From the Vault: These Are the Frameworks Every Entrepreneur Should Learn

And the day you understand this framework is the day you basically know marketing. Um if you're considering going to business school to learn marketing, let me save you two years and about two hundred thousand dollars. It's just one diagram. I feel like I can rule the world a low To be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off. Hey guys, this is producer Ben

Sam has been in Europe, Sean has been in Hawaii, and so we are going into the vaults this week. For an episode. We dipped way back into the vaults. This is from a couple of years ago, and it is Sean laying out some of his favorite frameworks, favorite ways to think about. entrepreneurship and and how to start and run a business.

And I thought it was really valuable and because it's one of our early, early episodes, uh it has very few downloads compared to what we get now. So over ninety percent of you haven't listened to this before. So we thought it'd be good to uh to reshare it. So check it out. Sean's Favorite frameworks. Hey guys, Sean here. Uh gonna try something different for this episode. This is gonna be

Ten of my favorite frameworks. As you guys know. I am. The the framework Don, the framework King. the the prints of frameworks and uh

Really just a nerd about frameworks. And so over the over the years I've tried to uh take all the lessons I learned building businesses and turn them into little nuggets that I can remember. uh little principles, philosophies, or frameworks, whatever you want to call it. And uh so I put ten together and I recorded myself reading it. This is like when Lucky Charms released the marshmallows only version of the cereal. It's just the best stuff. There's four techniques. Four frameworks. And the four best philosophies. That's twelve total.

I hope you enjoy. Your to-do list is killing you. I used Lists for years. And I love writing the list, but as soon as I put the pen down Anxiety would start.

And the longer my list went I would just start collecting dust. It would just serve as a guilt trip for all the stuff that I didn't do yet. So Even though lists feel good in the moment. They're not the best way.

To be productive. One of the problems with List is that they bury the headline. In your day, there's probably one or two things that are way more important than everything else. If you just did those things alone, your day would be a success. It's that old 8020 rule. I call that my one big thing, or

OBT for short. Instead of making a list, I ask myself, what's the one highest impact thing I could do today? Take note, my friend. I said impact, not difficulty. Don't confuse the two. And sometimes the high impact thing is just a 15 minute phone call, or it's that one conversation I've really been avoiding with my key person.

That's it. And if I do my OBT the rest of the day, anything else I do is just gravy on top. I have zero guilt once I've done my OBT. It's a simple daily productivity technique that has made me way more productive and way less stressed. And by the way, those two things go together.

And I I know what you're saying. You're gonna say, but but but what about all those things that I need to do? Okay, well even with an OBT you sometimes have to write stuff down so you don't lose track of it. But not on a list. Instead use what I call the power box. I think other people have different names for this, but I invented it for myself and so I named it for myself. A power box.

Is he Uh imagine like an X and Y axis. This is a little bit easier if you just look at the diagram, but I'll try to describe it. On the y axis you have impact. High impact on the top, low impact on the bottom. And from left to right, you have not urgent.

to urgent. And any time I think of a task, like let's say You know, I need to get a haircut. Low impact. But

might be getting urgent, you know, depending on the situation. Or if it's I need to find a tax accountant because I gotta do my taxes in a month. That's high impact and it's high urgency. Um maybe I have a big pitch. Or big sales presentation I need to do.

High impact. And if it's if it's tomorrow, it's high urgency. If it's two months from now I'll put it in the lower Jency bucket. You get the idea. It's like a list.

But it maps every task based on what matters. Time sensitivity. Or urgency. An impact. And when it comes to do when a new thing comes up, I just quickly triage it into one of these boxes. It's very

I don't know, m stress relieving to do that. Then you know where it stands. You know when to when to get to it. This is a powerful way to organize your day. Whenever I start a new project, I make a kickoff dock. And there's four parts to any kickoff process that I do.

Number one. I define winning. Number two, I set my anti goals. Number three, I back of the envelope. What does it take to get there? Number four.

I figure out how to get one hour of momentum. Notice what's not on this list. I didn't say research or Asking other people if it's a good idea. Or worrying if it's gonna work or not. Or coming up with grand vision statements, you know, those come later.

Let me give you a breakdown of each of those parts. So Defining winning. Uh I like to set clear, measurable goals. So you know, w you you can say I want to achieve financial success and not stress out about money. It's not a great goal because what is success? And

By when there's no time. So you could also say I wanna have five million in liquid assets by the age of thirty five. That's a good simple goal. It's measurable.

