Know When to Quit w/ John Lee | Ep 449

0:00Everyone would say no to me. Then I'd go back to my mentor and ask him, it's not working. These are supposed to be investors that don't have money. He said, tell me how you're pitching it. And I told him, he said, that's wrong. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And it's always about for them. He taught me this powerful lesson, W-I-F-T, what's in it for them? My name is John Lee and you are listening to the future.

0:25Chris Do: Everybody, today's guest. First, what we're going to do is we're going to listen to his voice. and if you were there when Clubhouse was popping, I'm sure you're going to recognize the voice. John Lee, welcome to the show. For people who don't know who you are, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your story. Well, brother, thank you so much for having me in the first place. For those of you people who don't know who I am, I'm an entrepreneur, speaker. I do a lot of things. And mainly people come to me when they have issues with my... So I'm the author of Money Unlocked, which has been published by Penguin in Hay House.

0:57and a lot of different business models going to real estate, going to social media, building personal brands, also looking at how business is currently changing as well. So a lot of people come to me for advice for like tech, like how do I grow it? How do I do a raise? How do an IPO? So it's kind of like a lot of these things. And, you know, as you know, now with the whole AI world, it's not being good at one thing. It's now having multifaceted approach in business. So I'm kind of like going in and doing holistic things. For me, it's finding out where the intrinsic value is in every single business, whether that be marketing, sales, whether it's understanding nuances in audiences, different distributions.

1:38And, you know, we had a pretty big conversation on AI just now. So it's kind of what I do.

1:43Chris Do: How do you think back in the Clubhouse days, how you were perceived online? What do you think your brand was like back in the day? And how has it evolved over time? When I first started was real estate. That's how I kind of made my pot of gold. And then it went from real estate to then becoming, teaching sales training. And then it evolved from sales training and then it went to speaker training. And it went from speaker training to social media. Now it's gone from social media to investing and then AI and then tech. During Clubhouse, fill in this sentence for me. No explanation, just fill it in, okay?

2:16Chris Do: John, he's the - Money guy. There we go, see, that's perfect. Money guy. Money guy, he's the money guy. Post Clubhouse, let's just say now we're at the One Billion Follow Summit with Mindvalley. Somebody sitting in the audience. Oh, John, he's the AI guy. Okay. So what is this book all about then? Is this AI money? No, it's talking about opportunities. Like for me, making money is the easiest thing in the world. I really, in my heart, feel it's so easy to make money. But yet most people struggle with it. And for me, it's my duty to get this message out there. Whether it's using AI to do it, whether it's negotiating a deal, whether it's creating a brand for somebody and helping them consult on that.

2:54There's so many different opportunities. I mean, we're living in a world where you can click a button now and create an entire film and an app. It is bizarre that so many people are struggling making money.

3:06Chris Do: I think we're in alignment here. It's making money easy. Yes. When did you learn that? When I was at high school. What did you do to learn that? So my parents had a Chinese takeaway. And in a Chinese takeaway, you have prawn crackers, you have cans of Coke and things like that. I used to just put those into my bag, take them to school and create my own tuck shop. So I would sell them to people. And so 50 pence here, 50 pence here, because, you know, I'm a gamer. So I like playing games. Right. So I wanted to save up for this console called Neo Geo. And if you remember Samurai Shodown, my favorite game.

3:38So when I looked at how that worked, I was like, I need a way to create something. So in the early days, I had something called a Sega Master System. I used to play Alex the Kid and Wise and all these incredible games. after I would complete them, I would take these to school and I would sell them for five pounds. The cartridges? Yeah, the cartridges. I've still got some of those cartridges, by the way. And then it wasn't until I realized that, oh, hold on a second. You've got something here, but people will pay money for and you can make money from it. And why do I make money? Because I want to buy another console.

4:07I want to buy another game. And one of my best friends, David, he had this, you know, I remember the Super Nintendos and he played every single game and he sold it. I was like, I'll buy it from you. So I remember, I'll never forget this. I bought it from him for 35 pounds. And then I walked two and a half miles. Back then you call them swap shops. You take something and you swap it, but you can also exchange it for money. And then I got 52 pounds back for it. So I'd made a margin. That was easy.

