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馃敶 Passive Income Scam Shut Down By The Government - YouTube
Channel: Miles Beckler
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Hey Miles here, milesbeckler.com.
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In this video you're going to learn
about the newest passive income scam that
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has been seized and shutdown
by the U S government. Yes,
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it's happened again,
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not the first time since I started this
channel that I've covered these kinds of
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topics and we're going to look at it
from three specific angles. Number one,
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the specific scenario, the company,
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I've got a little inside information about
it because of an event I went to last
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year, so I'll share that. Number two,
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we're going to go big picture so you can
make sure you're avoiding these kinds
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of potential issues because they're
really common. It happens all the time,
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so I don't want to talk
about just this one case.
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I want you to understand how this works
so you can prepare yourself in the
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future because there will be
more. And then number three,
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I'm going to give a shout out and I'm
going to mention some some channels and
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some individuals who brought this to my
attention who have done great deep dive
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digging on this and they're calling out
other scams and fake gurus by names.
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I'll share where you can find those
individuals to get more so you can protect
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yourself because I'll be perfectly honest,
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there are absolutely scam artists
out there trying to prey on you.
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This has been going on since the turn
of the century in the 18 hundreds to the
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19 hundreds this is not new snake
oil salesmen are real and you need to
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understand what's going on.
So in this specific scenario,
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the company's name is,
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today's growth consultant
is doing business as the
income store and their whole
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bit was that you essentially
buy websites through them.
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So they're already running, already
operating, already profiting websites.
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They often purchase them from F E
international or from empire flippers,
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and then their internal team manages
the website and runs the website and you
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get 50% of the upside
potential. So all in all,
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it started out as a very honest and good
working business model, I think. Uh,
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but as you apply scale and as our rhythms
begin to change as the world and the
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game begins to change, that's when
things get a little bit shaky.
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So they had a specific claim on their
website that said you get a guaranteed 15%
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return. And now I'm obviously no lawyer,
I don't play one on YouTube or TV.
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But when,
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when you start talking about guaranteed
returns and the returns start slipping
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and the money from the new investors
comes in to pay for those guaranteed
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returns for the old investors,
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it starts to look and smell a lot
like a Ponzi scheme. Now the sec,
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which is a security exchange
commission has actually seized it.
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I'm going to link to a playlist of videos
from an actual lawyer who has dived,
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dove dived into this data much more.
She's actually showing the, um,
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the filing. So you could see,
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but a lot of what's actually a lot of
the kind of content is actually sealed,
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right? We can see the filing itself,
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but we don't know what's
actually in it yet.
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So you can subscribe to her
to follow more about this. Uh,
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what's the key takeaway here now before,
let me tell about my backstory here.
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So I went to a really high end mastermind
with a bunch of seven figure business
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owner million dollars a year to
10 15 plus million dollars a year.
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I think some of them were in the
$20 million per year range. Now,
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that was in April of last year and
these were some of the highest sponsors.
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This actual company bought
their way in as a sponsor.
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They spent an incredible amount of money
as a sponsor and it makes me wonder
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they were pitching generally
it was $100,000 buy him
for a website and they were
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pitching that. Now they're really kind
of only doing $250,000 and more buy-ins.
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And I'm now wondering
if that moment in time,
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if they were just literally getting access
to a group of successful individuals,
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trying to get a little more money coming
in to pay all of their last investors.
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I have no idea if that's true or not.
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I don't know what they knew about their
companies scenario in that time and a
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place, but they seemed honest. They
seem genuine, they seemed authentic.
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And here we are less than a year later
and that business has been saved by the
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government. Um, it's very, very scary.
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So what are the takeaways from this?
What's the bigger picture? Number one,
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anytime somebody has
promising passive income,
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you instantly need to be weary of what
they're talking about because nothing in
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this life is passive, right? There's
no method that lasts forever.
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There is no traffic source
that's going to last forever.
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There's no advertising platform
that's going to last forever.
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And in one of the last videos that the
CEO put out, he's taken it down since,
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but I found a transcript of it on a forum.
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He essentially was stating that the
Google algorithm updates and the Facebook
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updates are really what
hurt their business.
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And they went from authority sites and
then they went on to Shopify sites and,
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and when the algorithms change there,
they didn't adapt quick enough,
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which is a big sign of
a large company, right?
