0:00 I've put together the most valuable lessons that have helped me achieve more out of my life. Hopefully, they're useful for you, too. Enjoy. This is brutally honest advice for poor people. I've been there. I had to pay rent. Every night, I would think if I didn't wake up tomorrow, I would be okay with it. And I don't want that for anybody. I get it. I was just going through all these old files yesterday and I saw a goal that I had written, which was to make $10,000 a month income. And so it was 13 years ago. And so like I viscerally remember what that was like. Um and I know I never I was in so much pain during that during that time that I get it. And so like the reason we make this stuff is cuz I I've been there and I don't want that for anybody, you know? Like I missed I missed my 20s. Like I just I
0:52 didn't have them as people traditionally say it, you know? Like it's it's weird because in today's like internet culture like I started my I I started my first brickandmortar business like storefront. I was 23. Like I didn't know [ __ ] about [ __ ] Like I knew nothing. And like I didn't know you could hire employees. Like it wasn't a thought. Like I didn't know anything. Um, and so like I cleaned, I did the billing, I did the sales, I taught the sessions, like I fixed the equipment, like I did everything because I didn't know you could and I also I did I didn't know and I didn't have the money, frankly, to afford anything else. And so, um, I get it. Like I get I get I get it. Um, but to get out of that, you have to take steps. And the first step is saying that it's my fault. The second step is that you have to use what you have. And so in the beginning I would I would you know I I was reading the self-help books and all this stuff. And um none of
2:00 them really hit for me because a lot of it was like power of positive thinking and like affirmations and like all this stuff. And the reason I make the content I do now, which has now almost become like a shtick, um, countering that is be is because it didn't work for me. And I'm trying like I'm not trying to speak to everybody. If you if that works for you, then like awesome. Like awesome. Like I people mistake me saying this is what worked for me with this is what I think everyone should do. And it it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm saying if what h what you have been doing hasn't been working, then consider this. which is that like I remember because I just read this yesterday. The intro in the book I say um I wish I could tell you that the reason I was able to make it out of the gym was because I was like really passionate about changing people's lives and I loved fitness and I loved you know my clients faces when they would light up
2:52 and they'd step on the scale and they'd lose weight. They'd be able to fit in their high school clothes again. It was none of that. It was just the sheer anger that I had, but the idea of being wrong and having the people back home be right about everything. And I just couldn't I couldn't I mean I still can barely tolerate it. And so I mean I took in some ways and this isn't a I don't if woe is me is the right is the right term but like I had an otherwise very successful career. like I was in a white collar job and sometimes it's hard like I mean hey I don't know I haven't been the other situation but taking a step down and humbling yourself to minimum wage after you've been in a white collar situation not easy and I remember I had clients who walk in and be like oh did you did you uh did you go to college and they were saying that um patronizingly um and mind you everyone here at least this channel knows that I don't I don't
3:49 give a [ __ ] um but they were saying it to basically like when I was going to like write something down, like am I literate? And in those moments again, it was like I could be right or be rich. Like I could try and humiliate them back because the pain of what they just said made me feel. They probably didn't even intend that. Or I can be like, "Yeah, yeah, I went to I went to school. I'm very grateful for it." You know, like so what are your goals? I could just move right past it. And so you develop that skin because I had to cuz I had to [ __ ] pay rent. And so I mean I tell stories about having a kid drawing marker on the wall while I'm trying to close his mom and he's writing in permanent marker and I'm trying not to lose my [ __ ] over the fact that I'm have to repaint the wall because she doesn't know how to parent a child. But I needed to close the card to pay for the paint. And so it's like I can scold the kid and lose the sale or I
4:38 can close the sale and keep my cool and then eventually clean the clean the wall. And so like you only get that stuff by doing it. Um, and so if you're in if you're in a place right now where you don't have a lot, you only have one thing, which is time. And so you have lower leverage. So I'm not going to lie to you and say that you like you're there there's this one play, this one secret. No, it's just it's sheer brute force. Like you have to will yourself out of it. Like there's you have to do it's it's like a it's a it's a huge amount of of soul driving energy that you have to do outside of what you normally do. So it's like you have to live one person's normal life. You have to do your normal work, your normal job. You have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to clean, you have to do whatever else and then then the workday starts. So that is how you eat today, but you're trying to get ahead and you have to eat tomorrow. And so you have to you have to
5:33 you have to eat the glass so that you can take the pain today and you're trying to take as much of the pain from tomorrow as you can today so you can get ahead and like the even the concept of getting ahead. I like I think about this visually which is like if you have this this timeline of life that you can pull towards you and it's glass in the beginning and then it's slightly less less coarse and then less coarse and then it gets and then it gets neutral and then it starts to get a little bit sweeter and a little bit sweeter and a little bit sweeter but you have to get through that glass period where you pull it towards you and I do have this theory that like on a long enough time horizon and if we could live a thousand years everyone would eventually be successful but people wait too long and they die too early and I say die too really on a long on a long timeline. And so I want I have to live today and tomorrow and the next day so I can live three days at a
6:24 time so I can get to my second and third life's benefits now. And so that was why like I remember the only times that I took off when I was when I was at the gym and one of the biggest things that I was grateful for with the gyms is that I moved across the country and so I knew no one. I was in Huntington Beach. I was from Baltimore like no one. And what would happen, so one of the gifts of that was that once the week was over, so my Saturday sessions were done at like noon, my phone didn't ring. No, like in some ways very sad because like no one wanted to see Alex, you know what I mean? Like no one was inviting me out. But I was like, well [ __ ] like I got to make this work. And so I would just I'd sit there and I'd be like, how do I sell memberships? How do I market? How do I everything, you know? But I but that was how I got ahead. And so I I tell the stories of like I remember when I when I stopped watching the Ravens and I was
7:18 from Baltimore, so that was like like a tie to home. And so um yeah, it's fresh for me cuz I just read the story yesterday, but it was like it was tough. I'll catch my breath. So, all that to say, the sacrifices that I encourage people to take are not sacrifices I did not make. And I I don't say that there there's there's no ways to to get there. I'm just saying that this is the way I got there. And if this path works for you, then maybe it works better than what you're doing right now, which is I had a lot of pain. And so I I tried to use it. I just used what I had. I just, you know, I was just angry. I didn't I didn't want to fail.
