CAREER STRATEGY

Podcast 14 min read

Know When to Quit w/ John Lee

with John Lee

Chris Do and John Lee distinguish a strategic career change from quitting when the work gets hard.

Chris Do

Founder, The Futur™ · September 2, 2026

A New Direction Can Be an Old Escape

A career change can look like courage while functioning as avoidance. John Lee, an entrepreneur, speaker, former CGI animator, and author of Money Unlocked, has built his working life around changing direction. His perspective matters because those changes, from animation to property and then teaching, give him a concrete answer to a difficult question: when does leaving become progress?

Chris Do sees the danger in making that answer sound too easy. A young creative starts something, encounters resistance, and moves on. The next pursuit becomes difficult, too. Another departure follows.

Twenty years later, Do warns, the person can remain close to the starting line. Movement has replaced development. The problem is not a shortage of interests but an inability to stay through the part that makes an interest valuable.

Lee offers an apparently conflicting account. His career has moved across real estate, sales training, speaker training, social media, investing, and technology. He describes those pursuits as connected routes rather than competing destinations.

The tension is not between ambition and discipline. Both men value both. It is between two explanations for the same behavior: leaving because the next opportunity deserves attention, or leaving because the present work demands more than expected.

Do refuses to let intuition settle the argument on its own. When Lee describes an inner calling, Do pushes for something a less experienced person can actually use. Otherwise, following a calling becomes an elegant justification for abandoning anything uncomfortable.

“That's the price of entry,” Do says of the work and pain that separate wanting an outcome from reaching it.

The distinction matters especially for creative professionals. A person can be capable of several kinds of work without having a viable business in any of them. Interest establishes a possibility. It does not establish demand, competence, or a reason for someone else to pay.

That broader tension also sits behind The Futur's Staff, Freelance or Entrepreneur?: different working arrangements require a deliberate choice, not merely an escape from the current one.

Lee's account becomes most useful when it moves away from declarations about instinct and toward the circumstances of his decisions. There are customers asking for help, a pitch that fails, a guide that circulates, and skills that become useful in adjacent settings.

Those details supply a more demanding interpretation of his flexibility. He is not describing a career assembled entirely from fresh starts. He is describing one in which earlier work repeatedly creates the conditions for later work.

A strategic pivot carries something forward.

That is the standard his story invites. Not whether the new field feels exciting. Whether the move preserves hard-earned ability, responds to something real, and gives that ability a more productive place to operate.

The Animator Who Started Counting Differently

Lee's first trading stories are modest. His parents ran a Chinese takeaway, and he recalls taking prawn crackers and cans of Coke to school to sell. The objective was not an abstract vision of entrepreneurship. He wanted money for video games and another console.

He also sold game cartridges after finishing them. In one transaction, he remembers buying a Super Nintendo from a friend for £35, walking two and a half miles to a swap shop, and receiving £52.

The lesson was visible in the difference between the two prices. Something available in one place could be worth more somewhere else. Do identifies the principle as arbitrage, then asks the harder question: how did a small transaction become a larger way of thinking?

The answer runs through animation, not property.

Lee says he worked as a character and creature animator, including at Framestore CFC. He studied animation at university, though he credits much of his practical learning to teaching himself. The distinction becomes a point of friction when Do challenges his initial description of being self-taught.

Lee's account is not that formal education never occurred. It is that the useful technical knowledge required substantial independent effort. He recalls working through large manuals while dealing with dyslexia and competing for access to too few university machines.

He and a friend would arrive at six in the morning, wait for the caretaker, and reserve seats with their bags. The detail complicates any reading of his later career changes as simple impatience. Before leaving animation, he had already practiced persistence inside it.

He also looked for a better production method. Lee describes using an animation tool called Messiah alongside his early work with Lightwave, valuing its real-time handling of character movement. In his telling, that technical choice substantially shortened the time needed to finish a short film.

He was already paying attention to three different things:

The effort required to acquire a skill.
The tools that changed how quickly that skill could produce work.
The relationship between the work's value and his own compensation.

The third concern became decisive. While working on dinosaur animation, Lee remembers comparing the value assigned to shots with his salary. He also describes the frustration of spending weeks on work that a director could discard.

His conclusion was personal: if he was going to work that hard, he wanted to work for himself. The comparison did not establish a studio's profit or account for all its costs. It changed what he wanted from his own labor.

This is the maker-to-owner tension named in Moving from Makers to Entrepreneurs. The ability to produce valuable work and the ability to organize a business around value are related, but they are not identical.

Lee did not leave because animation required learning. He had done the learning. He began looking elsewhere because he wanted a different relationship between effort, control, and financial return.

The Deal Was Not the Pitch

Property entered Lee's thinking as an alternative to earning only through his job. He recalls listening to a real estate book and becoming interested in the possibility that one successful transaction could equal a year's salary. That was an attraction, not yet a working business.

The practical education began at networking events and a seminar he says he could not afford. He borrowed the £350 attendance fee from his uncle, promising half the proceeds of his first two deals in return. Looking back, he calls it his worst negotiation.

The story is useful precisely because it contains an unfavorable bargain. Lee's confidence about making money did not mean every early decision was financially sophisticated. Access to an opportunity and good terms for accessing it are separate problems.

One mentor then offered a different starting point: find a deal rather than treating a lack of personal capital as the end of the process. Lee took that advice into rooms of potential investors.

