The argument in one line.
Staying broke as an entrepreneur is almost never about talent or timing -- it is about three invisible programs running in the background: what you believe about money, the business model you have chosen, and the metrics you are measuring success by.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- An entrepreneur who has been working hard for one to three years and still is not hitting income goals they feel are reasonable.
- A content creator or coach who is measuring progress by followers or views and wondering why that hasn't translated to revenue.
- Someone who grew up in a household or community where wealth felt like it belonged to a different category of people -- not them.
- A solopreneur stuck on low-ticket offers or a stair-step pricing mindset who suspects there is a faster path.
- Anyone who has felt discouraged enough to consider quitting their business because the scoreboard hasn't moved.
SKIP IF…
- You are already clear on mindset fundamentals and are looking for tactical execution frameworks rather than belief-level resets.
- You want data-backed business strategy -- this is primarily personal narrative and mindset philosophy with some model guidance.
The full version, fast.
Most entrepreneurs stay broke not because of the economy or their niche, but because of three invisible programs: a broke mindset (a thermostat set to a low wealth identity that cancels out any money that comes in), a broke model (pursuing low-ticket courses, follower counts, or arbitrary stair-step pricing when high-ticket direct offers are available), and broke metrics (optimizing for followers and views instead of revenue per client, LTV, and profit margin). Each one can be changed by a single decision -- to cut off the old belief and install a new one -- and the host claims all three shifted for him between ages 26 (food stamps, under $500/month) and 35 (seven-figure annual income and net worth in the same year).
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:35
01 · Hook and promise
Three invisible reasons none of which are what you think. The software metaphor established. Wealth becomes inevitable once you fix them.
00:35 – 06:00
02 · Personal origin story
Rock star dream failed. Moved to Florida with pregnant wife. Lost two jobs in 10 months. Applied for food stamps. Made under $500/month. The shame of it. Low bar: just didn't want to hate his job.
06:00 – 09:00
03 · The crack in the ceiling
Pressure forced a search for something new. Discovered Pat Flynn posting $112k monthly income reports. Brain cracked open. Realized wealth was a knowledge gap, not a category difference.
09:00 – 28:00
04 · Reason 1: Broke Mindset
Thermostat metaphor. Mindset is identity. Three broke beliefs: money is evil, making money is hard, wealth is for other people. Decision (de + cide) as the mechanism. First sale at $47 in 2010 shifted his belief. Became a millionaire at 35.
28:00 – 38:00
05 · Reason 2: Broke Models
Low-ticket courses, chasing followers, and trend-hopping are broken models. GPS analogy: people choose the slowest route. Tanya story: a $25k offer priced at $10k because she thought she had to earn her way up. There are no offer police.
38:00 – 44:30
06 · Reason 3: Broke Metrics
Mirror vs blood work analogy. Followers, views, likes are vanity. Iko: 500 subscribers, $30k/month. Real metrics: revenue per client, LTV, profit margin, MRR. Broke metrics destroy hope. Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
44:30 – 45:41
07 · Close
All three hit him simultaneously at 26. Software can be uninstalled. None of it is permanent. Decide today and watch what changes.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The hardest-working entrepreneurs are often the most broke -- effort is not the variable that separates broke from wealthy.
- Your mind operates like a thermostat: no matter how much money comes in, you will self-sabotage back to the wealth level your identity is set at.
- Giving a broke person more money doesn't make them wealthy -- it just gives a broke-mindset person a temporarily higher balance.
- The word 'decide' comes from Latin roots meaning 'to cut off' -- a real decision eliminates the alternative, not just prefers one option.
- Low-ticket courses and chasing followers are business models that have become structurally harder to make work, regardless of execution quality.
- There are no offer police -- you can skip straight to your highest-value price point without earning your way up through lower tiers first.
- A client with 500 YouTube subscribers can make $30,000 a month; a creator with 1 million followers can make a fraction of that.
- Followers and views are the mirror; revenue per client, LTV, and profit margin are the blood work -- only one tells you the true health of your business.
- Hope deferred makes the heart sick -- broke metrics are dangerous not just because they waste time, but because they erode the faith required to stay in the game.
- Inflation means making a million dollars this year is objectively more valuable than making a million dollars in ten years -- speed to wealth is not greed, it is math.
- The middle class may always have been a mirage: broke-mindset people with access to debt, not genuine wealth.
- You don't want to climb fast if it's the wrong building -- model selection matters more than execution speed.
- Wealth became inevitable for the host not when he got richer, but when he decided it was inevitable -- identity preceded the outcome.
- Content optimized for virality and content optimized for client attraction are not the same thing -- and confusing them is a business-ending error.
Three programs that keep entrepreneurs financially stuck.
WHAT TO LEARN
Financial stagnation in entrepreneurship is almost never about external conditions -- it is about three internal programs that run invisibly until you name and replace them.
- Your subconscious belief about what level of wealth is 'normal for you' functions like a thermostat: windfalls, viral moments, and big clients all get cancelled out until you reset the set-point.
- A belief is not something you accumulate through experience -- it is a decision you make; the moment you decide money is easy and wealth is for you, your behavior and attention begin to reorganize around that new identity.
- Judging people who have money is not a moral stance -- it is evidence that you believe money is evil, which means your subconscious is actively repelling it from your own life.
- Low-ticket courses and follower counts are models that can work but are structurally harder to scale now -- choosing the wrong model means working hard on the slowest route to the destination.
- There is no legitimate reason to price below your offer's value and work your way up -- skipping to the correct price saves years and is not subject to anyone's permission.
- Followers and views are the mirror; revenue per client, lifetime value, and profit margin are the blood work -- one tells you what you want to see, the other tells you what is actually true.
- Broke metrics are dangerous not primarily because they waste time, but because they repeatedly produce discouragement -- and an entrepreneur who loses hope exits the game before the compounding can happen.
- Staying in the business long enough is itself a strategy: the host made $10,000 in his first full year and nearly quit, then went on to earn that amount in a day.
Terms worth knowing.
- Broke mindset
- A set of subconscious beliefs about money -- that it is evil, hard to make, or reserved for other types of people -- that causes a person to unconsciously repel or undo financial gains, regardless of how much effort they put in.
