Luke Belmar's Guide To Making Money Blew My Mind

If you can do these three things, you assure yourself the ability to make money. I built 19 companies and invested in 78 startups. That isn't a thing I don't know about business, and I've managed to get Luke Belmont on today to teach you what he knows: how to escape the 9 to 5, how money works, and how he's making millions. And all you need to do is sit down and listen for 5 minutes. And if you can't do that, you're probably not going to make it. So, L, what are we going to learn today? How to guarantee yourself the ability to make more money. I like that. That's down. I think it's, uh, where we need to start. You know, many times people say, "Hey, fix different problems in your life." But if you don't fix your financial problems, you don't have to be a multi-millionaire. But if you don't fix your financial problems, you don't have the mind space in order to work on other areas of your life. The reason you struggle with your finances, and that affects your marriage, is because you're focused on the finances. You don't have enough time to focus on your relationship. The issue isn't the relationship. You have to be able to understand that in the game of life, money isn't important. Not this idea of absorbent wealth, but enough for you to be able to what? Have mental real estate and freedom to then work on other areas of your life.

So, we talk about business, but business isn't the only way to make money. That's what most people don't understand. And business doesn't mean you have to go and hire employees and have huge staff and or have an office. Business is just the ability to transact from one person to the other, or from one business to the other. So the question is, am I able to transact? The answer to that is yes. Everybody can transact. And you don't have to do it necessarily in person. So this idea of selling, how people naturally talk about, "You have to be good at sales." You can throw that out the window. We're not even going to talk about that because we live in a digital era as well.

So I call it the trifecta of money: your ability to guarantee money coming in in perpetuity. The first one is understanding that any that you do needs to be in high demand. Any type of endeavor that you take on needs to be in high demand. If you want to, for example, have a gardening business, it would be very foolish for you to have it in Manhattan because the demand for it is not going to be the same as if you have outdoor, let's say, Tennessee, or here in the outskirts of London where there's a lot of, what? Demand. So whatever you touch needs to be in high demand. I see people being like, "Hey, I want to start an application. I want to start the next Uber. I want to have these illusions of wealth." But they're actually traps because they're not in high demand, or they are not in the second place, which is super important. You have high demand, and then up north, which is going to be my main priority, is you need to be the best. And that's where most people get caught up. Your ability to do something with the best of your abilities will determine whether you're going to be hired or not. Why? Because there's going to be competition. Where there's demand, there's competition. And you don't want to be hired for being the cheapest. You want to be hired for being the best. So most people come into a business and they don't work on their skills. They don't polish their, their the business model. They don't enhance the business model. They don't think about what are the verticals that allow me to do this in a better way? So, for example, back to very essential, basic businesses: plumbing, electrician, homeschool teacher. All these things, how can you do it better than your competition? High demand, your skill set, and then finally, it needs to be, we'll call it, irreplaceable. Irreplaceable. You need to be irreplaceable. We are entering an era right now where AI and social media and automation is going to start quickly taking jobs. So why would I go into copywriting when any business in the next 12 months could replace me? I say that about people becoming doctors, you know, robotics and AI working together. So you need to also, this one's an alarming one, because you need to be irreplaceable in what you do. So when we, we're starting communities, we understand the, what? Irreplaceable factor of in-person relationships. AI can't replace that. So you need to be able to build on a solid foundation. You need to be in demand. You need to be irreplaceable. And then you need to be the best at what you do. If you can do these three things, you assure yourself the ability to make money. And I don't want to give a specific business model because it applies to anything that you do. It can even apply to your job. So why would you get a job at McDonald's that anybody can do when there's no skill attached to it? You'll get paid in proportion to what the difficulty of the problems that you solve. So if you solve better problems, you'll get paid in proportion to that. So you don't necessarily need to go out of your way and start a business. You just need to get a job that is in high demand, that not a lot of people can do, be the best at it, and make sure that you can't be replaced. We saw this during the whole metaverse kind of experience where Facebook rebranded to Meta. They were hiring engineers and paying them 50% on top of whatever it is that they were usually getting because they were irreplaceable. And Google would come and be like, "Hey, we'll hire you for an extra 30%." And because they're irreplaceable pieces, they secured their ability to transact because all you're doing as an employee is you're selling your to a business, whether you believe it or not. You're kind of an entrepreneur. You've just labeled it differently with the W2 or whatever it is that you have in the paperwork, depending on your country. But if you're the best at what you do, which this is fully in your control, select something that's in high demand by observing the marketplace, oops, and then finally, be irreplaceable in any endeavor, and you can secure yourself the ability to make money in perpetuity.

So, people are listening to this, so I actually totally understand this. But I'm thinking for people that won't, they might be asking themselves, "Well, what's not going to be replaceable?" Maybe we could get into that today. What high demand actually means? Because you can create demand. I mean, Prime, for example, that drink wasn't in demand until they made it in demand. They partly did it through scarcity, right? So that we could teach people a little bit about how to become high demand. What high demand means. And then the best for me is a really interesting thing because sometimes, like, the iPhone is not the best product, but actually Samsung Android is a better product. But people still want the iPhone. So it's interesting because if you can get the high demand, you can almost out some of these things. Yes, but this is also considering that best doesn't necessarily mean tech. Best can also have to do with convenience. People buy the iPhone because of the iMessage. Yeah, and they also, they also, they also buy it's a package. Yes, it's the experience of the entire thing. The other side of it, for people that might be listening that probably are working in McDonald's, here's the irony. I've hired people who were brilliant waitresses in a restaurant. Restaurant. If they're, if they're the best in the restaurant, they're looking after customers, they're really attentive, they're polite, they're cheerful, whatever it is, they're using all their skills, they're being the best. I'm like, "Wow, I would like that person to come and work with me." So you might be the best in McDonald's, and that will give you opportunity, right? So being the best in general, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, even if you're in that [ __ ] job, will give you opportunities. Yes. So people need to learn to be the best. So can we break down these things?

Yes. I mean, there's, there's a couple of things. For example, high demand. So there's two things with high demand, right? You look at trends, and then you look at narratives. So with trends, it's these small explosions, right? You look at a fidget spinner. You know, that's a high demand trend. Bring it back to us by mentioning it, right? Exactly. Spin a link down below. Affiliate link. Uh, so you have these trends, right? You have these small little bursts. We see them in social media now more than ever. These trends last two, five, maybe 15 days. People, for example, Donald Trump got shot. People started drop-shipping the shirt of him pumping the fist. It lasted maybe three days. But I saw a couple guys making $100,000 in 48 hours because it was what? A trend that was in high demand. So if you want to focus on this, this is like fast money. A pair of sneakers that Travis Scott releases that are private. That's a trend. You don't know if he's going to be around in 10 years. You do a quick flip, sell it for a couple hundred extra. Practice. It's a great practice. But you find something that's in high demand based off of trends. What I like to do is narratives, long-term plays. So what is a narrative? A narrative for me is AI is going to replace digital experiences, therefore people are going to crave physical experiences. So that, to me, is a long-term narrative that makes me operate differently. Initially, when you're trying to hustle and make your first money, you want to be on the trends. You want to be the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, till you build up your cash flow. Eventually, you want to get into your narratives, your long-term plays. When people are like, "You know what? Back in the day, you know, digital taxis and the ability to just order a taxi through an application." That's a long-term thought. If you get into that, you're expending time, energy, resources. And narratives, believe it or not, are also riskier because it's you trying to predict the future. With the trends, you're acting upon the present moment. So this is usually how I think about demand. Now, you can create it artificially if you're on the marketing side. You can create trends and you can create narratives. We can go into distribution, we can go into hiring, uh, key opinion leaders, we can go into influencing social media, we can go into distributing your clips. There's many ways to fabricate demand. And the second one is, the narratives are a little bit more difficult because narratives tend to take longer time to play out. They're longer transitions. So these in the trading world, you would consider trends kind of like your day trading plays, and your narratives are kind of like your long-term plays. Like you buy Nvidia, understanding that the chips in processing is going to be something valuable in the future, and 20 years later, skyrockets. So that's a long-term narrative. The trend is, look at all the other AI stocks that are now pumping because of Nvidia. Do they deserve to pump? No, but it's part of the trend. Same thing with crypto, right? Does it operate on narrative? Bitcoin may operate on the narrative of, "Hey, it's fair money, it's open ledger." But inside of crypto, you have trends like memecoins. Are memecoins and Bitcoin correlated? No, but it's a trend that now happens because of the macro narrative. So if you understand narratives and you understand trends, you can assure yourself to make money because where attention goes, money flows. We know that. So you have to go where the demand is. So that's breaking down demand.

