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You Were Taught to Work Hard. You Were Never Taught THIS! — Transcript

by Evan Carmichael · 41,145 words · 3,332 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00You can outwork everyone and still stay stuck if you're playing by the wrong rules.
0:05Waiting for motivation, fearing mistakes, and doing everything alone just makes your dream harder to build.
0:12You have to work hard.
0:13I mean, that doesn't, but work smart.
0:15You know, a lot of people don't, they waste so much time and they don't think carefully.
0:19Sometimes you have not only have to work how you have to work smart.
0:22Keep that up and you'll spend years beating yourself up while your best ideas
0:27stay trapped in your head.
0:27If you don't fail, you're definitely not going to make anything.
0:30You're not going to create things.
0:31As strong as any one individual is, no one person can deal with all the challenges that are going to get thrown at them in anything that you do.
0:38So in the next three hours, we'll break those habits so you can finally start building the future that you're capable of.
0:45If you've been here before, drop a hashtag, believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video.
0:49And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time.
0:56There's a famous line that usually gets credited to Henry Ford that goes, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
1:02I love it because belief is something that you can build through actual action.
1:06Your mind decides what you'll try before your body actually does anything.
1:10So tricking your mind means planning ahead.
1:12head so you can take the right action before your doubts can talk you out of it.
1:16Researchers Peter Goldwitzer and Paschal Schreiner reviewed 94 studies and found that people who make a simple if-then plan reach their goals more often than people who only set the goal.
1:26So an if-then plan looks like this.
1:29If it's 7 a.m., then I put on my running shoes.
1:31Now, I opened my YouTube channel in November 2008.
1:34And I sat on it for six months before I posted anything.
1:37My first video was a profile of Walt Disney and I wore a suit and a tie buttoned up shirt.
1:42I had a friend come in the filament and I spent two days trying to memorize the script.
1:46I still couldn't get through it.
1:47So most of the videos B roll with just my voice behind it.
1:50It got three comments in its first year, one from my mom, one from my sister, one from some random stranger.
1:55What helped me was a trick.
1:56I started imagining the camera was a friend of mine, an entrepreneur who was really struggling.
2:01And I talked to him.
2:02my energy went up the moment the camera became my friend instead so i want to make this video because i've never stopped needing these tricks i still get scared before i go on big stages 15 years later believing in myself it's still my number one problem that's the whole reason that this channel exists to help you believe in yourself too and i'm still working on it every day myself
2:23So if you learn how to work with your own mind, the goals you keep putting off start actually getting done.
2:29That big goal of yours won't happen if your mind talks you out of it every time you try to start.
2:33Now, there are 10 ways to trick your mind.
2:35I'm going to cover them with you today.
2:39Number one, count backwards from five.
2:41So your brain wants to keep you safe and comfortable.
2:44When you need to do something hard, you have a small five-second window before your mind makes up excuses that stop you.
2:51Counting backwards from five interrupts your normal thought patterns.
2:55It distracts your brain from fear and turns on the part of your brain that handles taking action.
3:01You have to count backwards.
3:02If you count forward, you can just keep going to 10 or 20.
3:05Counting down forces you to physically move when you reach...
3:09So friend of the channel, Mel Robbins is the most famous example of this trick.
3:13She actually created it and calls it the five second rule.
3:15Years ago, she was struggling with money and her career.
3:18She couldn't even get out of bed in the morning and kept hitting that snooze button.
3:22One night she saw a rocket launch on television.
3:25She decided she would launch herself out of bed just like that rocket.
3:29The next morning she counted five, four, three, two, one, and forced herself to stand up.
3:34This simple trick helped her take control of her daily habits.
3:37She wrote a bestselling book about it and now she's an awesome motivational speaker.
3:42Two, make a movie in your head.
3:44Your brain has a hard time telling the difference between a real event and something you deeply imagined.
3:49So when you play a success movie in your head, you're actually building new pathways in your brain.
3:54You're practicing the exact steps you need to take without even moving.
3:58If you see yourself winning over and over, your confidence naturally grows.
4:02When the real moment finally happens, you don't panic, you don't freeze, you feel completely calm because you've already lived that exact moment a thousand times in your mind.
4:11Jim Carrey is a great example of this trick.
4:13Before he was a famous movie star, he was broke and he couldn't get good acting jobs.
4:17Every night he drove his old car up a big hill in Los Angeles.
4:20He parked and he played a detailed movie in his head.
4:23He pictured famous directors praising his work.
4:26He visualized himself getting huge movie roles.
4:29He even wrote a famous check to himself for $10 million for acting services and kept it in his wallet.
4:35He dated it Thanksgiving 1995.
4:37And right before that exact date, he booked the movie Dumb and Dumber and got paid
4:41Exactly $10 million.
4:45Number three, treat your goals like a video game.
4:48So video games are built to keep you hooked.
4:50They give you a clear mission, small steps, instant rewards as you make progress.
4:55And every time you level up, your brain releases dopamine.
4:57Dopamine is a chemical that makes you feel happy and motivated.
5:02So when you turn your real life into a game, you can hack the system.
5:05If you don't wanna do a boring task, you could break it into small little quests.
5:08You give yourself experience points for doing the hard work.
5:11And once you get enough points, you buy yourself a real reward.
5:14Jane McGonigal is a famous game designer who uses this exact trick to save her life.
5:19She suffered a severe head injury that left her in constant pain.
5:22She felt deeply depressed and couldn't do normal daily tasks.
5:25But instead of quitting, she decided to treat her recovery like a video game.
5:29She created a secret identity that she called
5:31Jane, the concussion slayer.
5:33She gave herself daily quests like drinking a glass of water or walking outside.
5:37She fought bad guys, which were things that triggered her headaches.
5:40She earned points for every healthy task she finished.
5:43And this simple game helped her heal.
5:45She later turned it into a massive program called Super Better that helps millions of people level up their real lives.
5:53Number four, change your passwords to your goals.
5:55This is cool.
5:56So you log into your computer, your phone, your email dozens of times every single day, right?
5:59When you make your passwords your biggest goal, you create a powerful daily mantra.
6:04Typing the words out physically builds a mental trigger.
6:07You don't just see the goal, you feel it in your hands.
6:10It forces you to stop and think about your top priority before you start working.
6:15It stops you from getting distracted by bad habits because you just reminded yourself about what you actually need to do.
6:20Mauricio Estrella is the best example of this trick.
6:23He was going through a terrible divorce and felt deeply depressed.
6:26His office system forced him to change his work password.
6:30Now, instead of picking some random word, he made his password, forgive her.
6:34He had to type that exact phrase multiple times a day for a whole month.
6:38It didn't happen overnight, but typing it out slowly changed his mindset and helped him heal.
6:43He realized the trick worked so well that he kept doing it for his other goals too.
6:47He changed his next passwords to things like quit smoking forever and save money for a trip.
6:54It completely changed his life and millions of people have read his story online.
6:59Number five, act like your hero.
7:02When you face a massive challenge, your own brain tells you that you aren't strong enough, right?
7:06By pretending to be your hero, you step outside your self-doubt, you borrow your hero's courage and their discipline.
7:12It helps you make decisions based on what a winner would do, not based of how tired or scared you feel in the moment.
7:19You stop listening to your own excuses and start executing like the champion that your hero is.
7:24So David Goggins is another perfect example of how to use this trick.
7:28Growing up, he was terrified.
7:30He was out of shape.
7:30He was struggling.
7:31He didn't like the scared kid that he was.
7:33So to change his life, he realized he couldn't just be the old David anymore.
7:37He had to build a new person.
7:39He created a tough alter ego that he just called Goggins.
7:43Whenever David felt tired and wanted to quit Navy SEAL training, he asked himself what Goggins would do.
7:48Because Goggins wasn't afraid of anything and Goggins embraced the pain.
7:51By acting like this hero, he tricked his brain into pushing past human limits and became a legendary endurance athlete.
8:00Number six, break big jobs into tiny steps.
8:02So when you look at a huge job, your brain panics.
8:05It releases stress chemicals and makes you freeze.
8:07This is exactly why you procrastinate.
8:09By shrinking the task down to something tiny, you remove the fear.
8:12Your brain doesn't feel threatened by writing one sentence or doing one pushup.
8:16And once you start, the momentum takes over.
8:18So you're probably not only gonna do one pushup, you'll keep going, you'll do a few more.
8:22It's just always much harder to start than it is to keep going.
8:25Tim Ferriss, perfect example of this trick.
8:27He's a massive author, entrepreneur,
8:30When he was trying to write his first book, he felt completely stuck.
8:33The idea of writing hundreds of pages completely overwhelmed him.
8:37He kept freezing and couldn't write anything.
8:40So to trick his brain, he completely changed his daily goal.
8:43His new rule was to write just two crappy pages a day.
8:46That's it.
8:47By making the steps so small, he removed the pressure.
8:49His brain didn't panic anymore.
8:51he easily wrote his two pages and usually ended up writing for hours.
8:55That exact book became the 4-Hour Workweek and sold over 2.1 million copies worldwide.
9:00And it didn't just stop there.
9:01The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for four years and was translated into 40 different languages.
9:09Number seven, add the word yet.
9:11When you say you can't do something, your brain completely shuts down.
9:14It stops looking for answers.
9:15By adding the word yet, you keep the door open.
9:18It changes a permanent failure into a temporary problem.
9:21So your brain instantly switches from giving up to looking for a solution.
9:24It forces you to keep learning instead of just walking away.
9:27Carol Dweck is a famous psychologist who proved that this trick works.
9:30She studied high school in Chicago that had a very hard test to graduate.
9:35If students failed the test, the school didn't give them a failing grade.
9:38They gave them a grade that just said, not yet.
9:41The simple change completely rewired how the students thought.
9:44Instead of feeling like they weren't smart enough, they understood that they were just on a learning journey and they need to get better.
9:51It gave them a clear path to keep working.
9:53Graduation rates skyrocketed.
9:55In 2005, the average graduation rate for Chicago public schools was only 52%.
10:00but the school using the not yet grading model graduated 78.6% of its students.
10:05And it didn't just help them finish high school, a massive 87% of those graduating students went straight to college.
10:11Dweck wrote a massive book called Mindset about this exact trick, and it completely changed how successful leaders learn.
10:19Number eight, pair hard work with a treat.
10:22So when you hate tasks, your brain feels pain and wants to avoid it, right?
10:25It's natural.
10:25If you link a hard task with something you love, you change how your brain sees the work.
10:30You trick your brain into wanting to do the hard work because it wants the reward,
10:34This is a real science called temptation bundling.
10:38You take something that you naturally crave and tie it directly to a habit that you usually avoid.
10:43Katie Milkman is a famous scientist who proved that this trick works.
10:46When she was a student, she struggled to go to the gym.
10:48She felt too tired after a long day, but she also loved listening to exciting audio books like The Hunger Games.
10:54She made a strict rule for herself.
10:56She was only allowed to listen to her favorite audio books while she was actively sweating at the gym.
11:03Suddenly she wanted to go to the gym every single day just so she can hear what happened next in the story.
11:09She stopped avoiding her workouts and actually look forward to them.
11:13You can do the exact same thing by only doing the thing you love while you finish your hardest daily task.
11:18As a personal example, I only get my large one cream coffee from Tim Hortons if I go for my morning run.
11:24No run, no Tim Hortons.
11:25That's painful.
11:28Number nine, talk to yourself like a friend.
11:31Your brain believes the words that you tell it.
11:33So if you call yourself stupid when you make a mistake, your brain records that as a fact.
11:36You are stupid.
11:37You wouldn't talk to your best friend that way, so don't talk to yourself that way.
11:40When you treat yourself with kindness, you stop stressing.
11:43You allow your brain to learn from the mistake instead of just feeling ashamed and in guilt.
11:47It keeps you moving forward instead of getting stuck in a negative death spiral loop.
11:52Sarah Blakely is a great example of this trick.
11:54So she's the billionaire founder of Spanx.
11:57Growing up, her father completely changed how she talked to herself about losing.
12:02Every week at the dinner table, he asked her what she failed at.
12:05If she didn't give any failures, he was disappointed.
12:08It taught her to talk to herself like a supportive friend when things went wrong.
12:13So instead of calling herself a failure, she learned to celebrate the effort.
12:17When she started her business, she faced hundreds of harsh rejections.
12:21But because she used kind self-talk, she didn't quit.
12:23She just learned the lesson and she kept building.
12:25And she became a billionaire in the process.
12:29And number 10, design your environment.
12:30So your environment controls your choices.
12:32If you wanna build a good habit, make it the easiest thing to do in your room.
12:35If you wanna break a bad habit, add so many steps to it that you just give up.
12:39Willpower burns out pretty quickly.
12:41A smart environment works for you all day.
12:43If your phone is in another room, you don't need willpower to stop checking it.
12:47Victor Hugo is a famous example of this trick.
12:49He was a massive author in the 1800s.
12:51He promised his publisher a brand new book, but he spent a whole year procrastinating.
12:57He entertained guests and he delayed his work instead of actually writing.
13:01His publisher finally got frustrated and gave him a strict six month deadline.
13:05Victor knew his bad habit was leaving the house, so he told his assistant to take all of his clothes and lock them in a large chest.
13:11He was left with nothing to wear except a large shawl.
13:14Because he didn't have clothes, he couldn't leave the house and get distracted.
13:18He designed his environment so that staying inside and writing was his only option.
13:22He wrote furiously and actually finished the book two weeks early.
13:27That book was a classic story, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
13:32Believe it before you see it.
13:34So it's easy to look at all these successful people and think they were just born with more confidence than you or I.
13:40They had the same doubts that you and I have.
13:42What they learned was how to work with their own mind to overcome these doubts and so can you.
13:49Count backwards from five.
13:50Make a movie in your own head.
13:52Treat your goals like a video game.
13:54Change your passwords to your goals.
13:56Act like your own hero.
13:57Break big jobs into tiny steps.
13:59Add the word yet.
14:00Pair hard work with a treat.
14:02Talk to yourself like a friend and design your environment.
14:06Those are the ways to trick your mind and now you know them too.
14:09Pick one, use it on the goal that you have been putting off the longest.
14:12The you five years from now is already saying thank you.
14:15Six months is enough time to change your entire life and you're wasting it waiting to feel ready.
14:21Take action.
14:22So many people talk about doing something or say, what if they don't actually get up and do it?
14:29When are you going to do it?
14:30When are you going to do it?
14:32You've got to create a sense of urgency.
14:34I'm going to do it right now.
14:35Researchers at University College London found it takes an average of just 66 days to make a new habit automatic, which means the behaviors that reshape everything about you can lock in before this year is even over.
14:48On average, they found that about 66 days is the time it takes for a new habit to be built.
14:53Every single qualification for success is acquired through habit.
14:57People form habits and habits form futures.
15:00The person you decide to become in the next six months is the person you get to be for the rest of your life.
15:05Focus has always been a strong part of my life.
15:09If I get interested in something, I get really interested.
15:11The most successful people are very focused.
15:14Let me tell you about a broke actor sleeping in a bus station in 1975.
15:19His name was Sylvester Stallone.
15:22He was so far behind on money that he couldn't afford to feed his dog, a big bull mastiff named Butkus.
15:28So he stood outside a liquor store and sold his best friend to a stranger for 50 bucks, then walked away crying.
15:33walked away crying. That's how low it
15:35got for him.
15:35I went to California and I moved in the
15:38valley and things weren't going very
15:40very well there. As a matter of fact, I
15:42had to go out and try to sell my dog
15:44because it was either uh do that or or
15:48uh he just was not going to be very well
15:50fed around the house. A few weeks later,
15:52he watched a nobody boxer named Chuck
15:54Weapner go 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali,
15:56and something lit up inside him.
15:58One night, I went to see uh Muhammad Ali
16:02fight. One brief moment, this supposed
16:06stumble bomb turned out to be
16:14Now that, that is probably what I need as a catalyst for an idea.
16:19A man who's going to stand up to life and take one shot and maybe go the distance.
16:25Here was a man nobody believed in, standing toe to toe with the greatest in the world and refusing to fall.
16:30Stallone went home and wrote the entire script for Rocky in about three days.
16:34So I started to write and it was one of those writing frenzies and three days later,
16:40and came up with the script of Rocky.
16:42When he tried to sell it, the studios loved it.
16:44Originally, when I brought the script to them, they were fairly enthusiastic about it.
16:49The one thing they were not enthusiastic about was me playing the part.
16:52They offered him $360,000 for the script, which to a man who just sold his dog for $50 was life-changing money.
16:59And he said no.
17:01He said no because they wanted a real star to play Rocky.
17:04And Stallone knew in his bones this was his role and his one shot.
17:08But...
17:09The temptation started to come forward.
17:11First it was 25 grand, then $100,000.
17:15I never heard of $100,000, because I had like $106 in the bank, and like I said, I had to sell my dog, and things were not looking very, very good.
17:24I heard it went up to $360,000.
17:25So I thought, you know what?
17:28If I know in the back of my mind, if I sell this script and it does very, very well, I'm gonna jump off a building.
17:37And if I'm not in it, there's no doubt about it, I'm gonna leap in front of a train.
17:40I'm gonna be very, very upset.
17:43So this is one of those things where you just roll the dice.
17:46He turned down $360,000 with almost nothing in his bank account.
17:50He held out until they finally agreed to let him star and he took around $35,000 and the lead.
17:56Rocky was made for about $1 million and went on to earn over $200 million and win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
18:03And the first thing Sylvester did with his money was buy Butkus back, paying $3,000 to get his dog.
18:09And he put that dog in the movie.
18:11Stallone didn't need 10 years to change his life.
18:13He didn't need perfect conditions or rich family.
18:15He needed a decision.
18:17He refused to walk back and a simple plan he refused to quit on.
18:21That's exactly what the next six months are gonna be for you.
18:24Now I know what you might be thinking.
18:25You're thinking,
18:26Six months, Evan, I've tried to change before.
18:28I've started diets and routines and side businesses and none of it stuck past the third week.
18:33Why would this time be any different?
18:35And listen, that's a fair thing to feel.
18:37But here's the real reason it kept falling apart.
18:39And it's not because you're lazy or that you're a broken human.
18:42You are leaning on motivation and motivation is a feeling and feelings come and go just like the weather.
18:48You are also trying to change 10 things at once, which is why the whole tower collapsed the first hard week.
18:53That 66-day number from University College London is the key that unlocks all of it.
18:59You don't need superhuman discipline.
19:01You need one small behavior repeated in the same way, in the same spot, long enough for your brain to wire it in
19:08and stop asking permission.
19:09Do that and the changes stops being something that you force every morning and it becomes something that you simply are.
19:16It's who you are.
19:17So for the next few minutes, let me hand you the exact six month roadmap month by month so you always know precisely what to do and when.
19:27Month one, decide who you're becoming before you change a single habit.
19:31So most roadmaps start with a to-do list, right?
19:34Yours starts with an identity.
19:36And this is the step people skip that wrecks everything that comes after.
19:40There is a truth I come back to over and over again.
19:42Being leads to doing.
19:44If you want to run every morning, you don't start by just white knuckling yourself and forcing yourself out of bed.
19:49You start by deciding you're an athlete.
19:51An athlete doesn't debate whether to train.
19:53An athlete just trains because that's who they are.
19:56Stallone believed he was Rocky before a single person on this earth agreed with him.
20:01And that belief is what led him to turn down $360,000 when he was dead broke.
20:06So your very first job isn't a task, it's a decision.
20:09Get specific about the person who already has the life that you want.
20:12What do they do on a random Tuesday when nobody's watching?
20:15How do they talk to themselves when they mess up?
20:17What do they say no to without flinching?
20:19So get a notebook, try a real physical one, write it all down, carry it with you.
20:23Don't treat your mind just like this filing cabinet because the moment you write, I am the kind of person who keeps my word to myself, you've already started becoming that person.
20:32Then every morning, before the world grabs your attention, read that identity back to yourself out loud.
20:37It'll feel strange at first, and that's fine because you're not describing today's reality.
20:41You're casting a vote for tomorrow's reality for yourself.
20:44But in month one, you're not measuring results yet.
20:46You're installing the identity that every result over the next six months is going to grow out of.
20:51And if that feels too simple to matter, good, because the simple stuff done daily is exactly what separates the people who change from the people who spend their whole lives just talking about it.
21:05Pick your one number and only three ways to move it.
21:08Here's where a huge number of people drown.
21:09They set 15 goals, get crushed by the weight of all of it, and quit on all 15 at once.
21:14So you're gonna do the opposite.
21:15Pick one number.
21:16I call it your wildly important number, your win.
21:19It's a simple, measurable thing.
21:21If it moved, would prove your life is genuinely changing.
21:24So dollars saved, pounds lost, clients signed, videos posted, days in a row you kept your word.
21:30One number you can actually count.
21:32Then pick exactly three drivers, three actions that move that number, not 10, just three.
21:36And one of those three always has to be learning or experimenting because you don't know everything yet and you have to keep testing new ways forward.
21:44So say your number is five new clients in six months.
21:47Your three drivers might be reach out to five people a day, publish one helpful post a day and test one new approach a week.
21:54Or say your number is you're going to lose 20 pounds.
21:56Your three drivers might be hit 8,000 steps a day, keep protein high at every meal, and test one new healthy recipe a week.
22:04Same shape every time, one number you can count, and three actions that move it.
22:08Here's why three is so powerful.
22:10When you wake up foggy and you're unsure what to do, you don't have to think.
22:14You can't hide behind just being busy.
22:16You already decided.
22:17You just run your three drivers and the day is a win.
22:20Clarity is what...
22:21murders overwhelm.
22:23And three is a number that keeps you clear when your emotions try to make everything complicated.
22:28Write your one number and your three drivers on the first page of that notebook.
22:32Make it big so it's the very first thing you see every day.
22:38Months one and two, build your 66-day habit stack so momentum runs on autopilot.
22:43Okay, now you build the engine.
22:45And this is where the University College London research really earns its place on your wall.
22:50You've got about 66 days on average before a behavior turns automatic.
22:55So months one and two, it's your runway.
22:57Don't try to bolt on 20 new habits all at once.
23:00Pick the small handful that quietly upgrade everything else and stack them so one triggers the next.
23:06So here's an example stack that you can use.
23:09So the night before you put your phone outside your bedroom.
23:11So the first thing you touch in the morning isn't a screen full of other people's noise and agenda for your time.
23:17When you wake up, get sunlight on your face within 15 minutes and take a 15 minute walk.
23:22I call it my believe walk.
23:23It sounds too basic to bother with, but that simple move sets your energy and your focus for the entire day.
23:29And it costs you nothing, costs you 15 minutes.
23:32When you get back, open your notebook and write down your three drivers.
23:35Keep the new habits stupidly small at first.
23:38So small that you can't say no because a five minute walk you actually do beats a 60 minute workout that you skip.
23:45Then at night, run a 60 second audit.
23:47Did I run my three drivers?
23:48And where did I get in my own way?
23:50This isn't about shaming yourself.
23:51It's just about creating some data for the next day.
23:54And every single day, whether you feel like it or not, press your inner I believe in myself button.
23:59Self-belief isn't something that you're born with.
24:01It's a muscle that you build by choosing it on the days where it feels ridiculous.
24:05Stack all of this and then the magic happens.
24:07By the time month two ends, you won't be forcing any of it.
24:10You'll feel off on the days that you skip it.
24:13That's the moment the habit owns you now instead of you dragging it around every morning.
24:19Eliminate, automate, delegate, and clear the runway.
24:23Here's a fact that almost nobody wants to hear.
24:25The reason you feel like you don't have time to change your life is that you're pouring your hours into things that don't actually matter.
24:31So audit your days and run any recurring task through three filters.
24:35Eliminate, what can you simply just stop doing where nobody would even notice if it's gone?
24:39For years, I wrote detailed notes after every mastermind call because I assumed people needed them.
24:44One day I just, I forgot, I stopped.
24:47Nobody said a word, nobody was reading them.
24:49And I got those hours back.
24:51Find your version of that.
24:52Number two, automate.
24:53What can a tool do for you so that your hands never have to touch it again?
24:57Set it up once, let it run for years.
24:59And number three, delegate.
25:00What can you hand to someone else even if it just starts as one hour a day of help?
25:04This connects to one of the most freeing ideas that I know.
25:0710 times is easier than two times.
25:09To really double your results, you grind harder at everything you already do.
25:13But to grow 10 times, you're forced to drop the 80% that's average and pour everything into the 20% where you're genuinely great.
25:21Clearing the runway isn't lazy.
25:23It's how you open up room for the version of you that's ready to be the airplane and take off.
25:29Be honest about where your hours are really going.
25:31How much of your day gets eaten by things that don't even move the number one inch
25:36Cut them guilt-free.
25:37A plane covered in clutter never leaves off the ground and neither does a life crammed with busy work that just makes you feel productive while you stay exactly where you are.
25:48Months three and four, do 100 reps before you let yourself judge anything.
25:52This is the exact stretch where you'll want to quit.
25:54So we need to walk in knowing what's going to happen.
25:57Around month three, the newness wears off, right?
25:59The habits are in, but the big results, they haven't showed up yet.
26:02And that little voice starts to whisper, see, this one isn't working either.
26:06That voice is the single most expensive thing that you own.
26:09And here's how you beat it.
26:10You're not allowed to judge your progress until you put in the reps.
26:13So let me give you a number that changed my life.
26:15When I started on YouTube, I made about 350 videos before I stopped being completely embarrassed by them.
26:21Not three, not 30, 350.
26:23If I graded myself at video 10, you would have never heard my name.
26:27So give yourself a hard rule for months three and four, no evaluating, no quitting, no big dramatic decisions about whether this is really for you,
26:36You just hit your reps, you post the content, you make the calls, you do the workouts, you save the money.
26:41Volume across these two months is what builds the skill and the skill is what makes the results explode later.
26:48Look at Sarah Blakely.
26:49She started Spanx with $5,000.
26:51She saved selling fax machines door to door and she spent two full years getting doors slammed in her face before it became a billion dollar company.
