Alex Hormozi Answers Your Questions on Reddit

So we're doing a first ever Reddit AMA, and uh in the spirit of A-ing and A-ing, um I'm just going to basically scroll through here and start at the top because you guys upvoted these questions and answer them in the order in which they were upvoted. Uh so if you had a bad question and no one cared about your question, it is less likely than if everybody liked your question uh that it'll get an answer. And so the next time we do an AMA ask a really good one and then that That's that. Okay. So uh lastbad2687, your advice for most people to start a business is to start with a lawn or snow service. Uh what would you recommend for someone with a cushy IT job? Is that still the best path to get started? So I'll just I'll I'll initially reject the premise which is that for most people start a business that's lawn or snow service. Um I think my advice has generally been start with the thing that you have the that you already have the greatest existing skills for and has the greatest amount of existing leverage. So if you have basically not a lot of skills, most people can do lawn or snow, being able to knock on a door and have a lawn mower. And so it just has a very low bar of getting started. That being said, is it the best path? I think that asking the question best has like best as compared to what? For what outcome? And I think this is important to dive into because we have this idea that we're going to somehow have this perfect pick that like the first business we start is somehow going to be the last business we start. And unless you're Zuck or Bezos, that is almost never the case. Almost every very successful entrepreneur I know hasn't just started like one or two, but they started five, 10 plus different companies. Not to say they didn't do those all at the same time, they learned from the first one and they moved on to the second and so on. And so that being said, if you have a cushy IT job, then I mean there's this whole new thing called AI, it's pretty sweet, it's coming out uh coming out soon. Uh so there's a ton of money to be made in AI implementation for small businesses. Um and that's because there's still a lot of people heavy stuff that has to happen which is integrating their old stuff with the new stuff. And I think that there you're really dictated by how much money Basically, let me say this differently. You will be able to charge based on how much money you make or save the company or business that you're serving. And so, it completely takes you out of selling from your own wallet and gets you in a as close to the revenue or bottom line as possible. And in general, if I have to pick opportunities, at least in the B2B side, I want to pick stuff that's as close to the money as I can. On the other hand, if you're selling to consumers, then you want to sell to pain points that affect lots of people that are worth lots of dollars. But which one you should pick? It's like, let me give you this one thing. Well, there's a zillion different people and it's like, okay, should every first person start a snow blowing business? Probably not. Right? But if you were 16 years old and you have a lawn mower and you have a neighborhood, it's a great place to start. And I think the biggest thing that people have to demystify is this idea of like starting this business becomes this very amorphous vague thing. But starting a business is always the same steps. So, the advice to somebody who's at a hundred million dollars a year versus somebody who's at zero, very different based on the different businesses they have at a hundred. But at zero, it's all the same, which is that you need to start an LLC, you have to have a way to process money, you have to have a bank account. If you have those things and you accept a dollar from a stranger, you have a business. Congratulations. Now, from there, everything else becomes more and more varied the bigger and bigger you go. But that's the nature of the game. So, hopefully that helps and last bad 2627 or 2687. All right. Um Let's see here. All right, Kings, Queen, non-binary. Here we go. Your proof checklist is built on showing receipts, names, numbers, someone just like the buyer getting the result. Yes. I sell marketing to precision machine shops and aerospace suppliers. Dope. The wins are real, but they live behind NDAs and a culture where nobody tells competitors what's working. Two questions. What's your hierarchy of proof when the strongest evidence can't be named? And would you ever walk away from a great client because you can't use the win. Um great great questions. Um I'll answer the second one first, which is no, I wouldn't walk away from a great client because I can't use it unless that was part of the terms of the agreement. So, if I'm giving you a discount because I'm going to use your case study, then if I don't use the case study, then I have to change the terms, right? So, that's a that's an easy one. In terms of the first one, which is what's your hierarchy of proof when the strongest evidence can't be named, is that you can still do Acme Corp. And so, you can still be incredibly specific about what you did and not necessarily name the company. And so, that can get you around a lot of the like concerns. Like there's tons of times that you hear me tell stories about portfolio companies or companies that we've worked with where I'm not saying this is the name of the company, this is the person, but I can still tell you the actual story and give you a case study of before and after. And so, you can say we changed the names of the companies uh just for uh anonymity, and that might actually be able to that might allow you to collect a lot more uh testimonials or proof for your specific customers. So, hopefully that helps. Um beyond that, there's proof that happens in the past, but there's also proof that can happen in the present. So, what I can explain here is like to what degree can we approximate what being a customer of ours would look like? And so, I'll give you an example of what I mean. So, if I said I'm helping you generate leads for your let's say your precision, you know, machine shops and your aerospace suppliers. If I can get call recordings from these people, which you can also include in your exist in your in your uh initial bids or whatever, um you can then play the calls that you're getting for them for a prospect. So, it's like, "Hey, you know, this is John. I saw an ad on the internet for ABC, you know, precision machine shop. Um can you tell me more about what you guys got have going on?" So, I could play that for a prospect. So, it's kind of meta. So, it's like And so, then I would just say, "Hey, to be clear, can you handle about 10 to 15 of these a week?" And they'd be like, "Oh, dude, that's exactly what I want." And so, proof can come in a lot of different versions. It's just It's not just case studies. It's how many ways can I approximate what life is going to be like on the other side of working with me and take as much risk out of that as I possibly can. And so, the perfect world of this is a free trial. Like, don't trust me. Let me just do it, and then you can pay me after. And so, the idea is, how many of these proof points can I pull forward from what they would have experienced after they were a customer to before they buy. Hopefully that helps. Okay. Uh Infinite username. Hey Alex, don't know if you'll see this. I am. Uh but I've been waiting for an opportunity to tell you this. Uh-oh. Uh there's a period last year when I was going through a really tough time. I'm sorry. Uh my whole world was turned upside down, and I didn't have any direct clue uh or direction on what to do. During that time, your quotes through Twitter and Threads became my sport. I had a gallery widget on my home screen that would cycle through a folder of screenshots of your quotes. Oh, awesome, man. I'm not an entrepreneur or business owner. They gave me some motivation, fueled my determination, and kept me focused on what I was doing. And today, I'm doing much better, and I still have that widget there. Uh image screenshot. Super cool. Uh since this is an AMA, my question would be, since most of your advice is meant for startups, business owners, and entrepreneurs, what advice do you give people with a stable job? I think a lot of the actual advice carries pretty much one-for-one. It's just that you'd be applying that to the business you work on rather than um the business you own. And so, everything that has to do with work, like volume negates luck violence is the answer, um doing unreasonable amounts of volume that would make it unreasonable that you are not successful, um sticking on the path, like all of these things apply to somebody who's in a career. That being said, you'll always be compensated in proportion to the risk that you take on. And so, if you want to increase your income within your existing job, then it's about you shifting some of the risk that the business is taking on onto yourself. And so, that happens primarily in the form of how can I create variable pay, A, and then B, is there a way that I can buy stock? Can I risk some of my own capital uh for this initiative or whatever? And so, I was just having a conversation with uh somebody on my team I think two days ago about this exact topic which is any logical sane business owner will happily give you a fraction of money they have not made that you directly help them make. The issue that most people have is that they do not directly help them make it and the reason they're able to make it is because of other things that that person relies on which is why it is a fraction and not the entirety of. And so as long as you're clear as where the value is being provided and you were the closest one to making that happen, you'll be able to negotiate more and all this just comes down to leverage which is how much you need them versus how much they need you and the best way to improve your leverage is to gain more skills. And so said differently I think the future of work so this is taking a slight left but like I think the future of work is going to look like people coming with coming with their own AI agents into business. It's kind of like uh like I'm going to come with my at least a methodology of installing or spinning up tens or hundreds of agents for a specific department and so like I'm coming in not as a person but as an entire department or an entire function in the business and so you can take the aggregate amount of compensation that you used to have to pay for an entire department and pay that all to me or a fraction of that to me and we are both better off as a result. And so that's hopefully gives you a little bit of framework to think through but it really just comes down to like what you want. If you are content with your life then dude you already won. If you want to make more then you have to take the steps that that come with taking more. The first one is asking for more money and the second is earning that more money which you do by taking on risk. All right. Uh the revolution. Okay. Hi Alex, love how you break down problems and articulate them. Keep inspiring. How to scale my travel agency? Currently I do lead generation via meta. Okay. With few sales agents last month we did 30k profit. Amazing. And a hard 60k in sales. All right. Five jeez. Okay, 5500 ad spend. Really good. How does this scale to a million plus uh sales per month? Okay, great. So I mean fundamentally I'm actually not really I mean, if I don't know what percentage of the revenue you're generating is from ads, but if you spent 5,500 bucks or pounds, and you made $160,000 in sales, like that's that's pretty good. You know what I mean? Like that's that's really strong. And that if you made 30k in profit from that, then your gross margins are obviously higher than that. And so, if I'm going to spend $5,500 in ad spend, and I'm going to make at least 6:1 because your gross profit's higher than your net profit, then I would say like, what stops you from spending more on ads? And to me, that is the process of how do I scale to a million a month. Now, there's a world where you're unable to scale the ad spend past a certain point because the lifetime gross profit per customer is not high enough. And in that