“Work Less, Make More” with James Schramko

Ezra: Hey, Ezra Firestone here with a special guest, someone who you know. His name is James Schramko, ladies, and gentlemen. How’re you doing James?James: I’m doing fantastic. Thank you so much for catching up again Ezra. It’s always a massive joy in my life.

Ezra: Oh thanks, man. Well, I’ve got something to admit to you that I have not admitted to anyone. I haven’t even admitted it to myself until just now. Which is, I believe I am officially an espresso addict. I think I’m like, fully, like, to the point, where, like, this could potentially be a problem. I mean, not a problem, but it’s like, here’s the thing. I discovered coffee two years ago and…or three years ago now, and, like, I kinda got really into it, and now, like, I drink two espressos every morning. And I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I’ve gotta do some research on how much of this stuff you should be drinking, but like, I love it. It tastes so good. It’s so much fun, the ritual of it, James. It’s not even the stimulant side of it, because I can drink an espresso and go to sleep. Like, it doesn’t affect me the way it affects most people because I’m already like super hyper I guess, but the ritual of it, the grinding of the beans, the tamping it into the portafilter, the putting it inside of the machine, the watching it pull, the aroma of it, the tasting it, the steaming the milk, the whole ritual of making espresso, I’m in love with. And to go even further, I’ve spent quite a lot of money on this addiction of mine, and I have gone ahead and upgraded my espresso machine to something pretty fancy.

James: I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I mean, you could be a top fuel dragster or an ocean-going race boat addict, or on heroin or something, it’s coffee. And I think it’s okay in moderation, and there is some evidence, I think, to support that it could give you a nice feeling that will give you some alertness. I mean, they do forbid over caffeine intake for athletes because I think it might give them a performance advantage.

Ezra: Oh wow.

James: And it’s also, I don’t know if you’ve found about this one yet, but you can have caffeine sleeps, as well.

Ezra: Interesting. I have not found that.

James: That’s where you have a shot of caffeine and then you go and have a nap, and you’ll have these really awesome dreams.

Ezra: Wow, I’ve gotta try that. I gotta get into that. I got into this company called Clive Coffee. They’ve got a YouTube channel and I, like, watch all their videos and learn about espresso. And, like, it’s kind of interesting, going to what you teach, you know. They do basically Own The Racecourse, right? They’ve got me on their content, and like, a year later, I’ve been consuming their content for a year. And in the last month, I’ve spent like, maybe three grand with them. I upgraded from my Breville Dual Boiler to their machine. I upgraded from my Baratza Vario grinder to their grinder. And it’s amazing, like, it’s so much better.

James: That’s it. I’ve got the pro grinder and I’m on my second espresso machine, an Italian one. And I’ve also got the cold brew drip coffee maker that Jared Robinson bought for me. And I’ve got the stove top and then, of course, the French press, all different kinds of beans, I think it’s okay.

Ezra: We’re crazy people, we’ve gone…

James: Haven’t you built a whole business around it?

Ezra: Well, not yet but…oh I did, yeah. Well, I didn’t build a business around it, I partnered with a guy, and then I got out of it because it just…I didn’t have the capacity, man. I’ve got enough stuff to do. The last thing I need is to start trying to sell coffee. It’s like, you know what, no.

James: I would have been the one to say that, dude, like stick with…

Ezra: You were the one to say that.

James: Stay in your lane.

Ezra: Yeah, you totally did say that. Now speaking of you telling me stuff, that’s actually what this podcast is gonna be about. So, I asked you to come on because you wrote a book and that book is called “Work Less and Make More”, and I think it is the best dang book that has come out in 2017 for business owners. And I don’t say that lightly, and obviously, I’m a big fan of yours, and you’ve helped me a lot. And you’ve like, you know, coached me throughout the growth of my companies and, like, I believe in your coaching. And, you know, obviously you’ve got a bunch of students and you’re super successful. But, like, I think one of the things that’s popularized in entrepreneurial culture is this, like, you’ve gotta be working all the time. And, you know, you figured out a life that not a lot of people figure out, which is you make seven figures, and you also like, have time to surf, and have time for your family, and you’re not totally busy. And, like, what I’m curious about… Number one, go buy James’ book, “Work Less Make More,” I’m gonna put a link under this post. It is a phenomenal book. What I wanna know is a little bit about, like, for folks who maybe don’t know your story, like, the journey, man, you know. Because there was a time in your life where you weren’t working less and making more, you were working more and making less.

