The Six Percent Entrepreneur

Does Kanye West really love Nazis or is this some part of his genius marketing play? So in this episode we're going to talk about the exact formula Kanye West is using for his marketing playbook and before we talk about the formula, I want you to remember these two things. The first one is to be polarizing and the second one is equity and fairness and we'll talk about how these two things go together and how Kanye West is using it for his benefit. So here is the formula. What Kanye West does is he says something really provocative to get attention, this is not something new for Kanye West, he's always done this, he's pretty well known for doing this, but he says something really provocative to get attention and he gets that attention, people start talking about it like oh my gosh, I can't believe Kanye West said that slavery is a choice or oh my gosh I can't believe Kanye West said this and Kanye West said that, so he says something really provocative to get attention and then what Kanye West does is he explains his intentions and once you hear his intentions you're like oh that kind of makes sense and what that does is it gets people talking. So the formula again, you say something provocative and then after you say something provocative you get people talking and then you explain your intentions and then once you do that, people will actually come to your side and we'll talk exactly how that works again by being polarizing and equity and fairness and Elon musk actually does this really well. If you look at Elon must Tesla truck, it was very polarizing the design was very polarizing half the people thought it was ugly. Another half the people thought it was beautiful. And the thing is he actually made something that people would talk about, right? So he knew that this design wasn't going to be for your average person. He wasn't trying to build a car for your normal person. He was actually trying to build a cult following around Tesla and he did exactly that once the Tesla truck came out, people in the media were like, oh this Tesla truck is ugly and and yet he sold out all of his pre orders and people you know, can't wait to get their hands on his chest the truck. And if you know Elon musk, there's a lot of people that hate Elon and there's also a lot of people that love Ellen just look at what Ellen is doing with twitter. Ellen is very polarizing. Ellen does this very well in terms of getting people to either before him or against him because again, if you're in the middle, you're not for anything. So you have to be polarizing now. Andrew Tate also does this very well and one marketer that I interact with on facebook, his name, Ezekiel man, he has a facebook group called build a cult following, definitely go check that out. He did some analysis on Andrew Tate and in his analysis, he says Andrew Tate basically does the same thing, he says something crazy and gets people talking and then he provides a little bit more context and then once he provides that context and people understand his true intentions, they're like, oh that makes sense and who taste not really that crazy. I just misunderstood. Right? And then once that happens, Andrew Tate starts building a call following around him because then he gets people that are that feel like they're more enlightened because they understand the intentions behind his comments and those people start becoming evangelists because here's why people want fairness, right people, it doesn't matter if you're a republican, a democrat, a republican leaning person, I'm sorry, a right leaning person or a left leaning person, In fact I talked about, I talked about this on a previous podcast episode on episode 58 How Black Lives Matter and the All Lives Matter Movement are both right. And essentially it's two different groups that don't have all of the information, but both groups are fighting for fairness. So when Kanye West something says something like slavery was a choice or he's going to go death Con three on jewish people, it sounds very provocative. But then once you understand the context around it, once you actually give him a chance and listen you're like, oh that makes sense. So let's say Kanye West, slavery was a choice. For example, when Kanye said slavery was a choice, he got people to talk about it and then he dropped an album a couple months later where he was like let's see the lyrics, he said, I said slavery is a choice. They said how you just imagine if they caught me on a wild day. So what Kanye West is saying is that slavery is a choice between being a slave and dying because he will not be a slave, he will fight to the death. And once you understand that context and once you understand the intention would be like oh yeah, like I would probably do the same thing, that makes sense. And then when he says something like he's going to go death Con three on jewish people and then he explains how he is jewish himself on how black people are, are jewish himself, you kind of see what his point is. He's like okay I'm this person and I can talk about these people because I am these people, these people are my people. He says he loves jewish people and the thing is the stuff that he was saying, if you actually listen to a lot of people in the black community, they're like yeah what did he say? That was so wrong. You know, he's basically just stating stuff out there that's an observation for him and it's not necessarily racist, that's how a lot of people are are taking it in, right? So it's the same thing with everything that he's saying right now, he went on Alex jones in full war show and he said something really provocative, he says that he loves Nazis, he loves, he loves Hitler and I am willing to bet he's going to come out with some kind of song where he talks about jesus loves everyone and Jesus loves Hitler and Jesus loves everyone and Jesus loves Hitler, right? So you're like, oh if you look at it in the context of jesus where Jesus loves every person, where God loves every person, then how can you argue with that? Right? If you're arguing with Kanye Loving Hitler, then you're arguing with Jesus Loving Hitler. So that's kind of the whole thing of what he's doing and once he does that, then the fairness part comes in because people will fight for fairness, people will start to believe that how Kanye West is being treated because they don't fully understand his intentions, it's not fair and when people feel that it's not fair, they feel like going out making a podcast just like I'm doing right now and explaining to people what Kanye West intentions really are. So why does fairness works Chris Voss in his book, I can't remember the name of the book, it's a negotiation book, what is the name of the book, it's like something I can't remember the name of the book, the author's name is chris Voss and in his book, he says that people have an irrational reaction to unfairness. So when you are negotiating, it's a book about negotiation and you use the word fair, It starts to get people thinking about what is fair and what's not fair instead of being greedy, instead of people acting greedy, they actually want equity, they want fairness in a transaction. So whenever I do a negotiation for example, I will lay out my offer and then I will actually say is this fair? Does this sound fair? Whenever I'm negotiating with my staff, with friends, with family doesn't matter, I'll say, hey, does this sound fair? And as soon as they think about it, like oh that does sound fair, they're more likely to accept my offer. So again, to summarize the playbook that Kanye West is doing, he says something really provocative to get attention and then he waits a little while and then he explains his intentions and then once people start understanding the context around what he was saying, then he gets people to jump on his side. And when you're polarizing, that's how you build a cult and then when people will fight for you because they think you're being treated unfairly, that's how you build something very, very strong, jesus is a great example of how this plays out and jesus is pretty much doing the same thing. I hope this episode helped you become a better marketer. This is Robin Copernicus talking about other 6% entrepreneurs just like Elon musk and Kanye West, and I will see you in the next episode. 


