despite all the hard that you're going through you just have to believe with all your heart that you're going to make it welcome to the one of zero Show episode one advice for hard days I'll be taking questions for you guys in the audience and we'll be doing this live Alex what's up what's going on man how we doing I'm rocking hey dude first and for most man I know you probably heard this a thousand times over but thank you and uh not only for doing something like this but um the impact uh that you're making on people's lives I think you probably have a number of idea of a number of lives that you're impacting but you could just take that and multiply it by a thousand and that's real talk big number well I appreciate it man thank you what can I help you with man uh not much man I mean I guess not much and also a lot but uh yeah no so uh I run a group and personal training gym in uh in Jersey and it's um basically our tools are kettle bells Community breath work and the focus for me is longevity and uh the one question that I had that's been brewing in my mind since I'm pretty early in my career in the sense of two years coming up on three years um is what's the one question that you wish you would have asked yourself earlier in your entrepreneurial career when faced with a little bit of uncertainty and Direction and I know that's probably Hefty question and like just to give you context for myself too it's like 90% of my business is in person um in terms of online that's the kind of the the direction of whether or not I really want to go towards um more specifically you know creating almost like a watify version of kettle Bell's um platform you know so it's um just basically just trying to figure out what the next step is going to be you know h okay so I guess me asking myself a question is always going to be different than you asking something for you because we're different people right and we have different goals and so everything usually ladds up to like what's the goal what's the why and so like right now do you have like a monetary goal do you have an impact goal and believe me I have no issues if you're like I just want to make a certain amount of money like I get that um because any of the businesses that you just mentioned so whether it's the brick and mortar uh business or you want to start doing training for those people online or it's doing the watify version which is basically no service and just providing workouts and whatnot um all of those are are potential businesses but pursuing all of them at the same time will virtually guarantee that you don't succeed at any of them and so the biggest issue when you're starting out is just picking the path and being willing to commit to it with the uncertainty that comes with it because like every entrepreneurial path has uncertainty like and that's what makes entrepreneurship hard it's literally the not knowing and the pain of suffering consequences for ignorance for things that you've learned now that you're like if I had only known then what I know now and that's every entrepreneur until the day they die and it's just wishing that it were different that causes a lot of the struggle so which of these things of the three that I just mentioned like which of those is the one that like lights you up the most um I mean in-person training obviously like we live in a small Beach toown Community where everybody knows everybody and it's fun it's family it's convenient I will say there's that comfort factor that in almost in one scope is very beneficial because it is so comfortable but in reality too like Comfort is the enemy of achievement and growth so it's like I know like the comfortable side is the inperson and it's the community and it's fun it's family friends whereas the uncomfortable more challenging but also very big picture-wise would be the online going Full Tilt that side now i' I've breached into the gap of like three day launches four day launches of you know small ticket low ticket offers but in terms of you know trying to scale and make an impact on the world yeah then the world's really big that so that's always really hard because I remember I had a we had an event with gym owners and somebody stood up I said what's your mission they're like I want to impact One Million Lives I was like do you have a birk and mortar location that has like 200 members like let's want to do that then you would actually just you would you you You' approach it very differently or you'd have a Time rise and that's the rest of your life right it's like one or the other if you're like I want to do that in three years you wouldn't start with a brick Mor location and so the thing is is that what you said earlier is like you you feel comfortable and it sounds like you want to grow I just want to make sure that's correct before I like absolutely okay so there there was like an underlying assumption at least that was unspoken and I just want to draw attention to it which was you're like the brick and mortar thing is comfortable it's family it's friendly it's fun I'm assuming it's profitable I'm assuming you're making some money doing that um the thing is is like you could like just doing more of what you're currently doing and saying like how do I open a second location or how do I you know like how do I open like five locations over the next five years or whatever whatever it is yeah that would produce probably just as much of a challenge as going online would except you already have two years of learnings on how to run that business where you have none in the online space yeah and so like you always just want to Stack knowledge within a specific vertical so that you just go deeper and deeper on it because that's where the compounding returns happen like the richest people that I know have been in the same space for 40 years they just know everything there is to know about the space and like that's how they've made their money and so with what you're doing like you can either open a location that's not necessarily an Beach down and test your metal and see how good you are at actually scaling a team you know hiring somebody else seeing if somebody else if you can actually incentivize people build a culture so that people want to work for you that you can recreate the success and that'll show you whether the success that you had was because of you or because of your ability as a as a businessman right because like you can be a charismatic razzled Dazzle dancing bear in any brick-and mortar business and it will work yeah it'll work surface with a smile always always works right and it's just hard to scale because most people don't care as much as owners do but if you can create the model that has the incentives and the training in place and the and the procedures that can consistently create that five out of five experience that allow a second location to have the same amount of success as your first location then you have something that absolutely can scale and create lots of Enterprise Value over time so I would say either scale that or basically dial down your inperson to as little as humanely possible of your time and then go in on the online thing but uh trying to do both will be very hard because what'll happen is you'll start to do some online stuff you'll start to subtraction your gym will start going down but that's your main source of income then you'll hop back to the gym the online will dip and you'll go back and forth and so that's why I'm so big on just committing to whatever thing is because any of them would work but you just have to be all in on it yeah and I know we're running out of