Taki Moore: How To Build An Empire That Also Fits Your Lifestyle

I think if you're miserable before money, you'll be rich and miserable. And if you're happy without money, you'll be happy and rich.

I strongly disagree, actually. I strongly disagree because my parents were immigrants from Egypt. We didn't have a lot of money. We got all clothes from Goodwill. We didn't have, you know, like we struggled very little. That money doesn't solve.

Okay. I take back what I said. Sales team of 9 to sales team of 0. Like not a single setter, closer, no sales calls, no nothing. Team went from 36 to 8. I lost my mojo bigly. I felt really powerless in my own business, which is a weird thing to say. I'm the boss and I could do whatever the hell I want, but I like completely didn't feel it. My role went from I don't know what what my job is and I'm in meetings all the time to I get to do the two things I love. But if I've got a great business but my life sucks and my family's in trouble and I'm not healthy and I'm not sleeping and I'm stressed and I'm like what have I really done?

Today I sat down with Taki Moore, who is the coach of coaches. Any big guru, any big coach that you know went through the school of Taki. Okay? Taki taught them everything they know when it comes to coaching. What I love about Taki as a close friend is that he's the same person whether he's on camera, off camera, having lunch, and I find that incredibly hard to do, and most people don't do this. He's one of a few people I know that can do this, and I wanted to find out how did that happen? Did he work on it? Is it just natural? So I wanted to sit down with him on the podcast to find out, but I also wanted to find out a couple other things. One, he built an incredible business with a very small team. Taki doesn't have an office, okay? He works from home. He has a small team remotely that he works with, and he makes $2 million a A month. OK?

He's a busy guy.

He's got 6 kids. He's got a wife. He travels a lot and he still only works 4 days a week. It's incredible what he does. And I want to find out how he built that kind of life because it wasn't always that way. I've known him long enough to know that that wasn't always his business. So we dive deep in a conversation together that I really want to share with you, and I can't wait to share with you. But there's one more thing that we get into in this conversation that I think is amazing. And it's all about understanding who you are as a person and what you can add to your business. Taki's actually not like an amazing business person. He doesn't know how to read a spreadsheet. He doesn't have access to his own calendar. He's that like all over the place. But he's built this incredible business because he knows his superpower and he really knows how to be his own artist. He's, he's really more of an artist than he is an entrepreneur. And, uh, we get into how he kind of identified that, but also how you can find your superpower and utilize it in your business. Can't wait to share all that with you. So let's jump right into that conversation with Taki Moore. Taki, awesome to have you, man. Thanks, man. You're such a good guy. One of my favorite people in the world. You're one of 3 people, 3 is being generous, that I know that is the same person on camera, on stage, In person, having coffee, lunch, just, you know, shooting the shit, that kind of person.

Yeah.

Has it always been that way? Did you have to work through some demons? What— like, that's very, very rare.

That's weird. I think I'm more comfortable being who I am everywhere now than, like, even sitting down here. I was a bit ner— like, am a bit nervous because there's like 3 cameras and, you know, a crew and all the stuff. I just think it's Maybe I'm just old and you just get beyond the fuck it and you just don't care anymore. There's probably a little bit of that. I think it's hard to be who you're not long-term. And I've been running this business for like 16-ish years.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I don't think I would have kept it up if I wasn't me.

That's been my experience. Like, you know, we've been doing this for a while and you get to a point where it's just like not being yourself is not really working and you just get frustrated and you're just like, I'm just going to do what I want.

Yeah. I remember we run an event 3 times a year, March, July, November. And for years I put shoes on to run the event because who would run an event barefoot? And I was like, well, I don't wear shoes anywhere else. Why am I putting shoes on for these guys? They're paying to come and learn from me. I'll just be myself. So I took my shoes off and did the event. I remember Jack De Losa, one of our members, was like, are you not wearing shoes? I'm like, no. He goes, huh, cool. And then that was it. And now I can just be me. Yeah, that was like, that was the last hurdle of like freedom. Yeah, I think there's nothing more attractive than someone who's comfortable in their own skin. I'm not doing it to be attractive. I'm just more comfortable without shoes or whatever. I mean, there's something—

I don't know.

I think that's what we all like. The people I look up to are the people who are like, they've got something great to say and they're very natural and not forced. Yeah, I don't know if it's a learned skill. I don't know. I think I'm just quite comfy.

Yeah. Did you copy somebody in the beginning? For me, yeah, for me, it was Tony Robbins. I always tried to be Tony, and I realized like, I'm not Tony Robbins. I'm a brown kid from Long Island, parents immigrated from Egypt. Like, Tony's got— Tony's Tony, you know, and I love Tony, but like, I tried so hard to like— because he was the person that was in my ears, CDs listening to in the car while I was driving to work. Who is it for you?

I think when you start something, like, it's very rare that you've got your own everything together, and so you start by like modeling bits I think I've got bits of a lot of people. So when I started, like business model-wise, the only guy I knew who had this kind of information style business was a grumpy old dude called Dan Kennedy, who's amazing, by the way.

Oh, Dan.

Right. But he's like a—

Copywriter.

Yeah, he's a writer. Seems to be an introvert. And his model was like, I'm going to send people a paper newsletter and a monthly CD and a weekly fax. So guess what I did? A weekly fax and a monthly CD and a paper newsletter. And I was like, dude, I hate writing. I'm a talker. And so like, you got to start somewhere.

Yeah.

Presenting-wise, I learned from 2 people. I was in a seminar, in a workshop once with Brad Sugars. And I remember he asked a question of the audience and they didn't reply. And he just got indignant and like puffed his chest up and said like, since when was it okay not to participate in one of my workshops? Like, oh, you can like lead these people. And then Ethan, our son, was nonverbal for like 4 years. And we took him to this speech class called Hanen, which is about how do you help a nonverbal kid to communicate? And there's a lot of tricks like, you know, you get down on their level so you're not big and scary and intimidating and you like leave the end off a sentence and you wait for them to fill it with something. So I think like, you know, public speaking-wise, I've just got a lot of those skills.

Yeah.

I don't know. I think you just like see bits that you like and you, you adopt it as much as you can until you got your own thing and then you adapt it.

Yeah. One of the things that I believe has helped our podcast do so well is that like I try to lead as much as possible with empathy.

Yeah.

I still remember what it's like to be struggling financially, struggling with my business, with my voice. I personally felt like I was trying to be Tony Robbins because I felt like who I was wasn't good enough. So, I have to put on this performance so that I can be able to be good enough for my audience because who I actually am is maybe not blockbuster and larger than life.

Yeah.

What advice would you give to somebody who's listening right now? It's like, okay, Taki, but you're You're big and you're huge and you're making millions and millions of dollars. How do I present without feeling inadequate?

I think the real you, the one with the broken bits, is the more attractive you. And I think if you want to help somebody, like, it can be aspirational to look up at Tony Robbins, who's like extraordinary, but like, it's very hard to go, wow, I could see how I could do that, because he's like, he's up there and we're down here. And I think just realizing that Everybody you're trying to help or communicate with, whether it's an audience member or a potential client or whatever, or a customer, they're going through some stuff and the vulnerability makes you super relatable. I write an email every day to my audience and they're often quite funny, but if there's a joke about a person, it's always I'm the stupid one and the audience is the smart one. Partly because I got ADHD and I do dumb stuff all the time, but also deliberately self-deprecating because of approachability. And I think the real you, warts and all, is very attractive.

Yeah.

If you're going through some hard stuff, talk about the fact you're going through some hard stuff. I think maybe there's a spot for like, do it when it's scars, not open wounds, maybe. But I think just being honest with people about, you know, where you're up to and what you're working on, and you don't have to have it perfect. You just got to like share, you know, share the journey. Like, this is where I'm going for. This is what's hard right now. This is what I've figured out. And I think that actually, I think the thing that makes it tricky is when you pretend you're the I've got it all together guy and you don't, that's the piece that eats you alive and people can sniff that. But if you don't pretend you've got it all together and you just go, here's what I'm learning, I think you do really, really well.

Yeah, 100%. A lot of the episodes that came out of this podcast came through the struggles that we had growing our software company, Webinar Ninja. People would come up to me in person and tell me like, I just listened to your episode about like one of your key teammates or team members got poached. Is everything all right? It's like, yeah, yeah, that was like a year ago. It took me a year to get over it and to be like, okay, I'm comfortable teaching. But those episodes pop because you're teaching out of experience and you're, and you're teaching, hey, this is what worked for me when this happens, you know? And it's going to happen. You're going to have struggles. You're going to have people, close friends of yours, poaching your team members. And it's just like, no phone call, no nothing. What do you do? Do you sever that relationship? Do you do the same thing back to them? All this stuff. Like, how do you want to play this game?

Yeah.

But I find that anything that's hard, like it's really hard to share that, that's when it really does well.

Yeah.

Anything that's like, I got to pull this out somehow.

I think so. And you let people into your world a little bit. I think, you know, on the content side of things, really, I'm trying to share 2 things. You know, my worldview is the thing that people buy, but what makes that relatable is my world. And I think your world, my world has a bunch of characters in it.

Yeah.

You know, Nicole's a character. These guys are characters. The office is like this. This new amazing studio is a character. And so letting people into your world Makes you super relatable, and I think there's a bunch of people on the internet. Yeah, and all you see is the highlight reel, like the Instagram life. It's very perfect, and I think the real is where it's at.

Yeah. So, Sagi, we like to play some games here. Okay. This is a bunch of markers.

Okay.

I know you love markers. Yeah, I can't think of that.

Yeah. This whole thing's been awkward. This is going to make it much better.

No worries. We're going to play another game later, and these markers will be pivotal. Okay. But right now, yep, we're going to play a game called. Real talky, fake talky.

Okay.

Okay.

Yep. And, um, what do the markers do?

Well, the markers are going to be used later.

Okay, we don't need them now?

No.

Okay.

Um, but if you get a wrong answer, I'm going to remove one of the markers.

Okay.

Okay. And if you're left with just one black marker later, okay, you're gonna want all the markers later. So you want to, as much as possible, yep, get these answers right.

Okay.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you A quote. These are cards, you can read them out loud.

Okay.

This is a quote. You're gonna tell me, did you actually say this? Was this the real Taki?

Okay.

Right? Or is it, I've never said that, that's not me, fake Taki?

Okay.

Okay?

Yeah.

So I'm gonna give you these cards.

Yeah.

