If You’re Ambitious But Lazy, Please Watch This Video…

Codie Sanchez argues laziness is usually an environment problem. Sitting near a high performer raises output by 15%, while a toxic neighbor cuts it by 30%. She recommends outworking three people: past you, someone who has what you want, and a doubter.
Questions this video answers
15%
30%
A study of 58,000 hours in 11 companies
33% (differences in income by age 35 linked to neighborhood/economic connectedness)
Chapters
If you've ever called yourself lazy but still have big dreams. What if you're not lazy? You're misplaced. Laziness isn't a personality trait. It's an environment problem. If you're surrounded by comfort excuses, congratulations, you've caught the virus. It's called average. Most people think success is about discipline. But I realized early on it starts with proximity. Like, I realized I wasn't broken. You're probably not broken. You're just in the wrong room. This video is about how I fixed that and how you can too. I think fast. Let's talk about how environment shapes your outcome. There are studies that show if you sit near a high performer, your output increases by 15%. In a study of 58,000 hours in 11 companies, proximity equals performance. But if you sat next to a toxic performer, your output dropped by 30%. Toxic workers don't just underperform, they infect. They infect you, and it spreads 30ft wide. So if success is contagious, we really got to be careful about catching laziness from other people, too. Because the strongest will lift you up, but the weakest are going to take you down. Where you live affects your income by 33%. There's this study, you guys, that showed kids from the same economic background made wildly different money by age 35, depending on who they grew up near. Not parents, neighbors. It's called economic connectedness. So if you're in the right room, that changes everything. If you live in the right area and have a few rich friends, that changes everything. And if you can steal somebody else's ambition by getting a room with 700 other people that are ambitious, your life can change, too. People is performance. You don't need to outwork your competition. You only need to outwork these three people to get rich. And the last one, it's not who you think I'm gonna say. The first is the past you. The one that stopped in the face of something they didn't want to do. Going to the gym, waking up early, working late. Past you is comfortable. She wants you safe, not successful. You outwork her by doing the hard thing today that she kept putting off yesterday. And the second is the person who already has what you want. You know, don't envy them. Study them. See how they think, what they sacrifice, how they execute. Then quietly do 10% more. One more. One more rep, one more late night. And the third, the person who's counting on you to quit. The one who said you'll never make it. You're not built for this, it's too risky. You don't argue with them. You just keep showing up until they can't ignore you. You don't need to outwork the world. Just those three people. Do that long enough and you won't just get rich, you'll get free. Don't surround yourself with people you don't admire. So the friends that you surround yourself with, you want to make sure there's at least one thing that you admire so much you can barely stand it about them. They don't have to have the whole package, but they got to have one. It might be they're hysterical. You wish you were funny like that. They're super smart. They're always teaching you things. They've been massively successful, so you talk to them about it. What we found in all of our businesses is that A, players want to work with A players, B, players want to work with C players. Why? A players want to win. They want to be with other top performers. B players, they don't want anybody who's better than them. So think about the fact that if it is true, that good is contagious, you better make sure that you are around people who are better than you. My new friend Mel Robbins told me something that I loved on the podcast. She was like, listen, if you check your phone first thing in the morning, I want you to picture that every single person you don't like on one side or another. Every single person you don't like at work. Every single person who, when you look at their updates online, you kind of feel icky because maybe they're doing better than you. When you wake up and you look at your phone, I want you to picture all of them surrounding your bed. They're talking to you, they're yelling at you, they're spewing stuff right in your face. That's what you're doing the second that you wake up and you allow your phone into your brain the first thing in the morning. So because I have a buddy who's a super high performer, Mel, she's like, don't do that. I only want you to do one little tiny thing. I want you to take that phone, I want you to put it in the bathroom every night. That's it. And then the first 15 minutes of the day are yours, not theirs. Find friends who tell you hacks like that doesn't mean they have to be incredible, amazing business people. But they're at least obsessed with this idea of getting better. Even better than an incredible friend is a top tier partner like this is mine. And one of the things I love about Chris, I do not love working out and I do not love stretching. My back hurts sometimes or my hip hurts from sitting too much and working too hard. And he will literally yell at me until I come out and stretch with him every night. He will push me out of the bed in the morning to make me go work out with him. You don't need more friends, you need allies. You need somebody who's pushing you to be better, not just doing what makes you comfortable. And speaking of systems, if you've been looking for a way to launch a.
