The ONE Skill That Scaled Mindvalley to $140M – Vishen Lakhiani’s Secret

I got into meditation, and I mean seriously, deeply into meditation. Primarily the Silver Method. I got the license to sell it, and I rapidly became the number one affiliate for the Silver Method. Soon I was responsible for 90% of their sales. Why? Because I got good at one thing. Before we had the number one and the number three long form ad on YouTube, we released 42 different ads that failed. The lesson I wanted you guys to get there is that you only have to get good at one thing.

So me and. Me and Vishen, we go way back. Back in 2000, 2008, on Necker island with Branson. And then, you know, I think I spoke at your awesomeness fest in 2010. And during that period of time, you've built up one heck of a company. He's got a. So me and Shree were in Malaysia for three weeks. First time I've ever been to Malaysia. That's where your headquarters are. So I went and saw your office up there, which is really cool.

And I'm so impressed. You're dating a Malaysian, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes me so happy because he used to make fun of me for my accent. I mean, but I love that you. Joe's been a mentor of mine since 2008.

Yeah, you're great. And we had a dinner at your house with your parents, which is super cool. And then we were talking about some things that I was like, man, what we're talking about would be so damn valuable for all my genius network members to hear. So I wanted you to come and just have a conversation about it and talk about it, because you're doing some pretty cool stuff. His company last year did 140 million in revenue. So he's got a real successful company. And, you know, let's talk about the journey. I mean, Mindvalley is your company. Give everyone a quick version of what is mindvalley. What do you guys do?

So I graduated from the University of Michigan, right? And I realized I hated what I studied. I hated engineering. And so I was kind of failing through life trying to figure out what to do. And I came across this Internet marketing course by a guy called Corey Ruddle. Anyone remember Corey Ruddle? He was one of the original Internet marketers, right? And what I read in this $2,000 binder changed my life. So I understood the importance of digital marketing. And the first thing I decided to do was really go deep with Google AdWords and I tried to sell an ebook on how to sell used cars. So that was my first experiment. Completely bombed. And then I got into meditation. And I mean seriously, deeply into meditation. Primarily the Silver Method. Anyone here done the Silver Method? It's like. So the Silver Method is really interesting because when you think about meditation, you think meditation from India or the East. No, The Silver Method was invented in Laredo, Texas, on the border of Texas and Mexico. It is the Taco Bell of meditation. It's Tex Mex meditation, but it's so freaking effective. And it rebirthed the American personal growth movement. So it changed my life. I was studying it as a kid in Malaysia through Jose Silva's books. I got the license to sell it, and I rapidly became the number one affiliate for the Silver Method. Soon I was responsible for 90% of their sales. Why? Because I got good at one thing. Google AdWords, right? So from there, I kept growing and growing and growing, figuring out new skills I could learn. I studied Yannick Silver, I studied Frank Kern, I studied Jeff Walker, I studied John Reese. I'm sure you guys know those names because many of you who are close to my age, 48, probably learned from these men, right? So these guys became my mentors. And one day I read an article about Jannik Silver. And Jannik Silver was organizing this trip to Necker island. And it was on that trip that I met Joe. And of course, I signed up for the 25k group. And this is why I'm serious when I say Joe has been a mentor of mine for many years. But I think the lesson I wanted you guys to get there is that you only have to get good at one thing. And basically, like investing in the courses from these incredible gentlemen completely transformed my Life. So scaled Mindvalley to about 140 million in revenue. And at one point, I was looking for venture capital. And then I realized something. You don't need VC money. And I realized that when I was at Summit Series with Mike Koenigs. Where's Mike? And so Mike did something really ballsy at Summit Series. I don't know if you remember this, Mike. It was 2010 at Summit Series, and this guy got up to speak about how he had built one of America's biggest ed tech companies and how he had to go through multiple rounds of raising capital. And Knicks got up, and Knicks said, by the way, how much of your company do you own? And the guy goes, 1.5%. And Koenig said, I would not do that. Why would you do that? So you're talking about how you have a billion dollar company, but you own less than 2% of that company. Why would anyone do that? And this was a real shock to that room that was made up of Silicon Valley types. And you gave me a realization that day, Koenig. So thanks to you, I probably screwed up all of my investor pitches because I realized if you learn this one thing, digital marketing, which I learned from 25k, you don't need other people's money. You can make your own money. And it takes you as much effort to master digital marketing, be it AdWords or VSL or webinars, as it takes you to nail your pitch. And So I scaled mindvalue to 140 million in revenue just yesterday. I'm really happy because I was featured on CBS News Primetime Breaking news on one of the most important news days to talk about how the mindvalley app was been officially selected by Apple to be installed in 2 million iPhone 16s across the world. But it all came from these lessons of just plowing at it and going deep into these marketing lessons.

