Being the Exponential Entrepreneur

2007 or 2008, and we produced a million dollars in sales in 43 minutes, 2 million in 1 hour and 14 minutes. And as a result of that, I started developing some attention and an audience.

The irony of my life work. And you know this, and this is clinical, not arrogant. I mean, I've come up with a myriad 90 breakthrough.

You've got to start with the vision. And ultimately the solution is you have to give the founder or the DNA of the organization an upgraded identity.

All right, welcome to an episode of Capability Amplifier and the Jay Abraham Podcast. My name is Mike Koenigs. I'm here today with the one, the only, Jay Abraham. You know him, probably the way he describes himself or the way other people describe him is as a business strategist, optimization, marketing, and growth expert. And what Jay does is he sees hidden and untapped potential in every business.

And he's had access over the course of his career of over 1,000 industries, over 7,000 sub industries. He's added and generated over $100 billion worth of growth for his businesses and his clients businesses. And if I had one word to describ, the word is maximized. So, Jay, awesome to be here with you.

It's great. It's great that we're using this for a duality of purposes. I love it.

Yeah.

So we're going to go insanely meta today. And we just came up with the idea like, minutes ago because we were sitting around for an hour going, what are we going to do? And here's the basic idea. I threw this idea, which is, what would you do? And if you know Jay and you know his work, what would you do? If you had Jay's brain for a full day, how do you think you could use that brain with all of his experience to either invent a business or craft a marketing message or maximize profit in the business you already have, or just invent, invent, invent. So I said, hey, Jay, here's an idea. I'm going to be super selfish. We're going to use this hour, and we're actually going to invent an offer. We're going to create a pitch together today, and the offer is real. So you're actually going to watch some sausage making in motion. You're going to see the iterative experience in real time. So anything else you want to add to this before I throw out what this is and what we're going to be doing together?

Yeah, it's fun. It's like walking the high rope without a net.

Totally. Yeah. Why the Hell not, right?

Okay.

Okay, so here's the setup. I speak to a ton of founders, business owners, all the time, and I love asking them this question, which is, if you're going to answer the question, the reason I'm doing what I'm doing is so that I can. Or what I really want to do is blank. Most founders that I meet have reached a point where they'd like to get out of the current business. They've outgrown it, and they're looking for their third or their fourth act. And one of the best things that those founders can do is either find a way to reposition their business so it can be worth more money, so they can sell it for more and get the big ticket out, or they want to create something that involves a platform a little more work on versus work in the business and find another level and layer of freedom in their life. So what I thought we'd do is actually invent an offer to kickstart a business like that and where you get Jay's brain. So what else do you want to know so far?

Oh, I love it. It's great. I want to see how you're going to take and maneuver this and bring it all to a crescendo.

Okay. So I'm going to give you a mini story that'll hopefully create some inspiration. And it was a moment that changed my life. It truly changed my life. And then we'll use this as a little bit of a gateway, and I'm going to ask you some questions about your business and what works and what doesn't and the businesses that you work with and what works and what doesn't inside of that. Because I think sometimes when you design around the failures as well as the constraints, which we allocated an hour for this, today, we're going to walk out with something that hopefully will inspire some hand raisers. I love it. Okay, so here's the setup. This is to begin one of the first online marketing launches I ever did that it produced a million dollars in 43 minutes. It was the culmination of my whole life at that point. And this is in, I think, 2008, 2007 or 2008. And we produced a million dollars in sales in 43 minutes. Two million in one hour and 14 minutes. And as a result of that, I started developing some attention and an audience and.

A list. And there were lots and lots of people who had never heard of me, never bought from me before. And what I did is I had been promoting other people's products to this list of non buyers, they bought other people's products. And I made an offer which said, if you'd like, come to an event, I'm going to hold. I know you've never bought anything from me before, but I'm going to show you how I've made millions of dollars online, how I've produced products and businesses, and I'm going to demonstrate how to make a product and sell it right before your eyes. So There were about 350 people in the room. And in the first session, on the first day, I walked out and I said, how many of you have, until you got that message, had never heard of me before. And most of the audience, of course, they raised their hand. How many of you have ever bought anything from me before? No one raised their hand. I go, okay, here's what I'm going to do. And I open up a bag and I pull out a little tripod and I put a camera on it and I plugged it into my computer. I said, I'm going to teach you how to make a product. I'm going to teach you how to sell that product on video and in person. I'm going to teach you exactly what to say and how to say it. And before I'm done with the presentation, some of you are going to run to the back of their own, because I'm actually going to sell you something. And many of you will go back there to buy something before I even tell you how much it costs. And I'm going to do it in an hour.

So of course everyone's like, what? What, what? And then I'll show you something shortly after that. So what I wound up doing then is started teaching, built this presentation. And every step, I did it transparently. I said, right now I'm saying this thing. And what you're probably thinking is this, am I right? And of course you can see the audience shaking their heads. And I go, that's nlp. And I explained what NLP was and moved on the next thing and next thing. And then when I got to the end, I said, by the way, that bag that I came up here with, that I opened up with the tripod and the camera and the microphone and all the cables and the light is a bonus. And I have 25 of those in the back of the room. And whoom. The air sucked out of the room because they ran back there. And I said, that's called a table rush. Okay? So anyway, at the end of it, we sold $80,000 worth of the product. And Then in the next presentation, I said, I'm going to show you a six figure offer from stage, which included, if you'd like me to work with you and make a product with you, it's $100,000. Okay. And you already saw what I can do here. I'll put you on my stage. Next time I have an event, you can come to my studio, I'll make a product with you, and I'll do the work with you. And I had five people buy for 100 grand each, all from an audience who'd never bought before. So that's my.

Show off part of the show here. But what I thought is, Jay, you've made billions of dollars. I'm not even close to that. Maybe 100 million altogether with all the stuff I've ever sold. But.

