Graham Cochrane (00:06.508)
Right now it feels like the world is falling apart. And yet some people are quietly building their best year ever. Same economy, same algorithm, same headlines. So what do they know that everyone else doesn't? In this episode, I'm gonna show you what they know and how the next 12 months can be the best 12 months of your life and business while everyone around you, while everyone else around you is panicking.
And fair warning, it's gonna sound a little crazy.
Graham Cochrane (00:53.08)
Can I be honest with you for a second? I kind of hate YouTube right now as a consumer. I love it as a producer because it allows me to serve you and creates clients for my business. And I genuinely love creating this content. But I'm gonna be honest, I hate consuming it right now. I hate consuming Instagram, I hate consuming newsfeeds, I hate consuming Facebook, which I'm never on. I mean, I hate all of it. And the reason I hate it is because it is getting increasingly.
Negative. And it's negative across a lot of different categories. Okay, if it's the news, the news has always been negative. In case you didn't know, it's always been negative. They don't report good news, they report bad news, plane crashes, diseases, wars, angry politicians, economies bad. Like the news has always been negative. Nobody watches the news anymore on TV. Nobody reads the newspaper anymore, by and large.
But we still consume the news. We're getting it in our feeds. But here's what's even worse: we used to get negative news from credible sources, educated people. And no offense, but right now we're getting our news from people with a phone and an opinion. And oftentimes those people are getting that information from someone else with a phone and an opinion. They're just regurgitating it because guess what? It got a lot of views and clicks and reshares. So they're going to talk about the same thing. No offense to these people, and I'm not saying that they're not.
Educated, but they are not credible journalists. They are just your your broke uncle with a phone and an opinion, just some kid in a college basement with a phone and an opinion. And they're regurgitating stuff that they see. Half the time, which isn't even true. There are things that are posted that no one has done a shred of research into. And again, I'm not saying the mass media journalism is always squeaky clean, but these people.
Are professionals, and at the very least, they are doing their research to find a source. Where did we get this news from? The internet, there's no source. People just share whatever they want to share. There are all kinds of things, and then people reshare it. And it gets it's this is like rumors have always been so spreadable, and now with the internet, they're spread even worse. So you're getting negative news that's made up now. Negative news by itself that's real is already enough to depress you. Now negative news that's made up is even worse.
Graham Cochrane (03:19.617)
And don't get me started with conspiracy theories. And if you're a conspiracy theorist, stop. Okay? You just stop. It's not helping anybody. It's certainly not helping you. Even if you don't care about anybody else but yourself, you're not helping yourself, which we'll get to in a minute. The the internet is just full of this stuff. And I hate it. Like, it's like, why am I more agitated than ever before in my life? Why am I more on edge than ever before my life?
And let me get to why this matters, because this is not a rant. I want to help you today. And if you know my heart, you know how I want to help you. and if you're already hating this episode, then you don't know my heart, but you can hate it anyway, it's totally fine. I want you to win in life and business. Okay. I am a business coach. My clients want to win in business. And the reason they want to win in business is because they want to win in life. Because life takes money and life takes time. And if a business is run well, you'll get both. Okay. So I want to give you more money and more time.
Problem is, if you want to be massively successful in life and business, guess what you have to be? Positive.
shocking, but you have to be a positive person. What do you mean, Graham? Let's think about this. Entrepreneurs, business owners, investors, all of us take a risk. We decide to build something, serve someone, put our money into something without any promise of being paid back in return. We literally put our blood, sweat, and tears into something.
Hoping that it'll bless somebody else so much so that people will pay us later and we'll get rewarded later. We take on the risk. We we don't go to work and get paid. We go to work and not get paid, and there's no promise of getting paid in the future. That sounds crazy. And it kind of is, if you think about it, but it's not crazy if you understand what would be the motivation. Why would we do that? Why would I put my head down for a year?
