I Live Streamed For 30 Days. Here's What I Learned.

This is Alex Mosey reporting from downtown Las Vegas. Not really, about 7 minutes from the strip, but uh I am uh I think today is the last day. Is that correct, China? >> Yes. >> Today is the last day of 30 for 30-ish live streams. So, I've uh had had the intent to do 30 lives in 30 days, basically trying to do a live stream every day that I could and didn't have like a an engagement in the middle of the day. Um and I thought I would share with you some of the findings uh from that. China, what findings do we have of our 30 for 30? And I'll actually before you tell us that, I'll tell you what the uh the intention for us was. So, my thinking process is I wanted to dramatically improve our post-production process. And so, you might have seen that I recorded uh a Dolly Parton video uh yesterday, and it was actually posted 6 hours later. And so, that was like a really cool feat for the team to go from literally idea to slides to filming to editing and posting all within less than 12 hours. And from just the video uh you know, recording side to the posting in under 6. And so, that was almost entirely a result of this process of us just jamming a lot more footage down the pipeline and forcing [snorts] efficiencies throughout the team to say like what things matter, what things don't. And having more low-fi or low-production uh content that went out ended up still performing, you know, fine. Um and I'll share some of the uh stats for you guys. So, from live streams and clip longs, we did uh 1.6 million total long-form views from the live stream like experience, if you will, uh which is pretty sweet considering it wasn't like super scripted. It was just off the off the cuff. Um we got 20 million impressions um from this little experiment. Uh for clip shorts, we got 21 and a half million short-form views. And so, the overall um kind of first live stream in the year was successful, but this led to kind of like higher baselines. So, it's kind of like it's done this. Basically, the more live streams I do, the more basically, the more live streams I do, the more people come on the live stream. So, I guess the product uh doesn't suck, or at least that's my hope. Um but you can kind of see maybe we'll be able to afterwards show a graph of what it looks like, but it's just kind of like a a slightly upward streamed mountain, which is kind of cool. Um so, let me share a couple things that have worked well for us in terms of maximizing views and just kind of engagement overall for those of you like want to do this. Um number one, the title and thumbnail matter, obviously. So, you still want to treat it like a regular YouTube video, um and package it based on kind of the first point that's going to be made. So, if you're going to make a lot of points in the video, you want to at least match that when someone gets to the the the the live stream, that they're going to be like, "Oh, that's what I clicked for." And then that's what they're going to get. And then if they choose to stay on after, that's up to them. But just making sure those two match made a pretty big difference in terms of view count after the fact. Um number two, hitting up your email list if you have that or cross-promoting uh while you're streaming works. So, if you're like, you know, if I do an Instagram story and say, "Hey, I'm live on YouTube." That does push traffic. Same on same on email. Um scheduling it in advance uh made a and actually sticking to that time. So, this was like a very interesting finding for me. Um we tried to schedule some Some of the dates like we had it scheduled and then I had a meeting that went late or whatever. Um so, we had to push them. The days where I was able to stick with the time that I said I was going to start saw significantly more starting views and peak viewership. Um and so, if you are going to do it, I know that the the ultimate goal for most streamers uh and I don't necessarily put myself in that category, but I am somebody who streamed um is to have like the same time every day. Uh I would love to do that. I um I'm not sure, honestly. I'm just not sure if I'm willing to commit to that. It's just like that's a lot. Um but I was willing to do the 30-ish for 30 to get this started. Um additionally, integrating short-form hooks and kind of being mindful of the fact that the the content itself is going to be mined for short form. Um there are definitely some questions that I knew I'm like, oh, this is a really good question and I know it's going to become probably a clip. So, I'm just a little bit more mindful of how I phrase the answer and make sure that I land the plane with a very clear like next steps or uh like one, two, threes. So, there's a payoff for the clip when the team uh posts it. So, it's like you want to be more proactive rather than reactive about clipping rather than just say like, all right, I'm going to do this live stream for 2 hours. Let's see if there's some good moments. Just kind of thinking about the moments ahead of time um and trying to engineer them more uh proactively. Um also a format that works well is to begin with um basically existing high-performing content. So, if you have uh you know, hooks from other content that have worked well, weaving that into how you're starting the live stream um has seemed to work and that's not super surprising uh because a strong hook is going to outperform a zero hook or an untested hook most times. Um beyond that, uh we put on slow mode to prevent spam. So, that helped. We did heavy moderation to make sure that it was a good experience for you guys. Uh so, we have four moderators and that's just to make sure all like the spammers and scammers are just like not in the chat, which is kind of annoying. Um we asked uh asked chat in general to focus on questions of a particular theme and that way the live stream could at least have some theme um around it. Uh if you have the ability to bring in some sort of cameo, so Layla's uh cameos in when I was uh on vacation with her uh almost all outperformed solo Alex. So, you know, I'll cry myself a river there. Uh but no, I think it's unsurprising that you would want to see Layla more than just me cuz I want to see Layla more than just me. Um beyond that, uh let me see what else we have. Um taking questions obviously from live stream chat. Interaction with chat is the best form of engagement. That doesn't seem that surprising. Um let's see here. Uh um reading the questions out loud seems to help. So, we try to do that. Uh and then I'll I'll I'll finish with I think probably my biggest point here is that production does not matter. So, this we're at my studio here in Vegas and so this is a fancy camera, but when I had my my iPhone and I was on vacation, uh, it works just the same. And, uh, we did find out though as a small caveat that iPhone 17 and beyond, uh, basically the the mic and the camera on those specifically are good enough that you actually don't need any external mics, uh, whatsoever and it just was good enough that it worked. I did try to use the phone set up another time that it wasn't on iPhone 17 and the audio was a little bit shitty. So, if you're going to like invest some money or you're about to do an upgrade for your phone, you can maybe give it as an another business write off cuz you're like, well, I'm going to live stream with it. Um, and so that that makes this really easy cuz you don't need to have this fancy set up at all. Like I did it on vacation on purpose just sitting on a table with a tripod, um, and it worked pretty good. Um, beyond that, I'll give you some post-production tips. So, you want to trim as fast as you possibly can, um, obviously starting with the hooks and you