12 Ways to WIN in 24 Minutes! | How to Test Ideas

Continue to test. Hey everybody, welcome to another book video. I'm gonna be a little quieter today because I'm recording this on a Friday evening, 10:30 at night. Hayden is in that room over there sleeping. Luckily he's a deep sleeper, and hopefully I don't get too overexcited on this one. I want to talk about testing, and I've talked about it before on the channel, and I think entrepreneurs don't do enough tests. I think it's important to test your assumptions. You test the big ideas, test the small ideas. I think the difference between a lot of successful entrepreneurs and the ones that don't quite make it are judged by the number of tests that you run. And you wanna be constantly running multiple tests on your business to find the optimum performance to help you create the product or service that you really, uh, will hit the market strong. So as it relates to my book is I'm working on coming up with the subtitles. And I came up with a subtitle for my book, and my publisher and my agent didn't like my subtitle, so they both came up with a subtitle that they thought would be appropriate that I didn't like. So I came up with a variation, and then I gave it to my team, and they came up with 2 variations as well. So now we have 6 variations of a potential subtitle for the book. And it may seem like a small thing, like, who cares, it's just a subtitle, but attention to the details makes a difference. Uh, and I am I'm so all in on this book that I'm paying attention to all these little minor things because it means something to me and I want to pay attention to them. And so we've got these 6 title options now, and I convinced my publisher to let me share it with the 30 people who test wrote the book and gave me feedback. And we're gonna see who wins. We're gonna see who has the best one. We're gonna see what the audience thinks, right? We're gonna see what the people will end up buying the book think. And I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure that my publisher one and my agent one are not going to win. I just feel like they're not going to win. I like the ones that my team came up with too, and I like the ones that my, my both of my versions. So we'll see how it goes, and that will help guide the decision as to what the final subtitle works out to be. And I think what's really important to understand as entrepreneurs is you will be successful, you will make money, you will have an impact, you will get reach when you can combine doing something that you love with something that adds a lot of value to people's lives. Do what you love and be passionate about it and stick to it and have your vision and say, like, this is where I want to go, but not be so attached to the how, right? I want to write this book. There's a ton of great information in the book. It's gonna help a lot of entrepreneurs. I think it's gonna shake the foundation of a lot of entrepreneurs. I'm really excited. But the specifics of the subtitle, you know, I'm not so attached that it has to be exactly this subtitle or it's not gonna work. And so that's That's where tweaks around what the market is interested in is helpful. So I can combine my big picture where I wanna take this with the small picture tactical execution to make that happen based on market feedback. It's super important to have both if you wanna create a product or service that has a lot of reach and has a lot of potential. So I encourage you to increase the number of tests that you do, increase the number of experiments, small experiments, like be testing at least a new thing every week. In some area of your business, or some curiosity that you want to touch and explore and learn a little bit more about. Stop having, "I'll get to that one day." Stop having bucket lists. Stop having plans for where you're going to be in 5 years or 10 years, right? Start taking action on it right now. And often you'll find that those 5, 10-year plans are either, one, like, not what you wanted to do at all, and so that's great for you to find it out sooner, and two, They don't have to be that far away. Like, it doesn't have to be something that takes you that long. You can condense something from 5 years down to 6 months or 3 months sometimes, or a week sometimes, just by getting out and doing it and taking action. So increase the number of experiments, increase the number of tests in your business, and you will dramatically increase the success of your company. All right, let's get to the questions. Super excited, love the questions. First one comes in, Jones Crimson. What tips do you have for avoiding theft? My first book was what I thought would be my life's work when I was young, and I didn't want to risk someone stealing my magnus opus, so to speak. I don't know what the fear is around theft. I don't know if you're working with a publisher or you're just trying to do it on your own. I think when you're working with a publisher, you sign off the rights, right? So for me, I don't own the rights to my book. I own the YouTube rights, and I own a bunch of other rights, but I don't own the rights to the book. So they will own the book and I get payment for it. I got an upfront