It's time bound. So now you can actually act against that goal. The trick is to see. Could I fail this? If you can measure it.

Then you can fail it. So how ambitious should you be with your goals? Should you shoot for the moon or be realistic? Trick question. Do both.

I like to set two goals. There's a good goal, like If if we hit this goal then things went well. And then there's what I call The fuck yeah, goal. That's pretty self explanatory. Some people call it a stretch goal, but I prefer my linga. This is what you this is the goal if you hit it.

You'd be excited about it, you would say. Fuck yeah. Alright, process part two. Setting your anti-goals. There's an old saying when it comes to deal making, which is you pick the price, I'll pick the terms.

Basically. Even if you get the price you want. If the terms are screwed up, you'll be screwed up. So let's say your dream was to become a musician, and guess what? You did it. But while you're touring the world.

You gain a bunch of weight, you get addicted to drugs, your marriage is in shambles, your kids don't recognize you. See you you won the battle, but you lost the war. I stole this idea from my friend Andrew Wilkinson. It's called setting anti goals. These are the things that you don't want to happen along the way. Write these down. So now you got your goals and you have your anti-goals.

So step three. Time to back of the envelope. How might I get there? I'm a big fan of running quick numbers on things early on. Even when I have no clue how to achieve the goal. Doing a quick calculation will show you some of the options.

Let's say I want to make a million dollars. I can make a one dollar app and sell it to a million people. Or it can create a hundred thousand dollar product and find 10 customers. The back of the envelope is meant to walk through some of the scenarios and identify which numbers seem hard to hit. The ones you're worried about. That becomes my focus, okay.

That seems hard to do. How could I do it? How might I get there? I start to brainstorm strategies to get to that number. The last piece is getting one hour of momentum.

It's the most important step. You never want to leave the scene of a decision without taking action. So I end the kickoff. by brainstorming things that I could do in an hour. Not researching or planning, things like

Can I talk to a customer right now or Could I make a prototype in an hour and show that to somebody? The whole process for this whole kick off. Should take about One to two hours and it creates a ton of momentum.

Give it a shot. This is one of my favorite frameworks. It's called Big Mario marketing. And the day you understand this framework is the day you basically know marketing. Um, if you're considering going to business school to learn marketing, let me save you two years and about two hundred thousand dollars, it's just one diagram. And I know you can't see it, but I'll describe it.

So on the left side, there's a little picture of Mario. Mario when he's small. And this is a you know a potential customer of yours. And then the customer, you know, little Mario's running along and Finds this item. Right? The item is of in this case a fire flower. That's your product.

And when little Mario uh picks up that item, he becomes big Mario and can shoot fireball and kick everybody's ass, right? And the Big mistake that most people make. And these are you know, smart people make this mistake. Uh is they get so obsessed with their product, the thing they're building.

It's the company. It's the thing they work on every day. that when they go to tell customers about it, they go to market their company They talk about their product, right? They talk about the fire flower. But

You have to understand. Yeah. People don't care about you. They don't care about your fire flower. They care about themselves. They care about themselves going from little Mario who's weak and can't really do anything, to big Mario who can run around, shoot fireballs, and kick everybody's ass. And so I don't care what you're doing. Let's say you're

Selling breakfast bars. You could tell me about the granola and the bar and the carbs and all this good stuff. But instead you should tell me how this bar will save me twenty minutes in the mornings because I have a grab and go breakfast now. And how I'll lose weight because you made this delicious bar with no carbs and no sugar at it. I repeat.

Nobody cares about your product. Literally nobody. Even your mom. Your mom doesn't care about your product. Your mom cares about you. And customers care about themselves. Everybody cares about their own quality of life improving. So that's what you should do. You should describe how their life will improve and

if they use a special little item of yours, the special product of yours. And then you back it up with evidence and social proof and e explanations for why it works. So I'll give you an example. I have this thing called the all access pass. It's where I blog about

You know, businesses that I'm starting. And the reader, you know, little Mario in this case, is somebody who wants to build a successful business but's not sure how to do it, right? They have ideas, but they've never really been successful as an entrepreneur before. So they're They're they're unsure. And big n big Mario is that version of them? That's confident.

that knows they can build a successful business. Somebody who's seen it firsthand how to do it. And now is armed with a toolkit of tactics and a blueprint that they can follow to be successful. So that's what I provide. I give you a way to go from unsure. Confident. And you're confident because

I showed you how I did it and I gave you tools and I gave you tactics and a blueprint to follow. That's it. Now you know marketing. I have a little Playbook that I use to get unstuck.

