Influence School

 

Outsourcing is the best way to go when it comes to running your business. Why? In today's episode, I tell you my reasons for hiring people in the Philippines, why you should start doing it, and how to do it. Stay tuned!

Influence is an art, and beginning speakers and influencers know that it isn't easy to make an impact on people. Can you fathom influencing millions? In today's episode, let's talk about how I am able to reach out to a great number of people. It's tried and tested, and within two years, you're bound to come across great results. Join me in today's episode as I share with you my 2-year plan to influence millions. Check it out!

 

How do you influence millions of people? Can you make real, meaningful, profound change in millions of lives all around the world? 

I’m so excited to share this with you because you can! Once you get all the tools you need, show up in front of people, and have them listen to you, they’ll start seeing you as their hero! Everything you know and everything you’ve been through can make a significant impact on people from all walks of life. 

There’s nothing more fulfilling than someone coming up to you and saying, “Hey, what you said really made a difference in my life. I’m all the better for it! My relationships with God, my family, and my friends have really changed in a great way. I can’t thank you enough.” Trust me - there’s nothing sweeter to the ear and to the heart than those words! 

How do I know this? I’ve personally influenced over 40 million people, and I’ve done this through YouTube views and subscriptions. I’ve also helped other people make their mark and have people listen to what they have to say. 

I did this by coming up with a formula that will give you a platform for influencing millions of people. In just two years, you’ll be impacting millions of people with this plan. I’m not talking about getting people to view cute cat videos or funny viral content. 

This isn’t paid or entertainment traffic; this is real and life-changing influence! 

Just to give you an idea of how important what I’m going to share with you is, clients actually pay me $208,000 for me to do this for them for two years, so they can get them millions of views and reach greater influence. 

But today I’m going to share this with you just because I know there are some of you who have that resounding call inside you to do greater things and share your voice with the world! 

 

The Moana voice

Before we get into that formula, I want you to know why I started doing this in the first place. Now if I were to make you guess what my favorite movie is, a Disney film about a Hawaiian princess might be the farthest from your mind. 

But Moana is actually my favorite movie just because her story really relates to and resonates with me! Moana had responsibilities and a community to take care of, but she had this voice inside her calling her out to the sea. So she takes the leap, goes on that adventure, and ends up helping her people! 

For me, that inner voice has always been the call to entrepreneurship. There were definitely times when it didn’t make sense to anyone else, even to myself. 

I’d experienced financial hardship to the point where I had to ask my mom for money, and she asked me, “Nate, why don’t you just get a job?” Even when those moments of doubt and fear came, this persistent voice kept calling me towards my passion. 

So if you have that inner voice, that drive that just won’t go away no matter how much you try to stifle or ignore it, then you know you’re meant to influence lives in a big way - maybe even beyond what you ever dreamed of! 

 

What is influence?

How exactly do I define influence? How can you say you’ve influenced someone? Well, it just means changing someone’s life in a meaningful way. Let’s say you gave someone advice that was helpful to them or had an impact on their life. That’s someone you’ve successfully influenced! 

See, you don’t have to be a superhero saving someone from a burning building or even a big star with famous parents to be an influencer. When I talk about influence, I’m talking about your expertise and your life experiences. You might have the answers to questions people are asking all around the world on Google and YouTube.

What’s the catch? You’re not in the right direction that gives you the platform to answer their questions. 

To get started on this path, the first step is to find out why you want to give the right answers, influence people, and change millions of lives. 

 

Answering the why’s

You can’t get into the commitment of a two-year plan without knowing why you’re doing it. I’ll be the first to answer that question. So why am I so passionate about influencing people? I’m going to go deep and get down to the heart of what I’m doing. It might rub some of you the wrong way, but this is important to me, my life, and my business principles.

I believe that the purpose of life is to become like God. I believe I am a son of God, and we are all children of God. So with that in mind, our goal is to become like God. 

God is the master of influence. Jesus Christ is a master of influence. He uses influence perfectly. We want to follow Him and go with His example. We may not be perfect, but our goal is to do the best we can and become more and more like God. 

Now you may have different reasons, but here’s what you need to remember: When people listen to what you have to say, follow your advice, and buy things from you, it means you’re starting to have influence on their lives. And with influence comes power. 

Remember that great quote from Spiderman? Uncle Ben shares his wisdom with Peter Parker and says, “With great power comes great responsibility.” 

I love this quote, simply because it speaks the truth. Influence brings power, which brings great responsibility. We have to use our influence for good. See, many people get it wrong. They think the pursuit of influence is about pride or lifting ourselves up. 

But what’s really about is changing the lives of those around us for the better. You need to have total, absolute clarity and confidence why you want to influence millions. If somebody asks you, “Why are you doing this?” you can answer them and talk about your purpose without hesitation. If you’re not sure about this yet, take time to think about it and go back to reading this once you’re 100% clear on it. 

Commitment and consistency

If you already know your “why”, then the next step is to commit and be consistent. Think about how important this is to you. 

On a scale of 1-10, how committed are you to this? Are you really willing to do what it takes? How far are you willing to go? Are you ready to make sacrifices? What if my formula for influence requires you to get out of your comfort zone? 

Influence requires us to do things we might not want to do, but we need to do. For others, it’s getting on camera, and for some, it’s losing their anonymity. But how willing you are to do things that are uncomfortable or even scary is crucial to how effective you’re going to be at influencing millions. 

This influence strategy is a 2-year plan, which means you have to give me two years of commitment with your whole heart in it! 

The rough part is keeping it up. Week after week, you gotta put in the work - no matter what happens. Consistency is your #1 tool here, and not skipping a beat with it for 2 years. 

I’ve been teaching these principles for 7 years, and I also created a done-for-you service for those who weren’t implementing it all the way. My team took care of content, strategy, editing, launching, thumbnails, and they got great results. Every person I’ve helped, who went through those 2 years, is now influencing millions. 

These results I got drew in more and more people, and now they’re really listening to it. The message hasn’t changed, but the difference is, they’re now willing to take me up on the challenge!

It’s all up to you

Now you have to make a huge decision. “Am I going to trust Nate? Am I gonna follow his instructions? Is this the path I want to take?” I’m telling you right now: this is the path towards influencing millions. The question is, are you ready to go on this adventure? 

All I’m going to ask from you is to dedicate about 4 hours per week. Think about the commitment you made to college, to your job, or maybe to some other kind of training. In comparison, this seems a lot easier and more doable! You just need to be patient and committed, with your head in the game no matter what.

If you’re going to do your own editing, you might need to add 10 more hours. But what you can do is hire a virtual assistant for 400-450 bucks per month. Just search virtualassistanttool.com and you can look for the right person who can do the editing for you. I talk a lot more about that on my videos and podcast episodes, so check it out if you want to learn more about hiring virtual assistants. I have 16 full-time employees and I found them all there! 

Mapping out the 2-year plan

This is really exciting, so let’s get into it. The first thing you need to know is where your views and traffic will come from on YouTube. 

The first is search traffic. This is when people on YouTube find you by hitting up keywords or phrases on the search engine. The second is suggested traffic. Later on, once you really get your views up slowly but surely, your views will transition from search traffic to suggested traffic. 

Search traffic is really small, but suggested traffic is awesome! It means you’ve impressed the YouTube algorithm enough that it suggests your videos to other people who are watching content similar to yours. It’s also what gets you ranking higher and higher, with more and more views. 

Here’s a warning: it won’t happen in a flash. There’s some boring stuff you really need to get through and be really patient with. For the first four months, the results will be initially boring. You might get 40 views on one video, then 50 on another, then back down to 40. That number gradually increases. 

But once you get to that 4-month mark, that’s where it really gets the thrill and adrenaline really come in. Around that time you’ll have what’s called a spike. This means you’ll get thousands of views in a single day. Then in a few more weeks, you’ll have another spike with even more views. 

This is how your momentum will keep building and building! Every spike will dwarf your previous spike and hike up your baseline for views, so you’ll keep achieving more and more traffic. 

I’ve had clients that had their spike on the 4-month mark to the exact day. There was one who had it a week early, and another who had it 5 days late. I can’t control this, but the timeline stays pretty much the same every time.

 

The formula: 4 ingredients you need

I figured this all out by studying and understanding the algorithm for YouTube and Google. When I did, I found out that the 4-month spike and consistent growth from there happen when you have 4 ingredients. 

So I came up with this formula and it’s worked literally every single time! As long as you have all 4 ingredients, success is already in the bag. 

I share these ingredients in different orders, and Ingredient #4, in particular, is really important. do it exactly the way I explain. You can’t do it at 50 or even 80% - it won’t work! Trust me on this. I’ve been doing this for a long time and for many, many different people. 

Now, this is really important: take several notes and don’t miss a single thing from here all the way to the end of the article so you’ll know how to use each ingredient correctly and successfully! 

1) The perfect video length

The first one is that all your videos - every single one of them - need to be between 10 and 12 minutes in length. Now, some of you might think that’s too long, while some of you might think that’s really short. 

But it’s the perfect amount of time just because it performs so well on YouTube. People are used to content at that length and actually are on YouTube to watch longer videos. Unlike your Facebook or Instagram crowd, people on YouTube want to watch quality content that’s long and detailed. 

Plus, the YouTube algorithm loves longer watch time. They usually show ads every 10 minutes, so when your video is that long, they can show more ads around your content. 

“Short and sweet” just isn’t what YouTube is about. The belief that we need to keep our videos short (at 1 or 2 minutes max) doesn’t apply to quality content videos - it applies to ads. 

With ads, people are being [pitched to or sold to, so you gotta keep the energy up and keep people on their toes and watch for just a couple minutes. 

What we’re talking about how-to videos. Keep reading because I’ll go into more detail about that because it’s part of our formula. But the point is, for this type of video people really expect to be watching for 10-12 minutes. 

2) Average view duration of 45% or higher 

This is actually your retention rate, which means people aren’t just clicking on your video and moving on to the next. You need to keep people watching your videos all the way to the end. 

For example, if your viewers are just watching 30-60 seconds of your video for instance, then there’s something missing. And here’s where most people go wrong. 

Let me give you an example to give you a little more clarity on this. Years ago, I filmed with Doreen Spackman and she told me she had a sore throat remedy. So we did some keyword research and we found the title, “How To Get Rid Of Strep Throat Without Antibiotics.”

Now I know this remedy works wonders for strep throat and coughs because I personally applied it. But it’s not enough that I know it works, I have to show people how to make it and keep them curious enough to watch a full 10-minute video. 

So I’m gonna demonstrate how to make sure you get an average view duration of 45% or better yet, keep people watching to the end.

First, I’ll show you how not to do it. Here’s a sample of where it might go wrong:

“Okay, so let’s dive right into how to cure strep throat without antibiotics. The first ingredient is raw garlic, the second ingredient is raw honey, and the third ingredient is cayenne pepper. Just mix those three together! It kinda tastes yucky, but you swallow it and that will get rid of your strep throat. It really works, so you gotta go try it!”

What’s the problem with this? That really is the remedy that people are looking for, but it’s not gonna make them stick around. The thing is, I just shared the secret and gave away everything right at the beginning. My viewers won’t have any reason to keep watching.

Now if there’s a wrong way, there’s a right way and I’ll demonstrate the right way.

“Okay so let’s dive right into how to cure strep throat without antibiotics. I’m gonna start out by talking about why you shouldn’t antibiotics and there’s some good reasons that we’ll discuss. Then I’m gonna share three ingredients with you and explain with each one why it’s a natural antibiotic and a natural antiviral. We’ll talk about why this is so good for our bodies to take in and why it can get rid of strep throat effectively. So I’m gonna go through these three ingredients - you probably have these in your kitchen! - and I’ll explain how each of them work. Then we’re gonna go into my kitchen and I’ll show you how to mix them and how often you should take it. I’ll also share with you a story about when my son got really sick and had strep throat and high fever, and how this remedy really helped him. You’re gonna wanna hear this!”

So what I did differently there was I set “content hooks”, This is what keeps your audience interested. It lets them know what I’m gonna start with, what’s coming next, what’s going to happen in the middle of the video, and what happens at the end. 

You give them a basic idea of what they’re in for, but you also keep them intrigued enough to stick around for the full 10 minutes. 

I’ll give you another tip so you can really go back and figure out what makes your viewers wanna stick around: You can see your average view duration in the YouTube analytics. YouTube gives you a lot of data to review, so you can go behind the scenes and figure out where you went wrong on one video and what you did right in another. 

This way, you can keep improving your content to make your channel better and better! 

3) Five episodes per week

This sounds like a lot - well, because it is! Don’t be scared. Remember, you can do this in the four hours per week we talked about earlier.

Technically, you’ve got to do all these 13 times in a year. What I do for both my content and my clients is I film 20 episodes in one day, from start to finish. We start filming at 9 am all the way until 5 pm with just a lunch break in between. That’s already enough time to film 20 episodes with about 10-12 minutes each, and I only have to do that once every 4 weeks!

