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Lewis HowesLewis Howes

Your Mind Is Programmed To Stay Poor (Here’s How To Rewire It) | Chris Koerner

You don't need money to start a business. You need to let go of your ego and find one customer, even if you don’t charge them anything.

Chris KoernerguestLewis Howeshost
Jul 8, 20261h 14mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 1:10

    Intro

    1. CK

      People are masters at playing business and not doing business. They go get an LLC. They make a business plan

    2. LH

      A logo

    3. CK

      They start talking to their friends about it, "I'm making moves." You don't do any of that. Go find a customer. I don't care if it's your mom, your best friend. I don't care, you gotta start somewhere. I don't care if it's an unpaying customer and you do it for free just to get a five-star review. Go find a customer and then figure everything else out after that. Sell it before you have it.

    4. LH

      He is a serial entrepreneur who has launched 75 businesses, with multiple of them becoming seven and eight figure brands, and he's here to teach you the fastest way to add 10,000 plus dollars a month to your life. We have the inspiring Chris Koerner in the house.

    5. CK

      It's the fear of the perception of failure from others. That's the only thing we're afraid of. It's not one of the things. It's not the fear of failure. It's what will people think about me if I fail? The thing is, if you do fail, they're probably not gonna think anything about you.

    6. LH

      How does someone develop a more resilient mindset when they launch something, they get laughed at, and they lose money, and they fail? How do they not let that insecurity or that self-doubt stop them from trying again?

    7. CK

      It's an overly simplistic answer, but we-

    8. LH

      I've always

  2. 1:10 – 4:16

    Zero-Dollar Businesses

    1. LH

      heard people say that it takes money to make money. Is that something you believe?

    2. CK

      Maybe 30 years ago that was true, but that's no longer true.

    3. LH

      Why is that?

    4. CK

      We have more resources, tools, everything at our disposal today that we've never had before. We could use an AI tool on a free trial to launch a service business and sell something to a business owner that pays us $2,500 a month, right? Um, you don't need money to start a business, period.

    5. LH

      What do you need?

    6. CK

      You need to shed your ego. You need to stop thinking that people care about what you're doing or saying on the internet. You need to just let go. Like, as cliche as that is, you need to just do your own thing and stop worrying about other people.

    7. LH

      But what if someone spends a lot of time, energy, and money launching something, and they get zero results, and they lose their money?

    8. CK

      Well, how much money did they spend, and why did they spend it, right? What business did they pick is what I would ask them. I can think of very few exceptions where you need over $100 or $1,000 to start a business. Even if I were to start a restaurant that costs half a million dollars to open, I could still largely de-risk that idea by going to farmer's markets and having people taste my recipe or a pop-up or a, you know, renting a food truck for a weekend just to see if people come or people come back or if they care. There's a thousand creative ways to launch a business without money.

    9. LH

      And, and testing it first to make sure the model works, then scaling it-

    10. CK

      Yes

    11. LH

      ... then getting the half a million dollar investment in a storefront or whatever it might be.

    12. CK

      Yes.

    13. LH

      Once you know you have customers, once you know that there's product market fit or whatever it might be, right?

    14. CK

      Correct.

    15. LH

      And you told me beforehand that you can't be prideful and broke at the same time.

    16. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    17. LH

      Why is that?

    18. CK

      Because we are most likely to get our first customers from our friends and family or from social media, from our Facebook page that has 300 followers or Instagram page that has 262 followers. The people that trust us, kn- like us, know us, know our background, they are most likely to want to support us, right? But so many of us are too concerned about what that guy from high school 20 years ago will think about me if I post a selfie video talking about my new service business. He doesn't care. He doesn't know, and if he cares, he's not a person that you should care about. So we j- we just have to let go and realize that people have more distractions than they've ever had. We're swiping so many things. They're not thinking about you. They don't care about you. Just do your own thing. Let go of the ego, and you will win.

    19. LH

      Were you always good with money?

    20. CK

      I grew up poor, so I've had to be good with money. I, I've, I've had to have a kind of a scarcity mindset around money because I grew up poor.

    21. LH

      Do you still have a scarcity money, uh, mindset around money?

    22. CK

      Sometimes. Yeah, depends on the thing. Not around food. I'm a foodie, so...

    23. LH

      [laughs] You'll spend it all on the food.

    24. CK

      That's where I ball out, right?

    25. LH

      Yeah, yeah.

    26. CK

      But around a lot of other things I do 'cause those habits are hard to break.

    27. LH

      Yeah, so you don't wanna go back to being poor.

    28. CK

      Right.

    29. LH

      So would you say you have a scarcity mindset or a frugal mindset?

    30. CK

      Mm...

  3. 4:16 – 7:33

    Constraints & Creativity

    1. CK

      I think I'm a walking contradiction.

    2. LH

      [laughs] Yeah.

    3. CK

      I could point to s- like, I built a house more expensive than what I could afford in my 20s.

    4. LH

      Mm-hmm.

    5. CK

      But at the same time, there are other decisions I make that show my frugality mindset.

    6. LH

      Yeah.

    7. CK

      It just, I'm just... I don't know. I guess I'm a hypocrite. I'm inconsistent when it comes to money.

    8. LH

      [laughs]

    9. CK

      It just depends. But I will say this. I like to say constraints equal creativity, and building a house more expensive than I could afford in my 20s was one of the best things I could have done because it was a motivating factor to just, to work harder.

    10. LH

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CK

      And I don't want people to misinterpret that, misunderstand and say, "Well, I can go buy that $13 avocado toast 'cause it'll just motivate me to grind more." Like, I think that's kind of a weird quirk of mine, but for me, it worked. Like, I, I also had my first kid when I was 23.

    12. LH

      Wow.

    13. CK

      And my fourth when I was 29, right? And so that's always been f- the, the forefront of my mind, is providing for my family. And so if I did make a poor money decision, I always knew that, A, I could think of a creative way to start a business and, and make it back, um, or B, I would just have to work harder to be able to afford my lifestyle.

