The argument in one line.
Borrowing authority you do not yet have — then relentlessly executing what the people you borrowed it from actually do — is the fastest legitimate path from zero to rooms most people never enter.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You are early in building a brand or business and feel like you have nothing credible to say or offer yet.
- You want to understand how to get access to mentors, guests, or collaborators who are operating at a level far above yours.
- You are a creator struggling with whether to keep posting when the numbers are not there yet.
- You are drawn to the question of whether wealth actually translates to happiness and want a candid insider account.
SKIP IF…
- You are looking for tactical execution detail on any specific platform — this is high-level mindset and strategy, not a step-by-step tutorial.
- You are already deep in your brand-building journey with established credibility — the early-stage authority hack advice will not be new territory.
The full version, fast.
James Dumoulin built 21 million followers and 70 employees at 23 by solving one problem first: he had no authority, so he borrowed it. The strategy was to interview credible people rather than give advice himself, attaching his channel to the University of Texas and then to the cumulative weight of his interview roster. The mindset thread running through every billionaire he has interviewed is macro patience paired with micro urgency — thinking in decades while taking daily action with obsessive speed. Concentration builds wealth first; diversification only makes sense after you have mastered one thing deeply enough to generate something worth protecting.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
01:30hostEd Mylett
01:30guestJames Dumoulin
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 03:15
01 · Intro & Highlights
Cold open with best lines, then formal guest intro.
03:15 – 05:33
02 · Discovering TikTok & Mastering Viral Content
James discovers TikTok in 2019 as organic marketing, posts 3x daily through COVID, grows from zero to 800K followers.
05:33 – 08:16
03 · The Authority Hack
Nobody listens to three 20-year-olds giving business advice. Solution: interview credible people to borrow their authority.
08:16 – 09:05
04 · Execution Over Education
Being coachable at the speed of instruction.
09:05 – 13:53
05 · PAC: Platform, Algorithm, Culture
Gary Vee content framework: be on every platform, study what the algorithm rewards right now, tap trending culture early.
13:53 – 16:34
06 · Posting Frequency: Quantity vs. Quality
Early: post 3x daily. At scale: every post must aim for millions of views. The game inverts.
16:34 – 18:48
07 · Billionaire Mindset: Think in Decades Not Days
Reid Hoffman refuses to play a one-year game (ten-year minimum). Todd Graves thinks in generations.
18:48 – 20:47
08 · Macro Patience & Micro Urgency
The pairing: accept the long game while executing with daily urgency. Instant gratification as the generational weakness.
20:47 – 22:52
09 · Overcoming Fear of Rejection
400 posts on Instagram with 50 followers. No means not yet.
22:52 – 31:53
10 · How to Approach Successful People
Cold approaching Mark Cuban at SXSW with the University of Texas authority hack. Credibility kills all bad attitudes.
31:53 – 38:33
11 · Are Billionaires Actually Happy?
Cliff top vs. rock bottom (Will Smith). The happiest ones have strong family relationships and a belief in a higher power.
38:33 – 44:07
12 · Your Weakness Is Your Greatest Strength
Age was an asset for reverse mentorship and approachability.
44:07 – 56:34
13 · AI and the Future of the Influencer Space
AI-generated personal brand content will not win. AI increases content volume, making authenticity and creative quality more valuable.
56:34 – 59:27
14 · Final Advice: Making Dreams Come True
Travel. Change your environment. Master a skill set. Concentration builds wealth, diversification keeps it.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The fastest way to build credibility when you have none is to borrow it — interview the credible people instead of giving advice yourself.
- Billionaires do not think in years; Reid Hoffman told a 23-year-old that a ten-year minimum is the only game worth playing.
- Quantity breeds quality early — volume gives you data; that data tells you which content deserves more of your effort.
- Once you reach a few million followers, posting more actually costs you followers; the game flips entirely from quantity to quality.
- Most people are addicted to education but allergic to execution — the gap between learning and doing is where almost every career dies.
- Credibility kills all bad attitudes — the same person who ignored you last year will take your call after one high-profile placement.
- Fear of rejection is the actual bottleneck behind most failed brands, unsent pitches, and unstarted businesses — not strategy or skill.
- Posting 400 times on Instagram with 50 followers is not failure; it is the data collection phase that makes everything after it work.
- Proximity changes your frequency — the people you spend time with reset your baseline for what is normal and what is possible.
- Reverse mentorship works both ways: younger people can teach established leaders things about new technology and brand that decades of experience cannot.
- Concentration builds wealth; diversification keeps it — attempting multiple streams before mastering one is the silent killer of most early businesses.
- Platforms pay attention differently: Facebook rewards established audiences, TikTok rewards raw content quality, LinkedIn is currently in its early push phase.
- AI is making mediocre content invisible, not valuable content irrelevant — the creative premium on genuine human voice is rising, not falling.
- The happiest billionaires are the ones with strong relationships and a belief in something larger than their net worth — wealth itself is not the differentiator.
- Staying small enough long enough is a feature, not a bug — the discipline of reinvesting rather than paying yourself is what turns momentum into a moat.
The room opens when you stop waiting for permission.
WHAT TO LEARN
Every door James Dumoulin opened started with borrowed authority not earned reputation and the willingness to keep posting into silence until the market responded.
02Discovering TikTok & Mastering Viral Content
- Early platforms reward volume post until the market tells you which content deserves more.
- Treating a new platform as an organic marketing engine before the crowd arrives is how early movers win.
03The Authority Hack
- You do not need your own credibility to get access to credible people attach yourself to something bigger than you.
- Borrowed authority is real authority and it compounds as you stack associations over time.
04Execution Over Education
- Being coachable at the speed of instruction means suspending the need to understand why before you act.
- Most people consume without executing the gap between learning and doing is where almost every career dies.
05PAC: Platform, Algorithm, Culture
- Tapping a trending cultural moment early can generate 100x your normal reach on a single post.
- Platform diversification protects you from algorithm changes that can erase your reach overnight.
06Posting Frequency: Quantity vs. Quality
- Early in building an audience volume beats quality the market will tell you which content to double down on.
- Once your audience is established quality beats volume and underperforming posts cost you followers.
07Billionaire Mindset: Think in Decades Not Days
- Billionaires do not set one-year goals thinking in decades reframes short-term setbacks as noise rather than signals to quit.
08Macro Patience & Micro Urgency
- The pairing of long-term patience with daily urgency is the most consistent trait across ultra-successful people.
- Instant gratification is the generational weakness that makes the patient ones almost automatically competitive.
09Overcoming Fear of Rejection
- Fear of rejection is not a personality trait it is the gap between wanting something and doing the work required to get it.
- A rejection is of your offer or your timing never of you as a person and no just means not yet.
10How to Approach Successful People
- Credibility kills all bad attitudes the door that was closed last year opens after one high-profile placement.
- Find something you can do better than the person you want to reach and lead with that value rather than with your ask.
- Proximity to people operating at a higher level changes your baseline for what is normal and possible.
11Are Billionaires Actually Happy?
- The happiest high-achievers are the ones who have a relationship with something larger than their net worth.
- Money resolves money problems fulfillment requires something beyond financial goals.
12Your Weakness Is Your Greatest Strength
- What looks like a disadvantage such as youth inexperience or lack of credentials can be repositioned as the exact thing that gets you access others cannot get.
13AI and the Future of the Influencer Space
- AI increases content volume across every platform which raises the premium on authentic human voice and creative specificity.
- The creator who builds genuine audience connection becomes more defensible as AI floods feeds with indistinguishable content.
14Final Advice: Making Dreams Come True
- Concentration of effort builds the initial wealth or audience diversification only makes sense after you have something worth protecting.
- Reinvesting almost everything back into the business during the early years is what turns temporary momentum into a durable moat.
- Environment is a practical input not motivational fluff change your surroundings when your surroundings cap your ambition.
Terms worth knowing.
- Authority hack
- The strategy of borrowing credibility from an established entity — a school, a show, a previous guest — to gain access before you have built your own reputation.
- PAC
- A content framework from Gary Vaynerchuk: Platform (be on every one), Algorithm (study what it rewards right now), Culture (tap trending conversations early).
- Macro patience, micro urgency
- A mindset pairing: accept that building anything great takes years or decades, while executing with maximum speed and responsiveness on a daily basis.
- Cliff top
- Will Smith term for the emotional disorientation at the pinnacle of external success — the opposite of rock bottom, and equally destabilizing.
- Reverse mentorship
- A structured relationship where a less experienced person teaches an established leader about emerging tools, platforms, or audience dynamics in exchange for traditional mentorship.
