#35 - [SOLO] 38 Harsh Truths I Wish I Knew Before Starting My Business 5 Years Ago

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Corey

So I spent the last five years building my own solopreneur creator lifestyle business.

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Corey

And in that time, I've made just about every mistake you can.

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Corey

But I've also attracted some life changing opportunities by sharing myself and my ideas with the world.

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Corey

I've made $0 for over three months straight. I've also made over $27,000 in under 30 days.

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Corey

I spent weeks on a single piece of content and nobody ever read.

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Corey

And I've also created content that opened the doors. That led

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Corey

to me working with New York

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Corey

Times bestselling authors and YouTubers like Ali Abdul.

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Corey

Getting on the top podcasts like Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson

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Corey

and writing for publications like Psychology Today.

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Corey

Here are 38 harsh truths.

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Corey

About building a business I wish I knew five years ago.

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Corey

That would have saved me years of wasted time, money and stress.

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Corey

Every time I've struggled, it's been because I've forgotten at least one of these truths.

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Corey

And every time I've succeeded, it's because I've kept them at the forefront of my mind.

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Corey

Also side note. This was actually inspired by conversations I've been having inside the Creator Alchemy Lab, which is my online membership community.

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Corey

it's designed for, ambitious creators taking bold action. And it's all about helping you navigate the psychological side of entrepreneurship.

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Corey

Every month we have group coaching calls, workshops, challenges. We've got a ton of resources.

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Corey

And an incredible

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Corey

active community

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Corey

Everything is designed to help you get exactly what you need to succeed on your entrepreneurial journey.

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Corey

If you wanna learn more, just go to Creator alchemy.com/lab and also put a link below.

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Corey

All right. Onward to the harsh truths.

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Corey

Number one stop waiting for permission.

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Corey

No one is waiting to give you permission.

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Corey

Right. Nobody's sitting around thinking, oh, you know what? I should hit this person up and tell them. You know what? That thing you want to do, you should totally go do it. Nobody's going to do that.

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Corey

It is on you. If you want to do something, then do it.

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Corey

Most of us are raised in a world where we're taught we need to wait for permission before we can do the thing.

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Corey

But in entrepreneurship, that just isn't the case.

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Corey

Like if you see somebody who, you know, you can help

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Corey

rather than saying, oh,

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Corey

hello, sir. Hello, madam. Do you mind if I send over this thing I think would help you?

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Corey

Don't do that because you're waiting for permission. You're literally asking, hey, do I have your permission to send you this thing?

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Corey

Instead, just send it to them.

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Corey

They're like, hey, I see you are struggling with these things. Here's how I would approach it. Let me just give it to you away for free if you like. Cool. We can work together.

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Corey

If not, no big deal.

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Corey

Don't wait for permission.

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Corey

This is actually how I end up working with Ali Abdul. Like Ali literally put out a video. Was like a 45 minute video or something about the eight challenges he was having in life, in business. And I watched that. I was like, oh, shit. These are exactly the types of things I help people with in my coaching practice, like the founders and the entrepreneurs and creators I work with as a coach are exactly a lot of these things.

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Corey

Ali struggling with.

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Corey

So I basically dropped everything I was doing that day and wrote out, this thing's like a 20 minute read article. It's super all.

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Corey

Like, I didn't even edit. Like I just wrote it all in one go. And it was Haley. I don't know you, but if you were my coaching client, here's how I would start to approach every one of these eight issues you're struggling with.

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Corey

And then, you know, wrote it, publish it on my website, and then shared it to Twitter at the time. And I had like 500 followers.

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Corey

I was like, everybody, I don't know, Ali, but maybe if enough people share it, he might end up seeing it.

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Corey

People did share it. He did see it, and he loved it so much. He was like, hey man, would you be my coach? And that turned into me and him working together for like six months.

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Corey

Or like Jay Yang, I had Jay on the podcast before. You can check off that episode.

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Corey

16 years old Jay Cold emailed the CEO of beehive.

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Corey

With a list of ideas of how Jay could help them. That turned into him having an internship with them.

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Corey

At 17. He did the same thing for Noah Kagan, the founder of Appsumo.

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Corey

And he sent Noah a 19 page slide deck. Of all the ways Jay could help Noah.

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Corey

Grow his social media and newsletter channels.

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Corey

that turned into Noah hiring him to be his head of content.

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Corey

So before Jay even graduated high school, he was making six figures, working for an incredible founder

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Corey

because he didn't wait for permission.

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Corey

At 19, he self-published his own book called You Can Just Do Things.

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Corey

and started working with Alex and Leila hermosa@acquisition.com.

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Corey

As part of their media team.

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Corey

Jason wait for permission? I didn't wait for permission. You don't have to wait for permission.

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Corey

If you want to write the book. Start the podcast.

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Corey

Reach out to the famous person.

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Corey

Host an in-person meet up.

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Corey

Apply to be a speaker at a big conference. Whatever.

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Corey

Just do it.

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Corey

Stop waiting for permission.

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Corey

Because the only person who can give you that permission is yourself.

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Corey

Number two, you'll never find time.

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Corey

With entrepreneurship, it's easy to get so wrapped up in being busy and you're like, oh, well, I will do that thing when I find time to do it.

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Corey

You will never find time.

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Corey

You cannot make time. You cannot create time.

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Corey

What you can do is protect time and make the most of the time you do have.

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Corey

So, for example, for me, I block the first part of my day for writing and other creative pursuits.

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Corey

Because otherwise I don't find that time.

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Corey

Some shit always comes up that fills that time. Email, some other project, some whatever.

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Corey

So it was like, oh well, I'll write today when I find time to do it, or I'll work out today when I find time to do it. You just never will.

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Corey

So you protect time.

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Corey

But the other thing I hear a lot from people, and this came up in a recent group coaching call we had in the Critter Alchemy Lab.

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Corey

One of our members said, I really want to get back into recording videos,

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Corey

but I don't have enough time to film.

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Corey

Well, here's the deal.

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Corey

Rather than thinking, oh, I have to have two hours in order to have a proper filming session,

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Corey

all I have is 20 minutes, therefore I can't record. Instead of that, say, okay, I have 20 minutes to record.

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Corey

What can I record in 20 minutes?

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Corey

Well, just like with working out, maybe you don't have two hours to go to the gym and do this big, long, elaborate

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Corey

workout routine. Okay? But if you have 20 minutes, how much can you cram into 20 minutes?

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Corey

That's a lot better than saying, well, I don't have enough time to do it properly, so I'm just going to skip it altogether today.

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Corey

You'd be surprised how good of a workout you get in 20 minutes.

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Corey

You would be surprised how good of a video you can record in 20 minutes, or how much you can write in 20. Whatever it is.

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Corey

Protect your time first off, but then also make the most of the time you do have because you're not going to find it and you can't make it.

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Corey

Number three, the path of least resistance is often the most crowded.

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Corey

I this comes from another conversation we had in the Creative Alchemy Lab. So I said, I try to build a lifestyle business, but I haven't seen much traction. And now I'm starting to doubt my ability to succeed. Well, here's the deal. When you try to find the path of least resistance or the the low hanging fruit, right when you go for the low hanging fruit,

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Corey

most other people are trying to do the same thing.

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Corey

They're trying to find the lazy way. They're trying to find the shortest distance.

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Corey

They're trying to say, well, how little effort can I put into this?

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Corey

And that's usually the wrong question. That's also how you get tripped up in.

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Corey

By all these courses and shit that say like, oh, you can, you know, build this million dollar business working two hours a day or three hours a week or some stupid shit. That's not true.

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Corey

They're preying on your laziness.

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Corey

Instead, what I've kind of learned is I would much rather try to choose what is a craft I want to develop. So if I want to develop the craft of being a better storyteller, if I want to develop the craft of being a better writer,

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Corey

rather than saying, what is the least amount of effort I can put into writing?

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Corey

Say, what kind of writer do I want to become? What type of writing do I want to create? Well, now, what skills do I need to cultivate in order to achieve that?

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Corey

Well, suddenly I'm no longer trying to figure out what is the laziest way. What's the least amount of effort I can put in? And now I'm saying what effort is worth putting in. Why is this path worth going down? Why is this craft worth cultivating?

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Corey

Why now? Suddenly, I'm spending five years developing the craft of storytelling or public speaking.

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Corey

Well, that naturally sets me apart from everybody else trying to do the least amount of effort possible, which is why they still suck at speaking,

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Corey

or they still suck at writing, or whatever the result is, or trying to get.

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Corey

So rather than trying to find the path of least resistance,

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Corey

try to identify which path is most worthwhile for me and how do I equip myself to best go down that path and succeed?

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Corey

Number four, you can sell without being salesy.

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Corey

is a huge thing a lot of people get tripped up with because it's like, well, I have this thing and I think it's valuable, but I don't want people to think I'm salesy. So I'm just not going to tell them about it.

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Corey

It's like, well, how do you expect anybody

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Corey

to learn about it, let alone buy it?

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Corey

Or sometimes a well, I'll just give it away for free. A couple of years ago, I went to a marketing seminar. My friend Chewie, he's got a YouTube channel called jujitsu. These big in the jujitsu scene

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Corey

beyond jujitsu. Chewie. Like she was a legit business owner. Like he is a co-owner of a physical gym. He does the YouTube thing.

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Corey

He's got the instructions.

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Corey

He's got a newsletter. He's got brand sponsorships, podcasts, bunch of other shit. He also teaches marketing, all kinds of things. Chewie decided to do this free marketing seminar for the local community. He was basically beta testing what would later become like a more paid offer. I remember, 40, 50 people RSVP'd to it and maybe 12 actually showed up.

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Corey

One dude partway through this seminar was like, hey, man, I got to leave. I got a barber appointment. So, motherfucker, you can't reschedule your haircut. Because the thing with it was that the things that Chewie was teaching people would later pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for. And it was very hard earned, real insights into marketing.

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Corey

And I took copious notes because it was it was so good, so valuable. But later, after the seminar, I went up to Chewie. As I came in. I can't believe more people didn't show up. And I can't believe some people left for a fucking hair appointment. And he said people don't value what is freely given. And that that stuck with me ever since.

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Corey

And it kind of echoes the idea of if you want people to be invested, they need to invest. Meaning when we pay for something, we actually place more value on that thing. So when we don't pay for something, we naturally don't place much value on that thing.

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Corey

So when the whole like being salesy thing one, people straight up will not value your shit if you give it away for free.

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Corey

That's just not how apparently humans work most of the time. But the other thing is, if you're so afraid of of being of self-promotion, the whole self-promotion is cringing. Okay, but fundamentally, if you have made a thing that you have deep conviction, is valuable and will legitimately help this population of people you're trying to serve.

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Corey

Then you have a responsibility to let them know

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Corey

it exists and how to get it.

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Corey

Otherwise, they're just going to continue to struggle with whatever problem you're trying to solve.

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Corey

Or if I have an answer for you, but then I don't tell you I have that answer. You continue to have the problem.

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Corey

Another thing with this, I think that trips up a lot of people is we think that we're asking for money. Therefore, I am asking for you to, you know. Please, sir, may I have some more like. Please give me your money.

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Corey

But you're not asking for a handout. You're offering to help. You're saying I made this thing that I believe will legitimately improve your life in some way

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Corey

and in order for you to access it, this is the cost of admission. This is the investment.

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Corey

That's it. It's an exchange. It's an exchange of value. They give you money.

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Corey

You give them the solution.

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Corey

So fuck all this like salesy, self-promotion, cringing, insecurity. You have.

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Corey

If you've made something valuable,

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Corey

let people know about it and fucking charge for it.

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Corey

If you don't think it's valuable, then make it better until it is worth charging for.

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Corey

Because people won't value what is free and they won't buy shit they don't know exists.

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Corey

Number five if you're not making money, you don't have a business.

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Corey

Right? Like a business makes money. Fundamentally, a business provides a service or a product in exchange for money.

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Corey

No money, no business.

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Corey

A business makes money. A hobby costs money.

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Corey

If you're not making money,

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Corey

you don't have a business. You have an expensive hobby.

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Corey

So, like, fundamentally like, I spent so much time early on, like, okay, there's a one point I was debating on how large of a mailbox, a business mailbox I should get because it's like, oh, I've seen, you know, these these YouTube influencers, they get all this fan mail and shit. So I don't know if I need to get the small mailbox or not.

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Corey

Maybe I need to at least get the medium one because I'm sure I'm going to get fan mail. I've never gotten a single piece of fan mail ever. But I said, here and I got this. You know, the business mailbox I fucked around with, like, branding kits. And I did this over here, and I bought this expensive, complicated tech stack with, like, all these different softwares and shit.

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Corey

And I spent months.

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Corey

On doing what I thought was building a business. But because I wasn't bringing any money, I wasn't building a business. I was building an expensive hobby. It wasn't a business until it started bringing in money.

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Corey

I also know people who they've made a shit ton of money off of a free lead magnet. That is a Google doc.

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Corey

Like they wrote in Google Docs.

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Corey

know people who don't even have a website.

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Corey

Brand kit and then that shit.

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Corey

And they closed deals all the time by just sending DMs to people on social media,

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Corey

setting up a call or whatever, and then they just send them an invoice through like PayPal or stripe or some shit. So like zero cost, basically.

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Corey

They have a business. I at the time had a fucking hobby

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Corey

because it only cost money. It didn't make money.

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Corey

So focus. Especially early on, but basically forever

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Corey

on making sure you're building a business and not an expensive hobby.

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Corey

Which brings me to number six a hobby. Work ethic will not drive business results.

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Corey

Early on, I got caught up in this whole idea of, oh, I can totally work two hours a day, or I can have a four hour workweek,

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Corey

or I can work 20 hours a month and achieve all of these like magical business results and shit. And that is not the case, because even the people who say like, oh, I only work two hours a day.

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Corey

No, they fucking don't. Unless they are sitting on a shit ton of money and just kind of like, fuck off throughout the day and like, work a little bit here and there.

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Corey

Or they have a behind the scenes big ass team that they don't talk about.

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Corey

A two hour work day or a four hour workweek is a fantasy and not a reality.

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Corey

Now, the concept of being effective, right? The concept of okay, well, how can I make the most of the time I have? How can I condense rather than fucking off and, you know, kind of half assed things for an entire eight hours of a normal workday? How can I maybe condense that so that there's less fluff and, you know, ramping up and ramping down and, you know, getting distracted with, like, bullshit emails or whatever.

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Corey

How can I maybe condense down, like my productive time, my most effective time, to a handful of hours? That concept, totally solid.

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Corey

But you still have to work your ass off, especially early on.

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Corey

Like, don't get me wrong. Like I, you know, even now I basically live in pajama pants most of the time during the day because I'm writing or I'm on camera and, you know, I still have. What is it like the Covid mullet where like, I have, you know, a little bit more professional attire upstairs, but then downstairs I'm just in fucking pajamas or something because the pants I wear don't matter when I'm on camera.

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Corey

And then, you know, later when I am off work, I am in gym shorts. I rarely am in like regular dressier clothes anymore.

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Corey

So that may sound like, oh, you know, you're you're relaxed, you sleep in, sometimes you wear pajama pants, you know, you can travel when you want, like, okay, yeah. Like that sounds really cool. Sounds like a hobby.

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Corey

But I also work seven days a week.

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Corey

My business is also always on my mind.

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Corey

I take it seriously because if I half ass it, money doesn't come in necessarily.

