 What's up everybody, once again it's Brand Man Sean and as you can see I have a very special guest today just for starters. I've been telling you guys for a while that I wanted to bring more entrepreneurs onto the channel and more things outside of just music because we're in an age where independent artists really need to become more business focused, business minded and this is the beginning of that series interviewing and bringing a lot of thought leaders and successful entrepreneurs from different spaces where you really understand. And today we have Peter Prue. He is the creator of E-commerce Empire Builders. It started as a side project for him, as he said, but it's grown into something so much bigger than that. It's a full movement and it's a sever figure business, have I gotten that correct? Is that correct? Yes it is correct, it is correct man. Oh no, number one, the thing that a lot of artists are missing is money and a lot of conversation is going to be about money and marketing of course. So welcome, without further ado, what's up Peter? Thank you so much for having me. I'm hoping that I can provide and shed as much light as I humanly possibly can for you guys because I want you guys to like we were talking before like you guys all do what you love right now and you deserve to also get paid for what you love to do. Like that's like the dream lifestyle, right? So I'm hoping I could shed as much insight as I possibly can to help you guys do that. That's perfect. I mean, so I already know a couple of topics and things that just to let you guys know what I would love to even hear about are things like merch because we have products, all these side things to sell, all right? We're going to talk a little bit about merch, just a little bit about the marketing funnel before we even get into that, like how do you even get started in what you're doing right now? Yeah. So I call myself a 10 year overnight success story because a lot of the people that I talk about like and understand guys, like as you get started in like business, especially online business, like you're going to expect that there's going to be, you know, a lot of road bumps and bruises along the way. Like if it was easy, everybody would do it. Like there's nothing truer than that. Um, but I've been doing makes it sound so easy though. All right. So I've been doing online businesses for about 10 years. I started when I was a freshman in college. My roommate at the time, at the time Google was very easy to manipulate. Basically you could like rank pages in Google is super simple. And basically a lot of people are making a lot of money. I was making an extra hundred bucks a week in college and I was like the happiest dude ever. I was like, oh my God, like I was like, yeah, you know, drinks on me every Friday that like, yeah. Um, unfortunately a hundred bucks a week isn't enough to, you know, not have a job. So after graduation had to get a full-time job. Um, but I always had this like, like this itch. Like I was like, you know what, is it, there's more here. I feel like there's more, like I have something more to give, like or create. Like I had this little, uh, success in college. I was making a little bit of money, but like I didn't like go all in on it. So that's when I started diving really, uh, deep into, uh, e-commerce. So e-commerce is selling like physical products online, kind of like Amazon, uh, had a ton of different kinds of businesses along the way. I sold on Amazon, we lost like, uh, you know, to make a long story short, we basically invested like $30, $40,000 into Amazon businesses, lost all that. Didn't have any customers because a lot of times when you sell on Amazon, you're, you're, those are Amazon's customers, right? Not, not ours, unfortunately. So I started learning about like, how do I create a business that I'm in full control of? And I think this is going to be one of the most important thing I can, I can tell you guys is there's going to be a lot of people out there. There's going to be a lot of websites out there where they're going to, they're going to basically have you like, they're going to basically control your business and you're not even going to know it. Well, this is Instagram right now. All these platforms where they have their audience, they don't control their audience. I need people to be clear exactly, exactly. You're exactly, and that's exactly with Amazon. That's how we got like screwed over with Amazon, right? Because we had some false claims made against what we were selling on Amazon, completely fake, but Amazon just banned us, right? Took us a year to get the account ban, you know, account back from that point. And think about it guys, like your fans, right? They're your fans. Like those customers on Amazon, those are my customers, but I never had that data, right? Like I wasn't able to do it. So when you're building your business, make sure, and the strategies where we talk about it's going to like do this for you, but you need to pull them off of YouTube, pull these people off of your podcast, pull them off of Instagram, right? Create an asset for yourself. Now, I know some of you guys are going to be like, Oh, well, like how do you do that? Like what's like, how do you, what do you mean pull it off? Well, like for one, like getting their email address, getting their contact information. A lot of people say that like email marketing is dead. Nobody checks their emails anymore. But I can tell you, like every business that I've ever had, right? Every business that I've ever had, the only tangible asset, like something that you can take and put it on a USB drive and like go wherever in the world, right? That email list is your most valuable possession, right? It doesn't matter guys, like the reason, like for example, like, well, like, so, like your, like your best friend, let's say he emails you, right? You're going to open it, right? Yep. Right? You're going to open it. Same thing goes for us. It's the relationship you have with the people in your email list. They should be excited to open your email, right? Like, and you should be providing like valuable content for them or new music or whatever it is that you're, you're putting out to them, you know? A part of that. So that's a great point because one, I even did a video on this probably a couple of weeks ago, just the fact that no, email lists are not dead. Like, even if you look at the percentages of my traditional email opens or people I've worked with, it's on par or even greater a lot of times than how many people see your Instagram post, right? So that's one thing. But the second part is you said they should be excited to open your emails. That's up to you, right? Like, you shouldn't be spamming your audience. And that you, you create the, the circumstance on whether they're not opening your particular emails or not. There's a lot of emails that I, I scroll right past, but there's some people who email me and I'm like, let me check this. Yeah, exactly. And the thing is like, I actually just had this conversation with somebody earlier today is like, think about, okay, so let's say email, you know, open rates, they're, they're all low, right? A lot of people don't open their emails anymore. It is, it's fine, right? But you have to think about your cause, your fans, your customers, your potential customers. Like, think about different people, how they consume things. Like, for instance, like I have a YouTube channel, right? It's not huge, but I have a YouTube channel, right? I also have a podcast, right? I have people that listen to my podcast that never, ever, ever been on my YouTube channel, right? I have people that are on my Instagram that have never been on my podcast on my YouTube. I have people on my email list that have never been on any of those things. People consume content differently. So you're never gonna be able to reach like 100% of your audience that you have. But think about it, you get 20% on the email. You know, another 4% on Instagram. You know, another 5% on YouTube, right? You start getting them from other place. So that number, it goes drastically higher, right? So it's worth having that asset because if you don't have that, like an email list or something that you control because all of these platforms, like, they can shut you down, like, for no reason, guys. Like, I felt it really bad because it impacted my, like, literally my revenue, but like, even like YouTube, even with my YouTube channel and like my podcast, I'm like, okay, how can I get people off this? Because you never know what might happen. They might not rank your video for whatever reason they decide, right? You have no control. You literally have no control, which is, it's so scary as a business owner, as a creator, to be like, okay, well, like, how do I turn this traffic, you know, these customers into like some, like an asset for my business? And I would love you guys to all like think of that. You're a business, like you are a business, you're a personal brand, but a personal brand or a songwriter, whatever, you're still a, you're a business, okay? So make a long story short with Amazon, you know, we got banned off of that, went, still had to work full time at this time. Kind of went through like a dark period in my life for a couple of years. So it was like blaming everybody but myself for like my lack of success in life. And I was like, you know, like one day I just woke up and I was like, okay, so everything I've learned, all the crap I've went through, I'm just gonna quit now and not try again. So like, you know, it did take a while, but I was like, you know what, I gotta rebuild a business. Like I gotta get back in this. I gotta keep going. How long would you say that was? It was probably like two years, two, three years. Okay. Where I was just like, I just fell into a loop, like a lot of us do, you know, you're just doing the same thing, day in and going to work, you know, sitting in traffic, going to bed, just doing all that. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna rebuild a business, but this time I'm gonna build a business that like I actually care about. One that I don't even care if I win, like I'm just gonna have fun doing it. So that business was my fishing business. That was our, you know, our first seven-figure business. I don't wanna like make false experience, but it was years of hard work to build that business to that seven-figure level. But fishing for me was like, you know what, for me, like I do this every single weekend. It's something I did with my dad when I was growing up. It's a way like I remember my dad and it's something like I wanna do with my kids in the future as well. And I was like, you know what, I love this. This is what I wanna do, right? So started building the business around fishing and just had like a great time, brought on some bad partners just to make a long, so you know, we ended up selling the business earlier this year for a nice paycheck. And we sit in that for a second because we sit in that for a second just because like a lot of situations that a lot of artists encounter or just people in general encounter within music has to do with bad partnerships. So can you give me just a few lessons on maybe were there any warning signs of partners were bad or just some things that you learn in that space? Yeah, it's great. You're like the first person that ever asked me this. It's like, yeah, I'm definitely not as open about this part because it was like so, like it's, believe it or not, I'm sure you've had this. Like where people will tell you one thing but they'll tell you what you wanna hear but then their actions will never do that. So like with my partners, like they said, oh yeah, yeah, we're gonna be all in with you. We're gonna divvy up all the tasks. You know, I'm gonna be the CFO of it. I'm gonna handle all this. And there was like this marketing person I was gonna do all this and my job was gonna be like all these other things. And like nobody was holding up their end of the bargain. Essentially it was still me basically running my business and we were growing pretty fast. And I still was, it was like, why did I bring you guys on, right? Like why did I bring you guys on? We made these expectations that we set for each other, like who's responsible for what? And then yet somehow I just gave you guys a very big portion of my business for, and I'm still doing all the work. So like one thing I would definitely, definitely do guys, like if you ever, and like honestly, like I wouldn't even bring on partner. I'm so, it's left such a bad taste in my mouth, man. Like I rather you just like, if you're gonna hire me help, just hire like an agency, hire somebody that can help you just pay them, right? It may be in the future, I'll bring on partners for my other businesses that we have. We have like a supplement business that we're launching soon. But you know, just really, really make sure the expectations are clear and like you get that stuff and like writing if those end of the bargains aren't held up. Trust me, like it's worth it. It's worth the lawyer fees. If you have to go pay a lawyer a thousand bucks, like it's worth it. Like I'm telling you, like it's a lot of money to go a thousand bucks to waste on a lawyer, but it's worth the headache that you're gonna save yourself. Great note, great note because a lot of times we do not like to pay, particularly for things that seem long-term or it's only a possibility, but the possibilities are very real. So. And you don't ever wanna think like that. Yeah, for sure. Like, oh, like if, you know, if it happens, like if we ever, you know, break up, like, you know, so it's, you know, but it's always good to have that clear because it's business. Like in business, you just have to be, you have to leave emotion out of business. A lot of people that I see that come into like online marketing, online businesses in general, like they, they're so emotionally invested in it that like you can't even see clearly, right? Like we think, oh, we launched this new t-shirt and people aren't buying it. And then we're like, oh, it's, it's my, me. It must be me, right? Like it's my fault that it's not happening. And then you get emotionally invested and you're like, oh, well, like it's not, it's not though. Like you always have to think about like the data or you always like let the data tell you where to look, where there's problems. Cause I can tell like every one of you that if you have followers, if you have people listening to your music, like they want to get closer to you, whether you like to believe it or not, right? Like I'm telling you a hundred percent, like for me, like when I started my YouTube channel, like very small channel, like very niche, right? And I went to this conference that's very niche to it. Like the immediate when we even went to that conference like we couldn't even walk down the hallway. Like people were like, yeah, what's up, man? Like how you help me so much? I go, look all this stuff. And I was like, oh my God, it's the same thing. It goes for every single one of you. If you went to like some thing where your community would be, it's the same thing. They want to get closer to you, right? Sometimes it's just the execution wasn't done right. Maybe you didn't just portray whatever you're trying to sell well enough to them, but don't tie yourself so emotionally to it. And trust me, this happens all the time. Even when you think you've made it, right? Like, oh man, like you didn't, let's say you didn't make as much money as you made today as you did yesterday or something like that. And then you're like, and then you're beating yourself up over it and you're not thinking clearly, but don't tie yourself so emotionally. I love that because, oh wait, you broke up for a second. All right, cool. Part of being an artist, right? Is being very in touch with your emotions in a lot of ways. So how do you, I would love to get your opinion on how an artist recognizes their creativity and emotion with the data at certain points. Okay, so specifically in terms of, This isn't working, this isn't working, they don't like it, I need to change something. Okay, so a few things like in terms of like a music, in terms of music or like in terms of like product that they plan to sell. Let's start with product and then I will, I know it's a little bit out of your warehouse, but I would like to get your opinion on music too. So in terms of product, like I always like to think of, you have to understand like your fans extremely, extremely well, right? And what's the real reason that they listen to your music, right? Same thing goes for me, like with my customers, right? My fans, my fishing, people that like fishing, right? Like I have to think like, well, why do they buy stuff for me? Why would they even want to buy something from me? So I have to think, I'm like, okay, well, what's the result that they want to get from this? Do they just want to, you know, they catch bigger fish, catch more fish? Like how can I help them do that? In a lot of, it's easier for me to say that, in terms of like a musician and stuff like that, you have to think like, okay, this customer wants to, and I think the easiest one that anybody here can do is like merch stuff. I could kind of walk through exactly what I would do if I was anybody here listening to this, trying to monetize the audience, is you need to be, firstly, get them off of the platform, right? So things that I would do is something called a sales funnel, right? It sounds like it's a complicated thing. It's really not. A sales funnel is a very simple step-by-step process that you tell your customer or your fan what to do and how to do it and however much they want to buy of your product. So let's say you're selling a t-shirt. Let's say you come up with a cool design for a t-shirt that you want to launch out to your audience, right? So how I would test that is I would set up a very, very basic website funnel template. And I can give you one of these. It sounds more complicated than this. It's two web pages. And you can literally click a button and you can download it into your account and it's just that simple. It's right there for you to build and just copy and paste your images in there, right? Now it comes down to you guys, is your brand, your personal brand needs to be portrayed really well on these pages, okay? Because you, like the colors, like usually for a lot of the people that I work with, like that are just selling online, like physical products, they don't necessarily need to think of brand right away because they don't know yet. You guys who already have like some fans that are following you, like you want to make sure it's congruent with you, like these web pages. So changing around the colors, the products. But so how the kind of the sales funnel works is, right? When they, let's say you're like, hey, we're going to be launching a brand new t-shirt. You can pre-order one right now, you know, link in the description or however you're getting them from SoundCloud or wherever, right? So they land on this first page and this is where you make them a special offer, okay? In exchange for their email address, right? Remember when I said, or email address or messenger bot opt-in or whatever, put them to a Facebook group or get them off of wherever they're