https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy8XX8EuEnA

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 trying to summarize what i learned in a
year is hard \[Music\] what's going on everyone uh happy tuesday um i
hope you're having a phenomenal day whatever day it is that you're
listening to this um i had a lot of requests um from instagram and dms
and thank you for those uh for the 2020 lessons and failures uh so this
will be a sequel to my 2019 lessons and failures which if you haven't
listened to that one i think uh my my year-long recaps are i think some
of my better ones um but it's obviously up to you so this one will
probably a little longer than what you're used to and that's because
trying to summarize what i learned in a year is hard in one episode and
so for those who don't know i i keep an ongoing email thread to myself
consistently consolidating 20 20

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 lessons and failures so you can well
maybe you can't see it on the thing but it's there all right and so i
have this big thread that i just continue to email myself whenever i
feel like i learn a lesson and so i will do my very best to tell you
each of the lessons that i learned and how i learned it and 2020 was a
was a packed year of lessons for me and so uh where to start um where
okay well from the 500 you know million dollar mastermind i learned a
lot um from there i really learned about scale um and seeing the people
that were doing more than me all were going after bigger markets so
there's really two options for me to do that within the context of gym
launch

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 one is go after find alternative and
additional channels to grow the business because you know it's not like
we've sold 100 of gyms and so that means that i have to find new ways to
reach them so if my traditional advertising methods um obviously you
know you can exhaust a platform uh especially if there's a niche it's
usually much bigger than you think it is but you may you may not have
reached every single person on that platform but you may have reached
every person that you could reach on that platform profitably um so
that's kind of the the differentiation and so uh for me seeing all these
people who are doing more than me and i was you know providing value to
them in a lot of ways and i it's always like it's been a consistent
effort of mine to try and understand if there's anyone who makes more
money than me what it is that they have or what it is that i have that
they do not have because sometimes the question is not this is an
interesting one for you that i've learned also is it's not always good
to say uh what does

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 this person have that i don't sometimes
it's what do they lack that i have and i think oftentimes it's more
frequently the case which is why it's always backwards which is why i
think the learning process is interesting and so you know champions beat
normal people at their endeavor not because they have something the
other person doesn't but because they lack the ability to stop working
they black the off switch and so i think sometimes not only thinking
what do they have but what do i have that's limiting me rather than what
do they have that's giving them an advantage over me so first off just
even switching my thought process to thinking that way has been a lesson
of 2020 um for me from an entrepreneurial perspective um before i go any
further i'll just say this so that you know i'm supposed to keep things
interesting during these podcasts so we hit our 100 million dollar um
amount in 2020 which is kind of weird so just to to clarify this for
anyone uh the reasons i didn't put it on this award yet is because uh
i'm not very handy with things and i'll probably mess it up so i'll have
someone

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 else do it um but just for transparency
that means i've done 100 million dollars in total sales in the last
three and a half years um and so we did we did 30 we did 28 million we
did seven million in in in 2016 we did 28 million in 2017 in 20 2018. we
did 37 million in 2019 and uh in 2020 i think we finished at 31. uh
we're still getting the final books for this year um but yeah so that
was you know that's the that's the deal that's how we we hit 100 million
so it's not like i did 100 million in 2020 just for full transparency
because i think some people thought that that's not what it was um but i
made a podcast about how uh i i've been stuck at 30ish million for three
years and i finally figured out what i need to do to fix it and um among
those is hiring really good talent uh that is one um another one

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 and that sounds like so like duh alex
but i feel like it's so many times the lessons that i learn or not like
nothing's novel like nothing's novel it's just at what point does we
call them singed moments but at what point does something that you've
heard your whole life become real for you you know um for some of us
it's like be kind to others it's something you hear your whole life but
maybe some moment or some event triggers that for you and you're like
maybe i should be kind to people and then you start changing the way you
live and so for me uh you know i've always heard niche down i think it's
important to niche especially when you're starting but you will
eventually be constrained by that niche uh but that being said if you're
like i get this one all the time from our clients which is like man i
got my niche is too small and like homies doing like 500 grand a year
i'm like your niche is a six billion dollar industry and you think that
you doing half a million dollars a year has somehow tapped that niche

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 you just have such a poor business
model that your lifetime value of a customer is so low that you can only
profitably reach a half i mean like a quarter of a quarter of a quarter
of a percent of your market so it's really important to delineate
between am i capping my niche or are the economics behind my business
model stifling my ability to scale and grow profitably i think those are
two very different things and everyone just likes to say likes to point
outwardly because it's easier to say oh my niche is small rather than
thing saying no my my business model sucks and i have no way of
profitably reaching these people which either means you need to fix your
business model or you need to find alternative or additional acquisition
channels um and so for us i think we have a we have a i don't know of a
lot of businesses that have higher ltv from from you know micro gym
owners than us and that's candidly because we provide more value than
everyone else does in the marketplace that is why you get rewarded and
so uh i mean i always am trying to expand ltv provide more value find
ways that we can

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 you know solve problems and i i will
always continue to do that but given the numbers that we have um the la
one of the lessons of 2020 is expanding additional acquisition channels
and so we were able to build an outbound acquisition channel in 2020 so
that was um uh really cool and the additional part of what made that
cool for me was that i actually had someone else own the entire process
and end so when i talk about hiring high level talent it's really for me
transitioning from the what to the who and you've probably heard that
before but on some level it became real for me and the obsessive nature
of the entrepreneur of wanting to learn how to do everything is
absolutely required in the beginning but as you scale up it is more
about finding the who but the thing is is that in the beginning you
think too soon you need to find the who and in reality you still need to
learn the things that make the business work and so i think that's why
context and timing is so hard with these things because we have to find
like when i'm trying to give you know advice it's you know you have to
take it within like

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 your current paradigm and i understand
that that's difficult and that's why sometimes it's hard listening to
billionaires because it's like their paradigm of of what's happening
what is what are the successful actions for them right now in their in
their current chapter is different than somebody who's at zero or at a
hundred thousand dollars a year and so i'm going to try and cater this
as broadly as i can with as much you know contextual points as possible
so uh number one adding additional channels number two focusing on who
not what and specifically high value who and my picker my ability to
judge the quality of talent has increased um i think i've gotten better
at it i was not nearly as good at it years ago and i don't know how you
learned that without experience so that is that is something try and
find people with pre-loaded solutions so as a as a caveat to that that's
one of my lessons which is like i've i've now found people who come
pre-loaded with solutions they come batteries included you know i'm like
hey here's my problem

