Here are brutally honest truths that
will give you an unfair advantage. I'm
Alex Shamoszi and the founder of
acquisitions.com. It's a portfolio of
companies that generate hundreds of
millions of dollars in revenue per year
in aggregate. And a lot of my success in
business has come from finding and
exploiting unfair advantages. So
hopefully this video helps you do the
same. So let's start with number one.
Pain is the price of
progress. The fastest growth periods are
often the most miserable. If you want to
progress, get used to pain. If you think
about what actually occurs when you
grow, you stretch past your point of
comfort. So even if you're growing a
muscle, like you stretch it, you break
it down, it's painful. If you have
growing pains, like as a kid, it's like
you grew too fast and your joints are in
a lot of pain. If you're a company and
you expand, this is technically supposed
to be good stuff, but it doesn't make it
any less painful. Elite athletes don't
get stronger during easy workouts. If we
want progress, we must accept the price
of pain that's attached to it. You
cannot both want progress and live an
easy life. These two things conflict.
Number two, happy but not satisfied. So,
let me explain this. So, you're allowed
to be happy before you hit your goal,
just not satisfied. And so, there's a
very big difference between being
content with your life, content with
your work, and complacent, meaning
you're not going to take any more
action. There's this great Haitian
proverb, which is behind mountains are
more mountains. It's kind of like after
every peak, you can just see more peaks
ahead of you. The work works on you more
than you work on it. For me, I remember
I had a year that I basically went into
retirement trying to figure out what I
wanted to do. And the thesis that I came
out with was that hard work is the goal.
And so, the fact that there's something
that happens as a result of hard work is
really just a secondary effect. It's a
consequence, but the goal is the work
itself. I, you know, I had a friend this
morning who messaged me. They're like,
"Why do you still work?" And I was like,
"Because it's the thing that I enjoy
doing most." And when I looked back on
my life, when I didn't work, I was bored
and felt depressed. And when I do work,
I am stressed, but I do have moments
that I really enjoy as well. I took this
as a kind of a foundational truth for
me, not for everyone, that there is
misery on both sides. So, I might as
well be productive and useful. And the
only way to be productive and useful is
to be happy about the process, but not
satisfied so you can continue to provide
value to the world. Now, number three,
ignore critics. Now, this is probably
easy to say, hard to do. So, let me let
me break this down a little bit more.
So, friendly reminder that most people
are fat, poor pansies. Don't listen to
them when they try to deter you from
doing whatever it takes to succeed. So,
the average person will always try to
keep you average. It makes sense that if
you want to be extraordinary, you will
do things that an ordinary person would
see as extra, right? And so a lot of
people, and this is this is the really
hard part that I had to come to terms
with, is that a lot of people want to
see you fail because it justifies the
risk that they chose not to take. We
always have to think about listening to
the people who are closest to our goals,
not closest to us. And if you want a
more violent version of this, your
critics are going to eventually die and
their opinion isn't going to matter
then, which means it probably also
doesn't matter now. So, might as well do
what you wanted to do originally. Number
four, selective
productivity. Productivity comes from
all the things that you choose not to
do. I'm going to define two more terms
for you because I think it's important.
I see commitment as the elimination of
alternatives. So, if I get married, then
I eliminate all alternatives to the
person that I'm married to. Right? That
is commitment, right? Which is very
similar to focus. Focus, if you think of
the hypothetical extreme of focus, is
that somebody does literally nothing but
one thing. So they don't eat, they don't
sleep. They would eventually die, but
they would be 100% focused during the
time that they were alive, right?
Obviously, we have to put a couple
things in. You have to eat food, you
have to sleep, right? But the most
focused person does the fewest things
outside of the thing they're focused on.
Focus is about the number of things that
you say no to. Having this framework is,
in my opinion, more powerful for
productivity than just about anything
else. Right? People are always trying to
figure out like productivity hacks, but
they want to add things to their lives
to become more productive, which is
completely counter to what focus even
means. It's getting rid of everything
that's not the thing is how you focus.