situation, you have a number of kind of levers that you can pull. Number one is you can change the offer itself, which would you know, improve those metrics. Number two is that you could expand to other cheaper CPM channels. Or number three, which is my preference, is that you expand the money model, right? Expand the mousetrap, so that you can make more per customer. Because if you think about long term, if we if we if we equate businesses in terms of their ability to get customers, what is what is typically far more differentiated is the LTV per customer. And so, the classic example that I give is a Starbucks, right? If you have a coffee shop and you're competing at Starbucks, you getting a coffee customer is probably not going to cost that much more than it cost for a Starbucks to get a coffee customer. But what will be dramatically different is that they have a $14,000 LTV, and you do not. And so, they're able to spend more than you can because they make more. And so, the long-term arms race of business is always the lifetime gross profit per customer, and that is how you can go into new markets and dominate because you have a way that makes way more. Now, I would say that that is the that is the best long-term competitive advantage is having something that a lot of people need that you make a lot of money from. Now, the short-term competitive advantages, which is where I think real disruptors actually happen in the business world, is where you actually find a way to have different or cheaper distribution. So, for example, um Gymshark has come in and, you know, taken a shot at Nike and some of these larger brands because they had unique unique and new and cheaper distribution. And this is almost always the the case because old players don't learn the new tricks fast enough and then the emergent players, if they're smart, can capitalize and disrupt. Um Look at First Form for supplements. They were one of the first people. Look at Quest also for supplements. I'm obviously I'm from the fitness space, so I saw those ones first hand. Um and Jim Shark as well, right? And so each of these are are examples of people who were who were bootstrapped, started early on a new trend where they had cheaper CPM. So, in the event where you feel like it is very difficult for you to expand your lifetime gross profit um in comparison to a larger entrenched competitor, then you'll have to beat them on CAC. So, you have to get lower way or sorry, a cheaper way of getting customers. So, fundamentally, spend more money than you're currently are. Um and if you can't spend more money, those are the different things that I just walked through in terms of solutions. And I think actually the the the chat had good look. More ads. What's stopping you from doubling your revenue, right? Oh, here we go. Sales agents do manual manual sales, takes time to convert. It's travel agency. More spend more than Okay, so you need more sales people. Okay, so if that's actually the limitation, then what we need to do is go get another sales person. So, let's see if he answered that one. But, this is actually a great exercise though actually seeing this because like that is the game. That is the process. Well, I would, but I can't because. And whatever the because is, then should be the thing that takes your full attention in terms of your resources to go solve. And so, whenever you're spending time, this is very real. The reason that some people like every bootstrapped billionaire that you've ever met, if they started with zero and you have zero, you have no more advantages than they have. And it has to be very real. And so, fundamentally, the only thing they were able to do is allocate the very limited resources they had compared to you in a superior way. Meaning they got better returns for their time, their effort, their money than you are. And so, most of the time you are spending your days working on things that are not the constraint of the business. Elon in a in a recent interview talked about what are you what are you thinking about um uh when you're trying to uh you know, how are you growing these businesses so fast? He says, "I exclusively focus on the limiter, the rate limiter." And so, every business has rate limiters. There's something that is stopping you from scaling. And so, all of your effort as an entrepreneur should be directed towards solving the most complex problem, which is typically the rate limiter, the bottleneck, the constraint. All different ways of saying the same thing, which is there's something that's that's stopping you from making more. And any resource that is not deployed towards that is increasing the potential of the system, not the throughput of the system. And so, we need to increase the throughput, and the only way to do that is to address the constraint. How much AI are you using? God, this is a really good question. Okay. So, I'm going to answer this question in two parts. So, one is how much is ACQ using, and then how much am I personally using? So, I I'm going to answer your question with a story that might be relevant for you. So, I just made a video about this cuz it's been really top of mind, which is that I had a conversation um last week with a friend of mine who's a billionaire and little older, um really awesome dude, phenomenal entrepreneur. And I asked him, I said, "Hey, you know, off the cameras." I said, "I know that publicly you got to say you're you know, everything's AI, etc." I said, "But, how much AI are you using?" He started laughing. He's like, "Well, I mean, I'm not vibe coding all day, right?" And so, the idea is this, is that what AI did not do is it did not erase every other form of leverage. I'm going to say this again. Just because AI got invented does not mean all other forms of leverage stopped existing. For example, if I build a big brand, AI does not stop that from existing. If I have a lot of money and I can deploy capital, it doesn't mean that AI stopped that from existing. AI gave people who had no capital a high-leverage tool that they can use to get significantly more for what they put in. And the more skilled you are with it, the more you get out of it. And so, but if I have, let's say, let's just let's imagine something for a second. Let's say that you spent your entire life learning how to do AI in this first specific use case. If I say, "Hey, man. Um I'll pay you $5 million a year to do that thing." If you don't have $5 million a year and there's no one else offering you $5 million a year, I can gain access to all of that skill into my own business without learning AI because I use a different form of leverage. And so, what I'm seeing a lot right now is many people are still missing the fundamentals of business and using AI to try and make up for it. But let me make let me let me make this make sense. If right now you're deploying AI really aggressively in your business or in your startup or your side hustle or whatever and you're not making more money, it means you are still not working on the constraint. We still have to allocate our resources even with more leverage to the constraint. And so, what's happened is that people have more capacity to work, but they are still now deploying that capacity against things that do not matter. And so, just because you automated your email doesn't mean that you're all of a sudden going to start making more money. It just means you automated your email reading. Congratulations, right? And so, the fundamentals are still there. We just have another tool in our arsenal in terms of leverage. Now, in the future is there a world where it's all robots? Maybe, I don't know. We're not there yet. Now, in terms of how much I use it, I use it on the repetitive tasks. I like I basically automated almost all the repetitive tasks in my day, but that doesn't take very long for me to do. What is more difficult for me to automate is the relationships that I have. Um the decisions around allocations of capital. Now, you could say, "Okay, well I'm going to spin up a deep research agent." But the thing is is anyone who's used AI for an extended period of time, like the decision making that AI does, like you can pretty much sway the decision A based on the data that you give it, but also based on your um whatever direction it thinks you're leaning towards, it will typically confirm. So, it'll I think it'll agree with you like 49% more than a normal human would be given the same exact information. And so, if you're trying to make strategic decisions using AI, I have not found it to be very good at all. And especially since you're not making huge amounts of strategic decisions in the business, I would say that you don't want to forget how to use your brain. Because at the end of the day, what's AI is against AI, the thing that what is the differentiator if both people are using AI. Well, the person who's actually managing it, right? And so, what are we compensated in proportion to? I said it earlier. The risk we're willing to take on. And so, what can AI not do today? It cannot take risk. Somebody has to own the responsibility of the outcome. And so, the more you can do that deploying all other forms of leverage, the more you can scale. I'll give you one more example of this. So, leverage has a lot of different forms, right? I talked about media, you software is obviously a version of that, there's capital, money is a version of that, getting other people to work for you is another version of that. But, let me give you like five rapid-fire ones. If I go from having a one-on-one business to servicing people one on 10, I just gained 10x leverage. There's not a lot of AI stuff that you can decide like that and get 10x leverage on it. If I decide that I'm going to not make everything bespoke, I'm going to go to a specific customer avatar and then make more templated solutions, like that, I get significantly more leverage. I might get 3x, 5x leverage on my delivery, right? If I go from selling one on one to selling one to many, I might have virtually infinite leverage on my conversion. And so, we have to make sure that the AI is being deployed in a place that is the constraint yet again, right? And so, great, you've AI'd your whole business. Guess what? No one knows you exist. And so, the problems of business still remain. Now, of the activities that you need to do to get people to know you exist, of course, there's things that we can use AI. We're very heavy in terms of using AI across acquisition.com, um how we make ads, how we make content. And so, what's that allowed us to do right now, transparently, is that we're still hiring people. And to give a little bit of a proof point around this, look up how many employees OpenAI has. Look up how many employees Claude has or Anthropic has. Thousands. And so, if people were not necessary, you'd think that the number one most frontier models in the world wouldn't have any. They are necessary. And if you look at jobs markets in the companies that have have used AI or adopted AI the most, they are hiring more than other companies. And so, in the short term, um I wouldn't be as afraid of it as I think a lot of people are. I think it is creating more jobs than um than people were afraid of that it was going to. Um and I think, as always, people are we're making stupid decisions and using AI to do stupid things very fast. Okay. Uh let's go to the next one. So, my call You guys digging this? You guys finding this interesting? Okay. Hopefully you guys are enjoying this cuz I'm I'm just popping off over here. Okay. Uh hey, I read all your books, all your advice religiously to the point that I'm I've moved to a city where I know nobody. Nope, okay. Tried posting for years, learning from feedback. Good. Uh I spent my money on courses. Okay. Haven't been to the pub in the hopes to save my money. Okay, great. Done outreach 100 times a day for more days than I can count. Yet you're still broke. Okay. Uh is it just a waiting game? Do I legit just have to wait for good luck to finally find me? It's been years. Uh I've been starting following the day your podcast released the start of Bartlett, Steve Bartlett. I tried and tried and tried and yet I'm no more successful than that. Okay. So, I'll say this. There's the things you say and then there's the reality of it, which is that