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One of my clients tests was asking me earlier today how one of my recent promotions went. And I was actually telling her that I wasn't really happy with the conversion rates. We did convert some, but not at numbers that would be typical of a normal campaign. So I'm in the middle of troubleshooting that and then it got her thinking is like, oh you're actually coaching other people how to do this and you're actually having trouble yourself. So how does that work?"

 And that's the thing about marketing, that's the thing about entrepreneurship. It's not like you can just build something and just let it go and it will run forever, right? If that were the case, then Blockbuster videos would still be around. But the way marketing works is the marketplace is ever changing, it's constantly moving. So you have to be able to ride the waves and move with the market, right? 

So this is like a game of surfing. Sometimes you're gonna fall when you're surfing, but you just kind of ride the waves and you let the market dictate where you're going to go. But when it comes time to actually do well in the marketplace, it comes down to the fundamentals and the technicals, right? So if you're thinking about surfing again, if you have the right technicals and you practice the fundamentals, then eventually, when you put your hours and you're going to become a better surfer. The same is true for entrepreneurship. 

The marketplace is always changing. It's like an ocean. So you just have to catch the wave, find where one way will take off, you take advantage of that wave and then that way it's not gonna last forever and you just wait for the next wave. So this is the game that we play. But one of the things where we are able to be a lot more successful than other people is we keep the same surfboard. So when other serial founders, what they do is they'll catch a wave and they'll throw away that surfboard and they'll jump into a new market, new product, something totally different, right?

But what we do instead is instead of thinking about the product, we are thinking about the platform, the audience who our customers are knowing that some products will go obsolete, some products won't have any more demand anymore, but we still have an empire because we have this customer list, we have these people, this group of people, and we're able to sell them other things that they're eventually going to demand, right? So we're not dependent on a product, we're actually growing a community, growing an audience and that we were actually growing in empire. And then once you start doing things this way, what you're going to be able to find is you're going to be able to create a vertical leverage portfolio.

So your vertical leverage portfolio, the way it works is as you're growing your customer is as you're growing your audience base. Then again, the product doesn't matter. So what you can do is you can actually create creative partnerships with companies that are looking for customers, the customers that you have, and you can either buy their company, you can do a joint venture with that company. Me personally, what my plan is, I'm actually planning on buying up these companies just adding up my, adding my audience to that company for instant MRR. So again, MRR: Monthly Recurring Revenue.

And as I'm adding my audience getting instant MRR. I can choose to keep that company for cash flow or I can choose to flip it. Some companies, if I really enjoy running the company, I'll keep it for cash flow. But other times I might just flip it and you know, maybe I buy a company for $50,000 or $100,000 and then I flip it and I sell it for a million dollars, then I can take that million dollars and buy you know, 10 or 20 more companies and do the same thing, right?

So this is a way to fast track growing your empire, growing generational wealth. Again, one of the previous podcast talked about this technique a little bit more where we were talking about the digital asset flywheel, which was a concept introduced to me by Gregory L frank, and how that matches up with going vertical and how we are creating a vertical leverage portfolio.

So I hope this kind of helps, you know, when you were playing this entrepreneurship game, when you were playing this marketing game, yeah, you're gonna have some ups and downs, you're gonna catch some waves, you're gonna fall off some waves. But as long as you keep the same surfboard which is your audience, your customer list and you're not pivoting off of that audience, then you are going to be able to leverage the vertical that you're actually growing. So I will see you guys in the next episode. This is Robin Copernicus boom bam, I'm out. 

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One of the reasons it's always a good idea to keep on reminding yourself to keep an open mind is because you don't know what you don't know, right? Oftentimes when we're educated on something, we're actually miseducated. We don't have all the information. Sometimes it's because the information is changing. Sometimes it's because the information is withheld from us but there could be several different reasons. So I'll give you an example. 

Today, I actually learned that as humans, humanity, we've actually landed on Venus. Now, this is something that has never been taught in school. I was educated in the US. And one of the reasons for this is because the first country to be able to land in Venus was Russia in 1970. Well, this was during the Cold War and the US had very good reasons to keep that from the American public in terms of making sure that the propaganda to support the US was very real, right? So sometimes we just don't know what we don't know. 

I remember during the first Gulf War, I was living in Michigan and when we went to the US right after the war there was like a lot of anti-American-sentiment and mostly the reason for this American Anti-sentiment was because of the activities that were happening at this one jail center: Abu Ghraib. So in the US I mean we're just basically told how America's great, how America is going to all these different areas and they're liberating people who don't have freedom. So it's like yeah like America number one, right? 