James: Yeah, well, you know, it was a gradual progression of getting a job and making more, and getting a better job and making more, and getting a better job and making more. I went through this progression from my first jobs, sort of, part-time. I don’t know, probably gardening weeds for my mum in the backyard and then lawn mowing. But then my first real job in an office, full-time, was as a debt collector on the telephones. And I think my salary was $18,500 a year. This is in 1991. And from there I kept increasing my wage. I went from there to a finance company. I got all the way up to $27,500. And then I went to a technology company and I was earning $35,000 a year. And that’s when I started having kids. And I was only about 24 when my first kid came along and I was on $35,000 a year, and my wife was on $35,000 a year, and she was stopping work. So I realized I had to make a lot more money and I got into sales. I convinced someone to hire me after getting rejected by Toyota, I got a job with BMW, and I only did it on the basis that I could earn double my salary. I needed to make in the 70s as an income and juiced up on Brian Tracy’s “Psychology of Selling” CDs, and other resources…

Ezra: Old school.

James: …yeah, that my sales team had given me when I was an administrator. I got into the sales role, within a year I was the top BMW salesperson in Australia. Two years later I switched to Mercedes Benz, kept increasing my income, I went up to $115,000, then $127,000. Then I got a management job in the same dealership and I went to $145,000. And then I was approached to go and be a general sales manager at another dealership and I was on $200,000, and then $225,000, and then I became a general manager…

Ezra: Now let me ask you, during all this time are you, how many hours a week are we talking, that you’re working here?

James: Looking at our industry, Ezra, most of these places that I was working are open seven days a week. And it’s not like you’re not working when you’re on a day off because as you elevate up the ladder you become responsible for more and more. So in my last job, the dealership was open 7 days a week. I was responsible for over 70 staff in a dealership that was generating around 50 million a year. We had big targets to achieve so you’re never really switching off. And, of course, for the last two and a half years I was doing my online business at home after hours between 9:30 at night and 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. So, for the last couple of years, I was a general manager on nearly $300,000 a year, and I was doing my little affiliate marketing business on the side. And my big dream…my big ambition was that I could get rid of the day job and have my own business perform well enough that I could just do that. It took me a while to do that. Actually took me about nine months ’til I even made any income, and that was $49.25 affiliate commission when I accidentally bought through my wife’s affiliate link.

Ezra: Isn’t it funny how we always remember the first sale?

James: It was so hard. I just remember how hard it was. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. And I remind my students now, you know, they see people like you, you’re like $26 million a year, and they see people like me, making good money, and they sometimes forget where we started. But, I’m sure you started with some difficulty.

Ezra: Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Dude, I started from nothing. I started with zero, working 80 hours a week in a 300 square foot apartment.

James: Yeah. So I was just, you know, I was in a pretty unhealthy situation where I was burning the candle at both ends, and my health was declining, and I knew I…it’s like I was in a tunnel and I had to make a break for it or go back. It was either retreat or go forward at full speed and maybe hit a train. And I went forward and I just had this innate belief that I could do it. I did escape the clutches of full-time employment. It was not easy. And since then, I’ve seen some of those people come along. I’ve seen young single guys talking about working all the hours, like, sleeping under their desk in sleeping bags. And then I’ve seen stoic individuals, immigrant types who have this work ethic and stuff and they’re on camera with these deep black eyes, you know, like they haven’t had enough sleep. They look unhealthy and they’re preaching, you know, work 19 hour days. And one guy I interviewed, he said, “If it came down to work or spending time with the family, my family know I’ll always choose work,” and I’m thinking, “What a sad fuck.” Anyway, because I was…

Ezra: Man, that’s tough.

