0:39:34 of each and one is the artist.
0:39:37 And by artist, I’m not talking about like a poet or a painter.
0:39:40 I’m talking about somebody who obsesses about products.
0:39:41 They love the products.
0:39:42 They love making them.
0:39:43 They love supporting them.
0:39:45 They love marketing them.
0:39:46 They love talking to customers about them.
0:39:47 They love improving them.
0:39:51 That the artist, my guess is, Hala, that you are an artist.
0:39:53 I am also an artist.
0:39:56 Now the other personality that you need is actually the operator.
0:39:59 The operator is not going to help you make any products.
0:40:00 They’re just not.
0:40:02 What they’re going to help you do is manage the team.
0:40:05 They’re going to help you manage the priorities and manage the people and make sure everybody’s
0:40:09 working really hard because the artist normally doesn’t like to do that.
0:40:11 They want to obsess about the product.
0:40:14 And then the third personality is the entrepreneur.
0:40:19 And the entrepreneur looks at what the artist did and looks at what the team is capable of
0:40:22 doing and says, “How can this machine make more money?”
0:40:23 Period.
0:40:27 If we segment an audience and send them this sales funnel, then we can make more money
0:40:28 with this.
0:40:33 If we actually run a live webinar, we’ll collect more leads and we’ll do this.
0:40:35 The entrepreneur is thinking of that way.
0:40:40 If you have an artist, an operator, and an entrepreneur on your leadership team, you
0:40:41 are going to win.
0:40:43 And here’s what’s actually very interesting.
0:40:48 It doesn’t matter if the artist, the entrepreneur, or the operator is actually the CEO.
0:40:50 It doesn’t matter.
0:40:53 Any of those, if you look at somebody like Tim Cook, he’s an operator.
0:40:56 Somebody like Steve Jobs would be an artist.
0:40:59 The company has done extremely well under both of those.
0:41:08 But I guarantee you, surrounding Tim Cook are really good entrepreneurs and really
0:41:09 good artists.
0:41:14 So you need those three personalities in the cockpit of your airplane using the metaphor
0:41:16 of an airplane to run your small business.
0:41:20 You need those three personalities in order to really scale the company and reach its
0:41:21 full potential.
0:41:22 I really like that analogy.
0:41:23 It’s really cool.
0:41:26 So the second step is about marketing.
0:41:27 We’re not going to cover that, guys.
0:41:32 If you listen to episode 120, which I’m going to replay on this podcast, me and Donald cover
0:41:35 the seven step story brand framework in detail.
0:41:37 So it’ll be right on the feed for you guys.
0:41:40 Way to find episode 120 will be a Yap classic.
0:41:41 So check that out.
0:41:45 And we’re going to move on to sales because offline, Donald told me that, “Hey, we got
0:41:46 to talk about sales.”
0:41:50 He said, “I can really help your audience if we talk about sales.”
0:41:55 So you said step three, left engine of the plane is the sales step.
0:42:00 And in this step, you have to make the customers a hero during the sales pitch.
0:42:04 And so, from my understanding, you actually didn’t like selling when you first started
0:42:05 your business.
0:42:09 So why didn’t you like selling and then how did you learn how to sell more effectively?
0:42:14 Well, I didn’t like selling and I’ve learned to like it because I basically stopped selling
0:42:18 and I started inviting customers into a story and I realized I didn’t have to sell anything.
0:42:24 All I had to do is make my offer extremely clear and I sold a lot more of whatever it
0:42:25 was that I was selling.
0:42:30 The problem with sales training and sales education is you don’t get adoption.
0:42:34 Big companies play millions and millions of dollars to bring in sales trainers and up
0:42:37 to 70% of their sales force will ignore it.
0:42:40 They’re only getting 30% adoption if that.
0:42:43 And so, I don’t love the idea of sales training.
0:42:48 What I love though is to teach all sorts of sales account executives, all sorts of small
0:42:49 business owners.
0:42:57 I love teaching them a formula to do one specific thing and that is this, write a follow-up
0:43:00 email to a customer that will close the deal.
0:43:05 So let’s say you spend a day with a customer, maybe you were at a workshop and there were
0:43:10 5,000 people in the audience and a bunch of them gave you your email address.
0:43:14 Whatever it is, what you want to do is you actually want to go back to your hotel room
0:43:19 or go back home, open up your computer and you want to email whoever you just had a conversation
0:43:24 with an email and this is what the email needs to do in order to close the sale.
0:43:26 First, start with the problem.
0:43:32 Here today, we talked about how we all struggle with X and I know that can be very painful.
0:43:33 Start with the problem.
0:43:37 Step two, position your product as the solution to the problem.
0:43:43 Nobody has to deal with this anymore because we have created X and if you buy X, your problem
0:43:44 will be solved.
0:43:45 That’s step two.
0:43:47 Step one, define the problem.
0:43:49 Step two, position your product as the solution to the problem.
0:43:53 Step three, give them a three-step plan to buy it.
0:43:55 A three-step plan, don’t overthink it.
0:44:00 In order for you to engage this, all you need to do is have an intake session with me where
0:44:01 we talk about it.
0:44:05 Second, I’ll give you a custom strategy on what I think you should do and three, if
0:44:07 you want to move forward, you and I can move forward.
0:44:11 You want to remove the cognitive dissonance by giving people baby steps.
0:44:15 Then step four is actually to paint the negative stakes.
0:44:19 I don’t want to see you struggle with this anymore and I know if you don’t buy my product,
0:44:23 you’re going to keep struggling with it and a month from now, a year from now, this is
0:44:24 going to be even more painful.
0:44:26 Let’s deal with it now.
0:44:28 Step four are negative stakes.
0:44:30 Step five is positive stakes.
0:44:34 However, with my product, this is the life that you’re going to experience and here’s
0:44:36 how great your life will be.
0:44:39 Then finally, step six, ask for the sale.
0:44:42 I think you should buy this product today.
0:44:43 It’s the right product for you.
0:44:46 Click here and enjoy this special offer.
0:44:47 Let me just summarize it.
0:44:51 Start with the problem, position your product as a solution, give them a three-step plan,
0:44:55 paint the negative stakes, paint the positive stakes and call the customer to action.
0:45:00 If you write that follow-up email, you will close way more sales.
0:45:04 Not only will you close more sales, but you will have just learned how to sell.
0:45:08 And the way you learn how to sell is you find out what the customer’s problem is and you
0:45:10 position your product as a solution.
0:45:14 If you do it five times in an email, you will never have a sales conversation again.
0:45:15 That’s the same.
0:45:19 For instance, if you work at a mattress store, because we work with Tim Persily to train
0:45:22 some of their salespeople, you don’t want to go up and say, “What brought you in today?”
0:45:23 You know what brought them in today.
0:45:25 They’re looking for a mattress.
0:45:27 You want to go up and you say, “Hey, welcome into the store.
0:45:28 Let me just ask you.
0:45:30 What do you hate about your current mattress?”
0:45:32 If you say, “What do you hate about your current mattress?”
0:45:35 They’re going to say, “Well, it’s too soft in the middle or it’s hurting my back or
0:45:37 it’s too warm at night.”
0:45:38 And whatever.
0:45:39 And you say, “Great.
0:45:41 I’ve got three things, three mattresses here that will solve that.
0:45:44 Let’s take a look at them because they’re at different price points and they have some
0:45:45 different things.”
0:45:50 That’s a mile into the sales conversation and when you ask what brings you in today,
0:45:51 you’re nowhere.
0:45:52 You’re absolutely nowhere.
0:45:53 They’re going to try to avoid you.
0:45:55 That’s how you sell and it’s all you need to know.
0:45:59 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
0:46:04 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment, receiving a 3% IRA match on
0:46:06 retirement contributions.
0:46:10 The privileges of the very privileged are no longer exclusive.
0:46:17 With Robinhood Gold, your annual IRA contributions are boosted by 3%, plus you also get 4% APY
0:46:19 on your cash and non-retirement accounts.
0:46:22 That’s over eight times the national savings average.
0:46:25 The perks of the high net worth are now available for any net worth.
0:46:28 The new gold standard is here with Robinhood Gold.
0:46:35 To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold.
0:46:36 Investing involves risk.
0:46:41 3% match requires Robinhood Gold at $5 per month for one year from the first match.
0:46:44 Must keep funds in IRA for five years.
0:46:46 Go to robinhood.com/boost.
0:46:50 Over eight times the national average savings account interest rate claim is based on data
0:46:54 from the FDIC as of November 18, 2024.
0:46:58 Robinhood Financial LLC Member SIPC.
0:47:05 Gold membership is offered by Robinhood Gold LLC.
0:47:06 You know, it’s interesting, Hala.
0:47:12 I just spoke to 250 sales reps for a big, probably $1.4 billion company, 250 sales
0:47:13 reps in the room.
0:47:19 And I said, “Hey, raise your hand if there’s a customer that hasn’t made a decision yet.
0:47:21 You’ve been interacting with them, but they’re sitting the fence.
0:47:23 250 hands go up.
0:47:24 That’s a sales rep’s job.”
0:47:26 So everybody in the room had that.
0:47:27 I said, “Open your computer.
0:47:31 We are literally going to write them an email right now.”
0:47:34 And we spent the next hour formulating 250 emails.
