0:00

I think an agency is a really good vehicle to learn how to start a business.

0:03

Create a business by mimicking other businesses In the info world to profit 100,000 a month.

0:08

You're still a baby.

0:09

I know so many guys that just get program after program after program after program.

0:12

They go through the entire program and they don't do anything to act on stuff.

0:16

I don't get paid on output, it's paid on outcome.

0:19

You can make a business that does well over a million dollars a year by just getting really good at one platform.

0:24

Saturation is a really good thing when you're starting a business, because it shows that there's proof of concept and that the model is working.

0:29

Before we start this week's episode, I have one little favor to ask you.

0:33

Can you please leave a five-star rating below so we can help more people every single week.

0:39

Thank you, hi, bro man, I'm super excited for this.

0:42

I really appreciate you taking time for this.

0:45

There's multiple different areas I want to get into, but the reason why I'm really fascinated by you is because you're like a fucking hidden ninja man.

0:51

You're like the operator behind everything, but you've done so much different stuff, so it's going to be very valuable for people.

0:56

But from your knowledge, from what you've been exposed to, what do you think is the best business to start in 2024?

1:04

Wow, right out of the gate with a pretty open question.

1:06

I'm going to make it my goal today.

1:09

This is early my time, by the way.

1:12

What time is it for you?

1:13

Because I know we're across the world from this Exact same time 12 hours ahead, so 8.45 pm Got it.

1:18

So this is earlier than I ever take meanings because my brain is still kind of kicking on.

1:22

So this is normally when I'm meditating or praying or reading the Bible.

1:26

So this is my goal for this early interview will be to not say because my brain is still turning on.

1:30

I think if you're new to business, I really do still think online service-based agencies are probably the best beginner business model.

1:39

So I think it's a ladder. I don't think that most people should aspire to make an agency that they can sell or that makes hundreds of thousands a month in profit.

1:49

I think an agency is a really good vehicle to learn how to start a business, create a business by mimicking other businesses.

1:55

It's a very proven model. It's an ROI offer if you do it right, instead of a convenience offer.

1:59

There's a lot of benefits to agencies when you start out, but they are just vehicles, in my opinion.

2:06

I was actually thinking because I'm going to speak at a few agency events soon.

2:10

I was thinking about what I would want to speak about and I think one of the topics of conversation that no one goes over is just economics of an agency.

2:17

You know, you don't really see agencies ever start to profit.

2:20

More than 60 to 80 is like the average high profit agency.

2:25

Maybe 100 to 150 is like top 1%, top 0.1% of agencies.

2:31

And then, of course, you have your eddy mollusks and such with bad marketing.

2:34

That are your anomalies, right? But the reason I'm saying that is I think it's a great model to start, and if you look at the economics of it, I think a lot of the profit should be reinvested into learning and then after that, you start to get into your more lucrative businesses, like info products.

2:51

I think is the next logical path. Maybe you can look at the info product operators, growth consultants, et cetera, that are starting, which are agencies for info, which is essentially just outsource C suite, which is what I do for companies, and then after that, I think the one thing that people jump to too fast is SaaS.

3:07

People see the exits for software and they're like, oh my God, I want to get into that, I want a $50 million exit, but the failure rate for SaaS is so high because SaaS is one of the most complicated vehicles you can get into in business, and so I think realistically the chain for me would be agency or online service based agency, specifically ROI offer, probably on B2B, and then some kind of info products, whether that's B2B, bizop, et cetera, depending on what you're good at, and then somewhere down the line, maybe portfolio companies, saas, brick and mortar, et cetera.

3:35

Man, that's super fucking interesting. So I went straight into the deep end, right.

3:39

I was in the tech startup VC, grungy like backstabbing neighborhood like from my early twenties.

3:47

Now I wasn't the founder, but I was employee tree employee four of these companies and then I joined, like you know, series C, series D, big companies.

3:55

So I see just how dirty software is right as in how complex it is.

4:01

And when I hear like 21 year olds being like, oh, like I just built like this 16 SaaS and you could do it too, it's just.

4:07

it's just funny because like it's like the no code SaaS stuff that's going around right now.

4:10

You only stretch the surface right and like there's nothing wrong with no code, right, you could build.

4:13

You know they're describing now at the moment I heard a Shumat talk about how you know people are building their own Slack on no code now and they're saving thousands of dollars a month on Slack and enterprises because they're rebuilding it.

4:23

But it's like there's, it's just nuanced right and it's like I feel like that software level is almost like elite level entrepreneurship, to really crack it.

4:33

I've had a few mates that have raised 20, 30 million and drove the business to zero because it was just that hard.

4:38

They just ran out of money. It was run out of that hard.

4:40

Now, let me scare. Raising money, bro.

4:42

I was actually. I was. I'm new on Twitter.

4:45

Now I'm trying to. I'm sorry X.

4:47

Do people call it Twitter or X? I go on Twitter, I'm the same as you, I'm just.

4:50

I'm so not in that group.

4:52

Yeah, I, I'm brand new to it. I'm talking like a hundred something followers, like brand new to it.

4:57

And I'm right now I'm in a phase where I'm kind of just I follow like 10 people on it and I'm just reading kind of how they, how they tweet, to just learn how the you know how that social platform functions.

5:10

And there's a guy that I used to work with.

5:12

His name is Caleb Maddox, good buddy of mine, and Caleb tweeted something the other day because he's in.

5:18

He's in the AI software space right now. I don't know what that hybrid would be called, but it's essentially retweet on funding and I just I don't understand why people brag about funding.

5:27

I don't know about you, but in the software space they brag about how much money they raise and how much money they you know.

5:32

It's just to me it's like look at how much risk I'm compiling and how you know, and a lot of the time, a lot of the time, they do what you said and drive to zero.

5:42

And so I think, anyway, software to me is there's a reason I haven't started a software company.

5:46

It's probably been on my, on my map for I'd say two-ish years now and I still don't think I'm a mature enough entrepreneur to to make at least the odds of success higher, higher so that I feel like taking the gamble on it.

6:00

You know it's never going to be a hundred percent, but I still feel like it's not high enough for me to to spin the wheel or to to take the hit on and you'd need to be self-funded.

6:06

That's the difference, right, and I was like I, you know, I was in this, the VC space, just aware of it, and I was in that industry when the money was flowing and I was seeing the founder parties, man, you know, they were raising capital, they were going on trips with the money.

6:20

I saw all this shit and it was just, I always just had raised an eyebrow and I was like, hmm, something is wrong here.

6:27

Anyway, you know something is wrong. And then if you flip it right In a reception service, business service, businesses like our business works really effectively because we are the outsourced partners to enterprises.

6:37

They're like, fuck hiring people, fuck pain or medical care, fuck caring about your feelings.

6:41

We'll just give it to an outsourced partner and then we'll take care of the rest.

6:44

Right, but you made a very good point.

6:47

Well, you made an interesting point about the cap limit and I've I hear this a lot.

6:50

Right, but you know, agencies get to a certain point and it's the more difficult to scale and so on and so forth.

6:56

Why do you think that is Because, like we're, we're at that stage.

7:01

We're definitely at that stage now. We're at the stage where we're doing like 70, 80,000 revenue, like 50, 60,000 in profit.

7:08

I don't feel that, but is that something that kind of like happens naturally from there and I'm quite interested in that space, your margins, your margins are still so high that you're not.

7:19

you're not there yet, right? If you're doing 60K on 70K or around, you could probably spend more money to make more money.

7:27

But think of it, it's just the vehicle.

7:30

So let's use the word vehicle for the analogy, right. At the end of the day, a Honda Civic can only go so fast.

7:34

And so if you put a Corvette engine into it and mod it and put, you know, nitro or whatever, you can make it go faster.

7:43

But the amount of money you'll spend to make that go one, two, five, 10 miles per hour faster versus its top speed out of the gate from factory, it's a lot of it's, it's just it's not worth the squeeze, right.

7:55

And so I think let's say you're going to spend 30 grand on a Honda Civic to make it go from two, whatever the top speed is, let's say 150 to 160.

8:04

You're getting 10 miles per hour faster versus.

8:09

I'm sure I need to probably talk in kilometers per hour for you guys, but let's say 10 miles per hour faster for 30 grand versus.

8:15

You could probably just put that 30 grand toward a, you know, an old Corvette that, out of the gate, does 180 miles per hour, and so it's the same thing with vehicles, right.

8:23

So for time and energy spent, you can always make your business grow a little bit more and a little bit more, but it comes down to leverage on time and money.

8:31

And so there's there's a point when the friction you know, think about the laws of thermodynamics not to sound like I'm getting all guru here but when something starts to become high friction, you have to push it way more to move it, and so it's the same thing with an agency.

8:47

At that friction point it becomes worth it just to start playing a different game with a different vehicle that's meant to go faster, that is more complicated to start, and so the barrier of entry to have a high info, a good info product business, is slightly higher than the barrier of entry to start a an agency.

9:03

Right. And so realistically, when it comes, I wouldn't even necessarily say that's, that's the truth.

9:09

I would just say that that info product businesses have a much higher friction point.

9:14

And so one of my favorite things to look at, now that I've had a really good birds eye view on, is we work with the agencies and we work with info products, and if I talk to an agency that's profiting $100,000 a month, which is far in view between, let's even just say, a hundred K in revenue every month.

9:28

Those guys are so full of themselves versus info products that are doing 150 grand in profit or 200 grand in profit.

9:38

The difference in character between those two entrepreneurs is so much because on the agency side, to do a hundred grand or close to in profit or rev whatever you guys want to talk about, that's top 1%.

9:50

But in the info world to profit a hundred thousand a month, you're still a baby.

9:55

There are still guys out there that are way, way, way, way larger than you, and so it's.

10:00

That just shows on its own the difference in vehicle and the difference in terms of numbers that people look at.

10:07

If you think about it, it's kind of like, if you have analogy, it's like playing football in your local league and being the best in your local town versus going to the Champions League final right.

10:15

Yeah, I would just argue that the only thing about that analogy is it's still a different sport, right From playing football in your local league to then going to play cricket in a Champions League or such.

10:25

That's interesting because at the same time, there is like there is agencies that have kind of broken, true, but it's a good place for people to start, or even that agency model or the client based model.

10:34

That's kind of how it describes us. We're not really an agency, it's more like a client based relationship.

10:38

I'm going to get into that at some point, how that kind of functions.

10:42

But should that discourage people from making their first million as a result?

10:47

Because that could cash store really positively and then you could basically not have to go and go again, right, if you got to that point and continues to run it up.

10:55

Yeah, I don't mean to sound like a Debbie Downer on agencies, I said it to start.

10:59

Agencies are probably the best business model to start as a beginner, right.

11:03

I think that it's a really good goal.

11:07

I think of how spoiled we are talking about this, saying that the cap is 60 to 80, not the cap.

