#31 - YouTube for Entrepreneurs with Adam Ivy

YouTube growth strategy, personal branding, and turning creativity into a business — this episode with Adam Ivy breaks down exactly how to build a profitable YouTube channel from scratch.

On this episode of Based Business, Parker McCumber sits down with Adam Ivy — YouTuber, entrepreneur, and coach — to discuss how he went from struggling creative to building two 7-figure businesses using YouTube, systems, and intentional content creation.

Adam shares how he helped a company grow from 150 views per video to over 1.6 million views, scaling revenue from $5–7M to $20M+ in just 24 months, and how any entrepreneur can apply the same principles today.

This conversation goes deeper than just YouTube. It covers:

Building systems that scale your business
Why most creators fail (and how to avoid it)
The future of YouTube in an AI-driven world
How to turn content into clients and revenue
The “Rainmaker, Engineer, Creator” framework for growth
Leveraging networks, cars, and status for opportunity
Overcoming burnout and staying aligned with your mission

If you’re an entrepreneur, creator, or business owner trying to grow online, this episode will show you how to build authority, attract attention, and monetize your content.

🔑 Key Takeaways

YouTube is a skill, not luck — treat it like a sport
Systems and consistency outperform talent
Attention is the most valuable currency in business
Content → Trust → Clients → Revenue
Massive action creates massive opportunity

👇 Who This Is For

Entrepreneurs trying to grow a brand online
Coaches, creators, and business owners
Anyone stuck under 1,000 views or struggling with content
People who want to turn creativity into income

📚 Topics Covered

YouTube Growth Strategy
Personal Branding
Content Marketing
Online Business Systems
AI & Content Creation
Entrepreneurship Mindset 