Awesome. Wow. So I've got some questions. I'll go off script a little bit, but how do you see marketing evolving in the next five years, especially in personal development, you know, with AI, which I know you guys are doing a ton of. And what should entrepreneurs focus on to basically be at the cutting edge of what works and what is not working?

Okay, so marketing is evolving really, really, really fast. Now I'm old school. Anyone remember Teleseminar Secrets from Alex Mendocian? Right. So, yeah, see, I see a lot of you guys, A lot of the guys I recognize in the room. Hey, Daniel. So another course I invested in was Alex's course, like Teleseminar Secrets. And actually, no, I'm lying. I didn't invest in it. It was too expensive. I grew up in Malaysia. I was a kid in Malaysia. Alex came to speak in Malaysia, not Singapore. I did wait for him at the toilet. I couldn't buy a ticket to his event, but I knew he was human and he would eventually need to pee. So I waited for him at the toilet. I didn't hand it him at the urinal. He's slightly exaggerating on that one. But I did hand him a joint venture proposal. Now he said no. Basically, I said, hey, listen, I'm really good at building websites. I'll build a website for you if you teach me this webinar thing. He said no, and I respect that. A few years later, I was speaking an event where Alex was attending. And Alex so graciously offered to teach my team webinars. He did four, four hours of training for my team over four weeks, four hours of training and all he did was show us how to do one thing. Webinars. That one thing. Double the revenue of our company in one month. Right. So eternally grateful to Alex and of course eternally grateful to you because through you I met so many experts, so many, you know, people like Randy Gahn, so many digital marketers through 25k. That really helped me grow and grow and grow. But it was a slow process. Just bit by bit by bit figuring out things and going really deep and getting good at them. Okay, so webinars, I've now done maybe half a billion in webinar sales. I picked one thing, learned from Alex when as deep as I could. I'm probably the second best person in the world for webinars right now. Number one is Jason Flatline. Right. But you got to pick one thing, go really deep. So with advertising, we don't know what is the next big thing. We don't know is it going to be AI clones as influencers, is it going to be a new service that Meta or Google are going to launch? But I can tell you this, whatever is that new thing, if you jump on it and you go really deep in mastery, you're going to be able to win. I jumped on Google AdWords when Google AdWords was extremely new. I got so good at it. I wrote a PDF on Google AdWords like literally a white paper. Just became super good at one thing. And I stayed with Google AdWords for about 5 years, made a lot of money from Google AdWords until everyone else got on it and it became irrelevant. So whatever that one thing is, it's hard to predict. But if you are paying attention to, you focus on that one thing. You hire the best mentors, be it the next Alex Mendocin or the next Joe Polish. And you, you really fine tuned that. I think that could be a pathway to success.

You still keep calling me Polish after all these years, but I can't say no. We were going through Lakiani and he's like, no, no, it's. I'm like, okay, at least both of us don't know how to pronounce each other's name. How many? 16 years later.

So I learned to read in a different language. So I frequently mispronounce English words. People make fun of me for this all the time.

Oh, I only know how to speak English and I continually mispronounce English. So I mean, yeah, there's nothing wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that have not just cost you money, but have just either nearly ended the company, have caused you tremendous amount of angst and grief, because certainly you have had a hell of a journey. I know a lot about it. So keep mind sharing some of the things that would be instructional for people to do or not do.

Okay. In any specific field.

