Speaker A
The way I look at it is that you can have these tactics, but at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is force yourself to love something that you don't love.
Experts discuss Islamic mindset, health, and marketing strategies to earn $10k/month, focusing on discipline, sleep, diet, and content creation.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Protecting sleep and managing time effectively are crucial for health and productivity.
- A clean, balanced diet with healthy fats supports hormone optimization, especially testosterone.
- Content creation is essential for business growth; if you don’t want to create content, you don’t want to make money.
- Qualifying sales opportunities thoroughly is more important than tonality or objection handling.
- Emotional behavior largely dictates productivity and motivation, so mindset work is key.
What the video covers
- The video features four experts discussing mindset, health, marketing, and sales for Muslims aiming to increase income.
- Fedi Lecamus emphasizes the importance of loving what you do and protecting your time for content creation.
- Aaron discusses optimizing testosterone and overall health through sleep, diet, and exercise.
- The conversation highlights modern lifestyle challenges like sedentary work and poor diet affecting energy and motivation.
- Experts stress the importance of qualifying opportunities thoroughly in sales for business success.
- The role of dopamine and emotional behavior in productivity and motivation is explored.
- Practical advice includes waking up early, protecting sleep, exercising, and eating balanced meals rich in fats for hormone health.
- Marketing expert Leamin focuses on content as the foundation of marketing and the necessity of consistent content creation.
- Zakaria provides insights on emotional selling and long sales cycles in B2B contexts.
- The video encourages viewers to adopt disciplined routines and mindset shifts to achieve financial and personal growth.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Mindset on Loving Your Work
- 02:03Modern Lifestyle Challenges and Health Impact
- 05:00Simple Health Habits for Testosterone and Energy
- 07:34Time Management and Sleep Protection Strategies
- 09:46Emotional Behavior and Productivity Insights
- 11:38Content Creation as the Foundation of Marketing
- 13:48Sales Qualification and Emotional Selling
- 15:22Final Thoughts and Q&A
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
So, what I mean by that is if you're just using willpower and discipline, then the thing that actually gives you the—it's just difficult to say gives you dopamine because it's not exactly how it works, but the thing that is dopaminergic in its nature and you enjoy doing, which is subjective, right? Then you'll just do more of that.
Speaker A
But content right now, that's why we say it's king. So, if you don't want to make content, that means you don't want to make money.
Speaker A
You have to be able to protect your time and not just your time but what you're actually doing with it. This is the process of qualification and in sales there is nothing more important—not your objection handling, not your tonality, not your communication skills—it is the ability to qualify an opportunity thoroughly.
Speaker A
If you are a Muslim who wants to make more money in any capacity, that could be making your first 10k, your next 100k, or your million, inshallah, we've got four experts here. You got me on mindset, we've got Aaron, a brother on health and performance optimization, we've got Leamin who's an absolute marketing G,
Speaker A
and then we've got Zakaria who, hey, if you want to learn how to sell, he's the go-to guy. So, I'm going to start off by asking Aaron a question. Each one of us are going to ask each other questions
Speaker A
and be beneficial to you in the way that not only would you get your questions answered, but also you're going to get those little nuggets from experts that you wouldn't typically get and you'd actually have to pay for. So,
Speaker A
enjoy the video and we'll get started. So, Aaron, I wanted to ask you because I mentioned this when we spoke last time.
Speaker A
I went into a health check once and did my blood test. I came back with 150 nanograms validity to test.
Speaker A
I felt like poop the entire time I was on carnivore. I know there's a bunch of things with carbs and testing, etc.
Speaker A
But I'll be honest with you, even from the advice I was given then, I don't think I fully recovered from the last blood test I did, which is around 450, which is still lower than what I wanted to be.
Speaker A
Sleep isn't the best, but besides sleep and diet because I was alhamdulillah being improved, what would you say if somebody came to you with low energy, just low motivation and low self-confidence, which tend to be symptoms of low testosterone?
Speaker A
What would you say to them to fix that? I think it doesn't dial down to, you know, one or two things. I think it's very much a mix of different, you know, habits of how you've kind of, you
Speaker A
know, built them up over years. Like a low testosterone when we are young, for example, when we are, you know, going through puberty, 16, 17, 18, it should be really, really high, you know, but because, you know, in the
Speaker A
modern days, these times we're working from desks, we're not moving, you know, we're eating for convenience, you know, all these different ingredients on a food packet, you know, these things, they're all around us and it's hard to
Speaker A
get through. But, you know, there's a few things you can do. Obviously, if we look back in the olden days, you know, the kind of testosterone levels. Obviously, they didn't measure it when they didn't have
Speaker A
the technology in caveman times, but, you know, it was significantly higher even maybe 100, 200 years ago, but that was because the only things that, you know, our grandfathers, great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers were eating was eggs, meats, rice, pasta. These
Speaker A
like carbs in and of itself, they aren't bad either. We need them for energy, of course. Majority of it does come down to diet. But I would say if you were to fix one habit to optimize your not just
Speaker A
your testosterone levels but your other hormone levels as well, whether it's cortisol, whether it's, you know, your adrenaline, your kind of whole function of the body in terms of biomarkers, it does come down to sleep.
Speaker A
And a lot of guys these days, they're kind of addicted to scrolling after isa or they'll be watching Netflix or eating a tub of ice cream while watching it as well. The main thing that I would say, and you can use this for
Speaker A
anything, is if you wouldn't wake up early to do it, then you shouldn't go to bed late doing it.
