How to Get Rich in the New Economy (2024)!

Right now, the entire economy has shifted. The last century was a century about power, and when I say power, I mean like energy. The wealthiest individuals of the last century were built on oil. The biggest companies were all energy companies. Fast forward today, 4 out of the top 5 biggest companies in the world are not built on the old oil, but the new oil, and the oil of today is attention. The thing that is being pumped and drilled every day is the attention of the masses. You have 24 hours a day that your ears are open, and so the idea is how can we capture as many of those those hours from as many people as possible, and the war for our minds. The total amount of attention that exists is every human's eyes and ears collectively, 24 hours a day. That is the pie, and they're fighting for it. People who are creating the platforms that other companies can come and drill, they're basically the digital landscape. They envelope the world. They're literally buying up the real estate of the collective attention that exists. The oil tycoons had to go and buy estate, negotiate, haggle with the farmer to get his things. The new world today, they don't need to haggle with anyone. They just take it.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I make these videos because in my first business I was making $300 a month. I quit on my business partner, and the thing that saved me was studying the stories of super successful entrepreneurs. So I hope that this story today helps give you the motivation you need, because I still need it too myself. So today, let's learn how to get rich in the new economy.

Enjoy.

Scare resources are the things that are the most valuable. And so oil was the scarce resource, and now attention is the scarce resource. And so that's why attention is the new oil. A friend of mine, Ryan Fisher, just showed me a clip on his phone of a podcast that I did with him. This is when I wasn't really— actually, I didn't do any podcasts.

I was—

I wasn't doing any speaking stuff. Like, all I was doing is building Gym Launch and Prestige Labs. I was like, screw content, just run ads. I don't want to be known. I want to be rich and unknown. It's funny because he was like, and now you're not I was very against it. And then what happened, Kylie made the front of Forbes as a billionaire and she was 20. And at the time I was 27 and I think I had taken home $17 million in income the year before. I was on pace to do like $13 to $15 that next year in terms of take home. And I thought like I was hot shit. And then this girl is 7 years younger than me, crushes me in net worth. And I was like, wow. And so it was just this huge belief shift for me where I was like, what am I doing wrong? My ego felt hurt. So I started protecting myself. Myself, and I was like, oh no, Kris Jenner's her mom. She's an absolute gangster. She was born into this royalty. It's not that she did it, it was someone else, and blah, blah, blah. Ego protected. I feel okay now. And then Huda Beauty sold a percentage of her thing for $600 million at the time. It's worth over a billion today. Conor McGregor came out with Proper Twelve, and 12 months later, boom, it was a $600 million deal. Robach, well, and then The Rock had Teremana Tequila, which is now worth like $4 billion. Just kept seeing this again and again and again, to the point where I was like, I believe something that's not true. And so I talk about how skills, beliefs, character traits are the 3 things that hold back entrepreneurs. And this one for me was something that I believed about the world and I was functioning as though, and it was not. I always try and find those things because they construct our reality and we make our decisions based on the things that we believe to be true. And so I basically was walking through a reality that was not real. I then read a book by Naval Ravikant, which is his Almanack, uh, which is really good, really quick read. And he talked about the 4 types of leverage in the book. Leverage is the difference between what you put in and what you get out. The people who make the most money are the ones who have the most leverage because everybody has the same amount of time. It's just who gets the most back for their Compounding is that now that you've made that trade with your leverage, is it going to compound unto itself and get you even more back? Because compounding is a form of leverage. And you've got labor— you get other people to do stuff for you, which means you get more of your time back and you get output. Above that, you've got capital. So people give you money, you invest the money that other people give you, and you get leverage by extension. The last two levels are code. So you got software and media. So if you think about this, you make a piece of code and then 10 million people can use it— that's leverage. You put one-time investment, you get infinite, uh, on the other side. With media, it's the same way. If I take however much time it takes me I make this video, one person, a million people, 100 million people can see this video, which is what gives it leverage. But when I saw that, that was what made everything click for me as to why these people were getting these crazy, crazy numbers when they had— like, I had heard Kylie had a team of 7 and she was doing $200 million a year. I was like, team of 7? And it was because she had a compounding leverage vehicle built within her business. And that was when I looked at my own businesses at the time and realized I had nothing that compounded. Nothing. I almost became dissatisfied with the business that I had because I realized that whatever I wanted to do next, I wanted to have a compounding vehicle, something that multiplies unto itself over and over again. So Warren Buffett could build Berkshire Hathaway because the money itself compounds and compounds and compounds. And on a long enough time horizon, when you keep rolling the snowball, after you do that for 40, 50 years, you have a big snowball. You have to unlock one of those 4 types of leverage. And so when I looked at that pyramid, I was like, well, I understand the leverage of labor, so I've got that. I'm now in a position where I have capital that I can deploy. Now, I don't have other people's capital because that's not what I want to do with my life right now. But when I I looked at software and media, I was like, given my skills, etc., I could be better at the media side than I could at the code side. But I still wasn't there yet. I looked at these people that are ultra famous, I was like, huh, well, I'd still rather be anonymous because they've got all these stalkers and weirdos.

Hey, good morning, Kanye.

Shut the fuck up.

When you get exposed to 10 million people, if you figure 1% of people are crazy, you got 100,000 weirdos. Anyways, I go to have dinner with a friend of mine, Dean Grassiosi, who's— he gets like weirdos that come to his house and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, how do you deal with this? I was like, why do you think this— like, how is this worth it? He sat me down, he was like, Dude, if a couple weird letters, you know, every day or every week is the price I have to pay for the impact I want to have, he's like, I pay that price any day of the week and twice on Sunday. And there was just like this pause when he said it, between when he said it and he looked at me, and I just felt like it hit me because I was like, God, I'm being such a pansy. I want to make real business education available to everyone. If I say that that's what I actually want to do, then I need to match my actions to that. Otherwise they're just empty words. I hate doing something that I don't get credit for later. And so the idea of making a short that is going to float today and then disappear into the ether tomorrow, right? Or make a post on Instagram that's going to be gone in a week, like no one's ever going to see it again. To me, taking the scarce resources of my time and then having it vanish, I couldn't make that work for me. It was a huge belief that I realized. The content is not the output, is the input. The output is the audience, and the audience is what compounds. The audience is what sticks. You're gathering the scarce resource, and the audience is the thing that pumps attention over and over again. You've got MrBeast. I think he opened up a restaurant in a local area and had 10,000 people show up at a local restaurant. I don't think people realize that he's 24 and media compounds. I will make a prediction that he will be a centibillionaire, not just a billionaire, but a centibillionaire. And so becoming a master of media is a huge way of creating leverage because if Kylie can just point MrBeast can just point and then you have 100 million people who buy anything, you have a billion-dollar-plus company.

Rule number 2 is fix your poor financial habits with Kevin O'Leary.

