#213 Jordan Platten - The Raw Reality of Becoming a Millionaire in Your 20s

Jordan Platten is an entrepreneur and founder of Affluent.co, Affluent.Academy & LearnAds.io, a multi-service digital marketing agency and e-learning business. With a specialisation in social media advertising, Jordan has generated millions in revenue for companies around the globe.

This episode dives into what makes a coaching business thrive, delivering client satisfaction, client acquisition strategies and how adapting to forthcoming UK legislation is crucial for online businesses. Jordan also shares his personal evolution from chasing financial success to pursuing meaningful goals, highlighting the significance of authenticity in content creation and the power of masterminds in accelerating entrepreneurial growth.

We'll get into the nuances of building a resilient brand through authentic content and strategic networking, so make sure you watch till the end. 

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Connect with Jordan
LinkedIn: Jordan Platten
YouTube: @JordanPlatten

My Socials:
Instagram: Darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn: Darren Lee
Twitter: Darren_ks


(00:00) Preview and Intro
(00:39) Authenticity and No BS Approach in Business
(05:51) Legislation for Online Businesses?
(08:42) Transitioning from Agency to Coaching Business
(11:27) The Economics of Running an Agency
(15:46) Biggest Changes in the Agency Space
(18:47) How To Sell to Jordan Platten
(21:16) Decoding the Emotional State of Change
(26:06) Finding Purpose Beyond Money
(32:03) Shifting Goals and Values Over Time
(39:07) Content Creation and its Impact on Audience
(45:54) Using Content To Scale Your Business
(52:57) Why You Should Join A Mastermind
(01:02:28) The ROI on joining Masterminds

Transcript

Jordan: 0:00

I think so many people are willing to sacrifice their morals for cash.

Darren: 0:03

I never can do that. Most people made their money selling people the courses, selling people the coaching and then not actually having the business on the back end.

Jordan: 0:10

This just doesn't feel right, and so I just kind of paid my own way. But it's kind of why the coaching businesses like grow so effectively right, I was one of the first people to introduce a guarantee, full stop.

Darren: 0:19

We did that like five years ago I always think about 100 million dollar offers that value equation for me, I can see it.

Jordan: 0:24

Basically, scarcity is going out the window, that's for sure.

Darren: 0:32

Before we start this week's episode, I have one little favor to ask you. Can you please leave a five star rating below, so we can help more people every single week. Thank you.

Jordan: 0:37

Let's kick off man.

Darren: 0:39

I've wanted to get you on the show for a long time and you're basically like one of the fucking OGs of the space. But one of the reasons why I was really drawn towards your work is, unlike most guys that are like selling the dream and then trying to get you into their program, you are just like no bullshit, right, and like when I checked out your podcast, checked out your content, you just have that air of like no bullshit. And I pull up one of your quotes, which is do you actually want the things that you want or do you want them because other people want them? Now, most people don't think like that because they're just trying to get people into their fucking program. Right, but what's been that kind of reality for you?

Jordan: 1:13

why you just basically just speak the truth of what, what you know and what you believe I don't think I would be able to be happy within myself if I didn't do that, like I think so many people are willing to sacrifice their morals for cash. And I never can do that. Because if I sold someone into, let's say, starting an agency because we're talking about me and they jumped into it and I sold them on the dream it was going to be really easy. They're going to sign up their first client with little resistance, it's going to take them one week, etc. And they come in and they've had the shit experience that impacts my reviews, that impacts my morals, that impacts the way that they feel, and they probably still wouldn't even say anything.

Jordan: 1:54

Because we look at our heroes and the gurus and the people we learn from as we just trust their judgment, and I think a lot of people in this space don't hold themselves to that standard. But for me, I would much rather get a high quality customer and who knows it's going to be really difficult and is prepared to work really hard to get the result, Because then I don't have to deal with mental barriers all the time, because I've set that precedent. By the time they've even bought.

Darren: 2:14

But what's interesting for you, though, is that you've done this for so many years for yourself. You have your own agency and you're doing what is like over 100k 200k a month, but at the same time, you're doing it in a coaching model repeatedly for other people like that's actually. That's actually just complete proof, right, because most people made their money selling people the courses, selling people the coaching and then not actually having the business on the back end yeah, 100.

Jordan: 2:37

I mean we're like between three and four hundred, three and five hundred. At the moment we fluctuate because organic traffic isn't always predictable, um, which is something we're talking about off camera just now. But yeah, it's been a long time and it's been a journey and, to be honest, I can't say that I was the person I am today when I first started out. None of us are and in the early stages I probably would say that I was more up for selling the dream somewhat, because that's all I saw of the industry. It's what I saw all of the greats doing.

Jordan: 3:08

It was the epiphany bridge story. It was following russell brunson, it was experts, secrets, it was. It was. It was those days right, and and it wasn't until I started doing it all and I was meeting the resistance and then getting customers in that didn't have the right expectations. Like this is. This just doesn't feel right, and so I just kind of paved my own way, and I think there's a few people in the space that are on a similar path right now, which is really nice to see, but that certainly wasn't the case like two years ago man don't don't hate on expert secrets it's a great book.

Jordan: 3:30

That got me. That got me started. Yeah man.

Darren: 3:34

There's some of those like og, like russ russ is an og guru, right and like there's. There was a lot of videos on on him, like breaking down his business. But at the end of the day, if you looked at what he was teaching and if you went through expert secrets like I have it behind me closely it's a fucking amazing book. But you can see how that's taken out of context because, like, when I always talk about like selling the dream, I always think about 100 million dollar offers you. Just always it's like that value equation for me. I can see it, you know, you can see it on social media.

Darren: 4:00

Someone's saying perceived likelihood of achievement it's going to happen to you. The dream outcome is coming, it's not difficult, it's not. It's not going to be heard. So like that's kind of at odds. But it's kind of why the coaching businesses like grow so effectively, right, it's why they're always consistently growing month over month. But you think interesting on this, like, do you think that we're going to do like an online business recession to wipe out a lot of this stuff?

Jordan: 4:22

I think I I can't see it going any other way. I can't see how it, how it can't get to that place at some point, because I, at the end of the day, and I think it comes out like we've read the same books. I've read a hundred million dollar office as well. I think everyone knows in the industry. But it fundamentally comes down to that how you then perceive that and then you add attach that to your own morals, because people will then over promise on the whole $100 million thing. But there has to come a point where there's somewhat of a revolt in the industry and people are like I'm just not going to buy into this shit anymore. And I've been calling for that myself for like five years I think, even from day one. I'm pretty confident that I was at least in the agency space, but I'm confident in most of the education space.

Jordan: 5:03

I was one of the first people to introduce a guarantee full stop. We did that like five years ago. It was one client in 30 days, one client. Imagine if you put a one client in 30 days guarantee out now, you'd be fucking laughed at. Everyone would be like one client in 30 days. This bloke's promising me 100 appointments in 30 days. Offers are now this thing, and when I did that it banged. The industry was like wow, that's awesome, I'm going to guarantee the client, I'm going to make return. And now it would be a joke. And that's quite sad in itself because it shows what we've become. We're racing into this place of over-promising and under-delivering and I think that can only implode and I just think the light will be shined on the people that are doing that and I think it will just be very clear and also legislation will do that for us as well, like, if people don't do it, legislation will man.

Darren: 5:51

I had a. I had dinner with ibrahim turner the other day. He had an agency from money day space from the uk and uh, we were talking about this like info product space and just just like online business education and we were like there has to be some sort of legislation coming down the road because we were saying, like will a lot of these platforms be governed or will someone step in and shut down these platforms? And the next step is like having some sort of education being like you can't do this shit or you need to meet a certain criteria so that you can't do it any for any longer.