Now, part of that also means
environmentally, right? So, if you like
have a window that you look outside of
and you've got people who walk past your
office and people can knock on the door
and you've got Slack notifications, of
course, you're not focused because all
of those things are not the work. So,
I'm going to give you an analogy here.
So, imagine there's a wall that you have
to get over. All right? In order to you
have to get a critical mass to get above
this wall, right? And so you start
putting up, you know, these
ladders against the wall to try and
climb over the wall. All right, this
should make some sense. But as you try
to build up the the little rungs of the
ladder, so you put four rungs up. Well,
you're not going to get the critical
mass required to get over the hump to
actually get the success you want. But
the idea, the fallacy is that, oh, I'll
just do all three or four of these
things and I'll see which one works.
When the reality is that any of them
work, but none of them will work unless
you work on one. And so, we have to take
these four rungs that we're able to
build and say, you know what, we're not
going to do that. We're going to put
that rung here because I'm going to take
that time that I'm putting for my second
opportunity, put it here. I'm gonna take
this rugg and put it right here. And
then I'm gonna take this rug and what do
you know? I can get over this hump on
top and I can get to the other side of
the wall, which of course is where all
the money and all the happiness and all
the, you know, the girls uh with, you
know, beautiful, beautiful hair. Look at
this beautiful hair, right? This
beautiful hair. Now she's looks like a
bug. Anyways,
uh there you
[Music]
go. What's crazy is that this literally
happens at all levels of business. Like
people who are starting out trying to
start five things, people who are at
like their second or fifth year. I
talked to a guy last night who has a
really good business, really good
margin, 50% margins, has great revenue
retention. He was in cyber uh security.
People stay with him, people pay. He has
no problem getting customers. He has no
problem delivering on them. I was like,
"What's the problem?" He's like, "Me?"
He said, "I just I get bored." He's
like, "I just want to start more
things." And I'm like, "Yeah, you got to
stop that." Like, it's like the thing is
is think about how much more successful
you'd be. So, zoom all the way out.
Think of somebody who gets better every
single year and works on the same
project for 20 years. You'd be like, "My
god, that guy's probably really
good." And what's interesting about this
is that it doesn't matter what project
the person works on. You do 20 years of
reps and you do nothing else, you're
going to be good. And so if you know
that that's a that's a fact, that's a
certainty that you're going to be good
with 20 years of practice, then the
objective is to just get 20 years of
practice in one thing and stick with it.
So, like your plans aren't working
because the plans are wrong. The plans
aren't working because you're not
working on the plan. The hard part about
the plan is not creating the plan or
even following the plan. It's sticking
with the plan. That's the hard part. All
right. Number five,
fear versus regret. So, change is scary,
but so is regret. And so, the life you
live depends on the one you fear most.
The more successful version of yourself
also has fear. is that that your fear of
regret is greater than your fear of
rejection. Think about that for a
second. I'm going to say it one more
time. Your fear of regret must supersede
must be bigger must be greater than your
fear of rejection. And so I remember
when I when I when I quit my management
consulting job, which took me six
months, so I'm not saying this from a
pedestal. It took me six months of I
decided I wanted to quit. It took me six
months before I actually quit. By the
way, you can measure how powerful
someone is by the distance between when
they make a decision and when it happens
in reality. So, if you want to feel
impotent, then take as long as you
possibly can between when you make a
decision and when you act on that
decision. Now, for me, it was 6 months.
And all I did was I called my friends up
every night. I was like, "I'm going to
quit my job. I'm going to start a
business." And I, you know, we talk
every night, literally every night. And
I would be pacing in my condo like, "I'm
going to do it. I'm gonna do it." And I
wouldn't do it. I was too afraid. I was
too much of a scaredy-cat. But the thing
that got me over the hump was this.
Number one, I knew that when I looked
back on my life, if I never took the
jump, I would have been ashamed of
myself and I would have felt like I was
a pansy and I was like, I can't die a
pansy. I have to be able to make a jump.
