Everything You Need to Know About Money, Wealth & Scaling Your Income

Just working harder will never make you rich. You have to be willing to work hard, but you also have to be willing to work smart. I, I can't stand when people say work smart, don't work hard. But to me, that's not completely— because you have to do both. You have to do both. Who works harder, uh, the people at eBay or the people at Alibaba? Sometimes you have not only have to work hard, you have to work smart. If you really love it, like for real, not like you're kind of saying it because you're trying to get through your life, if you really love it, it truly isn't feel like work. You only have 24 hours in a day. So if your income depends on your time, your growth is already capped. You have to prioritize your time really carefully. You got to make money while you sleep, and the only way to do that is understand compounding. So if a child is a young person, 19, 20 years old, puts aside $50 a week, they put it in the market over historical returns, it's $2.2 million. I was no longer studying accounting and economics. I was studying wealthy people and only wealthy people. I'm not talking about the doctor that was a neighbor that makes $1 million a year and he's working 18 hours a day and he hates his job. If you don't fix this today, you'll hit a ceiling where no matter how hard you push, your income and your life stays small. In the next 3 hours, you'll learn exactly how to build assets, create real cash flow, and scale your income so money finally works for you. If you've been here before, drop a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time. Most financial advice is designed to keep you trapped in the middle class forever. Where are you going to spend your time and your energy is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life. I went to school and what they pounded in me was the poor person. You got to get a job, you got to get a job, you got to work for money, you got to save money, and you got to invest in the stock market and all this stuff. That's why people are poor. So at 25, I recommitted to my education, but this time I started studying not things that were in books, but people that had actually created wealth. The wealthy don't follow standard budgeting rules. They focus entirely on buying assets that print cash even while they sleep. The poorest people on Earth always are going after this stuff versus cash. Look, when you learn as an investor over multiple decades is the only thing that matters is free cash flow. That's it. If I earn $10,000 or $3,000 or whatever extra money, whatever the number is, $1 billion. I would take the entire amount of money. I'd go buy an asset that pays me cash flow, and I would always live off the cash flow, not the cash. If you don't unlearn those old money rules today, you'll guarantee a future full of constant financial stress and zero control over your own time. You have to prioritize your time really carefully. I have been a Warren Buffett fan in the business realm. I've been a Warren Buffett fan since my early 20s. I read the things he writes. Momentum requires you always do the next thing to keep the momentum going. And the reason you get yourself in a passionate place is so that you change your life. And the only thing that changes your life is making a decision. Think about the famous parable of the pipeline. So two men are hired to carry water from a river to the village. The first man works harder, carries more buckets, and makes a decent daily wage. But the second man spends his nights building a pipeline. It takes time and he makes less money at first. But once the pipeline is finished, water flows automatically. He gets paid while he sleeps and the bucket carrier loses his job. You have to stop carrying buckets and start building your pipeline. Now you might be thinking right now, I don't have the time to build a pipeline because you're too busy carrying buckets just to pay the rent. But the truth is that the longer you use that excuse, the heavier those buckets will get until they finally break your back. You don't need thousands of dollars to start building your asset. You just need a plan and a little bit of belief. Here's the exact step-by-step system to stop trading your time for money and finally build your pipeline. Shift your focus from consuming to creating. So when you sit on the couch and watch television, you are putting money directly into someone else's pipeline. The entire financial system is built to make you a consumer. Corporations hire the smartest marketers in the world to keep your eyes glued to their screens so you will spend your money. Banks hire brilliant people to create programs that entice you to borrow their money. You are acting as a consumer, and the consumer is always the person who pays the bill. If you want to change your financial destiny, you must become a creator. You have to create an asset that other people want to consume. So you need to decide what kind of asset to build, and I believe it starts with your own life. I think your purpose comes from your pain. So if you think about the hardest moments in your life, think about the the struggles that you fought through, the moments that you wanted to give up on everything, and the problems you eventually solved. You survived them. That's awesome. Now you have the exact blueprint to help someone else who is currently going through that exact same pain. If you struggled with debt and you found the way out, your purpose is to teach others how to escape debt. The blueprint is your first asset. You do not need to be a certified guru. You just need to be one step ahead of the person that you are trying to help. When you package your knowledge into a service or a product, you stop consuming and you start creating. You move from the side of the equation that spends money to the side of the equation that makes money. And the data proves that this shift dictates your wealth. Tom Corley spent 5 years studying the daily habits of the wealthy and the poor. He found that 67% of self-made millionaires watch less than 1 hour of TV per day. By contrast, 77% of poor individuals watch more than 1 hour of TV every single day. The wealthy use their free time to build their pipelines. They create assets and package their knowledge. The or use their free time to escape from their bucket-carrying jobs. You have to stop escaping your life and start building a life you do not want to escape from. The average person spends over 6 hours every day staring at a digital screen. That is over 40 hours a week of mindless consumption. That is an entire full-time job dedicated to watching other people win. You have to protect your free time. You must shift your core identity from someone who just buys things to someone who builds things. And when you make that shift, you stop waiting for that weekly paycheck and start building your automatic cash machine. Stop trading your time for dollars. So you've been taught your entire life from school to work to work hard for a steady paycheck. You trade 40 hours of your life and receive a fixed amount of cash in return, right? The massive problem with this traditional model is that your time is limited. You only have 24 hours in a single day. If you always just strictly trade your time for money, you immediately hit a financial ceiling that you cannot ever break through no matter how hard you work. The wealthy do do not trade their time for money. They trade value for money. They focus their energy on building systems, digital products, or investments that operate independently of their physical time. So you need to detach your income from the hours on the clock. You can look at the story of a friend of the channel, Ali Abdaal. He was a doctor in the UK. Doctors make good money, but they're still carrying buckets. They only get paid when they physically show up to the hospital to treat a patient. Ali realized that as a doctor, he could only help hundreds of patients, but he wanted to reach millions and detach his time from his income. So he started creating YouTube videos about productivity and studying. He built digital courses and systems, and today he's a multimillionaire entrepreneur. He's helped millions of people optimize their lives, and his videos print money for him while he sleeps. He moved from carrying buckets as a doctor to building a pipeline as a creator. This is how the financial system actually works for the rich. A comprehensive study by the IRS showed that over 70% of millionaires have at least 3 streams of income, and most of those streams are passive or portfolio income, not earned wages from a regular job. So you must start building your streams of income that do not rely on you physically punching in a clock, right? If you only have one stream of income and requires your physical presence, you are constantly just one bad day away from being flat broke. If you get sick or you lose your job, the money completely stops. You have to insulate your life against financial disaster by building digital assets that duplicate your human effort. So if you film a great video teaching your best strategy, that single video can be watched by a million people. You did the work one time, but you get paid for it repeatedly for years. Model the success of people who are already winning. So you do not need to figure out how to build a wealth pipeline all by yourself. The biggest mistake you can make right now is trying to invent a new way to make money entirely from scratch. You do not need to be a completely original genius to become rich. The proven path to immense wealth has already been safely carved out by thousands of people, millions of people before you. Success leaves clues. You just need to find wealthy people who have the exact results you want and study every single thing that they did. But you must copy their rise, not just the result that they're at today. People look at what successful people are doing right now and try to copy that exact same thing. That is dangerous financial advice. You have to look at what their actions and daily habits were like before they made it. So when I was 19, uh, had a biotech software company. I did not have any clue what I was doing. I was making $300 a month. I was eating canned beans for lunch every day just to survive. I desperately wanted to quit, and I did quit for one day on my partner. I had zero momentum, like it was just nothing was working. Then I decided to stop guessing and start modeling proven success. I looked at Bill Gates because he had a software company, Microsoft. I said exactly how he built Microsoft in his early struggling days. He did not build his empire by doing everything himself. He built it by forming strategic partnerships with hardware companies like IBM. So I took the exact same proven strategy and applied it directly to my little tiny software company, and we made a partnership with an established company that already had paying customers that I needed to survive. And my first deal was $13,500. That single shift, it saved my business. It eventually allowed me to safely sell that business for life-changing profit. And also, if you wanna take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in the description, go grab it. I'll see you there. You do not have to be born genius to get rich. You just have to be a highly dedicated student of success. According to detailed data from SCORE, entrepreneurs who actively work with a trusted mentor are exactly 5 times more likely to successfully start a profitable business. In addition, exactly 70% of those mentored businesses successfully survived past 5 difficult years. You don't need a physical human mentor sitting next to you in your living room, although that's awesome. You can find amazing mentors in business books, in audios, in YouTube videos like this. That's why I do these videos every day. Find someone who's built the exact cash pipeline you want. Study how they struggled at the start. Study how they overcame their biggest fears. When you carefully model the proven success success of the greats, you safely shortcut your own steep learning curve. Build momentum because perfection is a financial trap. The number one excuse you will use to avoid building your asset is that your idea is not completely ready yet, right? You tell yourself that you need to do far more research. You will complain that your website is not flawless or your digital product, it needs one more special feature before you launch it. This is the danger that tells your brain to keep keep you safe and keep you in your comfortable bubble. Perfectionism is just fear, your fear of being seen. And if you wait for your new asset to be perfect, you will painfully carry those buckets for the rest of your life. You are secretly afraid of what your old high school friends will think. You are afraid of what your parents will say. It's time to let go of that paralyzing fear right now. You have to expect to suck at the very beginning. Expecting to suck, especially at the start, does not mean that you actually suck as a human being. It just means that you do not have yet the necessary skills develop. Yet is the key word. When I started making my early YouTube videos, they were terrible. I was awkward, I was shy. My first one, I have a suit on. It was deeply uncomfortable for me staring at the camera lens. It took me 350 videos, public videos, before I could watch myself back and not be completely embarrassed, right? 700 videos until I finally watched a video that I genuinely felt a little bit of inspiration by what I was making. When I posted that first video. I left it up for a year, and in that year I got 3 comments, right? From my mom, my older sister, and then some random person saw my video, right? In, in a full year, one new comment. But that random comment, I was thrilled when I saw it. I realized I actually reached a human, like one person. If I had stubbornly waited until I was perfectly polished from my post, my first video, I would be absolutely nothing today. I would not have the subscribers. I wouldn't be talking with you guys right now. I wouldn't have a business that helps me build and grow and make a real impact. The science clearly shows that waiting for perfection actively harms your personal financial progress. The American Psychological Association published research showing that perfectionism is strongly directly linked to severe daily procrastination, crippling anxiety, and total mental burnout. Which means the longer you obsess over making your pipeline flawless, the longer you stay paralyzed in fear. You just need to bravely lay your first pipe today. It might leak, it might be crooked, but you can fix it tomorrow. The only way to win the money game is to start rapidly building momentum before you actually feel ready. You will easily learn far more from your first 10 messy public failures than you will ever learning and reading 100 books on business strategy to be safe. Make service your ultimate financial strategy. There's a massive lie in the modern corporate world that says you have to be greedy and selfish to get rich. The real truth, I think, is the exact opposite. If you blindly chase money, you will eventually run out of energy completely. You're going to burn out. If you— if the only reason you're doing this for money, you will burn out. The free market will instantly see right through your selfish money intentions. Money is simply a natural byproduct of massive value that you deliver to the world. You are fundamentally built to serve. It's what I believe. If you're not happy with your current financial situation, it is simply because you are not actively serving enough people at a high enough level. When you shift your mental focus from asking, how can I make $1 million, to asking, how can you deeply help 1 million people, your entire financial trajectory changes. So money can't be number 1 on your priority list, but it also can't be number 1,000 on your priority list either. Money is absolutely essential. Good luck getting your car to drive without having any money to buy fuel for it, right? Money needs to be in your top 5 priorities. It just can't be number 1. Number 1 has to be the specific mission that you are on. Your brand new pipeline has to be perfectly designed to strictly solve really painful problems for real people who are suffering and struggling. Think about the biggest companies in the world and what they sell. They all got incredibly wealthy by making daily life easier, faster, or better for their customers. When you actively serve at a massive scale, normal people begin to completely trust you. When they trust you, they gladly hand their money over to you. You without hesitation. And the business data strongly backs this concept up. A massive detailed study by Deloitte found that purpose-driven companies consistently witness much higher market share gains and grow 3 times faster on average than their direct competitors who only focus strictly on the cold hard profits. When you just make your pipeline about serving others and solving their deeply painful problems, the free market consistently rewards you with massive financial returns. If you feel totally stuck right now, you need to go out of your way to just help one single person today. Confidently teach them the one specific valuable skill you already know. Build your global financial empire on the solid foundation of actively making other people successful. When you make other people rich, healthy, or happy, you automatically become incredibly wealthy in the process. Protect your belief system at all costs. You can easily have the absolute best financial strategy in the world. You can have the perfect pipeline blueprint all mapped out on your wall. But if you do not have the core internal belief to execute the daily plan, you will will stay broke forever. The single biggest problem in the world, I think, right now is people do not believe in themselves enough to take a massive personal risk. When you start bravely building your asset, people will immediately tell you that your idea is crazy. Your closest friends will loudly tell you to play it safe. Your family will tell you to just keep happily carrying your wooden buckets like a normal, reasonable, responsible person. And if you listen to their doubts, you will instantly adopt their limiting beliefs, and you will permanently quit on your dream. So you have to fiercely protect what goes into your ears and into your eyes every single day. Your daily mental environment completely dictates your financial outcome and destiny. I actively make my daily YouTube videos strictly for myself first. I put my own videos on trying to inspire me in the morning. I call it my believe walk. I get outside, go for a walk, and, and listen to a video. I want Warren Buffett in my ear. I want Steve Jobs in my ear. I aggressively listen to their powerful voices every day because I need to borrow their belief until my own belief internally is strong enough to take massive action. You must consciously design a specific protective environment that forces you to constantly level up in your life. Research from the National Science Foundation shows that the typical average person has up to 60,000 separate thoughts per day, and 80% of those thoughts are entirely negative. That's crazy. Your own brain is already heavily fighting against your own future financial success. You can't afford to ever let those negative, small-minded people aggressively pull you down even further. You need to actively choose to consume inspiring content that makes you feel powerful, capable, and ready to completely attack your financial goals. When you can fortify your own mind with that belief, nothing can stop you from finishing your cash pipeline. So we need to heavily guard your internal belief exactly like it's your most valuable financial asset. It because it is. The truth about who you are. The only thing keeping you broke is a story you keep telling yourself. And so after this video, now it's time to stop playing small and start demanding the life you deserve. Your wealth pipeline is waiting for you to lay the very first pipe today. So get to work right now and go build your asset. You will never become a billionaire or even a millionaire by following the advice of the middle class. Most people think that extreme wealth comes from luck or inheritance or being in the right place at the right time. But the truth is, it comes from having the guts to concentrate your bets when everyone else is diversifying to protect their ignorance. If you keep spreading your focus, your energy, and your money across a dozen different safe options because you are afraid of losing, you will guarantee that you end up with a life of mediocrity and never reach the massive potential that you were built for. In 2008, Elon Musk was facing the worst year of his life. He had made $180 million from selling PayPal, a fortune that would set most people up for life on a private island. But Musk isn't most people. He had poured almost all of that money into two companies that looked like they were about to die: Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX had three failed rocket launches in a row. Tesla was running out of cash and couldn't make payroll. Musk had about $40 million left. He had a choice. He could put all the money into one company to save it, but that would mean the other would definitely die. Or he could split the money between them to try to keep both alive, but risk running out of cash for both and losing absolutely everything. Most people would have walked away. They would have kept the $40 million and lived like a king. Musk chose the hardest path. He split the money. He went all in on both. He literally had to borrow money from friends to pay his rent because he had zero liquid cash left. On Christmas Eve 2008, at the very last hour, a financing round came through for Tesla. Days later, NASA awarded SpaceX a contract. He risked $180 million to get to zero just to have a shot at changing the world. Today, he's the richest man on the planet. So right now you're probably telling yourself, but Evan, I don't have $180 million like Elon Musk. And that's not the point. It's not about the amount of money, it's about the of your mind. You're playing small with the $1,000 the same way you'd play small with $10 million. If you cannot bet on yourself when you have nothing to lose, you will never bet on yourself when you have everything to lose. So today we're going to break down the actual blueprint. I analyze 50 billionaires to find out what they actually have in common, and it's not what you think. The trap of diversification. The first thing you need to understand is that billionaires do not get rich by diversifying. You have been told your whole life, don't put all your eggs in one basket. That is great advice if your goal is to preserve wealth. It's terrible advice if your goal is to create wealth and build an empire. Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of all time, calls diversification protection against ignorance. He says it makes very little sense for anyone who knows what they are doing. If you know how to analyze a business, if you know your market, if you know your value, why would you put your money into your 20th best idea instead of your top idea. When you look at the portfolios of the ultra-wealthy, you see extreme concentration. They find one thing they believe in, usually a company they built themselves or an investment they know inside and out, and they push all their chips into the middle of the table. Bill Gates didn't diversify into real estate and gold when he was starting Microsoft. He was 100% Microsoft. Jeff Bezos wasn't buying stocks and other retailers in 1999. He was 100% Amazon. And the data backs this up. There's a study by Acadian Asset Management that looked at concentrated portfolio managers versus diversified ones, they found that the managers who had the courage to bet big on their best ideas, their top 5 to 10 stocks, significantly outperformed the ones who spread their bets thin. The managers who concentrated their portfolios generated higher returns because they were betting on their conviction, not their fear. You are hurting your own growth by trying to do too many things at once. You have a side hustle and a main job, and you're thinking about crypto, and you're trying to start a YouTube channel, and you're learning Spanish, You are diversifying your energy because you are afraid that if you pick just one thing, it might fail. But by doing 5 things at 20% effort, you are guaranteeing that all 5 of them fail. You need to find your wonderful business. Buffett says, "If you can find just 3 wonderful businesses in your life, you will get very rich." You don't need 50. You need one. You need to become an expert in one area. You need to know more about your specific niche than anyone else in the room. When you have that level of knowledge, you don't need to diversify to protect yourself. Your knowledge is your protection. So stop trying to be okay at everything and give yourself permission to be a genius at one thing. Put your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket very closely. Like Andrew Carnegie used to say, the power of disagreeableness. If you want to be a billionaire, you have to stop caring what other people think. I don't mean you should be a jerk. I mean, you must possess a psychological trait known as low Agreeableness. Researchers from the Socioeconomic Panel in Germany analyzed the personality traits of millionaires and billionaires. They used the Big Five personality model. They found a consistent pattern. Wealthy people score very high on conscientiousness. They are disciplined and they're organized. They score high in openness. They like new ideas, but they score significantly lower than the average person on agreeableness. This means they are not afraid of conflict. They are not afraid to swim against the tide. They do not need social harmony to feel good about themselves. When you are building something massive, people are going to tell you that you are crazy. They are going to tell you that it cannot be done. They are going to tell you that you are wrong. If you have high agreeableness, you will listen to them. You will try to fit in. You will compromise your vision to make everyone feel comfortable. Billionaires Leaders don't do that. They are non-conformists. Look at Steve Jobs. He was famous for his reality distortion field. He would demand things that his engineers said were impossible. He wasn't trying to be their friend. He wasn't trying to be agreeable. He was trying to change the world. He didn't care if people thought that he was difficult. He cared about the vision. You have to be willing to be misunderstood. You have to fight for your idea when no one else sees it. You have to be the one who says yes when the whole world says no. This is why so many billionaires are entrepreneurs. You cannot climb the corporate ladder if you are highly disagreeable. The corporate world rewards people who follow the rules and play nice. The entrepreneurial world rewards people who break the rules and create new realities. So you can ask yourself today, where are you compromising your dream just to avoid an awkward conversation? Where are you saying okay when you want to scream no? No, stop trying to please everyone. You are not pizza. You are a leader. Lead. The obsession with speed. Speed is the ultimate weapon. If you look at the daily habits of billionaires, they do not waste time. They understand that time is the only asset that they can never buy back. There is a concept called return on time investment, or ROTI. Billionaires are obsessed with this. They aggressively use leverage— other people's money, other people's time, systems, and technology— to make sure that their personal time is spent only on the highest value tasks. When I analyze successful people on my channel, I see this pattern over and over. They don't just work hard, they work fast. Tom Bilyeu, friend of the channel, has a strict routine. He gets up, he works out to build discipline, he meditates to clear his mind, and then he attacks his most important tasks immediately. He doesn't check email first. He doesn't scroll social media. He calls it thinkitating, using his brainpower to solve complex problems before the world can distract him. Most people are moving too slow. You have an idea for a business, you spend 6 months researching a logo, you want to start a podcast and you spend 3 weeks looking for the perfect microphone to buy, right? You're using preparation as an excuse to hide. If you wait until you feel ready, you will be waiting for the rest of your life. Billionaires act on information immediately. When Elon Musk faced that crisis in 2008, he didn't take a month off to think about it. He was on the phone, flying around the world, negotiating deals, moving money, literally working 20 hours a day to save his companies. The speed of his decisions saved him. You need to shorten the gap between the idea and the execution. If you have an idea right now, do something about it in the next 10 minutes. Send the email, buy the domain, post a video, call the client. Stop overthinking. Your brain is designed to keep you safe, not to make you rich. Safety is slow. Wealth is fast. The billionaire mindset is about shrinking timelines. If you think a goal will take you 10 years, ask yourself, How can I achieve this in 6 months? Even if you fail, you will be further ahead than if you stuck to the 10-year plan. So a lot of you are waiting for permission. You're waiting for someone to tell you that you are good enough. You're waiting for the perfect time. There is no perfect time. The perfect time was yesterday. The second best time is right now. The ability to handle crisis. You will never reach the top without facing a moment that threatens to destroy everything that you have built. This is the existential crisis phase. Every single billionaire that I've studied has gone through a moment where it looked like it was all over. We talk about Elon Musk in 2008, but look at Jeff Bezos in a dot-com crash of 2001. Amazon lost 90% of its value. 90%! Imagine looking at your net worth and seeing it drop by 90%. Most CEOs panicked. They folded. They went bankrupt. Bezos didn't panic. He focused on the math. He focused on one single metric: the cash conversion cycle. He realized that if he could get cash from customers before he had to pay his suppliers, he could fund his own growth without needing banks or investors. He turned Amazon into a cash-generating machine during the worst crash in the history of the internet. He didn't just survive the crisis. He used the crisis to become stronger. This is what Nassim Taleb calls being antifragile. It's not just about resilience, which is bouncing back to where you were. It's about getting better because of the stress. When you are building your business, you are going to get hit. You are going to lose a big client. Your star employee is going to quit on you. The economy is going to tank. Pandemic is going to shut down the world. If you crumble when things get hard, you are not ready for this level of success. Yet billionaires look at crisis as a puzzle to be solved, not a sign that they need to stop. They maintain an internal locus of control. They believe that no matter how bad the external situation is, they have the power to fix it. They don't blame the economy, they don't blame the government, they don't blame their team. They take extreme ownership. So when bad things happen to you, do you play the victim or do you become the architect of your own rescue? Your pain is your training ground. The struggles that you're facing right now are not there to stop you. They are there to prepare you for the weight of the success you are asking for. If you can't handle the pressure of a $10,000 problem, life will never trust you with a $10 million problem. So embrace the crisis. It is the fire that forges the steel. They solve the biggest problems. Perhaps the most important thing billionaires have in common is the scale of the problems that they solve. So you are paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of the problems that you solve. If you solve a small problem for a few people, you make a little bit of money. If you solve a massive problem for millions of people, you become a billionaire. So look at the billionaires that we've talked about. Elon Musk is trying to solve the problem of fossil fuels with Tesla and the problem of human extinction with SpaceX. Sex. Pretty big problems. Bill Gates solved the problem of putting a computer on every desk in every home. Jeff Bezos solved the problem of getting anything that you want delivered to your door in 2 days. These are not small problems. Most entrepreneurs aim too low. They start a business just to make money. They want to just pay their bills. They want a nice car. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it won't make you a billionaire. You have to fall in love with the problem. And to go to the next level, you have to expand your vision. You have to ask, how can I help more people? How can I serve deeper? You need to find your one word. You need to find the core value that drives you, because when things get hard— and they will get hard— money will not be enough motivation to keep you going. You need a mission. If you're just chasing paper, you will burn out. If you are chasing a purpose, you will be unstoppable. So the billionaires I know, the ones I study, they're not sitting around counting their money. They are working harder than you and me. Why? Because they're obsessed with the problem they are solving. They built to serve. So if you want to join their ranks, stop asking, how can I make a billion dollars? And start asking, how can I help a billion people? The money is just a byproduct of the value that you create. Focus on the value. Focus on the service. Focus on the impact. You have Michael Jordan-level talent at something. You have a genius inside of you that is waiting to be unlocked, but you are keeping it small because you don't believe in yourself enough to tackle the big problems. The world is waiting for you to step up. The world has huge problems that need your specific genius to solve. So don't deprive us of your contribution because you're afraid to fail. Go bigger. You are sabotaging your own business without even realizing it. Do you feel like you're working hard but not getting results? It's time to find out if you're making one of the 5 huge mistakes that self-taught entrepreneurs often make. Stick around because fixing even just one of these could change your business forever. Mistake number 1: trying to do it all yourself and not asking for help. You might be thinking self-taught means you have to figure out everything on your own. And this is a huge mistake. No one can do everything alone. When you try to be the lone wolf, you miss out on other people's experience and insight. It's hard to see the forest among the trees, as they say. A mentor advisor can often spot the solution to a problem that has you stumped. Even the greatest entrepreneurs have coaches, mentors, support networks. Here's some proof. A survey from the UPS Store found 70% of small businesses that receive mentoring survive more than 5 years, which is double the survival rate of businesses with no mentors. In the same survey, 88% of business owners with a mentor said that having one was invaluable. Another study found that one-third of successful entrepreneurs had a mentor or support group versus only 14% of entrepreneurs who failed. So the evidence and all the data, it's clear going it alone is actually hurting you. So what should you do instead? Ask for help. Find someone who's been where you are and and learn from them. This could be a mentor, a business coach, or even a peer group of fellow entrepreneurs. You'll make decisions with more confidence and avoid pitfalls others have already learned from. Remember, being self-taught doesn't mean refusing guidance. It means you take charge of your own learning. The smartest entrepreneurs are always learning from others. As the saying goes, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. So drop the ego, reach out, and build your dream with others. You'll get further faster with a little help. Mistake number 2: winging it without a clear plan. Running a business without a plan is like going on a road trip without a map. You might be busy driving, but you have no idea if you're headed in the right direction. Many self-taught entrepreneurs make the mistake of just winging it. They dive into work each day, just reacting to whatever happens without a clear strategy or goals. Figure it out as you go can only take you so far. The result is you waste time and money. You chase shiny objects, or you stall out because you don't know what your next step should be. Here is why a plan matters. Entrepreneurs who plan are far more likely to succeed. Research shows that writing a business plan significantly increases your chances of success. One review found that entrepreneurs with a formal plan were twice as likely to successfully grow their business and secure funding. Another study found that entrepreneurs with business plans are 260% more likely to actually launch their company. Company and 30% more likely to grow it. But despite these benefits, only about a third of business owners ever actually finish a business plan. So don't let that be you. Even writing down your goals makes you 42% more likely to achieve them. That's a simple step that pays off in a big way. It doesn't have to be a giant plan. Having a plan doesn't mean you can't adapt or be lean. It means you set clear goals and a basic roadmap for how to reach them. You can always update the plan as you learn, but start with something. Define your target customer. Figure out your product or service, your pricing, and how you're going to actually market your thing and deliver value. Set milestones for the next 6 months and year. This gives you a sense of direction each day. You'll know what success looks like and how to measure it. Without a plan, anything can distract you. With a plan, you can wake up each morning knowing the top 1 to 2 things you need to focus on today. You become proactive instead of reactive. So take some time to map out your business. It doesn't have to be a 50-page document. Don't stress out, don't overanalyze. Even a 1-page plan or bullet point list of goals is better than nothing. You'll be amazed at how much clarity you get by writing things down. So stop winging it and start planning it. Your future self will thank you when your business stays on track and starts hitting its targets. Mistake number 3: lacking discipline and consistency in your habits. Freedom is one reason you became an entrepreneur, right? No boss, no time clock. But here's the trap: without discipline, that freedom can destroy your business. Self-taught entrepreneurs often treat their business like a hobby hobby instead of a job. They work on it when they feel motivated and slack off when they don't, or they get caught in procrastination and busywork instead of the hard tasks that actually matter. Inconsistent effort leads to inconsistent results. The reality is successful entrepreneurship takes a lot of hard work and consistent habits. It's not a 4-hour workweek fantasy. In fact, most business owners work longer hours than employees. One study found 33% of small business owners work over 50 hours per week, and 25% work more than 60 hours. Many even put in the time on weekends and vacations. Why? Because when you're building something of your own, you get out what you put in. If you only put in half-hearted effort, don't be surprised when you get half-hearted results. But it's not just about the raw hours. It's about habits and consistency. Research from Duke University found that over 40% of our daily actions are governed by habit, not conscious decision. That means nearly half of what you do each day is just on autopilot. If you develop good habits like dedicating 2 hours every morning to high-priority work or making those sales calls daily, it will carry you through even when your motivation is low. On the flip side, if you fall into bad habits, sleeping in, scrolling social media, reacting to emails all day, your business will suffer. You won't even realize how much time is slipping away because habits run silently in the background. So to avoid this mistake, treat your business like a serious commitment. Set a schedule for yourself. You don't need a 60-hour grind if that's not realistic for you, but do decide on consistent work times and stick to them. For example, For example, you might commit to working on your business from 8 AM to 1 PM every weekday before any other activities. Create a routine. Maybe you review your goals each morning. You tackle the hardest task first, right? Eat that frog. You dedicate certain days to specific needs. Mondays are for marketing, Tuesdays for your product development, etc. Also, eliminate the distractions when you're working. Turn off your notifications. Let your friends and family know that those hours are secret. Being your own boss means you must boss yourself around. No one else will do it. Consistency beats intensity. It's better to move the ball forward every single day with solid habits than to work in erratic bursts of inspiration. Those small daily actions will compound over time, and that consistency builds trust with your customers and momentum in your growth. So set up habits that make you productive by default. Make success your daily routine. When discipline becomes a habit, your business will start to run like a well-oiled machine, and you will start to to reap the rewards. Mistake number 4: ignoring your market and customers, building something no one wants. This mistake is a silent killer— pouring your heart into a product or service without checking if anyone actually needs it. Self-taught entrepreneurs can fall in love with their idea and assume, if I build it, people will come, right? They spend months or years developing a business in a bubble— no market research, no customer feedback— only to launch to the sound of crickets. It's devastating. Frustrating, and it's common. Building something nobody wants is one of the top reasons that new businesses fail. So don't just take my word for it. Research by CB Insights found that no market need is the number one reason startups fail. In fact, one report showed that 8 of the top 12 reasons startups fail are related to poor product-market fit— basically making something that nobody wants. Think about that. The majority of failures happen not because the founders weren't smart or they didn't work hard, but because they didn't solve a real problem for customers. Another analysis found that 34% of startup failures were due to a poor product-market fit, and 22% failed from not having the right marketing plan. If no one wants your product, even the best marketing won't save you. The market is the ultimate judge. If you ignore it, you're running on hope, you're not running on reality. So to avoid this mistake, put your customer at the center from day one. Don't be afraid to get out there and talk to people who might have the problem you're trying to solve. It could be as simple as having conversations with your target audience or doing quick surveys. Ask them about their biggest problems and needs in the area that you want to help them serve. Listen more than you talk. Don't lead the witness by pitching your idea too soon. Just learn what they truly care about. And as you gather these insights, be ready to pivot or to tweak your idea to better solve the real pain points that you discover. This is not meant to be a blow to your ego. It's how you craft something people actually want to buy. Also, try to test your idea early and cheaply. If you have a product concept, creating a rough prototype prototype or even a sketch and get feedback on it. If it's a service, try a small pilot program or consult with a few potential clients. The goal is to validate that your solution resonates with people. Are people saying, I need this, or when can I have it, or are they lukewarm? Early feedback is gold. It's far better to learn and adjust in the beginning than to spend all your money on a full launch that then flops. Remember, feedback isn't criticism, it's direction. It guides you to shape your business into something that will work. At the end of the day, your business exists to serve customers to solve a problem, to bring value. When you align what you offer with what people genuinely need and value, you create that win-win relationship. Customers get something they love, and you get a growing profitable business. So fall in love with the customer, not just your product. Do your homework on your market. Stay curious, ask questions, and never assume that you know it all. The more that you listen and adapt, the less likely you are to build something useless. Solve a real problem, and you'll never have to worry about finding customers. They will come to you. Mistake number 5: being afraid of failure and giving up too soon. Entrepreneurship is tough, and not every attempt will succeed. But the biggest mistake self-taught entrepreneurs make here is taking failure too personally and giving up when things go wrong. You might hit a roadblock— a product launch fails, a client backs out, the revenue isn't coming in as fast as you hope— and you think, I'm just not cut out for this. So you quit. That is the only guaranteed way to fail permanently. The truth is, failure is not the end unless you stop fine. Every successful entrepreneur has faced setbacks. The difference is they learn from them and they keep going. I love the mindset that failure is feedback. In fact, every failure teaches you something valuable. It does. It shows what not to do or how to do it better the next time. Failure is only failure if you don't learn from it. If you treat each failure as a lesson, you actually haven't failed at all. You have grown. It's like getting feedback from the market or from life on how to improve. And Guess what? Everybody fails on their path to success. This isn't just a nice saying, it's reality. The road to success is paved with trial and error. The most legendary business leaders, inventors, creators, they all had flops and outright disasters before figuring it out. They succeeded because they didn't quit after those failures. There's a famous quote: I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. That's Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, humorously reminding us that every no gets us closer to a yes. Success usually It usually takes longer than we want to believe. Too many people just give up in year 1 or 2, just when things might have started to click if they had persisted a bit more. So how do you embrace failure in a healthy way? First, expect it. This doesn't mean you're aiming to fail, but don't be shocked when something doesn't work. It's just part of the process. Adjust your mindset to see failure as a teacher, not as a verdict on your ability and that you suck. When something goes wrong, take a step back and ask, why did this happen? What can I learn from this? How can I adjust and come back better? Maybe your marketing message was off. Maybe you targeted the wrong audience. Maybe you simply need more patience for your strategy to actually play out. Use that insight to pivot and refine your approach, and then you try again. And keep in mind that resilience, it's like a muscle. Every time that you get over some setback, you start to build that muscle. You get a little bit tougher and smarter, and over time you become more and more unstoppable because no failure can break you. You always find a way to adapt. This is crucial for self-taught entrepreneurs because you're learning as you go. Not everything will be perfect on the first try. Give yourself permission to fail and learn in public. It's better to launch imperfectly and then iterate and improve than to hold back because you are afraid. And most importantly, don't quit on your dream just because it's harder than you thought. If you truly believe in what you're doing, then keep pushing. You might be closer to a breakthrough than you think. Remember that every overnight success story has a hidden chapter of years of effort and setback. So keep going even when it's tough. Perseverance is going to be your superpower as an entrepreneur. Use it. The beautiful thing about mistakes is that they don't define you. They educate