0:47:38 I said, “Hit send,” and then I needed to get off the stage because I had a flight.
0:47:41 So the Chief Revenue Officer got up and said, “Don, thanks,” and I rolled my bag out of
0:47:42 the back of the door.
0:47:45 Got a call two days later to my staff.
0:47:47 Chief Revenue Officer said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.
0:47:50 We closed $2.4 million worth of sales in the room.”
0:47:52 Wow.
0:47:55 And it’s not because we coerced the audience into buying anything.
0:47:57 It’s not because we manipulated anybody.
0:48:01 What those customers were doing, we’re sitting the fence because they didn’t fully understand
0:48:03 why they needed that product.
0:48:06 And every sales rep in that room made it clear.
0:48:08 And now, they tasted that success.
0:48:11 I’m sure they’ve made tens of millions now because that was over a month ago.
0:48:16 And they’re starting to have very different sales conversations and sending out very different
0:48:19 proposals and giving very different presentations.
0:48:24 That formula works for follow-up emails, works for in-person conversations, works for keynote
0:48:27 presentations, works for elevator pitches, works for proposals.
0:48:30 That’s the formula you want to use to close sales.
0:48:32 This reminds me of something that Erica Dewan came on my show.
0:48:35 She’s a workplace productivity expert.
0:48:37 And so much of our communications are digital now.
0:48:43 So much of what we do in our work is reading screens, reading Slack, reading email.
0:48:46 And she says that writing clearly is the new empathy.
0:48:49 It used to be that speaking clearly was the new empathy and listening was the new empathy.
0:48:53 Now, it’s writing clearly is the new empathy.
0:48:56 You can’t write, especially a response email.
0:49:00 If you’ve already started a conversation with somebody, you can’t write a good email without
0:49:02 having done a very good job listening.
0:49:07 If I said, “Hala, you and I had a great conversation, congratulations on your $8 million.
0:49:08 I think that’s incredible.
0:49:13 I heard you when you said you have 60 employees and things have gotten more chaotic.
0:49:15 I felt your pain.”
0:49:19 Chapter five of my new book will walk you through five meetings that will completely revolutionize
0:49:20 your staff.
0:49:23 And when in about three months, you won’t feel that pain anymore if you run these five
0:49:24 meetings.
0:49:28 That’s me listening and saying, “Well, here’s the part of my product that would solve Hala’s
0:49:29 problem.”
0:49:30 You start doing that.
0:49:35 You have a lot more books and a lot more leashes for dogs and a lot more nutritional supplements
0:49:36 or whatever it is that you sell.
0:49:37 You’re going to sell a lot more of them.
0:49:38 Yeah.
0:49:40 So let’s talk about the language of sales a little bit.
0:49:45 Why do we need to think in story and how do we speak in story when we’re trying to sell
0:49:47 to potential customers?
0:49:50 Well, story is the universal language.
0:49:54 And when you’re having any kind of conversation, whether it’s getting together with a friend
0:49:59 to catch up or it’s a sales conversation or even if it’s a conversation with your therapist,
0:50:04 what your brain is doing the entire time is trying to organize events into the structure
0:50:05 of story.
0:50:09 Your brain is subconsciously figuring out who the hero is, what the problem they’re
0:50:13 up against is, how they’re going to get out of that problem, what the happy ever life will
0:50:15 look like if they do get out of that problem.
0:50:21 So because most people are not actually very good communicators, it’s very hard to figure
0:50:23 out what the story is actually about.
0:50:29 But if we actually lay out our communication in the form of story, the person that we’re
0:50:33 talking to doesn’t have to use any mental bandwidth in order to understand what we’re
0:50:34 talking about.
0:50:38 And that gives the brain a really pleasant feeling because the brain doesn’t have to
0:50:40 work hard to organize the information.
0:50:43 We tend to follow leaders who are able to do that.
0:50:47 And we tend to buy products from account executives who are able to do that.
0:50:52 Can you give us an example in terms of speaking in story versus not?
0:50:56 Like just, I don’t know if this is too hard to do, but like if you were to sell something,
0:51:01 trying to sell it in a way that’s not with a story versus one that is.
0:51:06 Well, we’ve worked with a number of politicians on the Republican and Democratic side.
0:51:07 I’m not a Republican or Democrat.
0:51:11 I find myself pretty much squarely in the middle and don’t really like either party because
0:51:13 I think they’re destroying the country.
0:51:16 But I’ve gone in and I’ve helped some folks.
0:51:22 And a few elections ago, Hillary Clinton’s tagline was, “I’m with her.”
0:51:26 Okay, well, if I’m with her, the story is about her, it’s not about me.
0:51:27 I don’t know where we’re going.
0:51:29 I’m with her, but I don’t know where we’re going.
0:51:31 I don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish.
0:51:33 I don’t know what’s in it for me if we get there.
0:51:35 In fact, I don’t even know where there is.
0:51:38 She did not effectively invite people into a story.
0:51:41 And so it’s not that people liked Donald Trump more.
0:51:44 It’s just that they didn’t show up in the polls to vote for her.
0:51:47 She had an incredibly low turnout.
0:51:48 Donald Trump also wasn’t all that much better.
0:51:52 He also had an incredibly low turnout, but he just had more people than she did.
0:51:57 And then you have Joe Biden later on who’s running against January 6th.
0:52:00 He’s running, he’s running, not against January 6th, he’s running against the spirit that
0:52:02 led to January 6th.
0:52:05 He’s running against, you know, he had all sorts of villainous things that he could
0:52:07 point out that he’s running against.
0:52:09 It was a clearer narrative.
0:52:14 And so it’s very important that we understand unless we’re inviting people into a very clear
0:52:21 story in which they, they, they, they get to be the good character winning the day to
0:52:25 experience a better life, people are going to tune you out.
0:52:28 You will see examples of that everywhere now that I just said it.
0:52:29 Yeah.
0:52:35 So then the main principle of this step, Donald, is to make the person that you’re selling
0:52:37 to the hero of the story.
0:52:41 Can you just talk to us about that a little bit of like how you position somebody as a
0:52:43 hero when you’re selling?
0:52:44 Yeah.
0:52:48 Well, you know, the reality is you probably talked to people, Hala, and I may have been
0:52:51 one of them at some point because I’m not perfect, but you probably talked to people
0:52:58 and you felt like the story was all about them and it really wasn’t about you.
0:53:01 And we might call that person a narcissist or something like that.
0:53:06 That’s because they see life through a prism and the prism is they are the hero trying to
0:53:07 win.
0:53:10 But the reason that that rubs us wrong, because it really shouldn’t rub us wrong, but the
0:53:15 reason that it rubs us wrong is because them winning is not helping you win.
0:53:19 In order to sit here and listen to this person who’s all about them winning means that you
0:53:22 don’t get to win and it’s not a win-win scenario.
0:53:24 It’s not a mutual thing.
0:53:29 What we’re actually looking for is somebody who enters into our story and helps us win.
0:53:31 So let me give you an example.
0:53:35 Let’s say you’re at a cocktail party and you meet two people who do the exact same thing.
0:53:37 The first person you meet, you say, “What do you do for a living?”
0:53:39 And they say, “Well, I’m an at-home chef.
0:53:40 I come to your house and cook.”
0:53:43 You’d probably say something like, “Really, where did you go to school?
0:53:44 Where did you learn to cook?
0:53:46 Have you ever cooked for anybody famous?
0:53:48 What are your favorite restaurants?”
0:53:49 You’d make casual conversation.
0:53:52 And at the end of the day, you’d think, “Well, that’s a really kind person.”
0:53:57 Two hours later, you meet somebody and they do the exact same thing, charge the exact
0:54:00 same amount of money, and have the exact same quality food.
0:54:01 And you say, “What do you do?”
0:54:04 And they say, “Well, you know how most families don’t eat together anymore because they don’t
0:54:05 have time?
0:54:08 And whenever they do eat together, they don’t eat healthy?
0:54:09 I’m an at-home chef.
0:54:13 I come to your house and cook so your family can sit around the table, look each other
0:54:15 in the eye, actually connect.
0:54:19 And at the end of the meal, you don’t have to clean anything up, and you don’t have to
0:54:23 feel bad because what you ate was actually really good for you, and it also tasted good.”
0:54:25 Who’s going to do more business, chef one or chef two?
0:54:27 Chef two, of course.
0:54:29 Chef one told their story.
0:54:33 Chef two invited the customer into a story in which they could play the hero, buying
0:54:37 their product in order to experience a climactic scene.
0:54:39 That is always going to win.
0:54:42 So one last question on sales, and then we’re going to close this out.
0:54:46 So something that I read in your book that I thought was really interesting, and it reminded
0:54:51 me of something that Jay Samet taught me a long time ago, or Jay Abraham actually is
0:54:52 the one who taught me about it.
0:54:53 He’s like a big marketing guru.
0:54:59 And you actually turned down customers whose products and services they want to buy them
0:55:03 from you, but you actually feel like it’s not a good fit for them.
0:55:07 You’ll actually not sell something even though you can sell it.
0:55:08 Why do you do that?
0:55:10 I do that to protect my reputation.
0:55:12 And also, that’s the selfish reason I do it.
0:55:15 The other reason I do it is because they’re not going to get any value out of this.