Yeah, just. Yeah.

Okay. Putting out crappy products. Right. Sometimes there have been situations in the past as well where we looked at creating a product for the sake of immediate revenue, launch revenue, and I've learned that that is just not the way to do it. So right now, we're obsessed with, like, the quality of the product. It's why our app is in the Apple Store and we spend. We have a saying in our company, if it is an art, don't release it. So everything we touch, whether it's an event, it's an app, it's the COVID of a meditation audio, it has to go through really, really, really great fine tuning to be aesthetically pleasing. Now, that is harder than it sounds. And we couldn't get there immediately. It took a while. But as we kept focusing on that, the design, the packaging, for example. Okay. We just launched a supplement line, mindvalley states. If you go to minevalleystates.com you will see the visuals, the design, how even the packaging of the supplement is so different from most supplements out there. If it isn't art, we will not release it. So this artist ethos.

This is a weird mic thing keeps.

So this. This. This artist ethos.

Yeah, we might need the mic gods to come out. And I think there's something in the back here that needs to be attached.

Sorry.

Can we get. Get him a handheld? We have one right here. Can we get them at handheld?

Something broke.

Yeah, just use this.

Okay, great.

Thank you. Is that okay? Can you guys hear okay? Sorry about that.

Yeah. And then because of. Because it's art, we focus on measuring NPS score. So if Something cannot hit a 50 NPS, we kill it. And then when you're building stuff that's at. What happens is that you are also looking at word of mouth. And word of mouth is really the best way to get a product out. Right. So to really move towards quality, we were spending 40, 50% of our revenue on advertising. But that's a sign that you don't have a good product. So we decided to go for what is a fairly good benchmark. We measured this religiously. 30%. So if you're doing 100 million in revenue, you get to spend 30 million a year in advertising. Not allowed to go beyond. And we call that our marketing efficiency ratio, our MER. So 70% is non ads. Sorry. 30% of your marketing of your revenue is put back into advertising. Never go beyond that 30%. Otherwise what happens is that you're training your company to get hooked on ads. And this is what so many of us do, because so many of us come from direct marketing roots who are really competent in that field. But what you want to do is you also want to get really good at building great products, all the way down to the packaging, the customer service, and all of that other stuff. And with the, you know, the world of AI right now, this is so much easier than it's ever been before.

Yeah, that's like that conversation that with Steve Jobs and Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, where Steve Jobs told him in a conversation, you just, you guys create too much shit. Quit creating shit products. Yeah. And so what about teams? So how big is your team right now?

