https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLkFOaxIdxM

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 literally everyone listened to this
this is the number one mistake that i see entrepreneurs make that i made
growing up so please do not do this because it is incredibly painful and
it takes so long to get out of so please do not do this so i was talking
to entrepreneur and i said you have three businesses and you've got
three different product lines in each of those businesses and i'll bet
you right now that eighty percent of your revenue comes from just twenty
percent of that stuff prettis principle nothing nothing crazy here and
he looked at all of his numbers he was like yeah i guess this is really
the main thing and i was like why did you do all these other things he
said well seemed like a good idea at the time and it just felt like
there was just extra money sitting there on the table that we should
just grab here's what's crazy the extra money that's sitting there on
the table is the money that distracts you from the main game i like to
use this principle called the women in the red dress so if you've seen
the matrix right which is my favorite movie of all time morpheus is
explaining to neo that uh anybody in the matrix could be an agent right
so there's a woman in the red dress who walks by and then all of a
sudden he turns back around and it's an agent right and i like to use
that analogy because the woman in the red dress is

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 the distractions that we use the easy
money that's sitting there on the sideline so i had a conversation with
an entrepreneur um in the digital marketing space doing about five four
five million a year and he said i think i want to do general business
coaching because i've got all these people who are asking me for general
business coaching and i was like why on earth would you do that he's
like well i mean they're just they're asking i'm just turning money down
and i was like that's the point that is the point of a strategy a
strategy is learning when to say no and so i said hold on for a second
before you do this right you have your business right now and because
it's hard for you to grow it you're going to choose to distract yourself
from something that's going to give you an easy win which gives you that
nice dopamine hit literally everyone listen to this this is the number
one mistake that i see entrepreneurs make that i made growing up so
please do not do this because it is incredibly painful and it takes so
long to get out of so please do not do this all right what they do is
that the thing they have becomes hard because they reach a

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 limitation either on their beliefs
their skills or their character traits and so as a result of that
limitation on the ladder that they've built for themselves with beliefs
on one side character each other to the other and skills just the middle
runs that they have to grab because you have to have all three in order
to grab the next wrong right they have those those those aspects and
they hit a level and what they do is they see another ladder next to
them that has some rungs already built because they have those things
and they just jump onto that ladder but then they climb and then they
reach another pinnacle that's still not above their first ladders limit
right of skills character traits and beliefs and so what happens is they
make this jump and so i was going back to this entrepreneur and i was
like hey man so could you imagine a world how easy would it be for you
if you just eliminated everything in your business and all you do is
grow this one thing i said how easy would that be and he was like dude
that would be easy as hell it's like you know 80 of my time is dealing
with all these other things and the operational drag and complexity
around you know these other teams and blah blah blah i was like right so
why don't you do that

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 and so when i come into most businesses
most of the times i get the entrepreneur to do less i get the business
to do fewer things because simple you can write this down write this
down simple scales fancy fails you can use that you can take it to the
bank uncormozy all right mosey nation that's one of our one of our one
of our tenants all right simple scales fancy fails and if you got a
fancy business i'll tell you the richest guys in the world have simple
ass businesses and they have the character traits to see that woman in
the red dress walk by and say not today nancy not today i'm good you're
not going to you're not going to seduce me today into into some quick
money that's going to take me away from the long term goal that's what
strategy is it's learning to say no it's learning to say no because you
know that your marriage in the long term is going to get you higher
returns than the short term quick fix right and that's a character trait
that you have to develop and here's what's crazy the higher up in
business you go the higher up that ladder that you climb

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 the sexier the woman in the red dress
looks like the sexier the seduction appears the sexier the temptation
appears because right now if someone were to come to me and say let's
say uh or let's just say that you're making a million dollars a year all
right in your business let's say you're netting 250 whatever all right
just as a hypothetical example if someone came to you right now and said
dude i can help you make an extra thousand dollars a month you'd be like
i'm good no thanks right but if someone came to you and said hey man i
can help you make an extra fifty thousand dollars a month you might be
tempted by that right or maybe an extra an extra hundred thousand you
might be tempted by that right but the reality is that it's just a woman
in the red dress it's agent smith is hiding pretending to be this this
thing that's going to give you the short-term win when in reality all
it's going to do is distract you from the long-term success that you're
trying to have because if you just match the market and you just do the
one thing over and over again if you just repeat successful actions if
you have aggressive patients if you do the boring work and you let it
compound

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 and you let compounding happen for you
and with you instead of against you and you use time as an asset instead
of a liability instead of being in a rush all the time you actually use
patience as a as a lever on your success use time as an asset that works
for you instead of against you and if you if you can do those things
you'll be unreasonably successful but it's because you took decisions
you made decisions you had character traits that were unreasonable and
un uncommon right uncommon success is not because it's complex it's
because it's hard and it's hard not because it's complicated it's hard
because it's so simple no one does it we let our humanity in our
irrationality and our need for immediate short-term wins get in the way
of what our long-term strategy is and i'll say this again strategy is
knowing what you say no to not what you say yes to if you think about
who you serve who your avatar is what you help them do you get a lot
more strength in knowing what you don't do you have to turn money down
you know much money i turn down every day like i literally get a dm i
probably get two dms a day saying hey man um i'll pay you

