00:00:28- Chris:   What’s up Total Freedom podcast. It’s Chris Duncan your host here, and I’m excited. Today I have the founder of The Rich20Something Community, the Facebook group that we’re all part of. It’s Daniel Dipiazza and he is right here with me and I’m excited bro. I’ve seen your stuff online, I’ve been in your group. I’ve had people tell me that I need to have you on the show. They always say “you know this guy?” And I’m like “I was living in Venice and now I’m on the show”. It’s great to finally connect with you man so welcome and thank you.

00:00:53- Daniel:              You were living in Venice?

00:00:55- Chris:                 Yeah dude.

00:00:56- Daniel:              You’re a freak like me then.

00:00:58- Chris:                 [Laughing]

00:01:03- Daniel:              Venice is like Santa Monica plus The Walking Dead. Everyone is here and it’s very expensive but also everyone is a little crazy.

00:01:15- Chris:                 There’s something really cool about that area and here’s what it is; it’s this mix of people who are super heart-centered artistic but also business minded. It’s one of the weirdest but coolest communities. Just south of Santa Monica, just [inaudible 00:01:25] and we lived there I think for half of a year, maybe a little bit longer. It was awesome.

Brother let’s start off with this because, I don’t know how, but there might be some people listening to this that don’t know who you are and know your story. Let’s go into your story, how it began and where you are now. I’ll leave it to you to fill us all in.

00:01:47- Daniel:              I can give my elevator pitch, how about that?

00:01:48- Chris:                 Okay.

00:01:50- Daniel:              Let’s say that we’re in an elevator and we’re going up to the top floor and I only have seven floors to pitch you, and you’re like “hey, what’s Rich20Something?” I stole this from a friend of mine. His name is Mark Goldstein and he’s a clinical psychologist and he’s really good with words. I stole this from him. This is how I position it now.

00:12:12- Daniel:              You know what ORI is right?

00:02:15- Chris:                 Yes.

00:02:16- Daniel:              Return on investment, that’s a dummy question, of course you know what ORI is. At Rich20Something we focus on ROT; Return on your twenties. We’ve helped people between 18 and 30 get the biggest return on what we think is the most important decade of your life. It’s an overlooked decade because a lot of the common mythology of your twenties is, “this is the period of complete freedom”, “this is the period where nothing matters”.

The approach that we take to it is “this is a very important decade for your life because it’s going to set up your 30s, 40s and 50s”. It all comes back down to now so we are helping you to figure out how to master your money, your mindset and your ability to make a difference, to make an impact. That was crisp. We do that through online courses and we have live events that we’re doing now, I have a book that’s coming out and we also have B to B sides. We’re really growing that way but that’s the … now we’re at the top floor and now you have to get off and go to your office.

00:03:23- Chris:                 I’m sold brother, I’m all in. That’s such a great point because I think a lot of us just float through Uni and don’t get started. My first business was at 17 so I’m the crazy kind that’s just been doing this the whole way through.

Let me ask you this; no one ever lands on top of the mountain, where did you start and what was the journey?

00:03:45- Daniel:              I think that one, I’m not sure if I’m top of any mountain but I think that the most interesting thing is that I started just completely, completely lost. A couple of years ago now, about five, six years ago. I was working at a restaurant and I was just really upset because I felt like I was in a very difficult situation. I had already finished university and I knew I didn’t want to go back and do more. I didn’t see anything that enticed me enough to want to spend the money to go back to school, but at the same time I wasn’t really interested in doing the corporate thing. I have some friends who were doing great in corporate America it’s just not really for me.

00:04:29- Daniel:              So I was stuck because I felt “If I don’t want to do one of those two options I’m going to have to pick these shit jobs”. I was like “I might as well try to figure out how to do something myself. I might as well try to figure out how to make my own, maybe there’s a way”. I didn’t know anything about internet marketing, I didn’t know anything about any of that stuff, but I just started cataloguing my skills and the first business I started was as a test prep coach, as a tutor.

