How They Keep You POOR! (Watch This To Become A MILLIONAIRE In 2023) | Alex Hormozi

for people who are poor it's because they actually don't see reality for what it is because the way they see reality they see making money to be impossible or incredibly difficult or it's only for a certain select people not for them right it's just because they I think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness I feel like a lot of society keeps people kind of Trapped In This broke mindset it's hard to kind of get ahead right because of people investing in things when they don't have money so they're in debt and they kind of stay in debt what is necessary for people to break the broke mindset that Society has kind of Trapped people in that keeps them poor so I think um like people have two sets of resources right that they allocate that they've got time they've got money yeah and so if you look at someone's bank statement and you look at their calendar you know what their life is and you can also predict whether life is going to be in x amount of years right and so if someone wants to change what their life is going to look like you have to reallocate where you're investing the resources that you have and so from a Time perspective people who are poor in my opinion spend a lot of time not doing stuff and that sounds terrible to say but like at the base level they're distracted they're not doing the right stuff right well I was I would even say not doing anything just distracting them right playing video games Netflix Etc you know all that stuff right so they've got there's like the basis like they don't do anything they're purely distracting themselves from their current state which is hard because it's hard to confront reality if you're like not happy it's easier to just distract yourself right now the level above that is you've got people who are operating they are working every day but they're operating in low leverage opportunity right so they're they're doing things that do not give them a lot of return on their time right and so it's like I could work it doesn't matter how many hours I work at McDonald's I like it's very very difficult to become wealthy there right just near impossible right um versus like you could buy a building for 10 million dollars and then sell to somebody else for 11 you know for 11 million dollars just get the contract and make a million dollars on the exchange super high leverage right from a Time perspective which is crazy for somebody who doesn't have money to even contemplate something like that but the only way that that happened and that required no money is skill right and so like that's an example of like it didn't require money to make that money that's skill that's required to do that and so first is the time right people are not doing stuff with the time that they have or they're doing low leverage activities with the time they have and then they're not trying to increase their output per unit time which means investing in their skill set so like one of the easiest ways to gain leverage on your time in and when I say leverage just for everybody like Leverage is the difference between inputs and outputs in a system so um you know archimedia said if you give me a lever long enough I can move the world and so the same degree if you have enough skills you can do anything right and so skills give you leverage on your time so you get more out of each unit of time so if I'm a master cold caller I will get more sales and calls booked for the same unit of time that somebody who sucks at it same time more output right because they developed a skill at a masterful level 100 yeah and so when people are allocating their time they're not by percentage they're they're kind of like consuming their time rather than investing their time so they're either doing nothing or they're consuming the time rather than putting time into getting higher Returns on their time which is education right and so education you can have from like the conceptual learnings watching stuff like this um or and or the actual doing right and so you know you learn taking action 100 failing messing up you know feeling like an embarrassment and reactions yeah the first thousand uh cold calls you make the first thousand cold emails you do the first thousand doors you knock on the first thousand you know what like you'll learn more from that than you'll learn from every single book you read up to that point on the concept like you'll learn right um and so people don't allocate nearly enough time to that in the beginning and so I think one of the things that the formal education system did really well that people poo poo on it is the idea of going into debt to gain education is something that fundamentally makes sense yes but it's got to be the right education you can make you money you got to get a return on it yes that's that's the issue right you have to get a return on it because like the idea of borrowing from a future self that can make more money to pay for the thing that you're getting this skill for makes total sense I think Elon was saying something about how neuralink in the future it's going to be such a competitive advantage that they could price it at whatever they want because once you have it you'll be so much more able than anyone who doesn't have it that you could so easily pay off the price of the thing that's how it should work conceptually right crazy so education is supposed to work yes and so um I like this is the simplest example that I have so A friend of mine has a 17 year old daughter she got a job at a bowling alley and she makes minimum wage and he said why don't you become a phlebotomist she was like well I don't want to spend the money he's like it's 500 bucks and it's a two-day certification and then after you have that you make 25 an hour so she didn't have the money now she could save it to get the 500 right or she could take a loan for the 500 bucks and pay back in a week right right because she has higher earning capacity and so it was like she could she could either save for eight weeks right from her her bowling alley to pay the 500 or she could take a loan for the 500 do the two days and then pay it off in a week so at that one week she now has seven more weeks of earning capacity this is a micro example right seven weeks of earning capacity at her new level and she'd be net positive on the next seven weeks of earnings right and so that's just a micro example of like what skill investing does um and so that because I a lot of us talk about like you got to get educated you got to learn stuff and like you learn stuff by doing it and a lot of times you pay for that education or access to people who can teach you those skills because a lot of people aren't going to give it to you for free that makes sense it's okay like it took them time to learn the thing and they compressed that time to give it to you so I mean that's why I'm like educate if there's one thing that's my like life's missions education and so I was telling my coaching students last night um on a call that I have with them that I have multiple coaches that someone is asking about mentors like how do you find mentors how often you stay in touch with them and I was like listen when I was broke whatever it was 15 years ago just getting started in this space I was lucky enough that I had a couple local mentors in Columbus Ohio that kind of had pity on me but they saw that I had this hunger this desire I was like I'll do whatever you tell me to do yeah and then I came back two weeks later and I was like I did it here's the results here's where I failed and that's a fuel for mentors to be like I gave you wisdom you took action you got results I'll give you some more feedback but if you just keep asking and you don't act yeah we talked about this with a mutual friend we have it's frustrating for a mentor they don't want to give you that time no and I told them I go this is why I pay mentors you know there's a there's a big guy in media that has a massive business that I I message him I'm an acquaintance with him I said hey I would love to pay you for some coaching he said I'll just do it for you for free for 30 minutes now I want to pay him because I want to be able to do it more frequently right right he said I'll give it to you for 30 minutes because he likes me we're friendly but I know I can't call upon him for 30 minutes every week so now I'll go back in six months and say I take action on everything you said in that 30 minutes here's our results can we do another call yeah and that's kind of like what you can expect with a mentor is that type of opportunity unless you have a serious Bond and they just want to give her their time but investing in it like you said is so much more powerful and getting that speed of information in my opinion totally the single highest return on investment thing I've ever done and not to sound right here but I just like using scenarios like if I had taken all the money that I had spent on coaching mentorships courses workshops seminars and put that in the S P 500 when I uh you know 10 years ago right the amount that I would have right now is inconsequential compared to what I currently have and it's because I invested in something different so rather than investing in the S P 500 I invested in the SME 500 so I took all of the excess cash that I had every single month and rather than saying like oh I'm at a dollar cost average you know long term I wait four years whatever um I was like I just don't make enough money so like I could be the Millionaire Next Door who saves every penny doesn't go to Starbucks for my entire life and have two million dollars when I'm old or eight you know whatever the last 10 years of my life right and literally enjoy nothing during that period of time that doesn't sound like it's not a trade I wanted to make and so I had a belief that I know I I will work hard and if I'm given the right tools I will be able to implement them and so I took all my extra money and this is kind of you know a lot of people might not necessarily agree with me on this but it worked for me so I put all of every dollar I had even went into debt to get access to communities and mentors and coaching programs and and masterminds yes and those were the biggest Gifts of all and it wasn't even just in this like the biggest gifts I got from those wasn't even the education but it was the perspectives on reality it was people disproving things that I thought to be true so there I was like this is the way the world is and they're like that's false and my whole Paradigm shifted because I just I I had distortions of reality I thought reality was different than it was and so right now for people who are poor it's because they actually don't see reality for what it is because the way they see reality they see making money to be impossible or incredibly difficult or it's only for a certain select people not for them right it's just because they literally cannot see it and so I'm trying to think of an example of one like you can see something that you know an easier example is like kids and parents right like a kid thinks the world is a certain way and the parents like you just haven't seen enough stuff yet and so you know as you level up in The Entrepreneur Space there's also just more levels of that where other people are like this is the perspective you need to have and you're like no way that's possible and so that's where those rooms um gave me the highest Roi the other skills because there's so many people there that are trying to learn the same things they already said hey get this program read this book and so they helped sift through the amounts of information that's out there because I only have one resource which is time at that time right and so it's like okay I'll spend it but where do I spend it and they're like okay if you want to learn real estate these are the top three guys you can join this Facebook group get into this guy's Community he is a coaching program that helps you do wholesaling this guy's of course brother does airbnbs this guy you know like and so it's like which one do I choose the answer for everybody who's curious let's do them all because you're just like you're not like people like which one should I do I'm like you'll you're not gonna be poor by learning more right right and then it's not like you have a finite capacity to learn the more you learn the better you get at learning right and then the more uh lines and synergies you find between different uh skill sets and opportunities the more dangerous you become 100 you just learn cold calling yeah but you didn't also learn you know copywriting and email marketing or speaking on stage you know it's the combination of multiple skills that make your earning power so much greater I get I'm literally getting Goosebumps oh dude I love it uh it's the it's the the compound and so I have this example I break down Jay-Z right and so if you look at Jay-Z in the beginning like he had you know he probably had a natural proclivity for rhyming and beat a rhythm whatever right so that was his first like kind of skill you probably practice that a little bit because he was into it right and then he started rapping right so that's just first level skill and then he learned you know writing lyrics and it's like okay so that's another saying right exactly then you learned producing and then he learned marketing and then he learned performing on stages or something yes and then he learned how to sign other people to his how to start a label and he