Ep763: Gabe Marusca – Pay Extreme Attention to Your Body

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win an investing, you must take risks, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And I want to thank you for joining this mission, especially those listeners in Portugal and Germany to interesting places. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Gabe Maruka. Gabe, are you ready to join the mission?

Gabe Marusca 00:47
Absolutely, there is no better way to learn than from the experience of others. Right.

Andrew Stotz 00:52
Exactly. That's the whole point. And it's so hard because we like to barrel through life, and make our mistakes on our own. But hey, there's a lot easier ways so I asked you to come on this show. And because I really love what you were doing on LinkedIn, and I had a prior guests. And he's, you know, comments on what you're doing. And he shared his thoughts on that and I respect him and, and then I just reached out to you and said please come on the show. And so I want to introduce you to the audience so gave known as the Nomad solopreneur is a location independent marketing strategist, who established digital finest as a solo printer. When he's not helping solopreneurs get more leads from their websites, you can find him swimming in the ocean, hiking through tropical forests are interviewing remote solopreneurs around their business model on the Nomad solopreneur show. In his spare time, he writes a weekly newsletter with the same name that follows his mission to help 10,000 Aspiring solopreneurs build location free one person businesses who doesn't want that game, take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Gabe Marusca 02:16
Or send your thank you so much for the lovely intro. Happy to be here. What an amazing opportunity to chat with you on these topics. And yeah, my unique pneus I think is the blend of sales, marketing and technical knowledge, which is quite unique. Because some people are technical, some people are good at sales. And I blend these skills together which I accumulate for the past 13 years. And I try to use them to help others did what I do. Build one person businesses that is completely location independent, I work all over the world. And for the past five years, I do it from tropical locations like Bali, Thailand, quarantine, Madeira, Portugal, of running the cold weather in my home country of Romania. So happy to be here and share all that learn with your audience.

Andrew Stotz 03:09
Well, I'm happy to have you with us. You know, I'm the type of guy that goes deep into creating a product. And I don't think about the reaching the market, I think about making a great product and people are going to come and it's going to be great, what a wrong way of doing things. And I spent many years doing them. And now I definitely understand that the product is only a small part of it. First, I need to reach an audience somehow, I need to attract people to my website, my landing page. And then if I don't have anybody coming to my landing page, I can play around all I want with changing the fonts and changing the things and the this and that. But if there's no traffic, then there's nothing happening there. But if I can get traffic to that landing page, next question is, does that landing page convert? Is it getting people closer to me and my products and services. And it's such a chain of activities that I didn't understand. And I still not great at I know a lot of my listeners out there struggle with the same thing. In fact, I just interviewed someone that says, Well, I just outsourced it. And they outsource marketing and social media posts and all that. And then they realized it was just a big waste of money, because it didn't have his voice in it. And it didn't really increase his revenue. And I just want you to explain to people what you do and how you look at kind of the flow of generating revenue that a solopreneur or a business owner needs to generate.

Gabe Marusca 04:50
Have you heard that and as you very well said, it's all starts with an audience. You have to build an audience first you have to listen to that audience. and doesn't mean, you need to have like a ton of followers on social media or 1000s, in your email newsletter, even if you have like 2030, close by people that you talk to every single day and ask questions, and you listen carefully, you will notice some patterns. And when something is repeating, day in and day out, you realize that there is a common problem that you can solve. And if you have expertise in that, or if you can, doesn't have to, you can come up with a solution, unique solution to that unique problem that you noticed all that audience, and you build a product around that. And that can be something as simple as a digital product, or an online course, or a cohort, or doesn't really matter, but must solve a problem, and can be one small one or a big one. And in general is just helping someone go from A to B. Because being in the marketing space, I noticed a lot of people trying to be a jack of all trades and provide all the solutions possible from paid ads to search engine optimization to landing page optimizations, and so on. But if you can solve one particular problem, for example, myself, I saw one big problem helping landing pages convert that traffic that you bring to your landing page, which can be a sales page, lead, magnet, whatever, turn that into your new goal. And that can be subscribers, sales, leads, and so on, and solving this unique problem. It's so underrated because people, as Andrew said, spend a lot of time and money bringing traffic to something that doesn't do anything. And putting a nice landing page, they're bringing all those investing all those money to ads, and at the end of the day doesn't convert you spent, you throw the money out of the human that you make probably the worst investment ever. And that's why it's so important to optimize those. And that's what I tried to do every single day. So you

