The Russell Brunson Show - Curiosity, Copy, and Fast Execution: Marketing Lessons from Tai Lopez | #Marketing - Ep. 56

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I sit down with Tai Lopez… Someone I’ve watched, learned from, and admired from a marketing and sales perspective for years. We go deep into the mechanics of success, from how to model winning frameworks, to why curiosity is the overlooked engine behind big breakthroughs. We talk about what it really takes to scale businesses fast, how Tai thinks about brand arbitrage, and why speed of execution matters more than having the perfect plan. Tai also opens up about the environments that shaped him early on and how that affects the way he operates today. This is one of those episodes that hits on mindset, strategy, and practicality all at once. Key Highlights: Why learning frameworks is more valuable than memorizing tactics Tai’s “four levels” of understanding and how to move up the ladder faster How curiosity drives decision-making, speed, and skill acquisition The role of environment and peer influence in long-term success Why imperfect action always beats perfect planning One thing that stuck with me in this conversation is how intentional Tai is about absorbing ideas (books, mentors, observations) and turning them into frameworks he can use. If you’re feeling stuck in the mud with overthinking, slow execution, or wondering what separates good entrepreneurs from great ones… this episode lays it all out. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/secrets⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠northwestregisteredagent.com/russell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn.com/CLICKS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job’s visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Russell Brunson show. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the show. I'm excited today to have one of the original OG dudes of the entire internet marketing world. First time I ever saw him, there was this video that started going viral. And it was a weird video because I think, and I'm going to have him confirm or deny if this is true, I heard it was the first ever selfie video in his garage.

And it got like, I don't know, tens of it. millions of views and I kept seeing it pop up and people talking about it. Some people were very excited. Some people talking trash about it. And I was like, who is this guy? And that was kind of my first introduction to him. His name is Ty Lopez. I'm sure most of you guys have heard of him before. But Ty, I'm excited to be hanging out with you today. How are you doing? And did you invent the first ever selfie video? Is that true? Maybe selfie video ad. I think people were doing just regular selfies, but at scale that I had never seen one like that and I was I had no idea I knew I thought it would do well but I didn't

know it would get massive so I was it was a Sunday and and I had a friend who had just scolded me I was going to go out with some friends in Hollywood and I had been texting with them and he said tie having fun is overrated so it was a Sunday in January 2015 and I went to my phone and I told my friends you know I was supposed to meet you out at a restaurant I'm to stay home and work by myself. So I just sat there at the kitchen table and I kind of wrote the beginning of the video. It was a VSL. I shot a four minute ad that then when you clicked it went to an hour and a half VSL on a funnel on a landing page. I had built my first funnel on 01. So I was kind of used to building funnels. But I said, let me just write it out the ad.

And I went in my garage and I didn't feel I felt like being alone sometimes when I'm creative. And I just said, instead of having a camera got here, I'm just going to grab my camera. And one of the very, I shot like seven variations. And one of them was here in my garage, just got this brand new Lamborghini. And I had actually, the month before I had run out of room in my house, I buy, I'm like you. I like to collect books, right? And so I was in Paris for New Year's Eve. And my assistant, Nathan goes, hey, Ty, I just got more books you ordered.

And there's no place to put them in the house. And I said, go buy bookshelves. and put them in the garage. And so that's the origin of like a Lamborghini with books in the garage. It wasn't intended to be an ad. But I sometimes think in life, like the most authentic, just record what you're doing. And that's what I did. I just like, let me just record what I'm doing with my own camera.

And it kind of launched kind of a genre of, of ads and funnels, you know? Oh, yeah. And it's funny because I remember just the comments, people are like, why is he of a Ferrari and books in his garage? And, like, there's so much controversy just about the concept and the idea. And they're like, it fueled it and kept grabbing and growing. It became viral. People were sharing and talking about it negative and positive. And do you know, I mean, I don't know if you've retracted it.

How many views I ended up getting when all of a sudden done? Oh, crazy. I mean, there's, I kept, I had like six versions of it, but I kept one of them public on my YouTube. I think I had 75 million views. But total all in was like 400 million because if you count, the ads, that was just on YouTube. And I had it running on Facebook. And that ad, my Google reps were like, Ty, in 2016, they ran a survey internally at Google. And they're like, we showed a picture of your face to a random sampling of American men. And if we show your face, 65% of American men,

like over 25 will be like, Tyler, so that ad just went like 20% of America saw that. ad i'm pretty sure yeah so back then it was you get in earlier on a trend like youtube ads the roas was like i would spend let's say 50 to 70 000 a day on that funnel and i like two hours later i'd make like 150,000 you can make two row as with no recurring no upsell i had to i do have two upsells just a funnel two upsells zero i didn't even have one sales person and you could print you know, you could do three to four million a month with just without recurring. And then I added recurring later, you know, and then I had a $69 recurring product. But at first it was just a straight sale.

It was the steps one, right? Like 67 steps or something like that. Was that the offer? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the offer, it's interesting because the way I marketed it, a lot of people that are beginning marketers, they forget.

What you're really doing is people are buying into a story of. transformation. And so if you talk too much about the product versus the transformation, it doesn't convert. So most of that video was my story, how it transformed me, and how it also worked on other people. At the end, in that VSL, which was like I said, about an hour and a half, I didn't really intro a hard pitch to buy for, you know, 45 minutes. And I went to your funnel hacking live and you of course are icon of marketing and i noticed you know you do the same thing you're up on stage when you guys are pitching the final offer it's not you don't quickly get into the product it's transformed like i like how you did i haven't seen that before that was that was good you had all

the people who had transformation like 70 of them or 40 of them or something even if it takes because a lot of people will be like oh that takes 30 minutes and that's a waste of time you should just do it for five minutes but people don't understand the reason humans Life will get a lot simpler when you realize humans aren't very logical. The reason I like my farm, you know, I got horses and cows and chickens is like, okay, humans, we like to think we're above the animals. And maybe we are in some ways, but humans are pretty reactive too. So that, that hour and a half VSL wasn't a webinar. There wasn't really auto webinar concept back then.