    14. LH

      So interesting 'cause in my 20s, uh, my first apartment was $250 a month, and I thought it was a lot of money. Then it was $450 a month. That was a stretch. Then I went from that to, in Ohio, to k- to New York City, and it was $2,600 a month-

    15. CK

      Mm-hmm

    16. LH

      ... for, for a rental for one month, and I go, "This is like six months of rent i- in Ohio." And I was like, "This is insanity"-

    17. CK

      Yeah

    18. LH

      ... "that I'm spending this to sleep." And then the next month after that, I went to $3,600 a month, and I go, "This is too, this is way too much." [laughs] And it was like six grand a few years later, and I was just like, "Are you kidding me?"

    19. CK

      Yeah.

    20. LH

      My younger self would be saying that you're just wasting your money. But for whatever reason, every time I stepped into a new environment in my living space that cost more-

    21. CK

      Mm-hmm

    22. LH

      ... it's like I unlocked financial abundance.

    23. CK

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    24. LH

      Like, I, it's like I got creative.

    25. CK

      Yes.

    26. LH

      Maybe it was a certain level of constraint by that framing where it made me think in a different way. I was like, "I need to go earn way more to be able to pay for this so that my bank account doesn't go down."

    27. CK

      Yeah.

    28. LH

      And again, like you, it doesn't mean go spend as much money as you can next month's rent, but that pressure caused me to figure out how to provide at a different-

    29. CK

      Yes

    30. LH

      ... level of thinking than the lower level of financial pressure.

  4. 7:33 – 10:21

    Parkinson's Law

    1. CK

      Uh, you're familiar with Parkinson's Law?

    2. LH

      Uh-huh.

    3. CK

      So for those watching, Parkinson's Law is the, is the theory that time and/or resources expand or contract to fit the space allotted to it, right? So in high school, if my chemistry teacher said, "We've got this project due in two months. It's a third of your grade," we were gonna take two months to do it. What I normally did, I have ADHD, is I would completely forget about it-

    4. LH

      To the last night

    5. CK

      ... to the last night.

    6. LH

      Yeah.

    7. CK

      And he would tell us, "This isn't the type of thing that you can procrastinate. I'm telling you." And I'm like, "Okay, we'll see." And last night I would forget. I'm like, "Oh, crap, I have that project." I would stay up all night, and I would submit something amazing. Like, objectively, he wouldn't have never known, and that's Parkinson's Law. And that's pressure. Whether artificial or natural, that is pressure. And what you're describing is the same thing, it's just not in a time format, it's in a monetary format.

    8. LH

      Yes.

    9. CK

      So there, it, there are pressures that are outside of our control. Like, if I took out an SBA loan to buy a business and then it turns out, like, the business was all a sham or fraud and I could declare bankruptcy, like, that might be way too much pressure for me. But for what you're describing, it would motivate you to go do a little more, try a little harder, do this, you know, stay clocked in a few more hours. And when that pressure is applied is when you unlock these amazing things. And a lot of pressure over a long period of time compounds to an insane amount, to where at the end of 10, 20 years of doing that, you're, like, you're insanely productive and efficient, and you have all these revenue streams, and these beautiful things have happened because you've ap- you've allowed that pressure to affect your life.

    10. LH

      Yeah, they say if you wanna get something done, give it to a busy person.

    11. CK

      That's Parkinson's Law.

    12. LH

      That's Parkinson's Law. It's like, it, it's so funny because I've had the, you know, the, the honor of interviewing a lot of people on this show and, you know, stay in touch and stay friends with a lot of them over time, and it's the people that you wouldn't expect to get back to you the fastest-

    13. CK

      Mm-hmm

    14. LH

      ... the people that are the most successful, the busiest-

    15. CK

      Mm-hmm

    16. LH

      ... that have the most on their plate, I text them, I call them, they text back within minutes.

    17. CK

      Yeah.

    18. LH

      The people that are not doing as much, that take days.

    19. CK

      Yeah.

    20. LH

      And I'm like, really? It makes no sense to me.

    21. CK

      Yep.

    22. LH

      I'm like, you can't reply within a day?

    23. CK

      Yeah.

    24. LH

      Or at least just a thumbs up in acknowledgement, you know? So-

    25. CK

      Yeah

    26. LH

      ... it's so funny that the most successful people usually are the fastest to reply, or if they see it, they're gonna give you some acknowledgement-

    27. CK

      Mm-hmm

    28. LH

      ... or say, "I'll get back to you tomorrow." They give you something where they're saying, "I wanna take action now."

    29. CK

      Yeah.

    30. LH

      And that action snowballs into more results.

  5. 10:21 – 13:36

    Reselling to $10k/Month

    1. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    2. LH

      Which types of businesses are the easiest to scale to 10K a month right now?

    3. CK

      I like to think of it like a barbell when it comes to businesses. Very, on one side of the barbell you have no AI, no tech, no internet, sweaty, hands-on, difficult. I love those businesses, 'cause people don't wanna play there.

    4. LH

      Manual labor.

    5. CK

      Yes.

    6. LH

      Plumbing, the m- lawn mowing-

    7. CK

      Yep

    8. LH

      ... the freaking tree removal, the, the dirty work, right?

    9. CK

      Yes.

    10. LH

      Which you can charge a premium for, I feel like right now.

    11. CK

      Oh, yeah. Yeah. AI isn't about to disrupt that.

    12. LH

      No.

    13. CK

      On the other end of that barbell, you have AI heavy, right? All online content, AI heavy. I, that's where I like to be. I don't wanna be in the messy middle where either side of that can be disrupted by the other side. So I really like reselling right now. Reselling anything. I don't know when that's gonna go out of business. I talked to guys just yesterday that are reselling VCRs. They're paying 5 to $10 for VCRs and selling them for 100 to $150.

    14. LH

      They might even be getting for free some of these probably, right?

    15. CK

      Yeah.

    16. LH

      It's like some of these things you just, like, find donations-

    17. CK

      Yeah

    18. LH

      ... and then fix it up, right?

