Build Your Lifestyle Empire Using Your Personal Advantage With Taki Moore

You know that tug in your chest when you’re working nonstop, showing up for everyone else, yet deep down you feel like you’re not actually building the life you want? It hits hard when you realize you’ve been grinding so much that your own strengths, your own personality, your own version of success barely get any space to breathe.

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• 1:11Speaker 00

  Today I sat down with Taki Moore, who is the coach of coaches. Any big guru, any big coach that you know, went through the school of Taki. Okay. Taki taught them everything they know when it comes to coaching.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the $100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps us reach even more people who need the same no fluff, practical business advice. It literally takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  What I love about Taki as a close friend is that he's the same person, whether he's on camera, off camera, having lunch. And I find that incredibly hard to do. And most people don't do this. He's one of a few people I know that can do this. And I wanted to find out how did that happen? Did he work on it? Is it just natural? So I wanted to sit down with him on the podcast to find out. But I also wanted to find out a couple of other things. One, he built an incredible business with a very small team. Taki doesn't have an office. He works from home. He has a small team remotely that he works with and he makes $2 million a month. He's a busy guy. He's got six kids. He's got a wife. He travels a lot and he still only works four days a week.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  It's incredible what he does. And I want to find out how he built that kind of life because it wasn't always that way. I've known him long enough to know that that wasn't always his business. So we dive deep in a conversation together that I really want to share with you and I can't wait to share with you. But there's one more thing that we get into in this conversation that I think is amazing. And it's all about understanding who you are as a person and what you can add to your business. Taki is actually not like an amazing business person. He doesn't know how to read a spreadsheet. He doesn't have access to his own calendar. He's that like all over the place, but he's built this incredible business because he knows his superpower and he really knows how to be his own artist. He's really more of an artist than he is an entrepreneur.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  And we get into how he kind of identified that, but also how you can find your superpower and utilize it in your business. Can't wait to share all that with you. So let's jump right into that conversation with Taki Moore. Taki, awesome to have you, man. You're such a good guy. One of my favorite people in the world. You're one of three people, three is being generous, that I know that is the same person on camera, on stage, in person, having coffee, lunch, that kind of person.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  Has it always been that way? Did you have to work through some demons? Like, that's very, very rare.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  That's weird. I think I'm more comfortable being who I am everywhere now than like even sitting down here. I was a bit like a bit nervous because there's like three cameras and you know, a crew and all the stuff. I just think it's, maybe I'm just old and you just get beyond the and you just don't care anymore. There's probably a little bit of that. I think it's hard to be who you're not long-term. And I've been running this business for like 16-ish years.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I don't think I would have kept it up if I wasn't me.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  That's been my experience. Like, you know, we've been doing this for a while and you get to a point where it's just like not being yourself is not really working and you just get frustrated and you're just like, just gonna do what I want.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like I remember we run an event three times a year, you know, March, July, November. And for years I put shoes on to run the event because well, I don't wear shoes anywhere else. Why am I putting shoes on for these guys? They're kind of paying to come and learn from me. I just be myself. So I left my, you know, took my shoes off and did the event. I remember Jack Delosa, one of the, one of our members was like, you're not wearing shoes? I'm like, no. He goes, huh, cool. And then that was it. And now I can just be me. So that was like, that was the last hurdle of like freedom.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  I think there's nothing more attractive than someone who's comfortable in their own skin. I'm not doing it to be attractive. I'm just more comfortable without shoes or whatever. I think that's something, I don't know. I think that's what we all like. The people I look up to are the people who are like, they've got something great to say and they're very natural and not forced.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's a learned skill or quite.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Did you copy somebody in the beginning? For me, yeah, for me it was Tony Robbins. I always tried to be Tony and I realized like, I'm not Tony Robbins. I'm a brown kid from Long Island, parents immigrated from Egypt. Like Tony's got, Tony's Tony, you know, and I love Tony, but like I tried so hard to like, because he was the person that was in my ears, CDs, listening in the car while I was driving to work. Who is it for you?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  I think when you start something, like it's very rare that you've got your own everything together. And so you start by like modeling bits. I think I've got bits of a lot of people. So when I started like business model wise, the only guy I knew who had this kind of information style business was a grumpy old dude called Dan Kennedy, who's amazing, by the way. Right. But he's like a, yeah, he's a writer, seems to be an introvert. And his model was like, I'm going to send people a paper newsletter and a monthly CD and a weekly fax. I guess what I did, you know, a weekly fax and a monthly CD and a paper newsletter. And I was like, dude, I hate writing. I'm a talker. And so like you speak, you got to start somewhere.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Presenting wise, I learned from two people. I was in a seminar in a workshop once with Brad Sugars. And I remember he asked a question of the audience and they didn't reply. And he just got indignant and like puffed his chest up and said like, since when was it okay not to participate in one of my workshops? Like, oh, you can like lead these people. And then Ethan, our son was non-verbal for like four years and we took him to this speech class called Hannan, which is about how do you help a non-verbal kid to communicate?

• 6:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of tricks, like, you know, you get down on their level. So you're not big and scary and intimidating. And you just like leave the end off a sentence and you wait for them to fill it with something. So I think like, you know, public speaking wise, I've just got a lot of those skills.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think you just like see bits that you like and you, you adopt it as much as you can until you got your own thing and then you adapt it.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. One of the things that I believe has helped our podcast do so well is that like I try to lead as much as possible with empathy.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  I still remember what it's like to be struggling financially, struggling with my business, my voice. I personally felt like I was trying to be Tony Robbins because I felt like who I was wasn't good enough. So I have to put on this performance so that I can be able to be good enough for my audience. Cause who I actually am is maybe not blockbuster and larger than life.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Like what advice would you give to somebody who's like listening right now? It's like, okay, Taki, but like, you know, you're, you're big and you're huge and you're making millions and millions of dollars. How do I present without feeling inadequate?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  I think the real you, the one with the broken bits is the more attractive you. And I think if you want to help somebody, like it's hard to, like it can be aspirational to look up at Tony Robbins who's like extraordinary, but like it's very hard to go, wow, I could see how I could do that because he's like, he's up there and we're down here. And I think just realizing that everybody you're trying to help or communicate with, whether it's a, an audience member or a potential client or whatever, or a customer, they're going through some stuff and the vulnerability makes you super relatable. And so, you know, I write an email every day to my, my audience and they're often quite funny, but the, if there's a joke about a person, it's always, I'm the stupid one.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  And the audience is the smart one. Partly because I got ADHD and I do dumb stuff all the time, but, but also deliberately self-deprecating because of approachability. And I think the real you, warts and all is very attractive. If you're going through some hard stuff, talk about the fact you're going through some hard stuff. I think maybe there's a spot for like, do it when it scars, not open wounds, maybe. But I think just being honest with people about, you know, where you're up to and what you're working on. And you don't have to have it perfect. You just got to like share, share the journey. Like this is what I'm going for. This is what it's hard right now. This is what I've figured out. And I think that, actually, I think the thing that makes it tricky is when you pretend you're the, I've got it all together guy and you don't, that's the, that's the piece that eats you alive and people can sniff that. But if you don't pretend you've got it all together and you just go, here's what I'm learning, I think you do really, really well.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. A hundred percent. A lot of the episodes that came out of this podcast came through the struggles that we had growing our software company, Weapon or Ninja. People would come up to me in person and tell me like, I just listened to your episode about like, you know, one of your key teammates or team members got poached. Is everything all right? It's like, yeah, yeah, that was like a year ago. It took me a year to get over it. Yeah. And to be like, okay, I'm comfortable teaching, but those episodes pop because you're teaching out of experience and you're, and you're teaching, hey, this is what worked for me when this happens, you know, and it's going to happen. You're going to have struggles. You're going to have people, close friends of yours, poaching your team members.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  And it's just like no phone call, no nothing. What do you do? Do you sever that relationship? Do you do the same thing back to them? All this stuff, like, how do you want to play this game?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  But I find that anything that's hard, like it's really hard to share that. That's when it really does well.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Anything that's like, I gotta pull this out somehow.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  I think so. And you let people into your world a little bit. I think, you know, on the content side of things, really, I'm trying to share two things, you know, my worldview is the thing that people buy, but what makes that relatable is my world. And I think your world, my world has a bunch of characters in it.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  You know, Nicole's a character, these guys are characters, the offices, like this, this new amazing studio is a, is a character. And so letting people into your world makes you super relatable. And I think there's a bunch of people on the internet.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  And all you see is the highlight reel, like Instagram life is very perfect. And I think the, the reel is where it's at.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. We've been buddies for a while now. I think about, we've known each other for about eight years. When, when I moved out to Australia 10 years ago, more than that, 2016 was when I moved, yeah. So 10 years ago, before I moved out, Michael Port, Booker S. Solid, Michael Port.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  He's extraordinary.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Yes. And he's a good friend of mine. And he was like, you're going to Australia, you gotta know Taki Moore.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  And I was like, okay. And I looked you up and I watched your videos and da, da, da, da. And then, you know, I was probably just busy trying to move and.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  I think I met you at Dale's paella party.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's where we met. And then I was like, okay, I got to know you a little bit, da, da, da, da. And like, we've been buddies for a long time, but the first time I saw you speak on stage was last year at.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  The thing I did with Dan.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes. The Media Empire event. Like, I just knew you as a friend and I ever saw you in person, like doing your thing.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  I don't know if you remember this, but when you finished that event, I was just like, I don't know what the heck you do for a living. You should be doing this, man. Like this, you were magic, dude. Like, I was like.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Ever.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  You are so, the whole room was glued to what you're, I think you were doing this session about a pocket banger. You have this framework of how to do short. Yeah, short form content.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  And even the name, a pocket banger, when you put it in your pocket and all that stuff. It's these little cards you put in your back pocket when you're done with it, you put it in the other pocket. But I thought in that moment, everybody in the room was just like, I can be successful as successful as Taki because Taki feels very relatable.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  And he's fun and interesting. And I have this like thing, this kind of archetype of what I have of you is like this reluctant hero kind of person.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Retarded Jedi is how I refer to it. I know that's inappropriate, but that's how I think about it.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, but it's this idea of like, hey, I stumbled upon this thing. I'm no genius.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  But I want to share with you. And people for some reason are a lot more.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  And it's not an act. That's who you are.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Totally it is. Like I, I treat my business like a lab. We're testing out new stuff all the time. Half of it blows up in my face, which is hilarious to me. It's like, I should have, we had a program that's designed to get someone to $10,000 a month. And the goal was to get people to $10,000 a month so they could join us in Black Belt. In order to qualify for Black Belt, they need to do 10 grand a month for three months in a row. So that's, that's the business goal for me. The program was three months long, which is, I was like, why aren't people upgrading? Well, they get to 10 grand a month, but they couldn't have got to 10 grand a month and hold it for three months in a row if the program isn't long enough for them to do that.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  And so like, you make all these stupid mistakes and you realize afterwards how obvious it was. You laugh about it. And then you've got a story to tell that's useful for others. Yeah. I don't know if it's reluctant hero, but it's definitely, I'm in the lab, but I'm testing stuff out. And I'm happy to share both the stunning successes as well as the stupid failures.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Especially if I find them entertaining.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I say a good portion of your content is you making fun of your old self and the business that you built that you hated.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  And then how you're like, hey, I woke up. I was like, I don't like this anymore. And the reason why that's so relatable, because entrepreneurs do that.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  They go after something they think they want. They like the idea of it.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  And then they live it.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Man, this is, this sucks.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. I want to hear a little bit more about, you know, the business that you built. Why did you hate it? How did you make the decision to change? What were the steps where you're just like, everybody out of my office?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we, I've been doing this for a long time. And for somebody who likes variety as much as I do, it's kind of weird that I've kind of got the same business as I started back then. It doesn't mean it's more often evolved. I'm in like version 58.2 or whatever. But it's been a, you know, a stable growing thing. COVID hit a few years ago and we're in this amazing situation where we had to do an event every March, July, November. And the March event was in Australia and then two weeks later in, in the States. And so we did the event in Melbourne. It was amazing. Clients from all over. And then in between the Melbourne event and two weeks later in LA, COVID hit and the borders got shut to the States and Tom Hanks got COVID. And it was like, okay, well, if Tom Hanks