But that VSL really painted my story of, hey, look, I graduated high school in a mobile home. home, you know, I find my, I found myself with $47 on my bank account and I didn't know what to do. And my uncle said, hey, Ty, you got to go out and find mentors. And so I started meeting, networking, and finding, I found my, you know, one of my first millionaire mentors, a guy named Mike Stainback. And I just said to him, hey, Mike, I'll work for you for free if you teach me what you know. And he said, I've been looking for someone like you for 20 years. He had a big, he looked like Tom sell it. He had a big mustache. And I started working and he taught me sales. And so each and I over about five years, I accumulated five millionaire mentors. And each of them taught me a different

thing. Mike Steinbach taught me how to close deals on the phone, cold call. And I had a guy named Al Howl who taught me finance, like understanding how money works and investment works. And then I had a mentor named Alan Nation who was just, he was the guy who taught me how to read a book a day. He was the first person I ever met that read a book a day. Um, and so he told me that when you're knowledgeable, money flows in your direction, right? That was his thing. So he was all about not just reading business books, but reading biographies and reading, you know, anything that make you wise. Like the Bible says, you know, get wisdom over silver and gold. Because when you have wisdom, then getting silver and gold becomes easier. So that mentor taught me

a different facet of life. And Joel Salatin is the farmer that was really my first millionaire mentor. And he taught me how to work hard. You know, I had grown up in a city and I wasn't that hard. I was a hard worker, but nothing particularly strong. And then I live with the Amish for two and a half years. And the Amish, you don't think of millionaires, but a lot of them accidentally get wealthy. And what I learned from the Amish is that you need a community, you need allies.

Wealth requires allies, success requires allies. So the Amish live in community, and so if anybody, they can help each other out of a bad time. And so anyway, I told people in that VSL, I said, look, I've got 67, I actually learned 300 principles. I have them on a whiteboard. I had written 300 principles over the summer before I launched the 67 steps. And I said, I felt like 300 was too much for anybody to remember. So I'll distill it down to 67. and you buy my program and one video a day, give me 67 days. It was a challenge. The average human they've found takes about 67 days to change bad habits. So the offer was simple. It's like, you know, it took me five years to find five millionaire mentors. If you can go find them yourself, that's the best, an in-person mentor. But if you can't, and you have 67 bucks, I charge $1 a video, click here. And this transformation story didn't just work from me. But,

When you shadow and learn from wise mentors, it's the quickest path to wealth. And so when I press that, I mean, it just unleashed the floodgates. It was, you know, I, I've sold about 500,000 Unix of different, you know, different programs. But that was for sure the flagship. You know, it's funny, a few years after like 2017 or something, I looked and I had my programmer calculate how much revenue that offer had done. and I kid you not, it was $67 million. It was $67.

It was $67. Yeah, weird. He's like, you're not going to believe this. It's like $67 million. Is this still live right now? Is you still running that at all or not? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's true.

I tell people, learn to build a digital offer because that offer now it's more than $67 million, but I launched it. I recorded it in 2014. It took me, by the way, for those of you, I know a lot of funnel builders and marketers, learning the game or listening to Russell. One thing I'd encourage you is don't give up too quick. I launched the offer. I remember it was in Palm Springs.

I always launched all my offers from Palm Springs, or not all of them, but a lot of them. And it was July 21st, 2014, and I launched it as only a dollar. It was like I wanted to get feedback. So I let a whole, I let like a thousand people in at $1 lifetime. I still meet people on the street, like, I'm part of the $1 group. and I only paid a dollar.

And then I kept raising the price. The next month, I raised it to $10.000. And then, but I still, I was making, the offer was doing three months in, was probably doing about $10,000 a month on recurring. And so success kind of comes, you leap, you get up to a plateau. And then for a while, you say it $10,000 a month. And then January, when I shot that one ad, then it shot up to like, so it shot from, let's say, $20,000 a month to like $2 million a month.

in January and even more. I don't remember exactly, but off of a $67 product with no or continuity. Well, I did, I did. I eventually dialed in. I had a $2.97 and a $4.97. One clicks. So, but I didn't have always have

recurring. I kind of stopped and start with recurring. Once I built a strong enough brand, you kind of need a brand for recurring. Like humans don't love high ticket. It was relatively high ticket. like 67 bucks doesn't sound high but you know when Netflix raises the price from $12 to 13 like they lose two million subscribers like people are pricing as though or a dollar so I learned you know

one badass ad I have a checklist system called the nine levers and so now whenever we're trying to sell anything we go through a nine lever nine step process number one is you know the offer how good is it number two is pricing pricing pricing pricing, you can get really sophisticated and really change the game with pricing. I have a private client. I do private mentorships for some CEOs, big CEOs. And I had her change her offer from 50K to $1 million. And she closed two products right away at a million versus four or eight at $50,000, less work, more money.

So anyway, I had this nine. I've now developed a nine step check. list back in 2014 i i brought out five steps so upsells are one of the nine but they're not your prime driver like prime driver the top the power three levers are is your product irresistible i call it a high appetite product i call it the million person framework did a million people wake up and say the exact phrase so my 67 steps was solving the problem of not having enough money so you got to ask yourself did a million people wake up and say man i wish i had more money That's a given. More like a billion or two woke up. So anybody listening, you got to start out by asking yourself, don't launch any product that a million people, you can't conceivably have heard imagine a million people out of eight billion said, oh, you know what? I do want to learn underwater basket weaving. Like that's kind of that's, you know, if nobody said that phrase, it's too small of a market. It's too niche. So I have the, that's the first power law of making money online. The second one is really, don't

be afraid to split test the price. Like, people get too afraid. Don't just price what your competitors are pricing. There's a good book, by the way, on this called Smart Pricing. It's by one of my mentors, Professor Jean-Jane. He's considered the world's number one expert on pricing. He does like Louis Vuitton's pricing and all that. So read that little book, Smart Pricing, and you can figure out the second. And the third lever is ads, good ads and good VSLs in the funnel. Absolutely, especially now. It's even more so. I've built my first funnel on a 01. I bought a program by Corey Roodle. I don't know if you ever heard of Corey Roodle.

