How To Get Ahead of 99% of People

All around you in the world. You are only going to get hate from two types of people. People who have done less than you and people who are scared you're about to do more than them. You have to be so good, they become irrelevant. How to be so good? You ruin your competition. How do we just step on their necks? I am so tired of hearing all the reasons why we can't. All the reasons why you can't win, why they can't win. How do you do it all as a woman, blah, blah, blah. The second that you start looking at your competitor, asking what they're doing and how can we iterate on, that is the second you've lost. I thought we'd talk about how you make so much money that when people talk shit, you just go, scoreboard, bitch. So I'm going to go through my nine rules to hit a nine figure business. The hard truth that I wish somebody would have told me when I was first starting out, and they definitely didn't because it's not PC now, the first rule is don't be afraid of outgrowing everyone. Your friends. Yep. Your family, likely the people that you hire today who you think are great, probably every single person. And the only way you're going to get through this is by not apologizing for a second for outgrowing people who cannot keep up with you. Hard to do. Really hard to do. Nobody wants to be the person to tell another one that they are not enough. But the truth of the matter is, is that if you do not push people on to their next level where they're supposed to be, you instead are kind of saying this. You're like, you're not good enough for me. You're not right for the company. You're still here. And I don't think that your talents are good enough for you to go somewhere else and be great. That's what you're saying when you keep mid performers. You're saying, I feel sorry for you. You're my charity case. You have to stay here. But in actuality, what are you holding them back from? Probably a place where they could be great. And I tell you this because I had a story where I was with the CEO of one of my financial firms. So I was at a company called First Trust. And at this company, I built out their Latin America business, right. And so we went from $0 in assets under management to over a billion in assets under management. And I was really proud of that. And then one day the CEO of the company took me on a Walk at the Montage in California. And he said something I'll never forget. I wanted us to do 21st century acquisitions. I wanted us to do what we're doing now, use a big platform, acquire a ton of attention, and through that, be able to do smarter acquisitions at lower cost, at scale. And I thought, we should get rich together as opposed to get rich quietly. And as we're walking along the beach, Jim looks over to me, and I'm still good friends with Jim to this day. And he says to me, around here, we don't do it that way. And if you want to row to the left while we are rowing right, you have to find a new boat. At the time, I was pissed, right? I'm like, I just brought in a billion dollars. This place. I have the future of how we're going to grow this company. Look how successful I am today at it. And yet you're telling me that this is not the right place for me. I was really mad. And yet he did me the biggest favor ever imaginable. He kind of gave me an ultimatum. So I left the company, and I started my own. And I'm billions and billions bigger. In fact, we're at 4x billion in assets under management for our portfolio companies now, as opposed to the 1 billion with him. But I never could have done it if he didn't push me out. And in a way, he was kind of saying, you aren't growing as fast as I am, so get out of here. And that is okay. And I want to give you guys permission to do that. How many of you in your minds right now have one person in your company that is like the splinter underneath your fingernail? Everybody, usually, you know, you need to fire them. How long. How long have you known that you need to fire this person? I saw a hand up over here. Somebody want. Yep. Do you guys want to say it to her? You want me to say it to her? The second that, you know, you need to let somebody go, what do you need to do now? Maybe not the exact second it's okay to say I need to have a plan, but the biggest reason why your company isn't growing is one person. There is one person. Have you guys ever tried to do something with your fingers? When you have a splinter underneath the fingernail, can you do very much else? Are you distracted the entire time? Of course you are. Because you've allowed one person to slow down your business. Never apologize for outgrowing somebody. Let them go. Now. To show that I'm not only just talking to you about this. I wrote this part because I had a fucking splinter. And I was doing the opposite of everything that I tell people to do. And this guy had been in my company for like six months. And I saw him in the office and was like, hey, Bob, how's the kids? In the meantime, I'm so mad. I'm mad that he's slowing us down. I'm mad that we're not fast enough. And so I called up a friend of mine, really good friend, who also has a portfolio, and I was like, yeah, I got this guy, I gotta let him go. She's like, yeah, I got a guy too. I gotta let him go. And I'm like, okay, cool. You know, let's touch base on it. What are you gonna do? Well, I follow up. This was on Friday. I follow up on Tuesday with her. And I'm like, yeah, so when are you letting that guy go? She goes, are you kidding me? I already did. She goes, rip off the