0:55:19 To bring me in for a day, we do these things called strategy sessions where I either come
0:55:23 to you for a day or you come here to Nashville for a day.
0:55:27 They’re really expensive, and they’re expensive because for me to take a day and not write
0:55:30 a book, the opportunity cost on that is very high.
0:55:36 So what we promise people is that, “Look, I will only do this if we really believe that
0:55:41 easily, easily, easily, easily, you can make a 10x return on your investment.
0:55:46 So if you’re going to pay me X amount of dollars to be here, we need to talk on the phone and
0:55:48 make sure you can make a 10x return on your investment.”
0:55:52 So that means do you have a list of emails that we can email?
0:55:55 Is your website pretty messed up so that we can fix it in a day?
0:55:57 Can we write some emails?
0:55:59 Can we come up with the three economic objectives?
0:56:01 We need to get a massive, massive return.
0:56:06 Well, I’ve never had to write anybody a check, but I do guarantee you’re going to get this
0:56:09 10x return or I’m going to give you your money back.
0:56:10 So there’s two things that I do.
0:56:14 One is if we have that call and I don’t think I can make you a pretty enormous amount of
0:56:17 money, I just say, “Listen, I’m not your guy.
0:56:19 I just don’t think we can do it.”
0:56:21 Sometimes the reason I don’t think we can do it is because you’re already doing so incredibly
0:56:22 well.
0:56:23 It’s like, “I can’t improve on what you’re doing.
0:56:24 You’re doing well.”
0:56:28 Or you haven’t released the product yet or it sounds like you’ve got dysfunction
0:56:31 on your team or whatever.
0:56:34 But if I look at it and go, “Yeah, you’ve got a great email list.
0:56:35 Your website is very unclear.
0:56:37 We’re going to make a ton of money when we clean that up.
0:56:38 We’re going to write five emails.
0:56:40 They’re going to make you a truckload of cash.
0:56:41 Let’s go.”
0:56:43 Then we do it.
0:56:45 So there’s people who I say, “I can’t do it for you.”
0:56:47 And people who I say, “Look, I’m going to do it.
0:56:49 You’ve got an honor system here.
0:56:51 All you got to do is call me and say, “Don, we didn’t make our money and I’m writing
0:56:52 you a check.”
0:56:54 And I’m going to write you a check for whatever you paid me.
0:56:57 And the main reason I’m writing is I never, ever want anybody to say, “I lost money on
0:56:58 Don Miller.”
0:56:59 I just don’t want them saying it.
0:57:01 So I’ll give you your money back so you can never say that.
0:57:06 I think that’s one of the ways I’ve built a little bit of trust in the business community
0:57:09 because the bottom line is the bottom line.
0:57:12 And we’ve got to make you money and I’m in the business of making you money.
0:57:14 I think you do that to protect your reputation.
0:57:17 And also, I just think there’s plenty of money out there and there’s plenty of people who
0:57:18 have the problem you solve.
0:57:24 So your job is to find the people who have the problem you solve and sell them something.
0:57:27 And if you find somebody who does not have the problem you solve and they want to buy
0:57:31 something from you, I think it’s our responsibility to sit down and say, “I don’t think this is
0:57:36 going to work for you and I never, ever, ever want anybody to buy my product and not have
0:57:37 it work.”
0:57:38 Yeah.
0:57:39 It’s all about integrity.
0:57:42 And by the way, when you have clients that are unhappy…
0:57:43 They talk.
0:57:47 Yeah, they talk and it’s just, it’s a drain for everyone.
0:57:51 But then on the other hand, if you have a perfect fit client where you solve all their problems,
0:57:52 they’re so happy.
0:57:53 They’re telling all their friends.
0:57:54 They’re referring.
0:57:57 It’s such a more positive experience also for everybody on the team.
0:58:00 So I really think it’s a great point that you made.
0:58:02 So Donald, thank you so much for coming on the show.
0:58:03 It’s always wonderful.
0:58:04 Yeah.
0:58:05 It’s always such a good time.
0:58:09 Where can everybody get how to grow your small business?
0:58:10 Well get it wherever you buy books.
0:58:12 If that’s on Amazon, grab it on Amazon.
0:58:14 If that’s at Barnes & Noble, grab it at Barnes & Noble.
0:58:15 Keep your receipt.
0:58:21 They email you a receipt and if you just copy that number, that receipt number, and go to
0:58:25 growyoursmallbusiness.com and enter your receipt number.
0:58:28 We have a bunch of free bonuses that we’re giving away.
0:58:34 One of them is a pass to the online sales script where we will actually, you can type
0:58:39 in your sales follow-up email and I will color code it for you so that you can see where
0:58:43 you’re talking about the problem, where you’re talking about the product as the solution
0:58:47 to the problem, where you’re talking about the three-step plan, negative positive stakes
0:58:48 and call to action.
0:58:53 We’ll actually look at it in four color to see where you’re talking about all these parts
0:58:56 to make sure it’s a perfect email that’s going to close the deal.
0:58:58 That’s free when you buy the book.
0:59:02 Just grab the book and then go to growyoursmallbusiness.com and give me your receipt.
0:59:05 I think this is going to be one of those classic business books.
0:59:07 I highly recommend that you go get it.
0:59:09 I’m going to be digging in way deeper than I have.
0:59:14 I’ve really only read it like high level, so I can’t wait to really go deep on this
0:59:16 book because I know it’s going to be filled with so many gems.
0:59:21 Donald, what is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become more
0:59:23 profiting tomorrow?
0:59:24 Set three economic objectives.
0:59:27 We talked about it at the beginning of the podcast.
0:59:30 What are the three ways that you’re going to make money this year?
0:59:31 Give me numbers.
0:59:35 We’re going to sell 400 of this, we’re going to sell 80 of this, we’re going to sell 25
0:59:36 of these.
0:59:41 Whatever it is, give me three economic objectives and then reverse engineer your entire strategy
0:59:42 to hit those.
0:59:43 Awesome.
0:59:46 What is your secret to profiting in life?
0:59:49 profiting in life, five o’clock, actually more like four o’clock.
0:59:54 I go home and I spend time with my daughter and my wife and I don’t think about work.
1:00:00 My wife and I talk about work for probably an hour a week and that’s it.
1:00:02 I have a life outside of work and I love it.
1:00:05 I know you put family number one by far.
1:00:08 It’s one of the things that I respect most about you, Donald.
1:00:11 Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:00:17 If you want to see pictures of my daughter who’s incredibly cute and my wife who’s incredibly
1:00:22 beautiful and my dog who is a feisty pain in the rear end who keeps us humble, Donald
1:00:24 Miller is my Instagram handle.
1:00:25 I’d love to see you guys there.
1:00:26 Awesome.
1:00:27 Well, thank you so much, Donald.
1:00:28 Always a pleasure.
1:00:29 Thank you so much, Hala.
1:00:30 Wonderful to talk to you.
1:00:31 Thanks.
1:00:32 Bye.
1:00:33 Bye.
1:00:33 Bye.
1:00:40 Bye.
1:00:42 Bye.
1:00:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:06 Today’s episode is sponsored in part by Robinhood Airbnb Open Phone Rocket Money and Indeed.
0:00:11 With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment receiving a 3% IRA match on
0:00:13 retirement contributions.
0:00:20 To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at Robinhood.com/Gold.
0:00:24 Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier with Airbnb’s new co-host network.
0:00:28 Mind yourself a co-host at Airbnb.com/host.
0:00:31 Open Phone is the number one business phone system.
0:00:35 Build stronger customer relationships and respond faster with shared numbers, AI, and
0:00:36 automations.
0:00:42 Get 20% off for your first six months when you go to openphone.com/profit.
0:00:47 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions,
0:00:50 monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills.
0:00:54 Sign up for free at rocketmoney.com/profit.
0:00:57 Attract interview and hire all in one place with Indeed.
0:01:01 Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profit.
0:01:03 Terms and conditions apply.
0:01:09 As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at young and profiting.com/deals.
0:01:11 You have to have speed.
0:01:16 And this is one of the things that Silicon Valley has learned more intensely than anywhere
0:01:17 in the world other than maybe China.
0:01:24 You are a truly prolific entrepreneur, PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, open AI.
0:01:28 What were some of the learnings that you learned at PayPal that helped you become a great entrepreneur?
0:01:30 People are familiar with pivots because it’s not working.
0:01:35 But pivoting towards opportunity is one of the things that entrepreneurs really need
0:01:36 to keep in mind.
0:01:42 What scaling companies is prioritizing speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty.
0:01:44 Speed over profitability.
0:01:45 Yes.
0:01:50 The only way to speed up learning it and deploying it and scaling it is the game.
0:01:52 Sometimes entrepreneurs are told, “Oh, ignore risk.”
0:01:53 No, no, no.
0:01:54 Take smart risk.
0:01:57 When you’re scaling really fast, hiring really fast, how can you maintain a healthy
0:01:58 company culture?
0:01:59 You have to intentionally…
0:02:17 Yeah, bam.
0:02:18 Welcome back to the show.
0:02:23 Today, we have a true legend on the podcast, Reed Hoffman, who is the co-founder of LinkedIn
0:02:25 and Inflection AI is joining us.
0:02:28 He’s also a renowned venture capitalist.