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 i can point them at it and they're
like oh this is all the things we need to do because i've already done
this three times i'm like got it yes please go do that and you know as a
as a correlator to that my role within the company i would say in 2020
transitioned from being a ceo to being investor slash owner or slash
stakeholder shareholder whatever way you want to say it but really i
would say for the first time in 2020 i really transitioned to being
above the business um not in like a weird airing away just like not
truly being out of it and so i think there's definitely levels to being
out of it you know first you're uh you own your own job right you're
self-employed and that's just you doing things for other people for
money you just someone else is paying you and you're doing stuff you
know above that you start becoming a manager and managing other people
right and then above that you become a leader and then above that in my
opinion you become an executive right which is like leading
organizational change in departmental change around

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 objectives that are going to protect
the business or grow the business right and i think the level above that
is where i i feel like this year i was able to get to i could be wrong
we'll find out in 2021 lessons and failures uh but but i've right now
i'm not i don't actually do anything um in the business besides meet
with two leaders a week um and really advise on the ways that we can
strategically improve the business and provide more value and so that's
really the majority of my time is like looking at the overall
marketplace and thinking like how can we provide more value in a
strategic way to everyone right and what are of the many ways what is
the one thing that we're going to focus on and so i think 2020 was also
a really uh humbling year for me because uh we got to refocus on the few
things that provide the most value and so for us it's

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 we need to get jim's leads because
that's what everyone wants uh we need to make gyms more money because
that's what everyone wants and that's about it you know pretty much any
other you know endeavors that are not focused on those things uh are
kind of a waste uh as much as you know people may need to have better
retention tactics better um you know better profit margins and we talk a
lot about that whenever we do talk about that we lose people who lose
interest because entrepreneurials most entrepreneurs that i serve um
only think about revenue right the only thing about growth rather than
what am i taking home you know how much risk am i exposed to that kind
of stuff and i think that just comes with time but i will practice what
i preach and not sell what i want to sell i will sell what they want to
buy and so that is uh how you know we've we've cut a ton of excess out
in 2020 um in the business and so uh really focusing on a handful of key
priorities um has been really useful and interestingly i think the
business has actually

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 improved since i've moved further away
from it because i tend to break things a lot because i want to fix it
till it's broken if you know what i mean and so giving our leadership
space to just transact you know run the business has been um really
valuable and i think it's actually been i think it's been better for the
business overall so uh those are some of uh my my initial list i've got
a whole bunch so i'm just to keep going through this so one of the next
ones was um i was talking to brooke castillo she is an amazing business
a good friend of mine if you've heard of her life coach school podcast
check her out she's an amazing pie she's a huge following um and she
didn't say this directly but like the the term that came in my mind was
scale skill zero and simple scales and or zero scales um i'll have to
come up with something catchy for that but basically the reason that i
had to be get into the you know quote in investor or owner type role i
believe

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 is because if i am involved in any
really day-to-day activity i will become the bottleneck right and it's
not a bottleneck of communication which is what happens when you are the
manager as a bottleneck but as as as somebody who even provides value in
any way if it requires you to be there to provide the value then as soon
as the team grows outside of you providing that value if it cannot grow
without you providing whatever that value is then it will stop there and
so i think that's 2020 was really my transition of of moving above that
and so i think that was kind of the win for the year um and so that was
kind of one of the lessons that i learned is is you have to scale zero
like i have to get myself to doing nothing and still have the company
make money and grow and be profitable etc in order for us to be able to
grow beyond where we're at and i think that's much easier said than done
especially because a lot of companies start because the entrepreneur is
skilled in a certain way

15 00:14:00.000 --\> 00:15:00.000 or has a variety of skills which is
usually what happens we have a stack of skills which is why you know why
we start growing um and then somehow you have to in the beginning
extricably you know or intrinsically link yourself to every aspect of
the business is what makes it grow and then piece by piece peel off each
of these skills and traits and and things that you don't even know you
do in the business to keep it moving and that's taken time and it's and
it's taken trial and error and it's been difficult but ultimately
rewarding um because now right now it's i would say like one day a week
is focused on all my leadership meetings um and that's it and then
beyond that it's just strategic insight uh on monthly and quarterly's so
um that's given me a lot more time to really focus on the industry and
how we can and help overall rather than being kind of like in the in the
tactics um next one um i have this belief and it just continues to be
reinforced that

16 00:15:00.000 --\> 00:16:00.000 see if you can just keep growing and
not hire people um we have had uh i mean all you gotta do is look at our
our atrocious glass door reviews um which suck uh to know that like we
have we hire fast um we've had a tendency to hire fast and fire fast so
we have followed that mantra um but i and the thing is is part of the
difficulty of having a business that that grows quickly is um or has any
level of volatility month to month is that you have these waxing and
waning demands for labor right and so it's like you need five people and
then the next month you don't need the five people anymore and uh you
know i'm not saying we hire five people and then let them go it's more
that like that consistent variability uh can be annoying from uh from a
payroll and labor standpoint and what's unfortunately happened many many
times is we'll bring people on um we will solve the problem

17 00:16:00.000 --\> 00:17:00.000 and then they won't and it really
should be like you know for defined periods of time you know like
project based and whatnot um the problem will be solved and after we let
the people go the business grows more and that's kind of weird and
backwards for me as an entrepreneur and so i'm going to just try and
make sense of it out loud with you um but i i kind of have this belief
that only one out of five employees in a company is providing value like
i i actually like kind of believe that uh kind of the 80 20 people are
fractal um i just can't like i just the amount of times that we've
literally gotten rid of like a department because it's just like we we
created a department for example to solve a problem let's say it was
churn and provide value in all these ways to solve churn and then after
scaling that after six months realizing that churn is completely
unaffected and we just took 20 more employees on and then having just be
like well guys you didn't solve the problem