11:12

The friction point is 60, 80K on average in profit every single month.

11:16

What we're saying essentially is yeah, it's sad that you can only really, on average, profit 800 grand a year from the agency.

11:24

That's bonkers money for 99.9% of the world 99.99% of the world, right?

11:29

So I think it's by no means something to shy away from it.

11:32

I think that agencies are the best beginner online business model to start, hands down.

11:37

I think that there's a few reasons as to why. Number one we talked about raising capital.

11:42

You don't have to raise capital to start an agency as long as you can really pay for GHL essentially at this point, and you don't even have to but as long as you can put together 100 bucks, 200 bucks a month for software fees.

11:54

I was watching something from Hermosi the other day and I talked about this all the time.

11:59

I don't like quoting other entrepreneurs in this space, because I feel like when you quote people, you're putting them on a pedestal.

12:03

I don't think that Hermosi is pedestal level yet.

12:06

I think he's on his way, but for the most part, that's why I like to quote Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc.

12:10

Guys who have really crushed it.

12:12

But Hermosi did have a really good point about every business starting in debt.

12:16

I like how he worded this. I'm just going to paraphrase it.

12:19

But everyone thinks that debt is financial. But you have learning debt.

12:24

You have I call it learning tax but you have all these debts of things that you don't know, or finances.

12:31

At the end of the day, when you start a business, you have call it knowledge debt.

12:36

You just don't know anything about what you're doing. You don't know how to hire team members, how to.

12:42

You don't know anything from scratch.

12:44

You don't know how to run ads. You don't know how to get clients. You don't know how to sell.

12:47

You don't know how to even get sales calls. You don't know how to hire people.

12:50

You don't know how to keep people. You don't know how to pay people. You don't know how to do any of that.

12:53

So that's all called debt, knowledge debt. Realistically, to start out with knowledge debt and then call it financial debt, because most other business models you need to either raise for developers right, or you need to.

13:05

If you're starting up brick and mortar, you need to put in some kind of cash for your storefront or your gym or whatever be it.

13:14

There's so many types of debt that you can start with that.

13:18

The amount of debt that you minimize to the least amount of debt that you can start with, meaning just knowledge debt is a really, really good starting point.

13:24

And then the cool thing from there is there are so many agencies that are successful successful being hitting that friction point that you have a lot of good material Really copy from if you will, and so you can just essentially say I see this agency in this niche, I'm just going to do the same thing and learn from it.

13:41

Right, which is I know a lot of people don't think or don't talk about the fact that.

13:45

How do I word this? It's not a common thing to talk about the fact that copying people is the best way to start, but that 100% is the best way to start.

13:53

If you see someone doing 80K a month in profit, just copy as much of that as you can, and even if you only get 10% of it right, you're still going to get that still 100K a year in profit that you're copying right, and so you are mitigating your knowledge debt, if you will, and making money in the process.

14:10

And then I think realistically, the thing that I was thinking about in the car this morning is everyone says reinvest into your education.

14:16

Reinvest like learn, learn, learn. It's often said by info product owners, but I think that the part of that that needs to be said is budget learning into your profits, Because what I see a lot of agencies do is, let's say, they profit 20K a month.

14:30

They often are spending 14K, 15K on education, right, and I think there is a certain amount of land that you should look into.

14:37

So if I was looking at an agency that's profiting you know that's doing like, let's say, like you said, 70K a month in revenue, I'd say probably don't need to close her at that point.

14:46

It's too small. Maybe have a setter, depending on what your setter OTEs are based on, where you are in the world and where your setter is.

14:53

Maybe budget anywhere from 5% to 7% for a setter, maybe a little bit of flat fee.

14:56

Probably have a CSM or two, you know you can keep your hard costs pretty much under 12 grand a month at 70,000, right, and so if you're doing that correctly, then you have 60K.

15:07

And then I'd say budget 20%, 25% toward learning and so on, 60K profit.

15:11

Then you're looking at my numbers a little foggy here.

15:15

I just went from 80K or something to 60, but it's 60K profit, budget 20%, which is $12,000 a month toward education.

15:22

And I think if you look at it that way, then you're going to force yourself at higher numbers to keep learning, because of the other paradox that people get into is they learn a lot when they are starting and they almost get into debt, if you will, starting because there are payment plans, all this stuff that they have to pay back.

15:33

And I remember when I was making 50,000 a month with my agency, not having almost any cash in the account because I was way overspending on education, or I think realistically I probably could have taken a little slower.

15:43

And then now I don't invest in anything, which is you know I'm guilty I should be investing in education.

15:49

Still, I still haven't learned nearly. You know, probably 0.1% of what I can learn.

15:53

I think it gets a little different when you get to a higher level.

15:55

But the reason I'm saying that, I think, is to go back to all of it.

15:59

I think agencies are great models to start and I think, if you look at the fact, that there's no better way to learn in the business world, in my opinion, than agencies.

16:07

That's why it's all the learning you give.

16:09

Man. I fucking love your mindset towards this.

16:12

There's a lot of this is so much aspects of here, even how you've invested in your learning, how it's contributed towards how you think and how you learn, how you perceive like agencies and business and logic are on that way.

16:24

Now you made a very good point about how you don't invest now, at this point, if I can make a guess, I guess is it because you want to be selective of what you let in from an information perspective, because you've, I guess you've absorbed so much so you're picking and choosing and cherry picking.

16:41

You're flattering me too much. It's laziness, to be honest, it's I'm dumbing it down a little bit it's that it's a couple of things.

16:49

Number one I think you go through phases of life where you're learning and phases of life where you're doing right.

16:53

So, like I have I don't mean to sound like tidal, busier stuff like I've books here, like I'm constantly like trying to re-talk about that man before.

17:01

Yeah, yeah, on the first.

17:03

So for those that don't know, we talked for, I think, probably 45 minutes before on another call when we were starting to talk about the fact that we wanted that podcast, just to get to know each other.

17:10

And you're an avid reader too, right, and so I think there's I try to consume knowledge at least that way.

17:17

But when it comes to dedicated, there's two sides to it.

17:20

Number one I'm in a phase right now of just doing. I know a lot and I just have to kind of put feet to the ground and actually do Right.

17:26

But number two is anytime I've invested in education, it's because there's a skill set that I need that I don't have that is keeping me from getting to where I want to go, right, and so just a normal gap for a sale Meaning, let's say realistically, let's say, on any of the businesses I'm starting, I needed to learn how to raise money right, which I never want to do, but let's say that I needed to.

17:51

That's a skill I don't know, and so I would 100% go and look for the best raising or capital raising, uh rate funding program that you could find, uh, and then I would invest into it, right.

18:01

I just don't have anything right now. That, I think, is a skill set that I am weakened, that I need to get better at at the current moment.

18:07

Now, the other side to it, too, is a lot.

18:10

You know the guys that I would learn from at this point. I don't think it's info products or such.

18:13

You know it's. It's more so like pay a hundred grand for a one on one every month, kind of thing for a few months, or kind of like Cromosie talks about start investing into different nonprofits and such to get around different circles.

18:26

Now, I look at this sounds so like Luke Belmari, um, which I'm not doing shade by any means.

18:32

I just don't like talking about this stuff because it sounds douchey, but I'm, I'm looking at what golf clubs do I join so I can get around higher level people and such and um, yeah, I think the education at the higher levels you know how you get it is different, but right now it's just reading and just being lazy with it.

18:48

For sure, I think. What's an interesting observation there, though, is, if you go back to the guru space I just spoke to someone recently about this how a lot of guys you know they they start out with the student mentality, and this is how you're going to make your first 10 K, first 20 K or first 30 K, and then they swap to the guru status.

19:03

They declare that they know everything, and then they then they denounce the student aspect.

19:08

The student mentality really comes in, and then that's when, I would say, people would stop investing in themselves, because they're at the point where they're like oh, I know how to do everything, I know how to send emails, I know how to send outreach, but to your point, um, we do have a setter, and the reason why we have a setter is because I needed someone to step things up.

19:24

Now. I had two things I could do. I got paid with my time or pay my wallet, and what I did was I paid my wallet.

19:29

I messaged my mate, tim Stoddard, and he said speak to the guys that automated revenue.

19:33

I gave the guy, dylan, a message.

19:35

20 minutes later, we were in the program.

19:37

Three days later, I'd finished a course.

19:39

Seven days later, I had a setter and that saved me six six months.

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20:15

That's. That's another thing. We yeah, we could even get into another thing, whereas you know a lot of people the only the dangerous thing about education that no one talks about is it's like a drug.

20:24

And so the biggest, the biggest, I think huh, hot take.

20:28

I think one of the biggest things, especially in the entrepreneurial space that's just a money trap is the self-improvement space, right?

20:34

So if you go to any bookstore, the amount of self-improvement books if you go to, you know, if you go to YouTube as an entrepreneur or everything's biohacking or the best desk set up and like all this different optimization stuff, right?

20:44

Um, so you know Hermosi's really, I'm talking about Hermosi a lot today, but Hermosi's really common.

20:52

He's commonly known for the line just do the work and I think, just to give context to a lot of stuff that's really commonly understood in the space, the reason that's such an important line is because I know so many guys, for example, bringing this back to education that just get program after program after program after program.

21:09

They go through the entire program and they don't do anything to act on stuff for six months a year, two years, et cetera.

21:15

Right, they're self-help junkies. It feels there's actually it's I call it, the YouTube effect there is.

21:22

So there's such a high release of, if you will, of feeling like you're growing when you're watching a YouTube video that tells you about you know, like people would rather spend two hours watching YouTube and feeling like they're growing than actually spending two hours prospecting or doing anything that actually grows the business right.

21:38

It feels more productive, um, feels like you're learning, so it's almost like the equivalence to an online junkie, if you will, and so I think that there's a lot, of a lot that you have to be careful with, if you will.

21:47

But what you said is the exact opposite, which is more like me.

21:50

You got into something I'm. You said you went through the program in three days.

21:52

I'm guessing you probably didn't even go through a fraction of it.

21:55

You probably just watched what you needed to watch. I actually watched.

21:57

I actually watched all of it, which, when I can, I did a funny point Sorry, I don't mean to, this is a funny very I didn't mean to drop to you.

22:03

Uh, I got to the very last video and I swear, I swear to God, this happened.

22:07

And on Sunday morning, uh, I looked at the last video and then no one had watched the last video, because you can tell if someone watched the video.

22:14

I was the only person that watched the last video and my girlfriend gave me and she was like I was like I'm, I was like I'm done.

22:19

And she was like you started out two days ago. And she's like, was that worth the money?

22:22

And I was like, absolutely, I just burned through it. I learned when I got, I got all the frameworks, tools and templates, and then they gave us help giving the center and stuff, and I was like it.

22:30

I didn't pay for the duration of time and this is a big caveat to repeat, it's a huge misconception or reality distortion.