8:17 And so I just kept going. And so there was no like there just wasn't another option. And so I think that's like that's what I would encourage people to think about was like they're just there I just didn't I didn't allow another option because the other option was just was just worse than dying because I mean I've told this story before and things get hyperbolized mean you know exaggerated romanticized whatever but like when I had my big consulting job I was making good money and I had the approval of my my peers and all this stuff and I just didn't want to wake up the next day every day and it wasn't like I was trying to kill myself. It wasn't that. But I was I every night I would think if I didn't wake up tomorrow I would be okay with it. And so when I knew that that was what I was going back to if I didn't make this work. I just had I had no plan B. I mean I had plan B is that I would drive Uber and strip. I joke about that. But that was very much my plan B if I didn't make
9:21 it work. Um, but and I I I get I get grilled on social media for saying this because of like [ __ ] race wars, but like there have been slaves for thousands of years. There were slaves in Egyptian times. There were Jews who were slaves. There were Persian slaves. There were white slaves. There are backslaves. Humans have enslaved one another. Period. And I like to think of things in extremes because it allows me to think about what's possible. And so the idea that someone else at some other time in history has worked seven days a week, every hour that they're awake with a threat not of their own death, but of their children's death, because that's what I would do if I were trying to control somebody. I would take their kids and say, "I'll kill them if you don't work." And guess what? They'll probably work. That that capacity exists. And so I would think to myself like I would try and I would try and put myself in that frame so that I wouldn't
10:20 get into the woe is me cycle and think all these things I could blame for why I'm here right now. Why isn't this working as fast? Like how is it that these guys are making more money than me? Like why don't these people will give me the respect I deserve? Blah blah blah blah blah. Um and just say like what can I do now? And then just every hour of every day, well, what can I do now? And so it was I have to learn how to market. I have to learn how to sell. I have to I have to go to these these groups that where other gym owners are and I got to learn their stuff. I got to I got to go to these seminars. I got to save up so I can learn some stuff. And that's what I did. And so that's how I got out of it. That visual of life as this like bloody game of tugof-war where like most people their hands just get too >> cut to keep holding on to the rope is like it's in it's stuck in my head. >> Yeah. >> It's that's really powerful. >> Yeah. It was tough. >> So I'm I'm
11:23 the first 100 grand is the hardest. And I know that that sounds like an unfathomable amount of money. It took me five years. Like I get it. So, like you just have to save it $1 at a time. Like that's like that's what it is. Now, obviously I talk about other things. Like there are smarter ways to make money for sure. Like if you can sell expensive stuff, you can just move the decimals. Like I mean like the thing is is it is factually true. It is spiritually false. And I don't even believe in spirituality in general, but like it is it is tough to sell a $10 million building and make a million dollar commission or a $500,000 commission when you are broke as [ __ ] It is very like it is like you would have to become a different person, which is why most people's first sale is not that. But is it technically possible? Yes. A lot of people watch YouTube and the internet for complex money-making skills and they haven't even mastered showing up on time. And so it's like they want to go
12:28 straight to calculus, but they don't know how to do simple addition. But the thing is is that like simple addition is foundational to that. And none of the other stuff will matter unless you can do the basics. But the basics doesn't make them less important. Usually they're the foundation of a building which make them arguably more important. They just are simpler to understand but not simpler to do. And I think that's the big disconnect a lot of people have is that they think they because they understand something conceptually that they feel like they have already mastered the skill which are two very different things. And so one of the most common traits that people who are poor have is that it's always tomorrow. And so they never talk about anything in terms of today. And so it's about starting tomorrow, the diet tomorrow, the diet on Monday, next year, my New Year's resolution. It's always it's always pushing off. So rather than uh delaying gratification,
13:18 they delay pain. And so rather than trying taking pain now for pleasure later, they take pleasure now and pain later. And so they flip the equation. And so they're surprised when today is later from yesterday that they're in pain. Because if if last week you were like, I'm starting my diet this week, then it is now this week and you've delayed the pain to today. And that means that the body you have right now is the result of the delayed pain that you are now forcing yourself to endure. And so they're somehow surprised when the bill comes due that they pushed off from the past. And so the first lesson of getting out of poverty is two words. It's my fault. It's I have to own that. And I think my fault you can kind of extrapolate to right now. Not like you basically have to own everything that passed to this moment. So, all the pain that I've gone through, all of the Mondays that I've missed, all of the diets that I've skipped, all of the savings I haven't made, all of those are