Graham Cochrane (05:27.201)
While I'm broke and on food stamps with a wife and a baby and a mortgage, and build content for free on YouTube and build course after course and offer after offer, only to make $10,000 in my first year of working full-time. Why? Because I wasn't working for that first year. I was working for that second and third year when I made $60,000 in year two and $120,000 in year three.
I was working and giving up and sacrificing and losing in the short term because I had a positive outlook about the future. I believed something about the future that was positive. I believed that the future is better and the future is brighter. And so that's the only thing that can give me power enough in the present to do something as silly as make content for free on YouTube for people that don't even know me. Why would I do that?
And if you're a content creator, by the way, and someone's giving you hate on your comment, congratulations. Those people don't know what they're doing. They've never put anything out there useful in the world, but you have, and you gave it to them for free. For free. 95% of the people that watch my videos or listen to my podcast will never pay me a dime. They won't even buy my $29 book that can put millions of dollars into their bank account. They won't even do that. And I I I understand that's the math of the game that I'm playing.
But I'm telling you, the only reason why I would put out content for free with no promise of being paid in the future is because I believe the future is brighter than the present. I believe there will be a reward. Right? Human beings are very simple. We do things because of reward. Do you have a kid? Are you a parent? Right? How many promises? I promise I'll take you to the park. I promise I'll take you. We'll go get a donut of Dunkin' Donuts. I'll get you your favorite thing. We'll go. If you just clean your room.
If you would just like I'll give you a treat if you just sh stop screaming in the store, you know, we are reward-oriented creatures. And there's nothing wrong about that. It just is, right? It just is. But it makes sense when you understand that. So the only reason I would sacrifice and build a business and serve people for free in the first couple of years is because I believe something powerful about the future. Does it make sense? Okay. The reason I bring that up is because when you are constantly doom scrolling.
Graham Cochrane (07:49.622)
And listening to incorrect news, fake news, and I'm not even making fun of the major media. I'm talking about all of your broke friends on the internet with an opinion and a phone, reporting fake news, making up stuff, recycling news that they thought was shocking, crazy. It's not even real with no credible source. The problem is if you are consuming all that stuff, or let's just talk about the real negative news. There's wars in Iran, the economy, you know, inflation.
Gas prices are up. Blah, blah, blah. Like, if you the more you pay attention to that, what do you think happens? Your view of the future gets smaller. it's getting so bad. It's so hard. gosh, it's all gonna fall apart. Next year's gonna be awful. AI is gonna take over. It's gonna be awful, right? We create all these doom scenarios because the news is telling us that. And why is the news doing that, by the way? It's what gets clicks.
Fear sells, always has. Man, if you wanna make a lot of money, predict the end of the world. People make fun of you, yes, but you will get a lot of attention. It's crazy. It's crazy. Okay? This has always been happening. Fear sells. So that's why they're gonna keep doing it. So just in case you didn't know, that's why they do it. But if that's what you consume, you know how they say you are what you eat? It's true online. You are what you consume online. You become a negative person. And now you're ver
Version and your view of the future is smaller. it's gonna be bad. My children's generation is gonna struggle. Says who? Every generation's only gotten better. Like we are living in the greatest time of the world. Our our ancestors would have loved to have air conditioning and a magical device where you press a button and someone brings you food while you watch a glowing box on your wall that has endless entertainment that a king would love to have. Are you kidding me?
The world is worse right now? No, it's not. No, it's not. This is how brainwashed we are by the media. It's the best it's ever been. It's only going to get better. Are there gonna be problems? Yes. Am I crazy to think there? No, there's problem, there's always been problems. And I have a I have a prediction that's actually always gonna come true. As long as there are humans on this planet, there will be problems and there will be pain and there will be suffering because of humans. Because we screw it up. Okay?
Graham Cochrane (10:15.682)
So, can we move on from that and not be shocked that there's pain and problems and suffering? And can we get to the fact that things are better now than they've ever been and they will continue to get better? And it's gonna be because of the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the people who take a risk and create new better things for us. So, if doom scrolling is giving you a smaller view of the future, it's just gonna get bad. What what do you think that causes you to do? That causes you to shrink. That it causes you to have.
