Copy your way to success: The lazy person's guide to making money

If you're anything like me, you are probably somebody who likes the path of least resistance. But you still have big goals and you want to do big things inside of your life. And if, if you're like me, then I, I totally get you because that's how I was when, when going through school. I was always, I was always able to get good grades in school. I was someone that. Somebody that never had trouble passing classes or getting good grades. But I also never loved doing the work and I also never loved, you know, putting in ridiculous amount of hours. So I would always try to find ways of getting like, optimizing for the best grades while still putting in like the least amount of effort. And when it came to making money and when it came to creating success in my life, and when it came to just in the different categories of like health, wealth, love and happiness in my life, I, you know, I wanted like to get the maximum result for like the least amount of effort. And so I would look at all these things, like passive income. I would look at like, how to build, how to make money in your sleep, how to make money online, and how to make money without working a job or doing any of these like weird things out there that they have. You know, like a survey is like you get down some weird monkey rabbit holes sometimes. And so I was always seeking for the path of least resistance. And that's when I discovered, you know, making money online. That's when I discovered all these different business models from doing real estate wholesaling to doing what all did I do, like selling stuff on Amazon, to selling digital products, to making audiobooks, to building YouTube channels, et cetera, et cetera. And so when I started getting in, I wanted to find the things that were, you know, easiest ways to make money without putting in insane amounts of hours. But I was still kind of missing like a big piece whenever I got. When I first got into YouTube, I thought I needed to be really original. I thought I needed to make really unique content. This was six years ago. This was on a channel that used to be called Devin Canup. And I changed it now to Real Estate University. I changed the name because I didn't want to be associated as a real estate guy as much anymore. Because I haven't done anything with real estate for over five years, unless you want to talk about digital real estate. That's different. But I haven't. So when I started that channel, I just started making my own content and I just started, started to kind of, you know, just put out what, what I Thought people wanted to know. But I didn't really see any sort of like real tangible success with it for a good amount of time. And it wasn't until I got frustrated from all these videos that I was making where I decided, screw it, you know what, I'm gonna just go and take what somebody else is doing and apply it through my own stories and my own ways of doing like my own personal self in my own experience. So take their exact video idea, which I think at the time was a video about like, you know, how to get contracts for, for doing deals. And I decided to like I saw someone else do it. So I did it myself and I just kind of told my own story and kind of did my own way of doing it, but like taking the strategy that was already proven. And as soon as I did that and I just did what they did and kind of like a one to one copy, I uploaded it and it was actually the best performing video that I ever made. It did better than the video actually that I was modeling. And it was the start of my YouTube career. It got me to a place where I started making a couple grand a month. I kept uploading videos and I kept getting better at it and I kept just. Instead of trying to be some unique creative guy, I would look to other, other people that had success, maybe not specifically in real estate, but other business models like shopify, drop shipping or E commerce or you know, other ways of making money online or through self employment. And I would take the best videos there and then I would apply it to my niche of real estate. And as soon as I did that, the results started kind of really rolling in. I started to like. It was like, it became easy mode all of a sudden it went from like level 10 difficulty hard of like why is nothing blowing up to YouTube became significantly easier? And time and time again I've had to kind of learn this same exact thing which is, you know, stop trying to be unique, stop trying to be creative. Instead find ways that people have already had success and just do what they did instead of trying to come up with this new thing. Trying to create something that's not already in the marketplace and trying to like reinvent the wheel. I don't know how many, I don't know why, but like reinventing the wheel is one of the most. Yeah, I agree, that's great advice advice out there, but it's also the least implemented advice out there that nobody ever implements, which is don't recreate the wheel. And this is something that I struggled with. For such a long time, anytime that I was struggling to make money, anytime I was struggling to have success, like it's happened probably 10 times even now in my business today, like I still haven't fully learned the lesson. Even when I'm doing multiple six figures a month. Like I am running to a place where I am not, you know, fully just taking, okay, what are things that are working in the market, what are other systems, what are other models? And okay, it's getting a good diagnosis of what they're doing and then just bringing it one to one over to my business and applying it to get the same result that they're getting. And through my industry or through my niche or through my stories or through my perspective on life or whatever, the philosophy on business or the model or whatever. And so now what I try to do every single time is I always, whether it be, um, in business, like I said, I try to find other people that are having success and, and then just doing what they're doing. When it comes to relationships, I go find people that I seek out mentors. I seek out people who have very healthy, successful relationships where it's, you know, they have amazing