Okay, so I used to have a fantasy, a goal of having a big office employing a thousand people. That's no longer the goal right now. I think that is stupid. That's limiting your freedom. I've actually been selectively shrinking my team. So we used to be 400 people. Now we are 330 people, of which 80 are contractors and then the rest are around 2. What's the math? Like 250 or so are employees. Right? And it's getting smaller. We've been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking our team because of AI. Last year, we increased revenue per employee by 40% and we shrank the team by about 20%. The secret to increasing revenue per employee by 40%. I told my team, before you want to hire, if you feel there's too much workload before you want to hire, I want you to ask yourself these four questions. And it's an abbreviation, asst. Assist. The first is can automation do it better? Right. So if you can find an automation tool to do what you're doing better, use that automation tool. So for example, my partner Iman, who's over there, she runs an AI company called Workable AI. Workable automates your social media. So if you need blog posts, you need Instagram Captions, you need YouTube scripts, it just uses a whole range of different high technology LLMs and it does a really great job and it automates it. Something like that cuts the need for a social media team by about 50, 60%. So automation. Now the second S is simplicity. So we asked the team, look at everything that you have on your table and ask yourself every quarter, what are the bottom 20% of things which are not worth doing? Now, this just does two things. Number one, it causes your team to really examine their work and not continue doing bullshit work. Number two, it causes them to really have to understand the output of their work. If they are running a particular campaign or if they're doing something for the customer, how do they know that it's the bottom 20% versus the top 20%? They must be measuring something. So everything has to be measurable. Every quarter, you gotta cut out the bottom 20%. Okay, so that's simplicity. The third one is systems. Can you create systems processes to make what you're doing easier? So for example, in terms of systems, we're a big fan of airtable. Anyone here uses airtable. So if you aren't using Airtable, definitely look into this software. So airtable is a kind of. It's like a cross between Google sheets, AI and a database. And if you use airtable, it causes you to think in terms of structure, in terms of efficiency, in terms of process, in the term is called computational thinking. It causes you to take any problem that you're facing in your company and break it down into individualized steps and then organize. And of course it allows you to create these beautiful, elegant processes. It's really hard to convey Airtable from a stage without showing it to you. But just go to their website, I'm not affiliated with it, and play around with it. And Airtable has probably saved me, has probably helped us cut down our workforce by 20%. So McKinsey Group said 20% of any knowledge workers, time is lost looking for information, just searching for information that you don't know where it is. Airtable allows you to organize your information in really beautiful ways. You can, and then pull that information back up. So for example, with airtable, I'm able to take everything in my head as a CEO and stick it into a data structure and then deploy an AI on top of that data structure to help my team make decisions. So if my team decides they want to do an event, and the event is going to be say, focused on fitness for women, and they want to know, okay, who are female fitness teachers in the field of nutrition that they can book on stage, who happen to be in the vicinity of Europe, they can go into our airtable database and see 14 years of history. Every single teacher we have published or had on our podcast or put on stage, the exact category the teacher has spoken in, the gender of the teacher, the location of the teacher. Pull all of that up in one minute. And so by putting everything in airtable and organizing your data, it's like taking your brain and putting your brain in an accessible data structure that your team can then access. Okay, so this is called systemization. So a lot of people think, oh, it's just I put your brain in AI. No, 85% of any AI problem is not the AI, it's the data that you're feeding into AI. So 85% of any AI based solution, it's getting the data organized. Airtable helps you get that data organized. Now you then stick that data into any AI you want. It could be ChatGPT, it could be Claude. And this is when you can create systems to help run your entire company. So entire company is run by these algorithms, by, by, by, by these systems, by these data structures, thus making our people hyper effective. And that's how in one year we boosted revenue per employee by 40%. Okay, so again, I repeat, there is, there is automation. Can you find software to do the job better than a human being? Go for it. Then the second S is simplicity. What's the bottom? The bottom 20% that you're going to eliminate. Then the third S is systems. How can you structure your processes? And the tool I recommend is airtable. Once you get on Airtable, it's probably one of the greatest discoveries of my life. I just love it. We eliminated so much other software tools that we use because when you're on airtable, you don't need Monday.com, you don't need Asana, you don't need Trello. Everything is in one system. Now the final in the ass team abbreviation is training. Right. So rather than hire someone else, is there someone in the company that is looking forward to being trained to step up and maybe take this role? And so we look at that and so we selectively. We are so against hiring right now. All we want to do is make our team get more and more and more effective and make the company as operationally efficient as possible.

Yeah, that was really good. Did you find that valuable? Yes. I'm glad you popped up here because I was thinking that dangling mic all over the place is probably driving him.

Nuts and it was scratching my neck. Oh, thank you. It feels so much better.

We should have people give us massages while we're doing this too. That would just like. Yeah, a couple of midgets or something like that. You know, now, now that we have a new administration, we can be more offensive. I Think is what people. So.

But by the way, there's something I learned about Joe. Can I, can I share this?

Sure.

Okay, so I know what you're going to say, but yeah, so, so I, I, I was always amazed. I try to be a good learner. So now observe someone who's really good at what they do. I want to understand why. Right. So one of the things I loved about Joe, firstly, so super generous, super kind. You know, when I, when I met Joe, we were at an event in Vegas. And no, this was like we'd known each other for about a year, but not too well. And Joe was organizing a trip to Necker island. And I really wanted to go on that trip, but I didn't have the money. I didn't have 40 grand. And Joe was gracious enough to say, okay, there's a, we don't have any spots on the island, but if you're willing to put up 12 grand, you can sleep on the beach and still participate in all the activities. And I put down that 12 grand. I slept on a boat on the beach. But I gained so much inspiration from that network and that trip. As I observed Joe, I noticed that his foul language and his way of poking and making fun of you actually makes you feel so at ease with him. Right? And it was such. And I remember being in that room with you when Paula Abdul came and joined us. And even the way he, like, pokes fun, poked fun at Paula Abdul, it made her more relaxed because everyone else is sucking up to her. Everyone else, like, puts her on a pedestal. And Joe, just this, this, this weird humor you have helps you connect with people in such a beautiful way.