And it happens, right? You get stuck. You have a setback, you face an obstacle, you hit a wall. We have all these words for this. It's just you trying to move forward and it's not easy. and it could feel draining. I call these plateaus. And when you're in a plateau, you feel stuck.

When I was younger, I used to overreact to these types of situations. I would hit a plateau and I would just feel worthless. Like why can't I make this work? And then I moved to Silicon Valley and I got on Twitter and now everywhere I looked, I just saw people, you know, crushing it. And it made me feel even more worthless. I've learned that there are three ways to handle plateaus. I learned this from Tony Robins. He says

You can be, number one, a dabbler. A dabbler hits a plateau. And gives up. Moves on to the next one, right? A dabble in this, a dabble in that.

The second type is what you'll encounter what I encountered a lot of at work or I went to a good university And these are called stressor achievers. So a stressor hits a plateau. Gets stressed, chugs some coffee, loses some sleep. Sleep and tries to plow through it.

They try to work their way to the bone. Uh to try to make it work. This is the person cramming for an exam. It works, but it's painful. You're not gonna enjoy the journey. You're not even really gonna enjoy the destination'cause you'll be so worn out by the time you get there.

The last option is a master. And a master hits a plateau and it greets him like an old friend. Right, a master says, Ah, Mr. Plateau, I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Because a master knows that plateaus are inevitable. They're a part of the growth process. Why would you stress over the inevitable? That's like stressing out every time the sun goes down each day.

So if you're trying to grow You know. Plateau's are gonna happen. So a master creates a playbook or a recipe for how to break through, and I'll tell you mine.

So step one of the Plateau breakthrough recipe. First Relax. Plateau's are always a part of any growth process.

This isn't normal. Number two. Get in the right state of mind. You know, you make better decisions. I know I do. I make better decisions and I'm more creative when I'm feeling loose, when I'm feeling confident, when I'm feeling happy. And when I'm frustrated or tired or stressed, I make bad decisions. It's just that simple.

So how do I change my mental state? How do I change my state of mind? I use the three Ms. Music? Which is easy. put on music and you're already you'll start to your foot will start tapping and you'll start to feel a little different.

Movement. This is a big one. A lot of people try to change the way they feel through their brain. And that's like, you know, trying to open up a door, you know, using your fingernails rather than the key. It's a very painful, slow way to do it. So movement is a faster way to change your mindset.

You can do pushups, you can go do some wind sprints, you can swim, you could do jumping jacks. Two to five minutes of any kind of high intensity movement, physical movement. And you will change the way you feel. You could even just Do a quick ice plunge or you know, splash some cold water on your face. It will change the way you feel.

And the last one, now we go into the head, is meaning. It's putting a different meaning on what's going on. So instead of thinking shit, this isn't working, you reframe it. Right. Maybe you reframe it as All right, this is an opportunity to try something new.

Or. Okay, this is a signal that's pushing me. I gotta get more creative to solve this. Or Alright, let me roll up my sleeves. This is a chance to sharpen up my skills and learn more. It sounds a little corny, but the meaning you give something

will totally change your response to it. When you think you're getting screwed, you'll get angry. When you think you're being challenged or tested, you might rise up. If you think The world is giving you an opportunity.

You will approach that situation in a very different way. My favorite one of all is no matter how bad it gets, I say This is gonna make for a hell of a story later. And just putting that meaning if this is a hell of a story in the making.

Changes my own experience. In two minutes I can change my state of mind. And when I'm in the right state, I start asking questions. I don't look for answers, I ask questions. I say.

What does the data tell me is that's happening? What's the evidence? What is the evidence telling me? Number two, I'll say What's the stupidly obvious thing I haven't tried yet? Or What would a friend or mentor of mine do in this situation, right? What would somebody who's awesome do?

Another question is What's a twenty percent tweak I could make? What's a little change that would make a hundred percent of a difference? Another one is Who's already successfully doing this? And what the heck are they doing differently than what I'm doing? Lastly.

Who are three smart people I could talk to on the phone help me solve this? The name I use is Suey. My friend Sylvia is probably the best entrepreneur I know. And so I always ask What would Sully do?

