It Took Me 45 Years and Losing Almost Everything To Realize What I'll Tell You In 43 Minutes

Being realistic about your goals is the absolute worst advice anyone can give you. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Everything you want as a YouTube creator, every freaking goal you want to hit, whether it be subscribers— you want to hit 1 million or 10 million or whatever— will come if you just make the best videos possible. So my goal, and this is what it will be till the day I die, is to make the best YouTube videos possible. When we were putting together this tour, I had some really lofty goals I wanted to reach conceptually. When you lower your expectations to match what is normal, you kill the exact vision that makes your ideas special. My family was still mad at me for not going to medical school, and now my wife was divorcing me because I lacked ambition. Once again, I was unable to live up to the expectations of others. Their dreams and my dreams were different. I'm always going to expect myself to do certain things or surpass certain things. As long as I believe that, then, you know, my road to success is going to continue to expand. Everybody told me I couldn't have what I was dreaming of. Everybody told me it's not possible. Give it up. Don't have high expectations. But the truth is, my entire life I've had monster, monster expectations. And if you keep playing small to make other people comfortable, you'll lose your passion and end up working for someone else's 10-year plan. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. I wrote this over and over and over again. I talked to myself in the mirror. I'd sit on the toilet and say, one day, one day I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a million dollars. One day, one day. And people used to tell me, that's crazy, dude. Like, why do you think so big? This is when people were telling me not to. What do you believe holds people back from just taking action? Other people's opinions. And how do you overcome that? By telling your mom to go fuck themselves. I'm 45 years old right now, but when I was 19, I joined a biotech software company. I worked 15 hours a day, but I only made $300 a month. I owned 30% of the startup, but I was eating beans every single day because that's what I could afford. I almost lost the business multiple times. I was so close to giving up and taking a realistic, safe $100K+ banking job, and my own brain was giving me incredibly smart reasons why I should quit. But I asked myself one question: When I'm an old man at 40 or 45 years old, will I regret not chasing this unrealistic dream? And the answer was yes. So I decided to stop playing small. I modeled success from Bill Gates and finally saved the business. If I had listened to the people telling me to be realistic, you wouldn't be watching this video right now. But I have bills to pay. You're sitting there thinking it's easy for a 19-year-old to eat beans. You have rent, you have kids, you need a steady paycheck right now. You're absolutely right about your responsibilities, but playing it safe doesn't actually protect your family. It just guarantees that you stay stuck. The risk of failing at a normal job is just as high as in a business, but the upside is zero. You can protect your family and chase a massive dream at the same time. Let me show you the exact steps to build your empire without risking your rent money. 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. Leave. Redefine your risk. So most people think of starting a business means risking everything. You think you need to empty your bank account, quit your job, and go completely broke. That is the absolute wrong way to do it. You can start testing your idea right now for exactly $0. A major study shows that 60% of new businesses fail within the first 3 years, and it is almost always because they just run out of cash. Don't be part of that statistic. Keep your day job to pay your rent. Use your evenings to build your real dream. Spend just 1 hour every single night working on your idea. You don't need to be reckless to be successful. You just need to be incredibly consistent. Start small and test what actually works with real customers. If you want to start a marketing agency, don't run an expensive office. Send 50 emails to local dentists offering to run their ads. When your side income finally matches your job income, then you can quit. Until then, use your job to fund your empire. This keeps the pressure off your creativity. You make terrible decisions when you're stressed out about paying for groceries. So keep the steady paycheck and build your legacy in the dark. You can start reaching out to 10 potential clients today on social media without spending a single dollar on ads. The internet right here gives you free access to the entire world. Use it. Your lack of a budget is an actual advantage because it forces you to be creative. But what is the exact thing you should be building? I'll show you how to figure that out right now. Discover your core value. So you need to figure out your most important core value. I call this your one word. My word is belief. Every single decision I run through this exact filter: does this project spread belief? If yes, I try to do it. If no, then I skip it. Research from the Harvard Business Review shows that companies with a clear purpose have 400% more growth than companies without one. This applies to you too. I recently analyzed data from 50 different billionaires to find their common success frameworks. Every single one of them had a massive, undeniable core value that drove their decisions. So think about the hardest moments of your life. How did you pull yourself out of the darkness? The specific lesson you learned in that pain is your core value. You want to teach other people how to avoid the exact pain that you went through. Once you know your word, your entire business plan becomes incredibly easy. You stop copying other people and you