you. Now we've covered the 5 huge mistakes to avoid. You have the power to course correct. Ask for help when you need it. Plan your path so you're not drifting aimlessly. Build rock-solid habits that drive you forward every day. Obsess over your customers and make sure you're giving them real value. And above And above all, don't let fear of failure stop you. Every entrepreneur's journey is a work in progress. You're gonna have ups and downs, victories and defeats. That is normal. What matters is that you stay in the game and keep going. Learn from every misstep and keep moving. Success is not reserved for only the geniuses or the lucky ones. It's for the ones who keep improving and keep going. So you've chosen a challenging path, being an entrepreneur, but it's also a rewarding one. You have a vision inside inside you, and the world needs to see it. So take this video as your wake-up call and hopefully your pep talk. It's time to double down on your growth, correct the mistakes if you've been making them, and you'll see the difference in your business and in yourself. You already have everything it takes to win. Now go out there and make it happen. And remember, the only way you truly fail is if you stop trying. You can completely escape the rat race in just 6 months if you stop playing by the rules of the middle class. There's a lot of people caught up in a rat race feeling comfortable, and they fear the thought of quitting their jobs because they won't have that steady stream of income anymore. Because that's what we're told, that money comes from an employer. You go to work, you get paid, and that's all we know, and that's all we're conditioned to do. Taking 180 Days to Master Asset Acquisition is all you need to replace your salary with reliable passive income. If you stay terrified financial risk, you will let inflation and taxes drain every dollar that you earn. Not spend all of that time working for the man, for the next man, making him rich. Not make a career out of a dead-end job because you will be miserable and you will never be happy. Robert Kiyosaki wanted a brand new Porsche. Most people would just save up the cash or take out a massive car loan, but Robert knew that buying a car directly would take money out of his pocket and keep him in the rat race. 2 years ago, I wanted a new Porsche. So let's say this is the Porsche here. My wife says, you can have that Porsche, it's a liability. Instead, he spent his time finding a mini storage investment. That real estate asset produced enough cash flow every single month to pay for the Porsche entirely. But you can have it as long as I first invest in an asset. So this was a long time ago, my— I invested a few thousand dollars in a mini storage storage in Austin, Texas, and every month the money from that investment comes in and it paid off my Porsche. So today I don't have any debt for my Porsche. I still have my Porsche, still have it all this time. I still have the investment and I still have my cash flow. He got the luxury car and he grew his wealth at the exact same time because he let his assets buy his luxuries. Now you might be thinking, okay, you don't have the cash to buy a mini storage facility or a piece of real estate. You feel like this strategy only works for people who are already rich right now. But lack of money is not the real problem. The lack of financial education is really what's holding you back. You can start building your asset column today with almost zero capital if you know exactly what to look for. And I'm going to show you the exact steps to spend the next 180 days building real wealth. Step 1: Change your mental programming. You have been programmed to be poor since the day you were born. The traditional school system was designed to train you to be a good, obedient employee. You sit in a straight row, you wait for the bell to ring, you have to ask for permission to speak or to go to the bathroom. This is the exact training you need to work in a factory. It's the absolute worst training if you want to become wealthy and independent. Robert Kiyosaki talks about the Cashflow Quadrant to explain this. He teaches that there are 4 different types of people in the business world. You have employees and self-employed people on the left side, you have big business owners and investors on the right side. The left side works for money, the right side has money work for them. So your goal over the first 30 days of this 180-day journey is to shift your brain from the left side to the right side. You have to move from being a consumer to being a creator. Consumers spend their money on things that constantly lose value. They buy the newest phone, expensive shoes, massive flat-screen TVs. Creators build things that hold value and generate actual cash flow. So if you want to change your life in the next 6 months, you have to stop doomscrolling on your phone. The average person spends over 2 hours every single day on social media looking at other people live their dreams. Imagine if you took those 2 hours and spent them learning about real estate, stocks, or how to build a business online. You would be a completely different person in 180 days. You are built to serve other people. You have a unique gift and a unique message that the world desperately needs right now. If you spend your time consuming garbage content, you are robbing the world of your gifts. So I keep this giant bag of Doritos back here behind the desk. Every day I don't eat them. I keep them there just to remind myself that I am stronger than the Doritos. You have to build that same level of daily discipline to break your old habits. You have to wake up every single morning with the intention to create value instead of just consuming it. That's how you start the journey to the right side of the quadrant. But just having the right mindset is not enough if you do not know what to actually buy. You need to understand the single most important rule of wealth, and it goes against everything your parents ever taught you. Step 2: Master the true definition of an asset. For the next 30 days, you're going to look at every single dollar you spend through a completely new lens. You've been told your whole life that your house is your biggest asset. Your parents told you this. Your banker told you this, but they are completely wrong. Robert Kiyosaki shocked the world when he said that your personal house is actually a liability. Here is his very simple definition. An asset is something that puts money into your pocket every single month, whether you work or not. A liability is something that takes money out of your pocket every single month. So when you look at your personal house, you will see it does not put money in your pocket. It takes money out. You have to pay the mortgage, you have to pay the property taxes, the insurance, and the constant repairs that's happening. It's draining your personal cash flow. A rental property that you lease to a tenant for more than your expenses is a real asset. The tenant pays the mortgage, the taxes, and the insurance, and you keep the extra cash cash flow. This is how the rich get richer. They buy real estate that pays them. They buy dividend-paying stocks. They build software and businesses. They do not buy massive houses and fancy cars with their hard-earned salary. A shocking 60% of adults currently live paycheck to paycheck. They are trapped because they buy liabilities and falsely call them assets. So to escape this trap, in the next 6 months, you must commit to only buying real assets. If you want a luxury item, you must first buy an asset that produces enough cash flow to pay for that luxury item. This rule forces you to become an investor instead of just a consumer. Now, I know this sounds simple, but executing it requires you to completely change who you spend your time with. Step 3: Upgrade your circle of influence. You cannot become rich if you are constantly taking financial advice from poor people. Now, if your friends complain about their jobs and complain about the economy and they waste their money in liabilities, they are dragging you down with them. Jim Rohn famously taught that you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with. If your 5 best friends are broke, you will be the 6th. Over the next 30 days of your 180-day journey, you must radically upgrade your environment. Now, you might be thinking, you don't know any rich people. You might live in a small town with no local entrepreneurs to talk to. That's no longer an excuse. You have access to the greatest business minds in the history of the world right here in your pocket. You can use your phone to make famous entrepreneurs your virtual mentors by by watching YouTube videos. I do this every single morning. I don't wake up feeling perfectly motivated every day. I might be tired, I might get stressed, but I go for what I call a believe walk every morning. I get outside, go for at least 15-minute walk, and I put on something that makes me believe in myself more. I want Steve Jobs in my ear, I want Warren Buffett in my ear. I want to hear how they overcame massive obstacles so I can believe in my own potential more. Robert Kiyosaki says that inside every problem lies a massive opportunity. If you surround yourself surround yourself with people who only see problems, you will freeze. If you surround yourself with people who see opportunities, you will take action. You need to carefully curate your social media feeds. Unfollow every account that makes you angry, fearful, doubtful. Follow accounts that teach you about cash flow, real estate, business building, stock market, YouTube. Change your inputs and you completely change your outputs. But all the knowledge in the world means absolutely nothing if you do you do not take this next crucial step. Step 4: Build momentum through imperfect action. The biggest thing holding you back from wealth is not a lack of money. It is a lack of momentum. People spend years reading books, taking courses, and analyzing the market. They wait for the perfect time to start a business or buy a property. But the perfect time does not exist. You have to start before you feel ready. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to fail. You have to expect to suck at the beginning. When I was 19 years old, I had a massive choice to make. I was studying finance and I had the opportunity to take a very safe six-figure investment banking job right out of university. It was my dream job. All my friends were taking those safe dream jobs, but I decided to take a huge risk instead. I joined a biotech software startup where I was making only $300 a month. It was incredibly painful. I wanted to quit, but I chose the path of the entrepreneur because I knew I would deeply regret it if I never tried. I didn't know if I was going to win, but I needed to at least try. I didn't know what I doing. I had to learn how to model success. I looked at Bill Gates, who started Microsoft, applied his strategies to my little software company, and eventually landed a deal for $13,500. I took action before I was perfectly ready. When I first started making YouTube videos, they were terrible. You can go back and watch them. I made 350 videos before I was not completely embarrassed by them. It took me 700 videos before I actually felt proud of my work, but I kept posting because I knew that consistency builds momentum. Kiyosaki teaches that the primary difference between a rich person and a poor person is how they manage fear. Poor people let the fear of losing money stop them from ever investing. Rich people know that losing money is just part of the learning process. You learn to ride a bicycle by falling off. You learn to build wealth by making small investments, making some mistakes, and adjusting your strategy. Over this 30-day phase, you must make your first move. Open a brokerage account and buy one index fund. Go to a local real estate meetup and talk to 3 investors. Film your first video explaining the business that you want to start. It doesn't matter how small the action is. The goal is to break your paralysis and put yourself into any kind of motion. Action cures fear. Once you start moving, you'll realize that the scariest part of the business is actually the easiest part to fix once you change your perspective. Step 5: Learn to sell by creating real value. You cannot become rich if you do not know how to sell. A lot of people hear the word sales and they instantly feel disgusted, right? You picture some sleazy used car salesman trying to trick somebody into buying some broken vehicle. But true selling is the— it's actually the exact opposite. Selling is simply serving. If you have a product, a service, or an idea that can genuinely help someone solve a problem that they're facing, you have a moral obligation to offer it to them. You are doing them a huge disservice if you hide your solution from them. Kiyosaki repeatedly states that the ability to sell is the number one skill in business. If you cannot sell, you cannot communicate your value to customers, employees, or investors. Data shows that 20% of small businesses fail in their first year and 50% fail by their 5th year, mostly because they run out of cash. They run out of cash because they do not know how to sell their value. So you have to stop looking at sales as taking money out of someone else's pocket. Look at sales as transferring your deep belief into another person. When you truly believe that what you are doing matters, selling becomes incredibly easy. You are just sharing your passion and inviting them to join you. So spend this phase of your journey practicing your communication Write down the story of why you want to start your business. Practice explaining how your idea actually helps real people. Don't use fancy jargon, just speak directly from your heart. People will connect with authenticity. They want to do business with people who genuinely care. And once you master the art of serving through sales, you are finally ready to turn your income into lasting wealth with this final rule. Step 6: Pay yourself first to force growth. This is the final 30 days of your 180-day journey, and this is where you lock in your wealth forever. Most people follow a very simple and very broken formula. They get paid, they pay their rent, they pay the phone bill, they pay the credit card company, and then they try to save whatever is left over. But human nature guarantees that there is almost never anything left over. Your expenses will always rise to match your income. The rich operate on a completely different system. They pay themselves pays themselves first. Kiyosaki learned this powerful rule from his rich dad. Before you pay the government, before you pay the landlord, and before you pay the utility company, you must put money into your asset column. You take a percentage of your income and you immediately use it to buy an income-producing asset. Now, you might wonder what happens if you don't have enough money left over to pay your bills. This is where the real magic happens. When you pay yourself first, you create a cash shortage for your bills. This creates immense pressure. For a poor person, this pressure causes panic. But for an entrepreneur, this pressure forces genius. Your brain is forced to figure out how to make more money to cover the shortfall. You start a side hustle, you sell items you no longer need, you negotiate a better deal. You will find a way. By paying yourself first, you guarantee that your asset column grows every single month while simultaneously forcing yourself to increase your earning power. This is the ultimate formula for escaping the rat race and building a life of total financial freedom. Your new financial reality. You have everything you need right now to completely change the trajectory of your life. Stop waiting for someone to come and rescue you because you are the only one who could take the necessary steps to fix your future. Trust in your own potential. Ignore the people who tell you to play it safe and take direct action on your biggest ideas today. You want to start a business, but you're worried about the economy? You're not alone, and it is possible to succeed. In 2023, a record 5.5 million new business applications were filed in the United States. Even in uncertain times, entrepreneurs are are taking a leap. The truth is, tough times can create tough entrepreneurs, but if you're not careful, certain mistakes can sink your business before it gets off the ground. So today I'm going to walk you through the 7 big mistakes new entrepreneurs make when launching during a downturn and how you can avoid them. From mindset and marketing to money management, leadership, and product development, we're covering it all. Avoid these mistakes and you'll vastly increase your chances of not just surviving but thriving. Let's dive in. Mistake number 1: Believing the downturn will doom your business. So here's a mistake: starting off with the wrong mindset, believing that the bad economy means guaranteed failure. It's easy to think the market is awful, maybe I should wait, or nobody succeeds in a recession. This defeatist thinking paralyzes you. If you're convinced you'll fail, you're practically defeated before you begin. Remember, your mindset Mindset sets the tone. A negative mindset in a downturn can make you give up at the first obstacle. Here's the reality check: history proves that downturns can be the best time to start. In fact, about half of all Fortune 500 companies, household names, started during a recession. Hewlett-Packard began in a garage during the Great Depression. Microsoft was founded in the oil crisis of the 1970s. Even Groupon launched amid the 2008 recession. Tough times forced these founders to be innovative resilient. They didn't say the economy is bad, let's quit. They pushed forward. As a result, they built some of the world's biggest companies. So here's some science and stats for you. Research shows hard times can actually spark opportunity. One study noted that rising unemployment in a recession often inspires people to become entrepreneurs seeking to be financially self-reliant. Entrepreneurial spirit doesn't die in a downturn. It gets creative. And customers don't vanish either. Their needs just change. Some of the world's greatest businesses— General Electric, General Motors, Netflix, Airbnb— were born in recessions. Why? Less competition and new problems to solve. A downturn can shake up customer habits, opening gaps in the market that didn't exist in good times. Here's a motivational insight: when you start a business during a recession, you may have fears and doubts, says Timo Wilson. He's the CEO of ASAP Credit Solutions. But with careful planning, the right strategies, and the right attitude, you can turn a bad situation into a good opportunity. So your attitude really matters. If you believe now is a bad time, I'll fail, you will hesitate and miss chances. But if you believe now is my time to solve a problem and serve people, you'll find a way to make it work. So don't let fear kill your dream. Use that fear as fuel to plan smarter. Here's what you can do instead. Embrace a resilient mindset. See the downturn as an opportunity to build something lean and valuable. Focus on what you can control. That's your work ethic, your creativity, your ability to adapt, rather than dwelling on scary headlines. Remember, if others could start great companies in hard times, so can you. Go in with eyes open, yes, but with the belief that your business can succeed. That confidence will drive you to find solutions when challenges come up. In a storm, mindset is your anchor. So set a positive, determined tone from day one. Believe that you can be the exception and then work to make it true. Mistake number 2 is trying to do everything alone. So the mistake is that you're wearing all the hats and refusing to ask for help. New entrepreneurs often try to be the CEO, the salesperson, the marketer, the accountant, the janitor all at once. You might think no one can do this as well as me, or maybe you don't want to spend money on help. The result, though, is burnout and bottlenecks when you try to do everything everything yourself, you quickly run out of time and energy. Important tasks slip through the cracks because you're stretched too thin. Plus, you limit your business's growth to the hours in the day. This lone wolf approach might feel heroic, but it's actually a recipe for disaster. So here's the reality check. Even the greatest entrepreneurs don't succeed alone. Steve Jobs, who was the visionary behind Apple, famously said, great things in business are never done by one person. They're done a team. Think about that. The guy who built one of the most valuable companies on Earth is telling you he couldn't do it solo. Collaboration is key. Elon Musk might be a genius inventor, but even he doesn't build Teslas or SpaceX rockets alone. He surrounds himself with experts who execute his vision. Why? Because nobody is great at everything. Musk focuses on what he does best and lets talented people handle the rest. If iconic founders rely on on teams, so can you. Also consider this: trying to be the Superman or Superwoman can blind you to your own weaknesses. You might be great at product development but awful at marketing, or vice versa. If you insist on doing it all, the areas where you're weak will hurt your business. Two heads or more are often better than one. Other people bring fresh ideas and skills you don't have. If you shut them out, you miss out on that value. So here's some signs that you're doing this. Are you working 12 to 16 hour days and still feeling behind? Do you avoid delegating because you think others will mess it up? Those are some red flags. Refusing to delegate because no one does this better than me isn't coincidence. It's a shortcut to burnout. The company is your baby, but you can't raise a baby alone. It takes a village. So here's what you can do instead. Build your support system. This doesn't mean you need to hire a huge team on day one. It means be strategic about getting help. Delegate tasks that drain you or that aren't your expertise. If you're not a numbers person, hire a part-time bookkeeper. Struggling with social media? Bring in a savvy freelancer. Find mentors or advisors who have walked this path and can guide you. Their experience can save you from costly mistakes. Remember, asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of wisdom. As an African proverb goes, if you want to If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Teams can accomplish what individuals can't. Even if you're a solo founder, you can't grow a business in a vacuum. You need customers, suppliers, maybe investors or employees. Embrace the mindset that partnership and delegation are strengths, not burdens. You can practically start by listing tasks only you can do, like setting the vision, maybe product design, and tasks others can do. Then look at that second list and start outsourcing or delegating one by one. It could be as simple as automating your bookkeeping or having a friend or consultant give feedback on your marketing plan. Free yourself to focus on what you do best. That's how you'll grow. Great businesses are built by teams, so start building yours. It'll not only lighten your load, it'll multiply your capacity to achieve great things. Mistake number 3: burning through cash too fast. So the mistake here is spending money faster than it comes in and not keeping an eye on cash flow. This is a huge pitfall, especially in a downturn. Maybe you splurge on a fancy office or hire too people too soon or invest in expensive tools you don't actually need. New entrepreneurs sometimes act like every dollar is replaceable, but in a tough economy, fundraising is harder and customers are cautious with spending. If you run out of cash, your business is done, period. It sounds obvious, but so many startups burn through their runway thinking more money will magically appear. The mistake is not budgeting carefully and not planning for slow sales or emergencies. It's like you're driving you're in a car with a gas leak, you're not going to get very far. So the reality check is this: cash flow is the lifeblood of your business. Here is a startling statistic: 82% of startups that fail blame poor cash flow