Transcription
Look at my phone. On it are the business cheat codes that I now know at 38 that I wish I knew when I was 28. I've been in business for over 17 years. I've got 100 plus staff and I've done over $7.8 billion in sales. Each of these cheat codes build upon one another and make me over $100K per day and form my ultimate cheat sheet, which I'll give to you at the end of the video.
Starting with cheat code number one: If you want to buy things without looking at the price, then you need to be able to work without looking at the clock. If you are constantly looking at your work as work and that you're not getting lost in it, where you can work on hours on end without ever looking at the clock 'cause you are so immersed and passionate about what it is that you're doing, then it's always going to be a job and you're going to feel like you're always driving the car down the freeway with the handbrake cranked on. You need to have the ability to lose yourself in your craft.
Cheat code number two: Longer games have less players and you want to play in decades, not years. Everyone has a short-term focus and the most successful people in the world, they have a longer time horizon that they're working to. What does my business look like? What is the type of team that I would need to build in order to reach that goal in the next 10 years? And when you look at things with that long-term perspective, it completely changes the way that you attack those problems and the results are far more lucrative.
Cheat code number three: People buy value, not price. When I got started, I just thought, "Okay, people are always coming up to me with this price objection. If I just brought down the price, then people are going to buy with less resistance." And you realize that no, it doesn't matter what your price is, you're typically always going to get that as an objection. They're not buying the price of this product, they're buying the value that this unlocks. What is the problem that, what it is that I'm selling solves for that person? Because a transaction takes place where value exceeds price.
Cheat code number four: The hardest of steel is made in the hottest of fires. The problems never go away in business. When you get to 10 team members or 50 team members or 100 team members, the problems don't get smaller, you just need to get better. "I am going to be stronger. I am going to be harder. I am going to be better at solving these problems by bathing in this fire." I wear that as almost a badge of honor that I know all the fires that you have to walk through to get to where you are right now.
Cheat code number five: Build a business that you would want to be a customer of and don't chase trends. Your business, it needs to be an extension of your soul, otherwise you're never really going to fall in love with the game and you're never really going to be able to build a big business. You're always going to be limited to running a business that isn't a business and it is just a job.
Cheat code number six: Plan out your year in advance and not just the work stuff. What does the next quarter look like? What does quarter two look like? Quarter three? Quarter four? When am I going to be going away on holidays? When am I going to be delivering on this big project? When do I need to do all of these big boulders within your year? And it gives your whole year a rhythm and a cadence. It allows you to sprint really, really hard for 90 days and then come up for air, come back refreshed, ready to go with your eye on the prize. Are you still with me?
Cheat code number seven: When it comes to building a team and hiring staff, there are three vectors of value that form what it is that you're offering to people that are going to join your team. One of those vectors of value is salary. The other one is experience. And then the other is learning. And all of those form as an aggregate to the offer that it is that you're making to people that are going to come and join with you. And most people completely over-index on salary. If someone is only interested in the paycheck that you're going to write them to come and work with you, then it is not going to be long until somebody can offer them more money on LinkedIn and they're going to move. I'm not saying that salary is an important vector, but it is only one of three.
Cheat code number eight: A compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. And my litmus test for a good offer is, if the offer does not keep the founder up at night, then it simply isn't strong enough. But the first objection that most business owners have when it comes to an offer is like, "That is just too compelling. I can't afford to really offer that to my marketplace." But that's way too aggressive. However, there is an underbelly to having a weak offer, and it means that your customer acquisition cost is going to be much higher. If you have a shitty offer, you are already paying the price of having a weak offer. So instead, what you may as well do is have a very strong offer that might be a little bit less financially rewarding on the front end, but it brings more people through to your business that you can then sell on the back end.
Cheat code number nine: Comfort is the enemy of progress and there can be no progress without struggle. Literally, the only way to grow is to stretch yourself beyond what feels normal and what feels comfortable to you. The skills that got you to this level are not going to get you to the next level. So in order to get to the next level, you need to get new skills and typically to get those new skills, you need to step down and become a beginner in a brand new domain or a brand new skill that you don't have. And that whole exercise of doing that, constantly just ratcheting down to ratchet up, ratcheting down to ratchet up, is uncomfortable. But it's that discomfort that gives you the progress that you seek for in your business.