0:02:33 He’s been behind companies like Airbnb, PayPal, so many great, huge companies that have moved
0:02:34 the world forward.
0:02:37 He is also a partner at Greylock.
0:02:40 He hosts a podcast, Masters of Scale, and he’s a prolific author.
0:02:44 He’s got a brand new book out on AI called Super Agency, which we’re going to dig into
0:02:46 in this conversation.
0:02:50 Me and Reed talked for well over an hour and 20 minutes, which you guys know I love to
0:02:52 do when somebody is just absolutely amazing.
0:02:55 I want to keep them on for as long as possible.
0:02:57 Reed was one of those guests.
0:03:00 In part one of this conversation, we really focus on entrepreneurship.
0:03:03 I talked to him about his early entrepreneurship endeavors.
0:03:06 We learn about his failures and big learning lessons.
0:03:10 Then we go into scaling, all of his strategy for scaling businesses.
0:03:12 Guys, he’s scaled huge companies.
0:03:17 Like I mentioned, LinkedIn, Airbnb, PayPal, he’s behind some of the biggest companies in
0:03:18 the world.
0:03:23 He’s got a lot of great content when it comes to scaling businesses, specifically his Blitz
0:03:25 scaling methodology.
0:03:28 Then in part two, we really focus on AI.
0:03:30 He wrote a new book called Super Agency.
0:03:35 It’s all about how humans are going to have agents moving forward, AI agents.
0:03:41 I really pick his brain on his optimism towards AI and how he imagines the future to be with
0:03:43 AI in the picture.
0:03:45 Everything’s going to be changing.
0:03:48 In part one, like I mentioned, we’re talking about entrepreneurship.
0:03:54 Stay tuned for that and enjoy my conversation with the amazingly talented Reed Hoffman.
0:03:57 Reed, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:03:58 It’s great to be here.
0:03:59 I’ve been looking forward to this.
0:04:00 Me too.
0:04:04 First of all, I want to say I feel very honored to have you on the show.
0:04:06 You were a truly prolific entrepreneur.
0:04:11 You’ve literally helped push the world forward for decades.
0:04:18 You’ve been a leader at companies like PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, now Inflection AI.
0:04:21 You also were a part of OpenAI.
0:04:26 You’ve just been behind so many huge companies that have pushed the world forward, like I
0:04:27 said.
0:04:31 I wanted to ask you, when you think of all your contributions to the world and all the
0:04:36 companies that you work with, because you don’t have to work right now, you choose to
0:04:37 work.
0:04:42 You must be thinking about, okay, what makes me want to work with a company?
0:04:46 What is your mission and what is the red thread with everything that you’re doing in the world
0:04:47 right now?
0:04:52 I guess probably it’s like I’m, to put it philosophically, a humanist.
0:04:56 Which is how do we make ourselves better individually and as a group?
0:05:00 It’s empowering a bunch of different individuals’ lives, but also leaving the world much better
0:05:02 than we found it.
0:05:04 How do we do that?
0:05:07 That’s the red line through everything I do, including companies.
0:05:12 Because you want to do companies that, of course, have all the normal company things
0:05:17 of providing great product services and jobs and all the rest, but you also want it to
0:05:22 be the impact that you have on the world, leaves the world in a much better place.
0:05:27 You transform industries, you transform societies and like all the companies you mentioned that
0:05:32 I’ve been involved with from the earliest stages, whether it’s personally LinkedIn and
0:05:40 PayPal or as an investor and board member, Airbnb, open AI, all of it has a theory of
0:05:45 how does this improve human life, human work, quality of experience.
0:05:50 How do we elevate ourselves, become more the people we aspire to be?
0:05:56 And in a similar way, in a similar token, I’d say you’ve said in the past, society flourishes
0:05:59 when people think entrepreneurially.
0:06:04 So talk to us about why you believe that the more entrepreneurs that we have in the world,
0:06:08 the more that mankind is better off.
0:06:10 It’s part of how you create the future.
0:06:14 Everything that we have in our lives, I mean this podcasting stuff, these computers, these
0:06:22 phones all come about through entrepreneurial innovation and it’s part of how the new future
0:06:28 is created and it’s part of how prosperity is created, it’s part of how life is improved.
0:06:33 And basically, we wouldn’t get to, even when you say, well, wait, there’s also science
0:06:37 which events, vaccines and other kinds of things, although a lot of vaccines are commercial
0:06:41 these days and have an entrepreneurial bent like Moderna.
0:06:47 And so it’s this invention of new things and it’s envisioning the way the world could
0:06:48 possibly be.
0:06:52 How could you create something that would be of service to, this is one of the things
0:06:58 I think people always forget about, the process of Adam Smith and capitalism is this theory
0:06:59 of moral sentiments.
0:07:03 How are you being of service to other people and that entrepreneurial creation of business
0:07:06 and products and services is a really key part of it.
0:07:13 And when you look around our lives and all the things in it, it was earlier entrepreneurs
0:07:16 that we were building upon their work.
0:07:23 So speaking of building on entrepreneurs of the past, my career has totally skyrocketed
0:07:24 from LinkedIn.
0:07:29 I was able to become a full-time entrepreneur with my social agency and my podcast network.
0:07:35 And so my question to you is, LinkedIn has blown up into this huge platform.
0:07:42 It’s one of the biggest social media networks in the world, 135 million daily active users.
0:07:45 Was your vision for LinkedIn what it is today?
0:07:52 What was your initial vision and did you ever imagine it would scale to what it is today?
0:07:57 So when you start a business, you should think about this as a kind of probabilities of outcomes.
0:08:01 So I did think that LinkedIn could become what it is today.
0:08:06 I actually even think things that were could be bigger and could be on path and you could
0:08:09 be asking me this question in five years when I achieved a bunch of new things and I would
0:08:11 also say, “Hey, yes.
0:08:12 This is possible.”
0:08:18 Now, are we in a low probability but high result future from when I started LinkedIn?
0:08:19 Absolutely.
0:08:24 You have to be rational as an entrepreneur and part of what sometimes entrepreneurs are
0:08:29 told ignore risk, take smart risk, manage it smartly.
0:08:33 And so when I started, it was like, well, we could be this big and there’s all of these
0:08:38 outcomes between here and there, which include not succeeding at all, that you manage your
0:08:44 way towards even as you have the moonshot, if you shoot for the stars, maybe sometimes
0:08:48 you only get to the hills, but you have to be shooting for yours.
0:08:51 You have that, but you’re wise about it.
0:08:56 And so yes, there’s learnings and we can go to the depths of which things I made mistakes
0:08:59 on or which things turned out to be new surprises with LinkedIn.
0:09:03 But I would say that we’re within the probability set that I thought was possible.
0:09:04 I love that.
0:09:09 And I’m definitely going to be asking you about scaling a business and all of your guidance
0:09:10 around that.
0:09:15 But first, before we do that, I do want to talk about your early entrepreneurship days
0:09:19 because a lot of the listeners tuning in, they’re young entrepreneurs, they’re failing
0:09:25 every day, which is a big part of eventually becoming a great entrepreneur is failure at
0:09:27 first that you can learn and get better.
0:09:32 So you started a company called SocialNet, which actually was a failed startup.
0:09:36 When I read about it, you could tell me what you think, if it was a failure or not, but
0:09:42 it was a social app for dating way before we had the dating apps of today, like Bumble
0:09:43 and things like that.
0:09:46 So it was like a really innovative concept.
0:09:51 Tell us about what happened with that company, why you ended pivoting to something else and
0:09:54 some of the failures and learnings that you had from that.
0:09:59 So a lot of the writings I’ve done are all the learnings from mistakes.
0:10:02 There was almost never anything like I just got to write the first time.
0:10:06 It was that you iterated at speed and you kept adapting and you kept learning.
0:10:08 And that’s one of the rules of entrepreneurship is always be learning.
0:10:12 So SocialNet, you know, I started with the kind of this theory of, oh, I’ve learned how
0:10:13 to create software products.
0:10:15 I know what a really good thing would be.
0:10:18 I’ve got a great product idea, let me go raise some venture capital.
0:10:20 Let me release the product.
0:10:24 Well, a huge number of things, everything from, you know, if you’re not embarrassed
0:10:28 by your product release, you’ve released too late relative to software and consumer
0:10:34 internet because I thought I would polish it and get it just so right and beautiful
0:10:35 before getting out.
0:10:39 And when we released, we quickly discovered half the things we’d spent months on were
0:10:41 completely useless.
0:10:47 We thought that the game was entirely about, well, did we have a vision for product quality?
0:10:50 And we didn’t spend that much time thinking about, like, our go-to-market strategy, which
0:10:53 is fundamental to entrepreneurship.
0:10:56 And so it was just failure after failure and recovery.
0:11:03 But the two ways that I kind of kind of learned to summarize this was, one, is I perhaps never
0:11:08 learned so much in my life except for between the ages of two and three because when you’re
0:11:11 falling over and learning it and standing back up.
0:11:15 And then the other one is every Friday, there were things I wish I had known on Monday.
0:11:19 And those things I wish I known weren’t person X is going to return your phone call or this
0:11:21 partnership pitch won’t work out.
0:11:24 It’s literally how to play the game, what to do.
0:11:30 And so it was a tremendous learning experience, which of course means lots of scars, tissue
0:11:32 and a lot of blood on the floor.