4:34Chris Do: You got a lot for that game. So I understood that you can buy something low and sell it high. Basic principle, buy low, sell high or buy low, sell low if you want it fast. Right. That's how it kind of got in real estate as well. Okay, that's arbitrage. And a lot of people have experiences like this, but they never really go to the heights. They're stuck in small transactions. Tell me the next quantum leap forward where you understand arbitrage and what age and where are you seeing this? So I worked in the film industry. I used to be an animator. So I used to work for a company called Framestore CFC.

5:05Before that, we worked.

5:06Chris Do: What kind of animator are you? Now you're like in my lane here. I am a CGI animator, character. Character, 3D? Character and creature, creature animator. 3D? Yeah. 3D. So I would use like Maya, 3D Studio Max. Okay. Just checking your card here. Lightwave is the earlier one. Yeah, yeah. Lightwave, sure. Yeah. So Lightwave. And how'd you learn how to use this? Self-taught. Really? In fact, do you know Lightwave has a secret animation tool called Messiah? No. I knew that early on in age that if you want something, you got to do it yourself if you can't get it. The university I went to did not have enough machines for animators.

5:43So me and my friend would show up 6 a.m. in the morning. We wait for the caretaker to come, open the doors. We'd go there, put our bags there and go to McDonald's to get breakfast. When we'd come back, our bags would still be there. So we had basically said, you can't take that seat. But the problem is, as you know, if anyone's listened to this, Lightwave at the time was just not quite, it was great at rendering. It was great at 3D modeling. It was great at all that stuff, but it wasn't great at animation. So you remember IK?

6:08Chris Do: Yes. Inverse Kinematics. Yes, yes, yes. So IK's movement of the character, Messiah could do it in real time. That means I could have a full short film that what would take everybody else six to eight months to do, which I could do it in three months. That was my advantage. What did you study at university? Animation. Oh, you did? Okay, so you - I had a degree in animation. Okay, so you wasn't so self-taught there. No. So you went to university to learn animation. But at that university, it didn't teach me jack. Everything was self-taught. I remember manuals like this, having to go through it. Being dyslexic, I'm like, this is really difficult.

6:42Chris Do: I learn on the job, not through university. So you are a very clear-minded, self-determined person. You do this. Now, where does the arbitrage come back in again? I was working on Prehistoric Park. This is a show. I mean, you've probably seen all the T-Rex and all the dinosaurs. I remember going to the Natural History Museum because we had to learn movement. Like, how do you animate a mammoth? It don't exist. Closest thing to a mammoth is an elephant. so you look at how they're waiting and so i need to have to analyze skeletal structures i remember sitting there thinking i'm working on this shot that's taking weeks to do this shot and the director can come in and say yeah scrap it i'm like this is ridiculous and i remember seeing one of the shots and how much the shot was like it was 23 000 for 24 frames per second shot and I'm like, I'm doing the calculation in my head.

7:38I'm like, hold on a second. That shot I just made was like 75 ,000 for that one shot. And that one, I started thinking about if I want to work this hard, I need to work for myself. I remember sitting there and this book called Real Estate Riches by Dolph DeRus. And I'm listening to this book and this guy had worked all his life to basically become a doctor. But at the same time, he was in real estate. And the same time he got a job eventually is the same day he had actually sold that piece of property and made the same salary as the offer he got from the job. And that's when I had one of those moments.

8:18And I realized at that point, I was, oh my God, like, and by the way, at the time I was on 36 ,000. So it was like this coincidence. I'm like, that's a really good idea. If I can just buy one house and then sell it, then I can take the rest of the year off. And that's how I got the idea to go into real estate. So from long hours in real estate, I would go to these property networking events. And it's so funny because I'd turn up and I'd see my best mate there. I'm like, I didn't know you was into real estate as well. And his name was Bao. And so yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to make some money in real estate.

8:49So I kind of got into this process of understanding. I went to my first seminar and I couldn't afford to go to my first seminar. My first mentor in real estate, his name was Ranjan Bhachacharya. And he charged 350 pounds to go to this. You know, the time you're like, I'm not paying that money to go there. So I went to my uncle Chi and I borrowed some money from him and he was reluctant at first. He said, what's it for? I said, it's for a seminar. He said, what it's about? It's about how to become a property millionaire. And he looked at me and he's like, oh, it's going to be a scam. I said, no, no, no.