26:59Two years of unglamorous reps before the world ever called her a genius and a billionaire.
27:04You're
27:04You're only asking yourself for a few months.
27:06You're standing in the exact part of the map where people give up 10 feet just before the treasure.
27:11You've seen those graphics.
27:12Turn around and then they go home.
27:14Do not be one of those people.
27:15And when you slip, and you will, remember one rule that saves everything.
27:19Never miss twice.
27:20A single bad day is fine.
27:22Two in a row is how quitting sneaks its way back in.
27:26So if you missed a walk, take a short one at lunch.
27:28You blow one meal, the next meal, you're back on plan.
27:30You don't need to be perfect.
27:32You need to refuse to let one bad day become two.
27:38Months five and six, borrow belief, then outgrow the goal you started with.
27:42You cannot do this alone and you were never meant to.
27:45There's an image that I love.
27:47It's a bird sitting on a branch, isn't afraid of the branch breaking because her trust was never in the branch.
27:52It was in her wings.
27:53So right now, your own wings, they may not be strong yet.
27:57And that's normal because you can borrow belief from other people until yours is strong enough to get you flying on your own.
28:03So get around people already living in the thing that you're chasing.
28:06Find an accountability partner that checks in with you, whether you did your three drivers.
28:11Join a community where your goal is normal instead of super weird.
28:15Get a mentor, even from a distance, even if just playing their videos while you work.
28:18You become the average of the voices that you surround yourself with.
28:21So choose that circle like your life depends on it.
28:24And by the time you reach month five, something has shifted.
28:27The habits run on their own.
28:28The reps have stacked into skill.
28:30the number starts to move.
28:32So do something that scares you a little bit on purpose.
28:34Look at the goal you set in month one, make it just a little bit bigger.
28:38If you can hit five clients, that was a good start.
28:40Now, how about we go for 20?
28:42If you saved your first thousand dollars, now build a system that saves $10,000.
28:45Winners don't cling to the goals that they set when they were smaller and more scared, they outgrow them.
28:50So think of the paper airplane, the logo on paper, the idea that a folded sheet of paper could break the sound barrier.
28:55That's the sound effect of my plane going across the screen.
28:58That's doing the impossible.
28:59And the impossible is exactly what you're here to do.
29:02Your purpose comes from your pain, from the exact struggle you're climbing out of right now.
29:06And six months from now, you'll be standing somewhere you'd call impossible today.
29:13Your six months start right now.
29:15All right, you have everything you need.
29:16The identity, the one number, the daily habits, the reps, and the people around you.
29:20The only thing left is to begin.
29:23And you know when the best time to start is?
29:25It's right now.
29:26Have it right now.
29:27Six months from today, you'll either be telling the story of how you finally changed your life or telling yourself another story about why you didn't.
29:35And I'm betting on the first one because if you have the ability to do this, and you do, then you must.
29:41The habits that kill your success are silent and that's exactly why they win.
29:46When I was at the peak of my career, I felt like I'm unbeatable and I feel like I could do anything.
29:52I kind of walking on the water.
29:53We all experience that in our own lives in certain way and it's a great feeling.
29:57But then the ego takes you places where it's harder to come back from.
30:00You're always going to encounter somebody better, stronger, faster, more pious, more worthy, more whatever.
30:05So if you live in a world of comparison, it will rob you of your joy.
30:10Researchers found that about 43% of everything you do every single day isn't a decision at all.
30:15It's an automatic habit running in the background of your mind.
30:19If you haven't deliberately chosen the types of friendships that you want, that's a problem.
30:25You have to put yourself in a state of perpetual discomfort in order to manifest your greatness.
30:30You've got to reach outside of your comfort zone.
30:33So nearly half of your life is on autopilot right now.
30:36And if the wrong habits are flying your plane, they'll take your dreams straight into the ground without you ever hearing the engine stall.
30:43Focus has always been a strong part of my personality.
30:47If I get interested in something, I get really interested.
30:49The most successful people are very focused.
30:52Let me tell you about a man named James Dyson.
30:54James Dyson.
30:55James Dyson.
30:56James Dyson.
30:58He had a simple, stubborn idea for a vacuum cleaner that wouldn't lose suction and he decided to build it.
31:04What he didn't know was the idea would take over the next 15 years of his life.
31:07He built a prototype and it failed.
31:08So he built another one and that one failed too.
31:11He kept going.
31:12Prototype after prototype after prototype.
31:14By his 2,627th prototype, he and his wife were counting every penny they had just to keep the lights on.
31:21By 3,727th prototype, his wife was giving art lessons on the side to bring in extra money because they were so deep in debt.
31:30Just think about that.
31:31Over 3,700 failures and he still wasn't done.
31:34It's a wonderful process of failure and overcoming failure and improving.
31:39Everyone in his life had every reason to tell him to quit, that a few thousand failures is the universe screaming at you to stop.
31:46But the voice that whispers, you're a fool, give up, never got the final say with him.
31:51He kept treating every dead prototype as just one more thing that he now knew that he didn't know before, one more dead end that he could cross off the list.
31:59Every single prototype you do that fails, I mean, failure is much more exciting than success because why did it fail?
32:06know what wait a minute why did it fail why doesn't it work you know what do i have to do to make it work and finally on prototype number 5127 after 15 years it worked you famously had 5127 iterations on your vacuum cleaner before the final product approximately approximately is that still your approach as many as it takes
32:29Yes, I mean, that's what you have to do is trial and error.
32:32That vacuum, the DC01, went on to become the best selling vacuum in the entire country.
32:37And James Dyson became a billionaire many times over.
32:40The thing that almost killed the success was not the engineering.
32:43It was the silent voice after failing number 3000, the one whispering that any reasonable man would have stopped by now.
32:49He heard that voice for 15 years.
32:51He just refused to let it drive the car.
32:54Okay, so the objection people say, okay, that's great for Dyson, Evan, but he was some kind of genius.
32:58He had 15 years to burn.
33:00I'm not him.
33:00I don't have that kind of time or that kind of brain.
33:03And here's the thing.
33:03You don't need to be a genius and you don't need to wait 15 years.
33:06What you need is to stop letting these hidden habits make your decisions for you.
33:12That's what makes them so dangerous.
33:13A silent killer never kicks down the front door and just announces itself.
33:17It doesn't feel like failure.
33:19It feels normal, even responsible, right up until you look back years later and realize that it stole a decade of your life.
33:26You don't lose to these habits in one dramatic big moment.
33:29You lose to them one ordinary Tuesday at a time, hidden in the 43% of your life that's already on autopilot.
33:35But the moment you can name them, you take away their power because you can't fight what you can't see.
33:40And today,
33:41you're gonna see all seven of them clearly.
33:44So let's pull them into the light one by one.
33:49Silent killer number one, your comfort zone.
33:52The first killer is the one that feels the safest, and that's exactly what makes it so deadly, comfort.
33:58Staying comfortable rarely looks like a mistake.
34:00It looks like you're being smart, you're being stable, you're not rocking a boat, but a comfortable life lived on repeat is just you slowly declining and telling yourself that it's safety.
34:09You chose the clear, easy path towards a small goal instead of the unclear, uncomfortable path towards a great goal, and you do it a thousand tiny times a day until one day you wake up and years have slipped past with nothing to show for it.
34:23Greatness isn't found in comfort zones.
34:25It never has been.
34:26Every meaningful thing that you want is standing on the other side of something that scares you.
34:31So here's a tool that I use on myself all the time.
34:33When a decision makes me nervous, when it makes my stomach tighten,
34:37I've trained myself to move towards it precisely because it scares me.
34:41So if it's scary, that's a signal that it matters.
34:43And I've tried to develop a healthy disrespect for safety because safety is where your big dreams go to die of old age.
34:50And I refuse to make decisions that make me feel weak.
34:52That's the filter.
34:54Does this choice make me feel small, uncomfortable, or does it make me feel like the person I'm trying to become?
34:59So I try to pick the second one every time.
35:01You have to get honest about what comfort is actually costing you.
35:04It's not costing you a dramatic disaster.
35:07It's costing you the extraordinary version of your life, one comfortable choice at a time.
35:13So the camera that you're not gonna turn on, the pitch that you're not gonna make, the message that you won't send out, the ask you keep putting off, all of it protected in the name of just staying comfortable.
35:22So start today, go find your uncomfortable spots on purpose and walk right into them.
35:27Do the scary thing while your hands are still shaking because comfort is the quietest killer of all because it kills you with your own permission.
35:38Silent killer number two, the people around you.
35:40The second killer works on you so slowly that you'll swear that it isn't happening and it's the people that you spend your time with.
35:46Standards are contagious.
35:47If the people closest to you think small, play it safe, and treat coasting as the goal, it becomes almost mathematically impossible to hold your own high standards.
35:56You will slowly drift down to the level of the room that you stand in every day and you won't even feel yourself sinking into it, the same way you don't feel the temperature drop one degree at a time.
36:05There is a person on almost every weak team that leaders hold onto out of just pure comfort, long after they should have let them go.
36:13Call it the Susan problem.
36:15There's someone barely treading water, not really moving the mission forward, but you keep them close because letting go feels hard and confrontation feels worse.
36:24Here's the damage that it does.
36:26Your high performers, they walk in, they see exactly who you're willing to tolerate and they lower their standards to match or what do they do?
36:32They walk away and leave completely.
36:35Who you accept around you sets the ceiling for everyone, including you.
36:39The circle doesn't rise to your hopes, it sinks to what you allow.
36:43So audit your circle the way that you would audit your money.
36:46Who lifts you towards who you're trying to become and who anchors you to who you're trying to leave behind?
36:52You don't need a ton of people.
36:54You need a few people who genuinely believe that the impossible is possible for you.
36:58You become the average of the voices you let get closest to you.
37:00So choose them like your life and your future depend on it.
37:06Silent killer number three, chasing too many things.
37:09The third killer disguises itself as ambition, which is why smart driven people fall for it the hardest.
37:15It's chasing too many things at once.
37:17You have a dozen ideas and each one feels so exciting.
37:20So you chase all of them a little,
37:22And none of them end up taking off.
37:24Taking on too much is the number one killer of your creativity and your momentum.
37:28Your brain simply cannot process a flood of goals at once without your execution suffocating underneath it.
37:34You feel busy, you feel productive, but you're just bouncing between tasks and finishing none of them.
37:40The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.
37:43So here's an exact framework that you can use to cut it through.
37:47First, define your win, your wildly important number.
37:50That's one single measurable number that you are driving towards.
37:53It could be a revenue target, a subscriber goal, a number on a scale, one number.
37:58Then pick exactly three drivers, the three actions that actually move the number, just three.
38:03Every other shiny object idea that pops into your head gets ignored on purpose.
38:07You're only allowed to review or change those drivers once a month.
38:10The rest of your time is spent
38:12doing them, not rethinking them.
38:14That focus feels almost painful at first because saying no to a good idea is really hard for entrepreneurs.
38:20But focus is a competitive advantage precisely because so few people can hold it.
38:25There's one more move that changes everything here and it's pretty ruthless.
38:28Let go of 80% of the little tasks that you're doing right now.
38:31And that might sound extreme to you, but getting rid of that 80% is the only way to free up your space, your runway, so you can go all in on the small number of things that you are uniquely built to do better than anyone else on earth.
38:44If you try to be great at everything, you'll be great at what?
38:46At nothing.
38:47So pick your spot.
38:48Protect it with your time and let the rest fall away.
38:51Chasing everything is a silent killer because it feels like drive and the whole time is just keeping you busy enough to never actually win.
39:02Silent killer number four, your ego.
39:05The fourth killer wears a mask that looks like strength and it's your ego.
39:10This is not the loud kind of arrogant kind.
39:13It's the quiet kind, the part of you that is so busy protecting this perfect image that it refuses to grow.
39:19Ego...
39:20becomes a shield that high achievers hold up to hide their vulnerabilities.
39:24And while it's protecting you from looking foolish, it's also slowly destroying your ability to actually get better because getting better requires being coached.
39:32It requires trying things that you're bad at.
39:34It requires raising your hand and say, hey, I suck at this.
39:37I don't know, show me.
39:38And the ego would rather die than say those words.
39:42The shift to make is from protecting your image to embracing being a beginner.
39:47You have to become willing to look like the person who needs help because that person is the one who actually improves.
39:54The most successful people that I know are shockingly quick to say I was wrong and shockingly fast to apply new feedback.
40:01That's not because they're weak.
40:02It's because their identity isn't glued to being right.
40:05They've untied their self-worth from looking perfect.
40:07And that freedom lets them learn at speeds that the ego protectors can't match.
40:12So the test, when someone gives you feedback, what's your very first reaction?
40:17Do you rush to defend yourself?
40:18Do you explain why they're wrong?
40:20Do you try to protect your image?
40:22Or do you get quiet and actually consider, huh, maybe they're right.
40:26The people who win treat feedback like it's gold, even when it hurts, especially when it hurts.
40:32Refusing to take feedback and apply it is not some personal weird quirk.
40:37It is the silent killer that keeps you frozen at the exact skill level that you're at today forever.
40:42So we gotta drop the shield.
40:43You gotta let yourself be a student again.
40:45Your ego wants you to look great today.
40:47Your growth needs you willing to look like a beginner so you can be great later.
40:52Pick later.
40:56Silent killer number five, comparison.
40:58The fifth killer is one that nearly everyone struggles with in the age of the Instagram highlight reel and that's comparison.
41:04You scroll, you look at someone who's further ahead than you and something inside your chest just sinks.
41:09You start measuring your behind the scenes against somebody else's greatest hits and it makes this quiet, constant unhappiness that drains the energy that you need to actually build.
41:19They say comparison is a thief.
41:20It steals the joy out of real progress and replaces it with this low vibe of not enough that follows you everywhere you go.
41:28So the first fix is to demystify your heroes.
41:30The famous people that you measure yourself against, the ones who look untouchable, they're not nearly as far ahead of you as they appear.
41:35And a lot of them are wrestling with the same insecurities that you are.
41:39They put on their pants the same way that you do.
41:41They have bad days, they have self-doubt, they have fear, just like you.
41:44When you stop treating them like gods and start seeing them as just people who simply started earlier and kept going, everything starts to change.
41:51You realize that you're not measuring yourself against magic, you're measuring against time and repetitions.
41:56And both of those are things that you can start stacking today.
41:59The second fix is to change who you're actually racing against.
42:03So we stopped lining up against strangers on the internet and start racing against the only fair opponent that you have, the version of you from a year ago.
42:10So look honestly at where you started and count the ground that you've covered in the past year.
42:14The skills that you didn't have then, the fear that used to run your life that hopefully barely touches you now.
42:19When you measure how far you've come instead of how far you have left,
42:22you start to refill your belief instead of draining it out of you.
42:26Your only real competition was always yesterday's version of you.
42:29So beat that person and let everyone else run their own race.
42:34Silent killer number six, neglecting your energy.
42:37The sixth killer is the one that people brag about, which is how you know that it's got them.
42:43It's running yourself into the ground and calling it hustle.
42:46Neglecting your health and your energy doesn't feel like a mistake in the moment.
42:49It feels like dedication.
42:51But your physical state sets the ceiling on your mental state.
42:55When you're exhausted, you're sleep deprived, you're eating trash, your decision-making automatically, what happens?
43:00It gets worse.
43:01Your patience, it gets shorter and every excuse in your head gets louder.
43:05You can have the best strategy in the world and still lose because you're too depleted to actually go out and execute it.
43:12So protect your energy like it's gold because it's the one resource that everything else runs on.
43:17So start with how you end your day because that controls the next one.
43:20Your mind is not this filing cabinet.
43:22If you go to bed with 100 open loops spinning in your head, your brain will keep you up trying to hold them all down.
43:27So write them down.
43:28Get every task and worry out of your head onto paper before you sleep.
43:32So your mind is finally allowed to rest instead of being awake all night.
43:36And it's hard.
43:36I still struggle with it.
43:37That one habit alone though can change the quality of your mornings.
43:41And if the racing thoughts still won't quiet down, you can use a simple breathing pattern to slow your whole nervous system.
43:47It looks like this.
43:48Breathe in for five seconds, hold for six, and then breathe out slowly for seven.
43:52Then do it again.
43:53The long exhale tells your body that it's safe to power down.
43:57It works better, at least for me, than lying there fighting your own mind with mantras because you're not arguing with your thoughts.
44:03You're changing your actual physiology.
44:08Silent killer number seven, waiting to feel ready.
44:11The seventh killer is the most patient one of all, and it's waiting.
44:14Waiting to feel ready, waiting for permission, waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect plan, the perfect version of you to finally show up before you begin.
44:22That moment is never coming.
44:24Playing small feels safe because you're paralyzed by the pressure to be perfect the second you start.
44:30So you keep polishing and planning and preparing and years slip by while you get ready to get ready.
44:36Perfectionism is not this high standard.
44:38It's just fear.
44:39You're just afraid.
44:41So here's the rule that beats the paralysis and it stops perfectionism cold.
44:45When you start anything new, refuse to judge yourself until you've done 100 reps.
44:49100 videos, 100 sales calls, 100 posts, 100 whatever it is.
44:53Your first ones are gonna be rough, you're gonna suck at the start, and that's the whole point.
44:57You're not supposed to be good at rep number three, you're supposed to be building the momentum and the skill that only comes by creating volume.
45:04So burying your head and committing to 100, you make it impossible for the perfectionism to stop you at number four.
45:11Because you've already decided in advance that the early ones don't count as final products.
45:16They count as practice.
45:17And that shift can take the pressure off in the beginning.
45:20And the beginning is exactly where perfectionism does its killing.
45:24So we're going to stop waiting for someone to hand you permission.
45:27Nobody is coming to...
45:29tap you on the shoulder and say, you, it's your turn now.
45:32If you see the thing that needs doing, then do it.
45:34Don't ask, don't wait to feel ready because ready is not real and the most capable people that you admire all felt unready the moment before they started anyway.
45:44You know when the best time to start is?
45:46Now.
45:46Have it right now.
45:47Being leads to doing.
45:48You decide to be the person who begins before they feel ready.
45:52You act like that person today and the action starts to make it true.
45:56The one who wins isn't the one who felt ready.
45:58It's the one who moved and started while they were still afraid.
46:04You already have everything you need.
46:06So there they are, the seven silent killers that we pulled out from the shadows.
46:10Comfort, your circle, chasing too much, ego, comparison, neglecting your energy and waiting to feel ready.
46:17None of them will ever show up and announce themselves.
46:20They win by staying quiet, by feeling normal, by hiding inside your habits that you never think the question, but you can't be beaten in silence by something that you're staring at right now.
46:29And now you're staring right at all of them.
46:31So here's what I want you to do before moving on with your day.
46:34Don't try to pick and fix all seven at once.
46:36Pick the one that's been running your life for the longest, the one that made you a little uncomfortable when I said it out loud and go take that single one away this week.
46:45Just one.
46:46That's a great start.
46:47And one real win changes more than you think because the moment that you beat it, the rest also get weaker too.
46:53Dyson didn't quit a prototype 3000 and you don't have to quit right here either.
46:57If you can see them, you can beat them.
46:59And now you can see hopefully every single one.
47:02The impossible is exactly,
47:04what you're here to do.
47:05There's a great expression that says, if you want to go fast, go alone.
47:09If you want to go far, go together.
47:11And I love it because every great thing that you want to create needs people.
47:16Almost everything that is going to change the world, solve a problem, improve something.
47:21These are usually big efforts and they require a team working together to really get something important done.
47:28And people need leadership.
47:30Number one skill of an entrepreneur is people skills and leadership skills.
47:35Leadership just means getting a group of people to do something together that none of them would do alone by themselves.
47:41As strong as any one individual is, no one person can deal with all the challenges that are going to get thrown at them in anything that you do.
47:48The leader is the person that everyone looks at when it's time to decide something, when something goes wrong, and when they know if they're doing a good job or not.
47:56What leadership is is having a vision, being able to articulate that so the people around you can understand it, and getting a consensus on a common vision.
48:04A title doesn't make you a leader.
48:06People choosing to follow you makes you a great leader.
48:09Gallup measured 27 million employees and found that managers explained at least 70% of how engaged a team is.
48:16Now, I've got over 50 people on my team now.
48:19Inc. Magazine called me one of the 100 great leadership speakers.
48:22But I started as an introvert who never thought of myself as a leader.
48:25And the first person I hired was for just one hour a day.
48:28When people ask me of what my definition of leadership is, I tell them wanting people to win as humans more than wanting them to win with you.
48:36So I wanted to make this video because I love studying
48:39leaders, business leaders, sports leaders, political leaders, all kinds of leaders.
48:43When I see them facing an impossible situation, I try to put myself in their shoes and ask myself, what would I do if I was in their shoes?
48:51So, for example, the decision to turn down my dream job that I thought I wanted and become an entrepreneur instead came from Jeff Bezos's regret minimization framework.
49:00Basically, don't live with regrets.
49:02He used it to quit his job on Wall Street and start Amazon.
49:05I borrowed his framework.
49:07And if I didn't, I probably wouldn't have this YouTube channel today and be making this video here.
49:11So if you learn how to be a better leader, you can use it with your team, with your clients, with your kids.
49:16The people who work for you will remember you as the leader who changed their life.
49:21That big dream of yours isn't going to happen with you doing all the work all by yourself.
49:26So there are 10 things that great leaders do that are never taught in school.
49:30And I'm going to cover them today through the stories of some of the greatest leaders who ever lived.
49:37Rule number one, make people feel important.
49:40Mary Kay Ash spent 25 years working in sales for other people.
49:43She watched men get promoted over her time after time.
49:45And when she finally quit and started Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963, she promised to build a completely different kind of company.
49:52Her entire business was built on one specific habit.
49:55She imagined that
49:56every single person she met had a large invisible sign hanging around their neck that said, make me feel important.
50:02She practiced this with everyone she met.
50:04When a salesperson spoke to her, Mary Kay gave them her complete focus.
50:08She remembered the names of their kids.
50:09She hand wrote thousands of personal birthday cards to her team members every single year.
50:14She also created a system that made her workers feel like absolute rock stars.
50:18Instead of giving out basic paper certificates, she rewarded her top sellers with brand new pink Cadillacs.
50:24She pinned diamond bumblebees on their jackets in front of huge crowds of cheering people.
50:29She knew that people need a paycheck, but they will push themselves much harder for true recognition.
50:35And by focusing entirely on making her team feel valued, she turned this tiny store into a massive global business.
50:42Now, one of the things that I try to do with our team is we have a Slack channel where I try to share a story at least a couple of times a week, recognizing somebody on my team and what they did.
50:51So a team member goes above and beyond for a client.
50:54Another one tries some new editing style or technique that has a massive return.
50:59Just trying to find the different wins that happened and not keep it so siloed to just some of the people who knew about it, but to expose it to the whole team.
51:07So I'll go from my morning believe walk and I'll think about somebody who did something great yesterday.
51:12on the team that I wanna share.
51:13And I'll just make a quick video and share company-wide in our Slack.
51:17I'll tag them so that they feel recognized and everybody on the team can see what a rockstar that person is too.
51:25Number two, lead by working harder than anyone else.
51:27When the USA basketball team met for a training camp in 2008, they had the best players in the world.
51:33So think guys like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, they were on that team.
51:37But Kobe Bryant wanted to show them what true hard work looked like.
51:41One morning, Chris Bosh went down to breakfast early at eight in the morning.
51:45He thought he would be the first person to be there.
51:48When he walked into the room, he saw Kobe Bryant sitting at a table with ice bags already on his knees.
51:54Kobe was completely covered in sweat.
51:56He actually had woken up at four in the morning.
51:59He called his trainer, went to the gym, and did a massive workout before the sun even came up.
52:05He wanted to make 800 shots before the official team practice even started.
52:09While his teammates were just waking up and yawning and stretching, Kobe was already three hours into his workday.
52:15Now, he didn't brag about it to the rest of the team.
52:18He just let his actions speak for him.
52:21Seeing Kobe work that hard completely changed the team.
52:24The other players realized they had to push themselves much harder too if they wanted to keep up with him.
52:29When I was training Ida on our team to work with our clients to help them build momentum on their YouTube channel, I got sick pretty early into the process.
52:36And she was talking to clients.
52:37She'd made Fathom calls, Zoom call recordings.
52:39I'd watch them and give her feedback.
52:41And a week or two in, while I was struggling to keep pace with what she was creating, I got sick and I went to lie down in my bed
52:50while I was traveling and still finished the recording.
52:53And it wasn't my best feedback for her, but the fact that I was willing to show up for her while I was sick, while I was stressed, while I was overwhelmed, made her feel even more valued, made her feel even more important part of the team.
53:05And those are the things that team members because you were truly pouring into them.
53:11Number three, listen before you speak.
53:13Simon Sinek often shares this pretty powerful leadership habit that he learned from the legend Nelson Mandela.
53:19Mandela is known as one of the greatest leaders in the world, but he also gave credit to his father.
53:25So his father was a tribal chief in South Africa.
53:28And when his father held a meeting, he followed two pretty simple rules.
53:31First, they always sat in a circle.
53:34And second, his father was always the last person to speak
53:37as the chief.
53:38Mandela watched this and used this exact same habit for his entire life, for all of his meetings.
53:42Because in modern business, the boss usually shares their opinion right away.
53:46And when that happens, the team usually just agrees with the boss to stay safe because you don't want to disagree with the boss.
53:52They hide their real ideas.
53:53Sinek says that great leaders actually do the opposite.
53:56They hold their own opinions back.
53:57They ask questions to understand why someone thinks a certain way.
54:01And by waiting until the very end to talk, the leader makes a team feel heard and gets the smartest ideas out
54:07in the open.
54:08One of the things we do internally is when we're having meetings, we'll do a, say, a monthly meeting on a certain topic.
54:13Somebody's trying to improve the click-through rate on our video.
54:15So we'll do a monthly meeting looking at all of the thumbnails for the channel.
54:18And they have a win doc that they present.
54:21And I'll talk about that a little bit later on.