Speaker A
For example, you wouldn't wake up, you know, early to watch the Kardashians, you know. Not that any of us would watch.
Speaker A
I know, each to their own. Who knows? Maybe Leamin. [laughter] But I think that honestly is the biggest lever for change because you have to be able to protect your time and not just your time but what you're
Speaker A
actually doing with it. You know that sleep should be protected at all costs and as a result of that you'll wake up for file, you'll feel like you're not wrestling with a blanket to wake up. Then as soon as you wake up, I would do some
Speaker A
form of exercise whether it's the gym, walking, get some sunlight depending on where you live, and then eating a clean balanced diet. You know, red meat, chicken. Chicken thighs are very good for testosterone as well. Obviously, we
Speaker A
all know eggs. Everybody knows this. Is that because of the fats or is it because of the fats? Because a lot of people when they hear the word fats, they think, "Oh, it's bad." Because if you're called fats, you know,
Speaker A
it's not a nice thing to hear. So the fats, for example, in eggs, in meat, etc., they're all going to bind for the human man to be able to have enough testosterone. Got it. Because, you know, we've had blood test
Speaker A
results come back. I know you obviously had 150. We've had guys come back with like 80, 90, and it's crazy. And they're full-time dads, full-time workers, running a business, whatever they're doing, but they wonder why they're just spinning their wheels all the time.
Speaker A
And it's because they're not doing the simple things. And for me to just pull it down to eat a clean, balanced diet, protect your time that you're sleeping, and train three to four times a week, it's not inherently difficult.
Speaker A
You're just choosing not to do it. Can I just jump in there? I mean, look, I would actually push back on you and disagree with part of that that it's—I would say in the day and age
Speaker A
that we're living in at the moment, those things can be difficult because of the culture that's being pushed.
Speaker A
Agreed. But I want to go back to a rule of thumb that you mentioned which I think is very, very interesting. You said if you wouldn't wake up early to do it, you shouldn't go to bed late doing it.
Speaker A
Right. So would you then say, for example, I typically go to bed late because I've got extra work to do, right, sitting in front of the screen. I know it's not necessarily good.
Speaker A
Would you say you can do that because it comes under the bracket of this is something that I would wake up early to do, or would you still say get to sleep on time no matter what the activity is? I would always say
Speaker A
to protect the time you're sleeping because I think even when you're young you can get away with it.
Speaker A
But if you continuously do the same habits that you inherently know are not going to be beneficial for you,
Speaker A
it's going to come and bite you eventually. So what I tend to do instead is I will go to sleep earlier but I will wake up earlier so that the things that I may have been doing late into the
Speaker A
evening. You have to ask yourself the question, could I be doing this with the more time I have in the morning after Fajr, for example, after you go and pray, you come back home and then you work, you
Speaker A
can, you know, you can have six, seven hours of work before the time. Usually that's what I do. So all my hard tasks in the day are already done. Then after that, it's the easy task. It's replying to clients.
Speaker A
It's adjusting programs, looking at blood tests, all these easy things for me. Then I feel like it's so much easier. However, because of where we are in the world, for example, if
Speaker A
can you know you can have six seven hours of work before the time usually that's what I do. So all my hard tasks in the day are already done. Then after that, it's the easy task. It's replying to clients.
Speaker A
It's adjusting programs, looking at blood tests, all these easy things for me. Then I feel like it's so much easier. However, because of where we are in the world, for example, if we're in Dubai and you have clients, I don't know, sometimes
Speaker A
your your calendar where we live, you know, you're going to have to take calls later if it's calls you're doing.
Speaker A
Yeah. in America especially in America. something that we deal with a lot as sales people especially when it comes to end of quarter and you've got deadlines you know it's not something that you can push push back yeah I mean for that I I would probably
Speaker A
say it's okay but say for the majority of the time if you are able to do the work you would do in the evening time to the morning I would always push for that I've always seen the best of my work
Speaker A
done when I've woken up early and I've done it in the morning obviously as we know there's baraka in the early morning so That's that's the reason why I do it.
Speaker A
I don't tend to like working past 8 PM. Number one is because that's time for me and my wife uh and the family, etc. And then number two, I just think I'm probably not doing the highest level of input I could cuz I'm physically
Speaker A
exhausted. Makes sense from the day. A really quick question on that then. I'm curious as to there's going to be periods obviously where we sleep less.
Speaker A
There might be like you said a deadline and it's temporary so it's not going to be forever.
Speaker A
going to be a habit. How do you recover from those bad nights of sleep so you can continue performing the best during the day?
Speaker A
Would you say it's like, okay, cool. Now you should prioritize this habit or that habit. What would you say somebody could do?
Speaker A
I think honestly I think I mentioned this before. The the main thing for me that when cuz this still happens to me, by the way. I'm not perfect all the time, but I always make sure that I wake
Speaker A
up to pray fudger and I stay awake and then I will have a nap between the anda time. That way you're still getting the recovery and it's just a little bit more broken.
Speaker A
If you have the luxury of working from home, running your own business, which is a luxury in of itself, you can give yourself that 60 to 90 minutes of extra rest that maybe you missed in the evening. That's what I would say.
Speaker A
Okay. I think and that's the lowest hanging fruit you'd say. Find a time to nap between.
Speaker A
That's what I would say honestly. I think I think that's the easiest way to do it. Obviously there's other things you can do with all the new kind of supplementational protocols we have available to us. Um that is another
Speaker A
route but again you need foundational. Yes because it's free. It's free. You can you can wake up and sleep whenever you want.
