Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Jay Samit on The Art of Disruption, How Successful Entrepreneurs Find Seven-Figure Ideas

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of YAP is sponsored by Shopify, Relay, and Masterclass. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Take control of your money with Relay, an online banking platform that puts you in complete control of your cash flow. Sign up for free at Relayfi.com-profiting. With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Right now, you can get two memberships for the price of one at masterclass.com-profiting. As always, you can find all of our deals in the show notes. What's up, young improv, I am super pumped for today's YAP Classic. We're pulling my first interview with Jay Samut from the Archives. Jay is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on disruption and innovation. He's raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups. He's sold companies to Fortune 500s and he's transformed entire industries with his expertise in disruption and entrepreneurship. In this episode, Jay teaches us how to cultivate

Starting point is 00:01:17 a disruptive mindset. He breaks down an exercise that you can do at home that will give you 90 new business ideas in just 30 days. And he's going to teach us how to rewire toxic thought patterns and beliefs. And even though this interview was recorded back in 2019, it is more relevant than ever. Think about how AI is disrupting industries like copyrighting and graphic design and content creation. The people who will thrive during this AI renaissance are those who have a disruptive mindset and who are able to leverage AI and think in an innovative way so they can solve as many problems as possible. Like I said, I'm super excited to replay today's episode, so let's dive straight in,

Starting point is 00:01:56 enjoy my conversation with Jay Samit. Thanks for joining Young & Profiting Podcast. My pleasure. Excited to be here. First, let's talk about your expertise on disruptions. Harvard professor Clayton Christensen coined the term disruptive innovation back in 1997. And he explained that a disruptive business

Starting point is 00:02:18 is one that starts by either satisfying the less demanding customer or creating a market where none existed before. Does your definition of disruption differ from Clay Ends or is it similar? Don't like to trash people. Mine's different. One of the reasons I wrote Disrupt You was there were a lot of books written by pure academics that have never worked or done anything. The one you're mentioning actually once raised a private equity fund and they forced

Starting point is 00:02:44 them to give back whatever money was remaining less than a couple years later because he'd lost most of it. Here's the simple definition of disruption. Think of that scene in Indiana Jones, where he's on the streets of Cairo. There's that swordsman with the giant cimitar that he pulls out. Swords had been around forever, you know, from the Bronze Age. They made little knives, bigger knives, kings were defended, Game of Thrones. Swords were great. And all of a sudden that scene in Indiana Jones and Raiders of Lost Ark, the guy comes out and with the big sword and

Starting point is 00:03:17 Indy pulls out a Smith and Wesson, that's disruption. Once somebody invented the gun, the sword was kind of, it doesn't matter if you make a better sword or a new sword. We now live in this era of endless innovation, and so what you have to realize is every business will be disrupted. And the only way to continue your career is to continue to disrupt yourself. So a great current example is everybody knows about autonomous vehicles. Everybody knows that they're coming fast. I have a Tesla and I'm blown away as it drives and changes lanes and does everything. So most people go, okay, so the auto industry is disrupted,

Starting point is 00:03:53 but you have to look what else changes? Well, here's what else changes. In the US, the automobile insurance industry is a 220 billion industry. That goes away if there's no more drivers behind the wheel. It's not your fault if it's an accident. The car that you buy testable cell insurance. And so you start noticing the ripple effect of change. So you don't have to invent something new. You just have to see how it changes the world. That's my definition.

Starting point is 00:04:23 Awesome. So essentially disruptors don't have to discover something new. They just have to see how it changes the world. That's my definition. Awesome. So essentially, disruptors don't have to discover something new. They just have to discover a practical use for that discovery, correct? And that took me 20 years of my career. I'd see these amazing things invented. The company spent millions and millions of dollars for it. And whatever reason, it didn't hit the market that they were going for. And you could say, wow, but if I would take that same thing to solve this other problem, I don't have to invent all that. You know, we live on a time where there's so much technology. We have a supercomputer in our pocket with us 24 seven that can reach 7 billion people. You're one click away

Starting point is 00:05:02 from being a billionaire. It is that simple. And all you have to do is figure out that path. And the first step is to realize entrepreneurs don't sell something. Entrepreneurs aren't buying an apple for $1 and selling it for $2. And entrepreneur is solving a problem. You solve a problem for a few friends, you're popular.

Starting point is 00:05:25 Solve a problem for a million people, you're rich. Solve a problem for a billion people, you change the world. All of us have that ability today because we're so interconnected. So you're just like one nanosecond away from changing your future in the world. Yeah. You actually have a great story about taking technology from a failed business and then applying it in a new way to achieve massive success. You actually were the inventor of the airport kiosk. Could you just tell that story to our listeners because I think it really articulates how with disruption you don't have to actually be the inventor. Sure, so I was in my early 20s and one of the early people working with computers.

