The Entrepreneur Playbook

Summary

Business School with Sharran Srivatsaa — "The Entrepreneur Playbook" (May 19, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This special episode delivers a comprehensive, action-packed playbook for founders, operators, and ambitious professionals aiming to build and scale extraordinary businesses with focus and clarity. Sharran Srivatsaa, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Acquisition.com, shares hard-won lessons from decades of building, scaling, and exiting businesses. The episode, originally recorded as an interview with Tiffany on the Anatomy of a Dream podcast, is repackaged for Business School listeners, weaving together real-world stories, tactical frameworks, and clear, repeatable principles for entrepreneurs at any stage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Focus as the Foundation for Scale

• Simplicity over Complexity

  • Many founders try to improve every aspect at once, but scaling relies on "doing fewer things, better."
  • Quote: “To do great things, we must do fewer things.” — Sharran (01:36)

• Diagnosing Your Business with Traffic, Systems, and Skills

  • Framework for service businesses:
    • Traffic: Do you have a consistent lead flow?
    • Systems: Can leads convert reliably into customers?
    • Skills: Is delivery scalable beyond the founder?
  • Quote: “If I transfer the skill to someone else, now I have a scalable model.” — Sharran (03:55)

• Start with Systems Before Traffic

  • Ensure processes ("plumbing") are reliable before increasing "water" (leads).
  • The "1-1-1 Method": One traffic source, one conversion method, one delivery channel.

2. What Makes a Business Scalable?

• Growth by Subtraction, Not Multiplication

  • Ask: “What would a $10 million or $100 million version of my model look like?”
  • Remove non-essentials to avoid exponential complexity.
  • Quote: "The hardest part is to get out of the curse of capability." — Sharran (08:19)

• Finding Your True Value Proposition

  • Case study: Telus Properties scaled by discovering and focusing on the one thing agents valued—saving them one day per week.
  • Build operations and decisions around that core value.

3. Building a Sellable (Option-Rich) Business

• Always Build to Sell… Even If You Never Sell

  • The goal is options, not an exit.
  • Take your business to market periodically to get feedback, discover what buyers value, and set your improvement agenda.
  • Quote: “When you don’t know your options, you don’t have any.” — Sharran (13:22)

• Types of Business Options

  • Grow solo (self-funded), bring in outside investment, or even sell to employees (ESOPs).
  • Use "phantom equity" to incentivize top talent without legal ownership complexities.

4. Recruiting and Retaining 'A Players'

• Express Pain or Vision Clearly

  • Write out your struggles or aspirations for a role; use AI to turn into a job description that attracts a perfect fit.
  • Quote: “It’s not that they are an A player. It is that they are an A player for you.” — Sharran (22:22)

• Creative Incentivization

  • Phantom equity lets key team members share success without legal share transfer.

5. Wealth, Lifestyle, and Risk

• Freeze Your Lifestyle Early

  • Keep personal spending flat as income rises to preserve capital for reinvestment and resilience.
  • Quote: “Our net worth is probably 50× in the last 14 years and we still run on the same monthly nut.” — Sharran (20:56)

• Wealth Creation Is a WHO, Not a WHAT, Problem

  • Build relationships—the "10/10 Forever Rule": invest in 10 people you’d support for the next 10 years, and who'd pay you forever.

6. Leverage the Power of Memos and Written Culture

• Institutionalize Clear Thinking
  • Use memos as a decision and meeting requirement: “No memo, no meeting.”
  • Memo structure: Story so far → Issue to solve → Recommendations → Questions.
  • Quote: “Fear has no place on paper. Right. You see it and you're like, oh, that is what I was thinking. I’m not afraid about that anymore.” — Sharran (27:31)

7. Entrepreneurial Mindset: Origin Story & Resilience

• Skill Stacking

  • Seemingly unconnected skills (tennis, computer science, investment banking) compound into unique advantages.
  • Some of the strongest skills are acquired by necessity, not passion.

• Proximity and Persistence

  • The rooms, mentors, and environments you intentionally place yourself in will shape outcomes ("Proximity is power").
  • Persistence shines in the face of setbacks—whether it's dumpster diving in college, losing money on a bad investment, or enduring a decade of uncertainty.

• Foundational Influence of Allies

  • Family and close supporters (especially Sharran's wife) provided the stability and belief to persevere.

8. The 'Second-Order Thinking' Advantage

• Chess, Not Checkers
  • Ask, "If I do this, what are the effects 1, 5, 10 years out?"
  • This thinking separates world-class operators from everyone else.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Focus & Complexity:
  “To do great things, we must do fewer things.” (01:36)
• On System Building:
  “Should we build the plumbing or should we send water to the pipes first?” (04:30)
• On Value Proposition:
  “What would be the one thing that if I took away, you wouldn’t want to work here anymore?... Me being here saves me at least one day a week.” (10:44)
• On Options:
  “When you don’t know your options, you don’t have any.” (13:22)
• On Scaling:
  “Growth by subtraction, not multiplication.” (08:28)
• On Finding ‘A Players’:
  “It’s not that they are an A player. It is that they are an A player for you—that’s the fit.” (22:22)
• On Email Lists' Value:
  “In the modern world, email is the gateway to everything... probably one third of my net worth has been created from my email list.” (25:11)
• On Memo Culture:
  “Any decision requires a memoir. We say, no memo, no decision.” (27:31)
• On Lifestyle:
  “Our net worth is probably 50 times [greater] in the last 14 years and we still run on the same monthly nut.” (20:56)
• On Failures & Belief:
  After losing $1,000,000, his wife’s reaction: “What did you learn?” (41:18)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:26 — The "do fewer things" principle & the 3-part business diagnostic (traffic, systems, skills)
• 04:30 — Building the right systems before scaling lead generation
• 08:28 — Simplification and "growth by subtraction"
• 10:44 — Telus Properties: Discovering and delivering one critical value proposition
• 13:22 — The "exit mindset" — always building with sellability/options in mind
• 18:59 — Phantom equity: How to motivate top talent without legal share dilution
• 20:56 — Lifestyle freeze for entrepreneurial resilience
• 22:17 — Finding and attracting “A Players”
• 24:03 — Why your email list is a superpower
• 27:31 — The memo as a strategy-defining tool
• 30:13 — Sharran’s origin: skill stacking and resilience
• 41:07 — Dealing with setbacks and harnessing support from allies
• 44:23 — Belief as the north star: The job of a leader, and the impact of environment
• 46:57 — Dumpster diving: Persistence and what it means to not give up
• 49:16 — "Preparation": The name of the current chapter

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Key Playbook Principles (as summarized by host Tiffany)

1. Skill Stacking: Combine diverse skills—even those gained out of necessity.
2. Proximity: Put yourself in environments that expand your horizons.
3. Ask for Help: Accelerate growth by learning from those ahead.
4. Recruit Superstars: Attract and compensate "A Players" (creatively, e.g., phantom stock).
5. Attention Management: Relentlessly prioritize high-leverage actions.
6. Simplicity As Strategy: Structure your business to do fewer things exceptionally well (the "1-1-1" framework).
7. Identify Bottlenecks: Assume success and spot where systems, not people, will break.
8. Rainy Day Readiness (Lifestyle Freeze): Unlock margin, avoid golden handcuffs.
9. Exit Mindset: Build processes and systems as if you’ll sell—even if you never will.
10. Undeniable Proof: Let your data and results speak so loudly, no one can ignore you.
11. Find Allies: Seek out those who believe in you, cut out those who don’t.
12. Persistence: Stay in the game, especially when winning seems unlikely.

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Actionable Takeaways

• Apply the "traffic, systems, skills" filter to find your business bottleneck and address the most pressing constraint, in that order.
• Stay simple and focused: Nail “one traffic source, one conversion, one delivery channel” before expanding.
• Regularly ask customers: "What’s the one thing, if we took it away, would make this no longer valuable for you?"
• Even if you don’t plan to sell, periodically act as if you are prepping for a sale—ask external parties for objective feedback.
• Express pain and vision concretely in job postings (and use AI to make them compelling for “A players”).
• Freeze your lifestyle early; optionality generates leverage.
• Write memos for every pivotal decision—clarity on paper drives clarity in execution and meetings.
• When stuck or facing setbacks, remember: “Not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.”

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Final Words

This episode is a field manual for high-achievers who want to win—on their own terms—by building with purpose, intention, and ruthless clarity. Apply these principles, frameworks, and mindset shifts to architect extraordinary growth without unnecessary chaos or complexity. And always, always keep swinging: persistence—when paired with focus and allies—remains the ultimate entrepreneurial advantage.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, this is Sharan Trivata. Welcome back to the Business School podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to do something a little different. I did an interview on the Anatomy of a Dream podcast and the host, Tiffany, did an insane job of taking my entire interview, chopping it up and repackaging it as the ultimate entrepreneur playbook. She gives you the story, the strategies, the tactics, and the exact frameworks on how to build and grow and scale your business. There is no way that I could have done this. And she figured out how to package all of it so that you can have some say, 20 years worth of learnings all down into one episode. This podcast and this video went viral on YouTube. Their short clips are going viral as well. I'm packaging all of this into audio format so that you can listen to it on the go. Check this out and you're gonna love it. One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you lear what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Trivata and welcome to business school.

[B]

Sharon, if I wanted to to 10x my company, what would guarantee that I don't accomplish that?

[A]

A lot of time people think that they have to improve and grow every other part of their business. But if you actually just improve one part of your business, everything else will be forced to lift with it. To do great things, we must do fewer things. And unless we accept that, it gets very, very hard to build a scalable business. Because if you think being a million dollar business is complex, imagine a hundred million dollar business, right? The complexity is not linear, it is extremely exponential. So our job is to figure out what are the few things that I can do and do them extremely, extremely well. Right?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I feel like I face like a lot of times when we started our company and even now, like there's times where you almost want to bet on the right horse, it feels like. So is there a way that, you know, people who are currently trying to scale and they're trying to figure out, like, what is that one thing that I should focus on for this next season?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How do they evaluate that?