Now, let’s break this down. You’ve got an 8-hour filming day, then several days prior you took another 8 hours to prepare all your content and outline all your talking points. So that’s 16 hours in total, and you have to do that once every 4 weeks. That comes down to 4 hours per week.

Here’s the big picture so you can understand the magnitude of what we’re creating here: in 2 years doing 5 episodes per week, you’ll add up to about 520 episodes! 

Let that sink in. Yeah, we’re talking about a lot of work. We’re going to impact millions and millions of lives - not hundreds, not even thousands - we’re talking 500,000 lives per month two years from now! 

4) Leaf strategy

You’ve really got to pay attention to this because this is a critical one. If you’re missing this, the whole formula just won’t work.

Now what you need to do is start on keyword research before filming. What do I mean by this, and how do you do it? I’ve come up with a pretty cool analogy for this, so stick with me here.

Visualize a tree. A tree has a really broad trunk that goes out into branches, into limbs, and then leaves at the very end.

1. The trunk represents your broad area of expertise. 
2. The branches represent all the different categories of expertise you have. 
3. The leaves represent the specific questions that people are asking all over the world. 

See, while a branch or a limb might represent vague or general questions, the leaves are very, very specific questions. Here are some examples to help you better understand this. 

Let’s say you’re an expert on goal-setting and you want to be established as on Youtube as the master or go-to guy for this field. What you don’t want to do is make videos called “My Best Goal-Setting Tips” or “How To Get Really Good At Goal-Setting.”

Now you might be asking, “Why not? That’s my expertise, isn’t it?” But your objective here isn’t to make a catchy title that might appear in a magazine or a blog. What you need to do is find long questions that have consistent search volume. This simply means specific questions that people usually search for on Google or on YouTube.

One of them is “How To Set Exercise Goals On An Apple Watch”. Talk about specific! It’s a long title, but it grabs your audience’s attention because it zeroes in on a topic and gets straight to the point. There’s also enough room for other talking points (for instance, you can talk about how important exercise and health is and motivate people to get fit with a few simple steps) so you fill up those 10-12 minutes with quality content.

There’s also “How To Make A Vision Board That Really Works” and “How To Set Financial Goals For A Business”.  Again, they’re really long, but that’s the point!

I didn’t make up these phrases or find them randomly. What I do is look for topics or questions with a consistent search volume of at least 10 per month. We don’t want too high of a search volume, because then you’ll have a lot of competition and get drowned out. The goal is for your video to rank on YouTube - on your very first day.

So you post the video and within that day, your video will rank at the top when people search for the question your video answers. This is why you don’t want to do videos on topics that get more than 100 searches per month. You won’t rank and you won’t get the views your channel needs for better exposure.

I’ll share with you a few more examples from actual channels I’ve helped to give you a better idea of what phrases get you ranking higher. My friend Kris Krohn, who’s an expert in real estate investments, has videos on “How To Buy A Multi-Family Property With No Money”, “How To Make A Million Dollars In Five Years”, and “How To Achieve Financial Freedom Quickly.”

Here are a few from Dr. Paul Jenkins, who’s a Positivity Psychologist: “How To Stop Siblings From Fighting All The Time”, “How To Get Kids To Listen Without Yelling”, “How To Get Someone To Open Up To You”, and “How To Motivate A Lazy Teenager.” 

These are all great “leaf” questions that got them ranking higher on YouTube! 

How to find your leaves

Now, how exactly do you find these questions? How do you find out what kind of search volume each phrase has?

The answer is simple, and you’ll want to write it down. I use a really cool and effective keyword research website called semrush.com. 

They’ve been around for at least a decade now, but last year I discovered a brand new tool that they have that’s a game-changer. It totally sped up the process and simplified everything I was doing to use my strategy - it’s really amazing. 

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by keyword research or SEO, but all you need to do is visualize the tree and remember to focus on the leaves instead of the branches or the trunk. 

So semrush.com has something called “Keyword Magic Tool”. Let’s go with an example so you can see how it works. 

My friend, Katie Gutierrez, is an interior designer in Miami. One of her branches is living room design. 

So if you go into Keyword Magic Tool and hit search on living room design, you’ll see a list of phrases that are commonly searched by people all over the world. There’s another magic button on the screen that lets you choose between all results or just questions. Go ahead and choose “just questions”.

That’s where the magic comes from this tool - it gives you tons and tons of questions, so on a single branch, you’ll have hundreds of leaves. 

So it gives you all these search phrases and you want to go for something that has low search volume. That means only 10-70 people are searching for it every month. 

You might be thinking, “Well, if more people are searching for a topic, shouldn’t I do a video on that?” But the catch here is that you’ll have so much more competition with that topic and you’re more likely to get drowned out. So it’s better to be more specific! 

I’ve listed down 20 titles from my Living Room Design search: 

“How To Design A Small Living Room”
“How To Design A Living Room/Dining Room Combo”
“How To Design A Living Room With High Ceilings”
“How To Design Living Room Furniture”
“How To Design MY Living Room Online”
“How To Design A Living Room With A TV”
“How To Design A Living Room With Large Windows”
“How To Design Lighting For Living Room”
“How To Design A Living Room With Fall Ceilings”
“How To Design A Living Room With Sectionals”
“How To Design A Living Room With Fireplace And TV”
“How To Design A Kitchen/Living Room Combo”
“How To Design A Living Room On A Budget”
“How To Design A Living Room With Corner Fireplace”
“How To Design A Living Room Without A TV”
“How To Design A Living Room With Long Narrow Living Room”
“How To Design A Small Kitchen/Living Room Combo”
“How To Design A Living Room With Recessed Lighting
“How To Design A Living Room In 3D”

Now why did I spend all that time listing off all these titles? Look at the list - from that, you already make 20 different episodes! This makes it easier for you to get closer and closer to our goal of 520 episodes. 

When Katie and I were first talking and sharing our ideas, she had enough expert content that she could talk about so many different aspects of living room design. This means any time someone would type “How With Corner Fireplace”, her video would pop up immediately. Plus, they’re more likely to watch all the way to the end because it’s exactly what they’re searching for. 

That’s why we want to go specific. Remember: we want topics with low search volume and ultra-specific topics. When you have really specific videos, you don’t have to skip over things so you can move on to the next topic. 

You can really go to the gold and dig in. This way, you’re not just churning out video after video; you can give the highest value possible and do it in 10 minutes. 

Remember, once you start making your leaf videos and launching 5 episodes per week, you’ll start getting a handful of views that will grab the YouTube algorithm’s attention. Once you start getting that trickle, it builds and builds with gradual momentum until you hit that 4-month mark and get that spike: that’s when it gets really fun. 

Bonus strategy: doing sequels

I have just one last tip for you to really get going on those views, and to explain it I’ll share a little story with you. 

So I mentioned my friend Kris Krohn above. We started his channel five years ago and for the first two and a half years, we only launched one episode per week. The channel grew, so later on, we were ready to take it up a notch and increase to 5 episodes per week. 

When we made that decision, we had 12,000 subscribers. Exactly 4 months later to the day, we had grown to 16,000 subscribers then we had our first spike. That spike pulled our channel up from 16,000 to 65,000 in just two months! It’s really exciting when that happens for your channel. 

Now what I do - which you can also do for your videos - is I go to YouTube Analytics and figure out what videos were mainly responsible for the spike. For Kris, one of the videos we found was “How To Invest In Your 20s” with about 60,000 views. I went on Analytics and found out that traffic was coming from suggested. I mentioned before that this means YouTube was suggesting it alongside other videos that people were watching. It meant YouTube was promoting the video for us. 

The video itself was actually short; it was just around 2 minutes long. So I thought, “Hmm, this video is really proving itself. How about we make a longer version of it?” 

The first version had Kris sitting there on his pool table teaching the whole time. What we did in the second version was have him pull up in his car, walk into his house and into a room, and that’s when he started teaching. He also went to his kitchen, drew on a flip chart, then went back upstairs into his office. This video ended up being 20 minutes long, it was a lot more dynamic and engaging. 

You don’t really have to do this when you’re in the rough beginning stages, doing 5 episodes per week. But when you get that spike, go into your analytics and look at the videos that are getting suggested traffic. Then create a sequel for that! 

It doesn’t have to be labelled Part 2 or anything like that. Just name it the same exact thing with a better thumbnail and longer duration. 

Now at the time when I did this for Kris, we had 80,000 subscribers. In five weeks, we grew to a whopping 160,000 subscribers! Sounds crazy, but it worked for him and it’s worked for every client I’ve ever had. 

Here’s the takeaway: start with the 4 ingredients. Build momentum. Commit to making 520 episodes. Once you get a spike, take advantage of the YouTube analytics and find opportunities to create sequels. Have more and more spikes. Before you know it, in 2 years, you’ll have millions of views and you’ll be changing so many lives. 

Thanks for sticking with me to the end. This means you really are committed and passionate about influencing millions! Now that you know the 4 ingredients you need to get started on making a huge impact on the world, are you ready to take the leap?

The ball is in your court; now let’s get to work!

Did this convince you to start the 2-year plan to influence millions? Why do you want to do it? What's your expertise? Do you think you can start today? Let me know and let's talk!

How do you think about your experiences in life? If you have ever been stressed about a certain challenging event, then you might want to consider having an intentional paradigm shift. Let's go from scarcity to abundance in today's podcast and live your life to the fullest!

 

Do you have a scarcity mindset? Don’t get defensive just yet! Most of us view our lives and experiences with this mindset that keeps us from seeing the joy, fulfillment, and wonder of abundance - and the worst part is, we don’t even know we’re doing it! 

See, this mindset doesn’t just affect our thoughts and feelings, but it also plays a huge role in how we see and interact with the world. It keeps us from enjoying the fullest of the many blessings we’ve already been given. 

You’re probably thinking, “Nate, I’ve heard this before! I know about it and I’m sure I don’t have a scarcity mindset.” Well, maybe in some ways you don’t. 

But the scarcity mindset reaches so far and wide that it manifests in ways we don’t even realize. A lot of it is so deep-rooted in our society that we don’t even think twice about our automatic thoughts or perspectives. 

The good news is, your mindset can change! You don’t have to be set in your ways, thoughts, and principles. The possibility for good and genuine change is within your reach!

I’m gonna give you the tools you need to re-think and reconsider your perspective on different situations and life experiences. My hope here is that you make the choice to shed your old glasses and choose to put on the lenses to see the world through an abundance paradigm. 

What I’m going to do here is paint a picture of what it looks like when you're not wearing these glasses of abundance, and then what it looks like when you are wearing them. The more times I do this, I think it's really gonna help you get a little more clarity and reach some wonderful epiphanies that might just change your life.

 

The paradigm shift

Before we really get into it, I want to give you some clarity on what I mean by paradigm shift. I use the word “paradigm” all the time but let me define it with a little more clarity. For me, it’s a viewpoint, it’s the perspective that we have. 

If I’m down at the base of a mountain, the view that I have of the sky and the trees and everything that surrounds me would be quite different from the view I would have if I climbed all the way up to the top. Even the way I feel about nature or about my experience outdoors would probably be different. 

Let’s look at it from a life experience point-of-view. Someone who’s young, maybe a bit naive, someone who sees the world through rose-colored glasses would probably see a situation differently from someone who’s 50 years old and has had a lot of experience and life lessons. The situation stays the same, but the perspective really makes a difference in how it goes about. 

Now what do I want to do? The reason I’m really diving into this is because I’d like you to be able to distinguish between scarcity and abundance. But that’s not enough. 

There has to be this paradigm shift, this change in your mindset, and it’s going to be new and maybe even difficult. I know about this, because for the longest time I thought I was already operating from a place of abundance. In some ways I was, but there were others where I was completely oblivious to the fact that I’d been coming from a scarcity mindset!

Why is this important? How does this really impact our lives? You might be thinking, “What does this matter anyway?” Well, we may not realize it, but our relationships with loved ones, our business endeavors and financial status, our spiritual life, and our physical and emotional well-being are all influenced by our mindset. 

I want you to walk with me through a couple of scenarios that might seem familiar to you, but we’re gonna dig deeper into them and look at them in a completely different way than you’ve gotten used to. 

Hold on tight! We’re gonna switch gears a lot, go through different parts of your daily life, and get some perspective you might never have considered or that might even offend you. But remember, this is all so I can help you really understand and hopefully get out of the traps and pitfalls of the scarcity mindset. 

If this episode works the way I’m hoping, then you're gonna have a paradigm shift from a mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance!

Are you ready?

 

Using coupons vs tipping

Let’s start off with something that’s pretty common but that actually might get into your skin. Let's talk about coupons. So when we have a coupon, it’s likely that you get a discount off of an item or you get a buy one get one free coupon. 