time but I guess on that point too it's like the one pillar that I guess I failed to mention was the freedom and flexibility this being a seasonal town and do the other thing and haven't gone to the gym for a year then maybe you'll do the you'll do a second gym and so I think no matter what path you do this is probably perfect end for this which is you either are going to do the online thing after you figure out how to Outsource the gym or delegate it and hire people who are awesome or you decide you're going to do a second um location either way you're gonna have to start with Outsourcing the first gym that's two STS one two stone or two birds one stone yeah appreciate you AJ appreciate you Bo keep doing it later hey Alex what's up how do you say your name hod hod yeah pretty good how are you doing good man good good so uh first of all really appreciate the uh chance that you uh gave me uh this is this means a lot to me um so I'll just jump into into the question so um let's say I um I want to start a business okay and um there are I can have a very Grand Vision of the business so like apple or Microsoft they they had this vision of like changing the whole world okay um but but I also can have a vision of just just making enough money for me to survive and just work on my thing um let's for now assume that I've that I've chosen the Grand Vision one okay um how so the the real question here is how do we keep working on this business for years when we're worried that it might get outdated because of a new AI or a technology or in other words what do we do when we think our project might not be useful in the long run I mean what you're talking about is strategy like these are strategic decisions that we have to make like you make a big bet on where you think the market is going to be not where it is today if you're going to go after something that's that big but do do you have investors right now uh no I'm I'm a entrepreneur if you you say that then let's let's bring this back down to earth all right just for just for your own sake um if you look at the companies that you just referenced right like you look at basos with Amazon you look at you know Zuckerberg you look at Microsoft every one of those guys started well off and well capitalized okay so basos was a investment banker from Wall Street Bill Gates parents were really well off and he was well off and whatnot Zuckerberg went to Harvard same deal and so like I you if you want to really go after that you would have to try and recreate the conditions and I think that right now the likelihood that that happens given your current situation is low and I'm not saying that to dissuade you I'm saying because I want to be realistic with you which is that you need to get your own head above water because like right now if you're if you don't have the ability to make money on your own right from a entrepreneurial perspective like you need to get your head above water because the only way that you could stick with something for the required amount of time in order for it to become world changing like we're not talking even a decade I mean those companies they're you know 20 Facebook's 20 something years old right just like context and so the only way to get there uh is be able to breathe while you're going and so I think that from a a one-on-one perspective starting starting a simple business that you can generate income on that you know you can you can learn the basics of business before trying to take on the biggest competitors in the most well- capitalized Arena absolutely on your own I see not to say that that's impossible it's just incredibly improbable given the the circumstances that you just laid out okay it would be really romantic for me to be like dude go chase your dreams go do that but like I also would rather have you in a year making money on your your own so that you can breathe because you might find out that if you actually start making money on your own you might just like that because right now it's just the idea of the status of the dream that like it's an amorphous idea but the amount of pain and suffering that you have to be able to put up with and not make money through that whole period of time really tough okay but but wouldn't that uh wouldn't that cause another issue where because you you decide to choose a pro choose to solve a problem that is small like smaller than the grand Vision uh then you won't be able to scale much that's not necessarily true and also every one of those companies starts small like Facebook wasn't like we want to be the social media platform for the whole world he wanted to map colleges yeah they s they start with a niche and then they expand outwards and so you want to much more narrowly Define your problem before you go attack it because what you're going to try and do is build something that's going to be everything for everyone and it's gonna be nothing for nobody I see you are strategy is prioritization it's allocating limited resources against unlimited options and so you have unlimited options but you have very limited resources and so in order to be successful you have to narrow the problem that you're trying to solve so you can allocate the small amount of resources you have to adequately solve that problem completely and then from adequately solving that problem completely like Amazon started with books and Facebook started with colleges right you solve and then you can go adjacent right so right now it just sounds exciting to say this but like it's not reality you have to pick one problem that you're gonna get really good at solving and that's it and then you can have an idea that in the future but real real so many things are going to change between now and then and there's so much luck that that that has to concur because if you think about this zooming all the way out the biggest companies in the world have super well capitalized people who are the best in the world made a good call and had luck because if you're number one you have all the things plus luck like if you're number one at like in the whole world it's all of it plus luck the market moves in a direction that M that you never know right and so I I would rather you just stick to a problem that you know you can absolutely solve given the resources you have learn the skills make income and then from there you can go solve an adjacent problem or you might decide you know what I like this and I'm gonna keep going with it I see thank you very much that's that was really awesome thank you than good luck man you too thank you all right so this is our first uh tweet break interruption or not Interruption just tweet tweet tweet Central um you're going to lose sleep you'll doubt whether it'll work you'll stress to make ends meet you won't finish your to-do list you wonder if you made the right call and have no way to know for years this is what hard feels like and that's okay um when I was tweeting that I was thinking to myself about I think it was just stuff that I was going through at the moment so if you guys don't know like my tweets actually just they're not they're not ghost ridden they're just me and they come throughout the day like right before I got here uh Jason grabbed my phone I was like wait I got to tweet this something just came on my head um and I think I think I was just just trying because a lot of people say like entrepreneurship is hard but I was like it's such a it's such a vague term I was like what what about it makes it difficult and the the thing that I keep coming back to that makes entrepreneurship difficult is that you have a known cost for an unknown