James: …I was in this position where I had four kids and a mortgage on a house in Sydney, which is one of the most expensive cities to live in. And I don’t say that as a snob, I’m just saying that’s where I grew up and I wanted to stay. I didn’t want to compromise and move out to the country. I’m not some 22-year-old who can move to Asia and spend $500 a month on living costs. I had a real challenge there to maintain a standard of living that I wanted to provide for my family and I made it through there. So really my book is just compressing a lot of the lessons that I learned and I put them into the most digestible, actionable, useful format possible. And I dedicated the book to my kids because I wanted to give them this book and say, “Hey, this is what your dad went through. Here’s the lessons all in the shortest possible format. Read this and hopefully, you can trim a few years off your own life curve of experience and difficulty.”

Ezra: I love that because it’s like, “Look, this is my experience, this is what I went through, and now I’m documenting it for you,” and what I think is kinda interesting is, like, you don’t hold…like, this content in this book is your content. It’s good stuff. It’s not like you’re holding anything back. And I wanna jump to…I wanna jump to Chapter 3 and 4 which is 64:4 and Building a Team because I feel like those two concepts are…I mean, they’re obviously big ones that I took from you, that have really helped me. I mean, my team is huge now and I’m very efficient with my energy input-output. So could you kinda unpack those a little bit to just use the parlance of our time, 64:4 and team building, and kinda some of your thoughts on those subjects?

James: Yeah, I got a lot from the 80/20. I read about it in 4-Hour Work Week. I was familiar with Richard Koch’s book and then Perry Marshall later wrote a whole book about it as well, which he sent me to read and I liked that too. The whole concept is that there’s only a few things that matter and the rest of it isn’t important. And I’d actually experienced that in my own career. There were just some customers who would buy a lot and others ones who’d waste a lot of time and not buy anything. And we’ve just got to stop treating things equally. So as entrepreneurs, we tend to see the opportunity in everything, whether it’s a coffee business or a, you know, a marketing business or face cream. There’s so many potential things we could turn our machine towards. It’s a matter of figuring out which ones are better. So, being curious with the 80/20, I read that it’s fractal. And that means that you can apply it to itself and it keeps working as you keep going into it. Like, so I’m calculating, what if you 80/20 the 80/20? And this is what I came up with. That only 4% of the things you’re doing are actually generating almost 2/3 of your results. That means if you had an e-commerce store, there’s a chance that just a few of your items or SKUs, whatever you call them, are generating the lion’s share of your income, and then there’s a whole bunch of other crap that doesn’t do anything. And that was certainly true of our parts department at the dealership. We had millions of dollars worth of physical stock in a warehouse that was sitting on a shelf doing nothing, yet every day we would sell brake pads, filters, umbrellas if you can believe. We sold so many umbrellas it was ridiculous.

Ezra: Ooh, that’s an interesting market.

James: But then you’ll get weird parts that someone ordered by mistake or it’s for an obscure model, and no one ever orders it. It just sits there and then you end up with this situation of obsolescence where you have to just write it off. So I’ve seen what happens. So anyway, 4% of the things you are doing are getting you 64% of the results which means that you could safely remove, delete, stop doing things that you thought were important and there would be no negative impact on your business. In fact it could have a tremendous positive impact. And one of my go-to coaching techniques is to help my students do less. And that really is where the book delivers on the promise.

Ezra: Yeah, totally.

James: I remember us sitting in a little hut there in Hawaii surrounded by exotic surf craft on the walls which I wish we’d done something about.

Ezra: I know, it was…just got thrown away [inaudible 00:14:29]

James: And so to you Ezra, why aren’t you just doing more of this boom stuff? You know, put it under different labels, sell it through different channels. You’re so good at it, I’m sure that you could just sell more of it. And this is where the power is. If we just stay in our lane and just mash the accelerator and not worry about all the side turns we could take, which, potentially, lead us to no real outcome other than wasting time and fuel, you know.

Ezra: Deep rather than wide, man. It’s such a good strategy. Now, one of the things that you kinda go into before you go into 80/20, 64:4, is your effective hourly rate. And I think that this is a…it’s like, this is something that I had never heard of before when I heard of 80/20, but it’s kinda good because it gives you that, sort of, the way of, sort of, figuring out what activities really should you be doing and what activities should you get someone else to do. So it’s kind of a nice lead-in. Can you just talk about that for a minute?