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When you have hundreds and hundreds
of employees, which they did,
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they were actually on the inc is fastest
growing companies in America list.
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So everything about it from
the outside looked legitimate.
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They'd been in business for a decade.
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It's literally the promise of
ever growing passive income.
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That is the one big flag that everyone
should have been able to see from the get
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go. Because the truth is nothing
in this world is passive.
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There's always work to be done.
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So no traffic lasts forever. No method
lasts forever. No business lasts forever.
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My first business online was on MySpace.
I was earning money as an affiliate.
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That website, I think technically it's
around, nobody's on my space right now,
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right? Uh,
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we rode the wave of Facebook organic
traffic to see hundreds of thousands of
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visits per month organically.
That's not really a thing anymore.
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We survived some of the penguin and Panda
updates of Google in 2010, 11, 12, 13,
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and we survived those. But I know
people who didn't survive those.
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I know people whose businesses has
been taken down by every one of these
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algorithm changes. And this is why
an online business is never passive,
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because you always need to be adapting.
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You always need to be aware of
where is user behavior trending?
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Where is user attention trending?
And you need to be engaged in this.
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So what is the work, right?
Like the, the goal is to just,
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you gotta be engaged and do the
active work of building a business.
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But what does that mean?
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I'm going to break it down a little
bit more specific for you and my wife.
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I were talking about this today.
Um, I think the true work,
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the best way for me to put this today
is you need to be working on building an
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[inaudible], honest, trustworthy brand.
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The power of brand right now is
continuing to grow in importance.
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And brand can be you, right? This is,
you're on the miles Beckler channel.
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I've got the miles beckler.com blog. It's
all miles Bachler all day around here,
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right? That's my brand. I'm the,
this is the miles Becker brand.
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I chose to do a personal brand.
My wife went in another direction.
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She came up with a brand name and either
way it's mildly irrel irrelevant which
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one you choose because the truth is once
you start to build a brand and you get
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known or your brand gets known as the
most helpful person in that space or the
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one to go seek, I don't care
if this is how to BBQ guidance,
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if it's how to fly a racing drone when
the world and the algorithms start to
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change, which is guaranteed
to happen in the future.
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If your brand is strong enough,
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they're going to seek you out and what
you might start to notice is you can
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actually go do keyword research on my
name and you're going to notice thousands
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of people per month. They don't
just search for keyword research,
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they search for miles Beckler keyword
research. They search for miles, Beckler,
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S, E, O, and that's the power
of brand coming through.
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When audience members like with you are
ready to learn something, you're like,
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I need to learn how to make a funnel. I
need to learn how to do my Facebook ads,
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I need to learn affiliate
marketing. And you're like,
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well I bet miles has a video on his
channel for that and you go search for my
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version of it.
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It doesn't matter what the algorithm is
doing in that day and age and if you go
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search on a platform and I'm not there,
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odds are you're going to jump to another
platform and search because you know
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I'm here showing up for you weekend
and week out because that's what I do.
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That's what successful brands do.
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They keep showing up and
this is why it's not passive.
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There's no such thing as passive.
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It is active and if you look at all of
the fake gurus out there who are selling
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passive income resources and passive
income tools and passive income courses,
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they're actively selling you passive.
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They're updating their social
media, they're updating their blog.
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If they have teams working on it,
they're hiring those teammates.
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They're doing the eight, they're working
behind the scenes in some capacity.
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They are, they're
involved in the business,
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which by definition means it ain't
passive. Now do I earn residual income?
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Do I get income ongoing in the future
for things I do in the past? Absolutely.
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That took active work to build the
systems, the brand, the domain authority,
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the channel authority to get there.
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And I'm getting residual compounding
results from those efforts.
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I'm all good with residual
income. I totally get it.
Multiple streams of income.
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Absolutely. But the day I stopped
showing up for you guys, my income,
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my brand,
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everything will start to slowly get worse
and worse and worse than the numbers.
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And eventually I'll have to go back
to work, right? The exit number for,
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for retiring completely and doing
nothing for the rest of my life,
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which sounds actually kind
of nightmarishly boring to
me. What, 10 12 million?
