Curiosity, Copy, and Fast Execution: Marketing Lessons from Tai Lopez | #Marketing - Ep. 56

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Got that right. This is the Russell Brunson Show.

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the show. I'm excited today to have like one of the original OG dudes of the entire internet marketing world. First time I ever saw him, there was this video that started going viral and it was a weird video because I think and I'm going to have him confirm or deny if this is true. I heard it was the first ever selfie video in his garage and it got like tens of millions of views. And I kept seeing it pop up and people talking about it. Some people were very excited, some people talking trash about it. And I was like, who is this guy? And that was kind of my first introduction to him. His name is Tai Lopez. I'm sure most of you guys have heard of him before, but I'm excited to be hanging out with you today. How are you? How are you doing? And did you invent the first ever selfie video. Is that true?

Um, maybe selfie video ad. I think people were doing just regular selfies, but at scale that I had never seen one like that. And I was— I had no idea. I knew— I thought it would do well, but I didn't know it would get massive. So I was— it was a Sunday, and, uh, I had a friend who had just scolded me. I was gonna go out with some friends in Hollywood and I had been texting with them and he said, "Ty, having fun is overrated." So it was a Sunday in January of 2015 and I went to my phone and I told my friends, "You know, I was supposed to meet you out at a restaurant. I'm gonna stay home and work by myself." So I just sat there at the kitchen table and I kind of wrote the beginning of the vid. It was a VSL. I shot a 4-minute ad that then when you clicked it went to an hour and a half VSL on a funnel, on a landing page. I had built my first funnel in '01, so I was kind of used to building funnels, but I said, ah, let me just write it out, the ad. And I went in my garage and I didn't feel, I felt like being alone sometimes when I'm creative. And I just said, instead of having a camera guy here, I'm just gonna grab my camera. And one of the very, I shot like 7 variations and one of them was here in my garage, just got this brand new Lamborghini. And I had actually, The month before, I had run out of room in my house. I'm like you, I like to collect books, right? And so, I was in Paris for New Year's Eve and my assistant, Nathan, goes, "Hey, Todd, I just got more books you ordered and there's no place to put them in the house." And I said, "Go buy bookshelves and put them in the garage." And so, that's the origin of a Lamborghini with books in the garage. It wasn't intended to be an ad, but I sometimes think in life, like the most authentic, just record what you're doing. And that's what I did. I just like, let me just record what I'm doing with my own camera. And it kind of launched kind of a genre of, of ads and funnels, you know?

Oh yeah. And it was funny because I remember just the comments. People were like, why is he in a Ferrari and, and books in his garage? And like, there's so much controversy about the concept and the idea. And then like it fueled it and kept having to grow and it became viral. People were sharing and talking about it, negative and positive. And do you know I mean, I don't know if you ever tracked it, how many views I ended up getting when all said and done.

Oh, crazy. I mean, there's— I kept— I had like 6 versions of it, but I kept one of them public on my YouTube. I think it had 75 million views, but total all in was like 400 million because if you count the ads, that was just on YouTube and I had it running on Facebook and that ad, my Google reps were like, Ty, we in 2016, they ran it. A survey internally at Google, and they're like, we showed a picture of your face to a random sampling of American men, and, um, if we show your face, 65% of American men like over 25 will be like, Tyler. So that ad just went like, like 20% of America saw that ad, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So back then it was, you get in early on a trend like YouTube ads, the ROAS was like I would spend, let's say, $50,000 to $70,000 a day on that funnel. And I like it 2 hours later, I'd make like $150,000. You can make 2 ROAS with no recurring, no upsell. I had to cut. I did have 2 upsells, so just a funnel, 2 upsells, zero. I didn't even have one salesperson. And you could print, you know, you could do $3 to $4 million a month with just without recurring. And then I added recurring later. You know, and then I had a $69 recurring product. But at first, it was just a straight sale.

