Category: Dan Martell

Right now, you’re either in one of two buckets. You don’t have a personal brand yet, or you do, but it’s just not making you nearly as much money as it should. So, I’m going to help you fix both. I’ve personally built a brand to over 10 million followers across all platforms, and it’s got me some cool stuff, like getting paid 100K for a single keynote, get on some of the top podcasts in the world, generate over 100 million in revenue for my companies, and most importantly, the thing I’m most proud of is the chance to help millions of people build a business they don’t grow to hate. And I want that for you, too. So, today, I’m going to walk you through the five steps of building a personal brand that brings every opportunity you’ve ever dreamed of into your life. But first, we need to understand what we’re building in the first place. Step one, understand what we’re building. What is a brand? Think about it like this. A brand is nothing more than association. You have an object and you have association. You have Nike and you have athletes. You have Ferrari and you have luxury. A personal brand adds a person into it. So what do people think about when they hear your name? If you think of Elon Musk, you probably think space. You probably think rich. You probably think controversial. You probably think X or Twitter. If you think Mr. Beast, you probably think YouTube, most subscribers, big smile, high energy. Just think about it. What’s the topics that you want to be associated with? When you think of people, who do you want to be associated with? When you think of products or hobbies, what do you want to be associated with? So for me, it’s blue shirt, it’s AI, it’s time, it’s the things that I talk about. The old model was essentially you build a monetization engine first and then you build an audience. You figure out what you want to sell and then you go create ads. That’s gone. That’s not the world we live in. The new model is you build audience, you build community, you build attention, and then you monetize only if you build trust. The audience is the asset. It’s the new oil. That’s why we’re seeing this like proliferation of people doubling down and going pro on their personal brand because the benefit of a personal brand is massive. Back in the day, it used to be who you know and today it’s who knows you. You being talked about in a room that you’re not even in there because you created content to help people. That’s incredible. Mr. Beast was offered a billion dollars for his YouTube channel like 5 years ago. Kylie Jenner used her social media to build a makeup brand that sold for $600 million. When I look at the crazy things in my life, speaking at Tony Robbins, meeting my idols like John Maxwell, doing the top podcasts like Modern Wisdom, Lewis House, all these came on the backside of building a brand. And brand is nothing more than the feeling and association somebody has when they hear your name. So don’t just build a business, build a brand. If you want to be a millionaire, you can build a business. If you want to be a billionaire, you got to build a brand. So, now we understand the concept of a personal brand, but how do we actually build one? Step two, stop talking to everyone. Okay, my friend Jen said it best the other day. She said, “If you don’t have a controversial take or an unpopular opinion when you speak, then you’re not repelling the people you don’t want, and you’re not attracting the people you do want.” Think about it. If you try to talk to everyone, you just end up talking to no one. You sound like vanilla. There’s no spice to your communication. And it’s not about like jumping out there and screaming at the crowd or freaking out or being Mr. Funny Pants. It’s literally having an opinion. It’s about being you. And if you’re quiet and you’re you’re chill and you just want to sit there and bake goods and record yourself doing that, do it. But if you want to like bring the energy and show your lifestyle and be a streamer like some of these people like I show speed, isn’t it crazy that that is some of the attention you can get? But again, association and brand. So the whole point is to talk to a specific person. What are their opinions on life? What do they want to learn about? That is your ideal audience. And if you’re trying to make money at some point, then you should speak to people that have the problem that you can help them with. So if you want to figure out what you can share to really connect with an audience that you want to attract, you have to ask yourself these three questions. The first one is what’s the toughest thing you’ve ever gone through in your life. Because if you can share that, I will tell you the most powerful thing you have is the most challenging thing you’ve gone through. Your job is to help people avoid that pain. That is why people communicate. The bigger the monster, the bigger the hero. Don’t shy away from that. The second is what’s wrong with the world and how do you want to fix it? Where’s the problem? How do you see it? And what do you think the fix is? My buddy Ronnie says it best. What’s a specific, observable, and nuanced challenge that this specific customer has around this problem? And you talk to that, your audience will feel like you’ve got a hidden camera in their office. And number three, what do you like talking about? When I think about the perfect mix, it’s what does the market want to hear? Cuz there’s an audience. And then what do I love to talk about? I just happen to love to talk about AI because I’m a technology guy. I love to talk about buying back your time and people show up. 2.6 million people on YouTube. That’s crazy to me. But it showed up because I chose to talk about the things that I love to talk about. So if you take those three questions, the answers to those should hint as to who you want to help, how you want to help them, the things you want to create, the content you want to help them with. Right? So write down this one sentence. I help insert type of person who is a specific person do get the desired outcome. What do you help them do without the pain is whatever they’re