19 Solcast - Episode Nineteen ft. Olivier Cantin: Marketing Masterclass, What Makes Humans Tick + Forging Your Own Path

Welcome to Episode 19 of The Soulcast. Today's guest is Oliver Canton, my good friend and marketing genius. We go deep into a few different topics, mainly related to business, marketing, sales. We talk about careers and how you can make your career work for you, and maybe first steps to becoming an entrepreneur and just creativity in general. Bit of human psychology as well. So something for everyone in here, a bit of change of pace from the other Soulcasts, but I think you'll enjoy and learn a lot. So please welcome Oliver Canton. Oliver, welcome to the Soulcast. Thank you for being here.

I'm excited, man. Yeah, me too. All the way from Canada.

Yeah, we're international. Uh, we got the first Canadian appearance, so hopefully you represent the country well.

Let's see here. Let's see. Yeah, but no, seriously, I'm excited to be, uh, to be on your show. I'm a fan of your content. I'm a fan of the cast. And you and I have had a couple of chats about, you know, business and fitness. So it's an honor, man. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you for joining me. I think everyone's going to get a lot out of this. For those who don't know, why don't you just go into a little bit of your background, what you do day to day, and, you know, the kind of information you're going to be sharing with us.

Absolutely. So my name is Oliver. You may have seen me tweet 600 times per day, occasional appearances in the sub tweets there on Sol Brah's feed. We've commented on each other's stuff. And I am a marketer and I have two businesses. I run an agency where I work with different types of clients. Specifically in healthcare marketing. So my biggest niche there is dentists. So I help dentists get patients and other somewhat related things in health and, you know, driving people to buy stuff from a local business just to, you know, to keep it high level using the internet. And my other business may be of more interest to the average person listening to this I am Petey Mangan's business partner. He is @mangan150 on Twitter. Mangan is a 65-year-old microbiologist turned health and fitness writer and coach. And for the past about 18 months, we've been working together doing different things. So information products like ebooks and courses. and he also has a coaching program, which is a different, um, type of person that relates to him than this, this group here listening to the podcast. But, you know, there's a lot of things that, uh, that are in common. So, so more about health optimization than necessarily, uh, bodybuilding aesthetics, but there, there's some overlap there. So, um, I'm a marketer and entrepreneur, and I do have an interest in, in health and fitness as well.

Very good. Uh, I know PD Meng and stuff, and as always, when you're talking about holistic health and fitness, uh, there's always going to be some carryover there. I always like to stress to people that you can focus on just the bodybuilding, but it's not going to paint the whole picture. You know, your bodybuilding efforts will be supported and improved when you look at the whole package. Like, if you're only training and you're only eating and they're the only two things you really focus on, you're not thinking about your sleep, you're not thinking about the types of foods you're eating. If you're only focused on calories, like there's that idea that, you know, as long as you're hitting your macros, even if it's junk food, that that's going to be fine. That's just blatantly wrong. You know, your energy levels, the amount of stress you're putting your body through. Like, people don't realize that mental stress as well is going to make an impact on the body, as well as digestive stress. So there's all of these things that you're gonna kind of think about, even if you're just interested in getting bigger and looking aesthetic. So there's definitely, uh, carryover there from what Peter Mangan's doing. Um, but for you, I wanted to more focus on the marketing side of things. I think there is a an idea amongst people that have never really gotten into business, or maybe they're looking to start their first business or whatever. There's this idea that marketing is somehow sleazy, and I had the same idea to begin with, you know, but I think that's just a misconception. You know, there's the bad— there is bad marketing in the world and people that try and take advantage of their things like, you know, the classic one is the, the car salesman, the guy that tries to add all these extras on to what you not necessarily need, or sell you a car that's not, you know, what it purports to be. Maybe it's got a dodgy engine or whatever. And that kind of sales and marketing is, of course, I think it's not honest and not what we want to replicate. But I think there's a space for, you know, being aware of what sells, being aware of how to sell, because our whole life is a form of marketing, right? You market yourself in the world every single day with the way you dress, the way you present yourself, how you draft up your emails, you know, all of these things which are skills that you need to have in the modern world if you want a job, if you want to progress in your career, if you you want to succeed. Like, these are all things that are essential in the modern life that I think to discount them as like all selling is sleazy or all marketing is sleazy is, is kind of like almost a low vibrational mindset. And I think if you have a product that needs to be shared with the world because it's genuinely good or you know that it's going to genuinely help people, then being aware of how to market that is almost essential. So what are your thoughts on that?

I agree. Let me build on what you said about, you know, you need to do sales and marketing in your life, right? So let me build on that one. So I agree with that. And I'd say that, you know, you talked about a product. Really, let's think of ourselves. We are a product. We, if we reduce it to earning a living, right? You can get into relationships and different things, but let's focus on making a living. So whether you're employed by someone else, whether you're self-employed, and then we can break that down into other categories, but you are a product, you know, you're a mercenary and earning a living with your skills.

Yeah.

Getting, you know, getting the opportunity to use your skills is sales and marketing and the ability to inside an organization, whether it's your own or someone else's, to use them to the highest level. That's also sales and marketing. So, you know, there's all these subcategories we could get into, right? What I'd like to, to to break it down into, it's just two things. It's long-term thinking versus short-term thinking. So there are things that work short-term, and some of them are ethical, some of them are not, right? So your example is great, the car salesman trying to maximize that one transaction. So maybe he wins, right? Like, let's just use an easy number. Let's just say the standard transaction would have been 3 grand, and you raise it up to $5,000. So, you know, maybe people will catch you, maybe they won't. But the truth is, if they have a great experience, you're not trying to sell one car to that one person one time. You're trying to establish a relationship, sell multiple vehicles in a lifetime to that person, and you're trying to get that person to bring their friends and family, right? So $5,000 one time versus $3,000 maybe 20 times. So I think this is the first, you know, bottom of the pyramid mindset. Yes, you can do a bunch of sketchy stuff. Yes, you can use all the hype and all the, you know, on Twitter, some people, they kind of overdo it on the scarcity and urgency and I'm gonna delete this product tomorrow and, you know, all that stuff, right? But fundamentally, Human relationships are almost all about persuasion. What we're doing is communicating ideas. We want to get other people to act in our best interest. And then you'll have a decision to make. Do you want to make a win-win transaction and a long-term strategy? Or are you trying to get the very best, you know, get the last crumb off the plate but then not be invited to dinner again. So that's the first thing I'd say. I hope that makes sense. It's kind of abstract, but I think this is the first thing. So anyone looking for a very specific tactic that, hey, is a maximizing strategy short-term, that's not what I'm about. And I don't think that's the right mindset.

Yeah, I agree entirely. You know, do you want to be that guy that, yes, he gets a small sale, but eventually the customer feels a little bit ripped off or cheapened somewhat, and then they're not going to come back to you? You know, the, the best customer is an existing customer. I can't remember where I learned that, but it really rings true. And you think about all of the big companies that, you know, make a lot of money is like the the people that buy their product over and over and over again because they enjoy it, because they trust the brand. You know, brand loyalty is something that is kind of earned through having a good product. And, you know, the companies that have a good returns policy and a repair policy, like for instance, I own some Iron Williams boots. They last for, you know, 20 years if you take good care of them. So that kind of thing. You're going to stick with those boots and go back to them and get new pairs and repair yours because they're a quality product that lasts a lifetime. So it's those kind of ideas, um, that, uh, will be beneficial to your business in the long run. And obviously I'm just starting in this world, so take my advice with a pinch of salt. I'm not saying I'm an expert or anything, uh, but there are, you know, very good books and everything that kind of detail this stuff if you're trying to learn it. Do you have any books that are kind of top of your list for people to read if they're interested in starting this kind of stuff?