I, Corey was one of the first guy that's done. He died. Yep. Yeah, yeah, he died in probably 06 or 07. I was broke. I was working for that Mike Steinbach guy who started an intro amount of phone sales, but I couldn't generate leads. And I hated cold called.

He'd be like, oh, cold called his list of business owners. And I'd be yelling at you. So I saw an ad in 01, just scrolling Google. That was when Google was new. And it was a, it was a, it was an image at maybe it was Yahoo or something and it was a picture of a guy's feet on the beach in hawaii and it didn't even show his face just his feet laying out like this and um he said how i made $28,000 yesterday while laying on the beach in hawaii and i remember thinking

ooh this is probably a scam but i don't even have any money so he ain't going to be able to i only had like three hundred dollars in my bank account so i was like hard to scam a man with 300 bucks right like the worst case i'm down through so i click the button back then there was no vsals there's no video sales letters there was no youtube yet there was very little live streaming and stuff people didn't have fast internet so it's what we call tsl text sales letter just a long one and i don't remember why but i just i spent all my money it was like a hundred bucks plus upsell so i spent 300 and it came in a three there was no instant delivery it came in a fedex box about a week later is a three ring binder.

I opened it up. It was like how to do internet market. It was called Internet Marketing Secrets. Sadly, I literally have that product on my shelf right now. I still have mine. I mean, it's, but the only thing I remember from it was he said there's this new thing called Google AdWords. You should try it. So the only thing I remember, this is why I like courses.

Like people go, oh, I'm going to buy a course and what, you know, what if I don't like the whole course? I'm like, you only need one thing from any. program you ever buy most people can't remember more than one thing for every college class they took ask people i have someone come work for me in marketing i said oh you got a marketing awesome what do you know about marketing they're she she was like i got to be honest i don't remember anything for four years she's like i got a more marketing group i don't remember anything i partied and i just memorized stuff and then i put it out of my brain so anyway i got the core ruddle i built my first ad word and i didn't realize google adwords had been out three months and i

remember, it was 20 cents a click for the keywords. And I remember being like, I'm being scammed again. What if somebody just clicks and doesn't buy? I have to give them a quarter. I'm giving Google a quarter. By the way, those keywords, the financial keywords like life insurance, you know, anything like that is $27 now. So I tell people, don't be too skeptical because if you can catch new marketing platforms early, you get them. When I got in Facebook, I was one of the early people in the Facebook ads. This is about eight years later. 2001, that Corey Rood, of course, took me from broke, you know, sleeping on a couch

on a mobile home. I live in Clayton, North Carolina. I got to six figures within nine months, pretty much on autopilot. Every month I'd make like $8,000 to $10,000 a month, which in today is inflated dollars with Joe Biden inflation. That's like $20,000 a month, right? So it really changed my life. Then I had a big jump up over time, but in 2009, Facebook,

had just launched Facebook ads and I launched that and I remember I went on a date with a girl to get sushi. I built an ad. Same thing. Image ads. I built an ad and I went, we went out, come back. I came back three or four hours later after eating sushi. I remember. I told that woman later like, you're lucky. I'm going to have to hang out with you more because when I came back, I'd spent four grand on ads and I had made 21,000. So I made 17,000. There was no targeting. It was crazy. there was no algorithm back then but when you're early i was getting clicks for pennies you know probably i was probably paying five cents a click now a click is one to three bucks so i got in and then with here in my garage in 2015 i was one of the first i was the first business person

there was a couple of their guys offering with health and offers on there was a guy named uh there was six-pack shortcuts by a guy named mike chang i don't know if you remember six-pack He was the first guy, but he was in fitness. And I was like, hmm, I met him. I went to a, this is why I tell people, spend money on conferences. I found out, I was like, this Mike Chang guy, this YouTube, he seems to know something. So I went to this ski conference that he was at. And I picked his brain and then I launched here in my garage. So watch those trends, man, skeptical people. They miss everything. Because by the time they're not skeptical, it's kind of like Bitcoin. Like I remember a bit. I, Sean,

a video, one of my, by the way, one of my most viral videos is in 27, 2018, I shot a video. YouTube took it down. They used to be, you know, censorship people on crypto. And I had two pizzas and I go, you all know the two pizza story about Bitcoin. A guy paid for two pizzas in Bitcoin. If he had held those pizza, that those Bitcoin and just paid for the pizzas in dollars, he would have $80 million in Bitcoin. Anyway, I read. shot that video that one got 10 million views a month it was great till got taken down so it's always the same patterns if you want to make money can you catch trends early can you not be skeptical can you pick somebody else's brain that's already doing it so you can save yourself

the learning curve and then lastly you know can you make a good ad and a good video good landing pages like it's what everybody's always been dreaming about like jacking the beanstock it was like the goose that lays the golden egg the money tree i was just talking to guys said you do he said i don't know if a funnel will work for my business i said well then you're cursing yourself i said be careful what you say because if you think a funnel won't work what you're saying is you will have to be on every phone call you will have to sell every person i'm like you don't want something right now while i'm sleeping every day since 2001 while i was asleep somebody watched a video i had pre-recorded, press the button, enter your credit card, and paid.

I don't know anything else that could do that, you know? Yeah. It's crazy. If you've been following me for any amount of time, you know, I always talk about as you're growing and scaling your company, the most important thing is finding the who, not the how. Who is the person that can help you drive more traffic? Who is the person that could be your CEO?