want to think about it again as though it were a regular YouTube video. So, do not assume that the audience who's coming in knows that it's a live stream nor do they really care that it was a live stream. They just want to make sure that value per second is still super high. Um, and then that way you get the video you get the views from the live people in general, but then also you get kind of like the post-live views which can sometimes double or triple the viewership of the live stream which is kind of cool. Um, and then beyond that, just make sure that the audio doesn't suck. Uh, you don't need uh, like anything fancy beyond that. You don't need any color grading, uh, any any fancy, you know, lighting whatsoever. I mean, it's super bright here, but it doesn't have to be, uh, in order for this to work. And so that was, I would say, the broad brushstrokes of the biggest lessons that we had that you could probably immediately use rather than just explaining like our internal processes that I get improved as a result of doing, uh, Streams of Life every day. Um, but in the spirit of Streams of Life, um, I want to theme today's chat or Q&A, um, with something that was top of mind for me which is uh hard choices. So, how to make hard choices? So, if for those of you who are at a crossroads in your life, you're you're picking between, you know, should I have a business partner, should I have a business partner, or should I have the partner that I have, or should I split? Uh should we bring on another partner? I don't even know what's all partners, but it's like should I should I open the next location? Should I start running uh meta ads? Should I post more content? Uh should I hire this person? Um the hard choices that I should I fire this person, right? Um the hard choices that you're presented with, um bring them and I'll do my I I have no promises that I'll be able to uh to help, but I'll do my absolute best. So, I can promise you that. So, while you guys are putting those in the chat, um let's uh let's dig in. Let's rock and roll. All right. So, uh hi Alex. I have a clothing design and manufacturing business in Russia that has been distributed via Wildberries, which is like Amazon here. Ukraine has been bombing the distribution warehouses and we have had huge losses. I'm torn because I have a family in Ukraine and don't support the war. I don't think my business can hold on in Russia. By the way, whatever you guys are doing right now, it's flashing like like blue every 2 seconds. I can't see what the question is. Um but I don't know how to get out either. So, what do I do? It's still doing this. I don't know. Uh what do you do? Okay, so you don't know how you can get out. Dude, you're in a war-torn country. That's very tough. I'm very sorry. Um >> [sighs] >> Honestly, this feels less like a business question and more like a life question, you know, because these I would say war and violence tend to be outside of the normal um elements of business because typically I'd say most normal I'll say normal businesses happen in more modernized and uh stable societies, which is like why war is bad for bad for business um because these things are completely unforeseen. There's really nothing you can do about it. Um I would say this, do not judge your ability based on your existing circumstances. I think that it would make sense for you, the fact that you've been able to do as well as you have and continue to hold on despite literally getting bombed. Um kudos to you and I'm sorry that you're going through that. If it were me, I would make every I would use every ounce of effort I could to get out and go to a place uh that was safer. I'm assuming that the thing is your skill your skill set transfers and you might be able to just sell direct to consumer in a non-war torn country and as long as you have your laptop and a connection to the internet, um I think that's probably the approach I would do because I don't think that the stability is going to happen on a timeline that is going to match your goals. And so I would probably try and shift my business to where it is stable. I know that's a radical uh answer, but you were also in a radical time. So, that's my honest answer. Otherwise, hold on there, man. Um wish you the best. Uh Hi Alex, in earlier stream you said that when torn between a hard and easy choice, to always pick the hard choice because if the easy choice is right, we would have already picked it. What is the framework used for assessing between two hard choices? Really good question. Um I think it actually comes down to goal optimization. So, what do I want to have happen? And so, uh the two most common questions that I will ask in the scenarios when I have these two hard things is what do I want to have happen and what problem am I solving? And this is super helpful because a lot of times, let's say it's a hard conversation. You're thinking about how you're going to have a hard conversation. Well, when you think, okay, well, I this guy's sucking. Uh I want to let him know that he's sucking, but that's that's not actually what you want to have happen. You want him to improve. And so if you thought, well, how do I improve this guy's behavior? Do I think that me yelling at him is going to do that? Probably not. It'll probably make him feel bad. And so, when you think about what you want to have happen, it ultimately changes your behavior in the in the present that like dramatically improves your outcomes. And this is a really tough one for a lot of people because most people have these They wanted to show up and throw up. They just want to vomit their emotions on somebody else because they feel bad in the moment and because of that discomfort, they feel this huge catalyst for action. This Their Their action threshold gets decreased, so they just want to do a lot of stuff cuz they want to not feel the way they feel. But, the fact that you want to do stuff has absolutely no correlation to whether those actions are actually going to yield the result that you want. And so, being able to very clearly say, "This is what I want to have happen, and I believe these actions are going to be the things that have the highest likelihood of making that happen." Um just simply adding those two filters prior to taking my action has just saved me so much time and made me so much money in my life. And the reason it's so difficult is because you have to literally pause when you have the emotions and say, "I know I want to do something. Is the thing that I want to do the thing that I should do to get the thing that I want?" And almost always it isn't. So, that is how I approach two-hard problems when I don't actually Obviously, I don't know your specific situation. But, that is almost always how I approach it. It's like, "Does Which of these gets me closest to I want what I want?" Okay. Hi Alex, I'm a single mom whose dad wants to help, but he just can't get together a job. Oh, okay, hold on. I'm a single mom whose dad wants to help, but he just can't hold together a job. I want him to be involved in my kids' lives, but I'm afraid he isn't a good influence. How would you navigate a relationship with someone important to your life that doesn't help you grow? >> [sighs] >> Hm. Well, I think there's levels of bad dad. Um there's like abusive bad dad. There's bad dad who's probably not as ambitious as you want, but is super involved in the kids' lives. Um and I think that they don't need to get everything from every parent. So, imagine that we flipped the roles for a moment. Imagine you were, let's say, at home with the kids and not ambitious for maybe a career perspective um and he was. Would we say that the mom is a bad influence on the kids from that angle? Maybe not. And