Yeah, we, we can, we can talk about a few, a few things here, right? So I'll take one more step back and say, you know, as humans we are deploying persuasion and psychology. So I can talk about two different things, right? You've got books about being a better communicator, being a better, you know, understanding human nature better. And then you've got tactics, right? So maybe in the first group you'd have those meta books, right? So, I mean, a very cliché. What one tweet I did a while ago was the two self-improvement books, or the only two self-improvement books that you really need are How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Atomic Habits by James Clear. So, you know, in the context of this question, and basically the Dale Carnegie philosophy is to be the kind of person that gives more than they take, that focuses on the other person and that looks to build positive relationships, right? So, so that's, that's one thing. And, you know, being a nice person is not just more pleasant, it's strategic, right? Again, if you try to extract as much as you can versus giving, you're going to have better outcomes long run. And I'll go back to the example from before and maybe the boots, right? So, Maybe your boot company could sell you 5 pairs over 20 years, or they can sell you 1 pair, but you'll tell 10 people. You just told, you know, thousands of people on the podcast. So that's the perfect estimate, right?

Yeah.

Then you've got other things to think about, you know, stable human nature traits. So you've got a great one is Influence by Robert Cialdini. He's got 6 principles there. And the book itself, it is maybe a little bit dry. A summary is probably sufficient, but you've got 6 principles of persuasion and influence that are really powerful. I used to build training material. I used to manage sales teams before I was self-employed. That's one thing I use constantly. And you know, everything by Robert Greene, the author of The 48 Laws of Power, He's got one on seduction, one on power. The one on power gets a really bad name, right? A lot of like the pickup artist kind of guy and people with different vibes and energy talk about that. And in reality, it's a good balance to the Dale Carnegie one. Dale Carnegie tells you to be a good person and how to be a good, you know, friendly, persuasive person. The Robert Greene books tell you kind of the dark side. So I am not advocating manipulating your conversation sparring partner or your audience, but I think it's good to know what moves people. So influence and 48 Laws of Power would be there. And then that's one bucket. And in the more tactical one, right? So I think if you're listening to this, you'd be doing something online or maybe doing phone sales. So there's a few things that you can look at for marketing. I'll recommend two. I'll recommend the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. There's two authors. One of them, I think it's Al Trout, if I'm not mistaken, but the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is one. It's a book from the '80s with some dated examples, but the 22 principles really sound, and that's one. And then another one more geared towards writing and copywriting is called Great Leads by Michael Masterson. This is a guy who founded a really, really high-performing copywriting shop. So, so great, you know, great book there. And on sales, the book I got the most out of, which was a recommendation from our friend Rogue Wealth, It's a book by David Sandler and it's called "You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar." So this is the Sandler sales system or sales method. So, you know, if I just recap there, you know, psychology, human nature, copywriting, and then marketing and sales stuff. Do you need to read all the books? I'll leave that to you. I do think book summaries can be effective. Sometimes I'll read, 2 or 3 summaries from the same book and then decide, do I need to read the whole book? But those are the kind of things I'd be thinking about.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Uh, you mentioned at the start that building those personal relationships, uh, the main thing— I think, um, Almighty Kaz had a tweet recently that I saw, is that the kind of older boomer-style businesses were entirely built, at least the lasting ones, on developing lasting personal relationships with their customers that they can then have, whether it's like a furniture delivery service or you're outfitting offices or something. It's like, you know, that you will be the guy that they can call for that business for the next 30 years. And that results from being the guy that delivers on time, is amicable on the phone and definitely doesn't try to upsell or anything. It's like, just be the guy that if you know that a customer is going to benefit from what you have, be the middleman. And that can— that is where the greatest benefit of sales happens. So, another point you said almost just from the title of the book alone is that you can't teach a kid to ride a bike from a seminar. It's that In life, and this applies to bodybuilding, this applies to sales or whatever, you can read books until the cows come home, but it's not going to replace that real-world experience of you doing it. You can read what is purported to be the best routine ever that will gain muscle and lose fat, but it's not going to replace the years of grinding and practice that you have in the gym. Figuring out what exercises work best for you, figuring out what sales tactics work best for you, figuring out just that, that life experience in general that is going to inform your opinions and your decisions moving forward. And that goes for everything. So get your feet in the water. You're going to fail at the start no matter what it is. But again, you know, I don't like to say that it's a failure. It's only a failure if you don't learn anything, you don't change and update your kind of operating system for dealing with the the world, you know, you either win, you succeed, or you learn. And in that case, that's a win as well. So it's framing all the experience you can kind of gather by getting your feet wet in any situation, whether that's a sales job, whether that's just office work, or whether that's in the gym, you know, that nothing can replace— and books can inform, but nothing can replace that real-world experience, which is just a question of time put in.

100%. Can I add one thing on what you just said? You named those boomer businesses and the, you know, you said deliver on time as one example. I'll just add that's marketing too, right? People think that marketing is just the tagline or the slogan or the logo. Every customer interaction is a form of marketing. You mentioned before the refund policy. You know, every single customer touchpoint, customer interaction is a form of marketing. And, you know, knowing what I know now, you know, after you said getting your feet wet, failing a bunch of times at a bunch of things. And if I were to accept a role as head of marketing somewhere, I would want to see everything that is customer service and operations looking at every possible interaction with a customer. People will remember those events way more than what we think of as a marketing message. And to your point before, you want to have a long-term customer. That's the whole point. That involves doing what you said you would do when you said you would do, And when there is a problem, which there will be over time, if you have enough volume, there will be a problem. And I used to work and run contact centers. And one thing I found, and I saw a couple studies supporting this, if people have a problem and you resolve it promptly and well, that can often increase their loyalty relative to people who did not have a problem. So, even in, you know, in challenges, there's an opportunity to create more loyalty if you do it well and if you treat people like human beings and not some robotic mechanism.

Not like a wallet.

Exactly.

Yeah, I think that's all good points. You mentioned self-employment before. Obviously you're self-employed now. I'm self-employed now, and I think especially in the space on Twitter, it's, it's definitely pushed as, you know, the end goal. And I think that's good. I think there's a certain spiritual side of things that once you as a man are in the world and you only answer to yourself for the most part, of course, you answer to your clients and your customers to some degree. But when you don't have that, you know, direct boss oversight and you don't have those silly office politics, particularly in jobs that maybe you're just punching the clock and just collecting a paycheck based on the time that you've spent there, I think that there's a greater metaphysical change that goes on within yourself when you kind of make that initial mindset shift to working for yourself and being self-employed. So maybe talk a bit about your journey from being employed to other people compared to where you are now. I know for me that it was a question of I was working an office job that, you know, I was not particularly motivated to do well in. Of course I did well in it and, you know, I think no matter what situation you're in at the moment, you should always try and do your best because you never know where that's going to lead or who you're going to influence or meet within that space. You know, it's that grander idea of making the most of wherever you're at at life. But I think that for the most part, if you can, you know, spend those hours on the weekend or in the evenings when you're at home trying to figure out and learn something that could possibly scale to you working for yourself down the line. And that could be anything depending on your particular skills and situation and circumstance. But I know for me that my outlook on life and my motivation for work itself was never really there before working for myself. And then when I had this avenue to pursue that I did work hard on while I was working at my other full-time job, grinding on the weekends or whatever, that, you know, that's such a huge change in my life and comes with such a multitude of benefits. So what do you think about that?