Number two, I played out plan B, which
is, okay, let's say I actually
completely fail. What happens? I was
like, well, I'm not really going to be
homeless. I know enough people that I
can get food, right? And I was like,
okay, so I would probably just couch
surf. I'd have a little bit of shame,
but at the end of the day, what would I
really do? Well, I could always apply to
get the job that I had back, or I could
just go to another place with an
experience or a story that would set me
up for something cooler later. And so,
all of a sudden, I was like, wait, so my
plan B is that I just have a cool
experience that I can talk about at a
job interview or to go to business
school. Okay, that's that doesn't
actually sound that bad. And so, there's
this huge amorphous fear, but I've just
noticed in my life that fear only exists
in the vague. It doesn't exist in the
specific. If you're afraid of something,
try and break it into pieces and spell
it out. play out the next two or three
steps because all of a sudden if you're
in the developed western world, the
downside risk is not really real. Like
the only real downside risk is the
opinions of other people who will say
that you failed who you don't care about
anyways. But like you think you're going
to die, but you're not. You're just
going to learn some stuff and you'll be
like, "Oh, maybe next time I'm not going
to make that mistake." And that's it.
And I say this and it's easy for me to
say, but it took me six months to figure
this out. But I do remember my final
straw was the realization that I had at
the time no girlfriend, no kids, and I
had no real, you know, financial
responsibilities besides like eating and
having a place to live. I said, if I
can't make the decision now because it
feels too risky, I will never be able to
make the decision because if other
people rely on me, now some of you are
in a position where people do rely on
you and you're like, "Well, Alex, you
know, I've got people who rely on me."
Yeah, I would say that it makes it
harder and what now? Harder and so what?
But for me, that was the thing that got
me over the hump. Was like, if I don't
do it now, I'm never going to do it. I'm
never going to have fewer
responsibilities. And to to play this
out a little bit more, if you have
people who depend on you, their
dependencies on you might increase. And
so, if you can't do it now, you still
might as well do it, right? Because it's
only going to go one way. Number six,
persistence creates timing.
So you can time everything perfectly if
your intention is to never stop. I'm
going to say this one more time. You can
time everything perfectly if your
intention is to never stop. So think
about this visually. So let's imagine
that this line right here is is the is
your lifeline. It's life as time passes.
Right? Now let's say that you have some
special thing that's going to happen
here and some special opportunity that
happens here and some special
opportunity that happens here. What most
people try and do is they don't want to
take they don't want to work at all and
then they're like, "Oh, I'm just going
to work here and then I'm going to work
here and then I'm going to work here."
But the likelihood that you're there in
these three moments is very low if
you're trying to time it. But if you
work the whole time, then the timing
will always be perfect because you will
be ready. And so perfect timing is a
complete myth. But perfect preparation
isn't. And that on a long enough time
horizon, your opportunity will come.
People think that they need perfect
conditions to start when in reality
starting is the perfect condition. It
creates the perfect condition for
opportunity to be capitalized on. And I
can tell you this from firsthand
experience with me, like the more you
do, the more you see you can do. And so
opportunities multiply with skill. And
so the better you get at doing stuff,
the more things you know you would be
able to do and win at. And so the goal
is to gain as many skills as possible so
that you have access to the maximum
number of potential opportunities. A lot
of people were thinking that oh I'm
going to wait for the right moment. But
when you have unlimited skills like Elon
can go do whatever he wants. He could
build a city in the middle of the ocean.
And so he could do that. He has the
skills because the world of
opportunities open to him. He also spent
all of his younger years just developing
all these different skills and becoming
a polymath across all these different
things. Independence political stuff.
Put it away. The point is the guy's
good. All right. And so the goal is to
get good and then you will never have a
shortage of opportunities. Number seven,
envy versus effort. All right. Let me
break this down. If people worked for
their goals as hard as they envy others
for achieving them, they would already
have achieved them themselves. So think
about the amount of mental effort that
goes into the hate that people spew out,
the envy for wanting other people's
stuff. I'll give you a couple hard
truths about this. Number one, no one is
doing as well as you think they are. So
by comparison, you're actually better
off than you think. Number two, you
don't win by beating people. You win by
growing into your potential and then
allowing them to shrink into irrelevance
by consequence. Three, and guess what?