management. That means 8 out of 10 failed companies essentially ran out of money or couldn't manage it properly. Even if you have a great product, if you can't pay your bills, your company is done. You might be making profits on paper, but if your cash isn't in your account at the right time, you can't operate. A classic example is Toys R Us, a huge company that went bankrupt in 2017, not because people stopped buying toys, but because they had too much debt and ran out of cash to service it. If a giant like Toys R Us can collapse from poor cash management, a brand new startup is even more vulnerable. So during a downturn, this is even even more critical. Banks tighten lending, investors become picky, and customers pay slower or buy less. Money isn't flowing as freely in the economy, so your margin for error is thin. Every dollar wasted is a dollar you might desperately need next month. Some entrepreneurs think, "Spend now to grow fast and we'll figure out revenue later." That mindset has killed countless startups. Yes, you need to invest in yourself, but invest wisely and track every expense to be sure that it's worth it. So here's what you can do instead. Be lean and mean with your budget. Treat every dollar like it's gold. Create a simple budget for your business and track your cash flow weekly. Know exactly how much is coming in and going out. There are great tools, even basic spreadsheets or apps like QuickBooks, that help you see this clearly. Plan for the worst-case scenario. What if sales are half of what you expect? Do you have enough cash to survive a few slow months? If not, you may need to cut expenses or find additional funds before you hit a crisis. It's advised to stash a safety net fund if you can—money set aside for emergencies. This could be personal savings or line of credit you don't touch unless needed. Also, prioritize spending that drives growth or is essential for operations and delay the rest. For example, paying for marketing that brings in customers is good, but paying for a luxurious office space is probably not, especially if you can work remotely. As one business expert put it, lavish office spaces, premature hiring sprees, and inventory mismanagement management can leave your budget gasping for air. So in other words, skip the frills. Focus on what keeps the lights on and brings in revenue. Negotiate with vendors for better rates. Avoid taking on debts you don't absolutely need and keep your personal expenses separate from your business finances. Most importantly, keep an eye on cash flow timing. A sale isn't real unless the money is in your account. If you invoice clients, some might pay you in 30 or 60 days. You must account for that gap. Plenty of profitable businesses have died because they ran out of cash while waiting for payments. Don't let that be you. In a downturn, cash is king. If you manage your money wisely and stay frugal, you'll be in a much stronger position to weather storms and seize opportunities others can't because they blew their cash early on. Remember, your goal is to stay in the game long enough to win, and that means not going broke along the way. Mistake number 4 is neglecting marketing and your online presence. Here's the mistake: believing that a great product or service will magically attract customers on its own. This is the "if I build it, they will come" fallacy. Many new entrepreneurs pour all of their energy into making a product perfect, then do little to actually market it. In a downturn, they might cut marketing first to save money. That's the big mistake. If people don't know you exist, you have no business, period. Neglecting marketing, especially online, is like opening a store and not putting a sign out front. No one knows you're there. Where is everyone's attention right now? Online. If you're invisible on the internet, you're invisible, full stop. Consider this: your potential customers are on social media, they're searching Google, they're reading emails, they're watching YouTube videos. If you're not showing up in those places, they'll buy from someone who is. Some entrepreneurs also underestimate the importance of an updated website or active social 'Oh, I'll get to that later.' Later might be too late because a competitor who engages customers online will grab that market share. In a downturn, trust and visibility are even more important. People are cautious with spending, so they buy from brands they see and trust. If you're hiding, they'll assume you're not a valid option. So here is your reality check. We live in a digital age. 84% of consumers find new products, services, and brands online. Businesses online through social media feeds, search results, or online recommendations. Let me say that again. 84% of people discover businesses online. That means if you have no online presence or a very weak one, you're missing out on a huge majority of potential customers. As marketing CEO Yacine Aberah puts it, you don't want to be the best kept secret. You want to be known. Look at it this way. During the last downturn, many businesses survived only because they had an an online presence, online sales, social media marketing, etc. Those who didn't were left behind. Even big ventures can fail by ignoring marketing. Quibi, a short-form video streaming startup, had $1.75 billion in funding and big Hollywood names behind it, but it flopped hard because it failed to market effectively and couldn't get users. All that money and talent wasted because they couldn't convince enough people to care. The lesson is that no matter how great your product is, you must actively reach your audience. So here's what you can do instead. Make marketing a priority, not an afterthought. You don't need a Super Bowl commercial or a huge budget. Thanks to the internet, marketing can be extremely cost-effective. Start with the basics. Build a solid online presence. Ensure that you have a clean, easy-to-navigate website, or a simple one-page site with your information and what you offer is a great start. Make sure your business can be found found on Google. Claim your Google My Business listing if it's a local business so people can find your address, your hours, and the reviews that you have. Get on social media platforms that your target customers are using. You don't have to be everywhere, but choose one or two channels like Instagram, like YouTube, like LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, wherever your audience hangs out, and show up regularly. Post content that provides value or insights related to your business. This could be tips, behind the looks, customer testimonials, industry news, etc. Engage with your followers, answer their comments and their questions. This builds trust and a community around your brand. Invest time in content marketing and SEO, search engine optimization, so that when people search for the problem you solve, they find you. For example, if you're a graphic designer, you want to come up when somebody searches for logo design for a small business. Maybe start a simple blog or a YouTube YouTube channel with helpful content. It can draw people to you. Also, encourage happy customers to leave reviews online. Positive reviews can significantly influence new customers to trust you. During the downturn, many competitors will be tempted to pull back on marketing. If you can lean in, you capture their market share. Marketing doesn't have to break the bank. Using social media is free, and even small targeted ads can go a long way done right. The key is consistency and understanding your customer. So ask yourself, where do my ideal customers spend time and what message would appeal to them right now? Then put your message out there again and again. Remember, people can't buy from you if they don't know you exist, so make some noise. Be proactive in spreading the word about your business. Share your story and what problem you solve. In a downturn, emphasize the value and reliability you offer since customers are more value-conscious now. If you do this, you won't be stuck hoping new customers somehow stumble upon you. You'll be out there attracting them. The businesses that thrive are usually the ones that are seen and heard. So don't be shy about marketing. It's the engine of your growth. Mistake number 5 is skipping market research and ignoring customer feedback. Feedback. So the mistake is this: you're charging ahead with your idea without checking if anyone actually wants it. This is like building a puzzle with missing pieces—something important just won't fit. Many enthusiastic founders fall in love with their product or service and assume, "Everyone will love this as much as I do." They invest time and money to launch, only to hear crickets because they didn't validate the market need. Equally dangerous is getting initial customers but then ignoring their feedback, basically sticking fingers in your ears to avoid hearing criticism. If you skip research and ignore feedback, you're essentially building your business in a little bubble, or worse, on false assumptions. That's a fast track to failure. Here's the reality check. Know this statistic: 42% of startups fail because there's no market need for their product. Let's let that sink in. Almost half of startup failures happen because they made something nobody really needed or wanted. Why does that happen? Because the founders assumed instead of asked. Skipping the step of talking to potential customers is a huge mistake. You might have the most innovative solution, but if it's not solving a real problem people have, it's not going to succeed. Enthusiasm is not a substitute for insight. Ignoring customer feedback is just as bad. The market is always moving and customers tell you what they like or hate if you listen. Think of companies that fail to adapt. BlackBerry was once a top smartphone maker from Canada, but they ignored the trend towards full touchscreen phones. They insisted people wanted physical keyboards and didn't listen to users who were drawn to iPhones and Androids. The result: BlackBerry went from dominating to basically obsolete because they didn't heed the feedback of of the market. That's a billion-dollar example of ignoring customer signals. Now, on a smaller scale, if your early customers keep asking for a certain feature or complaining about an aspect of your service and you brush it off, you're pushing them away to your competition. Here's what you can do instead. Do your homework before you launch and keep learning after you launch. Before you spend a dollar on building your product or opening your doors, research. This doesn't have to be expensive or formal. Start by talking to people in your target market. They could be friends, acquaintances, online forums. Where are your potential customers hanging out? Ask if they have the problem you think you're solving. Listen to how they describe their pain points. Would they pay for your solution? How much? This is called validating your idea. You might find you need to tweak your concept to meet what people actually need. You can look at industry research, trends, and even what your competitors are doing and where they might be failing feeling customers. Observe the competition. See if there's something customers complain about in their offerings. That is an opportunity for you. If possible, create a simple prototype or a basic version of your product—this is often called an MVP, minimum viable product—and get it in front of real people quickly. The goal is to gather feedback early before you've invested too heavily. It could be a demo, a sample, or pilot program. For example, if you want to open If it's a food business, maybe start a pop-up stall or catering a small event to gauge reactions. If it's an app or product, make a basic version with core features and see if users actually find it useful. Once you have customers, even just a few, actively seek their feedback. Use surveys, invite reviews, have conversations. Yes, you'll hear things that are hard to hear sometimes— I didn't like this, or it's too expensive, etc.— but this is gold. These critiques show you how improve and what to change to really fit the market. Don't take it personally. This is about making your business better. If multiple people are telling you the exact same thing, like your pricing is too high compared to value, or a certain feature is missing, pay attention and consider adjusting. Be ready to adapt. Sometimes businesses have to pivot, which means changing direction to find the real demand. Here's a very famous example. YouTube started as a video dating a dating site, then pivoted to general video sharing when they saw users wanted that instead. If the data and feedback point you in a new direction, don't be stubborn. Be willing to pivot your idea to meet the market need. In short, stay customer-focused. Your business exists to solve a problem or fulfill a need for your customers. Keep them at the center of your discussions. Regularly ask, is this what people want? What are they telling me? And how can I to serve them better. If you build with the customer, not just for the customer, you'll create something the market truly wants. That dramatically increases your chance of success, especially in a downturn. Remember, feedback is a gift, even when it's harsh. Use it to refine your business into one that people can't live without. Mistake number 6 is scaling too fast, too soon. So here's a mistake: you're trying to grow your business at lightning speed before you have a solid foundation. This could mean hiring a bunch of employees, opening new locations, or spending big on they get tons of customers right away. It's an easy trap. You get a little early success and think, hey, we need to go big right now. Or you might feel pressure to look successful because everyone glorifies fast-growth startups. But scaling prematurely is extremely risky. If your product systems or team are not ready, growing fast can cause everything to break. You end up with unhappy customers, overstretched staff, and a business that can collapse under its own weight. Here is your reality check. Growing too quickly is a leading cause of startup failure. Over 70% of startups fail due to scaling before they're ready. That's a huge number. It means a lot of businesses might have survived if they had grown at a steadier pace. So why is scaling too fast so dangerous? Imagine you suddenly triple your customers overnight. Sounds great, right? But can you deliver your product or service at triple capacity with consistent quality? If not, those new customers will be upset and leave, and your reputation will tank. Or consider costs. Scaling often means spending money on inventory, on staff, on a bigger space. If you scale up your revenue slower than your expenses, you can burn through cash, which ties us back to mistake number 3. Many startups take on big expenses expecting future income that doesn't materialize in time. A famous example is Fab.com, a once hyped e-commerce startup. They raised over $300 million investments, which should have been plenty of fuel to grow. And they did— too fast. Fab.com expanded aggressively, hiring lots of people and spending big, but they hadn't nailed down the sustainable business model or solid profitability. They grew users quickly but couldn't keep them, and their costs blew up. Within a few years, Fab.com crashed and burned, selling for a tiny fraction of its previous value. They're a case study now on how not to scale. The lesson: more isn't always better, especially not all at once. In a downturn, the temptation might be a bit less to overscale since you're cautious, but it can still happen. For instance, if you see a sudden opportunity, maybe a competitor went under, and you try to grab all their customers overnight without preparing, you could choke on that growth. Also, chasing growth in a recession by slashing prices or overextending can backfire. Sustainable Sustainable growth beats rapid, unsteady growth every time. So here's what you can do instead. Focus on steady, sustainable growth. Think of building your business like building a house. You need a strong foundation before you add extra floors. In business, that foundation is product market fit and solid operations. Product market fit means you're sure people truly want what you offer and you can consistently deliver value at a price that works. If you're still getting inconsistent feedback or struggling to fulfill orders on time, that's a sign to stabilize before you expand. Grow in stages. Set milestones. For example, when we consistently sell X units a month with good customer satisfaction, we'll consider expanding. Or once we have X amount in steady cash flow, we'll hire another salesperson. This way, growth is tied to real indicators that you're ready. Keep an eye on your metrics— customer satisfaction, repeat purchase rates, profit margins, etc. If any of those are dropping, fix fix that before trying to scale more. It's like in a game— level up after you beat the boss at the current level, not while you're still fighting it. When you do decide to scale, do pilot tests. For instance, if you want to expand into a new market or release a new product line, do a smaller trial run. See what issues come up, learn from it, improve, then expand further. This way you catch problems early when they're easier to manage. Also, control the pace of hiring. Hire slow and intentionally. One good hire is better than 5 rushed ones who might not they're right fit. Each new team member should fill a clear need. And remember, more employees means more management needed. Ensure you have structure in place so people know their roles and responsibilities. And here's another tip: maintain financial discipline even more when you have more money coming in. Don't assume a good month means it will be good forever. As you scale, continue to forecast worst-case scenarios— what if that big client leaves, etc.— so you don't overshoot. Grow with purpose, not ego. It's not about bragging how fast you grew. It's about remaining in business and thriving years from now. As one startup advisor put it, build a solid foundation before expansion fever hits. Perfect your core business, then scale gradually, making sure your cash flow, team, and processes can grow together. If something starts breaking as you grow, don't be afraid to pause and fix it. A slower, healthier growth beats a rapid rise followed by by a crash. Your business is a marathon, not a sprint, especially in a downturn economy. Pace yourself and you'll go much further. And mistake number 7 is giving up too soon. You have a lack of patience and persistence. So mistake here is expecting overnight success and losing heart when it doesn't happen. This is a mindset mistake that catches many new entrepreneurs by surprise. So you launch, you have big dreams, and when you hit your first serious roadblock or when sales slow down for a few months, you think it's not working. I should quit. In a downturn, this feeling can be even stronger because progress might be slower. But the hard truth is most businesses take time to really take off. If you give up too early, you might be abandoning ship just before it starts to catch the wind. So here's your reality check. Building a successful business is a long game. Most small businesses take at least 2 to 3 years to become profitable and truly massive success, often 7 to 10 years to hit hit their stride. Those overnight success stories you hear are usually myths. Even companies like Facebook or Tesla spent years in development or had several slow years before things exploded. And behind the scenes, there were likely multiple near-fail moments. The journey is full of ups and downs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of businesses fail in the first year and around 50% by the fifth year. Why am I telling you this? Not not to scare you, but to highlight that success rarely happens fast. Those that do make it are often the ones who persisted through the early tough years. A great example of persistence is Airbnb. Today, Airbnb is a huge company valued in the billions, but in the beginning, it struggled hard. The founders launched during the 2008 downturn, and at first, barely anyone was using the site to book rooms. They maxed out credit cards and even sold breakfast cereal in election-themed boxes just to scrape by and keep the company afloat. They literally went door to door to get new users and investors. They faced rejection after rejection. It would have been so easy for them to say, "This isn't working, let's quit." But they didn't give up. Eventually, they gained traction, got an investor after many said no, and the rest is history. If they had quit in those dark days, we wouldn't even know their names today. Their story shows that you might be this close to success without realizing it. And if you quit, you'll never know. As Thomas Edison famously said, many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. So here's what you can do instead. Practice patience and resilience. So go into your business with the mindset that you are in this for the long haul. That means emotionally preparing for slow periods, for setbacks, and for many iterations. Don't interpret slow growth growth as failure. See it as learning. Ask any seasoned entrepreneur and they'll tell you stories of how long it took to get their first steady clients or to turn a profit. It's normal. You have to keep pushing and keep improving. Think of entrepreneurship as a marathon, not a sprint. If you sprint too hard and expect to finish in record time, you will burn out. Instead, you keep a steady pace, and when things get tough, you dig deep rather than bow out. One way to stay motivated is to Remember your why. Why did you start this business? Is it to solve a problem you're really passionate about? Is it to create a better life for your family? Keep that purpose in front of you, especially when results are slow. That will fuel you to persevere. Also, set realistic expectations and milestones. Instead of, I must make a million in my first year, focus on achievable goals like gain 100 loyal customers or reach a certain monthly revenue that covers expenses. Celebrate small wins. Each sale, each positive customer review, each improvement. This will keep morale up. Importantly, be adaptable when things aren't working. Not giving up doesn't mean keep doing the same thing, failing over and over and over again. It means keep trying new angles until it works. Maybe your first strategy, it's not hitting the mark. That's okay, tweak it. Persistence is about being committed to the end goal, which is a successful business, not a rigid path of how to get there. If Plan A fails, go to Plan B, Plan C, Whatever it takes. Every time you encounter failure, treat it as a lesson. Ask, what can I learn from this? How can I do it better? And then apply it to the next time. Surround yourself with supportive people— mentors, fellow entrepreneurs, friends— who encourage you when you feel discouraged. Sometimes just hearing, hey, you're doing good, keep at it, from someone who's been there can bolster your resolve. And remember mistake number 2: you don't have to tough it out completely alone. Seek advice when you hit a wall. Lastly, keep an eye on long-term vision. Picture the successful business you want to be in 5 or 10 years. Keep that vision alive. It can carry you through your rough days. In a downturn, conditions may improve by the time you hit year 3 or 5. You want to be there when the tide turns, having built your foundation during the hard times. The founders who persist when others quit are the ones who will be perfectly positioned when the economy picks up again. Don't quit early. As long as you still have resources and The only sure way to fail is to give up, because success might be closer than you think. Be patient, stay hungry, and keep believing in your dream even when it's not visible yet. Every big success story is written with chapters of struggle. Embrace yours and keep writing the next chapter. So we've covered a lot from mindset and money mistakes to marketing, leadership, products, growth pitfalls. Avoiding these 7 mistakes will give your new business a fighting chance even in a downturn. Remember that every huge company started small and faced challenges. The fact that you're