Scientist to Entrepreneur: Axa Yox

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Aksa Joks. Aksa, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. So I'm curious, Aksa Joks, what ethnicity, nationality is that?

That's interesting way to start. I know. I'm from Armenia originally. I was in science for 15 years. I did my international master's in the international university in Europe. And also I lived for many years in Europe, the central Germany, Austria, Switzerland. And then I got the Fulbright. I came to the US. I fell in love with the US and then I moved to live here. That's kind of the very short introduction. I love it.

I love it. Okay, so Armenian by birth, then? Yes. Okay. And where do you reside in the States now?

Oh, I'm in Miami. I'm in paradise.

Miami. Yes, I love Miami. I've been there a few times. It's too big for me. But that's just personal preference. I, you know, maybe if I lived there, I'd feel differently. So you said you were a scientist by training, but you became an entrepreneur. Tell us how that came about.

Um, I was in science for 15 years. I was very successful. I had all the possible degrees, PhD. I won the first, uh, prize. Then I was nominated as a person of extraordinary ability. Then I did 12 inventions and I decided I'm ready for life out of academia. So to start my own company, I start and I failed miserably. Because somehow, while we hear all the stories about success, we have that idea that, oh, I'm going to succeed the same way I did before. But the regular life and the entrepreneurship is so much harder than we are told. That's why 90% of people fail, because they enter the, the business without realizing what is the cash flow, what is the difference between the profit, what is the gross revenue, what is the margin. And then you just dive into the terms, you talk to the investors, you are trying to raise the capital, and you are absolutely out of the terms. You have no idea. And they realize that, okay, you have a great idea, but you are going to fail because you have no idea about the business. And then they just stopped raising the capital, and I dived all into learning what is the finance, what is the business plan, what, what does the margin mean, what is the difference between those terms. So now when I talk to the investor, they realize, okay, she knows what she speaks about, she knows what is the margin, why people go for the bigger cash flow, the profit, and all together. And that's how, where I am at the moment.

Yeah, they're, they're— it's interesting. I was talking to some entrepreneurs last week that are in the, uh, grant space, so they help academics obtain grants. And, um, it— the academia doesn't really have a built-in money paradigm or finance component from, from the academics or the researchers' standpoint. However, there is this dark underbelly at the institutional level where it's 100% about the money and learning, you know, hearing him talk and learning about how like You know, these universities will go and poach professors based upon their ability to get grants. And I'm like, huh, that, you know, so, so it's interesting. And I think, I think it's very similar when you're an employee of a for-profit institution, like you don't get exposed to— it's not hidden, but you're never exposed unless you're way up in there and in the higher levels of the entity. Around the profit, the financial components, right? And so you don't know. And I think you're exactly right that your experience is not unusual, that people start a business because they have an idea or they're good at something or they have a passion for something, but they don't have an understanding of, quote, business, end quote, you know. So what was your— I'm curious, what was your area of research? What did you work on?

I worked on water quality microbiology. So I did my PhD with microbiology with genetics. So, and I started my path as a human biologist. So I know what's happening inside our body. And that's how the transition was from the technology that I invented to clean the water, to remove the nutrients. But somehow I failed and it took me a No longer even to talk to people, unfortunately and sadly. People don't care about the environment as I wish they would be. But the darkest part about science is not the split between the science knowledge and the money. The darkest part is that if it is not regulated, you can do whatever you want in your laboratory, publish, discuss, present without even need to present that you have correct data. That's the darkest part of the science. Because once you start to dive into, okay, those are the data that I found during my experiment, and then you cannot prove it, you cannot use it. So the science has two sides. That's why the science is underpaid versus what it does for humans, because science was created to create all the materials or whatever we need in life. But if you don't control the dark part, that somebody can claim that they did the best inventions or they discovered something, it can even harm humans. That's why it's, if you can prove that whatever you do in your laboratory, we can benefit, then you will get the grant. It is, even it sounds not very fair because not every person can write the grant and get the grant. It's not that easy. You just decide that I will apply for the grant and I'll get it. But still it's the stimulus. The same is like in business. If you claim that your your product is the best, but the customers don't like your product, then you will fail. Science is not that different unless you are in that fantasy that science is very easy and blah, blah, blah. The blah, blah, blah is a lot everywhere in business, in life, in science. And once you start to clear the bench and you see the real picture behind what the laboratory does, why some laboratories are more successful than the others, the same as in business, then you understand, oh, that's the difference. In science, the biggest difference between science and business, you can never fail in science. Even if you did the experiment and it didn't work, you just, you still publish and you say, this didn't work. This is the approach. This is better. But in business, you don't meet the numbers. You fail. You are out of the business, period. And that's the mentality that I needed to shift.