payoff you know every day that you're continuing to pay these bills both in time energy money all of it every day you're paying this bill right but you don't get the paycheck back you don't get the reward back and sometimes it's a week sometimes it's a month sometimes it's a year and sometimes more realistically it's years plural before you get the paycheck back and the paycheck isn't always money sometimes it's just knowing that the thing you said was going to happen happens or that maybe your wife looks at you a different way or maybe it's your your family that looks at you different way you want status with with your community whatever it is um whatever that thing is that paycheck that you're working for figuratively um and it just comes down to this absolute Soul crushing uncertainty with the idea that no one can actually tell you and you have this this unquenched desire to be able to predict the future while at the same time knowing that you can and you have this desire because every day you learn something and then you look back at a year from a year a year ago and you're like why the hell did I not know this like I'm such an idiot it feels like I'm starting all over again today because of what I just recently learned all the work that I did up to this point is useless but that's the wrong way to see it because like you are the work that you've been working on entire time and the fact that you can see what you were doing before was not nearly as fruitful as it could have been is the progress that you are making and so like trying to consistently reframe that for myself has been uh really powerful in getting through harder times Jimmy let's go to the next one DJ oh my gosh hi you're amazing I can't believe I'm talking to you thank you socome yes I love you um I do like I had to get that out I love you back yes so I run a writing company I write for celebrities and CEOs because I took your advice and I started writing for people that have more money and it's oh gosh yes um but I also publish my own books and I traditionally published with Publishers and I've done really well but in the future going forward I want to publish my own book self-publish my own book because that's just it's it's necessary right yeah but I have analysis paralysis because there's so many options to execute a strategy sometimes I don't know which option to pick to just execute the strategy for my next book and my first goal is just to sell a thousand ebook copies not nothing even Grand yeah okay then when I settle on a strategy I get scared because I don't know if it's going to work like when I set on oh I'm just going to use like clickfunnels and D then I'm like oh but I don't know if it's going to work and then right and then I'm back into the same place the hard times place and then I do nothing yeah understood so two questions real quick so when you say you have so many different strategy you can pick from you're talking about different topics for the book is that what you're saying no so I know the book topic but different options to execute a plan so I could use Quick clickfunnels to execute a plan to sell a thousand s yeah just selling it yeah just selling the Thousand copies that's that that's my goal I want to be able to sell a thousand copies for my next self-published book have you read the book yet have you written the book yet no but the book will be that's the easy part okay I'm a writer so that's the easy part okay okay okay um because I was like I'm like the book's the hard part selling's the easy part um opposite problem for me yeah no understood okay so um you you want to have a guarantee you're asking the world for a guarantee you're asking yeah you're asking the universe for a guarantee that it will never give you yes and you're waiting for a response in order to move forward from a universe that stays silent yep right and so you're just talking to dead people um and waiting for a response so like um the thing is the person you should be talking to is the marketplace because they will always respond like when you knock they will open the door and they will tell you to off or they you open the door and they'll tell you they'll let you in but either way they'll open the door right um and so I mean let's play this out the other way what are you afraid of because like you seem very upbeat and you see like obviously you've written this you've written stuff before yeah a lot of tons not worried about your writing skill given what you've said so far so like what are you afraid of okay so let's let's play it out so let's say you you have your book and you pick path one it doesn't matter what it is pick path one okay so what so what happens so you put it on Amazon you're like I'm just gonna put it on Amazon and see what happens all right that's the easy path okay then what yeah I'm I'm scared that I won't reach my number I'm scared that fail at the goal and then then what happens I I mean I'll survive but but then I still won't know how to do it like and and I'm also scared because I have self-published a couple books in the past that didn't reach my goal okay and I know that feels like I don't want to feel like that again yeah so let me so let me do this then let's reframe this because I have a lot of experience with setting goals right so I feel pretty confident talk about the topic especially big goals make the big goals that you set things that you can absolutely control like you cannot control how many people buy your book but you can control the amount of actions that you're willing to take that make it unreasonable that you don't sell a thousand copies and so then you can judge how successful you were by how much you adhered to the actions that you committed to and so if I were to say you have to sell 10,000 books not a thousand books 10,000 books you have to or you lose your life in 12 months you just die that's it you die what would you do knock on every door okay okay like you're thinking about it right like you have the leads book right there all there's eight different ways to advertise yeah right and so you know that the more people find out about your stuff the more people buy it and there's only four things you can do right you can talk to people 10 one you can make content you can run ads yeah right where you get other Affiliates you can get referrals once they read your book or you can get agencies or can get employees to help you out that's what you got yes okay and so if you know that you have to take those actions then wouldn't success be so let's play this out a year let's say that you did absolutely everything on the plan like your plan of advertising of letting people know about it for a year and you did everything and you sold 999 bucks would you consider it a failure no that would be a win okay now if you sold 90 books that what's crazy is that it's just a number no I know but I just want to reframe this because the honestly the thing that you're talking about is something that so many people deal with and it's because you want to control things you want to control the outcome and you're saying I'm only willing to pay this price if there's this outcome but you're seeing the outcome as the outcome rather than the skills that you develop along the way as the outcome because I can promise you this this will not be the the last book you write right and so if you get to a hundred sales instead of a thousand then what's going to happen realistically is that you will figure out the one thing or two things that actually work to sell books and then I'll say do a hundred times more of that and you can either choose to do that on this