Your biggest threat is not your
competition. It's a mediocre version of
you that never realized what you could
become. And as pathy as that may sound,
it's also true, right? A lot of people
think it's like, oh, you know, that
guy's doing really well. It's like his
doing well changes nothing about your
reality. Something really ironic that I
noticed is that the people who get
copied the most by their competition are
the people who ignore the competition
who are copying them. Fundamentally, you
start by focusing on the customer. And
if you always put the customer first,
everyone will copy you because you're
actually doing the thing that will work,
which is focusing on the customer. And
there's a lot of weird things in life
like that where like it's the opposite
is what you what you you'd think like oh
I'm going to look at what everyone else
is. It's like no just do what matters
most and then people who don't know how
to think will just copy you. Real threat
is that no one copies you at all because
you're doing nothing. If you take all
this effort that you look that you put
into comparing yourself to other people
that you look to kind of like tearing
them down sometimes even in your mind
let's be real. Maybe you don't say it to
other people, but in your mind you're
like
me that whatever that is, whatever that
feeling is that just do that towards you
not being good enough. What happens is
that when you do that, all of that
effort, all that energy goes into
improving yourself rather than tearing
down somebody else. And only one of
those things will help you. Number
eight, hard conversations create
opportunities. Hard truth, everything
you want is on the other side of a few
hard conversations that you have been
putting off. People either grow into
their potential or they keep living the
same six months of their life over and
over again. And the difference is how
many hard conversations you're willing
to have and how fast you have them once
you realize you need to. If you sherk
away from this, and I get it. I'm
somebody who like it for a very long
time had a hard time having hard
conversations, right? Like I literally
traveled across the country before I
told my dad that I left. All right? Like
I get it. So if you think having
uncomfortable conversations is hard,
just wait until you see the result of
not having them. It will be harder.
Basically, the the struggle is that you
have short-term pain versus long-term
pain. And long-term pain, I call regret.
Comfort is short gain. Regret is long
pain. Fear is short pain. Fulfillment is
long gain. You want to trade short pains
for long gains, not short gains for long
pains. It's not the safe bet. It's a
guaranteed loss just later. All right.
So, I'm I'm going to spell this out.
This is short
pain. This is long
pain. This is
short
gain. This is
long
gain. You want to trade short pain for
long
gain. That's the goal. It's the best
trade. Number nine, endure. There's a
reason that when I gave instructions to
some of the new business owners who were
going to start, you know, putting a
community on school, one of the sole
instructions I gave them was learn to
endure. And so, the fastest way to
become the person you want to be is to
put yourself in a situation where you
have no choice but to become them. You'd
be amazed at what you can endure when
you have no choice. For me, when I
signed my lease for my gym, I had $5,000
in my bank account. The rent was $5,000.
I had never really made money before.
And so I was like, "Oh, wow. How does
this work? If I made 100% of the money
that I had made in my job, I would have
been able to pay rent and have no food
or anything else." But one of my
favorite flavor texts on Magic cards is
necessity is the mother of invention,
right? It's the constraints that create
the innovation that is required to get
you out of the constraint, to get you
out of the hard time. And so when I
think back on like human history,
sometimes we think that things that were
going through our heart, but they're
certainly much easier than the things
that other humans have endured. And how
did they endure them? Well, when the
only choice they had was die or endure,
you tend to endure. Number 10, results.
Excuses. This is not going to be a big
surprise here. The thing with excuses
that's interesting is that they may be
valid. And I think that's the part that
people struggle with is that they're
like, "Yeah, obviously results matter
more excuses, but insert special
snowflake." The thing is is that like
you might be right. And I just like this
quote from Ila. She says, "It's not your
fault, but it is still your problem. You
still have to do something about it." Or
you can just wait and say, "You know
what? I'm going to continue to not live
the life that I want until I die." And
everyone will be like, "Oh yeah, he had
an excuse. That's
why." Right? Is that what like is that
what you really want? is that people
were like, "Yeah, he had an
excuse." Like that's it. Like, like it's
a weird thing to want a permission slip
for mediocrity, which is fundamentally
what excuses are. You just want
permission from everyone else to still
get respect without the outcome because
of your extenduating circumstances. And
the thing is is there's a ton of allure,
but the only person who actually
believes that is you. People might not
along. The people who love you might
say, "Yeah, you know what? You are
special. You are a special snowflake.
