So Dr. Robert Cialdini, so when I interviewed on our YouTube channel, he talks about
the power of authority, and that is how you source deals first exclusively and at a
better valuation. Someone comes to you for your strategic expertise and insights. Jay
Abraham says the most important thing is preeminence, so being positioned as the most
trusted, most well connected, most well known in a very specific area. When you
consult with what every billionaire has said publicly, some common themes come out
again and again. We bring this up often at our events, being highly integrated,
focused, aligned with who's on your team, what you offer, what you do and don't do,
avoiding the herd. Daniel Kaufman said, and I didn't know what he was gonna say for
any of his answers really, he said, "Don't do what everyone else does. "I wanna go
fly and meet them in person. "Don't copycat and act like the herd and rely upon
LinkedIn and digital tools. So doing the opposite, being unique is important.
Warren Buffett says the tide often matters more than the swimmer. So if your
business is growing and you have all these different vertical integration options, you
have these different growth options, which one is most asymmetrical? Which one are
you most excited about? Which one do you trust the partner most with, et cetera, is
really important and choosing the right tide can matter more than how hard you work.
So where you apply your energy and how much focus you have can matter more than
how many hours a day you're grinding on different things. What you really wanna do
is create an unfair advantage basically over your former self. It doesn't have to be
a competitive thing where it's like you're trying to gain a massive advantage over
others. That may happen naturally, but improving yourself in what you get for your
expenditure of energy and time should be something that you're always evaluating. We
talked earlier about being concise. How do you say in a sentence something will get
people to lean forward and want to meet with you? That's completely different than
anyone else ever says to them. So you stand out night and day from everybody else.
The exercise we do here today is going to help with that. You can't do that
without a great degree of focus. And Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, he
says that having extreme focus is really a superpower. And if you want to extend
your moat, play a unique game, don't compare yourself to others, do something so
different that nobody can even compare you to somebody else. Acquire strategic choke
points like we've talked about today, be number one in something for someone and
start very niche and grow in concentric circles mapping out visually the industry
you're in can help when reviewing options and what you want to avoid is something
that looks like this like this is what we do and this is the big group of people
doing it and then it just gets lost right you say where you run a real estate
platform you know so do literally ten other thousand ten thousand other people so
doing things as unique as you can the founder of EO is Vern Harnish he talks a
lot about focusing on the most valuable niche and just going very deep there and
All of our industries are getting more mature. It doesn't matter It's a newer
industry and you're managing, you know Blockchain technology investment fund or you're
managing industrial real estate. It gets more competitive over time So you have to
specialize again and again. You might have seen this diagram at one of our workshops
in the past But what are you doing this quarter or this year, this is going to
help you dial in your energy. When you're selecting where to focus your time,
if you choose the wrong thing or the wrong partner, you can grow old more quickly,
or it can really be something that you do for the next 10, 20 years when it
starts working, right? So there's a book called The Road Less Stupid by Keith
Cunningham, and his whole book is about being very thoughtful in a world where last
year the Oxford dictionary said the word of the year was brain rot because everyone
just scrolls on their Instagram and TikTok and can't focus on much. Being extra
thoughtful on where you invest your time is something that fewer and fewer people
probably are doing. So that's why we need to slow down and do an exercise like
this and you'll get a chance to meet a few other people here at the event. Many
times it's focusing on a niche within a niche And if you're not getting enough
momentum, getting more niched focus than you currently are, and just having that
crystal clear advantage, so you just stand out night and day from everyone else.
I've also found that if you focus on exciting exponential projects where you're
aligning all of the things we're going to discuss, it not only goes better, it's
more fun and exciting. And if you're doing things that are not exciting, it might
be because you really do not like your partner, the market is not like in your
offering, or something is off and not highly aligned. When we asked our all
different AI tools with pro -athlete talks on stage, billionaires, investors on stage,
et cetera, and we said, what does it take to be one out of 1 ,000? This is a
summary list that came from all those data sources. If you want to be not the top
1%, but 0 .1%, be laser focused on a high value niche, be bold and not boring,
have a clear, unique, compelling vision, ultra healthy and have a peak mindset, be
high velocity and high integrity, and have a beast mode work ethic and implement
very quickly. So if you implement slow and think about it too much, then someone
else taking action is gonna learn and you learn through action and feedback loops.
