#56 - The Recession Proof Skill Sets

Alright, it's ten thirty AM in San Francisco. I'm by myself in the studio because Sean wants to be with his newborn baby because he's a little nervous about this whole corona thing. He doesn't want to be out. Uh walking around. Don't blame them. And I don't feel like talking about business opportunities right now.

I stayed up late last night. Monitoring this whole Corona thing in the stock market. It's scary. It's a scary time.

I I don't know what the reality is gonna be. how it's gonna shake out, but it definitely It's not a normal day. And I don't wanna talk about normal stuff today because of that. And so I stayed up last night. And I came up with a list of four

skill sets that I've developed In the last Ten or fifteen years, maybe longer, twenty years. Uh since I started scheming, since I started trying to Create businesses.

And I wanna talk about those today because In a way they're kinda like I kinda think of them as my rock. my recession proof skill sets and these things that I'm gonna about to I'm gonna tell you have really changed my life. And I think that if

People use them. They're gonna be impossible to stop. I think that You're gonna be able to make a living no matter what. And I'm gonna spend some time talking about these four these four things that I've learned throughout the years.

And I'm gonna riff a little bit on them. I'm gonna tell you the resources that I think you can turn to. Most of all of them are free or they're cheap books. that you can go and acquire and read and I think it makes a huge difference. And Everything that I'm about to talk about I've stolen from people that are smart.

A lot more successful than I am, that's for sure. And My perspective I think is a little bit Interesting in that We have this event called HustleCon.

And I've hosted about five or six of them at this point. And throughout the years we've probably have had I mean we could have had forty thousand attendees throughout our events. And so we do HustleCon And we do all these other events. And

Because I do these events. I get to have all these really powerful and interesting people come and speak. But About an o I tell everyone to show up a little bit early, so I get to spend about an hour with him uh ahead of time. Typically privately or with just two uh of the other speakers, like maybe the one who just spoke.

And the one who will speak. And I'm able to ask them pretty intimate questions because that's what I do. I I I like to get the nitty gritty. And so my insight is coming from these people. And I'm talking about like folks who have started these really huge companies or who have accomplished really interesting or amazing things. And it's not just about money, but they're definitely successful if that's How you want to define success.

But more importantly, they're successful. In terms of just turning Dreams into reality. And that's really what I think that this whole business thing is about, which is about dreams into reality. How do you take ideas and how do you

Shape the world. according to those ideas and It sounds fluffy. But I'm telling you this shit is really important. So that's what I'm gonna talk about today. Some of these are skills

Some of these are mind sets. mindset frameworks or whatever you want to call it. And so I'm gonna talk about these four and I'm gonna I'm gonna go through'em relatively quickly. But I'm gonna add detaine stories where I think it's effective. So let's get into it.

I've got my notes here. I'm gonna be I just jotted these down. In the last uh Yeah. So

We're gonna go through them. Okay, the first thing that I've learned that's been incredibly effective. And these aren't in order, but this might be the most effective Which is

Controlling your emotions. And this sounds like some generic advice, but I'm gonna walk you through it. We have a lot of companies work out of our office because we got a lot of space here and when I started my business, someone let me work out of their office for free and so we try to kinda Do repay that that that favor to other people just getting going. And I always meet these really smart people, people who

Worked at McKinsey or went to Stanford and did all some amazing stuff, and on paper they are perfect and they are so smart. And I always tell them the same thing, which is This is not an intellectual game. This is an emotional game. Starting a business that is very successful financially. Intellectually, it's very easy. Now.

Maybe being like Elon Musk and starting a a a a company where you send a rocket to Mars. Yeah, that requires a lot of int intelligence. But For a lot of companies, like it could be like We Work. or Instacart, these things that are are Uber, these things that are really large. It's they're very simple concepts and they're not that hard to execute, but what's really hard It's controlling your emotions.