- Thermostat metaphor
- The idea that every person has a subconscious wealth set-point, like a home thermostat, that will always pull their financial life back to its baseline temperature -- whether through bad decisions, overspending, or self-sabotage.
- Upper limit problem
- Gay Hendricks' term for the tendency to subconsciously set a ceiling on how much success, happiness, or wealth you allow yourself to experience, then create problems to pull yourself back below that ceiling.
- Broke model
- A business structure that cannot produce significant wealth regardless of how well it is executed -- for example, selling low-ticket courses at insufficient volume, or building an audience with no monetization path.
- Broke metrics
- Vanity measurements (followers, views, likes, engagement) that feel like progress but have no direct relationship to revenue, often used as a proxy for business health when the real indicators are LTV, profit margin, and revenue per client.
- LTV (Lifetime Value)
- The total revenue a business expects to earn from a single customer over the entire relationship, as opposed to a single transaction. A core metric for businesses focused on long-term retention rather than one-off sales.
- Client magnet
- Content specifically engineered to attract and convert ideal clients, as distinct from content engineered for reach or virality -- the host's framework for content strategy.
- Psychocybernetics
- Maxwell Maltz's model of the brain as a goal-seeking system that automatically course-corrects toward whatever target has been programmed into it, like a torpedo locked onto a destination.
- SNAP program
- The U.S. federal food assistance program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), colloquially known as food stamps, referenced by the host as the low point that preceded his financial transformation.
Things they pointed at.
00:57bookRebel
11:55bookThe Big Leap
25:55bookA Changed Mind
26:50bookPsychocybernetics
35:00product10K Offer Challenge
43:40productEffortless Business
Lines you could clip.
00:11
“What's actually keeping you broke is invisible. It's running in the background like software you didn't know you installed.”
12:00
“Give a broke person more money, they still are a broke person. It doesn't make them wealthy.”
31:40
“There are no offer police that are gonna bang down your door and say you can't just jump to $25,000. Who do you think you are?”
39:40
“Broke metrics feel like you're winning, but you're not.”
42:50
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick. The way to win in business is to stay in the game long enough to win.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogystory
00:00There are three reasons most entrepreneurs stay broke their entire career, and none of them are what you probably think. It's not the economy.
00:08It's not your niche. It's not your following size. It's not even your work ethic.
00:13In fact, some of the hardest working people that I know are also the most broke. What's actually keeping you broke is invisible. It's .
00:24And the good news is that you can delete it. And today I'm going to show you exactly what it is and how to fix it because once you do, wealth isn't a goal anymore. It's inevitable.
00:36Now you may not know this but my dream growing up was to be a professional musician. I literally wanted to be a rock star.
00:43I wanted to get a record deal. I wanted to tour and I wanted to make music videos on MTV which kind of shows my age and, um, that dream was something I pursued hard in high school and college.
00:57I made a record, shopped around the labels and I talk about this story in great length in my second book Rebel. Suffice it to say the dream didn't come true and I found myself a few years later at age 26 a thousand miles away from home with my very pregnant wife who then gave birth to our first daughter Chloe.
01:17We just bought our first house. We were moving to Florida for the first time from Virginia. And then I subsequently lost my second job in a span of ten months.
01:28So picture this, I'm 26 years old. I have a wife. I have a baby.
01:33I have a mortgage.
01:35I don't know very many people in this new town, just a few people that we moved here with to help start a church. I'm volunteering at this church as their musician, as their worship leader leading the band, and I have no way to make money.
01:47Now we had some savings, but we burned through that savings. So then I found myself at the end of myself, and I ended up doing something I never thought I would do, not something I never wanted to do, it never even crossed my mind which was applying for aid, applying for food stamps, they call it the SNAP program and the government qualified me because I made so little money.
02:10I made less than $500 a month. I was doing some odd gigs here and there.
02:14And so they paid for our groceries for eighteen months. And this was the most embarrassing, um, shameful, like, what is happening to me moment of my life.
02:23And I say all this to say that I never
02:28thought I would get rich. Um, that wasn't the goal. And
02:34But I certainly didn't think I'd be poor.
02:37And so
02:40what came up for me were a lot of feelings and a lot of ideas. And in fact, the thought that I had when I lost my second job during that period and I was on food stamps was I I don't want much.
02:53I don't want much. I wasn't angry that I wasn't rich. It wasn't like I've been trying to get wealthy and it wasn't happening.
03:01I actually had a really low bar. I just wanted to make enough to pay the bills and not have to work a job I hated.
03:11And I I think that's fine if that's your goal, but I I think that revealed something actually really sad about myself is I didn't even dream of more.
03:22I was already surrendered to the fact there's no way I'm gonna be rich. In fact, I wouldn't say this out loud, but knowing myself because I am myself and I live with my thoughts, when I analyze my thoughts from the past and I'm and I I have some awareness of how did I think back then?
03:39And and one way to know how you thought is how you talked and who you spoke to and what you spoke about. I realized that I subtly play the victim, and I was subtly saying and acting as if there are rich people and then there are not rich people.
03:54I didn't think I'd be poor, but I certainly didn't think I'd be rich. And it was almost like they're just different people than me. Like, there's no way I'm gonna be one of those rich people.
04:02I mean, heck, my only skill set is music and music recording. And most musicians don't make any money, and most recording engineers don't make any money.
04:11There's a very select few at the very, very top that make all the money, not because they've done anything wrong. They've been incredibly blessed, they deserve it. They're really, really good at what they do, but most people in this industry don't make money.
04:21And so it never crossed my mind to even want wealth. I never and and the reason why is I didn't wanna be disappointed.
04:28I don't want to want something, and I certainly didn't want to back then, dream about something and then not get it and be disappointed.
04:36So it's almost like I just gave up and surrendered. Right? Like, my friends that I went to high school with and college with, they were all becoming lawyers and doctors and investment bankers.
04:47They had degrees that led to good jobs with big salaries, and they were gonna be the guys driving the BMW and and having a nice house in the nice part of town.
04:58And while those things would be nice, I just didn't even allow myself to want those things. Does this make sense?
