FNB App Academy 2026 EP 4

6:20 Heat. [music] Hey Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Hey, hey, [music] hey.

7:08 [music] >> [music] >> Hey, [music] hey, hey. >> [music]

7:55 >> All right, what's popping everybody? Welcome back to the 2026 FN App Academy. I am Kabo Mua from grassroots to greatness. Right, so there's a beautiful saying, right? um even though your beginning was small, your latter end will increase even abundantly. So that speaks about, you know, starting off from the bottom and going all the way to the top. All right. So if you're watching this, congratulations. You have made it as one of the top 50,000 students um in the program. That is an incredible achievement. [applause] All right, so now this is where the hard work begins and uh let's talk a little about how things are going to work. All right. So, the Johannesburg business school at University of Johannesburg has put together a comprehensive 10-week course just strictly for you guys. So,

8:42 the first five weeks will focus on digital skills and entrepreneurship and the second five weeks will focus on app development and practical coding skills. Right? So, that's one module a week for 10 weeks. So, that's five modules on digital skills and as well as five modules on app development. So at the end of each module there will be an assessment that must be completed before you guys can move on to the next module. All right cool. So when you have worked through all your modules you will receive a certificate of completion from the University of Johannesburg which is U.J. yet again well done and please do keep up the hard work because the app academy is a platform um that can change your life and take you from grassroots to greatness. All right awesome. So

9:28 before we get started, let's hear from one of our past graduates to speak about this particular platform which is the app academy and what it did for them. >> My father, rest in peace to him, he used to work at uh tech companies but I was young. I didn't know anything about tech. I was very much into sound engineering, music, production, all those things. things. I was very good at it. So when the app academy came around, I was like, you know what, let me just try this thing. [music] Maybe I might like it. Enjoyed it and I was like, you know what? Okay, I want to try uh boot camp again with code and it's like it was a stepping stone to everything that's been

10:15 happening. A lot has been happening ever since then. So yeah, and from there I've met amazing people. just recently finished an international competition where we got to represent South Africa at the bricks plus competition. That was exciting. First time ever doing that reversing people from China. Hey, it was rough. Hey, but we learned a lot. Even now, there's still things coming on the way. My homies, we starting out of business from that whole adventure. The FNB app [music] academy is definitely a plug for young people. Like even if you don't have any experience, I didn't have experience at all and it opened up uh

11:01 whole new world to me. I mean now I'm talking about opening businesses. I feel like I'm talking crazy. The journey itself like it's so vast. There's so many opportunities. It doesn't matter which way you want to go. there's there's a place for someone somewhere. I know my vision is to create, you know, tech that the world uses instead of us always consuming from your Americas and China and stuff, you know, maybe improve something that's already there that [music] the world can, you know, use. So, one of the dreams is [music] to have a company that may provide something along those lines.

11:53 All right, so awesome stuff. All right, so right now it's time for us to get started with our first lesson on digital skills and entrepreneurship. Remember this part of the course will cover over five weeks and is split into five modules consisting on four topics each. So for example our first module is on digital literacy and productivity tools. So this is split into four topics. So the first topics will be the foundations of digital literacy and the triad model. The second will be introduction to AI which is concepts, capabilities and critical limitations. So the third topics will be building your second brain. So code para and productivity tools and the fourth topic will be safety data and digital footprint which is popular and algorithmic awareness.

12:40 All right. So uh that's a lot of material to get through. So we're going to make things a little bit easier. So instead of releasing one long episode, we'll be releasing two episode per module. So the first lesson will cover topic one and two and the second lesson will cover topic three and four. Now at the end of module one there will be an assessment available on the learner management system which you must complete in order to move on to get your certificate. All right cool. So if that's all clear let's head into module one topic one and two. So please let's welcome our lecturer Devon Pabu. Hello and welcome to module one of the FNB app academy brought to you by

13:25 Johannesburg business school at the University of Johannesburg. My name is Devon Parbu and I will be your lecturer for the future ready digital entrepreneurship skills program. I'm thrilled to have you here with us as we begin this journey together. Whether you're running a solopreneur enterprise, a freelance design studio, catering business, or a growing e-commerce store, the tools and technologies of the digital economy are now the terrain in which every business competes. Digital capability is no longer optional for the South African entrepreneur. It is the foundation of modern success. The opportunity in the current gap that the research tells us is that only 23% of South African entrepreneurs have sufficient digital capabilities for the

14:11 modern economy compared to 47% globally. But we don't see this as a lack of talent. We see it as a gap in access and training. This module specifically is designed to close that gap for you. You aren't behind, you're early. The entrepreneurs who build genuine digital capability are now positioning themselves far ahead of the market. And this core shift is what's important for us to understand. And we'll unpack this throughout the course of the material. Instead of utilizing technology, we need to move from utilization to orchestration. And in this module, we're aiming to make that shift for a specific threshold moment. Most people practice technology utilization. They use a tool for its obvious and specific purpose

14:57 like sending a WhatsApp message. We want to move you toward technology orchestration. The ability to deploy tools strategically and in combination to create business value that wouldn't be possible without them. We want to move you from being an operator of tools to being the conductor of a digital system. So module one is the foundation of this entire program and over the next few hours we will cover four critical subm modules. The first we'll explore the foundations of digital literacy using what we call a triad model to show you how digital data and AI literacy build upon each other. In the subm module two, we'll provide a practical introduction to artificial intelligence or AI, stripping away the

15:43 magic to show you how it functions as a capacity equalizer for your business. In subm module 3, we'll help you build your second brain using the code method and the PAR framework in notion to ensure the best business ideas that you have never fall through cracks ever again. And then finally, we'll tackle safety, data, and your digital footprint, ensuring that you understand the Poppy framework obligations and how algorithms shape your business visibility. So, use this as your companion. Use it to record your reflections and complete your exercises as we refer back to these frameworks as you grow throughout the course. Everything that follows in this program depends on the groundwork that we lay here today. Let's get started on

