Our New Framework for Building Digital Education Products

Summary

This weekly recap covers key business developments, lessons learned, and frameworks crystallized while running an online education company. Topics span upgrades to their core coaching program, new belief-focused accountability measures to improve student success rates, strong sales despite limited new marketing efforts, collaborations with other creators, experimenting with raw selfie videos for higher engagement, the lesson that repeating yourself and executing boring fundamentals compounds over time, and more. The episode ends noting they must consistently distill and compound learnings, with one host newly married and requesting advice.

Takeaways

• 😊 They are iterating and improving their business offerings like PGA based on customer feedback
• 👍 Their backend infrastructure upgrades improved sales without new marketing efforts
• 💡 They realized educational content needs both skill training and mindset/belief coaching
• 📈 Traffic and conversions improved by fixing parts of the business that were suboptimal before
• 😎 Having both high quality and simple DIY style content creates an authentic connection with audience
• 🎯 Incentivizing employees to grow their roles and the overall business aligns everyone to company growth
• 📝 Repeating frameworks verbalized key insights for continuous improvement and future recall
• ⏱ Consistency in simple actions over long periods of time can achieve ambitious goals
• 💰 Counter metrics prevent gaming when creating goals with incentives or bounties
• 💬 Inviting audience participation made the show more engaging and value adding

Q & A

What is the main topic of the video?

The main topic is a weekly business recap and lessons learned by the hosts as entrepreneurs.

What improvements are being made to the PGA curriculum?

They are adding more content to address potential objections and limiting beliefs that students may have, in order to improve execution of the curriculum.

What did they realize about educational content from the mindset accountability call?

The best educational content provides both practical skills as well as addresses limiting beliefs that may prevent people from taking action.

What allows them to continue high performance without new marketing efforts?

The assets and backend infrastructure they built in previous months compound over time to drive enrollments even without new marketing campaigns.

What are some key lessons they learned this week?

Everything is trainable, just on a spectrum of difficulty. They will repeat themselves an uncomfortable number of times in business. Suboptimal parts of business present opportunities for endless improvement.

How did braking out compensation by department help the CEO have his best year ever?

It incentivized each department leader to perform better by treating their area like a business with shared upside.

What is the Cobra effect and why does every goal need a counter goal?

The Cobra effect refers to perverse incentives when goals lack constraints. Every goal needs constraints to prevent gaming the system.

What routine are they implementing to make rapid improvements?

Short daily meetings to identify tasks combined with closing the loop in the evening to review progress and iterate.

What are some potential business ideas they discussed?

Packaging clips of their best framework insights over time into a premium subscription offering.

When is Cole getting married?

Cole is getting married in two weeks during their upcoming trip to Colombia.

Outlines

00:00

🏗 Recapping PGA curriculum upgrade and accountability calls

This paragraph recaps Cole's work over the past week upgrading the PGA curriculum based on feedback from 400+ students, including pausing to address questions and objections in students' minds. It also discusses introducing a new PGA mindset accountability call to address students' limiting beliefs and roadblocks.

05:01

💡 Curriculum as a sales script to handle student objections

This paragraph explains the realization that a curriculum needs to address student doubts and objections that would prevent them from taking action, like a sales script. It notes the importance of covering both skill development and belief/mindset work.

10:04

📈 Strong PGA enrollments without new marketing efforts

This paragraph discusses PGA's standout enrollment and sales performance over the past month without any new marketing efforts, thanks to the curriculum and backend infrastructure improvements. It also covers running a successful Ship 30 cohort alongside ongoing PGA development.

15:06

👥 Collaboration with Thiago on viral content drops

This paragraph mentions collaborating with another creator Thiago on viral content drops. They productized the process of creating these assets so they can do monthly collaborations, quickly assembling the playbooks for others.

20:06

🎥 Experimenting with selfie video content

This paragraph covers Cole and Nate experimenting with more raw, selfie-style video content. Cole discusses the pros/cons of high production quality versus more authentic, accessible selfie video in terms of audience relationship.

25:08

🔀 Iterating frameworks during Espresso Hour itself

This paragraph points out they are iterating and establishing frameworks in real-time during the Espresso Hour itself. It lists some examples like combining skill development and beliefs in education products.

30:09

🌱 Business growth comes from improving suboptimal parts

This paragraph makes the point that identifying suboptimal parts of your business should excite rather than discourage you, since improving those areas allows endless growth potential. The hosts reframe frustrations as opportunities.

35:10

💍 Request for marriage advice and closing thoughts

The closing paragraph mentions Cole's upcoming wedding, asks viewers to provide marriage tips, and wraps up the episode. It also explains the secret word mechanism for selecting private AMA responders.

