Graham Cochrane (00:03.534)
There are three reasons most entrepreneurs stay broke their entire career. And none of them are what you probably think. It's not the economy. It's not your niche. It's not your following size. It's not even your work ethic. In fact, some of the hardest working people that I know are also the most broke. What's actually keeping you broke is invisible. It's running in the background like software you didn't know you installed. And the good news is that you can delete it.
And today I'm going to show you exactly what it is and how to fix it because once you do, wealth isn't a goal anymore, it's inevitable.
Graham Cochrane (01:01.838)
Now you may not know this, but my dream growing up was to be a professional musician. I literally wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to get a record deal. I wanted to tour and I wanted to make music videos on MTV, which kind of shows my age. And that dream was something I pursued hard in high school and college. I made a record, shopped around the labels and I talk about this story in great length in my second book, Rebel.
Suffice it to say the dream didn't come true and I found myself a few years later at age 26, a thousand miles away from home with my very pregnant wife who then gave birth to our first daughter Chloe. We had just bought our first house. We were moving to Florida for the first time from Virginia. And then I subsequently lost my second job in a span of 10 months. So picture this, I'm 26 years old. I have a wife, I have a baby, I have a mortgage.
I don't know very many people in this new town, just a few people that we moved here with to help start a church. I'm volunteering at this church as their musician, as their worship leader, leading the band. And I have no way to make money.
Graham Cochrane (02:26.542)
Now we had some savings, but we burned through that savings. So then I found myself at the end of myself and I ended up doing something I never thought I would do, something I never wanted to do. It never even crossed my mind, which was applying for aid, applying for food stamps. They call it the SNAP program. And the government qualified me because I made so little money. I made less than $500 a month. I was doing some odd gigs here and there.
And so they paid for our groceries for 18 months. And this was the most embarrassing, shameful, like what is happening to me moment of my life.
And I say all this to say that I never thought I would get rich. That wasn't the goal. But I certainly didn't think I'd be poor. And so what came up for me were a lot of feelings and a lot of ideas. And in fact, the thought that I had when I lost my second job during that period and I was on food stamps was I don't want much.
I don't want much. I wasn't angry that I wasn't rich. It wasn't like I've been trying to get wealthy and it wasn't happening. I actually had a really low bar. I just wanted to make enough to pay the bills and not have to work a job I hated. And I think that's fine if that's your goal, but I think that revealed something actually.
really sad about myself is I didn't even dream of more. I was already surrendered to the fact that there's no way I'm gonna be rich. In fact, I wouldn't say this out loud, but knowing myself, because I am myself and I live with my thoughts, when I analyze my thoughts from the past and I have some awareness of how did I think back then, and one way to know how you thought is how you talked and who you spoke to and what you spoke about, I realized that
Graham Cochrane (04:29.914)
I subtly play the victim and I was subtly saying and acting as if there are rich people and then there are not rich people. I didn't think I'd be poor but I certainly didn't think I'd be rich and it was almost like they're just different people than me. Like there's no way I'm gonna be one of those rich people. I mean my only skill set is music and music recording and most musicians don't make any money and most recording engineers don't make any money. There's a very select few at the very very top.
that make all the money, not because they've done anything wrong, they've been incredibly blessed and they deserve it, they're really, really good at what they do, but most people in this industry don't make money and so it never crossed my mind to even want wealth. And the reason why is I didn't wanna be disappointed. I don't want to want something, and I certainly didn't want to back then, dream about something and then not get it and be disappointed. So it's almost like I just gave up and surrendered.
Right? Like my friends that I went to high school with and college with, they were all becoming lawyers and doctors and investment bankers. They had degrees that led to good jobs with big salaries and they were going to be the guys driving the BMW and having a nice house in the nice part of town. And while those things would be nice, I just didn't even allow myself to want those things. Does this make sense? And so I wrongly believed
Rich people are just different and they must be lucky, they must be mega smart. They potentially did something illegal, a lot of people think that, but I didn't think most people that were rich did something illegal. But I didn't think I could be one of those people. Never imagined myself. I don't know about you, I don't know if that's your story, I don't know if you have always assumed you're never gonna have a lot of money.
But if you're listening to the sound of my voice, it's probably something you're not okay with. You want wealth, you don't want to stay broke, whatever level that is for you. But something changed. In that period of being broke and needing to figure something out, it's amazing what little pressure will do when you have to make something work. When what you're doing is no longer working and you need to create something new.