18 00:17:00.000 --\> 00:18:00.000 and as much as you're doing stuff it
doesn't is not doing anything right and so then we have to you know let
people go because it is a business and um and then and and then just
realizing that the business literally doesn't change at all like revenue
doesn't change return doesn't change profit doesn't change well profit
goes up and that's it and it's just like it's mind-blowing to me it's
like there are so many people especially as your organization grows that
you're like this person was totally unnecessary and that's crazy because
from the employee perspective it's like how can you do that and i
understand that perspective but on the flip side as the owner you're
like man this this person was 90 000 a year like people are afraid of
signing up for a mastermind and yet we'll hire an employee for 50 000 a
year without even thinking about it and it's just like which of these
things is providing more value you know what i mean and so that's that's
something that's been like mind-blowing to me is is seeing a company
grow after shrinking it's like it's crazy and it's happened

19 00:18:00.000 --\> 00:19:00.000 so many times and it happened twice in
2020 for us where i would get rid of a key team or a key you know series
of individuals who were doing a role that we we were tracking metrics on
and we kind of implemented it into to provide a solution and then it
then disappeared right and because the solution like it did not solve
the problem and therefore was not providing the value that it was
supposed to and so people were essentially cutting grass with scissors
which doesn't they're doing stuff but it doesn't mean it's being
valuable right and so um i am now really trying to add the constraints
to i want to see if we can grow with no people like how can we look at
berkshire hathaway right how can we look at warren buffett who has 19
employees and runs a gigantor you know company how can we find fewer
smarter people that are pre-loaded with solutions like i said earlier
but it's like i'm just trying to hit this in multiple ways because it's
it's really ingrained in me this year how important having an a player
is compare like one a player literally does more work than 5b players

20 00:19:00.000 --\> 00:20:00.000 it's crazy like most people actually
do nothing like it's it's it's crazy like most people don't do anything
and and and that's why they can't progress i mean like as a tangential
side story you know i i there's a guy that i've seen in a mastermind
this is an entrepreneur right and he's uh you know he's like hey you
know and this is three years ago when i met him he was like yeah i'm
going to start running facebook ads and i was like awesome fantastic
like that's a great idea and because his biggest issue was that he
couldn't get legion right sorted and i saw him at an event three years
later and i was like hey man how's it going you know how's the business
whatever and uh he was like yeah just you know we're gonna start we're
gonna we're definitely gonna start facebook ads soon and i was just like
bro it's been three years like what are you doing you're like what are
you like what are you doing you know what i mean like it just you know
what i mean there's different ver it's different for me if someone's
like trying to figure out what the obstacle is versus knowing what the
obstacle is and

21 00:20:00.000 --\> 00:21:00.000 not doing anything about it that's
that's the one that kind of drives me nuts and so i was like dude if you
literally spent one day and just googled how to run a facebook ad you
would be able to run a facebook ad by the end of the day like this is
not a quarter long solution like do it you know what i mean and so i say
that to say a lot of people think they are productive when in fact they
are busy and actually do nothing and i don't know if it's their fault or
whatever but that is just an observation that i've had and seeing the
company become more profitable and grow even while we contracted
resources is um sadly uh reassuring or reaffirming and so it's just like
you probably know if you're in a company of any size that like there's
like a handful of people that you know that everybody knows because
those are the people who move right like they're people in our company
that i don't know who they are and i don't know their names and i'm like
they're like oh we let go of kelsey and i'm like who's kelsey and then
now i've kind of been like well if i

22 00:21:00.000 --\> 00:22:00.000 don't know their name that's why they
got let go because if you're doing something i will hear about you
they're like oh yeah this new girl in blah blah is killing it right i'll
hear about it but if i'd never hear your name it's because you're not
doing anything so anywho that's uh that's another one of the lessons i
told you this would be a longer one and uh probably more encapsulated ah
okay next one oh my god data management is has been the biggest mistake
or has been the has been the thing that i messed up the most in the last
three years which is having a really good erp or crm that i run
everything dude is properly set up and i this has plagued my business
for three and a half years and i think it's actually been one of the
things that has kept us at 30-ish you know a million a year and we uh we
just got hubspot it's expensive i think we paid 36 000 a year for it um
but it's worth every penny it's just it's just worth every penny

23 00:22:00.000 --\> 00:23:00.000 it's it's so funny because we were
like man that's so expensive for crm i'm like do you think that the
entire system and all the data of everything that you have is worth more
than a frontline employee just one do you think it could provide value
to everyone in the company disproportionately to one foreign employee
well yeah it's like well like think you know think in relative terms um
but now we finally are able to track from click to close which has been
gosh the hardest thing in the world and if i could start all over again
so if you are you know listening to this like invest early in really
good data systems like it it will make your life so much easier and like
i i genuinely conservatively can say that we've we've left 30 probably
30 million on the table over the last three and a half years because of
such poor data management and because of our tit systems have been
literally the bane of my existence and so now when i start new things or
i talk to new companies the first thing i'm looking at is where are
using track data what's your crm you know are you on a google sheet you
know

24 00:23:00.000 --\> 00:24:00.000 zar is that how you're running
everything great let's put the whole system in place so that's just a
huge one that i feel like i now i got the i got the success from that
and i've learned from three years of failures and so that was a a really
big win for us um next one is uh three businesses you know i i shouldn't
have three businesses that's uh continued to be a lesson of mine uh
because we have prestige labs jim launch and allen it's been very hard
for me not from a time perspective but from an attention perspective to
split my attention like that um and so i think part of it is this was
like a paired lesson in failure is that i think the decision was
incorrect but i think that the lesson that i learned from it was it
forced me to get out of ceo and into investor owner role and i think
that was that was the gift of the curse the curse is that like i now
know that i shouldn't do that in the future and so now i'm trying to
figure out really how to run these as

25 00:24:00.000 --\> 00:25:00.000 portfolio companies if that makes
sense so that's that's been the hard part um and the thing is you can't
like undo something like that you know what i mean i've got i've got you
know 100 employees like i can't you know what i mean so that's uh those
are those are mistakes that are uh you know jeff bezos says when i'm
making a decision there's there's reversible decisions and irreversible
decisions starting a company is in some ways an irreversible decision
and so um it's not completely irreversible but it does you know it it
it's it's long and difficult you know what i mean if you want to try and
undo that which is either through a sale or you know whatever um or just
winding it down we're trying to like somehow sustain it and systemizes
so it stays at a certain level and doesn't require attention is also
hard and so anyways that's kind of actually a lot of what i would say i
struggled with in 2020 um that i've you know actively been putting
solutions together for 2021 so i'll let you know how that goes um this
is a big one know what your game beyond the game is this is a really big
one that i've