A lot to unpack here, right? So I'll maybe I'll start with some general stuff. So, you know, there's not one right way for everyone. I think the common theme in self-employment, you know, so you've got accountability. And in a way the highest accountability because it's to you, it's not to something else or someone else. You're the one that has to make it work. So there's freedom and there's accountability. And you know, you mentioned the metaphysical, so there is something different, you know, outside of how much you can earn outside of the unlimited income potential. And the, you know, the location independence for most things that the kind of, you know, the kind of thing that we talk about. And there's something there, right? And I can't quite pinpoint or describe what that is, but it's a different feeling. I'll share with the listener. So I'm 35 years old. I've been self-employed for a year and change, and I've been working towards being self-employed for several years. So I did not go as fast as some of the stories you see on Twitter. Um, I went to college, I worked, and I can touch on, you know, some jobs. Basically, I've had a number of jobs in sales and marketing. I was a salesperson, I led sales teams, then I led a sales department, uh, composed of about 200 people. Um, I went to business school, so I went to do an MBA. Um, and then I did some startup stuff in the tech world. And eventually got into the kind of marketing that you hear about on Twitter, right? So on online marketing. So there's not one right way, there's not one right path. I think the way I think about things now is the world is changing faster than ever. We are armed with, you know, the tools and the resources to learn what we want to learn. And it's about how do you want to spend your time, right? I don't believe in a hedonistic 24/7 lifestyle. I don't think anyone will be happy doing that long-term. So you have to find something, right? And some people call that meaning or purpose or mission. So you need to find a way to create value in the world and you need to capture some of that value. That can be in employment, that can be in self-employment. I think that's less important than that. It's finding something that you are uniquely skilled at and where your rewards and, you know, both the monetary and the, you know, the extra responsibility and the recognition in some jobs is tied to your performance, right? So, you know, The office jobs that are soulless, they're the ones when you're one of 27 people doing the same thing. You're doing something that could be automated away in 5 or 10 years. It's hard to find meaning in that. It doesn't mean you can't be diligent. It doesn't mean you can't learn, right? But it's a different feeling. So, you know, in employment, right? You've got different things that are a performance, right? So maybe you're a surgeon, Maybe you're an engineer, you know, that's instrumental in making sure a bridge actually stands. Maybe you're a salesperson. Maybe you're in marketing, you know, directly writing the message, going in front of millions of people, or maybe you're self-employed. And whether it's a small business solving a problem for someone, whether it's a marketer helping those small businesses solve a problem for someone, but That's how, you know, the closer you are to the actual delivery of the service, right? So fixing the problem or fulfilling the desire, I think that's the thing. So it's, you know, it's not about exactly how you earn your living, but it's, are you supporting the support team that supports the support team, or are you close to the action? Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I think why, at least my opinion is, you know, not heavily against, but, you know, definitely biased one way, is because the job that I was in was, like you said, one of those, you know, things that could definitely be automated in a few years. So you feel like you're in there just a number, you know, there are other people that are equally unmotivated. And when you're in an environment that is just a lot of unmotivated people, it can be hard to find motivation. And You know, if you're in a job that is doing really good things and you're being compensated appropriately and you have time for, um, those other things in life like working out and spending time with your family and things, then of course I'm not saying, uh, quit your job or anything. Um, it's just for me, and I know probably the majority of people, uh, in the, in the world at the moment, is that these jobs aren't the be-all and end-all, and they're not, like you said, spiritually satisfying. You don't feel like you're helping people. And I will say that the times that I could help people within that job were the times that I kind of went away from work being like, okay, today was a good day. So, it is definitely important that no matter what you're doing, you try and, you know, try and lessen the suffering in the world and try and contribute to the overall happiness of the world. Yeah, no matter what it is, um, I think that's going to be the, you know, that's going to be the space in all of life where you achieve the most personal meaning and therefore the, the most personal mental satisfaction. And, you know, even if it comes with stress or whatever, it can be, um, worth it. The, the times where those office jobs can be soul-sucking is when you're doing a thankless task You know, you're pushing paper. You don't necessarily feel like you're making any significant difference in people's lives or your own. Couple that with all the, you know, the health side of it, like you're spending all day inside, not getting any sun. You go in on your commute, you're wasting— well, not wasting, but you know, you're spending 45 minutes each way driving, so you're— or on a bus or on a train, so there's that lost time made up. And then you have equally unmotivating managers or people that just want to shit on you and all of that, that can just be a whole kind of whirlwind of stress that I would say, you know, do your utmost to get out of that because even if it doesn't seem that there is a way out and you feel demotivated because you think, I don't have any, I'm not developing any skills here, you know, that there's always a way out if you put your mind to it and whether that means you spend months on the side developing a skill and practicing something that you can do. It is just a question of not doing nothing, because when you do nothing and kind of resign to it, then nothing's going to change. Simple as that.

Let me add something. Sorry to cut you off. Just on that point, one thing I skipped that I'll share that might be interesting here. So, After my MBA, I did some startup stuff. Then I went back to the corporate world for a while. Uh, the first job back in corporate was a sales job, um, where I was paid quite well. Uh, you know, like, let, let, let's say I'm trying to be like, like close to $200K, right? Uh, but I worked a lot and there wasn't necessarily a, if I got into a role higher, it wouldn't have been tied to my performance as much. So it would've been similar money. And it was a very, very big bureaucratic organization. So there's a point at which, you know, I said, I want to become self-employed. I was, you know, I had started my marketing stuff and we could talk more about that. But what I wanna say based on what you said is what I did is I found an opportunity to switch to another job in the same company. A marketing job that was closer to a 40-hour-a-week job. So I went from, let's just call it $200K, 70 hours to about $90K, but 40 hours. So I didn't just quit and say, you know, let's burn the boats and figure it out.

Yeah.

I found a solution to reclaim some of my time and I used the time that I banked to double down and triple down on building the skills that, that took me to where I am today. So, you know, it doesn't have to be a land of extremes. And I'll add to, you know, you said before, uh, on stress, stress isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it has to be towards something meaningful. Something meaningful could simply mean a bigger, a bigger paycheck, if you stress to get an objective that you get a fair piece of, I don't think that's bad. But if it's just stress to meet these arbitrary deadlines to make someone else happy, you don't have skin in the game, you don't get something out of it, you don't see an impact, that's when, you know, there's a difference between eustress and distress. So that there's that nuance. You know, you don't need to just burn the boats, quit everything. There's different things you can do, whether it's in the same employer, getting something else with a different employer. And, you know, I had to check my ego to do that, right? Like other people in the company were like, what are you doing? And I questioned myself. And, you know, I don't wanna say that I did it and it worked for me, that that is the only plan and it's going to work for everyone, but it's an option that probably isn't on the table for most people. But that should be considered, I think.

Yeah, anytime that you can reclaim a bit more of your life back is going to mean that you're more productive in the time that you are working. And that's something I definitely wanted to touch on. I know that a lot of people, or maybe the Twittersphere, like this mentality of hustle, hustle, hustle, grind, grind, grind, never sleep. I think that that's harmful in a way, and I'm not— I don't want to discourage anyone from working hard, that's still important, but I think there is a balance to be had. And I think a lot of people beat themselves up if they're not working until midnight. But I think in terms of my own experience, and you know, that's all I can talk about really, is that my work, if, if I am well rested, if I get 9 hours sleep, if I'm eating properly, if I'm gymming as well, when I sit down and do the work, it comes a lot easier. You know, the work that I am putting through is better, it's a higher quality, I have more energy to do the things that I needed to do, and the work benefited because of that. You know, on my lunch breaks when I was working in the office, I'd make a point to go out on my lunch break, take the shirt off and walk around and get some fresh air. Things like that, which if you are an office worker, just in the intermediate, you can make that experience better. Whether you, you know, you sit down with your employer and you say, hey, look, I really want to, you know, I like working here or whatever, but I do need a bit of extra time just so that I can take care of myself. I think that's also an option. I have friends that have done that, that they just, you know, honestly say to their employer that they need a bit more time to look after themselves. And in that case, the work is— and their productivity improves and benefits because of that. So I think that the number of hours you're putting in isn't necessarily the thing. It's the quality of the work and the— what actually moves the needle and moves you towards your goals or performance metrics or whatever it is in that space. Have you noticed that with your work?

