I've got three boxes here. One of them

contains $1,000. One of them contains

$10,000. And one of them contains

$100,000. And you three are the avengers

of entrepreneurship on the internet. So,

you're going to tell me what you would

do with that amount of money to build a

scalable business.

>> So, do I get to give the money? Is that

how this works?

>> Okay. So, I would three highly

successful entrepreneurs with three very

different perspectives. This is the

ultimate master class in creating and

scaling your businesses to make

millions. There's two paths to making

money quickly if you don't have any. And

the first path is go find the best

entrepreneur and go work for them. Learn

as much as you can.

>> Totally agree. Like Kim Kardashian was

Harris Hilton's assistant and she

learned the playbook for being famous.

And then she took it to a new level.

>> And then the second way is high risk but

highest reward. Go do it yourself.

>> And the first business that you start,

you're going to be learning the game of

business even more than you're learning

the business that you're doing. Things

like if you wait 8 seconds after you ask

someone to buy, you close 30% more

sales. And there are actual studies now

that show that if I'm a woman, you make

more money if you do one thing. You wear

makeup, which is wild.

>> And what about making content?

>> Building a content empire that builds

your business. This is brand new to a

lot of people. And so a lot of creators

online don't think about how do I

monetize on top of this,

>> right? And I can name some Tik Tokers

with 50 plus million followers that have

had failed launches because they have

views but they have zero influence. And

in order to create influence, there's

four things. So number one is

>> okay so let's go on to simple actionable

frameworks.

>> So I have a framework in order to raise

money.

>> I have a framework for pitching

>> and I have one that can increase sales

by 20 to 40%.

>> And then if you want to know if your

business is going to make you money or

not we use the moat strategy

>> and there's a lot more. So let's go

through all of this.

[Music]

Daniel, Cody, Alex, I feel like I have

waited a long time to have this

conversation with you three because in

my mind, you three are the avengers of

entrepreneurship on the internet. And

for very different reasons, you do very

different things. You have very

different perspectives. You run very

different businesses. But for those

people that are sat at home and they

have an idea and they're mulling whether

that is the idea worth pursuing, is

there a framework for knowing if it's a

good idea or a bad idea? What we use

that comes from private equity. If you

want to know if your business is going

to make you money or not or investable

or not, we use the MOAT strategy which

is basically M stands for margin. So you

want a business that actually makes you

money, doesn't just generate revenue.

And so a good business typically has at

least 15% net margin. So that's the

money you put in your your pocket,

right?

>> So that's profit.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Exactly. And then uh the O stands for

operations. So operations being can this

thing actually scale over time or will I

really have a job, not a business? And

what's the difference there?

>> The difference between the two is if you

have a job, not a business, that might

be for instance without AI, if my entire

business was just me talking

continuously to camera and I'm an actor,

it's really hard to turn acting to a

business, right?

>> You're trading time,

>> right? You're still an employee. You're

just self-employed as opposed to a

business owner. And there's a real

difference between a CEO and a

self-employed person. And then the A

stands for advantage, which is, do I

have an unfair advantage in my business?

I think over time all arbitrage windows

close. So, if you don't have some sort

of advantage, it's hard to stay in

business over a long time. An advantage

might be I have distribution because I

have social media, so I can get more

eyeballs. I can figure out how to talk

to 2,000 people quickly because I can do

it via video as opposed to knocking on

20 doors. H or it could be logistics or

it could be uh 10 years of experience in

an industry. And then the T stands for

TAM, total addressable market, which

goes back to the doggy teeth issue,

which is, you know, is this a real

market that enough people are interested

in that I can build a business that is

big enough for me? And, you know, to

Alex's point, I don't think everybody

should try to play the trillion or

billion dollar uh game. In fact, I think

it can be quite miserable to to strive

for billions. And so the the total

addressable market for your local fruit

stand in your community may be a perfect

amount of income for you, but let's

actually know what amount of income is

reasonable for you. And the cool thing

about entrepreneurship in like today's

age, the data is available everywhere.

>> And so in private equity, you would take

this model like that. So you'd go moat,

you would I take them and for each one,

I rank them one to 10 and businesses. So

margin, operations, advantage, total

addressable market. each one of them. A

10 is perfect. A one is the worst you

could have. And businesses that are

better than 30 across all four, well,

that's a fund it. That's a fundable

business model. Businesses that are less

than 30 but more than 20, that's a fix

it. You've got some problems in the

model. And businesses that are less than

20, that's a flee it. This is probably

not right for you and a hard business to

do.

>> I think it's not just the people who are

looking for a new opportunity or people

who don't currently have a business. I

personally think at the moment every

single person on the planet who has a

business should assume that their

business is on borrowed time because AI

is going to disrupt everything and in

that disruption everyone has the

opportunity to rethink whether they want

a different opportunity or whether they

want to pivot. It's the perfect time. I

look at simple things when I'm thinking

about is it a good opportunity. I think

every good business is built upon

somebody's case study. So when I look at

not just businesses as a thing on their

own, I think businesses as a thing on

their own have to be taken in

consideration with who's the

entrepreneur. So your entre like

something that's a great opportunity for

Cody may be just a disaster for me and

like and likewise.

>> So I'm looking at the background of the

entrepreneur. Do you have a case study

to leverage? Do you have knowledge? Do

you have a network? Do you have

resources? Have you got a reputation in

something? Because those are the things

that we can then leverage. And then I'm

just going to have a look at three

little things. I'm going to say this

idea that you've got going forward.

Does this address someone's pain? Right?

Is there some sort of problem that this

solves? And that to we could measure

that, right? Because people pay to move

a metric. They love to move some sort of

a number. So, is there a pain that we

can measure and can I take people out of

that pain based on my story?

>> The next thing is does that type of

person who I'm going to solve that for,

do they have money to spend? Because

ultimately 60% of all the money is in

the top 10%. So the top 10% have about

60% of the available disposable income.

So groups that t tend to have money is

business owners, executives, people

who've got accumulated wealth. Um you

know, so you're looking at like some

sort of indication that you're selling

to a group of people who have money.

Underneath that top 10%, Amazon's

already got them, McDonald's has already

got them. Like that's a saturated part

of the market. You looking for that top

10% who've got disposable income. And

then the final part is passion. Like are

you passionate about this? And my

definition of passion is a willingness

to suffer. So it's not do you get joy

from it, not are you super happy from

it. It's are you willing to suffer for

this? Are you willing to have delayed

gratification um would an objective

third party who looks at your behavior,

who looks at the way that you show up in

the world, would they agree that you

seem to be willing to push through

difficult times in order to have this?

So those are some of the conversations

I'd have with anyone. And not just

people who are starting out, people who

have already got a hundred million

dollar business.

>> It's like the adult marshmallow test

basically.

