How to go from $0 to MILLIONAIRE [33 min training]

What is up? Welcome to my channel. My name is Leila Hormozi, co-CEO of Acquisition.com, which is a portfolio of companies that does about $100 million per year in revenue. And my goal with this channel is to get you from wherever you're at in your business between $3 to $10 million in revenue for free. That being said, video that I have made for you today is actually, um, I try to really break down because I get this question a lot. I get this question, Leila, how do I get to $1 million in revenue? And I talk a lot on this channel about how to get to, you know, $5 million or $6 million or $10 million. I think Honestly guys, like that's because I don't know, that's where I live and that's where I spend most of my time is just helping people who are already at, you know, between 3 and 6. But for a really long time in my career, in fact the 6 years prior to starting adsolution.com, all we did was help people get to really that $1 million revenue mark. And so I kind of put my head down and worked a couple weeks on this presentation to really outline like a simple framework for how to get to a million in revenue. So let me know what you think in the comments. I hope this is valuable and useful for you. If it's not, let me know. If it is, let me know. I would just like feedback. Enjoy the video and hope that I've earned my, whatever, 40, 45 minutes that this is. All right, like I said in the introduction, today we're going to talk about how to make $1 million. This is definitely a different kind of piece of content because I usually talk about making 8 figures or being the CEO, et cetera. But a lot of people ask me, like, how do I make $1 million? I kind of want to put together a generic how-to for those people that are asking. This is going to be a little bit different than my normal content. But I think it's really important. So if you're starting out and you're at zero or you're at, you know, I don't know, $10 grand a month, $20, $30, $40, $50, whatever. If you're not making $1 million yet, this video is for you. That being said, what I want to share today is really a couple of things. The 4 levels of entrepreneurship to get to $1 million, because I can talk about, and I have talked about, you know, levels of entrepreneurship to get to $100 million plus, but I haven't talked about how to get to $1 million. And it's really a journey of its own. I also want to include in there why most people stay stuck and don't make $1 million. And then how do you level up past this? That being said, who the heck am I? And I'm reintroducing myself to those who don't know who I am because I think that, you know, hopefully this video helps a lot more people than typically watch my channel. And I think that it would do you a disservice not to explain why I'm qualified to talk about this at all. So for the last half decade, I've taken home an average of $100,000 and $100,000, $1,200,000. I don't even know how to say the name. Over $1 million, $1.2 million a month as a 29-year-old from Portage, Michigan. So I have personally sold over 3,000 fitness programs, serviced over 6,200 high-ticket B2B customers, provided supplements to over 200,000 people in the United States, and personally built, scaled, and sold 3 businesses, one service, one SaaS, and one e-commerce for multiple 8 figures for each one. So I say this not to sound like I'm pumping myself up, but to motivate you, because crazy enough is I started where all of you guys are right now. So if you're watching this, you haven't made $1 million, I had no fucking experience before I made $1 million. In fact, no management experience. I had no formal training. I barely had taken any courses, and somehow I still managed to make $1 million. So if you have zero experience, you can still do it too. That being said, you know, it really started with— and many of you can relate to this because there's something in your journey that probably got you started in wanting to be an entrepreneur or make $1 million. For me, it was my fitness journey. So as you can see over here on the side, I was fat and basically drinking all the time. I got arrested 6 times. You know, I just didn't know what I was doing with my life, and I felt Honestly terrible about myself. And it wasn't until, you know, one day I kind of woke up to realizing that if I kept going down that path, I was just gonna become this person that I really, really, really fucking didn't wanna be. And so it was really driven from a place of insecurity and fear that, you know, drove me to, you know, lose weight and really go into my fitness journey, stop drinking, stop doing drugs, stop, you know, being a fuckass and turn my life around. And it really changed me as a person entirely. So naturally what I wanna do is help other people do the same.