Who is the person that could build your funnels? Understanding the who will dramatically speed up the growing and the scaling of your company. Now, the best place to find the who's who can help you with your vision is indeed. When it comes to hiring the right who's, Indeed is all do you need. Indeed gives you the ability to stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other sites because Indeed's got a sponsored job listing where you can stand out in front of your dream hires. With these sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates.

That means your funnel builder is going to see it. That means the person driving traffic your funnels is going to see. It means your new CEO or CMO or whatever you're looking for is going to see the exact ad for your business as soon as they open up Indeed. And that makes a huge difference. In fact, according to Indeed, data-sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. One of the things I love about Indeed is it makes hiring so fast. You can post the job and within minutes you're getting applications who are coming in looking to become the who inside of your business. Prior to that, I was often posting my help wanted ads on Facebook and Instagram and getting tons and tons of responses from unqualified people who had no idea what they were doing.

Whereas indeed, again, they're only being seen by the exact person I'm looking to hire. Now, with Indeed sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, there's no long, term contracts, you only pay for results. They may be wondering how fast is Indeed? Well, in the minute I've been talking to you so far, 23 hires were made on Indeed across the Indeed network. So there's no longer need to wait any longer. You can speed up your hiring right now by going to Indeed.

And listeners of the show get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your job more visible by going to Indeed.com slash clicks. Just go to Indeed.com slash CLI-C-S right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash clicks. Terms and conditions apply. are you hiring indeed is all you need um so i'm curious that that was like some the beginning stuff but like i've watched your career like evolve and change and shift and back and forth like

what are the things that you're working on right now like what are the what are the core offers and things you're you're driving or promoting like i'm curious about that side of it now that you've been doing so long well i've come i've come full circle like i built my personal brand in 09 i actually found the date i never could figure out when i started my damn personal brand and but i found you know how you know how iPhone says memories. I found a memory from 09. It's a video. I don't know if you remember my friend Zach. He sadly died at cancer, but he was on my social lot. He was a funny guy. Everybody loved him. It was a video of me on Laugh Factory on Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. And I go, hey, Zach, I'm shooting this video of you. And now they have this thing

called an app. I can upload this without going home and doing it on my laptop. I'm going to upload this video and he's like, what? And so that was, that's kind of I consider my inception point. So, oh, nine, I started a personal brand. I went really hard for like a decade. And then I, I kind of, during COVID, I took a break. I moved to Puerto Rico. I was, you know, I've been living in Beverly Hills in Hollywood for a long time. And I just went and enjoyed, I was like, well, the world's getting crazy. So I kind of slowed down my personal brand for a couple years. But I noted, it was interesting. It was like a sabbatical, you know, like professors take a about it. But I tell people now, there's only two business models left, AI and personal brand.

The only two business models that I think have a high probability, it depends how much money you want to make. If you want to make 100K a year, then there's a thousand things you can do. But people who are really trying to build something big, if it's not around personal brand, centered on a personal brand or centered on AI, you might get replaced. So in 2023, I kind of saw the writing on the wall. So I've been slowly in the last year or so, just really, put in a lot more content out organic content and you can monetize that in any way you want so you know i've had i've been the most googled person in america i almost in the world when here my garage came out there was times on the google graph trends i was like number one and i actually

tell people like you don't want to be that that that's not i didn't like that being that big that's why i've kind of you know i got three million followers like in 2016 on instagram and i people go why have you not grown it really it's almost up the same i was and i was like ah i know how to grow on instagram it's you mr beast is is a guy that has been in my programs you know he he's the he's the only one there's only two billionaires under self-made billionaires under 30 he's one of them and it comes with a lot of downside he just hit 400 million YouTube subscribers so i kind of ramp down trying to massively grow my following but now with AI here it's unsure like I'm like, I have an AI studio also.

I'm building AI apps, I think, and I know how to market them. So the two things I'm working on is really than my personal brand and AI. I launched an AI version of my SMMA. That's the other big program I launched in 2016, teach people how to build marketing agency. A lot of my students use clip phones. They should. I launched a whole generation. Yeah, all of them should.

I launched like 40,000 agencies. And now I'm teaching the AI version. You go into businesses and you offer them. an AI automation agency that does their marketing, but it really opens doors. Every business owner now is like, yo, AI, you should be doing more of that. So those are the big thing is AI related stuff, building my own concern. I'm building a fat burner app that tracks your food. I'm building a knowledge app, basically not just books and beyond.

So instead of doom scrolling your Instagram all day, kind of becoming stupid, I'm building like the Netflix of knowledge, you could say. So you pay seven bucks a month and it's delivering real knowledgeable stuff. I think people are getting, if you ain't careful, AI is going to make everybody stupid. Just like Google made everybody unable to spell. Like people don't spell anymore. You just go to Google. If you get kind of the word right, it figures out what you're trying to say.

30 years ago, if you didn't know how to spell and you go to a dictionary, you can't even find it. Right. So AI is in a way it makes society smarter, but average person's getting dumber and the algorithms of Insta TikTok. They're so good at just sucking people into doom scrolling. So I'm building an AI app for that. I'm building an AI app for marketing to generate content for you. I already use these personally, but I'm going to, I'm commercializing them. So I'll launch them in the next month or two. So, you know, it's the same thing. I like direct the consumer stuff. And I think it's. I mean, it's nuts. One of my followers built this calorie counting app just on the cover of Wall Street Journal. He or the front page, he launched it nine months ago and he's doing two and a half million a month, all with good marketing, viral marketing, charges seven months a month, mentor boxes, those similar model, you know, business models. Anyway, I just see right now, if you know how to market, you're in basically in possession of, the last important skill you need because if you don't send your kids to be computer programmers really because 99% of them are going to be replaced the only ones left will be the high level