book or you can choose to do it on the next book but the idea of like I have I'm setting this thous because you could have set a million books it doesn't really matter you're just setting it you're making up a number and saying this I feel is reasonable for me yeah instead of making the number reasonable make the actions that would lead to that the reason like what can you commit to four hours a day of promotion yeah okay then make that the commitment and I will if you do that every day one at the end of the year you will feel accomplished because you actually did what you said you were gonna do that the marketplace will also always recognize someone who puts four hours of work every single day into one thing yeah and that you can control right don't do my best do as required that's right might not be good enough that that's true man that was amazing just what I needed thank you good just promise me that you'll actually just commit to doing the work yes if you do that you do like I have to get sell 10,000 books what would I actually do to do that yeah find somebody who has an audience that is relative to the topics that you're talking about out to that now it's okay if I got one person they sold 20 books okay how do I reach out to a thousand people all have my audience if you do that you'll probably sell more than a thousand books but you just got to do it four hours every day okay cool yes thank you thank you I love you you're the best you're man love you good luck with the book appreciate it what's up hey Alex how are you doing good man nice hat thank you I like it quite a lot look felt oh my God it's the best hat for the gym good so what's up man awesome man so I have two topics that I kind of want to you know trade with you and you know you titled this advice for hard days and it's been it's been tough lately uh so I'm just going to catch you up on a little a couple of things that are happening so right about three months ago uh my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer two months ago uh my girlfriend the the girl that I T I was going to marry kind of left and then two weeks ago uh I traveled to London to speak at Europe's biggest business event and on the first day of my arrival my granddad passed away and so uh I had to basically uh speak in front of thousands of people and keep my smile and and then travel back and burry him did so yesterday I I did I did I did all of it and so the question is well you know yesterday everything just kind of hit me because now I'm back in the office and I'm taking the calls and I'm trying to deal with everything but the question is how do I maintain my composure and kind of stay strong right because it's it's a tough period totally well first off I'm sorry that you're going through that um that being said honestly you've got a lot of good stuff going for you so this is a I feel like almost a relatively easier one for me to take given what you just said okay like you just asked a question how do I do something I've already done before which is you got in front of a thousands of people and gave a presentation and had a smile and you crushed it despite the fact that you had other circumstances right yeah and so you ask the question how do I do something that I already done you've already done it yeah like what you're saying is how do I how do I keep living and you keep living by keeping living it's the same thing with breakups right it's like I I've heard this quote and I I heard it from Lila I think the first time like the amount of time it takes you get over someone do you know how long it is's it doesn't matter it depends there's a great math equation for it you'll love it it's exactly as long as you decide it takes yeah and what I'm going to say is going to sound really dark right now so I want you to take this the right way take it the way I mean it right which is that you just had you had three deaths right you had death of a life that you thought you were GNA have with a girlfriend and then you had the death of uh two different grandparents right you three deaths but wow uh on the positive sides my my grandmother is still battling with it oh okay she's still B wait we're we're plus one all right so only two deaths now right but sure we can even play it out all right on a long enough time riseon she will eventually pass away right it's going to happen yeah and the thing is is that you are already standing it like you're asking how do I stand it but you are standing here already like you are evidence to the fact you are you you talking to me today is evidence of the success that you're asking for you're already one dude you're showing up and you're working every day you're coming here to ask questions to actually still trying to grow yourself like the the stuff that you go through become the stories that you will someday tell and no one likes epic Heroes without Epic monsters and so you have to go through the rocky cut scene you have to have those periods of time where you doubt yourself or everyone else doubts yourself where the walls are crumbling around you because have you ever read shoe dog fil night story about Nike even if you haven't the the entire story is just him getting kicked in the nuts for 30 years it's the whole story and then he's like oh yeah then I built Nike right and now if he had just said yeah um I started this company and everyone loved it and all my suppliers were on time and I just scaled straight and as the money came in I just bought more inventory and then we just went public no one would care because it's not relatable and the thing is is that when you die the only thing that will remain is the story that people will tell of you and so wouldn't you want that to be an epic story yeah and so the things that you're going through are required for the person you want to be and for the goals that you have and how you are acting in the present already proves the thing that you're claiming that you want so you're already W dude and you're G to just stand it by tomorrow you're going to wake up and you're go to work and the next day you're going to wake up and go to work and then you're going to text and it's going to say that your grandmother's cancer is getting worse and what are you going to do you're going to get back to work work you're just going to keep doing the stuff like there's no there's no magic bullet you just keep going because either you keep going or you die yeah and if you don't die you succeeded got it just don't judge yourself on how you feel judge yourself by what you do despite how you feel so you can feel shitty you can wake up and have a terrible day and still show up with a smile in front of the thousand people and so if you can do it with a thousand people you can do it with one and that first one is the person that looks at you in the mirror in the morning if you can do it for them you can do it for you got it got it yeah well that that was kind of like the the Life part and and now when it comes to business I just have a real quick question okay uh so I've built an Instagram audience to over 100,000 I speak about sales and marketing I've been doing it for the past two years I've been posting kind of like every day I know the content game but the one thing that I'm struggling to balance is you know how you say give give give until they ask and you know I love it but sometimes you know it takes a while until they ask right and cash flow still needs to come in and I run h a service based uh business and so how do I balance it out without tiring my audience because I so my community is known for you know really being in the comments chatting