9:16So I did a deal with him. I said, give me the money to go on. And the first two deals I buy, I'm going to give you 50 % of it. That was the worst negotiation I ever did. But that's when I realized one of my first deals that I understood was that I never understood that there's people out there who are willing to sell a property at a discount. I just need to buy a house low and sell it high. So one of the first deals I did, Chris, was I bought it for$85 ,000 and I sold it for$185 ,000. But every single house on that row was valued at$180 minimum. I didn't have the money. But one of my mentors taught me, his name was Ying Tan.

9:53He said, you don't need money. You need a deal. Find a deal, the money will find you. That was the biggest unlock for me. So now like I wasn't worried about having to have the money to do the deal. I remember when we closed that deal, it was on the market for again, 118 on the market. It's like, why would someone sell it at a discount? Because they'd already made money from it. So I'm thinking of it from the wrong way. So then I go into these networking events and my pitch is, have you got 85 ,000 pounds? No. Have you got 85 ,000 pounds? No. Have you got 85 ,000? No. Everyone will say no to me.

10:24Then I go back to my mentor and I asked him, it's not working. These are supposed to be investors that don't have money. He said, tell me how you're pitching it. And I told him, he said, that's wrong. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And it's always about for them. He taught me this powerful lesson, W-I-F-F-T. What's in it for them? So he said, go back with the second pitch. So now the pitch is, it's not, do you have 85 ,000? It's now I've got a property, it's worth 185 ,000 and buying it at a hundred grand off. Would you like to partner with me? And then I started to get some bites.

10:53Then I met a lady called Karen Rutter, who did not have the money. And that's when I realized it's not who you know, it's who they know. And she found someone who's a multimillionaire called Shirley Wheeler. I sat down with her and I said, I've got this deal. And I did exactly the same pitch that my mentor taught me. And that's how I got the money to buy the house. She gave me 85 ,000 with a high interest rate. But I realized that you don't need to hold the money long. I held it for one day. Because at the time there was a loophole where you could refinance it. So she gave me the money. I refinanced it, got the money back out, paid her and her interest.

11:24and then now I've got extra money now. I get paid to buy the house because now the market value is higher. So now it's worth 185.

11:34Chris Do: But you haven't sold it for 185 yet. No, but I'm refinancing it at the market value. Now when you get a refinance, say 85 % of 185 is higher than 85. So I get all that money back, right? How much money do you get back? I think we refinanced at 112, 500. Okay, so now you have cash in hand before you even sold the property. Now, I used that money to refurbish it. And then I sold it. An interesting thing, I didn't even sell the property. My builder, Mike, who was doing the whole thing, people were walking past and going, oh my God, this property's for sale, right? Because they saw it being refurbished and they had all the skip outside.

12:08He would take people in, he would show them the property and say, oh, I would love to buy this. I want to live closer to my son. And he said, look, we're just about to refurbish it. We can refurbish it exactly how you want it. We can paint this orange. We can paint it white. We can paint magnolia walls. He's the one who sold the property for$185 ,000 for me in two months.

12:26Chris Do: So that's how I got the money. What is the catalyst for you to switch from industry to industry or from topic to topic? So do you know when people say to you, you should always stay in one lane and be good at one lane? For me, my mentality is yes, as long as it aligns. Where am I going? There's lots of different routes to get here, but ultimately the end in one place. So when you ask me, how do I know? It's going to sound fluffy, but it's an inner calling. Like my mind says no, but my heart says yes. Like my book Money Unlocked. I was asked to go to Columbia. I'm like, why am I going to Columbia?

13:00Like, I don't, I'm not speaking there even. But oh, if you go to the network. That's when I met Ken Honda. And Ken Honda is the one that got me the book deal, really at Penguin and Hay House. Well, it was Hay House first, but then he got acquired. And so this is why I have an open mind with things and I go into lots of different industries and I can see the nuances of each one. but actually they all fundamentally come to the same thing. It's just a different wrapper. And so if I'm doing speaker training, that's all to do with communication. But now communication is your message, which is now amplified on social media.

