Why Hard Work Isn't Enough Anymore

Transcript

0:00

today we're gonna be covering why hard work isn't enough anymore. The new rules of success in the AI economy, the creator economy. And, think about it like this. For those of you who are watching with us right now, there's people working currently 60 to 80 hours a week, who essentially are living paycheck to paycheck. Could you imagine living in a world where you're spending 60 hours a week, but still barely getting by? And then there's other people on the other hand who can, let's just say, work 10 hours a week, but they're making six or seven figures. But what's the difference? What's the biggest difference between these two people? Oftentimes the difference is not necessarily effort. The difference is leverage. The difference is leverage. It's a huge, huge difference. And I remember when I first got started on my entrepreneurial journey. Uh, leverage was a concept that was fairly new to me. Uh, I had really no idea how leverage worked and, uh, basically from a business standpoint, uh, why it was so important to have leverage. So we're gonna be talking a lot about that specifically today. And, uh, basically when it comes to the old rules of building wealth, it was all about working hard, grind, hustle, all of that. And today, the new reality is effort without leverage is modern day poverty, right? When you don't have any leverage whatsoever to, in today's day and age. I mean, think about it. Um, the middle class is pretty much being eradicated. There is no concept of, of a middle class the way it was decades ago. Back in the day, you could have been, let's just say a, a police officer on a single. Uh, income, right? A sole income for your house. You could have a house, you could have two cars and put your kids through school and, and be able to provide for your family. But today, in today's day and age, uh, you need two incomes, right? And oftentimes two six figure incomes just to be able to sustain, uh, uh, a home with a family, um, in today's day and age. So it's a lot more challenging. There's, there's no more, oh, let me just put in some overtime and, and be able to pay all of my bills. Um, it's a lot more challenging to kind of navigate in today's world with inflation and cost of living going up. So. It is very important to just learn how to have leverage in your life, learn how to work with the technology that we currently have today. And if you also wanna be relevant in the marketplace, you want to be able to compete in the marketplace. You're going to have to know how to adapt during these times, how to adapt and learn the, the very tools that will allow you to get that leverage that you need to build more wealth. So why hard work is broken? Why hard work is broken? First and foremost, uh, we'll be talking about the hard work trap, right? The hard work trap is basically this. Most people are trading time for money, right? That's, that's pretty much the reality for, for most people in the world. They'll work, let's say 40, 50, 60 hours a week, and you end up finding yourself in a situation where there's more month at the end of the money. It's, it's basically not doing it well. That's the case for most people. They, they pretty much work and get paid work and get paid. You know, it's interesting because. One of the things that I had learned on my, my, my entrepreneurial journey is when it comes to like the traditional way of making money, we've been so programmed to just work for a paycheck and basically put in a certain amount of hours and based off of those hours we're compensated. Now, the reason why this talk is so important today is because, uh, in today's day and age, you have AI that's basically replacing a lot of jobs. And there's a saying that we're not necessarily going to be replaced by, or we're not gonna going to be ruled by ai. We'll be ruled by the people who know how to work with the ai. AI is simply making a lot of people smarter, right? But for those who don't know how to use it, they're essentially going to be leveraged. You're either going to have leverage in your life or be leveraged as a person. So this is super important to understand. And one thing about time, you have to remember, time is capped. Leverage is not. Time is capped. You only have a certain amount of hours that you can work basically every single week. So if your wealth is predicated on how many hours you put in every single week, you're always going to be limited in terms of how much money that you can make. This was like a super foreign concept to me when I got into entrepreneurship. You, you, you, you're so accustomed to earning income a certain way, you know, especially if you've been, let's just say, indoctrinated into this system where you're working for the paycheck. And when I got into entrepreneurship, the idea of working sometimes weeks on end before you receive compensation was, was just something that I really, really didn't, uh, have an understanding of. And I remember learning from Jim Rohn years ago. He says, uh, you know, he always talked about formal education. He spoke a lot about. How self, self-education for, uh, uh, formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you, uh, a fortune and how profits were better than wages. Why? Because wages, again, it's typically based on the amount of hours that you're putting in, whereas profits, oftentimes you can make profits from leveraged income. So it's not just the amount of, uh, work that you do with your limited time. You, you're, you have a, an entire team or you have systems in place to be able to leverage other people's time. Now. Uh, Jay Paul Getty. He was one of the earliest billionaires in in America. He once said that I'd rather have 1% the effort of a hundred people as opposed to a hundred percent of my own effort. That's the idea of leverage, okay? It's not just based on what you personally do, and if you're trapped in that, you know, that, that concept of, or the matrix of working, you know, for a certain amount of hours, and that's how you receive your income, again, it's gonna be very difficult to scale wealth at the highest levels. So schools, remember, schools taught obedience, not scalability when schools were first created, especially the, the very first universities during the industrial age. One of the things that the, the schools taught, when you think about it. They, they essentially designed the school system to follow like the manufacturing processes that were around during the early days. So you had that bell ring from period to period, which represented, let's just say switching from one workstation to the other or breaking for your lunch break or whatever. And you essentially sat in a classroom with many desk and chairs and it, you, you were like following a system of, of manufacturing, for example. Like you had, you had people who would sew things, people who would build things in the automotive industry or whatever, and they typically sat down at their workstation and did their work. And that's how a modern, or that's how the, the, that's how people essentially earned income in those early days. And, and that's what our school system essentially replicated. However, in, in today's day and age, it's, it's not, again, you, you go to school for. 6, 7, 8 hours just like you would at work. And, you know, that's how you earn your income in today's day and age is very different because you may only work, let's say three or four hours out of the day, and you work those three to four hours out of the day. But that, that, that one, three to four hour project could essentially pay your bills for the entire month, right. When you