Graham Cochrane (06:48.374)
find something new that works, it's amazing what you discover. Jesus says it really powerfully in Matthew chapter 7 on the Sermon on the Mount, Seek and you will find what you are seeking. Ask and you will receive what you're asking for. Knock and the door will be open to you. So if you seek what you, if you, excuse me, if you find what you seek, well that, that's really interesting because I was finding what I was seeking when I didn't want to make a lot of money.
I was finding myself, I was finding other people that didn't make a lot of money, they weren't ambitious. But the moment I needed to find something new, I had to go seek for something new, I found new things. And one of the things I found was that there were bloggers on the internet making a lot of money. And I said, what in the world? These aren't people with degrees, although they might have had degrees, but they're not lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, celebrities, pro athletes.
running big businesses. weren't the head of, you know, Meta and Google and Tesla. They weren't those types of people. They were a different crop of people that were making a ton of money. One of the first that I saw when I knew how much he was making was Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. He was posting his monthly income reports, which was so amazing. And Pat's an amazing guy, by the way, and I've been privileged to be a guest on his podcast.
he would literally post how much he made every month. And I was seeing things like, last month I made $112,000 and I'm like, wait, what? You made that in a, not only a year, you made that in a month? And you run a blog talking about how to build a business? Like, I don't even understand, where does the money come from? Like, my brain was like cracked open.
And I realized they figured something out that I haven't figured out yet. And I got so intrigued, like I'm gonna figure this out. Maybe I won't be making $112,000 a month like Pat Flynn, and the reality is I didn't. But these days I make a heck of a lot more than that per month, which is pretty wild. I make that in a day a lot of times. So that would have, my brain would have exploded if me now told me then that you could do six figures in a day. It didn't even make sense.
Graham Cochrane (09:11.906)
But I was at least curious to discover they know something about money that I don't know and there must be more to know that I don't know. And I went on a quest to figure it out. And what I'm here to share with you today really briefly are the three things that are keeping you broke and they're invisible and they're hidden. And I guarantee you're struggling with one of these things. If you're not where you want to be financially,
However you like to measure that, that might be a certain amount you wanna make every month, it might be a certain net worth amount you wanna have, it might be how that shows up in the physical world, like you're not living in the neighborhood you wanna live in, you're not driving the kind of car you wanna drive, you're not taking the kind of trips you wanna take, or sitting on the part of the plane that you wanna sit on. And I know these things are material and they don't matter that much, but they represent something to you that you have made it financially into a different category or echelon from where you're at. However you measure it,
I can't measure that for you. If you're not there yet, it's because you're struggling with one or all of these three things. Okay. The great news is, is that these things are just things that have been programmed into you, and they can be unprogrammed. They can be uninstalled. It's not you. It's not your talent. It's not even your background, where you come from. Like, you might have come from a harder background than others, but that doesn't determine your future. Okay, it's just the programming.
And that's just such great news is you can uninstall bad programming. So it's not luck. It's not about timing. It's not about talent. Just let's pull back the curtain on these three things. Once you see them, delete these bad programs and install these new pieces of software as it were these new operating systems. Wealth becomes inevitable for you. Okay. So number one thing keeping you broke was and for me and it is for you, your broke mindset. Mindset might be a trendy word might be a buzzword and you might be like who cares about mindset.
Please care about mindset. Mindset is more important than anything else. It's more important than your skill set. It's more important than your tool set. It's more important than your team set, however you want to measure it. Mindset is everything. Robin Sharma said it famously, everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality. Everything begins with how you think. Proverbs 27, I think verse three says, as a man thinks, so is he.
Graham Cochrane (11:38.104)
Proverbs 4, 23, guard your heart above all else. The word heart there in the Hebrew, I believe it's leb, correct me if I'm wrong, Hebrew scholars, means your inner man, your mind, your heart, the core of your being. Guard your inner man, guard your mind, guard your heart, the way you think, everything, your inner being, because it determines the course of your life.
This is powerful stuff, this is not woo woo, this is reality. We know psychology tells us that you're always moving towards your strongest thoughts. So how you think, what you believe determines absolutely everything about what you do and how you show up and what you receive in life. I'm telling you, mindset is powerful and so if you aren't where you wanna be financially, it's probably because of a broken mindset. And not just broken, but a broke mindset.