His initial approach failed. He kept asking whether people had £85,000. Their refusals led him to conclude that the investors did not have money.

His mentor asked him to repeat the pitch.

The problem was not simply the amount. Lee had made his own shortage the subject of the conversation. The investor was being asked to solve his problem before being given a reason to care about it.

The offer has to explain what is in it for them.

Lee's revised pitch described a property he believed was worth £185,000, available for £85,000, and invited a partnership. The figures were the same. The proposed relationship was different.

The contrast is stark:

The first pitch asked whether someone possessed the money Lee needed.
The second presented the asset, the proposed discount, and an opportunity to participate.
The eventual introduction came through someone who did not personally supply the money.

In Lee's account, that introduction led to a private lender. He says he used short-term financing, refinanced the property, refurbished it, and eventually sold it. The transcript's financing figures are not consistently clear, so the enduring lesson is the change in the offer, not a reproducible lending formula.

The same caution applies to the difference between purchase and sale prices. That spread alone is not net profit. Lee mentions interest and refurbishment, both of which belong to the economics of the transaction.

His story is strongest as an account of communication and coordination. A mentor improved the pitch. An intermediary supplied an introduction. A lender funded the purchase. A builder helped connect the renovated property with a buyer.

That attention to the other party's interests makes a natural companion to The Skill You Need To Win Clients That No One Talks About. Here, the practical distinction is between asking for resources and making participation intelligible.

The refusal had not proved the opportunity impossible. It had exposed a weakness in how Lee presented it. Changing the pitch was more useful than changing the goal.

The Next Business Arrived as a Request

Lee's strongest defense of changing direction is not the property transaction itself. It is what happened after people began asking him how he did the work.

He describes meeting people for coffee and explaining real estate. Those conversations generated more introductions and more questions. Eventually, repeating the same explanations became cumbersome, so he began writing down the answers.

The guide was initially a way to avoid repeating himself. It then became something other people passed around. Written knowledge could travel without requiring another meeting with its author.

A speaking invitation followed. Lee remembers resisting because he did not consider himself a speaker. The organizer's instruction was simple: bring the guide and read it.

He says that first audience contained roughly six people. Another invitation eventually put him in front of about 250. Afterward, attendees asked for direct help negotiating their own property transactions.

Those requests became a business he called Deal Closer. Lee describes the offer as negotiating a buyer's deal in return for 1 percent of the purchase price.

“It was created through the demand of the process that drove me there,” he says.

That sentence provides firmer ground than the language of a calling. The service emerged from a sequence of observable requests. He had not simply become bored with property and selected speaking as a more glamorous identity.

The sequence preserved what he had learned:

Property experience gave him material other people wanted explained.
Repeated questions gave the guide its content.
The guide helped create speaking opportunities.
Speaking exposed demand for hands-on negotiation support.

Each transition changed the delivery format without discarding the underlying competence. A private conversation became a document. A document became a presentation. A presentation revealed demand for a service.

This is also where Lee's broader range becomes more coherent. He connects speaker training to communication, communication to social media, social media to sales, and earnings to investing. The fields differ, but he sees related problems running through them.

Not every adjacent interest deserves a business. Lee's example carries a narrower lesson: a new offer becomes more credible when it answers a request already arriving from people who understand the existing work.

It is an offer-first pattern, consistent with the tension expressed in You Don't Need a Personal Brand. You Need an Offer. Visibility can reveal a market, but being seen and being asked to solve something are not the same event.

The distinction also sharpens Do's original objection. Constantly starting over throws away the benefits of accumulated experience. Lee's teaching and negotiation work did the opposite: they gave the experience additional uses.

His trajectory does not prove that every interest leads somewhere productive. It shows why a change supported by demand is different from a change supported only by relief. The next step had customers attached to it.

Instinct Gets a Scorecard

Do eventually translates Lee's account into something more explicit. He proposes evaluating an opportunity across four variables, each scored from one to ten: demand, joy, money, and mission.

The exercise is deliberately plain. It turns a large, emotionally charged decision into a comparison of distinct considerations. A person can love the work while recognizing weak demand, or see financial potential while admitting the work does not fit the larger purpose.

Do's proposed variables are:

Demand: How much evidence is there that people want the work? Repeated requests and invitations are the examples he draws from Lee's story.
Joy: How much enjoyment does the work bring? Do asks whether it makes the person's heart smile.
Money: What is its financial value? Do permits either gross revenue or profit as the chosen measure.
Mission: How closely does it fit the person's purpose? Someone without a defined mission can leave this blank.

Do's instruction is to prioritize the activities with the highest scores and ignore the rest. It is not a claim that every important decision can be reduced to arithmetic. It is an attempt to make the reasons for a decision visible.

That visibility matters because a single attractive feature can dominate the story someone tells about an opportunity. Money can conceal a lack of enjoyment. Enjoyment can conceal a lack of buyers. A compelling mission can obscure an offer that nobody has requested.

Lee accepts the structure but says an element is missing: the feeling of knowing something is right. He describes situations in which others advise against an idea, yet accumulated experience produces a strong sense of what will happen.

His explanation is more specific than blind faith. He talks about reflexes built over time, the ability to anticipate consequences, and nuances that become recognizable through practice. The intuition he defends is tied to experience.

That distinction prevents the scorecard from becoming a false contest between rationality and emotion. Do wants observable criteria. Lee wants room for judgment that has not been fully translated into language.

Neither position requires treating excitement as proof.

