How to Go From $0 to Wealth in 2026 Billionaire Habits + High Income Skills

Just working harder will not make you rich. Who works harder, the people at eBay or the people at Alibaba? Sometimes you have not only have to work hard, you have to work smart. I know you've heard this before, harder or smarter, it's the combo. You got to work smarter and you still got to work hard. Just working hard doesn't do things in the world. There are people working 12 hours a day who are still broke while others build wealth by learning high-income skills. No matter how talented you are, your talent is going to fail you if you're not Skills are things that can be developed over and over, and all business skills are learnable. You can learn any skill you need to learn to achieve any business goal that you can set for yourself. You don't get skills because it looks good on a resume. You get skills because it lets you do the thing you want to do. James Clear said, "You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." If you keep doing more of the wrong things, you'll burn out, lose years of your life, and stay still not get ahead. So in the next 3 hours, you'll learn the exact high-income skills and billionaire habits that can take you from $0 to real wealth. 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. Talent has absolutely nothing to do with why some people get rich and you do not. I always look at IQ and, and talent as sort of representing the horsepower of the motor, but then in terms of the output, the efficiency with which the motor works, that depends on rationality. The problem is entirely skill set. It's not that you're average, it's that you don't have a skill set. I do think that we should all challenge ourselves to be self-aware and try to figure out the talents, and then if we're lucky that those talents match something we're interested in doing, we have to go pot committed to that. Wealth is simply the result of doing the exact same boring, highly effective habits every single day until you win. What you're describing is often sometimes called a keystone habit, and the idea is you do one thing and it like ripples into other areas of your life. Every single qualification for success is acquired through habit. At your age, you know, you will have the habits 20 years from now that you decide to put into practice today. So I just suggest that, that you, you look at the habits you admire in others, or the behavior you admire in others, and make those your own habits. If you rely on random bursts of motivation instead of building these habits, you will completely fail at every business you try to start. People form habits and habits form futures. If you don't deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you form bad ones. I took various people that I really admired and I took some of the qualities that I really admired in them and I'd write them down. I wasn't going to be like them, but I was going to develop a couple of these qualities or habits. Aristotle said that 95% of everything you do is the result of habit. So the rule is form good habits and make them your masters. Let's look at Warren Buffett. He did not build his massive wealth by guessing stock prices or relying on natural talent. He built it by using the most boring habit imaginable. He spends 80% of his day just sitting alone in a quiet room reading 5 500 pages of financial reports and books. He started from scratch and used this exact daily action to compound his knowledge until he became a billionaire. The magic is always in the boring repetition. Now you might be thinking, Evan, I don't have time to sit in a room for 8 hours a day, and I definitely do not have money to invest. But that's exactly the point. You do not need money and you do not need 8 free hours. You just need to build the right small habits that take $0 to start. And today I'm going to show you exactly what those 5 daily actions are so you can start building real wealth right now. Habit number 1: Reprogram your environment. So you are a direct reflection of the information that you consume every single day. If your bank account is at $0 right now, your current environment is perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are. You cannot expect to build a massive financial empire while you listen to negative news and hang people who constantly complain. You must take strict control over the voices that you allow into your head. Every morning you have a distinct choice. You can scroll through social media and feel terrible about your life, or you can intentionally put the voices of massive success into your ear. So I do this practice every morning. I call it the Believe Walk. I do not wake up feeling naturally like I want to go off and conquer the world. I wake up and I'm tired and I could think about the overwhelm of my day ahead. So I go outside, walk for 15 minutes, and intentionally put a video of a famous entrepreneur on while I'm going outside. I listen to their stories because I need their belief. I want their ambition to completely take over my mind. And the science actually really backs this up. The American Psychological Association published a massive report showing that constantly consuming negative media increases your stress levels and completely kills your motivation to act. So you have to cut the negativity out of your life today. Unsubscribe from the channels that make you feel small and defeated. Start your day with a video or podcast from someone who forces you to think bigger. Take the Believe Walk Challenge with us. Once you fix your daily environment, you will finally have the mental energy to take action. But energy alone will not make you wealthy. You have to actually move. And the fastest way to do that is what I will show you in the next habit. Habit number 2: Build instant momentum. Perfectionism is just a fancy word for fear, right? You're just afraid. Waiting for the perfect business plan or the perfect camera gear will completely keep you broke forever. Getting rich from $0 requires you to build the daily habit of taking messy, uncomfortable action. The biggest thing you're missing right now is just momentum. The very first step is always the hardest step to take. You just need to start moving. When I started this YouTube channel, I was a shy, introverted kid from Toronto. I sucked on camera. I made 350 videos before I could even watch myself without feeling completely embarrassed by myself, by most of my content. Most of those early videos got very few views, but I built the daily habit of hitting record anyway. I expected to suck at the start, and that one habit of Every day showing up with imperfect action is exactly what built this empire. Taking small daily actions physically changes your brain structure. A famous psychology study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology proved that practicing a small daily behavior turns it into an automatic habit over time, so it completely bypasses the need for daily motivation. Stop overthinking your grand master plan. Find the tiny 2% difference that you can make right now. Today, send one single email, record one bad video, write one rough page, just build the momentum. Habit number 3: Turn your pain into purpose. You do not need to invent a crazy new technology to get rich. The most profitable business ideas come directly from your own personal struggles. Your true purpose always comes from your deepest pain. The people who make the most money in the world are simply the ones who solve the biggest problems for other people. So if you want to know exactly what businesses start with $0, look at the hardest thing that you have ever overcome in your own life. You are uniquely qualified to help the exact person that you used to be. So I struggled horribly in my first business. I was making $300 a month and I felt completely alone. I wanted to quit. I told my business partner one day that I wanted to quit. I survived that deep pain and now my life is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs so they do not have to struggle the same way I did. You can look at Oprah Winfrey. She survived extreme poverty and childhood trauma. She did not hide from her painful past. She used her deep understanding of human suffering to build a massive media empire focused on empathy and healing. She turned her absolute darkest moments into her greatest financial asset. So every single day you can ask yourself, how can you serve someone else who is currently facing the pain that you already beat? When you wake up every day trying to solve a real problem for real people, the money will naturally follow, but you still need a proven strategy to execute your purpose. This is exactly where the fourth habit changes everything. Habit number 4. Model the greats. Trying to figure everything out on your own is a massive waste of time. Whatever you want to achieve, somebody else in history has already done it. You do not have to guess. You just have to model success. The biggest mistake you can make right now is looking at a billionaire today and trying to copy their current daily routine. You must copy their rise, not the result. You have to study exactly what they did on day one when they had $0, just like you. When I was failing in my first software company, I didn't know what to do. I called my partner, I told him I quit. It was one of the worst nights of my life. And so I looked at a successful software entrepreneur to model. I picked Bill Gates. I studied exactly how he got his very first client when Microsoft was just a tiny startup in a dusty garage. I took his exact strategy, applied it to my own struggling business, and landed my first deal that completely saved my company. Psychology calls this process observational learning. Albert Bandura published a famous theory called the social learning theory. He proved that people learn new behaviors the absolute fastest simply by observing and imitating others. So pick your ultimate hero, or at least pick someone who's done the thing that you want to do. Find out what they did when they were completely broke. Practice the habit of copying their beginner actions every single day. So you now have the environment, the momentum, the purpose, and the model. But there is one final daily habit that will hold everything together when times get incredibly tough. Habit number 5. Audit your belief system. Lack of belief is the biggest problem in the entire world right now. You can have the best business model and the perfect mentor, but if you do not believe you can actually win, you will self-sabotage before you even start. Building wealth from $0 requires you to practice extreme self-belief every day. When the people around you tell you that your idea is crazy, you have to be the one who stands strong. You have to borrow belief from your heroes until you can generate it for yourself. So think about exactly who you were 10 years ago. You're an absolute impossibility right now to your younger self. The things you have survived and the things you have accomplished would completely blow the mind of the younger you. You have to apply the same logic to your future. Dr. Carol Dweck from Stanford University spent decades proving that your core belief about your own potential directly dictates your financial success. People who practice a daily growth mindset actually rewire their physical brains to overcome massive failures and build wealth. So every single day you must consciously train your mind to reject doubt. Trust that the ideas that come to you when you feel bold are the right ones. Your daily belief is the only engine that will drive you from $0 to absolute financial freedom. Your time is now. So take the tools from today and start building your legacy right now. Do not let fear keep you trapped in a financial situation you hate. Make today count by taking one tiny step forward. Your future wealth depends entirely on the choices you make today. If you don't design the life you want, you'll end up living a life you don't. Most people drift through their days letting others call the shots, then wonder why they feel stuck. If you never take control, you'll look back and see you traded your dreams for someone else's plan. There's a famous parable about a fisherman and a businessman. The businessman urges the fisherman to expand, to work tirelessly for decades so he can eventually relax and enjoy life. But the fisherman laughs. He's already spending his days doing what he loves with the people he loves. The lesson here is to know what you actually want out of life and to live it now instead of blindly following what others think you should do. When I was 19, I lived that lesson. I had a high-paying job offer on the table, my ticket to the safe success stressful life that everyone expected, and I turned it down to make $300 a month and own a piece of a startup. Why? Because I imagined myself at 40, looking back, miserable that I never gave my dream a shot. I thought, if I don't do this, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. And the fear of regret was stronger than the fear of failure. So I took control and designed my own path, and it was the best decision I ever made. Now, maybe you're thinking, that sounds great, But I can't just redesign my life. I have responsibilities. I'm too deep in my career. It's too late for me. Listen, that doubt is exactly why you must start now. If you have a family depending on you, that's all the more reason to build a life that you are proud of, to set an example and give them the best of you. If you think you're too old, then you definitely don't have time to waste living someone else's dream. You can use every obstacle you have as more motivation to get this right, not less. So no more waiting, no more excuses. Today, let's start designing the life that you want. Here are 5 practical steps to do it. Let's dive in. Step number 1: Take full ownership of your life. No one is coming to save you or hand you your dream life. It's on you. The first step is to accept that completely. Psychologists call this an internal locus of control, and research shows people who have it are far more successful, healthier, and happier. Here's what it means: when you believe that you shape your destiny, you actually do. So starting right now, own everything in your life, the good and the bad. Don't blame your boss, the economy, or your past. The moment you take responsibility for where you are, you gain the power to change where you're going. This isn't about beating yourself up. It's about recognizing that you are in control of you. My mom drilled this into me from a young age. She used to tell me, if you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. And she was right. You can improve your life, so you must. It feel heavy to carry that responsibility, but trust me, it's also liberating because if it's your responsibility, it's within your control. The life you want is not some lottery ticket. It's a choice, and you're making that choice every day with your actions as well as your inaction. So decide right now that you're in charge of your life's design. When you truly internalize that, you'll feel an incredible surge of power and clarity. This is your life, and claiming it is step one to changing it. Step number 2: Define a clear vision. Find your why. You can't design a life you love if you don't know what you want. So step 2 is to get crystal clear on your vision and your why. What does your ideal life look like? More importantly, why does it matter to you? Take the time to answer these questions in vivid detail. Write it down. Studies show you're 42% more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down. Don't just say, I want to be happy, or I want success. Paint a specific picture. I want to run my own marketing firm, helping small businesses grow, or I want to live in a cabin by the lake and write my novel. Whatever it is for you, define it so clearly that you can taste it, because if you don't have a target, you'll hit nothing. Now let's talk about purpose. A vision isn't just about the what, it's about the why. One of the best ways to find your purpose is to look at your pain. I believe your purpose comes from your pain. The biggest struggles you've overcome are the ones that you are uniquely equipped to help other people through. The challenges that knocked you down, the people that hurt you, the problems that you solved for yourself, those experiences gave you strength. Use them. Maybe you fought through poverty or you beat an illness or you overcame extreme shyness. Whatever it is, that story can become your mission. In my early entrepreneurship days, I struggled hard. I felt alone. I felt like a failure. And that was painful. That pain became my purpose. I'm now driven to help other entrepreneurs so they don't have to struggle as much as I did. Your pain can motivate your purpose in the same way. When you know why you're doing something, you'll find the strength to do anything. So get clear on what you want and why you want it. That vision will be your North Star when things get tough. Step number 3, take immediate imperfect action. Now that you know what you want, it's time to get moving. Step 3 is to take action before you feel 100% ready. Most people wait and wait for the perfect timing, the perfect plan, more certainty, and they never go anywhere. Do not fall into that trap. A good plan executed today beats a perfect plan never executed. Clarity comes from doing, not just thinking about it. When you take even a small step, you get feedback, you learn, and you build momentum. I had to learn this the hard way. Early in my career, I was such a perfectionist that I spent an entire summer writing and polishing the perfect business plan instead of actually talking to customers. And guess what? An opportunity came and went while I was planning, and I missed out on a $40 million deal because I wasn't ready to act. Now, that hurt, but it taught me something valuable. I'll tell you exactly what I realized. Most of your plan is going to be wrong anyway, so get out there and test your assumptions. I stopped overthinking and started doing, and it made a huge difference. Now, maybe you're afraid that if you act now, you might fail. So try this as a reframe: not acting is the only guaranteed failure. According to Psychology Today, 92% of people never achieve their goals, largely because they never follow through. And I don't want you to be in that 92%. So break your biggest vision into the smallest possible step and do it today. Send that email, create that prototype, wake up an hour earlier, whatever moves you an inch closer, do it. You won't have all the answers and that's okay. You'll figure it out as you go. Action creates clarity. Action builds confidence. Every step you take sends your brain evidence that you are the kind of person who takes charge. So stop waiting, start now. Adjust later. Your future self will thank you. Step number 4: Surround yourself with support and belief. Designing your dream life is not a solo project. You are massively influenced by the people and the inputs around you. So step number 4 is to build a winning environment. Surround yourself with people who lift you higher, who challenge you, who believe in you, especially when you struggle to believe in yourself. Motivation doesn't last on an island. We all have moments of doubt, and that's when your environment will make or break you. Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins mentor, famously said, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. And there's truth in that. If your 5 closest contacts are ambitious, positive, and supportive, you're going to rise up. If they're negative, complacent, cynical, they're going to pull you down. So do an audit on who and what you're letting into your head. Sometimes you might need to set boundaries with naysayers. You might need to actively seek out mentors or people who inspire you. And here's something incredible. One study found that if you simply tell a friend about a goal you're working on, your chance of achieving it jumps to 65%. And if you set up regular check-ins with that friend, it shoots to 95%. That's how powerful support and accountability are. Use that to your advantage. Find an accountability partner, join a mastermind group, or just ask a friend to keep you honest. And remember, support isn't only from people you know personally. Borrowed belief is real. You can draw strength from other stories and mentorship until you build enough of it on your own. In the early In the early days, I borrowed belief from my mom's encouragement. Later, I borrowed it from people like Oprah Winfrey. I'd read about how she overcame extreme poverty and unimaginable challenges. And yet look what she built. Her story proved to me what's possible. I filled my environment with voices and examples that pushed me forward. Books, videos like this, virtual mentors. They can all be part of your support system. Borrow belief from your environment until you build it yourself. That's how you get through the early stages. So curate your world. Follow people who inspire you. Cut out the content that depresses you. Share your dreams with those who will cheer you on and hold you accountable. When you surround yourself with positivity and belief, you'll have the motivation and the courage to keep going when things get tough. Step number 5: Embrace failure and adapt for the long game. The final step is to treat your life design as an ongoing process. No plan will be perfect, and that's okay. You need to embrace failure as feedback and stay consistent for the long haul. When things go wrong, and trust me, they will, don't see it as proof that you can't do it. See it as part of the process of becoming who you're meant to be. Thomas Edison famously said about inventing the light bulb, I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. That's the mindset you need. In psychology, this is called a growth mindset. The belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning. People with this mindset thrive on challenges and persist through their setbacks. They understand that failure is not permanent, it's just a stepping stone. So keep that perspective— every setback is teaching you something. Now, I'm not just preaching here, I try to live this. When I started my YouTube channel, it took me 5 years to crack 2,000 subscribers. 