What I want to do with you today is design the perfect offer for the founder who wants to reinvent.

Okay.

And part of the offer is they get Jay's brain.

I like it.

All right.

Okay. Put it in your hat.

So here's my question for you. When you work with people right now you've been advising and consulting, what's it like to work with Jay Abraham right now? What is a typical scenario where you get called in and you're known as the maximization guy? Whether it's. You've seen virtually every business imaginable and at this point in your career, over 40 years.

Probably longer.

How many years you been at it?

45.

All right, pretty much seen it all.

What's a typical or what's a recent project that you worked on? Typical challenge, where someone got Jay's brain and just tell me a little bit about that. And then it came to the implementation, which is always the frustrating part, and they couldn't fulfill and deliver with the vision you gave them that could have been worth tens or hundreds of millions or even a billion dollars?

Well, I mean, you know a little bit about all the ways I work and you know that I am particularly strong in lots of things. Strategy, business model, value proposition, distribution channels. But I had a brilliant, if I can say so, strateg for helping someone tap into not dozens but hundreds and hundreds of businesses that would be sources of tapping all their respective clients, buyers, prospects, everybody, and feed them to this client I was helping. I walked them through the whole psychology, I articulated everything, but then the onus, the responsibility was on them to execute and they just couldn't do it. They couldn't do it. And I patterned it after something I had done for someone else that used it to make a half a billion dollars. So it was validated, it had empirical validation, precedent. I walked him through the same thing I'd done for a much bigger and they couldn't get it done. I wasn't responsible for doing it. And that was very frustrating to me because I'm very, very good at coming up with strategies, all kinds of things that just need to be properly implemented. But I don't do implementation.

Okay. Right. And that's in my experience, just like yours is the most frustrating part. And to use a little bit of Dan Sullivan terminology, it's the who, not how. You know, it's. If you spend your life in the how, nothing gets done. But you gotta find the perfect who's. And finding great who's who are fast executors who can work with founders is pretty rare in my experience. It's very rare.

So. And if you look at. So let's say you've met with someone and can you think of any? I know I'm putting you on the spot right now, but give me a recent business or business type that you worked with, where walking in, it looked like, man, I can feed these guys some great ideas. There's enough complexities in the business, they're leaving money on the table. And.

Things fell apart because I kind of want to deconstruct what was broken, what was missing, what didn't get done.

Yeah, okay. I mean, I could chronicle probably over the course of all the things that I've gotten involved in and looked at. I could divide and conquer and probably half the people can't get it off the concept. But interestingly.

I have a real, I get all these fascinating types of businesses. I have a.

Very interesting company that does processing and payments and everything for restaurants and bars.

And they do it all over the country and they're really good and they have really cool methodology that can ethically allow a bar restaurant to convert sales tax or credit card discount to, believe it or not, an ethical profit center. I'm not going to go into the methodology, but what that does, excuse me, is instantly it takes whatever the volume has been historically and brings 10 to 13% right down to the bottom line. Which, you know, if you're, if you're a group that has 10 restaurants, it's putting an extra $500,000 in your pocket. So very interesting. So I gave them a killer way to demonstrate, to validate, to let their target prospect, you know, see for themselves and test it. And I walked them through exactly how to do it, how to prove it, how to how to make almost an infallible proposition that was more irresistible than resistible, more unbeatable than beatable. They loved it. They loved it. They loved it. A month later they had done nothing with it. A month later they had done nothing with it. It required them to go to a couple of their clients and get some really unique commentary that I laid out exactly the questions they asked. How to do it, what to say if they said this, everything. But they did nothing. And it was like, ah, unbelievable. By the way, it's got a back end. Besides what I just said, once they get a client, they do credit card processing which is three times more profitable and they've got buyers for their portfolio at a 40 time multiple of every month's billing. So we were playing this enormously lucrative game and I couldn't get them started.

Insane and insanely common. And you said something earlier when we were brainstorming that I really like, which is how to 10x your bottom line without increasing your top line. And this is a really good example of that. So you can. What you're awesome at is looking at a business finding some hidden revenue opportunities that require basically no more work. It's pure cash, no effort. But clearly either no more investment.

No more investment. No more effort, no more risk.

And I can prove it. Beyond an argument, I can show people billions of dollars of precedent where it's been done for clients of mine or my colleagues did it. I have a concept. I can show people how Carnival Cruise, for example, with no money, when they started in one beat up boat, created a vehicle that got them $100 million of no cost advertising every year and how they can apply a variation whether they're large, small, whatever the scope. And I can walk them through how to do it and they don't do it.

One of the things that I've found has decreased the chances of that happening. When we've been working with people is.

I have a team of executors of who's doing stuff in real time. So while we're talking, I have a copywriter there while we're ideating. So we're literally writing copy. And like if I had a you dictating something, we'd iterate it a little bit and say, okay, what exactly should we say? Boom, boom, boom. We'd have a technical on and building like you were saying. If you would have had this person getting commentary, we could have been grabbing data from a customer database, selecting people that reach out. We'd set up the questions, create the survey and send it while we're together.

I call this principle small container, short tail. So the idea is while we're together, that's the container. So we have three days. Those are some constraints. And we're going to walk out with a business idea or a product idea. We're going to create the offer the pitch, target the audience, craft the messaging, and then actually make all the videos and all the copies so you can launch it the next day. Okay. And.

That way there's no tail, meaning I don't have to do anything and you don't have to rely on, on an ineffective team or an agency that operates like most attorneys do, which is they make their money by billing you every single month, not by actually producing results and outcomes. It's just a sad story. Okay, so I want to get back to. In your experience, if you had that while the genius was coming out of your mouth, would it alleviate the problem and do you think they would have got the thing launched in the next couple of days of the week or where else might there be a gap?