Your mama might still love you." But
like, you're not going to earn anyone's
respect. And I think you certainly won't
earn the respect of the person that
matters most, which is you, cuz you'll
always know that you could have done
more, that you could have done better.
That's the one that keeps me up. I have
a saying that I tell myself a lot when
I'm doing something that I don't want to
do, and it's I will do what is required.
It's not about doing your best. It's
about doing what's required because
what's required might be better than
your best is right now. But the good
news is that your best can get better.
So number 11, and this is this one's
real. All right. The hard way is the
easy way. You're like, how does that
work? The hard way is the easy way
because the easy
way never gets you there. So think about
it. People always are looking for the
shortcut, but you have to accept a very
simple truth, which is that the shortcut
never actually takes you to the place
that you're trying to go. And it's
because it's rarely one big thing. And I
would postulate, fancy word, right? That
there are a lot of shortcuts that exist
in life. Wait for it. Wait for it. And
everyone already uses those. And so
whenever an actual shortcut gets found,
all humans immediately do it and it no
longer becomes a shortcut. It's just a
thing that everyone does and it's not
really a thing anymore. Like we learned
how to tie knots. That was a big
breakthrough. And then everyone ties
their shoes and they're like, "Oh my
god, let me show you the shortcut to
this." It's like, "Oh, you tie." Like,
"Oh my god, everyone does it." and it's
like not a thing anymore, right? And so
all the things that you want to have
that most people don't have don't have
shortcuts. But thing is is so many
people waste so much time. They
literally waste longer than it would
have taken the hard way or the only way
to get there in search of the easy way
that doesn't exist. And so the reality
of this is that it's usually a hundred
small things that make days, weeks, and
months hard. It's the neverending
onslaught of And then you remember
after going through that onslaught of
that you signed up for this. But
then again, you figured that it would be
hard. And then you're reminded that this
is what hard feels like. And so you keep
going because it's the only choice you
have. I want to remind you that a lot of
times what we imagine hard to be is
different than how we experience hard
because the nature of hard changes too.
And it's more of a limitation in how we
describe hardship than it is and I
actually think there's a big problem
with this. So, just kind of like Eskimos
have like seven different words for
snow. I feel like I should have like 25
different words for hard, right? Like
the amount of things that you go
through. There's like lifestyle hard
like, okay, so there's sacrifice hard of
like you're giving up things that you
enjoy. There's also like effort hard of
like starting to do things that you hate
doing that you're not good at. There's
risk hard of the the fact that you could
lose something that you currently have,
right? That you have the chance of
losing what you currently have. You have
the uncertainty heart of the fact that
you might be doing all of the sacrifice
for nothing. There's lots of different
flavors of heart and each one of them
presents at different times and for some
reason when it gets a new kind of heart,
it's a new seventh type of snowflake
heart, then you're like, "Oh, this is
different." But it's not. It's just that
the thing that you grow comfortable
with, then you conquer and then you're
exposed to a new level. And so, I love
this quote from Paul Graham. He said,
"If you want to make a million dollars,
you have to endure a million dollars
worth of pain." Fundamentally, in my
opinion, the people who who who end up
building building, not inheriting,
building tremendous wealth, just have
massive concentrations of pain. So,
don't go looking for the easy way
because it will never get you there.
Number 12, don't, this is a big one,
don't give away your power. Now, this
sounds very like, you know, girl power
or a little uh little like rahrh, but I
will I will break this down in a little
bit less raw way. So, what offends you
controls you. Whatever you point your
finger of blame towards is what also you
point your power towards. Meaning, we
talked about excuses earlier. I can't do
it because insert X. Insert X is the
thing that has power over your life. And
I remember when I realized this was that
I had this belief that I would never be
able to be in a long-term committed
relationship because my mother had hurt
me as a child. I didn't get enough hugs.