54:22But basically, they're presenting their findings, presenting their ideas, coming up with the solutions and what they want to do for the next month.
54:28And they present their ideas.
54:30Everybody else listens.
54:31And then I'm the last one at the end to say, hey, here's what we're going to go and work on and do.
54:36And by having them prepare in advance, having them come with the research, come with the prep, and also think about how they want to solve the problem, as opposed to it just being given to them, gives them more of an ownership mentality.
54:47And we also get the best ideas before finally making a decision.
54:53Number four, take the blame and share the credit.
54:55Jocko Willink was the commander of a Navy SEAL team in Iraq in 2006.
54:59And during a massive fight in the city of Ramadi, a terrible mistake happened for them.
55:04There was a lot of fog and confusion and American soldiers accidentally fired at each other.
55:09One soldier died and several others were badly hurt.
55:12Jocko had to stand in front of his commanding officers and explain what went wrong.
55:17Now, there are many reasons that he could have used to point the finger and deflect from him.
55:21He could have blamed the radio operator.
55:23He could have blamed the crazy fighting conditions.
55:25He could have talked about the other people involved.
55:28But instead, Jocko stood up in the meeting, looked at his bosses, and he told them that he was the only person to blame for the tragic mistake.
55:35He said he was the commander, so the failure was entirely his fault.
55:39He took the full blame for the worst thing that could happen to his team, right?
55:43Somebody died.
55:44Because he took the blame, one, his bosses trusted him to keep his job, and two, his soldiers trusted him even more because they knew he would never throw them under the bus to save himself.
55:54Later on, when the team won huge battles, Jocko refused to take the spotlight.
55:58He gave all the credit and praise to the men doing the hard work on the ground.
56:01Now, this is something I'm trying to actively do more in my business as well, because I get invited to speak at different events and help people and get the rewards and recognition, et cetera.
56:09But it's all the people behind the team.
56:11It's the editors we have, the researchers, the people doing the thumbnails and the titles and the split testing.
56:16There's so much that goes into making these videos happen that if we didn't have this awesome team,
56:22I would probably just be saving away making videos all day long, trying to figure it out all up myself.
56:26And so one of the things that I'm constantly trying to remind myself to do more of is one, recognize team more for the work that they're doing.
56:34So when I get praise, hey, that's not just me.
56:36There's a lot of people behind this as well.
56:38And then trying to show the people on the team the results of their work, because if somebody is working on a thumbnail and then we get this amazing comment on the video, it's like you were part of that, right?
56:47Like you created the thumbnail that helped reach this person that had this impact on their life.
56:54And so I'm consciously trying to do a better job of that internally as well, because I think as entrepreneurs, we're spoiled in that we get all the limelight at the front and people don't always see the connection of the work they're doing to the results that clients are getting.
57:08Rule number five, focus on just a few things.
57:11So when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was losing a billion dollars a year.
57:17Apple was making dozens of different computers and printers and software programs.
57:21The product list was so confusing that even the sales team could not explain the differences between all the models that they had.
57:28Jobs decided he had to fix this and fast.
57:31So he called his top managers into a meeting room.
57:33He walked up to a whiteboard and he drew a simple grid with four empty boxes.
57:37He wrote consumer and pro at the top.
57:40Then he wrote desktop and portable on the side.
57:43He told his team that Apple was going to stop making almost everything they were working on.
57:48Instead, they would focus entirely on making just one great computer for each of those four boxes.
57:54Many expensive projects were canceled right away and forces designers and engineers to put all of their daily energy into making just four perfect machines.
58:03That intense focus saved Apple from going out of the business and built a foundation for the company to later invent the iPod and the iPhone.
58:11To help keep things simple for us, we created what we call a win doc, and this was inspired by Lee Benson, who has a book called Your Most Important Number.
58:20I believe that's what it's called.
58:20He built a, I think, $800 million business, and he built it off of this framework.
58:24We've modified it a little bit around having one win.
58:27We call it a wildly important number.
58:29So everybody on the team has one most important number that they're shooting for and then the three drivers underneath it.
58:35So for example, back to the thumbnail idea, one person on the team is in charge of working on the thumbnails and improving the click-through rate for all the videos on our thumbnails.
58:45And we're constantly trying and she's come up with new ideas and different templates and every month she'll present her win and that's the main thing she's focused on.
58:52Where are we with our thumbnails and our click-through rate?
58:54And then the three drivers underneath that make it happen.
58:57And so there's three things that she's working on every month that hopefully improve our most important number, the win doc that she started with.
59:04So having clarity and having focus really helps people become a lot more productive and also have clarity on what they should be doing every day in their work.
59:13Number six, keep your plans simple.
59:16So Warren Buffett is one of the richest men in the world, but his investment rules are surprisingly simple.
59:22He calls it his circle of competence.
59:24He only buys companies if he can easily understand exactly how they make money.
59:29In 1972, he bought a box chocolate company called C's Candies.
59:34It's really good chocolate.
59:35He understood that people love buying chocolates for holidays.
59:37So in 1988, he started buying massive amounts of stock in Coca-Cola.
59:41He drank Cherry Coke every day, and he knew that people
59:45all over the world would keep buying Coke.
59:48And during the late 1990s, almost every investor was buying these complex internet and technology stocks.
59:53Many people called Buffett out of touch because he refused to buy them.
59:57He simply said he did not understand how those tech companies were going to make real profit.
1:00:02When a technology crash happened in 2000, those complex companies lost billions of dollars.
1:00:08Buffett kept making money because he stuck to simple businesses like candy and soda and insurance.
1:00:14So one thing we try to do is just do one small thing at a time that's inside your circle of competence.
1:00:19So even on this video as an example, I'm trying to share more of my personal stories at the beginning, why I care about this video, why I wanted to do it in the first place, and then sprinkle throughout, sharing a little bit of how we do things behind the scenes.
1:00:30And we'll test it and we'll see if you guys like it.
1:00:33If it's awesome and you enjoy it, let me know in the comments, we'll do more.
1:00:36If you hate it and say, shut up, maybe I'll do a little bit less.
1:00:39But having one clear idea that you're focusing on at a time makes it so much easier to make real momentum and progress.
1:00:47Number seven, build an unshakable daily routine.
1:00:49David Goggins believes that a tough mindset is built by doing things you hate every single day.
1:00:55Before he became a famous Navy SEAL and a distance runner, he was overweight and he was not happy.
1:01:00To change his life, he created a strict morning schedule that he refused to break.
1:01:05So every morning, Goggins wakes up around five o'clock.
1:01:08He doesn't hit the snooze button like most people.
1:01:10Instead, he gets out of bed and runs for at least 12 miles.
1:01:14He does this before he eats breakfast and before most people are even awake or getting up.
1:01:18He openly admits that he hates running.
1:01:20He runs specifically because it is difficult and because it makes him uncomfortable.
1:01:24He calls this practice putting armor on his mind.
1:01:28By forcing himself to suffer through a long run first thing in the morning, he's proving to himself that he is in control, that he's building these mental calluses.
1:01:36And when terrible things happen later in the day, he is already prepared because he won the hardest battle before the sun even came up in the morning.
1:01:43One of the things I love doing is what I call the Believe Walk.
1:01:45And I start every day, 99% of my time with my Believe Walk.
1:01:49And it's simple as this.
1:01:51You wake up, you get outside, you go for a walk or a run.
1:01:55You, within 15 minutes of being awake or outside getting sunlight on your face, even if it's cloudy, even if it's snowy, even if it's raining, you get outside and you spend 15 to 20 minutes listening to something that helps you believe in yourself more.
1:02:06So this morning I was learning about Arthur Blank, who's the founder of Home Depot.
1:02:10And by the time I come home,
1:02:13I have more belief.
1:02:14I have more energy.
1:02:15I've gotten a little bit of movement in.
1:02:16I've gotten some sunlight on my eyes.
1:02:18I've filled my head with some inspiration.
1:02:20I can borrow belief from someone who's done a little bit more than me.
1:02:23And by putting that in part of my morning routine, on the rare days that I miss it, like if I'm traveling and have to catch a morning flight, I feel it.
1:02:29I don't feel as inspired.
1:02:30I don't feel as refreshed.
1:02:32I don't feel as competent.
1:02:33I don't have as much belief.
1:02:35And so find the thing that helps you believe in yourself the most, whether it's the hard run and mental armor like David Goggins, whether it's the Believe Walk like me,
1:02:42Put that in your morning routine.
1:02:44Do it consistently.
1:02:45You will become a better leader.
1:02:49Number eight, take big risks when it matters.
1:02:51In 2002, Elon Musk made over $150 million when he sold his company PayPal.
1:02:56Most people now, what do you do?
1:02:58You take that money and you relax.
1:03:00But instead, not Elon, he put his money into building electric cars with Tesla and rockets with SpaceX.
1:03:06By the end of 2008, both companies were completely out of cash.
1:03:09SpaceX had tried to launch three rockets and all three of them crashed.
1:03:13Tesla was struggling to build its first car.
1:03:16Musk was almost completely broke.
1:03:19He had just enough money left to save one company.
1:03:22If he split the money, both companies might die.
1:03:25Musk decided he could not let either dream fail, so he gave every last dollar he had to keep both SpaceX and Tesla alive.
1:03:32He gave up all of his personal comforts.
1:03:34He even had to borrow money from his friends just to pay his own rent and buy food.
1:03:39Because he risked his entire personal fortune, Space Hatch managed to launch his fourth rocket perfectly.
1:03:44That success won them a massive contract with NASA.
1:03:47And a few days later on Christmas Eve, Tesla secured the exact amount of money it needed to survive too.
1:03:52Now, I don't do this enough.
1:03:53I don't think I take enough risks.
1:03:55I admire the leaders who take bigger and bolder risks than I do.
1:03:58I think I play it really safe most of the time.
1:04:01And I think that's where you can borrow belief.
1:04:03I think by me studying leaders and by you studying leaders, it gives you a little more belief, a little more courage, a little more boldness to go and do the thing that's in your mind, that's in your heart, because the world is waiting for you and me to show up.
1:04:18Number nine, keep moving forward after a failure.
1:04:21Sarah Blakely grew up wanting to be a lawyer just like her father was.
1:04:24She studied for the law school admission tests, but she failed it.
1:04:27She studied even harder and took it a second time, and she failed it again.
1:04:30Her dream of becoming a lawyer was getting destroyed here.
1:04:32She needed to make money, so she spent seven years selling fax machines door to door, and most people just, they closed the door on their face.
1:04:38But growing up, her father had a special rule at the dinner table.
1:04:41He would ask her what she had failed at that week.
1:04:44If she had said nothing, he would actually be disappointed in her.
1:04:47He taught her that failing just means you are trying something new.
1:04:51Because she was not afraid to fail again, she decided to try solving a simple clothing problem.
1:04:56One night she cut off the feet of her pantyhose to wear under a pair of white pants.
1:05:01She didn't know anything about making clothes.
1:05:03She just knew she had a good idea.
1:05:05She used her old failures as proof
1:05:07that she could survive the hard times and she built a new company called Spanx into a massive billion dollar plus company.
1:05:13It's why I make videos every single day because often they'll fail.
1:05:17Like maybe this video crushes, maybe this video tanks, but there's a new one that I can make again and again and again tomorrow.
1:05:22We're constantly trying new ideas.
1:05:24I get something in my head, like find the fastest way to get it out to the market.
1:05:28And if you put so much pressure on yourself that this has to be the one thing
1:05:32We tend to overcomplicate.
1:05:34We tend to be paralyzed by fear and insecurities.
1:05:37And so as quickly as you can, get your idea out of your head into the market instead of spending another six months waiting and hemming and hawing and delaying.
1:05:46When I make a video every single day, some win, some don't.
1:05:49We move on and we keep trying.
1:05:53And number 10, put the needs of the team first.
1:05:56So back to Simon Sinek, who before talked about Nelson Mandela.
1:05:59Next, he was visiting a US Marine Corps base and he noticed something interesting happening at lunchtime.
1:06:04Everyone was standing in line for food in the cafeteria.
1:06:07The newest and youngest soldiers were at the very front of the line.
1:06:10The senior officers were standing at the very back.
1:06:13Sinek asked a Marine general why they did this.
1:06:15And the general said that leaders eat last.
1:06:18Now, this isn't a formal rule that's written in the military rule book.
1:06:22It was just a deeply respected tradition that they had.
1:06:25So in combat, officers are expected to put their own lives at risk to protect their soldiers.
1:06:30They made sure that the team has everything that they need to survive.
1:06:33When they're in danger, the leader steps forward.
1:06:36When there is food or comfort or safety, the leader steps back.
1:06:39The Marines know that true leadership means giving up your own comfort for the good of the people that you lead.
1:06:45And this goes back to my definition of leadership, which is I want people to win as humans more than I want them to win with me.
1:06:51Because sometimes the best thing for them to do is not even be in the company.
1:06:54Sometimes you have to push people out of the business because they have a dream that doesn't fit inside your dream anymore.
1:07:01And them staying with you could be great for your business, but it's actually cheating them of their ability to go actually realize their own potential too.
1:07:10Become the leader the world needs you to be.
1:07:12It's easy to look at all these great leaders and think that they're just so much better than you, that they had more training or more experience or they're just extroverted or they have some magical element about them.
1:07:22But the reality is they are just ordinary people who were called to do something extraordinary.
1:07:27And you are too.
1:07:28You've got big ambitions and big dreams and people are counting on you to choose today to step up as a leader and guide them forward.
1:07:36So make people feel important.
1:07:38Work harder than anyone else.
1:07:40Listen before you speak.
1:07:41Take the blame and share the credit.
1:07:43Focus on just a few things.
1:07:45Keep your plans simple.
1:07:46Build an unbreakable daily routine.
1:07:49Take big risks when it matters.
1:07:51Keep moving forward after failures and put the needs of the team first.
1:07:55These are the leadership principles that have shaped the world but aren't taught in school and now you know them too.
1:08:01Pick one, apply it this week and go make yourself and your family proud of the leader that you are becoming because we need you to step up.
1:08:10Nobody ever taught you money and that's why it causes so much stress in your life.
1:08:15Our school system teaches us nothing about money.
1:08:18Nothing.
1:08:19It's pathetic.
1:08:20Money is just numbers in and numbers out, isn't it?
1:08:22See, that's what people get.
1:08:23thrown off, I think.
1:08:24I think that's the root of a lot of financial problems for amateurs and professionals.
1:08:28When the Finrao Foundation quiz more than 25,000 American adults on seven basic money questions, only 27% of them could get five of them right.
1:08:36If you want to be rich, forget rich.
1:08:39If you just want to have basic financial security, you have to pay yourself first.
1:08:43There's three basic parts to a financial statement.
1:08:47Income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flow.
1:08:50You can teach a monkey that.
1:08:52but our schools don't teach that.
1:08:54Understanding how money works decides what you can say yes to, what you get to walk away from, and how much of your life actually belongs to you.
1:09:02Most of us don't speak the language of finance, and I think that's on purpose.
1:09:06I think people in finance do not want you to know the secrets to wealth because that makes it easier for them to keep it.
1:09:131992 damon john was living with his mom in queens he didn't have investors no degree in business he had forty dollars to his name his mother had taught him how to sew so he spent that forty dollars on fabric and made a few dozen tie top hats i go to the store get forty dollars with the fabric i come home i give my mother the the the stuff the to sew the hats and she says i'm not sewing this you're sewing this so crap now i gotta work at this i sew the hats and then all of a sudden
1:09:38I have all these hats and only one head.
1:09:39So he took them to a street corner and sold every single one of them in a day for $800.
1:09:45That's when I went out and sold those hats in the outside on that Good Friday and I sold $800 worth of hats in one hour.
1:09:51The hats worked, so he expanded into shirts and jerseys.
1:09:54Then I would start going to the black expos where there was like a basic flea market on the road and I would try to sell shirts there.
1:09:59His mom believed in it enough to mortgage the house they lived in for $100,000 and they turned half the house into a factory.
1:10:07She said, this is all we have.
1:10:09Why don't I go out and I take a loan on the house and, you know, you manufacture, deliver the clothes and put the money back in.
1:10:15Then he took samples to the Magic Apparel Show in Las Vegas and walked out with $300,000 in orders.
1:10:21I went to the Magic Trade Show, the fashion industry, and I wrote $300,000 worth of orders.
1:10:27but here's how that business actually works the stores don't hand you money at the show they order then they pay you 30 60 90 days after you deliver meanwhile you buy the fabric up front and you have to pay the people who are sewing it so damon had three hundred thousand dollars of orders and nothing coming in for months the hundred thousand dollars from the house went into the fabric and the and the employees he got around 75 000 that the orders made
1:10:52And four months later, that money was gone and the store still hadn't paid him yet.
1:10:57So he went to a bank.
1:10:58They said no.
1:10:59He went to another bank.
1:11:00They said no.
1:11:01He went to 27 banks and every single one of them turned him down.
1:11:04I went to 27 banks.
1:11:06I got turned down.
1:11:06The orders kept coming in the whole time until he had about a million dollars of them sitting there and he couldn't fulfill them.
1:11:13His mother took what was left of their money and put an ad in the newspaper.
1:11:17It said a million dollars in orders need financing.
1:11:2133 people called.
1:11:22And then mom again comes to the rescue and says they have an idea.
1:11:26She takes out an ad in the newspaper for something like a million dollars in orders, need financing.
1:11:32And 33 people call that ad.
1:11:34One of them was a textile division of Samsung who wanted to test the urban market.
1:11:38One was Samsung's textile division.
1:11:41They agreed to pay to get his orders made, but they had one condition.
1:11:45He had to do $5 million in sales within three years.
1:11:49He did 30 million in three months.
1:11:51And by 1998, FUBU was doing over $350 million a year in worldwide sales.
1:11:56Orders aren't money.
1:11:58You can have a lot of sales and still have nothing in your bank account.
1:12:01Now, a lot of people think, okay, this doesn't apply to me because I may not have a business or I'm not making enough money yet for any of this to matter.
1:12:08You're thinking money stuff starts once there's money, but you don't need a business for any of this.
1:12:13If you get paid and you pay bills, you're already making these decisions every month.
1:12:17You're just making them without knowing the rules of money.
1:12:20And it costs you real money.
1:12:22If you're carrying a credit card balance at 20%, that's costing you today, whether or not you ever learn about what compound interest is.
1:12:29All progress begins with telling the truth.
1:12:31So here's the truth.
1:12:32You're not bad with money.
1:12:33You were just never taught about it and you can learn it.
1:12:36So here's how money actually works.
1:12:38Start to finish.
1:12:41Money is a skill, not a personality.
1:12:44So you've probably said at some point, I'm just not a numbers person.
1:12:47Only 27% of adults got five of seven basic money questions right.
1:12:51That's not about who's good with numbers.
1:12:53It's about what nobody actually teaches you.
1:12:55So being leads to doing.
1:12:57If you decide you're the person who understands money,
1:13:00You'll start opening the bank app instead of avoiding it.
1:13:02You'll start reading the statements instead of just the total.
1:13:04You've been waiting until you feel ready to look at your money.
1:13:06It doesn't work that way.
1:13:07It works the other way around.
1:13:09You look at it and then it stops being scary every time.
1:13:12So once a week for 20 minutes, you look at three things.
1:13:15What came in, what went out, and what is actually left.
1:13:18That's it.
1:13:18Don't worry yet about budgeting or giant spreadsheets with 400 rows.
1:13:22Just looking on purpose every week until it stops scaring you.
1:13:25And you know when the best time to start is?
1:13:27Right now.
1:13:28Have it right now.
1:13:30The number in there is the number whether you look at it or not.
1:13:33Looking doesn't cost you anything.
1:13:37Learn your three numbers before anything else.
1:13:39Almost every money disaster comes from mixing up revenue, profit, and cash flow.
1:13:45So revenue is what comes in.
1:13:47Profit is what's left over.
1:13:48And mixing those two up is how somebody with a busy business ends up with an empty bank account.
1:13:54The third one is cash flow.
1:13:55And this is about timing.
1:13:56And this is the one that actually kills a lot of businesses.
1:13:58You can run a profitable business and still go broke because the money you're owed arrives later than the bills you have to pay.
1:14:06Let's look at a real example.
1:14:07Let's look at a dance studio.
1:14:09On the year, the business was profitable.
1:14:11Looks great, but I pulled in his last three months, month by month.
1:14:14October was negative 5,300.
1:14:16November was positive 2,500.
1:14:18December was negative 900.
1:14:19So across the quarter, he was down 3,700 while believing he was doing fine.
1:14:24His fixed costs were about $20,000 a month before anything else happened.
1:14:2711,000 of rent, 2,000 of insurance, instructor pay, software, cleaning.
1:14:32So the only question that matters is how much he has to bring in that month to cover it.
1:14:35$20,000 keeps the door open.
1:14:37So he set his target at 25,000.
1:14:39So there's something left at the end.
1:14:40Now he's not guessing anymore.
1:14:42He has a number to target.
1:14:44You have that number too, whether you're running the company or just your household.
1:14:47Add up what has to go out every month, no matter what.
1:14:50That's the floor.
1:14:51Once you know that, you know exactly what the month has to bring in.
1:14:54And if that number scares you, that's exactly why you need to know what it is.
1:14:58You can't cut a cost that you've never written down.
1:15:00So put every expense on one page before you decide,
1:15:03anything.
1:15:03Then take what's actually in the account and divide that by your monthly floor.
1:15:07So if you got $30,000 sitting there and you need $10,000 a month, you have three months.
1:15:11That's your runway.
1:15:12With runway, you can say no.
1:15:14Without it, you say yes to anything because you need the cash.
1:15:17Somebody with six months of runway can walk away from a bad client.
1:15:21Somebody with three weeks says yes to everything, including the work that's going to make the next three weeks worse for you.
1:15:26If your runway is under three months, that's the number to fix before anything else in this video.
1:15:33Your income problem is usually a price problem.
1:15:36If you want more money and you're an owner, the fastest change isn't cutting your expenses, it's what you charge.
1:15:41And I'll show you my own numbers so this isn't just some theory.
1:15:44So my mastermind is $50,000 a year.
1:15:46My growth strategy coaching program was 15,000 for four months.
1:15:50If somebody can't do that, we have smaller versions that people can join.
1:15:53I said those in that order on purpose.
1:15:55It's called price anchoring.
1:15:56When the first number somebody hears is $50,000 and the 15 sounds reasonable and ones after that sound like a bargain.
1:16:03If I started with the lowest price first, nobody would ever pay me more than that.
1:16:06And when you do raise your price, raise it on the next new client, not the ones you already have.
1:16:11You get the new number without a single awkward conversation with existing clients.
1:16:16And you don't get paid for the hours, you get paid for the result.
1:16:19Somebody selling six coaching sessions is selling time.
1:16:22Somebody selling, I'm gonna add $200,000 to your revenue this year is selling an outcome.
1:16:27And an outcome can be worth 10 times the price of the time.
1:16:31Selling to a smaller number of people at a serious price is also just easier to run.
1:16:36Low ticket offers at 50 bucks a month needs thousands of customers, a marketing machine, and a support team.
1:16:42That's real business, but it's a much harder one to build first.
1:16:47Make a list of 50 people.
1:16:48So here's what I'd do if I had to rebuild my income starting Monday with no ads and no audience.
1:16:54I'd write down 50 names, not 5,000 followers, 50 specific people who could each spend $50,000 with me in a year or send me three people who will.
1:17:03Real names, real companies, real people who already have the money and a problem that I know how to solve.
1:17:07Then I wouldn't pitch a single one of them.
1:17:09I'd start a show and invite them on as a guest.
1:17:12An invite is the easiest yes in business because you're offering somebody 45 minutes to talk about their own work.
1:17:18You're leading with a give instead of an ask.
1:17:20And after the recording, when the relationship is warm and real, you offer them a second opinion on something they're working on at no cost.
1:17:26You look at it, you tell them the truth, you give them your actual thinking from your expert opinion.
1:17:31And some of those turn into clients.
1:17:32Some send you three clients each.
1:17:34One of my clients works with home service businesses doing 10 million or more, where a normal client is worth $40,000 or $100,000 a year, and one platform level deal is worth a million dollars a year.
1:17:44At that size, you don't need 50 wins, you need two.
1:17:47And if you don't have a business yet, this still works.
1:17:50Write down 50 people who could hire you, who could promote you, or who could hand you the opportunity that changes your entire year.
1:17:57You're not asking any of them for anything upfront.
1:17:59You're making yourself useful to 50 people who could hire you one conversation at a time.
1:18:06Your 50 will look different than mine.
1:18:08Cool, write it anyway.
1:18:09It's a single highest value document in your business and it costs you an afternoon of work.
1:18:14Start with 10 names tonight.
1:18:1510 is enough to tell you whether this list is something that can be real or not, or whether you've been just guessing about who your customer actually is.
1:18:24Pay yourself like an owner.
1:18:25So a job pays you, takes a tax and hands you what's left over, right?
1:18:29A company earns, pays its costs, and then you choose how the money reaches you.
1:18:33That choice is worth a lot of money.
1:18:35So in Canada, where I am, money left inside a corporation is taxed at roughly 19 to 20%, while a big personal salary can hit at around 50%.
1:18:44So pulling out every dollar the second it comes in is one of the most expensive habits an owner can have.
1:18:50I pay myself a small steady salary, so I have a...
1:18:52clean personal record for things like the mortgage and the rest stays inside working in the business.
1:18:57There are legitimate costs a business can carry too.
1:18:59If you work from home, a share of the mortgage interest, the utilities, the internet can be a business expense because that's generally where the work happens.
1:19:06It usually gets worked out by space.
1:19:08So if your office is one room out of eight, that's about 12% of your house.
1:19:11So about 12% of those bills is a business cost.
1:19:15Keep the receipts, let your accountant run the actual numbers.
1:19:17Your country's rules are gonna be different than mine and I am not your accountant.
1:19:21So take this to a good one, but go with the right question.
1:19:24Don't walk in asking, how do I just pay less tax?
1:19:27Walk in asking how to structure what you pay yourself.