have proper leverage. So we're, we're going back to, um, how we originally would build wealth in the early days, because prior to the industrial Revolution, over 90% of the population were essentially entrepreneurs. And then at the turn of the century, um, during the 19 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, we, we switched into, you know, basically working for other people and, and being employees. So we went from 90% of the population plus. Being entrepreneurs to essentially less than 10% of the population being entrepreneurs. And there was a, there was a major shift, however you're seeing us now with all of the technology, just like the Industrial Revolution, uh, uh, created all these, these new technologies and, and eliminated a lot of older jobs, right? Think about, think about, for example, someone who is a milkman. If you delivered milk door to door. You had this, this, this job that, that paid you and, and you were able to provide for your family being a milkman. However, new processes come about, new systems come about, and some jobs just completely get eliminated. And that's what you're seeing today. You're seeing a lot of jobs being eliminated, and we're going back into this era of entrepreneurship and working smarter as opposed to working harder. And it is important to make sure that you adapt with the times. Darwinian theory states that, uh, you know, survival of the fittest isn't necessarily the strongest or the fastest. The fittest really is the, the person who, or the person or or, or animal or whatever that's most adaptable. So his description of fittest, again, was not. If you were the strongest in society or the fastest it was, who was the most adaptable? And the people who are most adaptable in these times are going to be the ones that thrive in this next generation. So here's the truth. You don't get rich again from working hard. You get rich from owning systems that work hard and when, when you sleep. So prime example, I remember hearing Warren Buffet say that if you can't find a way to get paid while you sleep, you'll work until you die. And I remember hearing that for the very first time. And during those days I was working, making a six-figure income. I had a really great income, I had benefits, I had the pension and all that stuff. And things were really great financially at, at least I thought. But then I saw people who were not necessarily just, uh, subjecting themselves to making six figures a year because, let's call it for what it is, even at six figures a year, a lot of people still struggle in today's marketplace. And I saw people who are doing six figures a month, working half the amount of time and why? What was the biggest difference between those who are making six figures a year versus those who are making six figures a month? It was leverage, right? I was making up to a thousand dollars a day working as a maritime captain, doing very well financially. However, I was always going to be limited. By the amount of money that I can make per day in that, in that career. So even though in terms of salaries in America, I'm in the 1%, it still, it still was very limiting because I didn't have any type of leverage. So the very most that I was going to make was that. So when I, when I learned about leverage, this really shifted my perspective. And I got into businesses that allowed me to get paid while I, while I slept. And I remember just thinking about that when I first heard. I'm like, man, there are people who literally have figured out ways to earn income while they sleep. And the very first businesses that I took on, they were businesses that had systems, businesses that operated in different parts of the world, businesses that allowed me to have leverage from building teams. Because you don't wanna just get paid based off of your own efforts. If you have a team in place, then now you have a lot of people working around the clock to help you bring in the wealth. And the idea isn't you make all the the money and have everybody else working for you. I believe in what Zig Ziglar says, you know, if you help enough people get what they want out of life, you'll have everything that you want out of life. So I got really good at helping people earn income for themselves, help, helping them build their own businesses, and as a result, it paid really, really well. So over the years, building sales teams was one of the best things that I, that I did, because even today, I still collect residual income for work that I did 10 plus years ago. Think about that for a second. Think about the fact that you can do work once and it'll continuously pay you out if you have proper leverage. So that's the idea. And even for me, um, today, like I, I travel all around the world and a lot of the times, you know, my wife and I we're booking one way flights and we, we'll come back home and we're tired of staying wherever we travel to, uh, with our family. And if we did not have that type of leverage, right, the leverage, there's no way in the world we would have been able to sustain that lifestyle. So again, are you in a position where you could essentially earn income wherever you are, right? That's also another form of leverage. How are you leveraging technology so that your income isn't just based on your local market, your income just isn't based on living in a specific city. For those of you who follow my story, you know that my wife and I also lived in The Bahamas. We moved to Tampa. Uh, we've lived in many different cities, and the beautiful thing about having leverage is that you're not limited to just living in one specific location. You could essentially earn income wherever you are in the world. Okay? So that was always, uh, an appealing, uh, way to, to go about building wealth, for me at least, because it's all about freedom. It's doing what you want, when you want, how you want for as long as you want. I remember a mentor of mine said, that's true. Success is when you have the ability to do what you want, when you want, how you want, for as long as you want, right? And I, I would, I would say that most people in the world would love to live a lifestyle like that where they can, you know, hop around and, and basically live anywhere they want or vacation for as long as they want, and still earn income now. The thing about it is we're not necessarily promoting this hedonistic lifestyle where you don't have to work, right? That's not what I'm talking about here today. I'm talking about just working a lot smarter so that you're not subjected to just one specific location, working to build someone else's dreams, working, being leveraged, right? For your specific time. So I, I would encourage you to ask yourself if, if you don't currently have leverage in terms of the way that you build wealth, are you the one being leveraged, right? Are you the one building someone else's dreams? And it's not to downplay working for other people, because sometimes you have to start out like that. However, if you don't have a plan to get some kind of leverage in your life, even if you own a business, you may still not have leverage in that business because it's a small business, or you're a one man army, one woman army, and. Business ends up owning you as opposed to you owning the business. So being an entrepreneur doesn't necessarily equate to freedom because if you're an entrepreneur and you don't have leverage, again, you are finding yourself working even harder on the business then you did on your job. I see this happen all the time, and you see entrepreneurs even worse off or burnt out because they're doing everything themselves. So you have to have