No real motivation. Like why worry about building a better offer if the world's all gonna be blown up next year? Like why you just you might as well just eat eat Cheetos at home. Spicy hot Cheetos at home and Mountain Dew, right? With as much red 40 in it, like you might as well just look out for yourself. So the negative news and the recycled rumors and the garbage that's online actually makes you selfish. It makes you self-protective.
Makes you inward focus. It shrinks your future. So you don't have the power, even if you wanted your future to be brighter, you don't have the power to do it. You know how people say hope is not a strategy? I'm sure I've even said that. Hope is not a strategy. And when I say that, now I kind of cringe saying that. What I mean when I have said that in the past is hope isn't enough. Like you need to have a real strategy to accomplish your goals. That's why people hire me to help them with strategy.
But I cringe when I when I hear myself saying in the past now because I actually think I'm wrong a little bit. I think hope is a strategy. Because when I think about it, hope that the future will be better and brighter is what gives you an expectation of a better, bigger future. And expectation is your superpower. We talked about this a few weeks back in the book of Matthew, chapter seven. Seek and you will find what you're seeking for. So if you want something great, you should.
Go look for it. Like if you want something great, you need to expect something great. If you expect the world to be a piece of crap, the world's gonna become a piece of crap for you. If you expect life to be harder in the next 12 months, it's gonna be harder for you. If you expect life to be better and easier and more abundant for you in the next 12 months, it will be better, easier, and more abundant for you in the next 12 months. And so I do think hope is a strategy because when you're hopeful about the future, your expectations about the future are big. It empowers you to do what's needed today.
Graham Cochrane (12:39.031)
To create that future. When your hope is gone and the future is small and negative and pointless and bleak, then you become disempowered. And you don't have the motivation. You do not have the intrinsic motivation to do what you need to do, to delay gratification, to build something, to serve someone else that won't pay you right now but could pay you in the future. Does this make sense? Like a year ago, when everyone was saying the world is falling apart.
If I had listened to that, I wouldn't have written this little book here, The Effortless Business, my third book. Okay. I wouldn't have written this book because I would have been like, what's the point? Like, who's gonna read this? How is this even gonna make me money? It's just gonna be a lot of my time, and I'll be writing it for like just my closest friends and like maybe some super fans. Why why even do that? If I had felt that way and I just gave up on this dream, then guess what wouldn't have happened?
I wouldn't have launched this book earlier in January and in the first ninety days made $192,000 off this bad boy and now recurring around thirty to thirty four thousand dollars a month from this book. How insane is that? I would have given up that kind of revenue and then not only that, but the people whose lives have been changed by the book who really find a ton of value out of it. I would have given up all of that if I'd given into the doom and the gloom. But I didn't.
Fortunately it didn't. Fortunately, I am in it typically a positive person. I believe the best is yet to come. That's what gets me out of bed every morning to go build something new for you. That's what gets me out of bed and every morning to do this episode.
So the idea is simple.
Graham Cochrane (14:27.617)
Hope about a better future is the secret sauce to creating that better future.
Graham Cochrane (14:35.915)
When you succumb to the doom.
It it doesn't make you what people think it's gonna make you, which is careful. That's what all my preppers think. I'm sure be careful. It makes you smaller, it shrinks you. It re it removes the power from your hands. It makes you powerless.
Preparing for the end doesn't make you powerful, my friend. Saying everything's gonna be bad doesn't make you powerful. It actually abdicates your power. It gives your power to the media, the the who the the schmucks with a phone. That's what it does. So here's here's my strategy for you. Be delusional. You need to be delusional. You need to create your own, as Steve Jobs from Apple said said, you need to create your own reality distortion field. I don't actually even know if he said that, but that's what people describe that he had this reality distortion field.