Starting point is 00:06:07 And there was a new thing that came out called the Lottery. States now had Lottery. And to go back in 1980s, ancient history, the way that the Lottery tickets were sold was a little screen, one of those, what you see in the movies, those green and white screens that just showed you the numbers. And California was the next state to get the lottery. And they wanted somebody to make a self working kiosk that you put your bill acceptor in and do all by yourself. And so the competition had this little green screen and you type in the numbers and that's it. And I spent every penny I had and maxed out my credit cards designing what I thought was the perfect

Starting point is 00:06:46 machine. It had a color screen that did video. It spoke in eight languages. It had a motion detector when you walked by it in a supermarket and go, pss, what would you do with a million dollars or whatever you wanted to say? It was so much head and shoulders above the competition and when you're young and starting out your cocky and think, you know, everything, that I knew I was going to win this multi-million dollar contract and life would be sweet and everything. And I go up to Sacramento. What I didn't find out till later, because the FBI had a secret videotape, was somebody

Starting point is 00:07:20 was making a decision, a state senator named Alan Robbins, was taking a briefcase with $50,000 cash in it from my competition and was awarded the contract. Now, I don't know this on the day. I find this out later. He goes to prison. My competition, by the way, got to keep the contract even though they bribed for it. But that day, I lost. I'm not getting it.

Starting point is 00:07:41 And I fly back to Los Angeles and I am not only dejected, I don't actually have a working credit card at that point because I maxed them out. And they didn't have enough cash to take a cab. And I'm trying to figure out how to get back from the airport. And at the airport, they used to have these nice, retired people, little old men and ladies who would sit you and tell you different stuff.

Starting point is 00:08:03 But by the time I got to the airport, those deaths had been closed, the information desks. So now I have no clue. And then it dawns on me. L.I.X. has 50 million visitors a year, not all of them speak English, not all of them come in the volunteers are there. How do people figure out how to get from point A to point B, how to get a cab, this is before Uber and everything. And then I realized my kiosk would be perfect for this.

Starting point is 00:08:27 So from that failure, I didn't give up. I just looked at how to solve another problem. And so so many businesses or pivots, there were three guys that had a great idea when 10 years ago, computer dating was already popular, but broadband had come out. So now you could use video and people could have video on a computer. So they said, wait a second, let's make a dating site instead of still pictures, we'll

Starting point is 00:08:56 put videos. And it was called tune in hook up. So they took on a make a fortune, they go, oh my God, now you can see person's personality, hear their voice, so much more of chemistry is a video than a still picture. And they put this site up, they do a brilliant job, and they had one problem. They didn't realize what do you do if nothing but losers show up. They had the worst videos. The first video on the site was a guy standing in front of the elephant cage at the zoo talking about why you should go out with them. So Tune in and hook up

Starting point is 00:09:30 was a dismal failure. But they looked at the data. You'll hear me say this again and again. And the data showed them something they didn't expect in their business plan. Yes, no woman wanted to date these people, but she absolutely wanted to show every one of her friends how bad the pickings were So she shared the videos and guys shared the videos So about 10 months in they changed the name of tune and hook up to YouTube It's very rare that a person says here's my business plan and here's you know the straight path to the top It's about failing It's about failing. It's about failing again and again and again until you succeed. So it's about believing in yourself. If

Starting point is 00:10:12 you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. That's what Henry Ford said and it is so true. From your reading material, I understand now that true innovation really comes from looking at problems differently. And you have an exercise that helps your students get into a disruptor's mindset where you tell them to write three problems they face each day and it helps them look at problems differently and get ideas for innovation. I'd really like my listeners to try this at home so could you explain how to do this exercise? Sure.

Starting point is 00:10:42 So yeah, so one of the things that I've done for the past decade for fun is I teach a class at the largest engineering school in the US on how to create a high tech startup. The best student project was two students that did $150 million the first year. So this process works. And here's the process. As you said, right down today, not tomorrow,

Starting point is 00:11:02 start right now, three problems in your life and do that every day for one month. The first day, it's pretty easy. I was in traffic, you know, whatever you want to write down. But after you get one or two or three days into it, it's really hard to come up with problems because we've gotten in a mindset of this is the way it's always done, this is the way it happens, and we don't recognize problems.

Starting point is 00:11:27 So give you two classic ones. Couple people were stuck in traffic and Tel Aviv. Now I live in Los Angeles. We have the worst traffic probably in the US, but every city now has traffic. And Tel Aviv isn't as bad. It's not a giant, giant city, but it dawned on them that the phone company

Starting point is 00:11:43 knew where their phone was. So they said, wait a second. If my phone told me to go left and the other driver to go right there wouldn't be traffic That was ways and they sold it for over billion dollars without a penny in revenue Second example was a reader of mine He gets up in the morning and he He gets up in the morning and he grabs his medicine to take it. The phone rings, he answers the phone, has his conversation, and then he's staring there. Did he take his pill? Well, because he was doing the exercise, he's sitting there waiting a second.