I've never seen him stay stuck for long. He's always positive. He's always thinking. He's always taking massive action and finding a way to win. In fact, he literally texts me in the morning about five times a month, just saying, let's win, win, win today. All caps. Win, win, win. I don't even know what he's talking about. He doesn't even know what I'm working on. That's just his mindset. So whenever I get stuck, I start to feel that energy draining out of me, I think, what would Sulli do? And just asking that question makes me twenty percent more creative and determined to win. You don't even have to know the guy. Just ask yourself that question. Okay.

The final step of getting unstuck. Patients. I'm an impatient motherfucker in general, right? I used to take pride in that. I patient. Who wants to be patient? Patient people just wait around doing nothing all day, right? I'm not patient, I take action. You see

I viewed action taking and patients as opposites. But then one day, like, you know, the modern day Buddha that I am, I figured it out. I got wise and I said Okay, I need to be impatient with action. and patient with results. I'll say that again. Slower this time.

Impatient with action. Patient with results. This is the yin and yang of entrepreneurship. Follow this and you will win, win, win, like Sully says. It's just a matter of time. Building an audience first.

You know, my audience is like steroids. If I was you and I was somebody who watches me do what I do, I would think I would think, man, this guy He's able to do all this because of his audience. It makes everything easier. When I don't know something, I ask Twitter. When I want to spread the word, I mention it on my podcast.

Having an audience gives you optionality to build many future businesses. When I started my podcast, I had no idea. I would be doing other businesses based off that. I raised a s a startup fund from listeners. I uh created a paid newsletter that makes tons of money. And uh I could have never seen that going, but once I created this audience I had all these options. And that's with my teeny tiny audience. Imagine if I was actually famous, you know, I I can't even imagine how easy it is for Joe Rogan or Naval or Kylie Jenner or you know, these YouTubers to launch new projects or get their problem solved.

They could s they could snap their fingers, they could tweet something out, and uh people would come out of the woodwork to help them. Get where they want to go. It took me one year to build my audience, and that was in my spare time. If I had focused, I think I could have done it about half the time. If you don't know w what to you know, exactly what you want to build or what company you wanna start I recommend building an audience first.

Building an audience in a topic area that you care about or a g you know building an audience of a group of people that you know really well. that can be a great place to start and it can give you options when you do think of a killer idea. You can start with a newsletter or a podcast or YouTube channel, whatever medium is fun for you because If this stuff takes time.

And it's not easy and you don't get instant results. So it's gotta be fun. You have to enjoy creating the content. Now how do you actually build that audience? That's a topic for another day. All news is good news.

There's two big mistakes that I've seen founders make, and I've learned not to make these mistakes anymore. I make some new ones, but I don't make these ones anymore. The first is that bad news demoralizes them. And even worse is the second one. Because bad news demoralizes them, they therefore subconsciously avoid looking in places where there might be bad news. Which sometimes might be your company bank account or the metrics dashboard or

Going out and talking to customers. But for us All news is good news. If I'm working on something and it's works. Good news, it worked.

If I'm doing something and it's not working. Good news. I learned something. Learn something from this. I try to always create a culture where I want to see the data, whether it's good, bad, or ugly.

And the way to do that. is to make it so that all news is good news. This creates a habit where people start to seek out the truth. They go look for the data. They go try to talk to customers and see what they'll say. Because

But no matter what happens, we're gonna celebrate the finding. When the news is bad, we don't panic or get demoralized. We focus on the learning. What did this result teach us? This sounds obvious, right? This is a lesson I could teach a third grader. So why did I put this as such a big takeaway? Because in my experience, 98% of founders don't operate this way. They ride an emotional roller coaster. Based on good or bad news.

You don't have to ride that roller coaster. Your entrepreneurial life will be more fun and more successful if you just adopt the mantra. All news is good news. Work like a lion, not a cow.

I stole this from Naval. I heard it and I loved it. Today we are trained to work like cows. Cow stand on a field all day. Slowly chewing weak and

Low nutrient grass. Every day the same thing at the same slow pace. This is how we're trained to work, right? Nine to five, Monday through Friday, fifty weeks in the year. Go to work. Instead, we should work like a lion. A lion sits, waits, observes.

Looks for its prey. When it sees it. Then they sprint. Hunt and catch it. And they eat.

They enjoy, they celebrate. And they hunt as a pack. And then they rest. They relax. And they wait for the next juicy prey. This is how winners work.

