The speaker (Brad Costanzo) offers a personal definition of ambition as refusing to settle and reaching for goals that feel slightly beyond what seems possible. He acknowledges fear and uncertainty when pursuing big aims but frames the real question as whether one can accept not trying; he contrasts people who feel hopeless with those who take hopeful action (seeking mentors or, alternatively, falling for get-rich-quick schemes). He closes by reframing "quick" as relative: sustained sacrifice (e.g., working intensely for five years) can lead to a profitable business exit (example: selling for about $5 million, with buyers often paying multiples of earnings).
Questions this video answers
Five years.
About $5 million.
Chapters
Ambition is not a real simple word to define, I don't think. I mean, it can mean different things to different people. Somebody who is ambitious might just be all focused on going to get the money and going for the promotion and climbing the corporate ladder and not really knowing what they want. They just know they want more. To me, though, ambition is a. It's an amazing word. I mean, to me it just means not settling for what you can have or what you do have, but pushing yourself to what is just out of the reach of the probable and even just slightly out of reach of what's possible. Because if you aren't reaching for something that is almost a little bit scary, then you're not really living. Yeah. You know, one of the most common questions I get is, how do you know it's gonna work? And how do you do it anyway without that certainty, without that knowledge? I don'. I don't know it's going to work. Actually, most of the time I'm scared to death that it's not going to work. I am wondering what the hell am I getting myself into? Am I biting off more than I can chew and am I going to be able to make this happen? There are so many variables outside of my control. The one thing that keeps me going and keeps me able to take that step anyway, in spite of the uncertainty, is really thinking about the alternative. Not do I have what it takes to make this happen and to pull this off? But do I have what it takes to not try? And you know, I don't. It really is okay to not be happy with where you are in life and to say, you know, I wouldn't have chosen this for myself. In fact, I'm really mad that either I feel like I was forced into this life by other people or by lack of choices or by the choices I made. And that's okay when you have something you really want. The thing that I found is there's two types of people out there who feel like this. They're the ones who feel like this, but then they feel hopeless, that there's nothing they can do to get out. But then there's the ones who have hope in them, and they're like, well, screw it if somebody else has done it, sure, I can find a way. And then those people look, and then they either find really great mentors out there, showing them the path that they've taken and they decide if it's right for them, or they find shady shysters who are selling Get Rich easy programs, get rich Quick actually exists and it is something to aspire to. It's the get rich easy part that does it. And let me prove that to you. You see, a lot of folks think that it's impossible to get rich really fast, but they haven't quite defined what really fast means. I mean, think about this. If you have an idea and you put money and time and energy into this idea, and you seek out resources and help and you work on this idea, you turn off the TV and you work 12 to 14 hours a day, and you say, screw it, I'm going to sacrifice some things in my life. And you do this for just say five years. You just bust your hump for five years, and then five years later, you find a company or an individual who wants to pay you to buy your business, to buy what you put together. And if you know anything about selling a business, oftentimes you get 3, 5, 10 times earnings of what you've made. You cash out. And that's what's called an exit plan. And a lot of us are familiar with this. But if you do this, if you bust your ass for 5 and then sell your business maybe for $5 million, I think if you change your perspective and you understand that quick is a relative term, I think you'll be a lot happier with some of the opportunities that you're able to create for yourself. And I think it's going to be a lot more fun on a ride. As. Sam.