[A]

The easiest way to figure out the thing to focus on in your business is to pick the thing in your head and then Assume that you've accomplished that goal. Hey, let's assume I already have all the leads that I want. Does everything work? Oh, no, we'll need to hire more people. We'll need to get, get more marketing. We'll need to do more things. You have to go to the assumption phase, because then the last thing that you want to have happen is you do the thing and then you get stuck with everything else. Also, it's really important to apply some kind of diagnostic to your business that we know most businesses use to figure out where the opportunity is. So let me give you the framework. In a service business, it is three things. Traffic, systems and skills. The job of traffic is to fill the funnel with opportunities. The job of systems is to convert those opportunities into appointments, cash, contracts, whatever. And the job of the skills is to deliver and actually fulfill and get paid. If I would take the traffic systems and skills framework and I knew nothing about your business, I would overlay that on your business. And I say, well, Tiffany, do we have a traffic problem? Essentially you say, well, what does that mean? That means, do we have an unlimited source of leads that are just filling the funnel constantly? And you may say, yes, no, maybe.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Then I say, great, do we have a systems problem? Meaning do those leads automatically start getting converted into contracts, appointments, deals, whatever. If not, there's the next one. And then do we have a skills problem? Meaning somebody is delivering that in a highly skilled way. Most of the time it is the owner.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Right. And so it's like, hey, do I have the ability to transfer the skill to someone else? So when I look at the traffic systems and skill, like, no problem with traffic, you're generating a ton of leads. No problem with systems, we're converting those. But the skills is Tiffany's delivering everything. So now the scalability on that, that is the constraint. So I have to do whatever it takes to transfer that skill to someone else. And so now they know that if I transfer the skill to someone else, now I have a scalable model.

[B]

Let's say the leads are not great right now, right. For somebody's business and their systems are not great. And they're basically saying like, okay, all of these three things are problematic. But then there's the argument of like, well, if I were to bring in a bunch of traffic, the systems are not there and that'll collapse. Do you fix the systems before the traffic?

[A]

Correct. Because otherwise two things are going to happen. One, the first set of people that came in are going to have a bad experience. And two, you're going to be really upset that you paid a ton of money for traffic and they didn't convert. So you always get the system right first. Think about it this way. Should we build the plumbing or should we send water to the pipes? First? You would build the plumbing first and then you would send water through the pipes. Now the best part here is you're like, well, it's expensive to build the plumbing. So what is the smallest version of the plumbing that I can build to get this to work? Right. That's why it's really helpful to have like a 1,1,1 delivery method. I have one traffic source that you can control. I have one conversion method and I have one delivery channel. For example, I get leads through paid ads. They convert on a one on one call and I deliver all of them in a Facebook group. I'm making this up, right? So now you know that, hey, I've got this one channel ads working. If the ads break, I'm done. But at least I know the ads working. And then you can make that better. Hey, I've got this one thing on the call. Well, my conversion is not doing well. Great. Maybe my script is wrong. Maybe I can try a few other things. So now you can hire a specific consultant to watch 10 of these calls and say, give me a way to get my conversion from 30% to 35%. Now you don't have to change anything else. You just say three different things in your script and you automatically. The funnel works better. So the 111 is very clear because then you say, cool, the 111 worked. Can I add two traffic sources? Can I add three traffic sources? And then a lot of people will say, well, what traffic source do I add? Very simple. Is it organic, is it paid, or is it activity or joint ventures? If you're a real estate agent, you say, hey, I'm going to go knock on doors. I'm going to give out flyers to generate some leads to get people to come to this. So 111 is really good because the 111 will probably get you to a $300,000 business very quickly. If you can dial the 111 in and then you just add another traffic source, then you add another traffic source, then it'll break somewhere. Then you probably need a different conversion source. One traffic source, one conversion mechanism, one delivery channel, and then you'll be able to diagnose that very quickly.

[B]

Okay, so what is it that makes a business model scalable?

[A]

There's this awesome football analogy. So I had a business Partner who played for the Miami Dolphins, and he was a defensive lineman. He played for this legendary coach named Don Shula. And I said, hey, what makes Don Shula this legendary coach that everybody wanted to play for? And he said, every single play that they mapped out ended up in a touchdown. Think about how crazy that is. No other coach in the history of the NFL plans that way. Most of them are like, hey, run spider3y banana and you'll get 8 yards. In don Shula's plays, every single play had a possibility of hitting a touchdown. The lesson there is we start the business and we think that we will figure it out tomorrow. What we want to do is project out, saying, if I continue to do this thing, is it sustainable enough for me to have it grow? Right. Because then you start to realize I'm already working 14 hours a day. There's no way, if this grows from 3 million to 30 million, will I be able to grow in that way? And you want growth by subtraction, not multiplication. This happens, this happens. And I make a lot of money. That's it. Right. The bigger question to ask is, what would it take for this to be $10 million? What would it take for this to be a hundred million dollars? And when you put that frame on it, you start to realize that the current model doesn't work because then the complexity starts to fan out. So anytime you look at something and say, this is getting complex, you just ask, what would a $10 million or $100 million version of this look like? Then you'll realize very quickly what's not important, what's important, right? And it's hard because I will tell you this, and, and it's very hard for entrepreneurs to listen to this. I call it the curse of capability. Smart, capable entrepreneurs will put themselves in situations to do complex things because they're capable of doing those things. I love investing in really simple, really lazy entrepreneurs.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because they're like, how do I find the easiest possible way to do this thing so I can make a ton of money? The hard working smart entrepreneurs have this complex web of businesses. And a lot of times when we invest in them, like, cut this, cut this, cut this, cut this, cut this, cut this. Oh, you have 90% of your time back and only 10% revenue dropped. The hardest part is to get out of the curse of capability.

[B]

Right. We've faced this, and I think currently even face this a little bit, where you offer all of these different service lines in order to be able to stay afloat. But then you also understand that you want to simplify the business in order to have that one, one, one.

[A]

When you're in it though, you're just so tied into the n. If I say to you, well, change that, you're like, but wait, I'll give you a crazy story. So one of our first companies is called Telus Properties in the real estate business. We, we bought it was roughly doing 300 million when he bought it. I was a passive investor in this business. And as I got some financials related to this business, I realized that the then CEO was embezzling from the business. And so we did the forensic accounting, me and my partner at that time, we bought the CEO out. I didn't have enough money. I reverse mortgaged my house and bought the CEO out thinking that it would be like a short term thing. I was a banker at Goldman Sachs at the time. I took a leave of absence to help like right the ship, find a CEO for the business. Starting to look at the business and I realized, wait a minute, I was doing the model and by mistake I put an extra zero in a spreadsheet cell. The 300 million extra. I have an exterior that was 3 billion. And suddenly those numbers all look phenomenal. And I looked at it and I said, if that is true, can I make it work? And so I pitched the board on this idea that hey, I'm going to take majority control, I'm going to run this five year plan, I'm going to do this, but I have no idea what I'm doing. And they said, well, as long as you stay with the original thesis that we want to build this boutique real estate company in and around Southern California, we're good. What we realized was no one wanted a boutique real estate company in Southern California. What we realized was our messaging was completely off. We had 30 real estate agents at that time. And I sat down and asked every one of them what would be the one thing that if I took away that you would not want to work here anymore. And unanimously all of them said this one thing. Me being here saves me at least one day a week. So I said, great, that means our value proposition is you should come to Telus because our job is to save you at least one day a week. What would you do with another 52 days a year?

[B]

Damn.

[A]

That grew the business from 300 million to 3.4 billion 10x in five years with that one value prop pitch, nothing else. That's all it was. So now you think about the operations around it. Now every question that we built was hey, does this continue to help our agents save more than one day a week? If yes, do it. If not, don't do it. We need a $10 million ad budget. Does this help our agents save them one day a week? No, we're not going to do it.

[B]

It really just shows that the simplicity is not only in the pitch, it simplifies the service. It simplifies the entire trifecta of what you are p. Correct. And that goes back to, like, the one, one, one.

[A]

We fear talking to our clients and our customers, we really fear that. We think because we're smart, we think that they want all of these things. Hey, they want the extra calls, they want the one time touches. They want the loom videos, they want the written reports. They want all of those. We think they do because it sounds good to us, but they don't care about most of those things. They just want one day a week. The two best questions to ask is, what is one thing? If I took away, this would not be a valuable engagement for you anymore. And what is the one thing that you wish I added that would make you stay forever? They will tell you what to eliminate and what to keep. And that is our job to continuously do that. What does that do that simplifies the business? Sure, you may lose a couple, but you're probably shedding so much complexity. And our job is to deliver that. What is your one day a week. That's what we need to deliver for them. And if you can find that, you just put all your focus around that, and then that's when people really love you for it. There was this CRM called Mailchimp. The number one reason why people chose Mailchimp was because it gave you your first 5,000 contacts free. Every other CRM charged $39 a month, $29 a month, $100 a month, or whatever. Right. Mailchimp was the only one that said it's your first 3,000 contacts free or what have you. Well, most people said, well, why would I go pay for something else when I can just get my first 3,000 free? Well, they did that, and that's when they became one of the biggest CRMs and got bought by salesforce for like, a couple of billion dollars. There's been no CRM that's ever sold for that level of money. Only because they did that one thing, which is we can get a lot more people in if we just said your first 3,000 contacts are free. And so they just built their entire business model on that one thing. And so when you figure out that one thing you just, that becomes your universal front end or universal front door. And that's when everything starts to hacker.