bandage. She goes, what are you here? Are you an employee or are you the CEO? I was like, that's rude. But yes, I'm the CEO. That's me. And so every time you think you have that splinter, think about the band aid that you have to rip. Because I can almost promise you one thing. How many of you here have fired somebody who you thought was an under performer and regretted it? Look around this room. I have been in thousands of rooms like this with tens of thousands of people. You know how many people raised their hand that they regretted a firing? Not one. And yet, why do we wait? We're allowing them to go on to something else, and yet we're not. I have another thought. Who here wants to be a billionaire? I also like when I do this in women's room. When I do this in men's rooms, they go, yeah, but I do it in women's room. They go, ha. I do. So I want you to maybe embody that a little bit more. Because let me tell you what. To be a billionaire, it takes a lot of zeros. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. But if you want to be a billionaire, you have to shed some skin. I always think about the snake metaphor, right? So have you ever seen those ridiculous looking boa constrictors that are so big it almost seems unreasonable? If they were to hold on to the person that they were before, they would never get to that size. There'd be a cute little garden snake run around, and instead these fuckers are eating alligators or Something in Florida. I don't know. You people live different down in Florida. Now the reason that I bring up billionaire and I'm going to get into math, I promise I won't do too much of it here. This is what's called a triple triple, double double double. A triple triple double double double is SaaS speak for how to get to a billion dollars inside of five years after you find product market fit. So at the bottom, what you can see is these are a bunch of big companies that basically hit this escape velocity that led to them having a billion dollar valuation. What's interesting about it is if you break down the numbers, you can basically see how this happens. Now we're talking billion dollar valuation, not billion dollars in sales, two different things. So we hit product market fit. Now typically I say companies have product market fit after you have at least seven figures in revenue and you typically want recurring revenue with a high degree. So I want 50% of my revenue at least recurring. If it's not, you have a lovely transactional business. You do not have yet product market fit to have billion dollar scale. So we get to 2 million, then we hit 6, 18, 36, 72, 144. In order to do this, you have to be unreasonable because of how rare this is. You can't get bigger if you don't shed your skin. So I want to talk about something really quickly. When you start getting to triple triple, double double double realm, you're gonna have to get to this step which is so many haters, they form a support group. It's like we hate you Incorporated. They got T shirts, they got hats, they got merch drops. Because the problem with scale, the average person. Do you know what the average person makes as an increase in their salary each year? Average person in the U.S. what do you want to guess? 3 to 4%. You're exactly right. So what does that mean? Well, these numbers here don't know a 4%. In order to do this, you have to hit numbers. So big average is in your rear view mirror. And so of course you're going to have haters. Why? Because those who only hit 4% do not understand 400%. And when we don't understand something and we can't see ourselves in it, we hate upon it. And so I thought about this in my life. So when I started contrarian thinking and I came from traditional private equity working at big firms, you guys could imagine what guys in finance look like, right? I mean, this is nicer. They don't look this nice. This guy Looks kind of lovely, but if you can imagine, I come into this crowd that looks like this and we got this chick, you know, she's in her bikini on the Internet. She's talking about, she's on TikTok. And I start building what is now one of the biggest mergers and acquisition education platforms in the world. We've taught 5,000 students how to buy small businesses. We're giving all the playbooks that private equity guys hold close like this. We're sharing how we do billion dollar deals. And our people have done $262 million in transactions just last year. That's not my company. Those are students where I take no percentage of their businesses that they bought. You could imagine how they felt about this chick coming in here and doing that. There were support groups and they were not for me. And I think you guys are going to realize this same thing. The second you start hitting velocity, speed, you're going to have haters come at you. Because the truth about Americans is that we love the underdog until we're not one anymore. Love the underdog until we're not one anymore. We love the scrappy person until that person gets a jet. Then that guy, that's okay. In some ways, we don't want to lose our relatability. But it's important to know as you go forward that if you think that you have to be liked or that you want to be liked as opposed to win, you're going to spend a lifetime of suffering. And I like to think about it like this. This is very technical, scientific. I call it they hate you because they ain't you curve. And this is what it looks like at the beginning. They go, lame. Then they go, she's kind of crazy. Then they go, one hit wonder. Then they