James: Yeah, because if you say 80/20 or 4:64, people are gonna say “Yeah, but how do I know which ones are better?” So, effective hourly rate is simply a scoring system. Because we can track time, the first step that I like to do is actually take a note of what we’re spending our time on. I recommend installing software, something like RescueTime. If you’re spending a lot of time on your desktop computer, it will show you where you spend your time. If you have different products within your products suite and some of them take up more time than others, then you can actually calculate how much profit is coming from that product line and how many hours are required to generate that profit. And you can simply calculate a profit per hour rate. So, if you had a coaching business, an e-commerce store, and say, an affiliate side-income, you could actually work out how many hours you spend on that and how much money you generate. And it might point to one of them being extremely profitable and another one being reasonably profitable, and another one, sometimes, you’re actually paying to have that business division.

Ezra: One of the…just a side note, is one of the terrifying things about RescueTime is you discover how much time is spent on email and Facebook and it’s shocking.

James: Email is like the black hole of productivity where it’s simply a to-do list that other people get to add things to which is why you have to be so careful who you give your email address to. Soon as you start entering marketing funnels under the false reasoning of, “Oh, I just want to see what they’re doing,” that’s like a downward spiral. You start clicking other things, you get intimidated by how clever they are and how well they’re going. You follow their funnels, you start buying things, trying a different model altogether, and you’ve wasted all that time and energy. And then social media, I mean, when I was in these work phases I didn’t know that people just sit there and look at YouTube videos all day long or mess around on Facebook. Which is why I’ve avoided putting my business on Facebook because it’s the last place I want to go to be productive. I go there to let off some steam or to see what people are up to or to do some marketing, to attract people to my business, but I am also super conscious that you could potentially go there and forget why you even went there in the beginning.

Ezra: A hundred percent, it happens all the time [inaudible 00:18:00]

James: An hour or two later, you’re like, “What have I done today?” So one thing that I do is I journal what I do each day. At the end of each day, I just post a few bullets in my Silver Circle community for my members, like, what I did today, and I’ve found just doing a little daily reconciliation keeps me pretty disciplined in terms of where I spend my time. But there’s one thing that I do every single day, and that’s surf. And having that routine, pinning my day around that, that is what keeps me from being a workaholic or a dull, boring, you know, grinder, or hustler, whatever you want to call them.

Ezra: Yeah, it’s important to have hobbies and activities and things that you’re interested in outside of work or you’re only gonna work all the time. And the other thing I was gonna comment on on the social media thing, is they’re now saying that the addiction to social media, to the feedback that you get, like, I don’t know what they’re calling it, an endorphin rush, or whatever it is that you get when someone likes one of your things, is more addictive than sugar and even some drugs. Like heroin and stuff. That, like, it’s just so hard to kick.

James: I think it’ll be like the asbestos. In ten years time from now, they’ll be revealing even more research about how terrible it is for your personality, for your relationships, for the way…for your self-esteem. We’re only seeing these curated lives, or then those people who I think, potentially overshare, they’re just sharing all this tragedy and woe. And anytime there’s bad news it’s right in your face on social media. So I actually would recommend people to limit the amount of time they spend on it, not because I’m some conservative old prude, but I came from a generation before your generation where we didn’t have mobile phones when we were teenagers. Like, we would be out riding our BMX bike or going down sailing or hanging out at a friend’s place playing Lego or whatever. Like, we didn’t have this thing in our hand from the time we came out of the womb. And I think I possess a skill or a discipline of being able to concentrate on things without electronic interference, you know, for periods of time. So, often I don’t even know where my phone is. It’s in my room…

Ezra: You know there’s a new service now that comedians like Dave Chappelle and Hannibal Buress and Joe Rogan are using which is this service that when you come into one of their shows, they will take your phone and put it in a bag that you cannot open unless, you, like, get a phone…if you get a phone, you can still get a phone call. Your phone still works. You can take it outside. They’ll open it and you can engage with it outside of the venue. And what they’re finding is that, like, people are way more engaged, and they’re paying way more attention, and it’s just like, way better than folks, just like, taking pictures and being on their camera, and texting people, and this and that, so, you know. Of course, you need to pay attention to your life.