That's that that that's incredibly challenging. And what I've what I've learned throughout the years through paying a lot of money for therapy and coaching and reading. Is That The majority of

Of both good and bad behavior that you have now. It started Back in childhood. And so what I tell people and what I've learned and what I tell myself is

If you just study your childhood, you're gonna learn a lot about why you are reacting to certain things. I remember being a kid, I I was I was only four or five years old and this is just an example of what of how things that happen when you're when you're a kid, a lot of times you don't even realize it. But It actually sticks w sticks with you. I remember when I was a kid

And I was at a we were at like a bar or restaurant or something with my family and my father was drinking it must have been like a Jack and Coke or something. I remember you ordered this glass. And I saw him get the straw and take it out. And I was like, Why are you doing that, Dad?

I was a little kid and he goes And he just made some comment, no big deal. He's like, Oh, men don't drink with straws. And he didn't even think twice. He was just joking or I don't know, he just said that because he meant like He was saying like men don't use like dainty straws when they're drinking Alcoholic drinks.

In my whole life I never used a straw and it wasn't until I was older When I s realized oh, he was first of all, pro he was just he just made some offhanded comment, he didn't even think about it. And second of all He was referring to alcohol. And so for my whole life when when I went to McDonalds or a fast food restaurant as a kid, I would never I would always pull the straw out of the drink.

And that's an example of how little things happen when you're young and sometimes you notice them and sometimes you don't, but they entirely shape how you behave as an adult. And I think it's very important to study your childhood and to Study how you are raised.

trauma that happened when you're young Because as you grow a company All of those all of those things that that happen to you, they become magnified. So good things and bad things. Uh

both ten X as you get more people and as you get a little bit more successful. And the way you react to things, the way you the way you gauge risk, the way that you react to people doing what you said, or them not doing what you said, the way you trust people. A lot of that stems from how you were raised. And things that happened to you as a kid. And so

What I do is I I have a therapist, so I've gone to therapy every Weak. For Maybe ten years. And I've had to work through a lot of

Interesting things. But I think it's quite common that people have the same issues that I have. But going to therapy is incredibly important, or at least it has been for me. And the other thing that I've did is I have um a CEO coach. That has helped a ton. It's pretty much like therapy, but

It's all related to your job, but like we you really talk about all types of relationships. Girlfriends, wives, boyfriends, husbands father, mother, I mean you talk about all this stuff, co workers. And so that has been incredibly helpful for me and so The things that have made a massive impact.

the resources that that have made an a massive impact are I use Torch. So Torch dot Io. That's my That's my coach. We pay him uh his name's Peter, we pay him a monthly fee and myself and Adam, the president of our company go to him. And it's been wonderful. The second thing is the body keeps the score. It's a great book on dealing with trauma.

Now trauma a lot of times People think that means soldiers who were in war. And who saw people die and their best friends and they're dealing with PTSD. uh post traumatic stress disorder.

But the reality is is a lot of people can go Have that So whether you your parents or your siblings or someone in your life was abusive to you as a kid, or it could be you just got really scared. You saw something that was pretty wild. It could be When I lived in Missouri when I grew up I remember being in uh fourth grade and seeing nine eleven.

And It could be it's it's a r it could be relatively small, but that made a massive difference on me and and that was a small indicator or a small example of trauma. А на shapes how you feel. And so what the body keeps the score does is it teaches you

How to recognize when you've experienced a little bit of trauma or a lot of bit of trauma and how to deal with it. And so that's a great book. And the second thing I like right now is how to change your mind. I don't drink any alcohol. I haven't had a drop of alcohol in eight years. Not a cent not a drop. I don't do drugs. I I like I'm not against drugs. I'm not against weed, in fact in many regards I'm in favor of it, but I personally just don't do it'cause it's never jived well with my personality.

That said, I'm incredibly fascinated right now with psychedelics. I have a lot of friends who Do micro dosing L S D, who do microdosing ketamine. And I'm not an expert on it. Yeah. But

How to change your mind is a great book. That looks at Um trauma and how to deal with it and how a lot of folks are turning to psychedelics and how that uh can impact you and and I'm I'm very, very interested in that.