leverage, whether it's with a team, whether it's with technology, having systems in place. And um, over the years I've also been adamant about partnering up with existing companies on business ventures. Why is that? Because the companies oftentimes are already established. The companies already have infrastructure. They already have systems, and system is an acronym for saving yourself some time, energy, and money. So you have to have systems in place. And when, whenever you're building anything, make sure that you have systems that will save you time. So, prime example, uh, I, I, I post up YouTube videos, right? Part of what I do in the coaching space with podcasting, all of that is on YouTube. So the thing about YouTube is whenever you post a video, you typically wanna put a YouTube thumbnail, a thumbnail. Are those pictures that you see before you click the video that give you an idea of what the video is about? Now, originally I would, I was doing the thumbnails myself on Canva, uh, Canva's, a really great app for creating all types of digital resources, and it would take me about 20 to 30 minutes to just create a, a thumbnail. Now I had the leverage of, on Canva, there's thumbnail, uh, templates where you can just pretty much swap out the words or swap out pictures, and it's a very great technology for, again, saving yourself some time back in the day, or just a couple years ago, you probably were doing it on, on like an Adobe software or something like that, and building everything from scratch. So technology, again, it evolves over time. It saves you more time or energy or attention. And now it was very simple. However, it still took me, let's say, 20 to 30 minutes to just, you know, go through the whole process. Some people could probably do it a lot faster. Now with the technology of ai, I recently discovered that I can create a thumbnail literally in less than four minutes. That's what technology does. That's what leverage does, is it saves you time. So the amount of videos that I was pumping out every single month, it was just time consuming and I, I was spending a lot of time, and now because I have the leverage from ai, I'm essentially saving myself a couple of hours every single month that I can dedicate to other things. That's, that's how leverage works. Okay? Now, it also applies to, let's say, building out a team. So over the years, I've built out sales teams. Right Now, I could have generated all of my sales from my business just by me. However, when I go to sleep, there's no sales coming in, right? When I'm doing other things, there's no sales coming in with the product or service that I was selling. However, building a team over the years, even when I'm working on another project or I'm, I'm with my family, or I'm taking Sunday off. There, there are people around the world that I collaborate with on my team that are still bringing in sales that's leverage at its finest. Okay? So it, it goes back to the idea that it's much better to have 1% the effort of a hundred people as opposed to a hundred percent of your own effort. It could actually be a liability relying on just yourself, because think about it, will your business survive if you're no longer in the equation? Now, I, one of the things that I always suggest studying is the Cashflow Quadrant, right? So the Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki, really great framework for understanding the nature of business. And it's essentially four Quad, well quadrant is four, right? So there are four types of businesses you have, or four types of ways of going about earning income. You can be an employee, you can be a small business owner, you can be a big business owner. You can be an investor, right? The downside to being an employee, or oftentimes a small business owner is a lot of small business owners, especially if you're like a photographer or even a coach. There's no leverage for a lot of people who are small business owners. Now, when you get over to the big business side of things, now you've, you, you're kind of forced to have systems, infrastructure teams in place. You have leverage. And now you can scale wealth in, in a much bigger way. And also when you're an investor, your money works for you through, let's just say dividends. Or maybe you have passive income from a real estate investment. But that's the goal. The goal is to get to a point where your money is even work, either working for you or you're in a big business that has leverage and systems in place so that it's not all dedicated or not all, uh, based on your personal. So again, why is being a one man army or one woman army, or just a small business owner, why, why can it be a liability? Because if something happens to you as the sole proprietor, then the business doesn't go go on, right? You, you still don't have any leverage. So entrepreneurship does not equate to freedom. Super important to understand on your journey. If you truly want freedom, it's not getting into entrepreneurship that's gonna bring the freedom. It's getting into a financial vehicle that has leverage, that has systems, that has infrastructure in place. You have a team in place, right? That's what, that's what really creates the freedom. So I have businesses that just depend on me. For example, like coaching. I have clients, right? My kids can't coach my clients. However, I have other businesses that generate passive residual income where. If anything happened to me, my kids can still live off of that residual income. Okay? So you have to choose your financial vehicle wisely. A great mentor of mine would oftentimes say that you have to get good at something worth getting good at. Is your financial vehicle that you're dedicating all of your time, energy, and attention to, is it really worth getting good at? Because if the outcome is you just being burnt out because you're, you're working now 60, 70, 80 hours a week, what's the point? Right? A lot of people, they leave the workplace because they want freedom and end up discovering that they're actually working harder on that business venture, working probably twice as hard than they did on on that job. Now, do you have the dignity of being your own boss and all of that? Yeah, that's cool. But it's cool up until it's not. When you're, again, burnt out, you're tired, you're stressed out, you have anxiety, you don't really know where the next paycheck is gonna come from, right there. There's downsides to it as well. In fact, I, I oftentimes do not recommend entrepreneurship for everyone because if, for example, let's just say you're providing for a family, you have to be very mindful. At the fact that, you know, entrepreneurship, it's like sometimes being in the desert. Yesterday I was shooting a podcast and the, the, the pod, the, the podcast guest that I was interviewing just spoke about her time in the desert and how daunting it can be, how scary and uncertain it can be, and it's not necessarily a great idea to, to be in the desert and you have a family to provide for, and now everybody in your family is struggling, right? So that's why I always encourage young people who don't have any children, like, go all out, go allow. And maybe you have a family, maybe you have a, a full-time career and you've gotta double down where you work, nine to five on your job, and five to nine on your dream. And, and that's what it's going to look like for, for quite some time until you get to a point where your business can now sustain you. Okay, so the le the three leverage engines we're gonna be covering next is skills, verse platforms, verse networks. So make sure you guys are taking, taking notes