05:04And so I wrongly believed rich people are just different,
05:10and they must be lucky. They must be mega smart.
05:15They potentially did something illegal. A lot of people think that, but I I didn't think most people that were rich did something illegal.
05:22But I didn't think I could be one of those people. Never imagined myself.
05:28I don't know about you. I don't know if that's your story. I don't know if you have always assumed you're never gonna have a lot of money.
05:35But if you're listening to the sound of my voice, it's probably something you're not okay with. You want wealth. You don't wanna stay broke, whatever level that is for you.
05:45But something changed. Um, in that period of being broke and needing to figure something out, it's amazing what little pressure will do when you have to make something work.
05:54When what you're doing is no longer working, and you need to create something new, and find something new that works, it's amazing what you discover.
06:04Jesus says it really powerfully in Matthew chapter seven on the Sermon on the Mount. Seek, and you will find what you are seeking. Ask, and you will receive what you're asking for.
06:16Knock, and the door will be opened to you. So if you seek what you if you excuse me. If you find what you seek, well, that's really interesting because I was finding what I was seeking when I didn't wanna make a lot of money.
06:30I was finding myself. I was finding other people that didn't make a lot of money. They weren't ambitious.
06:34But the moment I needed to find something new, I had to go seek for something new, I found new things. And one of the things I found was that there were bloggers on the Internet making a lot of money.
06:46And I said, what in the world? These aren't people with degrees, although they might have had degrees, but they're not lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, celebrities, pro athletes, running big businesses.
06:59They weren't the head of, you know, Meta and Google and Tesla. Like, they weren't those types of people. They were a different crop of people that were making a ton of money.
07:10Um, one of the first that I saw when I knew how much he was making was Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. He was posting his monthly income reports, which was so amazing.
07:22Uh, and Pat's an amazing guy, by the way, I've been privileged to be a guest on his podcast. But he would literally post how much he made every month. And I was seeing things like, oh, last month, I made a $112,000.
07:34And I'm like, wait. What?
07:36You made that in a not only a year, you made that in a month? Like and you run a blog talking about
07:45how to build a business? Like, don't even where does the money come from? Like, my brain was, like, cracked open, and I I realized they figured something out that I haven't figured out yet.
07:56And
07:57I got so intrigued. Like, I'm gonna figure this out. Maybe I won't be making a $112,000 a month like Pat Flynn, and the reality is I didn't.
08:06But these days, make a heck of a lot more than that per month, which is pretty wild. I make that in a day a lot of times. So that would have my brain would have exploded if me now told me then that that you could do 6 figures in a day.
08:19It didn't even make sense. But I was at least curious to discover they know something about money that I don't know.
08:28And there must be more to know that I don't know. And I went on a quest to figure it out. And what I'm here to share with you today really briefly are the three things that are keeping you broke, and they're invisible, and they're hidden, and I guarantee you're struggling with one of these things.
08:45If you're not where you want to be financially, however you like to measure that, that might be a certain amount you wanna make every month. It might be a certain, uh, net worth amount you want to have. It might be how that shows up in the physical world, like you're not living in the neighborhood you want to live in.
08:59You're not driving the kind of car you want to drive. You're not taking the kind of trips you want to take or sitting on the part of the plane that you wanna sit on. And I know these things are material and they don't matter that much, but they represent something to you that you have made it financially into a different category or echelon from where you're at.
09:15However you measure it, I can't measure that for you. If you're not there yet, it's because you're struggling with one or all of these three things.
09:25Okay. The great news is
09:29is that these things are just things that have been programmed into you and they can be an unprogrammed. They can be uninstalled. It's not it's not you.
09:36It's not your talent. It's not even your background where you come from. Like, you might have come from a harder background than others, but that doesn't determine your future.
09:44Okay? It's just the programming. And that's just such great news is you can uninstall bad programming.
09:50So it's not luck. It's not about timing. It's not about talent.
09:54Just let's pull back the curtain on these three things. Once you see them, delete these bad programs and install these new pieces of software as it were, these new operating systems, wealth becomes inevitable for you.
10:05Okay. So number one thing keeping you broke was, and for me and it is for you, your broke mindset.
10:11Mindset might be a trendy word, might be a buzzword, and you might be like, who cares about mindset? Please care about mindset. Mindset is more important than anything else.
10:18It's more important than your skill set. It's more important than your tool set. It's more important than your team set.
10:23However you wanna measure it. Mindset is everything. Robin Sharma said it famously, everything is created twice, first in the mind, then in reality.
10:34Everything begins with how you think. Proverbs 27, I think, verse three says, as a man thinks, so is he.
10:43Proverbs four twenty three, guard your heart above all else. The word heart there in the Hebrew, I believe it's Leb, correct me if I'm wrong, Hebrew scholars, means your inner man, your mind, your heart, the the the core of your being.
10:59Guard your inner man. Guard your mind. Guard your heart the way you think everything, inner being, because it determines the course of your life.
11:09This is powerful stuff. This is not woo woo. This is a reality.
11:12We know psychology tells us that you're always moving towards your strongest thoughts. So how you think, what you believe determines absolutely everything about what you do and how you show up and what you receive in life.
11:26I'm telling you, mindset is powerful, and so if you aren't where you want to be financially, it's probably because of a broken mindset.
11:34And not just broken, but a broke mindset. When I was 26, had a broke mindset and didn't know it. I probably have what I would categorize as a middle class mindset, but the middle class is dying, and it's really now you're seeing and it may have always been this way.
11:50It may be this is a theory I need to test and maybe do an episode on this, that the middle class is just a mirage all along. It's kind of a myth. It's always been broke people and rich people, but the middle class was this unique moment in time, at least in America and some other Western nations, where there was this group of people that are still broke mindset people, but they had this mirage of being slightly wealthy because they could drive nicer cars, live in nicer neighborhoods, but it's all built around credit.
12:16It's all built around debt. It's all built around paycheck to paycheck living. And that's evaporating because rich people think differently than broke people, and middle class people still aren't rich people, so I almost would categorize them as broke.
