What I Wish Someone Told Me

I ain't trading my dreams for no. 4, okay?

I ain't giving this fight for cold.

So don't say I'm getting cold.

Will I get it.

Sam?

Nine minutes.

That's weird.

What's up, greg?

Now.

But.

Every day.

Sam.

Ra.

From the bottom can't hold me down, hold me down I'm rising up, up from the ground.

Good work, philli.

Oh, yeah. We got a minute and a half until the simultaneous sip. If you are watching live, please say hello. What's up, Philip? Congratulations on kicking coffee. Give it two weeks. Give it two weeks. Before you judge it, Philip.

What's up, Josh? What's up, Amanda Alpine? How is Cleveland this morning? Hey, Herb.

Greg Johnson is in the house. C money is in the house. Elias, where are you? Elias? I'm bringing you live. So, Elias, you better be here.

All right, we got one minute until the simultaneous sip.

Hey, Susan Anderson. Somebody tag Elias in the Facebook group. Tell Elias to get here. Elias is going live today to rap about his brand.

I share in your pain, Amanda Alpine.

All right, ladies and germs, today's beverage is a double mocha tea. I, too, am getting back on the decaf wagon because you sleep like a teenager. Oh, it's just the best. I slept for, like, nine and a half hours last night. I am ready to go.

All right, ladies and germs, grab your cup, grab your mug, grab your beverage, grab your chalice, your stein, grab your tankard, grab your thermos, grab your flask, if you will. Grab your vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. Today I like a double mocha tea. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous sip.

That's good. Simultaneous sipping. Everybody, let's kill the music. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our Capitalism Coffee Chat, whatever the hell we call it here@capitalism.com.

It'S Sunday.

Church for business owners is essentially what it is. And today we have some announcements about the future of the group. We're going to go through a few things that I share in my new book, 12 months to 1 million. And then I'm going to turn it over to you for Q and A and we're going to talk about what's working in your business, what's not working in your business. We had some huge wins Friday Inside the Tribe. Oh.

Oh.

Oh, my goodness. My fa. Oh, it's so good. It was one of those moments where it was like, this is going to be a thing. This is special. There is special happening inside of what we're doing at the tribe@curecopitalism.com so hopefully some of you who are in the or in the tribe are watching live and are willing to share some of that. That would be a really fun conversation. If you are watching live, please say hello in the comments. Make sure you have approved Streamyard so I can see who the heck you are. I'm. I already. There's Elias. Elias is here. What's up, Josh? Hey. Bram Sparrow.

Hello. Chris Van Loan. And Greg Johnson. Hello, Amanda. Hello, Sue. Hello, Phillip. So first to kick things off, I'm going to, we're going to do a reading, if you will, from a spiritual text called 12 months to 1 million, this hits store shelves. Not that you'll be going into any stores anytime soon, but if we were in stores, this would be in every Barnes and Noble around the country. In the meantime, we'll just have to enjoy our own copy that we Pre ordered on Amazon.com and I want to give you a little bit of a sneak peek.

Chapter, chapter. Actually, it's chapter one. In chapter one.

Right here, this section right here. Before we begin, what I wish someone had told you told me I'm going to read you through. Not read you through, but I'm going to share with you the things that I wish somebody had told me at the beginning of my journey. And the reason I am telling you this is because these are the lessons that I wish I had known at the beginning that had I known, I would have gotten to where I am and even further ahead a lot faster. And if you can marinate on these, then the path to success happens a lot faster than you might expect. So there are six lessons.

That I'm going to share with you that if you get them, are going to massively impact the speed at which you accomplish what it is that you set out to accomplish. Is you ready? If so, give me some hashtags in the comments and I'll just wait awkwardly until there's hashtags.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. There we go.

Thank you, Chris Van Loan. All right, so there we go. Thank you very much. So here we go. These are the, these are the six lessons. Number one.

This is harder than you think.

I say this in the book. Becoming and succeeding as an entrepreneur is a lot like parenting. I can tell you that. It's hard. You can read books like this one that explain all the pitfalls and provide all the tips, but at the end of the day, you just cannot imagine how difficult it will be. Ask any parents and they'll tell you the same thing. Raising children is harder than they ever thought. A lot of people start a family because they think it will bring a new level of love and fulfillment to their lives. They're not wrong. Being a parent has always and will always be a source of limitless joy. That being said, parenting is 10 times harder than one ever imagines and there's no real way to prepare for it.

For those who think that the entrepreneur life is easy, you will fail. More accurately, you will think that it's easier than you've been told. After all, how hard can it be to hustle for 12 months for a million dollar payday? But you've got to nurture this thing. You have to live it, live with it for every hour of every day, like a child. Sometimes it calls for you in the middle of the night and you have to go help it. Going into this, if you, if you have the understanding that this is going to be really hard, especially for the first year, you'll be fine. But those who think that they're never going to get punched in the mouth, never going to run into major pitfalls, really struggle. Half my work, more than half my work inside the tribe or with clients is getting them to not give up or complicate it when they get punched in the mouth. So if you know how hard it is going in, you'll be fine. Number two, this is not about what you can get. But what about but what you can create. One of the first mindset shifts you'll need to understand is the difference between extraction and creation. Too many people think that they are only out to get a slice of the pie of the limited value around the world. They walk up to a table that has a single pie, take a slice and think that's enough. They imagine that once all the slices are gone, that's it. That's why people hate on billionaires or companies that don't pay enough taxes. They believe that the top 1%.

Get rich by taking from others. The truth is that we create value. For every slice you take, you have to bake a whole other pie. Jeff Bezos got insanely rich because he changed an industry that's value creation. Far too many people ask, how can I get my slice of the pie.

That'S hustling for every dollar? Stop thinking about what you can take and start recognizing the value you can create. Money is the byproduct of good work and it will flow to you as soon as you make that switch. So for most of my career, up until the last few Years I had the perspective that there was a certain amount and I had to go in and get mine. And most people never graduate from that thinking. But the truth is completely opposite. The way that you get any slice is by making a real big pie. And there, there, this is a universe of infinite value. Infinite value. There is no like we can, we can all be rich. That is true. I made this argument in a podcast with Billy Jean. He did not agree with me.

But it's true. We have more value today than we had a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago or 2,000 years ago. There's infinite value and you can have as much as you want. You just have to create more than you take. Number three. Growth is like interest. It compounds over time. A hustler lives from small win to small win. Tiny wins buying things at garage sales and selling them on ebay. They never compound. You might work really hard to make extra money, but it's unlikely you'll become a millionaire. But if you follow this plan, results stack extremely quickly. They might seem insignificant at first, but after a year you'll have a hard charging income stream that continues to grow for years to come. You don't get rich with one big sale. You get rich by doing the right things long enough for it to compound. In my experience, that takes about 12 months.

More to the point, it comes from setting long term goals and using those habits to drive them, to drive toward them. Whenever I'm trying to get rich, fit or happy, I need to think long term. And if I treat my customers well, they'll be happy. If my customers are happy, they'll leave. Good reviews, good reviews build loyal customers. Efforts and actions compound. And the more long term you think, the more successful you will be. This week, working with one of our tribe members, there is a girl who was playing a little bit of like, I didn't do enough this week. And what we did was I was like, okay, let's talk, let's talk about what you're actually doing here. She thought that in order for her to be to have progress, she had to make a like a big jump. This big. But what we were able to deconstruct with her was that the things that would compound were sitting right in front of her. Could she get one amazing review? Could she get one customer testimonial she could share on social media? Could she make one sale to the right person? Could she write one email? And those little incremental things compound over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until you have a multi million dollar business. That's how it works. It doesn't work by you going from here to here. It works by you going.