So, so, uh, let's talk about the, the decision to go out on your own. What was there? What I mean, like, you have 15 years in academia. What, what was it that pushed you out?

My, um, my passion about science, uh, water-wise and the environment-wise, because I think that Clean water is for everyone. Like, we need to preserve the potable water, drinking water, the fresh water, which is limited on the planet. But every time when I would talk to people and say, we can save the drinking water for the coming generations, no one cared. Once I flip and I say, with this technology, you can save the time because If you use this technology, you can skip cleaning the aquarium. So it was designed for the home aquariums which use the drinking water for cleaning, for filling the tank. People were not reacting. And that was kind of scary for me that people say, oh, the water is included in my utility. No, that's not the purpose. We need to save the drinkable water for the coming generations. We cannot waste it to clean the tank. Simply because we like the view. But you cannot convince somebody to care about the environment versus to care about their time. And then the realization just came, you cannot waste your time to convince everyone to care about the environment. This is somehow a little bit more the authority and state's job to do. Through the regulations and the law to force them not to pollute the water, to control the sewage that they just dump in the water and all. But somehow the system is broken. But you cannot stand in the crossroads and decide, no, I'm going to spend all my life there. So I decided to change the trajectory of the company and then once to have the money to reinvest, because water is still my passion. We need to save the water. But you cannot fight against something which doesn't work.

Yeah, you raise an interesting point. You can only sell something to somebody if they perceive a need. And it's funny that the need not even be real. They just have to think that they have a need, which is foundationally different than, to your point, academics, which is I'm trying to prove a hypothesis and whether I prove it or not, is irrelevant because it adds to the knowledge, right? I mean, it's useful in some way, even in the negative. But I guess the marketplace has a much higher standard. But I've seen and I see this a lot with startups is they approach the problem from their perspective as opposed to from the customer's perspective. And, and, you know, if you don't approach it from the customer's perspective, you're not going to have a successful business. It just doesn't work. It could be the best thing, it could be the best thing ever. It doesn't matter if the, if the customer doesn't perceive a need, then there's no sale. And that's why I'm I want to kind of dive into this. The, you kind of switched the thought process. You moved from what you thought was important in saving water to what the customer or the buyer perceived as a need, which is saving time. Is that accurate?

It's very accurate. It's kind of when you have the 6 or the 9, depending on the angle that you watch at, you will see very different picture. And still, from your perspective is the is the truth. You see the 6, the other person sees the 9, and then you start to argue. But the truth is somewhere where you benefit. It's not where your truth ends, it's where you benefit. Because you can just push 9 is the right way, but if no one needs your services, you are just out of the business. That's period. It's— that's why I completely shifted not only the mindset as how I see, I started to dive into why some businesses are more successful. That's That's where I started. I didn't start like what to do for the business. I started to study the difference why some businesses thrive, like they make millions and billions while the other, the same product coming from a different company can fail in one month. Because you need to talk to the customer their way. I was working in the retail because I wanted to develop my selling skills. I was coming from academia and I kept repeating to myself, oh, you are, you are scientist, you can never sell, you can never sell. So I, I started to work at the retail simply to develop the selling skills. Once in one week, I reached to be the favorite person for the managers because I was doing up to 6 credit cards a day. And I simply was talking the same way that the customers want to hear. So when you are the entrepreneur, you cannot start with your product. If you start with your product without understanding the psychology of the customer, you will fail. It doesn't matter if you fail 1 year after, 2 years, depending on how much money you have. If you start the, the opposite, you start to serve the customer versus thinking, oh, my product is the best, buy my product. Everyone claims their product is the best. You will never see the business owner would go there on the video and say, oh, I have the worst product, please don't buy it. Right. It makes no sense. But it's not what you think about the product, it's how people, uh, pursue it and whether they are willing to pay for that. That's also different. You might have I want the best product, but I don't want to pay for it. Right. And then you are out of the business. And that's what every entrepreneur before they start, what I normally recommend, go try to raise the money from the investors. Why? Without the intention to raise the money, because the feedback that you will get from the investors, it's pure gold.