    19. CK

      These guys are in, like, the middle of nowhere Virginia. And so when we were talking, I pulled up Facebook Marketplace, and I live in Dallas-Fort Worth, there's nine million people, and I typed in VCR, and I just watched their eyes lit up because there were hundreds of VCRs for 5 to 10 bucks. And they were like, "That one's worth 200. That one's worth 75. That one's worth 150." And, and I crunched the numbers and I'm like, "You could make six figures a year if you lived in Dallas-Fort Worth buying VCRs on Facebook Marketplace, where people don't know their value, and selling them on eBay, where there's a fair price, a fair market value for it."

    20. LH

      Wow.

    21. CK

      VCRs. Right?

    22. LH

      Yeah.

    23. CK

      And you could, you could rinse and repeat that category with hundreds of others. These guys were selling camcorders, all types of stuff. So that is a business where if you're-

    24. LH

      Reselling

    25. CK

      ... reselling anything.

    26. LH

      It could be clothes. It could be games. It could be toys.

    27. CK

      It could be-

    28. LH

      It could be whatever.

    29. CK

      I know a guy that makes six figures picking up free or close to free couches on Facebook Marketplace-

    30. LH

      Oh, yeah

  6. 13:36 – 17:43

    Manual Labor Side Hustles

    1. CK

      last week. Um, they wash windows. That's it. I paid them 500 bucks, and it was a husband and wife. They're, like, early mid-20s, and they washed my windows. And th- like, this isn't how it worked, but this is how it could have worked. They could have said, "Chris, can we wash your windows?" And I'm like, "Sure, I wanna support young entrepreneurs." Said, "Okay, we'd need to w- uh, require a deposit." "No problem. How much?" "Half." "Here's 250." Okay. They could have had $0 to their name, no car, no LLC, no insurance, anything. They could have Ubered to Home Depot, used that 250 to buy all the equipment for 50 bucks, come back to my house, spent five hours. Well, like, it's hard work, I'm not saying it's easy, and put hundreds of dollars of profit in their... They could have been paid to start a business, right? Th- that's a business where you would need money to start. You get paid up front. It's not unreasonable to ask for a deposit. That didn't happen. I just paid them.

    2. LH

      Yeah.

    3. CK

      But I'm saying, like, back to our you don't need money to start a business, that's one. So anyth- any service business that you start with your hands that's unsexy, that's physical. We're, we're missing, like, three million plumbers, HVAC, and electricians in America right now. We have a shortage of, like-

    4. LH

      Mm-hmm

    5. CK

      ... 3 million, and those are just the big three that home services that everyone talks about, but there's thousands of home service niches. If you look at just gutters, you have gutter repair, gutter replacement, gutter cleaning. Like, there's thousands of home service businesses. So anything you do with your hands that, you know, robots aren't about to take over because the smart people developing robots are making robots that can, you know, package orders and, and do things at scale-

    6. LH

      Yeah

    7. CK

      ... not replace a toilet.

    8. LH

      A few years ago, I was... You know, we bought a home, and I was, you know, trying to hang stuff and curtains and TVs and all this stuff, and I was like, "I don't have time to do this right now." And I... What is it? TaskRabbit.

    9. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    10. LH

      I went on there, and it's like, I think I paid someone, like, 4 or $500 to hang a TV.

    11. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    12. LH

      You know what I mean?

    13. CK

      Yeah.

    14. LH

      And it took them maybe an hour and a half, and there was probably 50 people on there that this is all they did full time.

    15. CK

      Yeah.

    16. LH

      And they're making bank.

    17. CK

      I know.

    18. LH

      I'm like, "This is insanity."

    19. CK

      Yeah.

    20. LH

      But I was also like, "Eh, I don't wanna spend three hours doing this right now, and I need to get it done. Uh, let's go to the top person ranked on-

    21. CK

      Mm-hmm

    22. LH

      ... you know, TaskRabbit. And okay, they have 100 reviews. Good enough for me.

    23. CK

      Yeah.

    24. LH

      Let's do it." And it's like, you know, I'm sure there I paid a tip probably or something, and it's like you're making bank doing service work.

    25. CK

      Yeah.

    26. LH

      That is good money.

    27. CK

      And they own their... Like, they own a business.

    28. LH

      They own it, and literally all they have is, like, a little tool belt with maybe some-

    29. CK

      Yeah

    30. LH

      ... nails and a hammer.

  7. 17:43 – 19:42

    The Bootcamp Method

    1. LH

      that immediately puts them behind before they even start when they're trying to launch a new side hustle or project or business?

    2. CK

      Yeah. People are masters at playing business and not doing business.

    3. LH

      Yeah. What does that mean?

    4. CK

      It means they go get an LLC. They make a business plan.

    5. LH

      A logo.

    6. CK

      They start talking to their friends about, "I'm g- I've got... I'm making moves." You don't do any of that. Go find a customer. I don't care if it's your mom, your best friend. I don't care, you gotta start somewhere. I don't care if it's an unpaying customer and you do it for free just to get a five-star review. Go find a customer and then figure else, figure everything else out after that. Sell it before you have it.

    7. LH

      I call that the bootcamp method or the Kickstarter method. Like, launch the sale of something first before you launch the business.

    8. CK

      Yes.

    9. LH

      And this is something I did early on. I would do f- a free webinar. If I ever wanted to launch a new-

    10. CK

      Mm-hmm

    11. LH

      ... course, product, offering, event, I would do a free webinar, and I'd ask for a sale before having anything to give people.

    12. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    13. LH

      This is, like, 15 years ago. And then I would do a bootcamp around this.

    14. CK

      Mm.

    15. LH

      I would teach and train, and I'd say, "All right, we're gonna do a six-week bootcamp training on this thing that you wanna learn."

    16. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    17. LH

      I would record that, and then I'd sell that as the course.

    18. CK

      I've done the same thing. Yeah.

    19. LH

      So I just called it the bootcamp method. It was like, do people really want this?

    20. CK

      Yeah.

    21. LH

      Before I build a whole site and landing page and this and that, and run a- Let me just see if I can get a few sales, and if it's exciting enough that people really want it-

    22. CK

      Yeah

    23. LH

      ... then I'll record it live, repackage it, and sell it over and over again now that people want it.

    24. CK

      Yeah.

    25. LH

      And try to go the least amount of... Well, maybe not the least amount of effort, but the least amount of work building the business, and just create the sale first.

    26. CK

      Yes.