Yeah, I mean, here's the irony of my life work and you know this, and this is clinical, not arrogant. I mean, I've come up with a myriad 90 breakthrough concepts that are pretty, pretty much applied around the world. And I've taught them around the world. I've been around the world 80 times and I've taught them to groups of very large groups everywhere in Japan, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, France, et cetera. I have over. And this is going to sound very, very, very impressive, but then I'm going to take it away. I have a hundred thousand, one hundred thousand plus success stories on record around the world. Now that sounds really impressive, doesn't it?

Yeah.

But if you shared not just theoretical concepts, but you've done hot seats, you've done makeovers. I do them with everybody. Tony Damon, Roland Frazier. I've done them at Joe Polish's place. And then you see so few people. I probably touched.

25 or 50 million entrepreneurs with this. I'm always embarrassed because people don't. They have great difficulty going from concept or strategy or foundation to action, implementation, transaction, and they just don't know how to do it. And it's very frustrating. When I was younger, I held people's hand and I had everybody that I was willing to do it with. One went from 300,000 to 500 million. One went 900% growth in three months. One went.

And did a billion dollars. But I got older and no longer wanted to hold their hands. I love coming up with the breakthroughs, I love coming up with total shifts in business model strategy, access vehicles, positioning, value creation, all kinds of new products, service models. But then it's up to them to run with it. And I'm very fascinated because the ones that do, you know, with very little exception, they, they really, you know, they knock the COVID off the ball very serious. And it's not an arrogant statement, it's not hyperbolic. My crack record demonstrates it. But the ones that don't are the ones that really are tragedy.

I totally get it. I totally get it. So let's. I want to deconstruct another business. So we just did the last one, which is a credit processor.

Give us another one.

One that that did it or didn't.

Do it, would you? Well, let's do a dead and then I want to do another didn't. Or we can do another didn't. Then we can do a did.

Well, give me two that did that are pretty non linear. And one was we took the number nine candy company in China years ago and we had good relations with that country to number one in a year. By shifting their whole focus, they started wanting to just be great marketers of their company and brand. And I taught them how to Instead grow the 60,000 little mom and pop candy companies in their market. And that by doing that, if they doubled their business, they would double their own, but they would be the only supplier that cared enough about.

The candy shops and they would gain stature and get a larger part. And they grew from x to about 8x. And Hershey's bought every share they could legally for about a half a billion dollars.

This was hard to convince them through translation. I had the largest. This is really fun. If you look at the analytics, it's really an interesting story. I had the largest driving schools in Tokyo as a client and they were trying to get a breakthrough. And the breakthrough they were looking for was really an incremental one. Turns out the only market that they have is somebody about 20 to 25 in between college and graduation who wants to get a license for one or two reasons. 50% don't do anything with it. It's a badge of courage or a badge of honor, but the others use it. 50% of the others don't even buy a car. They just rent cars on the weekend, but they do in the holidays and, and the others buy a car, but they wanted to try to grow more people in that one tight window. And it's only a couple thousand dollars and the margins are incrementally Very low. And I said, well, you're looking at this wrong. The big opportunity isn't just teaching them. It's having the rental car business because they're going to rent from you for literally 30, 40 years. And that's an asset you can sell a hell of a lot easier, better for a higher multiple than just the training business. And when we got them to do that, and it worked, then we got them to license the model and partner with rental cars and do it for all the other driving schools outside of the market. So it's thinking very differently. But they did it. But it wasn't easy because they had to do it through translation.

Yeah, yeah. Crazy, crazy.

Those are things that people that did it. I got lots of stories of people that didn't do it.

We were talking to my vice president of we call them profit partnerships because we do a lot of things for a base fee and then a very high profit participation. And he will tell you it's like this divide.

It's an ab.

A divide and conquer. There's half of them that do nothing and half of them that do something. And the ones that do nothing, we basically, we feel very frustrated for them and at them, because they don't do much, but they leave millions of dollars on the table, some of which is ours. So we get very frustrated, but we see these people inspired.

I do work on a lot of things. I do work on how to be preeminent, which is a total correlation to what you command in profit, pricing, positioning, brand superiority, and greatness. There's nobody that I've ever met that doesn't inherently want to have a preeminent brand, a preemptive brand, the most prominent brand. There's nobody that wants to not be a great entrepreneur, innovator, strategist, business growth person. And yet almost 80% of the people I've seen, Mike, operate in the mediocre zone. And it's not because they want to be mediocre. It's not because they don't want to execute. They just break down.

I totally get it. I totally get it. So while you're speaking right now, I had a little bit of.

A mental breakthrough, which is I want you to think back right now, and I could ask you a lot of tactical questions, but I want to just start with the who first, which is.

When you look at businesses. And really what I want to do is speak to founders and business owners right now, either of a certain type. So let's just say they're in the process of reinvention. So They've got experience and they want to go back out in the world and start something new or they've got an existing business and.

They know they're leaving a bunch of money on the table. But Jay Abraham, the maximizer comes into town, pulls out his six shooters and finds money laying all over the place. Who is that perfect business? Because I remember the last time we spoke you said to me something along the lines they have a lot of complex products and a lot of complex sales going on and there's always money being left on the table. Something along those lines. I'm horribly paraphrasing you, but there's a.