00:04:48- Daniel:              So we have this test, it’s the SAT, it helps you get into college. I’m really good at these tests and really good at tests. I started teaching this to students, that grew. That model worked. I started writing about how it was working and then eventually I started trying other things, doing some of the same approaches I learned when I was refining my methods. I started a web design business and a bunch of other businesses on the side. Multi central consulting. As I started writing about these things, I got picked up by Forbes, Fortune and Time Magazine and eventually it came to a point where I was getting less people asking me to perform the service and more people asking me to tell them how I was able to perform the service.

From that; Rich20Something which is a combination of personal experience plus the community, it’s been built around. Teaching how to do things for yourself without having to work for someone else.

00:05:03- Chris:                 I love it brother and what a great way to just have it unfold. What a great way for it to unfold and I love one thing you said in there, you had a look at your skills and you looked at all the things you could do and then started a business around something you could do. I always say to people the fastest way to start is consulting.

Let’s talk to the person right now that’s listening; they’re in their 20s, they’ve done what both you and I did, went to university and came out the other side going “what the heck was that about? And now I actually have to get a real job”. I remember being at uni and all my friends, two who had finished, a few years older than me said “stay in university [crosstalk 00:06:24] when you leave”. Let’s talk to that person, they’re thinking about starting a job, how do they start? What do they look at and what advice would you give them?

00:06:36- Daniel:              You mean when they’re about to graduate?

00:06:38- Chris:                 Yeah.

00:06:42- Daniel:              Look, hopefully the person listening to this, we get to them early enough where they can seriously consider not going to school. I have a lot of young people in my community and they ask me “should I go to high school?”, of course you should go to high school, of course. No question. But at the time when you’re going to college, you’re still trying to figure out who you are and what college does is it forces you to put yourself in a box. “I want to major in this, I want to classify myself as that” and during that time period, I don’t know about you, but you’re going to go back and forth between a lots of things that you think might be a good fit and ultimately a lot of times it ends up to being not very satisfying.

00:07:25- Daniel:              It’s easy to come out of college after four years, and the state’s probably in debt and still have no idea what you’re going to do. So I think the first thing is, take a step back from school. Even if you’re in school right now, you’re about to graduate, take a step back from what you actually learned in school, if you learned anything. Take a step back from what your classwork was and think “What skills do I actually have? What skills did I gain either from being in Uni or from just living my life? Do I have hobbies? Do I have talents? Are there things that people constantly ask me for advice on? Do people come to me to ask for help in a specific area?”.

00:08:01- Daniel:              Really take a hard inquiry into what it is that the world has been telling you, and if it hasn’t been telling you anything, if you’re not necessarily good at something, think about developing a skill. College a lot of times creates a lot of learning and a lot of knowledge but then it doesn’t really transfer a lot of skills. So if you don’t have any skills, you have to now take the initiative to build a skill. That really doesn’t sound very appealing to a lot of people because you think “well I’ve been in college for four years, why would I go out and learn … I’m just making something up … web design? Why would I learn that?”. Well because it’s something that you can directly exchange for money. You can’t with a degree.

What the degree used to be was a signifier of a level of intelligence that says “I’m going to go to a corporate job. I have this piece of paper and because I have this they’re going to know that I’m qualified to handle the tasks”. But it’s not a declaration that you can actually do anything. So unless you’re going to school to be a doctor, or an attorney where you know that the next step is more school and you have to do that, you have to really think “what skills do I have?”. If you don’t have skills, you have to get some.

00:19:15- Chris:                 Literally. And it doesn’t matter what it is. I always [inaudible 00:09:17] people start off with a service instead of going into a product. [crosstalk 00:09:21]

00:09:24- Daniel:              It’s easier, because there’s no start up costs. You can fumble you’re way along, you can do free work in the beginning to get some referrals and some experience. It’s just easier. Mow lawns, I really don’t care seriously. A lot of the things that you’ll do with clients, that experience will transfer over no matter what service you’re providing.