Andrew Stotz 07:10
talked about the idea of solving a problem. And that's something I think I didn't really get when I first started out that, you know, I solved a problem that I had, but I don't think I didn't validate that that problem was a problem that other people had, or, and then I never made it clear. But I do have one product that I started about a year ago. And it's a service and I want to tell it to you and then maybe get some advice live on air critique of what I'm thinking. So the name of the product is called profit boot camp. And the tagline that I came up with that I believe is good one, but I think maybe I'll find out it's not but that is I help midsize family businesses double their profits in 12 months.

Gabe Marusca 08:05
Versus I love it. Like I think you tap into the target audience, midsize family businesses. And you also transmit the transformation that you get them, which is doubling their profit. So I think you nailed that down very, very well, like way better than most landing page headlines, I see how they're so way down with that. Okay,

Andrew Stotz 08:28
that I'm glad to hear that. And it took a long time for me to get to that point. And a lot of lessons learn. Now, the delivery of this service is a true master class, that I work with the families basically, and I'm at their businesses in particular, I'm focused on families in Asia, and specifically in Thailand, they've got to be mid size, because they can't afford you know, if it's a startup, it's just not it's not worth it. And I don't want to help a one man show I have a management team. And the owners and I only work with owners. And when people sign up, they sign the profit manifesto. That is the agreement amongst all that the number one goal in this business is to double profits in the next 12 months. So that we stay on track. And then I have a whole curriculum that I walked them through. And then I basically helped them with the financial aspect, but more importantly, making the tough decisions. So as far as delivering that service, my customers, my clients are very happy. And they're seeing it coming to life. We're unlocking the profits in their business. So I'm not too worried about that. And it brings together all my passions and all my skills and experience having my own business, my own factory in Thailand that I've had for 30 years. I know everything that they're facing and being a financial analyst for 20 years. I know how to analyze their business and help them so as I often say when the Finance debate stops, I'm going to tell you exactly what the problem is relative to global peers, and then we're going to get to work on it. So I've got the product or the service down. And I've got the name. And you know, the tagline of kind of helping people quickly understand what we're talking about. But, but without a good landing page, and without traffic, all of my good intentions are just out the window. And so I want also, the reason why I'm explaining this is because I know that my listeners are in the same situation. They're smart, hardworking people, they've created great services and products and stuff. But they're missing the fact that they really need to figure out how they're going to connect that to the market. So maybe you can just explain, you know a little bit more about what you do so that everybody understands, you know, it's pretty clear, you know, you don't help people make great courses, right. And you also didn't make it sound like you're, you're the guy that's going to deliver millions of people in traffic and audience. So tell us how you would work with this person like myself?

Gabe Marusca 11:14
Sure, we'd love to share that. And I think one thing that most people miss, and in your case, you as well probably have this asset in your arsenal in order to drive traffic, I don't know. But from what you're saying, there, you need something special, which is a welcome into my ecosystem, or welcome into my world type of offer, that can be either a free one, or a low ticket one that solve a small problem from the big problem that you solve with your program. So in that case, this can be an extremely valuable resource that gives them and also prepare them to work with you, because you might not want to have everyone in that program. So you prepared that resource, you give it away for free, or for a very low ticket price. And sometimes that work way better to be a paid product, but super cheap, like probably 20 $30 or something like that. It was people see more value in paid sub that in free stuff. And with that product, of course, you capture their email addresses, and your their information, if they are generous enough, even some details about their businesses, so you can learn more about their struggles, learn more about the type of businesses they're in, and so on. And all that you can create a it's called a squeeze page in which you capture that information doesn't have to be a long landing page, it's just, here's the rest source. This is the help the solution, sorry, the problem that I solve with it. And you're gonna solve that problem if you consume the stressors, and has to be something they can go through in less than one hour. Because no one wants to stick there for weeks, going through like a 15 hour online course of something to solve something. And with that you showcase your expertise, you show the value that you can bring, and you solve part of the problem. But here's the trick, that problem that is solved with that resource needs to cause a bigger problem that your main product it's solving is not like a tricky situation in which you, I don't know you scan them, it's because you actually help them so reveals