No, thank you. It actually does, because I think people really, you know, there's this air of fakeness and phoniness and, you know, life is hard. Life is difficult. And so whenever you can use humor to break the ice and to just make it to be more chummy with people, it just simply works.

Okay, now can I share the second thing I learned from Joe? Have you noticed how Joe uses his phone? Okay. He will immediately connect you with someone with a voice note or a video. Anyone seen that? Okay, now, you guys don't know this, but I learned that from Joe. And I now run my entire company that way. So I set foot in the office sometimes, maybe once every five months. Everything is done. I run my entire company. I don't use email. I don't use slack. I learned this strategy from Joe, and I've evolved it. And I run my entire company on WhatsApp using this strategy and it's hyper efficient. And I got all my executives doing it and it buys us time. What I didn't realize, and I don't think even Joe knew he was doing this, but this is a format of communication called OODA looping. Has anyone heard of OODA looping? Okay, so raise your hand if you have, because this is crazy, guys, I'm so excited to share it with you. May I? Yeah. Okay. I'm not.

No, no, that's great.

So I learned about OODA looping at Singularity University. We were part of the XPRIZE Foundation. We went there and they had various professors, lecturers, teaching us all of these different concepts for productivity. And when the guy started talking about OODA looping, all the most brilliant people in the room stood up and listened. Larry Page was there, Ray Kurzweil, the VP of technology of Google. They were all on their phones, barely paying attention. When the topic got to OODA looping, everyone was alert. I literally have a picture of OODA loop on the screen with Larry Page and Ray Kurzweil there. So what was special about this OODA looping? OODA is a concept introduced to management theory by a US army colonel called John Boyd. So he was an Air Force colonel, and John Boyd noticed something. The Air Force pilots that were shooting down the most enemy planes were also the top guns that were wasting the more bullets. Now this sounds counterintuitive, right? Because if you're a top gun, we think you're going to be all Tom Cruise like and accurate. But it turns out the guys who are more accurate were worse fighter pilots. The guys who were wasting more bullets were better fighter pilots. Because in a war, what do you care about more downed enemy planes or saving bullets? So John Boyd explained it this way. A good fighter pilot observes. That's the first O in uda. Observes the landscape. Orients. Okay? That's where the enemy is. The decides an act. Ooda. Observe Orient. Decide. Act. Observe Orient. Decide. Act. Fighter pilots that were more precise, who had a higher accuracy rate, had slower. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. Loops. Fighter pilots that were wasting bullets were doing it very rapidly. Observe, Orient. The site. Act. Observe Orient. The site. Act. OODA. OODA. OODO. They were doing it very rapidly, wasting so many bullets, but in the end, downing more, more enemy jets. Now, the same thing applies to business. The faster you can make a decision, the faster you get into the enemy's decision loop and you out innovate the enemy. So this is what we did. First thing I did is I took Joe's concept of these fast WhatsApps and I told my team, listen, you guys can use email. I want everyone moving to Slack because Slack is faster than email. Use email only if you need to send a memo or something, you know, something long out or something legal. And I said, and by the way, I'm not even going to be in the Slack group. I don't want to micromanage. If you need me for anything, you WhatsApp me. And I respond to my team with an audio note or a voice note really rapidly. For example, two people came up to me earlier for lunch and they said, hey Vishen, I'd love to know, how do we get on mindvalley? This is the product I do. I open up my WhatsApp, I get them to record a one minute video and it's going straight to five people in my team who are responsible for author selection. They'll follow up. My job is done. I don't schedule meetings. OODA prevents meetings. So one of my partner business partners is John Butcher. I actually met John at this event in 2017. Okay, so that was. By the way, this is a great case study for Genius Network.