22:37

You pay for time you learn. You paid for what the time you saved from learning or the nuggets of information you got.

22:42

Exactly right. Like, like you know, like a consultation for a thousand dollars or $2,000.

22:46

Right, it's like what I can get in that time. I don't get paid on uh output, it's paid on outcome.

22:51

Basically yes.

22:53

Which is based on the leverage that you have to be able to put it. You have a business that you can apply that information to with enough leverage to actually make it worth Right.

23:00

And so, like we I talked about this a lot of people ask me for one-on-ones and I tell them it's just straight up, not worth your time yet, because the amount of stuff that you can actually action from what we would talk about, you don't have the leverage in your business yet to apply.

23:12

But I'm the exact opposite of you. I'll get into a program.

23:15

I spend 20 grand, 30 grand on it, et cetera, and watch 0.1%, 1% of it, but the 1% that I watch is the one thing that I needed, or the two things I needed, and then I can act on that and I don't really care about the rest of it.

23:27

Right? And so I think I'm one of I'm either an info products worst nightmare or best client in that I I never complain, I very I rarely show up to the coaching calls unless I have a specific question.

23:38

I just I'm. You know I'm there when I need it. This is back in the in the day.

23:40

I haven't done that, gone through a program, like I said, in a while.

23:42

But I either have a question or I'm not there kind of thing.

23:46

I'm there to to gain one little tidbit of knowledge that I can put leverage onto, or or not in the slightest.

23:52

And so anyway, yeah, I'm saying like a thousand times but education is huge.

23:57

I think the best way to fund that education is through an agency.

24:00

I think agencies are the best business models to start.

24:02

I think that there's so many, so much proven concept and proven companies to model.

24:06

After that, it's the easiest time ever to start a business you know?

24:10

Tell me what you're taught on a community pages.

24:12

So everyone under the sun is telling you to build a community page and build something within the backend.

24:16

Do you think it's a viable? You're saying a.

24:19

You're saying a community page, but you mean school.

24:21

School. I mean, I'm not a community Like I call it, I call it the glorified group chat and but as a, as a front end business with a backend coaching offer, like you think that's your way to like make millions.

24:36

So I'll tell you. I'll tell you what I'm doing after I tell you my thoughts on this right, and it sounds kind of it almost sounds like I'm being hypocritical, but number I'll kind of I'll believe this better.

24:47

Money does not like what the masses do.

24:51

There's two kinds of phrases that I think about with money.

24:53

Number one is money does not like masses. And then number two is everyone's heard of the phrase a jack of all trades.

24:59

What is it? I'm sorry, a jack of all trades is still better than a master of one or something, but something like that.

25:08

Long story short, everyone says you should be a jack of all trades, not just a master of one, and I agree with that in personal life.

25:13

I think in personal life you're way better off being someone who can work on a house, learn martial arts, handle a gun, cook, play some kind of music, you know, et cetera.

25:23

I think being a jack of all trades, not a master at you know master fire I was going to say fireman sharpshooter versus like just being a master electrician et cetera that's a little bit of a trade.

25:34

But my point is you want to be able to do a lot of things in your personal life and be well rounded.

25:38

But money specifically likes the master of one.

25:41

Money likes the top point 1% copywriter, the top point 1% salesperson, the top point point 1% content greater editor, et cetera.

25:49

And so money does not like the masses and money likes the masters.

25:53

Those are two things I think about. So when I think about these communities popping up, I love Sam I had a really good lunch with Sam.

25:59

Sam's a smart guy, and so I'm not trying to dog school in the slightest or impede that but when everyone's going to do one thing, like start a school community, to me my alarm goes off of like that's where 99% of people are going, so I have to do something very different.

26:12

Right, and it's the same thing. I'm a little bit ironic that I talked about this as I do a podcast with you and kind of start doing some content.

26:18

But everyone right now is trying to be the next Emon Gaji, the next Luke Belmar, the next Hermosie everyone starting their content runs, and so that means realistically that if everyone's going to content, there's probably something else to do, or at least do content in a different way than everyone else is doing.

26:33

And so because of that, I'll talk about the specific community stuff and how I think about the monetization stuff for that in a second.

26:41

But I have a Slack group that instead of free, it's a dollar a day.

26:45

I'm not trying to shut this out right now, I'm just trying to show my thought on how to create something different.

26:50

So I realized that the concept of having a lead pool is a necessary part of business.

26:55

Before I was school, you saw Facebook groups. Facebook groups were like the largest way to you know, nurture a community or group or such.

27:02

Now it's cool. I wanted something different.

27:05

So I thought to myself, where do the people that I want to sell to essentially have you know what's in their tech stack?

27:12

And 99% of the time it's Slack. I'm sure you talked to your team and Slack right, and so yeah, and so then I thought about the fact that Slack is paid.

27:19

It's like eight or 10 bucks per user or something like that.

27:21

I'm not going to lose money by you know the thousands to have a community.

27:25

And so I was thinking at first, okay, I'll just have people you know pay for their costs.

27:29

But then I thought realistically at a dollar a day.

27:32

If I can just give someone a dollar a day of value, and I think I think I way over exceed that expectation, then I can have a group that creates cash to an extent.

27:42

I think it probably makes a couple of thousand bucks a month that I nurture to, I sell to.

27:47

But the whole thing is, it's not a community, it's my journal, right?

27:50

And so this is the other side of our community.

27:53

I think community kind of goes alongside that like self-help junkie stuff, where you see there's only two, there's only three people in a community.

27:59

Number one is the person who runs it, right, the moderators, the admins, et cetera.

28:03

Number two are people that join the community to try to sell to that group of people.

28:07

And so in every single school community and every Facebook group et cetera, you have other info products, other coaches, other et cetera going in there, kind of like sheep in a I'm sorry, wolves and sheep then dressed as sheep, and then they're just prospecting out to your people.

28:20

If you don't, you know, if you don't realize that's happening, then you probably have a bad group.

28:23

But there's only your first two. The third kind of person is your average member and realistically, what I've learned is that members are, you know, you have two types of members.

28:31

If you want to break that down even further, you have the members that are non-existent and then you have the members that are spending way too much time in the group and not getting anything done.

28:38

And so I think that the fallacy of a community is that, you know, realistically, all you see is people who are not doing the work hanging out in the community or people that are doing the work not hanging out in the community, and so this community starts.

28:49

You know, it's very hard to have an active, highly engaged, highly effective community, right, and that's because, like, think about people like you and I.

28:55

We're not going to be spending all day in school or looking at a school group and you know, and asking questions to people that we would consider not as progressed in businesses ourselves.

29:06

And so I think, realistically, do something different.

29:08

If you want to monetize, my way of doing that right now is a dollar per day Slack group.

29:12

That could be a. There's a thousand ways you could do it.

29:14

It could be. You know, a WhatsApp group, realistically, where it's invite.

29:17

Only it could be there's, you know, as long as you have something to nurture a group of people through valuable content, valuable posts, et cetera.

29:26

That's, that's all that matters. And I think, realistically, just having.

29:29

Even if it was a free community, just not on school Sorry, I don't appear at that stage Even if it was a free community, just not on school, where it was on, you know now, facebook or circle or or whatever, just as long as it's not where the masses are.

29:42

Because right now, no matter how good your free community is, if it's hosted on school, where 99% of communities are hosted on, it's just another, another voice shouting in a in a crowd, you know.

29:52

You never. You're never going to become like a category of one from that perspective, because you're just going to end up following basically everyone else into the same kind of whole.

30:00

Now it could work and like everything works, but it's all about execution over the longer time.

30:05

It's all about brand too right, and like not to derail this.

30:08

But one thing that I kind of admire about you is how you hold yourself, how you present yourself, how you even talk, how you even dress right, and that kind of like brand is important and that's how you're going to be able to get good leads and bring them into your Slack group.

30:20

And you hold yourself up with that argument.

30:23

So it's just interesting, right, because it was like TikTok.

30:25

You know, when TikTok ran up, we have a bunch of clients.

30:29

I said to them oh, should they? Should they move on to TikTok?

30:31

Should they bring their podcast to TikTok? And I'm like no, like that's like where the 16 year old, like kid, is basically, whereas we use LinkedIn, like I've been a, I've been deep down LinkedIn for many different years.

30:42

I've man, like 90% of my business have come from LinkedIn.

30:45

I've taught since 2019, I just knew it was like on the rise and I can tell you why that was, but we, just we.

30:51

I love. I hate LinkedIn it's the being of my existence.

30:54

Really, let me give you a watch. You just the reason why.

30:56

So 100% degree that like it's virtue signalling, like there's a bunch of other weird shit.

31:00

There's lots of like virtue signalling bullshit, it's on it.

31:03

However, 1% of the platform create content, 99% of content, consume content.

31:09

The average salary is around 85K 75 to 85K and people there are generally there to like, engage and to do like quote, unquote business, whether that's read your prospecting emails, read your content.

31:22

And then people like Justin Welsh why not? Quite well, when he came over to LinkedIn, he built like LinkedIn business, which is like online entrepreneurs, solarpreneurs, agents, not even agency owners, mainly just like info product guys to share insights, share actual information, and that really built that community.

31:41

So the online business community blew the fuck up.

31:43

And then the last cherry on top is a lot of the Twitter guys came across with better quality writing, more actionable stuff, better copywriting, so it made this very powerful platform.

31:54

So if you're someone like, let's say, me, for instance, who puts out like a lot of content, I'll do probably do seven to nine posts a week, so every day, then when I prospect and I reach out to someone like you, right, and we've a podcast business.

32:07

If I was to reach out to you, you would click on my profile.

32:10

You would see a bunch of social waterproof, which is, like you know, 900 posts over the past three years.

32:14

You would also see a bunch of high value people engaging with it that you may know and vice versa.

32:20

And lastly, then you could get a good feel of like who I actually am, because my kind of ripe against Twitter is the fact that, like everyone is a fight club, fucking headshot, right.

32:29

Yeah, you get me.

32:31

Well, I think it's so cool about this. If it, can I interrupt?

32:33

Is that okay? No-transcript.

32:36

So two things strike my brain. Number one is that the space is so big that I've been in the space for well over five years at this point right, which I know doesn't sound like a long time, but in the online business world, over five years is a pretty decent like.

32:48

Every month feels like a year, right. Especially when you start to work with these bigger companies.

32:52

When you're working with companies that are doing you know, multi-millions a month.

32:57

Then and I've worked with a few companies like that every week feels like a month kind of thing.

33:02

So I know it sounds like it over five years isn't a long time, but to me that is.

33:07

And the space is so big still that there are communities like that and social platforms that I've written off that are apparently still huge.

33:15

The second thing, I think, is my entrepreneurial brain looks at that and shiny object syndrome goes off right away.

33:24

I'm like, oh my God, I like brought LinkedIn. I didn't realize it had that much potential.