- School of Hard Knocks
- The media company James Dumoulin co-founded with his brother and a childhood friend, built around interviewing high-net-worth individuals on-camera in both staged and cold street-approach formats.
- Coachable at the speed of instruction
- The ability to execute a mentor direction without requiring full understanding first — suspending the need to understand why in order to act immediately on what.
Things they pointed at.
00:28channelLinkedIn / Reid Hoffman
09:06channelSchool of Hard Knocks
25:48channelRobert Herjavec / Shark Tank
37:30channelTim Tebow
38:35productSailPoint (Mark McClain)
56:00bookThe Power of One More (Ed Mylett book)
Lines you could clip.
00:12
“Most people are addicted to education but allergic to execution.”
00:21
“Billionaires think in decades, not days.”
08:29
“Credibility kills all bad attitudes.”
38:02
“Concentration builds wealth, diversification keeps it.”
56:30
“You are not a tree. Travel.”
25:48
“Mentorship is like wisdom without the wounds.”
Where the conversation goes.
03:15 – 16:34denseContent strategy and social media growth
05:33 – 31:53denseAuthority, access, and cold outreach
16:34 – 20:47denseBillionaire mindset and long-term thinking
20:47 – 22:52steadyRejection, persistence, and confidence
31:53 – 38:33steadyWealth, happiness, and fulfillment
44:07 – 56:34denseAI and the creator economy future
56:34 – 59:27densePractical closing advice
Word for word.
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metaphor
00:00But then I have another saying that I love, which is that information can change situations only through implementation, and that's what we did. We're spending so much time with all these multimillionaires and billionaires, guys that are running ten, eleven, you know, figure businesses, And we started to actually implement, you know, the things that they were teaching us.
00:15I I love the saying that most people are addicted to education but allergic to execution. I think one of my favorite sayings is that billionaires think in decades not days.
00:24Wow. And and the reason why I love that one is I'll never forget, I was interviewing Reid Hoffman, founder of Lincoln.
00:30He sold LinkedIn to Microsoft for $26,000,000,000. And I was asking him, I was like, Reid, if you were to start from zero and you had one year to make a billion dollars, what would you do? And he stops me and goes, I never play a one year game.
00:40It's a it's ten year day minimum. Can you say that quote for me again about being coachable? Coachable at speed of instruction.
00:45I love that. Mhmm. Because in the short term, it's taking massive action every day.
00:50Personally, I would first of all advise people that if you think that AI creative content for a personal brand is gonna do well, no. I I I'm not a fan of people using AI to duplicate and clone themselves and create content.
01:01And I personally, I just don't think it's up to the standard in terms of, like, that being better than an actual person creating content. So let's first kinda dupe that and and establish that, first of all. Second of all, if you think it's hard to go viral on social media now, you wait for the next three to five years because think about it this way.
01:18With AI, you're gonna be able to start posting 20,000 pieces of content at once.
01:30Alright. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I wanted to have this young man on for a while.
01:34You may be the youngest person I've interviewed or at least one of you. You're in the in the one of the youngest we've ever had on the show and also one of the most impressive. And so because you've done something that I think you've turned what could be a weakness in your life, which is your age into a great strength in what you've built, and I wanna talk about that.
01:50Let me tell you what he's built. Once you see him, if you're on YouTube watching, you'll recognize him, but some of you may not know his name. His name is James Doomlin.
01:57He has a program called the school of hard knocks. Just to give you guys an idea of what this young man's done at 23 years old.
02:05Okay? 21,000,000 followers on all platforms combined, and he does about 200,000,000 views a month a month, everybody, not cumulative.
02:17And so he's built something absolutely remarkable, and he's become a celebrity. And he's done it at a very young age, and he's had a big impact in the world as well. You're gonna learn a ton of lessons about how to build something even though you might not think you can.
02:28James, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on, and I also wanna add in there. This last week, I just interviewed my 48 billionaire, Arthur Blink.
02:35Arthur? Uh, founder of Home Depot, owner of the Atlanta Falcons. So forty forty eight billionaires and counting.
02:41I I I'm waiting to find out if I can figure out anybody who's interviewed more billionaires than me. I think it is you, brother. It may it may be.
02:46Arthur parks his boat in the harbor near my my place, my island in Maine. And so, yeah, he he certainly is a multi multi billionaire. So and you're probably gonna be too where you're going.
02:56If it's if it's a byproduct of what we're doing, I'll be happy to make it happen. Alright. So here's where he starts you guys.
03:01Take me through here. You're working at Chick fil A. Yes.
03:04Everybody just get ready if you think you can make your dreams come true. You're in high school. You're working at Chick fil A.
03:09You're doing a little construction. Mhmm. Right?
03:11So you just you're you're high school kid. Yeah. Right?
03:14What the heck happened? How did this start? Where'd the idea come from?
03:18Etcetera. Yeah. So you said it best.
03:20You know, first two jobs I had growing up was working at Chick fil A and working construction. Um, going into my senior year of high school, I discovered TikTok, which is now, you know, the largest search engine in the world.
03:31And this is back in 2019. Uh, nobody really took TikTok seriously.
03:35Right? It was the dancing app at the time. But I saw this as the greatest organic marketing that ever existed because you could have a thousand followers, 500 followers.
03:43You could put out a piece of content, and millions of people could see it overnight. The only way that you could have millions of people see your content without having a massive brand at that time was paying hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars on ads. Mhmm.
03:54And so I I just I discovered TikTok. And, you know, during COVID, it was from 2019 to 2020, I just started to post content, get really familiar with the algorithm, how social media actually works. And before I knew it, grew a personal channel on TikTok from zero to 800,000 followers.
04:10Mhmm. And just learned that was my skill set. The one thing that got me to where we are today is I mastered short form viral content.
04:18I've learned a ton about business since then, but that was really my first, I guess, segue into entrepreneurship. Did you know anything about I didn't know anything about it other than the fact that, you know, one of my favorite sayings is that going viral is like hitting the lottery, but creating consistent content is like investing in your future.
04:33So I just it didn't it didn't matter where I was, you know, during during COVID, you right know, before I was getting ready to move out to Austin to go to the University of Texas. I was posting every day. It doesn't matter if I was on a train, a plane, if I was on a boat, three times a day, every single day for that entire year.
04:49And that's how I went from zero to 800,000 followers. Mhmm. Now as I grew the channel, I started to learn a ton of lessons and was able to scale, you know, other channels prior to scaling, you know, the big one now, which is the school of hard knocks.
04:59Um, but I didn't know anything about it going into it other than, you know, with time went on, I learned how to pivot. I learned hooks. I learned all these different things to really help me go viral and and build a brand.
05:09What would you say to somebody who because you're you're you're a high school kid becoming a college kid. Right? So
05:15if I were you, I would be thinking, well, why would anybody wanna listen to me? Right?
05:20And I think that's what most people think. They're they wanna get on social media. They wanna post, but what I always hear from people is they go, I don't have anything to say.
05:28I'm not interesting. I'm not I've not made it yet. Mhmm.
05:30So, Ed, I know why you did well on social. You were already a very wealthy guy, so you had credibility.
05:35I'm working at Chick fil A, or I'm doing this or that. What would you say to somebody who thinks they have nothing to bring to social media? Because you hear that too.
05:41A 100%. Authority hack. You know, when I started the school of Hard Knocks, it was initially me, my brother, and a childhood friend, uh, from the DC area where we were just making content about business.
05:50But we came to the realization early on in growing the channel that nobody gives a about three three young 20 year old kids Mhmm. Talking about business and giving business advice. So we're like, you know what?
05:59Let's take our pride and ego out of the way. Let's be the ones to go extract from the most successful people in the world their lessons, their insights, their knowledge, their credibility. Let's borrow their authority, and let's interview them.
06:09Let's get their insights. Let's get in rooms that most people didn't think were possible to do, which is exactly what we did. So we kinda borrowed that authority.
06:15But then I have another saying that I love, which is that information can change situations only through implementation, and that's what we did. We're spending so much time with all these multimillionaires and billionaires, guys that are running ten, eleven, you know, figure businesses, And we started to actually implement, you know, the things that they were teaching us.
06:31I I love the saying that most people are addicted to education, but allergic to execution. Mhmm. Right?
06:35A lot of people, like, you you'll host events or Mhmm. And and there's lot of people that will go there and be tactical, or they will consume your content, will consume my content, but a lot of them won't do anything about it. And so I tried to get very knowledgeable about how to actually kinda execute and, like, build businesses around things, which is what we've done.
06:52You know? A lot of people think that we just do street interviews, but we've got 70 employees now. We've got a Are you serious?