Who gives a Whatever. But I
realized that by using that excuse and
by saying it's her fault I'm broken.
It's her fault I can't trust people.
It's her fault I can't love anybody.
Right? By by saying that over and over
again, all I did was I said, "My mother
controls how my love life will go." Oo,
heavy real well. I don't want her to
have control over how I choose to love
or not love or how how content I get in
a relationship or anything like that.
So, I actively had to say, "Maybe all
these things happened, maybe they
didn't. Also, who cares? Me. I care. I'm
the one who's affected by this." And
what's crazy about this, it's kind of a
weird thing with like parents is that
you think by hurting yourself, you get
back at them for hurting you. And you do
hurt them when you hurt yourself, but
you hurt you more at some point. And
this is like this is like super
real. Let's say that you were parented
tough, whatever that means for you. You
had lots of bad things happen, okay? And
it was probably because you were a child
trying to deal with the world without
the skills of dealing with the world as
an adult. But you had these things
happen, right? And on some level, you
might believe that you becoming
successful, you making it work,
validates the way that you were
parented. And so you have this conflict
where you're like, well, I don't want
them to think that they did a good job
by me being
successful. And so then you want to keep
not being successful to prove to them
and to hurt them for hurting
you. and you stay there as long as you
want them to control
you. And so the day that you choose to
control yourself is the day that you
choose to divorce your results from the
very viable reasons that you have to not
win. You are right. And so what? Number
13, rejection versus regret. At some
point, everyone needs to choose whether
they'd rather risk rejection now or
guarantee regret later. And so, losers
fear rejection, winners fear regret. And
most attempts fail of anything. Failure
is literally a prerequisite for success.
And one of the one of my favorite quotes
of mine is greatness rejects all
first-time applicants. And so, it's kind
of like that person that just is like,
"Oh, I can't get a job." And you're
like, "Well, what have you done?"
They're like, "Well, I applied
somewhere." And you're like, "What do
you mean?" They're like, "I applied
somewhere." And you're like, "And?" And
and they're like, "Yeah." And I and I
didn't I didn't get the job. They didn't
even call me. You're like, "You went to
one place." And you're like, and they're
like, "Yeah." This is going to be a
really good analogy for somebody who's
listening to this only for people who
don't have a business yet. A lot of
starting a business is the number of
reachouts that you had to do in order to
get the path, the job, the career that
you want right now. So, think about the
amount of interviews. Think about the
amount of outreach. Think about the
amount of job ads. Think about the
amount of resumes that you sent out.
Think about all of that. And all of that
work got you what I would consider one
sale. You got one person to say yes to
you and they would give you money for
work. All right. Now, obviously within
the context of an employee relationship,
but fundamentally actually works the
same way. All you do in a business is
the same thing. If you can handle that
level of rejection, then you can handle
the same level of rejection in a
business. It's not actually that
different. The question is whether you
can handle that level of regret years
later for not doing it. And I'll say
this, one of the things that I've
noticed between champions and everyone
else is that people everyone else is so
excited when they win. They're so
excited, you know, by the idea of them
getting first place. But there's a
reason that they never get first place.
It's because they're excited about it.
The people who always and very
consistently hit first place and win the
championships are relieved because they
tend to hate losing more than they love
winning. and they expected to win
because of the level of preparation they
had compared to everyone
else. Which brings me very magically to
number 14. Consistency beats talent. So
listen to this. You can beat most people
at anything if you just stick with it
for a year. You can become competent at
just about any skill in 20 hours. It's
just that people will wait 10 years to
get the first 20 hours logged, right?
Like if you want to learn how to play
the first few notes of a guitar, you can
learn in about 20 hours. Now, are you
going to be Jimmyi Hendris, which
Jenzie, he was a guitarist, Purple Haze,
you can look it up. Anyways, the point
is is that people have this huge delay
before they begin. And what make things
hard isn't complexity, it's consistency.