friends in their life, they have amazing romantic partners. I seek those people and I look to, to how do I be like them? How do I, like what, okay, what are the strategies you guys do to have an amazing relationship? Okay, let me apply it to my life. Same with health. I never tried to be some frickin mad scientist. Like, I don't pretend to know anything when it comes to health or fitness. And so what I will do is I will seek out the people that know more about health than I know and I will just copy what they're doing. I'll, I'll have them give me their plan or I will find videos on how to get jacked or how to get fit. I used to weigh like 150 pounds for a lot of my life. I did cross country and I played baseball and I could just never put on weight. And I struggled that with that for a long time, even out of college. And so what I did was, is one day I was at the gym and I found this dude. He was huge. I got to chatting with him, we got talking and he was kind of walking through, you know, his philosophies on like fitness and stuff. And I asked him, I was like, hey, can I work out with you? He's like, yeah, sure. I don't have anybody to work out with and I love working out with people. So I was like, okay, cool. So I started working out with him. I ended up working out with him for three months straight. And I went from 150 pounds to like 185. So I gained like 35 pounds in the span of like 45 days. 50 days. It was. It became more than just working out, but we would also eat together. So I would like, whatever he would eat, I would eat. And he would just push me. He's like, come on, you got to eat all that. And he would force me to eat more. And. And I would just. He just. Whatever he would do, I would do. And slowly but surely, you know, this guy was 215. He was the same height as me, and he was like. His biceps were like five times the size of mine. And I just started doing what he did. And naturally I started to become like him. And I didn't have to. It wasn't a conscious effort. Like, I had to go show up and I had to go do the work, but I didn't have to think, I didn't have to actively do anything. I just had to do the work that was like laid out in front of me. And whenever I was given those game plans, whenever I was given those, like, the formula to, you just do this thing. And I just did this thing. Like I saw that this person's doing this, so I just did that. The results I started getting was instrumentally larger than if I ever tried to figure something out myself, and instead trying to figure out my own diet plan or my own thing instead, if I just found somebody that was where I wanted to be and I just did what they were doing, whether it meant I needed to to buy their formula or I needed to spend more time with them, or I needed to consume more of their content and then just modeling the exact same thing that they were doing, as soon as I started doing that, the results changed dramatically. That's how I went to making my first $10,000 a month. That's how I got to my first 30 grand, my first 50 grand, my first. A hundred thousand, my first $300,000 a month was purely just by seeking the people that have the systems and then taking those systems and applying it to that area of my life. So I didn't have to be some mad scientist, and instead I could be lazy. The only thing that needed to be done at that point was the work. I didn't need to be creative. I didn't need to be some magic scientist. I didn't need to be some genius. I just needed to do the Work based off of like what they told me. And so that's what you were looking for. You need to find somebody that is having success. And now you need to be careful when you are looking up stuff. You know, some people are, you know, they're, they're, they're giving the advice to eventually sell you into thing which there's nothing wrong with that. But you got to seek out the quality of the advice that you are getting. You should be, your life should be changing. You should see actual change in your life and the way that you see things and you're, the way that you believe things and the way that you view the world before you start working with them. Like you should like and it should be somebody that you can relate to and that you feel like just being in the vicinity of them is going to change your life. And if not, just finding the formulas that are already working. And I always recommend is modeling people's actions and not what they say to do. So don't let people tell you what to do and instead do the things that they do. Like what are the activities that they have. Like Gary Vaynerchuk, he's, he's a big advocate for that. He always talks about, you want to, instead of listening to the advice I give you inside of his content, instead you need to watch how he does content and how he does social media and apply that to your social media. And if you do that, you will get similar results to him. If you want to be like Alex Mosey and his content game, see how he does his content, see the volume of the content that he posts, see what he does with his content, like how he curates his content, like how he makes it for his audience and do that. Don't necessarily listen to what he says in the videos. That's helpful. Yes, but, but how is he doing it? How is he, how is he doing that? When it comes to faceless YouTube channels, like, if you want to build business YouTube channels like I have, you want to find channels that are having success, that are making 10 grand a month, making 50 grand a month, making a hundred thousand dollars a month, making $300,000 a month, making a million dollars a month and see what they're doing and do what they're doing. Like create the game plan in the blueprint based off of what they're doing. Like if I wanted to build a YouTube channel like the infographics show, which, I mean, it's going to take a lot of work because it's, you know, how they do the content is pretty intensive. I would watch every single little detail, every bit video. I would write out the entire game plan. It may take, it'll take probably like a week or so with the channel like that because it's a lot, it's very in depth. But I write it out and then I would just start over time building the systems to match what they are doing and doing