    27. LH

      And then do the service-

    28. CK

      Yes

    29. LH

      ... first.

    30. CK

      Yes. And have very generous, like, refund policies.

  8. 19:42 – 24:47

    iPhone Repair Story

    1. CK

      My first, like, real business was an iPhone repair store, and I had it in my head that I need to open a retail store. I was a student at the University of Alabama. I met a guy that was doing it out of his dorm room making good money, and I was like, "That's my business." I don't know why, I was just like, the iPhone was a year old. These are gonna start breaking, and I read an article about some guys at LSU that were making, like, 20 grand a month from a retail store. So I'm like, "All right, I need a retail store." So I had no money. I, I got a credit card advance. I got some of my Pell Grant, and I got this retail store, and this was the dumb thing to do. I was playing business, right? It worked out, uh, so that's what you shouldn't do. But I did it, and it ended up working out. But another thing I did is I never even learned how to fix iPhones. When I signed a five-year lease with a personal guarantee, 2,300 a month, my mortgage was 500 a month.

    2. LH

      Ooh.

    3. CK

      Okay? I had a $90,000 house. This was 2008.

    4. LH

      Oh my gosh.

    5. CK

      Um, 2,300 a month, five-year lease, personal guarantee. And people would come in with their iPhone, and they'd say, "Ah," and I was like, "Oh, okay, yep. Uh yeah, uh, 90 bucks." "Okay, cool. Come back in three hours." "Okay." They'd leave, and I'd go to YouTube, and I would just type in what they'd tell me, and I would learn how to repair iPhones on their phone.

    6. LH

      Wow.

    7. CK

      And this was the thing that I would suggest people do. Now, a couple times, I screwed up, and I remember I put a screwdriver through someone's screen. I broke their screen. I was fixing the battery, but I broke the screen, and it was a $700-

    8. LH

      Mm

    9. CK

      ... brand-new iPhone 4. And I had to go to the Verizon store and spend, like, a week's worth of sales-

    10. LH

      Oh

    11. CK

      ... revenue on a new iPhone. And she was okay. But, like, had I waited six months to l- learn and perfect, A, I'm gonna lose momentum probably. I'm probably gonna lose steam. I never even open. Who knows where I am today?

    12. LH

      Never.

    13. CK

      Right? Or B, if I do end up opening, I miss out on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sales waiting six months to open. So net of net, the 2,000 I had to spend in broken iPhones made me an extra six figures because I opened that much sooner and I didn't lose the momentum.

    14. LH

      Yeah.

    15. CK

      So that's one example of doing it right and wrong at the same time.

    16. LH

      It's, it's like learning on the fly instead of waiting till you feel like you're perfectly mastered the skill.

    17. CK

      Yes.

    18. LH

      A lot of people wait until they feel like, "I need to get more degrees, more education, more training-

    19. CK

      Yeah

    20. LH

      ... until I can launch."

    21. CK

      Yes.

    22. LH

      They play the perfection game, and they never make any money, or they never launch something 'cause they need it to be perfect first before just launching. Whereas you launched, made mistakes-

    23. CK

      Yeah

    24. LH

      ... lost money, but learned through the mistakes and then kept earning on, on the way.

    25. CK

      Yes.

    26. LH

      And that is the difference between someone who's a perfectionist and someone who's an entrepreneur willing to get dirty-

    27. CK

      Yeah

    28. LH

      ... and messy right away.

    29. CK

      I'm the opposite of a perfectionist.

    30. LH

      [laughs] Yeah. You could use more of that in your life probably.

  9. 24:47 – 26:01

    The Real Fear of Failure

    1. CK

      real. I don't think that exists. I don't think anyone has an actual fear of failure. Here's my analogy. You're stranded on a desert island, and you know that the mainland is, like, 30 miles away, but you gotta get there. So are you gonna be too afraid to fail at building your boat to not even build your boat? No. Like, you're gonna try to build a boat. If you fail, you know, you get a mile out and it fails and you have to swim back and build a better version, fine. Who cares? You, like, you have to do it. But if you were, if someone was live streaming you to the whole world or to your 300 f- you know, Facebook friends or to the six people that you played high school football with, you would l- approach that completely differently. You would, like, really want to perfect that raft, 'cause you're embarrassed. You don't wanna be put on the spot. So what you said is the absolute truth. It's the fear of the perception of failure from others. That's w- that's the only thing we're afraid of. It's not one of the things. It's not the fear of failure. It's, "What will people think about me if I fail?" The thing is, if you do fail, they're probably not gonna think anything about you.

    2. LH

      Maybe for a moment, and then they move on.

    3. CK

      It doesn't matter.

    4. LH

      Yeah.

    5. CK

      Yeah. It doesn't matter at all.

    6. LH

      Which business

  10. 26:01 – 32:40

    Delusional Optimism

    1. LH

      did you think, "This is gonna be a home run," and when I launched this? That you were like, "Man, these other people are doing this. It's working. Like, this is gonna be a home run. It's gonna be easy," that was actually kind of like a dud or a failure for you.

    2. CK

      Which one did I not think that? [laughs] I'm the most delusional optimist ever. I got tested for ADHD in college, and she said, "You don't have ADHD. You have delusions of grandeur."

    3. LH

      [laughs]

    4. CK

      I was like, "Wow, I paid 1,800 bucks as a poor college student to learn that. Thank you so much." So I'm just a, I'm just an optimist, unashamed optimist, right? So I launch businesses because I believe they'll be successful, and I truly believe that any business could be successful with the right distribution.

    5. LH

      Mm.

    6. CK

      I could tell you the dumbest idea in the world right now, objectively dumb, right? And if Elon Musk tweeted about it, he'd sell thousands of units.

    7. LH

      Distribution.

    8. CK

      Distribution. So there, with the internet, that's the asterisk, four billion people are on the internet. With that, if you can find the right message, the right offer, the right pricing, the right audience, the right channel, is it Facebook ads, is it Google ads, whatever, if you can find it, you can sell anything. And I firmly believe that. So with that framework in mind, I love every business idea.

    9. LH

      Even with a horrible product, you can sell, you can sell it well online, you think?