And the third thing that I really like when it comes to controlling your emotions is This YouTube channel called School of Life. It's this philosopher named Alan, I think it's Alan Day Bottton, I think his name is. And he does a really good job of

Explaining why people feel a certain way. and how to deal with that. And I have found his YouTube channel. It's free. to be incredibly impactful. on controlling my emotions. And The last thing that I do, this is an exercise.

I thought I This was unique to me. It's not. So I used to do this years ago, and I still do it to this day. And it turns out th there's a name to it. It's it it it uh some people call it uh

Um negative Uh a a negative thought exercise. Um I caught Looking at the downside.

And so what I like to do in order to control my emotions Because the thing with controlling your emotions is you have to control The up and the down. Because when you start a company But when you start anything Typically.

You have a fair bit of highs and the highs are probably as good feeling as you as you think. Or maybe even a little bit less. Than you think. Um but the downs are typically Way worse.

Than you can imagine. it's really hard to control the downs because when you start anything Um Controlling the down is the hard part. And most people are shocked.

At how low you can feel when you're starting something, even when things appear to be going well. And so what I like to do is I like to think in my mind. I'll close my eyes. I do this a lot uh a a lot of times in the morning. I'll do it at night as well. As I close my eyes and I think

What's the worst possible outcome. Right now. And so It could be

I get sick. My family gets sick. I'm gonna die. And I visualize What What that

Feels like And If you do it for long enough with your eyes closed, after about five or ten minutes You can really feel what that feels like. And then I do two things. I say to myself

All right. That is the worst that can happen. I just experienced it. Anything else that happens today, it is only upside. And it really makes you have a lot of gratitude and appreciate

Yeah. That hasn't actually happened. And the second thing that I like to do with this exercise is And this relates particularly to starting a company. or getting a job or moving somewhere else that's new and just starting your life.

Is I try to protect the downside. So for example If you are gonna start a company, you can ask yourself Well, in order to start this business I need a little bit of cash.

And so you have to be very specific. You have to say how much cash do I need? Well, right now I'm spending three thousand dollars a month How much how many months saved do I need in order to get to feel good about this? And so let's say we come up with the number six. That means I need six times three thousand dollars. I need eighteen thousand dollars in savings. I'm gonna go out and get that eighteen thousand dollars. Okay, I've got that eighteen thousand dollars.

What else is the worst case scenario here? What's the downside here? Well, I spend all my money And my business goes under. Now do I want to be homeless? No, I'm not willing to accept being homeless. Okay, so what's the ne so I have to protect myself from being homeless. How would I protect myself from being homeless? Well, I would probably get a job driving Uber because I have a car. Do I wanna am I willing to accept that? No, I'm not willing to accept that, or maybe you are, and then that's the worst case scenario.

But the s one stage up could be maybe, Well, I'll just get a white collar job. Um At a huge corporation. Yeah. And I'll just be a cog in in their big wheel and their machine and it won't be fulfilling.

It won't be glamorous, but it'll be a really good nine to five with benefits. benefits. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go and make friends with recruiters at those companies right now, even though this isn't even coming close to hap uh it's not happening yet. And so at least at this point, if something ever bad happens, I know that I have a connection at IBM Or I have a connection at Um

target headquarters or I have a connection at Into it or just the m the biggest companies in the world And the likelihood that I can get a job there is relatively high. Am I willing to accept

That that is the worst case scenario. Yes, I am willing to accept that. And so what I do is I go up the scale of like, all right, well where's the lowest that I'm willing to accept? Now I'm gonna lock that that that in as best as I can. So now anything that happens above this I am happy

And it is only upside and so No, that's what I like to do to control My emotions when it comes to taking risk. The second skill that I think is incredibly important. And this is

Maybe the number one or number two skill. I think in terms of business, I think it's the number one skill. And so This skill is Copywriting. I think copywriting is the most important skill that you can have for business and one of the most important skills that you can have in life. And here's why.

When you learn how to write well You learn how to think well. You when you learn how to write clearly You weren't learn how to think clearly. And copy writing is a particular type of writing.