14:24 not my dad's fault, my mom's fault, my circumstances fault, the country I was born in's fault, the zip code, any of those things fault. It's just mine. And the thing is is that people have this belief that because they have a strong argument for why it's something or someone else's fault that that somehow helps them. And it just doesn't because whatever you cast blame to is where you also cast power to. And so if I say I can't succeed because my mom didn't love me, guess who controls me? My mom. And so if you also like replace my mom with a race, a gender, a political party, whatever the thing like I can't succeed because of Trump's laws. I can't succeed because of the radical left, because of wokeism, because of whatever. You actually give that thing more power in your life than you give yourself. And so it's completely it the thing is is that and this is what's so deceiving about it is it's very it's very um self-fulfilling is that you get more
15:25 evidence and you get more confirmation. You get more evidence, you get more confirmation, and the more your life sucks, the more you're confirmed that you were right. But like, do you want to be right about the fact that your life sucks or would you rather like there's a there's I think it's an old Zig Ziggler saying he said you can either be right or you can be rich. And I mean it's simple, but this is what he was getting at is that you can say, you know what, you are right. Your dad kicked the [ __ ] out of your whole life and you don't have any confidence because he told you a piece of [ __ ] every day. You're right. But in order to be rich, you need to let that go. Because every day you say that I'm not successful because of this, it means because this now owns you. And for me personally, that realization that the thing that I hated most in the world, the things that I blamed for why my life wasn't the way it was, I was their
16:17 [ __ ] And just realizing that um made me angry. But through that anger, I was able to say, "Well, [ __ ] them." like I will succeed despite the fact that my dad said this or my mom said this or Barack Obama said this or Trump said this or the woke left says what? Despite that, despite the fact that the chips are stacked against me, I will still win. Why does saying my fault and taking that accountability begin to set someone down the path of making more money? >> And so if you think about if we think about success in terms of layers like foundations, right? the the the base level like when you're digging the building where you put the hole and you pour the concrete and the base of the entire thing is who is in power? Who is source? Because if it's anything but you in that base layer, all of the other things on top of them will topple down. It's it's a foundation of sand. Otherwise, you can't build on top of blaming other people. There's nothing
17:18 that stands on it. You see like I want to learn sales but I can't learn sales because I didn't get hugged enough as a kid and so I don't like people. And so as long as you keep holding on to that you have sand as your foundation. But if you want to learn how to sell or you want to learn how to market or you want to learn how to do whatever until you say well it's my fault that I don't know it and because of that it's within my power to change it. >> So it's not sales books. It's not it's not reading offers. It's not it's not even your books >> at the at the very beginning you have to accept that which is the first two words my fault my responsibility all me I am source and then once you can accept that one thing and what's crazy is that that one foundation is where 90% of people literally aren't they're not there they can't do it the reason my girlfriend left me is because of this not me the reason I lost my job is because my my employer was a dick my boss sucked
18:15 whatever the economy Like but like it never serves you. Like give me one instance, one example. This is to anyone who's listening to this. One example of when you blame something else and it made you better. One. You can't find it because it's fundamentally not true. And so you cannot both desire to get better and also maintain blame. You have to pick. >> When did this really hit home for you? Was it when you lost money? >> No, when I was 19 years old, I had to write an essay about uh depression in an intro to sight class. And I used to I don't talk about my mother my mother very much, but I used to harp a lot. I was an equal I was an equal opportunity angry person. I was angry at everybody. In other words, I blamed everyone. And so I blamed her for X, Y, and Z. And I remember having to write this essay on depression and you had to do it from someone else's perspective. And so you had to say how would they how would the environment and their upbringing
19:21 things like that contribute to the outcomes in their life. And so by writing the essay, true or not, to be clear, about my mother's upbringing and how hard she had as an immigrant coming here, getting beat up as a kid, getting made up for not being able to speak the language, all that kind of stuff. And this was in the [ __ ] 50s. It's when like it was more accepted to beat up foreigners rather than let them in. Anyways um so she had a tough time and so it made sense and and when I framed it like that, I was like, you know, maybe she's actually a massive success given where she started. And so then I thought to myself, now mind you, I still wasn't over it. But it was in this process that the first thing that happened is when I went back home for fall break or winter break, I remember she said something to me which would normally just like be the beginning of some big fight. you know, you get into these routines. Like, I'll
20:15 say this thing that we both hate and then we'll just get in a nice fight about it. And she said the trigger and I was just like, I understand you. I'm sorry you went through the stuff you went through. And she just like looked completely shocked and then just like started balling. And so I was like, we're cool. Like you don't anger me anymore. And I think for the most part since then, like that's been more or less the dynamic that shifted. But leading into that was also the idea that all the relationships that I had had that id blamed for not working because of the dynamic that I had with my mother. I was like I am giving her this power over my love life. That's gross. And so I was like well I I'd rather just say it's on me to change and not have my mom or parents at all involved in my relationships. And so that was me taking it's her fault that I can't make these things work. I have commitment issues. I don't want to get close to people. I've been hurt before.
