https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbDFCbpmI6w

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 what's going on everyone happy whatever
day it is that you are watching this um i get messages all the time all
the time um and comments about what are your favorite books and maybe in
another video or podcast i will do uh do an exploratory you know what i
mean of the the books that have been most influential but if i'm being
honest uh i didn't really start reading a ton until after i had made a
lot a lot of you know a relatively high amount of money right and uh and
i started reading when i had more time right so so it would be kind of
backwards for me to say hey these are the things that created my success
when in reality i feel like i started reading when i had the time and be
like ah this is really interesting and so um i think that to to kind of
make this story full circle before i even started my first business i
was definitely a seeker uh which is like you're just looking for
something you're searching for something that's because you just realize
that something's wrong with your life right and that's kind of how i
felt when i had my my consulting job which is what i took after college

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 and during that time period i read all
the time and i remember realizing after six or 12 months of just reading
book after book after book of self-help and you know personal
development and like all that kind of stuff that my life was literally
the same and i remember this was like kind of like a jarring moment for
me because i just sat there i finished a book and then i thought to
myself and it was like the happiness advantage or some you know whatever
right and i was like uh my life is not any different than it was before
i started reading these books and so i thought about it for a while and
i also realized that half the books contradicted each other and i was
like man this is really difficult and so what i ended up my conclusion
was i wouldn't read a book unless i executed everything in the book and
so what ended up happening next was i became very very selective about
what books i would read because i would i wouldn't get another book
until i have felt like i had executed that and so the result of that was
instead of reading lots of books i started reading a handful of books a
lot of times and so that was um really transformational for me i

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 think the first book that i read a lot
of times was how to make friends and influence people and i still think
to this day if you just did nothing else in business but just practiced
what is in that book you would be phenomenally successful like it's you
know to me like if you just did the things that are in that book you'd
be phenomenally successful um but that's kind of more like personal you
know personal traits and character traits and whatnot which i think are
very important for you know growing developing but in terms of skills
right and i would say the number one you know number one and number two
things that i get asked about are like hey how did you develop your
skill of marketing and how did you develop your scale of sales and truth
be told i never did a single sales training um i never read a single
sales book uh before i started selling and so that's i wish i had like a
really sexy answer for you but i don't um i just started selling and i
didn't even know that what i was doing was selling i was just like how
do i get people to sign up for my gym and give me money like i didn't
even know that term was sales at the time i was just like i have to get
them to give me money and so um i think a lot of people spend

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 way too much time in the like the
liberation stage and like they're trying to there you spend all your
effort in the i would say like productive procrastination space of just
like thinking you're getting better but you would get so much better
just doing it right and so only like and people now respect what i have
to say about sales because i've sold so much not because of how many
books i've read on sales right and so um i think that once i was
considered very good at sales i had you know i was managing multiple
sales teams and we were doing you know a few hundred thousand dollars a
month that is the first time i bought a sales product like think about
that and i went through it i was like oh this is good stuff you know
like there's there's stuff in here that we can use like neat but like i
don't think it fundamentally changed how good i was at selling um and i
think that that's because so much of selling is about conviction it's
about how much you believe in the product more so than like the the judo
chops right it's about how much you care about the prospect and how much
you hear about the pro and convince that the product will help them
because if you truly talk from a space of genuine care like genuine care
about a prospect you won't convince them to do something

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 that they shouldn't do and if you
genuinely believe that your product or service is going to help people
then making the sales very easy because it's like i really care about
you and i really know that this product works and so let me just like
help you connect these two dots and so that's like ultimately like that
is what selling is and should be the problem is most people don't
believe in their product and they don't care about their prospects right
and so because of that they come into all this cognitive dissonance
meaning like they believe themselves to be good people but at the same
time they need to make money and then those two things become at odds
and that becomes really difficult to sell because now you're you're
faced with a moral obligation um to like your family you know to try and
provide and then against yourself to be ethical right and that becomes
really hard for people that's why a lot of sales guys get burned out
when they find out more about whatever they're selling and so that's why
a lot of times sales guys will start start out hot and then crash just
because they find out what they were selling with the what they were
sold to sell is actually not what it really is cracked up to be and then
once they find that out then all of a sudden um that's that's why in my
belief there's way more churn in sales people than would otherwise be
necessary if they were all selling something they