• 14:30Speaker 01

  got COVID, it's in Australia, right? So we had to like redo the whole event. Like A, figure out how to do it on, on the internet and not make it suck. And B, all of the content that I taught in Melbourne now is irrelevant because the whole world's like been rug pulled from us. And so we're inventing this whole new event and a new delivery style. And it went super, super well. I think it was just like lucky timing that, you know, that happened right at that moment. And so we had a bit of an idea about what to do and we got able to lead people through it. So all of a sudden we get this reputation as like, these are the guys who can help us in this weird time. And the business takes off. And because I'm a better, you know, face than CEO, our solution to all the growth was let's just, you know, hire some more people and throw people at it. I'm not systemized. And so we throw all these people at it and the business grew.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Are you talking about sales teams? What are you talking about?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  I'm talking about sales team. I'm talking about coaches. I'm talking about support people. I'm talking about everything. We grew to like 36 people, which for me is a lot on the team. And, you know, COVID was an awful time to live through, but business wise, it was great for us. And then it disappears and I'm left with this heavy business with a bunch of folks. And I kind of lost, not kind, I lost my mojo bigly. I'd replaced myself out of a bunch of the jobs like you're supposed to. I wasn't doing much of the coaching or still running like the, the teach sessions, not doing much of the coaching, not doing any of the sales, because we had a sales team that did that, like nine people, not involved in the marketing very much.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And like frankly, I didn't really know what my job was anymore. And so I'm in this lost place where I've got this big business that looks great on paper, but my weeks are like, if you're not doing the coaching or the sales or the marketing or the whatever, what's left? Well, the, the meetings to organize the people. And I hate meetings.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  So I remember like just being in this funk, like lost my mojo. And I didn't realize, I felt really powerless in my own business, which is a weird thing to say. I'm the boss and I could do whatever the hell I want, but I'd like completely didn't feel it. And one day I jump on Zoom, because once a month we get the whole team together to do this, like all hands thing. You know, when you're on Zoom and you can see all the Brady Bunch faces of all the people? And I noticed that I can click to page two and there's like two Zoom pages full of folks. I'm like, man, when did we become like a two-page Zoom company? I didn't say this bit out loud, but in the back of my head, I'm like, what the hell do all, do all you guys do? I don't want to be a two-page Zoom company anymore. No wonder it felt really heavy. And so afterwards I got off the Zoom and I chatted with Tony, who's, who you know.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  And Kiran Rani, my wife, who you know. So I don't want this anymore. I didn't know what I wanted instead, but I knew what I didn't want.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Hmm. Which is a good start.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Often it's really, it's much easier.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  If you make a list of what you don't want, then what you do want is probably the kind of the opposite of that. And so I sat down with these two amazing women and figured out what it might look like on the other side. And I, I realized it'd been like a year and a half in a funk, just like tolerating all this [BLEEP] in my business that, that drained my energy. And my week was like, Casey and I said, says, it's not about how much time you spend doing what you love. It's about how little time you spend doing what you hate. And I was spending all my time doing what I hate. And I just didn't know that it was possible to change it, which is stupid to say, but true.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  It's also, you don't want to disappoint people, you know, you.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Most of it was just hanging on to people because.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  You hired them.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Cause I hired them and we'd become friends and I, and I felt like really uncomfortable.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Like I'm a conflict avoider. And so I didn't want to have awkward conversations with people put up with this thing that I hated. And I, like, I thought about shutting the whole thing down and just keeping boardroom, my, like my VIP group.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Like me and an assistant. And I was like, okay, but half the people in boardroom I only met because they joined us when they were smaller in Black Belt or smaller again in clients. And I was like, it's not the, like, I love the clients and I love the programs. It was just like the way my week was running, I didn't like. Watched an episode, a great talk by Jason Free from Basecamp, who I love. He's like my Elvis. He's talking to a bunch of software guys.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I know this is rambly, but I promise we'll, it'll be.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Worth it.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Hopefully, hopefully it'll be worth it. So we met how like software designers designed the product, but they never think about the product, the ultimate product, which is the business that they get to work in every day. And so I grabbed him for an interview and like secretly, I was like, what can I get from this for me? Cause I feel like I've built amazing client products, but the product I'm in every day doesn't feel fun. And then Tony and Kiran Rani helped get a vision for what it could look like on the other side. And then we're only like, from, you know, making the decision to a completely different business was 90 days away. And I spent more time not making the changes than making the changes.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  But, you know, 90 days later, the business was completely different. Sales team of nine to sales team of zero, like not a single setter, closer, no sales calls, no nothing. Team went from 36 to eight. And most importantly, my role went from, I don't know what my job is. And I'm in meetings all the time to, I get to do the two things I love, which is make new things and hang out with cool people and share the lessons from those two things to everybody. It's liberating.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And I think one of the things that I love about this journey is you recognize the fact that, hey, like, I don't want to do this rest of my life. Like, you know, this doesn't feel right. This is, and.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  A lot of us, we build these monsters called businesses and we confuse what we're supposed to do with what we want to do. Like.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is, this is a quote from Pinterest, you know, one of those Pinterest inspirational quotes that actually landed. And my friend Dan put me onto it, a different Dan. And it was like, I'm much more interested in how my business feels to me than how it looks to anyone else. And I heard that. I was like, oh my God, that's it. So I don't really care what anyone else thinks. Like, I'm the dude in this life 24/7. Let's build something that feels great. Yeah. Life changing.

• 19:37Speaker 02

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• 21:09Speaker 00

  So Taki, we like to play some games here.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Um, this is a bunch of markers.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  I know you love markers.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't think without it. And this whole thing's been awkward. This is gonna make it much better.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  No worries. We're gonna play another game later and these markers will be pivotal.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Um, but right now.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  We're gonna play a game called Real Taki Fake Taki.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yep. What do the markers do?

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Well, the markers are gonna be used later.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Okay, we don't need them now?

• 21:31Speaker 00

  No, but if you get a wrong answer, I'm going to remove one of the markers.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Okay. And if you're left with just one black marker later.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  You're gonna want all the markers later. So you want it as much as possible.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Get these answers right. Okay? So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to show you a quote. These are cards. You can read them out loud.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  This is a quote. You're gonna tell me, did you actually say this? Was this the real Taki? Or is it, I've never said that. That's not me. Fake Taki?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  So I'm gonna give you these cards.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  And you can go ahead and start reading and I'll tell you if there's real or fake.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Uh, okay. First one, I'm not responsible for any projects myself because I want them to actually finish. The idea is right. I don't remember saying those words. I'm, I'm the chief wanting officer. So mostly I'm like deciding what I want. But I'm definitely not responsible for finishing projects because otherwise they will definitely bomb.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  So more real or more freak?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  More real.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  So real Taki?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Phew. Okay. I don't remember saying those words, but that's great.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Next one.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Most coaches don't have a marketing issue. They've got an issue with marketing. I don't think I said that, but I love that quote. If I didn't say it, I'll say it now.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  But you're right. Fake Taki.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, good.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Next one.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  This is outrageous. I haven't got a number. We need to hit an order for daddy to love me. Um, I don't think I said that, but it's very true. Maybe I did say that. I'm gonna say real Taki.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  It is real Taki.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Uh, I don't have a number in my head. My dad, I had a great childhood. I'm definitely not driven by, by the numbers.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  I think you were answering somebody's question.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's hilarious. Okay, this is definitely fake Taki. Uh, mediocre coffee is fine. I did not say that.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  True. That's right. Fake Taki is right.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Next.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Eighty percent done by someone else is a hundred percent awesome. That's a Dan Martel quote. So if I said it, I was quoting Dan. I don't think it's me. Is that true?