starting a business right now in a tough economy shows that you have courage and determination. That's something many people lack, so give yourself some credit for that. And now commit to following through with smart choices. Success in business isn't about never making mistakes. You will make some, and that's okay. It's about learning quickly and and persevering. When you make a misstep, you correct it and keep moving forward. When you fall, you get back up. Each of these mistakes we talked about is avoidable with awareness and action. Now you have that awareness. You're already ahead of many beginners who dive in blind. Picture yourself a year from now running a thriving business, looking back on these early days. The economy might be better, maybe it's worse, doesn't matter, because you built something that can weather any storm. Why? Because you had the right mindset. You built strong team and network. You managed your money wisely. You continually reached out to your customers. You grew at the right pace and you never gave up. That is the path to success. So as you step forward, face the challenges with confidence. You know the traps to avoid. Stay focused on serving your customers and improving each day. Keep pushing, keep innovating, and keep believing in yourself and your mission. Downtimes create the best entrepreneurs. Those who can do well now will soar when things get better. The road might not be easy, but it will be worth it. Every setback is that setup for a comeback. Every mistake, a lesson that makes you stronger. You have everything it takes to build your dream. You have the knowledge, the grit, and now the insight into what not to do. So it's time to apply these lessons, start your journey, and make your business vision a reality. Don't wait for permission or perfect conditions. You have the power to create your own success story starting today, even in a downturn. Go for it with all your heart and smart planning. And remember, the only way you fail is if you quit. So keep going, keep learning, and keep believing. Your success story is waiting to be written, so pick up the pen and write it. You've got this. Believe. You scroll through your feed and it feels like everyone else is winning. New funding rounds, skyrocketing sales, big life updates, and here you are wondering, why am I not there yet? You start asking yourself if you're falling behind. You feel that way? You're not alone if you do. In fact, most entrepreneurs feel this at some point. The good news is that feeling behind is often an illusion, and we're going to break that illusion today. By the end of this video, you'll understand why you're not actually behind and how to focus on your own journey to success. The social media highlight reel illusion. Social media is the land of highlight reels. People share their wins, their new clients, their product launches, flashy lifestyle shots, but really their struggles. What you see is a curated montage of success. Psychologists even have a term for this: highlight reel syndrome. We compare our behind the scenes to everyone else's highlights. No wonder you feel inadequate. A recent survey by the American Psychological Association found 61% of social media users feel inadequate about their lives after seeing others' posts. So think about that— over half of people feel less than just from looking at other others online. It's because we naturally compare, and when we do, we always see the gap between where we are and where they are. But here's the reality: you're seeing their best moments, not the full story. You see the trophy, not the training. Their wins don't show the late nights, the doubts, the failures along the way. It's like watching a movie trailer and thinking you know the whole film. You don't. Remember this line: comparison is the thief of joy. Teddy Roosevelt said decades ago, and it still rings true today. Every minute you spend measuring your life against someone else's Instagram feed, you're robbing yourself of joy and motivation. Don't fall for the highlight reel trick. Social comparison theory: why you feel behind. So why do we compare ourselves to others in the first place? Psychology has an answer. Social comparison theory says that people have an innate drive to evaluate themselves by comparing to others. It's natural, we all do it. We look around and see how do we stack up. In some cases, this can motivate you. For example, comparing yourself to someone a bit ahead of you can inspire you to improve. But more often, especially in entrepreneurship, we do upward comparisons. We compare ourselves to those much further ahead or more successful, and that can often backfire. Studies show these comparisons can make you feel inadequate and discouraged, even lowering your motivation to pursue your goals. So think about it. If you're measuring your startup against the likes of Apple or Tesla, companies decades in the making, of course you feel behind. It's like comparing your chapter 2 to someone else's chapter 20. It's unfair to you. Instead, realize everyone's journey is going to be different. Some people sprint out of the gate, others build momentum over time. Life is not a 100-meter race with a single finish line. It's more like a marathon where everyone has their own route. When you catch yourself in the comparison trap, pause and remind yourself, their success is not my failure. Use their success as inspiration instead of a yardstick. And most importantly, compare yourself to your past self. Are you better today than yesterday? That's the only comparison that actually matters. Each day that you learn a new skill, make another sales call, or improve your product, you're making progress. Count those wins. They may seem small compared to someone else's huge score, but they are yours and they are real. And step by step, they will take you to your own big wins. Imposter syndrome. It lies to you. That feeling in your head that says, I'm not good enough, or I don't belong at the table. Let's talk about that now. Imposter syndrome. It's the voice that tells you that you are a fraud, even when you've earned your place. As an entrepreneur, you might feel like all of these other founders, they've got it all figured out while you're secretly still scrambling. Here's the truth: most of them are scrambling too. Imposter syndrome is incredibly common. Up to 70% of people experience imposter syndrome feelings at some point. And get this, 87% of entrepreneurs admit they've experienced imposter syndrome during their careers. Yes, almost 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs you admire have felt like fakes at one time or another. So when that voice in your head tells you that you're behind because you're not as confident or you're not as capable as other others seem, know that those others likely have the same doubts privately. Even top CEOs have doubts. A survey found 71% of US CEOs have at least some imposter syndrome symptoms. The difference is they don't let it stop them, and neither should you. Realize that feelings like imposter syndrome doesn't mean you actually are one. It often means you're pushing your limits, and that's a good thing. It means you care about doing things well. Imposter syndrome lies to you. It convinces you that others have it together and that you don't. But the reality is they're figuring it out as they go, just like you. So the next time you feel like you're not as good as everyone else, remember these stats. You're in good company with those doubts. Recognize it, but don't buy into it. Instead of thinking, I'm behind because I don't feel as successful as them, tell yourself, feeling this way is normal and I won't let it stop my progress. Every entrepreneur is work in progress. The ones who succeeded aren't necessarily the ones with zero self-doubt. They're the ones who kept going despite it. The myth of overnight success. When you see someone seemingly skyrocket to success, it's easy to think, wow, they came out of nowhere. I must be really behind. But overnight success is a myth. Almost every sudden success story has years of unseen work behind it. We don't see the first 10 or 20 years of effort, only the last flashy 5 minutes when the world notices. As an entrepreneur, try to internalize this. What looks fast in others was usually slow and steady in the making. Look at a couple examples from the business world. James Dyson spent 15 years creating 5,127 prototypes of his vacuum before finally making a successful one. 15 years of experiments and failures for a sudden multi-billion-dollar product. Would you have thought he was behind in year 10 with nothing to the show yet? Probably. But he wasn't. He was learning. The popular spray WD-40 literally got its name because the first 39 attempts failed. WD stands for water displacement, the 40th formula, meaning the inventors perfected it on the 40th try. 39 failures, then a hit. That's what real success often looks like. Colonel Harland Sanders founded KFC in his senior years. He didn't start franchising KFC until he was 62 years old. All those years before were trials and modest running of a restaurant. Imagine if at age 50 he thought it's too late, others are ahead. We'd have no KFC. His story proved it's never too late to win. And closer to home, my own story. You might see me now with millions of YouTube subscribers and think success came quickly. It didn't. We can pull back the curtain on the early progress. Here's a table that shows my YouTube growth from 2009 when I started. And look at the early years. May 1st, 2009, I had 25 subscribers. 5 years later, 9,440 subscribers. 14 subscribers. 5 years to not even get 10,000 subscribers. Not exactly an overnight explosion, but I didn't quit. I kept making videos, kept improving, kept building the audience one at a time. By 2018, I crossed 1.3 million subscribers. By 2022, I'm over 3 million subscribers. The early slow growth— just 344 subscribers after 2 years, 2,000 after 4 years— that's normal. It set the foundation for later exponential growth. If I compared myself to other creators, I would have given up in 2014. It's like 5 years in. I would never have impacted millions of entrepreneurs. In fact, in my first year, I only got 3 comments from my mom, my sister, and one random person. It would have been easy for me to feel behind and let others stop me, but I kept going. I also asked for help. After years of slow growth, I found a mentor who helped guide me, and with that help and with marrying my wife, my channel took off. So the lesson here was those early quiet years, they failures. They were my practice. It was my learning. And every overnight success story has a hidden chapter of grit that nobody sees. So the next time you catch yourself envying somebody's huge success, remind yourself that there's a story behind it. They had challenges, they put in the time, and so will you. Your story is still being written. It might just be chapter 2 for you while they're in chapter 10. And chapters can get really exciting as the plot develops. So stay in the game so that you can experience that part. Delay gratification. Play the long game. Here's a trait that separates successful entrepreneurs: the ability to delay gratification. This means being willing to put in the work now for reward later instead of chasing an instant payoff. If you feel behind because you're not seeing results yet, take heart. You might just be in the investment phase of your journey. You're planting the seeds that will bloom later. There's a famous psychology study that illustrates the power of patience. In the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, researchers put a child in a room with one marshmallow and told told them that they could eat it now or wait 15 minutes and get 2 marshmallows when the researcher returned. Now, some kids ate the one marshmallow right away. Others waited for the bigger reward. Years later, follow-up studies found that the children who waited for the second marshmallow tended to have better life outcomes— higher test scores, more education, even healthier BMI. In other words, those who could delay gratification succeeded more in the long run. Building a business is the ultimate test of delayed gratification. You might work for months or years without significant recognition or revenue, but then reap huge rewards if you stick with it. It's like planting bamboo, the famous story. For years, nothing seems to happen. Then suddenly it shoots up overnight. When you see others winning fast, remember that fast is not always sustainable. Some entrepreneurs do strike quick success, but many of those cases, if not managed, fizzle out just as quickly. Meanwhile, if you are practicing patience and persistence, you're developing your strong roots. Delayed gratification is a superpower in entrepreneurship. It's what keeps you coding your app at night even when nobody is using it yet, because you believe in the future payoff. It's what makes you reinvest your early profits into the business instead of taking a bigger salary now, because you're playing the long game. If you can do this, you're actually ahead, not behind, in the game of eventual success. You're trading the short-term short-term pleasures that many chase for the long-term victory that truly matters. So ask yourself, are you willing to endure now to enjoy later? If yes, then you have an edge. Every day you make the hard choice to work towards a future goal, you're beating the crowd that demands instant gratification. So keep at it, and when your success comes, it will be solid and earned, and it will last. Practical tips to focus on your journey. Okay, it's time to get practical. How can you stop feeling behind and start feeling motivated by your own path? Here are a few actionable tips for refocusing on your journey as an entrepreneur. Number 1, limit social comparisons. Actively reduce the triggers that make you play the comparison game. This might mean curating your social media, unfollow or mute accounts that constantly make you feel less than. Remember that heavy social media use can fuel envy and depression. So set boundaries. For example, check LinkedIn or Instagram once a day instead of every hour. Use that time to work on your business or skill instead. Out of sight, out of mind. If you're not flooding your brain with others' highlight reels, you're focused more on your own progress. Next, use others as inspiration, not measurement. Change the way you react to others' success. When you see a peer celebrate a win, congratulate them mentally or in a comment, and then learn from them. Ask yourself, what can I learn from their journey? Maybe they have great marketing. Can you pick up a tip? Maybe their product is solving a real problem? Is your product aligned with solving a real need too? Shift from envy to curiosity. This way, someone else's success fuels you instead of discourages you. Their success does not take away from yours. It's just proof that success is possible. If they can do it, so can you. Next, compare with your past self. The only valid comparison is you versus you. So start a habit of measuring backwards. You can keep a journal or log of metrics that matter to you. It could be revenue, customers, skills learned, etc. Each Every month, review it. You'll see growth that you might otherwise overlook. Maybe last month you had 2 clients and now you have 5. That's progress. Or a year ago you didn't know anything about marketing and now you can run a decent ad campaign. That's a win. By focusing on your personal growth, you get a sense of achievement. You realize you're actually further along than before, which means you're moving forward, not stuck. So celebrate those improvements. Small wins pave the way to big wins. Big wins. Next, define your own success criteria. Take a moment to define what success actually even means to you. Is it a certain income or flexible lifestyle? Making an impact in your community? If you get clear on your personal goals, you won't be as shaken by others. For example, if your goal this year is to develop a reliable product and break even financially, then someone else's Series A funding round— well, nice for them— isn't your measure of success. Create a vision or mission for your business that's rooted your values. I like to say that your purpose is greater than your fear. When you focus on your purpose, your why, you stop fearing that you're not keeping up with others. So chart your own course and stick to it. Next, practice delayed gratification. Remind yourself daily that you're playing the long game. When you hit a setback or a slow month, don't see it as failure. See it as part of the process. Develop routines that reinforce patience. For example, uh, set aside time each week to plan long-term moves like product improvements or your learning learning a new skill that won't pay off immediately but will in the future. Celebrate yourself for putting in that work. You can even gamify it. Give yourself a small reward for sticking to a tough task instead of taking an easy shortcut like you normally do. That builds the muscle of patience. Remember the marshmallow experiment. Every time you choose the second marshmallow later in your business, like investing in R&D or building customer relationships slowly, you are setting setting yourself up for bigger rewards down the line. Next, seek mentors and peers, or community. Instead of silently comparing yourself to high achievers, talk to them or to others on your journey. You'll often find that behind the scenes they're willing to share their struggles and lessons. Getting a mentor is one of the best ways to stay focused on growth rather than envy. My own growth accelerated once I found a mentor, and I married my wife. A good mentor will remind you that everyone's start small, and they'll give you personalized advice to get better. Also, surround yourself with fellow entrepreneurs who are positive and supportive. Join a mastermind group or just connect with a couple of business owners that you trust. When you have a community, you realize that nobody's journey is a straight line. You'll see people hit roadblocks, you'll see them pivot, slow down, speed up. It gives you perspective that you're all in this evolving process together. Plus, when when you do feel down, they will pick you up. Next, focus on what you can control. You can't control how fast someone else grows or what opportunities fall in their lap, but you can control your actions and attitude. So in the morning, ask yourself, what's one thing I can do today to move my business forward? It could be making one more sales call, writing a piece of code, improving your website. By pouring energy into what you can do, you shift the tension away from other people. It empowers you. Progress comes consistent action, not constant comparison. If you focus on daily actionable goals, before you know it, you'll have a lot to show for your efforts. Now, your pace might be different, but progress is still progress. So pick a couple of these tips and start practicing them. Over time, you'll notice the 'I'm behind' voice getting quieter as you build confidence in your own journey. You're on your own timeline. Keep going. Here's the final truth: you are on on your own timeline, and that's exactly where you need to be. Life isn't a race against anyone else. It's a journey where sometimes you sprint and sometimes you take the scenic route. Both are fine. Everyone seems to be winning faster than you only because you're looking at them. If you put that same focus back on you, you'll see how far you've come and how much more potential is ahead of you. And when doubt creeps in, remember the facts that we've covered. Most people feel like you do at times. You're not weird or doomed. Social media only shows the good parts, not the grind. And science and stories show that patience and persistence beat rushing every time. So remind yourself of the entrepreneurs who succeeded later or after many tries. Success does not have an expiry date. As long as you're still in the game, you're not behind, you're building. So keep showing up, keep learning, keep improving, keep pushing forward. Your breakthrough moment is coming, and when it does, you realize it was all the previous ordinary days of work that made it possible. Every great story has ups and downs before the climax. This is your story. Embrace your journey, all of it, and trust that your time to win big is on its way. Now go out there and do your thing. The only person you need to beat is the one you were yesterday. Focus on that and you will win. You've got this. Most people fail in business because they are secretly terrified of annoying their customers, so they never actually ask for this. Rejection is far worse in your mind than it is in real life. A lot of times we might stray away from opportunities because we're afraid that someone's going to say no. So why even bother asking? Fear is the greatest single obstacle for success in sales and marketing. If you truly believe your product can change a life, then holding back and staying quiet is actually an incredibly selfish thing to do. If you do not get over your fear of rejection today, the people who desperately need your help will suffer and your business will completely disappear. You have a moral obligation to do everything in your power to sell it to as many people as possible. And if you don't sell it to them, they're going to curse you. But if you do sell it to them, they're going to bless you. They can't hurt us. They can't do anything to us physically. So, so much of that fear is up in our head. In the early days of Airbnb, the founders were completely broke and living off dry cereal. I remember for the first 2 years started the company, I would wake up in the morning and I would just have this like kind of panic. Everyone thought it was crazy. No one supported us. We had no money. It was the best weight loss program ever. I probably lost 20 pounds and I didn't have any money for food. And I would wake up in the middle of the morning, like my heart pounding. I was like, how the hell did I get myself in this situation? Nobody was renting the room. So Brian Chesky did something that most people are terrified to do. He flew to New York, knocked directly on the doors of his few users and begged them to let him take better pictures of their apartments. He sat in their living rooms and asked them exactly what they hated about his product. And so we literally would fly during Y Combinator, Joe and I would go to New York and we'd go door to door. We would meet with every one of our hosts and we'd live with them. We literally would live with them. We'd write the first reviews for the places. And in fact, I would go there and I'd be like, "Wow, the photos are terrible. This is actually a really nice house." And the host is like, "Well, I can't figure out how to get photos." both onto my computer. And so I went home with Joe and we borrowed a camera from one of our friends in Brooklyn, like, who was a photographer. And we knocked on the door and they're like, hello, yes, I'm here, the photographer. And they were like, wow, this is a small company, the founder's also photographing my home. He invaded their personal space and asked hard questions. Because he had the courage to look his customers in the eye, Airbnb went from zero sales to a multi-billion-dollar empire. Now Now you might be thinking, well, Brian Chesky, you know, he got lucky, or that flying across the country to knock on doors is completely unrealistic for you. You might be sitting there with no money for a plane ticket and a deep fear of talking to strangers, but you don't need to book a flight to get in front of your customers this year, right? You need to stop hiding behind your logo and start using the tools right in your pocket to have real conversations with people. So let me show you the exact blueprint I would use to go from zero sales to rich this year. Build a business development show instead of a vanity channel. Most people start creating content in 2026 because they want to go viral. You think you need millions of views to make money. You might think you need a massive audience to get rich. I see this all the time with people who are interested in joining our Movement Makers and YouTube Mastermind programs. But fame does not equal wealth. If you are starting from $0 today, you do not need a million subscribers. You need to close high-ticket deals with a small group of people instead of making short videos, hoping an algorithm them saves you, you need to start a business development show. Think about the top 50 people you want to sell your product or service to. If you call them on the phone and pitch them, they will hang up on you. Studies show that cold calling has an incredibly low success rate, with less than 2% of cold calls resulting in a meeting. But if you invite those same 50 people to be a guest on your new interview show, they will say yes. People love talking about themselves. When you interview them, you spend an hour building deep trust. You listen to their problems. How do you actually build this show? You don't need a fancy studio. You just need an interconnection and a free video account. You send them a short, simple message. You tell them you love their work and you want to feature them on your platform, even if it's a brand new channel. Make the message about them, not about you. When they join the call, you ask them about their journey, you ask them about their struggles, you make them feel like a rock star. When people feel heard, they instantly trust you. This is the ultimate secret to selling without selling. You're providing real value first. You're giving them a stage, and in return you get their attention. When the interview is over, you stop recording and you ask to help be a second opinion on the things that they're working on. Since you just spent an hour making them look amazing, they'll give you an honest answer. You do not push. You just offer a solution. That's how you bypass the gatekeepers. This is how you get straight to the decision maker. You can use this exact strategy to close a $10,000 deal this month. One of our Mastermind members used it to close a $13 million dollar deal. You do not need to wait for a million subscribers to validate you. You just need the courage to reach out to the first person on your list. And if you need help, you can join our Movie Makers program. You can check it out by visiting our homepage. Give yourself permission to be terrible at the start. So you're probably sitting there thinking your camera is not good enough, your lighting is bad, or you do not have a fancy background. You're letting perfectionism keep you completely broke. Perfectionism is just fear, right? It's just wearing a nice mask. Psychology shows that perfection often experience extreme procrastination because they are terrified of failing in front of other people. When you start from zero, your videos are going to be terrible. Your sales pitches are going to be really awkward. Your website is going to look pretty cheap. And that's exactly how it's supposed to be. When I started making videos, it took me 350 videos before I can even watch myself without cringing. 