Work Worth Doing

Darren: 00:00

It's playing a game that there is no winning and there is no losing. There's only losing if you leave the game. This podcast isn't just something that you just talk to people about aliens, but it's a huge vessel for you to be able to build your business.

Dean: 00:10

Today's guest is Darren Lee. Dug his way out of a management consulting nine to five in London and now runs a 4,000,000 per year podcast business in Bali. The episode will be digging into his entire journey along with the frameworks he follows to build this success. I hope you enjoy. Starting on the subject matter of this episode, which is the infinite game.

Dean: 00:28

It's something I heard you say on a thousand podcasts before I even ever met you. And I just like to hear what your relationship to that phrase is, like how do you think about that?

Darren: 00:41

It's playing a game that there is no winning and there is no losing. There's only losing if you leave the game. So you can't lose a game that you don't leave. So if you stay in a game forever, it's impossible to lose, and it's also impossible to win. So taking fitness example, that's my first thing I ever did that was half decent.

Darren: 01:04

You can't win at the gym, you just have to keep going. You just go to the gym, you get fitter, you might get shredded, you might go to Ibiza, you might go on vacation, you might get show up for your wedding in a good shape, but you don't like win. So because of that, most people get down, they get really frustrated with their physique, they get they flop on their physique, they get really depressed with how they look, their relationship with food, with their body, because they think that they can win. So they're viewing an infinite game from a finite lens, which is inherently why they suck at that game. It's the same with a business.

Darren: 01:36

If you are destined in a tech startup to sell it, sure. But the model of the tech startup to raise a to build a business to sell it is inherently broken because 99.9% of startups that have ever been built all go to zero because they're playing a finite game in an infinite game. So they have created this world whereby they raise money, they try to get customers, it goes to shit inherently, and then they lose. And they're like, oh my god, why doesn't this work? And then they go back working nine to five because they're putting a square peg through a circle hole.

Darren: 02:07

If you look at it from the lens of a football game, a football game is finite and it has ninety minutes and you go in and Manchester United will play scunt over the weekend and they go head to head. As the time goes on, the level of intensity and pressure increases. The teams start cheering more. The teams, the players are like talking to other more. There's more like injuries and so on because it's a pressure cooker.

Darren: 02:30

But at the end of the ninety minutes, it actually ends. So depending on what's on the scoreboard, it's over. But people view that lens through their business, through their fitness, through their relationships, and then therefore they set it up for failure. Whereas if the football game always continued playing, guys would take breaks, they would roll in and out, they would realize that they need to do other things in their life as well as this thing. And you would only have a subsection of people left who truly love the game, insert whatever industry or nature it is, and they will be playing that forever then.

Darren: 03:04

So it's it's been a very strong reframe for me to look at how I'll view my podcast, how I view my business. I had dinner with Jordan Platton the other day, arguably like the second biggest guy ever in the agency space, like in the world. And he was like, what's the goal with the podcast? And I was like, there is no goal. It doesn't end.

Darren: 03:22

It just keeps on rolling. Like, it just keeps on doing things. My objectives are to build my network, have amazing conversations, learn more stuff, connect with people, take a bit of a break from the business every once in a while. But it doesn't end. I'm coming up to episode 300 at the moment.

Darren: 03:37

When I get there, there will be no one there to clap for me. Like fucking no one. I will manufacture attention to drive traffic to that video, But no one cares. Inherently, no one cares. And then after that, I'll just go back to the episode 301, 202, three, which will just come every Wednesday until I just don't do it, which is inherently leaving the infinite game, or you tragically die in the process of doing that too.

Dean: 04:04

Yeah. Well, that's I love the analogy because like it seems like there is games that are fine. I football, right? That's like an example of a finite game. Do you think it, like, only applies because fitness is a perfect example.

Dean: 04:19

Business is another example. But I think the business one is somewhat potentially flawed in the sense because, like you said, you can flip a business and sell it for a profit. Like, do you think because of the fact that you're doing it for a smash and grab rather than any maybe love is the reason why a lot of people fail in that scenario?

Darren: 04:39

Correct. Like they think that they can do things and just get results and then just not do them anymore. Right. But business carries responsibility. It carries risk.

Darren: 04:48

It carries personal and professional risk because there's different factors. Okay. But because of that, they look to make things perfect. Okay. They want to apply that infinite approach or the finite approach, but they're just screwing it up.

Darren: 05:02

The issue that they have, I think, is, especially in Bali, you'll see is that people are living in alignment. I have lots of clients that are like, I want this to be in alignment. Alignment in that process of like playing something infinite is bullshit because of the fact that they think that, oh, it has to be aligned and it has to make sense intuitively and everything. Your life will just constantly change and you're going to just get better and evolve as a person. Your interest will change.

Darren: 05:28

And there's some weeks where I'm recording podcasts. I'm like, damn, man, like, I don't want to get up super early. Like this morning, had a podcast at six a. M. Okay.

Darren: 05:36

I called last night at 09:00 at night, got up at five, and I was like, oh my God. And I got up, had a cup of coffee, and I was like, fuck this. And then I started recording and I'm just back into the rhythm. If I was in alignment, I wouldn't do anything with my life. I would literally just sit there procrastinating mental masturbation one on one.

Darren: 05:55

So there has to be this like there's obviously things there's interests and there's overlapping interests, but not everything is like linear in terms of enjoyment. Right. So there's going to be parts where you're going to chew glass. Right. And I was historically true in my life, just chewed glass and have had the ability to chew glass.

Darren: 06:13

And I've enjoyed it to some degree, right, because it's part of the pursuit. So the part of that pursuit of like, oh, do I enjoy it? Is that can you play an infinite game with it? And yes, there's going to be ups and downs and so on and so forth. But the whole logic is, can you do something for 100 reps?

Darren: 06:27

Right? 100 sales calls, 100 offers, you're running 100 podcasts, 100 pieces of content. Can you do that? And do you like that? Because I don't want you to do something you hate.

Darren: 06:36

But I mean, there's also going be pros and cons to everything. So, you know, Andrew, one of our really good clients, hopped on a call this morning, and he was a, yeah, man, like, sales team not performing, lost two sales reps, brought in two more sales reps. They're not tracking X, they're not tracking Y. And I was like, welcome to the real world, bro. I was like, this is just it.

Darren: 06:53

Like, well, well done. You're like, do you think you're going to make 4,000,000 a year by everything being perfect? And he's like, no. And I was like, so why do you think that everything's going to be perfect? It's going to be inherently wrong.

Darren: 07:05

Let's fix it. So let's put together a plan. Let's do a few different things. He left a call this morning with a bunch of things that we changed. Was like, all right, report back tomorrow with the changes you made.

Darren: 07:13

But like, if you think that this is going to be okay, you're in fucking fairyland, dude. Like, it's going to hurt and you're going to bleed. And I hope that you enjoy it because that's the only way you're going to get through it.

Dean: 07:24

So funny, I actually saw him at the gym this morning and he was telling me about that as well. And I was like, dude, when you hire someone and you outsource a task, you outsource something in the business. It will 1000000% show you where you didn't plan enough and something that you left out

Darren: 07:40

and your fault.

Dean: 07:41

You'll learn. It's always your fault, bro. I said that's something. He was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get back to the episode in just a second.

Dean: 07:45

But if you feel like you're receiving any sort of value learning or perhaps entertainment from what we're doing here, I have a small favor to ask from you. Could you please slide your thumb down your screen and hit that subscribe button? Because not only will you get updates of future episodes with future value and future entertainment, but and probably more importantly, you will make me very happy. Thank you very much and enjoy the episode.

Darren: 08:07

But that was an interesting observation, right? Because it's just it's a it's a lack of awareness and everyone has lack of awareness. I have a lack of awareness. I'm not, you know, up here at all. But it's like, do we look at this problem that we've created for ourselves?

Darren: 08:18

Undo it and fix it? You know? And I think everything can be fixed. Right? Everything can be fixed.

Darren: 08:22

I say it my life all the time. You have an issue with x y z. Yeah. It can be fixed. 100%.

Darren: 08:27

But this is separation separating the emotion from the logic as much as possible.

Dean: 08:31

Yeah. Hormozi said it good when the other day said it's not like the goal is not to have no problems. The goal is to have no problem with your problems. Yes. So it's like your relationship to when something goes wrong, then all of a sudden the thing itself, like the overarching thing is broken.

Dean: 08:49

The game is broken. It's like, no, you just have a problem with the fact that you've encountered a problem.

Darren: 08:54

Do you know the problem solution continuum by Hermozzi?

Dean: 08:57

No. Oh, this is such an

Darren: 08:58

amazing So basically, it's that every single time you solve it, you have a problem and you solve it, it opens up another problem. So it's a problem solution continuum, you have a problem, you find a solution and opens up another one. True. And you look at that and you're like, Oh my god, like I started this business. And now I left my nine to five and now I don't have money.

Darren: 09:16

So you left it in five, you got money and you sign clients. And then you have clients, you're like, Oh my God, don't know to deliver them. I don't know what to do. You solve that. And then you've done this for a while.

Darren: 09:25

Then you have scale as an issue. It's like, Oh my God, I need to hire. So every time you solve a problem, it opens another problem. Understand. Every time we solve a problem, it opens up another problem.

Darren: 09:33

But that is what an entrepreneur needs to do to make money because you are on the other side. You are the one positioning the solution. Okay? So we help people make we help business owners make more money with content. The first step we need to do is understand they need to make content.

Darren: 09:51

So we need to help them to make content, and then they solve that problem. After they solve that problem, I don't leave them just run off into the wilderness. I'm like, okay. Now you have content. We need to convert that content into leads.

Darren: 10:03

Okay. Next, let's start at the leads problem. Okay. Now you suck at sales. Cool.

Darren: 10:08

Let's teach you sales. But if I stopped at that point, I would not be valuable. This determines how valuable I am in the marketplace. So the power business has grown is become as because I have become more valuable. I have for many years, for half a decade, taught people how to create content and how to create content that makes money.

Darren: 10:25

But then I had quickly learned that people didn't know how to sell. So then I was teaching people sales to do with their content. And then I realized that all sales and content makes no sense unless I teach them offers. So I had to teach them an offer. And then that made me insanely valuable.

Darren: 10:39

So now I can actually take a step back and I basically do nothing but just look at offers and do a bit of sales with that because I have the infrastructure for people that are good at content, to production, go to operations and so on. So the question I always ask someone is like, do you want to ask me this question or do you want ask someone else in our company that's as good as me or better at that? Right. And I think that's where you become like valuable in the marketplace. And that's the concept of solving problems, creating new problems and solving those problems too.

