The Barriers Holding You Back

So this is called one zero nine, and we're picking up where we left off last week, we're going to talk about barriers today, a couple of other things I want to talk about. We're mostly going to be focused on barriers. And this really came from Mo most like, you know what, Chris, you've said things 1,000 times. And we get intellectually we get it, but maybe emotionally we don't. What's holding us back like, why aren't we able to implement the things that you're talking about? If we understand it intellectually, is it something about our own self esteem fear? Are we overthinking? Are we too impatient for results? What is going on? So I want to stop the share right now and want to talk about this a little bit. You guys started typing in a bunch of things on the event page, and if you're new to the call, all the calls are posted at least a couple of days before the event happens. Many of them are open agenda calls, but sometimes there's a topic like the one that we have today, so people are posting in their reasons. So I would like to bring those people online first and let's talk. So if you're one of the people who commented like Lady Christian, Mario Clair, Paul, Priscilla Mason, love Francine. If you're on the call today and you have a point of view, I'd like to talk to you about that. And this is just some group coaching therapy session. Let's get into it. He wants to go. OK if nobody goes, I will read something. And in case you can't figure it out, I'm on the tail end of getting over whatever it is I have, I've been in bad shape, so. OK, nobody's raising their great, great, great. I'll go. Who's that, Christian, you know? Go ahead. I think for me, like I accommodated, it's just a matter of priorities. And I think right now I really need to be focused on lead generation. And there are some projects I'm kind of stuck doing the work on. So it's sort of holding me back and all my energy is sort of going there at the moment. OK that makes a lot of sense. So you have these bigger goals, but then you have these, these other goals where you kind of have to just pay the rent, right? You've got to put food on the table and you have to do this work and it's a constant struggle between those two. Now, do you desire to achieve the bigger goals or do you feel like, you know what, it's kind of nice to have about a really, you know, maybe it's not for me right now. I desire them, but I'm sort of fuzzy on what I'm actually going after. I guess you say yes, so then we get into goal setting, right? Yeah on a different call, do another goal setting, call with you guys. I'm getting better at figuring out how to set goals and why they're really important to us. And I'll tell you a little bit of a story first. OK and the story is like this. It's like for some part of my life, up until when I was like 18 or 19 years old, I was a very different person than the person who sits in front of you right now. Of course, we all go through this phase where we learn and we grow and we mature. But I'm talking about like Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde difference here. I was the person who would wait till the last minute to do my homework and put kind of effort into it. And in the meantime, it wasn't like I was educating myself and reading books and watching videos. That was impossible back then pre-internet. But it was one of these things where I was like watching late night TV C and C+C Music Factory kind of dance party. Arsenio hall, if you guys are old enough to remember that and I was just wasting my life away, I was spending time talking to my girlfriend. So I was a very different person. And something had to happen to me for me to change. And we talked about this before, and I think it's something I saw on the internet where somebody had posted something like. Um, in order for us to change, two things have to happen. One is our mine has to have open. And that's the preferred process. And the other one is our heart is broken in some way or the other. And for me, I wish it was. My mind was open and it wasn't. It was because my heart was broken and then I had to change. I had to change because I didn't like who I was and where I was going. I could see that. So the reason why you have to have very clear goals in your mind is because the thing that you think about when you wake up with the thing that you go to sleep with is that goal. So the goal is kind of like it's a magnet. And it pulls you towards it. And when you don't have clarity, the magnet is very weak. So maybe your goal right now is like, you know what, my goal was to make a living in the creative space, to have a place to help my parents out from time to time, to have food and clothing and clothing, and I'm good with that. So when that goal was met? It's like you don't really have any extra fuel to do what you need to do. But when the goal is really clear and it's a bigger goal and it's something that really motivates you every morning when you wake up your eyes open, you're like, wow, I can't wait to get going on today. It's going to pull you out of bed, it's going to draw you to take action and it's going to keep you focused. What's also really important is it's and you become the magnet here because you magnetize yourself, you draw resources, energy, people opportunity towards you because you're so clear about what it is that you want when you just want a job. But that's what you get. You get a job if you want something more than that. Does things start to become attracted to you and you become attracted towards it? So it's really, really super important, Christian, to know exactly what your goal is now. Let's say your goal is really clear. You're like, you know what? I'm going to scale. I want to do more creative work or I want to do more development work. I remember talking to you. I can't remember it's one or the other, right? So what you should be doing instead is if you're working independently as an independent contractor is as you get the work, find somebody else to do the work pay them less than what you're getting paid or charge more than what they need to get paid, and you're going to be OK now you're buying your time back, which is very, very important. If anything, if I can stress this enough to you today on today's call, there's nothing more important than your time. Buy it back from people because there are people that are maybe 10 years, five years younger than you who are just getting out of school, who are switching careers, who are looking for an opportunity, who want to learn from you, because you have a lot to offer. Bring them in. What do you charge? They'll be like, I don't know, $20 an hour. Are fantastic. You start tomorrow. We'll give it a try. I can hire you by the week, and if it doesn't work out, I'm let you go. And if it keeps working out, we'll keep doing this dance. They're fantastic. So you do that and you charge $120 an hour. So you bought back your time for very little money here. Now, with that $100 in gross profit, you're going to sit around and think, like, what else do I need to be doing? How can I grow so that I can outpace this young person who I'm going to keep teaching everything to? And this is how a business is born and how you're able to get more time and to work on the bigger goals. This is really, really important. So come back at me, Christian, what do you got? Yeah, I think some of that stuff is things I've been doing. I've been working on like finding more developers to work with and just focusing on transitioning away from the development work. Have a couple of projects. I'm still in the middle of that. I sort of have to do the development on, but I'm going forward. I'm pushing much more towards clearing my plate of that stuff. I find I'm also like, I don't know whether I'm diverting my attention. I know that in my heart, I know that sales and creating some sort of lead generation is what I need to be doing, because that's what's going to create the flexibility and the confidence to go full time with. It is if I have some control over that process, but I also find myself diverting my attention to different areas. I see holes that need to be fixed and, you know, am constantly jumping around from thing to thing. So like definitely prioritizing the goals and getting clearer on what I really want because I have a vague idea, but I don't like I'm not clear what I'm going after or like all those different. Types of things, I don't know what I want my day to day to be, what type of work I want to specialize in and stuff like that. So OK, so I have one goal for you. Yeah, goal for today will be to figure out how to lower the camera. It is like seven feet high. You know, it's like, why are we so high up the most flattering angle and height for your camera? Everybody that's not a photographer. I'm telling you right now. It's a little bit above your eye line, ok? The reason why my camera is exactly where it needs to be, because that's the best spot. Like this face needs some work. So I was like, I'm trying to position the camera where it looks the best. So you guys are a little bit above your eye line and that's it too low and you have a big chin. You're going to get the Jay Leno chin too high, and you have a giant like head. So everybody think about that. If you're able to adjust your camera, that's what you would do. OK all right now, if possible, if possible, sit down and think about your goal today and dare to dream a little bit like, where do you want to be in 3 years? Put the Dan Sullivan question to the test. Get clarity in your life, your mission, your purpose. Figure it out, you guys. Now, everybody on this call should already know the Dan Sullivan question, right? Everybody, anybody not know, just shake your head visually, I can tell. OK, Dan, you do not know, OK, write down this name Dan Sullivan. He's a consultant. He's still alive. I think he's in the Midwest somewhere. I want to say he's in Colorado, but I don't know. That's not quite the midwest, but OK. I think he's in Colorado now. Dan Sullivan has this. The Dan Sullivan questions named after him and Blair ends refers to it. So now you know, I'm all in. I'm already all in on that. And it goes something like this three years from now. If you and I are having this conversation, what has happened in your life, both professionally and personally, that's made you so happy. OK, three years from now, if you and I are having this conversation. What has happened in your life, both personally, professionally to make you so happy? Sit down, spend 10 minutes with yourself and answer that question. And I'll tell you what to do with it in a second, so everybody got that. So three years is the timeline. You and I, we're looking back on this moment. What has happened in your life, both professionally and personally? Has made you so happy. What has happened, you guys? Basically, his philosophy is if you can't answer this question, he doesn't want to work with you and you only get exactly one chance to answer it. So some clients, some prospective clients would say, well, why would I tell you that I won't tell you that and said, OK, thank you very much and leaves. Some people are very suspicious, like why would you want to know that you're going to use that against me, you're going to charge me more money, et cetera, right? Some people just don't know. It's like, I can't help you achieve a goal that you yourself do not know. So clients who blow them off and say, I don't want to answer this question, bump into him in a year. And they're like, oh, my god, you know, I wasn't ready back then, but I've been thinking about that question for quite some bit and it's given me a lot of clarity and I've started to change