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 10 grand for an hour of time i'm just
like dude i just don't it's just not i can't like i can't say yes that's
just distracting to me to to do what i'm trying to do and the thing is
is that that woman in the red dress the higher up you become the more
sexy she becomes and one of the biggest i mean the mistakes i've made i
made many of these mistakes i think i started my second business too
early i started prestige labs or supplement company too early and i
think i suffered for that it took i think it basically flatlined our
growth for two years because of that and it took me to care to develop
all these other character traits that i had to do instead to learn how
to actually i went from running one business to running two businesses
and i'll just give you this quick tidbit if you're listening to this you
might be thinking well alex how do you have these women in the red dress
because you now have you know six seven whatever we have a lot in our
portfolio now how do you reconcile that well now for me the portfolio is
the one thing my portfolio is the one thing and that is the that's kind
of the overarching thing for me now is that i did this out of sequence
and so don't make please don't make the mistake you

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 can do whatever you want but like for
me this is a mistake i made is that if you're running a business and
here's how you define running a business if the business does not grow
without you spending less than five hours a week on it for six straight
months and you never have to jump back in that is when you are you have
transitioned from ceo to owner all right and right now fyi if it means
if you have if you don't have to do anything you're not part of the
fulfillment right but you're still ceo if you're still ceo every
business needs a ceo right every business needs somebody who's driving
the business if you're just not involved in the quote day-to-day you
still 100 have a job it's just not time oriented but you still 100 have
a job but what you need is to make sure that you get your attention back
and the way to get your attention back is to let someone else have the
intention of running the business which is making sure that you can then
move up and then you can make your net worth your portfolio your assets
the one thing right and so anywho all of us have a woman in the red
dress right that 5

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 million entrepreneur all of us have
that quick win that we want to have because we have some level of demand
that's there but you have to say no at least that's my my two cents
that's been my experience you have to say no until you get to the point
where even when you start that new thing right starting a new thing
you're not starting a new thing you're assembling the team that's going
to pursue this opportunity on your behalf think about like to think
about the language behind that you're not going to go start another
business you're going to go assemble a team that's going to pursue that
opportunity because you think it's worth pursuing think about that way
right or you acquire a business or a percentage of a business and then
you help assist that team grow and pursue that opportunity that is how
owners speak versus ceos right that is how you go from self-employed to
owner and most of us um especially you know younger entrepreneurs and
i'm not saying i say younger not in terms of age i just say in terms of
experience they're still self-employed you're ceo but you're still
self-employed right and i think that if you can make that and you can
swallow your pride about saying like oh i have this business

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 and you just realized that um then
you'll you'll you'll be much more successful so let's go back to the
very beginning to wrap this puppy up if you have lots of little things
in your business and you have one big thing that's really the majority
of your your income if you cut out all of these other things and make
your business so simple it would be unreasonable or unreasonable for you
not to be successful if you do that then you probably will be successful
because it would be unreasonable for you not to but the thing is it's
hard not because it's complicated but because it forces us to go against
our human nature and i think if you can think about things like that
like charlie munger and warren buffett like they don't spend that much
time working right they spend their time making good decisions which
doesn't take that much time it just takes a lot of intelligent or sorry
a lot of good discipline and character traits right and so if you look
at what they do if i think about that like just because something is
simple doesn't mean it's not the right call simple scales fancy fails
and i'll leave you with that i can tell you right now we make more money
like we make a lot of money right now and

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 we really don't do a ton and it's
because i had to change my beliefs about like we we we do these things
because we have these interpersonal needs we have these character traits
we have these deficiencies that we we choose to fill with our business
and our activities because we don't want to be alone with our thoughts
but if you can let your business just continue to run and not go in and
mess things up because you've gotten to that point you've put you know a
ceo in place you will be best served and so anyways stop being so fancy
simple scales fancy fails and if you're not at that point then be okay
with not being at that point don't be too good to run your own business
don't feel like oh i have to do what alex is doing because everything
has to be done in sequence until you until you know how to get to owner
you shouldn't try and do that yet so you'll be successful so anyways um
i hope you enjoyed this uh confront the hard work and the hard work a
lot of times is simple work it's simple decisions that we have to make
don't take the quick wins think long aggressive patience macro
perspective and i think that i think that will all ultimately be the
better for it at least these journals

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 these little vlogs are for me to to
write down the principles that that have made uh given us
disproportionate returns and i hope to share them with you mozi nation
keeping awesome catch you next video bye