so, I do know there's a tremendous amount of research that having a dad present is better than no dad. Um and so, there's significant stats that suggest that having a whole family or dad present is is good. Um and so, the question is like what is the detriment or what are the things that you're afraid of having happen? And then, is there a way that you can model the behavior that you are afraid that he does not model? Now, you mentioned the job and hopefully the mom-dad example flip that I gave earlier kind of helps attenuate that specific tension. Um but if there are additional things that he's doing that are not a good influence, then it means that you probably just need to step up more in that specific setting from a modeling perspective, but also it might be conditional in that if he wants to be involved with the kids' lives um and they are his kids, too. Um that maybe you give him the opportunity to win in other ways. Right? Like the more ways you have to win, the more successful you will be. And so, it's like if you if you want to if you want to be on his side, right? Ultimately, you're on your family's side. And so, I think uh a good frame here is like instead of saying this is a kid-first family or a marriage-first family, it's a family-first family. Is that we're optimizing for the whole, the benefit of the whole. Um and so, we know that having this figure is going to be important and in introducing him is going to be key. So, how do we just uh mitigate the downside risks of him coming in? But I think that by and large it probably makes sense to include him if possible, assuming no abuse, etc. Um and then, for the his deficiencies, you want to model the correct behavior and then maybe put contingencies on what type of behavior you would want uh him to model when he is there with the kids. So, um this reminds me of a a tweet that I like, which is the fastest way to become the person that you want to be is to put yourself in a situation where you have no choice but to become them. Because when you make big life decisions, you don't you don't want to listen to the people who are closest to you, but you want to listen to the people who are closest to your goals. Hey Alex, I'm trapped on a desert island with great internet but no food. When is it appropriate to resort to cannibalism? Um well, you know, uh no food. I mean, if you're on an island, there should be seafood around because if you're, you know, there's water and there's tons of food in the water. So, I'd probably start with nets. Um you could also look at spear fishing as a as an accurate, you know, as a first step. Uh but given the fact that I'm guessing this is a joke, I'm going to move on. Um Hi Alex, I'm inspired by how well you and Layla work together. I've been trying to start a business with my lover. Ooh, sounds spicy. Uh but unfortunately, we get into fights and then have makeup business. Uh when it comes to strategy and it just doesn't work. Uh I'm afraid if we keep trying to work together like this, we won't be able to keep our relationship together. Weirdly enough, we're totally in sync with raising our kids. How would you approach this? Um well, first off, is there a rule? Is there a demand that states that you must work together? Some couples don't work well together, and you have to just make the trade of like, is this something that I absolutely demand from my partner um or not? Because you might just have a wonderful relationship and a wonderful marriage, and you don't work together, and I think that's totally fine. Um if you're like, I absolutely must have this or else, right? Um then it's a communication gap almost always. So, I think you have to figure out like, is it that this person, your partner, uh lacks skills, in which case, you know, you want to basically help upskill them or train them. Um if they have the skills, but you just are misaligned on what you want to do with the business, that's tough cuz I mean you said it comes to strategy, um, which typically means that it's the prioritization of of resources, which means what decisions you're making. And so, one of you may have more skills in strategy than the other and I would typically lean on the person who has more track record. I don't know which one of you that is. Um, who should be able to make some of those harder calls if you have a split decision. I would say Layla and I because we tend to operate um, you know, we've had shared values for such a long period of time. Our rule is that if we don't agree, we don't move forward. That has worked for us very well. And so, that means that we will stay there in a disagreement until we both agree on next steps. And it doesn't necessarily mean compromise. What it means is we make sure that we both have 100% of the same information. And typically when we have the exact same set of information, we make very very comparable decisions. And so, when we disagree, the first thought we both have is what information you have that I don't have. And so, then we kind of like open the kimono and say, "Okay, here's all the stuff I'm working with. What are you working with?" And that's how we compare notes and then ultimately get to a decision that's not uh, contentious. Now, I'd one more thing is that when you're about to have a hard decision, I think it's helpful to frame the discussion by saying, "Hey, this might be kind of tough. I want to make sure that we're talking about the issue not each other. And so, if I'm going to make any critique on this thing, it's about the idea and not you. I love you and we're a team." Gooch? All right. Daniel, hard choice. I love filmmaking and would love to pursue it. Not on the highest level of Hollywood, but I'm also loving business. Running a pool service company during 10K month. Can I share? Sure. >> [laughter] >> Uh, yeah. Uh, I guess I'll I'll wait for your question. Um, Daniel Breazeale, uh, 2 months ago asked a person to move in and work together in my company and offered 50/50 split if he was able to fully commit. Yet he's doing 10 10 more stuff. I'm guessing 10 more things. What do you think? I'm carrying the biz mostly. Yeah, I would say that uh, I gave you a 50/50 split based on this agreement and these terms. You have not met the terms and so I can no longer give you the split. That feels feels pretty pretty straightforward. All right, we got a we got a verbal question coming in. Caller. >> Alex, I finally hired someone to take over the part of my business I've been doing myself for 5 years. She's great at it. She's even better than me. And now I sit at my desk every day feeling completely useless. I know the answer is supposed to be work on the business, not in it. But what does that actually mean at 9:00 in the morning when someone else is doing your job? >> Well, congratulations. First off, it means that you've delegated some level of your day-to-day, which is awesome. But your job in terms of working on the business is growing the business. And so that means that fundamentally, in order to grow the business, we have to get more customers, we have to make them worth more. And so at the most basic level, if we were to get you more customers tomorrow, let's say 50% more customers, would you be able to handle them? If the answer is yes, then you're a demand constraint. If the answer is no, I couldn't handle them, then you're a supply constraint, meaning you have to increase your capacity to take on customers. And so whichever one of those things it is, if it's let's assume it's demand constraint, as in you could take more customers than you have, then your job, being the person who is the business owner, is that you need to go get you more customers, which means you need to advertise more, you need to promote more, you