— and I see this a lot in people that are, you know, starting their first business— is it kind of is derived from something you did for yourself. You know, like you've achieved something for yourself, you figured out something for yourself, and now you want to help other people do it too. And so for me, that was in fitness. And so I actually ended up moving from Michigan to California. I didn't know anybody. I took my Prius, packed it up 2 days after I graduated college. I drove out there and I was like, I'm just going to go apply to every gym that I can think of and try to get a job somewhere. And so that being said, I ended up getting a job at a big box gym called 24 Hour Fitness in California. And then I kind of started dabbling in online training. You know, I'm doing fitness, I'm learning that, I'm realizing that it's all sales and marketing. And, you know, the fact that I know how to move your elbow the right way, nobody gives a fuck about. And so I started dabbling in online training because that was actually really hot back then. And then at that point, that was really the peak of my fitness career, right? So I was drinking Monster all day, I was doing fitness exercises, I was doing competitions, I was doing races. I was training people all day, and I kind of knew that I want to do something in fitness, but I felt like this is just too much. Like, this is not efficient. I'm trading time for money, and I wanted to figure out a way to leverage myself. And so then I met this stranger on the internet. Um, actually, I met him on Bumble. Uh, you might know who he is. His name is Alex Hormozi. He also has a YouTube channel that is really great. And I met Alex, and he was basically like, uh, you know, quit everything you're doing and you'll make way more money if we do this gym launch thing together. And I was like, Dude, I've got an opportunity to have an online business. I have an opportunity to earn equity in gym. And like, I don't understand. And he was like, I swear to God, you'll make way more money if we do something together. And I was, you know, 23 at the point, at that point and really young. And so I was like, fuck it. You know, like worst case scenario, I live on my parents' couch and like, that's not even bad at all. Like I've done that before. It's like high school all over again. So we launched essentially a gym turnaround business together and that's when we entered the eat shit stage. And this was when we had essentially no money. We were living out of extended stays. Basically what we would do is we would do the marketing and sales for a gym, and we would fly out to that gym. So I'd be like in Hawaii, he'd be in Virginia. We'd fly out to the gym and we'd do the marketing and we'd sell people into their facility and then try and, you know, semi-help them keep those people. And at that point, you know, we had no money. We were, you know, working all the hours of the day plus more, living out of motels, extended stays, and flying around all the time. So I think we did like 33 cities or some crap like that in 18 months. I mean, it was just— it was bananas. And so that's what I call the eat shit stage. After nearly 2 years of being in the eating shit stage, we finally found some success after tons of having money stolen and losing everything and having only $1,000 left and having our processor shut down. Just tons of crazy shit. We finally got some success and that's when our company Gym Launch was born. Really from there it just continued to go up. You know, we had a lot of success stories. We had— if you see around on the swords over there, it's all those people making $1 million. That's the first team picture we ever took. And then we had some more success. Alex wrote a book called Gym Launch Secrets. We were able to donate— actually, we donated over $2 million to After School All-Stars. We started Prestige Labs, which is an e-commerce supplement line. And really, we actually were able to scale from nothing to $50 million in 20 months. And so I say this to impress upon you that anybody can do it because, listen, I'm not the smartest person in the world. I, in fact, don't think there's anything uniquely special about me. I just am smart enough to do it and dumb enough to believe it's possible. That's what I like to say. And then that chapter ended, right? We actually ended up selling Gym Launch and Prestige Labs to APG, which is an investment group, and promoting Maggie and Cale Owen to become CEO and COO of those businesses. And they're actually doing really well. They're continuing to grow without us. And, you know, we moved on to kind of our next chapter, which we really took 18 months to think about what we would dedicate our rest of our lives to. And we decide on acquisition.com. And acquisition.com is really— our mission is to document and share the best practices that build world-class businesses. And we do that, guys, by— we talk to 30 businesses a week, we work with all the portfolio companies that we are invested in, and we take those practices and we share them here on YouTube for free. And the reason for that is because Alex and I had to ask ourselves, like, what is something that we would do if we were never paid for it? And I fucking wish that I had had somebody telling me and sharing with me, like unapologetically and without any scarcity, all the stuff that I needed to know when I was building my business. And I wish I'd had that information. And so, you know, that's what we do. And as for the portfolio companies, like, I wish I had someone that I could just bounce everything off of who'd already been there, who'd already done it. And they were there honestly whenever I needed them. And that's what we are to them. And so that is when we decided to start acquisition.com. To kind of, you know, bring it back around, what I have realized in doing this is that many of the people, in fact, we get about, you know, almost 1,000 inquiries a month for acquisition.com. Only 3% of businesses actually ever make only a million dollars in total revenue. So we often, more than often than not, you know, I would say 60% of those people haven't