And so, as boring as it is, you just
have to keep doing it before you get
anything back. So, one of my favorite
quotes from myself is, "The world
belongs to those who can keep doing
without seeing the result of their
doing." You have to delay how quick you
get a reward, how fast you need a cookie
in order to keep going. I've been told
that I'm decent at presenting and
talking on stage in front of people. And
what a lot of people don't see is that
for years I spoke with a microphone in
front of a group of people and I did it
like multiple times a day. And I did
that in the form of a fitness session.
And so I had to literally stand on a box
and shout around and tell people what
they had to do. And I had to do that for
years. And I remember when I had to get
on stage for the first time. And I had
in high school been very nervous to
public speak. And as I was about to get
up on stage, I was like, why am I not
nervous about this? Like this is weird.
Like I should I was like, I should be
nervous. Like why am I not nervous? And
I was like, I've I've done this so many
times. Like so many times. And I'm not
talking about, you know, Civil War
history and Abraham Lincoln. I'm talking
about stuff I know. Outwork your
self-doubt through repetition, not
affirmations. You don't do it through
belief. You do it through stimuli
habituation, which is just fancy words
for saying you expose yourself to the
bad things so many times they get used
to and it's no longer a bad thing
anymore. It's just life. If you want to
get over a fear, the way they do it is
habituation. So, if I wanted to get
over, you know, being afraid of spiders,
I'm not afraid of spiders, but some
people are afraid of spiders, right? If
you want to get over that fear, you
literally lock yourself in a room with a
bunch of spiders, and all you do is you
just have panic attack after panic
attack, and you pass out, and you wake
up again, the little there, you pass
out, you keep doing eventually,
eventually your nervous system adjusts,
and five hours later, eight hours later,
you walk out of the room unafraid
because you have habituated. And so the
point of practice for all of these
things is to habituate as fast as you
can. And so we're trying to microwave
that period of time. And the thing is,
let's say it takes let's say it takes
this many reps. You can have this many
reps take you a year or you can have it
take you a month depending on how
dedicated you are to it. Number 15, have
no shame. All right. Now, I have told
this before, but my plan B was that I
would drive Uber and strip. Now, I think
part of that was because I wanted to,
you know, thumb my whatever the the
Shakespearean saying, I bite my thumb at
you, uh, to bite my thumb at my my very
respectable parents, uh, and say like, I
would take off my clothes for money.
Now, of course, they would be horrified
by that, but I think part of the reason
I was okay with it was I was like, I'm
going to I'm going to do it my way. I
want to be crystal clear here. If you
have no money and you want to make
money, you should have no shame. Knock,
call, email, text, DM, ask.
Life-changing doors do not open
themselves. And sometimes I feel like
shame was invented by people who have to
prevent people who have not from taking
action. Because all of this is just an
illusion. What are you ashamed of?
Trying. Like let's play it out. Remember
I said fear only happens in the
abstract, not in the specific. So if you
reach out to a stranger, no matter what
happens, you always come out better than
before because you either have a sale or
you have an
experience. Both make you better. And so
the crazy thing about trying is that it
has an asymmetric riskreward return. So
worst case is you get a no and you learn
from it. You get better. Life gives you
unlimited shots while you're alive. And
so if you have nothing like you you're
just basically cashing in lottery
tickets and saying, "Oh my god, I lost.
But what you're paying with is time."
Fine. Pay more time. Get more tickets.
Keep scratching. So do you know the
difference between shame and
guilt? Guilt is when you break your own
rules. Shame is when you break other
people's rules.
So if you are gay and you're in a
religious community, you would probably
feel shame. If you also share that
religious community's rule set, you
would also feel guilt. If, let's say,
you were in a very liberal progressive
environment, you might feel neither
shame nor guilt. And so the question is,
whose rules are you following? If you
have this feeling, this fear of being
ashamed, then the question is, who's the
one who wrote the rules that you're
choosing to
follow? And I can promise you it's not
the people who are successful because
they're the ones shouting on the
rooftops telling you that it's totally
different once you get in the pool. It's
very different. It's kind of like you
have the lights of the world turn on and
like you're living in this mirage when
you're not succeeding where there's all
this all this uncertainty. There's all
this ambiguity. There's this fog of the
unknown in front of you. But as soon as
you start taking action, things become
very crystal clear. I think there's
there's I'm sure some stoic analogy that
said this, but basically like if you've
ever walked through very dense fog, you
can only see a couple steps in front of
you. The only thing that you can do in
fog is just start walking. And as you
walk, more steps become available to
you. And so there's this misconception
that you're going to be able to see the
entire path ahead of you. But it has two
fundamental fallacies in front of it.
