The Dangerous Truth About Multiple Streams of Income

0:00 If you have not yet hit seven figures, and you personally are running around doing a lot of non-revenue generating activities, or you're spending a significant amount of your capital on non-revenue generating activities, you're probably in the wrong spot. Welcome back to the Path to Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. What's going on? I feel closer to you. today. I feel like something's changed between us. Yeah. Wow. Your gravitational pull has brought me closer to you.

0:41 This is so fun. First of all, you know, being in the studio, get ready and get used to this, by the way, because we're going to do a lot more episodes this way and we're super stoked about it. Two weeks ago, I think I was on a call with Dan Martell and Mastermind Group, and Dan said something that got my brain just cooking. And he said, look, Guys, I calculated this week that if I would have stuck 100% with my first business, I would be worth $6 billion with a B. $6 billion. And it's not like Dan is sucking in the world right now. So this is really interesting because I got to thinking about this a little bit around both our business, some of the things that we've been through, but also some of the things that we watch.

1:29 We're so fortunate to be able to work with so many amazing business owners and entrepreneurs and some of the things that we see people doing. And also some of the, honestly, just fucking blatant lies about what creates wealth and I want to, I'd love to start here. We had this point where, I mean, what, when we got into the VA business, because we've been through this, when we got into our virtual assistant business, we were what, about a year into Empire? Yeah. Yeah. I think about a year to 18 months, somewhere in there. You were really the captain of this ship at the very beginning. I feel like you just blamed me for all of it. It was 100% your fault.

2:10 It was a very clever way to bring this into the fold. I know, and you picked it up right away. Bravo. You were kind of captaining the ship. So I want to take us to that moment and around when things were kind of starting to shake, I want to actually paint the whole picture because I think it's dangerous to just say, oh, there was an opportunity and it was cool, so we did it. What led into it and then what did we do? And then I want to talk about where it landed us. I want to give one little pre-frame to it and then I'll hook into it. So... In the last, what, 25 years of getting to work with Tony Robbins, one of the things he talks about or he touts on the regular is that, you know, he's I'm a part owner of 120 companies. Right. So here he has all these companies doing an excess of nine billion dollars a year.

2:52 So you have all these people who get to witness what he's saying and how he's playing into the fold that he has all these companies. So it can become very alluring for people to go, oh, to become that wealthy, I need to go have all these companies. Right. What most people don't realize is he really had one company, one primary company. He had his nonprofit as well, but he really had one company he drove on for 45 years. And then when he hit a tipping point, and guess what? He went and bought into or acquired or did the whole song and dance. So I just want to set that up first because it ties into where I want to take this. So we were, yeah, 12 to 18 months in on our business. And we had an opportunity, a really, really amazing connection in our world.

3:33 She was really good at providing people virtual assistants. And in our space at the time with us primarily having coaches, consultants, experts that are in the fold, the number one thing that they would all need is they wanted leverage. And they're at this precipice of how do I grow my business? And we're like, you need to make a hire. Well, which person do you need to go hire? Like, we're like, go get a virtual assistant, get the stuff off your plate that's not revenue generating. It's like, well, this is really easy. If we're going to connect all our people to her, like we can hook into her business and get a percentage of all of those people providing hours, which again, on paper, on the surface, it all looked like it made sense.

4:14 In my head, I'm like, this is like mailbox money. Like we get to get a piece of the hourly. You were so excited too, dude. I was so excited. Until I was not. No, but I was excited because, and this is the dangerous piece of what we did in our business. So like our company being called Empire Partners, the dangerous piece is that partner's piece. And why I doubled down on that, it's very easy for us because there's so many pieces to a business that we can tie into and where we can help. That partner's piece can be a shiny object, literally every, I mean, how many opportunities did we just talk about this morning over our Friday quiche, right? When we saw, or when I saw, I'll take ownership of it, and seeing the opportunity and seeing what was there, it made sense on paper.