But then once you go to these other countries and you actually get news that they don't show you in America because in America they actually do sensor a lot of information. You actually find out some of the real truth. So what I learned is actually saw pictures and videos of people at Abu Ghraib being tortured, not being treated humanely, being put into all these different situations where it's much worse than what it looked like if you were just watching as a regular American regular media. 

The other thing that kind of gets me too is: when I was living in China, China is really restrictive, right? But one of the things where I have to give props to China actually is China will blatantly just tell you you know what we're going to monitor everything that we're doing and we're going to restrict information from you. So China is very blatant about it, right? Some of the places that aren't so blatant could probably be a little bit more dangerous because they give you this false sense of security. 

So some of the places that aren't as blatant for example are actually the US. So when you look at numbers for example with China they're requesting information from Google to find out about reporters that are probably saying bad things about China. Well, America does this a lot more than China. So America will do information requests will try to find out about people. They'll censor a lot more things. They'll send censorship requests more so than China.

And the basic point is wherever you're getting your education, there could be several reasons why you're being educated in a certain way. Sometimes information may be lost. Maybe you might even have a teacher that has a certain kind of bias. So they didn't even look to disconfirm their bias. So you're just learning after their bias. And it's really important just to keep an open mind because you don't know what you don't know. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam, I'm out. 

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So the question is, what is it like to be a digital nomad? And the thing is I think digital nomad... this term is fairly new. However, this is something that I've actually just always done, this is the only life that I've known and really it's because of my parents. They are, I guess quote unquote digital nomads, I don't know, they started doing this before digital was even a thing, so I don't even know if you can say, digital nomads. But the thing is my dad... like we're not gypsies or anything. My dad, he just gets bored and he likes the job hop. So. he'll get into a job, he'll start making some salary, he'll see a better salary job, he'll apply to it and he'll just leave. The geography doesn't really matter and he'll move his entire family of four at the time and we'll just move from place to place to place, right? 

So I was actually born in Bangladesh and for the first five years of my life, I was living between Bangladesh and Kuwait. So, my dad, he had a job in Kuwait um even before I was born actually, my dad was quite the adventurer. So, my dad left home at a quite young age. I can't really remember the age, but I think he actually left during his high school years and he went to go live by himself and go to high school in the city because my grandparents on my dad's side, lived out in the country. Well, he went to high school in the city and then afterward  he got into a really good school. So the school is called Boet and this is pretty much the MIT of Bangladesh and it's a really good school. 

After he graduated from the school, he was able to get a job in Abu Dhabi and one of the reasons why he was able to do that is because his brother, my uncle, was a diplomat and he was working in Abu Dhabi at the time and he was able to get my dad an engineering project and this was like my dad's first time outside of the country, and working in Abu Dhabi. And I think it was a pretty cool job because from what he told me at a fairly young age, he was able to buy himself a Rolex with his first paycheck. Here's a funny thing, the first time that he told me the story, he told me that he took his first paycheck and he gave it to his mom, that was the first time and then the second time he told me the story, he said he took his first paycheck and he bought a Rolex with it.

But the thing is my dad, he's always traveled, so then he went and did his Ph.D. in Utah and that's where he brought the entire family along Utah as well. We've lived in Michigan, we lived in just like really all over my dad's work for Nasa as well. So we've always had this digital nomad life. Now with my brothers, they actually continued the tradition. So all of us, we all live in different countries. The middle brother, for example, spent some time in Sweden. Right now, he's in Dubai, the youngest one is in Silicon Valley and even spent some time in Barbados and we actually did are kind of own things. I was in China for a little while. Now, I'm in Colombia and I've been just kind of traveling all over. I've been really embracing this digital nomad lifestyle because I'm living a very minimalist life right now.

Right, so in terms of a minimalist life, I have a one-bedroom amount of furniture in storage, sitting in Houston, Texas and then everything that I own right now is, it used to be two duffel bags, but I have been kind of accumulating things. My experience as a digital nomad is probably quite different from most digital nomads. I'm going to share my experience as a digital nomad. 

So I was minimalist. I had two duffel bags, but that has grown. So it was two of my duffel bags and one duffel bag for Rari, my pomeranian and now I have around eight bags. So I travel with all my podcasting gear and things like this and if I do travel whenever I go to a new country, I'm always actually inviting either a friend or a coworker over, like one of my teammates and they will help me do the move, right? So when I was moving from Tulum, Mexico to Colombia, I had someone help me. What I do is I get first-class tickets because if you get first-class tickets, you can get a lot of luggage and we will just pack all that stuff in there and move everything. So it's like eight pieces of luggage right now and I probably need to whittle it down. Well, what I'm trying to do is I've already described and nomad trifecta strategy, I believe. 

What I'm trying to do now is I'm really trying to find a home. I'm trying to find somewhere that I can start to settle. So it won't be settling in the same way that someone else might settle. This is still settling in a way a digital nomad might settle. The idea that I have right now is I want to have three permanent bases and I can just travel among each of these three bases. So I'm still traveling, but at least I don't have to carry eight pieces of luggage every single time. So I like Medellín. I think Medellín is going to be one of those places. The only thing that I don't like about Medellín is it's really noisy. I mean, it feels like you're just living in the middle of Nascar because the way the hills are and the highways and all the motorcycles here, all the sound just echoes and yeah, it's just horrible. So hoping to get away from that, but I think there are places in Medellín where it's a little bit quieter. So I'm in search of that. 