because, uh, again, note takers are history makers, as cornea as that sounds, but it's so true. And the, the, the more notes, if you take notes, you're gonna be far more likely to retain the information, of course. Okay. We're gonna be covering some really great concepts here. The very first leverage engine is skills. Skills. So skills are essentially the foundation. Now, what skills are going to be essential when it comes to your, your, your foundation? I was, I was, I actually asked this question yesterday to the person I was interviewing and she had mentioned just learning how to go through being rejected. It's an essential skill that you have to learn, right? Like, and again, think about it. It's, it's really the, the skill of sales, right? Because part of the sales process is going through, the rejection is going through the nos. You don't, you don't get sales without going through nos. The nos are actually a prerequisite for the yeses. You, you, you have to go through the nos. There's no deviating around it. So I agreed with her as that skillset being one of the most valuable skill sets that you can develop. A lot of people are freaked out by being told no. They're freaked out by having someone reject them or, or, or just not wanna buy from them, right? And you can't get your emotions caught up in it. This is just an essential part of the process. So. Other, other skills outside of, let's just say sales, because let's call it for what it is. If you want to be an entrepreneur or you wanna get into business for yourself, you're going to have to learn sales. What is business? Business is selling a product or service? Nothing more, nothing less. You have to sell some type of product or service. So it probably would be a good idea to learn sales very early on. Another, uh, skillset is going to be on communication. Now, think about it. Oftentimes when you're selling. Communication is a part of that as well. So you have to develop your communication, okay? You have to know how to talk to different people. You have to know oftentimes how to cast vision if you're leading a team of people, how to articulate yourself and, and all of that. But communication plays a big, big part of the process. One of my favorite books on communication is How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. For those of you who are entrepreneurs, I definitely recommend checking it out. Even if you're not an entrepreneur, it'll definitely help you in your professional career. Okay, next. The other foundational skill is leadership. Now, I think like leadership is a bit broad, right? Because there's a lot of sort of micro skills that make you a great leader. For example, communication. You may be really good at communication and that helps you with your leadership. Or maybe you have skills in a specific craft or, or, or trade. And with your leadership, your competence in a specific thing, right? When you think of a lot of the great Fortune 500 CEOs, they have many underlying skills that put them in position to be a leader of those companies. Okay? So that's a, that's a big part of the process. Another foundational skill is storytelling. Now again, storytelling and communication, they go hand in hand. Now, the reason why storytelling is, is so important is because, think about it, if you're raising capital for your product. You're probably going to have to cast vision and tell the story of how you got to where you got or how you developed a product or service. Right? Sometimes storytelling is, is great for the team that you lead. So I tell a lot of stories when it comes to objections, how to handle objections, how, how people in, in business navigated through specific challenges, right? That those, those storytelling moments are also teaching moments for the people that you lead. So that's a big part of it, getting really good at storytelling. And then in today's modern day age. Having AI literacy is such a foundational skill that you will have to learn, okay? Um, I would highly recommend getting really good at the way that you work with the ai, learning how to prompt it. It's prompting engineering is what they call it today, I believe, and getting good at learning how to prompt AI so that it works for you. Now, remember this, skills are the engine. Platforms are the highway and networks are the fuel. I remember learning years ago that your network is your network. You have to build your network. It's one of the most valuable things that you're going to do on your journey, okay? You think about even with the work that I do today as a coach and consultant, there's no way in the world that I would have gotten this far if I didn't build my network in the early days. It was such a critical part of the equation and the skills. Think about it. Skills are the engine. Okay? There were, there were fundamental skills that I had to learn, whether it was sales or marketing or storytelling or whatever. Um, learning, learning technology, right? A lot of these skills I didn't even learn during college. I studied business in college, but some, some technologies that exist today did not exist. When I went to college, I would've never anticipated that social media would be what it is today, right? A lot of college professors had no idea how to operate social media. It was just becoming a thing, right? And that was a, that was a big thing. Like I remember when I was in college, in, in those days, you needed a college email just to sign up to Facebook. That that's how, that's how early in the game I was. I was in Facebook when you needed a college email. Right, and social media was just on the rise. So they're not necessarily teaching you the skills. Those are things that came along the way. So again, self-education will make you a fortune. Formal education will make you a living, but it's the self-education that will make you the fortune. So you have to continuously adapt and evolve and learn the, the, the skills of the times. Okay? Now the platforms are the highways, okay? There are a lot of platforms that have led to the work that I do today. So for example, if it wasn't for social media, I probably would not have had access to the network that I had access to. I would not have had a platform to showcase my brand. Back in, back in the day when there was no social media, your brand pretty much was a very grassroots, belly to belly type of situation. People only knew of your brand based on your reputation, right, of them knowing you, okay? And, and your reputation maybe in the community or whatever the case may be. But that was essentially how your brand was showcased. In today's digital age, your brand is, is essentially showcased through your digital blueprint across all the, the internet. Now, I know for some of you, building a brand online, maybe a bit cringe for you or it that you probably don't like putting yourself out there. But one thing that I will tell you, it is definitely valuable. In fact, your brand is so valuable that I would say I would go as far to say that your brand is also a part of your net worth, because think about it. If net worth is assets minus liabilities and assets represent something that can generate wealth for you, then isn't it true that your brand can generate wealth for you? You see, there are people who discover me, for example, on Google. There are people who discover, discover Me on Yelp, people who discover me on, on random social media posts and on, on television, on radio, on, on my podcast. And that that that attention is what converts to clients or converts to new business. A lot of people, they found out about products that I've offered in the travel industry, for example, just