20 Years of Business Knowledge in 51 Minutes

My business turns 20 years old this month. And I always knew from day one that I wanted to run it my way. During that time, the business has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue and I only work with clients that I like. I own 100% of the business. I don't have any investors, I didn't raise any venture capital. So that means I get to run it my way. And my team and I work remotely, meaning my daily commute is five feet from my bedroom to my home office. Now, yes, this business lets me travel for months per year and I'm bicoastal between New York and la. But what I'm really proud of is that I've been able to share my philosophy with tens of millions of people through my Netflix show, my podcast, and my book, which is currently on the New York Times bestseller list. So, for the first time, I'm taking you behind the scenes of my 20 year business and I'm going to tell you what it takes to build something that's profitable and lets you live your your rich life. First up, create your unique idea of success. A lot of us start a business or get a job because we want freedom, but we never really define what that word means. And if you look around at what most people do with their money, they almost always do the same thing as their neighbor. They buy a big house, they buy a big car. They don't really think about what their unique idea of a rich life is. And I think that becomes important when things don't go well. You see, my business grew a lot, but it also struggled. In 2016, my business took a 50% decline in revenue. That was a massive, massive problem. We had to go through multiple rounds of layoffs. I couldn't sleep. I started waking up at night struggling to breathe. That was a very, very tough time. Tough for me, tough for my team. And I'm really proud that we were able to get out of that and stabilize it. And there was a lot of leadership that went into, particularly from my leadership team. But at that time, that was when I really went back to why did I start this business? See, if you tie yourself to an external definition of success like I want to drive a fancy car, then when things get tough, and they will get tough, no matter what you're in, if you're an entrepreneur, if you work, if you're a parent, when things get tough, you will be in for an extra tough set of years. Much better to have a big aspirational vision that ties to you. And for me, it was the ability to run my business my way. And that means that I got to run it my way when things are going well and when things are not, it's also my fault. Write it down. Write down what success looks like. I'll give you an example from my own business. Personally, I consider impact plus profit plus lifestyle key signs of success for IWT and for me personally, let me tell you why I break it down that way in that order. Impact means I want to reach a lot of people. Therefore I'm probably not going to do one on one coaching for $150,000. It's just not really my interest. I would much rather spend years writing a book and then share it with millions of people. Profit seems obvious, but it's not. I remember moving to New York and there were so many people who I discovered are famous but poor. They're on major national TV shows but they don't actually have any real money coming in from it. I don't want just impact, I want it to be profitable. So I built that into my business and then lifestyle really important to me because you could be making $500,000 a year or $5 million a year, but if you're working 80, 90 hours a week, if you can't take a two or three week trip because you have all these things going on at work, that's not a good lifestyle. So I wanted to craft those things, but I could only craft them in my way by first writing them down. I'm going to give you a challenge right now. Put your hand out. Go ahead, really put your hand out and ask yourself, what do I get? If you work long hours at a job, if you are an entrepreneur, if you are a parent, if you're trying something new, ask yourself, what do I get? This is a key question. When I was going through real tough times in the business, I asked myself, what do I get? And what I got was I get to make decisions and own it, whether they're good or bad. When we are profitable, I get to take a large amount of profit which allows me to buy the clothes. I want to have somebody help as my executive assistant and plan things for me, for me to travel internationally and stay at the beautiful hotels that I love. I get to do those things because I ask myself, what do I get? So if you're working all these long hours and you're taking risks, you always have to remind yourself what's the purpose of this? What do I get? And make it really clear it's okay to even be selfish. You should not be living the same way as before. One of my students used to be an artist making close to minimum wage. I helped her make multiple six figures with her craft, and she was still shopping for groceries on her own. Now, for someone who's making that kind of money, the kind of money she was making, she should not be doing that. That is shocking to a lot of people. A lot of people go, I wouldn't change my lifestyle at all If I made $10 million. Wrong. I deeply believe you should not be living the same life before. Why? Because there's no virtue in living a smaller life than you have to. If this person loved grocery shop shopping, fantastic. But she didn't. And she had more than enough money to hire someone to do it for her. As I have moved up the value chain in my business, in life, I've become very comfortable with not living the same way I used to. Now, there are certain things I still do. I still iron my clothes because I really like it. It's relaxing for me. But there are other things that I'm just not going to do on my own, and I'm very comfortable getting help. There are so many ways that you can live a different, different and rich life that's uniquely crafted to you. If it's important to you, spend more. Be specific. Here's my list of money rules. These are the things that matter to me. My wish is that you create your own money rules. This brings me to hard truths I had to accept. You got to be humble enough to know you can't do everything. When I started off, I was the one who wrote the blog posts, wrote the emails, sent the emails, tracked the clicks, all of it. I don't know how to send emails anymore. I don't know where to log in. I don't know how it works. I don't know how QA works. And that is the way it should be. We have an amazing email marketing team who knows how to do all of that, and they do a phenomenal job better than I could do myself. You know, here's an example that I look back on and I just cringe. As recently as a few years ago, I wrote every Instagram caption myself. That's because I identify as a writer, so I really took it personally. I have to write these, okay? And I was catastrophizing. If I don't write this, the world will collapse. Somebody will know I didn't do it, and it's all gonna fall down like a house of cards. Well, that was not very smart. I had A very strong social media team who came in and said, look, if you want to write these, fine, but this is the amount of volume we are creating, and you can't keep up with it. Let us try to do it. I finally, like. I was like, okay, try. Okay, I'll let you try. For three days, they did it, and guess what? Nothing happened. It's fine. And I realized I was looking at the Instagram caption like it was this important in my business. In reality, it's this. It's a tiny piece of the overall vision of, I will teach you to be rich. And so I had to be humble enough to accept that I can't do that anymore. There are people who enjoy everything. Things you wouldn't think about. Like, there are accountants that. They love it. They're weird, but they love it. Find those people and then be humble enough to say, can you help me? When I did that, my life improved so much. I learned that nobody cares about your business as much as you think they do. Internally, we have a phrase. We are but a moment. In our reader's day, we are but a moment. What do we mean by that? We'll write emails that often take us, like, days. In the past, they took us weeks to write one email because they were really long. And maybe people open it, most of them don't. Maybe they skim it like this. Ah, interesting. And that's it. And this really crystallized for me. Years into running my business, like, 10 plus years into it, I was supposed to write a Friday, last chance email. This is an email we write. It generates a lot of revenue for us. And I was at the coffee shop in New York. I remember exactly, exactly which seat I was sitting in. And it was due by like, 10am so I'm there at 8am, I open up the computer, start writing. And I was just stuck. Like, stuck. True writer's block. And I sat there for over an hour. I'm flipping