Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 467 - Jeff Lerner

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

Jeff Lerner is a struggling jazz musician turned millionaire entrepreneur. He started his first online company in 2008 which has since generated over 50 million dollars in sales. He also is the host of the Millionaire Secrets podcast, and founder of the online educational platform for entrepreneurs, ENTRE. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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Yeah, we're going. We're working. Yep, we're rolling. We're live. Hey. All of the above. Hey. Hey.

What's going on, Jeff? What's up, guys? Good to have you on the show today. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you. Just want to kind of inform people how this came to be. Jeff reached out a while back back and we did a podcast together and I said, this guy's awesome, man. This guy's got some great content and great information and

just kind of seemed like a lot of the principles that we share here on this show that you had similar philosophies. And I was like, this would be great to have you on the show. So it's great that we have you here today. Yeah, I'm really stoked to be here. It's my first trip to Sacramento. And I wasn't sure what to expect because it's like the capital city of the capital state of the political craziness. I didn't know there would be like riots and protests, but apparently you guys squashed all that for me. So thank you. Yeah, you fly in and everything's fine. I thought the place was on fire. Like there was a lot.

Don't believe the hype. Don't believe the hype. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. You went for, I thought they were, I thought the place was on fire. Like there was a lot. Don't believe the hype. Don't believe the hype. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. You went for a run this morning. I did. It was also one thing I wasn't expecting was how cold it is. It's fucking cold right now.

It was butt ass cold. Like, and I went and ran the little river walk by Sacramento river. And every time the wind, like it just cut right there. I had two layers on, I had this and a jacket and i thought i was gonna die trying just to burn body fat right it was good yeah i probably got half my caloric

burn just from staying warm yeah just from being freezing it's a hack do you always stay because like when i saw it i was like damn this is actually pretty pretty good shape is that something that like you've been doing for a long time or yeah i have a on again off again relationship with fitness which i mean not by choice obviously that's just how a lot of people go right but in 2016 my my wife's mom uh passed away from pancreatic cancer and you know that's related to like insulin and blood sugar and it was just sort of like a metabolic component to that and i don't i don't remember or there's no point in recounting the full medical history but like like, we just drew a line in the sand. And I guess in 16, I was 36, 37 years

old. And I was like, I am going to age well. And my wife was in too, which makes it a lot easier when you have, you know, spousal support. And we just, we literally have been going to the gym seven days a week since summer of 2016. We were, in fact, we were in Coronado, California on a family vacation. We're like, you know what? We are going home fitter than we came here. And we started biking every day and we started jogging on the beach and we found the gym and started lifting. And it just became a pattern that I haven't broken for five years.

And now like I hate, I mean, and I hesitate around the word hate because it's like a harsh word. I fucking hate fat loser Jeff. He is not a good human. Now that I know fit Jeff, I don't want to be that other guy anymore. Yeah. Even for a day. Like yesterday I couldn't work out and I don't like that person.

So let me ask you this. I mean, just be an artist. Yeah. Cause like you, obviously you own a lot of businesses you're super productive what was the difference obviously other than being fit now but what were the big differences between fat loser jeff and the jeff you are now because you were still killing it i mean you know like you can kind of it's like you can fool some of the world some of the time but you can't fool everyone all the time especially yourself i was masquerading

as a successful person but like i believe very much that how you do one thing is how you do everything. And when I was taking shortcuts in my physical life, it meant that I, and it's true, I look back now in hindsight and I see the ways that I was, I was trying to outperform my laziness in business and I did a good job. And that's why people thought I was successful. But like, I don't know, maybe as you get more successful, you get the luxury of developing a more holistic definition of success because it's not just your bank account. But like, I'm just so much better now in a leadership position and from a creativity, value innovation, like leading a business, inspiring growth, inspiring loyalty. Like, you know, if you're not inspiring yourself to get up early and do a hard thing, how are you supposed to inspire a team of people to go change the world with you and your business?

And I see it now in hindsight. That company had a like an unset, unsteady footing because I was the unsteady footing. That makes sense. It's interesting because, you know, we spent a long time trying to chase down success and then you start to get some of it and then maybe realize you're not as successful as you thought. There's there's a lot of big dogs out there. Once you start, you know, once you start kind of getting into, you know, how much money certain people make, it's just astronomical. But the weird thing is that when you do get there and you do start to develop a philosophy around it and you start to have some of these ideas and principles that you like to live by, which are the things that got you there, you don't even care anymore.

Yeah. Because you did all these things to get there. You thought it mattered so much. But then I think with each acquisition of something new, I think you really just learn like it's just a byproduct of you putting in the work and being consistent and it and you kind of uh almost end up being um uh you almost end up with like a level of uh just you're so thankful that you're able to do it in the first place i guess rather than being like hey like what was i was able to get kind of thing yeah i told i mean i couldn't agree more i feel like you know money is basically

like a multiplier and so you know even like from fitness there's kind of like you know, money is basically like a multiplier. And so, you know, even like from fitness, there's kind of like, you know, there's like guys that you can just see that they've been putting in the work in the gym for years. Like their fibers are dense and they're thick. And it's just like they look and they're made of concrete. And then there's guys that like just, you know, did like nine cycles of steroids in 12 weeks and ballooned up and it's all like oil and puff and maybe they weigh the same. Maybe they can even lift the same, but they're not the same. You know, I just, I feel like in 2016 it was, it was two things. One, it was the commitment to fitness. It was the, the heart wrenching transformational experience of having to care for my dying mother-in-law in our home for almost a year.

I mean, I'm talking like just, you know, all the messy organic stuff of like a dying human, you know, sleeping with her because she felt like there were, you know, scary spirits in the room and like comforting her and just. So there was that. And then and then it led to the fitness. And then I was going to a ton of family therapy at the time with my wife and our kids. And it all just gelled. I felt like there was this like metamorphosis of like, oh, instead of trying to be the best crappy human I can be, I'd rather accept that I'm a crappy great human and learn to grow into that. human and learn to grow into that. And it was, it was really humbling. It was like a back to the drawing board moment. But what I'm doing now doesn't exist if it wasn't for that, that step, you know, because what I'm doing now is kind of like growing into this vision. We can talk more about it if it's relevant, but like I'm growing into this vision of what I think I can do in the

world, but it's a big enough vision that I would be racked with imposter syndrome every day of my life if I hadn't stripped it down bare and started over, if that makes sense. So I don't know, for whatever that's worth to the audience, like getting your ass kicked and even inviting the ass kicking is like long term, probably a good thing most of the time. the ass kicking is like long-term probably a good thing most of the time. And you kind of need that ass kicking because you need to be able to like not really avoid those things, but to maybe lean into them a little bit because the learning that goes on through some of these processes, right? Yeah. And I was reading yesterday about you when you like fell doing a thousand pound squat. Yeah.

Was that fun in the moment? Like that was so awesome, right? Brutal. But would you trade it out now if you could? No. Yeah. That was that thing for me. It was dying mother-in-law, realizing I was out of shape, realizing I sucked at communication,

realizing I was a grownup only child who sucked at empathy. And like, you know, sometimes it just happens in a moment with a thousand pounds on your back, but you need it. So right now, cause I am curious about that vision that you were talking about. I'm really curious about that. But more so the thing I'm curious about is the way you are now, the emphasis that you put on your fitness and your health. How has that reflected upon the way you deal with everybody else in your life, the way you deal with business?

Because you've been doing that for all your life, but obviously right now you're different. So how has that changed the way you handle everything else in your life? Just, I think part of it is it's made me a lot more patient. You can't rush the result. I mean, fitness teaches us that, right? rush the result. I mean, fitness teaches us that, right? And also people may debate this. My personal belief is like, I don't allow for days off because I feel like you're either growing or you're dying. And I mean, that's true in the gym too. Now, I mean, active recovery is a thing, but you don't take a day, you don't get a day off from caring.

You know, even if the strategy is, okay, today, my act of care is to rest. It's not a day of recklessness or flippancy. And that's what I detect in business now is like, you know, two years ago, I called a buddy of mine and I was like, hey, I have this, I think we could do this thing. And the old me would have messed it up trying to force it. Now it's been, I mean, that conversation was in June of 2018. And we kind of started in September of 2018. Now it's almost two and a half years later and we're right where we should be on track. I wouldn't, I would have messed it up because I would have been trying to rush.

That's probably the biggest change okay what uh did you grow up with a background in business like what's your your background i remember like last time we talked i think you like uh went to school for music yeah yeah i was i was a professional jazz piano player and and singer and like club musician for uh all my 20s and I did go to school for that after dropping out of high school I was miraculously able to get into a college that would accept a high school dropout because they saw that I had some some talent in that but I did I grew up around I mean honestly I didn't grow up with like Stephen Covey as a dad, but I almost did like my parents were both grew up probably solidly middle class, but if anything on maybe the lower edge of that, but mostly just cause they had a lot of siblings and that kind of drains a family's financial resources. Um, but they grew

up like my, my mom's dad was a, was a valedictorian of his class, college class. He was a valedictorian of his class college class he was a lieutenant under eisenhower in the war won like a you know bronze medal of merit or something and was a geologist for mobile my dad's dad was a a chemist that worked on the manhattan project like there was a lot of intellectual firepower and more than that like discipline and studiousness and they didn't suffer a lot of bullshit neither one of them. And so my dad was a money manager. My mom was an attorney. She was the second, I think the second female attorney at the one of the top five law firms in the country.

I mean, they were like badass people, but they were always super clear with me. They're like, Jeff, you're a kid. You have a good, we pay for your meals. You have a nice house. And it all ends when you're 18 because we're not gonna enable you to be like a delinquent. And so I always grew up with this model of success, but knowing that at some point

I was gonna have to pick that up and run with it or it was gonna end. And I mean, honestly, like now that I'm a parent, how, isn't that the right way to parent is like be as successful as you possibly can, model it for your kids, but do not give them the opportunity to take it for granted and recognize that it's something they're going to have to take on for themselves at a certain point. And yeah, I guess that's the answer to your question. I knew I knew what doing well at life looked like. And what was the first business that you got into?

I was so when I dropped out, change things, I guess, were. Yeah. So when I dropped out of high school because I decided school is training for a job and a job is not for me. And I experienced that when I was 16, I had a job for three weeks. Actually, my mom got me an internship at one of the other big law firms in town that they had a deal where they would like swap internships for the kids of the attorneys. And I got fired after three weeks for being mouthy to a secretary. She was being mouthy to me. Nobody cared because I was a lowly person. Um, but got fired and was like, job suck. I don't want one. And I mean, now I have a lot more like circumspect view of employment. Like I'm very grateful for employees.

I have many. But so I auditioned for a band that was like running an ad in the paper. And I got in the band. And the thing is, I didn't start playing piano until I was 16, I guess. So I was really late. And so it was like not a, it was not a sane thing to go, okay, I'm dropping out of school. I'm going to be a professional pianist. Pianists make the most money out of any instrumentalists because they, you can do a gig by yourself. You don't need like a drummer and a bass player to whack up the money with, but I don't play.

So I need, I need time. I need space. Give me 10 hours a day. I'll practice. Give me a few years. I'll be good. That's what I told my parents. They were like, we know better than to fight them on this.

So they let me do it. But the way I got into my first band, they were like, dude, you're not very good. And I was like, no, I know. But like, look, let me show you where I was three months ago. And I had like a recording like, well, you have gotten a lot better in three months. I was like, just imagine like a year from now how good I'll be. And in the meantime, do you guys have any gigs? And they were like, well, you have gotten a lot better in three months. I was like, just imagine like a year from now how good I'll be. And in the meantime, do you guys have any gigs? And they were like, oh, no, we just practice a lot.