I'm going to I'm going to be I'm going to be kind not nice here. You didn't incorporate the feedback well enough. Like just saying like I incorporated the feedback in a sentence does not make it true. Because if you had iterated and gotten better, you would be better. And I find it hard to believe that you did you reached out to cuz let's do the math on this. If you said 100 times a day and you've been doing this for let's just say 3 years. All right. So, that means that you reached out to 100,000 people individually and you're still broke. Something does not add up. Now, spent money on courses, things like that. That matters very little to me because the money that you spend on courses has nothing has has I'm sure it has some correlation to making money, but the thing that has a much higher correlation to making money is doing the actions that that money making requires. And so, fundamentally, were you doing something that people found valuable? Like I'm I'm struggling to understand. Obviously, this is, you know, amorphous. And I want to be clear, I'm not I'm not pooh-poohing you. I just like I'm just going to be real, dude. I think you're buying into your own [ __ ] Like I think that you have And I know that it sounds heavy-handed for me because if you're watching this right now, but like there's there's no world where you reach out to 100,000 people. And in that process of reaching out to 100,000 people, you've iterated what you were going to say 100,000 times. And you didn't get any It I just don't believe it. I just think I don't think there's a universe where that happens. And so at the basic level, in the leads book, if you reach out to 100,000 people and said, "I'll do something for you for free." You should have an absolutely full client load. And if you don't suck there's a percentage of those people that after you say you're no longer going to do that work for them, you say you'd do it for money because you're full, that they would say yes. And even if they did it, they'd be able to give you a testimonial. And even if they didn't do that, they'd still be able to give you a referral. And so there's there's not a world of reality that I see because of the reality that I've lived in my life um to believe that 100,000 people did not accept a free offer. Where you work for them. And so my guess is you went straight for the sale on something that people didn't want. And so I think you need to start for free. Get more reps. Get practice. Collect proof. And then in in the process of doing whatever that work is getting good. And then you will make money. And so there's also a huge amount of demand for things that like maybe you just need to be doing something that other people that there's a huge supply demand, you know uh offset. This it's shifted, right? There's there's more demand than there is supply. And so are you just trying to sell editing services uh you know, to to people on the internet? Yeah. I mean, that might be a relatively saturated niche. To be clear, doesn't doesn't winners can't win cuz winners always win. And so, um I just I could take your question at face value, but I do not believe it, and I think that you believe it, which is why I'm trying to talk to that point more specifically. And I think that you thinking you're working is probably the thing that's getting in the way of you actually working. Just being real. Okay. Hayn Hayn is in. I don't know what that is. That sounds cool. All right. I'm 24 years old earning $600 a month as a licensed engineer in Philippines. Okay, cool. I'm responsible with money. Great. I save and invest 70% of my income. Badass. That's also insane, by the way. Saving for So, you're living on $180 a month in the Philippines. That is that is that is next level. That is that is impressive. That is Dude, you're taking you're taking Mosey meals and Mosey mobile and living cheap to an entirely You are you are S-tier on cheap living. You are god mode. So, kudos to you. Um I want to earn north of $20,000 a month within 3 to 5 years, no matter how. Okay, great. Put put yourself in my situation taking into consideration the position of the Filipino accent, etc. What would you do to get there? Okay. This is awesome. So, number one is you have to gain access to US markets. Number two, the accent doesn't matter as much if you're good. Basically, the better you are, the less the accent matters. The worse you are, the the more it matters, okay? Because it is a small, but somewhat material, you know, factor. It's It really just comes down to trust. Um are people going to trust somebody who's foreign as much as they're going to trust somebody who's who's called English or native speaking? No, but it doesn't mean they're not going to trust. It just means that you're you're at a slight disadvantage. Um but, let me let me paint it to you differently. Is there somebody who's in the US who can then move to the Philippines and then make money? The answer is yes. Which means that there's nothing that really fundamentally separates you from that person besides your accent and the way you look. Now, there Are there any Filipinos who are American-born who were in the US, started making money online, and then moved to the Philippines. Well, then that means that they look exactly the same as you. And they have access to the same internet as you. And they also have access to the same customers. So, the only difference is between you and them is your accent. And so, when you say take into consideration the fact that you're Filipino, I will fully take it into consideration, which is that I do not think it matters that much. I think being good is what matters. And so, I think what you need to do is find a problem that is very valuable for somebody else to solve. Now, you are a licensed engineer. So, is there a way I mean, moving locations is the obvious thing because I'll tell you this, in the US, um I guess it depends on what kind of engineer you are. Uh but if you're like an electrical engineer, my god, you can print money here. Um but uh if you can't do that, then I I think you you need to in some way remove the licensed engineer from your your box of tools that you're available to. Let me Let me give you an example of what I mean. I did this um thing with Steven Bartlett who I just mentioned earlier, where he asked He said, "Hey, open up this uh suitcase." And it had a number between $1,000, I think, and $100,000. And based on the amount of money in the box, uh how much basically what business would you start? And it's a trick question because if you have $1,000 or $10,000, neither of those amounts of money really change what business you're going to start because you're just going to sell something that doesn't cost money to start, which is going to be skills and services. And so, the fact So, my point here is that your licensed engineer component is like that $1,000. It's this thing that is something that you spent time on, but is also not relevant. What we need to do is you need to learn a a marketable skill, which you either can go B2B, which is finding ways to make businesses more money, which is typically how do I help them market, or how do I help them sell, or how do I help them deliver in a way that is better, faster, cheaper. On the consumer side, anything that a consumer wants. Now, is there anything that stops you from uh recruiting influencers to promote a product that you like that you can drop ship from somewhere else in the United States and have them promote it for free and they're going to get a cut. Is there anything that prevents you from doing that? No, there's not. And is it the way that you want to build a business that's going to be millions and millions? No. Can you make 20 grand a month? Absolutely. And so my point is that I think that in some ways you've given yourself constrained thinking and in so doing preventing yourself from seeing the zillions of opportunities that exist because you have access to the internet. It was the same thing I had a guy who asked me he had a cafe in the middle of nowhere. In a 120 person town that he had a cafe and he was trying to scale it and he's like well how do I scale this cafe? And I was like dude the answer is you don't. You use this thing called the internet which is what you're talking to me on right now. And through that internet you gain access to the entire world. So the world is global. I would stop seeing the fact that you are Filipino or that you have an accent as um a a disadvantage. Not because it isn't but because it doesn't serve you. But yes, sell some stuff online. Okay. Um Alex, your ability to still abstract concepts like defining confidence into concrete measurable behaviors completely change how I view reality. Awesome, thanks man. Um I truly believe the most most of the evil in the world comes from the gap between what we say and what we mean. Okay. Uh have you ever considered publishing your personal dictionary translating these things? Please the world needs this. Um I'll leave the short answer to that is yes um and it's it's in the works. Uh I have like five half written books right now. So I'm I'm playing whack-a-mole for which book gets finished first. Um also what are the top three books you read specifically on behaviorism, operant conditioning, or systems? Um so the father of operant conditioning is B.F. Skinner. Um but I would say that a lot of my understanding actually um developed speaking to a good friend of mine who's like a master at it and using AI. Because AI is also pretty good master at operant conditioning. And so you can just ask it to use this frame in answering your considering questions. And so, that is I would say like where the the more, call it uh my 201, you know, education in that came from, actually just learning from AI. Hope that helps. Um I'm an online fitness coach and I'm growing more concerned about AI taking over to the point where I'm constantly moving to more tangible items like selling shirts and in-person coaching. Should I be worried about AI? Okay, good question. So, here's the thing. Um what people really want when they're hiring a coach is not the information. It is the accountability. Put differently, it is they want someone to say "Nice job." They want the encouragement. They want the reinforcement. And this has been fun for me because I actually just, uh for the first time in many, many, many, many, many years, um I have a coach again uh for strength training, cuz that's kind of what I'm into. And it was interesting because I'm observing my own behavior with the coach and I was like, I honestly, like I know what he's saying. I just want him to be like, "That was a badass lift." >> [laughter] >> That's like That's all I want to say. It's like, "Dude, you're looking strong." Like I honestly just want the approval. Just being real. Like one of the best in the world. Uh I was like, "I just want the approval." And so, it was a great reminder to me for consumer services and things of the like that like it has not been about the information. You can ask AI to make you workouts right now. You can ask AI to give you a diet plan. And I'll give you a real case study for this cuz I think it'll be real for you. Is that there was this club called Coco Fit years ago that started with the premise that they were going to build these machines and people were going to get fobs and they'd scan the fob. And then when they scan the fob, it would remember what the last workout was. And so, they had this whole idea that they were going to replace replace personal trainers, right? And so, they were going to they were going to use that as a reason to gain their premium pricing of $200 a month without having any trainers. So, basically it was this gym floor with these little screens and these machines and you scan your thing and it sells great. Except no one came. No one cared. Because what they what they they had one fundamental assumption that was was wrong, which is that the reason people aren't in shape is because they lack information. It has never been about lack of information. It's about lack of motivation, lack of accountability, lack of reinforcing contingencies that exist in their environment so that it makes not eating the bad thing, or rather yeah, not eating the bad thing and eating the good thing the easiest