even made a million dollars yet. So they're doing, you know, $200 grand a year, $400 grand a year, maybe $500 grand a year, and they're stuck. They can't figure out how to get to a million dollars. And so that is why I'm making this video today, because I want you to understand that this is what I see the most of, is people that are not able to get that million a month mark. And I want to kind of provide some clarity into the patterns that I have seen over talking to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, um, as to why they're not able to get there. And what this means, just so you know, is that out of every 100 people, only 3 are going to hit $1 million, which is crazy, right? Because there's a lot of ways that you can make $1 million, right? You could sell 1,000 people into a $1,000 product. You could sell 500 people into a $2,000 product. You could sell 200 people a $5,000 product. You could sell 100 people a $10,000 product. There's a lot of ways to make $1 million. But despite that, you know, only 3 out of 100 businesses ever get there. And so what that means too is like, if you're watching this video and you haven't yet hit $1 million, are you one of those 3? I think that if you watch this video, you have a higher likelihood of increasing your success in doing so. And that being said, our goal is really to create free training materials to make this simple for you guys. And that's why I've created this video today, because what else would I do with my life before I die? And so that's why what I want to share with you today, uh, is really what I've done personally 4 times, which is— and I'm not saying I've only made $1 million 4 times, but I have gotten over the $1 million mark 4 times personally, and I've helped over 200 businesses directly do so. Indirectly, I would hope it's a lot more from the content we put out there and such, but I can, you know, recognize 200 that have, uh, been because of our direct teaching. So that being said, I hope in sharing this with you and sharing my own story, you understand that I deeply understand where you are. I care because I've been there. That was our bank account when we had only $1,000, and this wasn't that fucking long ago, guys. This is like— look at that, that's 2016. I didn't start with any resources, nor did Alex. Like, we didn't have any more information than you do today. And if anything, I want to give you more information than I had so you understand how to get there faster and with less headache, and hopefully people don't rob you and you don't lose all your money because that sucks. And so what I want to dive into is really the repeatable process that I have learned from how to get from $0 to $1 million. So let's go in. Who here has heard of the hierarchy of competence? There's no crowd, so raise your hand at the computer, right? Okay, somebody probably has, somebody has probably not. Essentially what it is, it's the stages of learning for any new skill, and it looks like this. You've got unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Okay, so what does that look like, right? Well, unconscious incompetence is really you're dabbling in something and you don't know that you suck yet. You're so new to it that you have no idea how fucking bad you are. And I think everyone starts there. And the only reason you get started is because of this, because if you knew how bad you were, you wouldn't even start. The second stage is conscious incompetence, which means that you're aware that you suck and you're getting better at not sucking. So you're like, I fucking blow, but because I know how bad I blow, I know how much I need to improve in order to get where I need to go. Conscious incompetence is you suck less with practice and effort. So you're like, I am now putting the work in, I have a consistent routine, I know what I'm doing to get better. And then unconscious competence is you don't suck much at all with very little effort, right? And so you might see people that you're like, I don't know how they do that, that would take me hours and days and can't even imagine. It's years and years of competence built up, so it takes very little effort to have a high output. Competence leads to confidence. And so right now, if you haven't hit $1 million yet, you might not be feeling very confident. The thing is that you're not going to get there until you get through the period of shit, until you go through the eat shit stage where you feel like shit. You're not confident. You don't believe in yourself. You never get to the other side where you do. And so how does this really relate to you? $0 to $1 million is all about the learning process of consistently selling something that someone wants. Okay, what does that look like? Alex and I have come up with this framework for entrepreneurs. 