my life. Can we work together now? He goes, no, you get one chance. He walks away again. You've just like that. OK, so everybody sit down and think like three years from now, which is a very finite amount of time. So it's 2019 so 2022. What has gone on with your life? You know, so you can make two columns if you wish, and you could take in 1/2 by 11 or an A4 piece of paper folded in half vertically right along the long side and write personal and professional. Let's happen and just write all that stuff down. If you take my motivation goal setting workshop, we would go through this in detail. And then I would show you how to break it down. OK so spend some time thinking about this. Try to fill it out as clearly as possible, like where are you? What are you doing? Where do you live? Who are you with? Do you have any kids? What kind of car are you driving? What kind of work are you doing? Who are you helping? Are you are you mentoring anybody, you're taking care of anybody. How big is your company? What kind of clients do you work with? What has happened? Think about that. Now, as it turns out, this is a fantastic conversation starter when it comes to onboarding a new client. You could literally say. The same exact thing to say, you know what part of a coaching group, and I was asked this question and it had some profound impact on my life. Do you have 20 minutes because I'd like to ask you the same question? Really? Yeah. I'd like to ask you the same question, then you ask it and then you listen and you write. And then I'll tell you what to do with it. All right, everybody, good. Anybody have a question about that, about the dance of love in question. Still, I know. No, I was just shouting out, Dave. I can't say your last name, I'm so sorry. But he had a follow up question. In the chat that I think is really powerful. What if you constantly have a different answer to the three year question? What happens if you have a constantly different answer? It's in the chat, he elaborated on it. He elaborated on it. Each answer is better than the other, and you can't pick one and stick with it because there's greener pastures somewhere else. How to stick to something for three years without changing your mind? Oh, well, it's because you don't have clarity on what it is you really want. OK, David, are you online? David, can you bring yourself online? OK let's pretend I'm talking to David, because for whatever reason, maybe he has a noisy background or he's not got good internet connection, that's fine. So that's David. It's like when you're dating somebody, do you change your mind like every couple of months? Can you are you? Are you commitment phobic? Look, I know in my heart exactly what I want in three years from now, it's very clear to me, it's been clear every time you ask me the question. And it doesn't mean that all the steps are clear, but the destination has to be clear. Chris, I just come in on that. Yes, please. Because I think the analogy I think I've got a similar issue is when you talk about even with the relationship thing, there's a line in, I think it's friends where they talk about the different flavors of ice cream, right? So there's different things appeal to you differently at different stages like, oh, I might want to do coaching or I might want to have a design agency, or perhaps I'll do a movie agency and you kind you kind of just keep circling around same questions going from one to the other. I think, you know, I might perhaps I want to do this, or perhaps I want to do that, and they all seem viable at any one point in time. But that's the kind of dilemma that I certainly have. Sounds maybe similar to what David was. OK, then I'm going to talk to you. Ok? Paul, let's talk to you. So there are day to day goals, which you can have chocolate ice cream, vanilla, you can have neapolitan, you can have whatever flavor you want. But then in terms of a bigger goal, like where you want to live, who you want to be with, what kind of faith do you want to believe and/or not believe in? Those kinds of things are things that change all the time. I don't think they should be. Ben burns was sharing me a story about and I don't know why boats and our great metaphors for everything in life. But if you're sailing towards some destination, if you have no idea where the destination is, regardless of how good your boat is, how good of a sailing skills that you have as a captain at all. If you don't know where you're going, then every gust of wind feels like an opportunity and takes you off course because you had no course to begin with. You kind of have to know where it is that you're going. My my younger son suffers from this because he's like every day. He's like, I don't know what I'm doing. So I have to work on a vision board for my 13-year-old because he has no idea he's motivated just by what feels good in the moment. So he's leaving for the momentary pleasures of everyday life, which is probably the most beautiful thing for a child. But he's starting to leave that stage where he's going to be a child and needs to start thinking about what he wants in life. So we kind of have to get really clear about where we're going. And I think Christian was talking about this, this seems interesting. That seems interesting. So he goes on and on and after a while, you realize you just been sailing in a giant circle and you've not made a lot of progress. Here's a test for some of you. Look back three years ago. How far have you traveled? I mean, I'm asking this not in a rhetorical way. I want a real answer either type it in the chat or let me know right now. Three years ago, where were you? Do you still recognize yourself? Are you still making similar amounts of income? Right? I was just writing an article for an article, a page in my book, talking about Jonathan Courtney. He said that in the years of business that he had been in when he was struggling, he said they grew the agency about $50,000 annually in income. Now, at that point in time, I think he was doing about $600,000 in revenue. To grow by 50k is a tiny amount, in my opinion. After a while, you feel like I'm not making any progress and you guys know what that means, right? If you do the same thing over and over again and get the same result or expect a different result, you know what that means. So, Paul, let's get it back into it, like, are you clear, Paul, as to where you're going and have you made a lot of progress from three years ago? I would say no. OK and the progress is like more of like a star. So it's going off in different directions. I've got different amounts of progress in different directions and in choosing one, I find difficult. I have made choices and commitments, but ultimately when we come back to saying things like, is this something you really enjoy doing? I find that can, like you say with the wind blowing sound a bit can be deflected too easily. Yes and I think as creative human beings, we like doing lots of different things we like. Variety, we like to go laterally versus vertically. We like that it's part of who we are and what's making what makes us really good. We have very divergent thinking, but that's the one thing that stops us from being very successful because we put a little bit of effort to lots of different things and we don't really move any one of the pegs forward very far. And I suffer from this, too, it's like. And we have to tell the team like, this is what we need to focus on because this seems fun for right now and that seems interesting and that collaboration seems good. And so we're always fighting against this. And so it probably helps us to sit down and really think if we were to spend the appropriate amount of time, the proportionate amount of time about what it is we want from life than we do pursuing it, then we would be fantastic. But we may spend all of 10 or 15 minutes a year. Or a week, which is really not enough, obviously. This is why companies pay large management consultancies that come in huge sums of money to get clear on what their mission is. We have to turn these electrical impulses or whatever it is that happening in our brain into something that's concrete and we need to print it out, we need to say this is what it is. This is the eye and we're going to make a commitment for three years, no matter what happens to stay on course, if it doesn't sound like this, if it doesn't move us in this direction. We don't go that way and we get rid of those things. So Blair says there's two phases to our growth in life, and in the very beginning, we say Yes to everything. We try lots of different things and we take it all on and that's how we grow. That strategy gets us to a certain place, and we're going to plateau at some point. Then the second phase of our career, we have to do the exact opposite, which is say no to almost everything, to then decide to pick a lane and to focus in. So depending on where you are. I see Jacob, he's pretty young. You know, he's still exploring things and it's totally OK for some of us geezers in here. It's like, you know, it's time we tried lots of things already. Let's figure out how many of those things make sense to us in getting us where we want to be in three years. If you've done the Super power workshop or the worksheet with me finding your super power, it's about trying to combine as many of those interests into a singular effort that allows you that divergent thinking, the latter role kind of interest that you might have a horizontal interest while allowing you to focus in on a singular direction. I guess we could sit down for multiple calls and map this out and take a more structured approach, but this is very essential. And this is the compass, the rudder on the boat that keeps us moving in the direction that we need to move in. Because think about it, Matthew, Gregg, Ben myself, we always we don't always agree on where we need to go. And oftentimes people start like veering off course, like what is happening, sometimes it's me who's doing it. And I have to remind myself or the team was like, hey, we're getting off course. I'm like, oh, shoot, we are. And this is what happens all the time you have people rolling this boat or sailing, and we're like splitting apart, like what is happening. And that's where the friction comes in. Like, no, bring it back together. This is where we're going. We've been clear about this since day one. OK, now, Mo, you want to say something, right? Yeah, I've been people in the chat, and I think people want to hear an answer to that question. So if you don't mind. What happened? Just freeze. No of course it would go robot. Of course it would go robot the second I talked. Did you hear any of that? Well, would you mind if Yes. Would you mind if I asked you that question so we can hear a good formulated answer to it? You dirty dogs. I mean, I see I see you when I turn this on me. Yeah, I'll tell you exactly what is happening. OK OK, let me ask you so I can feel special for a second 3 years from now. What has happened? Well, if you're going to do it right, there's a very specific sequence of words, you must use. OK, so I'm going to help you. OK three years from now, if you and I are having this conversation because it implies I'm still in your life and I probably have helped you get there, ok? You can't just say you because then they imagine the future without you. So if you and I are having this conversation, we're looking back on this moment. What has happened? Both professionally, personally, to make you so happy what has happened, to make you so happy, both professionally and personally. You can literally type in on the internet right now. Let's do it because we want to read the question exactly the right way. I