AI tech people already Y Combinator the CEO he says 90% of our startups 90% of the of the code being written by all Y Combinator is no longer humans it's already at 90% replacement of humans so engineers are going to get replaced. Architects are going to be replaced. Doctors, maybe. Lawyers, definitely, big time. You can already find, make documents with AI almost better than any lawyer. So there's so many things getting taken away. The only real thing left will be like in-person service-based businesses. There's probably still going to be plumbers and air conditioners. Although I see these AI robots building houses now. I watch one. This robot can lay, you know, build a block. lock house can lay 200 blocks an hour with perfect precision. It's like, oh, my God. So build your

personal brand and learn AI. But the key driver, if you, you're going to have to know marketing. I always say like the king and the queen skills, you know, and the emperor skills. You got the emperor skill. You can learn the king skill and the queen skill. So I consider the emperor skill is making products that the world wants. Steve Jobs, this iPhone has sold over. two billion he had an intuition um that really he could tap into bill he'd go you know what this was back when everyone had a blackberry he goes you know what people want they want a tap screen phone and so that's the emperor skill Elon Musk he's like you know what people want they want this electric car that's kind of cool looking and a little bit looks like a portion

has smooth lines you know all the other car companies were making these ugly electronic, bolt, bolt, whatever these cars are, right? And so Elon and Jeff Bezos, they all have the emperor skill coming up with products like a billion people want. Then the next skill is the king's skill is marketing, right? And the queen's skill is sales. Marketing is just automation of sales. So you can start at the bottom, by the way. I tell a lot of people, if you're totally broke, do sales. If you're homeless sleeping out of a car, if you have a phone and you get to a McDonald's Wi-Fi, high ticket sales will get you out, get you from homeless to 100K faster than anything. That's the Queen's scale. Once you know that, you could start automating

your pitch with marketing. And once you know those two, you'll have tapped into the human psyche so well, you'll start developing products that the world doesn't even know it needed. I like that Steve Jobs said, if I would have asked the world what they wanted, you know, I've been a better Blackberry, but I intuitively knew. He actually went, got a spiritual conversion. You know, he went to India and he lived really, this was after, I think he was even a billionaire. He, when Apple was struggling and he had kind of, he was at a fight with the board, he went to India and just lived in some little villages. And his big takeaway was he had to, you have to learn, you have to develop your intuition, that deep intuition. That's hard. My mentor Joel

Souten says, you can't Google wisdom. Like, you have to develop. And that's the emperor's skill. Like he came back from that with the idea for the iPhones. It was pretty, Sigmund Freud said, on small matters, use the mind, on important matters, use the intuition, you know. Yeah. Interesting. So you probably have more books than anyone else I know. I'm not sure how many of you're at, but I have obsessed books too, as you know.

I don't know. You got a lot. We've got to have a lot. I'm just, you have. Yeah. I think last count, it was like in the last three years of buying. 18,000 books. So a lot of them are, oh, you probably have me beat now. I don't think I have 18,000. I just laughed at Tai Lopez in books. You just hear that? That's a big. I hand you the

crown. I'm adding that to my social, yeah. But I'm curious, just because you're so well read and so many of things like, what are some of the books that people probably haven't heard of, but it's like, man, if you guys could go read these books, the ones that I think, do you think would be the most beneficial either biographies or specific personal development or marketing? I'm curious what your favorites are. They may not, I might not even know about it. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, so a really good book that I think transforms every area of your life. There's a guy named Dr. David Bus. He wrote a book, a textbook. They use it in most universities like Harvard. And it's called evolutionary psychology. It's got a lizard on the front. It's a great by that book. A similar book to that is poor Charlie's Almanac made by Charlie Munger,

who's probably considered one of the wisest. billionaires ever so you have once you know these emperor king and queen skills are all psychological based so poor charlie's almanac is kind of the the psychology of money and then evolutionary psychology is the psychology of people the most up-to-date science then i would add to there there's a book if on courage i think you know a lot i tell people get your confidence back because without it All the opportunity and all the talent in the world won't matter. So you need to read books about courageous people because I try to read those at night. I'm reading right now a book on the people who explored Alaska.

You talk about courage. We know of nothing. They used to have eight months of winter at negative 70 degrees. And they just were like, la, la, la, la, and live through it. Right. So there's a book called Kuntiki, K-O-N-T-I-K-I. It's a story of a Norwegian explorer Tor Hyderdoll who wanted to, he had figured out that ancient people had taken a small boat, like a raft from South America, basically to like, almost to Australia, to the like Tahiti. And everybody said, no, that's not the story.

And he said, well, I can prove they did it. I'll do it myself. So he went to South America. He made a balsa wood boat. You know what balsa is? It breaks like that. He got on it and he floated from Chile. South America all the way basically almost to Australia.

So I like, I think you got to throw into the mix some books on courage and just real people who dared things that an average man would have had a nervous breakdown on. So Kintiki, I think a great one now more than ever. I've had this on my best book recommendation list for more than a decade. Gary Keller, the real estate billionaire, he started Keller Williams. his book the one thing, which is on the power of focus. So what I take away from there is like everything in our life. Think about it like dominoes. You have limited time in the day. What's one thing you do today that if you get it right, like five other tasks are automatically fixed. So for example,

if you're an entrepreneur, hire a director of operations or a COO. If you can solve that one thing, then that person can solve 50% of all your other problems. Instead of you putting out 100 fires, just put out the one thing, get somebody competent. Usually a woman in my experience is good as in as a C-O-O. So that's another book I recommend. I mean, a book that's controversial, but I think it's it's so genius. I haven't read a book more genius on the subject of happiness would be Sigmund Freud's book, Civilization and is discontents. Just read the second chapter.

Civilization is discontent. It's so profound. It's the book that I would say. is the most profound book written by a human. So if you're religious, maybe it's not as profound as the Bible, but it's wildly, it's like eight pages. And I've read it 40 times. And every time I read it, there's new insight.

Then another great book, I would say everyone should read. I think the wisest man to live in the last thousand years is a guy named Will Durant. Him and his wife wrote an 8,000 page story of civilization. but there's a short version he wrote called The Lessons of History. And I've been telling people for like 15 years to read this recently, by the way, Elon Musk found this book. And he's on Twitter going, you're not going to believe this guy. Go read Will Durant.