Speaker A
I have a question on taking a nap. People studies say that you can take you should take a nap max between 30 maximum 30 minutes or 90 minutes.
Speaker A
So not in between because I guess it's um the when you wake up the sleep cycles.
Speaker A
That's right. So you don't want to wake up in the middle of a cycle otherwise you'll sluggish.
Speaker A
Mhm. So would you recommend if you barely sleep let's say if you get four hours of sleep and then you want to get six hours of sleep an extra two hours which is past 90 minutes let's say or
Speaker A
would you say the the time of sleep does not matter. This is something that a lot of people get confused with because when you see online all the different things, it's get eight hours of sleep or you know it's eat one gram of protein per
Speaker A
pound of body weight, whatever it is. With sleep especially, it's not so much about the time, it's more so about the quality, which is why we track it with the Whoop so we can see what's your REM sleep, how many hours was deep sleep,
Speaker A
what was light sleep because then we can differentiate. Somebody might have slept for 12 hours, but their deep sleep might only be an hour. Their light sleep might be like 8 hours and maybe they only got two cycles of good sleep, you know? So,
Speaker A
you you'll notice it as well. Sometimes if you sleep longer, you might feel more tired and that's because you'll be waking up within a sleep cycle, which isn't good. So, you are right. If you're going to have a short nap, I think it's
Speaker A
I think it is 30 minutes. I think the research shows something like 27 or 28.
Speaker A
But you can also take a mini nap as well. So a mini nap is 9 minutes.
Speaker A
Power nap. Power nap. Basically, that's where that comes from. But you are right in terms of the sleep cycles. If you were sleeping for 4 hours or 4 and 1/2 hours, then and you wanted to get to 4 hours,
Speaker A
sorry, and you wanted to get to six, I would leave it at 90 minutes to get five and a half. And then throughout the later time in the week, you can make it up for through naps if you can. Because if you protect your
Speaker A
sleep, you protect your energy, you protect your time, your productivity, and your inputs. If you don't, your work productivity is just is going to plummet. It's not going to be very good.
Speaker A
If especially if you do it over time, makes sense 100%. Fedy, I've got um a question for you, right? Um and it's just pedalling off what Aaron said there about scrolling.
Speaker A
um especially after hours. What in terms of someone's mindset, what they think, the way they see the world, especially all of us being Muslims here, alhamdulillah. What impact is scrolling having and especially I'm talking about doom scrolling, which we
Speaker A
can define whichever way we want. I think we all have been there, done that.
Speaker A
What impact is it having on us? I think the worst impact it has is distracting you from the of Allah.
Speaker A
But of course, depending on what stage you're at in in your iman, that's not something I'm not saying you don't care about it, but it's like not something that can hit you hard, right? It's why certain times you'll hear and it'll hit
Speaker A
you hard. Other times you're like, I don't really get it. The second most important one is the fact that what you're basically saying to yourself is this. Whatever emotion I want to feel, let's say it's wealthy, motivated, whatever, I'm finding it in something
Speaker A
external, which is me scrolling the video. For example, a lot of brothers who are entrepreneurial, what they'll do is they'll watch entrepreneurial videos.
Speaker A
They'll feel like they're making progress. In fact, they'll often times feel richer. Genuinely, they'll learn something about marketing, sales, and they'll be like, "What if I were to apply this today? Think of how much money I could start making." And so,
Speaker A
they'll feel richer. But how the brain comprehends things, the subconscious mind via emotions is in the present moment. And so what the brain has understood is how do I get richer or feel richer?
Speaker A
Just scrolling. And so you don't get addicted to scrolling because it's an actual addicting thing. You get addicted to the emotion that you're after. And your brain can only comprehend that scrolling is the expression of that emotion. And so what happens is instead
Speaker A
of trying to pursue actual wealth, right, you'll start feeling poor when you're working on your business. Why?
Speaker A
Because you only feel rich when scrolling. This is just the example of wealth. It could be the same thing with attractiveness. If you feel desirable when you're, you know, learning these pickup things, questions to ask for before marriage and these motivational
Speaker A
videos about marriage, you feel like you've learned something. You feel like you're more desirable. However, if you're not doing anything about it or when you come to do something about it and you feel the opposite, because let's be honest, sometimes it might be more
Speaker A
difficult. Same with making money during the business and you're trying hard. Your brain is saying, "Oh, I want to feel this way. I want to feel desired. I want to feel rich. Where do I go to?" The scrolling. That's the real
Speaker A
detriment. It's in the fact that we have to understand that our behavior is dictated by our emotions 90% of the time. And it's unconscious, meaning we don't realize it. We don't think I'm angry, therefore, I'm going to punch
Speaker A
this person. You feel angry. Some you might not even understand the full extent of it. And you just swing. Right?
Speaker A
And so, the point is that you feel poor while working on your business. And therefore, you don't work on the business. You don't try hard. Why?
Speaker A
Because you're not seeing what you want from it. And so by not seeing what you want from it, it's a cycle, right?
Speaker A
You're like, I'm not making the progress I want to make. So where'd you go to feel rich? Scrolling. I'm not making the progress I want to make. Where'd you go?
Speaker A
Scroll. And look, I think the reason I asked you that, and I'm sure the guys have got ideas bubbling in their heads of things they want to they want to ask on this.