[B]

I love this because I didn't go to business school, right. And I think these are the fundamentals that, like I'm. I don't know if they teach you this in business school, but to me, this is the stuff that I feel like. I wish I knew when I started. Right. There was something that you had mentioned in a video talking about making your business sellable even if you had no plans on selling it. And so should every founder be building their company to sell even if they don't plan on it?

[A]

Yeah. The goal is not the exit, the goal is options. Right. My dad always used to say, when you don't know your options, you don't have any. Right. And I think most business owners are in that place. They just, they feel like they don't have any options. I'll give you a practical example of how this came about. When we were running one of our existing business, same business called Telus, I had no idea how much the business was worth. I could say, hey, we made this much revenue, we made this much ebitda, we made this much income, I think it's worth this. But you don't know what somebody is willing to pay for it. So I said, well, why don't I do a soft shop of this business? So every summer I used to take the business to market as I was actually planning on selling it. And I identified three to five of the key people that I think would buy the business. I put our package together like I was going to sell the business. I went through that process and then I said, hey, buyer A, here's all our stuff. Based on all of this, how would you value us? And let's say he said, well, we think you're worth a $50 million. I go, well, great. Why not 75? He says, well, to be 75, you need to do these five things. I was like, okay, thank you so much. Then I go to the next person, hey, it's $60 million. Not. Well, why not 80? Well, to do 80, we need these five things. So I take that list of those five things and I say, hey, COO, this is your business plan for the next year.

[B]

Damn right.

[A]

And then next year you come back and say, hey, Tiffany, you said if I did these five things, it would be 75 million. Oh yeah, that's right. You did all the things. Awesome. Hey, why not 150? Well, to get 150 you need to do these six things. Great, thank you. Go back, do those six things. When you do that and you go back to the same potential buyer, they see two things. Number one, they see that your business is malleable and adaptable, that it can actually grow by putting the strategies in place so they have confidence in what they're buying. Second, they have confidence in you and the team that given a new strategy that you could implement it to get to that thing. Everybody wants to buy a business that can change and grow and an operator that can change and grow with it. And what you've done over two, three periods, you've just shown them that. If we had not done that, I would have just had to make up the business plan in my own head. I would have said, well, we should do this or we should expand in this market. I would not have known if that was actually giving us any good value. The crazy part is potential buyers also told us what was not valuable. So I would ask them, saying, hey, why didn't you give this market in Orange county any value? They're like, well, we don't have any synergies there and looks like that's losing money because of these three things. So we actually gave it no value. And I'm like, amazing. I'm going to deprioritize that part of my business. So it also allows you to know which one to focus on, which one not to focus on. It is amazing when you go through the process when someone else was potentially going to buy, you looks at your business with a fine tooth comb. You will know what the assets in your business are and what are not. And then you realize what to focus on. I want not to focus on. That gives you optionality. So when you don't know your options, you don't have any.

[B]

So what are the different types of options that somebody can have in their business other than growth? And you know, maybe having an outside investor like private equity.

[A]

I think about it in three ways. Do you grow the business yourself? Do you grow the business with someone's help, or do you grow the business with your employees? And let me explain what each of those are. Growing the business by yourself is saying, I am going to fund this growth because I believe that if I put in a million dollars, it can grow to 10. And so I have funded this growth. I own all of this. The second is I'm going to take outside equity. And the outside equity could be bank equity or private equity or an investor. Now you have somebody else that is a co owner in the business, but they give you the capital and the resources to help you grow. The third is, which I have done once, it's called an employee stock purchase plan, you can sell your business to your employees. So one of my friends runs a wealth management firm. He sold like 50% of the business to his employees, but his employees had to only contribute 10% of that to buy in. He got the other 40% from the bank. So he made 50 million, sold 50% of his business to his employees. Now he has 50 shareholders, none of whom are going anywhere. Now, private equity came in and said, hey, we love your business because you have 50 shareholders. All of them are vested in the business. We know none of them are going to leave, so we have no risk of defection. So now we want to pay you more.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He got a $50 million check, and he recently got a $250 million check and all the employees got a piece as well. So you can even sell your business to your employees. Not all businesses are worked that way. Consulting, you know, accounting, things that are services based, that people stay on for a long time. You can sell your business to your employees. It's not the perfect fit every time, but grow the business, get outside resources, or you can sell business to your employees.

[B]

And it's also a really great way to find and source those a players. Right. They're very much invested in this particular company.

[A]

Yeah. I will give you a way in which entrepreneurs can give a piece of ownership to a key employee without giving them ownership.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

This is called phantom equity. And how this works is, let's say you and your husband own the business. And if I come on as a partner now you have to change the agreement, you have to change the LLC or corporation docs. Now I have shareholder rights. You don't know if I'm going to stay forever. What if I leave or do something crazy. Now you have liability, you have to change the way the tax structures are. Had all of that. And it's really complex. So most owners don't want to give a piece of ownership of their business to an employee because they are unsure as to like all of these other complications. And all that they're doing is to saying they just want them to feel like an owner because at some point when it sells, they want them to participate in it in some way.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So what you can do is you can do something called a phantom stock program. What that means is you and your husband have stock 100 shares in this business. You create a new program called the phantom stock Program. It's just a document that says this phantom stock program mirrors this. It's completely separate. But if we ever sell this business, you get 10%, but you have no liability, you have no tax consequences. You have none of that. But if we sell this business, you want 10%. By the way, if you leave, this goes away.

[B]

Right?

[A]

So now you bring an A player on board, you give them phantom equity, and now they feel like, hey, I'm building the business. I feel like an owner. And if this business sells, I get a piece of the pie as well.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So it's an easy way to kind of sweeten the pot without having to change your operating structure.

[B]

I never even thought about it as another recruitment strategy, but also that it allows me to have a further option in terms of selling it in the future. Right, so like, I've killed two birds with one stone just by evaluating all of my options, Correct?

[A]

Exactly right.

[B]

That's incredible. Now I want to ask you some rapid fire questions. So you recently announced that you became partners with Alex Hermosi and Leila Hermozi. I am curious because you guys met back in the gym launch days. What kind of questions were they asking that gave you insight that they thought differently.

[A]

While every other founder was asking first order questions, hey, what do I do? What do I do? Now they were asking, hey, if I did this, what would it mean for one year, two year, five years, 10 years down the line? The ability to see second and third order consequences is insanely powerful because you start to realize that it's chess and not checkers. And so sometimes you have to sacrifice the pawn to support the queen.

[B]

So if there's one lesson that you've learned in business, what do you feel is most important?

[A]

The number one thing a entrepreneur can do to set themselves up for scale in the early part of their lives is to freeze lifestyle. Most business owners feel stuck because they're working in the business and they want to be working on the business. The traditional thing. I'm working in the business, not on the business. The reason why most people are stuck in their business is they're like, wait a minute, I did $500,000 this year, after all my expenses, I made 150, right? And then to hire somebody pretty good, I need to pay 200 grand. I don't have the 200 grand. I would have to go to zero to actually pay that person that money. The problem there is if you now go to a million dollars, you're making 300 grand. And now you're used to a $300,000 lifestyle and you still can't hire the $250,000 person.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're like, I am the service, I am the delivery, and if I pull myself out of it, then I don't make the lifestyle that I'm used to. I'll give you a crazy example. In the last 14 years, our family run it on the same monthly nut. Our net worth is probably 50 times in the last 14 years and we still run on the same monthly nut. Now there's a reason for that, which is it gives us a lot of optionality. So I can say if this is my monthly nut, everything above this is just risk adjusted. And as people make more money, they just turn up lifestyle. And then it's very, very hard to turn down lifestyle.

[B]

Okay, Biggest misconception about building wealth, what would it be?

[A]

The biggest misconception about building wealth is us thinking that it is a what and how problem and not a who problem. We're like, well, what do I need to do? What offer do I need to create? So I came up with this thing called the 1010 forever rule. Who are the 10 people that you would invest in for the next 10 years? Who would pay you forever? So instead of investing in the next hot stock or the next hot startup, you say, I'm going to put tiffany in my 1010 forever. Whatever she says I'm going to do. Whatever I can do to support her, I'm going to do because I know that this relationship is going to be worth more than anything else. And once you do that, you realize that wealth creation is a who strategy, not a how strategy.

[B]

If I'm having trouble finding a players, no matter how much I try, what am I doing wrong?

[A]

Whenever you hire somebody, you're looking for one of two things you're looking to solve. The pain of today or the growth of tomorrow. Those are the only two reasons why you hire somebody. You're like, I'm drowning. I can't figure this out. I need somebody. I need somebody yesterday. Or you're like, wouldn't it be amazing if we had this person who could go help us go do that? Those are the two reasons. The number one reason why it's difficult to find an A player is because we don't articulate exactly that. So let's say it is the pain of today. What I would do is I would write up all the pain. I don't have time doing this. I have poor quality doing this. This sucks. This is terrible. The clients are having a bad experience without this, I'm stressed, I don't sleep. You do all of that and then you upload it to AI and you say, turn all of this pain into a job description. So now what you get is somebody that knows that when they do the thing, you get the exact job description for that person or for the growth. You turn around and say, wouldn't it be amazing if we could do a, b, c, 1, 2, 3. Then you upload into AI and say, turn all my aspirations into a job description. Because when that person reads that, it has to speak to them. The A player actually reads your job description. Right? They actually care. So if you think that your generic job description doesn't matter, you are wrong. You have now expressed exactly what you want and they now feel like they are the perfect match for it. It's not that they are an A player. It is that they are an A player for you that's the fit. An A player for you is not an A player for me. And the A player is a perfect match. And you got to give them your puzzle piece. And if they don't know your puzzle piece, they can never put their puzzle piece in.