What we're going to talk about today is really financial habits, habits everybody's got to do before they're 30. Now, these are pretty simple, but I get asked this stuff all the time, all the time. Number 1, this is the top of the hit parade. You gotta stop buying crap that you don't need. And there's a reason for this. Everybody is programmed. Society programs you. Advertisers program you. Everybody's programming you to spend money. That's how the whole society works. That's what capital is all about. I mean, you know, the whole idea of consumer goods and services that you need more of this stuff. You go into credit to buy this stuff. That's all bad. Bottom line, one of the biggest spending items is clothing. You buy so much crap you don't need and it just sits in the closet for years until you give it to somebody for free. You wasted that dough. And when I say that, it's because if you take that money— and this is like an age-old theme— you take that money and you basically don't save it. Saving makes you nothing because you get paid nothing in a bank. You invest invest it. You're taking this money that you didn't waste by buying another pair of jeans, another pair of sneakers, a $5 coffee. No, no, no, no, no, no. I've said that before. That's a total waste of dough. You start saving like $5 a day, $10 a day, $50 a week. You'd be amazed over your career how much that's worth as it compounds at 6%, 7%, 8% a year. So that's number 1. You absolutely have to Be very careful about that. Makes no sense. Now, before you get this going, what you want to do is pay off your credit card debt. I can't tell you how you get screwed on credit card interest. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21%. Don't get sucked into that. Don't let that happen to you. I can't make 18% in the market. And be guaranteed it like a credit card gets it and charging you on your interest. That's why I own all the credit companies' stocks, because they're doing it for me. But don't let me make money off you, that's dumb. Basically, pay off your credit card debt before you do anything else because it's the best investment you can have. It's such high interest rate. All right, now another discipline, and this is an earned attribute, in other words, you have to learn how to do this and stick true to it. You take 10% of your paycheck every 2 weeks, 10%, whatever it is after tax, whatever you got, and you stick it into your robo app, the one that's investing automatically for you. Doesn't have to complicate it. Download it from any one of these robo apps right on your phone, set it up to your bank account where basically your paycheck's often deposited, and take 10%. Force yourself to do that. That's after you've paid off the credit card debt, right? Because that's the one you're guaranteed to make 21% because you're paying off something that's charging you 21%. You want to do that. And this whole idea of this 10% is not into the savings account. Yes, you can have some cash around. You need to have some cash. Generally, 90 days' worth of your living expenses is a nice little safety net in case of catastrophe. You start investing. You get indexed into the market. That's what it's called. And you get a basket of stocks and it works for you. Really, really important. These are not complicated things to do. It's the discipline of doing them that's so hard. Saving 10% every week, once you get in the groove and you start to watch how your money grows right on your phone, that's interesting. Really interesting. Paying off your credit card debt, paying but very important because you know you're getting screwed. Crap. I've said don't buy crap 15 times now because I want to drill it in your head. Don't buy crap. Don't buy crap. Don't buy crap. Don't buy crap. You don't need crap. Have that little self on your shoulder. I'll go on your shoulder. Pretend it's me saying, don't buy that crap. Don't buy that crap. Don't buy that crap. You don't need to buy that crap. And that's how you're going to save a ton of money. Let's talk a little bit about investing in yourself. You know, what does that mean? This might be something that, you know, you're reluctant to do, but like they say, you gotta spend money to make money. It's true. Well, you have to invest in yourself. There's a lot of benefits to investing in yourself, as well as many potential ways to invest in yourself.

It's true.

Do you have a skill you need to learn, maybe improve or master? The difference investing in the right tools or classes can make this huge. In other words, you go to school for yourself. You find something you like to do. Maybe it's going to be a side hustle. Maybe it's something you do at night, but you learn about it. Right now, if you could do digital marketing, that's pretty hot in the economy right now because Digital 2.0 is sweeping the nation. All these companies, big and small, are trying to figure out how to sell direct to consumers. Well, those skill sets are understand the algorithms in social media, photography, video editing. Storytelling, web design, digital imagery, animation. All these things used to be, oh, that was a purvey of the starving artist. Starving artists, remember that? They're not starving anymore because it turns out that all of these skills are really important in the new 2.0 America that came out of the pandemic. So these skills can be learned, sometimes just trained or online lessons, or even go to college at night. These things— college is going to open up this fall. You may want to try this stuff. And learn these skills in addition to the job you have. It's like a side hustle. Nothing wrong with it. It can be very, very useful. That's the whole idea. You know, applying a new skill every few months, you know, every few years, you know, you don't really have years to waste. That's why you want to invest now and learn something. Now let me tell you another story I think you're going to find interesting. You know me from Shark Tank, right? Listen to what I'm saying here. I've been doing it for 13 years. When those people come in the Shark Tank, they're sitting right in front of me. I should say standing. They're standing right in front of me. And what you don't know is that at the beginning of their pitch, we've got a jib, like a camera that flies in from the sky on this big jib, and there's also a guy on what's called a Steadicam, which is a camera attached to his body that he can walk around, and it's got a stabilizing device in it, and that's that famous shot you see of the entrepreneur standing there and then their product behind them. That jib shot and that Steadicam shot are the setup to the whole presentation. They haven't said a word yet, and the floor director says to them, "Don't say anything. Just stand there while we get these shots." Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes it takes 2 minutes. Well, let me tell you what I do. I'm right in front of them sitting in that chair, and I'm like this. I look them right in the eye. I don't blink. I don't stare away. I just look at them. Just like this. Don't look away. You could see me do it if you look closely. I don't stop looking. Why am I doing this? I want to see what happens. And I'll tell you something I've learned. I've done it thousands of times. Thousands of times. I can tell right then from the aura, the vibe. You haven't even said a word yet, and I know right there if you're a winner or a loser. And I'm never wrong, ever. You haven't even said a word yet in your pitch, and I know whether you're going to walk out of there with a million dollars or something or nothing. How do I do that? It's in the eyes. How do you project confidence? It's how you look and how you feel and how you project it right out of your eyes. You only get one chance in your life to make a first impression, and you have to elude confidence even though you're nervous. Sure, you're in the Shark Tank for the first time, you're probably sweating bullets, but you want to elude confidence. You want to look me right back in the eye, stare right back, and basically say to me with your eyes, I'm ready to rumble. You want to rock? Bring it on. That's confidence. That's what matters. You have to do that every day of your life. You're going to have situations for the rest of your life when you walk in a room and nobody knows who you are. How do you look? How do you feel? How do you project that confidence?

That's what it's It takes. Rule number 3 is believe in what you're selling with Gary Vaynerchuk. You go into kind of the personal brand space a bit also. There's products kind of associated with your name. So whether it's Empathy Wines or the K-Swiss, you know, sneaker line. What's most important to you when you're taking a product and you're putting your name on it?