And then it starts to compound. You know, C Money and I are, are really hell bent on building up a solid YouTube presence for capitalism.com and I know that it's not going to come from one viral video. It's going to come from us pounding pavement and doing the right things and responding to comments and ranking for keywords and emailing the list and doing things that will compound in a year from now who have hundreds of thousands of followers and I've had to get out of my own way and things of like what's the video gonna be? There is no the video. There is just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Over time to everything works. Number four, your business impacts more than your bank account. I wish someone had told me way back when I was getting started just how big this was all going to get. I had no idea what I was building or what it would mean years later. Had I known, I would have gone harder. I would have been even more aggressive. You'll soon discover that big brands out there are looking to acquire small brands. They're literally banking on entrepreneurs like you to build something great so that they can jump on board. I never knew how many people were rooting for me. I never knew this process could inspire so many people or that I would make those same people students and watch them transform their lives based on my designs. Even beyond that, your business directly impacts your customers. We all have brands that we're passionate about and love to buy. You will be building something that directly impacts people on that level. People get into this thinking small. They want an added revenue stream or a little extra. But they have no clue how big this can get. There are a million dominoes ready to fall and it all takes just someone with the drive to push.

One. Do you get that? No, you don't. But I wish you could at the beginning of your journey, know how big this can get. Many people take this, the idea of the resources they have. They think, how can I maximize these resources? What they don't understand is that by playing this game well, they get a whole bunch of new resources. So if you want to have a $10 million a year business or $100 million year business, it can do that as long as you do these small things that compound over time. I wish someone had told me at the beginning of my journey just how Good. Just how big, just how much this can impact, just how big this can get. All right, number five, I'll turn over to y'.

All.

Having a partner can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you do it.

Great. Partnerships are not 50, 50, they are 100. 100. You have to punt. Get this, you have to punt the expectation that you will each do an equal amount of work because there will be times that you drive the ship and there will be times when your partner carries the torch. If you can take total and full ownership for your own results, then I would highly suggest bringing on a partner with the same mentality. When two people come together and they both take total responsibility for the results of the project, it can be magical. It can also be a disaster if it's the wrong fit. It's important to understand there is a difference between a friend and a partner. Sure, you can form a company with your buddy, have a lot of fun during meetings and make a few bucks. Most likely though, you'll end up like the majority of entrepreneurs, broke and starting from square one. There are two types of entrepreneurs. Those who drive vision and those who build. It is incredibly rare for one person to be both visionary and a builder.

And then I go into how to find the right partner.

But listen, the important thing that I want you to get there is punch the expectation that it will ever be 50, 50 ever. It's always 100, 100. Because if you do that, you've got a shot. You have to expect that you are going to be driving this thing and they have to expect that they're going to be driving this thing. And if you both do that, you'll be great and you forgive the other person for all their shortcomings now, because you can't see what they're thinking about, you can't see what they're working on, you can't see what they're planning.

So the expectation is always you're going to do 100 of it. And if they also have that, then you'll be fine.

All right. And finally, number six. No matter what, the chips stay on the table.

Despite the going. All in analogy, I don't compare this life to gambling. In this life, the house doesn't win because you stayed to play. Being an entrepreneur means thinking years in advance rather than months. The worst thing you could do in any cycle is trade long term risk for short term wins. So when it comes to building a seven figure business, here's the mindset you should take on. The longer you can keep your chips on the table, the bigger your end result will be. This means not taking an income from the business as soon as you're profitable. It means keeping the profits in play for the business rather than for your own bank account. Put simply, it means reinvesting rather than recouping.

So until you're doing a million a year, your chips stay on the table no matter what. That is in the introduction of my new book, Twelve Months, One Million, which launches May 5th. That's in, oh, two days, friends. So Tuesday you'll be receiving, you'll start receiving shipments from Amazon for 12 months to 1 million.

Hey, everybody. Good to see y'.

All.

I'm gonna go over a quick announcement for this group. So this is, this is an honest question. Have you all enjoyed these coffee hangouts? Do you think that we should keep doing them? Give me a yes and yes or a yes and no or, or a no and no. Why are you here if the answer is no? I'm not sure. So we have been wonder. You know, I committed to doing three of these live.

If you enjoy them and think we should keep doing them, let me know in the comments.

Yes, these are great. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.

Cool.

So absolutely yes. Good. Hey, Myra.

Here's, here's what we're agreeing to. We are going to keep these going and we're going to do to start a three in one cadence. So we're going to go three weeks on, one week off. Three weeks on, one week off. And what I am considering doing is creating a theme for every three part sprint. And I'll teach at one, we'll do Q A at one and we might bring on a guest at one, something like that. I don't know for sure, but we're gonna pick a topic, we'll talk about it for three weeks. We'll take a break, we'll start a new topic and we're new to that three on, one off. And we'll probably hit the topic. Kind of like I've been doing with these 20 minute segments where I've been teaching something and then turning them over to Q and A. We'll do pretty much the same thing. We'll take 20 minutes and we'll teach something either myself or with, with a member of the community or a guest that I want to share with the community. And then we'll open it up to Q and A for, for that round. And then we'll, the next time we'll just do Q and A. You know, we'll, we'll just rotate through that, so that's what we're, that's, that's how we're going to be doing things moving forward. This is our third one, which means next week we'll take a break. Well, on our honor Mother's Day, so none of us get killed. And then we'll come back with three more on around a topic. And for the first topic, I'm just going to put it to a vote. So look in the Facebook community for a poll coming soon where I'm going to propose a few topics for us to talk about for a few weeks and then we'll vote on it and we'll hit that, do Q and A and do the standard thing. So that is going to be how we do things moving forward with these Sunday, with these Sunday hangouts. Please, there's a comment from YouTube, from Rishabh. Please take my name. Ryan. I have no idea what that means, but welcome to the stream over on YouTube. Rishabh. All right, so with that, I'm gonna turn it over to y'. All. Elias, I. I promised you first, so I am bringing you on live. Give me a thumbs up if, if you're cool with that. If you're ready. All right, cool. Here you come. What's up, dude?

Hey, Ryan. How's it going, mate?

Good. Hey, am I saying your name right? Elias Oas. Oas. Oh, that's a badass name. Oas.

Thank you, man.

What's up, dude? I saw your post in the 1%. I just thought you might like to workshop it live.

Yeah, sure. First, I've got your order your book anyway, period, off Amazon. So that's coming in.

Awesome. Appreciate it.

I'm in the uk so I think we're getting it a week or two later than the guys in the us.

Cool. I appreciate it. Thank you always.

That's cool. So, yeah, so I've just joined a few days ago and I've started a million dollar brands course.

Yeah.

Kind of got up to module 5 or 6 and in the Facebook group I kind of posted my ideas which I'll run through now and see what everybody thinks. So my business idea was to basically sell technology for people who are kind of entrepreneurs or people who are digital nomads or remote workers.

Sure.

Who have like home based offices.

So I currently work for kind of a big IT corporation and obviously we're all at home, so it's kind of my field in that sense as well.

Yep.

As in my own target customer. So the idea was selling things like screen protectors, wireless chargers, probably wireless Keyboards, wireless mouse.

I'm trying to think what else I written now. Oh, mini desk fan. I've got mug warmer.

So I just want to share, I just want to share an idea that came to me as you were saying that.

Yeah.