[B]

So you mentioned in another video that if you lost your email list, it would be like losing a third child. Why is that?

[A]

In the modern world, email is the gateway to everything. To sign up for a social media account, you need email. When you're in a social media account or when you're listening to YouTube or a podcast, you are in constant scroll mode. Email is the only medium where you evaluate every single message on its own priority. You don't swipe and say, that's Sharon post. What should I do? That's Tiffany's post. What should I do? You don't do that, you just swipe. But in email you're like, that's Sharon's email. What should I do? That's Tiffany's email. What should I do? You make a choice on every single message. Email is also a personal platform because you don't send DocuSign over text message. Email is considered to be a personal, serious platform. The other reason is someone actually raised their hand, went in, gave you their email address and opted into your list knowing that you're going to send them something. Yeah, there's so much that goes in from an endorsed introduction perspective to get that thing. It is the most valuable thing before you get a meeting. And also an email buyer is a more serious buyer. An email reader is a more serious reader. I will tell you, probably one third of my net worth has been created from my email list.

[B]

What?

[A]

We built a billion dollar business off my email list.

[B]

Hear me everyone. I'm literally going to have an email list now because of this conversation. That is incredible. I know that you have said that one of the most important components of business in general is writing a memo. Why is that?

[A]

Internally we have this acronym called wafam wafm. Which is right of. So when someone on Slack is like, hey, do you want to do this? I'm like, what? Fam.

[B]

That being said, this is a great part for us to transition into our show and tell before we get back to the video, this episode is sponsored by no one. Yeah. We don't actually have a sponsor, so technically we are the sponsors of this video. But I'm sorry, that scared me. We have started a tradition where we shout out one of your dreams. And in this episode, I need to shout out. Hold on. Super vibe. Cue the applause. All right, guys. Now Derek, one of our founders watches

[A]

the show, said he's a co founder.

[B]

I said that. What I meant to say was Derek, who watches the show was super kind to send this box of goodies for us. I don't know about you guys, but I struggle so much with energy these days, especially while building the stream. So I am always on the hunt of looking for other ways to get caffeine. Supervibe uses green tea and is made out of a bunch of honestly very great ingredients. Chocolate is my favorite. Phenomenal. But the blueberry. The matcha Chef's kiss. If you guys can do me a huge favor and follow supervibe, let's surprise Derek with a bunch of sudden followers on Instagram. And if you happen to struggle with energy like me, go order them on supervibe Co. Let's get back to the the video.

[A]

The best leverage that you can get for your thoughts and ideas is to organize your thoughts. And most people have never been taught how to organize their thoughts. We've just been taught how to write an essay in school about the Great Wall of China. Right? And we live in a world where clarity of thinking creates the clarity of results. And [e-mail], one of the pillars of how we work is we have a memo culture, meaning if we want to make a decision, we use a memo. And all memo is just a written Google Doc of our thinking.

[B]

But what about for the argument for the person that's like, but Sharon, I mean, everything's on fire in my business. I don't even have the time to really make a memo. And who's Going to even really read this memo? Is it really that important?

[A]

That is exactly the reason why you should do it. The best reason to write a memo is for yourself. I think it's more valuable for solo operators who are going Mach 3 with their hair on fire than even large business owners. Any decision requires a memoir. We say, no memo, no decision. Because what it does is it allows you to see everything on paper. Because fear has no place on paper. Right. You see it and you're like, oh, that is what I was thinking. I'm not afraid about that anymore. Or I ask the question saying I'm concerned that this will reduce our profits. Well, let other people answer that question. By the way, for our executive meetings, if there are no memos to review, we don't do the meeting. So no memo, no meeting.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

We actually deliver the memo before the meeting. We require people to prepare. We say, read this memo with shared understanding. Come to the meeting, and all we're going to talk about is the questions in this memo. So what this does is it allows for the meetings to be a lot more productive. And when the meeting is over, everyone feels like they jointly contributed to the moving of the business forward. Not that Tiffany made a decision. You will see the meeting quality shoot up 10x. Also, there's institutional knowledge. So let's say you get a new employee or a new partner. You can say there's no onboarding. Read our last 20 memos. They read the last 20 memos. They're caught up on where the business is at right now. And if there's a similar project, you're like, sharon, that's exactly the same project we did to launch this podcast. Read that memo and then write a new one. Now they just take that, they dupe it, and they write a new one because it's almost an sop, but the decisions have already been made. Four years ago, this would have been really hard because you had to sit there and spend four hours writing this extremely thoughtful memo. Today, it's so much easier, which is why we created a memo framework. We'd love to share this with everybody. And what they should do is they can just voice chat AI and say, here's everything that I want to do. Here's what I'm thinking. These are my disorganized thoughts. Put this in the memo framework and it will automatically take your thoughts and reorganize them into a thoughtful framework, which you can now share with your coach, share with your advisors, share with your team, and say, please read this before our next meeting. So People will say, well, what is this memo? How do I write it, et cetera. It's actually really simple. There are three pieces to this puzzle. Piece number one of writing a memo is who do you write it to? Whenever I write a memo, I write it to my coach. I think about my coach in my head because I say, well, she has no context about anything. So I want to give her shared understanding of what's going on. So I use this section called the Story so far. Story so far. Here are the seven things that have happened. Now there's enough context based on this, here's the issue that we're solving. Based on this, here's my recommendation. I don't know the answers to these five questions. Can we meet?

[B]

Take me back. I think the thing that is most impressive about you is you have lived, I think like a hundred lives, right? Take me back to the beginning because I want to know it all.

[A]

We were a middle class family. We lived in a one bedroom apartment in India. And my parents realized early on, I realized early on as a kid growing up in India that I was not going to make it on academic prowess. Everyone else was just a smarter, way smarter than me. And in a academically dominated kind of society, you have to have something else to stand out. And I was not cutting it. I was tone deaf. So I did not get picked for any music. I did not hit my growth sport for a while, so I did not get picked on any sports. I was dyslexic, so it was really hard for me to read. So I would be like the last kid that got picked on the field. I would get kicked out of class. Like it was just terrible. It was to the point where I would get bullied a lot. And my parents realized that they're like, hey, we just need a better environment for you to succeed. We know that maybe the UK or the US is probably the right answer because they have a more meritocracy based system. It'll give my son one shot at a better life. So I remember my dad, we were sitting on a park bench, staring a couple of tennis courts and he says, you need a ticket, you need a skill that will make you stand out to get out of India. And we changed focus on academics, changed focus on time, and only my entire family focused just on tennis. And honestly, it paid off. I was able to use tennis as a little launch pad to leave India. So my parents made the biggest sacrifice to send me to the U.S. i'm also the only child, so they let their only child go. At 16 years old, never been to the US before. Once I landed in Chicago, this was the days where no cell phones or pagers or whatever and someone was going to meet me at the airport. I'm there, no one's there to meet me. And then suddenly my name gets called on public address system. Shran trivats a police report to the white courtesy phone that you never want that, by the way. The message is, hey, your driver's car broke down. They want you to take a bus and meet them in Moline, Illinois. Now, I have no idea where anything is, so I say, okay, I gotta go find a bus to take it to Moline, Illinois. No problem. I have like $100 in some cash and chain. I can do that. It was supposed to be like a couple hour ride. Well, five, six hours later, it's dark outside, I'm at a bus depot. I'm the only one in the bus. The driver's about to get off and he's like, hey, kid, where are you going? I said, moline, Illinois. He's like, well, we are in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I'm like, I'm guessing that is not Moline, Illinois. He's like, opposite direction. I go, okay. He goes, well, here's what I suggest. Why don't you come into the depot for tonight. Let's figure out a plan for tomorrow. I grab my stuff, I exit the bus, and out of nowhere, this guy jumps in front of me in a hoodie with a knife. So I've been in the US eight hours and I'm getting mugged in an alley in La Crosse, Wisconsin. So this guy says, give me everything you got. He opens my bag, he rummages through my clothes, and I will never forget this. He says, you're the worst person I ever met. Now I'm thinking, how many people have you mugged? And I kind of gather some courage and I tell him, I'm lost. I just need to get to school tomorrow. I pull out a hundred dollars. I have a hundred dollars. If I give you this hundred dollars, will you give me 50 back? And he's like, what? I was like, I just need to get to school. So he grabs the hundred bucks and he dishes me out a 20, a 20 and a five.

[B]

You negotiated with your mugger?