13:34But when you're on social media, you need to monetize, which means you need to have to go into sales. But once you've made money, then you need to invest it and multiply it. Therefore you need to start investing. So it's almost like this multifaceted approach. In the past, it was always, I'm a jack of all trades, but master of none. But now it's like, okay, now I need to be a master of all trades and a jack of none. So it's kind of evolving now. And so that's kind of how I know to kind of switch it, branding, positioning, but also have it feed back into an ecosystem that ultimately is all of it.

14:06Chris Do: How can you make this more practical for people? Because I'll tell you the opposite side of this is young creative people are like, well, I like this. I like that. They're all roads. That's what John said. We can just do anything and everything and it all leads to Rome. It's not often the case. What people do is they start something, gets hard, they quit. They start something else, it gets hard, it quit. And then you look at 20 years later, they're not much further along than they were when they first started. And that hurts me a little bit for them. And I just tell each person, this is the thing.

14:34Chris Do: Everything you want is on the opposite side of all that work and that pain, but you just got to get through that barrier. That's the price of entry. This is where everybody quits. And they listen to this and they're like, see, I told you, Chris, you don't know what you're talking about. John told us to do whatever. I was in my inner calling. How do we know that? It's like yin-yang. There's not one or there's not that. It's not black. It's not white. That's how most people operate life. It's like, you see, the black is white and it's very binary. But we're not binary. We're quantum. We have the in-betweens here and there.

15:02And so when you ask me, what is my calling? It's like, you are taking a step, one step at a time and you don't know what direction you're going. But guess what? Each step gets you closer to figuring out what it is. I'll give an example. Where you are right now is probably not where you thought you would be 10, 20, 30 years ago. Same with me. And so that 10 year gap is a series of footsteps that we take, callings that we take that when we get that thing that happens where it doesn't work, that's not that it doesn't work. We're being redirected to another direction that tells us not to go that way, to go that way.

15:40And it gives us a closer cue. So when I started in real estate, people ask me questions. Hey, John, teach me real estate. I'm like, okay, I'll sit down with them. We have a coffee. And then they'll tell somebody else I have another coffee. And it got to a point where everyone was asking me. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to write a guide. Ask me a question. I write it down. Next time you come to me, read the guide. And then that guide started being passed around. Then I get a phone call by a guy called Steve Foley. Calls me up, says, John, can you come speak at my event? And I said, Steve, I'm not a speaker.

16:10He said, bring your guide and read it. So I turn up, it's about six people there. and I start reading this guide. What happens there? A guy who is in that event tells a guy by the name of Just One Ride. He has 250 people in his next thing. He asked me to go and speak there. I didn't know there's 250 people there. I just show up. The car park's full. I'm like, there's be a wedding on here or something. So I do this talk. After that talk, everyone comes up to me. Hey, John, can you show me how to do this? Hey, John, can you negotiate my deals for me? Off the back of that, I created a business called Deal Closer.

16:42It was created through the demand of the process that drove me there. I had no plans of creating that. And that business was, you call my deal up, you negotiate the fee and I'll pay you 1 % of the purchase price. So it created another angle. And then that's what led to speaker training and what led to sales training and overcoming objections for real estate. So each one of these paths is the calling based on demand, based on my skillset and joy. Do I love doing it? Of course. Would I do it if I didn't get paid? Yes. That's when you know the calling's right. So sometimes intellectually, you know that if I go this way, I'm doing it for the money.

17:19But it's not about the money. It's about the mission. We do it for the mission, which then pays you the money to continue doing your mission.

17:25Chris Do: Let's do this against John's matrix here. Let's create four variables. Demand, joy, money, and mission. Score them one to 10. First of all, how much demand in the market is there for this? Are people clamoring at the door saying, hey, you must produce this booklet? that you must speak at our conference. How much demand is there for this? Number two, how much joy does it bring to you? Is this fully making your heart smile? If it does, that deserves a 10. One would be a really low score. Next would be money. You could talk about it in terms of gross or profit. It doesn't really matter. How do you measure money?