33:27

I got to get all LinkedIn, et cetera. But there are people that could say the exact same thing about what you're saying for LinkedIn, on Twitter, there are people that could say the same thing about Facebook.

33:35

There are people that could say the same thing about, you know, school and Instagram and YouTube, blah, blah, blah and probably more that I don't even know about.

33:44

So I think the whole game is, you can make a business that does well over a million dollars a year by just getting really good at one platform.

33:50

I think that's the thing that most people will try to spread themselves too thin and focus 10% of their time on this, this, this, this, this and this.

33:55

I think the guys that make a lot of money.

33:58

They're just very good at saying this is my golden goose.

34:02

I'm just going to feed this one and, once I get that to a certain level, call it a few hundred thousand dollars a month or so.

34:07

Then I'll start to learn the LinkedIn thing, and so, for example, given I, it's taken me a little bit of discipline right now to not text my assistant and be like let's get on LinkedIn and focus on this stuff.

34:16

It's more so, like you know, I have a plan I need to play out the next few months on Instagram and maybe some YouTube stuff.

34:21

I'm actually going to do the opposite of what you just said.

34:23

I think TikTok has an amazing algorithm for getting in front of other entrepreneurs, and so I think TikTok will help build an Instagram account, kind of thing.

34:31

I don't look at TikTok to get business. I look at it to essentially build the Instagram following.

34:34

I think there's a couple of plus there and my whole thing is just going to be Instagram over the next year or two.

34:39

And that's why I love it right, because there's a thousand ways to get rich, only a handful of ways to go broke.

34:43

Right, and I spoke with I love that saying I spoke with Aiman Al Abdullah.

34:48

He was the CEO of AppSumo probably no AppSumo from the agency space.

34:52

He's great guy and he breaks it down that you can get to.

34:56

He said you can get to like 10 million a year with Persona who you sell to product and promotion and for promotion he's he always events like that.

35:06

You don't need multiple different platforms like ads and this and this.

35:09

You just need one vehicle that you can scale.

35:12

So if you have something that's working for you which for us it's called outreach on LinkedIn and content on LinkedIn, so you just you just do more of it because like it doesn't, it doesn't, like business doesn't care, like about like what happens.

35:23

This is like whatever's working, just fucking do it.

35:25

Whereas my friend, like Jack Hopkins, who was speaking to rest recently, he kills on Instagram stories, not Instagram Instagram stories, and I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to articulate my thoughts on Instagram stories in contrast, so it just that's what I do.

35:39

Instagram stories have been my it's been Aiman's self as well.

35:43

Right and like this, obviously there's an air at the signs and a craft doing the storytelling and persuasion and everything.

35:47

So it's just interesting, right, it's an interesting way to view it.

35:51

Yeah, what's funny is like I said everyone will hear this and be like I got to get on LinkedIn.

35:55

I didn't realize there was someone and people will hear the, the, you know the daily bread.

35:59

I called the day by the Slack group thing and they'll be like I need to create a Slack group and such, and so I think a lot of you know.

36:06

If you looked at the, the path of an average entrepreneur sub like a million dollars a month it's just like I need to do this and then this and then this and this.

36:12

And the more they listen to, the more they have all these different ideas as to things they could do and the less focused they are on any of them and I think sometimes it's the Achilles heel.

36:21

So, long story short, for you, linkedin sound like that's awesome.

36:25

I don't think you'll ever see me on LinkedIn. It's just not something that approaches me, at least right now, in what I think could be could be the main leverage mover for me.

36:34

So sure, man. That's an interesting observation, right.

36:36

It's like the different maturity you have as an entrepreneur.

36:40

How have you seen yourself kind of level up in that way and change character, basically, as you've looked, evolved, yeah, exactly.

36:48

I don't have anything more to say on it. I think it's. I just think it's really cool to, to, to meet.

36:53

Almost enlightening for me to realize like, oh cool, I apparently have the discipline to hear something like that and not and not think I have to do it, which you know.

37:00

It talked to me years ago. Three years ago, I probably would have been on this call on on the side, making a LinkedIn page and stuff like that and typing my first piece of content out.

37:08

That's, that's how my brain used to work.

37:10

Tell me about what you think won't make you a lot of money this year, like what businesses are there that are kind of, like you know, oversaturated or whatever?

37:20

And what comes to mind for me is, like you know, like a short form agency, like I get messages every single day about, like short form and not to say it doesn't work, it's not going to work.

37:28

I'm just saying that there's a lot of people that want to get into the space.

37:32

Like what springs to mind for you that needs a recession, that needs a correction in the market.

37:37

The first thing I'll say is just saturation, I think is a way to play that word and so you just used it and I'll I'll give you.

37:42

I would love to hear your input on this after.

37:44

I share this thought. But I think that saturation is a really good thing when you're starting a business because it shows that there's proof of concept and that the model is working.

37:51

I'll give you an example given if I was trying to start a business, I think a great business to start right now would be short form, cause if it's really common, that means that there's a huge demand for, and if there's a huge demand, that means it's probably going to be easy to get to a couple of thousand dollars a month, 8,000, 10,000, 15,000 dollars a month.

38:06

Saturation only really plays in at scale, right.

38:10

And so when, when you're trying to go from, you know, call it 10,000 to 100,000, still really saturation isn't even playing at 100 grand.

38:18

But when you start to try to go for two, three $400,000 a month, that's when you start to get into kind of market share and dominance and such, and saturation at that point does impede that.

38:26

That's when you kind of feel the trend of the market.

38:31

But I actually like. My favorite agency to start or to tell beginners to start is a real estate marketing agency.

38:37

Real estate is one of the most saturated industries you can get into.

38:39

I just think it's way easier to find people who are succeeding, way easier to find people who are, you know, running different offers that are that are working.

38:47

It's just so. The more saturated it is, the more you can copy, the more you can look at people as idols not idols, but at least you know.

38:55

Again, the more people you can copy I think is the easiest way to say it the more demand there is.

38:58

I like saturation. For starters, I don't think that there is a model right now that I look at.

39:03

That, I think, is a a loser of a model if you will, or just something that's going to make you less money.

39:09

If you're, you know, if you're starting, if you're looking, if, let's say, you you got to like 20, 30 K.

39:13

Now you're looking for a different model. There are different things that you would, I would look at to make more leverage.

39:18

Example given I think an AI agency right now is probably a very good short-term play to make a lot of cash.

39:25

I don't think AI agencies are going to be a long-term play by any means.

39:27

I think AI is. This is a hot take, but I think AI is probably more of a trend right now.

39:32

I think it'll constantly be in society for the rest of for the rest of our lives, but I think that it won't be nearly as trendy as it is now for for a long time.

39:40

I'm sorry, I don't think it'll stay trendy for too long as it is now.

39:45

So I think an AI agency is a great play for now.

39:48

I think that you know the no-code stuff is slowly dying off.

39:51

You saw no-code SaaS blow up in session, so a lot of it.

39:54

It kind of depends on what you want to do. If you want to make a business that's going to last two, three, four, five years, then I would say start.

40:00

You know, start looking at an agency that's a very fundamental, just online service-based, boring agency, right.

40:06

If you want to create something that is going to skyrocket, then learn how to play those like market bubbles.

40:13

It would have been AI, for you know it went from like short form to AI.

40:17

There's really like the two things that you know would have been amazing agencies to look at.

40:21

I don't think, unless you're, unless you're, trying to sabotage yourself.

40:24

I don't think there are really business models that I would look at right now.

40:26

That would be losers. You know you could start a business, probably in print media, and still make $10,000 a month because there's still like that, there's still people that would want to do it, you know.

40:36

And so I, I don't know.

40:39

I can't think of a single thing that I would say out of if I was starting.

40:42

I'm going back to if I was starting, because I assume that's probably a lot of people that were listening to this.

40:46

Again, if you have leverage, then it's completely different, of course.

40:48

Of course, I have an interesting take on this too. I think that if something is saturated like, or if it's perceived saturated I think saturated is a fucking is the wrong word for it right, but what I would view that is that a lot of people suck right.

41:00

So if you imagine a bell curve, if you have people like that are at the bottom right, that like they have no idea what they're doing, people just in the middle, and then you'll have a few people that are killers.

41:08

So it's usually like proof of like concept as a result, right, and in the middle, a lot of guys they can't deliver, they can't, so they can't sell People in the door, can't market, can't showcase them and can't deliver.

41:20

And that's just the unfortunate truth, right, is the fact that that's what most people don't push on is because they're in that no man's land and they never really actually kind of figure that out.

41:29

And that's the unfortunate truth, right, because even looking at info products, so this is quite interesting I actually started with courses originally because I was working in tech.

41:39

That's how I kind of started my kind of entrepreneurial journey and then from there, then I was like, oh, I need more time.

41:44

So info product was a good idea to like scale something that didn't involve my time.

41:48

However, how do you think about building an info product specifically courses Like from zero upwards, because sometimes you know the idea is that if it's lower ticket it's hard to scale right and you need constant buyers coming in Like, how do you think about that?

42:05

For kind of early entrepreneurs Is that quite difficult?

42:08

So I said to start that I think the barrier of entry is a little higher on coaching and consulting offers or info product offers than it is for agency, and this is partially why, with agency, the easiest way to start is outbound messaging right, you said you got an SDR and they started playing with it.

42:21

But for coaching, it's a lot harder to get outbound nailed in, because the thing about coaching is that you have to have an authority frame, and if you had like an authority wouldn't be doing outbound right.

42:32

You would never see Elon Musk messaging people like hey, do you want me to teach you kind of thing?

42:36

So you want to do short form? Yeah, and so it's.

42:41

It's hard to to create that authority without bound when you're coaching, and so there is a little bit of trickiness, so a lot of the time you have to yeah, you see those guys grow from.

42:48

You can get outbound to work. I'm not saying you can, I've done it but most of the time when you see successful coaching offers, it's coming in from inbound, meaning a lot of time, organic Instagram stories, youtube, et cetera, or paid ads, all of which are skills that tend to take a little more time to learn or at least have some kind of authority or leverage to create.

43:10

So if you're a brand new person to the space unless you really like, when I say brand new person, I'm talking to 99% of people that started coaching company that have no experience doing what they're doing kind of thing right.

43:21

But like if I started, example given, an info product and this is on my horizon if I started an info product on how to, how to grow in for products almost like this, you know, you see Luke Alexander doing the IPO stuff and the growth consultant stuff and the Cosmetic said I think I'd be a very good person to teach that at mass scale and so I feel like I could start something and probably have it go out pretty well and I would know what I'm talking about so I could make organic content on it.

43:44

But a lot of the time when you see people starting coaching offers, they don't know what they're talking about and so they don't know how to.