Was it the— it was the, um, the steps one, right? Like 67 steps or something like that? Was that the offer?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The offer, it's interesting because the way I marketed it, a lot of people that are beginning marketers, they forget, um, what you're really doing is people are buying into a story of transformation. And so if you talk too much about the product versus the transformation, it doesn't convert. So most of that video was my story, how it transformed me and how it also worked on other people. At the end in that VSL, which was like I said, about an hour and a half, I didn't really intro a hard pitch to buy for, you know, 45 minutes. And I went to your, Funnel Hacking Live, and you of course are an icon of marketing, and I noticed, you know, you do the same thing. You're up on stage when you guys are pitching the final offer. It's not, you don't quickly get into the product. It's transformation. Like, I like how you did. I haven't seen that before. That was, that was good. You had all the people who had transformation, like 70 of them or 40 of them or something. Even if it takes, because a lot of people will be like, oh, that takes 30 minutes. And That's a waste of time. You should just do it for 5 minutes. But people don't understand the reason humans— life will get a lot simpler when you realize humans aren't very logical. The reason I like my farm, you know, I got horses and cows and chickens, is like, okay, humans, we like to think we're above the animals, and maybe we are in some ways, but humans are pretty reactive too. So that, that hour and a half VSL wasn't a webinar. There wasn't really auto webinar concept back then. And but that VSL really painted my story of, hey, look, I graduated high school in a mobile home, you know. I find my— I found myself with $47 on my bank account, and I didn't know what to do. And my uncle said, hey, Ty, you got to go out and find mentors. And so I started meeting, networking, and finding— I found my, you know, one of my first millionaire mentors, a guy named Mike Stainback. And, um, I, I just said to him, hey, Mike, I'll work for you for free if you teach me what you know. And he said, I've been looking for someone like you for 20 years. He had a big— he looked like Tom Selleck. He had a big mustache. And, and I started working and he taught me sales. And so each night over about 5 years, I accumulated 5 millionaire mentors and each of them taught me a different thing. Mike Steinbach told me, taught me how to close deals on the phone, cold call. And I had a guy named Al Howell who taught me finance, like understanding how money works and investment works. And then I had a mentor named Alan Nation who was just, he was the guy who taught me how to read a book a day. He was the first person I ever met that read a book a day. And so he taught me that when you're knowledgeable, money flows in your direction, right? That was his thing. So he was all about not just reading business books, but reading biographies and reading, you know, anything that make you wise, like the Bible says, you know, get wisdom over silver and gold, because when you have wisdom, then getting silver and gold becomes easier. So that mentor taught me a different facet of life. And Joel Salatin is, is the farmer that was my really my first millionaire mentor. And he, he taught me how to work hard. You know, I had grown up in a city and I wasn't that hard— I was a hard worker, but nothing particularly strong. And then I lived with the Amish for 2 and a half years. And the Amish, you don't think of millionaires, but a lot of them accidentally get wealthy. And what I learned from the Amish is that you need a community, you need allies. Wealth requires allies, success requires allies. So, the Amish live in community. And so, if anybody's, they can help each other out of a bad time. And so, anyway, I told people in that VSL, I said, look, I've got 67, I actually learned 300 principles. I have them on a whiteboard. I had written 300 principles over the summer before I launched the 67 Steps. And I said, I felt like 300 was too much for anybody to remember. So, I'll distill it down to 67. And there, you buy my program and it's one video a day. Give me 67 days. It was a challenge. The average human, they've found, takes about 67 days to change bad habits. So, the offer was simple. It's like, you know, it took me 5 years to find 5 millionaire mentors. If you can go find them yourself, that's the best, an in-person mentor. But if you can't, and you have $67, I charge $1 a video, click here. And this transformation story didn't just work for me, but when you shadow and learn from wise mentors, it's the quickest path to wealth. And so when I press that, I mean, it just unleashed the floodgates. It was, you know, I've sold about 500,000 units of different, you know, different programs, but that was for sure the flagship. You know what's funny? A few years after, like 2017 or something, something. I looked and I had my programmer calculate how much revenue that offer had done, and I kid you not, it was $67 million. It was 67 steps, it cost $67. Yeah, weird. He's like, you're not going to believe this, it's like $67 million.

You know, is this still live right now? Are you still running that at all or not?

Oh yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I tell people, learn to build a digital offer because that offer now, it's more than $67 million, but I launched it, I recorded it in 2014. It took me, by the way, for those of you, I know a lot of funnel builders and marketers learning the game are listening to Russell. One thing I'd encourage you is don't give up too quick. I launched the offer, I remember it was in Palm Springs. I always launch all my offers from Palm Springs or not all of them, but a lot of them. And it was July 21st, 2014. And I launched it as only a dollar. It was like I wanted to get feedback. So I let a whole, I let like 1,000 people in at $1 lifetime. I still meet people on the street like, I'm part of the $1 group and I only paid a dollar. And then I kept raising the price. The next month I raised it to $10. And then, but I still, I was making, the offer was doing 3 months in, was probably doing about $10,000 a month on recurring. And so success kind of comes you leap, you get up to a plateau and then for a while you stay at $10,000 a month. And then January, when I shot that one ad, then it shot up to like— so it shot from, let's say, $20,000 a month to like $2 million a month in January and even more.

I don't remember exactly, but off of a $67 product with no upsells or continuity.

Well, I did, I did. I eventually dialed in. I had a $297 and a $497. One clicks. So, but I didn't have always have recurring. I, I kind of stopped and start with recurring once I built a strong enough brand. You kind of need a brand for recurring. Like, humans don't love high— it was relatively high ticket, like $67 doesn't sound high, but you know, when Netflix raises the price from $12 to $13, like they lose 2 million subscribers. Like, people are pricing over a dollar. So I learned, you know, one badass ad. I have a checklist system called the 9 Levers. And so now whenever we're trying to sell anything, we, we go through a 9-step process. Number 1 is, you know, the offer. How good is it? Number 2 is pricing. Pricing, you can get really sophisticated and, uh, and really change the game with pricing. I, I just, I have a private client. I do private mentorships for some, you know, CEOs, big CEOs. And I had her change her offer from $50K to $1 million, and she closed 2 products right away at a million versus 4 or 8 at $50,000. Less work, more money. So anyway, I had this 9— I've now developed a 9-step checklist. Back in 2014, I brought out a 5-step. So upsells are one of the 9, but they're not your prime driver. Like Prime driver, the top, the power 3 levers are, is your product irresistible? I call it a high appetite product. I call it the million person framework. Did a million people wake up and say the exact phrase? So my 67 Steps was solving the problem of not having enough money. So you gotta ask yourself, did a million people wake up and say, man, I wish I had more money? That's a given, more like a billion or 2 woke up. So, anybody listening, you got to start out by asking yourself, don't launch any product that a million people you can't conceivably have heard, imagine a million people out of 8 billion said, "Oh, you know what? I do want to learn underwater basket weaving." Like, that's kind of, that's, you know, if nobody said that phrase, it's too small of a market, it's too niche. So, I have the, that's the first power law of making money online. The second one is really don't be afraid to split test the price. Like, people get too afraid. Don't just price what your competitors are pricing. There's a good book, by the way, on this called Smart Pricing. It's by one of my mentors, Professor Jean Jane. He's considered the world's number one expert on pricing. He does like Louis Vuitton's pricing and all that. So read that little book, Smart Pricing, and you can figure out the second. And the third lever is ads. Good ads and good VSLs in the funnel, just absolutely— especially now, it's even more so. I built my first funnel in '01. I bought a program by Corey Rudl. I don't know if you ever heard of Corey Rudl.