Speaker A
But I I mean, I can only use myself as an example. I have really good phases and bad phases because I use social media, right? Whether it's for, you know, speaking to to to individuals, giving them advice, uh whether they want to
Speaker A
break into tech sales or and so on and so forth, but I'll have periods where I'm really good and I'm not doom scrolling and then I'll have periods where I'm like, I need to use social media for work and then I end up falling
Speaker A
back into it. What would you say? Is that something that you've dealt with? Of course.
Speaker A
Or is and and how would you combat that? So the cycles of up and down are what I call the it's like a war between the conscious and subconscious. You have an average in the middle and that's generally what you should be like this
Speaker A
is me. And so the zakaria in the middle let's say is somebody who goes 3 weeks without scrolling and then two days of scrolling really hard. Three weeks without scrolling, two days of scrolling really hard. Your average is who you
Speaker A
currently are. And that represents your identity and your standards, right? And so to go into this it's like you see yourself as somebody who has this cycle.
Speaker A
That's the first thing is that you emotionally feel like you're somebody who cannot be consistent for longer than and there tends to be a set period of time. If you were to do this, by the way, it's really interesting. You'll
Speaker A
find that it tends to be the same period of time every single time. And so, the first thing is become aware of our patterns of existence. Once you become aware of your pattern of existence, you can go right, what is what is this
Speaker A
representing to me? And it tends to be representing some kind of belief you have about yourself or belief about the progress you're making those three weeks. Let's say you hit record numbers like I deserve a break. I deserve a
Speaker A
gift. I deserve to relax. So now what happens is you're imagine you're like reaching into a computer. It's like okay this file says break and rest. What's in that? Oh, it's a file about scrolling.
Speaker A
Oh, it's a file about playing FIFA. Oh, all of a sudden although you've got these three weeks of working hard because you're accessing files about hard work, etc. And your brain is telling you what to do.
Speaker A
Again, this is all automatic, by the way. Don't think about this. You think of rest emotionally and you believe something. You believe for example that going on social media is rest.
Speaker A
One of the studies I read which completely changes for me is that the only time you're actually resting is via sleep is during meditations or during a time where you are expressing and spending time with somebody who you
Speaker A
genuinely love. Everything else even reading a book not rest. Why? Because your brain is being stimulated. And so there's stimulations that relax us. We can use this for example just reducing cortile if you were to actually measure it. Yeah. Or it's stimulus that might
Speaker A
help us feel a certain thing but it's not relaxing at all. And so what I'm trying to tell you just to make it actionable for you specifically is you need to change your definition of rest.
Speaker A
You need to change what you define as a reward as well. You said sleep, meditation obviously is included in all stuff. Yeah.
Speaker A
um and spending time with someone that you genuinely love like having a call with your mom, right? Well, can it sometimes be stressful? Absolutely.
Speaker A
But at the end of the day, do you leave that call feeling better, right? Then you came in often times yes, often times no. But with scrolling, how do you feel afterwards?
Speaker A
You just feel like a you don't feel rewarded, do you? So this is the issue. It's like your brain is telling you the reward for my hard work is this thing scrolling, playing video games, whatever. But then what you feel
Speaker A
afterwards is not computing. It's like I don't feel rewarded. So what needs to happen is you need to change the definition of what a reward is.
Speaker A
And you'll find yourself slowly acting in accordance to your definition. Right? So I'll just change your definition.
Speaker A
That's that simple. And definitions of words hold emotional weight to them. Right? So I often times somebody like yeah but like I can't trick myself to read a book or I can't force myself to read a book. I don't actually enjoy
Speaker A
reading books. It's like, well, the reason you don't enjoy reading books is because you might believe that you can't read very well or that you won't learn something. You see what I'm saying? It's like emotionally you feel bored. You can
Speaker A
choose to have fun. Same way you can choose to be angry or happy about something. It's like imagine yourself reading a book [clears throat] and imagine yourself being happy. Do that for 3 weeks. Takes three weeks to change
Speaker A
a lot of these things. Do that for 3 weeks. All of a sudden, you'll be bored and you want to pick up a book. Again, I'm saying it's it becomes automatic. At the start, it's conscious. It's forced.
Speaker A
Then it becomes automatic. Makes sense. It's like like some I don't remember where I saw that, but it was like it takes like 21 days to form a habit.
Speaker A
Mhm. Like the three weeks that you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a the mental like the the pattern if you will like if you think of our brains as like roads. If you want a road that is well paved, the
Speaker A
brain is more likely to take that road. And so what you need to do is pave a road. And again, it takes 21 days for the brain to literally pave a road and therefore start taking that road. M
Speaker A
and that old road will start dusting over cuz it's not being taken. And once it's neglected, the same way all of us feel to walk in a forest, what are we going to do? We're going to take the
Speaker A
path that has clearly been trodden, the path that has slabs, we're not going to take the path that's like one footprint and we're like, all right, I'm not going down that route. The brain's the same.
Speaker A
It's like, which one am I currently always taking? Which one am I used to taking? Let me take that one.
Speaker A
So, as we rebuild it, it will just start automatically doing it. Start taking the one that's built up.
Speaker A
There's a lot of guys that I've seen, I don't know if this relates, but they can work like monk mode for like six months, and then they will take maybe a week or two off and literally do nothing and
Speaker A
kind of just sit down, not do anything, doom scroll, play the PlayStation, whatever. What would you say in regards to that model of working?
Speaker A
Rewarding yourself with uh with all this rubbish. Well, like I said, the reward itself is subjective. If we were to live life to the maximum productivity, which let's be honest, none of us are. I I don't either, by the way. It's not like
Speaker A
it's not like I'm just my reward is what 20 like I'm going to pray 10 minutes.