Now, when it comes to being the best, how I categorize the best is you have your, your, what you call your variables, and then your fixed best. Your variables are going to be depending on the specific job. So actual, like hard skill type things. Are you the fastest? Are you the most resilient? Things of this nature. Do you know the skill set in the profession well? And then you have your fixed, which is something that every person should develop. Do you show up on time? Do you show up with a good attitude? Are you trustworthy? Are you reliable? These are your fixed variables that nothing can basically waver, regardless of your job. These are the essentials, which is your character, your attitude, the intrinsic things of how people perceive you. And then you have your variable kind of attributes, which is in accordance to the job. So mentioning them, let's say I mentioned e-commerce. Well, I need to be the best in understanding supply chain. I need the best in understanding cash flow management. I need the best in running Facebook ads. I need the best in product research. Do I have to do that later on? No, you can eventually hire people to do it. But the reason you want to know it is because you want to know every aspect of your business. And the business basically grows alongside you. So the better you become, believe it or not, the better the business will be because the business only reflects you. There's a hack around this as well, which I, I've discovered. Is let's say I'm, I'm personally not very good at accounts. That side of business. I'm good at marketing, not good at accounts. So if I want the best, and I want to be the best, I do co-founder businesses. So when I start a business, I get that, that person in as a co-founder. Doesn't have to cost me any money to bring them in. So people listening don't have any money. You get a co-founder, but you get that best in-house from day one. So you don't have to go and learn accounts if that's something you're not good at, right? But you, you need to be A-players in your business. This is partly it too, right? And you don't, and you don't need many people. That's what most people don't understand. You can do a lot more damage with 300 Spartans, right? So what you need to do is find those individuals that cover the bases that are essential for a business to succeed that you can't cover. And if you are falling under the delusion that you can cover everything, then that's a fallacy. Maybe in the next couple years, when AI can become the best co-pilot partner and you don't have to show out equity or sweat equity to anybody, that future may come. We'll see billion-dollar unicorns by single. It's going to be more competitive at that point too. So you, so, but right now, we live in a situation where, once again, you have your variables. If you can't build them out, make sure you find somebody that can cover those bases. But then you have your fixed variables, which is the things that are undisputed, that people intrinsically value and consider you, uh, the best at or not. Can be like leadership. Are you a good leader? Like, are you somebody that's accountable? These are skills that matter more than the other because you can train the other things. These things come from inside. And then irreplaceable. It talks, it comes back down to trends and narratives. You need to look at, is e-commerce, me selling on Amazon, the most ideal thing? Yes or no? Why should I be selling on Shopify? What's my thesis? And different people do business differently because they have different understandings of trends and narratives. So just make sure you're irreplaceable. Pick something. Do something that gives you longevity. You don't want to be restarting a new business every two years. You want to take your time and build something that's going to be on a solid foundation, irreplaceable, undisputable, and that you're not going to have to be competing with robots that are going to be really cheap, cost-efficient, and working 24/7. You need to understand that you got to be playing the future game because the world is accelerating. There's something called Moore's Law. And Moore's Law dictates, right? We kind of have like the exponential growth curve. It's about technology, right? And Moore's Law dictates that technology every two years gets twice as powerful at half the cost. And it only gets more exponential. So you start with the telegram. Oh, well, how expensive is it to transfer a message? Well, we got to set up poles all throughout the Midwest. And okay, well, what's next? Is the radio? Well, what's next? Is the TV? Well, what's next? Is the phone? What was next? [ __ ] implants in your head, telepathic communication. Like exponential curve. So you need to make sure that whatever you're tapping into, your understanding that this exponential curve is growing, whether you like it or not. And that's what I tell people is the rules of the game are the rules of the game. You're on the board. The rules are set. If you understand how to play it, you're going to play it. The world doesn't work based off of what you want. The world just is, and you have to play the game.

The irreplaceable bit, I think, is the hardest thing for people to grasp. Um, I'd like to go deeper on on the other two subjects. But irreplaceable, like, I don't think I'm irreplaceable. Okay? So as an individual, I've got social media presence. But who am I? I'm, I'm easily replaced. It's an interesting problem. I think maybe using myself as an example. Okay, I've got 8 million followers online. So I built up an economic moat. Brands will want to use my service. But I'm not irreplaceable. There's other people out there that can help, for example, promote a brand. But I think where you become irreplaceable, maybe you can define it better than this, but like, if you're the best at something, and people, so for example, people like working with you, and you're good at it, they won't want to replace you. A reputation. Reputation, right? I think I think that's something that people wonder when they're listening. "How do I make myself irreplaceable?" I actually think that reputation, in particular, is totally underrated as a tool to become irreplaceable. Like, there's plenty of people out there that could learn from many other people. But if you become, uh, good at the best at something, I think this best thing is the key to it all. Because I also think the best thing, it links to what school doesn't teach you. And I know we're both anti the school system. I really think the school systems let a lot of people down because what the school system says is, "You're not good at these things, practice them more." But the one thing you are good at, it's okay, well, you're okay at that, so don't worry about it. You should double down on the thing that you're good at and get even become the best at it. Yes. So back to your point here, like, a lot of people are not making themselves irreplaceable because they're not doubling down on what they're actually good at. They're being told what they're not good at and wasting too much time on that stuff. Do you think? I agree fully. And then you add to that the fear of failure, right? So we need to define risk and we need to define reward. Because what people don't seem to understand, if they're trying to make money, is that these things are something that you have to input and do before the money comes. Money is a lagging indicator of your ability to master these three areas. And money will come. You don't plant a seed and just wait for it and it's going to grow the next day. You, if you have the paycheck mindset, you're not going to be able to be the best at. You get addicted to being average. I, I, I just really want, uh, for people to remember the reputation because, you know, a lot of people are going for the fast money and maybe in trends, they do things that will hurt their reputation. I agree, which eventually will mean that they are replaced, not irreplaceable. People can't work with you because you, you're not thinking long-term. Yes. And so, um, in the irreplaceable bit, let's talk trends for a second. Like, I, I think about what's happening in the future of AI. And I think, I mean, the line, this isn't my line, but I like it, which is like, AI is not going to take your job. Someone using AI is. So what do you think if people are listening, are there potentially, uh, proof? I used to say recession-proof, but now AI-proof. You know what? What do you think? In the short term, the most AI-proof thing that you can have is money, right? So figure out how to how to make money. I know that sounds crazy. No, no, you're talking about frankly, every government, every big business has cash reserves right now. Businesses have the most amount of cash reserves they've ever had because they're waiting for something big to happen like AI and take destroy their businesses. Cash. I actually think that's a good point. So people, you need to have your, you need to have money. So you need to focus on what's going to make you money without compromising your reputation, without disabling your ability to be irreplaceable in the future, whether it's because of reputation or you do something dumb, who knows, whatever. The point is, cash is extremely important. The second thing that's important is your connections, because in the future, what's going to matter is who knows you and who likes you, because AI is going to automate most of our human experiences. So if you fall under a standardized system, which most people will fall under a standardized system, you're going to be screwed. Mhm. If, when social credit scores come out, and you have to abide by them, and if you say something on social media that's not allowed about the school system, well, then you can't drive X amount of miles out of your. Well, you need this. This is already happening in China, by the way. I lived in Asia for 20 years. It's already, if you cross the road when the light is red, you lose a point. And you get 10 points, you get banned from driving. Yeah, it's crazy. So this is coming. So, so I'm thinking in the future, right? I'm thinking positioning yourself in the future, who you know, but not just who you know, but who knows you and who likes you. So it goes back to reputation. Yes. Right? Reputation precedes everything. Your reputation needs to be unassailable. Then you need to have money. Why do you want money? Because when you have money, you can't be bought. Mhm. You can't be bought. They can't stop you because you don't need that money. And you don't need a lot of it. You need enough to be able to have that mental space, freedom to do.

