How To Beat Your Competition (Even If You Have Less Money & Experience)

In today’s Youtube video, I’m going to be talking about how to win, even if you have less money and less experience than your competitors. 

So this will kind of be a half book review or my notes on Elon Musk, the billionaire of SpaceX and Tesla or how the billionaire of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our future. Now, this is like the reading area in my house. There’s another seat right here. I have this lamp, which actually doesn’t do much but this is a reading area in my house and right there I actually keep some book cliff notes. So I have these scattered all over the house. It’s funny because in Grow Your Agency and in six-figure SMMA, I have resources, financial tracking sheets, community cliff notes, the SBA worksheet, the 2019 planner, health and meditation and screen time tracking sheets. I have literally 20 plus resources custom made. The funny thing is, sometimes I don’t think that the six-figure SMA community realizes that all of these resources I make myself. When I say that, I mean I make for myself, so all these resources are initially just problems I have or I’m like, you know what, I just really want to do this. And then I do it and I’m like, oh! Actually this would be totally awesome for my students. So this is one of those examples of it. 

So all around my house, I have scattered these, which are basically cliff notes from books I’ve read. Because the thing is, once you read a book, it’s really hard to actually remember or retain most of the information and the knowledge you learned from it. Which is why in the 15 minute breaks I have between work blocks and just other times in the day, what I’ll do is I’ll just pick up one of these cliff notes and I’ll read through it and that’ll really help me retain a lot more of what I learnt in it. So if you are in six-figure SMMA, then you already have access to these, just go to section 12 resources, to the community cliffnotes part and then all of the cliff notes are listed there. 

Elon Musk, I’m sure a lot of you guys know him as quite the personality, as the real-life Tony Stark but there is a hell of a lot more to him. I used to see Elon Musk as almost like this celebrity entrepreneur figure, obviously he achieved ridiculously incredible things. I knew his achievements, but after reading the book which I read like five, six months ago, I had this new found respect for Elon Musk. Now, the main takeaways I had from this book is number one, Elon Musks North star. 

Elon’s North star, making sure humans are a multiplanetary species, permeates throughout his entire organization. This North Star guides him through thick and thin. So one thing that’s very interesting about Elon Musk is SpaceX, Tesla, they didn’t touch on Solar City too much in the book, but especially at SpaceX, most of his employees are underpaid. They actually take pay cuts to go to SpaceX, they’re underpaid, overworked, and a lot of time, to be honest, Elon Musk verbally abuses them. He’s very blunt, very to the point and he really doesn’t take people’s feelings and emotions into account, yet they stay there, right? Despite the fact that Elon pays them less and makes them work harder, these people still stay there and simply because of this north star and this overarching mission that the company has. 

And I really think that’s an important takeaway. It doesn’t matter if your agency is just you and one other person. It doesn’t matter if you have an affiliate marketing business and it’s literally just you. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 employees and you run a health tech company, it doesn’t matter. The point is if you have this overarching mission, for example, if you’re just an affiliate marketer sitting at home in your robe or you have an e-commerce business and you’re just at home scaling ads and not really doing much and it’s just you, it’s still important to have this mission. If you’re an affiliate marketer, for example, your mission could literally be, I want my affiliate marketing business to help as many people get out of the nine to five as possible by opening their eyes to the people that could get them there. 

For example, if you help promote other people’s digital products or something like that, by opening their eyes to the correct software and education, that’ll help them get there, right? So that could be a mission. But the point is, if you have a mission and you have just one employee and you have this north star that you’re going for like Elon did and it’s really overarching in your company, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if your employees are overworked and potentially not underpaid, but they can definitely get more lucrative paying jobs elsewhere. A lot of times they’ll just stay at the job just because of how exciting it is. I definitely have come to learn that, for example, with my agency as you IAG media and my education company GrowYourAgency.com because there are a lot of people that work for me, I’m sure that could get more lucrative jobs elsewhere and I’m sure they could get more prestigious jobs elsewhere. Jobs where they could coast a little easier, in my company because there is not many of us, you can’t really coast, you really have to pull your weight. Otherwise, it’s going to become very, very clear. I know a lot of my team, they are so excited about what we’re doing with GrowYourAgency.com. They’re so excited about being part of the frontier when it comes to online education and hopefully being the leading spearhead when it comes to online education very soon as well as everything that we’re doing in terms of charity, all of the charitable work that we’re doing at the end of the year. So, that Northstar permeates through the company and it’s contagious. 