16:29 building your digital future. So by the end of this module uh you'll be able to define the digital literacy and explain its roles as the foundation for data and AI literacy using the triad model by build a mental model for uh AI how it works where it falls where it fails rather and how to engage with a sense of critical awareness when dealing with artificial intelligence. uh as mentioned previously, we're going to apply this code method uh to capture, organize, distill, express knowledge uh to build your second brain. And the important thing about the code method is really around organizing. And I'll unpack exactly how the brain was never

17:15 was never designed to really store information. Our brain is generally created in order to generate ideas. And I'll show you exactly how we can organize these ideas in a systematic manner so that you can distill it and then express that knowledge in order to create for your organization. And then lastly uh sorry pen ultimately uh construct a second brain using the para framework with notion AI as the primary platform to do so. And then lastly, we're going to recognize that your digital footprint um and understand the rights that you have from a data perspective and identify how the Poppy framework uh provides obligations for you as an entrepreneur and as a business owner. So let's get started. One of the the big

18:01 misconceptions about digital literacy is that people treat it as a destination, but it's the foundation upon which every other skill in this program is built on. Um so for digital literacy what's important to understand as part of our objectives for this segment is that we have to define what literacy means. We have to define what it means to be digital um and explain how its its role in the foundation is a prerequisite for both using data and using artificial intelligence. We'll discuss the five competency areas for uh digital for building digital literacy and this is governed by the dig comp 2.2 framework uh and apply them to your business

18:47 context. We'll explain what this triad model looks like. Um, how we think, how we critically analyze, and what I call cognitive communicative um, which is really how we build a mental model for using any type of literacy when building a product, we're building a business and, uh, engaging with our customers. Then lastly, it's about distinguishing between both technology utilization and technology orchestration and you being the conductor in the symphony of your business and identify exactly got an assessment where we'll assess exactly which stage you're in when considering how you use technology across your business. So we've got two entrepreneurs if you'd like to think

19:32 about it in this way. We've got two individual stories. So the first individual uses WhatsApp to chat with their customers um digitally literate in every single way of the sense right but stuck in its basic use. The second individual however uses WhatsApp for business to create catalog of products to create autorespond messages uh to display their operating hours and to accept payments whether through snap scan or anything of that nature but they're leveraging the tools and they're leveraging this tool specifically to scale their organization and this is where the gap comes in and this is why we see that 23% of South African entrepreneurs is have the digital

20:19 capabilities to leverage the the applications. However, we aren't orchestrating the technology, right? And this gap it might be globally might be 47%. But it still holds true as far as the access and training gap. Only 50% globally of entrepreneurs are using technology in order to orchestrate their businesses. So this as mentioned previously, this is not a talent gap. We all can use the technology. you can use these applications u but today we're going to close that gap through how you can access it and how you can set up your business profile and then lastly as well how we we're going to close the gap from a training perspective right [snorts] so I've got this little quote that um I thought as I was putting together the

21:05 material and synthesizing the content this this sort of landed with me right that understanding how to leverage AI and big data is not optional for any entrepreneur It's becoming the baseline requirement for competitive advantage. And I think that's the the key idea around this is that the most significant digital learning experiences happen when people apply technologies across their business to solve real problems in society and in your communities. Not when we have to merely learn about these tools and applications in an abstract manner. So what are the five competency areas that we want to be focusing on in order to build digital literacy? The five areas

21:52 the first one is information and uh uh data literacy. So how do we how do we interpret information that hits our desk? Uh when we have a spreadsheet of information with custom information, maybe it's name, surname, ID number, uh maybe it's the type of product that they've purchased from you, uh the price point, when they've seen your social media post, what time of day they saw your social media post, what time of day they interacted with your business. Um the the information that's on your Google business profile. uh it's about finding, evaluating and using this information to make business decisions. The second around communication and

22:39 collaboration is really around how we used our digital channels effectively as mentioned before WhatsApp for business or building your Google profile manager uh using email or your customer relationship management system like HubSpot for an example. um it's how do we use th those those platforms in order to communicate and collaborate with our customers. Thirdly, uh digital content creation. It's about producing content posts such as you know social media posts for Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook or LinkedIn. uh creating product descriptions, promotional material with tools like Canva or Notion or or even a large language model with an integration into

23:25 the likes of Canva or so or or notion in order to to use natural language in order to create artifacts. But we're using these technologies in order to create content using digital mechanisms. Uh I think the fourth one is massively important. It's around safety, right? How do we protect the personal information and our of our customers as well as of our business? Um, it's about building your business and a business brand voice and your customer information and how do we store that and how do we protect that information, right? And then lastly about problem solving. It's about using digital tools to solve business challenges creatively rather than just defaulting to a manual approach. So, I

24:10 want you to think about these five areas in your learner guide. There's a a rubric that you've got that I'd like you to reflect on where you find yourself in each of these competency areas in information and data literacy uh in communication and collaboration. Rate yourself on that scale of 1 to five. Uh we're going to come back to that. But it's important that you do an introspective evaluation of where you find yourself from. How are you using data and information to make business decisions? How are you using your systems in order to communicate with your customers? Uh and and track how you communicate

24:55 with them. um how you using the likes of Canva or Photoshop or any of the Adobe suite applications in order to create material if you're using that. Um and then safety, how are you protecting the IP and of your business and how are you protecting your customer information in order to continue to build trust and relationship with your customers in a safe manner. And then lastly uh around problem solving. How are you using these digital tools in order to problem solve for your customers problems and your community related challenges. So let's jump into the triad model. We've got digital literacy right at the foundation. It's basic technological