at, right? You want to create more places where you can reach them, right? I always recommend email, it's just easier, it's built into the system, right? When I say offer, it's not just the t-shirt. What else can you give them with the t-shirt? Because everybody out there, YouTubers are like, oh, get my merch, get my merch. They're all spewing the same exact thing that it's like the only, it's just a t-shirt. Like it's not cool, like it's anymore, right? Like, because everybody's doing it. So what can you put in with that t-shirt, right? To make it more valuable, to boost the perceived value of it. So like just things that I'm thinking off the top of my head. Maybe you give them an exclusive album of yours of some unreleased songs that you never put out anywhere else, right? So your true fans will be like, holy hell, like, yes, I would pay just the 10 bucks just for that, but he's giving it that to me for free, right? So you can put that into like a little members area or you can just email them like some special links with this content, right? What else can we put? A private Facebook group or wherever where you go live maybe like once a week or something where you're just like, you literally, just when you're out on a walk, just get your phone and just talk to your fans, right? Makes them feel a little bit more connected to you. Now, that's the first page. That's where it's that perceived value is really high. They enter their email address like, yes, I want this. So boom, you just got them off, off of YouTube or wherever, Instagram. Then they hit our order pages. That's where they just, that's where the magic happens, right? They have the billing information, shipping information. They're like, yes, I want this t-shirt. And after they click submit, that's perfect, the order is taken, you just made money. Now, you can do these cool things called upsells. Now, an upsell is after they put their credit card information, they can, you can present them with different kinds of products or services that you have to make yourself more money. This is where I think most of you will make a lot more. So I recommend you starting to think, and I would never start a business without this one thing. It's continuity, subscription boxes or reoccurring revenue. So what I mean by that is like, you know, like BarkBox and Dollar Shave Club, you know, those companies where they just, you give them 20 bucks and they send you stuff in the mail, right? Exactly. I would do something like this for your businesses. I see a lot of creators and, you know, people in this space that they just set up like this Patreon thing or whatever. I'm sure you've heard of it. Yeah, I'm not a fan. I see what the suggestion is that I'd do it, but I just, it wasn't for me. No, this is how you do it. I have a subscription model, by the way, though. I have a SaaS background, so I'm a fan of that model. So exactly, me too. I would never start a business without it, right? No matter, it doesn't matter what the business is, you just have to think about it. Like, okay, how, what would people find it valuable enough to give me 20 bucks a month or 30 or 100 bucks? Whatever it is. And not like Patreon, like, and that stuff like, I'm like, what, like, they probably take money from you. They probably, these are fees that they take from you from that, and they're like, oh, just give me a dollar a month. I'm like, a dollar? Come on, like, so, here's the thing. You want to, because you're gonna have these ridiculously raving fans that are gonna, they're gonna take every, you can have as many upsells as you want. Like, you can have 100 of them if you want. And you're gonna have those raving fans that'll be like, yes, I want that, I want that, I want that, I want everything this guy's selling you. I recommend you guys just have one t-shirt. It's gonna be like your main, whatever t-shirt thing is. You sell that as the main product, and then you upsell them into some sort of monthly subscription thing, where they help support you in exchange for that support, right? That $20 a month or whatever it is. That's where maybe you can introduce like a group where you go live weekly or monthly or every day. You know, it depends on how much you want to put in. Maybe you send them a t-shirt every single month while being part of this club. A new exclusive design. Maybe they're the first to hear new music. Maybe they're the first to hear like, you know, unreleased music that you have, or you're just testing, or they get to see you create, right? A lot of us forget that like, one of the most powerful things I think I've ever done in my fishing business was showing the behind the scenes. Like people love behind the scenes stuff, especially with what you're doing. Like this is why vlogs and stuff work. But like it's not, like vlogs are too like, they're too perfect a lot of times. Like people want to see like the behind the behind the scenes. Like you actually like sitting there doing the hard work and like that could be like exclusive content that you give them in exchange for that, right? So I would like, like if I was you, like I would do something like that like immediately, right? Giving them some sort of physical product. Maybe it's a t-shirt, maybe it's something different every month. It's like a surprise for them that they can anticipate for it so they don't know what it is. And all this is like super simple to set up. I mean, you can have this set up within like not even an hour, you know? So yeah, like that continuity piece, man. Like I, if I would, doesn't matter if I'm selling information, if I'm selling your fishing stuff, whatever it always, that's like the core. Cause I think about a lot of businesses they fail because they're always fighting for new customers. And when you're just, when you're fighting for new customers all the time, you're basically competing against Amazon, Walmart, you know, all your competitors. But for us, I'm like, you make so much more money from your existing customers than you ever will with the new ones because your current customers, they know, like and trust you. They know who you are. They have a relationship with you, right? They've given you money, right? They want to buy more stuff from you and you just have to figure it out what that is, right? Like, and I can tell you from just like a lot of experience just like, especially in personal branding, it's like just getting closer to you, right? Like their first touch point with you might be like their YouTube channel. Okay, like that's free. I call that the relationship, right? That's the relationship funnel, right? Where you just put out content, you're just attracting new people and new fans, right? And what's the next step? Okay, well maybe you guys want to buy like a t-shirt, right? Put them through the t-shirt. Okay, then the next step in the ladder might be, you know, the continuity piece. Then maybe, you know, a concert, right? And you know, it just keeps going from there. How can they just keep getting closer and closer to you? Because like, I'm telling you, like, a lot of people like, they get, the only reason they're watching you is because they want to escape something, right? They want to be entertained, right? You know what I mean? Like, they're not, they're taking precious time out of their day. It's like, can you re-say that? Because it broke up for a second. I don't know if the recording got it, but it broke up. So I would say like, people are watching you because they want to be entertained by you. Okay. Right? Like, they might be like, you know, they might be watching after like a long day of work or whatever, right? Like, they want to, a lot of times, like especially in like the YouTube space and stuff like that. Like people want to live vicariously through it. Like this is why movies and stuff exist. So sometimes you have to think of yourself as a character, right? Like, because you are. You're putting yourself out there on the internet. And those of you that are like, just doing, like are a lot of people just doing like songwriting, would you say? So there's a set of people who are just doing songwriting, but then there's people who are the full-blown artist putting it out there. It's every slice of the pie or every makeup you get. Just me, like so for example, like just people that are just putting out music. Like immediately, like I would mix in like some of the personal branding stuff, like putting yourself out there, showing that behind the scenes stuff, not just being like, oh, here's just new music. You know that I'm putting out all the stuff. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So 100%, like having a funnel and keeping it simple. Like I see, like a lot of you guys will be like, okay, I see this big guy, Logan Paul, right? Or whatever. He has a merch store. That means I should get a merch store, right? But that's not necessarily the case because you don't see the behind the scenes of his backend business, right? Like he has a, he probably has like 100 people that work with him, right? From designers to all of this stuff. So you go in and you're like, oh, well I should get a merch store. But in fact, it's like you have to build up to that point. So what I recommend, that's why I recommend you guys is like if you do want to do merch, right? Whatever it is, don't go to like a Shopify store or any of these platforms where they're like, oh, let me go put up a bunch of designs. No, this is what confuses people. I use this a lot, but we have the attention span of Goldfish, right? Like whether we all want to believe this or not, we do. Like the second you give people more than one option, your sales will get lower. So if you only give your customers one option, you only have one t-shirt. Even if you do it like launch stuff, hey, this month this is our exclusive t-shirt that we're launching, right? It's only available this month and once it's this month is over, it's gone. You can never, ever, ever get this t-shirt again. That's a better model. That model will make you more money than if you just put in a hundred designs in your Shopify store. Like I can tell you, if Logan Paul decided to do this, he would make a ridiculous amount more money because it creates the two biggest psychological triggers that people have when they buy it is scarcity and urgency. And a lot of people fake it by putting timers on their websites or you only have one minute to buy. Like if you don't buy in this minute, this is gone, but then you wait a minute and then you can still buy it, right? Like at least with this, like if Logan Paul did like launch style where it's like exclusive design, this hoodie is only available this week only. It'll never be able to be purchased again. I can guarantee you that hoodie, even if it was ugly, like would still sell because people will be like, oh, I had this piece of clothing that is never gonna be in print again, yeah? Yeah, I love to hear you talking about this because it's just to have a different voice, you know, people who probably get used to my voice on this channel and think that it's like BS when I really talk about options and diversity, but this is really what I'm talking about. Before people understand that when you create options, it literally, not just oh, as an opinion, people, the numbers go down, they truly go down. Think about, it's called the decision fatigue basically, right? You don't wanna think, how many times do you go to a restaurant and after a while you just, you might say, what's the best thing on the menu or what's good here? It's because you might not, you don't wanna feel, you don't wanna go through all these things. You have a cable subscription, well, you know, today's, you might not have a cable subscription today, but you know, people have cable and they don't look at all the channels. They just want three or four of the channels, that's all they really watch. Same for YouTube, you have a set of YouTube channels, there's so many other channels you don't watch. You don't watch Apple, right? Apple literally takes so many decisions away for you versus Android where you can kinda do whatever you want, but Apple Streamline is a customer experience for, you know, through a lot of limitation. So, I'm just really glad to hear you talk about how it literally does take sales downs and too many options is a bad thing. People love to be, like, as much as you don't wanna believe it, it's true. Like, people love to be told what to do. They do, like, for example, like, I know just the area that I live in, like, food trucks are very popular here. Like, they're famous for the food trucks, like, great food trucks. Guess what? When you go to these food trucks, you have one option. They don't serve 100 different things in there. There's like, one thing, and they're like, okay, this food truck makes meatballs, but they make the best meatballs. You can never get these meatballs as good as anywhere else as if you could from this food truck, right? I rather, like, I tell us to people all the time, like, I rather you be the best at selling, like, this spatula, right? Than anybody else. Just like, if you're the best at selling a spatula, you will make a lot of money, right? You just have to figure out how can you sell a spatula? How can you get people to come buy your spatula, right? And it comes down to understanding your audience, your fans, whoever that's looking at you, right? Cause you're not selling a spatula, right? You're selling a solution, right? Like, what does a spatula do? Like, who is the people that we're selling it to? Maybe, like, the way, if I'm gonna sell a spatula, like, some people will think, oh, like, almost everybody has a spatula. Well, no, cause I'm gonna be like, okay, who, first I start with who? Who am I gonna sell a spatula to? Cause if I say I'm gonna sell it to everybody, I'm done, I'm toast, cause then I'm competing against Amazon. So I'm gonna be like, okay, this spatula is a premium spatula designed only for people that love cooking barbecue. Now, they'll be like, okay, well, like, they love cooking barbecue. What else can I add in here to help them cook great barbecue? Maybe I'll put, like, you know, a video guide together. Maybe I'll go interview, like, top five, you know, grill masters or something and put that in there and give it to them for free to make sure when they get my spatula, that they're like, oh, they know exactly how to use it. They know, they have all this other information that they can never get anywhere else. So I know that's kind of different from just, like, the merch, but it's still an important concept to grasp. Like, you don't have to strut, like, a lot of people will stress themselves out and they think that, like, back to, like, tying your emotion to the result. Like, what most people will do is, oh, this shirt, nobody wants it. I'm just gonna go design another one. Right, like, no, that's not true. Your delivery was probably what was wrong, right? Not more, more is usually not better. I could just tell you that, like, more is usually not better. So focus on, like, different kinds of strategies. Like, if I can leave you guys with that, one thing is, like, if you're gonna sell, like, merch or a t-shirt, right? Do it in, like, a scarcity kind of way, where, hey, you know, it's only available here. Then, upsell them into some sort of monthly subscription thing where they have closer access to you. They get more behind-the-scenes stuff with you. Maybe they get to see the creative process of how you're doing things. Because, like I said, believe it or not, a lot of people, they want to get to know you better. Right, like, even though you might not think that you're that interesting, I trust me, I think that all the time, but people will pay to get to know you better to learn more from you. Do you have something like that for yourself where people get to know you better outside of just the education that you provide, but even a little bit more personal? Yeah, so we have things like there's, like, I have, like, a mastermind group of people that, you know, they just have access to me any time. Like, they could just, there's an app, it's called Boxer that we use. If they message me on it, then I could just, it's like a walkie-talkie app. We just talkie, the walkie-talkie back and forth. We have, you know, Q and A sessions, you know, twice a week for, you know, couple hours each time, just talking back and forth, working with each other with our businesses. We wanna do, like, events and stuff in the future as well that we have planned. Like, for once, we had an, there was an event that we just came from. And, you know, I found out a bunch of our students were gonna be there, so we were like, oh, let's get everybody, you know? We, you know, rented out like a big area inside of this Brazilian steakhouse, got everybody there, paid for them all, just treated everybody, had a good time. Just like, just something like that, that was only for the students, right? Like, only for the people that have, you know, should that commitment actually want to get closer to you? Don't, don't, don't. I mean, I think that's a perfect example of a fan experience type situation as well, where, you know, there are these curated experiences that are only a certain amount of people who've already shown a certain amount of commitment even get access to. It's not even like, oh, do you just want this one off? No, if you have improving yourself already to have a certain level of commitment, there's no other way to get in. So I think that's great. There's an artist, I'm named Ryan Leslie, who does that very well. I don't know if you know who he is, but are you familiar with Superphone? No. Okay, okay. Actually, I want to switch really quickly because we talked a little bit about your businesses and we kind of sidetracked just for conversation. That was my fault, but I thought it was necessary. But back to the progression of your business, right? I think the last thing you talked about, well, you haven't gone to Empire Builders for sure. So bring us back along though. So I make a long story short. There was some, so I started that fishing business on like B-Rage, no, not the case. That's when I kind of, you know, took a step back and I was like, well, like why am I not getting the results that I want? And that's when I learned about these sales funnels where I'm like, hey, you know what? Why am I gonna sell a hundred different fishing lures when I can just pick a couple of them and be the best at those? That's exactly what I did, what we kind of just went through, right? So after a while, brought on some partners, drama, sold the business, and then my time started freeing up again and I kind of like was posting. There's a lot of online Facebook groups. I started posting just randomly in these groups, just like stuff that was working for me in our businesses. And people started asking, hey, like, can you like show me this for me? So I was like, okay, the easiest way I can do this is like to just go make a YouTube video about it and then just like paste it in there. So like a bunch of the first couple of videos that we had where it wasn't even me on the screen, it was just like, just the screen because I was just trying to share people, like, okay, you just click this and do this. And it's just so funny looking back, like this was a year and a half ago now