5:01 It was a good idea. And to what we were talking about earlier today, not all good ideas need to actually be executed on. Because what transpired over the course of that first year, we helped place like over, I would say close to 70 people into the VA services. Right. What came with that was the sales. Now, here was the big aha. The same amount of time and energy and effort that went into generating a client for their VA business was the same amount of time and energy and effort that would go into generating a customer into our primary business. So while it looked easy and simple, from a time standpoint, it was a time suck.

5:41 Well, that's before we get into customer service. That's before we get into people not knowing how to hire or train or manage or what do I do when they're not available? What do I do when there's a language barrier? It became a... black hole of we're now managing and running your businesses for what was supposed to be mailbox money turned into, oh, dear God, shoot me. And so a year later, it definitely became that, like, get this out of our world. Not because, again, she wasn't providing a good service or we weren't helping people. But we were no longer in our business. We were in a completely different universe. Man, it's so interesting because I remember I'll never forget the first time that you like laid this out.

6:22 He, by the way, is like king of he's so good at laying things out on spreadsheets and lucid charts. It looks so pretty. It did. It looked beautiful. Like the numbers were just stunning. They were gorgeous. It really was when you look at all the different activities that had to happen. And by the way, you did a whole bunch of them. And this is when you're thinking about this early on in a business, you are the primary driver of so many different activities. And so if you go start another one before you've got a robust team of people that's running the current business, the primary business, now we're in a spot where you're having to take time away from that. And to give a little bit of context, I mean, you know, to say that the income generated from a VA is, I mean, not even a tenth.

7:08 of what would have been generated had you spent that time on. But when you match up and say, but if we had 500 people, what if we have 500 people doing this? Look at this. Made my numbers look real good real quick. It did. Well, the other thing that was interesting about that, too, though, is that at first and really this is why I think it's important to think these things all the way through, because. Our rationale at the time and why I was like, okay, yeah, let's do this was it felt like it played alongside what we were already doing. It was like, well, we see that our customers have a need. They've got to go do this somewhere. Why not do it here? The thing that was interesting, though, is that as we went along, the first people that we serviced were our clients.

7:53 Then all of a sudden, before you know it, we're servicing businesses that have nothing to do with our mastermind or our consulting. They're never going to be customers on that end of the coin. And you're still spending time, you know, customer servicing and selling. Here's how you log into Google. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, man. where you really start to get the clear picture of, is this truly aligned with my primary business model or not, is, is it taking me further away or bringing me closer? And we were definitely getting taken further away. And I think I actually, it was such a blessing because, We had gotten to a point where he had several conversations about, oh, you know, do we stop this?

8:39 You know, and it was like, well, no, we kept hanging on to like, oh, you know, but it could. We could get to that 500 number. Oh, you hate to give up that little chunk of revenue. But I'm so grateful. I mean, it ended up coming to an end unceremoniously, quite frankly. And it was the best thing that ever happened because on the other side of it, holy crap, the amount of time and energy and effort that we got back. It was, whoa. You know, I mentioned Tony's name a moment ago. There's something that he used to say that I loved. He said, you can do the right thing at the wrong time and you'll fall flat on your face. And you can do the wrong thing at the right time and you can strike gold. Yeah. And so I think there's that element of, does it make sense to actually have multiple lanes in your business?

9:23 Absolutely. But sequence, right? Like the proper timing. And for us, it was just, it was so early in the game. And I think part of it too, there was, at least from my vantage point, I just, I've always had this piece of, ooh, how can I connect the dots on that? Or how can we make that happen? Or how can we add value there? Like as artists, we like to create more art. And the dangerous piece with that, there's two things. One is we may stay in a painting way longer than we should because the painting was done like four iterations ago and we should have walked away from it. I think the other side is true too, where we just start where we have like 15 canvases around our studio and we're like, what the hell am I doing? And who am I creating this art for?

10:04 And did I lose the heart and soul of what I was painting? And I think that happens in our business quite frequently. I couldn't agree more. I think in this case, quite honestly, like we were trying to convince ourselves that we had a fucking Monet when we had a finger painting. It was like, you know, it was like one of those abstract art fucking finger paintings. Every time I get close to it, she's a total Monet. To your point on sequencing, I think this is a big one because from a timing standpoint, you know, we were in a spot where we hadn't even hit seven figures yet. And this is danger zone. Like, if you haven't hit seven figures in your business, do not go start another one. Please.