    10. CK

      Yeah, because you could position it as a meme or as, like, a... I mean, this guy makes a million bucks shipping potatoes to people.

    11. LH

      Really?

    12. CK

      Like, as like a prank potato or, like, vulgar things to people or glitter bombs. Like, if you can make it a meme, like, if you can make-

    13. LH

      Doesn't someone, like, sell farts in a bottle or something?

    14. CK

      Yeah.

    15. LH

      It's like [laughs] crazy, right?

    16. CK

      Yeah. Pete Rock made millions of dollars.

    17. LH

      That's true.

    18. CK

      That was, like, one of the first meme products.

    19. LH

      That's true.

    20. CK

      So I think anything I start, uh, will be successful because I know that it can be.

    21. LH

      What thing hasn't been successful under your scheme of-

    22. CK

      Most of them.

    23. LH

      Really?

    24. CK

      Like, I'm, I forget, I, I forget all negativity. Like, I just, I just-

    25. LH

      You're like, "On to the next."

    26. CK

      On to the next.

    27. LH

      How long will you, you create, launch, and try to market something until you say, "Oh, it's either not working"? And is it 'cause it's not working or you haven't found the right distribution yet?

    28. CK

      It always comes down to distribution. So if I pivot at all w- to a different business, it comes down to opportunity cost for me.

    29. LH

      Do you wanna keep working on this one until you find it? That might be months. It might be years. Who knows? It might cost a lot more-

    30. CK

      Yeah

  11. 32:40 – 37:19

    AI Consulting Hustle

    1. LH

      launch side hustles, businesses online specifically, that are bringing them six figures a month or seven figures a year.

    2. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    3. LH

      What are a couple of things that you've seen that anyone with a small audience has been able to be successful with if they really focus their attention on that?

    4. CK

      I'm gonna say small audience is, like, 400 followers.

    5. LH

      Okay.

    6. CK

      So anyone, this could apply to anyone. Um, AI consulting. That's it.

    7. LH

      Everyone needs it. [laughs]

    8. CK

      Everyone needs AI. It's... So AI is, is not like the mobile wave or the internet or crypto or NFTs or Web3. A large percentage of people on all of those things thought that they were fads, right? Nobody rational thinks AI is a fad. Nobody thinks, like, AI is just gonna go away and fizzle out. Nobody. It's here to stay. They've done surveys of small business owners, and 85% of them know they need to use AI, and like 12% of them are in any meaningful way. And of those 12%, they're, like, getting ChatGPT's help with emails. So there's this massive disconnect between what w- it's like cognitive dissonance. Like, we know we should be doing something and we're not. And so all we need are individuals with a ChatGPT account, a Claude account, Groq, whatever it is, to just learn some skills, learn how to prompt. Um, 10% of all adults are business owners, okay? So there's 350 million Americans, 35 million business owners, um, which means that if you have 400 Facebook friends, 40 of them are business owners. You sit down with your friend, go to Starbucks with them, open the voice memos app on your phone, hit record, and just say, "Tell me about your business." "Well, you know, no," okay. "What sucks about your business?" "Oh, man, hiring is, uh... Can't find customers." Like... And then just keep peeling back the layers. Why? Like, why is it hard? Like, just get to the heart of what they're struggling with in their business. And the framework for having this meeting is like, "I'm trying to learn AI, but I need something to learn with. Like, I need something to hold onto that I can learn AI with. I'm not gonna charge you anything, I just wanna, like, learn AI skills around your business." You go back to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, upload the transcript of that conversation, and just simply say, "My friend needs AI in their business. They want to make more money or save more money. What suggestions do you have?" "Here's 13 suggestions." "Okay, number six sounds really interesting. Tell me step by step, how can I do that for them, 'cause I don't know what any of those words mean." "Okay, start here. Download this tool. Do this." Then have another meeting at Starbucks with them and say, "Dude, look at what I learned. You could be doing this. This guy over here has the same type of business and he's doing this." And they're gonna look at to you now as like the AI god. You now know more about AI than anyone in their life, and they're gonna say, "Take my money. Like, how do we do this?" And you don't have to go learn how to find customers, you just have to let go of your pride-

    9. LH

      Mm-hmm

    10. CK

      ... and your ego and be willing to talk to a friend about things that they're struggling with. Be willing to serve your friend. Be willing to help them, 'cause that's... We're not talking about, like, you know, a, a multilevel marketing scheme here. We're talking about helping our loved ones by solving problems with them for AI.

    11. LH

      But how does someone develop a more resilient mindset when they launch something, they get laughed at-

    12. CK

      Mm-hmm

    13. LH

      ... and they lose money and they fail?

    14. CK

      Yeah.

    15. LH

      How do they not let that insecurity or that self-doubt stop them from trying again?

    16. CK

      Post and ghost.

    17. LH

      What does that mean?

    18. CK

      [laughs] Post something to social media, don't look at the comments.

    19. LH

      Mm.

    20. CK

      Like, "Hey, DM me if you wanna learn more." Go stay in the DMs. What they'll find is if they do look in the comments, there's not gonna be much there.

    21. LH

      Yeah.

    22. CK

      Right? Anyway, but just psychologically, sometimes it's just ignorance can be bliss. It's an overly simplistic answer, but we just have to get over it, and we have to get, we, we have to get to our own personal rock bottom with regards to anything, right?

    23. LH

      Mm-hmm.

    24. CK

      If I'm an alcoholic, I've got to get to my rock bottom before I start going to AA and turning my life around. If I wanna start a business and I'm just not able to get it together, I need to hit my rock bottom in that area of my life. A- and so if I'm not willing to get over that mental block, then I'm just not, I'm not ready to start a business. But maybe something happens, I, heaven forbid, I lose my job or something, or this bill comes up, an unexpected emergency. That's gonna be my rock bottom, and then I post about it. And it doesn't have to be on social media, but I just start talking about it. I'm willing to open myself up and put myself out there. Sometimes that's what it takes for us to step out of our shell like that.

    25. LH

      What would you say, then, is the number one skill that

  12. 37:19 – 42:48

    Bias for Action

    1. LH

      successful entrepreneurs have over those that aren't successful?

