After reading the AI 2027 https://ai-2027.com/ This is my view. They describe a scenario that is detailed, plausible, and terrifying. It suggests that by 2027, AI systems will not only build software, write code, and automate workflows but they’ll be recursively improving themselves. If that happens, we’re not talking about disruption. We’re talking about extinction, at least for most of the current startup ecosystem. If the AI 2027 trajectory plays out, the traditional SaaS startup playbook is dead.

Let me explain.

We are entering a time of the Great Collapse of the Innovation Pyramid.

Most people think the AI revolution will crown new kings, but I believe it will erase the entire middle class of innovation.

We are all used to the Innovation Pyramid (Before AI) and for decades, tech has been shaped like a pyramid:

Top: Big tech giants, controlling platforms and infrastructure.

Middle: Startups, hustling with new ideas, carving niches.

Bottom: Tools, plugins, individual contributors.

Each level fed the one above. Startups scaled into unicorns. Devs built tools. The giants bought the best of them. That pyramid is about to collapse and be flattened by the weight of AGI-fueled automation and acceleration. When intelligence is cheap, abundant, and exponentially improving itself, you don’t need layers anymore. If you can describe a product, an AI agent will build it for you in minutes. MVPs that once took quarters now take hours. Iteration cycles vanish. “First mover advantage” dies. In this world, code is no longer a moat, it’s a dropdown that anyone can click.

• Ideas go straight to execution.
• Tools build tools.
• Platforms build platforms.
• Problems solve themselves before humans even name them.

There’s no room for middlemen in a world where intelligence is fully integrated into the infrastructure. So unless you have massive distribution, proprietary data, or regulatory capture, you’re a feature, not a company. These will be the new kings. The companies that already have them? Amazon, Google, Apple, OpenAI, Microsoft. The rest? Racing toward having those things or racing towards irrelevance.

My belief is that startups will be outpaced by the curve. The myth of the startup is that speed and scrappiness win. In the AI-2027 world, speed is ambient and scrappiness is irrelevant.

Startups will:

• Burn capital chasing ideas that AGI can execute faster.
• Lose hiring advantages as teams shrink to 1 engineer + 1 agent.
• Miss the wave because they’re optimizing for a pre-AGI world.

Worse? The feedback loops that once helped you iterate (market data, user behavior) will belong to the giants who control the new AI layer. Most SaaS today is just logic and UI wrapped in a login screen. In the AGI era, every SaaS product is a prompt away. Users will ask an agent to “build me an invoicing tool” and get one tailored to their exact needs. The new interface isn’t software, it’s intent. Desire itself is the operating system. If your business is based on static functionality, you’re already obsolete.

Venture Capital will mutate. VCs have long bet on the idea that time + capital + talent = value. Venture capital was built on an assumption, that small teams, with capital and time, could build valuable software companies. If AGI wipes out the time and the team requirements, what’s left to invest in? Time collapses. capital has no leverage, and talent is just an API call away. I believe VC will shift and the shift will be violent, it will look like this…

• Fewer deals, bigger checks (Less pre-seed and seed activity)
• Smaller checks will move away from software to real-world application tech (Bits to atoms)
• Focus on infrastructure, not features. (More mega-bets on existing giants)
• The collapse of the “unicorn pipeline”
• Ownership of computing, not code.

VCs won’t fund ideas but they will fund foundations. Founders, brace yourselves because the door to Series A is about to slam shut unless you’re creating platforms for AI agents or have irreplaceable traction.

So who will win in this collapse?

The winners won’t be the fastest builders. It will be the company that hosts the fastest builders. It will be platforms with deep integration into real-world infrastructure, products with a strong irreplaceable user base or network effect, those that own data flows no LLM can scrape, those that create tools that empower agents, not just users, and those that translate trust, culture, and context into systems AI can respect. The winners will think like ecosystems, not apps.

This Is Not a Drill. I may be early but I am not being hyperbolic. I know it feels unreal, but it isn’t. We’ve never built something smarter than ourselves that can improve itself. That’s not like making faster cars or better phones. That’s not a new tool, that’s a new species and it’s already peeking through the veil.

If you’re building for a 2023 world or still building a startup the way Y Combinator told you in 2014, you’re building a boat after the flood has already started. AI isn’t a platform shift. It’s a civilizational rebase. The old map won’t save you! The old rules won’t guide you. Start looking at what can’t be copied. Start investing in what can’t be accelerated. Start anchoring yourself in what can’t be replaced. Because 2027 isn’t the year of unicorns. It’s the year the unicorn goes extinct.

Over the last few months, there has been seemingly no industry hit harder than the restaurant industry except for travel. There are some of “our friends” in the media who say the restaurant industry will not survive. I have been working with small businesses and restaurants for over 15 years and the idea that the entire restaurant industry will die is not only sensationalism, its asinine. Will the industry be affected? Of course! Will it die? Of course not!

The restaurant industry has been in existence for over 5 centuries (no that’s not a typo). It has survived earthquakes, wars, nuclear bombs, and — oh yea — a few plagues: Tuberculosis (>1 billion dead), Smallpox (>300 million dead), and the Spanish Flu (>100 million dead). By no means am I making light of COVID-19 and the terrible destruction that it is leaving but I want to state the fact that we as a human race have faced so much adversity and we have always found a way to rise back up. The human spirit is resilient and the restaurant industry will survive, but now the question is what will it look like post-COVID-19?

Restaurants are in a life or death predicament with the closure of all nonessential businesses, employees not wanting to be put at risk, shelter in place directives, and restrictions on operations (i.e take out only, etc). The National Restaurant Association believes that the restaurant industry could lose $225 billion because of this pandemic. There will be some casualties for restaurants that were not able to get money through the Cares Act and did not have enough in emergency savings. But for those who could weather 2 to 3 months of economic slowing or got some relief from their landlords or the government below is what they could expect.

Here is what restaurants will look like post-COVID-19 and a grade to those types of business surviving, but remember it is not a one size fits all experience. Keep in mind my thoughts are for the majority, I do realize there may be some outliers. Another major factor is what state you are in.