Lee also separates mission from money. He describes money as supporting the continuation of work that matters, rather than supplying the entire reason for doing it. That claim belongs alongside his earlier financial ambition, not in place of it.

The resulting approach is practical without pretending to be certain. Demand gives the decision an external reference. Joy describes the experience of doing the work. Money tests its financial contribution. Mission asks whether the activity belongs in the same larger life.

Instinct can then challenge the assessment, but it should have a history behind it. Lee's evidence is not simply that a new pursuit felt good. It is that earlier work had taught him to recognize related possibilities.

A calling becomes more useful when it can survive being examined.

More Tools Do Not Remove the Need for Judgment

The discussion of AI raises the stakes of that judgment. Do worries both about employment and about people's growing habit of consulting a machine before forming an opinion. Lee agrees with the concern about diminished independent thinking, even while describing substantial use of AI in his own work.

Their employment forecasts remain forecasts. The conversation does not establish how many jobs will disappear or whether replacement roles will compensate for losses. Its more concrete contribution is the distinction between access to information and the judgment required to use it.

Lee describes an AI assistant called Nova that his team consults during executive meetings. His goal is to train the assistant to reflect his own thinking, rather than provide only general advice.

He illustrates the difference with social media. A broad answer can recommend creating more content. His preferred answer gives a specific operating constraint: one topic, one platform, and daily posting for six months.

He calls that approach the 116. After the publishing period, the instruction is to identify an outlier, double down on it, and recreate it in different forms. The system is offered as his own practice, not as a verified guarantee of audience growth.

There is a revealing contradiction here, though not necessarily an inconsistency. The entrepreneur who works across many fields advocates sustained focus inside a particular execution strategy. Breadth at the career level does not require scattering attention at the task level.

That is a useful correction to the idea that Lee's career authorizes doing everything simultaneously. A portfolio of interests can coexist with a narrow operating commitment. Changing the business and changing the daily plan are different decisions.

Do's concern remains unresolved: if people ask a system what to think before thinking, they can become dependent on the answer. An assistant trained on a person's previous judgments still raises the question of how that person develops new ones.

Lee's own examples suggest why experience remains central. The failed investor pitch taught him something because an actual person refused it. The guide developed because actual people kept asking questions. Demand was encountered, not merely generated as a plausible response.

AI does not erase the need to distinguish an appealing explanation from evidence that a market wants something. In this conversation, the most persuasive evidence continues to come from behavior: introductions, invitations, requests, and transactions.

Lee argues that connection, collaboration, and community remain important. He also credits Do's design and consulting experience with enabling him to see brand distinctions that other people miss.

That returns the conversation to its starting problem. Quitting too early does not only interrupt output. It can interrupt the accumulation of judgment that makes the next decision better. A faster tool cannot supply the personal history of noticing what worked, what failed, and why.

Change the Work Without Losing the Thread

A varied career creates one more problem: other people still need to understand it. Lee remembers being known as the money guy during the Clubhouse period and later being associated with AI. Do presses him to identify something more durable than the latest category.

He introduces the core three, his framework for expressing a brand through a defining association, an enemy, and a rallying cry. The purpose is not to inventory everything a person can do. It is to make the meaning of the work recognizable.

Lee chooses transformation as his central idea. He argues that people often fail to act not because they lack instructions but because they experience internal conflict. They want an outcome while resisting the identity or behavior required to pursue it.

For the enemy, he chooses doubt. He traces beliefs to friends, teachers, family, and experience, arguing that recognizing where a belief came from creates room to reconsider it.

Do suggests “Believe you can” as a draft rallying cry. It is presented as a work in progress, not an established slogan or a complete positioning strategy.

The three elements fit together in a way a list of services does not. Transformation names the intended change. Doubt names the resistance. The proposed rallying cry expresses the response.

But Do adds a demanding test: choosing a word is not the same as being associated with it. A brand requires recognition from other people. An internal description becomes positioning only when the audience can return the association.

This is the reputational equivalent of the demand test. Lee can say his activities belong to one mission, but the market still needs enough consistency to understand the connection. Otherwise, the owner experiences coherence while the audience experiences a sequence of unrelated offers.

The practical resolution is therefore not a universal instruction to quit or persist. It is a way to examine a proposed move without hiding behind either identity. The determined professional can be stubborn; the adaptable entrepreneur can be evasive.

Do's four variables make the opportunity inspectable. Lee's story supplies the evidence to look for: requests that repeat, skills that remain useful, relationships that create access, and work that continues to bring satisfaction.

A decision to stay deserves equal scrutiny. Persistence has value when it develops something worth carrying forward. Remaining in a role solely because leaving would contradict an old self-description is not the same as commitment to the work.

Before abandoning a direction, the distinction is specific: a failed pitch is not automatically a failed market. Before entering another, it is equally specific: enthusiasm is not automatically demand.

Lee changed fields, but his most convincing transitions did not discard the previous chapter. They converted it into material, credibility, or a service someone had already requested.

The next move should put hard-earned ability to work. Otherwise, it is just another beginning.