0:11:36 And I’d say that it was, you know, in Silicon Valley terms, a failure.
0:11:42 We returned the investor’s capital, but that was all we were able to do fundamentally.
0:11:46 And so I love that you started as an entrepreneur and you learned a lot with social net.
0:11:47 And then you went to PayPal, right?
0:11:54 And you learned as an executive there before you went and co-founded LinkedIn.
0:11:55 So talk to us about that.
0:12:00 What were some of the learnings that you learned at PayPal that helped you become a great entrepreneur?
0:12:03 So part of what happened is two friends of mine, Peter Thiel, Max Lovechin came to me
0:12:05 and said, “Hey, we’re starting this business.
0:12:08 We’ve been doing this for a year and a half with social net.
0:12:09 We’d really love you to join the board.
0:12:11 We’ll have you and Scott Banister join the board.
0:12:13 And could you do that?”
0:12:18 And I said, “Yes, because I’ve just come through a year and a half of learning every
0:12:19 week.”
0:12:24 And so a bunch of this stuff, PayPal had a initial booster pack on, which is all the
0:12:28 various lists, which is hire people who are high talented learners, more than people who’ve
0:12:30 had a ton of experience.
0:12:33 I mean, they must know how to do the job.
0:12:36 But it’s supposed to look, “I’ve done this job for 10 years.
0:12:40 I’ve done this job for at least a year or two, and I’m an intense learner.”
0:12:45 So PayPal started as a encryption technology on mobile phones, went to cash on mobile phones,
0:12:52 went to cash on Palm Pilots, then went to cash on Palm Pilots plus an online synchronizing
0:12:56 payment service, and then quickly converted to an online master merchant.
0:12:59 And the last pit was after it launched.
0:13:05 And so all of that initial cryptology on mobile phones was completely thrown out the
0:13:07 door and useless.
0:13:11 Because again, it was kind of this, “Don’t just build something because it’s an interesting
0:13:12 product.
0:13:13 What’s the market need?
0:13:14 How are you getting into it?”
0:13:16 And so there were just tons and tons of experiences.
0:13:22 I’d say one of the central things that I learned about entrepreneurship from PayPal was the
0:13:26 speed of execution, the speed of making decisions.
0:13:29 And so one of the things, I mean, there was a whole stack, again, we could take this entire
0:13:30 podcast.
0:13:34 Things I learned from SocialNet, things I learned from PayPal, things I learned, just
0:13:35 each one of them.
0:13:41 But part of the thing was basically, I kind of adopted there, which I wish I’d had at
0:13:46 SocialNet, this decisioning mode where when I’m confronted with a decision, I say, “Can
0:13:48 I make this decision right now?”
0:13:52 And if I can make the decision right now, I go, “And by the way, the usual answer is,
0:13:53 what decision would I make?”
0:13:56 I was like, “Okay, I would decide X, not Y.
0:13:57 Okay.
0:14:02 Is there anything that I could learn by researching, talking to people, et cetera that would change
0:14:03 from X to Y?
0:14:06 Okay, what’s the cost and time to do that?”
0:14:10 And if the cost and time is too great, you just make the decision, go with X, and you
0:14:11 live with it.
0:14:16 And maybe sometimes part of X and Y is, is it a one-way door or a two-way door?
0:14:20 Because if you can recover from it, you’re less likely to go do the research about should
0:14:22 you decide Y versus X.
0:14:30 Part of this practice, it gets you comfortable with making decisions at a really intense
0:14:34 speed where you’re uncomfortable with it because you don’t know everything when you’re making
0:14:35 the decision.
0:14:42 And that was one of our many ethoses at PayPal that allowed us to navigate this just like
0:14:45 lots of things almost blew us up.
0:14:50 And it was definitely a X-wing fighter going into the Death Star.
0:14:51 Oh my gosh.
0:14:53 Are we going to live or die on this thing?
0:14:54 We succeeded.
0:14:55 Yeah.
0:15:00 And I’m sure you’ve gotten really comfortable with uncertainty and taking these risks without
0:15:03 really knowing if it was the right or wrong decision.
0:15:08 And like you said, prioritizing speed over anything else, which is so important.
0:15:13 And I know you say that in your book, Blitzscaling, which you put out in 2018.
0:15:17 And even though it was put out seven-ish years ago, it’s still super relevant.
0:15:19 So I did want to cover it.
0:15:25 So you talk about Blitzscaling, and basically it’s a concept that is about achieving market
0:15:26 dominance quickly.
0:15:30 So can you go over some of the key principles of Blitzscaling?
0:15:31 And I’ll ask you some.
0:15:36 I’ve got like lots of questions about it, but I’ll let you summarize it first.
0:15:42 The pithy way of saying what Blitzscaling is about is it’s prioritizing speed over efficiency
0:15:45 in an environment of uncertainty.
0:15:50 And to unpack that a little bit, it’s that when you’re playing games where we call in
0:15:54 the book, Glenn Gehrig, Glenn Ross games, which is first prize is a Cadillac, second
0:15:57 prize is Stichnize, and third prize you’re fired.
0:16:00 You have to have speed and speed to scale.
0:16:05 And this is one of the things that Silicon Valley has learned more intensely than anywhere
0:16:07 in the world other than maybe China.
0:16:12 China is one of the few areas where I’ve also learned Blitzscaling games.
0:16:16 And it’s one of the reasons why when you look at Silicon Valley for the tech industry, the
0:16:22 whole population of Silicon Valley barriers like three and a half million that’s like Ireland.
0:16:28 And yet the number of global tech companies that come out of Silicon Valley versus anywhere
0:16:32 else in the world, and to some degree, including China, because we’re talking global here,
0:16:37 although, you know, there’s obviously ByteDance and TikTok and so forth, is just enormous.
0:16:38 And why is that?
0:16:43 ByteDance, the answer is because this hyper competitive game of Blitzscaling is something
0:16:44 that we have learned to do.
0:16:50 And you don’t do Blitzscaling as a goal into itself, you do it as a competitive tool relative
0:16:56 to being first prize versus second or third, because your particular industry, your particular
0:17:01 company, your particular potential industry transformation is worth it.
0:17:06 So you were just talking about how you have to basically prioritize speed.
0:17:12 So when we’re Blitzscaling and we’re prioritizing speed, lots of things can go wrong, right?
0:17:17 Because you’re prioritizing just hiring really fast, making fast decisions.
0:17:18 Things are not perfect.
0:17:23 So talk to us about some of the operational risk that is involved with Blitzscaling and
0:17:26 some of the fast decisions that people have to make.
0:17:32 Typically, obviously, people in business schools teach reduce uncertainty and prioritize learning
0:17:34 for efficiency.
0:17:40 But if what you’re doing is saying, well, we really need to get to scale very fast relative
0:17:46 to either a market because of a scale mechanic or because of competition, you’ll say, “Which
0:17:51 risk can we take to get to that scale product market fit much faster than our competition?”
0:17:57 And so, for example, classically what happens in a lot of these Blitzscaling companies is
0:18:01 people who are traditionalist business people will say, “What’s your operating margin?”
0:18:03 And you need to prove your operating margin.
0:18:09 I myself sat in early Airbnb meetings where one of the VCs was saying that.
0:18:15 And I had to speak up and say, “Nope, bad question, not a question to answer right now,
0:18:20 because we’re in a software business, we don’t have these capital hard assets, even though
0:18:25 they’re being rented and transacted in it, that’s not on our balance sheet.
0:18:29 What we just need to do is get this to scale and be the growing marketplace of that and
0:18:32 we’ll figure out operating margins later.”
0:18:35 But that’s, of course, what the size of your operating margins are, is how valuable your
0:18:36 business is.
0:18:39 And when you get to the operating margins, it will be when people start valuing your
0:18:40 business more.
0:18:45 And you’re like, “So that’s a very counterintuitive thing you say, we’ll take the risk on wherever
0:18:51 our operating margins will end up because getting the scale more quickly and fast and
0:18:55 taking experiments with like, for example, what you’re doing in marketing, what you’re
0:19:01 doing in hiring, what you’re doing in product development, we’ll just try it and we’ll iterate
0:19:05 and move quickly and we’ll abandon the things that aren’t working.”
0:19:09 And that’s essentially, and that’s part of the reason why Airbnb is one of the, as you
0:19:15 know, is one of the examples that we open Blitzscaling the book up with to kind of show
0:19:18 a modern example of these are a set of decisions that you make.
0:19:23 And then I forget which chapter, but there’s like eight counterintuitive rules in Blitzscaling
0:19:29 in the middle, which is like embracing chaos and hiring Ms. Right Now versus Ms. Right
0:19:33 in three to five years, because again, with the learning curve, those are all things you’re
0:19:39 doing to go, “Go fast now, go fast now, go fast now,” and iterate and change.
0:19:45 And that’s part of why Silicon Valley produces just transformational technology companies
0:19:46 for the world.
0:19:50 So it’s really what you’re saying, it’s about speed over profitability.
0:19:53 Yes, or any form of efficiency.
0:19:58 One of the things that I learned remotely from Uber, because they were another Blitzscaling
0:20:03 company we covered elements of in the book, is one of the things when Uber is like, “Oh
0:20:05 my God, we need to hire engineers really fast.”