Darren: 11:08

And if you can do that on a long enough time horizon, you become just, you just become very, very solid in your ability to do shit and confidence, you know?

Dean: 11:18

Yeah, you can just keep playing the game then because you know that that's coming. And it's so funny when you said that, you just reminded me when I was trying to get out my nine to five and I was like, once I get another client, once I get to five clients, then I'm gonna be okay. Happens at five. Okay. Once I get to seven and then I hire someone, then I'm going to be fine.

Dean: 11:36

Okay. Another thing happens. Okay. Once I get to twelve, once I get to twelve, then I'm going to be fine. It just doesn't happen.

Dean: 11:41

You never reach this utopia that you think you're going to And there's another good one that I'm going to share that I heard from, I think it was Rob Moore. Very simply put, he just says new level, new devil.

Darren: 11:50

Yeah.

Dean: 11:51

Right. You know, you go up, you raise your game, you raise the business, you increase the business, you hire someone, you make more sales, have more clients. The shit that you didn't see coming.

Darren: 12:00

Yeah. We were talking about this yesterday myself and Piyush, which was like we are now at the stage where we're we're hiring middle management. We have a middle management layer. So myself, CEO and COO and CSM, I had a client succession, I say, are now managing a layer of managers who are then managing a layer of executors. And then the whole logic is, what does a 10,000,000 a year business look like?

Darren: 12:25

It has that. It has that component. It has that layer of complexity. Okay. What does that mean?

Darren: 12:30

We need people that are A players. We need people that are well compensated so that it's not like a fucking cash grab. How does that look? Who do we need to do? Who do we need?

Darren: 12:38

Because at that point, it's not about what you do. It's about who do you do it with, you know? And then it's it's all it's a who not what. Right? One zero one.

Darren: 12:46

So what does that look like? How do I take a step back and how do I hire elegantly in that way? And again, we we had a topic of this yesterday, which was if that's the case and you're waiting for the team to be balanced and your work to be balanced, your clients, your clients to be at equilibrium and they're all chill. Well, you'll always get caught in this cycle and you'll never get out of it. And that's why people get stuck.

Darren: 13:08

So people never make more money. That's why people never grow their business, you know, so. And then the whole logic is like, if you can't do it right now on your current construct, you got to make time for it, you know? So you messaged me on Saturday, you're going to the party. And I was like, I'm working.

Darren: 13:22

I'm working,

Dean: 13:23

I'm building. Instantly I felt bad when you said

Darren: 13:24

that, was I'm just building- just like an landing page. And the reason, and it's not about like outworking someone, it's just like, I have shit to do, I have energy. I was like out all day and I came back and I wanted to work on something and I was like, I need to get this thing done. So if I don't do this, it's going to have an impact on stream, you So I think it's a bit of a realization. So that'd be kind of it.

Darren: 13:44

Yeah.

Dean: 13:47

There's like loads to unpack there, but I think it would be useful to circle back a little bit in your journey because you well, you're right. Person listening now might be thinking, okay, right. It was 10,000,000 in business. He's hiring, like, a 100 people, But everyone starts somewhere. Right?

Dean: 14:05

And and this long chain of events that has led you to be able to speak the way you speak about business and hiring and sales and everything like that started somewhere very small, right, with one small action, with one step into this game. And I know you've you've done a lot, right? You've done like fucking drop ship and you've done

Darren: 14:26

I've done you've

Dean: 14:27

done like you've done a lot of things, right? But could you talk a little bit about the very beginning? Like, what was it your state like before you started to make shifts like that, before you started to make some moves? And how did you get over that initial hump to to kick yourself into into momentum?

Darren: 14:43

I think we can go deep on this if you want to. So take a step back. So grew up in the center of Ireland, grew up in Cork. Ireland is historically very anti entrepreneurial. It doesn't have an entrepreneurial buzz.

Darren: 14:55

It doesn't have any incentives for entrepreneurs. There's very support for entrepreneurs. And honestly, quite frankly, I think they looked down on it because the nine to five is so glorious glorified because of actually because of corporation tax for these companies, because they're hiring so much people that, being an entrepreneur is very looked down on in Ireland. But I grew up with very little money and I grew up in like a very dysfunctional house, really fucked up house. And I want to get out of that true sport.

Darren: 15:21

Now I'm not particularly great at sport, but I was good at it. I was a good hundred meter track runner. We don't see that many Irish guys in Olympics. I I was going to Rugby probably wasn't that great, though, because I didn't really grow to be that big. But I thought like sport for me was like my way out.

Darren: 15:34

So my way out then end up having like a few horrific injuries, rebad surgeries and shit, like nearly lost my leg in a surgery, a a ton of really fucked up shit. And actually, funny enough, the surgery went so bad. I started losing my hair from it because I was on so much medication afterwards. Lost my hair. Would you believe I got a deep vein thrombosis?

Darren: 15:54

So I got a blood clot on my knee and, they they were like, I was very close to getting my leg amputated, but then the medication that they put me on, made me lose my hair, and I was in my teeth. Anyway, sorry for that.

Dean: 16:07

That is mad. Anyway, go on. Yeah.

Darren: 16:08

But I had this like kind of like individualism approach because I had to get out of my scenario. Right? Always. And even to this day, like, that scenario, I would never go back to. Like, in a million years, I'll sell my way out of it.

Darren: 16:23

Give me a fucking cold calling desert, and I'll fucking find my way out of But that was the what I what I always needed to get out of. So then when I would kind of gone into college and I was doing, like, engineering and shit, it's still never like click like nothing was nothing that was given to me when I was presented through to the regular system was any way out of that world. I was never gonna make a lot of money. I was never gonna really break out of like Irish living, especially Irish culture and so on. It just it just wasn't possible.

Darren: 16:51

And it's also it also just isn't possible. So that's when I started like dabbling online, finding different things. And I was actually running parties in Ireland at the time, because like I was a party boy. It was very easy for me to see like, ah, attention. I just run an event on Facebook.

Darren: 17:06

I get people to come to that event on Facebook. They go to the event, I hire a DJ, people have a great time, I make money. The artist is fantastic. I did that for quite some time. But this obviously just isn't like scalable, right?

Darren: 17:17

And then I was running events with other people, making good money with that man, there actually is good money in events, but it's just obviously not a short term thing. And then it was only until I got out of Ireland, and I went to The UK and it's such a typical Irish story, but didn't actually go this way. And I went to London, and my eyes opened up not from the perspective of a nine to five perspective of like, what are people's buying intentions? So again, I was like a rave kid, grew up in like house and techno when it really was just starting in Ireland, which was 2019, 2017, 2018. And at this point, I was like, Okay, I was so deep down this rabbit hole.

Darren: 17:54

So if anyone's listening, the best business to build is the business that you know the most, the area that you most. So I knew raving, I knew clothing, I knew just what people wanted. And I moved to London and everything was like on fire. It was 100 times more than what I was in Ireland. So I would go to these like festivals and events.

Darren: 18:13

And I would see like the best clothing that I'd ever seen. I was off in the 80s and 90s. And I was like, alright, let's go. So I was working in investment banking, and I was working middle office investment banking, not even at the front. Okay.

Darren: 18:25

It's an important distinction. And I remember going in the first day, and everyone around the office was fat, broke, had a suit on with their head down and was completely bald. And no one put their head up 08:00 in the morning. I was like, this is weird as hell. I spoke to my manager and she said, every single Thursday, we go for Thirsty Thursdays.

Darren: 18:46

And I said, that's weird because I have to go to the gym on Friday morning. And she said, he won't be doing that anymore. And I said, watch me. It was my response. I was like, watch me.

Darren: 18:54

I never once went to that event. And I was always in the gym. I was always doing my own thing. Right? Individualism.

Darren: 19:00

Individualism. And I saw a parody and so on. And at this time, I was getting really disgruntled with what was happening. So I was going from the gym into work every morning, and I'd bring two suit to gearbox, one of my clothes and my suit, one with a lunchbox, one with a bag full of lunchboxes with food. It was like chicken or rice, oats and protein, and I would line it in the fridge.

Darren: 19:21

And guys would take it out of the fridge and be like, who the fuck is this? And I'm like, that's mine. And guys like, no, you gotta move out of the way. I was like, fuck you. I literally was like, I'm not doing that.

Darren: 19:29

Straight up not doing that. So again, individualism. I wanted to make sure that, like, I was always like, I always want to do things that I was aligned to what I wanted to do. Okay. So then that's when I was like, all right, this whole corporate thing is just total bullshit.

Darren: 19:43

Right? These people are miserable. The best way it was said to me was, look at your manager and look at your manager's manager, because that's the life that you're going to have. So I looked at that and I like, that is not the person that I want to be. And I came back home.

Darren: 19:55

I knew that I was really into, like, parodying and everything. And that's when I started getting into e commerce. Okay. So in my apartment in London, I would buy a shit ton of clothing from the side of Italy. It would all be like perfectly handmade, like one of one items.

Darren: 20:10

I'd bring them in from Italy, physically store them in my place and sell them online. And they would sell them and they would fucking sell. And they were going and it was really, really hard at the time. It was just it was just a perfect, perfect time in the market. And that went really well until it didn't because e commerce is super hard.

Darren: 20:28

You have so much cash flow issues and so on. So that was like my kind of second entrance into like, damn, got like I got the taste of it. I got the drug of it, but I didn't land it. And after that, then I closed everything down, went to fit, went to went to test. Basically, it all went fell apart, came back to Ireland, and I actually wasn't going to go back to Ireland.

Darren: 20:47

This is very important. I wasn't going to leave. I wasn't going to finish my degree. I was going to stay in London and join a startup because I was in engine. I was in software engineering and and IT broadly.

Darren: 20:58

But I didn't do it. The agreement was I'd go back to Ireland and I'd work at a startup in Ireland while I finished my university. So again, I'm straight back into the startup space. I'm in a company that's raising capital from a company in Boston. We were like in the den every day building out software, and it was sick.

Darren: 21:14

It was so sick. There was seven of us. I wouldn't go to college during the day, and I would just go to the gym, to the library in night and then to the gym at 10:00 at night. So I did this for a while, and I was like, alright, software's a way forward. I was 21 years old.

Darren: 21:28

Fuck this e comm thing. I'm going to go into software. It's going be great. So I spent like a year building that startup with that guy. And then I left there, went to Dublin again, made the wrong mistake, went into management consulting in Dublin because I was told I was going to make more money than what I was making there.

Darren: 21:42

But I went in day one again and it was like, you know, NPC land, one zero one, just like super woke, super loser vibe, like really, really like anti me effectively. And that's when I decided to build a startup. So I would come home from an end of five and I would work from five p. M. To like 01:00 in the morning every single night for so long.