tabs, trying to get into it. Can't do it. And it was getting close to the deadline, and I finally realized I'm not going to be able to do this. And this was quite haunting for someone who had written lots and lots of emails. So I finally just, like, looked around, I go, you know what? I'm just gonna copy and paste one of our past ones and I'll change a little bit of stuff at the top. So I sent it in, and I was, like, watching the email inbox to see, like, oh, my God, people are gonna be so pissed. They're gonna be Like, I read this email, you know, nine months ago. I can't believe you're sending the same thing. And do you know, out of hundreds of thousands of people we sent that email to, how many wrote back with an angry response? Zero. And it was at that moment I took a hard look in the mirror, and I was like, have I been wasting my freaking time for the last decade? That taught me, again, we are but a moment in their day. And of course, we want our emails to be amazing, but it's okay to reuse really good stuff, freshen it up a little bit. But there's no point in only leaning on originality, because we are but a moment in their day. You can't really motivate people. I remember going to a management training in Chicago, and I went with some of the members of my leadership team, and the instructor said, how do you motivate people? And everyone raised their hand and says, do this, money, motivation, technique, this, that. And he goes, nope, you can't motivate them. They either love to work or they don't. And over time, I have come to find that to be true. If somebody does not like to work or love to work, that's it. There's nothing I can say. There's no amount I can pay them that's going to make them. I would rather just find people who love to work. I found that to be true. And when we truly internalize that, it really helped solidify our recruiting. One of the best things I love about the people that I work with is they love to work. I love to work. They love to work. Perfect. No is one of my favorite words. There's a West Wing episode where, towards the end, there's a new president elected, and one of the members of the old administration brings the new member in and says, you know, they're walking them around the Oval Office, they're starstruck. She says to her, your first and most common word will be no, be gentle. And I really, really took that to heart. In my 20s, when I was starting my business, I said yes. Like, yes 99% of the time. Somebody invited me somewhere. Yes. Conference, yes. Collaboration. Yes. You have to do that when you're starting out. You have to say yes to everything because you don't know what's going to hit. You haven't really tuned yourself to know what is a real opportunity, what's going to turn into something, what's not. But over time, you will find that a lot of people who ascend in their careers become much more discerning number one, they just become more selective. And number two, they just don't have as much time. Anyone who's become a parent also intuitively understands this. So for me, things that I would have done anything for even three years ago now are almost an immediate no. Things like, you know, oh my gosh, if I had gotten invited to go on that conference or speak on that stage or go on that TV show, now it's a no. And I think this is really hard to wrap your head around. But you can tell who really struggles with this. These are the people who, whether it's with parenting, business careers, any part of life, they wake up and they're just always feeling pulled in a million directions. Building the skill of saying no is strategic. It is so important. But I'd like you to get that energy, the energy of I can say no to. Because I know that there are more possibilities coming down in the future. And more importantly, I need to protect my time and my energy. That's what I want for you. Choosing your customer is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. I think this is so underrated. When I started out in my business, I was talking about personal finance. And even though I was never hyper frugal, I did grow up frugal. Remember, my parents are both immigrants. We learned how to get by on one income. You not a lot of money for a big family. So I would write about saving money. I wrote this one article about how back in the day when we had photo development, paying for one hour photo is such a waste of money, blah blah blah. And I grew my audience. I realized at a certain point I didn't really like some of the members of my audience. They were hyper frugal, they were only looking for tips. And anytime I started talking about earning more money, they got really angry, extremely angry. Of course those same people would never buy anything and simply wanted to talk about, you know, how to save money on frozen broccoli. Not interesting to me, not the kind of audience I wanted. And so what I did was I decided to go all in. I wanted to talk about a rich life, which is by definition about more earning more, spending more, saving more, investing more, all of it. I want you to live a bigger life, not a smaller one. And I got to tell you, as we started to sell more digital programs, books, etc. I got to understand customer psychology. And I got to tell you one thing, pathologically cheap customers are the worst. The worst. I had a five dollar ebook that I sold five dollars. It was $4.95 and there were people who were like $4.95. That's outrageous. Maybe if it was 50 cents, I would consider buying it, but I would need a guarantee. I just spent four years writing this blog for free. I have a PDF and if you don't want to buy it, don't buy it. $5. I have $5, like on the floor. Pathologically cheap customers. They are the worst. Every entrepreneur knows this. You take a customer who wants to pay you like $5 or $10, they're going to have a hundred demands. What about this? What about this? How come? Can I call you? I need to talk to customer support. You charge a customer $1,000. They're like, send over the access. Let me know when it's ready to go. This is totally known for entrepreneurs. Looking back, it would have been so depressing if I had not been intentional with who I chose to serve. And I had instead accumulated a bunch of hyper frugal people who would constantly battle me any time I talked about spending money on the things they love. This is what's happened to a number of people in personal finance. They started off super frugal and they accumulated this audience of people who are also hyper frugal. And then as the personal finance person became more and more successful, they're like, hey, wait a second, I think I'd actually like to get doordash once a week. I think I'd like to take a trip to Disneyland once every five years. And their audience turned on them. Why? Because they were not in alignment with their audience. And you see this in self development all the time. You see people start to hate their customers. I never wanted to do that. In fact, I always wondered how come nobody talks about falling in love with your customers? See, if you do, you become passionate or even obsessed with how to help them. And the revenue and profit growth is just a byproduct of that. I love the people who I serve. That is why I'm on Instagram responding to random comments and YouTube and I read every single email that still comes in. To this day, 20 years into my business, I still read every comment and email that comes my way. That's because I was fortunate enough to be intentional about the audience that I built. And they're the kind of people that I would love to hang out with anyway. Which brings me to my next point. Rewrite your attitude towards money. First off, the more successful you get, the more you are going to waste money. Now let me talk a little bit about what that means. As a business owner. As a business owner, you will lose money on things that didn't work out. That's part of doing business. And often you will find that people play it too tight as they grow. They are highly scarcity oriented. These are the same people who start off going like, I don't have a lot of money. Like, I need to be really, really meticulous about where I spend my money, which is great. Every beginning entrepreneur needs to be careful. But as they start to accumulate money, they have customers, et cetera, they don't know how to loosen the reins. Okay. And at a certain point, they want to track everything. Track, track, trackable. Not everything's going to directly contribute to profit. You can't always just get a 100% ROI. That's not how it works. Works. Okay. There are certain things, like I pay sometimes for pr. Can I track it? Kinda. Does it work? Maybe. But it's also just what needs to be done at a certain level. In fact, the more successful you get, the more you pay for things that don't directly pencil out. Look at this background that I have. This background and this