01:20:18 · Hussein Fazal, John Coogan, Alex Hormozi, Jordi Hays
[01:20:18] S8: Yeah. [01:20:18] S0: What is the right balance? How should entrepreneurs think in the modern era? Like, if you're starting a company, consumer product in 2026, what's the right level of social media and and actual owned content without it becoming, like, fake work? [01:20:32] S3: What do you mean by fake work? [01:20:33] S0: Fake work would be, like, you're you're growing your following account, but you're not growing your cash flow [01:20:39] S3: or your actual Yeah. [01:20:40] S1: There's a generation of entrepreneurs and, like, you're probably a huge driver of this that are, like, that are, like, I need to work I need to, like, I need to build my personal brand. Yeah. And they don't realize that, like, if they just make an amazing product that millions of people benefit from, they just default get the personal brand and they could just if you care about, like, attention and being on camera, then you could just do that later. But maybe just make something amazing. [01:21:02] S0: And also your personal brand is an actual media company that has cash flow. Yeah. And it's like a successful business. [01:21:08] S1: You wouldn't you wouldn't be you wouldn't I I don't think you'd be like on camera if you weren't making money. No. I wouldn't. I hated it. [01:21:13] S3: Yeah. It was, like, it was very hard for me to decide to do this.
01:21:13 · Alex Hormozi, John Coogan
[01:21:13] S3: Yeah. It was, like, it was very hard for me to decide to do this. [01:21:15] S0: Yeah. But there's a lot of people that are basically doing the media for the cloud, and they don't and they and they think put it it's fake work because they're saying they're justifying the cloud chasing by, saying, oh, it's marketing for my business. [01:21:27] S3: If what you do does not translate into the money that you make and money that you make is the goal Mhmm. Then you are doing work that is not effective. [01:21:34] S0: Yeah. [01:21:36] S3: If to the the example you gave earlier, if you start a a business and you get better at media and the media is making more money than your existing business, then maybe you're better at media than you were at your business. Yeah. And maybe that should be your business. Yeah. And that's fine. Think constantly being flexible about reassessing what the market wants versus what you have. [01:21:51] S0: Yeah. [01:21:52] S3: You know, I think says this, you know, determined on goal and flexible on path or whatever way he says that. And he's also a great example of what's Basis' personal brand? Well, everyone knows who he is. Does he make a lot of content? No. Why? Just happens to own Amazon. Right? Yeah. And so I think it depends on what what, sphere you wanna get into. This is kind of interesting. If you were to say, wanna be a big b to b influencer, you cannot be a b big b to b influencer without evidence that you are good at business. Period. Mhmm. You could take and there's plenty of people who take word for word the stuff that I say.
01:21:52 · Alex Hormozi, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[01:21:52] S3: You know, I think says this, you know, determined on goal and flexible on path or whatever way he says that. And he's also a great example of what's Basis' personal brand? Well, everyone knows who he is. Does he make a lot of content? No. Why? Just happens to own Amazon. Right? Yeah. And so I think it depends on what what, sphere you wanna get into. This is kind of interesting. If you were to say, wanna be a big b to b influencer, you cannot be a b big b to b influencer without evidence that you are good at business. Period. Mhmm. You could take and there's plenty of people who take word for word the stuff that I say. [01:22:24] S1: Aren't there there's probably some good counterexamples to that. We don't need we don't need to name that. [01:22:29] S0: Yeah. You know, it's it's tough. It's tough. [01:22:31] S3: Like Right. [01:22:32] S0: There's people that [01:22:32] S3: I would say the biggest the big I think the biggest b to b influencer right now is Elon. Oh, sure. Sure. Right. And he also has the biggest business and is the richest man. Yeah. Right? And so and that I think that just cascades all way down. The only reason that so, like, I was I had a podcast that started in July 2017. That's when I started. It was called Jim Secrets, and I rebranded it as just the game. [01:22:49] S1: The game. [01:22:50] S3: But the as I continue to make it, we went from, like, you know, 2,000 downloads a month to millions [01:22:56] S0: Yeah.
