#27 The Million Dollar Hack So Good It Might Break Your Business

Welcome to episode number 27, and this is on Daniel Priestley. And you might ask, who is Daniel Priestley? Well, he's this super successful entrepreneur. He's been on Diary of a CEO multiple and multiple times. Um, I want to say at least 3 or 4 times. Super successful, but he has a way of doing mental models, and mental models relates to Charlie Munger. He just loved mental models. And when you look at just all this, this episode is really a study of 4 different books. So I read Entrepreneur Revolution, Oversubscribed, Key Person of Influence, and 24 Assets. Now I'm gonna be going through at least 3 or 4 things that can help you just help your business. This will help you, give you models to help your business and really understand the science behind What can help grow your business? And it truly is incredible when you really think about this. Daniel Priestley is one of the smartest entrepreneurs I have ever read and learned about. And what, just in our time, because he's so, the way he thinks, it's so easy to pick up and so easy to understand. So I really want to go through just highlights of each one of these books. They all have commonalities between them, I really want to just go through the main important parts in each one and one and parts that I found really interesting. So there's some really cool things that we're going to be over, be going over today. And there's a lot of different things that you might not know that there's actually a lot of science and science as in like there's little cool rules or hacks or little things that Daniel Priestley tries to teach you so you can get this into your brain. And I really want to go through all this because this is going to be a great episode. And I honestly think if you successfully apply all this, your business will be successful. And this could end up growing your business to the next level, potentially even— I'm tossing around the idea of naming this episode, um, this hack could literally break your business because of how, um, crazy like what he's saying in here. And so it's just absolutely incredible. So let's go into the 4 ways of differentiating your business. So there's 4 different ways, and this is just something that stood out to me, and it's really interesting. So he said there's 4 different types of businesses. There's— you can have a scary business. So if you're watching, just imagine you're watching all this content online. There's scary content that's very like, oh my goodness, and it draws a reaction outta you. There's strange content and strange, so scary is number one, strange is number two. It, it's out there, it's weird, it's kind of out of the ordinary, but that's kind of what makes it appealing to some people. So if it's really, really weird and that's how you get like famous Instagram Reels and you know, with the crack across the screen, it actually makes you look like you broke your phone. And so it's really interesting, but now you have that, and then you have free value. So that's free packaging, PDFs, emails, etc. You go down the list because there's actually a lot of free value given by people all the time. And Daniel Priestley is a big fan of free value. But another thing, and this is what all the major businesses do, and this is the fourth way is being familiar. Being familiar. What does that mean? Well, there is a rule that Familiar draws off of, and it's called the 7-11-4 rule. And if you watch any of the Diary of a CEO episodes, you will legitimately find this out from Daniel Priestley telling this to Stephen Bartlett or any other podcast that Stephen— or excuse me, Daniel Priestley goes on. So The 7-11-4 rule. This is how to become familiar or know someone. So in order for someone to get to know you, they need to listen to 7 hours of your content. They need to have 11 interactions with you. So 7 hours they need to be listening, whether it's through podcasts or whether that's through just hearing you from somewhere else, like wherever that is, they need to have 7 hours with you. Now they need to have 11 interactions on 4 different platforms, and these should be major platforms. So for me, that would be Spotify, Apple, um, Instagram, Twitter, whatever it is, or X. You, you go down the list. So if someone hears me and they have an interaction with me on Instagram, they'll know who I am, uh, or Instagram, Spotify, all these major platforms. So with all these platforms, if you're having, if someone has 11 interactions with you on those 4 different platforms, they're more likely to remember your name because they're scrolling through, they might have listened to like an hour of your podcast or whatever content you put out. They might have listened to a short snippet of it, but if they keep seeing you, they'll actually be familiar with you. And then you have, all these brands play off of are just being familiar. So with Nike, you know, Air Jordan, and if you watched his games, you've seen the shoes. And if you— and they all play off of this. And this is scientific— scientifically called a parasocial relationship. And this is just another term for a one-sided relationship. And what does that mean? So what this means is I could be talking to you right now and I might be having a conversation with the listener, you, on the other side of this. But for you, you might have never met me in person. You might have, you know, heard my stuff on Instagram or just gone anywhere, listened to all hours of these, all hours of this podcast. You might have been able to listen to all this. And the whole thing is it's a parasocial relationship because it's a, it's