26 00:25:00.000 --\> 00:26:00.000 learned in 2020 which is uh you know
we've you know my wife and i have made a lot of money uh over the last
three and a half years we took 35 36 million dollars out of the business
just in direct distributions so that doesn't include like the actual
value of the companies um and you have to know what to do with the money
and i and i actively i'll tell you the thought process i had behind this
which was uh my second year so in 2018 we took home 17 4 in profit uh so
that's two years ago and while at that point i said well if i were to
get 20 return on my money i would make 3.4 million dollars on the 17
right um so me working on my business makes me 17 so i should just keep
working my business and ignore the money um but at a certain point the
kind of the the lost compounding becomes

27 00:26:00.000 --\> 00:27:00.000 big enough that that it it can surpass
your regular income and so you know if you look at what twenty percent
of you know if if for example i had actively managed it and had thirty
million dollars and done twenty percent growth it'd be thirty goes to
thirty six thirty six goes to forty two and at that point you're making
eight million dollars a year and that's two years three years later
right and so at some point you have to the opportunity cost of not
managing the money becomes bigger um and so and it actually starts to
take attention like a lot of my attention was getting drained on the
fact that just this gigantic big stack of money that i was like what am
i going to do with this thing right i don't want to learn the real
estate game i don't want to learn the the you know hard money lending
game i don't like there's so many different games for money i don't want
to learn the private equity game so i spent probably 30 of my year this
year on figuring out how to allocate money and i try to allocate them
within our companies because those are things i have direct control over
and i'll get disproportionate returns on which is you know candidly why
i started prestige

28 00:27:00.000 --\> 00:28:00.000 labs is because i had all this money
from gem launch and i was like well what's an ancillary business to what
i currently have that can provide value to my customers that i can use
the same you know distribution based and shared services on that i can
make you know that that i can get a disproportionate return on and
that's what started prestige labs and now you know two years or two and
a half years later prestige labs is a good business it's a it's a real
it's a very good business um it provides a lot of value we paid over 10
million dollars in commissions um so that's been really good um but it i
i don't think it was the correct decision at the time but now that i
have it um i am grateful that we have it so that's kind of the long and
short of that one um but knowing your game beyond the game because it
will it will distract you because what ends up happening is like once
you start getting into that world you get sucked into it and then your
actual business starts losing your attention that's where your highest
return on attention is is inside of your business right is your income
and growing it right because both your net worth and the cash flow from
your business both of them like it's one of the it's

29 00:28:00.000 --\> 00:29:00.000 one of the cool things about being an
entrepreneur is like the net worth that you have in the equity of your
business is usually larger than what you have pulled out of your
business actually most times it's larger than when you pulled out your
business and so um that's that's kind of you know interesting uh and so
for me uh trying to figure out how to allocate those things has been a
priority so before i get the question i'll just tell you this is this is
what i have uh invested my money in uh this year uh first we have uh a
whole life insurance policy high catch value up front you have to be
really careful about the people that you work with this because they can
totally screw you and they are incentivized to screw you and most
insurance agents will not want to hear that but they the the commission
structure that they have for these policies is insane um it destroys the
the cash value that you earn from these things so uh if you decide to
set up a whole whole value whole vet cash value whatever uh insurance
policy uh one go with the big four so that's uh guardian new york life
uh northwestern mutual and

30 00:29:00.000 --\> 00:30:00.000 uh umass um or mass mutual excuse me
so those are the big four uh they've been all around for over 100 years
you know new york life's been around for 183 years uh they predate the
tax code the reason i did that is because it it basically creates a bank
account for you that you can use you obviously pay costs in the
beginning but you can basically loan against the the cash value of the
insurance um and the cash flow guarantee is you know it's guaranteed
growth at about four percent a year and so if you just compare that to a
traditional bank account where you're losing money um this at least uh
covers for inflation right and so uh that allows you to at least park
the money in a way that's not devaluing itself and if you do see
opportunities you can loan against it and invest in those things so
that's the first thing uh that we did uh if you ever do one of those you
should be able to break even by year three to five at most if it's
designed properly uh they'll tell you that no that's gonna it's gonna
sacrifice the long-term blah blah of the

31 00:30:00.000 --\> 00:31:00.000 of the thing i think that's horse when
you when you compare it to the present-day cash like the value of having
your money available to co-invest at the same time is it's not even an
argument in my opinion uh it's also how corporations and banks uh and
fortune 500 companies structure it so ask so look into coley and boli
which is corporate owned life insurance and bank owned life insurance if
you want to see how they structure it because they know what they're
doing and so that is how we structured it so that's number one number
two uh we are investing in b and c class multi-family uh apartment units
uh syndication so that's big apartment buildings um the reason for that
is because i think uh i think single family might get hit hard um in the
next few years because i'm looking at like you know seven year timelines
uh i actually think that i mean who knows i won't even make my
prediction because there's no point but i think that that asset class
has outperformed other asset classes um and if people downgrade uh their
living standards because of some kind of recession because i'm

32 00:31:00.000 --\> 00:32:00.000 really much more about downside
mitigation than i am about getting the upside uh because my upside's in
my business so it's really like where can i park money that i know it's
not going to go anywhere and so i take inferior returns to know that i
have no downside or less downside uh and so parking money in b and c
class real estate has been one of those those places through syndicated
deals um the third place is uh i have index funds so that's indexes of
the entire market because again this is one of those things that i don't
want to think about and i'm not trying to stock pick uh because this is
not how i make income like this is not this is the thing that everyone
is like man i could get better yeah sure you get better returns if
you're a daily trader but you also have a business so are you going to
learn that game and be better than the biggest institutions in the world
that have you know zillions of dollars to literally destroy you maybe
but probably not and so what you can do is be really good at your
business and provide good service and private value and make more money
that way and then be willing to take the non-premium return you know of
active management and