• 23:16Speaker 00

  I, I caught you saying it so on a video. So it is real Taki.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  It's real Taki quoting real Dan Martel.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Okay, so I love the filler.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Love you, Dan.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, we love you, Dan. Uh, going viral should be your primary goal in marketing. A hundred percent not true.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Fake Taki, correct.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm probably gonna die one day on Zoom, teaching a workshop to our clients. A hundred percent true. I'm gonna do this until I'm dead unless AI, you know, unless the robots take over.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  That is true. Real Taki.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't want an empire. Empires are for tyrants. Fake Taki.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Correct. Very good.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  This is great.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  No markers taken. They're all intact.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  I've never like been so concerned about the, the longevity of some markers.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I'm glad.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  That's great, man. I love it. I want to talk a little bit about, you know, you mentioned this story before about, you know, you were strapped for cash. You had a buddy named Sam. You had borrowed 200 bucks so they can get groceries. Carrie Marie says she's pregnant for, you know, you had five kids. This is your sixth child coming on the way.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Something like that. It's probably fourth to fifth or something like that.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. The story is out there if anybody wants to Google it or find it on another YouTube channel, but you didn't come with a lot of money. Like money is not a thing that you grew up with.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  And I had a bunch of like dumb money beliefs from fam.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Hmm, like?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  So we had a, my grandparents were pretty, they were communist. We had a hotline to the communist party headquarters, like a red phone. And AZO, which is like the CIA here, had like files on my grandparents. And so I grew up believing, you're gonna hate me on both of these. Money is evil and Americans are bastards. And um, turns out they're terrible beliefs to have if you want to grow a business.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Hold up, we're gonna slow down for a bit. How? Where are your grandparents from? What?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  They were Aussies. They were just, I don't know. I don't know the whole backstory.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  But uh, yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  They just got the red phone because they were just good at that.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Well, they were in the, they were in the communist party and um, yeah, apparently there's a hotline to, to headquarters to get whatever the instructions were. There were files on, on them and uh.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  But that trickle down, obviously.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  A hundred percent trickle down. Yeah. Like I'm the only one in my fam who runs a business. My brothers and sisters are doing amazing things, like very, like one's really senior in, you know, in NGOs.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Are you, are you, are you one of the first millionaires in your family?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, going back a couple of generations, I don't remember him, but when I was a kid, apparently we, you know, I, I knew them. Um, Papa Toll started, I think the company that became Toll Logistics, you know, those trucks?

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Up in Newcastle, I think, but I didn't meet him. But yeah, yeah. I mean, it's all new.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. How often do you think of, like Nicole and I have this phrase, Old Navy days?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  Old Navy days is we were living in the States. All we could afford is buying clothes from Old Navy. Old Navy.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Oh, right. Old Navy, the brand. Yeah, yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, Old Navy is like.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Submariner or something.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's like, you know, Banana Republic Gap and then Old Navy is like the bottom of the barrel. Like, and it was kind of a joke, but it was the reality. Like, we didn't have a lot of money and we could pay rent barely. And then we were just trying to make it happen and.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Even my kids, like we've got six kids. The three oldest had a very different upbringing to the three youngest. Cause halfway through that journey.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  Hmm. How often do you think of those days? And what, do you think of them as fond memories? What are your thoughts when you go back to the poor days?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Um, I think I'm the same guy. And I think like, I was just as happy. Yeah, they were great days. Cause I like, money, money solves all the problems that money can solve, but doesn't change anything else.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Um, I think you hit it. There's like a lack of money which causes all sorts of problems. And then there's enough money. And then beyond that, like to be honest, life doesn't change. The happiness doesn't change that much. I mean, your stuff's cooler and you can travel at the front of the plane, which is awesome. But I, I think like we help people get to a million dollars a year. That's kind of what our job is as a coach. And people think that when they get to a million dollars a year, everything's gonna be radically different. And you wake up and it's not that different. Like you've got way more options and way more choices. And I guess a lot of the stress has gone away.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  But it doesn't, I think if you're miserable before money, you'll be rich and miserable. And if you're happy with, without money, you'll be happy and rich.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  I strongly disagree.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Actually.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  I strongly disagree because I am way happier with money. I'm way happier.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm not saying I wouldn't choose it.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  I'm not the same person. I was miserable.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. Are you kidding me? Like, oh my gosh, your money solves all your stress. Like kidding, like there's very little that money doesn't solve. Like very little. People like, I, I talk about this a lot on the show because I feel like I, I just have very strong feelings about this. But my parents were immigrants from Egypt.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  We didn't have a lot of money. We got all clothes from Goodwill.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  We didn't have, you know, like we struggled, right?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  I never knew the feeling of not being head above water. Like it's always like pay the bills and that feeling of that stress. And then once you get past that, great. But then when you have an abundance of money where it's like, oh, I can get, I can treat my family to this amazing vacation. Like it's just like.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll take back what I said. I think um.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  I'm like, I would never go back.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  No, I would never go back too. But I've been the same. I think there's two sides to this. I think my smile ratio is identical to how it was in high school and how it was.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yep. I don't think.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, I'm not, like we make ridiculous amounts of money. And if you had to ask me 10 years ago, I would have laughed in your face, even growing up. Like my dream growing up, we lived in North Carlton in Melbourne.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  I lived on Macclesworth Street and my dream was one day to live on Drummond Street, which is like, my vision was like three blocks away.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Was the nice street in the area. That would have been cool. But my, um, I think my happiness set point is the same. My life is way cooler. No question. And yeah, now we can do a bunch of stuff that we couldn't. But like my joy level is the same. Like.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Also my, my stress level is the same. The stresses are very different. Like we've got a bunch of hards in our life. Everyone looks at me and they're like, oh, Taki works like four days a week and four hours a day. And that's true. And my, um, yeah, dude, my, like, we've had a ton of hard things, family wise, health wise and stuff.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, off camera, we've shared, you've shared these stories with Dan. It's not, it's not, I love the fact that you shared it with me because we have this concept in Arab culture and the word is called risk. Risk means like you're, it's almost like you're a lot in life or it's like credits.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Like everybody gets a hundred credits. Sometimes all your credits is money and you have nothing left for health. You have nothing left for relationships. Some people, their relationships are really high. So, right?

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  At the end of the day, no one gets everything.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  You're, you're gonna get challenged somehow, you know? And you've had your share of challenges.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Correct. Yeah. I think that risk, how do you spell it?

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like R I Z Q.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Risk. That's cool. I love that. I think, have you ever played like a, a video game or Dungeons and Dragons or something where when you start your character gets like, you've got 20 points to spend on various qualities? Like strength or, or speed or charisma or what? I think I spent all mine on like jazz hands and charisma and didn't have anything left for, left for like discipline or like the ability to read a spreadsheet or, you know, grown up stuff.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  But you can like, whatever points you've spent, like you could take those a long way.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  If you look at anyone who's great, they're like a, an eight or a nine or a 10 out of 10 at something.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  I think a lot of times we play it safe. I know this is like way off topic, but risk sparked an idea.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. But that kind of leads to something else I wanted to talk to you about. Um, I think a lot of what you said just earlier about like, you know, uh, same number of smiles when I had money, no money.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yep. Um, that's true. Thousand percent true for me.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  And I think it's because I've always said this about you, like you're like 95% artist, 5% business person.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Million percent.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  And as an artist, you're just happy that you get to do your art.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Dude, all I need is that and a sheet of paper or a wall or a window or my hand to invent something. Yeah, like I don't need very much.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  To be like, simple pleasures. And I like, I've got, yeah, we've got really, really good money. But I like, the ideal day has like hanging out with a really good friend, hanging out with my fam, drinking a great coffee somewhere nice, going for a walk, having a swim.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  That doesn't cost much. Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  None of that, like the most expensive thing on that list is the coffee, which is like, if it's a nice coffee, maybe it's like 10 bucks, maybe.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. My only argument is that like, if you don't know how you're gonna pay your bills.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  You can't enjoy any of that.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  And there's nothing more stressful than like, the number shows up on a thing and you have to like, you're worried like, will this card go through? I've had plenty of those days. That's awful. Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  But I want to talk a little bit about that because I do feel like the reason why you've done so well, and even recently with your, your push to content and, and your branding and although great videos, you're putting out short form, long form.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Is that people get to see the artist side of Taki. I think initially probably, this is just my impression. People just thought like, oh, this dude must be great at business because he's such a great business coach and he probably thinks in spreadsheets and da, da, da. And it's like, when I met you, like, oh, this guy's the opposite.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I think you have like limited access to like your calendar or something.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is true. I'm banned from the calendar. I've got read on the access because of the incident where I said yes to speak at two different, I ended up like, I booked myself to speak at three different conferences on the same day in three continents, which is hard to pull off.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  One of them was mine, so I went to that one.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  The other two I didn't and I let people down. Um, yeah, read on the access to that. We make great money. I don't like, this is terrible fun. Please don't hate me.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  This is how I know how we're doing. A few times a year, Krimmer goes, hey, have a look at this. I'm like, that's a lot of money. I'm like, great. And I just get back to it.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Um, when Tony started to work with us, she's like, I just wanna, you know, wanna get to know you and your goals. How much money do you wanna make? I'm like, oh, why? She goes, so I can reverse engineer the plan. I'm like, oh, I've never really thought about that. Like, the only time I had a money goal was when, when I needed to get us out of a massive hole and we needed to have enough money by the time this baby was born or would be. But the rest of the time, like, like, I don't even think about it. A few months ago, she's like, hey, Tacks, guess what? We did two million bucks this month. I'm like, oh, it wasn't a goal. Like, that's amazing.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Do you purposely like, don't wanna know?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  My just doesn't, doesn't matter to me. I like, I'm, so some people have a, when I hit a goal, then I'll feel a certain way. But my goal is like something I can do every day. So like, for me, winning is, I'm working on projects that excite me with people I love to work with to help people we care about. And I could do that every single day, which I love.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  I'm in a post need economy right now.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, a hundred percent, yeah. And I mean, you're very public about your numbers. You make well over two million a month, so.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  You're way beyond, you know, making sure the lights are on.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  The lights are super on.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Um, but even beforehand, when it wasn't like, I just don't, I just don't really care about that.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  I actually think it helps in a lot of ways. Like, I, I, I wouldn't be able to do that personally. But I think, I think for you to be the creative you are, because when I watch your content on, on YouTube, when I see you on stage, I, I don't see some guy who's like, I'm gonna teach a framework so that people can be able to like maximize every dollar. And like, I know this by like, this exact equation that I worked out in my little lab.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  If you ever see me teaching maths, it's fake talky.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, I've just not.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Like, I've never seen like, a percentage sign. I've never seen ratios. I've never seen actual numbers on your videos. You know, like, everything you draw is words. It's, it's graphs, like, it's pictures.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  There's a lot of stories.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Stories.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I'm super bright brain. To be, you know, that means that I've probably left a bunch of money on the table.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  And that's okay.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  No.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Um, I'm much more intuitive than financial. Luckily, I've got great people around me who are good at that stuff. And like, Taki, this thing that you wanna do, it's gonna cost us this much money. Are you okay with that? Yes, or no, thanks for pointing that out. We won't do that stupid thing. I think there's something amazing about, like, I know my marketing is way better. My content is way better when I'm not focused on the numbers.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  I watched, I find Casey Neistat super inspiring. And I watched this interview with him on, um, sort of live event with Colin and Samir.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Who are amazing. Colin and Samir, if you ever watch this, I would love to meet you. Casey, whatever I just said about Colin and Samir times 10. Um, and they said, I'd love to get your take on the state of the creator economy. And it was like, I take issue with that phrase. There's a lot of economy and not much creator anymore. And I know that, especially since the business is doing so well, my sense of neediness is like different. And I just make content that I know will be helpful and that is fun and meaningful for me. And then I just, I can just go unhinged and let it rip. And the stuff I'm producing is way better because I'm not attached to the outcome. And I'm not trying to like squeak, squeak every extra bit of juice out of the algorithm or whatever.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I wanna like, piggyback on what you just said right now or, or elaborate a little bit. Cause I've seen a lot of your videos and every time I see it, there's, there's a reoccurring message happening. And that message is, a lot of coaches that come to you and say, hey, I wanna be, I wanna grow my coaching business. They think it's like a hack. They think like, I gotta fine tune a funnel. I may figure, I need more leads. I need to know how to convert these leads. And something that you always say, I don't know if it's actually getting through to people, cause you keep saying it, but is like, you gotta have a great product.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  You gotta have, whatever you deliver has to be amazing. Otherwise, all that is like a leaky bucket. There's no reason to do that. What, you've coached thousands and thousands of people.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  What happens when somebody does that, takes on that advice?