06:5770 employees, a couple different verticals and businesses. James, you're serious. You have 70 employees.
07:0070 employees. Yeah. At 23 years old.
07:0223 years old. Yeah. Oh, boy.
07:04That's impressive. Yeah. I mean, really.
07:06That's congratulations. Thank you. I I told you that when we met off camera.
07:08Congratulations. And we still run super lean too. Like, that's that's the thing.
07:11Like, we You know, you said something there that I my my first mentor is a very successful guy.
07:17And I remember him looking at me, he goes, know, I give this information to everybody. He goes, I need you, Eddie, to be coachable at the speed of instruction.
07:24Wow. I'll never forget that phrase. And and it's sort of what you just said.
07:28It's not just being coachable. Yeah. But it's almost like suspend disbelief.
07:32Actually, even suspend having to understand why I'm telling you to do this. Just execute. I'm further down the road than you.
07:38I think there's all the don't you think that people have all these filters of, well, I need to understand it. I need to know how it would fit for me. You don't know.
07:44Where I live, the market's different or my age or this or that. I think people build in these filters, but you left success leaves clues.
07:52I keep hearing this from people that are proficient on social media. I obviously built, you know, several million followers myself and then sort of backed away just out
08:01of fatigue and age and health, but I'm still on there everybody. But you said post three times a day. Is that sort of a I hear Gary say this often too.
08:09Is that the number, or is there some random reason that's it? So this is a great question right here because I think it actually changes with each level of social media. I'm at a point now with the school of hard knocks.
08:21I have not posted a single video on Instagram in since April 2024 that has gotten under a million views. Since April 2024, we're now April 2026. So in the last two years, I've posted just about every other day, have not had a single video hit under a million views.
08:34Everybody can back check that as well. Mhmm. I've never bought a view or anything like that like a lot of other people.
08:39There's a lot of other people that do do that, unfortunately. They ruin their algorithm by doing it too. It's crazy.
08:43And it's like, it's you might as well just start a new channel once you start to do that. Mhmm. But at the beginning, when you're on social media, I like to say that quantity breeds quality.
08:52The more you post, the more data that you get, which kinda tells you, hey. You should continue to create that type of content. I like to say people should have three to five different pillars when they're making content.
09:01So if you're trying to build a personal brand or even if you're trying to create content for your business, it's like part of it could be founder stories, your individual stories, coming up with the product or the service that you're ultimately selling. Two could be testimonials where you're talking about, I took this person from here to here.
09:15Third could be things that are just relevant knowledge. You know, I think you mentioned Gary Vee. Gary Vee gave me one of the best pieces of advice when it comes to content creation, which is PAC.
09:24Okay? PAC is platform, algorithm, and culture. So PAC or or platform, that's the first one.
09:29P, be on every platform. Content diversification is huge.
09:33A lot of people like, I make more money off of Facebook than YouTube than all the platforms combined. I make more money off of Facebook than any of the platforms combined. And people are like, Facebook?
09:42Yes. Yes, Facebook. Go look up what happened in 2020.
09:45That was the first year that Facebook ever stopped growing. So then they're like, okay. How do we get the biggest creators to come to our platform?
09:50Well, we're gonna pay them more than everybody else, which is exactly what they did. So platform. Beyond all the platforms, you hear Gary talking a ton about Snapchat.
09:56Mhmm. Making sure that you're and and the beautiful thing about that is you're able to build audience, you know, in all these different demographics.
10:03If I'm on TikTok, I'm appealing to a much more of, like, the, you know, high school to college. But if I'm on Instagram, it's 25 to 35. And then Facebook, I could be having people that are 40, 50, 60, 70 years years old watching our content, which I love.
10:15Mhmm. I was just in London all last week, you know, doing some interviews out there.
10:19And I had people from high school, people that weren't even in high school yet, the way up to people that were, you know, in their sixties that were coming up to us saying, hey. We we love your content. I And always like to ask, hey, where do you fall follow us from?
10:29You know, and it's it's all different platforms. And so that's the first one is platform. Then algorithm.
10:34What's what's going on right now? Okay. Instagram just launched.
10:37Now you can do up to three minute reels. Test some of that longer content out. See how it performs.
10:41So you should always be trying to learn about what the algorithm's pushing then and now. And then the last one, which is the most important one to me, is culture, and this is what Gary Vee talks about. The biggest cheat code with content is finding the things that are, like, the most trending.
10:53I'll never forget this just because, like, I'm very, like, analytical about business content, whose content I think is, like, doing really well. But I remember and, uh, just a a figure, um, in the entrepreneur space that's been very for a long time is, like, Grant Cardone.
11:08Mhmm. Um, and Grant, obviously, from a engagement standpoint, does really well. But I would say on average, he gets a couple 100,000 views on his videos.
11:15Occasionally, you have a video that pops and does a million views or so. The day that Charlie Kirk was assassinated, you know, when when he was, you know, murdered.
11:24Grant Cardone posted a video, I think, an hour after that news broke out of just a short twenty second clip of them on stage. 48,000,000 views on Instagram. I think it's probably pinned to his profile.
11:33But that's just an example to put into perspective that if you can, like, tap in and be one of the first to create content around, like, a relevant something trending, whether it's in the business space Mhmm. Fitness. You know?
11:43No matter what industry you're in, if you can understand, like, the platform algorithm culture, like, is such a a cheat code. Now back to kinda what you were saying. I don't wanna go too far off about quantity versus quality.
11:53Early on, I think it is all about volume. I really, really do. Quantity breeds quality because it tells you it's gonna give you the results right there.
11:58If you're making different types of content and there's clearly a winner out of the different pillars that you're making, double down, triple down, 10 x that type of content, I think the bigger you get the mistake people make is they do start to post too much. I think when you were at that realm,
12:09uh, where you have a couple million followers, you should not be trying to post two, three times a day. You already have your authority built. Focus on the content.
12:16Like, this is crazy. I have 8,000,000 followers on Instagram. If I post a video and it gets a million views, I lose followers off of that.
12:22Mhmm. So I'm only making content now with the mindset that it's like, this has to be such a good piece of content that it could get three to 10 to 20,000,000 views on on a video. So it it shifts from quantity to quality, I think, as you build the brand up a little bit more.
12:36By the way, I really appreciate you sharing tactics. You know, lot of times you get people on the show, it's just, you know, generalities and philosophical stuff. So I appreciate it.
12:43By the way, those of you that are listening right now or watching going, k. I'm not gonna I'm not a big social media person. We're about to shift gears in a minute because you maybe have interviewed more billionaires than anybody in the world.
12:51So we're gonna talk about their mindsets in a second, but I wanna put a bow on the social. I wanna unpack couple things he just said that, you know, with my ten year experience on there that I totally agree with. One is this idea of posting more when you're smaller and letting the market tell you which content it likes.
13:08Yeah. That's why when you're putting three or four posts out a day and you're doing it multiple days, the market will tell you, oh, your whiteboard content where you're writing on the screen, that works. Or the green screen behind you, that's working.
13:18Or this topic's working. So I wanna acknowledge that. And then also this notion of not relying on one platform.
13:26If I made a mistake in my branding, it was that I really took off on Instagram. Sure.
13:32And maybe it was just being a middle aged guy already, but I neglected TikTok. I neglected Facebook. I neglected x.
13:38And I didn't wanna I thought, I don't wanna rebuild on these other ones. I certainly podcast wise blew it on YouTube.
13:45Sure. I just want audio forever when the future looked like it was YouTube. So you're right.
13:49Be on all the platforms. LinkedIn is powerful as well. LinkedIn's popping right now.
13:53We got over a 100,000 followers in, like, two months. They're pushing that short form content now for sure. Okay.
13:58This is so good. Alright. You've interviewed 48 billionaires.
14:02It'll you know, you're gonna interview me soon. So Yes, sir. We'll add to that list a little bit.
14:06But is there a through line at all? I mean, you got your because there's different types. There's the new age sort of social media person who's build big brands and all that.
14:17Then there's, like, the quiet billionaire next door dude that you catch walking out of a restaurant, and he's got flip flops and a t shirt on and you'd never know it and isn't on social media. So they're in all these different businesses, anything that you've deduced is a through line with any of them or they just all completely different?
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16:36When it comes to, like, the commonalities? Yeah. Personality traits, mindsets, anything like that.
16:40There there's there's so many. I think one of my favorite sayings is that billionaires think in decades, not days.
16:46Wow. And and the reason why I love that one is I'll never forget. I was interviewing Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn.
16:52He sold LinkedIn to Microsoft for $26,000,000,000, and I was asking him. Was like, Reid, if you were to start from zero and you had one year to make a billion dollars, what would you do?