12:30Very, interesting thought, but I had a middle class mindset, but I believe I had a broke mindset. I didn't even know it. And the way I like to think about this is a thermostat.
12:39And I got this metaphor from Gay Hendrick in his brilliant book, The Big Leap. He talks about what he calls the upper limit problem. But think about a thermostat.
12:46. In your home, there's this device, we call it a thermostat, that controls the temperature. And it's really powerful because you can set it at the temperature you want the house to stay at all day.
12:57So let's say you wanna set it at 72 degrees Fahrenheit in your house. Well, if it gets warmer than 72, the air conditioning will turn on and and blow until the thermostat reads, okay, we're now back to 72, and then it turns the air conditioning off and it stays at 72 until it gets hot again.
13:15The opposite would happen if you're in a colder month. If you wanna keep the temperature at 72 degrees and it drops below that, the heat would kick on to raise the temperature back up to 72 degrees. Once it reads 72 again, drops or turns off the heat.
13:29This makes sense. Right? That's what a thermostat does.
13:31It holds temperature. You set it and forget it.
13:35This is the temperature I wanna have.
13:40You can work really, really hard. You can make a ton of money.
13:45You can get a big client. You can have a video pop off. You can go viral for a moment.
13:49You can have you can win the lottery. I mean, this is a great example. But if your thermostat is set to be broke, you'll always find a way back down to that preferred temperature.
14:00Now I say preferred temperature, but Graham, I don't prefer to be broke. But that's where your mindset is set. It's your mind is literally set at broke.
14:09And so even if money and abundance comes into your life, you have to revert to the mean. You have to revert back to who you are.
14:18Mindset really is identity. If you are a person, and I don't mean this as a dig on you, as if there's anything wrong with you as a person morally, ethically, But if you're a person who has a broke mindset, you are a broke person.
14:32Give a broke person more money, they still are a broke person. It doesn't make them wealthy. This is why it's so much more important to teach people how to be a wealthy person in their mind and heart first.
14:47New identities, new beliefs, new mindset. That's way more valuable to them than just give them money.
14:55And and before you clip this and judge me, there are people that need money right now to survive. My family and I support a ton of people in a ton of different ways that just need help.
15:08They need food, they need water, they need medical aid, they need education, uh, they need resources, they need money to pay the bills. Yes.
15:17Yes. And The whole teach a man to or give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach a man a fish, eat for a lifetime.
15:23I think you need to give a man a fish and then teach him to fish while he's eating the fish you gave him. So help people, but to really help people, you have to raise their thermostat. If you don't change the thermostat
15:36of financial prowess, you don't change the mindset,
15:40it doesn't matter how much money comes into their life. They they'll always end up back where it's set. And what does this look like?
15:46Here are beliefs that I see that keep you broke.
15:51Mindsets that keep people broke. Number one most common is that money is evil.
15:58Now most people don't say money is evil out loud, but at a subconscious level, they believe money is evil, and that is why they don't have any. And it could be bad teaching in the church.
16:10Money is the root of all evil. That's not what the Bible literally says. Just crack it open and read it for yourself.
16:15It says the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Very, very, very different statement. Can money be a trap?
16:22Yes. That's not the point. I'm not here to debate whether money can be dangerous.
16:26Money is just like fire.
16:29Fire is dangerous.
16:30Does that mean we should never use fire? No one should have fire because fire is dangerous? No.
16:34That's ridiculous. When used carefully and safely, fire can cook your food and heat your home.
16:40K? It could do a lot of other things. Money is just a tool, just like fire is a tool, a chainsaw is a tool, a dangerous tool.
16:47So you should know the dangers of it. Don't be ignorant to the dangers of it, but don't say it's evil because it's not. Jesus never said it was.
16:53Paul, who wrote that passage, by the way, in first Timothy six, said it was. That doesn't even make any sense if you read the Bible. Money is not evil.
16:59Money is a gift that God gives to his people that follow his teachings. Like, money is not the problem. But if you believe at a subconscious level that money is evil, you're gonna repel money.
17:11Because you don't wanna be an evil person. And this is happening at a subconscious level. I've talked about this a lot, but I'm gonna that's one of the biggest ones.
17:19How do you know if you have this belief? If you judge other people to have money. Even in your heart, if you're like, they don't deserve that.
17:25Why does he have all that money? Why why why don't the billionaires pay more in taxes? All of that.
17:32I don't care what you believe. All of that shows that you believe money is evil. Judgment of other people with money is a judgment against yourself, and that is the reason why you're broke.
17:41Number two, money belief, is that making money is hard or creating wealth is hard. If you say so.
17:50If you say so. Right?
17:52If you say and believe making money is hard, guess what? Whatever you seek, will find, Jesus said.
18:00K. There you said it.
18:03I believe making money is easy,
18:05and therefore it is easy for me. Well, that's easy for you to say, Graham, you have money. No.
18:10That's what I believed when I didn't have money. I had a moment shift for me when I sold my very first online course. This was April 2010.
18:18It was called Pro Tools Boot Camp. It was a $47 online training teaching you how to record music with a specific piece of software. I didn't even know it was called an online course.
18:26I just knew I was selling videos in a zip file with a PayPal button to a guy named Paul somewhere around the country. I don't even know who Paul is. If you're listening, Paul, you are my first customer.
18:35In 2010. Um, the moment I made those $47, I was not wealthy.
18:42But all of a sudden, I said, oh my gosh. Even though it took me time to make this thing and it took me my knowledge, my expertise and blah blah blah blah,
18:50that sale was so easy.
18:52And I could now imagine making a lot more of those sales somehow, some way. And making money seemed easier to me.
18:59And the moment I believed that making money was easy, guess what? It got real easy. I didn't become a millionaire overnight.
19:06It took a few more years, but money started to come in. So if you believe making money is hard, guess what?
19:12That's what your thermostat is set for. Here's another one, and we'll move on, is
19:17wealth is for other people. Other people get to be rich, not me. It's it's just for other people.
19:22I would like to be rich, but it's just it's just not in the cards for me. That is more akin to my belief.
19:31But really what that says is is you're a victim. Is is you're sad because you wish it could be for you, but you know what that is? Victims don't have to try.