Transcript

0:00

When it comes to YouTube, don't overthink it, but also do it with intention. That's why it's important to be a creator and not a consumer. And they were like, oh, no, no, no, we need to post these. So the owner of that company was hesitant, but he said, oh, okay. Post that in less than a month, 43,000 views on a channel that averaged like 150 views per video. The next video did 1.6 million views and took that company from around five to 7 million annually on average to over 20 million in 24 months. Wow. And I realized, oh, there's something here. Like my creative isn't just for music. I started teaching musicians, primarily creatives, how to build a brand around what they do. And that turned into two seven figure coaching businesses because people would be like, well, how do I work with you off of YouTube on a couple different phone calls, I've been like, Adam, just give me, give, like, give me the program, the co the course the coach, whatever. Like I will throw money at you. Uh, and you're like, yeah, yeah. I'll get you an email. Yeah. No email ever came, so I'm embarrassed. You're right. Unless you're willing to take that leap, unless you're willing to step into the unknown, you'll never be able to experience any of that stuff. And that like, that's, that's the massive reward for massive action. Yeah. That people don't realize. Could you crash and burn? A hundred percent. Welcome back to another episode of Base Business with your host, Parker McCumber. I'm here today with Adam Ivy, who is a personal superhero of mine. I really admire what you've been able to do with. YouTube and the growth and the way that you are able to present it in such a way that attracts clients and it's something that I'm constantly trying to emulate. So, Adam, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are Sure. And what you do. Yeah. I'm Adam Ivy. I've, uh, been on YouTube for 15 years now, and I kind of stumbled my way through it the first eight years. Uh, then I realized, oh, just like anything, it's like a sport. If I practice certain things, I can get better at it. Mm. If I have certain goals, I can actually now work towards those goals. And, you know, I say it all the time, as cheesy as it sounds like. I got on YouTube in 2009, 2010, to have my voice heard. I wanted to matter. I grew up in a very small town in central Wisconsin, um, and where I grew up, like dreams really don't exist there, and I wanted my voice heard to the world, right? So, uh, you know, I spent years trying to have my voice heard. And, uh, five, 10 years later I finally found my voice to begin with. And YouTube has just been so life changing for me. I grew up in a very blue collar, uh, area where after high school you either went off to go get, you know, a nursing degree or you're working at one of the factories in, in. In town. And I did that for four years. I was a union carpenter. And without making the story too long, I realized that if I didn't escape, I would be stuck there forever. Mm. Uh, like so many of the people that I worked with who were 50, 60 years old and they've worked there for 30 years and I wanted to do something creative, I chased the music career for a long time and in the process I realized I need to brand myself. I need to get out on in front of camera.'cause if nobody knows I'm doing this, then how is anything gonna work out? Yeah. And I was really inspired by some of the people that you know now, I don't even know if, I don't even know if they're on YouTube anymore, but, you know, the people like Ray William Johnson and you know, PewDiePie, and I'm not saying I was inspired by these people, but when I got on YouTube they were the superstars. Sure. They, there was no such thing as a Mr. Beast level person yet. And the production quality, everything looked like it was shot on a potato. Right. So, you know, fast forward, our smartphones are, I used a potato for my first few episodes. Yeah. It's the same. Yeah. But if you go watch my super old videos, I'm super awkward. I mean, I'm still awkward subjectively now, but, um. Yeah, man, I just, I love building, I love building businesses. I love building up people. I love building systems. You know, one of my first mentors, my Uncle Jack, rest in peace. He would say, Adam, all of the solutions are on the other side of your systems. And I know that you have a similar philosophy in some regard where it's like, something's broken. It's not just magically broken. You have to look at how everything plays hand in hand with one another. Yeah. And the same goes for YouTube. And the thing I love about YouTube is it's a level playing field. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, classically attractive, right? I'm like a, I'd say like a 6.2 outta 10, solid seven in my book. Well, to my wife, I'm probably like 6.8, maybe seven, but I got a good sense of humor, so it bumps me up a little bit. There you go. Yeah. But. The thing is YouTube you don't need, you don't need any prerequisite to turn the camera on. Yeah. It doesn't matter if you're trying to entertain, you're trying to inspire, you're trying to educate. Maybe a little bit of both. And the great thing I love about YouTube is that it allows you to go out there and crawl through the mud and get better rep after rep after rep, to the point where you can nerd out about every different aspect about it. But it all boils down to communicating in a way that's enjoyable for somebody to watch. Right. So I've been doing that now for, like I said, 15 years. Been coaching YouTube for mm-hmm. Uh, a little over two. Stumbled into it after, uh, going legally deaf in my left ear in 2016, I had a music career. My story's all over the place, so this could be a very long podcast. But I was a music, I was a music producer for about a decade, eight years of, of that were making a hundred thousand or more a year. I've worked with some big names over the course of the years and going legally deaf in my left ear. I was at a crossroads where it's like, I can't do this anymore and it's not enjoyable. Could I technically do it? Are there musicians who have hearing issues that do it? Like, yeah. But I just, it just, it, my opinion, it was mm-hmm. God telling me, Hey, you've been thinking about not doing this for a couple years now. This is like, here's a nudge. Exactly. And, um. In just bumping into the right people over the last 10 years, you learn a lot about yourself and you see a lot of opportunities. And I think one issue is a lot of people will be so dead set on the thing being plan A, and I'm not gonna have a plan B, that when other opportunities present themselves, they don't identify 'em because they're, no, that's a distraction. Mm-hmm. And at that time, I saw YouTube as a huge opportunity for me to just teach what I'd been doing. I wanted to kind of get it off my chest. Sure. That came from a very petty place. I know I'm jumping all into my life story here, but trying to get us to where I'm jump now. I started teaching musicians, primarily creatives, how to build a brand around what they do, how to communicate better through content. It wasn't just YouTube at the time. And that turned into two seven figure coaching businesses. Because people would be like, well, how do I work with you off of YouTube? Do you have an ebook? Can I hire you? Do you do consultations? Do you have a course? And back then courses were way more popular than they are at the moment. Mm-hmm. I think it comes in a cycle, right? It's like, oh, nobody's doing webinars now. Everybody's doing webinars, nobody's doing courses now everybody's doing courses. Um, but it made me realize that music had changed my life, but YouTube changed my life more than the music did. And so I'm like, if I can help other people change their life, change their business. Yeah. The people that don't. Have the ability to dream or hope. If I could show them, Hey, this is possible. If some pasty white kid from Central Wisconsin who grew up with a poor family can make seven figures with two businesses because YouTube helped me change my life. Like I can help other people do the same, for sure. And so that's where we are today, where I've just been obsessing for years over how to engineer attention, how to engineer trust. And it's not like manipulation or persuasion. It's like how does the brain work? Mm-hmm. Not even for who's watching me, but how does my brain work for how I'm communicating with them? I used to have horrible social anxiety, am my recovering introvert. So I was never great at cold open conversations, but I'd be the life of the party for all my friends, all the people I'd go to martial arts with, or were in high school with, or on the football team or baseball team. So I said, it's not that I'm introverted, it's that I'm really precautious with the unknown. Sure. And how do you get really good at handling the unknown? I mean, obviously your military background, you throw yourself into the unknown. Yes. And then you build systems to make you comfortable in the unknown. So YouTube is very, very simple, but it's not easy. And that's what I help, uh, entrepreneurs and business-minded creatives navigate now. And that's, uh, kind of a whole new chapter of my life over the last few years that has been just, I've been excited to create again. There was a, there was a time where I hit burnout. There was a time I did not wanna be in front of a camera, um, because I was serving. An audience that I feel like I outgrew. Gotcha. And, and when that happens, either you listen and you, you make that decision, or you just suffer for way too long before, you know, your hand is kind of forced and everybody and their grandma could tell you're not enjoying it anymore. Yeah. So I, um, I recently filmed an episode with, uh, an entrepreneur named Kevin Schmidt. Okay. He recently founded an energy drink company called Steep. And we talked about the concept of burnout a little bit. And I'm, I'm really starting to come into the opinion that it has less to do with the actual workload and more to do with the who you're serving and why you're serving them. Yeah. And so you kind of touched on that, just barely. Do you think that that's an accurate train of thought now because you're essentially doing a similar work, but now it's a different who? Yeah. And a little bit of a different why. I, um, I believe that obligation leads to resentment and when you do something that you're excited about and then it turns into a day job, it doesn't matter if you could be a professional butterfly catcher, there's gonna be days where you wake up, you roll out of bed, you look at that mm-hmm. Net that you have the carbon fiber net, the one that you work so hard to have as a butterfly catcher. You're like, I don't want to do this. I don't like, what's the point, right? Because now you are like, either I go do this or Yeah. I suffer. Which is a form of suffering. And so I feel like when you, I, I believe that we're put on this earth for multiple callings, but one calling leads to the next calling. Your first calling isn't your only calling, but that's going to deliver you to the next stage. Mm-hmm. It's gonna deliver you to that elevation. You know, I talk about it all the time. It's like as entrepreneurs, people that think outside the box, we're climbing this ladder constantly. And the people that are successful know there's no top rung. There's no top rung. You don't just magically, you just keep climbing. But if you think about it, throughout our entrepreneurial journey, there's gonna be moments where we feel foggy, we feel unsure. We feel like, I don't know how much more I can do, but that's just us keeping going through the clouds. Mm-hmm. And then once we pop up through the top of the cloud, not to get all like woo woo, we have a view that very few people get to ever enjoy. And if we keep climbing, we're gonna find another cloud. And that's the next chapter, the next challenge. And it's all about self discovery throughout the different phases of our life. Right? Like me at 20 is not the same as me at 30 or me at 40 now. Yeah. And so, yeah, I can create, I'm helping people find their voice. I'm helping people find their confidence. And I was doing that for years, but I wasn't aligned with those people when I started helping musicians. I had just come off of an eight year run of making. You know, I calculated it, did a YouTube video a long time ago. I made 840,000 a little bit more in eight years as an online music producer, more or less. And on paper, people were like, you have a six figure business as a musician. I hated it. I got to the point where I was producing music because I knew that that music would sell, not because I wanted to do it anymore. Mm. And that's, yeah, that's the challenge. A little bit of a different, uh, it, it's, it takes the art and turns it into a commodity. Yeah. And when it's paying your bills and allowing you to have a lifestyle where you don't, you know, I'm, I'm finding myself in my, in my twenties now, I don't have to think about how much that basket of groceries is gonna cost. Yeah. Meanwhile, a few years before that, I was out. Do you guys have Aldi here? Uh, no. Okay. So, so we have a place called Aldi in Florida, and it's all over a lot of places here in, in, in America. Um, I think originally from Germany or something, right? Yeah. They just haven't made it this far west yet. Not yet. But the thing about Aldi is it's all about accountability. You have to put a quarter. Into the carts. Yep. And to get the shopping cart out to market, to get shopping cart. I was so broke before music started working out that I would go to Aldi every time there was a downpour.'cause I knew people would, not every time, but a lot of times when there was a downpour, because I knew people would leave their cart in the parking lot and I would go soak and wet and put it back and get a quarter, put it back and get a quarter. And in an hour's time I could make $6, $8 sometimes, maybe a little bit more or less. Sure. And guess what I lived on for a year? Eggs, canned tuna and ramen, and then some condiments. I had so many condiments. I was the condiment king, but that's what I lived on for a year. I was sleeping on a broken futon and I said, if it all falls apart, I can move back to Wisconsin. Whether I shack up with my brother or my mom, I sleep in her basement or something like, but I knew that if I didn't bet on myself in what I knew was possible, if I didn't make the, the connection between the dots, I knew that the only time I'd ever go back is by ex exhausting all of my options and putting it all out on the line. Right. So in, in, in this, in this wild story, I then found myself making thousands a month on music, just enough to pay my rent. Mm-hmm. I'd have eviction notices and be like, oh, I got, I got it now. Like, no, no, no, no. I got, I got it now. And then I started making more five 10. You know, I don't think I ever made over 20 grand in a, in a, in a month with the music. It was always like, just over a hundred thousand a year. I think the best year was like close to two, but it was always a grind. I could work 18 hours a day and if I took a month off, I'd be broke again, it seemed like. Yeah. And I said that, that, you know, there's a better way of doing this. And so I started building systems and invested a little bit in like s and p 500 and stuff with a little bit of money. I'm, I'm certainly not, you know, rich subjectively, um, I'm rich and love it in the household. Right. But in what really matters. In what really matter. You know what, yeah, that a hundred percent. Uh, although that household, uh, requires some money to have fun with. But anyway, um, all of that to be said, I was doing music, fell outta love with, it was still going through the motions. Mm-hmm. I was praying a lot. What's next for me? Do I just go get a, like I like a, you know, my story, the timeline of my story is slightly, slightly confusing because while I was doing music full-time, I also had a corporate job. I stumbled into a media director job at a tech company just doing their camera work. It was just like, shoot videos, edit videos, post videos. That's all it was. I worked with the engineers, I worked with a sales team and, you know, ownership and, and the other people on the marketing team and I. I just started having fun with the YouTube content and they wouldn't let me post stuff. They're like, no, no, no, it's not how we market here. I said, why not? They were convinced that the, the market that I was in was very stuffy. They were, they needed more like sales engineering content, which is very boring. Yeah. Very specific to big purchasing agents at like Northrop Grumman or Lockheed. Sure. And I'm like, okay, I'm, you know, keep doing it. Whatever, you know, you're paying me. And then I showed the sale, a couple sales guys, those videos, the fun ones that I would do, uh, after hours, let's call it. And they were like, oh, no, no, no, we need to post these. So the owner of that company was hesitant, but he said, oh, okay. Post that in less than a month, 43,000 views on a channel that averaged like 150 views per video. And then he is like, okay, off to the races, we, we trust you now do it. The next video did 1.6 million views and took that company from around five to 7 million annually on average to over 20 million in 24 months. Wow. And I realized, oh, there's something here. Like my creative isn't just for music. My creative is, my creative ability is very impactful for other people. Yeah. And that's kinda what opened my eyes. I, I, I later became the marketing director for that company. It was a good run. Did that for almost 10 years. Um, but all the while. Built up my YouTube channel and said, if I can impact others, that's way more important than trying to get attention and trying to impact my life. And by osmosis, as you know, the more people that you impact, the more that it's gonna come back to you. So I started trying to think selflessly. Mm-hmm. When I thought YouTube was like a very selfish sport. And, uh, yeah. I'm all over the place, man. I apologize. I ramble a lot. Ramble. Yeah. Dude, I am loving the story. I am a chronic overshare, so you guys are in for a treat. We, uh, we like it. You, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. Yeah. One of the things that you mentioned, and it's something that I've, I've talked about on the show, so I just kinda wanna put a, a highlight on it. Yeah. Was, uh, you had the mindset where like, if everything fell apart, you can move back home bunk with a buddy mom, something like that. Maybe you're, you're going back to the Aldi and you're getting quarters. Yeah. You know, eight, eight bucks an hour. We're doing that. The, um, the thought that I have with that is like, we are so blessed in the United States where even in our worst case scenarios, everything goes south for you. Your worst is like, I'm moving back in with mom and dad. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna sleep on the couch. Uh, we're eating ramen for dinner. Yeah. So I, you it, as you shared that thought, you also shared the thought that. That was still important for you because you could self invest, you could invest in yourself. Mm-hmm. To keep growing. Take some inventory of like your personal stock, what's your worst case scenario actually look like? And then just invest in yourself. Right. O obviously everybody has a little bit of a different risk profile. Mm-hmm. But my greatest regret, which is crazy to say, 'cause I'm still young. Yeah. My greatest regret so far is that I didn't invest more in myself faster, sooner. Uh, I was, you know, 26 before I really got started. Yeah. And in hindsight, I, you know, while I was working in the military, things like that, a deployment, um, tax free income because of that, I, I just pissed it all away. Yeah. I've been there, man. It, I bought cars and, uh, dated expensive women and, you know, yeah. Like in hindsight, if I could have taken that, the resources that I was accruing and invested into my education, um, and not just formal education, right. Like, I'm a big believer you can actually learn how to do anything on YouTube now. Yeah. Um, a hundred percent. But like, if I would've, if I would've gone and found mentors, courses, uh, things that could have actually helped me become a better version of myself faster, sooner, then I would've been able to start making money faster, sooner. And I could have changed the trajectory of my life. And again, not to say that I have a bad trajectory of life. I have a great life now, of course. But it's because I started investing in myself. Yeah. So I just wish I had done it quicker. I can't agree anymore. Uh, I didn't start investing in myself until I was probably in my thirties, and I knew I had more to share with the world than I could figure out in my brain. Mm-hmm. Right. I think that there's some programming that we all go through. Sure. No matter where you live, by whoever raises us. Right. My, my parents, uh, my dad was a stay at home dad. He was in the Marines through Vietnam and was a police officer when I was first born and fractured his back. And he was on disability my whole life, essentially. And my mom would always be working two, three jobs to make ends to meet. And there's a lot to unpack there, maybe for another conversation. But we have to look at, we aren't going to be able to break the cycle of all we know. Yeah. Without looking, without looking outside of that. And I moved to Florida when I was 21 years old in 2007 because I knew that if I didn't escape the environment that I wasn't happy in. No change would ever happen. I was, I was homeless at 17 years old after my parents got divorced, I slept in the back of a Honda Accord. Like, I exhausted all of my options, sleeping on couches, and I was living with my, my grandma and one of my aunts, for some reason, convinced her she was gonna go to jail or something if she, it's like a really weird story, and I rekindled a, a, a great relationship now with my mom. But when you're 17 years old and your parents are knee deep in a divorce and there's custody things and stuff, and then your dad says, Hey, I'm moving in with my girlfriend. I don't, we don't have any room for you there, but you're 17, you're pretty much an adult. Granted, my dad dropped outta high school at 16 to fight, you know, be in the, in the, in the military. Yeah. At that time. So his reality was different as well. I'm like, dude, I'm working at Best Buy part-time. Like, what, what, how's that gonna work? Right? But you get thrown into it and you make a decision on whether you're gonna be the victim of that circumstance or you're gonna break the cycle of that circumstance. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, in my thirties I discovered books, uh, you know, uh, obviously like Russell's early stuff in, in the two thousands, uh, or I should say in my early thirties, I discovered.com Secrets and Discovered Launch, and I discovered, uh, you know, how to make friends and influence people by what is Dale Carnegie and like these different books that all of a sudden opened my mind to, oh, it's not that I'm broken, it's that I'm not opening my, like, I'm not programmed. I need to fix some things. Mm-hmm. And then, oh, I'm really bad at this. If I just study this person, even way before, mentors, passive mentors. If I study what they've done, if I study how they write, if I study how they communicate, if I watch what they're doing, it's no different than if you're at in the gym first time in your life and you wanna get in the best shape of your life, what do you do? You look at the guy who looks exactly like you wanna look. Yeah. And you watch what he's doing. And I think that mentors accelerate the chapters of your life in moving in the right direction. Obviously there's, there's bad apples out there, but I've been blessed to have mentors like Gary V and Russell Brunson and my uncle and, you know, passively through like Myron and other people in my life. Yeah. Where you're like, oh my gosh, I'm thinking small. Oh my gosh. I am capable of that. I have a, I had a business coach named Till for a long time, who I am, very creative minded, very right brained. And he was like only left brain. And he'd be like, Nope, do this, do this. We'll talk next week. We're not gonna talk unless he did that. I'm like, that's exactly what I needed. Because when you could follow the blueprint, or at least the loose guideline of what has worked, yeah, you're already, you already have a huge advantage no matter what you're doing. But so many people wanna jump right into like no results, all the results. And they have that impatience and they don't fall in love with the journey that they just give up and they're like, oh, it must take luck. Well, we have to create that luck. I think you'd agree with that. Absolutely. So I think that mentors, coaching, anything you can get your hands on that you will then implement is something that you should do as soon as you think of your situation as not where you want to be yet. So you mentioned that you're very right brains creator side, you needed a left brain to coach somebody who's more on the logic side. A hundred percent. Um, are you familiar with Mandy Keen's concept of the rainmaker triad? I am. She actually just broke that down for me, like, uh, maybe three months ago. I need to re-up with her on that because when I had that call, our uh, son was probably two months old. So it's like a lot of chaos in my life. But yeah, I think that having that person installed that picks up where you kind of constantly drop the ball. Yes. And I remember she broke down different archetypes and it just was like, oh my gosh, this is like a complete unlock shut up to Mandy Keane. Mandy is a, is a hero in so many different ways herself. She's, she's one of my superheroes too. I, uh, I flew Mandy Keane out to speak at my last mastermind. Amazing. She shared that concept, um, and it was something that we had broached previously in calls, but she really broke it down. It was the first time she had presented it live to an audience. And I, I'm fascinated by it because now I see that pattern everywhere and I mean, you mentioned that was what you needed at the time. I, I'm, I'm looking at that and I'm thinking this is actually the secret blueprint for like me and my world where I'm like, if I can find ways to implement that, I know I'm going to be successful. So, um, like I told you last, uh, right before we started filming, maybe I just hired a personal assistant last night. That's awesome. I've needed one for months. I'm very much a rainmaker in the traditional sense, where it's like I'm the charismatic person. I wanna go out and talk to people. I wanna build relationships. I want to drive sales. I want to increase revenue. Right? Like, that's my business superpower. Perhaps I suck at being an engineer. I'm not good at the system. I'm just, I'm just a i'll, I'll go and do the fun thing and talk to the people and, um, but my, my skill on the backend is not necessarily great. And then you have, uh, the creative side. Oh, I suck at the creative side. So like, that's always my first hire is I like, I've got Bart out there, Bart's been doing my, my videography and editing for me really since 2020. Wow. Um, and all of my best content is content that I do with him. Yeah. And all of my worst content was content that I was just trying to do myself. So I'm like, I know I need a creator. I perform better when I have the creator. I know I need an engineer. That's the executive assistant. Now I can be the rainmaker and now I have completed my triad. Yeah. And I expect massive growth as a result of it, because I can see that pattern in my other businesses. Right. I wrote about it in my book, um, with the e-commerce business. Right. Like I was doing everything by myself. I was able to get the business off the ground and I needed to hire an engineer to come in and fix the systems and the backend and make it more efficient and then creators to actually like make the, the product and the service good and desirable. Um, so when, when I heard you say that anyways, it just made me think about like this full circle. I can see the pattern in other people's lives as well. No, it's, it's cra it's a crazy unlock when you've been there, done that regardless. Mm-hmm. Where you can like, see it from a mile away what somebody is struggling with. And I think that's true leadership. I think that sometimes it's, it's hard to see it within ourselves. It's easy to see it with other people. Like, oh, you just gotta do this. And then you're like, why am I struggling with this? You're like, oh, yeah, I should practice what I preach. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, coming from a more of a creative background, everything that I've done is kind of aside from, uh, you being a union carpenter for four years, it's all been like relatively creative. I love music, I love videos and editing, and I nerd out about that stuff. I love the art of cars and fancy watches and architecture and stuff like that. Yes, we like cars and fancy watches. This is, this is not, this is like a semi fancy, it's just a tutor. A tutor. But, um, you know, we, uh, those are fancy watches for people that are in the now. Hey, for what it's worth, I've had like six Rolexes. I haven't got into like aps and stuff, but like, this is a, what is this? A black, a black Bay Krono Panda, like my favorite watch that I've ever had. I've had like sky dwellers and stuff like that. Although Sky dwellers a very, nah, I think the sky dweller might be number one. That's a different conversation for sure. A different podcast. But, you know, as I forgot to tell you, when we were talking about businesses, I, that's another one. What I have, I have a company that buys, sells, trades, exotic cars and watches. What, all right, we gotta wrap things up and, uh, go talk about that. Man. I've, I've had like 90 cars in my life. Not, not all exotics clearly, but you know. I was a co-founder of a charity rally, uh, that we did for three or four years called Gravity Rally. It still exists. Shout out to Cody, co-founder who's still running it. But yeah, man, having fun with, uh, fun cars and giving back to underprivileged kids, that was like the best. Absolutely. Yeah, man, that's the thing I love the most about being in that community now is, uh, like I'm not a gearhead in the sense of like the mechanics of the vehicle or anything. I'm, I'm just an experience junkie and not just the experience of sitting behind the car and driving really fast or something like that, but the experiences that come along with those communities and those circles. Absolutely. So I I, I love participating in that stuff. Yeah. I got a, a Hugo Big Bang, uh, on today Clean. It's, it's a cool one. We like 'em. Um, yeah, I I've got a, a little bit of a watch collection now. Oh yeah. No, I'm, no Bill Allen or anything like that. No. Yeah. You, you probably have a vault. You probably have a vault, man. You're being very modest right now. I have a, I have a small shelf inside of a home safe that is full of watches and the safe is the size of this room. Yeah. But that the safe's filled with guns. Okay, fair enough. So that's a whole different collection. There's just a little bit of watches in the safe. Uh, but yeah, I, I. That was another one for me. Sorry. Now we're going down that rabbit hole a little bit anywhere you want to go. Perfect. The watches and the cars opened doors mm-hmm. For business and deals and partnerships and networks that I didn't know previously existed. Um, and it, it was kind of curious for me, like, I bought my first exotic car back in 2019. Nice. What did, what was it? It was a, a 2016 Porsche GT three rss. Oh, nice. I almost bought a GT three Rs. It was in GT Silver. Okay. I mean, it was just clean, beautiful, gorgeous car. Right. Ah. Um, and I made sure that it was in a, a more rare color and like, uh, it gone, it had all of the, the spec that it needed to have. Right. There's a big research piece, and I kind of actually learned how to do this from, uh, the exotic car hacks guy. Oh, yeah, yeah. On Facebook. Yeah. Um, but essentially you find the most desirable car. Yeah. The best make, model spec. The, the trim level needs to be high. It needs to have the options everybody wants, and it needs to be in a color that's going to be desirable on the resell. So I end up paying a premium at the time I purchased it, knowing that that car would re-appreciate in value over the course of the next couple years. I bought the car for 150 grand, give or take. Yeah. Sold the car for two 12. Wow. Like 18 months later. So I made like 60 grand on this car. Yeah, yeah. After taxes, tags, everything like that. And, uh, I'm like, oh. This could just be a business. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And so in kind of in line with the thought of like, why I bought the podcast studio Yeah. Was like, I'm gonna just monetize that aspect of my life now. So now I get to drive cool exotic cars and like super cars and be in those communities in those circles and meet really awesome people as a result. Yeah. And I get paid to do it and people don't realize, I mean, you know, I did the same thing with, uh, I had a 2017 Audi R eight V 10 plus. Mm-hmm. And love the R eight, the, I almost bought the GT three R rs. It was, they were right, right around the same price. I paid 1 43 for the R eight and it was this Periwinkle blue that the original owner mm-hmm. Had custom painted it. Everybody, it looked like it was Nardo Gray. I thought that the colors were just off in the, like Autotrader listing. So I go up to Jacksonville, uh, Audi of Jacksonville. I live in Florida, and I look at it, I'm like, oh, that I've never, I thought that was gonna be Nardo Gray. That actually is blue, like the photos. Okay. And I look and I'm like, I, I ca I like, I had a slight autobody, uh, background as a teenage kid fixing dents and repainting cars and stuff. Mm-hmm. Putting on body kits fasted to furious style. And I'm like, this is a very good paint job. Like, very good. Yeah. And, um, talked to the sales guy. He is like, yeah, the owner down in Miami owns like an engineering firm. He has a bunch of cars and he custom painted this for whatever reason. I'm like, okay, cool. It was originally black, right. So it's like, it's not like it's blue over red or anything. Sure. And I, I, uh, anyway, I specked it out. Just put all the bells and whistles on it. It was, it was already, I mean, it's a V 10 plus. It was already top trim level. I paid 1 43 for it and I sold it for like one 90 something. And then I got a Huan. I took a bath on that because I needed to get out of it. That's a whole different story for a different day. But, um, I didn't really take a crazy bath, probably like lost 10 grand on it. Like the market, remember the market went up. Yeah. And then it like stalled and then it dropped. And I wanted to get into a G wagon and we were having our daughter and I'm like, she can't ride in this thing. It's like impractical. I wanna open up garage space. So I was like, just impatient really.'cause the sales guy, uh, was telling me he is like, Hey, just like, be patient, you'll, you'll get probably 2 10, 2 20 for it. Yeah. And, uh, I think I sold it for like one 90 something or 180 9 9 or something. But, um, I have met more entrepreneurs in having a couple supercars than the Masterminds I've been part of. Mm. Yeah, because you go to a car show, you got a line of exotics. I, I co-founded the charity rally, so all these people were paying us to be part of these things where their money would then go to Nemours St. Jude's Toys for Tots. Sure. Like usually about once a quarter we would do them. And so it's like we're giving back. That's why I named it Gravity Rally because it was like the gravity of our actions go far beyond what we're doing for ourselves. Mm-hmm. And um. Man. It's like my, my, uh, dream car is an SVJ Ventor. Yeah. And I like, that's, that's, that's like what my eyes, you know, what I, what I'm set on there. Um, but yeah, man, it's just, unless you're willing to take that leap, unless you're willing to step into the unknown, you'll never be able to experience any of that stuff. And that, like, that's, that's the massive reward for massive action. Yeah. That people don't realize, could you crash and burn a hundred percent. I'm not talking about in the cars, but, but in the cars too. But in the cars too. Yeah. I've gone too fast a couple times, but, um, yeah, man, I, it opens up so many different things when your hobby turns into a business, when your hobby turns into new friendships and networking and experiences that you could have never, never wrapped your head around. So that's kind of where I'm, I'm at in my personal business philosophy at this point, is I want to just turn all of my hobbies, all the things that I'm doing into a separate business now that, uh, I've, I've ran into some, some obstacles with that over the course of the last year. Sure. I've been involved in too many things. I started dropping balls. That's why I need the assistant now. Yeah. Um, and I'm trying to hire, build the team, build the team, build the systems. Um, but I'm like, I can just do what I want to do and get paid doing it. Yeah. It's almost like we're only fans, girls. Yeah. But with cars or watches or podcasts or, it's just kind of cool to think about, um, what's possible in that way because, you know, I, I grew up, um, like in a very poor household as well, and I just had no, no concept of what was possible in the world of business or self-development and achievement. Yeah. Um, and I started being exposed to that after I really left home and I joined the Army and I'm traveling the world, and now I'm seeing old money in Europe. Oh yeah. I'm getting exposed to some of those kind of things. Totally different game. Yeah. Like I, I can remember I'm a soldier and I, I'm like, uh, on the weekend off work, uh, I was stationed in Vick, Germany, so we would go on the weekends to like Nuremberg or something like that. Oh, yeah. You know these cobblestone roads in Nuremberg and there's like a la Ferrari coming down there. Right, right. And I'm like, what? They're, they're getting herniated discs in their back just going down the road. It is just so I, I remember seeing stuff like that and I'm like, this is a totally different, there are levels to the game that I just didn't know existed. So I, I started to actually, um, it, it was kind of weird. I was buying, let's hear Right. I was s buying, I was creeping on all of the most successful people that I knew. Sure. I started like studying them. Like what are they doing? Yeah. And I realized this, they're not smarter than me. They weren't, you know, necessarily better at business or anything like that. Granted, I didn't have the background yet, but I was like, okay, these people are just operating with a different toolkit. Like these people have all mastered self-discipline. Yeah. They're all in a process of continuous improvement or achievements where like they're trying to work towards a goal or better themselves constantly. Um, I could see like, they were always taking action and they were always learning. So I'm like, okay, I can implement those things. Yeah. And then as I started to do that, like that's when I started to, um, I left active duty, I started implementing that. I ended up starting the first business. It's slow, but it's successful. Like we were never, um, we were never upside down or in the red. Yeah. Like, uh, I used a pre-sell model so that we were bringing in revenue to fund for the purchasing that we were making. So like everything just kind of snowballed off that. And then we take the snowball mentality and we plug that into everything else. So that Porsche GT three RS that I sell and I make 60 grand on that becomes the down payment for the next two cars. Yeah. And then, uh, like we pick up, um, uh, nine 11 Turbo s and we picked up like a McLaren five 70 s. Okay. We did an R eight, then we did an R eight first. So I get an Audi R eight. Yeah, it was the original 2008 gated manual. Oh yeah. Iron Man. Iron Man car. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, that thing was awesome. Um, you said it was gated? Yeah, gated manual. Oh yeah. Nothing like it. Dude. That actually, the gated manual, one of my favorite driving experiences ever. Click, click, click, click. Yeah. Yeah. It was just Right. Yeah. So I, I loved that car, that car specifically. Uh, I got a, a phone call from a dealer in Florida who was like, Hey, do you still have that car? Yeah. I'm like, yeah. He's like, would you sell it to me? I'm like, well, I happen to know that you have a one of 200 Aston Martin Vantage a MR. Mm. I'm like, I won't sell it to you, but I'll trade it to you. Wow. Um, so we, we ended up working that deal. Yeah. He already had the buyer lined up for the Audi, so like, it was just a quick pass through for him, I'm sure. Amazing. Yeah. But then that was my doorway into like this Aston Martin Vantage, a MR really limited run, uh, very high, high desirable, um, car. So it was like, I just kept snowballing everything into the next thing. And when I learned that model, then I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this with the real estate too. Mm. Everything becomes a snowball. Yeah. So we start with just this, this small simple action of like buying one car on a loan. And then the momentum gained from those actions over time is like creating multimillion dollar portfolios. Yeah. Spot on. So I just do that with everything now. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's how I got, I mean, I had A-A-B-M-W-I eight, uh, this is probably back in 2018, actually. Like it, I think those are really ugly cars. Yeah. They, they, uh, don't photograph very well. They're cool as far as if you've never been in a crazy exotic car when you get in, it feels somewhat special because of the going doors. Sure. And, um, carbon fiber tub. Well, and BM BMW always does a good job with the interior. Like, it's gonna be nice. The finish was, was pretty deep. It was quick, certainly not fast, but quick. It would keep up with some of like the, it would keep up with like, you know, the guys at the, at the rallies that had m threes and stuff like it, like, uh, like a Camaro SS or something, but it wasn't like a supercar. Mm-hmm. And I put all the V Steiner stuff on it and wheels and, and dropped it a little bit just so it tucked a little bit nicer. But I bought that car for $62,000 in 2018 or 2019 when I, I traded it in on the Audi R eight and they gave me like 76,000 for it.'cause it was like. I'm like, yeah, you, you could. Sure. Yeah. And then I went from the Audi at 1 43 minus whatever trade-in was. And I, I think I had that car paid off, sold that off the Huan, did a bunch of, stu dumped a lot of money into the Huan and then it was just like life, life changing. But my plan was to work up to an event door, do the same thing. Mm-hmm. A little bit, work up to an ventor, maybe get like a 7, 7 20 s or something, and then just stay patient, talk to a lot of people.'cause that's how you find the good deals as you know. Um, but yeah, man, it's, uh, with watches, with all these experiences that people aspire to, just like how many people spend 1200 bucks and, and rent a Huon when they're in Vegas. Yeah. Right. It's like, well you could take that money and buy like an entry level watch that might have a decent resale or put, you know, stack up a little bit of money, put it down on something like a first Gen R eight, um, or it be even some of these older tuner cars. Yeah. I mean, I saw somebody recently selling a 1998 Mitsubishi Eclipse, GSX for like $23,000. I'm like pretty sure that's about what it was new. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I had one in high school and I think I paid five grand for it. Yeah. So I'm same with the Supras and the NSXs. And um, so as grown men, I also feel like it's a way for us to have like toys. Oh, agreed. That also don't cost us anything if you do it right. And you're a prime example of like having all these different toys. So you brought up the watches too, so now I gotta dive into those a little bit. Yeah, let's do it. Um, because I got exposed to watches through the cars, through the same, uh, and it's crazy how much of those go hand in hand. I think Exotic Car Hacks has exotic Watch hacks it. Correct. It's, it's, uh, the Watch Trading Academy. That what I did join that, that course too and, and go through that program and learn it, but I didn't, like I had done Car Hacks first. Sure. Um, and I didn't join the watch trading stuff until after I was going to like car meets. Yeah. And I'm taking my cool car and people are coming up to meet me and talk to me, and all of a sudden I'm somebody that people actually want to engage with. I'm not some rando at the meet. Yeah. And I realized every single one of these people had a really nice watch on. Yeah. And I like one of 'em, um, his name's Trevor. Good guy. Friends with him locally. Nice. Trevor's got, uh, a vampire ap. Oh. And, and I'm like, dude, I love that watch. It's awesome. Like ap uh, I, I fan girl over ap, so I've got one now. I love them. Um, but they were like the pinnacle for me at the time where that like, that's what I admired. And so I'm like, dude, I I love that. What do you do? He's like, oh, well I, I, I'm a watch trader. I'm like, what? What does that mean? He's like, well, I. Buy and sell watches. Uh, I try to flip 'em, you know, 20% margin on each deal, roughly, and that pace for my cars and lifestyle and things like that. I'm like, you're paying for your cars with the watch trading. He's like, yeah, mind blown. Okay. So then I started seeing other people, the watches, I would ask them about it. Mm-hmm. And almost everybody, almost everybody, not all of them, but everybody that was in a really nice car and had a really nice watch was flipping their watches to pay for their cars. And I'm like, yeah, because those communities go hand in hand when you have the car network. You also inherently have watch clients. So then I started like brokering watches a little bit. Um, not, yeah, brokering is probably the better word, where I would like, I, if I could see somebody with selling it, I would, uh, Hey, I know you're looking for this, or you're interested in this. Like, I've got a lead on one. Yeah. And I would just take a little cut Sure. On the, on the pass through. Or I started buying high demand watches that I, I thought would be desirable. I would list them on a Shopify store just as So that there was a formal listing. Yeah, yeah. Post 'em on an Instagram page. And then if people, people are just, Hey, I'm interested in that watch. Hey, great. Here's the deal. You know, I wire it, ship it, whatever. But, um, yeah, that, that kind of. I don't do that a ton because it's a little bit more time intensive than, than what I am willing to really spend on it. Sure. I end up, I end up trading a few watches a year, but I'm like, some people, like that's a way that they can build a business almost immediately. Uhhuh is like, you can make 20%, 25% on a watch flip and a couple hours a week. I know a couple people, and they're not doing it all the time, but I know a couple people have great relationships with authorized dealers and they'll get like a sub for, I don't know what they're going for now, 9 8509, like a no date. And then they just go to the other person and they flip it for 10 or flip it for 12. I had an opportunity to buy a another white face Sky Dwell, they're just stainless for 16. Eight, about a week before our son was born. And my wife was like, I'm gonna cut your nuts off if you end up going and buying the sky. I'm like, I can, I can flip it. Oh man. I could flip it. But that's the thing, like a lot of these exotic of dealer cars, dealers are cutting down on that too. Now. You're right about that. Yeah. That's, that's the problem. If you want to have a good relationship with an ad, like they can't trace your watch to the, you know, third party Yeah. Market. Otherwise you're not getting any more, uh, direct from. And then like I've, I've really only done Rolex and Tutor, um, like again, I've never done, uh, uh, hub Low or uh, AP or anything like that. Mm-hmm. But started with the Bruce Wayne. Right, right on. Yeah. Uh, blackface, GMT. Then I got into, uh, Batman. GMT with the sport bracelet. Got a a, I had an explorer just as an everyday, um, what is an, a Arctic, Arctic Explorer with the white face. Mm-hmm. And then I had, uh, my favorite watch I think I've ever had is, is the sky dweller. Had the sky dweller just stainless. But it was that, that watch, this is like one of my favorite watches that I've had. But like that sky dweller, when I'd go to car shows and stuff, when I would be around the other, 'cause there's levels, like you said. How I took it was I had a, I had a Huon six ten four. And when I'd go and try to schmooze with the Ventor guys, it was like, okay, like little brother vibes, right? Like, yeah, okay, okay. Oh yeah, H guy, okay. Like all these other crypto bros. Okay. And I'm like, no, no, no. But I had a, I had a sky dweller on and I was talking to a guy, he's like, Hey you, I need to introduce you to my friend. He looked down on my wrist, I need you. And again, this isn't saying that you need status.'cause a lot of this stuff is just stupid. At the end of the day. It's hobbies, it's grown men hobbies. But there's a huge upside if you leverage it. Yes. Financially, relationships, it's no different than if you have a bunch of friends who are sneakerhead, most likely you, yourself or sneakerhead, right? So it's a lot of times it's not who you surround yourself with. It's. Having common interests with the people that you surround yourself with in order to continue to move forward in the right direction. And I'm not saying you can't be buddies with people you went to high school with. Yeah. But at the same time, I think that in doing what we are doing, it's pretty common to outgrow other mindsets when they're just crabs in a bucket. Sure. It's just like, hey, uh, you know, people get real weird when start make money. I think everybody successful does that. Yeah. At some point. Like you just outgrow the people who can't keep up with the frame of reference or the perspective. Yeah. Um, like I lost all of my friends pretty much from high school and from college even. Were like, they saw me building my business. Yeah. Um, but building the business necessarily came at the expense of going out with them on the weekends, taking Fridays off to go snowboarding. Like Right, right. Things that we used to do together, um, and they didn't really understand it for a long time. Eventually the business grows, I become, uh, more successful and then all of a sudden it's the, oh, you were so lucky, man. No. Yeah. You're not relatable. I had to, yeah. It was, it was three years of hard work where I sacrificed those relationships, but now, uh, you know, it gets lonely at the top to some degree, um, because I don't have the same friend group anymore and there's less and less people that can relate with you, which is why the cars and the watches are so much more valuable to me now because those put me in circles of proximity where now people can relate to me again. Yeah. Well, and it, it's, it's, I think as grown men, I have, I have this conversation with my wife on occasion. It's like, it is very awkward and hard to make new life friends. Yeah. You could be buddies with a lot of people, but if you're my buddy, it doesn't mean you're my friend. Mm-hmm. If that makes sense. There's, you got translate a little bit here. Friends are people that you could depend on and talk to, just hang out with, be in the same space without having to always do something for them or vice versa. Always have to be like, like I, I've had friends where we just watch football. Outside of that, we have nothing in common. Nothing to talk about. It's just weird. Just like hanging, right. You have golf buddies, we go golfing, but like everything else. But over the, over the course of time, where do you meet 'em? Yeah, because most people's life, lifelong friends were like college or high school or maybe a job that they worked at. They bump into 'em and then they get pulled into the rest of their life. I have a couple, like my best friend Zach, best friend, Chico, I've known them Zach for 20 years now. He's the one that got me into music producing. We're both from Wisconsin. Shout out to Zach. Um, and then Chico I bumped into in like 2009 and he ended up being on my team for six years and there's a good chance that he'll end up on the team again. Um, but aside from the gym. Or maybe, you know, maybe military. Mm-hmm. Where are you gonna meet? Just you, you're gonna go to hang out, you gotta lurk around a grocery store trying to find another dude friend that it doesn't, but hey, I noticed that you're also a male at the grocery store. Well, how do you like those? Uh, how do you like those frozen chicken fingers? Do you have kids? No, this is just me. Okay. Nevermind. No, but it's like going to car shows, going to, you know, being, being in circles where they nerd out about watches too.'cause most of the guys at flip watches are nerds when it comes to watches. It's not just like a money thing. Yeah. It's like, you know how rare that is? This serial number's one of like five, that's like a holy grail piece. Right. And then they look into the, the more boutique brands like the Hamiltons of the world and, and, uh, grand Seikos and mm-hmm. Nobody knows the difference between Grand Seko and regular seko. And it's just like, you nerd out about all this, the, this art form. Really? Yeah. It's an appreciation of an art form. So I love it, man. I, you know, I think that as entrepreneurs we build and we try new things and we test things out and we jump into the perils of not knowing what's gonna happen. Yeah. And uh, what better way to do that than with some real estate watches and cars. So speaking of things that, uh, we don't know are gonna happen. Yeah. Did you check your Facebook after you got off the plane before you got here? Not, no, I have not. Okay. No, I have not. No spoilers then? No. I posted in the Facebook Inner Circle, or the Inner Circle Facebook group. I said, Hey, I got Adam Ivy coming into the studio. What questions should I ask him? I did see the Post. Now, Mandy Keen, we talked about her just a minute ago. I love, man, she submitted this question. Okay. Where do you think the future of YouTube is going? People are going to, okay, let me, let me rephrase that. So the future of YouTube, in my opinion, looks segmented. It's gonna be humans, and then it's gonna be faceless AI stuff. I hope that YouTube starts enacting tougher policies to keep the AI slop off the platform, because people don't go on YouTube to watch some animated explainer video with an animated or a fake voice. That sounds like it came outta chat. EPT. Don't get me wrong. If I need help setting the time on A VCR, maybe that would be helpful. People go to YouTube for human connection. Yeah, that's why when you're looking at somebody in a camera, when I'm looking at the camera lens right now, and I'm making eye contact with anybody watching this, depending on how the editor puts it together, I'm now in their space trying to connect with them on a real human level. Mm-hmm. If my opinions can be replaced by ai, then what are we really doing? What does art and opinions and perspective and life experience become? Not everything is just about facts and knowledge. I see YouTube trying to enact tools to make it more human. Got it. To make it, yeah, to make, like live, for example, is more popular than it's ever been on YouTube. Why? Because AI, up to this day is bad, at least. Mm-hmm. Faking lives. Like, there's been other case studies where those Asian dudes on TikTok had like a clone of themselves on TikTok shop and it was working and stuff. But I feel like if we look five years in the future, it's all going to be the same while looking a little bit different. What do I mean by that? You need to, how do I put this? Oh, it's very simple. This is what it's gonna look like. You need to attract attention, retain attention, and convert attention. Mm-hmm. It's all, it's attract, retain, convert. I call it my arc system, right? So if you're not getting any attention for your thing on YouTube, there's going to be 15 other people that can, so we need to be engineers more than ever before. And I know a lot of people out there get upset when I say this because they're like, well, I'll just make YouTube to have fun. Oh. I just, it's a creative expression for me. It's a way for me to, it's a, it's a creative outlet. It's fun to make some money. Well, there's nothing wrong with doing it as a hobby. Just don't get mad at me when I tell you that it's not gonna make you money. Yeah. And that's the problem. You can't have it both ways. If I wanna make really cool t-shirts with you in my garage, and I buy like one of those five station screen printers and I watch all these tutorials and I get the inks and I get the screens and I get the samples and we pick out the t-shirts that we really like and we're making these amazing t-shirts in the garage and Parker and I are just hanging out making cra and we never open the garage doors or tell anybody about it. Well, that's clearly not gonna be a successful, uh, successful, uh, t-shirt brand. Yeah. But people do that. They're like, well, I'm just gonna let it speak for itself. I worked with musicians for over five years. Seriously, how can it speak if it doesn't have the microphone to be heard? Oh, you right. A hundred percent the platform to be seen. Nothing has ever spoke for itself. Right? Yeah. Elvis, the Beatles, rolling Stones, Aerosmith, they did all the little college radio stations. They were published in as many different periodicals as they could. It was all marketing. Yeah. To get back to a product. No different than Nike sells shin guards, but they also sold, used to sell golf clubs. They'll sell a nut cup in kids cleats. Not, not, not the same. But you get what I'm saying, like, there's products. How are you marketing the brand? That's what it's all about on YouTube. It's building the trust that's engineering that it's making sure that you meet them where they are. Mm-hmm. Obviously entertainment versus education. I'm. 90% talking about educational content here. If you have a message, if you have a business, if you have a service, you're doing everybody a disservice for not getting in front of a camera and telling people about it and sharing your wins and sharing the journey and sharing what you do. Yeah, because YouTube, anybody can get information. Nobody's paying a coach to get the information. They're, they're paying a coach for implementation, unique life perspective, ex lived experience, and to be able to cut the corners ethically to say like, oh, Parker spent 20 years schlepping through this stuff, just, I'll just do what he tells me to do so I don't have to make those mistakes. Yeah. That's where the value is. Anybody can go on chat, g, pt, and write me a content plan, write me 10 viral hooks, all this other stuff, right? Mm-hmm. It takes the humanity out of it. If you want real customers, you need real humans, right? So I think that YouTube in the near future is going to have more tags. Mm-hmm. Saying this is AI content, so that people are very clear. What is human and what is ai? Don't get me wrong, I'm not, I mean, it's my initials. I'm not trying to say that AI is bad, it's just I look at it as a tool. Agreed. And not the creative brain. Well, and I don't think it, like my personal philosophy, maybe belief, I don't think it ever can be the creative brain. Yeah. The reason I say that is like, even now with how effective AI can be as a tool to enhance you, it operates off of a prompt. It still off operates off of the input that we provide it. It needs a creative to fuel its function. So I think that people who try to use it to replace creative are inherently going to self-defeat, because at the end of the day, it's a tool to enhance you as a person, help you be more effective or efficient. Well, and I, I, uh, to piggyback off that thought, AI references what has already been made. Yes. So it's already dated to a certain point. And there's no innovation. We don't know what the next cool big thing's gonna be.'cause AI's not gonna generate it as far as like your new favorite YouTuber or the next big brand, or TikTok, or it's not gonna come from ai. They might use it as a tool for ideation. Mm-hmm. Use it for some ideas about production or distribution. But true innovation can't come from. Referencing things that are already, have already been done. In fact, I think, and this is maybe a slight hot take, but I think a lot of people agree chat, GPT continues to get worse and worse and worse. It's almost like if you and I went to go, went to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa speaking of Paris earlier, and I said, okay, Parker, I'm a pretty good artist. Like I remember what it looks like. I'm gonna paint this. And then we bring friends and say like, that's the Mona Lisa. And then Chet goes and paints my painting of the Mona Lisa. And he is like, this is, this is exactly what it looks like. That's all chat GPD does. Yeah.' cause the more content that's coming influenced is now being referenced again. It's like, as disgusting as it sounds, it's like me taking five chicken nuggets, chewing them up and being like, here's some chicken nuggets. And then you chewing it up. It's like, it, it just, it, it, it gets gross. Yeah. And that's why there's so much AI slop and there's so many entrepreneurs out here and, and I'm friends with some of 'em that their whole thing now is like, I wanna teach you how to clone yourself with ai. It's like, yeah, that's like, uh, annex big push right now too. And he's killing it. He's crushing it. But here's the thing, I could, I could understand it for some time efficiency thing. But like, at what point are you just using a tool to make music and then you say you're the musician? Yeah. Like, and, and I think my perspective of this might be a little bit counterintuitive to most entrepreneurs that were using ai, but I came from a creative background. Mm-hmm. I was a music producer fighting amongst all these other music producers to get my music on TV and video or uh, TV and commercials, video games, movies, you know, working with artists trying to get their attention. And now you can click a button and have a thousand songs by the end of the week that sound like someone spent 12 hours making them. Yeah. And at what point does it go from being, oh, this is really cool, to like, oh, this is kind of pathetic. This is an innovation, this is, this is just Yeah. Stripping humans from being human. That's a really curious thought because there's, um, I can't remember a few, uh, maybe weeks, months ago, Joe Rogan had, was talking to, I'm not even gonna remember who he was talking to. Um, might've been, might've been a Dave Smith episode or a, uh, other comedian. Um, but he was talking about how AI can generate music now. Yeah. Even, even the voice. Right. Like somebody singing, but they ever pause to take a breath. Yeah. They can hit every note in every range. He's like, it's unreal. Mm-hmm. At first I'm thinking, I'm like, wow, that's, that's really cool that that can happen. Yeah. And then in hindsight I'm thinking how unrealistic, like it's, it's creating a environment or situation where, you know, people would be listening to that maybe, and they have no idea that it's an AI until they realize it can't be replicated by them. A human couldn't do those things. Yeah. And then you're trying to compare yourself to something that's not even human to begin with. Mm-hmm. And what, what kind of downward spiral on mental health and, and, you know, human standard and performance do we experience as a result of that? Like, it just, anyways, SWR balls for me, bro. I have been sent by my wife and friends, like podcast clips like this, talking about what it means to be, uh, a good husband or, you know, true friend. And I'm like, this is ai. People don't like being lied to, but they like making AI fake podcasts that regurgitate some Instagram motivation posts. Yeah. That they like, like at what point are, are we stripping ourselves from the value of an alternative perspective? Mm-hmm. Because if it's all just the same chirping. And content. That's the thing I really, that gets under my skin, man. The one thing that gets under my skin more than anything is learn a AI to make content. Learn AI to make content. Put it out there. You could put 18 pieces of content out a day and you can get attention for what? Yeah. Especially when it's like, not even them on camera, it's like fake cat videos or like, or, or you see it a lot now, the fake, uh, like ring doorbell type cameras. Yeah. Where it's like, oh, this guy fell off of a bladder. It's like, that's not real. Yeah. Right. Or some guy walks in just anything for views. That's what it's what is the point? Because then the, let's say that it's like the US Treasury. There's only so many CI circulated bills. Yeah. There's only so much circulating after the pursuit of ad share revenue. That's what it really boils down to. For me. It's not making much money at all. No. But if a hundred thousand views stupid people do what stupid people do because they're stupid people. Yes. We need it. That should be a teacher. So this is, this is like seriously a good, uh, philosophy that I implement and everything. I a good friend, he'll be at the mastermind tomorrow. His name's Morgan Steers. Morgan Steers. Uh, I met him in the military. He's been a client of mine now. Like, uh, awesome dude. He used a little bit of a more offensive way to say that, but in essence, it was the stupid people do what stupid people do because they're stupid people. Yeah. Um, and as I, I, I thought, I'm like, wow, that's a really crass way to say this. Like, uh, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And then I realized, oh my gosh, no, that actually makes a ton of sense. It can be applied. Good men do good things because that's what good men do. Yeah. Smart men do smart things because that's what smart men do. So I'm like, okay, this, this theory as I've pondered on it, can be put together. Now, stupid people do stupid things because that's what stupid people do. They're all chasing ad share revenue. It's the only logical thing that I can surmise why they're trying to get all those views with nonsense content that isn't actually informational. That's not really educational, it's just shock value. Mm-hmm. Right. It's the dude falling off the ladder in the front yard on a ring doorbell cam. Yep. That never actually happened and is totally AI generated and probably has the Sora watermark bouncing around in there somewhere. But you know what, you know what they get from that? Some guy sitting on his toilet going, huh? And they swipe. That's it. That's it. That's literally correct. It doesn't make sense to me. No. And it doesn't have to make sense to me because it's just stupid people doing what stupid people do, because that's what stupid people do. Well, imagine this. Imagine that you wanna meet your soulmate, you wanna meet somebody, take a step back from soulmate, say you are single and you wanna really date somebody to get to know them. Mm-hmm. Have a life with them. Well, how idiotic would it seem if I put you into a warehouse and there were 16, let's just say 16 females, and there are 800 mannequins. What's, they're not really options, they're just, they're just wasting your time. They're just in the space. They're just wasting your time. So if you have 200 million active users a day on YouTube, which is a little bit more than that, and you fill it with all this AI stuff, what is doing? It's wasting your time. It's wasting time wasting, and it's taking the eyeballs off of actual humans. Yeah. That, in my opinion, even if they're struggling and they just got started and they suck, you're taking your eyeballs away from watching someone grow and develop and actually taking interest in someone. Yeah. You're taking the data away from them too. Yeah. So that they can't improve. Yeah. You're actually, you're creating a system that forces you to have an inferior product over time. Right. And then the comparison game, because if all these fake videos, or even fake pranks with real humans are getting a hundred thousand views, a hundred million views, whatever that might look like. Mm-hmm. Then. You know, Tammy, who's making cooking videos from her, her kitchen, when her kids are at school, she'll get 230 views and feel like a complete failure. Mm-hmm. She just watched some fake guy falling off a fake ladder, you know, that got 43 million views. And so it's like, what is it? And don't get me wrong, again, I don't wanna, I'm not bashing ai, I'm bashing lazy content and people making content just to make content.'cause they don't have a message. Yeah. They'll go, what would be an underserved market that I could serve? Oh, what are the 10 issues that they're having in that market? What are the 10 pain points that I can make content to resolve? How would I resolve those? How would I take that one that I wanna resolve right now and break it into five different Instagram, uh, posts? How can I turn that into a reel? What should the hook be? You can't think for yourself. Yeah. And sorry to say, people think that typing in these prompts, like they're creating, they are a consumer. Just because you're on AI doesn't mean you're a creative. You are consuming mm-hmm. Everything that the robot, the computer gives you. I would like to do this, don't get me wrong. If you're trying to lose weight, if you're trying to get your macros dialed in, if you wanna have a better schedule with your wife to have a work life balance and say, this is what's going on now. AI can be a wonderful tool for that. Organization. Yeah. Helping you kind of say like, I wanna do, uh, 15 pieces of content on Instagram a a week. Mm-hmm. And this is what I do. Like what are the different angles or the, you know, let's say I'm into fitness, one could be healthy recipes. The other one could be outside workouts, one could be, you know, fit over 40, you know. Okay. Cool. Now I'm gonna go jot down. I was just talking to my wife about this the other day. I think