I mean it was before then.

Before then, yeah. But we became business partners when we had a discussion here in 2017 and we've gone on to do 50 million in sales together with Mindvalley Lifebook. John and I used to schedule a one hour call every week. And he lives in Hawaii, I live in Malaysia. These calls were brutal. It was so hard to get the time zone selected. So I said, John, you know what if rather than we do these calls, whenever you have an idea you need to convey to me, leave me a WhatsApp message and I'll do the same. Now I timed it. We went from one hour scheduled meetings and sometimes that was 10pm my time to 17 minutes a week of WhatsApp notes. So we basically saved 43 minutes. But we were also making faster decisions. We didn't have to wait for our weekly Thursday meeting. We killed the meeting. We just make fast decisions on WhatsApp. That's OODA now. So the first key thing is this. Screw meetings. Like I rarely am in meetings anymore. I can travel around the world. I don't have to set foot in the office because all decisions are made in rapid, fast cycles on WhatsApp. And so my schedule completely cleaned up. This gave me, this could transform my life, guys. It gave me more time for exercise, more time for health, more time with my kids, more time to read, more time to study more time to travel. I now live a completely life than I did when I was a CEO in an office with 200 people because of OODA. But there's another really interesting thing that you got to do. You got to accept this act when you're 90% right. Okay, so you guys know split testing, right? Copywriting, split testing. You're testing two headlines to get to 90% statistical significance. You can probably do it in five days, depending on your traffic, to get to 99%. You want to be really, really, really sure. It could take you five months. Good copywriters don't wait five months. If they know there's a 90% chance you're right, boom, they act on it. We do the same thing for business. So why do I need a long meeting to decide if I'm going to publish an author? Because I want to be 99% right. But when I toss that away and I accept the fact that 1 in 10 authors I sign are going to be a mistake, 1 in 10 new app features I choose to build is going to be a mistake. I'm able to make decisions faster. And then I use the ooda moment and WhatsApp. And this allows us to innovate like crazy. This is why our app is in the Apple Store. This is why our. We just launched an app for Microsoft integrated with Microsoft Team and Microsoft AI. It's one of 50 apps in the world that Microsoft selected. We're able to get all of these wins because we are making decisions crazy, epically fast because we are not looking to be anything less than 90% sure. So this liberates my teams. No reason for like long, crazy meetings. I ask my team, you want to do this? Are you 90% sure? They say, great, do it. And so when you embrace these principles, what happens is you create a really different type of organization. Rapid decision making, rapid movement. No unnecessary meetings. And for the founder, if you guys are the founder, freedom. And that's such a refreshing thing. So Joe inspired that when I observed how he was using his phone to do rapid introductions.

No, thank you. Thank you. That is great. And you know, the reason that I do everything quickly is because for good or bad, I navigate a tremendous amount of relationships. So the method was I had to figure out a more effective way to do it because there'd be no, you know, the Dunbar's law or whatever that is, where you can have like 150, you know, key relationships. I mean, I manage hundreds of relationships. I mean, in my iPhone, there's probably close to 8,000 people that I. Wow, that's impressive. And I can remember most of them. Yeah. As I get older, though, I'm starting to forget stuff now, which is really, really weird. But that could be. You know, there's a point where I think you hit the limit where you're like, all right. The brain's like, you know, but that's awesome. So can I ask you about culture?

Yeah, go ahead.

So built. So you have the technology. We've seen the effectiveness of that. How do you get your team so engaged? What is your method of creating this?

So, so Peter Drucker famously said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Right? What I've come to understand is that I over invested in culture. Culture is less important than I thought. And in fact, a lot of my mistakes was over investing in culture. Let me give you an example. We built an office in Malaysia that made Inc magazine top 10 most beautiful offices in the world. This office is a sight to behold. If you check out my Instagram, I just did a video of it. But if you go to the office right now, it's empty. Why? Because everyone wants to work from home. Nobody gives a shit about having one of the most beautiful offices in the world.