25:40 competencies as we've spoken about in the previous slide uh that we need in order to function in digital environments. Right. Second onto that is uh around data literacy and I find this to be vitally important not just in for an entrepreneur but you know for corporates and as you scale your business and as you hire more individuals it's important that you understand the there's an age-old concept and saying around garbage in is you know garbage out that's what you're going to get on the other side of your process and data literacy helps us understand how we interpret what we've collected, what process we've we've embarked on, and what process we've put that data

26:25 through or that information through in order to get the output. And that output is either accessible through your spreadsheet or through your CRM, customer relationship management system, or accessible through any other application that you use in order to make decisions like an analytics or Facebook analytics or Instagram analytics or anything of that nature. so that you can make a decision for your business. On top of that sits artificial intelligence and AI literacy which is really our engagement layer. Um but this requires that we've already built the the building blocks for both data as well as digital literacy. So AI literacy is sits on top of both digital and data

27:12 literacy. All right. Uh it's the engagement layer that interacts with your data that builds predictions of that data and integrates into your digital applications to ensure that it's got access to a a contextual knowledge base of your organization as opposed to fabricating information and going out into the ether or onto the open internet and the open web in order to collect information in order to make a decision. But we will jump into AI literacy um quite extensively in the second subm module. All right. So digital literacy is the foundation concept essential for understanding and engaging with both data and AI literacy. If we don't get

27:59 those five competencies around digital literacy locked in, we're building on a foundation of sand as opposed to a foundation of you know concrete. So each literacy and in particular around digital literacy has a has three legs and if you think of a tripod the first leg of that tripod is technical skills. So we need technical skills to help us choose the right tools and understand the tools limitations themselves. From a technical perspective, we need to know exactly how these digital systems and data processes and AI tools actually work. How are they how are they put together? Um, if you think of building a website,

28:45 what's the the the if we were to decompose a website rather, what is it constructed of? It's constructed of a header. It's constructed of some maybe CSS. So, we've got uh, you know, the the CI of your your brand built into the website that structures the the way it it it renders and way it looks. Uh, that informs the UI and the UX of the website. Uh, then we've got the body of the actual website and it's deconstructed into many different segments. Uh, and then, you know, we've got the footer of the site as well. Um, and that's very simply put around just understanding the basic structure of a website. And it can get a lot more complex. Um, but from a technical perspective, it's understanding that I'm

29:31 not just going to put a website together, but I need to understand exactly where I want people to navigate on my website. What is the real estate of my website look so that um I'm able to maintain attention, right? I'm able to when people land on my website they are they are they engage with it in a very meaningful manner and you know potentially if there's a form on the site they complete that form and you collect that information in order to help you make a business decision. The next step around literacy is then moving from that technical understanding of how the technology works. It's moving on to actually thinking and this is where we find the the use of artificial intelligence in the world of work today is that people are not thinking around how to use AI to get the right output

30:16 that they're looking for. Instead, they're treating AI as a search engine without providing context. We're not understanding exactly how it's how it's it's it functions. So, the second pillar of the triad model is critical thinking. It's the ability of ourselves to avoid blindly following uh just a platform or a recommendation or any output that we've created by use of these digital systems uh or artificial intelligence. The challenge with AI at the moment is that we are following sorry we're not following but we are treating our AI outputs as a a search engine. And that's because the the user

31:04 interface that we've used for many a year in the form of Google uh prior to that was Yahoo. Um but the user interface has never changed, right? We searched for content in a dialogue box. We're treating AI in the same way that because the UI looks the same or very similar, our brain interprets that as I can use this to search for information. The problem with this is that AI doesn't search, it predicts based on data. Right? So we need to avoid blindly following just an output from the use of artificial intelligence or any of our digital tools which largely have AI baked into it already. We need to avoid

31:49 blindly following the output by thinking critically about what we want to achieve. That's the second pillar of any literacy type and in particular for this case you know digital literacy. Lastly, communicative cognitive a big word a very academic term but uh simply put we need to build a mental model that keeps you as being the author of your own judgment right not the system that you use. So the system that you use whether it's your CRM I mentioned HubSpot earlier but it could be you know Salesforce it could be Zoho um we need to use these systems to give you insights in order for you to be the

32:35 judgment and orchestrator of judgment right so interpreting in integrating and communicating uh with digital content accurately and responsibly. So we about to dive into technology orchestration versus or technology utilization versus technology orchestration. And at this juncture I want you to pause the video and take a five minute leg stretch. Make a cup of coffee or get a glass of water or something of that nature. Think about how you use your technology. How do you use WhatsApp? How do you use your Google business profile if you've created one? uh how you use Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram or LinkedIn, wherever your

33:22 audience lies. I want you to take the next five minutes and just think about how you use them and then when you're ready, unpause the video and we'll continue. Welcome back. So technology utilization means using digital tools for what they were obviously designed to do. Sending a WhatsApp message uh scrolling through Instagram or searching Google prompting a large language model has become a new way of utilizing technology uh at least over the last six years or so. Um and this is where most people start. The challenge is we stay there. We're just using technology to scroll, to search, to

34:07 prompt or to send a message instead of orchestrating the use of these technologies. Right? And that's why technology orchestration is fundamentally different. So technology orchestration is fundamentally different. It means deploying digital tools strategically and in combination to create business value [snorts] and business value that would not be possible without these technologies. It's the difference between posting on Instagram because your customers are there and building an Instagram strategy that drives customers to your WhatsApp business profile or WhatsApp business account. And uh where you automate greeting sequences, you surface your product