It's high intensity and it's focused on the high value projects, the juicy prey. And then there's frequent breaks to rest and recover. You're not just grinding all day. You're not just standing there working all day. Your boss may not like this. But this is the way that winners work. Work like a lion.

Not a cow. We don't sell saddles here. Have you ever heard the memo that the CEO of Slack, you know, eighteen billion dollar company, he s sent his employees before they launched? If you haven't You should check it out. It's called We Don't Sell Saddles Here. Go read that shit and come back.

It's a must read, but I'll I'll try to explain it in simple terms. If you're operating in a new or a niche market. You wanna promote the lifestyle. Not your product. So what does that mean? Put let's put the diff let's put it differently.

Let's say you're a company that makes saddles, right? Saddles is the kind of thing you put on a horse. So rather than talking about how your saddle is better than the other saddles and just marketing to people who already are in the saddle market and looking at we're looking to buy a saddle and you know, they may already have one and they don't want to switch and they've never heard of your brand, they've heard of some other brands. Instead What if you promoted the lifestyle of horseback riding to the masses instead? This is why the CEO of Slack explained, We don't sell saddles here.

Meaning instead of just selling their chat app They sold a dream of working without so much damn email. And if you sold that lifestyle of working without email being buried in these long email threads He offered an alternative. you could use this live chat app.

And we put this into action when we were promoting our course, right? We had a niche course. Learning how to buy businesses. Not many people were in that market. To try to learn how to buy businesses. So instead of selling the course

We started promoting The badass entrepreneurs who buy businesses, who have done it I built hundred million dollar empires doing it. So we ignored our saddle, which is the course, and instead promoted the badass cowboys who like horseback riding. Like

Chamaut or Andrew Wilkinson. It worked way better. People love to learn about this new lifestyle. And then they start to ask. All right.

I kinda wanna go horseback riding. Which saddle should I use? And we were right there, ready to sell him our saddle. This is a tactic that we stole from Brex. You know, we like to say a good artist copy, great artist steal. That's Pablo, you know, the big paint Picasso, is what he used to say. So like a great artist, we stole this sales tactic from Bricks, which is a multi-billion dollar startup, grew really fast. Because they had tactics like this.

And we use this tactic to close about five hundred thousand dollars for our fund in two days. We used it for fundraising, but you can pretty much use it for any sales process that happens over email. So here's the tactic in action. Um I'll show you an example from Brex. So you have a a a sales agent from Brex who uh write an email to a client. And he says,

You know, hello client. You know, my chief sales officer asked that I reach out to you. See below. And below he has an email from the the chief sales officer saying, Hey

Check out. You know, the prospect name. Check out the prospect name. They're not on Brexit and I think we can help'em. Can you start with a call to the to the you know name? Of the person?

Offer to waive the credit card fees and get them on the accelerated rewards list if they're open to trying us out by the end of the month. It's like a private email. From the chief sales officer to the sales rep. but the sales rep is sharing this with the client. And now the the whole thing is he says, you know.

My chief sales officer said I should reach out to you, see below. For context, Brex is uh a corporate card designed for companies like yours. We don't require a personal guarantee, we offer high credit limits, and we have the best rewards program available on any corporate credit card. Do you have a few minutes for a call? Now this is genius because A, it feels special. It feels like you've been handpicked by someone with authority, right? The the he chief sales officer. Had reached out to his own sales rep and said, Go talk to them. They look interesting.

It feels raw, right? You you got a forwarded private email. You're not even supposed to see that email. So you feel like you're you're seeing something real. And it's friendly. All the language of these emails is transparent, very friendly. It's not like a normal cold email where uh you just feel like a d a robot could be writing this. So here's our version. We would say, Hey, blankety blank.

Nice to meet you. Sean saw that you signed up for the fund wait list and he wants to open up a spot for you. See below. I'm happy to share more details with you. Um, but just so you know, to invest you have to be an accredited investor.

And here's a link to the deck if you haven't seen it. and walk you through all the key points. Give it a read and let us know if you're interested in jumping in. And then you know, below that there's an email from me saying Hey Ben. I saw that blankety blank signed up signed up and his background looks really good for the fund.

He helped do X, Y, and Z. This is just pulled from their LinkedIn. Can you reach out to him and offer him one of the spots that just opened up in the fund? Now this little tactic closed about half a million dollars in two days. Great artist steal and keep an eye out for the great tactics that other people are using and put your own spin on it just like this one. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to

I put my all in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back

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