Jordan: 6:21

Yeah, I think what there is. There's a digital rights consumer act that's coming into the UK like really really soon, so that's something that anybody should look at. Who's in this space, regardless of whether you're an info or you're an agency and you offer services, and there's a few really big things. Basically, scarcity is going out the window, that's for sure. So, like, scarcity will have to be proven. Real scarcity, so. So scarcity will have to be proven. Real scarcity. So there'll be no oh, we're letting 10 people into this. If you're not actually letting 10 people into it, there'll be no false deadlines. And then you're extending deadlines, and this will be the same for e-commerce as well. So, pretty much all online. This is following what the FTC's new guidelines are in the US, but this is being implemented in the UK and then usually the rest of Europe will follow the UK.

Jordan: 7:03

So it's not going to take long until you can get in trouble. And it's not just if you're a UK based company, because all the Dubai guys are thinking, well, I'm all right now. Well, you're not, because if you're selling UK based customers or US based customers, they can still do you for it and the fine is like a 4k Like for one. It's not. There's no like case or anything. It's like if you can get proven for it and they can see it, it's like 4k, and then it like doubles and it like triples and it just it keeps going from there. So it'll some people could get in some serious trouble if they, if they, catch you for one thing and then all of a sudden you've got all these other things and I don't think it's historic, but at how would they prove that?

Darren: 7:44

because that's like a given idea, right? I'll give you a personal example. We can't take on 100 clients at once. We can generally take on two to three a month, and that's like being like normal conservative. And the reason why is because then we can give people enough attention and on board properly and we don't blow up the team and so on. So that's like a cap that we set ourselves and that's kind of more like a limitation, a scarcity limitation. How could that be taken out of context?

Jordan: 8:11

I. I think that I think what actually will happen is, if you were big enough and I don't think I don't think people like you and I at the stage that we're at right now I think it'll be the guys that are doing multiple millions on a monthly basis plus. But what is going to happen ultimately is, I imagine there'll be mystery shoppers, like it'll be. It'll be people going through, going through funnels, and, and they'll be really fishing through because that's a new avenue for the government to make money and if the government can make money in another avenue, they're going to be building entire departments around that stuff.

Darren: 8:42

So for sure man, for sure man. That takes me back to my fucking early days of like mystery shoppers and, uh, in retail man, back when I was like 16, 17. Now I want to ask you about, like uh, some of your progress right, because you've been someone that nailed it in the agency space and then built on the coaching space. How did you, how did you make that shift right? Because a lot of people will say, like you lose your focus when you move to different offers, but you've had two really successful businesses that are running on autopilot now at this stage.

Jordan: 9:15

Yeah, I think it's really key that you have to have one business running very smoothly before you move on to a second, and I've gone against that many a time and I've launched other ventures. For example, I started a company called Learn Ads, which is just an ads training business no-transcript, our first product. But then at that stage it was like when you could just launch a course product and you had no team. We didn't have any team infrastructure, no salespeople. It was a landing page and a course and I did a Q&A once a week. That was the only demand I had on myself.

Jordan: 10:07

Now we're a 35-person team in the education business. We're at the point that you need to make sure that you have the physical time in order to fill the boots and to scale and to be strategic and plan, and so the agency is completely automated. As far as I'm concerned, I've got Joe, who's my business partner. He runs the entire business. Again, there's about a 30-man team there and he runs the entire show, whilst I still take a percentage and I'm more on a consultancy basis in my own agency now, which is the way I'd prefer it. I didn't want to run an agency forever. It was always a stepping stone. I do think in most cases, for most people, a stepping stone and I do think in most cases, for most people, it is a really good stepping stone business, and then we kind of open up.

Darren: 10:47

What I really like about your approach towards it, though, is the fact that you've still had it right. Most people will ship it or close it down, and there's obviously pros and cons to it, and I spoke to paul daily last week, and he was like yeah, like it's a good starter business, which a lot of people do say it's a good way to get in, get in your foot in the door, but at some point you don't want to move on. But I thought I thought of you straight away, and I was like well, you're running that business. You leave it like outsource to some degree, you take a percentage and then you focus on a higher leverage play, but I guess most people will either get stuck in that loop and then never go on to it. Now question for you off, that is like so your agency is up to like 400k, or roughly whatever a month. Do you still see like strong economics with that business, though? Like are you? Do you still have good margins, even though you're at a higher level?

Jordan: 11:27

the. The agency isn't that 400. The agency will fluctuate between one and one and 200 and and based on service retainers and. But we have got it up to.

Jordan: 11:37

We've got it up to a pretty significant figure in the past and then actually downscaled because I don't think it's a very I don't think it's a very enjoyable business to run at scale when you're purely done for you. Now I think the business model of doing like an info agency hybrid, I think that can be a lot more enjoyable because you're having less customers and a lot higher LTV. But yeah, we've scaled the business up and scaled it back down. I do think that it's an incredible cash flow business and I think that most people who I don't understand the rationale at all of having a business shutting it down to start something else that's more leveraged, because if the thing actually was working in the first place, you would never shut down a positive cash flow stream. So most people that say they started an agency and shut it down are talking fucking bullshit and they never a successful agency. So that's facts let's get it.

Darren: 12:26

Let's get into that man, because I'm in the exact same board as you, exact same opinion, right? It's the fact that I feel like that if it's at a good point which ours is right it's not making fucking millions in one, but I mean it's at a good. We have a good team, that there's not that much that I actually do. There's a few sales calls uh, we could have someone doing that if I want to. But I like the business because it's cash flowing continuously. But I feel similar enough to you that you don't need to go to zero to go do another one If it is working right to deal with the character you have.

Jordan: 12:57

It's not rational, it doesn't make any logical. I mean so we spoke about someone off camera, a mutual contact who I won't mention, who I was with this week, and he has a multi, seven figure a month business. He still runs his agency, his original agency that got him started into entrepreneurship 10 years ago. To this day he doesn't run it. He's got a team that does. They do 500K a month in that agency. The whole thing is automated and he's like well, why would I shut it down? It doesn't make any sense, I'll just keep it running. And he's got multiple. He's not even involved in the agency space in any way, shape or form.

Jordan: 13:32

But there's someone who's already at multi-seven figures on a monthly basis and it's still like well, why would I shut down this agency? It's making me money. It takes a pocket, it's the more money I can invest. It's more equity, so best, it's more, it's more equity, so yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me as to why you would I mean people don't. That's the fact of the matter. It's not that. It's not that people are doing that, it's just that's the cover story that makes you look better for the fact that you kind of sold out and just jumped into something else man, cash is cash, right?

Darren: 13:57

doesn't matter if it's coming from a flashy sexy software company or from a fucking bakery, it's still cash. That's all that matters. That's all that matters, man. It's not to do with, it's not to do with all the other fucking flashy stuff, right. But what's funny, though, is you made a medical point about. Like agency is not working, so let's get into that, right? What do you think like the current state is of like agencies in the agency space and where we're currently at? Is it more difficult to build an agency now, and where are we currently sitting?

Jordan: 14:27

No, I don't think it's. I don't think it's, I don't necessarily think it's okay If we're talking like for five years ago, when I started, or I think it would probably actually I keep saying five years I think we're probably more like seven years now when I first started my agency, was it easier to start then than it is now? Yes, because we are selling a new opportunity, and it was when we were used to go into local business. When you talk about Facebook ads, it was like, oh, I've heard about that Facebook thing, not, I've heard about Facebook ads. It's like, oh, yeah, that Facebook, yeah, we can start using that, and so you're selling shiny object and that is an unfair advantage and I'm not going to sugarcoat that.

