Recession Proof Business Skills ( business tips ) | My First Million Full Podcast 03-12-2020

Sam Parr

Alright, it's 10:30 AM in San Francisco. I'm by myself in the studio because Sean wants to be with his newborn baby. He's a little nervous about this whole corona thing; he doesn't want to be out walking around. I don't blame him. I don't feel like talking about business opportunities right now. I stayed up late last night monitoring this whole corona thing and the stock market. It's scary... it's a scary time. I don't know what the reality is going to be or how it's going to shake out, but it definitely is not a normal day. I don't want to talk about normal stuff today because of that. So, I stayed up last night and came up with a list of four skill sets that I've developed in the last 10 or 15 years, maybe longer—20 years since I started scheming and trying to create businesses. I want to talk about those today because, in a way, they're kind of like my rock, my recession-proof skill sets. These things that I'm about to tell you have really changed my life, and I think that if people use them, they're going to be impossible to stop. I believe you'll be able to make a living no matter what. I'm going to spend some time talking about these four things that I've learned throughout the years, and I'm going to riff a little bit on them. I'll also tell you the resources that I think you can turn to. Most of them are free or they're cheap books that you can go and acquire and read. I think it makes a huge difference. Everything that I'm about to talk about, I've stolen from people that are a lot smarter and more successful than I am, that's for sure. My perspective is a little bit interesting in that we have this event called Hustle Con, and I've hosted about five or six of them.