James: When I go down to my surf every day, I walk down the path, and I walk from the path across the beach to the water and everywhere on the beach it’s just like teenagers in the sand, on their towel, Instagramming pictures, looking at their phone. There’ll be like six people, six young people there all looking at their phone, not talking to each other. I’m thinking, why even bother? Like, why don’t you just lie in your backyard with your phone? Because people are just not participating and I think there’s a real world out there for people when they put the phone down. And there’s a quote in the book that’s something along the lines of, “Success isn’t when you’re at the beach with your laptop, success is when you’re at the beach with your surfboard.” I mean, let’s have some time away from the device. It actually makes your business more profitable. You will get creative ideas. When you do get back in front of that device you can be super effective because you’ve been saving, or you’re building up an appetite for it. You can destroy it, you know, using your best energy when you’re on. So when my appointments are on, like I’m talking to you now, I’m focused on that. There’s no phone in sight. Just you, me, a microphone, and our best energy.

Ezra: A hundred percent, you know, work is gonna fill the time that you give it, and you need those…you need that, like, that space. Because, you know, what I’ve found, my wife is…Carrie, you know her but some folks don’t. So she’s into meditation and she’s gotten me into these, like, multi-day sort of digital detox, no technology, mostly silence, mostly isolation, not a ton of food, these experiences where you kinda go inward. And what I find is that every time I do that, there’s a kind of creation that is available only in that spot of no stimulation. If you’re constantly being bombarded with just, like, Facebook, and this and that, you don’t have the space to really go deep in your thoughts. And it’s such a really great practice. I think if you’re listening to this and you’re not doing any kind of digital detox, maybe add a day or two every six months where you just kinda take a break. You know, we have what we call no work Saturdays. We don’t work Sundays either but, like, we’re just not on our devices on the weekends for the most part. You know, we’re off our devices at around 7:00 p.m., you know what I mean? Like, we just have, we kind of, we break state from the digital world, you know, and it’s helpful.

James: That’s good. If you can do it every day then there won’t even be a need for detox because you’ve got a routine that you could sustain for the next 10 years. So that’s usually one of my tests. Could I do this for the next 10 years? Which is how I’ve built my business model, it’s how I build my friendships and relationships. They have to be sustainable because there’s not much effort involved if you don’t have to keep chopping and changing these things.

Ezra: Can we…I agree with you. I wanna switch to the last kinda subject I wanna touch on, which is one of the things that you’ve been really successful in doing is building a community of people who actually help one another out. And you have, I think, arguably, the best online marketing form that exists today for business owners where people can go and, like, actually have conversation about, like, “Hey I’m doing this thing, what do you think?” And get like, real, successful, actual business owners responding to them, and having like, in-depth conversations and sharing their experiences, you know. And I wonder two things. Number one, why you lean towards subscription revenue, because you talk about that in the business and how you coach people in relationship to subscription revenue. And number two, who is that community right for?

James: Okay, so subscription revenue, I like that model because it’s a sustainable model. It takes out the lumpiness of the peaks and troughs that you might experience if you have a onetime product. Product launch style business certainly has a place as promotions and you can still have promotions for a subscription business, but I do like having recurring income. I think I’ve had six-figure income months every single month for the last seven years. And I like not having to wonder if I’m gonna be able to pay the bills. I like being able to have team members who have been with me for eight years. I like having more money coming in than going out just in general. So the recurring subscription model makes sense. The enemy of subscription model is churn. That’s people who leave. So, if you can get churn under control, it means that I can spend most of my energy looking after my existing customers instead of chasing new ones, or trying to figure out a new technique, or worrying too much if Facebook shuffles around their algorithm. Because every time that happens you see people panic, and that’s because they are super dependent on getting new customers.