have it memorized. I'm pretty close to memorizing it. Type in Dan Sullivan question on the internet, everybody and screen capture that. Save it. Bookmark it and go and ask it so you can feel special. Yeah OK. Ready Yes. Mr Christo, three years from now, if you wouldn't die, we're looking back at this moment. What has happened in your life, personally and professionally to make you happy? OK, Mo. Excellent question. So three years from now, here's what I want to happen in my life on a professional level. And luckily for me, my professional and personal goals meshed together so tightly that there aren't two different answers. OK, I want the future to be the preeminent resource for creative professionals in their pursuit of building a career in life and creativity. I want us to have a curriculum that is, for all intents and purposes, on par with going to a private art school for what I believe will be at least 1/10 of the cost. So for what it might cost you to go to, say, Art Center for one semester, you can complete the entire curriculum that we have, which will be almost the same except for the in-person experience. I believe this idea has to happen. I believe that it will be an international thing, not just in the US so that also means that we have to have the ability to translate this into multiple languages, especially for really big markets where they don't speak English. I'm thinking probably India and China, the most dense populations in the world that don't speak English as a first language, I believe then we will have a few brick and mortar schools and schools I'm not using in the traditional definition, but more like gathering spaces, gyms or churches where people can come, congregate, meet with people, watch videos, interact and then go, do what they need to do. And we are probably at this point in time. Somewhere let me see three years. Probably doing $100 million in revenue at this point, probably with a higher valuation, but that's what our real revenue is, where we have a ginormous staff of teachers like the very best teachers and people who are invested in pedagogy and really want to build this future with us. Now my family is tightly integrated into this because my son is a part of the curriculum. My wife is part of the Chinese expansion, and I'm traveling the world trying to teach people these very thoughts. That was very clear, I have nothing to add. I just needed I just needed to hear it because I think that even the nuances that you said about revenue and where it's going to be in the different types of avenues that you're going to be teaching from brick and mortar to digital, like if I were to close my eyes, it looked like a Sims game that I was walking in. And I think that's the level of clarity that you're suggesting we need to have when we answer a question like that. Yes the more you could visualize it in your mind, from the way that the floors look, the walls, what's up, who you're around, all that kind of stuff, it makes it a lot clearer because when you have to make a decision, is this getting me closer to my goal or four or farther away, then you're like, you know what? I'm not going to do that thing. That's really important to me. I'll give you a really concrete example. OK, you guys just listen to this part and just see how when you have very clear goals, it can actually impact the decisions you make today. Now some of you guys have visited the mothership in Santa Monica. It's a rather large building, and people are often surprised at how big the building is, right? The building is almost 13,000 square feet, about 12,000 something that's actually usable, not stairways and hallways. Ok? and that's a lot of space for a tiny, bootstrapped startup that's barely doing as of last year, like $1.8 million. It's way too much space. It's irresponsible how much space we have. So the conversation often comes up, and the guy who's giving me a hard time about this, like, let's get rid of the space. We could all work from home and we could save so much money and the pressure will be off. The pressure will be off to generate so much revenue. We'll have a lot more freedom and we'll have people because right now what you're saying to us is value space more than people because in lieu of people, we are paying for rent or we're paying for the building, right? So here's the thing. Every year we've been growing our business by 300% every single year for the last four years. So if I'm going to do my math, if last year. We do $1.8 million, what should we do this year? Well, less than $6 million, but a lot more than 1.8 million. And when we get closer to four, 4 and 1/2 million in revenue per year, this discussion about rent and space will be moot. Let me play the two scenarios out for you. Scenario number one, I get rid of space. We lease it out and we all go to our collective homes and I rent a small studio somewhere that's 1,000 square feet, 1,500 square feet, something like that where we can shoot. We hit our 4 and 1/2 million dollars, what are we going to do? Well, now we've got to bring in more teachers, we've got to keep growing the company, right? Well, now I'm going to look for space. How can I get space now because space is going to be 5 on 5 and a half, what, five, 50 per square foot per month? So the space that we had that was purpose built for us that we're very comfortable and familiar with is now unavailable to us because we let our own space go. So when you have clarity in your goal, your finances and where you're going, it makes no sense. All we have to do is make it to the end This year. This is why on several live streams, I've mentioned this before, we got to just make it to December. And we play this thing like a football game, American football. We take it one quarter at a time to get to play the second quarter, we have to make it through the first quarter. To get to the third quarter, we have to get it through the second quarter, but we know where we're going every single moment. We know what this is for. And it's very, very clear to me, and I have to do a good job of communicating this to the team always, so we're making the decisions together. So having that kind of clarity, it's like, well, I don't endeavor to have a tiny operation with like five people working, making a couple of videos on the internet because sometimes you forget that. And here's also one key thing that you need to know about me and the team is that my tolerance for risk is really, really great. Where is their tolerance for risk? Is a lot smaller, even though it's not them risking their money, their livelihood, their 20 years of working in their home? I am, but they're just like, not as risk tolerant. So sometimes the decisions they make are way too conservative for me. And I have to remind them, you guys are not thinking big enough. You guys are iterating and you're not innovating. And if we want to be a company that's worth 300% more every single year, we have to become three, 300% the human that we are today. So if you're looking at yourself, and you still recognize yourself in the end of the year, you're going to be the weak pin or weak link in this whole operation. What are you doing to grow and challenge yourself? Because I'm I have to do that. We all have to do that because nobody in their right mind would pay us three times more for the same thing. Do not go into retirement mode on me because this is a startup. If you're not in it to win it, you're not in it. That's it. So we're not clear about our goals and the decision. So see when that clear. We make the decisions. So everything lines up and now I'm getting asked to speak at different places. Yeah, I'd love to speak, except. Sometimes speaking takes me away from our goal. Well, how do I make that work out for me? Well, you've got to pay me $10,000 for now for me to come out, so I have to say no to a bunch of things now because I have clarity. Again, it's a decision filter. Because taking me out means I can't write the book, I can't write content, I can't spend time with the team. I can't develop new courses. Those are things that's taking me away from. So what Blair says about saying no to almost everything is totally true. You have to. Turning back on the group. Hey, buddy. Hey, Chris. I can't see you. Dave hey, Dave. I'm curious. I mean, you are. You're very clear on what you want to do right now, like looking three years ahead. But if we went back, say, five years pre meeting up with, yeah, pre meeting up with Jose. Yeah, and you were. You know, still doing service work as your primary work. Yes what? Just like if we were to go just before you met Jose, what would you say through your goal would have looked like that? Oh, all right. So Dave has history with me. You guys need to know that he has history. That's why I can pull out these dark questions. OK, now in that point in time, prior to meeting Jose and all that stuff, my goal was to retire. I didn't want to work anymore. And I had enough money. I thought so. I was just trying to figure out. I got a couple more years at this and I'm done. I've saved up enough money. I'm out, ok? And that's all I was thinking about was retiring because all I wanted to do at that point was teach. Teachers spend time with my, my kids and my wife, and that was it. I also knew that there were a couple of things happening on this boat that we're traveling on. I knew that there was a giant iceberg I had, and I knew we needed to change directions if we want to do the service business. At that point in my mind, I was probably thinking, I need to turn over the company to a couple of key people that are running the company and say, it's your company. Now you guys can buy me out. I will remain a minority owner, but you have a majority decision making power. Would you like to do that? Right and I can do that for my team. But in order to do that, we need to shift from doing motion design, which was primarily targeted towards advertising agencies making commercials to doing something else. So I was already in the process of writing that ship and changing direction. I just didn't know what it was, and we tried lots of things. And we failed on a lot of things. So that was what was in my heart, I'm ready, I'm done, I have no more goals, Dave. My goal was just to get to another one or two years to pad out my retirement fund and I'm done. So, Dave, you have a follow up for me. Yeah, I'm just curious about that. You know, when the three year goal or trajectory changes, because for you, obviously you didn't retire, you met Jose. And then that should change the trajectory of what your next three years was going to look like. So just curious about how you navigated that transition, like when, when, when your target moves or when something happens and you readjust to recalibrate. How did you go about doing that? Well, I think Jose can be a metaphor for all of us right now in our life, there can be a whole day in our life right now that when that moment comes into your life, are you open or are you receptive to the opportunity that presents itself? Or do you close the door? See, because I was already searching, right? So you have to be open and ready and primed to do something to want something. So when Jose comes in and it wasn't all by accident, you guys, this was not like a random encounter. Jose and I knew each other from school. He had been kind of watching from afar what we've been doing. I've been watching what he was doing. I had a lot of questions. So we needed an excuse to talk to each other. So he recommended that I join the board of the AIG and I didn't know this at the time, but I get on the board. We meet, we talk a little bit. So the connection has been reestablished. And that's good. So then I