Was when you're, when you're a digital Nomad, you tend to have like a work bag, right? It has like, has like your laptop and your charger and your wireless whatever.

Yeah.

In my brain I'm just thinking like, what is in the work backpack? Everything that's in the work backpack, that's what this brand is.

Right.

And like the journal, the extension cord, the camera case, like whatever that you're bringing to your digital nomad co working space, that's what's in your brand. That just flashed into my brain. I've wanted to share that.

Cool.

Thanks for that. And then also around the social media platform. So currently I'm not active on social media and I think that's kind of what you were saying in your training, Ryan, was that you need to start essentially building a brand or build a following to where you have at least, I think you said around 100.

Followers. And so the idea was I would look to add things around productivity to things I know about. So it could be like around Pomodoro technique, it could be around like Brain fm, it could be around.

Kind of exercise or health benefits. So you're not constantly working. I kind of wrote a load on.

The board.

Early morning rituals, etc. So the idea was I'd kind of publish this out on social media, whether that's Instagram, most likely, or Facebook, and then get kind of followers that way and then say, look, I've got some tools that you guys might want to use. So that's kind of it.

So I mean, I, I mean, I mean this as.

As a helpful comment, not a slam. You're thinking a little too hard. Okay, so. So all this is great. Like, all this is great. But I can tell that there's a sense of you that wants to have all this figured out before you start and you don't, and you don't have to. So I think you'll feel a little bit more ease over this at the beginning of the process if you just give yourself permission to take the next steps and fumble a little bit, because you're going to anyway, even if you have it all figured out. So I think your brand and your approach is really solid. I think that's a really easy to target question crowd. And if that's you, then you know how to speak to that crowd. You don't necessarily need to go force yourself to do social media. If you don't want to do social media, just go partner with Facebook groups or Instagram pages or blogs that you like that you would like to work with and use their audience, or you create a partnership with them and they introduce other people who have audiences to you. So you don't have to go and hustle your way to 100 or 500 fans. Although you can and most people do. But if you don't want to, you don't have to either. I. I would also suggest that out of, out of the things that you just mentioned as the possible product line, there was not a. There was no like, clear, obvious one that was like, oh, that's really good for that brand. And so I would, I would do some thought into like, what. What's the thing that you can do a little bit differently than most people in that space? Because I'm waiting for you to be like, what my person really needs is this. And if you know that, then all the other stuff will be great second and third products after you got that one that you're really confident in. Does that make sense so far?

Yeah, so far. Do you have any recommendations of what that first product could be?

I mean, it might be a backpack. It might be. If you're going for something in tech, it might be a case that is so durable you can drop your damn laptop and everything is fine and it's waterproof and. Or it might be a piece of carry on luggage that is organized perfectly for the person who is a digital nomad and has little spots for this and little spots for this. It's. It is really about what the person that you are that who you are targeting wants and feels deficient in.

Right. I mean, for me, I think I've got. It's kind of two different markets potentially. So one is kind of digital nomad area and the other market will be people who are just home based. Yeah, they're kind of two different, different areas.

Okay, so. So there's a reason why you picked those and it's because those two cross over in some way.

Yeah.

What is the crossover between digital nomad and a person who works from home?

What do you mean by the crossover?

Yeah, so they overlap somewhere. So where do they overlap? Because it's not like you chose.

Authors and people who run hot dog stands. Yeah, those are my two markets. That's like, I need to pick one of those two. Yeah, but you pick. You're saying that You've got these two people in mind because somewhere they cross over, somewhere there's those two things become the same person. So who is that person?

Okay. So I think they cross over in, in terms of. They kind of use the same things. So it could be like a laptop and they're basically always on the screen.

So. And also I think that they'd like. So the person who's home based, I'm just. I think. So they might like products that are kind of lightweight as well.

Okay, so. So let me, let me coach you just for a second here. Where you're getting some tension is the person who works from home is more mobile than most of them. Most of people, right?

Yeah.

So where you're getting stuck is you're like, yeah, but when that person works from home and they're stable now, they need stuff for their home office. And things for the home office are different than the thing that they buy when they're traveling.

Yeah.

So the only decision that you need to make is, are you.

Mobile company or are you making the work at home company? And what I think you're saying is you want the mobile desk company. Like, you have the desk in a bag, here's your laptop, here's your case, here's your charger, here's your this, here's your this, here's your this, here's this. Oh, and here's the bag. There's your product line. It's for the person who is throwing their desk in their bag and they're going to the coffee shop, they're going on a plane, they're going to the office, they're going to. They're going on a trip to see a business partner. It sounds to me like that's who you're targeting. And where you get stuck is when you switch from that and you target the person who is stable working at home, because that's a different person. But it sounds to me like the person you're going after is the mobile. The mobile professional.

Yeah, that's really helpful because I was thinking, how do I attract both? But you kind of say, just go with one. Yes, yes, stick with that.

Always, always pick one and go all in on them. And then what inevitably happens is that other crowds start to find you. So, for example, I have a friend who sells a certain type of protein powder that they develop specifically for the weight loss crowd and for the people who are like counting calories and measuring their macros. And it was really like chefs who are losing weight, that's kind of their market but they got a huge following in the Weight Watchers crowd. They weren't targeting the Weight Watchers crowd. They weren't speaking to the Weight Watchers crowd. It just so happened that the also fit them, but had they tried to target them from the get go, they would have completely screwed it up. Right. So by you going all in on the person that you want and the person that you are and the person that you love to serve, you'll end up getting these other audiences because like, like your market's kind of like me. I started off as a digital kind of. Not really a digital med, but I traveled a lot, then I had a couple of kids. But I'm still a mobile business person. So I still pretty much put my entire business in my backpack.

Right.

And if you speak directly to me, I'm your guy. Even though I'm not a digital nomad.

Right.

That's cool.

The last question is, I suppose, where can I find out more information about the requirements or needs of these particular individuals?

Ask them. Go to forums, go to Reddit, go to Facebook groups, go to LinkedIn groups. Contact influencers who talk in the space. Listen to podcasts that are for digital nomads. Watch YouTube videos about digital nomads. Read the comments, hear what they're struggling with. Look on Amazon for similar products and read the reviews and see what people aren't happy with.

Read blogs about digital nomads. There's only about a thousand of those. Look at the product reviews that those people are doing because half of them make their money just by look, just by reviewing products and making their money as an Amazon affiliate. A lot of them are really upset right now because Amazon affiliates just lowered their commissions. So they're looking for a new people to date, if you will.

That's how, that's how you get more plugged in there.

Cheers. Thanks, mate.

Is that helpful?

Yeah, it's really helpful. Cheers.

All right, cool. Welcome to the group. OAs good to have you.

Thank you, mate.

All right, man, talk to you soon.

See ya. Bye.

God, I love that. Isn't that fun? Isn't this fun? What's so fun is like, half of you are like, yep, Oasis is gonna kill it. He just got product clarity. He knows that he's gonna roll this out. Just got plugged into the group. Cool. Six months from now, that's going to be a fun story.

Dana, I'm going to go to New Next. Give me a thumbs up. All right, let's do it. Hello, Dana.

Hey, how's it going?

Good. I'm happy to be here.

I hear you had a big breakthrough this week.

Yes.

Tell me about it.

So, well, first of all, I got three things going on, so real quick, I'm part of the Black Magic Bean dream team, so.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We're launching this coffee company, so. So that's been really fun. And the second thing I have is a fitness company, and that is a breakthrough. I had this last week that I really wanted to share with this community because it was just, like.

Awesome.