>> Yeah. I think Cody had a had a great

framework in terms of thinking about

this from an investing perspective for

the people who are considering starting

their first business. I like the pain

passion profession angle of like

typically it'll be something that comes

from a personal pain that you overcame

whether it's you had an eating disorder

or you have kids who have allergies and

you figured out how to pack lunches or

you figured out how to store stuff for

twice as long because of some unique

thing that that you retrofitted a cooler

with. whatever some passion which is

just like a hobby that's that's you're

deeply interested in or it's a

profession so something that you already

currently do like in a way this is I

think one of the easiest self-

entrepreneur you know self-employment

path is just going from employed to

self-employed doing the same thing that

somebody already pays you for

>> so like you don't need to worry about

like market risk of like I wonder if if

accounting is still going to be desired

by other people like right now because

everyone's so interconnected like remote

work and being able to be fractional

like many people can start kind of mini

consulting businesses doing, you know,

because a lot of businesses and

entrepreneurs are very um bad at

allocating resources. And so they have a

lot of quote full-time employees that

are working 20% of their effort and

still keep, you know, keeping their

paycheck and at the end of the day like

they do enough to keep their job, but

not so much that they are nearly at

their full discretionary effort. And so

all of a sudden you think, okay, well, I

could probably do the same work for half

the price and the entrepreneur be

willing to pay it, but I could do that

same work for half the price for five

times the people and make three times as

much and do it on my own time. And so

that becomes I think a great like foray

into entrepreneurship. Now what do you

have to learn there? It's like well you

already have delivery down because you

already do the job. You just have to

learn how to promote. It's just like how

do you reach out to people and ask them

if they want what you have and then get

them to trade you money for it. Um but

that like at least takes half of it out

of the equation. And almost all three of

those pain, passion, profession, you

already have kind of the back end. Like

you have the pain, you figured out the

thing. Uh the passion, you've already

spent all this time loving this thing.

So you've already done a lot of the the

work and research. And so really you

just need to learn the front end which

is like how do I promote and how do I

sell, right? how to get someone to give

me money for it. And then in terms of um

how much money you make, I think Dana

had a great perspective of like, you

know, sell the rich, like they're the

ones who have the money. And if you uh

sell rich people, you get to sell at

rich people prices, which is more fun.

Uh and so I mean, I'll give you a simple

example. Um I have a CRO company that

that we do a conversion rate

optimization across our sites and our

portfolio. And so if that company go

works with an e-commerce business and

they, you know, add 10% to, you know,

topline and goes from 1 million to 1.1

million, they make $100,000 of value. If

they work with an e-commerce business

that's doing $100 million a year and

they do the same exact work and they add

10%, they add $10 million a year. So

it's a hundred hundred times more in

terms of value that's being created. And

so fundamentally, you have the value

they create, your ability to negotiate a

slice of that pie, how unique that is.

As in, for example, I could have plenty

of sales guys are like, "Hey, Alex, I

could sell millions of dollars of stuff

for I'm like, "Yeah, but so could every

other salesperson." So, you have

significantly less uh you know,

negotiating power even if you have the

negotiating skill just because many

other people can do it, right? And then

the third the the final component is

risk. And that's the one that I would

multiply everything by, which is how

much risk you take on.

>> People often say this idea of selling to

the rich, but as you explained it there,

what what it actually sounded more like

is sell to the person who's going to

yield the most returns from your skill.

>> And I I reflect on this because I spent

the first half of my career doing social

media marketing. Yeah. I think I said

this when we sat down that I used to

work with fast fashion companies or

fashion and the net return

>> of me selling them all dresses was tens

of thousands. I then left that business

and spent two years working in

psychedelics in the biotech industry

where if this was around the g the meme

stock thing where if they could

galvanize people on social media to care

about their stock the upside the swing

was billions of dollars. I was the only

employee in this biotech firm that ended

up listing on the NASDAQ for $3.2

billion. And so their remuneration to me

for the six months contract was many

many many many many millions.

>> Yeah.

>> Because they they made billions.

>> So for me they they thought they were

ripping me off.

>> Yeah.

>> And and I think about funnily enough

when you put the same company on

different stock markets

>> the the company is worth wildly

different. And I think the same about

our skills where think about the stock

market where you're trading your skills.

>> I've got a I got a small example of that

really small example. There was a guy

who we worked with who was an

occupational health and safety uh

consultant and inside the workplace in a

typical office he would charge a couple

of grand a day

>> uh to go in and it was about 10 days so

about 20 grand to do an occupational

health and safety. And I asked him the

question, "What is the most dangerous

workplace you've ever worked in?" And he

says, "Well, there's this type of

manufacturing that has lasers, freezing

stuff, boiling stuff, lava, you know,

the sharks, you know, the whole thing,

right? Whatever it is, and not actual

sharks, but you get the idea." And I

said, "Do you know how to solve the

problems of that workplace?" And he

says, "Yeah, I absolutely know how to

fix those problems." I said, "Why don't

you position yourself and why don't you

run a campaign that you're one of the

best in the world for that and that

you're actually going to just run a

campaign around that?" Um, within a year

his day rate had gone to 20,000 a day

from 2,000 a day and a typical

engagement had gone up to 400 grand.

>> Mhm.

>> Mainly because he went from, you know,

the same skill set, but he applied it to

a a much, you know, more valuable

environment. Podcasting is somewhat

similar, you know, because if I podcast

in the UK, the amount of money I get per

view from YouTube is half versus if I do

the same activity, the same amount of

effort, the same amount of hours in the

United States, the platforms pay me

double for the same amount of views. And

I think many of us are like trying to

get a pay rise from our boss or

whatever, but actually thinking about

are you trading your skills on the

highest return market is a great way. We

I used to hire writers at my old company

and those writers would be paid you know

30 $40 $50,000 whatever it was in the UK

when when I was working in biotech and

we were looking for someone that could

write about biotech it was a quarter of

a million the salary it was five times

more for the same fundamental skill of

writing.

>> I think that I think that a lot of times

when you're starting out as a brand new

entrepreneur it's scarier to sell to

rich people. You're like I don't know

rich people. I'm not a rich person. I'm

going to sell to my friends. That is

very normal. That's the people that you

have the closest proximity to. But the

problem is is that means you have to

play the volume game. And the volume

game is actually really hard. It's hard

to get a lot of people to buy your

thing. Incredibly difficult. It's

actually much easier to get a few rich

people to buy your thing. And so, you

know, we had this home inspection

company and I didn't know it at the

time, but

>> he was telling me they were having like

major cash issues in their business. And

uh and I could kind of tell because when

an entrepreneur is under stress, like

you can sort of see it, you know, it's a

it's a a visual thing, too. and he was

about 45 days away from uh running out

of cash. And when I was sitting down and

talking to him, I was trying to

understand his business. Home inspection

has been around forever. It's a

normalized business. This business

works. It functions. It has good

margins. It's a rollup for private

equity. The business model is not the

issue. So, what was the issue? The issue

was their clients and their pricing. So,

he was trying to be the home inspector

for everyone at a lower price point. And

what does that mean? It means it was

actually really hard for him to

advertise because he wasn't niching

down. He was competing with all of the

major players and he had very little

margin because he was competing for

people who couldn't afford very much in

their home inspection costs. We made one

change which is we just said in front of

his business name and in all of his ads

luxury home inspections instead of just

San, you know, San Diego home

inspections or whatever city he was in

previously. And that one change

increased his margins by 45% and they

saved his business. He didn't do more

volume. He didn't hire more people. He

didn't get smarter. He didn't get

better. He just sold to rich people

instead. And because that increased the

surface area that he was covering, so

each house was like, I don't know,

thousands of dollars instead of a couple

hundred bucks to inspect, his business

was saved forever. And so I I think

protecting your profit is so crucial

when you start a business. And nobody

tells you that because it feels safer to

sell things cheaply to people who don't

have very much money. But there's that

old adage which is, you know, try to

work with a $50 client and they will

say, "I need everything under the sun

for this $50 I'm going to give you." And

then go to a $50,000 client and they'll

say, "Why are scent?" And so, you know,

so

>> in the beginning, go for the $50,000.