19:40The benefit of being a victim is you don't have to try. You can just say, I'm just not the kind of person that gets to be wealthy. Woe is me.
19:48And and that sounds like a weird benefit, but it is a benefit because a, people can feel sorry for you, b, you can feel sorry for yourself, but c, you're off the hook. You don't have to try and risk.
19:59Entrepreneurs, by definition, risk.
20:03They try something that may or may not work.
20:07And there's some inherent fear of of risking and it not working out. But until you've done it and it didn't work out and you realize you're fine, you'll just try something new and it's gonna be fine. You realize it's actually not that much of a risk.
20:18The greater risk is not taking action and staying broke your whole life. That's actually a greater risk. So believing that wealth is for other people, again, if you say so, by definition, should not be wealthy.
20:29I didn't come from a wealthy family. I don't know anybody who's wealthy. I didn't have any skills that created wealth.
20:35I was making $30,000 a year. I got paid with a college degree, $15 an hour to work at a software company.
20:42With a college degree, a specialized college degree, $15 an hour. I was not on track to be wealthy.
20:49There's no I became a millionaire at age 35, like a net worth millionaire. It's funny. The same year my net worth crossed over a million dollars is also the same year that my income crossed over a million dollars a year.
20:59It's kinda cool. They're not related. Um, just because you make a million dollars a year in your business doesn't make you a millionaire because most people, by the way, that's not profit.
21:07That's revenue minus profit. Take home. But two, just because you even take that money home doesn't mean you actually have wealth because if you spend it, it's gone.
21:15But I became a net worth millionaire and my income became a million dollars a year income all in the same year at age 35. That's way above that, like way before the average millionaire. It's usually in their late fifties.
21:28Right? So I never could have guessed that. If I had gone my whole life saying, well, I'll never be wealthy, that probably would have been the reality for me.
21:37But the moment I was like, may I don't know. Like, these bloggers, they don't seem like the traditional person making money. Maybe it's if it's possible for them, maybe it's possible for me.
21:46That was at least a start. Wasn't a strong mindset, but it's a start. So where is your thermostat?
21:52Where is your thermostat set? Do you have a broke mindset? I spent more time here because this is the most important one, but I'm I'm gonna fly through these next two because if you if you have a broke mindset, that is the reason why you don't have the wealthy one yet.
22:05But if you fix this, if you change your beliefs and what one thing I love that I I learned from David Bayer, uh, in his book, A Changed Mind, is that all a new belief is is a decision.
22:20The moment you decide, and literally the word decide is is a compound word in in the Latin de, meaning of or from and cide, c I d e, to cut.
22:33To cut from or to cut off. Literally, to decide means to cut yourself off from other options. That's different than choosing like I want that or that.
22:43A decision is like this is the direction I'm going. I'm not looking back. A decision by definition is a new belief.
22:49And what's cool is you can make a new decision in an instant right now. You don't have to wait to have this new believer, become this new person.
22:59No. The way you become the new person is decide. I am a wealthy person.
23:04I am a person that believes that I wealth is inevitable for me. Wealth is not evil. Wealth is actually good.
23:10Wealth is not hard to create. It's actually easy. And wealth isn't for other people out there.
23:14It's for me. And I'm gonna I decide I just didn't decide to raise my thermostat. So if your thermostat is a I'm a $50,000 a year person.
23:21I'm gonna raise that thermostat to $500,000 a year. I don't know how.
23:25The how doesn't matter. Your brain and your circumstances will discover the how. Your whole brain is a goal achieving machine.
23:32That's the whole premise of Doctor. Malcolm oh gosh, Whatever his name is, freaking psychocybernetics.
23:39Maxwell Maltz. Maxwell Maltz, I think is his name. Psychocybernetics.
23:43That's our brain is a psychocybernetics system just like a torpedo that's set to lock onto something.
23:48Like, it it it's constantly course correcting, and it's getting blown off course, but it it will it will find its destination because we're goal seeking machines. That's the way our our brains are wired. So it's just a decision.
24:00That's the great news. Decide to be wealthy. Decide that wealth is inevitable for you.
24:04Raise your thermostat and watch what you notice.
24:09Watch what conversations you enter into. Watch what books you start to read.
24:13Watch what kind of people you hang out with. Watch what happens. Okay.
24:17Broke mindset. That's the most important one. And let's get to these next two.
24:20We'll go a lot quicker. Number two is broke models. So let's say you fix the broke mindset, now you have a wealthy mindset.
24:27You can have the right mindset but if you have the wrong blueprint you'll still get wrong results.
24:31I'm speaking to you entrepreneurs right now. You believe wealth is inevitable for you because it is if you decide so.
24:38You're moving towards it, you're raising your thermostat but if you have a business model that's broken, it is really hard to become wealthy with a broken business model. Let me tell you, the business model that I see people still clinging to, and I I understand why.
24:55I taught it. I've made millions from it, but I don't think it works anymore, is low ticket courses.
25:02Trying to blow up on the Internet or run ads to low ticket courses.
25:08I just don't see the math working anymore. It is a lot harder to get the volume you need to generate serious income with a low ticket course or membership for that matter. And I've made millions off of both, so it's really painful for me to say that, But I don't want to tell you to do what I did because it worked back then.
25:27It's it it can still work now. That's the caveat. There's always exceptions.
25:32But I love you too much to say, yeah. Run that play. Not the play I'm running anymore.
25:35It's not the play I would recommend beginners run. I've just seen too much.
25:40So low ticket offers, um, chasing followers.
25:46It's like, okay. Here's my model. I gotta get really, really famous.
25:49Nope. That model that model doesn't work.
25:54And we know this because there are literally influencers with millions of followers who don't make hardly any money. If having all the followers led to the money somehow, that's not a business model. That's like a hope and a prayer.
26:05K? Another model that's broken is just trend chasing, where where literally you almost create a new business model every three months when you see a new trend. Because last year, you were an online course person.
26:17This year, you're an AI specialist. I mean, like, I understand that it can be smart to jump on a a topic that's trending, but if you keep changing your business model because the trends change, you will never become masterful.
26:34Yes, you need to evolve. Yes, you need to pivot. Yes, markets change.