[A]

I mean, I don't. I don't think I would have the ingenuity to do it now. It was desperate times, of course. So I got $45 and my stuff. Figure out the next day, get my bus to Moline, Illinois. Then I get to school and I was like, well, what does every Indian parent tell their kid to study? Computer science, math, engineering. Right? And so I was a computer science and math major by default. I got very lucky because I graduated with a computer science and math major during the technology boom. And so our first company, I was very early employee, we raised a ton of money and we had the first exit doing that. And I thought I was going to get $50 million. I go to bank of America on the closing day and I go to the ATM and I hit receipt and it just prints out this paper receipt. And I'm like, that's not 50. And so I called the CEO of the business and be like, what? What is this? He's like, did you not read your contract? And then I realized that I had a dilution clause in my contract called a ratchet. I know more about it now than I did then, but it had over 15x'd my payout down. So I took the liquidity that I had paid off any debts and I spent five years teaching tennis in the Caribbean, Dubai and on Maui. And I had a teaching pro who was one of the best tennis teaching pros in the world. He said to me, do you want to become the best teaching pro in the world? I said, yes. He said, you need to teach 100 free lessons, and I will evaluate and give you feedback on every single one of them. That's how I got good. And then I got teach Dennis to Bill Gates, Alan Alda, Richard Branson. I will tell you the number one lesson that I learned from Richard Branson. I played for two hours is like trying to rehearse this question in my head as to what I would ask him. I said, you run 10 companies, you probably have to make a lot of decisions. How do you make decisions? And the moral of the story was that most people don't have a framework for making decisions, therefore, they make dumb decisions. From that day, I started thinking about how I make decisions. And then I made a framework for how to make decisions. And it's number one, understand the context. So you ask where the shared information is. Number two, you isolate the issue. Hey, what are we problem? Are we actually solving? Number three, you accept the risk. If we make this decision, what actually breaks? Number four, you map the decision. Hey, what am I going to do? As next steps. Now, when you have a framework for making decisions and someone brings a problem to you, you're like, wait, can you tell me about that? Understand the facts. Then you say, isolate the issue. So the Problem we're trying to solve is this. Number three, accept the risk. If we make this decision, we probably can do this project, this project and this project and this project. Yes, accept the risk. Number four. Okay, given that we're going to do all of that, what is the next step? We make a decision. Right. No way would I have learned that if I never played tennis with Richard Branson. So after playing tennis, I was talking to one of my mentors and he said, hey, remember the time that you got screwed on your deal? He goes, yeah. Do you know why you you got screwed? I'm like, because I didn't read the contract? He's like, no, because you don't know how to structure deals. So he goes, if I were you, I would go to Wall Street. I'm like, I can get to Wall Street. He said, well, the only way to get to Wall street is to go to business school. I went to school of Vanderbilt, which has the highest placement rate of getting students into Wall Street. I went to Goldman Sachs right after. I was the only student in my MBA class to get a job at Goldman Sachs. I had 39 one on one interviews. 39, 39 one on one interviews in three different cities to get a job at Goldman Sachs. I'll tell you the craziest story I get into in probably interview number 10 or 12. I'm sitting in the conference room, a managing partner walks in and he says, you're a hotshot. You want to work at Goldman Sachs. He pushes the binder for me. These are my prospects. Call them, Send me an appointment. I go, right now? He goes, yeah, here's a phone. Here are my prospects. Call, set me an appointment. Let me see what you hotshot can do. I have no idea how to do any of this. And so I said, I'm happy to make this call, but I'd like to represent you. Well, could you give me a script? He looks at me, he gathers all his stuff, puts it in his bag, shakes my hand and says, you'll do great, kid. And he walks up. So I see him at the cocktail party after, and I said, that interview is 45 seconds long. You have to tell me what happened. He said, I've been doing this 20 plus years. In the last 20 years, only two people have actually asked me for a little help or a little script because everyone else thinks they're so good. They call and they make a fool of themselves on the phone. They think I'm giving them initiative points, but they don't realize that they're already There because of initiative. I just want to know that they are coaching. I just want to know that they will listen to what I say. I just want to know that we can mold them to become great bankers. And you showed me, just by asking me for a script, that you were coachable enough to become a great banker. So I spent six years investment banking, and during that time we invested in this company called Telus. It was a single office real estate company in Beverly Hills, California. Then we figured out the then CEO was embezzling. I had to pitch my wife that I was going to go from this highfalutin banker job at Goldman, which I was decent at, to running the startup, which was now running out of money across the country. And she was pregnant. So she said to me, she's like, I think this is a terrible idea. But at that time, my wife was a consultant for Deloitte Consulting. So I built her a pitch deck to explain to her in her love language why this was a good idea. So I presented this pitch deck to her on like a Sunday afternoon, and she sat there on the couch with me going slide by slide. And she was like, sounds like a good plan for us. So we reverse mortgaged our house. I put all my savings into the business. I did not make any payroll for the first year. We lived off of my wife's salary, and that is originally the amount that we continue to live off till today. I will tell you, Tiffany, I had never run a company before that. I had no idea what I was doing. I was Googling how to run a business, how to make a P and L. I was Googling everything. And I had to learn how to be the operator of a business on the job. I second guess myself every day saying, is this the right thing to do? Am I actually good at this? I was so lost. I remember they invited like 20 CEOs to a conference, and I was like, sure, I'll go skip my head out of the game. This lady comes on, and every time she said something, I was like, oh, that was good. And I felt like asking a question, and it felt like she was reading my mind. And she would just answer the question. And she did it again and again for, like, for an hour. Like, she was talking to me. So I drove home and I called my dad. I was like, dad, you will not believe this lady was in my head. She knew exactly the things that I was going through, the pain that I was feeling. My dad said, well, you should ask her to be your coach. I go, dad, she's Busy. She's not gonna do that. He goes, well, pay her. I don't have any money. How much do you have? I go, well, I don't know, maybe like 10 grand. Are you willing to part with that? I said, for the sake of the business and me getting better, yeah, send her an email and tell her that. So I wrote her an email. I saw you speak today and you. I was really impressed with what you did. Felt like you were speaking to me. I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness if you can be my coach for the year. I don't expect any meetings, I don't expect any scheduled phone calls, and I don't expect to bother you in any way. I would just hope that you would prioritize responding to my emails. I sent out the email. Twenty minutes later she hits reply saying, is this a joke? I said, no, I'm 100% serious. This is all I have. And then she says, write it up. I was like, I don't know what writing up means. So I hit print, signed it and scanned it back to her, wired her $10,000, and she became my first coach. I wanted to make it so low stakes for her because I bet people just get hit up saying, hey, can I take you to coffee? Can I pick your brain? Can I have your time? They make it feel heavy. And I'll tell you right now, you have no idea. I've probably written that email to at least a dozen people since then. Nobody says no. And it is some of the greatest investments I've made. That was a turning point in my growth. We built a business, we grew at 10x in five years to $3.4 billion in top line sales. And then we sold the business to Doug Sellerman, which is publicly traded out of New York. So that was a super good run for us. I'm just lucky that the swinging for the fences worked. But it didn't work for like a few years. It was hard on our relationship. She saw me working really hard. Being with the. Being with our child, figuring out being a young dad or new dad. It was hard.

[B]

What was the hardest part mentally for you?

[A]

It surfaced a lot of insecurity for me, actually. Even now sometimes I look back and say, man, am I really qualified to do any of this? But it's amazing when someone else believes in you. I think my wife believed that I had it in me to go do this, or she was at least felt safe, that it was one shot at swinging for the fences and that we were okay, Even if I didn't, but gosh darn, if I failed, I would. I was going to claw and poke and scratch till I made it work. I had no idea.

[B]

Makes me want to cry listening to that, because even hearing what your wife also, she believed in you, right? You had these. These people in your life that knowing that if those individuals had not been in your life, you know, the outcome could have been so different. I think it's what you were saying about people believing in you. Where do you think that you would

[A]

be without that belief when you asked that question? It reminds me of this story. My wife, I was so scared when this happened. This guy reached out to me by watching one of my videos. He said, hey, I've watched all your stuff. I would love for you to, like, help me with my business. So I said, sure. Met him in person, did the consulting, visited his offices, saw his books, saw his business grow. And then there was an investment opportunity in his business where he said he was going to go raise some money. And I said, well, wait a minute. I know this business really intimately. I'll write that check. And so I wrote a check for easy math. Let's call it a million dollars. And three months later, nobody could find him. He disappeared off the face of the earth. Couldn't find him, couldn't find his family. He just took the money and ran with the diligence. We found that he had two sets of books. He had a fake company. Everything that he was showing me was all fake. And it took me three, four months of therapy to be able to tell my wife. And so I sit down with her, I explain everything to her, and she's listening at that point. It was a decent part of our network. And she looks at me and she says, so, what'd you learn? So I told her, hey, based on this, I've changed the way I invest in companies. She goes, what is it? So I gave her my framework. Good people, good intentions, good rationale, good contracts. She goes, huh, Seems like a good lesson. She goes, I have no doubt that you'll make ten times or more back in a very short time. She walks away like bawling. I'm bawling because I was so nervous. And sometimes you have to go through those things to get your antennas up to build the frameworks around it. But you realize who are going to stick with you in thick and thin and who believe in you more. And I think the gift of that, that she gave me was to share that belief with others. Like, if you actually believe in someone else, that is the biggest gift that you can get them. Right.

[B]

To think that the first thing that came out of her mouth was that this was a productive thing that happened. I'm sure change the way even that you went about that moment, because what it could have done is it could have scared you, sure. From taking another chance. And instead what it did is empowered you to know that now you know better and you're going to probably make a better decision. And so I think there's something, an extra added component to it. When you think of someone's actions, even, you know, your wife saying, okay, like I'm going to be. Because, of course, that sacrifice for her too. Right. To take on that dream with you and your parents as well. I think when you look at that, what it does to your psyche for the rest of your life.

[A]

Our environment shapes a lot of who we are. I think the lesson I would tell myself is this. Some of the biggest names that we know, Tony Robbins, Elon Musk, Oprah, Satya, Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg. If you evaluate each of them, you would give each of them different scores on how well they spoke. Tony's a phenomenal communicator. Ilana's terrible. Three out of ten. If they were all not perfect, amazing communicators, how is a 3 out of 10 communicator the richest man in the world? And I think that all of them do one thing, which is they have this ability to transfer belief. The job of a leader is to help other people believe in a bigger and better future, because as soon as you believe the future is bigger and better, and there's a better future tomorrow than there is today, you have an operating system of hope. I think that's what my parents did. For me, it was not the belief of today. It was the belief of who I could be tomorrow. And I feel this immense responsibility to live up to that. And so when things get hard, I live up to that.

[B]

I'm curious about Sean back then. Had he even just gotten a snapshot at the wonderful success that was ahead? What would he have thought?