Darren: 22:03

I did this for like nine months straight, making no money and went to get funding, didn't get funded. Went to a bunch of angel investors from London, didn't get funding again, and it kept going on. And I was like, all right, I'm out. So at this point now, 20 years old, I've tried to build three businesses. They've all went to zero.

Darren: 22:19

I've been completely broke. I'm in so much debt from university. I have no progress in my career. I actually got promoted in my first year in a nine to five. I asked to get a triple promotion because I was doing more than everyone else.

Darren: 22:32

And they said, no, get in line. That was the accurate response. That day I handed them my resume, my resume, or my resignation. I was like, alright, I'm out I'm out of this. And that is when I started a podcast because I had spent so many years trying to figure shit out.

Darren: 22:47

I didn't struggle with action. Right. Your default mode should always be action. But I never struggled with action. I just had a skill and a learning gap.

Darren: 22:56

So it was about filling in that acquisition. So what was it? It was time to slow down, listen and learn and start a podcast.

Dean: 23:02

That's a beautiful point, though. Can I just interject on that? Because acting without clarity is something that I think a lot of people who are in that situation that you've just outlined, the management consultants, the finance bros that I think right there is one of the key pillars that people struggle to to to to to overcome. How? Because it seems like you just acted anyway without clarity.

Dean: 23:28

Seems like you didn't need a kick up the ass, whereas I think a lot of people because I think about me, bro, I was the exact opposite. I did need a kick up the arse and I and eventually it worked for me. So what would you say to someone like me who was who can do it, but needs a kick in the arse? Do you wish you could work on something that was your own? Do you wish you could take a week's holiday on a moment's notice?

Dean: 23:48

These are all things I craved so badly when I was in my nine to five sales job and it ate away at my self esteem. But eventually I took matters into my own hands, invested in an Airbnb mentorship and course, and systemised the business to where it now requires me for about four hours a week. And the best part is I don't actually own any of those properties. I can travel anytime I want, I choose when, where, and if I work, and the business does a predictable 10 to 15 ks per month every month. If you want that too, I can help you.

Dean: 24:12

I've documented all my processes and procedures over the past three years right away from finding your first client to accepting your first guest. It is my entire Notion hub that my entire business runs off so you can automate your business in weeks rather than years. If that sounds interesting to you, just click the link below and we can have a conversation and see if we're a good fit together. Worst case, I'll give you some free advice and best case we can roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Darren: 24:33

Well, this is thing, right, is that, yes, you need direction. Yes, you need guidance, but the cost of education is like almost zero right now. Right? You can get on chattypreeti. So people don't struggle with information because it's there.

Darren: 24:44

They struggle with like guided action, right? Accountability, where to go the right path. Okay. So I was doing things. I was building like Shopify stores and I was doing it with like YouTube videos, but it just obviously wasn't working.

Darren: 24:58

Yeah. So that's that's when for me, was like, right, I I'm still broke. Right. This is so important. I'm broke.

Darren: 25:03

I have no money. I need to do something. I started a podcast and I was learning from people. Okay. But I think like you just need to be I also feel like the one degree, right?

Darren: 25:11

So most people in their life are one degree off everything clicking. And that's nice. It sounds great. Sounds flowery. But the unfortunate shoot is being one degree off.

Darren: 25:21

You can go your entire life being a loser, being a B player, missing all your targets, missing your goals, never getting any you want. And the irony is if you're two degrees off, your whole life can fucking end. Two degrees off mean you can have great potential, a great potential. You could do such great things and you go to zero. So I always look at a true dot lens because directionally, yes, you're on the right path, but you need to be steered on the right way.

Darren: 25:46

That's why education is so great. That's why uneducation is so great. That's why, like, having a mentor, having someone in your corner is just so beneficial because for me, that was my podcast. And I had no money. Right?

Darren: 25:55

Even like how you started your podcast, you're learning so much through this process. So I was just in the trenches learning from startup roles because I still wanted to build startups at the time, startup founders, tech founders, But then I'd found my way into the online space. And I was like, wait. So there's guys here that have made way more money in the least amount of effort with way less headache, no bosses like VCs, investors, so on, and they're younger than me. What is my excuse?

Darren: 26:23

And I've done this for like a bare mind, like a 100 episodes and so on where I was getting to know what was going on here. And I was learning a lot. And then when I was doing things because I was implementing what was told to me, they were kind of click, penny would kind of drop, you know? And I think I have a good ability to like, listen, actually implement as well. So when I would learn something on a podcast, would actually just go and like do it for like six months and then I would just get good at it, you know?

Darren: 26:47

And it was an interesting thing. So the feedback loop for me was really positive. And I think then what was kind of happening and we can go deeper into this, of course, but the where I kind of wanted to be identified was is I didn't want to be identified as a creator. Fuck that. I want to be identified as, like, a business owner who uses content to make money.

Darren: 27:07

So that was the theory of what we were doing. So the podcast that I was building, and we can get into how votes came to be and what was that jump and and also leaving the nine to five point, which is really important. It came through the idea of I am doing this as a business, not as a broke TikTok creator. And when you view it in that lens, you view yourself differently. You view your conversations differently.

Darren: 27:30

You show up today differently because you're on it. And that's the whole goal.

Dean: 27:35

So you said one degree changes. I just wanted to zoom in on that. So would you look at your one degree changes as what would you what would you label as your one degree changes throughout that chaotic, turbulent?

Darren: 27:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: 27:49

And because I want to the reason I asked that is so somebody who's listening now could be like, all right, well, what's my one degree change? What could I do? And I just want to maybe identify what exactly was yours that sent you on this, like, wildly different path that you're on now. Okay. Because for me, it was mentor.

Dean: 28:03

I paid for a mentor.

Darren: 28:05

Okay. So I believed, and I still believe that I can can build a tech startup. I believe somewhere in my brain that I can do it. I believe I can do it. I can do I believe I can build a proper startup, but it's very difficult to do, especially just in general, like, I mean, like an actual tech company.

Darren: 28:22

So I had, this is my identity and I believe that that's what I wanted to do. And it was through my podcast that I was interviewing people that were like entrepreneurs, founders, they were like, dude, like, what's up with this podcasting? Like, they're like, one, it looks great. Even though it's on zoom, it looks great. Sounds great.

Darren: 28:39

Really good questions. Really dialed in there. Can you do this like for me? And I was like, no, no, no, no. I'm just like entitled tech guy over here.

Darren: 28:46

I'll I'll go figure this out. You go figure this out yourself. But it kept coming up. And then it was guys who have 4,000 employees, 3,000 employees that were like, hey, dude, can you just come in and help us with our podcast and help us with our marketing and everything? And then I was slowly getting consulting gigs where I would go into a tech company and I'm like, yeah, like you say things like this because it resonates in that way and it evokes an emotional response.

Darren: 29:08

And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And they're like, and what about the emails that we send? I'm like, yeah. The email is kinda like the podcast too. And you can actually make emails based on your podcast, by the way.

Darren: 29:16

And then they were like, what? So then that's what it was like this huge kind of proponent whereby I was like, yes, this podcast isn't just something that you just talk to people about aliens about. It's a huge vessel for you to be able build your business. And then companies started to really, really like jump at it and say, well, okay, this is a huge opportunity. Can you help me do this?

Darren: 29:39

I'm like, yeah, sure. So I had a bunch of consulting clients and coaching clients, many consultants the time where I would go in and tell them to do shit. And I would come back a month later and nothing would be done. And then I would say, dude, like, you just gotta, like, hit record on Zoom and just figure it out from there. And they're like, no.

Darren: 29:54

No. No. It's not possible. And then I said, okay. Let me just let me just do it.

Darren: 29:58

I'll just do it for you. I didn't know what agency was, bro. And I was like, I'll just do it for you. So I used my editors, and I was like, hey, guys. You want more work?

Darren: 30:07

Sure. Make it exactly like mine. Make the thumbnails like Chris Williamson. Make the thumbnails like mine. Make the intros like mine.

Darren: 30:13

And let's just do this for corporate people. So then we just started developing the system that we would just run people's podcasts for them, I. E. An agency. So they were a get done for you, done with you.

Darren: 30:22

Was like, yeah, I'll just do it all. Just give me the podcast. And we stayed within the podcast realm, but we were doing it from the lens of you're doing this to build awareness and acquisition for your cost for your company. They're like, yep, makes sense. Okay.

Darren: 30:34

So by now, I have this agency. Okay. That I'm like very passively just doing making like 6 k a month on a side. I have a job that I'm making like 8 k roughly a month, on that, and I'm literally doing like fifteen hours a week on this. And two two major things happen, which feeds into the one one degree adjustment.

Darren: 30:56

The first thing is I am interviewing all these young founders and I'm learning what an agency is. I'm learning how to do service delivery. And again, I'm learning from my podcast on how to do like automation back in 2022, how to do like Zapier flows and ship. And I realized that these guys that are younger than me, they all don't drink alcohol. And I was a big party boy.

Darren: 31:17

And I said, well, if I just do a month without alcohol, I can just catch up and I can just work at the weekends. So now I'll spend nine to five working on one to five. I'll work from five to 9AM and five to 9PM on my business. And on Saturday and Sunday, I won't go out and spend three days on a bender. I'll just work on my business.

Darren: 31:34

When I did that for a month, and my entire life changed. My business grew. I started getting my podcast grew a ton, started getting way more clients, way more interest, and I started feeling better. I hit ninety days with no alcohol. And the question was, instead of asking when would I start drinking again?

Darren: 31:50

It was why would I ever start drinking again? And that just kept snowballing and snowballing. And that actually is a compound effect. I was getting a positive feedback loop. And I was at that time one degree on where I was I was getting back to center.

Darren: 32:04

And I was making progress. And I was getting the feedback loop. And now it's been over one thousand days since I drank alcohol, and it's been the biggest like unlock ever in my entire business. My relationships, again, I come from a super dysfunctional dysfunctional relationship, family, like alcoholics, drug abuse, all this dumb shit that I had realized that all that stuff is not good. It's not cool, bro, to come home and drink alcohol every single day.

Darren: 32:26

But only when I had left drinking alcohol for years that I had that wake up call. Dude, that's only been quite recent, by the way. So a little bit context on that. But going back to this center, I'm now making progress. I'm now spending time making more money.

Darren: 32:41

I don't even have to put that much time into it, I'm making decent cash. Why don't we This was what I learned from Justin Welch. So basically, Justin Welch taught me this this concept, which is if you're trying to leave your nine to five, all you need to do is get 60% of the salary of what you are making right now in your nine to five. And with that ten hours or fifteen hours you're allocating right now, you can allocate forty, sixty. And if you're not a princess, eighty hours a week after you leave to add absolutely catapult that revenue.