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 believed in right so back to the main
point which is what do i do if i don't like if i have no way of you know
practicing well i mean honestly when i when i want to do something what
i do is i buy a course about how to do something and then i follow the
course and do it so if i wanted to make a webinar then i bought a course
on making webinar and then i followed the course to make the webinar and
so i learned the skill while i was going through the course i don't
think there's a lot of productive time and usage in in learning stuff
for the sake of learning like it's like and i don't even i would even
make the argument that you don't even truly learn it until you've
applied it and so like how do you know if you read six books on sales
and they have different strategies which one is is the right one because
you've never tested it in the battlefield right it doesn't make any
sense and so um like the same thing with marketing i never i never
bought a copywriting course i never bought any courses on how to build
landing pages i never bought any courses on how to run ads the only
thing i did was i spent um i

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 spent money one on one to get someone
to train me literally how to click to run ads for my gym but i learned a
little bit i learned enough on my own and so that's the thing is like i
think there's definitely a space for one-on-one training i think the
biggest gains i've made have been from investing in people who are above
me to break my beliefs about what was possible because the people were
above you most of times are not going to like they're not going to hold
your hand and teach you how to write copy this is not going to happen i
mean like they might edit you know copy you have if you have like a
one-on-one relationship something like that but for the most part like
it's going to be up to you to go acquire those skills and most of the
time acquiring those skills comes from doing them which means you're
going to suck for a while and i think just most people aren't aren't
willing to try because they think that if they are perfect they'll
somehow not fail the first time which is stupid because even when you're
really good you're going to fail so it's just people like
procrastinating and reading books about something that they haven't done
is a productive way of feeling accomplished without actually doing
anything and so um i say all this to say for the many people who who ask
me what are my favorite books on

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 sales and marketing my favorite book on
sales is to get out there and start selling right because if you start
selling and then read a book on sales it will make far more sense to you
than trying to read a book on sales before you start selling because you
won't even know what they're talking about right same thing with
marketing right like if you if you want to go and learn about marketing
the best thing to do is start you know learn how to run an ad you run an
ad to a landing page and then start getting some people who give you
their contact information and then pick up the phone and call them like
you know what i mean and the easiest thing to do in my opinion is the
advice that i got from ezra firestone years ago which is give yourself a
slush fund right give yourself a learning budget which is how much am i
willing to quote blow this month on failure so i can learn the skills
faster and whatever that percentage is might be ten percent of what you
make every month maybe five percent it might be 25 it just depends on
who you are and how stable your income is but if you just say i'm
willing to give 500 a month to learning the skill then you don't have
this like emotional attachment to whether or not you crush it your first
time because you're seeing this 500 a month investment

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 is truly that an investment in your
education your investment in trial and error rather than uh you know
like i bought this question copywriting i'm not a millionaire what's
wrong right when in reality you just have to get out there and start
doing it so um anywho that's my that is my two cents i i made most of my
money before i started reading a lot of books i would say like seriously
i read maybe 30 books before we you know were deca millionaires you know
what i mean um and so i wish i had something better for you but i i
focus most of my time on doing and applying and when i start applying
then i will go read for specific solutions to a bottleneck that i have
rather than trying to learn an amorphous topic by reading words from
multiple books and trying to get perspectives different angles on
problems i've never even encountered yet right i think it's much better
to encounter the problems than start seeking the solutions than trying
to cover every solution to every problem before you've even started the
race so anyways hope you found that valuable hope that made sense lots
of love keeping awesome and i'll catch you guys soon bye