Starting point is 00:12:16 Yeah, you know, this is a problem. If I don't take it, then I won't get better. And if I do take it, I could overdose. What do you do? So he got a little plastic watch like you would get from a happy meal. Put it on the lid of a pill bottle. So when you shut the pill bottle, the clock goes to zero.

Starting point is 00:12:33 So in that situation, it could look down and say, oh, I opened it three minutes ago. Yes, I took my pill or oh, it hasn't been open for eight hours. No, I didn't. Then he made a Bluetooth version so that you could check whether grandma took her medicine and reminded her to take her medicine. And then he said, how do I make this really popular?

Starting point is 00:12:50 And he realized it was a solution for the opioid crisis that you could make bottles that only unlock at certain intervals. And so what from now one moment in his day, he launched a giant business that has changed society. So it's really that process. So at the end of your 30 days, you have 90 ideas. You have more deal flow than the busiest venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. And then sort them along two axes.

Starting point is 00:13:21 One, what are you really passionate about? Because the road to success isn't going to be easy. So you really have to really want that business to succeed and believe in that you're making a difference. And the second is what's the size of that audience. So if the problem is something that only affects 10 people, odds are it's not going to make you wealthy. If it affects everybody, great business to go after. And there are countless examples of people solving this problem. Yeah, that is brilliant. So once we've come up with all of these ideas, you preach that we really need to find a way to kill them. You

Starting point is 00:13:56 call this zombie ideas. And you say, the faster you can kill about idea, the quicker you can pivot to a successful one. So many entrepreneurs are wrecked by praise. Oh, that's such a good idea. Oh, that's so good. One of the things that took me years, I've raised hundreds and hundreds of millions from venture capital. And when I was starting out, I would come out every minute and go, oh my God, I think I close the deal.

Starting point is 00:14:18 They loved it because they tell you how great it is. And then they come back and go, well, you know, talk to the partners and the partners, you know, don't want to do it. Well, they're basically blowing smoke because your next idea might be a good one and they don't want you to be not like them. But here's what you want to do. You want to find people that will tell you everything

Starting point is 00:14:37 wrong with your idea. Because the more iterations you can do if your idea between your two ears, the less money you're burning. Because these problems are going to find themselves when you launch. If you've spent all your money launching something that doesn't work, then you're a failed entrepreneur and you're back where you started.

Starting point is 00:15:01 When I meet with entrepreneurs, when I look at them, you know, you could call it cruel, I'm sitting there telling them every reason why I think it'll fail. And unless you can come up with answers for each of those reasons, you're going to fail. And so once you can make that bull proof thing that cannot be killed, that zombie idea, now go out to raise money and you'll see how quickly that process is. Got it. And then can you give your perspective on the difference between failing and failure? Sure. Failing is trying something that doesn't work. Famously Thomas Edison failed thousand times before he made a light bulb that works.

Starting point is 00:15:44 Failures throwing in the towel and giving up. When you're failing, how do you know when to stop? Okay? You could be one idea, one minor tweak away from, you know, changing your life. If you throw in the towel, you're guaranteeing that you won't be successful. So as I said, most startups pivot, most businesses evolve, and what causes that pivoting, what causes that change is really simple. You look at the data, you look at the results, you compare what's happening to your assumptions, and you may discover something that no one else did, and here's what really happens with a startup.

Starting point is 00:16:27 You start with an obvious idea, but you start spending time and resources going down a path and you go farther into the jungle than anybody ever has, and that's where you discover something new, and that's what makes a successful business, because you now have a competitive advantage that no multi-billion dollar corporation has. You have new information and new data that only you know.

Starting point is 00:16:51 And the only competitive advantage in the 21st century is being able to respond to data from your target audience faster than your competition. And big companies are not competing with you. Most aren't really trying to innovate. They're trying to fight last year's battle again and again. I was a very senior global officer at Sony. Sony thought all their competition was other Japanese electronics manufacturer. They didn't see Apple as competition until it was too late. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:19:24 truly make your business grow, there's one name that always stands out, Shopify. I actually recently interviewed Shopify's president, Harley Finkelstein. That's episode number 252, if you want to check it out. And he says there's an entrepreneurial renaissance happening right now. And Shopify can help you through it.

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Starting point is 00:20:17 Not to mention Shopify also is the home of the best converting checkouts in the game, 36% better than other leading commerce platforms. Shopify turns browsers into buyers. It's no wonder Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US. And if you're in that, I need to sell more with less stage. Shopify Magic is your AI super-powered sidekick, ready to whip up, captivating content that converts from blog posts to product descriptions. So don't stress if you're new to this commerce thing. Shopify's extensive help resources are there to support your success every step of the way. And remember whatever your stage, businesses that grow grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per

Starting point is 00:20:56 month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. And that's all lowercase. Again, go to Shopify.com-profiting to start growing your business today. You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. Yeah, that's so interesting. Staying on this topic of companies kind of providing value and being successful and not getting disrupted. You have a concept called value chain innovation and you talk about how businesses and products basically need to be understood as some of their value adding links.