and most convenient choice. And so to the question that you have like should you kill your business? No, I don't think you should. Um unless you want to. But like there's no like one I think more businesses right now are getting killed from thinking AI is going to take over the business than businesses that are actually going to have AI take over the business in the short term. And so the thing is is like it's kind of the barbell is what what job does what job am I doing for a customer? And if you think that people are coming to you because they actually need programming, I think you're wrong. People are coming to you because they like you. They like your vibe. They think that you are an authority and as a result you will get them to stay motivated with their thing. And I think that happens across spaces. Right? Do I think that AI is going to replace events? No. Do I think it's going to replace concerts? No. Like there's a lot of things that exist in the real world that AI at least in the short to medium term is not going to replace. And I think the question that we don't know the answer to yet is you know, will life-like robots exist that as far as work concerned act like act look and feel like humans. And will we care what they think as much as we care about what humans think? In other words, will we want to get status from a robot? I don't know. But it's a good question. Okay. You often talk So this is dry examination 2617. You often talk about the 85-year-old version of yourself and frame your decisions around death. What is your subjective perception about your own death? Does viewing yourself as just an organism running behavioral loops eliminate the fear of dying? Or do you still wrestle with the unknown that comes after you die? I can't sleep most nights because of this. Um I'm going to give you a wonderful piece of advice, um which is if a thought does not serve you, it is probably not worth continuing to think it. Real. Because if you really do believe that we are just uh you know, chimpanzees that have evolved and are in behavioral loops in an infinite universe, then you having this little thought that ruins your day over and over again, there's no meaning behind it. Why bother? And I think that that sounds overly simplistic, and it's also still true. Um And so, do I see myself as somebody who is who does things that they've been reinforced for doing? Absolutely. Um does that eliminate the fear of dying? Uh fear of dying, maybe. Preference for staying alive? No. Uh I would strongly prefer to stay alive. Um and the beauty of death is that once you are dead, you don't know you're dead. And so, it's only the fear of death that bothers us, not death itself. Kind of interesting. And so, um do I still wrestle with the unknown that comes after you die? Not at all. I really don't. I don't give it any thought. Um and I'll give you my and many people will disagree with me on this, and I want to be very clear, I agree with whatever position you have. Go for it. Love this for you, whatever you believe. That said, what has helped me through this basically not wrestling with this is that for the entirety of the universe's existence, I have been not alive. In other words, I have been dead. And so, I've been dead for almost all time that has existed except for the last 37 years. And so, I imagine what will happen after I die is the same thing that happened before I was alive, which is that there was nothing. And so, it didn't really bother me very much before I was alive that I was not alive, and I suspect that it will not bother me very much after I'm dead and also not alive. And so, in that in in in seeing the world that way, it has freed me in a lot of ways to just like not have a lot of stress about it. Um for some people that helps. For other people, it doesn't. If you're the type of person that helps, think that way. If it doesn't help you, then for for the love of everything, think whatever way. But that has helped me um because I think like our brains are designed to keep us alive, not to help us maximize our potential, not to help us be happy, not to help us, you know, be more useful. They only are there to keep us alive and help us pass on our genes. That's it. And so, there's a lot of other things that we're not designed to do. And so, we have to fight tooth and nail to orient the way that we see the world uh in a way that serves us. And I think there's a lot of ways to do that. This is just the way that I have. True twist 4684. I have a massive problem with optimizer paralysis. All right. Uh I delay execution because my ego is tied to the outcome. So, any chance of failure feels like an identity death. Okay. I was reinforced as a child to never fail and always win at school because top grades were the only thing that got me attention. Okay. It was literally the only reason other kids my age ever talked to me. As a result, I unconsciously only get into things where I have high certainty of winning. How do I kill this optimizer mindset? Um I love the first response, don't kill it, use it. Um but you've created a lot of labels for yourself, which is that this optimizer paralysis that you delay execution because your your ego is tied to the outcome and if there's any chance of failure, you don't do it. But the reality is that you are in a path that is guaranteed for failure because you decided to ask this question. So, you already feel like you're not succeeding. So, you're not leaving success and and and chancing failure. You're already in failure. What you're doing is whether you want to roll the dice at success. Think about that. But the plight that you're dealing with was the exact same one that I was dealing with. So, I know this very well, which is I was you know, I was magna [ __ ] laude, finished in 3 years, top of my class, blah blah blah blah blah. But, the thing that got me to get out of the comfortable thing was the realization that when I am 85 years old, I will regret if I was if I behaved cowardly throughout the entire period of my life when I could have taken risks. And the reality of a guaranteed regret at a delay versus a shot not the guarantee, but a shot at getting what I wanted. And so, if you have no chance of what you want and a chance of what you want, which door do you go to? So, you're telling me I've got a chance. And fundamentally, that's what you do. And if you are the type person that likes to win, then go into that arena and win. Cuz the thing is is and I love this Jocko quote, but all failure besides death is psychological. It's literally rules that we make for ourselves that we then draw a line in the sand and compare ourselves to it and say, "As a result of me being far away from this line, I am a failure." But, the thing is is that it's a fake game with fake rules that didn't matter to begin with. You made it up. And so, you can just choose to change the rules of the game. It's your game. It's your game. And you're never going to win in other people's eyes anyways, cuz they don't give a [ __ ] When Leila and I get on the Forbes list, eventually, I know what's going to happen. We're going to have a post. People will be like, "Oh, wow, he actually did it." I'm going to get 30 or 40 texts. And then I'm going to [ __ ] get Then the next day everyone's going to move on. Like, nothing's going to happen. There's There's no mariachi band that comes in in in 2 years from now and says, "Congrat You know, plays you a song for for the the reason that you're telling yourself that you can't do it." Like, there's Let me say this differently. There's a reason that you haven't taken action and that that action is serving you. You have to figure out what that reason is. Like you think that because you're an optimizer and that you have a a track record of success that if you fail, you're going to no longer have that identity. But as far as I'm concerned, you don't deserve that identity begin with. Mhm? Now, I'm just doing this to to to poke buttons, right? To push you a little bit. But the reality is you can redefine your identity based on whatever label you want, whenever you want. We could say that you doing what you're doing now is being a failure and you taking a chance is being a success. You define the label. All right. Trish the dish. >> [laughter] >> Does any advice come to mind for someone who has strong operational skill set but is not adept at sales or cold approaching? Okay. Doing the work is effectively easy part but having the opportunity to do so is the pain point. Sector is real estate property management hospitality. Um I'll give you two answers to this. So, I'll say hard way, easy way. I'll say the easy way is find someone who has the skills that are your that you're deficient in. There's tons of people who are very promotional oriented entrepreneurs but don't have somebody who's got strong operational chops behind them. And anything big is going to need operational chops. Uh so that means like leadership, managing people, managing processes, things like that. Like and and for infrastructure, like all of those things are important in a business to scale. And so, the easy thing is find somebody who complements you and then you guys go do it together. The the hard way of doing it is that you go get those skills, right? Um and you said that doing the work effectively is the easy part. But the thing is is that the work you need to do is on the thing you suck at. So, what I see that as is I like doing work that comes easy to me, not that work is easy. So, you like doing easy work, is not hard work. The hard work is doing things that you suck at and that you will fail at and you will feel bad for being sucky at, but doing it so many times that eventually you suck less until eventually you're good. That is the hard work. And it's the hard work because it's emotionally draining more than it is mentally draining. We can understand what 100 outreaches a day is. It's very defined. The emotional part is the hard part cuz you have to deal with the uncertainty of not knowing whether it's going to work or when it's going to work. You don't know if the iteration that you're going to do based on the feedback is the right one, but you have to continue to do that and I think it's the emotionality of how much suffering you have to go through in that process which teaches you to be more efficient and find ways to get better. And go find yourself a community of people who are doing this exact same thing and you surround yourself with them cuz I promise you'll learn 100 times faster if you can learn from 100 other people's life experiences rather than learning solely on your own. Asian Fochu. All right, thanks for the help you do for the community. If you had to help a lead generation business in the MSP space, you know what you know what MSP Master Services Provider? Uh what would be the best way to get qualified leads since the space is so saturated? Been doing outbound, we're about to start content. Anything that helps speed up the process would be great. Um well, the fast button is ads cuz you can do that tomorrow. The slightly slower button is going to be outbound uh and then the slowest button in general uh tends to be content. Now, if you're amazing at content, then obviously tomorrow you could make the best thing. It goes viral, you know, globally. Is it likely? No. And so, I'll give you hidden door number four, which is can you go find people who have the leads that you're looking for that are in adjacent businesses that you can partner with to send money back to them when they send you business? Is a great way to get started at a significantly higher leverage. So, for example, if there are five businesses that are adjacent to yours, um where you can do deals with, those businesses and all of their existing marketing, advertising, selling, etc. machines are now working for you. And so you're basically harnessing your your your hitching your your wagon to the back of their cart and letting them pull as long as the metrics make sense for them in terms of payback. Because most businesses, as long as you're not competing, would like to make more money from their leads. If they can't sell this person something, it makes sense for them to give them that person to you so you can sell them something and they can get a portion of it. And