Sam Parr

And throughout the years we've probably have had I mean we could have had 40,000 attendees throughout our events and so we do hustlecon and we do all these other events and because I do these events I get to have all these really powerful and interesting people come and speak but about an I tell everyone to show up a little bit early so I get to spend about an hour with them ahead of time typically privately or with just 2 of the other speakers like maybe the one who just spoke and the one who will speak and I'm able to ask them pretty intimate questions because that's what I do I I I like to get the nitty gritty and so my insight is coming from these people and I'm talking about like folks that have started these really huge companies or who have accomplished really interesting or amazing things and not just about money but they're definitely successful if that's how you wanna define success but more importantly they're successful in terms of just turning dreams into reality and that's really what I think that this whole business thing is about which is about dreams into reality how do you take ideas and how do you shape the world according to those ideas and it sounds fluffy but I'm telling you this shit is really important and so that's what I'm gonna talk about today some of these are skills some of these are mindsets mindset frameworks or whatever you wanna call it and so I'm gonna talk about these 4 and I'm gonna I'm gonna go through them relatively quickly but I'm gonna add details and stories where I think it's effective so let's get into it I've got my notes here I'm gonna be I just jotted these down in the last few hours so we're gonna go through them okay the first thing that I've learned that's been incredibly effective and these aren't in order but this might be the most effective which is controlling your emotions and this sounds like some generic advice but I'm gonna walk you through it I we have a lot of companies work out of our office because we got a lot of space here and when I started my business someone let me work out of their office for free and so we try to kinda do repay that that that favor to other people just getting going and I always meet these really smart people people who worked at mckinsey or went to stanford and did all this amazing stuff and on paper they are perfect and they are so smart and I always tell them the same thing which is this is not an intellectual game this is an emotional game starting a business that is very successful financially intellectually it's very easy now maybe being like elon musk and starting a a a company where you send a rocket to mars yeah that requires a lot of intelligence but for a lot of companies like it could be like wework or instacart these things that are or uber these things that are really large they're very simple concepts and they're not that hard to execute but what's really hard is controlling your emotions that's that that that's incredibly challenging and what I've what I've learned throughout the years through paying a lot of money for therapy and coaching and reading is that the majority of of both good and bad behavior that you have now it started back in childhood and so what I tell people and what I've learned and what I tell myself is if you just study your childhood you're gonna learn a lot about why you are reacting to certain things and I remember being a kid I I was I was only 4 or 5 years old and this is just an example of what of how things that happen when you're when you're a kid a lot of times you don't even realize it but it actually sticks sticks with you I remember when I was a kid and I was at a we were at like a bar or restaurant or something with my family and my father was drinking it must have been like a jack and coke or something and I remember he ordered this glass and I saw him get the straw and take it out and I was like why are you doing that dad I was a little kid and he goes and he just made some comment no big deal he's like oh men don't drink with straws and he didn't even think twice he was just joking or I don't know he just said that because he meant like he was saying like men don't use like dainty straws when they're drinking alcoholic drinks and my whole life I never used a straw it wasn't till I was older when I realized oh he was first of all he was just he just made some offhanded comment he didn't even think about it and second of all he was referring to alcohol and so for my whole life when I went to mcdonald's or a fast food restaurant as a kid I would never I would always pull the straw out of the drink and that's an example of how little things happen when you're young and sometimes you notice them and sometimes you don't but they entirely shape how you behave as an adult and I think it's very important to study your childhood and to study how you are raised trauma that happened when you're young because as you grow a company all of those all of those things that that happened to you they become magnified so good things and bad things both 10 x as you get more people and as you get a little bit more successful and the way you react to things the way you or the way you gauge risk the way that you react to people doing what you said or them not doing what you said the way you trust people a lot of that stems from how you were raised and things that happened to you as a kid and so what I do is I I have a therapist so I've gone to therapy every week for maybe 10 years and I've had to work through a lot of interesting things but I think it's quite common that people have those same issues that I have but going to therapy is incredibly important or at least it has been for me and the other thing that I did is I have a ceo coach that has helped a ton it's pretty much like therapy but it's all related to your job but like when you really talk about all types of relationships girlfriends wives boyfriends husbands father mother I mean you talk about all these stuff coworkers and so that has been incredibly helpful for me and so the things that have made a massive impact the resources that that have made a massive impact are I use torch so torch dot io that's my that's my coach we pay him his name's peter we pay him a monthly fee and myself and adam the president of our company go to him and it's been wonderful the second thing is the body keeps the score it's a great book on dealing with trauma now trauma a lot of times people think that means soldiers who are in war and who saw people die and they're best friends and they're dealing with ptsd post traumatic stress disorder but the reality is is a lot of people can go have that so whether you your parents or your siblings or someone in your life was abusive to you as a kid or it could be you just got really scared you saw something that was pretty wild it could be when I lived in missouri when I grew up I remember being in 4th grade and seeing 911 and it could be it's it's could be relatively small but that made a massive difference on me and that was a small indicator or a small example of trauma and that shapes how you feel and so what the body keeps the score does is it teaches you how to recognize when you've experienced a little bit of trauma or a lot of bit of trauma and how to deal with it and so that's a great book and the second thing I like right now is how to change your mind I don't drink any alcohol I haven't had a drop of alcohol in 8 years not a cent not a drop I don't do drugs I I like I'm not against drugs I'm not against weed in fact in many regards I'm in favor of it but I personally just don't do it because it's never jived well with my personality that said I'm incredibly fascinated right now with psychedelics I have a lot of friends who do microdosing lsd who do microdosing ketamine and I'm not an expert on it yet but how to change your mind is a great book that looks at trauma and how to deal with it and how a lot of folks are turning to psychedelics and how that can impact you and and I'm I'm very very interested in that and the third thing that I really like when it comes to controlling your emotions is this youtube show called or youtube channel called school of life it's this philosopher named alan I think it's alan de botton I think his name is and he does a really good job of explaining why people feel a certain way and how to deal with that and I have found his youtube channel it's free to be incredibly impactful on controlling my emotions and the last thing that I do this is an exercise I thought I this was unique to me it's not so I used to do this years ago and I still do it to this day and it turns out there's a name to it it's it it it it some people call it negative a negative thought exercise I call it looking at the downside and so what I like to do in order to control my emotions because the thing with controlling your emotions is you have to control the up and the down because when you start a company or when you start anything typically you have a fair bit of highs and the highs are probably as good feeling as you as you think or maybe even a little bit less than you think but the downs are typically way worse than you can imagine it's really hard to control the downs because when you start anything controlling the down is the hard part and most people are shocked at how low you can feel when you're starting something even when things appear to be going well and so what I like to do is I like to think in my mind I'll close my eyes I do this a lot a a lot of times in the morning I'll do it at night as well is I close my eyes and I think what's the worst possible outcome right now and so it could be I get sick my family gets sick I'm gonna die and I visualize what what that feels like and if you do it for long enough with your eyes closed after about 5 or 10 minutes you can really feel what that feels like and then I do 2 things I I say to myself alright that is the worst that can happen I just experienced it anything else that happens today it is only upside and it really makes you have a lot of gratitude and appreciate that that hasn't actually happened and the second thing that I like to do with this exercise is and this relates particularly to starting a company or getting a job or moving somewhere else that's new and just starting your life is I try to protect the downside so for example if you are gonna start a company you can ask yourself well in order to start this business I need a little bit of cash and so you have to be very specific you have to say how much cash do I need well right now I'm spending $3,000 a month how much how many months saved do I need in order to to feel good about this and so let's say we come up with the number 6 that means I need 6 times $3,000 I need $18,000 in savings I'm gonna go out and get that $18,000 okay I've got that $18,000 what else is the worst case scenario here what's the downside here well I spend all my money and my business goes under now do I wanna be homeless no I'm not willing to accept being homeless okay so what's the so I have to protect myself from being homeless how would I protect myself from being homeless well I would probably get a job driving uber because I have a car do I wanna am I willing to accept that no I'm not willing to accept that or maybe you are and then that's the worst case scenario but this one stage up could be maybe well I'll just get a white collar job at a huge corporation and I'll just be a cog in in their big wheel and their machine and it won't be fulfilling it won't be glamorous but it'll be a really good 9 to 5 with benefits benefits so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go and make friends with recruiters at those companies right now even though this isn't even coming close to hap it's not happening yet and so at least at this.