Jordan: 15:06

But is it now a really difficult business to grow? I still think it is the lowest barrier to entry when it comes into business. And if we just kind of strip back the whole SMMA or whatever service you're offering and we just treat it as a service-based business, which fundamentally they're all exactly the same you're just offering the mechanics and the operations and the actual business stuff is all the same, regardless of the service that you're offering Do I think that is still a viable business model. Yes, it's going to be a viable business model for the next 100, if not 1000 years. You know we're always going to be selling services for cash and the way that we acquire clients will differ slightly and the services that we offer will differ slightly, and I think that's the only nuance that's changed.

Darren: 15:46

For sure. So what do you see being the biggest changes that are happening? Whether is that like I don't know like an infrastructure layer level, like what's happening in Facebook, what's happening at Google, because things are constantly adopting right, and that's probably a big part of your coaching is staying ahead of, like, how Instagram is working, how Facebook is working, how people are buying, what tools to use.

Jordan: 16:05

What I see the most is that, as technology increases, people are getting more lazy, and I think that GPT is a prime example of that. I think there are so many people now that have even lost their own ability to copyright because they're so heavily reliant on something like ChatGPT or an AI model, and I think that is the same when it comes to email outreach. It's saying when it comes to things like dms. It's saying when it even comes to what kind of auto call setters that are coming into place soon, which probably banned before they even get good enough.

Jordan: 16:34

Um, but so I think that people, broadly speaking, are getting lazier with their, their approaches, which means to put in the work and go the extra mile. Those are the people that are getting the really good results, those people that are willing to do the shit that other people aren't. So to make calls, to send letters, to personalize all of your outreach, to specialize in a specific niche, those that aren't lazy are still doing really well, and so, yeah, I suppose that's one of the biggest changes that technology is making things more accessible for lazy people, and therefore it saturates things that used to work really well, but it just opens up opportunity for people that don't see it that way and are willing to just go the extra mile.

Darren: 17:18

Well, the barrier to entry has never been lower, but also the quality that you're getting has never been lower. Like man, I can't imagine what your fucking dms look like, your requests on instagram right in the sma space, god knows what it messes you're getting right because if I'm getting as a podcaster, if I'm getting 10 a day and they all look the exact same I can't imagine the type of people like that's how you gauge, like you kind of where things are at right I get a multitude of pictures from a we probably get at least 10 pictures a day, at least 10, on Instagram, then emails another beast entirely, because it's just easier, right and from a multitude of different services.

Jordan: 17:57

And I'll tell you, a prime example of that whole concept is the thumbnail industry. So thumbnail designers they're in abundance. There are just an obscene amount and short form. So short form and thumbnails are in abundance. There's so many of them. But the quality of agency is horrific. I'm not exaggerating when I say we've probably trialed at over 100 thumbnail designers in the last 12 months. We've given them trials and we're like this just is not up to par at all. And then you get a really good pitch. Sometimes the sales pitch is really good and the sales call is really good, and then again you get to work through and it's terrible, terrible quality. And so, yeah, low barrier to entry really does have its issues. But then, equally, like on the flip side, if everyone's shit, you only just have to be good to stand out, you know 100% man, like that, like that's just, but it's a reality with everything, right?

Darren: 18:47

it's the same with like fitness. It's the same with health, I don't know. It's the same with like dating, you know. It's the same with it's like how we interact with people. Is that it's a bell curve? Right, it's a bell curve. Now, my question for you off that is like how does someone sell to jordan? Like how would I sell to you to get in that door and be able to get my product across to you?

Jordan: 19:06

um, so, yeah, I get a lot of dms and what I think, what I think is key is I ignore anyone that hasn't got personalized outreach, first of all, because it's just, yeah, there's no effort that's gone into that. I also respect multi-platform strategies. I preach on multi-platform strategy a lot and I always think that's the most effective way to reach people if you hit them from all angles. And so if someone sent me an email and my team notices their name in the DMs as well, normally they will bring things to my attention if someone's really trying to get hold of me. And so, yeah, I think proper personalization and not just import fields and then a multi-platform approach usually will get a response Doesn't mean, of course, we're going to jump on a sales call, but that's usually what would get our interest at least to have a response, but it's just about how to stand out in general.

Darren: 19:52

Right, this is where most people will do the basic shit and then end up nowhere and then blame the tool. Right, they'll blame the fucking automated outreach. They'll blame the course. They'll blame the tool right. They'll blame the fucking automated outreach. They'll blame the course. They'll blame the program. Right, and that's the problem.

Darren: 20:06

One thing I want to say before we finish up on like this point where people go on zero to one, is like what do you see, like the characteristics in people who like really fucking smash it in your program versus people that basically don't do the work? Like what is that character trait that you can kind of identify coming true? Do you want to launch a podcast for your business but you don't know where to start? Remove the stress, pressure and all the overwhelm that comes with it by working with Podcast University. If you're an ambitious individual who wants to build your influence online, grow your own podcast and also stand out from the crowd, podcast University is for you. We help you with the strategy, equipment, the content, your guests, everything you need to create a top tier podcast. If you want to learn more, check out.

Jordan: 20:47

Podcast University and start your podcast journey today. It's resilience more than anything else. There's a certain kind of person that's like just relentless in there. They know that they are what they want to achieve and they're prepared to do whatever it takes to get to that position. And I think most people struggle with objection really badly because they haven't been rejected anywhere near enough in their lives and and that's normal and that's okay, uh, but it's that resilience that drives the most successful people forward.

Darren: 21:16

100 man, that's interesting. I went through your your work on the emotional state of change. I thought it was super fucking interesting. Man, can you walk me through that?

Jordan: 21:25

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, there's a cycle of multiple stages that people go through and I'll probably butcher this off cuff. But we start off with uninformed optimism when we're jumping into something new and we're like this is incredible, this is great. But we're off with uninformed optimism when we're jumping into something new and we were like this is incredible, this is great. But we're kind of uninformed or blinded by what could happen. And then we hit informed pessimism because we're like we've started doing it, but it's not what we thought it was going to be and it's actually. We've actually got to start making some cold calls, we've actually got to do some work and we're starting to then question whether or not this is actually all worth it and it's all worked, and we question all of the case studies.

Jordan: 22:01

Then we jump into this place called the valley of despair, which is where most people actually are who are not where they want to be in business yet, who are really struggling. It's that rock bottom that many of us talk about, and it's when we don't see a way out and we're laying in bed at night questioning whether this is all worth it, questioning whether or not we're in the right business model, et cetera. We want to jump onto something else, and at this point this is when people then jump onto another shiny object they're like right, let me get back into uninformed optimism, because someone else is going to sell me a dream on something, and so they flee, and so we see those kind of bunny hop, this opportunity and opportunity, and then what we have to do is push through that we get into. I've forgotten the fourth stage name.

Darren: 22:45

I have it right here. I have it right here, let me pull it up Informed optimism and then success and fulfillment.

Jordan: 22:50

Yeah, informed optimism. So this is when we first had our bit of our first bit of success. We've signed up our first client. We're like, ah, it does work. Okay, this is worth it, worth it, I can make this happen.

Darren: 23:00

And then, of course, we push through to to success it is very interesting to observe, right, because I don't know about you, but I bring business always back to like fitness and I always just relate it back to because it was the first thing I did before I ever fucking played entrepreneur on the internet, right, and it was like the first thing I was doing, whether it was like playing rugby, running analytics, whether it was going into like bodybuilding, and these things just happen so much with friction and it's always it's like resistance. If you've ever read Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield or any Steven Pressfield book, he's just always talking about resistance and it's about when you wake up you don't want to do the outreach and so on. And it's just interesting to me to observe that like that's the gap between most people actually making or not. It's not the fucking model, it's not the, it's not, it's not the vehicle, it's just basically about doing it continuously until you find and crack and we're talking before and about how our offer changed over the past year. It didn't change, it just got better. And it got better because we did it until we saw the opportunity. But you don't see the opportunity until you do it every fucking day for years and years and years, right, and you're so far ahead of me, like so far ahead of me, but I can just see, like I can just basically see the pad by just not leaving and going off to do something retarded right it's it's.