that's all cash flow with no risk, right? And there's no work and delivery. And so making those deals very very very lucrative and it gives you a tremendous leverage, especially when you're starting out, on your average attempts where you can do basically more targeted and more meaningful average. Meaning, can I, instead of just sending a DM, can I show up in person? Can I say to somebody that hey, I'm going to be in your area? And then when they say yes, I end up flying out there just so I can be with them, right? And so one of the, I think um underutilized ways of doing this is sending like very heavy lumpy direct mail. Ned, who's one of our he's our VP of Ops, and he's uh he he posted this inside of our Vayner community. Um there's old direct response stuff that people used to do, which is they would take a letter, they would crumple it up, they'd put it inside of a little trash can, and then they would mail it to people. And so inside the letter says, "Hey, I figured you were going to throw this away in the trash anyway, so I figured I'd save you the step. Haha." And so then you go through the sales letter. But the thing is is that when you follow up and say, "Hey, I'm the guy who sent you the trash can." People are like, "Oh, that was pretty funny." And then sometimes you get a you get a foot in the door. Right? And so being willing to do those things and then say, "Hey, I'm going to be in the area next week. Are you available? I'd I'd be happy to stop by." People, for whatever reason, are way more likely to say, "Well, he's in the area, I guess I can spare it." But if you're if you're not there, then they wouldn't say yes. And then you can just get yourself there for a few hundred bucks if the deal is worth it. Patient video 109. Is the character of a successful seller a scammy one? I've been coming up with ideas to upsell clients and some of my smartest ideas feel scammy. It's like I keep finding ways to increase my margin by selling client solutions to you imaginary problems. Okay, so I think we have to define a scam. So a scam I think is just something that is deceptive in nature, which is that you promise something that you do not deliver. Um and so fundamentally that's it. And so I think to some degree a lot of things are scammy because they promise things they don't deliver. Uh which is why the first rule of marketing for us has always been state the facts and tell the truth. And if the if the facts and the truth are not compelling, we need to change reality. We need to change We need You know, what I'm not saying here is that you're you're you're you're juking your stats. I'm saying that you work harder at making the thing better so that the stats and the facts are compelling and then you go advertise it. You let everybody know about it. And so um coming up with ideas to upsell clients some like like Yeah, I think it just comes down to that. Like state the facts and tell the truth. If you're going to help somebody and you know how to help them, tell them you're going to be able to help them. And as long as you don't promise anything you can't do, you're fine. That's really it. So and I'll say this. This I think this is actually relatively important. You have to make a decision at some point in your career whether you're going to pay more mind to the people who you want to help or the people who hate on you for trying to help. Every person who's an entrepreneur has to make that decision at some point because people will hate you no matter what you do. If you do nothing, they will [ __ ] on you for doing nothing. If you do something, they will [ __ ] on you for how you did it. And why do we do this? Because we gain relative status by putting other people down. Evolutionary. And so I mean, I obviously don't subscribe to that. You've never seen me talk negatively about anyone on my channel on any platform. And I do that because I think there's enough negativity in the world we don't need any more. That being said, um you still have to be able to weather that storm. And so if you can decide, I will choose to help this customer and I will do it in a way that might seem cringe or might seem odd or might seem weird to me because I think somebody else is going to make a comment in my mind about how I'm doing things, [ __ ] them. They don't care about you anyways. And they only feel that way because you remind them of the risk they were unwilling to take for themselves to get what they truly wanted. And as a result, they have a life that is inferior based fully on the things that are mediocre that they never wanted to begin with but settled for out of convenience. But you don't want their life, so why would you listen to their opinions? All right. Personal vanilla 8320. In regards to AI, we are only focusing on the fundamentals, delivery, feedback, iteration, content, and more internal processes. Do you think any of that will change in the future? Uh yes, I think AI will become more more adept and it will be able to do more things and as it is able to do more things, you should adapt where you use it in the places that have the highest leverage specific to your constraint. Ecstatic beyond 4189. Hi Alex, I've listened to almost every single piece of content for the past 2 years on Spotify. All right, I think the most underrated topic would be pricing. Dude, [ __ ] it. Agree. Agree. No one cares about my talk about pricing. I will talk about my pricing. It's the single strongest lever uh for making money in business. Okay. A deep dive into how much to charge, uh increase how much percentage and when if currently priced at commodity pricing, a formula if we can use. All right. Um following topic will be lame and [ __ ] I'm going to start I'm going to stop with the first one. So So pricing-wise, there i- The reason that pricing can be somewhat amorphous is that in some ways, it's like pricing is speculative for many people and many businesses. Meaning, if you have a house in the middle of nowhere and there's no comparables, what that house is worth is directly proportional to what someone else is willing to pay. And that can have huge variety. If there's a billionaire who decides that that house is the house that he has set his eyes on, the the value of that house could be tremendous. Now, there are some hard costs that can be related to that, which is like how much would it be for him to buy, you know, the adjacent part of the mountain and build the house themselves. That would be kind of like the baseline. And then the the value on top of it is just how much time you're going to save that person for not having to do that, right? And so, from a pricing perspective, there are very formal ways, there's entire books on pricing. Um but I would say that the back of the napkin way of coming up with pricing is typically the one that I use most often. And so, I'll give you two different ways of thinking about pricing. Um and then I'll give you a bunch of wrong ways. So, wrong way number one of thinking about pricing is look what everyone else is charging and then take the average. That's number one. That is how you guarantee that you are a commodity in a commoditized marketplace. Number two, do that and then do a little bit more for a little bit less. That's even worse. Number three, cost plus pricing. This is far more common. Cost me $10, I have a fixed 50% markup, so $15 is what I charge for everything and that's what it is. 50% markup. That is at least better in that you have some you've at least thought of your margin. Um but worse in that it's all about you. But it's not about you. It's about the customer. It's about what they're willing to pay, not what you're willing to charge. All right? So, the perfect price is one that a customer will buy that is the maximum that they're able to spend. The difficulty is that this changes within a customer's purchasing history in the moment and between customers. So, for example, if I've had a long day of skiing and I go to the lodge at the top of the, you know, the hill in the mountain and I want a beer, the value of the first beer is significantly higher than the value of the second beer. And the value of the second is is higher than the value of the third. And at some point, they couldn't pay me to have another beer. And so, value diminishes and this happens all the time within existing products. And so, how do you figure out if the if the beer is worth, you know, $7 for the first beer and then $3 for the second beer and $1 for the third beer and the fourth beer they don't want it anymore. Okay. Well, how much more is that first beer worth? And how many average beers do people buy? And so we do some math until eventually say we think the average person will buy three beers if the average price is uh let's say $1. If it's $1, they're going to buy 1 2 3, and on the third beer we get $3 total. We got three beers sold. Now, I said before the second beer was $3. So, if I price it at $3, I'm going to get three and then three, so I'm going to have $6. So, at three at $1, I have $6 at $2. I mean sorry, uh $6 at a $3 price point. And then if I said the first two beer was worth worth seven, then I should price my beer at seven. And no, I'm only going to sell one beer cuz six seven is higher than six. That is how pricing can change within an existing customer's experience, which for many of you guys who sell recurring stuff, this is very real. And this is why I'm such a big advocate of not having uh linear pricing when you can af- when you can afford to do it. Meaning, I like having onboarding fees. I like having upfront charges because in the beginning is when the person typically has the most pain. They're the most deprived of uh the service or or you know, whatever promise that you're delivering for them. Um And this is also really common for service businesses that you actually have to front-load all of the work. And so it makes sense to have the customer pay for that additional onboarding cuz it can help you offset the cost of getting the customer um while also matching to their level of deprivation. And so the big breakthrough that I had in the gym industry, which is what I mean, fundamentally changed a lot of group train- large group training space, was that when people came in, when I got into the gym business, people would try and sell them a trial. And I thought that was really interesting cuz it's like I paid all this money to get this person in the door. And the thing that I'm going to try and give them is free. Is a taste. But today is the day they're the most motivated they're going to be. They're in the most pain today. They're the most out of shape. They haven't done anything for themselves, and they've decided to get their butt in the car and drive to the gym. This moment is the maximum moment where I can charge. And so I flipped the model and I started charging for 500, 2,000, 5,000 on those first transactions, and then having a much cheaper price after the fact because the value that was conferred through a community of the gym was valuable, but less so than losing weight. And so, what also happens with any kind of service, especially if it's recurring, is the nature of the deliverable will also change. The reason people buy is not always the reason people stay. And so, we have to price based on the on the relative value at that specific moment. And so, someone might come to lose weight, but then stay for friends. Losing weight is more valuable than making friends, and I'm only saying this based on what people are willing to pay for, not whether that actually is true for your life, but by willingness to pay, people are willing to pay more. And so, it would make sense that I should have something that is my weight loss price and my community price. And then have those things reconciled. Now, the third element of this is between customers. So, rich guy, poor guy both get pitched the same thing. For me, if $2,000 comes out of my account and I'm rich guy, I might not even notice it. In fact, $2,000 might might be too cheap for me to even care. If I'm poor guy, $2,000 might be all the money in the entire world. And so, in which case, I'm not the right fit for this, even though the actual service is the same and we still might both still need the the core deliverable. And so, all of this comes down to what's