if you're so smart, why aren't you rich yet

Out of all the videos on YouTube, this is the one that you need to watch the most. You can get rich. You know you can get rich. If you're seeing this video, if you're watching this right now, you know that there is a life that's meant for you that's more than what you're currently living. You see, I was in your same shoes just 8 years ago. I was in college on the verge of trying to figure out what it was that I wanted for my life, and I realized I was going towards and headed towards like a train in the direction that I didn't want to. And luckily I had a stop that I I was able to get off on before I was stuck on the train for the rest of my life. And I realized that me being working a job for the rest of my life was not for me. And I knew I had to do something else. I had nothing going for me. I had no way of doing it. You see, I tried a couple businesses, I started a couple businesses, and I failed all of them. You right now are probably in a similar position. You tried a business, maybe you're on the verge of starting a business, uh, maybe you're trying to just— you just want to be rich. You just want to not have to work so much in your life, and you just want to live the good life. Well, lucky for you, you're watching this video right now. And this video is for you. It's hope. It's inspiration. It's truth. I'm gonna be real with you inside of here. And I'm going to tell you how it is. If you don't know who I am, my name is Devon Canup. I've been able to make almost $10 million now online. I'm 27 years old, about to turn 28 in a few months. And I've been from having negative $80,000 in finances, my financial net worth being in debt, to having my car actually get repoed at one point in time, to losing everything, breaking up from 4-year relationships and being one of the most lost, lonely, isolated, confused states in my entire life. To now I travel the world, do whatever I want and just live the good life. I did get to do whatever that I want. I'm literally in a hotel right now. I haven't had a home for 14 months now. I literally just live out of hotels and Airbnbs.. And I try to stay in pretty nice ones too. So here's the thing is, I'm going to go through a few different points inside of this video of basically if, if I was in that state of like, I've tried a couple businesses and I was trying to get rich, this is my advice to my past self and my past self being probably you right now, who you are right now. So the first thing is understanding that you can get rich, you can do it. Yes, other people are getting rich. Yes, people are becoming millionaires off of meme coins, off of like Pokémon cards now, off of these different businesses, maybe you've seen like YouTube channels and TikTok shop and like all this stuff. People are getting rich, and you have to understand that they are no different than you. And that you are not cursed, you, your family name is not cursed, you are not a cursed person. But instead, it's the belief that you can do it is the most important, because if you don't believe it, you won't play the game at all. And you have to understand that step number one of getting rich, of changing your life, of doing the thing, of getting on the other side of results, even if you've been beat down, even if you've been knocked down, even if you are in one of the hardest states of your entire life that you've you've ever felt, you have to understand that if you do not give up on this belief, you can make it happen. It is possible. I remember my car broke down. It, uh, it ended up having to replace the entire engine because it leaked oil and I didn't catch it in time, and the, the entire engine just kind of ended up breaking, and I would have had to pay $8,000 to get it fixed. I had no car. I had many businesses fail. I dropped out of college. I told my parents I figured it out. And here I was in one of the scariest, loneliest, I have to figure this out moments in my entire life. And what I can say is when your back is up against the wall, when my back is up against the wall, I perform at my greatest. So don't be afraid. Don't be scared. It's okay if you make mistakes. It's okay if you make failures. It's okay if you lose it all 100 times over and you have to use the overdraft feature in your bank account in order to keep going, because that state That version of yourself when your back's up against the wall and you have to make this work is what pulls the best out of you, is what gives you the fight. You see, I wanted success more than I could breathe. I told myself, I'm going to make it. I will do whatever it takes. I saw an interview of MrBeast with one of his mentors, Derral Eves. Derral said that like Jimmy was one of those people that said, hey, I will do whatever it takes to be the biggest YouTuber in the world. Even if that means I have to embarrass myself, even if that means I have to do things that have never been done before, even if that means I have to lose it all many times over. I will do whatever it takes as long as it's not immoral, unethical, and I don't have to lie, cheat, or steal my way of being able to get there. And he went and did it. He's the biggest YouTuber in the world right now. He has the most subscribed channel. He makes more money than anybody else on the platform. And the guy's a billionaire now. You have to have that same mentality. After watching that interview, I realized I need to do whatever it takes. I need to burn the boats like Alexander the Great did in, in the, in the mythology of him burning the boats. I don't even think it actually happened, but it's that idea of burning the boats, doing whatever it takes. I will be