1:19:30That's now an owner's question and mindset, and it's worth thousands or tens of thousands a year.
1:19:37Buy your time back.
1:19:39Eliminate, automate, delegate.
1:19:40So buying your time back is how you make more money.
1:19:43So do it in this order.
1:19:44Eliminate, automate, delegate.
1:19:46Eliminate first because it's free.
1:19:48So go through your week and find what nobody actually needs.
1:19:51So I used to write up minutes after every mastermind meeting.
1:19:55It took me real time.
1:19:56And one day I realized nobody was reading them.
1:19:58Not one person.
1:19:59So I stopped.
1:20:00And what happened?
1:20:01Nothing happened.
1:20:02Nobody cared.
1:20:03You've got something in your week right now that nobody is reading either.
1:20:07So write down everything that you did last week.
1:20:09The parts that nobody would miss are the parts that you cut out.
1:20:12Automate a second.
1:20:13So anything repeatable that follows the same steps every time should be handled by software or AI instead of you and can be done at 11 p.m.
1:20:21Delegate last.
1:20:22and start much smaller than you think.
1:20:24You can hire somebody for an hour a day.
1:20:25That's it, that's how I started.
1:20:27It's cheap enough that it won't hurt you if it goes badly and it teaches you the real skill.
1:20:31The skill isn't hiring, it's handing work off and then letting somebody do it their way.
1:20:35So do it in that order.
1:20:36You'll want to jump straight to delegate and then you're paying somebody to do work that you should have deleted or should be handed off to automation.
1:20:44And there's a number underneath all of this that you can actually calculate.
1:20:47Take what you want to earn in a year and then divide it by about 2,000 working hours.
1:20:51So if you want $200,000, your time is worth roughly $100 an hour.
1:20:56Now look at what you filled your last week.
1:20:58If you spent six hours on something you could hand off for $25 an hour, you spent $600 of your own time to avoid paying $150.
1:21:06So you lost $450 and it felt like you were being strategic and careful.
1:21:12then make the rest of it boring.
1:21:14So once you're earning money and keeping money, growing it should be the most boring part.
1:21:18For the first 10 years, compounding barely does anything, then it does almost everything.
1:21:23So take $10,000 growing at 5% a year.
1:21:25After 10 years, it's worth about $16,000.
1:21:28Give it 30 years, it's worth $43,000.
1:21:31The $10,000 earned around $6,000 in his first decade and around $27,000 in the last 20 years.
1:21:37The extra 20 years did that, not a bigger return.
1:21:39That's why waiting is so costly.
1:21:41The last 20 years are where the money actually grows.
1:21:43If you wait to start, those are the years that you're giving up.
1:21:46put it in an index fund that holds the whole market and just leave it there.
1:21:50You don't have to go and research individual stocks, not because you couldn't learn, but because those hours are hours you're not putting into your own business or career.
1:21:57And that's what actually changes your income and leaving it all in cash.
1:22:01Isn't actually safe prices in America are roughly 22.5% higher than before 2020.
1:22:06So money sitting still has been losing real value this entire time.
1:22:10One more thing compounding works against you too, and it works a lot faster.
1:22:13So,
1:22:14Credit card rates are sitting around 20% and new card offers are often higher than that.
1:22:19Compounding works on debt as well.
1:22:20And at 20%, it grows faster than any investment you're going to own.
1:22:24There is no investment you're going to find that reliably beats paying off a balance at 20%.
1:22:28So if you have a balance on your credit card, clear it before you invest a dollar.
1:22:32It's the best guaranteed return you'll ever get.
1:22:37You can learn this faster than you think.
1:22:38Nobody taught you any of this and it isn't your fault.
1:22:41What you do now though is up to you.
1:22:43Daymond John didn't have a finance degree when he took those hats out to that street corner.
1:22:47He learned it the hard way.
1:22:48And the worst of it came after the mortgage money ran out with about a million dollars in orders that he just couldn't fill and 27 banks saying no.
1:22:57A bird sitting on a tree isn't afraid of the branch breaking because her trust isn't in the branch, it's in her wings.
1:23:03So if you have the ability, then you have the responsibility and you have the ability.
1:23:08The stock market isn't a casino and believing that it is might be the most expensive mistake you ever make.
1:23:14Stocks are not lottery tickets.
1:23:16There's a company behind every stock.
1:23:17If a company does well, the stock does well.
1:23:20It's not that complicated.
1:23:22I have never had less than 80% of my money
1:23:25in American business.
1:23:27You can call them stocks.
1:23:28I don't want to own anything else.
1:23:2962% of Americans already own stock, according to Gallup in 2025.
1:23:34Yet most of them couldn't explain what they actually own or how it really works.
1:23:38The single most important thing to me in the stock market for anyone is to know what you own.
1:23:43I'm amazed how many people own stocks
1:23:46They would not be able to tell you why they own it.
1:23:48If you can't explain, I'm serious, you can't explain to a 10 year old in two minutes or less why you own a stock, you shouldn't own it.
1:23:5490% of the people that buy stocks don't think of them the right way.
1:23:59They think about something they hope goes up next week.
1:24:03And they think about the market as something they hope goes up.
1:24:05And if it's down, they feel worse.
1:24:07I feel better.
1:24:08So it's not even about stocks at all.
1:24:09It's about whether you spend the next 40 years trading your time for a paycheck or you finally get your money working harder than you do.
1:24:16until you have a ton of money to start investing and think, I'm not an investor.
1:24:19What you've got to do is say, rather than my Apple phone, let me own Apple stock.
1:24:23Let me own a piece of all the best companies, not just Apple.
1:24:26I've got to become an owner or I'll always be in scarcity.
1:24:29Longer term, the stock market's been the best place to be the last 10 years, the last 30 years, the last 130 years.
1:24:35But if you need the money in one or two years, you shouldn't be buying stocks.
1:24:38The first rule on investment is don't lose.
1:24:40And the second rule of investment is don't forget the first rule.
1:24:42And that's all the rules there are.
1:24:43I mean, if you buy things for far below what they're worth and you buy a group of them, you basically don't lose money.
1:24:49Let me tell you about a man named Ronald Reed.
1:24:51He wasn't a tech founder.
1:24:53He didn't invent an app.
1:24:54He wasn't born into money.
1:24:56Ronald pumped gas and fixed cars at a service station in Vermont for 25 years.
1:25:01And then he worked as a janitor at a JC Penny store for another 17 years.
1:25:06He wore old vinyl shirts and a worn coat he held together with a safety pin.
1:25:10He drove a secondhand car.
1:25:11He gathered fallen branches for his own firewood and ate simple breakfast at the local diner.
1:25:15Everyone in his small town assumed he was just barely getting by.
1:25:19Then in 2014, Ronald passed away at 92 years old and the entire town was stunned because this quiet janitor left behind an estate worth almost $8 million.
1:25:29He gave 1.2 million to the local library and 4.8 million to the local hospital.
1:25:33People could not believe it.
1:25:35How does a gas station attendant die with $8 million in the bank?
1:25:38He didn't win the lottery.
1:25:39He didn't have some secret inheritance.
1:25:41Here's what he did.
1:25:43He read the Wall Street Journal every single day.
1:25:45He spent far less than he earned and he quietly invested the difference into blue chip stocks, household names that you already know.
1:25:52Then he reinvested every dividend they paid him and he waited.
1:25:55for decades.
1:25:56While his neighbors bought the shiny new cars to look successful to their friends, Ronald was busy actually becoming wealthy.
1:26:03He understood something most people never figure out their entire lives.
1:26:07Looking rich and being rich are two completely different things.
1:26:11And the stock market was the simple tool that turned a janitor's small paycheck into a fortune.
1:26:17Now, maybe you think this only works for other people, right?
1:26:20You might be thinking you don't earn enough to invest or that the market is just way too risky right now and you'll lose whatever you put in.
1:26:27Because honestly, it feels like rolling a dice in a casino in a game that you don't understand, right?
1:26:33I hear you.
1:26:34And I think all progress begins with telling the truth.
1:26:36So here's the truth.
1:26:37Ronald Reed was never rich when he started.
1:26:40He was pumping gas.
1:26:41He never once earned a big salary in his life.
1:26:44What he had wasn't money.
1:26:45It was understanding.
1:26:46The only reason the market might feel like a casino to you is that nobody ever sat down and explained the rules of the game.
1:26:52And you can't win a game when you don't even know how it's played.
1:26:55So give me the next few minutes.
1:26:57Forget everything that's ever confused you about the stock market.
1:27:00And I'm going to explain the entire stock market
1:27:02to you like you're brand new, but very smart.
1:27:04And by the end, you'll see it the exact same way Ronald did.
1:27:10A share of stock is a real piece of a real business.
1:27:12So let's start at the very beginning, because this is where most people get lost.
1:27:16When you buy a share of a stock, you are not buying a lottery ticket or a magic number on some screen.
1:27:21You're buying a tiny piece of an actual company.
1:27:24You become a part owner of that business.
1:27:26If you own one share of Apple, you own a real slice of every iPhone they sell, every store they run, every dollar of profit they make.
1:27:33That's it.
1:27:34That's the whole idea.
1:27:35And it's simpler than anyone makes it sound.
1:27:37Now, here's a quick way to see how big a company really is.
1:27:40You take the price of one share and you multiply it by the total number of shares that exist.
1:27:45That number is called the market capitalization.
1:27:48And it's just what the public has decided the entire company is worth.
1:27:52right now.
1:27:53So when you hear that a company is worth $2 trillion, all that means is it has a lot of shares, each one owned by people just like you.
1:28:01Understand this and everything else starts to click into place.
1:28:03You are not just gambling on numbers.
1:28:05You're buying ownership in real businesses that make real things and earn real money.
1:28:10And as those businesses grow over the years, the value of your little piece grows right alongside them.
1:28:15That's the entire engine of building wealth in the stock market.
1:28:21how a company even gets on the market.
1:28:23So how does a company stock end up sitting in your app available to buy?
1:28:27It goes through something called an IPO, which stands for initial public offering.
1:28:31That's the day a private company decides to sell pieces of itself to the public for the very first time.
1:28:37And to pull it off, the company hires an investment banker
1:28:40The studies, the business, they set a starting price, and then they offer those shares to investors.
1:28:45It's not quick and it's not cheap.
1:28:47A typical IPO takes six to nine months from start to finish, and it can cost a company around 10% of all the money it raises just in legal accounting and banking fees.
1:28:56That's how big a deal going public really is.
1:28:58And once the company is public, its stock trades on a stock exchange.
1:29:02And Exchange is just a giant, heavily regulated marketplace that connects people who want to buy with people who want to sell.
1:29:08So in the US, two giants run the show.
1:29:11It's the New York Stock Exchange.
1:29:12It was founded all the way back in 1792 and has more than 2,800 mostly large established blue chip companies.
1:29:20And then the NASDAQ came along in 1971 as the world's first fully electronic market and lists over 3,300 companies packed with tech names like Apple and Microsoft.
1:29:30So when you tap that buy button, your order shoots over to one of these exchanges and gets matched with a seller in a fraction of a second.
1:29:37You don't need to yell on a trading floor to buy it.
1:29:41What actually makes a price go up and down?
1:29:43So here's the part that confuses almost everyone.
1:29:45So stay with me.
1:29:47A stock's price is not set by some boss sitting in the back room deciding what it should be.
1:29:51It's set by supply and demand by real people deciding to buy and sell the share.
1:29:56Every exchange keeps a running list called an order book.
1:29:59The highest price a buyer is willing to pay is called the bid.
1:30:02And the lowest price a seller is willing to accept is called the ask.
1:30:05When more people wanna buy than sell, those eager buyers snap up the available shares and have to offer a little more to win them.
1:30:13So the price goes up.
1:30:14When more people wanna sell, sellers start accepting lower and lower offers just to get out and the price slides down.
1:30:21That's it, that's the whole machine.
1:30:23So what gets people excited to buy or scared to sell?
1:30:27News and numbers.
1:30:28Strong company earnings, good economic reports, and exciting new products, those bring buyers running in.
1:30:34A weak quarter, scary headlines, bad economy, those sends people rushing for the exits.
1:30:40You'll hear three nicknames for this mood.
1:30:43A bull market is when prices keep rising and everyone feels optimistic.
1:30:47A bear market is when prices keep falling and fear takes over.
1:30:50And a flat or sideways market is when price just drifts and nothing dramatic happens.
1:30:56But here is the one sentence that you can tattoo on your brain.
1:31:00In the short term, prices swing on emotion.
1:31:03But in the long term, prices follow how much money the business actually earns.
1:31:07Remember that and you'll stay calm when everyone else is panicking.
1:31:14Investing is not the same as gambling.
1:31:17So let me clear up the biggest myth of all, because it's the one that keeps a lot of people stuck on the sidelines.
1:31:23There is a huge difference between investing and gambling, even though they can look similar when you're looking at it from the outside.
1:31:29Gambling is betting on a quick outcome that you can't control, like a coin flip or a hot tip that your cousin swears by.
1:31:36The day trader glued to his screen, buying and selling in minutes, trying to guess what the next little bit of wiggle room is.
1:31:42That person is much closer to a gambler.
1:31:45And the research shows the vast majority of them actually lose money over time.
1:31:49Investing is the complete opposite.
1:31:51Investing is buying real ownership in great businesses and then giving them years to grow.
1:31:56One is a sprint.
1:31:58based on luck, the other is a marathon based on patience.
1:32:02Ronald Reed never day traded a single time in his life.
1:32:05He bought, he held, and he let the years do the heavy lifting.
1:32:08So the next time someone tells you the market is just gambling, now you know the real truth.
1:32:12It's only gambling if you choose to treat it that way.
1:32:15Treat it like ownership, give it time, and the odds swing massively in your favor.
1:32:23Why you keep hearing about the S&P 500.
1:32:25Now, there are thousands of stocks out there and trying to watch every single one would drive anybody absolutely crazy.
1:32:32So years ago, smart people built indexes, which are really just scoreboards that track a big group of stocks all at once.
1:32:39The most famous one in the world is the S&P 500.
1:32:42It follows 500 of the largest companies in America and it's weighted by size, which means the bigger the company, the more it pushes the score up or down.
1:32:51In fact, just the 10 biggest companies now make up about 38% of the entire S&P 500.
1:32:57So when a news anchor says the market was up today, they almost always mean this one index moved up.
1:33:03You probably also heard of the Dow Jones.
1:33:05It tracks just 30 big blue chip companies
1:33:08And it's older and a little quirky because it's weighted by share price instead of company size.
1:33:13But here's why indexes matter so much to you personally.
1:33:16And this might be the most important point in this entire video.
1:33:19Instead of trying to guess which single company is going to win, you can simply own a tiny piece of all of them at the same time.
1:33:27When the American economy grows over the years, and historically it has, you grow right along with it.
1:33:33You stop betting on one horse and you start owning the whole race.
1:33:37When you understand it that way, it changes everything you think about investing.
1:33:44Getting paid just for holding.
1:33:46Now here's a simple piece that almost nobody explains to beginners, and it's, I think, genuinely beautiful.
1:33:50Some companies will actually pay you just for owning their stock.
1:33:54When a strong, richer company makes more cash than it needs to keep growing, its board of directors can send that extra money straight back to you, the shareholder.
1:34:03That payment is called a dividend.
1:34:05and it lands in your bank account whether the stock went up that day or not.
1:34:09There's a number called the dividend yield, which is just a yearly dividend divided by the share price, and it tells you how much you're gonna get paid just to hold the stock.
1:34:19That's exactly how Ronald Reed, the quiet janitor, built his $8 million fortune.
1:34:23He bought companies that paid dividends, and instead of spending that money, he used it to buy even more shares.
1:34:29Those new shares then paid him even more dividends, which bought him even more shares again.
1:34:35That snowball effect is called compounding, and it's the closest thing to magic that money has ever offered.
1:34:41A small snowball pushed down a long enough hill becomes an avalanche.
1:34:45You do not need to be a genius to use it.
1:34:47You just need to be patient and let time do the heavy lifting for you.
1:34:51That's a great start for anyone, no matter how small that very first dollar feels.
1:34:58why the market keeps climbing over the years.
1:35:00Now, you might be wondering if prices bounce around on a motion every single day, how does anybody actually make money?
1:35:08So here's an honest answer that hopefully changes everything.
1:35:12Zoom out far enough and the stock market has marched steadily upward for its entire history.
1:35:16Over the long run, the S&P 500 has returned about 10% per year on average.
1:35:22Not every year, some years are scary and deep in the red, but on average, decade after decade after decade.
1:35:28Now, think about what that really means.
1:35:30There's been a Great Depression, there's been two world wars, there's been oil shocks, the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial meltdown, global pandemics.
1:35:38And through every single one of those disasters, the market eventually climbed all the way back to brand new highs.
1:35:44Every crash in history so far has turned out to be temporary.
1:35:48Every new high has turned out to be permanent.
1:35:51Why?
1:35:51Because the whole thing is powered by human beings waking up every morning, trying to build, create, sell and grow.
1:35:58As long as people keep innovating, the businesses you own keep getting more valuable.
1:36:03So when you own a piece of the entire market, you are betting that humanity keeps moving forward.
1:36:09And I think that's the safest bet I know of.
1:36:11And it's paid off well for over 100 years.
1:36:16The simplest way to actually start today.
1:36:17Okay, now you know all this.
1:36:20What do you do with that without having a finance degree?
1:36:22It comes down to three simple steps and they're easier today than they've ever been in history.
1:36:27Step one is you open your brokerage account.
1:36:29So think of it like a bank account, except this one is built for buying investments.
1:36:33And most of them now charge you $0 in trading fees with no minimum balance to begin.
1:36:38You can open one right now on your phone in about 10 minutes.
1:36:41Step two, do not try to pick the next hot stock.
1:36:44Instead, buy a simple index fund or ETF that holds the entire S&P 500.
1:36:49With one single purchase, you instantly own a little piece of the 500 biggest companies in America.
1:36:55If one of them stumbles, the other 499 carry you forward.
1:36:58That's real diversification with one click.
1:37:01and it's exactly what protects regular people from disaster.
1:37:04And step three, use something called dollar cost averaging.
1:37:07That fancy term just means you invest the same set amount on a regular schedule, like $100 every month, no matter what the market is doing that week.
1:37:15When prices are high, your $100 buys a little less,
1:37:18When prices drop, your $100 automatically buys more shares when they're on sale.
1:37:22You stop trying to perfectly time the market, which nobody on earth can do anyway, and you simply start owning more of it every single month.
1:37:30And here's the part that hopefully will get you fired up.
1:37:33If you invested just $200 a month for the next 30 years at the market's long-term average, you could end up with more than $400,000, even though you only put up around $72,000 of your own money.
1:37:45The rest is the market doing the heavy lifting while you sleep.
1:37:48So don't wait until you feel ready.
1:37:49Now's the time to learn.
1:37:51You already know when the best time to start is?
1:37:53Right now.
1:37:53How about right now?
1:37:57The one thing that separates winners from quitters.
1:37:59This last one has nothing to do with numbers.
1:38:00The number one reason people lose money in the stock market isn't a bad pick or bad luck.
1:38:05It's their own emotions.
1:38:06They get greedy and buy when everyone's excited and prices are sky high.
1:38:10Then they get scared and sell when prices drop and the headlines turn all ugly.
1:38:15They do the exact opposite of what builds wealth over and over again.
1:38:18There's an image I love, a bird sitting on a branch is never afraid of the branch breaking because her trust isn't in the branch, the trust is in her own wings.
1:38:27The market will shake, it always has and always will.
1:38:29But if your trust is in your own understanding and your long-term plan, those scary drops stop frightening you and starts looking like a sale.
1:38:37While everyone else runs for the door, the calm owner quietly buys more.
1:38:41Being the kind of investor who stays steady is what leads to actually doing the steady things that make you rich.
1:38:47So stop chasing, stop panicking, and start owning.
1:38:51You now have the ability to understand this game, and if you can, then you must put it to work.
1:38:59you already understand more than most investors alive.
1:39:01Here's what I really need you to hear before you go.
1:39:03In just a few minutes, you learn what keeps most people scared, confused, and broke their entire lives.
1:39:08You are not behind.
1:39:09You're early.
1:39:10And a quiet janitor from Vermont already proved that an ordinary paycheck plus patience can quietly beat almost anyone.
1:39:17Anybody can be disciplined because discipline is just math.
1:39:21You use willpower on your goals and quit as soon as it gets hard.
1:39:25There's two kinds of discipline.
1:39:26There's internal self-discipline
1:39:28And then there's external discipline.
1:39:29So right now, if the world's kicking your butt, that's external discipline.
1:39:33And if you're self-disciplined, the world's kissing your butt right now.
1:39:36There's one thing that you absolutely require if you're going to make a big change, and that's discipline.
1:39:42See, without discipline, nothing happens.
1:39:44University College London followed people building one new habit, and the median time before it ran automatically was 66 days.
1:39:52I realized at a young age how to change myself was through discipline.
1:39:56And the military didn't teach me that.
1:39:58It was something I realized I had zero discipline, zero self-discipline.
1:40:02And I realized I have to start developing this.
1:40:04Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments, right?
1:40:09So whatever in life you envision to do, you've got to be disciplined.
1:40:13So you quit at day 20, blame yourself, say you suck, when the math says day 20 is nowhere near enough time.
1:40:20If you don't work out, you don't get a muscle, right?
1:40:23So I always tell people, there's a daily practice like priming.
1:40:26If you don't do that, if you get up and you just have no discipline whatsoever, you get no value of anything.
1:40:31Diets don't work when you don't do them.
1:40:32Exercise doesn't work when you don't do them.
1:40:34People have a love of music.
1:40:36They may do one or two or three albums, and then for some reason, they fade away.
1:40:41That hasn't happened to you.
1:40:42I think, again, it goes back to a bit of what Warren was saying as well.
1:40:46It's the discipline.
1:40:47John D. Rockefeller got his first job on September 26, 1855.
1:40:51He was 16 years old, and he was an assistant bookkeeper at a produce firm in Cleveland called Hewitt and Tuttle.
1:40:57was so proud of that day, he celebrated it every year for the rest of his life.
1:41:02He called it job day and he made more of it than his own birthday or his wedding anniversary.
1:41:08A few days after he started, he spent 10 cents on a small red notebook.
1:41:13He called it ledger a in it.
1:41:15He wrote down every single transaction of his own life, what he earned, what he spent, what he gave away.
1:41:20He wrote down every item as it happened.
1:41:23with his handwriting instead of adding it up at the end of the month.
1:41:26He was earning almost nothing at the time.
1:41:28He was a teenager on a clerk's wage and had no reason to keep books at all.
1:41:33And the amounts were tiny, but he wrote them down anyway, and he never stopped.
1:41:37Decades later, as the richest man in the country, he still had Ledger A.
1:41:42He kept it in a safe deposit box and he'd take it out and turn the yellow pages on it.
1:41:47A grown man in the 60s worth more than anyone alive.
1:41:51Looking at what a 16-year-old wrote down about a few dollars.
1:41:54Rockefeller ran Standard Oil the same way when it was refining most of the oil across America.
1:42:00Rockefeller was famous for wanting the actual figures, down to how many drops of solder sealed a can.
1:42:06When you know your numbers down to that level, you find savings that other founders missed.
1:42:11So Rockefeller's fortune started with a 10 cent notebook by writing down everything he spent money on.
1:42:16Now I know how this sounds.
1:42:17You're thinking this is gonna be joyless and that you're not a numbers person and that some people are just wired for this and you aren't.
1:42:25The good news is that discipline really is just math.
1:42:29And if you get the math right, then achieving your goals becomes automatic.
1:42:33So you're about to see six famous entrepreneurs and the one number that each of them tracked.
1:42:41Benjamin Franklin, 13 lines and a black dot.
1:42:44So Benjamin Franklin picked his number at age 20 on a boat before he'd done much with his life.
1:42:49It was 1972.
1:42:50He was sailing back from London to Philadelphia.
1:42:52He had 80 days at sea with nothing to do.
1:42:55And he decided he was going to fix his own character on a schedule.
1:42:59So he wrote out 13 virtues, temper and silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, and seven others.
1:43:06He made a little book and gave each virtue a page in a book.
1:43:09He ruled out seven columns, one for every day of the week, and 13 lines, one for every virtue.
1:43:15Each evening, he went back over his day and put a black dot in the box wherever he'd failed.
1:43:20He'd work one virtue a week.
1:43:22So 13 virtues at one a week is 13 weeks.
1:43:25So he got through the whole list 14 times a year.
1:43:28Be a better person is something that you can't measure.
1:43:31So you can't fail at it and you can't win at it either.
1:43:33Fewer dots on this page than last week is something that anyone can follow.
1:43:37So having a number also makes it easy to follow.
1:43:40One virtue at a time, seven boxes, a dot takes two seconds to put down.
1:43:44He kept that book for years and carried it around with him wherever he went.
1:43:48So pick the same thing tonight.
1:43:50Pick one thing you want to get better at this week, just one, and draw seven boxes for the next seven days.
1:43:55Mark it honestly every night.
1:43:58thing.
1:43:59You'll want to pick five things because one feels too slow to matter.
1:44:02Franklin picked just one, and that's how he became Benjamin Franklin.
1:44:09Mary Kay Ash, start with the hardest.
1:44:11So Mary Kay Ash spent 25 years in direct sales and watched men she trained get promoted over her, so she quit.
1:44:17And she sat down to write a book about what she had learned, and what came out was a business plan.
1:44:22She launched Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963 with $5,000 and her son.
1:44:26The discipline she built that company on takes about four minutes a day, and we're gonna talk about it right now.
1:44:31Every night before she stopped work, she wrote down the six most important things to do the next day in order with the hardest one first.
1:44:39The next morning, she started at the top.
1:44:42Six was a deliberately small number for her.
1:44:44Her reasoning was that a long list of things to do makes you feel beaten before you've even started, and a person who feels beaten
1:44:50doesn't do the first thing on the list.
1:44:52They do the easiest thing.
1:44:53So cap it at six things and everything on the list has to earn a place in your calendar.