started looking and so with each of these skills it wasn't one plus one it was like one plus one plus one equals ten right and so like in a in a formal world like the world that's not rap like if someone's good at math they can learn accounting or bookkeeping first right it's like okay that's a level one skill then you learn accounting okay now you're making more and then you learn how Insurance works and you're like oh okay now you can start to see this person evolve and then you learn how tax and tax efficiencies work and you're like oh and then you learn how to how to package and sell businesses and negotiate those deals with you know private equity and things like that all of a sudden that's a CFO that's somebody who's making multiple million dollars a year but it's the same basic few skills that stack on top of each other and get disproportionate Returns on all the prior skills with each new additional skill yes and so the idea is not like people ask their own question they're like which course should I buy which program should I do it's yes yes yeah you want like because each one of them you will learn things and there's going to be either different ways that someone's teaching they'll have different communities they'll have different beliefs you'll learn from all of them and this is something I think I'll hear this sometimes when people say well I just invested in this program I don't know if I have the time to invest in this next course or read this book or whatever it is and you got to think of like I believe you know I'm doing five six interviews a week where I'm constantly learning yeah you know every time you come on I learn something new it's not like there are things that confirm what I already know but I'm also learning new things it's not like I've said after 10 years of doing this I don't need to learn anymore I don't have any more time to learn it's so important for me to develop as a human being and that's why I'm constantly learning I you know people don't need to sit down and do interviews with people all day long they can learn in different ways but I don't think the investment ever ends and how much you can learn and it compounds compounds that's the best part what would you say are the three main skills for someone to want to have the potential of being a six or seven figure earner that they need to start learning now so 2023 they have that potential this is my opinion there's three main skills in business in general you gotta learn how to sell gotta learn how to build you can learn learn how to lead so you got to learn how to get people to give you money for Stuff got to have the stuff to sell them and then you gotta have people that work on your side to help deliver on those other two if you can do those three things you're unstoppable and if you do one of those three things you can make as much like you can still make a ton of money but if you can you can do all three you're unbeatable sell build like building a team building building so that would be on the lead side the building is like the products and services that you have so you have to figure out a way to deliver value to somebody to develop a program a product a service that you can package and sell and people are like well how do I do that all you have to do there's this is the perspective thing we were saying earlier it's like I don't know where their opportunity is and people who are entrepreneurship opportunity everywhere it's like and my biggest regret in life is that I can't live multiple lives because there's so many things I want to do but it's because all you have to do is look for problems you look for things that people hate you look for inefficiencies you just look for things that are nuisances like what are things that people do every day that they hate doing like and a big one a big misnomer I think is that people think they need to have a new thing you can start a cleaning business become a billionaire you can start a lawn care business become a billionaire you can start a roofing business become a millionaire like there's clear problems like all you have to do is just do what everyone else is doing learn how to sell learn how to deliver consistently and learn how to lead if you do those three things you can do just as well as everyone else and just do it better I was in the elevator this morning uh coming here and I have this this cat sitter that uh used to watch my cats right and um but he mostly Works in a different building that I used to live in now I'm in a new building he was in the new building because he had some other dogs he's a dog he's a dog like Walker right yeah but I asked him to watch my cats one time and um he literally for 30 seconds in the other day I was like hey man good to see you and uh I go dude how much you make it now because I see him hustling I see him like walking around with all these dogs I'm like and his prices went up over the last few years like when I first had him watch my cats was like 25 bucks now it's like 40 bucks for a session I'm like I go dude what are you making like five six hundred bucks a day he goes I go a thousand I got two thousand he goes I got three yes around three k a day I go what walking dogs and I go he goes now it's seven days a week It's a Grind yeah I've got three employees now who are like just walking walking dogs but he's like the go-to guy in Beverly Hills and he's like independent he's not with some you know you know Big Dog Walking Company or something but three grand a day walking dogs I go you can there's a need especially in this community where people are busy but they love their dogs and they have money to spend on their dogs and he is providing a service that's a problem three grand a day man that's crazy I I love this exam business I need to be walking dogs you know I love this example because it's perfect because everyone can understand it's like what's the problem that they're solving it's like people don't have time to work their dogs whenever you're looking at any any problems time is one of the easiest ones to solve is that people don't take the time to do something right it takes too long you want to do it faster uh Jason flatlin said the easiest business model in the world is find what someone else is doing do it half the time it's just you can do it and you can look at any business that exists and do that right and so it's like what did he have to do he had to learn how to sell which means he had to get people to give him money for the dogs which is part of that's marketing but I'm just wrapping that right promotion getting people to give you money you had to learn how to deliver which is like okay what are the best routes to walk around how do I manage 17 leashes at the same time like you had to figure all that stuff out right and then you don't learn how to lead so he has two employees or three employees he's always got a place but before he was like exhausted but now he's figuring out how to build and lead and what'll happen is he'll stop walking dogs right exactly and so it's like that's like such a that's such a perfect microcosm of the three skills being put to you use now it's taking him years to do it it didn't happen overnight he had to build his brand he had to you know show that he could deliver the value of the product consistently and all these different things he had to be communicating and yeah you know be reliable all these things and he was like I'm doing it seven days a week yeah so he has no life right so it's like an extreme yeah but it's possible and uh so the three skills I heard you say is sell build and Lead you can never get enough training on how to lead yourself and how to lead others because there's so much of a world inside of each one of us that has to learn how to overcome insecurities fears uh traumas triggers that will make us poor leaders of ourselves and of others so that people respect and trust us so leading skills is probably the hardest and it's also the one that's almost a metascale in that it actually can layer on top of the other two so if you think about it like as a hypothetical example imagine I know how to recruit and lead people and I don't know anything about marketing I don't think about sales I don't know anything about delivery but I have a vision for what I want to accomplish a problem that I want to solve that's meaningful to me and I think it'll be meaningful to other people I can compel people I can persuade them and influence them to want to work and help me solve this huge problem together right and so you don't even like real talk you don't even have to know how to sell and how to Market you don't have to know how to build a product build a service team because if you can lead you can get all those other people to do that and leading is also selling in a sense if you're a leader your energy is an enrolling energy your way of being how you show up how you communicate is selling you yeah in Your Vision yeah uh you don't need to know how to sell a product and get on stage and say buy my stuff but you need to be able to enroll people into a vision that they are in alignment with and I think that that is one of the hardest skills because people don't have the belief in themselves a lot of people don't believe in themselves they don't love themselves enough to be enrolling in my opinion and so they discount and that doubt people can feel that energy and that doubt yeah you have to be certain you're not confident you know what I mean I think part and so it's easy to say what like what we just said about the whole leading thing and like as much as everyone's like well I'll just jump straight to Leading I feel like there's some sort of like and this is me I could be speaking a limiting belief of my own so you know disclaimer right but it is my belief that there's a certain amount of like spiritual strength that you gain from having done stuff right developing skills developing a skills because people build confidence with these skills yeah because you have evidence results yeah and so people you can you can enroll someone you can subscribe someone to your vision and because the next the first question someone's going to always ask is why should I listen to you or why should I follow you specifically right and unless you have a solid answer that's not you being crazy right being like I have done these things they give me evidence that I can I can move I can I can move the goal post further than what we have to done before because of what I have done behind me right because the path I've already walked and so I think like learning how to sell learning how to build are the first two skills and then leading you learn consistently along the way for the rest of your life what would you say are the most important habits someone can develop for themselves on a daily basis to support their opportunities for earning more most of the import most important lessons that I've learned in my life have come from doing and mentors and so on a day-to-day basis it's reducing the time between when you wake up and when you begin working right A lot of people lollygag and delay and procrastinating things like that and if you just think about there's only a certain amount of time in the day I want to increase my output per unit of time as much as possible a lot of people have these superstitions that they have to do a certain thing they must do X Y and Z but all you have to do is talk to a single mom who has like five kids and no still start businesses they're not doing any of that stuff they're waking up and they're working before their kids are up and then once their kids go to bed they work then too right and they're not doing all the lollygag stuff that you know you see up trending all over social media it's like they're working and so like the single greatest skill in my opinion is being able to find a a place that you can shut out external stimuli and you can focus yes because for me the singers like the single highest Roi habit that I have is that for me between 5m and noon I have nothing on my calendar it is just work no meetings and then all my meetings happen after noon this is for the entrepreneur now if you're if you're like in a job right now then it's got to be in the morning before you go to work and in the evening after you come back from work but like having that dedicated time and if you're like well I'm not a morning person fine then just work late like that's okay like I've I've got billionaire buddies who are like oh I wake up at 10 but they work really late that's their that's their special time that no one bothers them it tends to be at the book ends of the day they're just from my experience because in the middle of the day you get pestered and it's hard to get into that deep focus that really that deep learning that you get when you really pour yourself into something yeah and I think uh I think I saw Layla mention this on a video clip where she was like I just wake up and I start working she's not spending an hour morning routine or something like that and I think you got to figure out who you are it's like if you want to spend an hour or two in the morning and taking coffee and going for a walk and working out and kind of like preparing yourself great I think for me yeah there is some importance to at some point in the day setting an intention either for the day or at night for the next day great so if you want to get up from work right away at night totally how what are the three most important things or what are the actions you're gonna take they're going to get you closer to your vision