When we use a coupon, we're always like, "Oh wow! I gotta get a discount!" Now is that attitude operating from an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset? 

But consider it from this point of view. If you're selling something, would you rather sell it at the full price or do you want somebody to use a coupon? I'm not talking about the marketing tactic of advertising a sweet deal to get someone into your store. I'm talking about ultimately customers buying that product: Would you rather they pay the full price of it or would you rather they get a discount?

This is one mindset that I've had for a long time: I don't like using coupons. Why? See, I like the business that I'm buying from and I'm supporting. I want them to succeed. If they have a product that I think is worth buying, I want to continue to have access to that. I want to pay them the full price so they can make a profit, because I know it’s going to contribute to the high quality I’m really after. 

Often, that discount that we're getting on a coupon means that they're not making any profit. We're getting it at a cost. Is that coming from a scarcity mindset? It absolutely is. 

Let's contrast that with giving a tip. So you’re ordering a nice plate at a restaurant and it costs $12.95. If you say, "Oh, I'm gonna leave a 5$ bill, I don't wanna pay too much." Look at the paradigm there. Are you operating from abundance or scarcity? Have you ever given a 50% tip? Have you ever given a 100% tip? How do you think it makes the waiter or waitress feel? 

If they’ve given you good service with a pleasant dining experience and you give them a tip that’s worthy of what they’ve given you, then you’re telling them, “Keep up the good work! I’m impressed by what I’ve experienced and I want to support the hard work and quality you provide.” You’re already starting to operate from a place of abundance! 

 

Two-plate limit

Let’s go to a fun place a lot of us love to go to: an all-you-can-eat buffet where you pay around $11.99 for everything you can pack away. 

Now, this is gonna be a hard one. Can you imagine going to a buffet and only having one plate of food? Seems crazy, right? You gotta eat until you're stuffed, so you get your money’s worth. 

Think about this, though: when you go to a nice restaurant, you pay even more than 11 bucks and you get a much smaller portion on your plate. Yet you feel like you still got your money’s worth because you probably got to enjoy good food, have a nice chat with your family or friends, and sit back in a lovely place. 

I don't wanna make any judgments, but I just wanna give you a challenge. I challenge you to go to an all you can eat buffet and limit yourself to two plates. 

So you get your salad and then you go back once and see if you can stop. I mean, I understand if you stack up your plate really high, but the point is to stop thinking you’re gonna run out of resources. That you’ve gotta milk every penny for what it’s worth. 

 

Getting vs giving 

 

See, the bottom line is the way you look at things. With scarcity, you have a focus on getting. What am I getting out of this? Am I getting all I want or I feel like I deserve?

From a place of abundance, your main concern is giving. What and how much am I giving? 

The irony is that when you focus on getting and getting for yourself all the time, you don’t really get a whole lot. People tend to not wanna talk to you or be around you.  

But if you're really there to give and you come from a place of giving and contribution, people around you obviously benefit a lot because you're giving. And the thing is, you end up actually receiving quite a lot from them! This is actually so much more exciting and fulfilling because it builds your relationships with other people and opens you up to a lot more experiences.

So think about your work. Is it all about you? When you talk to your boss, do you talk about how much you wanna get or are you focusing on making your company better? Do you just want to give your best, innovate in different ways, and create new things?

What about in the products or services that you create? Do you spend time and energy thinking of how much you can charge for it? Here’s something you can focus on instead: think about the benefits it has for your clients, how it’s going to transform their lives and take them to the next level!

 

Your money’s worth

While we’re on the topic of products and services, let’s talk about something you might purchase. Let me ask you a question:  Does the value of a course change by the amount of money I charge for it? You might think “Well, the course stays the same no matter how much you charge for it." 

But here’s what I’m gonna propose, and again, you gotta stay with me here: the more you charge for a course, the more the course is worth. 

I’ll back that up by giving you some figures. Now I have a course for how to succeed on YouTube, so let’s say I sell it for $100. If somebody purchases that, there's a good chance it's gonna sit on their shelf. If they just paid $100 for a course, they're probably gonna think, "Man, this course must not be worth a lot if he's only charging a 100 bucks for it. I wouldn’t put too much thought and effort into it." 

Now what about if you bought this course and you paid $1000 for it? How likely are you to actually implement it? You're a lot more likely to implement it than if you paid 100, right? You value it a lot more, because the information is a lot more. This means you’ll put in more effort into studying it. 

But are you going to follow every word to the letter? Are you gonna trust every piece of advice or are you gonna skim through it? My guess is, even for a thousand bucks, you're gonna skim through it. 

Let’s take it up a notch. What if I added a 0? What if you paid 10,000 bucks for this course? How committed would you actually be? Would you take action and comb through every last word multiple times to make sure you're doing it right? 

Here’s something really crazy. What if you bought my YouTube success course for $100,000? How seriously would you take it? What would you expect in return? 

You'd probably be like, "Hey I paid $100k for this, I'd better make a million or 500000 or 7 figures return on this." You'd be committed like never before! Nothing would waver your resolve and focus. It means you are really are fully, 100%, no-backing-out committed to making an awesome channel generating tons and tons of revenue! 

Okay, so when we talk about getting your money’s worth, this topic inevitably comes up. It’s kind of a trick scenario, but let's say my YouTube course costs around $10,000. Now you and I went out to lunch and we were having a conversation, where I learned that you're not doing so well financially. You admit to me that you can't afford the 10ki course. 

Now let’s say I said, “You seem like you really need help on this, so what about this? I'll give you the course for free.” That’s a $10k course all for free! You get it at no price at all!

The thing is, do you think you're gonna implement it? Do you think you’re gonna pour your heart and soul into it, or is it going to just collect dust somewhere in your house?

I know this because I've received things for free that are really quite valuable. For instance, I know someone who had a program where you had to pay thousands of dollars to get into it. I did, and when I purchased it this person gave away a thumb drive with all of his archive courses on it.

It was a really valuable thumb drive! It had all his wealth of wisdom there. Even if it might have been outdated and replaced by a new program, there were still a lot of great principles in there. I was so excited when I got it!  I thought, “Hey, this is great! There’s so much in here!”

But guess what? I never looked at it again after he gave it to me. Why? Because he gave it to me as a bonus. I didn't even pay the full price. I didn’t put in all my hard-earned money in it, so why would I put in any effort at all? See, that’s what happens when you don’t really work at and invest all you have into a product or an endeavor. 

 

Competition is the opposite of creation

So when you’ve really worked for something, you want to be at the top! The first thing most people think you should do is wipe out the competition. 

But for me, competition is the opposite of creation. That's a strange opposite there, right? You wouldn’t necessarily think of those two things being at odds. 

Let me explain. If I'm competing with another company, I want to win. I want them to not win. Competition is destruction. I wanna destroy the other team. 

When we compete at this level, we're operating from a place of scarcity. This is because we think that there are finite resources. We don't think that there's enough for both of us to win.

We think in black and white. We can’t both win. If I wanna win, they have to fail. 

It's about wanting a bigger piece of the pie because we think there’s only one pie. If I get a bigger piece, that means everyone else has to get a smaller piece. 

But when we have an abundance mindset, we realize, “Hey, why can’t I just make the pie bigger?”

If I want a bigger piece, then I'm gonna make a bigger pie so everyone can have a piece of the pie! We say the market is saturated, so we’ve gotta compete and take our share. 

Well, why not just create a new market? Or make that existing market bigger or better? 

Think about a rising tide. It raises all boats. That's where the abundance mindset lies: it's not about taking down your competition, it's really understanding your own unique value. It's recognizing your strengths and it's about going to work and create. It's about innovating.

It's all about creation! It has nothing to do with destruction. 

Here's a somewhat controversial topic when it comes to destroying competition. What about getting a patent on something you created? This really makes sure you get rid of competitors. Nobody can steal any ideas from you, so you’re protected. 

Listen, I’m not here to suggest that a patent is not a good idea. Let’s just mix up our perspective and think about it from a place of abundance. 

Now you can get a patent on something or you can put it out there as an open source. You know, One great example of this is Elon Musk and all the technology he's created in SpaceX, space travel, and electric motors for Tesla. 

He put it all out there as an open source because he wants the tide to rise. He wanted all auto manufacturers to advance electrical technology. You know what, it's worked!

I’ve been a fan of Tesla since every other manufacturer was making fun of them. If you’ve noticed, now they’re all trying to catch up to it. The problem is they're trying to compete, but Elon is never really about competition. He really comes from an abundance mindset, in my perspective, with all the confidence and security it comes with! 

 

Pitfalls of entitlement 

 

Let’s switch gears for a minute. Moving forward with more examples, I want you to keep what I’m going to talk about here in mind. This will really influence your mindset and how effectively you can change it. 

The major thing that people miss when it comes to being happy, content, and having an abundance mindset can be summed up in one word: Entitlement.

Entitlement is definitely the epitome of a scarcity mindset. It manifests itself in many ways we may not be aware of! 

We're entitled to a pay raise. We're entitled to that social security check. We've been paying our taxes and we're entitled to so many benefits. We're entitled to have roads paved for us. 

It's not taking ownership, it's not taking control. It's putting the control in somebody else's hands, which means they need to take care of you. You've done your part and they need to fulfill theirs. You're putting your control in somebody else's hands. 

For me, what I propose is that the entitlement or victim mindset is the opposite of grace. 

So let's define what grace is. When I do this, I often have to bring up the term "mercy", because in a religious context we learn about mercy and grace hand in hand. 

Mercy is when we don't get what we deserve. This means the bad consequences that we earned through mistakes or bad behavior aren’t given to us. We did something wrong, but because of mercy, we don't have to suffer the bad consequences. 

But grace is when we get what we don’t deserve. When we get abundant blessings we don't necessarily deserve them, but we get them anyway!

Now how does entitlement play into this? It happens when we believe that we deserve something. We are owed a particular position or status or reward. That's not grace. 

Grace is when we realize we are so abundantly blessed even when we don’t earn or deserve it. That's coming from a place of humility. 

In that place of grace, it's about taking responsibility. It means we say, "You know what? I'm responsible for all the decisions I've made in my life. I've also received a lot of blessings I'm so grateful for. I'm not worthy of them, so I'm just appreciative that I have them." 

I’ve got an example that’s pretty out there. Do you remember that popular movie back in the 90s called You’ve Got Mail? It’s a good chick flick movie, but it does have a very interesting dilemma right in the middle of it. 

The basic plot is that this nice lady owns a quaint small-town bookstore with a nostalgic, dreamy, loving environment. Then the “bad guy” who’s rich comes to their town and builds a big, corporate giant bookstore with a lot of books. 

Now people start getting riled up by this bookstore. They say it’s gonna put the quaint one out of business by undercutting their prices and outselling them. It’s all about competition. 

What doesn’t really come up is this important question: What does the customer want? Maybe some customers want a small and warm environment with stories being read to kids or old books piling up the shelves. But some might want better prices. They might want a bigger variety. They might want newer books.

If someone comes in with a whole new store that has a different value proposition, then the customer really gets to choose! 

So you can be entitled to having just what you want. Or you can also come from a place of abundance and think this is a great opportunity because now there’s more for everyone. 

Let me give you another example that’s a bit more personal to me. We’ve all heard the wonder of “Made In The USA”. When you read the label on something or you receive a service and it’s made in the USA, that means that it's good. That means it's better in quality, we're patriotic, and we're supporting our own country. 

Now I hire a lot of employees from the Philippines. I currently have 16 Filipinos on my team and a bunch of them are really great video editors. I pay them just around 400-500 bucks a month for the awesome work they do. 

So let’s say there’s a skilled video editor in the USA who has a degree and all these credentials. They probably need to make around 5 grand a month to pay their bills and make a good living. So if they want to apply for my team and I say, “Well, that’s great, but I have a video editor from the Philippines who can deliver what I need for a lot less money.”

They probably would say, "Hey, you can't do that! That's not patriotic! That’s not fair!" What do you think? Is it unfair? Is that American video editor entitled to make $5000 a month with the same quality of work as the Filipino editor? 

Is his demand coming from a place of abundance or scarcity? 

Look at it from my perspective. Is it smart if I say, "You know what, you're right. I'm gonna pay you $5000 a month.” even though I can hire ten video editors from the Philippines for the cost of one here in the US? Is that a fair and practical decision?

Think of the consequences of that for my clients. I'll have to increase my pricing ten times just to support my decision to hire one single video editor. 

But when you come from a place of abundance, you find opportunities! Does it mean that American video editor is down on their luck now? Does it mean he’s out of opportunities? 

The reality is, he has the same opportunity as me! With his video editing skills and expertise, he could hire a team of editors in the Philippines and he could oversee it. He could use that same leverage that I'm using. He has access to the same resources I have, so he could find a really smart way to do exactly what I'm doing! 