When I was 26, I had a broke mindset and didn't know it. I probably have what I would categorize as a middle class mindset, but the middle class is dying. And it's really now you're seeing, and it may have always been this way. It may be, this is a theory I need to test and maybe do an episode on this, that the middle class is just a mirage all along. It's kind of a myth. It's always been broke people and rich people, but the middle class was this unique moment in time, at least in America and some other Western nations, where there was this
group of people that are still broke mindset people, but they have this mirage of being slightly wealthy, because they could drive nicer cars, live in nicer neighborhoods, but it's all built around credit, it's all built around debt, it's all built around paycheck to paycheck living, and that's evaporating, because rich people think differently than broke people, and middle class people still aren't rich people, so I almost would categorize them as broke. Very, very interesting thought, but I had a middle class mindset, but I believe I had a broke mindset, didn't even know it. And the way I like to think about this,
is a thermostat. And I got this metaphor from Gay Hendrick in his brilliant book, The Big Leap. He talks about what he calls the upper limit problem. But think about a thermostat. Your mind is just like one. In your home, there is this device, we call it a thermostat, that controls the temperature. And it's really powerful because you can set it at the temperature you want the house to stay at all day. So let's say you want to set it at 72 degrees Fahrenheit in your house. Well, if it gets warmer than 72,
Graham Cochrane (14:02.094)
the air conditioning will turn on and blow until the thermostat reads, okay, we're now back to 72 and then it turns the air conditioning off and it stays at 72 until it gets hot again. The opposite would happen if you're in a colder month. If you wanna keep the temperature at 72 degrees and it drops below that, the heat would kick on to raise the temperature back up to 72 degrees. Once it reads 72 again, drops or turns off the heat. This makes sense, right? That's what a thermostat does. It holds temperature.
You set it and forget it. This is the temperature I want to have. You can work really, really hard. You can make a ton of money. You can get a big client. You can have a video pop off. You can go viral for a moment. You can have, you can win the lottery. I mean, this is a great example, but if your thermostat is set to be broke, you'll always find a way back down to that preferred temperature. Now I say preferred temperature,
but Graham, I don't prefer to be broke. But that's where your mindset is set. Your mind is literally set at broke. And so even if money and abundance comes into your life, you have to revert to the mean. You have to revert back to who you are. Mindset really is identity. If you are a person, and I don't mean this as a dig on you, as if there's anything wrong with you as a person morally, ethically, but if you're a person who has a broke mindset, you are a broke person.
give a broke person more money, they still are a broke person. It doesn't make them wealthy. This is why it's so much more important to teach people how to be a wealthy person in their mind and heart first. New identities, new beliefs, new mindset. That's way more valuable to them than to just give them money. And before you clip this and judge me, there are people that need
money right now to survive. My family and I support a ton of people in a ton of different ways that just need help. They need food, they need water, they need medical aid, they need education, they need resources, they need money to pay the bills. Yes, yes and the whole teach a man to give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach a man a fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. I think you need to give a man a fish and then teach him to fish while he's eating the fish you gave him. So help people but the
Graham Cochrane (16:29.774)
To really help people, you have to raise their thermostat. If you don't change the thermostat of financial prowess, you don't change the mindset, it doesn't matter how much money comes into their life. They'll always end up back where it's set. And what does this look like? Here are beliefs that I see that keep you broke, mindsets that keep people broke. Number one most common is that money is evil.
Now, most people don't say money is evil out loud, but at a subconscious level, they believe money is evil, and that is why they don't have any. And it could be bad teaching in the church, money is the root of all evil. That's not what the Bible literally says. Just crack it open and read it for yourself. It says the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Very, very, very different statement. Can money be a trap? Yes. That's not the point. I'm not here to debate whether money can be dangerous. Money is just like fire.
Fire is dangerous. Does that mean we should never use fire? No one should have fire because fire is dangerous? No, that's ridiculous. When used carefully and safely, fire can cook your food and heat your home. Okay? It can do a lot of other things. Money is just a tool, just like fire is a tool, a chainsaw is a tool, a dangerous tool. So you should know the dangers of it. Don't be ignorant to the dangers of it, but don't say it's evil because it's not. Jesus never said it was. Paul, who wrote that passage, by the way, in 1 Timothy 6, never said it was.
That doesn't even make any sense if you read the Bible. Money is not evil. Money is a gift that God gives to his people that follow his teachings. Like money is not the problem. But if you believe at a subconscious level that money is evil, you're going to repel money because you don't want to be an evil person. And this is happening at a subconscious level. I've talked about this a lot, but I mean, that's one of the biggest ones. How do you know if you have this belief? If you judge other people to have money, even in your heart, if you're like, they don't deserve that. Why does he have all that money?
Why don't the billionaires pay more taxes? All of that, I don't care what you believe, all of that shows that you believe money is evil. Judgment of other people with money is a judgment against yourself and that is the reason why you're broke. Number two, money belief, is that making money is hard or creating wealth is hard. If you say so. If you say so.