Keywords

💡internet famous

The concept of becoming well-known online from content creation. One speaker discusses his dislike of the flawed perception people have that achieving internet fame is easy or accidental. He argues it actually requires significant consistent effort and intentional strategy.

💡PGA curriculum

PGA stands for Podcast Guest Agency, which is a course offered by the speakers. They are currently upgrading the curriculum based on feedback from past students. A key upgrade is handling common objections students have about putting the course strategies into action.

💡mindset accountability

Along with teaching hard business skills, the PGA course didn't adequately address limiting mindsets that prevent students from taking action. So the speakers started a new call focusing on mindset coaching to help students work through these mental blocks.

💡student accountability tracker

A system to track PGA student progress, allowing the speakers to identify those who get stuck and reach out to get them back on track. This aligns with their view that accountability is essential for course success.

💡viral drops

Pieces of shareable content, created collaboratively with other creators, that aim to gain engagement and collect emails/followers. The speakers explain they've productized their viral drop process to do monthly collaborations.

💡selfie video

Raw, authentic video captured on one's phone/webcam without extensive production. One speaker made a 20 minute selfie video and found it garnered unusually high engagement compared to other more polished content.

💡ship 30

One of the speaker's info products - a 30 day challenge teaching how to build an online business. They just completed a cohort which was their most successful yet in terms of student outcomes.

💡delegatable

The speakers express a common belief that certain business tasks only they can handle, but find themselves continuously surprised at how much can actually be delegated/trained to others. This ties to the concept that everything is trainable to some degree.

💡marketing attribution

Implementing tracking to identify traffic and conversion data by marketing channel. Despite lacking this, their business growth has remained strong, leading one speaker to say this gap just means more upside when they fill it.

💡presso hour

The weekly video series shown in the transcript - called espresso hour. It captures the speakers analyzing their business progress and extracting lessons, which they aim to compound each week and compile into a framework library.

Highlights

The best educational content has both skill and belief components

Overcoming objections is key - address things that would prevent someone from taking action

Everything is trainable, just on a spectrum - assess how hard something will be to teach

To build a successful business, you'll have to repeat yourself an uncomfortable number of times

Suboptimal parts of your business should excite you - it means you'll grow forever

It's hard to stop a team when incentives align to grow the entire business

You can improve something quickly by making one small improvement every day

People don't pay for information, they pay for the packaging

Every indicator needs a counter indicator to avoid gaming the system

Human nature means people will always try to game the system despite restrictions

Doing a short selfie video led to high engagement, a great easy content format

Overly polished videos distance you from audience - selfie video keeps you relatable

Collaborating with other creators on viral content drops is very effective

Marriage advice for Cole - life updates at beginning/end could add value for viewers