How much do you think people need to try and get? So the first thing is, one thing is telling is, is people understanding that most of their problems in life are self-induced. So the amount of money that you're spending on rent is because you chose to spend. The amount of money that you're spending on food or eating out or bad habits. That money that you spend was your choice. So first of all, is get rid of this. Is self-sabotage you're talking about here? Yeah. Get rid of spelling that right? Leaks in the boat. People, what people need to check on themselves. Like the list for the people to folks listening to understand what they need to do to make sure they don't fall into these traps. We call small L's. The small losses that you credit every single day. The waking up late, the eating that extra bag of chips, that spending that money on that t-shirt that's $50 that you don't [ __ ] need because you already have nine shirts. Mhm. And you don't need 12. You've been tricked to buy that stuff most of the time. So it's the small L's. It's the death by a thousand paper cuts. It's the small jabs that you think are irreversible mistakes, but they're not because they compound like credit card debt. So small L's, you need to be able to take over your small L's. Most people think about the big stuff, but life is what? A cumulative of small decisions. You're making me quite emotional about this because I see this in people every single day that I ask what their dream is. They're not doing their dreams because they've had too many of these. Got themselves into debt, car debt, mortgage, all these things. They can't do what they love because they've done this to themselves 100 times. They're stuck.

So now, what's next? This is a big one because we're talking mindset now. Because we're talking self-sabotage. Grace. Hey, it's how you interact with yourself. Because if you take small L's, you're going to have an attribute, and we'll tie it back to we're talking about failure. An attribute that you're a loser. Mhm. But taking small L's doesn't mean you're a loser. If you treat yourself with grace, knowing that this is the first time you've played the game. Mhm. So if you understand it's the first time you've played the game, then you're going to treat yourself differently. Why is it that people don't treat themselves with grace? Is because when failure enters a situation, and this is what you get graded on, H, you get humiliated. Mhm. You get put in the back of the class. They make you repeat and go with younger kids, making you feel stupid. Uh, they ostracize you. They make your parents upset. So anytime failure is a possibility in your realm of getting rid of small L's, you don't want to try. Yep. Why? Because it's failure is bad. Mhm. But failure isn't bad. Failure just is. And you're going to fail more than you succeed. In the moment you accept that, you like, you want to fail more. I love failing. I look for it. I look for ways I can fail so I can learn. And by failing, you become what? The best. You become the best. How can we help people learn? Because we hear it, failure is good. And I think people hear that line and they go, "Why would it be good?" How can we help people fail? I mean, is there a mechanism for testing out? Yes. So, so it's very simple. It's understanding the pain that comes with perfection and the pain that comes with progress. If I want to go to the gym, I'm going to feel weak before I get strong. If I go to business class, I'm going to feel stupid before I'm smart. If I go hang out with wealthy people, I'll feel broke before I'm rich. And the negative comes with the positive. You have to go through it. And once you understand that that's just part of the process, then you accept it. Totally. Right? So it's like, you need to feel like a loser in order to be a winner. Maybe the word failure, just people need to reframe it. Is the word fight? Yeah. You know, like fight, have pain. You know, like it's, I don't know why more, like we all know the stats, right? 80% of A students work for D students. Yeah. So that should tell you straight up. If anyone's listening, should tell them straight away. Like, if you learn to accept failure, you also build up resistance to failure, resilience. And you, it doesn't matter if someone tells you you're a failure. If you know you're going again, this time you fail, but you're going again. So it doesn't matter. You're learning, right? And what I, and what I found valuable is understanding how do you avoid the small L's? Like, okay, I commit. Luke, I [ __ ] up. Luke, I mess up. How do I stop? So how are you in a situation where you can guarantee your ability to reduce your small L's? The small losses, the small failures, per se, that are holding you back? I've never been happier to be a person's whiteboard. Go ahead.

One is, make it so easy to win that it becomes difficult to lose. If you're struggling with your diet, why the [ __ ] would you have cake in your house? You're setting yourself up for loss. If you have debt, why do you have a credit card? Make it so easy to win that it becomes impossible to lose. Just make it easy for yourself. Positioning. If you have a cigarette addiction, why do you have a pack of cigarettes in your car? Don't hang out with people that smoke. It makes no sense. You need to position yourself. Make it easy. Positioning. Positioning is key. The reason we are where we are today is because we understand how to position ourselves. Make it so easy to win that it becomes impossible to lose. That's what you do with your small L's. Because you don't want to be thinking about it.