when I started that channel, just purely based on helping, like nothing, I didn't sell anything, I didn't have anything to sell. I literally just had, just I was helping, just tutorials for people to see the progression that it made. Now, when I started, I picked, I just picked YouTube just because I was like, okay, it's the easiest platform to have. And things started catching on, like people started getting good results for their own businesses using these strategies. You know, one thing will lead to another, we've grown pretty, pretty quickly. We've got a ton of students just doing really well for themselves. And now we're actually in the process of launching our supplement business. So we're hoping that is also our next success story. So that's kind of currently where we're at. Supplement or what specific supplements? So we're going to do a new tropic. So do you know what a new tropics are? Oh no. So they help, they increase your memory and focus, right? So what happens like a lot of times, and I'm not sure, maybe some of the listeners feel like this, but like, I knew when I was working nine to five, like I would come home from work. And like, even in the morning, I feel so good. I'm like, I wish I could just stay home and work on my business, like instead, because I have so much energy. Then when I would drive home from work, I would just feel like exhausted, like all the energy was gone, like all that energy. I felt like I was so creative during the day, but I was like wasting it all at my job. So by the time I got home, I was just like so exhausted, tired, and just feeling like I didn't feel like working, basically. And this is so, I started testing out different kinds of, at this time, like different kinds of new tropics, energy drinks, mixing them all together, trying to like wake my ass up, like when I got home from work, so I could like keep working and stuff. So there's a couple different formulations that we've been testing around instead of like doing the thing that I was doing, mixing things together from different brands. It's been a process. Like if anybody's out there that actually wants to start a supplement business, it's a long, long process. Like for sure. So just be weary of that, especially if you're tired. If you like the approval or something like that. Like yeah, you have to do tons of different testing for every single ingredient before they're even mixed together. You gotta get past the FDA. I mean, there's a lot that goes into it. But again, with my supplement, like it's gonna be a continuity. It's gonna be a subscription, right? Like, okay, you can buy it one time from our page, right? And this is all we're gonna sell. Just a supplement, right? I practice in my preach. That's all we're gonna sell. Just a supplement. And then once they buy it, they'll see an upsell page of like, hey, instead of coming here paying $49.99 for this next time, why don't we just put you on our auto ship program where you pay $39.99 a month, right? You get $10 off and we ship you one of these every single month so you're never without it. You're first of line service in case whoever sold out, right? So right there, that's like, even though I'm losing a little bit of margin right there, I'm okay with that because I never have to pay for that customer again, right? Like I never have to pay for that customer ever again. And usually a lot of stuff that we do with our businesses is we drive traffic from Facebook or influencers. We'll get influencers to shout out our products, to make sales. I'm assuming a lot of you guys are just organic. Like they just find you naturally. It's a combination. I think most people are trying or getting to the point where especially because of how Instagram is, right? They're really suppressing a lot of organic views these days. Most people are transitioning to shout outs influencers, Facebook ads. Yeah, I would, if you wanna like a fire under your, like your personal brand, like we did this for a while when we started to give yourself that like that extra push to get to your like first, you know, 10,000 subscribers or whatever you're trying to get to is run ads, not selling anything, but just selling yourself. Just being like, hey, yo, I just released this new music. I just wanted to show you it real quick. If you enjoy it, just make sure you click in the, you know, whatever the corners are with the ads and subscribe, but we're just gonna let this music play right now and see if you like it, right? That's it. You didn't even ask for anything, right? Then they're gonna be disrupted right there. They're gonna like your music, hopefully, and then they're gonna subscribe, right? Then they can click to subscribe. We're in a world where there's search-based marketing and then there's interruption-based marketing, okay? Search-based, that means they went to, you know, Google or YouTube and somehow found you, right? And then interruption-based is what basically you have to do to stand out from everybody else. You have to stop them from scrolling on Facebook, right? You have to get them to pay attention to your YouTube ad, your Instagram ad, whatever it is and get them over to your platform to create that asset, right? Get them into your business, you know, build that relationship with them before they finally go to your business, buy your t-shirt or whatever. But I think that's gonna be a lot of people that are like struggling to get to that first, you know, 1,000 subscribers on YouTube or to get listens to their music. I think you shouldn't focus necessarily, like focus on your music, of course, but you also need to start focusing on how to get people to listen to the music because unfortunately, we don't live in a world where it's like, oh, build it and they will come. They will not come, okay? There's a lot of products that are better, but they don't sell, right? You see this all the time, right? Because some people just, they know how to market it, so the people that are marketing it properly make the sales, even though this product right here might be so much better than this one, but this is the one that's marketing, being marketed to the right audience, to the right niche and is the one making sales. So I think like having some sort of paid traffic and obviously this goes to whatever your budget is to push people to find you because they're not, unfortunately, like I said, it's not enough to just be like, oh, I'm just gonna build it and they're gonna come. Like five years ago, that might have been the case, right? When a lot of these social platforms were new, but now you're basically competing against a ridiculous amount of people that are all basically trying to do the same exact thing, you know? Yeah, and when it comes to having a bootstrap budget, right? I don't have a lot of money. That's not the mindset that I'm in. What do you prefer? Do you prefer the little bit of money that I have? I do $100 over one week, or do you prefer $100 spent $5 a day, $10 a day, or does it not matter for you? I personally prefer to do it like over a period of time. So if you can do it like, like if I had a choice, I would do it like, I would just run $5 a day as long as I could, right? As long as that advertisement is performing well, it's translating to revenue, it's gonna be harder to track that in the beginning. A lot of the money isn't gonna necessarily have a direct correlation to sales, but some of the things that you're gonna be able to do once you build up your audience is like, for example, let's say they land on your funnel, let's just call it store, right? Where they're gonna buy your t-shirt, right? You're gonna be able to retarget to that person, right? On Facebook, on YouTube, on Google, right? Where they can come back and check it out again or give them more information about it. And those, that kind of stuff is so cheap, right? Because only you can target that person, right? With that retarget, because they visited your website. And it sounds complicated, you know? I mean, Facebook is like the easiest thing to use. Like I think anybody can do it with a little bit of just knowledge and learning the platform. But that audience is so much cheaper now to retarget, right? Like for me, with the Commerce and Empire builders, right? If I wanted somebody to come like, you know, give me like a hundred bucks or whatever, right? Like to buy something for me for a hundred bucks with cold people that have never heard from me before, I basically have to pay a hundred bucks to make a hundred bucks, right? That's basically what I have to do. To me, I'm okay with that, because I'm a marketer. I understand that most money is made on the backend and I know that I'll make more than a hundred dollars from that customer. But if I have somebody that viewed one of my YouTube videos and I've retarget them now with an advertisement to buy something from me for a hundred dollars, that now is literally probably gonna cost me like 25 bucks to make a hundred. It's the most profitable thing. So if you already have a YouTube channel, like if you are going to do this, I would be like, hey, you know what? Everybody that's viewed my video ever or all my subscribers, because you can go and see, I don't know if you know that, but like you can go in there and you can retarget people that, you know, the last viewed two days or engaged in the last two days and retarget those people with an offer, they'll buy from you. I can almost guarantee it. And that brings me to a question, because I've been in these discussions before as far as the retargeting period. Of course it's subjective, but like 365 days, which is the maximum they let you go on a lot of platforms is too much, right? But what