Reframe feeling like you've said something before - probably worth repeating

Transcripts

I don't want to be internet famous and

I'd sit there and be like I hate to Brak

it to you but you have a very flawed

understanding of how much effort it

takes in order to be internet famous how

have we been operating without this

we've just been Flying Blind for the

last 2 years of I think that's working I

think traffic's come from here and then

I reframed it of we did all this and I

had no clue every business I've ever

built I was always convinced that I was

the only person who could do it and then

I'm just proven wrong again and again

and again it's like the doctor Paradox

where the doctor thinks no one can do

what I do but then you have to ask the

question well how did you learn how to

do what you were doing if the goal that

you come back to me with is below the

number I have here no bonuses for anyone

the entire month just turned into squid

games really

quick boom welcome back to another

episode of the espresso hour 2024 this

is week number five in our business

recap and what we learned experiment

we're officially in February and off to

a good month the year's already over

flying by you can see yeah you said the

other day Christmas is right around the

corner Christmas is right around the

corner and I was like doing the math

it's not that far away it's not not

around the corner but yes we were once

again hyped up on caffeine despite I'm

taking a little bit of a caffeine I'm

trying to I'm trying to take my daily

down trying your best yeah I failed

today I I I hit my quota today was one

of my I guess I should explain I'm

trying to take my daily espresso shot

usage down from 4 to 3 and then slowly

back down to two but the way I'm doing

that is I'm measuring it over the week

so I'm giving myself one or two days to

stick with four and today's one of those

days The Meta framework here is who has

accomplished their New Year's goals

right like usually at the beginning of

February whatever goal you set out for

the new year it's gone it's obliterated

you didn't follow through with it and so

it was interesting to just jam on this

and think about okay why does that

happen and the root of that happening is

someone going I've been doing this thing

for a long period of time and starting

tomorrow I'm not going to do it anymore

or I've never done this thing for a long

period of time and starting tomorrow I'm

going to do it every day and the reality

is that's not how it works uh and

substances you know caffeine and and

like cigarettes things like that are a

great example going from zero to one or

one to zero is a recipe for failure the

better New Year's resolution would be

what do you want to be doing at the

start of next year mhm what do you still

want to be doing at the start of next

year and if you gave yourself the entire

year to build that habit and I'm trying

to build a framework around this where

let's say you wanted to start getting up

at 6:00 a.m. and you're currently

getting up at 8 most days you could

start trying to do every day at 6:00

a.m. or you could say by the end of the

year I want to be getting up at 6:00

a.m. which means I need to add five

minutes per week to my like less it

could be three minutes a week I just

move my daily wake up time 3 minutes on

average you'd be there by the end of the

year and you'd probably be able to stick

with it but most people go I'm going to

wake up at 6:00 tomorrow they go three

or four or five days can't stick with it

too big of a change and I'm mostly

saying that as a reminder to myself

because I do that all the time with

anything new I'm starting so I'm trying

to be more sustainable with change this

year yeah it's a more it's a more

painful path and I think in general the

more painful the path the less likely

you are to execute and stick with that

path though but why don't we start with

a recap of everything we did so you've

been cranking on the PGA curriculum

upgrade has it been going which is funny

cuz I it hit me this week that this is

almost exactly what I was doing one year

ago today which is crazy that it's been

a year since we started P yeah this this

time last year was when we made the

decision to do the beta cohort for PGA

and uh I got really sick at the time I'm

convinced I got Co or something and I

just uh oh you YouTu is going to ban us

for saying that and uh and so I just had

to push through and make this whole um

this whole curriculum in four weeks

while I was super sick and it was it was

horrible Jordan Flu Game yeah and each

each day it was painful and now it's the

same thing and we're basically redoing

the whole curriculum I mean I think

we're keeping maybe like 20 or 30% but a

lot of it's changing because we've had

400 plus people go through PGA and we've

learned these are the things that are

helpful these are the questions that

they have like one of the biggest things

and this is now a framework for any info

product that we make it has really

occurred to me that whenever you're

explaining something every time you

explain something the the customer the

reader The Listener is sitting there

with 5 to 10 objections in their head

they're sitting there going but what if

or what happens if I and so one of the

biggest changes we're making to the PGA

curriculum is explaining something and

then going let's pause cuz I know you're

sitting there going how does this work

what happens if I do this I'm afraid of

this negative outcome etc etc so you

pause you answer all those questions

then you move on to the next thing the

framework here is the curriculum is

really a sales script you're selling

them on this way of think you're selling

them on the idea you're selling them on

this way of thinking in it being the

best which is if you want them to

execute it you have to handle all the

objections that would keep them from

doing that in the first place which is

great because this goes back

to it's either a skill or a belief that

keeps someone from doing something one

of Alex SW Mo's best Frameworks on that

and a lot of times when you're building

a curriculum the bottleneck only becomes

beliefs believing that it will work and

so people give a lot of actionable

information but they don't handle the

things that either are time management

or fear or anything that would keep

someone from executing that curriculum

and that kind of leads nicely into the

second point which is this

week inside PGA we started a mindset

accountability call so for the last year

Cole's been running the um curriculum

Hot Seat call where basically people can

come up and ask questions about whatever