21:19 Blah blah blah. To like, okay, well, let's take it to the next extreme. Great. You're right. You'll never be close to anyone. You'll never have a relationship that'll last. You're right. Now what? I remember I was at a conference and I had this lady stand up in the crowd and I had just done a thing on like I don't remember what it was called offers and she stood up and said let me give you six reasons why this isn't going to work for my business and so she went down her list and I was like uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh. So I got to the end of the whole thing and um she said and that's why this isn't going to work for my business and I was like you're right you'll never be able to make this work for your business. And she looked at me like angry and she lashed back. She was like, "Yes, I yes I will. I'll be able to make this work for my business for this reason, this reason." And so the thing is is that like if the victim frame is just taken to the natural extreme, you
22:17 realize that you're right, you win the game. And by being right the entire time, you lose everything. And so it's one of these frames that I love. Dr. Cashy says this. He says, "You're 99% right, but 100% wrong." And what that means is like for example, if I every time I bring a girl home and I want my parents approval, I bring her home and they say, "This isn't the one. This isn't the one. She's not good enough." Whatever it is, every time it's easy for them to say that because every single person you date, except for the one you marry, they are right on. And so they're 99% of the time they're right. And they're confirmed by saying that that person that you bring home is not good enough. Because every time eventually you break up, oh, it's not going to last. This isn't the one. and it keeps going, right? But if you keep doing that all the way to the natural extreme, you're 100% wrong because you will be wrong eventually. It's the same thing as like,
23:07 I want to start this business, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. The second one will work. The fifth one won't work. The seventh one work won't work. And they're right, but they're just wrong on the long enough time horizon because one of them will [ __ ] work. And one of the girls or one of the guys that you bring home will be the one that you are going to be with. But it's so much safer for them to be right and right and right and you and they get deceived by their short-term rightness that they miss the long-term wrong. And we do this to oursel too when you're in the victim frame. I don't even like using the victim frame, but when you're in the powerless frame, you give the power away and you get to be right over that's why it didn't work. This didn't work. This relationship won't work. This job won't work. You keep it's not going to work this time either. Because you get to be right over and over again. and it makes you feel good in the short term, but in the long term, you guarantee the loss. >> I think there's also like social reinforcement. Like we love to complain about the weather and >> it's literally the same thing as never investing. Like if you want to invest your money, right, and you like you have all this big pile of savings. If you ever invest, there's always the possibility that it goes down in the short term. It's just the nature of markets in general. But if you never
24:14 invest, you guarantee that you will never get rich over the long haul. And so every day you could make this risk. You take a small risk, but you guarantee a macro win. So you take a small risk today, potential for loss today for the guarantee over the long haul that it grows and it makes you money. But the flip side is you don't take the small risk of loss today. You take the comfort today for the guarantee that you get the long loss. And so so many people flip their life to that same thing is that they have they flip the pleasure for today and they and they they just forget the second half of this which is pain for tomorrow and that today is also yesterday's tomorrow and we're living through the pain that you cast like you own this and until you're like this is my fault that I'm in pain today because of decisions that I put off pain for tomorrow where today is tomorrow. When you're broke, every dollar means so much to you. But
25:11 and you want to see the dollars in your bank account go up. But I never made that my goal. I made the amount of money I made every month my goal because I saw that as my like potential energy versus stored energy. Not to get I mean whatever physics people, you get what I'm saying. And so I was willing to take that stored energy and reinvest it to take $5,000 a month in income to make it $6,000 a month because I knew that over a year I was going to make 12. And so if it cost me two to make the 12 in income, I would make that trade every time. And so whenever I'd save up a small like nut, now obviously I've always been pretty good at about spending money. Like I I' I haven't had that that habit. So like again foundations like first it's your fault. Second spend less than you make. Third, take all of the excess and spend it on making more because if you're making minimum wage, I'm gonna say what you probably already know. You're not going to get ahead. Like,
26:10 you're not going to save your way there. You're not like, everyone loves to tell the story of that one girl at McDonald's, but you know, they don't tell the other 100 million people who worked at McDonald's over over the world who didn't make it. And like the outcome they're talking about is like she made $8 million over 40 years working McDonald's. like you can shoot for more. And so like take the money you make, live on nothing, and the hard part is to swallowing the pride for the fact that in the short term, everyone's going to be right when they say that you're amounting to nothing. And that's the tough part. That's the glass that you have to you have to swallow that. You have to pull towards you. And there's just no other way. Like you have to learn the skills. Now, I mean, to be fair, YouTube didn't exist when I was doing this. And like Instagram was like a new platform. So like all this stuff like the stuff we have today is crazy. Like the fact that
27:00 these videos and this podcast like all the stuff didn't ex like I remember when podcasting came out like I was already a business owner. Like none of this stuff existed. But at the time I just took all the money I had. And I I want to I want to make this point again is that people think that the money is about buying courses and stuff like that. And you can like there's nothing wrong with that. I've learned a ton from a lot of the stuff that I've bought to be really honest with you. But I think that I've always had an amazing return on education because I always did it. And I think like I always wanted to be the best student in every class and I was good at school and I and I I just took business as a different another another type of school. But part of the expenses that come into like what you take that money for is experiments that fail. And so one of the things that happens when you're broke is that you bet on stuff and then it doesn't work and people feel like they're back at zero. But you're not back at zero. you're at where you were plus one experience, plus two experiences, plus three experiences, plus four experience. But when you have plus 18 experiences, all of a sudden, boop, you level up one. You get experience points. There's a reason in video games call experience points. So, you didn't trade it for nothing. You got an experience point. And with enough experience points, you get to the next