0 to 1 million, you have one product, one avatar, one channel. The problem is you have no fucking clue what you're doing. That is the problem at 0 to 1 million. You don't know what to do. You don't know who to ask. You don't know where to go. The objective is that you consistently sell something people actually want, which is essentially achieving product-market fit. That is when you have found something that customers actually want to buy for the price that you're selling it at, for the value you've brought. So that being said, I, uh, call— I put these into phases that I've labeled, and I'm not going to give you a revenue level for what these each look like, but I am rather going to label them because the revenue level is different depending on the business you're in and depending on the market that you're in. And so if you look at this, when you are unconsciously incompetent, you're really a wantrepreneur. You don't know how bad you are, and you're, you know, looking to get started, but you really just have no clue how much you suck. Conscious incompetence, when you're aware that you suck and you're getting better, you're typically a starter. You've gotten started, you've gotten your feet in there, so you see what it should look like and you realize that you're very far away. Then when you're consciously competent, you're typically a producer, which means you are able to produce money. You're making money, right? And more consistently, and you suck less, but you're not mastery. And then the last level is really in unconscious competence, which means you don't suck much at all and you put very little effort into not sucking. You have mastered the skill. And so in order to get to $1 million to consistently sell something, you have to go through these 4 stages to get there.. And that is what I've observed time over time again. If you think about this in the context of something easy like sales, which many people watching my channel might know, this is kind of what it looks like to master sales. It's like when you master sales, it doesn't take much effort at all and you're very consistent. That's when you're a sales master. So first I want to define what each of these is. So first I want to start off at unconscious incompetence, which is when you're a wantrepreneur. A wantrepreneur is going to be defined as someone who is dabbling yet unaware of their skill deficits that are needed to start a business. They're dabbling. They have no idea how much they don't actually know. And so typically what this looks like is you start with an idea and 3 months later you have an idea. You have nothing else. You have no business, right? That is what I would define as an entrepreneur. You have no tangible evidence to support that you have a business. Then you have a starter. A starter is someone who at least gets started. They have actually started the business. They currently have an LLC that they own, right? Consciously incompetent. So they're aware of their deficits and they're attempting to create positive business impact through acquiring new technical skills, specifically sales and marketing. That is typically where people start. Am I saying that's 100% of the time? No, but typically it's sales and marketing. And so what that might look like is you have an idea and 3 months later you do have a business, you have an LLC, you know, you have something that you have actually created and put together. And then we go to producer, which is when you're consciously competent, right? This is someone who is aware of their deficits and is inconsistently creating positive business impact through their technical skills. Again, specifically sales and marketing. So you are able to produce results, it's just not reliable. So it feels very up and down, erratic. There's no consistency in the business, right? Lumpy revenue, et cetera. So what that looks like is, you know, you start the business and then you make inconsistent progress, which is like some weeks you feel like none, some it feels like there's a ton. It's just up and down. And then you go to mastery, which is unconscious competence. Which is someone who is aware of their deficits but can consistently create positive business impact through practice, technical skills, influence, and vision. A master is somebody who then once they master just being consistent at the skill, they make a lot more progress. So you can see that between starting the business and consistently adding in that positive progress, you add a lot more over time. Once your competence breeds confidence, the growth is then exponential. Getting to a million is the hardest part. If you can make it there,, it is much easier once you get there. And this is usually what happens. You hit $1 million and then literally it's like compounded and you hit $10 million so much faster than you hit $1 million. And I can tell you this, I've done it time and time and time again. It's like it takes so much tweaking and working and skill acquisition and like breaking up your own beliefs to get to $1 million. Once you've gotten there, you've done a huge amount of work. You just have to kind of double what you're doing to get to $10 million. It's much more simple. So the question is, what level do you fall into? And I would like you to really think about this, like in terms of those levels of the entrepreneur, the starter, the producer, and the master. Where do you fall? And that's going to help you as you're watching the rest of this presentation on the YouTubes. And so again, what I would also say is that if you're watching this, we lose 40% of new information that we see or hear within the first 24 hours. So I say ATN, always take notes. That being said, first off, let's go into wantrepreneur. What is a wantrepreneur? What does it look like? And how do we move on to the next level? Wantrepreneur, you are dabbling. You do not know how bad you suck. You are unaware of your suckage. For me, what this looked like was, uh, you know, if I were to say what it looked like when I was a wantrepreneur, right? I was doing some online training with, you know, some clients online, dabbling in it, training