I'm like, I'll get you gigs. That was my first business. I actually started a booking agency with my own band as the first client. It was called Music Lives Entertainment. I still it's actually still my operating company, the 220 companies. I changed the name a few years ago, but I mean, I think it's actually still my operating company the 220 companies I changed the name a few years ago but I mean I think it was incorporated like 1998 when I was you know 19 years old did you recognize it was a problem for a lot of other bands to get booked properly and stuff and so yeah oh yeah yeah I mean musicians you know you shouldn't paint anything

with the same brush totally but I mean generally they're pretty bad at business and not much better at general life management so at that time did that business like do well for you in your early 20s because you transitioned pretty yeah i mean well as relative we were of all the local bands in our you know late high school post high school age bracket we like had the most gigs we made the most money we want we were we practiced we had a disciplined practice schedule we actually won like a big battle of the bands and i i had a demo pressed and i actually flew this is a crazy stuff i've always been doing i flew out to la at like i was probably 19 and i i don't know i went to the back of a music magazine like musician's friend magazine

or guitar player magazine or something. And I pulled the addresses of all the A&R departments of, you know, Sony and Island and Jeff, Def Jam and all the record labels I could find back then. And I went to every single one of them and had to, you know, they're like so used to this. So I had, I developed some early sales skills to like work past the gatekeeper. And I actually got it onto the desk of at least one A&R person at every one of those labels. And I told my parents, I was like,

I'm not coming home. I had 20 discs and I was like, I'm not coming home until 20 of these are on the desk of legitimate A&R people. And I think that took me like three or four days and I got zero calls, but you know, I didn't care. I mean,

it was a moral victory. Yeah. And then also, I mean, right now, uh, as, as far as I know,

like in 2008, that's when like you switched everything as far as online business. Correct. Yeah. So all through, yeah. The, the first decade of the two thousands,

I was a musician. I wasn't, uh, you know, working, playing gay. I average one year I played over 400 gigs. So that's over eight per about eight per week. Um, so that's every day. Maybe I'd have one day off, but then I'd have like two on Saturday. There'd be like a afternoon outdoor cafe gig.

And then there'd be a Saturday night club gig. And then Sunday I'd have a church gig. Then I'd have a brunch gig. Then I'd have an evening gig. And, uh, I mean, what's crazy is I did that. I think that year counting tips, I made $60,000. I reported like 40, you know? Um, so I mean, that's a hard working like 90 hours a week. And in my early twenties, so this would be like 19 or sorry, 2002, 2003. Yeah. I got in with this one booking agency. And again, I was not the best piano player. And you know, the takeaway here is like, if you, if you do things professionally and you're reliable and you have certain intangibles, you can overcome lack of talent and skill, at least for a time if you're developing. So I got in with the single best booking agency in Houston

and they booked private parties for like, I mean, I played at Andy Fastow's house, who kind of an ignominious name now, but he was the CFO of Enron. Oh, the guy who literally created the world's biggest boondoggle that collapsed and ruined our country for like five years. But I played in his house. Yeah, I played in Tillman Fertitta's house, who now owns the Houston Rockets. Jim Crane, who now owns the Houston Astros. Bob McNair, who owned the Houston Texans. I mean, these are just like Houston billionaires.

I'm playing in their house on their three hundred thousand dollar Bosendorfer pianos for like 10 of them and like 10 of their friends at dinner because they would literally pay like $2,000 to have a pianist come in and serenade them and their friends just for a dinner party. I played James Baker's 80th birthday party, the former secretary of state. So like I got in this super thin upper crust of Houston society, even though I was a lowly musician and I would go in and I was suddenly I was exposed to this whole other world. And I had grown up around like my parents were successful, but they weren't like billionaires. You know, suddenly I was like, holy crap, I'm in a house that costs more than like most neighborhoods, you know, a $20 million houses. And, um, I was, I was, and, and, and I realized the value, this is when it clicked

to me the value of proximity like i was this close to bob mcnair and he i remember bob mcnair the the owner of the houston texans they had just written a new fight song and he had had some composer write this new fight song and he comes to me and he's like hey i want you to play this new fight song we're going to debut it and this was like the coach's dinner so jeff fisher was there who was the coach of the teans. It was Jeff Fisher. Yeah, I think so. And he's like, okay, this is the song. And I was like, well, do you have any music? And he's like, no, no, I'm going to hum it for you. And he shoves a piece of paper in front of me and he's like, you know, and he's not, he can't carry a tune. So I'm like trying to

chicken scratch it down. And then, and I got it. I was able to get the melody so i'm like trying to chicken scratch it down and then and i got it he i was able to get the melody and like are there chords or is it just like a sing-along melody and he's like oh i don't know man when the guy wrote it he had like a whole rendering with synthesizers and it sounded like an orchestra and i'm like can i hear that and he's like no no we don't have any of that i just need you to figure it out so i was able to like patch some chords together and anyway so i would go above and beyond to build goodwill. And then what ended up happening is it was like 30 minutes before the thing started. I was like, Mr. McNair, I got it.

We're good. And I played something for him. He's like, oh, that sounds, wow, that sounds like it. Good job. And I'm like, now, can you do me a favor? Tell me how you got so rich. And I asked him his story. And I did this.

I started this habit of doing this with all the billionaires and centimillionaires and CEOs and guys I played for. And I would get out my little notepad and I'd take notes on their stories. So I got to hear Bob McNair's story from Bob McNair. So you guys know the story of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, you know, the movie, he failed and failed and failed. He failed. Like, so Bob McNair makes Ray Kroc look like a child prodigy. Like he failed like 20 times. He didn't even make a, like, he wasn't net positive until he was like 44 years old. But by 54, he was a billionaire.

And he told me a story. I'm taking notes and taking notes. And I was like, so, you know, how would you sum it all up? He goes, you know, I think there's a day in kindergarten when they give all the kids a memo that's like, if you, if you fail enough times, you should stop. He's like, I think I was sick that day. And I was like, ah, you know, cause coming from a guy like that, it's like getting, you know, weightlifting advice from Mark Bell or something. It's like, you put a lot of stock in it. And I got essentially a kind of a few core messages from so many of these guys that I played for. And I think part of it is they were

just impressed that some like 22 year old piano players like even cares to ask and take notes. And plus he has a suit and he doesn't smell like cigarettes. And, you know, it's easy to stand out from musicians. God bless. I love my fellow musicians, but you make it easy to shine relatively. And so, yeah, that was when I got this entrepreneurial bug like i'm gonna go because nobody ever said like oh well i started in the in the the shop and worked my way up to foreman and then i worked my way up to manager like you can you know those guys might be upper middle class but they're not like ballers right these are all entrepreneurs so that's when i knew like i'm going to be an entrepreneur i'm going to start a business And I failed at 10 all through my 20s. And then this is a very long answer to your question about 2008. 2008, I had failed at so many businesses. I dug myself a $400,000 worth of loans, you know,

worth of rope to hang themselves with basically, you know, for these SBA franchise loans that were not as easy as advertised. And I got way in over my head in debt with these two franchise restaurants. Long story short, it all comes to a head 2008. I'm 29 years old. I'm $495,000 in debt. I'm being chased by the federal government because they were sba loans which means it's the u.s treasury coming to collect um because they're federally guaranteed i have two giant real estate investment trusts trying to you know default me on five-year leases that still have four years left on them taxes state of texas workforce commission state of texas unemployment commission because my squandered, like it was a giant ball of shit.

Got evicted from my apartment, had to move in with my soon to be ex-wife's parents. She was, we were like estranged. She was like, you're, you're reckless. You're an idiot. I don't want to be married to you. We couldn't even afford a divorce. So I live with her parents. I'm hiding in their spare bedroom. She's like, I'm going to live in my old bedroom. You go stay in the spare room. So that was where I was in fall of 2008. And I literally couldn't even, if they say, Jeff, there's a call for you. I would say, tell them I'm not here because it would be a collector. So that's when I went online and I started learning affiliate marketing and I actually paid off $495,000 in debt in 18 months from nothing. Wow.

And I've just staircase stuff ever since. What's affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing. So like you have amazing products, right? Let's say your slingshot. So if I had a fitness blog and I'm like, man, I tried out this product. My glutes are thrashed, totally transformed everything. You should totally try

it. And I put a little link that's, you know, markbellslingshot.com forward slash Jeff. And they click that and it links over to your site and they buy a slingshot. You kicked me a dollar for the referral and that's affiliate marketing. And in that year though, cause like that was early. I'm guessing that was pretty early in terms of affiliate marketing, right? Yeah. 2008. How did you manage that much in one year of affiliate marketing? And then what was your learning process, too? Because you must have learned that pretty damn quickly. Yeah, I did. So I will say self-teaching at a keyboard, something I'm already got some history with. Right. From the piano. I always joke. It's like, oh, I just swapped out the keyboard.

But the biggest thing about that is when i decided at 16 years old and this here's the thing like this is so accessible if somebody said like what's your message what do you want the world to get and this is just one example but this is true of a lot of things it's so accessible to so many people it's literally like anyone could do it but but everybody won't do it. Sitting at a keyboard for 10 hours a day for 18 months to make half a million dollars is literally doable for like, I mean, out of 7 billion people in the world, let's, you know, some of them have learning disabilities. Some of them like don't have internet. Let's say that maybe like 4 billion could do that.

Literally, you could do it. You could do it. I just did it because I was willing to sit at a keyboard for 10 hours a day for 18 months, literally not leaving the room in my case, because I didn't want to see my in-laws because I had shame because I ruined their daughter's life. And, um, but that's anybody could have done it for me. It was the experience of being 16 years old and saying, I'm going to be a piano player and having everybody tell me I was crazy. I mean, when I was 17, I dropped out of high school. I went to audition at the University of Houston music program. And the professors, I mean, I was barely playing chopsticks.

I think I played like a crappy version of Fur Elise or something. Like something you play after, like a kid can play it after like two years. And they were like, and I was like, I want to get, I want to be a piano major. And they're like, when did you start? And I was like, I don't know, like nine months ago. And they, who do you study with? I was like, I want to get, I want to be a piano major. And they're like, when did you start? And I was like, I don't know, like nine months ago. And they, who do you study with? I was like, I bought a book and they're like, you cannot be a professional piano player. Like go find something else to do. And I went back for six semesters. So for three years straight, I went back every semester and re-auditioned and all I did. So it's not like I go back three weeks later, I'd go back

like five months later. And for that five months, all I would have done it's not like I go back three weeks later, I'd go back like five months later. And for that five months, all I would have done is practice 10 hours a day. So much now that I, to this day, I have arthritis in my wrist because I overdid it. But, um, I learned from that. I learned that the discipline and the commitment to doing a very hard thing, playing piano is a very hard thing with, with enough consistency and perseverance over time, you can make everybody else wrong. All your doubters are wrong. They're wrong. If eventually when you're right, they'll be wrong. So the idea of like this affiliate marketing thing, it just never seemed out of reach to me. And part of the reason I'm so passionate about this,

I'm talking about it at such length is because now I have, and that's when I fell in love with education. You asked like, how did I figure it out? I enrolled in an educational platform. There was a guy that had come before me who used to sell mufflers at Midas and he did the same thing. He crash coursed in affiliate marketing and made millions of dollars. And then he started a training program. And I, you know, there were 40,000 people in that training program. And here's the thing about affiliate marketing. It's like, it's not like organic chemistry, where you can just keep going and going and going,

and the smarter you are, the better you'll get. Like, eventually you'll be Walter White from Breaking Bad or something. Like, affiliate marketing, I mean, you can be a really good copywriter. Copywriting is probably the one thing that there's kind of no ceiling on how good you can get. But generally speaking, affiliate marketing, there's nothing that's like prohibitively difficult where like, oh, you just don't have a high enough IQ. Anybody could master it given enough time. And that's important because there were 40,000 members in this in this training community. That's important because there were 40,000 members in this training community.