Lot of denominators that make for like a Herculean situation where there's underperformance, untapped opportunity, undervalued relationships, underperforming revenue, activities under recognized relationships and resources that can be dramatically enhanced for no more time, effort, money. I mean some of the denominators, you have a lot of moving parts, a lot of critical mass and velocity in your revenue system. I do something called revenue system optimization which is look at every facet, including the interrelated ones that nobody looks at and make each one bigger or better. But things like you have a lot of leads coming, a lot of prospects coming, a lot of opt ins, a lot of visitations, a lot of people registering, if you do seminars, a lot of salespeople, a lot of unsold prospects. I'm jumping around a lot because I've noticed for a while a lot of buyers who become inactive. If you only have a couple of products to sell, but you have very strong affinity and connection to decision makers that could buy a lot more things, your brand is great, but you're only putting a few things through it. You have a lot of distributors that had variability in their performance, a lot of salespeople that have variability in their performance, a lot of franchisees that have variability in their performance. Where if you could increase the performance, same amount of time, effort, cost, risk, it could be huge. If you can get more, if your ads have never really pulled what they want, if your leads aren't converting the way they want, but you have enough of them, if you have a, a product or service that either fills a void that nobody else does or adds a level of performance enhancement for the beneficiary, more value, more enjoyment, more protection, more enrichment, more entertainment, whatever it is, and you don't even know how much under performance you are accepting from each of those elements, then I want to look at it. If.

The relationship's Right. But as you so really insightfully noted, I don't want to look at you if you're not going to do anything with it because it's a period victory. I don't need to conceptualize anymore and I don't need proof that my methods work. I need proof you know how to work them.

Yes, yes. And that kind of gets back to. And you'll have to tell me. I know a number came out of your mouth a little while, but I want to set it up which is you know where to look, you know what to do, you know how to do it. And they'll even. You'll even tell someone how to do it is the problem is they don't do it. That's always the gap.

And Mike, excuse me for.

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, break the system.

I think what happens is people are drawn to me because of the power and the magnitude of the ability to look at opportunity from so many CAT scan perspectives and see so many different ways to enhance profitability, revenue, profit centers. But once they are left to their own devices, they get drawn right back to status quo. Even though I'm probably more super logical than they are. Tradition is actually, I mean, we talked about this. Even I believe things like best practices are flawed because everyone thinks it's great. But they're the best practices from one industry. If you looked at 1000 plus like I have, you see many higher ways to sell. Market position, strategize business model, value, create, monetize, remonetize, you know, their profit from sunk cost. But they don't even see that because they're all learning the same thing. And if everybody does the same thing, there's no advantage in it because it becomes standard operating procedure.

And you said the most important thing, you go through the process and they're right back to status quo.

Why? When you've outlined a vision that can bring them into a brand new future, more income, more freedom, more profitability.

What's that gap?

What wiring is missing or broken?

I think.

It'S probably a trilogy of answers. Probably one is even though you lay it out, they just don't because they've never done that.

When they try to do it, it's so foreign they can't get started. They don't know how to put it all together, number one. Number two, I think that if they had it, as you talked with me privately, turnkey ready to go, and even if it was taken to Sublime and even the leads were brought and all they had to do was have their salespeople close and then if they didn't have salespeople, the salespeople were sourced for them, they probably would go, wow, I could do that. But I think.

They want to transcend the limitations. Even this, by the way, I have found with operating businesses that successful ones, they don't realize, but many are what I call successfully stuck by that. I mean, they're very content making either at or above industry margins and making an income they've never made before. And it's pretty wonderful. But if they only knew how much more they could get from the time, the opportunity, the ads, the sales, the prospects, the buyers, everything they would be, they would be humble. But, and I think they get excited because I liberate and show them and I, I prove it to them. But then when it comes time for them to do it, they are drawn right back to status quo. And I think part of it, I think about when, when you were a baby or I was a baby and we try to learn to walk, talk at, you know, be poop, you do anything right by, we were terrible. And, and if nobody had done it for us or helped us or guided us or walked behind us or put their, you know, I think if you can get them out of the gate and give them a success model to implement one time, they can run with it. But they just, I think it becomes too intimidatingly abstract for their more linear continental construct. That's my opinion.

This is great. I'm going to repeat what you just said because I always take detailed notes whenever I'm interviewing. So the one of them is don't know how to get started. That makes sense. They need something turnkey done for them. They want to transcend the limitations. But the successful businesses are successfully stuck making at or above industry margins, which Joe Polish calls a success trap. I call it a success prison. It's pretty much the same thing. But also, this is really cool. I love what you said, the last one, which is intimidatingly abstract.

Which I think being able to see the metaverse, see the meta, but then get past it.

And as you were doing that, I was thinking, okay, what have I found that makes the biggest difference in the shortest period of time? So one of them is, obviously.

You'Ve.

Got to start with the vision. And ultimately the solution is you have to give the founder or the DNA of the organization an upgraded identity and an upgraded operating system. And I have found you said a success model inside of here. That was really good too. What that looks like to me is an inspired offer. And here's what you can do. Like I have found that if I can give someone an inspired offer that makes the founder or the organization, like I said, the DNA, feel like they've experienced an upgrade. And it's something that appeals to their highest values, where they know they've been underserving or serving an audience, a customer base that's less than they are capable of, meaning they know they're selling down and they know they're not receiving the value they deserve. And they haven't made the connection yet that what's wrong, what's missing is they don't have a great story, they don't have a great happily ever after story, or what we call the hero's journey. Once upon a time, there was someone just like you who had the same problems you do. And along came a guide, a wizard, a solution, who had a magic wand and a map, a roadmap to get you to the promised land. And along the way you slayed the outer dragon, your inner dragon that was dragging you behind.

And you found the chalice, the Holy Grail, rescued the prince, or married the princess and lived happily ever after. Amen. And that guide, that Yoda, that Gandalf, that Jesus, that Muhammad, that Krishna, that Buddha, I mean, that is the eternal story we all seek. And what I found is if you give someone a great offer and a great deck and you practice a pitch a few times and then put them on the spot in front of a camera, their identity shifts. They actually become a different being. And it's role play, it's role playing that makes all the difference. It's wax on, wax off. So play with that. I just want to get your reaction.