5 years of pouring my heart into videos, experimenting, failing, feeling like nothing was working. Most people would have quit to quit, but I kept adjusting and improving instead. In the next 5 years, that 2,000 grew to 1.3 million. Today, this channel is over 4 million subscribers, and it only happened because I stayed in the game. Years of struggle and self-doubt set the stage for an overnight success that was a decade in the making. There was also a time my team and I got all of our camera gear stolen the night before a major shoot. We woke up with nothing, thousands of dollars of equipment gone. We could have seen it as a sign to pack it Instead, we chose to adapt. We rented new gear, we showed up anyway and filmed. And you know what happened? The interview recorded turned out to be one of our best. And the experience taught me to have faith and that great things come to me. I learned that even when a branch breaks under you, you can rely on your wings. A bird on a branch isn't afraid of it breaking because its trust is in its own wings. Even if the plan fails, you can figure it out. The belief has to be in yourself. Not just the plan. Designing the life you want is a journey, not a one-time project. You will stumble, you will make mistakes. Good, that means you're moving. Learn from every misstep and keep going. Iterate, adjust your course, but never abandon your vision. The only way you lose for sure is if you give up. As long as you keep getting back up, you're still moving towards your dream. Pick one step from today and execute on it within the next 24 hours, even if it's tiny. Hey, do it. Your future self is watching, and today you get to make them proud. Remember, you don't have to have it all figured out. You just need to take the next step in faith and then the next. Saying yes to everything is destroying your business growth. You want to scale quickly? Start saying no to most opportunities in your life. That's the truth. In business, new ideas, requests, and opportunities hit you every day. It feels like you should grab them all just in case. Case. But if you keep saying yes to everything, you'll drown in busy work, in other people's agendas, and in burnout. Your vision will stall because you're too scattered to execute on what actually matters. Look at Steve Jobs. When he returned to a struggling Apple in 1997, the company was chasing projects in 18 different directions. Apple had a ton of products and ideas on the table, and it was going nowhere. Jobs's His first act was to slash their product line from hundreds of products down to just a handful. He literally killed off good ideas by the thousands so the great ideas could live. People thought he was crazy, but by saying no to almost everything, he saved Apple. He later said, "Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." And Apple's explosive growth after 1997 proved him right. Cutting those projects provided the laser focus that brought out the iMac, the iPhones, and what we know as Apple today. Before I started this YouTube channel, I had a website with over 100,000 pages of content— entrepreneur stories, resources, partnerships. It was my baby. It was doing well on paper, and I had a team of 8 people working on it, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. It felt like, um, a content factory, and I didn't enjoy it. So one night I made one of the scariest decisions of my life. I told my team, I'm shutting it all down. I'm and moving the entire team to YouTube overnight. I deleted the site, wiped out years of work, and replaced it with a single page that basically said, "We're figuring stuff out and we're moving to YouTube now." Everyone around me thought I'd lost my mind. To them, it was reckless, throwing away a successful business. But I knew in my gut, doing work you don't love is the real risk. Continuing that huge website that no longer inspired me was a slow death. The safe move was to pivot into what I did making videos. So I told myself, doing something you don't like anymore is the risky thing. The safe choice is to move towards what you do love. And you know what? Shutting down that 100,000-page site and saying no to its endless demands was a defining moment that built my YouTube empire. That one no let me give all my energy to YouTube. Now you might be thinking, but I'm afraid to miss out on opportunities, uh, or offend people if I say no. And I hear you. Every entrepreneur feels that. You worry that if you decline an invite or turn down a client or pass on an idea, you'll miss your one big break. You worry you're going to upset people. But every time you say yes when you should say no, you are already missing out on your focus, your energy, and your greatness. If you say yes to 5 mediocre opportunities, you've said no to one excellent opportunity you no longer have time for. You can't do it all. And if you try, you'll do nothing well. As for offending people, You know, the right partners, clients, friends, they will respect you more for being clear about your priorities. And the people who get angry when you set healthy boundaries, they're not the people who will help you grow anyway. So don't sacrifice your dream to avoid a temporary awkward conversation. Missing out on one small thing is nothing compared to missing out on your dream because you were too busy people pleasing. All right. So how do you actually do this? How does saying no translate into real business growth for you? Let's break it down. How saying no grows your business faster. You protect your focus and focus multiplies progress. Every yes you give is a slice of your time and attention. Spread yourself across 10 projects and none of them get your best. But when you say no to distractions, you free up massive mental bandwidth for the one or two things that truly move the needle. There's a reason Warren Buffett says very successful people say no to almost everything. They protect their focus like gold. Studies show that each time you switch tasks, you can lose up to 40% of your productive time. Imagine chopping away 40% of your day just because you're juggling too many things. That's what happens when you don't say no. But when you do protect your focus, you enter deep work. You get in the zone and make real progress fast. Think about my story or Steve Jobs's. Cutting the clutter let us explode forward. Your dream deserves that same focus. Say no to 5 things so you can crush the one big thing. The result is faster growth than you ever get by being a yes man or yes woman. It prevents burnout and overwhelm. Saying no isn't just about speed, it's about sustainability. You are the engine of your business, and if you burn out, everything stops. One of the top reasons entrepreneurs burn out is overcommitment. You load up your calendar with 100 tasks and please everyone, except yourself. By contrast, setting clear boundaries and saying no when you need to is proven to boost productivity and prevent burnout. In a recent study, entrepreneurs of every generation ranked the ability to increase focus and say no as critical for their productivity and sanity. You can't pour from an empty cup. When you start saying no, you reclaim time to rest, to think, to actually strategize instead of always scrambling. Maybe that means no to meetings after 6 o'clock, or no to clients that drain you. Early in my I tried to hustle 24/7 and say yes to everything, and I hit a wall. I learned that if you overload, you shut down, and then you're no good to anyone. But when you pace yourself and decline extra obligations, you can bring consistent energy every day. Consistency beats spurts of overwork followed by collapse. Your business will grow faster when you are at your best, and that means protecting your mental and physical health. So give yourself permission to say, I can't take this on right now. Now and watch how much further you go over the long term. Quality and impact go up when you stop trying to do everything. You can finally do something right. Saying no leads to better work because you're not stretched paper thin. Think of a restaurant with a 10-page menu versus one with a focused 5-item menu. The 5-item place is usually phenomenal at those 5 dishes. The 10-page menu, probably mediocre. Your business is the same. If you as a CEO or founder are involved in every minor project, you can't devote the attention needed to make any one project outstanding. But if you say no, we're not chasing that shiny idea this quarter, you can double down on executing your primary strategy with excellence. The result is happier customers, better reviews, more referrals, faster growth. When I shifted fully to YouTube, for example, I went from doing an okay job at many things to doing a much better job at one thing: making videos for entrepreneurs. Our content quality shot up because all of our creative energy was in one place. Viewers noticed and we grew. Saying no to some opportunities is really saying yes to giving your best to what's left. And greatness comes from giving your best. Psychologically, it also puts you in a flow state. You're not constantly context switching, so you can refine and master your craft. And over time, being excellent at a few things will beat being just okay at many things. Your reputation will soar and so will your results. You save time for the right opportunities. Not every opportunity is equal. 10 small gigs that pay pennies are not worth the one big deal that changes your life. But if your schedule is packed with the small stuff, you'll never even notice the big ones. Saying no creates open space in your calendar and in your mind, and that space is where the breakthroughs happen. It's where you can pursue that strategic partnership, that product development, that million-dollar client when it comes along. If it's not a hell yes, it should be a no. That's a rule that I love. Be selective. This not only preserves your energy, as we talked about, but it means when a truly great opportunity appears, you can jump on it 100%. Opportunities are always coming and going. If you're buried in low-value yeses, you'll be too slow or too exhausted to seize the high-value yes that could change your life. Treat your time like the precious resource that it is. It's finite. So audit your commitments. Which ones are nice to have versus game changers? Cut ruthlessly. This isn't about being lazy or avoiding work. You'll work harder on the few things that actually count, but it's about not being busy for the sake of busy. Remember, being busy is not the same as being productive. The most successful entrepreneurs often look like they're doing less than others, but in reality they're doing far more of the one or two things that matter. That's the only way to get exponential results. Create room. For greatness to enter. It builds your confidence and defines your brand. Every time you say no to something that isn't right, you're telling yourself and the world that you know your value and your mission. And that's powerful. Think about it. When you politely decline an offer that doesn't fit, you're essentially saying, I know what I'm worth and what I need to focus on. That confidence becomes part of your brand. People will start approaching you with better offers because they know you won't accept accept just anything. You train others to respect your time. More importantly, you train yourself to trust your judgment. In my case, saying no to my old, uh, website business and saying yes to YouTube was a huge confidence booster. It proved to me that I could make a tough call in service of my dream, and I've carried that forward. Believing in yourself is at the core of everything that I teach, and saying no is a big part of self-belief. You need to believe that your goals and your time are worthy of protection. It's an emotional hurdle. You might feel fear or guilt at first, but every time you enforce your boundaries, you get stronger. You start to own your journey instead of renting it out to everyone else. And here's something amazing. Others will notice your new strength. Your ideal clients, your partners, even team members will be drawn to that clarity of purpose. You know how saying no can actually inspire people. It shows conviction. It shows you're mission-driven. In a world where everyone is chasing everything, the person with direction stands out. You become a leader by sticking to your vision. So next time you're tempted to say yes out of fear, pause. Ask yourself, does this align with the person you're becoming and the business you're building? If not, saying no is an act of leadership. It's you leading you. And that confidence will translate into greater success. The bottom line is saying no is not about negativity. It's about making room for big wins. You're not just rejecting things. You're choosing where your brilliance goes. When you say no to one thing, you're really saying yes to something bigger. You're saying yes to your vision, yes to your focus, yes to your health, yes to your best work. That is how your business grows faster because you grow faster and you give yourself the chance to fully capitalize on the best opportunities. You have the courage to do this. I know it's not easy. It's hard to turn people down or pass on an idea, but this is the price of admission for your greatness. Protect your dream at all costs. Be bold enough to say no when your heart tells you to. Your future self will thank you for it when you're reaping the rewards of all those brilliant yeses you finally had space to pursue. Most of what you learn in school is completely useless for making real money. School teach you about money? And the answer is nothing. They know nothing about money and they teach our kids. The highest earners in the world ignore traditional career paths and focus on stacking a handful of high-impact skills. And if you keep following the old rules of climbing the corporate ladder, you will stay stuck struggling to pay your bills while watching other people live your dream life. A salary is the drug they give you when they want you to forget about your dreams. Let's look at Warren Buffett. He is one of the richest investors alive. But if you walk into his office, you will not see his university degrees on the wall. The only thing he hangs up is a certificate for a public speaking course that he took. I actually had the diploma in the office, and I don't have my diploma from college. I don't have my diploma from graduate school, but I've got my Dale Carnegie diploma there because it changed my life. He realized that learning the skill of communication would instantly double his value. He ignored traditional rules and focused on a skill that actually prints money. By far the best investment you can make is in yourself. If they just learn to communicate better, both in writing and in person, they increase their value at least 50%. Now you might be thinking, okay, that's easy for Warren Buffett, but I'm just too busy trying to survive to learn something new. The actual truth is you do not need to quit your job or spend years back in a classroom. You just need to focus your limited time on the exact abilities that the market actually pays for. And so today I'm going to show you the 7 high-return skills you can start learning today that will completely transform your earning power. Master artificial intelligence and prompt engineering. So you might think that artificial intelligence is gonna steal your job, but the truth is a person who knows how to use artificial intelligence is going to take your job. It's projected at 75% of global businesses will use AI in their daily operations. If you ignore this trend, you'll be completely left behind. A massive report shows that artificial intelligence could add $4.4 trillion to the global economy. So you need to claim your piece of that pie. The most important high-return skill right now is prompt engineering. This just means knowing exactly how to talk to artificial intelligence to get the best results. You cannot just type in a lazy question and expect magic. You have to use a specific 4-part framework. Work. First, define the role. So tell the program to act like an expert copywriter or a brilliant lawyer. Second, provide the data. Give it examples of what you want. Third, make the specific ask. Do not be vague. And fourth, request the exact format, like a bulleted list or a table. When you master this communication skill, you can do 10 hours of work in just 1 hour. You instantly become 10 times more valuable to any client or employer. Do not wait for the perfect moment moment to learn this. Action cures fear. Just open a free program today and start testing it. Build your momentum right now. But artificial intelligence is just a tool. To truly multiply your income, you need to know how to sell the value you just created, which leads perfectly into the second skill: close high-ticket sales. Selling cheap products will keep you exhausted and broke. If you sell a $20 item, you need thousands of customers just to pay your rent. But if you master the skill of high-ticket sales, you only need a handful of clients to completely change your financial life. High-ticket offers are not about tricking people into paying more for the same service. They are about solving problems that are so painful, urgent, or expensive that premium pricing becomes totally obvious to the buyer. So you have to change your entire mindset around selling. Most people feel slimy when they ask for money, but you are built to serve. If you have a product or a service that can genuinely fix someone's problem, you have a moral obligation to offer it to them. If you do not offer it to them, you are hurting them. You are being selfish. Selling is just serving at the highest possible level. You also need to understand that sales is a learned skill, not a genetic gift. Companies that spend money on sales training are 57% more effective than companies that ignore it. You can learn the scripts, you can learn how to handle objections. Do not take the yes away from the customer before you even ask for the sale. So pick up the phone, make your premium offer, and let them decide. Selling one-on-one is incredibly powerful. But what if you want to reach millions of people at the exact same time? That is where the third skill comes in. Public speaking and video communication. You have to get on camera. It does not matter if you are shy or introverted. I was. Video communication is the single fastest way to build deep trust with a massive audience. When people can see your face, They can hear your voice. They connect with your story on a highly emotional level. You do not need a fancy studio or an expensive microphone. You just need your smartphone and the courage to share your truth. When I started making videos, I was completely terrified. I was an introverted guy who just wanted to hide. It took me 350 videos before I was not completely embarrassed to watch my own content back, and it took me 700 public videos until I actually started to think I was getting be good. I expected to suck at the beginning, and I did, but I just kept going. I focused entirely on the one person I could help instead of worrying about the millions of people who were not watching me yet. So if you want to stand out in your industry, start making videos about your foundation story. Tell people why you started your business. Tell them about your struggles. Tell them what to believe. Do not wait for validation from the internet. Just put in the reps and build your back catalog. The market always rewards the who show up consistently and speak with passion. The art of skill stacking. So school's taught you that you need to pick one major and do one specific job for the rest of your life, right? That is terrible advice for making real money. Our economy does not reward specialists who only know one narrow thing. The highest