And I remember looking at the leaderboards. They would like rank, you know, basically if you started making money, you would send them your pay stubs or your commission checks. And they'd like rank you on the leaderboard. And the top leaders in this program were making anywhere from like 40 to 100 grand a month, let's say. And I remember looking at the leaderboard and going, okay, for me to pay off a half a million dollars in debt in any reasonable length of time, I've got to at least be in the top 10 in this community. I didn't know how many members there were. I knew they were in like 200 countries. So I assumed there were thousands. I didn't know there were 40,000, but I just sort of blocked everybody out. I said, okay, I got to be in the top 10, which means I'll make at least 40 grand a month. I'm going to get to work. And it took,

it took six months to even rank. It took a year to make real headway and it took 18 months to pay it off. Found out later there were 40,000 members. And over that period of time, I was number two and I was brand new. I'd never done it before. But again, it's not something where my advantage would have been intelligence because you only need so much intelligence to do it. It was literally just dogged work ethic. And that's why I share that, because anything that 40,000 people could have done, but only like two of us did, that's a that's a problem in like human the human soul. It's not a problem in the human brain. Right. So, like, let's lift everyone up and let know that they could do it, too.

So what kept you coming back every day though? You know, you, it's, it's pretty, uh, I don't want to say it sounds easy, but it's like, Oh, you paid off that much debt in 18 months. It's, it's like easy to receive. But like every day, I mean, you had to, I mean, you said you're putting in 10 hours each day. Like you did that today. Okay. What brings you back tomorrow? And the next day and the next day, the muffler salesman, he did it. I mean, I heard him speak. He's he oblong glaze. Like he was just a dude just like me, probably worse off. He probably didn't grow up with the parents that I had modeling what success looks like. I'm, you know, even, even like fitness, there's a certain genetic component to, there's just no genetic component to internet marketing, you know? And so the fact

that one person did it meant that anybody could do it. It's not like dunking a basketball. The fact that Michael Jordan dunked from the free throw line doesn't mean anybody else could too. But if one guy makes a million dollars affiliate marketing, pretty much anybody can. And it was just that. and part of it is like i would get pissed thinking about failing yeah like what does it mean if anybody could do a thing and one ordinary person did do the thing and then i who actually thinks pretty highly of myself for certain reasons i mean maybe that's a crass thing to say what would it mean if i didn't do it who would i be yeah i would i would have to

i would have to go back to the drawing board on all of my beliefs about myself and my life if i didn't do that i'm just i should just stop no i don't know it's kind of dramatic you ever uh watch the show uh succession you ever seen that show oh i love that show yeah on hbo there's yeah there's a scene in the show where um this uh the one one guy in the show named greg he's like he's like i'm finally getting paid i finally got some money so i'm gonna go out to eat and the guy's like oh that's great he's like spending some of your wealth huh and he goes uh yeah i'm going to uh california pizza kitchen and he's like what and he's like yeah place is amazing they got the best food he's like no no no i'm gonna show you you

know what you know so, you know what? So he takes him to this nice restaurant and he sits this kid down and he says, he goes, man, he's like being rich is a, it's like a superpower. He's like, and then the kid's like, well, I thought that people said, you know, money's the root of all evil. And you know, you know, you don't want to get too caught up with making money and so forth. He's like, no, that's a bunch of bullshit that a bunch of broke people made up.

He's like, being rich is fucking awesome, man. And he's like ordering all this like extravagant stuff. That was and they ate the Ortolan. Yeah, right. Little bird. They put their napkin over their head and they eat the little baby bird hole. It actually gets pretty dark. Yeah.

It's so I love that show. Yeah, that's a great that's an amazing scene. Was there something with these real wealthy people when you're in their homes? Was there something that attracted you to? Did you like the cars? Did you like the home? Or was it kind of the the fact that they just didn't maybe maybe they didn't give a fuck and they kind of did things their own way? Yeah, it was a few things.

One is I wasn't just hanging out with rich people. Yeah, it was a few things. One is I wasn't just hanging out with rich people. I had this beautiful juxtaposition of the rich people in the party and the struggling people on break or on the bandstand or in the back kitchen. I mean, we're talking houses that had like there was the kitchen, but then there was like the other kitchen where like the crew would cook the food. And so on breaks, we would go hang out in the kitchen with like the caterers and the bartenders and the, um, the musicians. So I would step out into the party and everybody's having fun and everybody's carefree and like whatever problems they have, they pretty much created for themselves.

And then I'd go back in the kitchen and everybody's depressed and everybody's like fiending for a cigarette they're like oh man i can't wait to you know till i can go outside and smoke in my like they're like going to get high in their car and so it's like two worlds right in front of me i'm like i live in this world but it's like it's like the bible says like be in the world but do not be of the world. Right. I want to be in that world. I want to be of that world. And so there was part of it was that juxtaposition. And the other thing is probably half the events that I played were like charity events. They were galas. So I'm going in and I'm playing piano. And suddenly at the end of the night, four hours later, they've raised like one point two million dollars to fight leukemia.

And I'm like, you know, these guys get a bad rap. And, you know, then you dig into the numbers and like all the good in this world for the most part. Well, I mean, not even for the most part in totality comes from the distribution of resources to the people that have the resources, have the most potential energy to do good in the world. And they're actually doing it. And sure, it's easy to be cynical do good in the world. And they're actually doing it. And sure, it's easy to be cynical and go, oh, yeah, they're just doing it

so they can put on a nice gown and be photographed and be seen in the society magazine. Who gives a shit why they're doing it? They're fixing problems. And they're doing it because they have the money to do it and they have the time to deploy that money to do it. I want in. I want in that club. That was it.

And then you go, the musicians, they were just so cynical and so negative and so defeated. They're like 24 years old and they're already defeated. You quit already? Yeah, so. Mind bullet shot. Oh. I'm sitting here twiddling with it. I keep forgetting about it.

So, can you guys give me a little more background on this? I'm not in the habit of accepting vials from people I have. You just inject it right into your thigh. It's going to be awesome. I'm pouring my port. It doesn't taste very good, so you might want to chase her. pour it in my port. It doesn't taste very good,

so you might want to chase her. Down the hatch. Not if he just disappeared. I mean, it does not taste good, but I taste like some herbs. Yeah, it's very earthy. It's just herbs. Herbs and spices. Your proprietary blend right yeah

it's got uh some kratom in it it's a product that we we like to use natural serum i think you like it it just uh just puts you in a good mood not that you weren't in a good mood but we just put you in a better one yeah i don't i was in a good mood yeah we'll see we'll see where it goes from here but it doesn't taste good though i. I can vouch for that. Is it appropriate to the conversation to tell me more about Kratom? Yeah. Always. Like I said, I'm a learner. Learn me, please.

It just helps put you in a good mood. That's the way I kind of always view it. I take it a lot of times before workouts or sometimes even during the show or before the show. Help with focus a little bit too. Yeah. Create them.

Yeah. I love it. It's good stuff. You'll feel it soon. Create them, but I just met them. That was good. But one thing I'm curious about, because I feel like later on we can definitely get into a lot of tactics because right now people are, a lot of people are struggling with work.

They're trying to figure out how to do something online since they have extra time. But for you, you know, Andrew's mentioning, and you mentioned you, you did 10 hour days. You always had this belief. Even when you started piano late in life, you're like, I can do that professionally. So there's this underlying belief in yourself that I think a lot of people don't inherently have. Most people would look at that and be like, I wasn't playing piano since I was eight years old. There's no way I can learn something this complicated at this late of an age. There's all these barriers that people create for themselves. But it just seems that you constantly don't do that. You constantly don't have those types of barriers. So how can one build that type of mindset for themselves? Because to do any of the things that you teach on your

YouTube channel and your courses, you need to have a mindset that allows you to grow. Not one that's saying, I can't be a business owner. I can't be an entrepreneur. I can't play the piano. All these things. How do you build that type of mindset for yourself? I mean, you know, I try not to be irreverent and sort of like diminishing of other people's challenges because I do recognize. And I mean, this is a call to all

parents, like give your kid the natural advantage of having had good parents. I had good parents and they modeled for me some of what you're talking about. So I don't want to take that for granted and be, you know, ungrateful for that. but there's also a point where you know i like the way you said it you said i don't build those barriers for myself in other words it's not that the barrier exists and yours is to tear it down it's the barrier doesn't exist so don't build it you know i mean that's how you said it and then on the flip, it was like people approach it like, well, how can I learn to tear it down? It's it's addition by subtraction. It's about not doing a thing.

It's not about doing a thing. And the thing to not do it. You know, how do those barriers get constructed? They get. How does anything in this world get constructed? It gets constructed through language. Right. What you say.

I mean, if you're trying to build a wall. Hey, bring that brick over here. Like it's initiated with language, trying to build a wall in your mind. It starts with language. So the one thing that I have done obsessively since I got fired from that job when I was 16 years old, and I don't know if it was a coincidence or it was by design, but when I was 16 years old, I got fired from that job. The very first book I read after getting fired was The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. And, you know, it's the story of Howard, Howard Rourke vision. I mean, I literally can still see the pages, the words on the pages in that book in my mind. And I've reread it since, but only once. And even that was probably 15 years ago. Howard Rourke, visionary architect who builds these amazing creations,

but they're not appreciated. They're not understood. And the world seems to be, you know, like this evil orchestration to tear apart his genius and his work. And he just keeps fighting, keeps fighting, fighting at the end of the book. He's seen as the genius that he was.

And it's like, I think Ayn Rand's point, I know she gets a lot of flack now because people have really politicized her. You know, it was called the fountainhead because the human mind, the human will is the fountainhead of all human achievement. Right. And just for the record, if anybody's like on a big anti Ayn Rand kick, I don't agree with her about everything. So like, don't, especially, I don't care if you attack me, don't attack Mark for having me on his show. He's like, Oh, he's an atheist or whatever. I don't care if you attack me.

Don't attack Mark for having me on his show. He's like, oh, he's an atheist or whatever. But so I don't know, man. I just caught fire with that, that like human beings can create. There's nothing in the world. I mean, even at this desk, right? Like the technology and the wiring and the cameras and the lights and the we we bottle water in Fiji and ship it to the United States and get people to pay like $3 for that. Like human beings are infinitely and endlessly innovative and creative and cool. Maybe that's not the best example.

Bottling overpriced water. But like, I don't know. I just said it was almost became like this thing of just like don't create obstacles that you'll then have to waste energy to overcome and just keep going. A lot of it's kind of like a let go and let god thing too like trusting the process i think when people get in trouble is when they start doubting the process and they start trying to rush or talk themselves out of the trajectory that they're on but the nut so it's anyway that's a i'm kind of meandering it's about insulating your self-talk and so saith dr phil dr phil talks about how as a parent you've got your kids like he always says it takes a hundred attaboys to overcome one what the hell right and so

as your own shepherd and guide through life you know the, the parent of yourself, you've got to give yourselves a hundred to one ratio of positive to negative. And I, so I very early on in the music was a big key to this because the only way I was able to achieve what I did through music, I started saying no to entertainment. I started saying no to media. I started saying no to friends. Like for three years, I didn't, I didn't do much that was fun because I had a bigger vision for what I want to do with my life, which was, which was a, it wasn't so much a vision. It was an anti-vision of, I don't want to get a job. And this is the only path I see. But I learned in three years what happens when you really, really isolate your influences. You put yourself in like

a media and I don't just mean, I mean, media as in the plural of all mediums of exchange and communication, you put yourself in a media silo and only let in the stuff that you want in and then you won't be tempted to build those barriers in the first place. That makes sense. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. It's, it's, you know, whenever I, I have friends that talk about their goals or talk about the things that they're trying to do. And like I mentioned, the reasons why they can't do certain things.

