Joshua Crisp | $11.3M in a Day Without Finishing High School

I was at a point, I remember my kids asking me, dad, why does Santa Claus never bring me what I want? My wife saying, why do we have to eat ramen noodles every single day? Why do we have to eat spaghetti with sauce every single day? What was the most amount of money that you made in a single year? About 11.3 million. If you don't sacrifice for your dreams, your dreams become the sacrifice. The question is, you have to ask yourself, are you okay with mediocrity? Something that I find fascinating is you have a ninth grade education. So many people bring up, Josh, you have no GED or equivalent, no high school diploma, no college degree, but you can sit in a Harvard boardroom and teach. You've had a lot of success in the digital marketing sphere. For those that are listening, how can they craft really, really solid offers? So one of the biggest piece of advice, and it's free to do, quick to implement, will change your life and trajectory of your business profitability in any niche or vertical is to start... What's your last message to the younger generation? What's going on, everyone? And welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James, and I'm here with Jack and Josh, and we've got an incredible guest for you all today. We're sitting down with one of the greatest internet marketers of your generation, of my generation. We're here with Joshua. Chris, Joshua, it's great to be with you, man. You went from, you know, Bath Bombs made you a millionaire. You sold tons of products, found winning products online. You've consulted for some of the biggest brands in the world, and ultimately built an empire in the e-commerce space, and have become one of the greatest, most renowned internet marketers of our generation. So we're very happy to have you with us today. My man, super excited to be here. Just blessed by the best. Appreciate you. I love it. But before we get into things, man, I want to go back, right? Because you didn't go to college. Nope. You didn't even finish high school. Nope. Ninth grade education. I know you said ninth grade education. Yep. So, you know, you get through school, you know, you have a family. There was a point in time where you were struggling to provide for your family. What was Joshua, Chris moment of, I'm tired of being sick and tired? What was that moment like for you and that turning point in your life to financial freedom? Yeah, so I'll never forget it, actually. And for those of you, this is longer format. So you want to make sure you have a piece of paper, a pencil, iPad, something to take notes with, note takers or money makers. Let me tell you, you will not, like a short pencil is better than a sharp mind. So please make sure you're taking notes. I vividly remember the turning point in my career because there's a saying that emotion creates motion, right? You don't get to the next level until you're sick and tired of the current level. You're getting started already, man. Come on, he's getting right into it early on. Hey, just for everybody listening. That's too aggressive, my man. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, for everybody listening right now, when he said get that paper out, get it out. Get it out. Because you are going to write down some gems. Continue. Get into that. No, no, absolutely. So again, a short pencil is better than a sharp mind and emotion creates motion. You will never get more momentum in your life or in your business to when you can genuinely say, I am pissed off. I am sick of this. In fact, my friends that know me that are great marketers, business owners, when they see I'm upset, they get excited because when I'm upset, magic happens, right? So first and foremost, too many people in business have a gambling mindset or mentality. I have a good job. I have a good career. I have something to fall back on. I have a plan B and they don't go all in, right? Tony Robbins says, if you want to take the island to burn the boat. So I was at a point, I remember my kids asking me, dad, why does Santa Claus never bring me what I want? My wife saying, why do we have to eat ramen noodles every single day? Why do we have to eat spaghetti with sauce every single day? Like all you're doing is working. There's no money. What are we going to do? And I remember that point, that conviction of feeling not like a man, not like a father, not like a provider. And at that moment in time, I told myself that I'm going to do anything and everything needed in order to be a provider and to do better for my family, right? So first and foremost, regardless of where you are, even in business, that's rock bottom, right? And the whole story is from nothing to something, from 725 to seven figures. That's what I'm known for. At that time, we were living in a one bedroom apartment. My rent was 375. I was getting help. I couldn't pay my rent and I was working nonstop. Why? I was a felon at 18, no high school diploma. And I was working at a recycling plant for 725 an hour. And I remember vividly having that same emotion, that same frustration then, and then also then at sub 10 million per year. Why am I stuck here? Why am I not growing? And that same frustration, that same emotion is what catapulted me when I was stuck later on at sub 10 million per year. So that's a very, very key lesson. So you were working a temp job, right? Basically just sorting through trash, stuff like that. How did you kind of take that leap into knowing getting started in entrepreneurship? Yeah, when did you realize you weren't going to get rich working for someone else? So here's the thing. Like if you, man, this is so crazy. Like I cannot make this up, right? It's actually in my book that I published this story. So I'm going to try to really scan over this, but it's a deep story. So I was working at a temp agency. It was called Spartan Staffing. The reason why I was working at a staff agency is because I had no high school diploma, no GED or equivalent, and I was a felon, AKA. Nobody wanted to hire me. I was a POS and I had to do whatever jobs no one else wanted to do. So on the bottom of all plastic, there's a triangle with a number. That's a recyclable grade in quality. In this recycling plant, there's no machines or technology or AI currently or at that time that can decipher a Pepsi can from a water bottle and then put them in different bales, right? So I was hand sorting trash with my bare hands, taking these bottles, putting them in different buckets, right? I'm talking about like poop, used condoms, the worst of the worst to give you a visual. It was a 50,000 square foot building. I was working for minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. I was working 12 p.m. to 8 a.m., night shift. How old were you at this point? At this point, I was, let me see, 2015, 10, I was 30, or no, I was 23 turning 24. So I was doing whatever it took, right? And too many of us, like you need to understand, you need to do whatever it takes at any point in your level in your life. Even when you're successful, you have to do whatever it takes. So what happened is I just got out of jail. I'm working there and I'm frustrated, but I'm showing up with a smile. And here's something that I've always done. I didn't learn this, I don't know what happened in my mind, but hopefully you can take away from this. Every single situation I try to improve or learn from, and maybe it came from my mom always telling me when I was young that, son, if you can always find a positive from a negative, there'll never be a negative. Man, why is this happening to me? Man, this sucks, man, this. Instead of why is this happening to me, maybe it's happening for you because what does not break you, you will break through. And tough times don't make successful people, right? I mean, tough times make, what is the saying I'm looking for? Tough times don't last, tough people do. Exactly, and then there's another one. Easy times create weak men and then hard times create strong men. Exactly, I was butchering it because. Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. I also was like the one where it's like life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. There it goes, so all those. And that's why I was like choking because there's so many good ones around that, but that was the whole mindset. So I'm showing up, I'm smiling, it's terrible, it's miserable, I'm not making any money. I meet my wife now, girlfriend at the time, through a mutual friend. So on my break, I go to visit her and I'm just hanging out and it's a little office about the size of this podcast studio. And she's taking orders online. And the owner of the business is sitting here at a normal desk, normal clothes, feet up taking sales calls, marketing. And I was fascinated because he owned his own business. That was when I was exposed to and you cannot grow to what you're not exposed to. I never knew that normal people like us could be business owners. I didn't know that. I generally did not know that. A lot of people don't know that, right? Until I was exposed to that. But the beautiful thing about your mind is once it's expanded to a new level of thinking, it can never be contracted to its original form of thinking. So once I was exposed to that, I became obsessed and your obsessions become your possessions. So I studied him, I studied him, I studied him. Long story short, he became my mentor, right? And the funny part is how life works, right? He became my partner and I blew his business up, making myself a millionaire. 