They would say, Steve, it's gonna take us eleven months to get this microchip thing solved or the power issue solved on this new computer. And he would say, Do it in five months. Like, that's impossible. He's like, No, it's not, do it. He lived in an alternate reality. And guess what? People rose to those expectations. He understood the power of being delusional. The the delusional word has a negative connotation. But it it shouldn't. I mean, I I don't know.
How else to describe the most successful people in the world? And I'm I'm not talking about whether you like these people or not. So please put your thoughts of them as a human aside, their political alliances as aside. Like, can we just be grown-ups for a second? Let's just look at the data. Who is the richest man in the world? Elon Musk. People think that guy's people have been calling him delusional forever. When he wanted to build rockets.
Graham Cochrane (16:23.991)
Put him into space, delusional, especially when those rockets blew up and he lost almost all of his money. Do you know how SpaceX almost went bankrupt? He's delusional.
Electric cars will never get mass, mass mass popularity with Tesla, delusional. He wanted to buy Twitter, people called him delusional. Right? He's the richest man in the world. I don't care about money as a measure of someone's worth. You understand what I'm saying. I'm just talking about pure data on who is the most successful business person in the world. It is Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos.
In in the middle of the nineties, leaves his high paying Wall Street job before he even got his Christmas bonus that year. It wasn't even a smart time to quit his job. He should have s quit after the bonus to move to Seattle to start a bookstore on the internet called Amazon.
Literally, his boss said he was delusional. He's crazy. Crazy. One of the richest men in the world and has changed everything about online shopping for all of us.
Graham Cochrane (17:28.947)
Every inventor is considered delusional.
There's authors that are considered delusional, r writing ideas in a book that they think are delusional until those ideas go on to sell millions of copies and help inspire millions of people to change their lives for the better. You have to be a little uninformed on purpose, a little delusional about the state of the world in order to be successful.
Graham Cochrane (17:57.464)
2020 was an interesting year, right? COVID was happening. And I found myself buying a piece of land and building a house in the middle of a pandemic. But we were already down that road. Like late 2019, we were looking at houses, couldn't find one. So early 2020, I think January, we met with some builders. We signed an agreement to build a house. We went looking for a lot. We found a lot.
And in April of twenty twenty, we bought it. And I was like, Is this a good idea? Is the world coming to an end? Because everyone said it was. Everyone's like, The world as we know it will never, ever be the same. And yet we were building a house and putting all of our money into this this new build. And people are like, This is a bad idea.
Turns out to be the best time ever to buy a plot of land, lock in building costs on a house, because within three months of us locking in the building costs, we'd already bought the lot a few months earlier. The value of that lot doubled, and the cost of building went up by 30 to 50%. So within a year,
But by the time we moved into the house, let's just say it this way, we already had an extra million dollars in equity just because of when we decided to move forward. I got lucky. I understand that. But you know what I did? I moved forward when everyone else around me was saying, This is crazy. This is a really bad time to buy a house, Graham. Turns out it was the best time to buy a house. And this is where humans get it wrong. It's the same in investing.
You know, hopefully you're an investor. Hopefully you're invested in the stock market and in real estate and other things. If you're not, you are going to be broke the rest of your life. So become an investor. Investors win. But it's it's hard to be an investor because there's so much fear and all this clickbait. And you you ride these waves of people saying, Now's the time to sell, now's the time to buy. It's always a time to buy, never a time to sell. You should be a long-term investor, buy and hold always wins. But I love this phrase.
Graham Cochrane (20:10.071)
For Moran Buffett, arguably the greatest investor of all time, former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, billionaire, he always says, when everyone else is fearful, be greedy. And when everyone else is greedy, be fearful. And what he means is when the market's doing great and everyone's like, it's only going to go up and up and up and up and up, they're getting greedy. They just can't see it ever going down. That's when you know it's probably gonna go down.