43:51

That organic content doesn't hit. If you watch like Think about 99% of the short form stuff you see right now, even the long form of long form stuff, it's a lot of people saying nothing with a lot of words, right, and I think realistically that's just because they don't understand what they're talking about.

44:04

I'm starting set a really cool line that I think is like recently been forgotten about with people talking about short form, but it that you, you only really understand something if you can explain in one, one to two sentences.

44:12

And so I think that I can take a lot of complex things.

44:16

I think Hermosie and Tyler Pes are probably two in the two are the best in the world at this right now.

44:19

But taking complex things and Simplifying them into one or two senses, I think that's a skill set that I have as well.

44:25

I think that just comes from understanding, which is why when I make content, I think it'll work Most people, which is how I would I would you know essentially fund the coaching business, the organic leads.

44:36

If you don't have that, then you have to get really good at either paid ads we have to get really good ads at outbound and then when it comes to price point.

44:45

To go back to your question about low-ticket and high-ticket, I think the only time that a low ticket offer makes sense and for the sake of us understanding what, what do you define low ticket as?

44:53

Oh I would say, I mean, that doesn't result. I think I think that really doesn't involve like setters or Like any sort of intermediary steps.

45:01

So anything below like a thousand Guys and below like below a grand, for me out perceive it as like less than 2k, but generally for most people below a K.

45:11

Let's just use what you're saying. Below 2k is fun, right?

45:13

Anything below 2k? Ah, let's say below a grand, because a lot of people would go both like 300, 500, 900, etc.

45:21

Right, everything is always a prime number.

45:24

Have you realized that? 3579? Those are like the price points you always see.

45:27

But anyway, so, realistically, below a thousand bucks, I think that you can make a business that does 10 or 20 grand a month off a low-ticket product.

45:38

The only real, then. The reason people do the low-ticket stuff is because they see other low-ticket products.

45:43

But the only reason to have low-ticket products are for one of two reasons.

45:45

Number one is a lead magnet to a much higher ticket product, and so you'll see companies have a $300 product but they have $50,000 things on the back end.

45:53

That actually is what you know, where they make the primary amount of money, and the $300 thing is almost like an ad liquidator.

45:57

That's number one. Number two is if you have a large audience.

46:01

This tends to be a lot of the guys that I work with, and so you know, but my current consulting company I think the aggregated amount of subscribers and followers between my clients are probably like well over 10 million at this point.

46:10

Right, and so they have audiences. Meaning if you have an audience, the game now becomes finding a, the sweet spot, if you will.

46:18

I'm sure there's like a scientific term for it. But the sweet spot between price point and liquidation of of audience, meaning how much of your audience can actually afford to buy.

46:27

And then do buy, versus, when you start to go, you know if you're too expensive then you're pricing people out.

46:32

If you're too cheap Then you're leaving money on the table. So where's that sweet spot A lot of the time with audiences.

46:37

That's why you see people draw, draw. You know 995, 495, 1495, etc.

46:43

That's that. There's, that's the reason behind that price Point.

46:46

Otherwise, if you're trying to make a business that's doing fifty, a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a month, you don't have an audience you really are gonna tend to see.

46:53

That's why you know Ten grand is such a common price point.

46:55

The economics of higher ticket stuff work better because at that, at a business without organic audience, what you're gonna see really is that you have to have a set or an enclosure for the most part, you have to have someone finding deals, triaging setting etc.

47:09

And then you have to have usually a team of people closing it.

47:11

So factor in 15 to 20% in commissions, just out of your top line, right?

47:16

If you do that on a fifteen hundred dollar offer, a thousand dollar offer, five hundred dollar offer, the economics don't make sense.

47:22

Your team's not gonna make enough money to live, so you can't.

47:25

You can't find talented people and then so you know, you either don't, don't ever hire them in the first place, you don't keep them, etc.

47:31

The economics are Terrible on low-ticket stuff and so you have to start to go higher ticket.

47:36

You're just starting, you're probably not gonna do 50k stuff, and so if I was just starting a coaching business and I wanted to make money off it, I'd probably do a Five to ten thousand dollar ticket.

47:45

If I, if I didn't, if I wasn't who I was, with leverage in some some kind of following, I'd probably start a five to ten K ticket, have a set error five percent, probably, do the closing myself to save the ten percent right now, which does kind of hurt with the authority frame.

47:59

If you, if you were a coach who was, you know, in the B2B space is what I think of In the bizarre in the B2C space if you're a coach for like personal training and stuff that's different, or maybe a closer 10% and then, realistically, I'd probably start to get really good at running ads and then some outbound stuff, that's.

48:13

That's. That's the process of which I would run and the price points.

48:16

Does that answer the question?

48:17

I'm kind of going off left field does man and the economics of it is really interesting because you made a very good point about, like, the authority frame and maintaining frame and maintaining influence and authority massive words that I always I talk about my writing and my content and it's interesting to observe the fact that, like, if you get the unit economics wrong, you fuck yourself because you get on these sales calls and actually diminish your authority even further.

48:39

And then you made a good point about, like, the ninja shit with the economics of what, how you Profile your audience.

48:46

So we do, like you know, high-ticket B2B stuff, but my podcast is completely separate now, at the same time, I don't sell into my audience, which is actually kind of why I built an audience Really well and then engage, because people know that I'm not because I'm not like, I'm not like getting anything from anyone.

49:02

People know that I'm not presenting anything to anyone because if they want to work with the company, they work with the company and go that way, right.

49:07

But it's an interesting observation right now how do you think about that?

49:11

Because you work with some very, very big guys, right?

49:14

How do you like work with your audience size and then Profile some products and even split tests and products like what's the mechanics is going on there.

49:23

Are you an entrepreneur who wants to build your influence and authority online?

49:27

You may have tried some of the hacks and tricks, but none of it has worked.

49:30

And it makes sense. 90% of podcasts don't make it the episode tree of the 10% that are left.

49:36

90% of them don't make it to episode 20.

49:39

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49:45

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49:51

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49:53

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49:57

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50:07

So if you want to learn more about how you can build a great podcast and have a fully managed for you, schedule a call with me at vox and we will help you achieve your podcast goals number, number one, just on the on the Getting on sales calls frame.

50:21

This also depends on the vehicle. So if you have an agency because we talked about agencies you can hop on a sales call as an owner and you should, you know, until you're doing a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a month, I think.

50:32

I think one of the things that you see agencies do too often is Delicate sales calls.

50:36

There's one regret I had with my agency that I had a few years ago.

50:40

Instead of got off sales calls when I was doing like around fifty, sixty K a month and I think that was way too soon I would, if I did it all over again at stay on sales calls until I was doing a hundred, fifty thousand dollars a month.

50:48

Coaching is different, just because the authority of coaching is a whole different type of frame, right, and so it depends on vehicle as to when you take different kind of strategic moves like that.

51:00

When it comes to that, you know, number one, what you said on the podcast stuff, and so I'm sure, if you don't know, if you're listening to this, I used to to be on the C-Suite and help run a team with a guy named he mon Really in mind a good friend, really smart dude, and he said a line when someone, someone was talking about His audience and he essentially said you know, the reason that this guy doesn't have that type of audience is because he, he does what he does, he sells to his audience, and Emon is, he cares about his audience so much.

51:30

Right, and that's one of the reasons that he's been able to grow it because, just like you, he's, he doesn't, he doesn't try to make a practice of of Selling every single time he talks to his audience, right and anyway.

51:40

So, bringing that back, emon, of course, is not a client of what I do, who's just a guy I got to learn from and work with, but the guys that I do work with now, the way that we get into split testing is depending on price points.

51:51

So, realistically, let's say, for example, given that you wanted to sell, let's actually just play this out into it until like almost a mini coaching, coaching thing between you and I, right, let's say you wanted to start your podcast.

52:00

I'm sorry, I wanted to start selling to your podcast and you were thinking about, you know, the latter.

52:05

The first thing I would say is like, you know, you have a following, so you probably need to come up with something very low ticket.

52:09

I'm not talking three, five hundred bucks, I'm talking like seven bucks, twenty bucks, thirty bucks or something.

52:14

I'd say let's come up with something very low ticket, and so it could be.

52:17

What tell me about your podcast, your audience, your listeners, who are they?

52:21

What do they do? So?

52:23

you young guys 25, 30 first time business owners, first-time entrepreneurs, mainly male, 95% UK, ireland and America.

52:33

I know a lot of Ireland is like one of the sweet spots for entrepreneurialism.

52:36

There's someone at least. I would go to the opposite, I would say the opposite one.

52:40

I mean I guess I'm in a bubble, right, but I have found a lot of good talented guys in Ireland and the first thing they tend to do is want to move out of Ireland Because probably what you're saying, ireland is not something that you know grows entrepreneurial spirit, but the guys that have that, that character inside of them, you can find a lot of good talent in Ireland.

52:56

But so let's say realistically, if they're new business owners, you're like, okay, let's make some kind of low ticket thing that had that appease it or at least approaches one One problem that they might be doing with.

53:10

So new guys Maybe they want to start a podcast because they know that starting a podcast will allow them to talk to higher level people and they can either try to sign clients out of that or use that as lead flow, or they can.

53:21

They can use as coaching, free coaching. A lot of people start a podcast because you can just have conversations with higher level guys and essentially just ask the what questions you have for your business on the podcast right.

53:30

So, whatever it is, you can make a program that is how to use a podcast to make your, you know, to add $5,000 a month to your business or something like that.

53:40

Whatever it is, and it could be a very small basic program like a course for $7, 20 something dollars.

53:47

Whatever be it, the the purpose of having something low ticket is Is that when you have something that is ultra low ticket I'm really talking less than like 60, 70 bucks no one thinks you're using that as a liquidation mechanic.

53:58

And so if you see TA example given on your podcast or on your story that you know something for 3,000 bucks, 1500 bucks, 5,000, 10,000 bucks, if you see TA, that I call that squeezing your audience and your audience feels the pressure of being sold to and, just like you said, the reason you can grow is because you're not putting that pressure on them right.

54:15

But if you look at guys who are Massive in the info space, what they do is they squeeze their audience with things that don't feel like you're beat like.

54:23

It's almost like boiling a frog or what is it frogs that can boil, and without, without feeling it right, and so, realistically, it's like boiling a frog without realizing it's being boiled and so you can squeeze on a seven dollar or seventeen dollar offer and people don't even recognize that they're being sold to.

54:38

Because the Psychology if I had to take a guess I've never read a study on this, but I'm guessing the psychology is that it, the price point, is so low that they don't think you're making money off it.

54:47

They think you're almost doing them an act of favor of putting something that's you know attainable for such low cost, so that when you see Grant Cardone, tony Robbins, dave Ramsey, dan Martell, I'm putting Dan Martell in that group of people.

54:58

I don't know if is One. One side note I was on a podcast the other day.