just come to him and I'm like, you know, I notice you do all this church of Twitter, the evil business guy and all this kind of stuff. I'm having some struggles or I'm struggling with how to do a web project properly. I tried it and it just didn't work out. And he's like, oh, let me tell you, I'll show you how to do it. And that's the beginning. That's the catalyst. I'm searching. I'm searching for something. I just didn't know what that thing was. So already kind of. I've already spent I think about a year or so searching for what's next. If I'm going to retire, I'm going to hand off this company to my team. In any way that is sustainable, I need to help develop what's the next thing, some searching, we tried, we tried and then I meet Jose. If I don't meet Jose, I meet somebody else because for sure, I will meet somebody because I'm searching. The answer isn't clear, but the direction kind of is like, yeah, I think I need to move probably 180 degrees from where we're at today. I'm reading the brand gap trying to learn about branding. I'm reading about the win without pitching manifesto, so all the seeds were planted kind of in the soil waiting to kind of bear fruit. So I meet Jose, I'm open to this thing, I'm like, oh, OK, this is interesting, he shares this thing about website design, and we also talk about our passion for teaching and education. At this point in time, some of you guys know this. I was starting to contemplate about teaching topography, but I don't have any kind of social following whatsoever. We were going to call it blind university, blind you, B you. And he sees us and he says to me. What's it going to take for you to stop doing what you're doing and join forces with me to do what it is that I want to do? So it becomes very clear. And, by the way, also Jose happened to stop by or hang out with me in some of my classes when I was teaching at art center, and he hadn't seen that before. So he was like in Jose's language, like, damn dude, you're a good teacher. So he sees that I'm interested in this thing, he sees that I'm searching. He sees that I'm teaching and I have a long pedigree in connection with Art Center. At this point, I think I was teaching already for 15 years. He makes the offer. Join me, I'll give you 50% of the company become part of this thing. And at that point in time, Dave, I don't want to misrepresent what I was going on in my mind. I wasn't sure that this was going to work out, I wasn't sure this was a business model. I was sure that this was the business partner to have. But I was curious and true to my nature, without certainty, without guarantees, without predictable outcomes. I threw caution to the wind and went for it. And to which many people questioned me about including my business advisor, my business coach here, my wife, my friends, people who knew Josie and myself like, what are you doing? Why would you want to do this with josie? I'm like, you guys don't see what I'm seeing. Don't worry about it. It'll work itself out one way or the other. I get dragged into doing this stuff on YouTube and starting to figure out this very scary thing to be in front of the camera, to talk to people that don't know, to be vulnerable, to share things and to be super transparent. This is not what we do in our industry. But I go for it, I'm like, what I got to lose, I was going to retire anyways, at least I can control how I die. Not not too bad. Dave, did I answer your question? Oh, kind of. Well, I'm still yeah, I'm still curious about the actual because I mean, just I'll tell you where it's coming from. For me, I'm in a place where, you know, I've done motion for over 20 years and I'm just like, I took a break for a couple of years and I'm coming back, but I don't feel that same passion. Like if you asked me five years ago or 10 years ago, you know, what are you going to be doing the next three years? I'll be like, what's the next step in motion or what's the next? Can I go into live live action? Can I, you know, it's just minimal change, really. It's just adding more. Yeah, it's just adding more services, right? But I guess now I'm at a point where, you know, I'm kind of the halfway point in my life and I'm trying to figure out like, what do I really want to do with the rest of my life? And I'm not quite at the point where I can just retire and say, I don't have to work anymore. But I'm also comfortable where I have a decent runway and I don't really have to work. So I'm just thinking like, if I was in your position pre meeting, Jose and Jose didn't work out like how many different Jose's how long? Like, how many different days would you have had to meet? So you went into retirement. Like the thing with Jose didn't work out and you went into retirement. Would you come out of retirement? Do you think you would have ended up in education if it was someone else? Or, you know? You know what I'm saying? Like, how many different things do you have to try or should you try or should use now? You and I were a little different. We're motivated a little differently, right? So I don't want to impose. My value system. On you, and I'm not saying this in any kind of judging way. I'm a super passionate person. I'm not a guy who does something kind of partway. I'm either all in or I'm all out. And that's what makes me a horrible person to work with, because sometimes I want it more than the person that I'm working with. And that's the problem. Or I say, this is a hobby. I'm not interested anymore. And every interest that I've ever had in my life, I try to take it to the extreme. And then I'm done and I move on. So had it not worked out with Jose, I would have found something else. I kept doing this. Let's play this scenario out. Like if we're Gwyneth Paltrow in the movie Sliding doors, I miss the train and the train was going to take me to the future of the school and I missed the train. Either I didn't see it or we didn't connect, or I wasn't brave enough to ask, and he wasn't generous enough to share. Let's say that didn't happen. OK, so I talked to my financial advisor. name is John. John's like Chris. You can retire now. You could literally retire right now. You don't need anymore. You're good. This is your net asset. You can live off this for the rest of your life and you'll be fine. Mind you, I just need to let everybody know I own two buildings, ok? In prime real estate in Santa Monica, like my kids are set, that means I should be set if I just get out of my own way. So I go home, I'm done. I fold the business, whatever it's like. It's not in a state where the team can inherit. They go and become creative directors and make a ton of money somewhere else. Fine go back home. I'm teaching because I love teaching and I've been teaching and I've been thinking because my wife will go to class and I'm like, honey, you understand why I love teaching? She goes, yes, you have a gift for your super passion. You're really funny. You say super controversial things, but that's OK. And I think I'll just bring some cameras with me to class at Art Center. I want to film this experience and see what I can learn from filming it. And then I start to learn how to edit, and then I have an intern working for me at home. I have a decent sized home, a home studio. Somebody can work behind me. It's OK. They sit there and we're editing. We're talking, we're joking. I teach more and it just produce these videos and I put them out on the internet. So I feel like when you're that clear about what it is that you want, even if your conscious brain doesn't recognize it. Eventually, it moves it right back to where it is. It's going to happen. I wanted to teach typography so I can do a we workspace, I could do whatever and say, look, meet me here, I'll teach you guys for a couple of days and then I'm back doing whatever it is I want. It takes a different route. But who knows, I ultimately think all those roads will eventually lead me back here because this idea of teaching online on YouTube was not necessarily Jose's idea. He used YouTube as a marketing platform to sell products. His interests were not the same as mine. That's why if you watch the first x number of videos with Josie and I, it's OK on the learning. But there's a lot of marketing built into the videos themselves. They were an excuse for us to talk about the product. And to this day, if you watch most of Jose's live streams. It's not by accident. They're designed to tell you what it is he's doing so that you can buy what it is that he's doing. So when he unplugged when he went to work, and this is not a judgment or criticism of him when he was working at consensus. He disappeared off the social grid. No more content. So the goal was within me. I just happened to meet a dance partner that could get me closer to that goal. Sadly, did not work out for both of us, but whatever. So, Dave, I think your situation. And I hope I'm not revealing too much here, you kind of pull me into the darkness is you have a very comfortable life. Almost too comfortable. Like, like I told some of you guys before, I don't want to feel like I'm coming from the streets, but I come from almost nothing. Living in I wouldn't say poverty, but I guess it's poverty because it's defined by a financial metric, right? Living with nothing. Government assisted programs. Going to public school, I know what that's like, and it drives me to want to achieve more, and I'm also comfortable going right back to it. The idea of going back to government programs does not scare me. That's why I'm like, whatever, let's risk it. Let's roll the dice double or nothing all in every time. So if you have that kind of urgency. The hot burning passion, the commitment to do or die, whatever it is you're looking for, you will find no matter what, if not the first time, the second or the 100th time you will find it. You came with that day. Yeah, yeah, I mean, what I heard in all of that was when for you teaching was your passion and it's in the area of design and the stuff that you're passionate about. So teaching, coupled with the subject of typography, design all that stuff. So I think for me right now to figure out what am I'm really passionate about and what do I want to kind of lay my life down for and Yes and go for it that way? 100 percent, that's exactly where you need to be. The Dan Sullivan question is for you to figure out. I mean, in less dramatic words. What you're willing to lay your life down for? What is it that fuels your life while you wake up every morning? Why not just expire today? Not for you. You have kids, you have a wife, you have a faith. And if you can start to bring those together with you into what it is that you want, where they're not a separate part of your goal, but they are integrated integral to your goal. And that becomes really interesting now. So for as long as I can remember, the two paths that I've always wanted to go down was entrepreneurship and education. I could not reconcile that these two were the same thing. So it wasn't into the school, the future was born that I'm like, whoa. You mean I can make a living teaching people the thing that I'm super passionate about? I could do that. Instead of getting the pittance that they give you. Almost as like a charitable handout. Wow because mind you guys, I have been teaching for 15 years at multiple schools. I'd like to think I was a pretty good teacher, too, but. So this opportunity comes because this is what's inside of me. And the fact that I get to do with my kids and my wife and it's like our family, it's really weird. I know this is going to sound super cheesy. My wife and I have been married. Let's see here. A 20 years now that our relationship is getting stronger, that there is more love and