So just be a little more cautious. When everyone else is fearful, saying, it's falling apart, the market's falling apart. It's another Great Depression. It's never gonna be, it's never gonna go back. We're gonna lose our money. That's when you wanna be greedy. That's when you want to start buying because everything's on sale. And human beings just don't do things for logical reasons. They say they do, they act smart. I'm telling you, they have college degrees. They might even be professional investors, but they do everything backwards. When everyone says doom and gloom, they sell when they should be buying.
When everyone says, It could never go bad, they keep buying at the top when they should be selling or slowing down or holding cash. This is less about timing the market because no one ultimately can time the market. It's more about human nature. Does this make sense?
So in COVID, I was doing things that were scary. Buying land, building a a home, a custom home. I was launching new communities and masterminds when everyone's literally, I had clients say, or can we even sell online anymore? The world's falling apart. I was like, bro, do people still need your help? Yeah. Well, guess what? It turned 2020 turned out to be the best year to be selling online information products. It was the first time.
millions of people even heard about online courses and then they became online course creators and jumped on the bandwagon that I had been on for ten years at that point. It was a great time to be selling. Great time. The government was printing money and giving it to us to stay home and everyone was at home online with nothing to do. I made millions and millions of dollars. My business five X'd that year.
Graham Cochrane (22:17.184)
I'm just telling you, you have to believe, because everyone said, it's it's gonna be so bad. We shouldn't invest, we shouldn't buy, we should just hunker down. I said, guys, this is scary, this is unprecedented, but this too shall pass. Like everything else that's ever happened in the world. When World War One happened, it was probably incredibly scary. That too passed. When World War Two happened, I'm sure that was very scary. That too.
The Cold War in the 80s. Right? I don't know if any of y'all grew up learning to to hide under your desks in school in case there were bombings. Like, how crazy is that? That you look at the movies that were made in the 1980s, they were crazy dystopian future movies because that's the pulse of the people back then. They're like, this is the end. The 1980s is the end. Bro, what are we talking about? That was 40 years ago. And it's only been in ton of prosperity since. The internet hadn't been invented yet. Like
What are we talking about, people? Right? Everything that's awful has passed. It always will. But there will be another awful thing. But we too shall get through that. And my whole point is not about the politics. And my whole point is not about the news. My whole point is: how do you be like the top 1% that are winning right now? How do you ensure that the next 12 months of your business are the best 12 months?
Despite everyone else freaking out and and being chicken littles and saying the sky is falling, you have to decide to stop being a chicken little. You have to decide to stop being the boy who cried wolf. I know it feels empowering in the short term to be the person saying, it's all bad. And I know and I'm smart because I know the conspiracies and I know how bad it is. So I can tell you that I I saw it coming, I told you so.
I prepared there, you you benefit from that. There's a reason why you succumb to that. There is some element of a benefit you get for that. Cause again, we do things out of reward. And so the reward you get for that is feeling pride, feeling like you knew something that somebody else didn't know, feeling informed, feeling like a realist, which is just a positive spin on being a pessimist, which is so hilarious because you're a pessimist, right? But you're trying to have a positive outlook on your pessimism and calling it realism, right? You get a reward for that. But I'm telling you, it's like that.
Graham Cochrane (24:36.788)
And then it fades.
If you're delusional, is what they call us and what they call me, and you say, Hey, the world's gonna be better next year. It's gonna be even better in five years, 10 years, watch out. And thus I'm gonna keep building, I'm gonna keep investing, I'm gonna keep serving, I'm gonna keep growing as a person. then you're gonna, you're gonna win because your business is gonna grow because you are moving closer towards your goals while everyone else is shrinking and playing small.
And here's a side benefit, by the way, of being delusionally hopeful and positive about the future. It's more attractive. It's more attractive. I know negative people get clicks. I know negative influencer online on influencers online get views and reshares, but they don't get really truly endeared to their viewers. They don't build trust.