go, oh, yeah, she that guy, didn't she? Then they go, what the her? Then they go, yeah, I know her. Then they go, he, hey, long time no talk, text message. Then they finally go, love to meet up. And finally after that, how'd they do it? And once you understand this curve, if we know where we're going on the road, if we have a GPS that's getting us to a destination, do we get upset when we know that there's going to be a traffic jam or that it's going to take three hours? No, we don't, because we kind of know where we're going. But nobody tells us that. This is actually what success looks like. That the second you start to hit velocity is when people start to act a little different to You. But on the climb, on the way up, all the rest of this is totally normal. And that is okay. Because the best revenge is spelled revenue, baby. And I think a lot of people don't realize this, but the truth about money that we don't like to say in today's society is that money solves a lot of issues. And in fact, think about this for a second. For 20 years, they told us that there was no material happiness increase past $75,000 in income. I'm not a scientist, but I was happier after I went past 75K. Anybody else here? Yeah, of course, 20 years, they go, no, trust the science. We go, I don't know. I feel happier now. Finally, they say you're no happier past 500k. Okay, I don't know. 500k sounds pretty good. But I still think there is a material difference in happiness with each level of dollar you put in your pocket. Let me tell you why. Because all money is. It is a ticket into the bank of I do whatever the f I want and you can't really tell me what to do. And they try to tell us that money is evil, that in order to chase it, you're bad, you're selfish. Why would you focus on that? Rub your crystals while you rent. I like crystals. Just to be fair here, I'm a crystal girly. But you can't manifest your way to money. You just can't. Now manifestation with a little bit of action plus a quartz crystal, awesome. But any one of those by themselves, not going to do it. And so the point of this story is it is okay to chase revenue relentlessly. And in fact, I think you guys have a moral obligation to do it to a certain point. Think about what you can do once you don't have to worry about money and you can exert your influence on the world We've seen, especially over these last couple years. What happens when we do not have financial freedom? Can we push back on government overreach? Not really. Do we get to push back on medical overreach when we don't have cash? Not really. Do we get to push back on how they educated our kids? No. Private school is pretty expensive, so freedom is spilled revenue too. And I think that's okay for all of us to realize it. And women, we have to realize that too. They actually tried to pit men against women. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. We're both born from a man and a woman. As far as the science checks out there, the real push is against those who want the money for them and not for you and that should be our biggest argument. Who cares what's down here? Don't care. Okay, now, rule number four. The truth may set you free, but first, it'll make you miserable. This is my pep talk for you guys. How am I doing? Is everybody like, yeah, just going, okay, so can I go on a little bit of a rant here? You're like, what has the last 20 minutes been if not a rant? All right, here's the rant. I was talking to one of our portfolio companies. So we have all these CEOs, right? They report up to me, and the CEOs always say there was one reason why their company isn't growing. What do you guys think it is? Leads. Somebody said it right here, well, if we only had more attention, leads, money, we'd be growing. If we had more sales, we'd be growing. Let me tell you why this is such an amateur reaction. Pros realize one thing that amateurs don't. You never have a lead problem. You have a product problem. This part is where I'm going to go a little hard at you guys. And I had to go hard at me. I have many companies that have a product problem and not a lead problem. Here's the difference. Most businesses today do not actually bring in water into a boat with a bucket. They try to do it with a sieve, and they're like, nope, no, not enough leads, not enough leads, not enough leads. What do they actually have? They have a shitty product that they don't want to look in the face. So if right now, in your business today, you think your problem is leads, I want you to seriously question that for me, and I want you to ask yourself if instead it might be the three R's, renewals, referrals, reviews. If you don't have at least 20 to 30% of your customers coming from referrals, other clients saying nice things about you, you're trying to bring water into a boat with a sieve. You got a leaky bucket problem. You do not have a lead problem. I realized this at multiple of our companies. One of our CEOs came to me and they said, we don't have enough leads. Like, I just want you to think about how ridiculous this is for a second. This is a company that I pushed through contrarian thinking. Contrarian thinking gets 100 million views a month. Does that seem like a lot of views? This company that we pushed leads to got anywhere from 10 to 30,000 emails for their particular product a month. Does that seem like a lot of leads? Yeah. And yet they didn't have enough sales. So what does an amateur say? Give me more leads for me to eat and do nothing with because of my inadequacy, because I