that next day so having some 5-10 minutes to have an intention and then act on it right as opposed to just reacting to the world yeah 100 that's what I believe but there was this one um to consolidate what we were saying earlier because I like this it matters a lot to me um most skills can be learned decently with about 20 hours of focused effort 20 hours like the first 20 hours of you actually doing something you learn the most you're going to learn about the thing for if you just consider by percentage of learning from like you know nothing to 20 hours in you already have a really good understanding of the thing the problem is that most people will take years to start the first hour and so that habit that you're referencing is that my speed at least now is that you know I've gotten better at this stuff is that like I try and detract the time from when I want to learn something or when I want to start doing something to starting it as soon as I can because I just want to start getting through those 20 hours as fast as I can yes and so that's just been a very tangible because it seems like this amorphous thing but there was a study that was done there's like in the first 20 hours you can learn almost any skill playing guitar running an ad doing a call like you'll learn more in that first 20 hours than any other time so it's like then just get to that 20 hours and don't delay yes and that's been one of the one of the most one of the deepest lessons I've had because it took me four years to learn how to build a website and it took me one day to actually learn crazy because you decided to act on the learning four years to delay and procrastinate and say I'm not a tech guy I'm not a tech person this isn't my kind of thing I'm a gym guy I'm a local business owner I should pay somebody to do this I'm above this kind of thing like all these stories right and then one day I sat down on a Sunday morning I was like I'm gonna learn this thing I Googled it and you took you know you just learned it step by step by step and you know what I set the whole day aside it took me four hours crazy it's amazing you'll you'll hear I bet you've heard this so many times that people are like I want to launch a podcast I want to start a YouTube I want to launch a book yeah and they've been saying it for years and years and years when you can literally go on Amazon and upload a book in an hour if you just learn the steps it might feel daunting and over like I don't know how to do this and how do I link my payments and create a book and put it up there but you can create a one-page book and launch it yeah to at least say you did it and now you know the steps so it's not as scary I think so many people are afraid to launch their thing because they don't understand how to do it and they think it's going to take a lot more time than it actually is you may not be good at it right away yeah your website private wasn't perfect yeah but you got the website up within four hours yeah and then you can make it better over time and there's this there because the the that first hour is you paying down the fear of uncertainty it's all these fears of like not being enough what if I feel stupid because you have felt stupid when you try to figure something else out but like if you remember how hard it was to learn how to tie your shoes when you were a kid right cause it's like I have to remember and then this one and the two bunny ears you know the whole thing right but like now you can do it in your sleep and it's it's the same it's just the emotions we have about beginning work because the judgments we're going to put on ourselves about how we're doing but if we can remove the Judgment of how we're going to do and say I assume I'm going to suck and all I'm doing is I'm going to start pooling the thread of this 20 hours that's my only goal is to start sucking that's it I just want to start sucking rather than nothing right you gotta love you gotta love embarrassing yourself the way I feel like it these skills that you're going to learn they're going to bring you a lot of value long term they're not easy to start with they're not and so you've got to be okay with accepting embarrassment of your own self um what's the what's the belief that why is it so hard for people that haven't made money let's talk about like the daunting number for a lot of people just seven figures which is it was hard for me to to get over the hump mentally and psychologically of like how do I go from five thousand dollars a month yeah to ten thousand dollars then ten thousand to twenty thousand and then how do you get a business I'm talking about business owners how do you get it to six figures and then to the seven figure Mark as a business owner what do we over complicate money in our minds if we've been taught stories as kids or been taught beliefs about it and how do we get over the over complication of making seven figures as entrepreneurs I would I agree with you that I think it gets over complicated and so we just have to boil it down to the first principles of the math like what what math is required to make a million dollars right like we can either sell you know a hundred ten thousand dollar things we can sell a thousand thousand dollar thing so we can sell and by when I say things you don't have to price your product at a thousand dollars you're just lifetime value if a customer has to be a thousand dollars right so just how much somebody's gonna spend with you over the period of time that they they buy from you in general right now for yourself those are products that might just be the the lifetime value but if you sell services like the the the dog guy yeah he probably has people who stay with him for years and so he has to add up that total lifetime value as the number and it's like well how many of those do I need to sell and then you just divide by you know to to back into it and so once you know the math right so the first is like what is the math to get to the million and you have to figure out how many units you're going to sell so let's just use something that's um let's use a thousand dollars because it's it's an easy one okay a thousand sales of a thousand bucks exactly so we have to do a thousand sales now how are we going to break that down on an annual basis because thousand sounds like a huge number well it's about three a day right like okay well three a days all of a sudden a lot more minutes yeah and we're like okay well what creates a sale so at some point to get I'm gonna take one step before for six figures for anybody who's not there it's like you have to sell and this is again for business owners entrepreneurs if you have a job then awesome but like if you're trying to try to make money it's you have to sell something to someone that's it that's all you have to do to get to six figures to do that so that's one Avatar one uh one meaning one channel right one product one channel that's all that is you add the fourth piece which is consistency right that's what goes from six to seven people and the consistent yeah 100 because then you can tackle all the emotional or whatever it is that why you're not being consistent but from a math perspective we just have to break down what are the primary actions that result in the the output right and so if three sales means that I sell one out of three people who want to walk or one out of two people who come for the for the dog walking okay well then I need six appointments a day okay how do I get six appointments a day it's like well I have six ways that I can get appointments right I can get appointments from referrals I get appointments from Affiliates so I I make a deal with um the local grooming place for dogs or the local vet for dogs or my flyers up or something or the urgent care for dogs or pet cut like whatever I mean like there's a million ways right like I get one of those guys I figure out how to deal with them and I say I'll give you the first two months of what they pay me to you if you just send them to me yes more money for them and it probably helps their customers because it's a need that they can't solve but they have the same Avatar cool so you got referrals you got Affiliates you've got uh you could just reach out to people you know just one-on-one like hey I've got my my thing how like do you need help with your dog you can reach out to people you don't know which you can do through Post-it notes cold calls emails door knocking like they're at Flyers yeah all of those things are ways that you can reach out to people you don't know one-on-one you can make content about how doggark is amazing and ways to ways to walk your dog better uh ways to take care of a dog and the whole point of that is to get people to feel comfortable with you specifically in your brand that you're that you will do a better job taking care of their dog than me very well exactly right you want people to feel guilty that they're not doing all this stuff for their dog and then they would start you know then you start get you feel inbound right and then finally you have ads right you pay you have unpaid ads um to get to get new new appointments booked right and so those are the six primary things you can do to get customers right so it's like okay I need six appointments a day I have those six different ways that I can get them which of them do I feel most comfortable with because you can you can win at all of them right it could be soliciting your customers to the referrals it could be getting the Affiliates of relationships set up it could be the one-on-one DMS it could be the ads it could be the content any of those six would work right and so we just have to pick yeah which one you want and so then you just reverse engineer those actions of because even one step after obviously this is something I do a lot so if you reverse engineer the affiliate thing right so how do you get Affiliates it's like well I need to reach out to 100 people a day so you'd still use one of the other methods so cold outbound uh warm outbound content or ads right to get that those Affiliates and say okay well if I reach out to 100 Affiliates a day that are in my in my local region um to see if they will partner with me and I can create some sort of relationship if I do that every day maybe I'll get two of those referral Partners a week and if each of those referral Partners we can get me 10 appointments then for me to get my six appointments today it's 180 appointments uh per month if I need 18 Affiliates right so all I got to do is get 18 Affiliates but then if you're thinking right now you're like well wait but I would be able to get 18 Affiliates in probably like a month or two and the answer is you're right but people just don't think through the math of how to do it because if we're being real there's no reason you should cap your business at a million right instead of the same degree when we ask the question like how do I make a million dollar business you also think in increments that somebody who's trying to make a million dollars thinks in right because I got asked on this Tick Tock so they gave me this prompt they said hey Alex how would you make six figures a year that was the question and my immediate response was I would sell something for 100 and then figure out what I would do for the rest of the year yeah and so it's like these people think about money differently you know what I mean and so if you think about how do I build this thing into like a hundred million like and you have to think of a number that's as high as you can fathom right if you can't fathom 100 million don't think that but like as high as you can mathematically fathom so it might be 10 million dollars okay think like how many dogs would I need to walk and you just reverse the math into what you need right and then people need to hire and yeah exactly and then you start and then you start with the inputs because in the beginning the only inputs you have is going to be the content it's gonna be running the ad it's gonna be doing the work it's going to do the reach outs that says those are the inputs and then everything else is going to stem from that and then what will happen is if you have that the advertising machine on the front end to bring people in the bottleneck becomes your leading rather than the selling and the product you're eating right and so then the focus then becomes how do I use that same if you really want to get deep on those how do I use that same skill set of advertising and then shift it to my internal because I still have to do warm retracts I still have to run ads I still have to make content I still can have Affiliates or get referrals from my employees to get more team and so every business has two funnels you have the front end funnel to get your customers and the back in front of the gets your team and so as you crank this guy you need to crank this one and then that's how you can scale these things to the Moon without stopping right is it harder to get leads and sales or harder to build a powerful team with the right culture I think they're both hard and both easy for different people yeah you know what I mean like Layla naturally is very good at the back end funnel I mean she's so good at building culture but she has this thing that she's kind of spoken over me from a belief standpoint which is if you are a really good marketer a really good salesman a lot of them are like oh I'm not a good I'm not a good leader I'm not a good operator not a good whatever and she's like if you can sell all those people and influence all those people you