 Hey, welcome back to the channel. So we're getting close to the end of the year, 2021. It's December 27th as I filmed this and it's been the best year by far for both my business and just overall life. And so I want to close this out. I like to do reflecting at the end of the year and figure out what went wrong and what didn't. And I want to share with you the five biggest lessons I learned in 2021. And I'm looking at my phone here. I have it written down so I don't forget. I'm gonna keep this pretty informal and I'm just gonna walk through these lessons one by one with you so you can take this and use it for building a better, a bigger and better 2022. So we'll jump into that in a second. Make sure that if you're enjoying the content you hit the like and subscribe button, helps me out and also helps to show it to other people who can benefit from this as well. And so let's jump into the first lesson here that I learned in 2021. And that is those who build communities are gonna win in the long run. So people really underestimate the amount of time it takes other people to make a decision, especially a buying decision where there's money exchanging hands involved. Now, when you have a community you're able to build a bond with your audience every day. And I'll talk about a few different ways that I do that in one of these other lessons here, but you're able to build a bond with your audience every day and move them closer and closer and closer to a decision. And if you're running a business, a buying decision with you every day. You're also able to directly listen to people's problems and their pain points and look at what they're struggling with so that you can create the best offers and solutions that solve those problems. Now, if you don't have a community you're starting from pretty much scratch every day because you're reaching out to strangers, people who are cold and don't know you, which can definitely work. You can close clients and customers that way, but it's a lot harder than if you have a community or an audience built up. So one of the best examples I can think of around this, a company who has done really well in the community building aspect is ClickFunnels. And if you watch my channel or you're a marketer or a business owner you probably know ClickFunnels and Russell Brunson who's the founder of ClickFunnels. Now, ClickFunnels is just a software. It's a landing page software and a funnel building software. You can build these multiple page websites where you're selling products and services or anything online that you wanna sell. And there are dozens of competitors out there who sell the same thing at a cheaper price and also probably do it better than ClickFunnels does where they have less bugs and they move a lot quicker. The software is a lot faster but because of the community that ClickFunnels has built up they're, I'm not really sure exactly where they're at now but they're $150 million plus company, I'm pretty sure. And a multiple billion dollar valuation. So Russell Brunson, I don't remember exactly when he started the group but they have a Facebook group with hundreds of thousands of people in there and they built a community around funnel building, right? Becoming funnel builders. And because they have this community there's people who will buy from nobody else but ClickFunnels and whenever they launch new offers like new books and courses and different products they have this community to tap into where they can get sales right away because there's people and audiences of people who trust ClickFunnels because of this community they built. So that's lesson number one is I really think those who build communities are gonna win in the long run because like ClickFunnels if you are building an audience and a community around your business and around your company whether you are a business with a big team or if you're an individual or a personal brand I think building a community is gonna set you up nicely in the long run because you get to bond with your audience and bond with your community over time and move them closer and closer to making a decision with you. The second lesson I learned is an amazing offer beats amazing sales and marketing every time. A lot of online business owners and just business owners in general and entrepreneurs think when they're not getting enough customers and clients that there is something wrong with their sales and marketing. And a lot of times it's because of their offer, right? It's because of what they're offering to the market. And an offer is not the same as a product or service. So an example, I went out this year, I do emails and I write emails for other businesses as a service but I changed my offer up this year. And now what I do is I work on 100% performance basis and I only get paid off of the sales that I generate through my campaigns. So I don't charge any upfront fee, I don't charge a monthly recurring fee for my service, 2K, 3K, 5K per month. I charge a percent of whatever I bring in, whatever sales I bring in. Typically that's between 25 and 30% but I only get paid on my performance, right? The results that I bring. So that's a much better offer, right? Me going to other businesses and saying, hey, don't pay me anything, you only pay me based off of what I get you and we share in the upside. That's a much better offer than, hey, pay me five grand a month and maybe I'll get your results, right? Now what that's meant for my business is I don't really need to do any hard selling or convincing or jumping on all these phone calls anymore because my offer is so good. So I can just go and send a one to two sentence cold email to people and get people lining up interested wanting to learn more about my service because the offer is so good. The other thing is I've talked to hundreds of people at this point for this new offer that I started in 2021 and I haven't once been asked for case studies or testimonials or proof or anything because the offer again is so good. So if I were to tell somebody to pay me five grand a month and I might get them results, they're gonna ask for my references. They're gonna ask to see all my case studies and my testimonials because there's no trust there. But if I'm asking them to just pay me based on the upside and the results I generate, there's no reason for them to ask that because the offer itself is so good. There's no risk to them. It doesn't take them any time or any extra effort. I'm going in and doing the work and they're getting a piece of the pie of whatever I generate for them. So that's lesson number two. An amazing offer beats amazing sales and marketing every time. Lesson number three is the highest ROI that you're ever gonna make is gonna be investing in leveling up your skillset and your network. So this year alone I've invested probably around $42,000 or so in coaching and courses and mentorship and joining these other communities of other entrepreneurs and people who are doing cool things in their life and their business. And I do this pretty