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My long way off from having
that in protected assets. Um,
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so I'm still showing
up for you guys. Right?
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And I think it's that mindset of it's
almost disheartening in a way when you've
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thought that there is that get rich
quick as possible when you thought that
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passive income is possible and somehow
you're going to go from being in a
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cubicle to being able to do nothing
all day and make tens of thousands of
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dollars per month would
love it if it was easy.
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You'd probably know people smarter
than you who already done did it.
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I don't know anybody who's gotten there
and who's crossed that bridge. Um,
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I know people who've made extreme amounts
of income, but they're still working.
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They're still active, they're still
creating, they're still publishing.
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They're still giving
value to their people.
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Sometimes they go start philanthropies
and they go work in charities because
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that's really what their
heart's calling is. Great.
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They're still doing
things in that capacity.
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Bill Gates is an example of that for
if you would like an example of that.
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So when you really build a trusted
brand that's all through content today,
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I don't care if that content is
Facebook advertising to landing pages,
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running a very simple funnel,
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or whether that content is YouTube videos
and you're doing a YouTube channel or
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blogging and you're building
a blog or an affiliate site.
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It's always coming back to content and
you always need to be putting out more
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content because a, you have people
who have a headstart on you.
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They just started before you. They're
not necessarily better than you are.
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They're not necessarily
smarter than you are.
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They currently hold the number
one, two, three, four, five,
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10 spot on Google and beyond
when you're entering the space.
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So you need to go catch up to them.
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And then there's that segment of people
who are coming up after you and they're
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chasing at your heels and they also
want those same few coveted spots.
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They want that same attention of the
audience that you do and they're working
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their asses off to get that spot as
well. And there's a competition going on.
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There's people who currently have it.
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There's people coming up through the ranks
who are going after it and you are in
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there on that spectrum somewhere and the
day you think you can stop publishing
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or you can just hand it off to a team
and Oh the team will take care of
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everything. That's the day that those
people who are hungry, hungrier than you,
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they're more strategic than you.
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They're putting in more hours than you're
putting in and they're being smarter
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about how they're going
about it than you are.
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That's the day they start to overtake
you and eventually when you don't put any
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effort in because you're passively
letting it dwindle and die,
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that's when they will eventually
overtake you. Your income will drop,
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your traffic will drop,
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your leads will wonder where you are
cause you're not emailing anymore because
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you're passively swinging in a hammock.
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So once you get beyond that belief that
there is some magic passive thing and
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you need to buy that right
system or buy that right tool.
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To me that's the freedom point and you,
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the realization is this is going to take
work. It takes time to build a brand.
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Takes a lot of content to build brand.
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I like to think of it in
numbers of iterations.
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I don't think there's a number of hours.
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I don't think there's a number
of days you could put on it,
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but I think there's a thousand iterations
and if you're extremely strategic
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about everything that you do and you're
always iterating your next video,
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you watched your first video and
you're like, okay, how did I do?
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How did I sound? How has that
title was my click through rate,
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how's my thumbnail? And then you
make an iteration, your second video,
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and you try again and you,
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you work to improve all these
little things that you're learning.
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Eventually you'll get to three
videos and you're like, all right,
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how do I get a blog post going?
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Then you get a couple of hundred
blog posts going, all right,
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how do I start emailing?
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Get a few hundred emails going this point
you're at five, six, 700 iterations.
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That's what a real business looks like
and that's where you need to get to.
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So when you and your brand are the
trusted advisor for your audience,
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when you and your brand are
the most helpful people at
helping your audience get
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the transformations they
desire, they want a better life.
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They want something right, and
that's what you help them do.
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Whether it's they want to be able to
barbecue the best brisket in the world and
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you're the barbecue guru teaching them
how to use that big green egg thing that
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they got, whatever it is,
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that's the role that you fill and
it takes time to keep doing that.
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So you got to keep showing up for your
audience is the ultimate key and anyone's
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selling you passive as if there's
something you could do and you sign up for
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this system and you copy and paste
their things. It's never going to work.
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That needs to be the red flag of this is
a scam and it might not be an outright
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scam. They might actually
have some good information,
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but the fact that they're selling you
passive income when there is no such
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actual thing as passive income,
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the fact that they're actively taking
time to build evergreen webinars,
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to create followup sequences, I guarantee
you they are split testing their ads.
