I spent 7 years interviewing millionaires, so you don't have to

0:00 I've spent the last 7 years of my life interviewing successful multi-millionaire entrepreneurs asking them three simple questions. Number one, how do you make more money? Number two, how do you build a business worth building? Number three, how do you enjoy the process and the ride along the way? AKA, how do you have happiness and fulfillment through your wealth-building journey? Because I think we all know that money doesn't make you happy, but does it Is that really true, right? And so, I have a podcast, Action Academy Podcast, and today is the thousandth episode. So, I've done over a thousand interviews with these people over the last 7 years and I've come up with a list of 10 kind of life and business laws or lessons that I've personally used in my life based off of a thousand hours of podcast conversations with these guys and girls. Some names that you would recognize like the Hormozis, Dan Martell, Pace Morby, Brandon Turner, everybody that's in real estate and kind of an entrepreneurship at large. And so, now these 10 lessons, each one of these that I've created for you guys here today that I'm going to share in this video are lessons that I am either actively applying and have gotten a lot of benefit and value from or I've applied in my business and it's fundamentally changed my life. Because today as I'm recording this, I'm recording this from the Greek Islands again. We're living here for a week here in the island of Crete in Greece.

1:11 So, forgive the kind of poor setup here. But, this is my reality right now. We're me and my fiance. So, I've got a new fiance that I just proposed to about a month ago. I've been traveling around Europe for 3 months as we run our business and scale our business. speaking of which, I've done over $10 million cash like revenue in the pocket from my business and we've also traveled 47 countries traveling on average like 5.5 months a year over the last 4 years as we've applied this advice. So, AKA, it works. So, if you want to learn 7 years of entrepreneurship and over a thousand hours of interviews with the best and brightest entrepreneurs and condense that down into just 10 lessons in 15 minutes in today's video, this is the episode for you. Happy 1,000th episode, Action Academy. So, these lessons are kind of across both life and business because when you become an entrepreneur when you become a business owner, there's a lot of overlap between the two. And so, when I say these things, a lot of them are going to make you a lot more money, but most importantly, they're going to help you be happier and healthier along the way of becoming wealthier, which is the overall goal of this podcast in today's episode in this video. So, the first and foremost, the first goal is your ceiling for success is based purely on your ability to manage stress.

2:29 Let me read it again. Your ceiling for success is based purely on your ability to manage stress. This is something I'm actively working on right now. So, I'll go ahead and give you guys tidbit. So, I got recommended this book. It's called The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal, and I'm currently reading that book right now. And the argument for the book that she gives and the argument that my mentor gave me is that you cannot escape stress because if you escape stress, you escape growth. So, it's like going to the gym and you're in the squat rack and you're like, "Ow, this hurts. I don't want to do this anymore, but you want massive quads." It's like trying to you're trying to bench press and you're like, "This is too heavy. I can't do it." But you want to grow a big chest and a strong bench press. So, stress is actually something that's good in life, but externally, not internally. And so, the point of the book and the point of this lesson is that again, your ceiling for success is based purely on your ability to manage stress. So, stress and success are are completely correlated.

3:28 You need stress in your life and in your business to be able to number one, drive urgency, and number two, to make you better, drive growth. But the issue is that you want to get to a point where you don't internalize stress. So, I've had an issue where I've been very anxious along my journey both after leaving corporate America, running my own companies. You have all these different levels and all these different devils that you're going through, and it's very difficult to manage the stress that takes a physical toll on you. And so, what this lesson is is you need to learn to reframe stress almost to where you're like, "Stress is good. Like, problems are good." That's a actually a lesson that I'm going to teach you on number three. But, problems are good thing.

4:09 And it's just how you view the problems that needs to change and how you manage the problems that needs to change because there are people doing billion-dollar problems right now with like little to no stress and they're just hanging out because they understand that they're either A going to figure it out or B they're going to die. So, at the end of the day, it's going to be figured out regardless and none of it's going to matter. So, it's just like this is something that I'm currently working on right now. I wanted to lead off with this lesson in particular because if you're just getting started or if you're like watching this with a hundred million-dollar net worth, your ability to manage stress will be at the direct ceiling because if you can't manage stress and you can't manage big problems, you can't make big money, you can't make big wealth. So, you have to be able to manage large problems all the time.