Two is commitment. Something that most people have forgotten about. Most people have no ability to commit to themselves, let alone commit to others. What do you have to commit to? One thing. A goal. Most people don't have a goal. Mhm. But that's why I ask people what their dream is, 'cause that gives them at least a chance. Most people don't know. They haven't even thought about it. No. So that as soon as they think, "Oh, I'd like to do this." Now you have a goal. How you going to get there? And I can tell people how to get there, and we'll discuss it because there's some very basic instruments to achieve anything in life. But you need to know where you want to go. And then you have to commit to that. If you don't commit to a goal, you're going to be like a ship without a rudder, just spinning in circles, directionless. Most people feel purposeless because they don't have a goal. And once they tell themselves, "I have a goal." Like, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to start this business." Or, "You know what? I'm going to do this thing that I said I was going to do." They have no ability to commit. M. And what happens when you stop committing to something? You become a liar. And most people lie to themselves. So what happens if I lie to you every single day? Are you going to trust me? Definitely not. Are you going to be confident in me? Definitely not. So why would you be confident in yourself if you're always lying to yourself? Of course, you're not going to trust your ability to accomplish your goal because you know that you're going to lie. Yeah. It's the number one thing I look for. I've got a team of 14 people helping me do this. And I, I basically would, if anyone ever lied to me, I will never work with them again. You can't. I just can't trust someone who lies. And I don't. But people lie to themselves. That's the, that's the real problem. And you need to be able to identify yourself not as a person that's living inside, but you need to position yourself like a stoic and look at yourself from the outside and ask yourself, "Hey, I've committed to something. I'm just going to follow my goal." You can't look at yourself as a first-person individual. You have to look at yourself like you're playing a video game of you. M. And if you're playing a video game of you, why would you self-sabotage? So first of all, make it easy to win. So we're not thinking about these mind games. There's a part of me, by the way, this word easy. There's a part of me wants to call it hard. Make it hard for yourself, actually. Like, make, so all the things you think you want, these little cuts, these little problems, make it hard to get them all. Yes. That's so easy. My brain seems to think that makes people. Got to understand that actually, you got to, to have a good life, you got to have at the beginning a hard life. Yes. Like, I think a lot of people, I know that are successful, they're successful because they had no choice but to be successful because they had a hard life. You kind of need to do that to yourself, right? Not have comfort. Not give that comfort to yourself too easily. Otherwise, what is, what is the goal? If, if you've got it all comfortable already, then you're not going to go and train and push yourself and make things happen. Yes. I agree. And the liar thing, by the way, is also really interesting because I, I mentioned there, people lying to me, but the other thing is people have to be really careful that they don't, um, it's a bit self-sabotage again, but they don't lie in a way that causes them to change their own belief system. So if you tell yourself, well, and I have, there's a lot of people say, "I'm not very good at business." And they keep saying it to themselves. Their subconscious starts to believe it. They're lying to their subconscious. Now believes it's true, and they think they can't do it. Like, everybody listening can start a business. Everybody, everybody. So if you think you can't, you're lying to yourself. It's just what type of business you're going to do. What your skill is applied to that business. You're an introvert. You're an introverted style business, perhaps, as opposed to an extrovert, right? People have literally told themselves lies so many times that they just believe it. Yes. I agree.

So how do you break that subconscious programming? It's very deep. So let's talk, let's erase this and we'll talk about how to break subconscious programming. And we'll tap into a little bit of what is more on the science side of things. Natural law is something that everybody has to abide by, like the law of gravity. Whether you believe in it or not, it exists. And if you don't believe in it, it doesn't matter. Just jump off of a building and you'll realize that it's real. There's other natural laws, like the law of cause and effect. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. The second law of thermodynamics. So we understand that for everything we input, there's going to be an equal and opposite reaction to that input. So what people don't, what people focus on is they focus on the output instead of the input. So you can't control when you're going to become a millionaire. That's the output. People are focused on the output. They're focused on the reaction. They can't control the reaction. All they can focus on is the action. So for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So what are the actions that you have to input in order to make a million dollars? Do you know them? Well, no, I don't know them. Okay, well, how many millionaires do you know? And how many millionaires have you gone into and asked them, "What is the input for them to make a million dollars?" No, not just, not just ask. Simon, just look. Go get 50. And I promise you, there's plenty of people on the internet. Send them a DM, be like, "Hey, what's the one habit?" And then you put together your list in your formula. They're very common habits. I've met hundreds of millionaires and quite a lot of billionaires, and habits are quite common. And you just mentioned some of them. And if you identify them, you know, be honest about your situation. I just, again, like that lying thing, really in particular, we want people not to forget it because it's like, you, you can lie sometimes, uh, to people about your financial situation and say you're not in debt. You better telling people you are. Yes. You don't hide things. That's, but being transparent. But people don't. Most successful people actually, at their core, are very authentic about what's going on in their lives. And we're going to talk about authenticity because it's super key to this. I'm glad that you mentioned that word. Uh, so for what are the inputs to become a millionaire? Right? List them all out. If you guys haven't watched all of Simon's content with all millionaires, go watch it and you can probably piece them together. Any quick ones by the way that you've noticed? First is, you need to have a product, service, or a good. You need to have something that you offer of value to the marketplace. So a product can be physical, can be digital, can be a service, your time, or somebody else's time. Actually, we love service businesses to start with because they're can be low cost, you know, cheap and get going quite quickly. Yeah. And then you're going to have, you can have your physical products, your digital products, and then you have your goods. And your goods don't necessarily have to be, uh, something that offers utility. Like a pair of shoes. Like a Nike pair of shoes aren't necessary. They're just a good. A variable, a version. So, for example, you could have a service-based business that offers car wash, but your goods are that you offer additional things to it and bonuses that don't have anything to do with the service. Like, do you sell them rim cleaner? Do you sell them additional perks and things that are inside of it? So you have your products, your services, and your goods. That's the input. By the way, most people who do a YouTube channel don't make money from the YouTube. They make money from affiliate links down below. They have goods on top of their service, as right? You, so you need to offer value. That's the first thing. If you don't have anything to to offer value of, you're not going to make money. That's the main one. That's the, the most important one. And then the second, [Music] one. Do you need customers? Man, do you need customers? So it's like, who's your target audience? People are want are thinking, "Okay, what am I going to sell?" No, no, no. Who am I going to take care of? You start with the, you start with the end in mind. Most people are way too generic on this. Yes. So I mentioned yesterday, we interviewed the billionaire Yatsu, and he was talking about niching down. How important niching is. People, customer-wise, people too broad. I'd like, "Sell t-shirts to men between 18 and 60." Well, it doesn't work that way. Yeah, you won't sell anything to anyone. You need, and this is, we'll talk about the third one, specificity. You need to be clear for yourself, internally and externally, what are you going to offer? Who are you going to offer it to? At what price? Where? These are the clarifications that you need. Value to who and how. M. Very simple. And that will give you the output. And if you just focus on providing value to this specific person in this specific way, you're going to test whether or not it works. And if it doesn't work, the output will tell you that it doesn't work. And if it works, the input will give you the output. So that's the first variable. Inputs and outputs are super important. Do, do you think, by the way, I, you might cover this in a minute, but I just wondered, um, do you think purpose helps you build this? If you have a purpose, get you up in the morning? Yes. And and purpose doesn't have to be this deep thing like, "Hey, I want to go to Mars." Purpose can be, "Hey, when this customer needs my help in this specific manner, I am the most reliable person that they can go to." And I wake up in the morning, and that's that's what fires me. I mean, that's why I see, I've interviewed thousands of people, and what I noticed, like, if I interview a nurse, she actually loves going to work. She might not be paid well and all that, but she, she has a sense of purpose. She, if she goes to work, she helps someone's life be more comfortable. So customers being satisfied, yes. For example, it can be your specificity. It's like, it's why is it that you do that you do? Yeah. You want customers to have less pain, you know, literally that can be, you know, but building purpose, I think, is so underrated into making the customers happy. I think my whole career, every business I've ever been involved in, financial, you know, success, some and some have failed, but I've always made sure the customer was happy. Yes. So that customer is a lifelong relationship as well, if you do it right. And that's, and that should be one of the outputs. The outputs should be, I guess we can, can delete it on the second thing because we're talking about inputs and outputs.