Yeah, for sure. Let me build on what you just said. So I've managed, so I've hired and fired a lot of people in my life. I've hired hundreds and I've fired dozens of people. So I'll tell you, your manager, if you're in a company that is a good company, meaning it's not just a bureaucratic nightmare, right? There is such a thing as a company that, you know, you just don't wanna be in. If everything is policed to the minute, and you, you may be a junior person at a, at a company doing that, then you need to graduate to the next level and that's fine. But as a, as a general thing, right? You want to be just as you said, in an environment where what's assessed is the output and the quality of work, not just a number of minutes in a chair. That's the first thing. To be able to negotiate any kind of flexibility, whether it's a different start time to avoid traffic, whether it's a flexible schedule overall, a longer lunch break, the way you do that is you have to do a good job, right? So managing your manager or managing up is something that many people don't get. And I'll just resume it as such. Your job is almost always to make your boss look good. And if you don't know what your boss's goals are, you want to ask them. You can straight up tell them, look, I'm on your team and I have, you know, here are my objectives, you know, formal or informal, you know, you need to do these things to do a good job. I imagine you're, you know, Bob, I imagine your objectives are the cumulative objectives of our team and some personal stuff, right? And then you say, well, Bob, you know, here's my commitments. I'm going to overdeliver on my objectives and tell me, is there something on your plate that I can help you with? So you're doing a few things here. One, you're showing that you know what's really going on. You're not just there to, to take orders. You're there to actually help your boss. If you take some of their, you know, if you help them delegate a handful of things to you, you're getting yourself ready for that next level. and then you become a valuable member of that team. And that's when, you know, after you've got some momentum for a few weeks, for a few months, if you want a little bit of flexibility, they can justify because your output is going to be better. You know, so you're not late. If there's a culture of arriving on time, make it a point to arrive on time. If there's a culture to be, you know, dressed a certain way or, and email and certain etiquette or whatever the case may be, you know, adhere by those things. Don't try to be a rebel that way. Take on some of their work if you can, and then ask for the things you were talking about, Sol, the flexibility. And you know, you might be able to carve yourself a different job than what is stated on that job description. And you may find that it's actually pretty enjoyable.

Yeah, it's about making the job work for you. If you can't, you know, if you are stuck within that situation, um, just like anything, you know, there's always something to learn. There's always something to glean from a situation, whether that's if it's hard to just work on your personal willpower, or like you said, build these skills which are going to help you in the long term. You never know. Like, I I enjoyed and learned from the jobs that I've done in the past, whether that was, for instance, at one point I was working in a carpenter's, you know, sweeping floors. It was one of my first jobs, but, you know, I learned a lot of things. I learned how to work with my hands a bit more. I learned how to use tools, and I knew at the time, like, okay, this is probably not what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, or what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but It is a question of, as a young guy, you will have to do jobs that you don't necessarily want to do for the most part. So I think it's important to, like any situation, make the most of it, get the skills that you can, you know, make the relationships that you, that you can, because you never know. Like, for instance, I've worked jobs where I've moved on, but then later on maybe a younger friend of mine needed work and I've been able to connect the two because I was the guy that, you know, did a good job or tried to do a good job, was on time, etc. And it's so easy because a lot of the time most people are late. They don't, you know, they don't have the right attitude. If you're the guy that's always on time and saying, putting your hand up for things and really going the extra mile within that job, it sticks out because most people aren't that way and they are just collecting the paycheck and sitting in their chair for the allotted amount of time. It does stand out when you, when you do put your head above the pack and hopefully that, you know, leads to some kind of benefit in the future.

100%. I need to say two things here. One, the idea of you sweeping floors, that sounds like the start of an erotica novel. Some of your female listeners were probably building some images there. So enjoy that. Enjoy that one, ladies. That's one. Number two, on your point of raising your hand, I'll just tell you a quick personal story. So my first office job, it was a bank that operated primarily as a call center. We had a few like branch cafes stuff. It was like, you know, hippie hip kind of bank. I was a, like second level of most junior person. So I was no longer a sales rep on the phone. I was doing some very basic support job. My boss's boss was sitting close to me in an open environment and she was on a conference call and saying to the effect, but who's gonna do this thing? And it was a training task. And I just stood up from my desk as she was on her conference call and it just pointed to me. I'm like, I can do this. Like I just heard, This opportunity was not written anywhere, right? I just heard it right away. I jumped. I said, hey, I can do this. And she looked at me and she said, okay, we'll try you. And that single thing got me to become a sales trainer, a sales manager, a sales director, and then a head of a department in about 4 years. So, you know, you could speculate something else may have happened, but that single time of, not only raising my hand, but like physically hearing something and volunteering. Right. And she could have said no, but I think you've got to, you got to swing for the fences. Right. Maybe that's an American metaphor, but you've got to raise your hand and it's key.

Yeah, 100%. And there is, you know, the, this greater spiritual idea as well is that doors seem to open to you when you put the work in yourself. That, you know, the harder you work, the luckier you get. You know, it seems to be that the universe does reward you as soon as you change your mind from, okay, it's not possible, to it's possible and I'm going to work at it. And whether you believe that there's, you know, some guy behind the scenes pulling levers going, oh, so-and-so did this today, cha-ching, now I'm going to push this beneficial thing his way. You know, it seems to be that the way the world works is when you make that initial mindset shift and adhere to practicing something or working at something hard, is that doors open to you. Uh, have you noticed that in your life?

100%. You— I mean, first of all, right, you know, let me do a— how I think about mindset and, and that, right? So yeah, you, you hear mindset, mindset, mindset, and, and I think it's important, but I think there's 3 subcategories. The first thing would be your beliefs, right? And that's it. You've identified that first. The belief is there is an abundance of opportunities. They present themselves when you're ready and you're ready by putting your reps in, right? Your reps in the gym, your reps at work, your reps meeting people, you know, in the dating market, right? So, you've gotta put your reps in. So you've gotta know there are tons of opportunities and you've gotta move in the direction of opportunities. Even if you fail, you know, 25 times towards something, have the attitude to keep going. That's one, that's your beliefs. The second thing is your, what I call your identity. So you've got to think of yourself as someone who can learn anything. Now, you know, obviously, maybe you and I, Sol, could do some of what Elon Musk does and work rockets from first principles, to use an extreme example, maybe, right? If we gave it enough time.

I'm going to say probably not, but I see your point.

You know, but so to use that extreme example, but you know, if you think of, if we use Twitter, all the guys you see with an e-com store, with an info product, with a cookbook, right? And maybe your first version won't be fantastic. And maybe the first thing you try to do is not amazing, but those things are possible. And you know, I'll say I'm not a genius. And I think you would, you know, we were joking with Elon, you wouldn't call yourself a genius, would you?

Not on Elon's level, but yes.

So, you know, not pointing that.

Yeah.

No, no, I know. I know. So you, but you've got to have, you know, the social science term is growth mindset. So being a lifelong learner starts with believing you can learn anything. And then the other thing is your standards. So you've got your beliefs about abundance, you've got your identity, it needs to be an identity that is compatible with learning, and learning needs failing. And then you've got your standards. So, it's not about expecting a lot from others. It's about expecting a certain degree of professionalism and diligence from yourself. You know, you were talking before about hustle, hustle, hustle. So it's not about time, right? If you think of things that are, that are worthy, right? So getting a new job, while getting a new job, you could spend all day on LinkedIn and doing all kinds of stuff, or you could say, okay, look, I need to send 10 resumes per day, right? So you break that down into, uh, 30 minutes of searching, um, 10 minutes of customizing each resume, and then 5 minutes for to send a resume, right? So that, that's what, I don't know how many minutes, that's 90 minutes, let's say, right? You want to find someone to, to date somewhat seriously. Well, you know, we can deconstruct that funnel. You want to get, you want to look like Sol Brah. Well, there's a bunch of steps that you need to deconstruct, but you need to have higher standards for the way you do each step. So that's the idea, right? So, so luck is when you do those things, you have the right beliefs, the right identity, and the right standards. It's not just a vision board with dreams. It's, Smart dreams with a plan and the right, you know, the right approach. I think that's what's missing sometimes. Just we say mindset, mindset, mindset, and we've got to think of what does that actually mean?