it's going on but it's all always been

hard skill focused yes it's like here's

the skill to and I think this was the

first time where it really clicked like

oh but there's another 50% of

bottlenecks which is beliefs and this is

wow I love that we talk these out every

week because we just stumbled on a new

framework which is like part of your

curriculum has to be the beliefs that

are keeping people from going through

your curriculum and most people and US

included we didn't include very much of

that in PGA so far so we surveyed all

our students and asked for anyone who

feels stuck could you please share

whether it's time management whether

it's uh impostor syndrome XYZ and then

they came to the call and I did it in

place of the curriculum call this week

but uh the response has been pretty good

basically got on stage and I was like

all right what's going on let's talk

through how you're feeling about this

and most of the time it was some kind of

limiting belief that they've never been

able to talk through with anyone and

that was signal enough for us that okay

it's clear that they think that the

curriculum will work but they don't

they're afraid to send a cold DM because

that might mean that someone thinks

they're salesy or they're afraid to get

on a sales call and look silly because

that would mean they don't know what

they're talking know what they're

talking about right so it was fun to

have that lens of let's talk personal

growth through the running of your

business because you're going to tackle

your self-limiting beliefs you're going

to talk about your beliefs about money

you're going to talk about your work EIC

your time management so it was nice to

be able to coach that and say all right

we have a a vehicle and a lens here

let's unpack why you're not executing it

and I dropped the hammer a little bit

which was fun but there were so many

Frameworks that we could clearly just

put into the onboarding of PGA that says

let's just start with the mindset like

you're going to try to solve problems

you don't have like the example

yesterday I was helping someone who was

struggling with cold Outreach and

they're a little bit scared to reach out

because they they don't think it it's

worth it so we talked about money

beliefs and that we could handle on its

own they were like how would you do it

if you were going to reach out to

someone every day for a month and I made

this super simple spreadsheet I was like

one column every person 30 columns day

one through 30 and I'm like here's what

I'd be doing on XYZ day one day two day

three and her first question goes well

what do you say on day 27 like how do

you follow up with someone on day 27 I

was like this is called solving problems

you don't have yeah you can solve day 27

when you get to Day 26 and you can solve

Day 26 when you get to day 25 but until

you send that first message to 100

people on day one Nothing Else Matters

and so many people were like wow I am

sitting here trying to solve problems we

don't have and the the metaphor we use

is people who go I don't want to start

lifting weights cuz I don't want to get

jacked like I don't want to look like

those bodybuilders who think like I pick

up a dumbbell and sneeze and I just add

25 lbs of muscle doesn't happen like

that that I find a lot of people say

that about creating on the internet like

and I ran into it when I was uh ghost

writing for CEOs same thing I'd get on a

call with them one of the first things

they'd say is they go I don't want to be

internet famous and I'd sit there and be

like I hate to break it to you but you

have a very flawed understanding of how

much effort time energy attention it

takes in order to be internet famous you

don't just write one article and then

every person on planet Earth is thinking

about you and I I find that faulty

belief in a lot of people part of this

framework to that's clicked for me is I

think courses and info products in

general you'll hear people say uh I've

been burned in the past you know a

program didn't work for me or whatever

it is and I tend to notice now like as

this is crystallizing that it's because

those programs are all belief focused

and very minimal hard skill focused uh

and very minimal accountability support

like actually helping you follow through

and so what happens is you get a lot of

well here's all the reasons why you're

not doing it which in in too much of a

dose can make you feel worse you know

and then doesn't actually give you an

actionable path and we actually made the

opposite mistake which is we we went so

hard in the hard skill direction we were

so obsessed with this is the action step

this is what you do this is how to do it

this is the framework to think about it

that we almost forgot well but the

bottleneck for a lot of people is I'm

afraid to send my first cold Outreach or

I'm afraid to you know and so you have

to remember to address both and it

reinforces the conviction for us when we

have the pure curriculum and the Pure

accountabil or the pure uh belief

coaching that we just have to be

unreasonable with our accountability so

that leads to the next one which is we

started a daily email series to anyone

going through PGA who has not made

progress in two weeks so the last month

we've been building this student

accountability tracker where we can see

the progress of everyone at any time

their last assignment completion their

last time logging into slack all that

and now anytime they go longer than two

weeks starts a two week daily email

sequence from me saying hey where are

you just checked in on this s you

haven't made progress next day bumping

this back up to the top and we know that

there are so many resources for learning

the hard skill and now the belief around

actually putting those hard skills into

practice that it's our moral

responsibility to annoy quotee unquote

annoy every single student and we found

like that was a limiting belief for us

of oh they might be busy it's whatever

every single email I've sent so far

people have responded going thank you so

much for sending this yes I got off

track XYZ I'll start this tomorrow and

they report back in and boom we've

completely turned them around so more

implementation there yeah if you want to

really drill into the root of the root I

think it's because we we grow up in a

society where it's better to just not be

the person that the teacher calls on in

class uh and then you see that manifest

in career paths you know corporate

corporate jobs where you're like I'd

rather just not address the problem

because if I don't say anything then I

won't be blamed for it and you can see