Starting point is 00:21:35 Can you tell us about value chain innovation and can you give an example of a business that optimizes it well and one that does it poorly? Sure, so when you look at where value is created, there's two things that you have to think of which starting your business or your idea. One is value creation, okay? So you've created a new product that does something.

Starting point is 00:21:58 The second part of that is value capture. Napster came with the idea of people could share songs and steal songs. Change the world, but it didn't put any of that released value into their pocket, so it didn't make a successful business. So you have to figure that out. So value creation can take place in any of the steps of business. It can take place in R&D, it can take place in marketing, in sales, in research. So really, if you look at each stage and then disrupt you, I give examples of how in each of these stages, you can just focus on that one part because the part of the business

Starting point is 00:22:33 that you really want to control is the part that's going to capture the value. And so in different businesses, different stuff. So conversely, you can then look at where business is lose value. So a great example. I mean, absolutely so brilliant is the most common business that people start. Do you know what the most common business people start is in the US? No. A restaurant.

Starting point is 00:22:56 Okay. Okay. And typically, somebody goes, oh, I've got a barbecue recipe. I'm going to make a fortune. Well, if you really look at why restaurants succeed or fail, one of the least important things is really the secret sauce and herbs and spices. It has nothing to do with that.

Starting point is 00:23:13 Number one reason restaurants fail is they have too many items on their menu, which means too many products. And if nobody buys the fish, there goes your profits. So this guy sat down and said, okay, I'm gonna solve that problem by only offering three items on my menu, that's it. Second reason restaurants fail is people all eat at the same time of day, which means if one person sits down

Starting point is 00:23:39 at the table for four at lunch, you can't monetize those other three seats. So you're actually losing money. So second rule that this guy said is, okay, I'm going to only seat full tables and require people to sit with strangers. And since I'm only seating full tables, people are going to have to wait at the bar until the table is available and you make more money on alcohol than food. So he has these three data points that he's going to work on. It sounds absolutely like the worst idea. I'm going to have to have a restaurant with only three types of food and you're going to have to sit with strangers who would do that.

Starting point is 00:24:18 And for nearly 50 years now Benny Hanna's has been making a fortune. He didn't set out to say I want to make a Japanese Tepeyaki house. He set out and said why do restaurants fail? He started by solving a problem and that's every successful business that you see today. You know, Uber solved an amazing problem. Anybody that ever visited New York City as an example, caps are great, except when you need one in the rain or snow or cold, you can't get one. And then you get into one and odds are you don't speak the same language as the driver.

Starting point is 00:24:58 So you can't explain where you want to go, especially I travel over the world. And you have to carry money and you don't always have that. And on and on and on. Oop or soft all of that. Those are great examples. Thanks so much for sharing. You also connect business disruption to personal disruption and you talk about internal value chains.

Starting point is 00:25:21 Can you explain what that is? Yeah. So that's probably what separates disrupt you from every book out there is, really disruption is like plastic surgery, except you're the one holding the scalpel. All disruption has to start internally, because if you can change something that you

Starting point is 00:25:40 thought was amalable about your personality, about your soul, if you can change that, you'll realize everything else to change in the world is easy. So in my personal case, I'm dyslexic. I was taught in school, that means I'm stupid. And I internalize that. And when you look today and you see that one third of all business owners are dyslexic that, you know, Edison and Disney and Steve Jobs and so on, etc, etc. or all dyslexic you realize, it just means that you think different and it wasn't a negative. So if you can change that one belief, you know, many people go, well, I'm not good at math. Why do you believe that?

Starting point is 00:26:24 Because in third grade, you failed a multiplication test that you could ace today. You know, so many of these things happen from parents and teachers that wanted to steer us down a path because they were afraid to try and they didn't like the pain of failing. So they wanted to protect you from that pain. Well, growth comes from pain.

Starting point is 00:26:50 If you constantly protect yourself and choose to live in the matrix, you achieve nothing. And here's the secret folks that I can tell you now that I have gray hair if you're listening and you don't have any yet. Go talk to your grandparents, go visit a senior home and you will find out that the biggest regrets that old people have, the biggest regrets you'll have at the end of your life, aren't the things that you tried and failed at, but the things that you failed to try. If only I had tried to be a rock and roll musician, if only I had tried to

Starting point is 00:27:23 do this, oh I had such a good idea, and somebody else did it. Those things will haunt you. You don't get to live forever, but what you create in your lifetime can. And the impact you can have, especially at a time like today with so many major problems, you know, climate change and population change and all the things that go with that. Imagine the impact that you can have. That's what's exciting. That's what gets me up in the morning. You know, to get to meet entrepreneurs that are coming up with things where you just go,

Starting point is 00:27:57 oh my God, that is like, makes so much sense because those zombie ideas, by the way, don't take a 20-page PowerPoint to explain. You can explain them in one sentence. And you go, wow, that was so obvious. And you go, well, if it's so obvious, why didn't somebody else do it? Because most people aren't trying to change the world. Most people are just accepting it the way it is. If we were told when we were growing up that, for example, we're not smart enough or we're never going to be rich or we're not fast or productive, how do we disrupt ourselves and retrain our brains to view the world differently? Well, start doing that what you were told you can't do.