setup cost well over $20,000. In fact, I hired a very talented woman, Sarah, who's one of my early learnable students. Does it directly pencil out? Meaning do I directly make profit from the 20 or 30 thousand dollars that I put into this? No. No. I will never be able to track that. But is it cool? Yes. Do I love this background every time I sit down? Yes. When people show up on my podcast or when I go on the Today show, sitting here, does it communicate something? Yes. So you will waste money. That's life. Just don't waste too much. Make sure you're managing your numbers carefully and you will be okay. But please don't go through life holding on to money this tight. It will never get you where you want to go. Don't be fooled by one off metrics. You will often see people saying, you know, how many employees do you have? Or how much did you make last year? And it's kind of like asking someone, how much do you bench? It kind of gives you a sense of how strong they are. But if you're really technical, you go, well, is it a one rep max? Is it my fifth set? Am I? Did I do shoulders yesterday? And on and on and on. In business speaking generally, it's relatively easy to make a million dollars in a year. Okay. But to do it for two years is impressive and to steadily grow that number is incredibly impressive. So don't be Fooled by just what you see on a snapshot basis once. Think about what happens over time. In my own personal case, what I made in one year, fine. But the fact that I have been doing that for 20 years and compounding that money and growing it and growing my team and growing the audience, that is way more impressive than any individual year. Entrepreneurs, please listen to me. Please. You need to invest your money. Do you know how many entrepreneurs I know who have multi million dollar businesses and they barely invest in the stock market? Most of my friends, that's the truth. You need to take money out of your business and you need to invest it. My entrepreneur friends will always say the same thing. They go, 7%. That's so freaking boring. Why wouldn't I just take that money and put it right back into the business and quadruple it? I go, listen, dude, how many people do you know who have a business lasts for 60 years? Almost no businesses last that long. So why not take some money off the table, put it in a nice index fund and be safe forever? And by the way, that index fund grows a lot. You just need to give it time. And in an entrepreneur's case, you can often put hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars per year into that index fund. You have to remember, one day their business will end. And often entrepreneurs who did not take cash off the table will be left with far less than they would have if they had simply set up an automatic withdrawal and contribution to their investment accounts. I had times in my business where we had extremely profitable years. I took my distributions, I put something like 95% of that into the market. And those years, those single years, there were just a few of them responsible for a substantial portion of my net worth. So build a plan for what you're going to do when times are good. Because you don't want the money to just sit there. You want to make sure money flows. Money needs to flow somewhere, whether it be to a savings account, whether it be to your business, whether it be to your own investment account, or even go have a nice vacation. That's flowing as well. But you need to have a plan for where the money's going to flow. Next up, get brutally honest with yourself. Would you actually read your own newsletter? Would you actually listen to your own podcast? Have you, have you ever listened to the entire thing beginning to end? Would you listen to yourself being interviewed on a TV show? Have you? We often are not brutally honest with ourselves about, am I actually really good? I think that the only way to get truly great is to be brutally honest with yourself. This is why, for example, bodybuilders are constantly posing in the mirror. It's not just that they're shallow. They are looking for feedback. They get it from themselves, and they're changing their pose ever so subtly. They're also getting it from their coach. They literally hire posing coaches. You need to do the same thing. I'm not saying all of you need to go out and hire a bodybuilding posing coach. That's freaking weird. What you need to do is to, first off, be honest. Would I read this or listen to this? Second, do it. Put yourself in the position of your readers, your listeners, and say, what is their experience? And you might hear things like, oh, my God, I have a horrible verbal tic, I always say. And then you can start to address that. But you can never get to be great unless you get honest with yourself. Would I listen to this? Would I read this? And then how do I improve it? One thing I learned was I had to ask myself what I wanted to do less of. Now, this is really counterintuitive, especially for a guy like me who. Who's been taught, take on more, take on more. You can do more. Just work harder, grind it out. I love grinding. But at a certain point, it starts to really affect the business negatively or it affects people around you in a bad way. Most of us are never taught the skill of how to stop doing something, especially when that thing is partially responsible for getting us to where we are. For example, I used to write these huge, long emails, and then I would get in there and send them. I don't do that anymore, okay? I have a team who does that. I used to write my Instagram captions. I don't do that anymore in my business. Some things that I was extremely good at and very proud of it that I don't do anymore. Email funnels. I was really good at our email funnels. At a certain point, I just couldn't do it anymore. And there are actually talented people who are better than I am. So my suggestion is to think of this like a dance. It's a dance of moving up, moving up the value chain and then slowly eliminating or delegating the things that got you there. This is classic leadership. It's classic business. However, it's really freaking hard to do because I took a lot of pride in how good I was at writing email funnels. And all right, this, and then I see the metrics on Friday and da, da, da. And now I'm just kind of out of it. At a certain point, every entrepreneur goes, what am I supposed to do now? Like, somebody's running that which I used to. Somebody's running that, which I used to do. What am I here for? There's some great CEO consultants who point out that a great CEO is mostly thinking and making a few key decisions per week or per month. Of course, you can still keep doing certain things, certain things you love, et cetera. Like, I'm doing this video. I like talking to you, and I like getting the feedback. But I would say be very intentional about it and make a plan as you get more successful for the things you don't want to do. You don't really have to follow other people. It's actually shocking how much of life is simply following what other people think you should do. I don't have an office. I've never had an office. Even pre Covid, never had an office. Why? Because I hate those little, you know, those things you put on your belt, those key cards, and then you pull them out and scan yourself. I hate those. Okay, now obviously if you're listening to this, you're like, this guy's a psycho. Like, who gets that angry about wearing a freaking key card? Just put the card on your belt and get on with your day. First of all, I don't really wear a belt. But second of all, this just my weirdness. I don't want to have to do it, so I never did it. Simple as that. I don't have an office. I don't have investors. I didn't give away equity. I don't have a co founder. These are all classic things, particularly in Silicon Valley, that you are told you have to do, but you don't. You get to choose what kind of business you want to run. And if you are good and if you are lucky, you will be in the position of running it your way. You know, you don't have to post about everything. This is especially important for people who are in the influencer world right now. Years ago, I knew somebody who was a business coach. She was quite good, actually really good at what she did. And I remember seeing her post about going on a Southwest flight and complaining how putting your bags on costs like $5 or $20 or something like that. And I was just looking at, like, why would you post this? Like, you're a business coach. You make money. Why would you post about a $20 expensive. It doesn't make any sense, and it just makes you look cheap. A lot of creators are addicted to being liked by other creators. So they post stuff that gets them tons of likes. It gets them tons of attention, but that is not what you want to do. You will often see this when somebody will post about their