some people in person, dabbling with it, you know, honestly just mentally masturbating all day. Like, spent all my time in my head just like constantly overthinking and then literally just consuming the shit out of everything like Masters of Scale, you know, Entrepreneur on Fire, Entrepreneur Podcast, Gary Vee, Tai Lopez, Rich Dad Poor Dad, like anything I could get my hands on, I was eating it up. But there was honestly no action, right? Like I was literally just in my head all day, whether it was consuming things or it was overthinking things. And so typically what it looked like is this, right? I got a new idea, I bought a domain, did nothing with it, bought a new— got a new idea, bought a domain. I never actually shipped the project. And I really like this little— I saw this somewhere, I think on Twitter. I thought it was hilarious because I feel like this embodies a wantrepreneur. And so if you look at it, really the level you're at as a wantrepreneur, you're dabbling without awareness of your suckage. Your beliefs are, I'm not sure I could do this, so I will test it out until I am sure of myself, right? It's like, I can't go all in because I'm not sure I can actually do this. The key trait of somebody like this is you're highly cautious. The key skill is the skill is overthinking. Like you are overthinking everything and your time is constantly spent in your head overthinking. That's what it looks like to be an entrepreneur. Here's the thing. Startups have a 10% chance of success. Ideas never executed on have a 0% chance. And so if right now you're watching this video and you're like, I need some inspiration to get started, to tell me I'm going— all you have to do is fucking get it started. Like if you just get started, you at least have a 10% chance. If you never start, you have zero. Think about it. So the question really is, why do so many people get stuck? There's really 3 reasons at this level. One, I see a lot of this, you've got a spouse, a spouse who's holding you back, people around you that are holding you back. It's your spouse, it's your friends, it's your inner circle. They don't believe it's possible. They don't root for you. They don't support you. It is much harder, not impossible, but much harder to succeed when you're surrounded by people who are assholes. The second is you've often got some kind of safety net, which I say is the golden handcuffs, which is probably a high-paying job. Maybe it's that your spouse has a high-paying job. There's something there that allows you to remain safe, and so you feel no need to jump because you're like, well, I've got this thing and it's really good, but it's not what you want. It's not for you. And then lastly is fear. It's just fear of the unknown. And people don't know how to— I'm scared of this, I'm scared of that. Humans are scared of unknown. They're, they're scared of situations that they cannot predict. And that's fucking okay. You're never not going to be scared of a new situation. You just have to understand that's just your brain and how it works. It's 2 billion years old or 2 million years old or what the fuck ever. And it's not you. This is not, it's not special to be scared. You have no unique situation. It's just unpredictable. That's all. And that's why so many people stay stuck. The question is, how does somebody actually level up? At this point, a lot of the time you have two options, which is create more safety in the unknown than the known. Right, by basically mentally tricking yourself, or burn your boats so you have no option. For me, it was burning my boats. That was what I had to do. I had to quit my job, I had to get rid of my clients, and I had to say, I'm doing this, and if I fail, I'm not gonna die. Like, if you fail at starting a new business, you will not die. So like, what's there to be scared of? Like, you'll be okay. So that is how someone levels up. Now, starter, okay, a starter is somebody who is aware they suck and they are getting better, right? Consciously incompetent. What did that look like for me when I was a starter? Well, I'd quit my job. I had decided I was going to go fly around the country and do this gym launch thing. Start taking online courses, honestly just testing stuff. You know, like I was taking online courses, watching YouTube videos, reading books, you know, anything I can get my hand on. At this point, like online learning was just kind of starting. So it was like not as popular as it is today. So you had to dig a little bit more. I was flying around the country, basically just testing out launching these gyms. It was like, I would say the first 3 were just like complete tests. It was like, I don't even know if this is going to work. And that's kind of what it looked like. Now, what does that look like in terms of the level? Well, I'm a starter. I'm aware that I suck, but I am getting better and I'm trying to get better. My belief at this point had changed. My belief was if somebody else has done it, there is a chance I can do it too. And that's really all you need is like if there's evidence that one person on this earth who is made up of the same shit as me can do something, then there's honestly no reason why I couldn't. My key trait is that I'm resourceful, right? And in this, in this phase, that is absolutely the number one trait that you need is to be a person of resourcefulness. The key skill right here is actually ruthless blind execution. Because the thing is, like I said, when