with me and being there for me so how do I do it that balance line so if you want to have a one step away from like just giving forever right is that you you give in public sell in private which is when people respond to your stories right when people DM you like those are conversations that they're usually asking or they're like they're basically ask when people ask questions there you can't still Define a scope and say hey like at a certain point I have like I've given you all this value use all the free stuff if you want more than that I'd be happy to hop on a call and see if I can help you more right so it's not it's not like everyone buy this thing right now right you're not you're not like getting super aggressive about you still publicly just keep pumping all the Goodwill in the value that you are and that'll grow your audience and increase Goodwill and all those things that's what you want you're G to keep doing that it's just that you could still have a call to action that's just in the in the in the comment section or put a story up that says hey by the way if you need help with that thing um I'm happy to help like those are those are very light touch things because I understand you got to pay bills I understand that and so you can put those things out without necessarily damaging the Goodwill that I think you're that you're that you're obviously building yeah that was that was kind of like the the one thing that that I had in mind well I don't want to take more of your time but that was fantastic yeah irresistible yeah so good if saying no I got it 100 million offers that's right thank you I appreciate you man you're fantastic you are too man hang in there you'll be fine you'll get through it and then it'll be a story that you'll someday tell yeah and thank you for everything that you do not just for me but for everyone else because I think you're marking A New Path uh and that's that's kind of cool I appreciate you brother thank you all right if you have your back against the wall and you have nothing left it also means you have nothing to lose and that makes a very dangerous person which is why there will always be room for the underdog you know I think this is really interesting um because I think I tweeted this because someone had recently commented or said or I saw YouTube comment where someone was like I don't have anything uh there's why is there even a point to this like why even bother because I don't have any of the advantages or whatever of XYZ person so there's a couple directions to take that so if you're one of these people and I'll throw this out there like right now if I were to say Hey wen't you succeeding the way you want to right you would insert whatever excuses you have you're like my mom doesn't help me or I did I wasn't born in the right neighborhood or I'm born across the country whatever it is right the natural response to that question is okay you're right you will never succeed now what well we got to do something right right so here we are again back to doing something right because it doesn't matter like the all the reasons that we give don't matter because they're they only change your behavior in so far as you allow them to stop you from doing things and so the laws of action and consequence will always preside and so you can do stuff even if you don't deserve it even if you were born in the wrong neighborhood with the wrong people and still get the thing that doing the action gets you right and the interesting thing to me is that the people who have the least also have the least to lose which makes them the most dangerous competitors because as soon as you have something you become more RIS averse you can't take the same gambl like I don't take the same G G now as I did when I started why because I have something to lose right but if you have nothing to lose then it's basically like life giving you uh a scratch off lottery ticket and you saying you don't want to scratch it off because you don't want to lose but they're giving you the lottery ticket for free because what happens you get the lottery ticket and you lose and where are you just as poor and still having nothing just like you did before but in that one ticket out of 20 or 100 or a thousand tickets which is phone calls reaching outs knocking on doors sending cold emails whatever that lot ticket is you can get one yes and it can change your life and so it's like why would you not take the lottery ticket and so it's interesting because a lot of people want the yes but they aren't willing to pay the price for yes because the price for yes is a 100 Nos and as soon as you are willing to get the 100 NOS you can get as many yeses as you damn well please what's up it's a man the myth the legend Alex man the legend black tank looks nice what's up oh thanks man I have to copy you over here I don't look as jacked as you so on that good Li all right so my question is basically I've been online fitness coach for the last like three years now and like even progressing from like the first 10K month like three years ago like 25k a month a couple months ago I kind of felt like I got loner the more successful I got even though I do have a pretty big audience now like over one million followers acrosser got yeah so across Facebook YouTube Tik Tok and Instagram itself like it just maybe you went through something that something like that or maybe you haven't in that sense I was just wondering like maybe how you got over that self-limiting belief because I feel like that's kind of holding me back I want to make sure that I'm I want to clearly understand your question so you're saying that being lonely is the thing that is holding you back well it was more like I know Lifestyle Changes oh obviously you're going to lose friends along the way the conversation is a lot different in that sense but just like especially from going in person and being a full-time in person training and going line top of that just like a lot more lonely kind in a lot of different aspects of losing that kind of touch you just need you just have to join a community man like just straight up like you just need you just need to get around people doing the same thing as you and so that might mean physically moving to a different area because right now I'm assuming online pay like pays your bills correct yeah right so if online pays your bills then you can literally be anywhere in the world and so if you where you live right now I'm Emon Alberta I'm planning to move to Colona it's more of like a fitness town in Canada in like two months time like that big reason because I know more Fitness people doing out there so I feel like that would be a big help to you I would do that and I would also join a bunch of online communities of people who are like trying to make money in the fitness space because you'll find a ton of other people who were doing the same thing as you that are on the path that are ahead of you that're the same as you that are behind you and you you get a little bit of some some fulfillment from helping out some of the people behind you but you can also get help from the people ahead of you um who are you know because you show that you'll you'll execute and you'll do what they say um and you'll and you'll grow but this is the nice news is that this problem is super solved like you just got to get around people and you got to be willing to rejected yeah it's just like friend sales it's the same thing just go you go you go on a bunch of dates they're just friend dates you know go hang out go get a lift in I mean it's Fitness so like just go ask a bunch of people to get a lift