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So, if you want to start or scale a business, how do you know if it's worth investing in a business coach, mentor, events, or community? For the last 5 years, I have invested over $100,000 each year in business coaches, mentors, and events like this. But this is a bit of a strange thing. First, why pay for business advice when it's all freely available on YouTube or ChatGPT? And secondly, how should a person feel about investments that do not provide any guarantees of return on invested funds? We are currently in Thailand at an entrepreneurial event hosted by one of my mentors, Taki Moore. So in today's vlog, I want to show you what happens at these events for entrepreneurs. And towards the end of the vlog, we'll decide together whether
it was actually worth it in terms of return on investment. Okay, we just finished the first session of the morning. We were given these cute little notebooks and something like workbooks. We had a few hours of classes this morning. We wrote down our business accomplishments over the past few months and goals for the next 4 months until the next such event, which appears to be in Austin in November. We identified the key areas of our business that we want to focus on. Now we have a kind of focusing lens through which we will view the rest of these 4-5 days of the event. But one idea that really impresses me is Alex Gormozy's book "The $ 100 Million Offer which focuses on how to create
an offer so good that it's ridiculous to refuse. The gist of the conversation so far is that instead of being overly concerned with the offer, which is, of course, important for attracting customers, it 's better to think: how to make the product so high-quality that it would be pointless for customers to leave you? I believe that this is now the main guideline for our Life School Business Academy. We already have a great offering, and now we want to build the world's best online business school - one that you don't want to leave because the product and experience Of course, you can get a lot of free business advice at ChatGPT. But the problem with ChatGPT is that it gives very general advice. And you can, of course, read
a lot of business books. That's how I gained most of my knowledge about business. I read books, applied these ideas to my own business, learned from it, and all that other stuff. Of course, you can listen to podcasts where people talk about it or watch YouTube channels where they share tips on how to create a great offer or a quality product. But what you don't get from such general advice is a specific understanding of your situation. For example, if you are trying to figure out which business idea to choose. Of course, you can ask ChatGPT what are the characteristics of a good business idea in general. You can read several books about it. You can watch several videos on YouTube. However, these resources are unlikely to help you understand whether
this idea is right for you given your personality, hobbies, experience, and skills. Instead, if you hire a business coach or mentor, or attend a business event where you simply connect with people-many of these events are completely free. Probably, such events are held in your city. When you talk to people who have already implemented similar ideas, you will hear: " Listen, I know you plan to do X. I have been in this industry for 10 years and have seen firsthand how business idea X works and how it does not work." A business coach, mentor, or someone who has already gone this path will give you something that ChatGPT won't: they will be able to critique your ideas to save you a ton of time.
Everything changed for me when I started to see business and making money as skills that could be learned, just like anything else. There are people who have these skills better than me-evidenced by the fact that they earn more and have been doing it for much longer. So why shouldn't I spend money, time, and energy attending events where these people hang out, or hiring a business coach or mentor? There's a good phrase I heard recently: you always end up paying for your education. Either you pay with money, learning from other people's experiences, or you pay with time, trying to figure everything out on your own. But yes, it was a morning session. Now let's get on with the rest of the day.
Well, friends. It's one o'clock in the afternoon, and we're heading to the " mobile mastermind." Mastermind works like this: we were divided into groups of six, and each person has about 10 minutes to present their most pressing business problem to the group. And then you have 10 minutes for the group to give you advice and feedback on your specific challenge. This mastermind is called mobile because we'll be conducting it on boats-you know, to change things up a bit. The previous version of this event we attended was in California, and we did a mastermind in hot air balloons. So it was quite atmospheric and fun.