can use that same skill set and just face internally to your team it was a nice belief shift for me or belief breaker for me I was like she's totally right and so to the point that you were making earlier like leading is selling and influencing a lot of it really comes down to being able to move people and being able to clearly communicate what you want why do you think it's so hard for people to overcome their limiting beliefs around money in general a lot of people were told things about the world that were not true and they take them as fact and so they're making their decision calculus off of something that is not true and so they're making conclusions off of false data and that so that's why they can't see it because what they're basing their assumptions on is false right but believing it for so long yeah so how do they change that belief when it's been baked in their psyche for decades yeah I think that the way that the biggest beliefs have been broken for me have been one of two ways reality proves me wrong or someone tells me a story and gives me evidence from their lives like I remember when I we went to a mastermind and I we were just starting out I was not making a ton of money um and the guy a guy got up there and he gave his little Spiel and he's like yeah you know we're making three or four hundred thousand dollars a month I don't really know what I'm doing I'm not really sure I like the business blah blah and the guy did not seem smart and you're like how is he doing this and it's funny you say that because my actual first thought was if he can do it I can do it right and so that was like he threw evidence like he reshaped my reality it's one of the most momentous thing I remember Layla and I both had the same takeaway because she was next to me when we both saw this guy do this like we walked out like dude if he can like we both immediately had the same conclusion like if he can do it we can do it and so I think that that's like how do you you either either have reality prove you wrong or someone else is that reality for you where they tell their story about hey I used to feel the same way I used to think this thing and then I will share my story so you don't have to have the scar yes so you don't have to give up five years of your life to learn this lesson I'll just give you the story so you don't have to have this car there's certain things I think we need to learn on our own and fail and you know and make mistakes on our own but there's a lot of things we can learn from other people being the youngest of four kids I watched you know my older siblings fail and succeed in their own ways as a model and say okay I don't want to make this same mistake I made other stupid mistakes but I didn't make certain mistakes that they had made and um and able to accelerate that time from the pain that I was going to feel by making the same mistakes yeah um I think you're going to make mistakes no matter what but I think that's seeing other people and learning this is why it's so important to have coaches mentors people that can can break the beliefs in you and tell you what you need to do if you think about human like the human race does it zoom out because I think it's a really interesting concept I was talking to um Caleb about Gary and I'm a competitive person yes I like you know thinking like Oh by the time I'm that age I'm going to be further I'm gonna you know what I mean like and it's it's it's lovingly right and he said this thing back to me that like it hit me right and he was like dude Gary didn't have Gary right he just had to do it on his own right and all of these and so the thing is is like a lot of us and myself included I get caught up in the like man these kids have it so easy you know blah blah blah right YouTube wasn't even around when I you know but the thing is if you ask most entrepreneurs what they want to do with their lives they say they want to make an impact on the world they want to make the world a better place but like making the world a better place what that looks like is it being easier for the next generation and so rather than lamenting the fact that the guys who are younger have it easier that was the point yes that was the like mission accomplished and so it Reef it reframed how I thought about being the greatest of all time because I think a lot of people have that goal to be the greatest I mean a lot of people have that goal but the more I thought about it the more I was like I can't have that goal because if I did my job then I have to have made people who are after me get there faster than I got there and so the mark of the success is that I'm not the greatest of all time but that other people who come after me are even better and so it really shifted my relationship with how I solve future Generations or sorry past Generations the guys who are older than me who are killing it and I used to think oh I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna beat them and if I look at my how much I'm worth at this at this age versus them like I just doing the math I should be further along than them by the time I'm their age and it was this kind of like different competition rather than this gratitude for like well of course I'm gonna be bigger than they are at their age I had them to help me they didn't have them to help them and so I'll I'll age up and we'll be multi-billionaire whatever it is right and then there's going to be a young whippersnapper who has need to help right who had me to help him out because I'm see you know we have guys who apply for acquisition.com who are in their 20s to 100 million a year right I'm like and that was that wasn't possible 50 years ago it just wasn't right right and so we think about like the human race in General on a macro perspective right you have like rather than seeing the people who who are older than you as the old dogs you have to to kick off right and biomaids play hard in the paint don't get me wrong um and the people the young whippersnappers behind you as you know resenting them for the fact that they got it easier it just flipped the script for me in terms of like I'm so glad grateful for these guys who came before me because they didn't have them right and then if these guys do eventually beat me right or or they're further along than I was at their age rather than lamenting them to protect my ego because what it really says is you're better than I am because if they're they're if they're making more money at a younger age than me then it means the better at business in some way than I was at that age that's that's just the fact of business right they're better than me at that age and to protect my ego I want to say they had it easier right but rather than right what does that do for you if you protect your ego as opposed to help others accelerate faster than you I think it just reframes it and so it takes the ego away from I need to crush these guys or I need to poke at why it's easier for them and instead say like it being easier for them is my purpose how can I say that my mission is to document and show the best practices building world-class companies and then not be pumped and I want someone to use the best practice of building world-class companies 10 years before I learned them to accelerate way past and so anyways that I just that was a frame of reference that completely shifted The Narrative for me in terms of competition I still am pushing as hard as I possibly can to transform my potential into reality um but it feels it feels different it feels lighter cool and I like it so anyways I just want to share because it was a cool breakthrough that I had recently yeah you just look a little lighter yeah I'd say emotionally if it's you lost a little weight too it's funny I just had uh Steve Young on who's a Hall of Fame uh quarterback in the NFL won multiple Super Bowls he was just on a couple days ago and he said back in the late 80s and I guess it was the 90s Bill Walsh the coach who was like he said three generations ahead of every other head coach at that time he had a a camera guy with him all the time documenting his processes and he would package it into these I guess vsh tapes and put him in a box and he would give it to all his assistant coaches and say I want you to learn these skills uh his offense was the West Coast Coast office so it was a far ahead of its time where most people just running the ball down you know down the middle and um so he gave away everything for free yeah and he said I want you guys to learn this and then come and challenge me yeah you know use my information and come and people he said years later some coaches would leave to become head coaches and they would compete in big games together sometimes we lose against these other coaches that he coached yeah and he loved it and he is still revered as a leader in the space because he was ahead of the time because he documented it and gave away the skills to his other coaches and I think that's really cool I mean you're not gonna be able to do this forever so you might as well leave some Legacy behind in that respect as well it puts the game above the player yes rather than putting the player above the game yeah and so like I think right now if Elon had a choice of having somebody else accomplish all the things that he is setting out to accomplish and not be him my hope my belief from everything that I have seen and witnessed of Elon is I think that he would be stoked and because it's Mission first rather than like you go first and so like Steve Young put the game of football and it consistently being elevated to be played at a higher level as more important than him because in three generations no don't remember him exactly right but the game will always have his fingerprint right and so like you can live alone in that way the same degree in the business game it's like we honor the game by playing to our absolute hardest and by and by doing our best and passing it on to the next Generation so anyways I love that stuff that stuff what is the vision for you now because when did we first have you on I can't remember it's a few months back yeah and we've hung out for dinner a couple times and I've seen you a few times but there's there's been like a transition in you in like three to four months you know there's been like an evolution already I'm hearing you say you're having realizations and recently and and before it seemed harder right and now it seems like there's something that's unlocked inside of you so I'm curious what is the business Vision that you have what's the number you want to reach yeah and personally for the business all these things yeah I know you've talked about being a billionaire it's just gonna take a matter of time when do you think being a billionaire will happen for you um I'd like to do five to seven for a billion I'd like to hit 10 and 10. that's uh that's what I would like to do I think that we can do that math wise based on kind of the inflow of deals that we have how like the returns they're getting um in general like I think we can do that um but the thing that like really drives me though is acquisition.com is the wealth machine that is behind Alex and Layla's media right and so I wouldn't be a very good business educator unless I had proof or evidence that I actually was good at business right so we obviously could just sit on The Laurels of the 3x that we had last year three exits we had last year but to me that's not like as crazy as this will sound it it's not super impressive you know what I mean at least for where I want to go um and so I want to have a billionaire multi-billion dollar thing because I think it would be so cool like how cool would it be if we if Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett and Elon Musk and all those guys had documented everything that they learned throughout that path all we get is these Snippets shareholder letters every once in a while and it's just like there's so little and they're gonna die and we're gonna lose it we're gonna lose all those lessons and so part of it that excites me is just calling my shop because I think um that always just like enlivens a little bit of the competition but I do believe from a mathematical standpoint we will get there so it's not to me it doesn't feel like a super big I'm not really pointing that far to the fence um but seeing the hordes the scores of businesses that are using the stuff in the books and the courses and YouTube and podcasts and you know Tick Tock and Instagram and Linkedin and use those and the message I get every day of like dude you help me go from a million to five million a year you help me go from you know quit my job and then start my dog walking business and now I'm doing you know six figures a month and like those stories I know that I will probably never meet most of them I will probably never work with the vast majority of them but the fact that it's happening just amps me up like it just gets me so lit that's cool and so the media has been really cool and new for me um but I like it and so I'm learning it and so it's just like it's a new thing that I get to learn and so I'm really loving that yes and then seeing the vision of where we're going in terms of what we're building on the acquisition.com side the companies that we're scaling there and the impact that they're having because many of them are also education businesses not all of them but like probably at probably about half um seeing that on both sides like us directly influencing through media and then the the actual wealth machine on