Jordan: 24:13

It's what it actually. What it is is doing that hard shit for a long period of time, especially when you don't want to do it, because I think that's the key. It's like because business thing gets like a lot easier, I would say, when you're doing really well and you have a really good team, and because you start off really opportunity scarce and you're like I really just need opportunity. What is it going to be? How can I just make some money? I'm going to do anything for myself, until you get to a point where you're looking around you and then the tables turn completely and you're like there are so much opportunity around me and the biggest struggle is knowing which opportunity to actually pick and what's going to take me to the next level and how can I decipher from this?

Jordan: 24:51

For example, I went to a mastermind for the last four days the challenge of going to a mastermind and the first couple of masterminds I went to years ago. You're writing down all this information. I need to do this, I need to do that, and now I need this three-step funnel and I need this three plus shipping thing and I need to do all of that. And you're writing it all down. You've got all these amazing ideas and you swamp the business and you're absolutely screwed.

Jordan: 25:10

The challenge is then actually now it's okay, let me listen what's actually relevant to me, and so what I'm saying is, in business, if we can, in the early stages, get used to doing shit that we don't want to do, all the stuff that we need to do when it comes to running a business, and everything's a lot easier and we're further down the line, we're then still going to be able to pull ourselves to do the difficult stuff.

Jordan: 25:36

That's going to get us next to the next stage, because it's so easy to jump into these shiny objects and these like nice kind of light, airy, fairy tasks that allow us to just run on a treadmill. But those big pillar tasks are still quite difficult to push ourselves into doing, and I think that happens like with a lot of repetition, of going through that emotional state of change, through seeing that proof of concept that you have to do the hard shit to get the good result. That gets a lot easier. But it's that mental resilience that you build in the early stages on doing the really difficult things when you don't want to do them.

Darren: 26:06

Fuck man, there's so many points to take there. I want to kind of diverge firstly into into your kind of even emotional state, because you know you're someone who's done a lot of really sick stuff. Like you've just done a lot of awesome shit. Now you're running your own mastermind stuff too. Where do you see like enjoyment from, like what is it that you actually want from your business? Right, because you've hit all those targets but you're still going? Is there like how do you think about like gratitude and how do you think about like what you want to do really, basically?

Jordan: 26:33

I'm an architect, not in the semi-literal state, because I I have a certificate of higher education education before I got kicked out of uni, but in the sense that I just love building ship and I love designing stuff and that's the flow state that I like to be in as much as possible in business. I really enjoy being a CEO and building and developing things, and so I think it helps that and I think it's quite nice that that in itself enables me to make a lot of money. I think initially I just wanted to get rich and I wanted to have some nice things. I wanted some nice cars, I wanted some nice watches, and until you have that and you realize that's not really what you want and then you have to figure out what the hell you really do want so you can continue doing what you're doing and keep pushing forward. And I've established it's just building, it's being creative and it's being able to create innovative products and solutions that impact a huge amount of people, and it's then helping other people come to these little micro realizations themselves.

Jordan: 27:33

I love taking on new mentees and they're like I just want to get rich, I want to make money, and I'm thinking in my head okay, cool, let's feed into that, let's give you what you want right now. But then I'm thinking we're going to come full circle here. We're going to be having this conversation when you actually do make that money, and then we're going to see you at my masterminds and then I'm going to take you through that and I think, as wish I could go to 100K again. I wish I could just get to that point. And I think in the info industry and in the education industry, if you truly are passionate about what you're doing there, I think it's because it comes to this root thing of being able to relive those experiences through other people.

Darren: 28:14

Because that's the whole point of teaching, right? Like the best way to learn is to teach and the reason why people do it is because they get so much enjoyment from it. And so people will teach and actually make no money all their life because they actually just like working with, like, let's say, children or whatever in that instance. But if you can make a shit ton of money from it because you're teaching a lot of good people to do good things, it brings you full circle. Did you ever find yourself like kind of lost in the numbers, just like not appreciating what you have?

Jordan: 28:39

um, I yes, definitely I hit a point of like two years ago. Uh, I, I've never really been surrounded by money, so I don't, I didn't really know what to do with it when I got it. And, um, and when I started doing even marginally well, I, everyone around me acted like I just won the lottery or something. And so, like my friends I had at the time, none of us had really come from money, so it was like I had a very false sense of achievement in the early stages of the business. Um, and I'm talking to like, even when I, like, when I was doing like, let's say, 50 K a month or something like that I was, I was acting as if I'd made millions. Like that's millions. That's how I felt about it. And so I hit this point, and it's probably like three years ago now.

Jordan: 29:23

Well, I pretty much took off an entire year. I did nothing to grow the business at all apart from continue making it run, helping our students, jumping on Q&A calls and so on, and I essentially semi-retired. And I remember saying to myself in my head oh cool, I've made the money now and I'm going to find myself a girl, girl and I'm gonna get in a relationship and I jumped in a relationship and that was like my full-time gig for like 12 months and I just like put all of my energy and effort into that and then at the end of it I was kind of looking, looking into it and looking back and I was like, and I just had this revelation. I was like, man, like you really haven't made it at all, like you haven't even got started yet, and I was exposed to other people that were so much further ahead than I was and it just opened my entire world up. And then I just realized what a fucking idiot I had been for that period of time.

Jordan: 30:06

But was I? Because we all have to go through these epiphanies ourselves to come to these realizations, and so some of us are fortunate to be exposed to that early on in life. Many of us are, and that's why I never tell people not to spend the cash they make. I would never tell someone don't buy the watch, don't buy the house, don't buy the car, because I think if someone has the gravitational pull to doing that, they should absolutely do it, because they need to learn the lesson themselves and no one else can give that to them yeah, man, that's so fucking interesting, because it's interesting that you went like a year without like recognizing it internally and thinking like, like was it was, it was a business increasing, like was the revenue increasing, but you weren't making change.

Jordan: 30:46

We were making the same revenue amount for about 12 months. We coasted for like 12 months and then what happened was at the tail end of those 12 months, we started to see a couple of months of decline, which is interesting in itself because I think many of us in online business are so. We don't realize how fortunate we are to be in business models where we don't factor in loss of money and we factor profit into almost every single month, and if we don't make profit, it's a really it's the end of the world. I don't think I've had a single month in business if we don't make profit. It's a really like it's the end of the world. It's like if you don't have, I don't think I don't think I've had a single month in business where we haven't made profit, and that is such a privileged place to be, because that is not a reflection of what business in the greatest scheme of the world, is actually like.

Jordan: 31:31

There are businesses out there. You launch a social media platform and there'll be like 10 years until you make any kind of profit whatsoever. And so the minute I had a couple of months where the figures started dropping a little bit, I panicked and I was like what am I going to do now? I'm going to go back to zero. Is it all going to drop? And I was just chasing my ass. But that period of time was exactly what I needed to then expedite the journey from where I was then to who I am and where I am now. So it had to happen, and I don't regret it at all, because I had a fun time in that year as well but that's all part of like the like, the internal journey.

Darren: 32:03

Right, it's not like I know it sounds woo woo, but like a lot of like business is internally, especially the type of business that we run right, just for some reason that a lot of it is like the more work you do yourself, the more like you're aware of who you are, what you want, your values, the business right or reflect even how you spend cash and what you really want. So it's kind of interesting to observe how, like seven or eight years into this game, you still have like desires, but they change over time. And now the goals are much different. Right, the goalposts have changed, but still the same values.