Speaker A
Like it's not anything like that. But the my point is that like if they if they are happy with it and there's no cognitive dissonance and they don't feel guilty at the end, that's fine.
Speaker A
You see what I mean? That's fine. If there's cognitive dissonance, it's their brain telling them, "Look, this isn't this is something we shouldn't be doing. ain't right.
Speaker A
And so if it's 6 months and then two weeks off, do you know what I mean? Like if it works for them, it works for them. For the one that's like at the end of it feeling a bit guilty and they're like, I
Speaker A
have to build momentum back up, then I'll be like, okay, same way in the gym, you take a de lo week where you might still go to the gym, you're just going to do a third of the way you did before.
Speaker A
Just that way you maintain going to the gym because that one week where you take the gym off, it might turn into two, then three, then four, then five very easily.
Speaker A
So, makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. There was uh there was something else I was going to ah there's a few like when we're talking about these things everything that comes to mind for me is uh like a dopamine reset
Speaker A
and I think that's a very big thing that's going on in the internet right now like dopamine maxing uh or maxing or face maxing or whatever it is you can't avoid it and there was uh face maxing maxing looks maxing looks
Speaker A
maxing what's that making yourself as handsome as possible you know the squid would f like [laughter] that's a Yeah, that's a thing.
Speaker A
That's a thing. Yeah, that's a thing. But what I was going to ask, there's uh [laughter] there's uh there's something going around now. I've seen it a few times. I don't know if you've tried it. I don't know what you think about it, but when
Speaker A
people go into deep work, what they will do firstly, they will set a 10-minute timer on their phone or a laptop or whatever, and they will look at a wall for 10 minutes, and then they will work for 2 hours. they will look at the wall
Speaker A
then for 10 minutes and then because they say it resets your dopamine. I haven't read the studies on it but I wanted to get your opinion on that as well because that's something that's going around a lot.
Speaker A
So the way I look at it is that you can have these tactics but at the end of the day what you're trying to do is force yourself to love something that you don't love.
Speaker A
So what I mean by that is if you if you're just using willpower and discipline then the thing that actually gives you the do it's just difficult to say gives you dopamine. know exactly how it works but the thing that like
Speaker A
is dopamineergic in its nature and you enjoy doing which is subjective right then you'll just do more of that and so you might have like Ze said like 6 months or 3 weeks or whatever of you working hard but if deep down you know
Speaker A
you enjoy something else more you'll go back to it the way I do work personally is I'd like to think I get my dopamine from work I don't have to stare at a wall I don't have to force myself to go
Speaker A
up to work I genuinely love what I do not because it's intrinsically lovable But because I've sat down, I've thought of thought to myself what do I want?
Speaker A
Then I I describe what is going to get me there in of course Allah I can plan to the best but like it might be different but I say for example I need to make content. Then I go right well
Speaker A
how can I make content fun? I don't think how can I make content similar to gaming whatever. How do I make content fun? I have to feel like it's fun. I have to emotionally feel like it's fun and then naturally my mind will make it
Speaker A
fun. Right? It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Mhm. And so that's why I did like a few months ago, I'd sit down, I'd list out all the activities that I was procrastinating or avoiding to do. I'd close my eyes, I'd
Speaker A
think of a memory of some kind where I felt like I was having fun. Like the best memory I have, for example, is my first Victory Royale on Fortnite. Like honestly, like I still remember it to this day. Like I I remember like my
Speaker A
friends we were shouting and we were like have like I sit there I have that memory so the emotion naturally comes back up and then I shift the memory to me sitting down in front of a camera.
Speaker A
The more detailed you can make it the more fun it will be. Everybody just quickly close your eyes right just very quickly.
Speaker A
Let's try this. Imagine Imagine one of your favorite meals. Whatever that is. Imagine one of your favorite. For me I'm just going to use for example pizza.
Speaker A
I can tell you every minute detail of this pizza, right? the cheese if it's bubbling whatever for you guys generally like you can probably tell the details [laughter] now I want you to still close your eyes right and I want you to imagine something that
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is disgusting to you disgusting to you it could be snails it could be oysters it it could literally just be pardon my language on a table right think of something that I was thinking [laughter] think of something that's disgusting
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why was I thinking the same thing I was thinking the same thing that's why I [laughter] said it as well I try to make myself sound got more class.
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So I want you to imagine that. Think about it. You can't give that much detail of it.
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You're not thinking. Do you see what I'm saying? Like you're not thinking of how it tastes. You're not thinking of all of that.
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Your mind is almost trying to like you can open your eyes now. Your mind is almost trying to minimize the details of it.
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That's what the mind does to things it hates. Right. The mind minimizes the details of things it hates and it maximizes details.
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I was imagining me not even looking at it. Like I wanted to get out of I don't want to look like for you to you guys are married. If you were to close your eyes and imagine your wife, you have so many details of
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it. Now, think of somebody you dislike. They're just one blur. They're just a face. You can't think of the details.
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And so, for work, I used to like I used to literally intrinsically see my camera, describe the lens and everything. By describing it in detail, my brain also enjoys it more.
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So, for me, I choose these little I I call them tricks, but they become automatic. They stop being tricks. Yeah.
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But that's why for me personally, it's like I could force myself to stare at a wall for 10 minutes and put a timer on me content and now I just love making content.
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Like it becomes automatic. Like me filming those two videos yesterday at the hotel. Yeah.
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Like I don't go I have to film videos today. I'm like I want to.