Number one is that you have the right
vision to be able to see that far with
your current skill set and resources,
which you don't. Because imagine today
all of your conditions changed. you had
more skills, which is hard to imagine
because you can't imagine what it's like
to have the skill, but maybe let's say
you have resources that you didn't have
before. Well, that would probably change
the way you play the game. So, trying to
play out and try and play 17 steps in
advance when the game itself is going to
change and you as a player are going to
change. The only thing that you can boil
all of this down to is to take the steps
that you can see in front of you one at
a time. And I would write this down of
like what are the things that are
stopping me? And more specifically,
whose voice do I hear? Whose voice or
judgment am I afraid of? Because usually
it's people. It's society is what we
say. But it's usually like two people.
And I remember when I had this big
decision that I had to make when I was
considering selling gym lunch. I thought
that $46 million was not a lot of money
for the business. Now, some of you may
hear this and be like, "Oh my god,
that's amazing." But believe it or not,
at before we before COVID happened, uh,
gym lunch was valid 150 million. And so
for me going from 150 to 50 or, you
know, 46, it felt small, right? It felt
like a really small number. And I
remember there was a particular person,
we'll call it a friend of me, if you
will, that I thought would think that
they were better than me if I sold for
this small number.
And when I was able to narrow it down to
just that one person's voice, I thought
to
myself, am I going to give that person
power over my entire life, which is
literally what it was. I was choosing
not to make a decision because of
someone else. That person has complete
power over me. And I was like, well,
that's a terrible reason not to do this.
And the crazier part is that even if
you're right and that person does say
that you
suck, so what? Most people don't want
you to win. And even if you do win, they
will try and do a reverse excuse, which
is called a justification for why you
should be excused of the respect that
you should earn for having won. He just
has good genetics. He has great parents.
He uh, you know, inherited his wealth.
He had connect good connections. She was
born in America. He speaks English. He's
a man. He's white. He's whatever you
want. But giving the person
justifications in no way helps you. You
might be right and so what? Like it's
it's so funny. It's like let's say you
have some advantage, whatever it is,
right? Whatever whatever advantage
you're born with, right? You might have
one. It's kind of the thing same thing
as the parent thing. It's like, well, I
don't want to be successful because I
don't want to prove that I had this
advantage. It's like, would you prefer
to prove everyone wrong by saying I had
this advantage and I also wasted it? I
remember I'll tell you a story and I
think it'll probably that'll that'll
round this off well. So, when I was
younger, I didn't want to be a doctor,
but that was pretty much the path that
was laid out in front of me. And so, my
father's a successful doctor and I I was
like, it's it's it's cheating, you know,
to to, you know, just assume your
practice and just like immediately have
a practice that makes a lot of money.
and he said, "Do you think Shaq, when he
was 7 feet tall, was like,"It wouldn't
be fair for me to play basketball. Other
people aren't as tall as me." And I
always remembered that. He's like, "You
play the cards you're dealt. These are
the cards you have. Play them." And I
remember thinking that as now,
obviously, I didn't decide to be a
doctor, but the reason that I didn't
want to do it was because I thought
other people would say that I would they
would disqualify away my success as not
earned by
me. when the reality is that they're all
going to disqualify your sex no matter
what because it makes them feel bad and
so them. But if you have some
cards, for the love of God, play them.
Hey, if any of these messages resonated
with you and you're like, "Man, I'm too,
you know, I'm a few months behind from
my goals." I made what I would consider
a counterintuitive video on goal
setting, which sounds so overused, but I
don't know, it's got like a couple
million views or whatever it is. So,
people seem to have liked it. Uh, and so
if you want that, you can check this
video out. Um, so far it's I think it's
the top video viewed this year.
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