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I guarantee you they're split
testing their landing pages.
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They're doing the active work
and they're selling you a lie.
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And when your relationship with those
individuals begins at the point of a lie,
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eventually you're going to be the one
holding the short end of the stick.
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When you realize this and
you're like, you know what,
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I'm going all in for my people.
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I'm going to become the best crochet
trainer in the world. I'm a do it.
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I'm gonna make my YouTube videos.
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I'm gonna figure out how to show
myself crocheting on YouTube.
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I'm gonna teach it. I'm just
going to be the absolute best.
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And then you commit to it a
thousand iterations and you go,
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you're on the path. And
eventually you'll get there.
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Eventually you'll outwork the people and
you'll outrank the people who currently
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have it. And if you're quick enough
and you're iterating fast enough,
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you'll stay ahead of those people biting
your heels to come get what you're
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after as well. And that is how you
become the champion in your niche.
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And that is how you build a real
business online that can let you live the
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lifestyle that you want. That's it
for part two of the video, part three.
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Now I want to give some shout
outs to some people. Number one,
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shout out to you if you
made it to the end here.
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You're a one percenter and I want
to know, hit it in the comments.
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Say I'm a 1% or let me know you made
it to the end. I love seeing that.
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I don't have time to comment every
time I still look through and see it.
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I know who you are, I
appreciate you. So that's it.
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Number two is thanks to John Gillam
from authority website income.
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He actually brought this to my
attention. Uh, Amelia Gardner.
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She is the utuber who's
covering this in depth.
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If you want to know more about this
specific scenario with the income store,
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she's the one to follow
up between the two.
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I've got a post of his and her YouTube
channel and the description between those
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two, you will find access to all the
documents, the conversations on Reddit,
[878]
on the Fastlane forums,
et cetera, et cetera.
[880]
So you can dig as deep
as you want into this.
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And then on the people calling out
the fake gurus, uh, number one,
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I want to give out a shout
out to coffee. Zilla. Uh,
[888]
this dude is just like on fire and he's
going for it and he's calling out the
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fake gurus by name.
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That's something that I consciously chose
not to do on my channel because they
[898]
are going to come and go and actually
fake gurus just quit the other day because
[902]
they're, they really, they have no
authenticity. This is just not real.
[905]
I saw him come up and I saw him
crash down and now they're quitting.
[907]
They made their money on the backs of
their people and now they're done with
[910]
their audience. They're onto
the next interesting thing. Um,
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I don't call him out by name because that
model's going to happen over and over
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and over. And I want you to
understand what to look for.
[919]
Cause they all use the
same language patterns.
[921]
They all sell the get rich
quick passive income scam.
[924]
They all make it sound easy.
[926]
They all sit on their fancy cars
and they flex using status symbols,
[930]
fancy watches,
[931]
fancy cars sitting in airplanes because
those are the status symbols that
[935]
trigger emotionally like wow,
[937]
maybe this time the get rich
quick thing will work. Nope,
[941]
that ain't how it works. So hats
off, shout out hat tip to coffee,
[944]
Zillow for doing what he's doing. And
then the, the Mike Wynot team, uh,
[949]
Mike Winnet, the Mike Winnet team and
a family there. Uh, they're in the UK,
[952]
he is a,
[953]
I think he's sold a startup and he's
a professional get rich quick buyer.
[957]
So he's actually like clicking on the
ads and going to the events and he is
[961]
calling out in very,
very clean detail. Um,
[965]
what these Contra preneurs
he calls him Contra preneurs.
[967]
I think he coined that phrase. Um,
[968]
these con artists acting as
entrepreneurs selling scams,
[972]
they all use the same sorts
of psychological things,
whether it's in person,
[976]
whether it's the automated webinar
bologna that you see over and over when
[980]
they're making it sound live and it's not.
[982]
They all use the same psychological
things. And when you learn what those are,
[985]
you'll have a moment when you're
like, Oh, this sounds interesting.
[988]
Click and you're like, damn, this
is, this is a recorded webinar.
[990]
This is all fake. This dude's lying to me.
[993]
Are you going to go into business with
somebody who's straight up lying to you?