And I think in a world where everyone's negative and everyone's talking about conspiracies and everyone's angry and bitter and everyone's doom and gloom, if you can be the one person that's saying, Hey, things are gonna be better, I believe in you. I believe in us, I believe in our ability to figure things out, I believe in our ability even to come together. I believe in the human spirit's drive to make
Their world a better place. Their God-given, God-imaging drive to take the resources we have and multiply them for good. Rearrange them for something better. Right? The Bible says that God created everything out of nothing. Ex nihilo, right? There was nothing and he created everything. Only God can do that. You and I are.
Graham Cochrane (26:31.85)
Are made in the image and likeness of God, the book of Genesis says. So we are creators like God, but we're very, very different. God creates things out of nothing. We create new things out of existing things. And that's okay. We're not supposed to be as powerful as God, but we're pretty amazing. He gave us a bunch of resources, metals, re natural resources, our brain, ideas, you know, and we take these resources.
And we refashion them into new products and services and solutions. Isn't that cool? And that's the most attractive person you can be around. Someone who's like, hey, let's go build something new. Let's go build something better. How can I make this better? You're gonna be more attractive as a spouse, you're gonna be more attractive as a parent, you're gonna be more attractive as a leader in your community and industry. People are gonna wanna do business with you. In 12 months, when the world hasn't ended,
And they're predicting some other end and some other reason why it's bad or whatever. you will have gotten twelve months further ahead on your goal, what everyone else has just shrunk and and prepped and stayed set scared and small. And they're gonna look to you and they're gonna need you and you're gonna be in a better position to serve them because you're future thinking, you're delusional in a positive way.
You are honestly taking Tim Ferris's suggestion from 2007 in the four-hour work week when it was first pub published of the low information diet. That's really your strategy is to go on the low information diet. Back then he was saying stop watching and reading the news. Unfortunately, now no one does that. They just watch and read YouTube and social media and TikTok, and that's where they're getting their news. And then that's even worse. It's gotten even worse. So I actually I co sign on Tim's idea. Go on a low information diet.
If that helps you stay positive, it helps you stay delusional in a good way. So maybe let's end with that action step for you. I want you to decide to cut and ignore the negative content online. And I don't know what that looks like for you. Maybe it's cut out one app. Maybe it's like me, put a timer. I put 15 minutes a day on all social media apps on my phone. It locks me out after 15 minutes. And that's almost probably 14 minutes too much. So
Graham Cochrane (28:49.184)
Decide what you want cut to go on a more of a low information diet. And then here's what I want you to do. I want you to do something that might be weird if you've never done this before, but it might be the most freeing thing and exciting thing you've ever done. And is I want you to draft the future you want to create over the next 12 months. So what I mean by this is I want you to start by actually closing your eyes. I want you to when you have time today, maybe it's right after this episode.
I want you to sit in a quiet place, close your eyes, and just imagine where you want to be in 12 months in your business. How much money do you want to be have having coming in every single month? How many hours do you desire to work every single week, 12 months from now? What kind of clients do you want to be serving 12 months from now? Then I want you to think about your family. I want you to think about what weekends and evenings look like. What vacations you want to take in the next 12 months? What house you want to move into? What car do you want to drive?
Taking your your kids on daddy daughter, daddy son dates, mommy daughter, mommy son dates. Whatever that is. I just want you to picture it for a minute, 60 seconds, to a two minutes, three minutes with your eyes closed and see which part of that vision gets you excited. Like get has an emotional resonance with you, because I can't make something up for you. I don't know what what matters to you, but you do. When you find a picture
Of a 12 month future that resonates with you, that hits you on an emotional level, that I want you to write that down. And then here's a crazy idea. I want you to turn off the news, be delusionally positive, and get to work. Go create that future. It's not going to create itself. No one's going to bring it to you. And no one's going to tell you that it's possible. Everyone's going to try to talk you out of it so you can join their negative, Nancy party, but we're not going to do it.
Remember, fear sells, but hope scales. Let's be delusionally hopeful about the future and let's go scale the business and the life we want. Stay delusional, my friend. I'll see you on another episode real soon.