earners in the world use a strategy called skill stacking. You do not need to be the absolute best in the world at one skill. You just need to be in the top 20% for 3 or 4 different skills and then combine them. So instead of just being a normal graphic designer, you become a designer who also understands user psychology and direct response copywriting. That specific combination makes you incredibly rare. Research from the World Economic Forum proves that cross-functional skills are the most heavily demanded abilities in the entire global job market. So look at your own life. Life. Take your boring corporate experience, add a little bit of marketing knowledge, and mix in your weird weekend hobby. Suddenly you have a totally unique profile that nobody else can compete with. You stop being a commodity and you start being a category of one. When you are the only person who can do what you do, you get to dictate your own price. But what happens when you have these rare skills and people still refuse to pay you what you're worth. You have to master the next skill to force the market to respect your value. Data-driven negotiations. Most people walk into a salary review or a client pitch completely driven by their emotions. They complain about how hard they work. They talk about how long that they've been at their company. They say that they need more money because their rent went up. That strategy will keep you broke forever. Businesses do not care about your personal financial stress. They only care about the value that you bring to their bottom line. So if you want to double your income, you have to separate your self-worth from the negotiation process. You can use hard data. An analysis of 500 different salary negotiations revealed that using emotional arguments only work 8% of the time. But when people presented a business case backed by actual market data, the success jumped to 67%. You have to do your research, find out exactly what your specific skill stack is worth in the open market right now. Present those numbers confidently. Show the client exactly how much money your work is going to make them. When you frame your request as a smart business investment instead of a personal favor, the money will flow to you. Negotiation gets you paid the right amount, but to build massive wealth that lasts decades, you need to understand the underlying pulse of your entire industry. And that brings us to skill number 6: data analysis and market research. You cannot build a million-dollar business based just off of your gut feelings alone. You have to know your actual numbers. Most people are terrified of looking at their analytics because they are afraid of seeing the ugly truth. They would rather live in denial. But if you do not know exactly where your leads are coming from or exactly where your customers are dropping off, you are just flying blind. Data science and analysis roles offer massive salaries because the ability to read data allows companies to maximize their purchasing power and predict future trends. You do not need a fancy degree to do this. You just need to log into your dashboard and face reality. Right? When I'm trying to grow a YouTube channel, I do not just guess what people want to watch. I look at the exact click-through rates on every single thumbnail. I study the audience retention curves for the first 60 seconds of the video. You have to do the exact same thing for your business. Track your conversion rates, track your email open rates, double down immediately on the things that are working, and ruthlessly cut out the things that are failing. Let the data show you a clearer path forward. Now you can have the best data, the best sales pitch, and the best technical skills, but you will still hit a massive income ceiling if you try to do everything yourself. This final skill is the ultimate wealth multiplier. Leadership and team building. You are the biggest bottleneck in your own life right now. You are trying to control every single tiny detail of your work because you are a perfectionist. You think nobody else can do the job as well as you can. That belief is keeping you stuck playing a very small game. The fastest way to scale your income to the moon is to stop asking how you can do a task and start asking who can do this task for you. When you transition into true leadership, your job is no longer doing the daily grind. Your job is to empower other people to do the work. Self-confidence and the ability to delegate are the absolute foundations of success for any high-level executive or business owner. You must learn the framework of eliminate, eliminate, automate, delegate. First, eliminate the useless tasks that you do every day that do not actually move the needle. Second, automate everything you can using software and AI. And finally, delegate the rest of the work to talented people who actually love the things that you hate doing. You have to let go of your ego, let your team make mistakes so they can learn and grow, build a culture where your people feel like the work they do actually matters. When you focus on serving your team and lifting them up, they will build your empire with you. You now have the exact 7 skills you need to completely double your income this year. But all of these strategies are completely useless if you do not fix the one massive problem happening inside your head right now. Your true potential. The only thing truly holding you back from doubling your income is your own self-doubt. You have to decide today that your biggest goals are actually possible for you. Stop listening to the people who tell you to play it safe and stay small. Step into your greatness and do the work that you were put on this earth to do. You might be sabotaging your success every morning without even knowing it. Billionaires have specific morning habits that set them up to win each day, and chances are you're not doing them yet. If you want to achieve billionaire-level status as an entrepreneur, it starts with how you begin your day. So let's dive in to the 7 morning habits that billionaires swear by so you can start adopting them to. Are you ready to upgrade your morning routine? Let's go. Habit number 1 is wake up early consistently. Do you hit the snooze button? Billionaires don't. Nearly half of self-made millionaires in one study woke up at least 3 hours before the workday began. By contrast, only 3% of low-income earners did the same. Waking up early gives you a massive head start. It's quiet, it's distraction-free, and it's time you can use to invest in you before the world wakes up. Take Sir Richard Branson, for example. He rises at 5 AM no matter where he is in the world. Why? It allows him to exercise, spend time with his family, and get in the right mindset before business begins. As Branson says, exercise and family time put me in a great mind frame before getting down to business. I like to wake up early so that I can work through my emails before most of the world logs on. That early start gives him an edge. So here's your action Step. Start waking up even just 30 minutes earlier than you do now. Use your time for your growth, as we'll cover in the upcoming habits. Gradually push it to an hour or more. Consistency is key. Waking up at the same time each day trains your body and builds momentum. In my book, Your One Word, I talk about the power of defining a single core value. Use your extra morning time to focus on your core value or mission. This will give you a why that makes getting out of bed easier. Remember, the early bird catches the worm. Worm. Billionaires catch the worm and conquer the whole farm by breakfast. Habit number 2: Exercise and move your body. Your body is your engine. Billionaires treat it that way by making morning exercise non-negotiable. Dr. Richard Branson, worth over $4 billion, says the secret to his productivity boils down to two words: work out. He claims regular exercise is a tool that doubles his daily productivity. It boosts his energy and focus for the rest of If a billionaire running 400+ companies can make time to break a sweat each morning, so can you. Science also backs this up. Morning exercise floods your brain with oxygen and releases chemicals that improve your memory and concentration. Even a quick 20 to 30 minute workout will get your blood pumping and your brain firing on all cylinders. Bill Gates starts many days with cardio exercise, often on the treadmill while learning via video lectures. Oprah Winfrey does regular morning workouts workouts ranging from hiking to strength training to stay in peak state. These leaders know that a healthy body equals a more effective mind. Now, don't worry, you don't need to train like an Olympic athlete. Just get moving. Do some stretches, do a quick run, yoga, hit the gym, or even take a brisk walk. Consistency matters more than intensity. As I often emphasize, building momentum is critical. By exercising each morning, you create momentum of positive energy that carries into your work. You will feel more confident, alert, and ready to tackle challenges. Plus, exercise is a natural stress reliever. So here is your action step. Pick a form of morning exercise that you enjoy or at least can tolerate and schedule it in. Even 15 minutes daily is a great start. Over time, you can ramp that up. Treat that appointment with your body as sacred. Remember, you're not just working out. You're sharpening your biggest business tool yourself. As the saying goes, take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. Live, and it will reward you with sharper focus and higher output all day long. Habit number 3: Practice mindfulness or meditation. Stressed out about the day before it even begins? Billionaires calm their mind first thing. Many credit meditation or mindfulness practices as their secret weapon for their success. Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, who's the founder of Bridgewater Associates, says, whatever success I've had in life has been more due to my meditating than anything else. This man manages billions of dollars, and he gives a huge amount of credit to daily meditation, which was 20 minutes in the morning and again later in the day. It helps him stay calm, think clearly, and make better decisions under pressure. What's so powerful about mindfulness? By taking even 10 minutes for quiet reflection, you train your brain to handle stress and chaos without panicking. Studies show that practices like Transcendental Meditation can significantly reduce anxiety and stress, and even improve your mental health and resilience. When you're an entrepreneur, your ability to stay focused and composed is a competitive advantage. Meditation is basically a daily workout for your brain's calm and focused muscles. Successful people use different mindfulness tools. Meditation is one, prayer is another, breathing exercise can work, or journaling. Oprah Winfrey, for example, starts her day with 20 minutes of meditation to center herself. Jack Dorsey, who's the co-founder of Twitter and Square, reportedly does meditation each morning at 5:00 AM to clear his mind. This isn't just hippie stuff. It's about getting your brain into peak operating condition. When you're calm and centered, you make smart decisions, not emotional reactive ones. So here's your action step. Tomorrow morning, before diving into work, sit in silence for a few minutes. Focus on your breath, or try a simple meditation app. If meditation isn't your thing, just try sitting with a notebook and writing down your on your thoughts or intentions. More on intention soon. The goal is to quiet the mental chatter and sharpen your focus. In Built to Serve, I talk about finding your purpose. Sometimes you can't hear your purpose because your mind is too noisy. So morning mindfulness will help you listen to that inner voice and approach the day with clarity and confidence. Habit number 4: Read and learn every morning. Billionaires are learning machines. They make feeding their mind a morning priority. So instead of scrolling social media or news fluff, they read books, articles, reports, anything that builds knowledge. Warren Buffett spends about 80% of his day reading and famously suggests aspiring entrepreneurs should read 500 pages a day. He says that's how knowledge builds up like compound interest. Now, 500 pages daily might be extreme for you, but the point is never stop learning. Many of the top entrepreneurs use mornings for self-education. Bill Gates reads roughly 50 books per year, often devoting morning time to reading before work. Mark Cuban reads 3+ hours a day to gain any advantage that he can. Elon Musk has said that when people asked how he learned to build rockets, he simply answered, I read books. Billionaires treat knowledge as the greatest asset they can accumulate. The average person might be content with browsing headlines. The billionaire devours information that can spark new ideas ideas or improve their decision-making. Now, you don't need hours each morning to read, but do try to read something useful each day. It could be a chapter of a non-fiction book that you're learning, an industry article, a biography of something you admire. Even 30 minutes every morning can set you apart. One study of Rich vs. Poor Habits found that 88% of wealthy people read at least 30 minutes a day for self-improvement. It's a habit that clearly correlates with success. Reading does two big 2 things. It expands your knowledge and it inspires you by showing what's possible. You can effectively mentor under great people by reading their ideas and experiences every morning. So here is your action step. Pick a book or learning resource like YouTube that aligns with your goals. Wake up, grab your coffee or tea or whatever you want to drink and read before you jump into work mode. Make notes of any ideas that jump out and think about how to apply them to your business, your life. You'll notice that this habit not only increases your knowledge, but also puts you in a more inspired, motivated state to start the day. Feed your mind before you feed the world's demands. In a year, you'll have read dozens of books and your improved thinking will directly benefit your business. This is how you go to bed a little smarter each day, as Buffett says, by starting each morning as a student of success. Habit number 5: Plan your day and prioritize. Billionaires don't wing it when it comes to their day. They take a few minutes each morning or the night before to plan and prioritize what needs to get done. Instead of reacting to whatever comes up, they proactively decide what their day will look like. This often means identifying the number one most important task for the day and tackling it first. As the old saying goes, if you have to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning. In other words, do your hardest, highest value tasks first while your energy and willpower are at peak. Research backs up the power of planning. In Thomas Corley's study of Rich Habits, he found that 81% of wealthy people maintain a daily to-do list versus just 19% of low-income people. Not only that, 67% of those wealthy people complete 70% or more of their tasks each day. They write down what matters and they execute on it. Writing your plan forces you to clarify what's important. Remember, being busy is not the same as being productive. Productive billionaires focus on the few critical activities that drive their goals, not the trivial many. Jeff Bezos, for example, schedules his high-IQ meetings at 10 a.m. while he's still fresh. He refuses to take meetings early in the morning so he can have time to think, plan, and get important work done, and even enjoys a relaxing breakfast with family before diving into Amazon business. Bezos said, I do my high-IQ meetings before lunch. Anything that's going to be really mentally challenging, that's at 10 o'clock work meeting. He knows he's at his best in the morning, so he protects that time for critical work and decision-making. By 5 PM, as he says, his brain is tapped out, so he structures his day to make the big moves early. So here's your action step: take 5 to 10 minutes each morning to map out your day. Write down your top 3 priorities. Do this before you get caught up in emails or fires. If you have a major task that could really move your business forward, schedule time in the morning to attack it. Planning doesn't mean Every minute is fixed. It means you have a game plan and clear priorities. This will keep you from drifting and reacting all day. As you complete your important tasks, check them off. It builds momentum and confidence, and over time, this habit will make you incredibly effective. Remember, either you run the day or the day runs you. Billionaires run their day starting with a solid morning plan. Habit number 6: avoid morning distractions. That means no phone first. So here's a habit to not do. Don't grab your phone the moment you wake up. Seriously, the average person, about 80% of people, checks their phone within 10 minutes of waking up. That means most people start their day in reactive mode, scrolling through notifications and emails and social media and the news and other people's agendas. Billionaires break this common habit. They protect their morning focus like gold. So why is avoiding your phone so important? Attention. The first hour of your day sets the tone for the rest. If you immediately plunge into a flood of messages and emails, you're telling your brain to play defense all day. You're chasing, you're reacting, you're stressing. Instead, successful entrepreneurs use mornings for offense— their goals, their mindsets, their plan, as we've already covered. They know Twitter and email can wait until they've taken care of key morning habits, exercise, planning, etc. By doing so, they stay in control. You own your morning instead of letting push notifications and inboxes own you. So think about it. When you wake up, your mind is relatively clear. If you fill it with a social feed or frantic work emails, you've essentially let 100 people in your bedroom shouting demands at you. Top performers often keep the phone on airplane mode or in another room room until their morning routine is done. Arianna Huffington, as an example, not a billionaire but a very successful founder, has spoken about banning devices from her morning routine to reduce stress. Even Oprah is known to avoid checking emails first thing. She'll spend her morning on meditation, exercise, and a good breakfast to ground herself. So here is your action step: don't check your phone for at least the first 30 to 60 minutes after you wake up. If you currently use your phone as an alarm, consider getting a separate alarm clock or placing your phone across the room so you can't mindlessly reach for it in bed. Use that first hour for the habits we're talking about: exercise, reading, planning, etc. If you absolutely must see if an urgent message came in, scan briefly after you've done one positive activity for yourself. Trust me, the world will not implode if you wait to check Instagram or Slack. By avoiding digital distractions, you give yourself the gift of presence and Focus each morning. This will make you far more productive when you do dive into work. It might feel tough at first since phone checking is an addiction for many, but stick with it because reclaiming those lost minutes of focus is game-changing. Your brain will thank you and your business will benefit from a more focused, strategic you each day. And habit number 7: cultivate gratitude and purpose. Billionaires often start their day by feeding their spirit and mindset, not just diving straight into work. This means practicing gratitude, visualization, or setting a clear intention for the day. It might sound a little touchy-feely, but this habit is about training your mind to be positive, resilient, and purpose-driven. When you're grateful and purpose-focused each morning, you carry that strength into everything that you do. Let's go back to Oprah Winfrey, for example. She has openly credited much of her joy and success to keeping a gratitude journal. In fact, Oprah kept a daily gratitude journal journal for a full decade, writing down 5 things she was grateful for each day. She says this practice changed her life profoundly. Why? Because it shifts your perspective to focus on abundance and opportunity. When you appreciate what you have, what you have appreciates in value. Gratitude literally rewires your brain to look for the good in situations, which is crucial for an entrepreneur facing daily challenges. Harvard researchers found that gratitude is strongly associated with greater happiness and health. It helps people feel more positive emotions, improves their health, and builds stronger relationships. Imagine starting every day feeling thankful and optimistic. Do you think you'd be more motivated and creative? Absolutely. Another powerful mindset habit is connecting with your purpose. Billionaires are often fueled by a big mission, not just money. Steve Jobs had a famous morning question he'd ask himself in the mirror: If today were the last day of my life, life, would I want to do what I'm about to do today? If many days went by with the answer no, he took it as a sign to change something. Now that's a pretty heavy question, but it instantly cuts through trivial worries and forces you to focus on what matters. It gave Jobs a daily dose of perspective and drive. You don't have to use his exact question, but find a morning thought or mantra that connects you to your why, the reason why you do what you do. In Built to Serve, I explained that when you find a purpose centered on serving others, it ignites you every day. So use your mornings to remind yourself of that purpose. Here's your action step: before you launch into your busy schedule, take a few minutes for gratitude or intentional ritual. This could be as simple as thinking of 3 things that you're grateful for as soon as you wake up, or writing them down in your journal. Feel that appreciation. Then take a moment to visualize your goals or say an affirmation that aligns with your mission. For instance, you might say, I'm building a business that makes a difference, or whatever whatever drives you. If you're spiritual, you might pray or meditate on your purpose. The key is to start your day heart first, not just head first. When you do this, you'll notice you approach your tasks with more enthusiasm and resilience. Challenges that come up during the day won't knock you down as easily because you've rooted yourself in gratitude and purpose at dawn. So the 7 morning habits of billionaires: 1, wake up early. 