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Corey

So you cannot expect a hobby work ethic to drive business results

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Corey

if you want to have a hobby. Like if you want to be a writer, for example, and you just want to like, oh, you know, I'll just I write when the muse inspires me. If you want to live that kind of a fantasy, cool. But do not think that your muse doing this shit, just waiting around for weeks at a time and just fucking off and walking through the park or some shit, or.

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Corey

Whatever. Laying on a couch looking at, I don't know, whatever the fuck. Weird writer fantasy life shit. Going to a cabin in the woods, you know, once every quarter in, like, writing for a couple days award in style. That just isn't the reality. If you're actually going to try to make money from your writing.

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Corey

But if you want to write as a hobby, totally cool to write when you feel like it. But when your livelihood

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Corey

is driven by your ability to write, you do not have that that leisure, that privilege, that.

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Corey

Leeway to do

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Corey

so. If you're going to make a business around writing or a business around speaking or whatever your thing is, understand you have to treat it like a business.

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Corey

You can't treat it like a hobby.

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Corey

Number seven hustle culture is really just virtue signaling for entrepreneurs.

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Corey

another conversation I had in the Credit Alchemy Lab with an entrepreneur. He said, I'm in my mid 30s and I'm afraid I don't have enough ambition to succeed as an entrepreneur, because several of my friends have told me I'm not. I don't grind enough. I don't hustle enough. So maybe I don't have the level of ambition necessary to succeed.

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Corey

Here's the deal. I'm 36 right now, 37 in a month from recording this. At this point in my life, I am probably

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Corey

at least as ambitious, if not probably more ambitious than I was when I was younger.

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Corey

The difference is that now I am simply unwilling to sacrifice my mind and body to grind right. Like when I was like 20 or some shit.

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Corey

I would do all nighters all the time. I would get by on three hours of sleep and just relentless monster energy drinks or some shit.

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Corey

I even in undergrad or grad school, I remember I would get because it was cheaper just a college student. I would buy pre-workout powders, like to go to the gym with and those would be my energy drinks.

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Corey

So rather than spending however many dollars on a bunch of energy drinks, I would just get a canister of pre-workout and then just put a couple scoops in my water, and then that would fuel me to do all nighters.

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Corey

Probably wasn't healthy, but I was. I was okay to do that. I felt like I could handle that when I went mid 30s.

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Corey

Absolutely not. Like I get a solid nine hours of sleep, even if that means I gotta push it in the morning because maybe I had a late night, or maybe whatever it was. Nope. Unwilling to sacrifice my physical health.

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Corey

But hustle culture, honestly, a lot of times just kind of glorifies inefficiency. Like, oh, I hustled 16 hours a day.

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Corey

Okay, well, how many hours were you actually doing shit that mattered

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Corey

for seven, even ten? Even a ten hour day of, like, legitimate product, like productive time. Cool. Well, this other six hours were just you wasting fucking time or fucking off somehow. So don't glorify the 16 hour day.

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Corey

Yes, you have to work your ass off. Yes, you have to work super hard. But this hustle culture, grind culture is most of the time, a bunch of 20 year old ish dudes glorifying and virtue signaling to be like, hey, look at how hard I work. It's like, maybe, maybe not. Maybe that isn't the best thing to to optimize for.

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Corey

I feel proud of what's even like, I think about like, martial arts a lot of times, like traditional martial art, kind of the way most people understand them. You know, as you get older, you aren't as physically capable. Well, when you're younger, you can compensate for inefficient movements with athleticism, with explosivity, strength, speed, flexibility, whatever.

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Corey

But as you get older, you start to lose some of these things.

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Corey

So you have to rely on efficiency.

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Corey

Hustle culture isn't about efficiency,

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Corey

it's just about brute force and sacrifice at all costs.

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Corey

But the way you actually improve in any endeavor, whether it is martial arts or music or business or also the shit, is actually learning to be more effective and learning to be more efficient

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Corey

rather than sacrificing your mental, physical, whatever well-being

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Corey

for it.

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Corey

so fuck hustle culture.

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Corey

Number eight there's prestige in solving hard problems.

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Corey

There is not prestige in making problems hard to solve.

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Corey

one thing is I had to learn early on was like, your intelligence is an asset until it becomes a liability,

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Corey

and you likely won't know when you cross that line.

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Corey

like when you're a smart person, you like solving problems that only smart people can solve.

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Corey

Well, a lot times what that means is when you find a simple a simple problem, you're like, oh fuck,

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Corey

this is too simple.

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Corey

I need to make it complicated

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Corey

so that then I have now solved a complicated problem.

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Corey

So then you just make it harder than it needs to be because you think there's some sort of prestige or pride or honor

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Corey

in making this thing hard, just so you can say you solved a hard problem.

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Corey

We over complicate shit all the time.

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Corey

And I would do that so often early on it's like, oh, this, this seems too simple. There's got to be nuance that other people don't consider as simple as it's true.

:: 20:57:19

Corey

But more often than not, it was just me getting my own fucking way and just making shit more complicated than it needs to be, just so I can have this weird sense of accomplishment.

:: 21:04:13

Corey

Like, oh, I solved a hard problem.

:: 21:05:23

Corey

But entrepreneurship is hard enough. You do not need to make it even harder.

:: 21:11:00

Corey

Sometimes it is really just as simple as sending a thoughtful DM to somebody about how you can help them.

:: 21:16:04

Corey

don't need some complicated CRM outreach template, sales coaching course, or what the fuck ever.

:: 21:22:17

Corey

And then you got to get stationery with like your logo and headers. But then first you got to like trademark your fucking logo. Like I was.

:: 21:29:09

Corey

It's too much. You made it complicated.

:: 21:31:08

Corey

Sometimes it can't just be simple.

:: 21:32:19

Corey

Just send the fucking DM.

:: 21:34:06

Corey

You can try it like find hard problems to solve. Awesome. But do not find a problem and then make it harder to solve.

:: 21:43:13

Corey

Number nine ideas do not matter.

:: 21:46:07

Corey

Ideas are easy, but more importantly, ideas don't exist. Or like you can't touch an idea. You can't steal an idea.

:: 21:53:21

Corey

You can't reap any rewards from an idea. Right? I hear people sometimes they say, oh, well, you know, I don't want to tell people what I want to do because I don't want to steal my idea.

:: 22:02:20

Corey

You can't steal something that doesn't exist.

:: 22:05:06

Corey

Now, if you take action and you execute on that idea, then it matters.

:: 22:10:14

Corey

Like even like, you know, people get wrapped up with, like, copyright shit. I don't want to tell people what I did because I don't want to, like, you know, I want to have copyright to it. Even if, like, copyright and like all the shit, it doesn't protect the AI. The idea itself, like you cannot copyright an idea why you can't copyright is the expression of an idea.

:: 22:31:02

Corey

example, like James, Clear doesn't own the copyright to habits and talking about habits,

:: 22:37:16

Corey

I can talk about habits.

:: 22:38:20

Corey

Now. If I took a chapter of Atomic Habits and wrote it out verbatim, that would be copyright infringement. That would be plagiarism, because that is how he expressed those ideas

:: 22:49:22

Corey

in his own words. Well, I can express the same ideas, give or take,

:: 22:55:09

Corey

in my own way.

:: 22:56:18

Corey

Same idea, different expression. Totally cool.

:: 22:59:19

Corey

it gets to this point of ideas. Real ideas do not matter.

:: 23:03:03

Corey

I hate oh so many times. I was like, oh, I had this really good idea. Okay, cool. I don't fucking care what you do with it. Oh, nothing. I just had a really good idea.

:: 23:11:09

Corey

I don't give a shit much good ideas. Nobody give a shit about good ideas.

:: 23:14:10

Corey

They give a shit about what you do with those ideas. Do you put them into reality,

:: 23:17:17

Corey

or do you just endlessly talk about them and think about it, but never do anything with them?

:: 23:22:12

Corey

So maybe

:: 23:23:02

Corey

spend less time coming up with ideas

:: 23:25:07

Corey

and more time turning those ideas into something real.

:: 23:28:03

Corey

Number ten listen to people who open their wallets, not their mouths.

:: 23:33:13

Corey

A very, very common mistake I made, and a lot of other people make early on, is

:: 23:37:20

Corey

you like, you run polls, you're like, oh, hey, do you think this would be a good idea? I got much ideas for like, hey, do you think I should do this? Or, hey, would you buy this? Sometimes that's that's a question that trips people up

:: 23:48:21

Corey

and then people say, oh, yeah, I would totally buy that.

:: 23:50:20

Corey

Well, that person is voting with their mouth. They have nothing invested. There's no skin in the game. And more often than not, the same person who told you that they would buy doesn't actually buy.

:: 24:04:14

Corey

Why? Because it's easier to vote with your mouth than with your wallet.

:: 24:08:22

Corey

Instead, what I had to learn the very hard way was, you know, when I have like a paid offer,

:: 24:14:02

Corey

like if I'm going to build a new course or some other like new offer like that, I do not ask people if they think it'd be a good idea. I do not ask people if they would buy it. I don't give a shit,

:: 24:24:02

Corey

but I give a shit about is are you actually going to give me your money?

:: 24:26:17

Corey

So now I pre-sell. I basically say, hey, I am going, I am in the process of building this thing. Here's what it is, here's the problems it solves. Here's who it's for, whatever. Here's how much it is.

:: 24:38:09

Corey

If you buy it now, you will get the Earlybird discount rate or whatever.

:: 24:43:23

Corey

But

:: 24:44:12

Corey

you got to buy it now

:: 24:45:13

Corey

if you want that, that discount or whatever the bonus is or whatever,

:: 24:48:09

Corey

some of the spur action.

:: 24:49:11

Corey

Well, let's say I have like my validation number of this. I want to pre-sell something. And in my own head I say as long as ten people buy this during like the pre-sell period, that is my validation number. That means enough people want this early to validate me, actually building the whole thing and investing my own time and money and energy into actually bringing it to reality.

:: 25:13:03

Corey

Well,

:: 25:13:10

Corey

let's say I run a pre-sell for like two weeks,

:: 25:14:23

Corey

then I'm like, then I get myself another like 2 to 4 weeks to actually build the thing out.

:: 25:18:02

Corey

Well, if by that two week mark that validation point, if maybe only six people have bought, what that means is I failed to validate which means not enough people fucking want.

:: 25:29:03

Corey

So then I just give those six people the refunds and then, you know, maybe I offer them a complimentary call for, you know, of a confidence, maybe get some more, you know, market research on like them and like what else they would find valuable in the future. Whatever.

:: 25:40:23

Corey

that may actually sound like a failure. But I actually saved me a shit ton of time, money and energy

:: 25:45:12

Corey

because I didn't build something nobody would have wanted. Because if I can't get ten people to buy early,

:: 25:50:18

Corey

what's there to guarantee anybody would buy after?

:: 25:54:08

Corey

almost like this, you know, field of shit.

:: 25:56:08

Corey

Like, if I build it, they will come. No, if they come, I will build it.

:: 25:59:13

Corey

So when it comes to my actual business and my business decisions,

:: 26:03:10

Corey

I don't care what people

:: 26:04:21

Corey

tell me with their mouths. I care about what they tell me with their wallets.

:: 26:08:14

Corey

Are you actually willing to buy the course, to join the community, to buy my coaching?

:: 26:13:13

Corey

To buy whatever the other thing is?

:: 26:15:21

Corey

And if not, that's cool.

:: 26:17:07

Corey

But that vote doesn't factor into my decisions.

:: 26:20:01

Corey

It's also like, again, go back to an earlier lesson

:: 26:22:15

Corey

People don't value what is freely given. People who invest become invested.

:: 26:27:04

Corey

It's the same thing with this. If somebody actually gives you their money, that means they're invested. That also means they're naturally a higher quality of a customer, of a client, of a member of your audience, of a person, whatever,

:: 26:41:09

Corey

because they're willing to actually invest something real.

:: 26:45:02

Corey

Somebody just saying, oh, that's a good idea. Oh, you should totally do that. That there's no investment in that. There's no skin in the game in that that's easy to do.

:: 26:52:13

Corey

It's just lip service.

:: 26:53:12

Corey

So focus on who are the people actually giving you their money, not just people saying, oh, that's a good idea. Or like on that post, that shit doesn't matter.

:: 27:02:06

Corey

Number 11

:: 27:02:18

Corey

branding is a waste of time.

:: 27:04:13

Corey

So

:: 27:04:22

Corey

branding

:: 27:05:15

Corey

and building a brand or a personal brand are two different things.

:: 27:09:09

Corey

Branding is like the packaging is this is this the wrapping paper kind of deal? Branding is like your hex codes, your fonts, your logo,

:: 27:16:21

Corey

shit like that.

:: 27:17:11

Corey

That doesn't really matter. It especially doesn't matter early on. And even when it does matter, you can always change it later,

:: 27:24:18

Corey

right?

:: 27:24:20

Corey

Like even like major companies rebrand all the time.

:: 27:27:07

Corey

But your brand, your personal brand,

:: 27:29:23

Corey

I find it is much more helpful to think about it as reputation. So any time, like I would ordinarily say, like, oh, my personal matter, like how does this affect my personal brand? Will this help or hurt my personal brand?

:: 27:41:14

Corey

I just substitute reputation. How will this help my reputation? How does this affect my reputation?

:: 27:47:17

Corey

Because your reputation, your personal brand

:: 27:51:05

Corey

is all about trust, respect, connection, resonance.

:: 27:55:02

Corey

What do people think about you when they hear your name?

:: 27:57:15

Corey

It the fucking colors and the font you use or the what are not shit matters.

:: 28:02:12

Corey

It is your reputation that matters.

:: 28:04:14

Corey

So focus on building a brand in that. Focus on building a reputation.

:: 28:09:05

Corey

Don't get caught up in all the branding bullshit, because nobody cares how pretty your wrapping paper is if it's wrapped around a fucking turd, right?

:: 28:15:12

Corey

Like I see people all the time they spend so much time and tens of thousands of dollars on branding kits and, you know, a website rebrand and like, oh, so the shit, it's like, okay,

:: 28:28:06

Corey

but the thing you have rebrand of like what's underneath of like the actual

:: 28:32:20

Corey

substance of your website

:: 28:34:13

Corey

or who you are as a person or the quality of services you offer, one didn't change, but two suck to begin with.

:: 28:42:01

Corey

So it doesn't matter how pretty the wrapping paper is, it doesn't matter how pretty your brand kit is. It could be a dope ass logo. It could be a super fucking cool. You know, colors and hex code or, you know, colors and fonts combinations and like, all is super cool and it's all like, consistent across platforms. And this you did this custom artwork shit, all those super cool.

:: 29:04:10

Corey

And that might get me through the door. But then as soon as I'm through the door, I'm like, oh, well, what does this person actually have to say? What do they actually have to offer? If all that fucking sucks because you didn't focus on building a brand, building a reputation,

:: 29:16:07

Corey

branding didn't matter.

:: 29:17:04

Corey

Focus on building your brand, your reputation

:: 29:20:04

Corey

sure doesn't matter.

:: 29:21:00

Corey

Number 12

:: 29:21:13

Corey

people don't follow you for your content.

:: 29:23:05

Corey

This is something I've talked about to all the above. All about.

:: 29:25:12

Corey

think about like this. If you know Ali, if you follow this content,

:: 29:28:06

Corey

if somebody else took a the script from one of all these videos

:: 29:33:01

Corey

and they rerecorded it frame by frame,

:: 29:36:04

Corey

it wouldn't do nearly as well.