725, rent 375, son sleeping in the one bedroom, we're sleeping in an air mattress in the living room with a shower curtain in the living room. Like we were pitiful poor. We were so poor that poor people felt pitifully for us. Poor I was, literally, literally. I didn't, I was doing anything and everything. Didn't have a computer, would walk to the library. We blew his business up so fast and so much we had to expand to a new building. That building was the recycling plant that I worked at for 725 per hour, hand sorting through trash. I remember asking for a $1 raise and the boss said no, because unfortunately you work hard, you do a terrible job, you smile, you're positive. However, there's nothing else that you could do. You don't have the skillset. So that was the last time that I would ever allow another man or anyone other than God to tell me what I'm worth, right? And that's pretty much how it worked and the rest is history. And one of the takeaways and because, you know, I worked at Chick-fil-A, he worked at Chick-fil-A for 725. You know, when you look back and you think on it, it's like, is an hour of my time really worth $7.45? It's absolutely insane. Here's the thing, too many people, and there's nothing wrong with having a job if that's what you want, but you know, a job is an acronym that stands for just above broke, right? And a salary is the price that they pay for you to forget about your dreams and you know the rest. It's the golden handcuffs. If you don't sacrifice for your dreams, your dreams become the sacrifice. So the question is, you have to ask yourself, are you okay with mediocrity and just getting by? Or do you know that you're called to do more, be more, be great and serve others? I generally believe that everyone should have some type of business or business interest, even if they don't think they're an entrepreneur, because it is the easiest way to generate additional revenue, right? Because you don't get paid in direct proportion to how long you went to school or what tests you've passed, you get paid in direct proportion to the value that you can bring. So what comes easy to you and hard to others? Everyone has a story, right? And you need to turn your mission into, your mission can turn you into a missionary. So for me, it was all of that resiliency and literally what I thought was a ball and chain, was really my gift, right? And God will never put you in a situation that you can't get out of, right? And the saying, and I just told my children this the other day, every new level, there's a new devil and every season has a reason. So if you're going through something and you think that you can't get out, you think that you're stuck, you think that you're broken, you think that you're broke, you think that it's not fair, it's actually happening to you. It's happening for you. It's not happening to you, it's happening for you. And all you have to do is change your mind. If you change your mind, you change your life. Hey, instead of thinking negatively about this, because the thing about negativity is it expands like a cancer at a rapid pace. Once you start negativity, you then lead to conviction around a negative outcome, which then allows you to lower your level of thinking, your standards, your self-confidence, and in result, you do worse. So what is becoming the best version of yourself? Doing great in all areas and in a pursuit of greatness in all areas, health, wealth, and happiness. So for me, the strategy, like even when I went to jail, I was terrified. I went to jail three hours away from home. No one came to visit me. I knew no one there. There was people fighting every single day, like serious criminals there. And I'm just a guy with no father, no real support, no mentor, just trying to make some money to provide for my family. My mother was a single mother. We were struggling, and I'm terrified. But I always found a way to come up with a positive outcome or a positive lesson from a negative circumstance. And that's one of the biggest pieces of advice that, again, my mother gave me. Couldn't teach me anything about credit or business, but that one specific thing, if you could turn any negative into a positive, you'll never have a negative. I took that, and I still run with it today. So you meet your mentor, and you become obsessed with this is an opportunity I've never seen before, and you're exposed to something that can become even greater. What did those next steps look like? Did you guys start a business together? Did you just learn from him originally for the first couple months or years? What were those next steps? Oof, this is so good, man. I hope you guys are listening. Most importantly, please, we're gonna take a break. Do not become addicted to education and allergic to execution. These guys put out such great content, and there's so much content. You can fall victim to analysis paralysis. So do it now. Now means no opportunities wasted. That's an acronym. Take action. Find one thing, take action on it, and implement it. Back to that. This is huge because somebody's gonna grasp what I'm about to say, and it's gonna change their life. First of all, I wasn't just hanging out here in his office. He's like, hey, Josh, I wanna make you a millionaire. You've got what it takes. He was a normal guy. First, I studied, right? I studied, and I became obsessed. I watched every single thing he did. Number two. So number one, study, become obsessed, know what you want. Number two, I asked the right questions. You guys asked the right questions. The more you learn, the more you earn, and the right lesson can change your life, right? So a skillset today, multiple eight figure earner, multiple eight figures generating digital and physical, my number one attribute is when I'm in the right room, I ask the right questions. So I'm in this room. I'm studying him day after day. I become obsessed. I work up the courage. I come up with a strategy. I'm gonna learn from this guy. I'm gonna figure out how to do what he does, whatever it is. I knew nothing about the business. Never even seen the warehouse at this point. Started asking the right questions. All successful people, you have to understand this. Time is the most valuable asset that we all have. Why? You guys have interviewed a billionaires. It's fine if you don't get it back. You never get it back. It's a currency that's spent by the second, and once it's deposited, there cannot be a withdrawal. It doesn't matter how many billions of dollars you have, how successful you are, you can never buy that time back. So what I've learned, I call this the breadcrumb theory. Successful people or people that are successful in any area of their life, when asked a question or when people want to learn from them or become mentored by them, they will give you a breadcrumb. And I've caught myself doing this subconsciously, even knowing the power of this. We talked about how you guys given the voice to the public and the courage to go talk to people. People like me would brush, because hey, there's no value here. It's a one-sided transaction. I'm just gonna call a spade a spade. It's a one-sided transaction. There's no value for me to give you all of my game, and then you're not gonna do anything with it anyway. Why am I here? Because number one, I got an opportunity. Number two, I took action on an opportunity. Number three, I did everything I could to go as hard as possible on the opportunity. That's the three pieces of success. So he gave me breadcrumbs, started asking questions, would teach me a little bit, kind of cut it off, kept asking questions. I said, listen, this is what I'm doing right now. This is how much money I'm making. I want to do more for my family. You have given me hope. I did not know you could be a business owner and be a normal person. I want to be a business owner. I want to make more money for my family. And what was he doing? So he was a bath and body manufacturer. So he did business to business for bath and body products. He made bath and body products. People bought from him and then resold. So what he ended up doing is he ended up saying, okay, cool, well, I have these products that I can't sell. They were bath bombs. They were actually his least sold product at the time. I have some laying around that are different colors, fragrances that I can't sell. Take these, try to figure out how to sell them. So then I asked him, I said, what would you recommend? Because I hear you talking. I would sit here and listen to him on the sales calls. And he would tell everybody, figure out how to sell them online. It's low overhead, right? It's high margin, less touch points. That's the all I ever heard him talk about is less touch points, high margin. And what everybody did is they would take the product and then they would go start a boutique. They would go start a store. They would go hire people and start running Facebook ads. And then three to six months, they'd be out of business and they wouldn't reorder. For him, he made money off of reorders, right? Not just one and done. So when I asked him, what's the one thing you would do? One thing by Gary Keller, that's a book. What is the one thing you would do? He told me, figure out how to sell it online. He was not selling physical products online retail or business to consumer. He was doing it business to business. His only traffic source was SEO, search engine optimization. You type in soap, you type in bath bombs, he's number one in the world for all categories. That's how he grew his business to eight figures. So I obsessed over that. In fact, I slept in the office, I worked nonstop and I started with eBay and then Etsy. And the big whale was Amazon. He kept talking about Amazon. I kept talking about Amazon. Amazon's gonna be the future. Amazon's gonna be the future. I knew nothing about Amazon. So Etsy, eBay, Shopify with Google shopping ads. And then I got on Amazon. Well, in 2015, beginning of 2015, I was one of the top 200 sellers on the platform when it wasn't called Seller Central, it was called Vendor Express. And the rest is history, man. One product, one SKU, $1 million in sales, less than 12 months, made me a millionaire. Ended up being his bestseller. We scaled like crazy. The rest is history. I sold millions of them. But it didn't start out that way. You had tried a couple of times before you had that successful launch with that third product or the fourth product, correct? So when he said Amazon, like I thought the product was stupid. I didn't use the product, never used the product. I'm like, I can't sell this, this is stupid. He can't sell it, this is stupid. So I'm trying other products. Like as I'm studying Amazon, I'm learning about product research. There's a software called Jungle Scout. I'm looking at other products. I'm scrounging up money trying to launch other products, right? And I'm launching products that I think would be a good market fit. My first one was a USB dual port car charger. This is 2015, like now technology is just crazy, but you had the big cigarette car charger things that you plug in with the dual ports. It was the first product, got massacred. But I'm thinking, okay, what's something cheap that I can sell for high margin that everybody needs? I didn't understand competitiveness. I didn't understand market fit. I didn't understand differentiation and all the different marketing strategies I did. Second product I launched, I tried to launch was a garlic mincer device. It's