And the last thing I'll say on that is

also when you're a young gun

entrepreneur, a lot of times people who

have money, they got there through

business nine times out of 10. They see

themselves in you as a young hard

worker. You can often get away with

things when you are young working for

somebody who is rich and sees themselves

in you, especially in service businesses

that you just can't at volume when

you're selling to people that really

need that last dollar. And so I think

that's why most businesses go

servicebased business. You trade your

time for money in some sort of way. Then

you productize the service. So now you

make the service so other people can run

it too. And then finally you turn it in

technology software as a service. you

increase your margin at every single one

or your profit at every single one, but

they're the same business. You're just

smarter. You're you're a higher level

entrepreneur when you're able to create

tech around it. And but really all tech

is is process at scale. And so it sounds

scary when you're just starting out, but

it it's it's really just the difference

between 10 years in entrepreneurship and

learning and not

>> I think when you um when you're starting

out, you a lot of times you sell out of

your own wallet to to Cody's point. So,

it's like you have no dollars in your

wallet, so you assume everyone else has

no dollars in their wallets either.

>> And you're so afraid of getting

rejection that you continue to lower the

price until you get here. You hear

people say yes. But just as like a

benchmark for people who are starting

out is that like usually you're

appropriately priced when seven out of

10 people are saying no. Um that's like

about the appropriate price. So if you

have like if I you know see a business

and they're doing 80% close rates as in

like 80% of uh the people they talk to

say yes, they usually have a double or

triple in pricing just sitting there. If

they're at like 60% close rates, they

usually have a one and a half to 2x

price increase that's sitting there. If

they're at, you know, 40 to 50, they've

got a 50% price raise in there. And if

they're right at that, you know, 30-ish

35%, then they're usually appropriately

priced. And if they're at 20, they just

need to learn how to sell better. But

and so, but fundamentally, I say this

because usually, you know, in the

beginning of entrepreneurship, you're so

afraid of hearing no. Um, but the

reality of it is that you need to be

hearing no more than you hear yes to

know that you're being appropriately

priced

>> because you like I way back in the day I

had a gym. Um, and I had I can't

remember how many members it was, but uh

I I said that's it. And I decided to

triple my prices, which is a pretty big

move. Uh, we have a recurring membership

base. And so I gave everyone a trial of

the new level of service I wanted to

give. I wanted to go from large group to

semi-private. And um, I tripled the

price alongside that. and I lost

one-third of my customers. Um, but I had

twothirds of the people at three times

the price. And so I made um two times

the revenue and I cut my costs by

twothirds.

>> And so I made a lot more money.

>> And it was probably better for your

clients as well. More exclusive

experience.

>> 100%. And it was like right as I was

beginning to learn how like pricing uh

worked with profit in a business. And so

it and by doing that tripling in price,

it didn't like triple my profit. It did

way more than that. And so like when you

have a 10% or 15% margin business, like

Cody saying, if you actually can pull

off a double in your pricing, it'd be a

6x or 7x increase in profits.

>> So there's a lot more sensitivity to

that price number. What's interesting is

that it's really just like, you know, a

lot of like, how do I raise my price?

It's like you do the exact same thing

you normally do and then right when

you're about to say the number, you just

add a zero and then and then you just

act the same. Dan Kenny had this great

quote. He said, um, go as high as you

can without cracking a smile. Uh, and I

think that's usually a pretty a pretty

decent place to start. Yeah. And if

nobody is giving you push back on

pricing, that means you're too cheap

immediately. Like I mean value metrics I

think are so un listen the thing is like

if you're a serious business person, you

want to make more money, pricing is

going to be really interesting to you.

If you're not a serious person wanting

to make a lot of money, pricing seems

like such a boring conversation. This

will never go viral on the internet

except for people who actually are in

the game of business and they understand

that pricing save saves businesses. And

the the thing that I learned that I

thought was like wrong at first, and I'd

be curious if you guys were the same. I

thought it was wrong to charge different

people different prices. I was like,

"No, no, everybody gets the same price.

That's the right way to do business."

And then I realized there's something

called value metrics, which is basically

your prices should be a representative

of three things. Usage, so does somebody

use this service a ton? Then you should

charge them more. Do they have a lot of

users? Do lots of people use it on their

behalf. Or then finally, uh, value. How

much value do they derive from it? Do

they make a ton of money? Um, you know,

can they have some sort of quantifiable

return? And if you're charging everybody

90 bucks a month for whatever your

service is, you are wasting a ton of

money from a segment of your clients

that would pay you way more.

>> Like Typeform is a good example. I I

started using Type Form, started using

it myself. They charge me $50 a month.

Then I started running tens of thousands

of surveys through there and I put my

whole team on there. Now I'm paying

$1,000 a month. It's the same [ __ ]

tool.

>> Yes, it is. But I'm using it way more

and I've got more of my team using my

account as well. So they're charging me

a thousand just over $1,000 a month

>> and they only had to acquire you which

is amazing. So from acquiring one person

and you're like you know your cost of

good or their cost of goods don't

escalate at the same rate at all. So

that's how these SAS companies get this

80% margins.

>> That's it. When you look at uh this this

little pyramid of customer segmentation,

you get 1% of people who have 15% of the

budget, 9% of people have 45% of the

budget. 90% of people combined 40%.

Right? So when you actually break that

down, you have one person willing to pay

15 grand, you have nine people willing

to pay 5 grand each, and you have 90

people willing to pay 445 each. So you

are almost always better off going I

think the best place for most small

businesses to go is that 9%. And the

reason is the top 1% typically shop on

pedigree. They want to work with the

best businesses out there. They want to

win work with the ones who have won

awards and the ones that have been

around for a long time.

>> Relationships

>> and and through trusted relationships.

>> The 90% they shop on price. They have a

fixed price and they only want to shop

on that price. The 9% shop on passion.

They want to follow someone who's an

interesting uh who has an interesting

new take on things who's putting

together a group who's done some

education or entertainment around it. So

the this 9% I would call that the

affluent niche. And that affluent niche

is really good place to start. And that

9% are the ones that are closest to

moving into the 1%. So you can grow with

a client over time, which we saw a lot.

>> You could help get them up to the 1% and

then then they'll take you and introduce

you to all the others.

>> This was one of the really fascinating

things for me when I was running a

marketing business, which is I think you

you referenced this Cody, which is when

I started the company, I was working

with founders who had a 10K budget and

the amount of times they would call me

because of that 10k budget because that

was do or die for them. And then when we

signed Uber and Coca-Cola and Samsung,

the budgets are massive and they they

call me less.

>> They sign things off quicker.

>> The meetings are easier, life is easier.

And that's just one of these sort of

interesting phenomenons with um with

client services, I guess, and service

businesses generally is the bigger the

budget, it typically it requires the

same or less units of effort to keep

them happy than someone whose life is on

the line because it's their five grand

out of their own pocket.

I think part of that you earn too as an

entrepreneur. I think I mean I'll speak

for myself. I uh you start out selling

way too cheap.