My digital nomad lifestyle. What I like to do is actually to continue to live a very American lifestyle. So all the luxuries that I had in Houston, Texas, I don't like to give them up. So whenever I do go to a brand new city actually stay at the most high-end places; and what you're gonna find is what most people think is you will be able to save money once you go to a new country, especially if it's a developing country and you can live a pretty bother life and save money. So that's true in some ways, but it's not true in other ways. Where it's not true is with real estate because what real estate for people that have money in a developing country, they have a lot of money. Most of the money is concentrated in a very small percentage. So if you're trying to live in a very high-end neighborhood or a high-end building, you're going to have to pay because you are going to live among people that have definitely way more money than you have, right? 

The way that I don't do my digital nomad journeys is I don't live like the locals. I don't do any kind of backpacking. I don't actually hang out with many ex-pats either. A lot of digital nomads like to hang out with ex-pats. I used to do the co-working thing before Covid and that was kind of fun, but now after Covid, I've been pretty much just a homebody and I like everything to come to me. So the benefit of being able to travel to a developing country is you do have cheap access to labor. So in terms of being able to save my focus, not having to figure out how I'm going to feed myself, how I'm going to clean everything, you know, how to wash my clothes and all these different things that I don't want to think about. I have cheap access to labor and I have people that are able to do this for me; so I can focus my time on growing my company and on generating revenue. 

So this is how I kind of travel around and this is my experience as a digital nomad, it's not necessarily the backpacker type life. It's an entrepreneurial type of life, right? So you have your high-powered entrepreneurs who are digital nomads, they have companies. For example, I had one of my podcast on Growth Hack Secrets, John Tarantino; he's actually in Medellín with me right now and we've actually hung out in several different cities together and these type of entrepreneurs, they have a very different type of lifestyle than a free traveler for example. So when I say free traveler, you will have these people that will travel around in vans and the thing is, they probably have a lot of money too, they probably have way more money than you do, but they just got fed up with that type of life and now they're looking for something different and they're just seeking something different, they're seeking self-actualization. 

So they literally just give up their shoes, they live in bands and they travel around and then you'll have people who are just remote workers who will go get an Airbnb somewhere and they will go to these co-working places. They will actually do all the ex-pat type of activities, they will join the meet-ups and, and things like that. So there's a lot of different flavors in terms of how you want to be a Digital Nomad. I really do think that the entrepreneurship flavor is the best flavor because yeah, you just have control over your own time and you're probably making pretty good money and if you're living somewhere where you have cheap access to labor, like, you know, you can save a lot of your focus at time and energy into actually building and creating something. 

So yeah, that's my experience as a digital nomad, I hope that helps. If you're thinking about being a Digital Nomad, let me know, hit me up in the DMs. And yeah, be interesting to hear what you have to say, All right, this is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam, I'm out. 

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One of the questions that I get is what is one of the best ways to cold outreach? Now, while I may not be a cold outreach expert, I will share a technique that actually works for me and this doesn't matter what kind of cold outreach you're doing if you're doing it to reach out to an influencer, for example, an A-list celebrity that you want to connect with. This strategy will work if you're trying to reach out to a potential client and you're doing cold outreach that way, the strategy will work as well.

 So, in a previous episode, one of the things that I said is if you do want to get other people's attention, it's really nice to have a platform, but if you don't have a platform, there are other ways that you can still get people's attention and really this idea is very simple, but the way to get people's attention just does nice things for them, give them something of value, something that they actually would want, and you'll be able to get their attention. So even if they feel like the relationship isn't right, you might at least get a response or a reply. 

One of the ways that actually applied this, and the person that actually learned it from was one of my friends, his name is Yogi Goyl, he is a DJ in Houston, Texas and Yogi is actually pretty famous in Houston. He's a DJ on 90.1 FM. One of the radio channels; and when I was first creating my first album, Yogi and his production company kind of sponsored my music and actually paid for a lot of my studio time and as I was trying to get my music out into different channels, I got pretty lucky where I was published in a major motion picture. So this was one of the franchises for American Pie. The person who helped me publish it, I didn't do any kind of follow-up, I didn't do anything. I mean, it was just a young kid, didn't really know any better, but Yogi... Yogi is a masterful network person. I wouldn't say network marketer because that's totally different, but he is really good at networking with people and as a DJ, I mean this is like one of his jobs, right? To get to know as many people as possible and he knows how to move a crowd as DJ as well.

So this is one of the techniques that he taught me. When I explained to him exactly how I published my music in this movie, he was like, "Dude, what are you doing? Why are you contacting this person that helped you?" And one of the first things that he said is, "You know? Right now, go online, go buy a bottle of wine and send it to this person and thank them for doing that." And this is something that actually never did. And so I listened to Yogi and I sent to this person a bottle of wine, and then three days later their company email me back and saying, "Hey thank you so much for the wine. Our staff and members really enjoyed it. If you have any new music in your catalog, we would love to hear it." So this was like an open.