 

Desperation vs confidence 

 

Your mindset affects your attitude. It influences the way you interact with people and how you carry yourself. So when you have that abundance mindset, you exude confidence! That makes such a huge difference in your success. 

The first scenario that comes to my mind is sales. Let’s say you're making a sales pitch to someone. If you’re desperate to make a sale, you’ll probably keep thinking about how you need the money and how hard it is to make a sale. That really rubs off on your customer! 

I’ve experienced this personally. When I'm on the receiving end of those pitches, I can tell right off the bat when someone is desperate. Oh man, it repels me. It repels me so badly. It’s coming from a place of scarcity because you think you’re gonna run out and you have to get more sales than your co-workers. 

But if you're coming from an abundance mindset, you’re thinking, “How will my product benefit my customer?” So you go forward with that. You have an attitude of confidence. People can tell you’re 100% secure about what you’re selling. 

All you have to say is, “What I have is great, and if it's a fit, this is what the price is. Think about it and go ahead and let me know!” That reassures your customers because they know you’re not just itching to make money off of them.  

This also applies when you’re speaking on stage or when you’re teaching and training people. If you have that attitude of desperation, all you focus on is wanting people to like you and listen to you. 

But when you have confidence in your material, you get really focused on giving and serving them. You know what you’re teaching is going to make a huge positive impact on them. That’s really all that matters! 

 

Riches vs wealth

When we try out all these business endeavors, sometimes we’re in it for the wrong thing. Sometimes we do it so we can get rich and gain more and more riches. 

There’s a difference between riches and wealth. Riches means you've got a lot of money, plain and simple. Wealth means you have the ability to make a lot of money and you create a lot of good with that money. 

You can get rich if you win the lottery. You can go to a slot machine and if you're lucky, you can win money. But are you wealthy? No, not really. 

Have you heard all those stories of people who win the lottery and ending up broke - sometimes even financially worse off than they were before - years later? 

Why does that happen? It’s because they weren't stewards of that money. They didn't have the stewardship of that money. 

See, gambling or playing to win is a scarcity mindset. We're just hoping we somehow get lucky despite the odds. Think about it. if you're playing a game of poker with friends, in order for you to win, your friends have to lose. 

Did you really win in the end? What does that do for your friendships and your emotional maturity?

 

Saving vs investing

Now I have another example that has to do with your money, but this time I want you to think about the money you already have. Being a good steward of your hard-earned money and putting it in the right place is definitely a sign of an abundance mindset. 

But where is the right place to put it? A lot of you probably think, “Oh, I know this. I’ve gotta save it because saving is in the abundance paradigm!”

The thing is, when all you do is save and save and save your money, it means you're worried about losing it. You're worried about it dwindling and running out, just because you think it's a limited resource. 

With an abundance mindset, though, you recognize the value of your resource. You can go, “I have the power and the resources to leverage this. I can do good with it."

This might ruffle some feathers, but the same things apply to your debt. Don’t be scared off just yet! I’m gonna tell you something that might just sway your fears and worries about debt. 

My good friend Kris Krohn is a real estate genius. I helped produce his YouTube channel for 5 years and over time, we’ve discussed so much real estate investment and the question. One of the topics that came up is that of debt. Is debt good or bad? 

Well, there's two types of debt. There's consumer debt and there's investment debt. The difference is, is the debt taking money out of my pocket or is it taking money into my pocket? 

If you're in a scarcity mindset, you're worried about losing money. You're thinking about how that debt is costing you so much and you just gotta pay it off. But hold on - what if the debt was putting more money in your pocket?

Let’s make the math a little clearer and easier to understand, so you can have an idea of how this would be possible. Let’s say there's a house that's worth $150,000, and you can buy it for $110,000. That’s an awesome deal, right?

Now let’s say your house payment and your mortgage payment comes to about $800 a month. You might be thinking, “I gotta put that debt first. My goal is just to pay off that debt.” 

But imagine if you bought this house then rented it out. Say somebody else pays you $1300 to live there. The debt would be making you more and more wealthy. It's actually going to bring in residual income.

Let’s talk about risks. Real estate can be risky, right? But the solution there is just being  resourceful about it. If we go back to our house example, we've mitigated the risk because we bought a home that's worth $150k with just $110k.. 

What if the market goes down? You might think, “Oh no my house is now worth $125,000.” Well, that's why we made sure to buy a really good deal. You didn't wanna pay 150k for 150k house. You mitigate your risk and your chances, and you play the smart way. When you think that all debt is bad, you're really just coming from that scarcity mindset. 

Saving and investing isn’t just limited to financial resources. It also extends to the products or services we offer. So let’s dive into that a bit. 

Let's talk about the value that you give what you have to offer. Do you want to save some of your wisdom for the products that you sell or do you wanna give it all away on YouTube? 

The scarcity mindset would say if I share all my secrets and knowledge, they're not gonna buy my course. Why would they wanna buy it? I just gave away my secrets. So instead, if I have ten secrets, I’m going to share five with them and save the rest for those who buy my product. 

But think about it from the perspective of your customer. That just sounds gimmicky! That sounds like you duped them in. It makes them feel like you don’t really care about helping them, you just want their money. 

Now what if you say you’ve got ten secrets and you’re gonna share all of them on YouTube! Your customer is going to admire you for that. They’ll think, "Oh that's amazing! This is amazing content!" 

The reality is, people would love you for doing that. People have come up to me and said they love me for doing that. They think it’s amazing that I don’t hold anything out. 

When they’re ready to really implement my course or my service and they want more guidance or help, they come to me straight away. They say, “Hey, Nate, you've provided such great value, I love what you teach. I wanna hire you.” 

You end up gaining more respect and you don’t lose customers at all. That's the wonder of the abundance mindset. 

 

Work towards being better, not having more

 

It all comes down to this: when we come from a scarcity mindset, we want to have and have and have and keep it all to ourselves. We think that having or achieving something will make us happy. 

But when we think about it, having something doesn’t add to who we are. It doesn’t add to being a good person. 

When we focus instead on who we are, being happy with the life we have, and expressing gratitude for the abundance we’ve been given, that’s the abundance mindset. 

We can still work towards goals and think about our future. The difference is, we get excited about where we’re heading rather than be miserable about not being there yet. 

The process we go through and the progress we make is where we get happiness from, not the achievement of that. It’s where we grow and become better people.  

So earlier we talked about entitlement. We often think we’re entitled to blessings because of everything we’ve done. Because we’ve gotten a degree, added all these letters next to our names, and put in the work, we think we deserve more and more. We think we’re better than everyone else. That's actually coming from a place of pride. 

But from an attitude of humility, we think everything is a great opportunity. Our work, our relationships, and even our obstacles are all places to learn from. 

We realize there's so much to learn from and grow in. We see where we can grow and contribute. When we have victories, they’re much more satisfying and affirming because we give credit to everyone else who had part in that! 

 

Get rid of scarcity attitudes

 

The scarcity mindset deeply affects how we think of other people, especially those around us who succeed or win. How do we feel when other people around us succeed or win? How do we feel when we see someone making a lot of money? Is there a negative emotion with that? 

Something as simple as seeing someone who has a big house or who’s flying first class can really bring up some of those ugly emotions in us. Do we think, “Hey, those people must be jerks.” 

I'm talking from experience. When I first rode first-class, I wondered what people who were passing me by were thinking of me. Why? Precisely because I used to think negatively about people who were sitting in my seat. 

I used to think I was walking by them and think, “Who could afford that? They’re just wasting their money?” I’ve also struggled with the scarcity mindset without even realizing it! 

Feeling envy or resentment towards people who have been blessed keeps you from thinking from an abundance perspective. It makes you judge people without getting to know them. It makes you think you’re entitled to what they have. It makes you want to bring them down.

I propose if you're feeling a negative emotion that something is coming from that scarcity mindset, explore it. Why do you feel that way? If I were coming from an abundance mindset, how would I feel? 

You’d probably feel happy for them! The abundance mindset says, “Hey, that guy is doing really well for himself. He inspires me. He makes me want to work harder and contribute more.”

At the end of the day, the scarcity mindset accounts for every dollar and cent. It looks for what’s missing, rather than what’s already there. 

Abundance is comfort in knowing that everything you have comes from God. It’s a blessing, it comes from grace. We’re given more than enough resources. So our responsibility is to take care of it. We get to create. We get to give value to the world. The more value we give, the better this world's gonna be.

We’ve covered a lot here, so I’m really curious to know what you think about this. Can you think of other ways where the scarcity mindset manifests without us realizing it? How do you think you can apply thinking from a place of abundance to your life? Let me know!

It happens every year: we set new goals, get all excited, listen and try to follow popular strategies, and end up with a laundry list of the things we haven’t achieved. 

What are we missing? What are those popular people who give us advice that doesn’t get results missing?

It’s not that they’re completely wrong; it’s because they’re lacking a particular foundation that makes all the difference! 

I’ve learned a lot of things on my journey to success; a lot of that had to do with setting goals in a way that most people probably haven’t heard of or even considered.

I’m really excited to share this with you, because it has honestly changed my life. I started getting results that I thought were out of my reach. 

But more than that, my outlook on what I want for myself and my approach to achieving those goals genuinely became more powerful and more focused. The principles I learned in setting goals also helped me become happier in many areas of my life and helped me realize what I need to become the best version of myself!

 

Where smart goals go wrong

Let’s start with something you’ve definitely heard before: you need to set smart goals. Well, that’s actually true, but it’s the mindset that keeps us from getting the results we want. 

Now a lot of advice we get - maybe from our family, our advisors, even some experts - focuses on the idea that we shouldn’t look to the past or set goals for the future, because that distracts from happiness in the present. 

There’s truth to this: we do need to be present in the moment and stay in the now. But that’s not giving you the complete picture. Wisdom comes from going back to the past and progress comes from visualizing and aiming for the future we want. 

That’s how creation works! We free ourselves from limitations in the past, accept what is in the present, and set goals for the future. 

Replacing happiness with goals

See, the problem isn’t setting goals for the future. It’s one of the most important things in life and what I consider to be the ultimate form of self-care. 

The problem is when we think achieving something we don’t have will bring us happiness. We’re replacing happiness with something we want and unless we get it, we won’t be happy. 

When we’re always chasing happiness, that doesn’t work both for our well-being and for how effective we are at accomplishing what we want. Believe me, I know - I’ve tried this before and it never made me feel like I 

My mentor gave me a valuable idea that I always consider: I already have access to what I want, it just has to come from my mind and my thinking.

 

It’s not what we achieve, but who we become

What I think we’re missing is focusing on what’s really important. It’s not achieving the goals that matter, but who we become in the process.

There’s a saying that goes, “It’s not the destination; it’s the journey.” It might be cliché, but clichés often hold a lot of truth. 

Making money or getting to a milestone isn’t nearly as important as getting on the journey towards that. It’s all about taking on all the obstacles that lead us to growth and help us realize who we can become. 

The reason we set goals is not so we can achieve them and gain happiness through that. We set goals because it sets a course, a direction for us to follow and focus on. 

There’s a lot more that setting goals can give us, so let’s dive into its advantages. Let’s talk about why they are so important in helping us realize our fullest potential and expanding our capabilities. 

 

1) We become better people. 

Take note that this is an advantage of setting goals, not achieving goals. Achieving something you want doesn’t necessarily make you better; it’s overcoming challenges that does. 

These difficulties and obstacles only come up when we set goals and work on them. When we learn from our mistakes, we become wiser, more influential, and more empathetic towards others.

 

2) We focus on the important things. 

Ever feel like you’re overloaded with information and distractions? This is why our brains have something called the “reticular activating system”. It sifts through all the input our mind and senses receive to figure out what’s important. 

Now you might say, “Well, that’s what the body does - it’s voluntary!” But setting goals helps us have a more active hand in choosing what we focus on. It reminds us to keep our eyes on the prize and prioritize what leads us towards achieving that.  

 

3) It impacts our thoughts. 

Setting goals affects the way we think about ourselves, the people around us, and our circumstances. It tells us, “Hey, that task might be hard to do, but it’s going to push me where I need to go,” or “It may seem like I can’t do it now, but if I do it, then I’m a step closer to achieving my goals.” We’re always going to have thoughts - why not drive them towards the direction we want?

This is actually the most important advantage setting goals has! See, it’s a process: Setting goals impact our thoughts, which create our feelings. Feelings drive our actions, which drives our actions which bring results. 

Let me give you a more concise visual of that:

 

Thoughts -> Feelings -> Actions -> Results

 

When you think about setting goals and achieving them this way, you’ll realize how much power and choice you do have in getting the results you want!

 

Abundance Vs Scarcity 

When we want to set the right goals and get on the track to achieving them, we’ve got to have the right mindset for it. That’s actually one of the most crucial components of setting goals, but unfortunately a lot of people miss that because they want results right away without putting themselves in the right mindset first. 