33 00:32:00.000 --\> 00:33:00.000 basically make money on your on
yourself twice because you're making money on income doing your thing
and you get passive uh from your investments um i have a five percent uh
hedge uh in crypto i don't really like speculative things but the only
reason i have that is because uh if for some reason the dollar gets
devalued and for some reason we lose the world currency that would
probably greatly appreciate in value and would the reason it's a hedge
is that i'm not trying to make money on it i'm only saying that i'm
putting five percent there so that if that happens that will probably 5x
if that were to occur which would offset the losses i would have in
basically the majority of my investments and so um that is my that is
the conclusion of my investment strategy um and what i am focused on um
outside of just value creation in the business because that's actually
the fastest way for me to increase my net worth okay uh next one if you
are financially done

34 00:33:00.000 --\> 00:34:00.000 you must have a bigger purpose so that
was one that i learned this year is like um you're like i mean i shared
my numbers transparently with everyone um i we need to um like it you
have to you have to sound stupid you have to really like what you're
doing um and have a purpose beyond it otherwise like the money starts
being meaningless and it like it just it doesn't incrementally change my
life in any way you know like think think about it like i know this
sounds crazy but just like imagine if buying a lamborghini for example
was one week's paycheck well what do you do after you buy lamborghini
the next week right and let's say you buy a crazy house and that's like
five weeks of paycheck well then what do you do with the other 40 you
know five weeks of the year's paycheck right like it you know a steak
dinner you know like is is not that expensive in the

35 00:34:00.000 --\> 00:35:00.000 relative term of things like if i eat
a steak dinner two times a day or you know went to the capitol grill and
spent 200 at three meals a day even right that's 200 000 a year um and
that is crazy for sure but it's also like within the relative scheme and
this is where like uh this is where the ultra wealth part starts to get
weird is that like if you have 10 million dollars and you grow by 15
that's a million and a half dollars a year and it gets bigger and that's
what's we like it's you can't eat it you can't like i still eat chicken
and rice like it's not you know be like nothing i eat bagels and i eat
the the cheap deli meat from the supermarket like my life hasn't really
changed you know i have a nicer camera now there's a thousand dollar
camera you know but um you really have to find something that that i'll
put it this way i have found that i must do work that i find meaningful

36 00:35:00.000 --\> 00:36:00.000 and that is what gives me purpose in
life um is that what i do i find the pursuit of that endeavor meaningful
um and the actual process itself enjoyable and so that is one of my my
bigger takeaways from 2020. laila and i spent more time together this
year than we ever have and man it was um the best thing about this year
was my marriage got a lot better not that it was bad but it's just like
we're just really good and the whole year has been great which was
definitely offset by the craziness of the of the world and i think maybe
that's maybe that's why we came even closer together um but really
focusing on the marriage has just made my life more enjoyable um even
though we actually made less profit this year than we did the last two
years um and so yeah that's that's that one um i did make one good
decision this year um we actually developed a whole crm for gyms for the
same reason bringing up is that you need to have good data management um
and i spent a million bucks on this thing and i realized that i couldn't
have

37 00:36:00.000 --\> 00:37:00.000 four businesses uh and so i pretty
much just killed the project and i just wasted a million dollars so uh i
make lots of mistakes just so you're aware uh lots and lots of mistakes
um but that was a good that was a good decision the starting it was not
a good decision but not doing the business after i had made it uh was a
good decision even with the sun cost which was hard um another one is
entrepreneurship comes in cycles and seasons there are seasons of heavy
work and there are seasons of there's seasons of reaping and seasons of
sowing and i think recognizing that there are cycles is really important
um and there's even seasonal cycles which sounds crazy but now this is
like the fourth year uh for our fifth year you know that we're going
into for us and every year i'm always like i feel like january through
june i'm like we're on fire you know what i mean and then like by
december i'm like we suck and we shouldn't be in business and we're
horrible you know what i mean and then like january comes again and then
it's like everything explodes and so i you know i've now i come to
recognize it and i prepare the team for it and i think now that this is
like my fourth or

38 00:37:00.000 --\> 00:38:00.000 fifth cycle through it um i'm more
steady and so that's been um i think a lesson in seasonality i was
talking to brandon from weighty uh wavy loss ladyboss uh weight loss and
he talked about the same thing is that he he and i started around the
same time and he realized the same thing is like doesn't matter what we
do we are somehow also subject to the cycles of seasonality and they
always have their you know q1 is always your strongest quarter why
because people are more motivated in weight loss when they're going into
summer going to spring and just started you know just had valentine's
day and new year's eve so there's like all the reasons are all right
there um you know once once it's august you know or july it's not
usually a huge you know fitness month and you know a lot of my business
is correlated to fitness and weight loss so that was that one um ah
three year life cycle of products so the average product or service has
like a three year life cycle and um you know gym launch has had to
innovate it's i would say product suite twice uh so we started with kind
of like the whole six week challenge thing

39 00:38:00.000 --\> 00:39:00.000 um and then we transitioned to kind of
higher ticket hybrid bootcamp packages and right now we actually sell
the same packages but the acquisition system is different it's all
outbound based uh because that's actually where the biggest arbitrage is
right now meaning we can buy leads and get sales basically roi on time
is highest there and so we just continue to see the cycle of you know
and you kind of get into these transition points where like a new
opportunity opens as another one's closing and then you kind of have to
like readjust the product and jump and that's always just focusing on
like what's working best right now another one is having multiple
acquisition channels and streams is really valuable now that we have
outbound you know like i teach the gyms what i'm doing with my own
business having outbound has been really nice uh it's it's stable it's
much more reliable it's slower for sure to grow it took 90 days to
really get it right for us um it definitely doesn't take nearly as i
mean for gyms like we already have the whole system but for us to start
from scratch and build the whole team and figure out how to find the
data because

40 00:39:00.000 --\> 00:40:00.000 like it's not just trying to find
weight loss like a lot of people are overweight not a lot of people are
gym owners so there's you know it's different um it's b2c versus b2b but
we had to figure out okay where do we find the data how do we clean the
data how do we create these lists you know what software do we use to
cold call what's the script what's the hook what do we say on the opener
how do we train the team where do we recruit from how do we compensate
these people how do we set up the sales process is it a two-step or a
three-step like all those things are things that we had to figure out
from scratch um and it took us about 90 days to figure it out so but now
that we have it it's actually really great um and it's just really cool
having two things that are really firing side by side between inbound
and outbound um i wrote this one again but simple scales and so simple
like really trying to figure out at all levels the simplest solution not
like oftentimes the best solution is not the best solution because it is
more complex and the simplest solution though it might not be the best
solution becomes the best solution because it is actually able to be
realized and