Cheat code number 10: Expect more from yourself than anybody ever could. I see too many business owners thinking, "Poor old me," or they're always looking for outs and little ways to just justify that they're working so hard and that all of these people are expecting so much of them. That is not an empowering mindset. You need to have the belief and expect more of yourself than anybody else in your business and in your life expects of you.
Okay, so now you know the first 10. Let me just tell you that I paid a lot for these next ones.
Cheat code number 11: Average is the enemy. That's an average landing page, that's an average offer or VSL or email or website or piece of copy. Nothing amazing happens in average. You want to look at what the normal things are that people are doing in your market and think about how do you dial this up to full blast and take it to the absolute extreme, because that's where all the dividends are paid.
Cheat code number 12: Don't ask somebody to buy until they are already sold. It is marketing's job to make sales easy. And if you're on sales calls all the time and you're constantly answering the same old objection, that means that your marketing isn't strong enough. In baseball, they have a term, "Don't swing at anything ugly." And it's the same thing in sales. You want to make sure that your funnels are warming up that cold traffic and they're sifting, sorting, and siphoning and educating your marketplace to pepper and preempt all of those objections and handle them in the marketing stage so the sales come easy.
This next one is super spicy. Cheat code number 13: Everything is your fault. There's some problem in my business. I never look at some outside source as to why that problem has occurred. I need to take extreme ownership of that problem as an individual to know that I haven't trained my team enough, I haven't hired the right people, I haven't set the expectations of what it is that I'm looking for in a clear way that would make my team be able to execute and deliver on the outcome that it is we're trying to get to. Most business owners just only want to take all of their success and they'll be like, "Yeah, that's all a result of me." And they never want to look at all the problems in their business and go, "Yeah, that is my fault."
Cheat code number 14: Just focus on the creative. When I first got started with running ads online, I thought that all of the growth in my business lay in some new Facebook ads course, some account structure, some secret optimizing of the pixel to link in with AI that would unlock all of this cash that would just miraculously fall down from the skies and I would be blessed by the internet gods. This is a fallacy and it is a complete false error and it's the shit that is peddled to you by these gurus out there trying to make you buy their $2,000 Facebook ads course. None of that shit matters. Well, 90% of that shit doesn't matter. The creative is going to be the thing that matters. The creative is going to be the thing of how you actually target people. It's the messaging. You do not want to focus on the technology, you want to focus on the psychology.
Cheat code number 15: Don't pay for something with time when you could pay for it with money. Time is the most expensive currency that it is that you have because you can never ever get more of it. So if you have the ability to be able to pay a consultant or pay somebody to buy that time, it is far cheaper to go out and buy that time using money and it allows you to compress decades into days.
Cheat code number 16: Partner your activities with days and say no to absolutely everything else. I have split-tested so many different calendars and optimizations and workflows and the Pomodoro method. Nothing works better than batching certain activities that you have to do with certain days. And the days that I tried to sprinkle in any of the stuff that was like more problem-solving with the creative stuff, it was just an absolute no-go. What I try to do now is make sure the first half of every single day is just the time that I need to do to move those big creative boulders up the hill. And then I try to block out Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The only thing I do on those days is deep work. And I schedule all of my shallow work, the emails, the admin, the interviews, the podcast, on the back end of two days per week.
Cheat code number 17: 80% of copywriting is knowing what to say and 20% is how to say it. When I first got started in copywriting and I figured out, "Oh my God, I can put words on a screen and make people pull out their credit card and buy things off me," I got obsessed. It's this headline complex and this is the 18-point checklist that I need to have in all of my headlines and my leading copy. And then you realize very, very quickly that's not where the winning is done. The winning is done in the research, understanding your prospect better than anyone else in your market, literally stalking on these people, therefore you can articulate their problem better than anyone else in your market.
Cheat code number 18: One good hook is worth more than a thousand words of the most masterful crafted copy. Because if you can't hook somebody's attention in this chaotic environment that we operate in on the internet, then it does not matter how strong the rest of your copy is or how good your offer is or even what price point that you're selling at. If you don't have the ability to hook them, then you're never ever going to be able to make any sales.