need to sell more. And you can do that via posting ads at 9:00 a.m. like what you said Oh, sorry, posting content, recording ads, scripting ads, and then filming them, and then putting them and then running them on Meta. It could be if you're locally, maybe it's running, you know, local Meta ads or Google PPC for keywords. And I'm going to bet a lot of these things, because you asked the question, you don't know how to do, which then means the step before that is learning how to do it. And if you're like, well, I don't know which of these paths I would choose, it depends on the ticket size of whatever the thing you sell is. But typically, if you're local, ads are going to work by far the fastest between Meta and Google PPC. If you are national, making content is typically going to be one of the first big steps in order to get more uh brand recognition, etc. out there so you can start generating leads. And then if you're selling extremely high ticket, call enterprise, outbound is sometimes a good motion because it's more highly targeted. There's fewer fewer people that you're going after and each one is worth a lot more. So you want to handle them with care. Hopefully that helps. Uh nonhuman overtime 26 small Q. I am a team lead but I removed two guys without prior notice. How could I have done it better? Was it better to give notice? Also in general, I have a hard time letting go of my members. Listen, man, um or not man. Uh it's never easy to let go of people as long as you have a heart. And so I don't think it really gets easier. I think that you become more skilled at maintaining your emotions and keeping them in check and being able to make the decision faster rather than avoiding it for extended periods of time. I'd say one of the big differences between advanced business owners and more beginner business owners laggards and bad teammates on the team way longer than advanced business owners. It's not that like advanced business owners somehow get it right every time. It's just that when it's wrong, they make the action a lot faster. Um in terms of letting it go, the big issue is that you have to make sure that you're prioritizing the business and everyone else who works for it. And so let's say you have 10 employees. Um if you've got two people who are you know, pulling the team down, you're literally sacrificing the other eight because you don't want to have a hard conversation with two. And so you are disserving the team in the business and ultimately their long term because if you don't do this, the business could eventually shrink down to you actually are forced to let people go rather than doing it proactively. And so it's always better to fire when you don't have to than when you absolutely have to. Um and so I would always prefer to get ahead and operate from from of strength rather than wait until the point where I actually have no choice. And the mental frame that I give myself, and this is really useful, is if I were Let's fast forward this. Let's assume the business was breaking even or losing money. What would you do then? How would you feel at that point about letting them go? You probably feel very different. You'd be like, "Well, we have to do this." Right? And so, if in that setting you would feel okay about doing it, and in this setting you don't feel okay about it, then it means that it's just the narrative that you're telling yourself, but the action still remains the same for them, and so does the outcome. And so, if what we're doing by taking these actions is preventing this outcome from happening eventually, because at that point, you still put everyone else at risk versus just two people. And uh in terms of notice, I think you want to let people know when they're messing up and the consequences of continuing to mess up, but I wouldn't say like, "We're going to fire you." Unless you're required by law, depending on what state or country you're in. Um Carter Byron, as an owner-operator, what is the appropriate time to bring in outside legal help to ensure compliance? At what size does real legal risk begin to accrue? 23 million, 300K ARR AI receptionist business. That seems like two very different numbers. Oh, 23 mail. That's what he meant. It's like 23 million. I was like, "How do those two numbers uh make sense?" All right. Um no, I don't think you need to bring legal in at 300K. Not even close. Um I I would advise I'm not sure I'm pretty sure I have it on the Scaling Roadmap at it's either at 30 million or 100 million that you bring in outside legal. Um I have had like ACQ has a legal team that's in-house, um but I've never had a legal team in-house, nor have I had the need to have a legal team in-house. Um so, I think you can contract uh legal probably up until about 30-ish million, then usually at that point your legal bills just because of just the of of running a business, um become big enough that bringing in a general counsel starts to make sense. But even then, and I just want to be clear about this, a general counsel will often still basically run point between you and two or three other kind of more niche legal vendors depending on whatever, you know, litigation or conflict you're dealing with. Uh Savage Average, I've been in the coaching and fitness space full-time for 6 years getting beat down with dealing with clients. How do you feel about dog training as a business? A lot of experience with it. Um It's fine. There's people who crush it in the dog training side. Um I would say that there are fewer dog trainers than there are human trainers. Uh and so in some ways it's a slight niche and people are willing to pay more for their animals than they are for themselves. So I I don't hate it. If you are I mean at the end of the day if you're beat up and you don't want to do this anymore, then I think what ends up happening is that you don't even push because you don't want to service more customers which ultimately limits you more than anything else you could possibly do. Like if you hate it, you cringe at the idea of more customers. If you're cringing at the idea of more customers, it's very hard to grow a business. And so I would try and look for a business that um I didn't wince at the idea of doing more of it. All right. Um For those of you who are just joining by the way, today's theme is hard choices. How to make hard decisions. So if you are split between two paths right now and you're not sure which one to take. Um I can't promise that I can help, but I will do my absolute best to try. Um and yeah, today is that is the theme of idea which is Jasmine. That is That means today by the way. Little Español. Um all right. Let's have our our our caller. Let's ask it. >> What's up, Alex? I'm 20 and I generated about 30K in sales last month through my content and I keep around 3K of it, a 10% margin. I'm good at driving sales. I just feel like I'm making everyone else rich. How do you know when it's time to stop promoting other people's products and start building something of your own? >> Well, there's not like a you know that this like there's no magic moment where like ah this is now the moment. Um if you have the skills to do the remaining portions of the business which would be creating the product and managing the delivery and you know how to generate the sales, then the moment that you have the amount of cash required to make the bet um is the moment that you would do that with the understanding that you take on risk and as you take on risk you are disproportionately rewarded for making it work. Um but basically it's a it's a goals thing. So if your current opportunity vehicle can't get you to where you want to go, then get in a different boat. And that's okay. All right, let's do another one. That was