challenged with right now trying to do the thing. The worst things ever happened to you is your mess. And often times your mess is the most powerful message you have. Pain in your world is the perfect teacher. And if you don’t share that emotion, you can’t get people to take motion, right? No emotion, no motion. And if you want people to sign up, you want people to follow, you want people to lean in, leave a comment, they got to feel you. If they think you’re just talking to everybody and you’re very vanilla and you’re plain, don’t be upset if you got no engagement. Now, for those who might already have a brand, but you’re struggling to create good content, I have a gift for you. I have a full content playbook that covers everything. I’m talking how to build your brand voice, the frameworks to make your content go viral. If you want it, just find me on Instagram and DM me the words YouTube content and I’ll send it over. Okay, we’ve built the plan to how to find your audience who you want to serve. But the next question is what’s the first real step to building. Step number three, don’t think. Turn off the frontal lobe. Because sometimes we convince ourselves out of doing something. Just post. Here’s the deal. You’ll never feel ready. So just start. First 100 posts will suck. Accept it. Just learn it. I actually consider it the first 100 throwaways. Why don’t you just run as fast as you can to video, post, video, post, and just ask yourself, what can I improve each time? Slow it down. Speed it up. Be clear. Is there a call to action? Do I make this about them or do I make it for me? It’s all about the reps. The reps. The reps. I sucked at being on camera when I first started. You see Dan today, but you didn’t see Dan 11 years ago. I was nervous. I couldn’t talk to the camera. I got red in the face. But I just knew that if I could learn how to communicate in front of a camera and not make it a big deal, not because there’s a recording little red bleeping thing, it’s just show up and talk that over time I would get better. And I got to a place where I can shoot any video, one take. I know I can stop and think a little bit. And that’s okay. I can breathe and just keep going. And the actions compound. Zig Ziggler said it best. He says, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.” So, here’s what we need to do today. Number one, pick a platform. One platform. If you’re asking for my suggestion, go all in on Instagram. Publish twice a day on a reel and just start and post. Start and post. Start and post. Don’t worry about your feed. Second thing, we have to decide on a posting schedule. As I mentioned, if you’re asking me, what does a pro do? Twice a day. But if you could just do one a day, oh my gosh, that would be beautiful. But all you have to do is pick a schedule that makes you slightly uncomfortable, that feels like a bit of a stretch, and just make sure that you’re consistent for a long period of time. I like to think in years, not in months, not in weeks. The third, now pull out your phone, hit record right now. Do it while you’re watching this and just start yapping being like, “Man, I’m watching a video. Dan just said I got to hit record and publish this thing and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be saying, but that’s okay.” He said, “Just shoot. Now I’m going to post it. And if you feel compelled by this video, you should shoot a video and post it too. So now the trick is just publish. That’s 80% of the problem. Just publish. Fourth is learn. Study the content. What worked in the past? Hit it again. What didn’t? Stop doing that. Go find out what other people are doing it. Learn from them. Look at what my videos are doing. Learn from me. So here’s where I’m going to go next level. And I’m going to challenge you. My friend Jen does it every day. She did it for four years straight. I’m going to challenge you to go live. And I want you to go live on whatever platform you want. It could be Facebook or Instagram or Tik Tok for 30 days. I want you to turn your phone on, hit live, and just talk. The cool part is is that you can delete the live as soon as you’re done. Okay? But record yourself on your phone talking to the people sharing an idea. You never know what’s going to work. You just have to commit to the time. So for the next 30 days, go live every day. Talk to your audience, even if there’s two people there, and just practice, practice, practice. So, now you understand the personal brand side. You know how to find your ideal audience and you’ve started posting, right? Right. [  ] yeah. That’s awesome. Cool. Posting isn’t enough. This next part is where a lot of people screw up everything. Step number four, don’t be a [  ] sellout. A lot of people will post and then they get a little bit of views and they want to squeeze every penny out of their community. Okay, that’s being a sellout. That’s being somebody that’s like NASCAR. You’re just like trying to monetize the out of everything you’ve ever done. I see people do this. They’re selling stuff that they don’t even use themselves. They prioritize making money over building the trust with the audience. Then once you lose that trust with the people, nobody’s going to pay you to get in front of them. If you have the trust, people will literally line up begging you to pay you to get in front of them. My inbox is full of companies that want to pay me to promote them. Guess what? Not doing it. For me, it’s not what I do. Trust is the currency that you’re trading when you build an audience. Think Apple. What Apple has in the market is the world trust. And because of that, it’s a trillion dollar company. When people honor you with a follow or your content shows up in their feed, the best thing you could do is honor that trust. Show up and give. Don’t try to monetize too quick. Don’t try to sell stuff too quick. Honestly, just keep giving. A guy know asked me, he’s like, “Hey, man. I know a way that I can monetize my audience even more. And I’m like, bro, do you understand the whole point of leaving money on the table is to leave the money on the table? If you’re the person that sells something to every potential