that faulty belief sort of spill into

all of these things like we had it going

well we don't want to follow up with

people too much because we W bother them

and then you see it with Outreach where

people go I don't want to follow up with

a potential client because I don't want

to annoy them but the reality is every

time you do that

the vast majority of the responses are

thank you so much thank you for

following up with me this slipped this

slipped my mind I forgot to respond and

we are learning that lesson time and

time again which leads nicely into the

next bullet which was week at the end of

the month this was our third best month

of PGA enrollments and our best month

ever of Mastermind enrollments which

felt extremely good given we were

running a SHP 30 cohort at the time

which we'll talk about being our best

cohort yet and we put almost zero new

effort into marketing it was just pure

status quo make the backend

infrastructure upgrades make the

curriculum upgrades because the

marketing will take care of itself so

great performance from the sales team

but or not even but that was just a big

lesson for us is we can continue to

operate at a high level without new

efforts on the marketing side given the

assets we spent October November

creating or starting a compound yep yeah

every time we build in the middle of a

ship 30 cohort it always feels yeah you

feel it there was the past couple weeks

Big Time switching cost cuz you're going

back and forth back and forth and that's

even with ship 30 essentially being

completely we're not adding anything new

it's all completely automated and a lot

of PGA Marketing Systems all of that

we're not really doing anything new and

even still the switching back and forth

is a lot yeah but it was our best ship

30 cohort yet because we still showed up

with big intensity on every single live

call so our Student Success rates were

the highest we had the highest

continuity conversion to our backend you

know writing program the captain table

and we felt it because those are pretty

much theatrical performances at this

point we've said the same jokes 20 times

30 times we were joking earlier that we

could switch places and I could be Cole

and he could be me and we could just

tell and use the same lines that each

other use during each of our live calls

but students love it and we have some

plans for changing ship 30 in the year

ahead that we'll talk a little bit more

about but it felt good to make all these

infrastructure upgrades see those start

to come to life still have success on

the marketing side without any new

effort all while running a ship 30

program that we aren't going to be

running for the next couple months so we

kind of got through the month that we

knew was going to be pretty intense and

now we're starting to reevaluate what's

next yeah but in the short term I think

we've really Crystal Iz that we don't

need to do anything new m p PGA has a

very clear path forward um very excited

about the Mastermind PGM on the back end

of it um yeah this is the first time I

think we're going into a full year going

I think we know how we're going to spend

this entire year MH you know every other

time it's been some kind of well we know

what these three or four months look

like but we just have to hopefully

rewatch this video when we start to go

down the shiny object syndrome shiny

object Rabbit Hole so other things we

knocked out this week we did that cross

collaboration with Thiago we've done

this with a couple creators now um very

excited about this like we'll just for

context we'll do these viral drops from

our own accounts we'll put together some

sort of info product and then we'll drop

them from our accounts it's a great way

of getting a bunch of engagement on a

social platform and then also as a

mechanism for collecting emails and then

we started going well why do we have to

do it from our account so we then

started reaching out to other creators

going hey could we collaborate on a

viral drop asset we'll help you assemble

it we'll give you our Playbook on how we

do this um so that's been that's been

really cool yeah we pretty much

productize this entire thing at this

point which means we can spin them up

faster than anyone else could so we'll

probably do those on a monthly basis

going forward but nothing really

exciting there I think the last one is

we both began to dabble in selfie camera

video so you made like a 20 minute video

talking head how'd that go how' that

feel yeah I really I'm really fascinated

by just the idea that video can be

approached in so many different ways and

something that's really clicking for me

is that professional quality video has a

lot of Pros but there's also cons and

one of the cons that I see is if you

lean too far in that

direction and I don't I I don't think a

lot of people think about this or maybe

they do and I just whatever if you lean

too far in that direction you inherently

start playing a more status game because

it becomes about elev the production

quality to the point where you are so

far above the people that you're talking

to right you get further and further

away from them and that's not really a

game I'm interested in playing like I

think the shipyard and having the Space

is really cool and and the fact that it

looks so great is awesome but ultimately

the thing that is most rewarding to me

is being on the same level as someone

and so I really like the idea of just

doing more like raw selfie video talking

head um cuz that's the experience I

enjoy more versus the people that lean

really heavily in the overly produced

quality Direction they end up creating

this Dynamic With Their audience where

they're like unreachable and I don't I I

just have no interest in that I think

there's a barbell where if you can have

highly produced highly qu high quality

educational videos like this with still

a constant selfie video like I'm just

the same as you guys I just have a fancy

Studio that's a sweet spot because

people go one or the other and I think

there are benefits to having both and it

was nice to see you make that video

because I've been thinking about doing

something like that for a long time and

seeing you do one I was like I'm just

going to do one tomorrow I've done three

in a row now and it's really easy and

way easier than I thought it would be

and that's a macro lesson of you delay

for months something that takes a couple

minutes to do like I took out my camera

on my Walks Like I'm filming it today

I'm doing it I s it to Ash he uploaded

it boom and the response has been great

I was going to say again drinking our

own Kool-Aid it's been fascinating that