1:44:58The other important part is that it's written the night before.
1:45:01So you're choosing what matters while you're calm so that tomorrow's version of you who might be tired, who might be getting messaged all day, doesn't have to choose anything.
1:45:09You just show up and you do what's on your list.
1:45:11She believed in it enough that Mary Kay printed space in those six lines in the date books, the consultant she had carried around hundreds of thousands of people running the same four minute routine and selling millions worth of products.
1:45:23I'm the same.
1:45:24way with my calendar, by the way, if I woke up and had to work out what to do today, I'm probably not going to be that productive.
1:45:30So the decision has to be already made before the day starts, which is why I put it in my calendar.
1:45:35So tonight, before you close your laptop, write six, six for tomorrow with the hardest one at the top, then do it again tomorrow night, six to six nights of that.
1:45:44And it becomes an automatic habit that pushes you towards your goals.
1:45:50Herb Kelleher, cut it to 10 minutes.
1:45:52Herb Kelleher was a lawyer, not an airline man.
1:45:54He and a client sketched out Southwest Airlines on a cocktail napkin in a San Antonio bar, drawing a triangle between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.
1:46:02Then he spent nearly four years fighting the existing airlines in court for the right to fly at all, and he argued much of it himself, because he was a lawyer, all the way to the Texas Supreme Court.
1:46:11By the time he won and got planes in the air, the company was nearly out of money.
1:46:15In the spring of 1972, Southwest had $143 in the bank and he'd already sold one of its four planes to make payroll.
1:46:23He had three aircrafts and a schedule built for four of them.
1:46:27Now anyone else would cut the schedule.
1:46:28Kelleher took a more disciplined approach and picked a number instead.
1:46:32The industry took about 45 minutes to turn a plane around at the gate.
1:46:36So you got to get everybody off, clean the plane, load it, get everybody back on.
1:46:39He decided his airline would do it in 10, 10 minutes to do all of that.
1:46:42A plane earns money in the air and loses money sitting at the gate.
1:46:46So take 35 minutes out of every stop at the gate and he gets an extra flight out of the same aircraft every single day.
1:46:52His three planes could fly the schedule built for four and the plane that he had sold to survive, he didn't need it anymore.
1:46:58So holding 10 minutes cost him things and he gave them up permanently.
1:47:02So there was no assigned seating, there was no meals, there was no transferring bags to another airline.
1:47:07There was one type of aircraft.
1:47:08So every crew knew every plane, everyone worked to make it happen, pilots included, picking up trash in the cabins.
1:47:14The idea is credited to Bill Franklin, his ground operations head.
1:47:18What Kelleher did was refuse to let it be a one-time emergency measure.
1:47:22He built a whole airline around that 10-minute number and defended it for 30 years against every consultant who wanted assigned seating and every executive who wanted a business class.
1:47:31He worked on the crew himself on the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the year.
1:47:36He worked the baggage department at Love Field with the ramp crew.
1:47:39So pick your own version of 10.
1:47:41There's one number in what you do that multiplies everything else.
1:47:45How long you take to reply to a lead, how many days from finishing a job to sending the invoice.
1:47:51Pick that number, cut it in half, name what you're dropping to get there, and then check how you're doing every week for a year.
1:48:00Andy Grove, put the number on yourself first.
1:48:03So Andy Grove ran Intel through the hardest turn in its history when Japanese manufacturers destroyed the memory chip business Intel had been built on and the company had to become a microprocessor company or die.
1:48:16In 1982, as his growth stalled, he saved the company with a number.
1:48:21He called it the 125% solution.
1:48:24Everyone was asked to work 25% more hours for the same pay to get the company through.
1:48:29Now that's a pretty brutal thing to ask your team and asking it puts you in a difficult spot too.
1:48:34So he did something specific alongside it.
1:48:37Intel ran a late list at the door, a sheet that you signed if you arrived after eight in the morning.
1:48:42One morning a reporter from the New York Times watched Andy Grove sign it because he was late.
1:48:46The chief executive in the middle of asking everyone for 25% more time was signing the sheet because he was late.
1:48:53He put himself on the list too with his name on it where his people could see that he was late.
1:48:58So really, he picked two numbers.
1:49:00125% more hours is what he asked for.
1:49:028am is what he held himself to in writing.
1:49:05Or if he was late, the whole company would see it.
1:49:07He didn't just give some big speech about commitment.
1:49:10So the next time you set a standard for other people, whether that's staff, a partner, your kids, pick the number first and put yourself on the list before anybody else.
1:49:19Then hold yourself accountable to everyone on the days where you don't follow through.
1:49:26Truett Cathy, give up one day in seven.
1:49:28So Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy picked a number that cost him money every week for the rest of his life.
1:49:34In 1946, he and his brother Ben opened a diner called the Dwarf Grill in Hapeville, Georgia on the 23rd of May.
1:49:41It had 10 stools, four tables, which is where the name came from.
1:49:45and they ran it around the clock 24 hours because that's what a new diner between a Ford plant and the Atlanta airport had to do just to survive.
1:49:52The two of them, they covered it between them on alternating 12 hour work shifts with a $6,400 loan on top of their heads.
1:50:00Truett was 25 and had just come out of the army.
1:50:03On the first Sunday after they opened, they closed.
1:50:06He said later that he'd seen what seven days a week do to people and that he and Ben needed the day off.
1:50:12So he had a 24 hour restaurant, a loan that he couldn't afford, two people covering every shift between them.
1:50:17And he took out one day in seven, which is 14% of the week at the exact moment that he needed the money the most.
1:50:24That business grew into Chick-fil-A and the Sunday off rule survived all the way through the company's history.
1:50:29One diner, then hundreds of restaurants, then thousands.
1:50:32Every one of them closed on Sunday for about 80 years now.
1:50:36Now, Sunday is one of the biggest days in fast food, but Chick-fil-A still does more sales per restaurant than chains that are open all week.
1:50:43His reason was religious and it doesn't have to be yours.
1:50:46What matters here is that he decided the number once
1:50:48in the year he could least afford it, and then he never had to have the argument with himself again.
1:50:53There was no weekly negotiation about whether this Sunday was special or not.
1:50:57Picking the number in advance is what ends the argument with yourself.
1:51:01We're not overthinking anymore.
1:51:03Then it's not about willpower or discipline.
1:51:05It's just about doing your number.
1:51:07So pick one thing you're going to hold when it's expensive and hard.
1:51:10One evening in a week with your phone in a drawer.
1:51:13One day in a month with no meetings on it.
1:51:15Put it in the calendar on a repeat schedule and treat every request to break it as already answered no.
1:51:24Dave Ramsey, pick the number you'll finish.
1:51:26So Dave Ramsey picks the mathematically wrong number on purpose.
1:51:29He went bankrupt in his 20s after building and losing a real estate portfolio, then spent the next 30 years teaching people how to get out of debt.
1:51:37His method is the debt snowball.
1:51:39So it's list every debt from the smallest balance to the largest.
1:51:42Pay the minimum on all of them except the smallest and attack that one.
1:51:46When it's gone, roll everything you were paying on it into the next smallest and then repeat.
1:51:50Now, any finance textbook will tell you that's the wrong order.
1:51:54The correct order is to attack the highest interest rate first because interest is what the debt actually costs you.
1:52:01Now, Ramsey knows this and he teaches the other way on purpose.
1:52:05His reasoning is that this was never a math problem in the first place.
1:52:09As he puts it, personal finance is 80% behavior and only 20% head knowledge.
1:52:14The optimal plan takes a long time to show you anything and a person who sees nothing for seven months quits.
1:52:20So clearing the smallest debt in six weeks gives you a win that you can feel and a person with a win, they keep going.
1:52:27So he gives up a bit of interest to buy the thing that actually matters, which is that you finish.
1:52:32So that's the limit on everything else in this video.
1:52:34Numbers are how you find the truth.
1:52:37They're not automatically how you get yourself to move.
1:52:40If the optimal plan is one that you've already abandoned three times, then it isn't the optimal plan for you.
1:52:45And a worse plan that you complete beats a better one that you quit next month.
1:52:50So there's no perfect plan.
1:52:52Whatever you write down, there are gonna be holes in it because the projection of where you're gonna go isn't reality.
1:52:57And reality is only what you ever actually get done.
1:53:00What almost everyone is missing is momentum.
1:53:02That's the most important thing.
1:53:04So when the math and your behavior disagree, pick the number that you'll still be running in 66 days to make your habit automatic.
1:53:14Pick your number tonight.
1:53:16Rockefeller started with a 10 cent notebook and every cent he spent was written in it.
1:53:20Then I showed you six more numbers from some pretty successful people.
1:53:24Ben Franklin picked 13 virtues and seven boxes.
1:53:26Mary Kay Ash picked six to-dos written the night before.
1:53:30Herb Kelleher picked 10 minutes to clean the plane when the industry average was 45.
1:53:34Andy Grove picked 8 a.m. or he signed in late on the list.
1:53:38Truett Cathy picked one day in seven days off and gave it up
1:53:42for 80 years and Dave Ramsey picks the smaller balance on purpose so you get a win before you quit.
1:53:47Every one of them chose a number instead of relying on willpower.
1:53:50They didn't get more disciplined than you.
1:53:52They just made the decision once in advance instead of every single morning having to think about it.
1:53:58The math is what tells you that you're at four attempts and not 500, that you're 20 days in and not 66 because your feelings will tell you that you've been at this forever.
1:54:07The math will tell you the truth.
1:54:09I've come to believe something about discipline having been on both sides of it.
1:54:13You blame it on discipline and whatever, that's just an excuse.
1:54:16What you actually have is a standards problem and your standard is whatever you let yourself off the hook for.
1:54:22You raise a standard by picking something small enough that you can't argue with it
1:54:26putting it in your calendar and then doing it, especially on the days that you don't want to.
1:54:31You are what you consistently do, not just what you think about.
1:54:35You can build belief through action.
1:54:37Every time you do the thing, you believe that you can keep going, especially when it's hard.
1:54:42So pick one number tonight, just one, make it small, put it in your calendar and then get to work.
1:54:49You can't just plan your way into being a different person.
1:54:51You change who you are one small habit at a time.
1:54:54The thing is, is that we've become creatures of our own habits.
1:54:58You can have any habits, any patterns of behavior that you wish.
1:55:03It's simply a question of which you decide.
1:55:05In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers tracked people hour by hour through their days and found 43% of what they did was habit, the same action in the same place almost every day.
1:55:18Habits account for 40 to 50% of our daily behaviors.
1:55:21And this is all the stuff that you're just doing without even thinking.
1:55:24If you want to get your life together, you have to start with small, boring habits to fix the loops that create 95% of our problems.
1:55:34Which means almost half of your day is already on autopilot and your weight, your bank balance and your marriage are mostly running on autopilot.
1:55:41So here's how you delete your old self and upgrade your autopilot.
1:55:45If you think about it, everything we do, almost everything we do in life is autopilot.
1:55:50Your brain is always developing habits.
1:55:52So it's happening whether you want it to happen or not.
1:55:55And the question is, can you take control of the process?
1:55:57George Foreman did it all in public and it started in a locker room in Puerto Rico in 1977.
1:56:02Before that night, George Foreman, he was the villain and he enjoyed being the villain.
1:56:05The first time around, I was angry and I just didn't care.
1:56:08I mean, people booed me and it was great because they were booing the right guy.
1:56:12I was a bad fella.
1:56:13He was the heavyweight who scowled at people, said almost nothing and scared everyone around him.
1:56:18And that was his whole persona and it worked.
1:56:19He was terrifying and he was famous for being terrifying.
1:56:23But then in March 1977, he lost to Jimmy Young in San Juan.
1:56:27I fought Jimmy Young and I just lost a fight.
1:56:29Afterwards, in the dressing room, he collapsed from exhaustion and started hallucinating.
1:56:34He describes it as a near-death experience.
1:56:44And I experienced a death in that room.
1:56:46He walked out of that room a born-again Christian, and he quit boxing at 28 years old.
1:56:50When I left that dressing room, I was screaming the name of Jesus.
1:56:53I started screaming words like, hallelujah, I've been born again.
1:56:55Then he spent 10 years doing something nobody talks about.
1:56:58What do you think the 10 years you spent away from boxing, from, what, I guess from 77 to 87?
1:57:05That's true.
1:57:0677 to 87.
1:57:0710 years.
1:57:07What did it take out of you?
1:57:09What did it take away from you?
1:57:10You know, it gave me an appreciation more than anything of life.
1:57:13It made me a better man.
1:57:15He became an ordained minister.
1:57:16He preached.
1:57:17I became a preacher, full-time evangelist with the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
1:57:21It gave me something I never had before, peace of mind.
1:57:24I like being who I am.
1:57:26He opened the George Foreman Youth and Community Center in Houston, Texas, and spent his days with kids who had nothing.
1:57:32A decade of that, out of the spotlight, doing small, repeated things that had nothing to do with who he used to be.
1:57:38He started deleting his old self.
1:57:40I dropped everything I was doing to tell the whole world that Jesus Christ is alive.
1:57:44God took me all over the country, fighting in Africa, Puerto Rico, Europe, everywhere.
1:57:51And I was just trying to exalt George Foreman.
1:57:54Now I'm going all over trying to tell them about Jesus.
1:57:56By 1987, the youth center needed money badly.
1:57:58So at 38, an age when every expert said it was ridiculous, he went back to boxing to pay for it.
1:58:04And it started one of the most famous comebacks in sports history.
1:58:07I decided right then, I know how to get money.
1:58:10I'm going to be heavyweight champion of the world again.
1:58:12That's how I was getting money for my youth center.
1:58:14And on November 5th, 1994, at 45 years old, he knocked out Michael Moore and became the oldest heavyweight champion in history.
1:58:22The winner.
1:58:22Come on, guys, let's get it.
1:58:23And once again, heavyweight champion of the world, Big Josh Paul!
1:58:37But the title wasn't even where the money was.
1:58:39A grill company put his name and his face on a small kitchen appliance, a George Foreman grill, and it sold more than 100 million units.
1:58:46In 1999, Sultan paid $137 million to buy out Foreman and two of his partners for the exclusive rights to keep his name on that grill forever.
1:58:54This thing sold over 100 million units.
1:58:58Right, and to give the Czechs some context too, you end up being bought out, I think for something like $140 million after what you had already made.
1:59:07Is it true?
1:59:08I mean, at one point Czechs were coming in for upwards of like $4 million monthly?
1:59:13$5 million.
1:59:15He'd made about $5 million for fighting Muhammad Ali.
1:59:18He made an estimated $200 million from the grill.
1:59:21Sultan didn't pay the 137 million for an angry boxer.
1:59:24Nobody was ever gonna buy a family kitchen product from the terrifying 1974 version of George Foreman.
1:59:30He deleted his old self and the man America met in 1994 was the one those 10 quiet years had built and the boxing comeback is what put him in front of everybody again.
1:59:40Now, you're not gonna collapse in a locker room in Puerto Rico, but that night wasn't what changed him either.
1:59:46The 10 years of preaching is the actual story.
1:59:48Everything that made him somebody else, everything that allowed him to delete his old self, happened in small, consistent habit changes in a church and a gym in Houston with nobody watching.
2:00:00Which brings us right back to that 43%.
2:00:02Almost half of what you do is already running on habit.
2:00:05The same thing in the same place.
2:00:06So to delete your old self like George Foreman did, you need to change the things you already do every single day.
2:00:12Here are the six things that actually rebuild who you are.
2:00:16Do them and you'll be a different person.
2:00:20Number one, decide who you are before you decide what to do.
2:00:24So you've been taught to do the reps, then you get the muscles, then you call yourself an athlete, right?
2:00:27You wait years before you'll let yourself say, I'm an athlete.
2:00:30We need to turn that around.
2:00:31Being leads to doing.
2:00:32So wake up and decide who you are today and what you actually do after that changes automatically.
2:00:38When you tell yourself, I'm an athlete,
2:00:39I'm a great dad today.
2:00:40I'm a leader today.
2:00:41It might feel ridiculous for about a week.
2:00:44Then you notice that you're doing things that you've never scheduled because an athlete doesn't skip the workout.
2:00:49A great dad shows up for family dinner.
2:00:52A leader speaks up when it would be easier to stay quiet.
2:00:55A list of to-dos gives you tasks but no reason.
2:00:59If you've decided that you are a leader today, you already know what to do when a choice shows up, including the hundreds of small choices that were never on any to-do list.
2:01:08Should you send that message?
2:01:09A leader would.
2:01:10Should you have that drink?
2:01:11An athlete wouldn't.
2:01:12You stop arguing with yourself about every little thing, which is exhausting because you've already decided who you are.
2:01:19Watch a salesperson at a Ferrari dealership.
2:01:21They don't scramble to pull up a website and prove how many races that the company has won.
2:01:25They stand there knowing that they are selling a Ferrari.
2:01:29And that means something.
2:01:30You're a Ferrari too when you decide that's who you are.
2:01:32There's a line on the t-shirt I own that I go back to constantly.
2:01:35A bird sitting on a tree isn't afraid of the branch breaking because her trust isn't in the branch, it's in her wings.
2:01:41Who you decide to be today can change the rest of your life.
2:01:44So decide who you are before you worry about deciding what to do.
2:01:51Number two, go outside before the world gets to you.
2:01:53If you took every habit away from me and let me keep just one, I keep this one.
2:01:57It's my believe walk.
2:01:58Here's how it goes.
2:01:59You wake up and get outside within the first 15 minutes of your day.
2:02:02Then walk for 15 to 20 minutes.
2:02:04Your phone comes with you for one job only, which is audio.
2:02:08No email, no messaging, no scrolling, no reacting to anybody else's demands.
2:02:12Go for your believe walk and just listen to something that makes you believe in yourself more.
2:02:17There are mornings.
2:02:18when your own belief just isn't there.
2:02:20And on those mornings, you can borrow somebody else's belief.
2:02:24You're gonna spend the next 15, 20 minutes listening to something either way.
2:02:28And if you don't choose with intention, you'll probably just pick whatever is convenient or a social media algorithm recommends.
2:02:35And now you've entered doom scrolling mode, which is probably not how you wanna start your day.
2:02:39So instead, put on a speech, a set of rules, an interview with someone who's done what you're trying to do.
2:02:44It's why I make these videos every single day on my channel.
2:02:46So there's always something new for you to put on if you want.
2:02:49And when you do that every morning, you come back from your Believe Walk with a belief that you didn't wake up with.
2:02:54And that's the whole point.
2:02:55Do that for 30 days and it'll change your life.
2:02:57A bonus tip is the second you get out of bed, put a stopwatch on.
2:03:01You need to be outside within 15 minutes.
2:03:03Go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, get changed, drink some water, feed the dogs, dance.
2:03:07Get outside.
2:03:08No more drifting or doom scrolling.
2:03:10You have now claimed your day.
2:03:14Number three, answer these three questions.
2:03:16You need something written down because your memory of who you decided to be will not last all week, especially when you get stressed.
2:03:23So sit down tonight and answer three questions.
2:03:26Who do you want to become?
2:03:27Why are you here?
2:03:27What are the things you actually want in your life?
2:03:30Spend an hour with it and give yourself permission to let yourself dream.
2:03:33For an hour, don't worry about the stresses, the mortgage, the family drama, the health issues, the responsibilities, your past trauma, and everything else that is creating pressure on you right now.
2:03:46Those are real and you will fix them.
2:03:48But just for an hour, let yourself dream again because you can't delete your old self by living in the problems of your old self.
2:03:56So three questions.
2:03:57Who
2:03:57Who do you want to become?
2:03:58Why are you here?
2:04:00What are the things you actually want in your life?
2:04:03Who you want to become is how you behave when things go wrong.
2:04:06Why you're here is the one people skip because it feels too big.
2:04:09But write down a bad answer.
2:04:10A bad answer is better than no answer.
2:04:12And on what you want, be specific, even if it's embarrassing.
2:04:15The number in your bank account, the money for selfish reasons, a break from responsibility, more friends, a weight goal, looking good naked, traveling to a specific destination.
2:04:25This list is just for you so you don't have to worry about someone else's judgments or expectations.
2:04:30Just write.
2:04:31That page is what you check yourself against.
2:04:33Not a mood, not a feeling about how the month went, a page that you can hold up next to your calendar.
2:04:38So a week later, if you're spending time on something completely different from what you wrote down, you don't need to argue with yourself.
2:04:44You just pull out the page.
2:04:45You wrote it.
2:04:46You can see the gap yourself in 15 seconds.
2:04:49Keep it to one page.
2:04:50If it's too long, you will not come back to it.
2:04:52It won't be as valuable and keep it somewhere that you physically pass, not just in some folder on your laptop.
2:04:57If you have to keep looking for it, you won't, especially on tough days.
2:05:01So keep it visible as a reminder of who you are becoming and why it matters.
2:05:06Bonus tip.
2:05:06Read that page every Sunday with a coffee and a fresh perspective.
2:05:10If the page says you're building a business and last week you had two hours on it and 14 hours of other people's meetings, the page isn't wrong.
2:05:17You aren't lazy.
2:05:19Your calendar just belongs to something else.
2:05:21And that's what needs to change.
2:05:23The goal is to catch the drift while it's still just one week wide.
2:05:26And one week is easy to fix.
2:05:27If you skip the Sunday read, you'll wake up six months later as somebody that you never chose to be.
2:05:36Number four, expect the moving cost.
2:05:37You are gonna stall out around week three and this is why.
2:05:41Changing who you are has a moving cost and it works exactly like if you're moving a house.
2:05:45The big items are easy, right?
2:05:47You know where the couch goes.
2:05:49What kills you is the small boxes of stupid things that you forgot existed.
2:05:53Same thing happens with your identity.
2:05:55Deciding is just the first part.
2:05:57then you find the bio line that still describes the old you, the link in your profile that points to something that you don't even do anymore, the autoresponder written by a person that you no longer are, the photo from four years ago, back when you were somebody else, the friends who only ever ask you about the old thing.
2:06:14None of those little things are hard to change, but all of it combined, it just slows you down and being slowed down is what makes you quit.
2:06:21So go clean out those small leftover things on purpose.
2:06:23Give yourself one hour this week and do it in one pass because spread over a month, you'll get stuck halfway and just live between the two versions of you.
2:06:30Rewrite the bio, fix the links, delete the old automated messages, change the photo, unsubscribe from the 20 emails that were meant for the person that you used to be and expect the people part to take a little bit longer because they're not trying to be difficult.
2:06:43They met a version of you that made sense to them and that is comfortable and familiar to them.
2:06:49Keep showing up as the new you.
2:06:51And most of them catch up inside a few months.
2:06:53The ones who never come around only liked you the way you were before.
2:06:57And that's worth knowing.
2:06:58And you don't need to announce any of this either.
2:07:00Announcing invites a debate about whether you've really changed or not.
2:07:04Just answer differently when they ask what you're up to and set a new standard for what you will no longer do.
2:07:13Number five, set a baseline for yourself.
2:07:15So you do the believe walk for nine days.
2:07:16Day 10, you sleep through your alarm.
2:07:17And instead of walking on day 11, you decide that the streak is broken, so the whole thing is off.
2:07:22And you restart properly on Monday, right?
2:07:24Monday becomes the first of the month.
2:07:25The first of the month becomes never.
2:07:27Sleeping in wasn't the real problem.
2:07:29What stopped you for good was deciding that you had blown it.
2:07:32So instead, set a baseline that you'll almost never miss.
2:07:35Not the perfect version, the version that you can do with a fever, on four hours sleep, on a day that started with some emergency.
2:07:42If the Believe Walk is 15 minutes, your baseline is walking to the end of the street and back with one song on.
2:07:48If it's the gym, the baseline is walking in and doing one set.
2:07:52If it's writing, the baseline is writing one paragraph.
2:07:55Write the baseline down next to the real version tonight before you actually need it.
2:07:59You can't set a fair baseline at 6 a.m. when you feel terrible, right?
2:08:03That version of you is looking for a reason to skip and it'll take any reason that you give it.
2:08:08Hit the baseline and you kept the promise.
2:08:10That's the rule.
2:08:11The baseline isn't there to make progress.
2:08:14Some mornings it does nothing at all for your fitness or for your business.
2:08:17And it still counts because what it protects is
2:08:20is the promise you made to yourself.
2:08:22You're building evidence that you're somebody who does what they said they do.
2:08:27And evidence is built by showing up again, especially when it's hard.
2:08:34Number six, sit down with yourself.
2:08:36I wanna give you two more exercises and both of them take five minutes.
2:08:39The first one, imagine a park bench.
2:08:41You sit down on it next to yourself from five years ago.
2:08:44You get five minutes with them and then they're gone.
2:08:46What do you tell them, younger you, to change their life?
2:08:49For me, it would be that I need to believe more in myself.
2:08:52Write your sentence downward forward, then realize that you're not just talking to the younger version of you.
2:08:58Whatever you tell them, younger you, you still need to hear it right now.
2:09:01Future you is also saying that same message to you right now.
2:09:0580-year-old Evan is telling me to believe more in myself too right now.
2:09:08The second one, and I got this from Jeff Bezos, is picture yourself at 80 looking back at this exact week.
2:09:13What do you regret?
2:09:15What did you never try?
2:09:16Then make the choice today that the 80-year-old version of you would be proud of.
2:09:20Both of these work because they get you out of the current version of yourself for a minute.
2:09:24And the current version is the one making all of your excuses.
2:09:28So do the park bench exercise tonight.
2:09:29Do the 80 year old test before any decision that scares you.
2:09:32They cost you nothing.
2:09:33And the answer you get is almost always the one you really needed to hear.
2:09:36It's a thing that deep down you probably already knew, but your fear was preventing you from hearing it.
2:09:44Your old self was a rough draft.
2:09:45George Foreman spent 10 quiet years preaching in Houston and running a youth center for kids who had nothing.
2:09:51That's how he deleted his old self.
2:09:53And years later, the whole world trusted him in their kitchen.
2:09:56Nobody heard from him for those years or cheered him on.