Take time to evaluate yourself. Are you a dreamer? Do you dream about your future and want to get somewhere in particular? Or do you just focus on putting out daily fires, punching in and out like clockwork? 

The latter means you’re operating from a place of scarcity. It’s what reminds us what we don’t have and keeps us down in the dumps. It triggers our negative emotions and - what’s worse - doesn’t give us a way out of them. 

So instead, we need to dream from a place of abundance! That’s where we can set goals and stay on the right track that we want to follow. 

How do we make that happen? I’ve got 6 steps you need to take so you can get there: 

 

1) Pair up things you want with things you have. 

 

Think of 5 things you want. Pretty easy, right? Now think of 5 things you have that can help you get there. This is a really effective exercise when it comes to setting goals. 

For instance, one of the things I want most in life - I mean boy, do I want this - is to see the earth from space. This one brings up a lot of negative emotions with me, as much as I hate to admit it, because it makes me focus on what I want so badly but still haven’t experienced.

But what I do is pair it up with something I already have which is really important to achieve that goal - I have sight! 

The reason I want to see the earth from space is to be amazed by how beautiful it is, to appreciate that vision. And I can’t achieve that without my sight, which already allows me to experience so many good things, like getting to see and experience nature in full color when I go hiking. 

See, it doesn’t just address negative emotions, it even brings out positive ones or emotions of abundance; in this case, it’s gratitude. I feel grateful because I can see well and even just with that one simple thing, I can find a way to get to space. 

Always try to mix in what you want by what you do have. It’s a great way to remind you that the tools are already there - you just have to use them! 

 

2) Write down your goals.

 

Somehow writing down makes goals easy to remember, which means they’re easier to achieve. I don’t really know the science behind it - if there is - but this really helped me, and I’m sure it would work for you too. 

You can just keep going back to them and reading them every day when you want to or when you think you’ve been getting distracted and you want to remind yourself what’s important.

When you write them down, be specific with what goals you want to achieve! Answer the “what”, “when”, “how much”, or maybe a combination of those questions. Leave out the “how”; you’ll figure it out as you go along and I’ll give you a few tips on that later. 

 

3) Acknowledge all your emotions, especially negative ones.

 

It’s important to expect to feel a lot of negative emotions when we’re setting goals. That’s a good thing! I know it doesn’t feel great, but It means we’re stretching ourselves out of our comfort zones. In fact, if you’re not feeling negative emotions, you’re probably not stretching far enough.

All emotions are good - we have to experience them because that’s how we know we’re making progress. We have to acknowledge how we feel and try to understand it. 

The reason why we have negative emotions about goals is because it’s paired with negative thinking. “I don’t know how I’m going to do that,” or “I’m not good enough to achieve that”. When we think that way, it’s only natural to feel frustrated or disappointed or even angry. 

But remember: we can think about our thinking. Now we know we need to process it. We can say, “Okay, that negative emotion is there. It’s probably because I’m eager to achieve this goal. But being disappointed in my work today doesn’t mean I can’t achieve what I want - it just gives me an opportunity to learn what I should and shouldn’t do.”

It’s important to recognize negative thoughts that bring out negative emotions, but the amazing part is that we can choose not to believe them! 

 

4) Go to a place where you’ve already achieved your goals.

When you find yourself drowning in negative thoughts, what we can do is to go to a place where you’ve already achieved the goal. Use the power of imagination - we can choose to believe in we’re already there. That way, we can also choose the emotion that we feel in that place of belief.

Why is this important? Doesn’t this keep our head in the clouds? Actually, it’s the opposite! With this mindset, we could start writing and laying out our action plan. 

See, the point is to ask ourselves, “If nothing were stopping me, if there was no way I could fail, what would I do achieve that goal?”

Operating like nothing is stopping you and thinking about what you’d do in that situation - these help you take the first step to concrete action!

Remember our visual? Thoughts lead to feelings which lead to actions which lead to results! 

So it’s not about shoving aside the negative emotion; it’s acknowledging it then moving past it by choosing to go to this place of believing you’ve already achieved it. 

 

5) Create an action plan in reverse

When you have that mindset where you’ve already accomplished your goal, you can create an action plan in reverse. This means you don’t focus on the how, you focus on the goal itself 

Think about the goal you “accomplished.” What’s the step towards achieving it just before that end result? And what comes before that step? And then before that? 

It’s like looking back at the path we took and taking things in retrospect, which gives us more clarity in taking the steps towards achieving our goals. 

The more you break it down into smaller and smaller steps, the more you go into detail, the better! 

 

6) Set “do” goals to achieve your “dream” goals. 

Let’s get a bit more practical. So you’ve already got these major goals that you want to achieve in the future. They’re your “dream” goals. It can be overwhelming to just focus on that day in and day out, because it might seem a little too far off from your reality. 

What really sets you in motion towards accomplishing them is the habits and actions you do every day. These are your “do” goals. What can you do today that will help you achieve what you want in the future?

For instance, your “dream” goal is to make a great speech at a large conference. Your “do” goal for the next days and weeks is to apply to as many conferences as you can. Or let’s say your “dream” goal is to get engaged. Your “do” goal would be to go on dates every weekend.

They don’t have to be big; in fact, it’s actually better for them to be smaller so you can practice them in your everyday life. 

Setting “do” goals makes it easier for us to keep track of our progress. More importantly, though, it creates habits and helps us take action so we can move towards our dream goals. This makes achieving them so much easier - maybe even inevitable! 

 

Becoming your very best self

What happens when we achieve the goals we set out?

Set new goals. Keep finding different things you want to accomplish. Again, it’s not important whether we achieve the goals or not. There might even be a few we don’t get to. 

The point is to keep growing and keep learning! It’s being excited about the new paths we can take towards becoming the person we want to be. 

What matters is the lessons, experiences, wisdom, and relationship we build along the way. Setting goals is there to get us on that journey and keep us focused on that.

Trust me, when you internalize these principles and apply the right way to set goals, it’s going to change your life in so many ways and so many aspects. 

What are some goals you’re trying to achieve? What have you learned in trying to do so? Do you have any other tips on setting goals? Share your thoughts with me and let’s talk!

I’m excited about this topic, simply because I’m currently in the trenches of learning and mastering this myself. This has made huge, unbelievable changes in my life: it helped me build more meaningful relationships and make a positive impact on people!

What I’m talking about is building influence through emotion. Tying this into your skillset and expertise can really put it all together and take you to the next level of influence. It doesn’t just increase your influence exponentially; it also makes it more significant and meaningful. 

So how does this happen? What do you need to do to get to a level of influence that can completely transform you, your emotional capabilities, your relationships, and your influence?

When you really want to make an impact on someone, you can’t stay on the surface. Getting to the heart and making emotional connections is the key to powerful influence. 

To get there, the first step is to create a deeper level of trust with people. How exactly do you start doing that?

Vulnerability builds trust

Being vulnerable means we share a story or a part of ourselves with someone that we don’t want anyone else to know. It could be something as simple as an embarrassing moment, or telling someone you’ve had a rough day. Nothing is too small when it comes to vulnerability. 

When you become vulnerable to someone, it helps determine how much trust you give them. So if they abuse it or use it against you, that’s a sure way to cut off a relationship. But if they honor that 

The same goes for influence! Sharing from your heart lets you build trust with someone you want to have an impact on. So if you have a personal experience that you think might help them, it’s important to go deep into your emotions and talk about what you learned from it.

If they’ve been going through something similar, your story just might encourage them to open up about their own feelings and struggles. It’s a two-way trust bridge: you let them know you trust them well enough to tell them your experience, and in turn, have them trust you because you understand exactly what it’s like.

Influence is about progress

Of course, influence doesn’t stop at them letting out their emotions to you or making them feel good in the moment. That’s a very important part - and we’ll get to that later on - but it’s not enough. 

How do you know if you’ve really influenced someone? It’s when you motivate or inspire them to take action!

There’s nothing more magical than when someone takes your advice, acts on it, and gets the results they want. This means you gave them a skill set for life and now they own it. So they trust you even more with their challenges in life. That’s influence! 

The important thing is that they know you’ve gone through the same things and you want to be there for their own journey. 

At this point, you’re probably wondering: so where and how does it start? What takes temporary motivation to lasting, meaningful influence? How does casual friendship become a real lifelong friendship? 

My answer is simple: Influence begins with authentic conversation!

Emotional Awareness

Before we get into what authentic conversations are and how to carry them out, there’s one important thing to remember: you can only have authentic conversations when you reach a certain level of emotional awareness. 

Emotional awareness is all about discovering your own emotions and putting a name to them. It sounds pretty elementary, but you’ll be surprised how challenging this can actually be. 

I myself am still in the process of learning how to do this. My mentor taught me that the more words I have in my emotional vocabulary, the more powerful and active I can be in taking charge of my emotions. 

Since then, I’ve been really hungry to learn more about emotions and master them in a way I never have or even considered before. 

So I researched on how to access that full spectrum of emotion. I found this emotion chart that’s basically a circle of the 7 basic emotions we have: happy, sad, disgusted, angry, surprised, bad, and fearful. Each one breaks down in to many more complex emotions. 

Let’s say you’re feeling happy today. Are you feeling interested? Content? Playful? Proud? Optimistic? Powerful? If you’re feeling angry, are you feeling humiliated? Let down? Bitter? Aggressive? Frustrated? We can dig even deeper into that. If you’re frustrated, are you simply annoyed or actually infuriated? 

What’s the point of having all these words? There’s a saying that goes, “Human beings are animals but animals are not human beings.” One of the most important things that separate us from animals is that we can think about our thinking. 

When you have a rich emotional vocabulary in your arsenal, you can pinpoint exactly which emotion you’re feeling. This allows you to self-examine, so you’re able to act on that feeling = or even those feelings - with clarity and good judgment. 

Having a therapist is a good way to increase your emotional awareness. I have a really amazing one that I go to regularly, and it took a couple of awful, meh, and good therapists who weren’t the right fit for me to find her. 

Enriching your vocabulary and becoming more skilled at emotional awareness doesn’t just help you; it strengthens your relationships with loved ones, friends, and even strangers!

Why? Because then you can actually hold authentic, meaningful, intimate conversations with them.

Authentic Conversation

“Hey, how are you?”
“I’m fine! Business is doing well, kids are great. How about you?”
“I’m pretty good myself. Couldn’t be better!” 

How many times have you had this kind of conversation? You’ve probably had one today! Now there’s nothing wrong with chitchat, but when you want to build influence and create meaningful connections with people, you can’t stay at shallow or casual conversation. 

So how do we go from this to having authentic conversation? 

The important distinction that makes a conversation authentic is that it focuses on emotion rather than on circumstance. Here’s a good example to help you understand this better. 

Let’s say you went to a conference. When a friend asks you how the conference was, you’ll probably tell them it was great, we heard from this speaker on Day 1, this event happened on Day 2, another speaker taught us a couple of principles on Day 3, and so on. You’ll probably even talk about what your lunch was and how the hotel accommodations were. 

But imagine if that friend asks you, “Well, how do you feel about that experience?” That would probably catch you off guard, but you’ll also have the chance to think about the emotions you felt or any breakthroughs you might have had from the conference. 

And because your friend specifically asked you how you feel, that’s already an open invitation to authentic conversation. 

I have to admit, though: I’ve been pretty bad at this. I’ve had good moments, but most of the time, I’ve really held things back. And in the process, my friendships suffered. At one point, I even questioned whether I really had friends. I didn’t have a best friend. 

What really changed my friendships and connections with people in just a short amount of time is authentic conversation. It takes surface-level friendship to a real, lasting, purposeful friendship. 

Taking opportunities

Here’s my challenge for you: take every conversation as an opportunity to create authentic conversation! 

Start going to emotion even in casual conversation, whether you’re with friends or even just running into someone in the elevator. It’s also a good way to gauge which people in your life you want to get closer to and have regular authentic conversations with. 

When someone asks how you are, don’t just focus on successes. Focus on your challenges. Reach into your emotional vocabulary and talk about feeling bad - and dig deeper! Talk about whether you’re stressed, overwhelmed, or feeling out of control.  

Now if that person tells you, “Oh, that sounds rough. Talk to me about it”, that means they’re holding space for you to talk about your emotions or even just admit that you’ve had a bad day. 

You know they really care about you and they’ve got your back. More importantly, you know they’re at a better emotional level because they know what you need in this moment is to be heard, to be given the time, space, and attention to talk about how you feel. This can strengthen your relationship with them in ways you probably haven’t even thought of.

Of course, you run the risk of someone telling you your emotions are wrong. For instance, if you tell them, “Well, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed today,” and they immediately shoot you down with “Oh, don’t be overwhelmed!”, that person is telling you your emotion is wrong or that it’s easy to dismiss. These are people you might want to keep at the chitchat level of friendship or - if you're up to it - work a little harder to involve in your life. 