    2. CK

      Bias for action. They just have to be impatient with action, but patient with results. Both of those at the same time.

    3. LH

      How does that look?

    4. CK

      So we're all curious to an extent. We all have questions about the world. The question is, what do we do with that curiosity? So if I'm... I was on a walk with my daughter. We were walking down these railroad tracks, and I see that some of the railroad ties are wood and some are concrete. I'm like, "Wood railroad ties? It's 2026. Why are we using these? Why not c- why aren't they all concrete?" So it's like I pull out ChatGPT, and I just start like, "What are the wood? Why the concrete? What are the cost differences?" And at the end of it, it's like, "Oh, that's really interesting. Okay, cool." Something that simple, we, when we have a question about anything, not just business or money-related, we gotta get an answer to it as soon as possible.

    5. LH

      Mm.

    6. CK

      Even if we're mid-conversation and it's rude, it's like, hold on, I gotta figure this out, right? The more we train that bias for action muscle and we, we start answering these questions about the world and about ourselves immediately, the more we do it, the more it snowballs and it compounds. And then the, the answer to the question turns into action. If I'm at a restaurant, and I love making tacos, and I'm at a taco restaurant, and I see this place has a line out the door, and everyone is there for these birria tacos, and it's like, oh, I love... I make really good birria tacos.

    7. LH

      [laughs]

    8. CK

      I wonder, I wonder how much money this place makes. Well, don't just go on to the conversation. Go outside, look at the line. Okay, 86 people in line. Look at the menu. $7 for two tacos. 86 times 7. Oh my gosh. Okay, let me... Throughout the rest of this hour, I'm gonna see how many p- wow, the line got even longer. Okay, this is a Tuesday. If they're this busy on a Tuesday, they're gonna be way busier on a Friday. Okay. Wow, they're doing 3.6 million a year just in birria tacos. That's not including drinks. And you're just doing all this mid-conversation, and it's like if their margins are this, and then, okay, what? Oh, okay. Then go home and, like, make tacos and give them out to your friends.

    9. LH

      Yeah.

    10. CK

      Like, that night.

    11. LH

      Yeah.

    12. CK

      Do a- like-

    13. LH

      Take action now

    14. CK

      ... now.

    15. LH

      Launch it now.

    16. CK

      Like, compress the timeframe-

    17. LH

      Yes

    18. CK

      ... because we talk a lot about focus, but we don't talk about momentum. We are human, and if we're gonna lose excitement, we're gonna lose momentum over a thing. So we need to be impatient with action.

    19. LH

      Mm. See, it was something you do that I don't know if I could ever do because I also like to think about the time, the attention I put on certain things, and I feel like I did a lot of different businesses, products, programs, things like that to make a lot of money and revenue streams for many years. And then I felt like my time was stretched thin.

    20. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    21. LH

      I felt a little burnt out. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I, I was putting lower energy in lots of places, and nothing really was building exponentially. Where does making money, making a profit, and using your time, energy, talents with your purpose tie into building a business versus here's an opportunity that I see you can make tacos-

    22. CK

      Mm-hmm

    23. LH

      ... a million dollars a year with tacos or selling toothbrushes, but is that the best use of my time and talent and purpose-

    24. CK

      Mm-hmm

    25. LH

      ... towards launching that business for a profit?

    26. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    27. LH

      What are your thoughts on that?

    28. CK

      Is it kind of like the passion versus profit question? Like-

    29. LH

      I guess it's just merging both of them. You know, just 'cause I can launch a shoe company doesn't-

    30. CK

      Yeah

  13. 42:48 – 49:14

    Avoiding Lifestyle Creep

    1. CK

      It's almost like the same problem of playing business. They play the role of someone who makes more money, and lifestyle creep creeps in. It's happened to me.

    2. LH

      Just spending more and-

    3. CK

      Yeah, 'cause they have it. Um, and I don't wanna contradict myself, because I do think that can be a good thing, but if it keeps you away from your kids or your family more because y- you want that second or third home, then I don't think that's a good thing. People, they contribute less and less as a percentage of their income to charitable causes, which I don't like. Um, like let's say you're used to giving 1,000 a month to charity, and you make, you know, $10,000 a month. You start making $50,000 a month, and you give 2,000 to charity. If you give 5,000, it's the same percentage, but you have 45,000 to work with. You're, you're able to afford much, much more. You're able to be, to do much more good with that money. It doesn't have to be a percentage or a, or a real dollar value. So I think that's a mistake, um, on how, how much people give. I don't... Like, at the end of the day, we're not gonna bring any of it with us anyway.

    4. LH

      Mm-hmm.

    5. CK

      Um, I don't want my kids to be hyper wealthy from stuff they inherit from me when they're 50 or 60, so I don't think at all about my second or third generation or how much money they're ha- they'll have. I don't care. I want them to work for it, too, right? So I think that's a mistake people make. And I think that people are likely to get prideful, um, and to treat people on a lower socioeconomic status than them as lesser than them, and I think it should, I think it should go the opposite direction. I think they should get even more empathetic-

    6. LH

      Mm-hmm

    7. CK

      ... because they've been there before as well.

    8. LH

      Yeah. What's your thoughts on the more you give, the more you are able to earn of your money, time, resources? Have you experienced that personally as a, someone who gives?

    9. CK

      Oh, yeah.

    10. LH

      And what's your philosophy on how much you give every year?

    11. CK

      Yeah. So there's this quote. I'm gonna try to remember it. "He who gives his, his money gives some. He who gives his time gives all," right? Something like that. I, I try to give even more. Um, I pay tithing to my church, 10% as, like, a baseline, and then I look for other charitable causes on top of that to donate as well. But more importantly, I try to give of my time, um, to younger peoples trying to start businesses, um, in ways that don't necessarily scale. Um, and yeah, mission trips. Our, our kids are gonna go on mission trips. I went on a mission trip. I plan to go on more.

    12. LH

      You went for two years, right? Where'd you go, Hungary?

    13. CK

      Hungary.

    14. LH

      Right.

    15. CK

      Yeah, very good. Yeah. Yep.

    16. LH

      What, you were 18, 20? How old were you?