like, it looks like pliers, but you put garlic cloves in it. It minces garlic. I like garlic, I use it on everything. It was hard to get fresh garlic on meals. They had good search volume, but then again, it's hard to differentiate and provide more value on such a universal generic product, right? Third product was a mat that was sticky that you could put on the wall or put on your dash and it was made to hold your phone or change, stuff like that. All of them failed. They all failed for three different reasons. Number one, the charger beat the supplier to death and you never wanna save money or increase margin by reducing the quality of your product. That was the first mistake. Number one, super saturated competitive industry. And then I made the cheapest one possible to make the most amount of money was terrible. So the last thing you wanna do is decrease the value of the product. You never wanna profit off of diminishing the quality of the product. If you're in manufacturing of a physical product or even you create a digital product, you never want to profit off of reducing the quality of your team, reducing the quality of your product or reducing the quality of the ecosystem. I was trying to profit off getting the highest margin by the lowest cost product. That is a good strategy. You wanna negotiate, but you don't want the quality to be lower. The second one, another niche product, generic, hard to improve, hard to solve a big problem, got crushed. Third one was a trending product. I never go into trends because trends go up and just as fast as they go up, they go down. We want sustainability. So now I use Google Trends and you can see the historical data. How long has it been selling? What's the search volume? So that thing went up like this, went back down. Fourth one I did was Fidget Spinner, same thing. Went up, went down. So the first product I made the million dollars with was the first product and that's when I listened to my mentor, went with that product. And here's the lesson. Do not make emotional decisions when it comes to business. Make data-driven decisions. Even in my digital marketing business and in my coaching consulting companies, I never create a product that I think the audience would like. I create a product that the audience ask for. So one of the biggest piece of advice and it's free to do, quick to implement, and will change your life and trajectory of your business profitability in any niche or vertical is to start surveying your audience. Go do that right now. Go to Google Forms, it's free, number one. Number two, use ChatGBT to create a form. Give it good prompting, good prompt engineering. Don't just take the first iteration. Go two, three iterations deep. Really dive deep, really refine it and create a survey asking your client and if you don't have a product yet, your potential client, what is your biggest needs? What is your biggest problems? What do you see that the marketplace doesn't have? How can I serve you at the highest level? What do I do good or what do you think I would do good? And ask it very specific questions and then create a product around that, right? So for you put the bath bombs on Amazon, what made you guys stand out that listing on Amazon? Amazon specifically, that you were able to generate a million in sales. This is so good because it ties into what we just talked about, right? What is the problem that I solved? So the number one brand in the world retail for bath bombs is lush, right? There's one at the domain, right? Um, and they were known for the bath bombs. They were the number one bath bomb retailer in the world. Why? Because they had a patent on the bath bombs, but you can't have a monopoly. It's against the law. So once their patent patent was up, it just happened to be around the time that I started selling, and that's why he couldn't sell them right. Which I didn't know any of this. Now, again, you can go to Google patents, check your product, see if it's patented by another, uh, another, uh, competitor, right? But what I did and how I was able to crush them, I was number one in the world. I was selling hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, like six figures profit a month with this product. What I did is again, I assert, I created a community Facebook community. Step one free. I love bath bombs. Created the community. I create, then I started to create multiple communities around that niche and I was cultivating herds. Once I cultivated the herds and the reason why herds are important. I'm going to get to in just a second is because it's multi-dimensional for marketing. Step one was coming up with the problem. I call this the big domino. If you can knock the big domino, the other dominoes follow behind it. What is the number one thing you guys want? You know what they all said? Take a guess. What's the number one thing? This is a million dollar lesson. Multi-million probably eight figure, eight figure lesson. Number one thing that bath and body people want, or the biggest problem or the biggest need, the biggest ask in the bath and body space, specifically around bath bombs. I don't know. I'm going to go with like, smell good. Like smell good. The experience. The experience. Smell good. The experience. How long does it last? How long does it last? So these are all three valid points. The number one thing that they wanted was selection. All bath bomb sets were bath bomb sets, meaning the same six, the same 10, the same 20, they want a variety. They want variety. That's why Lush did well. You go to Lush's store. There's 50 of them, right? The problem is they're 10 to $15 each. So, okay. People like the sets because you get a dozen for 25 bucks. It's cheaper than Lush. They don't like the, they don't like the limited selection. How are the March? They, they, they want to like candles basically. Like you go to like candle store. How are the March on bath bombs? So I'll get it, but make sure I want you guys to grasp this. So once, so build the community one, build the community to survey them, ask them again, Gary Keller, the one thing. Cause we're all wrong. We're all wrong. You guys are all wrong. Yeah. But, but the one thing, what is the one thing I can do? What is the one problem I can solve that, that'll make all of you guys happy selection quality quantity, right? Selection amounts, right? So what we did is we created a box where every single month you get 12 new iterations, 12 new exclusive bath bombs to amazon.com it's like crumble. So now every month, so now two things happened with that in the second one. I didn't even, it makes me look like a genius, but I didn't even plan for this at the time. Now I know about this, but two things happen. Number one, the sales shot because I solved the biggest problem in the space, solve the biggest problem in the space, the one thing that you focus on the biggest problem in the space. Number one, I did that crushed it. Number two, I set myself up for the Rolls Royce of marketing and sales. You know what the Rolls Royce of marketing and sales is recurring revenue, recurring revenue. Now my subscribe and save was recurring revenue was shooting up because people knew every month I was solving their need. They no longer had to go to lush. They no longer had to keep trying new brands. They liked our quality. They wanted different iterations every single month. And then to make things sweeter, I added a free gift. No one in the platform did it. So every single month, a new gift, random gift, a surprise of 20% of the mark market value of the box or more. So they're like, Oh wow. I'm getting $10 free gift every single time. It'd be soap, lotion, whatever it was. Plus I know I'm getting 12 new bath bombs every single month. So you're just a legend at making these offers. So irresistible offers are important, but the margins, I didn't want to skip past your margins. The margins on retail. So business to B2C business to consumer is around 30 to 50%, right? 20% if you're scaling like crazy and then you're in Walgreens, CVS, 20, 15 to 20. Um, but on Amazon, your own website, you can get 30 to 50%. What I find really interesting about this is it's not about just the product itself. It's also about how you make them feel. And I learned something really interesting the other day. I was, uh, I'd seen a thread on Chewy, the dog, the dog food brand. And one of the hardest moments as a dog owner is when your dog eventually passes away. And if you are getting recurring, you know, you get dog food on subscription every month and you get that next bag of dog food after your dog has passed away. And then you go cancel it. And one of the reasons is, Hey, I canceled because my dog passed away. You're in a very low point. You're in an emotional state. What Chewy does is they refund you for their last bag. And then within 24 hours, you have flowers and a card at your door. And what do most people do? Who are dog owners. They eventually get another dog. And what are they going to do the next time they need dog food? They're going to come back to Chewy. So there's two crucial lessons that I don't want you guys to go past on that. Number one, number one, um, LTV and understanding client LTV. What is LTV? Lifetime value, lifetime value. Chewy understands the lifetime value of pet owners are significantly high because what I've had two dogs. Why do I have had two and not just one? Because one passed exactly what you said. My second dog actually ate a toy. He's a German shepherd, ate a toy, had to have a surgery. I thought I was losing a family member when he was having that surgery. This is a dog I've had for a few years. So number one, LTV and the importance of LTV, right? Number one, number two, you tapped in or they tapped into one of the 48 laws of power. If you haven't read the 48 laws of power, it should be called the 48 laws of marketing. One of the 48 laws is the law of reciprocity. So the law of reciprocity and marketing is very important. The law of reciprocity states that in exchange of value, one wants to exchange value. Meaning I think like the videographer, I was like, yo, nice glasses. He took them off. He's like, you want them? You can have them. Now he was probably just joking, but if he was serious and I would've took them glasses, let's say the glasses cost him a hundred, 200, 300 bucks, I would've felt indebted to him more for the value of the actual glasses themselves. That's how they do business over in the Middle East. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, crazy, like real quick, we basically, we were at an event and this guy, he had the, the, the, the traditional clothing, the all white. And then he had this all white, like Mercedes hat that kind of went with it. And I was like, man, brother, you're looking clean. I like the hat. And he's like, oh, you want it? That was like, I was like, no, man, I don't, I don't want your hat. I just say, I was paying a compliment. You look like, look sharp. And he's just like, no, take it, take it. I'm like, I didn't take his hat, but like, that's how they do business over there. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I mean, even the craziest example was, uh, we spent time with, uh, Mohammed Bengadi, who's like a real estate billionaire in the UAE. And, uh, he has these watches in his house and we had gone there one time and he showed us the watches. And then the next time we came back, there was one that was missing. And, uh, we said, what happened to, uh, that watch? And he said, oh, the, uh, the president of Libya paid me a visit and he liked the watch, so I gave it to him $18 million watch, $18 million for free for just, he just gave it to him because he liked it, but now, but now, you know, the president of Libya is going to remember that exactly. So, you know, there's a lot to be said about that. Exactly. And relationships are hard to find and they're, they're hard to find. They're hard to keep. So, so I wanted, I wanted to ask you a question real quick. I will come back to the eight figure marketing secrets here in a second, but. I think there's a lot of value to be said about when you had first found that mentor, the one thing that you did exceptionally well is you asked great questions and there's a gentleman, Sean Mike, he sold several companies for, you know, eight, nine figures, and he's right now running a insurance company that's doing like over $850 million a year. And I'd interviewed him one time and he talked about how he was in, I don't think it was like a mastermind, but it was like a, like a business summit. And one of the main guys that was there was Arthur Blank, who, you know, ran Home Depot and he was, you know, asking him all these like questions. And he was pretty much saying how like he was the only person in the room asking questions, like everybody else was like terrified to ask questions or they just didn't have any. What was your approach when you had that mentor? Because like, let's say, you know, a young person, they found that person in their space that they're able to kind of build that relationship with, what was your thought process in figuring out the right questions to ask this person? Cause that's, I think that's everything is, is when you get that opportunity, how do you get to the root of, of the actionable advice that you can get to go and implement? No, that's great. And, you know, and I'll start by saying this. So I'm an introvert, like I've made millions and millions from the comfort of my home behind the desk. Like I'm not a networker. I'm not great. Like I'm great at public speaking. I'm an author, I'm a coach, all these things, but outside of the camera, like I'm an introvert, right? So how does an introvert go in these rooms or go to a stranger essentially and ask them the questions and so on and so forth? So first and foremost, you have to act like your life depends on it. Cause it does. Getting the right questions answered, making the right moves and might relationships can change your life. So again, emotion creates motion. It was bigger than me and how I felt in me being nervous, nervous, or not wanting to be communicative. I had to get it done. So it has to work where it has to work. First and foremost, you always have to be in a circumstance of a situational thinking where it has to be done. I have 30 seconds to talk to this guy. I have to go talk to him. Well, it'd be great if I talked to him, got an answer. So I was always in that state of life or death. Right. And for me, I didn't know, I've never seen, this is a unicorn. I never knew if I'd get another unicorn. So I'm like, I have to step out of my comfort zone. Right. Because you know what happens from comfort. You stay in comfort. Right. So number one, you have to stay ready, right? If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. Number two, my level of thinking. And again, how I look at questions, which is really interesting because I've never been asked this question. So now being able to reflect on it, the way I look at asking questions is I act as if I only have one. Right. I act as if I only have one, again, the one thing by Gary Keller changed my whole mindset, less is more. Like if you only could interview billionaires and every billionaire had one exception, you can only ask me one question, you would think long and hard about that one question. And that one answer to that one question would be more impactful than an entire interview itself. Right. So my questions were methodical and they were, my questions were. Premeditative to the point where the response would be a masterclass open ended, very specific questions. What, again, like I told you guys with the group, created the group, ask them a question. What is the biggest problem you guys have with these products? What is your biggest ask your biggest desire? Very short, very specific, got me an essential answer. So when it comes to questions, I'm really thinking of what is the most powerful, most potent question that I can ask? A lot of people have general questions. Like they, their questions warm up. Like their questions are like conversations. It's like, Hey, how's, how's things going? You know, how's the family? So on and so forth. And then 10 minutes in, they get to the ask. Right. Um, and I'll never forget. I told you the story about Cody Sperber. I know you guys interviewed Cody Sperber. So Cody Sperber did a, was speaking at a public event, huge event, 3000 people, and I'm on one side and he's on the other side and he's doing question. It's like, Cody, what do you think about the green Lamborghini? Another one is like, Cody, we seen the new house is great. And he's getting frustrated in their short answers. He's cutting them off. He wants to stop taking questions. And then he said, he stopped taking questions. I still have my hand up. I'm waving it like this. The guy comes by. I'm like, just give me the, give me the, give me the mic. Give me the mic. I take the mic and I asked him the question. And the question is. The question is very detailed around how to increase conversions. Like it was a very specific, I said, dude. I've went through your funnel. I studied your funnel. I've recorded your entire file, entire funnel. Why do you do this specific thing? And what is the conversion increase? Because I'm going to implement in my business. He walked from the one side all the way to the other side, walked up to me. And then said, what is your email address? So in front of 3000 people, I was able to give my email address. So now guess what? I got leads from the room for free, but number two, he said, I'm going to have my assistant send you the funnel and all of our data on that funnel. I went and took that funnel and the data he sent me when an implemented and made multiple six figures on a webinar that I was running by asking the right question. So asking the right question and not, not taking no for an answer. Like you're great at that. Not taking no for an answer. No stands for no opportunity. That's the acronym. So the secret to the questions, if you think you suck at asking questions or you feel like you don't want to ask the right questions, if you only get one, what would it be and make it happen? It has to work or has to work. That was so good. Now let's get back to this right here. So what was the most amount of money that you made in a single year? Uh, over 11 million. So about 11.3 million. 11 Ms. Yep. Let me ask you this. You you've given us before. A lot of people haven't heard this before. One of my favorite acronyms in the entire world. And it has to do with not reinventing the wheel, right? Damon John had told us one time in an interview that pioneers get slaughtered and settlers prosper. Give it, give us the acronym that, that, that, that we're needing right now. So, so again, and that, wow, that, that is actually huge. So the biggest epiphany that I had, I'm an Apple user, an avid Apple user. I love Apple as a company. I'm an Apple shareholder. I use all of their products and acronym that I developed, um, is WWAD, right? That's the one you're talking about. So WWAD is what would Apple do? Well, I got that from the WWJD. What would Jesus do? Wristbands. I'm old. So you guys probably didn't see those when you were young, but back in the day you were the man, if you had, you know, switched the WWJD bands up to match your gear. Right. But anyway, I came up with that acronym. What would Apple do? So too many people try to reinvent the wheel, right? What you have to do is you have to get inspiration from what is working. Right. And then again, identify what is a problem that I can solve, because here's the thing about giants, giants, step over ants, right? Giants step over ants, but small businesses are like small business owners are like anteaters. So what the giants are skipping past, we can actually get rich off of, right? So again, like Lush and these other companies, people are like, well, if I could start on Amazon, so sell on Amazon and get slaughtered by these large companies, no, because they're not focused on Amazon, you're focused on Amazon only. So my whole theory is, okay, what does Apple do with their customer service? Like the best customer service in the world. Like if you call anybody else, any other company, it's someone out the country. It's a VA. It's a terrible experience. You could barely understand it. You call Apple, they're US-based customer support. They're asking you like, would you like, like, Hey, I'm going to put a place on a brief hold. What type of music would you like? Jazz, soft rock. What type of music? Hey, you want me to Uber eat you a Pierre while you're waiting as well? Like, you know, Oh, you need help on your computer. Just, just hit all four. And I'm going to take control of your computer. Sit by hangout. I'll do everything for you. Customer service, world support, the design, the boxes, the packaging, the products. So I'm always looking at these large companies or a trillion dollar company. Not by coincidence, right? By design. So I'm looking at the best category Kings