You’re never wrong about how you feel

Dr. Paul Jenkins, my friend who’s a renowned positive psychologist, always says, “You’re never wrong about how you feel.” 

Our knee-jerk reaction to people telling us they have negative emotions is to “fix it”. When they tell us they feel lonely, we usually say “Hey, I’m here! You shouldn’t feel lonely.” Or maybe they feel powerless, and we say “Don’t feel powerless, you’re a fighter!”

We might think we’re helping and getting them out of an emotional funk. But that’s actually a way of shutting down their emotions and telling them how they feel doesn’t matter. 

Emotions aren’t the problem; they’re the key to connection! Give them the space to feel how they feel and invite them to talk about it with you. 

So if you’ve started opening up about your feelings instead of your circumstances, you can also encourage people to tell you about theirs. With friends and family, you’ll want to ask, “How are you feeling?” instead of “What happened to you today?”

Even when you ask emotion-focused questions, people usually respond with circumstances. So after they go into detail about that, ask again: “So, how are you really feeling about that?” 

It takes asking about emotions a couple of times to let them know you’re willing to go there, that you’re sincere about listening to how they feel. 

From my experience, their answer is usually surprising. We assume we know what emotion they’re feeling because we base it on how we would feel in those circumstances ourselves. 

But what they’re feeling might be completely different from what you expect. It changes the whole conversation because then, you can really connect and understand from their perspective. 

You might sometimes think they’re wrong or they shouldn’t feel that way. It’s important to acknowledge your thoughts about it, but it’s also important to remember that it’s not your place to dictate how they should feel.

One of the things my mentor taught me is that you don’t really have to know why they’re feeling a certain way. My mentor taught me I don’t really need to know why they’re feeling a certain way. They’re feeling an emotion, and I can hold space for that. 

That’s why silence is an amazing and powerful response. It’s hard and it can get uncomfortable, but sometimes just sitting there silently is the best thing you can do for them. When you show them that you’re paying attention, they’ll feel comfortable enough to elaborate more knowing you’ll stay there with them.

It’s a journey

Discovering your emotions and helping others with theirs is a journey. You’re going to make mistakes. Trust me, I’m still on that same journey and I’ve gone the wrong way a few or so times. 

When you want to build meaningful relationships by having authentic conversations, you might notice you’re slipping. For instance, you might instinctively go to circumstance instead of emotions when you’re talking to someone important in your life. 

When that happens, pause and reflect. Think about how you feel, and try talking about it at length.

This goes both ways! You also need to open up space for other people to talk about their emotions. A good way to do this is by asking some hard questions:

“How are you feeling about our friendship? Your life? Your work? Your family? Connection with God? Success? 

You might think, “But what if it gets awkward?” Let it get awkward. Anticipate uncomfortable emotions; don’t worry, it’s part of the process! once you get to that deeper emotional level with someone, it’ll be really worth it.

This really changed my life. It helped me improve my relationships with friends and family and make effective connections with new people. Sometimes we have no idea what’s going on in people’s lives, even the ones most important to us. So it’s important to check up on them and make sure they’re confronting and dealing with their emotions. 

Imagine how much you can affect a person with one simple but powerful question, “How are you feeling?”

 

How do you feel right now about this article? Have you had an authentic conversation with someone in your life recently? How do you think it went? Share some of your stories in the comments!

 

For many of us, being successful on Youtube seems like a far-flung dream. But Nate Woodbury has been there; he's made it happen! In this podcast, he shares with us the seven biggest lessons that he's learned during his journey to 40 million views. Check this out!

Over the years, Nate Woodbury has helped, managed, and guided multiple YouTube channels to success -- and his experience has taught him a bunch of important lessons that anyone who wants to succeed on YouTube should know, such as:

• How and why you should take advantage of YouTube search
• The importance of doing keyword research BEFORE even shooting your videos
• The real deal with YouTube's partner program
• How you should deal with competitor ads that are being displayed on your channel
• The best way to create eye-catching and attention-grabbing thumbnails
• How often you should post to satisfy YouTube's algorithm, and
• The deal with watch time and YouTube analytics

These lessons have guided Nate. They helped him get to where he is now -- a thriving YouTuber and YouTube producer in the how-to space.

 

 

Every entrepreneur wants their business to succeed; that's just a given. In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares with us the nine key ingredients for business success. These he discovered in the process of running his own businesses for a decade. Stay tuned!

Okay. You want your business to succeed. -Yeah. -Right? And there are 9 ingredients or requirements that if you're missing one of these, it's likely your business will fail. -Okay. -So, we're going to cover all 9 and hopefully you're taking notes and checking these things off to make sure. Otherwise your business is likely to fail. -9 things. I'm curious what they are. Is that, is it like a specific order thing? -Not necessarily specific order. This first one should be obvious. I'm going to say you need to have a really good idea. -Okay. -Right? Because there's a lot of businesses that will fail just because their idea really isn't thought all the way through. So, how do you quantify that? I don't know how to tell if your idea is good or not. Everyone thinks that their own idea is good. -Yeah, yeah. -So, that's all I'll say about that. That's number 1. You have to have a good idea. -Great. -To succeed in business, you've got to be disciplined. Because you're not just filling one role but now you're the boss. And you're the security guard, or you're the accountant. You're the marketing team. -Yeah. -And you control your own schedule. And you get to work where you want. -And it's the best part. -And you get-- you get full control of the budget. You get to spend the money how you want. -Which could be the worst part. -And so, I think that's the biggest reason why a lot of people don't go into entrepreneurship. -Okay. So, we're talking about discipline. Like, what do you mean by discipline? -Really, the ability to focus, to prioritize, and to make sure that you're working enough. You know, I mean, that 8 to 5 schedule is common but that was just arbitrary. -Right. -Divide the day in 3. You sleep, you work 8, you play 8. -Yeah. -But if you're going to work for 8 hours, what are you going to do? -I could especially see that being you have to discipline yourself with those 8 hours, right? Because if you're working from home, we're pretty easy... -There's an office just around the corner and it's a big video game console set up in there. -That's a pretty idea. -Maybe they're gamer. I don't know. And that brings me the third requirement here is tenacity. -Okay. -And what I mean by that is... Because I had 8 and a half years of a financial rollercoaster. -Okay. -Like for real. -Yeah. -Like some of the lows, one time I was in the Walmart parking lot in tears because I couldn't afford to buy diapers. -Oh. -Right? That's legit. -Yeah. -It's a hard time. Why didn't I get a job, right? Okay, then another time, this is not too long ago like 4 years ago if I were to guess. Maybe 5. Asking my mom if I could borrow money or not necessarily borrow. "Can I... can I have some money?" -Mm-hmm. -And my mom asking me, "Nate, why don't you go get a job?" -And you have to have that conversation. -Yeah. -Yeah. -And I still stuck with it. -Yeah. -And now, my mom and dad will say, "Wow, we're sure proud of you, Nate." Well, what about a few years ago? I was doing the same thing then. -Yeah. -So, even just a few days ago, somebody emailed me and asked me about that tenacity. Like, how do you stick it with it? And it's really... I have something that I really believe in. It's like, I believe that what I'm creating and I believe that entrepreneurship is noble. And, like, quitting on that is like failure at life for me. -Yeah. -That's what it feels like. -Yeah. -To go back and get a job, I just feel like that would be a failure. And yeah that's just my mindset. I'm not saying that employees, or anything like that, that they're failures. I'm just saying that's for my purpose and whatnot. And so, I'm putting tenacity as a requirement because I think I took longer than some. I mean 8 and a half years before I finally... -Yeah. That's a good long time. -But yeah. I mean, I would still... You know, I'm 10 years in. 10 years in now. I'd still be going even if I were still in the financial roller coaster. -Yeah. That's a great one. I think that's... And that's inspiring for myself as a writer and actor. It's very easy sometimes. Or actually, I won't even say myself. "Are you someone that more people know?" Chris Hemsworth. The guy who plays Thor. He talks a lot about how he and his wife for a long time were like, "Can we keep doing this?" Because he was a freelancer and it's the same thing where he's totally an entrepreneur, right? And and they talked for a long time like, "Why don't I just go get a job?" And they decided that they were going to stick with it. And I totally agree. I think it's like.. It has nothing to do with going and getting a job being a bad thing. But it's if you've put your mind to doing something and you don't have the strength to keep doing it, then it's not going to work. And that's a failure on you. For, like, for yourself personally. And I feel that all the time. I'm like, if I give up on this, that's me. That's not anyone else. And so, I have to keep going, right? I love that tenacity, it's a great one. -Okay. So, those are attributes. Talking about the business. I put one category as a brand. -Okay. -Like a business really needs a brand. And what I mean my brand is not necessarily a logo. That's a cool thing to have. But like in my case, I've had different logos. I've had different brands. But until my brand really had a track record behind it. So, that's what I mean. Like a brand that actually means something that... -Yeah. -And you can do things to really ruin your brand or whatnot. So, that's what I mean, is it's important to have a good brand in order to have a successful business. -That makes sense. Brand kind of being like, "What's the feeling? What's the vibe I want people to feel?" Right. So, what's next? What do you... What comes after that? -So, then you've got to create a system. -Okay. -And that's going to sound really official perhaps. But think about the most successful hamburger chain on the planet. The most successful chain -- period -- in businesses is McDonald's. -Yeah. Yeah. -They really have a system that they sell. They don't have the best burger necessarily, the best fries, or yeah it's shake. But they-- they have a system and they have a brand. -Right. -Their system is that they can hire a high school student. And they'll just run the system. And so for me, when I hire a new editor, we have a process that we go through and we just train them. They bring their skill set. But we train them to follow our system. It's like a checklist or whatnot. So, there's a difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. Somebody who's... A business owner will actually create systems and those systems either run automatically through software or they hire somebody to run that system. So, a business owner can take a step back and look at how's the business running. "Ooh, here's something that's broken. Let's fix that. Let's create a system that will make that work better." -So, if someone feels like maybe that's kind of intimidating. Someone feels like, "I've got a really good idea. I know what my brand would be and I want to get there. But a system? That's kind of intimidating", right? -Actually, I'm going to recommend a book. -Okay. So, it's called E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. "E" stands for entrepreneur. -Awesome. -So, find the book the E-myth and it will really just like open your... It will cause a paradigm shift. You'll see the world of business in a whole different way and understand the value of systems. Yeah, my company would be chaos and non-existent without systems. I'm going to talk about another one. -It's another kind of big word that might be intimidating. And I'm going to talk about what leverage. Leverage is required for profit. It's like, if I can create a service that's valued at this high but it only costs me this much, that's that's where profit comes from. And I found a great opportunity and hiring people in the Philippines. Because I can hire people in the Philippines for $3 per hour that are college-educated and that's a dream job for them. So, that's cool. Because that's a huge blessing to me. And so, what that allows me to do in talking about leverage is I can assign them tasks that normally I'd have to pay people here 20 or 30 dollars per hour to be able to do. -Right. -And so, I can create services and sell them at a cost that's extremely competitive and yet still be having lots of profit. I guess going back to systems, leverage can be applied to that too, is it's you're making things so efficient that I don't know how to explain without using the word leverage. But you're just really leveraging things like a lever allows it to lift something heavy. -Right, right. -With small effort. And so if you create systems or tools or resources or leverage people or money or time to create more work. Than you have something of value that people will buy. -So, we've talked about some like good mindset, right? You to have your good idea, you need to have discipline and you have tenacity. Right? And then outside of that, we're like, "Now, how do you have a brand and making systems and then turning all that into leverage so that you can make a profit?" Right? And that's how you're going to get going with your business. So now, it's like, "Okay. Now, how do we see that in action?" -Well, let's break it down. There's going to be 3 different areas of your business. Okay? You need to have traffic or some source of customers or lead generation. So, let's call that what traffic. -Okay. -I use YouTube for a lot of traffic. And I can I can link to a video right there my my leaf strategy video, okay? So, where are your customers going come from? Do you have a storefront in Times Square? -Right. -Or do you advertise on TV or radio? Do you have banner ads online? Do you  have a YouTube channel? Where's your traffic coming from? -Yeah. Then you need to have the ability to sell. -Okay. -Alright? So, how do you take a lead and turn them into a customer. -Okay. -So, you've got to have a some type of sales system in place. -Right. -And then you've got a fulfill. You've got to have some way of delivering that whether you're manufacturing and delivering a physical product or you've got a service that you're providing. -Right. -And whatever it is, you've got to provide good fulfillment that... Like good customer service that you get good reviews that's not going to hurt your reputation. That's going to have happy customers that's not going to have lots of returns. That your products aren't breaking. So, if you have a good source of traffic, you can turn that traffic into leads and sales. And you can keep your customers happy because they're getting what they expected. Those were the 9 requirement ingredients to have a successful business. -Okay. -Okay. Now, with that foundation, the next video that I highly recommend that you watch is my leaf strategy video. I mentioned traffic and I mentioned YouTube. My strategy really, really works and it's so much so that on one of my channels, we brought in 7 figures last month just from one channel. And this is the strategy. So, click this video up here. It's my leaf strategy video so you can learn how to get lots of traffic from YouTube.