vulnerability. Whenever they use the word vulnerability, my antenna go up. I go, oh, I like vulnerability. I like talking about emotions much more than when I was 22 years old and I didn't even think they existed. Okay, I know they exist now, but sometimes you see creators who start to talk about something that's hard. Things are hard. I get that. But what happens when you talk about, you know, I'm struggling with people this part of my business, or I'm struggling with parenting, or I'm struggling with this or that? It can go one of two ways. One, you can get a group of people who come out and they say, like, keep at it. This is hard. Everyone struggles with it. Just keep doing what you're doing. That's great, that's great, that's positive, that's healthy. On the other hand, you can get people who come out and say, yeah, this sucks, this is unfair. And you get this feeling of moral superiority, of righteousness. And this is. I've seen it happen a million times. People become addicted to talking about vulnerability. They become addicted to talking about something that is wrong in their life, and that takes them down a very dark place. So like I said earlier, fall in love with your customers instead. That will help you grow your business and live your rich life. You remember that Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford where he talks about, you can't really see the patterns looking forward to, but when you look back, you can see the dots connect. That was my graduation when I was graduating from Stanford. And I remember being in the audience and thinking like, wow, this is a profound moment. Looking back, I can see that I had a pattern. It wasn't intentional, but it was a pattern that just emerged. And it was working on one big thing per year. And I want to share it with you because I didn't even realize it until I looked back something like 15 years into my business. So every year, something major, a new major program, a new book, a new TV show, a new podcast, and on and on and on. Now, in the early days, I wouldn't have been able to do that. That takes a lot of infrastructure and know how and all kinds of stuff. But looking back, I realize one big thing per year. I kind of love it. It just gives me something to look forward to. It allows me to focus. Like, at the end of the year, I'm gonna have this one thing done and whether or not it does well, I know that I did my one big thing. So I would encourage you. Take that idea, play with it. Maybe it's right for you. Maybe it's one every two years. But there's something really satisfying about working on one big thing per year. And this brings me to a topic that I'm extremely passionate about, and that is stand up for what's right. I want to talk about this because it has profoundly affected my business and my own life. First of all, you got to apologize, okay? Every business owner will make mistakes. The single best thing you can do is just own up to it. I'm gonna tell you about a few times that I made a mistake in my own business. We had a program called Zero to launch. We had given people, when they purchased the program, lifetime access. Well, we decided we were gonna sunset that program because it had kind of come to its end of the life. And we told everybody, hey, we are giving you the ability to download ZTL and, you know, get all the videos and all that stuff, but we are putting an end to this program. And the feedback I got was ferocious. It was, you promised us lifetime access. This isn't that. What are you talking about? We paid for lifetime access. I took one look at the emails that came in, and there were a lot of them. And these were people who I really value. These are our students, our customers, people who we've helped grow businesses, who have spent a lot of money with us. And I was like, I was wrong. And that was actually, I believe, the first line of the email that I sent to them. I said, I was wrong. I apologize. I acted too quickly. Here's what we're going to do. You will have lifetime access. And I wanted everybody to know that when I make a promise, I stand by it. Another time, we sent out an email about crypto. I am, in general, not a fan of crypto as a primary investment for people. You know, people who have 85% of their portfolio in crypto, I think, are absolutely delusional. However, the text of the email that went out was way, way, way too aggressive. Somebody on our writing team had written it, and for whatever reason, it had not gone through our QA process. I never saw this before it went out. And I won't throw anyone else under the bus because I'm the owner of the business. I sent out an apology. I had to apologize for that because it did not reflect what I actually believed about crypto. My fault, My apology. And then finally, on my podcast, I've lost My temper a few times, and I regretted it. I came on afterwards and I said, I'm sorry. I wish I had not gone that route. I wish I had stayed calm. These guests come on my show because they expect to be treated with respect, and I didn't live up to it. When you do that, first of all, it humbles you. It did for me because it reminded me, hey, these are real people that I'm dealing with, whether it's my program, my emails, or my podcast. And second of all, people desperately crave someone who actually keeps it real. And we all know that you can't be perfect 100% of the time. I've messed up. I've run a business for 20 years. Of course I've messed up, and I'm probably going to mess up in the future. But people can start to see if you actually take responsibility. So if you run a business or if you have the opportunity when you make a mistake, apologize. And then don't be afraid to pick fights with bad people. Politics matter. I won't attend conferences and I won't go on podcasts with people who represent extremist views like restricting women's health care, restricting voter rights, or denying the results of a presidential election. Full stop. End of story. There are a lot of entrepreneurs I know who make tons of money, but I have zero respect for them because of their political beliefs. For example, hateful comments on immigrants. Be thoughtful and be explicit about who you stand for and who you don't. I wish more people of influence used it. Trust me. When I started writing, for example, about some of the extremist stuff that Trump was doing, I was very, very nervous. I had not talked about politics until that time, but I decided to go all in, because if I can't do it, a wealthy son of immigrants who's an entrepreneur who built his own business and on and on, then who can? And when I did it, I got a lot of negative feedback, especially at the beginning. But I got even more people who said, thank you for speaking up. Thank you. And I continue to speak about politics because I believe that we should be living in an inclusive society. We should be welcoming to all different types of people. And truthfully, I really don't care what effect it has on my bottom line. If it cost me a million dollars to say the right thing, so be it. Now, when you're standing up for what you believe in, you need to remember to surround yourself with. With the right people. You know, some entrepreneurs that I know are genuinely crushing it. Check out some of These folks, there's Kevin, Nathan, Laura, Noah, Katie, Sam. These folks are doing awesome stuff. Each of them has their own unique perspective, their own personality, money. With Katie, for example, I went on her podcast. She's so awesome. She talks about structural changes when it comes to personal finance. Money is political, and she covers it in detail. Laura Roeder, I remember she once told me, she goes, we don't really work after hours. She goes, if it's not scheduled on time, then we did something wrong. We're not doing emergency surgery here. She's just so calm about the way that she runs her business. So all of these entrepreneurs are people who I admire and I would challenge. You find the people who you admire not just because they make a lot of money, but also because they're engaging, they're interesting, and you respect them. Those are the kind of people that I would look for. At a certain point, you're probably going to find yourself a little depressed about your business and you might even be envious of other business owners. My suggestion to you is to unfollow them immediately. When you're in times where you're not feeling good, you got to focus on your own business, perhaps with the help of a coach that you can trust. But don't look at what other people are accomplishing. You don't know what went into it. You don't know where they started. Just focus on yourself and fall in love with your customers. A lot of people are just point blank lying. There's a recent trend sweeping the entrepreneur community that's going to be very tough on your mental health, and that is entrepreneurs bragging about how much money they