0:20:08 So what they would do is they’d re-interview an engineer, a reference check on an engineer,
0:20:11 and they’d offer engineers Sarah a job.
0:20:14 And then when they offered engineers Sarah a job, they say, “Okay, well, we’d like to
0:20:15 interview with you.
0:20:17 Who are the top three people you work with at your current company?”
0:20:20 And then just send those three people job offers.
0:20:24 It’s Blitzscaling, because it’s like, “Well, maybe they’re not going to really work out.
0:20:28 Maybe they’ll think it’s a little weird and creepy that they got a job offer out of the
0:20:34 blue with a pitch, but it’s part of the going fast.”
0:20:39 And so it’s not just profitability, it’s efficiency and everything.
0:20:42 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
0:20:47 Yeah, Pam, when I first started this podcast, believe it or not, I had an all-volunteer team
0:20:48 to help me out.
0:20:53 But as my business took off, I needed to hire a lot of new people and fast.
0:20:58 It soon became pretty overwhelming because I had to sort through piles and piles of resumes,
0:21:01 conduct countless interviews, and you know how it goes.
0:21:02 Hiring is a pain.
0:21:06 But then I discovered the easiest way to hire the right people quickly.
0:21:08 I found Indeed.
0:21:10 When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.
0:21:14 Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites.
0:21:18 Indeed’s sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire fast.
0:21:22 With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,
0:21:24 so you can reach the people you want faster.
0:21:27 It makes a huge difference.
0:21:32 According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications
0:21:34 than non-sponsored jobs.
0:21:39 Plus, with Indeed’s sponsored jobs, there’s no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts,
0:21:40 and you only pay for results.
0:21:42 How fast is Indeed, you ask?
0:21:47 In the minute I’ve been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed
0:21:49 data worldwide.
0:21:50 There’s no need to wait any longer.
0:21:53 Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.
0:21:57 And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your job’s more
0:22:00 visibility at Indeed.com/profiting.
0:22:05 Just go to Indeed.com/profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about
0:22:07 Indeed on this podcast.
0:22:09 Indeed.com/profiting.
0:22:11 Terms and conditions apply.
0:22:13 Hiring Indeed is all you need.
0:22:18 Hey app bam, launching my LinkedIn secrets masterclass was one of the best decisions
0:22:21 that I’ve ever made for my business.
0:22:25 And I didn’t have to figure out all the nuts and bolts of creating a website for my course.
0:22:28 I needed a monthly subscription option.
0:22:30 I needed chat capabilities.
0:22:36 I needed a laundry list of features to enable what I was envisioning with my course.
0:22:41 But here’s the thing, all I had to do was literally lift a finger to get it all done.
0:22:46 And that’s because I used Shopify.
0:22:52 Shopify is the easiest way to sell anything to sell online or in person.
0:22:55 It’s the home of the number one checkout on the planet.
0:23:00 And Shopify is not so secret secret as Shoppay, which boosts conversions up to 50%.
0:23:06 That means way fewer cards get abandoned and way more sales get done.
0:23:09 If you’re into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell
0:23:15 wherever your customers are scrolling and strolling on the web, in your store, in the
0:23:18 feed and everywhere in between.
0:23:22 Put simply businesses that sell more sell with Shopify.
0:23:27 Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use at Yap Media with Shopify.
0:23:32 Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:37 And that’s all lowercase younger profitors that’s Shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:46 Go to Shopify.com/profiting to upgrade your selling today, Shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:48 Hello young and profitors.
0:23:52 The start of the new year is the perfect time to get organized, set goals and prioritize
0:23:54 what matters most.
0:23:59 For me, a top priority this year is my financial wellness, which feels more important than
0:24:00 ever.
0:24:04 The richer I get, the more cheaper I get and I want to save money and just see my money
0:24:05 stack.
0:24:08 And thanks to Rocket Money, my goals feel achievable.
0:24:12 They show me all of my subscriptions right in one place and they help me easily cancel
0:24:16 ones that I forgot I’ve been paying for, which happens more than you think.
0:24:21 Rocket Money also pulls together all of my spending across all of my different accounts
0:24:25 so I can clearly track my spending habits and see where I can cut back.
0:24:31 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions,
0:24:35 monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.
0:24:40 With Rocket Money, you can easily create a personalized budget with custom categories
0:24:45 to help keep your spending on track and you’ll get alerts if bills increase in price, if
0:24:49 there’s unusual spending activity, or if you’re close to going over budget.
0:24:54 Rocket Money will even negotiate lower bills for you and deal with customer service so
0:24:55 you don’t have to.
0:25:01 Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million and canceled
0:25:09 subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app’s premium features.
0:25:14 Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.
0:25:17 Go to rocketmoney.com/profiting today.
0:25:26 That’s rocketmoney.com/profiting, rocketmoney.com/profiting.
0:25:31 When you’re hiring that fast, like you just gave that example of Uber, I have to imagine
0:25:37 that your company culture might suffer and it might become a little bit chaotic.
0:25:40 What’s your guidance for when you’re scaling really fast, hiring really fast, how can you
0:25:43 maintain a healthy company culture?
0:25:44 You have to intentionally try to do it.
0:25:51 By the way, Uber is an example of something that had a very chaotic and challenging company
0:25:58 culture and had to refactor it to be a good stable public company you’re getting.
0:26:02 The usual heuristic rule of thumb is that refactoring culture is actually in fact really
0:26:03 hard.
0:26:04 It is hard.
0:26:06 It’s not necessarily impossibly hard.
0:26:08 Dar really demonstrated with Uber.
0:26:12 Actually, we had a Master’s Scale episode on that because it was the question of, “Okay,
0:26:16 so you inherit something that’s got a lot of really broken parts.
0:26:17 What do you do?”
0:26:21 The punchline was, “You don’t show up and say, ‘New Sheriff in town,’ you say, ‘Hey,
0:26:22 we did these great things.
0:26:23 We already have what’s greatness in this.
0:26:27 Let’s focus on the parts that are great and use those to refactor the other parts.’”
0:26:32 So as opposed to saying, “Now, friends, something entirely new, we’re returning to the central
0:26:35 roots of our greatness and then refactoring the other ones.”
0:26:37 That’s actually, I think, a good change.
0:26:43 Now, that being said, we’ve had a lot of culture episodes and part of that’s because you should
0:26:46 be intentional about it.
0:26:49 The intentionality can be not hiring as fast as Uber did.
0:26:51 So we’re like Workday and Anil Busri.
0:26:57 It was Ian as co-founder Dave Duffield did a cultural interview at the end, even though
0:27:04 he is being the CEO, did a cultural interview at the end of every hiring process for the
0:27:05 first 500 people.
0:27:08 That slows you down some, but that’s one way to do it.
0:27:14 Another way is the culture deck for Reed Hastings, which actually just started as when they were
0:27:17 looking at the attrition of, like, why are people leaving?
0:27:20 It was like, “Well, they didn’t understand our culture when they got here.
0:27:24 So let’s first create a culture deck to onboard them and then, oh, shit, we should publish
0:27:25 it.”
0:27:26 Right?
0:27:29 So if you’re looking for a family, go to other companies.
0:27:35 If you’re looking for a team, like a professional sports team, come here because our culture
0:27:40 is we ask ourselves a question every quarter, every year.
0:27:44 If you wouldn’t hire this person right now, give them a severance package, go hire somebody
0:27:45 else.
0:27:48 And so you create these cultural moments and these are all the different tool sets that
0:27:54 you create for your particular business, your particular founders, management team, product
0:27:59 market fit, competition landscape, et cetera, because it’s not one culture, one size fits
0:28:01 all, but being intentional is very important.
0:28:03 Everything has a consequence, right?
0:28:05 There’s pros and cons to everything.
0:28:07 You can implement all these systems.
0:28:09 Like, I’m thinking about my own company right now.
0:28:10 I used to hire so quick.
0:28:15 I would just go on LinkedIn, find somebody, poach somebody, DM them, do an interview, hire
0:28:16 them.
0:28:18 Now, it’s a months-long process.
0:28:22 And I can feel that sometimes it’s really hurting us and I’m like, “I just want to go
0:28:24 poach somebody off LinkedIn,” you know?
0:28:27 It’s just like really just pros and cons and you’ve got to figure out what is the right
0:28:31 thing for your business and make the right decision.
0:28:36 So why is first mover advantage so important?
0:28:40 The whole point of Blitz Scaling is so that you can basically build a moat around you
0:28:43 as a company, but why is that so important?
0:28:47 Well, first mover to scale gives you all kinds of energy.
0:28:51 It doesn’t actually necessarily need to be first mover out of the gate, but the first
0:28:54 mover to scale, part of Blitz Scaling, is really critical.
0:28:57 Now, sometimes, by the way, the way that you become first mover to scale is you’re the
0:29:00 first mover out of the gate because you just keep going, right?
0:29:06 But that kind of getting the scale can have all kinds of advantages.
0:29:12 One is capital markets reward you versus whoever’s in second place as part of the Cadillac
0:29:15 and Steak Knives.
0:29:22 Please more want to work there that when customers or members, if it’s consumer internet thing,
0:29:25 think, “Well, what’s the one that everyone’s talking about?
0:29:27 It’s the one that’s the first to scale.”