Sam Parr

If something ever bad happens I know that I have a connection at ibm or I have a connection at target headquarters or I have a connection at intuit or just the the biggest companies in the world and the likelihood that I can get a job there is relatively high am I willing to accept that that is the worst case scenario yes I am willing to accept that and so what I do is I go up the scale of like alright where's the lowest that I'm willing to accept now I'm gonna lock that that that in as best as I can so now anything that happens above this I'm happy and it is only upside and so that's what I like to do to control my emotions when it comes to taking risk the second skill that I think is incredibly important and this is maybe the number 1 or number 2 skill I in terms of business I think it's the number 1 skill and so this skill is copywriting I think copywriting is the most important skill that you can have for business and one of the most important skills that you can have in life and here's why when you learn how to write well you learn how to think well you when you learn how to write clearly you learn how to think clearly and copywriting is a particular type of writing but it's not just limited to writing copywriting is understanding how people think and how they feel and how to use the written word or a script or spoken word in order to sell a product or sell an idea basically how to use words to get people to do what you want them to do and the way that you do that is you have to understand what motivates them what makes them what what makes them work and so this can be applied to literally anything I have made tens of 1,000,000 of dollars this way using copywriting but I've also met my wife this way I I learned when I was when I was trying to meet her she was that way out of my league and so I used what I learned in copywriting to like get her attention and make her or at least try to make her interested in me copywriting copywriting's incredibly effective I've used it to get customers like as in people to buy stuff from us or for the hustle to get advertisers I've used it to get speakers to our events I've used it to recruit people I've used it to sell people on this interesting idea I have copywriting is incredibly important and it boils down to a bunch of really simple principles but the easiest one to remember for this conversation is aida a I d a attention interest desire action for the majority of your copywriting life which for most of you it has nothing to do with getting a job it's just a good skill set to have in life attention interest desire action is the framework that you need so when you write you line it up with attention can I get your attention interest can I tell you some facts that get you interested and get you to fall down the slippery slope because once I get you to start reading my work I can get you to keep buying into what I'm saying and it's really hard to get people to fall down that slope but interest by specifically tell them very interesting facts and features about the story that you just started with your your your action?