Starting point is 00:28:36 One of the most common things is people are afraid of public speaking. You know, it's said that most people, given the choice of giving a eulogy at a funeral or being in the casket, would rather be in the casket. So if you're really afraid, if you say, I can't public speak, I can do that. Well, go start doing it. Volunteer, get on panels at conferences, go anything. By the way, it's the best way to market yourself and create your brand. So in disrupt you, I walk you through the steps of breaking down that internal value chain of what is your personal R and D? What is your personal marketing? What are the tricks and steps that others have used

Starting point is 00:29:10 so that you can shorten your path to success? And the second you realize that you can change, it's amazing. The other example in my life being completely transparent is my mom, she listens to this, she hates when I tell the story, my mom wanted me out of the house so she forged on my birth certificate, changed my age, so I went to school a year younger than everybody else,

Starting point is 00:29:35 which doesn't sound like much, but when you're a little boy and all the other boys are older, that means you were the worst one at sports guaranteed from day one, which means you hate everything having to do with sports. You have no interest in sports. You don't watch any sports. You don't play any sports. Sports were just a place for you to be humiliated and feel like a loser. Fast forward, I'm 40 years old. I'm deliberately looking at what can I disrupt in my thinking about myself. And I realize I'm not that four-year-old kid competing against six-year-old kids on the school yard.

Starting point is 00:30:17 I could do whatever I want. And coincidentally, I happened to have a member of the U.S. Olympic team working at my company. So I asked him what are a bunch of exercises because I had a no doubt a PE by the time I got to high school. I hated it. And I started exercising and all of a sudden, for me for the first time in my life, you can do 100 pushups, you can do pullups. I had muscles and I go, wow, you can make this. I don't have to be that scrawny little kid. And then I tried to figure out, well, what can I do with this?

Starting point is 00:30:42 And being the weird person I am, I said, you know, I always wanted to be a trapeze artist. So I'm going to go and take lessons and learn how to fly through the air. That's great. You can do anything. Another common excuse is people thinking that they don't have resources to be successful,

Starting point is 00:30:58 whether that's money or context. What do you have to say about that? Bullshit. That is the entrepreneur's version of the dog ate my homework. That annoys me so much. Oh, I had such a good start up, but we ran out of money. Really, if it was such a good start up, you wouldn't have run out of money.

Starting point is 00:31:13 There is no gatekeeper separating you from money. There is crowdfunding. There is private equity. There is VCs. There is initial coin offerings. There are a million ways to get funding today. Now, is there somebody standing on a street corner handing out a million dollar bills? No. Do you have to learn what is the process and where do I go and who do

Starting point is 00:31:37 I have to talk to? Yes, but think of it the other way. VCs, venture capital firms, go out of business if they can't find entrepreneurs to invest in private equity, goes out of business if it can't find businesses to invest in. There are millions of people whose job is to give you money. On top of which I talk about in my favorite chapter in the book, OPM, other people's money. There are companies that will give you millions of dollars and I've done this time and time again, tens of millions of dollars that don't want any equity in your business and don't want to be paid back any of that cash. And you go, well, what do they want? Well, it turns out that your business that you're starting is gone for a specific audience.

Starting point is 00:32:21 You're making a product for teens, you're making for women, you're making for senior citizens, whatever it is. Well, it turns out there's tons of companies that are not competitive to you that also want that same audience. And what you're giving them is an idea of how to reach that audience that they didn't have. And so that's marketing spend and they'd be happy to do it. And I'll give you a great example that will do as quickly as possible. When I was at Sony, iTunes had just come out and the iPod was killing the Walkman and we had to launch a competing service and Apple was spending a hundred million dollars a year in advertising and I had an advertising budget of zero. So I go, well, I guess I'm doomed to failure. No, I said, okay, how do I get someone else to give me their money to launch my competitive iTunes, my digital download service?

Starting point is 00:33:14 And so I looked at who's in trouble, what businesses were failing, there were two right then. Spurlock had had the movies supersized me where eight McDonald's for 30 days and early died. So McDonald's for 30 days and early died So McDonald's sales went down for the first time in their 40-year history said, okay, McDonald's has problems and The biggest airline in the US United Airlines was in bankruptcy. Oh, they have problems So now all that I have to do is figure out how do I solve McDonald's and United's problems with my music download service and they'll give me money. And you go, well, how do you connect those dots and make a long story short with McDonald's?