Talk about the second one is going to be your LTV. Most people are focused on the front-end money and the front-end interaction. How can I take from somebody something the first time that I meet them? How can I extract a couple pennies, a couple dollars from this guy? Like a hungry [ __ ] dog, excuse my language, because it pisses me off. They don't focus on lifetime value. No. That is a big mistake a lot of people make. They don't focus on the lifetime value of the customer. They focus on the quick money. So the input is the fast, hey, first relationship, first interaction. They don't think about was the long-term perspective, what's the long-term journey of this individual with me? When you focus on long-term value and lifetime value, which is so much bigger because it costs more to acquire a new customer than to sell an existing customer another product, then you stop focusing on making the money in the front end and you focus on allowing the lifetime value of the customer to yield returns long-term, whether it's money, whether it's opportunities, whether it's connections, resources. It really depends. People are focused on the fast money, the fast transactions. And you don't, you can make some hustle money, but you're not going to get rich. Well, I, I see people burn long-term relationships forever sometimes going for the money input and output. So mindset, number one, focus on just inputs. Don't focus on outputs. The second one is, we're talking about authenticity. When you look at a chart, for example, of of this idea of, yo, the yogis and and the Hindu masters talking about enlightenment and they talk about the different chakras and all these energy things. And okay, you, you read it and you wonder. And then you begin to do some research and like, "Okay, there must be some science or some facts attached to this stuff." And there must be some intelligent people researching these things. It can't just be me that's curious. So I come across a study. I'm like, "Okay, let me start reading it." And it's a study with the acronym S.P.A.I.N. It's an experiment that they did over 20 years, a span of over 20 years, which is the scale of positive and negative emotion. So what they did is they put individuals inside a Faraday cage. It was a, for those people don't know what a Faraday cage is, this cage made with different aluminums and different metals that basically block any sort of, uh, Wi-Fi signal, any sort of frequency to come into that box. And then they began prompting people with what? With different tasks, different minds, different thoughts, different questions to determine one thing: the vibrational frequency that their body was kind of operating on when they gave certain responses. So whether it was positive frequency or negative frequency. So, for example, let's say they prompted, you know, disgust or anger inside of the person. Well, clearly they could tell that it lowered vibrational frequency. So they're like, "Okay, interesting." So let's prompt some positive stuff. And they were like, "Oh, this is higher vibration." I'm like, "Oh, interesting." Because the body naturally reacts to your emotions. There's chemistry taking place when your emotions are kicking in. So when you have a negative thought, you're not just having a negative thought. There's an entire process attached to that energy, putting you in a different frequency. So the question is, okay, well, what's the best frequency to be in? If this is the scale of positive and negative emotions, I want to be at the highest scale of positive emotions. So what, what is the highest form of frequency that I can abide in? So that's, that was the question that these scientists were asking. And if you start looking at, you know, uh, these Yogi charts, you begin to see, you know, greed, lust at the bottom, then anger. Then you see love and gratitude. And then at the top, you see what? Enlightenment. Well, what is enlightenment? Okay, make that practical for me. Like, everybody talks about enlightenment, but what is enlightenment? So they began prompting people and they found that above what we often know is the highest form of of frequency, or what everybody talks about, which is love. That's what everybody talks about. The highest form, you know, the highest form of energy. They found that there was a frequency that made people vibrate 400 times more powerful than the vibrational frequency of love. And it was the vibrational frequency of authenticity. To become the truest version of yourself with no lies is to vibrate at the highest form that you can possibly vibrate at. Love, that giving you, so true, giving you a sense of peace, equanimity, and truthfulness. And it, all the baggage doesn't exist because you don't have to wear a mask. Therefore, you can be who you are. You can move faster. You can live free. And authenticity, remember, vibrational frequency is fast. Key.

That you said that authenticity is the key to everything, and if you can do things authentically, you win the game. So, once again, it goes back to the mindset. Like, are you being a liar? Well, you know when you're supposed to go to the gym. I'm not saying you have to go to the gym every single day, but you know when you're supposed to go and you don't go. You know when you're supposed to sit down and read that article or that book or listen to that thing, and you don't do it. And you know you're supposed to. You're not being authentic with yourself because you want something, but your actions say something else. And your mindset and your actions need to be aligned.

We talk about this concept of faith. People are like, "You know, you just need to believe. You need to believe that you can." Faith without your ability to manifest it in the three-dimensional world through action is dead. You can't just believe things; you have to create them through action. You need to materialize them with energy and at whatever frequency you're going to place it at. Remember, frequency always exists. What we're doing is we're tuning ourselves to that frequency. Nicola Tesla famously said, because once again, this goes back to the school system, how we're being taught. Nicola Tesla famously said, "My brain is a receiver of information." But what are we taught in the school system? That our brain is to be jammed with things that you have to memorize, and this is blocked information, and this is how your brain works. Well, what if we're only tapping into 5% of our brain? What if the conversation here is, "Dude, what if I have to get smarter and tap into more of my brain?" What if that's the maybe? If you're operating off a 2%, you deserve to be broke, 'cause you're not operating at your optimal. So how do you expect to have optimal results if you're not operating optimally? It doesn't make any sense because you're going to attract that which you are. Naturally, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So if Nicola Tesla says, "Hey, you know, the brain's a receiver of information," the question is, what are the things that are causing static? My inability to receive information, or my inability to get inspired, my inability to actually put forth the effort and purpose that I want? Well, what's the music that I listen to? What are the friendships that I hang out with? What's my environment? What do I eat? How do I speak to myself? All these things are either causing static or stillness in your ability to what? Receive information that gives you inspiration in order to act.

Think of, you know, think of you and me in 1940 or 1950, driving down the Midwest in an old Cadillac, and we wanted to listen to some music. That music is already attuned to that frequency. What we have to do is tune the radio and position ourselves in that frequency so then we can tune into it. So most people, they want to operate at a high vibrational frequency, attract prosperity, attract purpose, attract wealth, but their actions aren't aligned with it. So you have to act, and then you'll receive. You have to do, and then the outcome will produce itself. All you have to do is change your mindset and be like, "Hey, you know what? Instead of looking at the situation negatively, may look at it positively." Well, how do I do it? "I don't know. Lie to yourself until you believe it, just like you lied to yourself about the negative [ __ ]." But once you understand that you can't solve the problems in your life with the same mindset and the same information that gave you the problems in the first place, then you understand that you need a renewed mind and you need new information in order to behave differently. So authenticity is the name of the game. As much as it feels like it's a vulnerability factor, once you treat yourself with grace, like we were talking about in the beginning, now you enter a situation where you don't care because you know you're just learning and figuring it out.