Hi, Corey was one of the first guys I started—

He died.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah, he died in probably '06 or '07. I was broke. I was working for that Mike Stainback guy who started mentoring me on phone sales, but I couldn't generate leads. And I hated cold call. He'd be like, "Oh, cold call this list of business owners." And I'd be like, he'd be yelling at you. So, I saw an ad in '01, just scrolling Google. That was when Google was new. And it was an image, maybe it was Yahoo or something, and it was a picture of a guy's feet on the beach in Hawaii. And it didn't even show his face, just his feet laying out like this. And he said, "How I made $28,000 yesterday while laying on the beach in Hawaii." And I remember thinking, "Ooh, this is probably a scam, but I don't even have any money, so he ain't gonna be able to—" I only had like $300 in my bank account, so I was like, Hard to scam a man with $300, right? Like, the worst case, I'm down $300. So I clicked the button. Back then, there was no VSLs, there was no video sales letters, there was no YouTube yet, there was very little live streaming and stuff. People didn't have fast internet. So it was what we call TSL, text sales letter, just a long one. And I don't remember why, but I just, I spent all my money. It was like $100 plus upsell, so I spent $300. And it came in a three— there was no instant delivery. It came in a FedEx box about a week later as a three-ring binder. I opened it up, it was like, how to do internet market— it was called Internet Marketing Secrets. Sadly, I literally have that product on my shelf right now.

I still have one.

I mean, it's— but the only thing I remember from it was he said there's this new thing called Google AdWords, you should try it. So the only thing I remember This is why I like courses. Like, people go, oh, I'm gonna buy a course, and what, you know, what if I don't like the whole course? I'm like, you only need one thing from any program you ever buy. Most people can't remember more than one thing from every college class they took. Ask people. I had someone come work for me in marketing. I said, oh, you got a marketing degree? Awesome. What do you know about marketing? She, she was like, I gotta be honest, I don't remember anything from 4 years. She's like, I got a marketing degree, but I don't remember anything. I partied. And I just memorized stuff and then I put it out of my brain. So anyway, I got the Cory Rudl. I built my first AdWords and I didn't realize Google AdWords had been out 3 months. And I remember it was 20 cents a click for the keywords. And I remember being like, I'm being scammed again. What if somebody just clicks and doesn't buy? I have to give them a quarter. I'm giving Google a quarter. By the way, those keywords, the financial keywords like life insurance, you know, anything like that is $27 now. So I tell people, don't be too skeptical because if you can catch new marketing platforms early, you get 'em. When I got in Facebook, I was one of the early people in Facebook ads. This is about 8 years later. 2001, that Corey Ruddle course took me from broke, you know, sleeping on a couch in a mobile home. I lived in Clayton, North Carolina. I got to 6 figures within 9 months, pretty much on autopilot. Every month I'd make like, $8,000 to $10,000 a month, which in today's inflated dollars with Joe Biden inflation, that's like $20,000 a month, right? So it really changed my life. Then I had a big jump up over time, but in '09, Facebook had just launched Facebook ads and I launched that. And I remember I went on a date with a girl to get sushi. I built an ad, same thing, image ads. I built an ad and I went, we went out, "Come back." I came back 3 or 4 hours later after eating sushi, I remember. I told that woman later, like, "You're lucky. I'm gonna have to hang out with you more." 'Cause when I came back, I had spent $4,000 on ads and I had made $21,000. So I made $17,000. There was no targeting. It was crazy. There was no algorithm back then. But when you're early, I was getting clicks for pennies, you know. Probably I was probably paying 5 cents a click. Now a click is $1 to $3. So I got in and then with Here in My Garage in 2015, I was one of the first. I was the first business person. There was a couple other guys offering with health and offers on. There was a guy named, uh, there was Six Pack Shortcuts by a guy named Mike Chang. I don't know if you remember Six Pack Shortcuts. He was the first guy, but he was in fitness and I was like, hmm. I met him. I went to a— this is why I tell people spend money on conferences. I found out, I was like, this Mike Chang guy, this YouTube, he seems to know something. So I went to this ski conference that he was at, and I picked his brain, and then I launched here in my garage. So watch those trends, man. Skeptical people, uh, they miss everything because by the time they're not skeptical, it's like kind of like Bitcoin. Like, I remember a bit, I shot a video, one of my— by the way, one of my most viral videos is in 2017, 2018. I shot a video, YouTube took it down. They used to be you know, censorship people on crypto. And I had 2 pizzas, and I go, you all know the 2-pizza story about Bitcoin? A guy paid for 2 pizzas in Bitcoin. If he had held those pizza— that— those Bitcoin and just paid for the pizzas in dollars, he would have $80 million in Bitcoin. Anyway, I shot that video. That one got 10 million views a month. It was great till it got taken down. So It's always the same patterns if you wanna make money. Can you catch trends early? Can you not be skeptical? Can you pick somebody else's brain that's already doing it so you can save yourself the learning curve? And then lastly, you know, can you make a good ad and a good video, good landing pages? Like, it's money on it. It's what everybody's always been dreaming about. Like Jack and the Beanstalk, it was like the goose that lays the golden egg, the money tree. I was just talking to a guy, I said, you do, he said, I don't know if a funnel will work for my business. I said, well then you're cursing yourself. I said, be careful what you say, 'cause if you think a funnel won't work, what you're saying is you will have to be on every phone call. You will have to sell every person. I'm like, you don't want something right now while I'm sleeping? Every day since 2001, while I was asleep, somebody watched a video I had prerecorded, pressed the button, entered their credit card and paid. I don't know anything else I could do that, you know?

Yeah, it's crazy.

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So I'm curious, that was like some of the beginning stuff, but like I've watched your career like evolve and change and shift and back and forth. Like what are the things that you're working on right now? Like what are the core offers and things you're driving or promoting? Like I'm curious about that side of it now that you've been doing this so long.