00:09:45- Chris:                 And it’s huge and one of the things I think that’s important about that is how quickly that you’ve gone and said “let’s get started”. Typically, and same with you, same with me, same with many other people that have made millions of dollars, travelled the world and didn’t do that things they wanted to do in their 20s, is the first business isn’t their last business.

00:10:03- Daniel:              No, no way man.

00:10:04- Chris:                 But see you’re like “no, no way” but most people, they get this thing … and I want to address it, and I know that you’ve got some content on this … so many people are worried about starting because they think it’s going to be the one that they chose forever.

00:10:22- Daniel:              Here’s the thing, business is mostly just practice. You’re always learning and you’re always growing and you’re right it really is a stumbling block. People think “I want to pick the perfect business” because we view businesses as we view jobs. But think about the way a career work. Usually with a career, especially coming out of college, you pick a career field let’s say … take someone like my mum. My mum is in the insurance industry, she’s an insurance adjuster. Every five to seven years she gets some sort of either vertical or lateral promotion where she moves ups the ladder and becomes a manager of more managers or she moves to another company that pays her more for doing the same thing.

00:11:06- Daniel:              We look at entrepreneurship, a lot of us to an experienced (I was too at one point), we look at entrepreneurship in the same type of moving-up-the-ladder-way where “I’ll start the business one way and then I’ll just make that business bigger”. Sometimes that’s how it goes but most often the first four, five, six, multiple businesses; they’re just going to be things that you test, things that you learn with, things where you incorporate skills, build relationships, make some money to leverage yourself into the next business. It’s not necessarily a linear process like we view careers.

00:11:40- Daniel:              Part of that though causes anxiety because we like linearity, we like things that are straight forward and easy to discern. As entrepreneur, and you know this since you’ve been doing this since you were 17, you have to be comfortable with being able to see a few steps in front of you but not necessarily have the whole picture in mind. And that’s where it comes into play, that what you’re doing right now might not be what you’re doing in five years and you have to be okay with that.

00:12:03- Chris:                 And when you are okay with that, you can move. Those people don’t move, they don’t start because there’s one thing. They want to be perfect and they have this fear. This fear of losing, this fear of starting, I think it’s ingrained in us with school. You’ve got a book coming out right?

00:12:17- Daniel:              Yeah. Check this out this is 1 of 27 copies that exist in the world that [inaudible 00:12:22] put on my face.

00:12:26- Chris:                 What is the title?

00:12:30- Daniel:              I’ll let you read it.

00:12:31- Chris:                 Ditch Your Average Job Start An Epic Business And Score The Life You Want?

00:12:36- Daniel:              Rich 20-Something. Perfect example, this is something that- I started writing two years ago but five years ago I didn’t know I was going to write a book and you take things one step at a time. The book is similar to our discussion as I’m talking about progressing from being unsure to starting one thing to leveraging that into another thing. The book chronicles that, and distills lessons from it with actionable step-by-step things and combines those with some of my close friends who have now done the same.

00:13:13- Daniel:              I want to add something too; you start off doing … I was teaching SAT, I was literally tutoring. There’s no logical connection between tutoring someone in Math and Reading and now running an internet based business that’s making millions of dollars that does consulting and does products. There’s no connection but I had to start tutoring Math to get to the point where I could now write this book and have that business. Like you said, no one falls on top of the mountain. So whatever you’re thinking right now, you’re watching this and it’s your first time thinking about going into business for yourself or you’re unsure … it doesn’t actually matter what the first thing is as long you do the first thing.

00:14:01- Chris:                 Literally, you cannot … say Job sitter, you cannot connect the dots looking backwards.

 

00:15:10- Chris:                 You talk about some lessons and stuff in your book, would you like to share some lessons or some things for our audience that you think is important?

00:15:16- Daniel:              I’ll share one with you that I think is powerful. We met through our mutual friend Jared Kleinert …

00:15:26- Chris:                 Man, props to Jared I love that guy.