And, yeah, it got me, like, I was just thinking too small. And now I'm like, oh, my God, this is. This is amazing. And then the third thing is I have an invention that I just submitted the application to the government for my utility and design patent. And this is in the coffee and travel industry. So I'm really, really excited about that. So I don't know if I'm going to get to talk about that today, but maybe I can come back on and share that with you. Really, really excited about it.

Great. Well, where would you like to take this?

Okay, so first I want to talk about the breakthrough I had with my online business. So I've been a fitness professional for 25 years, and eventually, after working through all these gyms and everything, I decided back in 2008, I was going to open a gym. So I. I opened a brick and mortar the same year the market tanked. So I was sort of like, I just didn't have a plan B. I was like, I, I'm gonna make this work. But what I. So what I did do at the time is I pivoted and moved my business online and started a YouTube channel. So. So I started out really, in 2012, grew my following. I got, like, close to 30,000 subscribers on YouTube, posting, kickboxing, hit workouts, strength workouts, all sorts of stuff to build my audience. Then eventually I moved to an online platform, so I started charging for membership. So this was back in 2014. So I've been trying to market direct to consumers, right? Like individual people joining this fitness platform. And over the time. Now, today, I have over 500 workout videos in this platform. The other part of me, though, had been really wanting to develop, like, this Train the Trainer program where I help other fitness instructors become better fitness instructors. Because the training out there for fitness instructors and group is just. It's horrible. It's just lacking. It's just, you know, you get this piece of paper, you're certified, and then you're off to figure it out. So what happened with this whole coronavirus you know, going down is that I'm seeing my. The gyms everywhere just getting decimated. There are some gyms that are really smart and they stepped into the digital solution pretty quick and they're trying to figure it out and other ones are just trying to collect membership. They're going to follow. They're just not going to make it, in my professional opinion. I just don't see how they're going to make it. So maybe gyms will open, but group fitness is going to be just decimated. So here we have a problem where my fellow fit pros have no. They have no way of making money and they're trying to do zoom live and, you know, these Facebook lives and all this stuff. So I'm seeing this huge pain point that there. Because this happened to me when, you know, the market tanked and I had to eventually let go of my brick and mortar, moved online. The technology so overwhelming and so it can be paralyzing. So that is a major pain point. We have these content creators who are talented.

Dana, how, how can I help you with this?

Well, I just wanted to share that it was a pivot that I am now creating a partnership for fitness instructors to make money. So I was thinking direct to consumer and affiliates, and I was thinking too small and I just wanted to share that with you in this community because if it helps another business owner think slightly differently, I'm solving for. I've all these people who are out of work and yet I have a platform and something that can help them make money and me make money. So it's like a revenue share thing. Every time somebody came to me with an affiliate idea, I wasn't thinking of that affiliate in this manner. So I just wanted to share that with you because I've been following you.

So what was, what was the. What was the big breakthrough? What was. What's the new direction that you're going instead of affiliate?

Okay, so I'm. I now have five fitness instructors who are local. They're going to come to my studio and film content once a week.

Awesome.

And. And we're. I'm creating a fitness channel for them within my platform.

Amazing.

We have divided out like, you know, a split. So every time they bring people into their channel, I get paid and they get paid.

That's great.

They don't have to figure out the technology. The platform is already there. The filming videos, the editing. I have all the systems in place. I have the customer service, I have people on payroll. I have all that taking place, care of all they have to do is physically come to my private production studio and film their content.

That's great.

So now I'm really excited because I get to like help solve for the fitness professionals who have no work right now.

Yeah. And you just became a media company.

Yes, yes.

That's great.

So I'm just like reveling in it because the other thing and I just listened to the podcast you did with Brooke. Amazing, by the way.

It was good.

I really have been my mantra this last year has been how fun, easy and lucrative can I allow this to be?

Yes.

And I just, it's been working like magic. It's like, this is fun. Like this to me is fun. It is, yes. There's work involved and there's some back end stuff I need to line up sales pages and things like that. But there's. All of my being is like, yes.

That'S perfect. So I just want to recap what I'm hearing you say is that you're going to serve as the media platform for these local trainers and then you're going to have a revenue share with those trainers for what? The ad revenue or sales revenue that you do for those trainers. And is this, is this channel going to be for other trainers?

I guess it's really. So it's RealFit TV is the URL. So that's going to be the basic like landing spot. But then within that I'm gonna have all the, the fitness professionals able to like basically form their own channel. But here's the other really cool thing. I've already done 500 workout videos in there. So as a new content provider, you're like, great. Now how the heck do I get up to speed and I have to create value for people who, who are subscribing to my channel. I got your back. Because when you get into the community, you have tons of videos and all different types of workouts that you can do. So you're going to satisfy the people who are like, wait a second. But I'm joining this, you know, Be Fit channel under real fit. But you only have two pieces of content. No, because there's all of my content that they can piggyback and use and everything's in like one big library.

That's fantastic. Great. I mean, I think that is going to end up being the future of media production. So you're right, you're right on point. Great work. Great work, Dana.

Thank you. Thank you.

What else?

So, and then just real quick, I wanted to share. I just last year. Well, of course, right now we're not flying. There aren't airplanes taking off. However, last year, I'm coming back from this awesome trip with a friend. I board an airplane with a full cup of coffee, and there's nowhere to effing put my coffee. And I'm like, how is this possible? It's too 2019. And, like. So I was kind of trying to think of this, like, contraption that would maybe slide into the pocket. But I didn't want to contribute to plastic on the planet. So I get off the plane and I Google it, and there really isn't much out there on Amazon. They have a couple products, but they're plastic and the reviews are really bad because they're. They break and things like that. So I have developed the coffee Carry on, and it is cardboard, and it can be recycled, and it slides right into the pocket of the seat in front of you. I've had Brahms been using it, and he's used this, like, single one for, like, 12 plane rides. So I've been handing them out to friends.

But what I see here is the contract with airports. So just like, Starbucks would give you the cup sleeve. So they would just give them to.

Passengers and then show us how it works.

Sure.

So basically it's just this one piece, and it's collapsible, so that's really the patentable part of it. And it pops open like this, and this part slides into the pocket, and then this part is where the cup slides right in two. Because.

So, yeah, so I'm so proud of this because it solves for my problem. But then the more people I talk to, they're like, oh, my God, yes. I want to be able to leave my cup of coffee somewhere, take a nap, wake up, and it's still there. And I've been just handing this out. So I'm getting my website ready. I'm trying to link the Shopify. I'm trying to figure that out so at least I can start offering it to people when I talk like this. And to the community or my friends or whatever, I can send them somewhere because I've just been mailing them randomly here and there. But I want a better way. But really what I'm working on is I want contracts with these bigger companies. Yeah.

I was gonna say if. If you end up getting contracts with United Airlines.

Yeah.

You've done good.

Yeah. Or like Hudson News in the airport, you know?

Yes, correct.

Yeah.

Great work, Dana. You had a big week.

I know.

Congratulations.

That's why I was like, I just want to Share the good. Because there's been a long time where I just felt, why am I doing any of this? You know, and. Yeah, so just keep hanging in there.

That's great. You're getting a lot of love in the comments, so you're in the right place.

Yeah, I can't read the comments right now, but I'll definitely watch it on the.

Cool. Thank you for sharing with all of us. We appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for all you do, Ryan. Can't wait to read your book.

Thanks, Dana. I appreciate it. Talk to you soon.

Am I coming in a little bit crackly in my audio? I'm getting a little bit of feedback on my side. Let me know in the comments if you can hear me. Okay.