You know, what I am probably world class at is being a masterful thinking partner. And what a masterful thinking partner. In my opinion, it's way above a coach or even a mentor because they know what you're capable of and they won't allow you to self limit, even if you think that's your high aspiration. But they guide you with knowledge of how to deal with scenarios, contingencies, probability, outcome, and all the other range of factors that makes something work or not work. And you just nailed it. You know, if you can just say, well, here's what you want to say, and they go off and try it on your own. If you say, let's work on it now, let's make you comfortable. I like what you're saying. Let's have you. Basically we'll say it. I mean, what. Stephen Covey. Stephen Mr. Covey, who I Love a dear friend of mine.

Yeah, he's a great guy. Just interviewed him. Yeah.

Is the world expert on trust building and his new book is fabulous. It's Trust and Still I think is the name of it. They gave me an advanced copy and I was blown away by it. But he basically and his dad said the same thing. Clarify expectations. What too many people do. When you go to training programs that are static and they're mostly lecture based and a little bit of exercise, they don't really verify that you know how to apply, that you know how to implement, that you know how to execute, that you even are defining or interpreting the concept as it's intended. They just basically dump it. And they, some of them are nobly intended. But I think what you're saying is hey, okay, we've got a PowerPoint. I don't mean hey to be rude like that, but excuse me, we have a PowerPoint and we've got a presentational, we can call it a script or a process. And there are going to be Q&As. You're going to get and there are going to be elements of this you are going to have to parenthetically discuss. And even though we just told you that left to your own device is going home, you'll probably go. So let's practice it. We will role play it with you. We will video record it. We will go through it in many places. We will share with you what the viewer in the audience or on the zoom or on the phone is thinking. We will tell you the probable responses. They will have the objections, what's going on, what's verbalized, how to preemptively overcome that. I think that's great.

Yeah. And again the two key concepts are upgraded identity, upgraded operating system and what I found, and this is new because 10 years ago, maybe not as much 10, but 20 years ago, I got massive resistance on this. The first info product ever created was called the Internet Infomercial Toolkit. Joe Sugarman was one of my great mentors during that time who recently passed. Brilliant, great man. And I used to watch television infomercials and I watched Ron Popeil slicing and dicing and cutting and. And I was like, it dawned on me that this guy recorded a thing whether it was 30 seconds or two minutes or in Sugarman's case when he did long form 28 minute 30 second infomercials that he could record it once and play it and make millions. In the case of Sugarman, sold a billion dollars worth of blue blocker sunglasses and Then when the Internet came along, basically what I did is I modeled and I talked to some of the greatest. Infomercial producer.

Hawthorne from Hawthorne Direct. I don't know if you ever met Hawthorne. And there were a bunch of others. I don't remember all their names right now, but they gave me their scripts, they mentored me, and told me how to construct something. And I basically adapted the television and full marshal online. But the resistance was, I hate the way I look or sound on camera. Okay. But if you fast forward to now, everyone's been doing Zoom. Everyone's used to doing Facebook. There just isn't the resistance.

But it's just knowing what to say and how to say it and in what order. And despite that, does that mean that people are better at making great pitches? The gap is having that great offer. It's having something that inspires the speaker as much as the viewer and getting them to take action. Yeah.

I learned something. I came from hardcore direct response in the early days, advertising and sales letters. And somebody told me something one time that was profound. He said, a great, great copy will not transcend a great concept, but a great concept will transcend poor copy.

God, is that gold?

And that changed my life. I didn't worry about whether the order was right. It was the right formula, you know, sequence. I just worried about having the killer concept. And I was always good at killer concepts because I did it for very. You know, we did it for ici. We did it for Entrepreneur magazine. We did it for all the financial newsletters. We did it for, I mean, many prominent people. I did it for Tony when he was figuring out his seminar business. And I always focused on the killer concept.

I got a gift to give you, something I just bumped into last week, and it's. The book is called Several Short Sentences about Writing. And it's about maximizing what's in a sentence.

Oh, that sounds profound. Yeah, I'd like to see that. That'd be great. Yeah.

You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna have my EA send a copy to you right now. So you'll get it. All right, so. And that's really what it's about. And I've always hated poetry. Just for the record. Can't stand it until. And I used to. I never liked Bob Dylan either. I just didn't like his voice. I don't like Bruce Springsteen either. It's just me.

Okay.

But. But once I understood what's going on, and it was an interview, I was watching, I can't remember who it was. It just said, if you want to become a great copywriter, study poetry. Because the amount of compression and.

The simplicity of sentence and words to communicate a profound concept, just like a great song does. Right. You can live a lifetime inside of a song. I love that. And you certainly can inside of a poem. And I think the same is true in a great sales letter and great copy, and for that matter, an inspired offer.

So that was a winner, Jay. That was really good. You just. Thank you. That was a value bomb.

I also want to come around with, I think, one of the greatest moments in a founder's life. I spent a lot of time talking to people about this is design a business that you want to sell someday. Because one of the things that a lot of founders live with, and it doesn't matter what they're worth. I was just looking at a list today that showed up in the news, and it's the latest generation of new billionaires. And last year, I think the world had 510. This year it was about half that. And I might be wrong, but I know it's about that number. It just showed up in Forbes, and they're talking about where they were. And as I looked through all of them, they're all paper billionaires. They have companies that were valued by a company that has a vested interest in them being worth a lot because they're selling shares and they get a piece of that. Right. Is there no risk way of making a ton of fiat cash now versus the founder who's stuck with a piece of paper with no liquidity?

And the pain a founder lives with is they could spend 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 years inside of a business making a nice living. Okay, they got their little tax. They come out. But one lawsuit, one disaster, one death of a key person, one bureaucratic politician could destroy your business and your net worth just like that.

Yeah, I agree.

So multiples and exits. Let's talk briefly about that, because I know your brain goes to how do I increase value? And there's income. So bottom line, that's a huge part of where you think about and you look for where's the hidden money? I can increase the bottom line without making the business more complex, and then where do I increase the value? So the story of the business means it's worth 10x instead of 3x.