fun. >> All right, I completed a job. The client signed off and they said they were happy. And then they just stopped responding to every email, call, and text for 2 months. They owe me over $14,000. What do you actually do when a client just refuses to pay and does taking them to court ever actually work? >> It does work. It's often not worth the hassle. I don't know what percentage of the total contract the $14,000 was. Um but I would say my rule of thumb in general with these types of things is I just look for the next client because the amount of total time it's going to take me um to make that money back, I can make back faster just spending my time getting more customers and learning from the mistake than trying to argue and haggle at things over court because it will take significantly longer than you think and you might not even get the amount of money that you want cuz you're not going to get the full amount no matter what, right? So it's going to be a fraction of that amount you're going to work a lot harder for it. And so when you think about it like that, I think you learn from the mistake which means you probably have to qualify the customers a little bit more ahead of time and you might want to shift up your payment. So it's like I want half now, half at the halfway point rather than at point of completion. And so I'm going to bet right now you're going to say, "Well, people don't you know people don't do that in my industry." I promise you people will prepay for Absolutely people will prepay for it. Um and if you need to have an a better offer to do it, you could say, "Hey, um, if you pre-pay, I'll I'll give you this guarantee. If you don't pre-pay, I won't give you this guarantee." Um, and people are willing to pre-pay to have risk taken on by you. And then that way, it kind of accomplishes both objectives. So, you improve cash flow and they decrease risk, which is what the nature of a good offer does. All right. Another. >> Hey Alex, I've been in business for 12 years with a near perfect rating. Someone left a one-star review describing an incident that never happened with a staff member who doesn't even work here. I've reported it twice and it's still up. How do you actually protect your reputation when the platforms won't help and a single fake review can undo years of real work? >> I think you're catastrophizing the weight of one single review. I think you just need to do what you should have been doing over the last however many years, which is you need to get a load more reviews. If you had 500 reviews over years of work, then one one-star is not going to make a big difference. Um, like, we had, for the Money Models book, um, one of the printers, so on Amazon, Amazon handles the the printing of the book if you buy from Amazon directly. Um, and one of their printers printed, basically took my book and then sized it down to not the specifications, uh, because they don't have complete control over their their printers. And so, right at the beginning, I got a slew of one-star reviews of people saying this text is too small. And there's absolutely nothing I could do about it. And so, what do you do in that situation? You just get more five-stars, you know? It's just like you take your licks, it's just part of the game. Um, that being said, I'll give you one little tidbit that I think might make you feel a little bit better. Uh, on School, we have millions of customers and we have reviews on the platform and we actually found that, uh, high but not perfect reviews actually has the highest conversion. And so, imagine you have somebody who has five-star review, like a perfect score, and somebody else has a 4.9. 4.9 actually outperforms five because it's real. Cuz it's weird, if you were to go and see something there's not a single negative review, you think they're bots or bought. You don't actually think it's legit. And so having a little bit of smudge on it makes people feel like, "Oh, cuz of course people are going to have bad days and leave negative reviews." And you have to understand like the the buyers are typically reasonable people. Like have you ever bought from a place that had one star reviews? Yeah, probably. And you look at it, you probably been to a restaurant that you love and you read there's one star reviews. You probably just figured they might have had a bad server or they might have had a bad day and you just move on with your life. And so I think you're catastrophizing this and you should just spend all your time trying to get way more five stars than even worrying about this one star. Craft expertise. Uh worked in the beer industry and had a brewery fail. Now see no path forward in the industry for my financial goals. How do I pick another uh goal that I've less passion interested in? You know, it's an interesting question. Um I'm going to give you I'm going to give you I'm going to give you advice that I probably wouldn't normally say just because of the nature of what you said. If you really love the the brewing business, then it might make sense for you to actually go to a more successful brewery for a while and try to learn maybe from a smaller brewery that's like fast growing and doing well. Try to learn from them so that you can take another shot at it cuz like you're not going to die, right? Like maybe you make a little bit less for a period, but you're going to be trading earning for learning. And if you want to stay in this industry, I'm a big advocate of like if that like it's so rare to find something you actually like, like for real. So like kudos to you for actually finding something you like. Um that learning the skills of business around it, I think is much more basic to do than falling in love with something. And so I would go and get the business skills ideally from somebody who's in that space, who's doing well, and then be able to learn over a couple of years, and then go out and do my own thing. We have a ton of entrepreneurs who work at acquisition.com who had past very large companies. Um and they're here cuz they want to learn. So, I don't think that's a bad thing. And as long as your lifestyle doesn't uh prevent you from doing that, I think that would be my my honest answer. Otherwise, you're just saying, "How do I pick a business?" That's longer than I have time for. All right, let's do the next one. >> My business has been running at a loss, and I know I need to close it. But, I have customers who've already paid me for work that isn't finished yet. If I close now, real people lose real money. If I keep going, the debt keeps growing, and the risk gets worse. How do you know when it's time to shut something down, and what do you owe the people who trusted you with their money when you do? >> So, I've had this happen before. Um I had a partner, um which I've told the story inside of my my my book. Um who I woke up one morning, and all the cash that was in the account for prepaid services was gone. And I still had all these customers who prepaid for work, but there was no cash in the account. And so, I basically fronted all of my savings to continue to service customers and wind down the business. And I just saw like everything I had saved over the years basically vanish in a matter of like 6 to 8 weeks. Um which was really, really painful. That being said, I'll give you the piece of advice that I got from a mentor at that time, which was do right by everyone. He said, "And if you do right by everyone to the absolute greatest extent of your power, you will get out of this unscathed." And I 100% followed that to the T, which is basically like in this moment, you need to have maximum morality and operate with maximum ethics. So, if you Now, to be clear, if you don't have money, I don't