[A]

I think I'm just living on, living someone else's life. I got super lucky along the way. A lot of people believed in me. A lot of lucky breaks. There's a great story. When I got to the state, my parents had made me out a check for tuition for the first year, which was, you know, a significant part of their life savings. And I appreciate that. So I went to school and I deposited the check. The lady and she's like, welcome to college. All of this pays for everything. But since it's an international check, it'll take seven to ten days to clear. So till then, you may not have a meal plan. So I suggest you enjoy all the parties on campus.

[B]

They had free food.

[A]

They had free food. It was pizza and root beer. Like. Like, it's college food. I hit all of those. And then a Saturday came along, and all the parties died down. I was hungry, walking around, trying to find food, and I see these couple of guys toss a pizza box into a dumpster. I'm like, I just saw them toss good pizza in a dumpster. Like, in a box. This is good. I wait till sundown. I jump at this dumpster. I grabbed the box of pizza, got two little slices in there. I grab it, I run to my room, and I was. I felt so embarrassed. The next day happened, I was like, I'm still hungry. It's like meander away to the same dumpster. And I see a couple of people throw sandwiches into this dumpster. And I go, this is amazing.

[B]

Jackpot.

[A]

Jackpot. So I wait, I grab the Subway sandwich, and then I look in the corner. There is this all American box. Box of Pop Tarts. Strawberry, by the way. Like, this is amazing. So I'm about to grab it, and out of nowhere, something whacks me in the face. And I'm like, I'm bleeding. And in the corner is a raccoon. You can't even make this stuff up. So I grab the box of Pop Tarts, grab my Subway sandwich. I kick wildly. I don't know what I hit. I do not know what I hit. And I climb out of this dumpster, and I just run. I run to health services. So I'm with this nurse. She can smell the dumpster on me. She gives me a tetanus shot. And that was a really low point. And I was like, I'm dumpster diving. This is crazy. I can't tell anybody about this. She hands me a blockbuster card, like, $20. And she's like, get yourself some food in a movie. I'll. You'll be better tomorrow. The happy ending to that story is 22 years later, they invited me back to be the commencement speaker. So I'm at the commencement. I was like, well, it only makes sense for me to tell the story. So I'm telling the story. The thousands of people are laughing their faces off. Then I thought, well, is this dumpster still there? So I walk and find the dumpster, and I take a selfie. Then on the side of the dumpster is a poster with Aquaman on it. It says, not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do. I have never sobbed so much because I think that was full circle. Of all things, watching that poster was like, that made everything worthwhile. That made everything real. You don't have to be an Aquaman fan, but whenever I get stuck, whenever things get rough, I just tell myself that same quote, which is, not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.

[B]

Thank you for sharing that. You've had many chapters in your life. In one word, what would you call this one?

[A]

I believe that this is a chapter of preparation, because how you prepare shows just how much you care.

[B]

That's beautiful. And I just want to close by saying that we just met today, but you've been a mentor of mine for quite some time. It truly is very full circle for me and for us. It just means so much to know that all of the things that it took for you to get to this point, I'm just so happy that they did because you were, like, the right person to succeed. And so what you've done with your success and how you've shared all of those principles and how generous you are, you continue to see much. So much success now is because of the way you are. So thank you.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