the person to be successful. I will make this work. I will be the first millionaire in my family. I will be the person that despite all odds, I figure it out. And that's what every other successful person does. Every billionaire you see in one of those interviews, every athlete, every person who is where the general population wants to be in life, of that 0.001%, they did whatever it took, and they saw no other possible outcome in their life. And when you see that through that lens and truly believe and have faith in it, that's when the work starts happening. So you have to, first of all, have that belief. The next thing is you have to learn all the rules and then break all the rules. I see too many people trying to break the rules on day one, and they never know why things work. They never you know, make their first viral video, they never sell their first product, they never— nothing ever goes their way because they're trying to do something new. You have to understand that any other successful person out there, they're not doing anything new. The YouTube channels that I've ran that have made me millions of dollars, I didn't come up with the idea. I didn't create the style of production. I didn't come up with anything other than just following processes and videos that have already gone viral. Then eventually, when I started making $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a month, Uh, then I started to innovate, then I started to create, then I started to do something new. But you have to understand how things work first. If you were in a chemistry class in high school, you're not going to do some new groundbreaking doctorates program level chemistry, uh, experiment. No, you're going to do the same exact chemistry experiment that every other high schooler across the entire nation is going to be doing. Why? So you can learn how to do an experiment, how to do it, create a hypothesis, how to Following experiment, what's it— what is it to have a, uh, a neutral, or, you know, my science words aren't there right now, but what it is to run an experiment. And once you learn how to run an experiment, then and only then can you finally then start to do different experiments, better experiments, more advanced experiments, things that I've never done before, and test hypothesis and come to real solid conclusions and be able to come up with groundbreaking evidence or research. It's the same when it's starting a business. If you were to start a law firm, are you going to go and do some new law firm that's never been done before? Most people think they need to do that, but instead just do what's proven. Okay, a lot of people, they see a market and they think that that's saturated, that is too competitive to get into. But my friend, all business people know that if there's money already there, people already making the money, it's proven. And because it's proven, you don't have to gamble anything. You just have to be really freaking good at what you do, and you're guaranteed the money that you will be paid. A lot of people, they are making huge, insane gambles when the odds are stacked against them. Don't take any gambles, don't make any risks. Instead, be calculated in your decisions, calculated in the business you start, calculated in the ways that you're making money. Do not be inventive. Do what is working, and then be inventive once you start making money, when you have the room to do— to be risky. So when you start something, don't be creative. Just follow what's already proven, learn the rules, then break them. Make 10 grand a month on YouTube, then be creative. Don't be creative and then hope to make money. You see, that's where most people go wrong as they try being creative on day one. Nobody wants creativity. People want something that is proven. They want something that works. Like for me, getting a coffee, I don't want to try some new-ass coffee. I just want coffee that tastes good. That's it. I know most people are trying to start something. They're trying to do something new. Don't do something new. Do something that is proven. And then when you've made a ton of money, and then when you've been successful and you've had a lot of success and you understand market research and you understand what the customer actually wants, then you can go ahead and be creative. So the next thing, once you've learned all the rules, okay, you need to grind it out to learn those rules. Okay. Me now, I'm able to make multiple six figures a month working less than 20 hours a week, working less than 10 hours a week some weeks. And I make more money in a month than doctors do in a year, which is a crazy concept. But a lot of that stems from I have the skill sets, I have the leverage, I have the, the position that I've been able to create because of the work that I've put in and the person I've become and the skill sets that I have. Okay, you have to understand the beginning, you have to grind it out. You have to do the 2 weeks where you never leave your apartment or never leave your room. You have to do the, the the hard work to become the person that's inevitably successful. And I think a lot of people, they're always asking me this question, Devon, how do I become rich as fast as possible? How do I make $20,000 in the next 10 days? I'd be like, probably just go steal somebody's watch or frickin go hold somebody at gunpoint and steal money from somebody. Okay. Oh, you don't like that idea? Okay, well, take out this idea of getting rich fast. And instead, ask yourself, how do I make becoming rich inevitable? How do I make success inevitable? How do I become who I want to be? Inevitable. Okay, when you switch that perspective, and