:: 29:37:19

Corey

And the reason for that is it wasn't Ali.

:: 29:40:06

Corey

People don't follow Ali for his content on productivity or building a lifestyle business or whatever the fuck else he's talking about.

:: 29:47:12

Corey

That's cool. And yes, it should be good, but the real reason people follow Ali and they keep coming back to his content is because of him, not his actual content.

:: 29:58:05

Corey

It's the same for pretty much everybody else. People don't follow you for your content. They follow you for you.

:: 30:03:01

Corey

But even like, you know, like this episode or like the other shit I talk about their main.

:: 30:07:20

Corey

I mean, I don't think there are really any other like, psychologists who are also coach and are entrepreneurs who work with, you know, creators, founders, you know, leaders, shit like that who do specifically what I do.

:: 30:19:08

Corey

But there are plenty of other people in like the personal development or self-help space. There are plenty of other people in like the business space and shit.

:: 30:25:17

Corey

And a lot of the things that I say

:: 30:28:01

Corey

maybe aren't new,

:: 30:29:21

Corey

but I say them my way.

:: 30:31:04

Corey

And over time, you've learned to get to know me. Oh, you know, for example, like, you know, maybe oh, Corey cusses or oh, of course, no bullshit. I hear the lockers. No bullshit.

:: 30:39:23

Corey

Or sometimes people follow me because they, you know, I'll talk about one thing I call tactical vulnerability, which is basically not like trauma dumping, but being tactful or tactical, rather of sharing bits and pieces of yourself that may feel a little bit vulnerable.

:: 30:55:09

Corey

So like, you know, I talk about how I grew up poor and shit,

:: 30:58:20

Corey

you know, public housing, food stamps, some delinquency behaviors, other things. Well, a lot of times, or, you know, I've talked about my accent and how when I went to college, I tried to lose my accent. And then that ended up in, you know, some identity issues because I was kind of trying to distance myself from my upbringing.

:: 31:16:16

Corey

And then I had to like, come back to terms with, like, you know, being comfortable with my heritage and my upbringing and how I sounded and reclaiming my, my accent and my identity and things. While a lot of other people, when they hear that, they're like, oh, I grew up poor too, or oh, I've also struggled to accept my accent or I've struggled to accept this.

:: 31:34:23

Corey

You know, other part of me.

:: 31:35:20

Corey

Well, then I can sit here and say some business like, hey, validate your idea before you invest too much into it. You may have heard that from somebody else.

:: 31:43:20

Corey

So it wasn't that you were coming to me for my content.

:: 31:45:08

Corey

You're coming to me, for me and my take on it.

:: 31:47:01

Corey

Or because you feel connected to me, you see yourself in my journey or some other kind of shit right? Or I seem like somebody you would want to, you know, go to a bar with or sit around a campfire with.

:: 31:57:19

Corey

So rather than getting so caught up in trying to create the perfect content, it's like, well, how can I maybe share my imperfections? How can I share my story? My experiences?

:: 32:06:08

Corey

How can I be authentic? Because especially now, you know, is I and fucking copycats and clones and deep fakes and what are also stupid shit is. And even before that, right, there were other people who were just who would copy your account or they would plagiarize your words or some shit that's been going on in one form or another for forever.

:: 32:28:09

Corey

But your your brand going back to the lesson, but your, your reputation, your authenticity, that's really a moat like because when people connect with you,

:: 32:39:21

Corey

that's what matters. It's not your content, it's you. So focus on how can you be you? How can you bring more of you, your most authentic self, forward?

:: 32:50:13

Corey

That's what the fuck matters. It's also super hard to do

:: 32:53:09

Corey

because it feels vulnerable.

:: 32:54:05

Corey

It feels like we're exposed, like, oh, I don't know how to be myself. Like, I need to be like this prim and proper fucking professional fuck all that. Who the fuck are you? Be that person. Easier said than done, but very much worth doing.

:: 33:04:17

Corey

Number 13. Don't try to be a one person media company.

:: 33:10:01

Corey

It's sort of, you know,

:: 33:10:21

Corey

don't half ass a bunch of things. Whole ass. One thing

:: 33:13:14

Corey

know, early on I saw Gary vs stuff. And I mean Gary Vee, I mean, he's got a lot of really good content. But Gary's also got a team of dozens of people to record him to chop up his, his, his videos into 3 to 5 clips a day across every fucking platform. And he's doing this over here and over here and over there.

:: 33:34:09

Corey

And I was like, oh, I'll do that. I can be a one person media company. Let me create native content for each of the whatever. 813 whatever the fuck social platforms.

:: 33:46:02

Corey

And let me comment and repost and do this and do that and like, okay, I got I film the long form, but then I got to do for the video and then the podcast, but then also the newsletter over here. Then I do guest post over here, then I got to do this for a LinkedIn and then Instagram's too fucking much, too fucking much.

:: 34:00:11

Corey

You cannot be a one person media company.

:: 34:02:14

Corey

Not a good one anyway.

:: 34:03:16

Corey

What you can do. What I had to learn to do is identify what are the highest leverage based on my own metrics and like what I'm trying to achieve. What are the highest leverage

:: 34:13:22

Corey

places I can be?

:: 34:15:00

Corey

And how can I focus on them?

:: 34:16:20

Corey

So I guess there's a little bit of like experimenting of like, oh, let me try out LinkedIn. Let me try out this thing over here, but learn to very quickly spin those down like, okay, blue Sky isn't working for me, but LinkedIn. I'm seeing an uptick. I like being on LinkedIn more.

:: 34:30:05

Corey

That makes sense to focus on LinkedIn.

:: 34:32:01

Corey

For me, what I learned was the highest leverage things for me are YouTube, because a lot of people just like watching videos, especially now, more and more people are watching longer videos because they're watching them on like bigger screens, like their TVs.

:: 34:46:02

Corey

like to talk a lot if you can't fucking tell.

:: 34:48:01

Corey

So blogger form makes sense for me. I enjoy it.

:: 34:50:22

Corey

Do a newsletter plus website.

:: 34:52:16

Corey

This gives me another way to express myself. I actually typically prefer to express myself through writing unless I'm talking live. Actually sold videos like this are actually really hard for me to do. My working memory sucks, so like, it's hard for me to.

:: 35:06:02

Corey

And I can't read out loud very well. So, like, I can't look at a fucking, like, teleprompter, like read a verbatim script, but also I lose what the fuck I'm trying to say. So even like bullet points sometimes, it's, like, hard for me to do.

:: 35:16:14

Corey

But if I'm talking live to the cool, it's a weird disconnect.

:: 35:19:09

Corey

So I talking a long time YouTube.

:: 35:21:18

Corey

I like writing, which is a newsletter, and then like one social media platform which is set for me. Currently, the date of recording is LinkedIn. It might change in the future.

:: 35:30:23

Corey

But I stopped trying to be everywhere all at once, 3 to 5 times a day. It's just it's untenable. And it's also how you burn out.

:: 35:39:13

Corey

So if you are one person, focus on one thing.

:: 35:43:00

Corey

Or like three tiny. Thanks again for me. YouTube newsletter one social platform.

:: 35:47:02

Corey

Number 14. Be less impressed, more involved.

:: 35:51:12

Corey

It's actually comes from a quote I heard, Matthew McConaughey,

:: 35:54:20

Corey

share on the Daily Stoic podcast with Ryan Holiday. I love it, and the whole thing is like

:: 36:00:13

Corey

lot of times when you meet somebody famous or just somebody you perceive as higher than you, or you're impressed by

:: 36:07:13

Corey

or inspired by whatever,

:: 36:08:14

Corey

it's easy for you to try to be impressed or to show how impressed you are, or to be impressive yourself.

:: 36:14:21

Corey

Nobody really wants you to fawn over them.

:: 36:17:12

Corey

or get caught up in, like, trying to show by like, oh yeah, I've done this and I'm done this. And I'm like, you're trying to impress him. People want to be impressed.

:: 36:23:20

Corey

They want to have a real conversation. So the whole thing with, like, Matthew McConaughey was talking about is rather than trying to to get into that trap of fawning over them or trying to showboat, try to be actually involved in their life, meaning like give a shit about them as a person. Learn to see them as a person,

:: 36:39:17

Corey

connect with them on that level.

:: 36:41:04

Corey

Because like in real life, people don't have like their follower count or like their revenue number or whatever above their head.

:: 36:48:19

Corey

So don't treat them like they do.

:: 36:50:10

Corey

Like I've met decently famous people and they are just a regular person, a regular person in that because like obviously has like eccentricities and shit. And there are like differences in how they live their life.

:: 37:05:21

Corey

But as a person, as an individual,

:: 37:08:02

Corey

they are a regular person. So if you met them and didn't know they were famous,

:: 37:12:23

Corey

they would just seem like a pretty normal person.

:: 37:15:19

Corey

Well, if you think about it, once you get to a certain level,

:: 37:18:22

Corey

the number of normal interactions you have lessens. So a lot of times when you meet somebody like this, if you can just talk to them like a normal person, it's refreshing,

:: 37:29:07

Corey

but it also makes it a lot easier to become friends.

:: 37:32:10

Corey

Like it's like if you meet someone, you're like, hey, I'm such a big fan, I love this. I love that I basically stalk you and I know everything you've ever said publicly. Who in the fuck wants to befriend their stalker?

:: 37:43:18

Corey

First see if they came in. Read your book. It was great.

:: 37:45:17

Corey

Moving on.

:: 37:46:09

Corey

Because the majority of people I've met

:: 37:47:19

Corey

who at first seemed like they they like they could have been really intimidating of like, oh, they're too famous or there are two wealthy or they're too important or whatever.

:: 37:58:07

Corey

Instantly.

:: 37:59:09

Corey

Like, it's almost like like the walls kind of come down a little bit when you just talk to them like a person and you're trying to, like, genuinely give a shit and authentically connect with them rather than seeing them as a means to an end, rather than trying to impress them rather than fawning over them.

:: 38:12:14

Corey

So be less impressed, more involved.

:: 38:15:19

Corey

Because people are people,

:: 38:17:05

Corey

and people like to be treated like people.

:: 38:20:02

Corey

Number 15

:: 38:20:17

Corey

no one wants you to pick their brain.

:: 38:22:09

Corey

I personally hate this now,

:: 38:23:19

Corey

and I can only imagine how many people I irritated when I was first starting out was like, hey, do you mind if I just pick your brain real quick? Or like, hey, I have 15 questions or like, hey, can you

:: 38:33:02

Corey

do you have time to jump on a zoom call?

:: 38:34:22

Corey

Nobody's got fucking time to jump on a call for you to just be a mooch and like, leech shit from them. Nobody.

:: 38:43:19

Corey

A much better way. Kind of related to, you know, another lesson of being involved rather than impressed.

:: 38:51:01

Corey

Learning how to lead with value, learning how to form a like, have a genuine desire to connect and not just be a leech.

:: 38:58:16

Corey

Showing you care. Showing you've read their stuff and

:: 39:02:09

Corey

how it helps you. Like, hey man, I read your book. It was it was super helpful. I love this part. I actually

:: 39:08:22

Corey

this lesson I applied in this way and this was a result in my own life. Just wanted to shout it out and say thanks.

:: 39:16:00

Corey

I saw you're coming to a conference in Austin.

:: 39:20:08

Corey

I'll be there.

:: 39:21:07

Corey

Hope to get to meet.

:: 39:23:09

Corey

That's it.

:: 39:23:20

Corey

You're not picking the brain. You're not obligating. There was some bullshit zoom call. You're leading with value, with genuine connection.

:: 39:30:13

Corey

Because people like when people create something, they want to know that it's helping people. So something as simple as that, like, hey, this this thing you made helped me.

:: 39:40:08

Corey

I will be here.

:: 39:41:07

Corey

Hopefully we can connect

:: 39:42:09

Corey

a simple.

:: 39:42:21

Corey

Or if you have a question rather than the the cold DM approach of hey, I have a question, mind if I ask it?

:: 39:52:14

Corey

Buddy, you blew your one fucking chance at me seeing your question. You wasted your question because your question was can you ask a question? Just ask the fucking question.

:: 40:03:11

Corey

One of the guys I connected with is name's Nick Wignall. He's a fellow psychologist and and writer and creator and things. And when I was first starting, I was still in the process of like googling how to start an LLC and all these other things. I was like, fuck, I don't know how to do, like a WordPress website.

:: 40:21:10

Corey

Like, I don't know how to make a website.

:: 40:22:17

Corey

So Sonic, he had grown a large audience on like medium at the time, but I noticed he had a small audience on Twitter, so hit him up. And as I came in,

:: 40:31:20

Corey

I'm a fellow psychologist. Been reading your stuff and meeting for for a long time. Really like it.

:: 40:35:17

Corey

I'm actually trying to go into a similar space, not talking about the same topics you talk about, but using my expertise as a psychologist to help people in a lay friendly way.

:: 40:45:06

Corey

I noticed you're using your I noticed your website is built on WordPress.

:: 40:49:14

Corey

Do you have any templates or starting advice for for what I'm trying to do.

:: 40:56:08

Corey

So again, layered like here's a connection value work. It's been helpful. Here's a quick question.

:: 41:01:05

Corey

And that turned into like him and give me some really good advice. When we kind of became friends and things.

:: 41:05:01

Corey

That is how you can reach out to people. Not this bullshit of, hey, can I pick your brain? Lead with value, lead with genuine connection.

:: 41:12:08

Corey

There's nothing wrong with sending a cold message

:: 41:16:00

Corey

as long as there's genuine connection with it, because cold just means you don't know them beforehand.

:: 41:20:02

Corey

doesn't mean has to be spammy. It doesn't have to be a leech or a mooch. You can lead with value and genuine connection.

:: 41:26:08

Corey

Number 16 who you can text matters more than your follower count.

:: 41:30:21

Corey

Like being online is fun, having a lot of followers is cool. Whatever.

:: 41:33:19

Corey

But I've met too many people with large audiences, large followings, and they don't actually have good access to individual people.

:: 41:41:22

Corey

Like, they may have had a celebrity reshare one of their posts, but they themselves can't reach out to that person.

:: 41:48:16

Corey

So learning to build like deep, genuine, authentic relationships with real people goes way further than any follower count ever could.

:: 41:56:15

Corey

It's also like even quote unquote influencers with big followings. The majority of their business outcomes happen behind the scenes.

:: 42:04:10

Corey

Whether it is through the DMs in a text message, being able to just hit up somebody to go hang out.

:: 42:10:03

Corey

Because one person can help open doors.

:: 42:12:15

Corey

They can teach you. They can connect you with other people. Their potential collaborator.

:: 42:17:03

Corey

And I mean, it's one reason I started the podcast was because I ended up developing, you know, a quote unquote network of, you know, actual friends and good, solid relationships. And we were having these conversations privately,

:: 42:32:06

Corey

either at a coffee shop or, you know, in a jujitsu gym or on zoom or something.

:: 42:37:18

Corey

But I wanted a space. I could have some of these conversations publicly for other people to enjoy.

:: 42:42:11

Corey

ery specific person than have: 1000

:: 42:51:20

Corey

have a relationship with, or be able to actually contact.

:: 42:54:21

Corey

So who you can text matters way more than how many followers you have.

:: 42:58:08

Corey

Number 17

:: 42:59:01

Corey

don't romanticize being a lone wolf.

:: 43:01:17

Corey

Because lone wolves die in the wild.