0:29:30 And so in all of these fields, you have advantages.
0:29:35 Now, you might also have a business with network effects, where those network effects become
0:29:41 a really important growing super linear kind of competitive moat, whether it’s like Airbnb
0:29:49 or Uber or others, LinkedIn, or if it’s just a, “Well, I’m ahead.”
0:29:55 And so by default, all of the different forces that come together to make a company successful
0:29:59 are more aligned and believing you’re number one because part of what entrepreneurship does
0:30:01 is I have this vision.
0:30:02 It’s currently not operative.
0:30:08 I’m persuading multiple different constituencies to come invest in my vision.
0:30:10 It could be investors with money.
0:30:13 It can be employees with their time and ownership.
0:30:16 It could be press with their belief in what’s going to happen.
0:30:20 It can be customers who go, “Okay, you’re a startup, but I’m going to start using you
0:30:25 now anyway because I believe you will be the right thing in the future.”
0:30:30 All of these things is what you do as an entrepreneur is you persuade people to come and help build
0:30:31 your vision.
0:30:35 When you’re the first mover to scale, you have a lot more of those people believing in
0:30:37 you and therefore investing in you.
0:30:38 The cost of customer acquisition is lower.
0:30:41 Your cost of speed of recruiting employees is lower.
0:30:45 Your cost of capital is lower, et cetera, et cetera.
0:30:50 The weight of your brand is giving you all of this advantage, like the brand recognition.
0:30:55 Brand can definitely be a strong part of it, but it’s also the question of who do each
0:30:57 of these groups think is going to win.
0:30:58 So it’s a little bit different.
0:31:03 I mean, brand is also what is your brand promise, what are you going to become.
0:31:07 And awareness is part of it, but it’s like, “Okay, we think you’re going to win.
0:31:12 Now when you have dynamics like a network effect, then your brand might be mediocre,
0:31:19 but a network effect is incredibly good within a business or within any kind of entity that
0:31:20 has it.
0:31:22 It’s a very strong amplifier.”
0:31:23 So talk to us about that.
0:31:25 I know Airbnb had a network effect.
0:31:27 What’s a good example of one?
0:31:30 Networks are usually, but not always.
0:31:35 So LinkedIn has one, Facebook has one, WhatsApp and Instagram.
0:31:39 For example, when you look at Google, the network effect isn’t the search index.
0:31:41 That’s a scale index.
0:31:46 What it is is the AdWords, because the AdWords begin to get when you’re kind of that large
0:31:52 and differentiated and have the data and intelligence enough, you end up with a better cost.
0:31:57 You can provide an ad at what is a lower cost to you and a higher price to your customer
0:32:03 and have a higher margin revenue than your competitor that’s trying to sell something.
0:32:05 And so its network effect is in the AdWords.
0:32:10 So part of when you’re looking for these mega scale businesses, usually there’s some interesting
0:32:12 network effects that really power them.
0:32:16 I know that there’s different stages involved with Blitz Scaling.
0:32:21 So there’s family stage, tribe stage, village stage, city stage, nation stage.
0:32:25 So I was thinking about my company, and I think we’re right in between tribe stage and
0:32:27 village stage.
0:32:30 I think there’s probably a lot of growing pains in that stage, right?
0:32:34 Like we’re doing amazing, but I feel like it’s just like scaling is really hard.
0:32:39 And I feel like that is the first instance of really scaling.
0:32:43 So talk to us about each one of these stages, what do we need to think about?
0:32:49 And you can be high level or as deep as you’d like, but if you can just break down how companies
0:32:52 generally scale and the stages that they have.
0:32:57 So the basic idea was to say, when you’re hyper scaling to a market, obviously everyone
0:33:02 wants to have as much revenue and as much customers per employee as one of the ways
0:33:08 to benchmark businesses, but almost all businesses also get to growing their employee base for
0:33:09 various reasons.
0:33:14 It’s sales and new products and features, new product lines and customer service and
0:33:17 account management and finance and everything else.
0:33:23 So you generally speaking need to be scaling your employee base at some rate with your
0:33:24 business.
0:33:27 And so the thought was as you’re getting to scale product market fit, one of the challenges
0:33:32 you have is you’re scaling the size of your operation in all of these different vectors.
0:33:36 And so that proxies to number of employees.
0:33:40 And so we broke it up into the five categories that you just outlined.
0:33:41 Thank you.
0:33:46 And we said, look, when you’re getting to each of these things, what got you here won’t get
0:33:47 you there.
0:33:51 When you’re at the earliest stage, it’s like, you know, a couple of people, maybe you met
0:33:56 one of them, you hired them, you’re all in a room, communication isn’t really an issue.
0:34:00 The culture is usually like, well, we went out for beats in a beer and we talked about
0:34:01 it.
0:34:02 And that’s our company culture.
0:34:04 Like we figured out what we’re doing.
0:34:08 And as you get larger, all of these things change in the very earliest.
0:34:09 Everyone’s working.
0:34:12 And then you get to, there’s people who are working and being managers.
0:34:16 Then you get there’s people just being managers, then you get people who are managing managers.
0:34:21 And each of these things change at levels of scale as you go up of how you run communications,
0:34:26 how you make decisions, how you pivot or readjust something.
0:34:29 All of this changes, which risks are you willing to take?
0:34:33 Like for example, Facebook went and people thought this was different, but it was like
0:34:37 move fast and break things to move fast with scalable infrastructure.
0:34:43 And I was like, oh, you got wise and you changed your theory of moving fast like narrow.
0:34:46 What we realized was in a very early stage, move fast and break things was the way to
0:34:48 optimize speed.
0:34:51 And then in our later days, the way to optimize speed was move fast with stable infrastructure
0:34:54 because we broke the infrastructure.
0:34:55 It was too hard to fix.
0:34:57 And we suddenly were moving slower.
0:35:02 So it’s still both speed principles, but those changes, because for example, move fast and
0:35:05 break things weren’t totally fine when you’re 40 people.
0:35:11 When you’re 500 people and the infrastructure breaking and everything breaks, let’s keep
0:35:12 the infrastructure running.
0:35:16 However, many other things we may be breaking as we’re moving fast.
0:35:21 So all of those things go into the different levels and nation is kind of the placeholder
0:35:26 for public company, you know, thousands of employees, et cetera.
0:35:30 And just saying, hey, the rules here change too.
0:35:35 And your mistake is trying to run the same way as you might be even in a village with
0:35:36 you’re in a nation.
0:35:40 Even though you’re of course trying to keep speed, you definitely keep a vibrant culture
0:35:46 and high performance and high quality talent, the nature of the game changes as you change
0:35:47 size.
0:35:48 So interesting.
0:35:51 I highly recommend that everybody read Blitzscaling.
0:35:52 I loved reading through it.
0:35:56 I want to read it in even more detail because I feel like it’s just so relevant, especially
0:35:59 as like a newer entrepreneur scaling your business.
0:36:04 If you’ve never done it before, build a company that’s a nation-size company, it’s definitely
0:36:05 a good read.
0:36:10 So when you’re thinking about making intelligent risk, this is something that we were talking
0:36:11 about earlier.
0:36:16 Do you have anything that you think through, questions that you ask yourself to make sure
0:36:20 that you’re not just taking any risk and that you’re taking a risk intelligently?
0:36:27 Well, there’s a couple of quick hacks on every major decision, maybe not surprising from
0:36:32 the co-founder of LinkedIn, is I think, who are the three to five people I’d most want
0:36:33 to talk to about this?
0:36:39 Because it’s kind of like, where would they give me knowledge, expertise, different cognitive
0:36:43 tool set, different analytic framework, et cetera.
0:36:48 And with that, what I predict, that would be very helpful in this particular decision.
0:36:52 And frequently, those people, while you have a lot of great people in your company, there’s
0:36:56 a lot of them wearing any particular decision outside your company.
0:36:59 And that’s part of the thing of like, okay, what would it take to go get that when I get
0:37:04 the right, what kind of inspiration I get, would I be unknown and I would try, et cetera.
0:37:05 That’s one.
0:37:12 Because analyzing the risks is knowing which only few things to focus on and which other
0:37:17 things to really just ignore, because one of the, as you know, plan scaling rules are
0:37:23 like embrace chaos and let fires burn because you’re like, we’ll solve that later.
0:37:24 We don’t have to solve everything right now.
0:37:26 We can only focus on a few things.
0:37:32 Another one is to think about, all right, even if it’s painful to solve something later,
0:37:37 like for example, we were talking about the Uber hiring thing, can we solve that one later?
0:37:41 Because which the ordering of problems that we need to solve.
0:37:45 And some of the risk is we’re not going to solve that problem right now.
0:37:48 We’re not going to be able to measure it right now.
0:37:51 The only way to really measure this is to do it.
0:37:57 One of the things that modern consumer internet mobile entrepreneurs have learned is this
0:38:02 thing that’s paradoxically called paper testing, which is you put up an ad and you say, here’s
0:38:03 our thing.
0:38:06 And you see what the click through is, even though you don’t have anything behind the
0:38:09 ad because you’re measuring it and trying to get data because you’re trying to figure
0:38:14 out what the thing is, this is the toolbox of the cost of de-risking.
0:38:20 Which low cost things can you do talking to someone taking paper ad doing other things?