Bram, I think, is Dana's biggest fan.

All right. Greg Johnson has been waiting patiently here in the waiting room. Greg, give me a thumbs up if you're ready. All right, let's do this. Hello, my friend.

Hey, good morning.

You are muted. Oh, no, you just delayed. You're good, you're good. Okay. What's up, dude? How much.

How are you doing?

I'm doing great, man. I love these, I love these Sunday churches.

So do I.

Good.

So, first of all, I just wanted to reiterate what you said about the tribe call on Friday. It's amazing. It's so amazing to be with such a tight knit group of people who are all doing such mind blowing things with just these little steps that they're taking each week. And I, I am so addicted to that experience of watching all these people, you know, this, this step, you know, these small steps towards the success that they're, that they're going to have and, and just falling in love with them and their ideas and just being so driven to be their biggest advocate in whatever they're doing. So thank you for the communities that you create. It's been transformative for me and thank you.

Thank you.

I highly recommend it to anybody, so appreciate it.

Yeah, that was fun. That was a very fun call.

It was, it was. I'm excited to see what everybody's. Where everybody's going to be in a few months.

And everybody's excited for Greg too. Greg keeps his, his cards a little bit close to his chest.

Like Greg too.

I can, I can, I can show you my hand today. So ready? As, as I think the community has probably heard, Bram and I, who originally met in the tribe, decided two weeks ago that we should probably start a podcast based around this hot seat idea, which we completely ripped off from what you do in the tribe.

We just wanted to share this with. With more people.

Just.

It was. It was so good for us. We just wanted to see if. If it's something we could attempt to do in a different context. So two weeks ago, we said, hey, let's do a podcast. Last night, I hit publish. So it. Apparently it takes a week or two to go live through itunes, which, of course, I didn't know. We just decided we were going to launch it today, whether or not it was perfect. It's not perfect quite yet. We have a few things that are going to be improved down the road, but we just wanted to make it happen. So as of right now, Loveline for Business is a podcast. You can listen to it streaming on our website at loveline for biz.com it should show up in itunes shortly. And, yeah, I guess now we're podcasters.

Yeah. That's great. Congratulations. Thank you. Give the URL one more time.

Loveline for biz dot com.

Love. I. I love that the love line stuck. I. I love that that name stuck. That's great.

It's great. It. So if you just listen to the first 90 seconds and you see the intro we put together, you're gonna. It's. It's. It's perfect.

I can't.

Hilarious.

I can't wait.

Yeah. Our first interview we put out with Josh Valentin. He's in the 1%. He's a filmmaker, and it was. It was a wonderful conversation, and we all took something away from that. So I. Bram and I are so excited and having so much fun doing this.

Good.

And we actually think that some people are going to be helped by this and entertained.

So it's.

It's not just this selfish thing. Even though it's. Even though if that's all it was, we'd still do it because it's so fun.

Yeah.

So I. I just. I just wanted to thank you and the rest of this community for kind of being our incubator for this idea. And we are just pumped about doing this.

I'm so jazzed for you.

Great.

I mean, you're reminding me of myself in 2013, who's just like, look, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm just going to have fun with this.

Yes.

And here we are.

It's such a good place to work from, where you're just excited about what you're doing and not terribly concerned about what anybody else thinks yet.

I used to think. Greg, I used to think that I would kill it so that I could have fun later. And now I know that you have to have fun now so that you can kill it later.

So true.

It is. It is so backwards to what I thought it was. And what's interesting is I, I, I said this on the episode with Brooke that when I was a kid, I had no doubts about. I know I'm going to be rich. I know I'm going to be successful. I know I'm going to kill it.

I know.

And then you become rational and reasonable and you become.

You do what is, what's manageable and, and most people stay in that zone for the rest of their lives. And what I have started to rediscover in my 30s is that I had it right at 10. I was right when I, at 10, it was, I was correct that if you just know what you want and then go back to playing.

The act of playing is the work to actually build the momentum towards what it is that you want. And what we call work is actually when we expend that energy.

Results that is slower. And if you stay in play mode, the momentum goes way, way faster. So I think you are just going to be awesome. I think this is going to kill it. Cool.

Thank you.

Great work, Greg. Great work.

Not on itunes yet. Correct.

Not. It's, it's submitted for review.

Okay.

So I'm told it should go live within a week or two on iTunes, but right now it can be streamed from our website. We have six episodes lined up. We're going to publish weekly and record more content over the summer. So it's, it's, it's a real thing. It's been pushed into the deep end and we'll, we'll figure out how to swim.

Okay.

Over the next few months.

So what we'll do is as soon as it's live, post in the group and we'll do another announcement on this live calls. We'll get everybody to subscribe at once. Awesome. This is actually what we're going to do. Everybody. We're going to do a subscribe party when this goes live and watch. This is the power of this community. This is what will happen. Everyone will subscribe at once and it will jump up the ranking in itunes. So we'll just hack the algorithm together. So listen to the podcast but don't subscribe yet is what I'm saying. We'll all do it at once on one of these live calls and then it'll go. Cool.

Thank you.

You bet. Thanks, Greg. Thanks for hanging out with us.

All right.

Gosh, this is fun. Mr. Travis Ziggler, I'm about to put you live. Is that cool with you? Give me thumbs up if so. All right, let's do it. Hello, good doctor. You look well.

Well, you texted me while I was on a hike, so we just got finished. Just got out of the shower and just sat down.

What's up, dude? How you doing?

Doing well. We do our Sunday morning hike. It's five miles. I have my son on my back. Another £50, and then.

That's awesome.

We just kind of go. It's nice. It's nice.

That's awesome. You do that every Sunday, you said.

We do it about three times a week.

Yeah, then. Oh, that's great. You're in a good part of town to do that.

There's a couple hills in the area and we just like to hike to the top of the hill.

Awesome, awesome. Well, I reach out to you because I was hoping you could share a little about the acquisition that you did. If you're willing to share some of those details. I just have a really cool story from the last month or so.

Yeah, so we've been running a company. We've actually been running their Amazon side for them for about two years. We started with this company when they were doing about $10,000 per month, and we scaled them all the way up to 80,000 per month within about four months just by just putting the systems that we do and I love. And then.

Because you had to do pay per click management for them, correct?

Yeah, we. We advertise their. We actually did full Amazon management for them. But pay per click is kind of what we specialize in. And that's. We scale companies that way. And my main business, for those that don't know, is I love. That's the shirt I'm wearing right here. That's the one my wife and I run. And we'd been running this company for about two years. And the problem we were having with scaling that company was cash. It was always cash short. So we would launch a new product, scale it really quickly, but not have enough money to order more inventory because our advertising was spending a lot profitably. But as you know, as you grow a business, you can run out of cash pretty quickly. And so we just kept running into this situation where we'd get it up to 80,000 and then we drop it down to 30,000 because of cash shortage and we couldn't advertise anymore. And then we get it back up to 60,000 and then it drop right back down to 30,000. And so we Got stuck. And we just decided that the best thing to do with this cash shortage that we're having in that business is to purchase it and bring it into our more cash rich business, which is I love. And so we have been talking about it for like a year. And it wasn't something that before you.

Go there, just to reiterate, this was a client, a client's business that was organically doing like 30,000 works with you on the management and advertising side, goes from 30 to 80. But he doesn't have that bridge in order to maintain that because it requires a little bit more capital to supply that inventory. And so you had this roller roller coaster where you're doing your job of helping the client grow, but he is not able to keep up with that 100%. You say, I've got this other business that's related, that's cash positive. Why don't we use our cash to help support this business and acquire the business? Is that right?