55:02

My brain works this way, but I was on a podcast the other day and I said that I put Dan Martell in that group of people and say he's probably making a couple million dollars a month, a few million dollars a month, and I'm not sure if he is or not.

55:12

I'm guessing at the amount of short form I see that he's probably doing at least two million a month, but I probably floated his numbers a little bit.

55:18

I said that and I don't like saying something.

55:20

I don't know why I said it. I spoke out of my ass on one thing and it's all that I've been thinking about for the last like seven days.

55:25

Like I said, there's one thing and I'm not sure and it's driving me insane, but I'm going to put it.

55:29

In this group of people, if you see all those big guys, what they do really well, almost every single one of them is they have a ton of low ticket stuff, most commonly a book, and Martell has a book buying back your time.

55:39

Grant Cardone with all the different books he has the 10X Rule, the Closer Survival Guide, et cetera.

55:43

Dave Ramsey has what 15 books or something at this point.

55:46

Tony Robbins has a F ton of books, all those books.

55:51

If you're on this podcast and then you say we're talking about something, and or let's say I'm on the, since I'm a guest, I'm on this podcast, we're talking about something, and I say, oh, yeah, right, if you want to learn more about what I just talked about, I actually wrote a book on it.

56:02

No one thinks that I'm trying to make money off that.

56:05

They're just like, oh sweet, it's value in a book and they don't feel like they're being sold to you.

56:10

But then I get your info and I get your email. I get your, if I'm doing it right.

56:13

I can get your Instagram handle. I get all this information to where.

56:16

I don't want to give a shit about the $7, a 10 bucks or 17 bucks or whatever.

56:21

I care about the fact that now you're in my ecosystem and once you're in my ecosystem, that's where the magic starts to happen.

56:26

So what we would play with is what's a low ticket thing that your audience would like?

56:30

And then we would probably find a way to CTA it, to get an email list and say we would kind of ramp up the fact that you're about to do this, spend a month kind of promoing the fact that you're going to drop this very, this thing.

56:40

If you're interested, put your email, you know, down below, blah, blah, blah, whatever be it.

56:44

And then we would do a split test on email. Emails are.

56:46

There are only two really effective ways to split test low ticket stuff.

56:49

Number one is ads right, so ads to different, different funnels.

56:53

Number two is email. So let's say you could wrap up 10,000 emails.

56:56

We would probably take two groups of 2,500 and run two different price points.

57:02

Whichever price point wins there, then we would test that against another price point.

57:05

I like tested three, and so we would test let's say it was a, we would test like 17 and 37 or 17 and 27 or whatever, whatever one there.

57:13

Then we'd probably play with another 10, 10, you know denominator.

57:16

So let's say 27, one. Then we would test the second group of 2,500 versus 2,500, 2,500, 2,7 and 37 and see which one wins there.

57:21

And we would essentially use that split test to understand where your audience has the highest.

57:28

The word I want to use, this coefficient, like coefficient of draft, is what you would use in in in aeronautics, right.

57:33

And so like what level of drag gets you the most performance for the least amount of of negative?

57:39

And so what level of price point I'm probably I'm not a scientist, I'm probably not explained coefficient of drag the best, but essentially what level price point liquidates the most without your audience feeling they're being squeezed.

57:48

And so from that essentially start to build out that.

57:51

And then the cool thing is like if this is again the psychology of just how humans buy and sell, when you get their email and phone number and such, if your team is emailing, so let's say you know, you started email marketing, which 99% of businesses don't do.

58:06

For some reason we don't email our leads. But let's say you started doing daily emails and then you built out an SDR team or an MDR team that started actually calling the leads that bought the book and just saying like, hey, you know, I'm calling from Paul's team so that you bought X, wanted to make sure that it got your way.

58:21

What do you think? Quick question, just because we were thinking about writing another.

58:24

What's your favorite chapter? Awesome, why is that your favorite chapter?

58:26

Is that something you're looking at doing in your business? Blah, blah, blah. And then before you know it, you're getting a set call, right, and so all of that stuff, people don't ever feel like they're actually being sold to behind the scenes and so it's.

58:35

It's cool. You can't see TA a $10,000 program, but you can sell a $10,000 program via email, via phone et cetera, on the back end from that $7 lead magnet and they don't feel like they don't attach that that pressure to your brand on social.

58:50

So you don't lose engagement, which is what most people have happened right.

58:53

You start to see TA, all this stuff. You start to go from, you know, 50% engagement at 30% to 10%.

58:58

A lot of that has to do with shore farm. People do shore farm wrong too.

59:01

But you, you know you lose engagement and then you lose audience and you lose and before you know it, your brand is dead.

59:06

But if you look at the guys that grow really big, they have great engagement, they have a lot of brand power and it's because they see TA, small stuff that doesn't feel like they're liquidating, and then they do all the selling on the back scene.

59:15

So that's that's what I work with the clients I work with on. The cool thing about that is it's also a lot harder to copy.

59:20

So we talked about when you're starting. You want to have a lot.

59:23

You know everything that you want to copy as much as you can.

59:25

When you're, when you're scaling at mass, mass scale, the whole game becomes become as as least replicable as possible or, as least you know, make it harder for people to copy you.

59:35

And so the cool thing about back end selling is it's a lot harder for people to copy that process.

59:40

I love that man. My mind is firing even thinking that, because I'm seeing the different guys in the space do that really effectively and in a very non-slot way, because it's often helping you.

59:50

And this is where it's interesting. Right, I was like I have nothing wrong with selling.

59:53

If anything, I would say my best skill is sales.

59:56

I would say, just, naturally, you know, I got my partner to fall in love with me, I got my clients to sign with me.

1:00:03

You know, I would say, arguably is my best skill is being able to communicate.

1:00:07

Now, having said that, I would say that, like a lot of times is as you pointed out, you said this was that hey, I have the seven dollar offer.

1:00:14

It's of service for you. I would be a disservice of you, of me, to not give it to you for sure to, because you're actually helping them in that process.

1:00:21

So I'll give you another example if you're writing a book on how to scale companies and ask how you work with it, if you wrote a book on that and if I spoke to you and said, hey, like the book was awesome, it would be a disservice to me if you said, if you didn't say that you had a coaching offer.

1:00:33

The guy would actually want to know that and I want to find out more about that.

1:00:37

I want, I'd want, a few things. I want the book, I want the $1 slack fucking group chat and then, when I have the capacity, I'd want someone to come in on a fractional CEO basis, scale the shit out of it and walk the door afterwards.

1:00:48

That's ideally what I want, right? And in that kind of evolution stack, I know there's nothing wrong with that.

1:00:53

It's just being able to understand like what it is you're selling, versus growing an audience the wrong way, fucking up your engagement and then kind of selling your soul, right?

1:01:03

And I know like there's a difference between entrepreneurs.

1:01:06

Which is what 99% of people do, by the way, Exactly Because it's a lot easier to do that.

1:01:11

All the other stuff we're talking about writing the books.

1:01:14

You know there's a reason. Ghost Writing is a company.

1:01:17

Writing a book is treacherous.

1:01:19

And then creating all these low ticket things Like creating like if you created a $7 podcast tool, right, it's probably going to be something you could you could technically sell for thousands of dollars, but you're essentially doing all this work and putting all this time in for something that you're not going to liquidate from very, you know, quickly, and so it's it's.

1:01:36

All these barriers of entry are why.

1:01:38

Number one, why they work, but number two, why no one does it right, which, I argue, is why they work, because no one does it.

1:01:44

I have a news that are going out tomorrow. It's like 52 weeks of writing my newsletter and it's been like one of the highest or away activities ever.

1:01:50

My email list is tiny and the reason why is because, like, I'm just distilling my thoughts, I'm sharing insights, I'm sharing frameworks and tools and people look at her God, this guy's like, he's semi, not stupid, so we might work with him.

1:02:02

But it's funny because it's not about the depth, it's just about the next stage and the funnel or next stage in the process, whatever way you want to describe it, right?

1:02:09

But you submit a great point. People don't like the boring, right?

1:02:15

And this is why I think I resonate so much with you, because you work on backend operations, right, the boring stuff that the non Lambo stuff which I like.

1:02:24

I resonate much more. Sitting down at nine o'clock on a Friday night talking about some backend operations versus, like, rented Lambo, do you get me Just just in my brain?

1:02:33

I don't know why.

1:02:35

I on the same way. You know I to quote him for like the third or fourth time, for Mosey had a core value.

1:02:40

I don't know if it's still a core value, but do the boring work kind of thing.

1:02:42

I think it's because in this industry, that's what, that's what does.

1:02:46

Well. There's a proverb that I'm going through right now with my Bible reading.

1:02:52

For those that don't know my Christian, it's kind of like the, the guiding light to how I act as an entrepreneur but also just, and more so, a human.

1:02:59

But I make sure I go through proverbs every single day and then I also do a different book at the same time.

1:03:06

Right, and so a proverb I've recently essentially is just that all work is profitable.

1:03:11

Right, and so even even when you put in stuff, put in time to something that doesn't feel like it's making you money, it will somehow, in some way that you probably don't understand, and I think what most people do is they put in work and then expect, not most people, the way that most people think is I put in work, I get a dollar out, kind of thing, and if they don't see that dollar out right away, then they, they, they don't do it.

1:03:35

Think about the fact that you know to quote Hermosi for the fifth time wow, I, maybe I am putting them on that pedestal and unconsciously don't know it, but you know a hundred million dollar offer is probably one of the best books on offers ever and talks about the fact that you know.

1:03:47

He talks about Viagra, for example, given, and how, if you have ED, you can meditate to fix that, which takes years and such a blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:03:56

Or you can just take a pill that fixes it in a few seconds. The whole thing that makes an offer work is the time horizon, as to when, when, when you see return.

1:04:02

So same thing as to how people look at work. They put in work.

1:04:05

They want immediate return. The faster the return, the more likely they are to put in the work right.

1:04:09

And even entrepreneurs that are super disciplined entrepreneurs that you know make money.

1:04:13

They aren't good at understanding I put in X amount of work and I'll get X return in six months from now or a year from now.

1:04:20

That's a fucking good point.

1:04:21

It's the best point you made man.

1:04:23

Well, I think one of the things and this goes back to like one more root thing which is you can't do that If you're, if you're starting a business, it's, it's impossible almost to do this, because you're almost always operating from a place of starvation, meaning I have to find a way to pay rent, I have to find a way to put clothes on, but, you know, feed my family, blah, blah, blah.

1:04:39

You can't think about six months down the road, a year down the road, two years down the road, when you're in a spot where you're just thinking about finances.

1:04:45

But when you get to a point, you know and so I don't blame anyone for ever operating out of starvation and thinking short form but it the things that grow you as entrepreneur, like what gets you to a hundred k's and what gets you to a million is what gets you to 10 million.

1:04:57

It's always different. Almost always it's actually the exact opposite of what got you to the previous layers, what gets you to the next layer.