by watching on social media or seeing me travel around the world. So the platforms are such a critical part of the equation because the platforms also create leverage. Today I'm able to reach people on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn. It's, it's spread out, TikTok, all of these different platforms, and that's what leverage does. Think about how you had to market yourself in the early days. Maybe get a billboard, maybe be on television or radio In today's day and age is social media. It's a big way to market yourself, and it's not to downplay the traditional forms of marketing or advertising. Those things still work, right? People still drive on the highway and see that advertisement on the highway. So those things obviously still work. There are people who still tune into the radio, so it still works. However, you always have to ask yourself, where are most of the eyeballs? This is a big reason why I don't just live stream my podcast on one platform. I, I live stream it where the eyeballs are. Some of you probably forgot that Tuesday morning is the breakfast club. There are people who are gonna wake up today, right on the West coast. They're probably gonna wake up in another two or three hours and they end up seeing the breakfast club on Facebook or on Instagram. Or on YouTube, right? Just because that's where their eyeballs naturally go. So you have to decide what platforms are you going to showcase your brand or your, your life's work. Okay? Some people who work corporate, it may just be LinkedIn, but you have to make yourself visible. Now, your networks are the fuel. Why is that? Because where there is community, there is currency. Think about it, there's, there's an, a median income, an average income in the entire country. Let's just say it's 45,000 a year or 50,000 a year. If you're an adult person living in America, over 95% of, or let's say over 90% of adults living in America have a job, right? So there is currency there, and that's why understanding how to work your networks are, are essential and nurturing your networks, nurturing your community. The, the more we dive into AI in today's day and age, the more community building is going to be relevant. It's going to become more and more relevant people, no matter how much high tech there is. People will always have that desire for high touch people will always have that desire to be around people. So don't feel as if building community or building networks is a waste of time. No, it, it's actually an advantage to curate in-person events in today's day and age. Right? How many people thought that, let's say for example, uh, thought that the movie cinema was going away, right? Probably two, three years ago, people were like, oh, well, everybody's gonna wanna watch movies from home. You know, during COVID, uh, everyone thought that, you know, we were, we were gonna go into a world where we only work remotely, or we, we only watch cinema at home, right? But. Concerts are jam packed. They're still jam packed. You go to the movie theater today, I, I'm still seeing a lot of people showing up to the movies all the time, right? Because again, people will always want in-person experiences. Think about even shopping malls. How many people thought shopping malls were no longer gonna be around? But guess what? You can find a lot of people, even young people at shopping malls, because it's a, it's a different experience, right? People fundamentally have basic human needs, and one of those needs are variety, right? You can, you can only do so much from your phone sometimes. Any of you ever, like, uh, on technology all day, or maybe you're at home all day and you're like, I need to get out. I, I need to like, get around people. Sometimes I go to the mall just to walk around. I'm not even shopping in the mall. I just like the idea of just walking around it because we're wired for variety. Another thing that we're wired for is connection. People are wired to naturally connect with other people. So none of these things, community is not going away. Okay? AI is really just going to amplify the, the way we go about business. It's making us more efficient, it's making us smarter. Well, hopefully it's making us smarter, uh, for, for people who know how to work with it. Yeah, it absolutely makes you sharper, 100% from the content you put out to working more efficiently and so on and so forth. Now, platforms scale. Platforms scale. So when you think platforms, think social media, think things like podcasts, right? I'm able to reach an audience of people all around the world, like I have people who tune into the journey podcasts in dozens of countries all around the world. I have no idea who you guys are, who are out there, but you still tune in and the very platform that you're listening. Uh, two is, is what gets the message out there. So it is good to, again, choose your platforms. It can be email list. So I nurture my, my email list. Now, emails are very important in terms of nurturing community, because think about it. Let's just say the social media goes away. Uh, I believe about a year ago, TikTok, for example, uh, went away for a little while, or it was banned in the us I, I believe, and eventually it came back. But there were a lot of creators on TikTok who were freaking the hell out because their entire communities were just on that one platform. So that's why email lists are super important, because it's technically the only thing that you really of it whenever they want, or it can just go away. But you'll always have that email list. So building an email list is really essential when it comes to business. Now it could be YouTube. Right. I just started really getting serious about my YouTube channel, uh, a little over two years ago, two, two and a half years ago. And YouTube, there, there, there are young kids today who, what they wanna be when they get older are YouTubers, right? That was not even a profession in my generation growing up. Like, no, no kid was saying they wanted to be a YouTuber. Where most kids these days, you ask them what they wanna do with their lives. And like in America, they, they, they wanna be YouTubers, right? And the thing about it, they, these kids are making crazy amounts of money on YouTube, right? So there's so many different ways to earn income, and for those of you who are a bit concerned that AI is going to take over your job, understand that more jobs will be created. Technology always leads to more jobs being created as, as many as these jobs go away. Think about it, the unemployment rate is still less than 10% in America, right? So there, there are new jobs that will emerge in the process. People will go into more and more creative work, new business opportunities that will present themselves as well, right? And then your platform could essentially be just your community where you host your community. Now, the next thing is networks. So when you think networks, think acceleration, who knows you, who trusts you? Who shares your message? So these days, I, uh, oftentimes I get, uh, new clients just from referrals, right? Referrals. People who hear about someone or, or are referred to someone are three times more likely to buy into that, that product or service, right? Because of the referral. So referrals are super powerful. In, in business. So networks, knowing how to work your networks is essential. Oftentimes, people that I coach, I'll get reviews on Google, for example, and those reviews are read by other people, right? And like, while I'm sleeping, there are people doing their research and they're learning about my work. And that's what leads to