And I've been to the office. It's freaking cool.

Yeah. Here's what we do know. And we learned this the hard way. I wish I'd known this sooner. Working from home is a huge competitive advantage, but you got to combine some of these things together, right? So on LinkedIn, my COO just sent me this data. Only 10% of the job offers on LinkedIn right now allow working from home. 46% of job applicants on LinkedIn are looking for work from home. So we decided to shift. I was so attached to my office. I mean, imagine having one of the most beautiful offices in the world and then being able to say, you know, fuck it, we're just gonna be a work from home company. We did that, and it accelerated the company like crazy. Here's why. Because now we are one of those 10% of companies that offer work from home that we are getting almost half of of all of LinkedIn's applicants. So now we're able to hire all of these genius people who for some reason or the other, do not want to show up in the office. So I have this killer team. For example, my chief Product officer just came back from speaking to the Pope about AI. He just won five awards at ces. He has five magazines and five inventions in Time magazine. He has a song coming out this month with Snoop Dogg and Idris Alba. He's my chief product officer. Why? Because he has that freedom, right? He can work from home. And I also give him freedom to work on all of these other projects. So I find smart people and I'm like, okay, be part of our team. You choose your own working hours. I trust you. You can have side gigs. I just want you to really crush it at Mindvalley and I'll give you recognition. And that's how I get many incredible, many incredible people on my team. I have a young girl from Iraq who does videography on my team. On the side, she's making award winning documentaries, but she still wants to be part of a team. So work from home has been incredible. More important than any BS cultural thing, you know, such as education, perks. People just want their freedom. So Daniel Pink, okay, he wrote several books on really elevating employees. And he said, you want to make your employees really love your company, give them morning autonomy. So most of us, our lives are so shackled up by our work. You got to be up at 9, cut through traffic, skip your gym, skip time with your kids. So you have to show up at 9:45 for your Damn, like early morning huddle. We don't do things like that. We give our employees morning autonomy. I tell them we're going to move our huddle to 2.30pm no rush, take your time in the morning. Need to see. Need to make a good breakfast for your kid? No worries. Need to work out in the gym, need to meditate, go do that. And people told me I was mad, but that actually creates this incredible amount of loyalty. And so freedom is one of the core values that we give our employees. And the side effect is I have crazy freedom right now. Like, I am probably one of the most free CEOs of a company our size that I know because I'm not bound to any shackles. I choose my own hours as my employees do. I get to work from home as my employees do. But we make, but we innovate like crazy. We get incredible results, whether it's our advertising team or our technology team because of OODA looping and because of these other principles. So the ASSD model, that's unique to us, the ASSD model also ensures that we're not outlandishly growing our team and we're being really focused on revenue per employee.

Yeah. And I think what's key about what you're saying too, because I think a lot of people could hear this and be like, yes, that's exactly what we're going to do no more meetings, never have time in the morning. But you have to have really talented people that can build this stuff and make it all work. And if you don't, that would be very difficult because I've watched Elon Musk's interviews about working and he's like, someone's got to build shit. You can't build a Tesla from home, you know.

Right.

That sort of thing. And so I, you know, I've really looked at the pros and cons in different ways to observe.

I mean, it depends on the business. Right?

Yeah.

So if you're manufacturing, obviously you have a factory floor, people have to be there. But if you're doing stuff that's digital, it's not necessarily true. And this idea that employees are less, less productive when they're working from home, I don't know how true that is. We've not seen it.

Yeah, yeah. No. You know, it's funny to mention Elon. So we were you at. We were at one Elon Musk.

We were at SpaceX.

Yeah, we went to SpaceX. I've been there twice. Two meetings with Elon Musk and just small group of people. And you had asked him what is the biggest contributor to your success? And Elon is kind of an awkward dude. You know, he's got way better speaking then back then. And he said, I can tolerate. I think he said, I can tolerate.

He said I have a high tolerance for pain. Entrepreneurship can be. Is like crawling into an abyss of darkness and chewing glass.

Yeah, he said, I can tolerate more pain than almost anyone I know.

Right.

Which is quite fascinating.