2:09:59He built it himself.
2:10:00You can do the same.
2:10:01Tomorrow morning, do your Believe Walk, 15 minutes outside, and make a decision about who you are today.
2:10:07Your purpose comes from your pain, and the old version of you is the one who carried it.
2:10:12You've carried it long enough.
2:10:14Now go be the person who does something with it.
2:10:17Outworking the people around you still works and it's never been easier to do.
2:10:22You need to work super hard.
2:10:23And I mean, if you do simple math, say like, okay, if somebody else is working 50 hours and you're working a hundred, you'll get twice as done as much done in the course of a year as the, as the other company.
2:10:32If you don't work hard every single day, you will perish.
2:10:35Gallup found that full-time American employees worked 42.9 hours a week in 2024 down from 44.1 in 2019.
2:10:43I begin each morning by doing my highest priority work first.
2:10:47I have a very clear priority list and I start from the highest priority work first.
2:10:52Before I even get to work, my day is already a success.
2:10:55If it's not in the calendar, it won't get done.
2:10:58It's not really a priority, right?
2:11:00You have to make sure that it's in your plan.
2:11:03It's in your day.
2:11:05That gap is 62 hours a year, and that's a new skill, a finished project, or the side business that you keep saying that you're going to start one day.
2:11:12You have to prioritize your time really carefully.
2:11:14The way that I've found to stay focused, be productive, and not get distracted is, one, by auditing my time so that I know, one, what I'm supposed to be working on, and then, two, that at the end of any task, I'm going to reflect back on how long it took me, how much time did I spend on task.
2:11:31So here's how a true workaholic actually works.
2:11:34Jensen Huang runs NVIDIA, and he works seven days a week.
2:11:37The reason goes back to 1996 when the company came one chip away from dying.
2:11:42You're getting ready to ship the Riva 128.
2:11:45And you guys have about six months of cash left.
2:11:49In 1993, three engineers sat in a Denny's in San Jose and started a company with $40,000.
2:11:54Jensen Huang was one of them.
2:11:56Chris Malachowski and Curtis Priam were the other two.
2:11:58They made graphic chips.
2:11:59And for the first three years, they made them badly.
2:12:02At the time that we started the company in 1993, we were the only consumer 3D graphics company ever created.
2:12:08By the time that we realized we had gone down the wrong road, Microsoft had already rolled out DirectX.
2:12:13It was fundamentally incompatible with NVIDIA's architecture.
2:12:1630 competitors have already shown up, even though we were the first company at the time that we were founded.
2:12:21So the world was a completely different place.
2:12:24By 1996, the company was nearly dead.
2:12:26Huang laid off about half the company.
2:12:28Everyone left had one ship to bet on and not enough money to build it the normal way.
2:12:33Our backs were up against the wall.
2:12:34We were running out of time.
2:12:35We're running out of money for a lot of employees running out of hope.
2:12:38So here's how building
2:12:39A chip normally goes, you design it, you pay a factory to make a small batch, physical samples come back, you test them, you find the mistakes, you fix the design, and you pay for another batch.
2:12:49The plan that companies normally go through, which is, you know, build the chip, write the software, fix the bugs, tape out the new chip, so on and so forth.
2:12:57Every round costs months and money.
2:13:00Nvidia could afford one production run and nothing after that.
2:13:04So Huang made a bet that should have killed the company.
2:13:07He spent a big piece of the money he had left on an emulator, tested the entire chip on that machine and never held a real sample in his hand.
2:13:16We also made the decision to use this technology called emulation.
2:13:19Then he ordered the full production run on a chip that nobody on earth had even touched.
2:13:24If the emulator was wrong about one detail, there was no second batch and there was no company.
2:13:29You decide to do the entire testing in simulation rather than ever receiving a physical prototype.
2:13:37You commission the production run sight unseen with the rest of the company's money.
2:13:41So you're betting it all right here on the Riva 128?
2:13:44No.
2:13:44The chip was the Riva 128.
2:13:46And by the time it shipped, there was enough cash left to cover one more month of salaries.
2:13:52It sold a million units in four months.
2:13:55NVIDIA lived.
2:13:56Was everybody telling you you were crazy?
2:13:58No, everybody was clear we had no shot.
2:14:04Not doing it would be crazy.
2:14:06Because otherwise, you might as well go home.
2:14:08You're going to be out of business anyways.
2:14:09Well, it worked.
2:14:10Yeah.
2:14:10And for years afterward, Huang opened his presentations by telling the room that the company was 30 days from going out of business.
2:14:18He still works like a man who believes that.
2:14:21He has around 60 people reporting directly to him, and he holds no scheduled one-on-ones with any of them.
2:14:26NVIDIA's leadership team is 60 plus, 60 people.
2:14:30Yeah.
2:14:31And they all report to you?
2:14:33Yeah, they all report to me.
2:14:3460 direct reports.
2:14:3560 direct reports, yeah.
2:14:36I don't do one-on-ones.
2:14:37I give you feedback right there in front of everybody.
2:14:40Here's how he describes his week.
2:14:42I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep and I work seven days a week.
2:14:46Now, that's a true workaholic, but he isn't just putting in more hours.
2:14:50He set his whole company up so that those hours count.
2:14:53And right about now, you might be thinking, OK, that sounds like the fastest way to burn yourself out.
2:14:56And I hear you.
2:14:57And it doesn't necessarily have to be how you run your company.
2:14:59But when somebody joins me, I ask them a question.
2:15:02How many hours do you want to be working and how many are you working right now?
2:15:05Then I write a contract to match it.
2:15:08Some of the people on my team work 25 hours a week.
2:15:10Some are at 70.
2:15:11Both work fine because the hours aren't what usually breaks people.
2:15:15The wrong work is.
2:15:16Hours on work that matters make you good.
2:15:19hours on work that doesn't matter will wreck you, whether you're at 25 or 70 hours a week.
2:15:23And Jensen Huang isn't spending his week on boring paperwork.
2:15:26He built a company with no managers between him and the information.
2:15:30So he spends his hours deciding, making important choices.
2:15:33You can set up your week the same way.
2:15:35So here's how a real workaholic spends a day.
2:15:40Split your week into building days and meeting days.
2:15:43So my week splits into building days, maker days, and manager days, which are meeting days.
2:15:48So Wednesday and Fridays, those are my maker days.
2:15:50Wednesday is my creator day and Friday is my CEO day.
2:15:53And on both days, I don't have anything booked.
2:15:56Monday and Thursday,
2:15:57Those are my manager days.
2:15:58I stack them with calls.
2:15:59Tuesday is a maker day on paper as well.
2:16:02It's my YouTube day.
2:16:02So nothing gets booked on it either.
2:16:04Here's why I'm strict about it.
2:16:05One 60 minute call dropped in the middle of a building day does not cost you 60 minutes.
2:16:11It costs you almost the whole day.
2:16:12You spend the morning knowing that it's coming.
2:16:14So you don't start any deep work.
2:16:16Then you spend the hour on the call doing the thing.
2:16:18Then you spend the afternoon getting your head back.
2:16:20And by the time you're thinking clearly again, it's already 4 p.m. And you've built nothing.
2:16:24A meeting day and a building day are two different jobs.
2:16:28On a meeting day, you're reacting, you're answering, you're trying to make decisions quickly with people.
2:16:32On a building day, you go down into one thing and stay there for four hours.
2:16:36Try to do both in the same morning and you'll be wiped out by Friday with nothing finished.
2:16:40So pick one day this week
2:16:41And close it.
2:16:42Start with whatever you can book off and then grow it to a whole day.
2:16:44Move every call off it, even the good ones.
2:16:47Then take everything you moved and jam it into one other day.
2:16:50So I use two meeting days for meetings because of the size of my team and what I'm working on.
2:16:54But start with one.
2:16:55And on that day, you might get through six, seven conversations in a row.
2:16:57And you'll still have the next whole day free to actually go build something.
2:17:00Even half a day is a good start.
2:17:01Then you grow it.
2:17:04Give every day one job.
2:17:06So inside those days, I give each one a single theme.
2:17:09So Monday is my team day.
2:17:10And I spend the whole day mentoring and talking to the people on my team.
2:17:13Tuesday is my YouTube day.
2:17:14I'm filming this video on a Tuesday.
2:17:16Wednesday is my creator day, my project day.
2:17:18Thursday mornings, I do my group trainings.
2:17:20And Thursday afternoons, I save for friends and friends of friends and podcasts.
2:17:24Friday is my CEO day.
2:17:26The reason why I have different days for different things is switching.
2:17:28Every time you jump from a sales call to writing a video to a hiring decision to support emails,
2:17:34It takes a while to get your head into the new thing every single time.
2:17:37So you feel busy all day and you finish your week with like four and a half things finished.
2:17:42A theme day means you never have to catch up.
2:17:45So on Tuesday, I'm not taking calls.
2:17:46I'm not taking meetings.
2:17:47I'm just locked in on my YouTube, my
2:17:49Tools are open, my camera's ready to go, my head is already there, and I'll film a stack of videos one Tuesday that keeps my channel fed for at least a week.
2:17:56I can only do that because I'm not bouncing between things, and the bouncing is what creates most of the chaos and mental fatigue.
2:18:02So look at last week and count how many different kinds of work you touched on your worst day.
2:18:06If it was more than three, that's your problem.
2:18:09You're not lazy, the problem is you're just switching too much between different kinds of tasks.
2:18:12then name your own day.
2:18:14So for me, Monday's people, Tuesday is making YouTube videos, like whatever fits your business, write it somewhere where you will see it.
2:18:19And when somebody asks for a Tuesday sales call, tell them Thursday works better.
2:18:24They will almost never be offended.
2:18:25That's the part that most people worry about and it hardly ever happens.
2:18:28So they book on the Thursday and they start treating your calendar like it's worth something because you treated it that way to begin with.
2:18:35The people who take your protected days almost always are not doing it on purpose.
2:18:39They take it because it's available.
2:18:41So stop making it available.
2:18:42You made it available.
2:18:43And listen, you're going to have real emergencies.
2:18:45So you can decide right now what the rule is going to be for emergencies.
2:18:47For me, I'm training my team.
2:18:49So they know if you are calling me on a Tuesday, if you are interrupting me, you're sending me something.
2:18:53I'm in the middle of making videos.
2:18:54So it better be important.
2:18:55And people respect that boundary.
2:18:57And there are almost no emergencies that ever pop up.
2:18:59So the first few weeks, that's going to be a little bit harder.
2:19:02People are used to your old calendar.
2:19:04They might test a new one a handful of times.
2:19:07The more you hold steady, this is my calendar.
2:19:09The more they respect it.
2:19:13shrink the block and move it off your morning.
2:19:15Every meeting I run is scheduled to end five minutes early.
2:19:18So a 25 minute call instead of 30, a 55 minute, instead of an hour, that gives me five minutes to go to the bathroom, to get some water, to get my head straight before the next thing starts.
2:19:27So you never know when you're going to have to go pee and a day with no gaps is also where you can feel frazzled at the end.
2:19:33That's the smaller version.
2:19:34And here's the bigger one.
2:19:35I used to check a whole list of websites every morning and it would take me a while to get through all of them.
2:19:40It felt very productive.
2:19:41It also was the first thing I did every day, which my best hours went to reading other people's work.
2:19:46So I write an experiment.
2:19:47I condensed it into half an hour at one o'clock every day.
2:19:50And in that half hour, I have to get it done.
2:19:52And look at that.
2:19:53I get it done in half an hour instead of 90 minutes in the morning.
2:19:56If you give a task two hours, it usually takes two hours.
2:20:00So you can start doing this today.
2:20:01You can take the task that is eating your mornings.
2:20:03You can cut the time by two thirds, move it to the afternoon, set a timer.
2:20:07When the timer goes off, you're done, whether you're finished or not.
2:20:11The first two days, it'll feel a little bit rushed.
2:20:13By day three, you'll notice the work was never actually filling that whole block anyway.
2:20:17Your mornings are your best hours, so don't spend them on small stuff.
2:20:22Kill the work before you speed it up.
2:20:23So I have a formula I use for this and the order is the whole thing.
2:20:27It's eliminate, automate, delegate.
2:20:29That is the order.
2:20:30It's a particular order.
2:20:31Eliminate comes first and almost nobody starts there.
2:20:34You'll buy software to speed up a task that you should have just deleted.
2:20:38Now you're paying every month to do something that doesn't actually matter or you'll hand it to a person, which is worse because now somebody's week is filled with work that was never worth doing in the first place.
2:20:49So eliminate first, then automate what's left.
2:20:52A tool can automate, whether it's a software, whether it's AI, et cetera.
2:20:55This isn't only a business framework, it's a framework for anything in life.
2:20:58Anytime you're feeling stressed out or overwhelmed, that feeling is a signal that you need to go eliminate a few things from your life.
2:21:05Not to work faster, to have and do less.
2:21:08All progress begins, I think, with telling the truth.
2:21:10And the truth is usually that a third of your calendar is there because it was just there last month.
2:21:15So here is the assignment.
2:21:17Open last week's calendar and find the recurring thing that you'd be a little embarrassed to defend, right?
2:21:22The report, the check-in, the updates that people are not replying to.
2:21:25Skip it on purpose.
2:21:26Say nothing.
2:21:27If a week goes by and nobody notices, skip it again.
2:21:30Do that for a month and it's gone for good.
2:21:34One number, three drivers and nothing else.
2:21:37So I have a brain that wants to chase everything, right?
2:21:39Left alone, I'll start six projects on a Sunday.
2:21:41So I keep one Google sheet and I have what I call my wildly important number.
2:21:46At the top, there's one number.
2:21:48It's not a feeling.
2:21:49It's not a theme.
2:21:49It's a number.
2:21:50And under it, there are exactly three drivers and each one is also a number.
2:21:54Something I can count at the end of the week to see my progress.
2:21:58That's the whole document.
2:21:59Three is the limit and it matters.
2:22:01Two, when you're not really running a business, you're running a project.
2:22:03Four or more and you just have no priorities at all.
2:22:05You just have a list of to-dos that almost never get done.
2:22:07So to put it in a rhythm that makes it work, every time I'm checking in with my team, that number gets updated before the check-in.
2:22:14So you can see in a glance whether it's moving.
2:22:16But the number itself and the three drivers underneath it, they don't get swapped out because some shiny idea showed up on a Tuesday afternoon.
2:22:23The numbers hold for months.
2:22:24So if a driver turns out to be wrong, you change it deliberately, not because you're just in a mood to change things.
2:22:29That saved me more time than any app I've ever bought.
2:22:32The new project isn't the problem.
2:22:34The problem is the old one sitting half finished for six weeks while you play with this new idea.
2:22:39So write your number down tonight.
2:22:42Write your three drivers underneath it.
2:22:44Then look at tomorrow and find the block that doesn't move your number or any of your three drivers.
2:22:49There's always one.
2:22:51That's the block that goes away.
2:22:55Do three a day while they do one a week.
2:22:57So here's where your extra hours now should go.
2:22:59When I was young and part of an agency, I was the least skilled person on the team.
2:23:03That's not me being humble.
2:23:04I was measurably the worst.
2:23:06So I did homework.
2:23:07Everyone else was putting out a video a week.
2:23:09I made three a day, every day, including weekends.
2:23:11One in the morning, one at lunch, one at dinner.
2:23:13And my agent was looking at them, giving me feedback.
2:23:16So if we count what that does in a single week, I got 21 reps and a piece of feedback on each video I made.
2:23:22The person next to me got only one rep over a month.
2:23:24That's 84 corrections against their four.
2:23:26I didn't catch up to them because I was smarter.
2:23:29I wasn't.
2:23:29I was not naturally more gifted.
2:23:31I caught up because I'd been wrong 84 more times than they had.
2:23:34And every one of those got
2:23:35fixed.
2:23:36So that's what the extra hours are for.
2:23:37More attempts at the thing that you're trying to get better at.
2:23:40And after every attempt, somebody tells you what you did wrong.
2:23:43So find your rep.
2:23:44If it's a salesperson and you're taking calls, if you're making videos, then it's videos.
2:23:48If you write, then it's pages.
2:23:50Count how many you did last week, then do that many in a day and let the quality drop a little while you do it.
2:23:55You'll be embarrassed by attempt number seven and you'll get better by attempt number 15 and find out how it went as fast as you can.
2:24:00If nobody tells you what you got wrong, then you're not getting better.
2:24:02You're just practicing the wrong things.
2:24:04You're just staying busy.
2:24:07Start your day before the work starts.
2:24:09So every workaholic I admire protects the first stretch of the day and spends it with intention on purpose.
2:24:14So back to Jensen Huang from Nvidia, he gives his time to his email stack.
2:24:18I give mine to a walk.
2:24:19So I call it the Believe Walk.
2:24:21It's one word, hashtag, and it's three steps.
2:24:24Step one, wake up and get outside fast.
2:24:26Put a stopwatch on.
2:24:27I'm out the door within 15 minutes.
2:24:29That part matters more than the walking because the alternative is picking up your phone.
2:24:33And the second you do that, you're starting to hand your life, your day to whoever happens to be overwhelming you with email or Instagram.
2:24:39step two is the walk right fresh air move for 20 to 30 minutes some mornings i'll throw a rucksack on extra weight but that's that's an extra point you don't have to do that you have to get outside and in step three listen to somebody who's already done what you're trying to do so i'll put on steve jobs or howard schultz you're borrowing their belief until yours show up so this is not about trying to have some productivity hack it's about who you are when you sit down i think being leads to doing so do your believe walk get outside walk put something in your ears it helps you believe in yourself more
2:25:08And if you're tight on time, 10 to 15 minutes is enough.
2:25:10That's the baseline.
2:25:11And it's more than enough to change your life.
2:25:13You have 15 minutes.
2:25:16Make the information come to you.
2:25:18So working hard only pays off if you hear about problems quickly.
2:25:21Hwang has about 60 people reporting straight to him.
2:25:24Like I said, no scheduled one-on-ones, nobody filtering what reaches him.
2:25:28When he gives feedback, he does it in front of the group.
2:25:30So everyone hears the same reasoning at the same time and he never has to say it 60 times.
2:25:35And every morning he reads a stack of short emails from people all over the company, each one listing the five things that matter most to them right now.
2:25:43He gets through about a hundred of them.
2:25:46Look at what that design does.
2:25:48A normal CEO waits two weeks and sits through four meetings to hear the same thing.
2:25:52He reads it first thing in the morning in five lines.
2:25:55So he spends his day deciding and not just chasing people all day for updates.
2:26:00You can build that at any size.
2:26:01If you have a team, you can cancel your next status meeting and ask for five lines instead.
2:26:06If you work alone, you're still losing time just hunting for information.
2:26:10It's spread across all of your different apps.
2:26:11Every extra app you have to open is another place to go looking and lose time.
2:26:15one inbox, one task list, one document where the plan lives.
2:26:19If you have to check four apps to find out what you're supposed to do today, you'll spend your best hour just finding it out and getting nothing done.
2:26:25A bird sitting on a branch isn't afraid of the branch breaking because her trust isn't in the branch, but it's in her wings.
2:26:31So build the system so the information reaches you and then trust yourself to decide.
2:26:38You have more room than you think.
2:26:40So nobody gets more hours in a day than you do, right?
2:26:42The people who beat you, worked the hours everyone else gave up, and they spend them on fewer things.
2:26:48So close one day.
2:26:50Name your days.
2:26:51Cut a block by two-thirds.
2:26:52Delete the reports nobody reads.
2:26:54Pick your number.
2:26:55If you can do that, then you must.
2:26:57Where you are next year comes down to what you do with this week.
2:27:01Most people think getting rich requires a lucky break, but it's actually just about gaining specific knowledge.
2:27:07When you start a business and you start to talk about somebody, you're never in a vacuum with no competition unless you're just extremely lucky.
2:27:13In fact, nearly 80% of millionaires are entirely self-made, meaning they built their wealth through learned skills rather than inherited money.
2:27:22Once you lock this in, you can completely rewire your family's history and live entirely on your own terms.
2:27:29Naval Ravikant wasn't born rich.
2:27:31He came to America as a poor immigrant.
2:27:33He worked in catering and delivering Indian food just to get by.
2:27:36But he didn't just wait for luck to happen.
2:27:38He read every book he could get his hands on and learned about tech and investing.
2:27:42I read everything.
2:27:42I read every magazine.
2:27:43I read every
2:27:44pictograph or every book or every map he figured out that if he built specific knowledge in a brand new industry he could create massive value he eventually founded angel list and invested early in massive companies he built incredible wealth because he owned a piece of the business not because he rented out his time obviously we want to be wealthy and we want to get there in this lifetime without having to rely on luck a lot of people think making money is about luck it's not
2:28:11You can do the exact same thing if you stop relying on hope and start building your mind.
2:28:16Right now, you might be thinking that Naval, he just he got in early and all the good opportunities are gone.
2:28:21You think you missed the boat because you don't live in Silicon Valley or know how to code, but that's not right.
2:28:27It's completely wrong.
2:28:28Every single day, new industries are born.
2:28:30The internet is bigger than ever, and specific knowledge is 100% free to learn if you actually look for it.
2:28:37You don't need to invent the next angel list to get wealthy.
2:28:39You just need to follow a few core steps to build your own leverage, which I'm about to show you right now.
2:28:47Combine average skills to become unstoppable.
2:28:50Now you probably think you need to be the absolute best in the world at one specific thing to get wealthy.
2:28:55You watch top athletes or these brilliant inventors and just assume their level of mastery is the only way up, but it's actually not true.
2:29:03You don't need to be in the top 1% of anything to build massive wealth.
2:29:06You just need to build a talent stack.
2:29:09So the concept is simple, but incredibly powerful.
2:29:12Instead of trying to be the best at one skill, you become very good at three or four different skills, and when you combine them, you become completely unique.
2:29:21Look at the creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams.
2:29:25He openly admits he isn't the greatest artist in the world, he isn't the funniest comedian, he isn't the smartest business expert, but he's in the top 25% of all three of these categories.
2:29:36when he combined his decent drawing skills with his good sense of humor and his corporate business knowledge he created a comic strip that made him millions of dollars you can do the exact same thing right now so take out a piece of paper and write down the skills you already have maybe
2:29:52You know a little bit about coding.
2:29:54Maybe you're decent at writing emails.
2:29:56Maybe you understand basic graphic design.
2:29:58Individually, those skills won't make you rich.
2:30:01But if you can combine them, you can build a highly profitable web agency for small business.
2:30:05You have to stop feeling bad about not being a genius at one thing.
2:30:08Your specific knowledge comes from the unique combination of your average skills.
2:30:12When you stack them together, nobody can compete with you because nobody has your exact background.
2:30:18You become completely impossible to replace.
2:30:21And to find out which skills you should actually focus on, you have to look at what you truly love doing, which leads us directly to the most important rule of all.
2:30:32Turn your deepest pain into your ultimate purpose.
2:30:34So you have to follow your passion.
2:30:36You never win doing work that you hate.
2:30:37Society often tells you just to get a safe job and pay the bills.
2:30:40But if you don't love what you do, you'll quit the second things get hard.
2:30:44Entrepreneurship is incredibly difficult.
2:30:46You'll face days where everything goes wrong.
2:30:48And if you're only doing it for the money, you will quit.
2:30:50The people who actually build massive wealth are obsessed with their craft.
2:30:55They do the work even if they weren't getting paid.
2:30:58Now I've learned this on my own journey.
2:30:59I believe that your purpose comes from your pain.
2:31:02You want to help the person that you used to be.
2:31:04When I was 19 years old, I had a business.
2:31:07I struggled immensely.
2:31:08I was making $300 a month.
2:31:10I felt totally alone, defeated.
2:31:12Because of that pain, my massive passion became helping other entrepreneurs believe in themselves more too.
2:31:16That's why I do this channel.
2:31:18I want to save others from the struggles that I went through.
2:31:20That passion drives me to make videos every single day.
2:31:23And so you can look at your own life and find what you're deeply passionate about.
2:31:26What's a problem that you have overcome yourself?
2:31:29What's a topic that you can read about for 10 hours straight without getting bored?
2:31:33When you follow those passions, it stops feeling like work.
2:31:35You'll happily put in long hours that are required to become a master.
2:31:39You'll outwork everyone else because they're doing it just for a paycheck and you're doing it because it's a purpose.
2:31:44And once you find that passion, the next step is getting your foot in the door with the right people.
2:31:51Work for free to build massive leverage.
2:31:53You might feel stuck right now because you don't have a big network or a fancy resume yet.
2:31:58You think nobody will give you a chance because nobody knows who you are.
2:32:01The solution is called the permissionless apprenticeship.
2:32:04You don't need to wait for a jobless to open up.
2:32:06You don't need to ask for permission to show what you can do.
2:32:08You just need to find someone successful who you want to learn from.
2:32:12Identify problem that they currently have.
2:32:14Solve that problem for them completely for free.
2:32:17Let's say you want to be a video editor for a massive creator.
2:32:20Don't send them a desperate email asking for a job.
2:32:23Instead, take one of their long form videos and edit it into five amazing short clips.
2:32:28Send the finished files directly to their inbox.
2:32:30Tell them they can use Eclipse for free and that you just wanted to add value to their brand.
2:32:34If you do this for 10 different successful people and your stuff is good, you'll get a response.
2:32:39You're proving your worth before you ever ask for a dollar.
2:32:41The strategy works because successful people are incredibly busy.
2:32:44They don't have time to interview unproven beginners.
2:32:47But when you deliver a massive value upfront without asking for anything in return, you immediately stand out.
2:32:52You build instant trust.
2:32:54And worst case scenario, they ignore you, but you still got the experience of doing the work.
2:32:58Best case scenario, they hire you, mentor you, and introduce you to their incredibly powerful network.
2:33:04So stop waiting for someone to open a door for you, build your own door, and walk right through it.
2:33:10To actually build wealth from this though, you have to change how you charge for your work.
2:33:17Stop renting out your time.
2:33:19You're never gonna get rich by renting out your time.
2:33:20Even if you earn $200 an hour, your earning potential is completely capped because there are only 24 hours in a day.