That I believe in what I'm selling. Yeah. You know, I think I've been a great salesman my whole life because I don't sell things that I don't believe in. You know, I believe that Empathy Wines is is a dramatically better $20 wine than most $20 wines in the market. I know that because I know the sources of the grapes and things of that nature. But I also think that Maggie, who I adore, sitting here, she may like a $7 wine better than Empathy. That's okay. But I think, and this is actually, Michael, I'll be honest with you, this is actually where I've had a little bit of, I don't have a whole lot of problems with the people in the industry, right? Even though we were like renegades and people would razz me, I always understood. But the one thing that did always bother me is, you know, after 4 glasses of wine, mainly rosé at Cannes, a lot of these people who would publicly post nasty things about me or razz me in meetings would kind of get just tipsy enough to say, "You're onto something," or, "You're right." And I would ask them, it was always, that's always so nice, so I'm incredibly, I try to be remarkably gracious in those moments because I think all the things that have worked worked for me as the byproduct of my parents and the luck of my DNA draw, so I don't get too high on my GaryVee supply. I say to them, I'm like, why are you selling something you don't believe in? And I know the answer. People have lives and they have, this is where they find themselves and they have mortgages and kids. Like, you know, I get it, but there's so many people that could be doing other things outside of Madison Avenue. Now with us, I think there'll be a lot of, copycatting of us in the next decade, so there'll be alternatives, but like, you know, what's most important to me? That I believe in it. Like, I believe that I am going to build one of the most significant intellectual properties of all time. I really believe that. I really believe that Practical Peacock can be like Lisa Simpson one day. I really believe that. And so, as you can imagine, that gives me the energy to go so hard, to believe, like, I'm really into it. And so you've gotta believe in what you, you know, I believe the K-Swiss sneaker at that $40 price range is as good of an alternative as another sneaker. And if you choose to, like, believe in the mission statement of the sneakers, which is be kind, be practical, you know, if you see something in front of you that you want, it's gonna take work ethic, not burning out, but work ethic, you know, and things like that. So I always believed in it. I believe in the stuff I sell. The GaryVee stuff. I believe that my mom is the greatest mom of all time. I believe that. I believe other moms have come along that tie my mom because they also are 100% about their children, but also not delusional and keep it in this great mix of like self-esteem building but not entitlement building, which is impossible. Trust me, I don't think I'm good at it with my kids, so I get it. It's hard. So I believe in the things that I talk about, patience and kindness, but I do believe in tenacity and competition. So I live in this world, and I'll use America, I live in this world that is desperately trying to make the world about red or blue, and every day pushes more red or blue, and I know the answer's purple.

Right?

Look at me. As a marketing proxy, I think the Super Bowl is the number one ad than marketing. The best ad you can buy, right? Even though I'm very anti-other television.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there. Rule number 4 is stop saving fake money with Robert Kiyosaki.

I wrote this book for my generation because the baby boom generations are toast. You know, part of this, they were going through fake pensions. Where my generation is toast is that they actually believed there was a pension. So this thing is fake money, fake teachers, fake assets. It all starts with fake money. So in 1971, the US dollar became fake. And this book starts with me flying behind enemy lines in 1972. I was a Marine pilot and I was looking for real money, gold. So this book starts with me flying behind enemy lines looking for gold, because when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in '71, he made it illegal, also made it illegal for Americans to own gold. Imagine that. It was a criminal offense to own gold. I didn't know what gold was. So I fly behind enemy lines, I meet this little woman, little Vietnamese woman, she's got bright red teeth, they chew betel nuts there, And I tried to get a discount on gold. So gold back in '71 was $35 an ounce. It was now about $50 an ounce in '72. So it was going up. So I said, I think I'll buy some gold. Trouble is, I didn't know what gold was. Most Americans don't know what gold is because they've never seen it, because they made it illegal for Americans to own gold. And we now have everything fake. It's tragic. So it's fake money, only reason fake money can persist is because you have to have fake teachers. What do our schools teach us about money?

Nothing. Nothing.

And we buy these fake assets, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, and we save fake money. That's why I wrote Fake. Anyway, but also in Rich Dad Poor Dad lesson number 1 is the rich don't work for money because money is fake. That's why.

Yeah, it's honestly, I think it's very, it's an important lesson for all of us because we're taught to save all this fake money when—

and you worked in a bank, right?

Yeah, and I worked at the bank, so I see how real this issue is, when in reality it's not going to help us when the day comes that we need to be able to provide for ourselves. Because how long can this fake money last?

There's 3 kinds of money today that you guys got to be aware of. One is God's money, and God's money is gold and silver. So this is This is silver and this is gold. The reason I brought it is most people don't know what it looks like. And then there's government money, which is fiat currency, which is the dollar, the yen, the peso, the euro, the yuan. Fake. And everybody's working hard for it. It's like eating fake food or drinking fake water. That's why people are getting sick financially because they're working for fake money. And then there's fake assets, which was another part of the fake millennial, the fake generation series. But the reason I brought this here is most people haven't seen it. This here is real silver, plata. Okay, that's what it looks like. And so in 1972, and this here is gold. Yeah, this is God's money. This is what God's money looks like. The reason I call it God's money is you can't fake it. You know, you can fake it with a fake ETF, like a gold ETF or a silver, which I don't touch because it smells as bad as the guys that printed that crap. You know what I mean? Jesus. But this is real money. So you look at this here. When I first started buying that, that was $1.40.

Yeah.

Today, that's $16. And this here is oro, gold. And the reason we brought it is most people haven't seen or touched— this is real. This is God's money. Why did I say it's God's money? Because it was here when the earth was created. And it'll be here when we're all dead and gone. When you're saving those fake dollars, this will still be here. Or those fake ETFs or those fake stocks. So this here is called the grain box. These are— there's 500 of these little tubes like this.

Wow.

500 coins in here, and this is one. Which is worth more?

Which one's worth more? The gold.

Yeah, this is worth more than all that. Now the reason I say this is because for your generation This could be the biggest opportunity you'll ever see. I'm not making any commissions on this stuff.

Yeah, of course.

But if you look at what happened with the fake central bank, see, the purpose of the central bank or the Fed or all, you know, the Japanese, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, they pump out fake money. The purpose of central banks like the Fed is to protect the banks. Not you. They're a criminal operation as far as I'm concerned. You're gonna find that most of my talks is about the Fed. So I would recommend you guys buy this stuff. Don't save money. Don't save government money because they're corrupt as hell, as you know. Save God's money. So this is God's money. This is oro, gold. So today, that's spot today, is around $1,600 US. Now this is the difference. Is gold more expensive in Mexico or in America?

In America.

Huh?

In America.

More expensive in Mexico. If you live in a country like Argentina, it's more expensive. 'Cause the price, the spot price, is relative to the currency of the country.

Mm-hmm, that makes sense.

So the people, I was just in Argentina, If they had saved this, they'd be okay today. But they saved pesos, the same as in Mexico, okay? Same as in Peru. So this is relative to government money. So this is about $1,500, $1,600 today, US dollars, and this here is $16. It's about 100 times the difference, or whatever it is, I'm not good at math. But I'd rather have this So you look at why silver could be your best investment of all. Look at what's happening. Silver demand is getting higher.

Okay.

Silver fabrication demand in China is at record high. You look at, look at this whole thing in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. It never stopped. Even the world economy nearly crashed. Demand for silver kept going up because silver is an industrial metal. It's used in industry. This thing is only saved.

Yeah.

Okay, so in 1972, when I was flying behind enemy lines, I bought my first gold coin in Hong Kong. It was a Krugerrand, South African Krugerrand. Cost me $50. Today, that same coin is worth about $1,500. No, it's worth about $1,800 now. Now, did the Krugerrand get bigger or did the dollar get worthless?

The dollar got worthless.

Yeah, and they tell you to save money?

Yeah.

At the bank?

Yeah, and I mean, people are saving at extreme amounts because they want to be able to protect themselves for when they retire and things like that, but it doesn't make sense because the dollar keeps going down and down and how many currencies have gone extinct. Really, what I was learning the other day is that the dollar is basically coming to an end of its experiment time, and it's gonna— we might even go back to a gold standard, you know.

I doubt it. The reason we won't go back to the gold standard is because the banks can't rip us off. If we went back to the gold standard, the central bank, the Fed, the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, Bank of China, they couldn't rip us off.

It's not convenient for them.