• 35:54Speaker 01

  So let's start with what happens if you don't.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're a great marketer and your product's no good, you just speed up the rate at which people find out you're not good. Which is a terrible idea.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Like, oh, great, um, the emperor has no clothes. Okay, well, now that we know that. So, um, you can get a long way on marketing and sales. We've all, you know, we've all done that. I think having something you're proud of just makes everything else. I mean, it sounds so dumb that we need to teach people this, but it's the superpower. Like, have something legit amazing. And when you do, if you don't have that, you're, every new client you add is just replacing somebody who left. And so it's like, you know, churn and replace.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  And if you do, then you're like in ad and compound. And so life gets really fun really quick. Everyone knows Alex Hormozi is this great marketer, and he is, but dude, he's a product guy first. When they were working with gyms, his program was pretty expensive. Like, I don't know how much the average gym makes, but it's not that much money. And his program was like sixteen thousand, like a thousand dollars a month, sorry, a thousand dollars a week for 16 weeks. And they could like just scrape together the first payment. But if it didn't work by the end of week one, they couldn't pay payment number two.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Correct. They needed that ROI quick.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Product needed to be great. So he's like, the secret to scale is like, how low can you lower the bar about how someone, how, how good a client needs to be? And it still works. I think he's a product guy first, like Martell is a product guy first. All like, everyone good has a great product. Years ago, I remember reading that the Apple stores are the, I don't know if they still are, but they probably are, highest retail sales per square foot of any other retail store. And that's because the products are freaking great.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love it. You've coached thousands of people over, like, how long have you been doing this?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  A long time, maybe.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Twenty plus years, right?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Be close to 20 years.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've been in this a very long time.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm 50. How old are you?

• 37:34Speaker 00

  I'm 46.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  I'm the old guy.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  You look younger.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  I, if people ask you about my gray hair, it's like, well, that's, you know, that's 10 years of a software business and, you know, I sold it, otherwise I'm gonna lose my hair.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's the cost. But you've been in a very long time. You've helped a lot of people.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  What are the signs that you see when you have a new student, a new client, where you're like, I can't help you?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Um, butt face is probably the first thing.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, when you like, you give someone some advice and the first thought is, yeah, but that's butt face.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  So butt face is like a biggie. Anyone who's like not open to trying a new thing, that's a worry. Anyone who's looking for like, the tactics and the hacks. Honestly, if someone's like, focus is how do I make money? And I'll change my niche and I'll serve a whole different audience. Just tell me what works. I'm like, oh dude, I work with the good guys. I, I want, I wanna work with someone who's like, who cares about the people and, and wants the people to win. And they know that if they can help people win, they'll win too. That's my person.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  And if they, I think if it's a spectrum, there's mercenaries at one end, there's, you know, which is all money, no care. There's missionaries at the other end, all care, no money. And I wanna help that person.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  You know, this guy, not, not either of those two. I think that's the, how do I know someone's not gonna work it out? If they've got butt face or they're only in it for the cash and they don't actually care.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  They'll probably do really well short term, but they're not gonna do well with me.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  And who do you help the most? People that come with, they have XYZ, but they don't have this.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  The people I love to help is someone who's got something that works and that they love. If they've fallen in love with the customer, not with the, the product or the fame or the name, those people are really fun to help because they've got the goods. And now my job is to, how do we take the magic that's behind a, a door and show it to the world? That's really fun.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  These days, you can get an answer from the internet, an influencer, or AI in seconds. But when it comes to legal matters for your business or your family, a quick answer is not the same as the right answer. With 25 years of experience, LegalZoom knows how to start you off right. When you need a legal hand, visit LegalZoom. Go to LegalZoom.com to get started. LegalZoom provides access to independent attorneys and its law firm, LZ Legal Services. LegalZoom is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Today's episode is sponsored by Upwork. I don't need a script to tell you how much Upwork has helped my business. I've been using Upwork for over a decade and it's the easiest way to find top talent to grow your business.

• 40:04Speaker 00

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• 40:48Speaker 00

  That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U P W R K dot com, Upwork.com.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  We're gonna play another game, Taki.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  All right.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is one of my favorite games.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Anytime you use that the iPad, I get nervous.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  No, no, no. What are we doing? No, no, nothing to be nervous about. So actually, what's great about this game is that there are no right or wrong answers.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Amazing, we're gonna crush this.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  So this game's called Offer Table. I'm gonna give you an offer.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  You have five seconds to think about the offer and you're gonna say, deal or no deal. Okay?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  So I'm the buyer?

• 41:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, you gotta choose. I'll take that deal?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Or no deal, I don't want that.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  This is fun. I've never been on a show with games.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Here we go.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  I love this.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  First one.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  I'm gonna give you a hundred thousand dollars for one keynote. You must fly to Dubai and it must be tomorrow and you must stay for a week.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  No deal. Can I say?

• 41:39Speaker 00

  Why?

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Why? My wife's going through chemo, tomorrow's chemo, I'm gonna be there.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  We're wishing you the best, Kerry.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  You run a business, okay?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  And it runs perfectly without you.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  Forever.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  But you never have to work again, right?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  No deal. Sorry.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  No deal, right away.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not trying to build a thing to retire from. Yeah, I have no, like, the money's cool, but like, for me, this is about creativity and expression. And if I, if I, if my hands are tied behind my back and I can't like, think and draw and, yeah, that's not fun. What am I gonna do?

• 42:08Speaker 00

  That's your truth?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Next deal, unlimited travel.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  In a private jet for a year.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  In exchange for no coffee for a year.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  No, there's not a chance.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Love it. You can go tea?

• 42:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Death before decaf and definitely not tea.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  All right, I'm gonna buy your business right now for $250 million, but you have to stay as an employee for 24 months.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I'm mostly worried about what happens after 24 months, because I will happily work in it for the next 20 years.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Do whatever you want.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would take that deal. Yeah, I'd probably ask if I could stay longer.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Can I invest for 24 centuries?

• 42:41Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm gonna be around that long.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, you never know. What's happening right now, everyone thinks they're gonna live forever.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Okay, Netflix calls.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  They want you to do a special, but the crew must follow you and your family for six months, starting from tomorrow.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  I've got a few friends who kind of live this life, and when I hang with them, it is pretty awkward. Like, they're great, it just takes me a while to get my head around the camera crew. Do I get, if I get say about what they can and can't shoot, yes, otherwise I'm gonna say no. Because I put my hand up for face on the internet and my kids didn't.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  That's fair. 10,000 new clients.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  But they're all beginners, never made a dollar on the internet.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yes, I'll take that deal, because we've got a program now that does a great job of helping those people win and super, super proud of it. If you had asked me eight months ago, I would've said, no.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  This is clients.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would 100% do that.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, the program's called clients.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, the program's called clients.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  And it's extraordinary.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  And, yeah, and it works. We got people to make their first sale in, in three days and it's super fun. I teach it, but I don't coach it, if that makes sense.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, but what a gift you're giving people. That's, there's nothing like that first.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  First dollar's amazing.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really is.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  It opens up, the ceiling opens up, everything changes.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  I did my first, my equivalent to that for me was, there's this guy called Peter Sun, who had a group of marketing consultants. And he asked me to come and do a guest spot on, every Tuesday morning, he used to get on Zoom or whatever it was and like, yell at his people to follow the system and do the stuff. And he asked me to come and do a guest spot, like an interview, and I did, and I was too scared to sell stuff. And so I didn't. And then a few weeks later, I did my first like webinar to sell stuff. And we made $30,000 in an hour or an hour and a half. Previously, I'd like worked in a job for $23,400 a year. And I did more than that in an hour and I bawled my eye, like, my brain broke. Like, the first time you do a thing and you make actual money and you help real people on the, like, your brain just, it's the coolest thing ever.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, for me, the first dollar I made out of my paycheck, I made $30. My business was, I used to sell rare Air Jordans on eBay.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 44:46Speaker 00

  So I would buy, buy, find a buyer. I'm looking for a size 11 Jordan 11s. This is before the retros came out, this is 2001.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  So they would be like, I'm looking for, you know, size 11 Jordans 11, you know, the, the, the numbers for the different kinds of Jordans.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  And then I would find somebody selling it and then I would sell it with a markup arbitrage to this person. I made my first $30 that way. I was like, what?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  How?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yes, it's amazing.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  I was just like.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  By the way, how, like, the first time you make a dollar in your own business, it's almost the best money you make.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Oh, 100%. That's why they hang that first dollar in like the pizzerias and stuff like that where it's.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  It's really special.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, because you, you start doing the math, you start wondering, wow, what if I can make 60 with a hundred dollars? What, wait a minute, what?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so 100% I would take that deal.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, back to the game, all right.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Sorry, I segueed.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  All good. So you get one extra hour a day, so you get 25 hours a day versus everybody gets 24 hours a day.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:46Speaker 00

  For the rest of your life.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  But that one hour has to be spent alone.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Does sleep count?

• 45:50Speaker 00

  You could use that how you want. You could, if, you mean, alone, you're alone in your sleep, yeah.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I, I would, like, an extra hour, an extra hour of sleep, I think that'd be great. Means my other hours are good. I've got, a few friends have done that, what's it called, the 10-day silent meditation retreat thing?