much every year or at least for the last three years or so and it always pays off. So this year specifically I invested over $20,000 with one of my mentors Travis Sego and I have no doubt over the next few years over the life of my career it's gonna result in millions of dollars for my business and my income. So there's very few areas where you can invest 20K or 30K and get 100X returns on that over the life of your career. I've learned skills from mentoring under Travis that I'm gonna be using for the next 20, 30 years for the rest of my career. I also look around for communities and people who are doing cool things in their life and their business people that I wanna connect with and I buy access to those communities so that I can network with these people and potentially partner up with them in the future. And have a number of partnerships that have opened up this year where it's gonna result in six figures or more in deals down the line for the next few years that started from these communities that I'm joining. So while I do like these investments like crypto and stocks and real estate and all these other things I think investing in your skill set and investing in the right network and having the right people in your surroundings is gonna be the best ROI investment that you ever make. So that's lesson number three. Now lesson number four is to look at and treat your online business like a garden. So what I mean by that is every day I'm doing these three things here. Number one is I'm planting new seeds. So I'm adding new people to my audience every day. Number two is I'm watering those seeds and you can think of this like content, right? Like I mentioned in the first lesson I'm trying to move people closer and closer to a buying decision with me and bonding with my audience and my community. That's what content does. So I'm watering those seeds. Number three is I'm harvesting these money trees when they're ready to be harvested, right? Once for bearing fruit. And so these three things I'm doing every day I'm planting new seeds or building my audience. I'm watering those seeds using content and I'm harvesting those seeds, which is basically sales, right? When it's ready to be harvested. And nowadays because I do these three things every day I have something to harvest every day because I've been doing it for a year and a half, two years now, but it wasn't always like this. When I first started out I was trying to just go straight for the harvest, right? Go straight for the sale without planting new seeds growing my audience and creating content to move people closer and closer to me. And so if you're struggling to get customers and clients and struggling to get sales think about your online business like a garden, right? Are you planting new seeds every day? Are you watering those seeds? And are you only harvesting once those seeds are ready to be harvested? Once those trees, those money trees are ready to be harvested. I've been focusing on these three things for the last two years or so and that's when my business really started to take off. When I started doing these three things daily. So that's lesson number four is your online business is just like a garden and make sure you're doing those three things every day, right? Planting, watering and harvesting. And lesson number five is it's all about leverage. You should always be looking for more leverage in your business. Now, my simple definition for leverage is getting the most out for everything that you put in, right? Getting the most amount of output for every ounce of input that you put in. A few examples of this. Number one is my digital products, right? I can take my intellectual property and the knowledge that I built up in the expertise I built up over time and turn that into digital products that I can create once and sell over and over and over again. Another example is this new service offering that I rolled out this year on a performance basis. So I get paid based off of the results I generate. I work with these higher ticket information and course businesses. And I can write a single email and get a client that's paying $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 a month and get a percentage of that on an ongoing basis. So a tiny amount of work for ongoing pay and ongoing income from that. Another example is content, right? So I can create a piece of content on email, on Twitter, on YouTube, in my Facebook group and I can just repurpose it across all those channels and use it to grow my audience and get sales from that. Another example is just selling to my existing customers. So I have thousands of customers at this point who have bought one or multiple of my offers. And one of the easiest sales I can make is just go into that customer list and selling them a product or a service that helps them with that next challenge they have. And because these are existing customers, there's very little hard selling I have to do because there's already that trust built up from buying my other products and just from watching and viewing my content. So these are all examples of these high leverage areas in my business where I can put in a tiny amount of work and get a lot of upside for that. So to find these areas in your business, just ask yourself, where can I put in a tiny amount of effort that will give me a massive payoff, a massive upside going forward. And that's gonna help you find these areas of leverage in your business. So those are the five lessons, my biggest lessons of 2021 to review those again. Number one is those who build communities will win in the long run. Number two is an amazing offer beats amazing sales and marketing every time. Number three is the highest ROI you're ever gonna have is leveling up your skill set and also your network. Lesson number four is your online business is just like a garden and you should be doing those three things that I talked about every day, right? Planting, watering and harvesting. And number five is it's all about leverage getting the most out for every ounce of work that you put in. So I hope you found that useful. If you did give it a like and also let me know in the comments which one of these five lessons was the most valuable to you or the most surprising. I like I mentioned 2021 best year yet personally, but I think 2022 is gonna be even better. So thank you so much for sticking around so far the last two years I've been creating content. So whether you are subscribed here, my YouTube channel or you're following me on Twitter or my Facebook group or my email list I appreciate you following along. Hope you've been enjoying the content and I can't wait for 2022 to make it even bigger and better than this year. If you wanna follow along with the free content or any of my paid offerings to work with me directly go check out the description below all the different offers free and paid or in there but that's gonna wrap up this video. So that is it for me. I'm looking forward to 2022 and I'll see you in the next one. Take it easy.