100%. Yep. That's exactly what we.

Great. Makes total sense to me. Great thing.

And we didn't just do it to, to get the products and to be able to infuse cash into it, to scale it back up to that 90 to 100. Our best month was $100,000 and that was last December. But we ran out of stock in three items out of the five. And so then we went right back down again. So this constant roller coaster we've been having with them, we didn't just do it to acquire the products though, we actually did it to acquire the CEO of the company as well. He's an optometrist just like my wife and I. He owns a couple practices, but he's actually incentivized to get us into retail. And it's something that my wife and I have no interest in doing ourselves. We don't want to get into retail as far as we don't want to be the ones responsible for it. And he is very interested in that. And he has a mentor that took the company loofah from 500,000 to 100 million. And so they're going to work together on the retail side. But there's no, like, you need to do this. Like, it's just they're going to do it under their own terms. And if they get to it now, they get to it now. If they get to it in five years, they get to it in five years. And so to acquire this company, we actually didn't use cash. We actually gave him equity into our company and so no cash was exchanged. We actually wanted him to come in because he's a lot like me. He's an entrepreneur. He has a lot of great ideas, but he's not going to lead the business anymore. He's just going to be there for ideas. He's going to be an advisor, a mentor and then he's going to lead the retail charge as well. So we did it for the products. Yes. And to cash flow it and get it back up to 100,000. But we also did it because we wanted the CEO of the company to.

Come on as well.

So basically.

This other entrepreneur who you had worked with wasn't making any personal money from the business because he had to put more money in to keep the business going. So the asset was not producing for him. But you know it'll produce for you because you have seen the numbers and you know what you can do and you have experience running it. Since it was worth zero to him cash wise, you acquired it for zero and gave him an equity kicker back in your business. So he, now he's banking on the upside. And so you acquired an advisor and a cash positive business for $0 up front and now you're rolling the companies together and his kicker is probably going to be less than the addition that this business makes to the overall valuation of this portfolio. So just a win all around, that's the goal. Great work. That's amazing.

Yeah. And we took it over on Jenna's birthday. So it was my birthday present to her and she loved it. It was just last, last week on or actually just Friday. So it happened pretty quickly. Once we actually said, you know, let's just do it. I think quarantine really pushed it because then he has more time. Now he has three practices. I think it's three, two or three practices that he runs and those are all closed. So he's like, I have time to, let's, let's just do this. And so we did it. We're pretty excited about it and it's very complimentary to our business, which was key. So it's products that we can launch to our current audience without any hiccups. It will just go right into them. And we are in the process of launching another product for his line. And it's, it's all just, it's very synergistic. And we're also acquiring a website that's an income generating website from that business that we had started building. And so we're bringing that in. And true to what you challenged me to do, Last week is I am just doing the strategy for everything and I'm not in it. I had my person that does our Amazon ppc, she built out the whole Amazon PPC campaign. The website's gonna move over and we have to change it quite a bit. I have another team member that's gonna be doing that. The only thing I'm actively involved in is making the to do list. And that's.

It's perfect.

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

Isn't that a relief?

Yeah, it's been, it's been interesting. I don't have time right now just because, as you know, with kids at home, we have a toddler, you can probably hear him in the background right now and we're watching him 24 7. So it's been a interesting quarantine, but it's made me flex my delegating muscle quite a bit more than usual.

That's great. There's a question posted from Yasmin. Are you merging the brands or keeping them separate?

So we actually, we did. It was an interesting. I forget what they called it. It wasn't like an asset purchase. It wasn't a normal business purchase because we bought the ein, we bought the assets, we bought everything. So what we have to do is that seller central account, because it's mostly Amazon based is. It's all going to go under Ilove, but the main, his seller central account, we're just going to sell it out and then we're going to bring the products back into ours.

Okay.

And we're going to register for brand registry in Amazon. We already sell his products on our website. And so there was no transition there because we did consignment every time we sold it, we send him a check. And so it was a pretty easy situation for that. So now we just have it, the inventory stored at the same warehouse. And so we both use a warehouse in Missouri. He found that warehouse through me and we've been working together for two years. And so I know the business in and out and everything that we use for, I love, we use for that business. And so the transition is just, it's quick, it's easy.

Yeah, that's great. Good work, Great work, man. What is your plan for staying in that management or that not management role, in that overseer role, the strategy role and not going into the weeds?

I think that's the hardest thing from building this business from the ground up. And you know, I'm always, I've always been a doer. It's, it's Just, I like to get my hands dirty. But as an entrepreneur, if we want to grow, what I've realized is the last couple years we've been stuck at the same revenue number. And the more I've been delegating out.

The more we've started to. I can see the growth starting to happen again.

Last year we focused on sales more than what we usually do, which is service. And we were stagnant. We actually, our profit went down but our revenue stayed the same. And this year we're focusing on the service side again, serving our customers instead of working on sales. And the sales are actually coming as a result. Another thing that I've kind of got out of my own head is I've been holding this company back or holding it at 3.2 million. And it was a learning curve. I've got this obsession with helping little mom and pop shops and manufacturers. So I find a manufacturer in my hometown and love them. They're small, they're intimate, easy to work with. But I tell them we'll probably get your product to 100 sales a day. Can you keep up with that? And they say yes. And then we get them to 50 sales a day and they can't keep up. And so what I've learned through working with two manufacturers like that is that I'm holding us back because of my, I have such interest in supporting the mom and pop shop which isn't bad. But if we really want to grow, if you want to be. We want to become 100 million dollar company which means we've helped a million dry eye suffers. And if we want to grow to be that 100 million dollar company, you have to have the vendors that can grow with you too. Everybody has to think like that.

That's right.

And so we found a manufacturer that has grown their Amazon business, their e commerce business to 25 million. And she started her own manufacturing plant as a result. You probably know her. And so we're going to start using her now and we're going to move most of our manufacturing to her because she knows what she's doing and she can grow us to that 100 million because she can keep up with the demand.

Amazing. Dude, you've done really good work.

Thanks.

Congratulations. Like, I mean you're, we, I mean we did a full vlog on Travis just watching his growth throughout the last couple years. It's been, it's been amazing. And the really cool thing is like this is really just the beginning. It could, it really is like I remember, I remember when we met you remember, you remember when we met in the ballroom, like 60k a month or something?

Yeah.

And.

It took a few tweaks for you to get over the million, and then a few tweaks to get you over a few. And then you're like me, where it was like, you do this and then you kind of bump around for a while and then like, you become the person that you need to be to be this person. And then you bump around for a bit, then you grow again. And so it's just been a real joy to be a part of your journey.

Can I tell a brief story around that?

Please do.

So when we first met, it was in Vegas in 2015. And I remember talking to you and you're like, hey, you're going to come to the capitalism, or the Freedom fast Lane event is what it was called at the time, but capitalism now. And I said, no, I don't think I'm ready for that yet. And you said, why aren't you ready for it? I'm just not doing enough in my business to be ready for something like that. And you're like you're ready? And I was like, no, I don't think I'm ready for it yet. And so I didn't go that year. And we met or we saw each other again like 9 months later, and we had just started doing 90k and which is the minimum for the back room. And so you said, why don't you join the back room? And I said, oh, I'm not ready for that yet. And you said, you made that excuse last time not to come to Capitalism conference. And you're like, you should join the back room. And so I went to dinner that night with you and joined the back room. And you know, it's funny because I was in it for two years at that time, two and a half years. And then I dropped out. And the funny thing is, right when I dropped out, this is a testimonial for the back room. Right when I dropped out is when we started stagnating. And we have not grown since dropping out to where I was last November. And last November I realized that my mind was just really messed up. We about sold our business for nothing to get rid of.