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  For pasta or whatever?

• 46:05Speaker 00

  We mentioned off-camera, John Lee Dumas, he did that.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Okay, I would never do that in a million years.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  10 minutes in my, with my own thoughts is scary enough, 10 days, terrifying. But if I could sleep, I think I could use an hour of sleep.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  Nice. Next one.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Your work outlives you by 300 years, but you're never credited and nobody knows your name.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be dead, I won't care.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  Take that deal?

• 46:27Speaker 01

  100%.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I'm dead, which I'm gonna be, the fact that it keeps helping people, I don't need to be remembered, just wanna be good for, while I'm here.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Nice. Magic wand, you never have to deal with dramas in your life again, but you must be Prime Minister of Australia for three years.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  No, life's too short to spend even one minute doing stuff you hate. I'd be terrible at that, it'd be bad for the country, it'd be awful for me. This country would, yeah, people would wake up and they're like, what the hell happened to this place? It used to be so good.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  I'm not taking that deal. On behalf of the Australian people.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  You're welcome, I'm not doing it.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  I don't think I would vote for you.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't vote. No, I'd be awful as PM. Yeah, no chance.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  I would love to see the budget that you approve.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  That's a terrible idea.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Okay, you start over at 21 years old. You go back in time, so you have the same relationship, same Kerry, same kids, same road, you just have to go through all over again. Would you go through that again?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been a hell of a ride. So do I have the wisdom and knowledge that I've got now, so I can do it better and smarter?

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, why not? Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, then I would 100% do it. And even if I didn't, like, it's been a great ride. There's been so many, like, highlights, so many, so many lowlights. Often a mate will be like, how you doing? I'm like, most days I'm a 10 out of 10, some days it's a 2, averaging an 8, it's a great life.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  I mean, we've hung out enough for me to vouch, that's true.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and your kids are amazing and Kerry's a wonderful person, so.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  100%, yeah, very lucky.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, 100%.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  I like games, this is great, I need more games.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  In my, in my stuff.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Okay, so I wanna just, you know, we're gonna, we're, this is gonna publish maybe about four weeks from now.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  What is on your horizon? What are you doing? What fun stuff are you doing? What vacations, what work stuff are you excited about?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so vacations is tricky right now, because we're going through this chemo thing.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  We've got a trip to Italy in a month and a week that I think we're gonna have to bail on, which sucks, because we've got really dear friends on the Amalfi Coast who we hang out with every year and we're gonna miss them this year. So maybe we'll talk about work, because life is a bit tricky.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  So we're in this weird space, if you think about like, every business, you have to like, market and get leads, you have to sell stuff and you deliver a service. I think we have, without coming across as brag-ish, we've completely nailed the get clients side of our business. Been sold out 13 months in a row is epic and it's fun. And so I can't do like, lots of things at once, but if we put the eye of sour on and focus it on one thing, we get to focus all of our energy and attention for the rest of this year on how do we make Black Belt Out flagship program the greatest place on earth? It's already really, really good, but how do we make it even easier for clients to win? How do we make it more fun? How do we make it simpler? So all of our attention is on that right now, which is fun. We're talking about product versus marketing before.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Was it Naval Ravikant said, you're doing sales because you failed at marketing, you're doing marketing because you failed at product. That's, that's.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  That's a gut punch.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  That's a gut punch.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  And so Black Belt's amazing, but there's a few things in the program that aren't great.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Like?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Like, I've been doing this for a long time, I've got, I've had a bunch of ideas for a long, long time, everything's recorded, the portal right now takes a guide to walk you through. It's not like, step one, do this, step two, do this, it's custom planned for each person, which is epic, and I think that's the right approach. But I've got some content that probably should be shot and some things which should be streamlined. We're looking at how do we.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Like an onboarding for anybody that comes in?

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, onboarding, but also post-onboarding.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  It's choose your own adventure on purpose, because I don't want everyone to look and sound the same. And we wanna leverage your strengths, not cookie cutter you with everybody else. But I think there's a lot of things which are done manually and need a coach that could be done, could be streamlined. And so the goal for us right now, that Tony and Mike on my team are here this week and on Thursday, we're hanging out and building out missions.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  So it's like, we've got a process for like choosing the right next thing. At any given moment in your business, there's a, you know, one move that's like the, the lead domino.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  And then how do we turn that into a really clear six week piece of work for somebody? It's got big ideas about how to simplify and streamline the client experience. That's gonna be really fun.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  I've met so many people through you talking. One of the things I, there's a quote from, the quote, Jordan Harbinger, a friend of mine and podcaster.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Jordan's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  He, he mentioned this to me one time and he said that like, he's, his whole thing is networking and making sure that like you grow your network.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  And he used to say, or he said to me once, that if you are covetous of your network, if you don't share your network with other people, it atrophies.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Like if you don't introduce your people that you know to other people. Some people are like, I don't want to introduce them because I want them for myself, or maybe they'll get better than me and they're thinking that way, you know? I'm just gonna share a few people that you introduced me to and how, how much impact that's made on my life. Okay. So I'll start with, I'll go past, present, future. Okay. Past. Well, it's also, also present. You introduced me to Ken.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Oh, Kazuki. Is that right? Yeah, right. So Ken from Japan.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  He's in, he's in black belt, right? And by the way.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  He's such a good dude.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he loved your last event, by the way, in Thailand.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  You can tell a lot about how great somebody is. Like if they've got kids, if you meet their kids, you're like, this guy's a legit amazing human being.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Ken's kids are the best.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think, I think you got him beat by one, right? He's got five kids.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I beat Ken in number of kids.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  I'm not saying anything about the quality of the kids.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  His kids are extraordinary.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Everybody's great. So I met Ken. Ken runs a great team with his family. We met them because we were looking for ways to build out our studio in our home office at the time when we're going video two years ago, when he started doing this whole video thing on YouTube.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  He helped me build a studio in my house, tell me all the equipment. He set everything up. We got on Zoom calls, move the camera here, boom, boom.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  And then he's, they're very much part of our team still. They help us with the editing part of our,

• 52:02Speaker 01

  I didn't realize.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  Of our operation. Every year we go to Japan, we meet up with them and we have a great like kind of team powwow. They're, they're fantastic.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  They're amazing.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  But you introduced me to him because I was like, hey, I'm looking for, actually you introduced me more than one person, but then I went with Ken and it just kind of opened up this whole video world for me and our team. And I was like, you're like, you helped us tremendously in this area. And then we wanted to kind of grow beyond our home studio. We're like, should we build out a studio in a physical space, hire a full-time video producer? You know, this is prior to bringing on Josh and everything. So you introduced me to Sean and I said, I want to do a pilot with Sean just to see what it feels like to, to have somebody follow around the camera and, and I don't have to shoot myself.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  And so we shot a pilot episode with Sean just to get a feel of like, how is, it's like, okay, cool, Sean, that, that was, thanks for that experience. And it was kind of a green light for us to find Josh and we hired Josh and Josh became our video producer. We found our studio, found our office and that kind of like.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  So good.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  Dictated everything. And then when we met up in Manly, when we, at the Media Empire event, you told me about Simon Bowen.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Oh dude, of course.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  About the mental models and the drawings and all that stuff and how to get your genius out on these models. And then we had a chat on Zoom because you introduced us via text message.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  And from there, we kind of had a chat and starting his program like next month. So like.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Dude, Simon's such a good, good man.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  You're in great hands.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's fantastic. So like you have impacted so much of my journey in such a short amount of time, like, and just by introducing people that you felt like would be valuable to me.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Are you mindful of this? Are you like trying to, like who else can I help? Or are you just doing this in the spur of the moment?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  No, I just do it in the spur of the moment. But I like, I think one of my favorite things to do is like, I love to meet, like I'm where I am. I'm not self-made. Do you know Jason Gaynard?

• 53:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love that guy.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  So Jason.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's my talk.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Jason had this guy come and speak. I can't remember his name. I feel embarrassed that I don't. Might be Josh, but I could be wrong. He's got cerebral palsy and he's an incredible, like hilariously funny guy. And he said, I'm not self-made, I'm community made. And that landed and that became the title of Jason's book, Community Made. I think that's true of me. I'm definitely not self-made. I'm [BLEEP] by myself, but I'm great because I've got an amazing squad of really good friends. And.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Who's impacted you? Who are some of the people that?

• 54:17Speaker 01

  I mean, so many people. Ken helped me with video. Sean's helped me with video. Early days, a guy called Matt Church helped me unpack my ideas into IP. That's just like, Pink Sheets has been a skill that I've used for centuries. Dan Martell has helped me a ton with confidence and pushing me to do all the uncomfortable things like being on camera and getting abs and all the stuff. Thanks, Dan.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  That's abs, not ads.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, we spend almost no money on ads right now, but I don't have ads either. I kind of, I said, I don't know if I told you this, I said a goal.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  I saw your abs. You had them.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  I had them by April 1st last year. I had to like run a Zoom call with my shirt off and my man boobs jiggling because Dan said you need a public commitment and a consequence. So I did. Very motivating.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Some people like have been like directly one-to-one influential and some of them have been influential through their content.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  Their work, yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Casey is a massive inspiration to me. I think my dream video would be like a Casey Neistat business adventure video. That's kind of where I'm trying to get to. So many people.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  There's something that you and I have in common. We are students of comedy. We love comedy.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  I want you to give me your top three comedians and why.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  So they're all dark comedy, like.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  Like Louis C K dark?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Probably darker.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Wow, okay.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Frankie Boyle's my favorite. He's a Scottish guy, used to write for Jimmy Carr. He says awful things and I just love it to bits. So Frankie Boyle is hilarious and inappropriate. I'd say Anthony Jeselnik, I love, and probably, probably Jimmy Carr.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  Hmm. Jimmy's fantastic.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so fun.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  I like, the, the less appropriate, the more inappropriate, the better.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Stuff that you just shouldn't laugh at, but you do. Daniel Tosh.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's got this thing where he, he says something awful and you laugh and then he makes it your fault for laughing, not his fault for saying, I love that.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Mark Maron does that too. He's great too.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Sarah Silverman.