Darren: 33:11

So I was making 6 k roughly a month. I had two clients, dude. Right. And I was like, well, this is only taking me ten hours a week. If I just leave my nine to five and just put one hundred hours into this, where can I get to?

Darren: 33:24

So just left. And then I was on on par on no degrees left or right. Directionally correct. And was able to focus entirely on the agency at that point. And that's when we adjusted rev rev our retainers at that point.

Darren: 33:38

So it's very linear, like one input out, one input, one input, one output. It's still a great model, though. It's like I always say it's a great model, to be honest.

Dean: 33:48

Well, for someone in the nine to five, it's it's perfect. The dream, right?

Darren: 33:51

Yeah. And also you can still get like 30 ks a month so it's still chill without it being chaotic. So at that point now I've left and I have like seven clients within like, I would say actually when I actually went balls deep, I think I went to 10 ks a month in like a month, Just, like, zero to 10 k in, like, a month. Because, again, my dude, it was, like, a client, two clients. And then I think we went to, like, 30 k.

Darren: 34:15

Well, he's just here. I think we were probably in around that 10 to 20 k mark for around three months. And then we went from like 30 k and so on, so so on and so forth up from there then. And then we start adding in some funky shit, which we'll get to. But that's the kind of evolution though, you know?

Darren: 34:32

And if you think about it, it's about like identifying the opportunity that was actually working and then just doubling down on it then from that point.

Dean: 34:38

One of the things you said that I nearly cracked up at was, like, everyone's just trying to be like Chris Williamson. And

Darren: 34:44

I was like,

Dean: 34:45

I was a bit of my hand off me like, yeah. Because I think there's this connotation with doing a podcast that if you have a podcast, you just talk about real deep shit and you talk about that time when you like healed your trauma and so. Whereas you looked at it from a lens of just strictly this is something that supports the business I have. This is just a vessel of marketing that drives some level of awareness, attention, credibility towards the business that I run. And that for me was such a big shift.

Darren: 35:15

We had a chat beforehand. Do you

Dean: 35:17

remember we spoke?

Darren: 35:17

Yeah. And then and you

Dean: 35:19

were telling me and I was like, oh, I just want to make this part. I don't want make like money off it. I just want it to be helpful. And like, I was thinking, oh, I'm just going be fucking Joe Rogan. I've quit your nine to five and eventually people will just pay me loads of money and sponsor my like, and my head was in the sand with it.

Dean: 35:35

I just I thought I heard what you were saying, it didn't I didn't understand it.

Darren: 35:40

It's a reframe. Right. So like I said, like everyone, everyone's trying to be like Chris Williams and no one's trying to be like themselves. Everyone's trying to be like emojis. No one's trying to be themselves.

Darren: 35:48

Yeah. But if you actually just yourself, you get on podcasts, you talk about what you want to talk to, you create content that's aligned to you, you create offers that are aligned to your experience and you sell in a way that comes natural to you. You will make a killing. You don't need to be like somebody else. You just need to be like yourself.

Darren: 36:03

And the big thing with this is the fact that people looked at podcasts or content and they were like, I'm going to be like Alex Hermosy. I'm going to be like Chris Williamson. I'm going to speak like that. And then full transparency, like I kind of went through that arc as well. Right.

Darren: 36:16

Because when you're young, you don't know what your identity is. And then I think it's like when I started to realign to just like showing up the podcast with a T shirt that's cut off by my wife who just cut herself. Like you you act in a way that's more in alignment and you attract the right people, you know, like we started working together because I just show up the way that I show up. I'm harsh. I need to be harsh.

Darren: 36:36

I'm direct. Need to be direct. I can be supportive. I need to be supportive. But I'm still just like me.

Darren: 36:41

And I say things that I believe. And then I'm I'm in alignment with that. What I believe does that make sense? So when you're trying things that are new, the best way to learn something or the best way to learn is through imitation. Right.

Darren: 36:53

So they try to be like somebody else. But you got to make sure that you don't sacrifice who you are in that process too. Right. So whether you add in some of your values or some of your interests or some things that make you kind of your quirky weirdness. But that's an important part.

Darren: 37:09

And I think everything you do should feed the business. Right. The food you eat, clothes you dress, clothes you wear, the gyms you go to, like everything feeds your business. Right. Like if you're if you're doing something that's completely out of what you do, well, you should be prepared to know whether that's not going to benefit you to do your business you do in your life.

Darren: 37:27

You may love photography. That's great, man. Go take photos of birds. But just know that the twenty hours you're putting that a week has no benefit to you. Right.

Darren: 37:35

Unless you have something to do with photography.

Dean: 37:37

Yeah. Yeah. And I actually said this on my story yesterday. There's like this idea that making content and somebody who's has loads of followers all of a sudden equals loads of money. And it just it's just like couldn't be further from the truth.

Dean: 37:52

And even if you are doing that and you work with sponsors, what a shit business model. That's so shit. You you're chasing invoices, you get pennies off whatever they sell in your bio. Forget about it. And that that bro, that's like the consensus.

Dean: 38:05

Like the average person you'll speak to will think that anyone who has followers equals lots of money if they're a business owner. Yeah. But if they're not like content creation as a game is just not it's not it.

Darren: 38:17

It's just a mechanism. It's just simply a mechanism. It's just a way to get attention for what you do, you know? And I've even spoken to a really big guys in the space that are here as in really big content creators, like purely content. And like these guys might have like 4,000,000 subscribers and they're making 2 k a month.

Darren: 38:36

Right? And because of that, they're just not in the space. Right? They've built a business based on the wrong premises. And I think one of the biggest, like, limiting beliefs people have or one of the biggest lies in online business space is the fact that you need to go viral.

Darren: 38:53

It's bullshit. And the reason why it's bullshit is because you're sold a pretense that that attention is gonna be converted into dollars based on the TAM, how much people you go after. Whereas that doesn't actually work. That falls on deaf ears. Right?

Darren: 39:08

If that was the case, then Alex Ramosy's private equity firm would be worth a 100,000,000,000 because all of the views he got will be attributed to clients in his private equity firm. It's not the case. Right? He's got attention. But yes, some of them have fallen deaf ears.

Darren: 39:23

And that's when he created his books. People come into his books. That's why he created a school and school for him was his way to step in between the guys that are at his PE level, the guys that he can invest with, and then everyone else. So it's just a wrong business model. And also, you know, someone's going to say, well, you know, there's this influencer and there's this business owner who who's got it right.

Darren: 39:48

But it's not about looking at who got a right to model them as to imitate them. It's more looking at what is the thing that you need to do to get the result. Okay. So if you wanna make 10 k a month, if you wanna make a 100 k a month, if wanna make a million a month, the the mental model is what do I need? Do I need a million followers, or do I need 10,000 leads?

Darren: 40:10

Can I get 10,000 leads from a million followers? Maybe, but more than likely not. It's gonna be wrongly distributed. Can I get 10,000 leads from, let's say, post come out every day, good sales team, good setters, good offers over a long enough time horizon? Yeah.

Darren: 40:27

Fantastic. You can. Right? Because the traditional approach to like how you get content and how you get leads is completely detached to how you make money. Right?

Darren: 40:37

And not every lead is also a buyer. It's good to validate that too, right? Like who's a buyer? Who's make who's actually paying you? What's that look like?

Darren: 40:45

And it's funny because success is actually a lot easier when people think you You don't need as many followers. You don't need money as leads. You just need to not people date them. You just need to not say really stupid things on sales calls, and you need to have an offer that actually helps people. It doesn't give them a simple, simple kind of pain killer.

Darren: 41:01

Sorry. It doesn't give them a simple vitamin. It gives them a natural painkiller. Right. And so it's literally as straightforward as I'm making it to be because you've been told that it's more complicated than it should be.

Darren: 41:12

You know, we're working together. The biggest thing I say is run the offer. Just run it. Speak to the people that have messaged you in the past ninety days that have shown any type of interest in you. And I guarantee you that someone will raise their hand.

Darren: 41:24

And if they don't, it means your offer should. This is very simple. You just change it.

Dean: 41:28

So what about somebody who doesn't have an offer then? They haven't even been like me trying to be Joe Rogan of Quint Your Nine to Five. They haven't even got any headway whatsoever. Like, what's the first person for that? What's the first move, I should say?

Darren: 41:40

Two two ways to look at that. One, look at what is your competitive advantage? What is the unfair advantage that you have in the market? If you want to build a business from zero, what's the unfair advantage? I record a podcast.

Darren: 41:51

I understood that podcasts were created in a way you get attention. Right? That was my unfair competitive advantage. And I didn't need to be amazing at editing. I didn't need at a design.

Darren: 42:00

I didn't need to be amazing operations. I just knew that I could offer that to someone and that would become very valuable. And then I could hire the editors and designers as I need to. Okay, that's one side. The second side of it then is also what is your unique ability?

Darren: 42:13

Okay, so this is different. This is if I am uniquely positioned. So if I worked in sales and I worked in, let's say, B2B sales or worked in high ticket coaching, so I worked in high ticket sales. You can invariably sell that skill as a transferable skill to someone else because it's a skill acquisition gap. So sales is always the best example.

Darren: 42:33

So you are in sales. You can help people with sales because you've learned sales. And then most importantly, you have the receipts you've made or you've closed, let's say, 2,000,000 or 5,000,000 or whatever. And then it's this is verifiable evidence that I know what process is. And then you simply sell process.

Darren: 42:51

Right? Because you've done something. You've done something. So you either have an unfair advantage and you can spot something. You believe in a nine to five X, Y, Z, or you have an unfair advantage with a unique ability.

Darren: 43:01

Okay. Because the reason I'm saying this is because I was in position one. I was not in position two. I'm inherently terrible at things. Things that I'm actually pretty good at are actually hiring and culture that came from start up world.

Darren: 43:15

Really? So I can hire really well. I can sniff I can sniff a B player like this 100%. Second I'm on a call, I know just and I say to you guys all the time, B player, A player. And I say I say it to my team.

Darren: 43:25

I identify my team as A players as they pop up because an A player characteristic is like it's it's all you need in a business. Right. And I think that's what I that's what I'm inherently good at. So my unfair advantage or my unfair advantage was looking at how companies didn't have a podcast, e. G.

Darren: 43:45

Marketing, and I could position literally freelance editors and designers at the time, would you believe, as the solution? And I would broker the deal. That's what it was. I was basically aggregating deals. And then I learned sales and I learned B2B sales and I learned B2C sales.

Darren: 44:01

And then arguably I learned sales teams and sales management. And then we started busy selling that effectively. That's it. That's kind of it.

Dean: 44:12

So as you started doing more and more of these, VOEX was born. What was it called before

Darren: 44:18

it was called VOEX? KS Media.