you switch that mindset from making it fast to inevitable, that's when the change starts to really happen. That's when you give yourself a real shot, a real chance, because what you're asking for is to win the lottery. Basically, if you want to make a lot of money fast, could I make $20,000 overnight right now with my connections, my network, my leverage, my businesses? Yes, I can. But if I'm starting from scratch and ground zero, I'm literally just hoping to get lucky. And luck is not a strategy that's going to work in the long term. Let's say that, you know, you do make $20,000 on the next 10 days. Do you have a way to effectively keep doing that? You know, because you're probably lucky what goes up fast falls down fast and collapses fast, just as well. So instead, you want to think— a lot of people, you know, as a little thought experiment or exercise, if you were guaranteed to get paid $20,000 a month for the rest of your life, but in order to get paid 20 grand a month for the rest of your life, you have to show up every single day for at least 2 hours a day for the next 24 months. And in that time, you get paid zero. You get paid zero for 24 months, you have to show up for 2 hours a day, but the rest of your life you're guaranteed to make $20,000 a month. Are you willing to take that deal? You're an idiot if you say no. Unless maybe you have a family, people you have to provide for right now, here, right now. You can still keep working your job, let's say. You can keep working your job, okay? But to make $20 grand a month, you have to show up 2 hours a day for the next 2 years. You can't miss a single day. And as soon as you miss a day, the clock starts over. Are you taking the deal? That's how success works. People see overnight success. They're like, oh, this person just starts getting rich overnight. But what you don't see is the countless amounts of nights, the days, and the years leading up to that success. And what's happening is it's Batman in the cave. It's Batman putting in the work, this grueling work to become Batman that allows him to become the guy who's the Dark Knight fighting, fighting the city and saving the streets. Everybody wants to be the person that's the superhero. They want to be the superhero, but are you willing to do the work to become the superhero that nobody ever sees that allows you to become that person? It's the same exact thing when it comes in life and success. Are you willing to be in the cave and nobody sees the work that you're doing for years to, for the rest of your life, be whoever it is that you want to be? You see, I've been doing this for 8 years now. There was probably 4 to 6 years of people that just— people just did not see. And still, even today, people don't really see my life public. Like, I'm not the most public person about my life. I make a lot of content. I probably post something like 200 videos a week on social video right now, uh, with my face on it. And yet I'm not very public about the work that goes on behind the scenes. It's not that I'm like hiding that from anybody, it's just not sexy, it's not attractive, it's just not something that goes viral. Nobody really cares about that. But the reason why I'm sharing that with you in this video is because for one, it's a longer video. I want to be real with you guys on this YouTube channel, uh, but then also at the same time, you have to understand that like what's going on behind the scenes is what builds the success. The hours that go into the, into the, into work, into the craft, into becoming the craftsman, into becoming the expert, into becoming great at what you do is what makes success inevitable. And so you need to make it success inevitable. Okay, so you have to disappear for a bit. You're gonna have to lock in. You know, I usually— how I do it now these days, now that I've had a lot of success, is I lock in for 2 weeks and then I go mess around and have fun for 2 to 3 months. I'll lock in for 2 weeks, go mess around for 2, 3 months, you know, sometimes a month. Uh, how it was before is I would lock in for 30 days, 60 days, and then I would enjoy my life for maybe like 5 days or a week, and then I'd lock back in. So I would be very lock-in heavy. Okay, so I found if you say I'm gonna lock in for the next year, it's just unrealistic. Your brain can't comprehend a year. You want to put, uh, your timeline of your goals between 30 and 60 days because your brain can comprehend that. That's actually possible. It's feasible. You can comprehend doing something every single day for 30 days. You can't comprehend doing something every single day for a year in the moment. But when you do something for 30 days, it starts momentum and allows you to keep going. You see, I started a YouTube channel back in 2018 talking about real estate. And what I did was I just decided, you know what, I'm going to post every single day for a month. After day 20 came, day 25, I was like, you know what, I'm going to do this every day for 60 days. I got to around 40 days, 45 days in of posting every single day. I was like, I'm going to now do this for a year. Okay. And I ended up posting about 363 videos over the span of the next year. I missed 2 days because of technical issues, actually. And that is what built the momentum to when I first started my first faceless YouTube channel after doing that real estate YouTube channel. Talking about— I did a YouTube channel talking about Reddit videos. In 3 months, I went from making $2,000 to $3,000 a month on YouTube to making $42,000 in a month off of these Reddit YouTube channels. You need to make success inevitable. You start with creating small micro goals that then build