Cheat code number 19: Whenever you're launching a new service, a new offer, a new product, first validate the front end. So to run a very small test, one week, 30-day test, if there is an appetite for whatever it is that you plan on launching. Once you've done that exercise and you know, "Okay, this has got legs," spend 10 times more than you think is required on effort, time, resources in order to create an exceptional product. And if you do that, no one will ever be able to compete with you.
Which brings us to cheat code number 20: Once you've completed 90% of the work, you are halfway there. This is a Japanese proverb and it couldn't be more true. Whenever you're working on a project, it takes an enormous amount of work to get something to a 90% completion. But then all the greatness lies in being able to take that from 90% up to 100%. Because so few people are willing to labor through that excruciating pain that is required to work on a project. But that is the type of product that is remarkable, that people buy and they tell their friends about. "This is incredible! Like, you have to go and buy this now." That is something that is priceless in business, to create something that is so exceptional that people can't help but to make a remark about.
I hope you're picking up what I'm putting down, because these next 10 cheat codes made me over $100 million and could make you millions.
Cheat code number 21: And this one's going to rustle some feathers. Most people in business understand that they need to go out there at some stage and they need to hire help. But what I have seen in a lot of business owners is that they're not willing to hire that same help for their home. If you can get a cleaner to come into your house for cheaper than what your effective hourly rate is, it is not costing you the money to hire that cleaner. That cleaner is going to cost me $80 an hour, say, and let's just say that you make $200 an hour as your effective rate. That means that every time that you clean your house, that it is costing you $120 because you could have got somebody to come in and do that for $80. And that doesn't stop just with cleaning, comes with gardeners, cooks, car washers, the whole shebang.
Cheat code number 22: Compete on economics and not on marketing. People can rip your funnel in an hour. They can steal all your copy. They can take your design. How do I know this? Thousands of people do this to me every single month. And if that is your only advantage in you growing your business, then you are going to have a very hard life. You want to build a business that has a moat around it because of the economic model that you have created, the amount of team members that you've got, the service delivery that you can provide your customers so that they remain with you for many, many months or many, many years beyond what they stay with your competitors with. That's the economic advantage that allows you to then spend more money to acquire a customer because you're competing on the economics. You make way more money from each of your customers because you provide an exceptional service to them and therefore they stay with you for longer periods of time.
Cheat code number 23: Culture isn't just important, it is everything. As you scale up your business, your ability to be able to keep that talent density very, very high and also have an incredible culture that people love to come in, that is going to be the thing that allows you to attract the best people and have them come in and be thrilled to rock up and work with you every single day and have people that are going to want to work with you for many, many years to come. The number one thing that drives culture is to have a culture of winning. Because if you have bean bags and pizza and table tennis, but you're on a losing team and you never are working on exciting projects, people do not want to work at companies that aren't winning.
This next one saved my business. Cheat code number 24: If the team member can leave your business and they can steal your customers and they can set up a business that legitimately puts a threat on the livelihood of your business, then you don't have a business. You are just a highly paid consultant. You need to have a business that is not just an idea that you can just go and steal. It needs to be a big operation and there needs to be a lot of complexity with the way that that system runs to be able to deliver value to the marketplace.
Which brings us perfectly to cheat code number 25: Ideas are cheap, execution is where the fortunes are made. Most people think that they just need the best idea, an idea to launch a new product or a new service or an idea for a business in general. Everybody's got an idea. If you don't have a great sense of pride of being able to execute a business model or an idea out there in the marketplace better than anybody else, then it's always going to feel like a chore to you. Things that feel like a chore are a chore and you don't enjoy doing them and you never get good at them and then you get your ass handed to you by somebody who does.
Cheat code number 26: You can teach hard skills, but you can't teach soft skills. Do not try and find somebody and think, "Wow, this person, they've really got the skills to do the job, but they're an asshole. Maybe I can just train them not to be an asshole. Maybe I can just fix all that because they're so good at the skills." No, no, no, no, no. You can teach them the skills. You can train that the character, the values that people live, they're the things that you can't train. Look for people that have incredible sense of integrity and they have strong alignment to your values as a business, even if they are the less skilled person, and teach them the hard skills.