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Yeah. And the ideas just come naturally. So Okay. So for somebody who doesn't like making content, how like what would your strategy be for making them?
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All right, I'll use the example of content, but this goes for everything, by the way.
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This goes for anything. So the first things first is tell me why you don't like content. You don't have to tell me now, but I'm saying like list out the reasons why you don't like content.
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It could be that it feels fake. You have to be honest here, by the way. For me, a big reason I stopped liking content, it felt unauthentic.
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I was taking ages scripting the hooks. I was making with the intention of making money, not with helping people. And I just didn't do you know what I mean?
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Like I couldn't make myself do. So list out the reasons you don't like. List out all the things you hate in the process of making content. It could be setting up the camera. It could be all of this.
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Then there's going to be practical steps and then more mindset steps. Practical step. I hate setting up the camera.
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Cool. If you walk into my room, I forgot my tripod and my camera always up there.
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I even bought a clicker so I don't even have to get up to my camera generally.
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Like I don't like that process. So what am I going to do? I can systemize it right from a logical business sense, right? Same way I don't like making thumbnails. I hate making thumbnails.
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First thing I did was hire a thumbnail, right? Sometimes I don't use them, but like a thumbnail.
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Let me tell you one thing I hate. Um, finding relevant places to film or places that are comfortable to film.
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Okay, cool. Do you have one something that you hate about making content? I think it's it's kind of similar to what you said with you feel inauthentic.
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I think that's why I started doing the yap based content and I yeah basically that's like that's a good fix.
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And then you might have beliefs about yap yap based content not being valuable. So you might sometimes procrastinate to make or you might feel the necessity to not make yap based content because like but I'm not providing value here. It's not going to
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bring me leads whatever. And so then what you need to do is start believing and seeing ybased content making you loads of money, right? and like bringing you the leads that you want cuz often times it be like
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well why aren't you making more yap based content or why don't you just do yap based content when I as to one of my clients he's like but they're not valuable what you believe they're not valuable therefore when you're doing yap based
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content you're talking about things that aren't that valuable so I was like start believing they're valuable and then 3 weeks later again it's the three weeks like 3 weeks or so cuz he applied actually I told him make it take longer
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but 3 weeks he started enjoying them his yap based videos went from being like 5 minutes of and then at the end he'd be like I don't know if that was any good to half an hour videos where he was eloquent, he
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provided value. And then on YouTube, people were like, "Oh, this was amazing. I love this blah blah blah blah blah." Same on Instagram, he was posting on Instagram. Actually, I think it was Tik Tok. People were like, "This was
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amazing, dude. Like, this felt so raw. This felt so authentic." It's not raw and authentic because of the style of the video.
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It was the fact that he was like, "Actually, I can provide value by being raw. I can provide value by being by being authentic." Speaking of um for your one, by the way, very quickly, Zakari.
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Yeah. It's like, well, what do you believe? Why do you need a nice setup?
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Do you believe people will trust you more? Do you believe it provides value? Like, do you see what I'm saying?
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I feel as if, look, when you're I think maybe I've been uh brainwashed, indoctrinated by by the tech sales industry, right? Everything that you set up, especially when you're selling to really big corporations, you know, we're talking, you know, companies 30,000
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50,000 employees globally, everything is about presentation. the way things are set up, the copy, the way the app looks.
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So, I feel as if especially when I'm putting content out there, I need to be in a setting where one, I feel comfortable, and two, it looks professional because I am helping individuals who are looking to get into a professional setting.
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Yeah, they value that way. So, basically, you've got two things there. You got a psychological conquer truth, which is people, let's say, prefer to see somebody and they look professional.
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They well put together. For example, if we all wore blue se blue suits today, people without realizing would trust us more.
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They would, right? It's just that's it. It's a psychological fact, if you will. Then there's the other aspect which I want to challenge you on, which is that at the end of the day, people are looking to buy and trust you. People
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don't buy and trust people because of their presentation. Initially, yes, but over a long enough period of time, why do they buy and trust from them?
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Because you they they understand that you are probably one of the only solutions to that particular problem. So the words that come out your mouth can express that you are able to solve their problem. Basically indirectly that's what would be happening right. So at the
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end of the day that's all that matters the words you use now either you believe you need to compensate by having a professional background because you're looking for the validation of your clients because you don't trust the things you're saying
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or you don't have as much confidence as you'd like to have. But I promise you now if you had let's say the founder of Snapchat sat down in like just a horrible garage people would watch it.
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Mhm. because of what he has to say. Even if they didn't know he was the founder of Snapchat, let's say nobody knew who he was because he's quite a young guy. I didn't know who he was at the time.
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You just watch a video of his like, "Oh, damn. This guy, what this guy saying is true, right?" But again, you believe that it's very important. So, you're putting importance on it. By putting importance on it, you're taking away importance from
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something else, which could be double-edged in the sense that you're going actually maybe the things I have to say aren't as good as I'd want them to be, and so I've got to compensate with professionalism. Again, I'm saying
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this stuff and to a lot of people be like, "Why is this guy trying to make something out of nothing?" But like I said, it's oftentimes you're not aware of it.
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No, it's true because it's a it's a major major thing that prevents you from actually giving value. When someone sits in a room with me and I explain because I'd like to think I'm very very good at what I do. There's not many people out
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there that can do what I do as good as I do it. I really do have that self-belief.
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But again, there's just always something I think for everyone there. always like a bottleneck or a challenge that if they knew that they this thing was fixed or solved that they would just At what point do you get uncomfortable?