• 56:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Gosh, she's funny.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's very irreverent.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's the best. You know, the, she does this one about her sister, I think Jolene in college. If you ever get a chance.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I won't repeat it. It's amazing. It's amazing.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  All right. But the reason why I bring it up is because you're pretty funny. Like you're pretty funny when you're in your videos, when you're speaking on stage.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Are you conscious of like, let's have some fun, let's make some jokes?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  I don't know if this is normal, but if I'm in a conversation with somebody, like they'll say something and I'll think about it, which will lead to another thought and another thought and another, and like, before I know it, I'm like seven conversations away in my head. And usually, and they'll like, they'll catch me giggling. I'm like, what are you laughing at? And I'm like, oh. I ended up over here and let me, I see stuff that makes me laugh all the time.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  And I think part of it is just taking yourself lightly.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  I think my clients love it when I can, you know, we've got this thing in the Australian culture. It's true in the States, depending on where you are in the States, I think, where the more friends you are with somebody, the more kind of [BLEEP] you hang on them and they're going to each other. So I found that fun. And mostly I do this because it's entertaining for me.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  My goal with all of the content I make, whether it's for clients or for the public is like, how can it fun and useful? Is that, is that like, that's my north star?

• 57:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And if it's just useful, I remember chatting with Hormozzi via text. I'm like, my goal's to be useful. I'm like, yeah, you're doing that. My goal's to be fun and useful. You're no fun. And he's like, yeah, that's right. But that's, that's the thing.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, he had a whole Tony Robbins interview about that, like.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Where he had him on the show and Tony was trying to bring out his fun part.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Anabolic Alex, whatever it was.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  Exactly. Which is, which is interesting. But I find it interesting because Nicole always says, you're funny. You should be more funny on camera, blah, blah. And I always had this like fantasy of doing like stand-up comedy, but then I realized I'm actually not good as like a, by myself comedy.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  I need someone to bounce off.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  Exactly. Like all my funniness or jokes come from being around people.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  And yeah, like I make all the corny jokes in the office and blah, blah, blah. And like, I love to make people laugh and da, da, da, da. But like, it's hard for me to just do it outside of a group.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  And I think that it's hard to come up, that's why I have so much respect for these stand-up comedians.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Do you know Garrett Gunderson?

• 58:12Speaker 00

  No, who's that?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Oh, you, okay. He's the next one you need to meet.

• 58:15Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Garrett will be useful for you in a whole fun way.

• 58:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Uh, he's a mate of mine. He's got, uh, long kind of grayish hair. He looks like Jesus. He talks about money. I call him Money Jesus. He had a company called Wealth Factory. So he's like, entrepreneurs had to do their money. But he's, um, lately, he's, he's been into stand-up comedy. He's obviously been a consumer for a long time, but he's hysterical. He roast people. He'd be great on the show.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  And he's, he's one of my favorite human beings. You need to meet Garrett.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  You just mentioned about the wealth factory and Garrett. This is like, it's just total side note, total whatever. But like, I think that one of the like untapped resources for entrepreneurs is like what to do with your money. Like, um, our mutual friend Dale Beaumont, we hung out a whole bunch of times. Every time we hang out, Dale's like, do you know Jackson Milan? You gotta get to know Jackson Milan.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jackson's great.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  Right?

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  And I was like, Jackson Milan, okay, fine. I'm gonna talk to Jackson Milan. I'll get on a phone with him. Like he just berated me every single time to him. It's like, you haven't talked to me yet? Talk to Jackson Milan. I was like, fine Dale, okay. So then we get on a call with Jackson Milan. Jackson Milan's whole business model is basically you are making money.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  You need to do something with this money.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Outside the business, like invest, you know.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  You know, diversify portfolio. How do you tax advantages, blah, blah, blah. You know, and it's just like, kind of, he has like a whole team where they take care of your whole like future with money. And it's like, there's so much value in this concept of like, how, instead of trying to help people with.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Make it.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Make money in their business, like they made it, do something with it. And I was just like.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Coolest coaching niche I've ever heard of. I've never met this person, but my mate Pete told me about him. He's at an event full of coaches and they're like, turn to the person next to you and tell them what your niche is. And so he turns to this woman, she goes, I'm the instant millionaire coach.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Instant millionaire.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Hmm. So what do you mean? He goes, well, you know how somebody wins Lotto?

• 59:59Speaker 00

  Uh-huh.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  And they come into all this money and two years later, they're worse off than they were.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  I'm like, yeah. He goes, well, I work with people who've just won Lotto. She takes 1% of their winnings and helps them manage the 99% so they don't do stupid stuff with it and turn it into more. Like that's a genius niche.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  That is, and I'm sure she could have some athletes as well.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  And she can target like, because they publish the lottery winners. So she's got like, she could just snort the way, dude, it's so smart.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  So good.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  We're gonna play another game.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  With the markers.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  Okay, we're gonna step out of the studio and come back.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  So, we're here at the whiteboard. This game is called Whiteboard Gauntlet.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  Gauntlet, oh geez. Alright.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Okay, so we have the markers from before.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  Okay, you have all these markers to use.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  You can put it on the table, you can do whatever you want.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you a prompt, and you're gonna create a model. You're gonna explain how to do such a thing.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  As you go to each one, okay? You have 60 seconds to think about them.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  And then you have about 90 seconds to draw and explain to our wonderful audience.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Okay? The reason why we're doing this is because this is like your superpower.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  I can't think without a pen, so hopefully we're in good shape.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I just wanna show off Taki's superpower through the whiteboard gauntlet.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  Alright, so 60 seconds starts as soon as I finish the prompt.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, otherwise you'll take 58 seconds to explain it and leave me with no time.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Exactly. First one is a quick intentional reel for Instagram.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that's easy. Uh, let's get some colors.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  I think about Instagram reels, any kind of short form content like Lego. Um, we've got four parts, this is less a model, but I think the picture will kinda make sense. We've got the hook, which is designed to stop the scroll, get people to pay attention, that's part one. First three to five seconds, how am I doing for time? We've got heaps of time. Uh, second, we've got the build, which is the body of the content. You know, it's a story or a list or steps. Uh, third, let's go red, uh, and it will go black. So, grab their attention, give some context, get people curious. The build is a story or a list of steps, building to a payoff, and the payoff is like the, that's meant to be the tool that the Lego guy holds. This is the aha, the insight, the key idea. And then at the end, where's my red, there?

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  At the end, we want some kind of call to action, which is the invitation. And so I just think about it like Lego, four little building blocks. And so when I make a piece of content, I just have a little card with each of those pictures on it. I go, what's my topic? I usually start with the idea, and then go backwards. I know some people go, you know, hook first, but I like to go from here. My rule of thumb is it's gotta make sense, even if you take the call to action away, it's gotta be standalone useful, and then this is just a bonus to follow or to comment or to whatever.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  And this is how you deliver it?

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, grab their attention, tell a story or give the three steps or the tips, and then one key payoff, which is usually, don't do that, do do this instead. And then, uh, final is just a series of easy yeses, so what's the easy next step?

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  Wow, perfect timing, amazing.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  I realize we've got pens, but we don't have a wiper offerer.

• 1:02:55Speaker 00

  We do.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  There we go, wiper offerer, okay. I'll have you wipe while you think. Next one, a good marriage.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Um, a good marriage. I don't know that I'm the best example of a good husband, so it's probably got something to do with toilet seats ups or downs.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Okay, let's see it.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Uh, a good marriage. Alright, Kira Marie, don't hate me. A good marriage is probably, um, if you've got your two people. Ideally, we want some common interests, hopefully the overlaps are a bit bigger than that. I think, uh, the thing that helped us work is not only were we two people doing interesting things, but we had a kind of a fairly common view of the future. And so as we, you know, as I got closer to my future and she got closer to hers, we got closer and closer and closer together. Whereas I think sometimes over time, people part ways. So I think it's enough commonalities that we've got stuff in common, enough separate things that we have interesting lives by ourselves, and then a common future that brings you closer together.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  That's pretty damn good, actually. A lot of people grow apart because of that, that's pretty damn good.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so part of that is just like redesigning the futures so you don't.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, and have enough commonality to enjoy the journey.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  I wish I'd drawn them with a little bit more overlap, actually, to be honest.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  All good, I love it. And with 10 seconds to spare.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Easy.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Amazing. Okay, I'm gonna give you the next one while you wipe.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  I wish I gave you the wiping job, because then I'd have more time to think.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  No, no, you can wipe as slow as you like.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  The next one is how to write a joke.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Ooh, I don't know that I've ever written a joke on purpose. Um, I don't know. Um, how to write a joke. Okay, so a good joke, directionally, is like, you think it's going here, but it goes here. And that's the surprise element. So I think, if you think about like the most basic joke, there's like a setup, which is the part which makes you think it's gonna continue this direction, and then there's the punchline, which is this bit over here. And so we wanna figure out what's, like, the magic about this is it's, it's both true but unexpected. I don't know how to draw a joke, to be honest.

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  You're doing good.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Like, there's a classic, um, he's just like, take my wife, please. And you know, like, people thought it was going in this direction and it zigzagged over there.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  I don't know how to draw a joke, but it's basically,

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  It wants to be true.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Misdirection, I like it.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  It's misdirection.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. I like this kind of visual of like, I think it's going here, and then like, oh, that's, that's actually funny, and actually, better than what I thought.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. I like it, okay?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Sorry, that's not a great one.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  No. Hey, they're not looking like bankers.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  They're definitely not.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Alright, next one is your, how to choose your next holiday.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Oh, that's, that's fun. How to choose your next holiday visually. Oh, you didn't even give me a minute to think, we're just going.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Okay, I'll pause for you, there you go. It was, the wiping was the minute.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  You're right. Uh, how to choose your next holiday? Yeah, okay. So, there's two things which make a holiday great in my mind. One is the where, and one is the who you're with. And so for each of these, you've got like where you do like and where you don't like. So I'd go my, we'd go red, because red's bad. I'd go anywhere cold is an instant out.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Anywhere hot is an instant in. Uh, we also get to choose, is it somewhere I've been before that I wanna revisit, or somewhere I knew that I'd like to explore?

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Um, so I'm always gonna go hot and friends. Um, and then you think about time of year, like Europe in summer. I don't know if this is a good model, but,

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  I'd go Europe, uh, in summer, and South Europe, not North Europe. Have you noticed that there's two, Europe's two parts? So the Germany bit, you know, the north is like very logical.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  And the south is a bit more chaotic and fun. Nothing works, but it's way more fun. So I'm always like, where do I wanna go? Who would I like to have with me? If it's a family trip, that's got some parameters.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Otherwise, kinda anywhere with a beach.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  And coffee, you can find good coffee anywhere if you look hard enough. But I think that's where I'd start.