00:15:27- Daniel:              Jared is a super connector, really is. He’s like the center of the hub. He’s like the hub in a world of spokes. What I learned pretty early on is that a lot of the opportunities that you’re going to get come from crucial connections. Honestly, between the business being what it is now and the book deal and all this stuff, I could probably trace that back to five really influential people. Of course, it worked on my part and there’s been a little bit of luck, everybody gets a little bit of luck, but probably like five people.

00:16:09- Daniel:              I learned this early on when I was just starting off, I realized that a lot of these people who were doing well end up becoming friends with each other and so that’s how networks build. So what I do is I make an effort to meet people, like yourself, and we have this podcast and afterwards I say “Chris, that was really great, who else do you know that I should meet?” I would ask the friends I was making to introduce me to other friends who are like them and that way I’ve build kind of a curated network of people who care about the things I care about. Who are connected in the way I want to be connected and I use each relationship as a focal point to find new relationships. A lot of times people say “I don’t know where to find these kinds of people, I don’t know how to get a mentor”.

This is a big thing in the millennial community right now. How old are you brother are you 28, 29, 30?

00:17:03- Chris:                 29.

00:17:04- Daniel:              29 okay. You’ll know then, you’re a millennial. I’m 28, I’ll be 29 this year. A big thing for us right now, especially with the younger Millennials like 25 and below, maybe that’s Generation Z, they’re really obsessed with mentors right now. Everyone wants a mentor. You don’t necessarily need one mentor but you can get a lot of different people to help you out in a lot of different areas and that’s how you do it. You start by getting yourself out there, by going to events, by going to where interesting people are, talking with them and then saying “you’re awesome, who else should I know like you?” And they’ll do the work for you. Through that you’ll- over time, build good relationships and you’ll be very surprised the interesting- sometimes just crazy things that come from seemingly innocuous connections several years later.

00:17:50- Chris:                 It’s such a massive tip. It’s literally one of the biggest growth hacks out there. You never know because the thing is, and you said it really off cuff, is going to those events. You’re like “oh yeah go to some events” but one of the things that changed my life has been events. Seminars, workshops, mentoring, going and connecting and the easiest place to find like minded people is at those damn events.

0:18:14- Daniel:                 Totally. I have a friend, I’m always calling them like that but I’m using it as an example, but I have a friend and he’s a really talented graphic designer and video artist. He’s like “I can’t get any work. I can’t get people to pay me for the work and I’m looking for clients”, but he’s at his house all the time on the computer and I’m like “motherfucker” … I don’t know if can curse here … “dude, go to places where people are”.

00:18:45- Daniel:              Most of the people who I’m friends with, I would say a large majority of them, I’ve met in person at least once. A lot of them I met just off the cuff, like you said. Two weekends ago I went to a maple syrup testing down in Burbank in California, for no reason. Just because I saw it as an event on my Facebook events and I’m like “I’ll go to this”. I just go to stuff to see who’s there and then meet people. That’s not like necessarily a great place to meet entrepreneurs but the idea is putting yourself out there. Going to places where other interesting people are going to be and be a human because we’re so obsessed now with “how do I grow followers? I need to get people to notice me on the internet”. But people care about you a lot more in person.

00:19:30-Daniel:               I’m doing this book thing right now and the majority of people I’ve asked to help me with, I’ve met them in person multiple times and now [inaudible 00:19:37]. I’m like “I need you help” and they’re going to do it.

00:19:43- Chris:                 That’s so badass.

00:19:46- Daniel:              They’re going to do it. We’re going number one New York Times Bestseller, not just New York Times Bestseller, number one New York Times. Number one, uno.

00:19:55- Chris:                 I was talking to a guy last night who’s done New York Times, Bestseller 88 times in a row and I should introduce you to him.

00:20:02- Daniel:              What category is he in? I want get whatever category he’s in.

00:20:06- Chris:                 It’s not the category, he’s worked with [crosstalk 00:20:07] right through to … who was he talking about … anyway I will introduce you to Michael after this. There you go and guess what just happened just then.