audience every time you talk or open your mouth or post a video that you’re just trying to sell something, I’m just curious how long you can go giving and giving and giving and giving without ever asking for anything. So, here are three rules to not be a sellout. Okay. One, reply to at least five comments every single post. You in there. Somebody comments, reply. Reply. Do anything. Support them. Add value. Answer their questions. But always reply to the comments. Don’t think you’re too [ __ ] cool to reply to comments. Two, reply to every single DM. If somebody follows you and they send you a direct message, always say something. I appreciate you saying hi. The person who showed me the way for this is Gary Vee. Gary has replied to every DM, every email, every SMS. Honestly, I don’t know when he sleeps. He’s been doing this for years. He might not be able to still do this, but if he could, he would. And I’ve just always tried to honor that. Third, give 10 times more free value than you ever asked for. I dare you to give away your best stuff. The thing that you get paid the most money to do for somebody, unpack how you do that, and give it away. Give it away. Give it away. My whole philosophy around content is to die empty. I sit in my office and I go do things that make me tens of millions of dollars. Then I come in here and I go, “Okay, let’s unpack it. Let’s show it.” Just like this video and every other video on my channel. I want to die empty. I have no reason to keep it inside. I give it all to everybody that wants it. The whole playbook’s there. Everything I’ve ever done, I don’t hold back. I don’t gatekeep. If you do this every day, you will build an audience that actually trusts you. They show up to support you. If you have a book come out, they will buy it. It’ll become a bestseller because you’ve poured into them for years without ever asking for anything. Now, everything we’ve done so far will help you build an audience that literally trusts you and will start to beg you to take their money because they trust you to solve problems. But only then do you get to this next step. Step number five, monetize. The cool part is is you don’t need millions of followers to make money. Many people in my life that I’ve taught this to can monetize with less than 10,000 followers. My buddy Mike Brown had 7,800, I think, when he came to me. And I showed him the simple strategy of just messaging the new followers, talking to them. In the first year, he did a million in revenue off of his Instagram alone. He doesn’t have a massive audience, but he talked to them. See, the importance is knowing the ways to make money from your brand and not coming across as a sellout. Monetizing the best way is essentially just solving a bigger problem some of your audience has for people who already trust you. Have you ever just followed somebody and they just every time they talk they just drop bombs and they’re just like so helpful and you buy their book or you read their blog post or their newsletter and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I have a problem today that I know he would have an answer for. I really wish he had a product or a place or a workshop or a seminar or something that I could go spend time to get clarity around my problem.” Those are the best scenarios. I created content for almost a decade before I ever sold my first book. And when it launched in 2023, it sold 20,000 copies in its first two weeks, becoming a number two behind Atomic Habits, Wall Street Journal bestselling book. It only sold because of the trust I built almost a decade of content, the value I poured into my audience without ever asking for anything. I always prioritize trust first. I think it like this, okay? You give away your information as much as you can, your best stuff, and then people pay you for implementation. And there’s only three ways to make money from your personal brand. The first one is ad revenue. Okay? The platform pays you for views. Like YouTube, for example, and now it’s a slow build and it’s unreliable, but over time, the YouTube revenue can cover the cost of your production, your editors, your videos. It’s a wild thing to watch. And that’s just ad dollars that come in because when you publish on a platform, they need to make money to cover their cost. And then all of a sudden, if you do it for long enough and it grows, you can make a lot of money from it. You essentially get a portion of the ads that people spend to run ads on top of your videos. Two is brand deals. And this is where most people make their money where they get paid by a brand to create content to collaborate. Now, it can be wild money. It can be good money, but you do need to align with the right partners. Okay? Most creators do this. The ones that suck at it align with partners and they’re willing to sell their soul for anybody’s money. And the third, and it’s one of my favorite, is you own the product or service that you talk about in your content. It’s got the highest upside because one, you built the product. You’re aligned with the product. You know how the product’s going to get delivered, the audience trusts you, and it’s something that you can invest in over and over and over again. Think about Mr. Beast with Feastables. You think about, you know, Ryan Trey with Joyide, Neelk Boys and Happy Dad, or Logan and Prime. And there’s a ton of them. Now, that is an advanced move. Most content creators are not business operators, so that one’s tougher to do. All I would say is pick one. If it’s ads or brand deals or your own products, but go hard. Go all in. Choose one strategy to monetize. Build the trust with your audience. Introduce that and don’t try to build them all at once. Master one and win. Now, those are the five steps to build a brand, to build trust, to monetize. That’s it. See, most people will watch this and they won’t do anything with it. But not you. You’re here because you’re like, you know what? I resonate with this and I know that I need to grow my business. I got to create content. I got to build my personal brand. I have to do it in a way that gets the right ideal customers and builds trust.