both sides like I just see them both expanding that's cool and so I don't I had we were talking before this but it was like I saw a limit with gym launch Prestige Labs like at least my my vision was limited and that could have been me being younger whatever it is but like I don't feel like my vision is obstructed in terms of where this can go and so that is what amps me up a buddy of mine sold his company for a couple billion and he's been in a little bit of like a a rut since then yeah kind of interesting after people sell a lot of money why do you feel like they go into a depression or a funk after they sell a billion dollar company they lose the vision right like the vision like I think the vision is another word for Hope right it's hope for a better future that's what we're marching towards right and you basically give that away to someone right yeah in exchange for money right and then the Hope ended up healing you more than the money ever does but different conversation but the uh but he said this one thing to me and and it really resonated he's like I'm just looking for my next big bone to non and that visual for whatever reason like stuck to me and so I'm like I see a big bone to non knowing that I'll never chew through the entire bone but being pumped every day to just get a little bit further down the down the nub what happens if we don't have a vision for our lives I think you have less Direction and so you make less progress because you're not actually you can't make progress unless you have Direction because otherwise you're just moving so like you can only have direct like a vector right you know movement in a direction um if you know where you're trying to go and so it's like the first thing we have to do is figure out where we're trying to walk and then we can start walking there yes you said you want to be a billionaire in five to seven years so you kind of see the math playing out that way yeah let's say uh you were forced to do it in half the time yeah three years you were forced to be a billionaire yeah or some catastrophic event would happen yeah what would it take from you to reach the billion dollar goal in half the time what would you need to do differently and how would you need to think and act differently I would I would probably onboard more operators faster um that being said the current plan gets us there in like three years I say five to seven publicly because I want to give myself a little buffer I tend to be that way because like I I have probably a little bit different approach with goals like I want to hit every goal like I don't like missing goals and so for me um I don't like teaching myself or teaching other people that if I say something's going to happen it doesn't happen because some people like shoot for the moon think really like I think you absolutely should think really big but then like okay how do I make a goal that like and then I and then once I have that goal do the activities that make it unreasonable not to hit it like if I hadn't hit this goal to your point what level of activity would I have to do that it would be unreasonable it would be unacceptable based on how I see reality that I would not achieve it if you're like I want to learn sales I would say it's un it's unreasonable that if you get on 10 000 sales calls you will not be good at sales be unreasonable okay how how long will it take me to get on Ten Thousand sales right a lot of time yeah a couple years yeah right a couple years you could do it okay so then I can that's a goal you know what I mean like I could set that and if I do the activities it would be unreasonable that I'm not realistically you probably get there in half the time right because you're probably pretty good at sales even if your first two three thousand calls right you're probably pretty good and so with this um we would uh I mean what we're doing now is is the only thing I could probably do is take on bigger companies um that would be the the shortest path um but I feel I feel confidently like in terms of how much we're stretching um I feel good about it like it would take I feel like I'd be taking on more risk to hit that if that makes sense um if you had to do it yeah and half the time with less risk yeah with lesser what would you need that's a good question um what would need to happen What would need to shift inside of you yeah I would I would need more people faster I mean it would just be how many people would you I would spend more aggressively on Talent acquisition so I would basically go into like from the debt perspective right so rather than think of the businesses or like the portfolio companies as cash flowing towards me I would probably take all of the excess that is there um and plow it into Talent earlier so right now I live on a certain amount of cash flow Etc from you know just from the portfolio companies um and I probably have gotten accustomed to that and so I don't like cutting below that so if I had to then I would say all of that money rather than going to Alex is going to go into more Talent team bigger faster yeah exactly and then they would amplify and then they would be able to we would increase our rate you would have less money in the short term over a couple years but then you would have way more money in the long term totally so it's a comfort level yeah it is it is not as we're talking about yeah you knowing that you like to have a certain amount of cash flow every month but you've got a bunch of cash in the bank too I know it's totally it's uh it's 100 illogical if you had to do it though let's say you had to do it in two and a half years let's say we're gonna do tomorrow you know if you had to do two and a half years because you need time too yeah yeah you know you know five to seven you know they're doing two and a half and you had to stretch and get extremely uncomfortable where you're not going broke obviously you got money yeah how many people would you need to hire yeah and how much less cash flow would you need to have I mean I would eliminate my cash flow all your cash yeah I mean if I was really going I mean I was going ham on it I would just I would have no cash flow to me I mean I don't need you have money right yeah so I would eliminate all the cash flow to me and um it would a hundred percent of the money would go into the team the only thing that would go faster than that is that I drain my own net worth to further fund yeah exactly go your I would be incurring financial debt to more quickly build the Enterprise value of the asset so I'd be transferring money into the asset fast it's like you incur different types of like if you incur no debt when you start a business you do always incur that you incur management debt you incur technical debt time debt 100 and so people like all businesses start with debt it just depends on what type of debt you're dealing with right and so if you don't have money then that's fine you just incur other debt like even when we think about how we built how we're building the whole code right now at acquisition.com like I am building more fixed costs in the infrastructure right now because of what I want it to be in a year two years and so if I wanted to run it like we already do reinvest obviously a big percentage but I would just reinvest more and be okay with it yeah I just I've just grown accustomed to this and it's funny because a buddy of mine I had dinner with last night it's always coming for 250 million dollars and we were talking about how cash flow is a very regular reinforcer from a from a behavioral standpoint like you get this feedback directly every month of how you're doing right and so you as entrepreneurs or at least for me I've been always a high cash flow entrepreneur like I've never been like a reinvest every dollar into the business I like making money for my businesses um but I've that has become a trait that I have learned to look at as my barometer every month like how am I doing how am I doing how am I doing and so it would have to so to the question of like what would have to change in me I would have to change how I measure success and then I'd have to reinforce the behavior in a different way I'd have to measure it differently right and so is the cash flow coming from all the businesses you guys are in partnership with you get a percentage of cash flow they get a percentage of business owner as well so you have a certain amount of cash flow uh every month that's coming in from all these businesses right but you also have a ton of money in the bank yeah so one of them you could yeah I could take some money out somewhere you can still keep the cash flow coming and take the money from the the same I'm so security driven it's funny because I was having this conversation with this guy and so the guy sold us company for 250 million dollars for the last 10 years he's lived on 70 000 a year 70 000 a year and so he was staying at the Marriott and I was staying at a nicer hotel and I was like dude you got money now yeah you got money now and he's like I know he's like but I just it's not funny for years I would sit middle seat you know back of the airplane cheapest flights for years even when I had seven figures and a year coming in yeah but because I was so used to I was like I don't want to lose my mind you know it's like I want to make sure that I can live like this I was still sleeping up friends couches when I travel to events it was like any way to save money and it's not until the last couple years was like okay my back hurts I need to like have some like leg room right I'm a big guy but for years it was just like how do I save and use that money to reinvest in going to the event yeah buying the ticket to the conference or investing in coaching that will accelerate the revenue long term yeah it's so funny you say that because I think and this this would be just off the cuff here but um many of the people that I know who have tremendous amounts of money have huge fears around being poor and so it's just as an interesting thought like a lot of people who don't have money see people who have money as thinking differently and they might in that they are more uncomfortable being poor than you are like it is more painful for them than it is for you it might be I'm just being really it might be why some are stingy too without money I'm not going to spend this five dollars I'm going to keep it you know they're very stingy with all of it two nights ago I was we were out with to dinner with a guy who just got valued at a billion right and it's all cash flow it's not one of these software things like it's off like he's getting yeah like he's making real money crazy money and he's like I'm not going to that gym he's like free for equal and I said I'm gonna pay 200 a month for gym membership it's it's a different perspective now I'm not saying I'm that way you know what I mean like I'm okay spending on gym membership that's fine for me but like everyone has their own things and like there are these behaviors like he got the other guy who had the 250. he got to that point because he lived he he squeezed everything out of his business which made the business so valuable and then he was able to sell it but like the the billion dollar guy was saying he's like you know what they don't tell you about when you sell your business because he's sitting next to the guy with the 250 right and he's like the moment you sell your business he's like you have no cash flow and so he felt that too he's like what are you gonna do he's like you're gonna take the money and then what are you gonna do you're gonna try and buy more cash flow because you got to replace the cash for you with the business real estate assets you're gonna do something it's like my bother he's like I'll just keep it and so he doesn't have any intentions of selling and so it was an interesting lesson for me too because like we obviously got rid of our cash flow asset when we sold uh all three last year but you got a lot more money but you don't have the money cash coming right because then it looks like this this finite asset the business goes on forever in your mind at least right and so it gives you this illusion of control this illusion of security and me personally most people wouldn't believe this when I hear it but like I'm very risk-averse and so I probably need like what's the core changes that I need to have I probably need to be a little bit more of a risk taker um than I am like I tend to always take the lowest risk path uh when I can even even the idea of like when I quit entrepreneurship or so I want to quit my job to start entrepreneurship it was because I knew that the path that I was on was guaranteed not to get to me where I want so I had a zero outcome and that so this one even though it was lower like I had a low chance of success the other one had a hundred percent failure guarantee and so that so it felt like the lower risk option for my long-term goals to quit my job and become an entrepreneur for that reason and so you know people are like I'm really risk-averse I'm like so am I like I have hoard money like I do any of the money from the exits no it's not just sitting in the bank nothing we started working the next day we didn't even take it we didn't take a day off yeah we literally sold wire hit and we started working on acquisition.com the next day let's say you had to um put your start putting that uh cash flow every month into other things team resources whatever it is and that wasn't coming in and uh you know maybe let's call it 100 Grand a month was coming in with