So the whole thing here is I'm not angry at my banks because that's where I get my money from. I just don't save my money there. I save God's money. Okay, so this is demand for silver. It keeps getting higher. Look at this, a global government silver inventories. It's going down. So what's happening is the inventories of this is going up because China's buying it, Russia's buying it, Turkey's buying it. Everybody's buying gold now. The central banks are. They don't tell you that in school though, of course not.

Rule number 5 is become recession-proof with Dean Graziosi. There is a quote I hear you say a lot from Tony Robbins, which is, in the winter, people, some people freeze and other people ski and snowboard. Yeah. So my question is, what is the mindset that allows somebody to snowboard instead of freeze?

I think to start, it's preparation and anticipation rather than reaction. Wayne Gretzky, I love that quote. It's been overplayed, but it said, how is he so good at playing hockey? He said, most people skate to where the puck is. I learned to skate to where the puck was going. And I think if we anticipate and know, so many people we both know have been in business for 15 years or less, they really don't understand it. So they're more scared of the unknown. And if you're a study of history, you can understand it's a cycle, it's happening. Winter is here. I think winter is here. We just all haven't felt the effects yet. And when you go through a time like that, the reason Tony and I are working together and doing events and helping people is because there's some industries, like you said, that are going to be at the springtime. They're going to exponentially grow. And if you saw Warren Buffett in his yearly presentation, I don't know if you saw it, probably 4 weeks ago, he said inflation is here. Recession is inevitable. And there's a couple of things you can do to thrive during a recession, during inflation. And he said one of them, the most important thing, is be a part of an industry or start a business that has high margins. So the reason Tony and I are sharing so much and I'm so passionate about this because I've been in this industry for 25 years, is how cool would it be to have a business that you don't need inventory, you don't need to ship it, you don't have to worry about supply chain. It's probably one of the most valuable assets you have. Valuable that you own it and other people want it. You could sell it over and over again.

You're gonna have to tell people what this is.

I know, that's what I'm saying. And what it is is selling information. It's selling your experience. That's what Tony's been doing for 40 years. I've been doing it for 25. You think about it, how much has information or learning from other people impacted you in your life? I know what study you are. Yeah, and it's such a valuable asset.

Incredible asset.

And it's not just us anymore, right? 4 years ago, the industry, and let's call it the self-education industry, the influencer industry, the upskill industry, selling knowledge, 4 years ago was about a $100 million a day industry.

A day?

A day. Right now it's a billion a day. It's about $340 billion a year industry. And I just read this weekend, it's heading towards a trillion dollars by 2028.

A day or a year? A year.

The trillion will be a year. Right now it's at a billion a day, about $340 billion a year. And why that is, is I don't think people have time for general education anymore. They want specialized knowledge. So instead of going back to school, instead of trying to learn on their own, they're saying, hey, who's already been there? Tom already built a business. Look what he did with Quest. What will Tom share with me and how can I pay Tom to extract that? Or if, I mean, we've helped people in 4,500 different niches, whether it's going going through a divorce, going vegan, doing yoga better, or finding self-love again, or healing through trauma. Somebody has been through that experience and the world is seeing that they can find a way to unlock it, share it, impact others, and create success. And I think in a time of recession, whether it's the self-education industry, but it's definitely a time you must investigate because it is scary. I was in business in '09. I was in when the world shifted. I was in business in '07.

That's a kind way of saying it.

When the world shifted, I mean, it was, and it was brutal for a lot of people. And I know that sounds almost insensitive to say some people starve and some people ski, but I think the foundation is we must get our mindset right. We must prepare and say it's coming. You can't make it worse than it is and you can't make it better than it is. We must face the reality it's coming. And like Winston Churchill said, those that, don't understand the past are bound to repeat it. So learn about it, what's happening. Prepare emotionally to be more of that— I feel like I'm saying too many silly sayings, but they stick in my head— is be more of the thermostat of life rather than the thermometer. Address it. But then it's time to investigate and say, where can I sell something that has higher margins? How can I impact others? And how can I thrive in this shifting world? And I think that's why we're kind of pounding the pavement right now because it's, it's a time for everybody to either start a self-education industry, bolt it onto your current business, or at least explore and see if it's something for you.

And rule number 6, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is scale up your competency level with Brendon Burchard.

Long-term wealth requires ever-increasing competency. What you know now won't get you there. You're going to have to get new knowledge, skill, ability, and talent to go to next level. Even if you luck into a ton of money, you're going to have to get more competent on what to do with the money, right? Dealing with finances is a skill that you can learn. Well, same thing in every other area of your life. What I tell people all the time, I go, show me where you make money. They go, what? Show me where you make money. What do you do to make money? And they go, oh, well, you know, I have this job or I have this type of business. I said, okay. What's the skill there that you have that you think is driving your pay? What's the primary— if you had to narrow it down to 1, 2, or 3 skills, it's driving your primary pay. And if you enjoy that skill, go deeper, gain more mastery, take classes, watch videos for free on YouTube. Investing in your skill development. And investment means time, energy, money, effort, right? Time, energy, money, effort. We gotta go, okay, I, I've gotta, I gotta put something in here. Um, what's worthwhile investing in? I'm like, yourself and your skill sets. You know, I went to a bunch of seminars on how to enhance my public speaking. I invested in hiring coaches in that regard. I invested in taking classes and tutorials on how to operate all this gear by myself. I invested in, um, online courses to learn how to do online courses. Like, these are skills that you can develop, and as you learn to develop more skills, it's easier to exceed expectations and add new value. Right? I think skill development is way underrated, way under— what we have now is we have a browsing-based culture versus a mastery-driven culture. When you switch from, I'm a browser, right? I'm gonna use this phone all day like this and I'm gonna input a million random things that mean nothing to me whatsoever, to I'm gonna use this thing to deeply study something that will give, develop my skill, my capabilities, so I can build better, serve better, lead better, change, add value. When this becomes a tool of study versus just selfies or distraction, now you're on the right path to wealth. Now you're on the right path to wealth. This is so important. I would say one of the fundamental problems in our culture right now worldwide is that most people invest their time in consumerism, shopping, or in entertainment, just absorbing, taking it in, and very few in active development of skill. And skill can be communication, conflict management, negotiation, leadership, influence, like soft skills or hard skills. Like coding, like building something, like designing, like creating something, like actually executing a process or behavior, like athleticism, like something where you're just developing that over and over. The mastery mindset is a path to wealth. The mastery mindset is a path to wealth. When we invest in our skill development over a period of time, we're more capable of adding new value. Exceeding expectations, going to the next level. And as we go to the next level in those areas, we tend to get paid more. That's important. What's the primary drivers of how you get paid today? What are the major skills? How can you develop them? Get way better at them. Way better at them. I had to learn that in every area, from online marketing to email marketing to influencing. To teaching, to running the gear, to running the company, to how to deal with employees, to how to build up the finances of a company. Like, I don't know how to do any of that coming out of a broke mining town. But what I said is, I want to be able to serve at the highest levels, so what skills do I need to learn? When I was an author and I was broke, I said, what skills do I need to learn? Okay, well, one skill for me is writing a book, so I'm gonna study how to write well. So I studied and studied and studied how to write well. Great. That's one skill though, isn't it? And I'd look at these other authors. I said, well, how are they so rich? How are they wealthy? Well, it turned out a lot of them were on the road speaking, and as they spoke more, people bought more books. And I was like, well, that's a virtuous loop. Okay, so if I can learn to become a teacher and a speaker, then people buy more books. And well, I wanna be a writer who sustains my life as a writer. That was my goal. Okay, I guess I could add that skill, which would support the finances over here. It was an adjacent skill that served the main goal for me. Okay, well, I hate speaking. I don't like it. But I was like, well, why don't I like it? Well, because I don't know how to do it. I'm uncomfortable doing it. Well, I was uncomfortable riding a bike. I didn't know how to do that. Well, let me try. Let me put some training wheels on. Let me learn to speak. So I started speaking and teaching myself. Time, energy, investment of my heart and my soul to speak. And I was literally speaking to myself in a room, walking around, wearing out my carpet, just teaching myself to talk out loud. About topics for long periods of time. You know, it's like, okay, figure out how to do that. Then I was like, okay, I need to get some practice. I need to get in front of some audiences. So I'd start doing it in classes. I'd volunteer to give my report out, or when it was time to give the report out, I'd put some flourish on it, man. And I just thought, okay, I'm gonna keep getting better. I'm gonna keep trying to get in front of more and more audiences and bigger and bigger. I'll speak free, I don't care. I just need to run the reps. To gain the skill so I can become good at it. Because I saw speaking as an adjacent way to serve people beyond just my writing. So that was an entire skill that I built up from scratch with no natural talent or ability. In fact, more fear. And so it was like, okay, but that's going to serve over here. Let me see if I can do it, and let me see if I enjoy it. And of course Once I got over the fears and I saw the impact beyond me with people, I was like, wow, that really made a difference in a person's life who may not read my book. Wow, this is just another vehicle for me to make my difference. I thought it had to be about book writing. I was like, oh, but I can make a difference this way too, huh? And I can enjoy this too.