Graham Cochrane (18:56.172)
Right? If you say and believe making money is hard, guess what? Whatever you seek, you will find, Jesus said. Okay, you said it. I believe making money is easy and therefore it is easy for me. Well, that's easy for you to say, Graham, you have money. No, that's what I believed when I didn't have money. I had a moment shift for me when I sold my very first online course. This was April of 2010.
It was called Pro Tools Bootcamp. It was a $47 online training teaching you how to record music with a specific piece of software. I didn't even know it was called an online course. I just knew I was selling videos in a zip file with a PayPal button to a guy named Paul somewhere around the country. I don't even know who Paul is. And if you're listening, Paul, you are my first customer in 2010. The moment I made those $47, I was not wealthy. But all of a sudden I said, oh my gosh.
Even though it took me time to make this thing and it took me my knowledge and my expertise and blah, blah, blah, blah, that sale was so easy. And I could now imagine making a lot more of those sales somehow, someway and making money seemed easier to me. And the moment I believed that making money was easy, guess what? It got real easy. I didn't become a millionaire overnight. That took a few more years, but money started to come in. So if you believe making money is hard, guess what? That's what your thermostat is set for.
Here's another one and we'll move on is wealth is for other people. Other people get to be rich, not me. It's just for other people. I would like to be rich. It's just not in the cards for me.
That is more akin to my belief, but really what that says is you're a victim. You're sad because you wish it could be for you, but you know what that is. Victims don't have to try. The benefit of being a victim is you don't have to try. You can just say, I'm just not the kind of person that gets to be wealthy. Woe is me. And that sounds like a weird benefit, but it is a benefit because A, people can feel sorry for you. B, you can feel sorry for yourself. But C, you're off the hook.
Graham Cochrane (21:09.506)
You don't have to try and risk. Entrepreneurs, by definition, risk. They try something that may or may not work. And there's some inherent fear of risking it and not working out, but until you've done it it didn't work out and you realize you're fine, you'll just try something new and it's gonna be fine, you realize it's actually not that much of a risk. The greater risk is not taking action and staying broke your whole life. That's actually a greater risk.
believing that wealth is for other people. Again, if you say so.
By definition, I should not be wealthy. I didn't come from a wealthy family. I don't know anybody who's wealthy. I didn't have any skills that created wealth. I was making $30,000 a year. I got paid with a college degree, $15 an hour to work at a software company. With a college degree, a specialized college degree, $15 an hour. I was not on track to be wealthy.
There's no, I became a millionaire at age 35, like a net worth millionaire. It's funny, the same year my net worth crossed over a million dollars is also the same year that my income crossed over a million dollars a year. It's kinda cool, they're not related. Just because you make a million dollars a year in your business doesn't make you a millionaire, because most people, by the way, that's not profit, that's revenue. Mine's profit, take home. But two, just because you even take that money home doesn't mean you actually have.
wealth, because if you spend it, it's gone. But I became a net worth millionaire and my income became a million dollars a year income all in the same year at age 35. That's way above that, like way before the average millionaire. It's usually in their late 50s. All right, so I never could have guessed that. If I had gone my whole life saying, well, I'll never be wealthy, that probably would have been the reality for me. But the moment I was like, maybe...
Graham Cochrane (22:57.39)
I don't know, like these bloggers, they don't seem like the traditional person making money. Maybe it's possible for them, maybe it's possible for me. That was at least a start. Wasn't a strong mindset, but it was a start. So where is your thermostat?
Where's your thermostat set? Do you have a broke mindset? I spent more time here because this is the most important one, but I'm gonna fly through these next two because if you have a broke mindset, that is the reason why you don't have the wealth you want yet. But if you fix this, if you change your beliefs, and one thing I love that I learned from David Bayer in his book, A Changed Mind, is that all a new belief is is a decision. The moment you decide,
And literally the word decide is a compound word in the Latin day, meaning of or from, and cide, C-I-D-E, to cut, to cut from or to cut off. Literally to decide means to cut yourself off from other options. That's different than choosing, like I want that or that. A decision is like, this is the direction I'm going, I'm not looking back. A decision by definition is a new belief. And what's cool is you can make a new decision
in an instant, right now. You don't have to wait to have this new belief or become this new person. No, the way you become the new person is decide. I am a wealthy person. I am a person that believes that wealth is inevitable for me. Wealth is not evil. Wealth is actually good. Wealth is not hard to create. It's actually easy.
and wealth isn't for other people out there, it's for me. And I'm gonna, I decide, I just decided to raise my thermostat. So if your thermostat is, I'm a $50,000 a year person, I'm gonna raise that thermostat to $500,000 a year. I don't know how, the how doesn't matter. Your brain and your circumstances will discover the how, your whole brain is a goal achieving machine. That's the whole premise of Dr. Malcolm, gosh, whatever his name is, psycho cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz.