Yes.

You will learn all these lessons while you will go to success. When you are in the very beginning, we tend to ignore. Like every investor says, don't fall in love with your product, which I absolutely did. I have 12 inventions. The number already says, and I pursue only with one product. I left all the others because I was very romantic about the idea. Oh, that's my invention. That's my baby, blah, blah, blah. No one cares how you feel about your product. True. If the product that, if customer is not willing to pay for the product, you are out of the business, period. So I come, try to raise the money as soon as it's possible. And not for raising the capital itself, but to hear the feedback from the investors. And go to the best investors, not the angel investors, because they are not very experienced yet. They, they, they don't see the bigger picture. Go where the, the tech companies are going to pitch. Go to where the big companies or the companies who see themselves big are pitching because the investors who come to that cohort, they are very experienced and take any feedback, even if it insults you. Yeah, you will benefit from that 100%. And learn from the mistakes that you did. Flip, change, and don't ignore. Never ignore any feedback from the investor, even if you disagree. Change it. Listen and analyze. Does it serve me? If it serves you, take it. If it doesn't, okay, go for a next investor, but never ignore.

I love that. So what was your product that you took to market?

At the moment, we are starting with the foot cream, which is amazing for the ingrown nails. So we already have the testimonials. We are starting the campaign. And the second is coming. We already have the bottle designed. It's the new type of the plant-based yogurt. It's something that doesn't exist. Both products don't exist on the market. So we are preparing with the campaign to level that we don't need to fight the competitors. Because if you start to fight competitors, you will lose very soon. While when you start with the customer satisfaction and then you bring the product which is already known, then you already one or two levels up, like higher. And then it's still possible to fail. There is no guarantee that you will not fail. But you need to learn Why some companies are more productive versus the other? Because they are more visible. And when you learn it, you don't rush yourself to bring the product and then just to start to fulfill the shelves and then to think about the customers. And you lose the focus versus if you invest your time and get as many customer satisfaction as it's possible, the videos, the testimonials, everything. You prepare the base and then you launch. Then it's completely different pitch.

So was one of those products the one that you launched initially when you left academia?

Oh no, I was still romantic about the life. Okay, so what was that one?

What was that product that you started with?

It's the water cleaning technology. It's still, I have it, I invented this kind of, even filed for the patent, but I just dropped because it doesn't work. It takes so much energy, takes so much time and it people, it's harder to convince people to buy something that they don't want versus make the money. So the business is not about the product. The business is about being profitable. If you have the product which has very limited market, then you are stuck with that market versus if you choose different product which has larger market. Because for example, if I produce something that only 1% of people need, Only 1%. And out of that 1% of people, let's say there are 10,000 people, only 3% are ready to buy your product. Can you imagine how limited your market is? And once that, that's also when you start to do the business plan, when you understand what is the new customer, what is the cost of a new customer and running the ads and all What does the business plan mean? It's not the word business plan, it's the structure, is the system which your investor sees. Because I was, I was seeing the multiple millions and I was so excited. Oh my goodness, the technology will make the multiple millions. While the investors are not interested, they are interested in multiple hundred millions potentially. If you are not making, because they know that even if you have the numbers, you still have up to 7% guaranteed that you will hit that numbers. Now imagine you have only couple of millions and you have the chances of 7% to hit that millions. The investors will never invest in that. And then you are like, okay, that makes a lot of sense for me. Unless you have your own money, your own capital, you cannot invest in something which doesn't bring up to 20x or 10x minimum. Then you can survive. Otherwise you are out of the business. Forget I didn't get it.

So this product that you tried to bring to market didn't work and you were obviously disappointed. Talk about that. Like what your mindset was when you realized this wasn't working and the process by which you broke through that or changed your mindset.