:: 43:04:11

Corey

Like, no matter how smart you are, somebody knows more than you.

:: 43:08:20

Corey

And one mentor. One friend, one question.

:: 43:13:00

Corey

Can save you years and tens of thousands of dollars.

:: 43:16:03

Corey

So rather than trying to say, well, how can I just brute force my way through this, I'm a lone wolf. I don't need anybody. I can figure it out on my own one. Maybe you can't.

:: 43:25:03

Corey

The two, maybe you can. But how long would it take you to do?

:: 43:28:14

Corey

In business, collaborations are everything.

:: 43:31:12

Corey

So get rid of the whole lone wolf mentality.

:: 43:34:01

Corey

Now, this doesn't mean like you have to be dependent on other people. Obviously, you have to be really great at what you do in your lane.

:: 43:40:08

Corey

And maybe you could succeed relatively on your own. But why do it? Entrepreneurship can be lonely enough.

:: 43:47:01

Corey

Why make it feel even lonely or even harder? Trying to do everything yourself?

:: 43:51:18

Corey

When again, you could hit up somebody to collaborate, you could just ask somebody for some of their insight.

:: 43:56:15

Corey

Or even just have friends who get it. Other creator friends, entrepreneur friends, founder friends, or everyone call them have some sort of friends who get it.

:: 44:04:20

Corey

That you can hit up and just, you know, have even like a monthly call where you just get together, update each other, give any support you can,

:: 44:13:11

Corey

and just stay connected.

:: 44:14:14

Corey

One of my friends, Mel Mel Varghese,

:: 44:16:12

Corey

Mel and I have like a standing monthly call.

:: 44:18:18

Corey

And on these calls yellow, we talk about, you know, here's what's working. Well, here's what I'm excited for. Here's some fun ideas I'm going to explore in the next quarter. We have all that.

:: 44:27:18

Corey

But then we also make a space for like, hey man, this is what I'm struggling with lately. Or hey, my launch didn't go as well as I wanted, or hey, I'm really, you know, I'm at this fork in the road and I'm trying to figure out like, which direction, you know, which race should I go?

:: 44:40:08

Corey

And even if the other person doesn't have an answer for that, even if we aren't asking or seeking an actual answer for it,

:: 44:46:08

Corey

just having the space to process it, to feel connected and support from somebody else who gets it super, super important.

:: 44:54:18

Corey

So at the risk of, you know, making this metaphor a little crunchier, don't be a lone wolf. Find your pack.

:: 45:00:00

Corey

There 18.

:: 45:00:16

Corey

Focus on building a portfolio of assets.

:: 45:04:09

Corey

And I don't just mean like a stock portfolio.

:: 45:06:02

Corey

every article you write, every workshop you do, every video or podcast episode you post.

:: 45:11:09

Corey

All of these you can look at

:: 45:13:00

Corey

as individual assets in your portfolio of thought leadership and competency.

:: 45:18:21

Corey

Each one builds

:: 45:20:10

Corey

your reputation. Each one attracts the right people and the right opportunities.

:: 45:26:03

Corey

It's also like nobody cares what you say you can do. Everybody makes claims all the time. They don't care what you say you can do. They care about what you've actually done.

:: 45:34:18

Corey

I like the number of times I've, you know, reached out to somebody who I felt was like a higher level than me.

:: 45:40:14

Corey

What most people do when they get hit up a lot

:: 45:43:07

Corey

is, say, on Twitter,

:: 45:44:14

Corey

I'll hit somebody up on Twitter, and then they will look at my profile and I'll say, okay, well, here's this guy Corey.

:: 45:49:20

Corey

He's hit me up. Let me see if this guy is worth following up with.

:: 45:53:21

Corey

And one thing they do a lot of times is they look through what have you posted, what ideas have you shared.

:: 45:59:06

Corey

Whether that is on social media or a lot of times they'll go to your website, at least in my case. So go to my website and then they'll look through the articles I've posted, or they'll see the podcast I've put out or the podcasts I've been on that maybe even watch 1 or 2.

:: 46:11:09

Corey

Because again, each of these is an asset in my portfolio. I didn't like oh, I like how Corey thinks.

:: 46:16:18

Corey

Let me follow up with him. Let me hit him up and start a conversation.

:: 46:20:10

Corey

The other piece to this is I will share some on social media,

:: 46:23:20

Corey

but the majority of my effort goes into longer form content. I can go back to one of the other lessons. YouTube has a long lifespan, right? There's some videos that'll pop off ten years later.

:: 46:34:18

Corey

They don't have my newsletter and my website.

:: 46:36:09

Corey

Because if I only post something to to Twitter or, you know, even LinkedIn in a couple days or a couple weeks, nobody's ever going to see it again.

:: 46:44:08

Corey

That isn't really a good asset, because assets are meant to compound in value over time.

:: 46:49:13

Corey

versus like an article on your website. People will find those years and years later.

:: 46:53:21

Corey

So again, every time I think about putting out a piece of content, I think about it as how can this be an asset that adds to the value of my portfolio and will continue to increase in value over time?

:: 47:06:00

Corey

Number 19 don't live on rented land.

:: 47:09:15

Corey

So social media is is it can be fun. There are a lot of notifications. There's a lot of, you know, kind of hijacking how your brain works so that you want to come back to it and use it again and again.

:: 47:19:18

Corey

But the issue well, there are a lot of issues with social media, but

:: 47:21:20

Corey

one of the issues is you are beholden to the algorithm, right?

:: 47:25:01

Corey

Like all it takes is a single algorithm change and suddenly

:: 47:29:02

Corey

your posts aren't getting seen by the people who signed up to get your posts.

:: 47:34:06

Corey

Or like if I have a thousand LinkedIn followers and I put out a post,

:: 47:39:01

Corey

10 or 20 of my actual followers may see it

:: 47:41:22

Corey

now. Yes, maybe other people will see it and they may follow me.

:: 47:45:18

Corey

But unlikely in the grand scheme of things, unless something goes quote unquote viral.

:: 47:49:17

Corey

But the other thing is, I could be on a good trajectory. I could have, you know, hacked the algorithm. I could have figured it out.

:: 47:55:14

Corey

But then the algorithm changes

:: 47:57:03

Corey

and suddenly my reach is cut in half or even becomes like a 5% or a 10th of what it used to be.

:: 48:04:11

Corey

This happens all the time on all the social media platforms.

:: 48:07:12

Corey

But the other thing is like, you know, getting shadow banned. Now, a lot of people think they get shadow ban when really they just have shitty content. But

:: 48:13:08

Corey

I remember early on

:: 48:14:09

Corey

when I was still writing about like, mental health and things,

:: 48:16:11

Corey

I got shadow banned from Facebook and like meta platforms

:: 48:19:19

Corey

in that

:: 48:20:08

Corey

I wrote an article

:: 48:21:06

Corey

that got flagged.

:: 48:23:08

Corey

It was basically an article about like suicide.

:: 48:25:00

Corey

And obviously it wasn't pro suicide, but it was a it was built around the idea of,

:: 48:31:17

Corey

you know, a lot of people think suicide is selfish, like, oh, you're just you're trying to find the easy way out. And actually, from a psychological perspective, the reason a lot of people struggle with suicidal ideation is that they feel like a burden.

:: 48:42:15

Corey

So the whole point of this article is actually based on, like an academic article around the idea that in some cases it is almost like a distorted form of altruism

:: 48:53:13

Corey

of, well, I want to do right by my family. I want to ease their burden.

:: 48:58:23

Corey

I've identified myself as a burden, therefore, logically

:: 49:02:18

Corey

like incorrectly. But in this flawed logic scenario, I need to remove myself as the burden for them.

:: 49:09:20

Corey

And the whole point of the article wasn't to advocate for it. Clearly,

:: 49:13:00

Corey

it was to help people understand that there are nuances with mental health struggles like that,

:: 49:17:22

Corey

and to learn to see it from the other person's perspective so that you can give adequate support.

:: 49:23:15

Corey

Well, because Facebook and I guess meta in general at the time, anyway,

:: 49:27:17

Corey

had a blanket.

:: 49:28:13

Corey

You can't talk about suicide in any capacity. Even I, as a doctoral level psychologist licensed to practice clinical psychology, to diagnose it, to treat it, to do all this other shit around it. Even I

:: 49:43:22

Corey

got shadow banned because I talked about it.

:: 49:46:04

Corey

And I mean that as as in Facebook. I couldn't even, like send the article in Facebook Messenger.

:: 49:53:09

Corey

Like Facebook Messenger would say, you are not allowed to share this link. We will not send it. You cannot post it. You cannot. There's there's no way anybody on Facebook's platform will be able to see this article. Click on the link. Even you can't even publish the link.

:: 50:10:16

Corey

Want to like if I would have put all of my eggs into the basket of Facebook, I would've been fucked.

:: 50:17:11

Corey

Because who knows the other ramifications that that would have had on any of my future posts.

:: 50:21:17

Corey

Or my page or anything at the time. So one I don't really focus meta platforms now, just it isn't worth it. I'm I'll sometimes posting things on Instagram, but in no way do I use those for anything.

:: 50:33:07

Corey

Business outcome related.

:: 50:34:22

Corey

But that also kind of goes to the idea of like,

:: 50:37:03

Corey

you know, if you have a thousand followers or even like 100 that say you have 100,000 followers on the platform, if tomorrow your account gets deleted or shadow banned, banned, shut down in some way. Well then tomorrow you have zero followers and zero way to contact them.

:: 50:55:00

Corey

Versus if you have a website, people still visit it. If you have a newsletter, well, now you have people's email addresses. So social media is typically seen as rented land.

:: 51:03:23

Corey

And a newsletter and your website are considered owned land because with the newsletter, you know, if I, if I want to move from like git to Beehive or Substack to kid or, you know, any shuffling around, all I have to do is download a CSV file of

:: 51:19:12

Corey

all of my subscribers email addresses, and then I can just

:: 51:23:13

Corey

download it from one

:: 51:24:19

Corey

email service provider and upload it to the next one.

:: 51:27:08

Corey

So I keep my contact list and I can take it with me wherever I go. What was LinkedIn

:: 51:31:22

Corey

or Twitter or Instagram or any of these others? You never actually get that person's contact information.

:: 51:37:23

Corey

So the priority is always getting that contact information is always getting

:: 51:42:23

Corey

that email address so that they can subscribe to our newsletter so that you can send them your ideas.

:: 51:48:11

Corey

Right. Again, if I have a thousand LinkedIn followers, maybe only ten of them are going to see my post. If I have a thousand newsletter subscribers and I send a newsletter out,

:: 51:56:13

Corey

all: 1000

:: 52:00:08

Corey

but they all get it.

:: 52:01:20

Corey

Which related note

:: 52:02:21

Corey

if you haven't already, I would highly recommend you subscribe to my newsletter. Just go to create acme.com

:: 52:08:20

Corey

to subscribe.

:: 52:09:12

Corey

Every week ish, I share psychological insights that are designed to help you transform your business, your life, and yourself.

:: 52:16:12

Corey

And when you subscribe, I'll send you the Psychology of Success Masterclass completely for free.

:: 52:20:18

Corey

It is a multi-day, email based course

:: 52:23:21

Corey

that will help you build a foundations to succeed in life and business.

:: 52:27:09

Corey

again, Creator alchemy.com.

:: 52:28:19

Corey

That's where you go to sign up.

:: 52:29:14

Corey

I'll put a link below.

:: 52:30:11

Corey

Number 20.

:: 52:31:03

Corey

If you're stuck at a fork in the road, it means both paths are viable.

:: 52:36:00

Corey

It's really easy to think, oh well, I'm at a fork in the road. I need to do more research. I need to do another pro con list. I need to really, really think this through

:: 52:45:22

Corey

so that I can pick the best option so that I can pick the right option.

:: 52:50:08

Corey

And the reality is, the reason you are stuck at this fork in the road is usually proof both paths survival. Because if one path was clearly not viable, you wouldn't be stuck. You would not be at this fork in the road. You would be able to clearly say, oh, that is not the right path. I'm going down this one.

:: 53:09:07

Corey

And you would continue to do that every time you hit a fork. Oh, this is clearly the right.

:: 53:12:18

Corey

So then when you eventually get to one where you're like, fuck, I don't know which way to go.

:: 53:15:12

Corey

As intelligent as you are, as thought out as you are,

:: 53:19:06

Corey

that probably means both are viable.

:: 53:22:03

Corey

And I heard this

:: 53:22:21

Corey

idea a while back.

:: 53:23:23

Corey

Of any time you are stuck to make. If anytime you're stuck making a decision, flip a coin

:: 53:28:21

Corey

and basically let the coin toss decide. And it sounds flippant,

:: 53:32:07

Corey

but the way it actually goes is when you flip the coin, so you say, okay, heads I go left, tails I go right.

:: 53:38:03

Corey

when you flip the coin, when the coin is in midair,

:: 53:41:11

Corey

which way does your brain say, oh fuck, I hope it lands on tails.

:: 53:46:15

Corey

Well, the fact that your brain was like, oh, I hope it lands on tails. That means you actually want to go that direction.

:: 53:53:05

Corey

So if you flip a coin and you feel yourself leaning one way

:: 53:56:01

Corey

and both ways are viable,

:: 53:57:12

Corey

then the way you lean is probably perfectly fine.

:: 54:01:07

Corey

whether you flip a coin, throw a dart, spin a wheel, whatever the fuck doesn't matter

:: 54:05:16

Corey

if both are equally viable.

:: 54:07:01

Corey

Now, if you're still stuck,

:: 54:08:08

Corey

then a next level to this.

:: 54:10:18

Corey

Is still to identify which one are you maybe leaning very, very slightly more toward.

:: 54:15:14

Corey

Okay. Well, which one is that? So the first question which one is that? Second question. Why is that?

:: 54:21:17

Corey

Third question.

:: 54:22:15

Corey

What would have to be true in order for you to give yourself permission to commit to that path?

:: 54:28:12

Corey

And the question number four,

:: 54:29:15

Corey

what do you need to do to make those things true?

:: 54:33:09

Corey

So for example, oh, I'm leaning more toward this path

:: 54:35:20

Corey

because I feel that in five years that is just a much better. Like that's where I want to end up in five years. The other path, five years down the line, I don't actually want to go that way. Okay, cool.

:: 54:45:00

Corey

But you're still maybe waiting for permission, or you're still feeling that you're not quite ready to commit to this path.

:: 54:50:20

Corey

What are you waiting to be true? In order for you to give yourself permission to go down that path? Well, if I had a couple more leads or if I had a couple more clients, or if this one change happened, then I would feel comfortable enough to move forward.

:: 55:08:08

Corey

Okay, cool.

:: 55:08:19

Corey

What do you need to do to make those things true?

:: 55:10:10

Corey

What do you need to do to get more leads, to get more clients? To make that change happen?

:: 55:15:03

Corey

Okay. And you just you break these things down so that you can go down the path. You know, you actually want to go down.

:: 55:19:13

Corey

Number 21,

:: 55:20:04

Corey

metrics matter

:: 55:21:08

Corey

until they mislead you.

:: 55:23:05

Corey

external metrics. Any metric really is inherently flawed

:: 55:26:06

Corey

because you probably heard, you know, what gets measured, gets managed. Yes. But that also means whatever you measure is what you optimize for.

:: 55:34:04

Corey

So you have to be very intentional with what you measure, because that is what you're going to optimize for. There's this thing, this call like the Cobra effect. And basically the story goes way back when it was in India or some village or town within India. They wanted to incentivize people to collect cobras

:: 55:57:13

Corey

so they could get rid of them.