cash flow I don't know how much it is but let's just say that is going into hiring team and other things to support you getting to the billion in two and a half years what would need to shift in inside of you after three months of feeling no cash flow come in to stack your bank account in order for you to be okay with it to get to that billion quicker I would just have to be more secure just realistically like I I use what does that mean is that an internal I use cash flow from businesses as evidence to the fact that I'm not a failure and so I use I I've always like it it has been easier for me to change my conditions than to change who I am and so I have used my material success and accolades to quiet the voices of not being good enough and so for that like me having that if I had that little voice that peeps up it's like hey look at that I'm like okay no no I'm I'm okay I'm not I'm not that bad it's money it just came in everything yeah right and so so I'd have to I'd really have to re-engineer the conversation I have with myself around how I value myself um because then people are like well if you you know if if everything disappeared you know how would you feel about yourself I like to think that I would be uncomfortable and then I would change my views but I haven't needed to do that yet and so my effort goes elsewhere right but that's what probably would have to happen in order for me to make that change is it a what is the thing that is you're afraid of inside of yourself is it a self-worth thing is it a self-love thing is it a belief that you're not good enough it would definitely be a good enough thing for sure yeah it's just like maybe maybe maybe I'm not as good as I think I am maybe maybe everything that I've been putting on media maybe my book maybe all these things are actually not true and I don't know what I'm talking about right because clearly I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not making any money like so these things have been that's why acquisition.com is the other half like the the actual businesses of acquisition.com compared to the media of acquisition.com it is the other half because it's the evidence of the fact that the things that I say are true because those are getting results 100 and they're growing right and so that way I feel bulletproof when I make when I make the content when I make the book when I write the stuff like you know there's a zillion people who are like you suck none of this is true whatever and for me it rolls off my back because I have evidence right I'm like no no it is true and here's how but if I didn't have that I would probably have to it's because I don't know what the right call is there because if I didn't have the evidence it would be hard for me to say you're wrong because I don't have any proof that they're wrong but it's evidence now right and so I have this evidence so how do you change the belief inside that you're good enough with the years of evidence now the question is like I have I built a billion dollar thing yet you know what I mean um yeah of course no but like it's it's a fun it's a it's a fun convo and it's great because I it's this was wonderful Lewis because I get to see my own limiting beliefs um and just for everybody who's listening like everyone deals with this you know what I mean like at every at every level you're dealing with this of like feeling of inadequacy you know feeling not good enough feeling you're not smart feeling like you don't work hard whatever it is like I have that stuff all the time because you think that the external circumstance is gonna is gonna solve that and I would say that it does to a degree it becomes a crutch right but then you have this crutch and then you just tie yourself Worth to the ACT later the thing rather than steal yourself and maybe I need to do more work on that who knows if you could overcome one thing or eliminate one thing internally to become a better leader to yourself to to quiet the noise it will help you take a risk in a different way not talking about lose all your money but totally take the risk to help you accelerate this yeah and you don't have to buy in a way but I just believe that it's possible for you to do that yeah I believe you can be a billionaire in two and a half years I appreciate it if you that's the goal if you shift whatever inside of you is holding you back uh to get to that space what would be that one thing to eliminate or overcome internally to make it happen is Need for external validation 100 the need for external validation I started the question why do you need external validation I mean I think part of it's so ingrained in us if you think about us as kids right like how do you how do you Orient yourself with the world you get reinforced or punished at all at all phases directly indirectly but you get reinforced or punished and the things that you get reinforced you do more of the things you get punished you less of right like that's just how how we how we learn Behavior how we learn to function in society Right Touch the thing ah it hurts it's that's we got punished okay you know you uh your parent tells you to sit down and be quiet and eat and you learn to sit down and shut up and eat and then we wonder why adults don't move because we're told to sit when we're running around right we learn at school sit down and be quiet 100 and we and we wonder why uh we eat so much when the reward for everything we did when we were a kid was food right we wonder these things so the reason external validation is so hard at least for me is because it's how I learned everything is because external validation gave you know gave me the the directional guidance of what's good and what's not and then as you get older it's where am I going to get that validation from and so I would say that my external validation um comes is still 100 there it just comes from different sources so I'm more selective on Whose validation I want so how much external validation do you need in order to overcome this belief to go all in and do it in half the time yeah no I think I I just I need to be able to validate myself and that's fundamentally I think having Titus said this he said like if you need someone else's if you need he has this quote it's so good but it's basically like you need to be able to give you don't need to swear to somebody else you should be able to swell your swear to yourself and bear witness to yourself because your word should be good enough so you need to eliminate external validation right from you feeling good enough probably yeah it's probably that like obviously you need it's good to have feedback in life so I think that's why it's it's also difficult for some in general because it's not eliminate or have more of it's to what degree and from whom and about what and so then it gets a little bit more complex but even using those different lenses I think it's it's good to unpack it for anyone who's listening which is like okay Layla said this so this is not mine um but most times when we're afraid of something it's not actually like this amorphous crowd that we're afraid of it's like one or two people's opinion like it's your dad or it's your whatever it is right and you're worried about what they're gonna think and they're not even thinking about you but you think they're thinking about it they're thinking about their dad whatever it is right and so she restated this earlier on to Mike like when we were together five years ago she was like are you and she'd like me name the person it wasn't my dad it was somebody else for this particular thing she's like are you gonna let this guy stop us from getting what we want wow and it was like when I saw it it was like looking in front of me I was like she's like what if this guy hates you and thinks you're terrible is that a worthy enough reason to still keep going and I was like yeah just like them let's go you know what I mean and so she was very good with that what do you need to say to yourself every day to believe in to believe you're good enough yeah you could say one thing to you that no one else needed to hear but you needed to hear it from you what would that be I don't know if it would be a saying thing I don't think it'd be like an affirmation I think it's just a belief what would the belief be yeah I mean fundamentally the belief would just have to shift that that doing this is enough validation for me not the results right and that's I mean fundamentally that's always the the goal is that you can you can detach the the doingness from the result I think what I've been able to do has been to extend the time Horizon between the doing this and the result but not necessarily fully eliminated I'm patient in turn in that I can continue to do things for very long periods of time before seeing a payoff but if I were able to truly eliminate it I think that would be kind of like a Next Step then again it's that borderline on Insanity because if you never get feedback on sometimes you're like maybe I should change directions you'll keep getting feedback though because you're creating and taking action you know the more you do that you'll have more businesses you'll be acquiring you'll be creating more content and everything will be growing at the same time yeah yeah right 100 I love seeing you you know go through this process internally because I think I'm open to it I just want to win you know what I mean like I just want to be better what does winning look like it's achieving the potential it's taking all this raw potential the the the line in the Bible that always scared me the most was to whom much is given much is expected and so for me I always felt like I was given a lot you know what I mean like I I was born in America right off the bat I was born as a guy I have insane genetics like from from that perspective I was six pack when I was 15. um I have a pretty high processing load like I can I can usually I do okay with complex problems um I was I was bilingual at basically at Birth because Paris talked to me different language so that gave me good language abilities and so it's like these are these are all things that were given to me right and and I was born into like uh a d you know from a from a money standpoint a decently wealthy family right um not you know Ultra billion but like never worried about food or shelter or anything like that right and so these are all the things that were given to me and so to me I'm like man much is expected right and not necessarily that that's you know God whatever just I expect a lot of myself because I see so much potential um and I want to train like by the time I die I would like to have nothing left in my potential tank um and it just all have been transformed into into my reality yeah so that's what winning looks like what do you feel like missing in your life not a lot I'm just like really right off the Bell like I really like I'm I'm amped right now I'm super pumped I love what we're doing I love the businesses that we're helping um I love the mission I like doing this um not not a lot I mean though if I got into things that were missing it would be like super tactical like I want I want these these roles are ones that I won't build and the company you know I mean like it'd be stuff like that it wouldn't be anything else right if you enjoyed that interview then I know you'll love what we have coming up right now so what do you look for when you're you're acquiring a business or investing in a business that has cash flow and what businesses have the best cash flow so this will be relevant for everybody in the audience and also hits on what we were talking about with the well thing like wealthy people choose higher leverage opportunities and we went over what leverage was earlier um the best businesses especially in an inflationary period are businesses that have low Capital expenses okay um and that's because if you have some examples yeah so I'll give you opposite examples to make and then I'll drive it so the something that does have high Capital expense which is what you would not want to get into would be like stuff that has lots of inventory stuff that has lots of supply chain lots of manufacturing heavy equipment things where you have to constantly buy more stuff in order to increase capacity right a low Capital expense business there are things like Services right Services uh you know digital businesses uh software is mixed because sometimes the development team can be considered Aspen so it really depends on how you build the dev team but the idea is that if you can produce 10 times more units without phenomenally changing the the cost basis then you will have a business that has lower Capital yes and so that's what you like and most of those types of businesses produce more cash flow have more pricing power and so I mean that's what Warren Buffett invests in right it's high you know like um insurance Geico right there's no Capital it's risk they're literally assessing risk error it's math like the business is math like if you really think it's just math it's the entire business of insurance and what's crazy as a side note is that a great way of figuring out the highest leveraged businesses that exist is looking the business has been here the longest um insurance has been here since before World the world wars right Bank the banks have been around forever right JP Morgan was in the 1800s wow right the the biggest insurance companies they're all 100 plus years old they're found in the 1800s and so when you have a business that's lasted that long to me that's a