Yeah. Well, mindset can incorporate so many different things. I do want to touch on the fact that, you know, we may not be Elon Musk level geniuses that are capable of launching rockets into space, But for the most part, humans are uniquely adaptable in the biological world to the point where most animals you see, they're good at doing what they do. You know, beavers are great at swimming, they're great at chopping wood up and putting together a dam. But you put a beaver in the jungle, it's not going to survive very long. But you put a human into the jungle, they'll figure out ways to climb up into the trees specific tools. They'll figure out, you know, how to harvest food from that environment. You know, the human, the Homo sapiens animal, is uniquely adaptable and can adapt to any environment that you put it in. To that point, that means that with enough practice, uh, diligent practice, and, you know, with the right mentors or information that you're gleaning, you can for the most part do anything you want to. That's just a circumstance of being human. And I think that's, that's amazing. You know, you can do anything you want to. You can put on muscle, you can lose fat, you can improve your income potential, you can learn to code, you can learn how to sell, you know, all of these things. It just requires effort. And that whole thing of being a master at something, the master has failed more times than you even tried. So, again, it goes back to putting yourself in the environment, trying even though at the start it'll suck, but having faith and belief that you can adapt to any environment. That's just because we are human and we have the brainpower to do that. We have the opposable thumbs, you know, that was one of the great turning points in our evolutionary timeline. But being human means you have the capacity to change in any realm that you want to, as long as you have that, the first belief step being, I can do this.

You know, let me add two things there. Uh, what you said is really powerful, right? So, so humans are different. We were all in our little bubble and we don't think of the whole world as a system and the universe and all that. And, you know, we can get more, more spiritual too and talk about energy, but I'll just say, we have the benefit of being where we are now. So not only are we humans with all this possibility, the knowledge is collected. You can DIY a learning protocol, you can hire a coach or a mentor, and you can do it from the comfort of your home. So, you know, That's insane, right? Like, it's never been easier. This is a cliché now, but it's never been easier to master whether it's boxing or chess or fitness or a part of marketing. And it's never been easier. And I'll offer a less known Steve Jobs quote. You know, he said something to the effect of, or I'll paraphrase, I guess, He said something to the effect of, "Your life changes when you look around and you realize that everything you see was built by people no smarter than you." Right? So a bunch of people figured out things for the first time and you have access to all of them. So his message was about innovation, but I'll go further and say, I personally have not invented something. And I'll just, you know, to give you a little bit of mindset, I'm a self-made 35-year-old millionaire. It's not because I'm extraordinarily smart. It's not because I hustle 12 hours a day. It's because I was able to connect a few things based on other people's inventions. And I did my homework and I failed a shit ton of times. So, you know, you don't need, you know, again, to go back to Elon, You don't need to get to that level. You don't need to invent the new thing. You simply need to help people get what they want. And that means either problem solving or fulfilling a desire, right? Everything can be broken down into those two categories. And the tools exist, the resources exist, the teachers, the mentors, the coaches, they're all there, right? It's the— I think it's Naval, it's the appetite for learning that's not there. It's not the resources.

Yeah, 100%. You know, the internet functions almost as like this greater collective consciousness to the point where I almost— I refer to like learning a new skill through the computer as like a magic spell, almost like now once you unlock that part of knowledge, that little tip or trick that you figure out and dedicate to habit, and now it's part of your skill set. You can transform this into that, you can generate, um, interest of this, um, using this particular skill. And it's a magic spell in a sense, like once you learn this particular process or particular incantation, like you can generate this new thing. And all of that is just a matter of Googling something or YouTubing something. You know, there's so much free information out there that every skill that I've learned, that I've employed, uh, in this whole Sol Brah thing, um, whether that's graphic design, whether that's audio editing, or all the rest of it, it's come from me reading. It's coming from me watching a YouTube tutorial, uh, from some guy the other side of the world. And, you know, it's, it's so amazing now that we have that, that it's almost part of our greater brain that we have access to. It's like you, you're a node in a network in a sense, and taking advantage of that, I think, is, you know, it's mind-blowing what's possible. And I think it just, it just comes from believing you can do something. Okay, there's this obstacle. Google, how do I get around this obstacle? There's a million articles on it, and it's just a question of having the persistence and having the drive to do that.

And it's a level playing field, right? You no longer need a specific credential, having gone to a specific school, knowing a specific person. And those things can enable and enhance what you're doing, but you know, it bears repeating. You, you can really figure out whatever you need to figure out to live the life that you want. The challenge is doing something that makes sense and suffering through the initial stages where, you know, things are rarely as easy as they sound, right? You need to, you know, for lack of a better framing, trying and failing, or, you know, I'm sure if you look back at some of your first emails, some of your first content, if I look back at some of my old tweets or, ads I ran for clients years ago, you know, I'd find them cringe now. And I see that as a good thing. My new standards and my new basic, what I can do now in 15 minutes, I would do a lesser version in a couple hours. And that's because I put my reps in, right? Yeah. And in a way where I can practice, again, I want to reinforce what you said before. It's not about hustling 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. But if your goal is to go from a job to self-employment, and you know, for context, I probably spent 20 to 30 hours of my time for a few years before things really, you know, I really cracked the code. I was probably focusing on too many things at the same time. And if you can really identify a very specific problem you're going to solve, meaning, you know, you're going to have a business focused on one thing, and deconstructing that into what are the underlying skills, you know, in 6 months you can change your life, right? It sounds like a marketing line. It sounds crazy to people that don't have that mindset, but, but it's true. And the resources are there and you don't need to buy a course or a coach or anything like that. If that's not what you want, you, you can figure it out. And sometimes the right resources, the right person can accelerate your, your process, uh, help you skip some of the trial and error. But there's value in trial and error too, right? So it's really a matter of deciding, deciding something that is coherent with your vision of what your life should look like in 6 months, in a year, and later, and making it happen, right? It really is as simple as that.

Yeah, 100%. Um, a pivotal book that I read probably end of last year was Choose Yourself by James Altucher. Altucher. Yeah. But he basically breaks down why he believes in today's economy that the smarter and almost the more safe decision is to invest in yourself. And, you know, the title of the book, Choose Yourself, to the point where he makes the point that a business, for the most part, your job is there and the full-time work is deemed as safer than being an entrepreneur or working for yourself. But for the most part, businesses are just a mechanism of making money. They're not, you know, they're impartial to your personal life. And if it's going to save money for the company to cut your job, they're going to do that. I think some people have a— almost like they feel like a responsibility to companies for the most part. And if you're at a small business, then that is kind of a bit different. But if you're in a large conglomerate, then that company doesn't give a fuck about you. And it makes more sense to dedicate the time and effort, even if you are making less money in the short term, to developing your own skills and just figuring out something that will work for yourself. Because you never know when that rug is going to be pulled out from underneath you. You know, even if you have worked at a company for 10 years, all it takes is someone coming in and going, hey mate, unfortunately we're going to have to let you go because XYZ. And then your whole world is, you know, flipped upside down. So it makes more sense in today's world. You know, back in the day you could work for a company for 40 years straight and move up the ranks and get compensated appropriately. But now, you know, the economy is a lot different. There's a lot of changing of careers in that space, and it makes more sense to work on yourself and to figure out something for yourself than it does to dedicate a lot of time to the company, which might not— which might just kick you out on the street at a moment's notice.