in essence, one-sided over social media. You're hearing content from me and consuming content from me. And we all do this. We all listen to, you know, famous people or, you know, like through movies and podcasts and all these things. We're all consuming and we're all, um, in a parasocial relationship. But this is how to actually create one. If you want to become a creator and an entrepreneur, you have to have that 7 hours. You have to have 11 interactions on 4 different platforms. And this is called The 7-11-4 rule. So now I want to really dig into what is the goal of being oversubscribed. So this is an idea from Daniel Priestley's book Oversubscribed. And what does it truly mean to be oversubscribed? The— so the thing is, most businesses, they try to get more supply, they try to anticipate, and they try to really get their supply up. We need to have this many. So I just launched my merch store. Which is on— you can actually scroll down to the show notes and order merch from my store. And I try to make the best merch possible that there is. But the thing is, you know, most businesses, they're trying to get more supply. They're trying to make sure— oh, in my case, it would be, oh, trying to get more shirts or more this or more that when they actually need more demand. And this— the only thing I can say or equivocate this to is like Louis Vuitton Gucci, they want to build demand for a product that they're releasing so that way it's, it's scarce and it's building desire within the customer to really, um, just want their product so that way they don't have increased inventory. So now the thing is that I'm going to give you 7 helpful tips that Daniel Priestley talks about, and it's actually signal Response is desire, scarcity, capacity, delivery, and stories. I'll repeat that again if you're taking notes or if you're just listening to this so that way it really gets ingrained and we'll go through each one of these. But I really want you to absorb this because this will literally grow your business and this will help you succeed and take it to that next level. Daniel Priestley has done this. I believe that anyone that applies this successfully will, like, can break that level. So signal responses, collecting responses, build desire, increase scarcity, release capacity, deliver and amplify stories. So I really want to go through all, all, um, 7 of these, and I want to consider this, um, the loop, the The oversubscribed loop. So what does signal mean? Think of it as like a cryptic announcement or a teaser. You're teasing that something is coming. So you post it on social media, something's coming soon, or however you do that. The thing is, the mistake that people make is waiting until a product is actually done before telling anyone. I've fallen into this mistake many times. I just, I can't help myself. So I create, create, create, and then, you know, I release it and I'm, you know, if no one shows up, that's my fault. But the thing is, I, I need to be better at doing this. But the thing is, the mistake that people make, they wait until the product is done before telling anyone. And oversubscribed companies do the opposite. They actually create anticipation first. So they create that anticipation so it builds desire and like you know, you want people to be excited, but how do you do that? So you signal to the customer or the user or whoever it is, you say, hey, we're going to be releasing this. Maybe you have some product demo images or a rough cut of that image or whatever that is. Now the next thing you do is you collect responses. Once you've signaled, you don't sell, you collect interest. This could be a waitlist. This was something he talked about, create a waitlist, a form, um, just more modern examples like a DM on Instagram or a reply, yes, if you're interested. You need to be able to gather their names, emails, and just a way that they signal interest. And the thing is, most people think that this is small, but it's actually where the demand is born. You're funneling attention into a container. Think about it as It's a funnel, right? You want to float out an idea. If people grab onto the idea and there's a lot of people doing that or collecting, you're collecting that response, then you can actually start building the desire. So now you nurture those people who are signaling interest. You show behind the scenes, you can show progress updates, previews of people doing, you know, what, like, whatever your product is. So wearing your merch or wearing whatever it is, you drip feed value and narrative. It's like a story. You're building a story. And this stage is where desire compounds. People start thinking, wow, this is going to be amazing, I want to be in this. It's like they're missing out. And by the time the product launches, the market is already hungry. And this step is the most important because it It's the heartbeat of the loop. You want people really focused in on, man, this is what I want to do. I want to signal interest. I want people to grab it because most of the time what we do, and I fall into this a lot, I create a product, I put it out there and say, hey, this is out now. And if people don't buy what I have poured my heart and soul into, or for you, if you've had this problem where you put a lot of time and effort into something and then people don't buy it, that, that whole thing is because you haven't built up the desire. You haven't built up that, um, or you haven't signaled that you're going to put something out or that you're going to collect responses and make sure that people actually want it. You know, where there's a need, then people will say there's a