TRANSCRIPT

Everyone would say no to me. Then I'd go back to my mentor and ask him, it's not working. These are supposed to be investors that don't have money. He said, tell me how you're pitching it. And I told him, he said, that's wrong. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And it's always about for them. He taught me this powerful lesson, W -I -F -T, what's in it for them. My name's John Lee and you are listening to the future. Everybody, today's guest. First, what we're going to do is we're going to listen to his voice. And if you were there when Clubhouse was popping, I'm sure you're going to recognize the voice. John Lee, welcome to the show. For people who don't know who you are, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your story. Well, brother, thank you so much for having me in the first place. For those of you, people who don't know who I am, I'm an entrepreneur, speaker. I do a lot of things. And mainly people come to me when they have issues with my... So I'm the author of Money Unlocked, which has been published by Penguin in Hay House. And a lot of different business models going to real estate, going to social media, building personal brands. Also looking at how business is currently changing as well. So a lot of people come to me for advice for like tech. Like, how do I grow it? How do I do a raise? How do I do an IPO? So it's kind of like a lot of these things. And, you know, as you know, now with the whole AI world, it's not being good at one thing. It's now having multifaceted approach in business. So I'm kind of like going in and doing holistic things. And for me, it's finding out where the intrinsic value is in every single business, whether that be marketing, sales, whether it's understanding nuances in audiences, right? Different distributions. And, you know, we'd have a pretty big conversation on AI just now. So it's kind of what I do. How do you think back in the Clubhouse days, how you were perceived online? What do you think your brand was like back in the day? And is it, how has it evolved over time? When I first started was real estate. That's how I kind of made my pot of gold, you know, and then it went from real estate to then becoming teaching sales training. It's kind of what I do. How do you think back in the Clubhouse days, how you were perceived online? What do you think your brand was like back in the day? And how has it evolved over time? When I first started was real estate. That's how I kind of made my pot of gold, you know, and then it went from real estate to then becoming teaching sales training and then evolved from sales training. And then it went to speaker training and it went from speaker training to social media. Now it's gone from social media to investing and then AI and then tech. Like during Clubhouse, fill in this sentence for me. No explanation. Just fill it in. Okay. John, he's the money guy. There we go. See, that's perfect. Money guy. He's the money guy. Post Clubhouse. Let's just say now we're at the 1 billion followers summit with Mindvalley. So I'm sitting in the audience. Oh, John, he's the AI guy. Okay. So what is this book all about then? Is this AI money? No, it's talking about opportunities. Like for me, making money is the easiest thing in the world. I really, in my heart feel it's so easy to make money, but yet most people struggle with it. And for me, it's my duty to get this message out there, whether it's using AI to do it, whether it's negotiating a deal, whether it's creating a brand for somebody and helping them consult on that. But there's so many different opportunities. I mean, we're living in a world where you can click a button now and create an entire film and an app. But it is bizarre that so many people are struggling making money. I think we're in alignment here. It's making money easy. Yes. When did you learn that? When I was at high school. What did you do to learn that? So my parents had a Chinese takeaway and in a Chinese takeaway, you have prawn crackers, you have cans of Coke and things like that. So I used to just put those into my bag, take them to school and create my own tuck shop. So I would sell them to people. And so 50 pence here, 50 pence here, because I'm a gamer, so I like playing games. So I wanted to save up for this console called Neo Geo. And if you remember, Samurai Shodown, my favorite game. So when I looked at how that worked, I was like, I need a way to create something. So in the early days, I had something called a Sega Master System. I used to play Alex the Kid and Wise and all these incredible games. After I would complete them, I would take these to school and I would sell them for five pounds. The cartridges? Yeah, the cartridges. I've still got some of those cartridges, by the way. And then it wasn't until I realized that, oh, hold on a second. In the early days, I had something called a Sega Master System. I used to play Alex the Kid and Wise and all these incredible games. After I would complete them, I would take these to school and I would sell them for five pounds. The cartridges? Yeah, the cartridges. I've still got some of those cartridges, by the way. And then it wasn't until I realized that, oh, hold on a second. You've got something here that people will pay money for and you can make money from it. And why do I make money? Because I want to buy another console. I want to buy another game. And one of my best friends, David, he had this, you know, I remember the Super Nintendos. And he played every single game and he sold it. I was like, I'll buy it from you. So I remember, I'll never forget this. I bought it from him for 35 pounds. And then I walked two and a half miles. Back then you call them swap shops. You take something, you swap it, but you can also exchange it for money. And then I got 52 pounds back for it. So I'd made a margin. That was easy. You got a lot for that game. So I understood that you can buy something low and sell it high. Basic principle. Buy low, sell high. Or buy low, sell low if you want it fast. That's how it kind of got in real estate as well. Okay. That's arbitrage. And a lot of people have experiences like this, but they never really go to the heights. They're stuck in small transactions. Tell me the next quantum leap forward where you understand arbitrage and what age and where are you seeing this? So I worked in the film industry. I used to be an animator. So I used to work for a company called Framestore CFC. Sure. Before that, we worked. Well, what kind of animator are you? Now you're like in my lane here. I am a CGI animator. Character. 3D? Character and creature. animator. 