16:59And he stops me goes, I never play a one year game. It's a it's ten year day minimum. Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Cane's, worth over $20,000,000,000 off of selling chicken tenders.
17:09Uh, I asked him a similar question. He goes, you know, I'm worth $20,000,000,000 today, but what if I can be worth $30.40, $5,060,000,000,000, and I can help more people? What if my kids one day can continue to to grow that?
17:18So he only thinks in generations, and that is such a a common thread that I've seen in in the most successful people. And and I love this idea of Wow.
17:27Macro patience and micro urgency. So in the macro patience, you have to understand that this is to build anything great, this is gonna take a long time. Right?
17:36You know this from building companies. Mhmm. All the people your friends and and the people that I've interviewed and even just and us and and building a 8 figure business off of street interviews, um, our first three to four years, we you know, like, Elon Musk says, you have to eat glass and entrepreneurship is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.
17:53There's a couple years where, you know, you're gonna have to eat for a while, and that's exactly, you know, what it was. So we had that belief in us that it's gonna take a long time, but we have to be patient. You know, one of the things that my generation struggles with is instant gratification.
18:06Yep. They see people on social media driving a nice car. One of them, I gotta get that.
18:10I gotta get that. I gotta get that. But it's like, it doesn't it doesn't just come overnight, especially if you're gonna bring if it comes super, super quickly, chances are it's gonna be be gone like that.
18:18You're right. Um, or there's something isn't great necessarily involved with it. But then micro urgency going back to what we were saying.
18:24Right. Can you say that quote for me again about being coachable? Coachable at the speed of instruction.
18:27I love that. Mhmm. Because in the short term, it's taking massive action every day, and that's that's another commonality.
18:34I have so many billionaire contacts in my phone. And Matt Ishbia, who's the owner of the largest mortgage company in the world, he owns the Phoenix Suns, great guy.
18:42And when I asked him what he notices about all his billionaire friends, they all text back instantly. They they all respond instantly.
18:49You could email him, text him. He's he's responding instantly. And I feel like, you know, that is something that I have noticed that if I shoot them a text, they'll let me know within John Morgan, Morgan and Morgan.
18:59Like, it's very similar thing. So I think that Bro, you're so brilliant for 23. I have to tell you.
19:06My son's here. You know that? Yeah.
19:07And he's about back there wowing
19:09because whether my net worth is b or just close or whatever Sure. It's it's getting there.
19:15And, uh, it's one of the traits that I pride myself on most is I get back to people. And I I actually can't go to sleep at night till I've replied to the people I'm supposed to reply to. And and so these little macro things can I tell you one thing I observe about you?
19:28What's First off, people listening would forget that you're 23. Yeah. Right?
19:31With this level of wisdom. And by the way, I ask a question, it's reflexive. This is not stuff he's gotta dig deep for.
19:37Like, owns this stuff now. Speak to this just for a second. Even though these are just pocket meetings, some of them are in your phone and you're knowing them.
19:44Here's what I see on you. I believe proximity to somebody changes your frequency with them.
19:50Meaning, I believe people let's just take business. You're interviewing successful business people. No.
19:54I don't know whether they've got a good family life or not. That's a totally different situation. So I'm not saying these are people to emulate one way or the other.
20:00Some probably yes, some probably no. But when you get into proximity to other people, their vibrational frequency, the way they think, the way they live, the way they operate impacts you.
20:11Just through association, there's a piece of this. When I look at you, I'm like, I can see the associations having poured into you.
20:19So from a confidence standpoint, you're a guy who grew up part of your life, like, I read it, kind of a military brat. You grew up overseas for a while.
20:26This is not a dude who grew up in Palm Beach with money. Now looking at you, you look like a rich guy. You got a rich guy's haircut and all that, but the truth of the matter is you didn't grow up that way.
20:36So has just been being in the proximity of these people, do you think unknowingly, maybe even unconsciously, change the way you view you in terms of your confidence level?
20:47100%.
20:48You know, I'm I I like to talk in sound bites like I think you do as well. I love the saying that the world is overly cruel to shy men, and it rewards the courageous.
20:56I think that when it comes to being able to attach yourselves to successful people, they can tell whether you're kind of, like, hesitant versus, like, that confident person being able to approach them. And in a sense, the hyper successful people, they can see part of in you.
21:11But I think it has definitely had an effect on me. But I think it does stem actually from an early age. I would say that's one attribute that I've kind of always had and may have been a big reason why the channel became so successful in a short amount of time is because I was always really confident to approach people.
21:26You know, my dad, he ran the largest overseas military base in the world. Awesome. He was the garrison commander at Camp Humphreys.
21:32So from an early age, I was there six to 10. I was, you know, going to these events where he was speaking at, you know, town halls and in the city in front of thousands of people. And, you know, I was meeting a lot of the people he was meeting because, you know, with the military, oftentimes, you know, their families come with them.
21:46And so I think that from an early age, you know, I had to realize that the way that it that's the right way to act and also observing my dad and the way he interacted, he he was a great leader, very respected on the military basis that he was kind of running. And so that had a big effect on me. Mhmm.
21:59And then another thing was is another thing that I do growing up, I I was I was in boy scouts. So I became an Eagle Scout, and I I learned public speaking then and how to communicate. And, you know, my scout troop that I was in in the DC Virginia area was ran by a bunch of ex marine guys.
22:14So I had those little, you know, ounces of experience between observing my dad and interacting with some of the top military people, government officials that he was, you know, bumping elbows with, shaking hands with, and then also in scouts. And so that kind of, I think, translated to us being able to build the channel and and knowing how to interact and operate
22:32the same way that I feel like successful people Really great insight, James. Yeah. So is there a hack?
22:36So those people listen to go, hey. I'd like to meet some successful people and bring them into my life, or is there you're walking up to Tom Brady.
22:45You're walking up to Will Smith. You're and I don't know how many of these are orchestrated or not.
22:50I'm sure some are and some are random. Mhmm. Walking up to some billionaire walking out of a lunch place in South Beach or whatever.
22:56Yeah. Is there something you do or say? Is it a body language thing?
23:00Is there anything you would teach somebody
23:02to appropriately approach somebody whom they'd like to kinda draw into their world a little bit, but don't know how to do it? Such a great question and and extremely, I think, useful for people because I think that that is the ultimate cheat code in life. Right?
23:14I like to say . If you could attach yourself to just a couple very, very, very successful people, that is more valuable than any college degree, than any sort of, you know, general education that I think people can get.
23:28Right? Just all it takes is a couple, you know, hyper successful people to kinda get in your corner, um, and be willing to pour into you. But I think it starts with a couple of things.
23:35Right? Like, when we started the channel initially, we didn't have any connections. Right?
23:39My dad was a military guy. He wasn't connected in the business world. Um, and so it was us literally organically just going up to people cold approaching them off the street.
23:47The first billionaire that we ever interviewed was at South by Southwest in 2022. It was Mark Cuban. And I went up to him after he was speaking at an event with my brother, I said, hey, Mark.
23:56My brother and I, we started a channel at the University of Texas where we're just interviewing successful people trying to get advice to the younger generation. Now what did I say there? I started the channel at the University of Texas.
24:05Why? I'm borrowing that authority because it's bigger than me. Very good.
24:08Right? So if you can find a way to borrow that authority and a lot of people will see my interviews now where, you know, yes, Tom Brady was a setup interview. Tom Cruise was a setup interview.
24:17Uh, Will Smith was a setup interview. Shaq setup interview. Right?
24:19And a lot of our stuff now is definitely a lot more setup, but I'm a big believer in keeping the main thing the main thing. The thing that got us here was that off the street content.
24:28So, for example, I went out to London last week. I didn't set up a single interview. I went right to Mayfair, which is the wealthiest part, and just went up to probably several 100 people within a week just getting some incredible content.
24:40Nothing set up. Probably more rejections than actual interviews. Just be and the reason being is because people love to see that content.
24:47And a big thing that people see in our interviews that they love, whenever I get feedback from people that love my content, they'll say, I love how you're able to reel them in. They don't wanna do the interview at first Mhmm. But then they wanna do it.
24:55And if if you notice, like, one of the things that I'll typically say is I have a channel with 21,000,000 followers. I've interviewed, you know, x amount of billionaires in the last four years. We just we need one minute.
25:02I I'm a huge advocate that credibility kills all bad attitudes. Mhmm. That's probably my favorite saying ever.
25:08Credibility kills all bad attitudes. Like, I remember, you know, Tom Brady, Michael Rubin. Know, I a year before, uh, I was able to interview them, it was either a rejection or they took it to them, and they didn't wanna do it or just crickets.