and Queens. Okay. What can I take inspiration from that? They're doing right. Implement that. And then again, through surveys, through data, through research, um, through now AI, what are they ignoring? What are the ant, the colonies of ants that they're stepping over that I can go pick up figuratively speaking. Right. And that's how I do. I build all my brands, physical and digital. So we were talking earlier about Amazon and putting together your formula for having to stand out on Amazon, but you've had a lot of success in the digital marketing sphere. And I feel like the kind of that first step for that is the offer. What do you, what are those things that you think about when crafting an offer for those that are listening, how can they craft really, really solid offers when they're wanting to put their, their product or their, their service out there? Man, this is so good. And in now, like I've recently discovered why I did so good at Amazon is because marketing is kind of my gift, right? Conversion optimization, revenue optimization, um, and scalability is like my gift and that's what Amazon was the platform right now going into digital marketing, you know, and helping the best around the world become the best around the world to do the best with their offers. I've really noticed like, okay, wow. The here's the most simple way to make an offer irresistible. First of all, physical or digital never launched it. If the offer is not irresistible, right? Like, again, we talked about the physical product. What made it irresistible? I solved the biggest problem. You got a new batch every single month. Plus I gave you a gift and it was affordable. So that was an irresistible offer with digital products, programs, courses, mentorship, membership, communities, whatever it is, what is an irresistible offer, this is it in one sentence, making things very, very simple. How can you get them results? The fastest. And then how can you get them the most results? So how can they get the most results to fastest? You put it together. That's an irresistible offer, an irresistible offer. See amateurs monetize the front end experts, monetize the back end experts. Like I don't care about the old me, the 2018 webinar, me presenter, me. I'm doing value stacks. Cause that's kind of what the community and the industry talks about. That's what Russell talks about. You get this, this, and this, this, and this for a price point. $25,000. However, if you purchase it today, it's only 1495. So there's a lot going on. Number one, that's outdated. Number two, it's false urgency and scarcity. And then number three, people don't care about the pieces to the puzzle. They care about how fast can you complete the puzzle. Right? So for instance, I'm going to give you a puzzle and I'm going to give you that puzzle and you can buy that puzzle for nine 99 or, and why do you want the puzzle? You want the puzzle because you want to complete it. You want to frame it. You want to put it on your wall or for 1999. I'll sell you the puzzle and I'll put it together with you. Which are you going to choose? If you're not an avid puzzle builder and you don't love that, you're going to pay for the speed. So success loves speed. So in any offer, there's two components. How many? Two, you should be writing this down. Component number one, speed, speed, the result variable, number two, size of results. So when you combine the two and there's symmetry of a speed of execution and speed of execution and result with the size of result. Now it becomes irresistible. For instance, what if I could come into your business and add an additional seven or eight figures and you don't pay. If I don't deliver on those results, would you say that's an irresistible offer? Yes. Would you say that's something that you could value from? Yes. That's my offer. So again, what is it? Two things, speed. I want to get you X amount of results within a year and size of results. Seven to eight figures is a big number. So that's the example of the framework. And then a real world example. You said that trying to do everything yourself is like putting a noose on your growth. How important is it to delegate and how important was delegation for you growing that first business to multiple seven figures? So two parts to this part one, every business owner, especially if you're a beginning entrepreneur, like you haven't done six figures, seven figures, eight figures, you have to wear many hats because I'm an avid believer that you cannot manage what you haven't effectively done, right? Number one. So there's a growth stage and we'll call it. So the three stages of wealth I look at for any business in life is wealth creation, accumulation, and preservation. So those are the three stages. Stage one during wealth creation, when you're starting your business, you have to wear all the hats so that you can effectively manage those hats when you delegate. So that's stage one. Stage two and wealth accumulation. That's when we're scaling up. You then want to delegate because when you delegate, you don't participate and then you fall victim to now, or excuse me. Now you're creating this ASAP acronym. ASAP is autonomous, sustainable action in perpetuity. So that's the whole mind frame and logic I'm thinking about with my business. Right? Um, so delegation is essential because what you need to do, like you will not be the best at every area of your business, even though it's your baby, you built it. You can do everything good. You care about it more than anybody else, but the hack is when you hire the right teammates and you delegate it so that you can focus on what's the highest and best use of your time. So here's step two for wealth accumulation. After everything's built, you've worn all the hats, you're doing the email customer support, you're doing the sales, you're doing everything. Step number two, if you have not taken a disc assessment, you need to take a disc assessment. It's a few different providers. Tony Robbins has one. There's a Myra Briggs. Why? Because that's going to show you what part of your brain you use more than the other part. And what are the characteristics of your thought process, your, um, relationship building, who do you work the best with? So on and so forth. This will help you in life dramatically for 30, $40, right? So now if, you know, for instance, I'm a high D, right? So I get things done immediately. If I have an idea from idea to execution is, is immediate, but I'm not an integrator, I'm not a manager. I'm not an operator, right? I'm a visionary. I'm a, I'm a marketer. I'm a strategist. I take action on things. So now when I'm hiring, I need to make sure that my hiring and the staff that I'm hiring are the yin to my yang or the counterweight to where I lack. Right. And this is huge. Even for those of you that are like dating, like I've been married now next month will be my 10 year anniversary on the 22nd of next month. And I was just telling my wife, like, it should be almost mandatory that, you know, husband and wife take a disc assessment before they get married, because everybody talks about, you know, high percentage of marriages fail and divorce and this and that. What they don't talk about is compatibility, right? Like so many people bring up, Josh, you have a ninth grade education, no GED or equivalent, no high school diploma, no college degree, but you can sit in a Harvard boardroom and teach. You know, you're in executive meetings, you deal with multiple, you know, eight figure earners, how and why. It's because it's not that the knowledge and the skillset isn't there. It was the compatibility to learn in a specified setting. See, the traditional curriculum system was designed for workers, not builders, creators, or thinkers. And that's what John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the school system said, that we don't want a nation of thinkers. We want a nation of doers. In fact, he funded the scholastic system, the curriculum system to build more workers for his plant, his railroads, and his different companies. So someone like me, someone like maybe you, if you're in a similar situation, you may not thrive in a school settings because there's one type of learning, one type only. We're going to do a quick lecture, read this book, do this test. Something that I find fascinating is you have a ninth grade education. And if you look at some of the most successful advertisements of all time, they're written at a third or fifth grade reading level. Why do you think that is? That's crucial. I often tell my children, you need to speak well, everything you do, do to the best of your ability. And whenever you are reasoning, negotiating, doing business, explaining, creating an offer, doing anything, make it as elementary as possible. And my son, who just came out of elementary, was like, what does that mean, dad? Make it as elementary as possible. Make it as understandable as possible to the point where someone in elementary would understand it. And the case is because confusion is the lack of conversion, right? So many people come on and they think like, and even if you hear me speak or hear me present, if I'm going to do an elaborate six, seven, eight figure business proposition or deal or speak from stage, I'm not saying look at myself and talking about all this crazy stuff, because what happens is it'll go over your head. If it goes over your head, it goes past your wallet. So I want to make sure that if it goes over your head, it'll go past your wallet. So my goal is to make sure that I can articulate properly and that everybody from all walks of faith, belief, and even educational part can understand. So I wanted to ask real quick, because we were having a conversation about this earlier about marketing. And I was asking you whether or not you thought marketing is overrated. And I say that because I recently just interviewed, what's his name? Jim Cook. He's the founder of Samuel Adams, the beer. He's worth $1.2 billion. And he talks about how he says, sales is extremely underrated, but he thinks marketing is overrated. And the reason why is because he was talking about how when he was in the process of branding Samuel Adams, he said, I'm confident that I could have either gone with the name Samuel Adams or Boston Beer Lager Company, and they would have been equally successful. And the kind of example that he gave was, is that how many times have you really made purchases off of like, oh, that was great marketing. Right now, we could definitely