you're going to $1 million, you just don't fucking know. And you have to be okay not knowing, and you have to be able to act even when you're not knowing. And where's your time spent at this point? You know, you've just started a business, you're just getting in. You're 100% sales, 50% coaching, 50% admin, 50% delivery, 50% billing, 50% learning, 50% programming, 50% marketing. You are doing all of it. You are working overtime. It is uncomfortable. That is okay. You will not be here forever. It is a season. And so the question is, why do so many people get stuck? Well, at this stage, there's a few things that I see that typically prevent somebody from getting to the next stage, right? When I'm talking about you want to understand the one product, one channel, one avatar, all those things, right? In order to get past the not knowingness, right? What do I do next? Who can help me? Who is my avatar? What are my values? Because at this point, you've gotten started, but you have no idea who is my avatar, what is my product, what is my channel, how should I market, right? The first thing you probably want to do is invest in a mentor. This could be a course, this could be a coach, this could be, you know, something. It doesn't need to be like a person one-on-one coaching you, but like some kind of program or guidance. Because what you need right now is clarity. You have no clarity. You don't know what to do next. You have no fucking clue. Doing something is better than nothing, and doing something cookie cutter that somebody else tells you to do is often also better than trying it on your own. Because right now you have no fucking clue. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that a lot of people say suck because they don't break their perfectionist mentality. They get started and they can't even figure out how to grow because they won't let anything not be perfect. And so because of that, they actually paralyze themselves and then they don't do anything. They get started, they build the business, they get like one person in there, and then they're like, I can't do anything because if I can't do it to 100%, I can't do anything at all. And here's the thing, in the beginning you suck at fucking everything because it's just you, and that's okay. If you don't get past this, you don't accept that, you will never actually reach $1 million. And then the last part, and this is a theme you'll notice, is that you typically are surrounded by idiots. You know, people are just getting started and you're taking advice from people who aren't even where you want to be. And it's typically something that I see in people that haven't reached $1 million. And I'm like, well, who told you that was going to do it? They're like, well, the contractor I got from Upwork said blah, blah, blah. Or like, my friend who is a mechanic said that. And you're like, dude, if they're not where you want to be, why are you fucking listening to them? That's not going to help you. So you have to stop listening to idiots. You have to only listen to the people who know where you're trying to go and have been there before. And so the question on how does one level up is really just utmost clarity. You need to get clarity of your avatar and clarity of your product. And you only get that by finding people who have been there before, watching what those people have done, and using that as like almost like a stilt to get yourself off the ground. Because like at this point, it's usually better to replicate before you innovate. Because you're just trying to get started and like you want to know that the method isn't wrong. And if you've never done it before, how are you going to know if the method is wrong or not? Probably only if you find somebody else who's done it. Now, once you've gotten started and you've leveled up past that, we move on to the producer phase. Okay, what's the producer phase? This is when you suck less with a good amount of practice and effort. So for me, what did this look like, right? Well, I was actually making a good amount of sales. It wasn't like highly consistent, but I was making a good amount of sales. I was wearing all the hats, but still mainly doing sales as a priority, but also doing billing. I was also DMing people. I was also doing contracts. I was also doing taxes. I was literally doing everything and all of the hours of all the days. And then I started working with multiple mentors who knew what the next step was. I think that's a big piece of success when you're under $1 million, like finding somebody that you can trust. Everything that they say is not going to make sense. Probably half of what they say is going to be applicable to you, but it is better to follow somebody than nobody at this point because you have no fucking clue what you're doing. And so what this really looks like broken down: you're a producer, you suck less with practice and effort. The belief is that if I want to be great, I have to suck first anyways. That's the thing, you don't become great without sucking. Kobe Bryant, whatever, first time picked up basketball, probably sucked. If you've never done something before, of course you suck. Nobody is— there's rarely somebody that's naturally talented at something. So to hold that belief and to think that you must be good in order to do something is just keeping you stuck where you are. The key trait of somebody at this point is they're determined. They see a little success, they see the light at