Huh?

And if I hadn't done that, we wouldn't even be here right now. If I hadn't learned to run a camera by myself, because I'm in a room by myself. I don't know if you can tell, like, this is— I'm literally— this is a real room. I'm, I'm, I'm here by myself running all this gear. Like, it's just me. And so I had to figure out, like, well, how do I do that? How do I do the lighting? Right before we began, literally with the team, we were adjusting the camera and they're watching on Zoom. I'm like, how about here? How What do you think about that? Like trying to figure out all these little things without knocking everything down. And if I hadn't learned that, we wouldn't be here. So I would also say I wouldn't have reached the scale in my own career. As you scale up your competencies, you scale up the likelihood you will build wealth.

You must visualize the steps that lead you to the thing that you want, not the end goal. This is a major mistake that people make. They manifest improperly because all they do is focus on the end goal. If you've ever made a vision board, think about what you put on the vision board. You put up just the beach house or the million dollars in the bank, or you crossing the finish line, or you launching that business, or you having the body that you want? Are you driving the Maserati? Whatever it is, the end goal is what you put up on a vision board. That is not what you're going to do when you manifest. If you start focusing on crossing the finish line of the marathon, that is a one-way ticket to being unmotivated and completely discouraged. In fact, research shows that if all you do is focus on the thing that you want and you just focus on that vision of and your bikini body, or you with the love of your life on your arms, or you at the Oscars winning that award, or the Grammys. What happens is, because you've only focused on the end goal, you start to feel really unmotivated and discouraged because you're nowhere near it. That's where manifesting comes in, because we're not going to focus on the end goal. You got to pick something that you want in order to get started. But manifesting isn't about the end, it's about the bridge. It's about going from where you are here to where you want to go. Imagine that there is a bridge that connects where you are right here with what you dream about doing. Now, that dream could be to be a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter. That dream might be to have a family of your own. That dream might be to have a beach house or a ski house or to take a trip to Fiji. That dream can be whatever the hell you want it to be. But when it comes to manifesting, once you've given yourself permission to dream with the lid off and really want what you want, to feel the pull of that thing, now we gotta talk about the path. That connects where you are with where you want to go. And this is all about visualizing the little steps. There's a lot of research that proves why visualizing the steps is the most important thing that you could do. There was a study done at UCLA, for example, where they were researching manifestation and the power of visualization, and they broke students students into two groups, and they had Group A— we're going to call these the vision board group— they had Group A close their eyes, visualize in their mind and feel in their body themselves taking the test, and then walking up to a board where the test scores were posted and finding their name and seeing an A+. That's what Group A, the vision board group, were told to do, to visualize themselves achieving what they wanted. Group B, we're going to call these the hard workers. These students were coached in this research project to close their eyes and to visualize going back to their dorm room, sitting down at the desk, and studying and staying up late and putting in the work, studying and preparing for the test. Now let me ask you a question. Which group do you think did better on the actual test? Was it Group A, the vision board group, who were taught to visualize and picture themselves walking up to a board and seeing the A+? Or was Group B, the hard work group, the group that was taught to close their eyes and visualize and seeing themselves doing the work to study for the test? Well, if you answered Group A, you're wrong. If you answered Group B, you got the correct answer. The reason why Group B, the students who visualize studying for the test, got better test scores is because when you visualize yourself doing the work. Visualizing it leads you to doing the work. And it's only through actions that you will get the result that you want. Preparing your mind and visualizing yourself doing it lowers your resistance and leads to you taking the action. That's why manifesting works. You know, the same is true in sports. There's all kinds of research in sports psychology. In fact, our Olympic athletes, for the U.S. Olympic team, they hire sports psychologists to train our top Olympic athletes, particularly after they've been injured, in visualizing themselves competing. When you coach an athlete to mentally rehearse every single detail about going through the competition, you are training the mind, body, and spirit to show up and dominate. This is particularly true for athletes after they've been injured and they're stepping back into competition. If you've been injured in competition, you're naturally going to feel anxious. You're naturally going to be nervous. Your brain and nervous system circuitry is now programmed with the intensity from that injury, the memory from the injury. So of course it's natural to bring that into your pre-competition feelings about it, right? So manifestation properly— remember what it is. Manifesting is preparing your mind, body, and spirit to do the work. It's aligning your mind, body, and spirit with what you want. It removes the obstacles that would normally stop you, which then prepares and motivates you to take the actions to succeed. So in the case of athletes who visualize themselves and see themselves doing all the steps over and over, they're removing the nerves, they're removing all the programming related to the injury. They are preparing their mind, body, and spirit to go in and freaking dominate. And so are you.

You speak about the concept of the soul.

Um, do you associate this with any psychological constructs?