I would study the Spain experience. Um, I, I think, um, I'd like to get on to some of the, I guess, creating demand stuff and the social media stuff in a moment, just before do the authenticity piece, just to clarify it, because I, I really believe in this so much, and I want people to understand it. It's like, you got to be authentic with yourself, right? First. It's not just an external, external being authentic. One of the things I've noticed is, um, I go for a lot of walks, and when I'm not thinking about work, when I'm just being myself, is when I have my best ideas. So that's a, you know, example of being authentic with yourself, not trying to force things as well, right? But people listen to music, which I think is cool, but sometimes they create a false, uh, feeling, and then the music's gone, they've lost that feeling. I think you have to get to that frequency, that authenticity frequency, sometimes without external stimulation. You have so, you know, we, this content is supposed to help people, but in a way that people have to get there on their own and be authentic to themselves, what they want to do, what their vision is, what they, and it takes time because you have to chip away at yourself. You have programming, and you have to identify whether that programming serves you or not. It doesn't. For most people, it doesn't. But most people are prideful, right? And they're like, "No, no, bro, that, you don't even believe that [ __ ]. That's not your belief. Don't [ __ ] hold on to it. You don't even believe it, dude. You're just be..." You know, I was telling my, my assistant, uh, he was in a relationship. If we can't say this, I'll cut it off. But I asked him, I called him one day, and I, I'm like, "Yo, are you happy?" And he lied to me. He was like, "Yeah, I'm happy." And then he told me the other day, I was like, "No, I wasn't happy. I was just too prideful to tell you that I wasn't happy." And we do that all the time. I do that myself. Yeah. I think we, I tell people, "Hey, you know what? Yeah, I'm doing good." Well, no, I'm not actually doing good, and [ __ ] England is really bad. You know, here, you ask anyone, "How you doing?" "No, I'm good. I'm good." And then you're like, if you actually ask them truly, they're having some trouble with, they're having this problem that, yeah. And, and by, by allowing that, you create the status quo that it's okay. I'd love it if the whole world, if you ask someone if they're okay or not, told you the truth. It'd be really interesting. First of all, people would ask it less, 'cause most of the time people asking it don't really mean it. So, and then, so you get less wasted conversations. "Pointless, how are you?" "I'm fine, thank you." But also, I think people should just be honest. And I think every time someone actually tells me they've got a problem, my brain goes into, "How can I help them?" If they don't tell me the problem, how can you help people? Because I think the hardest thing is to ask for help. Yeah, that's actually the hardest thing for people. It, I think people want to help. That's my instinct. A lot of people I meet want to help people, but help them themselves. Very hard. Pre-programming, or help some, help themselves by asking for help. People find it hard. Yeah. I mean, helping, you can't help yourself if you [Music] suck. Like, you can't help yourself if you suck. So, okay, you need to fix yourself first. Well, how do you fix yourself? Small wins. M. It all goes back to the small building blocks. People want to overcomplicate, man. It's not that complicated. If you know you need to exercise, exercise. If not, you'll deal with the consequences. That's fine. If you want to be poor, be poor. M. If you want to leave hate comments, that's fine to do that. It's not, it doesn't bother us. It doesn't change our lifestyle. It is what it is. But it's your choice. And I often tell people, you know, the rich and the poor are both self-made, but only the rich will admit it. The poor person will never admit that they're broke, be, and that they're responsible for it. No, no, no. You're full. If you're a grown-up, if you're 15, 17, 19, 2, like, I get it. If you've had a bad life, you, you have some come-up that you still have to do. And you're, and I can talk. I was 15 years old and I was homeless. Yeah. But if I look back critically and looked at the time, I had an argument with my mom. I didn't compromise. She didn't compromise, and I got kicked out. And she had leverage. Yeah, she had leverage. Now, you could argue that that was self-created, because if I, if I had accommodated her and maybe worked it out, then I wouldn't have been homeless. So it was self-inflicted. Although I blame, I blame her for the most part of my life. And most of this. And once you get to that, that point of self-infliction, you understand that you're self-inflicting both negative and positive. So you're fully in control of everything. Yeah. And what I like about that is that nobody can take your wins. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Like, nobody wants to take your losses. That's fine. I get it. I'll, I'll eat my L's by myself. I'll deal with the garbage. That's fine. But when I win, I'm a save for that. Yeah. Right? So it's like, it's what we talked about. If you want to experience pleasure and you want to experience trophies and winning, perfect. You're going to have to deal with what it takes. Yeah. And that's what most people are not willing to go, because they have that 9-to-5 paycheck mindset, which is, I work today, I get paid tomorrow. I work today, I get paid tomorrow. And if that's how you think, then you're living on today. Doesn't work that way. You want to build true wealth, you need to be building imaginarily first, as to what it is that you want. And sometimes that takes saving, that takes structure, that takes becoming a new type of person, maybe a new community around you, like a new, yeah, new, new circle of people. Hard for people. They grew up in certain towns, certain villages, they, they got their hometown. I, I even had, I've got three brothers. Two, two of my brothers, I don't like them. I just had. But that's really hard to say. You just assume because you're born into the same family, you're going to be the same. But you have to learn to be disciplined and say, "Well, they're not the people I want to be around." And that's okay. That, I almost feel like that's my fault, like I'm, you know, that I, born into a family where some people I didn't like. I think people got to admit it and maybe make the life they want, take control, like you say, take ownership of that. And, and then you own the wins. If you do that, and the beauty about the wins is that it gives you the confidence that the small L's take away. Yep. Totally. And you start cycling that, and you go to an upward spiral. People talk about the downward spiral, then never talk about the upward spiral. The upward spiral is just positive momentum and positive momentum reinforcement. You go fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, and you're like, "Damn, I'm getting lucky." No, you're not getting lucky. You're just reaping the reward of the effort that you put in five years ago. The loser calls it luck, y, because they have no ability to dictate their life. Y. We, there's no such thing as luck. Everything in life is a game of what? Probabilities. Probabilities. So the question is, how do you increase your odds of success? The more risk you take, the luckier you get. Is actually the key, right?

So let's just finalize this at the end now. The high demand piece. I just want, can you just dig into that bit a second for us? So let's talk about high demands. Uh, let's go a little bit more on the business side. So nowadays, you have what we talked about, your, your, uh, your services, your products, and your goods. You need to be able to present them to people. If there's no eyeballs, not going to make money. So there's a couple ways. First of all, your business needs to have an online presence, whether you like it or not. Even if it means just having Google and having your customers leave a five-star review, because whether you believe it or not, people look at that, and that's the first, what? The first interaction, the first impression, and it matters. So first of all, is the impression. Before you get traffic, anything, what's the positioning? When inbound traffic comes, whether it's organic or generated, doesn't matter. What's the first impression? What's the first impression of your business? By the way, I, I always tell people, when, if you have a website, for example, which I think everybody should have for their business and for themselves, if your website, for example, link doesn't work on it, I make a judgment about that business. It's not well managed. It's not. First impressions matter. And I think a lot of people don't realize how quickly people will make a decision whether or not. So your high demand drops instantly because you're not following these basics. And you improve it as time goes on. So how do you do it? Feedback. What is feedback? For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, right? So what's the feedback telling you about what you're doing? Are there reviews? Good? Are the reviews beneficial? Do you manage the images on your social media presence? Yes or no? Like, what is it? How is it that you are positioning yourself to recruit new talent? I realized I was like, "People think LinkedIn sucks." But who thinks that? You know, I'm trying to find, find super top-tier talent. Okay, looks like I need to have a LinkedIn presence because that's where professionals happen to be. So that's what the feedback told me. So I had to act upon the feedback, and then I started getting better people on the inbound because my first impression was great. People knew what they were getting into. So the first impression is super important.