less disagreement. As time goes on, because we're finding ways to be together and to be a part at the same time. OK I'm a little parched right now. Let's get back into it like we haven't really talked about what's holding you guys back. And I blame Mo personally. Because he wanted to ask me the question. Well, yeah, whatever mode, keep your mouth closed. All right. Because look, let's look at it like what's holding you back? Is it issues about self-esteem, fear? Are you overthinking or are you impatient? Is a lack of clarity of goals? Is it because now you have a goal and you don't know how to chunk it down? You don't know how to break it into bite size pieces? What is it? Let's get really specific. I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm sick. And I know I'm sick. I don't know why today's conversation has gotten so personal and fairly intimate, I don't know what's happened. But I'm happy to continue or to change the tone and the vibe. So let me know. Do we just turn off our Mike to ask? I'm sorry, this is my first one. Ready to go? No, actually, you see there, there's this icon to raise your hand at the bottom of the screen somewhere. That's how I know to pick on you. OK, sorry, I was looking forward. Do you have it, mike? Go all right. Yeah, I think I share the same sentiment a lot of people share. I know you talked about having a tea, right, which is kind of my solution because I think when people hear like they can't do anything else kind of freak out like, well, what? I really like photography. I really like this other thing. It's like, you can dabble in it, right? But try to find your deep thing. But that's just that's what's holding me personally back, I think is really big on momentum. And it's just like the first just turning the car over, right? Just getting the engine started on a few things. So one is like when it comes to social, like YouTube, it's really hard for me to start, and I don't even think it's a confidence thing. I'm not sure what that first step is, and I don't. Maybe it's a lack of clarity, but I'm trying to figure out like just getting that momentum going is what's really holding me back right now. Because if I can start doing that usually have a hard time stopping. But OK, just getting going. Alec, have you read the book The compound effect? You have. Do you remember any parts of it? Yeah, mostly that. Mostly it's just talking about doing one thing every day, but I don't remember that it started part of it. Maybe I need to go back and read it. All right. This is how, you know, if you read a book, if you could tell somebody the most salient point in the book. That's the whole point, right, because I was thinking sometimes I get stressed out by like, oh, I've got to do a Keynote presentation at my default plan is always just tell everybody one important thing that you read in each one of these 10 books and you'll be OK. All right. So there are many things to pick up from the compound effect, but the compound effect basically is, I think, like a financial mathematical term that if you double whatever it is you're doing every single day, even insignificant amounts can yield tremendous amount. So if you put away a little bit of money every day, by the time you're ready to retire, you'd be like, you know, you have $10 million for something, and it always shocks people like, Oh my god, if I just put down, you know, 5% of in my income every day or every month, then I'm good. And that's exactly what happens. So this is the idea. It's called priming the pump, and Trump did not invent it, priming the pump like if you're at a well and you're like sitting there priming the pump, it takes forever for you to actually get some water out because the wells are deep and it's got to remove the pressure. And all that stuff is so slowly bringing you up to this point and you see no results and it's a lot of effort. But if you stop the water pressure goes back down, it's done. Yes, start over. And so this is a great way to understand something, which is it takes a lot of effort and energy and consistent, consistently applied over long periods of time before you see any result. If you give up. You might as well have not started. That's the key to make consistent effort every single day towards the singular goal. so, so just to get some clarity on the answer. So you're saying, you know, essentially like just start like I guess when it comes to like starting right, it's like just do anything, even if it's a little thing, a tiny little thing, do that. Yes, do it. Especially because it's a tiny little thing because nobody wants you to tie-in the little thing. They just want to jump from go and spin all around the Monopoly board and go collect $200 again, because that's what people see. So we've created a culture in a society where we see the results of what people have done. We don't see them priming the pump for 10 years. For some of you, you'll be surprised that I've been teaching in a real school for 15 years. You're like, I just went on the internet and just became internet famous. Well, maybe or maybe I've been running my company since 1995. I've been teaching since 2000 1,000. So there's a lot of invisible effort that's they refer to it in the book invisible effort that people just don't see. So here's what you need to do is there are 1,000 pumps in the field, right? You have to have clarity of your goal. That's why we started out with the Dan Sullivan question. Find the most likely pump that leads you to the goal that you want because you can be pumping the wrong pump. That's you know, that's not a great way to go to. We know that if you're working at a fast food place. That no matter how high you ascend, it's only going to go so far and it might not be in alignment with your goal. So sitting there, clocking in and day in and day out, I'm not going to get you there. So ask yourself, what is it I want from life? I got a short period on this planet. Make the most of it. You only have a short amount of time to do this. You know, Alec, you look like a young person. Soon you will not be that young. You get old and crotchety. Your body doesn't work as well, it used to, you know, you eat like one potato and you blow up like five out. What the heck happened to my metabolism? Right those nights where you could power through all night and bounce back up the next day and look none worse for the wear. Now it takes you two days to recover. Used to never get sick. Now you're getting your flu shots all the time because you're worried this is what happens, man, your body is in a state of decay. It really is. So let's strike right now. What are we waiting for? Get clear on your goal, what you want from your life, what you can see yourself doing forever and you've heard me say this before. This is the last job I'm ever going to have. This is it. I do this and I die. That's it. There is no other option. Can you get that clear about what it is that you want from your life now? Christian was talking earlier. He's doing development work. We know that he's going to get destroyed because of overseas offshore labor, by robots, by applications that can do the work that you used to do to make the process a lot easier that any fool can get into the market, like with a relative, you know, smarts in their brain can go out and do what it is that you're doing. We know he's going to get killed. Everybody is doing anything that robots can replace. At some point you're going to get killed. And he desires to do something more creative, to be a part of the strategic conversation. Well, now is a pretty good time to do that. There was never a better time to do it than now, get clear on your goals, so crank up that pump and realize it's going to take a long time before you see the results. But when the results happen, it's almost effortless. So again, in the compound effect. Darren Hardy talks about this, he's talking about a train, you know, it takes so much energy to move a train. Well, once a train gets going, it can run through like a solid 5 foot wall, like a brick concrete wall, get smashed right through it and not even feel it. So once the engine is going, it's fantastic, this is like, like they say, it's on ball bearings, it's just smooth. Garlic, yeah, I think that helps, I think I mentioned momentum, which is, I think what prompted the whole train analogy. Yeah, I think so. I think it's a matter of clarity, probably, which I feel like I have a lot of clarity, but I think I can definitely get more clear for sure. And I've done like a few of the other Darren Hardy's other things, as well as eat that frog and a few others where I've just been feeling down or you've been talking about. Yeah And I guess maybe the other thing I'm sorry if I'm thinking through this whole talking, but is maybe there is a certain extent of saying no to more things as well, though, because I think that's the other thing is, you want to you're sitting here, you're like, oh, I want to get this goal right? And you see like all the things you need to do. But sometimes there's a lot of things you need to do right like. So it's like a matter of like, which one do you focus on first? And maybe that's part of it, as well as just choosing one thing at a time, maybe rather than all of them? Or is there a way to do all the well or no? There's as far as I know, there's no way to do all of things well. So Alec, are you clear in your goal? Can you visualize it like if you were to close your eyes? Because, yeah, I could tell you right now, exactly. You know exactly what it is, right? And does that fill your heart with excitement? Is it something that would compel you to jump out? Oh, yeah, OK. Yes you got a good goal. Then it's clear it excites you. So now what you need to do is you need to sit down and think about how can I chunk this down into smaller, bit-sized pieces so you break it down to five goals, five milestones in order for me to achieve that in three years? These are five things that have to happen in order for that to happen. And then you take those individual five components and you break those down into five components, you keep breaking it down until it seems like I have a very clear action plan to move forward in my life. You take the mystery out of everything. In order for me to get to a million subscribers, this is what I need to do. I take The number of subscribers I need to grow by, divided by the time in which I give myself to achieve that. And then I figured out, Oh my god, that's a lot of subscribers per month. What kind of content do I need to make in order to achieve those results? What kind of videos get those kind of results and then I need to learn how to make those kinds of videos and say those kinds of things, and so that's what we do. It becomes a lot clearer. But that's just one of the goals that we have to hit in order to become the company we want to be. OK the reason why you talked about momentum and the reason why I brought up Darren Hardy is because we desire instantaneous feedback, right? We want to be able to say like input output, input output. I do this. This happens. I make five phone calls. Five cold calls. I'm going to get one new client. Life doesn't quite work like that. It's not so linear, the relationship is quite like that. You may call after call after call, you get no after, no, you get a little bit better. You read a book, somebody tells you, you bump into somebody at an event and you're like, dude, what do you do that allows you to close so many calls? Oh, my God. That's the one thing I need to do. You go back at it. And that's more like real life. It's not sexy, somebody would say to me, what is it? The hard way is the easy way and the easy way is the hard way. Right, especially