Casual Dining

Casual dining restaurant owners I believe will take the biggest hit due to this virus. The first hit they will take is restaffing. EDD is paying an additional $600 a week on top of the normal EDD benefits. Some of these workers went from making $15–$20 an hour or $600 -$800 a week (Depending on hours) to over $1,000 a week or more. This is not the fault of the employee but these employees will be in no rush to go back to work and take a pay cut. The secondary issue is the cost of dining. Casual dining is the fine dining of the middle class and to take a family of 4 to eat is anywhere between $125-$200 per visit. Most families will hold off on spending that type of money for one meal and grab fast-casual, food trucks, or fast food where they will pay half those prices or less. The 3rd and final negative is the concept of social distancing. Casual dining restaurants have an internal concept called turning tables which means that you try to get your guests everything they need as fast as you can so you can get them fed and bring in the next guest.

Once shelter in place is lifted in your state, you will see restaurants opening back up their doors but with the caveat of seating people a table or more apart from each other. This concept is the right thing to do but will essentially cut that business’s capacity to serve their guest 50%. Due to all these things, I believe, unfortunately, it will be at least 6–12 months before casual dining rebonds to pre corona sales numbers.

For the casual dining restaurants that don’t have money in the bank, they are the ones that have the highest chance of going bankrupt. Especially when a large sum of the Payroll Protection Program funds went to the larger franchises. According to Forbes 71 publicly traded businesses got millions of dollars in the Payroll Protection stimulus before the average businesses got a dollar. This is wrong on so many levels but its the sad reality we live in. If you own one of these restaurants here is what you need to do. 1) Streamline your operations. If you can open with fewer people do so. 2) Heavily adopt technology for order taking away from the store. 3) Be creative in your pricing to attract customers. 4) communicate, communicate, communicate! Traditionally restaurants don’t do much marketing but if you have an email list try to use companies like Mailchimp or Constant Contact in order to get customers in the door.

Grade: D-

Fine Dining

You know fine dining took a hit when some of them started allowing delivery companies to deliver their food. Fine dining is about the experience and without the experience why pay the exorbitant prices. For the rich, they will continue fine dining regularly because their bank accounts were not devastated during this pandemic. But for the average joe looking to take his wife out somewhere nice for their anniversary, or the new couple looking to have some fun or the elaborate birthdays dinners are a thing of the past for at least 3–6 months maybe more depending on how badly people’s income takes a hit in these times.

The loyal and well off customers will get back to their expense steaks as soon as possible and the others will have to wait for the prime cut ribeye until things get better. To me, fine dining is a 50/50 split and will need at least 3–6 months to get back to pre corona sales. Here is what you can do if you are a fine dining restaurant owner. 1) Let go of the desire to make the experience for now and double down on your brand. Most of these establishments win because of the brand so now is the time to leverage your brand to drive customers into the door. 2) Leverage your space. Find programs like KettleSpace and others that allow you to turn your space during non-peak times into an event or co-working space.

Grade: C

Food Trucks

This type of restaurant will have its positives and negatives. The positive is that they don’t have heavy rent costs like most restaurant types and they serve a market similar to fast-casual.

The negative is that a lot of these types of businesses rely on large gatherings and festivals to make their money. I personally know some food trucks that have still been doing moderately well even during these times because they are innovating on how they are trying to reach people and they are not resting on their laurels. That’s what it is going to take for these types of restaurants to survive, a lot of hustle and creativity. For example, find catering opportunities, create a pop-up event where people can order ahead and pick up, and move your food truck locations in front of beaches and parks. For those that have some hustle, they will see increases in sales similar to fast-casual and for those that don’t, they will see increases in sales similar to casual dining which I will talk about below.

Grade: B

Fast Casual

This will be the next style of restaurant that bounces back. Similar to fast food, fast-casual also does extremely well in a recession. It is actually the recession of 2008 that created the massive growth of fast-casual restaurants. Fast-casual chains emerged with the promise of speed like fast food but with higher-quality food in a limited-service format. More variety and healthier options make fast-casual a hit with the millennial generation and younger.

The biggest problem with these types of restaurants is re-staffing. The majority of the fast casuals that have stayed open did so with little to no staff and the owner playing a bigger role in taking orders and distributing the food. These types of businesses will have to double down on finding ways to create a contactless experience in the store and outside of the store. They have access to order ahead and delivery for outside of the store but for inside of the store owners will have to start thinking about potential options like adding a table tent card with the ability to take orders that go directly to the kitchen or a self-service ordering kiosk like the ones offered at Zyrl. The belief is that about a month or so after the shelter in place is lifted these restaurants will start to see major increases in their sales.

Grade: B+

Fast Food

This one will return the fastest out of them all. Fast food does extremely well in recessions and will bounce back to normal fairly quickly. As we all know COVID-19 is not just a health pandemic but an economic issue as well. About a week or two after shelter in place mandates are lifted we will see these types of restaurants have an increase in sales almost immediately.

And for those with a drive-through, they should see those increases even sooner. If you don't have a drive-through try order ahead and pick up in the parking lot. Most of these large franchises don't have to restaff because they had enough money to keep business moving forward even through these times. The reality is getting a $5 meal and getting out of the house even if it's only for 15–20 mins will be very satisfying for those who have been stuck inside for over a month.

Grade: A

For most restaurants, there is a path forward and for some, it will be easier than for others but there is no reason to lose hope. Even for the hardest circumstance, there is a path forward. I believe that if you find yourself on the hardest path then you should be proactive and innovative and find ways to survive. All great entrepreneurs had to survive the unsurvivable and make it. It’s a part of the journey. Good luck and I will be praying for you to make it. Tag 3 restaurant owners you believe need to hear this and hit that heart button and leave a comment to support your local businesses. The more they know the better their chances of success.

Sometimes coming close to losing your life can give you the biggest epiphanies. When my life was on the line I realized what my biggest fear truly was.

So what is my biggest fear?

I travel often and I have been on some rough flights before but this one flight was very different. The turbulence was the worst I had ever seen, nothing like your normal plane shake. Now, I’m not the type of person to get afraid easily but the plane was shaking so uncontrollably it had me afraid for my life. You could see the passengers bodies bouncing up and down out of their seats. The wings of the plane looked like they were about to be ripped off and even the flight attendants couldn’t hide their fear. They were very nervous and so was every passenger on that plane. The moment I saw the fear in the flight attendants faces was the moment I started panicking internally. What in the world was happening?!?