Graham Cochrane (25:02.838)
Maxwell Maltz, think is his name. Psycho cybernetics. Our brain is a psycho cybernetic system, just like a torpedo that's set to lock onto something. It's constantly course correcting and it's getting blown off course, but it will find its destination because we're goal seeking machines. That's the way our brains are wired. So it's just a decision. That's the great news. Decide to be wealthy. Decide that wealth is inevitable for you. Raise your thermostat and watch what you notice. Watch.
what conversations you enter into, watch what books you start to read, watch what kind of people you hang out with, watch what happens. Okay, broke mindset, that's the most important one. And let's get to these next two, we'll go a lot quicker. Number two is broke models. So let's say you fixed the broke mindset, now you have a wealthy mindset. You could have the right mindset, but if you have the wrong blueprint, you'll still get wrong results. I'm speaking to you entrepreneurs right now. You believe wealth is inevitable for you, because it is if you decide so.
you're moving towards it, you're raising your thermostat, but if you have a business model that's broken, it is really hard to become wealthy with a broken business model. Let me tell you, the business model that I see people still clinging to, and I understand why I taught it, I've made millions from it, but I don't think it works anymore, is low ticket courses. Trying to blow up on the internet or run ads,
to low ticket courses. I just don't see the math working anymore. It is a lot harder to get the volume you need to generate serious income with a low ticket course or membership for that matter. And I've made millions off of both, so it's really painful for me to say that, but I don't want to tell you to do what I did because it worked back then. It can still work now, that's the caveat. There's always exceptions.
But I love you too much to say, yeah, run that play. It's not the play I'm running anymore. It's not the play I would recommend beginners run. I've just seen too much. So low ticket offers, chasing followers. It's like, okay, here's my model. I gotta get really, really famous. Nope. That model doesn't work. And we know this because they're literally influencers with millions of followers who don't make hardly any money. If having all the followers led to the money somehow,
Graham Cochrane (27:26.252)
That's not a business model. That's like a hope and a prayer. Another model that's broken is just trend chasing. Where literally you almost create a new business model every three months when you see a new trend. Because last year you were an online course person. This year you're an AI specialist. like I understand that it can be smart to jump on a topic that's trending but if you keep changing your business model because the trends change
you will never become masterful. Yes, you need to evolve. Yes, you'll need to pivot. Yes, markets change. I get that. And they're changing faster and faster and faster. But business models are the same. Like there's a lot of different types of business models that work, but pick a model that works. You don't want to climb up fast if it's the wrong building, right? You don't want to be at the top fast of the wrong building. So find the right building to climb up. And it's funny because
One of the things that's broken in most people's business models is that there's this, and I keep seeing it, there's this, we talk about Ascension models with our offers, like first you have a lower ticket offer and then a core product and then a premium product. And I have a lot to say about that. I don't actually think the Ascension model is the model anymore, but there's also an internal Ascension model. And I see this with my clients where people say, well, first I gotta,
do this in my business and then I'll graduate to this and then I'll stair step up to this. And I'll give you an example, I was running my 10K offer challenge. I run this virtual event where I help people create a high ticket offer, take whatever they're selling for a couple hundred bucks, a thousand bucks and reimagine as a $10,000 or more offer and how to sell those things and make them irresistible. It's the fastest way to grow your business. I'll link to it below if you wanna come to the next one. It'll change your business, change your life.
One of my students at the last 10K Offer Challenge, she was creating a new offer and she got up the courage to make it a $10,000 offer.
Graham Cochrane (29:29.038)
And she specifically was helping doctors with their business is kind of chaotic. She helps them with their staffing, helps them with their operations, helps them stop the bleeding. And she kind of finds hidden money in their business and their practice. her offer sounded awesome until she told me the price $10,000, which you think I'd be happy with. I'm running an event called the $10,000 offer challenge, the 10K offer challenge. And I said, Tanya,
Why did you land on $10,000? She's like, oh, I just thought it'd be a great place to start. I said, well, what do think the offer's really worth? And I said, let me just ask you this. Give me an example of a client that you've helped, the client story, real quick. What transformation have you done for them? Well, I helped this one doctor plug some leaks, fix some stuff, and we've added 200 new, or excuse me, 100 new customers, patients every month consistently at $200 a month. So we've basically added $20,000 a month of revenue that was just hidden before.
