How To Become A Clean Thinker (And Solve Even The Most Complex Of Problems)

Hey, guys. Sabri Suvi here. And in today's video, I'm going to be talking to you about how to be a clean thinker. Now, you've heard me previously talk about mental models and really reasoning from first principles rather than reasoning from analogy. And I wanted to make a video to really break that down for you because I see a lot of people online that their thought process, you can see by their comments or what they're doing and how they're problem solving is just very, like, erratic, and there is no order to the way that they conduct their thoughts and really the way that they put together what their worldview is. So the best way to kind of clearly articulate what reasoning by first principles is is to really look at it as like a. For instance, a tree. Like a tree is made up from like a root system. And then you've got like, trunk and branches and twigs and leaves that produced fruit. And when you reason via an analogy, for instance, you'd be like, oh, this tree just doesn't bear any fruit. Like, I don't know what's wrong with it, but it doesn't produce fruit. Where when you reason by first principles, it's really looking at, okay, well, what does it take in order for a tree to bear fruit? What actually happens? Right. Well, you know, you need this really healthy root system. It needs to be getting sun, and there needs to be like, whatever the environment it is in order for that, that tree to bear fruit. And I'm kind of talking in abstractions right now, but when you look at it, you kind of think of breaking down each constituent part and really understanding those parts that make the whole, I. E. You know, if you want to be able to speak or if you want to be able to write. It starts off with first understanding the Alphabet and then putting the alphabets together to make words and then to make sentences and paragraphs and to really put down your thoughts in a cohesive manner. So when we're looking at, in like, I'll give you a more practical example, some bit you might be in a business and you might try running some Facebook ads. And you set up your ads and you run them and then they don't work. And then you're just like, well, Facebook's done. Facebook ads don't work for my type of business. Well, that's your reasoning via analogy, right? Something that's happened to you rather than from first principles. And this is where I see most business owners. They get stuck, they try a few sporadic things without really understanding all the different Constituent parts that add up that whole and they make assumptions just based on the one thing. So the way that you would do it is go, okay, so first of all, I want to run Facebook ads for my business. What are products or services that actually work on Facebook ads? Or will this product or service that I'm trying to sell will itself sell on this platform? Right. And then going and doing your research and finding other products or services or businesses that are effectively using that platform to sell their products and services. And then, okay, once you've done that, that's like the research component because there's so many different parts that make up whether or not something is going to work. So instead of saying, well, I heard that Facebook doesn't, doesn't work for fitness gyms or it doesn't work for this type of offer or for this type of service, and it doesn't work to like high value clients. It's only like the low lying fruit and you get like really cheap, like not very valuable clients or you can't sell expensive stuff. Well, again, is that really true? So the way that we want to start off is first looking. You can look at it from the beginning to the end. So you have a look. Okay, my offer is not working on Facebook. Okay, well let's have a look at why it's not working. Well, are people clicking on my ads? And you look at your ads. Okay, people are clicking on my ads and then they're coming to my landing page and then they're not taking the desired action that I want them to. Right. Or if you're in a service based business, yes, they're clicking on my ads. Yes, they coming to my landing page and they're filling out a form and becoming a lead. And then when I get on the telephone with them, they're not actually converting into actual clients. Right. They're, they're really low quality leads. So that's where a typical business owner would go, okay, well this just doesn't work. These are all shit leads. These people aren't really good buyers. Let me just move away. Let me go back to Google. Let me go back to relying off referrals rather than really trying to problem solve each one of those different elements. So for instance, the way that we would look at it is, well, people are clicking on my ads. I've got a 1% plus click through rate on my ads. People are coming through to my landing page and then they aren't converting. Well, they clearly like the ad and the messaging that's around that. But there's something that's falling short on my landing page. So then you need to start tweaking and finding out and testing your hypothesis to see what it is that works. And that's just looking at it, you know, in one little isolation. But the key to really get first principles working is you need to look at it as a hierarchy. Okay? And in this instance, we're looking at one of the branches being like the ads and Facebook ads, and are people clicking on the ads and are they converting on the landing page? But then if you zoom out right, and you go to the top of the hierarchy, that begins with the research. And this is the reason why I see so many people that run agencies and like servicing clients, and they have a real hard time trying to retain those clients because they get them on board. The client's like, yeah, go ahead and just make me rich, like, run some Facebook ads and just grow my business. And it's this very isolated and not a connected chain of events that's meant to take place with actually getting that client to get results with digital marketing. Then they run some ads, the client starts complaining that the cost per lead is too high