argue and be like, no, people are impacted by that. But in the instance, you are a big advocate of that marketing. And you were talking about it earlier. I thought you put it beautifully about how you're like convincing people that they have the product before they even buy it. Kind of what is your thoughts on that? How do you approach consumers' psychology when you're coming up with a marketing campaign, your copy, whatever it may be? Give us some game on marketing right here. Yeah. So first and foremost, I guess to piggyback off that, I guess everybody has their personal opinions and experiences with sales and marketing, right? My first love, passion and area of expertise is marketing. I learned marketing before sales. I became really good at marketing because being, you know, I became really good at marketing early on. And then later on, I became really good at sales. And then now I can say that the symmetry between marketing sales is important because if you have a bad product and bad marketing, you can get sales, but the sales will only last so long or the sales will only be so high. And what the part of sales that we don't talk about is chargebacks. There's no chargebacks on visibility. Once there's a view on your YouTube channel or your podcast or your Instagram, that view is there forever. Once there's a sale, that sale can be refunded, can be charged back, can be lost. The LTV can be lost. That client's trust can be lost. There's no chargebacks on visibility. I like no chargebacks on visibility. So visibility, like if you give me like, again, we talked about earlier briefly, the importance of relationships. Like I have many good friends that I have not done business with because I care about friendship. I care about actual relationships. It's more valuable than money to me because why? Because time, again, we talked about that time you don't get it back. Well, visibility, visibility and also what people think about you and your brand, that is very hard to build and very, very long. It takes a long time to build in a short time to ruin. So you can get a lot of sales through marketing, but if it's a bad product, it's not going to last. So I think that the symmetry between the two have to be together. What is marketing? Essentially, all marketing is, is letting the world know what you have and why they need it. What is the product? Here's my, what is the product? Here's my product, why you need my product. So when I look at marketing, I look at persuasion. All it is, is sales is serving at the highest level. When you stop looking at it as, uh, icky, it's sales. Oh, if you generally believe in the product and again, sales is gen sales is selling a product. Marketing is letting you know, I have a product. And I think the symmetry between the two believing in the product, right. And being able to effectively change someone's life with the product. And as a result, getting compensated is where you want to be at. Right. Um, so that's kind of the way I look at it and the way when I'm marketing products, again, I'm looking for the outcome. My biggest goal is for you to see the outcome. Remember the two variables, two variables, variable number one, speed of result number two, size of the result. So what I'm marketing speed, a result size result. And then when I'm doing the sales, it's explained, basically. I'm getting you to see why you need this and how I can improve the quality of your life. So when you become in a position where you're helping serve others, genuinely sales is, is serving and it's easy. So I think being between the two in those two being mirrored is, is very, very important. You could have the best burger in town, but if nobody knows you have the best burger in town, you don't have the best burger in town. Yeah, you got it. If they don't know you, they can't flow you. Yep. And the offer you don't make is the offer they can't take. So, um, you know, one common theme that we've been talking about today is time. And, you know, I feel in the lifespan of every business owner, there comes a day where you realize I'm spending too much time working in the business and on the business. And so there was a framework in our first interview that we did with you that we took forever with us, which was like, stop doing MWA, which stands for minimum wage activities. We use income activities. We probably, we have integrated that saying from that interview with you into our business, even to our team members saying like, Hey, if you are doing minimum wage activities, we need to find a way to automate this and do things like that. Not to cut you off on your question, but I just wanted to piggyback on and let you finish your question. But like for the longest time, like that, that MWA segment, you know, cause we have like a content agency. So we would like give ourselves like different roles. Like we would call, you know, cause we have clients that we'd like do their personal brands. And for the longest time, Josh was working at the agency and he was like reviewing all the videos. And so I was the CRO. We, we, we, we, we, we, we called him the chief review officer in my case. Right. A lot of people don't even know this. I have edited every single one of my interviews that I post. Wow. I edit every single interview. So, so I am the, what the CEO editor officer. I came to terms with that with him. Cause I used to get on him all the time. I was like, man, we could get another editor here and train, but in Dan Martell's book, buy back your time. He talks about for some, love that book for some business owners, they have this thing called the production quadrant, which it's like that those two or three things that like, maybe it might not make sense, but it gives you that joy, that energy, that passion. I can justify the 250 million views a month that we get, you know what I mean? So after I read that book, I stopped bothering him about having him to hire out the editing. Cause I'm like, you know what? Interviewing and editing those videos is his production quadrant. Like those are two things that like, we never need and highest, best, highest, best, highest and best use of time as well. Literally. That's what fuels him and gives him energy. So it's like, I don't need to, if he gets so much energy of like getting super like meticulous about the interviews and the editing, let it ride because it's working. My main question was, is because another book that I think everybody listened to this, that they should read. If that is you, if that MWA I'm doing MWA activities, I'm working in the business on the business that speaks to you, read the E-Myth Revisited. I think that is a brilliant book for anybody starting out as an entrepreneur. What are some books that maybe we haven't mentioned on this podcast? You think that people need to check out? I'm the wrong, you know, my, my books are in my will. Like my, my book collection, my libraries in my will at top priority. Like I, like I keep inventory on them. I maintain them. I keep them clean. The currency in my household for my children is books. My son wants a car. You learn, you, you, you got to earn by learning. Like that's the currency in our household. I learned that from Patrick Bat David. Um, so let me be intentional because it changes a lot and it depends on like, this is a general question. A lot of people ask, but the books that I recommend changes on like where you're at in business, where you're at in life. So I'll try to go wide with this, but I will say this. I tell my kids this, you ask any of my kids, off camera, off script, what is your dad? What's the biggest piece of advice your dad tells you? And it's literally the keys to the kingdom are in the chapters to the books. That's they, they know that I'm avidly breeding. They know I don't have an education. I'm avidly reading. I'm always teaching them that I make them read. So like it's boring if you hate reading, do audio books, but it is the cheat code. Right. Um, but books, a recent book that I wrote, that I read, that is a game changer, which I wish I read at an earlier stage in my business, um, is peaks and valleys. Um, and actually I'll, I'll open up my, my recent audio. That's one of the ones with that, that classic, the white, the, the, those classic business books, the white cover with the big letters. Yeah. It's the off it's the author from who moved my cheese. Um, and I've got no service in here. I was going to try to pull it up. Um, it's funny. Buyback your time is on here under, under continue listening. I listened to that book once a quarter, how he talks about a lab, like how he elaborates on your time, time usage, time blocking and efficiency of your team members is huge. Like when we talk about MWA, like all jokes aside, MWA minimum wage activities, all the activities and all the roles within your business, you want to write them down on a sheet. And in chronological order, you want to put hourly slash annually salaries next to those you want to put next to that, how much you want to make, how much do you want to make? How much do you want your business to make? How much do you feel you're worth? And then next to that, you want to do a scoring system. It can be one to five, it can be stars, whatever you want. And you want to rate yourself on what is the highest and best use of your time. What comes easy to you naturally and harder to others, right? Like we talked about the symmetry of sales and marketing for him. Like what, why would you be editing? Why would you be editing? Why would you be recording? Why would you be doing the interviews? Because he's obsessed over it and he has a dialed in proven in system. It's what he's passionate about. And like I told you guys earlier about like you're changing lives with it and he probably knows that. So like why you could outsource this, of course, like me, why do I do all this CMO stuff? Like I can outsource that because that's what I'm passionate about. But Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell is huge on just optimization of client, optimization of team members of your own time. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephan R. Covey. Peaks and Valleys by Spencer Johnson. I think he also wrote Who Moved My Cheese? That Peaks and Valley is a short read. It's like a two, three hour audio book on 1.5 speed. The whole premise of it, it talks about business being cyclical, which it is. Life is also cyclical, right? And so you can learn about business and in life in this book in a very interesting perspective where the peaks are when life is the highest, when life is the best, when business is the highest, you're shattering records, everything is working. Valleys is when you're alone, right? Maybe you're divorced. Maybe you're alone trying to find a significant other. Maybe you lost a loved one or in business, it can be your business had a turn. Maybe your ad account got shut down, offers not working, revenues down, tariffs hit. Like whatever it is, like there's peaks and valleys and the decisions that you make in the peaks or the decisions that you make in the valleys determine how long the peaks are. So your whole goal is to make the peaks last as long as possible and how to understand that you're in a valley and use that again, how to find a positive from a negative. When you're in a valley, what can you learn from and how can you reduce the time in the valley so you can increase the time in the peak? Very interesting, very powerful. The Richest Man in Babylon is huge. And again, I'm going to go super wide with it, right? Richest Man in Babylon, both my kids have read it. They've listened to the audio books, the whole premise is, and this is a mistake a lot of people make with entrepreneurship, as their business increases, their expense increases with it. So what you want, if this is a trajectory, like if I don't know if we can get a graphic or just look at my visualization of this, as your revenue is increasing, you want your expenses to flatline. So this is how you want it to look like. This is your income. This is your expenses. So the Richest Man in Babylon talks about really how to live below your means and how to build true wealth, like your money, your soldiers, how to keep them working for you. And when you spend your money, you're killing your soldiers. When you invest your money, you're allowing them to multiply, right? So that's huge because a lot of people, especially like me, who've never came for money, they get the Lamborghini immediately, they get the Rolex, they go buy the mansion, it's your first year doing good, right? So for me, I'm always investing, I'm always saving, I'm being frugal, living below my means. That was a huge, huge key for me. You got to invest. And there's a line that you said that I absolutely love, is Amazon will make you rich, but real estate will keep you rich. Absolutely. Why did you decide to start investing in real estate and why should others start to make that jump into that? Great. So fun fact, real estate was my passion and what I wanted to get into, but I had no credit, had no money, knew no one in it. So Amazon started first. And that saying, Amazon will make you rich, real estate will keep you rich, is essentially that. Find a vehicle that can produce fast cash at high margin, and then take that and invest it into something. So we talked about the three pillars of success, wealth creation, wealth accumulation, wealth preservation, find you a business that will secure the first two foundations or pillars, which is creation and accumulation, then transfer the money from the accumulation sector to the preservation sector. So for me, it's okay. Once you make the money, how do you keep the money? Because the difference between the rich and the wealthy, it's not who they work for. It's not what they did. It's not how many books they wrote. It's not where they went to college. It's what they did with their money, right? Again, the decisions they made in their valleys determined how long their peaks would be. And the decisions they made in their peaks determine how low their valleys will be. So now when there's inconsistency or there's drops in other businesses or something happens, I have that Rolls-Royce of investing, that recurring revenue coming in from my close to a hundred apartments, right? Or close to a hundred properties, right? So for me, it was always my passion. Wanted to get into it, made a ton of money fast with the digital. I put all my money, even to today in real estate, I would say 75% real estate for me, 25% stocks and crypto. No, I got to ask you, because I was asking you earlier about a lesson about money that banks don't want people to know. Do you remember what you said? Let me think about that. It was about the debt. It was about the debt. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. So a bank, a bank is sexy, right? A bank, the name bank is sexy. Do you know what bank means? No. So the name of the bank is actually, it's called a fractional reserve. So banks are all fractional reserves, but they're never going to market. And this is the difference between marketing and sales. They're never going to market it as fractional reserve, JP Morgan. It's JP Morgan, the bank, right? And the reason why they don't want you to know that they're actually fractional reserves is because they hold onto a fractional reserve. So the smartest thing you can do with the bank is play the game that the bank plays, right? The bank makes money off of your money, right? It's free money, kind of like the casino. So what happens with the fractional reserve is you bring a thousand dollars to me, the bank or the fractional reserve. I then put it in your savings account and give you 0.001 on your thousand dollars, which is approximately a penny. If my math is right, right. I'm then going to take your thousand dollars immediately. And I'm going to give it to him, a savvy investor or entrepreneur at a seven to 25% interest. Let's just keep the numbers simple. We'll say 10%. He wants to go do a deal. The minute you give me your money, I give you one penny. I give that thousand dollars to him for $100. I make a thousand X return on an investment I never made. That's how banks make money. So now how the rich, the wise, the wealthy, the successful use banks, they play the banks game alongside the banks. So now what I'll do, and this is not how I started, by the way, like, cause they don't teach this. You can't learn this. I didn't learn this in school. No one told me this. I learned it by playing the game. What I'll do now is I will make my money. I'll take my money to the bank, right? Cause you got to have it somewhere, but then I'll take my money back from the bank through loans and use those loans and use those lines of credit to scale businesses and buy real estate. Now, when I scale any asset, businesses are asset property is an asset, a real tangible asset. When I scale these up, I increase what the value, when I increase the value, I'm now getting a loan on the value or LTV loan to value two examples, two different worlds. Same thing. I build a business to a million dollars. I want to take a loan out on 50% of the million dollar enterprise that it's worth the EBITDA that it's worth. I can go get $500,000, right? If I have a million dollar portfolio, I want to take 50% of the value to get some cash. That's also $500,000, two different assets, same thing through a loan. Now here's where things, the magic happens. If I'm profiting through that $500,000, but it's through a loan, I don't pay taxes on it. Did you see what I did there? So the portfolio wasn't worth a million. When I bought it, I improved it. The business wasn't worth a million when I bought it or gained equity or, or shares, right? Or built it from the ground up and bootstrapped it. It's through value, through forced appreciation. So when I, instead of selling it and taking the money or pulling the money out, I pull the money out through a loan and I don't pay taxes on it. And that's what the rich, the wealthy, and the wise, they do. The business will pay the note on the $500,000 in still cashflow, knocking down that amortization schedule and the real estate will do the same. And that's kind of the backend. That's my retirement. That's the future, uh, you know, project for the kids, so on and so forth. And that's what I did. And that's what I wish I would've done early on, because like I, we talked about my family didn't come from money, never had credit cards. And I was taught debt is bad. Debt is what you use when you're messed up. You have no other option. Then you get in debt and then you just live this miserable life because of credit card debt and student loans and all this debt we hear. But the rich, the wealthy, the wise, they all have a maxes in their, in their card. I do not use a debit card. I never will use a debit card. My wife doesn't use a debit card. I explained to my kids why we don't use debit cards, right? We leverage credit. We leverage loans. So now if I'm going to spend the money on cash that I have for things that I need, why not use a max get four X points on my gold card in two categories, which means for every $1 I spend, I get four X points up to 200 grand. So now what does that mean? Now I can take the millions of credit card points I have and I can fly first class to Dubai, $30,000 for free. I can take my kids on the icon of seas, which is a $40,000 cruise for my family for free in the best cabins. So the rich, the wealthy, and the wise are leveraging financial institutions to not only grow their business, but to grow their network. And a lot of this is in line with what did your dad tell you? Your dad's 77 now. What did he tell you? So, so my father's been in the construction industry his whole life. And ever since I was young, again, both my parents, mother and father, two biggest pieces of advice that I ever got has nothing to do with money, credit business or anything, but it's helped me make millions of dollars. My, my mom, my mother told me the negative. If you could find a positive from a negative, you never have a negative. My father told me to always find a way to generate revenue with your brain. It'll outlast your back. He's 70, just turned 77. His birthday was on the 14th, you know, and he's great for his age. Cause he worked hard his whole life. However, that's the thing. He worked. hard for your own life and when you exchange time for money or labor for money It's the lowest of the value ladder because you can only earn in one place And then you're exchanging your time your most valuable asset for the least valuable asset that exists Which is currency currency isn't even worth the value of the material that is printed on In fact, if you go back BC before Christ currencies throughout the different areas of the world were on actually Materials that had substance value like gold and silver now, it's paper and copper Do you know why copper? Do you know why nickel because it's the cheapest of precious metals? So if you really look at it, we're exchanging