Well, I had a lot of things going on back then, so I actually never still followed up. It's really difficult to follow up. I will say that my follow-up game isn't that great, but I was able to at least reengage this person, get their attention again. They help me this one time and then automatically just by sending that gift they were wanting to reciprocate and help a second time. 

So if you do want to get people's attention, whether it's a celebrity or whether it's a potential client, if you provide something of value, something that they actually want, right? Not your pitch, but something that they actually value, then this is a good way to get their attention. I hope this helps. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom. Bam, I'm out.

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What does it mean to build an empire? When people think of empires, they usually think of huge empires, right? So you might think of the British Empire for example. The British Empire had its presence all over the world, or you might think of it in terms of lasting effect. So the Roman empire or the Ottoman empire, had lasting effects on our current culture, right? But whenever I think about empires, it doesn't necessarily have to be huge. If you can carve out a small empire for yourself, well then you are still an emperor. 

So if you look at the country of Brunei, for example. Brunei is smaller than Connecticut, right? It's in between the size of Connecticut and Delaware. Well, there is a sultan in place, who is pretty much the emperor of that entire land. It doesn't have to be the entire world, it could just be of this one place. Hopefully, you're a good emperor and you're nice to your people. But there are, you know, empires that are out there that don't necessarily have to stretch the entire globe. So when I think about empire, there's a lot of benefits from having an empire, because empires do help you stay afloat, right? 

When I think of an empire, I think about Ryan Leslie. So, Ryan Leslie is a music producer who was a child prodigy. He graduated from Harvard at 19 years old and he decided instead of going to hedge funds or consulting or all these other gigs. He would go into music and he started producing music and he had this opportunity where he actually got to work with Sean Diddy Combs and Sciarra to make this song called "Me & U". And it was a huge hit. Ryan Leslie was like in the Billboard charge. People actually knew who he was, it was a huge hit, but it was just a one-hit-wonder. Even though Ryan Leslie still kept producing things, he just didn't get that kind of traction that he did with "Me & you"?.

However, Ryan Leslie is still an emperor and he still has an empire. Ryan Leslie; has a following of around 5,000 people and he's making around $100 a year from these 5,000 people and that's half a million dollars a year doing what he loves to do and he serves his people with his content, with his music, with things that he wants to do. So he's actually making more than you would make at a consulting gig or at a hedge fund gig, doing what you love to do because Ryan Leslie has this empire and he nurtures this empire, he waters his empire and this empire feeds him.

So you don't need something huge to build an empire, you don't have to think about building the next Google or building the next Uber. You can actually carve out a small empire for yourself right now and then later on, if you do want to expand it into an Uber, Google, that option is available to you. But why live a life where you don't get to enjoy the fruits of having an empire? If you just don't start building this empire early. 

If you want to learn how to build an empire, if you haven't heard my talk, The Vertical Method, I suggest you check that out. If you go to theverticalmethod.com, so t-h-e, verticalmethod.com, it will take you to a 65-minute audio course and it will walk you through the GPDS framework and this framework is THE framework that you need to know for you to be able to build an empire. And when you can build an empire, there's a lot of cool things you can do. You can have a company where if your product fails, your company will still survive. It's something that helps you build a moat around your business and it's something that's very achievable right now because we actually have the technology to do it. So instead of trying to build these companies that don't make any profit where we're looking at Peter Thiel's and all these other people that got pretty lucky because they were just a little early. But now it's much more competitive and investors are much more demanding. You can't really do the things you could do before. 

But what we can do is we don't have to do the old things, we can look at all the tools and stuff that's available to us right now, and we can change how we're doing things that we can actually take advantage of this technology that's allowing us to build empires on the fly. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out. 

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One of the more common questions that I get asked pretty often is what is the difference when you are selling a product-based business and a service-based business? And people usually ask this question in terms of when they're applying the vertical method, which is the method that we use in the Vertical Liftoff accelerator program. And if you are making this distinction, here's where you may be making a mistake. 

The thing is where we are right now, today, there is no distinction between a product-based business and a service-based business and I'll tell you why, because we've already talked about how much the world has changed and how everything is a commodity because the time it takes to be able to copy your idea... your product is decreasing, right? 

So as soon as you come up with some kind of product, you're going to see copycats of it on Alibaba the very next day. So what this means is that everything is a commodity and when everything is a commodity, you can only differentiate in two different ways. One is by differentiating on price, which is the race of the bottom, which is not a fun game to play. And the other way you can differentiate is by differentiating on your brand story and that connection with your audience with your users. 

So when you think about it if everything is a commodity, then how do we de-commoditize it? And the way to de commoditize it is to add a service component. If people are going to decide what they're going to buy or how they're going to buy it. If it's already a commodity, then it's going to be a no-brainer that they're going to pick the item that's with the lowest price. But when you start adding a service component to it, then the decision-making changes, right? Because now if I'm looking at product A and product B, but product B offers the service that might be worth thousands to me. And it's only, you know, they're only maybe charging $10 more for this. Well, I'm definitely gonna pick product B. 

So once you start adding this service component, this is how you de-commoditize your product and every single business that's out there right now should be a service-based business. This is how you're going to differentiate yourself, this is how you should be thinking about your business. So when you think about a product-based business... Let's say that we are building a robot that is going to replace the barber, right? So this is probably really far out. We don't have the technology for this. But I think this is a good example because you're going to have a lot of hesitations from the people that you're going to try to sell this to. 