:: 55:58:11

Corey

So they would pay like, you know, they would pay money per head of a Cobra.

:: 56:02:11

Corey

Well then so that was what they measured. How many cobras that were bringing in

:: 56:05:08

Corey

people were incentivized to bring in cobras,

:: 56:08:02

Corey

cobra heads.

:: 56:08:22

Corey

Well, what actually ended up happening because they optimize for that is like, oh, well, if I bring in one cobra head, you know, I get $5.

:: 56:15:18

Corey

If I bring in ten cobra heads, I get $50.

:: 56:19:15

Corey

So people ended up breeding cobras so that they can make more money by bringing in cobras,

:: 56:27:02

Corey

because they measured how many covers they were getting in, because they optimized for getting more cobras,

:: 56:32:12

Corey

they actually ended up making the problem so much worse,

:: 56:35:23

Corey

because then all these people started breeding cobras in order to make money from submitting cobras.

:: 56:41:04

Corey

It's the same thing when you optimize for basically any metric.

:: 56:43:20

Corey

If you optimize

:: 56:44:17

Corey

for impressions,

:: 56:45:14

Corey

then you're going to do what gets more impressions, which oftentimes is being controversial.

:: 56:50:01

Corey

If you optimize for money at all costs, then you are likely to do things that compromise your integrity or your values in order to make more money.

:: 57:00:13

Corey

So yes, you do need to measure certain things. You do need to be aware of certain metrics for sure, but being very intentional with what you measure, because that is what you will likely optimize for.

:: 57:12:07

Corey

Number 22 audience capture can cause you to lose yourself.

:: 57:17:03

Corey

So audience captures is this phenomenon where

:: 57:19:14

Corey

you basically

:: 57:20:15

Corey

become a caricature of yourself? Here's how I kind of think about it. One of the

:: 57:26:05

Corey

common examples people will give is there's this kid his name was, I think about like Nakamoto avocado or something. It was a skinny little kid

:: 57:34:13

Corey

and he was a YouTuber, and he would just make all these like random

:: 57:37:10

Corey

influencer

:: 57:38:13

Corey

day in the life.

:: 57:39:12

Corey

Just random, you know, old school YouTube shit.

:: 57:41:18

Corey

And he wasn't really getting a lot of traction. But then one day he did. This is like a mukbang video was like a.

:: 57:46:11

Corey

Like a binge eating video where, like, you eat just like a mountain of ramen or some shit.

:: 57:50:17

Corey

That video went viral.

:: 57:52:02

Corey

So he was like, oh, well, let me do another video and see if that goes viral too.

:: 57:55:11

Corey

And it did, because yes, there are a lot of people with a feeder kink on YouTube. I guess I don't.

:: 58:00:19

Corey

So over time he just did more and more and more of those, and they got bigger and bigger and bigger and so did he. So he went from like this super skinny little vegan kid to this, like, I don't know, 400 plus pound, just slob of a person

:: 58:14:07

Corey

because of audience cash, because he was giving his audience more of what he thought they wanted.

:: 58:19:17

Corey

Right. You see the same thing with, you know, people like Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson, at first talked a lot more about, like, religion and philosophy. And he once he got into like political commentary type stuff.

:: 58:30:20

Corey

He would criticize people on the right and the left, but over time, he stopped really being as accepted by people who were more left leaning and people who were more right leaning embraced him a lot more. So over time, his political views and commentary went further and further and further to the right. Conservative.

:: 58:51:04

Corey

All that

:: 58:51:18

Corey

to the point that then he he was he almost he he sounded like anti left and he would attack the left and the woke and he would go off on like trans shit and like whatever it was,

:: 59:02:06

Corey

don't know, Jordan Peterson.

:: 59:03:07

Corey

We have mutual friends and they have respect for him. So you know, I would definitely be down to have a conversation with him and get to know the real him.

:: 59:09:05

Corey

But that is an example of audience capture of. At first he would criticize both, but over time he went pretty hard, right?

:: 59:17:07

Corey

And started to lose part of himself.

:: 59:19:04

Corey

Mercado avocado started to lose himself by giving his audience more of what they wanted.

:: 59:24:08

Corey

Even Mark Manson a little bit ago, he put out a video about how he was effectively spinning down his podcast, even though it was one of the top podcasts in the world for this very reason. Because of audience capture, because he was like, look,

:: 59:37:16

Corey

there are a lot of real incentives for me to do the podcast a certain way that doesn't really feel aligned with my own values or the the direction I want to go, but people give me a lot of money to do this.

:: 59:50:16

Corey

And I have, you know, ad spots I've got to fill. So I've got to put out episodes. And sometimes that means I will have somebody on the podcast that I don't really want on the podcast, or I don't push back against them as much as I would like to. Or maybe I have people on who are more controversial,

:: 00:09:11

Corey

even though I wouldn't ordinarily want to have them on, but I know they would drive views because of the controversy they bring,

:: 00:15:07

Corey

or purely because they have a large audience and would promote that episode.

:: 00:18:19

Corey

I know that episode will do better.

:: 00:20:13

Corey

So then he was he. Thankfully he was able to resist that that pull of well, let me just do this because of all of the incredible incentives, despite the misalignment in my own values.

:: 00:32:09

Corey

But it is very, very easy for audience capture to occur.

:: 00:36:08

Corey

And I remember early on when I was on Twitter,

:: 00:39:05

Corey

I

:: 00:39:21

Corey

followed a couple of the the Growth Guru bro's and their templates and their approaches to going viral, and I started to get traction honestly, really quickly. But then I saw the types of people I was attracting.

:: 00:54:15

Corey

I was like, I don't want you motherfuckers around me because I don't like your like your beliefs, your views, how you see other people, how you show up in the world.

:: 01:04:00

Corey

Not my jam. I don't want to fuck with you.

:: 01:06:00

Corey

But there were a lot of incentives that tried to motivate me to keep doing that. I'm getting a lot of growth. I'm getting all these people. Everybody's agreeing with me. I'm making a name for myself. I was like, no, because where this would lead, it's audience capture, where it would lead, I would become somebody different.

:: 01:24:04

Corey

I don't want that.

:: 01:25:02

Corey

So I put out a couple posts that, you know, was basically me planting my flag as far as my philosophy and a couple of my views. So it's like, hey, I'm not your people, okay?

:: 01:35:21

Corey

And thankfully, those wrong, critical, wrong people left

:: 01:38:23

Corey

And I was able to course correct.

:: 01:40:00

Corey

But being super, super aware of audience capture because it will cause you to lose yourself.

:: 01:44:05

Corey

Number 23 forget about work life balance. It is a lie. When you're an entrepreneur,

:: 01:49:09

Corey

your business will be on your mind 24 over seven, 365 or 366 for leap years.

:: 01:55:09

Corey

Like even when I'm caught off work, I'm still thinking about my business. When I'm in the car on the drive to the gym, I'll have an idea like, oh fuck, I need to write that down real quick because that'll make for a good article.

:: 02:06:19

Corey

Or like, oh, even, even this episode started off as me being on my way to the gym. I'd be like, oh, I should totally do a video about, you know, harsh truths because I'm coming up on my five year anniversary as an entrepreneur,

:: 02:19:16

Corey

your business is never not on your mind.

:: 02:21:08

Corey

I'm going back to my friend chewy. You know, chewy,

:: 02:25:05

Corey

he's a co-owner of a jujitsu gym.

:: 02:27:08

Corey

He's got a jujitsu YouTube channel. He now runs.

:: 02:30:05

Corey

jitsu tournaments, and he does a bunch of other things. That's what he does all day, every day. And he's talked about this before.

:: 02:38:02

Corey

You know his wife now, Jess, she's fucking great. She understands that they have a great life. But in the past he would, you know, date other people and they would just be like, hey, can you skip the gym today?

:: 02:48:05

Corey

Or hey, can you just, you know, clock out for the rest of that? He's like, no, this is my life. This is what I do.

:: 02:54:18

Corey

Work life balance for me makes sense. When you have a regular job,

:: 02:58:16

Corey

you clock in, you clock out. You don't give a shit about your job in between building to burn down overnight. Long as you clock back in the next day, sure doesn't matter.

:: 03:06:19

Corey

But when you own your own shit,

:: 03:08:09

Corey

balance isn't really a thing anymore. I much prefer to look at it as work life integration.

:: 03:13:18

Corey

Meaning how can I intertwine my business and my life

:: 03:18:20

Corey

in a way that feels aligned for me, in a way that energizes me? Yes, I set boundaries,

:: 03:24:22

Corey

but my business is always part of my life.

:: 03:27:08

Corey

Like, this is like I do this because I love doing this.

:: 03:29:22

Corey

I work seven days a week, not because I have to, but because I legitimately enjoy what I do.

:: 03:36:11

Corey

So that might mean, like on the weekends I only work two hours.

:: 03:39:17

Corey

But I would rather work those two hours

:: 03:41:22

Corey

than not.

:: 03:43:02

Corey

But if you don't love what you do, then yes, the work life balance mental model is much more helpful. But as an entrepreneur, I haven't really met a quote unquote balanced entrepreneur.

:: 03:54:08

Corey

They're all obsessive.

:: 03:55:11

Corey

They're all in or they're they're not all, all or nothing. And their business is one of the things they've decided to be all in on.

:: 04:03:12

Corey

Which is why another reason entrepreneurship can be lonely, because other people don't get that.

:: 04:08:09

Corey

Right. When I talk to you, you know some of my friends who aren't entrepreneurs,

:: 04:11:08

Corey

they'll bitch about their job for a little bit, but then they're talking about what they're doing that weekend or some, you know, recreational thing, or it'll be, you know, town gossip or some shit.

:: 04:22:01

Corey

But with my entrepreneur friends, it's always like, hey, man, here's what we've been doing. Oh, I can't wait to try this out next. Or yeah, I'm going to this conference and like, oh yeah. Like, what do you think about this new thing in the business world? Like,

:: 04:34:10

Corey

we talk about business a shit ton because we like business or we talk about creativity or we talk about philosophy and how that informs our approach to business.

:: 04:42:22

Corey

Like everything generally comes back to that because we're doing what we love.

:: 04:47:08

Corey

And that means not really being able to turn it off.

:: 04:50:18

Corey

So for me, work life integration, much better work life balance kind of a lie for entrepreneurs.

:: 04:55:20

Corey

Number 24

:: 04:56:13

Corey

if you do not respect your value,

:: 04:58:17

Corey

no one else will.

:: 04:59:16

Corey

This includes your actual value, but also your boundaries, your time, whatever.

:: 05:03:16

Corey

If you don't respect your time,

:: 05:05:03

Corey

you can't expect other people to

:: 05:06:13

Corey

be like, if I say, hey, I don't take client calls before noon,

:: 05:11:05

Corey

and client is like, hey, can you squeeze me in at 7:00 Am?

:: 05:15:02

Corey

If I say yes? And you know, there are exceptions, right? Sometimes, like there's like an A legitimate emergency or something. Okay.

:: 05:21:17

Corey

But as a general practice,

:: 05:23:09

Corey

if I say yes, I have now said I don't respect my time and you don't have to respect my time. You.

:: 05:27:23

Corey

Or somebody hits me up with like, hey, Corey,

:: 05:29:12

Corey

do you have 15 minutes

:: 05:31:01

Corey

for me to pick your brain?

:: 05:32:07

Corey

Do you have 15 minutes to jump on a call real quick

:: 05:34:23

Corey

so I can pitch you some bullshit?

:: 05:36:16

Corey

Early on, I used to think that I owed people my time, right? Like, oh, well, they they bought my course, or they followed me for a while.

:: 05:45:00

Corey

I owe it to them

:: 05:46:19

Corey

to give them my time. And what that turned into was all of my time being spent.

:: 05:53:06

Corey

On things that didn't serve me well, things that didn't align with what I was trying to do, and things that didn't actually allow me to help even more people.

:: 05:59:22

Corey

I was also burning out.

:: 06:00:23

Corey

And it came back to I wasn't respecting my own time.

:: 06:02:21

Corey

Now, like with value, you know, if I say, hey, you want to work with me, this is how much it is for this, you know, level of engagement.

:: 06:10:10

Corey

That's I was like, can you do half?

:: 06:12:23

Corey

No, I mean, I can I just fucking won't.

:: 06:16:17

Corey

Because the fact that you're saying that means that you don't value me. And what I bring to the table.

:: 06:21:00

Corey

Why would I want to work with somebody who doesn't value

:: 06:23:13

Corey

what I bring?

:: 06:24:05

Corey

Well, if I don't value what I bring, then I'm going to say yes.

:: 06:26:19

Corey

And obviously yes there is. Sometimes there's flexibility for for various reasons. But as a again, as a blanket thing,

:: 06:32:11

Corey

it's really easy to just bulk as soon as somebody say, hey, can you do less? Hey, can you meet real quick? Hey, can you squeeze this in real quick?

:: 06:39:07

Corey

remember when I worked at a rec center, I was a building manager and one of the directors.

:: 06:45:03

Corey

He had a standing meeting with himself from noon to one,

:: 06:48:08

Corey

and he would just go workout.

:: 06:49:10

Corey

And he would always have people say, hey,

:: 06:50:23

Corey

can you just skip that meeting? Or can you just push your workout to squeeze in another meeting with us? So we have these important people coming in here's like, look,

:: 06:59:11

Corey

that is a meeting with myself.

:: 07:00:21

Corey

If I push that meeting, I'm not respecting myself.

:: 07:04:00

Corey

But more importantly, when I have that meeting with myself, when I go work out, I am more effective the rest of the day. When I skip that meeting, I am less effective the rest of the day.

:: 07:15:01

Corey

And that really stuck with me like

:: 07:16:11

Corey

respect starts with you. You have to respect the value you bring.

:: 07:19:23

Corey

You have to respect your boundaries. You have to respect your time, your pricing, whatever.

:: 07:25:00

Corey

If you ever want anyone else to respect it.

:: 07:27:22

Corey

Again, obviously there are exceptions, right? Sometimes you may be flexible in pricing. You may squeeze in a meeting, you know, every now and then. But in general.

:: 07:35:09

Corey

Respect starts with you.

:: 07:36:11

Corey

number 25 confidence is overrated.

:: 07:40:04

Corey

Everybody wants to be more confident. Everybody wants, you know, to just be the epitome of confidence. I don't think about it like confidence.

:: 07:49:19

Corey

Because we typically think about confidence is like the antidote to insecurity.

:: 07:53:11

Corey

Well, insecurity is often selfish in that it is self-centered.

:: 07:58:23

Corey

So when I was on Pat Flynn's podcast, he and I were talking about this. So he and I both do, you know, public speaking like we speak in public for a living.

:: 08:06:12

Corey

And we were talking about, like, nerves

:: 08:08:04

Corey

and how, like every time before you have to get up and talk, I have to pee.

:: 08:13:04

Corey

I get, you know, my hands sweat, I get like, you know, heart racing, all this and that just doesn't go away. Hasn't gone away at this point, probably never will. And that's fine.

:: 08:22:12

Corey

But anytime I start to be like, oh, well, what will they think? What if I mess up what I have to say? Or what if I said the wrong way?

:: 08:28:10

Corey

Or what if a joke doesn't land? Or what if you know whatever? I forget a point. Whatever it is.

:: 08:32:11

Corey

that is all self-centered. My insecurities are because I'm focusing on myself.