or they're not getting the intended roas that they needed on their campaign, and then they cancel. And then you just kind of repeat this vicious cycle where the reason that that's a problem is that you're really only looking at one part and one branch of that tree where really what you want to do in a perfect world is zoom out and go to the top of that hierarchy. So you can really start to drill down into the specifics from first principles. So let's take a look at what that would look like. So as I mentioned before, you would really want to begin with the research. You would want to research who are your top five, top 10 competitors, or what are the top five or top 10 fastest growing companies in your niche in your industry. That can be both locally, it can be internationally. You don't need to be confined just to your local competitors. You can go, okay, I'm in this business. What is the fastest growing business in the uk, in America, in Australia, in Canada, and all of those companies, all of those countries, they will have lists of like, competitions for fastest growing businesses within their sectors. Then you can go and have a look and start to research, like, how are people in my niche advertising on these platforms? Because what we're really trying to understand is, are we able to sell your product or service on this platform? And the best place to, to really figure that out in the shortest amount of time with saving a lot of money and heartache is just to see, are people effectively selling this right now on this platform. So once they've done that, then you want to start to look at how are they positioning that offer, how are they able to sell it? That's the research. And if you're unable to get this information, then typically that means that it's not a good thing. Like people talk about. Yeah, you want to move into markets where there's no competition. Like that's a load of horseshit, right? I look for the most competitive markets because that means that there's money flowing in there and in the markets really competitive, you know that it's working, right? You know that there are buyers in that market. But let's just say, for instance, in the vertical that you operate that you do some research and you aren't able to find anybody. And most often than not, people do a quick search and then they'll give up. When they really dig deep, you will be able to find it. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say, like, look, there isn't anybody in your sector. So that's a little bit of a red flag to me, right? If there's no one in there, are we really going to be able to go in there and sell that product or service? And then we need to build a hypothesis and we need to test that hypothesis. So let's just say that we've got the research done, okay, and we can find products that are really like being sold effectively in that market. That's the first telltale sign. And then we look at, okay, well, what are the downstream effects of that? What is the next part that we need to look at to really see if we can make something work here? Well, what is it that they're offering? At what price points are they offering it? What do they sell? Their landing pages, right? And getting the messaging right and understanding what are the biggest problems. What is that market absolutely starving for? What is really selling well in that category? And how can you create a product or service that is better than the best selling product in that category for a cheaper price and then offer better service? This immediately puts you in a position where you're already going to win just based on the sheer numbers of looking at everything. So then you put that messaging and that offer on your landing page and then you think about, well, okay, I've got my offer, done my research on my market. This is my landing page. Now, how can I create the best ads? Okay? So do you see the chain of events? We're not starting with the ads. We're not reasoning by analogy. We're looking and breaking things down really to the constituent parts. And then we're building those building blocks to arrive at a destination that we're going to be successful. And then you look at the ads and go, okay, well what is the message that everybody else is putting out in the marketplace? How do I be different? How do I take what I know the market is starving for and how do I put that in an ad that is absolutely irresistible for my ideal market to want to click on that ad and find more? Then they click on the ad, right? And then they might download a high value content, offer a cheat sheet, free report, video series, something like that. They give you their name and email address. Okay. Then the next part to look at in the funnel is, okay, well I've done my research, I know this is what people want. They've come through to my landing page, I'm speaking to them in the language that they're talking in and I've got an irresistible offer for them. Then they're downloading that. Okay then, okay, well then I need to look at what do I say in the emails to nurture those people, to actually motivate them to book in a call with me or to make a purchase with me. And then you go down a further rabbit hole of that. It's like another branch comes off the tree and then there's all these twigs and leaves off that. Well, how do I get the emails open? How do I get the emails read? How do I get them clicked? How do I get people to then follow through and take action, to actually book that call in? And then it's all kind of funneling down, Right? That's why we call it a funnel. It's all funneling down to when you're getting it to the bottom of the pyramid, which is actually where a transaction takes place. And then, okay, now I need to look at the sales mechanism. So if I'm selling something via E commerce, are people coming and are they converting? Okay, and then that answer is really binary. It's either a yes or a no. And if the answer is yes, then fantastic. If the answer is no, then we need to go into more problem solving and we need to reason via first principles. Not well, this just doesn't work. Well, what is working? What is