>> Um because you also need the money

because as much as it's like a nice it's

very comfortable for me to say like yeah

you need to add a zero to your price

tag. If I don't get paid for the rest of

my life it doesn't matter.

>> And so I have a lot of leverage and

people can feel that. That's really

interesting,

>> right? Whereas I mean this is also like

if you behave as if, right? If I behave

as if I have a significant amount of

money, then I tend to attract people who

are going or basically somebody else who

also has a lot of money will recognize

that behavior and say, "Okay, this guy's

a player." And so then they'll be more

willing to do business with me. Now,

it's tougher when you don't have that

and you present that way, right? Which

is so I think that a lot of this kind of

does become earned because like either

you're faking it, which is not my not my

recommendation, or you just do a decent

amount of volume and you realize you're

like, "You know what? can't charge $99 a

month for this. It doesn't make sense

for me. And then you have a different

level of confidence going into this

where you just look at someone, you're

like, I just can't do it for that price.

>> That's the word confidence, isn't it?

>> Yeah. Well, that's how I how

>> does one build that confidence or

portray that confidence when really they

don't believe it themselves.

>> You outwork yourself, right? You do you

do so much volume that um you get bored

of it. Like when you can basically train

out your your affective response or your

emotional response to a given activity,

then at that point I would say like you

are ready. And so whenever I hear

someone, he's like, "How do you get rid

of nerves?" I was like, "You're just not

you haven't done it enough times like

until you're bored and you hate it."

>> At that point, I'm like, "Okay, now

you're ready."

>> Is that what like self-belief is to you?

>> To me, yeah.

>> There's two two types of confidence.

There's a confidence that comes from

repetition. And I think it takes courage

the first 30 times and then you get a

little bit of confidence and then it

takes courage and then you get

confidence. But I think it's like 30

block little blocks of 30 repetitions

and then you get rewarded with a little

bit of confidence upgrade. That's one

type of confidence. There's another type

of confidence which is an abundance of

options. So, let's say you run a lead

generation campaign and you want to get

10 clients and you're hoping to sign up

10 clients and a thousand people

respond. You end up with this with or

without you energy. And the with or

without you energy is I'm going to be

fine with or without you. I'm going to

definitely make my 10 sales. I've got a

thousand leads. I've got 10 sales I can

make. So, therefore, it's out of

balance. Mhm.

>> I I go back and forth on this because

the good thing about today actually is I

think people do less than ever but think

that they do more than ever in

entrepreneurship. And so we have a lot

of mental masturbation that goes on.

I've thought about this a lot. I've

really pondered it. I've wondered about

this. I've worried about it, etc. Right?

I've watched all these videos. I've

consumed all this stuff, but I've

actually done nothing.

>> Keep watching the videos.

>> Like and subscribe.

But you know I if if if I if you take

the quantity advice then what you do

when you try to go get a job let's say

whether it's it's a job uh that that you

have in your business or you're trying

to get an actual job then you just go

and you apply to 15,000 of them. I

actually think you'd be much better off

by applying to five and doing as much

work as it would take to reach out to

15,000 to obsess on those five. And so

even if you haven't done 10,000 hours of

painting uh somebody's house, if you go

and sit down and you sit down with uh

AI, get in front of Perplexity and you

write down, okay, what is the average

painting job cost? What are the problems

that come up with painting jobs? Uh who

are who is the most expensive? Um how do

I upsell them? And you put together a

package that is like here is everything

that you think you need to know

data-wise on this job that I want. Like

you will be the 1%. Nobody preps for

anything anymore to the degree that you

need to execute. And so I don't think

you always have to do the job if you do

the preparation to show that you care

about the job. And just think about it

like how many times have we all had

people reach out to us and they're like,

I want to come work for you or I want to

come get this job and they're like, hey,

can I send you a video of XYZ and if I

do it then then you'll hire me or can I

do a sales pitch for you? You know what

you should actually do? Make the video.

Make the video. Put together an entire

prep document. Put together a strategy

document on why I should hire you. And

make it so that it is almost impossible

for somebody to say no to you because it

shows how obsessed you are in a world of

super curious, uninterested, not that

deep obsession. And I've hired God, I

probably hired 15, 20 people solely

because obsession is rare and competence

is rare. And if you can show those two

things, you can be people who have been

doing it for 20 years. Because I know

many painters. We we own one of the

bigger painting franchises in the

country and I know very many painters

that have all the experience but they

don't know how to properly communicate

it and show the preparation that they've

already done.

>> Let's talk about that because that's a a

function of really sales. I guess that's

sales that's marketing. Um, I was

mulling the other day because I've I've

just hired someone called Harry who's

our new head of happiness in our in

Flight Story. And she and she didn't

just make a seven-minute video. She also

sent the video via unsaturated, less

noisy channels. And it made me think

about this framework of the resonance of

the message and the high signalness of

the medium

>> because as you all know, you're getting

DMs from people that say, "Any jobs

going?" that's like low emotional

resonance and a terrible medium. So I

think of it as like this four sort of um

square quadrant where in the top right

of the quadrant you have message the

7-inute video but then figuring out how

to get it round back past the PAS not

into the saturated inboxes maybe into

the post. I think post is so like

unbelievably unappreciated as a medium

in a world of like laziness where nobody

wants to like go to the post box. you

you're all on the receiving ends of

thousands of DMs and messages a month

and sometimes some of them get through.

Sometimes some of them result in someone

being offered a job or you investing in

their company. So if I'm listening at

home and I'm thinking, okay, I've got

four people here who get thousands of

DMs. What is the secret that penetrates

your your fortresses?

>> I would be careful reaching out to

people who get who have millions of

followers because it's hard for you if

you've never had millions of followers

um or even hundreds of thousands of

followers. It's it would blow most

people's minds just how much traffic is

moving on in the background on any given

day. There are plenty of people who have

10,000 followers or 20,000 followers or

they've got a very successful business.

They don't get a,000 emails a day. They

get maybe a thousand emails a year. So

there's a there's something that you can

reach out with which is called a proof

story which you mentioned. And the

format that I like to use is I did

something special. I recently worked

with a extremely famous uh YouTuber

>> um who has over 22 million followers

>> and we were able to spin out a new

business

>> um which became very very successful and

exitable

>> um and that business uh got you know 10

million worth of revenue in the first

six months uh and I project managed the

whole thing and I can explain exactly

how we did that step by step. So that

the format is I did something special

with a certain type of person. We got a

great result. Here's what the result was

and here's how I can explain it step by

step.

>> And what's in that for me or am I making

the the link?

>> So I'm reaching out to you with my proof

story. Yeah.

>> So I'm telling you this is this is what

I've done

>> and are you asking me for something?

>> I'm saying would you like to know how we

did it step by step? Now the other way

we can do this that works pretty well is

to do this in the public domain. So, for

example, you could reach out by actually

posting a video or a or a post on

LinkedIn or on Instagram or um or on uh

X. And what you can do is have five,

six, seven, eight friends who then jump

in and start commenting on it. Now, for

me personally, if you've tagged me in

something in the public domain and

people are now commenting it, so that

the the the the thing might be I've got

a little bit of advice for Daniel

Priestley

>> and I go, oo, what's going on here?