Well, I've come full circle. Like I built my personal brand in '09. I actually found the date. I never could figure out when I started my damn personal brand. And but I found, you know how, you know how iPhone says memories? I found a memory from '09. It's a video. I don't know if you remember my friend Zach. He sadly died of cancer, but he was on my social a lot. He was a funny guy. I really loved him. It was a video of me on Laugh Factory on Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. And I go, hey Zach, I'm shooting this video of you. And now they have this thing called an app. I can upload this without going home and doing it on my laptop. I'm gonna upload this video. And he's like, what? And so that's kind of, I consider my inception point. So '09, I started a personal brand. I went really hard for like a decade. And then I kind of, during COVID I took a break. I moved to Puerto Rico. I was, you know, I've been living in Beverly Hills and Hollywood for a long time. And I just went and enjoyed. I was like, well, the world's getting crazy. So I kind of slowed down my personal brand for a couple years. But I noted it was interesting. It was like a sabbatical, you know, like professors take a sabbatical. But I, I tell people now, there's only two business models left: AI and personal brand. The only two business models that I think have a high probability— depends how much money you want to make. If you want to make $100K a year, then there's a thousand things you can do. But people who are really trying to build something big, if it's not around personal brands, centered on a personal brand, or centered on AI, you might get replaced. So in 2023, I kind of saw the writing on the wall. So I've been slowly in the last year or so just really putting a lot more content out, organic content, and you can monetize that in any way you want. So, you know, I've had— I've been the most Googled person in America, almost in the world. When that Here in My Garage came out, there was times on the Google graph trends I was like number one. And I actually tell people, like, you don't want to be that, that that's not— I didn't like that being that big. That's why I've kind of, you know, I got 3 million followers like in 2016 on Instagram. And I— people go, why have you not grown it? Really, it's almost at the same I was. And I was like, ah, I know how to grow on Instagram. It's you— MrBeast is, is a guy that has been in my programs. You know, he, he's the— he's the only one— there's only 2 billionaires under— self-made billionaires under 30. He's one of them. And it comes with a lot of downside. He just hit 400 million YouTube subscribers. So I kind of ramped down trying to massively grow my following. But now with AI here, it's unsure. Like, I'm like, I have an AI studio also. I'm building AI apps, I think, and I know how to market them. So the two things I'm working on is really my personal brand and AI. I launched an AI version of my SMMA. That's the other big program I launched in 2016. Teach people how to build marketing agency. A lot of my students use ClickFunnels. Yeah, they should. I watched a whole generation. Yeah, all of them should. Uh, I launched like 40,000 agencies, and now I'm teaching the AI version. You go into businesses and you offer them an AI automation agency that does their marketing, but it, it really opens doors. Every business owner now is like, yo, AI, I should be doing more of that. So those are the big things, AI-related stuff. Building my own— I'm building a fat burner app that tracks your food. I'm building a knowledge app, basically not just books and beyond. So instead of doom scrolling your Instagram all day, kind of becoming stupid, I'm building like the Netflix of knowledge, you could say. So you pay $7 a month and it's delivering real knowledgeable stuff. I think people are getting— if you ain't careful, AI is going to make everybody stupid. Just like Google made everybody unable to spell. Like, people don't spell anymore. You just go to Google, if you get kind of the word right, it figures out what you're trying to say. 30 years ago, if you didn't know how to spell and you go to a dictionary, you can't even find it, right? So AI is, in a way, it makes society smarter, but average person's getting dumber. And the algorithms of Insta, TikTok, they're so good at just sucking people into doom scrolling. So, I'm building an AI app for that. I'm building an AI app to, um, for marketing to generate content for you. I already use these personally, but I'm gonna— I'm commercializing them, so I'll launch them in the next month or two. So, you know, it's the same thing. I like direct-to-consumer stuff, and I think it's— I mean, it's nuts. One of my followers built this, this calorie counting app just on the COVID of Wall Street Journal. He, uh, or the front page, he He launched it 9 months ago and he's doing $2.5 million a month, all with good marketing, viral marketing, charges $7 a month. Um, MentorBoxes, those similar model, you know, business models. So anyway, I, I just see right now, if you know how to market, you're in basically in possession of the last important skill you need. Because if you don't send your kids to be computer programmers, really, because 99% of them are going to be replaced. The only ones left will be the high-level AI tech people. Already Y Combinator, the CEO, he says 90% of our startups, 90% of the code being written by all Y Combinator is no longer humans. It's already at 90% replacement of humans. So, engineers are going to get replaced. Architects are going to be replaced. Doctors, maybe. Lawyers, definitely, big time. You can already find, make documents with AI almost better than any lawyer. So, there's so many things getting taken away. The only real thing left will be like in-person service-based businesses. There's probably still gonna be plumbers and air conditioners. Although I see these AI robot bots building houses now. I watched one. This robot can lay, you know, build a block house, can lay 200 blocks an hour. With perfect precision. It's like, oh my God. So build your personal brand and learn AI. But the key driver, if you— you're gonna have to know marketing. I always say like the king and the queen skills, you know, and the emperor skills. You got the emperor skill, you can learn the king skill and the queen skill. So I consider the emperor skill is making products that the world wants. Steve Jobs, this iPhone has sold over 2 billion. He had an intuition um, that really he could tap into. Billy, he'd go, you know what, this is back when everyone had a BlackBerry. He goes, you know what people want? They want a touchscreen phone. And so that's the emperor skill. Elon Musk, he's like, you know what people want? They want this electric car that's kind of cool looking and a little bit looks like a Porsche and has smooth lines. You know, all the other car companies were making these ugly electronic Volt, Bolt, whatever these cars are, right? And so Elon and, and Jeff Bezos, they all have the Emperor skill, coming up with products like a billion people want. Then the next skill is the King skill, is marketing, right? And the Queen skill is sales. Marketing is just automation of sales. So you can start at the bottom, by the way. I tell a lot of people, if you're totally broke, do sales. If you're homeless, sleeping out of a car, if you have a phone and you can get to a McDonald's Wi-Fi, high-ticket sales will get you up, get you from homeless to $100K faster than anything. That's the queen skill. Once you know that, you can start automating your pitch with marketing. And once you know those two, you'll have tapped into the human psyche, uh, so well. You'll start developing products that the world doesn't even know it needed. I like that Steve Jobs said, "If I would have asked the world what they wanted, I'd been a better BlackBerry, but I intuitively knew." He actually went, had a spiritual conversion. He went to India and he lived really— this was after I think he was even a billionaire. When Apple was struggling and he had a fight with the board, he went to India and just lived in some little villages. And, his big takeaway was he had to— you have to learn, you have to develop your intuition, that deep intuition. That's hard. My mentor, Joel Souton, says you can't Google wisdom. Like, you have to develop, and that's the emperor skill. Like, he came back from that with the idea for the iPhones. It was pretty— Sigmund Freud said, on small matters, use the mind. On important matters, use the intuition, you know? Yeah, interesting.