1:05:03

And so operating out of starvation is almost always what gets people to $100,000 a month.

1:05:07

Right, but then to get to a million dollars a month, you kind of have to like flip and mirror what you did before, mirror being the opposite of what you did before, and so you have to start to think okay, I really don't need to get to a million dollars this month.

1:05:21

I want to build things that get me to a million dollars a month, consistently, a year from now.

1:05:25

And so I'm going to do all this work that doesn't show at all for a year, right, and so, example given, I've probably written 600 pages of sales letters, for this is for my company, never clients.

1:05:34

600 pages of sales letters and free assets and such that I haven't even sent out, I haven't run any kind of ads to it.

1:05:42

I haven't done anything yet. I'm just I'm building and rewriting and editing, and building and rewriting and editing, and my goal is to have a library of such powerful free stuff that or maybe low ticket, depending on what hits well that realistically creates a.

1:05:56

It's the weapon, if you will, that my sales team will use six months from now, eight months from now, et cetera.

1:06:02

And so it's stuff that I'm putting in 10-hour days, sometimes just writing, and I see nothing from it, and I won't see anything from it for a long time, and a lot of stuff that I'm building outside of.

1:06:11

Even all that stuff is just things that won't make me money for a long time.

1:06:16

But when they do make money, I think it's almost like if you put in one minute of work, you'll get $1 out kind of, in return.

1:06:23

But if you put in one minute of work, waiting 10 months to get a dollar out, you'll actually get like $50 out.

1:06:29

It's almost like exponential right. So I'm putting in hours, hours, days and days, weeks of work, not expecting anything for a year and I think realistically that's why it's going to.

1:06:38

I would say 2024 is going to be a good year for me.

1:06:41

It's not going to be bad, but 2025, I think, will be probably the best year of my life, because 2024, essentially in my mind, is a write-off, just building for 2025.

1:06:49

You're planting the fucking seeds, man. So I first learned about this like aspect of time and like how billionaires think about time from Charlie Morgan if many were Charlie and I literally watched a video.

1:07:01

I think I watched a video like eight times. It was like an hour and 20 minutes and that wasn't like a fucking entrepreneur porn.

1:07:05

I sat down. He broke down like the physics of it and about how when you read that book like you're reading right now, or reading even the Bible now, right, that most people read it think, oh, that was interesting, 100 million offered, that's interesting and go on about their day and then blame her mosey a month later when they don't close a client.

1:07:20

But it's the book, learning or the lessons that take an impact six months, 12 months, 18 months and have an asymmetrical return.

1:07:28

So the whole point of your 20s or your 30s or your 40s is to find that one thing or the several things that bring you asymmetrical returns.

1:07:35

Now that operates in a negative aspect too.

1:07:37

You watch porn, you take drugs, you go drinking.

1:07:40

It has a small impact before.

1:07:42

It has a huge impact and I think the way he broke it down, which is excellent, was like everything has a cause and effect.

1:07:49

But people don't understand the variable of time. So they think, oh, because I drank alcohol and I feel, okay, two days later there's nothing wrong with it.

1:07:56

But it's actually if you drink alcohol every single week or month or whatever, that will have an impact in your 40s and 50s when you have liver cancer or liver failure, whatever the fuck it is.

1:08:05

So I think that's just the difference between you, iman, and all the other guys.

1:08:11

Right, it's like that decade long thinking versus give me the Lambo now, give me the cookie now, and what do you think about that?

1:08:21

Right, in terms of, like, people getting out of different opinion than Luke Alexander on this, I don't have a strong opinion on this, but what I was kind of saying was I feel like that a lot of these guys, you know, blow the cash and get themselves kind of back in a rut a small bit and get them back into a scarcity of mindset, because they did build that capital, they'd have a lot of opportunity, but they almost again let ego run and then end up in a back position to some degree.

1:08:49

Can I run with this point for a second, because this is probably the most powerful point I've personally made.

1:08:53

So years ago, five years ago, I became what's known as a reborn Christian, right?

1:09:01

So I grew up Catholic and my mom took me to Sunday school and I hated it.

1:09:06

And what happened? I think most times when people have parents that kind of force them into like a relationship with church, they fall out right.

1:09:14

And so I then went the next probably 15 years of my life up until I was 20 something, thinking God is real.

1:09:21

I don't really care, though. I know there's a God, but just not worrying about it, not thinking about it.

1:09:25

And then something happened in life where I just really I don't know how to word it, but God just pulled me in and I wanted to have a relationship with them.

1:09:33

And as soon as I started to have a relationship with God any Christian will tell you, as soon as you come back into God's life for the purpose of relationship with God not church, but actual Christ what happens is he starts to burn away any of the idols that you put above him, right, so anything that you treasure more than Jesus, he will chop you with knees to take that away in the most loving way, right?

1:09:56

It's almost like a dad who essentially, just if you have a drug addiction, will beat the drug addiction out of you, kind of thing, right?

1:10:04

I'm not saying you should that probably is not the right choice of words, but my point is in a very loving way, just takes out.

1:10:09

My idol was money. So I was the.

1:10:13

When I was young, I started out in the car dealership world and this is before.

1:10:17

Like online business stuff was a thing, and I was probably making a quarter of a million dollars a year as a car salesperson, finance manager and eventually running a couple of dealerships when I was like 20.

1:10:26

That's a decent amount of money to be making when you're a 20 year old, right?

1:10:29

Especially when online business isn't really a thing that people know about yet.

1:10:33

And so, like all this bonkers money of young people making that, that was not really a common thing back then.

1:10:38

So I felt like I was on top of the world and because of that, I was the guy who got the nicest department in my city.

1:10:44

I had, you know, the multiple cars probably $200,000 worth of cars I had.

1:10:50

I was the guy who bought everyone you know dinner and drinks and everything.

1:10:54

When we went out, I had tons of just.

1:10:56

I probably had like overhead of eight grand a month or seven grand a month or something stupid, and all of my pride and my being was found in essentially how much money I made.

1:11:06

That's all I could essentially treasure about myself. Like I just make.

1:11:08

I make a lot of money and I valued money.

1:11:11

So there was a stage where, long story short, I was going into the government and one month of vacation turned into 14 months of being on what's called a bench and not making money.

1:11:20

And I this is exactly when I was becoming Christian and so I also went Donald Trump was in office and was draining the swamp that's probably one of the reasons that I was on contract adjudication blah, blah, blah.

1:11:30

And so I went from having 80 grand in my bank account for savings to like negative 800 bucks or something like that.

1:11:37

Right, and I remember just watching the overdraft charges come in.

1:11:40

I actually think I got to a point where the overdraft charges weren't coming in anymore.

1:11:43

I think they just like froze the account or such. I remember seeing just the red every time it opened up my, my new VVV account and then I had one of those cars get repossessed.

1:11:51

I remember constantly like coming back and just waiting for the day that that car was just gone.

1:11:56

I still remember looking like in looking out the window to see if the car was still in the parking spot, kind of thing, you know.

1:12:01

And then the one day where it wasn't, and I just knew right away like okay, like it wasn't even a disappointment, it was just like okay, it finally happened.

1:12:09

And I remember coming back home and I was dating.

1:12:13

I started dating who is my partner now. I remember we'd be getting off the elevator and coming to my place and I would just be looking at the door to see a yellow notice that was essentially saying you have an eviction, like court date coming up, kind of thing.

1:12:25

I remember coming home to that like three or four times. Sorry, but I don't know why that happens.

1:12:29

And so I was going through this massive, massive rut of finances and I can, I can.

1:12:34

I remember still I haven't actually talked about this before Two things.

1:12:39

Number one this is the closest I've ever been to God in Christ.

1:12:41

And so he essentially destroyed my idol, which was money, and essentially he created in me, or at least cultivated in me, that my being now is in my relationship with Christ and Jesus and God, not money.

1:12:52

But number two is and to really boil this point in about pride and not having pride and money.

1:12:57

I still remember, dude, there were so many times where I had no idea how I was going to eat dinner that night, like I had no money, right, and I was at this point I'm still in my apartment.

1:13:06

I stayed in my apartment because at one point I remember my dad helped me out which which you know to ask money when you're, when you're, you know, like 20 or something, you're okay and you move out and then you have to ask your dad to help you pay for something.

1:13:18

That's like the most embarrassing thing. That's one thing. And before I did that, my entire apartment.

1:13:22

At this point I had sold every piece of furniture and all that there was in there.

1:13:26

All that was existent now was a mattress in the living room.

1:13:29

Right, I had some like plates and stuff, and then a mattress in the living room, no more bed frame and more kitchen table and more office, but everything was gone except for a mattress and sheets and such, of course.

1:13:40

And so I remember, through all of this, number one being closer to God.

1:13:45

But number two is God always provided. So I had a friend come to the door once and knock and he I haven't, I hadn't talked to this guy for like eight months and he just said like hey, bro, I don't know why, but I felt you needed this and he just gave me a couple hundred bucks.

1:13:57

And I don't know if you've ever been in a place where, like taking money from something, like you're not asking for money but someone offers you money to actually take that money and you feel like you cannot have pride and take that money.

1:14:09

I'll put it that way you have to. You have to, at that point, understand like talk about actual starvation mindset, but God provided.

1:14:15

And I remember at one point I went my friends were, we always had Wednesday night, guys nights.

1:14:21

I remember at one point I told the guys, like God, I can't come, like there's no way I can come out.

1:14:24

You know I'll have a water or something. And they were like no, we got you.

1:14:27

And I remember my buddy. He's one of my, one of my best friends, probably one of the earliest mentors I've ever had in life, really, really successful dude, very Christian dude.

1:14:34

I was giving me a hug and I could just feel his hands slipping something in my pocket when we were saying goodbye and giving me a hug, and he had slipped in like 400 bucks or something like that for me to, you know, to take care of me for the next hour or many weeks, kind of thing.

1:14:45

And so God provided the reason I'm saying this. It almost brings tears to my eyes, it's embarrassing to talk about, but it's because that embarrassment and that, that destruction of pride and ego and money, money idolization, is what allowed me, in my opinion, to grow in a way where I didn't do what you talked about, which is making money and spending and spending and spending it Right.

1:15:05

And so most guys, they, they, they make money and they never.

1:15:12

You know two things not most guys.

1:15:14

A lot of guys do what you said make money, spend money, never get to that point where they can operate any out of anything from starvation, even though they make a hundred thousand a month.

1:15:21

They spend $95,000 a month, a hundred thousand, and they can't operate for a year not caring about cash because they have to right.

1:15:28

They've essentially built this hamster wheel that they have to fund.

1:15:32

I never did that because God made sure that I didn't find my, my ego in cash and so, even though I have some nice washers and such and I have a nice place and everything I am, I'm really, really careful about spending money and I don't like spending money.

1:15:48

It actually kind of sickens me every single time I spend money.