34:53 catalog. Um you inform your customers around how they can get in communic in contact with you. Uh or you engaging with your customers on WhatsApp, but then at the same time surfacing a payment option through use of SC Snapcan that now converts that engagement into revenue. So you're monetizing that entire engagement sequence and converting them from just scrolling customers to paying customers. And that's ultimately we want to get to right. So acquiring digital competencies follows a nonlinear process. And what I want you to understand here is that utilizing technology versus orchestrating technology are fundamentally two different things, right? They require different behaviors from you. that require that you actually

35:39 in spend time investing into uh the different applications and understanding exactly how you can integrate one system into the next and orchestrate these applications. Uh so there are two individuals that I've got here that do this extremely well. Uh we've got uh Peter Levels from uh he's a soloreneer one a one person organization and uh he's built over 70 products uh and generates roughly just over 3 million US dollars in revenue annually and he uses Apple notes uh and Apple notes are integrated into his GitHub um and he uses Versel in order to

36:24 automate deployment ments. So he creates notes on uh he captures these ideas rather in Apple notes um and from those notes GitHub analyzes that information using its you know it's GitHub copilot it analyzes that information and from there automates the deployment of content into his website um and Stripe facilitates the payment but he uses Twitter or X rather as his his uh his social media platform of choice in order to act as a lead generation entity, right? And all of these applications are feeding into each other in order to uh to generate revenue,

37:11 but he doesn't do any of the work and there's no manual work that's done. As mentioned earlier, there's an automated deployment from his development engine all all the way through to his his his front end, his website. Um, so all of this information feeds into the other from one to the other with no manual intervention. What Peter does, he's the orchestrator or the conductor that sits on top of his entire tech stack and he's analyzing where there are potential bottlenecks so that he doesn't become a bottleneck from one application to the next because our time is limited, right? He's the conductor, not the operator. The next individual that I'd like to talk about is Justin Welsh and he's got a newsletter that has got arguably the most followers, most

37:57 subscribers called the Saturday Solopreneur. So what he does is he creates his content engine in notion AI. We'll and we'll jump into notion in subm module 3, but he creates his content there and he plans his content using a very structured manner. Uh notion is integrated into typefully. typefully is used as his scheduling application. So he doesn't he creates the content schedule but he doesn't physically get involved in the button pushing activities around sending the information from one application to the next. The content goes from typefully into convert kit which is his uh email uh newsletter application

38:43 and uh it's triggered from there. So he's got his schedule that says hypothetically speaking he's got a schedule that for a newsletter to go out every Saturday morning and uh the content is then created around uh his desired area of discussion in notion. It's then pulled into Typefully as the schedule and it's scheduled for Saturday morning at 9:00 am. The email content is then built in ConvertKit into his desired template and it's triggered at 9:00 to go out. So, it sends out to his mailing list as well. and uh use a stand store for converting any of the clicks and any of the

39:30 engagement that he picks up from convertkit into uh revenue from a sales perspective. So each tool as we've seen not just across Justin but also in Peter it's each tool feeds into the next and that system compounds value and the system compounds effort. So, let's take a listen to this quick video, a listen and a watch to this quick video. Uh, Justin is going to take us through how he applies his marketing principles to his business to create a content engine that monetized his newsletter. Let's take a watch. >> There's the path of like being very specific and there's the path [music] of being very viral and generic. I am

40:16 really specific on solarreneurship. Like we talk [music] about the same stuff every single day, all the time, right? So, as you grow your audience, the audience that you're growing is specific. My first product was >> [music] >> $50. If they spend $50, can you deliver $50,000 of value and like set the stage for [music] a deep future relationship for the next decade, right? You have that option. A few years later, you could do a core product as your audience grows and maintains [music] specificity, right? Then if you keep growing like me, you get to, you know, million followers, million and a half across a few platforms, you can drop your high ticket offer like I did with the creator MBA because I've been beating the same drum for so long. The reverse of that is when you don't [music] have a specific audience, when your audience is relatively generic, when you're talking about things like just general

41:03 productivity, [music] for example, right? Productivity in and of itself is a thing, but there are so many different types of productivity. [music] It's it can get so much more niche than that. And so what happens is you might have a harder time as your audience grows. We don't think about that when we're creating our content, when we're building our brands. We're trying to be entertaining and get the [music] most likes. It's like, no, be that guy. Be the guy who solves a very specific problem that's painful for a very specific company or person. All right. Well, my guest today is the one and only Justin Welsh. Justin left his startup executive role in 2019 after suffering from burnout. Since then, he's made $8 million by helping creators and entrepreneurs become successful solarreneurs, and I've taken his course, Creator MBA, and honestly, it's one of

41:48 the highest insight permitted courses I've ever taken. So, welcome, Jeff. >> Thanks, man. Peter, I appreciate you having me, and thanks for the kind words, and thanks for being a customer. >> All right, so let's go back to um I think 2018, 2019. You know, you were the VP of sales at a fast growing startup. you had 150 reports or something like that. So for by all means it's kind of like society's traditional definition of success, right? But like when did you realize that you actually needed a change from that career path? >> Yeah, you know, becoming like a VP of sales was sort of the upper echelon of what I wanted to reach in my career and when I was a salesperson and then a manager and then a director like that was the thing. That's what I wanted to be. And when I got there, I loved it. And you know, grew the team from just

42:34 one sales guy to 150 salespeople. I had maybe six to eight direct reports, but the team was big and the targets were big. And back in 2015 to 2019, when that was my life, it was the growth at all costs phase in startups. And so, you know, every target got bigger, faster, you know, the stakes got higher and it got more nerve-wracking, right? Like I hit I think 16 quarters in a row of my target even though they were massively big. And people think that burnout comes from working really hard or working too hard or working too long. And I don't actually think that's why burnout happens. I can work hard for a long period of time as can a lot of people. I