25:19But then when you interview a Tom Cruise, now it's like, okay. Now now now we can talk. Now we'll be in front of you.
25:23So I think that is a big thing for people. Like, don't necessarily get discouraged if, like, the first time it's a rejection or a no. Um, in business, whether it's you're trying to do a podcast or anything, trying to get a prospective client, it may not just be the right time.
25:36Maybe you need to kind of work on yourself more. Maybe you need to build up your credibility a little bit more. But I think that that's ultimately one of the things to do.
25:44And now if you're somebody that has no credibility whatsoever. Right? In our case, we started just attaching ourselves to the University of Texas.
25:50Hey. We started a channel here. Then it was, okay.
25:53Now we could attach ourselves to millions of followers, uh, x amount of billionaires interviewed. So we don't necessarily struggle with having to cling to that.
26:00But I always like to tell people, and I'll just use Tom Brady as the example. Tom Brady is the greatest football player of all time.
26:05Can I add value to Tom Brady's life to become a better football player? Absolutely not. But maybe there is something maybe it's content.
26:11Maybe there is something that I could disproportionately do better than Tom Brady. Mhmm.
26:15Maybe it's somebody playing the piano. Mhmm. Granted, maybe Tom Brady has no interest in learning how to play the piano.
26:21I'm just trying to put it in perspective for people that if you have some sort of, like, skill set that is, like, very, very unique Mhmm. And you can double down and become one of the best in the world at that, you can attach that to people. In our case, one of the reasons why we were able to attach ourselves to so many people is attention.
26:36That's one of the most valuable things in today's world. A lot of rich guys, like, they have more money than they can do. Now they wanna give back.
26:41Now they want legacy. Now they want attention. Now they want media.
26:43So Mhmm. That's kind of been our unique skill set that we've been able to add on to other people. And I think that this is very important as well because, you know, another one of my favorite interviews I've ever done is Robert Herjavec, the shark from Shark Tank.
26:55Incredible interview and such a nice guy as well. And I remember asking him the question, Robert, what do you think is more important?
27:00What you know or who you don't? 95% of people are gonna tell you who you know is more important, but he said the biggest piece of and, again, I don't like to cuss, but I'm gonna say verbatim with what he said. The biggest piece of advice that he's ever heard people say is that who you know is more important.
27:13Because you and I both know that if any if you are on a high level at all cylinders, you're a busy guy, you have all the opportunity in the world, You are not just gonna give your time to somebody Mhmm.
27:24Unless they have some sort of, like, value that they can offer you. Now maybe you do meet that, you know, young person. You can see the fire in his eyes, and you can see that he's got a lot of potential.
27:32Maybe he just needs somebody to pour into him or her, and and and you ultimately do that. But 95% of the time, it's like, you're gonna ultimately be with people that are gonna make you better, you know, add value to your life, and vice versa. You're gonna do the same.
27:44Life gives to givers, it takes from takers. So big advocate in giving back and giving to other people. But the lesson there was that you have to be if you become the brand, if you build it, they will come.
27:54Right? If if you become super successful and great at something, people are naturally gonna come to you.
28:00Mhmm. And then it's like you don't have to worry about, you know, who you know. So I know that was a bit long winded.
28:04No. I actually think there was brilliance in there as frankly every answer you've given.
28:10That idea of associative credibility Yeah. University of Texas in the very beginning.
28:14Now it's your the size of the show. But it could also be a cause you affiliate with, you know, that you're American Cancer or whatever it might be or the Make A Wish Foundation.
28:23So if you have associative credibility if you don't have it yourself and creating that, we even do that in branding in my companies now. When we get to a certain level, we'll associate with the PGA tour or NASCAR.
28:33So our associative credibility, you can do that on a small scale as well. Authority hacking. It's this is such a this this is such a good a good thing here.
28:41You've mastered this. Bro. Like, no one's ever said that on the show, and it's actually one of the best answers ever because it is true.
28:48This this idea of and by the way, once you get one, as you've said, hey. You know, I've got a show with blah blah blah viewers. We interviewed Tom Cruise.
28:54We interviewed Ed my I should put myself in that category. We've interviewed Gary Vee. We've interviewed whoever.
28:58So you're right. Finding a way for that. There's another thing you do, I think, maybe you don't even give yourself enough credit for.
29:04Most people, including me when I was your age, I had an allergy to rejection. I mean, it just I was afraid of it, and it destroyed me when I would get it.
29:16And I think if we were to cut out all the crap, why don't people post more on social media? Why aren't they starting a show? Why aren't they writing their book?
29:22Why haven't they started the business? Or why isn't the business growing? Why aren't they selling more if they're in a sales business?
29:28It is fear of rejection. Endo story.
29:32Yep. Right? Full stop.
29:34Do you have that? And whether you do or don't,
29:38what have you done to mitigate that fear? Yeah. I think it's important that everybody knows this.
29:43Right? A lot of people, they see our channel now. They see that we've got millions of followers, but what they don't see is I posted 400 times on Instagram and had 50 followers.
29:52Wow. I posted four now we have 3,000 posts and 8,000,000 followers on Instagram, but I posted 400 times on Instagram. I still have the screenshot of it and had 50 followers.
30:01How many people do you know would keep kinda posting after that? Most wouldn't. Most wouldn't.
30:06So I would say I definitely do not have a a fear of rejection. You don't have the fear? I don't have the fear.
30:11Now there have been times where, like, I've been rejected, and it's been very discouraging and kind of, like, where I've maybe lost a little bit of sleep over it, to be completely honest with you. But I would say I definitely don't have the fear. Again, I go back to the worst thing somebody can say is no.
30:23You know, I interviewed a gentleman recently who just sold a roofing company for high 9 figures in Dallas, and he said that you you can't take rejection personal. They're not rejecting you. They're just rejecting your offer.
30:33And so I feel like if the more that you can kinda just not take the rejection personal and, I go back to that idea of, like, there's been so many, like, countless times where there's people that had said no to an interview at first or it went through, and it was initially a no. I just again, it just means you gotta try a little bit harder.
30:48It means you know doesn't mean never. It just means not yet. And so I've I've really taken that, uh, to to my heart, honestly.
30:55And I think that this is one of the most important things that people need to learn how to overcome is that fear of rejection. Mhmm.
31:02You know? Again, I'll I'll name drop him again because he's it's true. He talks about this a lot, but Gary Vee said it is literally an a a pandemic as far as people worrying about what other people think about them.
31:13True. It's crazy. You know?
31:15They're worried that, oh, they're posting content. They're wanting to grow their brand, and somebody from back home is gonna see it and send it in a group chat and clown them behind their back. It's like, who cares about those people?
31:25Those aren't even your real friends. And oftentimes, especially once you start to kind of take off and become a little bit successful, that's when it gets the worst because people are like because you're doing something that they know that they could never see themselves, like, ever doing.
31:36Mhmm. And that hurts them. And therefore, you know, they're gonna project their own insecurities and and things on you as if, like, you're a bad person or Mhmm.
31:44You know, that you're corny or that you're a clown. Mhmm. So, again, I I love this idea that nobody else's thoughts ever paid my bills, which is which is So good.
31:52Which is it's so true. Bro, you know, you do in a good interview when my guy's behind the scenes, I'm watching multiple times, they've gone, wow. Yeah.
31:59Seriously, it's so good. Yeah. It's it's Do you I'm gonna give you a hard question now.
32:03I've been I've been so nice to you. Yeah. So now I'm gonna give you a hard question.
32:06Do you worry at all that you by the way, I I say this with respect when I say it. But do you worry at all that potentially you are projecting to young people or people watching your content?
32:21You know what I mean? That social media thing. It's every guy walking into a Lambo or whatever.
32:26Do you worry that people begin to think that someone like your father who served our country, who made a huge difference, who's clearly a stud and a leader and and has major influence on people, but he probably didn't become a billionaire working in the military.
32:41Right? Yeah. Do you worry that content about rich people, and that's not all your content, begins to pervert or morph people's view of what success is in the world?
32:51Yeah. Do you ever think about that? It's a very, very valid question.
32:54I've never actually been asked it before, honestly. I could see it on your face. That's that's a really good one.
32:59Thinking about it now Mhmm. It I think it definitely does have the potential to do that. I I think that it probably does a bit more good in the sense of, like, people can genuinely feel expired, and and they can be exposed to something like hearing the fact of, like, people that had come from rock bottom or had lost it all and were able to make it all back and what their mindset was in that moment, whether it was clinging on to faith, whether it was, you know, finding a loved one that was able to help them or just really grinding.
33:25So, look, I mean, I'm I'm a huge advocate and believer that, you know, especially, we're gonna need people that go in the military.
