people. That's the goal, and I pursue it every day in some capacity, whether it's through a new podcast episode or a coaching call with my clients. Every single day someone says this helped me, thank you. So I focus on the goal every day, but the game is in the way I'm going to do that.
My goal hasn't changed for years, but the game changes all the time. That's a big, big distinction that most people don't get. They focus on money as the goal, and when they don't hit the money, they get upset. Look at me, I'm a failure — self-pity, self-pity. The reality is that goal you created is outside of your control, because you don't have control over the thoughts, habits, actions and behaviour of complete strangers on the internet. You can influence them but not control them. You've said, I'm going to make my identity, my beliefs about myself and my emotional state completely dependent on an external variable I have no control over. How is that working out for you? Instead, my goal is to do something I do have control over, which is to be of service or to put something out there that's going to help at least one other person. I can say and do that every day. And if I'm doing that, then I'm already winning.
For people looking to get their gifts out into the world, do you think it's harder now because the space is more crowded?
Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘harder’. The simple answer is yes, but let me make a key distinction. When there are more people doing what you do, you may complain that the market is overcrowded or oversaturated. This is a belief that is rooted in lack, and lack is an illusion. That's a hard idea for people to take in. I operate from a context that lack is an illusion. There's no such thing as lack. You don't believe me? Go look in nature. My home borders on national forests. Thousands and thousands of trees, and thousands of leaves on each one. How many grains of dirt and sand cover this beautiful desert of Sedona? Abundance is everywhere. You make a choice when you see lack rather than abundance. So I don't look at market saturation; I look at market sophistication. It's not that there are too many people; it's that the market becomes more sophisticated, and you need to become more sophisticated than the market.
So it's hard only in the sense that your skills as a communicator, an influencer, a marketer and a copywriter need to match the sophistication of the current market. If you're trailing the market, you're losing. It's not until you get ahead and lead the market that you win. Today, with what I know and what I've done, that's very easy for me to do. But for someone without the necessary marketing skills, yeah, it's going to be hard for them. Because it's like trying to be the best architect when you didn't go to architecture school, right?
How do you view social media marketing with your personal brand?
The first thing I would say is when I'm creating content about my life, it's never from a place of what do I want to share? or what will persuade people to like me? but rather, what about my life will provide value for somebody else? That's the difference. You know, I think there are chronic over-sharers. And they're doing so out of a need for significance and attention, a need to be liked, which we've already talked about. None of that matters to me. Why do I need attention? Okay, that's just completely irrelevant to me. What I want is to help people, and if this helps them, then I want it in front of them so it can help them, and if it can help more people, I want to get it out in front of more people. So everything I do passes through that simple lens. To me, it's as simple as that.
How did your habits change from when you reached that first million?
My answer to this might be a little different from most people's. When I hit that $400 000, I fell into a deep depression, and I'm normally a pretty happy, easygoing dude. I just started drinking and smoking pot and couldn't get off the couch. The reason for that, as I found in hindsight — because hindsight is 2020 — is that I had tied my sense of self-worth to some elusive dollar amount in the bank account. If I make a certain amount of money, then I will be good enough, I will be worthy enough, girls will want to date me, friends will want to like me, people will want to love me. And when all that money came in, I didn't feel any different. I was the same insecure loser I saw myself as. And that was very scary, very confronting. What got me out of it really was that I went down a path of spirituality. I developed a spiritual context in my life, and it changed everything. This is why I talk about this so much, because it changed my life and I want to give back. If what I have, and what I've done, resonates with you and you'd like to learn a little more, here's what I discovered in my own life.
The first thing that had to go was this strategy that most of us have, which is that in some way we've equated our work ethic and our effort with our deservedness. If I work enough, if I work harder, then I will be deserving of success. I decided I never ever wanted that to be the case. So what I tell my students today is, you should never work hard to be deserving of what you want. Work hard, because your clients deserve the best. They deserve the best of you. But it has nothing to do with your being more deserving.
And I can say that, conceptually, everyone is going to have to go on their own journey to work through that. Because the scariest thing is to spend years of your life working harder and longer only to wake up and realise you still tell yourself that story. I'm not worthy enough, and no amount of work will ever change that. Trust me. When you can be at peace with who you are, with the idea that you are worthy, that you are deserving; then you're not working from a place of fear or compensation, you know, trying to compensate for a lack. Everything you do is because you put your heart into it. So I want the people who come into my world to experience my best stuff. Because they deserve it. That's it. I pour my heart into everything I do because I love it and it doesn't feel like work.
How much do you work now in terms of effort? Do you quantify work now?
I hesitate to answer because the way the business runs is in cycles. It ebbs and flows. This year especially is very different, because last year there were 21 events. I had two masterminds with three events each. So there's six events right there. Then I had a program called Business By Design, then Next Level, and that came with two events. So now we're at eight. Then we ran two BBD lives a year. So there's 10. And I ran an affiliate mastermind for people who had won one of our big competitions.
What is the first thing you think someone should do when they're starting in the online course world?
The first thing they should do is sell it. People waste too much time in their comfort zone. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and the pudding is the profit. You don't have a business until someone gives you money. So why not be in business? Now, instead of spending a year working for free trying to build something, the reality is, you don't need all that stuff.
You get started, you can just sit there and say, I want to help people do this. And if you'd like me to teach you, here's how to sign up. We've had people do their beta launch or founding members launch with just two people. Better two than none. The problem is, it's as simple as this. Ours is a unique type of business. I mean, I've seen people who have been in other businesses come into this industry and get their butts kicked. And part of it is because their identity is wrapped up in the product, you know, and all they get to deal with is these confronting issues around themselves.
The other part of it is, well, kind of tied up in that. It's the Pareto principle on steroids — 5 per cent of the activities you do are directly responsible for 95 per cent of the results you want. The problem is, that 5 per cent is often far outside people's comfort zone. They can stay busy and distracted for a long, long time. What I like to say is business is very seductive and it will trap you all the time. Oh, I've got to do this first. But I need to do that first. I need to do my photo shoot and my business card and my website. I need to podcast, to get the Instagram, to produce six months of content. Now I need to do that. And a year goes by and they're like, ‘I don't get it. I've been working my arse off and have nothing to show for it’. That's because the only things that will drive the business forward