clients, right? So who knows you, who trusts you, and who shares your message, who's an evangelist for your specific work, and, and who is out there speaking on your behalf or vouching for you when you're not even in those rooms, right? That's the importance of building a brand, building a reputation. I remember Warren Buffet, he, he spoke, he speaks a lot about reputation and he, he once said that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and it takes a moment to ruin one. So you have to be very, very. Particular about how you go about your, your reputation, always preserving your integrity because your integrity is an asset in business. Your integrity is an asset. There are, there are a lot of people that will do business with you simply because you have integrity. And when I say integrity, I'm not just talking about doing good business in terms of like being honest. I'm also talking about integrity with doing what you said you were going to do if you said you were gonna follow through on a project, you actually deliver on that project. So that's a big part of it as well. Now, turning knowledge into income. Many of you have some kind of an expertise and it is important to learn how to monetize on your specific expertise. Okay? It today, think about this. You can pretty much learn whatever it is you want on. Chat, GBT or, or Google or whatever, right? However, think about how valuable it is to be able to learn from someone who actually is doing the very thing or has done and succeeded in the very thing that you wanna learn. Okay? So the, the expert economy is, is growing more than ever before. And we are going into a world where people are going to want that high touch. They're, they're not going to just want to learn something from a robot or learn something from ai. People are going to want to have specialized knowledge, be able to learn from other people, okay? And the experts are simply going to work with the AI so that they're more efficient, so that they're even more refined and knowledgeable. Now, when it comes to turning knowledge into income, there's a monetization ladder that you've gotta follow. Okay, and I'm gonna go over the, the, the five different steps in the latter. The very first step is content. So remember, content leads to building trust. There are a lot of people that, for example, I've worked with over the years, that, uh, they simply, they simply signed up for a program or a coaching offer because of the trust in the world of marketing, there's what you call a a seven eleven four rule where people have to consume about seven hours of your content and by, by seven hours worth of your content, right? They feel as if they know, like, and trust you, and then they wanna make the purchase seven hours worth of content. Some of you who want to get into, let's say, the expert space where you're getting paid for your expertise, you probably don't even have seven minutes worth of content on social media. So creating content is super important when it comes to just building trust, especially in a world where you can now earn income from all parts of the world. Over 90% of the people that I coach today do not even live in my local city. How powerful is that where you can essentially have a career that you can work from anywhere in the world? Because you have platforms, you've got leverage, and these platforms create trust. Second thing when it comes to the monetization letter is community. Community leads to building belonging. Right. People want to be a part of something. So many of you guys, for example, in on the Breakfast Club, the Dream Nation Breakfast Club is a community of people from all around the world. Many of you guys see me at conferences, but many of you are just in Arizona with me, right? Or in Orlando seeing me speak at Pod Fest. Uh, some of you guys come on my trips. We, we do trips pretty much every single year. We do conferences for those of you who attend our Creators conference, um, every year. And it's, it's community. It's a sense of belonging. People want to get around other people and meet people. Okay? So that's a big part of it. The third thing is coaching and consulting. When it comes to the monetization ladder, and we're talking about expertise, right? So coaching sells transformation, and, and I, there's a beautiful saying that coaching transforms, the individual consulting transforms the process. So for those of you who've considered getting into the space, you have to sell transformation, getting someone a result, helping people solve problems. All right, next we have products and, uh, services, right? So you can have a specific product or courses that scale beyond you so that your income just isn't limited on, on you. So if you're in the expert economy, for example, uh, you may want to create some digital assets, things that could scale up and sell even when you're not working. Okay? So I've released different courses and things like that over the years, and, and that's also been super effective. Um, I've also had products that were membership based and there's revenue coming in every single month from an existing membership. Okay? So having products and services that can always generate revenue even when you're not in the equation. That's how you scale. And lastly is events and masterminds, again, in-person events, right? Building community, getting people together, and having a premium service where they, where people get premium access. So the monetization ladder, again, it's community, it's content, it's coaching and consulting. It's products or courses. It's events and masterminds. And by the way, for those of you who are tuning in, uh, if you've ever wanted to get into the space of whether it's coaching, consulting, speaking, podcasting, all of that, I've helped. A generation of people get into this space and be able to build a business for themselves, be able to generate revenue for themselves, right? Leveraging themselves, building their brands, building businesses online, becoming visible, all of that stuff. I built my entire company around that, supporting creators in this space. And this is what led to our Creators conference and so many different, uh, events and, and services that we provide over the years is helping people get into this space. So, um, for those of you who have questions or you need some advice, or you're not really quite sure how to get started or where you should start. Dm me the word coach, I'll be more than happy to, uh, send you resources if that's what you need, or just even answer any questions that you may have. Uh, it's definitely one of the greatest joys of my life, has not, not only been working to, uh, serve people with, with my specific knowledge and expertise, but also helping people get into this space so that they can financially liberate themselves so that they can build generational wealth for themselves and their families so that they can have freedom to be able to travel around the world with their children and homeschool and world school and all of that. My wife and I. We've dedicated our entire lives to helping people in entrepreneurship. So definitely a great joy of mine. You could always DM me the word coach. And for those of you who've been on the Breakfast Club the last few weeks, I also am doing a one-on-one challenge where you get to work with me where one-on-one for five days, it's a five day challenge. Over the course of a week, we do five coaching sessions, and I walk you through this journey. I help you launch whatever it is that you're working on. Okay? And I have very limited slots for that, but DM me the word challenge if you want more information on