Dennis Yu’s Real Superpower? Spotting Winners Before They Win

Dennis Yu’s Real Superpower? Spotting Winners Before They Win. Why talent + math = exponential growth

Dennis Yu doesn’t guess who’s going to succeed—he measures it.

In this episode, Dennis breaks down the exact process he uses to spot winners early and scale them fast using math, patterns, and his famous Dollar-a-Day strategy. From a college intern to multi-million dollar entrepreneurs, Dennis reveals how he identifies high-potential talent before the world catches on and what happens when you amplify what’s already working.

🎯 You’ll learn:

• Why picking winners is more science than gut feeling

• How to use data to amplify strengths (instead of fixing weaknesses)

• What most people get wrong about success signals

• How to turn small content into scalable results

If you've ever wondered what separates the breakout entrepreneurs from the ones stuck spinning wheels, this is it.

🎙️ Hosted by Brian Ouellette on The AskMyAdvisor® Show: Inner Circle Secrets of the Elite Trusted Advisor

 

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hey, Brian. Happy to share this secret. My secret is
I've discovered a way to pick winners in
life. Let me explain. So when I was a child,
I'm an Asian. I'm good at math, and I competed in math contests, and
I found that I could travel the world and win. I was fifth in the
nation in math counts. I had a perfect math for the

(00:23):
SAT. But let me tell you that I found
it works in all aspects of life. I'll give you an
example. Like, my friend, Anthony Hillb, he's a landscaper,
and he grew his business to $5,000,000. And then he started
applying what I teach with Dollar a Day, which is just digital marketing, which
is feed the things that are working best. So for

(00:45):
example, pictures and videos of him and his
crew cutting down trees and mowing lawns and doing estimates and buying
equipment and handing out paychecks on Friday. Like,
literally put that out there, put it out there on Google, on
YouTube, on Instagram, ran ads against it, against the best performing posts,
right, which is math. Find the ones that do the best and keep putting more

(01:07):
money against it. And last year, he told me he grew his
business $1,200,000, which he
gives the credit to me, but I give the credit all to him because he
already had in his business the winning
assets. He already was taking good care of his crews, taking
good care of his customers. It reflected in the reviews, but it wasn't

(01:29):
reflected on Google and social media and whatnot.
Or I can look at my friend, Jeff Hughes. He's an attorney, and he has
one of the largest family law firms in The United States.
But if we look at his business and we deconstruct how
he picks his lawyers, how he operates his intake, how they
answer the phone, how they are able to handle divorce and

(01:51):
custody cases and things that a family law firm does. He
has that documented and in a
scalable sort of way that we could apply our dollar a day technique, and
thus, he's growing his business in that way.
And now his son runs an agency, Liam Hughes,
that helps law firms be just like Sterling Law. So

(02:14):
that's another way of multiplying something that's already
working. Or my buddy Caleb Williams, I think he started with me when he
was maybe 20. We have some that are 14 or
15 and whatnot. He was a nobody, but I knew that he had
talent. And when you can I don't know? Maybe it's like me
as this Asian math guy where I spot talent because I'm looking for

(02:35):
certain things. Like I'm looking for a repeatable
pattern. I'm looking for the some kind
of excellent, some some way of thinking that is
not just unique, but it's repeatable in a way that it creates
value that the algorithm, Facebook, YouTube can see, and
we can run ads against and drive more of that thing. That's basically what digital

(02:58):
marketing is. That's what SEO is. And Caleb
published a best selling book, which then gave him
other financial advisors that followed him, made him an expert in
life insurance of all things, like how hard is it to sell life insurance. And
he became the top figure in NEFA, which is the
whole association, the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, to

(03:21):
where if you Google him, you will see that he is one of
the top guys in the industry starting as a nobody. And
it wasn't because of me. He'll give all the credit to me. If you Google
his name and my name, you'll hear me on his podcast and him giving me
credit, and he's so nice about all that. But that secret
power is I saw in him

(03:41):
early before other people saw him
that he had that knowledge,
he had the charisma, he had the work ethic and
character, he had the initial accomplishments that I
knew that if we ran dollar a day against it, which is the thing that
I'm known for, that that would just multiply. So