need. Um, and not all the time, this is— there's a, of course there are exceptions because Steve Jobs, you look at Steve Jobs and most of the time what he says is that people don't know what they want until you give them what they want. And that can totally apply. But the smartest thing, especially when you're starting out, is to signal, hey, if I put out a t-shirt or if I put out, you know, a music song or whatever it is, whatever it is that you do, if I put out something Is it going to get a good response rate? And that's how you really build just your business up. And like, I would almost aim for a more Louis Vuitton style or more where it's like, oh, we're going to drop this and it's a big event rather than, oh, just drop this. You know, there's a big difference. And so this goes into increased scarcity and this is where oversubscribed businesses separate from the average ones. Scarcity isn't manipulation, it's a constraint of reality. Whether it's limited seats, limited products, limited time, scarcity creates value because it shows people this is a real thing. There are limits. You know, if Louis Vuitton put out like 100 million wallets— let's just go hypothetical here— or 10 million wallets, or um, said that if you want it, you will get it. At some point, people wouldn't buy it anymore because it would become a normal wallet. You would see it in Ross or Marshalls or wherever. But Louis Vuitton is scarce and it's really expensive, and that's because there's limited supply and high demand. You want the market to feel the constraint. You want people to really value what you have. And when you lower the value people don't want to have it because it's just another thing. So you want to really increase scarcity and really ramp that up because that's how you get people to either buy what you have or really just show that people really want this and it's going to be sold out or it's going to, you know, go out of stock. And the thing is now, so imagine it's launch day, right? And this is number 5, release capacity. The doors open just briefly and the product becomes available. And because you've created more demand than supply, it fills instantly. And if you've done the loop right, which I believe that this will happen when you do this, you don't have to push, you don't have to convince people, you don't need to discount. Do not discount. I've tried it. Do not discount. And this is just a personal thing. I'm not, not as a never do a discount, like discounts can be very helpful, but it shows that your product isn't worth as much as you said it would be. And you want, if you've done this right, people are already waiting. This is where most people start, but in oversubscribed, it's the second to last step, not the first. You know, you're already doing this. Most people think it's the first step. They think they need to say, oh, It's out now and no one buys and they lower the price. They give a discount. They try to convince people to buy it. But the thing is, in the second to last step, like this is the second to last step in oversubscribe. Now you deliver. Once people buy it, once people are buying, this is where you actually fulfill the promise. But here's the twist. Daniel says delivery is also marketing. Because let's say someone buys, um, like a shirt or a, um— I'm just saying that because I actually have this. Um, I have a merch store now. So when people buy my shirts and my clothing, I want to amplify their stories. And this, this is delivery and story. So once the product gets delivered, you know, it shows that, um, you know, whether it's screenshots or reactions or clips or social proof or transformations or customer wins or stories from people, you know, that like, oh, this really changed my life because I bought this or did that. It's the whole idea of testimonials. And so this goes into number 7, which is Amplify. This is where you take all the success and you show it to the market. Amplify— amplification includes case studies, testimonials, behind-the-scenes footage, outcomes, and stories. You really want to show testimonials because that's why on your website, if you say, oh, this person did this, this, and this for me, I could not— like, I wouldn't be alive without it, or I wouldn't you know, this, this, and this. That's when it— people are like, oh, oh, I know that name, I know that person, oh, this person really helped them, oh, I'll buy it, or I'll do this. And that's why I really— whenever, whenever someone buys a piece of my merch, that's why I like— I want to share that with the world. I want to say, hey, you know, you bought that, send me a picture, I'll post about it, I'll share that. Because that shows that people care about what you're doing, and it, it boosts your confidence but also boosts theirs. They become an ambassador for you, but not only you, but like themselves. You're giving them something that they wouldn't have had before. And so this primes people for the next cycle. If you're, you know, oversubscribed companies, they don't run launches, they run loops. They— and each loop gets bigger because the previous one left behind those, you know, stories like you, you have more stories and more stories and it's building and building and building. And this is just number 2. So that, that was number 1 in terms of the loop. Now we go into his whole worldview is basically like, stop building effort, start building assets. So for me, this is my whole content library. This is my podcast. I have an AI bot that you can actually go down in the comments too and chat with, call with it. And it's basically me and like a 10 times smarter version of myself, but a lot like, like