Yeah, I agree.

I would love you to share a profound story. And then we're gonna roll this all together. And I want to deliver the big promise that I made at the beginning of the show.

Well, Okay, I mean.

I'll give you, let me think of probably the best. Well, I'll tell you the story that. I'll tell you a reverse story from the past and then I'll tell you one from the current. The icy hot story is really interesting because it now is the polar opposite of what would be true today. But we started with a product that was selling $20,000 and we didn't have any money. And I'm not going to go through the whole litany, but we were able to convince 1000 radio station, television stations, magazines, all kinds of media providers to run every time they had unsold advertising to give it to us. And instead of us paying, we would just share revenue because it was a mail order product. We accidentally got $150 million in today's market of free advertising in the first year alone. And even though it was a mail order product and a mail order company back then would have sold for a very low multiple because it was not respected, we accidentally forced retail distribution. And what that meant was people would go to their drugstores, their grocery chains and ask for this product and they would come to us and we would sell it to them. And.

Over a period of about six months it shifted to where instead of being a mail order company, the mail order was basically creating all the advertising for nothing. And it was driving this. And it moved to a consumer product package, patent medicine. And all of a sudden the value had a 10 times multiple. One nice overnight and they sold it for back then $60 million. This is in the 70s, which would be, I don't know, 600, 700 today. But that was really interesting. What was equally as interesting, and this just shows the failure to value assets nobody cared about. The 500,000 acquirer was a retail pharmaceutical company that had a lot of medical brands like Icy Hot, Analgesic Bomb, arthritis product. They didn't care about the 500,000 repeat buyers who were buying millions of dollars. And we got to keep that. They didn't value it at anything. They also didn't care about the thousand plus media distribution network we had that had generated all that free advertising. They didn't want that and we got to keep that. The only thing we were penalized on was we had a non compete in that very limited category. We went right back and did the same thing again. But it's interesting, there's two stories. So that was, that was that now today, you know, going retailing, becoming a retail business wouldn't be as excited as an E commerce business. It's been. It just flipped. It's flipped. But, you know, I think I told the story. The candy company sold to Hershey's, which was amazing because they weren't big at all. And they, they, they got all this from that. But we've had that happen many, many times. We've been able. I mean, what I'm very good at, and you know this, and most people aren't, I can make a business produce a lot more profit. And that profit gives them the safeguard to. I mean, depends on most. Most acquirers want ebitda as long as it's quality and recurring and predictable. Ebitda. A lot of people look at top line, and top line is only relevant if it's a strategic play or if you're funding a hockey stick, whatever you call it, and you're hoping to praise someday, it hits profitability. And that's not the majority of these businesses. And so I concentrate on the safest, easiest way to we talk about this. I'll share my concept about the top line and the bottom line 10x exponential moonshot. Because I think it's pretty profound. If you want me to talk about it.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Because I like where this is going and I know how to package this up. So, yeah, tell that story. It's a good one.

There are many people, they're very respected people, very bright people, very successful people who for years have been talking about the 10x moonshot. But what they're talking about is a 10x your revenue based on adding very sophisticated technology to what you're doing. And it can be VR, AI, you know, any of these, but what they're not telling you. And it's gotten probably better now. But I interviewed a lot of people in the early stages and this is totally true. You have to get very expensive experts to come together who've never worked together and may have never worked in the industry. You got to have the right APIs, takes longer, costs more. It's like building a custom home. And when it's done, it usually doesn't perform the way you need. And you have to have a parallel like the old business operating the same way while you have the new. And you got all these people you're double paying for. The cost has to come from somewhere, either borrowing cash flow or dilution of equity. And my whole premise is, why don't you first go for a 10x bottom line profit? Because you can do it with no extra investment, no risk, and you can just make everything you're doing do Better if you know how. And you can get huge, huge increases. That then will be the safeguard that will finance all that riskier top line. And you could achieve your goal much safer and much better, easier, without putting yourself in jeopardy.

Very smart. Very smart. And I've been doing a bunch of deals right now in the world of debt, private equity, and you're absolutely right about what they typically look at. And I also, from my own experience, when I've been bought, I was able to subdivide my ip. So for example, I put my IP in a separate corporation. I created a license agreement that I retained. So in the event that things fell apart, that still was my ip. I had given the other company a perpetual license. Okay. But I had the freedom to do something with that in the event that they didn't live up to their obligations. I love it. And in another instance. So I was just at abundance360 with Peter Diamandis a couple weeks ago. There's a guy there, his company has over a trillion dollars of investments and businesses under management. And one of the things they've been doing lately that really grabbed me is their corporation is amassed a database of 20 petabytes of information, insane amount of data. It's so sophisticated that you can feed it a customer you want and it will pop out the message to put in front of a large audience so those people buy from you.

Pretty profound. You think about all the data points that a human has to do to do that intuitively, and then a machine's doing it. It's like, okay, the world of the agency is rapidly shrinking. But here's what he said. He said right now they are actually taking the their companies and breaking apart the data side of the business and then leaving whatever the other part of the business, what they do. And he said it's common for the data side of the business to be worth four times the actual business. So just imagine right now taking something like Tesla and Elon saying, okay, Tesla's Tesla. And by the way, we're going to put the data in another container. But all of the driving data they've been aggregating and accumulating, all the machine learning, all the stuff they're going to use for robotics, that suddenly has four times the value. Just imagine right now, Tesla at this moment, whether you agree with it or not, the value of Tesla is more than all the other car companies combined. Now just imagine it being basically 5x that suddenly.

I love that. And I think there's so many elements that most successful entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, don't really recognize because their world is very, very, very sophisticated. But the sophistication is within a band. It's an expanding band. There's a really interesting book and you're probably more better read than I am because I spend a lot more time with people all around the world, all hours of the day. But there was a book a couple years ago called Range. Did you ever read that?