Sam Parr

Or, sorry, your attention. **Desire** is the second part. So, I'm going to make you desire whatever I'm selling. I'm going to get you to desire that by telling you things that you don't know and how this can benefit your life. Finally, **action**. I'm going to tell you specifically how to get you to act. Here's an example that my friend Neville always uses, which I love. If I'm going to try and convince a 15-year-old guy to drink more water, I could say, "Drink more water; it's healthy for you." A lot of these facts aren't necessarily true because I didn't research what water does for you, but I could easily use this premise. I might say, "Have you ever seen those guys with huge muscles at the gym carrying around gallons of water in their hands? It's like they use those milk containers to carry water." That's how I get your attention. You see, they're doing that because if you drink a gallon of water a day, the likelihood that your muscles will grow by 30% more than if you hadn't drunk water is significant. Now, the reason that happens—this is the **desire** part—is because water has these molecules that help oxygen travel through your blood, and oxygen is needed to build up your muscles. My desired part is showing you how to build up your muscles. When that oxygen goes to your muscles, they grow 30% faster. Now, this is the **action** part. If you want to build big muscles and be healthier than before, you need to drink about a gallon of water a day for every 100 pounds of body weight. So, that action part is where I specifically explain how to do that. Now, that was just a silly example. I don't... none of that is true, but you get the idea.