just crazy how much this like AI and I've called him Liam Applegate, but just it's basically Uncommon Excellence AI and just like crazy smart. But the thing is, for me, it's my whole content library. It's my assets. This is my asset. My podcast is one of my assets. My merch store is one of my assets. Like, you got to start building assets and start, like, stop building effort. Like, it's good to put in hard, hard work, but start building those assets. And the next thing I really want to go over is the KPI framework. What is this? Well, this is Key Person of Influence. This one is honestly a must-have. And the reason why is because there's 5 levers of this KPI. And I really want to go over this because it's a good reminder for myself and a good reminder for you. But the thing is, if you want to become successful in your industry and you want to be known, like, so let's say for me, I want to be an influencer at Instagram, but known for like entrepreneurs and helping other people out and all this stuff. If I were to do that, I need these 5 Ps. One is pitch. Two is publish. Three is product. Four is profile. Five is partnerships. So I want to go over each of these. Pitch is explaining your why, like, like why you do what you do, how you do it. It's the why, what, and how. It's Simon Sinek. Start With Why. That's the whole pitch. You pitch it to the world, you pitch it to certain people. Now, 2 is you publish something. It's ideally a book, but whether that's like you have a blog or you have something that people can go to and look at your credibility for, that will really help you in saying you're an expert in a field or whatever it is. The next thing is your product. Is your product good? Is it, is it exceptionally good, who are you selling to, all that stuff. Your next thing is your profile. So your profile is like when people go to your Instagram page, does it look legitimate? Does it look like, oh, this could be, even if you don't have a lot of followers or you're not verified or whatever it is, it's like, does this look legitimate? Is he followed by legitimate people? The next is partnerships. Who are you partnered with? So for me, it's Readwise and Amazon because Amazon, you know, I get affiliate links through Amazon. So that way, if you buy any of these books I point out in the podcast, I actually, you know, earn a little bit. And that's a good way of supporting the podcast and getting a book. Another one is Readwise. Readwise is a great sponsor of this podcast. I use them all the time just to look at my highlights, and I'm just constantly reviewing. So that's something that you can look into. But all of these are just ideas of— you need to have pitch, publishing, product profile, and partnerships. And the profile is where you get the parasocial relationship, the 7-11-4 rule, products, and just publishing potential book. And these next things are 10 challenges, and it comes straight from Daniel's challenges. I actually spent time— so I was listening to all the, all these audiobooks, and I spent time just taking notes. And these are 10 challenges for you, and they're truly actually great challenges, but they're really like 10 different challenges to help you become a better entrepreneur and a better just person in general. But particularly entrepreneur. So one is make 3 separate calls. This whole idea is making 3 calls to people that could really further your business, really help you become a better person. Um, 3 calls that could be mentors or whoever it is, it could really help. So make 3 calls. And I don't— I can't remember if this is make 3 calls a day or just make 3 calls in general. But if you do that, it will really help in what you're doing. The next is get your reptilian brain a bank account. He calls it a reptile brain. And the whole idea behind this is you have a, you have a reptile brain, and the reptile brain is this idea that you're constantly in fear or panic mode. And this isn't all the time, but it's some of the time where you're basically in panic mode. Where you're— you have a fight or flight response, and the reptile brain is this flight response where you want to just exit and you want to leave and you want to jump out of it. So the thing is, he's like, to calm and soothe that down, because when you're an entrepreneur, you're going to take constant, you know, hits and blows and all this stuff. So you have to have a way of silencing that down. And so he said every time that, like, whether you're just going through and you're putting, like, you're making money, whether that's a salary or whatever you're doing, always put 10% of what you make into a bank account so that way you have like an emergency fund of something. And I actually got this idea from him, emergency fund. Emergency fund is really cool because emergency fund, I call it an EF, let's just call it an EF for, sake of abbreviation. But an EF, it basically just put in the money to where that you can, like, if you ever need it— and you, you never touch it, but if you ever need it, like if something unexpected pops up, it's always there. And this is just good, a good idea. And this is— this helps soothe your reptile brain. Um, basically you always get it so that way you can kind of have an easy way out if you are really in a tough place, but you always save it for the really, really hard times and if you ever need it. The next thing is, and this is number 3, stop spending time with people who bring you down. This is a really interesting one because how do you— you might ask me, well, how do you— how do I leave this person or this person, or how do I exit this relationship if it's not good for me? Honestly, how