10:44 I mean, depending on what your goals are, I would say, actually, I'm curious your response to this. But when I was thinking this through, I think that we probably would have been three to five X for easy further along. Have we not done that? I call it the progress landmine. And because progress equals happiness. And so for me, the thing that was dangerous with it, it was very easy to make progress with it because I'm like, oh, it's way easier to see the gaps in other people's businesses and be like, here's what we need to do to fix it, make it better. Meanwhile, not looking at our own and making the necessary moves and putting the time and energy in. And it's to the same end, we all do this in different ways. It's like, oh, I'm gonna clean up my office today. Meanwhile, I need to go generate leads.

11:26 Well, I'm gonna go tackle all these things on my website that have no impact or benefit to what we're doing. So we spin in circles on the things that we can progress on, thinking it's moving us towards an actual destination. When in reality, it's actually just causing us to drift even further away from our actual outcome. I think on that point, you know, it's interesting because we've seen this too in our own clients. What's fascinating is that we have the good fortune and have had the good fortune of working with people who are literally at the very beginning, which doesn't really happen anymore for the most part these days. And then people who are, you know, all the way up to a nine-figure business. And the more experienced and dialed in the business owner is – the more disciplined they are about keeping their core business.

12:13 But also what's interesting is the more freedom they actually have to go create something new if they really want to, you know, in the, in, we, we just had this happen semi recently when, you know, uh, a client in the last six months or so is, is kind of, you know, trying to figure out a new, a new service based business and, um, They get a client and that client doesn't know something about something that they know something about. And then all of a sudden it's like, ooh, wait, so I decided like so proud. Oh, so I decided to spin up this other business, you know, so I'm doing this now too. Super duper. It's dangerous. It's very dangerous. So in my mom's house, I know it sounds like a weird, interesting reframe.

12:55 Yeah, where's this going? In the bathroom in my mom's house. So she has this frame and it talks about the tale of two wolves. So it's like the Native American story about, you know, which, you know, grandfather, which wolf's going to be the strongest. It's like whichever one you feed. And so we've recently had a couple other of our members and there's total contrast of the two wolves. One of our members, he's like, hey, I've got all these skill sets right now. I've got literally I've got my hand in the fire on 10 different projects that are going. Yeah. The challenge, he's really good at a lot of different things, right? So it's kind of like, you know, jack of all trades, master of none kind of concept. And he's like, I'm getting diluted results. I'm like, yeah, because you're diluting your focus.

13:36 And then contrast that with the next conversation with one of our other members. She's crushing it in her existing core business. And she's finally got the systems dialed in and she's got all the different, you know, the right people in play, the right technologies doing their thing. She's got predictability. And so she goes, look, I want you to coach me for the next two months on what my next chapter is going to be. on what that next lane or the next thing that I'm gonna plug into my business world. So instead of just being like reactionary, being like, oh, somebody over here says they're willing to pay me for this thing or I'm really good at this specific strategy or tactic or task, she's taking a step back to go, I wanna really think about what is gonna fit into my world and who I desire to become and how I wanna play this game for this 2.0 version of myself.

14:23 So you contrast these two different scenarios. What's wild when you actually look at the amount of revenue or the amount of net worth between these two individuals, they are literally in two different planets. First one, trying to figure out how am I going to pay my bills? The second one, she literally could stop right here, right now. She wouldn't have to work another day in her life, but she's strategic and she's intentional and she's willing to have that space and actually make good decisions and cut out. This is the fascinating part. She went into three different meetings yesterday and she set a standard and said, if we're not here, here, here, I'm stepping out because it no longer serves me. So clean and easy, willing to step away from something, knowing that it's not going to get her to that next phase.