in visual facts. So the hard way is the easy way meaning. The hardest way is to try to take a shortcut. Whereas the easy way is the hard way, which is the way that nobody wants to do is just grinding and doing the hard labor. That's the path you have to take. OK we talked about the t skill, the internal. But I want to talk about skill a little bit. I want to be super clear about this with you guys skill. OK, tee skill says you have depth, but that means you have to give up some things on the side. And I just want to be very, very clear. Externally, you need to be a t. Deep expertise in one area, if you to market yourself, it doesn't matter if your product or service, you need the tea because people like to work with people or buy products that are deep in their expertise. Internally, though, you could be a very fat t. You can even be an L If you wish, or you could be or you could be a lot of different shapes and it's totally OK that you have diverse interests and you can continue to grow as a human being. That's totally OK. But just realize externally, if you try to market that way, it becomes very confusing to people to figure out what the heck you are. OK all right, let's get into it. Jimi, you had your hand up and I want to go to Rachel. So I just wanted to note something. And I think from what you say about who say, I've understood that this is something you've been doing to. I think the biggest change in my attitude and the way I've started growing inside the group, I would say, is understanding that it's different to be learning a lesson from someone than receiving the lesson they intend. So you I think that you learned a lot of things from Josie that were not necessarily what Josie was trying to transmit. And I think when I shifted my mindset in this way, this is when I started breaking some, some ground. I hope I'm making sense. You're making sense. So I just I just wanted to know because you asked, like, why don't people grow grow as expected inside the group or what's the biggest, the biggest hurdle? I think that having this shift, what lessons should someone be taking from the whole group? I think when that change in my mind and Diane has helped a lot, a lot with this. So thank you, Diane. Yeah, when I did that change that, what change is that? Not take every, every lesson or every piece of advice as gospel, like as people intended to be given and try to understand how things apply in my own experience in my own life and what sort of filter should be putting through things, I suppose. OK, that makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of things that are said inside and outside of these calls, for sure, and at some point you can look at it as like, there's this feast. This buffet and the rule of the buffet is that you go up and you eat every single thing and gorge yourself. Although people do do that, you'll have a stomachache later. You just walk around and pick a couple of things and try something out. My strategy for the buffet is to go very light at the beginning. Just take a few little things here and there and then try them because things don't taste the way they look. They tried out like that was pretty good, that was gross. OK, so now I'm not throwing away a plate of food. I could finish whatever it is I take and I can go back and be more informed a second round and I could take a little bit more. The Brussels sprouts looked amazing, but they didn't taste so good. Now I'm going to go for this. I'm going to try different things. The mistake would be to try to drink from the fire hose and think that you could consume any of it in a reasonable way, put into a little cup, have a sip. If it quench your thirst. Get a little bit more. When I do my workshops with people, I tell them this, I'm going to give you a lot of information today, do not do all of it. Try two things whatever appeals to you, whatever you think is doable, attainable within your reach. Just go for it. Do that. And see what happens. I think that this was something that was not stressed enough when I started being in the program, so I spend a lot of months just trying, trying the hose, and I couldn't like it didn't work for me. And that was a big, frustrating moment, I suppose. OK now we know. Don't drink from the fire hose. All right, Rachel, you're up. Hey, Chris, good morning. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about patients I'm finding now that I do have a goal and I from, it's very easy for me to justify decisions like, oh, this is bringing me to my goal because of xyz. That's a very easy thing to convince myself. And then I find myself three months later, like, what was a huge tangent or that didn't actually get me closer to my goal. And I have a hard time distinguishing because I get really excited about things and it's hard for me to distinguish. And sometimes I'm realizing that it does take patients until you realize that you've made a mistake and can course correct. So could you talk about maybe personally, how that plays out for you? Yeah first of all, I think that's a good trait to have that get excited about things. I'd rather have that than like me. Nothing matters. Right? and be despondent about everything. OK, cool. So you're excited about lots of different things. And the second thing I want to say is this is that. You know, I think in our mind, we want it to be super like, I do this, this results and it's always very linear and everything happens cause and effect, but to create space in our life and our own expectations to know this. That there are some false starts and it's totally OK and not to beat yourself up over it. And what might have looked like waste of time, energy and effort? In fact. Well, either it was a lesson to learn or the building blocks of something else much greater. I've had many false starts. Like you could say, well, why did you waste 15 years teaching if that was not going to be the thing? Well, one could argue. Was it a waste or was it all the building blocks to get me to where I'm at or the rough and tumble relationships I've had with partners, business partners, where it's like, if you knew that wasn't going to work, why did you go through that? Well because that made me who I am today. OK, so it's OK to explore. We try to be smarter about areas of interests where we explore. And so usually, if you're not clear on your goal, Rachel, everything will look like it's taking you on your path. Have you done the Super power worksheet, the old one? Which I do think so, because I remember going through it and going through it in my head, I don't have the worksheet anymore, but that's fine. I remember that being helpful. Were you able to get some clarity about what makes you really happy, what your superpower is? Yeah, I think so. OK, I'll hold on to that thought. Now check with your goal. You're Dan Sullivan. Goal do they feel like there's a massive amount of overlap between those two things? But what makes you unique as a human being and the goal that you want to achieve for yourself? Yes these are good pieces of information for me. OK, last question for you, Rachel, is this is can you if your eyes were closed or open, whatever? Can you visualize what it is that you want? Is it? Almost tangible in your mind, like you could go, yeah, it's right there, it's like it looks like this, it's going to happen, it's right there. No, not yet. I've had you. Yeah all right. So have you done a vision board before? And I've done it for clients. But you won't do it for yourself. It's helpful for my clients, but no, I don't need it. So here's what you need to do this the vision board is a style escape for your own mind, right? Yeah so spend a little bit of time. And put that together, it's really fun, and it's very exciting, so when I start thinking about the physical space that we're going to be in and I start going on pinterest, pulling down images and things like that, building up my own style escape for the space, I get really, really excited because it's like, yeah, and then we have a juice bar and we have a gym. We'll do this. And people come in, and this is how it will look like. And this is a theater. This is the ceiling treatment. This is everything. And it's very, very exciting. This is who I work with, these are the brand sponsors will have it becomes very, very clear. The clearer you are with your goal, the less likely you are to make. Or to explore parts that don't actually contribute to that goal. OK and if you're super patient, don't worry, all those paths will lead you there. If you're less patient, be clear about your goal and be. More intentional in the things that you explore. That's all. OK, OK. Thanks you're welcome. OK lowering the hand, I don't see any of the hands up. OK, what else is holding you guys back from achieving your goal? And if I didn't phrase that properly, help me tell me how I should phrase that question because the information is out there. Money was one thing for me, I think I ran out my runway before I got to the place where I could find the information. What does that mean, you ran out of money before you could find? The place with the information like, I think lots, lots of the information don't really take into account that people don't have the financial way to support this journey, and it still needs resources. Right so you're dealing with the basic needs right now. Yes rent, food. Well, in the beginning, Yes. OK what about now? Well, it's getting better. Just because I realized I wasn't the intended target of the program. That's that's pretty much what I was saying in previously. Like, it's I think that a lot of the content of the program or a lot of the conversation isn't good advice for people who are at the absolute zero stage. OK OK, Alec, I see your hands back up. I don't know, I kind of disagree with that. OK, go ahead. Fire away, man. I mean, it's not that and I'm not right now. It's absolute zero stage. If you're asking me where I was three years ago, my mind was like, like, but this is the same advice that I heard three years ago when I was at the absolute zero stage, when I was with, like just working freelance. Nothing in the bank account. In fact, negative in the bank account owed the government $10,000. And it was just like watching. And Chris is incredibly consistent. That's kind of what's really nice. It's a lot of ways. And it's also annoying as you watch all these videos. My gosh, I got to start doing this rather than just hearing the same, the same thing. And that was part of my fear joining the group. To be honest, it's like, I'm just going to hear the same stuff. And in some ways it's true. But in other ways, that's what you need is just that. Sometimes it's like, dude, just get up and go. So I kind of disagree like the same like we were talking about like, these are mostly life principles, right? So the same way you scale from 1 to 2 is the same way you scale from like two to 4, and 4 to eight. Like, you know, Chris is talking about every year scaling the business by x. And it's really true. And like Chris is saying, like, I think maybe it's the same thing, like you're expecting what I'm expecting, which is I just want to go right to the not the finish line, but that point where like, I'm striding. I guess that's the hard part is you want to get right to the point where your mid stride like this is great. Like, I hit my zone, but it's like to get into the zone. There's a lot of factors that have to happen first. And so I don't feel like, well, I feel you with like the idea of everyone's talking in the program. Oftentimes, I guess the people that are most confident, I should say, I think there's a lot of people in the group that like you, I think the people are most confident to