    17. CK

      19 to 21.

    18. LH

      Did you learn the language, too?

    19. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    20. LH

      What did that mission trip teach you about life, business, relationships?

    21. CK

      Every year that goes by, I realize that it was everything to me. When I got home, it was just like, I c- um, you know... First of all, I got home with a ton of confidence. I got rejected tens of thousands of times. I felt like I was able to run through a wall and do anything-

    22. LH

      [laughs]

    23. CK

      ... which was huge, 'cause I was not much at all in high school. I was very average in... I was not, like, the valedictorian type, the f- the freak athlete type. I was playing video games, delivering pizzas, waiting tables. I was very average. The mission fundamentally changed, it rewired me at my core.

    24. LH

      Really?

    25. CK

      Yeah.

    26. LH

      What shifted about your identity after two years of being rejected over and over and over again in a language that you didn't know?

    27. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    28. LH

      How did your identity shift afterwards?

    29. CK

      Just resilience. Like, I, I don't talk about this much, but I knocked on tens of thousands of doors, and I flew all the way there to teach people about the gospel. Even so, I'm an introvert. I don't like talking to people. I don't. And so I would knock on a door, and even though I flew there to do that, I would silently hope that they would never open the door.

    30. LH

      Hmm. Of course. Who wants to be rejected? Who wants to deal-

  14. 49:14 – 55:19

    The Lung Transplant

    1. LH

      How did that come about?

    2. CK

      My daughter was born with a rare lung disease, pulmonary hypertension. It's high blood pressure in the lungs, which is very dangerous because it forces your heart to pump really fast and really hard to get the blood through your arteries, right? There's no cure for it, so we, we had her on medication from three to nine.

    3. LH

      Three years old or three months?

    4. CK

      From three years old to nine, and she was just constantly worsening. She had an oxygen tank. She had blue lips.

    5. LH

      Ugh.

    6. CK

      It was mostly an invisible disease, other than the blue lips. People thought she wore purple lipstick. Um, so it was tough because she had this disability, but people couldn't see it, you know? And so she was nine and the doctor's like, "You... She, she's gonna be gone within a year unless you get her a double lung transplant."

    7. LH

      Really?

    8. CK

      Yeah. And double lung transplants happen-

    9. LH

      That is intense.

    10. CK

      Yeah

    11. LH

      Invasive.

    12. CK

      It, it's, it's as invasive of a transplant as you get. So lungs are the only transplantable-

    13. LH

      Hmm

    14. CK

      ... organ that are exposed to the outside air. Everything else is protected, liver, kidney, all that, bone marrow, but the lungs get all of this air 24/7, and so they're, they're fragile.

    15. LH

      Ugh.

    16. CK

      So [clears throat] he s-

    17. LH

      They have to open up your chest?

    18. CK

      Yep. Yep.

    19. LH

      So they did, they did the surgery?

    20. CK

      Yeah, so they said, "Basically, you don't have a choice. You gotta move to Houston," we were in Dallas, four hours away, "'cause it's the best pediatric hospital for lung transplants." To keep in mind, there's only, like... I might get this wrong, but I think there's only, like, 8 to 15 lung transplants a month nationwide or worldwide. They're very rare.

    21. LH

      Wow.

    22. CK

      Very rare. Uh, so we moved to Houston as a family, uh, with no notice, right before Christmas, and we got her on the transplant list. We rented a house, and we got a call at 10:00 PM one night, and they said, "Hey, we got, we got some lungs. We think they're gonna work. The doctor's on a private jet flying to Nebraska. Um, he's gonna inspect them personally, but it sounds like they're good, so we need you to the hospital like now." So that was the call we were waiting for.

    23. LH

      And there's no guarantee she wakes up afterwards, right?

    24. CK

      No. No.

    25. LH

      It's like, it doesn't mean it's gonna work.

    26. CK

      No. No. In fact-

    27. LH

      But they were, but they were saying, "Hey, if you don't do this next year, she's-

    28. CK

      We didn't have a choice. She's like... Yeah

    29. LH

      ... she's gonna die.

    30. CK

      Yeah. So we went to the hospital, and I had to sign these papers, and it was like, "The chance of death is low double digit percent."

  15. 55:19 – 1:06:57

    Donating a Kidney

    1. CK

      Sam, Sam, Sam, and I learned about living kidney donation, where... or altruistic kidney donation, where you can, you can donate your kidney to a stranger.

    2. LH

      [laughs]

    3. CK

      And that, that's not me. I've never been admitted to a hospital. I'm afraid of needles, I'm afraid of blood. And in fact, my brother-in-law needed a kidney a couple years prior, and I was too afraid to get tested for him. Like I would have-

    4. LH

      You're like, "I don't want it to know that I could work for him."

    5. CK

      Right. I was waiting to be the very last to be tested.

    6. LH

      Right.

    7. CK

      Thankfully, my other brother-in-law, who's braver than me, got tested, and he donated his kidney to my other brother-in-law. And so that just kinda bothered me, that I wouldn't, that I wasn't, like, first to raise my hand. But I started doing research, and, A, like, I don't wanna sacrifice... Like, I don't wanna... I gotta be there for my kids. I didn't wanna go through a surgery that was gonna be a serious risk.

    8. LH

      Yeah.

    9. CK

      Even to say thanks, it seemed like too much. But the chance of death is, um, 3 in 10,000-

    10. LH

      Wow

    11. CK

      ... which is about the same as childbirth for a mom.

    12. LH

      Wow.

    13. CK

      And increasingly safer than childbirth. So I'm like, "Okay, half of the humans that have ever lived have taken even more risk than this to give birth, to, to create a life, but I can't do it to save a life."

    14. LH

      Wow.

    15. CK

      And so, so then I kept researching. I'm like, "All right. What about, like, long-term complications?" Almost zero. Any pills I have to take for the rest of my life? None. Dietary changes? No, just be g- like, generally healthy. Already planning on that. All these things. What about, like, how painful is it? How risky is it? Okay, well, what if my kids need a kidney? What if I give away my kidney and my kids...? Well, there's a program called the, uh, it's the National Kidney Foundation, and they have a voucher program where if you-

    16. LH

      You give one, you get one.