350 videos of me looking terrible and sounding awkward, but I put in the volume of of repetition. I did not wait for the perfect moment. I just kept posting. Why do you care so much about what other people think? You're letting the fear of judgment stop you from changing your family's financial future. You're worried that your old high school friends might laugh at your videos, but those people, they're not paying your bills right now. Those people are not going to fund your dream. You have to stop caring about the opinions of people who are not in the arena with you. Every massive creator you watch today started out making absolute garbage, but they did not quit. They understood that volume of repetition is the way to build the skill. When you learn to ride a bike, you expect to fall off. You do not quit after the first fall. Business is the exact same thing. It's just a skill, and the only way to get better at a skill is to practice it, and you practice it publicly. So record your first video today, write your first email today, make your first pitch to somebody today. It will be bad. Accept it, own it, celebrate it, because getting that first terrible attempt out of the way is the only way to get second attempt. Your second attempt will be slightly better. Awesome. Your 10th attempt will be decent. Your 100th attempt will be great. But you will never reach greatness if you refuse to take that first messy step. Your perfectionism is just a fancy excuse for hiding. So it's time to step out of the shadows and let the world see you try. Copy the rise and ignore the result. When people try to get rich, they usually look at what billionaires or what they're doing right now. You might see a massive entrepreneur and try to copy their current habits. You think you need a 4-hour morning routine, a team of 50 people, and a massive marketing budget. But copying their current success will destroy your business right now. You need to copy their rise, right? Not the result. You need to look at what they did when they were completely broken in your shoes. When I was 19 years old, I was struggling to build my first software company. I was making $300 a month. I was totally stuck. So I looked at Bill Gates. I did not look at what he's doing right now as a billionaire. I looked at what he did when he was getting started in his business. I learned that he picked up the phone and sold his software to a company called MITS before the software was even built. He did not wait for everything to be perfect. He just sold his vision. Research shows that studying the early struggles and failures of successful people dramatically increases your own resilience and your motivation. So find someone who has built the exact business that you want to build. Study their first year. What were their first products? How did they get their first 10 customers? How many times did they fail? Map out their exact early strategies and apply them to your business today. If you model the actions of people who have already walked the path, you do not have to guess. You can just follow the blueprint that they left behind. You have to reverse engineer their success. You have to go back in time, read their earliest blog posts, watch their very first YouTube videos. Look at the grainy, out-of-focus footage from 10 years ago. This is where the real lessons are hidden. You will see their fear. You will see their awkwardness. You will see the raw hustle that actually built their foundation. When I studied Bill Gates, I realized he didn't have a massive team when he made his biggest move. He was just a college student. He called the computer company and told them he had a program for their machine, but he hadn't written a single line of code yet. He sold the concept first, and then he worked day and night to build it the meeting. That's the kind of bold, messy action that creates the starting points of wealth. You don't need to have everything perfectly aligned. You just need to sell the vision and then work on delivering your promise. So pick 3 heroes today, dig into their past, find out exactly what they did when they had $0 in their bank account. Write down those actions, make those actions your exact playbook for the next 90 days. Ignore where they are right now and obsess over over where they started. Turn your deepest pain into your biggest pitch. Now you might be trying to sell something that you do not actually care about just because you think that it will make you rich. But in today's economy, consumers are completely blind to fake enthusiasm. They can tell when you are just trying to take their money. If you want to build massive wealth from zero, your purpose must come from your pain. The most profitable businesses businesses are built by entrepreneurs who are solving a problem that they personally suffered through. When you sell a solution that changed your own life, you do not have to memorize a sales script. Your passion is completely real. Customers who feel an emotional connection to a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value. Most entrepreneurs fail because they are acting like mercenaries. They are just chasing the next shiny object. You hear that real estate is hot, so you try real estate. Then you hear that software is hot, so you try software, but you have connection to the industry. And then when things get hard— and things will always get hard— you quit because you only cared about the money. But to get rich, you have to be a missionary, not a mercenary. You have to care deeply about the problem that you are solving. So think about the darkest moments of your life. Think about the times that you felt completely hopeless. How did you get out of that hole? What books did you read? What strategies did you use? What mindset shifts did you make? That journey is your greatest asset. You possess specific knowledge that millions of people right now are desperately looking for. You know exactly what they are feeling because you felt it too. When you build a business around solving your own past problems, your marketing becomes incredibly powerful. You do not need to use sleazy sales tactics. You just need to tell your truth. You just need to say, I was exactly where you are, and this is how I escaped. People do not buy features, they buy hope. They buy a better version of themselves. When you offer a genuine lifeline based on your own pain, price becomes less relevant. People will pay you whatever you ask because they trust that you actually understand them. Turn your past struggles into your ultimate superpower. Ruthlessly audit your environment and your inputs. You cannot build a rich life if your mind is constantly filled with cheap thoughts. Most people, they wake up, they grab their phone, and they immediately start scrolling through negative news and mindless social media. They let the world dictate their mood before they even get out of bed. If your environment is designed to keep you distracted, you will never get rich. You have to ruthlessly audit what goes into your brain. If you're serious about making millions of dollars, you need to surround yourself with greatness. If you do not have successful friends in real life, that's okay for now. You can borrow them online. I put successful entrepreneurs in my ear every single morning. I call it a believe walk. I wake up, I spend at least 15 minutes outside, and I listen to a successful entrepreneur. I read their stories, watch I your speeches. Studies prove that social contagion is real, meaning your behaviors and emotions are directly shaped by the people that you observe and interact with. Your brain is a sponge. It absorbs the energy, the words, and the beliefs of whatever is around you. If you spend your day listening to people who complain about the economy, you will start complaining about the economy. If you spend your day watching videos of people who are gossiping and telling telling stories, your mind will stay small. You have to treat your attention like your most valuable financial asset. You have the power to curate a completely custom environment for your success. You can choose your mentors, even if you never meet them in person. I want Steve Jobs in my ear. I want Howard Schultz in my ear. I want people who have changed the world speaking directly to me every single day. I try not to let random chance decide my mood. I manufacture my own inspiration. You need to build a routine that forces you to feel powerful. So before you look at your email, you check your messages, put on a video that fires you up and get outside. Join the Believe Walk Challenge. Listen to a story of someone who overcame massive odds. Fill your mind with evidence that the impossible is actually possible. When you do this consistently, you physically rewire your brain. You start to expect success. You start to act with bolder confidence. You stop playing small because your environment is constantly reminding you of how big you can actually be. So protect your mind at all costs. Cut out the negativity. Shut down down the doubt and flood your brain with pure, relentless belief. Once you change your inputs, you change your outputs. But having all the right strategies will not matter if you forget the most important truth of all. The one choice you must make today: your lack of money is just a reflection of your lack of belief. The world desperately needs a specific magic that only you have inside you. So stop waiting for the perfect time and start trusting your own great greatness right now. You already have everything you need to build a massive life today. Law number 1: Money follows value. Money isn't random. It's the reward for solving problems. Wealth is built not on what just excites you, but on what you create that serves others. The more value you deliver, the more dollars will chase you. It's that simple. Think of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or Sara Blakely. They got rich by fixing pain points for millions. You want money? Stop chasing cash and start chasing problems to solve. When you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want. That's a law of the universe. Law number 2: Adopt a wealth mindset, not a lottery mindset. Getting rich starts in your head. If deep down you believe money is evil or not for people like me, you'll unconsciously push it away. Newsflash: Luck won't save you. 70% of lotto winners blow it, and a third end up bankrupt because they didn't change their mindset. Self-made Millionaires, on the other hand, think differently. They believe they deserve success and can learn whatever skills wealth requires. So the excuses like, I'm not smart enough, I came from nothing, and replace that with, why not me? Train yourself to see money as a positive force, a tool you can master. Your mind is your biggest asset or liability. Choose to make it an asset. Law number 3: Purpose over profit, but money in your top 5. Money itself isn't the end goal. Freedom, impact, and purpose are. I always say making money is great. It has to be in your top 5. It just can't be number 1. If you chase only dollars, you'll burn out or compromise your values. Instead, chase a mission and use money as motivation. Think of companies like Patagonia or Tesla—mission-driven, but they still prioritize revenue to fund that mission. Here's the balance. Care more about your impact than your income, but respect money enough to plan for. Money in your top 5 means you price your product right, you monetize your skills, you track your revenue because you know profit powers your purpose. When your why is strong, the money follows. And when the money comes, you push it back into your why. That's how world-changing businesses and lives are built. Law number 4: Pay yourself first. The first bill you pay each month should be to yourself. Before rent, before groceries, invest in your future. Siphon a chunk of every paycheck into savings or investments immediately. This habit needs to become a non-negotiable. Why? Because wealth doesn't come from what you make, it comes from what you keep and grow. It's the classic millionaire habit. Nearly half of self-made millionaires save 20% or more of their income from day one. That requires discipline and delayed gratification, skipping some short-term treats so future you can win. Psychology proves this. The famed marshmallow test showed that kids who delayed gratification ended up more successful in life. The same goes for money. So automate your savings. Treat it like a tax that you owe yourself. If you can't pay yourself, you'll always be paying someone else. Law number 5: live below your means. I know this sounds basic, but it's amazing how many people ignore it. Don't spend all you earn, and definitely don't spend more than you earn. Hello, credit cards. The rich stay rich by living like they're broke. The Most stay broke by acting rich. Studies of millionaires show they're frugal. 64% live in modest homes, 55% buy used cars, nearly all of them vacation cheaply, and 84% refuse to gamble with their money. They aren't clipping coupons for fun. They just know that every dollar wasted is a dollar that can't work for them. So yes, reward yourself occasionally, but don't inflate your lifestyle with your income. Grow into your wealth. Don't blow it. As your earnings climb, keep your expenses expenses in check. This creates a gap, the golden gap, that you can invest to generate real wealth. Law number 6: Avoid bad debt, leverage the good debt. There are two kinds of people: those who pay interest and those who earn interest. To get rich, you want to be the second kind. Credit card balances, payday loans, buying a Ferrari on finance— that's bad debt. It will chain you down. The average credit card interest will eat your future alive. So here's your rule: never borrow to buy depreciating crap. Use debt only when it's a tool to acquire an asset that pays you back. In simple terms, an asset puts money in your pocket. A liability takes money out of your pocket. Your home, for example, can be a liability if it's draining cash. Meanwhile, a rental property or business loan can be good debt if managed well because they generate income. The rich strategically use other people's money to multiply their wealth, but they respect the risks and have a plan to pay it off. Be very real with yourself. If the thing you want to buy won't earn or save you money, don't go into debt for it. Law number 7: Let compound interest work. Start investing now. Time is your greatest ally or your worst enemy in building wealth. Every day you delay investing is cash left on the table. Why? Compound interest, the snowball effect of money earning on top of itself. Albert Einstein supposedly called compound interest the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it. He who doesn't pays it. So here's Here's a quick example. If you invest $1,000 at 10%, you'll earn $100 a year. Not bad. But if you reinvest that $100 next year, you earn 10% on $1,100, not just $1,000. That's $110. And now you have $1,210. Keep rolling that over and in 10 years, that $1,000 turns into nearly $2,600 without adding a penny, all from reinvesting and compounding. Start earning and it's like planting an orchard instead of a single tree. Don't wait for enough money to invest. Even $50 a month invested now beats $500 $100 a month started 10 years later. Small seeds become giant oaks, but you must plant them now. Law number 8: Create multiple streams of income. One stream of income is one point of failure. If that stream dries up— job loss, one client leaves, industry shifts— your financial life sinks. The wealthy know this, so they build boats with multiple engines. It's often said the average millionaire has 7 streams of income. And while your number may vary, the idea is diversification. It could be a side hustle, investments, rental incomes, royalties, a second business, you name it. In one study, 65% of millionaires had at least 3 income streams and nearly a third had 5 or more. So start with one strong income. This is where most people get it wrong when they're thinking have multiple streams of income. You don't have 7 all from the beginning because then you will be, you will diversify your energy out of any real wealth. So you start with one strong income, master it, and then add another. Each new stream is a layer of security and a force multiplier care for your wealth. Importantly, build active income—so business, career—and passive incomes, which is investments and assets. Do them together. Don't rely on a single paycheck or a single customer. Spread your bets and create income while you sleep. Law number 9: Make money while you sleep. That's passive income. If you earn only money when you're personally working, you'll never escape the grind. You need income that doesn't require your constant presence. Warren Buffett said it best: If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die. And that's not hyperbole. That's, that's a reality. Passive income can come from investments like stocks, index funds that pay dividends, rental properties, or from systems that you create, a business that runs without you, or online products or royalties from a product. It usually takes hard work upfront to set up these passive streams. So don't think it's free money. But once they're running, they free up your time. Even having a little extra cash trickle in every month gives you breathing room. So imagine waking up to find you earned $100 overnight. Now imagine $1,000 or $10,000. The goal is to decouple your time from your money. Start building something today that pays you tomorrow, next week, next year. That's real financial freedom. Law number 10: Never stop learning. The moment you think you know it all, your bank account will prove you wrong. The wealthy are students of wealth, constantly reading, attending seminars, picking up new skills. 