talk are the ones that have already seen a lot of success. And so it's easy to get discouraged looking around and everyone's sitting here like, oh, I just closed a $10,000 client. I just closed at 100. Or does anyone need a client? That's 100 thousand, you're like, Oh my gosh, like, what is this like? I can't do this, but it's like, it's the same thing. It's like you start at one. But it's just this advice that still applies. It's like, yeah, well, you might not be trying to close at 10 thousand, you're closing a $2,000 client, but it's the same method to close. And it's just getting yourself in a position where you're viewed as someone that can demand $1,000 you know? But it's not. It's the same advice, I'd say. So I just wanted to kind of disagree a little bit. Hello Hello. Is that a debate, guys? Let's not get into that. The reason why I didn't disagree with demian. I want to tell you a couple of reasons. I'm holding off on what it is. I want to say, because if somebody says something and I totally disagree with it, I might say something, but I'd rather not. It's important for all of us within this conversation to speak from your truth and just say, this is how I feel because I can't invalidate how you feel. So Demi feels like I wasn't ready. Well, truthfully, he wasn't ready, and you can't say that he is ready. That's it. So everybody has a right to their lens. The reason why I can't dispute it is because I'm not a person in my own group listening to myself, so I can't negate that right? But you can Alec, you can say, well, my experience is different. And you can just talk about it like that. So this is not meant to be a debate. So nobody is here to prove anybody right or wrong. So I appreciate both of you for speaking and sharing your truth. And I think it's fantastic. I agree with both of you, to be honest. I really do. Yeah, I did want to add a caveat to say, though, like I didn't join the group until I was, you know, in a position where I felt the same way I was watching it for a really long time. I was really hurting, so I really wanted to be part of it because I started watching, way back in the day. I don't think I don't know if Chris remembers at all, but we've had a couple of conversations where he had like just a few people like I was with and I was like, really like a little while like envious of like Ben bernanke, like call me and Chris would have just picked me. It's like, well, I didn't really spend all night talking to them. I just kind of message him a few times. I was like, hey, it's really cool. It's really hot out here in Arizona. Like, how are you doing? But like, but I waited, I waited. And so maybe it is. There is a caveat to that, which is, you know, maybe I wouldn't have been in the position to take the knowledge or take the advice, even though it's the same advice. But you know, there's a journey like you were saying, and it's just kind of where you're at. Absolutely, if you're 100% full, you cannot eat another bite and take you to a buffet, it's not much of a help to you, right? It's like I'm not ready and you have to be ready, you have to be open. That's that's the thing for a lot of different reasons. Mentally, spiritually, financially, you have to be ready. OK I think there are a couple of other hands that have gone up and we'll give oops. Paul, Oh Paul, can I get back to you, Paul, because I see another hand that's up and. Can you raise your hand back up, paul? Debbie, Debbie, you haven't talked yet, so let's get you on first and then Paul. Well, I've had an interesting thought during this whole talk is that I've thought. When I feel like I'm not achieving my goals. Am I? Is that actually true? Or am I just thinking it needs to look a certain way? But but as we're kind of like earlier in the conversation saying, even when I think about three years ago where I was at. I've totally been on track to achieve my goals, even though I haven't even known what my future goals were going to be. So I'm just this is kind of just changing my mindset a little bit and even thinking about constraints I think I have in taking those and thinking, OK, well, this is what I have been dealt at the moment. So how can I take those things then? Like, for instance, like thinking Instagram's algorithm is horrible and it's screwing up what I'm trying to do on Instagram. OK, what can I do then? What's in my control to change that? So that's just those are my thoughts. I just wanted to put out there and see what people think or. I don't know where I was with you at the beginning. Yeah towards the end of the Instagram algorithm like that, a little bit better. Sorry? well, I think I was throwing that in as an example, but I don't know if it doesn't matter. I think that's something where I was thinking about a constraint that mentally I think I have in terms of where I'm trying to go specifically goal wise, but it's really not a constraint. If I start viewing it differently, like what can I do to keep moving forward regardless of what I think is holding me back? And how real or fake is that to? I guess it's a question. Right? I don't have an answer for that, but I like it. I like it. OK that's all right. Let's get back to Paul then. Paul, your turn. I was just going to say about the context of what we're talking about with things is often kind of missed. If we go back on the pro group and you look at the old videos, some of the subjects you talk about, for example, like value based pricing on these older videos, you see the progression, the evolution of what we're talking about, whereas later on we come into some passionate discussion about value based pricing. And if someone's new like, say, just for example, like if Demi was new coming into it, it just sounds like it's wonderful idea of value based pricing. And for the person who's just starting out, they start thinking, how am I going to do this? Base price, because there's no lost the context, and it's not necessarily right for that one person. What we're passionately talking about now isn't necessarily right for you. I think that's and it's helpful. I think maybe if we had some kind of starter fac or something, you know, these are the sort of subjects. We like to talk about and, you know, go go see this video over here or something like that to get yourself primed for it. I think maybe something like that would be helpful or just say, yeah, we'll just say maybe if you're in, when we start, if you have a subject and it seems like you don't understand it, this whole thing about just to say you don't understand it. Don't be. Don't be worried. Don't be concerned. Just put your hand up and say, this sounds great, but I'm not sure. Do you think it's right for me? All that kind of thing? Just an observation. Yeah, I think it's easy to fall into the trap of comparing where you're at with where somebody else is at. I think Alec brought that up. Somebody is. OK they're going to cut something for a little bit where somebody is like just secured a $10,000 logo assignment or 100,000 website. You're like, dude, I'm looking for my first 2000 gig and that kind of creates this pressure to feel like I'm not worthy. I'm not here. And what Paul was saying too, like if we're talking about value based pricing, is there's been this whole arc of lots of different conversations that got this that got us to this point and that it's not for everybody. It's just an idea because people are interested in knowing more about it than we talk about it. So we have to kind of figure out our entry point into the conversation and to slip into the stream that way, not to sit there and say, well, I don't have clarity on my goals. I'm a total failure. Well, that's OK. Maybe you're like 20 years old or you have a major crisis in your life and your career that you're making a big change, so you're not expected to have that right away, but to begin the thinking process to get definition and clarity on your own life goals and your mission, your purpose, your why? I think that's a valuable conversation to have at any point. So, Paul, you're right. OK, let's see who else wants to say something besides Alec. OK, I'm going to do. Shane Moe and back to Alec because Alex had two or three opportunities. So Shane, first Moe and then Alec. OK, cool. Alex is like gesturing like, no, no, I'm no good. Or what? OK OK, Shane, go ahead. Nice one. I just wanted to chirp up a bit and just say like as someone that is new entry to the Pro group like amount to the impact it's had on me in terms of being able to discuss with other people from completely different walks of life and dare kind of much higher value price tag common or celebrations go on. It can be a bit daunting from someone like myself, totally can be like, Oh god, they're bringing in so much more money. That's something. But it's also the sense of community that comes with where you see it and you're like included in on that celebration where you're genuinely happy for them doing so well. As well as that. I think it was Alec that mentioned earlier about starting off at 0 and sort it to me as well. Like myself, I'd be open to zero. I'd probably be 0.7 or 0.6 or something, but not too far away from it, whatever. But like my stay in the Pro group is going to come to an end for a brief period of time. But it's made a big difference on me and even the access to resources in the videos. So it's been really amazing and like, yeah, so Thanks very much. Great Thanks for sharing. And I hope to see you back. Yeah, definitely. Definitely thank you. OK, so Mo, you're up next, bro. I'm really passionate about what we're talking about and the coffee's hitting, so if I, if I ramble, shut me down. But yesterday I was reading a document that I purchased a long time ago. It's called superior muscle growth because your boy has a dad bod and he needs to get back into it. But the last portion of that book talked about how, after he had talked about diet and routines and splits and all these different things, you talked about action and consistency. And he talked about the differences. So the first thing he says is you have to take action. And then he and then he says that action is not enough because on January 1st, everyone is taking action. And then he says, you have to be consistent with the action. But then he says, you're Sol because there's a lot of people that have been going to the gym for decades with consistent action, but not getting results. And then the last portion, he said, it's about the effort. So I'm going to create like a little diagram probably posted on Facebook. But I think where the barrier comes from, especially now, is dependent on the person's goal. They think that they're doing, they think that they're taking actions and they're taking actions consistently, but they're not seeing results because one, they may not have clarity on the goal, but also what is the intensity in which you're operating at, right? Like if you show up to the gym every day of the week, but you're not doing anything for what's called progressive overload, right? You're not increasing the weight every time you've hit your max RPM, right? You're not improving. So when he wrote the word effort, I realized for me that there are sometimes things that I'm doing consistently right in attainment to this goal. But I'm busy more so than I am productive because the effort in which I'm doing it at is not intense enough to make me grow, quote unquote muscle wise. So like, this conversation is really interesting to me. Still, because I feel like we're dancing around something that's very personal, because even in this book, he's like, listen, this is probably the best muscle growth document that's ever written on the internet, but you're not doing anything with