17:56Chris Do: Score from one to 10. And the last one is how on mission is it for you? If you don't have the mission yet, you can leave that one blank. But if you already have a mission, score this. Then just do the things that have the highest score and ignore the rest. Is that all right? Yes, but there's a missing element. Okay. What is the missing element? The element is, do you know when you just know something's right? Like in your heart, you do it like, even when, like you must have team members that say, it's not going to work. Nah, nah, I wouldn't do that. And you know, with absolute certainty that you know that if you do it, it's going to work.

18:28Because what happens is when you do something, you have these reflexes and the reflexes are built up all the time. So you understand if I do this, this is going to happen. If I do this, you can pretty much predict it. These are the invisibles that only come with wisdom and experience. So it's these little nuances, these little wisdoms that you can't

18:47Chris Do: just put your finger on it, but you just know. We have another 20 minutes. We got to cover some things and I need to move to AI. I believe this is not a thing of conjecture anymore. AI will be the largest displacement of jobs that's ever been invented in the history of the world. For example, we just activated full self-driving on our Tesla. It's remarkable. And I think we're about months away from it picking you up. So all the Uber drivers with Elon's next big play, they're gone too. Tesla's been collecting data from hundreds of thousands of cars on the road. It knows things that normal people don't know.

19:26Chris Do: Yes. But don't forget, data in, data out, garbage in, garbage out. Sure. Right? So you still need new data and things change. Yes, it's going to eventually figure it out, but you still need someone to do that. The jobs that it's going to take, will inherently create a new job. The thing that I'm finding now is that the more you use AI, the less we're able to think. I ask people for their opinions and they're like, give me a second. They're on the machine again, asking it for opinions because we're losing the ability to decide and to have critical thinking. Do you see that or you see something else?

19:59Chris Do: I agree. I have to agree with you there. I agree with you there. Yeah. For example, we'll do it. Like, you know, we'll have a meeting, an executive meeting, and it's like, oh, we don't know. Ask Nova. So I have an assistant called Nova. The goal is to train it to think like you. For example, there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. People go, well, why should I use your AI versus ChatGPT? Because if you go to ChatGPT and say, how do I get more views? It'll say, create more content, do this, this, and that. If you ask John Lee's AI, it'll say, use the 116. One topic, one platform, post every single day for six months, find the outlier, double down on it, recreate it 50 different times.

20:32it will tell you to do that one because that's been trained in my wisdom. So knowledge is, my good friend John Davy told me, he said, knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that you don't put tomato in a fruit salad. For example, when we had that conversation in Dubai and you asked me like, what is Nike's brand? I'm like, hmm. And then you said, greatness. And then when you explained it to me, I started to see it. But you only see that because you have this incredible mind that see these nuances that most people cannot see. Where does it come from? years of design, years of experience, years of consulting work.

21:05Can AI replicate that? To a point, yes. But are they going to replace Christo? No, because there's only one of you. And so now it's, you know, I will say that this year is all about connection, collaboration, and community, which AI is going to be struggling to replace.

21:23Chris Do: I want to ask you about your wisdom about yourself. So there's a framework I refer to as the core three. Every personal brand, every brand worth knowing has these three components. Let's see if we can do this together. Okay. And I'll tell you what the framework is. And then you pick the one that you want to answer and we'll see what the other two sound like. Okay. Every strong brand is known for something. The one thing they want to be known for, and they're able to articulate it. And we can, even more powerful, we can articulate back to the brand. It's not just them saying it. They have a clearly identified enemy, something they're trying to rid the world of.

21:55Chris Do: And then they have a call to arms, call to action, or a rallying cry in which this whole big philosophy can be summed up in three to five words. Which one do you know? Do you know your keyword, your enemy, or your rallying cry? Transformation. Transformation is your keyword? Yes. Okay. What's the context? A lot of people, when they come to me, one of the biggest reasons why they struggle to make money is not that they don't know how to make money. Like if I tell them to do what I do, like do this, do this, do this, and you'll make money. But the problem is people don't do it. And why? Because it's internal conflict.