Right? And then I see that there's a

public video and I see several people

commenting on it. And then I look at the

video and it's a proof story and it's

really complimentary. I really like your

stuff and here's what here's going and

here's the here's my proof story. And by

the way, Daniel, I'd love to get in

touch. Drop me a DM. I'm I'm going to

check that out because it's in the

public domain

>> because

>> well because it could be negative. It

could be

>> like I don't know.

>> I want to know what the heck's what

what's being said there, right? I I

think the real thing is don't confuse

famous with rich. Like you guys

shouldn't care about us and reaching out

to us. There are people that are richer

than all of us even though we all have

some means as far as I understand. There

are people that are way richer than us

that nobody knows that nobody's reaching

out to that want to give you their

money. And so I think a lot of people

spend time focusing on fame as opposed

to rich. And when you're young, who

cares? Like you can't eat fame. Fame is

not lasting. We will all be totally

irrelevant probably sooner than we even

want to

>> speak for some

>> like and subscribe.

>> Alex will be remembered in 500.

>> So like it, you know, for young people,

I do think sometimes uh because we get

DMs, we think that it's important, but

if you're watching this, you should

really be obsessed with just making

money and then you can be sitting at a

table like this and not worry about, you

know, slipping into our DMs. I mean, the

richest guy that you know probably

started a sprinkler head company, lives

down your street in a big house, and if

you went and asked knocked on his door

and asked him how he made it, and if you

could do a service for him, he would

probably let you.

>> So true.

>> I wouldn't mess around with famous

people.

>> The people that gave me my first leg up

in the world of business were no one.

They didn't have followers.

>> They were some guy who had built a

business similar in the city and was now

living out in Monaco, living an isolated

life. It was someone who'd sold some

kind of company was running uh you know

some kind of marketing business but and

they were at that level. They were

probably at the $50 million level in

terms of net worth and they were

delighted to have an email from me

tickling their ego

>> of course

>> and saying that I was reading their blog

etc.

>> Yeah.

>> It's very exhausting to do the very deep

level of work that you do in order to

get a high level client and then have no

response. Right. That can be that can be

really you know extinguishing from a

behavior perspective. But if you do that

work for, you know, Steven Bartlett and

then you make the post and you say,

"Hey, this is this like I'm a XYZ, you

know, whatever designer and I've worked

with these types of clients and let me

just show you my breakdown of what I

would do. I think his stuff's awesome.

This is just some stuff I would do." And

then I tag you, then I'll probably like

things is enough people will see that

that you'll get it sent to you from

somebody else who you will answer the

response from messenger messaging type

perspective. like somebody whose DMs you

will open will be like, "Hey, I don't

know if you saw this

>> team member."

>> Right. Exactly. Um and you do respond to

them.

>> I do. Yeah.

>> And so all of a sudden it's like that's

actually how you can get in, but you

also get all the free exposure of the

work that you're doing. And then another

person who might not be you and it might

be me and saying, "Hey, I like Stephen

stuff too and I thought this was a

pretty good breakdown. Um hey, do you

have services?" Uh you know, in exchange

for money.

>> Yeah. I'm I'm nab that [ __ ] Um, and so

and so yeah, I actually actually really

like that perspective because it doubles

it allows the work that you do for your

lead magnets to basically double as

content and so doubles as promotion. And

so you get you kind of get multiple

bites of the app, which I think is

really uh good.

>> And I think if you do do it though, be

sure you're good because

>> because you know the truth of this

happens all the time with you and I. I

mean there we go back and forth because

people will say online like, I built

everything that Alex Formoszi owns. Can

I come work for you, Cody? Yeah, you

know, I received those emails, too. I

built

>> He'll have this. He has the same people.

You know, I built everything Cody has.

How? And then, you know, kind of

funnily, I'll be like, "God, I don't

remember that person ever working for

me." Like, did

>> did this actually happen? And so, I do

think this is just a little listen, you

got to hustle when you're young. You got

to do things you're going to cringe

about later. I am so on board for all of

that. But also remember that the world

is small, especially with people. pause

on that cuz I think this is an important

point is all the people that have had

the biggest net impact on my success, my

career in my team, they don't they don't

seem to have time to be telling the

world that they did everything.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, Jack is a good example. Jack is

Jack was here from episode one of the

podcast, but Jack in my view is doing

the like least personal branding,

milking the cow, and he's in my view

arguably the most responsible

>> Yeah.

>> for all of this stuff. And there's

almost this inverse correlation between

someone that works for you for three

months and then builds a personal brand

off the back of that

>> and is on stage claiming, you know, the

success versus the people in the in the

trenches

>> in the circle. Yeah,

>> it's a it's a bit of a side point, but

um one of the things people are so

fascinated by is this idea of passive

income.

>> And I think I think they're fascinated

by it because it's a promise of big

returns for no work. And that's you talk

about offers a lot. That's like the

perfect offer.

>> Yeah.

What what's your what's your thoughts on

passive income, Alex, and is it

something we should be aspiring for?

>> So, um, first I think it'd be helpful

for everyone to even define in terms of

how to think about passive income versus

active income. So, one is that people

often discuss it in binary terms,

passive versus actum, when it's really

more of a continuum of how passive is it

versus how active is it? And that way it

becomes way less black and white. When I

think about passive versus active, um,

when people are starting out, I

generally just discard it entirely

because they typically don't have

sufficient capital in order to actually

make meaningful passive income and they

would get significantly higher returns

on increasing their active income. And

virtually every extremely rich person

who self-made as my asterisk generally

has gigantic active income and only

begins to look at passive when they have

so much money from reinvesting in their

higher return things, which is what got

them this very large active income that

they're like, where else should I put

it? And then at that point it's really a

question of diversification which is

like how much more do I not want to

double down on the main thing and that's

a completely personal question and I

don't there is no in my opinion there's

no right answer to that um of because

that's a fundamental like how much risk

do I want to take um which I see is

entirely personal but I'll give you a

very a real example of like an

investment I made you know 5 years ago

which was um we did ex exited the

business um and I had more time on my

hands and I was like okay well why don't

I just start spending you a couple

million bucks a year on making content.

Now, that had basically zero return in

that time period, but if I were to look

at the return on capital for that, you

know, $2 million a year I did for the

first few years compared to today was

probably the highest return capital that

I made. But is that was that a passive?

No, it's definitely not passive. It was

100% active in from an investing

perspective. And so, this is when people

are like, what do you mean by investing

yourself? I mean that right like you're

investing in either the skills that

you're acquiring the businesses that

that you have and a very simple

investment a lot of times uh can get you

ideally leverage on your time and so I

would rather think for the person who's

starting out not like how do I make this

passive I would say how do I get more

leverage on my active and so like I

could start by shoveling snow in the

beginning and then once I save up enough

of my shekels then I'll buy a snow

blower and all of a sudden I can go from

doing you know one driveway an hour to

doing three driveways an hour and then

boom I tripled my income. Now, for that

one week that my cash flow is down

because I had to buy the equipment, I'll

I'll have made less money, but then I'll

very quickly recoup it. Now, to the same

degree, that's in a capital expense from

an equipment perspective, but you can do

the same thing from a skills perspective

of I give a classic example of a

phabotamist as somebody who draws blood.