And you can go ahead and start reading, and I'll tell you if it was real or fake.

Okay, first one, I'm not responsible for any projects myself because I want them to actually finish. The idea's right, I don't remember saying those words. I'm the chief wanting officer. So mostly I'm deciding what I want, but I'm definitely not responsible for finishing projects because otherwise they will definitely bomb.

So more real or more fake?

More real.

So real talky?

Yep. Correct.

Phew. Okay.

I don't remember saying those words, but that's great.

Next one.

Most coaches don't have a marketing issue. They've got an issue with marketing. I don't think I said that, but I love that quote. If I didn't say it, I'll say it now.

But you're right. Fake Taki.

Yeah.

Okay, good. Next one.

This is outrageous. I haven't got a number we need to hit in order for Daddy to love me. I don't think I said that, but it's very true. Maybe I did say that. I'm going to say true. I'm going to say real Taki.

It is real Taki.

Yeah, that's true. I don't have a number in my head. I, my dad, I had a great childhood. I'm definitely not driven by, by the numbers.

I think you were answering somebody's question. Yeah, that's hilarious.

Okay, this is definitely fake Taki. Mediocre coffee is fine. I did not say that.

True. That's right. Fake Taki's right. Yeah.

Next. 80% done by someone else is 100% awesome. That's a Dan Martell quote. So if I said it, I was quoting Dan. I don't think it's me. Is that true?

I caught you saying it on a video. So it is real Taki.

It's real Taki quoting real Dan Martell.

Okay, so I love the filler.

Yeah.

Love you, Dan.

Yeah, we love you, Dan. Going viral should be your primary goal in marketing. 100% not true.

Fake Taki. Correct.

Okay. I'm probably going to die one day on Zoom teaching a workshop to our clients. 100% true. I'm going to do this until I'm dead, unless they are, you know, unless the robots take over.

That is true. Real talky. Yeah.

I don't want an empire. Empires are for tyrants. Fake talky.

Correct. Very good.

That's great.

No markers taken. They're all intact.

I've never, like, been so concerned about the longevity of some markers.

Oh.

I'm glad.

That's great, man. I love it. Awesome. We've been buddies for a while now. I think about— we've known each other for about 8 years. When I moved out to Australia 10 years ago, More than that. 2016 was when I moved here. So ten years ago, before I moved out, Michael Port, Book Yourself Solid. Michael Port, he's extraordinary. Yes, and he's a good friend of mine. And he was like, "You're going to Australia. You gotta know Taki Moore." Oh, and I was like, "Okay." And I looked you up, and I watched your videos, and da da da da. And then, you know, I was probably just busy trying to move.

And I think I met you at Dale's paella party.

Yeah, and that's where we met. And then. I was like, okay, I got to know you a little bit. Da da da da. And like we've been buddies for a long time, but the first time I saw you speak on stage was last year at the thing I did with Dan. Yes, yes, the Media Empire event. Like I just knew you as a friend, and I never saw you in person like doing your thing.

Yeah.

I don't know if you remember this, but when you finished that event, I was just like, I don't know what the heck you do for a living. You should be doing this, man.

Yeah.

Like this, you were magic, dude. Yeah.

I was like fun ever.

You were so— the whole room was glued to what you're— I think you were doing, um, the session about, uh, a pocket banger. You have this framework of how to do short— yeah, short-form content.

Yeah.

And even, even the name, a pocket banger, you put it in your pocket and all that stuff. These little cards you put in your back pocket. When you're done with it, you put it in the other pocket. Um, but I thought in that moment, everybody in the room was just like, I can be successful, as successful as Taki, because Taki feels very Relatable.

Yeah.

And he's fun and interesting. And I have this like thing, this kind of archetype of what I have of you is like this reluctant hero kind of person.

Retarded Jedi. Is that how I refer to it? I know that's inappropriate, but that's how I think about it.

Yeah, no, but it's this idea of like, hey, I stumbled upon this thing. I'm no genius. Yeah, but I want to share with you. And people for some reason are a lot more— yeah, and it's not an act. That's who you are.

No, totally it isn't. Like, I treat my business like a lab. We're testing out new stuff all the time. Half of it blows up in my face, which is hilarious to me. It's like I should have— we had a program that was designed to get someone to $10,000 a month, and the goal was to get people to $10,000 a month so they could join us in Black Belt. In order to qualify for Black Belt, they need to do $10,000 a month for 3 months in a row. So that's the business goal for me. The program was 3 months long, which is— I was like, why aren't people upgrading?

Well, it's—

They get to $10,000 a month, but they couldn't have got to $10,000 a month and hold it for 3 months in a row. If the program isn't long enough for them to do that. Right. And so like you make all these stupid mistakes that you realize afterwards how obvious it was. You laugh about it and then you've got a story to tell that's useful for others. Yeah. I don't know if it's reluctant hero, but it's definitely— I'm in the lab and I'm testing stuff out and I'm happy to share both the stunning successes as well as the stupid failures.

Yeah.

Especially if I find them entertaining.

Yeah. I mean, I say a good portion of your content is you making fun of your old self and the business that you built that you hated.

Yeah.

And then how you're like, hey, I woke up, I was like, I don't like this anymore. And the reason why that's so relatable, because a lot of entrepreneurs do that. Of course, they, they go after something they think they want. They like the idea of it.

Yeah.

And then they live it.

And this is— this sucks. Yeah.

Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. I want to hear a little bit more about, you know, the business that you built. Why did you hate it? How did you make the decision to change? What were the steps? Were you just like, everybody out of my office? Yeah.

So I've been doing this for a long time, and for someone who likes variety as much as I do, it's kind of weird that I've kind of got the same business as I started back then. It's morphed and evolved. I'm on like version 58.2 or whatever, but it's been a stable growing thing. COVID hit a few years ago and we're in this amazing situation where we had a— used to do an event every March, July, November, and the March event was in Australia and then 2 weeks later in the States. And so we did the event in Melbourne. It was amazing. Clients from all over. And then in between the Melbourne event and 2 weeks later in LA, COVID hit and the borders got shut to the States and Tom Hanks got COVID and it was like, okay, well, if Tom Hanks got COVID, it's in Australia, right? So we had to like redo the whole event, like A, figure out how to do it on the internet and not make it suck. And B, all of the content that I taught in Melbourne now is irrelevant because the whole world's like been rug pulled from us. And so we're inventing this whole new event and a new delivery style and it went super, super well. I think it was just like lucky timing that, you know, that happened right at that moment. And so we had a bit of an idea about what to do and we were able to lead people through it. So all of a sudden we get this reputation as like, These are the guys who can help us in this weird time. And the business takes off. And because I'm a better face than CEO, our solution to all the growth was let's just hire some more people and throw people at it. I'm not systemized. And so we threw all these people at it and the business grew.

Are you talking about sales teams? What are you talking about?

I'm talking about sales team. I'm talking about coaches. I'm talking about support people. I'm talking about everything. We grew to like 36 people, which for me is a lot on the team. And COVID was an awful time to live through, but business-wise it was great for us. And then it disappears and I'm left with this heavy business with a bunch of folks. And I kind of lost— not kind of, I lost my mojo bigly. I'd replaced myself out of a bunch of the jobs like you're supposed to. So I wasn't doing much of the coaching. I was still running like the teach sessions, not doing much of the coaching, not doing any of the sales because we had a sales team that did that, like 9 people, not involved in the marketing very much.

Yeah.

And like, frankly, I didn't really know what my job was anymore. And so I'm in this lost place where I've got this Big business that looks great on paper, but my weeks are like, if you're not doing the coaching or the sales or the marketing or the whatever, what's left? Well, the meetings to organize the people. And I hate meetings.

Yeah.

So I remember like just being in this funk. It's like lost my mojo. And I didn't realize I felt really powerless in my own business, which is a weird thing to say. I'm the boss and I could do whatever the hell I want, but I like completely didn't feel it. And one day I jump on Zoom because once a month we get the whole team together to do this like all hands thing. And you know when you're on Zoom and you can see all the Brady Bunch faces of all the people? And I noticed that I can click to page 2 and there's like 2 Zoom pages full of folks. I'm like, man, when did we become like a 2-page Zoom company? I didn't say this bit out loud, but in the back of my head I'm like, what the hell do all you guys do? It's like, I don't want to be a 2-page Zoom company anymore. No wonder it felt really heavy. And so afterwards I got off the Zoom and I chatted with Tony, who's who you know, and Karimah, my wife, who you know. I was like, I don't want this anymore. I didn't know what I wanted instead, but I knew what I didn't want.

Which is a good start.

Often it's really, it's much easier if you make a list of what you don't want, then what you do want is probably kind of the opposite of that. And so I sat down with these 2 amazing women and figured out what it might look like on the other side. And I realized it'd been like a year and a half in a funk, just tolerating all this shit in my business that drained my energy. And my week was like Casey Neistat says, it's not about how much time you spend doing what you love, it's about how little time you spend doing what you hate. And I was spending all my time doing what I hate. And I just didn't know that it was possible to change it, which is stupid to say, but true.

It's also, you don't want to disappoint people.

Most of it was just hanging on to people because—

You hired them.

Because I hired them and we'd become friends and I felt like really uncomfortable. I'm a conflict avoider. And so I didn't want to have awkward conversations with people. And so I just put up with this thing that I hated. And I thought about shutting the whole thing down and just keeping Boardroom, my VIP group, like me and an assistant. And I was like, okay, but half the people in Boardroom I only met because they joined us when they were smaller in Black Belt or smaller again in clients. And I was like, it's not the— I love the clients and I love the programs. It was just like the way my week was running I didn't like. Watched an episode, a great talk by Jason Fried from Basecamp, who I love. He's like my Elvis. And he talked about how he's talking to a bunch of software guys. Yeah, I know this is rambly, but I promise it'll be worth it. Hopefully it'll be worth it. So about how like software designers design the product, but they never think about the product, the ultimate product, which is the business that they get to work in every day. So I grabbed him for an interview and like Secretly, I was like, what can I get from this for me? Because I feel like I've built amazing client products, but the product I'm in every day doesn't feel fun. And then Tony and Kiran Marie helped get a vision for what it could look like on the other side. And then we're only like, from making the decision to a completely different business was 90 days away. And I spent more time not making the changes than making the changes.

Yeah.