Andrew Stotz 13:31
it reveals the neck problem, the next one Exactly.

Gabe Marusca 13:35
And that's how you attract traffic to your main offer. And that can be done. There are basically two main ways content that can be search, organic search content, for example, blog articles, and so on. But most importantly, social media traffic, like posting constantly on platforms like LinkedIn, or others where your audience are spending their time. And this is important factor to know exactly where they are spending their time might be, for example, in your case, listening to radio in talent, you never know and putting their an ad inside the like old school radio or inside the newspaper or inside of social media, on a social media platform, and drive traffic to that solution that you provide. Because otherwise, if you drive traffic directly to your paid product, especially for those that don't know you yet, they are not ready to buy. So you're targeting direct or the bottom of the funnel as we call it in marketing, instead of bringing awareness. Oh, I have a problem and I need to solve it. Then you bring that awareness towards the solution here is to solve the small problem. And with that, by capturing their emails, you can nurture that audience and send them more valuable emails with a Call to Action basically, the next step they have to make in order to enter your world and actually purchase the high ticket offer that you sell them. And that's the easiest way to translate that in, of course, a short amount of time. But of course, are more details to either.

Andrew Stotz 15:19
So to summarize, you've talked about like a welcome into my world offer, which is free or low ticket price that solves a problem. And that by solving that problem, you reveal the next step in the process of solving the bigger problem. In my clients case, it's that they're not making enough profit. They're making revenue, they're growing their business to mid sized businesses, but they need more profit. You talked about content, social media, you talked about the fact that this should be able to be consumed in less than one hour. So let me maybe I'll throw out some things that I've done, and then give me some feedback. And for the listeners out there, this is, you know, part of the goal that I saw you doing on LinkedIn is, you know, demonstrating what you do. And I think that that's a lesson in itself, that you're demonstrating, and that's attractive that people want to work with you when you demonstrate. So in my case, my prophet bootcamp has five steps. The first step is to get the strategy of your business, right. There's no point working hard if the strategy is not right. What client are you going to serve? What products you know, do you really stand out? What are you going to get out of that's just wasting your time. And so one of the things I've done is, I've said, Look, you can start by just taking the first step, and pay me specifically for that. And let's work together. And if you like it, then we continue on. And that first step is a lot lower price than the overall thing. But it's also, as I've done it, now, it's about three hours, one on one with me and the owners and the management, and then two times, and then they've got assignments in between, to go through it all. It's enough to get to know each other, and also to kind of solve some problem. But it's also enough to realize, Wow, we need this kind of support. But when I listened to what you said, I thought maybe that's a little too heavy to start off with, particularly when I'm thinking about social media and content out there. What are your thoughts on that?