Not any psychological constructs that are more valid than the notion of the soul. No, there's, I would say, what we mean by soul is something like animating spirit. And you might say, well, what's a spirit? And well, that's actually rather easy to answer. So when a child of 4 is playing house, let's say when a child of 4 is playing house, she acts out the role of the mother. But acting out, that's a strange thing, right? Because she doesn't literally duplicate in her actions or her words perceptions in the game what she observed her mother literally doing. So for example, she didn't go into her mother's bedroom when her mother awoke and watched her turn her head in a particular way to awaken and count the number of blinks so that she could mimic that in her play. And you know, you think that's absurd, but it's not absurd if it's just mimicry. It's not. It's unbelievably sophisticated. So what the girl does is she watches her mother manifest maternal behavior across a a vast array of instances, and she integrates that with the image of the mother she's received from all the books she's been read and all the little movies she's watched, the Disney movies and so forth. And she abstracts out the animating principle of the maternal, and then she embodies that in play, and usually with a little boy. And that's practice for what's going to come later. It's unbelievably sophisticated. And she's embodying a spirit, and the spirit there is the abstraction of the central animating principle from multiple embodiments of its manifestation. And if you think children can't do that, well, then you don't know anything about children, because they do that all the time in their pretend play, which is a necessary precursor to healthy psychological development. And so part of what we refer to as the soul is the presence of that spirit, or maybe even the capacity of embodying such spirits. And it's very difficult to know how deep that goes. You know, I had a vision at one point of all the men in my life who've been particularly influential in a benevolent way, you know. And so, and you think, well, just the mirror notion of the idea that there could be a benevolent way that would unite the acts of benevolence across a series of men, that's all comprehensible to you. That's— you take that as a matter of course when you say that there are such things things as good men, and you can identify them, right? Something stable about whatever is good across multiple manifestations of incarnation, let's say. And I saw that transform into the Father person of the Trinity as the embodiment of that benevolent spirit. Now, I don't have any idea what that means metaphysically, because who does? But that spirit manifesting itself within is certainly part of what we refer to when we talk about the soul And you can see that shine through people. I mean, it's part of what gives someone charisma. It's part of what elicits the instinct to imitate in you. You know, when you see that even in simple things, when you see a remarkable athlete do something incredibly athletic to put the goal, to put the soccer ball, the football ball through the net to score the goal, and everybody leaps to their feet in celebration of that. Well, that's, that's a celebration of the divine capacity to hit the target dead on. And it grips you at such a low level, way down inside your soul, that you're compelled to your feet to cheer. And you don't even know what you're doing, but you enjoy it, that's for sure. And that enjoyment is also a sign of the depth and utility of that response. You see this in all, all the things that people do that are, you know, so-called popular entertainment. It's unbelievably sophisticated. The soul is participating in that in the fullest extent. And, you know, you can say, well, there's no use for the religious— there's no necessary use for the religious terminology. It's like, well, until you come up with a better word, there's plenty of use for it because it's a very complex and deep phenomena. And to, you know, just cast it into the realm of superstition in some casual manner is just not helpful. Not in any possible— it's not helpful scientifically. It's not helpful ethically. It's not helpful existentially. Try treating someone for a while as if they don't have a soul. Just really, I mean it. Just, you know, treat them like a deterministic machine, if that's your belief. Really act it out. You'll be like the most hated person in town in about 15 minutes. Well, I mean, I mean, what do you make of practical evidence like that? I mean, you interact with people as if they're free souls capable of choosing between good and evil. That's what you do all the time. And maybe you can addle yourself out of that by some ridiculous rationalist ideology, but that just means you're kind of a gabbling fool, and it's just going to make you trip over things you don't even notice in all of your social interactions. What do you tell me? I don't care how you think philosophically or ideologically, you bloody well know that what I just said is true. So, and that's true even when you're interacting with an infant or a small child. It's true when you're dealing with someone who's elderly and virtually incapacitated in every way. You still see that divine spark, for lack of a better term, and we do lack a better term, by the way. You see that everywhere if your eyes are open. And if you're willing to see it, and to the degree that you're responsive to that, then your actions are guided by love and your words are guided by truth.

If you want to have more money, one way is to uncover the areas where you may be wasting money. And that's why we're talking about 5 common ways we throw money away.

Where exactly did your money go?

Money is something a lot of us struggle with. Check this out. In a 2019 employee survey, In a recent employee survey at PwC, 71% of millennials said their money stress had gone up over the past year.

It is stressing me out.

And nearly half of all respondents said that they spend 3 hours or more every week thinking about or trying to sort out their finances. And money woes don't just affect us individually. 44% of young adults said that money is the number one stressor in their relationship. I need to borrow some money. And check out these stats. According to Erin Lowry, creator of the Broke Millennial blog, the average millennial graduated with $37,000 in student debt. That's in the States, and some have much more. That's enough to buy a brand new car or put a down payment on a house. Maybe you're like, yeah, don't remind me, Jay. Hey, I get it. Lots of us come from tough places places financially, and you might be there now. Growing up, my family definitely was not what you'd call wealthy. For some of us, the hard times actually helped spur us on to success. Here's one of the stories that's really inspired me. It's of a young man who at 14 was evicted with his mother from their apartment and couldn't afford a place to live. By the time he was 16, he was arrested multiple times. Though he went on to secure a spot to play American football score at a top college, in his junior year he lost his spot and his NFL career opportunities with it. At one point he found himself with only $7 in his pocket, but he kept working and striving. And today, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson says that every time he experiences a big moment of success, he reminds himself of those early struggles when his back was up against the wall and the only way to go was forward. And that's That's why he named his company Seven Bucks Productions. Still, even if you don't have aspirations of becoming a mega movie star, financial security is within reach. And the place to start is to stop wasting money. Now, a little disclaimer first. What I'm going to share with you is for informational purposes only. It is definitely not intended as formal legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. You want to consult a qualified licensed licensed professional for that. Okay, so here are those 5 big areas where you can stop wasting money and get yourself on track financially.

Take notes, boys.

Let's start with a super common one that's really simple. Financial expert Suze Orman says if you're buying a coffee every day, you may be literally flushing your chance to be a millionaire down the drain. You know, because after the coffee goes through your body Okay, never mind, you get it. Anyway, Ullman says that if you invested that $100 or more per month so many of us spend on coffee in a Roth retirement account over 40 years with compound interest, you'd have a million dollars.

What?

That's worth making your own coffee, right? Actually, the entire category of food and drink is a big one. Not only do we spend loads of money eating out for dinner, another Another big money waster people often overlook is lunch. Here's a quick quiz. How much do you think the average person spends on lunch in a year according to Visa? Is it A, $520, B, $1,280, and C, $2,746? If you guessed C, you're right. The average person spends $2,746 per year on lunch. Lunches. Now check this out. If instead of buying lunch, you invested that money every month in a basic savings account, over 20 years you'd have— I hope you're sitting down because this is unbelievable— you'd have $60,760.41.

I'm gonna sit down.

And that's just with basic compounding interest. Okay, so here's another big way we waste money: buying new. Now here's the thing, I know for I'll be honest, myself included, how we look is important. We enjoy fashion. But you can continue to have your unique look and have favorite brands and still spend less money on clothing. Here's a way to do that. I have another friend who's into designer brands but would never pay designer prices. Her secret is to shop at consignment stores. And now that there are lots of these stores online, there are tons of items to choose from. and you can even shop by your favorite brands. The other month, I complimented my friend on a sweater, and she told me she got it for 65% less than the original price, and it came brand new with the tag still attached. Plus, shopping consignment also benefits the environment because we're recirculating clothes instead of just making more stuff. Beyond clothing, there are loads of things we tend to buy brand new that we really don't need to. For example, if your iPhone breaks, you can actually buy a refurbished one directly from Apple for way less money, and they come with a warranty. And don't get me started on cars. Here's another quiz. When you drive a new car off the lot, it literally immediately loses a certain percentage of its value. What percentage is it? A, 5%. B, 10%. C, 30%. The answer is B. According to Carfax, the second you drive a new car off the lot, it loses at least 10% in value. Over the first year, it loses about 20% of its value. That means if you spend $30,000 on a brand new car, within a year it's worth only $24,000, and the value just keeps going down. Instead of needing everything brand new, look at what you can buy used used or borrow from someone you know. And that's another way we waste money. We buy things immediately. We think of it, we get all excited, we go online and buy it. It's like when the Apple Watch first came out and I went out and bought one. I was so stoked. But no offense to the product, I discovered pretty quickly, just in time to give it back, that I didn't actually need it. Ended up returning it.