it. It's something I can't teach you. So I don't know not to sound pessimistic. I don't know if the end result of this conversation is like it's an individual thing that you have to do against your specific goal. Once you gain clarity on it and your effort has to be intense for you to make results and see tangible progression. So if I were to follow up that rant with a question, it's. Can we help each other, develop a framework for us to dumb down this very big goal that we have to be able to execute with intense effort to make progress? Oh, OK. A lot, a lot of trying to figure out there, ok? 100% agree. This is the most you said a pessimistic. It's the most scary and liberating thing is that the only thing that's keeping you from getting where you want to go is you. Period it's highly individual. You're right, because I often think about this and I ask this question in very serious tones here. It's like, why can't you get where you want to be? And some people, I can figure it out really fast, and some people take a lot of time and energy to figure it out. And obviously, I don't have enough time to talk to all 60 people or 290 people in the group to figure it out. I'm trying to do this on scale, so it's affordable, but really, you have to kind of look inside yourself like, why aren't I taking this step necessary? And I happen to believe it's your belief that you believe it's up for you. You believe it's not possible. You believe that you don't have the requisite skills or the right client base or you live in the wrong city. And as much as I can tell you, that's all nonsense. You yourself have to believe that it's true. And if I have to trick you, if I have to slap you, if I have to do whatever I have to do to make it work for you, I would do that, but I don't know what your trigger is. So everybody here has to start to figure out their own trigger for some of you. As we touched upon earlier, it's because you don't really know what it is that you want most. Like, I don't want the dad body, so I've got to go to the gym and take care of this stuff. So he kind of has a vision in his mind what he's going to look like by what date and time. And if he wants it bad enough, he will achieve that. That's plain and simple. If he physically can do it, he will do it if he wants it bad enough. So when we talk about people saying, you know, why do you charge $500 for this when you could charge 20,000 like, I'm not worth that much, the market can't bear that, they'll say no. So these are all internal problems. So what I would suggest for all of you, because there's a lot more affordable, is to go and see a psychotherapist. Some of them, community base are very affordable, it's on a sliding scale, or some of them are a fixed fee, and it's $100 an hour. If you spend $500 and go to five sessions to make a commitment to talking about why you're stuck. If you find a good therapist, they should be able to help you through this within a few sessions. Right, so I don't know what it is that's holding each one of you back, except for that it's. It's a belief. I've said this thing before, said this thing before. It's a very complicated world out there and we don't really know or understand many things. So we just make up stories so that we pretend like we know. And sometimes those stories become so real in our mind that they almost seem like factual. But in truth, there's very little that we know. And some of the stories that we tell ourselves are the stories that our parents told us about what's possible, what's not possible. And if you were to examine any one of those thoughts and beliefs and said you say to yourself, where did I learn this thing from? What fact? What proof do I have that this is actually real? See, so what we do every single day in our life is we think all of what we know is factual and everything that we don't know is not factual. So we don't apply the same rigor in looking at New information as we do internal information. So if I told you tomorrow that the going rate for what you do is 4 times as much as you're currently charging, you're going to say, well, that's not true. What proof do you have? Show me case studies, give me examples. I want to hear interviews and testimonials. You have to convince me, Chris. But I could equally say to you, where did you learn that charging one fourth is true? And if you could do that, you could look internally and say, well, I get the information from. because Jimmy told me when I was 16 years old, Jimmy told me, that's worth, or if I'm going to go back in time, you know, when I was younger, when I was six years old, I was pointing to something creative and my dad told me, that's worthless. Nobody cares about that. That's who told you it's true. If you apply the same standards of truth, finding of fact checking to external information as you do internal, you'll figure it out really, really fast. There's a lot of crappy things you believe to be true that are based on nothing. It's all myth inside your mind, but you hold on to it like this is the truest thing I've ever heard. So I wanted to mention one thing like this entire call. I already have a plan to rewatch it as soon as possible. And it's like a two hour infusion of great ideas that push people that make you inspired and if you want to do something. But I think that one thing that influences. Action, especially over time, is the environment in which a person is. And that relapse to you get the infusion here for two hours, it keeps you until the end of the night and it keeps you also maybe tomorrow for a couple of days and then you go back into the same environment. It's the family. It is your friends, it is your neighbors. It is everything that you see every day that is keeping you in a way where you are right now. So it is. Borderline impossible for most people to change their environment. But I found that when I was whenever I would be what I feel stuck in a way I would just move out. I would find a new place to work. I would find a new place to operate from, if not physically. Rule would my entire, my entire family. So I think that, you know, just understanding the cues in the environment they're keeping people down can help them release from that pressure, especially from other people and their opinions and their comments as well. Yes, it's very interesting what you said, their love. And I want to acknowledge what you said, which is get this infusion, this hit of energy and its positivity and a mindset, and you're very clear for the moment. And then life happens and then the energy starts to dissipate. And then you get pulled in thousand different directions, all from well-meaning people right in your life. And then it's like way I lost my way again. It got really foggy, and this would happen to my students all the time. We would get clarity in class when I critique the work and they're like, yep, I know what I'm doing in the next week. I'm like, what happened? Like, it got foggy again, man. It's like there's this massive fog outside the classroom door. You open up as you get hit with it and you didn't know what happened. And this goes further to emphasize the point in which I was making earlier, which is have to have very clear goals because people can't pull you if you don't let them. OK, so you said my environment, it's almost impossible to change, while then in two breaths later, you're like, well, I got a new job and moved. It's like, is it impossible? Maybe not. Maybe some of the people that are in your life that you feel like you're stuck with. Maybe that's not impossible either. Some of us are cursed with having one or two parents that are totally toxic for us. They're constantly undermining us, questioning us, wishing that we were somebody else. The oldest. The youngest, the smartest. The prettiest, the most handsome. They're wishing all kinds of failed dreams that they couldn't figure out in their life upon us. And we say, well, they're our parents. Well, as far as I know, my period is over. You're an adult. You get to choose what you want to do, so you can minimize your exposure to people who are toxic to you, who are anchors in your life, who weigh you down with negative energy. This is your choice. Now I know that this is a piece of fiction, but I forget its name, but I think it's Gene Wilder with the crazy hair. He recently passed away and his characters were always so interesting in movies like they would throw them in prison and he's like, OK. And they think that by torturing him, they're going to break him. And it's funny, because he would come out with the exact opposite reaction. They could not break this man. They would put him in a hot box, you know, like in prison. This is a comedy, but they put him inside. He would get out three days later parts, and he's like, Oh my god, like, he can stand up on my back. It's like, I've never Wow. I feel so good now, and they're just puzzled. So no matter what happened to him in the story, he would always emerge stronger, happier with himself. And this is the thing is that our environment has as much impact on us as we let it. Right because I think I can be around like very dire circumstances, but I'm going to try to remain true to myself. And this is like you being centered and present to know that these are external influences. I get to decide which ones I listen to, which ones I don't listen to. I get to decide what action I take and don't take. So then the power comes back on me. When you come to this realization, it's super empowering, they say almost everything that happens in your life through the lens in which you interpret it. Changes the entire meaning, so if you just change your lens, the meaning changes, so you kind of have to decide. And we do these exercises in the mindset workshop where if somebody crashes into your car. Somebody crashes into your car, it takes you out of your day, somebody, if you are going to the grocery store and you get shot with a bullet. Because there's a robbery and you're a bystander. That changes your life, but depending on how you interpret that moment. It could determine that the trajectory, your happiness, your outcome and everything. Another thing that Tony Robbins says is all you have to do in life is spend time with people. I don't know if he's a paraplegic, but I think he said people without limbs and look at how optimistic they are, how they've adapted, how they have adjusted. And then you come to the realization that you have no reason to feel bad. So I do agree it's kind of tough to change our environment, it's not impossible, but how we interpret the environment is more important than whether or not we change it. So let's learn to interpret it differently. And it will empower you. OK OK, so I know. So live, what you need to do is you have to have more frequent meetings with your peak performance partner. You have to be very clear about your goals, what it is that you want to have in Black and white to make it a screensaver on your desktop, to have it as wallpaper on your phone everywhere you go if you need to make a t-shirt or poster out of it. This is what I want from my life. The clearer you become with what it is that you want, the less likely you're going to be distracted by what you don't want. We have to learn to exercise and use a very powerful word in a vocabulary. And that is no. Will you help me do this like that didn't sound like what I need? No, no. And I struggle with this all the time because it makes us feel good to say Yes to help other people. It really does something. Somebody like Chris, when you come and speak at this thing, I'm like, Not unless you can pay me. Because that's taking me away from my goal. As soon as I got clear on that, everything became a lot easier.