And 90 days later, the business was completely different. Sales team of 9 to sales team of 0, like not a single setter, closer, No sales calls, no nothing. Team went from 36 to 8. And most importantly, my role went from, I don't know what my job is and I'm in meetings all the time, to I get to do the 2 things I love, which is make new things and hang out with cool people and share the lessons from those 2 things to everybody. That's liberating.

100%. And I think one of the things that I love about this journey is you recognize the fact that, hey, like, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. Like, you know, this doesn't feel right. And yeah, A lot of us, we build these monsters called businesses and we confuse what we're supposed to do with what we want to do.

Like, yeah, there's a quote from, from Pinterest, right? You know, one of those Pinterest inspirational quotes that actually landed. And my friend Dan put me onto it, a different Dan. And it was like, I'm much more interested in how my business feels to me than how it looks to anyone else. And I heard that. I was like, oh my God, that's it. So I don't really care what anyone else thinks. Like, I'm the dude in this life 24/7. Yeah, let's build something that feels great.

100%. I agree with you.

Yeah. Life-changing.

Yeah. I wanna talk a little bit about, um, you know, you mentioned this story before about, you know, you were strapped for cash.

Yeah.

You had a buddy named Sam. You borrowed $200 so they can get groceries. Yeah. Carrie Marie says she's pregnant for, you know, you had 5 kids. This is your 6th child coming on the way. Yep. Um, how—

Something like that. It's probably 4th to 5th or something like that.

Yeah. The story's out there if anybody wants to Google it.

Yeah.

Or, or find out on another YouTube channel. But, You didn't come with a lot of money. Like, money is not a thing that you grew up with.

And I had a bunch of like dumb money beliefs from fam.

Like?

So we had a— my grandparents were pretty— they were communist. We had a hotline to the Communist Party headquarters, like a red phone. And ASIO, which is like the CIA here, had like files on my grandparents. And so I grew up believing— you're going to hate me on both of these— money is evil and Americans are bastards. And turns out they're terrible beliefs to have if you want to grow a business. Hold on.

Okay, let's slow down for a bit. How? Where are your grandparents from? They were Aussies.

They were just— I don't know. I don't know the whole backstory.

Okay. But yeah, they just got the red phone because they were just good at that.

Well, they were in the Communist Party. And yeah, apparently there's a hotline to headquarters to get whatever the instructions were. There were files on them.

And But that trickled down, obviously.

100% it trickled down.

Yeah.

Like, I'm the only one in my fam who runs a business. My brothers and sisters are doing amazing things. Like, very— like, one's really senior in NGOs.

Yeah. Are you one of the first millionaires in your family?

Yeah. Going back a couple of generations, I don't remember him, but when I was a kid, apparently, you know, I knew them. Papa Tol. Started, I think the company that became Toll Logistics. You know those trucks?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Up in Newcastle, I think. But I didn't meet him. But yeah, I mean, it's all new.

Yeah. How often do you think of like Nicole and I have this phrase Old Navy days?

Okay.

Old Navy days is we were living in the States. All we could afford is buying clothes from Old Navy. Old Navy is like maybe the brand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Old Navy.

You're a submariner or something.

Yeah, there's like you know. Banana Republic, Gap, and then Old Navy is like the bottom of the barrel. Like, we, you know, and it was kind of a joke, but it was the reality. Like, we didn't have a lot of money and we could pay rent barely. Um, and we were just trying to make it happen.

And even my kids, like, we've got 6 kids. The 3 oldest had a very different upbringing to the 3 youngest because halfway through that journey, things got good.

How often do you think of those days? And what do you think of them as Fond memories? What are your thoughts when you go back to the poor days?

I think I'm the same guy. And I think like, I was just as happy. Yeah, they were great days. Because like, money solves all the problems that money can solve, but doesn't change anything else. I think you hit it. There's like a lack of money, which causes all sorts of problems. And then there's enough money. And then beyond that, like, to be honest, life doesn't change. Happiness doesn't change that much. I mean, your stuff's cooler. And you can travel at the front of the plane, which is awesome. But I think we help people get to $1 million a year. That's kind of what our job is as a coach. And people think that when they get to $1 million a year, everything's going to be radically different. And you wake up and it's not that different. You've got way more options and way more choices. And I guess a lot of the stress has gone away, but it doesn't. I think if you're miserable before money, you'll be rich and miserable. And if you're happy without money, you'll be Happy and rich.

I strongly disagree. Actually, I strongly disagree because I am way happier with money. I'm way happier.

Oh, I'm not saying I wouldn't choose it.

I'm not the same person. I was miserable.

Is that right?

Oh yeah, are you kidding me? Like, oh my God, your money solves all your stress. Like, kidding. Like, there's very little that money doesn't solve. Like, very little. People like— I, I talk about this a lot on the show because I feel like I just have very strong feelings about this. My parents were immigrants from Egypt. We didn't have a lot of money. We got all our clothes from Goodwill. We didn't have, you know, like we struggled, right? And I never knew the feeling of not being head above water. Like it's always like— Pay the bills. And that feeling of that stress. And then once you get past that, great. But then when you have an abundance of money where it's like, oh, I can get, I can treat my family to this amazing vacation. It's just like, okay, I like what I said.

I think I like—

I would never go back.

No, I would never go back too. But I've been the same. No, I think there's 2 sides to this. I think my smile ratio is identical to how it was in high school and how it was.

Wow.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Like we make ridiculous amounts of money. And if you had to ask me 10 years ago, I would have laughed in your face. Even growing up, like my dream growing up, we lived in North Carlton in Melbourne. Yeah, I lived on McIlraith Street and my dream was one day to live on Drummond Street, which is like my vision was like 3 blocks away. It was the nice street in the area. That would have been cool. But my, I think my happiness set point is the same. My life is way cooler, no question. And yeah, now we can do a bunch of stuff that we couldn't, but like my joy level is the same. Like, yeah, also my My stress level is the same. The stresses are very different. Like we've got a bunch of hards in our life. Yeah. Everyone looks at me and they're like, oh, Taki works like 4 days a week and 4 hours a day. And that's true. And no, dude. Yeah, dude. My— we've had a ton of hard things family-wise.

Yeah.

Health-wise and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, off camera we've shared— you've shared these stories with me. Yeah, correct. It's not— it's not— I love the fact that you shared it with me because We have this concept in in in Arab culture, and the word is called risk. Risk means like you're it's almost like your lot in life, or it's like credits. Yeah, like everybody gets 100 credits. Sometimes all your credits is money. Yeah, some and you have nothing left for health. You have nothing left for relationships. Some people their relationships are really high. So right. Yeah, at the end of the day, no one is gets everything correct. You're you're gonna get challenged somehow. Yeah, you know, and you've had your share of challenges.

Correct. Yeah, I think that. Rizq? How do you spell it?

Yeah, it's like R-I-Z-Q.

Rizq. That's cool. I love that. I think, have you ever played like a video game or Dungeons and Dragons or something where when you start, your character gets like, you've got 20 points to spend on various qualities like strength or speed or charisma or what? I think I spent all mine on like jazz hands and charisma and didn't have anything left for like discipline or like the ability to read a spreadsheet or, you know, grown-up stuff. Yeah, but you can like, whatever points you've Like, you could take those a long way.

Yeah.

If you look at anyone who's great, they're like an 8 or a 9 or a 10 out of 10 at something. Yes. I think a lot of times we play it safe. I know this is like way off topic, but risk sparked an idea.

Yeah, totally. But that kind of leads to something else I wanted to talk to you about. You know, I think a lot of what you said just earlier about like, you know, same number of smiles when I had money, no money. Yeah, that's true.

1,000% true for me.

And I think it's because I've always said this about you. Like, you're like 95% artist, 5% business person.

Million percent.

And as an artist, you're just happy that you get to do your art.

Dude, all I need is—

Yeah.

That and a sheet of paper or a wall or a window or my hand to invent something. Yeah. Like, I don't need very much.

Yeah.

To be like simple pleasures. Yeah. We've got really, really good money, but I like the ideal day has like Hanging out with a really good friend, hanging out with my fam, drinking a great coffee somewhere nice, going for a walk, having a swim.

None of that costs much.

None of that. The most expensive thing on that list is the coffee, which if it's a nice coffee, maybe it's like $10.

Maybe. Yeah. My only argument is that if you don't know how you're going to pay your bills, you can't enjoy any of that.

And there's nothing more stressful than the number shows up on the thing and you're worried, will this card go through? I've had plenty of those.

That's awful. But I want to talk a little bit about that because I do feel like the reason why you've done so well, and even recently with your, with your push to content and, and your branding and all the great videos you're putting out, short form, long form.

Yeah.

Is that people get to see the artist side of Taki. I think initially, probably this is just my impression. People just thought like, oh, this dude must be great at business because he's such a great business coach and he's, he's, you know, and he probably You know, things in spreadsheets and da da da. And it's like when I met you, like, oh, this guy's the opposite.

No.

Yeah. Like, I think you even have like limited access to like your calendar or something.

Yeah, this is true. I'm banned from the calendar. I've got read-only access because of the incident where I said yes to speak at 2 different— I ended up like I booked myself to speak at 3 different conferences on the same day in 3 continents, which is hard to pull off. One of them was mine, so I went to that one.

Okay.

The other 2 I didn't. And I let people down. Yeah. Read-only access to that. We make great money. I don't like— this is terrible fun. Like, please don't hate me.

No.

This is how I know how we're doing. A few times a year, Kermit goes, hey, have a look at this. I'm like, holy shit, that's a lot of money. I'm like, great. And let's get back to it. When Toni started to work with us, she's like, I just want to, you know, I want to get to know you and your goals. How much money do you want to make? I'm like, oh, why? She goes, so I can reverse engineer the plan. I'm like, oh, I've never really thought about that. Like, the only time I had a money goal was when When I needed to get us out of a massive hole and we needed to have enough money by the time this baby was born or we'd be fucked. But the rest of the time, like, I don't even think about it. A few months ago, she's like, hey, Tuck, guess what? We did $2 million this month. I'm like, oh, it wasn't a goal. Like, that's amazing.

Do you purposely like don't want to know?

It just doesn't matter to me. So some people have a, when I hit a goal, then I'll feel a certain way. But my goal is like something I can do every day. So like for me, winning is I'm working on projects that excite me with people I love to work with to help people we care about. And I could do that every single day, which I love. And I'm, yeah, like I'm past— I don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't sound douchey. I'm just going to say it douchey. I'm in a post-need economy right now.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And I mean, you're very public about your numbers. You make well over $2 million a month. So yeah, and you're way beyond, you know, making sure the lights are on.