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If you want to get rich. And I don't mean kind of, I mean very. It's never a how, it's a who. And there are only three who's that matter. First, the mentor. In rooms like this, this is your shortcut to wisdom. They've already done the thing you're trying to do 10 times over. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to follow someone who's already driving the car. Mine of late is this guy, Bill Perkins or this other guy, Joe Lonsdale. They've made lots of zeros and I ask them for their advice. Second is the investor. This person understands leverage. They don't trade time for money, they trade money for more time. They see risk differently. Where you see fear, they see an entry point. They end up being your first check or your first dollar and help you grow somebody like Jenny. And the third is the operator. This is the one who makes it real. They execute. They don't talk about building. They build. Without them. Every idea dies in a Google Doc somewhere. This person helps build with you. They don't have to be an expert, just a doer. So you put those three together. Mentor, investor, operator. That's your wealth triangle. This is how you steal other people's ambition. Because not every empire needs to be built alone. The question is just how do you find them? You stay focused. You narrow your group. You protect your plans. Because everyone in your circle is not actually in your corner. Let's be honest, that line hits because it's true. Most people don't want to see you fail. They don't really want to see you win either. Especially if your win reminds them they have been standing still. When you're building something, energy matters. What did I do? I started treating my ideas like equity, only shared with people who've proven they can invest. You don't need this big group. You need a sharp one. People who push you, protect you, pour into you. Because when you're playing for freedom, not followers, proximity doesn't equal loyalty. Alignment does. I think there's a little bit of life strategy to stealing people's ambitions. And one of the things that I love to do more than anything else is my husband and I play a game. We did it on the way over here. And we'll ask each other, what is the one thing we're so obsessed with lately? Some hack or thing that we're doing that we can't shut up about. So for me, that might be like whisper flow. I really don't like texting or keyboarding. So I talk into my little computer and it spits it out perfectly. Amazing. And every single day, instead of him just saying, how was your day, honey? And I say, how was your day, honey? And we do that. We share one little secret, one little hack, one little thing that we learned. So maybe try that and let me know how it goes. Now, let's talk about the power of place. You see this room here? So we're in one of my rooms that I prep for before I get on stage, and there's a bunch of research from Princeton that shows that if you live in a messy place, if you sit at a messy desk, you have what's called cortex overwhelm, which means that your brain is actually trying to process all these things around you, and it makes you 45% less productive. So especially in the places that you need to win, keep them clean, keep them nice. My team kind of makes fun of me, but if you come into my office I'm always like, can we get rid of this? And they're like, are you ocd? And the answer is, yes, I am. But also it's because a clean desk leads to a clean brain, which leads to clean outputs. So don't overwhelm your cortex, but let it breathe a little bit. Think about having not very many things as a way to sort of meditate on your brain. This is a crazy statistic that I don't know if it's true, but they say that having a clean desk will make you 94% more productive. That's why I love that line from Jordan Peterson where he says, if you want to change the world, why don't you start with cleaning up your room? In life, it's really helpful if you want to outperform. To think about what can you take one measure of control over? A lot of that could be as simple as cleaning up. Why do they say that so many people who want control live in really clean, sterilized places? Because it helps you assert your will on the world as opposed to having the will asserted upon you. Okay, so I have a little rule. It's called the five minute rule, which means in the beginning of the day, the first thing I do when I get into the office, I survey my little desk area and I make sure nothing's messy. And if it is, I clean it up. I rearrange a little bit. At the end of the day, what's the last thing I do? I write down what my to do list is for tomorrow, and I survey the desk and I clean it up. It actually is super annoying. I never want to do it. At the end of the day, I'm one of those cup hoarders that has like 452 cups everywhere, but it turns out that then when other people are around you, it ripples. Because, you see, if I clean up tonight, and I'm not lazy tonight, that means when I start the morning out, when I have the most energy at the beginning of the day, I don't have to spend it on things that aren't very productive. If you're also a little lazy like me, sometimes rituals lead to discipline. So, for instance, I do not like going to the gym. So I learned something else from a friend, which is taking out your clothes and laying them not just on the bed, but lay them in the middle of your closet in the most annoying way possible, where you have to, like, walk over them every time you go do something. Why? Because you're eventually either going to have to pick them up and admit defeat, or you're going to have to get your ass to the gym. And I think you should get your ass to the gym. That's at least what I tell myself. I also do lots of little routines. Like, for instance, every single day before I start working, I love to light a little candle. Sometimes a little palo santo. Why? Because I kind of want to, like, relax into the thing that's miserable. Let's say, for instance, that I know that I have to work super late on a Friday night. How can I pair that with something kind of juicy, kind of delicious? A glass of wine? A candle? If you're a fellow nerd like me, I love a Harry Potter movie while I'm doing a little work. That's my love language. And it means that I can kind of be lazy. Like, people aren't like, you know what she does a lot of, she watches Harry Potter and she drinks wine, and that's why she is tippy toppy. But if I pair that with something that I know is going to help me in my day, those little rituals lead to discipline. You don't have to be a superhero. You just have to steal other people's ambition. By stealing their processes, you can steal mine. I don't remember who said it, but somebody said you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And that is true. Where in your life can you build a way where it is super hard for you to fail? Why? I come to events like this, and, hell, it's why I throw them. Because if I get in a room with 700 people who are building things simultaneously, the likelihood that I'm gonna meet an investor, somebody who could get me a deal, somebody who might work for me, somebody who I could work for is pretty damn high. I don't have to go out and recruit and search around the world when instead I can walk into one room and steal 700 people's homework. So today, one YouTube video. You should pat yourself on the back. I think you just stole 10 years of my ways to be lazy but also ambitious. And if this was useful for you, why don't you tell me which one you're gonna try and try it and then follow me.
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