43:19 think burnout starts to happen when you lose control. And so I often kind of bring up this example where if you've played Tetris before, you know, as the levels get harder and harder, the pieces start falling faster and faster and you have to make moves much faster. And when you mess up a move, it compounds very quickly because the pieces just start stacking on top of one another really fast. And that is what it's like when you start to feel out of control at a company or in your role. When like you make a mistake and one mistake becomes two becomes four becomes 16 becomes 190. like it just multiplies, right? And it multiplies fast. And so I knew that I needed a break because I coped with burnout in the same way that a lot of people do, which is I ate too much. I drank too much. I didn't exercise very

44:04 much. I didn't get much sleep. I wasn't a great husband. I wasn't paying attention to my family. And that all sort of culminated in this panic attack that I had in December of 2018, which was like, if you've never had one, it sounds silly, like a panic attack, but it was like pretty a pretty meaningful day of my life where I didn't really know what was happening and I thought I was dying. And that was the day that I knew that I needed to make a change. And I had a conversation with my bosses the following Monday and they were super receptive and understanding. And I ended up staying for another eight months and getting myself back into mental and physical shape. >> Got it. And it's kind of like a big leap to make, right? Because you've kind of made it as VP of sales and for for you to tell your boss that actually, you know, I don't want to become SVP or CEO. I just want to make a change that. But I guess when you actually, you know, go to the hospital or something, it's kind of

44:49 like a life. It's a kind of like a wakeup call. >> Yeah. It was interesting like I had aspirations of becoming a chief revenue officer. It actually happened. I went back to the company a year later. I was rehired to be the chief revenue officer. So I was able to sort of check that box in my career, which is really nice. and I helped them navigate growing the company through co but I got lucky in a weird way and the way that I got lucky was I was forced like a lot of people sit around and they think about like should I you know grow my side hustle should I become an entrepreneur should I leave my job like I didn't have a choice I backed myself into a corner physically and mentally and the only choice I had was to take a break and in a weird way that was like a very lucky thing to happen to me because it's like that the

45:35 only option I had so I had to take it and it made it a lot easier. >> Got it. So I think you know tech industry goes through these ups and downs and I think many tech people are feeling burned out right now. Either they're like they lost their job already or you know how this stuff goes like you could be doing well your company and then they want to do cost cutting and then you get laid laid off. But you know I think a lot of people still have mortgages to pay. They live in the Bay Area. What what's your advice for folks who are thinking about doing this or trying to take back control a little bit? Yeah, it's a phased approach, right? I think there's a lot of like I think people talk about media propaganda. I think everything's propaganda. So like if you go out and you read, you know, internet gurus propaganda, it's all about like working 4 hours a day on the beach or like

46:21 whatever it might be, right? And like sure, can you eventually reach that if you put in the many years? Maybe. But like the truth and the reality and the authentic way to sort of make it and to gradually gain back some control is just what I said. It's gradual. And so the the first thing that you can do is figure out just like how might you get a little bit of attention online. Maybe it's not even online, right? Maybe it's local. Maybe it's online is not the only game. It's the biggest game. And so like how might you get a little bit of attention? And if you can find 15 extra minutes every day to think about attention and to put yourself out there and to share the knowledge and the skills that you've accumulated over the course of your career or your hobbies or things that you like doing in your free time, that's a great start, right? Figure out like what does it mean to

47:08 market oneself? Because so many people are smart, they have awesome business ideas, they've got great products, they've got great services, but they can't communicate. And in the end, communicating your value is the thing that matters the most. So I would practice that. I would practice that for a long time until you get really good at it. And once you get good at communicating your value and sharing your expertise and your knowledge, that is when you can start, you know, making a little bit of extra money, doing a little coaching, maybe building a product, maybe you have a micro SAS consulting business. And as you get traction, you're going to start growing over time. And once you have reached a certain threshold, maybe you're 60 to 70% of your take-home earnings, getting 40 hours a week back, you're likely to continue to grow. And so, think of it as

47:53 a phased gradual approach over many years. And just because you see someone who did it faster doesn't mean that's the right way to do it. >> Yeah. In some ways, it's almost good to, you know, do a couple years while having your main job cuz, you know, if you just quit without having an income, you're going to put a ton of pressure on yourself and it's going to be pretty stressful, right? So, >> that's right. That's right. People see that I went on social media about eight months before I quit. I had this panic attack and then I started writing online because I was like, "Okay, if I'm going to quit my job, I have to like got to do something, right?" I didn't know what else to do other than like maybe I would go talk about my expertise, but like I had timing on my side. I did it in 2018 back before the platform that I chose LinkedIn was even a popular place to write. Right? So I got luck timing like don't follow my path and hope that you

48:40 have the same luck and timing that I do. Follow a more gradual phased approach and don't attempt to be an outlier. Like try and be the person that thinks in the long game and and takes their time and has patience. Another thing that I think you're really good at is you created systems and stuff and one of your systems is how to use your time more effectively which is I think very relevant for people who want to start side hustles right so can you talk about the steps that you go through think about where you spend your time >> yeah I mean it's it's not too complicated effectively the way that I think about spending time is you should probably like anything around the prito principle is you should probably be spending your time doing the 20% of things that maximize 80% of your intended outcome. And that outcome may

49:26 not be making money. It it might be growing a social media audience. It might be, you know, something else, you know, spending more time on on your hobbies. But what I generally do is I start by picking like an intended outcome, right? So you might say my intended outcome is to grow my business revenue, right? And so once you know that you want to grow your business revenue, all you do is you take a look at your week. Like and this is what I do. something I do generally quarterly is I'll just like lay out my week and I'll say all right inside of any given week. What is what are every task that I do during a week, right? So like if I think about tasks that I do, there's like I write my newsletter, I think of ideas, I create content, I create my templates, I edit the newsletter, I send it, I do podcasts, I help people do