it? So then again another branch comes off and we go further down another different path. Okay, well what is the time on site? What is the scroll Depth of the page, how long are people staying here? Are they reading the copy? Are they clicking the button and then like, not like, are they abandoning the cart or what? What's actually happening? Okay, so your bounce rate might be 90%. Okay, well then something to do with my headline, with my landing page, with my lead in copy is not resonating well. Or if it's a lead gen play, yes, it is converting. Excellent. Or no, it's not converting. Why isn't it converting? Because I know that I've done my research and this is a product or service that will sell very well in this category. And then people are clicking on my ads and they are opening my emails and they're reading them and they're clicking those emails, but then they're all coming through to this landing page and then they're not converting well, what's going on with this landing page? What is the messaging? How long are they staying here? Right. What is the copy? What's the promise? Am I asking for too much of a commitment in order to get that conversion and turn them into a lead? And you start to just look in isolation. And the way that you want to do it is if you're building a funnel, if you're running a campaign, you want to look at each constituent part that makes up the whole. You want to optimize every single piece of that funnel to it is singing in harmony to get to the end result. And when campaigns don't work online, like, it's very rare that you launch a campaign and things just go well. So more often than not, you need to wear your problem solving cap. And if you just throw your hands in the air and you reason by analogy and you're like, yeah, my business buddy, he told me that he tried running Facebook ads as well. And he said it's a complete waste of money. So that means that Facebook ads must be a waste of money and I should just stop it and I should retreat and I should go back to whatever I was doing before. Now, unfortunately, that's how the majority of people reason. That's how they think about things. That's how their worldview is constructed, rather than looking at all the different parts that need to be in place in order to make something work in the first place. So realistically, when we're problem is solving a funnel, there's three things that you really need to look at. And it's like whenever something's not working or we're working with a client and we're not hitting KPIs or we're not getting the results. Or we launch a campaign for our own business and it's not meeting our KPIs or our expectations. Expectations. I just use this three basic step framework which is are people clicking on our ads at the rate that we normally get or what is our KPI? Are people converting on our landing page to our KPIs and then are they converting? Are those leads converting once we speak to them on the telephone? They're the only three things that you really need to problem solve. No, people aren't clicking. Okay, awesome. Then we need to look at our ads. Yes, they are clicking, but they're not converting. Okay, we need to look at our messaging. What happens? Post, click right, Then they're not buying. Okay, well why aren't they buying? What's wrong with our offer? We need to test price points, messaging, packaging of our offer. That's the real three things. If you're in a lead gen business that you're looking at and you know you want to have KPIs around all those three things and just iterate and optimize and go down those branches and twigs and leaves to really find out what is this little isolated incident in this hierarchy of events, reasoning from first principles that is breaking down in my funnel and not getting it to work. And then it becomes this thing that was like mysterious that you didn't know anything about and it was kind of like just throwing your hands in the air to actually looking at it from a scientific approach. And you know, reasoning from first principles isn't some shiny new object. Like this is. You know, Aristotle talked about this in great depth. So, you know, some of the greatest and most powerful, cleanest thinking minds that have ever lived, this is the way that they reason and that they think of things from first principles and looking at their experience, experiences out there in the world, then applying reason to those experiences and really testing those hypotheses and understanding that there's all these different elements from the root system to the trunks, to the branches to the leaves, to the sunlight to the photosynthesis that takes place and the oxygen and carbon dioxide that creates an environment for a plant to bear fruit. So that's the real way that you know, that's the biggest tip that I could give for you. If you're running campaigns online, if you're getting customers online, you really need to think about it as that hierarchy. And don't just start with the ads. You see the ads are last, right? The landing pages and what's happening on those is the last thing that you want to be thinking about. The first thing is, is this something that is going to sell on these platforms and working from the top of that hierarchy all the way down and then using my three step framework to really diagnose what's happening from a campaign level to why your campaigns aren't successful. So I hope wherever you are, whatever kind of online advertising that you're doing or advertising in general, that you can apply this princip principles and this reasoning from first principles to your situation to problem solve and optimize and really get your funnel and your whole process from taking strangers and turning them into clients and dial that in so it becomes as effective as possible for you. Hey guys, if you enjoyed this video, make sure that you click the like button and subscribe. We're dropping a video on YouTube every other day and if you've got any questions about any of the content that I covered in this video, just basically leave a comment with heysubree in the comment section. 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