00:20:19- Daniel:              Yeah, you see that?

00:20:20- Chris:                 We just witnessed the power of connections. Last time- because I’m right New York Times Bestseller right now as well so I’ve just hired the number one consultant in the country-

00:20:29- Daniel:              [inaudible 00:20:26] Ryan?

00:20:29- Chris:                 His name’s Michael Drew and he’s-

00:20:31- Daniel:              Nice.

00:20:32- Chris:                 I can introduce you and he’s done it 88 times in a row. I’m going to be 89 because there’s this system and this is what’s fascinating … if you can see us on video or if you’re watching this, or listening to this on a recording … what just happened is going to explode Daniel’s business. This is done, it’s insane. And this is what I think you’ve been talking about brother. We’ll do that after the call, I’ll intro you that’s no problem.

00:20:57- Chris:                 Let’s talk about your book because I’m sure people need to go get it. Why should they get the book? What’s different about the book? Why do we need another book on that topic? Didn’t Tim Ferris do it all?

00:21:05- Daniel:              Well first of all there’s a whole of bunch of nudes right in the middle of it. You can’t get those anywhere online.

00:21:13- Chris:                 A whole bunch of what?

00:21:14- Daniel:              Nudes, nude photographs of me.

00:21:15- Chris:                 Oh okay great. I was like what?

00:21:14- Daniel:              [inaudible 00:21:23] and Tim Ferris’ book is great. Tim’s a good guy and his book is great but two things are missing from that equation in my estimation. One, that book was written originally in 2008. Times have definitely changed since then, in that decade, and Millennials feel like, “now that their so many people in entrepreneurship it’s harder and harder to get noticed”. When Tim was writing his book, he was writing at a time when entrepreneurship was still not as much public awareness. Now entrepreneurship is it’s own trend. You can be in the business of talking about business now, which is a new thing.

We take it from the perspective of “look, entrepreneurship and that whole fad, that whole trend is already here. Here’s how to still get in, it’s not too late and we go through a step-by-step process. Also I think one thing that’s really relatable about the book is that I talk a lot from a very personal perspective.

00:22:30- Daniel:              You alluded to this earlier about falling on the mountain top, I think it’s so funny that people see me as some sort of guru. In fact, just as a joke with myself, I allowed the publisher to call me a guru in the description just to fuck with people. Because I totally don’t believe I’m a guru, I think I’m always learning and I think that it’s really eye-opening to see and hear the experiences of a normal person doing extraordinary things including all the bad stuff, which is in the book. All the bad stuff, all the heartache, all the expectations that got crushed, mine along with about 10 other friends who I allowed to write essays in the book, who have done really well.

00:23:21- Daniel:              It’s just a fantastic resource, not just for tactical knowledge, but for reminding yourself that it’s possible. And we all need that.

00:23:28- Chris:                 Right on brother I love it. I highly recommend it, everyone’s going to go out there and get it because books, workshops … when you get the book to number one, I’ve got a system to help you get there but we can still get you there.

00:23:41- Chris:                 Here’s one thing I’m interested in; I’ve successfully scaled to multi-millions a few times but I’m always curious, because a lot of people don’t get there and you have as well, you alluded to it before, what was the difference? What was the difference between the Daniel who was at six figures and struggling to making the multiple millions? I would love for you to share.

00:24:03- Daniel:              Two things. First of all six figures for most people isn’t struggling. Most people would love to make six figures independently.

00:24:13- Chris:                 Let me just say six figures revenue because we both know six figures revenue isn’t six figures in your bank.

00:24:20- Daniel:              I gotcha, totally. Two things; one was really ramping up the brand leadership. Really becoming a fault leader. Writing for places like Entrepreneur Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Time, all those places might seem like a cool little trophy but what they allow me to do was they allowed me to scale the business on the B-to-B side.