But when I know more about these people, it, like you mentioned, it always comes down to their parents. Like, and I think a lot of listeners that have kids, you know, we, we, we talked about this a lot, but it really is important. The type of way that you talk to your kids and you, you encourage them or discourage them from doing things because there's a lot of close people in my life right now that are so much smarter than me. And I know there's so much smarter than me, but it's like the way they talk about themselves doing certain things. It's like, so there's so much negative and there's so much,

uh, they've put so many barriers in front of themselves and it's hard for them to get out of that. It almost seems like it's hard for them to get out of that. It almost seems like it's impossible for them to get out of that. So that's just, that's super damn important. Yeah. And I love that you use the words encouragement and discouragement. Encourage is to instill courage. Discourage is to remove courage.

The root of courage is, you know, heart, core. And when you think about it in those terms, you might think you're doing your child a favor. Like you're discouraging them from trying this thing. You're protecting them. What are you protecting them from? Courage? You're protecting them from heart? Like I think when you view it through that lens, I mean, parents sadly are probably 90% of the challenge that you're talking about how to work through. It really does come down to so often overcoming your upbringing, which I was blessed to not really have to do.

Yeah. I also, too, if you have like if your parents are practicing some of these things, you're seeing it on a daily basis, not just their success with it, with their job or whatever it might be, but they're just positive. How do you deal with negative? I mean, you did say that you try to reinforce, you know, kind of tenfold on the positive side, but how do you, because negative stuff pops in for all of us. What's your, uh, you did talk a little bit about like just not having it there at all, which I agree with, but it still slides in there somehow. Well, and in the last two and a half years, so, I mean, this is a brief pre-frame of what I'm doing now.

So about two and a half years ago, I sold,, this is a brief pre-frame of what I'm doing now. So about two and a half years ago, I sold, I had a digital agency. I sold it. I was supposed to have enough money from it that basically I could retire. I was 39 years old, ended up getting screwed out of about half the money, but that's a whole other story. Never, if you exit a company, get the damn money upfront. Don't accept the two-year payout. That's my advice. But anyway, time, I was, I was able to kind of reflect on what had happened for me over the last 10 years and how starting with education, that one platform that I became a member of and learned all this stuff from, and I'd just been, and it wasn't just education, it was self-directed education. It wasn't, let me plug into a university system and just follow the curriculum path. It

was no, like, let me seek out and actively assemble the knowledge to do what I want to do. And I got really, you know, sold on the power of self-education, even music. I was self-taught and, uh, and, and self-taught is, is not a, it's not an ungrateful thing. It's self-assembled. I'm still learning from greats. Right. Um, so I was super passionate about education. 2016, right around the time I made the commitment to fitness and empathy and just being a better human. I had a really cool phone call with a guy who was the number eight employee at Microsoft. So he was like, you know, had Bill Gates on speed dial. I mean, super well-connected, smart guy. And I was telling him like, yeah, I'm kind of feeling like stale with my agency.

And he ended up planting the seed about how the educational industry was so ripe for disruption. He's like, if you want to go do something that's like all about meaning and purpose, basically it's healthcare, education, energy. There's a few things that are ready for disruption, but of them, education was the thing that you could kind of take a stab at with the fewest resources. I mean, if you're going to disrupt healthcare, you're going to spend two years just trying to get some license from the government or something. But education, that was where I came from, was self-education. So that was, this is a long answer to your question. All my answers are long. I should just stop saying, let's just set a default. I give long answers and I'll try not to. But 2016, the seed is planted. I'm all

about education. 2018, I sell the business and I had this theory that you could launch anything online if you just deliver enough goodwill out to the market. And so this is, this is actually getting to your negativity question. So in September, 2018, I started shooting videos where I was just basically freely giving of myself saying, Hey, you know, 10 years ago, I was a broke musician, overweight, depressed, divorced, just, you know, down on my luck. And in the last 10 years, I've, you know, had these changes. I've made this much money. Like, and here's how I did it right here. The fundamentals of how I did it. And she started giving away every day I was shooting one or two videos.

So I, I think at the end of the one year mark, I had created over 400 videos. Um, you know, people struggle to like make a video and upload it. I was doing like eight a week for a year, all free value, all free content. like eight a week for a year, all free value, all free content. And I, uh, you know, that that's when I really discovered what negativity can feel like, because, you know, here's the thing I did that was a great marketing move, but a horrible self-esteem move is I would make a video. And then, and by the way, I, I took this strategy from Frank Kern, who's a great online marketer. I would spend my own money, like I would spend like $5 a video, $10 a video.

I ended up over the course of about 400 videos over a year, I spent about 25 grand. And I would actually boost the videos on Facebook to put them in front of cold audiences. So I would say, you know, here's a video on a conversation I had. I remember one in particular that kind of caught on. It was like, hey, kids, here's how to make school not a waste of time. And it was because I had taken my daughter and a couple of the neighbor girls to school that morning. And I had had a conversation with them about, so what are you learning? And the feedback was all school sucks. School's a waste of time. I'm not learning anything. I want to play video games or like whatever. And so I was like, oh, I can take that conversation

as raw material to have a, put out a video about for kids, here's how to make school worthwhile and what you can ask your teacher to get the value out of the lessons. So then I would spend, let's say, and that one I knew was probably pretty good. So I would spend like $50 to put it in front of cold audiences. I would target, you know, women between 25 and 40 who probably had small kids. And I would target men who follow Gary Vaynerchuk or, you know, Facebook lets you be pretty interest based targeting savvy. feedback about what audiences resonated with me, what videos in particular would get traction with different people so that I could figure out like what angles and what messages are really resonating in the market. And that's why I produce so many videos because it gave me so many data points. But you got to imagine, you know, if you, let's say you're a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk,

but you don't know who Jeff Lerner is. And all of a sudden he's spending money to get his random ass videos into your feed. And every time you go on Facebook, there's this guy you've never seen before. He's running his mouth and he's not even selling anything because that's the thing for a year. I didn't sell anything. And so I think a lot of times people will forgive if you have, if they see you have commercial intent, they're like, oh, it's just an ad, but I wasn't selling anything. I was just in their feed and you know, I see their position, basically telling them how to live their life,

telling them how to do better at life. And they're like, who the fuck is this guy, man? Who is this dickhead? And they just, I mean, you know, there are a lot of kind people in the world, but there are a lot of not so kind. And they saw a target in me and they just got, and especially on day one when you publish a video and the video has like 14 views they're like oh this guy's weak i can

pick on him and and it was weird i got people coming back to my videos it was like it was actually bullying they would come back to me even over a string of months they would come leave like you know they and they were artful with their hate they'd be like you look like yo man i was playing uh grand theft auto last night and the game glitched out and it looked just like you fuck what the fuck you're like huh they're so innovative i'm like if you could put some of that creative energy into something productive you wouldn't have time to hate on me online and they're like they're they're like, um, one of them was like, bro, how, you know, something like, bro, um, how was the, how, how did the beehive make out? Cause it looks like they stung the shit out of your face.

Jesus. You know, cause I have like kind of these puffy eyelids and it was a video I took on a beach where I was squinting and they're like, bro, you need some, some, uh, Benadryl or like, I mean, just video after video. And so to your question, I ended up becoming very appreciative of it because it was like this window of a year where I was too small to have anybody having my back. Like once I had a big audience and people that actually listened to me, they would defend me and the bullies go away.

But initially it was just me and the bullies. And in that year, I, I learned I can survive anything. That was actually probably one of the hardest years of my life. Even though I had money, even though I had a great life, like I, every day I was just emotional mess. Isn't it weird? Like, why, why do we give that any power? Who cares? Like we don't even, we have no idea who's saying that, but you know we have no idea who's like making the comment but why do we care well and every time i would every time i would i would try to get to know who was making the content i mean these people were uniformly just trash like not happy people no you wouldn't look at be like man that guy's so happy successful and well adjusted why is he being mean to me no it was never that yeah but um it what

ended up powering me through partly i had a big enough vision of what I wanted to do. Like, I believe we could fundamentally change the education system to change individual consciousness at a basic level that, you know, even a lot of the problems we're seeing in the world today would be different if everybody thought entrepreneurial. If everybody was about empowerment, individual responsibility, self-determination, resourcefulness, creativity, like if if that was what school produced, we wouldn't have these problems. I think if you were to say, hey, with the voting in the United States, let's Elon Musk it. A lot of people would get it and they'd say, OK, yeah, let's fucking figure it out. And you have you get all the best scientists or whoever around and they that's the entrepreneurial approach and works. And there might mess up a little bit and fail quickly, but get to the right answers quick. Which is the opposite of the government's approach to any problem, which is pander to

the lowest common denominator, make sure all the victims don't get disgruntled and spend a lot of money and maintain a lot of unnecessary jobs in the process. Yeah. So that's why I was so passionate about the vision. But also it was the people that were starting to buy into my message and go, hey, so that's why I was so passionate about the vision, but also it was the people that were starting to buy into my message and go, Hey, this guy's got something that I see a strength in and that I'm starting to like the way it feels. I couldn't quit on that.

And I ended up kind of taking all the arrows for them. And that was what ultimately taught me. I mean, in this last year, 2020, our business has grown just shy of 3000%. We started selling courses in June, 2019. We were still testing and figuring it out. And I mean, I don't, you know, whatever you guys, sometimes I still hesitate around oversharing about numbers and stuff, but like, that's great. I mean, we were, we were a low six figure business in January of last year.

And we were like well over $3 million a month in sales by December. Was that from meeting me? It was 100%. I thought, yeah, that phone call felt magical. And I expect to be at five this month. How's that feeling, by the way? It actually feels, that's what it is. I'm like starting to vibe.

I feel like you just got a nice warm hug. In fact, yeah, I'm going to take this off, man. I'm starting gonna take this off perspiration he's taking off his pants everybody was that the one that has ecstasy in it yeah I'm not being histrionic I feel, I feel some goodness. Yeah. Yeah, it feels good. Is it something where, like, your receptors get saturated and it's never as good as that first time? We don't know.

We're not sure. Actually, no. Like, no, no. It feels good every time. It does? Yeah. Okay. Wyatt, can you make a note?

Crack them. Crack them. Is that what it's called? Crack them? Crack them? Crack them. Crack them. Some people say crack them, I think that's what's called crack them some people say crack them i think if i go out we gotta rename it asking on the street if anybody's got some crack give me something different but but my point is um i attribute the growth in 2020 to the goodwill that i built in 2019 of giving without asking.

And, and, and the fact that what, what at a deep level, what got me through was true. I mean, this is not just like lip service. It was truly a spirit of service.

It was like, I have to keep going because there are some people that are getting value out of this and I cannot let the assholes win. And I think when that's, that becomes your your your basic reason for doing things like the universe is actually like pretty generous, you know, and that's why I think we're doing so well now. You mentioned your parents several times and kind of sounds like they allowed you like a nice amount of freedom to be able to pick and choose maybe what you thought was best for yourself and from your parents. What something that they kind of made you do because they thought it was in your best interest today?

Did they push you towards anything? And do you do any of that with your children for a specific reason? Yeah, they so my parents, they did. I mean, yes, they were always a pretty good blend of nurturing and challenging. And in high school in particular, I think what they recognized was my biggest challenge was like I was this ball of like untapped potential. And what limited me was just like. Just crippling insecurity, like a lot of young people have But, and I will share that part of that came from, so I grew up,

I guess I'm still growing with a genetic condition called Wardenburg syndrome. And by the way, I was like 39 before I ever literally talked about this with anyone other than like my parents and my wife. Okay. So, and like,

it's, it's the evolution. Like it feels so good to get comfortable with your baggage and over time eventually where you can set it down. But this was a really big one. I have something called Wardenburg syndrome, which is a genetic disorder. It's a mutation and it runs in families. And the real the real downside of it is I could have been deaf, which would have been really sucky because I'm a musician. Cleft lip, cleft palate.