in and you'll see who's cool and you'll see who isn't worst case yeah have you ever kind of experienced that as you kind of leveled up and leveled up I know of course but as long as you keep growing this is not going to stop you're going to find new friends and if you keep growing you'll pass them and then you'll find new friends that are above them and you'll pass them and you'll just keep going um and so it just depends on how like what you see the role of friends as in your life and so you know for me I just want my requirement for friend isn't necessarily that they make the same or more money than me at all is do they make me better do they make me better do they have my best intentions in all just already two incredibly difficult things to pass but if someone passes both those things then they are a friend and so I would just use that as a limit test like is this person making me better and do they have my best you know incentive at heart yeah and how is making friends I guess now because obviously you're a higher level and things are different with social status and all that vers four is probably different so do you kind of have the same standards now kind of like what is what is it kind of like dude it's harder for me than it is for you yeah um no for real it is but the thing is is that I most of the my closest friends don't live here like don't live in the same physical area that I do most of the closest friends that I have live all over and so I see most of my friends once or twice a year and that's it and I work in the meantime the thing is is that like the higher up you go here like and I'll just tell you something like from My Level whatever you want to call that um all the friends I have everyone complet like there is zero social obligations for anything like none and if I don't respond to text for 3 days there is zero drama it's not even acknowledged it's just we know that busy people understand that busy people are doing and so if everyone you have everyone who's who's in your world understands that you're trying to take this hill then if they're truly your friend then they want you to take the hill more than they want you to respond to their text or come out with them for the like I just got invited to a 7-Day thing that um with a with a couple friend that LE and I both really really adore um but we'll probably not be able to do it because we have so much stuff that we were that we're doing at that same time and I really want to go but I also really want to do this other stuff and I know that I will feel worse about myself if I don't have this other stuff done and so we're gonna say that I can't go and that's going to be it and they're not going to hold it against me and so until you find friends who are 100% aligned with you achieving your goals who are making you better and you goals then you just keep looking but the thing is like everybody goes period that you're at like I think I I think I made I wrote a tweet about this but like there is this lonely period that always happens when you start growing because it happens is that you're too big for the old friend group but you're not quite big enough for the group that you want to get into right so you kind of have this path in the Middle where you just kind of like keep trudging along but like every single person who's accomplished anything material has been in your exact same shoes and you just keep going and you keep going you keep networking you enter you go into the communities you see the people who are adding value to those communities and you message them you find the givers because givers recognize givers almost immediately you can see the people who are always giving more above and beyond and you can understand they get the game and so like in that first meeting if they're like like let me see if I can do this for you let me like take care of this for you let me help you in this way rather than like hey could you help me with this like wrong person but if you just start by giving to a whole bunch of people who are where you want to be you'll get more back even if nine out of 10 don't give you anything back okay that was very helpful over there especially I mean with the community side of moving definitely kind helps and just giving to those groups and those are kind of people especially want to kind be around if you give out a lot publicly the people who message you privately will be people who recognize what you were providing and so like be loud provide shitloads of value people will message you and then be like hey let's hop on a zoom let's grab a zoom lunch whatever and so like you can have a ton of friends dates or whatever that you meet people and see if they have game and if they have game then you keep in touch because you're making them better too yeah you also said that pretty much all your friends are kind of around the world I know it's a little different itself you kind of feel like you almost lose a little bit of that Personal Touch then or no of course it's just a trade it's a trade so it's like if you're willing to make the trade then I mean like I'll put it this way if that were the price that you had to pay to live the life that you want to live would you pay it that you just have friends that you meet up with once a month yes then that's just the price tag and those are the Nikes you can pay the 500 or not but that's the price tag all right appreciate everything you bet brother you kill the content Game Change it's amazing got see fly everything down spinge all your stuff keep it up bro I appreciate it man thank you we rolling this Tuesday hey Alex how's it going all right tell me how do I say your name celesi oh that's easy celesi all right what's up celesi what's up Alex hey thank you so much for having me on here um so I'll get right into my question so after doing full-time entrepreneurship for three years right um and you know raising a family I got four four small children all under the age of five I found myself in a very hard position where I had to go back to a ninet to-5 I'm actually at my nin to I'm I'm at my ninet to-5 right now sobody so now I'm like I'm like in a place that like you know like I would say entrepreneurship is like like you said it's hard and and I know what hard feels like but after discussing it with my wife like I felt like this was like the right decision after getting myself into business debt and other things like that and I didn't never have a paycheck to live on you know so how do I know when it's like like how do I get back into entrepreneurship like now I'm just running my stuff on the side so for example right when I was laid off uh three years ago I was doing taxes and I just doing like um bookkeeping and then I worked my way up starting to offer accounting services and then I leveled up and I started look going after higher leverage like now I started doing CFO services and um I went through that Valley of Despair thing and that's probably why I'm at where I'm at right now you know okay um just being completely honest and and now I'm like you're good no I said you're good man like don't worry like I I I I appreciate you being candidate upfront about it because otherwise this wouldn't be very valuable because You' tell me a bunch of fake information and I'll give you a response to fake information it wouldn't matter for either of us so thank you for being honest um that being said you're not honestly you're in a pretty good spot and I'll tell you why so you have a valuable skill set that will always be in demand because a lot of people don't want to do money stuff so people don't do budgets people don't