AI is not going to make you rich. Not the tools, not the agents, not the prompts, none of it. Whether you’ve made money with AI already or haven’t made a single dollar with it, I need you to hear this. I’ve skilled AI companies past a million dollars in under 6 months over and over and over again, and I’ve seen exactly what makes people rich with AI and what keeps them broke. So, in this video, I’ll be walking you through how to actually get rich with AI. Point number one, stop selling the tool. AI is just a tool. It’s like a database. It’s like an internet connection. It’s a thing. Tools don’t make people rich. Think of it this way. Selling AI is like a carpenter selling hammers. Selling a hammer doesn’t make him much more money. The carpenter who gets rich has a full toolkit. It’s the person who can solve real problems by using all the tools. Same with AI. You don’t need a tool. You need a tool kit that you know how to activate. And the first tool, the one to master right away is point number two, the hammer. The hammer is like an LLM, an AI, right? You got Claude, you got Chad GBT, you got Gemini, and it’s cool. It’s powerful. It can put a nail into this piece of wood, but it is just a tool. The most basic and universal tool in your toolkit is the language model, but it requires you to actually know how to swing it. Have you ever met somebody can’t even hold a hammer? They’re like, I’m going to hit that nail. It’s like you can’t even get it to contact with the nail. Amateurs with a hammer make more problems, create more holes, waste more resources than anything else. A pro, have you ever seen these guys? They like, it’s almost like they have a nail in their teeth or behind their ear and they just goang and it’s down. And it’s down. And you’re like, “How are you a real person?” Bang. And it’s down. You’re lucky I don’t have a nail right now. I’d put it right through this wood. LLMs are the same. They’re very easy to use. like a hammer, but it requires manual input. It requires the mind, the fingertips to guide it, to make it do something useful. Most people are using these LLMs like a fancy Google search to answer questions. They type, they get answers, they copy, they put in another system, and they move on. And their output most of the time is the way you fix that is having a prompting framework and a strategy for using it. And that’s what I call the maps framework. Every great AI prompt follows this process. The M stands for mission. That’s the first one. So you start with the outcome, not the task, not the reason behind the task. Give it direction. Like what are you trying to do? The wrong way would be saying like find me leads. A better way would be I need 30 new customers a month every month to hit my revenue targets. See how that becomes the mission. The second one which is the A which stands for ask. What is the task you needed to perform? Now this is where we get specific. one clear request, not just like a bunch of ideas. Be clear as possible. So bad would be help me with leads. Good would be give me 40 qualified leads for my business and include their email and their cell number. It turns out the LLMs love to solve problems for you if you’re very specific about what you want. The P in MAP stands for parameters. That’s the third one. What is the context? What do you know about the mission? What do you know about the ask? Right? Is it your ideal customer profile? It’s what’s worked before. The more you give it, the sharper the output. So, pro tip, if you got a lot of stuff you want to tell it, I like to use voice. I like to hit there. You hit that little button to talk to it. And you just talk and talk and talk. I can talk three times faster than I can type. And so can you. The S in maps. Number four is the shape. What should the output look or sound like? Tell it the format. If you want it in a CSV spreadsheet, why would you copy and paste the output and go put it into a spreadsheet? Just tell it. Do you want bullet point? Do you want markdown file? If you ever copy and paste something from one system to another and the formatting goes away, get it to do an asky. You’re welcome. Do you want the output to be conversational? Do you want it formal? How long do you want it? All of those are specifics to the shape. You can even give it a screenshot of what you want it to look like. Maybe you’ve seen something you like from somebody else. Just copy it, paste it into your chat, hit enter, and watch it do its magic. Just follow the maps framework and watch that output come out dialed. Now, most people ask at this point, “Well, Dan, what’s the best LLM to use?” Well, if you’re a business owner and you’re looking to buy back your time using AI, I created a full document with my whole AI tech stack tailored specifically for business owners. So, if you want it, find me on Instagram and DM me the word YouTube stack, and I’ll send it right over. So, you now know how to use a hammer. That’s cool. But not every problem is a nail. Which leads me to point number three, the screwdriver. The screwdriver is AI automation. You think of like Claude Co-work, you think of N8N, Zapier, Make.com. Essentially, anytime you have a task that has to happen over and over again, you use a screwdriver. That is way different than using a hammer. Instead of manually prompting AI, you can actually build a workflow that once you set it up, the AI can be super smart and be on a schedule and repeat that task over and over again. That’s where you start getting massive leverage in your life. And that is what people are willing to pay for cuz it solves a bigger problem. And the reason why it’s more like a screwdriver is because the solution is more permanent. It’s like if I have a screw and I need to put things together, once I screw it in, it’s not coming apart. Like the whole point is for it to stay together forever. And once you set up an automation, it’s set it and forget it. Set it and forget it. That’s it. For example, I get a report sent to me every Friday in Slack that analyzes every call in every company that I’m involved in from a sales point of view that tells me how they’re doing. Happens every time like clockwork and it keeps me on the pulse of the revenue. Now, how do you know if a task is worth automating? Well, that’s what I call the rule of R. One. Is it repetitive? Is it a task that you do at least once a week? If you’re doing it every week, then you might want to look at as an opportunity to automate. And if you’re doing it every day, you’re definitely needing to get yourself a screwdriver. Number two, is it rulebased? Does the task have the same set of inputs and outputs every single time? The third is, does it generate a return? Does it save you more time to automate it than it takes you to manually do it every time? Cuz I’m telling you, some people are automating they shouldn’t automate. Don’t build something that takes 60 hours to build and automate only to save you 2 minutes a week. If the answer is yes to all three of these Rs, then automate them. Now you got a hammer and a screwdriver of AI. Now, this is where it gets really fun. What if AI didn’t just do tasks for you? What if it took over entire workflows? Point number four, the power drill.