All right, guys, you know the drill. We are going to be diving into the Anatomy of Sharon's dream. We are going to be going over the principles that came up in his journey, and because there are so many of them, we are going to be putting up a list of all of them, and we're just going to be touching on the few that we're going to found that were the most important. And if there are any that you want us to touch on in a future video, let us know. All right, let's dive in. The first principle that came up in Sharon's story is skill stacking. This is the idea that when you combine multiple skills, even if they seem completely unrelated, they form a stack and eventually become your unique advantage. In our interviews so far, this has come up, by the way, 100% of the time. And honestly, Shron's journey might just be the most vivid example that we've seen on the show so far. I mean, if you look at it, I mean, there's tennis, computer science, investment banking, real estate, and on paper, none of them go together. And yet, when you look back at it, none of it went to waste and normally never does. Tennis gave him discipline and the ability to perform under pressure. Computer science gave him the ability to look at a problem and reverse engineer it. Goldman Sachs, that gave him the deal structure, knowledge that he needed to never get diluted again after his exit. And then real estate, that gave him networking skills, marketing skills, and honestly, that made him a very well rounded CEO. None of it was random. It just might have looked that way at the time. And what Sharon's story adds to this that we haven't seen before is that your stack doesn't necessarily have to come from passion or curiosity or your interests. Some of the most powerful skills that you'll ever have are ones that were potentially forced onto you or the ones that you picked up just to survive. And I think that honestly, sometimes necessity builds a better stack than intention ever could. Meaning that random job that you are taking to pay bills isn't a waste of time. It probably is teaching you something that you'll need one day. So if you're in a season right now where your life feels a little all over the place, where you're not sure if it connects yet, trust that it only means you're creating a unique advantage that no one else will have. Moving on to our next principle, which is proximity. So this principle is basically that your environment shapes your outcomes. Meaning being present around certain people or places or ideas actually increases your odds of success. And there is plenty of data that actually supports this. This means that we should be placing ourselves in environments around people who elevate our thinking, they accelerate our pace and they expand what we believe is possible. Now, proximity was essential. Insurance story. I mean, think about it. His parents recognized really early on that the environment that he was in wasn't built for him and was not going to offer him the future that they wanted for him. So, so they reorganized all of their priorities around one goal. Getting him into a different environment, one where we actually had a shot. I mean, to be real, we don't know if Sharon would be where he is now if he hadn't moved to the us. That doesn't mean that if you aren't in a specific country or in a specific city that you have no chance. Applying this principle can be as small as working in the best hotel lobby that you have in your city. Or it can be attending virtual events where you will be meeting the right kind of people in the industry that you want to work in. This whole principle is really about being intentional, no matter where you are, to expose yourself to the right environments and people. Because ultimately that genuinely does influence us in our actions. And also Obviously in the opportunities that we get from it. And for Sharon, it led him to the founder event where he met that first coach. It led him to teaching Richard Branson. And remember, Sharon didn't always have access. He wasn't born into the right rooms. He had to literally engineer his way into them. And sometimes it was with a cold email and 10, 000 that he could barely afford at the time. Sometimes it was saying yes to things that felt impossibly out of his comfort zone. So the real question to ask yourself is this. Look at the environment you spend the most time in. Are they expanding what you believe is possible or are they keeping you comfortable? And what's the one thing that you could do this week that would put yourself in proximity of more opportunity or the right people? Is it an event reaching out to someone, or is it working out of a different environment? All right, moving on. The next principle that comes up in Sharon's story is that he asked for help. Now this principle is the deliberate choice to accelerate your progress by seeking insight or guidance or support from others who have already navigated the challenges that you're currently facing. Now there's this quote by Jim Rohn, who is this well known entrepreneur who said, to solve any problem, here are the three questions you need to ask yourself. First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask? I know I'm making this sound very simple, but this is actually the part that I think most of us struggle with. Because help is not only uncomfortable, it really does go against the way that we're designed to operate. I think a lot of us learned that our value is based on what we offer or what we give, not necessarily what we need. Because like, here's what we're taught, especially ambitious people. If you're capable, if you're smart enough, and if you really want something badly enough, you should be able to figure it out on your own. And asking feels like you're admitting that you don't have what it takes, like you're exposing some sort of weakness. And for me, the part I struggle with most is I feel like I'm bothering someone. Had Sharon led with this fear, he wouldn't have gotten this job at Goldman Sachs because while every other candidate before him picked up the phone and they tried to wing it because they thought that that's what initiative looked like, Sharon asked for help by asking for that script. I swear this seems very simple, but as we're saying, most things actually are very simple. We're just making it Complicated. So if you're struggling right now with a problem in your business or you're pursuing a dream, ask yourself, where am I trying to figure out something on my own when someone else already has the answer. Now, that exact question is, what ledger on to making that $10,000 offer to that coach. Which brings me to my next principle of recruiting superstars. Now, superstars are your employees, your C suite, sometimes even they're your mentors. They are going to be the people who are going to increase your chances in business. Now, I want you to think of your business as if you're building a team. You are the owner of that team. Now, don't ask me what kind of team because I really do know nothing about sports. But I do know that you would need players, but you also would need coaches. And considering you, for all intents and purposes still are a player on the team until you have removed yourself, that coach is probably going to be coaching you at first. The woman that Sharon send that 10k to, that I keep bringing up, she was a superstar. She was someone who had already solved all of the problems he was facing and had answers to the questions that he needed. Am I recruiting her? Yes, recruiting. Because that's technically what that email was. He compressed years of learning into four years of focus growth. Now, I want to be clear about something here because I don't want to contradict what we talked about in the earlier section. Asking for help and recruiting a superstar are two different things. Asking for help is obviously a moment. You're reaching out, you're being vulnerable, you're trusting that people will be willing to guide you. And a lot of the time they honestly are, and even for free. But recruiting a superstar is different. That's when you want someone in your corner on a recurring basis. Someone who knows your business, who shows up for you consistently, who is invested in where you are going, and for that you need an offer. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought that that 10000 offer was a pretty unique proposition. I've honestly never heard of anything like that before. What was interesting about it is he was offering something in exchange for something that felt pretty easy on the surface, which was just answer my texts when you can. And while 10k is a lot of money for most of us, was even a lot of money for Sharon at the time. Honestly, he probably saved money in the long run by spending that. And this wasn't a one time thing either. I know for a fact that he's hired several coaches he doesn't just believe in having a coach. He believes in having the right coach for every area of his life in business. And I've seen that the most successful people do this even before they are successful. They make an investment into the right people, the right people to coach them, the right people working on their business, and the right players on their team. And I also want to point out, because many of you may have found out about Sharon through Layla and Alex Hermosi, but He's now the CEO of acquisition.com and think about it. He himself is a superstar. I've heard Leela and Alex Hormozi talk about how they want to bring acquisition.com to $1 billion. It was no surprise to me that when they announced Sharon as the CEO, I was like, well, this makes sense. They're bringing in a superstar to literally score the goal. Sorry, I'm telling you, I'm like, so bad at sports. I was trying to say make the shot anyway, you know what I'm saying? They're bringing in the superstar to actually help them win the game. It's going to be much easier for them to have that led by him than them doing it alone. So how do we attract superstars? Well, going by what Sharon said, he said that you first have to understand what you need. You have to identify the pain, not the role. And instead of writing some generic job description, we have to write down every single thing that's going wrong, every single stress point, every single thing that our clients are suffering with currently, at the moment. Then we have to upload it onto AI, turn it into a job description, because when the right person reads it, they're going to feel like it was written for them. And I think that's true, because you can't really find the right player if you don't really understand what your pain is. More importantly, what problems that you're trying to solve. Just remember, the goal of getting an A player is so that you can pass the ball to them, someone who can score goals as well. Second part of how to attract an A player. What do we offer them? You need to think about what they want. Well, of course, as Jeron says, money is just one way to do it. But you can also offer them equity. You can offer a specific job title. But how about this? What do you think this person you are after is after? Themselves. Many of them honestly care less about the money and more about ownership. Some of them just want to be on a winning team because they think that if they work in your environment, they're going to climb faster. And in Sharon's case, he literally just asked them and he found out that the value proposition of Telus specifically was that working there saved his real estate agents at least one day a week, probably with their systems and the resources that they had at his real estate firm. Now, they began using that to recruit by saying, you should come to Telus because our job is to save you at least one day a week. What would you do with the another 52 days a year? Now, that value prop alone was the leverage that they needed to attract the best agents so that they could bring their company from 300 million to 3.4 billion in five years. Now, obviously the value prop can range depending on the role and the industry. But think about one piece of leverage that you could offer that they couldn't get anywhere else. That's how you get them. Now, the third way to attract an A player is one that I'm adding because I don't do this one nearly enough. We need to recruit just like they do in sports. And by that I mean don't just post a job description online and only work off of who applies. Most A players are currently employed. Go find them, go meet them, and if they aren't interested, ask them to refer you. Because A players know other A players. Now, Stephen Bartlett, who is the host of Diary CEO and he has Flight Story I know, has said that he spends like the majority of his weeks interviewing and recruiting more than anything else. And it makes sense because if you do own a team, what's the best way to ensure that you win? Recruit good players, find good coaches, find your superstars. So in summary, what do you need? What do they want? And go take that and recruit. Now this brings us to our next principle, which is attention management, which is the ability to aggressively focus on a few things that actually move the needle and actually protect them. Now, Sharon said something earlier in the conversation that I honestly haven't been able to stop thinking about. And it's that to do great things, we must do fewer things. That's it. That's the whole principle. And yet it is so freaking hard to live by that. And as a founder, I know that feeling of really seeing everything as so important. But in reality, there are really only two to three things max that actually make the biggest impact. So we have to ask ourselves this, what are the two to three areas of my business that have the most, most amount of payoff when I do them? And what are projects, initiatives or tasks that are not really moving the needle And I think the thing to remember is that just because you are not working on those things doesn't mean that you'll never do it. It just means that right now it is not your focus. Now, the next question is, if I could only focus on one of them, which one would be the highest leverage? Now, take that and ideally spend 80% of your time on those top three things, and then on top of that, spend the most amount of time on your number one. And I would say that every quarter, you would probably want to renew this. Now, Sharon's belief that to do great things, we must do fewer things didn't just apply to his time or focus, but it also applied to the structure of his business. Which brings us to our next principle, which is simplicity as strategy. This principle is the understanding that the biggest businesses are built on the simplest foundations because complexity is the enemy of scale. And I'm honestly noticing that this is probably what most of us do not do, especially in the early stages of our company. But it's also the most imperative if we really want to scale our company. Now, after really thinking about this principle, I realized that simplifying your business unlocks two critical advantages. The first one is that it becomes easier to create scalable systems. I really loved what Sharon said about how smart, capable entrepreneurs, they put themselves in complex situations because they're capable of doing complex things. And basically that the more capable you are, the more complex your business becomes. And so this is how I internalized it from the very beginning of our business. We're a creative agency, by the way. We offered every single service that you could think of. Now, Roy, my husband, who is also one of our co founders, he's an incredible editor. So we offered editing services. We both knew how to produce, so we offered producing services. I had been a social media manager in my prior job, so that became a service. Roy knew about graphic design, how to build a website, and visual effects. So every single one of our capabilities became a service line as a way to try to get as many clients as possible. And basically our capability led to us creating the most complex business ever. But here's the thing. This complexity still worked for us. We run a very successful, complex business. But Sharon is right that it has become incredibly difficult to scale. And I'm telling you this six years down the line. So if you are at the very beginning, I am just warning you at some point that competitive edge will become the thing that's holding you back. So what does simplicity actually look like in practice? Sharon mentioned a framework that he calls the one one one. It was the one where he was saying was the one traffic source, one conversion method, the one delivery channel. And he mentioned that you want to get those three things working together first before you add any anything else. Because once you have one of each of those things dialed in, you'll be able to diagnose what's working, what isn't. And you're not really guessing across 10 different variables. You're literally fixing one thing at a time. And that's the clarity that actually allows you to grow. Now, the second advantage to using simplicity as a strategy is that it will make it easier to market and sell. Now listen to this, because I thought this was fascinating. According to SIEGEL and Gale, 76% of people are more likely to recommend a brand that delivers simple experiences. And brands that lead in simplicity outperform stock market averages by more than 200%. Now, what does this mean? Well, let's take a look at Natalie Barboo, who is the founder of RELA and a previous guest of ours. When she was on our show, she said that the first version of her company had a bunch of tools for both like influencers and social media managers. And so you could basically manage posting, but you could also see all of your earnings and brand deals and track all of that. And ultimately, this version of her product led her to almost closing down the company. And with just months of Runway left, they made a pivot and strictly made it a social media management tool. And that is what led her to 7xing her revenue and saving the company. Notice how the first version of the product was a bit hard for me to explain. The complexity of the product, although it was with the best intentions behind each feature, also made it complex to explain or even market. By the way, that doesn't mean that you have to do that forever. Good American started with just jeans, skims started with just shapewear. Instagram was literally only square