Dean: 44:20

KS Media. Yeah. And then

Darren: 44:22

That's when I was into consulting.

Dean: 44:23

K. Yeah. What was the KS standing for?

Darren: 44:25

Kickoff sessions.

Dean: 44:26

Oh, sorry, yeah, Jesus. Yeah. And then VOEX was born, you started

Darren: 44:30

to develop. I separated it out, know, that was the idea. I think it was like, think it was December of twenty twenty two, I was in Ireland, in Cork, Christmas Eve, just so anxious to figure shit out. And I'd spent twelve hours in Starbucks from 9AM to 9PM on Christmas Eve making that dumb fucking pink logo. And I spent all day building that landing page, dude.

Darren: 45:00

That was it. I spent all day Christmas Eve and I came back and I remember telling people and they're like, you're a loser. And I was like, fuck you. I'm gonna make this work.

Dean: 45:09

If I was listening to you now, I might be what were I so imagine you because I actually got out of my nine to five somewhat less, brutally, maybe I was is the right word? To be fair, I lost a lot of money and I was in a bit of a hole for a while because I took on some risky business with property. Whole lot of story. However, mine was still somewhat more graceful in the sense that.

Darren: 45:36

Burn the boats.

Dean: 45:37

I wasn't I wasn't like I wasn't up at five to nine. I was actually getting up at like six and like calling leads, but I wasn't working like eighteen, twenty hours a day type thing. Like in your eyes, do you think? Because to me, I look at it as seasons. I look at like because to me, a big part of why I did all this was travel.

Dean: 45:57

I like to travel. I like to see new places. I like to explore. I like to not have to check my phone. I love all that shit.

Dean: 46:02

That to me is like why I do it. And so what do you think about trying to get out in such a way that's maybe 20% less than that? Like do you think that's possible?

Darren: 46:16

In terms of leaving it in the fight for?

Dean: 46:17

Yeah.

Darren: 46:19

Yeah. It goes back to what are you optimizing for? And then there has to be some like rational logical conversations which is, if you're, I have one of our clients, Colm, who's also a good friend of mine, he wants to leave his nine to five, he's in investment banking, he's living in London, and he also bought a house inside of London, So for him to leave his end of five, he's got a bit of cash. Right? And he's probably gonna have a child soon.

Darren: 46:40

He's like with his missus and so on. So he needs. He probably needs around £10,000 coming in a month being realistic, you know, his house is fucking future kid, his wife, and the community and all this bullshit, like seven or eight, whatever. Right? Yeah.

Darren: 46:55

So he, his logical approach is he logically, he needs a lot of money and he has a bit of golden handcuffs, But it's about like, what are you optimizing for? Because if you're like you and you're optimizing for freedom, dude, like chicken rice is fucking chicken rice, right? You can eat it in a warung around the corner. You need a nice restaurant. We're pretty simple guys.

Darren: 47:15

Like to this day, I literally just eat chicken rice and nothing will change on that. Like I'm even me and Lara. We don't spend money, dude. We don't we don't buy shit, you know, don't buy things. But if you're optimizing for freedom and you truly are optimizing for freedom, that means you're actually not leaning into materialistic stuff.

Darren: 47:31

So you can be living a pretty inexpensive life. And then as a result, can optimize your business in a way that you can optimize for not looking at your phone. You can have a very simple coaching consulting gig and so on. Right. And it's very simple.

Darren: 47:45

But if you're optimizing for pure freedom, and I would say with freedom in this lens is almost like ease, kind of

Dean: 47:54

have choices

Darren: 47:55

choices, choices. But I mean, if you want it to be easy, a part of it being easy means that you will sacrifice the upside.

Dean: 48:03

I'm almost going to correct myself on that because I think if you use the analogy of the plane taking off, the plane is taken off and you're in a nine to five, you've just got to get get your get your roll your sleeves up. Like, it's it's just gritty. There's there's only so many hours you have. A lot of them are already taken from you until which point you're happy to hand them off and regain them. So at that point taking off, it just requires blood, sweat and tears.

Darren: 48:27

Yeah. Elbow grease. Yeah. And but then this is interesting. So let's use that analogy.

Darren: 48:31

Yeah. Let's say the plane's up in the air. Do you have a decision? Do you want to do a fifteen minute ride and it's nice and smooth? Or do you want to do the seventeen hour flight that I'm going do on Sunday to London?

Darren: 48:41

Like, there are two different flights or two different devils or two different planes or two different equipments, whole different approach to it. I think that's kind of like what I'm optimizing for because I brought a full transparency. What am I going to do? Like, I already live in a beautiful place. I have all my house.

Darren: 48:55

I have my dogs. I'm already married. And what else am I fucking do? Like, I'm being dead serious. I've been to every club.

Darren: 49:00

I don't drink anymore. I parried all during my twenties. I have nothing else to do. If I was to pick up a book and just flick a book, first, it would be a business book. And then secondly, that would that would be super, like, ironic because I'm reading a business book to get away from my business, to relax.

Darren: 49:16

But I don't want to read anything else from business because I have something I enjoy doing. So I much prefer like ruthlessly refining a process. Like me and Pewsh were having lunch yesterday. And I was like, what do we need to rebuild? Like, I was like, let's rebuild the team.

Darren: 49:28

Like, literally at lunch, was like, let's rebuild everything. And we had, a call with a team member. I was like, let's scrap this part of the team and let's rebuild something. So for lunch, for no reason, I did that. Perhaps you fucking know a reason because I was like, oh, this process can get better.

Darren: 49:41

And I'm walking around my kitchen being like, and then if we did this, you know, and it's like, I enjoy that. And then afterwards then I'm like, okay, cool. And then like, I'm at dinner with I'm in the sauna last night at eleven talking about with Lisa, I'm like, my wife. And I'm thinking and I said to her, I'm like, I'm changing this process, change this process. She's like, that's great.

Darren: 49:57

Well done. Because what else am I gonna fucking do?

Dean: 49:59

Does she love it? Does she like hearing about that stuff? Does she tell you to shut She

Darren: 50:03

likes that I like things. Do you get me? And and she also kinda always jokes being like, thank God you're not like a fucking gamer dude, or thank God you're

Dean: 50:10

not like

Darren: 50:11

out drinking, you're not going to like partying and doing dumb shit, you know? And I thank God she's not a boss babe and so on. So like, it's it works both ways. But what I'm trying to say is like, I like this. Right?

Darren: 50:22

So and I had lunch with William Brown. I know you're recording Pocket Cinema on Saturday. I was in Willsboro house for ages on Saturday, and it was kind of unprompted. Gave him a dog, and we're sitting down and like I'm sitting as long on the table and this is just and we're friends. Right?

Darren: 50:34

And we're just sitting there and we're talking about like call tracking sheets for like an hour. And he said we're talking about like open rate, closed rate and show rate for like an hour. And then I was like, I I don't know what else we would talk about. He was like, yeah, man. I just love it.

Darren: 50:53

Mhmm. So it's like, what what is it you generally actually do enjoy? And you can sense from someone too, right? You don't need to be the online business guru or bro. But it's like, if you do enjoy it, this is an important point that I wanna make.

Darren: 51:05

A lot of guys will shame you for wanting to, like, build and scale your business. But if you enjoy it, just do whatever the fuck you wanna do. It's not their responsibility. Also, you could be making that money for anything, dude. You can be in that money for your family, for your kids, philanthropy.

Darren: 51:22

You might wanna give it away. You might wanna help your family, whatever. It's not someone else's job to tell you what you can and can't do. Remember, you left your nine to five because someone was trying to tell you to do something. Now that you're an entrepreneur and you're making 20 ks a month, who's who's telling you shouldn't scale up?

Darren: 51:37

Right? I'm telling you and I'm showing people that our business is making up to 4,000,000 a year. Dude, it's great. Fantastic. Right?

Darren: 51:46

It's fantastic. Yes, there's a few issues, but I prefer my issues to be giving me the swing of a fucking 50 ks extra week versus the downside of, ah, my one of two clients churned. But some guy in Bali is telling me that I should be selling via a fucking a fucking poster. And now that's the reason why I'm not making money. James Kemp, one of my strong mentors at his mastermind.

Darren: 52:13

He was he was telling me about how people his mastermind, sorry. He was telling me how people are so entitled that he's like 19 year olds. They're like, I'm I'm not taking a sales call. I'm I'm bad. I'm a sales call.

Darren: 52:25

He said, yeah, you can't. But you must be prepared for everything that comes with that, because you are too much of a princess to do it. Right. So we got to think about this, like very logically. Know I'm on a bit of a rant.

Darren: 52:38

Right. But I have a theory called princess syndrome, and I diagnose someone with princess syndrome when they show one of these characteristic traits. So it's a business owner that's too proud to create content. It's a creator that's too proud to send a DM. Okay.

Darren: 52:51

Or it's a founder who has to ask their boss to go take a piss. Right. And any of those traits really signal to me that you're an entrepreneur because you're too much. You're too proud. You're too much of a princess to do things that in that actually drive results and success, success, whatever that may be.

Darren: 53:09

Okay. So you've got into this game, which is a bloodbath, by the way. Anyone's building a business, it's bloodbath always. But now you've added the constraints of being a princess. So not only do have constraints as personally, you're actually just a fucking princess, which is a huge red flag.

Darren: 53:25

And there's a famous quote, which is that it's hard to run, tree miles when you wake up in, silk sheets. Okay. And that's the whole logic. They've got a little bit of success. They've made a 4 k or 10 k.

Darren: 53:36

Their ego is higher than someone's making a million a month. And they are too naive, ignorant, and arrogant to do the thing that was getting the result. If my Instagram went down tomorrow or whatever, I would go back sending cold email, man. I go back sending Loom videos, and I'm not afraid to do it. And arguably, we should probably be doing it because it's it's the reason why I'm here.

Darren: 53:59

It's the reason it got me here, you know, and I'm not Yeah. Any way, shape, or form overlooking those things.

Dean: 54:06

I really like what you said at the start of that about it's like, what are you optimizing for? And for me, what I'm optimizing for has actually changed over time as I've gone further into this journey. So, for example, when I started, I was just like, I just want to get this fucking nine to five off my back. I don't want to have this.

Darren: 54:25

Of course.

Dean: 54:26

That was objective one. Be able to to fuck around travel. Right. Once I got that, I I I squeezed the lemons. I went traveling virtually all of last year, like six, seven months, something like that.

Dean: 54:40

In that time Question

Darren: 54:41

for you. Were you just spending the money that you were making for the most part, yeah?

Dean: 54:45

Yeah. Yeah.

Darren: 54:46

But you're like happy to do it, yeah.