No, I haven't. I'm going to get it right now.

And the premise was this very famous guy left him in Epstein. I can't remember the other books he wrote, but he said that the defining attribute of really explosive success capabilities in the 22nd century, late 21st, is going to be the range of somebody because the scenarios you're, you're asked to deal with aren't predictable. Hindsight isn't going to be the denominator. And secondly, the opportunities are going to be hybrids that are going to come from combining. And I created many years ago a concept called funnel vision versus tunnel vision, but it's integrating success approaches from outside.

An industry and combining them into hybrids that people don't know about. But there's so many revenue opportunities that people, I mean most people don't realize. I've made more money for clients in the past. This is true from the leads they didn't sell. Yes, once they did. And we've turned the rain Bain's business into a lead generator for the other ancillaries that were the tail that wagged the dog. But most people don't think that way. I've gotten people to compete against themselves. People that sold weight loss supplements to create portion control, food and equipment and everything else they sold to the same market and make more than their basic business. But you have to have a very expansive and enlightened mindset to see that.

Mike, I love it and I think this is.

A perfect place to throw out an idea. Now you and I brainstorm a little bit about this, but I'm going to present it. And I told you at the very beginning when I said one of the most successful things I ever did is I put it all on the line. I pitched an offer to an audience that had never bought from me before. And I had one of the biggest events. It was a million dollar event and we had produced a million dollars before the first day was done in a three day event.

So I love your brain and you've got four and a half decades of wisdom, knowledge, experience, expertise, and you're at the place in your life where.

What you love to do. And what you're great at is sitting down, meeting with people, inventing new ways, looking at things, every imaginable direction, taking this.

Encyclopedic memory in mind of yours and spitting out some ideas. So let's say, let's pretend that a founder who's in a place where they either want to find a bunch of new money or reinvent themselves or craft a new business or new offer.

Can get a day of. Jay Abraham. Now, one thing I know, because I know a lot of your clients, they say a half a day is plenty. I get all the ideas I need, and I'm thinking to myself after a couple hours, how the hell am I ever going to get this done? Well, that's where we get to part two. Because one of the things that my team and I have been doing for the past four years is working with founders and business owners, and what we do is make those things happen. So we've been creating reinventions and products, but in three days, from start to finish, you walk away with.

The brand. So the big idea. So that's something that we do. The offer and the sales pitch and the messaging and a deck. And then we spend a day in studio creating all of the content, videos. We do articles, which we end up publishing. And one of whether it's Ford, fast company, entrepreneur, influence of magazine, the lead generation system, the sales system, and then the business model that doesn't tax the business you already have. So the whole idea is everything's focused on being able to walk away.

In.

A week with everything done so you can actually present the offers. And we've literally had people leave my condo in San Diego, where we do all this on the beach, and the next day walk up on stage. And I had this happen three weeks ago, and I showed you the slide. The text message that I got from this guy closed a million dollars. The next day.

I thought, what a great collaboration. Because you don't like the execution and the doing part. And finding executors who make dreams come true is very, very rare. I know because in the 35 years I've been doing this, it's really, really hard to build teams who know how to execute and execute quickly. You'll get it done somewhere between never and maybe six months, what we can do in a week. So punch a hole in that offer. Jay Abraham.

It's a fabulous offer, but you've eliminated probably one more very key scenario. I would argue that every successful company should be evaluating how many ways to reinvent themselves, because Physical probability that they've taken the business, its assets, its access, its performance.

Its value. Prop. It's everything to sublime is so low that I was just thinking about a metaphor because you are more masterful in the neuroscience of how the brain works. But I was thinking when you go every year, particularly when you're old, older, you go and you have your body evaluated, you do a checkup, or you go to, you know, you go to, you know, one of the Mayo Clinic once a year, you're really having. You're really. You're. You're reimagining your body for the future. I mean, you might be going the wrong way. And you want to have somebody give you the way to have more longevity, more mental acuity, more energy, more physicality, more fitness, more attraction, more everything. And I think everybody that's already got a successful business owes it to the business, to its asset, to its ability to contribute, add more value. To have it reimagined at a regular frequency.

Yes. Which. That is. What most founders are wondering right now is they like, okay, this is great. I get Jay for a full day, and then I get you guys for a week to make this thing and actually do it, and I walk away in a week with this done. Sounds like a miracle. Don't know how it's possible, but let's just assume for a moment that between you, between me, we can prove that this works. And we've got plenty of evidence. The next one is what happens next. So what you and I agreed to is we're making space for four people that we'll work with over the next year unless we decide to change our mind. But that's what we make right now. So there's a limited amount of time available. And what we agreed to is our goal is not to play the short game, but to play the long game, which is the. What happens next is Jay and I, as long as we like you and we feel you're appropriate, and we won't take you on unless we know you're going to get an ROI on your investment. Because our long game is we will actually consider becoming advisors to your business and participate in the upside and equity because we want to build businesses with a long tail that produce continuity revenue. Jay is interested in building and growing his legacy, not his workload. And what I promised him is right.

Yeah. No, you're right on the money.

Okay. So part of this is I had to create a great pitch for the great Jay Abraham, and I had to create a great pitch that my team's behind who's listening to this right now and going, yep, I want that too. Yep, I want that too. And for your team, who's listening to this. And so here's what our offer to you is. Number one, this is a substantial investment. I'm not going to list the investment here, but I'll just say it's a multiple six figure investment to get us and get this done for you. And then we have some triggers to create some upside opportunities. But at first it's just initially in agreement that we're going to work together. And then we discuss the long side. The process of applying is going to paidforlife.com.

Exp and exp stands for exponential. I love it. So it's paidforlife.com exp. There's an application, our teams, meaning your team, Jay and mine, look at the app, follow up. And first of all, we're going to have a brief conversation to make sure you qualify for this because we got to make sure you're a right fit. And then what will end up happening is Jay and I review. As long as we decide to take you on, we'll end up having.