He has a little book, Lessons of History. It's so compact and so profound that even guys like Elon Musk are like, this dude might be an alien. Like, who is this guy? So Will Durant, Sigmund Freud, throw in a courage book, Contiki. a focused book, I think I may already said that, read, you know. Now, a practical book I mentioned earlier, which is smart pricing. What I like about that book, not only will teach you the science of pricing your products, but it starts making you think, wait a second, there's a science to making

money. And I think people forget that. I think you need what Steve Jobs had, which is like the art of having your intuition that's the artist side right but you but you also there's technical things you need to learn and and i think smart pricing is like a mind-blowing book on just it's like it's a teeny book but it makes you realize most business owners they just make up a price they they look at their competitors and go well they're charging a hundred bucks a month so i'll charge 100 bucks or they figure out what their cost is and they add 30 but he goes through the five ways you price your product and he says 99% of people price it incorrect almost nobody the interesting pricing would be like airplane next time you want to flight ask how much the guy next to you paid

zero percent chance you paid the same for the same seats never they have something called dynamic pricing so anyway i think smart pricing is a good one to introduce people that like oh isn't it making money is chess not checkers yeah that's so cool i haven't heard of like 90% of like 90% books. I guess we're really excited to go buy a bunch right now. Um, okay, last question I have for you. Oh, man. Let me, Russell, I'm going to challenge you. Get the best version of the story of civilization. It's like, I have it there. It's probably, can you hand me one of those? It's like 10 volumes. Get a great version of it. If you could get like a, this one will go up in value. Elon Musk will buy this from you. I have a couple. I buy one for every house that I live in. So it's

this. This is the age of reason. And that's the, that's the two people. If you get this, I'm telling you, this one is the one that can 20x in value. If you're looking at the investment, fine. That's awesome. Okay, the question I want to ask you, because I get this a lot, because I talk about a lot of books and people are always like, how do you read so much? And you mentioned earlier, the book of day strategy. So we explained what that is and how you actually do that? Yeah. So, yeah, one of my first controversies or people are like, It's fake and I said I read a book a day and what people don't realize I really did and I still do but I now I really also like supplementing with audio books. I think there's nothing wrong with it.

I've heard people say, oh, you know, listening to auto books is like drinking your vegetables. Well, if you drink your vegetables with the pulp in it, it's the same as eating them essentially. So it's not agreed it. But so I would say what I do now, when I take a shower, hopefully you take a couple showers a day, set it on 2X and listen to the right book. And let's say you take, I don't know, I'd like to take long shower. So let's say 15 minutes of showers at 2X. That's 30 minutes of a book. I do that Monday through Saturday.

Then I try to fall asleep. I think it's deadly to fall asleep with your phone. Like 90% of the world is now falling asleep with our phone. If you can figure out a way to hypnosis, mind control, whatever, to not doomscroll in bed, the blue light messes up your sleep. It messes up your circadian rhythm. So I think you should read when you are going to bed. And you shouldn't be too tired when you.

You should be able to stay in bed for 20 minutes before you fall asleep. So if you find yourself, I'll tell I read 10 seconds and then I fall asleep, you probably don't have good sleep and you need to work on your anti-aging stuff. So I get in a solid 20 or 30 minutes. So that gives me about an hour a day. Now, I go in spurts. If I'm reading The Star of Civilization, you cannot read an 800 page book in one day, right? But there's books that I get like pop culture books. Let me see one. Like something like, I don't even know what book, let me just pick one. The conversion code. You know, this is the one I think I got on an airport.

I'm not, I don't even know if I've read. I think, oh, yeah, I have read this one. This one is easy to read in a day. I mean, it's, it's a hundred page, 136 pages. And I think it's nothing wrong with skipping around. Read the parts that serve your life. There's no downside. People get so Gestapo life.

They're like, me, I must. If I don't read the whole page, I mean, the whole book, every page. Forget that. One of the great books is Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography. It's called, what is the damn? I forgot. Anyway, it's a great one. And the second half doesn't interest me.

It's about his political rise at California. No of hate to him. I love Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I'm not in the politics. The first half is the most fascinating thing. So I've read the first half like 10 times in 10 years and the second half, never. Now, some people go, what? I caught you. You're not reading a book a day.

And I'm like, dude, this is not. a professional sport where I'm cheating but I'm saying I read sometimes I read every word that would be like Dr. David Buss evolutionary psychology I've read every word never skip no speed reading and then other books I'll read seven pages and be like okay like Malcolm Gladwell if you ever read Malcolm Gladwell I like him but he's very long winded so he basically has one main point like outliers the book like you know study outliers people who are have extremely good results and then every chapter is just a story confirming what he said in the first chapter so you can just read the first chapter you know i don't need 83 i know he's not going to put in a story

that disproves his side of the story so why i don't need to read him so malcolm gladwell i think he has great books david and goliath outliers all these but i never read them all you know Will Durant, I read the whole thing. Oh, yeah, it's called Total Recall, Honor Sorcercercercercer. So what's your secret? What do you do? Well, first off, I'm going to tell you a story. So the first time I came to see you at your mansion back in the day, I'd just written the

expert secrets book. And I remember Dave and I were there together. We came in and we were sitting in the lobby waiting. And I was like, okay, I want Ty to read my book. And so I strategically left the book out somewhere, hopefully you would grab it and read it. So that was, I was like, if Ty Lopez reads my book, book, how cool that book. I have your books.

I think I have them right over there. I should have grabbing them before the call, yeah. It was like way back to the first, it was like one of the first copies I had. And I was like, and you'd invite us over. So I was like, okay, this is our shot. We're going to leave it. He's going to read it someday.

And then I'll see anyway. It's kind of fun. For me, though, it's similar. Like I listen a lot of audiobooks. I work out. I'm listening. I'm driving. I'm listening.