And I said, you're telling me you're creating $240,000 a year of new revenue for this client and you only want to charge them $10,000 for the offer? I said, Tanya, that's a $25,000 offer. She said, I know. I said, then why are you charging 10,000? Here's what she said. I thought it was a good starting spot. I I thought I would start there and then work my way up. That language right there, work my way up is such a myth. I literally, said, Tanya, can I play with you? There are no.
offer police that are going to bang down your door and say, Tanya, you can't just jump to $25,000 with your offer. Who do you think you are? You got to start at 10 and then when you sell a few, raise it to 12. now that you're okay, then 16 and eventually you'll get up to 25. said, Tanya, that's not how this works. The offer is either worth $25,000 or it's not. Why delay winning? Why delay the inevitable? It is what it is. Just go right to 25K. She said, all right.
I literally, whenever her next offer is made, I just saved her $15,000, or I made her an extra $15,000, because she felt that she had to follow this model. Well, first you do this, then you do that, then you do that.
Graham Cochrane (31:44.194)
She was taking the long way around. I think about a GPS on your phone or in your car, you set the destination. I think we all want a similar destination. We wanna be wealthy, we wanna be successful in our businesses. We wanna have time freedom. But have you ever noticed when you put in an address in your GPS, it shows you multiple ways to get there, multiple routes? And you can optimize the route based off of, please avoid tolls.
or avoid highways or let's go the scenic route. You can choose which route you want to go. And I don't know if you ever noticed that because most people, because this makes sense, pick the fastest route. And by default, the app will show you the fastest route first. But for whatever reason, when it comes to business and life, people are incredibly good at taking the slowest, most roundabout route. Well,
First I gotta build a website and then I gotta start with a low ticket offer and then I gotta, you know, I gotta prove myself, I gotta get some testimonials and then I gotta, I don't know why I'm doing that accent, please forgive me, I'm not trying to make fun of anybody. And they just, they map out the slowest, most zigzaggy, like, yeah, and then eventually I will be ready.
to sell at this level or do this kind of thing or run a challenge or have a high ticket coaching client or speak on a stage or there's no like one day you'll be ready. You just do the thing. Why wouldn't you pick the fastest path to get where you wanna go? I'm not saying you rush. I'm not saying you run faster than is possible and sacrifice your health and your family and your time freedom and your spirituality and all those other things to get there.
I'm not saying that, I'm saying people are opting for the slowest path because they're running the wrong play to get to, I think we all want the same destination but we're running the wrong model, following the wrong path and it's slow and we're like, it's taken me a long time. It does not have to take you a long time. And I know this because I coach entrepreneurs every single day and I have entrepreneur clients.
Graham Cochrane (33:54.84)
that take the slow path because they've decided that's just what they think they have to do. And then there other clients in the same program who go there really fast, not because they're smarter, not because they were more poised to win when they came into the program, because they just decided, what's the fastest path? I'm just gonna do that. I'm gonna go right to that. I'm gonna raise my prices right to that. I'm going to stop doing the things that are slow and do the things that are fast because they just believe that the fastest path is available for them.
You can take a slow path to get to your goals and if it's a good path, you will eventually get there, but you will have wasted so many years. I don't know about you, but I don't want to waste any time. I don't really know that tomorrow's promised. And even if it is, I want more time with that wealth and those goals achieved in less time.
Graham Cochrane (34:47.232)
Also, let's just be practical, inflation is a real thing. Money in 10 years from now is not worth as much as it is today. I would rather make a million dollars this year than a million dollars in 10 years, because a million dollars in 10 years is probably closer to worth $500,000. So making money sooner is by definition more valuable. So do you have a broken model? Do you have a broken business model?
Graham Cochrane (35:14.446)
If you need help figuring out your business model, pick up the effortless business. This business model will get you to a high income, low maintenance business faster than anything I've ever seen. And number three thing keeping you broke is broke metrics. So you've got a broke mindset, that's everything. If you have a broken model, you'll be broke forever, even if you're working really hard and believe that wealth is possible for you and inevitable. But the last thing holding you back is
broke metrics, chasing broke metrics. I was thinking about this. It's kind of like the difference between looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing what's actually going on in your body. You can look in the mirror and say, man, I look great. I look healthy. However, that means for you, whether you feel like you're ripped or shredded or muscular or just, everything looks fine on the outside, but you have no idea what's going on on the inside until you do blood work.
till get blood panels and you see there's some things that are off. You see certain levels that are high or low or missing or like, the mirror doesn't tell you what's actually going on. So if I judged my health by what I see in the mirror every day, I could think that I'm healthy all the way into the day I die. And I could die all of a sudden from something I didn't even know was there. I'm not trying to be morbid, I'm not trying to make you fearful. I'm just saying, right? The mirror doesn't tell you how healthy you are. Only blood work does. Broke metrics feel like you're winning.