that ideation on paper is more valuable than it's ever been. Mm-hmm. Because we are so deprogrammed now to live in an analog world because we're so addicted to our phones and these apps and just sta staring in into a void, which is your screen. Yeah. That could be your laptop, your home monitor, your iPad, your tv, your cell phone, your I wa your Apple Watch, your looking at pixels all day and the thing that's gonna unlock our brains, and we're gonna, we're gonna realize this, a, it's gonna be too late before most people realize it. We have to be bored and let our bodies do what our bodies are meant to do. We need to be able to reset our attention, reset our dopamine and serotonin release. Mm-hmm. We have to get outside. We have to take care of our health and fitness. And that's not just looking good. That's not just telling people that you're living your best life. Who are you when it's all stripped away?'cause if we lost Instagram and YouTube and TikTok and Facebook and Pinterest and Snapchat and all these other things, who were you before you picked up the phone to sign up for these things? Yeah, because usually people fall into the consumption trap and that's all they ever become.'cause they're so focused on comparing themselves and learning knowledge. Porn is such an addiction for so many people. I learned how to do all these things. I read all these books. Okay. What did you do with it? Did you take any action? Yeah. My Uncle Jack, um, founded a company called 800 CEO read like 30 years ago or something. It was Amazon's number one competitor, uh, for book selling for a while. Like obviously way long time ago, before Amazon became Amazon, um, or what we know as Amazon now. But my Uncle Jack would send me, and this is kind of funny because I didn't even know he did any of this stuff until I was in my late twenties, early thirties. And I think one of my aunts who I'm very close, was like, you know, uncle Jack has a whole business and he sells like books or something. You should call him and ask him about it. We'll, come to find out 800 CEO read.com at the time, now it's Porch Light Books was just about business, self-development, marketing books. It was just like super niche. And so he sent me my first box of books and I, I remember almost every book in that box, five or six like skills or strengths finder and stuff like that. And he goes, Adam, I want, if I ever come to visit you, I want to see all these books destroyed. He goes, they're not, don't be precious with them. Highlight, highlight things that impact you. Dog ear pages. Put post-it notes in 'em and you could roll it up and put it in your back pocket. The second you find something in that book that's valuable to you, think about it. Close the book and do something with it. He goes, these books are not novels. They're not fiction, they're tools. He goes, and honestly, half of he is like, more than half of them by the time you hit the halfway point of the book, you don't have to read the rest of the book.'cause it's just like the author reiterating what, what's they've already shared in a, in a lot of cases. And that just kind of changed my entire perspective of it.'cause I was the guy who was like, oh, don't bet, don't open it too much. Like I wanna, I want it to look like it came off the shelf at Barnes and Nobles. Uh, is it Barnes and Nobles or Barnes and Noble. Noble. I think its just Noble, noble, singular. Yeah. Thank you. I was like something inside. That's where I do all my Christmas shopping. There we go. Hey, the ones that have the Starbucks in there. You just, that's what I'm saying, man. My, my two and a half year old, you go in there, the kid section. It's amazing. Anyway, you know, I started reading books and really studying this and, and one of my clients and uh, kind of a passive mentor to me, ARA Vasuki, who's in Inner Circle as well. He says, you know, he learned from Bob Proctor. You study one paragraph. For a week, five days study one paragraph or maybe one page. If the paragraph is just like a filler thing. Sure. One page, one concept. You go back and you reread it every day for five days and you just chunk through the book like that, not cover to cover chunk by chunk. And he goes, you study it and you implement it. You do everything you can to say, how can I do this? What does this look like in my life? Yeah. For a week. And even if only 20% of the vapor's still there afterwards, change has happened. Yeah. You've actually got 20% of the progress. Right. Incremental change. Right. The small drops. I used to tell clients all the time, you are so obsessed with knowing how many jelly beans are gonna fit into the jar. Meaning like, when am I gonna be successful? When is this gonna work? Mm-hmm. But if you just focus on putting one jelly bean at a time, next thing you know it's overflowing.'cause you fell in love with the process. Yeah. It's one thing at a time. It's why I always say you rep, uh, you're, you're, uh, your, your, uh, I always say your repetition builds your reputation. So that's something I live off of. If I sleep in every day, well that's the reputation that I have. Mm. If I say, Hey, no, I'm gonna call you back this weekend, and I don't, which I've been guilty of in the past, that's why I say it. That's your reputation. Has anybody ever asked you to go out like four or five times a row? You like, nah bro. No, no. Nah. Then they stop asking. Yeah. But if you go into the gym, I know you have a fitness background. If you go into the gym and you wanna run a marathon, do you start with 27 point whatever miles. No, you start with maybe a half a mile. Yeah. Until you got Wicked Hins place. Yeah. And then you, you know what I mean? The most effective, uh, sorry. So we're just gonna share the thought here please. The most effective way I've found to train for running is a combination of, uh, Phil Mait lesson and a Hal Higdon lesson. Um, and it's essentially heart rate based training. Okay. Over a progressively increasing amount of time. Well, I like that. So it's really counterintuitive.'cause you know, I was in the Army and the Army's like, run faster, run harder. Oh, you're slow at running, just run harder. And then you get shin splints and then it hurts, and then all of a sudden you have stress fractures and the Yeah. Just keeps compounding worse and worse and worse because they're making you take a bad action repetitively. Yeah. So we take a good action. We slow down, really slow heart rate based training. Like for me, uh, 145 beats per minute is like my target. If I get over 150, I'm walking until my heart rate comes back down. Wow. I've never actually heard of this before. This is blowing my mind now. Okay. So Phil Matone teaches this is called the Math 180 Method. Okay. It's a little mathematic solution that you can come out with that should have your target heart rate zone for training. Sure. So one 40 to one 50 for me. 1 45 is the target. If I get below one 40, I need to run faster. Yeah. And that's a signal for me to pick up the pace. If I'm hitting above one 50, I know I need to slow down. If that means I have to slow down to walking speed. Yeah. Until my heart rate gets back under control. Then I do that. Now where the, the Hal Higdon piece comes in is he teaches essentially progressive overload for the time training on your running. Yeah. So it's like you start your first couple sessions at like 20 minutes and then it's 30 minutes, and then it's 40 minutes, and then it's 50 minutes. Right. So it's, you're ramping how now as you do this, the merger of these two methods, over time, you develop the capacity to operate faster, longer at the target heart rate. Oh, that's genius. So over the course of, uh, 12 to 16 weeks of training, even though I was walking at the beginning of that, I'm at a point now where I could run my 13.1 miles for my half marathon at 145 beats per minute. Wow. In a sub two hour window. That's really impressive, dude. But that's the, so, okay. So it starts with the smallest, slowest, most counterintuitive effort of like, I'm gonna walk for 20 minutes at a target heart rate. Yeah. And maybe that means I'm power walking for five minutes and I'm really walking slow for the next 15 to bring my heart rate back. But you develop a capacity in that working zone. Now you take that concept, it's the exact same concept for. Business, entrepreneurship, self-development, family relationships, it trickles into everything else. You start with these really small actions of training consistently on something or doing something consistently. And then over time you build the individual capacity that allows you to do it at a greater scale. Yeah. For bigger, for longer. That's it. Love it. That's secret. Love it. Yeah. And then that, yeah, your repetition builds your reputation. I mean, it, it's just doing the small things over and over again. And you know, as you're saying that, I'm like, you know what? I, uh, I took a long break from running when our son was born and I just picked it up like, uh, maybe a month or two ago. And the first time I was like, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna put on the jets and I'm gonna see what I can run a mile. No. And it was, it was bad. I had to take a, I had to take almost a week off 'cause my knees hurt and everything hurts and, and my legs felt heavy. My feet felt heavy. And I literally, um, so a friend of mine who's also our veterinarian, lives in our neighborhood and he was, uh, riding his bike with his, his, he has a daughter that's around this age of our son, probably like seven months old or something like that, his daughter. And he goes, I said, I'm gassed man. I stopped. I was, I was almost at a mile. And, uh, we bumped into each other and he goes. He goes, well, you're running out like 180 BPM or 180 heart rate. And I'm, I looked and it was 180 5. I'm like, I am like two steps away from freaking passing out here. But, um, I think that that's super important because that's where you're pushing yourself without straining yourself. Correct. So, and that's what people do. They go into the gym and I think it's safe to say it's a very similar comparison, but if you and I went into the gym, we wouldn't just go first day and try to squat 305 pounds. Right. We wouldn't like load it up unless we were already doing it. Yeah. Me 15 years ago, I would've, yeah. Yeah. But now I know right now I'm an old man. Yeah, yeah. Right. You make me feel like an old man. But, um, and that's the thing. I think ego lifting and ego, anything just destroys progress because yes, if you're trying to do progressive overload and you're adding fives, two and a halfs, you might look and be like, this looks kind of pathetic. I don't know. So this is a really good concept that you're highlighting for me. Um, and it's something that I definitely struggled with for a long time, was I, I was an ego lifter. I was also an ego businessman. Yeah. Okay. So, conquering one in one aspect of my life has helped me conquer the other. I used to do competitive, not really competitive, kind of competitive. Used to be a power lifter. Nice. And I would just do like. Military base competitions or the thousand pound clubs. Sure. Or like, uh, Utah Valley University while I was going there, they have like their power lifting competition and everybody can come lift and record their weights and things like, so I would do those kind of things. Yeah. Um, but I was, for all intents and purposes, an ego lifter where everything was about chasing the number for me and just, it was my, my theory of self-improvement, but it wasn't actually about self-improvement and I didn't understand that at the time I was, I was just trying to have the biggest number to impress other people, and I was justifying that under the guise of if I'm lifting heavier, I'm getting stronger, I'm getting better. Yeah. But really, like you mentioned, I was destroying myself. Like I had an MRI last week. I've got, uh, like moderate ac joint deterioration and like, uh, tendinopathy in my shoulder and I'm like, okay, well what's the average diagnosis for someone with that? It's 60 plus years old. I'm like, I have, I, I just wore myself out. Yeah. That's what I've done. Um, knees constantly ache. I've got low back problems. I've herniated multiple discs, like. Those things. All we need to launch a new po. A PO new. We need to launch an Old Man Falling Apart podcast. Sorry for interrupting The Falling Apart podcast with Adam and Parker. Um, so I like, I have these injuries that have been sustained over a decade plus of, I mean, I guess I was really lifting through high school than military and now, but I've had to change the way I, I lift and train and I'm noticing eventually at some point, I think really it came after I became a father and it really started after I was focused on being around longer for my kids. Like how do I increase my longevity, be a better version of me? For them it stopped being about ego. Yeah. And when it stopped being about ego, I stopped being hurt so much. Mm-hmm. And somewhere around that same time of conquering that ego business stopped being about hitting everything outta the park and getting rich quick. Yeah. And it started being about the replicatable systems and the, the discipline and the process of like showing up, putting in the work, building the brand, building my name. So when I could put away the ego in both categories, I stopped undermining my own progress. I stopped hurting myself. Arguably, when I checked the ego for fitness, I, I chased, um. A really crazy goal and I almost achieved it actually. And then I got a hernia. I was this old man problems. Uh, I, I was trying to run a full marathon and be able to bench 315 pounds at the same time. Now that, so people who aren't in the know, that's like unheard of. Yeah. Nobody runs a full marathon, the 26.2 miles and can bench press 315 pounds. I know. But I was close. Um, I found out that I, I was doing, you know, half marathons or part of the training process to get to the full marathon. Uh, I started having just a lot of pain, um, in my, in my groin and go in, uh, they end up doing like an ultrasound and everything. Sure. Say, Hey, you've got a sports hernia. So it wasn't an inguinal hernia where I had to tear in the intestine. It was like, um, just this, this strain that had created a pocket of inflammation. And because it's in a very low, um, low circulation area, the inflammation couldn't dissipate or drain and it was pinching nerves. And so it was like just there agitating me constantly. So I went through like six, seven months then of like getting continuous scraping to help increase circulation to clear that out and, and, uh, trying to like slowly ease back into running a little bit more and more and more. But I was at the point where I could bench 310 pounds and I was running like upwards of 15 plus miles at a time. Yeah. So I was gonna get it, but I didn't get it. Now I gotta go back and reset this whole goal. Sorry, side sidetrack. We open up old stars here. Yeah, we're open. That was old wounds. That was a wound, that was a goal that I had set, that I was close to achieving that I never achieved. Gotta go back. Okay. Damon Burton wants to know, why are you so sexy? Oh, Damon is the best. Um, you know, I don't even really have an answer for Damon. I just try to do, uh, just try to do me baby, you know, say, this is good advice. No, just try to Do you, let's see if we got any other questions on Facebook real quick. No, Damon is awesome. Damon, um, was one of the first people that I met in Inner Circle, uh, just about three or four years ago. And, um, oh dang. People are opening up for you. Oh, really? And, and a lot of these are more vain than I would've anticipated. Oh, really? Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no, no. Um, so no, Damon's always been a huge, hugely supportive person who, you know, I'm proud to call a friend at this point. And, uh, I think Damon, out of everybody that I know is one of the most admirable fathers that I've ever met. Um. As that guy will be at an event and he'll just like bounce to go make sure that he doesn't miss a kid's soccer game. Yeah. I mean, you're tickled by something. I'm, I'm nervous now. I I pulled him up so I could ask you. Yeah. Damon's, Damon's a funny guy. I, um, I, I, I guess I did wrong here. I didn't know better. So I had invited Damon out to my last mastermind. Yeah. And, uh, you know, in typical, is he here local? Like he's in Utah. He lives about an hour north of me. Okay. Okay. Um, he hit, he just sent a message back. It was like, no thanks. Oh yeah. I'm like, okay, thanks. You know, I just, yeah. Yeah. You know, I know you're local. I, I had some of your friends, like,'cause Mandy and Robbie were coming down for it and, and, uh, Akbar and he was like, yeah, I'm friends with them. I don't go to people's events anymore, Damon, but like, it's just this really short, brief events. I'm like, you know, that's actually when I think about it, I've met him, you know, at a couple different masterminds. I've, I've never actually had a conversation with him. It's always just like one sentence straight to the point. Yeah. Damon Damon is a, he's just a, he's just a really fantastic guy. But the thing I actually, that completely confirms what you're saying. The one thing I appreciate about him is that he's very. Um, protective of his time. Yes. I, well, I really admire that. Me too. He's this direct. He doesn't care. Like he's nice. He's a very kind person, but he's also very direct. Mm-hmm. He doesn't sugarcoat. He doesn't like, oh yeah. I'll do it. Like, he has learned the art of saying no. Yeah. That's something I need to learn better. Me too. Me too. Like, there's so many times that I get people like, Hey, let's, we should catch up. And I'm like, I didn't, we're not really friends. And then it just turns into two hours of me, like, you know, free consultation forum 'em. Yeah. How's everything going? It's good. Okay. So I have this problem, like, okay, this is what that catch up was all about. Oh, they gotcha. So Damon had asked, uh, why are you so sexy all the time? Yeah. Um, then I invited him out to, to come to the, the jazz game with us tomorrow. So I think he'll, he'll show up for that. Oh, that might be cool. Yeah. Um, I, I laugh, I laugh at his funny, funny guy too. No, he's, he's cool. Okay. Aaron Carrasco. Oh yeah. Why do you love Dairy Queen so much? Oh, yeah. So shout out to Aaron. Shout out to, uh, to Miguel. Um, their clients who live in beautiful Winnipeg, Canada. They took me to a Winnipeg Jets game while they were in like game four or five of the NHL playoffs, my first ever professional hockey game. And, um. There's a dairy Queen kind of around the corner from their, uh, house. And I think we ate there like two or three times while, and I was just like, yeah, I can't go. It's kind of embarrassing when at 40 years old you go and you're like, Hey, let's, let's just pick up some food real quick.'cause we were like in the middle of working and I was like, yeah, I'm gonna get a blizzard. It's like, you're, you're gonna get ice cream? Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna get ice cream. And it was like, cold. Yeah. I'm like, no, I'm gonna get ice cream. So yeah, dairy Queen has a fantastic blizzards. They a multitude of different combination options that you have, and I love that they turn it upside down. Oh yeah. I don't think they do that anymore. Oh, if they do around here, it's might, maybe a Utah thing, but they still do it. Okay. Well, yeah. No, uh, I tell you, I've got one right by my house. Maybe we should go there from here. But no, uh, dairy Queen is a sleeper when it comes to a fast food burger. They actually have a very, that's pretty good. A very decent fast food burger. It's not a greasy one. Yeah. Yeah. It's, no, it's, it's solid, right? Yeah. Solid. Solid. For a fast burger, fast food burger. I'd prefer Dairy Queen over Burger King. Much better than a cafeteria burger. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And they have all these different sides, right? Like they have a lot. You, it's grill and chill. Like, where else can you go that you grill and you chill, Parker. Yeah, that's true. Right? That's true. And I, I love, I love the chill, right? I, I want to get the Reese's, uh, fluffer, nutter, you know, mixer. This sounds like a good time. Speaking of which, if you guys want 10% off your next Dairy Queen purchase, make sure you go to Dairy queen.com/parker. I don't actually have a Dairy Queen code for you, but we could get spot, that'd be great. Right? But maybe, maybe if be sponsored the be sponsored by Dairy Queen, that'd be amazing. Dairy Queen. Pick us up, dog. Yeah. Call, call him. Pick me up. Dairy Queen. Yeah. Uh, okay. Shelly. Shelly Gartman. Shelly Ys and Garman. Shelly G. Shelly g as we call her. If you were starting a YouTube channel now, what are the top three dos and do nots? Ooh, I, I kind of did this right? So I have a channel that's less than a year old. The number one do would be understanding that YouTube really only cares about three things. Click through rate, retention, and then session time, click through rate is how many people, and I'm gonna be teaching this tomorrow, but how many people see your thumbnail and title? Versus how many people click on the thumbnail and title. That should be a minimum of 3.5%. Then retention, when they watch your video, how long are they watching? Mm-hmm. They watch it for the first minute or two of a 12 minute video then bouncing. Or did you bring them in and are giving them such a good experience that they make it to the halfway point or beyond?'cause we need a high halfway point number, which should be at least 35% or higher. Sure. Then are they going to another one of your videos after they watch the one they're currently watching? Uh, more on a surface level. When you do your ideation, I believe in a 55 1 rule where it's 50 ideas, they could, some of them could be kind of crap. Five are gonna stand out outta that list and they could be iterations of ideas. Right. It doesn't have to be 50 separate fresh ideas. Mm-hmm. Pick five that speak to you in that moment and then keep reading them. Keep going over them until one of them, you're gonna have a lightning bolt of an idea, whether it's, oh, I could talk about this, or, oh, I love this. That one is going to be the most I. Smooth sailing video of the bunch because you're interested in it. Yeah. You're just boiling down what you actually wanna do. It's like, kind of helps you eliminate procrastination while, again, analog coming up with ideas, thinking about different angles for those ideas. But we have to have a thumbnail and a title idea kind of locked in before you ever hit record. So many times people record their video and they're like, I'll just figure it out. Yeah. I do that. Yeah. How's your YouTube YouTube channel We're doing, we're doing it right now. Yeah. My YouTube channel sucks. Uh, it actually, it's getting better. I told you this before, we're getting better. Yeah, it's all right. Um, I was posting all of my, like, podcasts and shorts and clips and everything. Everything was on one channel. Yeah. It was just under my name. And there was a, a brief moment, a moment in history where even though I only had like 115 subscribers Yeah. I was in the top 1% of YouTube watch time, and my videos were only getting like, like 200 views or something on them, but I was getting a huge retention. Oh, sure, sure. So it was like people that would go watch my, my videos, like I had a average of like 45 minute watch time on an hour video. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's fantastic. And so I, I, for whatever reason, I was just getting an ins, like the podcast obviously was structured in such a way where people would listen to it. It would captivate them. Yeah. And then the information or the re hooks when, you know, I ask Why are you so sexy? Uh, would just keep them on board Sure. For a prolonged period of time. And it, so after I was in that, that zone, and I didn't really know that I was in that zone until like, you know, uh, vid IQ and YouTube Oh, sure. Send you periodic, like a message. It's like, Hey, congratulations you did X, Y, Z or you've, you've got a hundred thousand views or whatever. Sure. Um, I was getting those kind of things and I, I had noticed in my like creator studio, my analytics or something, I was like, I had this insane, like yeah, I've, I've got, I've got these videos with only a hundred, 200 views, but they have like 50 plus hours of watch time Yeah. On a single video. Yeah. And I'm like, wow, that's, that's really good for like no views. Yeah. Well, and everything we're talking about right now, Parker, I always say if you treat YouTube like a sport, you can get paid like an athlete, but you need to be the Kobe Bryant, the Michael Jordan, the Tiger Woods. Like, you need, you need to be looking at all of the game, not just how fast you could throw baseball, how many threes you can hit. It's all the mechanics of it. Yeah. There's more to it, way more to it, but it's, again, it's simple, but it's not easy. You gotta show up consistently. I just did a video where I, I told people like, you don't have to worry about posting the same day, same time every week. Mm-hmm. That should be a goal. As long as you can do like one a week, that's all you need to start. You need to be able to optimize these videos so that YouTube, since it's owned by Alphabet, you know, Google, you need to make sure that your videos are optimized for Google indexing and search intent because you get a lot more traffic that way. For example, like YouTube chapters, you ever go to a video and you see all the little bars. Mm-hmm. You can skip chapters. All of those are indexed. So if you've ever typed in how to make a birdhouse, you wanna do a weekend project with your kids and the search results are video, video, video, video. And you click and it starts like three minutes into a video and it's like, alright, building the bird house because that creator was smart enough to let Google know this is what it is, this is who it's for. Yeah. It's exactly what we're talking about. Um, and, and a lot of the dos is just use what you have to, what you have pays for what you want. Don't obsess over the, I need better gear. Everybody, almost everybody has a smartphone. Even my mom who's still using an iPhone 10. It's good enough Yeah. To shoot something because either it exists or it's only in your head. The don'ts are, don't ramble, don't wing it. Over and over expecting some crazy good results. Um. Don't do the thumbnail and title after you shoot. I mean, podcasts are a little bit different 'cause you don't know what we're gonna talk about and there might be something specific, right? Sure. So I'll give you a pass on that. Um, and don't expect it to be overnight. You know, I have this new channel that has, I think I said 32 videos as of right now, and it's, uh, at about 21,000 subscribers and almost 600,000 views. Mm-hmm. Probably about 600,000. And I've got clients, I've had people come in, follow me on Instagram. Uh, one thing I didn't even bring up, our email list is now over 4,000 people in the last a hundred days. Yeah. And that's just from these free YouTube videos. Like, just like, check out my thing. And I think one thing that kills people is that they get on YouTube as a business owner and they want everybody to go from their video to their landing page or their video to their service or their video to their store. But let me ask you something. If you and I had competing barbershops in town here, mine had been open for 20 years. You just opened yours up six months ago. But you're, you're like excited about it. But every Friday and Saturday night, my barbershop is people like waiting in their car, waiting in the parking lot.'cause I, I'm constantly booked out. All my chairs are taken, people are inside, hanging out and outside, hanging out. They'll be there till one in the morning if that's what it takes to get a haircut at my place. Your place isn't established yet. So you come across the street one day on a Friday night and you come into my shop and you're like, Hey guys, I got three chairs open right now. Actually, I think a charge a little bit less than Adam does. How many times are you gonna be allowed to do that before somebody stops you in the middle of the road? You're gonna get smacked down after the first time. Yeah. That's what YouTube and all the other platforms do. When we take the traffic, we take their people and send them away from where they're making money. YouTube makes money by showing ads, mainly YouTube premium and a couple other things they make money on. So if I am a steward of that and I understand how the game works, I'm like, Hey, come on in. I got a 16 minute video that I'm gonna send you to a 12 minute video that I'm gonna send you to a 21 minute video. And I'm not saying that the time matters quite at all, but I'm just for this example, well now if they watch three of my videos, they're like, this guy kept people on the platform for 45 minutes, close to an hour. Yeah. We showed this guy 17 ads and they're engaging and they're going to more content on YouTube. That's why I say that YouTube shorts is really just for brand awareness, discoverability and reach. It's not gonna, it's what we're, what we're talking about here is distracted attention versus focused attention. Yeah. And so long form, you have to understand what your core. Topic is I'm all over the place, but hopefully those listening are watching this tracks. We have to have intention in everything we're doing is what I'm getting at. And we need to keep people on YouTube because you know the crazy byproduct of this Parker? Hmm. When people are binge watching our content, they will find whatever we have to offer Yeah. Without us telling them about it. So if they're watching six of my videos in four days, they're gonna say, who is like, where can I, I, does he have more? Is he on Instagram? Yeah. Does he have a program or something? That's how my whole other business started. I was doing these music marketing videos for two years before I ever had a program. People are like, do you have an ebook? How can I work with you? Like I mentioned, and I'm like, no. And, and I was naive enough where I started, I'm like, you don't need any program. This is like everything I'm, and then I realized there's nuance. Yeah. To everything I'm teaching, I can teach a blanket thing, but if I'm working with Parker versus Chris, versus Shelby versus whoever, they're all slightly different levers being pulled. Yeah. And on YouTube, it's about just resonating with your target core audience. Right. And it's like a funnel, broad spectrum content that appeals to the masses. Mm-hmm. And then you can get a little bit more niche and then you can get super niche on occasion. But back off that a little bit where if I'm talking about email marketing. And how to, how to grow an email list. That would be mass appeal. Yeah. For, for that group. If I said, uh, if I did a video, how to increase your open rates by 32%, do you think the masses really are looking for that? And most of them don't even know what an open rate is, right? Right. But that's, that's, that's the warm people. That's the people that are really nerding out. And then I might do a video, and again, I'm not, I'm not even an email marketing specialist, but I could say something like, the one tool that I use to convert 70% of my opened emails or something. Obviously I'm work chopping this. Mm-hmm. And then people would really have to nerd out about that. It's no different than if we talk about Lamborghini, Huan, you know, uh, suspension mods. Right. They have to be into, they have to be into a certain type of Yeah. Supercar then a specific model to supercar, and then they sh they have to care about the suspension, that modification. Yeah. So there's layers. And I think people get too specific, and I think Russell coined this term, I was just talking about this with another client of mine, but it's called Justus. We do it so much that it's, oh, this is just what I do. Oh, this is this. Yeah, it's normal. And we rob our audience of all the intricacies of the day to day. And I think that if we can look at what, what we consider our, our justise is. Mm-hmm. And we say, well, I don't shoot content when I'm here because this is, I do this all the time. Yeah. I don't shoot any behind the scenes when I travel.'cause I'm flying all the time. I don't do breakdowns because this is like normal. I've been doing this for 13 years. You don't think that could help somebody? Yeah. For real. Did to get to that point. Right. And so it's just like a supplement stack. It's like, oh, this is just what I take. It's good analogy. Right? Well, why do you take glutamine? You know, like, oh, why are you taking so much vitamin D? Why, what creatine, what is that? Is that steroids, peptides, what this is like, this is what I take. Why? What does that do? Oh, you know about that, but you never shared that with me. Yeah. And so it's important because that's how people embed this into their own lives and they navigate and say, I'm gonna use this, I'm gonna use this. I never assume that everybody watches my YouTube videos, assuming they're gonna take every step and every tool and everything I teach them and they're just gonna implement all of it. Yeah. I know that if I watch a movie and I'm sitting right next to you and we're done with the movie, there's gonna be a part that I bring up. You don't even remember. It's gonna be a part that you bring up that I don't Oh, oh.'cause it, it's a different hit point, right? Mm-hmm. It, it embeds in us for whatever reason. So when it comes to YouTube, don't overthink it, but also do it with intention. Is the video that you're making to gain subscribers, is it to gain trust? Maybe both. But you kind of gotta pick one or the other sometimes. Which one? Yeah. Okay. Because I'll make a video and I'll say, this is mass appeal. I just posted a video yesterday that has like close to 20,000 views I haven't checked in a while. And it has grown my channel by over 500 subscribers since yesterday. Wow. I knew it was mass appeal.'cause it doesn't, it doesn't appeal to business owners per se, but you know who's in that mass appeal group? Business owners. The business owners. Yeah. And, and now they know my name. Now they're like, oh, that was helpful. What else does he have? Oh, he does really deep dive this other stuff that like, doesn't have any views, but he knows about this. Yeah. So I think sometimes we try to have so much specificity in our content that we actually kind of gloss over all the people that should enjoy what we have, what we have to share. Well, even content should be a funnel. Right? A lot ways You have your, you mentioned, uh, your, you kind of keyed on it. Your top of funnel stuff is like the mass appeal. You want to throw the really big net out there. Yep. And then, um, for example, like your arc method. Yeah. Right. It's essentially tearing that down. Yep. Um, so you, you cast the big net mass appeal, then you need kind of that middle, middle funnel. It's like the story content that's building a lot more trust and then resonance with your audience. It's all long relationship building there. And then at the bottom of that is where you can actually make your, offer your conversions, things like that, uh, with maybe more informational or niched down material. So you, you mentioned a minute ago you said you, um, have grown your email list over 4,000 people now. Yeah. Via YouTube. Yeah, just YouTube one lead magnet. What does that process actually look like? So is it, is it you, uh, create video? Video to landing page? Yeah. I mean, you, because you're trying to keep 'em on YouTube, right? Oh, so I'm gonna, I'm just curious how that all works together. I'm gonna break down something that I think is a justis for me that has worked very, very well and I've developed it over the years and it's called a by the way, anyway, to action. Mm-hmm. I'll be talking about whatever. I could be talking about fitness 'cause I know you and I connect on that. So I could be talking about, um, you know, five ways to build a powerful chest, you know, to get everybody apac Right. Five ways to get an apac. I'm gonna, I'm gonna comb through what I'm gonna talk about. Mm-hmm. And where I know people are gonna be like, oh my gosh. Like that mic drop moment. The point of max impact and value. I'm gonna immediately lead over to a, by the way, anyway, call to action where I'm just like, let's say that, uh, this is a horrible example, but let's say that there's one recipe that'll help you shed pounds faster, and you only have to eat it once a day. And I'll say, and that works because X, Y, Z and the carbs and the fat, and the proteins, whatever. And by the way, I got something that's gonna take that to the next level. And a lot of people have already been emailing me, thanking me for it's awesome. Um, and thank you for reaching out. Those of you who have checked it out, but I'm gonna put a link in the description box below. All you have to do is click it, use it as a companion for these videos, and you're gonna thank yourself immediately. Anyway. What I'm doing is, if you and I were sitting across the table at a restaurant or a coffee shop, or even sitting in, you know, in your house at a, at a barbecue, and you're like, yeah, I've been really having a hard time with X, Y, Z. And I'm like, oh, dude, I got, I have that tool. Yeah. I hit that exact tool in my toolbox. Just pop over to my house. I'll, you can borrow it as long as you want. That's the call to action that gets people to open up another tab and continue watching you. Mm. Rather than stop the session to go, because now you're helpful. Now you have a utility and you almost didn't even share it. It's like, oh by the way, I have this saying, and mine is, I've done it so many times 'cause I do it in every video. It's like, Hey, by the way, all of this and way more is in my ultimate YouTube growth guide. It's a perfect companion for all my videos here on this channel. I've had a, you know, 4,000 people download it in the last 90 days alone. So I think it's good'cause nobody's complained. I'd love for you to be the be the judge of that. So in the description box below, I'll have a link. Click the link. Yeah. Download the guide. Actually do something with it and enjoy. Anyway, that's it. It's like, doesn't take much time.'cause what you see and a big don't would be luring people in knowing that you're just trying to like almost borderline manipulate them to, okay, now that I have your attention, let me talk to you about your used car warranty. Yeah. Because that's how it feels in a lot of videos when they go from, Hey, I'm your buddy, I'm here to help. And then it jumps into like a sales presentation, like a VSL video, you know, like A VSL would would do. So what I do is, I believe, and I think I picked this up from Frank Kern, my landing pages, especially like A PDF or a lead magnet, it looks janky because the better it looks, the more polished it looks in my opinion, the more salesy it looks. Yeah. Like if I could literally take my iPad and write the sales copy or the copy on like a, here is the download, download this with an arrow, uh, that would get more conversions. Because people are like, oh, okay, cool. Like he is just giving it away. Yeah. Like, oh, I gotta put my email in. Cool. Not there's 18 testimonials of people that have done like, no, it's just a thing. Yeah. Here, this is a thing. I didn't spend much time putting this together, but you can have it. Like, I think that yeah, in a world of chat, GPT Gemini, Claude generated everything and everything is overwritten. And it's like the patterns, you see it time and time again. I think people just want real, like, I don't know if you've done this or anybody listening, I purposely misspell things in my emails now so that people don't think I wrote it in chat. GPT. Mm. Curious. Like almost every email that I send aside from like, you know, a couple sentences here or there, somebody that I know, if I write a long email, I'll misspell something or I'll have put a couple typos in there. Yeah. Or, or bad punctuation or two. You make it human. Yeah. Because if genius, if you see, I mean, I, I get 'em all the time. Proposals from sponsors that wanna sponsor video and it's just like, Hey, user, you know, that's like probably what they had and there's like 15 m dashes and emojis in there. I'm like, what is happening right now? Like, who did you send this to? 99 Undisclosed. What is this? Uh, but um, YouTube is all about just the track. Retain, convert. Yeah. You gotta bring people into your thing. You have to build a relationship with them. You gotta do it in a way that's not pushy. You gotta do it in a way that's genuine. Then you gotta convert them into something that's gonna transform their life and actually be of value. Because if you have a tracked and convert, but you don't have that retention or relationship, then you have a lot of people that know who you are. You have something to sell'em, but they don't trust you. Yeah. If you have retention or relationship and convert, but people don't know who you are, then you're selling to like high school friends. You know, you're selling to people that you've known forever, like the whole five of them. Mm-hmm. And if you have their, uh, attract and retain, that's the best problem to have. Because now a lot of people know you, a lot of people trust you, but it's like you're dragging around an ATM machine behind you refusing to plug it in. You gotta give 'em something. Right? Yeah. And I know a lot of people are hesitant because they're like, ah, I don't wanna ruin the, I don't wanna ruin the relationship. Ah, I don't want people to think I'm trying to sell you. And I deal with the, the online world of everybody's a scammer. Everybody's a fake guru, a fraud, like whatever. I'm sure you've seen my reels on that. Oh yeah. Yeah. My Mormon scammer hat. Yeah. You got the hat and everything. But that's the thing, people are cynical to skeptical AI's making it worse. Yeah. So you have to just say, Hey, I'm gonna meet you at the door. To this day, there's somebody in my comments constantly. He's always like, he's a scammer. He just trying to pedal a course. I don't even have a course for sale. Yeah. Well, here's the thing about that.'cause I've been called a scammer, like although I might have a course for sale by the time this is finished filming. Well, let's do it. Well, here's the thing. If you buy an extended warranty on your car, is that a scam? Only until you need it. Yeah. If you have health insurance, is that a scam? Yes. All the time. But you need it. Let's say your kid breaks his leg. You need, well, I mean, we might be in a situation where we can just kind of, no, we'll pay cash for this. But you know, here's the thing. If you go to the gym and you sign up January 1st, like so many people do. Mm-hmm. And comes, uh, when I, when I was, when I was doing that whole life, it would be, everybody signs up January 1st and then Valentine's Day was when you started seeing the gym clear out the cancellations. They just wanted, yeah. To gain the confidence, maybe lose a few pounds or get toned up or whatever. Use the tanning beds to get tanning Well, and then you got a date by Valentine's Day. Well, there's a transformation that takes place in the act of purchasing something. Well, I agree with that. So it's like if I buy a gym pass, maybe it didn't make me fit. Yeah. But it did make me someone with a gym pass. Yep. Well, here's the problem though. There are people out there who justifiably. Believe or they can justify, not, it's not justifiable. They could have a gym membership for nine months and never go, and then in their head they should be able to go back into the gym and get a refund.'cause they haven't used that one. Oh yeah. I hate that. Those are the worst. Hate that worst types of people. I've had people in my, my programs, and here's the thing I'm very proud of. In the four or five years that I was selling a course to musicians, I had less than 50 refund requests. Lifetime. Wow. More than 2000 people came through. Less than 50 refund requests. But there's a couple that stand out. There was one guy who was going through it. I don't know what he was going through, but he asked for a refund nine months after he paid me nine months. He was part of group coaching calls. He was part, he went through all the curriculum, he did all that stuff. And I don't know how, still to this day, like I, I don't understand it. Like he did a chargeback and he won, man. But I'm like, that's crazy. Nine months. And I had emails him thanking me and I had screenshot, like I, we, we win. I admittedly, yeah, I, we've only had like 10 chargebacks, lifetime, but we won most of them. But like, I'm going into the weeds here a little bit. There are, there are people that are so broken and are determined merely to under, to misunderstand you. Yeah. And I learned a long time ago, you can never convince someone who is determined to misunderstand you that you're doing it for the right reasons. That you're genuinely trying to help, that you are providing an actual transformation to those who take it seriously. Yeah. Because in their head you remind them of something that is a thorn in their foot. Mm. You remind them of somebody who might've fired them in high school from a job at Denny's. You remind them of the rich real estate guy that drives down the road and their parents were always like, yeah, it must be nice dickhead. You know, bleep that out if you have to. But I think that the more you do it, like I'm a people pleaser by nature. I really hate when people think I'm doing anything for the wrong reasons. Yeah. To where it really bothers me. And I used to like try to convert people over to believers, but like, yeah. Like what, what, what is it? Christian Bale said, if you have a problem with me, call me and if you don't have my phone number, you're not important enough for me to care about your opinion. Yeah. Like that's really what it is. And the funny thing is, anybody could be typing this. He could have a profile photo of like a 40-year-old man in Alabama and it's like. A 12-year-old Vietnamese girl. Yeah. Just say, but to us, we see this group of 10,000 people cheering us on, telling us how great we are. All the comments on YouTube that I've received over the years, thank you so much. This changed my life. This it becomes noise and it sucks. Mm-hmm. I used to do it, I used to do an exercise where every day for, for like 10 or 15 minutes, I'd open up the comments and I would sit on each of the positive comments for like two minutes and I'd read it. Not just like, thanks for this video, but like the ones that spent some time and actually responded. Yeah. Because I got so numb to it that I would go searching for the one guy who would say something relatively rude or negative, and