Sam Parr

This ada it works wonderfully and I always think that I always tell people you gotta learn copywriting and and and there's a few great ways to learn it you can do what I did which was very labor intensive and very effective but it takes a lot of time and that's called copy work and so what I did was I got a hold of the 100 best sales letters of all time I don't know what makes it the 100 best but it's just famous sales letters so in the fifties sixties seventies eighties nineties before the internet really came around and it even happened after that but predominantly before that these salesmen would send these letters to people's homes and they would try to convince people to get interested in buying a vacuum or an encyclopedia or a pair of sunglasses and the it was typically the they typically wrote to wives the the housewife would take out her checkbook and be like oh this is really interesting I need to buy this and she would write a check put it into the envelope and sell it back that's a lot of friction and so these people were so good at using words because it was so expensive to send out all these letters they had to be good they were so good at using their words that they had to that they convinced these strangers to write a check and mail to them and so I found these 100 letters and if you Google best sales letters of all time you're gonna find them and I would I spent probably 6 months where I would spend about 2 or 3 hours a day and when I was 22 years old I would write them all out by hand I would also do that with books so the great gatsby saturday night live live scripts I would do it with movie scripts just any piece of great writing I would do that with and when you do this it's kind of like how you learn an instrument the way that we teach people how to play music it's incredibly effective so if I hand you a guitar or a piano I don't say go ahead write a song I tell you copy the star spangled banner go play jingle bells go look at jimmy hendrix go look at led zeppelin play all these all these copy all these other people steal their work for a little while and or whatever genre you're interested go and copy them exactly and in time you're gonna learn how to feel the texture you're gonna see the patterns that work best that works extremely well with writing and it's the same concept I call it copy work this is how a lot of people used to learn our school our schooling the way that we do it now it's changed over the last handful of decades but for a long time people used to do this ben franklin was a great writer and he said this is how he learned how to write and it's really effective so it's called copy work the second thing that you can do and I'm biased neville is my good friend but there's a guy named neville madora and I actually met him because I bought his course and I bought his course and then after I took his course I became friends with him and years later we became best friends and he's was the best man at my wedding so I love neville and so I'm biased but his course is what I took to learn about copywriting he has he's got this course called copywriting course it's spelled with a k copy with a k and course with a k I don't know it always stands out it's a great course I don't know how much it costs right now it could cost a few $100 or a 100 I don't even know but it's relatively affordable and I think if you don't like it he'll refund you his money your money but anyway it's a great course so it teaches a lot of this this stuff it's worth it it's totally worth it and actually I think I used to promote this so much that if you go to copywriting course.com/sam I've got like a referral link and I think there's like a $50 off code or something you could use so if that interests you do that the third thing is this book called advertising secrets of the written word by joe sugarman it's a great book it costs $10 and I bet you if you Google Google it correctly you can find a free pdf of it online it's a great book that walks you through copywriting principles and why certain things work and why they don't and finally the last thing it's not a copywriting thing but it's a writing thing and it's a book by stephen king called on writing and the first half of the book is it's it reads really fast it's only 250 pages maybe the first half it's all about his tools and tricks and his toolbox he calls it his toolkit or his toolbox for writing well and it's incredibly effective it's a he has got rules like don't use too many adverbs or keep your sentences short things like that it's incredibly effective it's a great book on writing the second half of the book is about his biography and it's really really fascinating so it's called on writing by stephen king so the second skill set that I wanted to go through copywriting I think that because I know how I would say I'm a pretty good copywriter I'm a b because I am a b copywriter until the day I die I will never be homeless I will always make money now verdict's still out if I'm gonna be very very wealthy but I will bet everything which I I am betting everything by starting businesses and things like that that no matter what happens I will always be able to make a really good salary whether as an employee or selling someone else's products so I think that copywriting is incredibly effective it's it's just it's really useful for your life business and just living okay we're gonna go to the 3rd one and the 4th one and then that's it the third one the or the third skill set or thing that I've learned in business that pretty much shocked me I I really only learned this in the last year but looking back at it people have told me this forever which is there's a massive difference a massive gap in skills and a lot of people cross it but there's the the gap exists of starting and managing so when you start businesses a lot of people think of mark zuckerberg and they're like this college kid started this thing he was 20 when he started it now he's only 30 or he could be 25 still and he manages 10,000 employees he hired the the best people in the world from princeton and stanford and harvard and he's sold people from amazon the brightest minds on earth and you think yeah that's just how it goes well managing those people and the business it's incredibly challenging and oftentimes the people who are creative and crazy enough to start companies a lot of times the skill sets they needed to start it are not only different but oftentimes opposite of what it takes to run when you start something you could look at a lot of spreadsheets and you could kinda like guess your way there but a lot of times not all the time but a lot of times starting something it's completely irrational on paper things may or may not work and you just gotta be creative and you gotta do shit and you gotta move fast and you're not gonna have meetings you're not gonna talk to people about stuff you're just gonna move quickly and you're gonna execute and you're gonna do it and it's a very creative process it's almost like creating a piece of art like maybe there's some equation that says like the perfect rectangle looks this way but every but a lot of times there's just picasso who just says fuck it this is interesting to me I'm doing this and sometimes it works that's kinda what what starting a business is but managing a business is a lot different and so at our company I did a pretty good job of getting us to about a1000000 a month in sales but towards the ends of that I was breaking I was doing horrible I was not good at managing it and I was very unhappy and so we hired one of my first hires was this guy named adam who I went to high school with and he's now president of our company and he runs a lot of the day to day stuff so I kinda I kinda I'm like he's like sandwiched in the middle whereas I'm really good at thinking of these really high level ideas and I'm also really good at going in at the very bottom and just being an individual contributor and and creating interesting things I'm not always great at managing the day to day of of what's going on it's I bet I could get good at it but it just really doesn't interest me and that was really hard to learn and I struggled with this for years I like I said I hired a ceo coach I had we have a handful of really great angel investors and I kinda talked to them and I'm like I don't know what to do here and it wasn't until I realized that adam is one of the best at this he loves this he's the type of guy who was the captain of the football team the president of student council he loves leading people and it kinda hit me I'm like man the way that I sometimes don't understand why people are unwilling to start something or how on earth they're afraid of starting I am kinda like that on the other end with managing there's people who it it it whether it comes naturally to them or they've just worked on the skill set they're really good at it and so in a way I was wearing this backpack that was full of weight and I hated carrying it on my shoulders I just took out some of the weight and I put it in adam's bag and he loves carrying it and so through this process I mentioned earlier we have hustle con speakers through this process I actually talked to a lot of people at our conferences and that was one of the major things that I used to ask people which is do you have a right hand man or a right hand woman do you have someone leading the day to day because I'm struggling with that how do you do that and there was typically two answers which was yeah I don't like it it's really hard and I could sense that these people I'm talking I mean I don't wanna I don't wanna call anyone out but go and just Google like hustle con speakers or something look at all the people who we've had at our events and those these are this is the type of person or those are the people who told me this which was they would say like I am horrible at managing this or oftentimes they would have like one of their assistants or like a keeper or like a handler like with them and I would be like hey what's this person like as a manager and the answers were pretty consistently pretty bad this person is not good and so the the first answer was I'm not good at it I'm really struggling with it and a lot of times those people would say I wish I had someone who I could replace myself as ceo I I would hear that all the time you'd I I was shocked by it and the second answer that I got was yeah I hired a really good coo or a really good president and this is my right hand woman or right hand man and they run a lot of the day to day and it allows me to focus on what I do best and the people who said number 2 are way happier and oftentimes I think a lot more successful now there are these rare occasions where the person who started it is just they're they're they're also a great ceo or a great people manager that that definitely happens but often it is not the case I'm looking at a photo of ted turner ted turner is one of my heroes he was pretty notoriously a bad manager he was a great leader people wanted to follow him into battle but what he would do is he would come up with these great ideas so ted turner came up with the idea of cnn and he launched it but before that he had other businesses and when he came up to cnn a lot of people think ted turner you're the guy who started cnn well yeah he is but he also there's another guy named reese and reese was the guy leading the day to day ted would come came up with the idea and then he went away for 3 months and did a sailing competition so having these right hand people are is very important and a and a lot of times I feel like I'm the right hand person at this.