have chosen to the wrong tool. Look yourself hard in the face and ask yourself, do I have a lead problem or do I have a product problem? Here's the beautiful part about this. If you have a product problem that is about 10x easier to solve than a lead problem, everybody wants more sales, so it's expensive. Everybody wants more leads, so you gotta pay a lot for them on Amazon or on Google or with ppc. But only you are uniquely your product set with your particular unfair advantage and your particular Persona. And so if most founders spent one tenth the amount of time perfecting their product as they did perfecting their funnel, they would never have to sell again. One of my mentors said something to me that I've never forgotten, which was when I went out on my own for the first time, and I was running a private equity company. So in that case, my. My client at the time was investors. You know, I wanted them to give me money and me to take action with them. And he said, I want you to do something for me. He's like, I'll invest in you. I'll invest in you. If you treat your first client like it is the only client that you will ever get, and you try to get five more clients from your first client. And I was like, that's hard. I'll ask them for their money and their grandmas and their moms and their dad. That seems tough. And he said, well, then I'm not going to give you money. Okay, fine. You don't do that. You don't get my cash. So I said, all right, fine, I'll try. And I did. And because of that, you have never seen me once fundraise on the Internet anywhere. Because I ended up having five partners, I don't raise any more capital. And they told a few other people about me. And so the problem in most of life is a pound of pre Production is worth £10 of post production. What does that mean? When we do videos like Tanner and I are doing here, most of the time we kind of go and film, right? It's like we're gonna do a couple hours of thinking about stuff beforehand, but then let's go out and do it. But you want to know why the big guys win? Because they spend all the time up front and you can't edit a bad ingredient. And so I want you guys to think about your product aggressively. Anybody know who this is? Chamath Polyapatiya billionaire. You want to know why he came up with one idea at Facebook, One idea that led to Facebook being one of the most powerful companies in the world. And it's called seven friends in ten days. What he basically found was that if you came to Facebook and in your first 10 days at Facebook you had seven friends either come with you or you brought seven friends, you stayed for life. So what did they have to do? Did they have to go out and get a bunch of new users or do they have to obsess on making their first users bring buddies? This is what made Facebook a billion dollar company. Now the interesting part about Chamath is now Chamath is a billionaire many times over and he has had fail after fail after fail just for shits and gigs. Google Chamath Polihopitia and then Google Spac and then have some fun reading about the haters this guy gets online. But it actually doesn't matter. Why? Because all you need is one win so big it erases all of your fails. And that is what this guy has. And so spend the time, that ounce of pre production to find your seven friends in 10 days. What is the one secret to your business that you don't actually even realize is there? Archimedes says give me a lover long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I can move the world. Most business owners have no leverage but brute force in their business. What is yours? Now this is what this actually looked like. This is what seven friends in ten days looked like. So basically what you can see is that that number over the far right positive predictive value, which means with 99% certainty, Chamath could tell you that if X action happened, why clients stayed inside of almost every business is a 99% predictor. And yet most of us don't even know where to drive the 30 or 40% in our business. So my plea to you is if people can't shut up saying nice things about your business, your problem isn't leads. Your problem is your product. Spend an inordinate amount of time on your product and your leads will never be an issue again. This is why Apple's advertising can suck ever since Steve Jobs died. I mean, do you guys ever see an Apple advertisement now and you're like that guy? Yep. No you don't. They used to be masterful and now they aren't. Does that matter? Of course not. Why? Because their product is so good that you tell all your friends when you get the new component of it. Alright, rule number five. Your bank account is a reflection of how good you are. Oh, that one hurts. Especially because I think all of us realize that we want more in the bank account. But the second that I realized this is the second my bank account started to grow. And let me tell you why. I had this CEO at one of my companies and he had the ultimate flaw that is the cancer of our society today, which is that he doesn't think that he has to earn, he thinks he deserves the right to earn. And so we had a goal and I said, hey, I don't know, Bob, Bob, if you hit this goal, you're gonna get a hundred thousand dollar bonus. Cool. Quarterly goal. Hit the hundred K, hit the bonus, get 100 K. Awesome. Well, comes around, Bob's excited, we sit down for the meeting, he goes, hey, here's the goal. We're only off by about 5%. How fucking awesome is that? I was like, did I say a hope or a goal? I know they're both four