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  Okay, where would you put Canberra?

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  I would put Canberra here.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Nothing, nothing wrong with it, but there's not enough right about it to make it desirable.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  But this is a good model, like, in terms of like your priorities and value, and then like when you're pitching ideas to your family, like where we wanna put these places on the map.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  So we wanna, we wanna buy a house in Japan, and there's this beach town about 90 minutes south of Tokyo called Kamakura.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, Kamakura's gorgeous.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  Hot springs, yeah.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  So I was telling the fam and, I goes, Kamakura, where is it? I'm like, it's an hour and a half from Tokyo. She goes, no, come a closer.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  How to write a joke?

• 1:07:36Speaker 00

  Alright, next one.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Next one.

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  Okay, next one is,

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  It's not how to be a good dad, but how to do your best as a dad.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Um, how do I draw this? So I think there's probably three layers to this, and the first layer is care, which is mostly a function of time. Together. Sometimes we've got more time than others, but it's mostly about being there when you're there. Uh, and finding, is it in the, in the Jewish traditions, they talk about, um, mealtimes, going to and from places? And I think like, uh, mealtimes and driving times, bedtimes are like perfect times. So I think that's first. Uh, then I think there's probably some, there's some sharing the lessons that, I think this is a damn martellism. Uh, don't give your kids the things you never had, give them the lessons you never knew. But I think the big part of it for me is help them become the best them,

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  which is about them exploring their options and finding the things they're good at and love, and being able to try a bunch of stuff and then go, that's my, that's my thing or things. My goal for my kids is they, they become the best them.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  Right. I love it.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Speaker 00

  Um, well, we had this conversation once with my mom, because my mom worked long hours, and both my parents worked really long hours. Um, and she was kinda like, you know, you know, sorry, I wasn't like always home to help you out, blah blah. And like, for me, I, I thought the best thing I got from her was her being her best self.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  Seeing her in her element, seeing her at work, seeing her be successful as a woman.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  You know, immigrant, how to learn a new language, all this kinda stuff.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  And just like you being actually successful is a huge gift you can give your kids.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  Love it. I love it.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  That's all the games we have at the whiteboard gauntlet.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Oh, amazing.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  Amazing. I do have a question, though.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Um, do you, as a marker fan?

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  Feel like certain markers allow you to have better handwriting?

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  I don't know about better handwriting, but there's definitely pens I love and pens I don't love.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  And why do you love them and not love them?

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Mostly fatness of pen equals goodness of picture.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Fatness of pen?

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, like, if you're doing this, like, here we've got a camera nice and close up, but if you're in a room, that's really hard to see from far, far away.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  So I noticed you have these really big, round ones that you use on your paper.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, fatness is what I'm going for. I'm obsessed with stationery and.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  That's why you love Japan.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  That's why I love Japan.

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  But yeah, like colored markers, like even in this little bag I've brought with me, there's like note cards and fat note cards and, and three different pens and two different copy markers, because I can't think without a pen and I like to think and I like to sketch.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Mostly it's about fatness.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. Let's jump back into the studio.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  Nice. And shout out to Ken. So you have passed the whiteboard gauntlet.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  That was, that was quite the gauntlet.

• 1:10:25Speaker 00

  No, it was a bit of fun. I love it. Um, and I'll hang with you, man. It's great. It's been great. Just the last couple of hours together.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Appreciate it.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  Yep. I wanna wrap up today's episode with a little bit of, um, we talked a little bit about it, but I wanna go a little bit deeper on your concept of a lifestyle empire.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  Um, you had some conversations with other entrepreneurs and they asked you this question. They say, are you building an empire or a lifestyle business?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so insulting.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  So I've got many, many thoughts. This, this first came up when Dan Martel, who's got a lot more airtime on this episode than he probably deserved, asked me to come speak, I'm kidding, Dan, we love you, um, asked me to go speak at an event in Kelowna and the event's called Empire, uh, Empire Builder. I'm like, this sounds great. I'd love to come speak. What's it about? He goes, well, it's for empire builders, not lifestyle businesses. And my mouth said, that sounds great. And my gut said, oh, it's like, why should you choose? I mean, every business is a lifestyle business because every business kind of impacts your lifestyle.

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  And, uh, if you can have both, I think you should have both. I heard, um.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  What is your definition of both? Of what's an empire? In your head, what's an empire business versus, just so anybody's listening or watching?

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  There's a lot of like business dudes who've got a business and that's kind of all they got. And like, they're obsessed about it and that's fantastic. If like, honestly, again, back to the conversation before, I'm much more interested in how your business feels to you than how it looks to anyone else. So if that's what you want, amazing. But if I've got a great business, but my life sucks and my family's in trouble and I'm not healthy and I'm not sleeping and I'm stressed and I'm like, what have I really won? So I think traditionally an empire is like something big and a lifestyle business is something small that allows you to like live a great life.

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  And I think if you do, you know, we're in this lucky position where we get to choose and design whatever we want. And if we can design whatever we want, why don't we make something where we get the best of both worlds?

• 1:12:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  In Australia, I don't know how well this will translate for international, but there's a, a brand of taco shells that you buy at the supermarket called Old Del Paso.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  And they've got this commercial going back a few years where there's a Mexican family and they're fighting over, we want the soft shell tacos and we want the hard shell tacos. And then like this beef happens. And the little girl goes, porque no los dos? Why can't we have both? Like, she's my spirit animal, that girl.

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And so if we could do both, I think we're great. We talked before about Jason Fried from Basecamp.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  His business partner is a guy called David Hannah Meyer Hansen, D H H. He was just on the David Sandler podcast and, uh, they brought up this lifestyle business thing. He goes, yeah, I have a business and a lifestyle. What have you got? Just a business? Ew. Right?

• 1:12:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  I think let's just set this thing up deliberately so that you get the balance of both that is right for you. And I think that changes. Like for me, you know, a great business has got really great money, really good meaning. So you're doing work that you care about with people that you love and to help people, you know, it's meaningful. And then freedom. And I think we wanna design it so we get both. I've got this epic client, um, long time friend now called, uh, Rob Nixon, who's up in Brisbane.

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  He would love Rob. Built this big company, maybe a team of 30 or something in an office in Brisbane, super swanky. I spent a day there and it was extraordinary, like very profesh. And they had like the daily stand up and all the things. And then he brought in a CEO and a board and one day, a bit like Steve Jobs, they conspired and they booted him out. And, uh, so all of a sudden he's, yeah, so he's got no access to the database, can't, you know, market and sell to the, like, he's just like out, out, starting from scratch. So he flies down to Sydney and we're at the Opera Bar, just under the Opera House.

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Great pizza, great pizza there.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't have the pizza, but I'll try it next time.

• 1:13:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  He's like, uh, I'd love your help thinking through the, yeah, my next business. I'm like, all right. He goes, well, I've done some thinking. I've got a rule, list of like 15 rules that my next business must have.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  And I love this because most people just go, what do I do? And he's like, this is the criteria to know if it's right. And the criteria was, I don't remember all of them off the top of my head, but there was like this amount of money, this amount of days. I wanna be able to travel first class. And so we, like, we designed business through the lens of, I want these outcomes for life. And so now he works 13 days a quarter. Every 90 days he works 13, does like five or $6 million a year, 85% profit. Team of like a couple, living his best life.

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Because he did it intentionally. And I think most people build their business sort of by accident rather than by design.

• 1:14:39Speaker 00

  One of the things that just came to mind when you just said that, um, we had Ramit Sethi on the show, um.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  I don't know Ramit, but he's super smart.

• 1:14:46Speaker 00

  Uh, we got introduced to him. He's a good friend of mine and, um, he loves Japan just as much as you. So you probably could meet up in Japan.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  So Ramit was on the podcast. We actually had the episode in Japan. And he has this line that, that was really impactful. And he says, every entrepreneur needs to ask the question, what am I getting? What, what do I get in my hand? For everything I'm about to do to start this business? All the sacrifice, all the time, all the money, all the, what have like, what do I get? And it's like, a lot of us, we don't stop to say like, what I want to get out of this? What's the end game?

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:15:18Speaker 00

  You know? And if you don't mind me sharing, you know, like my lifestyle empire journey was a little bit different, you know, like, as I mentioned, you know, I didn't come from money. So like, I wanted to solve like the money problem in my life. And that's why I went empire with Webinar Ninja for a very long time. We built it for 10 years and Dan Martel again was our coach and, um, helped us kind of scale our, our operations in the software game. Sold that business, uh, solved the money problem for us with that sale. Uh, don't have to worry about money. Thank you so much. Yes. Um, a lot of people ask me like, did you feel amazing? I like, I felt relief.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:51Speaker 00

  Felt like I didn't mess it up.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Um, but I was no longer the webinar guy anymore. And now I had to like, put all my effort and energy into the podcast. And I had a chance, Nicole, I had a chance to sit down and be like, what do we wanna do now? Like, how do we wanna live our life? What kind of business we wanna build?

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  What do I wanna be when I grow up?

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  Exactly. And that's when the lifestyle empire concept started to come to us. It's like, well, how do I do what I love? Do my secret sauce and not have to do anything else. Uh, and that's kind of the journey we're on right now, like building out the team. You know, making sure that we have all the tools required, da, da, da, da, you know? And I just wanna have like fun, have interesting experiences, have, so I can learn from these experiences, so that I can share them on the show. Uh, and yeah, and you can grow a really, really big business with that in mind.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Speaker 00

  But you just have to like allow yourself to do that.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it starts with what do I want or what do I don't want?

• 1:16:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  And then everything else kind of trickles down from that.

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  And I, I wanna just preface that through like, oh, Omar, you know, you, you're, you're starting from a very comfortable space, you know, like you had the money problem solved, da, da, da, da. But it's a good exercise to say, even, even if it's not your start. Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say a lot of people go, well, you know, it's easy to do afterwards. Like, cause everyone who says like, money's not important to me. Usually they're the billionaires who like, it's not important to me now. Of course, dude, that's fine.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Um, but I've been, like, I've got off track a couple of times, but I like, I deliberately built this business the way we did, recurring. Because plus or minus 10%, I know what's happening for the next few months.