Since I was a kid, I never had the mindset, oh, I have a problem. I always say, okay, there is no, there is, we don't have the time to think about the problem. We need to find a solution. That's how I always move forward. Like I have a problem. Okay. It doesn't work. Just drop it and then continue with something else. You need to prepare the base and then to start differently. My approach was to learn from people who succeed because I, I don't believe in accidents. I don't believe that somebody woke up successful compared to the other person who was working harder. Because I was in science, I had many colleagues and they were failing while I was just succeeding. I was getting one scholarship after another, after another, after another. I was very successful and I was goal-oriented and I was learning from people who succeeded. It's not by accident. If you want to succeed, learn from the best, take their lessons and move on. Ask for the feedback when you are in the very early stage because it's better if you admit that you are, you just started the wrong product versus halfway into that you are already emotionally attached to your product and you don't You don't want to consider yourself that you failed, but still it's harder and harder to carry the, the, the leg, the baggage. It makes no sense. Admit that's the wrong place. It's not going to work depending, first of all, depending on the goal. So if you want to settle with the job that you created for yourself, okay, go with that product. That's fine as well. If you have bigger vision of how you want your business to be, then you have to think differently. You cannot think at the level that I have a product, I'll bring and then will convince people to buy it because I love my product. You will fail. If you level up and you see what successful people do differently. At the moment, I'm involved in one program. And every time when I listen, there are two different people. Like they run the program. One is kind of the management, in the management. The other is the owner. The mindset is so different. It's mind-blowing. And you immediately see the difference and you realize that's why the person owns the business and he makes billions. That's why this person works here. Because even I was starting with a bit different topic. I'm starting my path in public speaking. So I was starting with the health, the nutrition, the diet, which is harder to convince people to be healthy versus if I tell somebody, I'll teach you how to make money. They will come immediately. Like that, that it hits right away. And when I was like, I'm thinking about to change my niche because it doesn't work. The person was like, oh, don't 'Oh, don't do that. You are professional. You did your PhD.' And I was not staying there and thinking, 'Oh, he might be right.' I was like, 'That's why you are a manager. That's why you don't own, because you cannot tell somebody.' Or that's my opinion. I might be absolutely wrong, but that's how I live. If you are in the wrong space, you have to move from there. Don't— because longer you continue, you need to come back and then start the new path. Imagine every next step that you do the wrong direction, in the wrong direction, you need to come back all those steps and start the new path. Even if you consider that you don't start from the scratch because you have the experience. But the second you realize that it doesn't work, don't hesitate. Make sure, does it work or no? Analyse the situation and be as honest as you can because you save your time, you save your money. Every day when you don't make the money, you lose the money. It's not that you don't make the money, you lose the potential. So don't move the direction which doesn't work and listen to people who already succeeded. There is no better way to succeed. They know why they succeeded and they tell the story. They don't hide. It's everywhere. Every person says, You have to move this direction. You have to be visible. You have to do this. You have to do that. It's not by accident because they lived their life. They walked their talk. It's not that they decided in the morning, okay, now I will talk about it. No, that's not, it's not how it works.

That's interesting. So a lot of entrepreneurs have a characteristic of being like, uh, depending upon the context, it's, it's this persistence or stubbornness or like stick-to-itiveness, whatever you want to call it. Um, you know, overcoming obstacles. Um, how do, how do you balance that— I don't know if you have that trait, but how would you advise if you don't? How would you advise an entrepreneur to balance that, you know, giving up too soon versus you're on the wrong path? Like, how do you discern that? Like, because a lot of times there are just, uh, obstacles to overcome. It's, it's hard work. As opposed to I'm just grinding the gears, not going anywhere. It's time to— it's time to reevaluate.