3D? Yes. 3D. So I would use like Maya, 3D Studio Max. Just checking your card here. Lightwave is the earlier one. Yeah, yeah. Lightwave. Sure. Yeah, so Lightwave. And how'd you learn how to use this? Self -talk. Really? In fact, do you know Lightwave has a secret animation tool called Messiah? No. I knew that early on in age that if you want something, you got to do it yourself if you can't get it. The university I went to did not have enough machines for animators. So me and my friend would show up 6 a .m. in the morning. We wait for the caretaker to come, open the doors. We'd go there, put our bags there and go to McDonald's to get breakfast. When we'd come back, our bags would still be there. So we had basically said, you can't take that seat. But the problem is, as you know, if anyone's listened to this, Lightwave at the time was just not quick. It was great at rendering. It was good at 3D modeling. It was great. 6 a .m. in the morning. We wait for the caretaker to come, open the doors. We'd go there, put our bags there and go to McDonald's to get breakfast. When we come back, our bags will still be there. So we had basically said, you can't take that seat. But the problem is, as you know, if anyone's listened to this, Lightwave at the time was just not quick. It was great at rendering. It was great at 3D modeling. It was great at all that stuff, but it wasn't great at animation. So you remember IK? Yes. Inverse Kinematics. Yes, yes, yes. So IK's movement of the character, Messiah could do it in real time. That means I could have a full short film that what would take everybody else six to eight months to do, which I could do it in three months. That was my advantage. What did you study at university? Animation. Oh, you did? Okay, so you - I had a degree in animation. Okay, so you wasn't so self -taught there. No. So you went to university to learn animation. But at that university, it didn't teach me jack. Everything was self -taught. I remember manuals like this, having to go through it. Being dyslexic, I'm like, this is really difficult. I learned. On the job, not through university. So you are a very clear -minded, self -determined person. You do this. Now, where does the arbitrage come back in again? I was working on Prehistoric Park. This is a show. I mean, you've probably seen the, all the like T -Rex and all the dinosaurs. I remember going to the Natural History Museum because we had to learn movement. Like, how do you animate a mammoth? It don't exist. Closest thing to a mammoth is an elephant. So you look at how they're waiting. So I need to have to analyze skeletal structures. I remember sitting there thinking, I'm working on this shot. That's taking weeks to do this shot. And the director can come in and say, yeah, scrap it. I'm like, this is ridiculous. And I remember seeing one of the shots and how much the shot was. Like it was 23 ,000 for 24 frames per second shot. And I'm like, I'm doing the calculation in my head. I'm like, hold on a second. That shot I just made was like 75 ,000 for that one shot. And that one, I started thinking about, if I want to work this hard, I need to work for myself. I remember sitting there and this book called Real Estate Riches by Dolph Deroos. And I'm listening to this book and this guy had worked all his life to basically become a doctor. But at the same time, he was in real estate. I remember sitting there and this book called Real Estate Riches by Adolf DeRoos. And I'm listening to this book and this guy had worked all his life to basically become a doctor. But at the same time, he was in real estate. And the same time he got a job, eventually, is the same day he had actually sold that piece of property and made the same salary as the offer he got from the job. And that's when I had one of those, ah, moments. And I realized at that point, oh my God, like, and by the way, at the time I was on 36 ,000. So it was like this coincidence. I'm like, that's a really good idea. If I can just buy one house and then sell it, then I can take the rest of the year off. And that's how I got the idea to go into real estate. So from long hours in real estate, I would go to these property networking events. And it's so funny because I'd turn up and I'd see my best mate there. I'm like, I didn't know you was into real estate as well. And his name was Bao. And so, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to make some money in real estate. So I kind of got into this process of understanding. I went to my first seminar and I couldn't afford to go to my first seminar. My first mentor in real estate, his name was Ranjan Bhachacharya. And he charged 350 pounds to go to this. You know, at the time you're like, I'm not paying that money to go there. So I went to my uncle Chi and I borrowed some money from him and he was reluctant at first. He said, what's it for? I said, it's for a seminar. He said, what it's about? how to become a property millionaire. And he looked at me and he's like, oh, it's going to be a scam. I said, no, no, no. So I did a deal with him. I said, give me the money to go on. And the first two deals I buy, I'm going to give you 50 % of it. That was the worst negotiation I ever did. But that's when I realized one of my first deals that I understood was that I never understood that there's people out there who are willing to sell a property at a discount. I just need to buy a house low and sell it high. So one of the first deals I did, Chris, was I bought it for $85 ,000 and I sold it for $185 ,000. But every single house on that row was valued at $180 ,000 minimum. I didn't have the money. But one of my mentors taught me, his name was Ying Tan. He said, you don't need money. You need a deal. Find a deal. The money will find you. That was the biggest unlock for me. So now I wasn't worried about having to have the money to do the deal. I remember when we closed that deal. It was on the market. minimum. I didn't have the money, but one of my mentors taught me, his name was Ying Tan. He said, you don't need money. You need a deal. Find a deal. The money will find you. That was the biggest unlock for me. So now I'm like, I wasn't worried about having to have the money to do the deal. I remember when we closed that deal, it was on the market for again, 118 on the market. It's like, why would someone sell it at discount? Because they'd already made money from it. So I'm thinking to these networking events. And my pitch is, have you got £85 ,000? No. Have you got £85 ,000? No. Everyone would say no to me. Then I'd go back to my mentor and ask him, it's not working. These are supposed to be investors that don't have money. He said, tell me how you're pitching it. And I told him, he said, that's wrong. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And it's always about for them. He taught me this powerful lesson, W -I -F -F -T, what's in it for them? So he said, go back with the second pitch. So now the pitch is, it's not, do you have £85 ,000? It's now I've got a property. It's worth £185 ,000 and buying it at £100 ,000 off. Would you like to partner with me? And then I started to get some bites. Then I met a lady called Karen Rutter who did not have the money. And that's when I realised it's not who you know, it's who they know. And she found someone who's a multimillionaire called Shirley Wheeler. I sat down with her and I said, I've got this deal. And I did exactly the same pitch that my mentor taught me. And that's how I got the money to buy the house. She gave me £85 ,000 with a high interest rate, but I realised that you don't need to hold the money long. I held it for one day because at the time there was a loophole where you could refinance it. So she gave me the money. I refinanced it. I got the money back out, paid her and her interest. And then now I've got extra money now. I get paid to buy the house because now the market value is higher. So now it's worth £185 ,000. Well, you haven't sold it for £185 ,000 yet. No, but I'm refinancing it at the market value. Now when you get a refinance, say 85 % of £185 ,000, it's higher than £85 ,000. So I get all that money back, right? How much money did you get back? I think we refinanced it at £112 ,000, £500 ,000. Okay. So now you have cash in hand before you even sold the property. Now I used that money to refurbish it. And then I sold it. An interesting thing, I didn't even sell the property. My builder, Mike, who was filmed doing the whole thing, people walking past and go, oh my God, this property is for sale, right? Because they saw it being refurbished and they had all the skip outside. He would take people in. So now you have cash in hand before you even sold the property. Now, now I used that money to refurbish it. And then I sold it. An interesting thing, I didn't even sell the property. My builder, Mike, who was filmed doing the whole thing, people were walking past and go, oh my God, this property's for sale, right? Because they saw it being refurbished and they had all the skip outside. He would take people in, he would show them the property and say, oh, I'd love to buy this. I want to live in that closer to my son. And he said, look, like we can, we just about to refurbish it. We can refurbish it exactly how you want it. We can paint this orange. We can paint it white. We can magnolia walls. He's the one who sold the property for 185 ,000 for me in two months. So that's how I got the money. What is the catalyst for you to switch from industry to industry or from topic to topic? So do you know when people say to you, should always stay in one lane and be good at one lane? For me, my mentality is yes, as long as it aligns. Where am I going? There's lots of different routes to get here, but ultimately the end in one place. So when you ask me, how do I know? No, it's going to sound fluffy, but it's an inner calling. Like my mind says no, but my heart says yes. Like my book, Money Unlocked. I was asked to go to Columbia. I'm like, why am I going to Columbia? Like, I don't, I'm not speaking there even, but oh, if you go to the network. That's when I met Ken Honda. And Ken Honda is the one that got me the book deal, really at Penguin and Hay House. Well, it was Hay House first, but then he got acquired. And so this is why I have an open mind with things and I go into lots of different industries and I can see the nuances of each one, but actually they all fundamentally come to the same thing. It's just a different wrapper. And so if I'm doing speaker training, that's all to do with communication. But now communication is your message, which is now amplified on social media. But when you're on social media, you need to monetize, which means you need to have to go into sales. But once you've made money, then you need to invest it and multiply it. Therefore, you need to start investing. So it's almost like this multifaceted approach. In the past, it was always, I'm a jack of all trades, but master of none. But now it's like, okay, now I need to be a master of all trades and a jack of none. So it's kind of evolving now. And so that's kind of how I know to kind of switch it, branding, positioning, but also have it feed back into an ecosystem that ultimately is all of it. How can you make this more practical for people? Because I'll tell you the opposite side of this is young creative people. So it's kind of evolving now. And so that's kind of how I know to kind of switch it, branding, positioning, but also have it feed back into an ecosystem that ultimately is all of it. How can you make this more practical for people? Because I'll tell you the opposite side of this is young creative people are like, well, I like this, I like that. They're all roads. That's what John said. We can just do anything and everything and it all leads to Rome. It's not often the case. What people do is they start something, gets hard, they quit, they start something else, it gets hard, it quits. And then you look at 20 years later, they're not much further along than they were when they first started. And that hurts me a little bit for them. And I just tell each person, this is the thing. Everything you want is on the opposite side of all that work and that pain, but you just got to get through that barrier. That's the price of entry. This is where everybody quits. And they listen to this and they're like, see, I told you, Chris, you don't know what you're talking about. John told us to do whatever. I was on my inner calling. How do we know that? It's like yin yin. There's not one, there's not that. It's not black, it's not white. That's how most people operate life. It's like, you see, the black is white and it's very binary. But we're not binary, we're quantum. We have the in -betweens here and there. And so when you ask me, what is my calling? It's like, you are taking a step, one step at a time and you don't know what direction you're going. But guess what? Each step gets you closer to figuring out what it is. I'll give an example. Where you are right now is probably not where you thought you would be 10, 20, 30 years ago. Same with me. And so that 10 year gap is a series of footsteps that we take, callings that we take, that when we get that thing that happens where it doesn't work, that's not that it doesn't work. We're being redirected to another direction that tells us not to go that way, And it gives us a closer cue. So when I started in real estate, people ask me questions. Hey, John, teach me real estate. I'm like, okay, I'll sit down with them. We have a coffee and then they'll tell somebody else I have another coffee. And it got to a point where everyone was asking me. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to write a guide. Ask me a question. I write it down. Next time you come to me, read the guide. And then that guide started being passed around. Then I get a phone call by a guy called Steve Foley. Calls me up, says, John, can you come speak at my event? And I said, Steve, I'm not a speaker. He said, bring your guide and read it. Someone's asking me. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to write a guide. Ask me a question. I write it down. Next time you come to me, read the guide. And then that guide started being passed around. Then I get a phone call by a guy called Steve Foley. Calls me up, says, John, can you come speak at my event? And I said, Steve, I'm not a speaker. He said, bring your guide and read it. So I turn up, it's about six people there. And I start reading this guide. What happens there? A guy who is in that event tells a guy by the name of Just Want Right. He has 250 people. He asked me to go and speak there. I didn't know there's 250 people there. I just show up. The car park's full. I'm like, let's be a wedding on here or something. So I do this talk. After that talk, everyone comes up to me. Hey, John, can you show me how to do this? Hey, John, can you negotiate my deals for me? Off the back of that, I created a business called Deal Closer. It was created through the demand of the process that drove me there. I had no plans of creating that. And that business was, you call my deal up, you negotiate the fee, and I'll pay you 1 % of the purchase price. So it created another angle. And then that's what led to speaker training. And it led to sales training and overcoming objections for real estate. So each one of these paths is the calling based on demand, based on my skillset and joy. Do I love doing it? Of course. Would I do it if I didn't get paid? Yes. That's when you know the calling's right. So sometimes intellectually, you know that if I go this way, I'm doing it for the money. But it's not about the money. It's about the mission. We do it for the mission, which then pays you the money to continue doing your mission. Let's do this against John's matrix here. Let's create four variables. Demand, joy, money, and mission. Score them 1 to 10. First of all, how much demand in the market is there for this? Are people clamoring at the door saying, hey, you must produce this booklet. You must speak at our conference. How much demand is there for this? Number two, how much joy does it bring to you? Is this fully making your heart smile? If it does, that deserves a 10. One would be a really low score. Next would be money. You could talk about it in terms of gross or profit. It doesn't really matter. However you measure money, score from 1 to 10. And the last one is how on mission is it for you? If you don't have a mission yet, you can leave that one blank. But if you already have a mission, score this. Then just do the things that have the highest score and ignore the rest. Is that all right? Yes, but there's a missing element. Okay, what is the missing element? The element is, do you know when you just know something's right? Like in your heart. to 10. And the last one is how on mission is it for you? If you don't have the mission yet, you can leave that one blank. But if you already have a mission, score this, then just do the things that have the highest score and ignore the rest. Is that all right? Yes, but there's a missing element. Okay. What is the missing element? The element is, do you know when you just know something's right? Like in your heart, you do it like, even when, like you must have team members that say, Chris, that's not going to work. Nah, nah, I wouldn't do that. And you know with absolute certainty that you know that if you do it, it's going to work. Because what happens is when you do something, you have these reflexes and the reflexes are built up all the time. So you understand if I do this, this is going to happen. If I do this, you can pretty much predict it. These are the invisibles that only come with wisdom and experience. So it's these little nuances, these little wisdoms that you can't just put your finger on it, but you just know. We have another 20 minutes. We got to cover some things and I need to move to AI. I believe this is not a thing of conjecture anymore. AI will be the largest displacement of jobs that's ever been invented in the history of the world. For example, we just activated full self -driving on a Tesla. It's remarkable. And I think we're about months away from it picking you up. So all the Uber drivers with the Elon's next big play, they're gone too. Tesla has been collecting data from hundreds of thousands of cars on the road. It knows things that normal people don't know. Yes. But don't forget data, data in, data out, garbage in, garbage out. Sure. Right. So you still need new data and things change. Yes, it's going to eventually figure it out, but you still need someone to do that. The jobs that it's going to take, take will inherently create a new job. The thing that I'm finding now is that the more used AI, the less we're able to think. I asked people for their opinions and they're like, give me a second. They're on the machine again, asking it for opinions because we're losing the ability to decide and to have critical thinking. Do you see that or do you see something else? I agree. I have to agree with you there. So we're on the same page there. I agree with you there. Yeah. For example, we'll do it. We'll have a meeting, an executive meeting and it's like, oh, we don't know. Ask Nova. So I have an assistant called Nova. The goal is to train it to think like you. For example, there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. People go, well, why should I use. Do you see that or you see somebody else? I agree. I have to agree with you there. So we're on the same page there. I agree with you there. Yeah. For example, we'll do it. Like, you know, we'll have a meeting, an executive meeting. And it's like, oh, we don't know. Ask Nova. So I have an assistant called Nova. And the goal is to train it to think like you. For example, there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. People go, well, why should I use your AI versus ChatGPT? Because if you go to ChatGPT and say, how do I get more views? It'll say, create more content, do this, this, and that. If you ask John Lee's AI, it'll say, use the 116. One topic, one platform, post every single day of six months. Find the outlier, double down on it, recreate it 50 different times. It will tell you to do that one because that's been trained in my wisdom. So knowledge is, my good friend, John Davey, taught me this instead. Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that you don't put tomato in a fruit salad. For example, when we had that conversation in Dubai and you asked me like, what is Nike's brand? I'm like, hmm. And then you said, greatness. And then when you explained it to me, I started to see it. But you only see that because you have this incredible mind that see these nuances that most people cannot see. Where does it come from? Years of design, years of experience, years of consulting work. Can AI replicate that? To a point, yes. But are they going to replace Christo? No, because it's only one of you. And so now it's, you know, I will say that this year is all about connection, collaboration, and community, which AIs can be struggling to replace. I want to ask you about your wisdom about yourself. So there's a framework I refer to as the core three. Every personal brand, every brand worth knowing has these three components. Let's see if we can do this together, okay? And I'll tell you what the framework is. And then you pick the one that you want to answer and we'll see what the other two sound like, okay? Every strong brand is known for something. The one thing they want to be known for. And they're able to articulate it and we can, even more