The lights are super on.

Yeah.

But even beforehand, when it wasn't like, I just don't really care about that.

I actually think it helps in a lot of ways. Like, I wouldn't be able to do that personally. No, that's fine. I think for you to be the creative you are, because when I watch your content on YouTube, when I see you on stage, I don't see some guy who's like, I'm going to teach a framework so people can be able to like maximize every dollar. And like, I know this by like This exact equation that I worked out in my little lab.

Yeah. If you ever see me teaching maths, it's fake talky.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, I've just not—

Like, I've never seen like a percentage sign. I've never seen ratios. I've never seen actual numbers on your videos. You know, like everything you draw is words. It's, it's graphs.

There's like pictures.

There's a lot of stories.

Stories. Yeah. I'm, I'm super, super right, uh, right brain. Yeah. Right brain. Um, and to be, you know, that means that I've probably left a bunch of money on the table.

Yeah.

And that's okay.

No.

I'm much more intuitive than financial. Luckily, I've got great people around me who are good at that stuff. I'm like, Taki, this thing that you want to do, it's going to cost us this much money. Are you okay with that? Yes or no? Thanks for pointing that out. We won't do that stupid thing. I think there's something amazing about— I know my marketing is way better. My content is way better when I'm not focused on the numbers. I watched— I find Casey Neistat super inspiring, and I watched this interview with him on So at a live event with Colin and Samir.

Yeah.

Who are amazing. Colin and Samir, if you ever watch this, I would love to meet you. Casey, whatever I just said about Colin and Samir times 10. And they said, I'd love to get your take on the state of the creator economy. And he was like, I take issue with that phrase. There's a lot of economy and not much creator anymore. And I know that since the— especially since the business is doing so well, my sense of neediness Is like different. And I just make content that I know will be helpful and that is fun and meaningful for me. And then I just, I can just go unhinged and let it rip. And the stuff I'm producing is way better because I'm not attached to the outcome and I'm not trying to like squeak every extra bit of juice out of the algorithm or whatever.

Yeah. And I want to like piggyback on what you just said right now or elaborate a little bit because I've seen a lot of your videos and every time I see it. There's, there's a recurring message happening, and that message is a lot of coaches that come to you and say, hey, I wanna be, I wanna grow my coaching business. They think it's like a hack. They think like, I gotta fine-tune a funnel. I, they figure I need more leads. I need to know how to convert these leads. And something that you always say, I don't know if it's actually getting through to people cuz you keep saying it, but is like, you gotta have a great product.

Yeah.

You gotta have, whatever you deliver has to be amazing. Otherwise, all that is like a leaky bucket. There's no reason to do that. You've coached thousands and thousands of people. What happens when somebody does that, takes on that advice?

So, let's start with what happens if you don't.

Okay.

Yeah. If you're a great marketer and your product's no good, you just speed up the rate at which people find out you're not good, which is a terrible idea.

Yeah.

Like, oh, great. The emperor has no clothes. Okay. Well, now that we know that. So, you can get a long way on marketing and sales. We've all, you know, we've all done that. I think having something you're proud of just makes everything else— I mean, it sounds so dumb that we need to teach people this, but it's the superpower. Like, have something legit amazing. And when you do, if you don't have that, you're, you know, every new client you add is just replacing somebody who left. And so it's like, you know, churn and replace.

Yeah.

And if you do, then you're like in add and compound. And so life gets really fun really quick. Everyone knows Alex Hormozi is this great marketer, and he is. But dude, he's a product guy first. When they were working with gyms, his program was pretty expensive. Like, I don't know how much the average gym makes, but it's not that much money. And his program was like $16,000, like $1,000 a month— sorry, $1,000 a week for 16 weeks. And they could like just scrape together the first payment. But if it didn't work by the end of week 1, they couldn't pay payment number 2.

Correct. They needed that ROI.

Product needed to be great. So he's like, the secret to scale is like, how low can you lower the bar about how someone, how good a client needs to be and it still works? I think he's a product guy first. Like Martell is a product guy first. All like everyone good has a great product. Years ago, I remember reading that the Apple stores are the— I don't know if they still are, but they probably are highest retail sales per square foot of any other retail store. And that's because the products are freaking great.

Yeah, I love it. So you've coached thousands of people over the— like, how long have you been doing this?

A long time.

Maybe— 20-plus years, right?

Be close to 20 years.

Yeah, you've been doing this a very long time.

Yeah, I'm 50. How old are you?

I'm 46.

Dude.

Yeah.

I'm the old guy.

You look younger. I would— if people ask me about my gray hair, it's like, well, that's wisdom. That's 10 years of a software business. And, you know, I sold it, otherwise I'm going to lose my hair. Yeah, that's the cost. But you've been here for a very long time. You've helped a lot of people. What are the signs that you see when you have a new student, a new client where you're like, I can't help you?

Butt face. It's probably the first thing. Yeah, you know, when you like, you give someone some advice and the first thought is, yeah, but that's butt face. So, butt face is like a biggie. Anyone who's not open to trying a new thing, that's a worry. Anyone who's looking for the tactics and the hacks. Honestly, if someone's focus is, how do I make money and I'll change my niche and I'll serve a whole different audience, just tell me what works. I'm like, oh dude, I work with the good guys. I want to work with someone who cares about the people and wants the people to win. And they know that if they can help people win, they'll win too. That's my person. And if they're— I think if it's a spectrum, there's Mercenaries at one end, there's, you know, which is all money, no care. There's missionaries at the other end, all care, no money. And I want to help that person.

Yeah.

You know, this guy, not, not either of those two. How do I know someone's not going to work it out if they've got butt face or they're only in it for the cash and they don't actually care?

Right.

Well, they'll probably do really well short term, but they're not going to do well with me.

And who do you help the most? People that come with— they have XYZ, but they don't have this.

The people I love to help is someone who's, who's got something that works and that they love. Like if they've fallen in love with the customer, not with the product or the fame or the name, those people are really fun to help because they've got the goods. And now my job is how do we take the magic that's behind a door and show it to the world? That's really fun.

I love it. We're going to play another game, Taki.

All right.

Okay. So this is one of my favorite games.

Anytime he brings out the iPad, I get nervous.

No, no.

What are we doing?

No, no, nothing to be nervous about. So actually, what's great about this game Is that there are no right or wrong answers.

Amazing. We're gonna crush this.

So, this game is called Offer Table. I'm gonna give you an offer.

Yep.

You have 5 seconds to think about the offer and you're gonna say deal or no deal. Okay?

So, I'm the, I'm the buyer?

Yeah. You gotta choose. I'll take that deal or no deal. I don't want that.

Okay.

Okay?

This is fun. I've never been on a show with games.

Here we go.

I love this.

First one.

Yep.

I'm gonna give you $100,000 for one keynote. You must fly to Dubai and it must be tomorrow and you must stay for a week.

No deal. Can I say why?

Why?

My wife's going through chemo. Tomorrow's chemo. I'm going to be there.

Wishing you the best, Kiri.

Thank you.

Yeah. You run a business. Okay. And it runs perfectly without you forever.

Yep.

But you never have to work again. Right.

And you— sorry.

No deal right away. Yeah.

I'm not trying to build a thing to retire from. Like, the money's cool, but like, for me, this is about creativity and expression. And if I, if I have If my hands are tied behind my back and I can't like think and draw and yeah, I'm— that's not fun. What am I gonna do?

That's your truth. I love it. Next deal, unlimited travel.

Yep.

In a private jet for a year in exchange for no coffee for a year.

No, no deal. No, there's not a chance.

Love it. You can go tea.

No.

Okay.

Just before decaf and definitely not tea.

All right. All right. I'm gonna buy your business right now for $250 million, but you have to stay as an employee for 24 months.

I'm mostly worried about what happens after 24 months because I will happily work in it for the next 20 years.

Do whatever you want.

Yeah, I would take that deal. Yeah, I'd probably ask if I could stay longer.

Nice. Can I vest for 24 centuries?

I don't know if I'm going to be around that long.

Yeah, you never know what's happening right now. Everyone thinks they're going to live forever. Yeah. Okay. Netflix calls.

Yeah.

They want you to do a special, but the crew must follow you and your family for 6 months starting from tomorrow.

I've got a few friends who kind of live this life, and when I hang with them, it is pretty awkward. Like, they're great. It takes me a while to get my head around the camera crew. Do I get to— if I get say about what they can and can't shoot, yes. Otherwise, I'm gonna say no because I put my hand up for face on the internet and my kids didn't.

So that's fair. Yeah, that's fair. 10,000 new clients. Yeah, but they're all beginners, never made a dollar on the internet.

Yes, I'll take that deal because we've got a program now that Does a great job of helping those people win, and I'm super, super proud of it. If you had asked me eight months ago, I would have said no.

This is clients.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would 100% do that. Yeah, yeah.

The program's called Clients.

Yeah, the program's called Clients, and it's extraordinary. Yeah, and yeah, and it works. Like we got people to make their first sale in in three days, and it's super fun. But I'm I teach it. But I don't coach it, if that makes sense.

Yeah. But what a gift you're giving people. There's nothing like that first—

First dollar is amazing.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it really is.

The ceiling opens up. Everything changes.

I did my first— my equivalent to that for me was there's this guy called Peter Sun who had a group of marketing consultants, and he asked me to come and do a guest spot on every Tuesday morning. He used to get on Zoom or whatever it was and yell at his people to follow the system and do the stuff. He asked me to come and do a guest spot, like an interview, and I did. And I was too scared to sell stuff, so I didn't. And then a few weeks later, I did my first webinar to sell stuff and we made $30,000 in an hour or an hour and a half. And previously I'd worked in a job for $23,400 a year. I did more than that in an hour and I bawled my eyes out. My brain broke. Like the first time you do a thing and you make actual money and you help real people on the end, like your brain just— it's the coolest thing ever.

Yeah. For me, the first dollar I made out of my paycheck, I made $30. My business was, uh, I used to sell rare Air Jordans on eBay.

Is that right?

So, I would buy— find a buyer. I'm looking for a size 11 Jordan 11s. This is before the retros came out. This is 2001. So, they would, uh, be like, I'm looking for, you know, size 11 Jordans 11, you know, the numbers for the Different kinds of Jordans. And then I would find somebody selling it and then I would sell it with a markup arbitrage to this person. I made my first $30 that way. I was like, what?