letters, I'm pretty sure that they're spelled differently. And he expected to get the 100k without missing the 5%. This is the world we live in today where we think that we are playing a game of horseshoes and hand grenades, which means the close is good enough and it doesn't. Now what's fascinating is one of my chief executive officers who oversees all of our portfolio companies heard this from Bob and said, well, you know, he did get almost a goal like 5% off of goal. We should probably give him like the bonus. Right? Here's the thing, people will hold you to your highest level and they will sink to your lowest standard. And what I realized in business is my chief executives actually thought that they deserved payouts. They didn't understand that there's this ripple down effect inside of a business. That means that if I pay people to for not achieving the things that they said they were going to do in a short amount of time will be out of business. Right. Do you guys know the average profit margin for Walmart, one of the biggest companies in the world? How much do you think they make per dollar that you give them? 6 cents. Think about that for a second. You have a disconnect between your top leaders, their communication with your employees and the standards that you've set. And that is a different kind of grenade rule number five again apparently, but it's actually six. Assume your best competition works harder and is smarter than you. It's an interesting thing. I'VE realized most people, when they get competitors, what do they do? They go, yeah, but they're shitty. Yeah, but they're not good enough. Yeah, but you know, that's kind of cringe. Yeah, but their product isn't as good. I actually want you to flip something for me. Assume that your competitor is better, smarter, richer and better funded than you, and then take action. And let me tell you why. This is billionaire Joe Kraft. He's become a friend of mine. Joe owns the biggest mining operation in the world in coal, also one of the largest producers of energy in the world at a company called Alliance. Joe is from, as he would say it, the sticks of Kentucky. Right? He's from the middle of nowhere. And when I was talking with Joe a couple weeks ago about why he's so successful, what are some of the reasons why, as Kentuckians do, which is probably similar to people from St. Louis, he's like, oh, man, I don't know. Luck, you know, Shucks. As I'm sitting on his fourth plane. And then I asked, I dug a little deeper. Joe is up at 5:30 in the morning. Joe is 74 years old, 75 years old. Joe doesn't go to work until. Doesn't go to sleep until 11:30 at night. Joe has been doing that for 48 years. As the CEO of Alliance, that's your competition if you want to be a billionaire. Now I thought maybe that's just Joe. He's kind of a psychopath. Well, then I met another billionaire who's become a friend of mine. This is Jeffrey Kent. He runs a company called Abercrombie and Kent, one of the biggest luxury travel companies in the world. And I sat next to him on a plane, got to know him. And as I'm talking to him, I said, what do you think your secret is, man? You've been a billionaire plus a polo player, plus you're friends with King Charles. That's kind of cool. And he looks at me kind of perplexed, almost like, what a stupid question. And is like, cody, I've been doing this for 61 years at the same company. What if time and consistency is the only ingredient you need? The average employee in the US Stays with the job now for three years. Three years. The average business in the US Lasts less than five. What if all you need is time plus consistency plus irrational work ethic? That's sort of an interesting idea. I have this on the wall in my house, a reminder almost daily that I read to myself. It is very simple. You do not have what you want because you have not done what is necessary to get it. Another way I think about this is do you just do what you want as opposed to what is needed? And I realized very often I did what I want instead of what was needed. I waited two years to fire the person because I didn't want to fire them. I went on the vacation even when I felt like the company was going sideways. I obsessed on leads even though I knew we had a leaky bucket in product because I did what I wanted, not was necessary. The next one. Culture doesn't start from the top. It slides downhill from the middle. This one was fascinating. All our life we've been told culture starts at the top. Right? Culture starts at the top. The truth of the matter is you have to employ people who are as good at as or better than you. Because the problem is your lower level employees are actually looking at them, not you. You're like too far out of their mind. As a CEO, they don't look at you and think they should act like you. They look at you and go, yeah, of course you work hard. It's your business. Yeah, so it's not my business. I'm not going to have to work as hard as you. What a reframe is that the second that you realize that actually, you know who you have to look at real hard? Who's your second level of leader? Who's your right hand, your chief of staff, your C suite, your main leaders of your business? Their work ethic is the best you will get from the people underneath them. So hold them accountable. I had an employee, this just happened the other week. An employee for one of my sub companies came into my main office and studio in Austin. And it was a Friday and it was 2:30 and he came into my office and he said, hey, I'm gonna head out, beat