Um, in the US, I think they make

somewhere in the neighbor of like $25 an

hour or something like that. It doesn't

take very long in order to become a

phabotamist and it doesn't take a lot of

money. And so, you know, a couple weeks

you do the studies, you get your cert,

and then all of a sudden you take

minimum wage and as long as you're not

in San Francisco, you will have double

or tripled your earning capacity in just

a very short period of time. And so,

that's a very good return on capital.

And so, that's where I think about the

best investments for people who are

starting out who have call it sub

$10,000, sub maybe $25,000. It's like I

put all my money into how I get more

leverage on my active, which is either

going to be more skills or or more

actual physical equipment in order to

get returns on the skills I already

have.

>> Interesting. more leverage on my time.

>> I I personally like the idea of asset

income versus passive income. So if you

actually look at what's really going on

with passive income, it's that there is

a an asset and that asset is in some way

generating income. So for example, you

own a house and you get rental income or

you write a book and you've got

intellectual property and that

intellectual property generates a

royalty income. So first there's an

asset. Income follows assets. So the

first thing you need is an asset and

then you get the yield from the asset.

And there's traditional assets which are

very very good if you've already made

money or you already have money and you

want to park it somewhere and you want

to stay ahead of inflation.

>> Traditional assets are terrible for

trying to make money.

>> Give me an example of a traditional

asset in this definition.

>> Um I think of something like art, wine

and watches as more like a speculation

but or or perhaps a store of value. But

then there's something else which is

called a performance asset. And a

performance asset is typically

intellectual property, media, code, or

data. And when you have these

performance assets, if you can build

these, these are ones you don't have to

buy, you build them. So, for example,

you could write a book, and now you've

got intellectual property. You could

build a system like a a SAS platform.

Uh, and now that SAS platform is in some

way an asset, and you can rent that out

to to more people. uh you could build a

database of a thousand people and build

a relationship with those thousand

people and then every time you write one

email it goes out to a thousand people

and they've got a little newsletter. So

that's a performance asset. So typically

when you look at um the people around

this table we're actually got we we're

very lucky to have a lot of performance

assets big followings uh lots of media

and content um books that we've written.

So these are kind of like the

performance assets that anyone can

create. It used to be until very very

recently that you just couldn't build

assets like you couldn't. It was very

very difficult. But we live in this

magical moment where almost anyone with

a phone and a laptop can start creating

performance assets with intellectual

property, media, data, and code. And uh

and then you can basically start the

process of building those assets and and

then those assets produce more income.

>> Here's my conspiracy theory about

passive income. And uh I think that

passive income, it's a tax code, right?

It is a real thing. It exists. You pay

less money to the government if you have

passive income than active income. Like

that's where the word comes from. But I

think the reason that it's been so

idealized is because there's an entire

industry where people have told all of

us for decades that they are better at

managing our money than we are. That's

the mutual fund industry, that's the

investment industry, that's the real

estate industry, that's the private

equity industry. and they have said we

are uh professionals and thus we will

charge you 2 and 20. We'll charge you uh

an investment fee on top of your assets

for you to give us the professionals

your money to beat inflation over time.

The problem is is that to your point

they will never make you wealthy.

Investing overtime in those assets are

are great for beating inflation or

making sure you have downside protection

for your cash over time in order to

allow it to grow and have

diversification. But they're very bad if

you want to get rich. If you want to get

rich, you're not going to get rich in

mutual funds and sitting it in somebody

else's private equity fund. The people

who get rich off those things, they do

the active income. They're the ones who

are running the private equity fund.

They're the ones that are running the

private equity companies and they're the

ones that are running the real estate.

And so there's this fascinating world we

live in actually where people think that

it is better and more sophisticated to

not teach you how to become capable of

running your own business and creating

active income, but that instead uh

you're more sophisticated if you're on

Wall Street. And and so I think that

passive income was actually in a lot of

ways a way for the wealthy class to gain

a lot of our assets.

>> But people click it. And this is why

there's a generation of younger people

as well that are obsessed with trying to

figure out how to make passive income.

It's it's it's clickbait, isn't it?

>> I think it's forex trading,

>> but I think it's almost deeper than

that. I think it is actually that um it

sounds, you know, if Alex says this, I

say it too, but like invest in yourself.

People are like, "What does that mean?

What do of course I'm trying to but how

do I invest in myself? That's hard. I

don't know exactly how to do it. What

are you trying to sell me courses or

tell me to buy your books or whatever?"

And that's the the reaction. But the

truth of the matter is is that you will

never be able to have the return on

investment in somebody else's asset that

you will in yourself. You just won't.

>> Okay. So, let's go on to that then.

Investing in yourself.

If you were starting out in your career

today without the skills that you have,

without the audience that you have, and

you had to choose how to invest in

yourself, what is that investment you

would make in yourself today in 2025?

>> I'm going to give two answers. So um so

I started at zero once and then I've

lost everything twice. And so I have the

I have done that three times now. Um

starting from zero without a reputation

um or money. And so um what I did in all

three times was the same thing which was

the first thing I did was I learned how

to advertise which is how to let people

know about the stuff I have. The second

thing I did was that I went to people

who had an existing business and I said,

"Hey, for as little as little money as

possible, what would you do to fulfill

your existing services

and then when someone uh I would then

use the advertising that I had, so at

the time it was Facebook ads. Um, I

would run ads and then I would sell

those leads into that business based on

the pre-determined price. And so let's

say it's a a chiropractor or for me it

was a gym. So I went to a gym owner. I

said, "What would you, you know, take

for a member?" And they said, you know,

we would actually take them for if you

can just bring them, you can keep the

money. We just want the customer for

free. And so I said, okay, well, the

first six weeks of the time that they

spend money with you is mine, and then

after that, they're all yours. And they

said, "That's fair." And so then I just

spent money and I sold into someone

else's business, and I kept everything

above the spread, which since the basis

was zero, I kept all of the money, and I

had zero cost of delivery. So literally,

it was just cash collected minus CAC,

all of that was profit. And so when I

started over from zero the third time,

um I was able to make $100,000 in the

first month when I needed it

>> because you had that skill of

advertising.

>> And so when we say like invest in

yourself, it's just a it's a it's a very

uh amorphous term, but fundamentally you

have to learn the the the skills of

generating money. And so you're going to

have to have some level of promotion.

You have to let people know about your

stuff, which is either be through

content, through paid ads, through

outreach, right? Or it's going to be

through affiliates. So somebody already

has an audience you negotiate some sort

of thing with. Honestly, so many

businesses, like you can go to a

chiropractor and say, "Hey, you know,

how little will you do 10 sessions for?"

And you'd be amazed if I say, "Hey, I

can bring you a hundred people. How

little can you do 10 sessions for?" They

might say 20 bucks a session. Now, I

might sell it for 200, but that's on me.

>> And I make my 90% spread. I don't have

to do anything. I just have to promote

and sell. And so, that is an example of

something that like I have done and did

do each of the times when I needed to

make money in the beginning when I had

nothing.

>> What skill that you currently have?

>> Yeah. would get you back to being a

hund00 million entrepreneur.

>> So, it's a really good question. I think

it's actually stacking skills. So, a lot

of a lot of times like when this

question gets asked um basically the

assumption is that you have to stay in

the same vehicle. And so, like the

fastest way to make $100,000 is not the

fastest way to make $10 million, but I

might make $10 million faster if I

started with $100,000. And so, if I have

zero, then I'm going to do something

that costs zero capital and is pure

skill, which is exactly what what that

was. right now to make let's say to

actually start running those ads I might

need $1,000. And so it's like I might

drive Uber for a,000 bucks, get my

thousand, then spend the,000 on ads to

make my 30,000 and during that process I

can reinvest that to get the hundred.