As the time passed the situation got worse and as the situation got worse I got more afraid. That’s when it hit me. I asked myself- what am I afraid of? Am I afraid of dying? But the answer to the latter was, NO. That’s not what scared me at all.

The main reason why I was afraid was simple! I was afraid of dying without achieving the things I felt like I was called to achieve. THAT WAS MY FEAR. There was so much in me that I didn’t get a chance to do. There were so many times I made excuses or procrastinated. All I could think about was the regret of if only I could’ve done just one more impactful thing before I died. Maybe I could have moved one more mountain. Maybe I could’ve said yes one more time. Maybe I could’ve picked up that phone and called that loved one. There were so many things that I felt like I didn’t do and now I would never have the chance! And that was my fear. Now clearly I survived because I am talking to you right now but even until this day that is still my fear. I have so many dreams, so many goals, so many aspirations, and my biggest fear is to die knowing that those things are still inside of me!

One of the biggest frustrations a human can have is untapped potential. When you know you have something inside of you, but you haven’t tapped into it yet. You’ve been complaining, you’ve been making excuses, you’ve been doing all of the things most people do. A lot of times we push things off to tomorrow but we don’t know if we are going to have another day. We don’t know if tomorrow will even come.

Sometimes we have to motivate ourselves and say- today is the day! You have to say to yourself- this is it! No more waiting! No more hoping! I understand how tough that can be because I was afraid too. Here is how I had to think about it. If you were on your deathbed, do you want to say- I wish I had or I’m glad I did?

How do you live with the fear? There are two ways you live with that fear.

1.Assign the Right Meaning to it.

The first thing that you need to do is assign a proper meaning to the fear. Most people have the tendency to assign the wrong meaning to the things that they don’t like or are afraid of doing. Let’s take public speaking as an example. If you have fear of public speaking then you are occupied with the thought that public speaking is absolutely scary and therefore shouldn’t be pursued. Well, that’s assigning the wrong meaning to it. It’s similar to not opening your own business because you are scared you’ll never be successful. With that mindset you will never do it. Instead, what you need to have inside of you is this voice that says- I will do this regardless of my fear!

I highly recommend reading this book called “Feel the fear and do it anyway” by Susan Jeffers. Sometimes you just gotta go after it! Assign proper meaning to your fear. Understand that even though you are afraid to do something, you will have courage and do it anyway. Do not use fear as an excuse to not do something. Do not let fear stop you from going after your goals. Don’t let it restrict you. Push forward. You know in your head that you have it in you to actually go out there and make it happen. So, whenever you are faced with fear if you have this mindset you will force yourself to do the actions necessary to have the life you want.

2.Let the fear drive you.

You have to let that fear drive you. You have to let that fear motivate you. Personally, I was afraid of people having a negative opinion about me or speaking negatively about me. I NEVER wanted people to do that. Even today, it still bugs me here and there.

But what I realized is that I have to I let the negative talk drive me. I let the times my principal said I’ll be either dead or in jail, drive me. I let the time when my friend said “you’ll never have success if you work with those people” , DRIVE ME! I let the people’s doubt and people’s hate and people’s lack of belief in me, drive me. I let that fear push me and propel me to my greatness. And so you have to let that fear- drive you. Your fear might be different than my fear. Whatever the fear is let it drive you. Let it motivate you. Put it in front of you and face it head on.

Don’t let that one thing have power over you. Your mind is the ultimate powerhouse. You have the power to manage your fear and turn them around for your benefit. Your fear is only an illusion to stop you from your purpose. You can go out there and make your purpose happen! You can make your destiny happen! You can walk into your dreams, your desires and your goals, if you decide not to let the fear stop you but instead let it drive you.

Write that fear down on a piece of paper then crumple that piece of paper and throw it in the trash. Because it doesn’t have a hold on you if you decide that it does not. You have to choice to hold on to fear or let it drive you. What will you decide to do?

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WE ALL WANT SUCCESS. Majority of the time we have absolutely no clue what is stopping us from getting to that success! Often times we don’t realize that getting to success (whatever success might be for you) is like going through one of the toughest obstacles courses in the world.

Now, imagine going through the toughest obstacle course in the world blindfolded! Well, that’s how most people attack their goals. They have no idea what obstacles are holding them back from getting to the success that they desire. These obstacles come in two types of limits. These two different types of limits can stop you from achieving the goals that you set for yourself.

1. Speed Limits

What are they?

When you are driving in your car you can see on the side of the road there are ton of speed limits signs. Now these speed limits are dictated by the state or city that you live in.

Others have decided how fast you can go and they’ll punish you if you go faster than you were told. Isn’t this just like life? In life there are speed limits that are put on you by other people. Everyday other people are putting limits on you and this the first type of limit you need be aware of. The limits other people put on you!

Are others imposing limits on you?

I have had so many conversations with the individuals I’ve coached that tell me they couldn’t do something because their parents said it was not possible, their friends said they didn’t have the ability to do this, their spouse said they were incapable of doing something. Most individuals are trying to figure out what they believe they can do but they are trying to do this through the lenses of other people opinions. Sometimes even society will paint a picture of what a person can or can’t do. Whether you are limiting your success has a lot to do with if you are allowing other people to dictate your destination? Are you letting other people construct the path of success for you? If you are, you’ve got to decide right now that you are no longer going to listen to other people’s limitations because you have all of the power! You can only use your power to your best advantage once you stop taking on the limitations of others.

How to stop others from limiting your success?

Have you ever heard people say “Beware of the dream stealers, they are out there to steal your dream!” Look, here’s the thing, nobody can steal your dream. That’s not even possible. The only way people can steal your dream is if you give it to them. But they can’t steal it. They can’t take it from you! They can only get it through your permission. One of my favorite quotes that I live my life by and I say it at the end of all of my videos is “Let no man steal your vision because no man gave it to you.”

2) Governors

What are they?

If you know anything about cars you know that cars that are designed to go on the civilian roads have governors. Governors regulate the speed at which a car can operate.

The speed governor is part of your ECMs embedded program. When it senses that the vehicle speed is close to the rating of the stock tires, it shuts down the injector pulses and ignition then will return it when the vehicle is at a safe speed again.