traffic. Anything else you need from me? The CEO of one of my companies, two of his employees were still in my office. I sort of looked at him and said, okay, you're leaving now. He said, yeah, I'm, I'll do some work later at night today. I said, okay. And I thought about it and I realized that especially in this day and age where we're zooming and we're not in front of people all the time, most of your company is like an iceberg. You see the best that they do, but underneath there is a world of non performance happening. If you're super honest with yourself as a leader, you know that in your gut, right? So what did I have to do I had to have a tough conversation with this guy and say, you are my representative the second you leave at 2:30. What do you tell your employees? You're not obsessed, you're curious. Do we hire curious people around here? Absolutely not. We hire obsessed. Otherwise, go do something else. Plenty of other companies for the curious in a simple nine to five. Not at my company. Rule number seven, if you can't find top talent, that means you are not top talent. Ooh, tough one. Let's think about this for a second. Does a lion want to work for a gazelle? No. Wants to eat that bitch. The problem with most leaders is that we go, what? There's no good people anywhere, Right? Where are all the hard workers? Can I get a better recruiter? But the first thing we should actually be doing is look in the mirror and we should be asking ourselves this one question. Am I good enough to attract and lead the lions? And if not, beautiful opportunity. Because what's easier to control? Other people or you? I thought about this in a few specific ways. For instance, for a while, I really didn't get ready in the office. I was in finance. I like, didn't think appearances mattered really that much when we were internal into the company. Then I started to look around and I was like, lah. People look kind of shit. Like you're in your workout gear in the office today. We're not a workout company. We're a finance company. Like, what's going on here? And then I had another employee that came into the office and they actually came in after a workout and they didn't shower. And I was like, one gross dude. Only a dude would do that. Sorry, guys in the back, chicks wouldn't do that. But as opposed to going after those employees, I thought about it for a second. I was like, this is a me problem. This is actually a me problem. So I started doing my makeup, wearing clothes that are nice, putting outfits together. Do I like it? Not really. But there is scientific data that proves one first impression equals almost the hardest thing you'll ever have to overcome. If the first time somebody engages with you, they think you're unprofessional, they have a split second reaction to you. You have to do a ton of work to overcome that. Second is people pay pros because they look like pros. So you gotta ask yourself, are you looking like a pro? So very easy. First thing to do when you're in the office, do you look like a pro? Because pros pay pros well. Second is, are you the level of talent that you would respect if you were a top performer. Do you show up to meetings late? Sometimes maybe. Are you out at 2:30 on a Friday? Are you responding to stuff over the weekend? We have this crazy world. We have Clown World right now. In Clown World they go, oh, don't reach out to your employees over the weekend. You guys have heard that like literally in France I saw a lot of know if this is true, that if you email your employees on the weekend, you violate a law. So we've had this, this, this work life balance nonsense plugged into our brain. The problem is you don't require your level of dedication for your employees. You can't. Nobody will ever work as hard in your business as you do. You own the thing. But if you are not obsessed, how can you expect the top performers to be obsessed? You know what I think about hiring top talent? Like, I think about it like this. The only reason a top performer would come to you is because your dream is so big. It creates this umbrella at which they cannot imagine weathering the storm better than they could with you. You create a vision so big that the outcome that they see for themselves with you is bigger. Bigger than the outcome they see by themselves. That is the only way. So this guy, this big monster, his name's Bobby. Look at that poor fucker. He just, can't you tell? He's like not even trying. And he kind of accidentally kicks the guy and puts him to the ground. Bobby is an animal. Bobby was at a company called SeatGeek. He grew the marketplace from 5% to 40% market share. Multi billion dollar company. And when I met Bobby to hire him over to my company, Bobby was making a mil plus a year. He was a stud. And when I went to sit with him, something weird happened to me. He was like, how big do you think this company's going to get? What's your vision for it? What are your plans for the summer? What's the worst partner that's ever partnered with you? Think about you. When was the last time you fired somebody for underperformance? What do you think you will do when the company runs out of cash at some point and you have to put more money into the company? This is an interview for me to interview the guy to come be at my company and to pay him almost a million dollars a year? This is what top performers sound like. They interview you and if you are not bringing people in with that level of intensity, I mean, he's nice, he smiles, he picks the guy back up, but he beats