is for a beginner to some super other as a more general answer, what would you say would be a nice threshold for people to keep it at maximum? So people who engaged or people who have just viewed your content? Both. Both. So I usually, it depends like, it depends on the offer and what it is. If it's like a temporary like offer, like for example, let's say it's just a temporary thing that you're just launching a t-shirt for a week's period. Like I would do everybody I could. I would get all of my subscribers, everybody, because I'll throw as much money as I can at it, right? But if it's something where I'm trying to drive people to a certain website, just to get their email address or something like that, I would keep it like two, three days. I believe we have it set to two days right now, engage. Got it. So when there's financial gain on the other end, then it logically just makes more sense to increase the rise of the pool. Yes. And again, the retargeting campaigns that you have, like for you will be so much cheaper, like cheaper instead of going and being like, oh, I'm just gonna go target people that like music, right? Like you can utilize your retargeting people to like, hey, come check out this shirt that we just launched or whatever you can push them to whatever. Cause you can think about it like a lot of creators, especially on YouTube, they rely on Google AdSense, right? Like to get paid, which is like a shame because that's like peanuts compared to what you can make from your audiences, right? You just have to think about it a little bit. Like maybe it's not, maybe it doesn't make sense to do merge. Maybe it's, they just want to do, maybe they just want access to like a private group where they get to hang out with you every Sunday night, right? You go live for like four hours and you just hang out with everybody, right? And like just like stuff like that. Like, so I have a friend and he has like, he does like, he's like, does meat smoking or whatever the thing is. And he had a Facebook group, a public one and he had like, I think like 50,000 people in there. And he used to just go live in there, teach people how he was smoking meats on like, I think he literally did it on like Saturdays or Sundays. And somebody asked me, you should do like a private group. So he did, he created one for nine bucks a month. You get access to another private Facebook group where he goes live once a week inside there and teaches you what he's doing. How he's, he basically is doing, he's living his life and he just records one piece of it for these people because he would be smoking his meat anyway, right? So it's just a different way of thinking. I like that idea. It depends on your audience. I think yours, I think would because like you have a lot of people that follow you. So they would love to get to know you more, like it's on a personal level and stuff like that. Like, you know what I mean? So- Yeah, I'm kind of weird about stuff. I'm not talking about nature I've been learning but I definitely agree with the thesis and what I think, especially for artists in general, right? People are invested into your lifestyle in general, all right? So there's so many little categories and spaces where you can literally monetize, like you said, something that you're already doing. Just for small, you don't have to do much extra effort. Maybe you pay somebody else to be able to do the recording and uploading and all that stuff for you to make it even easier on yourself. But as far as the amount of effort and energy, you just become a walking, I mean, you know, walking bank or collector just because of the nature of the relationship between fan and artist typically, especially when we get into like little kids and the younger fans. It's a little bit different as an adult. I mean, think about it like this one. I forget what this YouTube channel is, but I think they do like a couple of million dollars a month and the kid just unboxes toys. Yes, yeah. And that kid does like over a million dollars a month and he's like 10 years old, right? Like, you know, so it's like thinking about things Believe it or not, he makes most of his money from referring people to Amazon. So when he, so like for example, here's another good one. Like if you guys like, if you ever refer anything to your customers or to your prospects on a YouTube video or wherever you're doing it, go look if they have an affiliate program. So Amazon, if you go to the bottom footer of Amazon, you could sign up for their affiliate program. So every time you send somebody to Amazon, you get a commission for everything they buy in the next 24 hours. So let's say I recommend a lot of books. So I like reading. So I recommend a lot of books on my YouTube channel. I'm like, okay, go click down below. I have the book. It's my our affiliate link. They'll click it, they go to Amazon. If they buy the book, I'll make a little commission. But then if they decide they wanna buy a 70 inch TV or whatever, I also make commission off that. So just a little way to, you're not gonna, you're not gonna make thousands upon thousands of dollars a month doing this way, but it's like an extra hundred, 200 bucks a month. So it builds up over time, right? It builds up over time. And it's just like, again, thinking about everything that you do in a sense of somehow creating something. Look at top celebrities, Instagram stories. I look at my fiance and stuff. She follows this one influencer. And I love looking at marketing, looking at why people are doing so. I don't use social media as most people do. I just look at it as business. It's purely business. That should be for all you guys. But she follows this one influencer, not a big influencer. She's constantly putting out stories, talking about her life, what she's doing. Next thing you know, she's selling something, right? Boom, my fiance buys it. It's like, boom. But it would have never happened. If she just came out of the blue and was like, oh, I'm gonna sell this thing, right? My fiance wouldn't have bought it. But it's that relationship, right? That, oh, this influencer, I know her life almost. She's showing her doing things with her family and having a fun time. And you start feeling like a connection with that person. So by the time they do refer something, and that's what this girl does. She just refers people to old Navy or whatever. And he's like, oh, I just got this shirt at old Navy. Swipe up to buy it. So she gets paid from old Navy when they buy. So thinking of things like that, that people are gonna buy anyway, to just get them to buy it from you. So you get a cut. Got it. Makes sense. While I'm thinking about it, you mentioned the supplement brand and they are, what is it again? Neurotix? Neutropic? Neutropic, I love that. Neutropics, okay. So that causes me to think, you're an entrepreneur. You've built a lot of businesses. You even talked about some of the ups and downs. What do you do personally when it comes to just getting in a healthy mental space, a healthy just routine in general? Yeah, I love talking about this stuff. And I know a lot of you guys, maybe some of you guys watch this, will be like, oh, it's just a woo-woo stuff. You don't care about mindset, but I can tell you like, since I started working on my mindset that my life has been better. There's three core desires to live a good life, in my opinion. It's your health, wealth, and your relationships. Any one of those that suffers, I don't, you could put anything in life into one of those three buckets. But if any one of those suffers, if your relationship sucks, your wealth is gonna suck. Because they're all connected in a weird way. They all need to be kind of there to be successful and even in any one of them. So in terms of mindset, for me like, I do this thing, like I have like this journal, it's actually right here. And I literally, I've journals for like years, and I love looking back. Like I recommend you do it. Like write down, just start writing things down that you do every single day, and or goals that you have. And I love looking back at them, like from years past, and be like, oh my, it's just so funny looking at myself, like, oh my, a totally different person. But other things I do is like, I create these, I have this journal that I read every morning and every night. So essentially, all of us have this life that we want. It's like, oh, we want a Lamborghini, or we want this mansion, or whatever this goal is. And I believe anybody watching this, anybody that sets any goal for themselves can achieve that, whatever they want. Because if one person can do it, I believe anybody can do it. You just need to figure it out, figure out the path. So what I like to do with this journal is I love to, like the first page of it is like everything I've ever accomplished in my life, like up to this point, right? And every one of us has accomplished something we're proud of, right? I could tell you, like graduating college, graduating high school, maybe you have a kid, like whatever, it could be stupid. Maybe you have a nice car, or whatever it is that you're proud of, put it on this page. Maybe you're proud of your family, or your mom, or whatever it is that you're proud of that you appreciate in your life, put it on this page, and just look at it every single morning. I look at this page and I'm like, okay, this is where I'm currently at in my life, currently things I'm proud of. And then I love to have like a vision board. And on this vision board is like, literally, and this should be fun for people. Putting everything you want that you think would make you happy, right? So you could put like the dumbest material things that you'd