15:05 So, yeah, what we get rid of and really fixating on that one thing, there's so much magic and power in it. We did the episode last year. We were kind of just reacting to Alex Hormozy's $80 million plus launch, right? Yeah. So many people looked at that and were like, oh, okay, what did Alex do like right away that made him $80 million in a vacuum? He just did one webinar and made $80 million. Yeah, except that's not what happened at all. That dude is playing chess while you're playing checkers. But here's the thing that's interesting about this. I think that this also plays along with timelines. Speaking of Alex, one of the things that I appreciate the most about him is that he has a realistic and I would say like...

15:50 ridiculously healthy view of what a timeline should really look like in business. And I think that so many people end up going out of business too fast because they're just too impatient. The fucking Milwaukee Brewers just won the World Series after 58 seasons for the first time in history. 58 seasons. And if you would tell somebody who starts, you know, who founds the Milwaukee Brewers, hey, listen, you're going to be one of... I don't know how many teams are in Major League Baseball now, but, you know, one of X number of teams in Major League Baseball and you guys are going to win a World Series. Would you do it or not? Most people are too fucking impatient to do that. They're like, no, I'm not waiting 58 years, you know.

16:33 But the thing is, we get into business. And I think that a lot of this, like that squirrel and making the hard right turn, a lot of times comes down to the fact that, like, We get into a business and we're a year or two in, even if we're having some success or creating some traction, what ends up happening is that I think for most, first of all, most of us think it's going to be easier than it's going to be before we ever start. I don't know that anything actually prepares you for running a business the very first time that you're going to do it. But when you dive in and you get some traction, I think there's also this sense that like, oh, when I get here... Then everything's just going to be smooth sailing and hunky-dory and whatever.

17:18 And oftentimes, I think people believe that if things go well, that's within the first couple of years of running a business. But that's the exact danger zone. Within a couple of years, you got two paths. And if you get an opportunity to go start some other business, even if you think that it plays alongside the one that you're currently running, unless you have just crushed... the first two years and you were way further down the line than 99% of other business owners, you are literally creating a track where you dilute your results. Well, you know, my buddy Rory Vaden says diluted focus equals diluted results, right?

17:59 You dilute your results going this way or, you know, and it seems exciting at the moment too, by the way. Or you go down the other path where you double down on the one that you started that's primary, that's making you solid money, that you are talented at, and you keep going, and now all of a sudden, you're way further down the road than most. The path over here potentially lands you out of business. Seen that happen many times. At best, it puts you in a position where you're still amongst the pack instead of getting way further ahead. And I feel like... I feel like a lot of that comes down to the fact, kind of to your point earlier about like what we do with our time.

18:41 It's a dopamine hit. Like I get that, you know, I get that when there's a new opportunity and it's like, Ooh, you know, Ooh, wait a minute. You know, I like what we're doing here at Empire, but this feels exciting. You know, that level of discipline, uh, And intention, to your point about spring, is game-changing. There's something magical in the midst of what you just said. Finding the magic in the mundane. So if you can get really excited and get your dopamine hits off of doing the boring shit, the biggest challenge I see with people is they're like, Oh, it's not exciting anymore. So let me either pivot. Let me add another layer in. Or, which we see very frequently on our squirrel syndrome, right?

19:23 A lot of people diagnosed with squirrel syndrome lately. They get so bent out of shape and bored, they set fire to their business, but they won't do the boring stuff. Like their business is actually rocking and like things are taken off. And we're like, yes, you're doing the right things. It's going like awesome. Like do some of these boring things to make it work better. And it's like, but I don't want to do those things. And then three weeks later, my business doesn't work. No, your business is actually working great. You're just not doing the things that are boring that are going to take it to the next level. So there's this magic of like, we have to almost be like, psychological warfare with ourselves at times where we literally have to rewire our brain and our thinking to do the boring things that are going to get us to where we need to go.

20:04 Just give me your reaction to this. Wealthy people have multiple streams of income and that's what makes them wealthy. No. Well, maybe. But more times than not, not usually. The way, just, you know, I mentioned Tony earlier. He did one lane of his business for 45 flipping years. 45 years. This coming year is going to be his 50th year in business. 45 years doing the same thing. And here's what's wild. If you go to his events right now, so he actually has an event happening next week. So his flagship event called Unleash the Power Within.