make. I personally know of several entrepreneurs who are point blank lying about their revenues. But there are even more ways to shade the truth. You know, I can make $50 million but spend $70 million to get there. Or I can use a $225,000 launch to claim I have a 2.7 million dollar run rate. Or you can have 2 million followers with low engagement. Most of these people are doomed. The people who go around bragging and lying and it's because of their own poor ethics, forget about them. Focus on yourself. Focus on your customers. Remember, if you spend time reading about fear, writing about fear, talking about fear, you're going to see fear everywhere. Same for anything. Be very careful what you surround yourself with as you're listening to these lessons from 20 years of my business. Take a second to hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. You know that I give it to you straight no bs, no outlandish, get rich quick promises, only real advice that actually works. Alright, next up. What helped me stand out? One of the most important things I ever did was to build a technical skill. Think about it. Anyone can be a money coach. Anyone can be a life coach. Very few can discuss the intricacies of asset allocation or money psychology, and almost nobody can do both of those things, which is a very rare intersection. You can spend a lot of time on like how long should my YouTube video be? But doomed. The people who go around bragging and lying and it's because of their own poor ethics, forget about them. Focus on yourself. Focus on your customers. Remember, if you spend time reading about fear, writing about fear, talking about fear, you're going to see fear everywhere. Same for anything. Those are all tactics. Instead, I would highly encourage you to learn a technical skill because the vast majority of people you're competing with will not do it. And if you learn that skill, it's just like a moat that you can take with you for the rest of your life. You got to know when the problem is tactical or emotional. Now, as a guy who grew up, who if you asked me about my feelings in my 20s, I would have said, huh, what's that? This is a very subtle skill that very few people talk about. Take a look at this example on Reddit. This guy has millions of dollars. He's like, should I splurge on a business class flight? And all these commenters are asking these tactical questions. How tall are you? What's your income? Irrelevant. This is not a tactical problem. You be very careful what you surround yourself with as you're listening to these lessons from 20 years of my business. Take a second to hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. You know that I give it to you straight. No bs, no outlandish, get rich quick promises, only real advice that actually works. Alright, next up. What helped me stand out? Well, you can tell by the question, it's an emotional one. And so many of us go through life just focused on tactical things, but instead we fail to connect with the emotional side of it. Truthfully, we need to flip that, especially technical guys. Spending an extra three hours learning some ChatGPT skill or Excel thing is not going to improve your life as much as actually connecting with your emotions. In fact, once you figure out the emotion, the tactical answer is usually quite easy. The same thing is true in your business. We tend to lean towards tactics because it's what we know and we don't really value emotions. But most of the really big business problems are actually emotional. Do I think I can do it? Will anyone listen to me? Why would somebody believe me? How am I going to find people who are going to sign? The most important things I ever did was to build a technical skill. Think about it. Anyone can be a money coach now to help go on this journey with me. When I have a business or a money problem, deep down, it's usually a psychological problem. Here's my point. Don't look at the world through just one lens. My wish is for you to develop. Anyone can be a life coach. Very few can discuss the intricacies of acid al others. Ask yourself, what kind of business do I want to run? Do I want to be successful? Deep down, what does success look like? What would it feel like to my spouse or to me if I was successful? Am I worried deep down that if I became successful my spouse might not like it? Do I think that if I got successful, maybe the people around me would think that I got too big for my britches and therefore that's why I self sabotage myself multiple times per year? These questions are worth deeper than can I improve the conversion rate of my landing page? So yes, do the tactics. But I have found over 20 years that the emotional side is way deeper, way more rewarding, honestly, way harder. But allocation or money psychology. And almost nobody can do both of those things, which is a very rare intersection. You can spend a lot of time on like how long should my YouTube video be? But it gets me closer to where I want to to go. In my opinion, the rarest thing in the world is a strong point of view. So I get this question a lot about how did I get my Netflix show? And what people really want is for me to say, you know, I called this person and this is the email I sent them. Just a series of tactics that I did. The truth is that the way that I got that show was decided 15. Those are all tactics. Instead I would highly encourage you to learn 18 years prior that was in coming up with a unique point of view on money that was hammering at home through tons of different examples. Earning more instead of just saving. Run the numbers before you buy a house instead of just thinking you have to buy technical skill because the vast majority of people you're competing with will not do it. Negotiating your salary because there's a limit to how much you can cut, but no limit to how much you can earn and all. And if you learn that skill, it's just like a moat that you can take with you for the Rest of your life, you got to know when the problem is tactical or emotional. Now, as a guy who grew up, who, if you ask me about my field, on and on, that point of view about combining money and psychology, about automating money, about not beating people up for wanting to buy a morning coffee that hadn't been seen in personal finance in this form before. And so what really got the Netflix show was to have a unique point of view. The questions I would ask are, why are you different? How do you stand out from so many other people? And this is a really hard, profound question. Especially if you want to make a big impact, it takes you being really honest with yourself. I know I had to. Why am I different feelings. In my 20s, I would have said, huh, what's that? This is a very subtle skill that very. Please, for the love of God, get media training, please. I was listening to a podcast recently, a few people talk about. Take a look at this example on Reddit. This guy has millions of dollars. He's like, should I splurge? It was a really interesting topic. It was high net worth individuals talking about how they structure money inside of families so that next generation is successful. Like, this is a really interesting topic. Too bad I couldn't listen to more than 12 minutes. The person was urge on a business class flight. And all these commenters are asking these tactical questions. How tall are you? What's your income? Irrelevant. This is not a tactical problem. You so boring, so dry. I get this question a lot about people who are about to launch a book. They go, what should I do? They're looking for tactics. Should I do Instagram, Instagram stories, podcasts, this press, da da da da. I go, look, podcasts are great for selling books. How are you on podcasts? So what I'm looking for is anyone who says I'm amazing. People who say that usually are amazing. It takes a lot of confidence and competence to say that. But anything other than that, they're usually not good at all. They go on a podcast, they don't prepare, they're actually not engaging. And for somebody to want can tell by the question, it's an emotional one. And so many of us go through life to listen to you for 45 minutes or two hours. You got to be likable. That stuff can be coached. Just focus on tactical things. But instead we fail to connect with the emotional side of it. Truthfully, we need to flip that, Especially technical guys. Spending an extra three hours learning some ChatGPT skill or Excel thing is not going to improve your Life. Okay, I want you to please, if you're doing any type of media work, podcasts, Instagram, whatever. So find a media trainer. I know your first question. What media trainer? It's not about what media trainer I used. It's about you spending money and going through the process of finding the right media trainer for you. Accepting that you might find the wrong one. And that's okay because you can hire another one, it's