Take it back.

Instead of impulse buying, batch your purchases. If you say, oh, I need to buy that, whatever it may be, and then go to Amazon and buy it, and then later in the day, oh, I wanted to get some of that other thing I love, and then go into Amazon or another store to buy that, what happens? When you get your card statement, it all adds up, and you're like, whoa, how did I spend that much money?

I don't remember any of that.

And that's because $15 here and $10 there doesn't seem like much at the time, time, especially when you're using a credit card or other digital payment, because you don't see the money, you don't feel it, you don't actually have that experience of giving it away or holding on to it. Instead, when you think of something you need— and I'm putting need in quotes because it might not be a real need but a want— put it in your cart and leave it there, or write it down on a list. Don't buy it right away. Then at some specified time, like the end of the week week, look at your list or your carts and choose what it is you really need. That will give you a better idea of what you're actually spending and what you actually need versus what you want. Another way we waste money is by passing up free money. According— and you're wondering, what are you talking about? According to investment advisors Financial Engines, American employees leave roughly $24 billion on the table every year in unclaimed money by not taking full advantage of their employer match on their 401(k). The typical employee loses out on $1,336 per year. Now look, if your boss said, "Hey, we'd like to just give you $1,336 per year," you'd be like, "Yes, please," right?

I'm gonna need that in cash.

But if you're not contributing the full percentage that an employer will match, you're basically saying, "No, thank you." So you need to stop missing out on free money.

When I analyze businesses, whether they're startups or doing $100 million in revenue, doesn't make a difference. Usually there's something in one of those three or all of those three that is missing. And so when we start to focus on getting the inner game right, plus what you need to do and then you do it, the results are pretty easy. So here's what I want you to ask yourself. Are there people out there, all right, that could buy your product or service but you don't know how to reach them? Right? Is it possible that there's people out there that need what you have, your product, your service, your knowledge, your skills, whatever it is that you're selling, selling, offering to the marketplace? Is it possible that you just don't know how to reach them? So that means that it's a skillset issue, right? Now, in 2021, we know how to do those things. They're, like I said earlier, where I started, right? The fact that there are 2 billion people a day online means that there's more than enough people to get in front of. Listen, in the old, In the old days, right, when we didn't have the internet, we had to advertise, you know, in the newspapers, postcards, magazines, radio, television, or set up a store in a shopping center. But now just about every single business, okay, is online offering information content to develop a relationship and rapport with prospects. And they're taking them through a process. Yellow Pages, that's right. Thank you, Muse Debbie, Debbie Muse, right? So Yellow Pages. So here's the thing, one of the formulas that you must figure out is where I started before, traffic times conversion equals revenue. The added version to that is traffic times conversion plus repeat business and referrals equals exponential revenue. Traffic times conversion equals revenue. Now traffic times conversion plus referrals and repeat business equals exponential revenue. And so one of the things that you need to be thinking about, okay, and if this is the only thing that you leave today, I'm gonna give you a couple things. Number one is I need to adapt. I need to adapt to the market and use all the tools available to me, but not use every one of them. I want you to ask yourself the question I posed earlier is, what has to happen in order for me to just double or triple the leads that I get? Leads, the, the prospects coming to see you online or offline. If you just focused on that question, what has to happen in order for me to double or triple my prospects or leads? And I'm not sure who said that you picked up The Answer, Virginia. Yeah, this is, this is my New York Times bestselling book, The Answer. If anybody's read it, it is a New York Times bestseller for many, many, many years now. One of the best books on the inner game and outer game of business. I put that back over there on my, on my thing. But I didn't come here to, to sell you on my, on my book. I want to give you information. If anybody wants to Get the book on Amazon for $15 or less. It'll blow your mind. And The Lux Coast, you're reading it now? Awesome. So when we understand there's already a process in place and we discover how do we take our product or service and create the marketing— how many of you, are you good in marketing? Are you good in marketing? Meaning, I'm not talking about branding. I'm talking about getting your product or service with the right message in front of the ideal client. If you're not good at marketing, okay, I want you to let me know, are you good at marketing? Yes or no? So you're not good at marketing. Think about this. If you're a business owner, there's a couple of different hats that you have to make sure are being taken care of, right? In business, if you're a business owner with a product or service, You have to have somebody who's doing the marketing, right? Which is developing your brand, creating your messaging for how you're gonna promote your product or service to people who don't know you. You have to learn how to sell, and selling is doing something for somebody, not to somebody. You need to learn how to manage. You need to learn how to either develop products. You need to learn some of the technology needs that you have. There's a lot of different hats that you have to wear, or you have to make sure that somebody in your company is wearing that hat, right? And so imagine if you need surgery, but you're not a good surgeon, what would you do? You'd have to find, how do I get somebody who could do the surgery? So for those of you who are not good at marketing or sales, which is the oxygen required for any business regardless of how good your product or service are. The question you want to be asking yourself is this: Who can I hire to help me? Or who can I barter with to help me? Who can I partner with to help me do my marketing and sales if you're not good at that? So hire, partner, barter, or defer payment to get it done because without marketing and selling, you really don't have a business. And those are skills that either you have that you need to develop, or you don't have, you're not good at, you don't want it, but you still need to figure out as a business owner, how am I going to get it done? Your job as a business owner is not to do everything, but to make sure that everything that is oxygen and is required gets done.

When you see an opportunity, what do you do? When you've got an idea that you know could be great that comes to your mind, but then your inner voice starts taking over to say you can't do that, you're crazy, that's never going to happen, what do you do? It's in these moments that your entire self-identity is created. Because for too many of us, we've created the identity that we get great ideas, but because we don't know how they're going to work out, We don't know how they make logical sense. We don't, we don't take any action on them. And that's how you lead to a life of regret. That's how you lead to a life that in 10 years you look back and you say, I wish I did something. Why didn't I do anything? How many times have you had a great idea that you thought was a great idea, then you see somebody else go off and make tons of money off of your idea? The only difference is they started it and you didn't. You know, it's not that they're any smarter than you or more resources. You probably have more heart, more more vision, more purpose than they did. So why are they successful and you're still sitting here? Because they did something on it while you're thinking about it, researching it, planning it, strategizing it, reading about it. They went off and did it. That's the only difference. It's the courage to stand up and say yes and take action on the imperfect idea. So I look at Adam Duran as an example. I did an Instagram Live yesterday and Adam Duran came in. And Adam Duran was a guy, an entrepreneur who I met in San Jose, and I knew he was coming to my event. I was doing my tour, and the day before— I'm in San Jose, day before my big event— I see Adam Duran go live on Instagram. I'm at an ice cream shop, I go to the car, we're eating our ice cream in the car, and Adam Duran goes live. And for whatever reason, I come up with the idea of, I should, I should go see what Adam Duran is doing live. I don't know why, but let's go do it. And I go and join his live, and there's, you know, 2 or 3 people in it, not a lot. And so I said, I'm gonna join Adam live, I'm gonna join Adam live. So he invited me in, and then my audience starts funneling in. So now he has a bigger audience of people who are watching. And while I'm sitting there talking to him, My event's the next day. I say, Adam, I just got this idea. I'd love for you to introduce me tomorrow at my event. Somebody local. You're from San Jose, all San Joseans, uh, come and introduce me. And he said yes. I never had anybody introduce me at my events. I don't even know this guy. I mean, I just hung out with him a little bit on Instagram Live. I don't know who he is. I don't know if he's gonna suck. I don't know what he's gonna say. And in his mind is all the fears and insecurities of, "Oh my God, it's tomorrow. I don't have a month to prepare this. What am I gonna say? I don't want to disappoint Evan or let him down." There's easily tons of fears on both sides, but he said yes. I asked, he said yes, and he came the next day and he was so nervous and he got all dressed up and he brought a cameraman along with him as well, and he crushed it. He did, he did a fantastic job. The point of that story is to trust your ideas, to trust the things that come into your mind, to trust that they're good, to trust that they will serve you, to trust that they're the right things for you, to stop judging your ideas, to stop, to stop trying to be practical all the time with the ideas that come to your mind. Because your brain is designed to keep you safe. Your brain is understanding of what currently exists, so it doesn't understand the new things that could be, where your heart can come up with brand new things. That's why you always make the big decisions in life with your heart and the small ones with your head, because your brain will, will talk you down from it. So in that story with Adam, there are a couple key moments. One was was deciding to join Adam's live on Instagram. Why did I come up with that idea?