payment and I get royalty payments for it. So when you deal with a publisher, I don't know what the big concern is because you're gonna— they're gonna own it at the end of the day. If you're doing self-publishing, I don't know, I don't know what the, the laws are around that. Like, if you publish a book and then somebody else comes and takes it word for word and publishes it themselves, I'm assuming there's some copyright laws around that, but you want to talk to a lawyer about it. The legalities around it are pretty new to me, and I'm really only familiar with the, with the published route from a legal point of view. I don't pretend to be a lawyer, I don't act like a lawyer on TV, and I just speak of what I know. So, I mean, end of the day, if you're really worried about it, go talk to a lawyer, go get their feedback, see what they think, and take it from there. Tamara Weeks, super fan, love you Tam. Oh, that kind of rhymes. Super fan, love you Tam. That was a fun video to watch. Love seeing Nina and Hayden. You two always make me smile. They make me smile too, Tam. I like hearing how you hire people and how you explain working for a company to gain experience, and when they aren't teaching you anything, you go full-time into your business. So what happened with the logo on page 43 of your book? Okay, a while ago I talked about the logos being cut out of a— out of my book. They didn't want to have pictures at all in the book, and I'm fighting for some of them. At the end of the day, I didn't really care so much about the logos. One page in the book talks about— I'm giving a little bit of secret away— one page in book comes and talks about helping you create a logo for your company. And what I love doing is modeling success, and I talk about the stories behind some iconic logos and give you lessons on how you can learn from them to apply it to your business and your logo creation and having a logo that has something that's powerful and meaningful to you. They didn't want to have pictures in the book and they didn't want to deal with the rights issues if you included logos from certain brands. And for me, it wasn't, it wasn't a battle worth fighting. You know, there are 3 things that I am insanely adamant about that I am fighting every day on to make sure it gets, you know, gets included in the book because it means a lot to me. And, you know, logos on page 43, I don't really care that much. The solution is going to be I'm going to put it off on my website. And we'll put a link from the book to the website, so the content's still gonna be there. They actually wanted to cut the logo page from the book, which was not cool because I love that page, uh, the test audience loved that page. And back to the topic of testing, because the test audience loved that page, I had data to show the publishers like, we cannot cut this page, people love it, there's a lot of great value on here, we gotta keep it in. And so the compromise was take out the pictures, put it on your website, but keep the written content. Which, you know, it's a bit of a bummer, but it's not a huge deal. I was just honestly, when I was ranting about that, just tired of the BS excuses, right? Like, that's not the real reason why you don't want to— like, nobody's gonna not buy the book because there's a logo on page 43, right? So that was why I was upset, because that was the excuse I was given, and there's always a real reason behind the excuse. Cam Jones, can't wait for your book, man, very excited. Thank you, Cam, I'm excited too. Amanda, I think people sometimes hit and run because they don't have a support system. Can you address how to self-motivate from within and how to finish what you started on your own belief? Cheers. That's a super tough question. I think it's hard to be motivated as an entrepreneur all the time. I think we look at stories of successful entrepreneurs and we wanna be like those people. And we don't realize how hard it really, really, really is until you actually get into starting a business. I think most important is that you are insanely in love with what you do. You know, I do this because I love doing this. This is a Friday night, 10:30. You know, what are you doing on 10:30 on Friday night? I'm making videos for my YouTube channel. You know, like, I love this. I love the process, not just the outcome. I love helping people. I love answering your questions. And when you love what you do and you can get lost in it, you know, when your work can make you feel happy, when, when you're depressed at things and you can bury yourself in your creations, in your art, and that makes you come alive, that's a powerful thing. And, and if you don't love what you do, then you will quit. You will give up once it gets hard. You have to be crazy in love with what you're doing to want to keep going. I feel like I should be yelling my way through this, but I'm concerned about hating waking up. The second thing is having, having some kind of support system. And I really, you know, when you say support system, I really lump that in their environment. So it's great to have friends who support you. If not, then go find a mastermind group. What videos do you watch in the morning to give