And.

Yeah.

Right. And I mean, God bless Elon. I think, I think Elon's a great gift to the world. I don't want that. I just. I want to enjoy life. So I have different rules as to how I do it.

No, no, totally, totally. This is great. All right, so for the time we have left available with all the courses, all the training, all the personal development, everything. Mindvalley right now. And for Genius Network members, I talked with him backstage about this. If you are a Genius Network member, you're going to give. You'll send me access to figure out how we get it to everyone. A free membership in mindvalley. So what is that? What does that.

Okay, so a membership on the. So mindvalley has many different divisions to it, but a membership on our app. This is the app that Apple has installed as a demo app in all new iPhone 16s in Apple stores. So it gives you access to over 100 of the world's most incredible programs in every aspect of making you a better human. For example, where's Vern Harnish? Right, so Verne has a program on scaling your business to a million. This is for beginner entrepreneurs. That program is on there. At the same time we have a program by Mickey Agrawal, the award winning entrepreneur on how to scale to 100 million. At the same time we have Jim Kwik's memory program and speed reading program, the best speed reading program in the world. We have all of these different unique programs from a variety of world class authors. And these programs are based on microlearning. So even Silver Method, the program is on mindvalley and in 20 minutes a day you can, you can basically advance just about any aspect of your life. The newest program I think is of particular interest to many people in this room. It's by John Lee, he's an incredible digital marketer and it's really about how to use social media for marketing, advertising and branding. Incredible program. And, and it just launched. And so all of these programs are available for one subscription fee. We're like Netflix for improving your life. You also get access to a thousand hypnotherapies and meditations. These are really high quality audios that can help you boost your confidence, relieve stress, help you sleep better. All of that all in one really beautiful app.

What do you charge? What's your pricing?

So we charge 500 if you come to the website. We sell a lot through long form VSLs on YouTube. So we had, last year we had the number one and the number three best performing long form ad on YouTube globally. And on those ads you're buying it for between 300 to 400.

Gotcha. What do you think is going to happen with courses in education? How's it going to be, I mean changed? What areas do you really see it changing dramatically?

So I think bulk subscriptions like this are going to be how people start consuming content. I don't think courses are going to disappear, but what's going to happen is that these courses are going to get a lot more intelligent. Right? So for example, you might be taking Vern's course, but you might also be able to chat with an AI avatar of Vern and get the answers that you need. You might also be able to jump into a community and discuss with other students, post questions, receive, receive responses. They might be. One thing that we're going to be, that we're going to be getting to is every person who comes on our app will understand who you want to be, understand what your motivations are and have a custom AI coach and you can choose. Maybe you want Dave Asprey's voice or you want my voice or you want Marissa Peer's voice. Have an AI coach guiding you day by day with the right class, the right lesson to help you get to your learning goal.

Okay, and so what. One last thing. What is the smartest doable thing that we've not talked about that you can share that would help everyone here make the most money?

Okay. The smartest doable thing. I think what I shared on OODA is probably what I've seen make the biggest impact in businesses. But the smartest doable thing is like find out when Alex Mendocin is going to pee. No, find one person, right? One person who is a marketer, who is an expert in any type of marketing that you are interested in. Go really deep in their work. So many people come to me going, hey, how? Like how are you guys doing VSLs? How are you guys doing webinars? You're crushing it. And I tell them it's non stop focused. Like before, we had the number one and the number three long form ad on YouTube. We released 42 different ads. That focus failed and it took us one year of learning to get there. The reason my advertising strategies work and demolish the competition is because we stick to one thing and we make mistakes, but we go really deep till we master it. And most people won't go that deep.

Yeah, really superb. Anything? I didn't ask you that. I should have.

No, I think you did a pretty good job, Joe. Good job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

What'd you guys think?

Thank you guys.

Vision, my value. Thank you, man. That's awesome.

Thank you. Well, I would say that, you know, being forced to lie about anything diminishes you and weakens you as a person. And you're never going to be successful in business or as a human being if. If your life is based on lies. And so, you know, I don't think you really need to tell most entrepreneurs this. They understand.