So my question is do you have a governor on your mind?

Lets play a quick game. Play along with me here. Raise your hand…….No seriously raise your hand. Great, now raise your hand higher!

Am I limiting myself?

Now let me ask you a question, did you raise your hand higher the second time? Why is it that you didn’t raise your hand at the highest point as far as you could raise it the first time I asked? The reason is- we limit ourselves. We constantly install self-imposed limits on our own selves. Every. Single. Day. A great deal of it has to do with human nature. Human nature is built on survival. We are constantly trying to survive, therefore, it’s a natural habit to leave a little bit of reserve in the tank, just in case. You never know, what happens if you’re in the gym and you’re running on the treadmill and you give it all you got then you walk out of the gym and have a dog chase you! You have to use all your energy to run but you already used all your energy in the gym and now you have nothing left. Our mind is constantly subconsciously playing these tricks saying: Hey leave some in the reserve! Don’t give it your all!

How to remove self-imposed limits?

We have to program ourselves to push past our limits. Limits are just a fragment of our imagination. They’re not real. They are self-imposed. This box that you create on the basis of what you believe your limit is, is self imposed. You decided on that limit. If you wanna break that self imposed limitation, guess what can you do? Break it! Understand this and go ahead and break it. I am telling you, it is possible.

Look as humans we have been putting limitations on ourselves forever. At one point in time, we concluded that we couldn’t put a man on the moon, we couldn’t bend pieces of metal and fly them across the pacific ocean, we couldn’t do so much but we did. We have been constantly breaking limits we put on ourselves. You need to decide to not allow the self created box of limitation to hold you in anymore. You can break all limitations because you have the ability to! It was you who created the limitation in the first place, why not you be the one to destroy it?

History speaks. Before every milestone that humans achieved, it sure seemed impossible. But guess what? We’ve exceeded those limitations and guess what we are constantly going to do that?

We are going to keep exceeding limitations! Why? Because, we as part of the human race, we continue to push the barriers as long as we allow those barriers to be pushed. We don’t let people around us segment those barriers and we don’t let ourselves segment those barriers and stop the greatness that’s within us from being revealed.

I encourage you to not let anyone else or yourself place limits on you. Don’t let anything stop you from having the success you crave. Most of the success is your ability to step out of the comfort zone and say I CAN DO THIS. However, a lot of times you say I can’t and that’s what stops you from reaching success because whether you think you can or can’t you are absolutely right!

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We are all highly familiar with the phrase mind your business. I am going to flip that a bit. I believe that you need to mind your mind.

What is minding your mind?

You need to be intentional on what you focus on every single day. You need to be intentional about how you develop your mentality because your mindset plays a heavy part in your success in the future. You have to be mindful about what you focus on and intentional about how you develop your mind to progress.

What happens if you don’t feed your mind on a constant basis?

We all know you need to find your mind with the right things in order to grow. Most people are aware. But most people also aren't doing anything currently about growing their mind. So what happens if you don’t feed your mind constantly? Well, actually that statement is not true. You are always continuously feeding your mind.

Let me ask you a question: Do you watch TV? Do you read the news? Do you talk to other human beings? Who and what do you allow in your mind?

There is always someone or something feeding your mind and acting as the food to the mindset. You are feeding your mind the food of the things you see, read, hear and experience on a constant basis. The only question is: what food are you feeding your mind with?

I mean, seriously, how is watching 27 murders on the news move you any closer to your goals, dreams and aspirations? We seriously have to be deliberate about minding our mind. You can’t achieve your body goals by not having an deliberate diet. The mind works the same way. You are what you eat and so is your mind!

Why are people unable to mind their mind?

It’s simple. Majority of people are minding other people’s minds. They want to let other people’s philosophies and mindset dictate their direction. YOU MUST FORGET ABOUT THAT. If you choose to focus on the others then you are always going to blame them for the philosophies that they gave you that didn’t create success. You can’t change other peoples philosophies. You can change 1 thing. You can change yourself. Focus on that. Focus on what you can do to change your personal mindset. Mind your mind and everything else will move forward from there.

One of my mentors TD Jakes said that the battle is in your mind. He said the enemy is after your mind and if you can whip it in your mind, you can whip it in your checkbook. I, also, love the way Jim Rohn breaks it down below.

We need to get ourselves away from focusing on everything else.

Everything else is a distraction. Here is what you need to focus on constantly, daily and every minute is- how am I thinking? How’s my mindset? How can I mind my mind? Keep yourself in check by asking yourself these questions. Eventually it’ll become second nature.

You gotta focus on you. Focus on changing yourself. Jim Rohn says if YOU change, everything will change for you. But if you don’t change, nothing will change. You gotta take the time and focus on how can I change? What can I do differently today that I didn’t do yesterday? What can I do to get out of my past and into my destiny? Don’t focus on the past, don’t focus on the problems, don’t focus on any of those things because you can’t change the wind from blowing.

But what u can do is you can set a new sail.

You can decide today that I am going to move in this direction and I am going to think this way. I’m going to change my mindset. Every problem that I look at is going to look like an opportunity to create promise in my life.

Everything that you want is on the higher shelf. But you have qualify to get to that higher shelf. The way you qualify is by standing on the books to get you to that higher level of success.

Every new book gets you to the higher level of thinking. Developing the mind gets you to the higher level. The higher you get, the more attractive you become. I’m talking mentally attractive. Energy attractive. The more you develop yourself, the more attractive you become. And guess what? Success is attracted by the person that you become. When you become more, more is attracted to you.

Most people waste their time trying pursue the success. You can’t pursue success because it will elude you like a butterfly. But what you can do is pursue becoming more attractive. And the more attractive you become, the more success starts to come closer to you and attracts to you like a magnet.

What to do now?

Start spending! Spend the time. Spend the money. Spend the resources. Do whatever you need to do to become better.

How do I get to the next level?

You move to the next level when you deserve to be on the next level. When you become more, you’ll get more. Become better and you can achieve better. But if you don’t do anything to mind your mind, you’ll stay at the same place. Actually, once again that statement is incorrect, you won’t stay in the same place! You are either growing or dying, there’s no such thing as neutrality. Either you are on the incline or the decline. Don’t allow yourself to decline. Continue to grow. Even the wealthiest and most successful people, every single day, still take the time to become better. Still take the time to read the books. To hear or realize one new idea because literally that one new idea can revolutionize your life. It can make your the next best entrepreneur! It can make you the greatest dad! It can make you the next billionaire, if you just focus on feeding your mind. Mind your mind. And your mind will mind your success.