okay. But it will transform the way that you communicate to your readers, your listeners, everybody out there. One of the reasons I'm creating this video is I want to show you what it takes to create a business that lasts for 20 years. A 20 year business on the Internet is incredibly rare as much as actually connecting with your emotions. In fact, once you figure out the emotion, the tactical answer is usually quite easy. The same thing is true in your business. We tend to credibly and I want you to understand all the nuances. Some of the tactics. Yes. And also some of the psychology. Which brings me to my next point. Master your psychology. I realized that in order for my business to be healthy, I have to be happy. Now this is kind of a profound realization for me. Lean towards tactics because it's what we know and we don't really value emotions. But most of the really big business problems are actually emotional. Do I think I because I always thought of myself as equal and I never want to give myself special privileges in my business, etc. Right. That's just how I was raised. But at a certain point I realized if I'm not thriving, if I'm not happy, then everything else in our business goes down. I'm not excited when I'm creating videos or podcasts. I'm dragging when it comes to writing emails or whatever it might be. And so I need to find a way for me to stay motivated and engaged. Think about it. I've been talking about business and money for 20 years. That gets boring if you're talking about the same topic. That's why I don't want to talk about how to set up your Roth ira. I'm like, read my book. It's in there. I wrote it years ago. So I got to find ways to stay engaged and to stay can do it. Will anyone listen to me? Why would somebody believe me? How am I going to find people who are going to sign fresh and relevant? That's one of the reasons that I travel a lot. When I travel, I'm up to help go on this journey with me when I have a business or a Money problem. Deep down, it's usually inspired, especially staying at beautiful hotels and going around and doing food tours and seeing how different countries set things up in their markets, et cetera. That psychological problem. Here's my point. Don't look at the world through just one lens. My wish is for you to develop others. Ask yourself, what kind of business do I want to run? Do I want to be? Teaches me so much. It teaches me, number one, the American way is not the only way. And then interestingly, it also teaches me that there's a lot of people out there who want to live their rich lives. They want to do it by shopping at this market and getting fresh fruit, or they want to stay at a $4,000 a night hotel and they're happy to stay there for a month at a time. That's crazy. All of these things just help me get a really diverse view into how people think and act. And I have to say, sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I go down a rabbit hole that ends up ultimately unproductive. But it's also what I need to do. There was a time period where I was thinking of creating a fitness program. We actually did create it. We helped people lose a lot. Successful, deep down, what does success look like? What would it feel like to my spouse or to me if I was successful? Am I worried deep down that if I became successful, my spouse might not like it? Do I think that if I got successful, maybe the people around me would think, oh, wait. And ultimately we decided it wasn't right for our business, but we had a full time trainer on staff and we went down that route, decided not to do it. You got to remember this lesson. Live to fight another day. It's as simple as that. There have been times where my business was in a really tough spot. Also entrepreneurs that I know, they were almost out of money and you know, we're talking and I go listen, that I got too big for my britches and therefore that's why I self sabotage myself multiple times per year. Best advice I got on this is just live to fight another day. What that means is make sure you have enough cash in the bank and make sure that mentally you have not given up. All you have to do is live to fight tomorrow. That's it. And with time and luck, you will be back. But sometimes things happen. The economy changes, your customers leave, your competition emerges, whatever. Just don't give up. If you still have a little bit of cash left, enough to sustain yourself, and you haven't mentally given up, you will live to fight another day. Learning how to live in the present has been challenging for me. The way I was raised, it was always the these questions are way deeper than can I improve the conversion rate of my landing page? So yes, do the tactics. But I have found over 20 years that the emotional is what's next? What's next? All right, what are you doing next? And this is kind of part of slide is way deeper, way more rewarding, honestly, way harder. But my academic career, it was like I went to high school, got into this college, oh, I'm going to get my master's degree check. Should I work at Google or should I work at this company? And it was a never ending series of what's next? I don't particularly love that mental framework anymore. I think my gets me closer to where I want to go. In my opinion, the rarest thing in the world is a strong wife has done an awesome job of helping me really be present. And one of the best examples of this is after I re released my book. My 10 year edition in 2019 came out and I launched it and it was, it did great. And I was like, what's next? She was like, no, we are going to stop and we are going to celebrate. We went on one of our favorite trips and she goes, when we go here, you're going to remember this is because you launched that book. It really stuck with me the idea that I'll get to the thing that's coming next. But sometimes I just need to enjoy that moment. And so I really started to put this into practice. I took her lesson and I tried to make it more my own. And what happened was during Point of View. So I get this question a lot about how did I get my Netflix show? And what people really want is for me to say, you know, I called this person and this is the email I sent them. Just a series of tactics that I did. The truth is that Netflix, my friends and other people would be like, oh my God, congratulations. So what's next for you? And I remember just like it was like time slowed down and I finally said, you know what, right now this is it. I'm just enjoying the moment at the way that I got that show was decided 15 and that was the first time as an adult I had ever really sat with it and realized that sometimes the answer is right in front of you. What's next is what I am doing right now. I don't like to give a lot of unsolicited advice, but I'm gonna Do it right now. If somebody was 22 years old and they asked where should I live? I would tell them, get straight away to a big city. A big city where there are tons of ideas going around, tons of experiences, tons of people who you will meet, lots of different diverse perspectives, things you would not encounter in a place with less population density. I was lucky enough to live in some of those cities and they profound years prior. That was in coming up with a unique point of view on money that was hammering at home through tons of different examples. Earning more instead of just saving. Run the numbers before you buy a house instead of just thinking you have to buy it. Negotiating your salary because there's a limit to how much you can cut, but no limit to how much you can earn. And only changed my life. I think the biggest lesson that I learned was to dream bigger, not to dream smaller. So when I went to Stanford, for example, I realized being surrounded by these peers, how much was achievable by just asking for it and working really hard. That's what I learned when I was in Silicon Valley doing a tech startup. I learned how many amazing people you can meet by simply sending them an email. Amazing. Incredible. I realized over time I could travel, I could see amazing things, I could eat the best food, I could have new experiences. And to me, that really connected with me. I didn't want to shrink my world, I wanted to expand it. That is why I talk so much about living on and on, that point of view, about combining money and psychology, about automating money, about not beating people up for wanting to buy a morning coffee that hadn't been seen in personal finance in this form before. And so what really got the Netflix show was to have a unique point of view. The questions I would ask are rich life about earning more, about saving more, investing more, trying new things, hiring a coach, even if it doesn't work out, okay, fire them, hire another one. Versus I want to save 60% of my income until someday when I can retire and do what I want to do. No, that's not for me. I want to live a rich life today