Gabe Marusca 17:40
Yeah, it might be because there's quite a bit of commitment, especially if you give them a sign on between session and the first interaction with you. And if you notice, did you notice a pattern between all this conversation that might be this the lack of strategy, it's a way to back not, of course, helping them come up with that strategy. But a way to pack some valuable information for them to understand how to make the first step in order to start building a strategy for their business. If that if you can pack that in, even if it's like a short ebook or a short video, presentation, like doesn't have to be like one hour, as I mentioned, in this case, but maybe like half an hour, they can consume fast and enrich to give them as well maybe a short checklist they can go through in order to make sure that they went through all the small steps they have to make in order to actually have the resources necessary, when they jump into a call with you to actually build that strategy. That might be an idea. Other if you can recall, again, some common problems they have like literally something that every single person go through, which is easy to solve, because in the strategy, building a strategy is quite a complex thing. But if it's if you find something much more, even if it's at a later stage in their business, probably or even before they maybe they struggle to understand how much money they need in order to start a business or something like that around the financial assets. Or how to create a paperworks for starting a business in Thailand, and all those things that you already do and solve for others. So something between those lines, like something easy to solve, that doesn't take a lot of time from both you and them. But it's a welcome into my world type of thing that as I mentioned, you can nurture over time and showcase others that went through the process and because that's also really important, something I even mentioned, not sure only valuable and I How to content but share success stories, share those stories that people use your service, or use your expertise and transform their businesses to double their profit and so on. Because that's much more easier to turn them into actual paying customers, or simply getting their email because nowadays, people don't give their email so easily. So you need to give them reasons for that even for a free product. You need testimonials.

Andrew Stotz 20:26
Yeah, and so I saw one of your posts where you highlighted, you know, what you did with a particular client. And you know what the result was. So that's a great demonstration right there of the idea of showing that it's successful. One, I had two ideas. One is to do a checklist. Another one is to do an audit, like score your company's financial position relative to global peers. And it's 10. Questions. And, and depending on how you answer that, it tells me and you, where you rate, for instance, do you get your financial statements? Are they on time and accurate by the 15th? Of every single month? Do you have a team meeting with your management team to review them? You know, do you have a six month forecast to go through, you know, what your plans are? Whatever, you know, a financial forecast. So there's, let's say, 10. And then you'll get a score, you know, 10 points means you don't need me, you're in great shape. And one point means, oh, there's a lot of things you got to fix. And it's those things listed right there. So that's one idea. What do you think about that type of free thing where they're scoring themselves?

Gabe Marusca 21:50
funny that you mention that, because it's part of my strategy. Or for January, yes. And there is a grilling, I'm not sure if you use the same tool, there's a good app out there score app, which based on the results, people get through those questions give you a score. And it's also very dynamic. So depending on the score, you get a specific message for that score. And based on that, you can have like a call to action for them to take the next step. Or, of course, you get the emails, and you nurture that over time. So that's a really good idea. And it's a really modern way to help someone understand the position, make them aware of the problem. And as well, providing some value next steps, and can give them away after they complete that. Like those questions, to provide something for free, like, here's a gift, here's an especially if you can do so depending on their result. For example, if they did poor, in that result, here are some resources that will help you achieve that. And especially if you will mention that, that is perceived as a huge value for they're like, Oh, I just they just helped me realize I have a problem. But they're actually providing some resources to help me solve the problem. And it's much more easier from that point, to actually for them to take out their their card and pay for a service. And it's a natural part of my strategy in 2024. And works great for others, I already validated the idea with others and you can use it the same way for a small paid product, like providing a small, let's say, ebook, in which you charges, let's say $5 or something. And parts of that question questionnaire. And, yeah, like you, you should do things in the same time, because once a person that already paid for something, they are much more willing to pay for something else. Yeah. And like you basically attract into a transactional type of interaction from the beginning. But of course, this works very well for free things as well and brilliant idea. So I love that. Can't wait to hear how it goes. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 24:19
The other thing that I do is since I teach at university, I teach executives through kind of, you know, executive training and different I partner with some other organizations that get business owners into a room. And then what I do is I spend between, let's say, maybe six to 12 hours. So a series of courses a series of an in that basically what I say as I'm going to teach you everything that I do in the profit boot camp. I'm going to give you the material the whole thing that you're going to get So you can go fix your business, I can't fix every business out there, I have a capacity limit. But it would be my dream to help you double your profits in the next 12 months. And because my service is a combination of a lot of things, it's not just, you know, something simple. There's a lot of thinking that goes into it, a lot of talk together with the team and all that. I know that I'm not so worried about someone like taking my material or some ticket. Because as I explained to some young people that asked me about why do you reveal, you know, what your secrets are some of the and I said, look, the bookstores are full of books about how to lose weight. So are people skinny? They're not, because it will, implementation is the hardest part. It's the hardest part for me to, you know, for anything. And so that's another way that I've been reaching. But what I just think about after listening to you is that maybe, first I do that audit, and then I provide specific feedback, look, you know, number four, and number seven is where you're weak. And here's some ideas about how you could fix that. And then I could follow up with another email where I say, I'm going to tell you in five minutes, the steps of the profit boot camp. And in that five minutes, I'm going to explain each of the steps that we would go through, if you were working with me, so that you can take that general outline, and then try to bring it back to your business. And then maybe I follow that up with another one where I'm gonna give you the ebook that outlines it in a lot more detail or something like that. What are your thoughts on that?