I talked you out of that one.

And it was at sellercon, listening to you talk, that convinced me otherwise. We were in the middle of the transaction. We had literally the final contract on our plate, and we were waiting for like another week or so and heard you talk, got out of my own head, got my Head back straight. And then we joined the back room again. And now I feel, I feel more abundant minded, less scarcity minded and feel better than I have ever felt about my business. And I finally moved to Austin like I said I was going to do like three years ago. And so my head is just in the right space right now.

That's great, man. Well, we're so proud of you. It's been like.

We love being a part of your journey. So thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I just want to milk this moment for as long as possible. You know, Travis, I know there are a couple times there that you thought about.

Bringing on partners or investors. If you decide to go that route, let me know.

Yeah, I, I can, I can definitely do that.

All right, sounds good, bud. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Yep.

See ya.

All right, See ya. All right, we're gonna go over to Brad here in a second. But before we go to Brad, I'm gonna let my annoying cat outside.

Yeah.

Here.

I found myself as the proud adoptee of a new feline this week who loves it outside and meows until I open the door. So Brad Smith, give me a thumbs up if you're ready. Let's do this. What's up, Brad?

Not much. So just wanted to say if I stumble on here and I'm a nervous wreck about doing this, I never get on live.

We're all in the same boat and.

I don't do social media. So the first off I just wanted to say been a long time follower and stuff and really appreciate everything that you put out content wise and everything like that. Pre ordered the book following you since probably 2013 if not slightly, just slightly after that. And really like what you said about.

You had it right when you were 10 because the only time I've ever made any money in E commerce was when I was 16 and was just figuring hey this, this looks like something interesting and put together some Google Ads for Amazon affiliate products, going straight to the product, like no landing page, nothing and then thought okay it didn't work after two weeks, turned it off and ended up with like 100 plus bucks in the deposit in my bank account the following week because someone had made a sale that got cookied and stuff. I had no idea what it was. Yeah, my quote, my well let's do a, let's do a give first is that I work as a software engineer so I'm really technical minded, very techie. So if anyone has any technical questions or wants technical help, just give me a shout.

Out in the group.

And then as far as the ask my question would be.

I have a lot of difficulty trying to figure out what a target market per se would be, what market I would identify with in order to even figure out what base of people to serve. Because I. The stuff I do every day is very technical and I'm not really.

But I don't really enjoy that as much as far as that particular type of work. I don't like that as much as I would like actually helping non business related people per se. More of a, I guess a direct. I'm not a B2B type person, more of a business to consumer type person. And so I have difficulty figuring out even what market or what group of people I could identify with and serve. And so I'm just basically looking for some ideas on how to try to identify that overall because I feel end up feeling completely lost systems wise doing the digital marketing stuff like that. I do that every day. That's not the problem, it's the figuring out, I guess who I would want to best identify with and serve and provide value for.

For.

So there you said a lot without saying it in that. In those last, that last minute.

Because you're. I can tell you're like tripping over it a little bit. Okay, where, where. I'm just going to recap what you said.

It really resonated with me what you said that I had it right when I was 10 because when I was 16 I was in more of an effortless place. And that was the time that I actually started making money on the Internet. Now I work a full time job and I'm in the tech field and I don't really think of myself as a B2B guy. I think of myself as a B2C guy. So when I force myself to think about B2B it's really hard. And when I think about the industry I'm going to solve, I think about B2B and that's really hard. Is that right?

Yes.

Okay, so let's zoom in on what you said without saying it. You're a B2C guy, which means you like thinking about people, which means you like thinking about developing products for the end consumer much more than you like thinking about.

For a big business. You actually really like thinking about the people that you're serving. You like thinking about the customer that is behind the transaction. You just haven't allowed yourself to think that way because you've been in IT land and behind a computer screen for so long that you have forgotten that it is okay for you to think about the end user even though that is the thing that you like the most.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Because I basically spend my days having to actively disconnect myself and remove access from the end user to me.

Yeah.

So the, the strange, the strange irony of this is the thing that you want the most is to be in that serving close knit. You're providing a product that this end customer really loves and is talking about. That's what you want the most. And by you thinking like that you will get it. You just are not practiced in it because you're trained to think in a B2B environment. So if you were to, if you were to say, oh that's great, that'll help you later down the road. All you need to do is what you really want. Who is, who, who are the people that come to mind that you would like to be serving?

People that have trouble seeing the way to bring things together like overall systems. And I'm not talking about just it, but bringing things together to accomplish whatever it is they are that they, that they don't see how all the different, different things that seem not connected can connect together to create a whole.

Okay, got it. So are you looking to start a physical products brand or are you looking to start just any business?

Probably, probably physical products brand because of the more.

The more I'm not going to say hands off, that's poor terminology, but the ability to scale it independent of my time. I currently do a lot of IT consulting on the side aside from my main job. And the problem that you obviously run into then is that you're essentially just creating another job, another time trap that I can't scale because I can't scale me.

I've been leaning for a while towards doing physical products type or even even digital product type, but trying to avoid basically building myself another job because I've done pretty well at doing that from, from a consulting standpoint. But not what I want to stay in.

Are you a builder, Brad?

I would say yes, I'm very. And not trying to toot my own horn, but I'm very, very good at building things and figuring out how to connect things and make things work the way that they should and also seeing how something should work and then putting it together.

Cool. So a couple things that are striking me. One, I think you are. So I don't know if you're here at the top of the call, but I read the two types of people that make a perfect partnership, a visionary and A builder. You're a builder, you're a person who likes to put things together and to see the plan and go build and execute upon the plan. You like that, you're good at that, you're qualified for that. So one thing for you to consider is to drop all the efforting that you're doing about trying to figure it out and instead start offering yourself as a back end person to other physical product brands or new entrepreneurs who have an idea and cannot get it out of their head. There are so many of us, Brad. So if you start thinking about yourself as the perfect complement to the crazy visionary who has all these product ideas, you'll find seven partnerships just within the 1% if you stay active in that place in this group. So that will happen very quickly. The other option, if you don't want to take on a partner, if you don't want to go that route, but you want to go in the direction of building your own physical products brand, is to simply look at where do you spend at least a hundred dollars a month over and over on a hobby, an interest or a skill set. And that for you might be. I build things with my hands, I do construction in my house. And so I buy gloves and I buy hard hats and I buy glue and I. And you just go down the list of what you're spending money on as a construction person in your own house. Or if at 16 you really liked Legos, or if at 16 you really liked baseball or whatever it is that you're spending money on to just play.

Tune in to there being markets around that. And there are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people just like you who also share in that, in that desire.

But, but the, the most important thing that I just said there is that you stop efforting, trying to figure it out because you're at, you're tripping over it. Like, like we said, you actually know a lot about what you want. You're just tripping over it with patterns of how you think it's supposed to be.

Yeah.

And unfortunately it ends up being that the visionary step is usually like the first part. And so I'm great on the execution. And the visionary part is the, or I mean I could be completely off base on that. But is, is that backwards?

Well, no, not necessarily, but really what you just said is that it's not even the visionary part, it's just the decision.

Like vision is really great to get to a decision.

Gotcha.

But once the decision is made, you're great.

And so you could either just make the decision.

Or you could complicate it.