and a richer life tomorrow. Whether it's living in a city, whether it's surrounding yourself with other motivated people, that feeling when you realize, oh my gosh, I don't have to play small, but I can actually want more and get more, to me, that is a very powerful moment. All right, after all these lessons, it's now time for a why are you different? How do you stand out from so many other people? And this is a really hard, profound question. Especially if you want to make a big impact. It takes you being really honest with yourself. I know I had to. Why am I different? Business Quick Fire. We're going to go through quickly my thoughts on a few different topics. I'm going to tell you what I think is overrated and underrated. Okay, overrated in business segmentation on your email lists. Oh my God. Anyone who starts an email list soon enough they go, I need to segment everything. I go, stop doing that. Okay, the minute you start segment, please, for the love of God, get media training, please. I was listening to a podcast recently is a minute you're going to be focused on that for the rest of your life. Segmentation and purchase attribution is like a deep dark hole that is very difficult to get out of and it's unclear if you actually get anything from it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you're lucky. So what I always tell people is don't even think about email segmentation until you have at least 150,000 subscribers. Probably more than that. That's. It was a really interesting topic. It was high net worth individuals talking about how they structure just my personal opinion, random tactics like auto webinars. It depends on your industry of course but I often find that people over focus on technology because they like the idea that I'm going to set this thing up once and it's just going to print money from you, money inside of families so that next generation is successful. Like this is a really interesting topic. Too bad I couldn't listen to more than 12 minutes the person was. And you even see this in other companies. Remember Sweet Green the salad company? Do you know they went like over so boring, so dry. I get this question a lot about people who are about to look 10 years or something like that presenting themselves as a technology company. I'm like, you make salad. I ordered the salad with the guacamole and double chicken. It's a salad. It's not a technology company. Please stop talking about yourself as a technology company if you're not. And then events, events are cool. I've done events. I got no problem with events. However, when it comes to simply looking at the ROI profit alone, they're really hard. A lot of the events, a book, they go, what should I do? They're looking for tactics. Should I do Instagram, Instagram stories, podcasts, event people. I know, you know, it's a lot of time and effort to do it. What the hell am I Saying, who knows? Let's talk about what's underrated. Underrated. What's underrated? Things that we tend to ignore. Number one, choosing the right audience. Please choose the right audience. Don't choose pathologically. This press. Da, da, da da. I go, look, podcasts are great for selling books. How are you on podcasts? So what I'm looking for is anyone who says, I'm amazing people. If you think nobody would ever pay for this, then I just simply turn around to you and say, when was the last time you paid for a premium service? You can't charge for a premium service if you yourself never pay for one. People who say that usually are amazing. It takes a lot of confidence and competence. So if you yourself are not the right audience, then you need to learn how that audience thinks. Don't simply go with whoever's going to come to your account and click like, please be careful. Do not simply go for what's going to get you likes. Do not simply go for what's easy. Choose the right audience. It is a subtle distinction, a subtle decision you will make early on, but it could be responsible for millions and millions of dollars in your business. Also, you just want to like the people that you're serving. Underrated. Finding creative ways to say that. But anything other than that, they're usually not good at all. They go on. Express yourself through your business. For example, my podcast, for 10 years, I had friends telling me, gotta start a podcast, gotta start a podcast. I was like, like, what the hell am I gonna do? Interview a bunch of authors? Podcast. They don't prepare. They're actually not engaging. And for somebody to want to listen to you for 45 minutes or two hours, you gotta be likable. That stuff can be coached. I'm an author. I don't even like a lot of authors. What am I supposed to talk about? And then during COVID I had a couple who said, hey, I know you're doing these Instagram lives. Can you talk to my wife and me about our money? I said, all right, but I'll only do it if you show me all your income. Okay? I want you to please. If you're doing any type of media work, pod all your debt, all of it, thinking there's no way he would do. He was like, okay. I was like, what? And within five minutes of being on that Instagram, live with them, I knew. This is my new podcast. Try new things. If they don't work, close them up, but find these creative ways that allow you to really find joy and finally reading real customer feedback. When I first started off, I used to pride myself on reading and responding to every single email I got. I can no longer respond to every single message, DM, email, etc. But I still read everything. I appreciate it. It keeps me gas, Instagram, whatever. So find a media trainer. I know your first question. What media trainer? It's not about what media trainer I used. It's about you spending money and going through the process of finding the right media trainer for you, accepting that you might find it. It keeps me in touch with the people who are so important to me. That's you. The people who subscribe, who purchase, who join, who share all my material and watch it and listen and the wrong one and. And that's okay because you can hire another one. It's okay. But it will transform the way that. So thank you so much and I hope to create even more material like this for you. Now, if you follow the lessons in this video, you have a pretty good chance at creating a long lasting business. Of course, building this business takes a lot of work, a lot of luck, and the right moves. That is why I created a video walking you through my complete playbook to build your business from scratch. You can check it out right here. You communicate to your readers, your listeners, everybody out there. One of the reasons I'm creating this video is I want to show you what it takes to create a business that lasts for 20 years. A 20 year business on the Internet is incredibly rare. Incredibly. And I want you to understand all the nuances, some of the tactics. Yes. And also some of the psychology. Which brings me to my next point. Master your psychology. I realized that in order for my business to be healthy, I have to be happy. Now, this is kind of a profound realization for me because I always thought of myself as equal and I never want to give myself special privileges in my business, etc. Right. That's just how I was raised. But at a certain point I realized if I'm not thriving, if I'm not happy, then everything else in our business goes down. I'm not excited when I'm creating videos or podcasts. I'm dragging when it comes to writing emails or whatever it might be. And so I need to find a way for me to stay motivated and engaged. Think about it. I've been talking about business and money for 20 years. That gets boring if you're talking about the same topic. That's why I don't want to talk about how to set up your Roth ira. I'm like Read my book if you in there. I wrote it years ago, so I got to find ways to stay engaged and to stay fresh and relevant. That's one of the reasons that I travel a lot. When I travel, I'm inspired, especially staying at beautiful hotels and going around and doing food tours and seeing how different countries set things up in their markets, et cetera. That teaches me so much. It teaches me, number one, the American way is not the only way. And then, interestingly, it also teaches me that there's a lot of people out there who want to live their rich lives. They want to do it by shopping at this market and getting fresh fruit, or they want to stay at a $4,000 a night hotel and they're happy to stay there for a month at a time. That's crazy. All of these things just help me get a really diverse view into how people think and act. And I have to say, sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I go down a rabbit hole that ends up ultimately unproductive. But it's also what I need to do. There was a time period where I was thinking of creating a fitness program. We actually did create it. We helped people lose a