00:24:44- Daniel:              We have our products which work really well and they’re doing great, but we were missing something and once we added the service side … because for a while I started my business doing services and then once I got good at doing services I thought “fuck it I’m just going to do only products”. For a while I was doing that and it was doing okay but I realized “something’s missing. I feel like I could be making a lot more and I don’t know what’s missing”. Once I added services back into the mix, it just took off because the services … because of all the credibility I had built around the places I’d been writing and things I’d been doing … the services we were able to charge a good amount of money for so that instantly increased our revenue. Plus it allowed me to pour back into the courses and those two combined synergistically worked to take us to seven figures plus.

00:25:26- Chris:                 Nice. So to summarize that it was first really getting the authority and the notoriety by going onto some big publications. That helped to really grow that. And then the second was, I guess it was adding more services that allowed you to get over that threshold.

00:25:44- Daniel:              Think about it, if you have five clients that are doing multiple seven figures, paying you seven to 10,000 dollars a month just to create content for them, manage their social media and just help them build their brand. For them, it’s not too expensive, it’s totally doable they’re not [inaudible 00:26:04] and you feel good about it, it’s comfortable. If you have 10 of those clients now you’re making 70-80,000 dollars a month, that pretty much take care of it. And then you pour that back into the products, the products do better, so everyone wins. It’s like, rather than thinking about trying to sell a million things for a dollar, how can I sell just a few things at a much higher price?

00:26:26-Daniel:               Everyone has different models though. That’s not necessarily the only model. Mcdonalds is making billions selling one dollar hamburgers, it’s fine. It’s just that we found it was easier.

00:26:37- Chris:                 I always tell people the easiest way to a million is a thousand thousands, 500 200s a month. It’s very simple and I wish people would always understand this. Check out this number, if you can have 500 people paying you $167 a month, that’s a million dollars. I think people sometimes just don’t understand how simple it actually is to get there and it’s exciting to talk to you about this but brother we’re about to wrap up. I feel like I found another soul brother, that we could just talk forever and I also like to keep these shows as short and impactful as possible. I’ll leave it to you on what last thing, impactful message, you’d like to leave with the tribe.

00:27:11- Daniel:              Okay.

00:27:13- Daniel:              Guys, focus. Listen here. Listen I’m a tell you something … everyone’s scared of starting and I’ll admit that starting can be scary, it can be onerous, it can be intimidating. But if you can get pass the starting point, pass those first 90 days, pass those initial first periods of resistance, it doesn’t get easier but the playing field gets much clearer. Everyone’s concerned that there are other people who are trying to take their ideas. There are too many people in the market for them to stand out, but I promise you no matter what you want to do whether you want to make business doing content, whether you want to be a service provider, whether you want to do products. If you can get pass that start up phase where everyone feels the intense pressure to stand out, eventually there’s a space for you. And if you keep pushing you’ll find it too. It’s not as crowded up the top, just keep pushing.

00:28:20- Chris:                 Nice words brother, I love it. It is true. I appreciate your time, time is the most important currency to me so thankful for spending some time here with us and everybody please go out and rush and buy his book. I highly recommend it. I think that just from what you’ve shared today in just this short interaction I’ve had that I know there’s going to be some gold nuggets that you’ve put in there which is just awesome. Everybody go grab that.

00:28:43- Chris:                 If you want to know how to connect with Daniel, you want to stalk him on the internet, anything he’s going to allow to give me, I’m going to put it on my website.

00:28:50- Daniel:              Rich20something.com/book. That’s where you need to go.

00:28:54- Chris:                 There you go, rich20something.com/book and that will be on the site plus everything else about how to track him down and find him and get those nude pics if that’s what you really want. Clearly right, bro?

00:29:07- Daniel:              Dude, I’m ripped! I’m ripped! You need them.

00:29:14- Chris:                 Listeners we love you so much. Live with total freedom, free your mind, free your life, free you time and do it right now. Go out there and smash it. Do what matters most. Like, subscribe, share this.

Daniel, love you brother and will catch you on the next episode. Peace.