Which brings us nicely to cheat code number 27: Hire missionaries and not mercenaries. Mercenaries have a lust for making money. It's the thing that they place at the very, very top of their value chain. Missionaries, they care about creating meaning. They want to work on projects. They want to be a part of something. They want to constantly be stimulated by big creative endeavors that they're doing and they want to work in an environment where they're free to do their best work.
Cheat code number 28: 90% of the time, volume is the answer. When people aren't seeing the success that it is that they want to, it's simply because they're not doing more of the actions that they know that they need to be doing. And instead, they're looking at some new thing that they need to do at a lower volume than just taking the core fundamentals and cranking that up.
Cheat code number 29: Never not have a split test running. Split test is the easiest way to increase your profits by 10%, 20%, 30%. If you're running a split test on an opt-in page or any landing page of any endeavor and you're able to increase the conversion rate by 10%, 20%, 30%, which is all very, very doable from a split test, that is literally dramatically increasing the profitability of all of your business because everything stems from that. You're able to reduce your customer acquisition cost by 30%, you are adding that 30% to your bottom line of your business.
Cheat code number 30: Whenever you're about to walk into a room, think about how you can light it up. So whether you're walking home and you're returning to your kids or your family or your wife, before you walk in the door, close your eyes, take a breath, think about all the things that you like about that person, and then just walk into that house with a bit of a pep in your step, with a bit of energy. That is the greatest equalizer. It doesn't cost you any more to do, but it will really add a lot of value to everybody else in your life.
But none of these matter unless you apply these last eight.
Cheat code number 31: Don't make ads, create campaigns. And you want to do it in sprints. So what do I mean by that? Well, instead of sitting down and thinking about, "Okay, I have to create a new ad," what is a whole campaign that I can create? What does my campaign look like for the next 90 days? And really sit down and think about how many individual ads that you can get from one campaign. You can shoot multiple hooks for the same ad. And instead of just launching them out into the market as one big promo, you want to take all of the assets from that campaign and then you want to drip feed them out over 90 days. And you want to do it in sprints rather than is constantly being on the treadmill.
Cheat code number 32: You do not need any more data. You already know what to do. Just fucking do it. You don't need to go and validate anything else. You already know what needs to be done. Just go out there and do the boring work.
Cheat code number 33: Add a big benefit and a huge amount of intrigue to every single ad that you create. Nothing drives the performance more than having the big benefit and a massive amount of intrigue.
Cheat code number 34: You do not need cheaper traffic, you need a better funnel and economics. People obsess, "Where do I go and get the cheapest clicks? I can't spend six bucks a click." But that's just too much money. It's not too much money, it's too much money for your shitty funnel. You want to spend 80% of your time focusing on how to increase the lifetime value of a customer and 20% of your time in how you can reduce your customer acquisition cost.
Cheat code number 35: When it comes to marketing, never underestimate how stupid people are. Do not take for granted that people are going to know what it is that you're asking them to do, what the next step is, where they should click, when they should book in. You need to be extremely explicit in your instructions to actually maximize the conversion rate at every step of the funnel.
Cheat code number 36: People that you love and that you trust will hurt you. They will do bad things to you, but you must never act in malice. You should not even give these people the time of day. Yes, it's going to be disappointing. Yes, you're going to be let down. But those emotions will pass. Just focus on winning and let the winning do the talking.
Cheat code number 37: You want to buy a good pair of shoes and a good mattress because when you're not in one, you're in the other.
And the final cheat code number 38: Most people know what to do, but don't do what they know. Don't go seeking for answers to problems that you don't even have in your business right now. I used to obsess over wanting to upskill and read books and learn all of these things to arm myself with the information that when I inevitably come across that problem, that I will have that information and that I would be able to solve that problem. When the reality of it is, I already had information to problems that I hadn't solved in my business. And instead of focusing on solving those problems within my business, I tried to go out there and get skills to problems that did not even exist. Instead, you want to execute on the boring fundamentals better than any of the competition and you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams.
And all of these cheat codes for my master cheat sheet, which you can download on the link in the description. Like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next one.