Sam Parr

But I think that it's really important to understand the difference between starting and managing I mean for a long time for a long time it was normal that they would call them gray hairs it was normal to get a gray haired leader to come in for a start up so these young people would come up with this idea for this great tech company and then the the investor would say alright let's go hire a ceo and that is not popular right now but I think it should be I think it's actually quite effective maybe not ceo but you definitely need this team of experienced people and and so the reason why I brought this up is it's it's a it's something that most people I found struggle with but there's not a lot of resources out there not a lot of people talking about it and so I think it's really important to learn this ultimately this skill set comes down to delegating and there's 4 resources that I'll have that I've liked the first one I don't like the name of the book but it's very helpful it's by a guy named felix dennis felix dennis he was this he's dead now he died a few years ago maybe 10 years ago he was he's kinda like richard branson but more vulgar he was a british entrepreneur he started dennis publishing which launched maxim magazine which launched a a ton of great titles it's still like a $200,000,000 a year business he also launched micro warehouse which basically before amazon was around it was like amazon for software and it was a huge multi $1,000,000,000 publicly traded company so very successful entrepreneur close to a billionaire and so this is why I don't mind his book being titled so horribly it's called how to get rich and the reason why I don't mind it is because he was really successful he wasn't this like get rich quick guy and in that book he does a great job of of talking about delegating in that book I use it as a reference book I read all the time about how to work with people that that's my my go to the second one is I like the one minute manager just Google it you'll find it it's a great book on on managing the third thing is is the 5 dysfunctions of a team and so it's a great book that looks at what successful teams and people look like and what they don't look like more importantly and so you in order to oftentimes the best way to be good at something is you find out the bad ways of doing it and you just don't do that and the 4th thing is one of my investors is this guy named tucker max tucker max if you're a man and you're between the ages of probably 2840 you probably know who tucker max is he was famous because he had this blog called I hope they serve beer in hell and it was very controversial it was basically about his frat days and he was just this wild partier and drinker so he has a really controversial opinion but after he's he's in his forties now so he's no longer a kid but he's really thoughtful at this.