Jordan: 32:34

It's a hundred percent. The values still remain the same. The goalpost does change.

Jordan: 32:38

I think after a while, when you've fulfilled your own selfish desires, you start looking externally and you're like what can I do for my family?

Jordan: 32:44

What can I do for my friends? How can I create this well for my children? And then I suppose, when you've got that fulfilled, then you're completely sorted there. You're really then thinking how can I impact the world, how can I change things? What can I do from a philanthropy sense and I always envy people in a way that do all of those things at once. And what I'm not saying here is I've been selfish in my wealth and I haven't looked after my family because I have, but I haven't retired my parents completely, I haven't bought my family houses, etc. I haven't launched schools in Africa right, many things that I would like to do, and I envy those people that have the mental capacity to do those things at the same time. So I think it's very difficult to do that. I think it's very difficult to serve yourself and your business and to grow whilst also serving other people, and I think that takes a lot of mental resilience.

Darren: 33:39

But I certainly-. It goes back to uh like having the right people right, because we had myself and my my girlfriend have had a charity for about four years in asia, uh, to do like animal welfare. But it started out together and then when I realized that we were doing like 80 hours a week for it, I obviously stopped fucking doing it, right, but that was basically the first thing I did was pull out of it and pull straight out of it, and now she runs that full-time and that's like you know, way more hours than what I do, right, way more hours. But that's like her thing, right, and it was just the fact that like, yeah, we did it together, but now I definitely don't do it anymore. Um, but you need to go like zero to one and then like basically have a team. I think now she has like a pretty decent team that helps her do that as well, but I think that's just that's kind of interesting.

Darren: 34:20

Now it's not the same scale as building fucking skills in africa, right, but at the same time, to make that impact, you don't need millions of dollars now. Of course, you want to have a bigger impact because you might inject millions of dollars in the future. But I think that's just an interesting observation, how you can kind of go zero to one, use what you have right now and then use that as like a way to have a bigger impact, because that's, I think, where we're always leaning back towards. After all, the business is done, said and done. You know, if you just look at the number of your bank account, it doesn't give you much of a value of who you are. It's basically how you give back the impact you have, and the bigger impact you have invariably will actually increase the money in your bank account as a sub, subfactor, as how it works out right a hundred percent, and that's that's really interesting.

Jordan: 35:00

Um, and I think you're absolutely right, I think it's the key is having those people, and but and in many cases it's easier said than done as well, because you have to. You have to have those people, um, and, and we have like a, we have a tree fund, and we do things where we can, and I, in many cases, see, see, uh, when you invest so much into your product, into your customers, in many cases you are not doing it at all, in any case as charity. But what really, fundamentally, is the difference between giving money into an area where you're essentially gifting money to a factor of life in order to improve it, and investing money into your business, into your customers? Because what I pride myself in is that continual investment into customers that have already spent money with us years ago. They've spent money with us like five years ago, and we're just bringing out new things, we're bringing out new updates and we're giving us all this stuff. We're over delivering in value just to bring value into people's lives.

Jordan: 35:54

So I suppose, in many cases, the same desire, the same things come into play in investing in your business, into your people, as it does externally, into charity and I would love to do some really big environmental stuff at some point, more with animals and conservation of reef systems and so on. But I think to do that mentally it's very hard just to manage the shit you've got going on right now. And I'm a big believer of being all in and I think that to do something well you have to really be able to give dedicate to your time. I wouldn't want to half-ass that I want to do it. I want to do it really big. At the point that I can do it.

Darren: 36:30

Um, I'm not sure that time is now and also man, the emotional impact, the toll it takes on doing stuff like that is actually very heavy because, like, uh, like, from having a small bit of dip in my toe into animal welfare, well, as much as I possibly can, it's not pretty right. I'll put it that way. At the very very least, it's not pretty. A lot of stuff that you see is fucked up, like super fucked up, and you nearly, you nearly, need to put a gate, like a mental gate, on it, because if you didn't like jesus christ man, like your entire life could be consumed by it, which I know a lot of people actually do they become very consumed by it. So it's like you only have so much mental bandwidth and, like you, your fucking main skills are in building, growing. You're the artist, right, you're the creative person, you're the artist, you can feed into other aspects of life. But I just think it's a really good barometer because, like I just see, like a lot like young people get into the space, especially the twitter space, right, and it's all just like fake fucking receipts, revenue numbers, screenshots from stripe, where it's like I I think, I think you're missing the point. That's.

Darren: 37:32

What I think is that there's a bigger play and like matt shields we spoke with previously, like matt shields is very like religious. He always puts it back to like the religious play, like you should always be helping people, so on. That's like his play and he's fucking crushed it right. It's 20, fucking two years old, right, I can see. It's very interesting observation and when I met matt he was like, yeah, I've made, like make like three and a half million a year and it's nothing. And the reason why he says it's nothing is because of like the impact he wants. He needs more, he wants to have more, basically, more of like a desire. I just think it's very interesting to observe yeah, I think so.

Jordan: 38:06

I think I think fundamentally, if you seek impact, everything that you want from the material world will come into existence anyway.

Jordan: 38:14

If you just focus on impact and I think most people in business have that ass backwards and I think that's- okay if you're in your first 12 months, maybe even 24 months, because I don't think society sets us up to understand what good business is, even about. Most of us don't have a clue. I always find it so bizarre how. I mean it's really not bizarre when you think about it, because why would society want us all to own businesses? But I think we all are fighting that uphill battle.

Jordan: 38:40

When we jump into business, we don't know how to set up a company, we don't know how taxes work, we don't know the morals behind growing a business, and so we think we want to make money. We just have to do the things that we see on face value make money. It's only when we start working with people and we start getting customers that we realize that impact equals money. So I um, so I think it's okay that people I mean, you're going to have that twitter money scene, but as long as they grow out of it, you know, and some people don't- some people don't, man.

Darren: 39:07

It's like a fucking cesspit, right. But that kind of red pill, money, twitter, space, people get stuck in it, right. Um, good to start. I would say like good to start in that way, but it's important to graduate from and just be a regular human. I want to shift gears into some of your content. So I think something that is not undervalued but underplayed is like your ability to make fucking great videos, man. Like I don't think people recognize that. Like the content that you put out. Like you've got 240k on youtube. It's wild, right, it's wild. Like 65k some shit. Like that's wild to see your ability to create videos, your ability to script videos, your ability to identify like an audience to market into. And I think one of the most impressive things which I've heard you spoke about on a few podcasts is that where Iman has targeted the 16 to 20 year old, you've kind of targeted the 21 to 25 year old.

Jordan: 40:05

And so it's interesting because we've done the whole Iman thing from the perspective of we have hand-selected audiences in the past and we have then catered ourselves or me as a kind of theoretical character to that audience and so I've tried to go for complete top of funnel 16 to 21 before in the past and it actually just didn't align with me like at all. And I think that you have to. You either are creating content as fundamentally almost entertainment pieces, so the content is fabricated to cater to a specific audience, to invoke a specific emotion, for them to take a specific action. So you're either creating content in that sense or it's docu-style, where you are just authentically speaking and you're just offloading your brain and it's information-based. So content is either entertainment or it's information and there are lines that blur in between that. But that's the difference that we would see, let's say, with Iman's channel, which is that. But that's kind of the difference that we would see, let's say, with Iman's channel, which is in very many ways carefully curated to hit that target audience and he does an exceptional job at it, right, okay, hence why he's grown so big.