:: 08:37:15

Corey

So you would think, oh well then the the antidote is to be confident, exude confidence, speak to the back of the room, pull your shoulders back like puff your chest out, fuck all that.

:: 08:48:13

Corey

That form of confidence doesn't really work for a lot of people.

:: 08:51:20

Corey

I look at it much more as what do I have? Conviction. Meaning what do I believe needs to exist in the world because it will help other people.

:: 09:01:01

Corey

So if I'm getting up on a stage and a to a group of people, rather than focusing on myself and my own perceived insecurities or inadequacies, I say, why do the people in this room need to hear this message?

:: 09:13:21

Corey

Well, now suddenly my self-consciousness goes away because I'm not focusing on myself anymore. I'm focusing on other people. What do they need? Why do they need it?

:: 09:22:18

Corey

Well then confidence. You know, you're bypassing confidence. Confidence is irrelevant at that point

:: 09:27:20

Corey

because you're focusing on what you have. Conviction and conviction inherently is about more than just your self confidence is just you try to give yourself a pep talk.

:: 09:38:08

Corey

Conviction will keep you going when your confidence would otherwise falter.

:: 09:43:14

Corey

So I stopped really thinking about confidence a long time ago. Now, I say, what do I have conviction and why? Why do I have convictions? Why does this need to exist in the world? Well, now I'm focusing so much on helping other people and bringing this thing into reality.

:: 10:00:02

Corey

I've kind of removed myself from the equation and any of my own anxieties or insecurities that might come along.

:: 10:06:08

Corey

So confidence overrated.

:: 10:08:06

Corey

Number 26 no one knows what they're doing. Straight up. Nobody.

:: 10:11:16

Corey

The only people who claim to fully know what they're doing are full of shit. And selling you some sort of snake oil, get rich quick fuckery.

:: 10:20:09

Corey

I have worked with people who

:: 10:23:19

Corey

are at the top of what they do

:: 10:25:12

Corey

and I this one creator. I was like, yeah,

:: 10:28:04

Corey

I'm going to put out more content on, you know, various topics, and I want to do higher level content that would target creators at your level, founders at your level.

:: 10:36:20

Corey

So, for example, I clearly would not do something on impostor syndrome.

:: 10:41:19

Corey

And he looked at me. He was like, why? He's like, I have imposter syndrome. Everybody I know has imposter syndrome,

:: 10:46:02

Corey

as he did. You're the reason other people have imposter syndrome. How the fuck do you have it? Like you cause it in other people?

:: 10:52:10

Corey

And that was, you know, kind of when I realize nobody knows what, like, everybody feels like they're just kind of winging it.

:: 10:57:10

Corey

And this is kind of part of being an entrepreneur.

:: 10:58:22

Corey

You never feel ready.

:: 10:59:22

Corey

You're never going to take perfect action.

:: 11:01:14

Corey

You're never going to be fully prepared.

:: 11:03:05

Corey

But the other thing with the concept of imposter syndrome, I look at it much more as liminal tension.

:: 11:09:20

Corey

So a liminal space is just the space between two places where like a hallway is a liminal space between the living room and the kitchen or something.

:: 11:17:09

Corey

Well, any time we go from one room to another,

:: 11:20:01

Corey

we naturally experience like this tension of oh, I haven't yet entered this room. Well, fundamentally, imposter syndrome is the belief that you don't belong in the room.

:: 11:28:17

Corey

So when most people start to enter that room and they feel that tension, they're like, oh fuck, I don't. I don't deserve to be here.

:: 11:34:00

Corey

I don't belong here. Let me back away.

:: 11:35:17

Corey

I'm not ready yet. I don't deserve to enter that. You know, to cross the threshold of that room.

:: 11:40:23

Corey

But really, that tension is saying, hey, this is a new room for you. This is a growth area for you. You've never been here before.

:: 11:49:06

Corey

Well, think about it. The alternative is stagnation, right? Like if you never push your growth edges, if you never leave your comfort zone,

:: 11:57:22

Corey

if you never embrace discomfort or uncertainty,

:: 12:01:01

Corey

then you're not evolving.

:: 12:01:22

Corey

You're not growing, you're stagnating.

:: 12:03:13

Corey

Versus learning to almost chase or at the very least, embrace that liminal tension anytime it comes up. That's how you grow

:: 12:11:02

Corey

and remind yourself nobody knows what they're doing fully. Everybody's winging it to some extent, and everybody in that room, you think you don't belong in there, all having those same fucking thoughts

:: 12:22:08

Corey

to one degree or another.

:: 12:23:17

Corey

And the way you grow, the way you evolve is by embracing is by leaning into that tension and entering that room. Anyway.

:: 12:31:04

Corey

Number 27, it feels hard because it is hard.

:: 12:35:02

Corey

Entrepreneurship is personal development in disguise

:: 12:39:10

Corey

where like, you read all the fucking books you want, take the courses, do the summits and mastermind retreats and whatever. Sit here and like, do some sort of hollow tropic breathing or some shit with a YouTube tutorial. All that's fine.

:: 12:52:19

Corey

Listen to the motivational podcasts or whatever.

:: 12:55:11

Corey

Have the poster of the cat that just says, hang in there, kitten. Like you can do all that shit. Okay, fine. Or you can start a fucking business.

:: 13:03:09

Corey

And now suddenly

:: 13:04:10

Corey

you can't hide from your character flaws. You can't bullshit yourself. You can't live in the realm of fantasy. And what what maybe could happen one day if you maybe applied yourself

:: 13:17:11

Corey

every fucking days on you.

:: 13:19:17

Corey

If you have an insecurity, guess what? That insecurity is going to keep you from making money. You god damn well better learn how the fuck to deal with that insecurity.

:: 13:28:06

Corey

There's no more of this theory shit. It's you straight up have to figure it the fuck out. Because every day is about building. It's about learning. It's about fucking up, learning from that fuck up and iterating on that fuck up so you don't fuck up the same way again.

:: 13:40:21

Corey

I don't know much better ways of legitimately

:: 13:45:19

Corey

embracing personal development and personal growth than starting a business.

:: 13:50:17

Corey

Growth is hard in business and in life.

:: 13:53:20

Corey

Which is why most people spend their entire lives avoiding the work they know they need to do to grow. Because it's hard. Oh, so you don't have to start a business, right? Like this is, you know, me to myself five years ago kind of deal. So obviously I'm talking about entrepreneurship, but it goes for anything like any and even like, you know, the last lesson around, you know, imposter syndrome and liminal tension

:: 14:17:17

Corey

growth is fucking hard.

:: 14:18:20

Corey

It is uncomfortable.

:: 14:20:05

Corey

But what else are you going to do? Like how do you wanna spend your time? Do you actually want to be the same person you were? You are today? In five years. That would suck that you just didn't improve for five years.

:: 14:34:16

Corey

Are you not a better version of yourself today than you were five years ago?

:: 14:37:20

Corey

Well, how the fuck did you get to this point

:: 14:39:10

Corey

by constantly pushing your growth edges, by doing more than you maybe thought you could,

:: 14:44:14

Corey

by constantly pushing against the maximum of your capability of your comfort zone?

:: 14:53:04

Corey

Growth is hard. Growth in life is hard. Growth in business is hard.

:: 14:56:18

Corey

It feels hard because it is hard. Even even going to the gym and working out. Working out is fucking hard.

:: 15:02:12

Corey

Now. Once you develop the habit of it, then it becomes like you, you know you need to do it to feel, to feel right. That day.

:: 15:08:04

Corey

But it's still hard. Even shit you want to do, even shit you enjoy doing

:: 15:13:07

Corey

most of. It's still fucking hard. Which is why most other people don't do those things.

:: 15:18:06

Corey

So any time I start to, you know, throw a little pity party like, oh, this is so hard. Oh, it's so hard to figure out. I remind myself, motherfucker. Yeah, you are correct. It feels hard because it is hard. And most people spend their entire lives avoiding doing hard things, which is why they live a mediocre existence

:: 15:37:00

Corey

and then get to the end of their life.

:: 15:38:01

Corey

And they look back, filled with regret at all the things they wish they would have done, deeply wanted to do, but didn't do because they were afraid, because it felt too hard, or some other bullshit excuse.

:: 15:49:10

Corey

It feels hard because it is hard. Embrace that. Lean into it. Deal with it. Move the fuck on.

:: 15:56:02

Corey

Number 28. No one gives a shit about you straight up.

:: 15:59:13

Corey

People do not care about you.

:: 16:00:18

Corey

Early on I read this book called Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit by Steven Pressfield.

:: 16:05:17

Corey

And effectively the premise of the book is the title nobody gives. You know, nobody wants readership. Meaning if you're going to write a book, respect people's time.

:: 16:13:18

Corey

Don't spend fucking forever on this preamble or all this unnecessary backstory and shit. Respect their time because the time someone gives you to read your book is

:: 16:25:23

Corey

an aspect is little unit of their life.

:: 16:29:02

Corey

They can never get back right? When somebody spends five minutes reading your book, that is five minutes of their life

:: 16:36:06

Corey

that they will never get back, that they are choosing to invest in is your thing.

:: 16:40:13

Corey

Give them their due respect by creating something valuable, and that is worth that time they're spending with you.

:: 16:48:07

Corey

What's the same thing with me?

:: 16:49:21

Corey

When I came online and started building a personal brand reputation, whatever.

:: 16:53:23

Corey

Nobody gave a shit about who I was. Nobody gave a shit. I was a psychologist or I spent, you know, 12 years getting a doctorate and then rising to the top of my field and then doing so. Shit, nobody give a shit. Didn't matter.

:: 17:04:10

Corey

What they cared about was what value did I have to provide?

:: 17:09:08

Corey

Did I have ideas worth engaging with? Was I sharing things that actually improves their life?

:: 17:15:05

Corey

Was the content I was putting out respectful of the time they were investing into me to engage with that piece of content.

:: 17:24:10

Corey

People don't care about your credentials.

:: 17:25:17

Corey

They care about your competence and your ability to convey that competence

:: 17:29:13

Corey

in a way that feels authentic.

:: 17:31:08

Corey

And yes, maybe, you know, eventually people do start to give a shit about you. They do start to care about you and your specific takes on things, sure, but early on, before people know you, nobody gives a shit about you. They can't give a shit about you because they don't fucking know you yet.

:: 17:45:11

Corey

So it is your responsibility to create things that respect their time, that bring value to them.

:: 17:52:19

Corey

Like take again, take yourself out of it. Think about the other person. Think about the people you're trying to serve.

:: 17:57:13

Corey

Remember 29 stories. Move people,

:: 18:00:11

Corey

not statistics.

:: 18:01:14

Corey

Every day I try to get a little bit better at storytelling because I suck at it.

:: 18:04:22

Corey

But people remember stories

:: 18:07:06

Corey

when I read the afterwards. Away by Ryan Holiday.

:: 18:10:05

Corey

Other than, like the title of the book,

:: 18:12:03

Corey

I don't remember much of the content of the book.

:: 18:16:12

Corey

Again, I wasn't like the

:: 18:17:19

Corey

the overall premise of the book.

:: 18:19:10

Corey

Of what impedes the way becomes a way sort of thing.

:: 18:22:10

Corey

But there's one story in it

:: 18:23:14

Corey

that has stuck with me,

:: 18:24:16

Corey

it was this whole idea of

:: 18:26:00

Corey

like, the banana king or some shit.

:: 18:27:12

Corey

Basically.

:: 18:28:04

Corey

There was this plot of land to grow, like banana trees on,

:: 18:31:08

Corey

and

:: 18:32:02

Corey

two people claimed to have the deed to this land. So clearly, like one of the people was lying. Well, there was this solo entrepreneur and this mega big mega company, and they both wanted to own that land for the banana trees.

:: 18:49:16

Corey

But the issue was that these two dudes both claimed to have the deed

:: 18:53:11

Corey

while the big mega company, they're like, okay, well, we're going to spend a shit ton of money doing all this research, hiring all these lawyers, and we're going to figure out which is the true deed because we don't want to pay the, the, the shyster for his fake deed.

:: 19:08:07

Corey

So we're going to figure out who owns the deed so we can buy it from the right one.

:: 19:13:00

Corey

little solo, you know, small business owner. He was like, I don't know the resources to do that. I straight up cannot compete with the big boys. He was like, well, what is my actual goal here?

:: 19:23:06

Corey

My goal isn't to learn who owns the correct deed.

:: 19:28:10

Corey

My goal is to own the fucking land.

:: 19:31:12

Corey

So what the little dude did was he just bought the deed from both people because it's like, it doesn't matter if one's lying to me, because as long as I buy both, I'm guaranteed to have the correct deed.

:: 19:42:08

Corey

And that stuck with me because now I'm like, okay, what is my actual goal?

:: 19:45:12

Corey

Like, not oh, you know, again, I'm not trying to figure out who who has the right deed. My actual goal, the thing I'm actually trying to accomplish is to own that land,

:: 19:55:20

Corey

and learning to see past that obstacle, that problem toward the actual end result, where the thing you're actually striving to achieve has provided me so much clarity over the years.

:: 20:05:14

Corey

But the reason I remember that is because of the story Ryan Holladay put into that book.

:: 20:12:16

Corey

All the expertise you have, all the value you have to share, will fall on deaf, deaf ears. If you don't learn how to package it appropriately. If you don't learn how to convey those ideas, those emotions, those experiences to other people,

:: 20:29:17

Corey

we remember stories

:: 20:31:04

Corey

we don't remember, you know, general statistics or all these, you know, complicated facts and shit nearly as effectively as storytelling.

:: 20:39:01

Corey

So I'm always thinking to myself, like, what story can I share right now?

:: 20:43:10

Corey

Number 30 know when to widen your vision

:: 20:47:03

Corey

and when to put on blinders.

:: 20:48:23

Corey

It's really easy to get caught up in oh I need it. You know I need to figure out how to hit ten cmha. I need to figure out how to build $1 million business.

:: 20:56:17

Corey

You don't. You're thinking too big, too far down the line.

:: 20:59:22

Corey

Because thinking about how you're going to build $1 million business

:: 21:04:15

Corey

is irrelevant until you hit a six figure business, which is irrelevant until you learn how to make $10,000, which is irrelevant, and to learn how to make a fucking thousand dollars or $100 or $10 or one goddamn dollar. But so many people get caught up in, okay, this is my million dollar roadmap.

:: 21:22:10

Corey

Shut the fuck up.

:: 21:23:07

Corey

All that, like one year roadmaps. Never going to fucking actually work in reality. Like no matter what you said, no matter how easy you think is going to be, it will or even how hard you think it's going to be. It's always going to be harder than you think.

:: 21:33:17

Corey

It's going to take longer than you think.

:: 21:35:08

Corey

Sometimes that that wider vision or that long term, you know, a longer time horizon type of thinking can be important.

:: 21:42:23

Corey

But a lot of times it is just a distraction from doing the work in front of you.

:: 21:47:11

Corey

Like, what do you need to do today to succeed?

:: 21:50:22

Corey

What do you need to do to hit your first thousand dollars first?

:: 21:56:04

Corey

Once you hit that thousand dollars, then you can start to look a little bit further. Okay. Well, cool. How do I make turn this into a ten? What do I need to do to scale it up to ten? Scale it up to 50, scale it up to 70. Scale it up to 100.

:: 22:08:06

Corey

Rather than saying like, oh, million dollars is always on the horizon, I'm running toward it.