I'd be like, what? Because you, you, you seek that out when all the other stuff becomes the norm. I'm at a, a, a different spot right now, so a lot of like my background in business Right. And I've got an MBA and I'm finishing my doctorate. That's awesome. Like I have the formal education and I have the verifiable business success now where it's like I've got the, the Two Comma Club and the two Comma Club acts and the a hundred thousand Shopify orders award. That's amazing. And like I have those things, so there's proof that I'm legit. Mm-hmm. But I didn't build in public. Yeah. I didn't have a personal brand before. Getting into maybe the coaching and the masterminds and things like that a little bit more. So now as I am more public and I post some of this content and I'm trying to help others and, and the reality is like, honestly, if I never worked another day in my life, I'd be fine. Yeah. I, I could just hang it all up and go enjoy the time with my family, but I feel like I have an obligation to help other people. Where, especially where it's like I was able to overcome a lot in terms of like the poverty and then I joined the Army to like escape, like the p the army was my escape. Think about how, how awkward or bad, or, I don't wanna say bad 'cause like I didn't have a bad childhood or anything. Yeah. But it was like, imagine the military being someone's escape like $20,000 a year to get shot at in Afghanistan. That's a pretty sweet gig. Yeah. But that's what I thought. Mm-hmm. So, okay, I get through that. Now the stage I'm at is I'll post things on social media, but it's the hater stage. Yeah. I get, I have more haters than fans it feels like. Um, so it's actually like this deterrent for me where I am, I can be consistent in posting, but I'm not consistent in engaging because every time I get on that platform, I'm just getting lamb lambasted by these, the pores with no mindset for growth. Yeah. They're, they're, yeah, they're broken people. Yeah. And I, I know that they're not healthy and I know that they're not well, and I like. So I try to take it and, and have some grace and not hold it against them. And I, I'm like, I'm genuinely trying to go and help people. Yeah. But I, I, I feel like I get tore up. Well, I, by the negative, I am not the guy to talk to about this because like I said, it, it has affected me in the past. However, when it got to the point where it was like maximum velocity on my big YouTube channel, and we were doing hundreds of thousands of views a month, and, you know, I had, i I, I don't know if I've shared this with you personally, but like one video on my YouTube channel alone generated more than 10,000 high ticket applications. So we had nonstop people reaching out and people jumping on calls with us. Yeah. And that's a lot of really good feedback. Well, right. But there's also the dark side of it where somebody sees, oh my, like, I would always say that I was like Jesus to these people until they found out that I had anything for sale. Mm. And then it was like, oh, what, you know, they, I thought he was just helping to help. I'm like, yeah, I bought all his fancy camera gear and stuff, just not to ever make any money. Like doing like, I'm not doing Mr. Beast videos, but, well, but that's the thing. Even the Mr. Beast stuff mm-hmm. The dude is super charitable. Oh, hundred percent. Right? Like, I mean, I'm sure you've seen a thousand wells in Africa and stuff like that. Yes. But all of that good can only come because he's able to generate a profit Yes. To pay for that. So what I would suggest you do, before I lose my train of thought, is assign somebody on your team to scour all of the comments. And be your first line of defense. Because if it's something that's negative, that's just gonna kind of put you in a funk or put you into a defensive mode, it's not going to benefit anybody. Yeah. Have somebody go through and just block 'em. And I'm not against criticism if it's constructive. There have been people Yeah. Where somebody would be like, oh, that's a hater. No, he's actually kind of true. He said, uh, this guy doesn't get to the point till seven minutes into the video. Let me work on that. And that's the, the on the surface level, the haters that are actually very helpful. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I love stuff like that. Me too. Anything that helps me be better. Yeah. Um, because again, I operate very much from a mindset of personal growth. Yeah. How can I be a better version of myself today than I was yesterday? So if you give me feedback, um, like just before we started filming the podcast, you're giving me lighting feedback for the studio that's gonna make me better. I love that. I want to eat it up. I'm go invest in it. Like, that's just, that's just how we operate. Um, but it, it's, it's killer where it's like I'm trying to create genuinely valuable content for people that will help them grow and find success and become a better version of themselves and a more successful business owner or entrepreneur. Yeah. And it's like, if I just post that, I know it's gonna go get, somebody's gonna go target that as like, you're a scammer, you're a fraud. You're out here to rip these people off. Well, and that's the thing, man. Um, those people spend their days looking for things to chirp up about. I like that you use that term. Yeah. Like they, they seek it out because you find what you're looking for. That's what it is. They seek it out because their self-worth is through having an opinion that they plaster on everybody else's stuff. Yeah. They want to matter. They want to be seen so bad that they're spreading all this negativity, speculation, you know, unfounded opinions mm-hmm. On stranger's content. How sad does somebody have to be, and I have to remind myself of this when I get Yeah. Pulled into it. Imagine yourself online scouring the internet, looking for people to hate on. Yeah. You're not healthy. No. Well, and the thing is though, we are people that wanna help. We are wanting to make an impact. And when somebody miscategorize what we're doing, because we have seen the scammers, we do know what the other side of that looks like. Yeah. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, hey, hey, hey. But the people we're talking to are not like us, but we think they are.'cause if I came to myself, I'm like, no, no, no. Hey, hey. Like, yo, I, I understand where you're coming from, but like, check this stuff out. Like, and I'll be like, oh, you know what? Hey man, I was just kind of in the mood. You're totally right. People aren't like that. Yeah. And so again, we have to protect our piece and protect our mission from those people. Because here's the thing, you can't, you can't please everybody If you're like a professional bodybuilder, people are like, oh, that was stupid. Wasting all your time to look like that. Right. If you're too, if you're too short, people make funny. If you're too tall, make funny. There's no, there's, yeah, there's like, well, Alex Hormoze said, uh, said, criticism is a neutral tax on life. Yeah. Um, you're gonna get judged no matter what you do. Well, Shelly G who asked that, you know, last question, she, she told me on a call, she said, the bigger the spotlights, the bigger the spit watts. Dang. I had a two hour do not disturb. So the fact that a call came through meant that, uh, we've been going for a while. Yeah. We have been talking for quite some time. It's almost lunch o'clock. Oh, I love it. We'll, we'll, we gotta go get some fat lunch. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to derail you. No, not at all. I'm just saying when you put yourself into the spotlight, more people could see you to aim the spit wads at you. That was what Shelly was saying, and I believe that life in general, and I, I'd love to get your your input on this, I feel like life in general is a balance of good and evil. Light and dark. Hot and cold. So you can't want all the light without inviting in the darkness. Yeah. You can't have it. You can't have all the hot without the frigid cold creeping in sometimes. And so. I feel like when you step into that light, you almost have to put a shield on and say like, oh man, this is gonna be hard. Mm-hmm. But they don't call 'em followers and subscribers for no reason. They're following someone that, what does that make you? You have to be a leader. Yeah. Right. And I know that's your specialty. Subscribe to what? Oh, I'm subscribed to a channel. What's that? Channel? It's a business. The business owner has to open the shop. The, the priest has to open the church. I really like the way you're framing this. Well, it's, it's what it is. If you land on my channel, you are now in my store. Right? Mm-hmm. And I have to appeal to you, or you go somewhere else. And if you go somewhere else, cool. But I'm gonna do my best job possible to say like, oh, I got something for you. So many people talk about what they're gonna do and they hype it up and they get a fancy camera and they have a couple videos. They're like, oh, nothing's working. Nothing's working. So like, but yeah, like one cheeseburger doesn't make you fat. One salad doesn't make you skinny. Yeah. It's the consistency play. I think that one thing I always look at is golf. I'm horrible at golfing, but I love golfing. I can't watch enough YouTube videos to make me a good golfer if I never get out on the, on the course. Mm-hmm. So many people in all aspects of life now especially, are watching all this parental advice. They're feeling like bad parents. Yeah. They're watching this fitness advice. They're feeling like worthless. They're watching this business growth, uh, whatever they wanna get into, they're watching so much of it that it goes from being exciting and impactful in their life and a motivator to, oh, why would anybody watch my stuff? This guy already exists. Yeah. Oh, why? I don't know. I'll never look like that.'cause they keep consuming it. They keep consuming it. It's like a, it's like, uh, I don't wanna say cancer, but it's like mold. Once you invite the mold into your life, it spreads because when you're consuming, you're giving it a dark, cool environment. Yeah. And it thrives on that. Like, that's why it's important to be a creator and not a consumer for the most part. I think one thing I always look at to reframe that don't consume study. Yes. I like that a lot. Because if you're consuming, that's a whole lot of just like in one ear out the other. When you're studying, you're trying to find consuming iss a drain. Yeah. Right. Like, it's not a drain on your resources, your time. Right. Attention. When you're, when you're studying, you're learning intentionally. It's all about intention. It's a hundred percent. Yeah. YouTube is all about just getting the mechanics one step at a time, but you have to start. Mm-hmm. That like what is the, what's the quote? Like, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start in order to be great. To be great, right? Yeah. So that same thing goes with YouTube. And the one thing I'll say before I forget is people are like, well, I don't have a good camera, and I mentioned this earlier, but I'm, I'm coming at a different angle. I have never once watched a documentary that was really good, that didn't show me some old grainy footage of the before. Yeah. Of whoever it might be a movie star or a historical figure of any sort. You always find the old origin content, so get excited to make the origin content and excited to be able to compare that in five years. Yeah. With the highlights. Most people are just not looking at it long term enough. If you want something to change your life, it needs to be a lifestyle change. It needs to be part of your life forever. That's a, a good, good way to phrase that. If you want something to change your life, it needs to be a lifestyle change. Yeah. I'm thinking about it in terms of like some of these big successful people. Yeah. Right. And even in a, in our own, uh, spheres, maybe like, okay, so you have the Mr. Beast. Yeah. Right. Uh, uh, the most successful creator ever. Yeah. He started posting consistently for a decade. Mm-hmm. Before he was Mr. Beast living at his mom's house. Yeah. Yeah. But to put a pin back in, into your thought here, it was his entire lifestyle changed around content creation because of content creation. He made himself a content creator before he was ever successful, so he. Yeah. Change the life, lifestyle change. Yep. Joe Rogan did the same thing, right? He talks about, he, he was doing his show, he's hundreds of episodes in Yeah. Doing it just for fun before he ever had a sponsor. Mm-hmm. Before he ever actually started making money or it became profitable and now it's the most popular podcast in the world. It's all about intention and purpose, but it was just, he changed the lifestyle. Mm-hmm. Committed to it, stuck with it. And his life changes. In my story I brought up earlier that it took me eight years of just throwing stuff up against the wall on YouTube before I kind of started figuring it out. Mm-hmm. To put stats behind it. Eight years in, I had 50,000 subscribers, but they were very fragmented. Some came from this type of content, some came from that type of content. Yeah. Some people forgot. They subscribed to me. And when I got really intentional, I just started dating my wife, uh, maybe a year prior to this. And I said, babe, I wanna do one video a week. Or it was two actually. Yeah. Two videos a week for an entire year. I had already been on YouTube for so long that I said, this is gonna be my final pushup. This doesn't work. I'm done. She's like, yeah, whatever, whatever you need from me. And she was just very tolerant of late night shoots, you know?'cause I still had my, my day job as a marketing director. Yeah. And in 18 months. I was up over 200,000 subscribers and I had two seven figure businesses just from getting super hyper intentional and looking at it like a sport. Yeah. Saying, how can I get really good at doing exactly what I want to do to then feed the life that I wanna live? But so many people want to just like, kind of fall into the life they wanna live based on. Yeah. It's just not realistic. It's not, and it, well, I wish it was, I really do. I really wish that we could just be like, this is exactly what I want, but then we'd realize that what we want won't make us happy. Mm-hmm. It's usually the footwork, putting in the effort, seeing it through, going through the adversities and the days you wanna quit and the days you feel like an imposter, and the days that nothing's working, because again, the, that's your origin story. Nobody makes a documentary about somebody that just had an easy life. Yeah. That maybe if like somebody a generational wealth and like, but like that would be an outlier situation. I think that what we have to look at is the average is month to month, year to year rather than day to day. Yeah. And well, the day-to-day stuff even, uh, I mean, we've drawn a lot of parallels to fitness because it's a, a mutual background that we have here, but even the day-to-day stuff that can be discouraging, right? Like, um, say you're trying to lose weight. Right. And even though you're in a caloric deficit, right. Maybe you have a high carb meal that one day. Yeah. Well, okay, so when you eat a lot of carbs, you retain water weight the next day. So all of a sudden you've maybe gained weight even though you're eating in a caloric deficit. And that's discouraging. So then how do you, how do you, um, back off of that to actually track your realistic progress over time? And that's when you take that larger macro look like you're discussing, you start looking at maybe weeks or you start looking at months before to judge the actual result. Well, it's just like you were saying earlier with the, uh, heart rate based training for the marathon, it's like, don't look at how far you've run, look at how long you've run and where your heart rate is. Yeah.' cause the second you're like, well, four miles in, all of a sudden it's like the goalpost moved a little bit. Yeah. Versus just going through it. And so, you know, I think with any creative endeavor as an entrepreneur, if it's outside of the normal systems that you're used to, if you're reaching people that you've never, that don't know you like, like you are now. Mm-hmm. I think it's, uh, easy to say that it's kind of foreign territory in a lot of ways. And we've become accustomed to so many different things that have worked through the longevity. So like if you and I wanna learn how to play guitar, if I pick up a guitar right now, my first day, you would laugh at me if I said I suck at this. Well, yeah, of course you do. Yeah. You just started. People will pick up a camera and post 15 reels for 15 days, be like, it's not working. It's like, yeah. How far along on the guitar would you be in 15 days? Yeah. It's an instrument. You need to learn your instrument. Oh, that's such a good way to phrase that. Yeah. Well, even your voice and your communication style, you don't, you don't become an F1 driver in a day. Nope. You know, it's, it's an instrument. You have to learn it over time. People start, and it's the progression of it. There's a progression in all things. Right. Like just driving as an example.'cause we use F1. Yeah. All of the most successful F1 drivers start carting. Yeah. And then they get into F four and three and two and one. And so there's the progression. Yeah. Right. You don't just come out and you're not max first stepping from birth. You know, like if you look at it, that applies to anything. Uh, and I played musical instrument in, in, in high school and middle school. So like, I learned the clarinet, then I learned guitar. Um, but like those were progressions over time. Yeah. It was, you learn, you know, individual strings and then you learn chords. Right. Uh uh, you have to fall in love with the process. And it's the same with anything. If you wanna become a world famous baker, if you wanna become a world famous athlete, if you wanna be a magician, yeah. Anything worth awe and admiration is not an overnight thing. People are in awe of it or admire it because you've gone through the cycle of getting to that point. Yeah. To become the master. That's it. And even when you are the master, there's some people that are more gifted in certain things and you have unfair advantages in your own right. If you look at the NFL, how many teams are in the NFL? Like 32. 32 teams. Every team has a 52 man roster. Start regular season, right? 52, 58, 53. 53. Thank you. How many college players are there In division one? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you got, uh, division one SCS, just division one or uh, sorry. FBS. You've got, um, 150 teams, give or take. So 50 team. And each one of those probably has 72 ish players on the roster at any given time. So 150, two times 70, whatever. And then how many division two, three, and four schools are there. Yeah. Now you're into the thousands total. Mm-hmm. And all of these schools, I mean, you're ranging from 50 to a hundred people on, uh, the, on the football roster. So now you're looking at hundreds of thousands of athletes at the collegiate level competing for just a few hundred jobs. And how many high school football teams are there? Yeah, that one's even crazier 'cause. Now you're looking at, you know, hundreds of high schools in a state. Yeah. And each one of those hundreds of high schools has hun, like for example, I coach, uh, at Westlake High School. I'm a offensive coordinator for the sophomore football team out there. Amazing. Um, there are a freshman team, a sophomore team, a JV team, and a varsity team at the school. Each one of those teams has give or take 50 kids on it. So it's like you've got in the high school at any given time, 200 football players. Now granted that's a larger school. Well, let me ask you, but there's, you know, 105 A schools, you know, like I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this right now. Kind of their brains are melting with all the numbers. Right. But this is what I'm getting at. The guys that are in the NFL, do you think they were just like, oh, I guess I'm good enough to go to college for football. Oh, I guess I'm good enough to go to the nfl. They were obsessed with it. Yeah. Since sixth grade, seventh grade, it was the life and they had to go through all of the opportunities to fail. They had to go through all of the lottery of choices that they've made in their Yeah. Young adulthood life. So if Brian over here is an amazing quarterback in high school in the middle of Alabama, the odds of him making it to the NFL are still slim to none. Yeah. So what kind of internal. Unbelievable obsessive belief in themselves takes you from being a high school quarterback to an NFL quarterback. It, it's this concept of delusion that's, to be honest, obsess. But like you have to be delusional to make it because you're trying to do something that though top 1% of people could maybe achieve. Yeah. Same goes for YouTube and, and recognize that like, okay, 49% of people are below average. Yeah. Yeah. So statistically speaking, statistically speaking, one in every two people is both, is not, is not gonna cut it right now. Okay. But you think about, um, if you're trying to achieve something of note worthiness, you're trying to achieve something that is the top 1% of people and typically it's the top 1% of 1%. Yeah. You have to have a delusion because the vast majority of people are never going to be in a, a scope or a realm or a world where that is possible for them. So they can't believe it's possible for you. What makes you believe it's possible for you. Yeah. It's this delusion, it's this belief that you are going to achieve something that no one else can achieve. And here's the thing, talk about like NFL players. How many of the collegiate players that had a chance had somebody in their ears saying. Held him back. Not good enough for the NFL. Yeah. Not good enough for the NFL. You know, it's really sad, man. I've got a a, an athlete on our, our team this year. Really? He's a talented kid. Yeah. Uh, one of the most productive receivers on our team, but he is quitting football. Yeah. Because his family essentially didn't believe that he could play at the next level. Wow. So it's like, even though he was good, he's just had it in his ear that he's not going to be good enough into the future. Yeah. And so he's just gonna stop now. Now think of all those hater comments that come through. Anybody even listening or watching this, the hater comments that come through. Are you gonna let it take you off the path of where you know you can go? Because I firmly believe that if you have a vision that's embedded in your head that you could see with your eyes open, yeah. That is God showing you your future. You don't know how you're gonna get there, but if you stop, you'll never make it a reality. The only way you can envision it with your eyes open is if it's embedded by something. Yeah. Not just, oh, it's a dream. I don't ever envision being the president of the United States of America, or, you know, like anything like that. McCumber for President 2036. Tell your friends. Let's do it. Here's the thing, if you can envision it, Adam Ivy, press Secretary 2036 doing friends. I can't handle the media man talking about haters. Right. But no, I think that. You just gotta go after it in small chunks and appreciate the progress. Mm-hmm. More than obsessing over the, you know, it's