And it's so easy to fall for those traps because the best advice that I received ever in my life: fail fast. And so many misinterpret the idea or never give up. That's, that's the worst advice to give the person. Never give up. You need to analyze what do you never give up? If you never give up on the idea which doesn't work, you just give up on your idea to success. Analyze, ask for the feedback, not from, from the random person, but the person where you want to be. And you cannot go with the highest achievers. They don't have the time for us. And it's okay because they somehow sell. The best would be if you, the fastest you can invest in the courses Yes, never hesitate. The best step that I took is to start to invest in myself, to buy the courses and stop wasting your time for the free stuff. At the moment, if people send me and they are like, oh, the free seminar, and I'm like, that's the trap so many people fall for. There is nothing, nothing in the world for free. If you invest your time, you invest your time. There is nothing free. So it's better to stop this endlessly free, uh, communities, summits, webinars, anything. Don't do that unless you already created the base that people know. I tell the different stories. So if you come to my webinar, even it is for free, it's not for free. So If you see that it doesn't work, ask for the feedback from people who already are one step forward. Even if they ask to pay for the class, pay for the class. Start with the tiny classes like the $30, $50, $100. And by the way, once the person really did a lot of money from the course, then they put the same course for $5. I started my investment like in myself with $5. I bought the course from Russell Brunson. It was pure gold. When I even the first line and I was like, and I paid $5 for this? I was shocked. And then that was the moment. It was back in 2020. It was the first time that I invested in the course, $5. And I was like, I will never ever go for the free stuff. So I would follow somebody for free just to get the idea whether the person has the knowledge that I want to, and then I will start with the course that I can afford. Then I will go a bit higher, uh, higher, higher. So it will give you the perspective what— because people behind the courses, they always learn, teach the lessons. That's the, the best difference is I always keep telling during the free course you can learn and the knowledge. During the paid course, you can learn lessons. That's the biggest how not to fail. So the free stuff is how to succeed. The paid stuff is how to avoid failing. And that's what you need. Because if you start thinking that I'm going to succeed, you are going to fail 100%. If you think that the path to success is only up, The first hit the rock bottom, which is coming, there is no exception for anyone. You will learn what is the, to keep the positive money, like the cash flow, what is the margin, what is the difference between when you already have the team and you still have to support them and then you forget to pay yourself because you don't have that much money. Once you realize that you are going to hit the rock bottom unless you have the machine which prints the money, then you understand what is the difference. Do I give up upfront? Do I stop where I already feel that it's not going to work? Don't fall in love with your product. That was, I heard it back in 2020, first time I was pitching with my product. Don't fall in love with your product. And I was like, how you can be passionate about the product? Product and even to convince people to buy your product if you are not in love with the product. And it means so different— mean, there is such a different meaning behind. That's exactly like, if the product is not going to be demanded by the market, don't fall in love because you will, you will just keep pushing the product which people don't need. I I have 12 inventions and 6 out of them are the product. One of them is the shoe tool, like to protect the tights from the run, which is the problem for any women. Any women. I was talking to them and I was like, would you pay for the product to protect the tights? Because every time when you wear, you have the runs. And they were like, yeah, I will. But once you say the price, once you say, okay, I have the product, buy it. They disappear because they are also in this romantic state that, oh, nice product, nice design. But once you say, oh, you have to pay for it, and they are like, oh, okay, I'll think about that. Okay, but you can never build a business based on the opinion of the customer. I'll think about that.

No, and I think you've mentioned it a couple of times that if you're starting something new, a novel product or service, the best thing you can do is to get the product or some version of it out and get someone to pay for it, because that's the ultimate validation, right? I mean, I see a lot of people keep iterating and building and trying to perfect the product, and it's wasted time. Like, if you, if you don't know whether someone's going to buy it, you're, you're, you're building on an unfirm foundation. And I want to go back to something else you said. You said knowledge versus lessons. And I think about— I've been involved in a group called Entrepreneurs Organization for 13 years, 14 years. And, and one of the precepts of EO, it's a, it's a global organization of entrepreneurs and it's, it's higher-end entrepreneurs. You have to have a million in America. It's different in different countries, but you at least have to have $1 million US in revenue to qualify. So, you know, we're talking about businesses that have had some, some amount of success. But one of the foundations of EO is forum, and they put us into groups of 6 to 8 entrepreneurs who meet monthly. It's the same people you're meeting with. And you're not in there with competitors. And you, you do experience share rather than telling people what to do. So I might come and I say, well, I'm thinking about launching this new service and You know, the, the point of the exercise is to get experience share around what other people's experience with that was, not for them to say, oh, that's a good product, or you should do it, you shouldn't do it, or this is how you should do it. And, and the, the key there in my mind is, and why that is so powerful, is because if someone tells you, you should do this, or you should not do this, it's not ultimately your decision, you're relying on them. And so if you fail or you succeed, you don't own it either way. Like, you were successful because Oksa told me to do it. Or if I was not successful, and Oksa told me to do it, I'm like, well, Oksa was an idiot. But experience share, Oksa says, well, this is what I did when I started this product, and these are the challenges I had, and this is how I dealt with it. That puts the ownership back on me, and I've got to take that experience, that lesson that you're mentioning, and somehow apply it to my situation. As opposed to knowledge is just, okay, this is best practices. This is, you know, if you're going to launch a product, this is what you do. It's a deeper level of understanding because you have to bring it into yourself and synthesize it, to use a good science term there, to your own situation, as opposed to it's just just because, you know, frankly, in this day and age, all the knowledge you need is out there, right? To your point, you can get it for inexpensive and a lot of times for free. But what, what good does that do you if you don't, if you don't have the context or the judgment or the experience to really apply it? You know, I feel like people that are considering getting into business spend a lot of time getting ready, right? And it's like, dude, you can't prepare for this. You've got to just go out and do it. You can read all the books, listen to all the webinars, but there's nothing happens until you put that thing out there into the marketplace and say, okay, is someone going to buy it?