So you probably have more books than anyone else I know. I've tried— I'm not sure where you're at, but I have obsessed with books too, as you know. Oh, you got a lot.

We've got a lot.

I mean, yeah, I think last count was like in the last 3 years I bought 18,000 books. So a lot of them are—

Oh, you probably have me beat now. I don't think I have 18,000. I just lapped Tai Lopez in books.

You guys hear that? That's a big—

I hand you the crown.

I'm adding that to my social. To my social. Yeah. But I'm curious, just because you're so well-read in so many things like some— what are some of the books that, that people probably haven't heard of, but it's like, man, if you guys could go read these books, the ones that would— I think, do you think would be the most beneficial? Either biographies or specific personal development or marketing. I'm curious what your favorites are that may not— I might not even know about.

Yeah, so I— yeah, I mean, so a really good book that I think transforms every area of your life, there's a guy named Dr. David Buss. He wrote a book, a textbook They use it in most universities like Harvard and it's called Evolutionary Psychology. It's got a lizard on the front. It's a great, buy that book. A similar book to that is Poor Charlie's Almanac made by Charlie Munger, who's probably considered one of the wisest billionaires ever. So you have, once you, you know, these emperor, king, and queen skills are all psychological-based. So Poor Charlie's Almanac is kind of the psychology of money. And then evolutionary psychology is the psychology of people, the most up-to-date science. Then I would add to there, there's a book on courage. I think, you know, a lot— I tell people, get your confidence back because without it, all the opportunity and all the talent in the world won't matter. So you need to read books about courageous people because I try to read those at night. I'm reading right now a book on the people who explored Alaska. You talk about courage. We know of nothing. They used to have 8 months of winter at -70 degrees, and they just were like, la la la, and lived through it, right? So, uh, there's a book called Kontiki, K-O-N-T-I-K-I. It's a story of a Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, who wanted to— he, he had figured out that ancient people had taken a small boat, like a raft, from South America basically to like almost to Australia, to the like Tahiti. And everybody said, no, that's not the story. And he said, well, I can prove they did it. I'll do it myself. So he, he went to South America, he made a balsa wood boat. You know what balsa is? It breaks like that. He got on it and he floated from Chile, South America, all the way basically almost to Australia. So, I like, I think you got to throw into the mix some books on courage and just real people who dared things that an average man would have had a nervous breakdown on. So, Koticki. I think a great one now more than ever, I've had this on my best book recommendation list for more than a decade. Gary Keller, the real estate billionaire. He started Keller Williams. His book, The One Thing, which is on the power of focus. So what I take away from there is like everything in our life, think about it like dominoes. You have limited time in the day. What's one thing you do today that if you get it right, like 5 other tasks are automatically fixed? So for example, if you're an entrepreneur, hire a director of operations or a COO. If you can solve that one thing, then that person can solve 50% of all your other problems. Instead of you putting out 100 fires, just put out the one thing get somebody competent. Usually a woman in my experience is good as a COO. So that's another book I recommend. I mean, a book that's controversial, but I think it's so genius. I haven't read a book more genius on the subject of happiness would be Sigmund Freud's book, "Civilization and Its Discontents." Just read the second chapter, "Civilization and Its Discontents." It's so profound. It's the book that I would say is the most profound book written by a human. So if you're religious, maybe it's not as profound as the Bible, but it's wildly— it's like 8 pages and I've read it 40 times, and every time I read it there's new insight. Um, then another great book would— I would say everyone should read— I think the wisest man to live in the last 1,000 years is a guy named Will Durant. He— him and his wife wrote an 8,000-page story of civilization, but there's a short version he wrote called The Lessons of History. And I've been telling people for like 15 years to read this. Recently, by the way, Elon Musk found this book and he's on Twitter going, you're not gonna believe this guy, go read Will Durant. He has a little book, Lessons of History. It's so compact and so profound that even guys like Elon Musk are like, this dude might be an alien. Like, who is this guy? So Will Durant, Sigmund Freud, throw in a courage book, Contiki, a focus book. I think I may have already said that. Read, you know, now a hard, a practical book I mentioned earlier, which is Smart Pricing. What I like about that book, not only will it teach you the science of pricing your products, but it starts making you think, wait a second, there's a science to making money. And I think people forget that. I think you need what Steve Jobs had, which is like the art of having your intuition. That's the artist side, right? But you also, there's technical things you need to learn. And I think Smart Pricing is like a mind-blowing book on just, it's like, it's a teeny book, but it makes you realize most business owners, they just make up a price. They look at their competitors and go, well, they're charging $100 a month, so I'll charge $100. Or they figure out what their cost is and they add 30%. But he goes through the 5 ways you can price your product. And he says, 99% of people price it incorrect. Almost nobody— the interesting pricing would be like airplane. Next time you go on a flight, ask how much the guy next to you paid. 0% chance you paid the same for the same seats. Never. They have something called dynamic pricing. So anyway, I think smart pricing is a good one to introduce people that like, oh, business, making money is chess, not checkers. Yeah.