the same exact process. How they come up with the ideas, how they write the hooks, how they do the animations, how they do the music in the videos, you know, the, the volume of the content that they do. I'd probably go and find out what their team actually looks like. I'd probably go get on call with the guy that owns infographics show and I'll just reach out to him and just ask him to, to break down his entire production process or I would find interviews on it where he breaks it down and I would just take that and then get. Apply those systems to my, to my business. Now like I said, that's like a you know, seven, eight figure business. That one's kind of hard to emulate if you're a beginner. But instead you can just go find somebody that's getting like 3 million views a month and just do what they're doing. So that way you don't have to think, you don't have to think for yourself. You don't have to like be that creative. Just see what somebody else is doing and then take the systems the way that, the process of them doing things, the way that they're making money and one to one, copy it over to yourself and you do that. And that is the key to success. That is the key to making money. That's the key to becoming being a lazy person and getting the result. Now to allow yourself to become lazy, you have to make like when it comes. When it came to school, in order for me to get good grades, I couldn't just be lazy all year long and just get good grades. There's a strategy to it. How I would do it is I would become friends with the people who are going to be successful in the class and, and then what I would do is I would have them, you know, I would build systems with them. So when it came to homework assignments, whatever, you know, I'd find a good healthy balance of how can I get them to do a lot of the work and allow me to apply it. But made it feel like it was an equal exchange there with reciprocity and other things. But then at the same time as well What I would do is before the night of the test, I would just look up the previous test for that class and I would take those tests and I would just do. I would just study other tests that that class has had. And when I would study the test of that class, I already knew pretty much what the answers on the quiz was going to be. Maybe there was going to be a couple questions that would be different. But for the most part, most curriculums don't really change that much year to year. And so the same with the driving test, the same with any sort of schooling or any sort of like passing a test. I would just always find the answers. I would find the quiz, I would. And then I would take the quiz until I got a good grade on it. And then when I actually took the test in real life, I already knew like majority of the answers to the questions because I've already studied enough. And that's how I like 80, 90% of me getting good grades was I would find the thing that was already there, I'd find the system, I would just do that. And then I could be lazy in the class. I didn't have to study in the books, I didn't have to actually read the book or any of that. I just knew what the questions were and I would just do the answer. Same thing with success and the same thing with building. Find people that are already there. Document the strategies and the systems and what they are doing in their process. And what I will say is, if you're already doing that, Devin, I'm already doing that. Devin, I'm already like, you know, you, like, you tell me to do this, I'm already doing that. You're probably not doing it to the depth that you need to do it. In all honesty, like you're probably putting in 20 minutes into something that they put like 100 man hours into. Now obviously I'm not saying you need to put 100 hours into coming up with a video idea and researching it, but you need to kind of get a good idea of what the process is and ask yourself, how can I cram that into 3 hours instead of 100 hours? Get really good at that process, develop that skill set and you will get results. Like I said, this is like the lazy guide to getting rich. This is a lazy guide to making money. This is a lazy guide to getting successful is find the people that have already figured out the wheel, that have already done the hard work. So that way we can just take what they have done and then apply it to our thing that's what they call standing on the shoulders of giants. We are taking what other people have done and staying on their shoulders. If you know Tony Robbins, he's like one of the most successful, like, MLP guys, the most successful motivational speakers. And he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has sold companies and gone public with companies. For him, with this speaking like I didn't wasn't original. He studied Jim Rohn, he studied Bob Proctor, he studied Guys Zig Ziglar. He studied these guys that were already good at speakers, just watched how they spoke and then he spoke like them. And over time, as he spoke, as he watched how they spoke and he spoke like them, he became more like them. He didn't have to be some mad scientist genius trying to create some sort of new thing. He just took what other people are doing and he would apply it to his thing. And then over time, he would just start to add things to his process. And then at that point, it's just work. What I consider lazy, I view lazy as, like, you know, you. You don't want to think. You don't want to have to, like, think about what you're doing. You just want to do the thing and then be done. That's it. Because that's how. That's how I view, like, laziness. It's just like, I want to do a thing and be done. That's what every rich person is like. A lot of them. Most rich people are lazy as hell. They would define themselves as lazy, and that's because they try to find the easiest ways of doing things. They don't have to go through all this pain, all this suffering, all this hard work. Instead, they could just focus on just getting the shortcuts to success. The shortcuts to success are finding the other people's systems and applying it to what you're doing so you can get rich. So I'm Devon Canup. Drop a comment down below. Subscribe comment like, and I'll see you guys all in the next one. Peace.