But but there's also just some physical affectation. So a lot of the stuff that I was getting teased about online, which is like, you're, you know, people would say, oh, you know, you're doing really well for a down syndrome kid because my eyes are kind of far apart, which, you know, resembles that, um, certain angles. Like I almost look a little bit like maybe there's something going on, like what, you know, it is what it is. But growing up, it was really hard because, you know, when you're when you're a kid, you're such a hyper vigilant observer, but you don't have the context to interpret what things mean. So you're just like overrun with data and you're attaching your own meaning to stuff. So I probably got picked on like one time when I was five years old and I turned it into, you know, some huge thing. And then I probably reinforced it a few other times because in the back of my mind, I knew

I'm different. I have a disorder. And so what was the original question? When I start talking about that, I get all this like emotional stuff flicking in my brain. It's about your parents. They force you to do anything. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And thank you. So I think they realized that I had been kind of hand, not not handicapped, but like self handicapped, self limiting. Because of that, I was always really scared and holding myself back.

So when I was 15, I guess 15 or 16, they took they put me in this thing called wilderness ventures where you go for, you know, six weeks and you backpack all around the Northwest. And we climbed Mount Rainier and it was like really awesome. I mean, it was pretty expensive. I mean, I'm guessing they spent like 10 or 20 grand. Was it like with other boys or something or just? It was a co-ed group.

Co-ed group. Yeah. Which creates its own other set of challenges to be like camping for six weeks with girls. And I mean, that was a part of my life where I was a total disaster and, you know, forced me. But long story short, it was the first time in my life when I was able to reinvent myself, sort of get a clean slate of deciding who I wanted to be in the world. And it was awesome. It was awesome, man. Did you maybe not want to go to this?

I was totally terrified and resistant. But suddenly you're like all these people out in the woods. And, you know, when kids are operating within a structure, like bell rings, go to locker, go to class, bell rings, go to practice, sports, move, like go, everything's scheduled. There's sort of a devaluation of difference and an increased valuation on sameness. I'll get this is kind of ethereal, but I'll get there. So everybody's kind of going through a similar set of motions. It's almost like military. Think about how kids are structured.

I mean, that's a whole other conversation about the development of the Western education system. It's part of why I do what I do. But fundamentally, it's very militaristic. It's almost prison-like. Like everybody moves at the bell. There's only a few places in the world where people, bells ring and people go. Prisons, military factories and schools. And so suddenly you have these kids, they're just out in the woods and it's like,

oh, we got to climb a mountain, but so-and-so has a blister. So let's improvise a solution or who's, and there's all this time and there's all this freedom. Now difference, it de-emphasizes sameness and it increases the value of differences because differences keep it from being boring. So you've got all this time and you're just walking for like 10 hours a day right so suddenly the fact that i had like interesting things to say and i had like a little offbeat different personality and i and i i brought my guitar and i could play the guitar these things all of a sudden had had currency when in school they had just made me a weirdo. And I spent that summer being cool for the first time in my life, not in a stupid way, but like people actually liked me and made me feel good about myself.

And I came back home addicted to that feeling. And I never accepted going back from that moment on. I was in love with my differences where prior to that summer, I had thought my differences were wrong or, or, or like word made me defective. That makes sense. Yeah. I think that's what it being a parent is all about right there.

I think you summed it up really well by them having more, like they knew that was going to happen. Yeah. Imagine the conversations they have, like, like he really doesn't want to go, you know, and they're talking about it back and forth. And one of them said, Hey, look, he's, he's really got to go. Cause it's going to be important for it. conversations they have, like, like he really doesn't want to go, you know, and they're talking about it back and forth.

And one of them said, hey, look, he's really got to go because it's going to be important for it. But they knew they somehow knew that that was going to be like an answer for you, which is cool because they do recognize like he's not as confident as we'd like to see because he's a great kid and they know your attributes. And then you get to actually show that. And I think that's that's an amazing thing. That's hard to do. It's hard to really, it's really hard to do that as a parent. It's hard to kind of make them do something when they're like, I don't want to do it. You know, your first reaction is like, well,

I guess you don't have to do it, you know? Yeah. But you got to sometimes draw that line. I'll say like about a month, maybe six weeks ago. So we have a big group of teenagers that always hang out at our house. It's like, so I have two teenage boys, Jason Braxton, Jason Braxton is his name. And all their friends, they just always like being in our house because it's like the fun house, the chill house. My wife and I, I guess we're laid back or whatever.

So they always hang out there. And a group of the friends ended up asking me instead of their own dads, which I was like super honored. They asked me if I'd want to coach their recreational league basketball team, which is part of this junior jazz program in Utah, like the jazz junior jazz. Right. And I honestly, I like, I don't have time. I was not an ideal candidate, but I was so flattered.

I couldn't say no. So, but I have sent, I really, and I wasn't going to force, but I was going to, I was going was gonna run a like a firm press and i i got one of my sons jace to do it too and my sons are not team sports guys and it was exactly the same thing you're talking about he like he really didn't want to do it and we just had our first game this week and we got our asses just demolished um i mean it was like 50 to like 12 oh i mean but like we had so much fun and i got to see him for the first time you know i put i'm the coach so i i put him in and he got the ball and everybody went nuts because they knew it was the first time and he was super nervous and finally he started playing and he got so into it was so awesome he played so hard that like literally after five minutes he

sprinted off the court and found a garbage can and started puking in the corner of the gym like like just like you know right around so excited but he like now and he kind of still pretends like he doesn't like it that much. But you can see the just he can't hide it. He lightens up now when we talk about it. It's the same thing, man. Push them to be uncomfortable in a way that has enough structural support that they can't get hurt. Do you have any advice for people to simply just identify some of these insecurities?

Because they might be holding back, but they actually don't even understand why. And that's a great question. Um, I mean, I think that the key to particularly with teens and, and, you know, this is something I have invested a lot of time and energy into is becoming a

good parent. Be, and without overdoing the backstory, when I met my wife, she already had three kids, but no dad. They had no dad. And so when I met her, the kids were eight, seven, and one. And I ended up moving across the country, move in with her, and went from bachelor to basically married or co-parenting with three kids in like a day. basically married or co-parenting with three kids in like a day.

In fact, the reason I was like, I have to do this. I can't ever not keep going in this direction is because the one-year-old called me dad. And I was like, A, that was weird. B, that was awesome. I want more of this. So one of the first things we did, I mentioned all the therapy and, you know, family therapy and stuff I was doing in 2016. That had started in like 2012 when we said, okay, we're going to build a blended family life together. I've never had kids before.

These kids haven't had a dad, whole other story there. So let's do it right. Let's go get some professional help. So I was doing a lot of therapy. And so we've invested a ton. I mean, And so we've invested a ton. I mean, I've probably done 5,000 hours in the last 10 years of either therapy or group class, group therapy or like classwork. Like I've been doing. I took an inner sentence class. I took a parenting class every week for three years straight. And then home study.

I read John Gottman on how to have a better marriage. I read, you know, all the Jane Nelson books on positive parenting and positive discipline. Like it's kind of my passion is to study parenting and effective relationships and communication. It's not interesting because you're studying like all the things that you're doing and not many of us do that. Yeah.

I mean, it stands for reasons. Whatever you're spending the most time doing that has the most impact in your life. Like maybe study that. Yeah. I mean, it stands for reasons. Yeah. Whatever you're spending the most time doing that has the most impact in your life, like maybe study that. Yeah. Being like a book on being a dad. Like I would never even think to read one as ridiculous as that sounds. Yeah. I mean, and there's so much information and here's what I'll tell you from having spent thousands of hours working on that part of my life. It's all so counterintuitive. Like I'll give you an example. And this is to the, to the, to wrap up my answer to the previous question is the way to, that was your question.

Yeah. The way to really get clear on the struggles that your parent, your children are having is to build good enough relationships with them during neutral times, not when they're having a problem. So when they're having a problem, they're scared, they're emotionally flooded, they're shut down. You can't go, come here and son, you got to tell me what's going on. What's the deal?

What's the deal? You have to have built that bridge when everything was cool and build enough of a relationship that you are the friend they'll come to. And I don't really know another way to do it. There's no shortcut for that. But so, yeah, that's the answer to that question. What were we talking about? It doesn't matter. You know, I don't even know what I want to I want to I want to ask about this because there's something else, but I don't want to lose it.

So I'm write it down. But education, what do you see as far as like, you know, kids getting kids going to school right now? Where are the big glaring issues you see with the education system? Because, like, you know, when I look about when I look back at school, I get jealous of like, we had this guy named Matt Boudreaux and he he's, you know, he does this act in academy thing where these kids literally have agency on all the things that they want to do. Like if you're interested in doing something, you want to start creating YouTube videos, you're interested in knitting, they, you go into that and they, they, they help you develop the things you're truly interested in. Um, and I didn't get much of that in school, obviously, when I was a kid.

But how what glaring issues do you see personally in the education system having four children? And then with what you're doing now, how is that potentially making a difference in that realm since what you do is education? Yeah. You know, schools have a really like I have a lot of sympathy for what schools have to try to contend with. I mean, they say, okay, here's, you know,

between the ages of five and 18, here's, I don't know, 40 million kids or however, just in the U S. All right. And basically the schools go, and here's about a third of the budget you probably should actually have.

And here's 40 million kids figured out. And like, you know, that's, that's kind of destined to fail. And it's not a surprise we have so many challenges. But, you know, in terms of what we can control, because, I mean, it's a whole different conversation. How do we re-architect, you know, federal and state level policy

around schools and how they work and how they're funded and who they hire and da-da-da. But in terms of what I think we can kind of contend with at a local level, you know, look at who teachers and school administrators are and they do amazing work, but it's, it's one thing to have a great heart for your work. It's a different thing to be totally qualified for your work. And you know, I might upset some people in saying that,

but like when I say qualified to rear kids to properly deal in the world that we live in, what I mean is we live in a world, there's a world emerging where the idea of getting a $50,000 a year job with summers off and a guaranteed pension is that that's, that's a dead man walking archetype for employment. Like it literally just that's not the world that we're preparing kids for in 20 or 30 years from now. So I think we're kind of bringing in, you know, bringing in teachers to teach students how to live and how to go contend in the market. But like teachers don't actually do that.

School administrators don't actually do that. You know, if, if I taught a class, if you guys taught a class, it would be a completely different experience than if, you know, probably most teachers teach a class. Like we would, we would talk about different because we,

we know what matters in the world. Like, you know, reading the Thucydides history of the Peloponnesian war, nice thing to do on your off time. It's not preparing you for anything. Yeah. Right.

I mean, I have even half jokingly made comments like, like, I don't think you should be allowed to go into politics if you haven't successfully run a business. I would also probably suggest you're probably not really qualified to teach kids how to develop adaptive and nimble thinking that's ultimately going to prepare them for where the world is headed, where things move so much faster than they are now or certainly than they were at the time that most of our educators were educated. I don't think you even know how to do that. You don't speak the language if you've never run a business just imagine if uh say like a 10 year old kid taught a class for that have you know five-year-old kids in it it'd probably be so much more entertaining probably be so like the kids would probably absorb a lot because the 10 year old is still you know creative and still thinking about fun stuff school can sometimes be so uh dry and boring the school that my son's going to right now is a acting Academy. Like he's talking about, we had our friend Matt on the show and he explained to just have like

totally different education system. And then what they're trying to do is they're trying to bring up kids as kind of entrepreneurs, allow them to think for themselves. Hey, okay. You like music. Let's have you not just like play and be like a burnout and,

you know, play hacky sack before school every day. Let's have you actually see if you could go, you know, assemble a band and get a couple of kids together and go. And they'll they kind of push kids out in the world and have some of them even making money. There's a couple of artists. There's a couple of people and, you know, starting different businesses. And then the other kids will help the kids that do have the businesses. It's it's pretty it's pretty amazing. And Matt said his ideal day.