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Raising your standards starts with the word resolve. The definition of resolve is- Decide firmly on a course of action. And there are only two reasons why somebody resolves to decide.

Avoiding Pain

People want to avoid pain. They have been through some type of pain in their life and they want to avoid it at any cost. I’ll be the first one to vouch and tell you that I have been in those painful situations. Situations consisting of no money, no food, no direction and definitely no hope. Sometimes we have to hit a wall. Sometimes we have to get so low to the pit of the dark hole that it snaps a feeling inside of us to make a decision and change our course of action. I had to decide that if i didn’t want the pain of being broke, hungry and lost anymore then I need to step forward and actually move towards my goals.

Gaining Pleasure

You also have people that raise their standards because they want to gain pleasure. That’s exactly what motivates them to raise their standard but more often than not this is the hardest to get people to move.

Why? This is because if you are already in a place where you have seen some to a lot of success. You sure as heck aren’t worried about bill collectors marching up your street and your relationships are also doing very well. However, even though everything in your life may be good, you still want to take your life to the next level. Why would you settle? Why have an ice cream when you can buy an ice cream truck and eat ice cream forever? (Of course health is not a factor here)

I know you want to gain more pleasure but when things are going great it’s difficult to get up everyday and put in the work. It’s easy to work when you don’t have any money in the bank because you need to eat. I needed to eat so I did whatever it took to get myself to a place where I could eat comfortably. Again, I do empathize with this side of the spectrum as well. I do realize how difficult it is to move when you are already in a pleasure situation and you wanna gain more pleasure. But you need to find that resolve to realistically make it happen for you!

People only raise their standards with either of the two things. Pain and Pleasure

How to find the resolve?

When you have resolve you start to raise your standards. You sustain an unwavering attitude that you will accomplish or do whatever needs to get done to move to the next level. But occasionally, you won’t get to that point of resolve until you have a day of disgust!

My Day of Disgust

When I moved to California from New York at 18 years old I was 185 pounds. I was an active young man going to the gym and playing basketball everyday. This was complimented by an active man’s diet which means I ate A LOT OF FOOD. Moving to California I carried on my “active mans diet” but I surely wasn’t as active as before. I climbing up the success ladder, got busy making sacrifices and working and moving forward with life. I let go of my health in that time. Shortly after that 1 pound gain turned into 2 pound gain and next thing you know at 28 I stepped on the scale and I weighed 297 pounds. Yea I know crazy right. The minute I stepped on that scale and saw that number I hit my day of disgust.

I realized that weight was going to keep increasing until I did something about it. Before I stepped on that scale I knew I should lose some weight but I was a tall guy and getting older this is normal. I was stuck in my should mentality. I knew I should go to the gym. I should eat healthy. I should NOT eat that cheeseburger. The should was never backed up by any action.Ultimately, I hit the day of disgust, I had been avoiding stepping onto that scale for 2 years. I didn’t want to see the numbers because I didn’t want to change at the time. I wasn’t ready. I said I was but I wasn’t. This is the most typical situation a human falters to. I never made the real decision. I never decided on a firm course of action. So, it was no surprise that when I stepped onto the scale and it said what it said.

I was shocked! I let myself down. I lowered my standards. The date was June 23rd and I’ll never forget it because it’s my son’s birthday and it’s the day I promised myself that I would never be 300 pounds in my life. And with that decision I changed things around. I changed my shoulds into musts. I must go to the gym. I must eat healthy. I must…

It took me under 12 months to lose 50 pounds because I decided and turned it on. I am still not where I want to be but I am not where I was which is the most important point.

When we make it a must, we make it a part of our identity. People follow through who they believe they are. If you believe you’re shy you’ll act shy. If you believe you’re enthusiastic you’ll act enthusiastic. If you believe you’re a leader you’ll act, walk and talk like a leader. I believed I was an athlete and I lost that identity and I needed to gain it back. Humans have a need to stay consistent with how they define themselves.

We get yanked by life constantly. Every trial, every problem, every pain, every hurt and everything that we go through yanks us back. These things yanks us back from going after our goals even when the goal is right in front of us. Even when the opportunity is placed right in our lap, we don’t go after it because we have the feeling of incapability and we have defined ourselves based on what we have assimilated ourselves to be. We lowered our standards because we don’t believe that we can do it and because we’ve assigned that identity of inability to ourself so we don’t go after it.

Why haven’t you been achieving your goals if you’ve raised your standards?

Frequently, I have people telling me that they had the resolve to decide and they set their goals but they haven’t achieved their goals or raised their standard. This is because they’ve set these huge goals but failed to attach a habit to it. They never set a habit that aligns with their desire to raise their standard so they come up short. Every successful person knows how to set habits that allow that successful person to continue to create success consistently. So you’ve got to set a habit along with your raised standards.

Boxing champions are made in the gym. They might be publically recognized in the ring and some people want that public recognition. All that public recognition starts with what you do in private. You’re not going against the world. It’s not you vs the world. It’s you vs your untapped potential. Look, you can decide to be whoever you want to be if you decide to create the mental asset of raising your standards. However, if you have a vision of raising your standard but you don’t have the habits to go along with that vision then you are lying to yourself. You must be willing to create the positive habits in order to achieve long term success. I talk more about developing habits and how to create habits that help you become a world class achiever in my book The Mental Playbook.

If you have the ability to resolve and decide to raise your standards. Then once you raise your standards you add along the habits to allow those standards to continue to move forward. If you do those things you are on your way to success.

I urge you, decide to raise your standards, back it up with action and watch your success grow uncontrollably!

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This isn’t an article. This is a battle. I am here to pick a fight today. I am here to pick a fight against one’s worst enemy- a loser’s mentality. This type of infected mentality is running rampant in today’s society. In today’s day and age people are OK with losing. People are OK coming last place. People are ok with not succeeding. NO! If you maintain this loser’s mentality, I promise you it will bleed into rest of your life.