At that time, we were facing a problem at Lifestyle Business Academy because we were just starting out, so we had a lot of questions about the curriculum, product, etc. But then we fixed all these shortcomings, and now our challenges are more about scaling issues than launching a product or starting from scratch. So, we gathered everyone on the bus, and yes, the next stop is the mobile mastermind. Let's go. We have an online business program called Baby Tuddles that helps ordinary people start a coaching, consulting, or service business and earn their first $10,000. It's not 10 thousand a month, it's the first 10,000 dollars. Yes. This is our 6-
month incubator. And we also have Ascend-a 12- month accelerator that helps them go from 10k to 10k per month. Yes. So, we just completed our mobile mastermind. It's 4:00 PM, the first day. It was wonderful. I received a lot of very useful advice on the different areas we are working on at Lifestyle Business Academy, as well as for our team. So my initial question was how do we make our Lifestyle Business Academy so valuable that people are excited to stay with us for years, not just months? Um, and there was another question about how we can help our coaches teach students better by spending less time on administrative matters, bills, and the like, so we got some good ideas. And then we had a great talk about team values, where Rachel and Shay shared their
experiences building teams of over 100 people, and how to understand each team member's values and how to align them with the values of the business, which I also found incredibly helpful. So, overall, it was great. By the way, a quick word from the sponsor of this video-the Stan company, of which my team and I are fans. This is a service we recommend to all of our students at Lifestyle Business Academy, especially when they are launching their first online business. In fact, many of our students have made hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars online from their first business using Stan because Stan makes selling products online so easy.
Whether you sell a digital product, a PDF, an online course, or conduct one-on-one coaching sessions, they do it all on an incredibly simple platform that allows you to focus on running your business instead of figuring out the intricacies of programming your own platform. Stan now has a whole range of features to help you increase revenue from your online business. First, they have "order bumps"-when someone buys one item, you can offer them the opportunity to buy additional items at the bottom of the page. And that's a good thing, as it can increase the average order value. The second thing Stan has is built-in sales funnels. So if someone buys something, on the next page you can offer them an upgrade to that product. And if they say yes-that's
great. And if they say "no, thank you"-that's okay too, you can offer them something smaller in return. For example, someone might buy your first product for $47 and then check off the additional workbook you offer. And maybe they'll reject the big upgrade but settle for less, meaning one order now costs, for example, $93 instead of $47. And that's essentially like finding a second customer, except you didn't actually have to go looking for that second customer. The cool thing is that Stan doesn't take any percentage of your sales, it's just a simple monthly subscription. So, the more you sell, the better the deal becomes. If you want to try it, there's a link below to a 30-day free trial of Creator Pro, which has all the funnels, upsells, and
other tools already built in. So thank you Stan for sponsoring this video, and we move on. Okay, it's 4:30 PM and it's the third day. I did n't shoot anything for the vlog yesterday. I was planning, but there were so many things to do, and I had to get distracted by a bunch of other conversations and events. The second day was just class. The morning started a little strange because our daughter, who is here with us, had diarrhea, so she got a little dehydrated during the night. So we had to look for electrolytes. We took her to a local hospital or clinic. She was examined and regained some consciousness after electrolytes. So, that was good. Uh, so I missed the morning session where Maria Wentz spoke. But I will watch the recording since they
record all the sessions, so that will be convenient. And then I had a talk about YouTube and systems for YouTube, where I talked about my approach to content creation, how we teach business owners to think about content, and basically gave permission to the coaches in the room not to be afraid to create content on YouTube because they already have the expertise. That is, everyone here is a coach or online teacher to one degree or another. So, making the move from holding Zoom sessions to YouTube videos is not difficult at all. And I think many people exaggerate the difficulties, thinking that you have to become a professional YouTuber. And in reality, especially with the current algorithm, it's less about building a large
audience and more about creating videos that solve the pain points of your existing customers if you're a business owner. So you already know how to talk about these pains, and we've talked about it a lot. It was a question and answer session. There was a wonderful atmosphere. And right after that, we went on a podcast with Maria Wentz. It was a lot of fun. Okay, I have, I have a question for you. You're already Oh my God, already. we just have to start with this. Let's just start with this. understanding Okay, here's the thing, right? You know, in general, revenue is equal to price multiplied by volume, let's say? So, if you want to make $100,000
, you can sell one thing for $100,000 10 things for $10,000. Yes. Or 10,000 items for $10 each. Mhm. And it seems to me that your whole concept is to sell 10,000 things for $10. Yes. Which goes against almost all conventional wisdom. Yes. Including my opinion on this, which is that it's actually easier to sell 10 things for 10 grand. Yes. Than sell 10,000 things for $10 each. Yes. So can you help me understand what's going on here? That's a great question, and I really think it's easier to sell 10,000 items for $10 each. So I stand by my opinion.