That's so cool. I haven't heard of like 90% of those books. I guess I'd be really excited to go buy a bunch right now. Okay, last question I have for you then.

Oh man, Russell, I'm going to challenge you. Get the best version of the story of civilization. It's like, I have it there. It's probably— can you hand me one of those? It's like 10 volumes. Get a great version. If you could get like a— this one will go up in value. Elon Musk will buy this from you. I have a couple. I buy one for every house that I live in. So it's this. This is the Age of Reason. And that's the, that's the two people. If you get this, I'm telling you, this one is the one that can 20x in value if you're looking at the investment side. That's awesome.

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Okay, the question I want to ask you, because I get this a lot, because I talk about a lot of books and people are always like, how do you read so much? And you mentioned earlier the book a day strategy. So will you explain what that is and how you actually do that?

Yeah. So yeah, one of my first controversies where people are like, "Ty, you know, it's fake." And I said I read a book a day and what people didn't realize, I really did and I still do. But I now, I really also like supplementing with audiobooks. I think there's nothing wrong with it. I've heard people say, "Oh, you know, listening to audiobooks is like," drinking your vegetables. Well, if you drink your vegetables with the pulp in it, it's the same as eating them essentially. So it's not a great— but, but so I would say what I do now when I take a shower, hopefully you take a couple showers a day, set it on 2x and listen to the right book. And let's say you take, I don't know, I'd like to take long showers. So let's say 15 minutes of showers at 2x, that's 30 minutes. Of a book. They cannot— I do that Monday through Saturday. Then I fall— I try to fall asleep. I think it's deadly to fall asleep with your phone. Like, 90% of the world is now falling asleep with their phone. If you can figure out a way to hypnosis, mind control, whatever, to not doom scroll in bed— there's the blue light messes up your sleep, it messes up your circadian rhythm. So I think you should read when you are going to bed. And you shouldn't be too tired when you— you should be able to stay in bed for 20 minutes before you fall asleep. So if you find yourself, "Oh, Ty, I read 10 seconds and then I fall asleep," you probably don't have good sleep and you need to work on your anti-aging stuff. So I get in a solid 20 or 30 minutes. So that gives me about an hour a day. Now, I go in spurts. If I'm reading "The Story of Civilization," You cannot read an 800-page book in one day, right? But there's books that I get, like pop culture books. Let me see one, like something like, I don't even know what book, let me just pick one. The Conversion Code. You know, this is the one I think I got in an airport. I don't even know if I've read, I think, oh yeah, I have read this one. This one is easy to read in a day. I mean, it's 136 pages, and I think it's nothing wrong with skipping around. Read the parts that serve your life. There's no downside. People get so Gestapo-like. They're like, me, I must. If I don't read the whole page, I mean the whole book, every page, forget that. One of the great books is Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography. It's called, What is the damn, I forgot. Anyway, it's a great one. And the second half doesn't interest me. It's about his political rise at California. No hate to him, I love Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I'm not into politics. The first half, the most fascinating thing. So I've read the first half like 10 times in 10 years and the second half never. Now some people go, "What? I caught you. You're not reading a book a day." And I'm like, "Dude, this is not a professional sport." where I'm cheating, but I'm saying I read— sometimes I read every word. That would be like Dr. David Buss, Evolutionary Psychology. I've read every word, never skipped, no speed reading. And then other books I'll read 7 pages and be like, okay, like Malcolm Gladwell. If you ever read Malcolm Gladwell, I like him, but he's very long-winded. So he basically has one main point, like Outliers, the book, like You know, study outliers, people who have extremely good results. And then every chapter is just a story confirming what he said in the first chapter. So you could just read the first chapter. You know, I don't need 83. I know he's not going to put in a story that disproves his side of the story. So why am I— I don't need to read it. So Malcolm Gladwell, I think he has great books, David and Goliath, Outliers, all these, but I never read them all. You know, Will Durant, I read the whole thing. Oh yeah, it's called Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So What's your secret?

What do you do? Well, first off, I'm gonna tell you a story. So the first time I came to see you at your, at your mansion back in the day, I'd just written the Expert Secrets book. And I remember Dave and I were there together. We came in and we were sitting in the lobby waiting and I was like, okay, I want Tai to read my book. And so like I strategically left the book out somewhere, hopefully you would grab it and read it. So that was, I was like, if Tai Lopez reads my book, how cool would that be? So I have your books.

I think I have them right over there. I should have grabbed them.

Oh yeah, it was like way back, the very first, it was like one of the first copies I had. And I was like, and you'd invite us over. So I was like, okay, this is our shot. We're going to leave it. He's going to read it someday. And then I'll see. Anyway, it was kind of fun. For me though, it's similar. Like I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I work out, I'm listening. I'm driving, I'm listening. I'm at home, I'm listening. I walk, you know, like, and so there's just so much time to do it. And then a lot of times if I want to read a book and I want to get through it, what I'll do is I'll put my headphones on and I'll turn up the 4x speed while I have the book. Along and I'll read it for— read it while and listen to it at 4x speed. And I can get most books done in about an hour that way.

That work?

And if I just speed read or if I just listen really fast, I can't get it. If I do both at the same time, it's insane how much I can get out of it in an hour.

So yeah, I'm gonna have to try that.

It's really fun.