And this is probably something that you would really like his ideal day there is that none of the staff shows up and the day just went great because the staff is only there to, like, encourage. They're not they don't really do much else. I kind of saw them have a meeting one day. It was Jake's first day checking the place out. kind of saw them have a meeting one day. It was Jake's first day checking the place out. And this teacher was explaining like, Hey,

what, what they want this group to do next. And she was like, Hey, like you want to, you know, put it to a voter. And the other kid was like, if you don't mind,

he's like, I got it. And so then he just kind of took, they're allowed to kind of do that. And he just kind of took charge and said, Hey, here's what I think we should do. And another kid was like, Hey, let's not even bother to vote on it.

Let's just make it like if there's enough people interested in this one group, then that'll just be a thing. And those will be groups. That's how we'll do it. And everyone was like, you agree on that? And I was like, yep. And how old was he when he started this school? He was Jake just started this year. We had Matt on the show this year, and I was inspired to look into it further.

I've been talking to my son for many years about education. He hates school. He's a super bright kid. How old is he? He's 16. Okay. Yeah. He's 16, and he's a super bright kid, and there's all these different things that he loves to do, but he just hates school.

And so he and I have been talking about it for a long time i'm like hey you know we kind of just need to like fly under the radar like get through school so your mom doesn't you know put her foot up your ass and my ass you know that's kind of like one of my boys oh my gosh yeah that's kind of that's kind of the main thing with him but i see that he's a good kid i see he has a good heart he's kind you know what i mean like there's all these things that matter a lot more to me. Like I don't care if he passes history class. Right. I don't give a shit.

You know? How, how, how, I wonder how much, and I'm curious if they talk about this, like how much unlearning do you have to do to be ready to learn that way? Because 16 is kind of late to make that shift, right? Yeah. He actually said at the school, like, uh, because they're like working on projects, there's a little bit of downtime and he's like, sometimes there's nothing to do.

And so he's not used to it being slowed down. He's used to what you mentioned earlier, kind of being rushed off from one class to the next, but he doesn't have like specific classes. And if he finds interest in something specific, like, uh, mathematics or something like that,

they have him sit there and just take online courses. That's cool. But there are ones that he picks so he can choose the math. You know what I mean? Like how much more are you going to get out of that when it's stuff that you choose? Yeah. I mean, it's such a big challenge. I, you know, I had a decision at certain point to make, how do I want to tackle what I view as, you know, education is the one way that you can actually impact the world aiming towards youth. And even though I'm dealing with adult education right now, like we actually just launched something, our company's Entra Institute, and we just started something called the Entra Family Club, which is a volunteer

subgroup in our company of people that were basically developing curriculum that parents would enroll their, you know, buy for their kids at like super discounted, you know, prices. Right. And I just long term, I feel like education is the only way you're going to get deep enough in society to essentially to grow a new society where it doesn't always just feel like it's like remedial, too little, too late. And back to what you're saying earlier about these barriers, if you have a skill set, then the barrier is like diminished or the barrier almost doesn't even

exist. An example would be, you know, if somebody wanted to try to jump you on the street, if three people wanted to beat the crap out of you, well, you'd be terrified and you'd probably just try to run away. But if you've been practicing martial arts for the last 15 years, you have a skill set and you're like, hey, this is going to be funny. I hope somebody records it because I'm going to kick the shit out of all three of these people. So having a skill set really kind of helps you with those barriers.

I'm curious. How did you do in school, Mark? I hated it. Yeah. I sucked in school. Yeah. And clearly you're just a degenerate loser now. It went nowhere.

That's the way it works. Yeah. Yeah. I dropped out. So, yeah. In fact. What grade? I dropped out my junior year.

But what's funny is when I dropped out, the truancy officer called my house and told my parents, you know, so far this semester, there've been 35 days of school or whatever. And your son has been absent like 26 or something. I mean, it was, it was bad ratio. And my parents were like, okay, well, we'll talk to him. And I mean, first of all, this, this is the school sort of insane mindset. They're like, so he better watch out. If he shows up back to school, we're going to cite him. That's how they're getting me to come back to school is by threatening upon to dock me on site or whatever.

So my mom was an attorney. So she's like, okay, so how do you want to handle it? And it long story short, she actually helped. I didn't drop out. She actually unenrolled me.

But the point is I wasn't like going to do drugs. I was actually driving to the school and I was going to the library and I was reading because I'm like, it is so stupid to be here. A, learning things that I don't think benefit me and B, learning very ineffectively. So I'm just going to go learn on my own in the library. And I was actually at school every day. I was just in the library reading. It's like Steve jobs did that,

right? Like dropped out of college and took classes. He just, he snuck into like other classes after he dropped out. And I think that speaks to the number one problem that school has. They make learning unfun. Like, why was I going to the library to learn on my spare time instead of going to school to learn less effectively?

Because it was actually way more fun to do it myself. I'm not pretending I was some highly evolved teenager who's just like, you know, let me do what's good for the world. No, I just want to have a good time. But learning actually can be fun if it hasn't like had all the joy crushed out of it. And that's sadly what I think school kind of does for a lot of kids. It really does. Yeah. How are you educating your kids on like finance and money and stuff? So, you know, I'm also a big believer in like, not everybody ultimately should be an entrepreneur. believer in like, not everybody ultimately should be an entrepreneur. You know, some people just, I think a lot of times, I mean, I don't know, probably the biggest factor is like anxiety in a way. Like if you're an anxious person, the intrinsic risk of entrepreneurialism is probably

going to exacerbate it unless you've developed some really, really sophisticated coping mechanisms. And kids who have anxiety or sort of like deal with certain sets of emotions like they don't they haven't developed the coping skills. So to try to engineer to say you need to become an entrepreneur, I feel like you're introducing, you know, it's like a second wrong to try to write the first wrong. And I don't think it's the right move. So like I've I've taken the tack with my kids of really trying to assess them personality-wise and even neurologically. And one of my sons deals more with anxiety. So I do not recommend – I'm not trying to shape him into me. But my other son, the only thing that gives him anxiety is school.

So I'm like, all right, let's let's do this. So and that that affects so much to your question about money, how you teach them about money. I think there's two very different approaches to money. One is the entrepreneurial approach to money, which is to focus way more of your time on in generating income than managing expenses. time on generating income than managing expenses. And then there's the employee way of approaching money, which is a lot being a lot more, you know, strategic in kind of dealing how you structurally manage what you get, because you're probably not going to like double it in the next year. Yeah. So it's kind of a nuanced answer. I was curious. I don't know if you remember earlier in the podcast, you mentioned that you you had this vision that was bigger than what it's like. You mentioned like having a little bit of imposter syndrome because the vision was so big.

I was just curious what that vision was, because you alluded to it a few times. I'm just I was wondering, what is it? Yeah, it's like I want to I want to fundamentally disrupt the educational system in the world. But I'm willing to start with America. You know, I visualize it as like, I mean, you have 16 year old boy. So in a couple of years, he might come to you and say, you know, Dad, I'm thinking about my future and I want to study. You know, I want to study mechanical engineering. I think I'm going to go to UC Berkeley or whatever.

Most parents would be like, right on. That sounds like a great plan. But that same kid goes to his parents and says, you know, I think I want to study blogging. And I want to go to Entre Institute. They're not going to have the same, you know, level of stokedness for their kid. I want to change that. I want to, I want to take entrepreneurial education out of the morass of online guru courses, you know, and, and elevate it to the level of structure and standardization

and credibility and excellence of like, not just university level, but like Ivy league education. Yeah. Because the reality is, you know, if you map the course of most people's lives and say, okay, well, how do you want to finish? Do you want to finish hanging on or do you want to finish well and thriving for most people? If you want to finish thriving, you need to build a business. most people, if you want to finish thriving, you need to build a business. If you want, if you want to actually be able to retire before you're 75 and your health condition forces you to retire and with enough money that you can help your grandkids. And, you know, let's say, you know, your, your grandson gets addicted to opioids and it's going to be $120,000 to send them to a nine month inpatient rehabilitation program. Insurance ain't going to pay for that. Don't you want to be the grandparent that can

literally save your grandson or granddaughter's life? You can't. You're not that person. If you worked a job for 40 years and retired with a pension or a 401k. Only entrepreneurs generally, I shouldn't say only, generally entrepreneurs are the ones that finish with a badass state of life. And so given that that's what most people, most young people want, it's ridiculous to say, oh, that's the bad option. You need to play it safe. How is it playing it safe to put yourself on a road that virtually guarantees you you won't get where you want? Right. on a road that virtually guarantees you you won't get where you want right and so i'm trying to elevate entrepreneurial education to the place where people really see it for what it is which is especially in a world where the dollar you know speaking in terms of america the dollar

is going to be pretty badly devalued over time relative to other currencies and cryptocurrencies to other currencies and cryptocurrencies. So inflation is a major problem for us. You know, job security is like laughable at this point. The average, I forget the statistic, by the time somebody's 35 years old, they've changed jobs like 14 times now. We have, you know, clearly our, you know,

Medicare and social security and all that is completely insolvent. By the time my kids are, you know, 50 or 60 years old, like we have a system that's basically screwed, but like nobody really wants to talk about it. And the people that are going to have the best outcomes, I believe are entrepreneurs. So I don't think what I'm doing is some like, you know, self-deluded radical shift. I actually just think it's generally like promoting an awakening and an awareness that like, oh yeah, that, that should have always been normal all along but particularly in the last 10 20 years because it's all these like guru like douchey lamborghini bros on the internet talking

about starting a business they've really discredited what should be emerging as the best option for young people right now and that's what I'm trying to change. Okay. That's dope. So what is, you said it's ENTRE Institute? Yeah. ENTRE, E-N-T-R-E, like entrepreneur. So what is that? It's, you know, I believe the most credible, highest standards and like, you know, I'll own it. I mean, like any entrepreneurial venture, we're little over two years old, like we're still evolving, we're still emerging, but we've really crystallized around this vision of taking entrepreneurial education to the place where it legitimately competes with Harvard as an option for great people that want to have great lives, only it's never going to be as expensive as Harvard. Because we're not worried about

protecting the exclusive self-image of our alumni who are like no you can't use the internet to syndicate harvard's courses to millions of people around the world because that'll devalue my harvard degree right so like we don't have those conflicts um and we're trying to elevate entrepreneurial education to that level and really focusing on a things that make money like we don't offer majors in modern dance, there should be extracurricular programs for that that are not masquerading as like school and career life planning. We focus on stuff that can actually give people quality of life, which means resources. And we focus on what I call new economy business models. So, you know, that would be affiliate

marketing. That would be starting a digital agency, running people's Facebook ads. That could be blogging. That could be video marketing. That could be the knowledge business where you take what you know. It could be physical products where, you know, for example, like Mark, you have an innovation, you have an idea, you have a thing, you create a thing, but you do it in a modern way. Even real estate, like there's, there's very modern progressive ways to do real estate. And then there's very like clumsy and slow ways to do real estate.

So we're open to anything. If it leverages technology, it leverages the evolved consumer behavior. That's so much, such a big thing is understanding the new consumer. You know, think about it. I opened a business and I gave stuff away for a year and I didn't sell anything. The old school would tell me that was dumb. The new school that understands consumer behavior and how people, how you're really, you don't have to win their money. You have to win their attention and you have to win their affinity would get that what I was doing

was smart. So we're just kind of put everything in the new paradigm heart. I mean, to really illustrate what I'm saying, Harvard tried to produce a course on how to run on Facebook advertising. They spent two years kicking it around in committee. And by the time they finally got it out, the Facebook platform had gone through like three more iterations and the whole course was obsolete and didn't even work. Wow. That's how traditional education approaches the new economy. So like there is a need for this.