I'm at home. I'm listening. I walk. You know, like, and so there's just so much time to do it. And then a lot of times if I want to read a book and I want to get through it, what I'll do is I'll put my headphones on and I'll turn up the 4x speed while I'll have the book along and I'll read it for read it while I'll listen to it at hour speed. And I can get most books done in about an hour that way. And if I just speed read or if I just listen really fast, I can't get it. If I do both at the same time, it's insane how much I can get out of it in an hour. So yeah, I'm going to have to try that. It's really fun. Now one one other thing. When you fly, don't watch movies. flying is like I live part-time in Europe dude I look around it was crazy the other day I was flying to Scandinavia like Sweden from the US and I looked around and not one person it used to be five years ago like 20% of the plane was reading 10 years ago 40 if you go back you know 20 years

ago I was like 60% of it I was the only person reading so one good thing about reading is I love it when I find something valuable that nobody else does because as Charlie Munger says, if it wasn't for the stupidity of other people, you wouldn't be able to get rich. So if everybody was reading the books, you'd have no unfair advantage. So, you know, best way for a lot of people want to make a lot of money. And by the way, what I'm most proud of, I sent you that screenshot Russell where it said top 10 funnel experts in the world. It had you ranked as number one and me as number two. I want, I'm going to have a personal talk with an open AI about that and be like bullshit. But anyway, um, you ever, I tell everybody,

ask chaty PT what are what is one thing you're your number one in the world at? And, uh, obviously it's hard to know. But it said, I've gotten more people to read nonfiction fiction books than anyone in modern history. It said me one, Oprah went for two. So I was proud of that. And what I want, the way I got people to read books is not really me. I use psychology. Like I had a birthday party at my house. This is about a year. after they hear in my garage video and somebody brought their girlfriend and I was talking to her when she walked in I said what do you do I'm a school teacher and I said you know interesting and she said I'm in the inner city of Los Angeles public schools a lot of crime poverty later in the night she came

over and she's like I tell you a funny story and I said what she goes I realize who you are now and I had a kid he's in and out of jail juvenile delinquent crime and he said out of blue this inner city high schooler is walking down the hall with a nonfiction book. And I walked up to him when I forget his name. What his name was, you know, John. Hi, John. You read now? And he goes, yeah, there's this guy, Tyler Lopez says, if I read, I can get a Lamborghini. So a lot of people are like, oh, you're selling the dream. I'm like, exactly. I'm selling a truthful dream, man. And so I get people to read by going, Warren Buffett wrote a book to first graders, but it really applies to adults. It says, the more you learn, the more you earn.

And I've been in business with three guys on the Forbes list, three billionaires. It's wild how much more as I go up in net worth people read. People really read. Jeff Bezos was, you know, richest man for a decade in a row. He started a business. Amazon was started around books. Number two, Elon Musk's sister just wrote an article six months ago. she said oh yeah my memories of my brother as a teenager as he'd read two books a day he says he was

super depressed at age 12 he stumbled across a book called the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and it made him realize the reason for hope is that there's more to this universe than just earth and it changes life and SpaceX and all these things so one book not only can it change your life another but it can make you rich and so when you're reading a book and you're like, I don't feel like reading, just ask yourself, would you rather be right and lazy or rich? A lot of people would rather be right than rich. Humble yourself, realize there's not a man on this earth or a woman on this earth who contains all you'll need in your life. And so you're going to have to read. Now, maybe one day AI will replace that,

but next 10 years, books ain't reading is not going anywhere. The form might change the e-books. It might change to podcasts or audio but knowledge the more you learn the more you earn is the simplest message that people ignore good dude it's so fun catching up with you and seeing you again and i appreciate taking the time today to come and hang out and talk about marketing and funnels yeah i know we have to do it in purpose yeah we should i got to get you out of idaho or i need to get to idaho one of the other all right i tell you what next what's what i did We'll do so. I have an idea.

What's that with City? Boise. What percentage of time are you in Idaho per year? 90. What's your guess? 90%. Oh, Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I'm a homeboy, man. Are you going to do Funnel Hacking Live again? Or are you done with big conferences? I'm not done with big conferences. I have, I'm taking a break though for a couple of years. And then I'm working on a project I think will lead into another big event thing in the future. probably a couple years away.

So it's sabbatical time. Kind of, so if I'm still working every day. I need a tie low-pice. You know, but I mean sabbatical from the big conferences? Yeah.

You did it, what, 10 years? Yeah, we did 10 in a row. Was it 10 of them? Yep. I figure 10's a good spot to stop. If I did 11,

then I have to go like 20 or 15. I don't know. So I figured it was a good time. Well, awesome. I look forward to me to coming out to the farm sometime, man. I tell people,

when you make your first, million, buy a piece of land. When I bought my first farm in 20, I think it was 2014. My mom's like, Todd, you're in Beverly Hills. Why are you buying a farm? You know, you're in California. I said, you never know, the world could get crazy. You know, she's like, what do you mean? And I said, let's see. And then when 2020 came, I was up, I was living in New York, in L.A. at Manhattan. And when that COVID hit in March, the second I saw that grocery stores, there was like no milk, no bread. I grabbed. all, my family, my son. I said, let's go to the farm. And we drove down there and you're not

going to starve on a farm no matter what. You don't need a grocery store. And my mom said, that's why you bought a farm. So I tell people, if you ask chat GPT, let's do it right now. Let's see what the updated number is. What are the odds? Let me just see here. What are the odds that something crazy happens and major cities could like run out of food for a day or in the next 10 years or it could be pandemonium riots any major event whether it be a bomb whether it be terrorism whether it be you know blah blah blah give me the odds one to a hundred so that's why that's what you have your art Idaho has good forms have you bought a piece of land man I haven't but I think I'm going to buy one tonight like you kind of sell me on it now

Mark Quain said, buy land. They ain't making any more of it. Land has gone through. You know what? A lot of Americans are mad at China because China's, you know, our competitor. But when you see the Chinese and the two richest men on Earth, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, when you see them buying up millions acres of farmland, jump into it, 10%. 10% chance.