20:45 It's one where day one you walk on 40, or it's actually about 20 yards of hot coals, right? So the fire walk. Guess how many years he's been doing that event? 45 flipping years. It's been a four-day event for 45 years. So the mass majority of people are like, well, I already did that event that one time. So I'm going to go create a whole new event. So he's become obsessed with optimization. And so his, now this has also been to the detriment in some ways too, but he's, For 45 years, these are the core four events that we do. These are our core offers that we provide. We're just gonna go all in on being the best of those things in this company for this specific client.

21:28 And he's doubled down on it and he's done it for 45 years. Now, there's been a lot of different things that he's squirreled out on, but he crushed it for those first 15 and he was willing to go all in. Now, here's the fascinating piece. He went all in on infomercials. back when infomercials were just coming out. How many other lead structures did he go create? Zero. He went all in on infomercials because he saw like, I can go kick ass in this one lane and do this one thing better than anyone else. And it's at a time when television was starting to shift and late night and all those different things were coming in the fold. But, Well, guess what?

22:09 That was the one lane he went in full tilt. Fast forward in time. Then it was Guthy Ranker. So if you remember, they had the, you know, shopping network type stuff that was there. So once the infomercial game was kind of weaning out, he went all in with Guthy Ranker and went full tilt, crushed it. Well, then guess what came after that? The internet. Okay, so then the internet figured out, oh, shoot, we can actually do a lot of marketing here on social media. We can actually crush it. Turned off all those other different channels and went all in on the one channel. So you start to see now, it's not really until, I would say in the last two years, he's had to put a lot more legs underneath the stool. But again, he's in a position... not even getting to the hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue that's there that allows to play in all those different zones with the right amount of staff, with the right amount of strategy and structure behind it.

22:59 I was in a workshop recently, which I want to give a huge shout out to my good buddy, Amber Vilhauer and Dr. David Grutter. We were in this workshop talking about creating a movement. And Dr. Grutter was talking about the need to create a category of one. That is exactly what Tony Robbins did. He created a category of one, not by doing eight bazillion things, but by doing one and becoming the guy. You say personal development, that is a first name that drops out of anybody's mouth. And I think that like for any of us running a business, you want to be the guy for somebody.

23:39 You want to be that person where when we talk about this all the time, we were just discussing this at breakfast this morning about connection and referral and things of that nature and how not only has it not gone away, but it's probably even amplified as an even more effective strategy in today's marketplace. If you are, we all have like a guy. Oh, you got this problem? Oh, yeah, you got to see my guy, you know, or gal, whatever. But we've all kind of got that guy for the, if you can be the guy, you can't be the guy if you're in like six different businesses because people's brain goes squirrely, right? And this is another thing. I think a lot of times, you know, we figured this out really kind of the hard way where We are very blessed, both you and I, to have seen business from many different angles.

24:30 And we have seen the inside of businesses from a solopreneur all the way up to multi-nine figures. The one thing that people know us for more than anything else is sales. And we had a moment where I think that, you know, we were, we love getting to do revenue optimization type consulting where we're getting our hands dirty and like other parts of the business and stuff like that. But when we think about being the guy, literally just this year, we flipped a switch. We're like, okay, you know what? Bucket, we're going to, we're not going to fight it anymore and open the freaking floodgates. since then because it's not like people are not thinking about oh you know you're doing six different things it's like you need sales this is where to go this is what to do you know what i mean there's something within that too because we were also locked in on how we thought it had to go and having this honest dialogue about like man sales is such a critical piece of the business and you know us wanting to just champion and get everybody to get on board with wanting to become a if everybody would just dive in, what are they?

25:38 There's this whole world they don't even know on the other side. And at our event, it was actually, this was wild. The magic in this is listen to your consumer base, listen to your clientele. Because we thought our one thing was sales in terms of us training people how to sell better, more effectively. As soon as we asked everybody at this event, we're like, who here loves, who here wants to become a master of sales? There's like two people out of like, I don't know, 60 people. Like, if we could do the sales for you, who here would want to just hand everything over to us and who would pay us 20%? Every hand in that room went up. I'm like, uh-oh, we've been going down the right lane on the thing, but in the wrong vehicle. Yeah.