28:04 level. And so, I think if you just even thought about it like that, it's not a loss, but an experience point. It could get you could bridge the gap between your current income level and the income level that you want to get to. And then guess what? There's more experience point that you have to get there. And those experience points also cost more money. Because when you take a bet in the beginning, and when I say it costs money, it's like if you run an ad and it doesn't work, it costs money. If you want to set up a Shopify store or an e-commerce store and you spend 30, 40, 50 bucks a month, whatever, it costs money. Um, and it does, you know, like all of these things cost money to start. Now, mind you, it cost a lot less than it did in the 20s when you had to mortgage your house and guarantee that you'd win or you'd lose everything forever. Um, so like the bar hasn't never been lower than it is now, but there still is a bar and you have to get over it. And I still think that the vast majority of the [ __ ] that people trying to get over has nothing to do with the difficulty of business. But the first step, the foundation, which is it is my fault that I am here and in it being my fault, I am the one who can get me out of it. It sounds like in that stage three when you start experimenting and investing in that and let's say the kid who has a failed drop shipping experiment or starts a school group and
29:07 they want to win the school games but they don't. Their measuring stick for whether or not they're doing well shouldn't be how much money they're making >> or should like should they be thinking about money at that point or >> so the wealthiest people I know only think about skills. They think about what can I learn and then what can this skill get me? And so they will always take any money they can to buy more skills. And in the beginning, you have to buy all the skills yourself. Once you have enough skills that you can generate an excess of income, you can start buying other people's lives. And what I mean by that is like everything comes down to buying time. And so at some point you're 10 years into your career and you have a handful of skills, but you can buy someone else's 10 years of skills by just paying them to do something, too. is you don't have to learn all those things. And so you do need to get good at stuff and then eventually you generalize to being good at people. And
30:03 that's pretty much always the path for everyone. >> Maybe the framing is like a lot of people who are wanting to make more money just don't know what the avenues are. >> Yeah. So a lot of people who want to make money don't understand how money is made. And so it's made by getting it from someone else and they have to give it to you voluntarily or it's theft. And so assuming you don't want to steal, then you have to give something to someone else first. And then by doing that, they give you money in exchange, which is why I love capitalism. It's voluntary exchange between two parties. And both parties say thank you at the end because both parties think they're better off from the trade. And so the idea is what you want to be able to do is find something valuable to trade. And so you can either trade stuff, you can find a place where you can get stuff and then bring it to other people where it's convenient for them so they pay you more
30:56 than you did when you had to go find it at some back alley cuz you know suburban mom doesn't want to go into back alley to get x y and z but you'll give it to her. Man, it sounds like I'm explaining drugs but well, there's a reason they make money. But anyways, point is is that you can sell stuff at a mar at a margin and a part of that margin is going to be the convenience that you deliver them. And either you're selling stuff that someone else manufactures or you create your own stuff. Now, if you're starting out, you're probably going to sell someone else's stuff. And I do think and I I mean I'm saying this right now, I do love the concept that the first thing you sell is not the last thing you're going to sell. And so learning to sell in and of itself, the best way to learn to sell is sell something. And that's why uh referral referral uh programs, ambassador programs, affiliate programs for different types of businesses, almost every business I've
31:44 ever owned has an affiliate program. Um it's great to enroll in those. I'm not even going to say any of the names of the companies that that we have because I want you like it's not about that. I want you to if you can just because then you you only have to figure out one skill. Like if I just sell someone, if I just promote, I get paid. Cool. And I can just do it over and over again. Now over time you're like, man, I want to make more of the nut. Cool. Then you just you eat up more of the responsibility. So you can either sell stuff or you can sell skills. You can scale sell outcomes. And so that's where you develop a certain expertise. So like in the beginning for me and like the first time this ever like the first money I ever made from a stranger was that I had a lady at the gym. It's a real story. I was in really good shape. I like to think so. And she said,"Will you meet me uh and do a nutrition consultation for me?" And she didn't even say that. She
32:35 said, "Will you help me with my food?" I think is what she said. And I said, "Sure." Um, and so we met at a at a pizza place, ironically. >> No, this was after college. This is after I graduated from college um when I was still consultant. So I I went we met at a pizza place. And I was like, "Okay, well, what are you currently eating?" And she was like, "This." And I was like, "Well, what do you want to do?" She's like, "I'm trying to lose weight." And I was like, "Well, this is something I eat for breakfast that's less calories than your thing. It's pretty good." And try this and try this and try this. And it took like an hour. And then um I had like a notepad and I gave her the the notes or whatever. And she took out her purse and she wrote $200 on a check and she handed it to me. She was like, "Thanks so much." And I was like looked I was just like looking at the check, looking at her, looking at the check, looking at her. And I was like, "Okay, don't act surprised." And I was
33:22 like, "Uh, thanks." And then she left and I was like, "Holy shit." I was like, "I just got paid for." But like realistically, I'd been in at this point I was competing. So I'm winning. I'm like I had a state record at that point. Like I was in I was in shape, you know what I mean? Um and I think she knew I was a state record holder cuz the gym that I was powerlifting gym. Um but I had done some stuff. I had gotten some level of authority on some tiny thing and people were like, "Oh, can you help me with that, too?" And to be really honest with you, my entire life, and I'm saying like there's many paths, but like my life has been learn something, get good at it, have evidence that you were good at the thing, and then people ask you for help on that thing. And so, in the beginning, people asked me how to get in shape. And then I started a business around getting people in shape. And then people who had businesses around getting people in shape asked me how I was getting my
34:11 businesses that were getting people in shape to work. And then people who had businesses that were national scale that helped people in a specific niche or industry started asking me how I was helping people in a specific niche or industry. And then people who had really big businesses just started asking me how did you get a really big business? And so like my entire life been simply doing as hard as I [ __ ] could to get good at something and then do it enough times. And to be really like very clear with you, every time I did it, it was not to move on to the next step. It was to just get good at the thing. And then by getting good at the thing, people asked me about it. And so it wasn't like I lost 10 pounds and then tried to start selling, you know, weight loss advice. I had multiple state records and I like I looked good, you know what I mean? Like I was in very good shape. And then people started asking me about it. And
34:56 then I didn't have one gym and start telling people, hey, here's how you run a I had six gyms by the time I was 26. And then people were like, okay, you're 26 and you have six gyms and you did all cash flow. Like you're doing something right. And then people started asking me about the stuff. And then and then when I had the licensing business doing 4 million a month, people who had other bigger businesses are doing a million a month or 500,000 a month. They're like, "How do you get to 4 million a month?" And I was like, "Well, this is what I did." And so, like, I've just tried to figure it out. And it's it's like the path has always been revealed as I took more steps. And so, I think a big fallacy in the early on days is trying to think that you're going to figure out the entire path before you even take the first step. >> It's just not true. Real quick, I have the most amazing offer for you, which is all three of my books for free. Uh, just