do bookkeeping people don't do CFO work people do financials projections forecast no one wants to do any of that stuff and you do and you're good at it so presumably you're good at because you keep doing it right I'll just I'll leave it at that I'm gonna assume that for the sign for call right so um one I think it was wise that you got a job because you have a wife you have four kids I think that was a smart Noggin move okay now that being said there's going to be a conversation that you probably have to have with your wife about what because your nights and weekends either are going to have to go to family or they're going to have to go to the new thing and so I think that you need to have a candy conversation with her and say listen my Prim and I'm just I'm putting words in your mouth here so this is if I wear your shoes I would say as a man my primary drive is to provide and right now I feel like I'm failing you and I want to lead our children by example so that when they are 20 or 30 and they're thinking about making that jump I can speak to it because I wasn't afraid to take the risk again because in gymnastics as soon as you fall off the pommel horse even if you twist or break your ankle you know what they do they try and get you right back on the horse again and they do that because if you don't and you take enough time off you start developing these fears around getting back on you never get on again and so they want you to get back on the horse right now I think you got bucked by the entrepreneurial horse and that's okay it happens it's part of the game right like it's the it's the the scene in Rocky 17 or whatever Rocky it is where he's like it's not about how hard you can hit about but it's about hard you can get hit and keep going forward right and so you got hit big you know big whoop everybody gets hit everyone loses all the time I lost everything twice before this time right and so like you've lost everything once you still you still owe me one right you can tell your wife I said that and so let's get into tactics all right so right now the in my opinion the issue that you miss is you didn't know how to advertise you didn't know how to promote and so you have the service you just got to let people know about it and so you were full-time as an entrepreneur but you probably weren't spending four hours a day promoting and you're 100% correct right so that's that's what you need to do so nights and weekends for you is you log out of work go home kiss the dog high five the kids and then you spend four hours promoting and promoting is you make content you reach out to people or you run ads and given your financial situation it's going to be making content and reaching out to people that's it literally if that's what you're you start your timer four hours you make content you reach out to people and you do that for four straight hours every day you do that you're gonna have more business in the next six months you even know know to do it dang that's it that's all you have to do like you the thing is you're in a good spot because you have the skill that there's already demand like I don't have to test your idea you're trying to provide bookkeeping services it's a commoditized service like if you do a good job you're on time like you are responsive you deliver things on the first of the month people will want to do business with you and they'll stay with you and so you just got to let people know about it faster because I'm guessing that your rate was based on referrals you had one or two customers maybe three and by the time you get one new referral every two or three months one would drop and you stayed there until eventually you couldn't right I'm guessing that was the story right so you just need to increase your sales velocity which means you got to let more people know about it and you got to learn how to sell because it was just you right did you have employees no I had a virtual assistant during tax season but yeah it was mainly just me yeah then you have the easiest business in the world because 100% of the revenue is profit right it's just you for now and so you can absolutely get yourself to 10 20 accounting clients and you're gonna be working like a dog at this point but you'll be making way more than you are now and then you'll have new problems because then your wife's like I don't see you anymore you're like yeah but now we're making three times money and I will find a way to use the money to buy back some time and you can do that but idea like you're you're like you already have the hard done you're like six months away seriously like I don't normally say that like you're six months away you gota you got to reach out to let's call it let's call it 10,000 people okay you reach out to 10,000 people you'll have the you'll have the business you want got it even if you suck you'll have the business you want if reach out to 10,000 people and just ask them if they need help with that thing because I'm telling you right now as a business owner dude the amount of crappy accountants and bookkeepers that out there outnumber the good ones 100 to one like no one's stoked about their bookkeeper so like like it's not hard and like think about it those guys don't like those guys suffer the same issue that you have is they don't know how to promote themselves they're not business people they're Bean counters and so like you you've been you've been in bean counter mode and you got to get in you got to get in promoter mode especially as a as a solo entrepreneur it's all promotion in the beginning so would you suggest just mainly cold Outreach or should I try to do content or just go straight cold Outreach you can do both I mean dude one post a day one post a day see who interacts with it so who likes it who comments on it you can message all those people and then you can reach out as well but the thing is is with your profession finding someone who has an adjacent audience so uh you know if someone who's an HR company or recruiting company right like if you can figure out a way to just work with them they already have a whole engine of people coming in and just see if you can just get off the backside and give them a kickback just for intros like that's a super prod way of uh of leveraging the amount of reach outs like you can just reach out to 10,000 business owners and you'll you'll get your nut but you could probably reach out to a thousand B2B businesses and see if you can structure a partnership with them that they can refer you business and you refer it back to them either of those at work okay okay yes content and Outreach you and real talk the content is probably not in the beginning where you're going to get the majority of your business I just want to just prepare you for that but the reason that you're going to be making the content at the beginning is that so when you do Reach Out people will go to your page and they will consume your content and then they will decide to respond based on the quality so think about that stuff as lead nurture more than lead genen in the beginning over time you'll get better at it it'll start generating business but it might take you a year or two like it takes time to get good at that yeah hey thank you so much Alex I I just want to say thank you so much because like the past three years I just listen to the game podcast like all the time and that's honestly what's got me through everything but I it just it just honors me and it makes it makes me so happy like as a father and as as like a aspiring entrepreneur to to meet you and and everything that you do like you've inspired me and that's