26:18 And it's wild because as soon as we made that pivot this year, we go, hey, let's just provide sales. Like our business is starting to run to the point where you and I had an honest conversation last week. We're like, we got to rewire a lot of the pieces of how we're doing this thing. One of the things that I think is important to figure out is you got to know what your one thing is. The one place that I'm going to give like some leeway here is you might have started something that's totally outside of your zone of genius that is not that you're not really very good at or you're average at and you're not making a whole bunch of money doing. And there's not a significant amount of upside. Yeah. Yes, that's when you take chances, you try something else, you pivot, whatever.

27:03 Those things are going to happen. But I think that when you know that you've got the thing that makes you the most money, and not that this is just about money, this is about impact. Like if you've got a service-based business, which are the people that we serve every day, If you've got a service-based business, if you're not serving the max number of people that you can serve, you're not making the impact. Or if you're not taking that small number of people and going super deep, you're not making the impact. So you've got to look at what can I make the most impact doing? What can I make the most income doing? And if that's already your primary business... Like just double, triple, quadruple down on it until you ride it to a point where you can start to remove yourself from the center of it.

27:48 Because until you've reached a point where you can remove yourself as the center of the business, you have no business starting something new. I think the big indicator for a lot is if your elevator pitch requires like 500 stories in a building. That's how you know you got a problem. And most people's elevator pitches are, I do all these things, right? It requires a novel of explanation versus I help X people solve Y problem. If you can't articulate it in one sentence, it's too diluted. And that I think is a huge piece of our world. And especially for the people who want impact businesses where they wanna help people get transformation, it's so too many things.

28:32 I want to dovetail this into something else because there's the danger of the different business. And then, you know, and I think that in the context of the different business, sometimes it's, hey, I'm thinking about this other thing or I've got an opportunity over here. Other times you've actually started doing the thing. And I think one of the other things that I want to bring into play here is sunk cost fallacy. This is basically what says, hey, I spent money, I spent time on this thing, and so I have to hold on to it. I have to keep doing this. It's the fucking couch that you hate that you spent the money on.

29:14 It's a VA business. It's the VA business. Yeah. Yeah, that you freaking sit on for way too long. I think that these are the moments, if you're listening to this right now and you're like, oh, yep, I did it. Get out as fast as you can. As fast as you can. I think that we watch other people make these mistakes, but we have made it ourselves where we stick around just too long because we put time and effort into it. And I think sometimes it's literally that thing in the back of our mind, depending on how we're wired and what our beliefs are that, oh, I spent the money. I spent the time.

29:55 I have an obligation where you need to look at what your real obligations are. Using the VA business as the example within that. I mean, part of why I kept hanging on to it. So first off, kiss of death. First off, I'm like, oh, this was my idea. So I have to make sure that it's successful or I'm going to have egg on my face. And so I stayed in it way longer than I should have because I didn't want to have to get real about it. Right. The other part was because we have other team members who are now tied into it and we have partners who were like, we can made these commitments to help you do X, Y, Z. I mean, shoot, the amount of time I mean, built out a whole training program for people to learn how to hire and train and onboard.

30:38 Wow. like put in all the different pieces that are in our calendar. So now we're on the hook to commit. So I had all these beliefs running through my head of commitments I made, promises I put into play, then looking at a line item on our sheet of like, there's revenue that's coming from this and it's supposed to be a different number. So I have to find a way. So that sunk cost, was more than just the tactical on the paper. It was the emotional story that was running through my brain. I'm sure there was others on our team too, as well as the people who we were in partnership with. We wanted to see them successful. So knowing that we would have to rip that Band-Aid off, It became a bigger story than it needed to be. And, you know, call it God, the universe, however that played, it gave us an opportunity to go, the right thing to do right now is to step away.