the shit. Out of them. And that is what you want for your top performers, especially ladies, us. It is literally in our nature to be more nurturing. It's very hard to like. I'm sure you guys have felt this. Have you ever come home from work, you're in like your work mode. You like get in the door, like, yeah, honey. Anyway, so what I want to do for dinner is this. And then I'm thinking that. And your husband's like, jesus. That ever happened, anybody? Hard to flip, right? Helpful. If you have a bunch of lions surrounding you and they respect you enough to help you be the bad guy too. I got two more friends from business, not business from friends. This is really important and a little bit of a tweak. When you start winning, you become a target. Donald figured that out this weekend and I think all of us will figure it out in one way or another. The bigger the win, the bigger the target. And let me tell you what I mean by that. There was a guy who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from me. That is actually the price to entry to winning. But this guy in particular stole hundreds of thousands from me. Okay, not exact, but he is what I think he looks like in my head. Whenever I think of this guy, I picture this motherfucker. I actually hysterically googled the guy's name and this picture came up, which I think is karma. Could also be unrelated. Now, this guy stole from me, but what did I learn from that? I actually learned something really important. Let's say that I met somebody like Emily for the first time. And the first time I met her, I was like, let's do a deal together. Let's partner on this. Can you invest in this thing? For me, that is called business from friends, not friends from business. If your first engagement or action with somebody is an ask as opposed to a give red flag, it is okay to do deals and business with friends long term when you are at equal level of success. That is the biggest thing that I've realized. You don't want to actually partner with people below the position that you're at. You want to employ those people and then allow them into the profits. This is a nine figure lesson that I wish I would have learned earlier. And then rule number nine to get a little touchy feely in here. I think marrying well is the biggest life hack of all. And the truth of the matter is, is that if you don't find somebody who has a growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset, who wants to grow alongside you, your life will Be misery. And I should know. I was married previously to a guy who's awesome in his own realm, but wanted a fixed mindset life, which I didn't. And if you guys promise to not tell anybody, including everybody on YouTube eventually watching this, I'll tell you guys a secret. And the secret is before Chris, I mean I was worth like, I don't know, you know, healthy, eight finger figures, higher side assets. Post Kris, nine figures plus. Why is that interesting? Well, it's not because he had money. He didn't come for money. He had a military salary, he didn't have experience. None of the money actually came directly from him. I have the bigger businesses, he now works in them. But it came from the fact that I truly believe that having a partner that you can rely on, whether that partner is a man or a woman, is a life hack. And so the goal isn't to get happily married, it's to stay happily married. And I kind of stopped talking about this for a while because I have a lot of single girlfriends. And I think it's really hard being single for men and women. And yet I think it's bullshit for us to tell people that, like it's fine and it's easy to be single and out there. I don't think it is. And so I think no matter what you do, pouring into your partner and realizing that they will be the biggest reason that you will get from one level to the next is a truth. Because whoever you choose will also choose your bank account for you. And I think men have known this for some time, but as women we haven't. And it's important thing that we start to tell each other. Alright, last rule. Hire people so hungry they look like they're gonna bite you. My dad said a line I loved, which is, I was struggling in business and I didn't have this person who wasn't performing. And I said to him, dad, you know this person and I can't get him to do this and I can't get him to this. And he said this line that stuck with me me forever, which is, you can't teach hunger. Think about that for a second. I can't make you hungry. I can't make you want it. It is the single most important thing you need in your hiring process. Relentless, almost uncomfortable hunger. If they don't have that, who cares how good they are? Totally irrelevant. If you can get a team so hungry you're afraid they're going to nibble you, you're probably on your way to nine figures. Alright, with that. Let me say the last thing here, which is this. I think in this world today, you all are incredibly rare. Only 3% of the US owns a small business. 3%. Only 10% of small businesses will ever reach a million dollars in sales point. 4% of businesses will ever hit $10 million in sales. Most people want to see to be led. They don't want to lead because there is a certain misery to making millions. It's just true. And so no matter what you go through for the rest of the day, I hope you know this. I respect the shit out of you. It is hard. And I promise only one thing. A lot of misery. And if you continue for a long time, it ends up becoming worth it. Thank you guys so much for having me today.