26:37I get that. And they're changing faster and faster and faster. But business models are the same.
26:43Like, there's a lot of different types of business models that work, but pick a model that works. You don't wanna climb up fast if it's the wrong building. Right?
26:50You don't wanna be at the top fast of the wrong building. So find the right building to climb up.
26:57And it's funny because
26:59one of the things that's broken in in most people's business models is that there's this and I keep seeing it. There's this we talk about Ascension models with our offers, like, first, you have a lower ticket offer and then, you know, core product and then a premium product.
27:14And I I have a lot to say about that. I don't actually think the Ascension model is the model anymore, but there's also an internal Ascension model. And I I see this with my clients where people say, well, first, I gotta do this in my business, and then I'll graduate to this, and then I'll stair step up to this.
27:30And I'll give you an example. I was running my 10 k offer challenge. I run this virtual event where I help people create a high ticket offer, take whatever they're selling for a couple $100, a thousand bucks, and and reimagine as a $10,000 or more offer and how to sell those things and make them irresistible.
27:46It's the fastest way to grow your business. I'll link to it below if you wanna come to the next one. It'll change your business, change your life.
27:52One of one of my students at the last ten k offer challenge, she was creating a new offer and she got up the courage to make it a $10,000 offer.
28:03And she specifically was helping doctors with their business is kinda chaotic. She helps them with their staffing, helps them with their their operations, helps them stop the bleeding, and she kinda finds hidden money in their business, in their practice.
28:19She her offer sounded awesome until she told me the price, $10,000, which you think I'd be happy with. It's I'm running an event called the $10,000 offer challenge, the 10 k offer challenge. And, um, I said, Tanya, why did you land on $10,000?
28:30She's like, oh, I just thought it'd be a great a great place to start.
28:34I said, well, what do you think the offer is really worth? And I said, let let me just ask you this.
28:39Give me an example of a client that you've helped, the client's story real quick. What transformation have you done for them? Well, I helped this one doctor plug some leaks, fix some stuff, and we've added 200 new or excuse me, a 100 new customers, patients every month consistently at $200 a month.
28:54So we've basically added $20,000 a month of revenue that was just hidden hidden before. And I said, you're telling me you're creating $240,000 a year of new revenue for this client and you only wanna charge them $10,000 for the offer?
29:05I said, Tanya, that's a $25,000 offer. She said, I know.
29:09I said, then why are you charging 10,000? Here's what she said. I thought it was a good starting spot.
29:15I think I thought I would start there and then work my way up. That language right there, work my way up, is such a myth. I I literally I said, Tanya, can I play with you?
29:27There are no offer police that are gonna bang down your door and say, Tanya, you can't just jump to $25,000 with your offer.
29:35Who do think you are? You gotta start at 10, and then when you sell a few, raise it to 12. And now that you're okay.
29:41Then 16, and eventually, you'll get up to 25. I said, Tanya, that's not how this works. The offer is either worth $25,000 or it's not.
29:50Why delay winning? Why delay the inevitable?
29:54It is what it is. Just go right to 25 k. And she said, alright.
29:58I literally whenever her next offer is made, I just saved her $15,000. I made her an extra $15,000 because she felt that she had to follow this model.
30:08Well, first you do this, then you do that, then you do that. She was taking the long way around. I think about GPS on your phone or in your car.
30:16You set the destination. I think we all want a similar destination. We wanna be wealthy.
30:20We wanna be successful in our businesses. Um, we wanna have time freedom. But have you ever noticed when you put in an address in your GPS, it shows you multiple ways to get there, multiple routes?
30:30And you could optimize the route based off of, oh, please avoid tolls or avoid highways or let's go the scenic route.
30:38Like, you could choose which route you want to to to go. And I don't know if you ever noticed that because most people, because this makes sense,
30:47pick the fastest route. And by default, the app will show you the fastest route first.
30:54But for whatever reason, when it comes to business and life, people are incredibly good at taking the slowest, most roundabout route.
31:04Well, first, I gotta build a website, and then I gotta start with a low ticket offer, and then I gotta, you know, I gotta prove myself.
31:13I gotta get some testimonials, and then I gotta I don't know why I'm doing that accent. Please forgive me.
31:17I'm not sure I make fun of anybody. And they just they map out the slowest, most zigzaggy, like yeah.
31:27And then eventually, I will be ready to sell at this level or do this kind of thing or run a challenge or have a high ticket coaching client or speak on a stage or there's no, like, one day you'll be ready. You just do the thing.
31:41You just why wouldn't you pick the fastest
31:44path to get where you wanna go?
31:48I'm not saying you rush. I'm not saying you you you you run faster than is possible and sacrifice your health and your family and your time freedom and your spirituality and all those other things to get there.
31:58I'm not saying that. I'm saying people are opting for the slowest path because they're running the the wrong play to get to I think we all have the same destination, running the wrong model, following the wrong path, and it's slow.
32:10And we're like, it's taken me a long time. It does not have to take you a long time. And I know this because I coach entrepreneurs every single day, I have entrepreneur clients that take the slow path because they decided that's just what they think they have to do.
32:22And then I have other clients in the same program who go there really fast, not because they're smarter, not because they were they were more poised to win when they came into the program, because they just decided what's the fastest path. I'm just gonna do that.
32:33I'm gonna go right to that. I'm gonna raise my prices right to that. I'm going to, you know, stop doing the things that are slow and do the things that are fast because, Graham, like, they just believe that the fastest path is available for them.
32:46You can take a slow path to get to your goals, and if it's a good path, will eventually get there,
32:53but you will have wasted so many years.
32:56I don't know about you, but I don't wanna waste any time. I don't really know that tomorrow's promised, and even if it is, I want more time with that wealth and those goals achieved in less time. Also, let's just be practical.
33:06Inflation is a real thing. Money in ten years from now is not worth as much as it is today. I would rather make a million dollars this year than a million dollars in ten years because a million dollars in ten years is probably closer to worth $500,000.
33:20So making money sooner is by definition more valuable. So do you have a broken model?
33:27Do you have a broken business model? If you need help figuring out your your business model, pick up the effortless business.