Yes.

How?

Yes. It's amazing.

I was just like—

by the way, how— like the first time you make a dollar in your own business, it's almost the best money you make.

Oh, 100%. That's why they hang that first dollar in like the pizzerias and stuff like that.

It's really special.

Yeah, because you, you start doing the math, you start wondering, well, what if I can make $60, $100? Wait a minute. What?

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah. So 100%, I would take that deal.

Yeah. Back to the game. All right. Let's go.

Sorry, I segued.

All good. So you get 1 extra hour a day. So you get 25 hours a day versus everybody gets 24 hours a day for the rest of your life. But that 1 hour has to be spent alone.

Does sleep count?

You could use that how you want. You could, if you mean alone, you're alone in your sleep.

Yeah. Yeah. If I, I would make an extra hour, extra hour of sleep. I think that'd be great. It means my other hours are good. I've got a few friends who've done that. What's it called? The 10-day silent meditation retreat thing, Vipassana or whatever.

We mentioned off camera, John Wadumis, he did that.

Okay. I would never do that in a million years.

Yeah.

10 minutes in my own, with my own thoughts is scary enough. 10 days, terrifying. But if I could sleep, I think I could use an hour of sleep.

Nice. Next one.

Yeah.

Your work outlives you by 300 years, but you're never credited and nobody knows your name.

Oh, I'm gonna be— I'm gonna be dead. I won't care.

Take that deal?

100%.

Yeah.

Yeah. If I'm dead, which I'm gonna be, the fact that it keeps helping people is fine. I don't need to be remembered. I just wanna be good for while I'm here.

Nice. Okay, so magic wand, you never have to deal with dramas in your life again. But you must be Prime Minister of Australia for 3 years.

No, no. Life's too short to spend even 1 minute doing stuff you hate. I'd be terrible at that. It'd be bad for the country. It'd be awful for me. This country would— yeah, people would wake up and they're like, what the hell happened to this place? It used to be so good. Yeah, I'm not taking that deal on behalf of the Australian people. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm not doing it.

I don't think I would vote for you.

No, I wouldn't vote. No, I'd be awful as PM. Yeah, no chance.

I would love to see the budget that you approve.

Yeah, that's right. That's a terrible idea.

Okay. You start over at 21 years old. You go back in time. You have the same relationship, same career, same kids, same road. You just have to go through all over again. Would you go through that again?

Yeah. It's been a hell of a ride. So, do I have the wisdom and knowledge that I've got now so I can do it better and smarter?

Or do I— Yeah. Why not?

Yeah. Then I would 100% do it. And even if I didn't, like, it's been a great ride. There's been so many highlights, so many lowlights. Often, a mate will be like, how you doing? I'm like, most days I'm a 10 out of 10. Some days it's a 2, average an 8. It's a great life.

I mean, we've hung out enough for me to vouch that's true. Yeah. And your kids are amazing and Kiri's a wonderful person.

Yeah, 100%. Very lucky.

Yeah, 100%.

I like games. This is great. I need more games in my stuff.

Okay. So, I want to just, you know, we're going to— this is going to publish maybe about 4 weeks from now. Okay. What is on your horizon? What are you doing? What fun stuff are you doing? What vacations? What work stuff are you excited about?

So we're in this weird space. If you think about like every business, you have to like market and get leads, you have to sell stuff and you deliver a service. I think we have, without coming across as braggish, we've completely nailed the get clients side of our business. Like we've been sold out 13 months in a row. Business is epic and it's fun. And so I can't do like lots of things at once. But if we put the eye of Sauron and focus it on one thing, we get to focus all of our energy and attention for the rest of this year on how do we make Black Belt, our flagship program, the greatest place on earth. It's already really, really good, but how do we make it even easier for clients to win? How do we make it more fun? How do we make it simpler? So all of our attention is on that right now, which is fun. We talk about product versus marketing before. Was it Naval Ravikant said, you're doing sales because you failed at marketing. You're doing marketing because you failed at product. It's like, that's, that's, that's a gut punch. That's a gut punch. Yeah. And so Black Belt's amazing, but there's a few things in the program that aren't great. Like, like I've been doing this for a long time. I've got— I've had a bunch of ideas for a long, long time. Everything's recorded. The portal right now takes a guide to walk you through. It's not like step 1, do this, step 2, do this. It's custom planned for each person, which is epic. And I think that's the right approach. But I've got some content that probably should be shot and some things which should be streamlined. We're looking at how do we—

Like an onboarding for anybody who comes in?

Yeah, onboarding, but also post-onboarding. Okay. It's choose your own adventure on purpose because I don't want everyone to look and sound the same. And we want to leverage your strengths, not cookie cutter you with everybody else. But I think there's a lot of things which are done manually and need a coach that could be streamlined. And so the goal for us right now that Tony and Mike on my team are here this week and on Thursday we're hanging out and building out missions.

Yeah.

So it's like we've got a process for choosing the right next thing. At any given moment in your business, there's one move that's like the That lead domino, right? And then how do we turn that into a really clear six-week piece of work for somebody? It's got big ideas about how to simplify and streamline the client experience. That's going to be really fun.

I love it. I've met so many people through you, Taki. One of the things I there's a quote from the quote Jordan Harbinger, a friend of mine and podcaster.

Phil's amazing. Yeah, yeah.

He he he mentioned this to me one time, and he said that like he's his whole thing is networking and making sure that like you grow your network.

Yeah.

And he used to say. Or he said to me once that if you are covetous of your network, if you don't share your network with other people, it atrophies.

Yeah.

Like, if you don't introduce people that you know to other people, some people are like, I don't want to introduce them because I want them for myself, or maybe they'll get better than me, and they're thinking that way, you know. I'm just gonna share a few people that you introduced me to and how, how much impact that's made on my life. Okay, so I'll start with, you know, I'll go past, present, future. Okay, past. Well, it's also present. You introduced me to Ken.

Yeah.

Okazaki. So, right. So, Ken from Japan. Yeah. He's in black belt, right? And by the way, yeah. And he loved your last event, by the way, in Thailand.

You can tell a lot about how great somebody is. Like if they've got kids, if you meet their kids, you're like, this guy's a legit amazing human being. Yeah. Ken's kids are the best.

Yeah. I think you got him beat by one, right? He's got 5 kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, I beat Ken in number of kids.

Yes.

I'm not saying anything about the quality of the kids.

No, no, no, no. His kids are extraordinary. Everybody's great. So, I met Ken. Ken runs a great team with his family. We met them because we were looking for ways to build out our studio in our home office at the time when we're going video 2 years ago when he started doing this whole video thing on YouTube.

Yeah.

He helped me Build a studio in my house, tell me all the equipment. He set everything up. We got on Zoom calls, move the camera here, boom boom. Yeah. And then he's they're very much part of our team still. They help us with the editing part of our of our yeah of our of our operation. Every year we go to Japan, we meet up with them, and we have a great like kind of team powwow. They're they're fantastic.

They're amazing.

Yeah. But you introduced me to him because I was like, hey, I'm looking for you actually introduced more than one person, but then I went with Ken. Um, and it just kind of opened up this whole video world for me and our team. And I was like, like, you helped us tremendously in this area. And then we wanted to kind of grow beyond our home studio. We're like, should we build out a studio in a physical space, hire a full-time video producer? You know, this is prior to bringing on Josh and everything. So, um, you introduced me to Sean and I said, I wanna do a pilot with Sean just to see what it feels like to—

Mm-hmm.

to have somebody follow around the camera and, and I don't have to shoot myself.

Yeah.

And so, we shot a pilot episode with Sean just to get a feel of like how is— it's like, okay, cool, Sean. That, that was thanks for that experience. And it was kind of a green light for us to find Josh. And we hired Josh and Josh became our, our video producer. We found our studio, found our office, and that kind of like—

So good.

Dictated everything. And then, uh, when we met up in Manly, when we, uh, at the Media Empire event, you told me about Simon Bowen.

Oh, dude, of course.

About the mental models and the drawings and all that stuff and how to get your genius out on these models. And then we had a chat on Zoom because you introduced us via, you know, text message.

Yeah.

And from there, we kind of had a chat and I'm starting his program like next month.

So like, dude, Simon's such a good, good man.

Yeah.

You're in great hands.

Yeah, he's fantastic. So like, you have impacted so much of my journey in such a short amount of time, like, and just by introducing people that you felt like would be valuable to me.

Yeah.

Are you mindful of this? Are you like trying to like, who else can I help? Or are you just doing this in the spur of the moment?

No, I just do it in the spur of the moment. But like, I think one of my favorite things to do is like, I love to meet— like, I'm where I am. I'm not self-made. Do you know Jason Gaynard? Yeah, I love that guy. So Jason had this guy come and speak. I can't remember his name. I feel embarrassed that I don't. Might be Josh, but I could be wrong. He's got cerebral palsy and he's an incredible, like, Hilariously funny guy. And he said, I'm not self-made, I'm community made. And that landed and that became the title of Jason's book, Community Made. I think that's true of me. I'm definitely not self-made. I'm fucked by myself, but I'm great because I've got an amazing squad of really good friends. And—

Who's impacted you? Who are some of the people that—

I mean, so many people. Ken helped me with video. Sean's helped me with video. Early days, a guy called Matt Church helped me unpack my ideas into IP. That's just like pink sheets has been a skill that I've used for centuries. Dan Martell has helped me a ton with confidence and pushing me to do all the uncomfortable things like being on camera and getting abs and all the stuff. Thanks, Dan.

That's abs, not ads.

Yeah, we spend almost no money on ads right now, but I don't have abs either. I kind of, I said to God, I don't know if I told you this. I said to God—

I saw your abs. You had them.

I had them by April 1st last year. I had to like run a Zoom call with my shirt off and my man boobs jiggling because Dan said you need a public commitment and a consequence. So I did. Very motivating.

Yeah.

Some people like have been like directly one-to-one influential and some of them have been influential through their content.

Their work.

Yeah. Yeah. So Casey is a massive inspiration to me. I think my dream video would be like a Casey Neistat business adventure video. That's kind of where I'm trying to get to. So many people.

Yeah. There's something that you and I have in common. We are students of comedy. We love comedy. I want you to give me your top 3 comedians and why.

So, they're all dark comedy.

Like Louis C.K. dark?

Probably darker.