you ideas and keep you motivated? I used to watch— I used to read a page from a book every morning that had stories of famous entrepreneurs, and just reading their stories made me feel like, you know, these guys could do it, so I can do it. And it also gave me— so it gave me the motivation, but it also gave me some strategies of what I could do to grow my company. I wanted to make that video, so that's why I have the Enespresso series and the Top 10 series. And the leaders that I'm training, I'm part of the leadership training for them, is you need to watch the Top 10 videos every day. Like, you need to surround yourself with greatness. You need to be around these great people, even if you never meet them ever in your life. You need to learn from them to help push you beyond your comfort zone and help keep you motivated to go off and do something great. So I think those two things really help. Find something that you love so insanely much that you want to do it every day. You would do it if you weren't getting paid, because you won't get paid at the start for a while. And two, create that environment that fosters you to want to go out and do great things every day. Alex, I believe you've inspired everyone in your orbit. You're destined for greatness. I need you by my side for my 20-year dream. Thankfully, Mr. Zak. I'm already here, bro. I'm already here. I'm answering your questions. I'm making videos. I'm by your side. Let's do it. Next 20 years. Olaf, is it only me? Each time you talk about your editor agency, I get the impression you regret having chosen them for your book project. That's an interesting question. Thank you, Olaf. I think when I make these videos it can often turn into a rant session. There are definitely a lot of frustrating parts of dealing with a publisher and dealing with an agent and an editor. I'm facing most of that right now. I don't regret it though. I don't want to self-publish this book. I believe that the publisher that I'm with, the options that we had, is the best one to go with. I think like in any relationship there are times that get tough, right? If you have a partnership, if you have a spouse or a girlfriend, there's gonna be times where it gets really tough. And I think when you come from different places, it makes it even harder. I want to create something that will be great. I wanna create something that will make history. I wanna create something that people will proudly put on their bookshelf, will read every single year as a refresher, will gift to their parents because it had such an impact on them. That's what I want to create. You know, I get frustrated when I'm working with people who don't share that same vision, who want to, you know, they'll say they want to create something great, but they don't actually believe it. And just the standards aren't as high as my standards. I guess the video becomes a place to vent for me, and I will vent internally also about entrepreneurs I'm working with or people on my team. If they're not getting to the place where I want them to be, I either need to shift their mindset or it's on me too to make myself work harder to get them to where I know they can be. There's nothing more frustrating. If you look at, you know, believe is my one word. There's nothing more frustrating than believing somebody can be somewhere and they don't see it in themselves and they're reluctant to want to take the steps to get there where it's so clear for you where they could be. But I don't regret making a decision at all. 100%, no regret. Um, I think I made the right decision. Super excited and happy about it. These are just some of the roadblocks that you face, uh, as you build the business and as you write a book. And the idea of making this series was to show people kind of behind the scenes of what goes on from an author's perspective. Maybe they, if they made their own video, they'd be like, "Oh, Evan making us do these things. He doesn't understand the publishing industry." You know, maybe they, I'm sure they have their own vents and frustrations with me, but I don't think they regret making a decision to work with me either. So yeah, I thank you for allowing me to expand on that because it's definitely something that I am extremely grateful for and extremely excited about, even though I I vent, and I vent to try to encourage you guys, right, to when you're faced with these things in your life, when people give you BS answers or people don't have high standards or where people don't see your vision, to do something about it, to stand up, right? I stand up. I take a stand on things that I want to see happen, and I will pull people kicking and screaming with me to go achieve my vision if need be. Or I'll be an army of one and just make it happen. And so that's the point of kind of getting passionate, excited, because it's not just a frustration that I'm feeling. I feel it on behalf of you guys, and I feel like you're going through some of these same things, and you may not have anybody kind of helping you along on that path. And I want to turn up to help you stand up for yourself. So that's where the, the passion and excitement comes from, because I want to see you guys build something