I'm not I'm not saying go into more debt in a in a model that does not work. That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying if you can do services for customers for free using your own time and maybe it takes longer, but you do it all yourself, then that's what you do because the thing is it's not even about reputation. Like sure, that's part of it, but like the the reputation that I care the most about is how you think about you. And so, I think there's something very powerful about knowing that when things get really hard that you stay hard, right? And that sounded way different than I thought it was going to sound. Um but when things when things are difficult, um you just know that you will not bend your integrity. Because the thing is is like integrity only matters when it's inconvenient. Like that is the only time that having integrity matters. It's when it's not the way you planned it. When it didn't go the way you thought it was going to go. It's like your loyalty to your spouse only matters when you're in a situation where loyalty matters. If you never have an opportunity present itself, then we don't even know if you're loyal. It is just something you claim. And so, I believe that you are going to get through this. You're not going to die. Um the absolute worst case scenario here is that you file bankruptcy for the LLC. That is why it's a limited, you know, liability corporation. Um and then part of dealing with a business as a customer is if a business goes under, I mean, the thing is is that people want to have justice. And so, if you're like, "Listen, if it makes you feel better, I lost everything I own." And usually people are like, "Well, okay. Well, I you know, I lost a little bit. He lost everything." Um and so, absolute honesty is the kind of state the facts and tell the truth. And then the second rule I'll put there is do right by absolutely everyone you possibly can. Um and I would say stop the bleeding as as as fast as humanly possible. You would deliver as much of the services as you can humanly do even if it takes a little bit longer, and you maintain your integrity for yourself more than anyone else. King Kavoodle I built this company to escape needing money. Now I don't need it anymore, but I never figured out what I actually want instead. How do I find that and how do I know when I found it? I think it's actually less about finding it and more about creating it. Um and I will say this as somebody who has also made plenty of money and doesn't need it anymore. Um I think most businesses at a high enough level are actually the same thing. And so whether you're selling widgets or selling services or selling software, you're going to have a head of marketing, head of sales, head of product, you know, head of customer success, uh head of finance, head of legal, head of tech. And so your actual day-to-days going to be dealing with people predominantly who are doing core functions in the business. And so you quitting this one to then start another one, it's like you're I think you're asking for the business to solve a you problem. Like it's not the business's job to be wanted by you, right? Um because if you don't need money anymore, then it means you don't have to do what you're doing, which means you can pick whatever you want to do within the business. And almost every business has functions within it that are amenable. And so it's kind of this I think you have a mythical idea or of an over romanticist over romanticizing another business like it's somehow is not going to have Like all businesses have parts that suck. And honestly, most parts of business suck. And there's a few glimmers of hope and moments that are like really fun when you like make something work. But I think that you're over romanticizing what you think you don't have and under appreciating what you do have. Eric, not even going to try your last name. Uh Alex, first business COVID greater than 90% revenue gone. Second startup left do miss left do mismatch team with huge lost. Clearly English is not your main thing. Uh now start my third business, but my wife and kids don't believe any more. Advice to manage this. One of you guys is right. Either you or your wife and kids. And the nice thing is that until you die, you get to be in progress. And so, the day that you stop and quit, they will be right. But if you continue to try, you will either be in progress or you will win. And if you do die before making it work, you won't have to deal with the dissatisfaction cuz you'll be dead. And so, I take the position that you either you either win or you die. Rather, you die trying. But um I know that sounds relatively extreme, but we live in extreme times. So, that is my honest opinion. I think you just got to keep trying, man. I think this is the part where uh you get to see what you're made of. Uh one moment. My phone is blowing up. I want to make sure my wife is not in some sort of issue. Okay, we're good. Um okay. Mofa. Hey Alex, a friend of mine owns 45% of my business. He's a mentor and investor, but I'm at a stage where my knowledge exceeds his, but I feel bad about suggesting a buyout at this stage. What to do? Tell the truth, dude. When for everyone, when you have a contentious or hard conversation that you have to have with someone, say all the things you would say to a friend about the situation. I would say, "Hey, listen, man. You own 45% of the business. You've been a mentor and investor. I just feel like I'm at a stage right now that my knowledge is exceeding yours, and I feel like your value added to the business is less and not commensurate to the 45%, and I feel bad about suggesting a buyout at this stage, but I'm not sure what to do. How do you think we can move forward from this?" And then now you're going to have an open discussion. You've put your cards on the table, and you might be like, "You know what? I've been sensing the same thing." And it depends on how good of a relationship you have. You might be like, "Do you want me out or do you want me to downsize my position?" Um you know, what do you want? Because here's the other side of this is that like did he get 45% for doing nothing? Uh did he get 45% for helping out? Did he get 45% putting capital in? Right, there's there's different things. Like he if he put capital in, that's kind of tough cuz he took real financial risk, and it worked out. And that's kind of the nature of an investor. Um if he if he did kind of call it advisory help and you didn't know what you were doing and he helped you set you on your way, like that was the contribution the fact that the business worked um is a testament to the fact that like he was a greater than a zero value add. Um but I think you can say like listen, I think the compensation right now is demotivating for me and I think long term it's going to prevent me from wanting to continue work on this thing. And so if he's not going to work on it, this is like so we need to reconcile this. Just state the facts. Tell the truth. Like I'm telling you guys like whenever I have a hard conversation, I say all the stuff that I'm thinking too. So it's like I really don't want to have this conversation, but I'm in this weird spot and I don't want to piss you off and I'm very afraid of messing up our relationship and I even was afraid to bring this up because I don't, but I think I'm at a point where like I can't not bring this up anymore. I just say it. Just say it up front, right? Um ProMind Group. Hi Alex, I have golden handcuffs. Uh what you and your spouse do in your own time, man, is up to you. Um I don't need to know the color of your handcuffs. Uh Uh Really good company and scaling their business nationally. Uh when I achieve this, it will be