much experience do I have in that? Not a ton, but it's simple in the fact that in order to get away from people that are like, you know, that are taking you down, you just stop spending time with them. And I hate to just repeat this, but you do— all you do is you literally just spend less time with them. If they ask you, hey, can you do this, or Do you want to do this with me or that? You just say, I can't do that, or I'm busy, or I'm like, you, you literally— time is so valuable and whatever you do with it, you want it to be the best you can do with it. And so having time that can really like time with other people that bring you down can be really detrimental to your future and who you want to become. And if you don't sort that out, you will become like those people. And that's why there's this business maxim that you want to be careful with the people that you hire, because the people that you hire will bring you down if they're bad people. A C-player, just like we talked about with Brad Jacobs, How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. If you hire someone, a C-player, and he's toxic, he will bring the whole team of A-players with that one C-player down. But if you hire a team of all A-players, that team will be really successful and wildly just amazing. And that's the whole thing with this, right? Where it's like you gotta stop spending time with people that bring you down. You gotta stop hiring people that bring you down if you're an entrepreneur. Like, you have to be more time savvy and you have to have this idea that my time is valuable. I'm reading Buy Back Your Time right now, and it's crazy where it's like you don't want to be around people that suck your time. You want to be people be around people that are fulfilling it and making your life better, and you're actually learning from them. Be a learning machine. You want to constantly be learning. And so that's the whole idea of stop spending time with people who bring you down. It really— take this to heart because I cannot express this enough. You have one life to live, and when you look back at it, are you Don't regret it. That's all I want to say. Don't regret it because if you regret it, that means you only have a little, like, however much time you have, just fully maximize it. Fully be a time maximalist and you want to do it to your fullest extent. And so that's why you got to stop spending time with people who bring you down. And that doesn't mean canceling people. Do not cancel people, but it just means be more time savvy and just keep going at it with the people that are going to bring you up and make you more successful in whatever that means, whether it's being a better father, being a better mother, or being a better entrepreneur or better idea maker, or being more creative or being more like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, whatever that is, you know, you got to keep doing it. And so the next one is carry cash. And this is going to sound a little bit weird, but carry around $2,000 in cash and this will help you get over it. This was kind of a revolutionary idea for me because I didn't know what he meant. I was like, okay, I hear this, but why? Like, why should I do this? And I haven't done it yet. But the thing is, what you do is you basically, you, in order to get over, oh, how much money something is, you actually carry around $2,000 in cash in your pocket. And this will help you get over it because at some point you're just going to be like, all right, that's a— that's not a lot. I mean, you pull it out and it's like, all right, that's $2,000. You put it back in your pocket. And once you realize that, you know, even if you only have $2,000 in your account and you put it in your pocket, you will start to realize, oh, I can get a lot more. I can, you know, and that's when it kind of get— it helps you get over money. And I thought that was a really interesting hack and I really want to do that. In the upcoming future. The next one is take someone new out to lunch. Try to do it every week because you really want to grow your network. You really want to meet people that inspire you and make you grow and learn, and you want to just learn from them. And you really want to go and really just try to do it every week. And this was just something from this, but like, if you take someone out, take someone new out to lunch every week, You're really growing that network and they might say, hey, I want to connect you with this person and you connect with that person. Like there's an endless expanse of people that you can connect with and learn from and grow. The next thing is tune out the news for 90 days. This is really interesting because when you think about it, tune out the news for 90 days. This is actually somewhat similar to Naval. Naval says you should just tune out the news in general, and I don't disagree, and I don't necessarily agree. I think you should be updated on certain things, but like checking your phone every day to like get a daily influx of news where you're like, oh, I need to know this and this and this— you really want to just tune out and like focus on what you're building. Like, focus. Make your product the best product it can be. Be an entrepreneur, be whatever you're doing, you know, focus on what you're doing. You have one present focus that you have in your life right now and go just full into that. The next one, and this is number 7, keep an entrepreneur journal. I have not been great at this, but I think it's a really good idea because I know Stephen Bartlett does this and this is helping him write his new book. Because he just goes through and he