build up to these big, huge macro goals. I knew I wanted to get rich. I knew I wanted to make a ton of money. I knew I wanted to be able to retire at an early age. So how do you make that inevitable? And it starts with the small things, the day to day, the 2 weeks in, the 30 days, the 60 days, the 90 days, and locking in for a short period of time for a sprint, for a burst, and then turning that into something that expands. Okay. The next thing is that you just need to create a dopamine loop. I see too many people, you know, now they start on this 30-day sprint. You say, I'm going to upload a YouTube video every single day for 30 days. I'm going to make a TikTok every day for 30 days. I'm going to create a new ad every day for 30 days, whatever it is. I'm going to ask a girl out every day. I'm going to go knock on 100 doors every day, whatever it is. But then after a week, after 3 days, they give up. Okay. Why does that happen? Well, you see, the biggest issue that plagues most of society today, and especially high achievers or people that want to go do more, which you watching this video is probably one of these people watching this, and you have faced this exact same issue, is the mental evilness of perfectionism. So perfectionism is actually one of the largest hindrances of most people's lives, either procrastination or perfectionism, which procrastination is actually a form of perfectionism. So how perfectionism works is, is, uh, you want to go and do something and you have really high standards for yourself. Okay, here's the thing, if you've never ridden a bike, you're going to crash, just plain simple, right? If I put no training wheels on, you'd never ridden a bike. What's going to happen? You're going to crash. So make sure to wear frickin knee pads, elbow pads, and a helmet. Okay? You're going to crash, right? It's inevitable. But if you told yourself, I am never going to crash, and if I ever crash, then I'm not good enough, is how most people go into learning how to ride a bike. Basically, metaphorically for business, you never end up riding the bike because you never want to look bad. You never want to fail. And failure is the teacher. Failure is just a part of the journey. When it comes to business, you're going to suck. Your first video is going to be bad. Making YouTube videos, your first 100 sales calls or pitches are going to suck. They're going to be bad. You're going to do awful. But it's in that failure, it's in that sucking, it's in that being not good enough to get the conversion and get the sale to make the money to get the viral video that you learn for the next one. So it's people that are held on so hellbent that this first thing they make has to be this viral thing. The first 10 things has to be some viral thing that they never get to video number 30. They never get to video 127. They never get to video number 372. They never get to video 3264. It's on video 3264 that you're getting paid $10,000 every single video that you make. But most people won't get past video number 3 because it didn't get them the result that they were looking for. Okay, and so you have to understand that failure is the teacher. Failure is the sign of progress. Failure is the next step in the 127-step checklist to make a million dollars a year. And so here's the thing. Is that progress is perfection. Perfection is not progress. In order to make— get the life that you want, the result that you're looking for, you have to get onto the other side of the action, of the step. Okay, maybe if you're at video number 327, and none of them have gotten more than 10,000 views, okay, yeah, you have an issue. Okay. But most people won't get past like step number 5. Okay. So what you have to do is you have to create a dopamine loop. Of action. Okay, I learned this concept about dopamine. I've talked about it on a few of my videos where dopamine is created as a response to two different things. I thought it was just a response when you do the thing, like you have the cake, you know, you, you get the coffee and the feeling of drinking it creates dopamine, right? You watch a video, create, creates dopamine. But it's also created in the visualization of the thing as well. Okay. So if I am thinking I want to go get coffee, dopamine fires in my body. And it creates action, it creates forward momentum, because now I have this dopamine in my body of wanting coffee, it gets me to get out of bed or go get, go get up from the chair, and to go get coffee. And then when I get the coffee, the dopamine loop has been finished. So I created dopamine, and then close the loop. And so what a lot of people are doing, and this is the issue with progress and why they never get to where they want to be in life, is they create this concept of, uh, they create dopamine in their head. They talk about business, they think about success, they think about getting rich, they think about money, but then they never pay themselves off. They never close the loop. And a lot of people think it's because like, oh, I did all this work and I didn't make $100,000. Yeah, I mean, I guess you get dopamine that way, And it is nice getting paid. You know, I think the first dollar that I made probably was online was way better than the— I don't know, like the past month I've probably generated— I've made like almost $300,000 in the last like whatever, 28 days. And I felt more dopamine in making the first dollar than I do seeing my phone show that I made $20,000 in a day. It's kind of a weird trippy concept. Okay, it's like it breaks my brain. I was like, I'm gonna be pissed off. And I'm like, Whatever, who cares? I made some money. But that first dollar is crazy. But here's the