Daily Content Machine

A lot of people feel awkward, gross, and slimy when they sell. How do you sell without feeling awkward?

You have to believe in what you sell—that’s the answer right there.

Why do you feel awkward? I think you feel awkward because when you think of sales and selling, you think of salesmen.

What is the job of a salesman? The job of a salesman is to get you to sign on the dotted line. They want to get you to sign, buy, purchase, rent, or lease, and that’s it. Their job is over.

If you don’t like what you bought, either the product or the service, that’s customer support or the refund department’s job.

The salesman’s job is over, so he will do anything it takes to get the sale. He has to get the sale.

That’s why you don’t like salesman, because the only job of a salesman is to get you to buy—that’s all they care about.

Why are artists and business people always separate? Why are they seen as this exclusive thing?

Most artists don’t understand business and most business people don’t have the skills to create great art, but to be successful you need both elements.

You need the creativity, but you also need the practical business sense.

In most cases, people tend to focus on their specialty—artists are artists and business people are business people. They stay separate.

Both sides need each other. It’s a symbiotic relationship, but it doesn’t have to be.

Donations are a way to give people money if you’ve gotten value from them or you believe in what they do.

It’s an alternative to general commerce, where you buy goods or services and you exchange money in return for something.

A donation might just be based on a feeling. Maybe someone did something good for you or you’re enjoying a show and they accept donations.

A donation is a way to pay them back and to let them know that you appreciate something they did.

Who wouldn’t want to take donations? It’s great to get money for what you do. Maybe you run a show, whether it’s an audio show, video show, or possibly a blog, and if someone wants to donate money to you, why wouldn’t you take their money?

Well, I think I have a reason why you might not want to take donations and to explain that, I have a story for you.

When you find out that you are the problem in any circumstance of your life—an issue with a client, your family, your job, etc.—you can do one of two things:

You can get depressed and feel bad about yourself or you can realize if you are the problem, you are also the solution.

Something I learned this year is that commitments aren't always set in stone. That sounds weird at first because when we think of commitments, we think of a sense of permanence—a sense of lasting.

When you commit to something, you're going to stick to it. It's good to commit to things. We all want to be people of our word. We want to be people who keep commitments.

That's something we want other people to think of us, but where you can run into trouble is thinking that commitments are forever.

It's good to set expectations, but not all expectations should last until we die.

Do you want to build a wealthy business? You need to understand there’s two kinds of brands: a discount brand and a premium brand.

What is a discount brand? A discount brand is a company that discounts their products. They come out with a product, they set a price, later on they discount it, and they lower the price.

Premium brands never discount their products. They never lower their price. If anything, they increase their price.

We all buy from both kinds. We buy from premium brands and we buy from discount brands.

I don’t discount my products, I don’t have a discount brand, but I still buy from discount brands. I will look for coupons, I’ll find the way to get the lowest price, because the true value of a product is the least amount someone is willing to sell it for.

How do you make your competitors irrelevant?

Sure, you can try to stay one step ahead of them every single day, week, and month. You can always be adding new features and trying to do things a little bit better than them.

The most sustainable way to make your competitors irrelevant is to invest in the meaning of your name.

You want to invest in your brand. Your brand is your unique asset.

Your brand allows you to do anything that anyone else is already doing and your customers will buy from you because of that name. That name carries with it expectation and precedent. Hopefully that’s a good precedent of quality, customer service, and not cutting corners.

When you have that name, it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. It doesn’t matter if people are doing the same thing.

YouTube is a wonderful acquisition channel.

It’s a great way to reach people, but increasingly I see people wanting to “make it big” on YouTube. They say, “I want to make it big on YouTube,” and they see it as an end unto itself.

There’s a lot of people on YouTube making a living just posting videos, playing video games, making vlogs, or talking about whatever they want to talk about and people are saying, “I want that!.”

They’re saying it like it’s this silver bullet, like making it big on YouTube is going to solve all their problems and make them millions of dollars, but have you really looked at the numbers?

Yes, the handful of YouTubers at the very top make multiple millions of dollars, this is true. Did you know that the 20th most profitable YouTuber only made just over a million dollars in the past year?

I heard recently that a friend of a friend wanted to start a product business and they planned to go in debt to start this business.

I don’t recommend going into debt to start a business. A lot of people say you should, but I don’t think that you should.

I don’t like owing people, I don’t like buying things I can’t afford, I don’t like living outside my means, and I’ve never operated my businesses that way.

I've never operated my businesses with debt, and I don't think that you need to either.

A lot of people assume if they want to start a business, they have to go into debt because they don’t have the equipment or the inventory.

What’s better than going into debt for something is building up capital yourself, saving the money, and investing in your business.

How do you optimize your consumption habits and become a learning machine?

What do I mean by "learning machine"? I mean someone who's always acquiring knowledge, learning new things, and soaking everything up around them like a sponge. How do you become that?

Obviously, we all learn things every day, but how do you do that on hyperspeed? How do you acquire a ton of knowledge around you way faster than everyone else?

The key is to optimize your consumption.

To learn, you must consume. You must consume knowledge from other people and other sources. You’re consuming to learn, but you have to optimize that consumption.