So it's the doom scale, they call it. If you knew there was a, if I gave you a dice, it has 10 sides to it. I said, every year, I want you to flip it. Every year. Anything from one to nine, your life's perfect. Number 10 is you and your family are caught in a middle of a riot with no food. And the solution is, get your little Idaho. They have irrigated farms there.

So, I mean, you got the money. You made your first million a long time ago. Do you have somebody who watches your farm for you? What's happening when you're not there? I have farm managers. This farm I have three farm managers. What is he was like raising cows and chickens and corner? Like what are they doing all day?

Yeah, yeah. They're working. They're pretty big forms. I had more forms. I sold some. And then the Amish, the Amish run my other farm. Yeah, if you're not on a farm, you can get managers, though. Get yourself a good farm manager.

By the way, Russell would be a beautiful investment. you'll thank me irrigated farm alfalfa farm horses you go to it you know once a month or something or once a quarter you don't have to leave your bubble of idaho and by the way the most i didn't buy a farm for views or anything like that like i bought a farm you know i live with homage for two and a half year so when i when i was like 20 so i bought a farm i will tell you about 40% of my followers when they meet me they're like you know what i'm tie i don't give a shit about Lamborghinis or even money it's cool you have a farm like there's a whole subset of earth who the the farm movement is they call you know i ever heard of like trad wife

movement the traditional movement it's massive so it's an unintended thing people are like oh my god i want to come to our farm and da da da so i just googled farms for sale in idaho and there's some insanely cool farms for sell i'll tell you uh my first business ever before I built an online funnel was farm consulting send me the farm before you buy it I will save your life I'm I'm I'm you know one of my business partner once said he said tie you know what's strange about you he said if I draw a circle here on a piece of paper and it says people who know internet marketing and I draw another one people that are planting oats because I was planting oats when he goes I have a billion humans you're the only one

in that co-centric circle where they touch. So I will help you buy a farm, man. I'm telling you. Oh, so hang out in that circle with you, man. It'll be sick. Idaho has very good land, dude. It has fertile land if you go in the right place. How many kids do you have?

Five. Five. The other reason, the main reason, besides the chance the world ends is like there's something special. If you look at American history, 90% of the people we consider great, whether it's George Washington, Abraham, Lincoln, you know, all these people that they grew up on a farm. And there's something you can't get with your kids in the city. So, you know, I have people don't know.

I have kids. I don't post them on social media. But like my son was just here, like I see him because he lives part time in the city. And I just see so many bad habits happen. They want to do video games. But today, he was living a video game. He was like, you know, in the tractor. Like, I don't let him drive a tractor.

but it's safe up there out of a cab and he's like moving a joystick and i was showing him i'm like hey this and he was like he never asked about video games when he's doing that so i just think get back you know when all wells fails get back to the land as the bible says you know from dust we came and from to dust we will return so that the earth that keeps you humble it realizes it makes you realize there's there forces outside of your control you could be the richest man in the world but if a flood comes and washes out your crop Jeff Bezos, Elon Lust, they were the same as a common poor farmer. So it grounds you.

I just think it has a crazy, and it's quiet, man. I track my sleep. There's less EMFs. A lot of people get, you live in a big, I live in a big high rise in Manhattan called Billionaire Row, this one street. You look at your Wi-Fi. There's 40 Wi-Fi's connected to you. Here, there's nothing.

And so you feel better. It's better for your kids. It's a great backup plan and farmland risk adjusted since the 1980s has been the best risk-adjusted return with very little volatility. And so farms just go up more than inflation. So it's almost impossible if you buy a nice farm. So send me the one. Send me like three that you like. And I'll just say, I'll give you my opinion.

Okay. Unbiased. I'm going to get a farm. I did not know going into today. I was going to be a farmer. and now I'm going to be a farmer, dude. Well, you don't have to be a farmer. You will be the gentleman farmer.

I want to call myself a farmer. If I'm going to have a farm, that's pretty cool. It's new identity. Yeah, a rancher. Yeah, a rancher. Start with chickens. Chickens don't hurt anybody. My wife wants chickens at a house.

I fought it. If we had a farm, we could get chicken. She'd be so happy. Oh, dude, I eat all my food. I got 2,000 pounds of meat from this farm out there. I grow wheat and oats. calculated i can grow 20 i can make 20 000 loaves of bread so just you don't even need a huge farm man you don't if i would you sell it like we can we buy like ty lopez steaks and ribbys

and i i i'm gonna i had a business like that during covid but it kind of covid was hard to process the meat but i'm gonna bring that back my neighbor jol salatin has one i i'll send you something he lives he lives in a way his way that's too cool oh man well dude i it's great catching up man i appreciate you and uh it was really cool thanks for having me yeah no worries if i do anything for you please let me know and hopefully have a chance hang out in person again soon yeah and if anybody wants i got a free book list i don't charge any money tylopez dot com slash books i have my top hundred books everybody should read in order i have like number one two three four so tylopez dot com slash booked that's my shameless plug even though i think i have

affiliate links i make i make like two cents if you buy a book from my link so If you put any of my books in their top 100, we'll pay you way more higher commissions on those. So just slide some of those in there. There you go. All right. I'll leave that. I'll throw that in. Rick, we'll add one of his books in there.

I don't know if you're going to get in the top 10 because you're up there with Albert Einstein and stuff. But just getting on the list is good. Yeah, man. That's my new. What's your, all the books you have, if you could only leave one book to posterity, what is the book that you're most proud of? I think my favorite book is dot-com secrets, I think the most powerful ones, expert secrets. So I'd say expert secrets.

Yeah. What would the most people get value from? Expert secrets, for sure. Expert secrets for sure. Yeah. We'll get that on the list. Yeah. Expert secrets.

Yeah. That's awesome. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you.