88% of rich people devote at least 30 minutes a day to learning through reading. They read biographies, business books, industry news, not gossip, not junk. They treat their mind as a million-dollar asset that compounds just like money. If you want to get rich, adopt a growth mindset. Invest in courses, find mentors, seek feedback. My core philosophy is believe. Believe that you can learn and improve. And I try to live this. In the early days, I studied Bill Gates and other successful people to model their strategies. And that learning led directly to my big breakthrough. So ask yourself daily, what can I learn today that will make me more valuable tomorrow? Every new skill or insight is money in the bank, just a bank you can't see yet. Stay curious and humble. The more you learn, the more you earn. Law number 11: Your network is your net worth. You can't do it alone and you shouldn't try. The people you surround yourself with will make or break your success. Jim Rohn famously said, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the you spend the most time with? So take a look around. If your 5 closest friends are broke, negative, and complacent, guess where you're headed? Successful people consciously build success circles. They hang out with other winners. One study found the rich intentionally seek optimistic, goal-oriented peers. Why? Because environment matters. Conversations with high achievers will spark ideas, opportunities, and higher standards in you. On the other side, toxic pessimistic people will drag you down to their level. This doesn't mean cut off loved ones. It means spend time strategically. Find mentors who've achieved what you want. Join entrepreneur groups, mastermind calls, online communities of goal-getters. Upgrade your network and you'll upgrade your net worth. It's practically automatic. Remember, birds of a feather flock to the bank together. Law number 12: Don't do it alone. Ask for help and mentorship. So pride and secrecy keep people poor. I learned this the hard way. In my startup days, I was making $300 a month and was too embarrassed to tell anyone how much I was struggling. I thought I had to fake success or go solo, and it nearly broke me. The truth is, successful people ask for help all the time. They hire coaches, they seek mentors, they gather teams of advisors. Ego can be expensive. If you're too proud to admit what you don't know, you will cap your growth. In fact, 82% of small businesses fail due to cash slow problems, often because the founder didn't seek financial advice or delegate when they should have. So don't let that be you. Find someone who has been where you want to go and learn from them. And if you're in a crisis, reach out instead of suffering in silence. Don't do it alone because you'll probably fail. You'll quit along the way because it's too devastatingly lonely. The right help at the right time can save your business and your sanity. Success is a Money is a team sport, so play it that way. Law number 13: Reinvest your profits. So when money does start coming in, it's tempting to celebrate. I made it! Let's spend! But the wealthy think differently. They plow money back into growth. Warren Buffett insists on this. When you first make money, you may be tempted to spend it. Don't. Instead, reinvest the profits. Whether it's profits from your business or returns from stocks, feed it back into your wealth machine. This is how small ventures become empires. I did this with my first company. When we landed our first deal, I didn't go buy a car. I poured it into scaling the business, which later allowed me to sell and truly cash in. Reinvesting is how Buffett turned a pinball machine side hustle into a stock portfolio. Each round of profits bought more assets, which produced even more profit. It's a cycle. Earn, invest, earn more. On the flip side, if you spend all you make, you kill the compound growth and go back to zero. So celebrate your wins, yes, but then put that money back to work. Delay the gratification a little longer and watch your wealth snowball. Law number 14: Take calculated risks and embrace failure. No risk, no reward. It's a cliché, but it's true. Getting rich will require you to step out of your comfort zone. So start that business, invest in that property, pitch that big client, even when there's no guarantee of success. In fact, you will screw up along the way, and that is okay. 63% of millionaires admit they took risks and failed at least once in business. But here's the difference. They didn't see failure as the end. It was just data. They learned and kept moving. As the saying goes, winners are not afraid of losing, but losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success. And that was one of the hardest lessons for me. I was afraid to look stupid, to ask dumb questions, to lose money on a strategy that might not work. But every failure— eating beans for lunch for years, failed product launches, interviews that tanked— that taught me something that eventually led to a huge win. So Don't be reckless, do your homework, and take calculated risks. But when you feel fear, don't let it stop you. Often that fear is a sign that you're on the right track. Bet on yourself, and if you fall, get back up smarter. Law number 15, be patient, wealth takes time. We live in a world of instant gratification, but building real wealth is a long game. Too many people try one thing for 6 months, don't become millionaires, and then quit or jump onto the next fad. Don't fall for the get-rich-quick trap. But the truth is, most millionaires get rich slowly. In one study, 80% of millionaires were over 50. It took them decades of consistent effort to hit 7 figures. Saver investors took an average of 32 years to reach millionaire status. Even fast-track entrepreneurs took 12 years on average. The media loves to highlight the 22-year-old crypto billionaires, but that's the exception, not the rule. Embrace the process. Commit to the long haul. This doesn't mean it has to take 30 years for you. The timeline can accelerate with smart decisions, but it won't happen overnight. Set longer-term goals and keep grinding. Grinding. Remember, compound interest needs time to work its magic. That's Law Number 7. Each year you persist, your knowledge, your network, and your assets compound too. Patience isn't just a virtue in wealth building, it's a strategic advantage. Law Number 16: Leverage. Multiply yourself through others. Here's a harsh truth. You will never get truly wealthy trading only your own time and effort. There are only 24 hours in a day and only one of you. The rich scale up by leveraging other people's time, their talent, their resources. That means hiring, delegating, automating, building a team and systems that make money even when you're not personally doing the work. So I learned this in running my YouTube channel. For years, I was in front of the camera, I was behind the camera, I was doing everything myself, and I was hesitant to spend money on help. I grew up without a ton of money, and maybe I was too cheap at first, but once I hired my first part-time editor, boom, I went from one video a week to one a day, which then brought in more money. Leverage. Similarly, in business, the moment I started bringing in partners and employees who are smarter than me in their areas, our growth started to explode. According to research, over 80% of millionaires rely on a of smart people— attorneys, accountants, advisors— to help achieve their vision. So ask yourself, what tasks or expertise can you leverage from others to scale up? It could be as simple as hiring a virtual assistant for $10 an hour to free you up to make $100 an hour, or partnering with someone who has skills or contacts that you lack. Yes, it can cost money to hire good people, but not hiring when you need to is far costlier. Build your dream team. Law number 17: Take action. Speed beats perfection. The money goes to are those who do, not those who wait. One thing I see holding entrepreneurs back is analysis paralysis. They plan and polish and procrastinate, and opportunities pass them by. The wealthy have a bias for action. They do the best research they can, then pull the trigger. Jeff Bezos calls it the bias for action and credits much of Amazon's success to it. Warren Buffett calls unnecessary waiting thumb sucking and pushes himself to make decisions swiftly when he has enough facts. The point is, you can't steer a parked car. You have to start moving. Want to invest in stocks? Open the account and put in a small amount today. Learn as you go. Have a business idea? Launch a simple version of it right now, even if it's not perfect. You will refine through real-world feedback. Money loves speed. Not reckless, stupid speed, but the momentum that comes from decisive action. Action precedes clarity. So the law is, do it before you feel 100% ready. An average plan executed today beats a perfect plan never executed. Start, stumble, learn, adjust, but start. Law number 18: Know your numbers. Track your money. You wouldn't drive a car blindfolded, right? So don't drive your finances that way too. Ignorance is extremely expensive. Wealthy people are keenly aware of their numbers. They know their income, their expenses, their profit margins, their tax liabilities, the investment returns, at least the key figures at all times. You need to become the CFO of your own life. You make a budget, update it regularly, and review where your money is going. You can use apps or spreadsheets, chalk on a board, whatever works for you, but track it. If you're an entrepreneur, this is even more critical because poor cash flow management kills 82% of small businesses. When I started, I used Microsoft Money software to track my business finances, and my early accounting was a total disaster until I learned how to prioritize it. And once I did, I found ways to save on taxes and get unexpected refunds that boosted boosted my cash flow. That's the reward for paying attention. The law here is what gets measured gets managed. When you track, you naturally start optimizing. You spot wasteful spending, you find opportunities to save or invest, and you avoid nasty surprises. So open those bank statements, know your credit score, set a weekly date with your money. Yes, I'm serious. Your bank account should never be a mystery. Law number 19: Give and you shall receive. This might sound more spiritual, but it's hard-nosed success strategy too. Generosity breeds prosperity. The wealthiest people I know are givers. They donate to charities, they mentor others, they create opportunities for the people that are around them. Why? Because what you put out into the world comes back to you multiplied. Zig Ziglar said it best, "You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want." And it's true. When you operate from a mindset of service and generosity, you build an army of allies. People open doors for you. Clients refer to you. Your reputation starts to shine. Even on a practical level, generosity expands your network and skills. So volunteer in an organization and meet influential people. Mentor someone, and you often learn from the teaching. Also, giving keeps you humble and hungry. It reminds you that wealth has a purpose: to improve lives, including your own. And here's a little secret: giving money away can actually make you feel wealthier. It breaks the fear that money is scarce. Of course, Be smart. Don't give beyond your means, but make generosity a line item in your life. It could be money or time or knowledge. Nearly 3 of 4 millionaires in a study volunteered at least 5 hours a month, and many actively mentored others. Coincidence? I don't think so. The more you give, the more you grow. It's a law. And law number 20: Stay humble and stay hungry. Money is a moving target. The game doesn't end when you hit some magic number. To not only get rich but to stay rich, you must keep your ego in check and your drive alive. Success can be a sedative the moment you think, I've made it, you start to slip. Remember Bill Gates's warning: success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose. So don't fall for that trap. The greats, the, the Buffetts, the Oprahs, they never stop learning. They never stop pushing. They act like beginners even when they are masters. For me, the belief game never ends. Despite all the subscribers and the business, I still wake up as a student. I still want to get better every day. So celebrate your wins, yes, but stay curious and grounded. Keep setting the next goal, setting the next challenge, and importantly, stay grateful. Humility also means recognizing the role that others have played and some luck in your success. It keeps you from doing something dumb and losing it all out of arrogance. The hungry, humble entrepreneur will run circles around the complacent one who is resting on his laurels. Money has a way of disappearing from those who take it for granted. So no matter how well well you're doing. Adhere to these laws. Keep growing, keep giving, and keep believing. A quick final thought: you've just learned 20 laws, but knowledge alone won't change your life. Action will. Pick one law today and start living it. Maybe it's setting up that savings account. Maybe it's calling that mentor. Maybe it's finally launching that product. Remember, every big success is just an accumulation of small, consistent wins. You showing up for this, absorbing these strategies, that already sets you apart from the masses who are still looking looking for easy answers. And so I want to acknowledge you for, for being here right now and investing in yourself. Now get out there and do the work. Apply these laws and build the wealth and life that you deserve. Keeping your passion as just a hobby is a waste of your potential. Think about it. Most people, they slave away jobs that they hate, suppressing the things they love. No wonder they feel stuck and unhappy. If you never act on your passion, you risk waking up at 80 with nothing but regret. The regret of knowing that you never even tried. Take Walt Disney as an example. Walt started out drawing cartoons for fun, sketching animated figures in his spare time. At 18, he landed a job as a cartoonist, but he wasn't satisfied with just drawing for someone else. He had a bigger vision. He turned his doodles into an empire, starting his own studio and growing it into the Disney we know today. Imagine if Walt had played it safe and kept art as a side gig. We might not have Mickey Mouse, no Disneyland, none of it. His His hobby became his legacy because he had the courage to go all in. Now, a personal story from my own life. Years ago, I fell in love with salsa dancing. I started as the tall, awkward guy with two left feet. I didn't speak Spanish. I was a slow learner, but I kept at it week after week. Salsa wasn't my job. I did it because I loved it, and it changed my life. I met my wife through salsa. It became a huge part of who I am. Fast forward a few years later, the owner of my salsa studio decided to move on., and the community we built was at risk. So I couldn't let that happen, so I bought the studio. Yeah, a guy who started as the worst student in class ended up owning Canada's largest salsa dance studio. Why? Because salsa was more than just a hobby, it was a passion that I was willing to invest in. And that little hobby now impacts tens of thousands of people, even doubles as my film studio for my videos during the day. I turned my hobby into a business that serves my community and brings me joy every single day. So you might be thinking, okay, that, that's great for you, Evan, but my hobby can't pay the bills, or what if turning it into a job ruins the fun? I hear you. It's scary. That's legitimate. You worry about money, you're about failing, about losing that spark. But what if you never try? What if you keep dragging yourself to a mediocre job and only dabbling in your passions on the weekends? That's a recipe for a mediocre life. Turning your hobby into your career doesn't kill the passion. It doesn't have to. It can amplify it. Yes, it will be work, and not every day will be amazing and sunshine and rainbows, but it's meaningful work fueled by something that you actually care about, and that beats any soul-sucking job any day of the week. And guess what? People are making it happen every day. If someone else with a camera or an oven or paintbrush can turn their passion into a thriving business, why not you? The only difference is they said yes to their dreams while others say no. So are Ready to say yes? Let's talk about how to actually do it, how to transform that hobby of yours into a real career, step by step. Here we go. Step number 1: stop calling it just a hobby. Shift your mindset. So you have to believe that your hobby can be your career. Step 1 is an identity shift. Stop treating it like a cute little side interest and start treating it like it matters. If you don't take your passion seriously, nobody else will. Think of Alicia Schaefer, a mom of 3 who loved making boho chic designs. She started out crafting in her kitchen at first and selling on Etsy. At first it was just a fun side hustle. Then she had a mindset shift. I decided to stop treating it like a hobby and start treating it like a business, she said. The result: she became Etsy's top seller, pulling in as much as $60,000 to $80,000 a month with her handmade products. That happened because she believed believed her hobby was worth something and committed to it like a professional. I had to learn this myself. Some of you know my story. I started a website in my 20s of sharing lessons from successful entrepreneurs, and that site started to blow up. We had 100,000+ pages of content, and even big names started writing for us. On paper, it was a success, but I woke up one day and realized I no longer loved it. It had turned into a content factory just chasing ad dollars, not the mission-driven project that envisioned. Meanwhile, I was getting more excited about making YouTube videos, reaching people more directly, having more fun with it. So I made a bold decision. I just shut down my big website overnight, and I moved my entire focus to YouTube. People thought I was insane. They said, Evan, you walked away from a sure thing to chase a hobby on YouTube? What are you doing? But I didn't see it as crazy. In my mind, it was more risky to stay stuck doing something that I didn't I didn't like anymore. Why keep investing in a business that my heart wasn't in just because it made some money? I'd rather take my shot doing what I love. And I told people, walking away from something you don't like towards something you do is the opposite of risky. And you know what? That decision to treat YouTube, my passion for creating video content, as my real business changed my life. The channel that you're watching now only exists because I had the courage to put my passion first. So step 1 for you is internal. Own the identity. You're not just a hobbyist. You're a baker, an artist, a coder, an educator, whatever your hobby is. Start calling yourself that. Carry yourself like it's already your career. This isn't about fake it until you make it. It's about being it so you can become it. And psychology backs us up. When you identify deeply with a role or mission, you behave differently. You show up with purpose. You keep going when others would quit. And the world The world needs people who are alive with passion. One of my mom's favorite pieces of wisdom for me was, "If you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must." And I carried that into my mission. If I can help somebody with something I love, then I have to. Your hobby lights you up for a reason. It's pointing you to your purpose. So embrace it fully. Decide that you're going pro in your passion. That decision alone sets everything else in motion for you. Step number 2, start before you're ready. Overcome perfectionism. So stop waiting for permission or for the perfect plan and just start. This is where so many aspiring entrepreneurs, they fall apart. I know because I stumbled here too. We want everything to be just right. We don't want to launch until the stars align and success is guaranteed, right? Newsflash, that day will never come. Perfect is an illusion and waiting for perfect is a dream killer. So let me share 2 quick stories. First, back in my 20s, my software company and almost had a huge exit. This deal would have been $40 million to us, life-changing money for me at that age. But guess what? We missed it. Why? Because I was obsessing over details and planning instead of taking action. So I spent an entire summer writing and polishing our business plan. Meanwhile, a competitor, they got out there and they built relationships, and when the big opportunity came, they were ready and we weren't. And that competitor got acquired for $40 million, not us. And I'll to be honest, that really stung. I remember saying, I lost a $40 million deal because I was trying to make things perfect. It was a tough pill to swallow, but also an incredibly valuable lesson. And I'm still a recovering perfectionist, and I realized that a half-assed plan that you act on is better than a perfect plan that you never execute. Most of your precious plan is going to be wrong anyway once it meets reality. You've got to get in the game and adapt on the fly. And my perfectionism cost me a once-in-a-lifetime deal, and I vowed to never let fear of not being perfect slow me down again. Second and start my YouTube channel. So fun fact, I created the channel in 2008, but I was so nervous about getting it right that I didn't upload my first video until April 2009. I sat on it for months. Why? Perfectionism. I told myself I needed a professional videographer, a script, the right suit. And I did all that for my first video. It took me an entire day to record a, I forget how many minutes video because I kept overthinking every line. I was so stiff and unnatural trying to be perfect and looking back, cringy, but, but I posted it. And you know what? I had 3 comments in the first year: my mom, my older sister, and some random person. But that experience taught me just to press record and post, even if it's ugly. If I hadn't broken through that perfectionism, I'd probably still be sitting here planning my perfect video instead of having 10,000 videos and 4 million subscribers. So I call myself a recovering perfectionist now because that tendency never fully goes away. You just learn to override it with action. So I want you to override your your perfectionism starting today. Start before you feel ready. Launch that Etsy shop even if your product line isn't 100% polished. Post that video even if your video could be better. Tell your first 5 clients that you are open for business even if you're still figuring things out. Yes, you might stumble. It will definitely be messy, but you'll learn more from one real step forward than 6 months of theory crafting in your living room. Psychologists even have a term for getting stuck in planning mode, analysis paralysis. You think you're being diligent, but really you're just procrastinating because you're scared. So let's call it what it is. Perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes. You're afraid of being judged or failing, so you dress it up as, I'm not ready yet. So I'm giving you a loving kick forward right now. You are ready enough. You don't need to know everything to begin. You'll figure it out as you go. I promise. Action creates clarity. As you start, you'll refine your strategy in real time. The big company you admire? They started in a garage with a clunky prototype. My first videos were terrible, but you can't get to video number 100 without making a few awkward ones first. So get version 1.0 out there. Embrace the motto: progress over perfection. Your mantra is launch and then adjust. This is how every successful entrepreneur turns a hobby into a career. They start. They launch that Etsy shop, the YouTube channel, the small weekend catering gig. It might flop or it might fly, but either way, you you learn and you move forward. As the saying goes, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to become great. So do it now. Do it imperfectly, but do it. Step number 3, share your passion and ask for help. Don't go it alone. Turning your hobby into a business is hard, but doing it alone is almost impossible. You need to build a support network around your passion. So that means sharing your journey. It means connecting with others. It means asking for help when you need it. And this step is both practical practical and mental. Practical because opportunities come through people. Mental because it forces you to shed the lone wolf mentality that might be holding you back. And I'll admit, this is a tough one for me. I still have a hard time asking for help. I'm an introvert. Reaching out is not my natural tendency. And especially in the early days of my startup, I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that I was struggling. I was making $300 a month, felt like a complete failure, but I kept it all inside. I thought I have to figure this out on my own. And that That was a huge mistake. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Don't do it alone because you'll probably fail. You'll quit along the way because it's too devastatingly lonely. And that's the truth. When you're grinding in isolation, every setback hits you harder and every, every doubt becomes louder. I almost quit on my business because I felt so alone in it. The moment that I finally swallowed my pride and I asked for advice from a mentor, things started to turn around. I learned that asking for help is not a weakness. It's actually just a success strategy. So let me give you a quick story to show how important this is. A while back, I was on a flight to Puerto Rico to speak at an event. The guy next to me tried to chat, but I did my usual introvert thing. I put on my headphones and basically sent a leave me alone vibes. Small talk on a plane is like my worst nightmare. I'm thinking, please don't let this stranger talk to me. So we fly in silence. And when we land, I see the same guy checking in at the hotel for the entrepreneur mastermind that I I was speaking at. And turns out he was exactly my kind of person, an entrepreneur headed to the same event, and we could have had a great 2-hour conversation on that flight, sharing ideas, maybe forming a friendship or some kind of partnership, who knows. But I shut the door on that before it even opened. I remembered standing there thinking, wow, I literally avoided a golden opportunity because I was too shy to say hello. So lesson learned. Now I try to engage even just a little because you never know who's sitting next to you, maybe your future business partner, maybe your next investor, or simply a friend who understands your journey. So what does it mean for you? Find your people. If your hobby is baking cupcakes, join a local bakers club or an online forum for baking entrepreneurs. If you love coding, go to hackathons or meetups. If you're a dancer, start hanging around dance studios or in online dance communities. Get yourself in the mix where others share that passion. And then open your mouth. Share what you're doing. Tell your friends and family that you're starting a business. Yes, that can be vulnerable. You're effectively saying, "I'm trying something big and I could fail." But you'll be surprised how many people will cheer you on or introduce you to someone or give you that one idea or client that kicks things off. And please, get comfortable asking for help. This, this is still one of my biggest growth points. Even after I've had some success, I still struggle with asking. But funny story, a few years ago, a friend of the channel, Brendan Burchard, invited me to his mastermind at his house. And I walk in and I'm surrounded by all these legends, people that I look up to, and part of me feels like I didn't belong. And at one point, Brendan noticed that I was being quiet, and he called me out in a kind way, and he said, Evan, you give so much to people, you gotta make sure you come up with an ask. What do you need help with? And he pushed me to receive, not not just to give. And that was uncomfortable for me, but I did it. And I asked that group for advice on growing my YouTube channel and on my book and dealing with some self-doubts that I had. And guess what? The feedback I got was pure gold. And one idea from that room saved me months of trial and error. And it reinforced for me that entrepreneurship is a team sport. Even if you're a solo entrepreneur, you need mentors, your peers, your cheerleaders along the way. Don't isolate, communicate, show your passion to the world. You keep it hidden, no one else can help you, and you might miss connections— you will miss connections that will change your life. Collaboration and community will carry you further than you can carry yourself. So ask yourself, who can I reach out to this week for support or for feedback? What forum or group can I join? Who out there is doing what I want to do, and how can I connect with them? Don't let pride or fear of rejection stop you. Most people love to talk about their shared passions. They'll be happy to help an enthusiastic newbie because reminds them of why they started too. So send that email, attend that meetup, comment on that fellow creator's post. You never know where one hello might lead. Step number 4: Be patient and persist. Play the long game. Turning your hobby into a full-fledged career will take time. There's almost no way around this. The overnight success is a myth. Most overnight successes were grinding in the dark 4 years. So commit to the long game. That means staying patient and more importantly, staying persistent when your progress is slow. So reality check from my own journey: people see my YouTube channel now with the millions of subscribers, etc., and think I have some sort of magic touch. They don't see that for years I was shouting into what felt like the void. It took me 5 years on YouTube to crack 2,000 subscribers. 