4:54 number two, this one is from Dan Martell specifically. and I think he got it from John Maxwell. So, this one is 80% done by someone else is 100% awesome. and I love this one because as a founder and as a CEO, it's you have these seven words, right, that you say which are the most seven most dangerous words in the English language, which is nobody can do it better than me. Right? And this applies to marketing, fulfillment, sales, anything. And so, the only way that entrepreneurship is better than employment is because you get to utilize leverage.

5:34 When you're an employee, you can't utilize leverage. You can't hire people under you to do the job for you or to multiply your talents or to what's the word I'm looking for? Or to kind of level set your weaknesses. So, when you hire as a business owner, you hire to multiply your strengths and to support your weaknesses. That's the word I'm looking for. And so, what Dan taught me is that even if it's 80% done, you want to build a standard to where you're so good that even 80% of what you could do done by somebody else is 100% effing awesome because now you have the ability to scale. You have leverage now unlocked and now you can actually scale a company that operates without you because the only way that you guys can have the passivity that you're looking for is if you are having profits, processes, and people in place, aka the 80% done that are being activated and implemented without you and your direct involvement.

6:31 So, 80% done by someone else is 100% effing awesome. That is lesson in law number two. So, any stage that you're at, number one, learn how to manage stress. It's a massive macro skill. And number two, learn that 80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome. Number three, this goes back to number one what I was talking about. Problems are a good thing. You need to learn how to reframe them. So, this one is another one from Dan Martell. So, shout out Dan. so, when we think of problems, a lot of us think of everything's going wrong and we view them as like this reflection of inadequacies in our own life. We're like, "I'm stupid. I'm dumb. I can't believe I'm having this problem." But, the reality is all of these problems are literally like just imagine that you're playing a video game and you've got like level one, level two, level three, level four, all the way up to level 10. You have a boss at the end of each one of these video games, right?

7:27 And you can't move to level two until you beat the boss of level one. And what most people do is you just kind of keep playing the same level over and over again, which is level one of the game. You keep getting beat by the same boss and you keep getting afraid of that to go to the boss versus I'm going to try a different strategy to beat this boss. And so, that's what problems are. They're not actually problems, they're puzzles. And that's the reframe that I got taught is problems aren't problems, problems are puzzles. Puzzles are meant to be solved. Puzzles are fun. Puzzles are enjoyable. When you complete the puzzle, you now have the complete picture of how that puzzle looks, right?

8:06 With all the different pieces put together and you've got this massive sense of accomplishment. And once the puzzle's put together, now you know how to redo that puzzle if you break it all back down again and create it. So, now you I've built the skill. You've become the person that is capable of completing the puzzle. And so, it's just such a massive reframe is problems are a good thing. Problems aren't problems, they're puzzles. And another reframe of problems that I've been using a lot, and again, I'm somebody that's like not a highly anxious person, but I'm somebody that has struggled with anxiety and is actively struggling with anxiety, and I'm trying to be a calm, cool cucumber as I scale my businesses.

8:46 and so, reframing problems as also lessons. Because a problem like our issue with problems are that when we fail at a problem the first time or we we failed that level one of the video game or we get beat by the boss, we think that we're failures. But, you only fail if you give up. A failure is only a failure if you don't learn from it. If you keep trying the same approach over and over again, that's a failure. But, if you change your approach and you're like, "The boss has hit me from the right. I'm going to come under the left."

9:17 That's it's not a problem. That's not a failure. That's a lesson. And so, once you give yourself permission to fail and you view problems as puzzles, then you can keep chipping away at them, and that's how you become better. So, that alongside the ability to manage stress and 80% done by someone else is 100% awesome. Like just those three alone are worth their weight in gold. So, hopefully at by this point you'll want to listen to the rest of the podcast and subscribe to this channel if you made it here. Cuz if you made it through three problems here, or three lessons, then you'll listen to the rest, I hope.

9:48 so, number four is I don't care what your religion is or if you're non-religious. This is something that I wholeheartedly believe. I am Christian and I am a believer. And so, this one is you need to have God-size goals. So, this is a John Maxwell quote. And I learned this from John Maxwell because a lot of the time you have a goal that is so small that you can like tactically plan how to do it. And so, kind of how I think about goal setting now after interviewing all these successful entrepreneurs and implementing this myself is if I have a plan for how to accomplish a goal, the goal is too small.