the end of the tunnel, and they're like, I need to keep fucking going. Now, the key skill here is you've got adaptability and sales and light marketing, right? At this point, in most businesses that I am speaking to on this YouTube channel, you most likely need to understand sales and some light marketing in order to get to this point. Where's your time spent? Again, fucking everywhere. You are spending your time everywhere at this point. It is pretty much the same as when you started. It is just getting harder and harder, and there is like it's building up to the point where you're not going to be able to do it on your own. And so at this point, typically what it looks like when you've moved in the stage where you can produce, it's just inconsistent, is you have a really flexible infrastructure. You might have a digital agency that's running your ads, and then you might have like 2 VAs or something to that extent that are like helping you with DMs or helping you with something involving the marketing or sales. They're basically assisting you and helping you leverage yourself out of the marketing and sales just a little bit. And so the question is, why do so many people get stuck? Right? The questions at this point are, should I spend more money? I'm nervous that nobody will do it like me if I get more people in here to help me. What is a priority right now? And am I stable enough to invest more into this business? At this point, many people stay stuck because you have something that's working, you have a little bit of leverage, but you're afraid. You're afraid of really committing to it. And so people typically resist trading money for time. You've been so used to trading time for money. That's what you've done to get here. To trade money for time is very foreign. But the thing is that until you start, you know, hiring people, paying more money to leverage yourself, you're never going to get out of this stage. The going hand in hand with this is the need for control, right? Which is you don't want to let anybody else do anything because you're afraid nobody will do it like you. And the thing is, you have been doing it that long, you probably still suck some. And the longer that you delay giving this to somebody else, the longer that you get better and the person who should be doing it in the future gets worse. And then lastly is the inability to manage time effectively. Is often people are still saying yes to what they said yes to when they were a wantrepreneur. They're still trying to maintain those friendships. They're still trying to maintain that lifestyle. They're thinking there's something wrong with the fact that they're working so much and they're trying to maintain what they were doing before rather than sacrificing for the short term, knowing that you're in a season. Getting to $1 million is the hardest season and it requires a lot of focus and effort. The more time you spend on a daily basis to get there,, the faster you will get there. The more hours you dedicate per week to figuring out how to get to a million, the easier it is when you get to a million and the more time you'll have back then. So it's worth investing the time, letting go of the control, and starting to realize that you also need to trade money for time. And so if you want to level up, again, like I said, you want to learn to trade money for time and then usually take that money, trade it for talent, and buy back your time. Because at this point, what you've realized is that in order to even be consistent, you have to have 1 to 2 people helping you full-time. And so lastly, we reach the level of master, right? Master is when you are able to make $1 million. What does that look like? It's usually unconscious competence. You have figured out how to sell something consistently to somebody that they actually want. What this looks like, you are consistently making sales, you have predictable sales, you know that you are going to grow month over month if you continue making these sales, you have happy customers, you have a mentor who's helping you, and you have support, so delivery systems are solid. You're not just, you know, scrapping things together. You've got some people helping you so that this isn't like a house of cards. And so here's the thing. If you don't interfere with this process, you will reap the benefit of time. And what happens is that most people don't allow that to happen. They interrupt the natural process that will occur to allow you to reach $1 million. I'll explain what that means in a second. So you're at the level of master. You don't suck and it requires much less effort. So you're saving time in terms of your expertise Your belief is often that consistency trumps intensity. You realize now that what got you started doesn't keep you going. Consistency is going to be a more useful tool right now than intensity. Key trait is that you are industrious, you're working your friggin ass off, and your key skill is sales and leveraged acquisition. So you might still be making all the sales, but you have leveraged the marketing. So you are lightly involved, but not nearly as much as you were. Where's your time? Again, It's selling, overseeing marketing, coaching calls, directing small vendors and contractors. And typically at this point you have outsourced some of the small admin work to those people that are on your team, right? You've got someone else helping with billing, somebody else helping with contracts, and you're