takes stories and ideas and puts it into his book. And this is basically ideas explored on paper. This is how Daniel Priestley words this. So keep an entrepreneur journal. And I have like a list of probably 10 different questions that you can ask, or I can ask you, to help you kind of get started with this entrepreneur journal. I need to I should be doing this, but it's also just kind of a cool thought experiment if you don't want to do it a journal, but more of just a normal thought experiment of how could I grow my business. So here's some questions to ask when you're starting something like this, because this could help you write books, this could help you in the future with your kids or whoever is reading these in the future. So what are you most grateful for this month? Who has been helping you recently that you haven't acknowledged? And, uh, this next question, and it's not necessarily good timing for it, but what do you want to achieve before the end of the year? Um, that, that answer— that is a great question, and if you want to save that for January 1st, as I know this episode will be releasing in late November, but Even if you have a goal that you want to achieve before the end of this year, shoot for it and go for it and just sprint and do it as hard as possible. Um, sprint for that as hard as possible. Another one is, what problems have you noticed people struggling with? That's a great question because, you know, if you notice a problem, that could be a great business opportunity. What trends or opportunities are you noticing? If you had $100,000, how would you spend it to grow your business? Who could you take out to lunch this month that could be a useful contact in the future? What headlines and hooks would you use to gather attention to your business or for your business? Those are just some questions that I wrote down that I literally was like writing every single question down while listening because those are great questions. And especially if you want to start an entrepreneur journal or an entrepreneurial journal, it's like, it's a great just question starter to keep you going. And whether you're a business owner or you're not, if you're seeing problems in your business, whether it's with fellow employees or you're an employer employing people and it's just daily problems, like whatever that is, keep note of that because you can write a book out of that. You can do anything with that. The 8th of the 10 challenges is plan inspiring holidays. And Daniel Priestley goes pretty far and he says like you should be planning 8 weeks at least where you like, you just get out and you just go. And I thought that was really interesting and something to keep in mind, especially in the future. Where it's like if you're an entrepreneur, you love this, you know, plan inspiring holidays where you can be creative over those holidays. The 9th one is get structured, have a structured balance and a great team. And this goes into the 10th one. Get your entrepreneurial team in place. So be structured, have like disciplined schedule, but also have a great team behind you so that way if you, if you left for 8 weeks, you could actually have an enjoyable 8 weeks on holidays or whatever. And this is truly the essence of this episode where it's like, have like, take 5 of these 10 challenges and just go after them. And the crazy thing is with all this, like the KPI framework, key person of influence, pitch, publish, product profile, and partnerships, you know, all this reminds me of great businesses. Like whether that's Louis Vuitton where it's like you have, um, especially the oversubscribed loop. It's like, this is what major companies do. And just with the KPI, I mean, we could apply this to Michael Jordan. If we look at the KPI, um, key person of influence, Nike has a key person of influence. The pitch of Air Jordan publishing, he has written many books. He has a great product, a profile that, you know, has created a parasocial relationship with people who have watched his documentary and all this stuff. And then partnerships with Nike and other brands, the merch store, like he has all this. So it definitely makes sense. And you should apply this to your company, the 5 Levers of KPI. And if you haven't already, read any of Daniel's books, um, they're really great books. Um, their Entrepreneurial Revolution or Entrepreneur Revolution Oversubscribed, Key Person of Influence, and 24 Assets. They're all great books. And another thing that he talks a lot about is bringing free value. So whether that's free packaging, PDFs, emails, you're just providing free value for people and in exchange getting their contact info, all that stuff. And that will really help your business because you could provide more free value and you'll become more familiar. So it's all a big loop. So really take this stuff and absorb it and really just understand. And I would go read all of his books if you haven't already. And if you have, good job. Really try to internalize them and really understand them. I still need to really internalize and understand and apply these to my own business. But this is Daniel Priestley, a great entrepreneur. If you get a chance to watch him on Diary of a CEO or Mogadishu Slow Mo, I'm pretty sure is what it's called. Um, if you have a chance to listen to any of his episodes, go listen to him. I'd love to have him on my podcast at some point. Um, but he's truly a remarkable genius and I love what he's doing. So these are just some of the, uh, highlights I've gotten from these 4 books. Um, and thank you for listening to this episode. That is 27 down. Um, and I'll talk to you guys again soon.