And get rejected, by the way. Yes. Unless you get rejected, you will hit that wall. And then that's the first when you start to wake up. No one who learned the lessons, and it's okay. No person in the world can run the business if they share everything for free. The business is the money and profit oriented. And even it sounds like nonsense, There are so many courses that I subscribe for for free. I never watch them. Once you start to pay, you pay the attention. 100%. Even now, like when I bought the course from Russell Brunson for $5, I bought at the same time several multiple different courses for $5, $10, $50. I never watched them. Never. Because it was cheap for me. So I went through and I was like, okay, I'll watch it, I'll watch it. But once you get the idea about, oh my goodness, time is more, it's precious. And every time when I waste my time learning different opinions, because the business, we need to keep that in mind as well. Every entrepreneur, they think that their path, their lessons, and their mistakes are unique. So you cannot learn everybody's mistakes. You would be completely lost. Pick up, let's say, 10, that's how I see, 10 that you follow their content for free. Out of 10, choose the 5 that you can go with the low-paid courses. Get their courses, get the idea whether it's worth or not, and then just change. So the 10 persons are not permanent. They can be changed all the time. So exclude, update the list, and then check out of those 5, the cheaper courses, 2 maximum, and go for the higher courses. That's where you will learn the lessons and the application. Because the lesson, no one cares about the lesson. There are so many lessons at the moment in the world. You would waste all your time learning the lessons and how to do the best, I will achieve. And remember, people who say, oh, I did $100K this month, how you can prove that they did? With Photoshop, I can create any snapshot and put there and prove that I had that income. And then you look at the person, it's really very hard to say, but even from the outlook, you can judge the person whether the person can have that. Or you think that they cannot gather the friends, put them together and claim that that was a course? Everybody knows that. And once you start to realize what's the difference between people who claim and people who really did, that's the gap that you see. That's why people are so lost because they fall for the cheap courses. They just keep investing like I did, $10, $15. I didn't care. And then if you So if you put all together as a summary, it was one course from the person that I trusted the most, and then I would buy. Lately, I bought the course, the VIP ticket for the same person, Russell Brunson. I paid $600 only for 3-day course. I never ever regretted any second. $600 for the VIP to be able to ask one question from Russell personally. Away. So that's what you need to do. You need to start to sort out people who are not serving you. Find people who did already, who are there for you. This is one or two persons that you can afford the higher paid, uh, courses. And then have two or three below that you can afford because you still need to learn the tiny lessons. And it doesn't mean like, I have my lessons as well, right? But I can charged the same as Russell Brunson does, but still you can learn the same lessons. There is no difference because the business has the same lessons. It's just only because I'm not that popular, you pay me less. So never ignore the middle class of the coaches that can give you the same course, the same lessons, but for more affordable, because they are going to be very expensive one year later. So catch them when they are in the transition to be in demand.

Yeah, no, I, I think that's— yeah, I think that's, that's wise advice. I, I, I— we're doing our— for our business, we're doing our first live event, um, in October of this year, and, uh, we've never done this before. We really don't know what we're doing, but to your point, I found speakers that that I knew were rock solid in their content, but maybe their presentation is not as polished. They're not well known, but the content is there and you can get it for a lot cheaper. And then talking to about what you said about like, you have to invest the money and then you'll pay attention. That some of that went into our pricing, right? Like, I don't want people that are looking for a cheap event because that's not— if you're, if you're not going to invest the money and the time to travel for— and there's no, there's no streaming on this. It's like you've got to come and physically sit in the workshop for 2 days. That weeds out the people that I don't want. I want people that are interested in in investing the time and the money? Because if I cut the price in half, I potentially can have more people, but are they really going to get what they need out of it? And for the people that I'm looking to have attend this event, I want them to— I don't want it to be like, I'm not going to be able to feed my family if I do this, but I want them to know that it's an investment and that because that brings a completely different energy, uh, versus, you know, if I, if I'm going to spend 2 grand to go to a 2-day workshop and the travel involved and everything else versus a free webinar, well, what's the— I could do the exact same content and, and, and give them the exact same thing. What's the result going to be for them if they do it on a free webinar where for 2 days they can be working, uh, you know, in the background versus paying 100% attention and doing the work. It's, it's not even the, it's not even the same thing, right? So yeah, I, I would agree with you that even if the content is the same, you paying more brings your energy and your focus because it's a bit more money.