special. Okay, next. Visionary. Just a question that has been stuck in my mind. Should you pursue what you love to do or pursue something that helps people. I guess what I'm saying is be you or be the hero. And my answer there is easy, be both. Like, that's where the genius is. Embrace the and. We have a whole series on the and. The greatest opportunity for you, and I talked about this earlier even on this episode, is the intersection of what you love doing with what helps people. Often what you have to do is, you know, what you love doing is the big picture, is the vision. You know, this is where you want to— this is the kind of company you want to build, is the impact you want to have. And then how you help people can, can change and often needs to change. Often solving a problem for yourself, there's a lot of people who have the same problem and you can help them too, but you may need to tweak it a little bit. You may need to make some market adjustments, but be yourself and be the hero, right? Like, those are not opposites in my mind. You are the hero. You are the best hero when you're being yourself and you're being true to what you're passionate about. I don't think you are really a hero if you're doing things that you're not excited about. You can rise a little bit, you can like chase an opportunity that will last for a little bit of time, but if you want long-lasting, mega impactful success, it's gonna come only when you absolutely love what you do and you're providing value. And when you figure that out, that intersection, that's the big time, baby. Next. Yusuf, the audio is stuttering. Can you please kindly re-upload it? Yeah, I hear you guys. A lot of you— I know Yusuf, thank you. Michael wrote in, a couple of you guys wrote in about the audio. I, I usually record these with Blab recently, and Blab has just been causing some issues. I didn't notice it till I was already done. That was the second time I recorded. The first time it lost my recording completely. Christina, my video editor, kindly asked me not to record on Blab this week, but to record using my camera. So here we are. Zaino, you may not like it, but at times I'd like to see you being upset. That's when you show your heart and passion even more than usually. It's interesting because I'm not really an upset guy that much. I feel like I get upset on behalf of others more than I'll get upset for myself. And I think a lot of that is reflected in these videos. When I, when I turn up about something It's because I don't want to see the people watching you guys, I don't wanna see you guys make mistakes. A lot of what I talk about is from mistakes that I made, and I don't regret mistakes that I made because I feel like they've gotten me to where I am now. But if I can help you guys not make the same mistakes and learn from success and learn from failure and get there faster, that's awesome for me. And quite often to do that, you need to turn up. At least for me, my style is more to turn up than to like, be calm and sedated. I'm not necessarily like the Zen master, quiet, you know, wisdom guy. I like passion. Passion is my fire. Passion is my secret weapon. And but I think in really kind of digging deeper and understanding that is more for you guys, you know, I care a lot about you being successful and you making a change in your life, and the best way that I'm able to do that, to express that, is to turn up and get upset. But this is a different vibe today because Hayden's asleep, and so we're chilling together, for me on a Friday night. Next question. Emeka. What would you say about a boss that doesn't give a damn about your best? I say you need a new boss. I say you need a new boss. If you have a boss who doesn't care about you, who doesn't care about your best, who doesn't care about your growth, doesn't care about your development, doesn't look for opportunities for you, doesn't set you up for success, that's a bad boss. Uh, something that I'm going through helping and mentoring an entrepreneur close to me. If you're working for a leader that does not really see you as someone important, that does not try to train you and educate you and make you the best version of yourself and, and try to see you as someone greater than yourself, right? Like, you have a limited view. We all have limited views of ourselves. You want to be around people who push you, who see more in you than you see in yourself, who say, "I think you could deliver that speech at that event next month," and you're sitting there saying, "Are you kidding me? I don't want to speak in front of people. I've never done that." You know, all these fears that set in, but the fact that somebody else believes in you and is pushing you to do that at least once, at least to try, is something that you need in your life. Like, we need people to push us, and if you have a boss that doesn't care about you and is not pushing you, then go find a new boss or be your own boss. Like, there's tons of bosses. The reason to take a job is to learn. The reason to have a boss is to learn. So if you're not learning, go find a new boss immediately, because you don't need to wake up and drive to another job that you hate for another day. Go find