1:15:50

The best money I spend is that I donate 10%, a tithe 10%, of every dollar that my businesses make like gross top line.

1:15:57

10% goes to to the church and that's my my favorite dollar that I can spend Like I'm happy to do that.

1:16:03

Every other dollar I spend feels like icky and wrong, right, and so I think the reason that you see everyone have, you know, everyone that has a come up story, like anyone doing top tier numbers, almost always has had a rock bottom, right.

1:16:18

So I just talked to that.

1:16:21

What I just gave you was a glimpse of my. I could go 10 times further into that, but Dan Martel has a rock bottom where he is, I think went to jail for drugs and such right.

1:16:27

Grant Cardone was had a rock bottom. I'm sure Tony did.

1:16:30

I haven't looked at his past, I'm sure David. But all these big guys came from somewhere where they were struggling to make, to make they've.

1:16:37

They came to us face to face, essentially, with their rock bottom, and what you'll learn is two things.

1:16:41

Number one at rock bottom, god takes care of you, right?

1:16:43

There's a line in scripture that essentially says look at the, the flowers and the birds.

1:16:46

God takes care of them.

1:16:50

And how much more important are you kind of thing? Right, and he will.

1:16:53

He will take care of you rock bottom in ways you never realized and it makes you realize that rock bottom is something you can live through and why there.

1:16:58

Most people equate rock bottom to death.

1:17:00

I equate rock bottom to somewhere where I don't want to go back, but I just equate it to relationship with.

1:17:06

This sounds bad after saying I don't want to go back, but I equate it to relationship with Christ.

1:17:09

It was not by any means my, my um in terms of like secular living.

1:17:16

It's not my, my, my pride, my prideful time, but it's I just remember, knowing that God took care of me and I probably was more humble and meek than than I've ever been in my entire life.

1:17:24

But because I went through that, I also look at cash.

1:17:27

As you know, any, any dollar I make is essentially stewarding God's money, not to get super Christian on this, but I think God just now trusts me to to steward his money to take care of the people that that work with me.

1:17:37

I've become a better leader because of how I look at this.

1:17:39

So I think I'm a better leader to the people that work with me.

1:17:42

I think I'm I'm more, um, disciplined with the cash that he essentially sends my way and how I approach that and growing the kingdom and and how I spend it.

1:17:51

And the ecosystem. I think money is almost like an ecosystem.

1:17:53

The ecosystem of money that flows around me is very giving rather than selfish.

1:17:58

It's not like a care about buying Lamborghinis and such. I like I've, I can, I can probably buy any car I want and I'm struggling to.

1:18:04

You know my car is seven years old right now. I'm struggling to get myself to buy another car.

1:18:07

You know, um, and I like there's been a couple of guys I I almost always have guys coming to my office or like living with me and such, and I struggle to buy one and they're and they're here in my seven year old car probably thinking like what?

1:18:20

Like why the fuck is Paul driving a seven year old Audi? You know, like why doesn't he buy it?

1:18:23

And they keep telling me to like to look at the Lambos or G-Wag and stuff and I'll probably just get like a Chevy Tahoe or something Just very, you know, very simple and probably keep that for another decade.

1:18:33

But I think anyway that's. That's the root reason as to why I can build that for a year without having to worry about money.

1:18:41

And it all comes back to the fact that I I do everything I do through Christ, because no-transcript, he is me essentially at this point.

1:18:48

That's such a fucking powerful story. Thank you for sharing that, because I know you had done that previously.

1:18:52

What's most interesting is, again, it's the impact on you, the fact that you don't act out of scarcity anymore, because a lot of these guys a lot of people in general, a lot of guys in online space people turn into an asshole, right, if you want to say something like I put up a thread about it recently being money is an amplifier and if you have that air of being an asshole, you'll become more of an asshole.

1:19:15

So maybe you're better off without it, maybe you're just better off with small farm, very simple, because it doesn't work well with your personality.

1:19:22

But for you, I can see that you don't operate from a scarcity perspective.

1:19:27

Even if things went south, you have that comfort and support which is pretty unique.

1:19:33

Right, and I think that I would say to your point with Damaterra as well, is that you need to go through it, to experience it, and people have different, varying levels of severity.

1:19:44

Like I've had my experiences and my stories, which I do think about often, and it's a good like that's the baseline, like we don't want to go back there and that's the.

1:19:51

You probably will notice. It's like the heaven and hell analogy.

1:19:54

I could fuck this up now, but was it from like Kane and Abel when they were talking?

1:19:58

That's like the reference which is like we don't want to go down here.

1:20:01

This is the opportunity that we can have. We don't want to basically imbalance it, but it's good to know where we could end up if things don't work out.

1:20:08

I could have got that completely wrong.

1:20:09

You're not wrong. My favorite line on that is that where we are is either as close as we'll ever be to heaven or as close as we'll ever be to hell.

1:20:16

Right, and so I operate that.

1:20:18

It's a different thing, if you will I think that's CS Lewis but it's a different thing I operate with.

1:20:23

And so one of the other sides to this, too, is a line that's been sitting with me a lot.

1:20:27

Are you a Christian? I know I'm talking about Christianity a lot. I don't know much about your faith.

1:20:30

I'm not really like actively Christian.

1:20:33

So I'm from Ireland, which is like Catholic and I grew up in like a Catholic household and like Like culture is Catholic if you will, yeah, but you it's culture, yeah.

1:20:42

And again back in fucking my day when I was a kid, like young kid is at the schools.

1:20:47

All the school systems are a Catholic.

1:20:50

Yeah, that's, that's that's how I was raised to, and it probably makes you stray away, which is what happened to me too, because my mom's from Mexico and in Mexico it's the same thing.

1:20:58

Mexicans are Catholic by culture, right. And there's a line that's been sitting with me going back to why people buy Lambo's and all this different stuff.

1:21:05

Because what's funny is you said like maybe you belong on like a farm If money is not a good amplifier.

1:21:10

Blah, blah, blah, blah. I want a farm like that. What I actually want now I tell people the only things I care about money wise at this point is I want to in where I live in Maryland it's my home state, nothing to me hits the same, but I want to have a large farm in the middle of nowhere, on the water, with a lot of sunlight, right, that's all I care about.

1:21:30

And to do it it's going to be probably well over a $10 million home or something like that, and so that's that's really.

1:21:36

If I'm working toward anything, it's seclusion, so that I can spend more time with family and with God and away from people, I think.

1:21:42

Do you know who Colin Castrina is? So I know he's big in the podcast world, but one of the things that he came to my office wants to get to know me and he was like bro, I think the most crazy thing that no one knows about you is just, you're in blank town of Maryland.

1:21:56

I'm in a very non entrepreneurial, non known town and it's my favorite thing being.

1:22:01

You know, I go to Scottsdale, miami and stuff and you see the entrepreneurs there and the spirit and I very specifically try to get out of it If you will.

1:22:10

But there's a line that's been sitting with me as to why people get Lambos and stuff, and that is that I think most people do it to be glorified.

1:22:15

Most people are looking to get a Lambo so that you know people see how much money they're doing, how much they're making the watches nine times, nine times out of 10 for this.

1:22:23

And the line that's been sticking with me is why I expect to be glorified in a world that killed its Lord.

1:22:27

So like Jesus Christ, in my opinion, jesus this is how I operate Jesus Christ came down to die for our sins.

1:22:32

He was God and we killed him, and so if we can't glorify him, then who am I to even expect to be glorified?

1:22:40

And so I know for a fact, if I get any kind of nice car and you nice watch or anything like that, it's not going to actually glorify me in the slightest, it's just going to, you know, be something that I think of as making you look cool, and it's going to be out of pride, and so I that's one of the one of the I don't know something.

1:22:54

I'll find lines like that that just sit with me for a bit.

1:22:56

That's been the line that's been sitting with me, it's always about who you're impressing, right?

1:22:59

Like ideally you want to impress like your partner, maybe your future kids or whatever.

1:23:02

Like that's who you're actually trying to, that's who you care about.

1:23:05

You don't care about, like random numbers on the internet.

1:23:08

Basically, right Before we finish up, my last question for you is what do you want to be remembered?

1:23:14

for this is the easiest answer for me to be a Christian one more time on this podcast.

1:23:19

But I want to be remembered for for someone who grows the kingdom of Christ through excellence in what they do in business.

1:23:25

My mission statement is a human is to use businesses. It means to an end to grow the kingdom of God, and so I want to be remembered as someone who is respectable in business and good at his craft and knew what he was doing, but all that through the image of God and through the creativity and wisdom of God.

1:23:39

I don't think that's.

1:23:41

You know, I'm not doing the business stuff for the sake of doing the business stuff and making money.

1:23:45

I'm doing it because I think that I can do it well and I think doing it well will grow the kingdom.

1:23:49

And so my dying goal is I saw this once on a TikTok reel or something like that, or an Instagram reel my dying goal is to one day die and have Satan's army essentially rejoice and be happy about the fact that I left the playing field of growing the kingdom of Christ.

1:24:07

So that's my goal, and business to me is a means to an end to which to do that.

1:24:13

I know we spent the first, I'm sorry to talk about Christ as much as I have and, by the way, I know it's a hot tip To me, it's just so.

1:24:20

I think it's funny, man, I'll talk about on with coaching calls and podcasts and everything like that, prospecting and all these different systems, and I love that stuff, don't get me wrong.

1:24:30

But the thing that really makes me eager to do what I do and to you know, the reason I want a platform is because I just I love talking about God, I love talking about Jesus and I think that anything I do to gain platform, to do that, is just a means to an end.

1:24:44

What I'm realizing is I think I'm I say this humbly, but I think I'm sworn enough to at least know kind of what I'm talking about in this space and so people will listen to me and then, if I have ears, almost like a sales funnel, I'll talk about what you want to talk about, which is business stuff, not you specifically, but just humans and people in this space.

1:25:01

I'll talk about the business stuff to open the ears, but then, realistically, what I actually think matters is that we have a Lord and Savior that you know, people write off and no one talks about, and that's what I want to do.

1:25:11

I want to be remembered one day for being a guy who uses business to grow the kingdom of God.

1:25:16

Yeah, man, a hundred percent agree. Like leave on this note is that often say like you, focus on impact and everything else happens Right, if you're looking for money or looking for success, looking for status, that's just a byproduct of impact.

1:25:27

Be first focus on the impact and then everything else comes from there.

1:25:30

Man, this was an insane podcast, honestly, when I said this is one of the best podcasts I've actually recorded.

1:25:36

It's really, really insightful. Man, I love how your brain works.

1:25:39

It's very like caring, kind, you know, giving me a lot of time.

1:25:44

I know this wasn't easy as well to get organized.

1:25:46

I want to say thank you, appreciate it.

1:25:48

Thank you for having me, man. This was a fun one to do.