the sweet spot on pricing. How do we sell the most number of units with the maximum number of gross margin? And so, this is the this is the math, so if you want the formula, it's number of units sold times gross margin. That gives you the highest absolute amount of money that you make in a given marketplace. Typically, and just so you get a little bit of you know, you don't stress yourself out about this, it's a curve. Meaning, there is two points on either side where you will make the same amount of money selling a lot more units and selling fewer units at a higher price. The question is what type of business you want. And so, for most service businesses that include humans, I make a very strong argument for being a premium price leader because if If make the same money serving 10 customers as 100 customers, wouldn't it be nicer to scale the 10 customer business? Because once you sell 100 Once you're servicing 100 customers, do you have the operational infrastructure being able to deliver those to that 100 customer base, you're already 10 times as big in terms of absolute profit. And your ability to advertise those people, those people are willing willing to pay, etc. etc. down the road, right? And so, you can make the same amount of money on either side. And so, if you get stressed about this, remember that these these decisions, it's a zone, not a correct answer, and it's going to change. The market changes. And so, you will never have a perfect price unless you have a pure marketplace function like Uber does in the moment for people at this at this minute in this micro locality, the band just came out, they're surge pricing. Unless you have a perfectly efficient marketplace like that based into how you charge, you're going to always have inefficient pricing. And so, the solve to this is having tiers of service that attract or clearly articulate or signal to a specific type of customer um that this is for them. Said differently, my favorite video that I made this whole year uh was I think called like the 51 1 rule. You could look it up on my channel. Um but basically, it's about the fractal nature of customers. And so, where this is really interesting is that if you were to spread out $100 on 100 circles that represent America, um the bottom 50% of those circles in terms of absolute wealth have something like $2.70 of the $100 that's available of total wealth. Think how crazy that is. The bottom 50 Half the people, all of them. Now, the reason this is so difficult is that if you are poor and you only know poor people, you will look at all the people you know and assume that is how the world is, that no one has money, and that is not true. It's just that no one you know has money. So, if we look at the top 50%, the next 40, so from 50 to 90%, that next 40 has somewhere in the neighborhood of like 30-ish dollars of that total 100. The next 9%, so from from 90 to 99, all right, percentile. The next 9% has, I think, another like mid-30s dollars, and the top 1% has 30-something dollars. And so that means, in a very real way, the top 1% has 11, 12, 13, whatever the math is there, times the money of the bottom 50. And so it makes sense logically, not because you're you're some person doesn't want to help poor people, but because that's where the money is. And so you go where the money is and service those customers because they will give some of it to you. And so having tiers of service that that appeal to different fractals of customers allows you to maximize the revenue you generate from an existing audience. And so for example, and typically, and I'll say the big mistake with a lot of pricing, and hey, he asked for pricing, I can talk about pricing all day. All right, the big mistake a lot of people make with pricing is that they do not go high enough and they do not go low enough. So what I mean is, let's say you've got A, B, C, D tier, all right, for prices. Whenever there's a tier increase, what most people do is is like I saw this in the gym space all the time. I've got a I've got a uh you know, 129 a month for my A, and then I've got 149 a month for my B. Well, the thing is is that that's the exact same buyer. And so this is that's the person who's the the the gym owner thinking of selling from their own wallet. They're thinking about the cost basis of coming more times or whatever other doodads they added, but they're not thinking about the customer they're selling to. And so when I'm designing a pricing schema or offer schema for an audience, I have to think how valuable is solving this problem for this person. And I start with the price and then I work backwards. And so we know there's a buyer for a $9 a month product. And then the next tier of buyer, for school for example, might be $99. That's 11 times more expensive, right? Now, let's do again do the math on this. If I have 20% of customers buy something that's five times as expensive, me adding that five x price point above my my core offer doubles my revenue. And so for me, I typically like to make sure that every offer tier doubles my revenue overall of my core. And the only way you can do that is with basic assumptions of what the uptake rates are going to be for um for a given population. And so most upsells of customers, you're probably going to be in the 20 to 30% range most times. And so if that's the range, then I want to make it worth it, which means I'm going to five x the price relative to the base. And then think, what can I possibly deliver to this person that would be worth five times the price? So hopefully that helped. Ecstatic beyond 4189. Um Okay. Alex, how do you make nothing happen feel valuable? Okay. Um I help a uh got it. All right. I I I already know this is going This will be good though. Okay, so um I operate a 20-year old plus MSP, so master service provider, IT consulting, cybersecurity and support with about 500 managed users. Now specialize in specific professional services niches. We When we do our job perfectly, there's no outage, breach, email fraud, et cetera. Prospects therefore compare providers uh by price per user because the value is invisible until something breaks. We can also not responsibly guarantee no breach because no employees, vendors, third parties remain outside of our control. How would you build a grand slam offer and risk reversal for this type of prevention business? So, let me reframe this for you for a second. You sell in I mean, it's a version of insurance, which is like obviously you have some core services that you're providing, but you need to focus on the don't. So what I mean is you're saying when we do our jobs perfectly, nothing happens, right? When a airplane does its job perfectly, everything arrives on time and you know, high five, no one cares. But if I wanted to sell someone on why they should get on my plane, I'm going to talk about what is the chance that this thing goes down? And also, what are the other inconveniences? So like, a plane either lands or doesn't land. Either you die, right, or you get there, right? But the thing is there's there's other variables of that journey, right? There's like, how good is the service? There's was it delayed? Did it start on time? Was I able to get there faster? Right? There are other variables that'll still affect I mean, think about right now. You have probably have a favorite airline. And you probably have an airline you hate. Both of them get you to your destination. What are the differences? Fundamentally, we're getting to the value equation. And so, we have to think we have to decouple the elements of value that you have in your master service, you know, in your business. And so, one, if I were selling this, I would focus on how much does it actually cost you for an outage? Now, to your point of I can't guarantee no outages, fine. But we can still create a guarantee. We just have to manage our risk and our conditions. So, if we had an unconditional guarantee, that might be tough. Now, we could have an unconditional guarantee that has limited in terms of its scope, which is functionally reverse insurance for yourself. And so, you say, I'm willing to take on this risk that if we go down in service, you get that month free. Now, you do the math, because if you close twice as many customers, and you lose one month from every third customer, the math maths. And so, it's a controlled burn. It's a controlled risk that we're willing to take. The more aggressive you are with it, the more you'll be able to win business knowing your risk tolerances. Now, you can make that conditional in that they follow your best practices, XYZ, the same way insurance has conditions, right? Like, you have life insurance unless you kill yourself. Don't get life insurance anymore, right? There's conditions for the risk. There's conditions for the guarantee. And so, if we want to make your thing more valuable, one, let's talk about the big risks. Two, let's guarantee around it responsibly. Number three, I want to talk about speed to the greatest degree possible, the speed within, and speed delays. I want to talk about ease and sacrifice. What are all the things that they um have to do that they don't want to do uh that I save them from doing by doing my thing. And then ease, how many things do they get to do that they want to do that otherwise they wouldn't be able to do without me. And so all of these things get aggregated together into something that is ideally to get you out of commoditized pricing. The reason the first chapter in the book is that you are selling commodity is cuz the issue that you're dealing with right now. And so you are not selling nothing happened. >> [snorts] >> I think if I could just change one thing about your your your your perspective on this is that's not what you're selling. You're selling that the the plane lands on time. I don't want to sell that nothing bad happened. I want to sell that something good happens and then guarantee around something bad happening responsibly and then improve every other component of my service so that I can still even with two airplanes flying to the same destination and um still make my air- airline more valuable. All right. Adeptness annual 8766. Hey Alex, how do I deal with uncertainty of a business? Okay, I tried freelancing and starting a development agency but after a few months I was solely focused on day-to-day survival. All right. This translated me being in my head most of the time, imagining doomsday, not doing as much as I used to during the early business. My sales pitch became really bad. Okay. Now I jumped into full-time role again because I do not see myself improving and wanted to swim in the swim to shore as fast as possible. Okay. One thing that I did realize is my technical skills as employee and my passion for coding were bottlenecks. I was doing custom software builds. I focused more on providing quality but that extended time line. Okay. And this passion for something doesn't translate well to business. That is just false. Just false. I think that is uh that that's cope. That's cope. You didn't know other skills and you're saying that your passion is why you didn't do well. That's not true. I'd say if anything being really passionate about the product might be one of the few things that actually matters. Um if I had been working like an operator doing only 1/10 of what needed, I would have fared better. No, you were mispriced, dude. There you go. That was the solution. Like if you're like I want to do this very complex work, fine. Would you do it for a billion dollars? Yes, of course you would. Okay, would you do it for a dollar? No. Okay. So, there's nothing wrong with the work, you're just priced wrong. And so you're like, well, I would have you know, I would have made money if I did a tenth of work. Right, at that price. It's like we assume that the price is somehow fixed. So, what are the skills that you're lacking? You didn't know how to sell. Right? You said it. You don't know how to sell. And because you don't know how to sell, you priced too low. Because you priced too low, you're still delivering more than you charged for, but that's on you. And it's okay. Everybody starts there. Dude, I've I've I've failed at selling a free trial when I started the gym. All right? Like every like everyone starts somewhere. Everyone