that. Okay? So going back to our session here, the formula is this. Knowledge times platform, times audience equals income, knowledge. Whatever your expertise or knowledge is times your platform. Your platform is your infrastructure, right? That, that, that's where you, where, where you build your community. That's where you build your brand. Then you have your audience, which is your network, okay? And spending time nurturing that network is essential. Go to in-person events. For those of you who haven't been to networking events in a while, it's super powerful these days to just give someone a handshake. You know, it's interesting. Uh, one of my, my businesses, we provide marketing services, right? To different companies. And so many companies, I, I find today that they're being spammed, constantly getting called by telemarketers, getting called and, and now with the ai, it's becoming even worse. You have AI bots that are calling you, right? And everybody's trying to get your money. And now more than ever before, it's even better to walk into an establishment and shake someone's hand, to actually meet someone face to face, look'em in the eye and shake their hand. That's becoming more like, it's like we're, we're coming back full circle to the old school way of, of doing business. So go out to networking events, shake some hands, build genuine relationships because those relationships could end up being led to your very next opportunity. Over 90% of the best opportunities in the world, I believe comes from who, you know, not that piece of paper that you're working towards. That piece of paper may get your foot in the door, but oftentimes it's the relationship. Okay, so if you guys are getting value so far, drop a v in the comments for value. If you guys are getting value from all this information now, what most people are doing wrong. Okay. What most people are doing wrong in today's digital age. In today's age of ai, the first thing is consuming more than creating. You don't want to just be a consumer giving away your dopamine to everybody who's trying to grab for your attention. Remember, we're in the attention economy. Attention is the new currency. Okay? So how good are you at grabbing people's attention? And oftentimes, if you have something of value, then you can get people's attention. So for example, I, I get paid from social media platforms to put out content these days, and I'm compensated because I can get people's attention in a sense, right? And the reason why I'm able to get your attention is because I'm adding value. So how can you add value, whether it's making people laugh, whether it's educating people, it can be inspiring people, but having some type of content, right? That would draw people in. Another mistake is scrolling instead of building. Don't get caught up in doom scrolling. Social media should be a tool. It shouldn't be something that just consumes all of your time, so you don't wanna get caught up in doom scrolling. In fact, I always talk about how I delete my social media apps multiple times throughout the day. If I find myself doom scrolling and not being intentional with social media because it has a great way to hook you in, then I immediately delete it and I'm like, all right, let me just re-upload it or download it when I need it. Okay, next is waiting for perfect. Do not wait for perfection. Just get started. Whatever it is that you are working on, do not wait for everything to align, because the reality is it's rarely ever going, going to all align the way that you want it to, right? You have to just get started and, and getting started. If you wanna be great, just get yourself going. Right? That's, that's really what it comes down to Now. Avoiding sales. A lot of people, you know, I, I always say that there's no shortage of good coaches. There's just a shortage of coaches that can sell and market themselves, right? And I, it, it blows my mind how many people, I've mentored a lot of coaches over the years and certified a lot of coaches, and it blows my mind how many avoid sales. It like freaks them out. They love coaching because they're all passionate about it, but they avoid sales. And listen, sales is what makes you that very thing an opportunity. It's actually good that people are fearful of sales or fearful of rejection, I should say, because that's really what it comes down to. Because if people weren't fearful of rejection, think about it. Would it still be that same opportunity? The sales, the rejection is actually the resistance. That most people have to go through. So that's what creates an opportunity for you, because if you can navigate through that resistance with grace and understand that it's a part of the process, and you can just make up in numbers what you lack in skill, make up in numbers, what you lack in credibility and just get enough nos. It doesn't matter what you're selling, product or service, you're going to thrive in the marketplace. So do not be the person that's avoiding the sales. Lean into it, embrace it. It's a part of the process. And when you get good at it, you actually will grow a love for it. Okay? Now, another mistake that a people, people are making these days are ignoring technology, whether it's AI or social media. I, I meet a lot of old timers who their style of doing business has worked for them for generations. And then you'll hear about how they just. Get shut down because they did not embrace technology. This is actually what happened with Kodak. Kodak. Remember that wonderful company that we would buy their products to take photos and stuff like that. They did not adapt with the times, and they pretty much got left behind. They didn't embrace the digital age. They never would've thought in a million years that it would have turned into what today is, right? So you have to evolve. You have to be willing to embrace, whether it's ai, social media, it's inevitable. It's going to be a part of our lives. So you might as well get good at it. So understand this, the richest people, the wealthiest people, learn fast, publish faster, and sell confidently. That's that's the framework, okay? You have to learn fast, publish faster, and sell confidently. What are you publishing content. So create some content, whatever that is. But you've gotta adapt, you've gotta learn fast. And the thing about publishing content faster, there's so many tools that you can utilize today. Like today, I can take long form content from this Breakfast club session, put it on a platform like Opus Clip and Opus Clip will chop it up and create reels out of it that like, let's just say three years ago, I would literally have to go and and chop it up myself and do all the editing myself. And with technology, again, we can do things a lot faster, but you have to learn how to work with the technology, embrace it. It may be a little bit intimidating, but your superpower in today's day and age is going to be how well and how fast you learn. You have to understand pattern recognition. You have to be able to adapt faster than everyone else. Now, here are three life hacks. The very first life hack is the leverage hour. Spend one hour a day on something that compounds one hour a day, the leverage hour. So it can be a piece of content, for example, that that content gives you the exposure and it, it can be out forever. Like there are YouTube videos from years ago that I posted up podcast episodes from years ago that I posted up that people still watch to this very day and that's what leads them to my line of work. Okay? Many of you have probably found out about the Breakfast Club because of some, some piece of content that I shared