The power drill is a gentic AI. If you haven’t heard of things like OpenClaw, Manis, if you’ve been watching my videos, you’ve heard of it. Apex, one of my platforms, or even things like Perplexity Computer. The hammer needs swinging. The screwdriver, you have to turn it, right? The power drill, you just point it, pull the trigger, and it does the work. You’re not doing any of the heavy lifting. It’s a power machine. You’re setting the direction and letting the tool take over. That’s the power. See what I did there? of Agentic AI. Agentic systems are supposed to just do work for you. So, if you want to build an app that helps you with your nutrition, you just say, “Build me an app that helps me with my nutrition.” Hit enter and then it’s done. Create a spreadsheet that models this scenario. Enter and it’s done. Real Agentic systems can do multiple systems, multiple workflows all over for you automatically. And it’s a workflow that’s complete, not a step in a process. So, think about it. You have like things that got to get done. Those are steps. You have automation. Those are steps within a process. You still have to set up those automations. With Aentic, you just say, “Here’s the outcome I want.” And it just it does it and you don’t even know how it did it cuz it don’t matter. So, I use Apex, one of our platforms, to build a new system called Agent Forge. It looks at a research body of all this knowledge about what’s the future of AI and agentic platforms and operators and humans on the loop, all the crazy stuff I’m in, and then identifies opportunities to build products. Then it creates the website, creates the ad, tests the whole thing, gets leads, even gets people to pay to be bumped up in the weight list to then coordinate the recruiting of the people who are going to build that company and have them show up and the product validated so we can launch it into the world. LLMs can’t do that. Automation can’t do that. You need an agentic system to go end to end. If you want to start replacing your workflows with AI agents today, this is what you got to do. It’s called human on the loop. Most people have heard human in the loop, which is kind of like the automation screwdriver side where you have like a bunch of different things going on, but the human’s still like kind of pushing things forward. human on the loop is the complete loop is being done by an agent and then the human is just there to inspect what it expects. No different than I have an employee that works for me and I’m just making sure that the thing that I asked them to do is being done right. Cuz if you’ve ever had longunning tasks with agents, it can start to have what’s called context rot. Their brain stops working right. So you need to show up, reset it, and maybe give it some guidance. So this is how we do it. Number one, pick a full workflow. I dare you to take a full workflow. idea to a completed output and use that as your challenge workflow. The second is go back and use the maps framework to prompt your agent. Make sure it has the mission and the ask, the parameters and the shape to actually get it to do what you need it to do. The third step is once you get the output, do not jump in. I dare you not to touch it. Whatever your impulse is to do once the thing is done, I want you to challenge yourself to have the agent do it. So, if it’s to share with somebody, maybe it’s to review it to see if it’s any good. Have the agent review its own work. That is an advanced move that most people don’t even consider. And the fourth is you got to guide it. See, most people try to tell the AI how to do the task and it might know a way, probably a 100 ways to do it faster, better. So, just guide it towards the outcome and let it surprise you in its decisions to getting the thing done. Some of you are too nice. That’s the problem. And it’s like confused. It’s like, it said I was doing good, but then it’s upset with me. No, just be like, “Be better. I trust you. You do it.” And you’d be surprised half the time it actually is like, “Oh, okay. I’ll just get it done.” And a pro tip is I have separate agents that all they do is check the work of my other agents. So, I have like a coding critique and every time there’s code written, it goes to the critique. It writes a list of things to improve, send it back to the coder, and it fix the code it wrote based on the critique. Separate people. Just like humans, we have specialized knowledge. And if you have somebody that’s like really good at finding real estate deals, but somebody else that’s really good at running the numbers on the real estate deals, have those as separate agents and have this agent check its work. So now you got the whole toolkit. The tool for thinking, the tool for automating, and the tool that runs the entire workflow. Yeah. But remember, AI tools are not what makes you rich. So what does point number five, the orchestrator, owning the toolkit actually isn’t the win. Knowing when and where to use it, that’s going to make you money. See, most people fail because they just bounce between tools. They’re like, “Oh my god, I know how to use Cloud Code. Oh my gosh, I know how to use Nano Banana. Oh my gosh, I know how to use OpenClaw. Cool. What does it do? What problem does it solve?” See, the orchestrator picks and chooses between all these three intentions and solves the right problems. Problems make you money. Write it down. Get the tattoo. Problems make you money. The bigger the problems, more money shows up in your bank account. And the only way you’re ever going to get rich is if you can sell the solution to somebody. How much would you pay for a hammer? 