powerful, we can articulate it back to the brand. It's not just them saying it. They have a clearly identified enemy, something they're trying to rid the world of. And then they have a call to arms, call to action, or rallying cry, in which this whole big philosophy can be summed up in three to five words. Which one do you know? your keyword, your enemy, or your rallying cry? Transformation. is your keyword? Yes. Okay. What's the context? A lot of people, when they come to me, one of the biggest reasons why they struggle to make money is not that - whole big philosophy can be summed up in three to five words. Which one do you know? your keyword, your enemy, or your rallying cry? Transformation. is your keyword? Yes. Okay. What's the context? A lot of people, when they come to me, one of the biggest reasons why they struggle to make money is not that they don't know how to make money. Like if I tell them to do what I do, like do this, do this, do this, and you'll make money. But the problem is people don't do it. And why? Because it's internal conflict. It's like a postcard. I want this, but I want this, but actually I don't want it. So transformation means something needs to shift inside of you and identity needs to shift from this to this. Then you'll do it. And I say to people, imagine you're not competing in your school sports day. You're a runner. Compete. Now you're competing in the Olympics. Two different mindsets, right? So it's very, very different. So a part of, and then when I instilled to what it is, actually transformation. In order for you to make money, you have to transform. Here's the test. When someone thinks of transformation today, is your name on the top of that list? I don't, but let me caveat that. A lot of people, even though I talk about social media, AI, business, when, for example, we've just finished the mastermind here. The common theme is you're very inspiring. You are motivating. So I don't say, here's on my head, transformation. But when I seed it through, when I infuse my content with the feeling, people feel it. So the idea about branding is you're associated with something. So for example, if you're like a super performance cars, everybody will answer a little bit differently, but we know that there's a few brands and we know there's a lot of other brands that don't fit that category. So when I say, when you think of the word why, who do you think about? Simon Sinek. Yes. You see, abstract is the word why is. He's made a whole thesis and he's been hitting it over and over and over again so that we can know that if I say vulnerability, who do you think of? Bending a problem? Yeah. And if we keep going down this list, the people who have the clearest articulated brand or keywords own a space and it's very precious real estate. You were talking about real estate before. This is the real estate in the minds of people. So if your word is transformation, you don't have to own it today, but if that's your word over time, in theory, even if you ask. list the people who have the clearest articulated brand or keywords own a space and it's very precious real estate you were talking about real estate before this is the real estate in the minds of people so if your word is transformation you don't have to own it today but if that's your word over time in theory even if you ask chat gbt or claude or one of the llms who comes to mind when i say this word your name needs to be in the top 10 if not the top three that's my opinion that's great advice your enemy what is it you're trying to get rid of the world that's aligned with the idea of transformation my enemy is doubt doubt okay that works doubt like do you know what it is people don't believe themselves and and they have this this belief system and the belief system comes from four categories it comes from the friends you hang around it comes from your teachers that teach you every day your family and also your experience and when i look at all four of these things your beliefs were not your beliefs they were just given to you when you understand they were given to you then you can do something about it they weren't mine to start with and so my enemy is doubt it's disbelief it's thinking that things are impossible that is my enemy then what is your slogan rallying cry call to arms that's why i need your help with that i already have the answer i am the answer already okay so if your keywords transformation your enemies doubt i believe you're rallying cry draft one work in progress believe you can so this is a thing that you can print a book title a talk title and you you build a whole case study and a thesis for this and it's like if you believe you can you can and you will and the enemy to this doubt is belief and it's ties to your idea about spirituality and faith i believe so believe and faith and all that or maybe it's have faith i don't know what the word is and it's something i just believe that that belief is what is it it's it's an energy yes it is right everything is energy yeah right so if you think if you imagine you're like a fuel tank and that is your belief in that and every time you are doubting yourself you're second guessing yourself you're like oh it's not going to work it's like you're poking holes in it and it's leaking out so yeah so your life force if you will is draining and unfortunately we hang around people who just don't poke holes in it they'll get a hammer and put a massive dash in it and then the whole thing is your belief in that. And every time you are doubting yourself, you're second guessing yourself, you're like, oh, it's not going to work. It's like you're poking holes in it and it's leaking out. So your life force, if you will, is draining. And unfortunately we hang around people who just don't poke holes in it. They'll get a hammer and put a massive dash in it. And then the whole thing comes out. So a part of this is, when I think about transformation, is energy. It's transcending into something. And to transcend, we need to be the bigger version of us. Right. Okay, John, quickly pitch the book. Tell us why we need to buy this book. Oh. You want to hold it up? Yeah. So this is coming out. It's called Money Unlocked and it's all about how do we make it, how do we keep it, and how do we multiply it. And it's about 20 years of distilled processes and wisdom put into one book. And this book's been in my head for 20 years. So finally, I've been able to get it out. When is the book dropping? April 28th. It's called Money Unlocked. I don't know what camera I'm looking at. Money Unlocked. Everybody, my guest today has been John Lee. John, how do people reach out? How do they follow up with you? Where do we send people? Oh, just go to any social media profile, type in John Lee or go to johnlee .com. By the way, that's another story. 27 years to get that domain name. But yeah, johnlee .com or just any social media platform. Just type John Lee in. John, it's been a pleasure. Brother, thank you so much, man. Amazing. Thank you.

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