I agree with that statement. I got that lesson and similar from Wall Street Playboys, right? The account, they have some books and they have one, in one of the books they talk about, they just simplify things and saying revenue by employee, right? And a good way to look at a company to see if it's profitable and if it's somewhere where you want to go is what is the revenue per employee, right? Then like the extreme example is like Instagram and WhatsApp, right? They built like a billion-dollar business that was sold to Facebook with, very small teams. And then if you're, you know, if you're in a massive company, right, you're essentially a line on a spreadsheet. If you're one of many people in the same role, you're really like item 37B on the spreadsheet, right? And as soon as, I mean, look, if you just think of a job, the definition of a job is a set of things that a company pays you money to do that is worth more to them than it is to you. That's the definition. It doesn't mean it's always a bad deal for you as the person taking the job, but if you could choose, which side of the equation do you want to be on? And about risk, right? So, um, this is where advice from, um, you know, people, uh, that are a little bit older that operate with these old assumptions. What used to be safe isn't necessarily safe long term. And if you're in the job market and you have no interest in being self-employed, you have to realize that you're a mercenary. You have to keep your resume, your LinkedIn, um, up to date, right? So don't wait for an annual review. Don't wait for any rumors. You want to constantly keep, you know, we were back to what we said in the very beginning, right? You are a product. Make sure you keep updating your product specs and your accomplishments. You measure things as much as possible. And often the best way, almost always the best way to increase your salary is to jump organizations, right? There's different norms when you hire someone from the outside than you promote someone from the inside. So you want to get as senior as you can in your organization as fast as possible. And then you want to jump ship a few times, right? It's very rare that someone will be hired as, you know, a more junior job. Hopefully the toughest break is to get from non-management to management. And then once you're in management, you can get recruited to be a senior manager somewhere else, maybe a director, and then you can become an executive again by, by jumping. Right. But this idea that my company will just give me a linear career projection for the next 30 years, that is so rare these days. Like it's, it's, it's rarer than you starting a business that makes a million bucks a year. It is not what's going to happen.

Yeah. Uh, so one thing I wanted to touch on, um, was the idea of, um, you know, your social relationships and possibly your romantic relationships as well. How do you personally balance those? Because I know, at least for me, when I initially, as a young guy, when I was going out and partying and all that, you have to make sacrifices in order to, you know, spend your weekend studying or learning something instead of going out and partying. I think The sooner you learn that and internalize that, the better, of course. But there is a balance to be had between, you know, is one night when you're young hanging out with your boys, you know, creating memories. I think that's still worth it to do if the, if the occasion calls for it, of course, and enjoy your life even if you are trying to build a side business or whatever. But I also think, you know, you know, you can't be doing that every single weekend, especially if you're drinking a lot. You don't want to be hungover and compromised in terms of your brainpower going into work and things like that. But I was wondering your thoughts on that balance and what you found helpful in that arena.

You know, I don't think you need to necessarily not do it every weekend, right? It's more about, do you know what you need to do even if we take one more step back, do you actually have specific goals, right? I'm gonna argue that people listening to your podcast probably do. Many people don't. So that, that's distinction number one. Do you have an actual goal that you're after? Are you thinking about the future? And then the other thing is, you know, delayed gratification. So, delayed gratification could simply mean getting the stuff you need to do so that you can go out on Friday nights and, you know, be out of whack until Sunday. If, if you do that, and I'm not advocating for, you know, super substance and alcohol-infused Friday nights every Friday night, but I'd be a hypocrite to tell you that. My path to success was sobriety. It was not, right? You know, it's not that, that's where, you know, these, these black and white rules, right? Like, oh, cancel Netflix. I'm not a video game person myself, but you know, people love video games. They love partying or Tinder or whatever, right? It's really about, do you have a goal, a mission type of thing? Have you deconstructed that into specific actions you need to take? Are you moving forward towards a goal? And is your timeline, you know, aggressive enough? If the answer is yes to all those questions, you don't need to work 80 hours a week. If you, you know, if you're 22 years old, and you go out 40 weekends a year and you're doing these things, I don't think you're a bad person. I don't think it's dumb. I think it's, it's life is about different moments, right? And if you're doing it because you like to do it, you get something out of it. I don't think that's time wasted. If you're doing it because that's all there is to do. And you know, there is such a thing as having the wrong friends. Right? There might be times in your life where you have to look at your social circle and say, you know, everything we've just said, and do your, do your brothers have goals too? If you hang around with a bunch of people that don't have goals, whose entire mission is to get the booth with the, you know, with the bottle service. I'm not saying you shouldn't get bottle service, but if that's the only goal, perhaps you need better inspiration around you. But you know, this reductionism of this activity is bad, you know, if you really wanna make it, don't do ABC, I think that's BS. That's just, it's easy and it's catchy on a tweet to say something is bad. If you focus on the right things for the right amount of time, and I don't mean like minutes per day, I mean like, you give an honest shot to it. Like, I'll just take, take my thing, right? Like, so to learn how to run a marketing agency, there's a few sub-skills. You need to learn them in a certain order and then you need to get clients. So once you, you have the capability to get clients, you conduct outreach activities to get sales calls. If you've conducted those things, then there's a bunch of randomness, right? Maybe you're running ads, maybe you're sending cold emails, not to get too granular on marketing, but you're doing stuff to get the actual activity that gives you the business. So you're doing these things, some weeks that might drive 10 sales calls, some week that might drive 3. It doesn't mean your system works or doesn't work. You always want to measure and improve it. And then the week that you had 10 sales calls, You know, you shouldn't like go and celebrate and be crazy. And then the next week cry in a corner, right? You have to trust the system, trust the process. And, and you know, when you've done, you know, once you've had enough experience, you know, when you've done what you need to do and if you want to let loose, let loose, you know, uh, it's not about being a monk here.

Yeah, I agree. And you made a good point that life is a series of moments, and the, the present moment is all we have at the end of the day. And I think it will lead to an empty and unfulfilling life if every single day your only focus is that eventual payoff after 5 years of grinding. And yes, that's how you make the Amazons of the world, but for the most part, most people aren't looking for that kind of wealth and success. People are just looking to pay their bills and live comfortably. And if you can achieve that with a few hours of work a day, doing the things that you need to do once you've built up those skills and put in the hard yards, I think that's important to realize. I think it's important to, you know, the present moment is all you have, so you have to enjoy that. You can't always delay your personal satisfaction to this finish line, which may or may not come, which might be years down the track, because otherwise you're just going to be one of those guys that all they think about is work, all they talk about is work, all they have to relate to is work. And I see that somewhat with some of my friends who are at the larger agencies. That they, yes, it's good for their career that they're moving through that way, but then I talk to them and all they have to relate about is work. And, you know, if that's what they enjoy, cool, but I don't, at least for me, that, you know, I don't work to work, I don't live to work, I work to live. And I think that having those moments in your day as well like, even if you are starting, if you've put in 6 hours of work, you know, leave your work at the door, you know, log off the computer, go walk around in nature, work out hard, go get some sun, because all of that is going to make sure that you're a more well-rounded person for the most part, but also ensure that you aren't going to go jump off a building because of stress.

100%. And the, you know, I'll just add with something simple. Not everything has to be useful. You do have to have a goal. You do have to have needle-moving activities, but not, you know, this robotic lifestyle of everything being measured and quantified and every minute of every day should be optimized. And this is not a human thing. If, you know, it's neuroticism, it's not what humans are meant to do. It's not how humans evolved and it's not a natural thing. So I'll say that. And I will add something bordering on obsession with success. I think that can be fuel, but to your point, Having no memories, having nothing to relate about, you know, an easy kind of thing here is reading fiction, right? So for me, I'm 35, I don't go clubbing at this point. I did, you know, I spent a lot of time and money in clubs. I was on Tinder. I did all the stuff that people do, right? And for me now, the way I do that is, you know, what, like, I, you know, maybe I'll get my Twitter card revoked, but I do watch Netflix. I like The Office. That show brings me joy. And I think the writing is genius. I've seen every episode more than once. And I read fiction and sometimes that informs my writing, but it's okay to do things for pleasure. Right? And, you know, certain things are— some people would categorize as self-destructive. And there is a line, obviously, you know, without naming specific substances. If every weekend is a crazy binge of booze and substance and sleep deprivation, that does catch up to you. But I'm not also endorsing a zero experimentation Lifestyle, right? I think virtually no decision is irreversible. And don't get yourself in, you know, kind of a weird thing to say, but don't get yourself in prison.