Now one, one other thing, when you fly, don't watch movies. Read. Flying is especially if you like— I live part-time in Europe. Dude, I look around, it was crazy. The other day I was flying to Scandinavia, like Sweden, from the US, and I looked around and not one person. It used to be 5 years ago, like 20% of the plane was reading. 10 years ago, 40. If you go back, you know, 20 years ago, I was like 60% of the— it's— I was the only person reading. So one good thing about reading is I love it when I find something valuable that nobody else does, because as Charlie Munger says, if it wasn't for the stupidity of other people, you wouldn't be able to get rich. So if everybody was reading the books, you'd have no unfair advantage. So, you know, the best way for the— a lot of people want to make a lot of money. And by the way, what I'm most proud of, I sent you that screenshot, Russell, where it said top 10 funnel experts in the world. It had you ranked as number 1 and me as number 2. I want— I'm gonna have a personal talk with OpenAI about that. They're like, bullshit. But anyway, um, you— every— I tell everybody, ask ChatGPT, what are— what is one thing you're, you're number one in the world at? And, uh, obviously it's hard to know, but it said I've gotten more people to read nonfiction books than anyone in modern history. It said me one, Oprah Winfrey two. So I was proud of that. And what I want— that the way I got people to read books is not really me. I use psychology, like I had a birthday party at my house. This is about a year after the "Here in My Garage" video. And somebody brought their girlfriend and I was talking to her when she walked in. I said, "What do you do?" "I'm a school teacher." And I said, "Ah, you know, interesting." And she said, "I'm in the inner city of Los Angeles public schools. A lot of crime, poverty." Later in the night she came over and she's like, "I gotta tell you a funny story." And I said, "What?" She goes, "I realize who you are now and I had a kid." he's in and out of jail, juvenile delinquent crime. And he said, out of the blue, this inner city high schooler is walking down the hall with a nonfiction book. And I walked up to him and I forget his name, what his name was, you know, John. Hey John, you reading now? And he goes, yeah, there's this guy, Tyler Lopez, says if I read, I can get a Lamborghini. So a lot of people were like, wow, you're selling the dream. I'm like, exactly, I'm selling a truthful dream, man. And so I get people to read by going, Warren Buffett wrote a book to first graders, but it really applies to adults. It says, "The more you learn, the more you earn." And I've been in business with 3 guys on the Forbes list, 3 billionaires. It's wild how much more, as I go up in net worth, people read. People really read. Jeff Bezos was richest man for a decade in a row. He started a business. Amazon was started around books. Number 2, um, Elon Musk's sister just wrote an article 6 months ago. She said, oh yeah, my memories of my brother as a teenager is he'd read 2 books a day. He says he was super depressed. At age 12, he stumbled across a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it made him realize the reason for hope is that there's more to this universe than just Earth. And it changes life. And SpaceX and all these things. So one book, not only can it change your life on Earth, but it can make you rich. And so when you're reading a book and you're like, I don't feel like reading, just ask yourself, would you rather be right and lazy or rich? A lot of people would rather be right than rich. Humble yourself. Realize there's not a man on this Earth or a woman on this Earth who contains all you'll need in your life. And so you're going to have to read. Now, maybe one day AI will replace that, but next 10 years, books and reading is not going anywhere. The form might change to ebooks, it might change to podcasts or audio, but knowledge— the more you learn, the more you earn— is the simplest message that people ignore. Good, dude.

It's so fun catching up with you and seeing you again, and I appreciate taking the time today to come and hang out and talk about marketing and funnels.

Yeah. Yeah, we should— I gotta get you out of Idaho or I need to get to Idaho, one or the other.

All right, I tell you what, next we'll do something. I have an idea. What's that?

What city? Boise. What percentage of time are you in Idaho per year?

Oh, 90. What's your guess? 90%.

Oh, that high? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm a homeboy, man. I love— Are you gonna do Funnel Hacking Live again or are you done with big conferences?

I'm not done with big conferences. I have— I'm taking a break though for a couple years, and then I'm working on a project I think will lead into another big event thing in the future, but probably a couple years away. So it's sabbatical time, kind of, except I'm still working every day. I need to, like, I need to tie Lopez.

No, but I mean sabbatical from the big conferences. Yeah, you did it, what, 10 years?

Yeah, we did 10 in a row. Was it 10 of them? Yep. I figure 10 is a good spot to stop. If I did 11, I have to go like 20 or 15. I don't know. So I figured it was a good time.

Well, awesome. I look forward to me coming out to the farm sometime, man. I tell people, when you make your first million, buy a piece of land. When I bought my first farm in 20— I think it was 2014— my mom's like, Ty, you're in Beverly Hills. Why are you buying a farm? You know, you're in California. I said, "You never know, the world could get crazy." You know, she's like, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Ah, let's see." And then when 2020 came, I was up, I was living in New York and LA, Manhattan. And when that COVID hit in March, the second I saw that grocery stores, there was like no milk, no bread. I grabbed all my family, my son, I got in, I said, "Let's go to the farm." And we drove down there. And you're not going to starve on a farm no matter what. You don't need a grocery store. And my mom said, that's why you bought a farm. So I tell people, if you ask ChatGPT, let's do it right now. Let's see what the updated number is. What are the odds? Let me just see here. What, what are the odds that something crazy happens and major cities could like run out of food for a day or in the next 10 years, or it could be pandemonium, riots, any major event, whether it be a bomb, whether it be terrorism, whether it be, you know, blah, blah, blah. Give me the odds, 1 to 100. So that's why, that's why I said, do you have your— Idaho has good farms. Have you bought a piece of land, man?

I haven't, but I think I'm gonna buy one tonight. Like, you kind of sell me on it now.

Mark Twain said buy land, they ain't making any more of it. Land has gone through— you know what, a lot of Americans are mad at China because China's, you know, our competitor. But when you see the Chinese and the two richest men on Earth, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, when you see them buying up millions acres of farmland, jump into it. 10%, 10% chance. So It's the Doom Scale, they call it. If you knew there was a— if I gave you a dice, it has 10 sides to it. I said, every year I want you to flip it. Every year, anything from 1 to 9, your life's perfect. Number 10 is you and your family are caught in the middle of a riot with no food. And the solution is get your little Idaho— they have irrigated farms there So I mean, you got the money, you made your first million a long time ago.

Do you have somebody who watches your farm for you, or like what's happening when you're not there?