10, 15 bucks. But how much would you pay a carpenter? They would come in and fix a massive leak in your roof and change the whole roof without you lifting a finger. Now we’re talking thousands of dollars, 5,000, 10,000. See, the carpenter doesn’t sell the hammer, the screwdriver, or the power drill. They fix a problem, which is a massive leak in your roof, and give you a new one. That’s the orchestrator. They use the entire toolkit to sell a solution. I see this happen all day long where people are like, “Hey, we’re selling this AI solution. Normally, it would cost them $5,000 for this. We can do it for $500.” And I’m having a hard time selling it. And I’m like, “Well, if they’re already used to paying $5,000, why don’t you just sell the thing for $5,000? And if you can do it for $500, keep the difference.” I actually think most companies shouldn’t even bother saying it’s AI. If you have a cheaper, faster, better way to do it, that’s your benefit. The customer doesn’t care. They just want their roof fixed. When’s the last time you asked your carpenter, your plumber, your HVAC guy what tool he used to do the thing? Now, I know some of you guys said, “Well, just yesterday, cuz you’re high factfinder, not talking to you. I’m talking to normal people.” And that’s the thing. You have to be a director, not a doer. Actually teaching yourself to stop doing so much and start using the AI to get the work done. That’s where the power comes in. And that’s only when you start being rich. So, stop chasing trends. Stop trying to add AI to everything and start solving real problems. That’ll make you a lot of money. AI is just like the internet. It’s just like mobile. These are technologies. These are not ways to make money. Always work backwards from the customer and go get paid. Drop a comment below and let me know what tool are you going to add to your toolkit so you can level up and make more money. And remember, if you want a full AI tech stack, DM me YouTube stack on Instagram and I’ll send it right over for free. And if you want to learn how you can get dangerously smart with AI, click here and I’ll see you on the other side. The set it and forget it. It’s like a It’s like a chicken. No, it’s a chicken air fryer. Why this is such a dinky screwdriver? This video will make you dangerously smart with AI.

You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

If you know these seven principles, you will get rich. Whether you’re broke or you make money, but you know you should be making more, this video will fix both. I learned seven principles of success that took me from dead [ __ ] broke at 24 to being a multi-millionaire by 28 in 4 years. And these principles aren’t just some generic advice. We’ll leave that for the other people. Each one has a number that’s going to make it crystal clear on how you act on each and every one. Starting with principle number one, know what you’re building. The idea is this. Can you get a business that can generate profits without you? It’s very simple. If you vanish poof, tomorrow, would the whole thing collapse? Would it slowly decay? My rule is I always build a business so I can sell it because whether I do or don’t, a company I could sell is a great company to run. So, what metric should you measure so that you know that what you’re building is the right thing? It’s called enterprise value or EV. And here’s how you calculate it. The first thing is we have to take your yearly profits. Then you multiply it by the industry multiple. This is the average amount of money that buyers, if you build something that people want to buy, will pay on the profit. The less risk the business has, the higher the profit, the better the multiple. So it’s called durable revenue. So, for example, let’s use real simple numbers. If you’re making 500,000 in profit each year, okay, you have a business that does 1.5 million and it’s 30% profit. That’s a half a million dollars in profit. You then look at the industry average, let’s call it an agency, and it’s got a 3x multiple, then that means your business to a buyer could be worth $1.5 million. That’s your enterprise value. That’s why when you’re making decisions about growing your business, you want to think, can I invest some of that profit back into the business to increase my enterprise value because you can take that from 15 to three million fairly quickly. So now we know what we’re building and how to build it. But what makes a business more valuable than another? Principle number two, keep what you make. This is what separates a 2x business from a 10x business. It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. Every dollar that you keep after you pay all your expenses makes the business more valuable. Some people have big revenue in tiny little margins and to me that revenue is just vanity, right? You can hit 10 million in revenue and still wake up broke. Those people show up in my DMs every day because they don’t know this. Until you actually know how to keep every dollar that you’re making, then you’re just flying blind in business and you’re not creating wealth. You’re not being efficient. A metric that aligns the most with how much you keep is gross margin. So essentially we have revenue. How much money do you make per month? Then you got to subtract the cost. Okay, to deliver everything that came with the item or the services. How much did that make? Okay, that’s per month. And if you do that, if you have revenue minus cost to deliver, that equals gross profit, which is different than profit. Look, profit is typically your revenue minus all your expenses. This is gross profit on just the things sold. So to get our gross margin number, what we got to do is take our gross profit. Okay? I know I’m asking you to do math. Stay with me. We’re going to have some fun. Divided by our revenue, how much money did I make that month? Okay? times 100 because it’s a math equation and that equals our gross margin. So, for example, if my revenue for the month is 50K, okay, and my cost to deliver was only 10K, that means my gross profit, pretty awesome, equals $40,000. Cool. Now I take the 40k and then I divide it by my revenue which is 50k and then I multiply by that 100 so I get the number 80% gross margin. Your accountant has probably never been able to explain this to you and you’re like I don’t get it. My rule is gross margin for any business I’m involved in never falls below 70%. Now if you own a restaurant you’re like well that’s freaking awesome. I don’t get it because average food cost in a restaurant, the margin is about 23%. It’s different for every business, but that is where I like to stay because the higher the gross margin when I’m building a business, the more profit I usually have at the end of the month, which means the business is more valuable to increase my enterprise value. So, knowing your margins is step one, but understanding all the principles to apply it to your business, that’s a completely different thing. So, if you