33:34This this business model will will get you to a high income, low maintenance business faster than anything I've ever seen. And number three thing keeping you broke is broke metrics. So you've got a broke mindset.
33:45That's everything. If you have broken model,
33:48you'll be broke forever even if you're working really hard and believe that wealth is possible for you and inevitable. But the last thing holding you back is broke metrics, chasing broke metrics. I was thinking about this.
34:01It's kinda like the difference between looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing what's actually going on in your body.
34:09You can look in the mirror and say, man, I look great. I look healthy.
34:14However that means for you. Whether you feel like you're ripped or shredded or muscular or just you just everything looks fine on the outside.
34:22But you have no idea what's going on in the inside until you do blood work, till you get blood panels and you you see there's some things that are off. You see certain levels that are high or low or missing or like the mirror doesn't tell you what's actually going on.
34:34So if I judged my health by what I see in the mirror every day, I could think that I'm healthy all the way into the day I die, I and could die all of sudden from something I didn't even know was there. I'm not trying to be morbid. I'm not trying to make you fearful.
34:45I'm just saying. Right? The mirror doesn't tell you how healthy you are.
34:49Only blood work does. Broke metrics feel like you're winning, but you're not.
34:53What are broke metrics? Followers.
34:56One of the most broke who cares how many followers you have? Followers feels nice, but it's a vanity metric. It has no bearing on how much money you make.
35:06No bearing on how much money you make. Couple of weeks ago, I did an episode called Tiny Audience, Huge Income. And the example I gave was one of my clients, Iko.
35:13She has 500 subscribers on YouTube. 500.
35:18You could call that laughable. But who's laughing? She makes $30,000 a month as an English pronunciation coach to native Japanese speakers.
35:27Oh, that's a great life. Followers don't matter.
35:31I know people that have 1,000,000 followers and don't make a fraction of what Aiko makes. So followers is a wrong metric to chase. Um, views on your videos or on your reels, um, likes, engagement.
35:43These are all things that we all want because here's why, because they're the visible ones. And and I will say there is some value in the visible metrics for credibility because other people care about it.
35:56And if they see that you have a million followers, they for a moment might think there's something special about you. They might consider connecting with you.
36:03They might consider responding to your message. They might consider reaching out to you because there well, there must be something she's doing right if she's got a million followers.
36:10So there is value. I'm not saying there's not value, but it's a broke metric.
36:14It's not a metric that makes you money. At best, broke metrics like followers, views, likes, engagement, subscribers.
36:21At best, they'll just distract you from the real metrics and the real work that actually puts money in your pocket. It's just a giant distraction. As a content creator, you have a choice.
36:33Do I make content that will get me a lot of views? Or do I make content that will create clients? Now those things don't have to be mutually exclusive.
36:41I'm not saying you should purposely choose low views. By all means, get as many views as you can. I'm saying, what drives you?
36:49Is it the cart driving the horse or the horse driving the cart?
36:52What are you optimizing for? Do not optimize for virality.
36:57Optimize for client attraction. And if virality comes, by all means,
37:03you'll attract more of your clients. But a video or a piece of content that goes viral that isn't optimized for client attraction does not help your business.
37:13It's a huge part of my business model, and I call them creating client magnets. That is, in my opinion, what you should be optimizing your content for. So at best, these wrong metrics distract you.
37:23This wasted time. It's wasted effort. Wasted momentum.
37:27Here's what's insidious about it though. At at worst, these broke metrics destroy your hope. Because these games becoming incredibly famous on the Internet is incredibly hard.
37:40Now, some people, it happens almost effortlessly and so they are lulled into this belief that, oh, it's easy to go viral. It's not easy.
37:48That oftentimes, it's called luck. And I'm I'm not, um, saying that I'm not saying that as a diss. But if you went viral without really trying, you were you had the right message at the right time for the right people to praise God for that.
38:00That's awesome.
38:03But it's a really hard game to win, and it's only gotten harder as the algorithms shift because they're responding to AI and to each other and competitors. Like, it's it's a it's a wild world out there.
38:16The last thing you want as an entrepreneur is to lose your hope. The scripture says hope deferred makes the heart sick. Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
38:23The way to win in business is to stay in the game long enough to win. One of the surest ways to exit the game before you have a chance of winning is to just give up hope entirely. Get discouraged, beat down over and over again.
38:36And I don't know if that's how you felt. I don't know if you've been like, Graham, I've been trying this for years. I've been trying this for years, and nothing has worked.
38:43Like, that's that's discouraging.
38:45I get that. I get that. I worked and built my business and pumped out three pieces of content a week for a whole year
38:56full time and made a whopping $10,000. That's $830 a month on average working full time.
39:05If I quit and that would have been justifiable, most people said, bro, I did I gave it a year. I'm going back to find a job.
39:11If I quit, I would have given up the tens of millions of dollars I've made and the millions of people I've impacted. But fortunately, didn't lose hope. I actually didn't see it that way.
39:19I didn't see it as, oh, I've only made $10,000. I saw it as this is working. It's it might take me a while, but I I could see a future where this was working.
39:28Because I wasn't chasing followers. I was chasing the dollars. And even though the dollars were low, I could see the activities that were creating revenue.
39:37I could see the skills that were leading to connecting with my people.
39:43And I was like, I can kinda do some math. And as this thing grows and as I get better at these skills, selling, offer creation, solving people's problems, messaging, I could see this really working.
39:58So the the thing you wanna protect is not only your energy, but you wanna protect your hope. You wanna protect your faith.
40:07When when the moment your faith dies, the moment your hope dies, you're gone. So you have to protect it at all times. That's one reason why you wanna be around people that lift your spirits, that don't shoot your dream down.
40:20I had to exit a lot of peer groups and friend groups, not like, sorry, we'll never talk again, but just subtly distance myself from people that were like, why are you doing this? This is never gonna work.
40:31Just be like us.
40:33That's functionally what they were saying. I was like, I can't I can't be around that. If I'm around that, I will start to believe that cause it is hard right now making only $800 a month working full time on this business teaching musicians how to record music.
40:46I had to be around people who would stir up my faith. Right?