But of the five areas, you can focus on your business, getting new customers is not really the best payoff. Generally, it’s improving the frequency, having multiple sales for the same customer, or increasing the lifetime value of the customer. So that is why I like the subscription model. But I also, from a personal standpoint, I like developing that relationship that I have with my best customers over the years. Some of these people have been to 11 or 12 of my events. I go and see them at local meetups in different states and different countries. And I know my customers quite well. And there’s nothing that replaces that kind of research where you are face to face with a customer. In the same way that I see you, every now and then, in a different place, here and there, but we’re always reconnecting and we have a much deeper relationship than if it was just a virtual relationship over Skype.

Ezra: Totally. Absolutely. And that forum, man, it’s so powerful because you’ve got real people responding to you. I mean, this isn’t just meant to pitch all your stuff but, like, I think forums are a really good…something that people forget about. Where, it’s like if you need support, it’s better than a Facebook group, frankly, I think, so…

James: To answer your question, who it’s for, I mean, look, this thing’s been around since before Facebook groups. So, I guess I created the community that I have as a solution for what I thought was missing. And what I thought was missing was, yes, there was forums and there was places you could buy information products and they often talk about a retention of three months being the normal membership. And that’s because they had pretty crappy support. My real bugbear is that the person who starts the community never shows up. They’re not there. And you could probably apply this to most Facebook groups. Often the person who started the group is not there. Their first thing they wanna do is extract themselves from it and appoint administrators or people to service the customers while they’re off doing whatever else they’re doing.

In my case, I show up. And I think that’s a big differentiator. And the second point of that is I’m able to actually customize the information for people according to their own situation. I’m not leaving it up to them to try and interpret a generic training. I might point them to checklists and frameworks, and specific trainings, and then we can talk about how it applies to their business. And I’ll also follow people up, find out how they’re going and keep them accountable. So it genuinely is a coaching environment where I want them to succeed because that gets rid of the churn challenge for me. And that’s why we have members staying there for two or three years, not two or three months.

Ezra: For sure. And I think that is one of the ways that you’re unique, is that you actually go in there and respond to posts. And the other thing that you just mentioned that I forgot about is frameworks and standard operating procedures is something that you are phenomenal at. And I don’t think you realize how valuable that is to ongoing business process. And I think that’s one of the things that, in my estimation, has made you as popular as you are. It’s like, you can take ideas…it’s like, there’s a lot of people who teach but there’s not a lot of people who teach really well. And I think part of one of the reasons why you’re as popular as you are as a coach, and as a teacher, and as someone who runs a forum is because you have that unique ability to just kinda framework, and systematize, and standard operate, like, somewhat complex processes, you know?

James: I do like to simplify the complex. But also, I know if something’s going to be done more than once, it’s worth documenting. So for that reason, I’ve always taken notes on all the coaching calls. I like recognizing patterns. I guess I would say it’s like Charlie Mungers’ Mental Models. If I can see a pattern or an algorithm that I know works, then I would like to share that with other people who might also get benefit from it. That’s why in the higher level group, Silver Circle, which you’re a member of, where I’m working with people that have quite substantial sized businesses, the patterns that work for one in a bass guitar market might work really well for someone who’s in the skin care market, where they’re not applying it, or they can get this innovation rapidly. So having a core group of people of a similar level of business, being able to cross-pollinate has been useful. And therefore, it’s worth documenting that and getting contributions from that data set. So I guess we’re capturing data across a whole bunch of people. And if you look at SuperFast Business, I think there’s 800 coaching threads in my private section where I’m coaching people individually for their own situation. And most people just can’t believe that it’s true. They don’t believe that I’m gonna be able to do that, and…

Ezra: Yeah, they’re like, “Who is this imposter James Schramko? It can’t actually be him.”

James: Well, it’s not like that, they just don’t think they can actually use that section unless they pay more because they feel just unrealistic for that amount of value to be offered for the price that I charge. So, over time I’ve been raising my rates a little bit to try and get that back into step with, you know, basically to slow down the number of new intakes to a really manageable level so that I can deliver a good product. Because I believe if your product’s really good, you don’t have to worry about tricky sales techniques. The product will hold people into it, give them a great return, and they’re not going anywhere, and then they actually tell people about it. And this means you don’t need to do big launches, you don’t need to worry about affiliate programs, you don’t have to drive, you know, a crazy amount of traffic in a desperate spike because you got some bill due. Like, everything changes, it removes compromise.