great breadcrumb of like this thing has to print money because it means that they were able to still keep making money through Wars through famines through professions all of it and they were still able to keep going and so I think that when people are like when you look at all the like many of the biggest businesses that exist they have phenomenal gross margins I don't want to get to like you know business termy here but like the gross margin is how much incremental cost it is to make a new an extra widget right and so like a pill for example cost a hundred million dollars to make the first pill and then every pill after that costs a penny right sure and so the gross margin on the pill is very high because if they sell each pill for ten dollars they cost them a penny those are great margin and most people who are small business owners or people are trying to get into small business price like small business owners they say Well it cost me a dollar I'll sell it for three or I'll sell it for two but if you're already starting on like a 50 gross margin it's very very hard to make money because think about like that's at a hundred you're already at half and then you have the rest of everyone else you have to pay off that extra fee yes very hard to do and so like I'll give a couple rules of thumb if anyone wants this but like if you're if you're building a service based business for us I would I by all means I have to get gross margins above 80 which means five times the cost of goods so if it cost me a hundred dollars a month the minimum I'll charge is 500 right and so that also gets you to think about business differently which is not necessarily even how much going to charge but how can I provide value and make it cost as little to me how can I be as efficient as possible and if you think about what technology does over time is technology takes something that's valuable and makes the cost of delivering it less and so that's what happens is a lot of people are able to have access to things that were once only for the wealthy but now become for the common men because the cost basis decreases as a result of technology and so technology as we see it you know like we can create technology but you can also have technological breakthroughs just through process in your own business it's like and that's we're niching down and being very specific about the Avatar becomes important especially when you're starting because then you can productize the service because if you're doing everything custom which most people they're starting out do it becomes really difficult to become efficient and it's really difficult to go fishing a very little margin right or you have to charge huge fees which most people aren't too afraid to do and so the flip side is if I do the same thing over and over and over again I will get better and more efficient at it and I will know how to do it faster and quicker and cheaper and I specifically choose this type of customer so that I can have more margin because there are millions of even this one specific type of Avatar and then from there I can take the gross margin the extra cash that I have and I can hire the best people I can invest in marketing but when you have such little marginal work off of it's very difficult to make money yeah it's so hard to grow that's interesting what do you think it's going to be harder or easier to become wealthy and start businesses over the next few years with everything that's happened in the last couple years and where this whole great you know 2030 agendas coming and all these different things are happening the war and all the you know there might be another pandemic whatever it might be do you think it's gonna be easier or hardier to make money I think technology in general makes things easier for most people I mean because at the end of the day it's just it's it's increased access for more people yeah and so I think to reach more people yeah at any moment yeah if I were just to use history as a as a as a guide businesses only gotten easier to get into it's got more competitive and easier to get into and so I think that what happens is just the arena gets bigger so you got more Gladiators so it's more competitive but more people can walk in and so I think but it but for the world in general the more people you have fighting to make amazing products and services the better it is for society yeah but the downstream effect of that is that in a capitalist system it is a winner take all for most for for many not all but for many businesses and just by the nature of it that does create social disarray and it's just but the thing is is like it's still the best system that we have we don't have a perfect system because the other other systems remove incentive and Humanity doesn't buy incentive yeah even the survivorship bias like every MLM in the world exists off the fact that there's that one guy who makes 500 000 a month selling shake mix and the other five million shake mix producers are like someday why do they need to get there yeah and it's just survivorship bias right but that's why the whole capitalist machine works so I think they're like figuring out some sort of a you know creative way like my I put this in my on my YouTube channel um but like the idea of having 100 death tax I thought was like take down like the income taxes and all this stuff but like the thing that creates the conglomerate at the top is that if let's say let's say I have a hundred billion dollars right that's interesting and if I have 500 billion I'm probably pretty good at managing it because that's why I have 100 million so let's set a game for holding it you're you're not using it yeah let's say I gained 15 on my assets so I make 15 billion dollars right on my assets it is so hard for anyone to to make that up in a lifetime with just the one and like that might be my kid who gains 15 and the next year he gains 20 like and so it the compounding effect of the wealth is a cross-generational is where I think it gets crazy but if there were 100 death tax because obviously this is aligned with my belief that all of it disappears anyways um so this is obviously Alex's two sons of the world um but it's just basically dramatically lower the income income taxes I think income taxes should be like as close to zero as possible and then make the capital gains taxes higher because that's only going to really affect the wall if you really want to think about it right because people who if you make with your hands awesome right if you make on your assets that's the stuff that has no has infinite leverage with with time so if you trade the most expensive thing for your money then I feel like you should get taxed less than if you trade no time for your money sure this is like a weird thought experiment what do you think would happen if it was 100 death tax I think that billionaires would become far more giving and as they approach the end they know they can't keep it and I also think it would change the way the game is played because if you know because this is the analogy that I I'd like I I haven't heard it anywhere else I think it's mine um but if you were to imagine Life as a poker game right we everybody you know grows up from 18 years old they can go into the casino they get a check for 21 whatever age you can be and then you get it you get a chip and then you sit down at the table and your delt cards right there's all the other players around the table and depending on the cards are dealt and the skill you have you begin to amass chips right and the difference between this fictitious you know casino and the casino of life is that in the real world you can amass chips you cash out you have a big lot of money you walk out the door but in the casino of life when the Grim Reaper Taps you and says you it tells you it's time you have to get out from the table but your chips stay on the table and they push them to the middle to be distributed by everybody else and continue to get played for and that's when you realize that it was a fake game with rules that never mattered to begin with and so I bought this piece of land in Austin it was this huge it was like a big really really nice lot and I remember thinking to myself like and then I thought to myself I was like well the guy before me thought the same thing and the guy before him thought the same thing and the guy before him thought the same thing and I was like and we've literally still been looking at the exact same piece of dirt and it's just been cycled even if it was father to son even if it was family to whatever like the like death tax is everyone 100 percent like even if the government doesn't death taxes everybody 100 and then time taxes your money to Infinity because like people are like I want to build a legacy it's like that's even just with like within Americana you know I mean within the times of America but like you go a thousand years and there's never been the same superpower over a thousand year period right and so we're like I'm going to leave a legacy it's like but that would be like you know let's say an ancient Greek saying I'm gonna leave a legacy for my kids when like they might change their currency by you know XYZ or and there's so many things and I've had a real experience with this because my great great grandfather was a ruler in Iran which is where we're from we got uh kicked out because we were low to the shop back in the day which is why my dad came to the U.S and so despite that my great grand great grandfather um had like 400 wives ruler very very well really yeah very very wealthy different time different different culture very very well he's a ruler right yeah yeah all the money all the women all everything literally a ruler right and it doesn't matter and here I am I'm not even that many generations separated from him right even that you don't have all that wealth you don't have that land yet right and so like the idea that we're going to somehow like because the desire for legacy is the desire to cheat death like that's what it stems from it's like we don't want to die we want to last forever so we want to make something that is impermanent and so we fool ourselves into thinking that the accolades and the material success and the books we write whatever are going to last forever and they're probably not right and so like I mean the sun's gonna disappear at some point right like if we don't do anything before then like at the very least that's gonna happen and so if that is the inevitable outcome I think it shifts the way people think and I think that's when you start changing I mean Tony robstock like global global belief systems and that's why if someone like adopts new religious belief like everything changes because the reasons they do and the way they believe the world Works changes and so I think that if they did do 100 death tax it would be a really interesting way to see the downstream effects of how it changed the way the players played the game what do you think would happen if all the billionaires started Distributing their wealth sooner I think or would they be as hungry to be and driven to push and build and innovate yes to generate the wealth if they knew I got to give this away anyways quickly I think they would well I think it's because it's I think it's I think I'm going to say something that might sound bad but um I think winners win because of who they are and so I think it's like sales guys like you can have an incentive or a comp plan they just want to win but they are sales people and if I get on the phone I want to sell because of who I am not because the comp the cop is the ticket to get me to say yes to the deal but it will not change my activity I will do it because I love to sell right and so I think billionaires get there because they love the game like you don't get to a billion without just because you obviously don't need it for you you stop needing it for you millions and millions ago right and so you do it just because you love the game what I do think of the reason that I I like that solution is because uh Elon Musk said this but uh private Enterprises 10 times as efficient at Capital allocation compared to the government right so every dollar that private private Enterprise spends it's 10 times more efficient and so it is like if if we were to death tax 100 so whatever you accumulate while you're alive it just goes back like and the thing is it's not that it would go back into the system through the government it would if you were lazy but most people knowing the government was going to take it the less efficient vehicle at the end of your life you would then start thinking about how can I allocate this money efficiently and so what I think what would happen is you'd create far more Ingenuity and Innovation around social Enterprise um before they die solving problems knowing that the wealth would eventually disappear so like it's more there's this backstop that no one wants to hit and so I think what happened is they would change their behavior before hitting the backside I don't think a lot of people just be dumping their bill into the government I think just knowing that they had to would then just trigger them to yeah yeah that would be you know hey that's Alex's two cents of the world which is obviously different what's uh you just had a big exit right last year what was that for how much it was 46 points 46 million so when that enters your account yeah what did you expect what happened what did happen and what can you teach other people about what they should expect to happen when