2:33:26So if you stop working, the money stops flowing.
2:33:28To build real wealth, you must decouple your time from your income.
2:33:32You have to own equity.
2:33:33Equity means you own a piece of a business or an asset that works for you while you sleep.
2:33:37Wealth is like having a computer program running on a server that serves customers around the world while you're on vacation.
2:33:43So you need to transition your mind from being a wage earner to being an owner.
2:33:48Now,
2:33:48Right now, you have the greatest tools in human history to build leverage without needing millions of dollars to get started.
2:33:55Code and media are the ultimate forms of permissionless leverage.
2:34:00You don't need anyone's permission to write a piece of software.
2:34:03You don't need anyone's permission to record a podcast, a YouTube video, or write a blog post.
2:34:08Once you create these assets, they can be duplicated and consumed by millions of people at zero extra cost to you.
2:34:13You can record a video once and it can earn you money for the next 10 years.
2:34:16That's true leverage.
2:34:18So look at your current life and ask yourself, how can you turn your daily efforts into these permanent assets?
2:34:24Stop trading hours for dollars and start building systems that compound your wealth automatically.
2:34:30Now that you have assets building wealth, you have to protect your most valuable invisible asset.
2:34:37Play the long game with your reputation.
2:34:39Everything in life that's actually valuable comes from compound interest.
2:34:42This applies to money, but it heavily applies to your relationships and your reputation.
2:34:47So if you want to build massive wealth, you have to play long-term games with long-term people.
2:34:51There are a lot of people who try to get rich quick by scamming others or burning bridges for a quick payout, right?
2:34:56Quick buck.
2:34:57They might make a few dollars today, but they completely destroy their future.
2:35:00When you play the long game, you realize that your reputation is your most valuable asset.
2:35:05When people know that you're honest, you're reliable, you're incredibly good at what you do, opportunities will magically start flowing to you.
2:35:13You won't have to chase deals because the deals, they start to chase you.
2:35:17This concept is closely tied to the Lindy effect.
2:35:20The Lindy effect states that the longer something has survived, the longer it'll continue to survive.
2:35:25The same goes for reputation.
2:35:27If you spend 10 years building a spotless track record of delivering massive value, that reputation becomes completely bulletproof.
2:35:34People will trust you blindly because you've proven yourself over a massive time.
2:35:39So you have to stop looking for just the immediate gratification.
2:35:42Stop worrying about making a quick buck all the time this month and start focusing on who you're going to become over the next decade.
2:35:49Treat every single client, every partner, every customer with massive respect.
2:35:53Under promise, over deliver.
2:35:54You've heard that, right?
2:35:55Every single time.
2:35:56When you let your reputation compound over years and decades, you'll eventually build this empire that nobody can tear down because your reputation doesn't get torn down.
2:36:05And then the next step is learning how to keep the money that you actually make.
2:36:11Keep your wealth completely invisible.
2:36:13Most people don't actually want to be wealthy.
2:36:15They just want to spend a lot of money to look wealthy to other people.
2:36:19They buy the fancy cars and massive houses, the designer watches just to prove and show off their status.
2:36:26But playing the status games is actually the fastest way to destroy your wealth.
2:36:29True wealth is actually what you don't see.
2:36:31Wealth is the sports cars you decided not to buy.
2:36:33Wealth is the expensive dinner that you skipped.
2:36:35Wealth is the money sitting in investment accounts, quietly compounding and growing your ultimate freedom.
2:36:40You have to realize that investing money is the gap between the ego of what you want to look like and your actual income.
2:36:47When you stop caring about what strangers think about you, it becomes incredibly easy to save and invest your money.
2:36:52Look at Ronald Reed, he was a janitor, gas station attendant who lived a very quiet life.
2:36:56When he died, people were shocked to learn that he'd amassed $8 million.
2:37:01He did it simply by investing what he earned and quietly over decades making it happen.
2:37:06The highest dividend that money pays is the ability to control your own time.
2:37:10Having money in the bank gives you the freedom to walk away from a terrible boss.
2:37:14It gives you the flexibility to take on a risk or a new business venture without facing total financial ruin.
2:37:21You can't achieve that level of freedom if you're constantly spending every dollar you earn to impress people that you don't even like.
2:37:27So keep your lifestyle completely grounded even when your income skyrockets.
2:37:31But none of this matters if you never take the very first step.
2:37:37Take immediate action on your ideas.
2:37:39The final piece of this puzzle is massive, relentless execution.
2:37:43You can read every book, study every billionaire, master all the psychology in the world.
2:37:47It means absolutely nothing if you don't take action.
2:37:50Most people stay completely stuck because they overthink everything.
2:37:54They wait for the perfect business plan, the perfect camera equipment, the exact right moment to launch.
2:37:59That perfect moment is never gonna come.
2:38:02You have to start making moves today, exactly where you're at with exactly what you've got.
2:38:06You build confidence by taking action, not by sitting around and thinking about it.
2:38:11So think about the smallest possible step that you can take right now.
2:38:15If you want to start your podcast, awesome.
2:38:16Don't worry about buying an expensive microphone.
2:38:19Pull out your phone, hit record, start talking.
2:38:21your first attempt, it's gonna be terrible.
2:38:23It's gonna suck and that's perfectly fine.
2:38:25You have to expect to suck at the beginning.
2:38:27I hated my first 350 videos.
2:38:29I couldn't even watch them back, but I just kept going.
2:38:31And it took 700 videos before I finally felt a little bit proud of my work.
2:38:35You build momentum by pushing through the initial discomfort.
2:38:38Momentum is your superpower.
2:38:41It's your superpower in wealth creation.
2:38:43Once you get the ball rolling, it becomes so much easier to keep moving forward.
2:38:47You learn by doing, not by over planning.
2:38:49The market will give you feedback, you adjust your strategy, and you'll get slightly better every single day.
2:38:54So stop waiting for someone to come and rescue you.
2:38:56Stop waiting for permission to chase your dreams.
2:38:58Your entire life will shift the second you commit to taking relentless, imperfect action every single day.
2:39:06This is the exact moment you need to step up and claim the life you actually deserve.
2:39:13Your time is right now.
2:39:14So you've got everything you need inside of you right now to make this happen.
2:39:18Stop letting fear dictate the size of how far you can go.
2:39:21Step into your power and prove to yourself what you can achieve.
2:39:25You're fully capable of building an incredible life.
2:39:28Law number one.
2:39:29Money follows value.
2:39:30Money isn't random.
2:39:31It's the reward for solving problems.
2:39:33Wealth is built not on what just excites you, but on what you create that serves others.
2:39:38The more value you deliver, the more dollars will chase you.
2:39:41It's that simple.
2:39:42Think of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or Sarah Blakely.
2:39:45They got rich by fixing pain points for millions.
2:39:48You want money?
2:39:49Stop chasing cash and start chasing problems to solve.
2:39:53When you help enough people get what they want,
2:39:55you'll get what you want.
2:39:57That's a law of the universe.
2:39:58Law number two, adopt the wealth mindset, not a lottery mindset.
2:40:02Getting rich starts in your head.
2:40:03If deep down you believe money is evil or not for people like me, you'll unconsciously push it away.
2:40:09Newsflash, luck won't
2:40:10Save you, 70% of lotto winners blow it, and a third end up bankrupt because they didn't change their mindset.
2:40:16Self-made millionaires, on the other hand, think differently.
2:40:18They believe they deserve success and can learn whatever skills wealth requires.
2:40:23So the excuses like, I'm not smart enough, I came from nothing, and replace that with, why not me?
2:40:29Train yourself to see money as a positive force, a tool you can master.
2:40:33Your mind is your biggest asset or liability.
2:40:36Choose to make it an asset.
2:40:38Law number three, purpose over profit, but money in your top five.
2:40:42Money itself isn't the end goal.
2:40:43Freedom, impact, and purpose are.
2:40:45I always say making money is great.
2:40:47It has to be in your top five.
2:40:48It just can't be number one.
2:40:50If you chase only dollars, you'll burn out or compromise your values.
2:40:54Instead, chase a mission and use money as motivation.
2:40:58Think of companies like Patagonia or Tesla.
2:41:00Mission driven, but they still prioritize revenue to fund that mission.
2:41:04Here's the balance.
2:41:05Care more about your impact in your income, but respect money enough to plan for it.
2:41:10Money in your top five means you price your product right.
2:41:12You monetize your skills.
2:41:13You track your revenue because you know profit powers your purpose.
2:41:18When your why is strong, the money follows.
2:41:20And when the money comes, you push it back into your why.
2:41:24That's how world-changing businesses and lives are built.
2:41:27Law number four, pay yourself first.
2:41:29The first bill you pay each month should be to yourself.
2:41:31Before rent, before groceries, invest in your future.
2:41:33Siphon a chunk of every paycheck into savings or investments immediately.
2:41:37This habit needs to become a non-negotiable.
2:41:39Why?
2:41:40Because wealth doesn't come from what you make.
2:41:42It comes from what you keep and grow.
2:41:44It's the classic millionaire habit.
2:41:46Nearly half of self-made millionaires save 20% or more of their income from day one.
2:41:51That requires discipline and delayed gratification, skipping some short-term treats so future you can win.
2:41:58Psychology proves this.
2:41:59The famed marshmallow test showed that kids who delayed gratification ended up more successful in life.
2:42:07The same goes for money.
2:42:08So automate your savings.
2:42:10Treat it like a tax that you owe yourself.
2:42:12If you can't pay yourself, you'll always be paying someone else.
2:42:16Law number five, live below your means.
2:42:18I know this sounds basic, but it's amazing how many people ignore it.
2:42:22Don't spend all you earn, and definitely don't spend more than you earn.
2:42:25Hello, credit cards.
2:42:26The rich stay rich by living like they're broke.
2:42:28The broke stay broke by acting rich.
2:42:30Studies of millionaires show they're frugal.
2:42:3364% live in modest homes, 55% buy used cars, nearly all of them vacation cheaply, and 84% refuse to gamble with their money.
2:42:42They aren't clipping coupons for fun.
2:42:44They just know that every dollar wasted is a dollar that can't work for them.
2:42:48So yes, reward yourself occasionally, but don't inflate your lifestyle with your income.
2:42:53Grow into your wealth.
2:42:54Don't blow it.
2:42:55As your earnings climb, keep your expenses in check.
2:42:58This creates a gap, the golden gap, that you can invest to generate real wealth.
2:43:03Law number six, avoid bad debt, leverage the good debt.
2:43:06There are two kinds of people, those who pay interest and those who earn interest.
2:43:11To get rich, you want to be the second kind.
2:43:13Credit card balances, payday loans, buying a Ferrari on finance, that's bad debt.
2:43:18It will chain you down.
2:43:19The average credit card interest will eat your future alive.
2:43:23So here's your rule, never borrow to buy depreciating crap.
2:43:26Use debt only when it's a tool to acquire an asset that pays you back.
2:43:30In simple terms, an asset puts money in your pocket, a liability takes money out of your pocket.
2:43:36Your home, for example, can be a liability if it's draining cash.
2:43:40Meanwhile, a rental property or a business loan can be good debt if managed well because they generate income.
2:43:45The rich strategically use other people's money to multiply their wealth, but they respect the risks and have a plan to pay it off.
2:43:52Be very real with yourself.
2:43:54If the thing you want to buy won't earn or save you money, don't go into debt for it.
2:43:59Law number seven, let compound interest work.
2:44:02Start investing now.
2:44:03Time is your greatest ally or your worst enemy in building wealth.
2:44:06Every day you delay investing is cash left on the table.
2:44:10Why?
2:44:10Compound interest.
2:44:11The snowball effect of money earning on top of itself.
2:44:14Albert Einstein supposedly called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world.
2:44:18He who understands it, earns it.
2:44:20He who doesn't, pays it.
2:44:22So here's a quick example.
2:44:23If you invest $1,000 at 10%, you'll earn $100 a year.
2:44:24Not bad.
2:44:25But if you reinvest at $100 next year, you earn 10% on 1,100, not just 1,000.
2:44:27That's 110.
2:44:27And now you have 1210.
2:44:34Keep rolling that over and in 10 years that $1,000 turns into nearly $2,600 without adding a penny.
2:44:40All from reinvesting on compounding.
2:44:42Start earning and it's like planting an orchard instead of a single tree.
2:44:46Don't wait for enough money to invest.
2:44:48Even $50 a month invested now beats $500 a month started 10 years later.
2:44:53Small seeds become giant oaks, but you must plant them now.
2:44:57Law number eight, create multiple streams of income.
2:44:59One stream of income is one point of failure.
2:45:01If that stream dries up, job loss, one client leaves, industry shifts, your financial life sinks.
2:45:07The wealthy know this.
2:45:08So they build boats with multiple engines.
2:45:10It's often said the average millionaire has seven streams of income.
2:45:13And while your number may
2:45:14vary.
2:45:14The idea is diversification.
2:45:16It could be a side hustle, investments, rental incomes, royalties, a second business, you name it.
2:45:21In one study, 65% of millionaires had at least three income streams and nearly a third had five or more.
2:45:28So start with one strong income.
2:45:29This is where most people get it wrong when they're thinking have multiple streams of income.
2:45:33You don't have seven all from the beginning because then you will be, you will diversify your energy out of any real wealth.
2:45:39So you start with one strong income, master it,
2:45:42And then add another.
2:45:43Each new stream is a layer of security and a force multiplier for your wealth.
2:45:47Importantly, build active income.
2:45:50So business, career, and passive incomes, which is investments and assets, do them together.
2:45:54Don't rely on a single paycheck or a single customer.
2:45:57Spread your bets and create income while you sleep.
2:45:59Line number nine, make money while you sleep.
2:46:01That's passive income.
2:46:02If you earn only money when you're personally working, you'll never escape the grind.
2:46:05You need income that doesn't require your constant presence.
2:46:09Warren Buffett said it best.
2:46:10If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.
2:46:15And that's not hyperbole, that's reality.
2:46:17Passive income can come from investments like stocks, index funds that pay dividends, rental properties, or from systems that you create, a business that runs without you, or online products, or royalties from a product.
2:46:29It usually takes hard work upfront to set up these passive streams, so don't think it's free money.
2:46:34But once they're running, they free up your time.
2:46:37Even having a little extra cash trickle in every month gives you breathing room.
2:46:41So imagine waking up to find you earned $100 overnight.
2:46:45Now imagine $1,000 or $10,000.
2:46:47The goal is to decouple your time from your money.
2:46:50Start building something today that pays you tomorrow, next week, next year.
2:46:55That's real financial freedom.
2:46:57Law number 10, never stop learning.
2:46:59The moment you think you know it all, your bank account will prove you wrong.
2:47:02The wealthy are students of wealth, constantly reading, attending seminars, picking up new skills.
2:47:0988% of rich people devote at least 30 minutes a day to learning through reading.
2:47:14They read biographies, business books, industry news, not gossip, not junk.
2:47:20They treat their mind as a million dollar asset that compounds just like money.
2:47:24If you want to get rich, adopt a growth mindset, invest in courses, find mentors, seek feedback.
2:47:30My core philosophy is believe.
2:47:31Believe that you can learn and improve.
2:47:33And I try to live this.
2:47:34In the early days, I studied Bill Gates and other successful people to model their strategies.
2:47:39And that learning led directly to my big breakthrough.
2:47:42So ask yourself daily, what can I learn today that will make me more valuable tomorrow?
2:47:47Every new skill or insight is money in the bank, just a bank you can't see yet.
2:47:52Stay curious and humble.
2:47:53The more you learn, the more you earn.
2:47:55Law number 11, your network is your net worth.
2:47:58You can't do it alone and you shouldn't try.
2:48:00The people you surround yourself with will make or break your success.
2:48:04Jim Rohn famously said, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
2:48:09So take a look around.
2:48:10If your five closest friends are broke, negative and complacent,
2:48:14Guess where you're headed?
2:48:15Successful people consciously build success circles.
2:48:19They hang out with other winners.
2:48:21One study found the rich intentionally seek optimistic, goal-oriented peers.
2:48:27Why?
2:48:27Because environment matters.
2:48:29Conversations with high achievers will spark ideas, opportunities, and higher standards in you.
2:48:36On the other side, toxic, pessimistic people will drag you down to their level.
2:48:40This doesn't mean cut off loved ones.
2:48:42It means spend time strategically.
2:48:45Find mentors who've achieved what you want.
2:48:46Join entrepreneur groups, mastermind calls, online communities of goal getters.
2:48:51Upgrade your network and you'll upgrade your net worth.
2:48:53It's practically automatic.
2:48:55Remember, birds of a feather flock to the bank together.
2:48:58Law number 12.
2:48:59Don't do it alone, ask for help and mentorship.
2:49:02So pride and secrecy keep people poor.
2:49:04I learned this the hard way.
2:49:05In my startup days, I was making $300 a month and was too embarrassed to tell anyone how much I was struggling.
2:49:09I thought I had to fake success or go solo and it nearly broke me.
2:49:14The truth is successful people ask for help all the time.
2:49:16They hire coaches, they seek mentors, they gather teams of advisors.
2:49:20Ego can be expensive.
2:49:22If you're too proud to admit what you don't know, you will cap your growth.
2:49:26In fact, 82% of small businesses fail due to cash flow problems, often because the founder didn't seek financial advice or delegate when they should have.
2:49:36Don't let that be you.
2:49:37Find someone who has been where you want to go and learn from them.
2:49:41And if you're in a crisis, reach out instead of suffering in silence.
2:49:45Don't do it alone because you'll probably fail.
2:49:47You'll quit along the way because it's too devastatingly lonely.
2:49:51The right help at the right time can save your business and your sanity.
2:49:54Success is a team sport, so play it that way.
2:49:56Law number 13, reinvest your profits.
2:49:58So when money does start coming in, it's tempting to celebrate.
2:50:01I made it.
2:50:01Let's spend.
2:50:02But the wealthy think differently.
2:50:04They plow money back into growth.
2:50:06Warren Buffett insists on this.
2:50:08When you first make money, you may be tempted to spend it.
2:50:11Don't.
2:50:11Instead, reinvest the profits.
2:50:14Whether it's profits from your business or returns from stocks, feed it back into your wealth machine.
2:50:19This is how small ventures become empires.
2:50:22I did this with my first company.
2:50:23When we landed our first deal, I didn't go buy a car.
2:50:26I poured in the scale in the business, which later allowed me to sell and truly cash in.
2:50:30Reinvesting is how Buffett turned a pinball machine side hustle into a stock portfolio.
2:50:35Each round of profits bought more assets, which produced even more profit.
2:50:39It's a cycle.
2:50:39Earn, invest, earn more.
2:50:42On the flip side, if you spend all you make, you kill the compound growth and go back to zero.
2:50:46So celebrate your wins, yes, but then put that money back to work.
2:50:50Delay the gratification a little longer
2:50:52and watch your wealth snowball.
2:50:54Law number 14, take calculated risks and embrace failure.
2:50:58No risk, no reward.
2:50:59It's a cliche, but it's true.
2:51:00Getting rich will require you to step out of your comfort zone.
2:51:03So start that business, invest in that property, pitch that big client, even when there's no guarantee of success.
2:51:09In fact, you will screw up along the way, and that is okay.
2:51:1263% of millionaires admit they took risks and failed at least once in business.
2:51:17But here's the difference.
2:51:19They didn't see failure as the end.
2:51:21It was just data.
2:51:22They learned and kept moving.
2:51:24As the saying goes, winners are not afraid of losing, but losers are.
2:51:27Failure is part of the process of success.
2:51:30People who avoid failure also avoid success.
2:51:33And that was one of the hardest lessons for me.
2:51:34I was afraid to look stupid, to ask dumb questions, to lose money on a strategy that might not work.
2:51:39But every failure, eating beans for lunch for years, failed product launches, interviews at Tank that taught me something,
2:51:46that eventually led to a huge win.
2:51:48So don't be reckless, do your homework and take calculated risks.
2:51:52But when you feel fear, don't let it stop you.
2:51:54Often that fear is a sign that you're on the right track.
2:51:58Bet on yourself and if you fall, get back up smarter.
2:52:01Law number 15, be patient, wealth takes time.
2:52:04We live in a world of instant gratification, but building real wealth is a long game.
2:52:07Too many people try one thing for six months, don't become millionaires, and then quit or jump onto the next fad.
2:52:14Don't fall for the get rich quick trap.
2:52:16The truth is, most millionaires get rich slowly.
2:52:19In one study, 80% of millionaires were over 50.
2:52:22It took them decades of consistent effort to hit seven figures.
2:52:26Saver investors took an average of 32 years to reach millionaire status.
2:52:29Even fast track entrepreneurs took 12 years on average.
2:52:32The media loves to highlight the 22 year old crypto billionaires, but that's the exception, not the rule.
2:52:37Embrace the process, commit to the long haul.
2:52:39This doesn't mean it has to take 30 years for you.
2:52:41The timeline can accelerate with smart decisions, but it won't happen overnight.
2:52:45Set longer term goals and keep grinding.
2:52:47Remember,
2:52:48Compound interest needs time to work its magic.
2:52:50That's law number seven.
2:52:51Each of you persist, your knowledge, your network, and your assets compound too.
2:52:54Patience isn't just a virtue in wealth building, it's a strategic advantage.
2:52:58Law number 16, leverage.
2:53:00Multiply yourself through others.
2:53:01Here's a harsh truth.
2:53:03You will never get truly wealthy trading only your own time and effort.
2:53:06There are only 24 hours in a day and only one of you.
2:53:09The rich scale up by leveraging other people's time, their talent, their resources.
2:53:13That means hiring, delegating, automating, building a team and systems that make money even when you're not personally doing the work.
2:53:20So I learned this and run my YouTube channel.
2:53:21For years, I was in front of the camera.
2:53:23I was behind the camera.
2:53:25I was doing everything myself and I was hesitant to spend money on help.
2:53:29I grew up without a ton of money and maybe I was too cheap at first, but once I hired my first part-time editor, boom, I went from one video a week to one a day, which then brought in more money.
2:53:38Leverage.
2:53:39Similarly in business, the moment I started bringing in partners and employees who are smarter than me in their areas, our growth started to explode.
2:53:46According to research, over 80% of millionaires rely on a team of smart people, attorneys, accountants, advisors, to help achieve their vision.
2:53:53So ask yourself, what tasks or expertise can you leverage from others to scale up?
2:53:58It could be as simple as hiring a virtual assistant for $10 an hour to free you up to make $100 an hour, or partnering with someone who has skills or contacts that you lack.
2:54:06Yes, it can cost money to hire good people, but not hiring when you need to is far costlier.
2:54:11Build your dream team.
2:54:12Law number 17, take action.
2:54:14Speed beats perfection.
2:54:16The money goes to those who do.
2:54:18not those who wait.
2:54:19One thing I see holding entrepreneurs back is analysis paralysis.
2:54:22They plan and polish and procrastinate and opportunities pass them by.
2:54:27The wealthy have a bias for action.
2:54:29They do the best research they can, then pull the trigger.
2:54:32Jeff Bezos calls it the bias for action and credits much of Amazon success to it.
2:54:37Warren Buffett calls unnecessary waiting thumb sucking.
2:54:40and pushes himself to make decisions swiftly when he has enough facts.
2:54:44The point is, you can't steer a parked car.
2:54:47You have to start moving.
2:54:49Want to invest in stocks?
2:54:50Open the account and put in a small amount today.
2:54:53Learn as you go.
2:54:54Have a business idea?
2:54:55Launch a simple version of it right now, even if it's not perfect.
2:54:58you will refine through real world feedback.
2:55:01Money loves speed, not reckless, stupid speed, but the momentum that comes from decisive action.
2:55:07Action precedes clarity.
2:55:08So the law is do it before you feel 100% ready.
2:55:11An average plan executed today beats a perfect plan never executed.
2:55:16Start, stumble, learn, adjust today.
2:55:19Let's start.
2:55:19Law number 18, know your numbers, track your money.
2:55:22You wouldn't drive a car blindfolded, right?
2:55:24So don't drive your finances that way too.
2:55:26Ignorance is extremely expensive.
2:55:28Wealthy people are keenly aware of their numbers.
2:55:31They know their income, their expenses, their profit margins, their tax liabilities, the investment returns, at least the key figures at all times.
2:55:38You need to become the CFO of your own life.
2:55:40You make a budget, update it regularly and review where your money is going.
2:55:44you can use apps or spreadsheets chalk on a board whatever works for you but track it if you're an entrepreneur this is even more critical because poor cash flow management kills 82 percent of small businesses when i started i used microsoft money software to track my business finances and my early accounting was a total disaster until i learned how to prioritize it and once i did i found ways to save on taxes and get unexpected refunds that boosted my cash flow
2:56:08That's the reward for paying attention.
2:56:09The law here is what gets measured gets managed.
2:56:13When you track, you naturally start optimizing.
2:56:15You spot wasteful spending.
2:56:16You find opportunities to save or invest and you avoid nasty surprises.
2:56:21So open those bank statements, know your credit score, set a weekly date with your money.
2:56:26Yes, I'm serious.
2:56:27Your bank account should never be a mystery.
2:56:29Law number 19, give and you shall receive.
2:56:32This might sound more spiritual, but it's hard no success strategy too.
2:56:36Generosity breeds prosperity.
2:56:38The wealthiest people I know are givers.
2:56:41They donate to charities.
2:56:42They mentor others.
2:56:43They create opportunities for the people that are around them.
2:56:46Why?
2:56:47Because what you put out into the world comes back to you multiplied.
2:56:50Zig Ziglar said it best.
2:56:52You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
2:56:57And it's true.
2:56:57When you operate from a mindset of service and generosity, you build an army of allies.
2:57:02People open doors for you.
2:57:03Clients refer to you.
2:57:04Your reputation starts to shine.
2:57:06Even on a practical level, generosity expands your network and skills.
2:57:10So volunteer in an organization and meet influential people.
2:57:12enter someone and you often learn from the teaching.
2:57:15Also, giving keeps you humble and hungry, reminds you that wealth has a purpose to improve lives, including your own.