So that’s number one. Number two, talent. So the best talent in the world goes to SpaceX and Tesla, I wouldn’t say the best of the best, but incredible talent goes to SpaceX and Tesla when they could easily go to competitors and they attract next level hires and this truly drives his company forward. A lot of what has made SpaceX and Tesla as great as they are, is the fact that they’ve been able to attract such incredible talent. The big reason that they’ve been able to attract such incredible talent is because Elon Musk has this ridiculous vision and mission that he’s going for. The company is exciting, it’s innovating. And as I said, just bringing that back to my team and my employees, I know that a lot of my team members, they love working for the company because it’s not a sluggish agency. They actually get to deliver real results for incredible clients and they get to do it in a way where it’s not very formal and it’s very efficient. They don’t have to spend tons of time creating dumbass proposals. We don’t have many team meetings, we keep them to a minimum because we understand how inefficient it is. So I can just see that in my company to be honest. So that’s number two. 

Number three is resourcefulness. No matter what challenges Elon faced, no matter what hurdles that came up, Elon was just ridiculously relentless and he just kept pushing. I really came to learn this throughout this book. Just how relentless he was and how no matter what was served his way, he just kept pushing and pushing. 

So bring it back to the topic of this video. And as I said, if you’re a six-figure estimate customer, literally just go to section 12 and then you can get all of the rest of the notes and I think the 20 odd pages of cliff notes and stuff like that. But, really coming back to the topic of this video, I know most of you guys watching this are agency owners and one of your main concerns and hopefully it is your main concern will be hiring an incredible team. So ,for example, if you do SEO, hiring someone who can actually do the SEO day to day for you. If you are doing Facebook ads, which I know majority of you guys are, or doing paid traffic of some sort, having a contractor that can eventually become a full time team member. For example, with Daniel and my agency, they then can become a full time team member with you. That should be one of your main priorities because really hiring an incredible team is one of the highest leverage things that you can do as a business owner. And apart from that, you might be wondering, Well Shit, there’s these other agencies out there that have swanky offices and perks and this thing or that thing. So why would these people come to me? Or potentially, why would these people not just do it on their own? And that’s really where these three principals come in, number one, having this north star. It doesn’t matter if you’re just a service provider for dentists out there, you’ve got to ask yourself, why did you choose dentists in the first place? Or why did you choose marketing in the first place? Now, a lot of the reason might be simply because you needed a profitable business, so you built an agency, but dig a little deeper than that. Create this overarching north star and this overarching mission in your agency or company. It doesn’t matter if it’s just you and one other person, that will permeate throughout your tiny team. It’ll just push you guys to work even harder and it’s just this compass, in the same way that 500, 700 years ago when sailors were navigating the seas and they need a compass and a sense of direction. That’s what that will be for your agency or potentially your company. 

So that’s number one. Now before you can have this mission. As I said, even if you’re just one person, I recommend you create a mission you know where you’re trying to head to. But realistically, before you can really enforce that mission or that mission can encompass your entire company, you’re going to have to find great talent. Now having that mission will be one of the best advantages you have when it comes to hiring. Even if it’s just a contractor that then could potentially become a full time team member. Most people out there, their job is their job. It’s just a means to get money, right? Whereas if you can make it clear that this is what we’re trying to do, and even if we’re just an agency and we’re just servicing restaurants out there, this is why it matters. 

This is why it matters and this is the change in our clients’ lives. We’re helping real people, real businesses and if we can help them grow, then think about the second order consequence of that. For example, in my agency, if I can help the e-commerce businesses that I do and the coaching businesses that I do or the online education companies that I do. I believe in the power of online education. That’s why my agency helps a lot of people out there with online courses and coaching programs. Because I vet these people. I believe in these people and I know that, if this person who’s an industry leader in this space and helping people create an outcome with this business, if we can help them grow, then their program is just going to help thousands of others achieve the goal that they’re trying to achieve. If I can help our e-commerce businesses, then their product can land in the hands of hundreds of thousands of other people and then that has a second order consequence. So, with that in mind, that’s why even though I have a small agency when it comes to team, we are so efficient and we’re so passionate about what we do. That’s why I get so much out of my team is because we have that overarching mission and we know that if we’re helping our clients then in turn we’re helping all the people that our clients help. 

So guys, I hope you enjoyed that video. If you don’t already have a north star and it’s just you and you think that this is some weird esoteric thing. No, just create a mission today because as I said, that’ll help you when you actually go ahead and bring on a contract or bring on a new hire, because rather than them doing it for the money, which of course they will be partly doing it for the money, they get to buy into that mission and they understand what you guys are trying to achieve as a company. 

So that’s that. Number two, if you haven’t watched this, or if you haven’t read this book, I strongly recommend you read it. It was like a biography so also a little bit of an easier read if you need something less dense. I definitely recommend you read this book. And number three, as I said, if you are a six-figure SMMA student, just log into the content portal and you will get the entire 20 odd pages of this. And number four, if you’d like to learn how to start and scale your own six-figure and beyond agency, we have a new updated free training. I think it should be the first link below this video. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this video and I’ll see in the next [inaudible].