So other than like you mentioned some awesome courses there, especially right now, I think that that type of first off, that type of school is going to be super useful for everybody, because I know a lot of people who've literally lost their job or they're working from home with less pay. Right. And people are trying to figure out how to start businesses from their computer. from their computer. What like what would be like maybe the top four business types of online businesses that people could get into right now? I mean, you mentioned affiliate marketing, but do you do things like drop shipping? Do you think that stuff is still beneficial or what are things that you think people should try to pay attention to? Yeah. So I have a mixed feeling about dropshipping. Dropshipping is great if you've done the initial work to build a brand and develop some kind of unique value proposition in the market where it doesn't necessarily have to be through like a patent, but just, you know, brand equity or a unique angle or a unique message. But the idea of just going on like AliExpress and white labeling or probably

labeling products from China, you know, to try to put your unique spin on it. I think that idea is pretty much done because in the mind of the consumer, you're competing with Amazon and your quality of support, your quality of fulfillment is going to be a disaster. Basically, bottom line, if you're bringing products in from China. So and even if you're just trying to create products that don't have unique value. So with drop shipping, I would actually say take more of like the affiliate marketer angle or the some of the fundamentals of affiliate marketing, which are kind of have the same issue, which is if you're an affiliate of a product, your product by definition isn't unique from someone else's product. So you have to focus on building a brand. You have to focus on adding value to that product, whether it's through content or

through your own products or whatever. And so once you've built a brand online, you've built a lot of value, you've built affinity with the audience, you've delivered, you've got a nice look, you've got all the aesthetic, like once everything's in place, kind of like I did, where I took a year to build the brand before I ever sold a product. It almost doesn't matter at that point. If you want to do drop shipping, as long as you can get the product here and fulfill it out of the United States. So everybody's not waiting a week because then you'll be screwed. Or you want to create your own products or you want to just be an affiliate of other products. It's investing in the marketing.

That's the ability to execute marketing through the context of technology is i call being a marketing technologist is the 21st century superpower and you know historically if you look at the c-suite of major organizations the cmo is the lowest paid guy in the c-suite like marketing's always been kind of like the redheaded stepchild no i don't know where that even came from no offense to redheaded stepchild. No, I don't know where that even came from. No offense to redheaded stepchild. But was that little orphan Annie? Might be. Probably could.

I don't know. Anyway, but so that's always kind of been the lowest revered in the in the of the marketing or of the business departments. market with direct with an understanding of direct response psychology and the modern consumer behavior and to deliver it through the the various technical platforms social media and search engines and the like and you're you're a freaking god in this world if you can do that like you go get any job with any company if they understand the value of that you can be the highest pay and you could walk in and say i don't even want a salary, pay me on performance and make a million dollars a year. Like it's, it's such a superpower now. And so to some degree, it almost doesn't matter what the business model is, but you know, I guess to answer your question directly, I would say affiliate marketing. And there's kind of two

types of affiliate marketing. There's, there's driving affiliate or driving paid traffic to affiliate offers. So you make money quickly. And then there's building what I call digital real estate assets over time, which would be like a YouTube channel and a blog. So that even though it's a slower burn, you can make money for life. So that's kind of like two variations on the theme of affiliate marketing. Digital agency services to businesses, basically being able to run Facebook ads, Instagram ads, help them with content, even consulting. Huge business. I mean, I spent six years with an agency and, you know, we made the Inc.

5000 twice and did about $30 million in sales. And it's just like me and some guys I got together in a room. Huge upside to that business model. Great margins because you're not dealing with physical products. You're selling information and you're selling ones and zeros. And then anything in the knowledge business. I love the knowledge business where you know how to do a thing. And the fact that you know how to do a thing and you're a unique human being with your own color and your own character and your own personality, and you smash those two together and you basically create a market of people that are somewhat like

you, or at least resonate with you that want to learn how to do that thing. I think that people generally just don't realize how huge that opportunity is on the, like, like what I'm doing is the knowledge business. It just so happens I'm uniquely doing the knowledge business and also teaching the knowledge business, but it wouldn't matter. I could be doing it in the health niche. I could be doing it in the relationships niche. I could be a dating coach. I could be teaching people how to go into the, the woods and cut down a U tree and make their own bow, shoot an arrow. Like it doesn't matter if you know how to do a thing, you can sell it. It's awesome. Is a lot of what you do a video based or is it a through text or like how do people learn? Are they courses? Yeah, they're,

they're courses. And I like video because it's just the most effective medium. I know there are some people who, um, shy away from video, which is, I wouldn't say it's a mistake, but it's a, it's a limitation. You're going to have to probably work. You're going to have to write more words to overcome the fact that you just don't want to be on camera. Um, but yeah, most of our stuff is delivered through, through video and a lot of, and this is what I would encourage people that are scared of being on video is you don't want to be on camera. But yeah, most of our stuff is delivered through video. And a lot of, and this is what I would encourage people that are scared of being on video is you don't actually have to be on the video. Make slides, like video-based slideshows with just your voiceover actually in some ways probably teach even better than you being a talking head.

Yeah. We had a question from the live chat from Eric and basically he's just asking, how does somebody get their feet wet in affiliate marketing affiliate marketing today uh self-serving answer but i'm not asking for money go to my youtube channel i have about 500 free videos on my youtube channel and probably 50 of them deal with various aspects of affiliate marketing and that's you know and i say this not to flex but to say like be careful who you learn from because there's a lot of like pop-up gurus online like i'm you know, and I say this not to flex, but to say, like, be careful who you learn from, because there's a lot of like pop up gurus online. Like, you know, in five years, I made about 10 million bucks with affiliate marketing. So I know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that answered my next question, which was, you know, well, in regards to affiliate marketing, everyone has a promo code.

So one, how do you stand above that? But also you kind of already answered it. I wanted to ask, like, there are, you know, the Ferrari bros out there that, you know, have claimed that they've made X amount of money or like I remember the memes. I think was name. Should I forgot that that other guy when he's talking about books like what? Lopez. Lopez. Knowledge. Knowledge.

I don't remember what that guy was selling, but it just, it always, you know, I had skeptical hippo eyes towards that guy, but how can somebody, you know, I guess, who do we, like, how do we trust somebody? And I, I guess you just answered that, but you know, if we can dive deeper into that. It's easy for me to be like, well, just trust me. But, um, I will say this, Tai Lopez is a super smart guy. I'm actually literally right now on the fence about investing in his retail e-commerce ventures. He just bought Pier One Imports and Linens and Things and Dress Barn and Franklin Mint, all these companies out of bankruptcy, and he's reinventing them online.

I'm like, I'm on his calls, the investor calls. I'm thinking about going in on some of this stuff with him. He's a very smart guy. But the reason, I mean, think about it. Of all the videos that just popped into your mind from this whole history of this industry, which one popped into your mind? It was his. He's a smart ass marketer.

Yeah. And, you know, what's more viral than turning yourself into a meme? That's yeah. And that's why I've remembered that video has 70 million views on YouTube. But anyway, so, yeah, as far as who to trust, I mean, I would say don't until don't trust anyone until they give you like super compelling, incontrovertible evidence that, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt that you should trust them. And that's what I've worked so hard on for my brand. You know, you go on my LinkedIn page, I have like 1100 endorsements of people saying, oh yeah, Jeff's an expert at this.

Jeff's an expert at that. But that didn't just happen. I would reach out to people year after year when I added any value to their life and say, hey, would you mind leaving me an endorsement here on Facebook? I have, you know, I don't know, something like 150 five-star reviews. But again, you have to like actively solicit for that. And I kind of got aggressive about that when I was a digital agency and there were all these businesses who do great work for hundreds of customers and they have one bad experience with one customer and then you go online and they have one review and it's one star from the one guy they pissed off because they're not proactive about harvesting good feedback um so you know i guess that's the short answer is find people that you can't

i'm sure you you have tons of content on your youtube channel but if you can maybe point to a video in regards to like how to become a better affiliate marketing person, whatever they're called. Yeah. I mean, I can't remember, but if you just type in, if you go to my channel and you type in affiliate marketing, there's going to be three or four that stand out and you can watch them all in an hour. Cool. You have a lot of content on your channel. I was perusing that today. Yeah.

And that's, that's another thing to your question about who to trust. Like people that are consistent, consistent people that have been in it a long time and they've never, they don't, they don't disappear and come back. Like there's just, you know, cause you're going to buy something from someone. I mean, if you're learning from something, something from someone now, you got to understand if they're a good marketer, at some point they're going to probably want to sell you something. And as much as you're in their world, you're kind of building that relationship, you're probably going to end up becoming a customer of theirs. So know that they have staying power.

Do you teach people how to start? Because I know there's a lot of people that will obtain some of this information and sometimes they don't ever really act on it. I mean, I definitely teach people that they need to start. What is it? What did Zig Ziglar? I think he said, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Right. Yeah.

I mean, that is the bane of my existence. You know, we enrolled 60,000 students in one course or other in 2020. And I think 48% of them never logged in. Now, granted, I mean, if it was just our entry level course, they probably paid an average of about 80 bucks. But still, like if I spend $80 on a bottle of supplements, like I'm at least going to take one. And you know, so I don't know if you've solved that problem, please let me know. We'll change the world. How long does some of these courses take someone to kind of get through? You know, our entry level course.

So like our main entry level course right now is called the Entre Blueprint. It's seven, seven video lessons that each last, each of the lessons, probably about an hour. And then there's some kind of supporting material, but it's seven video lessons that each last, each lesson is probably about an hour. And then there's some kind of supporting material, but it's $39. So you get seven hours of training plus, you know, some exercises and some quizzes to gauge competence. So it's a really good value. But then like if you enroll, I mean, we have 12 month guided coaching programs too. So it's just all how serious you want to get. You know, for yourself, you mentioned that book by Ayn Rand that kind of shifted the way you think about certain things when you're younger.

Are there any other books you've read and older books or books in recent memory that have really helped shape your your mindset, your outlook towards business motivation? help shape your your mindset your outlook towards business yeah motivation yeah um i mean for more on just the raw personal growth side i would say um two books by scott peck the road less traveled and people of the lie which people of the lie is more just it's more just something i thought was awesome not so much like oh this is how i directly use it in business but it's just an awesome book but it'll challenge you to do some deep self-analysis because it's basically a a medical slash scientifically objective deep dive on the problem of human evil yeah and it basically says in order to to deal with evil we have to approach it as a doctor, not as a judge. Because if you're not objective about something, you can't objectively work through it.

So he's like, let's look at evil like we look at diabetes or something. It's a medical problem. It's a psychological and physiological problem. How do we solve the problem? But as he goes through it, I swear, and there's no one that could probably read that book without going, wait, am I evil? Like, oh, like it's such a deep self-analysis that comes from that book. But anyway, so also The Road Less Traveled from a marketing psychology perspective, a book, two books by Robert Cialdini, C-I-A-L-D-I-N-I, which would be Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion, which basically is like the Bible for marketers. And then also a book called persuasion, which he was really ironically ahead of his time, which is kind of the persuasion concept, which is like instead of persuasion, you sell them before you even make the offer.

You persuade them. But he was ahead of his time because when he what he talks about in pre-suasion is exactly what you do on the internet where you give so much value that people they buy into you before you ever even offer them your product um so those are great books i'm a big fan of the seven habits of highly effective people i mean who isn't but like that one's had a big impact on me. Um, I mean, I keep going, I mean, thinking grow rich, like, you know, the staples are staples for a reason. And, uh, honestly the Russell Brunson trilogy.com secrets, expert secrets and traffic secrets for people that want to get into kind of more nerd level digital marketing, which again,

marketing technologists are the superpowers of our generation. So it's worth getting into that. But Russell Brunson has a trio of books. You stay in great shape. And you mentioned earlier that you don't like having days off. How do you train and how do you eat? Like what's some of that look like for you? Well, first of all, Mark Bell just said I'm in great shape, so I just might need a minute to blush. Yeah, I think you look like you're in great shape, so I just might need a minute to blush. Yeah, I think you look like you're in great shape to me over here. No, I appreciate that.