2:57:21And here's a little secret.
2:57:22Giving money away can actually make you feel wealthier.
2:57:25It breaks the fear that money is scarce.
2:57:28Of course, be smart.
2:57:29Don't give beyond your means.
2:57:31but make generosity a line item in your life.
2:57:33It could be money or time or knowledge.
2:57:36Nearly three of four millionaires in a study volunteered at least five hours a month and many actively mentored others.
2:57:43Coincidence?
2:57:43I don't think so.
2:57:44The more you give, the more you grow.
2:57:46It's a law.
2:57:47And law number 20, stay humble and stay hungry.
2:57:50Money is a moving target.
2:57:51The game doesn't end when you hit some magic number.
2:57:53To not only get rich, but to stay rich, you must keep your ego in check and your drive alive.
2:57:57Success can be a sedative the moment you think I've made it.
2:58:01You start to slip.
2:58:01Remember Bill Gates' warning, success is a lousy teacher.
2:58:04It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
2:58:07So don't fall for that trap.
2:58:08The greats, the Buffetts, the Oprahs, they never stop learning.
2:58:12They never stop pushing.
2:58:14They act like beginners, even when they are masters.
2:58:17For me, the belief game never ends.
2:58:19Despite all the subscribers and the business, I still wake up as a student.
2:58:22I still want to get better every day.
2:58:24So celebrate your wins, yes, but stay curious and grounded.
2:58:27Keep setting the next goal, setting the next challenge.
2:58:30And importantly, stay grateful.
2:58:32Humility also means recognizing the role that others have played and some luck in your success.
2:58:37It keeps you from doing something dumb and losing it all out of arrogance.
2:58:41The hungry, humble entrepreneur will run circles around the complacent one who's resting on his laurels.
2:58:47Money has a way of disappearing from those who take it for granted.
2:58:51So no matter how well you're doing, adhere to these laws.
2:58:55Keep growing, keep giving, and keep believing.
2:58:58A quick final thought.
2:58:59You've just learned 20 laws, but knowledge alone won't change your life.
2:59:02action will pick one law today and start living it.
2:59:05Maybe it's setting up that savings account.
2:59:07Maybe it's calling that mentor.
2:59:08Maybe it's finally launching that product.
2:59:10Remember, every big success is just an accumulation of small, consistent wins.
2:59:15You showing up for this, absorbing these strategies that already sets you apart from the masses who are still looking for easy answers.
2:59:21And so I want to acknowledge you for being here right now and investing in yourself.
2:59:25Now get out there and do the work.
2:59:27Apply these laws and build the wealth and life that you deserve.
2:59:30You're not broke because of the economy or bad luck.
2:59:32You're broke because you keep stepping into the same 10 money traps.
2:59:36While other entrepreneurs are quietly getting rich by avoiding these mistakes, you might be repeating them without even realizing it.
2:59:41And if you don't fix this, a year from now, you'll still be stressed about money, hustling hard with nothing to show for it, wondering why you're not winning.
2:59:50Just look at the proof.
2:59:50Ever hear about lottery winners going bankrupt?
2:59:53Roughly 70% of big lottery winners end up broke within a few years.
2:59:57Jack Whitaker won a $315 million Powerball jackpot and lost it all in a few years.
3:00:03He even said the money destroyed his life.
3:00:06Why?
3:00:07Because money isn't the answer if you haven't fixed the habits that keep people poor.
3:00:12If you got a million dollars today, but carried on with the same bad behaviors, that money would vanish.
3:00:16I had to learn this myself the hard way.
3:00:18When I was 19, I had my first company and was making $300 a month.
3:00:22Imagine working more than full time and not being even able to afford rent.
3:00:26That was me.
3:00:26I felt worthless.
3:00:27I hit my breaking point at a family event and I told my business partner I quit.
3:00:31I broke down crying, snot nosed, uncontrollable tears because I felt like I just didn't have what it takes.
3:00:38But the very next morning, I woke up and something snapped.
3:00:42I realized I hadn't earned the right to quit because I hadn't tried everything.
3:00:45I thought, has someone figured this out before?
3:00:48And it turns out Bill Gates had built a software company from nothing.
3:00:51So I decided to model how he did it.
3:00:53I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started learning from someone who'd already won.
3:00:57And you know what?
3:00:58Within a short time, I closed a $13,500 deal and jumping from $300 a month to a 13.5K check.
3:01:05In my head, I felt like a millionaire, but more importantly, I had proof that if I changed my approach, I could change my results.
3:01:12I went from almost giving up to finally getting momentum.
3:01:15Now, maybe you're thinking, Evan, it's not me.
3:01:17It's just it's a tough market or I already know this stuff.
3:01:20wrong that thinking is a trap by itself i've coached thousands of entrepreneurs and the ones who stay broke always point fingers at the economy their competition anything but themselves the winners they take responsibility they look in the mirror and they fix what's holding them back so drop the excuses at least for this video and really listen even if you think you've heard it all i guarantee there's at least one trap on this list you're caught in right now and if you could eliminate it it could mean the difference between scraping by and actually building
3:01:50So let's do this.
3:01:52Here are 10 money traps that will keep you poor and how to break out of each one.
3:01:59Top number one, scarcity mindset.
3:02:01This is the fear of spending money or taking risks, the impulse to hoard every dollar.
3:02:06You tell yourself you can't afford to invest in growth, so you do nothing.
3:02:10And ironically, that guarantees you'll always be short on money.
3:02:14Here is your truth.
3:02:15Money is a tool, not a trophy to tuck under your mattress.
3:02:19If you're too afraid to use it, you'll never have more of it.
3:02:21Think about it.
3:02:22If a farmer refuses to plant seeds because he's afraid of losing them, he'll never get a harvest.
3:02:27It's the same with your money.
3:02:28Sitting on it due to fear is a sure way to stay broke.
3:02:32Successful entrepreneurs have an abundance mindset.
3:02:34They invest in themselves and their business confidently.
3:02:38Even when I was struggling, I forced myself to invest in help.
3:02:42I hired someone for just an hour a day to take over tasks that he was better than me at so I could focus on higher value work.
3:02:48Did it cost money I felt I didn't have?
3:02:49Yes, but freeing up that hour led to more growth and more money.
3:02:53The scarcity-minded you would never have done that.
3:02:55That you stays stuck.
3:02:57So here's your action step.
3:02:58Next time you're scared to spend on something that could grow your business, a course, a tool, an employee, remember avoiding calculated risks is the riskiest move of all.
3:03:07If you want this year to be different, you have to loosen the grip.
3:03:10Invest in your growth or remain forever a servant to pennies.
3:03:17Step number two, believing money is not important.
3:03:19I don't care about money, I do it for passion.
3:03:21It sounds noble, right?
3:03:23It's also a recipe for staying poor.
3:03:24I'm all about mission.
3:03:26My channel exists to spread belief, but if you don't make money, you can't keep going.
3:03:32Some entrepreneurs wear burnout and poverty like a badge of honor, as if making money would taint their purity.
3:03:38That's nonsense.
3:03:39Money is oxygen for your business.
3:03:41If you ignore it, your dream dies.
3:03:43I had this blind spot myself at a mastermind.
3:03:45My peers told me, Evan, we want to pay you more, but you haven't given us away.
3:03:50It hit me that I was so focused on service, I hadn't built monetization into my mission.
3:03:55And I used to say, I'll do it for free if I have to.
3:03:57And I meant it, but that mindset was holding me back from scaling my impact.
3:04:01I learned that money can't be your number one motivation, but it must be in your top five.
3:04:07If your mission really matters, you owe it to yourself to fund it properly.
3:04:11Think of money as the fuel or your gasoline that you have on your fire.
3:04:15More fuel, bigger fire.
3:04:17Does running on fumes make you a martyr?
3:04:18No.
3:04:19It makes you a struggling amateur who might have to quit their dream and go back to a day job.
3:04:24So your action step is start respecting money.
3:04:27Charge what you're worth.
3:04:28Create offers and products that bring in revenue.
3:04:31Not because you're greedy, but because revenue equals longevity, equals impact.
3:04:35Money in your pocket means you get to keep serving, keep improving, keep living your purpose.
3:04:40Breathe life into your business by embracing profit, not as the goal, but as the means to amplify your goal.
3:04:48Chat number three, the get rich quick illusion.
3:04:51This one is deadly because it seduces you with flashy promises, crypto schemes, mean stocks, guaranteed six figures in 30 days courses.
3:04:58If you're chasing those, you're running on this hamster wheel, right?
3:05:01The reality is almost nobody wins that game.
3:05:04Studies show that over 97% of day traders lose money over time.
3:05:07Did you hear that again?
3:05:08You think you're the exception?
3:05:09The odds say that you're not.
3:05:11Trying to get rich quick is like trying to sprint in a marathon.
3:05:15You burn out or collapse financially.
3:05:17Wealth built fast rarely last.
3:05:20Look at the dot-com bust.
3:05:21Look at the crypto crashes.
3:05:22Fortunes made in months disappeared overnight for those who didn't have solid fundamentals.
3:05:26And psychologically, the more you chase instant rewards, the more you wire your brain for short-term thinking.
3:05:31Remember the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment?
3:05:34Kids who resisted eating one marshmallow immediately to get
3:05:36two later ended up with better grades, better jobs, and way more success decades later.
3:05:41Why?
3:05:42Because delayed gratification is a superpower.
3:05:44It means you can sacrifice now for a greater payoff later.
3:05:47If you lack that, you'll always snatch at pennies and miss out on dollars.
3:05:51So your action step, commit to the long game.
3:05:54If you catch yourself saying, why am I not rich yet?
3:05:56I need a shortcut.
3:05:57Slap yourself, right, figuratively.
3:05:59Decide to get rich for sure, but not to get rich quick.
3:06:02Build real value, develop skills, put in the reps.
3:06:05It might take longer, but when you get there, you'll stay rich.
3:06:08Every overnight success you admire took years of unseen work.
3:06:12Keep that in mind every time you're tempted by the next hot opportunity.
3:06:19Top number four, stagnating your learning.
3:06:21The moment you think you've arrived or I know enough, you're done.
3:06:25The world is changing faster than ever.
3:06:27This year will belong to the innovators, the learners, the adapters, the tinkerers.
3:06:31If you're not obsessed with learning, you will be left behind.
3:06:34Maybe you've got a degree or some experience and you think that's enough.
3:06:39I'll tell you what I discovered.
3:06:40My business degree was practically useless when it came to real entrepreneurship.
3:06:45In my senior year at University of Toronto, I finally got a class on entrepreneurship on small business, and the professor had never even run a business himself.
3:06:52While my classmates played it safe with case studies about fake coffee shops, I was out there running a real company at the time and struggling, and none of my professors could help me.
3:07:03I learned more from YouTube shows than an entire semester of lectures.
3:07:07That's how out of touch formal education was with entrepreneurship.
3:07:10And guess what?
3:07:11Today, the best teachers are on YouTube or podcasts or forums, people actually in the game, sharing their up to the minute insights.
3:07:18If you're not tapping into that, you're choosing ignorance.
3:07:21Meanwhile, technology is exploding.
3:07:23AI, social platforms, shifting market trends.
3:07:26You can't rely on what worked in 2016 or 2023.
3:07:30You need to be upskilling constantly.
3:07:32Read books, take courses, follow industry leaders, watch YouTube videos, experiment with new tools.
3:07:37The top CEOs read dozens of books a year, always hunting for one idea that gives them an edge.
3:07:42So your action step.
3:07:43schedule daily learning.
3:07:45Yes, daily, even 30 minutes of reading or watching a YouTube video or tutorial.
3:07:49Adopt a beginner's mindset.
3:07:50Assume that there's always something that you don't know because there is.
3:07:53This year, ignorance will cost you more than ever, but if you keep learning, you won't just make more money, you'll future-proof your success.
3:08:04Trap number five, lifestyle inflation and looking rich.
3:08:07This trap is sneaky because society will clap for you while you fall into it.
3:08:11You make a bit of money and you immediately upgrade your lifestyle, bigger apartment, nicer car, expensive gadgets to look successful.
3:08:19After all, you deserve it, right?
3:08:20Here's the problem.
3:08:21When your income goes up, if your spending matches it, you're not growing wealth.
3:08:25You're just on a nicer treadmill now.
3:08:27I've seen entrepreneurs make $100,000 in revenue and spend 110K trying to appear like ballers.
3:08:32The math doesn't work.
3:08:34Even multimillionaires go broke from this.
3:08:3678% of NFL players are either bankrupt or under serious financial stress within two years of retirement.
3:08:42These are people who earned millions per year.
3:08:45And 60% of NBA players are broke within five years of leaving the league.
3:08:50How is that possible?
3:08:52Lifestyle inflation.
3:08:53They felt like they had to flex Lamborghinis and jewelry, spend like kings, help every second cousin and old friend who asked, and they blew their money.
3:09:02Wealth is silent.
3:09:04Poverty is loud.
3:09:05If you're spending money to prove to others that you have money, that's a fool's game.
3:09:09Real millionaires are investing into assets, not liabilities to stunt on Instagram.
3:09:15They're not buying depreciating toys on credit.
3:09:17They're reinvesting in their business and stocks and real estate, things that make money while they sleep.
3:09:21Meanwhile, the pretenders stay one hiccup away from complete disaster.
3:09:26So your action step, cap your lifestyle.
3:09:28Pick a modest baseline and stick to it as your income grows.
3:09:31Instead of a fancy car, get a fancy investment portfolio.
3:09:35Let your results do the talking, not your Gucci belt.
3:09:38This year, economic ups and downs will hit the flashy spenders hardest.
3:09:42Be smart now so you're not selling your luxury junk later to pay your rent.
3:09:46Remember, you're building empires, not trying to look like a king for a day.
3:09:52Chapter number six, doing everything yourself.
3:09:55The one person army, the solopreneur who refuses to delegate, that mentality will keep you broke and exhausted.
3:10:01You might think you're saving money by not hiring, not outsourcing, not partnering, but you're actually stealing from your own future.
3:10:09Why?
3:10:10Because you're capping your growth to the hours that you personally can work.
3:10:14There are only so many hours in a day, and if you insist on being the hero who does it all, you will burn out before you ever build real wealth.
3:10:22I'll share a quick story.
3:10:23I met a YouTuber with six million subscribers, had a huge audience, and he had just hired his first virtual assistant because until then, he'd been doing everything himself,
3:10:32The editing, the thumbnails, the emails, all of it.
3:10:34This guy was a rock star on the outside, but behind the scenes, he was drowning in busy work.
3:10:40It blew my mind and it reinforced one of my core beliefs.
3:10:43You have to build a team if you want to go from just hustling to actual enterprise.
3:10:48And I get it, nobody does it as good as you, right?
3:10:50And paying others feels like a luxury when money's tight.
3:10:53But not hiring help when you're overloaded is a trap.
3:10:56Think about it, if you spend 10 hours a week doing $10 an hour tasks, that's $100 of value.
3:11:00If you paid someone $10 an hour to do it, that's $100 out of your pocket.
3:11:04But those 10 hours could be used to generate $1,000 of value or $10,000 doing higher level strategy, sales, product development.
3:11:11So action step, identify the one task that consumes your time and someone else could do at half your rate or better.
3:11:17Outsource it this month, even for a trial run.
3:11:20Start small if you have to.
3:11:21Hire a freelancer for five hours a week.
3:11:23Your future self will thank you as you find yourself with more time to make real money.
3:11:27Remember, businesses are built by teams, not lone heroes.
3:11:31You're not just an entrepreneur.
3:11:32Become a leader of people, even if it's one part-timer to start.
3:11:38Chat number seven, never asking for help or advice.
3:11:41Pride, fear of looking stupid, I have to figure it out on my own.
3:11:44These attitudes will silently rob you of your success.
3:11:47Listen, every great entrepreneur that you admire had mentors, coaches, advisors guiding them.
3:11:53Steve Jobs had Bill Campbell.
3:11:54Zuckerberg had Steve Jobs.
3:11:56Gates had Buffett in his corner.
3:11:57Meanwhile, you're over there Googling or ChatGP team for hours just flailing in silence because you're too proud or too shy to ask someone who's been there for help.
3:12:04And I struggled with this too.
3:12:06I'm an introvert.
3:12:07I don't like bothering people.
3:12:08For years, asking for help was my biggest weakness, probably still is.
3:12:12I thought I had to do everything myself, back to trap number six.
3:12:14But once I started seeking guidance, everything started to change.
3:12:17I joined the mastermind group.
3:12:18I reached out to entrepreneurs I looked up to.
3:12:20And very often, people are willing to help.
3:12:2284% of CEOs say that having mentors prevented them from making costly mistakes, and 69% of them made more profitable decisions thanks to mentor guidance.
3:12:31That's data.
3:12:32Even the top of the top lean on mentors to fast track their learning.
3:12:35If the highest performers can benefit from advice, why on earth would you try to wing it alone?
3:12:40It's pure ego or ignorance.
3:12:43Both will keep you broke.
3:12:44So action step, swallow your pride and actively seek out mentorship.
3:12:47This could mean reaching out to someone in your field that you respect with a specific question, joining a local entrepreneur mastermind or meetup group, or even just posting your challenge in a community of your peers.
3:12:59Not asking is a guaranteed no.
3:13:01The worst that can happen is someone says they're too busy.
3:13:04So what?
3:13:05Move on to the next.
3:13:06When I was stuck early on,
3:13:08I could have saved so much time if I had just asked someone who'd already built a business for advice instead of assuming the bank would help me or suffering in isolation.
3:13:18Don't let your pride or your fear keep you ignorant.
3:13:21This year, make it a rule.
3:13:23If you don't know, ask.
3:13:25Save yourself years of trial and error.
3:13:27Your net worth will often depend on your net work.
3:13:29So start building one that can guide and inspire you.
3:13:35Trap number eight, waiting for the savior or a sign.
3:13:37This one's a bit counterintuitive.
3:13:39It's when you wait for an outsider to rescue you, a bank loan, an investor, the perfect moment.
3:13:45Instead of creating momentum yourself, it's the mindset of if only I had X, then I would succeed.
3:13:50And I see entrepreneurs fall into this trap all the time.
3:13:52They think a big investor is gonna suddenly appear or write them a check or a bank will just toss them tons of money because they had the courage to start a business.
3:13:59I made this mistake myself.
3:14:00At 19, I walked into a bank.
3:14:03My head was held high and I said, hi, I'm starting a business.
3:14:05How can you help me?
3:14:06Expecting them to be as excited as I was.
3:14:09And the banker basically laughed me out of the door.
3:14:11They told me no loan without three years of history or huge collateral.
3:14:16I left feeling crushed like, oh my God, I'm going to fail.
3:14:18This is ridiculous.
3:14:20For a minute, I thought maybe that was it.
3:14:22Maybe I wasn't meant to be an entrepreneur if even the bank didn't believe in me.
3:14:27But here's what I realized.
3:14:28Nobody's coming to save you.
3:14:30That rejection was actually a gift because it forced me to get creative.
3:14:34Many people would have quit right there.
3:14:35In fact, a lot of new entrepreneurs do quit after their first big rejection or failure.
3:14:41They take it as a sign that it wasn't meant to be.
3:14:44That's the trap.
3:14:45The truth is setbacks are normal.
3:14:47Rejection is normal.
3:14:48Waiting around for perfect conditions or someone else's money is a loser's game.
3:14:52If I had waited for an investor or kept begging banks, I'd still be waiting.
3:14:57Instead, I bootstrapped.
3:14:58I cut expenses.
3:14:59I hustled for sales.
3:14:59We made alliances.
3:15:01Remember the idea of modeling Bill Gates's partnership strategy?
3:15:04Eventually, I didn't need the bank's money.
3:15:05My business funded itself.
3:15:07So your action step, whatever you're waiting for, stop waiting.
3:15:11Start doing.
3:15:11If you think you need funding, challenge yourself to launch a smaller version of your idea with whatever resources that you have right now.
3:15:19Prove that it works.
3:15:20Get some traction.
3:15:22If you're waiting for the economy to improve, find a way to serve people in this economy right now.
3:15:26If you're waiting for permission or validation from some
3:15:29expert.
3:15:30Give yourself permission.
3:15:31This video is your permission.
3:15:33The only savior you need is the person in the mirror.
3:15:36No more waiting for someday or someone.
3:15:38Successful people start before they're ready and they trust that they'll find out what they need along the way, not up front.
3:15:47Top number nine, not managing your money.
3:15:50Look, it doesn't matter how much you make if you can't manage what you have.
3:15:53Plenty of entrepreneurs have high income and still end up broke because they don't know where their money is going.
3:16:00Ignoring your finances is a huge trap.
3:16:02Maybe you find it boring, spreadsheets, budgets, taxes, so you avoid it.
3:16:06Or you assume your cash flow is fine because sales are coming in.
3:16:09That's a big mistake.
3:16:10According to a U.S. bank study, 82% of businesses fail due to poor cash flow management.
3:16:17That means almost 8 out of 10 businesses don't die from lack of ideas or even lack of customers.
3:16:23They die because the owners weren't on top of the money moving in and out.
3:16:28They run out of cash and boom, game over.
3:16:30you must know your numbers, your monthly expenses, your revenue, your profit margins, your burn rate, if you're burning savings, all of it.
3:16:38When I started making a bit of money,
3:16:41I hated accounting.
3:16:42So you know what I did?
3:16:43I didn't ignore it, I delegated it.
3:16:44One of the first things I let go of was doing my own books because I knew if I tried to handle it while hating it, I'd probably screw it up.
3:16:52I used Microsoft money software to automate what I could, and as soon as I could, I hired a part-time bookkeeper.
3:16:58I kept an eye on everything, but I left someone who loves numbers handle the details.
3:17:04That key point is I respected the numbers.
3:17:06You need to respect your numbers too.
3:17:08If you're not a finance person, fine.
3:17:11But the excuse, I'm not good at math, doesn't fly when your business goes under.
3:17:15So action step.
3:17:17Today, make a simple financial dashboard for yourself.
3:17:19Track your monthly income, the expenses, your net profit.
3:17:23At the very least, you can use a spreadsheet, an app, I don't care.
3:17:26Just have visibility on it.
3:17:27Set a weekly date with yourself.
3:17:29Money Mondays, for example, to review and update your finances.
3:17:33Find one expense to cut or optimize and one area to potentially invest more in.
3:17:37And please separate your personal and your business finances, right?
3:17:40Pay yourself a salary or draw so you're not constantly mixing your funds and losing track of what's what.
3:17:47When you know your numbers, you can control them.
3:17:49They don't control you.
3:17:51Master this and you won't wake up one day surprised that you're out of cash.
3:17:55Instead, you'll wake up building true wealth systematically.
3:18:01And chat number 10, quitting too soon.
3:18:03The only guaranteed way to fail is to give up, right?
3:18:05Cliche, maybe, but it's cliche for a reason, it's true.
3:18:08And most people still don't get it.
3:18:10Quitting early is the ultimate wealth killer.
3:18:13Every entrepreneur faces pain and doubt and darkness on the road to success.
3:18:18Those who push through eventually see light.
3:18:21Those who quit stay in the dark forever.
3:18:23And I nearly fell into this trap myself.
3:18:24As I told you, I almost quit my business in the first year when nothing was working.
3:18:29If I had stayed, quit,
3:18:30you probably wouldn't know my name.
3:18:31I'd be working some job that I hate right now and none of the impact I've had would exist.
3:18:36I was this close to that reality.
3:18:38And it scares me how many people's success stories end early because they walked away right before the breakthrough.
3:18:43It's digging for gold.
3:18:44Most people stop three feet from gold because it's taking longer than they thought.
3:18:48I say keep digging.
3:18:49Often the breakthrough comes just when you're at your lowest and ready to quit.
3:18:53If you give it one more big push.
3:18:55After I decided to stick with my business and model Bill Gates, our first win, that $13,500 deal, it came in not long after.
3:19:02That wasn't a coincidence.
3:19:03It was my persistence being rewarded.
3:19:05And it taught me that a failure is just an event.
3:19:07It's not the end, unless you make it the end by quitting.
3:19:10I try now to use my almost quit story to coach others that quantity leads to quality.
3:19:14You have to put in the reps to churn through the failures to get to the success.
3:19:18If you bail after a handful of tries, you never develop mastery.
3:19:21You never hit the tipping point where it starts to rain money.
3:19:25So your action step is make a commitment this year
3:19:27that you won't quit on anything important out of frustration or fear.
3:19:31If you're gonna quit something, quit making excuses.
3:19:33But don't quit on your dream.
3:19:35Whenever you feel like giving up, remember why you started and picture yourself one year from now if you keep going versus if you stop.
3:19:41And use the pain of potential regret as fuel.
3:19:43Because if you persist through 10 failures, you might find success on number 11.
3:19:47But if you quit after three, you've guaranteed failure.
3:19:51So keep going, adjust your strategy, learn from the setbacks, reread chat number seven about asking for help, but keep going.
3:19:57Persistence is undefeated in the long run.
3:19:59Winners are just ex-losers who refuse to quit.
3:20:02And most importantly, don't just watch this video passively.
3:20:05Do the work to call yourself out and improve.
3:20:08Most people won't even admit they have flaws to fix.
3:20:10You are.
3:20:11That already sets you apart from the masses who will just let another year go by and live in the reruns of the same mistakes.
3:20:17Now it's on you to take action.
3:20:19Knowing these traps is step one.
3:20:21Doing something about them is step two.
3:20:23You've got this opportunity right now to set new habits, a new standard for how you handle money and success.
3:20:30So take it.
3:20:31And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be.
3:20:35To get ahead in life, make money and build wealth.
3:20:37Check the video right there next to me.
3:20:38I think you'll love it.
3:20:39Continue to believe and I'll see you there.
3:20:42Getting ahead in life is easier than you think.
3:20:44Every day you're going to be faced with a hundred things that you could potentially go do.
3:20:49And your job is to pick the one thing that actually matters.
3:20:52Because out of those hundred things, it's really only actually going to be one.

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