:: 22:13:08

Corey

That's irrelevant

:: 22:14:03

Corey

until you hit these other shorter term milestones.

:: 22:17:13

Corey

And also thinking through how you're going to make your first thousand dollars or $10,000 way simpler in scope than trying to get to $1 million,

:: 22:28:10

Corey

like $10,000 like that's a couple of clients, either a couple clients over a couple month period. That is one good launch. That is, you know, it depends, but that's much more doable and feels much more achievable.

:: 22:41:23

Corey

This thing. Okay. Well, you know, I know this one guy, he makes $500,000 a year. I need to to do that in the next six months.

:: 22:49:15

Corey

Unless you have a shit ton of resources and a lot of, like, incredibly unfair advantages, probably you're probably going to be better off to look at how can you make 50 K, not 500 K for now?

:: 23:00:03

Corey

This also goes for, like, napkin math. It's really easy to get caught up doing napkin math. Like, okay, well, okay, so here's how I, here's how I hit $1 million. I need to have this many clients and charges and this much, but then I need to sell this many courses at this price point. And then I have these, you know, down sales at this price point and then these upsells at this price point.

:: 23:21:09

Corey

Then I have my membership over here, and then I have this much as sponsorship revenue. Oh, easy.

:: 23:26:13

Corey

As long as I just hit this napkin. Math easy.

:: 23:29:17

Corey

Napkin math is so fun to do because it's so simple. You just, you say, well, I want to charge. You know, if I want to get to $100,000, I just need to charge ten people, $10,000.

:: 23:42:02

Corey

Well, I have a year to just find ten people to give me $10,000. So simple. I only have to close one client a month at $10,000, and, well, fuck, that's the $120,000. That's more than $100,000.

:: 23:59:08

Corey

Problem is, what the fuck are you offering that is worth somebody giving you $10,000?

:: 24:05:19

Corey

But also, how are you going to find these people willing to give you that $10,000?

:: 24:11:10

Corey

And then how are you going to deliver that value in the first place?

:: 24:16:07

Corey

Two, two. Easy to get caught up in napkin math.

:: 24:19:08

Corey

And again, a little bit just to to do projections or understand like oh fuck. Like okay. Well ten at ten K like that's, that's a good bit. Maybe I can do 50 people at two K,

:: 24:32:17

Corey

maybe that's a little bit easier.

:: 24:33:21

Corey

Or maybe getting 100 people for a thousand.

:: 24:36:23

Corey

Or maybe 200 people at $500 or 205 hundred. Like.

:: 24:40:23

Corey

What would that look like? How could I make that happen?

:: 24:44:06

Corey

Oh, if I get a 1% conversion rate, then I need to have at least 100 people visit the landing page so that one of them converts.

:: 24:51:06

Corey

So then if I. So I have a 1% conversion rate and I need to get 200 conversions. Well what does that mean? How many people do I need to visit that page. Oh well I need 20,000 people to visit this page for the 1% conversion. Assuming that holds

:: 25:06:21

Corey

to turn into 200 total conversions.

:: 25:09:01

Corey

Okay.

:: 25:09:09

Corey

Well then you know a little bit of math. Okay.

:: 25:11:06

Corey

So then the question is how do you generate 20,000 visitors to that page.

:: 25:16:13

Corey

That again still not easy to do, but it gives you a more realistic idea of like, oh, okay. In order for me to actually hit this, I might need to figure out how to get at least 20,000 people to even look at that page.

:: 25:31:15

Corey

I have.

:: 25:32:06

Corey

Well, I'm only getting 300 people a month to look at that page. Cool. Then that is telling you you're probably not going to hit those 200 members for $100,000 in your first year.

:: 25:44:09

Corey

So in that case, it can't be helpful,

:: 25:45:21

Corey

but only so much as it gives you a better idea of how much effort it was going to take.

:: 25:50:15

Corey

otherwise it's just going to be a distraction. I got ten people on charges, $10,000 like 100 K. Easy. Simple bullshit.

:: 25:57:18

Corey

Number 31 don't live online, live offline and share online.

:: 26:04:17

Corey

Matthew McConaughey was on some talk show and he was talking about

:: 26:08:02

Corey

advice he gave to his son at the time.

:: 26:10:15

Corey

And his son was, you know, starting his own Instagram and just getting all social media things. And McConaughey said.

:: 26:16:15

Corey

Don't create for social media. Live your life and just share what you're doing.

:: 26:22:13

Corey

And this kind of echoes what Gary Vee early on said, which was document don't create.

:: 26:26:22

Corey

A lot of people get really caught up in creating content specifically for social media, and then they just kind of, you know, they perpetually live online. They're always commenting on all the things or try and be like, okay, how do I make this perfect graphic?

:: 26:43:03

Corey

And you know, what is my hook? And what about this? And what about that? And they're after I again, look at what you measure.

:: 26:48:20

Corey

They're optimizing for social media.

:: 26:51:08

Corey

But that turns into they're not actually living a life.

:: 26:54:00

Corey

Don't actually doing anything worth talking about.

:: 26:56:16

Corey

They're trying to just come up with ideas to share online, rather than living their life and just sharing what they learn and what they're doing

:: 27:04:20

Corey

with their following.

:: 27:05:20

Corey

The other thing is, a lot of people who have large followings didn't actually build them through playing the social media games,

:: 27:12:16

Corey

like, for example, Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban on basically any platform he goes on, has a huge following on day one.

:: 27:19:05

Corey

Or he's not playing the social media game.

:: 27:21:23

Corey

All he's doing is just posting about what he's actively doing,

:: 27:25:23

Corey

right? Like right now, if you go to if you follow him on blue Sky, all of his shit is about cost plus drugs. One of his latest companies,

:: 27:33:09

Corey

he's not doing some fucking viral hook format template shit. He's like, hey, this is what I did.

:: 27:40:09

Corey

Hey, here's a cool thing that we just rolled out.

:: 27:42:19

Corey

People aren't following him because he has perfectly manicured posts.

:: 27:47:12

Corey

They're following him because he's a genuinely interesting person to follow because of all the cool shit he's doing in real life.

:: 27:55:17

Corey

So rather than getting caught up in this whole like, okay, I got a post at 8:00 Am Eastern Standard Time every day and I need to comment on at least ten posts before I post my own thing.

:: 28:05:12

Corey

And then I have to have an engagement part and then have to. Okay, well, this is the the latest meta for like the hooks that are working or the viral formats. Fuck all of that. Do cool shit offline. Live your fucking life offline

:: 28:18:13

Corey

and just share what you're doing online

:: 28:20:00

Corey

and then move on.

:: 28:21:00

Corey

Number 32

:: 28:21:20

Corey

pick what you want to be great at,

:: 28:23:10

Corey

then accept being mediocre at everything else.

:: 28:26:09

Corey

Early on I, I loved like Peter McKinnon's videos or like Becky and Chris Jeremy Sears just the the way they did their color grading

:: 28:38:08

Corey

for their their YouTube videos.

:: 28:40:21

Corey

Some of them were like cinematic,

:: 28:42:10

Corey

saturated, muted, like just the the darks were just so much more vibrant.

:: 28:47:12

Corey

Loved it. Loved just the the esthetic of it.

:: 28:49:23

Corey

So when I started

:: 28:50:16

Corey

recording my own videos, like, okay, I need to, I need to be like a world class like editor of Color Grader. I need to, like, learn all this fucking fancy shit and like, what is, you know, how do I do like, you know, raw video. What is log and

:: 29:02:12

Corey

what are these fucking.

:: 29:04:04

Corey

Histograms and shit.

:: 29:05:17

Corey

But then I quickly realized,

:: 29:07:12

Corey

I don't want to be a world class editor. I don't want to be a world class color grader.

:: 29:11:17

Corey

I appreciate it, and I would love for my videos to be more cinematic, and I'll definitely be down to collaborate with people in the future.

:: 29:18:03

Corey

But me, myself, what I actually want to do and be great at, I want to be a great coach.

:: 29:22:14

Corey

I want to be a great educator, a great speaker, a great writer.

:: 29:25:19

Corey

A great facilitator.

:: 29:27:06

Corey

These are the things I focus my energy on, not everything else. And it's really hard to accept mediocrity or to accept being mediocre at certain things, especially when you like you. You want to be great at everything, but you can't be great at everything. But you can be great at a couple things. So what are those few things that are worth being great at and worth developing as your craft?

:: 29:51:04

Corey

Because,

:: 29:51:21

Corey

for example, if I want to be a great writer, well then every hour I spend editing a video or doing some other kind of thing

:: 30:01:05

Corey

is an hour. I'm not getting reps in on writing.

:: 30:04:13

Corey

So really getting super clear on what you want to be great at.

:: 30:07:11

Corey

That means you don't want to be great at all. The other shit.

:: 30:11:12

Corey

So except not being great at that other shit.

:: 30:14:19

Corey

Either just write up, accept those things being mediocre, or just outsource and have other people done for you because other people who do want to be great editors or great website developers or whatever that is cool, work with them.

:: 30:28:11

Corey

But you yourself

:: 30:29:13

Corey

accept not being great at.

:: 30:31:20

Corey

Number 33.

:: 30:32:15

Corey

Forget trends. Focus on timeless.

:: 30:36:07

Corey

So, you know, you've probably heard the whole Bezos and Amazon thing where most businesses were like, oh, what's going to change in the next 5 or 10 years?

:: 30:44:15

Corey

And he famously was like, no, we think about what's not going to change.

:: 30:47:20

Corey

What's not going to change is people want choices, they want lower prices, and they want faster shipping.

:: 30:52:15

Corey

So that's what we focus on because those things are timeless. Those are the evergreen perennial, you know, whatever things, they don't really change.

:: 31:01:05

Corey

So many people get focused on trend jacking or chasing trends

:: 31:07:22

Corey

and this means that they naturally churn.

:: 31:12:04

Corey

Super often like I the number of people I've seen like they were the copywriting expert and then they were the Web3 expert and then they were the AI expert. It's like, motherfucker. Like how how did you like, I

:: 31:28:07

Corey

or crypto? Crypto came out and was pseudo adopted.

:: 31:32:02

Corey

And you are claiming that you have been an expert for years and I'm like, motherfucker, I saw your profile three months ago and you were a different kind of expert. They're just chasing trends.

:: 31:41:23

Corey

But that also means you're going back to building a portfolio of assets. Assets, compounds in value over time.

:: 31:49:07

Corey

Chasing trends

:: 31:51:03

Corey

doesn't align with that

:: 31:53:09

Corey

because like everything you do has a has a fairly short lifespan because you're just chasing a trend. And trends, by their very nature, end pretty quickly.

:: 32:03:07

Corey

I would much rather focus on what is timeless like.

:: 32:06:01

Corey

So for me, timeless things people struggle with are fear, imposter syndrome, insecurity, feeling stuck, waiting for permission to do the thing.

:: 32:14:20

Corey

Learning to trust themselves. Embracing their authenticity.

:: 32:17:21

Corey

Doing the work only they can do. The work that they quote unquote feel called to do, or deeply passionate about doing. All of that. The psychological side of entrepreneurship, that's really what I focus on, because that's pretty timeless.

:: 32:32:16

Corey

Now you can take something timeless

:: 32:34:22

Corey

and make it timely,

:: 32:36:17

Corey

right? So, for example,

:: 32:37:19

Corey

if I wanted to talk about how do you say the thing only you can say in the age of AI, when I can probably say the same thing better,

:: 32:47:17

Corey

how can you, rather than trying to compete on being the best speaker or saying it the best way, or having the best grammar, how can you instead focus on saying the thing only you can say?

:: 32:57:06

Corey

Sharing your story. I doesn't have a childhood. You have a childhood.

:: 33:00:21

Corey

Well, that's still in the realm of what I do, of how can you share your self and your ideas with the world? How can you come up with ideas or unlock inspiration from everyday occurrences? That's one aspect of what I do with people.

:: 33:16:09

Corey

So that is and that's a timeless thing.

:: 33:18:00

Corey

Like timeless, people want to share themselves in their experiences. But sometimes I struggle with insecurity, with imposter syndrome, with giving themselves permission to say, oh, you know, calling yourself a writer or some shit.

:: 33:27:19

Corey

I can make that timely by connecting this time, this thing, to something currently going on, which right now would be AI and writing and things.

:: 33:35:12

Corey

But I'm still focusing on the timeless aspect of human experiences.

:: 33:40:04

Corey

Number 34 choose the torture you're comfortable with.

:: 33:44:04

Corey

I was watching a clip Jerry Seinfeld was on The Howard Stern Show,

:: 33:48:18

Corey

and Seinfeld was talking about

:: 33:50:07

Corey

how he's he's never fully present,

:: 33:52:10

Corey

like when he's with his wife and his kids. He's always half thinking about a joke or how he could turn the situation into a joke.

:: 33:58:17

Corey

He said, even, you know, talking with our son, he's like, I'm not even fully here with you right now. I'm thinking about how I can make this into a bit someday.

:: 34:05:04

Corey

And Howard Stern was like, that must be torture.

:: 34:08:17

Corey

Insightful said it is, it is, but it is the torture I'm comfortable with. He said. Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with.

:: 34:17:09

Corey

And for me, that is definitely writing. And some of the things I do to me, writing feels like Billy crawling through broken glass. It is always excruciating. Whether it is like a like Jimmy, like a fucking tweet, a LinkedIn post, an article, my book, whatever. It's excruciating. Like the process is excruciating. It is torturous, but it is the torture I willingly choose because it is the thing I can't not do.

:: 34:47:12

Corey

I am compelled to do it. I am obsessed with doing.

:: 34:50:12

Corey

Like, if I had to take two weeks off and, you know, for for a vacation, if I wasn't allowed to write during that time, I'd rather just not even fucking go.

:: 35:01:03

Corey

Even though writing is excruciating for me, sometimes, I can't not do it.

:: 35:06:09

Corey

And again, this comes back to, you know, growth isn't linear, it isn't guaranteed. It isn't even pleasant a lot of times. A lot of times growth is uncomfortable a lot of times. And we like to glorify, oh, just follow your passion, okay? But the thing you actually deeply want to do and are well positioned to do, that doesn't mean it is easy or simple.

:: 35:25:23

Corey

It's still probably going to be painful. It's still probably going to be excruciating. Sometimes.

:: 35:30:19

Corey

And the people who dedicate themselves to their craft, most of them will tell you like there's there's a lot of unpleasant bits when it comes to pursuing their craft.

:: 35:42:14

Corey

But that doesn't mean it isn't worth it.

:: 35:43:23

Corey

So again, rather than try to find the easy route or the guaranteed route or whatever, really looking at what problems do I want to have?

:: 35:53:02

Corey

Mark Manson says, what is, you know, pick your favorite flavor of shit sandwich.

:: 35:56:06

Corey

Tom Bellew says

:: 35:57:09

Corey

the struggle is guaranteed. Success isn't. So again, like, what torture do you want? What problems do you want to have? What shit sandwich would you rather eat? What struggle do you want to sign up for? This to me is just a much more well balanced, holistic,

:: 36:15:14

Corey

real question then.

:: 36:18:22

Corey

Oh well. What are you passionate about? What feels effortless to you that feels effortful to everybody else? I just don't like that shit because it's like nothing feels effortless to me. Even when it looks it.

:: 36:30:13

Corey

And even if, you know, maybe in that particular moment it feels, you know, kind of, I'm in the flow. That's on the foundation of a decade plus worth of grinding it out, eating shit, belly crawling through broken fucking glass.