managing those people. And so what that might look like again is that you have a few more people on your side. You know, you've got 3 part-time or even full-time people that are helping you with delivery. You've got outsourced accounting, you've got outsourced marketing. And of course, these are not fully outsourced. You're heavily involved in the management. And then you have these people that are helping you leverage your delivery systems. And that's typically what it looks like. So why do so many people get stuck? Why is it that so many people can't level out here? Once you've hit $1 million, how do you level out of $1 million? It's really actually one of the hardest transitions for entrepreneurs is you ask yourself these questions, right? What if there's a better opportunity? Now that you see that you can make $1 million, you start to think, where else could I make $1 million? Look at all these other cool things I could do. And then you think, uh, this is not another business, it's just a new product line I'm going to start. You start thinking, I need new things now. I've reached a million, I need something new. We need a new product. I think maybe enough people aren't buying it now. And then you wonder, should I hire help? How many SOPs do I need? Like, what do I need to do to grow this business? So I would say the first threat to getting past a million is shiny object syndrome. I can't tell you how many times I have talked to people, once they make a million dollars, they start like 4 more businesses. And guess what? They just have 4 businesses making a million dollars. Their life is so fucking complicated. It's shiny object syndrome. It's thinking that that new opportunity is better than the current opportunity. But the reality is you just don't know enough about it yet to know that it has the same amount of shit as the one you are currently in. The second is the lack of ability to hire. You are refusing to hire help. You're thinking, I don't know if this is consistent. I don't know what this is going to look like. I don't know. I don't know. And you're so uncertain that you refuse to hire people out of fear of loss. The thing is, you will never win unless you take some risk. And risk at this point is using— is bringing other people onto the team and knowing that if it fails, you have to fire people, or if this doesn't work out, it's on you. But like, you're never actually going to have a business unless you get past that point. And then lastly is overthinking systems. There's like a thing that happens at a million where it's like, I need SOPs, I need order, and I need to have a million systems in place. And you actually bog your business down. If you're at a million dollars, you don't need that many fucking systems. You're fine on Excel sheets. I know people with $50 million businesses that run it off Excel sheets. There's nothing wrong with that. It's working. It's working. So at this point, you don't need to reinvest in heavy infrastructure most of the time. And so the question on how do I level up is really in 90% of the cases, focus. There's this thing that happens when we hit $1 million and we think we're now the special unicorn, we're the special case scenario. We've got to do something else. We need a new product. We need a new business, we're in the wrong opportunity vehicle. And we steal our future success from our future selves by quitting too early, by giving up too early, by losing focus too early and not reinvesting in the current thing we have. And so at this point, that is when focus is the utmost important thing that you could do. You do the boring work. And so I end with this quote, which is, strategy is choice. Strategy means saying no to certain kinds of things. And in order to get to $1 million, you have to have the utmost focus, which is often what doesn't get you started. What gets you started is like the excitement of something new. But what gets you to $1 million is being able to say no to everything else and focus on one product, one channel, one avatar, one task at hand. And that being said, guys, if you do this, if you can do this, the only thing that compounds faster than interest is learning. Once you spend all that time learning how to make $1 million, to get to $10 million, is not as hard. I promise. It is much less difficult. But a lot of people steal that from themselves because they don't focus and they won't allow themselves the opportunity to even get there. And so my question is, do you have a clear idea of what you need to focus on to level up? What I would do after watching this presentation is identify what level you're at and then ask yourself, what do I need to do to get to the next level? What kind of person do I need to become? What skills do I need? What kind of people do I need around me?. And that will answer the question of what you need to do to get to $1 million. So let me know what you guys think in the comments of this video. This is definitely a different style than I normally do. And also, I've had a lot of people ask me, like, how do I make $1 million? And I was like, gosh, I don't feel— I don't feel like telling anyone and putting it into a system. And so this took me a bit of refining, and I'm sure I'm going to refine it to be better and better each time. But I hope this provides like a broad picture of what it takes to make $1 million. So let me know what you think in the comments if this was useful and if you like the style of presentation.