Second is, we're going to talk about organic traffic. So we talked about trends and we talked about narratives. If you want to reduce your cost of acquiring a customer, because there's a specific cost to acquire a customer, and you should know based off of your product, how much, how much is it going to cost you to acquire a customer? If you're selling a product for $97, okay, perfect. If it costs you $200 to acquire a customer, that's not an issue, as long as you have a high lifetime value. M. Because you're paying in advance for the future lifetime value to the customer. Let's say it's 1K. But if you're only focused on the short-term money, you're going to lose out, and you're going to have to focus on acquiring a customer for really cheap, which is totally fine. That's how you want to do it. Let's say it's a drop shipping approach. You know, let's say it's a, let's say you're selling a product for $97 and you acquire it for 25. So in this case, you can make frontend money, but you can tell that it's not that much. You can run off of small margins. So organic traffic, capitalizing on trends, narratives that are taking place. I like social media, that's what I utilize. Social media will tell you what's hot. You go on Twitter, it'll tell you what's, what's trending, and you can create product demand based off of that. Then you can have what I would call your inorganic or would call your paid traffic. And paid traffic is going to be divided into two categories, and this is a new category that has just come out recently that I've mastered. We're going to talk about paid traffic because if you want to acquire customers nowadays, you're going to most likely have to pay for attention. So the first type of paid traffic is where you pay platforms. So you pay platforms, whether it's, you whether you want to pay for ad revenue, like that's your ad expense, whether you want to pay for, like banners, whatever it is. Different platforms operate differently. So this is your paid, paid platforms. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Snapchat ads, Google ads. This is where people are. So over the last 15 years, paid platforms made a ton of money because the only way to interact with people was to notice them through ad. It would be very hard for people to know who, for example, let's say Ty Lopez was back in the day, unless he had that "In My Garage" ad. What if you made a YouTube video, just posted it? Maybe 5,000 people would have seen it. He had to use paid platforms in order to push his message. However, two years ago, TikTok rolled around and took over, and they introduced distribution. Your ability to reach people that have never interacted with your content before via the "For You" or the "Explore." This is what exploded for me. I mean, we, a video day before yesterday, get 52 million views. The distribution is insane, and you can quantify it. So somebody do the math for me. So 52 million views. Let's say your, your, your Facebook CPM on the cheap side is $7. Tell me how much paid traffic that video generated. So you just have to divide it. Uh, $742,857. So you get $750,000 worth of impressions for free because you've mastered distribution. M. And you don't need a big following. If you look at the numbers behind that video, 99% of the views are new followers for you and brand new people. So now people have no excuse because people used to have the excuse, "Hey, I need to master paid traffic. I need to either find an agency. I need to learn it myself. I got to spend money. I don't have it." Okay, well, I get it. Today, it's no longer the case because you have distribution marketing. So how are you distributing your products for people to find out? If you have a service, are you showcasing people your service every single day, multiple times a day, or are you hiding it? If you're hiding it, nobody's going to see it. There's plenty of businesses on TikTok that're out here with a voiceover, cutting lawn and getting customers left right and center. Totally. So distribution marketing now makes it completely possible for everybody to get attention. You obviously have to pay for it. What are the costs? Well, it depends on how crazy of an operation. Most time, just creativity. Creativity. Maybe you have to incur a bus ticket. Maybe you have to buy your product to shoot the product. Small things. M. But it's minimal because the return, the ROI is there. Now, what I like about this for brands is that now brands, this is the final part, is you need your content. This is the key, right? M. Because if you want to master distribution, the content needs to be good. However, back in the day, let's say you wanted to hire an influencer or wanted to go into a studio to shoot your e-commerce product, you would think about it twice because you're like, "Dang, if this person posts once, maybe I'll get 100,000 views, and it won't be worth it." Or I have to spend a lot of money on this shoot. I don't know if this campaign will go well. Today, with distribution, you can repurpose the same video a thousand times. M. So now the lifespan and the shelf life of the content is higher. Therefore, you can invest more into it, which used to not be the case because you would need new creatives when, what, the audience fatigued. If, if you could make no more videos for the rest of your life and just recycle what you already have, and you would obviously get new eyeballs. Why? Because there's 8 billion people out there. So it's like, there's plenty of people out there to get around with the content you already have done. How I did it is we built a distribution system, and in our distribution system, we created multi-page accounts. So I have thousands of accounts, and my first, you control with those accounts, all of them. Yeah. So you can have affiliate programs. You can hire people to come work for you. They're called clippers. The short-form clippers. Today, I have about 150 people working for me in that distribution department. We do about 150 to 200 million views per month on short form, and my CPM is 2 cents. So I think I have 500 cheaper than your average cost for a thousand views on Facebook. This is partners pay down partners, 'cause I see that as your internal. Because the other model is reverse of what you just said, which is you incentivize someone to do. No, people are listening. They can't afford to hire 150 people like you have done. The way they can do it is the other way, which is, you basically, if time someone signs up to your product because of you've created account for someone, they get a piece of it. Yeah. So an affiliate model, basically. Absolutely. You can have an affiliate model. It's reverse of what you said, 'cause you, you've got funds to go and hire those people. But I simultaneously, I didn't start that way. How I started was, I would also pay, pay per view. Right? So you pay in direct proportion to the value that the person provides, which if you're thinking that people are just going to work for free and get you views for free, you're a delusional, right? It's like, it does. I've got, by the way, I've got fans. I've never done this. So I actually have people that are making my content. What I think they're doing is they're trying to make money off TikTok. Absolutely. They've taken my YouTube videos. I haven't done this, and they're getting paid for the vi. Yeah. So that's another model, right? And that's that organic. But this is where it gets even better. It's when you add the pay-per-view that you give them, and you add the TikTok pay-per-view, right? Because TikTok's already giving them this. Now you double it down and give them something on top of it. So you give them a baseline salary, and now you give them an upside. It's, it's this is not known, obviously, it's not known. That's why most people don't do it. But I'm sure it's not known. Why is it? Why is it not common knowledge? I mean, you wouldn't think the people like TikTok, they should pay us to do this. By the way, we've just basically explained why TikTok is a channel you've got to be on, 'cause Instagram is different. Instagram doesn't pay you for views. It doesn't. And YouTube pays you for views, but it's incredibly tough as a platform. So it's kind of interesting that right now, actually, right now, back to, you know, what we were talking about earlier, right now is probably the time to start a business because this distribution is still available, and it's cheap. It's available in social platforms are competing against each other to offer the best distribution because right now they're realizing that they're not in the business of making money, they're in the business of surviving. Fine. Because all these social media platforms that exist, dude, they're burning [ __ ] money left right and center to hold on to users. Yeah. So what you need to do is go to where people are distributing you the best. For example, during the World Cup, you would watch the matches, and what was running on the ads? Right? We need to be aware. It said YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts. I'm like, "Okay, YouTube is probably going to push YouTube Shorts." Right? So I took four different pages, right? Built out just the YouTube Shorts. Did a million followers on all four different pages of my own content. The same content we were talking about repurposing, right? The content on all four different pages through short form did over a million followers. Yeah. We, we've had exactly the same experience. YouTube Shorts now are fighting with TikTok. Yes. But YouTube, backed by Google, Alphabet, they actually have money. They're not burning money. So unlike TikTok, which actually has a bit of a difficult financial model. That's if you're not on YouTube Shorts right now taking advantage, and like you say, it doesn't have to be you on camera talking to people. It can be, like, I know someone who's unpacking video, and he's just using white gloves and unpacking videos, and people get tens of millions of views. Get tens of millions views, and then people can buy the product down below. So you don't have to be on camera. You can be an introvert and still leverage all of this. You