35:43 cover the shipping. I think it's like five or six bucks in shipping uh per book. Um, you get the actual hardback shipped to you. And the reason for that is because some of you guys may know we had 3.6 million copies that were donated from entrepreneurs. And I'm doing my part to give the books away, but I'm also giving the other two books uh to anyone who want them, who choose to redeem it. All right. Last time I made this offer, uh, it sold out in like 10 days. Uh, so I did buy a lot more books. Um, so if you see this, you know, go check it out. Go grab them. Um, these are obviously while supplies last. Um, because this lives in the video forever. And if you get there and it's not there, then, you know, don't get upset. All right, back to the video. >> I was going to ask, how important is it for someone to have that moment with the check where they just make their first Oh, >> I mean, in some ways, I think it's everything. In other ways, it's nothing. Like one of the cool um shameless plug for school, the um 30.44% of people who finish their first month of school make their first dollar online. And that's like so like like that's why we do it. You know what I mean? Like I know how hard that first dollar is. Like there's so much to get the first dollar across the because the second dollar comes so much faster after that. Um that I mean that's why that's why I invest in the company. That's why I'm so adamant about it. But um anyways,
37:00 the the point is is that yes, I think having the first dollar get across is very important. But if you can reframe it from that experience points perspective, that there's there's there's probably three levels before that. You have to like level one is that you have to understand that it's my fault. Level two is that you have to use what you have, not what you wish you had to get to where you want to go. And where you want to go isn't 100 steps forward. It's just the next step. And so like I don't think that anger drives me as much as it used to, but it was everything that I had when I started. And so if I had listened to the positivity mantra when I started, I never would have gotten going because nothing made me feel happy. And so they were like, "Follow your passion." I was like, "My passion is to not be poor and to not be here in Baltimore. That's my passion is not be here." And so that's what drove me. And so I think that it just needs to be restated that like
37:55 is that the goal? Sure. But is that necessary to start? No, it's not. And so I can tell you that even when I was angry um and getting through that, making more money did make my life better. Like I had more ability to deal with inconveniences, hassles, health issues from family members that I had to foot the bill for. Like all these things like money can provide value. And so, um, I'll say this thing that a mentor told me. He said, "Money does not buy happiness, but it can help you avoid pain." And so, like, I think there's nothing wrong with getting with making money. Obviously, I like doing it. Um, but I just hate the people who espouse that you have to feel a certain way to win or that or that winning when you are angry or sad or in pain or ashamed is somehow wrong. And so I just like you have to meet success where you're at. And if the first step you have to take out of anger and the next step you have to take out of sadness and the next one you have to
38:57 take out of shame and use that to to propel yourself forward. All that matters you take the step. And one of the things that I always like is for a very long time I didn't consider myself a good person. I mean, I still probably don't, but um in terms of like I I always identified with the villain um and the oppressor in most scenarios, which is bad. But anyways, but I there's a point to this is that I never thought that I deserved the good life. I never thought I didn't think I deserve the happy ending. I'll put it that way. And so the thing that got me through that was the idea, and this felt like honestly like gaming the system. So like from the evil side, was that I could still get the good guy's ending if I just did the thing that they do to get the ending. So I didn't have to do it with pure intentions. I didn't have to do it as a great guy, but if I just still did the things, I could still get the getting. And I think for me that that realization
40:01 has been why my ruthless focus on like well what did you do? And to everyone who listens to my stuff like it's like great throw the emotions out. Throw the spiritual energy vibrations out. What do you do? Patience is just figuring out what to do in the meantime. Like courage is acting as though you weren't afraid. Like like what do you do? And then eliminating everything else and then just doing that and then doing whatever mental tricks you have to do which is like there were slaves who work seven days a week. So can I like and then alternatively catastrophizing the alternative path which is that if I do not do anything this is what will happen eventually that pain in the future will be my pain today and then actively thinking about what that pain would be like and then seeing if that can make you more uncomfortable than the comfort that you're in. And I think I mean I think Tony Robbins says this. He says change happens when the
40:58 pain of staying the same sorry when the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same. And so if you're comfortable in staying the same the point is to make yourself more in pain to get yourself to move. And so I think there's a skill in being able to future pace and think through what pain you're going to go through. Like if you're like man okay I have gained 5 pounds a year and it has been four years so I'm 20 pounds up. Well, if four years from now I'm another 20 pounds heavier and imagining the snide comments at the holiday party or the if you're a girl, the guy who says, "Man, she'd be really cute if she lost 40 lbs." Or like even like I'm I'm going girls perspective here. A guy who says something that's like "Um I would be with her, but she's just she's just too fat. She's just not cute enough." And you're like, "Wow, that's so politically incorrect." Deal with it. It's [ __ ] life. But the thing is is like your thoughts don't need to be politically correct.
41:58 They're your thoughts. They're no one else's thoughts. And so whatever you have to do to get yourself there. And for me, the idea that a girl that I would want to be with would be like, I just don't think he's ambitious enough. I don't think he's successful enough. Like that those ideas killed me. And so I never wanted to be denied entry to somewhere because I didn't have these things. Now, do I believe that people should be denied entry? No. But I also realize that's the way the world is. And so you I think you can balance both beliefs. Like I'd love things to be different, but I accept the fact that they're not. >> Does this feel like a good argument for getting rid of other broke friends? Because I bet other broke friends reduce the pain of staying the same. >> A friend who supports you is someone who deliberately decreases the possibility of failure. And so if you look at your friends and you ask yourself, does this person increase or decrease the possibility of
42:47 failure with my goal? It's very easy to answer that question. It's yes or no. It's increase or decrease. There's no in between. Do they increase or they decrease my possibility that I get to my goal? If the answer is decrease, then get rid of them. Because imagine that you have a 100% chance of hitting your goal and you have three friends that have a 30% decrease. Like you might now have a have a [ __ ] you know, whatever a third times three is, whatever. You have 27% chance of hitting your goal now because you have three terrible friends. >> Like negative experience. >> Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they're it's like getting in video games. It's like you've got somebody who's casting like a slow spell on you and you're like moving so slow and you're like weak and like all your all your hits have like half power. Like a lot of people need to shed friendships, but the thing is it's more that they call them friends, but they're not really friends. They're just there.