the reason why I took the jump in the beginning so I appreciate you well I appreciate you for taking the jump and um I will ask you to trust me one more time which is that four hours a day have the conversation with your wife 10,000 regs awesome she she's watching so she knows all right let celese take his 10,000 that's it like on the other side of 10,000 reach outs is you making the money that you want to make and having the skill of promotion and sales that's it awesome thank you so much 100 every day rule of 100 I got it thanks Alex you better brother life is hard believing it should be easy makes it harder oh man it was um Dr CEO Ghost Writer I feel so bad right now um but you you you had this issue which was that you said you wanted to have a thousand books to sell and you basically made an equation that was if I don't get X I will be unhappy and so um I think the first person I heard this was from nval but he said um desire is making a contract to be unhappy until you get what you want and so it's like signing a contract by saying life should be easy and every moment it isn't easy I will be unhappy like that makes it more difficult than just being willing to weather the harder times and so when I do get down on myself because I do too I actually had a pretty sad day I woke up this morning and I I actually messaged Leila I was like I'm really sad today I was like I don't know why I was like I'm just giving you a heads up um I try and think what expectation spoken or unspoken am I making of the universe that I feel is fulfilled and is that expectation reasonable and more often than not I can identify what the expectation is and once you pull it out and look at it you think about how ridiculous it is like I the expectation that I have of the universe is that I should be able to sell a thousand books because I deserve it and by the way deserving is the exact opposite of gratitude so I am I want to publicly State wholeheartedly that I am hardcore against anyone thinking they deserve anything so people are like get what you deserve ask what what you want BL but you don't deserve anything you can get things for what you do but you don't deserve them because if you do get things when you believe you deserve them then you will not be grateful for them you will expect them and then it takes something that otherwise would have been amazing and nullifies it it's like spitting on a gift and so I try to take this perspective of I deserve nothing and I'm grateful for everything and obviously that's very hard because life is about creating predictions and trying to meet those predictions but as much as I can be aware of the times where I feel more anxious or more sad or more angry or more upset or frustrated it usually comes down to what expectation my demanding from life that is unreasonable and realistically it's almost always just any expectation that I have of life that does not care and so um that perspective and I share that one because like entrepreneurship sucks a lot of the time like most of the day-to-day of Entrepreneurship is just getting kicked in the nuts every single day for years years on end with an occasional glimmer of hope followed by a swift kick in the nuts and so like one you have to have pain tolerance but that's that makes it sound super Alpha and whatever because I don't really think it's pain tolerance I think it's reframing pain as reality and something to be expected and the price that we are willing to pay for the thing that we want and so it's like the $500 Nikes it's like you can't be upset that the Nikes it's like going to the store and being upset that something costs a certain price and I know some people do that which is a great recipe for being upset all the time but like it's just a trade you can choose to not make the trade and that's the thing is like we have the choice it's voluntary like we chose to become entrepreneurs we chose to start businesses and with that choice comes consequences and one of those consequences is forever feeling uncertain and always dealing with pain and I saw this tweet by Elon Musk yesterday and I thought it was so perfect he basically said being an entrepreneur is always getting I'm paraphrasing what's left over it's after everyone's done their job and then there's the really terrible thing that no one wants to do guess who gets to do that you because it's no one else's business and it's also no one else's job and so like the definition of what you are as the founder or the entrepreneur of your business is that after all of the tasks have been done from the people who have their jobs being done the the the steaming pile of terrible conversations that you have to have have those are yours no one takes those for you and whenever there's an unknown circumstance like we've never seen this before gets who gets to do that you and guess who gets to mess it up and think about it for the next five years also you and you just accumulate these scars until eventually you see a second one that reminds you of one that happened three years ago and you're like o i remember what I did that time and that didn't work I will try something different and hopefully this time it sucks a little bit less and it's literally that cycle over and over again until the sucking just becomes normal because I don't think like I don't think entrepreneurship sucks less the higher up you go I think you just get so used to it that I mean I I'll tell you a story like I remember the first time I had legal concerns like an employee said that a wrongful termination or whatever right and I like you know I had all the anxiety what if they're going to end the business what's going to happen now but then I got the second one and my third one and my fifth one and at this point like Elon Musk is always engaged in a hundred ongoing lawsuits at all times if you have people will try to take it from you it is how it works and so if you if you have never had a legal concern it means you have never had anything worth taking and so it's not that you are failing it is a sign that you are on the right path like you don't have hardship if you're not moving forward like the only time that you truly have no hardship is if you're not growing like nothing says stagnation like a comfortable entrepreneur and so the fact that you're in pain means that you are growing which is why they call them Growing Pains like and that is voluntary because we chose to become better and part of that becoming better means breaking the old self that you had into a thousand pieces and feeling every single crack that has to happen and then watching the new fresh skin come underneath of it stronger and thicker than before all right well Instagram Twitter Youtube hope you guys enjoyed one of zero live this was our our first shot at this this was a uh an experiment we like to try new things here we're experimental if you will um and if you guys dug this or this was interesting for you guys uh please let us know and if this also blue let us know and if you if you were like you know what this part was great and this wasn't let us know like we take all feedback we accept all feedback now we might not do everything you say but we will absolutely accept all feedback and so um that's the biggest gift that you can give us if any of this was valuable for you the gift that I asked for is that you let us know how it was um otherwise I just want you to know and I and I hope that mation exists here for this one reason which is that like you are not alone there are other people going through it and so despite that it may feel lonely you were not alone keep being one of Zero by n