Oh, so you really think it's easier? I find it literally easier to sell 10,000 items for $10 each. Yes. And Maria makes about $10 million a year selling very cheap things. So, she sells crazy volumes of very cheap things. I'll mention this somewhat contrary to traditional beliefs, just in case, because many people believe that it's easier to make a lot of money by selling a small amount of expensive things than huge amounts of cheap ones. But I felt that Maria made a pretty convincing case for the low- check business model. And so, perhaps, I'm starting to change my mind about the value of inexpensive goods. OK. So, this is the third day. We just finished the morning session. We are on break now. Absolutely incredible seminar
from this guy Jason Fledlien about webinars and how to run a really quality webinar. I had so many moments of enlightenment and insight throughout this whole thing, and I thought, "[__] it." This is one of those situations where I've done webinars where we've done a masterclass and then sold something at the end. I've been doing this for several years. But I blame myself for never really taking the structure of these events seriously. So, seeing this guy who's been doing this for 20 years and has consulted people like Alex Hormozi and Tony Robbins. And the main takeaway from that conversation was, " Wow, if we had this method that he just taught us about doing workshops and webinars, we would have a lot more students whose lives would be changed by our
products." We held workshops where we sold products worth several hundred thousand dollars. This guy was doing workshops where he was selling ten million dollars worth of goods in one event or one workshop. And the only difference is the skill level. And skills can be learned. And this guy here is teaching these skills. I think: great. So now we have a session with this same guy where we'll be working on our webinars, and I also have a bunch of questions I want to ask him. So yeah, it's just incredible. Listen, today was just a crazy day. We had a webinar in the morning and then Jason, the webinar specialist, led another Q& A session in a smaller group. And then there was a session with Taki, which he called "the reducer." And the
whole idea of the session was inspired by Rick Rubin, a famous music producer who wrote on his albums "reduced by Rick Rubin" instead of " produced by Rick Rubin." When a business grows, it starts to seem very burdensome. And most people do what they're used to - they add new things. Like, how can we make more money? Well, we are adding new products. We are adding new customers. How can we make our customers happier? Well, we're adding new features and adding new things. But the result is a business that often becomes unmanageable for the founder and team, and often overloads the clients themselves. So this session was a strategic look, using stickers and discussing with people in the room who have experience with this, about what you can
remove from your business to make everything a little more lean, efficient and effective, instead of just thinking about adding, adding, adding. Because the danger of attending such events is that you get a bunch of ideas, you want to implement them all into your business, and it becomes even more difficult. So the real skill is deciding how many small things we will surgically add or remove from our business, instead of massively adding a bunch of everything. Then we had a great lunch session with an amazing guy named Simon. Simon worked in corporations all his life, managing sales departments, etc., and then opened his own consulting business. Um, and now he consults with small and large businesses, helping them structure their intellectual
property into a visual model- let's say, a visual mental model of their processes. I've known Simon for a year. We've chatted a little bit from time to time at these events the last two times, but we've never sat down and had a full conversation. And it was always on my bucket list to talk to Simon about these model things. Especially in our case with Lifestyle Business Academy, where we try to help beginners open their first business, make their first sale, reach $10,000, then $ 100,000 a year, and eventually a million. We won't worry about how to get from 100 thousand to a million. For now, we are only focused on the first 100 thousand. It requires so much, so many skills, and such a large curriculum. I've tried to
simplify all of this as much as possible into a model that makes sense to me, but I think working with a professional who specializes in these kinds of things and can draw more knowledge and experience from me will help create a better model. Our students will be able to follow her lead to further dispel myths about how to start a business from scratch and grow it to a six-figure income and beyond. This conversation, I think, started around one o'clock in the afternoon, and we finished at four. It lasted about 3 hours. At the beginning of this video, we talked about the question: why pay for something when you can get information for free in ChatGPT?
Yesterday or the day before yesterday we discussed the personalized approach. What I wanted to talk about today is that " networking" is a bit of a dirty word. But every time I attend a business event, I'm just thrilled to be among people who do the same thing, speak the same language, understand the same problems, have similar challenges and goals - it's so cool to be part of such a community. There are many people I have met at this event over the past year, as well as at similar business events, who have become my friends, with whom we communicate outside of business meetings. They come and stay with me in Hong Kong, and we stay with them when we visit their countries or go on vacation together.