41 00:40:00.000 --\> 00:41:00.000 so that is a lesson that i have
learned in 2020 more so than any year is like we have made our product
suites simpler and more digestible and immediately actionable and we're
getting better client results now than even when there was like crazy
facebook arbitrage and that took time you know what i mean to just learn
that because i would say like a year and a half ago we had so much stuff
inside of our product that's like it could be so perfectly customized
the thing is is that it was overwhelming for the majority of clients and
so trying to to to rectify the complexity versus simplicity equation uh
you know you kind of have to find the middle ground and the sweet spot
for what's going to serve the most people at the highest level and so
that was just reinforced this year and honestly right now we're doing
we're i'm i'm more proud of the jim launch product now than i've ever
been which is pretty cool for me um another one is that you can make the
right decisions and be wrong and you can make the wrong decisions and be
right and so this is really hard from a learning perspective

42 00:41:00.000 --\> 00:42:00.000 because let's say for example i bet my
life savings on uh black at the at the at the casino right if it hits
black was it the right decision probably not and so i may be rewarded
for poor decision just like i could make a strategic bet in business
that for all reasons was the right call and then covet hits right and
then all of a sudden that's not the that wasn't the quote right bet but
it was the right decision given the information available and so uh
things change there are market dynamics and so i instead of beating
myself up over decisions i think if all i had was the the
decision-making criteria that i had available to me at the time the
information available to me at the time was the decision that i made the
best decision and what i don't want to do is unlearn good habits right
because we're constantly you know evolving and growing as entrepreneurs
and so not unlearning good habits

43 00:42:00.000 --\> 00:43:00.000 and and not reinforcing bad habits
that have good outcomes uh is is is something that i have focused on a
lot this year and so sometimes there are short-term trades that have
long-term uh outcomes and i think this year was actually much more of a
long-term focused year for us ironically with all the craziness that was
going on we put a lot of foundational stuff in place that i think is
really setting the stage for 2021 so pump for that and i would say my
there's there's more to this but i'll i'll probably end on this note
which is um understanding an expanded time horizon has been immeasurably
valuable for me and this is one of those things where you hear it all
the time right um but it doesn't become real for you and i feel like it
became real for me this year which was i'm independently wealthy

44 00:43:00.000 --\> 00:44:00.000 i don't need any more money for the
rest of my life if we grow our current net worth at 10 a year we'll be
worth 700 million dollars half a billion dollars by the time i'm 60. and
so that probably means i won't need anything i could stop working now
right um and that allows me to think from a slightly different
perspective but the thing is is that i think the reason that the rich
get richer is because it allows them to think from this perspective and
so the hardest thing is trying to get yourself into this and so i'm
making like this is if there's anything that you listen to in this
entire video it is what i'm about to tell you if you can expand your
time horizon beyond months and even a year or two you will be so much
better off if you expand your time horizon beyond just a month or a year
and actually start thinking in five year and ten year terms you'll be so
much better off and i think there's there's so many reasons for that

45 00:44:00.000 --\> 00:45:00.000 one is when you bet on long enough
time horizons you can virtually get rid of risk and if you can make risk
fee risk-free guaranteed upside then why would you not make those bets
the reason warren buffett said this he said no one wants to get rich
slow right but i would rather get rich for sure than get rich fast and
lose it right or or more realistically for many try and get rich fast
for my entire life rather than just saying well if i just did this for
10 years i'd be guaranteed to be a millionaire and i think that is the
issue and i think that's the problem that the world has and that's why
most people will never become wealthy is because they cannot delay their
impatience they cannot delay their gratification and so for me when i'm
thinking about our businesses i'm now really thinking like do i think
and this is because i've been reading a lot about investor stuff and i'm
like you know private equity firms will come in and their goal will be
to double a company you know uh in in five years right double a

46 00:45:00.000 --\> 00:46:00.000 company in five years and i think
about that with like gym launch and there's so many times where i'm like
oh we got a double this year why didn't we double but if i'd said like
we just got a double in five and made the plan for that the plan would
look so much different and also so realistically attainable that i think
we'd probably over perform that but what it would do is eliminate the
needless frenetic energy of of oh we got to do this now you know like
craziness of the shifts and the turns and like sure there's always
things that you have to adapt in the marketplace but it just gives you
this steadiness as a leader and when you can look at a five-year goal
but like i've never even believed in five year goals as a from a goal
perspective but i think of it in terms of a timeline perspective of like
how am i measuring myself like when i think about where i was five years
ago it's it's not it's like not even comprehensible and so i mean i hope
to have that kind of difference five years from now we'll see

47 00:46:00.000 --\> 00:47:00.000 but i think that if i can take a more
steady approach a more disciplined approach to growth and to value
creation within the company everything that i've read about you know
value-based investing um and how you know companies do turnarounds which
is really valuable if you ever you know want to get into a reading topic
look at uh you know by buying and buying and flipping businesses because
you look at what they're looking at in the business is what they can do
to improve and so you can basically come in with fresh eyes to your own
business and think like what would i do if i were buying my business
fresh from day one today which is actually a really good thought
exercise and so i've kind of walked through that process and the things
that i would do are different than what i'm actually doing and so by
expanding it to an investor's time horizon i feel like i'm making much
better decisions and i have much better perspective and um it's been
it's just incredibly calming because i

48 00:47:00.000 --\> 00:48:00.000 think the reason that entrepreneurs
you know the double-edged sword of us is that we're emotional people we
you know we i get so excited and then we have all these ideas and we
want to do all of them and the reality is that you can't you just can't
you can't even do you can't even do most of them you can do a very very
very small percentage of them and when a private equity buyer for
example comes in to try and buy a business and improve it they will i'll
tell you actually you know i'll tell you what uh this has been really
enlightening for you so i'll tell you what they do so the first thing
they do is to create a hundred day plan um and the objective that
hundred day plan is to align uh the economic interest of the management
with the fund who and the investor who's buying it right and the way
they do that is they first figure out what their uh primary two to three
kpis are going to be that's it two to three and then they figure out how
to accurately and meticulously track those things so typically you know
uh investors are known for you know cutting costs and increasing profits
that's like a standard thing that they'll do um but