50:12 login issues, I set up tracking on my social media stuff, I book sponsors, I find affiliates. there's a million little tasks, right, that fall, you know, to me to accomplish or at least they used to. And so once you have all those tasks out, you just look and say, "All right, like how much time do I spend on these tasks, right? Do I spend an hour, 2 hours, 30 minutes, so on and so forth." And then you basically say, "All right, on a scale of whatever, 1 to 5, 1 to 10, you pick the scale. Like, how do these tasks align with the the intended impact that I'm trying to have?" Like I might say like scheduling a podcast interview back and forth on email. If you tie that to generating revenue for my business, it's a 1 out of 10, right? Sending my news, making sure that my newsletter is high quality, it's probably a nine out of 10. So like you

50:58 just kind of assign value to each of these tasks. And what you're left with is you're left with an assigned value from 1 to 10 or 1:5 or however you want to rank it. And then you've got an hourly amount of time that you spend each week. And then you have ratios. You simply divide those into one another and each thing gets a rate gets a number, right? And what you're trying to do is say, "All right, I got 60 tasks. If I've have 60 tasks I'm going to do, the top 20% are the top 12, right?" So, list those out in order from 1 to 60. So, what are the top 12? That's probably where you should spend your time. Or if you want to say it's 50, it's the top 10, right? That's where you should spend your time. Everything else should have one of three sort of things tethered to it. It should either be simplified or or eliminated first. Go through and

51:44 eliminate the bottom stuff, right? Like what's the the stuff that is not important at all? Eliminate it. Get rid of it. After that, it's like, okay, what are some things that are really complex that could be simplified? And if you can simplify those, will they take up significantly less time and therefore have a better ratio number? Next up, can you automate something with a tool? AI, automated tools, Zappier, whatever it might be. And then, can you delegate things? And so I do this quarterly and I'm left with the things that I should do, the things that I can automate, delegate, eliminate, eliminate and simplify. And that keeps me on target for the things I should be working. Yeah, that's awesome. I think like additional wrink like I don't know like trying to find sponsors or like you know teach a bunch

52:29 of live courses on the weekends. So that's you might want to try to dedicate or automate some of that still, right? It's like >> certainly and like when when I go through the process, it's like like any process, there's nuance to the process. So like if you look at your top 10, you're like, man, I hate doing one of these things. Cool. It's not it's not a steadfast rule, right? You don't have to be like, "Oh, unfortunately, I have to do these 10 things." Like, okay, you hate it. you're going to do nine out of the top 10 things and you're going to outsource that one thing or you're going to automate that one thing or god forbid you're going to eliminate it. So, it's not said fast, but it helps you get a sense of where you should be spending your Got it. Okay. So, now let's talk about finding your niche and like crafting a unique value prop. By the way, that that's like probably my

53:15 favorite part of your course. I think it's probably the most important part. So, people keep talking about you got to find a niche. How can people figure out, you know, what problem other people are willing to pay them for? Like how do you even start thinking about this? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. There I mean there's a lot of ways, right? So like I don't I'm certainly not the authority on telling people how to find their niche, although I think I'm pretty good at it. So I'm I'll share four ways that you can think through it. And again, it's not an exhaustive list. I'm sure someone listening will say, "Oh, I have a fifth or a sixth way." And that that's awesome. Again, I'm not the authority. But you know, one way is just pretty simple. It's your practical experience and it's your credibility. So >> what have you done at work, right? Like for example, I was a sales a VP of sales and a sales leader for

54:00 >> I think 15 years, 16 years, right? So that was pretty easy. >> So the first thing that I like I I did when I quit my job was I didn't become the creator that I am today. I built a consulting business helping healthcare startups grow because that's what I had done for 16 years. So it's like easy transition, right? So, so one way is practical experience and credibility. Another one is just what I might call like a learned obsession. It's that thing that you don't do for a living, but you're completely obsessed with. So, I pivoted over time. I went from helping healthcare startups grow to becoming a creator and maybe what you might call like digital marketing for lack of a better description, right? And soloreneurship and things like that. I was obsessed with that. I never did it as a career up until me doing it now.

54:45 But like I was reading every book. I was reading every I was listening to every podcast. I was reading every blog post I could find. I was tinkering with tools. I was doing marketing on the side, creating content, read magnets, webinars, everything, right? Because I was super obsessed with that. And that was an obsession that I just learned. And since I learned it over time, I became an expert without having, you know, traditional experience or having it in my title at work or anything like that. So that's another thing that you can do. And a lot of times people are obsessed with something that's completely unrelated to their job. The third thing that you can look at is just what do people come to you for advice for? Like we all have family and friends that come and they say, "Oh, Peter's really good at X." Or, "Man, Justin, I was thinking about you because I have this one problem and I know like you're the guy who can solve this thing." And maybe you're good at three things,

55:31 right? But it's like keep your eyes and ears open for those things. We're in such a fast-paced world. We're moving so quickly. We're not paying attention to much. We're consuming and creating. we often don't stop and like pause and be cognizant of the things that people are coming to us for help for. And those can be really awesome things to build a small side hustle on. And last is just problems you've solved for yourself. So like right now I have a problem in my business and I'm actively solving it. And as I solve that problem, I'm like this is a cool product. This is a cool service. Like if I'm having this problem, how many other creators are having this problem and would pay a lot of money to solve it? And so then I'm thinking about that as a product and service because I'm fixing a problem that I have myself. So those are like four ways that I might approach solving