Okay, great. Now I've got the hundred.

Now with the hundred I can flip that

into and the key of each of those is

that none of those are really businesses

per se and that like I can just walk

away from them whenever. I don't have

ongoing delivery or ongoing commitments

and so that gives you a lot of

flexibility. And I mean, I think there

are a lot of entrepreneurs, at least the

ones that I know, um, have have had

these moments where they needed to

generate a lot of capital in a short

period of time and have a few kind of

like fast money skills that they don't

flex normally because there's there's

caps to them, right? What

>> I think is cool about entrepreneurship,

too, is we can all do it. You have to

find your unfair advantage. One of your

unfair advantages is you're very good at

paid promotion and getting to the

masses, right? That was never really my

unfair advantage. I think there's two

different ways you could do this. One

would be promotion. So, are you an

incredible salesperson to go direct to a

ton of people? The other way is

partnerships. And I think you can think

of these different ways. Promotion could

be BTOC often, which is like going

direct to consumer. Um, often

partnerships is B2B, going to a few big

people. Um, I think of partnerships as

employment, which is a very fast way

often to make money, too. Like Jack

might make way more millions with you

than he does individually. And so, my

background when I didn't have any cash,

I didn't know how to go to people

directly. I didn't know how to do paid

ads. I wasn't sure how to do promotion,

which is a volume game that you have to

be good at. So, I went towards

partnerships. I said, I can get to

fewer, bigger, faster. I can't get to

many fast. And so, I think there's like

two paths to making money quickly if you

don't have any. And and the first path

has less risk, but perhaps midsize

returns. And that is go find the best

entrepreneur, founder, business builder

you can find who you can still get to on

a daily basis in some way and go work

for them. Learn as much as you can, earn

as much as you can. As you learn more,

ask for more continuously over time.

This is how I mean Cheryl Sandberg is

one of the richest people in the world

and she's never had her own business,

right? She's only worked for other

people and she's doing just fine. So I

think that's the first way and that

would be what I would call partnerships

or employment. And then the second way

is to go do it yourself, right? which is

high risk but probably highest reward.

And in that instance, you have to go and

figure out how to get people to buy your

things continuously over over time. But

like when I didn't have money in the

beginning, um you know, I had just I had

gotten out of finance. I didn't want to

work for somebody else again. I was

pretty miserable. I had worked for a

billion hours for people in investment

banking and asset management. And uh I

had massive gold in handcuffs. Like I

made a lot of money. And um I had no

brilliant idea. I didn't have a business

idea. I had no idea what to do next and

I'm pretty riskaverse actually. I was

like way too scared to go do do what you

guys all did which is start businesses

from scratch. And so instead I partnered

up. I went to another company that

needed to raise capital and get a few

investments in it. And I went to them

and said, "I can raise money from a few

of these people that I know. If I do

that, can I negotiate a little bit of

equity in the company? Can I negotiate

upside return for the money and dollars

that I bring in? And I want to I want to

be a partner in the company." And so you

don't always have to start your own

thing. If you can negotiate with

partnerships, I think sometimes you can

skip to the front of the line if you're

not a great natural salesperson, you

know, or marketer. And so you really

just need to decide which one. And

neither of them are better than any

others. They're just better for you.

>> The amount of resources you have access

to is a factor of knowledge, network,

and reputation. So you're at all times

you're trying to build your knowledge.

You're trying to build your network.

You're trying to build your reputation.

A lot of people are worried about the

knowledge, but they've probably done

interesting things already in their

history. They probably if they looked

over the last 3, four, five years, they

could say, "Actually, I've done all

sorts of things, but I've never told

anyone about that, right? I've never

actually explain to I've never posted on

LinkedIn. I've never posted an update

telling people what I've done. So

therefore, I've actually got things that

could build a reputation, but I've never

leveraged that reputation." If you're a

young person, especially, network is

actually you've got a superpower with

network. And I'll tell you why. Because

if you go to a private bank that

normally banks people with 3 million,

but you say, "I want to be an

entrepreneur. I want to come to some of

your entrepreneur events that you host,

they'll bring you along cuz you're

you're an ambitious young person." If

you go to a large accounting firm and

say, "Do you ever host big events? Could

I attend some? Can I jump on a

newsletter that lets people know about

the events?" They'll invite you along.

And I'm talking about like Ernston Young

and KPMG. Every single week, they've got

some thing that they're doing in their

offices. They've got experts, they've

got rich people, they got all that sort

of stuff happening there and they'll

invite you along. So, you've got this

ability to build your network, you got

this ability to leverage uh your

reputation. I actually don't think that

you can make good decisions about the

knowledge on your own. I think you need

someone who's at the higher level to

tell you this is the skills you should

go for. These are the things you should

do. So, for example, at the time that

Alex did ads, it was a great time for

doing ads. But now fast forward to

today, it's probably better to study AI

and and to bring that to the table. So

sometimes those rep sometimes those

things change. So let's say you figure

out what is your reputation? What can

you talk about when you're in front of

people, you go networking, you go to a

few of these events, you outreach, you

get yourself in front of some people,

and you actually ask the question, what

kind of skills do I need? What what sort

of um I need to build my skills? I need

to build my knowledge. What do you think

would be a valuable thing uh to do?

because people who are at that next

level up, they're they're noticing what

they what they need. Uh they're noticing

what's hot, what's not. Um so they're

going to be able to teach you or or

guide you. And and um to Cody's point,

you know, you you want to have a mentor

in your life. You want to have someone

who's who's been there, done it. You

want to, you know, partner with a bigger

organization and get some of those.

Before Kim Kardashian was Kim

Kardashian, she was Paris Hilton's uh

assistant and she learned the playbook

for being famous for being famous. and

then she took it to a new level. Took it

to a new level. So she she uh she did an

apprenticeship and then she applied the

apprenticeship.

>> One of the things that all of us have in

common is we make content and it's

almost a bit of an elephant in the room

that no one's no one's really doubled

down on when I asked what what you guys

think is the most sort of like

undervalued skill or the best place to

invest in yourself. I was actually

expecting you all to say start making

content for a variety of reasons. Not

just because you want to build an

audience so you have more customers, but

actually

>> and I can see it on all of you. It's

helped you to think better.

>> It's helped you to communicate better.

It's helped you to sell better. When you

get that chance to sit down with that

investor or that rich person, you said a

second ago, you said earlier that if I'd

sat old Alex here, one of the big

differences is this one's much more

focused, concise, articulate. So, I'm

wondering what you guys think of that

content as a undervalued,

underappreciated skill in the world

we're heading in.

>> If I'm starting to today rather than

when I had, you know, zero, there's

still a huge amount of attention that

sits on social media, if not more. And

there's even more demand for content now

than there was. And so you can supply

that and get compensated for it. And

you'll have to do repetitions for a

period of time until eventually you get

good. And then you can develop an

audience and then you obviously can sell

things to them.