Yeah.

And don't drive drunk. Don't, you know, obviously like have some caution, but this idea of trying nothing, playing it safe, and being goal-oriented 24 hours a day, um, I don't think that's human, frankly.

No. And maybe that worked for the Mike Tysons of the world, where he only thought about and he breathed boxing for his entire life, and that enabled him to get to the literal top of the mountain in that regard. But for the most part, it's not sustainable and it's not healthy. And even him, he now speaks about his, you know, podcast experiences where he said, you know, he he has to, you know, smoke weed because otherwise that aggressive conqueror self is all he is and he doesn't like that part of himself anymore as he's aged and changed. And, um, if you are and develop that way to be only cutthroat business-minded, I think that's dangerous, uh, to be in, um, 100% of the time. The other thing I wanted to mention, um, you mentioned doing things for pleasure and I think that's important. Um, for the sake of business as well. Because if you think about where your ideas come from, um, our friend Fraser had a tweet that I like to bring up, is you could have— he was quoting someone, I forget who, but he said that you could have one idea while walking on the beach that'll generate you millions of dollars. You know, you will not get your greatest ideas when you are writing cold emails and doing that kind of stuff and studying and filling your brain, uh, with other kind of nitty-gritty stuff. Um, some of my greatest ideas and tweets or whatever will come when I'm in the shower. Um, the shower, of course, and I think everyone feels that way, is that, you know, that whole idea of shower thoughts is, um, because the shower is for a lot of people the only time where they're not consuming something or watching something or on their phone or reading or whatever. It's just them and their thoughts because they're in the shower. So there is a space for free time and just walking outside in nature without your phone because those times are the times where you're not processing any input, where your brain and your subconscious can kind of just click through everything in the background and you might not be aware of it. But your subconscious is always processing things, always ticking away in the background and sorting out issues, maybe in your business that, you know, a few hours later you'd be like, ah, shit, okay, I can do this and fix the problem. And if you're only learning and intaking stuff all the time, that space doesn't really happen. So I think it's important to have those times where you are relaxing in order to motivate and generate the ideas that you can then implement into your business ideas or just your life in general?

There's, there's different examples, um, of that. I, I think it was Edison, his thing about falling as like going into a sleep state, closing his eyes and holding balls, and then when he fell asleep, you know, the balls would fall and that would often trigger a new, you know, I'll call it a synaptic connection, right? So some, you know, some things are tasks, right? You have a list of things to do. Again, I'll go back to my marketing stuff or the job seeking stuff. It's about sending the right message to the right person, right? So then you need to sit down and do that. Yeah. But crafting the right message, the strategy behind it, if you wanna have a bit of a unique twist, that probably, you know, the inflection point probably won't happen when you're sitting at your keyboard. It's going to happen exactly as you said, in your shower, and when you're walking in nature, when you don't have another stimuli, you have your subconscious connecting things. And this idea of having different experiences, right? So obviously you do need some hard facts and hard data, right? If you just read fiction, just watch movies, just go out and you don't have any primary sources of knowledge, then you can be a very interesting person, a great conversationalist. Maybe you can be a great sales guy based on relationships. And for some people that's, you know, that works. If you want to go to the next level, you need to deliberately learn. But those special moments, exactly as Fraser, by the way, is @frazzledazzle on Twitter. That's who Sol was talking about before. And, you know, walking on the beach, being in nature, being in the shower, going for a drive, you know, people with cars, and that's kind of an American thing too. Being in a different space and things connect, right? And I find sleeping too. When I was, I have a Twitter course, not to do a big promo there, just to give an anecdote. I built it over about 10 days and my best ideas were upon waking up, right? So I would just think, think of stuff, work, do something else in the evening. Maybe I'd hear a joke or a comment on a TV show or in a book. And then I'd wake up with a new connection that the next, you know, the previous day, if you asked me, are you gonna build this? I wouldn't have been able to tell you, but everything connected, right? So, so there's something there. So it's an argument. You could call if you're in anything creative, right? And you can define creativity very widely. If you write emails, if you have sales conversations, doing things that other people would put in the leisure category can be considered fuel for your creative work. So neglecting that is not optimal.

Yeah. I'm happy you mentioned creativity in that sense, because I think if you're not creating something as a human, you know, if you're not bringing something out of the ether that your brain is connected to into the physical world in some regard, I think that's a just a human experience and a side of human existence that, uh, if you're not doing that, you're missing out. You know, everything you see in this world was initially an idea in someone's head. Where that idea came from, who's to say whether you think you're connecting to source of consciousness in the world, whatever. But I think that that is an important thing for all humans to do, whether you're just writing at the end of each day or whatever. But I think that building a business, you know, scratches that itch for a lot of people. So even if you don't think that you're, you're not a creative person, person in that you, you couldn't instantly pick up a, a, uh, painting brush and create a masterpiece. You don't have to be that narrowly defined as creative in that sense, but anytime that you are bringing something into reality from nothing, from an idea, that is creation. And I think that is one of the most spiritually satisfying things you can do, uh, creating content. For Twitter or YouTube is a version of that and expressing yourself through that way. I know that I feel the best at the end of the day when I have produced more, much more than I have consumed. So I still am on Twitter and watch YouTube videos every now and again, but it's 90/10, you know, 80/20. It's, it's not consuming a lot all day. And when I do push that ratio, I to be more like consuming all day, you can do that on one day a week, maybe on Sunday, and that's fine. But if it's over time, the majority of your time, that's when you seem to feel those effects. And it's hard to put into words what that feels like. But everyone understands what it feels like when you've, you know, all day, all you've done is watch a TV show or scroll through Instagram. Or Twitter, it's just you're consuming, consuming, consuming. You're not really doing anything yourself to bring stuff into the world.

Let me, let me add something here. I'm interrupting you a little bit. I hope you don't mind. I'll just say this. There definitely, this creation consumption, I think is super important. I just want to make it sound less pressure, right? So create more than you consume. And the first step is just creating something, anything, and it could literally be a single tweet. You can get to a point where you're doing more creation than consumption. And the ratio can be, you said 90/10. I guess I just wanna moderate that in that you don't need to go from, what most people are doing to in the next week becoming a hyper-prolific content creator, right? It's about, okay, I'm willing to put something out there in the world. And I'm mainly thinking here of content in the form of something online, but it could even be journaling. It could be photography. It could be coaching friends or family. You know, we have a lot of people in fitness listening to this, passing on the knowledge that you've learned, you know, whether it's paid or unpaid. It's just that, right? It's taking some accountability and using your brain, basically programming something into the world instead of being programmed. But don't put yourself on, this kind of pressure regimen where, you know, from one day to the next you need to shift everything. But I do agree with you that the long-term goal should be to produce more than you create. But it doesn't have to be, you know, like, you're not a failure if you're not doing that now. You want to get there, and that's, you know, the world's biggest cliché, but it starts with one step. So, you know, you just need to start before you go and And the ratio is in favor of production. I just wanted to mention that.

Yeah, I agree. And at least in my experience, there were literal years where I went about my life thinking I should create this. You know, when I was younger, it was more like YouTube video content ideas that I had. But it was years of a almost like this paralysation where I would have these ideas, but I never actually just put pen to paper. Or if I did, it was, you know, for an hour, and then I would stop and go do something else. And I think it's just a— it's a question of each day. Each day it seems like, okay, now today I'll do this, or tomorrow I'll do this. And then that day happens, you make the decision to consume rather than produce or sit down and do the work. And each day doesn't seem like much of a negative to not do it that day. But when you don't do it each day, that stretches into months and that stretches into years.