photos on a feed and dry bar was only blowouts on your hair. And I'm starting to realize that you don't stand out by being really good at many things. You stand out by being the best at one thing. Like Sharon said, once you've dominated in that sector and you created scalable systems that actually work without you, then you expand. What does this look like for us? Well, first, what would the simplest version of your business look like? The one thing that if you stripped away everything else, could still carry the business to what is your 1:1,1 right now? Do you have one clear traffic source, one conversion method one delivery channel. And if not, what would it look like for you to simplify down to that? Number three, if your customer had to explain what your business does in one sentence to someone else, how easy would it be? Number four, what is one service, product or initiative that you could remove right now that would actually free you up to do the most important thing better? Oh, and by the way, down below, we've actually included a downloadable worksheet where you can go through all of these questions yourself and start putting these principles into action. All right, moving on. Our next principle is to find the bottlenecks. Now, this is the practice of identifying the things that are holding your business back, whether it be now or down the line. In most early stage businesses, the bottleneck is often the founder. In Sharon's case, I think that a huge part of his success is that he understands that he must avoid this. Sharon mentioned that when he met Layla and Alex Hormozi that he realized they were different by the fact that they understood second order consequences. Meaning, if I do this, where does it lead? If everything works, where does it break? It's really the ability to see steps ahead into the business and understand what the potential bottlenecks are going to be. Now, I want to go back to the part where he says that you need to assume that everything is going to work. Let's say have the clients lined up, you have the employees lined up, but are those employees going to need your approval for those things? What if you have three huge accounts or clients all at once? Do you have the systems in place to divide and conquer? Most of us think, well, we get the clients, then we find the people, then I'll create the systems to train them. But the reality is, most times you get the opportunity, you rush to hire someone, and even if they are a savage, you don't have the time to transfer all of your knowledge and create the systems, so you end up doing it yourself. Tell me that hasn't happened to you, because that happens to us a lot. And this is why simplifying your business is so important. Because with every single service line and product that it needs, they become their own departments. And at the beginning, chances are you do not have your department set up. One service line or one type of product is hard enough to manage at scale. And so I'm seeing that identifying these bottlenecks ahead of time and creating the systems while you don't have all of those opportunities right now is the biggest leverage to find the bottleneck before it finds you. But what if your business or dream has your face in it or requires your specific talent for whatever reason. Let's look at Mr. Beast. It's literally called Mr. Beast. There is no way that he's not in every single episode, but he's not there every day. He pops in for a few hours, and then he moves on. Generally, they're filming multiple episodes at once. He found the bottleneck. He asked what would reduce it, and he built systems around it in a format that would allow it. And now he runs one of the biggest media companies in the world. So the question isn't whether you have bottlenecks. You do. We all do. The question is, are you finding them on purpose, or are you waiting for them to find you? So ask yourself this. If your business doubled in size tomorrow, where would it break? That's your bottleneck. What is one thing that only works right now because you are doing it? And what system or process would need to exist for that to change? Assume success if you already had everything you wanted, all the clients, all the revenue, all the customers. Does everything actually work? If not, start there. All right, moving on to our next principle, and it's to save for a rainy day. This is the discipline of resisting the urge to upgrade your life or your business as your revenue grows so that you always have the margin to make the moves that actually matter. And Sharon's version of this is one of the most striking things that he shared with us. And it's the part where he mentioned that after 14 years, even though his net worth grew like 50 times over, he and his wife have kept the same exact monthly budget. I mean, think about it. He's literally 50x his net worth, and he's sticking to the same monthly number. I don't think most people would do that. And the reason that he did that isn't because he couldn't afford more. It's because keeping that floor flat meant that everything else above it was available to take risks with, to invest, to move up when the opportunity showed up. And that is not frugality just for the sake of frugality. That is optionality. That is freedom. Now, let's take Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people alive. He still lives in the same house in Omaha that he bought in 1958 for $31,500. Now, he once said something that I think is one of the most important financial principles ever stated. He said, do not save what is left after spending. Spend what is left after saving. And I'm smiling right now because I know that my husband is on the other end rolling his eyes at these words are coming out of my mouth. And he's probably like, do you hear that? And I do remember, I am not perfect. I'm not saying these things because I live and breathe these things. I am just noticing it enough where I can't ignore it. And going back to Natalie Barbou, CEO of Rella, when her company was almost out of money. The reason that she was able to survive long enough to pivot and then 7x her revenue was because she had been incredibly careful about what she had spent inside of the business. And she's just one of the main, many, many founders and successful entrepreneurs that this has happened to. And I keep saying that this section makes me so uncomfortable because I believe in this whole principle wholeheartedly, but I also do dumb like buy Starbucks almost every single day. I know. But I will say this. I'm also one of the lowest paid employees at our company right now. And while sure I could take more, this channel is an investment. And until this makes money, every single dollar that we don't spend could be towards giving us another month of chasing this dream. So if you're in the early stages right now and you're thinking, well, I have no choice but to be frugal, I actually think that's one of the greatest gifts that we can receive as founders because financial constraints teach us something that money never can. According to Harvard Business School, 75% of VC backed startups never return investors capital. Which means that having money isn't what makes a successful business. Sure, I know it makes it easier, but most people don't lack resources, they lack resourcefulness. So if your company is making money, great. Ask yourself if your revenue stop tomorrow, how many months could you survive on what you have saved? Ideally, you have around six months. That number is your real Runway. If your company or dream hasn't made any money, remind yourself of this. Resourcefulness is a skill and this is my opportunity to sharpen it. All right, moving on to the exit mindset. Now, this is the practice of building your business as if someone could buy it tomorrow. And it's not necessarily because you plan to sell sell, but because the standard forces you to build something that doesn't need you and it has clear systems and creates real value. And after Sharon said it, I honestly feel like this is like one of the most underrated hacks that I have like ever heard of creating a scalable business. Because most of us are building our business to be successful, but in reality it should ideally be sellable. And here's why. Those are two very different things. A successful business might need you every day, but a sellable business doesn't. And the ones that don't need you are actually the most successful ones. I mean, think about Apple. Steve Jobs, the second time that he came back, built something so systematized, so clearly defined in its values and operations, that it didn't just survive without him, it's still thriving. And the best businesses in the world are not built around a person. They're built around a system. And the exit mindset is what flow forces you to build that system, whether you ever plan to sell or not. And Sharon did this when he would approach potential buyers and go through the processes if he were to sell it, which is honestly unreal, that he did that, and their feedback became his business plan for the next year. And every year, the business got cleaner and tighter and more valuable. Not because he was trying to sell, but because he was literally building it as if he was. And what I think is so brilliant about this is that the outside buyer's perspective literally gave him something that he couldn't get another way. He gave him objectivity. Because when you're inside your business every day, you can't always see what's actually valuable and what's just noise. But a potential buyer, I mean, they're going to tell you immediately they have nothing to lose by being honest. And I'll be honest, because with our company, we always have said that we don't want to sell. But what I'm now realizing is that if we had the mentality of prepping our business to sell from the beginning, it would actually be a better business to open own. Because the exit mindset isn't about the exit. It's about the standard. It's about asking, is this business good enough that someone else would want it? Does it run without me? Does it have systems? Does it create value? And if the answer is no, then it's just not sellable. So whether you plan to exit or not, ask yourself, if someone were evaluating your business today, what would they say? What would they value, and what would they cut? Going through this process every year with potential investors didn't just give Sharon a roadmap. It gave him something else entirely. Which brings us to our next principle, which is undeniable proof. Undeniable proof is doing something so well or showing results so clearly that people can't ignore you. They can't say no. The data speaks for itself. And in Sharon's case, every single time that he went back to those same potential buyers with proof that he had done what they had asked. He wasn't only updating them, he was showing them that he could execute and that he could be trusted, and that this business had the capacity to grow. And when the time came to actually sell, they already believed in him and this company because he had spent years proving it. And a lot of times, as founders, we think that if the purpose or the potential of the business is big enough, then that should be enough. But at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters in business is results. Now, I want to make something very clear, because results don't always have to be numbers. I got my directing thought on an Amazon show off of a short film that I made in film school. But here's the thing. When I made that short film, I wasn't just making a film. I was very deliberate at the time about every single creative choice. I wanted to make sure that I created and shot my scenes in a way that would showcase all of the elements of the types of shows that I wanted to direct. So I love suspenseful thriller dramas like Ozark. And while my film had nothing to do with Ozark, I shot it so that any executive watching it in the future would have undeniable proof that I could pull it off. The thing is, I didn't ask them to imagine it. I showed them. And that's what undeniable proof is. It's removing the imagination gap, the gap between what someone has to picture and what they can actually see. The smaller the gap, the harder it's going to be to say no. So what does that look like for you? Our next principle is one of the reasons that Sharon could even create that undeniable proof. And it's that he found his allies. In his case, his biggest allies were clearly his parents and his wife. Now, they say that the person that you marry is the most important business decision that you'll ever make. And in Sharon's case, it really reminds us why. And I want to be honest with you about this one, because this one might be the hardest principle on this entire list. And it's not because it's complicated, but more so because I know that not everyone watching this feels like they have people like that in their corner. And if that's you, I want you to hear this clearly. Those allies are out there. And it starts not just with finding the right people, but with cutting out the wrong ones. The people who make you feel like you need to keep your dream to yourself. The people who make you Feel guilty for working on your dream instead of actually encouraging you, even on weekends. The people who listen to what you want to build, and they make you feel like it's too big instead of making you realize your dream might actually be too small for what you are capable of. And the longer that they stay in your orbit, the harder this gets. I think we all know that chasing a dream is not easy. It's unbearably hard. And honestly, I don't know how it's possible to do it without people in your corner who remind you what you're capable of, especially in moments when you forget. And in Sharon's case, he luckily had his parents who gave him that strong foundation for support and belief. And then there was his wife. They lived off of her consultant salary for a year so that Sharon could chase his dream of building Telus. She took a risk with him and supported him even in the moments where he failed. Allies come in many forms. Sometimes they're going to be family members, sometimes there are partners, and sometimes there are friends. But the most important thing to note is that they are out there. You need to recruit them the way that you would recruit your superstars. I would not be here without my biggest ally who happens to be sitting on the other side the camera right now. My husband. Now, a few months ago, I was very close to quitting. And if you've been here for a while, you know, but there really is something about someone else believing in you that makes you want to prove them right. I mean, my husband, he literally put cameras, cameras that we invested in for this show on his own credit card. And this was when our views were arguably at their worst. So I guess what I'm saying is find your allies and cut out anyone who isn't one, especially if you want to accomplish the biggest dreams. But even with the best allies in the world, there are going to be moments where you still may want to give up, where even the people who believe in you can't pull you out of it. And that's where this next principle comes in, which is persistence. Now, here's the thing I've learned about persistence. Specifically, as we've been studying the anatomy of a dream. Persistence isn't just staying in the game when you believe that you're gonna win. Real persistence is staying in the game when you don't believe that you're going to win, and you do it anyway. We normally structure these episodes looking for that one dark moment in the guest story. It's what we call the dark night of the soul in film. And it's where the hero in their journey feels like all is lost. But in Charons, he mentioned a few of those moments. And it reminds me of this quote that Rocky Balboa's character says that I think captures this better than anything else I could say, and I'm sure many of you have heard it. And it's that it's not about how hard you get hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. And when I think about Shiron's story, I think about how many times that quote applies. I mean, there was literally the dumpster diving, the mugging on the first night in America, the first exit that he got diluted by a clause that he didn't read. The years of building Telus, not knowing if was it was going to work. The million dollars that he lost in a bad business deal. Sharon's journey is one of success, but it's also one of failure. Many of them. But he kept moving forward. We focus so much on what it will be like when we win, when the only thing that really counts is what we will be like when we lose. I've been really honest about my journey on this channel. However, a whole year, we saw barely any momentum, and then suddenly we began to see some growth. And while I do my best to not think about it, I would be lying if I, deep down, didn't brace myself for the next video that may not perform or the next failure. I mean, I'm human, but looking at Shiron, it reminds me that failure is inevitable, but so is success, as long as I don't give up. And I can't help but think of Sharon's Aquaman poster that talks about how not giving up is the most heroic thing that you could do. And I think that's beautiful because at the end of the day, we are the hero in our own journey to our dream. The journey to success isn't really just us against obstacles or us against the world. World, even most times, it's really us against us. And I think that that's what makes it a heroic act, because we all know that that's not easy. So if you are in your darkest hour right now, if you're in a season where you're on the verge of giving up, where things are hard, and you literally do not know if you're going to find your way out, think of Aquaman. Because not giving up isn't just the most heroic thing that you could do. It's how you reach the anatomy of your dream. All right, guys, I will see you in the next one.

[A]

Hey, this is Sharon. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I've got a chance to build $2 billion companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you will love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It's on my substack called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from the trenches as I go for a three peat and build the Next Billion. So everything's free atmynextbillion.com. please check it out. Mynextbillion. Com.