40:51In Hebrews, it talks about don't neglect to meet together and stir stir up one another in love and and good works and encouragement. Like, we need to be around people that fuel us with faith.
41:02So if you need to, like, level up your peer group, by all means, do it. Whatever it takes. The the scoreboards out there right now, they're broken.
41:10They've been broken from the beginning. You are not the problem. You've never been the problem.
41:13It's the scoreboard system that's the problem. It's a game that everyone's trying to play that literally is a pointless game. Just opt out.
41:20Let everyone else play that game. Don't play that game. Just play the game that actually puts money in your pocket.
41:24Wealthy entrepreneurs
41:26keep a different score.
41:28They these are the metrics they chase. Revenue per client. They chase profit margin.
41:33Lifetime value, LTV. When I create a customer, how much is this customer worth to me over time? Not just how many one off hits can I get?
41:40Just run ads to a new person, new person, new person. Can I create a customer for life that brings lifetime value? You know who does this really well is Apple.
41:49Apple does this well. They don't wanna just sell you a product. They wanna make you a customer for life.
41:53So once they sell you a product, however you enter the Apple ecosphere, it might be your iPhone. It might be a Mac. It might be, you know, through the Apple Podcast app, and and then you might be, you know, whatever it is.
42:05Final Cut Pro, Logic, any of these Apple apps.
42:09However they get you in, they're so good at taking their customers and then assembling them together in in virtual events and and things and selling new products to old customers and selling old products to new customers and and and bringing you into the world where it's like, hey. If you like the iPod and the iPad, you're gonna love this.
42:27If you like your iPhone, you should you you would really love the iMac.
42:30You know, like, just
42:32they they they want you to be an Apple fanatic for life, and they do that by aweing you and and over delivering and showing you other cool things that can help your life and improve your life. They're not just trying to get one more customer. They want LTV.
42:46Profit margin is huge. You can make more money just by spending less and being more efficient in your business. And this is why I'm a huge fan of teaching how to create high ticket irresistible offers because you don't need a ton of clients to create a million dollar a year income.
43:02You just need a premium offer that's so irresistible, and you can maximize how much revenue you make per client. Because clients the right clients will pay you whatever they will pay you if you ever effectively ask them to pay you as long as you communicate the value correctly.
43:17I know those numbers are boring. They don't get a whole lot of attention or likes, but they they tell the truth. Those numbers, profit margin, LTV, revenue per client, MRR, monthly recurring revenue, those things are like the blood work that tell you the health of your business, not the mirror, which is my Instagram followers.
43:36So what is it for you? Is it the broke mindset?
43:39Is it the broke model?
43:41Or is it the broke metrics that you're chasing?
43:45When I was 26,
43:47when I was broke and on food stamps, all three were working against me simultaneously. I had a broke mindset.
43:54Couldn't imagine wealth being for me. I had a broke model. I thought the only model I knew was go to work and get paid.
44:03That's keeping people broke very well. And then I had broke metrics. I was looking at, am I making enough to cover rent?
44:11What kind of metric is that? Right? I wasn't even thinking big enough.
44:15Um, the great thing is that those mindsets, those things that are broken in you, again, it's software and they're not permanent.
44:24You can uninstall software and install new software whenever you want. Like, your computer can be pointless and bogged down with dumb old software or you can reboot it, refresh it, and have all new software, new programming, same computer, and it can be a whole different experience.
44:38That's you. You can change your programming.
44:40None of this is permanent.
44:42None of it's talent. None of it's timing. Like, just stop letting those be excuses for you.
44:47You can't control timing. You can't control the talent you have. You can control your mindset.
44:51You can control your business model. You can control what metrics you chase. So the moment I started changing these three things, wealth stopped being a dream and it became inevitable to me.
45:03And I know more wealth will continue to be inevitable. I'm not afraid of not having wealth because it will just continue to come to me because I I just think different. I have a better business model.
45:12I chase the right metrics, and the same is true for you.
45:16You don't have to earn your way to wealth slowly, the roundabout way. You don't have to hope for it, wish for it, fight for it, hustle for it.
45:25You can decide to upgrade the software today and let wealth become inevitable.
45:32I hope this helped you and blessed you today. If you're on YouTube, leave a comment. Let me know what part resonated with you the most,
45:38and I will see you on another episode real soon.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The host opens by promising to name the invisible. Not the economy, not your niche, not your following size, not even your work ethic -- something running in the background like software you didn't know you installed. Forty-five minutes later, after a personal story of food stamps and a $500-a-month income floor, three frameworks have been named, diagnosed, and handed back as decisions the viewer can make right now.
Named ideas worth stealing.
12:00model
The Thermostat
Your subconscious wealth identity functions like a thermostat set-point. No matter how much money enters your life, you will self-correct back to whatever level your identity is programmed to hold.
Steal forany offer or course about money mindset, or a content hook about why lottery winners go broke
26:00concept
The Decision (de + cide)
A decision is not a preference -- it is a cutting off of alternatives. New beliefs are not earned through experience; they are installed by deciding. The moment you decide, the new identity begins.
Steal forany coaching content about belief change or goal-setting
32:00model
GPS Route Selection
When given multiple routes to the same destination, most people pick the fastest in real life but inexplicably pick the slowest in business -- stair-stepping prices, building before selling, waiting to be ready.
Steal forpricing conversations, offer sequencing, and readiness objection handling
38:20model
Mirror vs Blood Work
Vanity metrics (followers, views) are the mirror -- they look fine but tell you nothing about internal health. Revenue per client, LTV, and profit margin are the blood work that reveal what's actually happening.
Steal forany content challenging creator obsession with follower counts
41:00concept
Client Magnets
Content engineered specifically to attract and convert ideal clients, as distinct from content engineered for viral reach. The host's core content strategy framework.
Steal forcontent strategy positioning for coaches or consultants
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
44:40next-video
“If you're on YouTube, leave a comment. Let me know what part resonated with you the most, and I will see you on another episode real soon.”
Soft close with no explicit product sell in the final beat -- the 10K Offer Challenge and Effortless Business book were mentioned mid-video as contextual recommendations.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