Gabe Marusca 26:39
Great idea. And what else to extra, I'll basically because some of them might not be ready to buy. But since you already provide value, and since they already understand how the bootcamp looks like and such, to continue sending them emails over time, like at least maybe twice a month, or once a week, depending on in general how the process of getting one person to buy from you works like because it looks like yours for some of them might take, let's say one year until they are ready. And in my case is the same like I cannot help those that are at the beginning that they don't have money to invest, and so on. Of course I do with free resources like you do. But those that have the three resources, they will get on a profit, and then they will be ready to purchase my services. And that way, if you continue to send them valuable things over time, and doesn't have to be every single email a transactional one at the end, like having a call to action. But you can add something like whenever you're ready, I'm here to help you with these things, or something like permission marketing, like asking for permission to sell them something or to help them. And that can be mentioned, like smaller at the end of the email. But if each single email provide value over time, that will add on and people will at some point convert that the most important thing to remember that a lot of those that you attracted to the world, maybe they're just trying to find a solution, but they don't have money to invest. And depending on the value, sorry, depending on the price of your bootcamp and your one on one help and such. It will depend the conversion rate and so on. But that is a good idea to start like pushing emails after you provide some value already. Helping them further. Make them understand what the bootcamp is all about. And another way is to actually help for example, let's say you have 10 points, if I remember correctly, you mention in the 10 questions, and for each of those to be a separate email to helping them solve the question that they did worse that and at the end mentioning, look, I have this bootcamp that will help you go forth and so on. But dripping that information over a sequence of emails will not give everything in arts like in a single email plus is overwhelming if you give a lot of information at once. And that way, you can help them Oh, I get the new thing and let them know like next day you will get because you can segments this like schedule this in order next day or next week you will get this information. But specifically for this part of scenario you might want the first emails especially those that are related to the questions to drip them one day after another and usually at the same hour they took the interview the questioner because that way you might understand that oh, that our they're active online and they will actually read my emails. So that's one way to do it.

Andrew Stotz 29:59
Yeah. That sounds great. I mean, the other thing I was thinking about too in the email, because I'm not, it's not a mass market product, you know, let's say there's 1000 family, midsize family businesses that are probably interested in something like this is across Asia. Another idea I thought about was trying to share wins, and share, you know, like, almost like a community to say, you know, share the wins every Friday night, we meet for an hour. And I invite people to come and share how you know what wins that they're doing, or, Hey, if you got to win. The other thing that's important is to understand the day that we first met. Because that's the day that you're going to start thinking about doubling your profit. And what we're three months away from that day, now, where are you at. And that's part of the time pressure and that type of thing that I try to work with my clients like, let's go, let's go. So it, you just got so many different things going in my head. And I just wanted to go through that. Because I also feel like, it's a good demonstration of your skills in that area. And that the listeners out there, if you've got products or services, where's the best place for them to go to learn more about you.

Gabe Marusca 31:24
There are two places that you can reach out either to me or LinkedIn, or to Gabe Marasca, or search for Dinobots solopreneur annual find me all over Google and on my business websites, which is called Digital finest.com. And you can reach me there both of these location and active. And you can also see my services and such.