56:17 a problem. Got it. And how do you because like it's just kind of like building a product and bring it to the market, right? Like how do you validate this with real customers as soon as possible as opposed to try to build something and then realize people don't want this? I guess it's kind of obvious answer but like how do you go about it's obvious to me or and maybe you but that doesn't mean it's obvious to everyone. Five years ago I would have said I have no idea, right? But to me, my inclination is to is to actually help them on your own, one-on-one, right? So, it's like identify five to 10 people who have those problems, have those aspirations and want to work with you, right? And >> are they willing to put some skin in the game? And the amount doesn't matter. It's just are they willing to spend money and time to solve the problem that you solve them to reach the aspirational

57:04 stage that they want to reach. And if you can do that, what you do is you validate that A, they'll spend the money, b they'll spend the time, c they'll show up and they'll do the work, and then d you'll help them reach the intended outcome that you told them that you would help them reach. If you can do those four things, then you have at least a viable framework of a business, right? If nobody's willing to spend money and nobody's willing to spend time, then you have an idea, but you don't have a business, right? And so once you do that, what I would do is I would try and wrap that into a process because I would imagine that if you have five g guys and gals, there are going to be commonalities amongst all of them. And as you help them work through this problem or process, you will see all those commonalities. Those commonalities

57:49 become a framework, right? So that as you bring more people in, you're like, I know the five things we got to nail in order to let them reach their outcome, to overcome their pain points. And then you turn that into a process as a service business where you can continue to work one-on-one with people. Once you've validated that there is more interest in the market and that your solution actually works, productize it. Raise your rates on your service side. Lower the rates on the product side. For those people who don't want to spend a lot of money to do work one-on-one with you, let them work through a self-paced product. Those people who want handholding and want to spend time with you one-on-one, they've got the service business. This is exactly how I started my business. Yeah, it does seem like a pretty surefire path. It's just like, you know, when I think services business is like a lot of a lot more me, a lot more meetings on one-on- ones, but I

58:35 think you just have to do it. It's like building a product. You just got to talk to customers oneonone and figure out what they want. >> Yeah. >> It's like saying I really want to build a product, but talking with customers sounds like a lot of time. >> Like it it is but it's important, right? So like, you know, I think you hear a lot about these startup founders who want to build something I'm just going to make up an example, right? they want to build something in like supply chain, right? And they go and they spend like a 100 hours on the Amazon distribution centers or in a supply chain place where they're doing like, you know, manual labor to try and understand the pain. Like you got to live you got to live it before you can solve it. >> Yeah. I I think there was a a step in your process that you skipped. I just want to bring it back which is create a movement and find a almost like find an enemy or someone to fight. Maybe you can get some examples of that from from you

59:20 or from other your friends like Dan or other folks. >> Yeah, totally. So that's more on the marketing side, right? So like I don't think you need that to validate a business necessarily, but if you want to go out and you want to grow that business, you have to market. And so marketing is a lot like politics. And so I'll give you kind of an example. If you look at American politics, and I'm not going to go down a political rabbit hole or either party. I don't care about any of that stuff. like just pick either party, right? Very rarely do they tell you all the good things that they do. Instead, most of the focus is on the bad things that the other party or candidate or person does, right? It's they're creating an enemy. And if you think about some marketing talk, like there's

1:00:07 a famous quote, and I'll probably mess it up, which is like you want to give people you want to help people throw rocks at their enemies. I think it was Blair Warren who said that and he's like kind of an old old school marketer and throwing rocks at your enemies is like you want to pick a target. It doesn't have to be a person. It could be a mantra. It could be a movement. It could be an ideology that you are 100% against, right? And so for example in your example like you're against the idea of the traditional career path like to become a better engineer you do not need to lead people. You do not need to grow teams. You want to be a better engineer, build better products, right? Build a career building the best product possible. So the reverse of that is your enemy, right? And once you have an

1:00:53 enemy, you can build a movement because movements are built by defeating another enemy. So for example, I'll give you an example for my business. I talk about soloreneurship, right? Is soloreneurship right for everybody? It isn't. I'm very, very candid about that. I'm very clear about that. But I also won't tell someone they shouldn't try. I'm not a babysitter, right? I I think adults should do whatever they they want to do. My enemy is the traditional career and life path where you work for a company until they don't need you anymore and you get fired and you do that for 60 years hoping you can save enough for retirement and we know from the average American they can't. That sounds like a shitty life to me, right? So like that's the enemy and I throw rocks at that enemy all the time. And by throwing

1:01:40 rocks at that enemy, I am building a movement. And the movement is that over here, we've got a group of solarreneurs who are taking control of their life, taking control of their time, and taking control of their freedom. Right? A guy like Dan Go, a buddy of mine, the stereotype, and that stereotype is getting broken much faster by a lot more people of like as an entrepreneur, you shouldn't be so busy that you're out of shape, right? You should be in the best shape of your life. like the way that you treat your body should translate into how you treat your business and your family and the type of person that you are. Whether that's true or not, right? That is the movement that guys like Dan Go, a buddy of mine is building. And by the way, I don't want to speak for Dan. That might not be exactly his movement, but that's sort of how I I see it. And his enemy is, you know, the entrepreneur who's letting

1:02:25 themselves go, who's not keeping themselves in shape, who, you know, says they'll do anything for their family, but they're not getting in shape for their family. That's his enemy, right? And so I think by having these two sort of juxtaposing things, the enemy and the movement, you can market a lot more effectively. And that's part of what marketing is. Yeah, it does. Uh I'm not going to talk about either party, but with the politics stuff, like one of my big frustrations is like they just keep talking about each other. They don't actually talk about what they're going to do for the country if they get elected. Like tell me what you'll do for me. That's right. Tell me what you do for me. That doesn't sell, man. Unfortunately, by the way, >> I wish it did. That's crazy. That's crazy. Okay. So, after you've crafted a really good unique value proposition and you when you talk to a bunch of customers, you validated people, maybe pay you some money for it, you have this really simple funnel to actually get