So all that combined is important. So we love to show this diagram at some of our
workshops. We oftentimes don't have time to go deep on it, but I wanted to say at
this event because it's a smaller room and we can do some networking as part of
this, but essentially Jim Collins has this diagram, you know, of an event diagram
and it's basically telling you his hedgehog strategy was not to say yes to anything
unless you're really passionate about it. It can make you a lot of money and it
also fits your background and your DNA. If it only fits two of those and it
doesn't make you money, you'll never be able to hire people, scale it up, invest in
your technology, et cetera. If it makes you a lot of money, you're naturally really
good at it and you're not passionate about it, then when you're flying home from
this event, if you did come from mainland, the other person who's passionate is
gonna be writing down notes, drafting emails to their team, even if they don't have
Wi -Fi and sending those once they land. they're gonna run circles around you with
the amount of action they take 'cause they're so excited about what they're doing.
So it's important that you only say yes to things that fit all three of those
criteria. And then the other three criteria I like to think about is what is your
biggest strength individually or as a company? Where is the most future demand?
So if you work really hard for this position, the tide is at your back and the
tide is gonna come in. like Gary Vaynerchuk always says, if you're always just
chasing where the herd already is, then at best you're gonna track the herd and
it's not gonna be good for you. You're gonna be investing in things right as it
hits the high and then it's maybe gonna maybe go down, right? You don't wanna do
that. So you wanna get in front of demand, where's the most future demand and where
is the lowest competition? Usually life becomes less fun if there's tons of
competition. And if you're not doing what's your biggest strength and it doesn't fit
this criteria, It might not be the smartest way to grow your private equity
platform, your real estate platform, grow your balance sheet, or acquire that next
business you wanted to acquire, etc. So this should be helpful for my local investor
friends from here in Hawaii, but also anyone running a platform that they're looking
to scale. And so this is the worksheet. You need to first write down what is your
biggest strength? Where's the most future demand? And you might be considering two,
four, six or seven areas of investment or growth and try to, when you look at the
most future demand, just write one or two things in there that have the most
inevitable future big demand. And then the third question here, where is the lowest
amount of serious competition? So you aren't one out of hundreds of people competing
head to head in a niche. After that, If you write down a couple of notes, what
you're most passionate about in your business, look at your DNA, where have you had
success before, who's on your team, what capabilities do you have, what distribution
or access you have, and then what makes you the most money historically and in what
opportunities are most profitable, and then try to condense that down to just one or
two ideas there in the middle. Would like to take five to seven minutes to do
this. Right Now it's 11 45. So at 11 52, we'll just ask you to break into groups.
I'll let you know when that time is, and you can just get in groups of two or
three or table. We just ask you not to meet maybe with somebody from your team,
'cause you can talk to them anytime. Maybe meet somebody new, introduce yourself, and
then share what you wrote down, and then maybe you'll learn something from what they
wrote down. You can get to know a few other people here at the event. So we'll
give you seven minutes to complete this and then we're going to take about 20, 25
minutes to do networking, explain what you wrote down. If you need a cup of water
or refresh your coffee, you can go do so. And then we're going to come back here
for a private investor discussion panel before breaking for lunch. And then we have
another, you know, 60 % of the content after lunch, but we'll have a good hour
networking break for lunch as well. So if you can start filling out this worksheet,
that would be great. And I'll let you know when the seven minutes are up. All
right, if we can get everybody's attention here, we're going to come back for our
next discussion panel. I know our table only got through part of the workshop
discussion, but that's all right. It's good to meet everyone at the table and
helpful. So I think the number one most important thing about the worksheet that we
just completed is just knowing what is the number one best use of your energy over
everything else. One of my mentors, Evan Pagan, he says that clarity multiplies
action. If you're not taking action, it might be because you don't have clarity.
And Bezos says that 90 % of stress is knowing that there's a situation that needs
to be addressed and you have not taken action on it yet. And once you turn a
problem into a project because you're taking action on it, then a lot of the stress
goes away and 90 % of cases stress is just not taking action on a problem yet and
clarity multiplies action. So it's one of the most important things I've learned from
working with family offices is just try to have great crystal clear clarity.