But it's not just limited to writing. Copyrighting is understanding how people think and how they feel. And how to use the written word. Or a script or spoken word. In order to sell a product or sell an idea.

Basically how to use words to get people to do what you want them to do. And the way that you do that is you have to understand what motivates them, what makes them t uh uh Wha what makes them work? And so This can be applied to literally anything.

I have made tens of millions of dollars this way. Using copyrighting. But I've also met I I learned when I was when I was trying to meet her, she was that way out of my league. And so I used what I learned in copywriting to like get her attention and make her or at least try to make her interested in me.

Um Copyrighting copyright's incredibly effects. I've used it to get customers like as in people to buy stuff from us or for the hustle to get advertisers. I've used it to get speakers to our events. I've used it to recruit people. I've used it to sell people on this interesting idea I have. Copywriting is incredibly important. And it boils down to a bunch of really simple principles. But the easiest one to remember for this conversation is Ada.

A I D A Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Uh The majority of your copywriting life, which For most of you. It has nothing to do with Getting a job, it's just a good skill set to have in life.

Attention, interest, desire, action is the framework that you need. So when you write, you line it up with attention. Can I get your attention? Interest. Can I tell you some Facts.

that get you interested and get you to fall down the slippery slope because once I get you to start reading my work I can get you to uh keep buying into what I'm saying. And it's really hard to get people to fall down that slope, but interest uh by specifically tell'em very interesting facts and features about the story that you just started with, your your your action point. Or sorry, your uh attention point.

desires the second part. So I'm gonna make you desire whatever I'm I'm I'm selling Um and I'm gonna get you to desire that by telling you things that you don't know and how this can benefit your life, and then finally action. I'm gonna tell you specifically How to get you to act. Um and so

Here's an example that my friend Neville. always uses uses that I love, which is If I'm gonna tell you I'm gonna try and convince a fifteen year old guy to drink more water, I could say, Drink more water, it's healthy for you. Or And a lot of these facts aren't necessarily true because I didn't research what water does for you, but I very easily could use this premise for that.

I'm gonna say Have you ever seen those guys with huge muscles at the gym carrying around gallons of water in their hand? It's like they use those milk containers to carry water. So that's how I get your attention. You see They're doing that.

Because if you drink a if you drink a gallon of water a day, the likelihood that your your muscles will grow by thircent More than had you not drink water. Now the reason that happens and this is the desire part The uh Yeah, this is the desire part. The reason that happens

Is because Water has these molecules in them that helps oxygen travel through your blood and oxygen is needed. To build up your muscles. That's my desire part is I'm I'm trying to show you how to build up your muscles. And

when that oxygen goes to your muscles They grow thirty percent faster. So And this is the action part. If you want to build big muscles and be healthier than before You need to drink about a gallon of water a day.

per hundred pounds of body weight. So that action part I specifically Explain how to do that. No, that was just a silly example. I don't I don't None of that shit's true.

You get the point. Ada, it works wonderfully. And I always think that I always tell people you gotta learn copyright and the and and there's a few great ways to learn it. You can do what I did, which was very labor intensive and very effective. But it takes a lot of time, and that's called copy work. And so what I did was

I got a hold of the hundred best sales letters of all time. I don't know what makes the the hundred best, but it's just famous sales letters. So in the in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, before the internet really came around and it even happened after that, but predominantly before that. These salesmen would send these letters

And they would s try to convince people to get interested in buying a vacuum or an encyclopedia or a pair of sunglasses and the it was typically the they typically wrote to wives. The the housewife would take out her checkbook and be like, Oh, this is really interesting. I need to buy this and she would write a check Put it into the envelope and sell it back. That's a lot of friction.

And so these people were so good at using words because it was so expensive to send out all these letters. They had to be good. They were so good at using their words that they had to um that they convinced these strangers to write a check and mail it to them. And so I found these hundred letters and if you Google best sales letters of all time, you're gonna find'em. And I would s I spent probably six months where I would spend about two or three hours a day And when I was twenty two years old. I would write them all out by hand.