10:27 So, a lot of you guys in corporate and girls in corporate, you're watching this and you're like, "Oh, okay, cool. Like, well, here's our quarterly plan. I'm going to execute this quarterly plan to hit our goal." When you're an entrepreneur, that's not the the point. You need to have God-size goals. You need to have goals that are so large and so abundant that you literally have to go to God to be like, "Who do I need to become and who do I need to, you know, accept and attract at like a magnet into my life in order to become the person that is capable of hitting this?" And so, it's like only divine intervention will be the thing that gets you to the goal. And I've created a few God-size goals in my life and I'm telling you that it just works.

11:05 Like, like a quote that I have that I came up with is you can't attract a a million-dollar mentor with a hundred-dollar goal. That's the also the truth in the same kind of breath in the same sentence as this is can't attract a hundred a million-dollar mentor with a hundred-dollar goal is like, you can't have God really come and show like providence and abundance in your in your life if you're if you're aiming small. Like, God rewards big. so, you need to have God-size goals. You need to create goals are so big and so scary that they pull you forward to become the person that is capable of achieving them, which is the point of a goal in it in and of itself.

11:39 It's not the accomplishment of the goal, but it's to become the person that is capable of accomplishing the goal. Because now you have that skill set for the rest of your life. Which leads us to number five. I try to pair all of these lessons and teachings together so that you guys can, memorize them better. And this one's from Ben Hardy, who's now a personal friend and mentor of mine. And it was also obviously on the podcast. 10x is easier than 2x.

12:02 Same idea as the God-sized goals to where you need to set a goal that's a 10x version of the goal that you have today because 2x, you get really lost in the tactics in the weeds, but 10x, you have to completely re-examine your strategy and examine your team and examine how you're getting there. So it's actually much better to have a 10x goal because it completely breaks how you're thinking about things and it changes your frame of thinking so that now you have to aim bigger and you have to become bigger. You you become a new person in order to hit that versus just stretching yourself maybe 7%, 10%, like a safe goal that we set in corporate because we don't want to hurt our feelings if we fail, but failure is rewarded in entrepreneurship. So, 10x is easier than 2x.

12:46 Ben Hardy. number six. You can't This one's more of a, a happiness idea. You can't think your way into happiness, only out of it. >> >> This is a really good one. You can't think your way into happiness, only out of it. And so, I've learned this way I've learned this lesson, very, very hard because you whenever you're not happy, you start psychoanalyzing all the reasons that you're not happy. Like, well, why why shouldn't I be happy? Like, I need to be happy. Why am I not happy right now? And you start thinking, well, what are the things that are causing me to be unhappy? And what should I do about those things? And do those things really matter? And is there validity to them?

13:29 And then your mind just starts running 100 miles an hour. That's anxiety. Anxiety is an overactive mind. So, that's why all of you guys are watching this, you're anxious with me. Because it's an overactive activation of your mind. So, actually the answer to anxiety is slowing down. And which is the point of this is you can't think your way into happiness. You can only think your way out of it. And so, if that's true, then where does happiness come from?

13:56 It's not here, it's here. You go south. So, for anybody listening to the podcast, it's not in your head, it's in your heart. So, happiness is actually a game of subtraction, not addition. So, it's subtracting all of the past, the present past and the future thoughts that you have, and you're just focused on the present. You're not thinking of how things should be or how you should feel, you just feel. And I think that we can all agree that the happiest moments that we have are the moments where we're just It's like the simplest things or it's just like the simplest moments or the littlest moments. And like those are the moments that really like make you feel the most warm.

14:30 And they weren't manufactured. It was always a surprise. It wasn't something that you planned. And so, you can't think your way into happiness, only out of it. So, the way to happiness is just to be grateful. And just to feel it. So, it's like why you can't think of and psychoanalyze your way of why am I not happy right now? Instead, I just shift my focus to like what am I grateful for right now? And I feel it more in here.

14:54 And that's really helped me in my maturity process as a as a leader, as a business owner, and as like a human being. You know, trying to learn this stuff and how to actually be happy along the process because a lot of the times it's very, very difficult for you to be happy. Like right now, it's not a season where I'm I'm as happy as I've been in other seasons, but it's something now that I have to actively work on. It's a muscle. It's like the happiness muscle, the gratitude muscle.

15:17 You have to feel it, right? And so, it's a focus and then it's a feeling. It's not a thought. It's a difficult one to think of and kind of conceptualize. Number seven is a business principle, so back to business. I learned this from from David Osborne, one of my original mentors, and I think episode like number seven on the podcast back in 2021. And this is the concept of I do, we do, they do. And so this is how I build every single business, and David's like worth quarter billion dollars at this point.