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Constrain the hours because Ethan, who's now 26 and healthy, thank God, started his journey very different. Like we're in hospital for, you know, Westmead Kids Hospital for 10 weeks. And I was like, how do I run a business from beside the thing? And it's gotta be flexible enough. So we built it for freedom first. But originally it was like freedom, so I can look after my kid in hospital. And now it's, now he's healthy and well. So now it's freedom that we can go be wherever. I think it's a mistake to believe that, yes, there's seasons and when you start, you probably put more time and energy and whatever into it. But I think believing that, you know, I have to work really, really hard so that one day I can make it fun. That's just 1950s cold and they want their plan back. Like, that's not true.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Uh, I love Tim Ferriss talking about like taking your retirements early, many, many retirements along the way.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  And so I think, especially now, like, it's so easy to, like technologically, you could be anywhere. We've got like a, a recording studio in a pocket.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  Um, I think if you start with the, the rules, what's okay and what's not okay. And what do I want? What do I not want? You can build whatever you want.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  The way you want it from day one.

• 1:18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Cause you don't want to be stuck with a business you hate. You, I mean, you're, then you're an indentured servant, you know, like running after your tail and trying to figure out how to,

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  You know, keep it going and then they're done that. It's not, not fun.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Not fun.

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  I had a couple of years in the wilderness and it wasn't great.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. So one of the things that Nicole and I like to do in interviews, not podcast interviews, but actual new team hire interviews.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:51Speaker 00

  Is like, you know, we ask them a bunch of questions and then at the end of the interview, we ask them, do you have any questions for me? So I'm going to ask you, do you have any questions for me?

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. Tell me about like, you're great at basketball.

• 1:19:07Speaker 00

  I wish I was great.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  No, you are dude. Well, compared to me, you're great at basketball and you seem quite healthy. At least every experience I've had with you. How do you, do you go to the gym?

• 1:19:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, I want to know how you find slash make time. And do you enjoy the gym? I'm hoping the answer is no, but you go anyway. And if so, how do you make yourself go? But if the answer is not that, then I'll take whatever you got.

• 1:19:28Speaker 00

  Hmm. This is a fantastic question because I thought about it a lot.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Okay. Cause I don't enjoy the gym and I should go, but I don't enjoy the gym. So I don't go.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  I think a big part of it is identity.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:38Speaker 00

  Is like, I identify as a person that goes to the gym or I identify as somebody who is an athlete or as um, somebody who is healthy. And who do, like, what do athletes or healthy people do? They go to the gym. So like, I, I'm doing it because I don't want to be a liar.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  So I think it's really hard to get people to do something if they don't, it's not part of their identity.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  So you either choose that's your identity.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Or um, you choose something that you enjoy. It doesn't have to be the gym. It could be like pickleball or whatever.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:07Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  I think that's the hack for me is if I was going with a mate.

• 1:20:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  I would go every time.

• 1:20:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  Everything good in my life is mostly because I've got a date with a dude.

• 1:20:17Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  And I chose because I don't want to let the dude down. And then I have a great time with him since I'm there. But the identity thing's really interesting.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, and I would tie it to something that you really enjoy outside the gym. So like, if every time you go to the gym, you go get a coffee, like that, like there's a motivation there. Or maybe you just love the beach. So let's do the workout at the beach.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  You know, like something that ties it together. Uh, but for me, it's identity. And I do think that micro steps really matter. So for example, if I hated the gym, like I go four days a week, but let's say I hated the gym and I wanted to start going to the gym. I would just set a goal where I would say, I, my whole job today is just to walk to the gym, go in the gym, go home. That's it.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Speaker 00

  Right? The next day I'm going to do five minutes on the treadmill. The next day, right? Like it was, what happens is that, yeah, you just, you, you win by just showing up.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Okay. This is how, that's funny. Cause you're giving me two lessons.

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Like one, make it, combine it with something fun and be micro. That I do in other parts of my life and having it, I hated the first eight YouTube videos, like the experience was not fun. And then I was chatting with Caleb Rolston. And he was like, the thing you want to do, can you peg it to something you love to do, which is outside beach coffee shops? So now I shoot outside.

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  That's exactly what you do.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  And now I love it. And the micro thing was email, uh, after I brew my, have you read Tiny Habits?

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, Linda Fog Phillips, who coaches Tiny Habits, BJ's sister, black dot. He told me, uh, after I brew my morning coffee, I will write two sentences. And you can't write two sentences and then stop. Cause once you've done it, you're just like, well, this is kind of good. And I'll just keep going. All right. That's helpful. Thank you.

• 1:21:53Speaker 00

  Anything else for me?

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is episode 2,000.

• 1:21:57Speaker 00

  Eight hundred and thirty.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Eight hundred and thirty. That's a lot. It's 12 years. How do you find the fun and inspiration? Cause most people give up or most people go, okay, I've done that. How do you keep it fresh and interesting and fun for you?

• 1:22:07Speaker 00

  The fun for me is the mastery. Like it's not the actual shooting the videos. It's me seeing us get a little bit better. Every time we shoot an episode, maybe we improve one little thing. Maybe it's my intonation, maybe it's the cameras, maybe it's the script, maybe it's the way we edit. Like something small.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Speaker 00

  Um, and I love this idea and I get it from basketball. I get it like this small little, like not even 1%. It's like, it's not even a fraction of a percent where you're just like getting better every little bit. And I've been doing this for 12 years, we're celebrating 12 years this week on Friday, and you're going to come to the party.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  So it's going to be fun. Uh, we're just be celebrating here at the studio, but um, I, I mentioned that because you know, I love outlasting people.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:54Speaker 00

  You know, I have photos of all the podcasts that launched when we launched and I would say 95% of them don't publish anymore.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure that's true. Um, do you know Stephen Bradbury?

• 1:23:05Speaker 00

  No, who's that?

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  Okay. He, so um, this is a great Aussie reference for you. Australia's really good in the Olympics, not so good in the Winter Olympics. Stephen Bradbury won Australia's first Winter Olympics gold medal.

• 1:23:15Speaker 00

  This is the guy that everybody fell and he went through the tape.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's the outlast guy. He's like, he'd get to the, the, you know, the last, you know, the finals. He's like, I probably can't beat these guys. I'm going to hang back and they'll be so competitive, they'll fall over. And yeah, so everyone else fell over and he won. I think that's a great metaphor for sticking it stuff.

• 1:23:33Speaker 00

  And then I know that if I just keep doing it, I will get better. Like I'm more of the camp of, I watched this documentary on Steve Urkel, uh, Jaleel White. Yeah. Jaleel White, the actor.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  All right. Steve Urkel, it's funny because he hates people calling him Steve Urkel in public. Cause like, I'm more than that.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  And I just called him Steve Urkel, but uh, Steve Urkel, Jaleel White.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  This is a short little documentary about him and he, he said, the biggest life lesson I got from that experience is that anything that grows very fast, comes crashing down very fast and things that grow very slowly, little by little.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 00

  Have a better chance of survival and, and being there and being, you know, prolific and, and being um, uh, what is the title of the book that Ryan Holiday has?

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Like a perennial seller.

• 1:24:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Being perennial, being a perennial seller. Right? So uh, I always have that back of my mind. Like, you know, like I, I'm okay with slow growth. And that's exactly what has happened with this podcast is like slow, slow growth, but we've been growing every year and, and kind of like.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  If you do it long enough, if like, if you go a long time plus a fraction of a percent better.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  You can't help but get great.

• 1:24:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. But it also allows to lower the pressure. It's like, I don't have to be great tomorrow.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:41Speaker 00

  You know, like I'm going to just get better over and over and do my best. That's all you really can do. And it becomes a little bit more enjoyable when you don't have the pressure of being like, I, I gotta go viral tomorrow, you know? You know, we, we did an amazing job on audio. We've been still doing an amazing job. We have about two million downloads a month. Great growing audience. I love it. Yeah. I'm really proud of that. But I'm a beginner again on, on YouTube, you know, we're, we're still trying to figure this out and you know, two years in, we just got our first like partnership, first like, uh, you know, sponsor.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:13Speaker 00

  On video. So it's like a lot of commitment. And the, the thing is that most people are not willing to do that. They're like, do something for two years and not get a reward, you know?

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's big. The um, I'm going to do this for a long time, expecting nothing back. And eventually it'll get good enough that it's worth it. I think that's smart. Thanks, man. This is fun.

• 1:25:32Speaker 00

  It's been great. Taki, thanks so much for all your wisdom and uh, um, not only on the show, but just like over the years, getting to know you as a friend. The introductions you've made, you've been super generous with me. I think one of the qualities that a lot of people don't see because of, you know, how charismatic you are. But you're actually a really lovable guy. Like you're, you show a lot of love, which is your big heart guy. And I think um, it's very rare to find people that are as successful as you to care so much. So thanks so much.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  I think the two are very linked. Like it's only going well. Cause like.

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  We have a saying back, you know, I was a teacher for over a decade and you know, your students don't care how much you know into you. They know how much you care.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:26:10Speaker 00

  Which is, which is exactly what people feel.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:26:13Speaker 00

  Love, man. I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation with Taki. Such a good buddy. A lot of fun. I loved all the games he got to play with him and uh, I love the fact that he played along so well. If you want to learn more about Taki, his business is called Million Dollar Coach. His specialty is helping coaches get to a million dollars in revenue. I highly recommend you sign up for his email list, not only because he gives you a lot of great free content, but he'll invite you to one of his workshops, his live workshops. He actually does for his paid clients. One thing that we didn't get into the episode, but that's one of his like a marketing ideas where he's like, I don't want to create a fresh piece of marketing. I'll just invite my interested clients to my actual live coaching I do for my clients.

• 1:26:53Speaker 00

  So if you want to jump into one of his coaching calls and see what he's all about for free, just get on his email list over at milliondollarcoach.com. Taki is one of my favorite content creators. So make sure you check him out on YouTube as well. He's uh, growing his YouTube channel. He's done a great job with his videos recently. But all in all, I think today was one of my favorite just talks I've had in a while, just even off camera. Just because Taki is so open, as you saw, and he shares so much without any, he doesn't hold back. He just kind of shares and introduces you to people as you learned, but also just shares everything he knows and also shares his failures. So that's another reason why do you want to be on his email list? Because he shares those failures in his newsletter.

• 1:27:35Speaker 00

  He writes his newsletter himself. So you'll get to know him as well and see what's going on in his life. But um, I really enjoyed my time with Taki. I hope that you enjoyed it as well. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss any other episodes here on the 100 MBA show. We have some other great guests coming on really soon. So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it.

• 1:27:55Speaker 00

  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you gotta do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.