Wow.

Okay. Yeah. Frankie Boyle's my favorite. He's a Scottish guy, used to write for Jimmy Carr, and he's just— he says awful things and I just love it to bits. So Frankie Boyle is hilarious and inappropriate. I'd say Anthony Jeselnik, I love, and probably, probably Jimmy Carr.

Jimmy's fantastic.

Yeah. So fun.

Yeah.

I like the less appropriate, the more inappropriate, the better. Stuff that you just shouldn't laugh at, but you do.

Wow.

Daniel Tosh.

Yeah.

Yeah. He's got this thing where he says something awful and you laugh and then he makes it your fault for laughing, not his fault for saying it. I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Marc Maron does that too.

He's great too.

100%.

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah Silverman.

Yeah.

Gosh, she's funny.

Yeah, she's very irreverent.

Yeah, she's the best. You know, she does this one about her sister, I think Jolene, in college. If you ever get a chance. Yeah, that's— I won't repeat it. It's amazing.

All right. But the reason why I bring it up is because you're pretty funny. Like, you're pretty funny when you're in your videos, when you're speaking on stage. Yeah. Um, are you Conscious of like, let's have some fun, let's make some jokes?

No, I, um, I don't know if this is normal, but even if I'm in a conversation with somebody, like, they'll say something and I'll think about it, which will lead to another thought and another thought and another. And like, before I know it, I'm like 7 conversations away in my head. And usually, and they'll like, they'll catch me giggling. I'm like, what are you laughing at? I'm like, oh, I ended up over here and let me—

yeah.

So I see stuff like, I see stuff that makes me laugh all the time.

Yeah.

And I think part of it is just taking yourself lightly.

Yeah.

I think my clients love it when I can, you know, we've got this thing in the Australian culture. It's true in the States, depending on where you are in the States, I think, where the more friends you are with somebody, the more kind of shit you hang on them and the more you tease each other. And so I found that fun. And mostly I do this because it's entertaining for me.

Yeah.

My goal with all of the content I make, whether it's for clients or for the public, is like, how can I— fun and useful? Is that like— that's my North Star. And if it's just useful, I remember chatting with Hormozi by text. I'm like, he goes, my goal is to be useful. I'm like, yeah, you're doing that. My goal is to be fun and useful. You're no fun. And he's like, yeah, that's right. But that's the thing.

Yeah. I mean, he had a whole Tony Robbins interview about that where he had him on the show and Tony was trying to bring out his Fun part.

Anabolic Alex.

Yeah, exactly. Which is which is interesting. But I find it interesting because Nicole says, "You're funny. You should be more funny on camera." Blah blah. And I'm I always had this like fantasy of doing like stand-up comedy. But then I realized I'm actually not good as like a by myself comedy.

I need someone to bounce off.

Exactly. Like all my funniness or jokes come from being around people. And yeah, like. I make all the corny jokes in the office and blah blah blah, and like I love to make people laugh and da da da da. But like it's hard for me to just do it outside of a group. Yeah. And I think that I have. I just. It's it's hard to come up. That's why I have so much respect for these stand-up comedians.

You know Garrett Gunderson?

No.

Who's that? Oh, okay. He's the next one you need to meet.

Okay.

Yeah. Garrett will be useful for you in a whole fun way. Okay. He's a mate of mine. He's got long kind of. Grayish hair. He looks like Jesus. He talks about money. I call him Money Jesus. He had a company called Wealth Factory. So he teaches entrepreneurs how to do their money. But lately, he's been into stand-up comedy. He's obviously been a consumer for a long time, but he's hysterical. He roasts people. He'd be great on the show.

Yeah. Okay.

And he's one of my favorite human beings.

You just mentioned about the Wealth Factory and Garrett. Um, there, this is like, it's a total side note, total whatever. But like, I think that one of the like untapped resources for entrepreneurs is like what to do with your money. Like, um, our, our, uh, our mutual friend Dale Beaumont, we hung out a whole bunch of times. Every time we hang out, Dale's like, do you know Jackson Milan? You gotta get to know Jackson Milan.

Yeah, Jackson's great.

Right?

Yeah.

And I was like, Jackson Milan, okay, fine. I'm gonna talk to Jackson Milan. I'll get on the phone with him. Like, he just berated me every single time I met him. It's like, you haven't talked to him yet? Talk to Jackson Malone. I was like, fine, Dale. Okay. So then we get on a call with Jackson Malone. Jackson Malone's whole business model is basically you are making money.

Yeah.

You need to do something with this money outside the business. Like invest, you know, diversify portfolio. How do you tax advantages, blah, blah, blah. You know, and it's just like kind of, he has like a whole team where they take care of your whole like future with money. And it's like, there's so much value in this concept of like how instead of trying to help people with, Make money in their business. They made it, do something with it.

The coolest coaching niche I ever heard of, I've never met this person, but my mate Pete told me about him. He's at an event full of coaches and they're like, turn to the person next to you and tell them what your niche is. And so he turns to this woman, she goes, I'm the instant millionaire coach. He's like, what?

Instant millionaire?

He's like, what do you mean? She goes, well, you know how somebody wins lotto and they come into all this money and 2 years later they're worse off than they were?

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah. She goes, well, I work with people who've just won lotto She takes 1% of their winnings and helps them manage the 99% so they don't do stupid stuff with it and turn it into more. Like, that's a genius niche.

That is. And I'm sure she could have some athletes as well.

And she can target like, because they publish the lottery winners. So she's got like, she could just snipe the winner. Dude, it's so smart.

So good. We're going to play another game.

Okay.

With the markers.

Okay.

Okay. We're going to step out of the studio and come back. Okay.

Let's do it.

Let's do it. So we're here at the whiteboard. This game is called Whiteboard Gauntlet. Toilet. Oh geez. All right. Okay. So you have the markers from before. Yeah.

Okay.

You have all these markers to use. You can put on the table, you can do whatever you want.

Okay.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a prompt and you're going to create a model. You're going to explain how to do such a thing.

Okay.

Uh, as you go to each one. Okay. You have 60 seconds to think about them. Yep. And you have about 90 seconds to draw and explain to our wonderful audience.

Okay. Okay.

The reason why we're doing this is because this is like, Your superpower.

I can't think without a pen, so hopefully we're in good shape.

Yeah, and I just want to show off Taki's superpower through the whiteboard gauntlet. Amazing. All right, so 60 seconds starts as soon as I finish the prompt.

Yeah, otherwise you'll take 58 seconds to explain it and leave me with no time.

Exactly. First one is a quick intentional reel for Instagram.

Oh, that's easy. Uh, get some colors. Okay, I think about, uh, Instagram reels, any kind of short-form content like Lego. Mm-hmm. We've got 4 parts. It's less a model, but I think the picture will kind of make sense. We've got the hook, which is designed to stop the scroll, get people to pay attention. That's part 1, first 3 to 5 seconds. How am I doing for time? We've got heaps of time. Second, we've got the build, which is the body of the content. You know, it's a story or a list or steps. Third, let's go red, and we'll go black. So grab their attention, give some context, get people curious. The build is a story or a list of steps building to a payoff, and the payoff is like the— that's meant to be the tool that the Lego guy holds. This is the aha, the insight, the key idea. And then at the end, where's my red? There. At the end, we want some kind of call to action, which is the invitation. And so I just think about it like Lego, 4 little building blocks. And so when I make a piece of content, I just have a little card with each of those pictures on it. I go, what's my topic? I usually start with the idea and then go backwards. I know some people go, you know, hook first, but I like to go from here. My rule of thumb is it's got to make sense even if you take the call to action away. It's got to be standalone useful, and then this is just a bonus to follow or to comment or to whatever.

And this is how you deliver it?

Yeah, correct.

Yeah.

Grab their attention, tell a story or give the 3 steps or the tips, and then one key payoff, which is usually don't do that, do this instead. And then a funnel is just a series of easy yeses. So what's the easy next step?

Wow, perfect timing. Amazing.

I realize we've got pens, but we don't have a wiper offerer.

We do.

Oh, cool.

Here we go, wiper offerer. Okay, I'll have you wipe while you think. Next one, a good marriage.

I don't know that I'm the best example of a good husband, so it's probably got something to do with toilet seats, ups or downs.

Okay, let's see it.

Kirra Marie, don't hate me. Uh, a good marriage is probably, um, if you've got your, your 2 people, um, ideally we want some common, common interests. Hopefully the overlap's a bit bigger than that. I think, uh, the thing that helped us work is not only were we 2 people doing interesting things, but we had a kind of a fairly common view of the future. And so as we, you know, as I got closer to my future and she got closer to hers, we got closer and closer and closer together. Whereas I think sometimes over time people, um, part ways. So I think it's, uh, enough commonalities that we've got stuff in common, enough separate things that we have interesting lives by ourselves. And then a common future that brings you closer together.

That's pretty damn good, actually. A lot of people grow apart because of that. That's, that's pretty damn good.

Yeah, and so part of that is just like redesigning the futures so you don't.

Yeah, and have enough commonality to enjoy the journey.

Yeah, I wish I'd, I wish I'd drawn them with a little bit more overlap, actually, to be honest.

All good. I love it. And with 10 seconds to spare.

Easy.

Amazing. The next one is how to write a joke.

Ooh, I don't know that I've ever written a joke on purpose. Um, okay, so a good joke directionally is like you think it's going here but it goes here, and that's the surprise element. Uh, so I think if you think about like the most basic joke, there's like a setup, which is the part which makes you think it's going to continue this direction, and then there's a the punchline, which is this bit over here.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so we want to figure out what's like the magic about this is it's, it's both true but unexpected. I don't know how to draw a joke, to be honest.

Um, you're doing good.

Like, there's a classic, um, who's it? I don't know the old guy's name. It's like he's just like, take my wife, please. And, you know, like, people thought it was going in this direction and it zigzagged over there.

Yeah.

I don't know how to draw a joke, but it's basically Yeah, it wants to be true.

Misdirection. I like it.

It's misdirection.

Yeah, I like this kind of visual of like, I think it's going here, and then like, oh, that's, that's actually funny and actually better than what I thought. Yeah, yeah, I like it.

Okay, sorry, that's not a great one.

No, hey, they're not all gonna be bankers.

They're definitely not.

All right, next one as your how to choose your next holiday.

Oh, that's, that's fun. So There's 2 things which make a holiday great in my mind. One is the where and one is the who you're with.