Make Accepting the L Unacceptable

I commonly hear parents say and accept that they have out of control kids. They believe that’s just the way it is. Thats False! Pick up a book and learn how to be a better parent. GOOGLE IT! Listen and seek advice from exemplary parents to become better. Do what you need to do for your own kid but please don’t just give accept that you can’t be a winning parent! You don’t want to lose as a parent.

People are also aggressively losing at their finances. They don’t have the majestic 401K to retire with and the bank account isn’t where they desired it to be. Here is what starts to happen. If you accept the loser’s mentality, you will start living and accepting a life you don’t want to live. You will begin to drive the vehicles you don’t want to drive, you will find yourself working for a company you don’t want to be working for. You will look up one day (on your deathbed, usually it takes that long) and repeatedly slap yourself in your head wondering and thinking: WHAT THE HECK DID I DO WITH MY LIFE?

Look, we’re all born winners but in order to win you gotta plan to win. Prepare to win. Expect to win. Most importantly- execute to win. You have to have a winner’s mentality.

Winners say it’s difficult but possible. Losers say it’s possible but too difficult. Winners say I see the gain. Losers say I see the pain. Winners say I see the possibilities. Losers say I see the problems. Winners say I’m gonna make it happen. Losers let it happen. Question is — Are you gonna have a winners’ mentality or a losers’ mentality?

Winning is a Mindset

Having a winning mentality will pay huge dividends to you and your future.

Most people don’t have the winning mentality. They rid themselves off the gift they are born with because it’s easier to lay back and relax rather than struggle and thrive. It’s just not in them to utilize and maximize the gift inside them. You gotta have the confidence and the swagger to step into the game of life and do whatever it takes. Regardless of the situation or obstacles that continuously create and/or adding to your already burdened life- you need to not care! You gotta go into each situation with an insatiable appetite to get the win. Winning is a mindset. Winning is a choice. You just need to choose to win.

Do you want a lavish life? Do you want unlimited supply of $$$? Do you want your dream job? Do you want that 100% perfect body that you see yourself having in your head? Well, you gotta work for it! Nobody is going to knock on your door and hand you all your desires on a silver platter. It’s not gonna be handed to you. You gotta wake up every single day and choose to win.

I choose to win. I choose to come in first place even if that translates into staying up later, working a little bit harder and fighting a little bit longer. I don’t care. I am allergic to second place. Second place is in my rearview mirror.

Your competition may be smarter than you, faster than you or maybe even prettier than you but they won’t beat you. Why? Because you possess the will to win. You are possessed by the scorching desire that you will win. Some people will say it’s not all about winning. Winning isn’t everything as long as you play the game. Blah Blah Blah, insert more cliches. The person who came up with that probably came in second place.

Here’s joke:

Knock knock

Who’s there?

The guy who came in 2nd place

The guy who came in 2nd place who?

EXACTLY!!!

Shine

You have something special inside of you. However, if you allow it to stay inside submerged with losers’ mentality that says I can’t, that makes you will wanna give up. That mentality doesn’t even wanna make you start.

LOOK…… YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THAT.

Your family, your finances, your body, your desires, your goals, your dreams are relying on you. They are relying on you to step up as the winner you were born to be.

Losers visualize the penalties of failure but winners realize the possibilities of the future. You gotta be a winner and have a championship mentality. If you keep fighting for your winning mindset — one day your hardwork will pay off. Your sleepless nights will pay off. Your willingness to do what others won’t or your competition won’t will pay off. There’s always somebody out there trying to beat you to your end game so you need to do what you gotta do to win. And that could mean just having a different mindset. You have it inside of you, you just gotta go after it!

It burns inside of me when I know the seed of greatness is trapped inside of you. It wants to become great but is being poured down by the negativity of the world. I know if you release that seed the world will change. I was no different than you. I am no different than you. In some cases even worse. I had a negative bank account, stuck on my mama’s couch working a dead end job but somebody showed me the seed of greatness was in me. Somebody told me to release it. When I did decide to release it, that decision ended up affecting thousands of people! Perhaps it’s affecting you right now?

One of Marianne Williamson’s powerful poems says:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

If you let your light shine people around you will be liberated! Go ahead, my friend, SHINE!

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When you see the title of this article I am sure a shiver crawls up your spine because we have all dealt with change and it’s not east. But if you are going to succeed in your career, as a leader, as a business owner or entrepreneur you must understand- change is unavoidable!

One thing that is clear in life is THERE WILL BE CHANGE! In the process of success there will be change. Moving forward in any direction whether it’s personal or business and you want to maximize your achievement, you must learn how to deal with change in order to keep up momentum and move forward.

When looking at change there are 4 ways to look at it and this shift in perspective will allow you to not let change paralyze you. Here are the 4 ways you need to think in order to get over or deal with change:

1. EXPECT IT:

Our mind can play tricks on us. It’s easy to get comfortable with the way things are and want them to stay that way. Everyone of us at times has been oblivious to apparent changes. Why? Because it’s easy to stay the same. But it’s also very dangerous.

Here’s the thing that you probably already know subconsciously that you just need to consciously be aware of. As a human you learn to adapt. Our human nature is designed to adapt in different situations- from the caveman on up.

Think about when you were in school, the majority of us have had to leave our closest friends from junior high to move on to high school. And that change was tough but did we survived. The thing is we know that change is constant yet people are not willing to accept the inevitable. . You’re junior high friends didn’t come with you to High School, your high school friends didn’t come with you to college and your college friends didn’t join you at your workplace now. If you know things are going to change, why be upset and mad as if you didn’t know. When you learn to expect it then things are going to get a lot better for you and you can get off of the emotional roller coaster (great video on this philosophy)

This mindset is one of the major reasons why businesses die! This is how companies like blockbuster and companies like big box stores (soon I think) are going to die or have already died. Most of them don’t embrace the idea that change will occur. Even in the midst of change — they won’t even look at it! Blockbuster had an opportunity to buy Netflix for a few million dollars and they turned it down. Can you imagine what a deficient decision that was? They truly believed that people would rather walk into a store than go online to watch a movie. Their unwillingness to embrace the change caused them to refuse to look at crucial data showing peoples’ affinity towards spending more time online over doing anything else.