31:24 And this is also where it's important to understand yourself. How well do you really understand yourself and why you make the decisions that you make? Because so often we'll do more for others than we will for ourselves. And so, especially if you're that nurturing kind of person, You're like, oh, yeah, but no, I owe it to them. I don't want to let them down. I don't. Yeah, but what happens? And we'll play this all the way out. Oh, my gosh. What if I if I step out of this thing and then the whole thing goes into a heap of burning flames and they don't survive. And then I have that on my conscience, you know. And in truth, we're lying to ourselves. That's why it's called the sunk cost fallacy, by the way, is that we're lying to ourselves.

32:07 Because when we are not in a congruent situation with ourselves, our highest good, and what we're meant to be doing in the world, We are literally cutting off, cutting other people off from what they are truly meant for. We really are lying to ourselves because in that moment, if we would free someone up to actually go run with the right partner or truly on their own by themselves going and doing the thing that they were meant to be doing, they're going to be way further along. And so are we at the end of the day. So I think this is really a big point is like if you've gone down that road, don't be afraid to just actually rip the bandaid off and get out because you're going to be you're going to be further faster.

32:54 I'll make one more point on this, dude. The further along I get in the business world, I wouldn't have been able to say this 15 years ago because I didn't know any better. I didn't spend enough time around people that had done really incredible things. The more people I spend time around that have built really incredible things, the bigger the rooms that we get into, the higher the level of connections that we're making. I am a firm believer that we look at those people and we put them up on pedestals and we go, they know something that I don't know. Oh boy. You know, they're just that much more talented than I am. It's not that it's just that they make decisions faster than you do. When they realize they're in the wrong business, they get out faster than you do.

33:39 And the speed to decision. Say that one more time. Cause that's really, really important. Last piece. It's not about the decisions that move them forward. It's about the decisions they get out of fast. I'm Yeah, it's cutting off from. It's addition by subtraction. We almost go backward to go forward, right? And here's the thing. What's interesting about it, imagine that if you start every business that you start, every new little thing that you're doing, let's just imagine that you got a weight vest. And you can just load, you know, you can like their weight vest where you can like load little more packs in there. Right. And you start off and you've got like five pounds and it's not that big a deal. Right. And then you add another five, another five. And all of a sudden, before, you know, you got a hundred pound weight vest.

34:22 What would happen if you dumped half of it? Like you'd be running, you know, a bazillion times faster. I want to kind of put a bow on this with something that you brought up earlier, but I want to at least hit it before we end this episode, which is... Inside of our own business as well, we have the competing, what we believe are competing priorities. And I'm curious about something. I have a belief that if you are, if you have not yet hit seven figures and you personally are running around doing a lot of non-revenue generating activities, or you're spending a significant amount of your capital on non-revenue generating activities, you are probably in the wrong spot.

35:07 Do you agree with that? Totally agree. A hundred percent. Yeah. And I, I, not only do I agree, but it's also something that you and I, we face it monthly. We literally look at where are we allocating our time and our resources and our personnel. Is it driving us to the outcome that we have at this present moment? And it's always got to be revenue generating. And even in our consulting, how many times every week you're doing what? Why? Because you have a belief you think it has to get done. Is it going to generate revenue? No. Oh, okay, great. Stop. This time of year, and I'm knowing when this episode comes out, between now and the end of this year, this is a really good time for people to reevaluate and look back at where have I been? What did I do this year? Where did my time go?

35:47 What did that energy take me to? What are the things I did this year that I really shouldn't have? Because you have a moment in time to recalibrate. With the new year literally knocking at our door right now, not only can you make some big decisions, but you also have an opportunity and an excuse to cut this shit out and go, hey, the new year's here. I got to do some things that are different. I know we worked together this last year. I love you, but this is how I have to play. This is the moment where it can be very, very easy to make those pivots. So I just want to champion people. I'm looking at you if you're watching the video. Make the changes, cut it out. And as Bob Newhart, as we now know, stop it. And as Michael Jackson said, make that change.

36:29 Make that change. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Path to Mastery podcast. Until next time, take care. Take care, everybody.