Hmm.

And so for each of these, you've got like where you do like and where you don't like. So I'd go my— we'll go red because red's bad. I'd go anywhere cold is an instant out, anywhere hot is an instant in. We also get to choose Is it somewhere I've been before that I want to revisit or somewhere I knew that I'd like to explore?

Yeah.

So I'm always going to go hot and friends. And then you think about time of year, like Europe in summer. I don't know if this is a good model, but yeah, I'd go Europe in summer and South Europe, not North Europe. Have you noticed that there's 2— Europe's 2 parts, the Germany bit You know, the north is like very logical.

Yeah.

And the south is a bit more chaotic and fun. Nothing works, but it's way more fun.

Yeah.

So I'm always like, where do I want to go? Who would I like to have with me? If it's a family trip, that's got some parameters.

Yeah.

Otherwise, kind of anywhere with a beach.

Yep.

And coffee. You can find good coffee anywhere if you look hard enough. But I think that's where I'd start.

Okay. Where would you put Canberra.

I would put Canberra here. Yeah, nothing, nothing wrong with it, but there's not enough right about it to make it desirable.

But this is a good model, like, in terms of like your priorities and value, and then like when you're pitching ideas to your family, like where we want to put these places on the map.

And so we want to, we want to buy a house in Japan, and there's this beach town about 90 minutes south of Tokyo called Kamakura.

Yeah, Kamakura is gorgeous.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Hot springs, yeah.

So I was telling the the fam and Ara goes, Kamakura, where is it? I'm like, it's an hour and a half from Tokyo. She goes, no, come closer.

How to write a joke. All right, next one. It's not how to be a good dad, but how to do your best as a dad.

Um. So I think there's probably three layers to this, and the first layer is. Care, which is mostly a function of time together. Sometimes we've got more time than others, but it's mostly about being there when you're there and finding— is it in the Jewish traditions they talk about mealtimes going to and from places? And I think like Forget the Bible for a second. Mealtimes and driving times, bedtimes are like perfect times. So I think that's first. Then I think there's probably some— whoops, wrong color. There's some sharing the lessons that— I think this is a Dan Martellism. Don't give your kids the things you never had, give them the lessons you never knew.

Hmm.

But I think the big part of it for me is help them become the best them.

Yeah.

Which is about them exploring their options and finding things they're good at and love and being able to try a bunch of stuff and then go, that's my, that's my thing or things. My goal for my kids is they, they become the best them.

Right. I love it.

Yeah.

Um, one, we had this conversation once with my mom because my mom worked long hours and both my parents worked really long hours. Um, and she was kind of like, you know, you know, sorry I wasn't like always home to help you out, blah blah. And like, for me, I, I thought the best thing I got from her was her being her best self. Like, yeah, seeing her in her element, seeing her work, seeing her be successful as a woman. Yeah, you know, immigrant, how to learn a new language, all this kind of stuff.

That's great.

And just like, you being actually successful is a huge gift you can give your kids. There we go.

That's it.

Live it. I love it. Yeah, that's all the games we have at the Whiteboard Gauntlet. Oh, amazing, amazing. I do have a question though.

Yeah.

Do you, as a marker fan, feel like certain markers allow you to have better handwriting?

I don't know about better handwriting, but there's definitely pens I love and pens I don't love.

And why do you love them or not love them?

Mostly fatness of pen equals goodness of picture.

Fatness of pen?

Yeah. I mean, like, if you're doing this, like, here we've got a camera nice and close up, but if you're in a room, that's really hard to see from far, far away.

Yeah, um, so I noticed you have these really big round ones that you use on your paper.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, fatness is what I'm going for. Um, I'm obsessed with stationery, and that's why you love Japan. That's why I love Japan. Yeah, but yeah, like colored markers, like even in this little bag I've brought with me, there's like note cards and fat note cards and, and 3 different pens and 2 different Copic markers because I can't think without a pen, and I like to think, and I like to sketch.

I love it.

Mostly it's about fatness.

Okay, cool. Let's jump back in the studio.

Let's do it.

Nice. And shout out to Ken. Thanks for the timer, buddy.

Yeah, 6 seconds to go.

So you have passed the whiteboard gauntlet.

That was, that was quite the gauntlet.

No, it's a bit of fun. I love it. I love hanging with you, man. It's great. It's been great just the last couple hours together. I appreciate it. Yeah, I want to wrap up today's episode with a little bit of, um, we talked a little bit about it, but I want to go a little bit deeper on your concept of a lifestyle empire. Yeah. You had some conversations with other entrepreneurs and they ask you this question. They say, are you building an empire or a lifestyle business?

Yeah, it's so insulting.

Yeah.

So, I've got many, many thoughts. This first came up when Dan Martell, who's got a lot more airtime on this episode than he probably deserved, asked me to come speak. I'm kidding, Dan, we love you. Asked me to go speak at an event in Kelowna and the event's called Empire Builder. I'm like, that sounds great. I'd love to come speak. What's it about? He goes, well, it's for empire builders, not lifestyle businesses. And my mouth said, that sounds great. And my gut said, oh, it's like, why should you choose? I mean, every business is a lifestyle business because every business kind of impacts your lifestyle. And if you can have both, I think you should have both.

What is your definition of both? Of what's an empire in your head? What's an empire business versus— just so anybody who's listening—

There's a lot of business dudes who've got a business and that's kind of all they got. And they're obsessed about it and that's fantastic. Honestly, again, back to the conversation before, I'm much more interested in how your business feels to you than how it looks to anyone else. So if that's what you want, amazing. But if I've got a great business but my life sucks and my family's in trouble and I'm not healthy and I'm not sleeping and I'm stressed and I'm like, what have I really got? So I think traditionally an empire is something big and a lifestyle business is something small that allows you to live a great life.

Right.

And I think if you do You know, we're in this lucky position where we get to choose and design whatever we want. And if we can design whatever we want, why don't we make something where we get the best of both worlds? Right. In Australia, I don't know how well this would translate for international, but there's a brand of taco shells that you buy at the supermarket called Old El Paso. Yes. And they've got this commercial going back a few years where there's a Mexican family and they're fighting over, we want the soft shell tacos and we want the hard shell tacos. And they're like, this beef happens. And the little girl goes, ¿Por qué no los dos? Why can't we have both? Like she's my spirit animal, that girl.

Yes.

And so if we could do both, I think we're great. We talked before about Jason Fried from Basecamp.

Yeah.

His business partner is a guy called David Hanemeyer Hansen.

Yeah.

DHH.

Yeah.

He was just on the David Senra podcast and they brought up this lifestyle business thing. He goes, yeah, I have a business and a lifestyle. What have you got? Just a business?

Ew.

Right? Yeah. I think let's just set this thing up deliberately so that you get the balance of both that is right for you. And I think that changes. For me, a great business has got really great money, really good meaning. So you're doing work that you care about with people that you love and to help people. It's meaningful. And then freedom. And I think we want to design it so we get both. I've got this epic client, longtime friend now called Rob Nixon, who's up in Brisbane.

Right.

You would love Rob. Built this big company, maybe a team of 30 or something in an office in Brisbane, super swanky. I spent a day there and it was extraordinary. Very profesh. And they'd have like the daily standup and all the things. And then he brought in a CEO and a board. And one day, a bit like Steve Jobs, they conspired and they booted him out. And so all of a sudden he's— yeah, so he's got no access to the database, can't market and sell to the— like, he's just like out, out, starting from scratch. So he flies down to Sydney and we're at the Opera Bar just under the Opera House. Yeah.

Great pizza. Great pizza there. Yeah.

I didn't have the pizza, but I'll try it next time.

Yeah.

He's like, I'd love your help thinking through the Yeah, my next business. I'm like, all right. He goes, well, I've done some thinking. I've got a list of like 15 rules that my next business must have.

Okay.

And I love this because most people just go, what do I do? And he's like, these are the criteria to know if it's right. And the criteria was— I don't remember all of them off the top of my head, but there was like this amount of money, this amount of days. I want to be able to travel first class. And so like we designed business through the lens of I want these outcomes for life. And so now he works 13 days a quarter. Every 90 days he works 13. Does like $5 or $6 million a year, 85% profit, team of like a couple, living his best life.

Yeah.

Because he did it intentionally. And I think most people build their business sort of by accident rather than by design.

One of the things that just came to mind when you just said that, we had Ramit Sethi on the show.

I don't know Ramit. That's super smart.

We got to introduce you to him. He's a good friend of mine and he loves Japan just as much as you. So you probably could meet up in Japan.

Yeah. So Ramit was on the podcast.

We actually, who had the episode in Japan. And he has this line that, that was really impactful. And he says, every entrepreneur needs to ask the question, what am I getting? What do I get in my hand for everything I'm about to do to start this business? All the sacrifice, all the time, all the money, all the whatever. Like, what do I get? And it's like, a lot of us, we don't stop to say, like, what do I want to get out of this? What's the endgame?

Yeah.

And if you don't mind me sharing, you know, like my lifestyle empire journey was a little bit different. You know, like as I mentioned, you know, I didn't come from money. So like I wanted to solve like the money problem in my life. And that's why I went empire with Webinar Ninja for a very long time. We built it for 10 years and Dan Martell again was our coach and helped us kind of scale our operations in the software game.

Yeah.

Sold that business, solved the money problem for us with that sale. Don't have to worry about money. Thank you so much. Yes. A lot of people ask me, like, did you feel amazing? Like, I felt relief.

Yeah.

I felt like I didn't mess it up.

Yeah.

But I was no longer the webinar guy anymore. And now I had to, like, put all my effort and energy into the podcast. And I had a chance— Nicole and I had a chance to sit down and be like, what do we want to do now? Like, how do we want to live our life? What kind of business we want to build?

What do I want to be when I grow up?

Exactly. And that's when the Lifestyle Empire concept started to come to us. It's like, Well, how do I do what I love, do my secret sauce, and not have to do anything else? And that's kind of the journey we're on right now, like building out the team, you know, making sure that we have all the tools required, da da da da, you know. And I just want to have like fun, have interesting experiences, have so I can learn from these experiences so that I can share them on the show. And yeah, and and you can grow a really really big business with. That in mind. Yeah, but you just have to like allow yourself to do that.

Yeah, and it starts with what do I want or what do I don't want? Yeah, and then everything else kind of trickles down from that.