We know that human behavior is shifting- eyeballs are shifting. People don’t even watch television anymore during the times that show actually comes on. They Tevo it or they record it on their DVR and skip all the expensive advertisements meant to get our attention the most people aren’t even paying attention to. I see a plethora of miscellaneous companies fighting their hardest to resist change especially when it comes to marketing. Marketing trends have been changing and it’s not something that took place overnight. The marketing change has been building up for years now and it’s very easy to see. The attention and eyeballs used to be on television and now it’s all over the mobile phone and social media. But even with it being obvious that all this change is happening most companies still won’t change with the times.

Are you shifting your mindset to embrace change? One of my biggest pet peeves is being around people who say; this is the way it’s always been done. The problem is that the world is not the same as it was when that person was doing what they were doing or when that company was doing what they were doing- the world is changing! When the world changes you must change with it. It’s either adapt or die.

Embrace the change, understand that it’s coming. Don’t fall in love with the method or the tactic or the process. Fall in love with the philosophy because philosophies don’t change. The techniques may change but the philosophies stay the same. Therefore, fall in love with the philosophy of how people think about marketing, business or success because that is the true indicator of where to go next when things do change.

2. EMBRACE IT:

When the change comes shift your company to go with the change. The hardest thing is to shift on the tail end of a change. More often than not companies are too late to make the change they knew they should probably make. When blockbuster finally understood that every individual is making a move to digital, they tried to shift but it was too late. They got killed because they moved too slow.

When you see the change is taking place, don’t let yourself keep falling for the way you’ve been doing things based on your expired ideologies. Realize the shift is approaching and start creating new processes to turn the tide in your favor. Don’t let change run you over.

You need to be continuously thinking how can you innovate and put yourself out of business? What technology can can you create that would shake up your market? The minute you can figure that out you have power moving forward.

3. GAIN EXPERIENCE:

By dealing with change you gain experience. How do I communicate the change to my people? What would be the best method to make them aware? Often times people’s livelihood is completely dependent on the change. How many people have lose their jobs to technology? Cars used to be handcrafted then technology took over and made human hands and legs replaceable. Everyone gains knowledge, experience and wisdom from making the desired changes and also by developing your company further by choosing innovation over being left behind. It’s harsh but true.

4. SHIFT PERSPECTIVE

Learn better, do better. When you shift your perspective you no longer think like the old you but the new you. Now you’re focused on creating future. This mindset shift is how the market is today and where it’s headed in the foreseeable future so start acting on it!

Just remember this one thing, change will happen if you want it to or not. So why not be on the right side of history.

The simple answer to this question is, YES. The concept of content is king is clearly not a new concept. Matter of fact 20 years ago Bill Gates was talking about this concept long before it became a cliché. He talked about content being the variable between success and failure when it comes to business. When you think about the concept of content is king think about it in the terms of a chess board. The king is a very important piece on the board. It must be protected but there are other pieces on the board that are also important as well. The queen is the marketing, the rooks are the strategy, the bishops drive actionable results for the content and the pawns are experimentation and testing.

But why has the idea of content is king been dragged down to a buzz word. Well for a while people heard the concept that content is king and so they just started putting out massive amounts of content and thought that “If I just put out content it will be discovered”. They totally ignored the other pieces on the board. The concept of content is king is not to say the other things are irrelevant, but its to say that creating content is still one of the most vital parts of growing a business. And most people who say content is not king are trying to be counterintuitive in hopes to get the attention of others, but if you read any of their articles or watch their videos they say content is still important, but its just not the only thing (which to me is common logic).

It is very clear the necessity of content for business. In todays world if you are only advertising and trying to sell 100% of the time then you are losing market share. wAny good marketer or entrepreneur worth their salt knows content allows you to claim your digital territory. It also allows you to become a subject matter expert and helps you build brand awareness. This content allows you to have people connect with and engage with your brand in ways traditional marketing could never do. It builds education around your brand for your businesses desired end goal and most importantly it drives sales. The value of content is extensive and one article can never do it justice.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, lets talk about how we can benefit from content creation.

A lot of times you have people who are new entrepreneurs or existing entrepreneurs that know content is king, but ask the question which platforms do I use? Do I try to be a master at all of them? The truth of the matter is there are new social media platforms coming out all of the time. We all know the major ones like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, Youtube… then you’ve got the Medium’s, Musical.ly, Pinterest, Linkedin. And the list can go on and on of different social media platforms that can start building content around.

Which Platform do I use?

With all of the platforms out there it is easy for an entrepreneur to say where do I start? What platform do I get on? How do I know which platform is best for me and my business? And it’s really simple. If you can afford to be on all of them. If you have the resources and the team to be on all of them then do that, but for most companies they don’t have that type of capacity. The next best thing is to look at what the platform is doing, what the psychology is around the platform? Is the platform for entertainment? Is the platform about news like twitter? Is it a platform about your social graph and the connectivity to friends like Facebook? Is the platform about showing great imagery of experiences, products and events like Pinterest and Instagram?

You must know that these different platforms have different psychologies and the reasons why people get on these platforms are so different. Here is the first thing you must do is figure out who you are trying to target and which platforms do they spend their time on. Then you have to be self aware enough to know which platforms you can operate best on. If you are good being the talent in front of the camera on video then do that, if you are good behind the camera taking picture do that. Try to stay in the area that would allow you to put your businesses best foot forward.

How do I best tell the story?

When you look at your product and your service you must see how you can make your message match the psychology of the people that go on to that platform. If you go on Pinterest you know this person is looking to buy something, you know a lot of times the people that go on Pinterest are women between the ages of 23–45, they are going to have an interest in creating a wishlist and/or looking for a specific things they can purchase. Let’s say you have a clothing line and you know the clothes target between the ages of 23–40 who are looking to do shopping online. Then you say alright Pinterest is the perfect fit for me and now let me create content around Pinterest. Simply look at your business and see how your business align with the psychology of the social platform you are thinking about using. And then once you have that, then you now have to thinking about : how do I best tell the story?