want, whatever, you know, watches, like Lamborghinis, houses, right? And then like also put things in there that actually are like not as tangible, like people that you aspire to be like. Who are like people that you look up to? Like maybe there's a book of somebody you read. Maybe there's like, you know, for me like one of them is Walt Disney. I think he was like one of the greatest businessmen that ever existed, right? Like ruthless guy, even though everybody thinks Disney World is such a great place, but he's a ruthless businessman. Like you can add like people don't like working at Disney World because it's like hard. Yeah. I know, I was friends with somebody who interned there. But the thing is it has to be like, sometimes if you're trying to grow a business, like you got to be ruthless sometimes. I mean, to an extent, but I love having these two pages that I look at and like think about and like when I wake up in the morning, I'm going to one, I'm going to know where I'm at in my life and I know where I'm going. So I have like a clear vision of what I'm going to do. And when I read it at night, even though my day might have been like totally shitty, it might have been terrible day, I'm going to read it. Even though the last time you're not going to feel like you're going to I'm too tired, just do it. Read it, look at where you're currently at and what you want to accomplish. What do you want to achieve? Because I can tell you, you're going to sleep better that way too, right? Like you're just going to be like, oh man, like you have all these things that you want to accomplish in life. And I can tell you like weirdly enough, like these things manifest, I'm telling you, they manifest like for example, two years ago, I just read this to my fiance the other day, like two years ago, I said, I wanted like this area that I live in, I said I wanted a brand new construction home, like brand new, never have I ever lived in a new house ever I used to share bedrooms and never do this stuff when I was growing up. But I was like in two years from now, I want to be able to buy us a brand new house. And we just did, this was like brand new house that we just moved into last month. And it's weird how these things, they manifest into reality for you, right? And you have to, like a lot of us, we don't trust that we're on the right path, we second guess ourselves, or are we doing the things that we're supposed to be doing? But you have to become like this, I think part of the process is like understanding where you're currently at, right, which is right here and then where you want to go, which this is gonna force you to do. So is that kind of makes sense? Yeah, I like that. So just some things around what you said, I think there has to be a sense of, you know, being honest of where you're currently at, because you can only work from there. But then also ensuring that the actions are parallel with those desires that you talked about. So was there ever a period where you felt like you were doing something similar of an activity, but it didn't manifest in reality because maybe your actions weren't in line at the time, or maybe it took way, way longer because it took a while for your actions to find out. You know, yeah, I mean, I have things that are my, like there's one thing I really want, like it's probably not gonna happen for like 10 years. Like I want a, I want like a villa in Greece. All right, I love Greece. Like it's my favorite country. And like, I knew like that, like, you know, that's like a long-term thing, because that's like a really expensive thing to ever even own. But yes, like you sometimes, like, and this is becoming, like, you have to like believe that there, so like, this is gonna sound crazy, but like, there is a version of you in the future, like that has all the things you want. Right, because there's like one choice that you can make right now. And I remember like when I quit my job, I was like, I can, I keep saying I'm gonna quit my job. Right, I keep saying, I keep putting it off. I keep saying I'm gonna do it. Right, but like, I'm not like, and there's like some decision that you can make right now in your life that will totally, totally like disrupt where you're going. Right, like that was a decision for me that when I made that decision, I was like, oh, I'm not coming back here and I quit. Right, but I could have still been there right now. Like I could have still been there. I can tell you I wouldn't be where I'm at with that. So you have to think about like, you have to learn, like this is the key, like you have to learn to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because if you're waking up every single morning, like tired or whatever, you're not treating your body right or whatever it is. And you're always just like, you're not uncomfortable. Then yes, you have to start pushing your limits a little bit more, start doing things that you don't want to do. Right, like for me, when I started the YouTube channel, I didn't want to put my face on it. I just didn't. I felt uncomfortable. I was like, oh, I'm just gonna do like a podcast. I don't want to do it. Right, but I can tell you if I got, if I didn't just like, man up and was like, okay, you know, I'm just gonna, you have to push yourself to do things that you don't want to do. Right, like there's a really, there's a really, you think like a lot of these guys that are like billionaires or millionaires, multi-millionaires, like they've done things that they didn't want to do to get to the point that they're at. Right, and you have to think about their stuff that you're probably putting off today. You're like, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow, whatever, with that you know you need to do. Okay, so like for example, like just us talking about this, like monetizing, like taking a step towards doing something like that. Or maybe there's like a song or something that you wanted to put out but you're scared everyone's gonna make fun of you because you put it out or whatever it is. Like just do it, you know, do you know what I mean? Like there are, if you're every day, you're not like, like I am exhausted. Like I obviously self-employed, but like I am mentally like totally drained by that every day. I'm literally physically exhausted at the end of the day. And you should feel that way too. Like if you are actually working hard in your business, you've got like the energy to like, you know, do random things with your friends. Sometimes you got to like put that stuff off, put that stuff off so you can work on the things that matter in your life. And that comes, you know, and I don't know, like for me, I'm not surrounded necessarily by a lot of like successful people. I kind of have to force myself into successful groups of friends online and stuff like that. And I can tell you, a lot of my friends have held me back for a lot of years. I'm comfortable saying that now. So I limit contact with a lot of them, right? We'll hang out like maybe once a month or something like that. They're my friends. They're like people I trust. They're not people that are ever going to be like, oh, you have money now. Like I'll take advantage of me. They're like my, they're my like friends for years and years and years, right? But you have to audit yourself sometimes because if you're trying to get somewhere, like and you're, you are the average of the five people you hang around, whether you believe it or not, right? If all your friends are making like whatever, 10 grand a year or whatever, you're probably making 10 grand a year, right? But I can tell you, if you start hanging around with some higher level people, like for example, when I was at this conference, we were hanging out with a bunch of people that were like making tens of millions of dollars a year. Like you feel it. You feel different standing in a group of these guys that are just like, they're totally normal, just like you and me. But like you feel that the energy they release to you and show you, hey, you know what? This guy, there's nothing special about him. He's a normal, he's just a normal guy like me and you. But like you could tell like the confidence, like the certainty that he has in life, right? And when we're hanging around with people and just like drinking or whatever we're doing, like that is not getting you any closer to where you want to go. So I'm not saying cut off your friends or your family. Don't do that by any means, but start trying to find some people that you can hang around with that are going to stretch you and push your limits. And if that isn't whatever, like I know a lot of you guys are probably like, you know, they're doing the songwriting stuff, like have a group of you guys, so you're talking and holding each other accountable on something, right? Like support each other, right? Like collaborate or something. I don't know, you know what I mean? Like bring each other up together, right? Instead of always doing everything alone. Like I've done stuff so long in my life alone. And like until I found like my own group of people that, you know, we're on the same level as me and we all just grow together. You know, we grow as people, our incomes grow, like, you know, our businesses grow. So like start thinking about like, how can I start, how can you start hanging around with people that think like me, that have the same goals as me, right? Because if you want to be able to share them with other people, so they hold you accountable. Instead of just being like, oh, just writing them in your journal, right? But your friends and believe it or not, unfortunately, like this is like bad to say, but like a lot of your friends and