Dean: 54:47

But I was enjoying it, yeah.

Darren: 54:48

That's what I mean, like you're

Dean: 54:49

happy do it. This is it, I was

Darren: 54:50

like, it's a feature.

Dean: 54:51

I can just like whip my laptop open at a cafe, work for an hour,

Darren: 54:54

go off and climb a mountain. Know, it's just like, yeah, like as a result, I'm just burning through that cash and just have to, like, realize, yes, of course. Yeah.

Dean: 55:01

Yeah. A 100%. But I I I had a very good job before, so I was sitting on lots of investments, so I wasn't even thinking about it or anything, you know? But as time went on, realized I don't wanna this isn't my jam. Whatever this this business I built, I don't wanna I don't wanna grow it crazily.

Dean: 55:19

I only did it so I could not have to do the job anymore. Right? So it did its thing. It's like purpose was served. Amazing.

Dean: 55:27

Right.

Darren: 55:27

I

Dean: 55:30

then started to think, right, well, I want to do something that I love doing, like the game you're playing. You love the game. I want to love the game. Right? I want to love what I'm building and feel more like connected to what I'm building and like enjoy the effect it has.

Dean: 55:43

And I want to love the clients I work with. One of the things you say a lot is like your clients are a reflection of you. And I'm like, want to I want to work with people that I'm like excited to work with, excited to help to be of service to really. So I guess going back to like what you're optimizing for it for me, it changed, you know, quite a lot.

Darren: 56:03

But with all this, know, I actually mentioned that earlier, which is like here's the whole point with the business, which is if you're in alignment, like not everything in the business is gonna be fantastic at times, overall is directionally correct, yes things change, but are you using this business for cash flow? Do you get me? Does that make sense?

Dean: 56:22

I was. Yeah.

Darren: 56:23

Yeah. And and, you know,

Dean: 56:25

unless It's great. You know, like, that's that's exactly what it was for. It's exactly I knew what I was doing it for. Got it. Now other things come up and that's what yeah.

Dean: 56:37

I mean, to me now, even though I'm doing a different business, I'm still playing the game. Like, game is still the same. I'm just enjoying where it takes me.

Darren: 56:45

Yeah.

Dean: 56:46

And it's not like to me to to quit, I would have to step off the conveyor belt and, like, get a job again. What? Like, never. Never. I can never ever do that.

Dean: 56:57

I'm in the game now.

Darren: 56:58

And

Dean: 57:00

that when you used to say that, you'd post about the Infinite game quite a lot, And I'm like, Oh, that's so good. I fucking love that. I love that so much. Do you think staying on that, do you think like with Vox then because you're doing up to 4,000,000 a year crazy numbers, is your plan to continue playing that game? Do you think there's, like, seasons where you maybe shift gears a lot, or do you think Voix just goes forever?

Darren: 57:27

No. I just keep building.

Dean: 57:29

Yeah.

Darren: 57:29

Like, the the big thing for us was that we had the media company for so long, just for context. So we had the agency, we expanded the agency more into media components. We started to take ownership of businesses, take, revenue shares of businesses that had to grow that out more. And that's when, like, things really started to, scale. So we ran that for so long, and we still run that obviously.

Darren: 57:53

But that was giving us, a lot of attention, but it was still b to b. Okay. So it was it was kind of the hormozy effect. It was that all the content I was putting out wasn't actually helping the business. So it's B2B.

Darren: 58:04

So it's B2B selling, B2B sales and everything. And that grew really well. And then it was like, okay, now we have all this attention. And then there's a huge proportion of people that want help with their podcasts, want help with their content, but can't get access to an agency service or a media company service or they're not at the stage. Right.

Darren: 58:23

Because at the point you're working with some the biggest podcasts in the world. Right. So they're never going to get there. The model is broken for us to be able to scale that in that way. So that's when we add in education.

Darren: 58:33

So it was like, okay, now we have, we're in the space online space. We're one of one in the podcast space where one of the only media companies that actually make money. Bear in mind, all the other podcasts are just broke. And now we have this huge opportunity on the education side, and then we combine both of them. So now the business just quadruples at this point, and we're running two different businesses inside of one.

Darren: 58:57

It's growing, growing, growing. And then it's like, Okay, what else do we want to do? Right. What else comes into that mix? Is there other products you want to build?

Darren: 59:04

Is other software's you want to build? Like what's actually going on? And then it's like, Okay, do we want to squeeze the lemon out of what we have or do we need to add more? For the most part, I think the stack the stack that we have is like solid. It always needs to get better.

Darren: 59:18

You get me. So that's part of the infinite game for that. You know, for me, I wouldn't want to create a second company because the second company gets diluted focus. The only consideration that I would have, I'm not considering it, but the only consideration I would have is adding in like a third component into it, you know, like a new project that would fit into this or something that fits underneath the umbrella. But do I need it?

Darren: 59:41

No. And also, am I at the point whereby I want to do it? No. Like the whole logic with the education, adding that in, this is a very important point for you that are building multiple offers was that me and Piyush were like hand in hand for so long. I was passing off more of the business to him.

Darren: 59:56

He was running mainly the agency on his own. We had a we had a conversation, which was, can we go build this new proponent of the business without this business declining? And we're able to do it. That was the whole question was, can we build a new offer in online business world under this business? And how does that maintain?

Darren: 01:00:13

Whereas and then what happened was we had the incubator. We had core. Well, it was renamed core, the agency. We have two. And then we'd run this for like a year.

Darren: 01:00:23

And then it was like, oh shit, everyone in the incubator was finishing and they were getting they were getting to 30 k a month. They were finishing. They were like coming to the end of their term. Do they want to keep going? And then I was, yes, all these guys want to scale up.

Darren: 01:00:36

Okay, how do we help you with scale? Well, we actually run a shit ton of sales and we have multiple offers and there's more different stages. So again, these people had filled that cycle that we'd filled, which is it's been two years building an offer and now it's at a point whereby it's at optimal scale for one offer. And that's when we moved into Apex. And now, effectively, there's three different businesses or offers underneath the one.

Darren: 01:00:57

Does that make sense? And it was ironic because, like, the incubator became, like, a 6 figure program. Apex became a 7 figure program. Core is an 8 figure service for 8 figure businesses for the most part. We have some other outliers for sure, but for the most part.

Darren: 01:01:14

And it's like, okay. But that's that captures the entire TAM, which is the market for our entire industry, you know? So there's basically nowhere to be sitting. Like, things like this, like it improves the sales process. It improves, like, the offers because we don't need anything, you know?

Dean: 01:01:34

And you're you're like enjoying it, man. And this is like you're enjoying solving the problems like you're not trying to get off the conveyor belt at all. You're like, okay, where next? What can we do with this? Like, you're actually enjoying it.

Dean: 01:01:46

And I think actually that's one of the most overlooked things, because if you look on LinkedIn, right, like the sentiment around starting your own business, I see this so much and it fucking pisses me off of people just in the comments being like, oh, yeah, you know, like it's really stressful when you're just like waiting for the next client and like, just be mindful of like starting a business and it's not all a tale to be and all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, fine. It just sounds like you've got a shit business and you can close deals like so

Darren: 01:02:12

that's exactly

Dean: 01:02:13

don't fucking tell other people not to do it because someone who's on the fence is going to see that and be scared and be like, oh, fuck, that person said it's really hard.

Darren: 01:02:20

Your business is a reflection of

Dean: 01:02:21

you. Yeah.

Darren: 01:02:22

So if that person is chaotic and they can't take it, they can't even take care of themselves and they can't close the door. Yeah. Like once you get your

Dean: 01:02:29

actual finances in order and you can quit your job, everything after that is fun.

Darren: 01:02:34

Yeah. And it's also like, again, it depends on what is you're trying to achieve. Right? As I said, if you're trying to optimize for doing nothing, then you have a tough fucking time as a business owner. You're better off just getting a sugar daddy at that point because you're not going to be able to go very far.

Darren: 01:02:49

So it's what level where do you want to get to? How much cash do we need? Where do you want to live? Right. It's such a big question.

Darren: 01:02:56

Like, do you want to live in The UK where it's all miserable and shit? Or do you want to live in Ireland where everyone's super woke and miserable? Or do you want to live in Asia? Do you want to live in Dubai? Like, where do you want to live?

Darren: 01:03:06

Like, how much does that cost? How much does that look? What does that what's your life look like? You know, and that was a big setup for me here, which was I was here for quite some time. Then it was, do we move to Dubai or do we stay here?

Darren: 01:03:17

And if we stay here, like, am I going to open up businesses here, which I've done? And I have a bunch of businesses here now and a bunch of different, like, companies here, should I say. And am I going to make that decision? Right. And it's like, what where do I what do I need?

Darren: 01:03:32

I need very little, by the way. But it's like, what do I need taken care of? And then what do I want? I want to build something that's cool and interesting. I want to maximize the potential.

Darren: 01:03:41

You know, the biggest thing that me and Lara talk about is like, we just want to maximize our potential for ourselves because because, yes, the Stripe screenshots are good, but you actually will become a little bit numb to it and a bit stagnation. And also 100%. You know, we said this offline, which is just because you hit a number on Stripe doesn't actually mean that you have that business. It's a big thing is that just because you make a 100 k in a month doesn't mean you are a 100 k in one entrepreneur. So you just did it once.

Darren: 01:04:13

You could run some bullshit thing. Right? But it's like how often are you doing it? We've been running at a multi 6 figures a month for a long time and for a long, long time. And even we joked yesterday or was it today or yesterday, which is we actually had a slow month in terms of new customers because you're so focused on the mastermind.

Darren: 01:04:31

I just like we weren't taking calls for like a week and then afterwards and everyone was exhausted and almost taking calls. But we actually have made the same amount of money apart from where 1% off, we're 1% off how much we made last month because we just have a bigger organization. Retainers are coming in. Second payments are coming in. Upgrades are coming in.

Darren: 01:04:52

All this shit is happening in the background. Beautiful. We've actually signed the lease with the clients this month since maybe like February, February, which is funny, but we're on exact same revenue level because that's what a company is. And a lot of the chop shop online business bros, they're always focused on like the paid in full, get guys over the line and then just kill them afterwards, which ironic because we have a lot of guys and funny enough, who said it to me? It was Jordan Platton said it to me, which was the business model that we have is very unique that we have a lot of people that do upgrades.

Darren: 01:05:25

Other guys move from incubator. Sorry, him or you? Me.

Dean: 01:05:28

You. Okay.

Darren: 01:05:28

He just made an observation saying that what we have is very unique. The ascension that we get is very rare. A lot of guys never get ascension because they don't get results or they don't get people that come to masterminds or they get people that come to events because they just treat them like shit and they're gone. That's end of it. You know, so I've always had that as my highest value that the customer success is the highest value, making sure people are actually successful.