>> I think um content content's a little

bit of an interesting one because

content works when you've got

intellectual property to leverage. So I

remember Alex popped onto my screen the

first time and he says, "I've sold my

company for $40 million and I've got

nothing to sell you. I'm just going to

tell you how I did it." Cody's the same.

She's like, uh, you know, I, uh, I was

working at Goldman Sachs, but then I

left Goldman Sachs to earn more money

through laundromats. I'm like, that's

interesting. That's fascinating. Right.

So, I'm going to watch that content

because there's some interesting

intellectual property there. Um, my

channel took off when I started talking

about I've done seven startups that went

zero to a million in the first 12

months. So, it's that ability to have

some intellectual property that people

are going to want to get to. I can think

of a bunch of examples of creators that

hadn't done anything but their ideas

were the value. So if you think of

someone like George Mack or even James

CLA or lots of other of these sort of

like J Shetty online writers who

>> J Shetty had a great one which was uh

I've got monk wisdom for the modern

world

>> and we've got Ali Abdal I left the I

quit being a doctor to be a YouTuber. M

>> so there's these little hooks that work

and

>> does everyone have a you don't have to

have sold a business for tens of

millions or made millions

>> from I think there's some intellectual

property that you've got but bear in

mind that there was a different time

where you could just burst onto the

scene and we now have AI generated

content so if you imagine like airplanes

and they're at the airport and the fog

rolls in and if you're on the ground

it's very hard to take off but if you're

already up in the air it's very easy to

stay up in the air and it's kind of like

the AI content that's coming in is is

that fog Right? There's just going to be

thousands of AI generated content pieces

just flooding onto everyone's feed. And

if you don't have a really good hook,

you're just not going to drown out that

noise.

>> You guys must all be thinking about

this.

>> I have I have so much I'm all right. All

right. So So

one thing I think everyone has to decide

on if they're going to start making

content is am I an entertainer or am I

an educator? Right. Right off the bat.

And so I think AI content for sure will

have tremendous leverage on

entertainment more so than education

because the big underlying thing that

Daniel's hitting at is that you have to

have proof, right? Like like an AI

avatar cannot come in and say I sold my

company for free. They can't. They

didn't do anything because they don't

exist in the real world. Which is why in

my opinion like the absolute foolproof

method for making educational content is

dop Epic [ __ ] and then talk about the

epic [ __ ] you did. Period. And so like I

um so yes I'm in you know I'm in LA.

Yesterday we also um we had the school

games winners come out schools platform

that hosts online communities and the

winner of the last school games. So 90

days he got to like 300 and something

thousand a month from a YouTube uh

channel that he started 16 months ago.

So he started 16 months ago making

videos about AI. Now what was his

interesting thing? So he was just always

into AI learned about the tools and then

he started helping small businesses for

like $1,500 $2,500 a month where he

would just help them implement these

automations that would save them money

and time. And then people were like well

how did you do that? And so he just

basically would just explain each of the

automations that he made for each of

these businesses on his channel. And he

made one video a day explaining one of

the automations. And then he said, "If

you want I have a group that's whatever

$300, $400 a month that shows you how to

build the same automations." To your

point about the education is like you

just need some proof. And it doesn't

like you don't have to like the bigger

the proof you have the wider basically

the wider TAM you'll be able to reach

because more people be I'll just put the

words impressed. if you just are in your

20s and to be fair, you just quit

Goldman Sachs. It's like that is enough

of a thing that because that's it's a 1%

type deal, right? But you can also you

can 1% through achievement. But the

other side that I think people widely

underestimate is you can 1% through

volume of work. So if I said I read 200

books last year,

>> let me show you the 200. They're all

dog, you know, dogeared. Let me tell you

what I learned. Like I'd be like, well

shoot. Because I think everybody wants a

bargain on time, right? Like I went on a

100 speed dates. this is what I learned.

It's like, well, I don't want to go on

100 dates, but like anyone can do that.

So, it's either 1% achievement or 1%

effort, but this one you can do. And

even if you have zero outcome, there's

still stuff that you'll learn. And then

that will people find interesting that

you can build an audience around. And if

you do that enough times, eventually you

do achieve something that is

interesting. And then that kind of

becomes permanent. But at the end of the

day, like proof always beats promise. I

>> I also think anybody can go viral online

with one of two things. We've talked a

lot about experience. So if you do have

experience, if you built a billion

dollar and assets under management

business, gone to Goldman, built seven

startups, that's incredible. That's not

normal. That's totally fine. But that

means that you could just have the

everyday other e of starting the

experience. I think we we obsess on

expertise. Expertise is the way to make

content online and make millions. But

what about just the experience? You

could say, "Actually, I've done nothing.

I'm a college dropout. I've [ __ ]

around a lot. I don't have much figured

out, but over the next year, I'm gonna

try to make a million dollars. And you

can go just as viral, if not more. I

mean, a good example would be like Ryan

Tran, who who I love, who's in Austin,

Texas, too. And Ryan is just like, I'm

trying stuff, and this might fail and I

have no idea, and you guys can come

along. The proof could actually be you

just trying a thing and it not working

one way or the other. And so I think the

only problem with this type which is

experience as opposed to expertise is

that with expertise you have attention

and intention aka intent to buy whereas

if you're just experiencing thing you

might have attention but what are you

going to sell because you don't have

like a value derived from it where's

your intent I mean if you think about

who are the biggest creators online

only fans the Kardashians you know what

are the biggest websites online porn

sites that's a lot of attention but the

intent to buy is going to be low for any

of those over time at large. And so I

think you have to ask yourself, okay, if

I get a ton of attention, let's make

sure I'm really thoughtful on what I get

attention for. And then let's think

about once I have that attention, where

do I actually have some sort of

expertise or value that I can trade in

order for people to have an intent to

buy? And I think about it like this.

Rihanna, huge star, right? Big

celebrity, billionaire now because of

Fenty Beauty. Drake, giant celebrity,

arguably more views, more hits than

Rihanna, worth one, one six, 1/8 what

Rihanna is worth. Why? Because he has

ton of sub attention, but he hasn't

actually done much to get intent to buy

from him. And so Rihanna's just

categorically better, if we define

better as bank account and scoreboard on

uh net worth, than Drake is at

monetizing their intention. And so, um,

I think that a lot of creators online

think too much about views, likes,

subscribes, and don't think very much

about how do I monetize on top of this

because nobody stays relevant forever

online. And so, I think while you're in

the spotlight, you do have to think

about how you going to convert that

funnel in some way.

>> That's a really great point. A lot of

the people you see blowing up online,

they do have a backend that monetizes it

because to your point, it costs money.

you know, I probably spend 40 50,000 a

month just on retainers of people who

are working on that stuff and

>> content.

>> Yeah. Content related stuff and you know

because I have businesses that can

monetize that then it it worth doing but

it's hard to compete with that if you

don't have a back end. The the other

option is to work with someone who does

have a business and they do have

experience. they do have something to

talk about, but they're busy and they

need someone to project manage this

because one thing that's happened is

that to the traditional business owner,

this personal brand thing and this

building a content empire uh that builds

your business, this is brand new to a

lot of people. So, there are plenty of

people who've got a $50 million a year

business and they're going, "Oh, should

I show up online at all? Maybe I

should." and they're just starting to

tiptoe into the water and they've got a

story, they've got a back-end business,

they can monetize it, they can allocate

budget to it, you could be the person