(04:04):
my whole thing, Brian, is I feel like I have this box,
which wasn't even made by me. It was made by Google and Facebook and
whatever. And whatever I put in the box, I can get 10 times
more out of that. So I'm trying to find hundred dollar bills
to put in this box instead of putting in nickels and quarters and pennies.
Right? And so me as a math guy, I would have never

(04:26):
thought that all those years of doing math would
lend itself towards doing this Internet, social
media, content creator influencer thing where
you find someone you know that who's that guy who does the singing
shows? The Simon Cowell. Right? And he's known for
being sort of a jerk, but he also identifies talent. I feel

(04:48):
like my superpower is kind of like
that, but where instead of, like, saying, oh, this person's
gonna be a great singer because I can spot talent. That that's not what I'm
saying. I'm saying because of measurable components, because
of how their content performs, not whether I like it or not, but I can
see the average watch time. I can see the cost per click. I can see

(05:09):
the email opt in rate. I can see, you know, the feedback. Like, I'm looking
at those signals. And if those signals look good,
which is rare, then I wanna work with that person because I
know it's almost like a sure thing. It's it's like a
soup a superpower because it's like being able to, I I don't know, win the
lottery in advance because you already know kind of what you don't know exactly who

(05:31):
the winners are, but you know, like, generally what the range is gonna be. So
you just overinvest in those ones that are more likely to win. And I think
most people are so, I don't know, subjective
or they don't realize there's math or they have their own hidden
biases. But the the beauty of this math and the
algorithms getting smarter and AI and whatnot is that,

(05:52):
ironically, people, as you know, don't change.
People are locked in the pattern. So if you can find those people early
and you know they're gonna succeed and you just throw a little fuel on the
fire, give them a little media exposure, you're gonna have a
winner. Like my friend, Harrison Gevirtz, he started with me when he was 14. I
think he's 31 now. And now look where this guy is.

(06:14):
Right? He has several companies that are 10,000,000, hundred million dollars a year. Not to
say, like, money is the only important thing, but my
superpower, which I don't really think is even that much of a superpower because I'm
sharing it. So I don't even think it's like a secret, is look for people
who have those components, not because you like them, but
because they measurably meet the criteria. We call these

(06:36):
the standards of excellence, which is a subset of dollar a, like the 10% engagement
rate, that kind of thing. Right? And if people have that, then just have them
do more of the thing that they're good at. So, you know, the modern school
system, not for me to criticize too much, is trying to remediate.
So if you if you, you know, you suck at math, they make you work
more on math. Or you suck at English, you suck at PE. They

(06:57):
instead of focusing on the thing that you're really strong at, if I'm Shaquille O'Neal
and I'm seven foot two, I think, and I dunk and I'm really
good at that, I'm not gonna learn the three point shot. I'm gonna do more
dunking on other people and maximize that kind of thing. And
that's what I think all of us need to do with ourselves and
with the people that we're around and maybe people on our team that we wanna

(07:19):
develop. What are they really good at? How do we amplify that? Instead of trying
to make them learn the thing that they don't like or make them eat broccoli
if they hate broccoli. Like, what's the thing they're good at, and how do we
do more of that? And when you apply that systematically, like I
do, and feed those items into Google and Facebook and
LinkedIn and OpenAI and whatever your favorite tools are,

(07:41):
then the result is magic. It means your ability to determine which
things are slightly better than the others creates this big
magnifying effect. And I hope, Brian, you, and
everyone else see that this is a superpower that's not unique to
me. Shaquille O'Neal being seven foot something, you know, you either have that
or you don't. I'm five foot five. But the superpower that I have is

(08:03):
transferable because anybody who's willing to adhere to these
logical principles, even though emotionally people think this is better than that,
they don't wanna look at the data, they just naturally say, oh, no. This is
better. They're not gonna be able to avail themselves of this superpower. But if you
take it from a math guy who's done this thousands and thousands of times, seen
lots of entrepreneurs like an Anthony Hilde, like a

(08:25):
Jeff Hughes, like his son Liam, like Harrison,
like Caleb Williams, like all these other people, thousands of people
that I've I've been able to see, and you realize there's a pattern, then
I hope you take advantage of that. And I'd love to hear, what do you
guys think?