0:38:21 Can I do to de-risk this?
0:38:24 And then at the end of the day, you make the risk bet.
0:38:29 Now some of the red teaming thought is, well, if I’m wrong on this decision, what are my
0:38:30 plans be?
0:38:32 How do I recover?
0:38:35 If I go, ooh, this one, we’re just dead.
0:38:36 Not, oh, it’s painful.
0:38:40 We’re dead, if it doesn’t work, oh, okay, well, let’s invest a little bit more on the
0:38:41 risk decision if we can.
0:38:45 But by the way, part of what startups do is you’re making the bet.
0:38:48 If you’re not making the bet, you’re ultimately going to fail.
0:38:56 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
0:39:00 I want to talk about AI, but before we do that, I’ve got a little quick fire section.
0:39:05 I’ve pulled out some of my favorite quotes that you’ve said about entrepreneurship, and
0:39:08 then I just want to get some more color on each one of these quotes.
0:39:09 Okay.
0:39:13 If you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late.
0:39:18 Well, that’s what I talked about a little bit already with socialite, which is, look,
0:39:22 there’s the number of people who are product geniuses that go, oh, when I pull back the
0:39:26 curtains, everyone’s going to go, ooh, la, la, you are perfect.
0:39:32 That’s less than 1% of entrepreneurs and product people, and yet everyone thinks they are.
0:39:36 Obviously, you should be a good product person, otherwise you shouldn’t be doing the product
0:39:37 side.
0:39:39 Entrepreneurship is doing something else.
0:39:41 But the right thing is how do you learn from your customers?
0:39:42 How do you go?
0:39:43 Which things?
0:39:48 And that’s part of the reason why minimum viable product, product market fit, all of
0:39:53 these things, kind of testing your hypotheses, using other data as a way of doing it.
0:40:01 Because if it’s speed to market and speed to learning, and part of the reason why embarrassment
0:40:05 is because our natural instinct as people, as entrepreneurs, is we want you to tell
0:40:09 us, oh my God, we love what you did.
0:40:12 And actually, in fact, you want them to grow to love what you did.
0:40:14 And obviously, the more they love it at the beginning, that’s great.
0:40:19 But your speed of learning it and deploying it and scaling it is the game.
0:40:23 I’m smiling because I’m just thinking about me being an entrepreneur and something that
0:40:28 my business partner always says is my favorite thing is to just announce something.
0:40:33 Even before it’s ready, before I have any idea how to do it, I love to just announce
0:40:37 we’re doing this, and I’m like, well, we got to figure it out.
0:40:38 Exactly.
0:40:43 OK, so don’t wait for something to fail before you learn or before you consider a change
0:40:44 or pivot.
0:40:50 The best pivots are to take advantage of an upside rather than to avoid a downside.
0:40:54 So obviously, people are familiar with pivots because it’s not working.
0:41:00 And there’s different ways to get to the conclusion before it totally is a train wreck.
0:41:06 You want to make the decision that’s not working before the train wreck happens, change tracks.
0:41:12 But one of the things that people under-describe is a pivot to a new opportunity.
0:41:16 And in some sense, this is the PayPal story that we were talking about a little earlier
0:41:20 because they said, well, we have this really great unique technology, and we’re figuring
0:41:24 out that it’s not really going to work, and we’re pivoting away from it because too hard
0:41:25 to get to market.
0:41:31 And then what happened is you released this kind of PalmPilot plus a synchronizing payment
0:41:32 service.
0:41:36 And what happened is eBay people started using it.
0:41:41 And I remember the first week in the conversation of PayPal was, who are these eBay people?
0:41:43 Should we stop them from using our product?
0:41:45 And it was like, no, no, no.
0:41:46 Those are our customers.
0:41:48 None of these people are our customers.
0:41:49 Those are our customers.
0:41:51 We’re going to pivot entirely towards them.
0:41:54 And so pivoting towards opportunities, seeing what happens, and sometimes, by the way, it’s
0:41:58 like, oh, you’ve been working on the software product, and now AI is here, and you’re like,
0:42:00 OK, I’m going to do AI.
0:42:05 Yeah, I know I did this last 18 months of work, maybe three months if it’s recoverable,
0:42:07 because that’s the opportunity.
0:42:13 And that pivoting towards big new opportunities is one of the things that really creates these
0:42:19 successful businesses because we want to tell this heroic story where she or he had this
0:42:24 original vision that came down from on high, and they came down with the two stone tablets.
0:42:27 And they said, I’ve got this vision that goes on forever.
0:42:28 And that’s reason I’m a genius.
0:42:32 And it’s like, well, actually, in fact, a lot of things happen based on, well, I was
0:42:38 in the game, I was learning, and I saw this new opportunity that emerged from the market,
0:42:42 a technology, a set of things with competitors, and I moved towards that.
0:42:48 Like, for example, Google, it’s theory of, when it launched, it was we’re going to sell
0:42:49 enterprise search.
0:42:51 That’s our theory of the game.
0:42:53 Then they saw, and then, oh, it’s not working.
0:42:57 Oh, our backup plan is to put double-click ads on top of it.
0:42:59 Oh, shit, the whole ad market went.
0:43:00 What do we do?
0:43:02 Oh, now we end up at AdWords.
0:43:08 And they pivoted from enterprise to consumer, and then consumer to using elements that they’d
0:43:13 seen from the market, but inventing their own version of how to make a really powerful
0:43:14 business.
0:43:17 And it’s one of the most powerful business models that’s been invented in human history
0:43:18 so far.
0:43:22 And so that pivoting towards opportunity is one of the things that entrepreneurs really
0:43:24 need to keep in mind.
0:43:25 It’s not always that you’re failing.
0:43:30 Your company could be doing good, but you just want to go towards even a bigger opportunity.
0:43:31 Yes, exactly.
0:43:36 No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always
0:43:38 lose out to a team.
0:43:44 Again, we tend to tell these heroic myths of the individual entrepreneur or she or he
0:43:50 is like, “I am the person, the creator, the innovator,” et cetera.
0:43:55 And actually, in fact, all of these projects are the result of teamwork.
0:43:57 There’s almost nothing as an individual.
0:44:01 And part of the thing is you want to be, to some degree, the best entrepreneurs, the
0:44:07 people who recruit and bring around them, the most amazing teams who work with them
0:44:08 for a long time.
0:44:13 And actually, obviously, part of the thing is the truism tends to be higher, slow, fire
0:44:14 fast.
0:44:16 The higher slow, you can see whether that works.
0:44:20 If you’re really going to hire slow, you better be hiring all the time so that your
0:44:23 pace of hiring is in match not like, “Oh, I need a person now.
0:44:24 I’m going to start looking.”
0:44:28 I start recruiting for people I think I’m going to need six to 12 months from now today
0:44:29 as an instance.
0:44:34 And so, that team sport is really important, but it’s not just the employees.
0:44:35 It’s also the people around you.
0:44:40 So the advice to give entrepreneurs is not to go up to people and say, “Hala, what do
0:44:41 you love about my idea?
0:44:42 What do you think about my idea?”
0:44:47 Because I’m asking you to tell me, “What’s wrong with my idea?
0:44:49 What thing could make it break to learn from it?”
0:44:56 And so, having those teams built around you outside your company, advisors, investors,
0:44:59 experts, industry people, et cetera, is really, really important.
0:45:05 And that’s why entrepreneur is a team sport, is a network sport, not simply an individual
0:45:06 sport.
0:45:07 Okay.
0:45:08 Last one.
0:45:12 Just as the Industrial Revolution created new opportunities for collaboration and new
0:45:18 capacities for innovation, creativity, and productivity, the cognitive revolution will
0:45:19 do it as well.
0:45:22 This is, I guess, bridging into our AI discussion.
0:45:27 The thing that happens that we’ve learned with entrepreneurship is new technologies completely
0:45:32 change industries, sometimes every industry, like AI with general purpose technologies
0:45:36 and the parallel between chat, GBT models and general purpose technologies, always something
0:45:42 I’m finding a little entertaining, but you look at these technology changes as changes
0:45:43 in market landscapes.
0:45:49 It’s changes in how, what the real shape of products and services are going to be.
0:45:51 It changes in how companies operate.
0:45:55 It changes in what business models are available and all of these things.
0:46:00 You really look, even if you’re not yourself, purely the technology company, you look for
0:46:05 changes in the technological landscape because fundamentally, if you don’t have a technology
0:46:10 strategy, it’s not an IT strategy, it’s not am I using PCs or Macs or iOS things.
0:46:15 It’s a technology strategy and that you’re going to need to evolve with.
0:46:21 And so AI, which is the cognitive industrial revolution and my belief is going to transform
0:46:25 probably every industry and if not every, almost every.
0:46:27 It’s between almost every and every.
0:46:31 So everybody needs to be looking at it to say, “Okay, what does this mean for my product
0:46:36 service, my competitive landscape, the way that we operate as a company, how we do sales
0:46:40 and marketing, how we do account management, how we do customer service, what other ways
0:46:45 of which we operate, whether it’s supply chain, finance, risk mitigation, et cetera.
0:46:50 What are all the ways that this can come in and give me a competitive differentiation
0:46:52 for how the new world is going to look?
0:47:02 [MUSIC]
0:47:12 [BLANK_AUDIO]