I would also do that with Book, so the Great Gatsby. Saturday night live live scripts I would do it with. Movie scripts. Just any piece of great writing I would do that with the And when you do this, it's kind of like how you learn an instrument. The way that we teach people how to play music, it's incredibly effective.

So if I hand you a guitar or a piano, I don't say Go ahead, write a song. I tell you Copy the Star Spangled Banner. Go play.

Jingle bells. Go look at Jimi Hendricks. Go look at Led Zeppelin. Play all this all these copy all these other people. Steal their work for a little while. and or whatever genre you're interested, go and copy them exactly.

And in time you're gonna learn how to feel the texture you're gonna see the patterns that work best. That works extremely well with writing, and it's the same concept. I call it copy work. Um This is how a lot of people uh used to learn. Our school our schooling

the way that we do it now, it's changed over the last handful of decades, but for a long time people used to do this. Ben Franklin was a great writer and he said this is how he learned how to write. And it's really effective. So it's called copy work. The second thing that you can do And I'm biased. Novel.

is my good friend, but there's a guy named Neville Medora. And I actually met him because I bought his course. And I bought his course And then after I took his course I became friends with him and years later we became best friends and he's was the best man at my wedding. So I love Neville and so I'm biased. But his course is what I took to learn about copywriting. He has he's got this course called Copyrighting Course. It's spelled with a K. Copy with a K and course with a K. I don't know it's how it stands out. It's a great course. I don't know how much it costs right now. It could cost a few hundred bucks

Or a hundred. I don't even know. But it's relatively affordable. And I think if you don't like it he'll refund you his money your money. But anyway, it's a great course. So It it teaches a lot of this the stuff.

It's worth it. It's totally worth it. And I actually think if I used to promote this so much that if you go to copywriting course dot com slash Sam, I've got like a referral link and I think there's like a fifty dollar off So, I think that's a good thing Uh if that interests you, do that. The third thing is this book called Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Sh Joe Sugarman.

It's a great book. It costs Ten dollars, and I bet you if you Google Google it correctly, you can find a free PDF of it online. It's a great book that walks you through copyrighting principles and why certain things work and why they don't. And finally the last thing, it's not a copywriting thing, but it's a writing thing, and it's a book by Stephen King called On Writing. And the first half of the book is it's it reads really fast. It's only two hundred and fifty pages, maybe. The first half

It's all about h uh his tools and tricks and his toolbox he calls it, his toolkit Or his toolbox for writing well. And it's incredibly effective. It's uh he has got rules like Don't use too many adverbs.

Or Keep your sentences short. Things like that. It's incredibly effective. It's a great book on writing. The second half of the book is about his biography and it's really, really fascinating. So it's called On Writing by Stephen King. So the second skill set that I wanted to go through, copywriting. I think that Because I know how I I would say I'm a pretty good copy writer. I'm a B.

Because I am a bee Copyrighter. Until the day I die. I will never be homeless. I will always make money. Now

verdict still out if I'm gonna be very, very wealthy. But I will bet everything, which I I am betting everything by starting businesses and things like that. that no matter what happens, I will always be able to make a really good salary, whether as an employee

Or selling someone else's products. So I think that copywriting is incredibly effective. It's it's just It's really useful for your life. Business and just living. Okay, we're gonna go to the third one and the fourth one and and then that's it. The third one the or the third

skill set or thing that I've learned in business that pretty much shocked me. I I really only learned this in the last year, but looking back at it, people have told me this forever, which is There's a massive difference, a massive gap in skills, and a lot of people cross it, but there's that the gap exists of starting And managing. So When you start businesses

A lot of people Think of Mark Zuckerberg and they're like This college kid started this thing. He was twenty when he started it. Now he's only thirty or he's could be twenty five still.