good for my reputation. Is it worth sticking out for a year or grow out of my own and start my business? It depends on how big the outcome is. If the outcome is something that is going to basically be like I'll call it like career bucket list type stuff that like if you walk into a room and someone introduces you, if one of the things that happened in this business is something that they would mention next that's going to happen in the next call at 6 to 12 months, um I would say that it is worth staying for that because that narrative will pay you more than you would be able to make basically making up ground without that. Now, not all bullet points on the resume are of equal value, but like for example, to take an extreme, you know, my my company's going to IPO in the next 6 months. I'm the CFO. I'm going to be leading the IPO and I've never done this before. Yeah, that's probably worth you staying around for the IPO to go through the process because for the rest of your life you'll be like this is the guy who took XYZ public, right? Like there's some things where the narrative actually provides alpha or superior return um to the time invested uh to get it. Right? And so it means that forever from that point going forward you'll be able to earn more equity, uh charge more for your services, have more demand for your services, and all of these downstream impacts. Now, if it's like can you say this Can you say with honesty that the point in the business that they're at now still confers the same level of authority to you? If that's true, then there's not a lot of additional value for you to stay. So, it really just comes down to how big is the accomplishment and is that accomplishment uh big enough to merit the time investment and the additional earnings that would happen as a result of the accomplishment? All right, I got offered triple my salary at a job I already know will make my soul leave my body. Do I take the money and rent a therapist or stay poor and happy with my business? Um I think we have to ask the question of global versus local. So, I'll tell you a story about this. So, when I was considering starting my first business, um I had uh a mentor, it's my godfather. Uh I was talking to him about my father. So, he has a prac My dad has a practice, he's a doctor. And my dad has worked 30 hours a week my entire life. And my godfather said, "Hey man, like maybe you should just consider taking over dad's practice." And I was like, "I don't want to be a doctor." And he said, "Dude, for 30 hours a week" he said, "you can do whatever the hell you want the other 100 and you know, 20 hours uh of the week." He's like, "That's basically like part-time." And so, it's really looking at the global. Now, obviously I didn't do that because I have my own insecurities and didn't want anyone to say that I was successful because of my father. Um so, do what you want with that. Um but I think you have to ask the question of why do you make money? Because if you make money because you want to to your life, you're taking more money to literally do the opposite of what you wanted money for to begin with. And so, here's my Here's my proposition for you. Take that salary offer and see if there's another position at a different company that will not make your soul leave your body. And so, maybe you can get you can have your cake and eat it, too. Like, there is a door three here. Um And so, I would consider trying to take that rather than say like, poor and happy or rich and miserable, you could probably look at a third door and say like, can I make my business work better or can I find a job that matches the salary that I don't hate? Rat King Y'all have some of the most wild names. Uh Actually, before I answer Rat King's question, um let me do a quick poll cuz I'm actually curious. Uh can you put your uh revenue level uh or if you have a business? So, if you don't have a business or revenue level in the poll, my team's going to put it up there. I'm actually curious um who's with us. Oidea, Jasmine, that's uh today for uh for the Spanish-speaking in the room. Just want to make sure that I'm translating live. Um all right, while the uh while the the uh the China survey comes up, Rat King, the floor is yours. Uh I have a great job where I'm earning good money and learning a lot, but I have a small side hustle that's been successful growing and starting to take up more and more of my time. I don't know if it's worth going full-time. The hardest part is that the day job is upskilling me for the side hustle. Boss is a great lady, supportive, uh so it's not a tension there. How do you navigate this? Um we're looking at which thing will create the most total earning power over a longer time horizon. And so, if you are still learning really quickly in the main thing, then everything you learn is going to lift the potential of the side hustle. And so, as long as the rate of learning is high, then I would continue to do both. But, at some point, you'll have to make the the where you're like, I can't do both anymore, and then you'll probably have to go all in on the side hustle. Um it depends obviously on the goals that you have, but let's say the side hustle is taking 10 hours a week and makes half of your current income. Well, it means if you took all of your time, then you might make twice your current income. If that trade is worth it for you, then go for it. But, my position is I want to I want to get I want to exhaust as many learnings as I possibly can, and I can do that on someone else's dollar, and de-risk as many of my own risks uh as possible. And I'll give you one more frame on this, which is that does staying longer in the job increase your opportunity size or decrease your opportunity size? And so, that means if you learn more and then the opportunity grows as a result, then you delaying 3 months or 6 months is not really going to negatively impact you. On the other hand, if you're like, I have it I can't really learn that much more. My rate of learning has dropped precipitously, um then at that point I think it makes sense to take the side hustle and make it your main hustle. What does the survey say? >> Still going. I can >> Oh, it's still going. All right. Well, we'll we'll we'll we'll do another one. My top salesman is stealing clients on the side. Done, dude. Fire him. No question. This is not it. This is I don't even need to read the rest of this. Uh but he's also the reason I can afford lunch, and he's not a gas station that isn't a gas station burrito. Do I fire him or promote him? Uh you promote him. Um I would make sure that you've recorded all the sales uh that he's done so that you can duplicate this. Also, as a side note for anyone, if you do not like every entrepreneur needs to know the basic three things that are required to make a business work. You need to learn how to promote, you need to learn how to convert, you need to learn how to deliver. So, you got to let people know about your stuff, you need to get them to give you money, and you got to be able to deliver the thing you promised. Those are the three core things. The rest of it, whether it's the accounting, whether it's the legal, whether it's the tech, whatever, those are all things that you can outsource. But, these are the core elements of value creation in the business. And so, right now you are being hamstrung by someone who has leverage over you. All right? Now, I was a little bit aggressive in the onset. Like, if you do fire him and you have no no understanding of how the sales motion works, uh then that would be a bad idea. So, basically, you want to go on a hardcore recon of what this guy is doing or gal is doing, learn it cuz you need to learn it no matter what, um and then as