2, exercise. 3, meditate. 4, read. 5, plan your day. 6, avoid distractions. And 7. Practice gratitude and purpose. Now, you might be thinking, that's a lot to do every morning. Start with one habit at a time. Build it up. Consistency is more important than perfection. Even adopting a couple of these habits will give you a noticeable boost in your mood, your energy, and your productivity. The more you can stack together, the more powerful your morning routine becomes. Remember, morning routines set the foundation for your entire day. If you win the morning, you're far more likely to win day. These habits are common among the ultra-successful for a reason. They work. They prime your body and mind to be at your best. And as an entrepreneur, your business rises or falls based on your mindset, energy, and choices. By noon, a billionaire has often taken care of their health, fed their mind, knocked out a top priority, and centered themselves on what matters. Imagine how further ahead you'd be if you did the same thing starting tomorrow. No more excuses. You do have time for this, remember, it can all start by waking up a little bit earlier and not letting your phone hijack your attention. Protect your morning for you and the growth of your dreams. And over time, these small habits compound into massive results. Like I say in my book Momentum, success is built through steady momentum, and that momentum begins anew each morning. So now it's your turn. Which habit will you adopt first? Commit to it. Make it part of your "Identity: I'm the type of person who blank every morning." Keep going even if you stumble some days. The goal is progress, not perfection. Soon you'll notice you're more in control, more energized, and closer to your goals than ever before. This is how you join the ranks of the ultra-successful, one morning at a time. So you've got this. Make your morning count and you'll change the trajectory of your whole life. All that's left is to start. Get up, get going, and make your success routine a reality. All successful people have the exact same 7 traits. Most people will ignore this and stay average. If you ignore it, chances are 5 years from now you'll still feel stuck, or worse, you'll be looking back with regret wondering what went wrong. I don't want that for you, and I know you don't either. Look at Walt Disney, the man who created Mickey Mouse. He was fired from his first newspaper job because they said he lacked imagination. Then his first animation company went He was told over and over that his ideas were too risky, too expensive, or just plain silly. At one point, he couldn't even afford food and survived by eating beans from a can. But he refused to quit. He kept creating. He kept believing. When he pitched Disneyland, more than 300 investors turned him down. Yet he kept going until one finally said yes. Today, Disney is one of the biggest brands on Earth. He succeeded because he never gave up. So ask yourself, if a man who got fired for no imagination could build a world of imagination, what could you build if you refuse to stop? I almost gave up on my dream too. At 19, I quit on my first business. I had left a high-paying job opportunity to own a part of a startup and ended up making $300 a month. Nothing was working. I was grinding every day and feeling like a total failure. I was so embarrassed by how broke I was that I stopped hanging out my friends, and I couldn't even afford pizza. One night I hit rock bottom and told my business partner, I'm done, I quit. And then a new kind of pain hit me. I pictured myself years later haunted by the fact that I gave up on my dream. That vision of regret was worse than the failure, and I couldn't accept that. So the very next day, I crawled back into the office, which was my, my, uh, business partner's condo. I had no idea how I was going to how to fix things, but I made a decision. I would find someone who did know and learn from them. And I picked the best model I could think of— Bill Gates, since I had a software company, he had the largest software company in the world— and study how he built Microsoft and made his first million. And guess what? Within a few weeks, we closed our first major deal for $13,500. I went from making $300 a month to bringing in a $13,500 check in a single deal. That blew my mind, and it changed who I was. I realized I could have stayed a quitter and missed out on everything, but instead I proved to myself that if you push one more day, if you're resourceful and you model success, you can turn things around. I learned a lot about the value of resilience and belief and finding mentors in your darkest moment. Now you might be thinking, okay, great story, Evan, but I'm not Walt Disney. I don't have a ton of imagination. I'm just a normal person with normal problems. Listen to me. Every successful person you admire started as a normal person with normal problems. None of them began with special powers. The difference is when things got hard, they didn't settle for normal. They made different choices, choices that built those 7 traits into them. You can make those choices too. This isn't about born talent or luck or money. It's about what you decide to believe and how you act when the pressure is on. And the fact that you're watching this tells me something, that there's a fire in you. Maybe it's small right now, but it's in there. And my job in this video is to pour gasoline lean on that fire. So here's the good news: these 7 traits can be learned, they can be practiced, they can become your traits at an identity level. Starting today, you can decide to develop each one and completely change the trajectory of your life. So let's break them down one by one and get specific on how you can build them. Trait number 1: self-belief. All successful people believe in themselves. Unapologetically. They believe in their vision even when it's just a crazy idea and everyone else doubts them. There's a famous saying: whether you believe you can or you can't, you are right. And it's true. If you don't believe in your ability, you won't even try, or you'll quit as soon as it gets tough. On the other hand, when you do believe in yourself, you'll move mountains to prove yourself right. In psychology, this is called a growth mindset— the belief that you can improve and Stanford research has shown that the view you adopt of yourself literally shapes your life. If you believe you're capable of growth, you will grow. Successful people act like they're capable of amazing things long before it's evident, and that belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Think of Oprah Winfrey. Early in her career, she was fired and told she wasn't fit for television. She could have said, maybe they're right, and she faded away, but she didn't. She didn't. She held on to her belief that she was meant for more. And now she's Oprah, one of the most influential media figures of all time. She believed in herself when no one else did. Do you? Ask yourself honestly, do you believe you can do great things? If your immediate answer is no, then let's change that right now. You might say, but I've never done anything great before. So what? Every success story starts with someone believing before they have evidence. I learned this from my mom. She used to tell me, "If you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must." Whenever I failed or felt down, she'd look me in the eyes and say, "You're Evan Carmichael. You can do anything you believe you can." And I didn't buy it at first. I was a B and C student while my sisters got straight A's. But after hearing it enough times, I finally thought, huh, what if she's right? And that little seed of belief, what if it's true, changed my life. I started behaving like I could achieve something. Something. And eventually I did. Trait number 2: passion. Successful people love what they do. They are obsessed with it. They would do it for free, just for the joy, because it's part of who they are. I spent over 20 years studying entrepreneurs, artists, innovators, leaders, and one of the most consistent pieces of advice is follow your passion. You have to find the thing that makes you feel alive, the thing that you would do even if you never got paid. Why? Why? Because doing anything great is hard. It takes years of hard work. If you don't love the process, you'll quit. If it's just a paycheck or a casual interest, you'll give up when it stops being fun. But if you're truly passionate, you'll keep going even when it sucks, even when everyone calls you crazy, even when it doesn't make logical sense anymore. You keep going because you need to. It's who you are. You don't get to be the best by doing what you hate or what you think you should do. You become the best by loving what you do more than anyone else. Else loves what they do. Think about the greats. Kobe Bryant shooting baskets at 4 AM because he loved the game, not just because someone forced him. Or Steve Jobs, who famously said, 'The only way to do great work is to love what you do.' He was right. If you haven't found something you can pour your heart into, you need to keep looking. Don't settle for a life of lukewarm interest. It's a recipe for mediocrity. So what do you love so much that you do it no matter What would you regret not doing? It might be a career, a project, an art, a cause, anything. Identify it and give yourself permission to pursue it. Yes, you might have responsibilities and bills, and I'm not saying be reckless, but you owe it to yourself to incorporate your passion into your life and ultimately into your work. Because when you operate from passion, work doesn't feel like work. It feels like honor, like service, like play. And that's where the magic happens. You'll put in more effort, you'll put in more hours, you'll be a lot more creative and happy because it feeds you. That's how winners pull ahead of the pack. They're not straining themselves to compete, they're playing their own game that they love, so they naturally practice more, they learn more, they persist more. If you haven't found that thing yet, keep exploring, follow your curiosity. Think about what pain you've overcome in your life. Often your purpose lies in helping others with the struggle that you went through. I always say I always say your purpose comes from your pain. In my case, I struggled so much as an entrepreneur that I became passionate about making entrepreneurship easier for other people. Find your why. Trait number 3: Action. Successful people do something. They have a bias for action. They execute fast, even before they feel ready. This is where so many people fail. They get paralyzed trying to plan the perfect approach or waiting for the right time, and they never actually start. Newsflash. There is no perfect plan and there is no perfect time. At some point you have to pull the trigger and go. And I learned this the hard way in my first business. I was a perfectionist. I'm, I'm still a recovering perfectionist. I spent an entire summer drafting the ultimate business plan, dozens of pages of research, projections that look beautiful. And while I was planning, a competitor in my industry was acting. They got out there, they got customers, they got attention. A large competitor came along looking to acquire a business like ours. $40 million. And guess who was already ready and who wasn't? Not us. Our competitor got bought for $40 million and we got nothing. I missed out on a $40 million deal because I was stuck in planning mode, and that one hurt. But it taught me a pretty valuable lesson. A half-assed plan you start now 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 can't think your way to success. You have to do your way to success. So ask yourself, yourself. What's one important thing that you've been putting off because you don't feel ready? And decide to take one small step today. Make that call, publish the post, start the channel, make the video, reach out to that person, whatever it is, just start. You won't have all the answers, and that's okay. You figure it out by doing. Start before you feel ready. Trust that you'll learn along the way. The simple trait, being an action taker, already puts you miles ahead of most people. Remember, You can't steer a parked car, so get moving and you'll find your direction. Trick number 4: Embrace failure. Every successful person has a healthy relationship with failure. In fact, they fail more than the average person. The difference is they're not afraid of it. Most people are so terrified of failure that they don't even try. And that's the biggest failure of all. Successful people understand that failure isn't the end of the road. It's just a data point on the path. Path to success. It's feedback, it's education, it's a necessary stepping stone. They don't take failure personally. They don't make it mean, 'I'm a failure.' They just say, 'Okay, that didn't work. Good to know. What can I learn from this? Let's try again.' They fail their way to success. In fact, they failed at more things than most people have ever attempted. Think about that. The average person might try a dozen things in their life and give up when something doesn't doesn't immediately work out. Successful people might try 100 things, fail at 90 of them, but the 10 that hit more than make up for it. Failure is the price of admission for success. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players of all time— I put him as number 1— he put it this way: I missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I was trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over in my life, and that is why I succeed. Failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success. Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful light bulb prototypes. When a reporter asked him how it felt to fail 1,000 times, he said, I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps. And that's the mindset you need to adopt. Trait number 5: perseverance. Never giving up. If one trait separates the winners from the losers, it's the sheer your grit to keep going no matter what. Life will test you, business will test you. Do you get back up one more time or do you stay down? Successful people always get back up long after other people have thrown in the towel. Remember Walt Disney with his 300+ rejections? That's perseverance. Or look at J.K. Rowling. She was rejected by 12 publishers. 12 publishers said Harry Potter wasn't worth publishing. She could have stopped at rejection number 12 and we'd never have known Hogwarts, right? But she persisted until a small publisher took a chance on on her. Now she's one of the best-selling authors in history. Stories like that aren't the exception, they're the rule. Virtually every success is built on a mountain of persistence. They say it takes 10 years to become an overnight success, and it's true. The problem is most people never make it to year 10 at whatever they're doing. They quit at year 2 or 3 because they're not seeing results yet. Don't let that be you. Perseverance is a choice. It's a quiet, daily choice. This, that I will not quit. Decide that for yourself. Decide that no matter how long it takes, you're going to see your vision through. There are no expiry dates on your dream. I don't care if it takes you until you're 30 or 40 or 65. Time is going to pass anyway, so you might as well keep pushing towards something that you care about. Keep going. Trait number 6: positive environment. All successful people raise their standards for their environment. They purposefully shape who and what they surround themselves with. So you've probably heard the saying, you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with. It's true. Environment is everything. If you hang around 5 pessimistic, lazy, excuse-making people, you will become the 6. If you hang around 5 ambitious, optimistic, high-performing people, you'll also become the 6. We as human beings are contagious to each other. So winners curate their environment ruthlessly. So this means 2 things. Cutting out the negative influences and adding in positive influences. First, the negative. You must distance yourself from chronic negativity, naysayers, people who hold you back. Sometimes that's friends, even family. Sometimes it's the content that you consume. Pay attention to how the people around you make you feel. Do they make you feel energized, inspired, capable, or do they make you feel drained, discouraged, and small? If it's the latter, you need to start spending less time with them. Them. This can be hard, but it's necessary. Successful people from tough backgrounds often had to be the ones who said, "Enough. I love you, but I can't have you around my dreams if you're going to tear them down." They raised their standards and refused to tolerate constant negativity around them. They stopped blaming their circumstances and they started demanding more of themselves. That's how you break free from a limiting environment. You declare to yourself, "I will not accept this anymore." and you change it. Now, cutting negativity alone isn't enough. You have to add in positivity too. If you don't have supportive, inspiring people in your life immediately around you, seek them out. Find a community of people who are also pushing for more and believe in more. That might mean joining groups or clubs or online forums. Even here in the comment section here in Believe Nation on this video, put it down below. Fill your ears with the words of great mentors from videos and books and podcasts. I still do this constantly as a shy introvert starting my business, I didn't have any entrepreneurial friends to turn to. So I turned to my heroes. I called them aspirational mentors. Through their biographies and their talks, their mindset became my mindset. You can do the same. There's no excuse to not have positive influences. You have YouTube, you have audiobooks, you have virtual mentors at your fingertips 24/7. Make use of it every day. Consume something that elevates you, ideally earlier in the morning. It's like healthy food for your brain. Trait number 7, a strong purpose. The final trait that all successful people share is that they're driven by a deep sense of purpose. They know why they do what they do, and that why is everything. It gives meaning to their work and fuel to their fire. Purpose is what turns a job into a mission. It's the difference between someone who is just making a living and someone who is making a difference. Now, if you study the greats, you'll see this over and over again. They weren't just chasing money. They're usually chasing a mission to change something in the world or to reach a personal vision. When you have a purpose, setbacks don't defeat you as easily because you know what you're fighting for. Like Viktor Frankl said, he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Successful people have a powerful why. I like to say your purpose comes from your pain. Whatever you struggled with in life is what you want to help other people through. Now, here's another thing. Having a purpose also attracts other people to you. People want to be a part of something meaningful. Your team, your customers, your audience, Audience, they will rally around you if you have a genuine mission. It's inspiring. It's also a compass for your decisions. When you're lost or you're facing a tough call, you can ask, does this align with my mission or not? That clarity becomes gold. The world needs what you have. Successful people internalize this. They carry a sense of duty about their purpose. It's not just about personal