And he manages ten thousand employees he hired the the best people in the world from Princeton and Stanford and Harvard and he st stole people from Amazon, the brightest minds on earth. And you think, Yeah, that's just how it goes. Well, managing those people and the business, it's incredibly challenging. And oftentimes the people who are creative and crazy enough to start companies A lot of times the skill sets they needed to start it

are not only different, but oftentimes opposite of what it takes to run. When you start something You could look at a lot of spreadsheet and you could kinda like Guess your way there. But a lot of times Not all the time, but a lot of time starting something

It's completely irrational. On paper things may or may not work. And you just gotta be creative and you gotta do shit and you gotta move fast and you're not gonna have meetings. You're not gonna talk to people about stuff. You're just gonna move quickly and you're gonna execute and you're gonna do it. And it's a very creative process. It's almost like creating a piece of art. Like Maybe there's some equation that says like the perfect rectangle looks this way. But every But a lot of times there's just Picasso who just

Says fuck it, this is interesting to me, I'm doing this. And sometimes it works. That's kind of what what starting a business is, but managing a business is a lot different. And so at our company, I did a pretty good job of getting us to about a million a month in sales. But towards the ends of that I was breaking. I was doing horrible.

I was not good at managing it and I was very unhappy. And so we hired uh one of my first hires was this guy named Adam who I went to high school with. And he's now president of our company and he runs a lot of the day to day stuff. So I kinda I kinda I'm like

He's like Sam sandwiched in the middle, whereas I'm really good at thinking of these really high level ideas and I'm also really good at going in at the very bottom and just being an individual contributor and and creating interesting things. I'm not always great at managing the day to day of of what's going on. It's Uh Bet I could get good at it, but it just really doesn't interest me. And

That was really hard to learn. And I struggled with this for years. I like I said, I hired a CEO coach. I had a we have a handful of really great angel investors and I kinda talked to them and I'm like I don't know what to do here. And it wasn't until I realized that Adam

Is one of the best at this. He loves this. He's the type of guy who was the captain of the football team, the president of student council. He he loves leading people. And it kinda hit me, I'm like, Man, the way that I sometimes don't understand why people are unwilling to start something or how on earth they're afraid of starting. I am kinda like that on the other end with managing. There's people who it it it it whether it comes naturally to them or they've just worked on this skill set, they're really good at it. And so in a way I

was wearing this backpack that was full of Wait. And I hated carrying it on my shoulders. I just took out some of the weight and I put it in Adam's bag and he loves carrying it. And so Through this process

I s mentioned earlier we have HustleCon speakers. Through this process, I actually talked to a lot of people um at our conferences, and that was one of the major things that I used to ask people, which is do you have a right hand man Or a right hand woman, do you have someone leading the day to day? Because I'm struggling with that. How do you do that? And there was

Typically two answers. Which was Yeah. I don't like it. It's really hard. And I could sense that these people I'm talking I mean I don't wanna

I don't want to call anyone out, but go and just Google like HustleCon speakers or something. Look at all the people who we've had at our events and those these are this is the type of person or those are the people who told me this, which was They would say like I am horrible at managing this. Or oftentimes they would have like one of their assistants or like a keeper or like a handler like with them and I would be like, Hey, what's this person like as a manager? And the answers were pretty consistently pretty bad. This person's not good. And So the the first answer was I'm not good at it. I'm really struggling with it.

And a lot of times those people would say, I wish I had someone who I could replace myself as CEO. I I would hear that all the time. And you'd I I was shocked by it. And the second answer that I got Was Yeah, I hired a really good CO or a really good president and this is my right hand woman, a right hand man.

And they run a lot of the day to day and it allows me to focus on what I do best. And the people who said number two were way happier. And oftentimes I think a lot more successful. Now, there are these rare occasions where the person who started it is just They're they're they're also a great uh CEO or a great people manager.

Um that that definitely happens. But often it is not the case. I'm looking at a photo of Ted Turner. Ted Turner's one of my heroes. He was pretty notoriously a bad manager. He was a great leader. People wanted to follow him into battle. But what he would do is he would come up with these great ideas. So Ted Turner came up with the idea of C and N and he launched it. But before that he had other businesses and when he came up to C N a lot of people think Ted Turner, you're the guy who started CNN Well.