Business isn't always going to be smooth-sailing -- a fact that is known by every successful entrepreneur. In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares with us several helpful tips that can help you save a failing business. Stay tuned!

How do you stop a failing business? All right, I've got a successful business, but I've had many fails. And my first eight years -- eight and a half years -- have been a financial rollercoaster. And I switched directions and so I've had many failures along the way. So, how do you stop that, and how do you actually achieve success? Because I fill in there now, I can share some of my secrets with you. So, when you know your business isn't succeeding or isn't succeeding like you want it to, you've got to be objective and separate yourself emotionally from it. Okay, you've got to be objective and just look at it logically and find out what is going wrong. Because in order for you to fix it, you've got to know what's going wrong. I mean, maybe you need a second pair of eyes to come and look at your business and help you figure out what is going wrong. The next thing I want to recommend is to create systems. And if you haven't read or listened to the book, "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael Gerber-- So, the E-myth Revisited. Man, that is a must-read, and that has a good chance of saving your business from failure. Systems mean that instead of me wearing all the hats and just being an employee and being self-employed wearing all the different jobs in my company, that I systematize my business. That I create a system and hire somebody to run that system or create a program to run that system or hire this person. And so, I'm systematizing my business. This allows me to work on my business continually making improvements and making it better and ensure that it will succeed and grow and be profitable instead of just working in my business --being a slave to it. Another way to look at this is if you're working as the technician instead of as the owner. All right? I mean, think about McDonald's. Like, a McDonald's is a very successful business franchise. Do you ever see the owner? I mean the owner of that location? No. You see the high school students. You see the manager, perhaps? They're the employees that are hired to run that system. And so that's one reason that you might be feeling is if you are the dishwasher, if you are the cook, you're working as the technician, not as the owner. Okay, this is one that I have struggled with. And I've made improvements in and want to continue improving. And that's that I try and sell what I want instead of what my customers are asking for. Because in some cases, I feel like I know better. I know what they need, so I sell them what they need. Okay? I've learned that they know what they want. And they're not going to buy what they don't want. So, I need to sell what they want and if I can also provide them what they need. And you can do that through education, right? So, if you sell them what they want and educate them on what they need, for so long, I did struggle because I only would-- I was only willing to sell them what they needed, but they didn't know that they needed it, right? Okay, another piece of advice, and it's kind of hard because we live in a world with lots of shiny objects. I would focus on one thing at a time. Just focus on one step at a time. So, you've got this big idea. You've got this big launch campaign and all these things that you want to set up. This big sales funnel, these websites, the marketing videos that YouTube channels social media. Wow! Right? Just focus on one thing at a time. And focus on the most important thing like what's going to bring in revenue today? Is this Facebook campaign cool? Is it going to be great long term? But is it going to bring me revenue right now? I've got to focus on bringing in revenue right now before I can go there. Does that make sense? Maybe let me say it this way. Just don't over complicate things. And we can make our businesses way too complicated. If we just take a step back and simplify. Okay, this is advice that I wish I would have given myself. And I knew better but I got a business loan. I had already been in business. But I got a business loan so that I could invest in marketing. And I thought that marketing was going to help me scale. It didn't work. I didn't have proper sales funnels in place so that all that marketing money just was wasted. Yeah, that was-- that was a lesson learned. Don't go into debt. Don't go into debt for your business. It's so easy to start a company and be an entrepreneur and create a very successful, profitable business with zero money in the beginning. Okay. And I guess I had another point here talking about shiny objects. I wrote, "Filter shiny objects that don't really lead to direct results." There's a lot of shiny objects out there. Different programs, different campaigns, different tools, different gadgets that are awesome. Like I still don't own a drone. I wanted a drone ever since they became popular. But I don't know how I'm going to use a drone to actually make revenue for my business. I could get it and write it off because we do so much filming. And I have all these desires of getting a drone. Maybe I can justify it. But the moral of this story is, just filter the shiny objects that don't lead to direct revenue if you want to save your company. Alright. How consistent are your sales? If you don't have consistent sales, then your great risk of failure. You've got to have revenue coming in. You've got to always have new clients coming in, or you're at risk of failure. Okay, that's an all stage. Is that a place to me that a place to the beginner. So, look at consistency. Be honest with yourself about how consistent your new customers are coming in. Okay, this next one was one that I am very good at. I really have tenacity at making a mistake and picking myself up and learning from it and moving on. So, I feel like I've got a lot of entrepreneurial wisdom, a lot of business wisdom. Because I make a lot of mistakes and I learned from it. So, that's the biggest tip right there if you want to reverse your business from failure and move it towards success. Be open with yourself about mistakes. What mistakes have you made, and what can you learn from each one of them? You know, don't just be hard on yourself and judgmental of yourself. You didn't do it on purpose. What can you learn from every mistake? I want to work this one because it sounds cliche. Like, solve problems. Find a problem that you can solve. But I want to contrast that instead of just creating a product, right? Instead of just creating a service, "Ooh! I can create websites for people." Yeah, people want websites, right? I'll create websites. I'll be a web designer. Well, I want to recommend that you create websites that do something specific that fill a need, fill a void. I look at it in terms of results. When I had a web design company -- right -- we designed over 500 websites. And my clients were happy. They had a pretty brochure that they could show their family and friends. And yet, I knew that their website wasn't getting traffic and they weren't making sales. That's discouraging to me. It's totally discouraging, and that's why I don't have a web design company anymore. There's a longer story than that. But I love results, and I recommend that you create a product or service that you can get them predictable outcomes and results. Okay. Here's one that I've learned through experience. And I'm going to call it to know your value and prove it. All right, I knew the value of my YouTube service, but I didn't have a track record. I didn't have a portfolio in large scale like I was trying to sell. So, I decided to prove it. And it took me 2 or 3 years without making any money. Then I proved it. Then I had a track record, and people would come to me I didn't have to pursue them they would come to me saying, "Hey, do for me what you did for them." So know your value and prove it. Just even if you have to give away your services, give away your product for free, invest in yourself, invest in your portfolio. Prove it. This one would be a hard one for me just the way that I'm wired. But maybe this will work for you. Get a job to remove the financial stress. Maybe, okay? See how that resonates with you? Just think about what would it be like. I mean, yeah, you're going to have less time to work on your company. But if the stress was gone, if the urgency was gone because your bills were paid, would you be able to turn your company around? Here's another cliche one. Okay, set goals and know your why. Why are you in it? You know, so when you get smacked down, you get punched across the face or something and hit some big obstacle or setback or some failure. When you know why, it's easier to get back up. And if you're setting goals and you're making progress towards them. If you don't have goals, then you don't know where you're going. And you don't know if you're making progress. So, you've got to set goals and have a foundational why beneath them. Okay. And lastly, you know, if you're trying to avoid your business from failing, maybe it is time for this business to fail and just to go and start a different one. Now, you know what doesn't work, go start one that will work. Take all this knowledge and go start fresh. I'm not saying that's the right answer. But maybe it is. You would know better than me. Now, with that foundation, the next video that you should watch is what I would do if I were starting a business from scratch. I share all my secrets on how I created my business that I absolutely love and what I would do if I were creating it from scratch again to save me from making mistakes. So, go watch that video next.

There's a lot more to YouTube than most people come to know. In fact, most people have only scratched the surface! In this episode, Nate Woodbury will be answering some of the most common questions regarding YouTube. Check this out!