    17. CK

      You get to the top of the list.

    18. LH

      Wow. That's cool.

    19. CK

      You or five people. So I have five people in my family-

    20. LH

      And you can-

    21. CK

      ... me plus five. So I put them all on the list, so now I have an insurance policy if they need a kidney.

    22. LH

      Wow.

    23. CK

      So I'm even better off, right? So, so I keep-

    24. LH

      Wow

    25. CK

      ... researching, and then it's like, well, what if I need a kidney for myself?

    26. LH

      Then what?

    27. CK

      Kidneys rarely go bad alone. They always go bad together.

    28. LH

      Really?

    29. CK

      So it's like, it's... I'm no, I'm no worse off if I only have one kidney and it goes bad, 'cause the other one would've gone bad any-

    30. LH

      Huh.

  16. 1:06:57 – 1:11:35

    Teaching Kids About Money

    1. LH

      What would it be?

    2. CK

      First would be to be generous with it, especially to... I try to teach them to treat service workers as if they're volunteers, right? Like, if I had someone that was my servant, like serving just me all day, unpaid, I would be so grateful for them. But like, if you get in an Uber, like, "Hey, thank you for picking me up."

    3. LH

      Yeah.

    4. CK

      "Thank you for getting here so fast." Like, they're getting paid, but like, they've got a hard life. So I would, I, I, I do, I teach them that. Like specifically service workers, treat them as if they're unpaid volunteers, and be more generous with them than you think you should be. Um, the second thing I would teach them is no one's coming to save you. Like, you- nothing is guaranteed. I don't care if you have a job, a pension, a, you know, you work for a great company. Nothing is guaranteed. No one is coming to save you. You have to be self-sufficient. You... I look at, um, entrepreneurial skills like food storage. In our church, the LDS church, we're encouraged to have a year's worth of food storage, okay? And we do. Uh, well, we used to before we had as many kids. We need to stock up.

    5. LH

      [laughs]

    6. CK

      I don't wanna be, uh, dishonest here, but I look at s- like reselling, stuff like that. I think people, everyone should have those skills just in case the crap hits the fan, and they can sell some old iPhones or something just to make ends meet. So I'm not like pushing my kids toward entrepreneurship, but I want them to develop those skills in case they need them.

    7. LH

      Mm-hmm.

    8. CK

      So treat entrepreneurial skills like, like food storage so you can use it in emergency. Um, and the third one is to, to convert your liabilities to assets, right? It's, which is kind of like a derivative of number two. So if you have a car, have the skill to make income from that car, if it's DoorDash-

    9. LH

      Mm

    10. CK

      ... or Turo or whatever.

    11. LH

      Yeah.

    12. CK

      If you have an, a house, learn how to rent out a room on Airbnb, because any liability could be turned into an asset with the right skills. So I'm actively, I guess, passively trying to teach them how to do that in just the way that we live. I, I went and drove for DoorDash last week just-

    13. LH

      Really?

    14. CK

      Yeah, just to see.

    15. LH

      Just to try it out?

    16. CK

      Yeah. 'Cause I delivered pizzas for pizza out in high school, and I loved it, and I just wanted to see how much money I could make, and it was a lot of fun.

    17. LH

      Did you try it for like a few hours or something? Or did you-

    18. CK

      Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun actually.

    19. LH

      Really?

    20. CK

      Yeah.

    21. LH

      Just picking up orders, dropping them off and-

    22. CK

      Mm-hmm. I would like send goofy pictures to them.

    23. LH

      [laughs]

    24. CK

      Like dropping it off, like, just like-

    25. LH

      Yeah, yeah

    26. CK

      ... I was like praying over it, and it got me extra tips. Like, I, I learned-

    27. LH

      That's smart

    28. CK

      ... I was actually able to influence my tips more than you might think.

    29. LH

      Wow.

    30. CK

      More than just going through the motions, so.

  17. 1:11:35 – 1:13:59

    Three Truths

    1. LH

      So hypothetical scenario, imagine you get to live as long as you wanna live in this earth and create everything you wanna create.

    2. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    3. LH

      Do whatever you wanna do, but in the last day, you have to take all of your work with you, this content, your podcast, whatever you make in the future.

    4. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    5. LH

      It's gone from this world. Uh, but you get to leave behind three truths, three lessons that you would leave with the world. You just shared kind of three money truths.

    6. CK

      Mm-hmm.

    7. LH

      But what would be your three life principles that you would leave behind?

    8. CK

      Impatience with action, patience with results. That's one. In anything you do, people are much more likely to be not bold enough. It's very rare that someone is too bold, right? So be more bold, like, with what you believe. Like, just, just don't, just don't care about what people think. Like, just stop. People don't think about you. And that's not an, that's not a pessimistic or negative thing. They're thinking about their family, their loved ones, their wife. Like, just do your own thing. Um, and the third one, do things for the story.

    9. LH

      Mm.

    10. CK

      For sure. Like, when you do things, if for no other reason just to have a good story out of it, you will be wealthy-

    11. LH

      Mm-hmm

    12. CK

      ... and happy, and you'll be interesting.

    13. LH

      And rich.

    14. CK

      Yes.

    15. LH

      Rich in heart.

    16. CK

      Yes.

    17. LH

      Yes.

    18. CK

      That's what, with the Bucky story, it was like, "This is gonna be a great story."

    19. LH

      And you're still-

    20. CK

      And it is

    21. LH

      ... telling it today.

    22. CK

      Still telling it, but it's, just that one thing has made me wealthy.

    23. LH

      Wow. That's cool. Chris, I wanna acknowledge you, man, for being of service to so many people, not only with your intellect and your skills around entrepreneurship and business, but also your service around giving an organ to a stranger and saving a life literally. So what you're doing is making a difference, and I appreciate it, man. It's really inspiring.

    24. CK

      Thank you.

    25. LH

      Of course. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

    26. CK

      Greatness is simply being a net positive to the world.

    27. LH

      Mm-hmm.

    28. CK

      Net positive.

    29. LH

      My man. Thanks, Chris.

    30. CK

      Thank you, Lewis.

Episode duration: 1:14:00

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