don't have to be an extrovert. Yes. You don't even have to talk on camera. You can just have an AI voiceover. Just write. You don't even have to write the script. Like, that's how insanely automated this thing is getting. Dude, when I had to start doing e-commerce back in 2017, I had to sit down, think about everything. Think about the copy, think about the hook. I can just sell. ChatGPT, give me 19 different hooks. Give me a script that is X amount of words long. I want it to have this narrative. I want it to have Apple commercial vibes. I want it to be simple for a kid to. And then you read it, and then you tweak it. You work on it a little bit, but 90% of the work, dude, it's done. You don't even have to have a [ __ ] product. It's never been easier, is it? It's never been easier. And what I tell people is, and this is where it gets crazy, okay? Like, we're talking about all these things, and you're working your 9-to-5, like you're dealing with your [ __ ], you look at your bank account, you're missing money, you owe money to people, like life's not good. We've all been there. We've all been there. What you are in right now is a hamster wheel. You're in a hamster wheel. Most people's issue is their ability to break out of the hamster wheel, thinking that the moment they jump off of the hamster wheel, that they're going to fail, that they're in, that they're moving backwards. But remember, the hamster wheel is an illusion of moving forward. [Music] You have to get off of the [ __ ] hamster wheel in order to move. But people don't get that. So I want to jump off it. How am I going to jump off it? I want people to jump off that hamster wheel. How it happens. So first is understanding that everything that we do in life are loops. Most people live on looped behaviors. You wake up to at the same time, you do the same thing in the morning. Creatures of habit. Go to the same job. Comfort. But it's the same thing. When I was working my 9-to-5, 2018, 2017, 2018, before I quit, it was a comfortable job, cubicle marketing job, dangerous comfortable. $4,800 a month, spending a couple hundred, sleeping on my brother's couch. I was chilling. Like I had money, I was good. Could afford, could go out, eat nice restaurant. I was good. But then an opportunity presented itself. I could take the same skill, do it for myself, which was at the time running Facebook ads, and do it for a company on Wall Street. How much do they want to pay me? $9,000. Same skill set, better money. But I had to quit my job. I had to get out of the hamster wheel. And what I realized was like, "Okay, why is this easy for me to do now?" It's because I secured a monkey bar before I let go of the last one. You get one client. All you have to do is set yourself up. You have to position yourself in order to slow down the hamster wheel so that you can get off. Most people are like, "I'm just going to quit my job." No, no, no, no, no. Secure a monkey bar before you let go of the last one. If not, you're going to fall on your [ __ ] back. So number one, though, is get your cost down, isn't it? So number, this why it's down. Number one, get your cost down. This is so key. Number two, what you saying there, like, have, have a monkey bar to grab, which I think is, get a client, right? Or, or get a, a replacement. We call it, we'll call it side money. Yeah, side money and income stream. Could be those videos I just mentioned with in video. It doesn't matter. Something that's going to give you replace, replace, replace your current thing. Unlimited upside. That's why I love side hustle so much. It's become a bit of a, I mean, I've been saying side hustle, got a lot of negative comments or people should be doing a side hustle. It's, there's too much stress, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, "No, no, no. That's how you get off the hamster wheel." Yes. Right? Reduce costs, side hustle. What else can people do? And then the third one, which is, I think most people don't [Music] realize, is the goal. Like, like, what is the goal that is going to allow me to no longer do the, the, the hamster wheel? What's the goal? How much money? By when? How much money do I need to save? How many clients do I have to get? Like a very simple goal. Okay, side money. Okay, how much? Financial literacy is also not taught in school, which is absolutely ridiculous. But I think when people understand, if you want to make a million pounds, you're never going to make it on an hourly salary. Never. It's never going to happen. You'll be 65, you'll own your home, you'll be house rich, life poor. You won't have the skills to make money that you need. I, I just, I don't understand why people don't all have a goal. In fact, everybody listening now, write your goal down below. What is it? I'll critique it, and you probably won't have time to. I'll probably check it out. We'll check it out. Right, write down your goal. Anything else you want to share? Yeah, I mean, yeah, let's continue. So we have reducing costs because obviously you want to give yourself mental real estate. You have want to have room, wiggle room. You want to side money. Okay, from where? How to? Who doesn't have to be a lot, dude. Flipping sneakers. I know 17-year-old kids make. I love that. When I meet 30,000 a month, man. Yeah. And they love it too. They're meeting celebrities, crushing it, and they're crushing it. So they have a goal. Set established their goal. Now they're making money. Now they're able to what? Afford the luxury to get out of the hamster wheel. And they're not doing it feeling like it's risky. That's what most people, this is risky. Okay, well, create the variable where you'd reduce risk. So limit your expenditures, increase your cash flow with a simple goal. So that's how you get off of the hamster wheel. That's the very simple preference. Now, I'll conclude with this. Once you get off of the hamster wheel, you need to understand why most people will never get off of the hamster wheel, and why you don't want other people to get off of the hamster wheel in a certain perspective. One is, most people are comfortable in their current zone. So once you break out of your current situation, the people that are around you that are still on a hamster wheel, they're going to think you're nuts. They're going to think you're crazy. They're like, "Why? Why the [ __ ] are you running? Why? Why are you not on? Why are you not being productive on the hamster?" Even when you made a lot of money, people are like, "Why are you working so hard when you made a lot of money?" Because I enjoy it. People even so. So the other hamsters begin questioning your [ __ ]. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it, so now you have to have what? Definiteness of purpose. You need to have definiteness of purpose. Be definite of purpose. So you need have defined purpose. Defined. Okay. Defined purpose. Purpose. And we end with this, because when people sign up for entrepreneurship, they don't realize that they're signing up for 95% hardship. And unless you have a defined purpose and a definite purpose, whether it's other people telling you in your ear that, "Hey, you're not going to make it," whether it's the business situations that you're going to go through that are going to suck, if you have no definitive purpose, you're not going to have the key to business. The key to making money in life, it's longevity. M. You win in the long term. That's how you win the game. And unless you have purpose, you can't have longevity because of the things that are going to happen. What's a very practical example of this? Because we see this take place every single day. If I was to take you right now, we went to the river, and we went to the captain's deck, and we asked the captain, "Hey, you know, we want to go to X, Y, and Z port." Okay, we have the goal. Do you know how to get there? Within a sentence, and maybe 10, 10 seconds of research, he would tell you exactly where we're going. Can most people tell you within 10 seconds, in a paragraph, where they're going? No. So you need to establish a goal, and then realize that for 99% of the journey from Port A to Port B, you're not going to see the destination. For 99% of the journey, you just have to trail the journey. But you know that you have a definite set purpose and an objective. So you have an objective, and you understand that 99% of the way, you're never going to see the outpost. You're never going to see the end result. You just are going to arrive there. And once you've arrived there, now, by definition, you're once again an unsuccessful person because now you have to find another port of destination. M. So those people are like, "Oh, I hit my goal. Now I feel empty." Yeah, 'cause you have no purpose. You need a new purpose. And life is about conquering purposes, finding purposes, about achieving purpose. So true. And that's what I leave people with. Find definite purpose. Defined purpose. That purpose needs to be attributed to something that has longevity, that gives you the ability to run long. And I think we can find a lot of purpose and pleasure in that. That is so insightful. Um, and I think the, the thing is as well, that journey of going on that boat to that island, being on the island will never be an interesting story to people on the island. The journey that got you where is what makes you interesting. And so when I, I tell people that, you know, enjoy that journey. You know, that journey is hard. There'll be scary moments at sea, but there'll be the stories you tell later. Don't you want stories? Don't you want legacy? Like, I want to tell my son the things I went to Hong Kong when I had no money, I did this, I did that. I don't want to tell him I just grew up in my hometown and died in my hometown. Right? That journey on the ship. Thank you so much. Um, we have a little bit of a joke at the end of these videos where I say, um, "Should we go for chicken?" Do you see some chicken? I'm down for some chicken. Whilst I was with Luke, he answered some of your most asked business questions to our brand new series on the Help Bank channel. Click the video on the screen to now check it out.