thing is that you can actually close the loop sooner. You can reward yourself sooner. Okay? When you take that first step, when you upload that first video, you even just come up with the first video idea. Whenever you start the business, you create the Instagram account, you put up that post, you, you upload video number 5, number 22, even though you didn't make money, you must reward yourself and do something. Okay, you must always close the loop. You must— anytime that you create the loop of dopamine of thinking about it or imagining it, you must always close the loop. And this is what is known as a feedback loop. If you never close the loop, your brain's going to get pissed off, you're going to be frustrated, you're going to be angry, you're going to be upset, you're going to be annoyed that you can't get— do it, you can't get rich and you can't make the money. The thing that winners understand, the thing that successful people understand, the thing I had to learn to understand is that how you get rich, how you become good at anything, how you stay consistent, is you reward yourself when you just did the task, not based on results. Because if you're always rewarding yourself and you, you feel how you feel based on results, you're gonna be frustrated, pissed off, angry, annoyed, upset, happy some days, but most of the times you're gonna be in a bad mood. I love this quote from Jeff Bezos to his shareholders, or to his— I think it's to his employees. He's like, you must not associate your emotions to how the stock price of Amazon is doing. Because if it's up 5%, then that means you're happy. And if it's down 5%, then that means you're having a bad day. The stock is going to go up and down. But the thing that makes sure that it consistently goes up over time is that you don't tie your emotions to whether or not the stock is up or down that day. Instead, you tie your emotions to how much you are improving, how much the company is improving, how much we're growing as a family together. And it's through the rewarding of growth, of progress, even if it doesn't mean money in your bank account, is what creates that feedback loop, is what creates that dopamine loop that allows you to have the chance and the opportunity to become rich, successful, be in the place of videos going viral, of being able to become lucky, have this concept, have content perform really well and become the person that you want to become. But if you have a bad feedback loop, if you don't give yourself the reward after the action, your body becomes confused. You get filled with cortisol, you get filled with stress hormones, and you end up becoming stressed out. This is why you see burnout being such a thing. Burnout is not a thing if you constantly reward yourself for the work that you do. And the issue with most people with burnout, they just stop rewarding themselves and it feels less pleasurable. Yet you see some people do an action every single week, every month, every day for years and years and years, and they still share the same love and excitement for it as day number one. You hear a lot of people about relationships about, oh, there's a honeymoon phase, and then eventually the relationship starts to go sour and starts to go south. Uh, yeah, that's because you don't cherish the things that are good. You don't reward the behaviors that are good. You don't, you don't celebrate the progress that you have made. And so you're putting in all this work, and you're not seeing the reward from it. So then you start to think to yourself, this is not the person I want to be with, or that this relationship isn't good. But instead, it's when you constantly reward the relationship, it's when you constantly have signals of progress, you celebrate the anniversaries, you, you cherish the moments, and you cherish the growth, and you reward yourselves, and you get the desserts, or you, you have fun, or you do the fun celebrations and, and, and you reward your— you and the partner self for the progress that you made, that then every single day can feel like a honeymoon. I've been in a relationship now for like 5 years, and it feels like every day is day number 1. And it's because like the same excitement and emotion of the first month, because we're constantly rewarding ourselves, because we're constantly growing, because we're constantly creating that feedback loop of progress. Okay, and so the same comes with your success is you have to reward yourself on the little things, even though it feels like you did nothing. Okay, so you have to give yourself something to look forward to as well. What I'll do is like, I'll book a trip, I'll have something to look forward to. I'll have like a goal that like, okay, once I get to like end outcome, this is— these couple of things are going to happen. So that way it's like, okay, yeah, when I'm working freaking 20 hours a day and not really sleeping much to try to build this business or to try to get rich or to try to change my life. It's worth it. It's— there's an outcome on the other side of all of this, okay? So stop overthinking everything and just get rich already, my friend. I believe in you. I know that if you watch this video, you're somebody who can become successful. I hope my story in these videos helps become an inspiration and a light for you going through that valley of darkness at times, because I get it and I understand how hard it is at times to like Ah, keep going. Nobody else around you will get it, okay? So I hope that every one of these videos is the light of inspiration to help you become who you want to be. So I love you guys, and I look forward to seeing you guys all in the next one, like always.