33:33We're gonna need people that ultimately work jobs. And, um, I think every job is a is is a great job ultimately. Like, if you can, you know, make a living for yourself and your family, like, not everybody's able to do that.
33:42Mhmm. So I it's it's a really good question.
33:45I'd I'd love to see at some point do by by the way, I asked that question believing what you do is great. Sure. Just so you know.
33:51Yeah. And I believe people want to be on the inside of watching people have accumulated wealth, including somebody like me. It's why that's why people probably listen to me a lot of the time as well.
34:00But so I'm not saying that. I mean, to put you on the spot. I just wanted to hear your heart about it.
34:04Mhmm. And I wanted the audience to hear. I shook your hand when we first met.
34:08You have a ton of humility. I could tell you come from a good place, and I don't think you think wealth is the only means of success, and I just wanted to give you the chance to actually express that.
34:18That's the only reason I asked you. No. I appreciate that.
34:20Just so you know. Are they happier? So you're only getting these moments, but some of you got to know.
34:26Tell us. You know, is a guy worth 600,000,000
34:29or a lady worth 600,000,000 or 800,000,000 and or a billion or 10,000,000,000, are they any happier than your dad or a school teacher, or are they less happy? Or would you say the money part's irrelevant? They're people are people.
34:42I think it really comes down to the person. You know, I've been able to meet and spend a lot of time with these people behind the scenes, and I can definitely tell that there is definitely a lot of emptiness in a lot of them. You know, for example, like, uh, Will Smith per se, he talks about this idea of cliff top.
34:56You know, there's rock bottom, and then there's cliff top. Right? And he says cliff top's the worst thing in the world because you can be at, like, the pinnacle of success, but it's like you come to that realization that it's like like, where else kinda do I go from here?
35:07Especially for that person, you know, that feeling of, like, never ever getting comfortable Mhmm.
35:13And never getting satisfied. They're you're always chasing something. It's a blessing and a curse because from a from a business standpoint, from a success standpoint, it's always great to have that mentality.
35:22Mike Rapoli, one of the favorite, you know, guys that I've been able to interview. I mean, that guy, just the way that he thinks is incredible. It's just a raw obsession about business and success, but he talks about when the big guy you know, the when the big entrepreneur on top starts to get comfortable, the starving entrepreneur is gonna come up and eat their lunch.
35:39And so that's why I feel like a lot of them it's important for anybody to, I think, have that mindset. Like, if you wanna build a great business, you you do have to realize that it's like, okay. When I get to a million followers, it's just the beginning.
35:50You have to keep on going, keep on going. But understanding that there is definitely a lot more to life than just the financial means of success, like having that.
35:59I've noticed that the the people that I've interviewed, when they do have a very healthy relationship relationship with with their their family, family, with their a good relationship with their kids. Like, again, you can't worship god and mammon. Right?
36:10And I had a incredible conversation recently. Uh, it was actually yesterday. I interviewed Tim Tebow recently, and one of his business partners, Scott Donnell, just gave me a call just checking in and said, hey.
36:19Anytime you need five or ten minutes to to kind of talk, um, I'm happy to. And and he goes he goes, do you know what what what is? Right?
36:26And he was saying that how most people think is just money. And he's like, no. Is just the, uh, idea.
36:31It's it's like wanting more of something. Mhmm. Constantly wanting more, wanting more, wanting more.
36:36And so when he said that to me, it kind of, like, just made me think a bit about that, and it's, like, it's very true. So this idea of, like, having to kinda, like, surrender yourself to god as far as that being the most important thing and kind of about, like, the humility thing. The reason why I think that's so important is because even though we've had you know, I say we because it's me, my brother, and childhood friend that are all partners in this thing together, we've had tremendous success in our early to mid twenties.
37:00I still have that realization that, like, I'm extremely insignificant in the sense of, like, there's ultimately a a creator that's much bigger than me that is is running this whole thing. And at the end of the day, we don't take any of that money with us. And that's the one thing that I would probably challenge a lot of these guys that are, you know, worth billions of dollars and that are that successful.
37:19It's like, do they really think that, like, this goes on forever? Right. You know?
37:22Because it doesn't. Right. And so I think that the ones that do have that humility and that belief in understanding that, hey.
37:29This is great. I'm gonna leave a legacy. You know?
37:32I've I've created a great company. I did this. But at the end of the day, there is, I think, a lot more to life and and from a fulfillment standpoint that these people can have.
37:40So I think a lot of the happiest ones are the ones that are actually have great relationships with God, um, and and have a have a belief in a higher power and a and a and a creator, honestly. I'm proud of you, bro. Great answer.
37:51Timmy's been on the show a bunch of times. He's one of my good friends. And Tebow?
37:54Yeah. He's a good guy. Mean, you say just on a few weeks ago.
37:57Yeah. And
37:59Gary's been on, and Rob Rob is about to be on. We're about to interview him.
38:04What's it feel like? So take us inside. You had a dream, and it started to happen.
38:10Mhmm. What's that feel like? I think a lot of people would just love to know, like, do you when the dream starts happening because I know how it was for me, but I I'm I'm not being interviewed right now.
38:21I'm asking the questions. But, like, is it, oh my gosh. This is happening, or is it completely different than you imagined it?
38:27Is it the pressure of not losing it? Like, oh my gosh. This could go away.
38:31What's the feeling like as a dream you have at one time starts to materialize itself in your life? And then you're walking through your life, is there a part of you that's like, I can't believe I just talked to Tom Cruise, or or what's the whole process feel like as a young man going through it? One of the things that I've really had to instill in myself,
38:50uh, along the way with my partners as far as with all these things that we've been able to do is to take time to celebrate the little wins. Mhmm. Um, I feel like oftentimes, especially when you're building something great and and trying to achieve something, oftentimes, people forget to look back and and feel a sense of, you know, proudness for themselves and just to really think about your blessings and and be really thankful for, like, what's happened.
39:11So we've tried to be a lot more intentional. If, like, we close a big deal or, um, you know, we land a huge interview and we do it and it goes well, then, you know, ultimately, like, we we try and take time to really take that in and and think about it. Mhmm.
39:23Um, I I also think that, um, one of the most important things for anybody is to understand this idea of momentum. You know, like, last like, last year, I was probably on a 100 to a 150 flights, probably beyond the same amount, if not more this year, just continuing to go all over.
39:41And the reason is because, you know, with over 20,000,000 followers now, like, I wanna and, again, it's it kind of does go back on some of the things that I just talked about. But it's like, I have the understanding that, like, if I if I do stop, somebody else could easily come up.
39:56And I'm like, I wanna continue to just build this moat. I wanna continue to just grow this thing as big as I possibly can and take advantage of the momentum that we do have.
40:05So if that means, like, you know, I'm going to interview another huge NBA team owner out in New York next week and, you know, just continuing to do all these, you know, great things and and awesome collaborations. It it really does feel amazing. Um, it does, and I'm very thankful and blessed for it.
40:21Um, but I also do, I think, have that
40:24part of me that, like, feels like there's so much more to still do, honestly. Good. Yeah.
40:29You do. You I where much is given, much is expected. And I sure actually, after meeting you, I'm glad you're one of the young people that has influence in the world.
40:36Thank you. I think it's been you have a stewardship. You know, man?
40:39There's a lot lot of people that look up to you that are gonna continue to look up to you. If you come back and do the show with me here in a couple years, you're you're gonna have 50,000,000. Yeah.
40:47And you just will. Right? Because I don't think I think you understand momentum when it's a very fickle friend.
40:51And if you don't keep feeding momentum, it can go away. Right.
40:55Momentum makes a guy like me who's pretty average seem a lot better than he is, and that momentum is a magnifier. And you wanna do everything you can once you get it to feed it.
41:05Most people do the reverse. They get some success. They start to think it's them.
41:09They cool it. They start to sabotage themselves, and then it goes away. Sustained success is understanding momentum's a blessing and continue to feed it.
41:17So I'm really grateful that you said that. Okay. Two more things.
41:22And I wanted to ask him in this sequence because I opened up with this, but you did something unique. I opened up with he took something that could have been a weakness and he flipped it into a strength, which is your age. Yeah.
41:33A lot of people think I've got this. This isn't gonna work because I'm middle aged. This isn't gonna work because I'm too young.
41:38It's not gonna work because I'm not rich. It's not gonna work because of my career or whatever. But I actually think if you were a 50 year old dude who started this channel and started walking up to random billionaires, I think that part of a successful person who wants to pay it forward wouldn't exist.