Starting point is 00:33:52 Pitch them by a big Mac, get a free track. So you got a free song, you got a free code song with every burger that you bought. And McDonald spent tens of millions of dollars of TV advertising where every customer was driven to my store to get their free song and then they'd signed up and they could buy other stuff. And United Airlines had tons of people that weren't flying anymore because they were worried about the bankruptcy, but they had enough frequent flyer miles to make like nine round trips to Pluto. So I said, okay, you can now spend your frequent flyer miles

Starting point is 00:34:25 at my store. And now United let us throw a concert of 35,000 feet in a plane. They played that video on every flight and millions and millions of their customers suddenly became my customers. I spent zero dollars and zero cents to launch that business. I've done that with crowdfunding for commercial real estate.

Starting point is 00:34:46 I said, okay, no one cares, that's a complicated concept. How do you get anybody care about? And I said, okay, where can I find hundreds of journals that have nothing to write about? And it turns out that was the first year the Coachella went from one weekend to two weekends. So I go, okay, so there's 600 journals that had a bunch of stuff to do one weekend,

Starting point is 00:35:06 sit in Palm Springs with nothing to do for five days and another weekend. So I went to Hard Rock Hotel and I said, we're gonna crowd fund your remodel. They go, we don't need a remodel. I go, you need a remodel. There's a free million dollars. What would you do with it?

Starting point is 00:35:20 And suddenly everybody writes about it, launches a business and the business gets millions and millions of customers. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Calling all entrepreneurs, are you tired of having to manually manage your bank accounts? Are minimum balances and overjaffees sucking up too much of your money? Are you too busy to sink all your payments to your accounting software? If so, consider switching to relay. Relay is an online banking and money management platform that puts you in complete control

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Starting point is 00:37:26 Again, that's Relay Fi.com slash profiting to sign up for free. That's Relay Fi.com slash profiting. Young and profitors, I want to introduce you to Rakuten, a true game changer when it comes to online shopping. My boyfriend actually first introduced me to Rakuten and no lie funny enough this was yesterday before a new Rakuten was the sponsor of our show. You see I've been eyeing these prodiguts for the fall they're so cute and Daniel told me, Hala, you gotta go through Rakuten to get

Starting point is 00:37:54 them so you can get cash back on such a big purchase. And of course I listened to him because he's really the best when it comes to getting deals and steals and I'm just good at shopping and spending money so I I logged on to racqueton.com that's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Found my store, which I needed, which was Burgdorf's. And I just went about my purchase. It was so easy. And now they're gonna give me 15% cash back

Starting point is 00:38:15 on my purchase over $250. It was totally worth the three seconds it took to set up. Now their cash back rates change every day. But regardless, racquetuten is the smartest way to save money while you shop. Now I'm gonna get cashback on all my favorite stores, so for a Nordstrom Apple and so many more.

Starting point is 00:38:33 If you're looking for a smarter way to stretch your holiday budget the season, definitely try Rakuten, stack holiday sales on top of cashback, giving you the maximum savings possible. Rakuten is spreading like wildfire. They already have 17 million users on board who have collectively earned over $4.6 billion and cash back.

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Starting point is 00:39:11 I can make up my own routines. I've taken a million different workout classes over the years. But lately, I just feel like it hasn't been enough. I feel like I'm not pushing myself. I feel like I'm getting bored of my workouts. And I really wanted to see more results. And that's why I turned to co-pilot.

Starting point is 00:39:28 Co-pilot is a one-on-one remote personal training service that links you with an affordable real-life personal trainer. And now my workouts are tailored to my individual needs and goals, and it's all through an app. And because I'm so experienced at working out and I've been doing it for so long, I never felt justified paying for a personal trainer. But with Copilot, it's all the advantages of personal training without that hefty tag.

Starting point is 00:39:52 And Copilot is super flexible, whether you prefer to sweat it out in the gym or in the comfort of your home, Copilot's got you covered. And it's a real deal because it keeps me accountable. I don't feel left on my own devices. I have a real life trainer that's there to guide me, check my progress and provide me with endless support and motivation. She sends me really challenging workouts three times a week.

Starting point is 00:40:13 I can do them whenever I want. I just put it on my smartwatch. And then the app tells me exactly what I need to do. It just counts me down, workout by workout, play by play. And I finally feel challenged again with my workouts. I'd love for you to follow my lead to get fit and feel fabulous.