Jordan: 41:17

But my content really and you can see we're looking through my content at the times that we've gone through this shift, certainly over the last 12 months, when I realized that I really didn't enjoy creating content that was made in that way and it just doesn't suit my personality. And that's not to say one or the other is better, but it just doesn't suit me. And so when I started creating content, well, I just offloaded my brain and actually, in fact, some of my most lazy videos are my best performing videos and I started showing that I'm doing the thing and I started talking what I was actioning, what I was preaching, and I started showing people that I actually am the person that I say I am on YouTube and not just introducing theory. That's when the channel really started taking off and we started gaining a really good client base, and that took me quite a long time to come to that realization that the best content is just If you're trying to I think for most people watching this creating that entertainment based stuff. You're.

Jordan: 42:14

It's very difficult, but if you want to grow big on youtube, just offload the information that you have in your head in the most authentic way to you. So we have, like charlie morgan space, for example, charlie's a great friend. Charlie's doing a really good job at the moment with his content and what really works for him is he gets up a whiteboard and he scribbles on it and he's so analytical and he's so philosophical and he does such an incredible job at that. I could never create a video like that.

Jordan: 42:42

It's not how my brain works and if you try and become Charlie and you're not fundamentally that person, it's not going to work for you. You have to be a certain character type. I would rather create a notion board or a Myra board and run through and offload some things that I'm passionate about and do it in my way and that works really well for me. And I think you just have to find that groove in yourself. And you can only really do that through repetition of just testing shit. And I think the worst thing that you could do on YouTube is mimic someone like Iman, someone like Charlie, someone like me, as opposed to just testing what feels right in the gut for you.

Darren: 43:12

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Darren: 44:08

Charlie's videos are absolutely wild. I remember I was walking through North Carolina during Christmas we just on a tour in New York and I was super burnt out like 44 hours of flying recording for many days locked in a studio in like rainy New York, and I got to North Carolina and I started watching his like 50 minute videos, like on like long walks, and I emailed, emailed him and I was like your video on time was one of the most impactful videos I've ever seen. I genuinely emailed him and he got back to me and he was like, oh, I appreciate it and I've spoke about a serious nearly every week in my podcast that nothing has impacted me more. And he broke down into construct of time and how you make a change and how you put effort into something. You read a book.

Darren: 44:51

You don't get the effect today. You get it six months, 12 months, and basically he kind of went through this the tracking of like asymmetrical returns, um, and yeah, it was just wild. And if you took, if you check his older videos, which I hadn't a clue about prior to that, they were the super, you know, edited over edited effect. And I checked the comments and everyone was like, yeah, we love these, like more sam oven style, just more like free, um, stream of consciousness, stream of consciousness, uh, thinking, and if he never did it, he would have never got to that point now where he's he's adding like 30 000 subscribers or some shit a month at this day yeah, and that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Jordan: 45:28

He's one of those people that has gone through that journey of realization himself. He's, he's, he's played, he's played the act of puppet by mimicking what other people have done on the platform, realized that didn't work for him and then just figured for what the fuck does actually, what, what the fuck do I actually want to do here? Well, let me just record videos that I want to record and then, fundamentally, that's what other people would. They will feel your authenticity off the back of that and that's why that content will then work.

Darren: 45:54

How do you bring people from your content into your program, like what's the connector?

Jordan: 45:59

I'm not a hardcore salesperson when it comes to the actual content, because I don't actually think necessarily it's the place for it. I have a strong sales background, but I leave that to warm leads and backend. I think that content is a place to provide value and I think if you provide as much value as you possibly can without asking for anything in return, people will always go through that mental thought of well, if he's given me this for free, what will he give me for paid? And naturally find their way to your paid stuff. And so we will do, from time to time, calls to actions.

Jordan: 46:32

We will maybe name drop our program here and there, but I'd certainly don't ram the program down people's throat like some people would on the YouTube space, and I think that's. I think that's really the difference between growing a good brand and growing a big following and having the respect from your following and building a funnel, because content can be a funnel for you, only a funnel for you, if you want it to be. But you can never then expect it to get to the level of, let's say, my channel or Charlie's or Iman's or anyone's for that matter. It won't ever reach a substantial place if you are only using it as a lead magnet.

Darren: 47:04

So lead with the value and people will find their way yeah, like the content should just sit on its own, it should just be its own living kind of entity, and then everything else that happens in the back end is like a value add. Basically, in terms of people that want to work with you, they can work with you. I think that's the the problem of like, when you it goes back to the very beginning, right, uh, increasing the likelihood of achievement, the the effort to sacrifice. When we move all those like dials and start fucking with them, that's when people will say, okay, well, they're coming to this program to make it super easy, which is exactly like the problem in that space, right Is like. That's where the issue is. But the fact that you're running it async and, man, to be honest, with the traffic that you're getting and the amount of views that you're getting, like you're probably doing like a couple million views a month. You don't even need to be hired selling in any way in that regard, right?

Jordan: 47:50

No, you don't need to be, and it also gives you the ability to pick and choose who you want to work with. There's nothing greater in the world than the abundance of leads, because then you can choose who is suitable for you. You can qualify. I think it's really tricky as a business owner when you're in a place of famine when it comes to lead flow, because you start working with the wrong people and actually then your business over a period of time goes in the completely wrong direction, because you're building a product for the wrong person. And so, yeah, having a large content flow, which certainly has to do with the fact that we don't pressure sell on the channel itself.

Darren: 48:22

Question for you on that. So a lot of your students or customers they're in like the SMA space or during the client service space. Would you recommend them creating content for their business to get leads?

Jordan: 48:36

um, yes, absolutely, I think that I think so. That was how I got a lot of clients, uh, in the e-commerce space from my first move into e-commerce. So I used to rank number one. We used to. First of all, we used to offer every ad platform we used to run ads for. We, first of all, we used to offer every ad platform we used to run ads for. We no longer do that. We only run ads on Facebook now in the agency and we just have a content bolt on. But I used to rank number one for how to start Facebook ads, how to start YouTube ads, how to start Google ads, how to start TikTok ads it's all the big platforms and Snapchat as well, and that was, for a very long time, our main lead flow when it came to brands. And then we started working with larger brands and then the beginner content didn't work as well and we stopped doing it. But I think as an agency owner.

Jordan: 49:16

Let's say you're working with cosmetic dentists. There is so little content out there. Maybe with dentists is probably an outline to this because it's such a popular niche. But let's say tattoo shops. You create a YouTube video on how to run Facebook ads for tattoo shops on the best tattoo shop marketing strategy in 2024, or getting 10 times the total investment for a tattoo shop. Okay, those keywords you're going to be.

Jordan: 49:42

It's so easy to. People don't realize how easy it is to actually rank a video on search on YouTube. In a small market If it's a small market it's so much easier to rank a video on YouTube and that is so much more and infinitely more valuable than ranking something on Google, because you have visuals that come into play as well, and then you can, of course, someone gets to watch the content and they actually get to know you and connect to you, rather than just seeing a landing page. And so, yeah, absolutely, people should be using in any agency and it doesn't matter what service they're offering or what niche they're working with. One video a week or one every two weeks would go a very long way.

Darren: 50:13

most people shy away from content yeah, and I always kind of struggle with that my brain, because it's like, oh, should we put more time into like outreach? We put more time into client services, or should we put more time into building that brand and building that personal brand based on the front end? But now it's something that I've just learned. You know, you look back at the data and you see, like the, you know, the truth reveals itself. It's obviously something that's benefited us like tenfold, and we spoke previously as well about how a lot of people that I will interact with before anything, if we're speaking with their podcast, they'll check out mine and if they ever ask for like a case study or an example, the first study I always use is mine, because you, you lead, but fucking you lead from the front.