Yes, and, uh, what I realized for myself, if you don't know how to, um, charge the money, you will never spend the money. It's completely shift of the mindset. So if you go to learn how to make, to create a course, to sell the course, if you go for the free webinar, you will never learn it because you yourself, you don't have that mindset to pay for the course. You will never learn how to speak to your audience to get them to pay for your course. I did the free webinar lately last week and I swear to myself I will never ever do the free webinar. So I was teaching what is behind the breathing techniques because I was in science. So for many years I was working on the cell level and I know what is the mechanism of how our body works. So I had about 30-something people subscribe for the webinar. Only 3 showed up.

Right.

I told them the lesson. I really described something. All of them said, we've never heard that before. Never. It is not on the internet. It is not somewhere. I am somehow, I have this mind tweaked. I always go into the details. But I never gave them how I do the breathing technique. So I said, the breathing techniques, those are that exist. This is the mechanism behind. This is the most important part of the breathing technique. So it's not the inhale or exhale, is the, is the holding between. Why? Because our body gets the oxygen only when it, it's replaced with CO2, which is the carbon dioxide. So if you don't have the ratio between those two gases, your oxygen will, will be stuck in your hemoglobin and it will never be released. So you are short with the oxygen while it's just traveling in your blood. I just gave them the idea. I never told them how I do the breathing technique. So if you don't have the audience who is ready to pay for your course, they can never learn from you how to sell the course. Because the mindset of people who come for the free webinar, they can never sell their own course. Course. They are not there. And the membership, when they start to charge higher, it's not the price idea. It's the idea that you need to flip that mindset for yourself as well. If you don't pay, you can never understand how to sell because you are not there. Because you would think from the different perspective, oh, the person has the pain point, I have the solution. That's not why people pay. They pay if they value what you give them versus the pain that they have. If they love their own pain, you can scream from the roof about the problem. Oh, you wake up, you are going to die. They don't care. They are romantic about their pain. They love their pain. And now you are trying to detach them from the pain, which is the only thing that they have. They have the explanation why they failed. Because they have the pain. Right. And they are married to their pain. Now you want them to divorce without giving the solution because that's what the free webinar is. You push the pain point over and over again to wake up people. That's not how people wake up. They need to wake up from different perspective. And this is only during the paid courses that you will learn because there is different atmosphere. I will give even a bit different example. Lately I went to the course with Grant Cardone. I paid $500. So they had 3 options, like the VIP, which was $2,500, the top VIP, the VIP $1,500, yes, and $500 only for the regular. So during the third day, it was pure gold, by the way, but they brought all together because they were selling the courses starting from $7,000. So they need, you need to pay and to be there. It was pure gold what they were teaching. But during the third day, we had the person who was speaking. She was speaking and she has very nice temper, like very kind temper. People behind the line, they couldn't, we couldn't hear anything. Nobody from the audience went and asked them to increase the volume. I was the only one. 5 minutes into, I couldn't hear anything. I went and I asked, can you fix that? During the lunch, I was asking people. Could you hear? And they were like, no, it was absolutely— but she had a very nice temper. You paid to be there, but the mentality— look, they diminished themselves simply because they were not the VIP. So they saw that the money that they paid, it was not worth enough to require the same treatment. Right. That's the difference between when you go with the higher ticket, you will learn how to sell the high ticket, uh, course because you are at that level to think yourself and you think the same level as the customer that you can attract. Remember that the level that you think will attract the level of the customer, uh, the same level of the price that the customers will Aksa, I love that.

Unfortunately, we are out of time. How do people find you if they want to learn more about the things you're doing?

Oh, I'm very active on LinkedIn. I also help people to how to build their brand. I have the book on Amazon, by the way. It's called Fulfilled Life. And also I start the product is going to be called Yep is the drinkable yogurt. It's very good for the health. So I'm going to be around. I love it.

I love it. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until then, remember, you are not alone.