falls the first time. This is normal. Uh but just do not believe this excuse that you are too passionate to be good at business. That is That is the biggest load of [ __ ] I've ever heard. Like like ridiculous. You might be good at this thing. You might not be good as good as you think you are. And you're certainly not good at selling. You're not good at pricing. That's okay. All of those are learnable skills. So, I would say go back out there and then sell like you mean it. And since you don't need the money anymore because you got a job, sell what it's actually worth for you. And again, I encourage you everybody here is like we have this obsession >> [clears throat] >> with like I want to make sales, but I want to make money. In order to make money, you have to be willing to say no. And you have to have faith that if you continue to do the advertising activities, which is letting more people know about your stuff, that you will get another customer who says yes. It really comes down to that. Now, you originally asked, how do I deal with the uncertainty of a business? You Action alleviates anxiety. So, what is What is the uncertainty? The uncertainty is what what what could happen? All these different things could happen. Okay. So, of those things that could happen, how many of them are under my control? If none of them are under your control, they're not worth thinking about. Because again, the fear only exists in the vague, never the specific. And so, you have this fear around the uncertainty of business, but just play it out instead of letting your mind play games on you. Like fear, super amygdala, tiny part of your brain, walnut-sized, that gives you this very strong feeling. It's super evolutionary, hundreds of millions of years old, right? Alligators have them. Very old part of your brain. It's very good at making at changing your behavior, cuz it kept you alive, which is good. But what it's not good at is being detailed. So, what do I mean by that? If you say, "The uncertainty of business frightens me." That makes sense. But what part? Is it the like reaching out to people that frightens you? Is it that like 17 people didn't respond to your email? Is it Is it like I Basically, and let's play it out a little further. Um let's say that this business fails, which again, big word, how do we break it down? Means that you didn't make money fast enough to pay your bills, so that you have to get a job again. If that's what we decide failure is. But we can decide what failure is. If you keep trying, did you fail? So, one of the interesting things about success is that the only requisite for success is that you try for it. And if you try for it, you're successful. It's one of those beautiful things. >> [cough] >> Because one of the things that I learned when I sold the company was that you were successful the moment you decide you are. If you had a kid, I would imagine, and they tried really really hard, and they were 7 years old, and they weren't a billionaire, would you think they were a failure? No. Would would proud of them for trying and getting better. Right. And so we could take the exact same frame for ourselves. I'd be proud of that I tried. And them And them still going And still putting myself out there. And so when you play out the worst case scenario, you realize it's not that bad anyways because you're not going to starve. You're going to have shelter cuz you probably have friends who you don't You don't seem socially inept. Right? And so if the absolute worst case scenario is you could move in with friends, move in with your old folks, and if you have neither of those, you could move into a homeless shelter. And still get food. That is the absolute worst case scenario. Which means you don't die. Which means that you have unlimited shots on goal. And if you have skills, which seems like you do, the worst case scenario is that you just have a job and you have to work 5 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. longer than you currently are. Doesn't sound like that bad. And so I think this idea of fear and uncertainty is holding you back more than the reality of the uncertainty, which is you don't know when it's going to work, but you know that it will work as long as you keep working. Hold that up. And fully implement 100 million dollar offers. Do that. Um I'm a great showman. 3369. How do you crank out so much content that it becomes unreasonable for me not to see? Okay. Uh do you have a team? Yes, I have a team. >> [laughter] >> Um they're behind the camera right now. Uh how do we do it? Um you need to make it easy and convenient for you to capture rather than manufacture content. So the easiest thing to do for any business owner is that you capture you delivering your services to customers. So you probably deliver services. Any service business owner does, which is 78% of businesses. [snorts] And so every time you're servicing a customer, we should be capturing that. And when you capture that, that becomes content. That becomes ads. And that becomes case studies. It becomes marketing collateral. Um and so since you are working all day every day, the easiest way to start is just start with what you're currently doing and capture that. And the only thing that's called the 201 version of that is okay, yeah, but no one's interested in that. Of course no one's is in the whole thing. What you want to do is compress what 6 weeks of work with a client looks like into 60 seconds. That's the value. The format is the value. What you're looking for is winning formats. And so >> [clears throat] >> it's basically like where do I set up the cameras and recordings to capture the moments? And this is the keyword, like double underline highlight. You want moments. No one can see 6 weeks of a project, but they can see the moments. And so we want to know what are the key moments of this customer's journey? Probably when they sign up. Probably when they get on boarded, probably their first milestone, probably a halfway point, maybe at the end. Great, that's five moments. Can I compress that into a 60-second video? Yeah. Can I do a case study video where I break down a 6-week project into 16 minutes? Probably. Right? So it's like you need to take better notes on what your customers are doing. That would be the quick manufacturer, right? Is that you take what you did and then you talk about it, but you can also just capture instead of manufacturing get way more content. That's how we do so much. Is that I'm not actually making content the vast majority of I'm making content, I'm just talking. Four lights. Hey Alex, what question are you most tired of being asked? Uh this question. No, I'm kidding. Uh either something you've answered a million times or something that you think people can find out on their own. Um I think the most common question that I get asked is why don't people start? What do you think is holding people back from being successful from from doing what they want? And it's the question that I just answered before this, which is just fear. And it's because people are so afraid of the idea of failure that they won't even sit in it long enough to actually look around the room that failure lives in to see what the decoration looks like. They won't look at the floors, they won't look at the ceilings, they won't look at who else is in the room, they won't look at they're actually in a room, that they actually still have food, that it's actually fine. And cuz like Leila has this quote that I love, but it's um fear is a mile wide and inch deep. So when you look out at it, it looks like this vast ocean, but when you take your first step, you're like, "Oh, there's nothing here. It's very empty. It comes from an old part of your brain. And to be clear, it was there to keep you alive and was a good thing. But when the reality is that like you're not actually fearing for your death, but you're behaving like you're fearing for your death. But I think one of the things that I think I've learned from Elon, just from observation, and Peter Thiel made this really excellent point about this. He said, "If you were to have like when Elon had started his three companies, anybody would have said, even one of those companies succeeding would have been a monumental success." Like a very characteristically low odds bet that any one of those three made it. And Elon himself, when he was asked, "What do you think the likelihood of each of the companies work?" He said he put it about 10% odds of success. Three companies. And all three of them did work and became, you know, multi-hundred billion, trillion-dollar, whatever companies. And so Peter Thiel talking about this said, "Elon must understand something about risk that we don't all get." And I think there's something very valuable in that. If the richest men in the world understands a concept, then probably one of the most central concepts of entrepreneurship, which is risk, better and differently than everyone else. I think one of the big things that he understands is that he is fearless. And so when people play games with Elon and that I've I've only I've only observed this from second-party commentary, so that's all I can comment on. Um, is that he is just relentless in his attack. And he he's fearless. He just fears nothing. He just continues to go in because I think what he has realized, and I think the longer you play the game, you realize is that the the downside doesn't really exist. It's not real. You're not going to die. You're not really going to be shunned. The worst-case scenario is you have a story and you have a reasonable excuse like everyone else who had a a startup that didn't work. That's your downside. And so so much of it exists in our areas because we act as though that taking that step is going to kill us. So yeah, that is the question that I think uh I'm most tired of answering. But it's also the question that the most people need answered. So, it is what it is. And maybe that day when they hear it is the day that it head clicks. So, maybe that's the day for you. All right, Trenton NYC, what's your perspective on the upcoming AI revolution? What would you say to someone starting their career um when all experts predict AI will replace them in 4 years? I can't imagine an AI won't uh be better at cold calling than the average salesperson in about three. I know there's you're not dead, keep working, of course. Uh but what would you say to your child being born in this increasingly strange and unrecognizable world? How can we adapt and overcome our replacement? Um So, in the short term, there are more jobs in the AI-rich companies than in the non-AI companies in terms of job growth. So, if we're just looking at facts, that's what it is right now. So, that's kind of interesting um as a counterpoint. Um beyond that, for my own right son that's coming, um I'm going to do the only thing I can do, which is I'm going to equip him with as many skills as I possibly can so he can navigate the world to get what he wants out of it. Um and not just out of world, but just out of life. And so, I I would probably give the exact same advice to myself and I'd give the same advice to you, which is that like um keep learning more than anything else. Like you will never be worse off from knowing more. You will never be less capable in a given situation by being more capable. And so, if we just So, in game theory, the most flexible player wins, right? Same thing with the Darwin, right? It's the It's the adaptability, which is the thing that allows you to win. And so, adaptability comes from being able to succeed in different conditions and different environments. And so, part of being able to succeed in different conditions and environments is your ability to learn, which is a function of intelligence, which is how quickly can you change your behavior. And so, if you see this big threat and you let's say you're a cold caller, then yeah, maybe you might have want to learn other skills along the way. Um, that makes sense. Um, but the idea that there's not going to be any jobs like in the near term, I don't know if I you know, the data suggests you know, the opposite of that. And like I said earlier, the the biggest frontier companies have, you know, 5,000 plus employees and so like it seems like they