But you're not. What are broke metrics? Followers. One of the most broke. Who cares how many followers you have? Followers feels nice, but it's a vanity metric. It has no bearing on how much money you make. No bearing on how much money you make. A couple of weeks ago I did an episode called Tiny Audience, Huge Income. And the example I gave was one of my clients, Iko. She has 500 subscribers on YouTube. 500.
You could call that laughable. But who's laughing? She makes $30,000 a month as an English pronunciation coach to native Japanese speakers. That's a great life. Followers don't matter. I know people that have 1 million followers and don't make a fraction of what ICO makes. So followers is a wrong metric to chase. Views on your videos or on your reels. Likes, engagement. These are all things that we all want because here's why, because they're the visible ones.
Graham Cochrane (37:41.55)
And I will say there is some value in the visible metrics for credibility because other people care about it. And if they see that you have a million followers, they for a moment might think there's something special about you. They might consider connecting with you. They might consider responding to your message. They might consider reaching out to you because, well, there must be something she's doing right if she's got a million followers. So there is value. I'm not saying there's not value, but it's a broke metric. It's not a metric that makes you money.
Graham Cochrane (38:13.066)
At best, broke metrics like followers, views, likes, engagement, subscribers, at best, they'll just distract you from the real metrics and the real work that actually puts money in your pocket. It's just a giant distraction. As a content creator, you have a choice. Do I make content that will get me a lot of views or do I make content that will create clients? Now those things don't have to be mutually exclusive. I'm not saying you should purposely choose low views.
By all means, get as many views as you can. I'm saying what drives you? Is it the cart driving the horse or the horse driving the cart? What are you optimizing for? Do not optimize for virality. Optimize for client attraction. And if virality comes, by all means, you'll attract more of your clients. But a video or a piece of content that goes viral that isn't optimized for client attraction does not help your business.
It's a huge part of my business model and I call them creating client magnets. That is, in my opinion, what you should be optimizing your content for. So at best, these wrong metrics distract you, it's wasted time, it's wasted effort, wasted momentum. Here's what's insidious about it though. At worst, these broke metrics destroy your hope.
Because these games becoming incredibly famous on the internet is incredibly hard. Now, some people, it happens almost effortlessly. And so they are lulled into this belief that, it's easy to go viral. It's not easy. Oftentimes it's called luck. I'm not saying that as a diss, but if you went viral without really trying, you had the right message at the right time for the right people. Dude, praise God for that. That's awesome.
But it's a really hard game to win and it's only gotten harder as the algorithms shift because they're responding to AI and to each other and competitors like, it's a wild world out there. The last thing you want as an entrepreneur is to lose your hope.
Graham Cochrane (40:19.874)
The scripture says, hope deferred makes the heart sick.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick. The way to win in business is to stay in the game long enough to win. One of the surest ways to exit the game before you have a chance of winning is to just give up hope entirely. Get discouraged, beat down over and over again. And I don't know if that's how you felt. I don't know if you've been like, Graham, I've been trying this for years. I've been trying this for years and nothing has worked. Like that's discouraging. I get that.
I get that. I worked and built my business and pumped out three pieces of content a week for a whole year, full time, and made a whopping $10,000. That's 830 bucks a month on average, working full time.
If I quit and that would have been justifiable, most people would say, bro, I gave it a year. I'm going back to find a job. If I quit, I would have given up the tens of millions of dollars I've made and the millions of people I've impacted.
But fortunately, I didn't lose hope. actually didn't see it that way. I didn't see it as, I've only made $10,000. I saw it as this is working. It might take me a while, but I could see a future where this was working. Because I wasn't chasing followers, I was chasing the dollars. And even though the dollars were low, I could see the activities that were creating revenue. I could see the skills that were leading to connecting with my people. And I was like, I can kind of do some math and
Graham Cochrane (41:59.796)
As this thing grows and as I get better at these skills, selling, offer creation, solving people's problems, messaging, I could see this really working.