Darren: 01:05:51

And it's ironic because when people are in there figuring it out phase, if you can just be there for them, it's already as much as being as getting the results. Because again, what is success? Right? Success is different for everyone. Success could be just starting your content, it could be just buying a programme, it could be just getting a mentor, it could be getting 10 ks a month, it could be getting a million a month.

Darren: 01:06:10

But don't judge your success based off someone else's success. Even if you're in a programme with someone and they're making 200 ks a month. That isn't the standard. Right? It's what is success for you?

Darren: 01:06:21

What is that goal for you? How do you want to engineer that? And how do you reverse engineer it?

Dean: 01:06:26

Because people look ahead and they see, Okay, well, Darren's making $354,100 ks a month. But like, that doesn't make you feel like you're not that's not solving some hole inside you. And it's I think the point you made there, you said you were chatting to Lara about which is it's the victory is who you become and morph into

Darren: 01:06:48

100%

Dean: 01:06:48

further you go into this. And I've learned that firsthand as well. It's like just the the level of grit I've built, the level of confidence I now walk around with and what I've pulled off. That to me is actually worth far more than the money.

Darren: 01:07:04

I've noticed this in myself with client relationships. So when I was younger, I just like, I even like in the beginning, even my voice, like super hot headed, like if the invoice wasn't paid, I'd like, fuck. I'd like, I'd snap. I'd be all, like I'd snap either like privately or just publicly. I just be like, what the fuck?

Darren: 01:07:21

And I just be, I'd blow off the fuse because I just wasn't mature. Whereas now I actually have clients who like, they have like a down period in their business or like, like the economy or something. And I'm able to look at scenarios a little bit more objectively. I'm like, all right, let's find a solution. Let's fix here.

Darren: 01:07:39

And I'm actually able to keep clients that actually want to churn for factors beyond our control just because of I've just learned how to sit and I've just learned that I don't need it. And when you don't need something and you want something, you can figure it out. Awesome. Beautiful. And I always like, even like many people say to me like, oh, like, many people say a lot of things to me.

Darren: 01:08:00

People say, people say, do I need my podcast anymore? Always. Who asked me all the time? People say, do I need like the agency anymore? People say, do I need these clients anymore?

Darren: 01:08:08

And for me, it's not that I need it. I want it. Like it's I don't need shit, bro. Like I don't like the chicken and rice that I ate when I was broke. It's the same chicken and rice I eat right now.

Darren: 01:08:17

So I don't need anything just for clarity. I want it. So even when I'm like working with a client, and they're like, I'm a bit slow to get results, and there's a bit of few issues here. I don't fucking I don't have to do anything in my life, man. No one's my boss and do whatever I want.

Darren: 01:08:32

But I want to fix it. I'll ring someone and be like, hey, let's see what said. Let's change this and so on, because I'm more interested in the outcome for them and for me and for everything versus like, I need this. That's such a beautiful thing to be able to say, man.

Dean: 01:08:46

Like, I'm doing this because I want to do it.

Darren: 01:08:48

It's part of a 10 x is easier than two x, which is you can want what you want, whatever it is. You want the Rolex. You wanna make a million a month. You can want to not have kids, have enough to get married, do whatever you want. You can want 10 girlfriends, and you can want it because you want it, you don't need to explain to anyone else.

Darren: 01:09:07

Why do you need to explain to them? Why? What's the reason about it? You don't need to do anything. I said to you earlier about traveling, I haven't been to Ireland in like five years.

Darren: 01:09:14

I don't fucking wanna go there. I'm not going there. Fuck that place. I don't wanna go there. So don't.

Darren: 01:09:19

So I don't have to. So Yeah. And and also I'll get messages from people that are like, like, I'm running this event and stuff. And I just mentioned them like, I'm working. And then it gets in 2027.

Darren: 01:09:28

I'm like, I'm working that day. That's literally my response. I've been invited to like weddings and stuff. And I'm like, I'm not going. I'm working.

Darren: 01:09:35

But it's in 2027. Can you bake it in? Like, no, something on. Yeah, Because like, man, you don't have to do something. Can do whatever you want.

Darren: 01:09:43

And whatever business model you want, whatever business you can work with clients. Don't need I don't need anyone. And I viewed and also I don't need to be. I didn't need to get married. Right.

Darren: 01:09:53

I want to get married. I don't I don't need to have four dogs, I want to have four dogs, like I don't fucking need to do anything dude. And it's just it's very interesting right? And even like even the business I have, like I want to have a big business, everyone's like, oh my god, must be so stressful. Like, no, I'm like, you know, what's stressful to me?

Darren: 01:10:11

Fucking waking up every day, having to do all client delivery on my own, having to do all invoices on my own, having to run a one person shit show on my own. That would seem fucking awful to me. I like having support. I like having a support around me. You know, I have people like you don't need to be XYZ.

Darren: 01:10:25

You can just want what you want.

Dean: 01:10:27

Do what you want.

Darren: 01:10:28

Yeah. Do what you want. You should read 10 X Zs or two X.

Dean: 01:10:31

Him insane.

Darren: 01:10:32

And it's a big philosophy book. You know, it's like the philosophy of like how you build a business, how you build your life. Yeah. Great.

Dean: 01:10:39

But like just to be able to do what you want, I think is like to to to the person who's this show is generally directed at in a nine to five, you fundamentally cannot do what you want. Otherwise, you won't get paid, and otherwise, you'll die. You'll have enough food, you

Darren: 01:10:55

know, you'll have enough

Dean: 01:10:55

water, whatever. And that that I think that's I don't know if you'd agree with me or not, but like it's certainly one of, if not the best thing about having a business is like I can literally just do what I want, like any day, any time I can choose to grow it. I can go mental. Can hire people. I can fire up, not firing people like off the cuff, but you know what I mean?

Dean: 01:11:15

Like, can just do anything and that I actually have to pinch myself sometimes and be like, you know, because we create problems, right? No matter where you get to, you're going to have problems. It's not like you will be without problems just because you can do what you want. But doing what you want with problems is definitely not better than not being able to do what you want with problems.

Darren: 01:11:36

100%. I think it's the biggest thing is skill, right? You guys, if you learn skills, you can do what you want. Not a skill, you're fucked. Right?

Darren: 01:11:46

Because you're dependent on someone else. You're a nine to five. People that are in nine to five's predominantly don't have skills. Right? Because you work at a big corporate company.

Darren: 01:11:54

What does what does Melanie, blonde Melanie that's in marketing know? She knows fucking nothing, dude. She's overseeing the overseeing over the overseeing of the adept that someone else ran. Right? She doesn't know anything.

Darren: 01:12:06

So Melanie and Emily and Peter, no fuck all. They don't have skills.

Dean: 01:12:10

What would what would you tell them to do, though?

Darren: 01:12:12

Learn skills. Learn sales, learn marketing, like actually learn like true marketing and copywriting, learn how to build an offer, learn a quick content. Because if you learn how to get attention and you know the skill of always getting attention, but you could do anything you want, right? Because there's often your brand. It can be you can build a business, it can be a business brand, it can be a faces brand.

Darren: 01:12:34

You have the skill of attention, which is content. You have to write hooks, you learn psychology, you know, the front end, okay, you can get you can get there. And that's the front end. That's that's the content side. Okay.

Darren: 01:12:46

Let's say that that's the content side, the attention side. Then you learn sales. Even if you if you're too afraid to get on a sales call, you learn psychology and psychology in DMs. It's the same same equivalent. So you learn you learn the skill of sales, and then you can be thrown into the Gobi Desert with a dial up phone and you'll find your way out 100%.

Darren: 01:13:05

So you learn a skill of sales, and then you learn a skill of delivery. You learn how to deliver a service or offer to someone that's client success. It's communication. It's emotional intelligence. You become insanely dangerous because then no one can tell you what to do because you can be put into any scenario and find your way out of it.

Darren: 01:13:23

100%. Because you can help someone, you can coach someone, you can teach someone, you can sell to someone, you can get attention. Tomorrow, I could start an offer, which is teaching people how to knit. And in theory, I could learn how to write knitting content that would appeal to someone's psychology of the community of knitting so that they could learn how to knit, how they could get attention and how they could be around other people around knitting. And then I could probably get grannies on the phone and I could probably sell to them, or I probably was putting a closer of an old woman T shirt sales and how to get people into that community.

Darren: 01:13:56

Right. And lastly, I could figure out a way to hire someone to teach them how to knit, because in theory, it's all the same shit. I could replace that. Dude, I know someone. This is a crazy story.

Darren: 01:14:08

It's great from Ireland. I think he I won't I won't give him I won't give him his name just in case, like he doesn't want to share it. But I know a guy, great guy, fantastic, amazing workhorse. His family are farmers. Okay, farmers.

Darren: 01:14:24

And he was in the fitness space for ages and he was jacked and huge and not in gear and all this kind of shit. And he was doing fitness coaching and he learned attention. He learned sales and he learned delivery. And it was good fitness coaching, even though we have some good fitness coaches, for the most part, they're not making that much money. 10 to 15 ks a month.

Darren: 01:14:40

He decided to pivot and move into coaching farmers farming. Fuck. So he was a farmer. He puts on his fucking boots. He goes into his shed and he records his VSLs on like the type of horse manure he needs, type of cow like shit equivalent, you need.

Darren: 01:15:00

There's different seasons to do bales and hay. And bro, the dude hit like 100 ks a month. Bro, I'm pretty sure he hit 100 a month in like ninety days. So he has the farmer knows how to manufacture attention with his boots and as well as in the sheep and the cows. He knows how to get attention.

Darren: 01:15:18

He knows how to sell people because he's he knows psychology and he has an offer that helps farmers improve their farming. But what is it? It's a B2B offer. I said it to my wife yesterday and she goes, fuck off. And I was like, I was like, I was like, it makes the legend, but it makes perfect sense.

Darren: 01:15:33

Firms generate a lot of revenue, right? They've high costs and a lot of revenue. A firm will probably make a couple of million a year, but their overheads could be a couple of million a year, too. Right. There's a lot of over it's running.

Darren: 01:15:44

There's a lot of overheads, right? Especially large firms. So think about it. Farmer has problem of cost inefficiencies and also making more money and getting the right deals and suppliers to get rid of their cows. Okay?

Darren: 01:15:56

I someone teaches farmer how to lower costs and increase revenue.

Dean: 01:16:00

How much

Darren: 01:16:01

how much is that worth to? How much should be worth to? You make 2,000,000 in revenue. How much would that be worth to? My question.

Dean: 01:16:10

2,000,000.