So let's say you made a robot that is going to replace the barber and you as the founder, you want to go out and reach out to different barbershops who have a pretty good presence and see if you can just add one more area, replace one barber with this robot barber that's going to save them so much time and money. And you're super excited about spreading this idea. But what you're going to find is that the people that you're selling to, have all these different hesitations. So a hesitation could be, well, if I'm using this robot barber, how are my customers going to feel about it? They might not trust the haircut that they're getting and they might not want to come and they're not gonna trust my stories. That's hesitation, right? 

Another hesitation that they might have is if they get this robot barber, well, they might have to lay off people that they've hired for such a long time and some of these people are probably their friends. Another hesitation might be where they have to replace all these resources. So not only are they replacing human capital, they have to reeducate their customers, but they have to retool how their barbershop works right now, they might have to install this equipment, replace the equipment, maintain the equipment. 

There are all these different questions that they're going to have and you as the founder, what you will have to do to be able to address all these concerns is you have to add a service component that addresses each of these hesitations. So for example, if the buyer fears that customers aren't going to like it. Well, then you have to have a program in there that helps educate the customer. And this program is so good that it actually convinces the buyer of the robot that this is going to work, right? Then other hesitations, for example, getting rid of employees, then you might want to have some kind of change management guide on how you can let go of employees, how you can support them in their future career, how you can even maybe franchise out and let these other barbers start opening up different locations for you where you install more robots. 

There's a lot of opportunities there. Then if you are doing maintenance contracts and things like that, that's another service component that you're adding, and what you're going to find is someone else that is selling this exact same robot. Well, they're not gonna be able to compete with you because you thought of every other thing that a buyer could possibly think about and you're adding that as your service component and the other person, all they can do is they can only compete on price because they just have a product. They don't have a service business. 

The way the world is right now is if you don't have a service-based business, you are going to lose because you have a commodity. If you have a commodity, your goal is to make it a service-based business by adding some kind of service component to it. I hope this helps. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out. 

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When I was younger, I used to have a music studio in my apartment. I would run out of studio time. I would make my own music. I would produce my music. I would write. I would design my album covers. I would do pretty much everything like your one-man studio, one-man shop and it was a lot of fun. One of the coolest things is out of this, I was able to produce music that was published in a couple of movies and TV shows. One of them, for example, was part of the American Pie Franchise. And there were a couple of TV shows as well where I'm still getting royalties for this music to this date. So if anyone says passive income does not exist, then tell them that they're wrong because it definitely exists, especially for collecting passive income in terms of royalties. 

One of the coolest things about making music is whenever you got some kind of radio play... I mean this was like the most amazing feeling in the world. It wasn't like how it is right now where everyone is on Spotify and if you want airplay, it's really easy to get airplay. But back then there wasn't Spotify, there weren't all these things, there wasn't even YouTube. So, getting played on the internet. I'm sorry, getting played on live radio... That was like a huge deal. 

So I had my song played on local radio just around Houston, Texas and I actually had my first national airplay on BBC 1 Xtra. So this was a pretty huge deal for me because this was like, "Wow nationwide, right? It's going to be heard all over the UK". Unfortunately, it only got played once. I was hoping to get to play a lot more times, but they only paid at once. And then that was it. I didn't get anything out of it. That was just it, but it was still cool. It was still bragging rights. I think I recorded the show, I can't even remember no idea where it is, but it was cool.

When I went back to ask them if they would play my music again, the DJs, actually said, "Yeah, sure, we'll play your music" and they wanted something for me. So they were asking me about what I do. They looked up the radio show that I was associated with. So when I actually reached out to these people, I reached out to them with an email address that belonged to a radio show for one of my friends who was a DJ on the show and it was on FM radio. And it turns out that these people at BBC Radio 1 Xtra, the only reason that they played my song is that they wanted to be featured on our radio show, which is something pretty easy to set up. But I'm not really sure exactly how if they understood the format or they understood what was going on and I just kind of mentioned that it's not really my show, it's a friend's etcetera. And then just saying that I had never heard from them again, right? 

But the whole thing is I was able to get my song played because these people thought I had a platform and because they thought I had a platform, they wanted to get on my platform as well. They were willing to give me time on their platform. So what this means is if you want to build connections and you want to get on other people's platforms, what this means is you have to have your own platform. So in today's episode, we're actually going to talk about the quickest way for you to get your own platform and a few simple steps. 

So the first thing that you're going to do to be able to create a really quick platform is you're just going to open up a Medium blog, right? So in terms of platforms, you can do so many different things, you can become an Instagram influencer, you can have a podcast, you can have a Youtube channel, there's like a lot of different things that you can have, but to make it as easy as possible, what we're going to do is we're just going to make a medium blog. After you create this medium blog, which takes you less than three minutes to put together; After you make this medium blog, you're going to make a list of all the different people that hold the customer list that you want to get access to. 

So whatever product service offer, whatever you're selling or even if you're not selling, you're just trying to get in front of your dream customer, whoever has a list of these people, you want to list it down and then you will reach out to these people and say, "Hey, I am working on this blog article and you pick a topic", and you give each one of these people a question. Maybe you picked 10 people from this list that you just created. You give them all a question and the question could be, you know, "What's your favorite book?" for example, and make sure that when they do answer it pertains to the industry that you're talking about, right? So you can just answer, ask a simple question like what's your favorite book? Get everyone's answer. 