So the thing you want to protect is not only your energy, but you want to protect your hope. You want to protect your faith. When the moment your faith dies, the moment your hope dies, you're gone. So you have to protect it at all times. That's one reason why you want to be around people that lift your spirits, that don't shoot your dream down. I had to exit a lot of peer groups and friend groups, not like
sorry, we'll never talk again, but just subtly distance myself from people that were like, why are you doing this? This is never gonna work. Just be like us. That's functionally what they were saying. I was like, can't be around that. If I'm around that, I will start to believe that, because it is hard right now making only 800 bucks a month working full time on this business teaching musicians how to record music. I had to be around people who would stir up my faith.
Right? In Hebrews it talks about don't neglect to meet together and stir up one another in love and good works and encouragement. Like we need to be around people that fuel us with faith. So if you need to like level up your peer group, by all means do it. Whatever it takes.
Graham Cochrane (43:28.482)
The scoreboards out there right now, they're broken. They've been broken from the beginning. You are not the problem, you've never been the problem. It's the scoreboard system that's the problem. It's a game that everyone's trying to play that literally is a pointless game. Just opt out. Let everyone else play that game. Don't play that game. Just play the game that actually puts money in your pocket. Wealthy entrepreneurs keep a different score. These are the metrics they chase. Revenue per client. They chase profit margin. Lifetime value, LTV.
When I create a customer, how much is this customer worth to me over time? Not just how many one-off hits can I get? Just run ads to a new person, new person, new person. Can I create a customer for life that brings lifetime value? You know who does this really well is Apple. Apple does this well. They don't wanna just sell you a product. They wanna make you a customer for life. So once they sell you a product, however you enter the Apple ecosphere, it might be your iPhone, it might be a Mac, it might be through the Apple.
podcast app and then you might be, know, whatever it is, Final Cut Pro, Logic, any of these Apple apps, however they get you in, they're so good at taking their customers and then assembling them together in virtual events and things and selling new products to old customers and selling old products to new customers and bringing you into the world where it's like, hey, if you like the iPod and the iPad, you're gonna love this. If you like your iPhone, you would really love the iMac.
They want you to be an Apple fanatic for life and they do that by awing you and over delivering and showing you other cool things that can help your life and improve your life. They're not just trying to get one more customer. They want LTV. Profit margin is huge. You can make more money just by spending less and being more efficient in your business. And this is why I'm a huge fan of teaching how to create high ticket, irresistible offers because you don't need a ton of clients to create a million dollar a year income.
You just need a premium offer that's so irresistible and you can maximize how much revenue you make per client. Because the right clients will pay you. They will pay you if you ever effectively ask them to pay you, as long as you communicate the value correctly. I know those numbers are boring. They don't get a whole lot of attention or likes, but they tell the truth. Those numbers, profit margin, LTV, revenue per client, MRR, monthly recurring revenue, those things are like the blood work.
Graham Cochrane (45:53.538)
They tell you the health of your business, not the mirror, which is my Instagram followers.
So what is it for you? Is it the broke mindset? Is it the broke model? Or is it the broke metrics that you're chasing? When I was 26, when I was broke and on food stamps, all three were working against me simultaneously. I had a broke mindset. Couldn't imagine wealth being for me. I had a broke model. I thought the only model I knew was go to work and get paid. That's keeping people broke very well.
And then I had broke metrics. I was looking at, I making enough to cover rent? What kind of metric is that? I wasn't even thinking big enough. The great thing is that those mindsets, those things that are broken in you, again, it's software and they're not permanent. You can uninstall software and install new software whenever you want. Like your computer can be pointless and bogged down with dumb old software or you can reboot it, refresh it.
and have all new software, new programming, same computer, and it can be whole different experience. That's you. You can change your programming. None of this is permanent. None of it's talent, none of it's timing. Just stop letting those be excuses for you. You can't control timing. You can't control the talent you have. You can control your mindset. You can control your business model. You can control what metrics you chase. So the moment I started changing these three things, wealth stopped being a dream and it became inevitable to me.
and I know more wealth will continue to be inevitable. I'm not afraid of not having wealth because it will just continue to come to me because I just think different, I have a better business model, I chase the right metrics and the same is true for you. You don't have to earn your way to wealth slowly, the roundabout way, you don't have to hope for it, wish for it, fight for it, hustle for it. You can decide to upgrade the software today and let wealth become inevitable.
Graham Cochrane (47:57.56)
I hope this helped you and blessed you today. If you're on YouTube, leave a comment, let me know what part resonated with you the most. And I will see you on another episode real soon.