I don't know.

I saw him live. I said, okay, I'm gonna go join him. Then when I'm talking to him, asking him to come and introduce me, even though it wasn't part of my model, even though nobody was introducing me at other events, even though I didn't know who this guy was really, but something felt right. And so instead of judging overthinking. Like, there was no time to judge and overthink because the event was tomorrow. This idea came to me. I'm gonna trust it. I'm gonna say yes. And then same thing on Adam's side. He didn't have time to overthink and judge it. He could have said no. He could have said, I'm not ready. He could have said, who, me? He could have said— he could have said, I'm not ready. And instead he said yes. We were both afraid. We both said yes. And it ended up being great. And that helped Adam, and he's gone on and done a whole bunch of other videos and speaking, and he's amazing. He said that was a, that was a big moment for him. We were talking about it yesterday. The more you can teach yourself to go from idea to action is where great things start to happen. The first thing that most people do when you come up with a great idea is we default into research mode. We default default into planning mode. And while we're using our courageous energy, our bold energy— get an idea, you get excited, right? You get an idea, you're bold, you're courageous, you want to, you want to go do something like, yeah, just be amazing— we waste our best energy on planning and researching and strategizing and talking to a friend instead of actually doing something about it. With the best you can do is to take imperfect action. So you go from idea to action, idea to action. You got it, you got an idea. Default to thinking, default to training yourself that when you come up with an idea, it's amazing. How about we start thinking you have amazing ideas? How about that? How about that being a default way of thinking instead of thinking, oh, this will never work, I suck, I'm not good enough, I don't have the resources, this is too difficult, I'll never be able to do it. How about we start to switch the default narrative in our minds that you come up with amazing ideas, that the fact that you came up with it means it's a good idea and you should do something about it. It doesn't mean you go mortgage your home to go start this thing, but it's a good idea. Step number 1, right? Your ideas are good. Step number 2 is take imperfect action. Don't go mortgage the home, don't go making some big plan. Don't start thinking about how you need venture capital to start this thing. What's the first, smallest, dumbest step that you could take today? Just to do it. Just to do it. Just to start. You want to start a YouTube channel?

Awesome.

Take out your phone right now. I'm filming— what? I'm filming this video in my parking garage right now. You know? Tuesdays I film the content. Nina usually does some errands and I sit in the car and film film content. She finished her errands early. I still have a video to make, so I'm going to finish this video sitting in the parking lot of my condo. Is this perfect? No. Is the lighting good? No. I'm still here filming content. You can do it. What's the first step? You want to make a YouTube channel? Pull out your phone today, make a piece of content. You want to write a book? Go write your first 3 pages. Like, it's is taking— I call it the 2% difference. You have your goal, that's getting 100%. Whatever your goal, your mission, your vision, reaching that will be 100% completion of your goal, right?

Perfect.

Don't worry about 100% yet. What we default to doing is planning the 100%. Don't worry about that yet. Focus on the first 2%. What's the 2% difference? What's the first 2%? The first 2% is making your first video. The first 2% is writing those 3 pages. The first 2% is going to the gym today. The first 2% is, is going for a walk. The first 2% is recording your first song. Like, the first 2% is just anything to build momentum. Don't worry about how it all fits into the grand scheme. It's going to feel like you don't have the plan. The problem is you spend so much time on the plan that you never start doing. You spend your best energy on creating the plan, and then you wake up the next day and you realize, I can't do that. Who did I think I was instead of thinking I could go do that. You haven't built any momentum and then you freeze and you stop. And this is how you end up going through this cycle of great ideas and then no momentum and then another great idea and then no momentum because your best energy is spent on planning instead of doing. So the 2% difference gets you out of it and you're gonna feel out of control. You're gonna feel like you don't know where this is going. You're gonna feel like there is no plan.

Perfect. Perfect.

The plan will come. Plan tomorrow. Today is action. 2% difference. So, step number 1, trust that your ideas are great. They came to you, so they're great. You're a genius. Stop telling yourself that your ideas suck. They're great. You got to do something on it. Step number 2 is a 2% difference. We're taking immediate action on it. And then step number 3 is just expect to suck. Expect to suck. Why do you expect to be great the first time out? When you first picked up a skill as a kid, you first got on a bike, you first got on a you bought a pair of skates or rollerblades.

What happened?

You fell down.

It's normal.

Why do you expect your first video to be amazing? Why do you expect your first page of your first draft of your book to be awesome? It's not. It's gonna suck. Expect to suck. Expect it to suck. What we often do is internalize that and say, "Well, because it sucked, therefore I suck." No, that's not what it means.

You rock.

Because your first video sucked It doesn't mean that you suck as a human. It means you're amazing for trying. If your first video is amazing, then I think you suck because it means you should have started it 5 years ago. Your first of anything needs to suck. We have these impossible standards for ourselves that we say, "Well, I need to be great out of the gate or I'm not going to do it." Then you get stuck in the never creation mode. Expect it to be terrible. It's okay. That's normal. That's how great things happen is your first thing sucks. Your first trip to the gym will suck. Your first push-up will suck. Your first video will suck. Your first page will suck. Your first song will suck. All of it. Great. That means you're amazing. That's how progress happens. That's how you start to move forward on your goals because you don't want to stay stuck just knowing that you could have done something but you were too afraid. So, step number 1, trust that your ideas are good. They came to you, therefore they're good. Step number 2, the 2% difference, immediate action. And then step number 3, expect to suck. That's how you start to make the transition. That's how you start to live that life that you want to live. You've had amazing dreams and goals in the past that didn't come true, not because you're not capable, just because you didn't take action. Use that as leverage, as fuel going forward, because right now you've got great ideas to. Right now you've got a great heart to. Right now you know that you can be doing something epic, and all that's missing is momentum. All that's missing is your willingness to be courageous, to expect to suck, and then to create. And next day, create again. And next day, create again. And next day, create again. You do that every day, your life will look dramatically different when you're from today. You're a genius. You've got an amazing heart. The only thing missing from the life you want to live is momentum. Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever never do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. To see the 7 steps rich people take for massive success, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

I think of this idea of performance necessity, two stories kind of come to mind. One is I was working with an Olympic gold medalist sprinter, and we're in the tunnel and we're going out, and he's talking about the competition.