Sam Parr

He's kinda turned his image around and he has a great blog where he a talked about firing himself and replacing himself as ceo and he it's maybe like a 12 part blog it's really good I would highly recommend everyone reading him and he's one of my investors and he's kind of a mentor to me you know he him and I are kind of similar in that we try to be macho and or at least we started that way of wanting to be macho and show no weakness but he's actually done a really good job of being introspective and talking about his feelings a lot and he's done really good about talking about managing people tucker also has this great book on how to create a or this great document on how to manage a company or like create a culture and you could Google tucker max culture document and you'll see it it's free okay the 4th and final skill set that I want people to take away from this rambling is how to influence people influence well you I'll I'll call it persuasion or influence it's very similar to similar to copywriting but this one's a little bit more psychological but it's similar and what most people don't realize is how to get people to do what you want them to do or how to influence them to think how you think and that sounds evil but that's not how I mean it I mean you could use it for evil ways I mean the stuff that you convince people to give to a non profit or you convince people of certain morals or why something's bad and something's good it's the same stuff that you can use to get people to do a lot of really bad things and so this is definitely a scary skill set to learn but if you but the thing is is that people are like animals I mean in the same way that if you show a dog food you know what's that pavlovian experiment where you you show a dog food and you ring a bell so the dog starts associating the bell with the food and so whenever you ring the bell he starts slobbering people are the same way you can there's all these little tricks that you can do to get people to say yes to certain things or get them to buy into certain things more so for example if I'm a politician and I wanna put a huge billboard in your front yard the likelihood that I of me just knocking on your door and asking to put this big billboard in your yard in your yard the likelihood of you saying yes is pretty low but if I go in there and I say hey can I put this small little sticker on your window and you and and the likelihood of you saying yes to that is quite high now if I go back a week later and ask you to put this big billboard in your front yard the likelihood then that you're gonna say yes is a lot higher than had I not asked you to put that small sticker because you're already bought in and there's about 8 or 9 principles just like this of of getting you to buy into things so another one's the rule of reciprocity and so what that means is let's say that I I go out or let's say that you go out of town and I'm your neighbor and you ask me to check your mail for you when I'm gone and I say yeah sure no problem I'll check your mail you I've just done a favor for you now you owe me a favor and this is how humans work we all we work on favors and so now let's say next week I go hey look I watched I I I checked your mail last week can I borrow your car for a day the likelihood that you're gonna say yes is actually a lot higher because I've already done you a favor and so the interesting thing about the rule of reciprocity is that people pay it back disproportionately meaning I can do a really small favor for someone and then I can ask them to do a much bigger favor and shockingly a lot of times they'll say yes and so there's about 8 or 9 of these principles that are incredibly effective for influencing people another example I've used this before I wanted to go I went and bought a motorcycle for a guy for $3 or he was asking $3 for it and I thought it was I thought yeah I'd be willing to pay about $2,200 for this and so I went and bought a can of coke I bought 2 of them and when I showed up to the place I opened up 1 I started drinking I go hey man you thirsty you you want a coke I I I was just down the street and I bought 1 and I thought maybe you don't want 1 too he opened it up and he starts drinking it and I go cool motorcycle I'll give you 22 he goes everyone's been offering me that I'm not gonna do it but you seem like a nice guy I'll do it fine and so I don't know if the coke was the reason but that's just an example of there's all these little tiny things that if you do them effectively they kinda add up to be pretty effective and so to learn these things there's this great book by robert cialdini called influence if you just Google influence book you'll see it it seems robert cialdini read that it's it's that book changed my life and the second one which is pretty famous a lot of people know it it's called how to win friends and influence people that book I I think that book is one of the best selling books of all time the best selling non fiction books of all time it was written in the 19 thirties 19 twenties it's still 100% effective so go and read those 2 books and I and I think that if you learn how to influence people it's really really really effective and it will shock you now like I was a nerd in high school and I liked women and so I was always just like any other kid I wanted to go meet girls I I remember reading this book as a kid I was like I want them to like me how do I do that and so I read this book and I would apply this stuff to to meeting girls and I and I it worked I I'm married to an amazing woman and she was way out of my league when I first met her and she still is out of my league and I remember I used some of these things when I met her and it helped me kinda get my foot in the door and so this stuff will help you make money it will help you start a company it'll help you balance your emotions or it will help you meet your your future spouse it's incredibly effective and so I'm gonna wrap this up those are the four skills that I wanted to talk about today this whole corona thing man it's it's weird I didn't I didn't wanna talk about little business and schemes today but I wanted to talk about a few things that actually impact your life more than just more foundational things that can impact your life bigger than just a business and I don't know maybe maybe we'll have to call this like the the recession proof skill set or something like that but that's it let me know how you feel about this I miss my best bud sean my co host he's not here today but maybe we'll try to publish this the same day that I've recorded it what's today is today wednesday I don't even know it's thursday today's thursday it's it's 11 am so tweet at me thusampar let me know what you thought about this if you actually made it all the way through maybe we'll do more of them but good luck talk to you soon