Starting point is 00:40:30 Give Co-Pilot a try to find out why it was listed by Forbes as the top rated personal trainer app of 2023. Head to go.myco-pilot.com-profiting to get a free 14-day trial with your own personal trainer. That's go.myco-pilot.com-profiting to get a free 14-day trial with your own personal trainer. That's go.mycopilot.com slash profiting to get a free 14-day trial with your very own personal trainer. Take a back seat and let co-pilot help you reach your fitness goals. Such good examples there. Just switching gears a bit. Something else that you

Starting point is 00:41:00 talk about is visioning. Why do you think visioning is so crucial when we have our next business idea and what are your tips to do it effectively? It turns out that that expression, the power of positive thinking is absolutely true. When you are in a positive mind frame, when you, you know, I started each day with two affirmations, today can be better than yesterday. And I have the

Starting point is 00:41:26 power to make it so. And just by looking in the mirror and saying that as silly as that sounds, here's what happens physiologically, it lights up the synaptic nerves in your brain, and you release dopamine. So you actually are doing the same things if you were using drugs. And it puts you in a positive state of mind. Well, when you're in a positive state of mind, you're more likable, you'll have a better love life, you'll close more sales, you're seen as more intelligent,

Starting point is 00:41:56 it goes on and on. Conversely, when you're in that negative funk, you can't see opportunity. We all work with that person that comes in every day with the cloud over them. You know, oh, this is wrong. This is wrong. They're never going to get out of their own way. So you have to start with picturing that end state, picture that goal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, before it became Mr. Universe, he pictured himself up on that stage. Most

Starting point is 00:42:26 Olympians picture themselves on the platform with that metal going around their neck. They see it, they visualize it, it sets in their mind and then you can take that vision whatever that is and work backwards from that. I want to be a doctor okay. Well that pretty much means I guess I have to get to med school and how do I get to med school? And you work backwards those steps. You don't have to know every step in the journey to start the journey. You just have to know where you're heading. And guess what? You don't have a goal of where you want to be in five years. You're not going to get anywhere. You'll be exactly where you are right now. And what could be sadder than that?

Starting point is 00:43:07 Totally. Let's move on to how the world is changing in terms of the way we work. People are calling AI, robotics, and automation, the fourth industrial revolution. How do you envision these technologies changing the way that we work? Half of all jobs are going to disappear over the next decade. And for anybody that thinks that that's hyperbole, let's take a instant journey back 100 years ago. 100 years ago, half of all people in the US lived on farms and they made food for the other half that lived in cities. Two inventions, irrigation and the tractor, and today less than 2% of

Starting point is 00:43:47 people in the United States are on farms, and not only do they feed 100 million people, but they feed the rest of the world by exporting. So if you think about it, half the people used to be, and only 2% are doing it, half the people in the US lost their jobs. Happens that we had the industrial revolution, so they all went and worked at factories etc. We know that story. Today anything that can be automated will be automated. The number one job in the US is a truck driver. There won't be truck drivers. Amazon's now taking it where they have a robot that can load and unload trucks. Amazon has robots that move stuff around the parking. We have drones that will deliver self-driving cars, we've self-driving freighters that take stuff across the oceans that are unloaded by robotic cranes

Starting point is 00:44:32 that go in and load into self-driving trucks that take it to stores and distribution centers. So those jobs are going AI on the other hand is taking anything that's basically knowledge-based and can do it better. God forbid you have cancer and you go to radiologist. Maybe in his life he's seen 2,000 patients and he's seen 2,000 scans. Well, IBM Watson has seen every scan of tens of millions of people and can 99.99

Starting point is 00:45:01 accuracy instantly know what they're seeing. And the same thing can be said, law firms no longer need tons of lawyers, AI can write most contracts. You no longer need com trovers and lots of accountants, the large accounting firms and all that will be downsized. So you're going to have tons of people losing their jobs. And so one of the reasons why I'm spending whatever time I have left on this planet teaching people how to be successful is all of this means that we're eroding the middle class and you can't have a democracy without a strong middle class.

Starting point is 00:45:38 So if you like living in a world filled with democracy since the abilities, you better thank the entrepreneur because they're the only ones creating jobs. So at the same time, the many jobs are disappearing. Many new ones can be created. You know, no one really should spend their entire time on this planet doing a mundane task over and over again that could be automated. Nobody was born to flip burgers for 50 years. I'm not putting that job down. It's not it's not beneath somebody, but how great would it be if we could free people from the mundane and let them do something more inspiring, more challenging, more human and humane. Yeah. So we're going to see with climate change, more refugees moving and populations moving as different countries

Starting point is 00:46:25 are affected differently and many countries will no longer be able to grow the food to feed their own populations. So, we're going to have huge existential problems that need to be solved. And yet, the heavy lifting of what those tools are, of the AI systems, the neural networks, the robotics and everything, those have been designed already. You don't have to invent, you don't have to be some, you know, Einstein to do it. And I'll give you again, one of my favorite examples. God forbid your child's born missing a limb or a hand.

Starting point is 00:46:57 Think of what their life is like. Think of when they go to school of how they're different and kids pick on them and they withdraw and their personality and their whole path is changed because of a minor disability. Well people that I know looked at that and they looked at 3D printers that were so cheap. So most kids don't get a prosthetic because they grow so fast and prosthetics are very, very expensive that they don't get them till their teenagers or adults when their personality is now been formed and altered. So they 3D print for about $15, amazing prosthetics that work. But they were entrepreneurs that took a one step further. They said, how can we take this disability and turn it into something special?