Yeah, he is, but he also there's another guy named Reese. And Reese was the guy leading the day to day. Ted would come up came up with the idea and then he went away for three months and did a sailing competition. Um so having these right hand people are is very important and a and a lot of times I feel like I'm the right hand person at this point. But I think that it's really important to understand the difference between starting and managing. I mean, for a long time, um, it was normal that they would call'em gray hairs. It was normal to get a gray haired leader to come in

for a startup. So these young people would come up with this idea for this great tech company And then the s the investor would say, All right, let's go hire a CEO. And that is not popular right now. But I think it should be. I think it's actually quite effective. Maybe not CEO, but you definitely need this team of experienced people. And And so the reason why I brought this up is it's it's a it's something that most people I've found struggle with, but there's not a lot of resources out there, not a lot of people talking about it. And so I think it's really important to learn this ultimately, um uh the skill set comes down to delegating. And there's four resources that I'll have that I've liked. The first one, I don't like the name of the book.

But it's very helpful. It's by a guy named Feli uh Felix Dennis. Felix Dennis. He was this um He's dead now. He died a few years ago. Maybe ten years ago. He was he's kinda like Richard Branson, but more vulgar. He was a British entrepreneur. He uh started Dennis Publishing, which launched Maxim magazine, which launched a a ton of great titles. It's still like a two hundred million dollar year business. He also launched Microwarehouse, which basically before Amazon was around, it was like Amazon for software.

And it was a huge multi billion dollar publicly traded company so very successful. uh entrepreneur close to a billionaire. And so this is why I don't mind his book being titled so horribly. It's called How to Get Rich. And the reason why I don't mind it is'cause he was really successful. He wasn't this like get rich quick guy. And uh in that book he does a great job of of talking about delegating. And that book, I use it as a reference book. I read all the time about how to work with people. Uh that that's my my go to. The second one is I like the one minute manager. Just Google it, you'll find it. It's a great book on on managing. The third thing is f is the five dysfunctions of a team.

And so it's a great book that looks at what successful teams and people look like. And what they don't look like, more importantly. And so you In order to oftentimes the best way to be good at something is you find out the bad ways of doing it and you just Don't do that. And the fourth thing is one of my investors is this guy named Tucker Max.

Tucker Max. If you're A man and you're Between the ages of Probably twenty eight and

forty, you probably know who Tucker Max is. He was famous'cause he had this blog called I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. And it was very controversial. It was basically about his frat days and he was just this wild party and drinker. So he has a really controversial opinion. But after he's he's in his forties now, so he's no no longer a kid. But he's really thoughtful at this point. He's kinda turned his image around. Any um

has a great blog where he A talked about firing himself and replacing himself as CEO And he It's maybe like a twelve part blog. It's really good. I would highly recommend everyone reading it. And uh he's one of my investors. And

he's kind of an a mentor to me. You know, he him and I are kind of similar in that we try to be macho and Or at least we started that way of wanting to be macho and show no weakness, but he's actually done a really good job of being introspective and talking about his feelings a lot. And he's done really good about talking about managing people. He Tucker also has this great book on uh how to create a or g that's great um document on how to manage a company. Or uh

Um Like create a culture. And you could Google uh Tucker Max culture document and you'll see it. It's free. Okay, the fourth and final. skill set that I want

People to take away. from this rambling is How to influence people. Influen you c I'll I'll call it persuasion or influence. It's very similar to similar to copywriting, but this one's a little bit more psychological. But it's similar.

And What most people don't realize is How to get people to do what you want them to do or how to influence them to think how you think. Um, and that sounds evil, but that's not how I mean it. I mean You could use it for evil ways. I mean the stuff that

Uh you convince people to give to a nonprofit or you convince people of certain morals or why something's bad and something's good. It's the same stuff that you can use to get people to do a lot of really bad things. And so this is definitely a scary skill set to learn, but if you but the thing is is that people are like animals. I mean, in the same way that if you show a dog Uh food. Um

You know, what's that Pavlov Pavlovian experiment where you you show a dog food and you ring a bell, so the dog starts associating the bell with the food, and so whenever you ring the bell he starts slobbering. People are the same way. You can there's all these little tricks that you can do to get people to say yes to certain things or get them to buy into certain things more. So for example If I'm a politician. And I want to put a huge billboard in your front yard, the likelihood that I of me just knocking on your door and asking to put this big billboard in the yard.

in your yard, the likelihood of you saying yes is pretty low. But If I go in there And I Say, Hey can I put this small little sticker on your window?