49 00:48:00.000 --\> 00:49:00.000 they increase the cost on it and
reporting and diligence and so for me thinking about that it's like okay
that just really shows how important the data and reporting is which is
kind of what i was alluding to earlier and so they implement a lot of
erps and crm systems that they already have you know test and whatnot to
get the tracking in real time around their kpis now the number one kpi
that they track which i found incredibly interesting which we don't
track which is wild is excess cash flow and it's crazy because that's
the thing i care the most about us as the owner is what am i depositing
my bank account every month but as financials become more sophisticated
you look at your profit and your ebitda and like all the you know your p
l and you have to offset revenue based on contract terms and blah blah
blah blah right but all i care about is excess cash flow and it was
ironic to me that the most sophisticated investors you know in the world
some of them right uh the thing that they care about is the thing that i
care about which is just how much cash are you putting off you know um
and they have different reasons for that because they can serve a step
better they can get better leverage which means they can get better

50 00:49:00.000 --\> 00:50:00.000 multiples and blah blah blah and they
get better returns um but for me thinking about that is something that
i'm going to be reorganizing our business around which is how can we and
and aligning the incentive of the management team around that that kpi
and so that's what they do in their first hundred days and then after
that they only create two to three focused task forces right small teams
that can be held accountable to um big domino operational objectives
that will provide the most value in the the that have high probability
of success they'll provide the most value to the business and so that is
it and that's what they do and they just ruthless ruthlessly manage
around those metrics and i think about that and what that means is they
allow the management and leadership team to run the business rather than
metal and i think that i definitely have a tendency to meddle because i
like doing things my way and i want things to sound a certain way and
blah blah the same things all of us do and um and it's not it's not been
it actually hurts the business and so um because it it removes

51 00:50:00.000 --\> 00:51:00.000 consistency and so if we can create
consistency of operations it creates it creates less waste right so you
can be more efficient it creates a more consistent experience for the
customers and so it allows us to make more profit from less waste it
gives like i said more value um and it allows us to just focus on a
couple of things without feeling the constant overwhelm so i actually
think that our team etc itself would be happier um with this type of
approach and so that is how i'm kind of shifting my my perspective on
our our businesses now because we have three of them um uh in doing that
and so that's been really cool um i've also taken on a number of small
companies that i'm working with so companies that are doing one to five
million dollars a year that are either you know consulting service uh
knowledge education based businesses or uh niche brick and mortar
businesses

52 00:51:00.000 --\> 00:52:00.000 um that you know have have the desire
to like franchise or scale uh nationally and so those are it's just
because that's that's the businesses that i know intimately um and so
i'm actually working with some companies there um and that's crazy for
me because if you think about from an investor standpoint um i have a
company that um i just recently became an advisor to and uh they'd been
at half a million dollars a year for two years i think um and now we're
doing uh 150 000 a week uh six months later right so that's from 500 50
000 a month to 600 000 a month right wild uh so pretty pretty cool um
very exciting um and uh i'm just i'm just pumped pumped out the future i
think 2021 is going to be a good year um i think there's a lot of cash
on the sidelines uh savings across the entire united states like went up
a ton uh which means they're printing money and people are holding on to
it which means that when

53 00:52:00.000 --\> 00:53:00.000 people start spending that money we
should see a boom overall um i do think that you know as we have an
entirely democratic uh president you know all three houses or whatever
uh branches the government are all democratic i don't think they're
gonna wanna not look good and so i think that they're gonna pump the
economy as much as they can which will be good in the short term and
we'll see in the long term as much as everyone's really worried about
the inflationary effects which is definitely a concern there's also
really strong deflationary effects going on right now too uh so i also
think that the people who who are running monetary policy are probably
more knowledgeable than we are it's literally what they do uh for a
living full time so just something to consider there uh but yeah that
was uh 2020. i have um i've i've i've had a i hope you enjoyed this is
different than the normal types of podcasts that i make this is kind of
the the top of mind the things that have been most meaningful for me um
and i'm

54 00:53:00.000 --\> 00:54:00.000 i think i'm in the best mental place
i've ever been which is cool for me i'm not a particularly i would never
have described myself as a particularly happy person um but i'm i'm i'm
pretty close to happy um i don't really like the word very much um
because i think it's it's really misleading um but i'm i'm really i'm
really i'm pretty fulfilled uh i really like what i do um i think i'm
good at it so i find that fulfilling i find it challenging i love the
game of entrepreneurship and um i'm very grateful to to be able to apply
you know i really am and um i'm gonna leave you with one thing uh that i
so i talked to my 18 year old neighbor right and uh he's having a hard
time uh he's got more stuff that's happened since the last time uh
you've heard a podcast from me just personal stuff and you know he's
he's having trouble with the sacrifices that are required for
entrepreneurship you know he's young he wants to have fun

55 00:54:00.000 --\> 00:55:00.000 and and and the thing is there's
nothing wrong with that it's just the question is how bad do you want
what you claim to want you know everybody wants a six-pack it's just
that they want donuts more right they actually want donuts they they
claim to want a six-pack but they want donuts more right and i think
that that you know analogy is the same for business like he wants to be
an entrepreneur but it's hard to see your friends partying and having
fun and living you know their their youth youthful lives without you and
it's easy to rationalize and say like well i should enjoy my youth and
i'm not saying you shouldn't i'm really not um i just know that if you
you know the sooner you start investing in skills and i'm not saying
he's gonna like investing in skills is the thing right what he does to
invest in the skills is irrelevant but investing in skills is how he
gets there and putting a disproportionate amount of time towards
developing those skills will allow him to you know outpace the
competition being you know everyone else right and i said something that
when i was 19 was a huge epiphany for me so