Ezra: Yeah, it’s a really good strategy, looking at that, how you can implement repeat business. So, you know, I’m a fan of keeping these somewhat short. We’re going about 40 minutes now. So I’m just gonna say one more time, you can click the link under this podcast and purchase James’ book, “Work Less Make More.” If you don’t read, you really ought to because what…it kind of gives you…it kinda gets your brain working in a different way than consuming audio or video content. It’s worth giving a shot. James do you have an audio version of this book or a video version or any other way people can get it, download a pdf or something like that?

James: I actually read an introduction for the book, like, the whole introduction chapter on my podcast. So that would be a good way to ease into it. And I’m currently making the audible version.

Ezra: Nice. So what’s the URL people can go to if they’re not on my website when they’re listening to this?

James: superfastbusiness.com/book or just go to Amazon and search for “Work Less Make More” by James Schramko. And that’s S-C-H-R-A-M-K-O.

Ezra: So, superfastbusiness.com/book or go to Amazon, search for James Schramko, “Work Less Make More”, James, thanks for everything you’ve done to support my business and the growth of my business. And I sure hope that folks go out and get your book because it’s really good, man. Good job.

James: Well thank you for executing on all the things we talk about. You’re like a dream scenario for someone who helped businesses, where you got an enthusiastic participant with the ability to go out into the marketplace, innovate and pioneer. You’re a tremendous leader to our market and you deserve all the success you’re getting.

Ezra: Thanks, man. Yeah, I mean, people probably don’t know this, but like, Smart Marketer that you’re listening to now, exists, it’s your model, it’s Own The Racecourse. I got the model for Smart Marketer directly from you. I remember when I…you had this sales video or you had this sales page. It was like, you were gonna bring a group of business owners together and show them this, like, system. It was two days in Australia and, like, you’d broken it all down and it was like a sales event. You were only charging two grand if I remember, remember that?

James: That was the first and only Own The Racecourse live training.

Ezra: Yes. So I wanted to come to that so bad but at that time, I don’t think I could afford it. Like, I think it was like, the plane ticket and the ticket price and the whole thing. And I was like, I couldn’t do it, you know. And I was bummed because, like, I was, like, this is the thing that I want. Like I felt…I had some kind of, like, I just knew that was, like, I needed to learn that thing. I read the sales page and, like, this is what I need for what I’m trying to do. And then what happened was I think I ended up selling my e-commerce business coming into some money and joining Silver Circle as one of the things I did with that money. And then running into you at a live event where I was like, “Listen, dude, that event you held in Australia, you need to just teach me that,” and you were like, “Okay, sweet,” and that’s kind of how it happened.

James: Yeah, maybe you actually said, “Look, I don’t know if you will, but I’d love, you know, I’ve got this domain, smartmarketer.com, and I want to do what you’ve done with the SuperFast Business,” and you were concerned that I may not teach you, that I might have a limiting belief that there’s not enough room for both of us in the marketplace.

Ezra: Yeah, I mean, well, at that time I don’t think I really fully understood what you did and I thought maybe we were gonna be doing the same thing, but it’s like, obviously we do completely different stuff but…

James: Well, I like to think that I can see a future version of people when I’m dealing with them. And I could absolutely tell you had something special. That’s right, you had a spark and that’s why I immediately said we should do a podcast together because I knew you were going places and I’m a good talent spotter, having hired hundreds of salespeople.

Ezra: I was just a young seedling.

James: Look at you now, you’ve probably, I think technically, could be the most successful student that’s come out of that program. From where you started to where you are now, has been massive.

Ezra: Yeah, I mean, look at Own the Racecourse on Boom, right? Boom went from a couple hundred grand to 20 million a year in that time span. And a couple hundred grand a year to 20 million a year largely on the backbone of Own the Racecourse.

James: It’s not bad.

Ezra: Not bad at all. I mean, listen, I’m happy with it, right? Alright man, I’m gonna call this, thank you so much, superfastbusiness.com/book or Amazon.com, search for “Work Less Make More” with James Schramko.