And now what you've done is you started building relationships with these people that have these lists because they think you have a platform. And you do have a platform. You have this medium blog. And once you do publish this medium blog, they will actually get a lot of benefit from it. And they'll probably get more benefit from this medium blog than if you were to actually go out and get your own WordPress with your own domain when you're first starting out because Medium has a higher domain authority. And getting backlinks from your medium article is a huge benefit. They just need someone to put this together. 

So if you're the one who put this together, this is your platform. This is a really easy way for you to reach out to people. Start making those connections, you give them something and benefit as well. And then as you start building this report, then you know, this is how you build friendships and then out of friendships come more business and better business, etcetera. 

So this is how you build a platform really, really easy. You can do this probably just today. Just make that medium blog, go make this list of people that could be done today in a couple of hours, and then just go reach out to them. That could be done today as well. And then maybe some out of 100 people you reach out to 50 people will "say yeah, I'll do it." The other 50 people, might curse at you or they might not reply at all, whatever. But you know, you have 50 people, you put them all into a blog article and you have your platform. Boom bam, I'm out 

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What do we need you for? This is a question that you might hear from investors or from people that seemingly have power over you, and seemingly have power over your dreams, right? They're like the enablers of your dreams. And if you don't have something proprietary to show them or something proprietary for yourself in terms of your character, your trace, your abilities, you might hear this question where what do we need you for? And this question is a little condescending and sometimes I don't know, it could even be a little racist. 
 
The reason I bring this up is I actually heard two different people mentioned this type of story. So the first person I actually got off the phone with him pretty recently is this young gentleman, he is working on a cannabis startup and through this program called Social Equity, from what he was explaining where for a lot of people that were incarcerated due to marihuana, they're trying to make it right because now that marijuana is legalizing, they want to make it right for people who have served time for marihuana and what they're doing is for those people there actually offering out marijuana licenses or cannabis licenses to be able to distribute and sell marihuana. 
 
So he is one of these few people that are eligible for this license and because he is eligible for this license, he has a lot of investors coming to him that are interested in this asset that he has, and these investors, what they're telling him is they actually don't want him in the day to day business or anything like that. They will just pay him a salary to essentially just shut up and do nothing, but he doesn't want to do this, right? Because this guy, he is a visionary, He has a vision, he has his asset and he actually wants to develop it. He just doesn't want to take money. 
 
So this is how investors think, right? They want to exploit, they want to extract. But this young man, he is a visionary. He wants to... he has a much better future envisioned for himself where he doesn't just have to sit back and take money. Yes, he wants to do things right. And when he wants to do things and he's getting approached by these investors and he's telling them how he wants to be involved with. The investors are saying "Well, what do we need you for?" Because the investors believe that they have all the advantages they have the capital to get started. They have all these different things. I mean, all they really need is this asset and what they're actually doing is they're threatening this person for this asset saying "If you don't play nice, we will take it from you". 
 
And this actually reminds me of this comedy special I saw on Youtube with Dave Chappelle. How Dave Chappelle was sharing his story on what really happened behind his deal with Comedy Central. So the whole thing is his show, Dave Chappelle's show. The Chappelle Show on Comedy Central was a huge hit. Like I remember me and my friends, we would redo those jokes, you know, we still redo those jokes, so it was like a huge hit, and everyone pretty much thought that Dave Chappelle walked away with millions and millions of dollars. But the thing is that's not the truth at all. 
 
The truth is, Dave Chappelle signed a contract that put him in a very raw deal, and the reason he signed this contract is that this very show, The Chappelle Show is being streamed on, well it was being streamed on Netflix, but it was being streamed on HBO and all these other channels. And Chappelle was infuriated because he pitched this very show to HBO. And HBO said no, they liked the idea, but they were like, we can just replace anyone with Dave Chappelle, what do we need you for? And Dave Chappelle kind of goes to the story on how there's been a lot of monsters in the industry that will just take things from you. 
 
So his first example or first experience where someone just took something from him was when someone stole a joke from him. They started out borrowing and then they just took it from him and then now with this whole Comedy Central thing, Dave Chappelle, I mean he made a lot of money for a lot of people, but he didn't get to take any of this money for himself and he feels that they just took it from him, right? 

So he's pissed off because one, they were unable to see the value in him. I mean, Dave Chappelle literally is a prodigy. He's been doing this since 14 years old. He's a community genius and he walked away from that deal hurting, right? And the whole thing is they took it from him and now this young man that I just spoke to, he's facing the same dilemma where these people are like, what do we need you for? And then because he won't play by their rules, they want to just take it from him. 
 
I think the point of this is when you try to put all your dreams, hopes, and aspirations into someone else's hands, you are doing yourself a disservice, you're probably going to put yourself in a situation where you think you're getting a good deal and you start giving up equity and then you realize that you're not getting a good deal at all. 

And for other people, there's this concept and it's actually a concept that happens from the music industry a lot is where they will shelve artists, right? So in terms of shelving artists, what happens is record labels, they will actually hand out record deals to everyone; that was kind of like a hidden secret back in the day. They will actually hand out record deals to everyone and what they'll do is in the contract, they actually won't support this artist. And because the artist will get frustrated and they want to get their music out, they'll start doing all the work and stuff themselves anyway, without any of the label support. 