Yeah, I just honestly get up really early in the morning. So it started 2016 when I made that commitment. That was in June. A month later, July, my daughter Stella was born. And so my wife and I, we got home from that trip and we're like, okay, we want to commit to working out. But you know, Stella, I mean, she's an infant. She'll put, we can have the older boys like just, Hey, we're going to the gym, be around in case Stella cries or something. But generally like she's going to be up and crying by like six, six 30 in the morning. So we got to be going to the gym and getting our workout totally done and come home and shower and prep for the day before Stella gets up.

So we started getting up around 3.30, 4 in the morning. And my wife has – Stella's 4 now. My wife has backed off that schedule, but I never did because two years after I had Stella, I had another baby that's called Entra Institute. And it gets up just as early as she does. And it actually, in fact, it never sleeps. So the only way I get it all done, I get up at 3.30. I have like a pretty silly regimented schedule. I get up at 3.30. I'm at the gym by 4.30. I work out for 60 to 70 minutes. Then I go to my office, which is five minutes from the gym. I play the piano for 45 to 60 minutes, depending on what time my daughter needs to leave for the bus, do the changes. And then I go home, take her to the bus, go back home, spend some time with Stella.

My calls and work starts at eight. And I mean, five days a week, unless I'm here doing something like this with you guys, that's my life. And I love it. And you sleep pretty early? Huh? You sleep pretty early? I go to bed around 10, 1030. and I love it. You sleep pretty early? I go to bed around 10, 1030. Wow. So the key is power nap in the early afternoon, 20 to 30 minutes. But I think about like, you know, the longer you've been awake or sorry, the less time you've been awake, the less time you need to recover. Right. So by sleeping five hours at night and then I'm awake for, you know, whatever, So by sleeping five hours at night and then I'm awake for, you know, whatever, eight hours, and then I take a 30 minute nap and then I'm awake for eight or nine more hours because I'm recovering from smaller intervals of being awake. It's like I'm able to recover in smaller intervals of sleep.

So even though I end up getting five and a half to six hours a night, I pretty much never feel tired as long as I get that little nap. Yeah. What are your tactics for, you know, focusing for long periods of time? Because like, again, you've mentioned all the things that you spent time learning. You were learning those for long periods. And a lot of people, especially nowadays with all like just tech and all this shit that's around you, they have problems focusing. Yeah. So is there anything special you do that is a little bit different to help you stay on task? Yeah.

you do that is a little bit different to help you stay on task? Yeah. I mean, just like I talked about siloing your thoughts to where only positive gets in, you silo your habits. I mean, tech, yeah. Like nobody is so smart or so, you know, emotionally stable that they're going to resist the rewiring of their brain through like dopamine, you know, misfires constantly from being on their phone. So just don't do it. Yeah. You know, you got to start at the beginning. You can't try to, it's a lot harder to clean up the mess after the fact. And so, um, you know, I really look at, I think social and fundamentally it's mostly social media, what you're talking about. I mean, yeah, it's like, oh, well, we get our we get our information in shorter snippets because we read blogs instead of newspaper articles or we read, you know, blogs instead of novels. But like that's all pretty minimal.

The real to me, I mean, my superficial analysis is the real enemy of concentration is social media. I have developed a really disciplined relationship with social media where I use it. I use it for my purposes. It does not use me. Mark Zuckerberg, he likes me because I spend a lot of money on his ads, but he doesn't like me because I refuse to interface with his content the way that he has spent millions of dollars engineering it to be interfaced with. Ditto YouTube. Like I, I look at these platforms that they're so powerful. Why am I not using them to advance my life? I focus on being a producer, not a consumer. And you know, I've been doing that probably since I started Zerly, probably

since 2012. I've just never allowed myself to consume social media in a way that I think is going to mess up the wiring of my brain. And, uh, and when I'm on there, I'm actually hunting for specific things so that I can analyze what they do. I go find other marketers, any ad that I see more than a few times I go, Oh, that ad must be working or they wouldn't keep running it. So let me swim upstream and reverse engineer their funnel and analyze it and understand what they're doing. That's like the only thing I do on social media. And I don't know. And maybe there's a better answer, but that's the only one I have.

What are you doing from a food perspective? What you eating? So actually, we don't talk about it on the air, but I'm super excited to talk to you about this. But I generally I mean, I would say the one. Rule that I never bend is just like, basically don't eat carbs. Sometimes I've tried full keto, like high fat, low protein. Sometimes I was reading about your carb night program, which is like high fat, high protein,

one night a week of carb indulgence. I've done paleo. I've done all, you know, I've done intermittent fasting. I've done ifo i've done uh all you know i've done intermittent fasting i've done if it fits your macros and whatever but basically i just i've realized carbs are the enemy how they affected you in that way like how what do you notice when you're eating a lot more uh puffiness water retention if i do it very long i'll actually start to get fatter um energy dips ebbs and flows of energy and um i end up having a higher like gross need for just more hours of sleep mental fogginess all the stuff they say fruit vegetables anything like that

i have a i have a a quote card on instagram that says what does it say it says um A quote card on Instagram, what does it say? It says, something like fruit is a scam that convinces you a little bit of vitamins is worth a lot of sugar or something. I got some flack about that one, of course. But no, vegetables. Yeah, I mean, I'll do vegetables. I love Brussels sprouts. I love broccoli.

I love asparagus. I love zucchini and squash. But no, I don't do fruit. Just eating a lot of meat. I love Brussels sprouts. I love broccoli. I love asparagus. I love zucchini and squash. Yeah. But no, I don't do fruit. Just eating a lot of meat. I love meat, man. I could eat. I could eat like a 16 ounce Pittsburgh style ribeye bone in from Mastro's seven nights a week. No problem.

Delicious. Right. And I've seen what you eat. So I know you're with me on that. Yeah. That sounds awesome. How's it that I was curious because you mentioned that when you started trying to get yourself in shape in 2016 your wife also hopped on board and she's she's been on board since it seems yeah But before that like yeah, it wasn't as important to you

Was it important to her and then also? Now that you guys have been doing that like did you really have to get her there to do it with you? Or was it just like both of you found a lot of importance in trying to change your habits as far as fitness? Yeah, no. I mean, since 2016, when we both had this sort of simultaneous epiphany, it's been we've just been totally united, like very equally yoked. I mean, sure, there's days when she's more in or I'm more in. But I mean, it's There's days when she's more in or I'm more in, but I mean, it's, it's a unified effort. Uh, prior to that, I started working out a lot in high school and I would fall away and, you know, I balloon up and I mean, I've probably had 50 pounds of

up and down swings a few times through my twenties and even early thirties. Um, so by no means was I like, you know, some sort of exemplar, but it was always on my radar. It was not on her radar when I met her. She's just a naturally skinny athletic person who just didn't have the time or see the need. But I think she got, you know, whatever, mid 30s. Her mom passes and she realized, OK, health isn't about vanity. It's about life quality. And that changed for her. Has a, how, how long ago did you start, uh, like lifting?

I mean, I got a trainer when I was in high school to lift, like all my friends were, I wasn't a very good athlete, but I was friends with the athletes. So I would go work out with them for, you know, football type workouts and stuff. I've always loved lifting. I just, I just like it. I don't know. I like it hurts in a good way. That's awesome. Um, I'm, I'm curious about this actually. Uh, have you ever thought of having any of your kids do martial arts? Yeah. My son did karate, uh, at one point, but no other than like I talk a lot about like with I have a real like reverence for the lore and the iconic people, whether it's the Gracie family in jujitsu, whether it's Dan Gable in wrestling, whether it's like like you asked about books. One of my favorite books is called The Fighter's Mind by Sam Sheridan okay where he he interviews and spends time with these just extreme nut job athlete david goggins isn't in the book but like people like that yeah

that's another great book can't hurt me um i just really really appreciate people that understand the developmental benefit of pushing themselves to extremes that most people can't even fathom and i love reading about it i love trying to do it in my own way. My body's not built for as much as some guys, but in my way, I'll do what I can. I just, and so I try to impart that, that beauty to my kids. Cause I think like, I look at my own life,

like all through my teens, I was the worst student of my parents, but I was still watching. And in my twenties is when it clicked like, oh wait, I had a real opportunity to observe them. Now it's time to implement some of what I learned. And so I try to be that for my kids and not be overly pushy about you need to implement this now.

But if I can get them to fall in love with endurance and grit and hard things, then I feel like it'll happen when they're ready for it. What's coming up in 2021 for you? Any particular goals or anything on the horizon that you're really pumped about? I mean, you know, I don't want to sound like too, too much of a greedy capitalist, but like I want to scale my business. I just, you get these windows in time, these opportunities where you've done a lot of hard work and things kind of come together and coalesce. And then you're like, okay, I got a strike now. And that's, this is that year for me. This is the year I think that we can go from like little engine that could and did to like really being on the map about like, these guys are really disrupting education.

Like we're, you know, like, like Ted talk will be calling kind of stuff. And I just think it's the year we did 60,000 students last year. Our target is a quarter million students this year. We're investing a ton. Like last year we invested a lot in figuring out our marketing and now we

know we can scale. Like we actually got our, our advertising guys holding back right now um we could probably be we we could already be probably at the pace of like 100 million dollar company 100 million dollar a year company right now if we took the governor off but i i'm actually focused on leveling up our courses to where like you know if a if a professor emeritus of economics from stanford happens to go through our courses i want them to be like holy crap this is this is stanford level education and right now we spent 2020 being getting better than all the online guru crap

but being better than crap isn't really good enough. So this is the year. I think we go all the way to like uni university level, um, and just mass. I've got a book coming out this year that I think is going to do a lot to thrust us more clearly into the mainstream. You know, I want to be on Barnes and Noble. I want to be doing shows like this twice a week. And yeah, I think this is our year. So, but that doesn't happen unless I double down. I think that's so sick in terms of like the courses that you're putting out. I haven't seen them yet, but they're not like, like you mentioned, Harvard puts out a course, but it's already three years behind, right?

Like the stuff you're doing, it seems like it's going to be things that are always going to be remaining current because you're focused on the internet. Like, and that's the things are changing as far as like Facebook ads and the way things are done like all the time, but you're staying on top of that. And I think that's one massive advantage of your courses because it's headed by someone like you. That's always on top of what's new. Yeah.

And so much of it, we're, we're stress testing and making sure we're still at the bleeding edge because it's actually what we're doing to grow our own business. So like, I'll teach you how to grow a YouTube channel, which is super valuable real estate for any business, because I've spent the last two years growing a real estate, a real estate YouTube channel from zero. I mean, I was, I was a nobody. Like I had been successful. I had made money online, but I had no brand, no true business. I had, I had had a digital agency, which is fundamentally a service-based commodity. Let me know who Jeff Lerner was. And I sold it. So like I was in a way uniquely starting from scratch two years ago.

So everything I've done to grow Entra is what we teach to grow any business. You know, and I mean, there's some people, I guess that have done it faster, but in the business education niche, just YouTube as an example, I've gone from zero to about 30,000 subscribers in two years. And business education is a really hard niche. I'm competing with Tim Ferriss and Tony Robbins and Grant Cardone and, you know, guys with big ad budgets,

guys that are really good marketers. And so like all the little stuff that I've had to figure out, we just weave it back into our courses. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it.

Andrew, want to take us on out of here, buddy? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. We had an episode a couple of episodes ago about how people were blaming 2020 for not being able to achieve their goals and moping around because they can't find a job, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's a man that you said

you've raised your business 3,000%? Almost, yeah. Okay. So he's definitely has some knowledge that you guys definitely got today. So if you found this episode valuable, please share it with some of those mopey people because they need to hear this stuff.

Please make sure you're following the podcast at mark bow's power project on instagram at mb power project on twitter and uh if you haven't subscribed to the newsletter please do so now because in sema's working on some cool stuff for you it's going to be dope my instagram is at i am andrew z or you can hit me up on twitter at i am andrew z and sema where you at uh and sema in yang on instagram and youtube at SEMA gaining on Twitter and where can people find you? Jeff, Jeff Lerner, official across the board. Great. I'm at Mark smelly bell.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.