22:28it's like a podcast i want this but i want this but actually i don't want it so transformation means something needs to shift inside of you and identity needs to shift from this to this then you'll do it and i say to people imagine you're not competing in your school sports day you're gonna compete now you're competing the olympics two different mindsets right so it's very very different. So a part of, and then when I instilled to what it is, it is actually transformation.

22:59Chris Do: In order for you to make money, you have to transform. Here's the test. When someone thinks of transformation today, is your name on the top of that list? I don't, but let me caveat that. A lot of people, even though I talk about social media, AI business, when, for example, we just finished the mastermind here, the common theme is you're very inspiring. You are motivating. So I don't say, here's on my head, transformation. But when I seed it through, when I infuse my content with the feeling, people feel it. So the idea about branding is you're associated with something. So for example, if you're like super performance cars, everybody will answer a little bit differently, but we know that there's a few brands and we know there's a lot of other brands that don't fit that category.

23:44Chris Do: So when I say, when you think of the word why, who do you think about? Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek. Yes. You see, abstract is the word why is. He's made a whole thesis and he's been hitting it over and over and over again so that we can know that if I say vulnerability, who do you think of? Bending a problem? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if we keep going down this list, the people who have the clearest articulated brand or keywords own a space. And it's very precious real estate. You were talking about real estate before. This is the real estate in the minds of people. So if your word is transformation, you don't have to own it today.

24:15but if that's your word over time in theory even if you ask chat gbt or claude or one of the

24:22Chris Do: llms who comes to mind when i say this word your name needs to be in that top 10 if not the top three that's my opinion that's great advice your enemy what is it you're trying to get rid of the world that's aligned with my idea of transformation my enemy is doubt doubt okay that works doubt like do you know what it is people don't believe themselves and and they have this this belief system and the belief system comes from four categories it comes from the friends you hang around it comes from your teachers that teach you every day your family and also your experience and when i look at all four of these things your beliefs were not your beliefs they were just given to you when you understand they were given to you then you can do something about it they weren't mine to start with and so my enemy is doubt it's it's disbelief it's thinking that Things are impossible.

25:10Chris Do: That is my enemy. Then what is your slogan, rallying cry, call to arms? That's why I need your help with that. I already have the answer. You're the master of this. I have the answer already. Okay, so if your keyword's transformation, your enemy's doubt, I believe your rallying cry, draft one, work in progress, believe you can. So this is a thing that you can print, a book title, a talk title, and you build a whole case study and a thesis for this. And it's like, if you believe you can, you can, and you will. And the enemy to this doubt is belief. And it's ties to your idea about spirituality and faith, I believe.

25:47Chris Do: So believe and faith and all that. Or maybe it's have faith. I don't know what the word is. It's something like that. I just believe that belief is what is it? It's an energy. Yes, it is. Right? Everything is energy. Yeah. Right? So if you think, if you imagine you're like a fuel tank and that is your belief in that. and every time you are doubting yourself, you're second guessing yourself, you're like, oh, it's not going to work. It's like you're poking holes in it and it's leaking out. So your life force, if you will, is draining. And unfortunately we hang around people who just don't poke holes in it.

26:19They'll get a hammer and put a massive dash in it. And then the whole thing comes out. So a part of this is, when I think about transformation, transformation is energy, it's transcending into something. And to transcend, we need to be the bigger version of us.

26:33Chris Do: All right. Okay, John, quickly pitch the book. Tell us why we need to buy this book. Oh. You want to hold it up? Yeah. So this is coming out. It's called Money Unlocked. And it's all about how do we make it? How do we keep it? And how do we multiply it? And it's about 20 years of distilled processes and wisdom put into one book. And this book's been in my head for 20 years. So finally, I've been able to get it out. When is the book dropping? April 28th. It's called Money Unlocked. I don't know what camera I'm looking at. Money Unlocked. Everybody, my guest today has been John Lee. John, how do people reach out?

27:03Chris Do: How do they follow up with you? Where do we send people? Oh, just go to any social media profile, type in John Lee or go to johnlee.com. By the way, that's another story, 27 years to get that domain name. But yeah, johnlee.com or just any social media platform, just type John Lee. John's been a pleasure. Brother, thank you so much, man. Amazing.