And this is good for the label because the label owns the rights to all the content and the name for this artist. So, the more of this artist wants to be heard, wants to get his or her music exposed, the better off the labels are. So labels will just sign deals with everyone and then they will shelve them hoping that these artists will actually try to do things on their own so they can get the lion's share from that thing. 
 
This thing happens all over the place. It's not just in the record industry, it's also in the VC industry, and when you're putting all your faith in other people and you're starting to give away control of your vision, your equity, this is where you're starting to hurt your company. It's so much better instead of chasing the big money and chasing the speed, which has a low probability of success anyway, it's so much better if you just empower yourself and start working on your start-up on your own terms. And if you follow that GPDS framework, this is how you can actually skip investor funding. 
 
And if you don't know about the GPDS framework. If you go to theverticalmethod.com. So this is about the vertical method, right? You have to go to theverticalmethod. So, theverticalmethod.com, it's a 65-minute audio course, which will go into how you can skip ambassador funding by going vertical. And I think this is a game-changing course for a lot of people. Because now, instead of the focus being on business plans and pitch stacks, the focus is actually on creating value for the founder's audience. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out.

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What if they steal my idea? This is a concern that many early-stage founders have where they try to protect their idea. They will go into stealth mode. They want NDAs from all these different people before they even share their idea. When the fact is ideas are not exclusive. There are probably 100 maybe 1,000 other people working on the same idea. And I'm pretty convinced that there are probably thousands and maybe even more than thousands of people working on the same idea because you will be surprised by the number of people that come into the accelerator program in terms of the applications, the number of applications that we get with similar ideas... It's crazy. It's astounding. 

For example, we've had three different companies pitch an idea where they were working on virtualizing fit. So in terms of clothing, the problem that they're trying to solve is people have to go to different fitting rooms and they have to see how the clothing fits on them, etcetera. So they want to solve this problem, especially because of Covid, they have the technology that will let the garments draped down and it's like an accurate simulation model. And I've had three different companies approached me with this exact idea, they were all kind of going about it in three different ways. Some ideas were better than others. However, it was the same idea and if these three different players play the game long enough, they're probably gonna converge towards that same idea, right? Because that's how water flows... water flows kind of towards this same direction. 

This Fit tech idea. That's not the only type of idea. I have people reaching out to me with ideas for setting up solar panel stations for the electric car revolution, I've had at least two or three people reach out for that. Then we have people reach out for sharing economy ideas, so they'll look at Airbnb and they will try to replicate that for events. So it could be selling experience. Like I've had two companies at least do an Airbnb of events. And it could be other types of sharing as well, so it doesn't have to be events. It could be something like an Uber model where people are sharing space or they're sharing some kind of tools, gardening tool, whatever. Like I've had a lot of different people approached me with this marketplace is this is one of the biggest things people want to develop two-sided, three-sided marketplaces, they just want to bring different people together, buyers and sellers together. And there are so many easy ways to do this too, but founders will make the mistake where they're actually trying to build the app first instead of actually building the market first. 

The whole point is, there are so many people working on very similar things that if you're keeping this to yourself, you're actually doing yourself a disservice. The best way to approach this is to actually pretend that your idea is already stolen. So whenever founders come into the Vertical Liftoff accelerator program, this is one of the first things that we do. We build a company we want to make sure that we build a company where if our product fails our company will still succeed. And part of the product feeling is if someone steals our IP we can still succeed. So the approach is we just assumed that someone already stole it. And if you can build a company around an idea that's easily copyable but still succeeds, this is when you know you are starting to build your operating system for your empire. 

So don't let this little thing stop you. Where you think people are going to steal your idea because the fact is people are going to steal your idea. It's inevitable. There's nothing you can do to stop it. In fact, if you focus all your time energy and focus on getting patents and all this other IP protection. You have to have the money to be able to defend your patents and if you don't there's nothing you can do. And what most likely is going to happen is other companies that may be acting maliciously. They will steal your IP, they will set up an LLC, they will steal your IP, they will take from the market as much as they can and they're getting much higher margins because they don't have to pay for this R and D, that you paid for, right? 

They just stole your idea. Now they're making money from it. And then before you can even say the word lawsuit, that company is dissolved and they are gone. And then they will just set up another new LLC. And they'll keep doing the same thing. And before you can even sue them they will disappear and they're gone. And you're just left playing this whack a mole game, which is gonna drain you of all your time, energy, focus, resources... And it's not a very fun game to play. 

So to get around this, because the time it takes for someone to be able to copy your idea is decreasing. To be able to get around this. When you go vertical with a vertical startup, then you are delivering value, an unparalleled value that other people just cannot deliver. So it doesn't matter if someone steals your idea or steals your IP if you have this customer list, then you are building this empire that will grow with you and go with you. Even if you don't have a product or service to offer, you will still be fed because you have this customer list and you can sell access to this list. You can do so many things with this list. Your customer list is an asset. 

I hope this is getting through to you because of your IP... It really doesn't matter your brand name, your domain name. All these things. It really does not matter what really matters is your customer list. And when you have this customer list, you will be building a moat around your business, where it doesn't matter if someone steals your pipe because you still have your people. I hope this helps. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out. 

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