Andrew Stotz 31:47
Great. And I'll have links to all that in the show notes. So that anybody can just go to the show notes, click the link, listen to the podcast, get the you know, the website and all that stuff. It's really I appreciate you taking the time to go through that. And that's a big thing of absolute pleasure. Why, why I really wanted to have you on because you saw the problem that I have. And I think you and I are going to talk a lot more about how you can help me solve that problem in the future. But now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to and then tell us your story.

Gabe Marusca 32:27
We'd love to share that. And hopefully some of your listeners can learn from my mistakes. Because my worst investment ever isn't about crypto or real estate or other financial assets. It's about the most valuable and limited currency that you have, which is time. And that's because for almost a year, I slept around four hours a day and those 20 hours, workdays helped me make enough money to quit my full time job. But made me do something way more important. And that's helped. And helped me to get back in time that was 2010. And it was a summer, hot summer. And I was sitting at this job that ahead with one of my legs in a pocket of rips, you know, in a bucket with ice because I had a small football accident and I couldn't take a day off to, like recover myself. And I was like what I'm doing here I am an executive position. I make only $200 per month when my rent was 150. I'm not going anywhere I need to do something. And what I did, I asked for help. I talked with some friends, I start learning new skills, I already have a base, like I have a degree in physics and computer science. So I knew a lot of programming and stuff. But start learning other skills like marketing, web design, and so on. And those helped me start a side hustle. But there was a problem. I didn't have patience. So I didn't see it as a long term goal. That's why I literally wake up every single day at 3am in the morning, I work on my side hustle until 6/7 commute to my full time job, stay there for eight hours, go back home, study for one hour and start working again on my business and all that by eating on my laptop not having a social life not exercising, not doing what our body needs. And I didn't listen to my body because my body start sending signals like I feel less and less energetic. I was like young I was like I have all the energy and the hold all the healthy normal. I can sustain this for a long time, but wasn't the case. And after one year, I was able to quit my job, but as well the old those working nights and so on Are two crippling, and I start to feel worse and worse until I develop a chronic illness. And all that was a huge warning sign for me that I need to do things differently. So that's when I started to pay attention to what my body's telling me and do things in a way that is sustainable over time, and helped me achieve something much more than financial freedom or location, freedom and so on, which is a healthy body. And yeah, ever since I tried to learn from those mistakes, and there were quite a lot of them. One, I keep on thinking to myself, why I have to spend all those nights instead of having a long term vision, having patience, I was young, no one rushed me to make, I don't know, Fortune overnight and get off that job. Because at the end of the day, I was able after that, to get money from my side, hustle and all that those financial was enough for me to sustain my living back then. And that was the biggest mistake like spending all those nights instead of working on normal hours, not having a social life, not exercising, and so on. And the second one was to literally paying extremely attention to my body, like because nowadays, if we have a headache, if we have a stomach pain, if we have, I don't know, a bit, we are a bit dizzy, or if we feel exhausted in the morning or after, let's say two hours of work, we return that we think that is normal, because that's what societies are, it's normal to have a headache, it's normal to be stressed, it's normal to be that and that. But that's not actually true. Like that's a sign that something is off. And before arriving at the point that I arrive at, or others arrive at, in which you will literally destroy your health, you need to pay attention to those and find the reason behind them. And when you do so you realize, oh, I eat maybe something that cause that headache, or cause that lack of energy and so on. And of course, sometimes it's that like we eat too much sugar, we eat too much gluten, or other things that affect our body and make our fists worse, after we eat instead of feeling energized. And when I put all those into practice, literally everything change. And that's, those are probably the biggest lesson I get from that. And my worst investment, like putting the wrong amount of time in the things that doesn't matter. Like in that moment, like thinking long term, it's much more sustainable than thinking I want to be now I need to make money now I need to do that. And that. That most of the time doesn't work. It worked for me for time being but again, the price of health, which is never a good trade.