15:46 And so he taught me this business principle of I do it, which is I do it by myself, we do it, which is now you build it together as a team, and then you get to they do it, where now they do it without you. And you cannot move to a new business until you have successfully completed the I do, we do, they do cycle in your current business. It's what a lot of people do is they go from I do to we do, which is now you hire a couple people, you hire a team, and you think, okay, cool, now I'm bored. I don't like systems and structure and scale, I'm going to move to the next thing. You go back to an I do, then a we do. But the secret is that you want to get all the way to a they do, which is they do it without you. And they grow up without you, and they build functions without you. And so now I am now in this section of Action Academy, where I'm trying to get to the point where it's just like, how do I hire and and structure our team in such a way that they actually are better with me being gone? Like they I've got better people, faster people, smarter people, people that are more capable and competent at executing our systems, at improving our business, and serving our members than even I am.

16:49 And so it's it's a it's a toughy, you know? It's a hard thing to do, but just remember, I do, we do, they do is how you build businesses. And until you have unlocked they do, which I would probably identify they do as you can remove yourself from the business for 2 weeks, and the business actually stabilizes or grows without you, that's when you'll know that you're successfully at a they do, okay? So, number eight is the concept of navigation versus acceleration. so I I this from a few of the the gentlemen on the podcast recommended this in a book. It's called The Buddha and the Badass. And so this is a concept of kind of how to live life and it's how I live life.

17:29 And so I read this book in 2022 when I was first like kind of going through an existential crisis of who am I, what am I here to do, what am I here to accomplish? And I learned about these two seasons. So a lot of people think that your entire life is supposed to be met in spent in acceleration. So acceleration, this season of life is where you're running 100 miles an hour, you've got a goal, you're pursuing the goal, you're going going going going going crazy, working really hard to get this goal.

17:58 and that's fine and good. That's what we all kind of called hustle culture, right? It's just like grind or die. And so when I think of acceleration, I think of a cheetah in the wild and you think of cheetah like sprinting to take down the gazelle. But what a lot what happens here is you kind of burn out from doing constant acceleration. A lot of you watching this have never even heard of the other 50% of life, which is navigation. So it's supposed to be 50/50. So acceleration should be 50% and navigation is 50%. So navigation is the time where now you're slowing down, you're stepping back and you're like, "Okay, cool.

18:33 What do I actually want? Let me reset the GPS. Let me figure things out. Who am I? How am I feeling? Check in with the body, check in with the mind, check in with your family, your loved ones, and your friends. You're like, "How am I today? Am I is where I'm going and accelerating to the correct direction? Or should I set the GPS in a different direction?" And this is the process of navigation, which is a very uncomfortable process because it requires you to get slow, it requires you to get still, and it requires you to think of things and like really sit down and get quiet. And for the first time in your life you're like you're not doing doing doing, you're being being being.

19:06 Like you're a human being, you're not a human doing. and so that one has been the one that has helped me the most is like going through periods of acceleration and as soon as I feel like I'm close to burnout, then that's when I am like, got it. That's the trigger for me to enter back into a navigation. And so to use the analogy of the cheetah again, when you see a cheetah, you associate it with it with speed and running. But the reality is a cheetah only sprints about 13% of its life. Because if a cheetah sprints, I think for more than 7 seconds, it can actually overheat and die.

19:39 So what a cheetah spends most of its time doing is navigating. So it's in a navigation phase. It's stalking in the grass. It's lurking. It's looking for the gazelle. And then as soon as it sees the gazelle, it sees its target. It's crystal clear. It knows what it needs to do. It begins the acceleration process again. That's how life should be. So perhaps it's time to consider a period of navigation for you guys watching this. Number nine, two more to go here, guys, is the takeoff law. So the takeoff law is something that I just created as a law from a concept that I've heard over and over again, said different ways, but I found a way to finally condense it.

20:14 And that is that it requires like 10 to 100 times more effort to get started than it does to keep going. And so when you think of the takeoff law, it's like you think of an airplane on the runway. And when it's at a standstill, you've got hundreds of people in there, all the cargo, all your bags, all the fuel. It takes a lot of jet fuel and energy and effort to get the plane slowly moving down the runway, right? And then the heavier the plane, the longer the runway, so the longer it takes to get lift and to get takeoff. And so you're going, going, going, going, going.