I have farm managers. This farm, I have 3 farm managers in order.

What do they do, is like raising cows and chickens and corn, or like what are they doing all day?

Yeah, yeah, they're working. They're pretty big farms. I, I had more farms, I sold some, but, um, and then the Amish my— the Amish run my other farm. Yeah, if you're not on a farm, you can get managers though. Get yourself a good farm manager. By the way, Russell, it'd be a beautiful investment. You'll thank me. Irrigated farm, alfalfa farm, horses. You go to it, you know, once a month or something, or once a quarter. You don't have to leave your bubble of Idaho. And by the way, the most— I didn't buy a farm for views or anything like that. Like, I bought a farm I lived with Amish 2 and a half years when I was like 20. So I bought a farm. I will tell you about 40% of my followers when they meet me, they're like, you know what, Tai, I don't give a shit about Lamborghinis or even money. It's cool you have a farm. Like there's a whole subset of earth who the farm movement is, you know, like I've heard of like tradwife movement, the traditional movement, it's massive. So, it was an unintended thing. People are like, "Oh my God, I want to come to your farm," and da, da, da.

So— I just Googled farms for sale in Idaho, and there's some insanely cool farms for sale right now. Yes, I'll tell you.

My first consulting business ever before I built an online funnel was farm consulting. Send me the farm before you buy it. I will save your life. I'm— you know, one of my business partners once said, he said, "Ty, you know what's strange about you?" He said, "If I draw a circle here," on a piece of paper and it says people who know internet marketing. And I draw another one, people that are planting oats, because I was planting oats when he was visiting me. He goes, out of 8 billion humans, you're the only one in that concentric circle where they touch. So I will help you buy a farm, man.

I'm telling you, I'll hang out in that circle with you, man. It'll be sick.

Idaho has very good land, dude. It has fertile land if you go in the right place. How many kids do you have? 5. 5. Like, the other reason, the main reason besides the chance the world ends, is like there's something special. If you look at American history, 90% of the people we consider great, whether it's George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, you know, all these people, that they grew up on a farm. And there's something you can't get with your kids in the city. So, you know, I have— people don't know I have kids. I don't post them on social media, but like my son was just here, like I see him 'cause he lives part-time in the city and I just see so many bad habits happen. They wanna do video games, but today he was living a video game. He was like, you know, in the tractor, like I don't let him drive a tractor, but it's safe up there, I have a cab and he's like moving a joystick and I was showing him, I'm like, hey, this is, and he was like, ah, he never asks about video games when he's doing that. So I just think, get back, you know, when all else fails, get back to the land. As the Bible says, you know, from dust we came and to dust we will return. So the earth, it keeps you humble. It makes you realize there's forces outside of your control. You could be the richest man in the world, but if a flood comes and washes out your crops, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, they're the same as a common poor farmer. So it grounds you. I just think it has a crazy— and it's quiet, man. I track my sleep. There's less EMFs. A lot of people get— you live in a big— I live in a big high-rise in Manhattan called Billionaire Row, this one street. You look at your Wi-Fi, there's 40 Wi-Fi connected to you. Here, there's nothing. And so, you feel better, it's better for your kids. It's a great backup plan. And farmland risk-adjusted since the 1980s has been the best risk-adjusted return with very little volatility. And so farms just go up more than inflation. So you want— it's almost impossible if you buy a nice farm. So send me the one, send me like 3 that you like, and I'll just— I'll give you my opinion. Okay.

Unbiased. I'm gonna get a farm. I did not know going into today I was gonna be a farmer, and now I'm gonna be a farmer, dude. Well, you don't have to be a farmer.

You will be the gentleman farmer, they call.

I want to call myself a farmer if I'm gonna have a farm.

That's pretty cool. It's new identity. Yeah, rancher. Yeah. Dude, a rancher. Start with chickens. Chickens don't hurt anybody.

My wife wants chickens at our house and I fought it, but if we had a farm, we could get chickens.

She'd be so happy. Oh dude, I eat all my food. I got, I got 2,000 pounds of meat from this farm out there. I, I grow wheat and oats. I calculated I can grow 20— I can make 20,000 loaves of bread. So just, you don't even need a huge farm, man. You don't. I would—

if I always sell it like we Can we buy like Tai Lopez steaks and ribeyes?

And I, I, I'm gonna— I had a business like that during COVID but it kind of— COVID was hard to process the meat, but I'm gonna bring that back. My neighbor Joel Salatin has one. I'll send you something.

He lives a little ways away. That's too cool. Oh man. Well, dude, I— it's great catching up, man. I appreciate you.

And, uh, it was really cool. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, no worries. If I can do anything for you, please let me know, and hopefully I have a chance to hang out in person again soon.

Yeah, and if anybody wants, I got a free book list. I don't charge any money. tylopez.com/books. I have my top 100 books everybody should read in order. I have like number 1, 2, 3, 4. So tylopez.com/books, that's my shameless plug, even though I think I have affiliate links. I make, I make like 2 cents if you buy a book from my link.

So if you put, uh, support me with any of my books in their top 100, we'll pay you way more higher commissions on those. So just throw slide some of those in there.

There we go. All right, I like that. I'll throw that in. I'll— Rick, we'll add one of his books in there. I don't know if you're going to get in the top 10 because you're up there with Albert Einstein and stuff, but, but you'll get on. Just getting on the list is good.

Yeah, man, that's my new goal. What's your—

of all the books you have, if you could only leave one book to posterity, what is the book that you're most proud of?

Um, I think my favorite book is DotCom Secrets. I think the most powerful one's Expert Secrets. So I'd say Expert Secrets.

Yeah. What would the most people get value from? Expert Secrets. The largest group.

Expert Secrets for sure.

Okay. Yeah. We'll get that on the list. Yeah. Expert Secrets. Yeah. That's awesome. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Thanks for hanging out, man. I appreciate it.

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