1:03:12 attention and to, you know, get people to actually like build relationships and actually spend on your product. May we can talk about it just at a really high level first. >> Yeah, sure. I keep it simple because I think most marketing is over complicated. Not all marketing, by the way. I'm not trying to paint with a broad brush. There are certainly, you know, times and situations that call for complex marketing, but for the most part, there's the old school marketing funnel, right? I think it's awareness, idea. I can't even remember. Awareness, something, decision, action, right? I can't even remember because I don't really follow that one. I follow my own. So, mine's a little bit different, right? It's get discovered, build trust, deepen relationships, and monetize. Very simple. So, I'll kind of talk about it from high up, right? So the top of the funnel is just called getting

1:03:57 discovered. And so getting discovered simply means getting your name, your face, your brand, what you do, who you help, your knowledge in front of as many people as possible, right? As many people as possible because you want people to resonate with your message. You want them to have an opportunity to hook on to your movement, to join you in throwing rocks at the enemy, to share it with their friends who say, "Hey, Jim, this sounds a lot like what you were telling me about, man. You should follow this guy." Right? Getting discovered is huge. And that is all organic social. So organic social to me is all about getting discovered. And so that's why I'm very active on platforms like LinkedIn, like X, like Instagram, like Threads. I just try and get top offunnel

1:04:43 discovery all the time. You know, my goal was like hundreds of millions of impressions every single year. Getting discovered in and of itself is not enough, right? You have to it's the eyeing aid is interest, right? But to me, less about interest. It's more about trust. So, after getting discovered, I want to build trust. And I don't mean trust like, you know, you leave me at home to babysit your kids or watch your house or anything like that. That's not the kind of trust that I'm talking about. The kind of trust that I'm talking about is like I trust this person is really good at what they do. I trust this person is not just lip service that they're actually an expert in the things they say they're an expert in. And the easiest way in my opinion today to show trust or to build trust is long form content. And so long form content can be written content, a

1:05:30 newsletter, a blog, a lengthy article. It can be video, right? a robust YouTube video that takes someone from point A to point B in 2530 minutes. Like these are a podcast, right? Uh where you're breaking down complex topics and making them really simple. These are all opportunities to build trust. If you can get discovered and build trust, you're in a pretty good position to take the people who want the thing that you have, trust you're the right person, and make some money at a business, right? If you sell something very extensive, there's probably another step. The next step would be deepening the relationship. And that's why I think a lot of like enterprise level companies, a lot of high ticket sellers with really

1:06:15 expensive stuff benefit greatly from events, communities, things where like people are getting access to them in real time and they're deepening that tie. They're strengthening that bond. they're really going deep on this relationship because we buy from people we know and like. So if you sell something that's a,000 bucks, you got to deepen that relationship. And by the way, a,000 is an arbitrary number. That might be inexpensive to a company and expensive to an individual person. But hopefully you get the the point, right? Whereas if you sell something low ticket, $50, you might not need to deepen that relationship. After building trust, you might be ready to present your offer. You might say, "Hey, you've read all my stuff on LinkedIn. You've consumed all my newsletters and articles. you've checked out all my long form videos. Are you ready to work with someone to solve your problem? This

1:07:02 thing's $50 or $99. Like they might be ready to pull the trigger right then. So, it's discovery, trust, relationship, monetization. Got it. And what are some ways that you've kind of optimized this funnel that had kind of like a step function change your business or is it just a matter of showing up every day and like doing doing the work? >> Yeah. Yeah, it's mostly the latter, right? But there are certainly some ways that I' I've gotten better at it. So, I'll give you an example of how I've sort of fine-tuned it, for lack of a better description. So, let's start with the top. Getting discovered. Well, getting discovered is a function of the the value and quality of the piece of content that you create. So, I've created probably 5,000 pieces of unique content over the last 5 years. And there's new AI tools out there. So,

1:07:47 what's the first thing that I want to do? I want AI to analyze the thousands of things that I've created and tell me what is it about the top 50 that are similar, right? What should I be what should I be trying to do to maximize getting discovered? >> So often what I think is if you want to improve impressions, it's the opening, the hook, right? The opening and the hook kind of drive impressions. If you want to drive engagement, it's the body. It's the call to conversation. Those things drive comments, re-shares, like the information. How good is it? Right? Outside of the hook, like after the hook, did you deliver? Right? That stuff drives the engagement, drives the comments, drives the retweets and the re-shares. So, like I'll look for commonalities amongst those things. And

1:08:33 what I'm trying to craft feeder is like the perfect post. What does a perfect post look like that drives both impressions and engagement, right? >> And then I'll look at a ratio of impressions to clicks to my website. So, like what percentage of people that saw this thing clicked through and went to the article that I recommended? And when I get these ratios, I can see, okay, just cuz something had a million hits and drove a,000 people to my website, that's good. But what about something that only had a 100,000 hits that drove a,000 people to my website? That's a better call to action. I got a larger percentage of people to my site. And so, like I'll look at the commonalities in those things. I'll have AI break those down. and say, "What was it about this call to action that you think drove a bunch of people to my website?" Again, I'm trying to have the perfect post.

1:09:18 >> So, once we've got the perfect post down, it's like, okay, I know the hook's good. I know the body's good. I know the call to conversation's good. I know the link to my website's going to work. Cool. We're getting them to the point where I'm starting to build trust. So, I'm sending them to some article on my website. Certain articles work better than others. So, the same ratio. How many people read an article versus make a purchase? If someone reads an article and 10% of them make a purchase on this article or they read this other article and 2% of people make the purchase, the

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