And I want to just preface that through like oh Omar, you know you you're you're starting from a very comfortable space. You know like you had the money problem solved. Da da da da. But it's a good exercise to say even even if it's not your start. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I would say a lot of people go well you know it's easy to do afterwards like because everyone who says like. Money's not important to me. Usually they're the billionaires who like, it's not important to me now. Of course, dude, that's fine.

Yeah.

But I've been like, I've got off track a couple of times, but I deliberately built this business the way we did, recurring, because plus or minus 10%, I know what's happening for the next few months. Constrain the hours because Ethan, who's now 26 and healthy, thank God, started his journey very different. Like we're in hospital for Westmead Kids Hospital for 10 weeks. And I was like, how do I run a business from beside the thing and it's got to be flexible enough. So, we built it for freedom first, but originally it was like freedom so I can look after my kid in hospital. And now he's healthy and well, so now it's freedom that we can go be wherever. I think it's a mistake to believe that, yes, there are seasons and when you start, you probably put more time and energy and whatever into it. But I think believing that I have to work really, really hard so that one day I can make it fun, that's just 1950s called and they want their plan back.

Yeah.

That's not true. Yeah, I love Tim Ferriss talking about like taking retirements early, mini retirements along the way. And so I think especially now, like it's so easy to like technologically you could be anywhere. We've got like a recording studio in our pocket. I think if you start with the rules, what's okay and what's not okay and what do I want, what do I not want, you can build whatever you want the way you want it from day one.

Yeah, because you don't want to be stuck with a business you hate. I mean, you're then you're an indentured servant, you know, like running after your tail and trying to figure out how to, yeah, you know, keep it going. And then they're done.

That's not fun. Not fun. Agreed.

100%.

I had a couple of years in the wilderness and it wasn't great.

Yeah. So one of the things that Nicole and I like to do in interviews, not podcast interviews, but actual new team hire interviews, is like, you know, we ask them a bunch of questions and then at the end of the interview we ask them, do you have any questions for me? So I'm gonna ask you, do you have any questions for me?

Yeah. Tell me about like, you're great at basketball.

I wish I was great.

No, you are, dude. Well, compared to me, you're great at basketball and you seem quite healthy. At least every experience I've had with you. How do you— do you go to the gym?

Yes.

Okay. I want to know how you find/make time. And do you enjoy the gym? I'm hoping the answer is no, but you go anyway. And if so, how do you make yourself go? If the answer is not that, then I'll take whatever you got.

This is a fantastic question because I thought about it a lot.

Okay, because I don't enjoy the gym and I should go, but I don't enjoy the gym, so I don't go.

I think a big part of it is identity.

Yeah.

Is like, I identify as a person that goes to the gym, or I identify as somebody who is an athlete or as somebody who is healthy. And who do— like, what do athletes or healthy people do? They go to the gym. So like, I'm doing it because I don't want to be a liar.

Yeah, right.

So, I think it's really hard to get people to do something if they don't— it's not part of their identity. So, you either choose that's your identity or you choose something that you enjoy. It doesn't have to be the gym. It could be like pickleball or whatever.

I think that's the hack for me is if I was going with a mate, I would go every time. Everything good in my life is mostly because I've got a date with a dude.

Mm-hmm.

And I choke because I don't want to let the dude down. And then I have a great time as soon as I'm there. But the identity thing is really interesting.

Yeah. And I would tie it to something that you really enjoy outside the gym. So, like if every time you go to the gym, you go get a coffee, like that, like there's a motivation there. Or maybe you just love the beach. So, let's do the workout at the beach.

Yeah.

You know, like something that ties it together. But for me, it's identity. And I do think that micro steps really matter. So, for example, if I hated the gym, Like, I go 4 days a week, but let's say I hated the gym and I wanted to start going to the gym. I would just set a goal where I would say, my whole job today is just to walk to the gym, go in the gym, go home. That's it.

Yeah.

Right? The next day, I'm going to do 5 minutes on the treadmill. The next day, right? Like, what happens is that, yeah, you just, you win by just showing up.

Okay. This is how I— that's funny because you've given me 2 lessons.

Yeah.

Like one, make it, combine it with something fun and be micro that I do in other parts of my life and having it. I hated my first 8 YouTube videos. Like the experience was not fun. And then I was chatting with Caleb Ralston and he was like, the thing you want to do, can you peg it to something you love to do, which is outside beach coffee shops? So now I shoot outside.

That's exactly what you do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And now I love it. And the micro thing was email after I brew my— have you read Tiny Habits?

Yeah.

Okay. Linda Fogg Phillips, who coaches Tiny Habits, BJ's sister, is in Black Belt. And she told me, after I brew my morning coffee, I will write 2 sentences. And you can't write 2 sentences and then stop because once you've done it, you're like, well, this is kind of good. Now let's keep going. All right. That's helpful.

Thank you. Anything else for me?

Yeah. This is episode 2,830. That's a lot. It's 12 years. How do you find the fun and inspiration? Because most people give up or most people would go, okay, I've done that. How do you keep it fresh and interesting and fun for you?

The fun for me is the mastery. Like, it's not the actual shooting the videos. It's me seeing us get a little bit better. Every time we shoot an episode, maybe we improve one little thing. Maybe it's my intonation. Maybe it's the cameras. Maybe it's the script. Maybe it's the way we edit. Like, something small.

Yeah.

And I love this idea, and I get it from basketball. I get it like this. small little, like not even 1%. It's like, it's not even a fraction of a percent where you're just like, I'm getting better every little bit. And I've been doing this for 12 years. We celebrate 12 years this week on Friday, and you're going to come to the party. So, it's gonna be fun. Uh, we're going to be celebrating here at the studio. But, um, I, I mentioned that because, you know, I love outlasting people.

Yes.

You know, I have photos of all the podcasts that launched when we launched. And I would say 95% of them don't publish anymore.

Yeah, I'm sure that's true. Do you know Steven Bradbury?

No.

Who's that? Okay. So this is a great Aussie reference for you. Australia is really good in the Olympics. Not so good in the Winter Olympics. Steven Bradbury won Australia's first Winter Olympics gold medal.

This is the guy that everybody fell and he went through the tape?

Yeah, he's the outlast guy. He's like, he got to the, you know, the last, you know, the finals. He's like, I probably can't beat these guys. I'm going to hang back. And they'll be so competitive they'll fall over. And yeah, so everyone else fell over and he won. I think that's a great metaphor for sticking at stuff.

And then I know that if I just keep doing it, I will get better. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm more of the camp of— I watched this documentary on Steve Urkel, uh, Jaleel White. Yeah, Jaleel White, the actor.

Yeah.

All right, Steve Urkel. It's funny because he hates people calling him Steve Urkel in public because like, I'm more than that. Yeah. And I just called him Steve Urkel, but Steve Urkel, Jaleel White. This is a short little documentary about him, and he said, the biggest life lesson I got from that experience is that anything that grows very fast comes crashing down very fast, and things that grow very slowly, little by little, have a better chance of survival and being there and being prolific and being— what is the title of the book that Ryan Holiday has? Oh, yeah, like a perennial seller?

Yeah, Being Perennial.

You're no seller, right? So, I always have that back of my mind. Like, you know, like I'm okay with slow growth and that's exactly what has happened with this podcast is like slow, slow growth, but we've been growing every year and kind of like—

If you do it long enough, it's like if you go a long time plus a fraction of a percent better, you can't help but get great.

Yeah. But it also allows to lower the pressure. Like, I don't have to be great tomorrow. You know, like I'm going to just get better over and over and do my best. That's all you really can do. And it becomes a little bit more enjoyable when you don't have the pressure of being like, I gotta, go viral tomorrow, you know. You know, we did an amazing job on audio. We've been still doing an amazing job at about 2 million downloads a month. Great growing audience. I love it. Yeah, I'm really proud of that. But I'm a beginner again on YouTube. You know, we're still trying to figure this out. And, you know, 2 years in, we just got our first like partnership, first like, you know, sponsor on video. So, it's like a lot of commitment. And the thing is that most people are not willing to do that. No one's willing to do something for 2 years and not get a reward, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's, that's big. The, um, I'm gonna do this for a long time expecting nothing back, and eventually it'll get good enough that it's worth it. I think that's smart.

I love it.

Yeah. Thanks, man. This is fun.

It's been great, Taki. Thanks so much for all your wisdom. And, uh, um, not only on the show, but just like over the years getting to know you as a friend, the introductions you've made, you've been super generous with me. I think one of the qualities that a lot of people don't see because of, you know, how charismatic you are, but you're actually a really lovable guy. Like, you're— you show a lot of love. Which is you're a big heart guy. And I think it's very rare to find people that are as successful as you to care so much. So thanks so much.

I think the two are very linked. Like, it's only going well because I care.

I love it. Yeah, we have a saying back, you know, I was a teacher for over a decade and, you know, your students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Yeah, that's true.

Which is, which is exactly what people feel.

Yeah, man.

Love it, man.

Thanks for this. Great.

I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation with Taki. Such a good buddy. A lot of fun. I loved all the games we got to play with him, and, uh, I love the fact that he paid— played along so well. If you wanna learn more about Taki, his business is called Million Dollar Coach. His specialty is helping coaches get to $1 million in revenue. I highly recommend you sign up for his email list, not only because he gives you a lot of great free content, but he'll invite you to one of his workshops, his live workshops he actually does for his paid clients. Uh, one thing that we didn't get into the episode, but that's one of his like marketing, uh, ideas where he's like, I, I don't wanna create a fresh piece of marketing. I'll just invite my interested clients to my actual live coaching I do for my clients. So if you wanna jump into one of his coaching calls and see what he's all about for free, just get on his email list over at milliondollarcoach.com. Uh, Taki is one of my favorite content creators, so make sure you check him out on YouTube as well. He's growing his YouTube channel. He's done a great job with his videos recently. But all in all, I think today was one of my favorite just talks I've had in a while, just even off camera, just because Taki is so open, as you saw, and he shares so much without any— he doesn't hold back. He just kind of shares and introduces you to people as you learned, but also just shares everything he knows and also shares his failures. So that's another reason why you want to be on his email list, because He shares those failures in his newsletter. He writes them. He writes his newsletter himself, so you'll get to know him as well and see what's going on in his life. But I really enjoyed my time with Taki. Hope that you enjoyed it as well. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss any other episodes here on the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. We have some other great guests coming on really soon, so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it. Thanks so much for being here, and I'll check you in the next one.