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This is why I would challenge you. Same with everybody here by the way. At what point do you get uncomfortable with who you make content for? Like for example, Aaron, do you believe you are worthy or worth those 95enters who are looking for
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that extra 5% to get to 100%. Or do you believe you're only made for those survival guys? Because the way you speak and con like for me for example, I used to say to myself, it's like what money
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makes me comfortable? I can I can feel comfortable talking to you mean by that I'll mention it's like I feel 20k 30k 50k then it's like 120k I'm like oh that's a lot of money that's not a lot of money it's just I'm
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uncomfortable with it so for you it's like at what point are the people the audience that's watching you are they too good for you at what point is the tech company too large for you at what point are they like should they
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be listening to somebody else other than Zakaria you see what I'm saying at what point do you start feeling that you might be like yeah do you know what small companies they'd listen to me I can provide them a ton of value, but
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then you get larger and larger and larger. And obviously, mah, you've worked with lovable and stuff, but maybe you're like, that was a one-off. What if Zoom reached out to you? Do you see what I mean? Like, if if Zoom was to watch
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your video, I've worked with companies like HubSpot. Yeah. Mah. So, it's like if it's for you, it's like, I'm comfortable with that.
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Yes. You need to put more emotion of comfort into that, if that makes sense. Or confidence into that.
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So, you normalize it. Normalize it. Normalize. If something's normal, again, the behavior comes naturally. Whereas if something's abnormal, then you try and force the behavior.
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And if you try and force something, you're more likely to one, not do it, and two, do it badly.
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That's so true. Okay, speaking of content, we've obviously got the marketing expert here, Allah.
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Um, what would you say is the best form of marketing? And again, you can answer this however you want to, whether it's B2C, B2B, apart from content. Okay, because we're going to get on to content, but apart from content, what
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would you say? I would say proof. Proof. Yeah. Because let me give you two kind of two different people. There's one guy that just talks about every single strategy of marketing that you can if you do this, it's going to work. Uh make
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this kind of setting of camera and all that. He can make 100 pieces of content just talking. Then you have the other guy that just makes two videos and says, "I've worked with this guy and this guy and this is what I made for him." Who
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you going to trust with more? I want to trust the guy who told me that he could get someone else like me the result.
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Exactly. And he him showed you. So that's kind of the best form of marketing right now, especially with AI because with AI you can get give amount a huge amount of information to people, right? So for me, why do I trust Hormosi
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is because he's I mean he's done a demonstration that he sold how many $100 million in books. So that's already proof that okay, he knows what he's talking about, right? So now it's more proof and showing that you know how to
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do it. So now there's other things on in terms of proof especially in the physical space, right? Uh you show a before and after for example when it comes to fitness. M okay this was my before and this is my
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after because we talked about you talked about before in the podcast with uh with you he talked about with you uh if you don't know if you don't have any clients how should you how do you show proof
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it's by you doing it demonstrating it so that's kind of that's what I believe right now it's proof so what you're saying is it doesn't matter if it's Facebook ads it doesn't matter if it's whatever it doesn't matter if it's like outreach etc proof
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is at the foundation of your marketing. Absolutely. So that's what you should invest into 100%. And then you asked me before um what which platform is the best? And I had this analogy. I have this analogy.
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If you go to Antarctica and you start selling swimming suits for summer, is someone going to buy?
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No. [laughter] Because it's cold. It's freezing and you want to sell that. No one's going to buy.
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Yeah. So you have to go to Spain, Barcelona where I'm from, and then sell that. and or Dubai because [laughter] oh my god Dubai because it's hot right so that's where you're going to see people so in terms
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of marketing is the same thing go where your customers are that's where you should position yourself so if it's Tik Tok then if you're going to sell some dancing stuff sell there if it's YouTube where you have people
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that your customers come see YouTube go YouTube he mentioned about LinkedIn you get most of your customers in LinkedIn why because you target professionals yeah he's targeting executives so that's where you should make content.
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So, you should always start first where where your customers are. Mhm. Basically, interesting. Interesting. And when it comes to content, like there's a lot of people out there that, and again, I'm personally against this, but I'm going to say the opinion.
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There's a lot of people out there that say, "I don't want to make content for my business." Do you think they are at a disadvantage and if so what should they do?
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Yeah. So it depends as well in what's your acquisition channel because if they say I don't want to make content any I'm talking any business now because the reason I say that I don't know of any business out there today that's
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doing really well that doesn't have some sort of content marketing channel. It's maybe because do you guys know of any? I might be wrong.
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There's some people I know a couple. Yeah. Of big companies that don't. companies like uh 100 million only via cold calling.
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Wow. Okay. Ah yes, we spoke about this. Yes. But if you realize if you see that they don't have a demand problem, right? So they're not looking to get more customers. That's why they say I don't want to make content. But if
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they're struggling to get more customers, of course you will have to be they will have to make content. Or another another thing maybe it's cold calling. It's something more something else that they don't another accus maybe they've maxed out maybe I mean cool
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coding I don't know I don't know if you're going to max out because you have a lot of uh we can get a lot of customers from there but uh it's not only content because you can have referrals word of mouth and all
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of that but content right now that's why we say it's king so if you don't want to make content that means you don't want to make money I agree no I genuinely I agree and Um I'm someone who was very very camera
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shy. I don't know about you Fedy. I don't know you about you if but I did not want to pick up a camera and and yeah it was very uncomfortable but it was what I had to do to share my
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knowledge out there. Another thing I can see is like there is you can reach millions of people and you don't have to think of myself. I don't want to make content, but how much of an impact I can I can
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make to the person that's watching me and that can be millions of people. So, it's just thinking not for yourself, but thinking something bigger than yourself. Basically, we're on a timer. So, I've got the last sales question I wanted to ask you.