[997]
Not this kid. I'm going
to do the hard work.
[999]
Cause that's the only way
to get it done. Right?
[1000]
And all the people I know who are creating
six figure seven figure eight figure
[1004]
people in this business,
they're working their tails off,
[1008]
but they're loving it because they
chose to work in a niche, in a space,
[1012]
some that interests them,
[1013]
whether it's the barbecue or the
crocheting or the drone racing,
[1016]
whatever it is for them, they're
doing something that they love.
[1020]
So that process over the next
three years, five years, 10 years,
[1022]
whatever it takes, because that's
where you got to be. Is it a whatever?
[1026]
It takes level. It's all kind of
fun. My wife loves spirituality,
[1030]
so everyday she's studying
spirituality, she's reading books on it,
[1033]
she's watching videos on it, and then
she's creating her blog posts on it.
[1036]
She's creating her videos on it.
It's a labor of love. This channel.
[1041]
I am such a marketing geek. I can't even
tell you and I have been since 2003.
[1045]
I'm like 17 years into marketing
geek dome. I love what I do.
[1049]
I love learning this. I love sharing this.
[1051]
I love hearing about your
growth and your experiences.
[1054]
That's why I'm on this planet.
So there ain't no like,
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I'm going to do this until I get there
and then I'm done with you and now hell
[1059]
nah. Like I'm just going to keep with it.
[1061]
Maybe I'll start putting out books
if I ever take time to write coherent
[1065]
chapters. I don't know. Um,
[1066]
but when you get there yourself and
you let go of all that shiny object
[1070]
bullshit, man, your bank
account is stopped dwindling.
[1073]
You ain't gonna put no thousand $2,000
scams on your credit card anymore.
[1076]
Your emotions will change cause you won't
feel stupid for getting caught up into
[1080]
yet another scam. How do
I know I bought into tens,
[1084]
dozens of scams before I ever
committed to just doing the work?
[1088]
The shortcut in this world do the
same thing for three years straight.
[1091]
The shortcut in this game of digital
business, thousand iterations,
[1095]
how quick can you get there? And if
you're doing one thing, one niche,
[1098]
you're playing the Shopify game
and Shopify and Facebook funnels,
[1100]
and then you stop after six months
and you go start to do something else.
[1103]
Guess what? Your iteration
clock went back to zero.
[1107]
And if you had 120 iterations going on
your path to a thousand that you want to
[1110]
be and you change gears to a
new niche or a new something,
[1113]
you're back to zero and
you're starting over.
[1115]
And that's what most people are
doing. They're buying this scam. Oh,
[1117]
that didn't work. Let me go buy this
scam. That didn't work. Oh, this guy,
[1120]
the passive income guru
boy says podcasting can do.
Okay, I'll buy his scam.
[1124]
That didn't work by that. Scam
that well, lock it down. Focus in,
[1129]
build a brand, give value to an audience.
[1132]
Go all in on helping them know that
you've got to chase down those who already
[1136]
hold the spots that you desire, which
is the attention to the audience.
[1139]
And you've got people coming up in the
ranks behind you trying to track you down
[1143]
and outperform you. So be more strategic.
They are published more quickly,
[1147]
more frequently than they are,
[1148]
and you will be the one holding the
belt at some point in time when that
[1152]
happens. I don't know, but guess what?
[1153]
It's pretty beautiful life when it
does and that's it for this video.
[1156]
So thank you for watching. Again,
thanks to John Gilliam, a Illumina,
[1162]
Amelia Gardner, coffee Zilla Mike,
[1163]
when I'm gonna have all their links and
stuff on the end screens and now below
[1165]
here, they're everywhere.
Thank you for showing up.
[1167]
I appreciate you do the work.
Give value to your audience.
[1170]
It creates an amazing
lifestyle and ultimately stop
padding the pockets of these
[1174]
fake gurus because they're just going
to dump on you when they're done.
[1177]
They're just going to
disappear when it's done,
[1178]
when they get called out for whatever
they're doing and good on the folks
[1181]
calling them out. We need more people
like that in this world. And on that note,
[1184]
I'm gonna call it. So
thank you for your time.
[1185]
I appreciate you and I'll see you on
the next video. Until then, be well,
[1187]
cheers.
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