a job where you're gonna learn something. E Cookie: Hey Evan, I'm as motivated internally as I am externally, but I'm having a hard time keeping my work ethic consistent. "Could you help me with some advice on how not to slip back into the dark side?" That's an interesting one for me. I divide my work into kind of two chunks. I think one, it's super important to have a schedule and have days to do different things. So for me, I record most of my videos on a Wednesday, as an example. On Thursdays, I do my public-facing days. I do my Hangouts, I do my calls, I do my meetings. On Tuesday, I do my book-related stuff. Every day of the week has its own thing and its own time slot, and so it helps keep me productive and make sure that I'm doing the things that I need to do. That being said, so like the schedule's super important, but that being said, you can only force yourself to do something that you don't enjoy for so long. You can only force yourself to stick to a diet that you don't really like for so long. You can only drink water and tea for so long, right? You can only do work that you hate and force yourself for so long before you'll break it and want to go do something else. If you're constantly struggling with this, yes, a schedule may help. This is what most people do. They default to schedule. They default to tools. "What tools can I use to keep me more efficient or keep me back on track?" They download 1,000 different apps and to-do list kind of tools. I tried Outlook and Gmail and my calendar and all these different things and Evernote and CRMs and like, and nothing's working. And they want the next tool. And really the reality for those people, if that's you, is that the tool will not save you. It's that your work is boring. The stuff you're doing is just not exciting to you. You know, there are days when you are working on something that you're excited that you can just get lost in, right? Like you start, you wake up, you're so excited. Like maybe you wake up early because you were so excited thinking about it. And then you're working the whole day and you look up and it's like 6 o'clock at night, like, what happened? Where did the day go? And you just want to keep on working where you can just get lost, not because you're being forced to do it by a deadline or a customer or something, but like you just love what you're doing. You love the creation of what you're doing. You want to try to do that as much as possible. And not every day is going to be amazing, and not every day you're going to get lost in your work. And I get that. But if you're doing work that you hate and you need to constantly motivate yourself to do, then chances are you're not doing a lot of the work that you should be doing. Your work is just too boring. And so if that's you every day, you could try the tools, but stop blaming the tools. If this is constantly happening to you, you're just doing stuff that you're not excited by. So change it immediately. Last question from Doug. Really looking forward to this. When are you going to reveal the name of the book if you haven't already? I haven't yet. I have to talk to my publisher to see what the deal is about that. Most authors, when they're creating a book, don't do this behind-the-scenes kind of stuff and share a lot before it comes out. So we're looking at a December 6th release, I believe, and so I don't know when I'm supposed to or when I'm able to be able to tell the book and do some pre-marketing. My head is almost in the marketing side. Right now we're just finishing up, as I said, the testing the titles, people signing off on everything, the proofreading, editing, all of that stuff that I'm not super excited about, the kind of boring stuff for me, but it has to get done. And then once that's done, we get into marketing mode. And so I'll be able to answer all your marketing questions and release the book title and what it's all about. And I'm, I'm so itching to get into that phase right now. So itching. So as soon as, as soon as kind of we've signed off on that, I'm gonna have a conversation with publisher, let them know, hey, the people want to know. The people want to know what this book's about. We're like how many, how many weeks in? 40-something weeks in a video and we still don't know what the title is or the topic of the book. So thank you guys for your patience. It's coming soon, I promise. And as soon as I'm able to, I will let you know. It's awesome. Thank you guys for all the questions. I'd love to know your thoughts on the topic at the top, which was about testing. Are you running enough tests? What are the tests that you're running right now? How can you run a new test every single week for your business? If you need help coming up with test ideas, leave it in the comments and Believe Nation will step up and give you some ideas. I'd also— if you have questions about my book, the book writing process, anything book related, leave it below and I'll answer it in next week's video. Thank you guys so much for watching. I know this is coming out on a Monday, but for me it's Friday. So I hope you have had a great weekend then and have a great week ahead. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.