like Benjamin, Dr. Benjamin Hardy with the gap in the game. Yeah. It's like so many people obsess and, and for those that don't know what this is, I'll make it very short where you started, where are you now, where do you wanna be from where you started to where you are now. That's the game. People don't appreciate themselves for where they've come from, how far they've come. Self bias that they, yeah. Struggling from, well I'm not where I'm, I need to be yet. But that's the gap where you are now versus this mythical make believe ideal of where you need to be. Mm-hmm. That's the gap. And sorry to break it to you, like no matter how successful you'll become, there'll always still be a gap.'cause maybe you have all the money in the world, but your relationships are suffering. Yeah. Maybe you have the best relationship in the world, but you're dead broke. Maybe something in between. There will always be a gap, but we obsess over the future. Like we can control it. The only way to control it is by our, our actions and implementations day to day and making sure that we keep that vision crystal clear. Yeah. Because once it starts getting foggy, that's when things start falling apart. You feel lost. And don't let anybody else throw you off the path and send you into that free fall when you are the one that's carrying the vision. You can't explain to somebody what the color blue looks like. You have to show them. Right. So what we have to do is we have to show the world what we're capable of. We have to seek out the mentors, we have to read the books, step outside of our comfort zone, whether it be YouTube or anything else really. And we have to show the world what the color blue looks like and not spend our whole entire life saying, well, this is what it looks like. Why don't you understand what it looks like? I explained it 15 different ways. Yeah. It's like, just show me. That's easy. Right? Just show me if you know about it, just show me. That's what the world's waiting for. Just show me. Yeah. Okay. Two more questions for you. Sure. Let's go and then we gotta get some lunch. Yeah, we do. Sorry, I've held you, held you up too long. No, it's all good, man. Uh, Mandy, send in another question. She said she wants to know, who do you think or who is the, the funniest person in the world to you? Oh man. So I grew up with my dad and my mom are both pretty funny. There was always like way more love and, uh, laughing in the household than there was any financial resources. Um, but I grew up my dad, like this is, this is shout out to my dad, but like. I would sneak out to the living room at very early age and my dad would be playing stuff like Eddie, Eddie Murphy, uh, delirious, uh, standup comedy specials and stuff. Mm-hmm. And I grew up listening to Weird Al I grew up, you know, listening to back in the day Adam Sandler CDs and watching Comedy Central Day in and Day Out to a certain extent. Uh, I couldn't listen to, you know, stuff that was too crude or anything, but there's no one person that I could think of that is like the funniest person ever. I I, I have a wide, just like, we like cars and we like watches. Mm-hmm. I have a wide appreciation for all aspects of comedy. In fact, this is a story that I rarely ever share. My guidance counselor in high school, Mrs. Karts, uh, I think junior year, maybe sophomore year, met with all the students, Hey, what do you think you wanna do? What path to college do you want? Or it's college for you, whatever. And uh, we sat down and I graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA. Just like, that's, that's, uh, uh, I told Mrs to karts that I wanted to be an, uh, architectural engineer 'cause I was really good at drawing in math. And she's like, uh, Adam, she goes, you have a really bad GPA. And uh, the license plate I had of my RA to my Lambo says Bad GPA. Um, and, uh, no, and I'm not bragging about that. I just thought, thought it was funny because she told me. She said, Adam, I have no idea what this looks like. And I just feel moved to say this to you, but I think that you should pursue a career in comedy. I don't know what that looks like, but do some research. Find out, talk to people. Yeah. It's because I was always, everything from Saturday Night Live to, you know, the, the, the, the, the greats of my time. You know Chris Rock and you have the Dave Chappelle's and you have the George Carlins and you have like every, everybody under the sun, right? Mm-hmm. I just, growing up in the household that we grew up in, um, I had to latch on to humor, self-deprecation. I was bullied, viciously bullied in elementary school and in is like kind of into junior high and, uh, until I like discover weightlifting and people stopped messing with me. Um, and without going into too much, like there was times where my parents would argue and my dad would have a real short temper and I would take my brothers into my room and they would call it a funny show.'cause I'd like play just any comedy CD and I would like lip sync the words or like do the Sure. Physical comedy of it. So there's a lot of people now that are just like hilarious to me. And sometimes it's just like. Really awkward comedy. Sometimes it's physical comedy, sometimes it's very clever, like very well written, set up some punchlines. Um, but I can't, I can't name one specific person just because I have like an appreciation of that, uh, for that art form that I think is, uh, people don't give comedians enough credit, you know, for being able to take something that's just an emotional trigger in the best of ways and inject it in a delivery system that gets people going. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I love Nate Brizi. Um, Sam Morell. D Vaughn. Like, yeah, I just have, there's certain topics that I get uncomfortable with, you know, like I don't like when it's overly crass, just to be crass. Sure. But, um, I could find humor in almost everything in life, and I, I think that's served me well. Yeah. Jeff Dye was the comedian whose name I forgot earlier, but I remembered it while you were talking. Jeff. Yeah. Adam, you have provided a ton of value to me, to the listeners on the show today. Is there anything that I can do to provide value to you and your audience? So when it comes to what I'm doing in a creative field, you really specialize in leadership systems, that sort of thing. What would be your, like in the abbreviated understanding of, of everything I do behind the scenes is mostly creative. What position, and it might be an executive assistant. What position, based on what you know about what I'm doing, do you think would be the first thing to look at? And for, for helping me move my business forward. Sure. And how would I look to fill that role? Because I am notorious, even though it's worked out pretty well, I, I just hire friends and I'm like, yo, do this. You could do this. And then when it comes to, um, disciplining or when it comes to hard conversations, I'm a little too friendly still because I don't wanna hurt anybody's feelings, especially'cause these are people that I could consider almost brothers to me. And I care about them as humans more than employees. Yeah. So I gave you a little bit extra context because I have a problem with the admin, like I said, the left side brain stuff. Mm-hmm. Organization, keeping me on task. Uh, and I just go to, you know, squirrel like half the time when I'm doing that. So in your experience, what would you recommend for me as far as a hire or, you know, whatever may, might come to mind. Couple of different thoughts here real quick. Um, the first one is, and I apologize if I embarrass you. It's okay. I don't mean to No, please. Uh. On a couple different phone calls, I've been like, Adam, just give me, give, like, gimme the program, the co the course, the coaching, whatever. Like, I will throw money at you. Uh, and you're like, yeah, yeah, I'll get you an email. Yeah. No email ever came, so I'm embarrassed. You're right. Because I'm like, I I wanna learn from you. Yeah. And I'm gonna make Bart learn from you so that we can continuously be better. Right. So that process of improvement, but to me, that that signals, um, you are missing the systems person in the backend. Right. If we go back to that rainmaker triad, you've got the creative Yeah. And that's what you're really passionate about. And like, that's, that's where I can see you're, you're, uh, focused on how to constantly improve that. So I would suspect that your, your next hire needs to be somebody that's actually going to build the business system behind you. Mm. Right. Like you've mentioned, you've got, um, your, your email list is growing. Yeah. You're able to start generating, you know, um, high ticket client applications with what you do. But what's happening with those client applications now would be, I guess a subsequent question. Is there a system in place or a person in place who's taking ownership of that to make sure that you're capitalizing on those applications? That they're getting the follow up, that they're getting, the, the email marketing sequence that you said that, you know, maybe you're not the best at, but you should probably be taking advantage of. So I think first. You gotta get the people in the in place. So when I, when I coach people now, what I do is I focus on first you as the leader, right? You have to have the vision of where the organization is going. Then you need to get the team in place. Uh, and I, I default to the, you need the rainmaker for the sales and the rainmaker. You can wear two hats in my, my belief. Yeah. So like, you're obviously the charismatic face of your, your business and your company, right? Sure. Um, so you're doing that, that piece, you're doing the creative, you need to get the engineer in there. The engineer needs to build out the systems in the back end that actually captures all of the sales and puts them into a process for ascension. Mm-hmm. Um, because you don't just want to make one sale and the, the customer walk out the door. Sure. Like, the goal with my, my thing is I, I really have three offers right now. I've got the school community, which is free. Yeah. But the point of the school community is get you enough knowledge and, and system and setup that you can then afford to pay for my group coaching that $2,500. Yeah. And then, uh, at that point it's like, I'm going to get you so much money. I wanna help you be so successful that then it's a no brainer to pay me $20,000 a year to coach. Yeah. Right. Um, so there's a pro, a system there, but you need somebody that's gonna take ownership of building that. Mm-hmm. And then pushing your, driving your people through it. Um, and you mentioned hiring friends. I stay away from that one. Yeah. It's dangerous for me. Now, the closest exception that I've had is Bart. Um, and, and, and I hired Bart before he was my friend though, I guess where he was doing videography for me and like some one-off shoots and things like that. And it was a very professional relationship. Um, and then when I had the job open up because I bought this studio, then it was like, okay, Bart, I can bring you on full time. Yeah. Um, but I typically don't hire friends and family because like you said, it's hard to hold them accountable because you view them in a different light and it's a different type of relationship. That said, I pretty much exclusively hire based on referrals now. Mm. So like, um, we were talking before the, the show. I recently hired an executive assistant. I posted it on my Facebook page. It was the only place I posted the listing and I only posted it to friends. Yeah. And I said, Hey, this is the situation I'm in. I'm looking for an executive assistant to help me. This is what they need to be able to do. I will only accept referrals from people I know. Yeah. That's why you guys are seeing it here. If you have somebody let me know. And I ended up getting like 15 applications relatively quickly. Yeah. Um, but then there's some skin in the game for those people. Mm-hmm. One, the person doing the referral. They're not gonna give you a bad prospect because they don't wanna soil the relationship they have with you. Yeah, that's that's very smart. Yeah. So they're gonna give you somebody that they think is good because that benefits their standing with you. Second, the person who's being referred doesn't want to, you know, put that person in a negative light. They don't want to suly the reputation of their friendship. True story. So they're gonna come and they're gonna bring their A game. So, sorry, I'm out a drink and my throat's dry. We've been talking a lot, but, uh, I just get higher. I think quality of applicant, generally speaking, when I go through that kind of a process, super smart. So I take the referrals we vet, the referrals we hire based on trust and character, how do they integrate with the culture of our organization and the people that we're working with? And then if that is good, we can train and develop the skills, the competencies, right? We can make them into an A player. Um, but it has to start with trust and it has to start from a background that you can hold those people accountable for. Yeah, it's definitely something that, uh, as this business grows relatively quickly this year, I think an executive assistant of some sort or operator of some sort, maybe, maybe it's kind of a hybrid. The beauty is you can grow it into from one to the other. Yeah. So like the executive assistant I'm hiring right now, she's an engineer. She's very systems and processes oriented and like data driven. Yeah. Right. It's not necessarily my strength. Um, so I can plug her in, she can start building that, but then naturally there becomes a progression. She's an executive assistant now, but it is the doorway to maybe an operations officer type role. Yeah. Moving forward. That's what I think. I think that's gonna be the cheat code for what I do, because I care so much about my client's successes. Mm-hmm. And I, one thing, uh, friends of mine have said within the business is like, these people are your clients.'cause sometimes it's like you get so close to them. Mm. Yeah. Where they're, you invite them to cross boundaries. Like just, no, just, I gotta give you my number. Just text me anytime. And the next thing you know, you're at dinner with your wife and kids and you're looking to hold, hold on. Like, uh, you know, Parker needs something. Right. And like, if he would've never opened that door in the friend side of things. Yeah. So I think that if I can just maintain my creative flow and stay in my intellectual genius, which is the creative side of things. Yeah. I've always been the biggest bottleneck in all of my businesses. And I'll be the first one to admit that. Um. This guy needs approval. This guy, or this person needs approval, this person needs approval. And it's all, like, sometimes it's awesome and sometimes like, yeah, why, why do I have to approve this if you're the right person for this job? And maybe you're not, you know what I mean? So, no, that's really good advice. There's probably a process of, um, disciplined initiative in there too. Like when you say, why do I have to approve this? It's probably because the team that you have right now Yeah. Doesn't understand exactly what their authority or their left and right limits are. Yeah. Right. So they're operating and they're trying to figure out what the boundaries are still because they, they, they aren't delineated. Yeah. So like when I, I try to hire people, I try to make sure that they know relatively quickly what their purview is, the left and right limit, what they can operate within or what the spend limit is or what decisions they can make. Um, and then refine that as you go. So it's like, Hey, in the future a decision like this, that's you, you don't need to bring that to me. That's part of your job. I expect you to make those decisions for the company. Yeah. But then they have the understanding, oh, okay, sure, I can do that. Um, as long as there's a up to a certain point or there's some, like you, you just make sure you have the safeguards in place that you need to have. Then, uh, I try to go as hands off as quickly as possible and that, that there's some risk associated with that, but it serves a, a greater benefit of building trust with the relationship and the employee. No, thank you for that. I, uh. You know, it's all part of the journey, right. The leadership and being a really good boss is, has been something that I've been working on for years. Sure. Um, and being able to be a great communicator without falling into the trap of I spend all my time with these people, it's kind of like, you know, we're just hanging out. Yeah. Right. At some point, that actually becomes the detriment too. And that, that's happened to me a couple times where we've had to kind of snap back into place. And, um, I think that once I get that triad figured out, and I do agree, like I'm good at sales, I don't want do sales calls, like I've been studying, talking more stuff mm-hmm. Where he just does sales doc or offer doc. So you just essentially here's the, here's the document, here's the offer. If you're in, cool. If not cool. And it's like, if you need a sales call, which most people don't, we, here's a way to do that. But, um, Dan Martel runs on that model and, you know, uh, it's just like, how can I, I've been wa I've been learning from Dan Martel right now. Yeah. Dan Dan's, uh, I put myself into his, 'cause he makes his content about, um, I close high ticket sales and Instagram chats all the time. Oh yeah, he does. Yeah. I put myself into his Instagram chats. Oh yeah. He almost sold me a year or two ago. I'm, I'm, I'm letting him and his Did he send you the virtual assistance? No, he hasn't sent me an offer doc, but he just asked me if I want to join his coaching program. And I'm like, why don't you tell me about that coaching program? You probably have an offer doc in your dms right now.'cause I, he had, at the time, it was $8,000, might still be, and I was like, credit card out. Well, business debit or whatever I had at the time. I was like, I was like ready to type it in. I'm like, you know what? I'm part of like too many things right now. Let me just focus on the things that I am a part of. But, uh, no, there, there's so many different ways I'm trying to align my entire business with who I am. Yeah. What feels good, what feels comfortable. Keep me away from overwhelming stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety are like the norm for me. Right. But like to what level? Yeah. Right. Like my resting heart rate's like 58 or something, it's like stupid, right? But when something all of a sudden just gets under my skin and it's just like, oh, crap mode, just panic. It's because I don't have a team to handle those fires. You know what I mean? So gotta build those out in a way where I can be friendly and be friends on some level. But I think that's my, my default in how I was raised. It was just like, Hey, we, we hang out. You, you're helping me with this thing, so of course I'm gonna overshare with you and next thing you know, you're, uh, you're like, oh, this person's like just hanging out now. And that, that really hasn't happened too, too bad. But, um, no man. I appreciate the, uh. Coaching. Okay. There was one more question I remembered that came in to that, that Facebook group. Oh, you've been holding this in your back pocket haven? I, I totally forgot about it. Okay. But I remembered as we're, we're, I'm, I'm listening to you right now. Let's do it. I forget the name. Someone asked, what hair product do you use? I use uh, lay Right Cement. Yeah. And I use, uh, some hair powder that, uh, what are we talking about? No, man. So these are the questions that the Inner Circle wanted to know. That's hilarious. My hair, hair used to be way bigger than this, by the way. I'm just kind of, it's tamed down, but I use, uh, what I do is after I shower, after I whatever, I blow dry my hair and then I put this powder in. That kind of makes it more coarse and not greasy. It's almost like it helps the, it's like a volumizer. Right. That probably helps with the videos. Yeah. It probably adds texture. My signature look. Yeah. And then I use what's called Lay Wright cement.'cause I have very thick, coarse hair for the most part. It's thinning a little bit here in my old age, but I, I don't know anything about those problems. Well, you're right. I, I got a little spot back here. I went bald at 21. Oh really? Wow. I, it suits you a little good. But I use the Lay Wright cement and I just go like this and then I kind of just put it into place and I don't touch it. Same with like my. Little bit of facial hair that I could grow. Uh, yeah. So now here's a shout out to Russell Brunson's Inner Circle Guys, what are you doing with these questions, man? Yeah. Really? We give you a chance to fire anything you wanted out here, and you, you, we need to do a workshop to teach people how to ask better questions, how to ask better questions, ask better questions with Parker and Adam. Oh, that's that, that's a good, we, we have like four different podcast spinoffs from this one conversation. Okay. So tell me if you think this is a bad idea or not. I'm listening since I have the studio now. Uhhuh, I was thinking about just doing a, like a different show every day of the week and having just a bunch of different podcasts. No, too much. Not too much. Focus on one thing. Okay. Don't chase seven rabbits, five rabbits. Yeah. It's like, no, no, no. Just find every Monday morning I'm gonna come in. We're gonna talk about the sports over the weekend. You know, don't do that. Okay. Like, you have to be a specialist. People respect specialists. Mm. You could be a little bit broad with what you talk about. Sure. But it needs to have a center and then a wheel that built that's built around it. If you look at any of the big podcasts Yeah. On the Spotify or, or Apple Podcast, top 500. They're all specialty podcast. They all speak to one audience. They're all just one thing. So you could try out different formats though. Same podcast, different formats, meaning maybe a different set. Maybe you have eight segments that you do every single podcast. Mm-hmm. Where it's like. If you're doing an interview, if you're doing a solo show, this is, these are the segments. These are kind of how you're gonna flow to where it's predictable. Uh, and, and then the, the audience, the, the market is gonna tell you what they like and what they dislike. If you, if you think about it, when Joe Rogan signed that like, $500 million podcast deal with Spotify. Yeah. Remember he had like the spaceship set that he came out with. Mm-hmm. And nobody liked it, so people stopped watching 'cause it was just like not pleasant to look at. Yeah. Like, go back to your old set. He spent like all this money on a, on a crazy domed set and it just, yeah, it didn't look good. He went right back to the kind of semi cheap setup, even if it is massively expensive with the gear, but like, it's just what everybody knows and loves. Right on. Yeah man. Okay. I gotta get for you. Oh no, no. It's not anything crazy. I just wanna say thank you so much for coming on the show. So a copy of How the hell are you doing this? My story of life and leadership. Well, I do appreciate it, man. Thank you so much, so much for the opportunity. Appreciate having you. Yeah, man. And that is an episode of Base Business of Parker McCumber featuring Adam Ivy. It's great being here.