5 years of, uh, what some would consider a failure of a number. But in another 5 years, I got to a million. But that's That's a decade of work to get to what creators can potentially get in a year. And in the first few years, my subscriber growth was so slow that I thought I'd be 90 years old before I'd ever get a Gold Play Button. I remember uploading videos, I got 30 views and 50 views, and it's hard not to compare yourself to others when they're blowing past you. But I just had a mindset shift that saved me. I stopped obsessing over the numbers and started celebrating the people. I told myself, okay, 50 people watched this video, but 50 people took the time out of their day to hear my message. Imagine I was giving a speech at a local library and 50 people showed up to listen. I'd be thrilled. And so that perspective changed everything. I started focusing on who I was serving instead of who I wasn't. So instead of feeling like, oh, only a few dozen views, I felt grateful and energized to help those few dozen people. I focused on serving the audience I did have, not the audience that I didn't. And slowly those 50 turned into 100 and then 1,000 and and a million. And what kept me going in the dark days was purpose and love for the process. So I genuinely enjoy making videos, and I was on a mission to solve a problem that I struggle with myself— lack of belief and mentorship for entrepreneurs. Even when the external rewards were small, the internal rewards were there. I was growing, I was learning, I was getting better in my, my field, my craft of videos. You must find that same well of patience and persistence. Expect that the first year or two might be slow. That's normal. It's okay. Do not quit your passion just because it's not printing money immediately, or because your Etsy shop only got a few sales in your first month. If you truly love it and you see even a glimmer of impact, keep going. Adjust your approach maybe, but don't give up on the whole game. I'll give you an example from my own persistence. My salsa business partner Alex— when Alex started as a dance student at my studio. He was awful. I mean it. The guy was the worst student in the class. And we have a system for if you're not ready to move to the next level, you get held back to repeat the level. Now, it's actually pretty rare. Like, almost nobody gets that. Less than 1% of students ever get held back. But Alex was held back at almost every level. Can you imagine that? Most people would have been so embarrassed they'd quit after the first time. But Alex loved dancing. He didn't care if he wasn't a natural. He kept showing up. He actually thanked us for holding him back because it meant that he could continue to improve on his fundamentals of dancing. And that mindset, but Blue Mary was awesome. Fast forward, after being our most persistently terrible student, Alex eventually improved. He started assisting classes, then teaching. And today Alex is our head instructor who helps run the dance studio. He had a career in sales and he left it to pursue dancing. Talk about turning a hobby into a career. He literally went from the worst in the class to leading the entire school. How? Through grit, through showing up even when it was hard. Hard and humbling. That's the power of persistence. And science backs this up too. Psychologists have a term, grit, coined by Angela Duckworth, which is basically the mix of passion and perseverance. Studies have shown that grit, which is just sticking with something that you care about over the long term, is a better predictor of success than talent or IQ. What does that mean? It means that if you're consistent and you keep improving, you can surpass the naturally talented people who just give up early. Consistency beats intensity. Me every time. I take the everyday hustler over the one-week genius any day. So commit to a process. Give yourself time to succeed. I'm not saying quit your job tomorrow and live in your car while you wait for your hobby business to bloom, right? Be smart financially. Build it on the side if you have to. But emotionally, you need to give this endeavor some patience. Set a longer horizon. I'm going to give this my all for 3 years instead of 3 weeks. When setbacks happen, and they will, remember why you're doing this. We'll get to that in the next step, but remind yourself that every master was once a disaster. Every pro was once an amateur. Your slow progress is not a sign of failure. It's an indicator that you're on your journey. As long as you don't stop, you're still in the game. And sometimes slow growth is setting you up for explosive growth later. My channel crawled for years, and then boom, it started to take off. And those early years were absolutely necessary to build my foundation, my skills, my content library. If I'd quit in year 3 year 3 or year 4, you wouldn't be watching this right now. And one more tip: celebrate those small wins. Did you make your first $100 from your art? Awesome! Take a picture of that PayPal notification. Did you get your first client testimonial? Amazing! Frame it on your wall. Treat these little victories as breadcrumbs that lead you forward. Cherish them. They'll, they'll keep you positive and motivated while you wait for the bigger break to come. Step number 5: Stay connected to your why. Make it about purpose, not just profit. So as you turn your hobby into a career, there will be a point where it starts to feel like work. Anytime you monetize something, there's pressure. Now there's deadlines, there's customers, there's finances that enter the mix. And the danger is you can get so caught up in the business side that you forget why you loved it in the first place. So to prevent this burnout and truly succeed, you need to anchor Anchor in your purpose. Keep it mission-driven, not just money-driven. Don't get me wrong, you absolutely should aim to make money and lots of it. Money is a fantastic servant. It gives you freedom. It validates that you're providing value. But money cannot be the only reason that you're doing this. If it is, the first rough patch, you're going to quit. When the money is lean or the sales aren't coming in, you'll have no reason to continue. But if you have a deeper why, a mission, you'll push through walls to see it happen. For me, that mission was baked into why I started creating content for entrepreneurs. Remember my first company struggle, how much pain I went through trying to build a business as a clueless 19-year-old? I felt so alone and so close to quitting so many times that I eventually survived and sold my startup, but it was brutally hard. And that pain became my purpose. I thought, if I can make it even a little bit easier for the next entrepreneur in my shoes, I should. Your purpose comes from your pain. I like to say that the thing that hurt you, uh, or challenges that you overcame, it's exactly what you can help others with. So my hobby of consuming entrepreneur stories, tips, strategies, that turned into a mission to share those with the world so others don't have to struggle as much. That's what kept me going in those early years of creating content for basically no one. I wasn't driven by ad revenue or fame. I was driven by the thought that maybe one video could save an aspiring entrepreneur entrepreneur from quitting. That meant something to me. And guess what? That's exactly what ended up happening. I started getting emails and comments from people saying things like, Evan, your video kept me from giving up on my business, or this interview inspired me to finally start my dream. And that became motivation for my soul, right? So connect your hobby to service. Ask yourself, how does doing this passion as a career help others or impact the world positively. So if you're a musician, maybe your music brings joy or helps people feel seen. If you're making something, your products might bring people comfort or confidence. Uh, if you turn your baking hobby into a bakery, you're not just selling cupcakes, you're giving people moments of happiness and celebration. You like tie your work to something that matters. Debbie Fields, who founded Mrs. Fields Cookies, said it perfectly: once you find something you love to do, be the best 'best at doing it.' And she also said, 'The greatest failure is to not try.' Her deeper purpose was spreading joy through cookies and proving naysayers wrong, and it drove her to build a cookie empire. Another part of purpose is keeping your own passion alive. So protect the love you have for your hobby. Sometimes when it becomes a business, you might start doing aspects you don't enjoy, like paperwork and marketing, etc. That's normal. But always make time to reconnect with the fun, the creative part that made you start in the first place. So I I like to tell creators, make sure that you're still creating things for you, not just for the algorithm or the market. So in my case, I still make videos on topics I'm personally curious about or struggling with, not just what I think will get views. I thought this was an important video. We'll see how it does, but I wanted to make it because I thought it was important personally. I make content that I need to hear, and it turns out that a lot of people need to hear it too sometimes, and that keeps me engaged and growing too, personally. It's also okay to evolve your vision as you grow. So maybe your hobby career opens comes new opportunities. Great, follow the ones that actually excite you. Just always do check-ins. Does this still align with what you care about? If you ever find yourself feeling like your passion business is becoming soulless, pause, refocus, remember why you started. Maybe even write down a mission statement or a simple sentence of why you do what you do and put it on your wall. Make it somewhere in front of you. When things get tough or confusing, look at it. That why will help you cut through the noise and reset get you on the right path. And one more thing: acknowledge yourself for the courage it takes to do this. Seriously, most people will never even attempt to turn their hobby into a career. It takes guts, it takes belief. By even trying, by putting yourself out there, you're already in the elite minority of people who are trying to live life on their own terms. And that is actually something to be really proud of, no matter what stage you're at. So use that as positive reinforcement. You're doing what most only daydream about. So keep going. Your hobby can become your career, and when it does, it's one of the most fulfilling feelings in the world. You wake up excited to work, you give it more energy and love, and that translates into better results. And people will feel that energy. Your customers will sense that you genuinely care about what you're doing, and they'll support you because of it. And in turn, you're making a living, or maybe even a fortune, doing what you love. And that's the win-win outcome that we're after. You're happy and you're making others happy or solving their problems too. And you get paid for it along the way. It's a beautiful cycle. And it all starts with the decision to take your hobby seriously and go for it. Now, I've given you a roadmap here. Mindset, action, community, patience, purpose. These 5 steps are not one and done. You'll revisit them often, but if you follow them, you will be miles ahead of where you are now. So remember Walt Disney or Alicia Schaeffer or my friend Alex. Their success didn't happen by accident or or overnight. It happened because they dared to believe in their little hobbies and stuck with them. You can do the same. Do one thing that moves your dream forward right now. It doesn't matter if it's small. The journey of 1,000 miles, right? One step. You've got this. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it. And your future self is already smiling back at you saying, thank you for starting. Thank you for watching, and more importantly, for being the type of person who actually wants to do something with their life. Most people won't even make it this far into a video like this, but you did, which tells me that you're serious. You're building that belief and that knowledge, and now turn that knowledge into action. You do not need to be a genius to learn as fast as Elon Musk. You can learn anything you want for free. It is not a question of learning. I think just kind of throwing yourself into different situations to learn new things is— I don't know, I think that that's just a big part of life. You don't I don't need to be a genius in what I do. The ability to master any new skill in record time is just a simple framework that anyone can copy. First principles analysis, I think, is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, uh, any, anything really. It's really just saying, let's boil something down to the most fundamental, uh, principles. The things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level. If you keep trying to memorize information the traditional way, you will fall so far behind your competitors that your business will fail. I think a lot of things people learn, probably there's no point in learning them. Colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they're not for learning. When Elon Musk decided to build a rocket, people laughed at him. He did not have a degree in aerospace engineering. He was a software guy, but he did not let that stop him. In a Reddit Ask Me Anything, Elon revealed his secret. He said most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. He views knowledge as a tree. He makes sure he understands the fundamental principles first. He learns the trunk and big branches before he gets into the leaves and details. He mastered rocket science by focusing on the core ideas first. Now, you might be thinking that Elon Musk is a billionaire genius with a photographic memory and you are just a regular person trying to build a business. You think this method only works if you already have a massive brain. Brain, but that is completely wrong. The truth is that Elon uses this method to organize his brain because human memory is deeply flawed. When you use this exact knowledge tree method, you level the playing field and unlock your true potential. So today I'm going to show you exactly how to build your own knowledge tree step by step. Identify first principles. You cannot learn fast if you are blinded by what other people are doing. The biggest mistake you make when trying to learn a new business is copying your competitors. This is called reasoning by analogy. You look at what is already out there and you try to make a slightly better version. This is a trap that keeps you slow and average. Elon Musk does not reason by analogy. He uses first principles thinking. So when he wanted to send a rocket to Mars, he found out that buying a rocket would cost $65 million. Most people would just accept that price and give up. Elon did did not give up. He broke the rocket down to its fundamental truths. He looked at the raw materials of the rocket. He found out that the aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, titanium, copper, and carbon fiber only cost 2% of the typical rocket price. He learned how to build rockets by focusing only on the raw materials. You must do the exact same thing in your business. So when I was 19 years old, I walked away from a six-figure finance job. I decided to join a software startup where I was making $300 a month. I I was struggling. I was completely isolated and alone. I did not know how to sell anything, let alone scientific software. Instead of looking at my local competitors, I looked at the biggest success that I can find. I studied Bill Gates. I broke down his early strategies to their absolute core truths. I applied his exact raw materials for success to build up my tiny company. Because I stopped copying average people and broke the problem down to its first principles, I landed my first deal for $13,000. $17,500. So if you want to learn a new skill right now, stop looking at the surface level. Write down the absolute facts of the problem. Strip away the opinions, the assumptions, and the industry traditions. Those are usually the worst. Once you have the raw materials, you can then build a completely new and faster way to learn. But identifying the raw materials is only the first step. You still need a place to put them inside your brain. Plant your semantic tree. Most people try to memorize random facts, tips, tricks. This is why you forget everything that you read. Your brain is not a filing cabinet for random data. Elon Musk explained his secret in that famous Reddit interview. He said you must view knowledge as a semantic tree. You have to understand the trunk and the big branches first. If you do not understand the trunk, the leaves and the tiny details have nothing to hang on to. There is a proven scientific reason why this works. It is schema theory. A schema is a mental slot in your long-term memory. It acts like a cognitive shortcut. So when you learn the core chunk of a subject, you create a permanent schema in your brain. When you learn a new tiny detail later, your brain instantly knows exactly where to put it. So think about this in real life. So I'm a big salsa dancer, right? I met my wife Nina at the salsa studio that I then later bought and now own. But when I was first starting dancing, I was terrible. I wanted to look cool immediately. I wanted to learn the advanced spins, the dips, the crazy hand tricks. But those moves are the leaves of the tree. If you try to learn the leaves first, you'll fall flat on your face. You have to learn the basic step first— forward and back, side to side. That basic step is the trunk. Once your brain understands the trunk, every single advanced spin becomes incredibly easy to learn. So we can apply this to your business. If you want to master marketing, do not start by learning the latest social media algorithm hacks. Those are the leaves. They will change next week anyway. Learn human psychology. Learn why people buy things. Build your trunk first. And once you have a strong trunk, you need a system that actually force that information into your daily schedule. Chunk your time and knowledge. You cannot learn this massive subject all at once. Your working memory, it has a strict limit. In psychology, there is a famous concept called the magical number 7. It proves that the human brain can only hold a few pieces of information at a time before starts to get completely overwhelmed. To get around this, you must use a process called chunking. You break massive amounts of data into tiny bite-sized chunks. Elon Musk uses chunking to manage his entire life. He runs multiple billion-dollar companies by breaking his day into tiny 5-minute blocks. He focuses completely on one single problem for 5 minutes, solves it, moves on to the next chunk. He uses techniques similar to the Pomodoro method to maintain his intense, razor-sharp focus. And I use this exact same mental strategy when I'm playing games. When I play League of Legends or Minecraft, I don't sit down and just try to win the entire game in one giant move. I break the game down into tiny quests. I focus on finding one resource. I focus on winning my lane in trades. You need to treat your learning the exact same way. Do not sit down and say you're going to learn everything about sales today. You will just get frustrated and quit. Block off 20 minutes, focus on learning how to write one single cold email. Master that one chunk, then move on to the next. But even if you chunk your time perfectly, nothing matters if you refuse to take messy action. Force your brain to change. You cannot train your brain just by reading books. You have to actually perform the skill. Your brain is a physical muscle. It uses a biological process called neuroplasticity to adapt to new challenges. Neuroplasticity means that your brain literally reorganizes itself and creates new neural pathways based on your experiences. To force these new pathways to grow, you have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, new situations. You have to expect to suck at the beginning. When I decided to start my YouTube channel, I was a massive introvert. I still am. I was terrified of getting in front of the camera. I did not know what I was doing. My first videos were terrible, but I didn't quit. I forced my brain to adapt through just sheer volume and repetition. It took me 350 videos before I could even watch my own content back without being completely embarrassed by myself when I was doing it. Took me 700 videos before I finally watched a video and thought, oh my God, I'm starting to get good at this. I built my entire business because I was willing to be bad at something long enough to let my brain learn how to be good at it, right? You can see my whole YouTube journey. Go back and watch all the videos on my channel. They're all still there. You can see all the mistakes that I made early on, and you can do the exact same thing. If you want to learn a skill like Elon Musk, you have to embrace the pain of being a beginner. Your purpose comes from your pain. The struggle you feel when you are learning something new is just your brain physically upgrading itself. So stop waiting for the perfect time. Stop researching. Start doing the actual work. Trust that great ideas flow through you and take the first step because you have the raw materials, you have the semantic tree, you have the focus to master anything. Now you just need to believe. Your next step to greatness. Everything you want out of life is possible if you just believe in it more. You are entirely capable of mastering any skill you need to build your dream business. Do not let fear or slow learning stop you from serving the world. Take your new knowledge tree and go make something happen today. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. To learn how to turn your dream into reality, even when you're starting from nothing, thing. Check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. Right now, you're sitting on ideas waiting for the perfect moment while years quietly slip by. I'm a humongous believer that ideas are shit.