Yeah.

And definitely, as soon as I made the proper commitment to just, okay, no matter what it is, I'm going to stick and do a little bit each day and put that out into the world, whatever may happen from that. Um, that is when everything else started to change and everything else started to fall into place. Um, and like you said, it is— the hardest bit is starting, and the hardest bit is getting over that fear of, you know, what will people think of this content? Will they judge what I'm saying? Is it good enough? All of that, um, are just, you know, relics of our biological mindset. Where if we did something in the tribe that was weird or frowned upon, we would get shunned and then we wouldn't eat. And that was as a human in, you know, with saber-toothed tigers roaming around the jungle, that was a bad move. So we had that inbuilt into our brains to prevent us from doing weird shit, basically.

That's it. That's it. You know, you want to keep the best of our history, but you want to use the best of modernity. And, you know, maybe I'll add one more. And, you know, one kind of bridge towards creation is active consumption, right? So reading or watching, the act of having a pen and paper or taking notes, right? So you're working towards, you're consuming some, and again, I'm not saying every piece of content has to be for a purpose. You know, I'm not the one telling you to never watch a movie for fun or read a book for fun. But when you're doing something towards your goal, instead of trying to accumulate the most number of things, getting the essence of what you're doing, right? So if you're learning online marketing, well, there's a bunch of pieces. So, you know, writing effectively is obviously important. And, you know, so find one book, find one YouTube channel, find one thing that you relate to And as you consume it, you know, take notes and lessons and questions. When you're reading a book for, you know, that's not purely for pleasure, use the margins. That's one thing too that changed for me is when I stopped trying to treat a book like a pristine object and really treat it like a journal, right? Like bend the pages, take notes, ask questions. And you do that enough, connect dots between different things, you find not just the tactics, but the strategies and the principles, and you can remix them for your own purposes, right? So already that's a different experience than passively consuming content, even if it's content that's meant to be helpful. And if it's a two-way, you know, conversation or experience, That's a very different thing. And that's when we say, you know, you don't, you can listen to 12 hours of videos and not get much out of it, or you can spend 90 minutes taking notes, pausing, connecting dots, and then you actually get something out of it. Then it, you know, your time investment may not even be as big, but your output is meaningful. And you do that for enough time. You know, you were talking about kind of momentum, right? Like the reverse momentum, of not doing something for months. Well, that's a way to just start figuring out what you like. Maybe you want to poke around different things and learn a little bit about different things to see what you might enjoy learning more about and then going deeper, right? So you can go wide in the beginning, then go a bit deeper into one of those things, find the right resources and actively consume it before you start producing.

Yeah, I always recommend to people, like, if you are going to consume media, then watch the great works, you know, those timeless movies, the timeless classics that everyone kind of agrees on that are, you know, works of art more so than just the Avengers movie, you know, where it's like, you know, bang, bang, explosion, CGI, all the rest of it. But to consume the media that's going to expand your artistic interpretation and your knowledge of things, you know, learning from others is obviously going back to learning from the greats of whatever you are choosing to pursue.

What—

who has what you want in life? Figure out what they're doing and copy it. You know, there are, for the most part, not many brand spanking new ideas. You know, it's, it's all rehashed. It's all taken from here, mixed with a little bit of this and packaged this way. So who has what you want? Figure out what they're doing. See what others are doing that works for them and works within their particular niche and adapt that to your skill set and adapt that to your product or business or whatever it is, rather than just consuming mindlessly, looking at the TV, you know, not necessarily getting anything out of it. Like you said, that's a great first step to take.

If you're consuming really popular things, a way to make that— speaking as a marketer, right? And again, if we say everything is marketing, everything is persuasion.

Yeah.

Why is this popular, right? What are the common things there are? Screenwriting is something I'm interested in. I'm not a screenwriter at this point, but I'm I have an interest for all forms of writing and there are canvases and templates and formulas that popular movies and popular culture follow. So if you were to look at what those are, I can't think of a specific resource for that now, but you can look at different analysis and tools. If you were again to consume something that perhaps you won't get much out of it learning. But if you go one layer deeper, why is this popular? Why are there so many Marvel movies? And why did they choose to do things that way? And what are the storytelling principles? What's the hero's journey in here? And, you know, so there's a way to make almost every consumption useful if you take the time to do it. Again, it doesn't mean you can't just veg for X amount of time, but if you're smart about it and you can make almost everything productive as a broad marketer, whether it's directly as a marketer or studying the persuasion techniques and understanding what makes the average human tick. If you can understand what makes the masses move, you'll never go broke.

Yeah, exactly. Maybe an example of that would be, uh, if people aren't aware that we would— once they hear this, they'll be aware of it. But in most movies, there is, you know, the start of the movie, everything's great, the storyline's fun, whatever. And then there seems to be a problem. And then the problem arises, develops, there's a moment of tension, and then the hero of the movie figures out a solution and then boom, you're taking on this emotional rollercoaster where, oh shit, are things going to work out? I have to work around this issue and then everything is resolved and it's a nice happy package to the end of the movie. That formula is pretty common in a lot of mainstream movies. I would say that there's probably something similar for marketing, would you say? Or selling a Product?

Yeah, I mean, the kind of term that people would use is a funnel, right? So you've got a different piece and we can go all night on this one. It's night here, I guess it's morning for you over there. But you've got to show people that you exist, right? So you've got to grab the initial, attention and awareness. You've got to build enough interest for people to, you know, stop scrolling or read what you're doing or open your email. Then you've got to build, you know, trust and credibility. And then you've got to have— I'm reducing it to fewer steps, right? But, and then you've got to have a compelling offer. Right? So it's all about matching a specific offer. So meaning what you're delivering, product or service, to fulfill a specific desire or take away a specific pain for a specific person and using something somewhat unique. You know, it all comes down, you, you, you can take that framework. And again, we could go a lot deeper on marketing, but you can take that framework and look at virtually every good or service out there, right? The mistake that people make, especially in the context of a smaller business, right? Is thinking that, oh, my product or my service is for everyone. Well, it's not, right? You're not Coca-Cola, you're not Amazon. You want to be doing something specific for a specific kind of person. And I'd add, at a specific time of their life, right? Let's say you take women that are 37. Well, there are women that are 37 after 2 pregnancies that want to get their body back. There are women at 37 that they really want to have a child and the clock is ticking. There are women at 37 that are debating, um, do I continue the career track? Do I slow down my progress and focus more on being a mom? Right. And I'm just using those three as an example. So you really want to deconstruct what it is you're doing for who you're doing it. And then there's all kinds of, you know, specific tactics and strategies and and mechanisms you can deploy, but it all goes down to human nature and who you're actually looking to help, right? And notice I didn't say sell to, but who are you helping and is your solution or your offer specific enough for them? And I would argue specificity and clarity of specificity is more important than quality. You know, abstract quality is not as good as giving people confidence that you really understand what it is they're going through, and you give them confidence that this is built just for them rather than any kind of quality certification. Obviously, you want to have a good product or a good service, but, you know, bragging about that part versus really getting inside their head and communicating that you know who they are, you know what they need, and this is why it's going to work.

Yeah, well, I think that's a great place to end on. This has been a masterclass on marketing and getting started if you're looking to get into the entrepreneurial space. Oli, I want to thank you for joining me on the Soulcast. Where can people reach you? Where can people read your stuff?

The best place to find me is on Twitter. I'm sure you'll have show notes there. It's @oliviercantin. So Oliver Cantin with an extra I, my French first name, and happy to connect with people on Twitter. Thank you for having me. It's been fun, different topics, different vibe than other casts I've been on, I've enjoyed it very much, and maybe we'll do it again sometime.

Yeah, sounds good for sure. I'm sure we'll see you again on the Solcast. Oliver, thank you very much. See you next time, and thanks for listening.

Thank you, brother.