want my internal scale your business workbook with the exact steps that I walk all my coaching clients through for free, just DM me the word YouTube workbook on Instagram and I’ll send it right over. So, having large margins is awesome. So, awesome. But the large margins won’t feel very good if you can’t maintain them. Which brings us to the next principle. Principle number three, you got to plug the holes in the bucket before you fill it. If you’re losing clients faster than you can bring them in, there’s a point where you will just be banging your head against the ceiling. See, most entrepreneurs that see clients leave and just go, “Oh, I have a marketing problem. I got to go run more ads. I got to get more people to show up.” Wrong move. If you just pour water into a bucket with massive holes in it, you can’t pour enough water fast enough to fill that bucket up. And that is what people often do. How about you keep the customers you have or sell more to them versus trying to find some new ones? Do you know it’s seven to eight times cheaper to sell something to an existing client than it is to go find a new one. So where should you put your effort and at what level? The metric that helps you plug the holes in that bucket is called turn rate. So here’s how we calculate it. Super simple. So first thing is we need the clients that we’ve lost that month. Okay, clients lost. How many this month did you lose? Okay, in the month. Then we divide that number by the total amount of clients we had at the beginning of the month, not the end of the month, beginning of the month. And to make that a percentage, like always, we multiply it by 100. And that equals your churn rate. So, for example, let’s say you had three people leave. At the beginning of the month, you started with 100. That would mean times 100, you would have a 3% turn rate. Most businesses should be at 3% monthly churn. Okay? Now, obviously, every business is harder to calculate this. If you have a restaurant, you have an agency, you have a retail store, it’s a little different, but you can still look at the transaction volume. You can look at the average purchase rate. You can figure out through the data what yours is. And honestly, just look at like how often are people buying from you again and again. If you never lose a customer, think about it. It’s graph, okay? And on the top side, you have how much you’re growing. But on the bottom side, you have how many customers you’ve lost. If you grabbed all those people underneath that line and you put it on top of the customers you currently have, that’s how much bigger your business would be if you never lost a customer. For most businesses, that could be two or three times bigger. So now we know how many clients are leaving. The next thing we need to know is what are those clients actually worth? Think about this. The client you already have is worth way more than the one you’re chasing. Most founders are out there spending all their time and energy trying to chase new customers and not realize that the ones that they have now could be worth a lot of money if they knew what that was worth. I’m a big fan of always growing what you’ve got before you go chase what you don’t. And the metric that tracks what each one of your clients are worth is lifetime value or LTV. Here’s how we calculate it. It’s a super cool simple formula that nobody teaches. So what you do is you take the average revenue per client per month. Okay, how much is that number? And then you divide it by the monthly churn percent. Okay? And that will give you your lifetime value. Okay? Aren’t you curious what your customer is worth? I am. I’m curious for you. Let’s say for example a customer pays you a 100 bucks a month. Okay, divided by let’s say you have a 2% monthly churn 0.02 then that means your customer is worth $5,000. You see why this gets exciting? Because instead of losing customers and you keep them, they get worth more and more and more. And when you do that, guess what goes up? Enterprise value. I know it all stacks together. Okay, the important note is that churn is the drag on this number. Okay, obviously what you get paid every month is important, but most people don’t realize that if they can cut their churn in half, they double the value of their customer with no extra effort. Same price, twice the value. So, yes, you can get more value from your existing clients, but you still have to grow the business. And every time you do that, it does cost you something. Principle number five, know your spend. Here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional speaker, a coach, a restaurant, a retail store, sell stuff online. Before you ever get paid, a client costs you money. Okay, think about it from an ads point of view. Maybe you got to pay a sales commission. Maybe you had to do a promotion, a marketing thing, maybe you had to pay to go on a radio station. There’s cost that goes into making the market aware of you before somebody ever gives you money. And most founders and business owners never tally up what a single yes from a client actually costs. The richest operators I know know this number cold. Broke ones, they guess. And if you can’t price the yes, you can’t price growth. The metric that tracks how much a client costs is called the customer acquisition cost or your CAC. So first you have to take everything that you spend to get a customer and know what that means. So that is your cost to get a client. I’m talking the ads, the sales commission, the software that you had to pay for those teams. And that’s how much you spent that month. Then you divide how many new clients you added that month. Okay? Not leads, not trials, actually paying clients that gave you money. And that will give you your CAC, your cost to acquire a customer. Let’s say, for example, you spent $10,000 in expenses that month to acquire customers and you got you would divide the number by 20 20 new customers. That means every one of them cost you $500. So, your CAC to acquire customer is $500. Isn’t this cool? Now, you can evaluate opportunities to grow the business. So, somebody comes to you and they say, “Hey, I can get you new customers for $100.” You say, “Well, that’s cool because right now I’m paying $500.” If you can get it for $100, that’s a steal. Let’s run it. Let’s