41:53So I actually think your age, do you agree, in an odd way, was an advantage walking up to these more senior people because it was
42:03almost out of respect in looking up and looking for advice. Would you give someone advice to say, look at what you think your biggest efficiency is, and it might actually be the catalyst for your uniqueness as well. Yeah.
42:14I I I put a 100% agree with that. I think our differences do make us stronger, and I I do think that this idea of reverse mentorship is so powerful. And I learned this from a gentleman named Mark McClain.
42:25He sold a company to Oracle for hundreds of millions of dollars, and he now is, uh, he started and is the CEO of a publicly traded company. I think they're called SailPoint. They're worth, uh, several billion dollars, and he's actually based out of Austin.
42:37Incredible entrepreneur and a great, uh, leader as well. And, you know, he talked about this idea of, like, one of the most important things that they do with this company at his company's reverse mentorship, where he knows that, hey.
42:47Even though I'm I'm I'm an older gentleman, a lot of these younger guys can actually come in here and teach me a lot about the new technology, about the new, you know, branding side of things. Whereas I have a lot more kind of skin in the game.
42:57I've been around for a lot longer, those years of experience in business, you know, can certainly teach them. So I do think that that idea of reverse mentorship Mhmm.
43:06Is very true. And, look, I've probably been turned down by a lot of people also because they didn't see enough gray in my hair, and and that was probably definitely a very real thing. So I do think that it is important to understand where people have their strengths and weaknesses.
43:21But, yes, those weaknesses, whether they think it's their age, whether they think it's their gender, some people think, you know, it may be color of skin for some people. Um, right? And I think that people can ultimately,
43:31you know, maybe utilize those two advantages in some ways. Find a way. Because it actually may be true that it's that your age was gonna hinder you doing this, but you found a way in the way you approach University of Texas, the way you leverage that weakness into a strength.
43:45I think it's a key. Yeah. I did it in business too when I was very young and I was coming up in business.
43:50I thought no one's gonna take me seriously. So I had to become so good at what I was doing that all of a sudden, oh, he's a prodigy. He's a so the they don't prodigies aren't 60.
43:59Prodigies are young. So the fact that I was very good at what I did and very knowledgeable and young was an advantage.
44:06So I became a prodigy instead of just a young kid who didn't know what he was doing. So there's a way to flip that. What about AI?
44:11Do you worry about what AI is gonna do to the influencer space, the branding space in general? I behind the scenes, everybody should know. My peers who, you know, are influencers or business people or self improvement are concerned that they could be replaced by AI somehow or that it's gonna change monetization or things of that sort.
44:33Virtual mentors, if you will, on social media stuff. Any because you're at the cutting edge of this stuff. You're talking to everybody.
44:39What are your thoughts about that? It's it's it's also, honestly, a really great question and very relevant question. See, we're talking about that culture right now, that the packed platform algorithm culture, you're leaning into that Mhmm.
44:48Which I love. Um, when it comes to AI and content and just kind of the future of that landscape, personally, I would first of all advise people that if you think that AI created content for a personal brand is gonna do well, no.
44:59I I I'm not a fan of people using AI to duplicate and clone themselves and create content. Personally, I just don't think it's up to the standard in terms of, like, that being better than an actual person creating content. So let's first kinda dupe that and and establish that, first of all.
45:12Second of all, I think with AI coming up, it is gonna make it incredibly much harder.
45:18And this is why, like, this is a great time for you to ask that question and people to listen. Because if you think it's hard to go viral on social media now Mhmm.
45:29You wait for the next three to five years. Because think about it this way. With AI, you're gonna be able to start posting 10,000, 20 piece 20,000 pieces of content at once.
45:41So think about how like, when I think about it this way. Right? I started posting on TikTok when pretty much since it's and a couple months after its inception when it really started to take off.
45:49Like, 2020 was the year TikTok just over over to Google as the number one search engine, but 2019 was when I started to post. So right before, I would say most people started to get on get on it.
45:59And I would I would tell people then, you could you could post anything then and and go viral. And I'm I'm not kidding. Like, some of the stuff that even I posted or that went viral then, like, it was way easier to go viral compared to, like, now.
46:11Like, I'm being transparent and honest. Like, you have to put out great content in order to go viral. Let's be very clear.
46:17Where social media is heading, it's gonna it is it already has become, but I think it is increasingly becoming less about the amount of followers that you have, and I genuinely, genuinely mean that.
46:27Why? Because some of the biggest business creators in the world, like, I see they have doubt or millions of followers on TikTok, and some of them are their last 10 posts are getting 20,000 views on TikTok. I noticed it too.
46:39So which is crazy. And that's the majority of them. Like, let me say it.
46:42Like, that's it's not like it's, like, one or two people. It's like, no. That's the majority of them.
46:46I think Instagram's done a bit of a better job of of where if you have the audience and community, your stuff will tend to perform a little bit better on there. That's why I think TikTok is, like, the best test of, like, a content that's, like, viral and, like, like, a great piece of content because TikTok's it's not necessarily about the audience that you have.
47:05It's about how great that content is. And that's why it's never been, like, a better time to focus on pouring into and building that brand because I do think that even three to five years from now with AI Mhmm.
47:15Coming onto the scene, it is gonna make it a bit harder to to to build a brand and and stand out with people being able to where, you know, now and a year ago, you're only posting one piece of content or two or three pieces of content at once for different channels.
47:29Now with being able to clone accounts, like, some people are probably gonna be putting up 10,000 pieces of content a day on behalf of their brands and whatnot. Think about what that saturates the hell out of a, you know, social media feed and whatnot for people.
47:42So I think it is very important
47:44to to to get in now. I think you're right. I think also the other thing you said that's true is, like, it's more important out the content's good.
47:50Oh, 100%. And and the cream will always rise to the top. Yes.
47:53And our our human being putting out great content organically, I think, will always do better Yes.
48:00Than some AI generated content. And by the way, when I see AI generated content now,
48:04I know what it is when I see it. I can even tell when people are reading content that's AI generated on their podcast and stuff now too. It's like it's it's made people very lazy to be creative, and I think the space is gonna open up even bigger for creative people.
48:17Well, exactly. It's like you don't wanna take the human element out of things. Right.
48:20Because you you can tell. Like, nobody wants to listen to somebody who's robotic. Right.
48:23You know? You know what I mean? And don't don't get me wrong.
48:25Like, I do think that using tools, sure, to your advantage to come up with creative ideas, strategy for punchy, bold things, sound bites, and whatnot, like, absolutely big advocate in using it for things like that. But I think for the most part, it's like, it does make people lazy.
48:42For people that are writing copy for their ads, like, can tell when somebody's using, you know, AI generated stuff. So it's You know, the other thing too is, like, humans evolve. And so right now, the stage of AI, it's still pulling from what already existed.
48:53So, like, even when I ask AI, what would Ed Milets say about self confidence?
48:57It tells you what I would say about self confidence three, four, and five years ago, not what I would say about it now as I've evolved and learned more and had more experiences. What is the biggest thing that you would change?
49:06Like like three years ago, Ed versus now. Great question. How you read the interviewer?
49:10Well, no. I I wanna know this because I I think that I used to believe that self confidence was exclusively about keeping the promises that you make to yourself.
49:18I now think that self confidence is stemmed a little bit more in my own case from intention. Meaning, my confidence doesn't always just come from my ability but my intent to serve. So, like, when you and I are done with this interview, I'm about to go speak to, I don't know, seven, eight thousand people, right, in this arena that we're doing this in.
49:34I'm gonna wanna go out there as a confident expression to myself. I'm not gonna go out there confident because I think I'm the greatest speaker in the world. I'm gonna go out there because I've attached my confidence that my intention is to make a difference for these people.
49:46My intention is to serve them. And so I can't control the result of it. So, like, Wayne Dyer said this to me when he was alive.
49:54I met him at one point, and we became dear friends, but he said to me, Ed, you're gonna change the world. And I'm sure he said that to tons of other guys, but to me, I was the only guy he ever said it to, and he said, and it's not because of your talent or the fact that, you know, God gave you a a pretty deep voice or you're a smart guy or whatever, of which I'm not.
50:12He said, uh, I just think you have a beautiful heart and you intend to serve people. You intend to make a difference.
50:18You're a good man. It was the first time in my life, James, that someone gave me a compliment I believed because I didn't think I was very talented.
50:27I don't think I'm that smart, but I do think I'm a decent man. And when he attached my ability to do something to my intent and not necessarily the skill, I believed it. Wow.
50:37And so he said, all your life, if you'd attach your confidence, Ed, when you walk in a room to your intentions. That's what I picture in you, James. When you walk up to Tom Cruise, even though that one was staged, whoever it is anywhere, I don't think you're walking up there confident like, I'm a badass.