43:39 And they're there because they've always been there, but not because they should be there, but because they're going to help you get to where you want to go. They just they're just there. They exist. They're not going anywhere. They don't have goals and they're at a different part in their journey. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going to start the path of of of drinking glass and starting to to to double time, you got to live your life and you got to live tomorrow's life and the next day's life and start dragging that towards you, they're going to they're going to be upset about it. And so one of the sayings I recently have that I like a lot which is there are no social obligations only social consequences. And the people who want to deliver those consequences often do it by talking to you less and by avoiding you more. They try to spend less time with you and talk to you less to punish you for the fact that you missed the party. You missed
44:30 the going out. You didn't show up to their wedding. You didn't show up to their dogs christening or whatever. But the crazy thing is is that if you felt obligated to go, then it means you didn't want to go. And if it mean that means that if you didn't want to go and the punishment of not going is that you don't have to go more in the future because they avoid you. They don't invite you anymore. Then to me that's a win-win. You save time today and you save time tomorrow. And I don't understand why people are not willing to deal with that. Like just looking at what happens rather than whatever emotional noise they make with their face at you like moving past that. Great. You expelled air at me. Understood. Got it. But the outcome is you will no longer invite me, which is what I want. Great. I feel like we won here. And so thinking second and third order outcomes from what happens when I quote break up with this friend or what happens when I offend this friend. A lot
45:23 of times it's you closer to your goal. And I've always been okay with that. And like if someone if someone like the moment I have seen somebody as decreasing the likelihood to hit my goal, I am happy to tell them that like I think I think you are not good for me. I don't think you help me hit what I want to hit. And they be like, well then they'll try and downgrade your goals and say you shouldn't believe this way. And then they'll cast their beliefs on you. And for me it's like that's amazing that you believe that. I don't believe that and I don't really want to believe what you believe because then I would have your life and I certainly don't want that. And so like again I I you I make these tweets about this but it's like if you don't like their life don't listen to what they say. Like don't take their advice if you don't like what you see. And so if everyone around you has a life you don't want then don't listen to any
46:16 of their advice. Like, and hopefully you're listening to this and you're watching. If there's some element of my life or whatever that you find awesome, cool. Then maybe some element of what I can share is helpful for you. Um, but you have to put blinders on because there is a period of time where you, and I mean, I've said this, but you you're not going to be successful enough for the next tier of friends, but you're too different from the friends that you used to have. And so, that middle path is very lonely. But the good thing about loneliness is you've got time. And right now, time is what you need because you got to learn stuff. You got to get the skills so you can start trading that for more and more money. And then you can take the money and trade that for more money. But in the beginning, you just have time and that's what you have to spend. And so if you are broke or you are poor and wish to no longer be broken poor, the first is owning the fact that everything that has to do with your life is your fault. And a lot of people will reject that. And you're right. Stay poor. You're totally right. You'll never be successful. You're totally right. I believe you. The next step is being willing to use what you have rather than what you think you should have or what you wish you had. The circumstances, the connections, the money, whatever, the passion, the purpose, the meaning behind the work.
47:32 You can wish for all that stuff, but you don't have it. So, you have to use what you have, which could be anger, could be shame, could be pain, whatever. And then as soon as you start taking action, everyone around you will collapse and try to pull you down. And so the only way to protect yourself against that is to increase your own approval of self and decrease how much their opinion of you matters. Which means that you have to be you have to be proud of you for taking the step and actively look at their lives and think do I want what they have? If the answer is no, then do not listen to what they say. And then when you do that, you keep walking. You keep taking steps no matter how painful it is. And you never stop. And if you do that, you will get there. That's it. Cool. >> In your 20s, you don't need to find yourself. You need to build yourself. Here are 18 tactical lessons I learned about achieving early success. >> I made my first million at 26. I crossed
48:42 100 million in net worth at age 31. And this is my road map for things that I learned along the way. I'd like to normalize a 6 day a week, 12-hour per day work week for men between 16 and 28. And despite all the self-worth voodoo that social media and society will tell you, you are valued based on your utility. And when you're young, you have none. But you have a lot of energy. And so trade that energy for experience points and become useful. The first rule of entrepreneurship according to Alex is use what you've got. And the reason I like that is because many people always don't start things because they don't have the capital. They don't have the connections. They don't have the whatever insert insecurity or projection of blame and power they want to put on. But the first rule is you use what you have. And so it's about resourcefulness, not resources. And so if you have energy, you use the resource you have. You use what you've got to trade to
49:41 develop experience, to develop proof that you can get good at a skill. And you only get good at the skill by not being good at a skill and repeating it and then failing at each time and then making incremental improvements which take many many repetitions until you actually get good. And this may be a little controversial, but I'm not here to be nice to you. I'm trying to be kind, which might mean that it hurts a little bit. So, let's make this practical. If you have less than $100,000 in savings and you would like to have $100,000 or more in savings, these are the things that I would recommend doing. And that means that you have to check out your ego. It's your ego is gone for this. All right? You don't care what other people think because they're not going to be there in 10 years. All right? Because you have a whole new group of friends that are way [ __ ] better and cooler. So, one, stop eating out. Discount groceries only. That's if you're super poor. If here's my caveat, if you know how to make money, you already have a base level of skills, then eating Chipotle and whatever, whatever you can Door Dash it in so that you can keep working. The moment I realized I can make $500 every 30 minutes by selling, I was like, "Oh, I'm never buying I'm never cooking food or grocery shopping ever again." Anything that was less than $500 an hour was was now immediately outsourced. All right? But this advice is for people who are super broke. Okay? So, if you don't