Okay. We're tackling it. YouTube for dummies. You're not a dummy. But you know what, we're answering some really good questions about YouTube. I produce 13 different YouTube channels. My biggest one is making 600 thousand dollars a month. So, I have some answers for you. Okay. So, the first question that I have is: what are the best ways to make money on YouTube? Now, there's ad revenue that can be a good way if you're a really good entertainer, if you're willing to go a few years without making significant money. So, you've got another way of paying your bills, right? And you can make entertaining content for a few years. Wow, you can really do well with ad revenue. Personally, it took me several years. I did make $16,000 last month. It averages about 12 right now. $12,000 thousand dollars per month. But that's just icing on the cake because I have a lot of expenses. That's not all profit -- right? -- for my business. So, that's just one way. That's one way you can make money is ad revenue. YouTube will put ads. So here's your video. YouTube will put an ad in front of it. (or is that behind?) So here's your video right the front of it. So, here's your video. YouTube puts an ad in front of it and the advertiser pays money to put that there. Well, YouTube gives you 55% of it. So, that's how you can make money through ad revenue. But if you've got a business, you've got a product or service that you sell if you're an expert, like a coaches, speaker, and author, YouTube is an amazing place to share your expertise. And then people will want to buy what you have to sell. People get your free advice on YouTube and then they want to go to your website and hire you as their coach, hire you to come speak. They want to come to your events. They want to buy your courses. So, that last one -- digital courses -- that's where you going to start making the most money early on on YouTube. Let me just share with you a story. So, Kris Krohn, 2 years ago, he was hoping from all this YouTube traffic to get people to come to his local events in Utah. In the previous year, only one person had come to his event. And yet everyone was saying, "How can I work with you. I want to learn from you. This is so amazing. Can you help me invest in real estate?" And yet, no one was willing to come to Utah to attend his event. That's how he was mainly making money is by people coming to his events and selling them things at the end of event. So, we then decided to create a digital course. Long story short, we created the course, we launched it. We made 6 figures that month. It's done very well ever since. But guess what? Fast forward 2 years. Today, Kris puts on events and he fills them mostly with people outside of Utah. So, he just needed to get his channel to a bigger space. So the the courses are how you're going to monetize your channel the fastest and the most significantly. Ad revenue will start to come in after a few years. People start to get people coming to events or hiring you for speaking engagements after a few years. So hopefully that puts things in perspective. So, how do I personally make money on YouTube? Well, I mentioned ad revenue. I get a lot of leads for people wanting me to produce their YouTube channel. They're experts and they hire me to do it from start to finish. So, we help with the topic strategy. We do the filming we do the editing. And we do the  lunch. The thumbnail design everything. So, I make money from that. I also have an affiliate arrangement with... My biggest ones are virtualassistanttool.com. That's a great affiliate program. So, virtualassistanttool.com. Also procart.org. Okay, this question that came in is kind of interesting. I'll read it. It says is it still possible to make money on YouTube without making videos in 2020? This was it's still possible to make money on YouTube without making videos, what do you... How are you making... I don't know. I don't know if it's still possible because I don't know if it ever has been possible. That's what YouTube is all about is making videos. Maybe you're stealing other people's content? Sorry. I'm the dummy on this one. So, I don't know how to answer your question my friend. So, this is a great question: How do YouTube channels benefit from getting more subscribers? Right? The more subscribers you have, that's like your following. It's your tribe and when you post a video, a good portion of your subscribers are going to watch that video. So, if I've got 10 subscribers, one person watches. That's 10%, okay? if I've got a million subscribers and that's same 1% watches. Well, hey, at least I got 10,000 views. Or some channels get 100%. You know, they get it. They have 50,000 subscribers on their channel and they'll on average get 50,000 views on their videos. So, it depends on the type of content that you're creating. But the more subscribers you have, it's really a good indicator of the momentum that you have. How many views you're getting every single month. I can go back even more basic. You can subscribe to a YouTube channel. Let's talk about how does it -- subscribing -- benefit you. So, if you watched a video that you like, you think, "Oh, I would like to see more like this." Or "I like this channel." Then you can subscribe. And when a new video is uploaded to that channel you can get an email notification. You subscribe and turn on the alerts. Or when you go to your YouTube home screen, you'll see videos that YouTube thinks you would like to watch next. Because you're a subscriber, it'll suggest videos from that channel. So, by people subscribing to my channel, my content is shown to those people more often. Okay. So, this was a very specific question and it's kind of assuming. It says, "Why do financial videos on YouTube make more money than other videos?" Well, by financial, I can definitely agree that videos that are talking about how to make more money in business or how to make more money in real estate, those videos do make more money because advertisers are willing to pay more money for audiences that are looking to make money. Because they have programs to sell and like in the the space that I work with Kris Krohn, how to invest in real estate. And real estate is the largest commodity out there that we can typically buy and sell. You know, a property might be $250,000. And that's kind of an average price of a home. And so to learn how to invest in real estate, people are willing to invest at a higher amount. And so there's just larger amounts of money to be made there. Versus I can make a great channel about cute kittens and cute puppies and cute animals. But I don't know that I'm selling anything. I might just get lots of views. Maybe I'll get some some ad revenue but who wants to advertise next to those. How is it going to relate to their product it may or may not. Okay. So, why is video editing so important to a YouTube channel? Well, you've got there attention. It's not like a podcast or radio where you're just kind of listening to you in the background. With YouTube, they've got their phone out or their computer and they're giving you their full attention. If you've recorded for 17 minutes but there's some dry spots throughout there, you definitely want to go and edit out those dry spots. Since that video up to 11 minutes. So, that it'll keep their attention and you can keep their attention watching to the end. Because here's the thing: If people watch all the way to the end, the YouTube algorithm sees that and will recommend your video to more people. So, the more watch time you get, the more people watch the whole thing; the more people that video will be promoted to and the more people will watch there's a lot more watch time and so forth. Editing isn't really to make your video look more professional. It's just to keep people's attention more. This is an interesting question. Should I trust the Shopify gurus on YouTube? I'm going to go a little bit more broad and like how can you know if you can trust someone on YouTube? Yeah, that's a good question. Like how do you know that you can trust me? How do you know that what I'm sharing with you is true or not? It's kind of the same way that you you know it in real life. I mean, when you meet someone, you have a gut feeling, with YouTube, you have a little bit more advantages. Because you can dive in a little bit deeper. You can do some research. You can watch more of their videos. You can get to know them a bit a little bit better. I mean, it's not like when you're in a sales situation and and the person's right they're trying to move you towards the clothes. On YouTube, you can take your time. You don't have to go to their website for months and months, right? If you want to know if you can trust them, watch more other videos. Learn their personality, see if you agree with them, find a controversial topic that you have a strong opinion about. And go and watch and see what do they think about it. You know, integrity is doing what you say you're going to do. And what you teach. Right? So, if you teach to do something, are you doing that thing? That's a big ingredient for trust, right? So, pay attention to what they're doing in addition to what they are saying. See if you can research and find out. Okay. This next question, "How to outsource YouTube video editing?" Well, you can hire me and my team. We'll do we do the filming editing strategy and the launch. But if you just need an editor, you've got the filming side down... Man, I have a recommendation for you. It's virtualassistanttool.com. It's what I use. That's where I found all 14 of my employee. Oh, I have to take that back. I've got 2 sibling that was hired and I've got a friend that was hired. But everyone else was hired through the virtualassistanttool.com. And I've got other videos about why I hire people in the Philippines. I can link to it up there. You'll find other videos on my channel that teach the different of aspects of how you can actually hire a video editor. Okay. So, question here I've got a read to you. It says, "Every video I try to upload on YouTube says, it's copyrighted. How can I remove the copyright from those videos?" Okay, YouTube can scan your video and know if you have rights to that or not. And if everything that you upload it says it's copyrighted, it means you don't have permission to use that. It means it belongs to somebody else. So, how you can avoid that is to pull out your phone or your camera and make a video and you create the footage. Don't take someone else's content. Don't take someone else's music that you don't have the rights for. Buy the music or create the music. Make your own videos like this video right here. No one else owns the copyright. When I upload this to YouTube, it's not going to give me a copyright warning or notice because no one else owns this. It's my camera. I'm recording, I'm talking. I own it. I'm uploading it to YouTube. And that's what you've got to do to avoid the copyright garbage. How much does it cost on average to make a YouTube video? Well, if you you already have one of these in your pocket. So, pull it out. Hit record. Talk to the camera just be conversational. I can make an amazing YouTube video like that. Now, you can upgrade. You can increase production costs over time. But let's start at free. Start at free. Start getting results there and then you'll know when the right time is to buy a new light or to get a better microphone. Or to get a DSLR camera. Because you want to be able to blur the background. I love blur in the background. See, how I do that blur. I mean watch this. Now, look how blurry that is. That is awesome. See, if you want to be able to do that, like start with your phone. And then invest when the time is right. So, this question I'm going to twist my answer a little bit because the question is how do I stop the edge which come in YouTube. I'll actually give you two answers. Now, I don't see ads when I go to YouTube. I pay for YouTube's premium. It's like 12 bucks a month. So, my YouTube experience is ad free. The creators, they still get paid a portion of it. Instead of getting paid for the ads that I would see, now they get paid for the premium that I pay each one. They get their pieces of that. But the other way that I want to answer this question is I love ads. Because if I make a video that YouTube pairs an ad with and it does well, YouTube will promote my video and my video will get lots and lots of views. I have a video that's got 5.4 million views not because it went viral but because YouTube paired an ad with it and then started promoting it. So, you don't want to turn off the ads. You want ads before your video. Even if it's a competitor. Even if it's a competitor that competitor is going to bring you traffic. I love this question: Can one seek therapy on YouTube? Well, yeah. Live On Purpose TV, doctor Paul Jenkins. He's a positivity psychologist. There are lots of channels like that where you can get therapy. Now, I love watching content like that on YouTube. But I also have a therapist. So, I don't think YouTube can fully replace a real therapist. I think everyone should be seeing a therapist. In addition to my therapist, I have many coaches that I pay thousands of dollars to every month. So, that I can always grow and always learn. A therapist is not a bad thing. A therapist is a really good thing. If you have a therapist, good for you. If you're thinking "You know what? I'm just too hesitant. I don't want to go see a real person. Can I get therapy on YouTube?" I'm going to say do both. Do both. You can definitely learn a lot and gain a lot of insights. And use YouTube with a real therapist. Okay. I've got two last questions. Second to last one: How do we start our business on YouTube? Okay, start a business off of YouTube first. Okay? Just create your product, your service, your event. Whatever it is, create something of value and sell it. Start making money. If you have something that's a value that you can sell, then create a YouTube channel. And watch more videos on my channel to learn how to build a following so the leads will then go into your business. How do you start a business on YouTube? I guess the other way is you have a job and you don't need to worry about money. And you just start YouTube as a hobby. And after a few years, you'll have a big enough following and your audience will tell you what they want you to sell. They'll tell you what they want to buy. And so you can go that route. Last question: "Mr. Nate. How would you make a better YouTube?" That is a tough one because YouTube has done so many things right with their partner program. I mean somehow and I know that this is a controversial topic. I would clean up YouTube a bit. I want the full YouTube to be friendly for my children. I really have to monitor things a lot there. So, that's one thing. I love the results I'm getting. It takes a long time. It takes 12 to 24 months to really start to get real momentum. I mean, you want to make seven figures on YouTube. You've got a 7 figure business already, you want to use YouTube to market it, it's going to take two or three years to really build a significant following and to generate that additional seven or eight figures of revenue. The strategy that I use works there's a lot of people succeeding on on YouTube. But there's there's so much content being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Go ahead and look up the stats. You probably know the stats. You know, this might sound weird. but I want YouTube to continue making all the algorithm changes that they're making. A lot of my friends make content that chases the trends or finds a loophole. And when there's an algorithm change, they really suffer. Their income goes down. Their views go down. Their channel can contract. That's never happened to me. Every time there's been an announced algorithm change or whatnot, my channel is either steady at gradual growth or it's increased because I make content that people are searching for. And I make content that will make YouTube money. So, if they're making an algorithm change is because they're trying to filter out a lot of the garbage to find my channels and to find my content. Now, if you don't know about my leaf strategy, this is something you want to know about. If you want to succeed on YouTube, watch this video next. My leaf strategy video. That's how I've achieved the level of success that I have across all 13 channels. It's how you can make a video and get it to rank number one on YouTube on day one. Go watch my leaf strategy.

It's natural for people to assume that YouTube producers make money through YouTube ads. But did you know that there are far better income sources than ad revenue? In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares with us the five different ways he makes money on YouTube, as well as his thoughts on each one.

I can make money in 5 different ways. I'm going to tell you how I make money online. The 5 different ways I make money. I'm going to dive right in and share with you the 5 ways that I actually make money. I'm going to share with you which ones are my favorite. Kind of what I like and dislike about each. And then I'll share the secret as to why I've been able to be so successful in making money in these ways. Okay. So, let's talk about ad revenue. A lot of people know that I'm a YouTube producer and so when we're looking at money, they think, "Okay, we'll you make money from YouTube advertising." I do make a significant amount. It's actually much higher than I thought it would be. Because my strategy is a bit different. My income last month was $16,000 from ad revenue. So, that's the respectable amount, right? That's a respectable amount. But it's only icing on the cake. So, the second way that I make money is I sell done-for-you services, right? People come to me to produce their YouTube channels. We do the filming, we do the editing. Okay, even before that, we do the strategy. So, we do the strategy, the filming, the editing, the production for YouTube, the thumbnail design. We do it for you. And I have different packages ranging from over $100,000 all the way down to $24,000. That's what people mainly come to me for is my done-for-you services. And that is where the majority of revenue comes from. I also have a YouTube course. Now, it's not a majority of my revenue yet because I've only just launched it. But what I've done with some of my other channels and promoting my other clients' courses, I do expect that it will exceed and become the dominant source of revenue for me. I've got a YouTube course that's $2,000. Okay. Now, there are variety of other ways that I make money that I'm going to categorize into one group. I'm going to call them affiliates. Okay, I do get paid affiliate revenue. My biggest one and I feel like I should not share the number. Let's just say it become significant. I hire people in the Philippines and I teach a lot of people about how I do that. And the tool that I've been using for 10 years is called virtualassitanttool.com. I'm an affiliate with them. And so, when I send people with that website, if they sign up to use that service then I get paid a monthly commission. And the cool thing about it... And I recommend this as an affiliate program for you. They don't stop. So, once somebody starts paying a monthly fee, years go by and I'm still getting a percentage out of that affiliate commission. So, virtual assistant tool is my favorite affiliate program. One that I actually haven't promoted for a long time is procart.org. It's a great shopping cart. But I haven't promoted that for years. And so, if my income dwindled from that, I think I made 150 bucks last month. But that's another affiliate program. You know what? I don't make any money from Amazon affiliate program. Not a dollar. Not a dime. It's crazy. I buy a lot of stuff on amazon and you think that the links that I've shared with people will at least earn me a penny or something. And also, you may know that I do a lot of speaking. In fact, this weekend I'm flying out to Washington DC to speak about YouTube. I just spoke in Miami. I'm speaking after I get back from the Philippines, I'm speaking in San Francisco. You know what? I don't get paid as a keynote speaker. I don't get paid for my speech. So, that's just as a side, that's a way that I don't get paid. But that is kind of my marketing, right? I don't really do traditional marketing or advertising. I do YouTube influence building and I speak. Alright. Now, here's another way that I do make income. And it's my least favorite. Okay, consulting. It's not that I don't like consulting in the moment. But I don't like putting hours on my calendar and I don't like that it totally drains my energy. So, that if I even do 2 consulting hours in a day it makes it... So, I can't be productive the rest of the day. So, I charge $1,000 per hour. Maybe I should charge more than that now. You know, I sell that in quantities for 4 hours or I have in the past. I'm not really... I've turned people down for that recently. And maybe that's a good time to talk about kind of the pros on cons. What's my favorite? The least favorite is the consulting. Again, it's not because I don't enjoy the consulting work or helping people that way. But I just... I don't like trading my time for money even though $1,000 might seem like a high amount paid per hour. Trading time for money is... It's challenging for me and like what I said... I put a lot into it. When I put in consulting, I'm all focused on them, their channel, their business. And so, when I'm done, I mentally exhausted. And I need to take a nap. I need to sleep. And I'll be ready to work again the next day. So, let's talk about ad revenue. It is one of my top 3. Kind of like icing on the cake. I don't really have to do much anymore. The thing that I don't like though is it's not predictable. I don't really control it. One month, it can be 18,000, the next month it can be 8,000. And that's just one specific channel that I'm remembering. The real number's for. So, I don't really control it. So, I like it. It's like icing on the cake. But I don't control it. Now, I love my done-for-you packages. They're very profitable. And I love how to get results. So, I've created a service that I can charge a high dollar amount for that gets results that are way higher than the dollar amount that I charge. And I've hired a team that does it for me. So, where I still provide the expertise. My team puts in the long hours and I love that. The disadvantage to my done-for-you service is it's difficult to scale. Because it's a big project taking on a new client. And I do take on new clients but not like hundreds of clients a month. I take on a new client each month. Just one, right? So, it's a harder to scale. So, that brings me to talking about the last one. Selling a course. So, that brings me to my digital course. It's really nice. Because it's fully leveraged as I can be. I put a lot energy and heart. I worked on this since the beginning of 2019. And It's taken a lot to create. But now that it's created, it's automated. Right? It's automated, I can control it. And I can scale it. Okay. So, now there are several areas that I am making money on my business. And what is the number 1 strategy? How was I able to get traffic to be able to sell all these things. And that's through my leaf strategy. I do keyword research before filming. If you don't know yet my leaf strategy is or you're not perfect at it, watch this video right here. This is where you should go next. Watch my leaf strategy video and you'll know how I get in all the traffic through YouTube to buy my course. And that's why I'm so successful.