It's so cool to have such a global network of friends who are doing similar things and are all in the same boat, wanting to help each other. When you find the right group of people, you don't see each other as competitors, you see each other as friends, partners, colleagues, and everyone tries to help each other, and it's just incredible. There is a lot of wisdom being shared in the group, which, again, cannot be obtained from ChatGPT. So, this whole idea that all information on the internet is free. Well, first of all, it's not personalized for you. This is like average, general information is free on the internet. But in reality, not all information is available on the Internet. Once you move beyond the circle of complete beginners,
you gain business knowledge, skills, and strategies by interacting with other people who are already in the business. This doesn't happen by trying to find something on the internet, because usually the highest level people in this business don't talk about it on the internet. They usually share this in closed circles because they have no intention of discussing it online unless they are literally business coaches. In part, this is why it seems like when you look for business advice online, the only people giving it are people trying to sell you a business course. That's one of the reasons why I do it. If I were a guitar teacher, I would have no reason to log my experience at a business conference where I learn strategies and tools to grow my
business, because my audience is guitarists. Why should they be interested in me sharing tips on growing a guitar business? But in my case, it's a bit of a meta -story, because we help people start businesses; So by giving you an idea of what it's like to be at a business conference, I might inspire you to start your own business, because it aligns with what we sell. There is a man here who teaches farmers how to become better farmers. There 's a man here who teaches illusionists how to become better magicians and how to get more performances. There's a man here who teaches garage owners in Australia how to run their businesses better.
None of these people talk about business development online because their target audience is n't particularly interested in it. From the outside, it may seem that all the advice is on the Internet, but when you delve into the matter, you realize how general, impersonal, and far from reality most of the advice on the Internet is. So this is another reason to come to such an event. So, it's our fourth day, and we're canoeing, or rather, we're being taken by canoe between islands. This is simply incredible. What do you say, Isabel? Yes, it was very nice. Wonderful atmosphere. And a nice way to end the week. Listen, this event is organized like this: the first three days I'm with everyone, and the fourth day is only for the members of the board of
directors. And the board of directors is for those who have a business with an income of at least a million a year. So, smaller group, good atmosphere, we hope to learn something, and if not, just have a good time. Oh, okay. Day four of four. We just finished. Today was just incredible. There was a party on a boat. We went on a little canoe trip. We were taken around caves and other interesting places. We returned to the boat, had lunch, had a great chat, and there was a, that brings us to the end of the four-day trip. And the last question I want to discuss is: is it worth it? For context: we are part of this group. You have to pay $60,000 a year
to be in this group. To be honest, I don't really take advantage of the opportunities other than the three events they hold each year. So, to some extent, you could say that participating in each of the three events costs us $20,000. So I ask myself: was it worth 20 grand? The answer is unequivocally yes, it is not even discussed. Even just on the first day, during one of the sessions, when Angus, a member of our team, was having lunch with one of the guys, we got an idea that would instantly add significantly more than $20,000 in value to our business. So, it paid off on the first day. And on top of that, I made some really cool friends.
I hope we will work with Simon to figure out our model of genius. I became friends with a great guy named Jason who specializes in webinars, he gave a great session about webinars, and now we're in touch. So the next time we do a webinar, it will be much better. Plus, now I have his WhatsApp, so I can text him: " Hi Jason, can you help us with some things?" » So yes, when it comes to the specific return on investment for the business, I have no doubt that this money was well spent. When I attend entrepreneurial events like this, where everyone is at a similar stage of business development, we all go through the same challenges. You just speak the same language with them, and it's incredibly inspiring-just talking to anyone and learning about
their business. So, yes, it's definitely worth it. And if you've made it this far in the video, I hope it was at least a little helpful to you on your journey. And if you've made it this far in the video, I'd like to know how watching this video has been helpful to you on your journey. I don't make these videos for entertainment, but because I want them to be useful. It's also fun, but it's much more enjoyable when my team and I feel like what we're doing is truly useful. So, I'd like to know if this video was at least somewhat helpful. If you're curious about what it takes to build a business that eventually gets you invited to speak and attend events like this, here's a video that goes over the master plan I would follow if I were
starting a business from scratch and trying to grow it to a six-figure annual revenue, ideally within 12-18 months. So, it's going to be right here. Thank you very much and see you in the next video. See you later.