01:22:56 · John Coogan, Alex Hormozi, Josh Zoffer, Jordi Hays
[01:22:56] S0: Yeah. [01:22:57] S3: When I sold my company for 46,200,000. And then people were like, oh, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. [01:23:02] S7: Yeah. [01:23:02] S3: And then the brand took off because I had evidence. [01:23:05] S0: Legitimacy. Yeah. [01:23:06] S3: And so I think that the amount of legitimacy that you need to be an influencer depends on the risk that the consumer has in taking action on the nature of the content that you're making. And so if I'm a beauty influencer, if I buy lipstick or I do a a, you know, a lash technique, I'm yeah. I'm getting water so I'm not familiar with you. You paint your face in some way. Right? Expert. The risk is relatively low. [01:23:31] S1: Sure. [01:23:31] S3: Right? You move a little bit over here and you got, like, personal finance. Well, it's like, who's the biggest there? Dave. And then there's there's some of the new age ones, Erica Culver. She's got her but she was also and there's Vivian too, I think. But, like, they have some credibility behind. And, like, there's tons like, if a teacher isn't in her basement talking about how you should invest in the S and P five hundred and says exactly what Warren Buffett says, and maybe they even say it a little bit more compelling than the way that Warren Buffett says, they won't be Warren Buffett because they just forgot to build Berkshire Hathaway. [01:24:01] S0: Sure. Sure. Sure.
01:24:01 · John Coogan, Alex Hormozi
[01:24:01] S0: Sure. Sure. Sure. [01:24:02] S3: And so it's like the proof is the pudding, I think. At least my perspective on media is the proof is the pudding, but it varies in terms of how much proof you need. Now, if you're ugly as shit, very hard to be a beauty influencer. [01:24:13] S0: Yeah. That is that way [01:24:15] S3: But if you can use but if you are ugly and then you paint your face so well that you become hot Oh. Then you absolute yeah. Because you have evidence. Yeah. Right? And you have a more dramatic point. No. A 100%. This is how it works. [01:24:25] S0: Yeah. I like that. Talk about status seeking. It seems like in Silicon Valley, there's often you know, Naval talks about this, like, there's value Silicon Valley. Yeah. Well well, well, that's what I wanna know. In Silicon Valley, there's a lot of trend chasing, there's a lot of status seeking, and there's value in, like, doing low status activities. And I'm wondering in in mid market entrepreneurship, small businesses, like, what is the shape of that? Is it different than Silicon Valley? Is it less pronounced, more pronounced? Like, what is the version of, look, you just need to run a series of golf courses and be happy with that that type of thing or whatever whatever the equivalent is? [01:25:01] S3: I think it depends on who they compare themselves to. [01:25:02] S0: I think
01:25:02 · John Coogan, Alex Hormozi, Jordi Hays
[01:25:02] S0: I think [01:25:03] S3: it just comes down to that. Think tech guys compare them to some other tech guys, and they want approval from tech guys, and so they do the the activities that tech guys approve of. Yeah. If you're an HVAC guy, then it's gonna be you're gonna do the activities that HVAC people Yeah. Think are cool if they're the peer group that you actually, compare yourself to. Sure. Which they might not be. Yeah. And to be fair [01:25:19] S1: I love the tech guys that that sell their business for 9 figures and then are like, I need a cash flowing lifestyle business ASAP. Yeah. I know a lot of them. [01:25:28] S3: Yeah. A lot. Like, a crazy amount. Like, gas stations. Like, it's a lot. [01:25:33] S0: How bad is that? Bad? [01:25:36] S3: What do you mean? [01:25:36] S0: Like because I I imagine it's a grass is greener on the other other other side thing where they enjoyed building their business. They sold it. They have all this cash, but they want cash flow. They want the stability of the cash flow. And so they want the idea of of running a small [01:25:49] S3: Every month. [01:25:50] S0: And they don't exactly. But they don't think about what it means to, like, at 2AM, your gas station got robbed and you gotta go down there and sort it out with the cops or something like that. And so I'm wondering about, like, what is the actual lesson there for someone who's, like, about to get over their skis.