lot of weight. And ultimately we decided it wasn't right for our business. But we had a full time trainer on staff and we went down that route, decided not to do it. You got to remember this lesson. Live to fight another day. It's as simple as that. There have been times where my business was in a really tough spot. Also entrepreneurs that I know, they were almost out of money and you know, we're talking and I go, listen, the best advice I got on this is just live to fight another day. What that means is make sure you have enough cash in the bank and make sure that mentally you have not given up. All you have to do is live to fight tomorrow. That's it. And with time and luck, you will be back. But sometimes things happen. The economy changes, your customers leave, your competition emerges, whatever. Just don't give up. If you still have a little bit of cash left, enough to sustain yourself, and you haven't mentally given up, you will live to fight another day. Learning how to live in the present has been challenging for me. The way I was raised, it was always, what's next? What's next? All right, what are you doing next? And this is kind of part of my academic career. It was like I went to high school, got into this college. Oh, I'm going to get my master's degree. Should I work at Google or should I work at this company? And it was a never ending series of what's next? I don't particularly love that mental framework anymore. I think my wife has done an awesome job of helping me really be present. And one of the best examples of this is after I re released my book, my 10 year edition in 2019 came out and I launched it and it was, it did great. And I was like, what's next? She was like, no, we are going to stop and we are going to celebrate. We went on one of our favorite trips and she goes, when we go here, you're going to remember this is because you launched that book. It really stuck with me, the idea that I'll get to the thing that's coming next, but sometimes I just need to enjoy the moment. And so I really started to put this into practice. I took her lesson and I tried to make it my own. And what happened was during Netflix, my friends and other people would be like, oh God, my, my God, congratulations. So what's next for you? And I remember just like it was like time slowed down and I finally said, you know what, right now, this is it. I'm just enjoying the moment. And that was the first time as an adult I had ever really sat with it and realized that sometimes the answer is right in front of you. What's next is what I am doing right now. I don't like to give a lot of unsolicited advice, advice, but I'm gonna do it right now. If somebody was 22 years old and they asked where should I live? I would tell them, get straight away to a big city. A big city where there are tons of ideas going around, tons of experiences, tons of people who you will meet, lots of different diverse perspectives, things you would not encounter in a place with less population density. I was lucky enough to live in some of those cities and they profoundly changed my life. I think the biggest lesson that I learned was to dream bigger, not to dream smaller. So when I went to Stanford, for example, I realized being surrounded by these peers, how much was achievable by just asking for it and working really hard. That's what I learned when I was in Silicon Valley doing a tech startup. I learned how many amazing people you can meet by simply sending them an email. Amazing. Incredible. I realized over time I could travel, I could see amazing things, I could eat the best food, I could have new experiences. And to me, that really connected with me. I didn't want to shrink my world, I wanted to expand it. That is why I talk so much about living a rich life, about earning more, about saving more, investing more, trying new things, hiring a coach. Even if it doesn't work out, okay, fire them, hire another one. Versus I want to save 60% of my income until someday when I can retire and do what I want to do. No, that's not for me. I want to live a rich life today and a richer life tomorrow. Whether it's living in a city, whether it's surrounding yourself with other motivated people. That feeling when you realize, oh my gosh, I don't have to play small, but I can actually win, want more and get more. To me, that is a very powerful moment. Alright, after all these lessons, it's now time for a business quick fire. We're going to go through quickly my thoughts on a few different topics. I'm going to tell you what I think is overrated and underrated. Okay? Overrated in business segmentation on your email lists. Oh my God. Anyone who starts an email list soon enough, they go, I need to segment everything. I go, stop doing that. Okay? The minute you start segmenting is the minute you're going to be focused on that for the rest of your life. Segmentation and purchase attribution is like a deep dark hole that is very difficult to get out of and it's unclear if you actually get anything from it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you're lucky. So what I always tell people is don't even think about email segmentation until you have at least 150,000 subscribers. Probably more than that. That's just my personal opinion. Random tactics like auto webinars, it depends on your industry, of course. But I often find that people over focus on technology because they like the idea that I'm going to set this thing up once and it's just going to print money from you. And you even see this in other companies. Remember Sweet Green, the salad company? Do you know they went like over 10 years or something like that, presenting themselves as a technology company. I'm like, you make salad. I ordered the salad with the guacamole and double chicken. It's a salad. It's not a technology company. Please stop talking about yourself as a technology company if you're not. And then events, events are cool. I've done events. I got no problem with events. However, when it comes to simply looking at the ROI profit alone, they're really hard. A lot of the event people I know, you know, it's a lot of time and effort to do It. What the hell am I saying? Who knows? Let's talk about what's underrated. Underrated? What's underrated? Things that we tend to ignore. Number one, choosing the right audience. Please choose the right audience. Don't choose pathologically cheap people. If you think nobody would ever pay for this, then I just simply turn around to you and say, when was the last time you paid for a premium service? You can't charge for a premium service if you yourself never pay for one. So if you yourself are not the right audience, then you need to learn how that audience thinks. Don't simply go with whoever's going to come to your account and click like. Please be careful. Do not simply go for what's going to get you likes. Do not simply go for what's easy. Choose the right audience. If you. It is a subtle distinction, a subtle decision you will make early on, but it could be responsible for millions and millions of dollars in your business. Also, you just want to like the people that you're serving. Underrated. Finding creative ways to express yourself through your business. For example, my podcast. For 10 years, I had friends telling me, you got to start a podcast. Got to start a podcast. I was like, like, what the hell am I going to do? Interview a bunch of authors? I'm an author. I don't even like a lot of authors. What am I supposed to talk about? And then during COVID I had a couple who said, hey, I know you're doing these Instagram lives. Can you talk to my wife and me about our money? I said, all right, but I'll only do it if you show me all your income, all your debt, all of it, thinking there's no way he would do it. He was like, okay. I was like, what? And within five minutes of being on that Instagram live with them, I knew, this is my new podcast. Try new things. If they don't work, close them up. But find these creative ways that allow you to really find joy. And finally, reading real customer feedback. When I first started off, I used to pride myself on reading and responding to every single email I got. I can no longer respond to every single message. DM, email, etc. But I still read everything. I appreciate it. It keeps me grounded. It keeps me in touch with the people who are so important to me. That's you. The people who subscribe to, who purchase, who join, who share all my material and watch it and listen. So thank you so much, and I hope to create even more material like this for you. Now, if you follow the lessons. In this video, you have a pretty good chance at creating a long lasting business. Of course, building this business takes a lot of work, a lot of luck and the right moves. That is why I created a video walking you through my complete playbook to build your business from scratch. You can check it out right here.