our most valuable asset for the least valuable asset that exists So the highest and best use of your times and how can you make your money work for you? So you don't have to work for it because if you don't find a way to make money while you sleep You'll work until you die. Mm-hmm. It's a great point and on that point of extending time, you know, I see the whoop Got a yeah on the longevity when you're not working on business What are some of those things that you feel that are important that business owners and people need to be? Aware of yeah in the last 24 months, you know, I'm far from perfect. I think most business owners and entrepreneurs are again If I could go back again when you've never had money, you've never had success That is your pivotal like that's all you are concerned about You make my first 10k then it's your first hundred K Then it's your first million then it's your first million in a year Then it's your first million in a month. Then it's your first million in a day. And then after you shatter all of those The goals keep going up, but the happiness stays the same. So that's saying that money does not buy happiness It's it's true and it's false because I often tell people who say that you you know You never had a bad day hopped in a Lamborghini and heard that that v10 naturally aspirated engine And seeing the looks that you get right you've never looked at the time and realized wow I have a $50,000 watch with the wrong time the wrong day in the wrong date and thought to myself Wow, right But all jokes aside Health wealth and happiness and now the last 24 months I've vividly been focusing on my personal health and personal development not only strength not only physique But longevity like you said is the key word because you can be jacked you can be shredded You can be skinny and you can be unhealthy and you can have you know shortened longevity So just being the healthiest I can be being the best version of myself physically Spiritually mentally mental health is huge focusing on my mental health Focusing on my marriage being the best husband I can for my wife We've been married 10 years next month on the 22nd and being the best father I can be right so For me again, and there's a saying you have to be selfish before you can be selfless so I don't have it all figured out I'll tell you what I did. I probably messed up But here's where I am The first five to seven years in business until I became a multi-millionaire and I knew with the system set up Remember wealth creation accumulation preservation with the preservation set up the trust the wills the real estate The systems the SOPs for if I passed with all that set up and my family being good for the rest of their life It's like okay, what's next right? and for me It was the relationship with them the relationship with her the relationship with God the relationship with myself All four were neglected when I built that I bled Sweat like I slept Brett I slept sweated and bled at my business 24-7 365 it's probably not the right way to do it. I didn't I wasn't Dan Marr telling it when I started out I mean, it's awesome. It's great to learn this personal development But I think business to start especially below your first hundred K below your first million you have to hustle like grit Like grit hard-working grit determination perseverance will outlast any type of skill set Because you can be the best in the world at a specific thing and the worst in the world at actually following up at Actually taking action at working on the weekends and you won't get the results So when I started I gave everything I committed first figured out the rest later. I did everything I worked around the clock then I finally became successful. I had to sit down again emotion creates motion I had that emotion which the doctor blood pressure high Losing my hair fat gut on me miserable. What am I doing? You drive a Lamborghini you have this life that she always dreamt for and you're throwing it away Right, and I remember again. My mom always told me, you know, we're Christian I believe in God personally and my mom always told me that God will never bless you with something that if you don't God will never bless you with the next best thing if you don't take care of the current thing so I've again 10,000 a month first it was 10,000 cash then 10,000 a month then a hundred K than a million then it was a million in a month and a million a day I did A million in three hours multiple times on launches multiple seven figures multiple times and I kept asking for more But doing less with the greatest gift that I've been given which is life so I think that anybody's listening to this I can tell you after chasing this thing called success a Father a husband multiple business owner coach consultant motivational speaker all of that the last 10 years Success is becoming the best version of yourselves and helping those who you care about Become the best version of themselves that to me is what true success is and what I've been chasing the last 24 months I love it my friend and we like to end these off with two last questions Man, your last message to the younger generation right 35 today. How old today 35? 35 Josh mean you perish tomorrow. What's your last message to the younger generation? So the biggest mistake you can make is sharing a large dream with someone who has a small mindset because Influence is huge and when we're starting out and when you're starting out and some of you are starting out Some of you are right now in this phase You're sharing your large dream with a small-minded person and this could be someone that you love someone you care about someone you cherish Someone you've known forever can be your friend that you went to school with and you've known your whole life It can be your mother. It can be your father. It can be your sister It can be your brother do not allow them to tell you no because first they will ask you why? But when you figure out what you are trying to figure out and you get the results that you know that you can get you Believe in yourself you go all in you commit first figure out the less later and understand a success love speed They will then ask you how first they'll ask you why then they'll ask you how Every single person that doubted me has my program and guess what? I wouldn't accept their money You couldn't hire me to train you couldn't hire me to consult you and I won't take your money here It is for free. You weren't there when I was here You won't be here now that I'm here Right and you a lot of people like literally a lot of people check out because that hey mom What do you think about this? How do you think about this? I've been told and I'm not gonna say by who you're not a real man. You've got two children. You've got a wife Go get a job What does job stand for just above broke? They say, you know, that's a scam making money online is a scam You're 24. You're 25 years old at the time in 2015. You're 24. You're 25 years old You're trying to make how much money online? So you have a kid you have kids you have a wife You don't want to go to work and be a man. You want to sit at home and try to figure out this Internet thing It's a scam. You know what scam still scam is an acronym that stands for still confused about money So it's not a person problem, it's a learning problem, right? So for those of you that feel broke and disgusted that use that emotion as fuel because emotion creates motion. Hmm Yes, sir. We've talked a lot about a lot of great things today and You've accomplished a lot in your life, but when it's all said and done, how do you want to be remembered? I want to be remembered as someone who's generally given more than they've asked for and That's my number one goal my number one goal we talked about reciprocity My number one goal my kids know it as a trait that I cherish that. I believe that I'm good at I Generally, and that's why I protect my circle and who I'm around. I have a very small network And level of exposure because anyone who's around me who comes around me I want to make sure that the quality of their life improves again Remember success to me is the height becoming the chasing because I never believed that you will ever die Like on this time on earth will never reach max potential So I'm always chasing that right highest and best use of my time becoming the best version of myself so on and so forth But again, the second part of success is not only becoming the best version of myself But helping those around me become the best version of themselves so I would want to be remembered as someone who literally gave more than they asked and Generally wanted to see everyone around them thrive and become the best version of themselves You went crazy today Josh you went crazy my brother and my man well everybody tuned in right now Be sure to LIKE and subscribe for amazing content We've got coming every week because we're bringing the biggest business owners the most successful most knowledgeable business owners in the entire world directly to you Every single week Josh where can everybody find you out online at official Joshua crisp across the internet and again I'll end with this do not become addicted to education and allergic to execution and I'm an avid believer that if you do not pay you do not pay attention if there's no transaction there will never be a Transformation so act right now make your deposit right now for those of you that took notes That's your deposit This platform is free Their paid platforms are basically free because you can't hire these people to learn from these people Even if you had the money you wouldn't even know where to contact these people So, please do not just skip to the next podcast and just get warm and fuzzily inside warm and fuzzy inside for the 30 60 90 minutes Please deposit with your time effort and energy because if you put the work in it will work out I love it And we're gonna plug all our Josh's links down to find him on Instagram below as well as like you said guys our platform the school Of mentors we built it into the number one community for entrepreneurs in the entire world because we give you guys direct Access to the millionaires and billionaires we interview every week where you can get mentored from them on live calls check it out We've got over 4,000 Like-minded entrepreneurs in there growing learning from the biggest minds in the world and getting mentored from them So go down to the link in the description with that being said see in the next video