So if you’re a larger businesses you’ll have a team of people who are creating the content. You’ll have someone who’s good at writing , creating images, great in front of the camera, and you can do a lot of those things when you have a greater marketing budget, but if you don’t that budget and is just you creating that content then you are going to have to focus on what you do best and start to drive the best actionable result you can drive on the platform you are on. But maybe hiring somebody as intern or reaching out to somebody as an outsourcing option can be a valuable asset to your company to get you to the place you need to be. But if it is impossible, then just do the thing that you feel like u do best.

What do I talk about?

Get a list of top 30 most relevant and interesting topics for your customers. Look at your customers and try to think about the topics you think they would care about. The great this is that this can be directly or indirectly related to your product or your industry. It could be something that you believe could be useful to your customers but might not have nothing to do directly with your product. Jot these top 30 topics down and start building content around them.

You want the content to be actionable- where it can inspire customers to take action. You want it to be inspirational- to make your customers feel better at the end of looking at your content. You want it to be outrageous- where it’s fun and entertaining to your audience. You want it be useful- where people can walk away from your content and say “I can use this, this is something that is of utility for me or I can use this in my everyday life”. Or you want it to be educational- where you make your customers smarter by looking at your content. You want them to feel the feeling of value when they see the content you put out!

Have you ever been on Facebook or Instagram and come across someone or a business that never provides any value? You may not have unfollow or unfriended them, but what you’ll do subconsciously is (after a few times of not receiving value) you won’t take 10–30 seconds to read or look at whatever the heck they put out. You will scroll right past them. Why? Because you feel like the lack of value they bring is not worth the time.

You don’t want your brand or yourself to be looked at as an individual who brings no value. This means as an entrepreneur you can’t misuse the platform and you can’t create content to only sell, sell, sell. You first need to create value. Then you sell. A little ratio that I like to go with is 4x the value for every one opportunity to sell. This number changes depending on your brand. It doesn’t have to be 4:1, it can be 7:1 or 20:1 . Whatever you think is right. You have to go with your gut here and act upon whatever you feel is the best.

Every business is in the business of telling stories. And the way to tell stories in today’s market is by creating content that you can post online and that content will create the business end result you desire. Just remember to provide value through your content in a way that fits your personality as this content will be important to the long term success of your business.

Always try to think like an old school media company. You are now the CNN, the NBC, you are the FOX news. You are the major channel and you have the power to provide content that will make people tune in. You give them the whole television show, but in just like in any TV show there are 30 second commercials- this is where you sell. When you look at the statistics of content viewing it consists of entertainment, education, outrageous fun and inspirational stuff and if you pair the content with little slithers of times where you use to drop the commercial. And because the people tuning in see are tuning in to see the value you provide then they will be willing to provide you with the attention you need in order to sell to them. Remember, if you want to sell something you need attention. In order to get attention, you must provide value. This value is generated from the content and this is why content is STILL king!

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I know I just shocked some people with that headline and I might say some things in this article that might shock you some more!

Here is the statement I want heard all across the online world, Having 1 million followers means nothing to a person who understands how this social media game works.

This is the issue I have with everyone trying to become a influencer on social media. They focus so hard on getting the number of followers up but they don’t realize that the real value of your social page is not about how many people took the time to press the like or follow button because you learned how to create a piece of content that caught their attention. This game is about getting people to care about what you have to say when you say it.

There is a phrase I like to use and its called “true influence.” This true influence is a measure of more than how many people liked your page. If you are an influencer or you are looking to use influencer marketing to hire an influencer then you must ask yourself what is this persons specific Measure of True Influence(MIT)?

How do you gauge this? In my opinion, you can only gauge the Measure of True Influence(MIT) through 4 things.

The 1st thing is actual engagement. True engagement is not just how many people are following you on social media, but also the percentage of people who care about what you have to say. When you talk who wants to be apart of the conversation. How many people would consider themselves apart of your community.

These are your true fans, the people who will ride with everything you put out and who feel connected to you on a personal level. You also must ask yourself what is the percentage of people you have engaged relative to your follower count. If you have 1 million people following you with 1% engaged then you have 10,000 people who care about what you are doing. But if you have 200,000 follower with 10% engaged that is 20,000 people who care about what your doing. So, in that example who has the higher Measure of True Influence?

This situation is just like a TV commercial. If you say that a commercial reaches 100,000 people because data shows that 100,000 people watch this TV show, this doesn’t necessarily mean that all the viewers actually watched the commercial. This just means that the commercial showed on the TV screens of 100,000 people. As soon as that commercial comes on do you have the people’s attention or are they doing other things? Did people pick up their cell phone while the commercial came on? Did they go on FB, Snapchat, or Instagram? Did they take a bathroom break? Are they really paying attention to that TV ad? Actual engagement is the first and most important measurement of MTI.

The second Measure of True Influence is the level influence of those who engage and follow you. There is a difference between a large percentage of celebrities that follow you vs a large group of 8 year old’s. I know that example is a bit extreme, but I am trying to make a point. The reach of a celebrity goes way further than the reach of an 8 year old. If one celebrity favorites or shares your post it can reach millions more people outside of your current sphere of influence. There is major value in the reach of those who care about your brand.

The third Measure of True Influence is the percentage of people you can get to move when you put out a call to action. If you have a million followers and 10,000 people are engaged, but you can only get 100 of those people to move on a call to action then that says something about the value of your influence.

Lets be real about this if you are an influencer or a brand that wants to use an influencer your goal is to sell something. Maybe not at the moment, but at some point you what to sell something. If your influencer cant convert than how much value do they really have and how much should you really pay them for that value regardless of if they have 1 million followers or not.

The forth and final Measure of True Influence is follower count. Now I am not saying follower count is not important. I am saying that most people are over emphasizing the value of the number of followers a person has and under emphasizing the other factors that contribute to a valuable influencer. True influence is comprised of so many more things, then just how many followers someone has.

The question you must ask if you are an influencer or if you use influencer marketing is, what is the MTI?

The marketing world has the definition of social influencer value twisted because they are solely valuing influencers based on follower count. But if you look at the raw data and the numbers, you realize people with lower reach sometimes have a higher potential of true value. Also keeping in mind the social platform that they are on makes a difference as well. But even influencers who are on the same platform, you can still see a person with a lower reach have a higher impact. Remember reach means nothing if they are not paying attention to you.

What metric would you add to the Measure of True Influence and what is your Measure of True Influence?

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