A quick conversation with you and then you get onboarded. You'll also get access to Jay's life's work. By the way, Jay, in the background, I was negotiating with your team. So you've got over $40,000. Every product, book, content you've created is going to be made available. And then we've got some great bonuses and you'll be. Go ahead.

Now they haven't calculated. It's about 125,000 if you just take the non duplicated stuff.

Nice. All right, well, there you go, another $100,000 worth of value. And we'll spend a day at Jay's, which is in la, and then you'll spend three days at my condo on the beach in beautiful La Jolla, California, where we do this with you and for you. And you'll spend a day in my studio where we create all the content. You literally walk away. Done. And part of the follow up you'll receive, there'll be a follow up video you'll receive when you apply is a walkthrough showing you examples and case studies of other businesses that we built in days. Literally days. So Jay, to wrap this up, what would you like to say about the offer or anything else you'd like to say to the person listening to this right now?

Yeah, it's. Well, I'd say that.

I always feel like the world's a 3D movie. And I try to give my clients the only pair of glasses in their industry or in their category, but I'd say that the biggest. And there's a couple quotes I love, and one of them was a Leo Burnett quote who said, if you set your sights on the moon and the stars, one thing is certain, you're not going to end up with a handful of mud. I just think people don't. It's a cool concept, and there's another one that I used to use, and I can't remember who it is, but it's pretty cool. It's that most entrepreneurs struggle trying to figure out this, what, this, how, how am I going to get more fulf. More leverage on myself, more asset value, more psychic enrichment at this point. And they say, am I worthy of even figuring it out? I've done very well. I'm content, but it's no longer satisfying, fun, challenging, fulfilling, enriching, whatever. And the concept is, most people question that they're worthy of taking it and figuring this out. And the right question is not are you worthy of the challenge? But is the challenge worthy of you? Because there's so much more you can get a business to produce, an opportunity to produce a market, to produce product service, a distribution channel, a team, salespeople, audience, media, advertising. And I've lived my life fanatically wanting people to realize that, and not just realize it intellectually, but harness it, harvest it financially, and operate at the highest level. It's very liberating when you understand all these possibilities. It's very, very. It's intoxicating in the most wonderful way. And you're operating at a strata of fulfillment, impact everything. And I just wish that for everybody, whether they're one of four or not. But that's what I would say.

Well, you know what, what you're saying is, at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's poetry. It really is. When you understand how to move the energies that move people and that create value. It's. It is intoxicating messaging, which to me is poetry. It's great. Copywriting is. And this is alchemy at its. At its finest being a creator, especially in the world we live in, where wealth and abundance is accelerating at the greatest rate in human history and is going to continue to do so. And I truly believe we live in the greatest moment in human history when we can move atoms and bits and craft and create life even.

We can do and invent practically anything. And to bring us back down to mother Earth here. My promise to you, the listener and viewer is Jay, and I guarantee that you'll 4x your investment with us or we simply won't take you on. And between the two of us, we can predict whether that's possible very, very quickly when you apply. So, Jay, I don't have anything else to say. I could go on and on and on, but I want to keep this limited because you've got an interview. I've got an interview. And I want to make sure that every time I reach out to you, say, yeah, let's spend some more time together creating great things. This is great.

It was fun. You are very listening to you articulate. I mean, I think the biggest, one of the things that I always strive for is to impact people so that their mind's eye says to them, I've never thought about it that way before. And this is something that I really want to do because I see the implication, the impact. So you did great. I love this. You thrilled me. You made my day. Thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. And in the background, Brian asked me to add one last thing. So I'm going to do this for Brian, who works with you. He says, share what winning feels like after you do this. So here's the story, very brief story, I'll tell you, because just yesterday a guy I was working with, his name's Dino, and his wife Shannon, were over. He's the one we created this new business and it's Fix My team now. And for years he has been helping teams in the dental industry and helping businesses grow double to 4x their revenue by improving and increasing their soft skills. That soft skills turn into hard results. That's one of the taglines we created. And.

We completely re engineered and redeveloped his business. And within about an hour after we began, we created $2 million in extra revenue that they were like, yep, no doubt about it. Yep, no doubt about it. Just from opportunities that are inside by repackaging, repositioning, and repricing the programs. Not to mention the fact that I made an introduction to him with someone I knew because we didn't even talk about that, Jay. But between our two Rolodexes, assuming we like you and we want to work with you, we're going to open up our Rolodexes. So I made two.

Introductions. One where I got this guy a speaking gig, the other one a partner who already said yes, that's almost guaranteed a million dollars or more in additional revenue. So what you walk away with is courage, confidence, and offer a presentation and the messaging, the skills, the story that you have practiced that you can take out or it can go out for you, and that automatically finds right fit clients that want to work with you. I like to say the best thing that can ever happen is when you get hand raisers who say, I know I already want to work with you. And one of the guys that I showed you earlier in one of the case studies, Jay, was Corin, who as soon as our podcast dropped because we do the media. He had 26 leads, four applications, two people who bought on the first day. One of them was already closed before they even spoke, who wired him $75,000 the next day. So that's what turns me on, is when I hear those stories. And I was away in Portugal, I got that one from Corn. I got another one from another client who had his million dollar day. That's what's possible. And I don't want to work with someone and say yes to them unless I know it's possible. So I'm going to look at you in the eyes and say, I know that Jay and I can make your dreams come true. That's how I'll finish it off.

Jay nuts. I mean, ditto. How about ditto?

All right, good. So that's it. Head on over paidforlife.com exp, which stands for exponential. We'll follow up with you. Jay Abraham, you're awesome. I appreciate your genius.

Thank you very much. And I respect yours as well. Thank you.

Thanks, brother.