that little selfie talking head video I

post on YouTube immediately it's not

like it went viral or anything but tiny

little data point it was one of my most

engaged videos period and I looked at it

relative to recent podcast Clips or oh I

didn't see you put that on YouTube yeah

I put on YouTube and it's gotten more

like likes and more comments than almost

any other video I've posted in that same

period of time interesting I didn't know

you did this oh cool yeah and so that to

me it's like this is something we try

and explain in ship 30 people go into

the I want to create things on the

internet with this mindset of either no

one consumes it or it gets a million

views and a million comments and a

million likes and there are so many

little data points that happen between

those two extremes and so even this I

mean this has a th views like it's not

like it went viral but if you look at it

relative to some of the other videos

I've posted I interpret that as oh this

is a small spike in interest in

engagement I should lean into this more

yeah I bet your attention was great on

this video you know and depth of 78

likes on less than a thousand views

that's great yeah okay interesting more

signal for me cuz I could just turn my

what I've been doing is I had a process

I was already going through which was

sharing what I wrote every day now I

just turn that into video and I've added

like a little tip or framework or tactic

I think my next step is going to be

taking the weekly personal lessons and

realizations and just make a talking

head video here we are iterating in real

time iterating in real time yeah I like

these lessons and realizations you ended

with I think this is always this is the

meat of what we want to share on a

weekly basis as a way to distill and

crystallize Frameworks for ourselves so

we've already stumbled on a few more

which is I I'm just going to add to the

list which is the best educational

content has both skill and belief

yep which is overcoming objections

anything that would keep someone from

doing it next one we came up with is

everything is trainable some things are

just harder to train so rather than

thinking is this trainable it's how

trainable is it it's a spectrum so there

are some things like having a

conversation with me is impos is like

zero trainability in terms of being able

to do to replic to replicate someone

else but someone asking me questions

about how they can better manage their

time we might have that belief of like

I'm the only one who could explain it

but if I can explain it to that person

it means I can explain it to someone

else who could then explain it to that

person Y and we are learning this lesson

more and more of I don't think there's

any part of the business that we didn't

once think was

untrainable that we then ended up

learning actually we could delegate this

if we needed to and so it's just a

continuous process anytime we feel

ourselves like oh we we have to be the

ones to do that it's probably because we

looked at it from a binary lens and

instead go okay we might not be able to

replicate all of this but what are the

parts that are trainable or replicatable

or delegatable yeah it's sort of like

and I certainly have fallen victim to

this I in every business I've ever built

I was always convinced that I was the

only person who could do it and then I'm

just proven wrong again and again and

again but it's like the doctor Paradox

where the doctor thinks no one can do

what I do but then you have to ask the

question well how did you learn how to

do what you were doing cuz someone had

to train you right so it's this and we

should do this for ourselves it's like

how do we know the things that we know

well someone else had to teach us

someone else had to train us so yeah I I

really like your point of everything is

trainable it's just on a spectrum and

how difficult is it going to be to train

yeah how trainable is it how difficult

is it to train right we've seen it with

Ash cranking through a lot of our emails

and things like that that we used to

think wouldn't be train I thought I have

to write every single email no you don't

cuz volume solves a lot of problems and

one of the ways that volume solves

problems is that when you're forced to

do something over and over and over

again your impatience for it grows until

eventually you become so frustrated with

the fact that you have you continue to

repeat yourself that you start to go if

I don't find a solution for this I'm

either going to throw my head through a

window or I'm going to just stop doing

it I'm going to give up and so I noticed

that the more that I repeat myself on

something now I'm giving myself the

permission of okay who could I train to

do this yeah and that I wrote that down

as another lesson from the week it's to

build any kind of successful business

you will repeat yourself un

uncomfortable number of times so many

times that's both in your own products

you're going to have to say the same

thing time and time again on chip 30 how

many times have we said the same thing

on the same live call over and over with

your team you're going to have to

communicate the same core values the

same way to build a culture you're going

to use the same words over and over over

again you're going to use the same

belief breaking and coaching formulas in

your content you're going to say the

same thing time and time and time and

time again and that's great it's nice

realization is when you feel like wow

I've said that before it's probably

worth saying again MH and that's true

for everything it's like oh you want to

play in the NBA you're going to take the

same free throw shot a gazillion times

oh you want to play golf you're going to

it's that same swing every single time

you know so this exists everywhere I

think it's just reframing that in your

brain and the inverse is also true if

you look at most people again I made the

same mistake you look at most people who

are stuck in their business or in their

life or or whatever it is it's because

they've started down the path of that

boring monotony and then they've become

it's like they're disillusioned by it

they're like I need the next shiny

object I and and every time you do that

you're starting over you're starting

over you're starting over you're never

allowing the path to compound it applies

to everything where you are a fixed

number of boring actions away from

basically any goal so my example right

now is I started the

year put on a little bit too much

holiday chub no you're bulking yeah I

was I was thank I was Ving and so I came

into the year and said all right I'm