gains, it's about using your gifts to make an impact. When you approach your life like that, as a mission, you become someone a lot more powerful. You won't give up easily because it's not just your own comfort that's on the line. It's your calling. And that is identity-level motivation. That's what creates your legacy. So those are the 7 traits, and I'll list them out one more time. And as I do it, I want you to imagine who you could become if you committed to all 7. So self-belief, trusting that you can figure things out and win even when no one else believes in you. Passion, doing work that lights you up so you have endless fuel to devote to it. Action: moving quickly and decisively rather than overthinking and hesitating. Embracing failure: learning from every misstep rather than never trying because you're afraid. Perseverance: getting back up every time, outlasting everyone who gave up. Environment: surrounding yourself with inspiration and cutting out the negativity. And purpose: knowing exactly why you're doing all of this and letting that why drive you forward. Notice something important here: none of these traits are genetic. Genetic. None are privileges given only to the lucky. They are all choices. They are habits of mind and behavior that anyone can cultivate, including you, especially you. Success is not this mystical thing that is handed out to a select few. It's the result of building these traits day by day until they become who you are. Don't be intimidated by the entire list. You don't have to master all 7 overnight. Just start with one. Which one of these do you need the most right now? Pick that one trait and focus on it this week. Write a sticky note reminder. Do one small action each day and practice it. Keep it simple. If you chose action, for example, then every day this week, identify one important step and do it before your head hits the pillow. If you chose self-belief, start each morning with a video, an affirmation, a visualization of you accomplishing your goal. Bit by bit, you'll feel that trait growing stronger inside you. And here's a secret: these traits reinforce each other. When you act, you gain confidence. Your self-belief grows. When you persist through failure, you discover new passion and purpose. When you surround yourself with positive people around you, you'll find it easier to keep going, and your belief gets stronger. It's all interconnected. You're basically upgrading your identity piece by piece, and momentum will build. Now it's your turn. No more waiting, no more excuses. The good news is you have the blueprint. You have the same 24 hours in a day as everyone else. You have gifts inside you that the world needs. Yes, needs. It's time to unleash them. So the moment this video ends, I want you to take one concrete step toward your dream using one of these traits, even if it's tiny, especially if it's tiny. Just do it now and then do it again tomorrow and then again the next day and let those little steps compound. Remember, the only thing that can stop you is you, and you're done standing in your own way, aren't you? The fastest way to make money has absolutely nothing to do with finding the perfect business idea. In life, you get handed these things. It's not perfect. You know, even today, people want to be handed something perfect. Imagine you said the first thing that you write has to be in Hollywood. The first song that you write has to be at the top of the Billboard charts. That's the problem, that we have these overamplified views. Perfectionism doesn't advance anything. Ironically, after studying billionaires for over 1,000 hours, I found that your ability to create wealth is entirely based on how quickly you can make decisions. Always better to make a decision and be wrong than be afraid to make a decision. So not making a decision is, is like a guaranteed wrong answer. If you take a long time to make a bad decision, you're going to take a long time to Most decisions should be made by single individuals, but they need— and done quickly, in the full understanding that you can always change your mind. If you keep waiting for the right moment to start, you will spend the rest of your life watching other people live out your dreams while you stay exactly where you are. Strategy is not words. Strategy is action. When are you going to do it? When are you going to do it? You've got to create a sense sense of urgency. I'm going to do it right now. I learned from so much doing. It's why a lot of good things happen for me, because I realized just the doing is actually more efficient than the thinking about it. Richard Branson was in his 20s and stuck in an airport because his flight to the Virgin Islands was canceled. Most people just sat there complaining and waiting for the airline to fix the problem. Branson didn't wait. He immediately called a charter company, booked a private plane, and wrote Virgin Airlines $39 $1,000 on a whiteboard. He walked around the terminal, filled the plane with his fellow stranded passengers, and made his money back. That fast, fearless decision launched a billion-dollar airline empire. Now, you might be telling yourself that moving fast means being reckless and making stupid mistakes that will ruin you, but that's completely wrong. Billionaires do not make reckless choices. They just refuse to let fear paralyze them. They take fast, calculated action because they know that speed is the ultimate advantage. I'm going to show you exactly how to make lightning-fast decisions that actually build wealth without risking your entire life. Master the art of extreme concentration. Most people believe that to protect their money, they need to spread it out across many different investments. You are taught that diversification is the only safe way to build wealth. But Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the Evan Carmichael completely disagrees. He says that diversification is just a protection against ignorance. If you know exactly what you are doing, spreading your focus only slows down your success. Billionaires do not build massive wealth by putting a little bit of effort into 20 different projects. They pick one thing and they concentrate all their energy, time, and money into mastering it. When you focus intensely on a single industry, you build deep expertise. Expertise. You start to see opportunities that average people completely miss. You gain a massive competitive advantage because you understand the market better than anyone else. So if you're struggling to make money right now, look at your daily schedule. You are probably trying to run 3 different businesses, learn 5 different skills, and manage a dozen social media accounts. You're spreading yourself too thin. You need to earn your right to Concentrate. Pick the one area where you have the most passion and potential. Cut out every single distraction and direct all of your power into making that one thing incredibly successful. Program your brain for problem solving. You cannot make billion-dollar decisions if your brain is constantly overwhelmed by stress. Most people wake up, you look at your phones and immediately start panicking about the day. You live in a reactive state, letting other people dictate your focus. The ultra-wealthy protect their mental energy like it's actually their most valuable asset. They use special routines to force their brains into a state of deep and creative thought. Tom Bilyeu, friend of the channel, co-founded Quest Nutrition and turned it into a billion-dollar brand. He did not do this by working himself to death without taking a break. He created a strict morning routine to train his mind. Every single morning, he exercises to build discipline, and then he immediately meditates. He uses meditation to calm his mind and enter what's called an alpha brainwave state. This is the state where your brain is at its most relaxed and most creative. But he doesn't just sit there. Once he reaches that calm state, he practices something that he calls thinkitating. He stops quieting his mind and points his focus directly at his biggest business problems. Because his brain is relaxed, he can see the unique solutions that he would never find while being mega stressed out. You need to build a space in your day to down. Stop running from task to task. Give yourself time to think deeply, and that will unlock answers that will completely change your business. Leverage the cash conversion cycle. When the economy crashes, average people panic and close their doors. They blame the market for their failure. But billionaires see chaos as the ultimate opportunity to grow. They don't rely on outside investors to come and save them. They restructure their business to generate their own cash flow. Low so they can survive any storm that comes. During the dot-com crash in 2001, Amazon lost 90% of its value. Most internet companies went completely bankrupt. Jeff Bezos did not give up. He focused his entire company on one single metric, the cash conversion cycle. He figured out how to get paid by his customers upfront, and then he waited 28 days to pay his suppliers for the products. This meant Amazon had a negative 24-day cash conversion cycle. Evan Carmichael. By getting the money before he had to pay his bills, his business funded its own massive growth. He turned a terrible financial crisis into an actual engine that made him the richest man in the world. You need to look at how money flows through your business. Find ways to collect cash faster and pay expenses later. When you control your cash flow, you end up controlling your destiny. Apply the Russian doll hiring principle. You'll never build a massive empire entirely by yourself. At some point, you have to bring other people onto your team. The biggest mistake you can make is hiring people who are less talented than you just so you can feel like the smartest person in the room. Billionaires leave their egos at the door. They intentionally hire people who are absolute geniuses in areas where they are weak. There's a concept among the ultra-wealthy called the Russian Doll principle. If you hire people who are smaller than you, you become a a company of dwarves. If you hire people who are bigger than you, you become a company of giants. Billionaires look for people who have a fire inside them. They want team members who are self-motivated and do not need to be micromanaged every single day. You have to stop trying to be the expert at everything. Identify the tasks that drain your energy and hire someone who loves doing them. Give them the freedom to make decisions and push your company forward. When you surround yourself with brilliant people, their success becomes your success. Your job is to set the vision, and their job is to figure out the fastest way to get there. Make the ultimate commitment. Every successful person reaches a breaking point. You will face a moment where everything goes completely wrong, your money runs out, and the whole world tells you that you should quit. This is the moment that separates the people who stay broke from the people who become billionaires. You have to decide if your vision is actually worth fighting for. In 2008, Elon Musk faced the worst year of his life. SpaceX had 3 rockets explode in a row, and Tesla was weeks away from completely running out of cash. He had spent all the money he made from PayPal. He had to choose between letting one company die to save the other or risking everything to save both. He decided he would rather die trying than give up on his mission. He split his remaining money, secured last-minute contracts, and to save both companies from complete failure. You have to find that level of commitment inside yourself. If you treat your business like it's a hobby, it will pay you like a hobby. You have to burn the boats and decide that failure here is simply not an option. When you fully commit, you stop making excuses and start finding a way to win. The pressure will force you to become the leader that you are always meant to be. The ultimate choice. The only thing standing between you and the wealth you want is your own hesitation. You have the power to make a decision today that changes your entire future. So stop waiting for the perfect time and start taking massive action right now. Go build the life you know you deserve. 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 it. 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 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 broke 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. 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 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 a 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. 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 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 which is $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 a month started 10 years later. Small seeds become giant oaks, but you must plant them 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 billionaires 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 for your wealth. Importantly, build active income. So business, career, and passive incomes, which is investments and assets, do them together. 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 reality. Passive income can come from investments like stocks, uh, 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 up front 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. Mundane. 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 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 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 birds 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 fail due to cash flow 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 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 failures, failed product launches, interviews at Tank 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 people try one thing for 6 months, don't become millionaires, and then quit or jump on to the next fad. Don't fall for the get-rich-quick trap. 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. 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. 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 team 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 those who do, not those who wait. One thing I see holding entrepreneurs back is analysis 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. Doing. 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 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. Create 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 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's resting on his laurels. Money has a way of disappearing from those who take it for granted. So no matter how 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 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. If you don't design the life you want, you'll end up living a life you don't. Most people drift through their days, letting others call the shots, then wonder why they feel stuck. If you never take control, to look back and see you traded your dreams for someone else's plan. There's a famous parable about a fisherman and a businessman. The businessman urges the fisherman to expand, to work tirelessly for decades so he can eventually relax and enjoy life. But the fisherman laughs. He's already spending his days doing what he loves with the people he loves. The lesson here is to know what you actually want out of life and to live it now instead of blindly following what others think you should do. When I was 19, I lived that lesson. I had a high-paying job offer on the table, my ticket to the safe, successful life that everyone expected, and I turned it down to make $300 a month and own a piece of a startup. Why? Because I imagined myself at 40 looking back, miserable that I never gave my dream a shot. I thought, if I don't do this, I'll regret I regret it for the rest of my life. And the fear of regret was stronger than the fear of failure. So I took control and designed my own path. And it was the best decision I ever made. Now, maybe you're thinking, that sounds great, but I can't just redesign my life. I have responsibilities. I'm too deep in my career. It's too late for me. Listen, that doubt is exactly why you must start now. If you have a family depending on you, that's all the more reason to build a life that you are proud of, set an example and give them the best of you. If you think you're too old, then you definitely don't have time to waste living someone else's dream. You can use every obstacle you have as more motivation to get this right, not less. So no more waiting, no more excuses. Today, let's start designing the life that you want. Here are 5 practical steps to do it. Let's dive in. Step number 1: Take full ownership of your life. No one is coming to save you or hand you your dream life. It's on you. The first step is to accept that completely. Psychologists call this an internal locus of control, and research shows people who have it are far more successful, healthier, and happier. Here's what it means: when you believe that you shape your destiny, you actually do. So starting right now, own everything in your life, the good and the bad. Don't blame your class, the economy, or your past. The moment you take responsibility for where you are, you gain the power to change where you're going. This isn't about beating yourself up. It's about recognizing that you are in control of you. My mom drilled this into me from a young age. She used to tell me, if you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. And she was right. You can improve your life, so you must. It might feel heavy to carry that responsibility, but trust me, it's also Because if it's your responsibility, it's within your control. The life you want is not some lottery ticket. It's a choice. And you're making that choice every day with your actions as well as your inactions. So decide right now that you're in charge of your life's design. When you truly internalize that, you'll feel an incredible surge of power and clarity. This is your life, and claiming it is step one to changing it. Step number two. 2. Define a clear vision. Find your why. You can't design a life you love if you don't know what you want. So step 2 is to get crystal clear on your vision and your why. What does your ideal life look like? More importantly, why does it matter to you? Take the time to answer these questions in vivid detail. Write it down. Studies show you're 42% more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down. Don't just say, I want to be happy, or I want success. Yes, paint a specific picture. I want to run my own marketing firm helping small businesses grow, or I want to live in a cabin by the lake and write my novel. Whatever it is for you, define it so clearly that you can taste it, because if you don't have a target, you'll hit nothing. Now let's talk about purpose. A vision isn't just about the what, it's about the why. One of the best ways to find your purpose is to look at your pain. I believe your purpose comes from your pain. The biggest struggle you've overcome are the ones that you are uniquely equipped to help other people through. The challenges that knocked you down, the people that hurt you, the problems that you solved for yourself, those experiences gave you strength. Use them. Maybe you fought through poverty or you beat an illness or you overcame extreme shyness. Whatever it is, that story can become your mission. In my early entrepreneurship days, I struggled hard. I felt alone. Alone. I felt like a failure, and that was painful. That pain became my purpose. I'm now driven to help other entrepreneurs so they don't have to struggle as much as I did. Your pain can motivate your purpose in the same way. When you know why you're doing something, you'll find the strength to do anything. So get clear on what you want and why you want it. That vision will be your North Star when things get tough. Step number 3, take immediate imperfect action. Now that you know what you want, it's time to get moving. Step 3 is to take action before you feel 100% ready. Most people wait and wait for the perfect timing, the perfect plan, more certainty, and they never go anywhere. Do not fall into that trap. A good plan executed today beats a perfect plan never executed. Clarity comes from doing, not just thinking about it. When you take even a small step, you get feedback, you learn, and you build momentum. Momentum. I had to learn this the hard way. Early in my career, I was such a perfectionist that I spent an entire summer writing and polishing the perfect business plan instead of actually talking to customers. And guess what? An opportunity came and went while I was planning, and I missed out on a $40 million deal because I wasn't ready to act. Now, that hurt, but it taught me something valuable. I'll tell you exactly what I realized: most of your plan is going to be wrong anyway, so get out there and test your assumptions. I stopped overthinking and started doing, and it made a huge difference. Now, maybe