And you and and the likelihood of you saying yes to that is quite high. Now, if I go back a week later and ask you to put this big billboard in your front yard. The likelihood then that you're gonna say yes is a lot higher than had I not asked you to put that small sticker. Because you're already bought in. And there's about eight or nine principles just like this.

of of getting you to buy into things. So another one's the rule reciprocity. And so What that means is let's say that I uh I go out or let's say that you go out of town and you and I'm your neighbor and you ask me to check your mail. For you when I'm gone.

And I say, Yeah, sure, no problem, I'll check your mail. You I've just done a favor for you. Now you owe me a favor. And this is how humans work. We all we work on favors. And so now let's say next week I go, Hey, look, I watch I I um I checked your mail last week. Can I borrow your car for a day? the likelihood that you're gonna say yes is actually a lot higher because I've already done you a favor. And so the interesting thing about the rule reciprocity is that people pay it back Disproportionately, meaning

I can do a really small favor for someone. And then I can ask them to do a much bigger favor. And the shockingly a lot of times they'll say yes. And so there's about eight or nine of these principles that are incredibly effective for influencing people.

Um Another example I've used this before. I wanted to go I went and bought a motorcycle for a guy for three grand or he was asking three grand for it. And I thought it was I thought, Yeah, I'd be willing to pay about twenty two hundred bucks for this and so I went and bought a can of Coke. I bought two of them.

And when I showed up to the place I opened up one, I started drinking. I go, Hey man, uh You thirsty? The uh you you want to coke? I I I was just down the street and I bought one and I thought maybe you'd want one too. He opened it up and he starts drinking it and I go

Cool motorcycle, I'll give you twenty two. Everyone's been offering me that. I'm not gonna do it. But you seem like a nice guy. I'll do it fine. And so I don't know if the Coke

was the reason but That's just a r an example of There's all these little tiny things that if you do'em effectively, they kinda add up to be pretty effective. And so to learn these things, there's this great book by Robert Chaudini. called influence.

If you just Google influence book, you'll see it. His name's Robert Chaudini. Read that. It's it's That book changed my life. And the second one, which is pretty famous, a lot of people know it, it's called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Um That book, I I think that book is one of the best selling books of all time. The best selling nonfiction books of all time. It was written in the nineteen thirties. Nineteen twenties, it's still one hundred percent effective. Um so go and read those two books. And I and I think that if you learn how to influence people, it's really, really, really effective and it will shock you. Now

W like I was a nerd in high school and I liked women and so I was always just like any other kid, I wanted to go and meet girls. I I remember reading this book as a kid. I was like, I want them to like me, how do I do that? And so I read this book and I would apply this stuff to to meet and girls and I and I it worked. Um I'm married to a an amazing woman and

She was way out of my league when I first met her and um still is out of my league and I remember I used some of these things when I met her. And it helped me kinda get my foot in the door. And so This stuff will help you make money, it will help you start a company, it will help you balance your emotions, or it will help you meet your your future spouse. Um it's incredibly effective. And so I'm gonna wrap this up. Those are the four

Skills that I wanted to talk about today. This whole corona thing, man, it's It's weird. I didn't I didn't want to talk about little business and schemes today, but I wanted to talk about a few things that actually impact your life more than just uh more foundational things that can impact your life bigger than just uh a business. And

I don't know. Maybe I'm not going to be able to Maybe we'll have to call this like the The re recession proof skill set or something like that. But That's it.

Um Let me know how you feel about this. Um I miss My best bud Sean, my co host, he's not here today. So tweet at me, The Sampar. Let me know what you thought about this if you actually made it all the way through.

Maybe we'll do more of'em. But uh Good luck. Talk to you soon.

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