56 00:55:00.000 --\> 00:56:00.000 i'm just going to share it with you um
i was dating a girl for two years uh in college and uh she was very very
obsessed with happiness it was like it was her major it was positive
psychology as her major and she was really obsessed with happiness and
she ended up being an amazing person you know what i mean but i think at
the base um a relatively sad person and um and i know that when we split
up and during that time because you know people rub off on you i i had
become really really interested in happiness how do i optimize for
happiness every does this make me happy like all this stuff and i think
happy's a horrible term i think it's a horrible term i think it poisons
so many people you know um and i remember you know because you you're
kind of emotional when you're younger and uh probably we're emotional or
older which is better hiding it but uh when we split up uh

57 00:56:00.000 --\> 00:57:00.000 she and i and i and i had these habits
of you know reading all this positivity stuff and blah blah and and i
just remember going to this place where i was just like happiness i'm
just gonna win and that became my new kind of operating standard i was
like happiness like i'm just gonna move i'm gonna take so much action
that i don't have to think about it i don't have to think i don't have
to be alone with my thoughts right i'm just gonna keep moving and i'm
just gonna keep getting better and i'm gonna keep making progress i
don't care if i'm happy and a weird thing happened um once i stopped
obsessing about happiness i actually think that i became more content
because the thing is is i was constantly measuring myself before that to
this what i would say you know what consider an unrealistic expectation
of the human existence and always finding myself deficient and so the
desire for happiness

58 00:57:00.000 --\> 00:58:00.000 creates an unfulfilled expectation
that makes me unhappy and disregarding happiness gives me permission to
not give a and if i happen to be happy or enjoy a moment or or find
fulfillment in my work then it becomes above my expectation and so i
have a positive experience and so uh one of the biggest things that i
have worked on and this is what i was talking to my 18 year old neighbor
about was the only reason that you were upset right now is because of a
fictitious expectation that you arbitrarily made up in your mind that
you are not reaching that you made up it's like if i said i wanted to
gain 20 pounds of muscle in seven days and then was upset that i didn't
gain 20 pounds of muscle in seven days because i worked out hard it's
the same thing right i was like you want to be a millionaire and you're
19. i was like do you feel like it's reasonable that you think that
after

59 00:58:00.000 --\> 00:59:00.000 two months of beginning your
entrepreneurial journey that you don't earn above the top one percent in
the united states like do you feel like it's reasonable that after eight
weeks of not being in school that you are not in the top one percent he
was like when you say it like that and i was like right but that's what
you're thinking you're thinking like that right and so this kind of goes
full circle with what i was saying earlier about having the extended
time horizon if we can extend our horizons then we decrease our own
expectations and by doing so we increase our fulfillment by default
because we expect less or nothing and while we increase our fulfillment
during the process we actually get better faster and that was what i
have him having him focus on is like why don't we say

60 00:59:00.000 --\> 01:00:00.000 what's a five-year goal that we
believe is reasonable and let's make it action based all right so
instead of i want to make four hundred thousand dollars a year in five
years why don't we say what skills will i need to have that would allow
me to make four hundred thousand dollars a year and then what actions
would i need to take to acquire those skills that would be reasonable
even with poor talent that i would achieve that and so for example we
determined that lead generation and sales if he wants to be an
entrepreneur would be valuable skills and so i said okay how do you
think that we can go about guaranteeing virtually that you will have
those skills and he's like well you know reps and i was like right so
how do we get reps in and how many reps do we feel like are reasonable
right i was like do you feel like if you make 25 000 calls this year
which is 100 calls a day um it's just 500 calls times 52 weeks right you
think you make 25 000 calls you'll be you'll be able to prospect and get
business he's like yeah i think after 25 000 that would be reasonable
like cool great so that's one year next year what

61 01:00:00.000 --\> 01:01:00.000 do we do do you think after if you
took you know you know 20 20 high ticket you know calls a week over 52
weeks you know a thousand high ticket phone call closes you would be
able to be at least proficient in sales he's like yeah i think i could
do that like okay we still have three years left on this on this
timeline but i can tell you right now if you can generate leads and you
can prospect for your own thing and you can sell at high ticket amounts
you can make 400 000 a year no problem but we're only two years in what
else we're going to need he's like well i don't know what i'm selling
i'm like that's great so then we have to develop a skill that's valuable
right and so at that point i was like i'm not going to make that goal
right now we're going to develop these first two and then after that
we're going to go develop the other ones and so um i hope these kind of
anecdotes about my my 18 year old neighbor are useful for you um it's
really it's honestly been one of the it's honestly been one of the most
rewarding things for me um because i feel like i get to live i can i can
help someone not you know suffer as much as i did during that process
and really shortcut the the whole path to

62 01:01:00.000 --\> 01:02:00.000 success um anyways i love you guys for
listening um this is i you know i appreciate those of you who find this
valuable uh this is really just my mental diary for myself so that i can
look back you know and maybe maybe hopefully you know in in decades to
come i'll i'll be among the billionaire bros who donates their their
life life's net worth to some meaningful cause uh and they'll be like
dude you gotta listen to her mosey's old stuff um and so hopefully
that's what these are so anyways um i appreciate you all uh i'm focusing
on simple i'm focusing on longer time horizons i'm focusing on finding
good people i'm focusing on getting them focused on just a handful of
things and just driving those and doing living a boring but steady
business life and trying to come into it with no expectations and um and
being pleasantly surprised about anything that happens and so that

63 01:02:00.000 --\> 01:03:00.000 is that is my outlook and i know that
the world has been rough my recommendation is to turn off all media um
it i turned off i removed all the media from my phone uh because i
thought it was especially overwhelming and uh i realized that my life
was really the same without all of the news so uh hopefully that's
valuable for you and i know that the news does not make me more money
and i also know that the news does not help me prepare for what is to
come independently because i think to myself well what would i do
differently than i'm currently doing if these things were to happen and
the answer is nothing which means it's not really providing me value and
if it's like well i need to stay informed if there's anything major i'll
find out i don't need to go surf the news to go do that so anyways 2021
i think it's gonna be a good year for a lot of us um i think a lot of
people grew a lot in 2020 and so as a result their businesses will grow
in 2021 like they personally grew i personally grew more in 2020 than i
did in any other year

64 01:03:00.000 --\> 01:04:00.000 and i think that we're gonna we're
gonna i think the result of that is going to show um in 2021 so uh
keeping amazing and uh keeping awesome lots of love and i will catch you
guys in the next vid bye \[Music\] \[Music\] \[Applause\] you