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I believe sales to be the number one skill anybody can have. And as a Muslim who maybe thinks, I don't want to start a business. I don't want to do any of that.
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Would you recommend they do? What would you recommend they do? Cuz I think they should go into sales. What do you think in your experience?
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Without any shadow of a doubt, there's only one answer and that's sales. I am not of the opinion um that people should do what they love to make money.
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It it helps and it will take you very far, but it's not a necessity especially as our priorities as Muslims is not to make money. Money is a route to a burden and to obey Allah. So, if I've got to do
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things that I don't like, which sales initially I did not like, I'm going to do it. And why didn't I like it? It was uncomfortable speaking to strangers, trying to sell them things that they might not necessarily want, need, or
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have the budget for at that particular time. That was very, very uncomfortable. But what I started to realize is that it started to impact other areas of my life. Sales is in everything. And once I got into the industry, not only did I
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learn business acumen and skills that I would have never have learned in any other working in any other industry. I can't talk for other industries cuz I've not ne necessarily been there.
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But it I started to I started to essentially view the world in this way where I'm seeing the way other businesses are generating revenue and I'm like, "Okay, that's that process.
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Okay, that's that channel. Okay, that's this. That's that. That's how they do things." And I'm like, "Wow, just because I'm now being paid to sell a product for a big company." And the thing with tech sales specifically is
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that you are given some of the best sales training globally. These tech giants spend millions on their sales enablement to hire the best sales coaches to teach you consultative selling. Not I mean look you see a lot of sales online like B2C selling
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emotional selling and that has its place for certain things but when it comes to B2B it's a whole different ball game some deal cycles to go from first point of contact all the way to someone signing a deal and signing a contract
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we're talking six figure seven figure eight figure contracts we're talking sometimes years what conversations after conversation after proof after demo after exercise after PC's POVs lawyers uh uh procure procurement and so on and so forth. So you start to understand these things and
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you're being paid to do it as a young person. Wall I do not believe that there's anything better that you can get into.
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Mashallah. No, I definitely agree. Plus for personal development as well. I don't think there's a better thing than sales.
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Yeah. Yeah. Especially that you speak with speak with different people. 100%. And you see different pain points and rejection. Yeah. [clears throat] It it just teaches you to keep going as well. It's like one more sale. You know,
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I would not be the husband I am today if I hadn't been for sales. I'll say that over.
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Communication, understanding, labeling, just it's insane. So many things that I just lacked. Even something something as simple as like I'm quite I don't like using the word ADHD and like self diagnose myself. I'm kind of against that. But I'm very uh I I switch things
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and I cut people off. But I didn't realize how much I cut I used to cut people off until I got into sales.
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Um I probably just cut you off there. I [laughter] I was I was aware, but now I'm aware of it. Before I was completely unaware of it and I didn't know I was doing it. Skills like active listening,
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like you'd be surprised how just sitting in front of someone and just, you know, I'm going to teach you guys something real quick, right? Um if anyone's ever read the book Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. He talks about a
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technique called mirroring, right? So if someone is saying something like give me a problem or a challenge that maybe someone on a sales call might say something on a sales call might say and I'll I'll demonstrate it for you
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live. Okay. So you'll demonstrate it for me. A pain or a challenge? Um I'm struggling to generate clients at the moment.
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Sorry. Struggling. Yeah. To generate clients at the moment. You're struggling? Yeah. Expand. So we're currently trying to do this new outbound thing via LinkedIn and it hasn't really been working for us.
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hasn't been working for you. Yeah. So, it just hasn't been getting us the leads that we were hoping to get.
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Sorry. The the leads that you were hoping for. Yeah. We're currently trying to hit a new goal for Q1 and Yeah.
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We know how many leads we need, but we haven't been getting new goal. Yeah. New goal. Yeah. So, the board wants to I think you get the point, right? So, I want to get sales [laughter] call again.
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I want to do sales calls again. with with mirroring it's you can extract so much conversation in two ways. One by actually listening to what they're saying and not just responding which people do for the sake of responding but
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two actually taking that pain and just repeating it back to them with a confused tone to just get them to expand and to give you more information.
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This is the process of qualification. And in sales, there is nothing more important. Not your objection handling, not your tonality, not your communication skills. It is the ability to qualify an opportunity thoroughly.
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Why? Because your biggest value and asset that you have is your time. So if you cannot qualify opportunities correctly, you there's millions of frameworks out there, but if you don't build that intuition, that gut instinct to know if a quality an
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opportunity is worth spending time on, you will not only not do well in sales, but you will waste a lot of your own time.
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100%. And that applies to all of you guys as business owners. 100%. Amazing. Awesome. We're on the clock for watching. If you enjoyed it, check out these guys. Where can they find you? You can find me on new YouTube channel
Speaker A
Zakaria Tech Sales via the Silicon Sales Institute. You can find me on Instagram zakaria.insite.
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I'll be putting the links below anyway. Instagram Instagram. Yep. IG, LinkedIn, YouTube as well. My old account got taken down so [laughter] new account.
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Awesome. Take care of yourselves and shall speak to you
Topics:Islamic mindsetsix-figure incomecontent creationtestosterone optimizationhealth and performancesales qualificationmarketing strategiestime managementdisciplinemuslim entrepreneurs