try it out. Right? But if somebody came to you and said, “Hey, I can get you a customer for $1,000.” You might go, “How about no?” So, here’s a pro tip. There’s another metric called the CAC payback period. Meaning, how much do you spend and how quick can you get it back? So, let’s say a customer pays me $100 a month and my cost to acquire a customer is $100 a month. That means that I can grow unlimited with a 30-day credit card to pay it back. See what I’m saying? But if I have to spend $500 to get a customer and I only make that money back after 6 months, the faster I grow, what you hear is the sound of cash flying out of your business cuz you got to finance that growth. Even if the customer is worth $5,000 to you, you want to make sure that the speed that you can get back the cash that you spent to acquire the customer is as fast as possible. So that’s why a lot of companies charge setup fees. They try to get you to increase your average order value. They try to get you to pre-by something before you use it because that cash finances the acquisition cost. Cuz if not, you have to finance other people’s value that you’re delivering with your business. And that’s just not a fun place to be. Okay, so now you know how much a customer is worth to you. That’s awesome. But what if you’re trying to grow and spend money to acquire customers, but they can’t find you? Which brings us to principle number six. Tighten your funnels. Every week, new people know about you. They find content. They talk to somebody. They refer to you and they walk into your business, your website, and they want to buy from you. They raise their hand. And yet, somehow somewhere along the process that they wanted to give you money, they weren’t able to do that. It happens in my businesses. There’s broken links. People text me them. It’s just a normal thing in business. The problem is is that most founders don’t even see it happening. So the metric that tracks how many clients that come through your funnel and drop is your conversion rate. So here’s how we calculate it. First you take your funnel and you break it into all the separate steps that are involved. Think leads, qualified, booked, showed, and closed. That’s usually the big ones, right? Each stage is a new yes. If the person doesn’t go from stage one to stage two, it’s a no. the end of the day, the conversion rate is the total amount of percent of people that started and finished by giving you money. So at each stage that says yes, those are called survivors. So we want to count at each stage how many people survived that question. So if you have 100 leads and then 40 people qualify and then 10 people book, eight people show, 5% close, that means your overall conversion rate is 5%. So now you got your funnels figured out and you look and you go, hm, where should I focus my time? You need to figure out which step is broken and then go attack that step. So this allows you to know where you should be focusing your time so that you can improve the business the fastest. And then next we have principle number seven. Know how long you can go. Every month that goes by where you don’t make any money then it has to come out of pocket. It’s why when people start companies they usually empty out their savings account. But at a certain point you’re going to run out of energy and time to grow this business if you’re not making any profit. You need to know how many tries, how many months do you have ahead of you so that you can calibrate each decision. Experienced founders, the best, know exactly how many months they have left. Your P&L, your profit and loss statement, it’s an autopsy after the fact, not a diagnosis. Your business could be done in 30 days and you haven’t done anything about it cuz you didn’t even know. The metric that tracks how long your business has until it has to shut its door is called your burn rate and runway. Okay, so the first thing we need to do is figure out what is our burn rate. So essentially you take the cash out which is a negative number because it’s gone. Then you add the cash that’s coming in. This is your sales any kind of revenue that’s really important. Okay. And that’s a positive number. And then whatever is left over that may be a negative number. And essentially that is your burn. And for example, if you’re spending 40 grand, okay, and the money coming in is only 20K, okay, then that means that your burn per month is negative $20,000. So that means every month that goes by, you lose $20,000. So now we need to know how much cash is in the bank. Cash in bank, right? Minus your burn. Okay, equals how many months your runway. Okay, essentially how many months can you continue this way? Okay, in the business world, I call this default debt. How many months before your default debt? Now, if you’re making more than you’re spending, game on. But what happens is oftent times we make investments, we make bets, and we can make that ratio get flipped again, even if at one point we’re making more than we’re spending. So, for example, if I start the business and I somehow get $100,000 together and I’m burning every month 20K, then that means I have 5 months of runway. 5 months until I’m at zero. 5 months until I’m default debt. At minimum, you obviously want to make that number as far as possible into the future. If you’re 2 to 3 months away, take massive crazy high volume action because one bad month can actually make this number a lot closer than you think. And one way I do this so that I’m never surprised is I do a daily cash report. That means every day I get how much cash came in, how much cash went out, and I’m paying attention to it so I can create a rhythm or a pulse on my cash. So those seven principles, if you follow them and you focus on them, you will increase the value of your business more than anything else. Now you know what levers to pull to improve it. What I want to ask you below in the comments is let me know out of those seven, which one did you feel you need to go calculate and go come back and calculated this week? I don’t need to know the answer, but I need to know that you did the work. The truth is the winners aren’t the smartest people in the world that are like so genius level IQ. They’re the ones that know their numbers. They know what to measure and they know how to fix