And either one's fine.

Thanks. Yeah, that's clarity.

Good. I'm glad to hear it. Anything else, Brad?

Nope, that was all I had.

All right, man, it's great to see you. Thanks for hanging out with us.

All right, we are going to wrap with one more. Muhammad. Give me a thumbs up if you're ready. All right, cool. Mohan, I'm gonna bring you on and then stick around because I actually have an assignment for you all today. We're going to do something new. I'm going to give you an assignment and you're going to track it inside of the Facebook group. But first, let's chat with Mohammed. What's up, Mo?

Hey. Hey, Ryan. How are you doing?

Good, how are you doing?

All right. About to go outside, do some yard work, but I caught this live, so I figured jump on.

Awesome. Sounds good. What's up, man? What can we do for you?

So I joined the 1% a few months back and even before that, I've been watching your videos because I had joined ASM previously, I've been watching your videos, and the most common thing that I always sticks out about you is when you always harp on like, identifying your audience, identifying your person. So when I started going through the ASM modules and stuff, I didn't necessarily see that too much there. It was more about find what's already selling and, you know, rebranded as yours. So I kind of merged the two concepts together. I took theirs and I specifically put a lot of.

Work behind trying to identify my target audience while at the same time meeting the criteria that they were telling me as far as what the first product should be, what kind of criteria to follow. So my wife and I, we basically started this.

We basically picked our first product and we started this.

A brand. But I wanted to make sure that the person that we're targeting and this is what I needed. I wanted to ask your input on if we're being specific enough. So the product that the market that we're targeting is new and expecting moms, and the brand story that we're really trying to.

Trying to get across to our audience or will try to get across to our audience. Right now, we don't have an audience. It's just in our heads. But the person that we're trying to target is new and expecting moms. So new moms would be maybe moms of up to two years old, maybe two, up to three years old, and expecting moms. And.

The thing that we're trying to get across is that.

How all of these moms, regardless of whether it's a Hollywood actor mom or a stay at home mom or a corporate mom, how all of these moms are universally connected through their common struggles.

So that was going to be like basically our brand story, but all of our products had to be something that alleviates a particular pain point that all these moms would naturally go through. Everybody has problems with sleep schedules at night with a newborn. Everybody has problems with, you know, just trying to find a moment to take. Take to themselves like as a new moment. So when we target our person as new and expecting moms and our brand story is about, you know, that universal connection to create that group, that brand that all moms share, is that are we being specific enough or do we need to dive deeper? Like new and expecting moms who also like yoga? I'm not necessarily selling yoga products, you know, but I'm just saying, am I being specific enough or do I need to dive?

First of all, the demographic, the demographic is fine. You don't need to get more specific about that. But have you run this brand positioning by a woman?

I mean, my wife.

And what does she say?

I think, I mean, she's on board with this. She thinks that this is something that her friends, for example, they would all love it. Like our first product that we chose is something that has helps.

So even though our brand is, we want our brand to be for moms, our first product happens to be a product that's more for a newborn baby. But we're. And it's like a toy slash sleep aid type of product.

Yeah.

So we're not looking to become a toy product company, but this product happens to be a toy product that will help. And our, our, our focus is to.

Help the mom use this as a tool to put their baby into a sleep routine as quickly as possible.

So.

I wish your, I wish your wife, you should let your wife tell the brand story because you're so logical about it that you're going to isolate women talking about it now.

Hey, can you come over here? Yeah.

So, so let your, let your wife do the positioning of the, of the story because this is your actual brand story. Your brand story is that most moms feel alone. Your, your story is that regardless of the fact that we just had a new person come into the life, that women feel more alone than ever once they become moms. No one can relate to the fact that they sleep four hours a night for six months. No one can relate to the fact that they're starting to rediscover who they are there. No one can relate to the fact that even like, even though the day to day routine is them staying at home, they secretly pine for help from somebody from the outside. No one can relate to that. So they go through this experience feeling very alone. Your brand positioning is that you're the company that understands and is the person that is there for them. And you do that through the lens of making products that allow their life to be in their transition to be a little bit easier. They're the, they're the, they're the hired, you're the hired help there to support this person. That's your brand positioning. That's your brand story. And yes, that, that, that applies to all new moms. You do not have to have a, a secondary way to target them moms, moms who eat clean. You don't need any of that. New mom is a new journey all on its own. And your job is to serve that person through the context of that journey.

So, so when you say that I should have my wife tell the brand story, can you, can you tell that, can you explain, explain that a little bit?

Yeah, so we described it. It was extremely logical.

So in order, I'm in it as well.

So okay, that doesn't shock me at all. So the way that you will be able to communicate from a brand perspective is by asking your wife, how do you feel about this? Yeah, how do I, how do I describe this? Because you're talking about it logically is going like, you could have a great brand of it dads and be like, look guys, I jiggy rigged this system in order to put the pacifier back in the mouth as within seven seconds of him or her spitting it out like, and other it does be like, oh, that's so cool and logical. I don't know why I didn't think of that. And moms would be like, that's the dumbest thing ever. Like that person doesn't feel nurtured. It's a different way of looking at it. And you look at it for it dads, you could have a great it dad brand, but it's not what you're saying you're doing. So when you go to develop these products, I would ask your wife how they should be positioned because your, your brand is really the supporter of the woman who is going through a hard time and she doesn't want to be. Logic.

No, absolutely, you're right. So no, everything that, everything that we come up with as far as the brand story, it's always been like her input 100% going in there. And the two, two individuals that we had hired to come up or help us with our brand story were also females. I think I'm trying to get that female voice to try to help me figure this out. But yeah, so if you think I'm being specific enough as far as the demographic is concerned, then that was, that was really like information I needed.

You're right on point. And once again, I would, I would encourage you to think of the brand as the hired help that is there to help them get through this transition.

Okay.

If you do that, your products will be super on point.

Awesome. Thanks Ryan.

Great work. Thanks for hanging out with us.

All right, team, I'm going to give you an assignment before we go and the assignment is this. Most of you have access to something in your members area called the other half. This is a training that we made, actually we made it to go solicit so get more members of the 1% because it's a really bomb ass training. There is a specific training in that, in that product. Again it's called the other half. It's in most of your members area.

Inside of that there's one lesson specifically about building up a network. I call it building up your success network. And it is very simply putting 10 people, writing down 10 people who you want to be closer with and then reaching out to them. And there's a specific way to reach out to them in order to develop a closer relationship with them and open up opportunities to work with that person. So Brad, this is perfect for you, for people that you want to connect with who are visionaries or Josh, I think it was you. You're like, I really need a builder. This exercise will really help you with this. If you're looking for affiliates, if you're looking for investors, if you're looking for advisors, if you're looking for just friends, connections, mentors, the way that you do this is you make a list of 10 of those people and then follow the instructions in that training of how to reach out to them. And I can guarantee you two weeks from now when we come back to this, that you are going to have stories that just completely rock the socks of the rest of the community. So go through that training, report about it inside your members area and in two weeks I'll bring some of you on live to hear how that that went. So that's your assignment for the next two weeks. Go through that specific lesson inside of the other half. It should be in most of your members area. Do the exercise, report on it in the Facebook group. Just document it. Here's why I reached out to. Here's how I reach out to them. Here's what happened. Here's what they said. Here's how the conversation went. And then in two weeks when we come back here, we'll have a conversation about it and some of you will share your story as well as the other stuff that we'll teach on that lesson. All right, good to see you all. Have a great Sunday and we'll see you next time. Take care, everybody.