50:53 have the skill set yet at all and you're struggling to just get things going, then you need to be completely on the defensive so that you can have enough money so that you can start taking bets. Because the only way that you're going to get ahead is that you have to make bets. You got to make bets on education. You got to make bets on opportunities. You got to make bets on inventory. You got to make make bets on software. or you want to start a Shopify store, you want to start a school community, you want to start something, it's still going to cost some money, right? You might have to buy a camera, you have to buy some software that helps you edit videos, like there's some expenses. All right? And so having a big stockpile allows you to be patient. The the more money you have, the longer you out you can think because you don't have to worry about tomorrow. You know that next month and the month after and the month after taking care of because even if you made no money, you've got enough. That's how you can start thinking long term. People are like, "Think think long term. Think long term." But like unless if you have payroll and you've got or you've got rent or you've got you've got groceries to pay, you can't think long term because you're in survival mode. And so I'm trying to get survival to be as low as humanly possible for you so that you could get into thrive mode. But
51:54 it's all relative. If you make 40 grand a month and spend 40 grand a month, you're going to be in the same survival mode. But if you make 40 grand a month and spend four, you're going to have you're going to have every month you make 10 months worth of income. And so in two months, you've got you've got 20 months saved up. You're good. And then you can get super aggressive with that other 36 and start really betting to to double down. All right, so here's the very broke five, six things that you can do to immediately spend way less. One, stop eating out. Discount groceries only. Two, stop buying new clothes. Go to Goodwill only. Three, only attend free friend events. All right, so think of what I just said. Think about all the events that friends will tell you to come to. weddings, bachelor parties, uh birthdays, um just nights out because it's Thursday, whatever. Only attend free friend events. And if they don't support your goals, they are not your
52:44 friends. Think about that. If I said, "Hey, I've got this goal." And I said, "Hey, there's this human being and he wants to get you to not have that goal. Would you describe them as a friend or an enemy?" Think about it. Some of you, some of the people in your life that you call friends are actually your enemies. You just don't know it. Now, four, take the rest of the time that you have to A, apply to jobs that make more than your current job. B, pick up side hustle work. C, learn skills that you can trade for a higher hourly rate than you currently do. When I say trade, I mean you make more per hour than what your current current skills pay you. All right? And then five, find the hardest worker in the room when you enter that new job or that new place and then double their level of input. So if they knock on a 100 doors, you knock on 200. They make a 100 dials, you make 200 dials, right? When I had Jacob, my young neighbor, I gave him this exact advice. And he was expected
53:40 to on his team do a $100 a day. He did between 300 and 400. And so guess what? He got better faster. And then once you follow all of those steps, this is what you need to do next. Wait 36 months. And this is what I mean by patient with your outputs, impatient with your inputs. And the crazy thing is that you can change your life in one decision. I can get drunk, drive in a car, and change my life forever. Right? I can happen like that. But it can happen just like that the other way. It's just that the outcome's delayed. That's the only difference. You can change your life today in this moment by making these decisions and the and your life path will have veered. You will have changed direction. Your tree of of life will move. It's just that it takes time for that new direction to bear fruit. Whereas you can poison the fruit in a second. You can kill a tree real fast. You just can't grow one real fast. But it doesn't mean that if a seed's planted
54:31 and you're watering it, it's not growing. It just takes a second to get above the surface. I think you can solve a lot of male problems by getting in shape and making money. You'll still have problems. They'll just be smaller and you'll have more resources to handle them. So, let's talk about the making money part first. Fundamentally, in order to make money, you have to provide value to some someone, either an employer or customers. But either way, you have utility which you exchange for money. And so by making that a goal, then it means that you're going to increase your own usefulness. And so somebody who is more useful all of a sudden develops other ancillary skills around that utility that they can use in other parts of their lives. If you're good at sales, guess what you can do when you're talking to girls? You can use the same conversational skill set. If you're trying to negotiate uh a purchase for a car or a house or whatever, like those skills generalize. They transfer across
55:26 domains. And so a lot of people think it's like, well, when would I ever be a salesperson or when would I ever be a outbound what like it doesn't matter. It's not about that thing. The thing is it's like real life skills actually do generalize. Like this isn't elementary school or or middle school when you're learning calculus or algebra or whatever and thinking like what am I going to use this in real life? One, it is real life right now. Two, these skills do get used across domains. Of all of my friends who are sent to millionaires and billionaires to a person, they started in what I would consider a high volume sales environment. So that's either door-nocking, cold calling, or some sort of in-person business where they had many, many, many conversations with strangers on a daily basis. And I think there, and I'm talking not like a a a month or six months. I'm talking like three, five years where no one knew their name. They were just some faceless
56:22 representative that stood there at the door, saw people, sold memberships, sold insurance, sold solar, sold whatever. And the thing is is like skill development happens through volume and feedback loops. So it's the number of repetitions you have times the amount of improvement between repetitions. Brute forcing the amount of volume definitely will help if you can give yourself feedback. I've seen people say, "Hey, I've actually made a hundred pieces of content." Now, this is like 1% of people
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