still need some humans. Um, and I would say that this is probably a relatively contrarian take and especially as a company that uses a lot of AI. Um, I have felt maybe you agree with me, but like AI feels like it has hit some sort of asymptote where it takes a huge amount of energy to make very small and incremental improvements. I can't really tell you a gigantic difference between like you know, I think when GPT went from three to four, that was a monster difference. From four to five, it was significantly smaller difference in my opinion and there's some models right now that we run that are still four cuz we think it's better and faster and it just like it actually sounds less AI sloppy. And so I think uh, there's a French AI guy who talks about this, but basically the way that we're currently training AI has diminishing returns and until we can get AI to train in the real world with real-time feedback loops, just training on more data is not actually the solution to getting it to be smarter because I think all of us have seen the AI slop of the internet um and been like, well, this isn't that good. Uh, and so there's there's some room, right? Um, that being said I'll tell you more importantly probably what not to do which is to don't hide. Don't bury your head in the sand and hope for it all to go away. Don't live in fear. Ask yourself what can I do to best equip myself to succeed in an environment where the conditions change? And that's going to be learning skills and that has not changed. And it would just be what skills are you learning which would probably be AI adjacent skills so you can learn it. Just like you know, years ago when you know, Word and Excel and Zoom and these tools came in the beginning, it was like, oh yeah, I'm proficient with Word. No one really says that anymore cuz it's assumed and I think to the same degree learning how to use AI right now is a newer skill, but in time it will be something that everyone is doing because they'll have lowered the barrier to getting into it. Okay. >> [snorts] >> Much veterinarian 399. How much time we got by the way? >> We got >> It's dead. >> 6 7 minutes. >> 7 minutes? Okay. Um okay. What would you say running from problems and traumas by working? Is it maintainable long term? All right. I'm probably going to end on this one cuz I think this is juicy. Okay. The reason I I actually really like this is because we use imprecise language and then have imprecise outcomes in our life and don't know what's going on. So, running from problems and traumas. So, I'm going to just unpack this for a moment. You're not actually running from anything physically. And when we're talking about things that are amorphous, I prefer to use precise language so that everyone can get on the same page. So, you cannot run from a problem. You literally can't. Like your problem Maybe you're you know, I mean, I guess if your wife's angry and you run away from her, I guess you could physically do that, but the problem would still exist. All right? Um and so most problems you cannot physically run away from, so we need to use more precise language, which means that uh avoiding is probably what we're talking about here. And then when we say problems and traumas, let's define what these are. So, problems I would say things that are that are against our preferences, things that happen that would that are that are not going the way we want them to go. And then traumas, the reason this is important to define is because like otherwise you have all these, you know, internet whatevers who are like, "Ah, trauma's stored in your body and your body you know, it's it's it's as though the the body's a computer." I'm like, "Where is it stored? Is it stored in my liver? Is there a storage place there? Is I've got I've got Juliet who's pre-med." And I was there storage in your bones for these things? I don't know. I don't know if your trauma gets stored there. Now, if you get a cracked rib, sure. And you know, you're going to have the scar of a cracked rib, but if your dad's mean to you just with his words, I don't think it's held in your I don't think it's held in your bones, you know? So, I'll go out there because I think people make these they try to anthropomorphize issues into giving them this animation that's not real. Um and so, we can confuse people very well with analogies. And so, I try to not use analogies when I'm trying to explain something rather than to uh motivate. So, trauma means you learn something from a bad thing. All right? So, it is accelerated learning from aversive stimulus. Now, where this gets interesting is if I'm a child and I burn my hand touching a stove, I probably will learn not to touch the stove again. Was the stove burning my hand a bad thing? Yes. Did I learn a permanent lesson from that? Yes. Was it trauma? By my definition, yes, it was trauma. But then the question is, is it bad that my child learns to not touch the stove? No. So, is it possible that a good thing can come from a bad experience? Yes. So, does that mean all trauma is bad? No. And so, when we unpack this, we stop having this emotional charger even around the word or bad things happening to us because it means that we can truly make lemonades lemonade out of lemons. You can have a bad thing happen and have good things happen as a result. And so, it's a permanent change of behavior, permanent learning from a aversive stimulus, bad thing. Permanent lesson, one-time bad thing. So, or repeated bad thing. So, you could be like, my dad traumatized me because he didn't hug me enough. Okay, what behavior did you permanently learn as a result? And so, whether the trauma was good or bad depends on whether the behavior you learned helps you or hurts you achieve your goals. If you're in combat, I'll bet you some of the traumas that people are in combat learn helps them survive. In that condition, it might not be bad. Is it still trauma? Yes. Is it bad? Did it keep them alive? Yeah. Now, they come back stateside. Is it now hurting them with their goals? Yes. So, we need to unlearn something. And this is the difficulty with trauma, which is that you learn something consciously or unconsciously at some point from bad stuff in your life. And so then we have to ask, does this help me or hurt me? If it hurts you, then we have to figure out here's the big here's the big magic magic sentence here. What do I do instead? When this happens, what do I do next time? What do I do instead? What do I do that is more aligned with my goals? If that's true, then what we have to do is basically create some sort of reward loop or cycle around trying to take this first action. And then once we get that reward cycle going, then that new behavior gets reinforced under this condition. And then we have reversed our trauma. Or we just learned something. And so the reason I'm so specific about this stuff is that like I like I used to get buried by this [ __ ] And so I I I I explain this this way because this is what got me out of it. And so I used to be in my head all day long. I'd stay in my apartment for months on end, not leaving cuz I didn't know what to do. I was analysis paralysis. I thought my trauma defined me. Right? Because I used these amorphous terms that I heard on the internet, I read in these self-help books that no one defined. And so they became these big boogeymen that I was trying to avoid cuz I didn't know what the [ __ ] was going on cuz I never defined anything. And so if you don't have what you want, you have an inaccurate view of reality. Your model for predicting what is going to happen in the world is flawed. You do not have all the variables, you do not see it clearly. The people who are able to get what they want see reality more clearly than you. And part of you can take that as an ego hit. Don't really give a [ __ ] You can do whatever you want. If your if your model of the world is working for you, go for it. I don't care. But if it's not working for you, then I would suggest or might I offer an alternative viewpoint, which is just to find what the [ __ ] you're talking about. So, when you're running from your problems and your traumas by working, we have to say, "Okay, you're avoiding things that you don't like and using behaviors that you learned in bad experiences by working." The sentence really stops making sense, which is why so many people are confused to begin with. They say words they don't understand and then somehow hope someone's going to say something back to them that they do understand. And so, is this maintainable long-term? So, let me rephrase the question as I think it was intended, which is can I use work as a way to not work on my problems? And I think the answer is, is it maintainable long-term? I mean, it's as maintainable as long as it maintains. Like, basically, if you're able to do it in the short-term, what prevents you from doing it in the long-term? Real question. I don't know the answer. If there is something that accumulates, then we would have to deal with it. And when the the punishment of not dealing with it supersedes the reward you get from working and avoiding it, you will change. And so, I think a lot of a lot of the a lot of people get get weighed down by the shoulds of their life. I should do this. Like, is it maintainable long-term? I don't know. Have you done it long-term? Cuz you can always do it long-term and then the day that it's not, you can change. I mean, when I was like when I like I worked a lot in my 20s and I worked a lot in my early 30s. I work a little less now than I did then. And along the way, people would be like, "He's going to wake up one day and he's going to realize he did it all wrong." You know what's great about that? Is that the day that I wake up, I'll [ __ ] change. It's like, in what world did we stop getting permission to change our minds? In what world did our priorities become fixed in stone? Why must we do everything as we always have done it? In order to be consistent with ourselves? Is that under the assumption that no information is ever changed? That no one has learned anything in their lives? Is there Is there okay to have something that's okay for a season and not forever? Of course. And so, I by and large reject these shoulds because they don't serve you. And they certainly don't serve me. And so, when people say the these these these big truisms, these like, "Hey, man, like You know the amount of people who told me how I should mourn my mother's death? That how I did it, I should do it differently? Like, they have permission? Like, they have some sort of authority over my life? Like, their opinion on my suffering, I should somehow weigh? Like, what is the appropriate amount to mourn? What is the correct way to do it? What is the correct way? Is there a book that says this is the correct way? According to whom? Based on what? And so, people will put They will thrust their [ __ ] on you. They will put these expectations They will put these labels on you. And then you will confine yourself by these words that you never define and neither did they. And you will make real choices in your life that have real consequences based on words that do not matter. Based on opinions of people who never even thought about what they were saying. And so, my simple ask to you is just ask, "What does that mean? How do you know that? So what?" Whenever you're confronted with these things. What does maintainable mean? How do you know that? Okay. And so what? Maybe it's not maintainable. Okay. And then when I don't maintain it, I'll stop maintaining it. Do I die? No. Is there a mariachi band that comes out and sings me a song when I maintain it long enough? No. We're all going to die. We don't know when. And so focus on the work that's in front of you, whether that's work with your family, work with your career, work on your health, whatever it is. My My grandfather said this to me. Those are my favorite things. He was He and I were super close and he died um 10 years ago. And he said, "You only have two hands and one brain. Use them." And so if you find yourself not using your two hands and your one brain, you're probably living in someone else's game, not your own. With that, I'll leave you guys. Appreciate you all. Happy AMA, Reddit at all, YouTube at all. You guys rock. Appreciate you.