they have a big exit so I will say that I I did not feel the money I did feel the loss of cash flow because I had this you know I measured myself off cash flow for since now you don't have any right you got a big chunk yeah and then no money coming in every month so I actually felt and I probably still still feel horror now than I did before the exit that's interesting because the cash flow's going down now I I know that acquisition.com is going to be I think significantly bigger than sure than those companies were um but in the interim I definitely did not feel any better after that um I am happy that I did it because I do think I'm in the right you know vehicle doing what we're doing now making the books making the YouTube channels the the twitters the social medias all of them but the cash flow is what I felt and because I'd taken dividends my whole life the amount of money that we got out was pretty much about what we already had anyways right so it was not life changing in any way um it didn't change how I lived at all um like not at all we didn't we didn't have any big like what are you gonna buy I was like well I could you know I'm happy already yeah I could buy 100 Lambos before the sale you know what I mean like that wasn't good and I never bought them in and I never did so like you know because I I don't get a lot of out of that um what else was different losing losing the team is hard yeah um because when you sell a company you sell the you sell the people like that's something that people yeah but you sell you sell the organism you sell the system the people yeah the processes and everything 100 and so that was that was hard because there's definitely times now that we're building acquisition.com where I'm like man I wish I had so and so oh I already taught this person everything I'd like to have to do it again so yeah there is a but there's also some level of beauty to it because now that I'm doing acquisition.com um I have a different appreciation for what I'm doing because every other time that I've started something it has been from a place of lack it has been from like well this is what's going to not make me bore you know what I mean like the gyms was all about that and then I lost it all so the second time was all about that again wow so this time I'm starting not like that and I know what it got like before we sold the companies last year I spent basically 12 months not doing anything because I wasn't required in the business I could truly it ran and so I had a lot like it was very impressive exactly it was very depressing for me what happens if we don't have a purpose I mean you you find one yeah you know what I mean and so for me but you're in a depressed state even though you have I mean I'm sure you're fine but you were emotionally mentally like what am I doing every day exactly I've never go to the gym for so long right can I go out to dinner yeah what else are you gonna eat every meal I want I can travel okay now what after three months of that there's about submission yeah some purpose right even though you have the money yeah your safety you have everything yeah security but it wasn't fulfilling a hundred percent and so that was that was 12 straight months and it was because we were going through a sales process so you can't start new initiatives because I'm in the middle of a sale um and you don't want to like make any massive new hires and so you just basically have to just like maintain and the whole time you're wondering I hope this deal goes through because if it doesn't then you just wasted a year just doing nothing and then you might have to do it again so it was this it was it was a super super it was one of the most emotionally tiring years of my life because it's always like this is about to happen it's not going to happen the deal's on the table the deal's off the table like there's all of this drama that's happening constantly and I also one of the things that sucked that I didn't like was as soon as I had made the decision to sell um or that I was going to entertain the idea of selling and this is a mistake I made everything became about satisfying fictitious Overlord of like what will they think about this move well how they value this and I started thinking whatever acquirer who whatever private Equity was going to buy the company like how are they going to see this are they going to Value this or is this a waste and so what happened was I started making the private Equity buyer my customer and that was a mistake and so I think that like at the end of the day and now that and what happened was interestingly we started the sales process because my wife and I were beat down like we were just very tired of you know we've been in gyms for almost 10 years you know at that point not to say that that's not a good thing but like whatever we it we won this course we were ready we were ready but in order for us to sell it and make it a sell business we had to fix all the things right and so we took a year before the year so two years exactly yeah so it took two years basically one year to like fix everything and then one year to sell it but the thing is it's just like when you have a house that you like fix up before you get ready to sell it by the time you're about to sell you're like I love this this is amazing I just fixed all these all the problems I fixed now I've got more cash flow it's more efficient yeah exactly and so it was again a very like mind trip experience where I'm like well maybe I should just hold it as an asset that just produces cash flow yeah overall Uncle Warren never sells anything like selling is what makes you rich keeping is what makes you wealthy like you know I'm like I've got all these kind of things in the back of my mind but I think ultimately like I think no matter what we had done we would have been fine but I think for me right now I think the likelihood that the choice if I had two alternate realities which I don't have to play in I think that the choice will ultimately yield more impact for more people I would not have the attention to do acquisition.com and the media stuff that we're doing right now I wouldn't be here right I wouldn't maybe focused on your gyms yeah or the yeah exactly on those companies that were in that in that portfolio and acquisition.com would still be a side thing but it probably wouldn't be the main thing um whereas now it is 100 of my attention and the companies are killing it and I feel renewed when I launched School of greatness 10 years ago I remember saying I'm going to do this for one year because I I wish I had access to this I wish this was a thing that I could go listen to yeah in the world to teach me yeah and I'm not going to try to make money like I'm gonna do it for a year yeah all in but I'm not going to try to make money I don't want to make money I mean if the money came great but it wasn't my intention it was just to how can I create the best content to serve people on the things that I wish I would have learned in school growing up yes the school of greatness yeah and after one year I was like man this thing's really starting to take off yeah you know but it wasn't based on how do I make as much money totally it was how do I create something that can really make a lasting change yeah and that intention is what's made me sustainable for 10 years loving the process totally so when people come from a place where I'm here you say when they come from a place of that intention of service or because this needs to be in the world it's art art exists not to do something it exists to exist right it's like no one says why did you paint that it's like I said needed to come out I didn't have to express it exactly and so I think that if people chose their businesses that way I think and don't be wrong I'm all about making money like by all means go get your back you know as much as you can Yeah by all means but I think that what it does is it ends up freeing you to then make your real impact because then you can start the whatever the next thing and hopefully your first thing is that thing but realistically it probably isn't and all you have to do is look at every entrepreneur that's really wealthy the amount of graveyard businesses they have in their back right right and so like right now if you're listening and you're like I'm not sure if this is the perfect business idea let me just save you the time it's not because look at every other person who has been Ultra successful they have 10 failed business ideas so just like just start so you can just start notching off the Bad businesses right but extending the time Horizon I think only happens if you do shift the intention through which you're building it or you're just unbelievably self-disciplined but I think it's easier to just like start at it with the right heart because uh small changes but I think it'll be worth it is that the reason that most people aren't successful in my opinion is that they sacrifice Global benefit for local benefit and that happens in all areas of life you eat the piece of cake because you have an acute local benefit versus the global benefit of a six-pack that lasts for a very long time or Better Health Etc right and the instant gratification as opposed to delayed gratification exactly and I just I like saying Global I just like saying local versus global because it it happens in an organization for example sales guys don't want to put the notes in the thing because it's a pain in the butt to put the notes in the CRM but Finance needs the notes customer service needs the votes success needs to know like all of these other departments need those notes for all the other things that we're going to do and so it's a local cost but for a global benefit and so I think if people were able to delay that immediate gratification which is like this is the nature of success I think they're responding man there was this study that was done I can't remember it but it's a marshmallow test or the other okay God I can talk about the marshmallow test okay so fun fun one with that with the marshmallow test is measuring how long they delay for the marshmallow so at what point does it not make sense if they say you can get one because because they like everyone simplifies the experiment which is like if I give you a marshmallow one now or you can get two later right but what if two is in a year yeah you're like I don't care I'll take the one now right so then the next question I would have is like if you were to test kids and then say at what point the global versus local crosses would be and then track the kids who had the longest marshmallow waiting period because then you could measure how long the most successful probably a life yeah really interesting just total side note but the three things that I think were in common of the ultra successful were inflated sense of self as in they thought that they like they deserved big things they wanted to go after big things they believed in themselves right inferiority never being good enough and impulse control those are the three factors of the most successful they like when they did a common factors analysis like these people think they believe that they can achieve all this amazing stuff and then it it's just it's an amazing Paradox because at the same time they think they're not good enough and they are insecure about whether they they can achieve it and they have impulse control and so it's like if you have a plan yeah right and they just they and they stay focused on the thing and what I like I'd say the biggest breakthroughs that I've had I think that will create a lot of the wealth that we will have in the future is is really a deep understanding of how long long is and shooting with the intention of like I'm only bringing this up because my YouTube guy said it he's like I've never had somebody who actually started I was like we'll see what we do in five years I was like We'll measure that and he was like no one has literally ever said that to me I was like as long as I see progress I'm good because it wants results in like two months yeah yeah like if we're making if we're going this way I'm cool I don't need to like that's good enough for most people if if they could extend the time rise because like I'll give you another hack you can know how wealthy someone is based on the time Horizons they speak in give me an example so if someone's talking about how they're trying to make you know make money this today hey let me hold 20 for today you know how you know how poor they are I have to say poor like you know how poor now right if someone's talking about what they're going to make this week or this month or this quarter or this year or this decade think about how different the people are who are talking in those time Horizons and so I think that if we can shift the time Horizon that we think in then we gain more leverage over our time which we then know we will compound into money because I think if you can Master the time you match them that's good the more I I learned the more I realized I was lied to like we're taught to go to school to get a degree to get a job so we can then get a job and climb the corporate ladder but wealthy people don't do that wealthy people are not working to climb the corporate ladder they're working to own the corporate ladder I didn't even realize that you could do that

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 3,636,871

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: JPCJEtMXOu0

Length: 90min 28sec (5428 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022