:: 36:44:03

Corey

So it's just a much more helpful reframe for me of choose the torture you're comfortable with.

:: 36:48:11

Corey

Number 35. It is going to feel like drinking from a fire hose for a long time.

:: 36:54:04

Corey

Entrepreneurship is overwhelming.

:: 36:56:07

Corey

Entrepreneurship is overwhelming.

:: 36:57:18

Corey

You are the marketer, the copywriter, the writer, the script producer, the on air talent, the course creator, curriculum designer, workshop host, graphic designer, coordinator, investor, visionary operator, whatever the fuck else you are. Everything.

:: 37:11:21

Corey

Like I was sitting here trying to Google how to start an LLC, trying to figure out, okay, well, now I need a website.

:: 37:17:12

Corey

Well, how do I do a website? Well, now I have to learn like hosting and template design and, you know, site maps and submitting it to Google. And then it's like, okay, well, how the fuck to send an invoice? Okay. Well how do I do, a call? Okay. Well, now I need to get zoom on. Now I need to figure out how do I do an invoice.

:: 37:36:19

Corey

Is it through PayPal? How does PayPal work? Like, okay, well, now I got stripe. Goddamn stripes. Dashboard is overwhelming. Then there's all that

:: 37:42:21

Corey

on top of actually learning how to, like, be effective at the shit that I do. The actual services and products I create. There's all the back end shit.

:: 37:50:09

Corey

Like it is overwhelming,

:: 37:52:00

Corey

which is why a lot of people don't do it.

:: 37:53:16

Corey

You got a regular job, you go in, you do what the fuck you're told to do, and then you leave. And as long as you keep doing what the fuck you're told to do in a good enough manner, generally you keep getting money with entrepreneurship. If you don't figure the fuck out, you don't make money.

:: 38:09:11

Corey

If you don't figure out how to make it better.

:: 38:11:07

Corey

Rather like, okay, I learned copywriting, but I said, well, my conversions on this landing page aren't as high as I would like them to be. Okay, well, what problem is causing that isn't my actual copywriting? Well, maybe I need to switch from, you know, Ada to the pastor model, or I need to go from this one to that one, or I know, I know, I need to do that before, after, bridge, whatever.

:: 38:34:11

Corey

Maybe it isn't my copywriting. Maybe I need more testimonials. Well, how do I get testimonials? So maybe the actual website design is a little too clunky.

:: 38:41:16

Corey

Maybe I fucked up the buy button.

:: 38:43:11

Corey

Maybe it isn't even that. Maybe it's just my type of funnel. Okay, well, what the fuck is top of funnel? How do I figure out how to fix my top of funnel?

:: 38:49:12

Corey

All of these things are just the daily reality of entrepreneurship.

:: 38:54:10

Corey

It's overwhelming

:: 38:55:07

Corey

because it is all on you to figure out.

:: 38:57:19

Corey

But just because it is overwhelming doesn't mean it isn't worth it.

:: 39:01:12

Corey

Because again, going back, entrepreneurship is personal development in disguise.

:: 39:05:05

Corey

How else are you going to develop yourself so much, so deeply, so quickly?

:: 39:11:13

Corey

Then what should actually matters?

:: 39:13:01

Corey

It's overwhelming.

:: 39:14:00

Corey

You can handle it.

:: 39:15:11

Corey

Number 36 focus on resonance over reach.

:: 39:19:15

Corey

This is something I picked up for my friend Jay. A Kenzo also had him on the podcast. You can check out that episode.

:: 39:24:19

Corey

And Jay's whole thing is, you know, 1 to 1 aspect of it is

:: 39:28:15

Corey

would you rather

:: 39:29:18

Corey

have

:: 39:30:14

Corey

50,000 followers of just random people or 500 followers or subscribers of fortune 500 US?

:: 39:39:19

Corey

Who follows you? Who loves your shit is way, way more important than how many people follow you,

:: 39:47:07

Corey

but also

:: 39:48:03

Corey

it is much more important.

:: 39:49:12

Corey

How much people feel connected to you

:: 39:52:02

Corey

and.

:: 39:52:21

Corey

ks about, you know, find your: 1000

:: 39:56:12

Corey

and your: 1000

:: 40:01:15

Corey

Because these are the people who deeply get it, who love what you do, who who fully connect with your authenticity.

:: 40:08:21

Corey

But it's also when you put out something and somebody who's very discerning, they're a leader in their space. They're really, really good at what they do, and they have a very low tolerance for any sort of bullshit or fluff. When somebody like that says, hey, I love your shit, or hey, I recommend your thing to everybody.

:: 40:33:20

Corey

That's what matters.

:: 40:34:23

Corey

And the other thing with with resonance is, you know, true compounding takes time.

:: 40:40:08

Corey

But once it gets going, it turns into, you know, a tidal wave that can shift the paradigms and the very zeitgeisty where part of.

:: 40:50:19

Corey

No, that wasn't I scripting this. Like, that's actually how I fucking talk. I don't fuck with I with my script. Some shit

:: 40:56:10

Corey

my outlines.

:: 40:58:12

Corey

But when you deeply resonate with one person, they stick around and then they tell other people about you, and then now other people start to resonate with you, and then they tell other people about you.

:: 41:09:03

Corey

That is how that compounding works.

:: 41:11:16

Corey

But if you just try to put shit out, that reaches the masses, okay, cool. Maybe you get a lot of reach,

:: 41:18:18

Corey

but you don't put anything out that has real nuance, that doesn't actually connect with people and resonate with people. That to me is just much more effective and much more aligned with what I want to do with my life and my business.

:: 41:32:13

Corey

I want to resonate with the right people rather than just reaching, you know, the blind masses, the the mindless masses of the generic population.

:: 41:42:10

Corey

Because it's also like it is much better to be surrounded by decision makers than tire kickers, period.

:: 41:47:20

Corey

So really looking at am I trying to focus on resonating with people, sharing unique things, being authentic, legitimately providing value?

:: 41:57:21

Corey

Or am I just trying to blindly chase as much reach and virality as possible?

:: 42:03:12

Corey

Number 37 embrace your dark horse era.

:: 42:07:21

Corey

I came across this term a couple years ago, and the dark horse is basically somebody who's really good at what they do, but they just haven't gained recognition yet.

:: 42:17:22

Corey

There will be a period where you will be really fucking good at what you do.

:: 42:23:02

Corey

And not nearly enough people will know about you.

:: 42:25:17

Corey

And having competence without an audience is, you know, existentially excruciating because you're like, well, fuck, I'm good at this. Why don't enough people know about it? Why are people talking about it? Why are people flocking to me? And it can start to make you kind of questioning your own abilities, so. Well, if I was if I was, if I'm as good as I think I am, and if I'm as good as other as some other people tell me I am, why the fuck are there not more people around me?

:: 42:50:09

Corey

That's just sort of part of this dark horse era that everybody has to go through.

:: 42:56:10

Corey

Because the alternative is like 15 minutes of fame, right? Like even like Huck tours, some shit go viral for a minute, and then everybody fucking forgets about you.

:: 43:03:06

Corey

You know, you have value to give, but there's going to be a period where you don't have anyone to give that value to, or you have a painfully small group of people to give that value to.

:: 43:15:07

Corey

But the cool thing with this is you're still getting better.

:: 43:18:09

Corey

You're still helping real people. You're stacking those skills and you're you're working all that resonance. And over time, that resonance can turn into reach

:: 43:29:10

Corey

over time.

:: 43:30:05

Corey

You know, maybe you're just you're sort of like a name. People whisper behind closed doors like, oh, yeah, this Corey guy, he's pretty cool.

:: 43:36:23

Corey

Oh, who's that?

:: 43:37:17

Corey

But maybe eventually, you know, you see your name plastered on billboards in Times Square. Like, maybe you get to that level of fame and you're no longer the dark horse like you are the end all be all whatever. Okay? You don't really control that.

:: 43:49:22

Corey

Instead, focusing on what you do, control,

:: 43:52:16

Corey

which is doing the work only you can do, and being the best goddamn person in the world who does that thing

:: 43:58:21

Corey

eventually. Recognition, you know, revenue resonance, whatever become the byproducts of just doing the fucking work.

:: 44:07:22

Corey

Right. It's like, you know, the whole idea of it takes ten years to become an overnight success. Everybody. I know who other people may consider them an overnight success, or they had this rapid rise to fame. They were grinding it out in their dark horse era for years and years and years when nobody knew who the fuck they were, but they were consistently getting better and better and better and resonating with one person after another after another, until eventually they crossed that threshold into more of the mainstream, and then everybody else found out about them.

:: 44:41:19

Corey

You don't control that part, but you do control

:: 44:43:23

Corey

showing up every day, becoming the best you can possibly be at that thing,

:: 44:48:12

Corey

and kind of just letting the rest fall where it may.

:: 44:51:04

Corey

Number 38 the final harsh truth about business and entrepreneurship I've learned over the last five years,

:: 44:58:19

Corey

most productivity issues

:: 45:00:19

Corey

aren't due to a lack of discipline, but an abundance of fear.

:: 45:05:13

Corey

Like productivity at its core is about efficiency. How can you do more things? So when you say, well, you know, I'm struggling with procrastination. I'm struggling with not getting things done on time. Well, then the productivity space would say, oh, you need to do Pomodoro techniques or all you need to do an Eisenhower matrix to make better decisions.

:: 45:27:10

Corey

you need to do, you know, an: 8020

:: 45:34:16

Corey

Those productivity strategies are fine, but the reason they typically don't work for people when they don't work for people is that procrastination or a lot of these other quote unquote, productivity issues, these self-sabotaging behaviors are actually just fear avoidance in disguise.

:: 45:50:19

Corey

So if you've read all the productivity books, you've taken the courses, you've applied all the fucking frameworks and systems and strategies and shit. They're just not working.

:: 45:59:06

Corey

probably because the reason you procrastinate is to avoid something you're afraid of happening.

:: 46:03:16

Corey

just like if I'm afraid that if I publish this article, people are going to judge me, they're going to criticize me, they're going to make fun of me or whatever.

:: 46:12:00

Corey

Then procrastination is serving a real function. It is helping me avoid risking that judgment coming my way.

:: 46:19:23

Corey

So the longer I put off hitting publish, the longer I put off potentially having to deal with trolls and shit.

:: 46:25:10

Corey

Well, when that's the case for me and Eisenhower, matrix is going to do fuck all. A Pomodoro session isn't doing anything.

:: 46:33:07

Corey

It's going to make me more courageous or some shit, right? It's not going to help me learn to deal with the the mental toll of trolls.

:: 46:40:11

Corey

All of that is is fear based.

:: 46:42:16

Corey

So now any time I start to whether it's procrastinate or, you know, shiny object syndrome, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, all of these other things,

:: 46:50:09

Corey

anytime I start to feel that I'm pulling back from doing something, I ask myself, what fear might this be helping me avoid?

:: 47:00:14

Corey

What thing that I you know what can I maybe be afraid of? That this is helping me avoid

:: 47:04:05

Corey

whatever that answer is. That's what I deal with.

:: 47:06:14

Corey

Rather than just saying, oh, how do I be more productive? How do I just, you know, smash through my procrastination? That's not usually the actual issue, the actual issue.

:: 47:16:07

Corey

probably that you're afraid.

:: 47:17:07

Corey

All right, y'all, this I don't even know what the for the final time for this solo episode is going to be, but it's been a fucking doozy.

:: 47:24:02

Corey

These are some of because I'm. I have plenty others, but I feel like this has been long enough.

:: 47:29:05

Corey

These are some of the harsh truths, the harsh business lessons I wish I would have known five years ago when I started my business.

:: 47:38:05

Corey

Every time I've struggled over the last five years, it has been because I've forgotten at least one of these. And every time I've succeeded, it has been because I have kept these at the forefront in my mind.

:: 47:48:11

Corey

I'm super curious, though, what harsh truths or business lessons

:: 47:53:15

Corey

have you learned on your own entrepreneurial journey?

:: 47:57:01

Corey

Leave a comment and let me know! I would legitimately love to kind of crowdsource other lessons.

:: 48:02:17

Corey

And before you go

:: 48:03:11

Corey

do things,

:: 48:04:02

Corey

probably talked about the Career Economy Lab. My online membership community would love to have you join if you felt aligned.

:: 48:08:11

Corey

Again. We go through multiple group coaching calls every month. We've got workshops, challenges, a bunch of async resources support, super super supportive community, fucking love hanging out there.

:: 48:18:08

Corey

And the other cool thing with like the crit Alchemy Lab versus like social media, for example,

:: 48:21:22

Corey

like when I go on Facebook now, which Facebook for me is mostly just to keep in touch with like high school friends or some shit

:: 48:26:21

Corey

I counted at one time and like legitimately 20, like I would.

:: 48:30:05

Corey

I look through the first 20 posts.

:: 48:32:01

Corey

2 or 3 of them were actually from people I followed. Everything else was suggested, or an ad or sponsored thing, or some I generated bullshit. So it's like I scrolled multiple times and didn't even see my actual friends. I wanted to stay connected with

:: 48:48:12

Corey

with Creator Alchemy Lab. When you join and you look through that as your feed, everybody there are ones are real people.

:: 48:55:04

Corey

It's real shit, but it's also people you actually want to see you actually want to connect with. And for me, this is, you know, trying to bring the social back in social media. That's one of the reasons for this community is for you to socialize and get support and connect with other creators, founders, leaders, entrepreneurs, other people in it, pursuing their own entrepreneurial journey who understand some of these things we talked about today.

:: 49:19:22

Corey

They understand what you're going through. They understand like, oh, well, I'm about to make this big business decision that I can't really come back from. Like once I commit to this, there's no going back. Fuck. I'm afraid. How do I do what? That insecurity. How do I make sure this is the right move for me? That's some shit.

:: 49:36:01

Corey

You can't Google

:: 49:36:18

Corey

that. Some shit. You can't just ask a random friend for advice for. Right? That's the type of shit you need. A community of people who get it, who not necessarily will always want to give you like spoon feed your answers. But they can be there to support you, to help you process your own decisions so that you can come to your own true conclusion for you and how you want to move forward.

:: 49:55:13

Corey

We've had everybody from like financial wealth planners to coaches, consultants, YouTubers,

:: 50:00:08

Corey

videographers, like tons of different people would absolutely love to have you in the community. Credit McCombs lab. I'll put a link below. We'd love to have you there.

:: 50:08:07

Corey

If you're not ready to join a community like that. The other thing super simple just subscribe to the newsletter creator alchemy.com.

:: 50:16:09

Corey

It's completely free.

:: 50:17:16

Corey

I send out weekly ish issues.

:: 50:19:23

Corey

You will get exclusive content I don't share anywhere else.

:: 50:23:02

Corey

It's also just a good way to stay connected, right? Because again, the whole algorithm thing. Subscribe to a newsletter. You always get my shit and you can just hit reply and we can start an actual real conversation that isn't just in the comment section, it's an actual dialog. We can have.

:: 50:38:02

Corey

So just go to create alchemy.com to subscribe completely for free.

:: 50:41:18

Corey

And when you subscribe, shoot me, reply.

:: 50:44:00

Corey

Tell me a little bit about yourself. I would legitimately love to get to know more about you.

:: 50:47:18

Corey

right, that's all I got for today. If you all have any other questions, comments, concerns, feel free to hit me up. Otherwise I will see you next time.

:: 50:54:18

Corey

Take it easy.