you're afraid that if you act now, you might fail. So try this as a reframe: not acting is the only guaranteed failure. According to Psychology Today, 92% of people never achieve their goals, largely because they never follow through. And I don't want you to be in that 92%. So break your biggest vision into the smallest possible step and do it Hey, send that email, create that prototype, wake up an hour earlier, whatever moves you an inch closer, do it. You won't have all the answers and that's okay. You'll figure it out as you go. Action creates clarity. Action builds confidence. Every step you take sends your brain evidence that you are the kind of person who takes charge. So stop waiting, start now, adjust later. Your future self will thank you. Step number 4, surround yourself with support and belief. Designing your dream life is not a solo project. You are massively influenced by the people and the inputs around you. So step number 4 is to build a winning environment. Surround yourself with people who lift you higher, who challenge you, who believe in you, especially when you struggle to believe in yourself. Motivation doesn't last on an island. We all have moments of doubt, and that's when your environment will make or break you. Uh, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, uh, mentor, famously said, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. And there's truth in that. If your 5 closest contacts are ambitious, positive, and supportive, you're going to rise up. If they're negative, complacent, cynical, they're going to pull you down. So do an audit on who and what you're letting into your head. Sometimes you might need to set boundaries with naysayers. Uh, you might need to actively seek out mentors or people who inspire for you. And here's something incredible. One study found that if you simply tell a friend about a goal you're working on, your chance of achieving it jumps to 65%. And if you set up regular check-ins with that friend, it shoots to 95%. That's how powerful support and accountability are. Use that to your advantage. Find an accountability partner, join a mastermind group, or just ask a friend to keep you honest. And remember, support isn't only from people you know personally. Borrowed belief is real. You can draw strength from other stories and mentorship. Until you build enough of it on your own. In the early days, I borrowed belief from my mom's encouragement. Later, I borrowed it from people like Oprah Winfrey. I'd read about how she overcame extreme poverty and unimaginable challenges. And yet look what she built. Her story proved to me what's possible. I filled my environment with voices and examples that pushed me forward. Books, videos like this, virtual mentors. They can all be part of your support system. Borrow belief from your environment until you build it yourself. That's how you get through the early stages. So curate your world. Follow people who inspire you. Cut out the content that depresses you. Share your dreams with those who will cheer you on and hold you accountable. When you surround yourself with positivity and belief, you'll have the motivation and the courage to keep going when things get tough. Step number 5: Embrace failure and adapt for the long game. The final step is to treat your life design as an ongoing process. No plan will be perfect, and that's okay. You need to embrace failure as feedback and stay consistent for the long haul. When things go wrong, and trust me, they will, don't see it as proof that you can't do it. See it as part of the process of becoming who you're meant to be. Thomas Edison famously said about inventing the light bulb, I had I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. That's the mindset you need. In psychology, this is called a growth mindset. The belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning. People with this mindset thrive on challenges and persist through their setbacks. They understand that failure is not permanent. It's just a stepping stone. So keep that perspective. Every setback is teaching you something. Now, I'm not just preaching here. I try to live this. When I started my YouTube channel, it took me 5 years to crack 2,000 subscribers. 5 years of pouring my heart into videos, experimenting, failing, feeling like nothing was working. Most people would have quit, but I kept adjusting and improving instead. In the next 5 years, that 2,000 grew to 1.3 million. Today, this channel has over 4 million subscribers, and it only happened because I stayed in the game. Years of struggle and self-doubt out set the stage for an overnight success that was a decade in the making. There was also a time my team and I got all of our camera gear stolen the night before a major shoot. We woke up with nothing, thousands of dollars of equipment gone. We could have seen it as a sign to pack it in. Instead, we chose to adapt. We rented new gear, we showed up anyway and filmed. And you know what happened? The interview recorded turned out to be one of our best. And the experience taught me to have faith and that great things 'Wings come to me.' I learned that even when a branch breaks under you, you can rely on your wings. A bird on a branch isn't afraid of it breaking because its trust is in its own wings. Even if the plan fails, you can figure it out. The belief has to be in yourself, not just the plan. Designing the life you want is a journey, not a one-time project. You will stumble, you will make mistakes. Good, that means you're moving. Learn from every misstep and keep going. Straight, adjust your course, but never abandon your vision. The only way you lose for sure is if you give up. As long as you keep getting back up, you're still moving towards your dream. Pick one step from today and execute on it within the next 24 hours. Even if it's tiny, do it. Your future self is watching, and today you get to make them proud. Remember, you don't have to have it all figured out. You just need to take the next step in and then the next. The absolute worst thing you can do for your future right now is listen to the people who tell you to be realistic. Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity. Why would you be realistic? What's the point of being realistic? Don't listen to the naysayers. Everything I ever did, the thing that I heard out of people's mouth was, that's impossible. Wealth is only created by the crazy ones who ignore the limits and build products that nobody else thinks are possible. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. If you're going to do anything new or innovative, you have to be willing to be misunderstood. So I think it's important to start now. It's important to do things that you think are crazy. If you let average people talk you out of your wild ideas today, you will spend the rest of your life full of bitter and painful regret. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. The biggest poison in us is regret. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have. And, you know, I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. Think about Steve Jobs. In 1976, he had $0 and was working out of his parents' garage. His friend Steve Wozniak built a computer circuit board just for fun. Wozniak wanted to give the plans away for free because that was the realistic thing to do. But Jobs was crazy. He told Wozniak they should start a company and sell the boards. They had no money. So Jobs sold his old Volkswagen van just to buy the first parts. Everyone thought they were nuts to take on giant computer companies from a dirty garage. But because Jobs ignored the realistic advice, he built an empire that completely changed the world. Now, you might be thinking that Steve Jobs was a rare genius and you're just an average person with an empty bank account. But Jobs started out returning glass bottles just to buy food. He was not born a billionaire. He just refused to let a lack of cash shrink his vision. You have the exact same potential inside you right now to unlock that potential. I'm going to walk you through the ultimate $0 playbook inspired by one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history. Copy the rise, not the result. When you look at massive companies today, you see their shiny corporate headquarters, you see their thousands of employees, their massive advertising budgets. You look at what they are doing right now. And you try to copy it, and that is a massive mistake that will keep you broke forever. You have to copy the rise, not the result. So you must look at what your heroes did when they had $0 and zero team. So when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was an absolute disaster. They were 90 days away from total bankruptcy. They had dozens of confusing products. They had different versions of the Macintosh. Different printers, and a bunch of random software out there. The customer was completely confused. Jobs did not launch 50 new ideas to save the company. He walked into a meeting, drew a simple grid on a whiteboard with 4 squares, and changed everything. He cut 70% of the products and focused on just 4 things. He made 1 desktop and 1 portable computer for consumers, and 1 desktop and 1 portable computer for professionals. You need to do the exact same thing in your own life right now. If you're starting with $0, you cannot afford to have your attention split into 10 different directions. You cannot try to launch 5 different companies at the same time. You cannot try to master 10 different social media platforms all at once. You have to say no to almost everything so you can say yes to the one thing that actually matters. Multitasking is completely destroying your future. A major study by the American Psychological Association proves that switching between different tasks causes a 40% drop in your productivity. You need to pick one single problem to solve. Pick one product, pick one platform, go all in on that one thing. Build your momentum step by step. It takes a massive amount of energy to get the train moving, but once you have momentum, you become completely unstoppable. Focus is your greatest weapon when your bank account is empty. Build your empire with free technology. Right now you are living in the greatest time in human history to be an entrepreneur. You do not need a giant bank loan to build your team. You do not need to hire expensive agencies or consultants. You have free access to artificial intelligence that can do the work of 50 people. This year, technology is the ultimate equalizer. Generative artificial intelligence is completely changing the world and is available to you for absolutely nothing. A major report by McKinsey estimates that generative AI will add up up to $4.4 trillion to the global economy every single year. What does that actually mean for you today? It means you can use free AI tools to write your code, create your marketing plan, design your logos, and build your entire website today. You can build AI agents that handle all of your customer service while you are sleeping. You have to start using these tools immediately. Steve Jobs always believed that a computer was like a bicycle for the human mind. He believed technology should amplify your natural ability. That is exactly what you must do with AI right now. So stop making excuses about not having money to hire people. Use Gemini, use ChatGPT, use OpenClaw, use NotebookLM, use the free tools that are sitting right in front of you on your laptop. When you leverage technology properly, your $0 budget turns into a billion-dollar advantage. The winners this year will not be the people with the most most money. The winners will be the people who use the free tools to execute their crazy ideas faster than anyone else. Design the ultimate customer experience. So you can't just build a product that works, you have to build an experience that people actually love. Steve Jobs was famous for combining technology with the liberal arts. He believed that engineering and math were simply not enough to win. He said it is technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields the results that makes your heart sing. So think about the early days of Apple. Steve Jobs dropped out of college, but he dropped in on a calligraphy class just because he thought it was beautiful. Years later, he put those beautiful fonts into the first Mac computer. He cared about how things looked and how they made people feel. You have to focus on the design of your business. How does your customer feel when they interact with your brand. You want your brand to be a powerful emotion. When people watch my content, I want them to feel belief. So think about what you want people to feel. Companies that obsess over design and customer experience completely crush their competition. The Design Management Institute ran a massive study over a 10-year period. They found that design-driven companies outperformed the standard stock market index by 219%. You do not need money to care about your customer. You do not need a massive budget to make your product simple, elegant, and beautiful. Focus entirely on creating an amazing experience that your customers will never forget. The power of quality thought over production value. People get completely stuck because they think they need a massive budget to start making content. You think you need a $5,000 camera and a professional studio to be taken seriously, right? And that's a, a complete lie. All you need is your phone and a really good idea. The quality of your thought will always matter more than the quality of your production. When I look at the most successful videos that I've ever made, they were not always shot in a fancy studio, and it's not because of the quality of the camera that I had. It was me sharing a message that people needed to hear. In fact, people trust you more when you look like a normal human being instead of just a polished, I don't know, television commercial. A major report by Statla found that 86% of consumers say authenticity is the most important factor when deciding what brands they like and support. So you have to stop worrying about having the perfect lighting or the perfect microphone. Steve Jobs built the first Apple circuit board in a dirty garage, not a billion-dollar laboratory. He focused entirely on the quality of the product, not the fancy environment around him. So you have to take that exact same approach to your business today. Use the free camera in your pocket to talk directly to your audience. Give them actual value and they will never care about the background of your video. Say no to the good ideas. A lot of people think that getting rich requires having 100 billion ideas. The truth is actually the, the exact opposite. If you want to build an empire from nothing, you have to learn how to aggressively say no to almost everything. Steve Jobs famously taught that focus is not about saying yes to the thing you have to focus on. He said focus is about saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. The biggest threat to your success is not a bad idea. The biggest threat is the good ideas that distract you from your great idea. Good is always the enemy of great. When you have $0, you cannot cannot afford to waste your energy chasing shiny new objects. You have to pick one lane and dominate it completely. A major global study by Startup Genome analyzed thousands of companies and found that losing focus and trying to scale too many things at once is the primary reason that new businesses fail. Because every time you say yes to a new side project, you are stealing time and energy from your main goal. So you have to be incredibly ruthless with your calendar. Say No to the networking events that do not matter. Say no to the extra features that your product does not actually need. Keep your offering as simple and pure as possible. When you strip away all that noise, you are left with a crystal clear vision that your customers can instantly understand and trust. Start a business development show. You do not need a million subscribers to make a million dollars. That is one of the biggest myths in the entire business world. Right now. You think you need to go viral to be successful, but going viral usually brings you the wrong kind of audience. If you want to make money with $0, you need to start a business development show. This is something we teach inside our Movement Makers program. The strategy is simple: you create a podcast or video interview series, and you only invite your ideal clients or referral partners to be guests on the show. You're giving them a platform to share their story. Nobody's asking these people for interviews, so they're incredibly flattered, and they and they often say yes. You'll spend an hour with them building a real relationship and showing them exactly how you think. This strategy works because you are delivering massive value to them before you ever even ask for a single dollar. You turn a cold prospect into a warm friend just by shining a spotlight on them. You do not need a giant audience for this to work. If you do an interview with 50 of your deal clients and one of them signs a huge contract with you, your business is instantly transformed. Stop chasing random stores and start building deep connections with the people who actually want to buy what it is that you sell. Expect to suck at the beginning. The biggest reason that you're stuck right now is that you are terrified of looking stupid in front of your friends and family. You are a perfectionist, and your perfectionism is actually killing your greatest dreams. So you have to expect to suck at the beginning. When you try something completely new, you're going to be really bad at it the start, right? That's just how life works. When I started on YouTube, it took me 350 videos before I was not completely embarrassed by my own content. I hated watching myself on camera. My lighting was terrible and my audio was awful, but I kept posting anyway. It took me 700 public videos until I actually inspired myself. Now, most people quit long before they ever reach video 700. Steve Jobs had massive public failures too. You only remember the iPhone and the iPad, but you forget the painful failures that came first. The Apple Lisa computer was a giant disaster that lost the company millions of dollars and failed in the market. He was even fired from the very company that he created. He started another company called NeXT, which also struggled to sell computers to everyday people. You have to stop hiding behind your lack of money and your fear of judgment. Go make your first piece of content today. Build your first ugly prototype right now. Do the work and expect it to be terrible. The only way you get better is by putting in the repetitions. Your fear of failure is not a good enough reason to stop trying. You got to get out of your head and just take the first step. The first step is always the hardest, but is the only way you will ever build true momentum. Turn your pain pain into your purpose. So you need a massive reason to wake up every single day and fight for your business. Making money is important, and you absolutely need it to survive, but it can't be your number one goal. If money is your only goal, you will quit the second things get really hard. Your true purpose always comes from your deepest pain. Think about the hardest moments in your entire life. Think about the things that you struggled with the most. Now build a business that helps other people survive and get through the exact same struggle. You are built to serve. You want to wake up every day feeling like your life actually matters to somebody else. To do this effectively, you have to put yourself out there. You have to become the fearless face of your brand, right? So this year, people do not buy from faceless, boring corporations anymore. They buy from real human beings that they can relate to. A major study by BrainFrog discovered that 82% of people trust a company more when the leader communicates directly on social media. So you have to tell your story. Tell people why you started this journey in the first place. Use your empty bank account as a powerful badge of honor. Show your audience the raw, unfiltered truth of your daily grind. When you share your heart and your struggles, you build deep, meaningful connections that no amount of money could ever buy. So stop waiting for permission and start serving your community. When? Right now. Borrow belief until you have your own. The single biggest problem in the world right now, I think, is that people just do not believe in themselves enough. You have massive world-changing potential locked inside of you, but your environment is holding you completely back. If you are surrounded by negative people who tell you to be realistic, then you need to cut them out of your life immediately. You must fiercely control what you feed into into your mind every single day. Start your morning by listening to people who inspire you to take massive action. I call it the believe walk. Wake up, get outside 15 minutes, put on something that inspires you. You can borrow their belief until you have your own. When I'm struggling, I look at the stories of famous entrepreneurs who started with absolutely nothing. I look at Steve Jobs returning glass bottles just to buy a meal. I look at the giants who change history from a dirty garage. If they can do it, you You absolutely can too. You have to protect your mindset like your life depends on it. So stop scrolling through negative news that drains your energy and start consuming content that makes you want to get to work. Build a daily routine that fills you with belief and courage. You are just one video, one idea, or one brave decision away from completely changing your entire life. You have everything you need right now, even if your bank account is absolutely zero. You just have to decide that you are going to win and take the first step today. Your next step to greatness. Never let anyone tell you that your dreams are too big for your current reality. You have greatness inside of you, and it is finally time to let it out. So keep taking massive action, keep pushing forward, and never give up on your vision. Your intelligence is the reason you're not successful. Being smart might actually be holding you back. Every Every day I see brilliant people with sky-high IQs lose to others with half their talent. Why? Because intelligence alone doesn't automatically translate to results. If you keep letting your smarts run the show, you'll watch those average people, the ones who show up consistently and push through, leapfrog right over you. And the worst part? The world misses out on your genius. The woman who should have cured cancer might be stuck in a dead end job because she didn't believe in herself or take action. Think of the tortoise and the hare. The fast, cocky hare, the smart one, took a nap thinking he had the race won. The slow but steady tortoise kept going and crossed the finish line first. In real life, too many smart people act like the hare, so confident in their brainpower that they get complacent or overcomplicate everything while the less assuming tortoises quietly grind out the win. Being the hare might feel good at first, but it doesn't win races. I learned that the hard way. In my early 20s, I had a shot at a life-changing deal selling my first company for millions of dollars. I was trying to be the smart kid with a detailed plan, and I overplanned everything. I spent months crafting the perfect business plan instead of actually doing something. And guess what happened? A big company came looking to buy businesses like mine but we weren't ready to move. It came down to my company and our biggest competitor, and we lost. And that competitor of ours got bought for $40 million while I was still polishing my plan. $40 million. That stung. I could have sold my business for $40 million, but I missed my shot because I was being too perfect. That failure woke me up. I realized my smart plan was really just fear in disguise. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of it not being perfect. Perfectionism is really just fear. We call it diligence, but really you're just scared. I decided to become a recovering perfectionist after that. Now when I get a great idea, I force myself to act on it immediately before my brain can come up with 20 reasons to wait. I learned that a half-assed plan that you actually execute is better than a perfect plan that stays in your head. Now at this point you might be thinking, Evan, are you saying I should stop being smart? Am I supposed to dumb it down to succeed? No, I'm not saying abandon your brain or act recklessly. Recklessly. I'm saying you have to change how you use your intelligence. Right now, your smarts are running the show and running you into a wall. You probably pride yourself on being the smartest person in the room, but is that working out for you? If you're so smart, why aren't you where you want to be? The truth is, raw intelligence without execution gets you nowhere. You have to get out of your head and into action. Being smart is a gift, but if you don't pair that gift with courage, with discipline, with hustle, it will absolutely hold you back. Don't let your ego or fear of not looking smart keep you from growing. The only thing worse than being seen as not smart is being full of potential and never actually achieving anything. So yes, keep your intelligence, but put it to work for you, not against you. So let's talk about how to fix this. Let's turn your intelligence into an asset instead of a liability. Here we go. Why smart people struggle with success and how to turn it around. Around. Number 1, you overthink everything. Smart people can get stuck in analysis paralysis. Your brain sees 20 angles to every problem. You can imagine every possible outcome, and all that analysis leaves you spinning in circles. Sound familiar? You plan and you plan and you plan, and nothing actually happens. Meanwhile, someone with half your brain power just picks a direction and goes. They get results while you're still in your head. Here's deal. Thinking about doing something and actually doing it are completely different things. No matter how brilliant your idea is, you must act on it. Studies in cognitive psychology even show that excessive deliberation can lead to worse decisions because you start second-guessing yourself and overcomplicating simple choices. So what's the solution? Decide and go. Give yourself a deadline to make a decision and then execute. Cute. Trust your intuition and start moving. You can adjust course as you go. Remember, real progress happens in the real world, not in your head. Don't let overthinking murder your momentum. Number 2: You're chasing perfect and it's slowing you down. This was my curse. In school, you might have been the kid who got A's, who set super high standards. In life and business, those high standards can actually cripple you. You rewrite the opening chapter 7 times. Times and never publish the book. You tinker with your product endlessly because it's not good enough yet to launch. Guess what? Perfect is the enemy of progress. Successful people execute and then iterate. Unsuccessful smart people keep polishing a draft that never sees the light of day. Here's how one entrepreneur put it: You can't refine what doesn't exist. You can't improve a product that never launched. Average performers often beat perfection greatness because they're willing to put out good enough and then improve later. My own $40 million mistake was due to perfectionism. I waited and wanted the perfect plan, and I was too late. Learn from my mistake. Launch messy. Embrace mistakes. Done is better than perfect. And remember that urge to be perfect? It's really fear. Perfectionism is fear in a tuxedo. It looks respectable, even admirable, but it's killing your success. Punch fear in the face by putting out your work, flaws and all. Progress beats perfection every time. Number 3, you rely on talent instead of work. This one stings, but I've seen it so often. Things come easy for you, right? School, jobs, picking up new skills. You're used to being the best with minimal effort. Meanwhile, others had to grind to get good. And the result is you never developed the discipline and habits that success actually requires. Maybe you breezed through school without studying, so you never learned how to truly truly study or struggle. You prided yourself on pulling off last-minute miracles or acing presentations with no prep, and it worked until now. So when you finally hit something hard, something that doesn't come instantly, you stall or quit because you don't have the tools or grit to push through. Psychology research backs this up. People who think intelligence is fixed tend to avoid challenges that might prove them wrong, but those who believe abilities grow with are the ones who persist when things get tough. So natural talent might open the door, but discipline, resilience, and grind get you to the finish line. If you've coasted on talent, it's time to be humble and get to work. Being smart is not an excuse to be lazy. Embrace the beginner's mindset. Push yourself to do the uncomfortable drills, the boring repetitions, the late-night study sessions. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard every single time. Number 4, you get bored and lose focus. Focus. So let's get real, highly intelligent people get bored easily. Your brain craves novelty and big ideas. Once you figure something out, doing the actual work feels tedious. You love planning the project but hate the day-to-day grind of executing it. And I get it, but here's the reality: most success is built in the boring middle. The book that you want to write, 5% is the exciting idea and 95% is sitting down day after day banging out words or editing. And that business you want to build, the concept is thrilling, but actually building it involves a thousand tedious tasks, paperwork and emails and routines. Not exactly fun or intellectually stimulating. The smartest people often struggle here. Isn't this work beneath me? No, this work makes you. Consistency is the secret weapon of the average. Those who succeed are willing to do the uninspiring stuff consistently without constantly questioning, is this worth my genius? If boredom is killing your momentum, fix it by reframing the boring stuff as a challenge. Can you show up and execute even when it's not exciting? That's your new game. Also, systemize your life. Build routines and accountability that keep you moving forward even when you're not feeling it. The ability to do boring things consistently is incredibly valuable. Master it and you'll leave the be dabbling geniuses in the dust. Number 5, you live in theory, not reality. Smart people often fall in love with theories and big picture ideas. You might design elegant strategies in your head, craft perfect models of how things should work. But then here's how things do work in real life, which is usually much messier. If you're too attached to the ideal scenario, you can become disconnected from actual reality. So for example, you might refuse to launch a product until you understand every aspect perfectly, or you insist on a plan going exactly as imagined. And when it doesn't, you freeze. Meanwhile, less brilliant people are adapting on the fly and they're getting results. So what's the fix? Embrace reality and adjust. Don't let your beautiful theory stop you from getting your hands dirty. Maybe your strategy should be tweaked. That's fine. Maybe your hypothesis was wrong. Learn and you pivot. Actionable data comes from the real world. Not the daydreams. So don't wait for conditions to match your mental model. Get out there, try stuff, and adjust to the feedback. Remember, your ability to learn and adapt beats your ability to pontificate. Stay grounded and stay flexible. Number 6, you undervalue emotional intelligence and help from others. Success is not a solo brain game. It's a team sport. If you're brilliant but can't work with other people, you're going to hit a ceiling fast. Maybe you've told yourself, others just slow me down, or no one can do it as well as I can, right? Classic smart person trap. The truth is, someone with average IQ but great people skills will outrun a genius who alienates others. Businesses, careers, life— they all run on relationships. If you struggle to communicate, to collaborate, or to ask for help, that's a major blind spot. And I used to try everything alone and not admit weakness loneliness. It nearly broke me. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that I was struggling, and that loneliness almost made me quit. I learned that if you don't ask for help, you end up stuck and isolated and far more likely to fail. So don't let the pride or social awkwardness sabotage you. You don't have to be an extrovert or the life of a party. I'm not. Just develop the skills to connect and communicate. Listen more, be curious about others, find mentors, and accept their advice. If you lack some of the soft skills, learn it. Being smart means you can grow here too. Remember, being right isn't enough. You have to bring others along if you want to do something big. And if you have a big dream, you'll definitely need others. So start valuing emotional intelligence as much as book intelligence. It's not soft. It's the glue that holds your success together. Okay, now let's bring this home. We've identified the traps: overanalysis, perfectionism, coasting on talent, lacking of follow-through. Living in theory, and flying solo. These are natural tendencies of a powerful mind, but if you leave them unchecked, they become big barriers. The great news is you can overcome each one. Self-awareness is step 1. If you've nodded along or, or winced at any of these points, you're already learning where to improve. Step 2 is to work with your tendencies instead of against them. Build systems and habits to counteract your weak spots. For example, if you know that you overthink, set strict deadlines or accountability partners to force action even when you're in your head. If you're a perfectionist, set good enough goals. Deliberately release version 1.0 of a project when it's 80% there, just to prove to yourself the world doesn't end if it's not perfect. If you get bored, gamify the process or tie boring tasks to a deeper mission that actually fires you up. Practice doing things before you feel fully ready for them. This starts to train you to gather real-world world feedback. And if going it alone is not working for you, find a coach, a community, a partner who can push you and keep you accountable. And most of all, shift your identity. Don't see yourself as the smart one. See yourself as the bold one, the action taker, the lifelong learner, the resilient fighter. Yes, you're smart. So use that brain to strategize ways to get out of your comfort zone instead of clever excuses to stay in it. My mom used to tell me me, if you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. And that hit me hard and stays with me. Your intelligence is a gift, not just for acing tests or impressing people, but for making an impact. If you're capable of more, you owe it to yourself and the world to do more. I know there's genius inside of you. Everybody has what I call Michael Jordan level talent or genius. That's something. Don't let it go to waste because of fear, laziness, or ego. Break the patterns. Do the uncomfortable work. The world needs what you have, and you deserve to fulfill the measure of your potential. You will never become wealthy without mastering one skill. You were told to be well-rounded, but that guarantees you'll be a jack of all trades and master of none. If you keep dabbling in everything, you'll stay busy but broke while someone else becomes the best and claims all the rewards. Warren Buffett had to conquer a crypto crippling fear before he could become one of the richest people on the planet. He was so terrified of public speaking in college that he would literally vomit from anxiety. Buffett knew that if he didn't master public speaking, none of his other talents would matter. If you can't communicate, it's like winking at a girl in the dark— nothing happens. So he invested $100 in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course, and it transformed his life. In fact, Buffett says that honing communication skills is the one easy way to boost your worth by 50% overnight. The proof hangs on his office wall— not his college diploma, but his Dale Carnegie certificate from 1952, the symbol of the skill that made everything else possible. He felt the same pressure that you're feeling right now, the fear of stepping out of your comfort zone to learn that one skill that changes everything. When I was 19, I had to the hardest decision of my life: take a prestigious, high-paying job or stay with my own struggling startup that paid me $300 a month. I chose my company and immediately fell into the lowest point of my life. I worked 12-hour days and still felt worthless and ashamed because nothing was working. And finally hit my breaking point. One night I told my business partner, I'm done, I quit. I was ready to give up on my dream and crawl back to the safe path. Death. But the next morning, I felt a new fire. I realized I could handle failing, but I couldn't live with quitting on myself. So I gave my dream one more shot. I started desperately looking for answers, studying how Bill Gates built Microsoft. I learned that Gates's first big break came from a partnership deal. He mastered the skill of selling through partnerships. That was his move. So I stopped cold calling customers and started modeling Gates. I began reaching out to potential partners, and within a few weeks, I closed my the first big deal of my life. That one partnership brought in more revenue than we had made in years. We went from nearly going bankrupt to getting acquired. I was this close to giving up entirely, but learning and applying one new skill under pressure saved my business. I felt the fear, I hesitated, but I acted anyway, and it changed everything for me. Now maybe you're thinking, sounds great, but I'm not a natural at any one thing, or won't I limit myself if I focus on just one skill? That is exactly the fear that's keeping you stuck. No one starts as an expert. Buffett was terrified of speaking. I was an introvert who didn't know how to sell. Skills are learned, not born. Science shows your mind and abilities are far more malleable than you think. And focusing on one thing now doesn't limit your life. It's what will finally unleash your potential. So let's get practical and break down the brutal truth about learning that one skill that will make you wealthy. The one skill that will make you wealthy: communication and persuasion. Ask any self-made millionaire and they'll admit a harsh truth. Being great at one skill beats being average at a dozen. In fact, when 20 ultra-successful people were asked which single skill had the biggest impact on their success, every one of them gave the same answer: sales and persuasion. Why? Because if you can't convince others, you can't close clients, you can't inspire your team, you can't attract attract investors. Nothing happens until a sale is made. Communication is the ultimate wealth-building skill. Warren Buffett flat out says that improving your ability to communicate in writing and speaking can increase your value by 50% instantly. Sir Richard Branson, billionaire founder of Virgin, calls communication the most important skill any leader can possess. It makes the world go round by allowing you to share ideas and inspire action. And research backs us up. 85% of your success comes from your people skills, your communication, negotiating, leading, and only 15% from technical knowledge. You could be a genius coder, a brilliant inventor, but if you can't convey your vision or persuade others to join you, your impact and your income will be limited. So what one skill should you learn? Start with the skill that multiplies all others: communication. This means mastering how to sell, how to speak, how to write, how to listen. Every entrepreneur needs to sell, whether it's selling your product, your business plan, or simply selling yourself and your ideas. Even billionaire Mark Cuban stresses that knowing how to sell was key to his success. And finance guru Robert Kiyosaki said the number one skill of an entrepreneur is the ability to sell not just products, but yourself and your vision. The bottom line is your net worth is tied directly to your communication skills. If you hone the art of persuasion, doors open, clients Clients say yes. Investors sign on. Employees rally behind your mission. It's the force multiplier for your wealth. Still not convinced? Think about the people that you admire, the greatest leaders and business titans, whether it's Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. They all became world-class communicators in their own styles. They learned to tell stories, to influence, to rally people. If you feel sales is a dirty word or public speaking isn't your natural strength, we need to rewrite that story. These are learnable skills. Remember Buffett throwing up from his nerves and then remember that he became a folksy, confident communicator that is beloved by millions. You can learn this. Pick one aspect of communication, for example, uh, closing sales calls or public speaking on camera and decide to get exceptionally good at it. It will make more difference to your bank account than any minor skill ever could. Focus. Depth beats breadth. Becoming wealthy means becoming exceptional at something. The marketplace only rewards the top few percent with massive wealth, and to join those ranks, you need laser-like focus. The truth is that being world-class in one area obliterates being pretty good in many. There's a reason Bruce Lee said, I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced kick 10,000 times. Mastery is intimidating. Mastery earns disproportionate rewards in almost every field. A superstar earns more than 100 competent people combined. The best salesperson in a company often outsells the entire bottom half of the sales force. The top 1% of entrepreneurs in an industry capture most of the profits. This is a winner-take-all world, and the winners are those who do one thing to the extreme. And that's the brutal truth. You can't be casually great. You have to choose your arena and pour yourself into it. It's not about working more hours, it's about directing your energy to the highest impact area and saying no to everything else. Steve Jobs put it best: focus is about saying no to the 100 other good ideas. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the first thing he did was slash projects. He understood that chasing too many ideas would dilute excellence. The same applies to your personal growth. Every skill or opportunity you don't pursue is actually a win because it protects your focus for the one that matters. Look at any elite performer— athletes, artists, CEOs— and you'll find an insane level of focus behind the scenes. They're not just dabbling, they're obsessing. Studies on expert performance shows that intense, narrow focus is the only way to reach an elite level. You cannot accidentally become an expert while multitasking on 10 things. You have to go all in. That might mean sacrificing hobbies, saying no to social engagements, or turning down shiny business opportunities that distract from your main thing. It will definitely mean enduring boredom and repetition, but that's the price of admission for the wealth-making skill. But the good news is that focus is a skill in itself. You get better at focusing the more you practice it. So start building your focus muscle by cutting one distraction today. Carve out time for your one skill and protect it ruthlessly. It might feel like you're giving up variety, but what you're really doing is trading short-term breadth for long-term breadth. Once you master one thing, you'll have the resources and credibility to explore other interests later on. As the saying goes, you can do everything you want in life, just not all at once. So choose the one that will be your foundation. Depth beats breadth every time. Next, practice with purpose. How to master your skill. Deciding to focus on one skill is step one. Step two is putting in the work day after day to actually become great at it. Here's where many people fail, but not you. You're going to approach practice like a pro, not a hobbyist. That means using deliberate practice, the kind of focused, feedback-driven practice that builds champions. It's not about doing more hours mindlessly. It's about how you use your hours. According to psychologist Anders Ericsson, Deliberate practice is a very specific process. It's a laser-focused activity. You isolate the sub-skills you need to improve, push yourself just beyond your comfort zone, and get immediate feedback. It requires intense concentration, and it's often mentally exhausting. It's not always fun, but it works. This is how concert violinists and chess grandmasters and Olympic athletes are made, and it's how you will become a master of your chosen skill. Regular practice might maintain your skills, but deliberate practice is the only way to reach expert level and break past plateaus. So embrace that fact now. If it feels easy, you're not growing. So what does this look like for you, the entrepreneur honing that one wealth-building skill? Let's get practical. Start by scheduling daily deep work. Block out time on your calendar every single day to work on your chosen skill with full focus. Consistency beats intensity. 30 minutes of focused practice every day trumps a 5-hour cram session on a random Saturday. Every day. By making it a non-negotiable routine, you're training your brain that this is who you are now. World-class communicators, for example, often practice their speeches or sales pitches for hours, tweaking every tone and word. Treat your practice time like an important meeting that you can't miss. Over time, these daily improvements compound into mastery. Next, target your weaknesses. Don't just do the easy stuff that you're already good at. Deliberate practice is about attacking your weak points. If you're learning to sell and you're great at talking but bad at listening, spend your practice sessions role-playing listening and asking questions. If you're working on public speaking and you always mumble the conclusion, rehearse just the final 30 seconds 20 times in a row. This approach is supported by research. Practitioners focus above all on what they can't do in order to improve. It will be uncomfortable to confront your flaws, but that's exactly where your growth lives. Next, get feedback and track progress. You need a way to measure whether you're improving or not. That could mean recording your sales calls and critiquing them, or getting a mentor or coach to review your performance. Have metrics if possible. For example, your conversion rate on sales calls or the number of ums in your speech, and aim to reduce them. Deliberate practice thrives on feedback. No feedback, no improvement. So find a way to get instant input on how you're doing and keep track of it. What gets measured gets improved. Next, embrace the suck. There will be days when practicing your skill feels like slamming into a wall. Good. That means you're on the edge of your capability, exactly where you should be. Remember the study of elite violinists. The exercises that improved performance the most were rated as the is the least enjoyable. The top performers in any field learn to love the plateaus, to tolerate the frustration of slow progress because they know a breakthrough is coming. So when you hit a resistance, a boring drill, a failed attempt, a rejection, don't shy away, lean in. This is the part that 99% of people can't handle, which is why 99% of people stay average. You're forging resilience. Every time you struggle and don't quit, you're strengthening your identity a master in the making. Next, model the best. Seek out people who are already world-class at the skill that you're developing. Watch what they do. Read their biographies or interviews. Watch their videos. Success leaves clues. If you want to be a great negotiator, study Chris Voss or read about how Jack Ma negotiated Alibaba's early days. If you want to be a charismatic speaker, analyze talks by Tony Robbins or Les Brown. Steal their technique shamelessly and practice them until you make them your own. Mentors and role models can cut your learning curve dramatically. I turned my business around by modeling Bill Gates's partnership strategy. I let someone who'd already solved the problem that I was facing show me the way. You can do the same in any field. Next, never stop learning. The journey doesn't end when you become good at your skill. The truly wealthy keep upgrading their skills continuously. Elon Musk taught himself rocket gains by reading textbooks. Warren Buffett, at age 90, still spends 80% of his day reading to deepen his knowledge. The richest people on Earth never stop learning because the moment you stop, you stagnate. So adopt a growth mindset for life. Be forever a student of your craft. Stay curious, stay humble, and keep pushing yourself even after you start seeing success. This not only keeps you sharp, it also keeps you ahead of everyone trying to catch up up to you. Remember, every expert was once a beginner. Every legendary skill was forged through hours and hours of unseen grind. You can do the same, but you have to be willing to pay the price in practice and persistence. It's not magic, it's a choice. Choose to put in the work when others won't. Choose to focus on improvement instead of just going through the motions. If you do that consistently, it is inevitable, truly inevitable, it's inevitable that you will rise to the top of your field. And when you do, wealth will no longer be a question of if, but when. Your next move. All right, you've watched the video, you've learned, and now it's on you. This is your moment of truth. Will you keep being interested in success? Will you commit to mastery? Decide on that one skill that will make the biggest difference in your business and make it your mission to conquer it. I know it's hard, but you're here right now proving that you have the hunger to improve, and that already sets you apart. So I'm proud of you for showing up, and now I'm proud of you for doing the work. Now get out there and make your move. Do you want to know the real secret to making this year your best year yet? It's not a mystery or a gimmick. It comes down to adopting the same proven principles that fueled the world's most successful entrepreneurs. And here's the brutal truth. The truth, if you don't start applying these principles immediately, you risk letting another year slip by with nothing to show for it but regret and missed opportunities. In fact, I learned this the hard way. When I started my YouTube channel, it took me 5 years to reach just 2,000 subscribers. I was awkward on camera, I had no clear strategy, and I felt insecure and shy about putting myself out there, but I refused to quit. I kept creating video after video, even when hardly anyone no one was watching. I just kept going, and that relentless consistency paid off. I slowly improved, my audience grew, and now that tiny channel has become a community of millions of entrepreneurs around the world. The lesson for me was overnight success is a myth. Consistent effort is the real game changer. Now, you might be thinking, okay, that sounds great for you, Evan, but I'm not sure I can do it. Or maybe I'll start when I feel ready. This is exactly where most people stumble. They wait for perfect conditions or a burst of motivation that never comes. Stop right there. As the famous entrepreneur Napoleon Hill put it, don't wait. The time will never be just right. There will always be an excuse to delay. You're too young, you're too old, you're too busy, the economy is not ideal. But waiting only guarantees one thing, that nothing changes. If you're hesitating because you're scared to fail or you feel unprepared, remember that action beats inaction. Action every time. You don't have to be perfect to start. You just have to start. So now let's get into the practical steps that can make this year the year that everything changes for you. Step number 1: Define your vision and goals. Successful entrepreneurs begin with a clear vision. What does your best year actually look like to you? Define it. Set specific goals for this year and write them down. Yes, write them down. Why? Studies show that you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down. So don't just wing it, create a plan. As author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famously said, a goal without a plan is just a wish. So break your big goal into monthly and weekly targets so you always know your next step. Make sure your goals align with your purpose and passion. In my book Built to Serve, I talk about how creating clarity and purpose for your life and aligning that purpose with your business allows to lead a life of impact. When you know why you're chasing a goal, you'll have the fuel to keep going when things get tough. So take an hour this week, grab a notebook, and map out exactly what you want from this year. The clarity you gain will give you direction and motivation every single day. Number 2: Build winning habits and be consistent. Big goals are achieved through tiny actions repeated daily. It's all about habits and consistency. Consistency. You can't rely on short bursts of inspiration and then fall off. Long-term consistency beats short-term intensity, Bruce Lee once said. And that is 100% true in business and life. Decide on a few core habits that will move you toward your goal, whether it's making 10 sales calls a day or coding for 1 hour or writing 1 page of your book, and commit to doing them every day. Science backs this up. Research shows that it takes on average it takes 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. Now, some habits will click faster, some will click slower, but the key factor is repetition. So don't be discouraged if it's hard at first. Stick with it. For example, if you want to start every morning with a workout or a reading session, set a time, make it a non-negotiable, and keep at it until it feels weird not to do it. Remember, consistency now is your superpower. It's the tortoise care. Small daily improvements lead to stunning results over time. Number 3: Keep learning every day. The most successful entrepreneurs are lifelong learners. If you're not growing, you're standing still while the competition races ahead of you. Commit to feeding your mind new knowledge and ideas this year. This could mean reading books, taking courses, watching educational videos like this one right here— whatever works for you, but make it a habit. According to research on self-made millionaires, 85% of them read 2 or more books per month, and 88% of them devote at least 30 minutes a day to reading or self-education. Think about that— nearly 9 out of 10 wealthy, successful people are reading every day. Success leaves clues, and this is a big one. So schedule time in to learn. Wake up 30 minutes earlier to read a chapter, or turn your commute into a mobile university by listening to audiobooks or podcasts, watching YouTube videos. Not sure where to start? Pick up a book that builds a skill that you need, or study— my favorite— study the biography of someone who achieved what you aspire to. There's a good chance I've covered them in my Top 10 Rules series right here on this channel. The point is to keep improving yourself. New knowledge will spark new ideas, which then boosts your confidence, which then helps you make smarter decisions throughout the year. Number 4, surround yourself with the right people. Your environment will make or break you. Jim Rohn used to say, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Your peers hugely influence your success. In fact, Time magazine reported that if you want to change some aspect of your life, finding like-minded friends will increase your chances of success. Surround yourself with people who inspire you, who challenge you, who push you to be better. If all your friends are ambitious entrepreneurs, you're gonna feel pushed to level up. If your circle is full of pessimists and procrastinators, you're gonna get dragged down to mediocrity. And there's science behind this too. Researchers have found that habits and attitudes spread through social networks. So for example, uh, one famous study showed that if a close friend becomes obese, your own risk of obesity increases by 57%, not because of some magic, but because their habits and mindset rub rub off on you. Now flip that. If you hang around people who are health-conscious, goal-oriented, and positive people, you're far more likely to adopt those traits yourself too. So seek out a mastermind group, find a mentor, join a community of entrepreneurs, whether it's online or offline. Engage with people who are already where you want to be, or they're at least on their journey alongside you. And if there are toxic or unsupportive people in your life, you know, you know who I'm talking about— the ones who shoot down your ideas they fill your mind with all this doubt, it's time to set some boundaries. You don't necessarily have to completely cut someone off if it's family or a longtime friend, but limit the time you invest in naysayers. Protect your environment. It's easier to stay motivated and confident when you're surrounded by others who are striving for great things too. Number 5, prioritize your health and energy. Entrepreneurship can be a grind. It's long hours, high stress, which is exactly why taking care of your health needs to be a top priority this year. Think of it this way: you are the engine of your business, right? If you're sluggish, you're sick, you're chronically exhausted, everything in your life and your business suffers. But when you're healthy, you're energized, you can perform at your peak. And there is plenty of science that reinforces this. Regular exercise, for example, doesn't just build muscle or help you lose weight, it literally makes your brain work better. Studies have found that the brain regions responsible for for memory and thinking are larger in people who exercise regularly than in those who don't. Exercise improves your mood and reduces anxiety too, which means a clearer, sharper mind for tackling business challenges. So make a commitment to your physical well-being. This could mean hitting the gym or doing home workouts a couple times a week, walking each morning, practicing yoga, dancing salsa, whatever keeps you active. And don't forget the basics: sleep Sleep and nutrition. All the positive mindset in the world won't help you if you're chronically sleep deprived and running on junk food. So prioritize getting a solid 7 to 8 hours of sleep. Research shows that lack of sleep sharply impairs your cognitive performance and focus. Essentially, when you sacrifice your sleep, you're operating with a handicap. And fuel your body with better food— more water, more veggies, more protein, less sugar, less processed garbage. You'll be amazed at how much more energy and concentration you have when you treat your body with respect. High achievers often treat their body like a business asset because it is. So this year, decide that you won't just build your business, you'll build your fitness and your energy too. The ROI is too valuable. Number 6: Take action and embrace failure. Finally, none of the advice in the world matters if you don't take action. Knowledge alone Phone will not change your life. Execution will. Too many people get stuck in planning mode or waiting mode. They say, uh, uh, I'll launch my product once it's perfect, or I'll start making sales calls when I feel more confident, right? Successful entrepreneurs have a bias towards action. They start now with whatever they have and they learn as they go. Only 9% of people stick to their New Year's goals. The other 91% fail often because they don't follow through or they give give up at the first setback. I don't want that to be you, just another statistic, and I know that you don't either. So start before you're ready. Make the call, post a website, publish the video, do something that moves you just one step closer to your goal today. And here's a big part of taking action: embrace failure as part of the process. Don't shy away from it. Expect it. Learn from it. Every success story is built on a pile of screw-ups and lessons learned. The difference is successful people keep going instead of quitting. Think of Sir James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum. He went through 5,127 different prototypes over 5 years. That's 5,127 failed versions of his product before he finally invented the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. 5,127 failures. Most people would have given up after 5 or 50 or maybe 500 times, but Dyson, he persisted. He tweaked, he improved each time, and that unwavering persistence made him a billionaire entrepreneur in the end. As he later remarked, you learn from failure, not from success. So each failure was just data, it's feedback to help make the next attempt better. So when you hit a wall this year— and listen, you will at some point— don't see it as the end of the road. See it as a lesson. Ask Ask yourself, what can I learn from this? How can I adjust and try again? If a marketing strategy flops, analyze why it didn't work and pivot. If a client says no, figure out what you can improve for the next pitch. Treat failure like a scientist treats an experiment. It's just information to guide your next move. No failure, no growth. This mindset shift is crucial. Once you're not afraid of failing, there's literally nothing that can stop you because you'll just keep going until you win, and you will win. Your time The time is now. You spent these minutes learning strategies to make this year incredible. Now I want you to implement. Even just picking one of these steps to start with can build massive momentum in your life. And by the way, give yourself credit for even just being here. The fact that you chose to spend time feeding your mind with positivity and knowledge means you're already separating yourself from the pack. Most people would rather binge some mindless content, but not you. You're investing in yourself, and that is huge. So keep this momentum going. Surrounding yourself with this kind of motivation and education is part of shaping your environment and your habits for success. That's why I make these videos every day. So come back again tomorrow. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep taking action. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. To watch 26 years of brutally honest business advice in 3 3 hours, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. Most of what you've been taught about success is designed to keep you safe, not to 10x your life. Over the next 3 hours, we are stripping away the theories and looking at the raw, unfiltered reality of what it takes to build something