stuff, like they'll support you, but like a lot of them, like once you like find success, like a lot of them will be mad at you. Because you, like when you find success, a lot of people, your family usually not, at least in my case wasn't. I know a lot of people that have lost family, like members due to this kind of stuff, but like when you do find success and you start making money, like a lot of your friends won't like you because they'll see, they'll say, oh, it was easy for you, it was lucky, you got lucky or like whatever, but they don't see like all the hard work that it is. And then you are portraying something that they wish they had done, right? And this is like, this is a very, very important thing to grasp. And this is why I don't necessarily always recommend you say everything to your friend, like that you're doing, but once you start, like, you know, keep it separate, keep your business world, right? And then like your relationship with them separate, you know, don't try and instill your beliefs because you're building a business now and you want like all the support from them. But that's just me, that might just be my experience with it, but. Yeah, you know, that brings me to an interesting question. I never would have thought I would be asking this when I got to, when the interview started, but what about with your relationship and with your fiancee, right? And one, if you care to share, how long have you guys been together? So three years. Okay, so how is that relationship in terms of the amount of work that you probably do, right? And I don't know at what level you guys, you were personally when you guys met, but what is that dynamic of communication like and how do you, and to what extent do you talk about business? Yeah, so it's funny. I was just talking to just a friend of mine about this. Like, so for me, I always recommend like you guys that are, because you're going to be mentally exhausted and you're starting out, it's fine. Like just, you know, if you can commit to working really freaking hard on Monday through Friday, fine. Give yourself Saturday and Sunday off. Like do just hang out with friends, family. Usually for me, I just pick Saturday or Sunday and I'm just hanging out. I'll go meet up with friends, I'll go hang out with my fiancee, go hang out with family, you know, do whatever, right? But like Monday through like Friday, it's like grind time for me. Like I'm up at six in the morning. Usually I work till seven. I'm basically exhausted and then I just hang out with my fiancee first and I get dinner, you know, watch Netflix, hang out, whatever, go to a movie, whatever it is. But it was funny when I was talking about this with my friend, this is actually Allie. And he, he's like, well, like, oh, do you like talk about business? Like and stuff like that. And the thing is, for me, if she was like me, there's no way this would work. Like, hey, I've been here. I love, like I couldn't have, I don't think I could live with somebody like me, dude. Like a hundred percent, like I work ridiculously hard. Like I want to be able to like, when it's time to just hang out, I just want to hang out with somebody. We don't have to talk about business, just talk about life and that's it, right? Like she has like a couple of her own little business that she does, but it's not like, oh, we're just talking about business, business, business all the time. It's just, you know, so it just, that's like a separate thing for me. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? That's what I mean. I know a lot of people, go ahead. No, I was just saying, I'm like that. I can't have that all the time because I can't turn it off myself. So I need people who, who can't. And you, you didn't need to, like me, I think about business 24 seven and you should. You, you shouldn't, if you're starting a business and I tell people this a lot is like, if you're starting a business that you're trying to escape from, then that's, that's the wrong bit. You're in the wrong business. Like I think about business 24 seven, which is a good thing. It's my business. If I don't work in it, nobody is. I'm going to be poor, right? Like, but it's, it's important to like step away from it sometimes and like have that, you know, those times where you don't necessarily talk about it. So usually for me, it's like after seven, you know, Monday through Friday or Saturday. Like I'm just like, you know, I'm just hanging out with my fiance. Not, we don't need to talk about business. Yeah, of course we talk about, hey, what's going on in business in general and stuff like that. But not like, not like, and this is one of the things like when I, when we first started dating, like when I was building my businesses, I was like trying to instill all these things. I'm like, are you excited? Like, oh my God, like, look at all this stuff like I'm doing. And like, she's like, oh, that's cool. Like, so it was, it was different. Like she's seen me like from the point where it's like, we were, I wasn't making as much money when we first met to the point that we're at now. And it's like, she hasn't changed at all. Like it's, it's crazy, man. I was thinking about like, damn, like this is, this was really, this was a really good girl I found because like, I feel like a lot of other people and I'm not saying like I'm banking right now, but like a lot of people would have probably taken advantage of me, right, along the way. Like I've seen it happen with my friends and stuff like that. So like thinking about like that, where, where we were. And to this point, it's like, she's the same person. I'm the, I'm the same person. Like she was there with me even like through all the chaos. I'm telling you like this entrepreneur journey, like, you know, I've battled so many things through it. And like, she's been there. Like when you're building your own business, it's like the toughest thing you'll ever do because you're going to have businesses that fail. You're going to struggle all the time. You're going to feel depressed all the time and you need somebody there that's going to like, you know, still like support you, keep pushing you forward, you know. But yeah, dude, like a hundred percent, like I needed it to be a, at least for me, I know a lot of these power couples that are out there. I don't think I could do that, man. Like me personally, I don't think I could do that. Dope, man. Hey, I always say I try to push as much as possible, man. Self-awareness is everything, you know. I tell everybody, especially when we're talking about the artists, right? This big independent thing, which is essentially being an entrepreneur if you're doing it to the max. You have record labels. Of course, there's a lot of bad things that come with record labels, but if you're not the type to be very entrepreneurial, there's a lot of bad things that come with doing that as well. You have to understand what's going to be the best situation for you. So I love that, you know, you say, hey, power couple, that's a cool thing, but it's not what will work for me. So that's cool. It could work for people out there. Again, I just know my personality. It's not for me. But for other people, like if somebody watching here is doing that and you feel fulfilled and happy, don't, like, this is the most amazing part about being a human being is like, just because one thing is like I like and one thing you don't like, it doesn't matter, right? You don't have to do the same thing as me to feel fulfilled in your life, you know? 100% man, 100%. Hey, well, I really appreciate the conversation, man. It's been a joy talking to you and everybody follow him at Empire Builders. I'll be putting the link in the description just to, you know, multiple links to things that you should check out from Peter. But other than that, are there any thoughts that you would love to leave the audience with? My thing is like, honestly, like it's great to listen to what we just talked about, right? And some people will listen to it and get some ideas from the stuff that we talked about but never actually do anything with it. And like, I'm challenging like whoever, if you got like one little dumb idea, you know, it might have not even been like what we said but it sparked something, like an idea in your head, like act on it because like so many people, they consume a lot of content, they say they're gonna do these things but then they don't ever do it. One of the reasons I think I'm as successful as I've gotten, and I've gotten this like a lot from Emerson Wright team is like, I will, like if I think of something in the morning, like I'm doing it immediately and putting it into play. Place, like I don't wait like two weeks or a week to think about it. Like, and this is a lot of things I've seen from like the people that I've hung around with that are really successful is like, when they get an idea, they just implement it immediately, right? You have to be able to take action quickly on the ideas because the moment you let it sit, right? For a week, you're not gonna have that inspiration that you have in this very moment. Interesting, interesting. I think that's something that is, that's why I always say there's so much more creativity to building a business than people give credit for. Mm-hmm, absolutely. Awesome. Well, hey, once again, this is Peter Pru. You already know who I am, brand man. And I would love to know you guys' thoughts on this conversation. Put it in the, you know, the comment section below. But other than that, if you liked this video, go ahead and hit the like button if you like it, might as well share it. And if you're not subscribed, you know what to do, hit that subscribe.