quickly as possible get them out of the business. And I would say I would sell alongside him and try to match his or her numbers. And then once I had gotten close to that, knowing that I'm not going to be eating gas station burritos, I would let them go. But you have the the best day to cut out cancer was the day it started growing. Uh the second best day is today. All right. What do we got? >> Poll results, if you're interested. >> Yes. >> I don't have a business, 40%. >> Okay. >> Less than 100k per year, 40%. >> Okay. >> And then above that, so 250k, 10%. And then above 500k, 10%. >> All right. Good to know. Um >> 264 votes. >> All right. Rock and roll. Uh I don't know if you guys heard that, but it was 40% no business, 40% some business, 40% 10% 250k, 10% Was it 500k? Above 500k? Okay. Um Azar Khived, "Hey Alex, 22 studying design next year and want to build Australia's best streetwear brand next 5 years. Do I stack cash via service business, work in a proven brand, or start and learn by doing?" Hm. I wouldn't start a service business. Um if that's what you really want to do. If you want to If you want to, you know, start Australia's best streetwear brand, I would probably look at Thing is, you don't want to work in a proven brand cuz it'll be too big and you won't get enough exposure to enough disparate types of work. And so, I would rather work with a very founder-driven, small So, when I say small company, I kind of say like call it 10 to 30 max, maybe 40 max. So, you could have way more exposure. At least even maybe not to the work, but at least to every person doing the work. So, you could basically take all your lunch breaks, all your mornings, and all your afternoons and evenings trying to talk to other co-workers to learn what they do, so you can learn about how to do it. Um I think that's one of the most underrated ways of of of learning any kind of new skill. Um you can obviously just start and learn on your own. I mean, you can look at Ben Francis and figuring out with Gymshark. So, there's nothing to say that you wouldn't be successful. Um I learned the gym business by literally just starting the gym business, but I still took 3 months and I did the basically like an apprenticeship under a successful gym, which kind of showed me the beginner ropes uh to doing it right. And so, that is how I literally did it. I worked for somebody for three-ish months. I got a good understanding of what I needed to do, and then I went out and did it on my own. Now, can you do it in less than, you know, more than 3 months? For sure. You don't have to do 3 months. You can do 6 or 12. Um but, I think you can give yourself a deadline that you want to say like, I am going to make sure that I that I move on by this point. Um so, yeah. Muhammad. Uh currently employed in a 10K US job, uh but wants to start a business in finance consultancy. All right. Uh not sure if it's worth the trade-off and because my job, I don't feel the urge of being more disciplined. I'm not even sure if there's a question here. Was there a question? I'm just going to move on from this one. It wasn't clear enough for me. I I think it's what you know, what do you do? Do whatever you want. Um okay. Hi Alex, I have almost 150K subscribers here on YouTube, but I'm struggling to make an income. Brands don't pay more than $300 sponsored videos and I don't make enough from AdSense alone. I'm going to guess that you built an audience around entertainment, not education, uh because educators always make more per follower, like not even close. Um and so, you need to Basically, it's like the fact that you built 150K subs might be a good thing, might not be a good thing, I don't know. Um you basically don't have a valuable enough asset. Right? So, it's like what audience instead of saying like I have subscribers here on YouTube, it's like what audience did you compile together? And what products and services do they spend the most money on? And then you need to go sell those products and services. So, either you or you need to go get advertisers. Um and if they're not willing to spend more than $300 per sponsored video, here's the thing, that means they're not making more than that. Because if they make that cuz again, people who who just do sponsorships don't understand like the whole point of the sponsorship is that the person pays you money makes more money. That's the point. That's why they pay you. And so, you need to do everything you can to learn how to sell, learn how to market, learn how to advertise to figure out how you can really sell your audience on the thing. If you are pure entertainment, it's much harder and they're typically just say paying for reach and impressions. Um and you're going to be you're going to earn the least amount of dollars per kind of impression compared to somebody who has super high affinity and trust and influence in a specific niche and an audience that has already demonstrated that they're interested in this kind of stuff and learning it or uh your advice is trusted so you can make you can make recommendations or endorsements on products uh that they would actually believe. So, um at the end of the day, you got to make your audience more valuable, which you can either prove by selling your own uh or make sure that they make more money. And if neither of those things happen, the audience is not valuable, which means you can go build an audience that is. Zack Shannon. I'm going to do two more. Zack Shannon, how do you know a pain point is strong enough to build a business around? Uh people give you money for it. It's kind of interesting when I get this kind of question. It's like, how do I know that people will like this? Ask them to buy it. And if they give you money, then it will be strong enough of a business. If no one wants your thing, then it is not strong enough. You can literally take the money and then like a different way of doing this is you can try to pre-sell stuff and say, "Hey, I'm going to be building this thing. You can buy it ahead of time." This is the nature of Kickstarter. Um but like do not ask people if they think that your idea is good cuz they will tell you yes. Do not ask people if you if they think they would buy it cuz they will tell you yes. Ask them to buy it and if they buy it, then they will buy it. All right. Caller. >> Hey Alex, my parents were unalived in front of me as a kid and I channeled it into becoming a masked vigilante at night. Funding all my gear through the family company's R&D budget so it never hits the official balance sheet. I still run the company by day but the board keeps circling my personal projects and asking hard questions about where the money's going. How do I keep them off my back without ever telling them the truth? >> Um, I would suggest you make Morgan Freeman your chairman of the board and uh and have him kind of play stopgap for you and be comfortable working in the morally gray area of uh doing what you feel is right even if it is not illegally right. Um, because we have a legal system not justice system. Uh Batman. By the way, I got that one. Uh last time for those of you who are new here and were like, what was that about? Uh last time the uh team uh pranked me with a an Iron Man one and I had no idea and I uh really really went I bit I bit hard on it. Um, otherwise uh today was the uh the the last live stream stream of life uh of the 30 for 30. Not to say that I'm not going to do more. Um, maybe I'll do one tomorrow, you never know. Um, but uh that was the experiment. I gave you the uh the stats on the beginning of that. If you guys like this, um let me know in the comments because uh if I don't get it then I won't do it because I need the approval of others. All right. Lots of love. Bye.