Andrew Stotz 37:55
Let me summarize some things I take away from that. You know, I think the first thing is sleep. I think many young people think that the way to be productive is to sleep less. And as I always say to people that asked me how productive you know, as I am, I always say that never take from sleep to try to be creased, productivity, it doesn't work. And so I never use an alarm clock. And I always fall asleep, you know, whenever I'm tired at night. But there's a second thing that I learned from I think it's Jeffrey Walker's book is a Jeffrey. That's called Why We sleep. And in that book, I learned about the importance of the time from 10pm to 2am. So you may sleep eight hours. And let's say you go to bed at 3am and you sleep eight hours, or you go to bed at 9am and you sleep eight hours, you're gonna feel more rested in the going to bed at 9am because of all the testosterones and all of the cortisol and all of the different hormones are going wild between 10 and 2am. And that's the time that your body's really you know, recalibrating itself. And if you miss that time, it's just harder for your body so that the first thing is sleep is critical. And never try to take from sleep to be productive. The second thing is eating good food in I have always eaten really good food like meat and vegetables and little bit of you know, carbohydrates but not not over the done and then the third thing is I pretty much only drink water. I don't drink any alcohol. So I never have a hangover. I don't take any drugs. So I don't have you know I'm not drugged. But what I do is instead of having any kind of I worked for Pepsi in Los Angeles when I was younger and I saw how it's made and when I moved to Thailand 31 years ago, I said, I'm never going to drink sugary drinks again. So that's a third thing. And then the fourth thing for me is, when I get out of bed every morning, I go to exercise and I have a park nearby, I just get up and walk, or I do yoga on a mat. And you know, I wasn't keen on doing it. But I followed atomic habits, and it taught me basically just lay out your mat every morning and sit on it, don't even have to do anything. And I did that for a couple like a month, until I'm like, Well, okay, I'm sitting on this mat, I might as well start doing yoga. So those are some of my takeaways that I thought about, as you were talking, is there anything you would add to that?

Gabe Marusca 40:42
It was a very valid one and actually do them all. Like, I still drink alcohol as well, I drink only water. And it's like, it's a substitute for coffee. And as well, like, I stopped drinking coffee thing five years ago. And with just a glass of water in the morning, first time that after I wake up, it does wonders, like it's fresh and everything and I do yoga in the morning for 10 minutes. And even that I cannot do it like for one hour. So but those 10 minutes to put the call it the blood moving, it's unbelievable and more other type of exercises in the afternoon. But speaking of that, one thing that I do as well is start, like literally taking a piece of paper and a pen, and writing my thoughts down before going to sleep. And that way helps me like sleep better, because I don't think all of the things that I had to do next day or something. And as well like putting dots on paper is such a good way to not stand on a computer, like watch your screen before bed. And I tried to avoid that like one hour before going to sleep like both sorts of screens with the exception of a Kindle, which is not having doesn't have the blue light and such. But doing so helped me sleep way better. And like you said, Andrew, like sleeping other eight hours. So important. I did both like I didn't sleep at night, and I start sleeping around 10pm. And that does wonders. Of course, if you are young, and you're thinking like oh, but I'm gonna miss all the parties, all the meetups and so on. You may even so you can meet up your friends and your peers at the earlier hours. But your body and your life you will thank you for that. Because if you're not 100% your business or a person life won't be either and better take care of yourself and all the others will get on it. And those friends that respect you will still hang out with you will still spent on YouTube. But yeah, if you have drinking buddies that you want to go at 10pm, it's your choice. At the end of the day, you either make a choice or you don't, it's still a choice. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 42:52
you'll pay. I also have a notebook I keep with me just like you and I'm constantly writing in it. And it's such a relief to get away from the computer and stuff. And every morning, every Sunday morning, I take my mother out for brunch. And before I order breakfast, I plan my week. So I'm um, I'm stalking something that I can't say that I enjoy it that much. I enjoy eating breakfast more. But you know, I like to do it then. The other thing I do is fasting, I do water fast. So I do prolonged water fast. I just did one for seven days only water. And you don't want to do that unless you're under you know, doctor's supervision and you learn about it. But I've been doing it for many years. And it's a way of resetting immunity and it has some other benefits. So whether it's a long, fast or just limiting the eating hours. I think that's also another thing. So let me ask you based on what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn, like we've talked about a lot of different things, but I want you to bring it down to one action. Think about a young man or woman out there right now. They're asking themselves What am I doing? What is one action that you'd recommend that they take to avoid suffering the same fate