50:52I'm the best ever. I think you're walking up there with an intention to learn about them, an intention to learn yourself, an intention to transfer that information to your audience. So I think your confidence is stemming from, I I'm here to do good.
51:04Mhmm. And I so I think confidence is more of that than I used to. I love that.
51:08Yeah. I I hadn't heard that before, but I love the idea about it being from, like, an an intentionality standpoint. Yeah.
51:14Well and then the reason that's important that I'm gonna ask you a last question, that means anybody can be confident. I'm not saying don't get great at what you do. I mean, I've worked very hard at being a a speaker.
51:23Right? That part's the that's the that's the little leaks. But the question is how do I walk out there as the best expression of that practice so that the a game comes out, not the c game.
51:33Mhmm. I think when you watch a great athlete when they're expressing their craft, they've put all the work in.
51:39But I think the confidence comes from I've put the work in. I've kept the promises I make to myself, and my intention is to win here.
51:45My intention is to dominate. My intention is to serve play for the Red Sox, win for the fans, win for Boston. So I think intention matters.
51:53That's just my piece. You're But not interviewing me. I'm interviewing you.
51:56Last question. By the way, this has been a great interview. Thank you.
51:59Like a 10 out of 10. I just want you to know that. You don't need that acknowledgment, but I love when I'm doing something that I know is gonna make a difference in the universe, which is what you did today.
52:08So thank you in advance because we're gonna have the last question. It's a simple one. Most people listening to us or watching us right now want to be happier, want to be wealthier, want to make a bigger difference.
52:19Right? They want deeper relationships. Basically, they have dreams that they wanna make come true.
52:25Most of them won't. Most of them won't. You are.
52:31So what advice would you give to them that currently aren't making their dreams come true as a place to begin to actually turn that around and be a little bit more like you've been? I love it. Couple things.
52:42Number one, you're not a tree. Travel. Go see the world.
52:45You can only grow to what you're exposed to. I'm
52:48I I'm a big believer. Before the time I was 20, I went to 20 countries. And what that did for my mind and my perspective, seeing the world, I remember when I was nine years old, I was in Cambodia.
52:57I got to travel to all of, like, the countries in Asia when because my living in South Korea. I remember I was nine years old floating around in, like, a river in Cambodia.
53:07And I, like, looked out, I saw this little boy who was floating around in a trash can lid, arm cut off, and a snake wrapped around his neck. And I was like, what that did for me then seeing that at 10 years old now is, like, I I often think about that whenever I'm, like, stressed or worried about some big problem that I have.
53:24It's like, you don't have problems, dude. You you don't have problems. And so that was healthy for me.
53:29I think traveling, being exposed to different cultures is very important. Get out of your hometown. Uh, if you're not in an environment or a place that where you have like minded people that are wanting to achieve more for themselves, I like to say that the best decision I ever made was moving from the Washington DC area to Austin, Texas.
53:46Growing up in the DC Virginia area, I'm very thankful and blessed. It was a great community that I grew up in, you know, great schools that I went to. You know, my dad was at the Pentagon towards the end of his career, so that's why we were ultimately there.
53:56But all the people around, you know, DC is structured. It's centered around government jobs, contracting, politics, defense. Everybody's top level of success to them is going to get a $100,000 government contracting job.
54:07I didn't want that for myself. And so when I ultimately moved out to Austin to be with my brother at the University of Texas, I'm exposed to people that are authentic, people that are like minded, that are young. They're building something great, and it causes you to wanna do the same thing.
54:21And that was a very important decision. So I would tell people that if you're not in an environment that's gonna cause you to grow you know, you talked about proximity and what the frequency that that leads to in yourself.
54:30But, yeah, that proximity is is power Mhmm. Where you can go in a coffee shop, and you can see a guy sitting down who just sold a company for $400,000,000, and he's in a T shirt and flip flops.
54:39And so I think that that was very, very important. Mhmm. You know?
54:43People will take you places that money can't. I think that it is very important to, you know, build up a solid network of people from a they can help you mentally. They can help you from a business standpoint.
54:52They can help you from a spiritual standpoint. I think that's very important. I think especially as you are starting to grow in your business, it's important to have, you know, people around you that can keep you help keep you grounded and give you those insights that it's like, hey.
55:03When you start to feel this type of way, just remember this. Go pray about this. Go reflect on this.
55:07And they can and they can relate to you, and they can kind of instill in you and pour into you some of those lessons. And then I would, you know, kind of end by saying that we're we're in a skill set based economy now. You know, I just interviewed one of the random guys I interviewed out in London was a a guy who was an investment banker on you know, owns a hedge fund now, and he was talking about how, you know again, it goes back to this idea of, like, what you know versus who you know, and he's one of the few people that will tell you what you know is more important.
55:31And he said years ago, it was what you know. But he was saying that one of the governors of, like, the big banks out in London is complaining that his daughter can't get a job anymore. Mhmm.
55:37How twenty years ago, that wouldn't have happened because of nepotism. Like, he would have made a phone call, and this person got a job. But if you have connections and you don't have anything of, like, substance to offer those people, those connections are worthless.
55:48Mhmm. So I think that that's a a very important thing.
55:53You know, find that skill set. And me, was Constant. I became one of the best in the world at Constant.
55:57Was able to grow my own brand, then grow other businesses, and then kind of also help attach that to other people, which helped me build relationships with people. So become, you know, great at at at one or two things.
56:08You know? The wealthiest people, they you know? I mean, some of them now, they have a diversified portfolio.
56:14But, like, the myth that the average millionaire has seven streams of income, it's it's it's not true. You become greedo. One or two things, and then eventually, you know, you diversify.
56:23Like, one of my favorite sayings is that concentration builds wealth, diversification keeps it. I just bought my first piece of commercial real estate right in the middle of Ohio State. Uh, $5,000,000 building out there.
56:32It's like a kinda like a shopping center there. So it's right next to the highest grossing potbelly in the in the country. So, uh, and, again, that was the byproduct of, again, concentrated so hard for a couple years.
56:42We're able to build businesses on the back end of what we were doing and and monetize in a way where we weren't done with our money to where now it affords you to diversify and make those investments to where you'll be getting, you know, paid every month for the rest of your life. So think that that's a a good one.
56:55And last one because I gotta end it off with one more sound bite. I interviewed a gentleman out in Houston, uh, named Deal Woods, and, uh, he yeah.
57:03I remember him saying this. He said, stay small enough long enough, and you'll be big enough soon enough. That I took that with me because when we were making, uh, $30,000 a month off of just Facebook ad revenue, that was our first Wow.
57:17Stream of income on Hard Knocks. It was $30,000 a month off just Facebook. Didn't have any businesses at at the time.
57:22But one of the commonalities that I've learned from hyper successful people is this idea of reinvesting back into the business, reinvesting back into the company, back into the company. So when we were making 30 k a month in profit, my partners and I were only paying ourselves $2,000 a month. Wow.
57:35And so but that was important because even to this day, we still do that. Now what's important about the lesson about the 30 k a month is that 30 k a month went to less than 5 k a month because we got demonetized on Facebook.
57:46Mhmm. And that's why it's also important that as a content creator, you do not own the content that you post once you post it on that platform. Mhmm.
57:52Instagram owns it. TikTok own it. They can decide at any time to ban you and your content.
57:56That's why that diversification piece is very important because you again, you can't control what happens to your content if you get a content violation or a strike. So you need you need to understand that and realize that you need to find a way to monetize.
58:08Like, you can't build a business off of just ad revenue. Um, but what that lesson there did was because we were so good and diligent during those couple months of making only $30 and paying ourselves $2 just to cover our expenses and put everything back in the business is it gave us a couple months to go back to the drawing board and then figure out an appropriate way to kinda, like, monetize that made sense.
58:27And, you know, even to this day, where our businesses do 1 to 1,500,000 a month in revenue, we do about 7 to 800 k in profit. I still pay myself less than 20 k a month. I'm impressed.
58:37And everything else is going back into the business, hiring, expanding, buying, you know, and invest you cash know, flowing, appreciating assets. So that's it right there.
58:45You're an impressive young man. Thank you, sir. I
58:49please stay this humble and confident at the same time. Thank you. Yeah.
58:53That was a great conversation today. Thank you. I appreciate you having me.
58:56Oh, bro. I'm glad I did. Yeah.
58:57This is my pleasure. This is James Doolin, you guys. School of hard knocks.
59:00Go check him out. Share the episode today. This is one of those that'll go go very viral.
59:05God bless you, everybody. Max out.
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The bait, then the rug-pull.
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