20:44 You're speeding up, speeding up, speeding up. And what most people do here in this process is they're like, dude, I'm not flying. This is really hard. I'm running out of fuel. I got to stop right here. And then they let off the throttle and they don't ever get lift. They don't ever get takeoff. But the reality is as soon as you get takeoff, as soon as you the the air whips under your wing, and all of a sudden you get lift, and now you're going up. All of a sudden you go through the clouds and it's bumpy, you're going through all the turbulence, right? And then you get what happens next? You get up to the clear skies, blue skies.

21:14 You're above the clouds. And then you get into the jet stream, and then you level out at 30,000 ft, and then the flight attendants come out, the pilots go to the bathroom, and it's on autopilot, and it's just cruising. And it's like using, I think, 1/100 the amount of fuel it takes for takeoff, right? And so, that's the takeoff principle. There's a lot of you guys are just quitting too soon. You're just quitting in the hard part. The hardest part is getting started and getting going. Because once you're up, not only do you is it easier because you have momentum, but now you have an entire team that's up there helping you.

21:44 And you got your flight attendants, you got your co-pilots, you have all the passengers that are there that are also that are on the bus with you and on the plane with you. And it's just like just remembering that law is like so useful for me because whenever I'm starting something new, I'm like, "Okay, just remember, I don't have lift yet." As soon as I have lift and as soon as I'm stabilized, I know that there's a stabilized process of this where it's just do more, do better, do more, do better.

22:07 And no more new, right? Which will be the last lesson in law school. I learned this one from the Hormozis. The concept of more, better, new. So, this is how you scale a company, and most of the time, new is not the correct answer. So, there's only three ways to get more money and to scale a business. So, either do more of what you're currently doing that's working, you do it better and you improve what you're currently doing, or you do something new.

22:32 And 95% of the time, the answer is more and the answer is better. It's never new. And so, a lot of the times, we are always trying to use new as kind of this lotion to like fix this itch that we have, and we're like, "Oh, I'm just going to do new. New, new, new, new, new. I'm going to do new strategy, new business, new side hustle, new idea. I'm going to go from Airbnb investing to business buying to hotels to all this stuff. New, new, new." Okay? No more new.

22:56 Just do more, do better. Like one focus, one strategy, one opportunity, okay? This is everything you ever wanted in one chance. No. this isn't M&M, this isn't 8 Mile. But in all seriousness, like I have to remind myself of this lesson over and over again, which is just like, "Oh, well, how do we go from 5 million to 10 million? Why don't we just do more of what we're doing and do it better?" Like, let's not introduce this new product line, let's not introduce this new business, let's not introduce this new service. Let's do more of what we're already doing, and let's do it better.

23:23 Okay? So, no more new. So, as a recap of the top 10 lessons from 7 years and 1,000 episodes, number one, your ceiling for success is based purely on your ability to manage stress. And the book is The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal. Currently reading it right now. I will report on it. Number two, 80% done by somebody else is 100% effing awesome. Number three, problems are a good thing. Problems should be reframed to puzzles, right? Number four, you need to have God-sized goals. You need to have providence and abundance. You need to have a goal that's so big that God has to be involved, which leads us to number five, 10x is easier than 2x, always. Doesn't sound like it would be a tactic, but it I promise you, 10x your goal, you will accomplish it easier than the 2x.

24:08 Number six, you cannot think your way into happiness, only out of it. Number seven, I do, we do, they do. You know that you're at they do in your business and you're ready to go to your next business once you have 2 weeks off of your business and the business grows and scales without you. Number eight, the concept of navigation versus acceleration. Spend your time hunting the gazelle and figuring out where the gazelle actually is, navigate, stalk, lurk for your prey. Soon as you see the gazelle, boom, switch to acceleration.

24:35 But right now, if you're sweating and you're breathing and you're like, "Dude, my heart's going to give out." Stop. Switch to navigation. Figure out if your GPS is set correctly. Number nine, the takeoff law, it's 100 times harder in the beginning than it is to keep going. So, it's harder to start going than it is to keep going. Number 10, more better new. Stop doing new, do more better. All right? So, if you guys enjoyed these, go check out Action Academy podcast, subscribe to that. follow me on Instagram at Brian Lubin. And if you're watching this on YouTube, leave us a like, leave us a comment. Which one of these is your favorite law? You know, I I don't have a fancy studio here, but this is just literally me traveling, filming this with a mic and an iPhone.

25:13 So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this. And if you did, share it with somebody else that you think could get value. And, subscribe for more videos. Let's go. Here's to the next thousand episodes Action Academy. Thanks.