Starting point is 00:47:40 And so they went to Disney and they licensed Iron Man and frozen and star wars and made the coolest prosthetics for young people and So now instead of being the kid that nobody wants to play with they go, oh, I want Iron Man on our team Right and when I give my talks at universities I show a video of this beautiful young woman who had no four arms. It is two of these prosthetic hands, these low-cost prosthetic hands that are beautiful. And she plays classical piano, concierto, and there's not a dry eye in the room. That was an entrepreneur. They didn't invent the 3D printer.

Starting point is 00:48:20 They saw a problem, and they applied it to that problem. That's so inspiring. Let's go back to the fact that you said that the middle class is inevitably going to shrink as these technologies come on board and jobs are going to stop being available for people and essentially, people are going to need to be reskilled, right? So what are the types of skills that you think that people are going to have to take on in order to have job security in the future? So I think we can all agree whether you like it or not, your career will be disrupted. And it doesn't matter what stage you are.

Starting point is 00:48:58 There's tons of people that were like, oh, I work for this big company. I work for Kodak. I can want to work there forever and disappear as I work with this retail chain. You know, it's been the retail tsunami as tens of thousands of chains just close. So, how do you protect yourself? So disruption isn't about what happens to you. It's about how you respond to what happens to you. Number one, going to college for four years, which I think is important. It's not for everybody. But that's not going to arm you for the rest of your life with knowledge. Nothing makes me matter than the following statistic.

Starting point is 00:49:31 The majority of college graduates in the United States never read another book. Let that sink in for a second. You spend more on a mocha, hot latte, whatever, then you do on books each week. You have to commit to lifelong learning. The world is changing. No one's going to employ you, work with you, unless your skills are the best that they can find and your knowledge is current. I'm in my 50s.

Starting point is 00:49:57 If you came to me and I was a doctor and I told you, I haven't learned anything since medical school 30 years ago. You'd run out of the office, even if you were sick and dying, okay? That's what you have to look at with your career. You are going to be constantly involving. You're not going to have one job, one career, you're going to do many things

Starting point is 00:50:15 and you're going to have to constantly learn. Number two, if you're not going to be at one job for 40 years and getting that gold watch, that means you're going to always be in the market to a new job and a new skill in a changing world, which means you have to learn how to market yourself. You have to become the brand of one and personal branding through social media, through LinkedIn, through Instagram, through so many tools. We see all these people that became influencers and then

Starting point is 00:50:45 actually became businesses, you know. Kylie Jenner is the youngest self-made billionaire and it's not because she was a Kardashian, it's not because she's beautiful. There's other people that are beautiful, there's other people that are famous. She took that and turned it into a business. So how do you become a brand of one? How do you find and build your tribe, whether it's locally or internationally,

Starting point is 00:51:12 it is so easy to find that. And so if you start looking at your life as being in permanent beta, then it's a fun challenge and a fun game. And it also means you never have to get bored. So I'll pre-guess a question, which is how do you know when to leave your job? If you're at a job where you're learning,

Starting point is 00:51:33 where you're growing, where there are more skills that you could pick up, stay there and absorb it. Think of it that you're going to grad school, but somebody's paying you to attend it, okay? If on the other hand, you're at a job where you are at a Tom Nathana, where you're just doing the same wrote mundane thing over and over again, and there's no chance for you to change that. It's time for you to move on. So plan your exit plan, what you want to do next, figure out what those

Starting point is 00:52:04 skills are and what's driving you. Where is that go? Where what you want to do next, figure out what those skills are and what's driving you. Where is that go? Where do you want to be five years from now? Where do you want to be 10 years from now? How do you get there? And now life becomes an adventure and it's fun. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:52:16 Well, this was incredible. Honestly, you went through so many gems for our listeners. I'm sure everyone's going to have to listen to this two or three times to get everything out of it. Before we go, where can our listeners learn more about you and maybe you could just talk about your workbook that you have that I think would be a great asset for everyone to get their hands on? Sure, so it's easy to find J. Samet,

Starting point is 00:52:39 you couldn't follow me anywhere on social media and Google all that, but jsamet.com, J-y-s-a-m-i-t is my website. I post articles, daily motivation, all that. But I also have on there a companion workbook to disrupt you. That's free. It's a 40-page workbook to ask you questions to push you along in your self-disruptions so you can get the most out of the book and really focus. And again, self-destruction so you can get the most out of the book and really focus. And again, my goal in doing this wasn't to help me. It's to pay it forward. So if I can help ease you in that journey to success, then, you know, that's why I'm doing this. Thanks so much, Jay. It was a pleasure having you on.

Starting point is 00:53:21 It's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Jay Samit on The Art of Disruption, How Successful Entrepreneurs Find Seven-Figure Ideas

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