going to do a little six week mini cut

between now and Columbia I've now eaten

the same breakfast the same lunch the

same dinner for 33 days in a row and

that level of monotony is something that

most people could not stick with yeah

but I have done that because I on day

one I said if I eat these three meals

every day for six weeks this is

literally what will happen I will lose

this much because I'm at 2,800 calories

a day maintenance this is 2, 800 a day

50 days boom and literally I'm on a

chart that is a straight line down at

the exact slope that I programmed and

it's just a reminder to me do the things

that you know will work if you repeat

them long enough yeah it's people going

I want people to read my writing okay

write every day online for the rest of

your life and if you do that you will

there there isn't a world where you

won't achieve that goal you know so I'm

trying to duplicate that simple formula

of like what are the things that I know

if I do every day it's unreasonable for

me to not reach my goal okay how about

this one suboptimal parts of your

business should excite you because it

means you're going to grow forever so I

felt this one this week

during as we've been setting up this

marketing infrastructure where I want to

be able to see our traffic sources from

LinkedIn from Twitter from Instagram to

all our different email courses and I

was like how have we been operating

without this how have we not we've just

been Flying Blind for the last 2 years

of like I think that's working I think

traffic's coming from here no clue and

at first I was like God that could be so

much better and then I reframed it of we

did all this and I had no clue that

Instagram was driving this number of

leads which should probably post more

here at this time to this traffic s or

to this lead magnet it's amazing and I

know that we're one week away from

having that and it'll be a whole new

level of clarity on the marketing side

yeah

I'm very excited about all that

attribution yeah the fact that we've

done what we have despite the fact that

we don't have any of that um yeah this

is also yeah I'm really glad that you

wrote this the reframing of things that

could be better should excite you

because you'll grow forever CU I for

years have just had a really bad habit

of always looking at something negative

being like well I guess that's it yeah I

guess the business is ruined and it's

like no that's that's the opportunity

that's the whole point and we have a

massive list of things that could be

better which means we have our work cut

out for us so it could be H this

business is broken there's nothing none

of these things are working it's like oh

great the business is actually doing

fine despite none of those things

working so let's go fix them and we'll

continue to grow forever uh two more

it's hard to stop a team when everyone

has aligned incentives to grow the

entire business I've really noticed this

lately so there's multiple components to

this one finding ways to give everyone

some sort of

trajectory something to strive for MH um

two finding ways and it can be created

in you know there's not one one size

fits all but finding ways to allow

people to share in the upside right

because like when you win you want

everyone to win um but third is also

tying those incentives to the type of

culture that you want to build like what

do you want people to be obsessed with

you know and I think something we've

done a good job of is really instilling

this culture of people being the wanting

to be the best at their role like if

you're going to be in that role you

should become the best possible person

to own that role and if that's not your

goal then a it's probably going to

reveal itself and B it's like you should

pick something else you know because if

you're going to spend all your time

getting really good at something get

really good at something that fits your

natural strengths this I heard a great

horos framework on commentation that I

want to crystallize right now so he was

talking about he heard it from someone

else they're going to start to implement

it but basically he takes someone's

compensation let's say they're on track

ideal compensation would be 200 Grand he

splits it in half he he was uh echoing

this from someone else someone else does

this splits it in half says 100K is base

then takes the

additional 50% so the other 100K and he

splits that in half and so 25% of their

comp is he takes those two pieces one is

tied to the overall business Revenue

hitting a certain Milestone so it's

teared out of like the business grows

this much you get this much business

grows this much you get this much Etc

the third the other piece is they set an

individual

goal and if they hit it they get that

other

25% they pick or they allow each person

to set that goal but they have to tell

the entire team what that goal is so you

can't set a goal that's so low where

everyone around you goes why are you

setting goal that's so low just so you

automatically get that

25% so we're doing the same thing which

was really interesting because you have

the culture that supports a higher

performance goal so they get the

personal growth of setting a goal that

they can go and hit they have the full

aligned incentive to build the entire

business and it's still not putting all

their eggs in one basket such that if

the business doesn't grow they don't get

their base salary I thought that was

really interesting from a from a

compensation perspective and I think we

could impl something like that yeah the

there's a moment a little story I come

back to all the time this was back when

I was living in La I went to

some not party like like what's a

business party called it's not

networking but it's like a business you

know there's a bunch of people there uh

in business and I was talking with this

really successful CEO and I was like oh

good to see you um how's the year been

and he said I just had my best year ever

and I said well what did you do

differently and he said I broke out each

department and I basically made each

person treat their Department as if it

was a business inside of my business and

I tied I I reduced their guaranteed base

a bit but I gave them more upside in

their specific department and he said it

made everyone work harder it made the

whole business grow faster and I just

had my best year ever yeah and I I that

was is one of those moments that really

stuck out to me where I think I think

the reason that works so well is because

especially today like more and more

people want to be entrepreneurial but

that doesn't necessarily mean that you