Darren: 50:51

Right, it's trial by fire. It's like here's the example of how I did it for me, and, yes, there's fucking 50 other more people, but let's just look at me today and I'll send you the rest of them an email, right, I think that kind of authority frame is underrated because it's something that people don't do. So if you can basically show yourself being a good example and again back to fitness right, you're not going to work with someone who's a fat personal trainer. So, at the very baseline, the personal trainer you're going to work with needs to be in a good shape. And then, yes, they look at their fucking case studies, but it has to start from within initially this is the thing about content is I?

Jordan: 51:26

I truly believe that people don't understand how much impact content will have on every other area of the business. If you're outreaching, regardless of what your outreach platform is, people check you out after you've booked a meeting with them. They'll check you out if you haven't booked a meeting with them and maybe they'll self-subscribe. And if you don't look like the person you've said you are in that outreach, if you don't come across, if you don't have that social proof, you don't have that clout and that presence and authority, then you're not going to be able to close clients. And it's almost a non-quantifiable amount and I think that's why most people shy away from it, because you can't really quantify how much of an impact content is having on your brand until you get inbound leads and you can't quantify the impact of your youtube channel on your email outreach. But it's there, I best believe it like and it's and it's, and I would. I would say it's so much more significant than we would even presume if we could get that stat would be shocked man, I love that.

Darren: 52:21

It's like like your whole take on this is like just it's there, just take your word for it, right, I call it. I call it the intangibles. I say to our clients like it's the intangible benefit, and they almost hate it when I say it, but I'm like we can't measure it. But it is there, like like it's proof in the pudding, right, and uh, what I always say too is like if we're what I call right and we go through like our, like our model, and someone's like how do I know it's going to work, I'm like, how did, how did you fucking find me? And they're like, oh, okay, and now it makes sense. It's like that's why we're here. It's true that that's full circle, right, man?

Darren: 52:57

I want to ask you about the masterminds. So I know you've done a ton of them in the past and one observation I've made from so a lot of the interviews I do right, they're all fucking killer dudes smashed it. You know great guys, nice, really nice guys as well. I must say that there's nice people. They've all been in the Sam Ovens masterminds. Every one of them, every single one of them have been in it. And again, time, time effect and the impact of time. It was like three years ago they were in it and now they're smashing it right. And I asked them the same questions, being like what, like what was your experience kind of going into like masterminds and like what would you say is the benefit of you doing it?

Jordan: 53:38

basically, honestly, for anyone who is watching this right now, who has enough, who's sitting on a little bit of money in their bank account, in their business and they're conserving it for whatever reason and thinking about whether they should invest in something like a mastermind like I, it's probably one. It's probably my single biggest regret in business is not jumping into mastermind sooner. It took me three years in business and and and to already be at 100k a month to jump in my first mastermind. But I dread to think where I would be right now We'd be well in excess of a million a month if I started masterminding from year one or year two, and I'm unwaveringly confident about that. Masterminds for me. And let me just start by prefacing the mindset of why I didn't join Mastermind sooner, because I think it's really important for people.

Jordan: 54:33

I, when I first started my business, I had this mindset that I was able to, that information was available in abundance and it's everywhere, and if I can just watch YouTube videos on it, then I'll just watch YouTube and I never need to pay anyone for anything, and I've got the ability to learn things myself and I've got books and there's just no reason why I need to pay people for their information, which is ironic from someone who owns an education business now. But that led me to a certain point and because I did get some kind of success and because I could get myself to a certain level, all I did was fuel my ego and fuel that image. But I couldn't have been more wrong and I'm so happy to admit that and I'm so glad I came to that realization. When I first joined Sam Oven's Mastermind, it opened my entire world and it made me realize well, I've been missing out on the entire time and actually coming full circle from what we were talking about earlier on them, 12 months where I just coasted, that was the big action that I took.

Jordan: 55:21

When I started having that decline, I was like what are you going to do here? How are you going to get out of this? And I knew I needed a big, big mental trigger and so I just joined Sam's Mastermind, went to the first event and I saw everyone doing really well. And this is the year that you've got Cole Gordon in there. You have ad clients, brian Moncada, there's some really great people in there and I started meeting these individuals and having conversations and they just realized that I needed to think bigger in those moments and it's, I think, one thing and, just coming back from one this week, one thing that I always love the most about masterminds very rarely will you come away from it without getting what you want out of it.

Jordan: 55:58

So if you go in with a purpose and then you're trying to come through a certain problem, maybe you don't know what you need to do for the next 12 months. Maybe you're launching a product and you don't know how you're going to launch it. Whatever that is, if you go into it with a purpose, it's very unlikely that you're going to come out of it with the right people in the room without that answer. But there's an intangible again benefit of just this fire that you feel within you from being surrounded by other people that are seriously successful, and you can do that at any time. You can go to Dubai if you want to hang out with rich people.

Jordan: 56:27

I'm not talking about that. It's when you're in an environment where all cards are on the table, where everybody is there to lay everything out and there is nothing held back, where the ego is stripped at the door, and and you're in this position and we make this very clear in our mastermind as well, because we have one that you are here to share and everyone is here to share, and that you can't sell anyone anything and that we want everybody to succeed here. And when you come into something with that preface, just the energy is different and you can learn anything you want to learn and it just fires you the fuck up for months. It's just an incredible thing. I'd recommend it for anyone like, yeah, you have to be in the right space, don't just buy into anything. You have to be in the right circle with the right people and they have to achieve what you want to achieve. But if you can be in those spaces, it propels your journey forward tenfold.

Darren: 57:13

So let me ask you that so with the Sam Ovens one, let's use that as an example. Was that specifically your own info products?

Jordan: 57:29

mastermind like sam had. Sam had all types of different people you would have. You would have. There was someone that had a multi-million dollar guitar business and they were educating people on guitar and, yes, lots of it was. I think there's info and agencies really at the time, yeah and so what would be your advice there?

Darren: 57:43

so, like, would you be joining ones now, like you did recently? That's in your niche, that's in your, that's in your target. And the reason I'm saying this is because there's some bigger ones that like touch on different shit, right, like some, like some could be like health orientated with like ecom, with like fucking crypto, with like this, or there's different things it's funny because I was.

Jordan: 58:03

It's just so fresh and fresh in mind at the moment. I think the perfect sweet spot is like two masterminds. I think any more than two masterminds that you're in currently is too much and I think they have to be two polarizing things. One of them may be something personal and one may be business, but I think fundamentally you have to pick something that aligns with the highest probability that the majority of people in the room are going to be where you want to be or have achieved what you want to achieve right now. So your one to three year plan and the key to consider about a mastermind is the best ones aren't when the person in the room is the person delivering all the value, the best mastermind, and that wasn't Sam. So I think about like this like Sam Evans mastermind maybe certainly not when I joined, and Sam's an incredible guy. I'm invested in schoolcom, I believe in him wholeheartedly and he's one of the just the homages of this industry, so I founded this industry.

Jordan: 58:57

Arguably, he was not the main player in that mastermind. He was from a perceptional standpoint because he was somewhat of a celebrity to some people. Perceptional standpoint because he was somewhat of a celebrity to some people, but the value was this collective energy from everyone and it was the shares of cole standing at the front and sharing his stuff, and then you'd have someone else go up there and and we had a panel of youtubers and we're all sharing and taking answers to the room, and that's where the collective value comes from. Exactly the same with the mastermind I joined I was in this this week it's not about the person that owns it at all. In fact, he spoke once for for 20 minutes. What he spat was fire, but it was that collective value from everyone else. So you have to select it based on the people that are in it, not based on the person that owns it man.

Darren: 59:42

Are you familiar with chris doe? I don't, the name rings a bell. Uh, he owns a company called the future. He used to be the um creative artist for people like justin timberlake and a few other people and then he built the future, which is basically like an info product for creative people getting into like online space. And uh, he's part of that like fucking alex ramozi, cody sanchez, sam ovens a group.