Gabe Marusca 44:15
that's quite simple. I will stay every single time when you plan Spirit speaking of planning, when you plan your calendar when you plan your next week or next day. Start with actions that helps you like put that workout put that I don't know eating with your loved ones put that activity that fill you with energy with joy first in your calendar, then start adding the other test block those time for the important you because all the other will start to add on because we often start with oh I have this business task to do I have that thing to do. And you end up nowhere because you end up with your calendar fool you don't have time for yourself you become first straited and at the end of the day, you will feel unfulfilled, and everyone will suffer starting with you, then your business and so on. But if you start with you, what is the miracle happen? I'd start that every single day. And my business is fulfilling. I feel energized all day. Of course, there are some exceptions, of course, because I'm not a robot. But if I start the planning with me, everything change and try it for yourself and see the miracle happens.

Andrew Stotz 45:25
That's great. It's what often is called a gateway habit, that gateway to a great day, when you do a habit like okay, go to the park and take a walk, run, spend 30 minutes or 20 minutes with a loved one or whatever. So that's great, great advice. All right, what is a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Gabe Marusca 45:48
A book that literally changed my life. And speaking of listening to your body, it's called when the body says no by Dr. Gabor Matta. It's a Canadian physician, and he spent all his life studying chronic illness and so on and finding the root causes. And more often than not, it's caused by hidden stress. And our body's telling us that listen, you need to take a break, listen, you need to, like, stop doing what you're doing bad habits, bad eating, whatever. And yeah, it's a must read for anyone. I highly recommend it already to a lot of people, my family and so on. And it literally changed the way they act and the way they take care of themselves.

Andrew Stotz 46:31
Great advice. So it's called when the body says no, by Gabor Ma Tei. And Jennifer, oh, Jennifer Gambino is narrating the audiobook, I can see. And that's ranked 4.7 out of five on Amazon with 2400 ratings, which is pretty fantastic. And of course, if you really like what he says you can also listen to his son, Aaron Mati, who is an amazing guy with a lot of brilliant insight. In his work, I follow him on Twitter. So great, great resource. So let me ask you last question. What's your number one goal for the next 12 months I think about I admire, you know, what you do and where you know the value that you bring? It's something that I don't I'm not good at and I'm learning. But I think about you know what you're doing and stuff. I'm curious what is your goal for the next 12 months?

Gabe Marusca 47:35
Quite a big one, I will say I want to reach 10,000, aspiring solopreneurs through the Nomad solopreneurs show and newsletter, and help them build that one person business without feeling overwhelmed and unfulfilled because it's totally possible to build one person business without having like big offices, or full time employees and so on. And without working 40 hours, weeks. And that's my goal for the next year to reach those 10,000 and help them succeed. Well,

Andrew Stotz 48:07
you've read some of them here on this show, and we appreciate that. And also, I just want to mention to the listeners, again, all the links to this, to your resources will be in the show notes as well as I've just also included the link to the book that you've mentioned about the body. So listeners, there you have it another story of laws to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, Gabe, I want to thank you again for joining our mission and on behalf of a Stotz Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Gabe Marusca 48:51
Thank you so much, Andrew, for having me. And yes, I have a burning word like tell me how you spend your time and I'll tell you how successful you are. What Aveda

Andrew Stotz 49:02
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, that is a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth fellow risk takers let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.