Darren: 01:16:10

So you're making 2,000,000 as a farmer. Okay? Mhmm. I'm gonna help you make more money. I'd say increase by 10%.

Darren: 01:16:17

And I'm gonna help you decrease your costs, which are, let's say, 1,200,000.0. Yeah. Let's say I'm happy to decrease your cost by 20%. How much does that work to you? My question.

Dean: 01:16:26

Foot clouds.

Darren: 01:16:27

How much did you spend?

Dean: 01:16:29

Slightly less than fuckloads. You're probably spending To get the fuckloads.

Darren: 01:16:32

Maybe like 10 k?

Dean: 01:16:32

Yeah. Maybe 10 k. Yeah.

Darren: 01:16:34

Maybe if I we did it in person or we did a workshop, maybe would you spend 20 k? Yeah. So then we see that the logic of offers, which is pain, upside, reward, downside if I don't do it. So, Johnny Farmer, if you don't do this and you start bleeding an extra 1.2, 1.4, 1,600,000.0 a year, you're going to be losing profitability. Yes.

Darren: 01:16:59

Pain. The upside heaven and hell analogy is this. Okay, fantastic. We can get you to 2,500,000.0, 3,000,000 in your farm. We can get you to buy more cattle and so on.

Darren: 01:17:10

You just give me 20 ks. I'll give you back this dude. Any rational person would jump at that.

Dean: 01:17:16

Second last question right on this. I'm going say on this for a sec because this is brilliant because like ultimately, fundamentally, if you work with a business, if your offers B2B rather than B2C, like businesses make decisions off three things, you're either like saving the money, you're making the money, or you're reducing their costs, sorry, reducing their costs, increasing their revenue or reducing their risk. One of those three things.

Darren: 01:17:34

However,

Dean: 01:17:36

let's say it's not B2B and I'm trying to run a B2C offer, which can then bring into the space of wealth or say not wealth relationships and

Darren: 01:17:43

health relationships. Yeah.

Dean: 01:17:44

How do you start to quantify? Because it's difficult, it's more it's less tangible in that sense. How do you quantify that pain relative to a revenue figure if you're not saving or making the money?

Darren: 01:17:53

Everything is qualitative, man. Everything is quantitative and qualitative. So give me an example. Give me an offer

Dean: 01:17:59

and I'll offer something to Let's use Dan's offer, Daniel's offer. Like he's a relationship coach, isn't he?

Darren: 01:18:04

A 100%. Okay. Perfect. So the offer, this would be a good clip. So this is the offer.

Darren: 01:18:11

You help someone improve their relationships, get more dates. Okay. Find their loved one, and eventually have kids with someone. That's your that's your offer. And I sit down with you.

Darren: 01:18:20

I'm like, hey, Dean. Okay. You've been trying to get dates. How long has it going on for? Two years.

Darren: 01:18:26

I've been single for the last two years. How much dates have been going on? I've been going on dates twice a week for the past two years. Okay. So you've been on over 200 dates.

Darren: 01:18:34

Okay. And none of them are successful. No. They're all terrible. What are you using?

Darren: 01:18:37

I'm using Bumble, Tinder, all this stuff. I also pay for them. Okay. Premium. Perfect.

Darren: 01:18:42

On top of that, how much time do you allocate towards this? I spend at least twenty hours a week on dating apps and in DMs, and I also spend an extra $100 a week on dates. Okay. Fantastic. So I have extreme pain now.

Darren: 01:18:55

How does that make you feel then? Oh, on top of this, I've also struggled my confidence. My confidence gone back a ton. I've also got overweight as a result because I'm I'm less in tune with my body. How much you overweight?

Darren: 01:19:07

I'm overweight about 20 about 10. What weight are you naturally? Eighty kilos. What weight do you know naturally? Ninety kilos.

Darren: 01:19:13

Okay. There's a delta of 10 here. How is that impacting your life, dude? Actually, I closed on my business because of the fact that I was super insecure and also put all this time into relationships. And as a result, I'm not making that much money.

Darren: 01:19:24

Okay. So as a result of your relationships being screwed and you have this issue where your relations as aggregating that we've seen over the past two years, this has been a problem for two years plus. It's also impacted your health, your ten kilos overweight, and also your business slows down. How much is your business making? It used to make 100 k a year.

Darren: 01:19:40

Okay. Perfect. And I don't hunt the business out of whack. You're making very little money. Your health is screwed, and your relationship is screwed.

Darren: 01:19:48

Well, we need to fix this problem back here. You have a confidence issue, Dean. We need to focus first on the confidence, getting that up, getting over your limiting beliefs. We need to get you back in the motion of improving how you do this. I have a four step relationship fucking system which involves firstly working your limiting beliefs, then actually getting you in check.

Darren: 01:20:07

So let's get you back in back in shape. Let's get you feeling good. Let's get you feeling good about yourself. Let's start doing a little bit of kind of personal development. And then, yes, let's start approaching girls.

Darren: 01:20:16

You're not going to find your loved one in a club. Let's go find her like, I don't know, in a fucking rose garden or something. Let's go put together a plan for that. And then finally, when you have that together, I actually know a friend who runs a program called incubator, and he will help you scale your business as well at the same time.

Dean: 01:20:32

Sales masterclass, my friend, that was amazing.

Darren: 01:20:35

It was always held. It will always hit health, wealth and relationships. So this person has a relationship issue. And if I only sell the symptom, which is the relationship, it's not worth anything. It's not valuable.

Darren: 01:20:47

So we need to find what the root cause is and the root cause then will always hit health, wealth and relationships because it's the business owners and as a salesperson's job to be able to sell, into all three categories. And then when he has deep pain in all three categories due to the actual data approach, he can quantify the gap between his current state and the future state. The future state laid out laid out there is that you have your wife, your kids, you're married, a business that is supplying and supplementing them. And also you're going to be in tune and you can see your penis when you go to take a pee. So because all that is together, we have that gap.

Darren: 01:21:22

Okay. And then there's a quantifiable gap. And the question I ask is, how much is that worth you? That's worth a lot. Because right now I'm bleeding money and fat.

Darren: 01:21:30

I'm losing it. I'm going end up miserable. And because we know how long it's been an issue for, we can quantify even more. How much does that work to you? Because some people because that's actually worth so much.

Darren: 01:21:40

This is important. There's a big difference between being willing and able to work with you. So everyone is willing to work with you. And when they see the gap, they're like, oh, I wanna do that. I wanna do it a 100%.

Darren: 01:21:48

Let's go. But they're not able financially. So the program is 10 k, bro. That's the investment. But the cost is the past two years that you just wasted.

Darren: 01:21:58

And also, bro, you have, like, forty years left in your life before you hit by a bus. You're also gonna get hit on that cost every single month, bro, for the next forty years. How much does that work to you? That's worth a lot to me. Alright.

Darren: 01:22:10

If you don't get 10 ks today, we'll split it up, bro. That's it.

Dean: 01:22:14

That is a good clip.

Darren: 01:22:16

I see. Hopefully that fits under a clip level. But, yes, that's it.

Dean: 01:22:20

Final question. That was a fucking sick answer. Is we were talking a second ago about skills and you were saying Angelica or Alexandra, whoever blonde girl in the marketing department.

Darren: 01:22:32

Emily that manages the managing of the managing of the managing of the managing of the ad account.

Dean: 01:22:37

Let's say Emily, right? Launching. She doesn't have skills yet.

Darren: 01:22:41

She did a master's degree.

Dean: 01:22:42

I'm gonna give you two paths for Emily to take. Okay? Yeah. Path A, she has, she she she does what you said. She learns the skills.

Dean: 01:22:53

Right? But she stays in her same environment. Path B, she doesn't quite get the skills. She doesn't pay for the program, but she goes to Dubai or she goes to Bali and surrounds herself with other entrepreneurs and changes her environment completely.

Darren: 01:23:07

I feel like she goes to Dubai, showing up in a different different career.

Dean: 01:23:10

What's more important? I guess the the root of the question is skills or environment?

Darren: 01:23:15

Oh, such a good question. That's such a good question.

Dean: 01:23:19

I just thought of it.

Darren: 01:23:20

Thought that was such a good question.

Dean: 01:23:22

Because I don't know either. I'm I'm thinking both. Both are, like, profound.

Darren: 01:23:29

It's environment, but you need to know what you're looking for. Right? So, like, again, you can't just go to Dubai. It was when you're gonna be, like, just, like, fucking thrown to the side. But I think, like, you can get into, like, online communities.

Darren: 01:23:39

Right? And this isn't, a buy my program thing. This is, just clean up your feed. Like, you look at my Instagram. I follow, like, 60 people.

Darren: 01:23:45

They're all people that I want to be or that I've interviewed. They're all just, like, where I want to be. I don't even know you're Instagram, same LinkedIn. I did the same on LinkedIn. I cleaned up my feed, cleaned it out, watched my clean up my YouTube videos, cleaned out what I was consuming.

Darren: 01:23:57

That's environment. Then by virtue of that, I start get it. I start to see like, okay, what is I want to learn? I learned this from this person. I'll start a podcast interview that person, you know, and then that cleans up my environment.

Darren: 01:24:08

So for me, it was environment because I have my podcast, right? My podcast was the the the data that was coming into my brain. And that data was indicative of the actions that I took. It was a barometer. And then as a result of that, then I'm like, oh my fucking god, I need to learn how to market my podcast or to market my content.

Darren: 01:24:25

And I learn that skill then as a result.

Dean: 01:24:27

I think, yeah, I think I'm just thinking about my answer as well. I think environment, man. I think environments as I think environments long term, you're virtually guaranteeing success.

Darren: 01:24:36

Well, I

Dean: 01:24:36

think skills your environment might actually take you down. You might have the skills, right? But you see people who do courses, they see people who join programs.

Darren: 01:24:44

So true.

Dean: 01:24:45

And they fucking fall off. Right. They had the skills. Everything was right there. But all their mates are still going to the booze on the weekends and everyone around them.

Dean: 01:24:52

Stop.

Darren: 01:24:52

The biggest thing they don't have, well, they should have, but they don't get is accountability. Right. His environment.

Dean: 01:24:58

Sure.

Darren: 01:24:58

Do you get me? So it's just like that person to be like, hey, do something or hey, are you Okay? Hey, can we fix this? You get me? So it's accountability, which is environment, too, you know?

Darren: 01:25:07

And they brought work side to side.

Dean: 01:25:10

This is fun.

Darren: 01:25:11

It was great, man. It was over. Good shit. Yeah, man. That was awesome.

Dean: 01:25:15

Nice, man.

Darren: 01:25:15

Hey, thank you, bro.

Dean: 01:25:16

Yeah, thank you, man.