have to go start your own thing there's

a lot of benefit in being

entrepreneurial inside of an

organization that has a ton of

opportunity and you can have more

ownership in whatever it is that you're

doing it's the same idea of spectrums

right yeah full entrepreneurial is you

own all the risk and you're the last one

to get paid W2 is you're the first one

to get paid if there's some kind of

Middle Ground where you have shared

upside but also a base that's just in

the middle so here's what I did with the

sales team I said we're going to do a

bonus payout this month based on

individual goals so here's what I had

them do all three of them are going to

set an individual goal to hit for this

month if they hit it they get a certain

bonus if all three of them hit their

individual goals they all get an

additional bonus but if when they I

wrote down a reasonable goal for each of

them and I put it on a piece of paper

and I took a picture of it and I said if

the goal that you come back to me with

is below the number I have here no

bonuses for anyone the entire month just

turned into squid games real quick so I

was like I couldn't get the like public

accountability because they could still

collude and everyone set a low goal so I

was like if you guys collude and you set

super low goals so it's easy to hit it's

gone so now they have to figure out what

and I gave them the numbers I was like

here's what I think is reasonable for

this this and this do the math you'll

see where I'm projecting and then set a

goal a little bit higher than that

that's amazing I didn't know you did

that yeah I did that this morning so

they're all like Oh great cuz I saw them

like snickering like oh what if we just

said this I'm like okay yeah here's the

last bullet if you come with a goal

that's lower than the goals I think you

should have all of you lose the chance

to have this so it's going to raise the

bar I hope we'll see a lesson that it

doesn't matter what restrictions you put

in place everyone will always try and

game the system yeah exactly no it's the

the Cobra test when you this is another

lesson I need to write this down

every this is from a Keith for boy video

every indicator needs a counter

indicator so we learned this with one of

our challenges last month on the sales

side was a certain number of of

enrollments but we didn't set a counter

indicator that said it had to be of a

certain percentage of Revenue collected

like rather than a payment plan and so

anytime the uh whole bonus uh payout

that I just talked about for the team is

now subject to one team-wide kpi that

they must meet as well so there's like a

minimum threshold that will solve the

problem we had last month and now we

have a counter indicator for all the

other goals and so this comes from the I

don't know if it was old England or old

India where it originated but they had a

snake problem cobras and to try to

reduce

the number of cobras in the wild they

put a bounty on if you brought a dead

Cobra to whatever office they'd give you

$100 it's like okay this is going to

solve people are going to find the

cobras they're going to kill them

they're going to bring them to us and

instead in a couple

weeks way more cobras started popping up

they're like what's going on and the

people started to breed cobras so they

could kill them to then turn the money

in oh my God so you need a counter

indicator and it when you align when you

create a goal with no you know

constraint then people are going to find

ways to hit that goal there game the

system right so got to keep that one in

mind and I'm going to add that to our

list human nature yeah these are some

really good takeaways it'll be again a

compounding here it'll be interesting at

the end of the year to compile all of

these like a montage right here all the

Frameworks we talked about it's like a

three-hour long video Yeah I'm feel so

good this perfectly ends the last

section you can improve something

quickly by making one small Improvement

every day with a morning meeting and

closing the loop in the evening and

basically this is just a daily iteration

process where we're trying to improve

multiple different things right now so

we've had three meetings in the morning

identify the action items for each

member of the team during that meeting

and then shut the loop by the end of the

day and it's the same idea here with the

presso hour it's how how can we put

something on the calendar that we're

going to do every single week or day or

per time period such that you can

iterate and make improvements and then

this one is just compounding over the

long term so I think we'll get better at

breaking down our week every week we'll

distill more lessons and realizations

and then by the end we'll have a huge

library of all those improvements and

we'll see where we're at and then we'll

put it in a perfectly organized notion

dashboard now honestly though we could

there's a product idea it's like here

the best people don't pay for

information they pay for the packaging

so if it was here's a clip snippet of

the 50 best Frameworks we

shared a like a premium version of aprl

or something like that yep so lots of

cool ideas in the works just based on

putting something on the calendar doing

it every week and going from there

infinite things for us to create that's

right burden of opportunity that's right

and the very last thing I put on the

what happened is we got back to filming

espresso hour so we're back in the lab

breaking things down it feels good and

two weeks until we go to Columbia there

we go Cole's getting married it's happen

marriage it's happening I'm ready to be

on the other side of

the the new life begins thereafter so

anyone has if anyone has marriage tips

for Cole maybe we should start drop in

the drop a comment if we should do life

updates at the end or at the beginning

of this if you'd be interested in a

little bit of behind the scenes of what

goes on outside this camera and outside

the the business World maybe we'll make

the secret word marriage marriage and so

give give me your best piece of marriage

advice yeah there you go all right

secret word for this one we're going to

be compiling I'm starting to do weekly

private ask me anything sessions for

people who respond to the what I wrote

today and they get a personal invite

where it's like a Sixers 30 minute come

with a question ask it to me whoever

leaves a comment with the secret word

we'll do one or two or three people

invited to that private es me all right

that's all we got for this week if

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one y'all see

you

m