years ago, and you just kept coming on on onto it because it was valuable for you. Right. So spend at least one hour a day on something that can compound something your future self would thank you for. Okay? Number two is the build in public rule. And that's basically sharing your journey daily with people, whatever that journey is. Maybe you're going to write a book, and that book is something that you can use as leverage later down the road. Okay? And you bring people into your journey. Share your, your journey with other people. This is essentially how you build your brand, how, how you build your network, right? Because people feel like they're a part of your journey. So that's been a big part of, of my brand over the years is including like my family. Not everybody is big on putting their family on social media, and that's cool if that's not your thing, but it, it definitely helps depending on the nature of your business. Okay. So I'm in the people building business. I'm in the network building business. I'm a networker. So I, I I build teams of people. I, I have tons of, uh, employees and I, I should say, uh, teammates around the world, right? I don't like using the word employees. I'm very particular about that because a lot of the people that I work with, uh, they're their own bosses. They freelance, right? Um, and yeah, I've had people that we've also had on payroll, right? And we, we have those people as well, and that's, that's amazing also. Um, however, um, my, the nature of my work, oftentimes it's building teams. Hiring someone, right? Whether it's them being an employee or having members, having customers with different products or services that I'm offering. Okay? So, uh, it is very, very essential, uh, to be able to showcase like my private life as well. And it's like, Hey, this is how we live. This is my family. Welcome to my world, right? Uh, I'm your mentor Josh Valentine. And, and this is, this is my life. And, but that's not everybody's thing. And I think that it's super important to really find your thing because you, you putting your life on public display may not very well be your thing. And I think it's important to find your authentic path, right? Because if you're like, yeah, I really don't care to put my, my, my life out there like that. Well, there's other opportunities that don't require that, but you've gotta find out what is your thing. Okay. And, and for me, I've learned to embrace it because it's, it's a form of like journaling for my family. And I, like my wife and I, when we travel and we post videos with our kids, like, we like the idea of our grandchildren one day looking back at our content and being able to learn from us, be inspired by us, right? Think about how cool it would be if your great grandparents had content and you could go on their IG page today and look at their life and all the things that they did. So it's, it's something that you embrace over time and it can be a beautiful thing. It just depends on how you go about it. Okay. And the last life hack that I have here is the 90 day skill stack, the 90 day skill stack. And it's basically picking one income skill and mastering it. Whatever that is. It could be sales, it could be marketing, it can be some type of form of communicating, uh, public speaking, whatever. But pick one income skill and master it for the next 90 days. Okay. Something that can generate the most revenue for you. I know for me, the skillset of learning how to work with technology these days has been the most valuable thing in, in recent days. Another skill has been communication. Public speaking today, being able to be paid very well for my public speaking abilities, uh, is, is the best thing that I could have invested in in the early days. Joining Toastmasters to work on my communication and things like that, reading the books, all of that, uh, learning how to sell. Getting my 10,000 hours in when it comes to sales has also been super valuable. But find a skillset that could help you produce more income. Okay, and here are three fun facts before we bring it in for a landing. The very first one is, think about this. Instagram reached a hundred million users in just two and a half years. That's the power of leverage. You see, they didn't know any of these people before they signed up to Instagram. However, they leveraged other people to expand it all around the world. They provided a very valuable service or product, and people spoke about it. People shared it right, and it, and it spread. They, they created leverage. All right, so that's the idea. The second fun fact is AI tools. I don't know if it's necessarily fun, but it's just the truth. AI tools are replacing entire departments. Entire departments, companies are downsizing now more than ever before because of the invention of ai. And AI has been around for a while, but in recent years it's becoming more and more prevalent. Right. So AI is replacing major, major departments and that's why it is important. I talk a lot about this. It's not because everybody's interested in in business per se, but it's just to prepare people for what's to come. You have to be thinking about what the next 10, 20 years look like for you from a career standpoint. Okay. Is your career susceptible to being replaced by ai? And for a lot of people it simply is. There are gonna be millions of jobs that are eradicated. However, there, there will be millions more created. This is not to be all doom and gloom. It's, it's really just to prepare our community, like you should be preparing for these next several years and what your career looks like. And that's why I oftentimes talk about the, the knowledge economy, the expert economy, uh, because it is a thriving economy and you can be compensated again for the knowledge that you have. Here's another fact that is inevitable. In today's day and age, we have top creators who are earning more money than many Fortune 500 CEOs today. Creators, right? It's, it's powerful because it's, it's about your network. These CEOs may not necessarily have access to millions of people, right? But the, the creator who's putting out really great content does. So where there is community, there is currency. That's why it's important to really nurture your networks as much as possible. So as we close out. You wanna stop asking yourself, how hard can I work? And start asking yourself, how much leverage can I build? It's no longer, again, grinding 60, 70, 80 hours a week. Now, will that give you an advantage? Absolutely. But you better compliment that with some type of leverage. That's the idea. Okay, so my call to action to you is write down your one monetizable skill. What's one skill that you have? Or maybe it's something that you know very well that you can monetize. The second is choose what platforms you're going to use to be able to monetize. Are you going to use social media? Right? Are you going to curate events that are in person, right? But have platforms that you can pretty much showcase your work and then commit to showing up for at least 90 days. 90 days. And for those of you who are looking for the next big business idea, what if it's just your mind, your expertise, your knowledge, your ability to communicate. All of these things can generate revenue for yourself, okay? And like I said, I'm always here to help guide you guys with that entire journey. And, uh, all in all, breakfast is served. God bless you all. Thank you so much for tuning in. If this was valuable for you, again, drop a comment in the common threads. I read through all of the comments and I'll be seeing you all next week. Take care. God bless. Breakfast is served.