Darren: 1:00:06

And uh, he said to me basically that he was like at a table and sam was there and, like you know, sam like doesn't like talk. He's a very like quiet, just like quite a normal guy. And he was like hey, he was like Chris, so you should start a mastermind. And Chris was like ah, like I don't know, like you know, my stuff is in like creative work for like big brands, like it probably wouldn't help people, and he's like no, no, no, it's not like about like you.

Darren: 1:00:26

He was like started and it's 100K for the year and he's like me four times a year, 100k. And he was like just do two sessions, do a session and basically answer a few Q&A questions. Don't bring any questions, just answer Q&As and then the group will take care of the rest. And he was like what do you mean? And he was like, basically, if it's 100K a year, you'll get people that make at least 10 million a year in there and them collectively being together is actually the value of the mastermind. You're actually not even going to be the one that's delivering the message. They will be delivering the messages to each other and they will come with questions and bringing those questions will answer the questions and evoke new questions. So describes exactly as you said. Now I don't think he fell follow through with it, but it was that concept of like how do we attract the best people possible for the best outcome for everyone in the 100?

Jordan: 1:01:19

and he's, he's bang on the money. That's what it is, because it's not about even just that time that you're sitting in front and you've got this classroom setting where you're firing ideas around. It's when you're're sat at dinner and you're like I really need to speak to that guy because he's just created that funnel that I'm trying to create right now. I want to shortcut all the email flows. I want to shortcut the do's and don'ts and bang in one sitting at dinner in a 20-minute conversation. You've achieved what you could have achieved in 20 months trying to do it yourself. That is the intrinsic value. Do it yourself, that is the intrinsic value.

Jordan: 1:01:54

And yeah, I think that masterminds are the peak of time-based return on investment. When it comes to education, I think that courses and mentorship and so on is fantastic and I think that that can get you to a certain point. But if you're on a high-level business and you're trying to achieve something or you're trying to get somewhere, you want to learn something. We don't really have time to watch courses and take coaching and so on and jump on a call every single week. And a mastermind environment can. I think that's the peak.

Darren: 1:02:28

I think that's the the ultimate return relevant to me too. So is it more focused on agency?

Jordan: 1:02:31

yeah, so our mastermind um a session is based uh, is focused on agency owners. So, uh, minimum 50k a month revenue. So it's it's experienced agency owners, um, although the average revenue is like 200k in in the room. Um, and we've the mastermind model that we're following is is a similar format to what most people do when you have like one event every quarter, albeit this year we kind of put a little bit of a pause on it because we're working on another project at the moment. So we're going to do kind of Q3, q4, rather than Q1, q2. But with us we've taken a little bit of a different spin on it. Initially it was a bit of a passion play. So what we've done is we went to Tulum in Q1 last year and we hired two mega mansions, sister mansions, and we had 30 agencies there, which was awesome, or 30 individuals of probably about 18, 20 agencies, and then we hired like a big penthouse in London as well. So there's a lifestyle play with our mastermind as well, which is quite fun, completely diminishes profit.

Darren: 1:03:32

Like literally, if you're watching this thinking I want to start a mastermind so I can make money from it.

Jordan: 1:03:35

Like, the profit margins on masterminds are terrible. You're really not doing it for interesting. You're not really not launching a mastermind for any kind of business revenue or profit. You launch a mastermind for I mean, of course, for a place to house all of your most successful people, but really for your own knowledge as well. Like my mastermind is the best place for me to learn the latest things that are working from the best agencies in the world right now, and then, like that trickles down into my education and everything else that I'm doing. It trickles down into my agency as well, because just because I've got an education program and agency doesn't mean I know everything there is when it comes to growing an agency.

Jordan: 1:04:16

It doesn't mean I have the one answer, and I think that's the key. No one has the one answer. There's a hundred different ways to do the same thing, right, and so, like from a selfish position, my master, there's a place for me to learn. I sit back and I'm watching other people like, wow, this is just, this is awesome. Like I gotta make a little bit of cash, but I also get to learn all of this and I gotta have an incredible time and I get to see people that are now making 300k a month, that joined us when they were in university. It's like this whole full circle moment.

Darren: 1:04:43

it's incredible man, it's a curse of granted knowledge, right, when you're so deep in your business. It's not that you think you know everything, but you think that what you know is like it basically right, like there's it's, it's subconscious, it's happening subconsciously. So having that new filtration process of more information coming in from people that are just crushing it is super important, right? And man, I imagine the profit margins are pretty thin when, like these guys, are making absolute bank and now you have to host them for like a week, their standards are gonna be pretty high.

Jordan: 1:05:10

With a, with a, yeah oh, tolu villa was like 50 000 pounds just for the villa, like so. And then you're like you're paying for entertainment and so on, all sorts of going on. Um, so yeah that's it.

Jordan: 1:05:24

That's in mexico, of all places too yeah, mexico, yeah, yeah, so you can imagine what that was like. But yeah, it's a cool play, I don't think long-term you would, I don't think it's actually. I think, if you don't take, don't model what I've done here for anyone who's in the info space, like I think, like you could do like one retreat a year, but I don't think it's just yeah, and it's also a lot of mental tax, like a lot goes into that, like planning that and you get an events team in and no matter what team you've got, it still takes a lot of mental tax. You got to consider that even going yourself.

Darren: 1:05:57

Right, and you made a good point about like limit yourself for like fucking two a year or whatever two groups a year because, like one, the filtration system, again like too much information. You know you're going in different directions. If you ever look at, like, um, the diary of ceos podcast, right, all the comments are just like every week this information is completely different. And that's how I sometimes describe this stuff. Right, it's like if you're getting a bit of everything, you're kind of going in no direction. And the second thing then is your own commitment. Right, you need time to execute on what you learned, and that's a big thing. Right, it's like you come to yours in tulum, you have fun, you learn, but then you spend six months implementing what you've learned and now you're like basically locked in for the next six months until you need to go again exactly that is key and it's really important.

Jordan: 1:06:38

And what I also recommend people doing if you're, if you're part of a mastermind now or you're gonna join a mastermind is book like two days off afterwards, just somewhere when you can be alone, especially if you have a partner and you live with someone else, or even if you live with friends. Book two days to just decompress and filter out the shit and make a plan, because if not and you have to jump back into the, you come home and you're back into the real world, you're back into your personal life and you've got all these other distractions. It's very hard to then maintain what was a very significant priority a couple of days ago when you're then back in the, the madness of your everyday life.

Darren: 1:07:18

So, yeah, I think that's key that's where a lot of the muse of life comes in around. You should definitely check out um rick rubin's new book well, not new book, but latest book and he talks about like a lot of like the creative work or like the problems you're trying to solve. They come from outside of the business, right? So let's say you're in that mastermind, you learn shit, but then it's not until the days afterwards where you're walking on the beach and just decompressing that. Then you get what you wanted to learn, right, it's not going to be back on like the fucking whiteboard and, I guess, interesting ways to like learn, like how we actually process, how we can relay information and actually implement it then as a result. So, yeah, man, I want to say a big thank you. It's fucking nearly 10 o'clock. We've been running for quite some time. I really appreciate this man. I want to do the next one in person, for sure, but yeah bro, this was sick.

Jordan: 1:08:02

Yeah, awesome man, it's been great chatting to you.

Darren: 1:08:05

It's been a long time coming and definitely we'll get one in person, be it in bali, be it in london, wherever we'll get it for sure I want to do a lot more traveling now, like, well, over summer I will be doing more travel for recording as well, so it'll be good to get in person and yeah, man, just uh, I think I can help you with two always, always free to reach out nice amazing.

Jordan: 1:08:22

Well, thanks so much.