start building something that only you can build. So look at your favorite movies, your favorite songs, your favorite teachers. They all share a common theme. That theme is your core value. When you align your business with your deepest value, you stop feeling exhausted and burnt out. You wake up with energy because you feel like your work actually matters to you, because it does. You aren't just selling a product or service anymore. You're leading a movement, even if it's a small one. But what happens when you wake up feeling completely crushed by doubt? I have a specific system to fix that immediately. Borrow belief from giants. So you'll have days where you completely doubt yourself. Your environment will try to drag you down. The people around you might tell you to just be normal and play it safe, man. You need to change exactly who is in your ear. When I started my channel, nobody in my real life really understood what I was doing, so I borrowed belief from people who are already massively successful. I listened to Steve Jobs and Les Brown in my ear every morning. It's called my believe walk. Get outside, put something in your ear that helps you believe in yourself more. A study by the American Society of of Training and Development found that having a mentor increases your chance of success by 65%. If you don't have a mentor in real life, find one online. Listen to their interviews while you brush your teeth. Watch their speeches when you commute to work. Fill your brain with the voices of people who absolutely refuse to play small, and their extreme confidence will slowly become your confidence. You'll start thinking bigger because you're surrounded by giant thinkers. You have to aggressively guard your mind. Turn off the negative news. Turn on the people who make you you want to win. Your daily habits dictate your future. So if you spend 2 hours a day watching mindless entertainment, you'll stay exactly where you are. If you spend 2 hours a day though listening to successful leaders, your entire mindset shifts. But watching videos isn't enough. You actually have to put in the reps. I'll tell you exactly how many reps you need to do next. Commit to 350 reps. Now you're probably judging your first attempt against everyone else's 10th year, right? That's the big mistake. When I started making YouTube videos, I was terrible. I hated watching myself on camera. It took me 350 public videos before I stopped feeling just completely embarrassed by my own work, and it took me 700 videos until I actually inspired myself for once. A study from the University College London showed that it takes an average of 66 days to form a new habit, but mastering a complex skill takes thousands of repetitions. So you can't expect to be great on day one. You have to be willing to completely suck at the beginning. If you want to grow a massive audience, you have to constantly test what works. You need to spend time completely optimizing your titles, maximizing your click-through rates. You test cinematic, you test text-free thumbnails. Your first product is going to be ugly. Your first video will get zero views. Put it out anyway. The only way to get the skills you need is to actually do the work. If you refuse to release anything until it's 100% perfect, you'll stay stuck forever. So stop overthinking and start producing. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you to build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in description, go grab it. I'll see you there. Now, what if you want to skip the startup phase entirely? There is a completely different way to win. Buy cash flow instead of building. You don't always have to start a brand new company from scratch. Sometimes the absolute smartest move is to buy an existing business that already works. You look for completely boring business models that print money every single day. So think about buying a local laundromat or a waste management company. The current owners are getting ready to retire and their kids don't want to run a boring company. According to the Exit Planning Institute, 75% of business owners plan to transition their business over the next 10 years. That is a massive opportunity for you to step in and acquire wealth. You can buy a highly profitable asset instead of spending 5 years trying to build one. You step into a company that already has high-paying customers, trained staff, and consistent revenue. You just apply your maybe modern marketing skills to a very traditional business and the profits could explode. You You don't need to invent a brand new tech software to be incredibly rich. You just need to find a solid, boring business and run it much better than the previous owner. Buying an existing business gives you immediate momentum from day one. It completely removes the high risk of a brand new startup failing. But once you own the business, you need to tightly manage your time. If you do every single daily task yourself, you'll burn out fast. Here's exactly how to fix your schedule. Today. Eliminate what does not matter. The obsession with being extremely busy destroys people's potential. Working 15 hours a day on the absolute wrong task will keep you broke forever. You need to look at your daily schedule and instantly cut out the garbage. Apply a 3-step process to your life: eliminate, automate, and delegate. First, eliminate everything that doesn't directly bring in revenue or build your brand. Second, aggressively automate your repetitive tasks. Use advanced AI tools, custom prompts, and integrations to to handle most of the boring work for you. And then third, delegate the remaining tasks that you aren't an expert at to other people. A study by Stanford University found that knowledge workers spend up to 41% of their time on discretionary activities that could easily be handled by others. You should only be doing the specific tasks that only you can do. If you hate editing audio for your videos, hire someone else to do it. If you need a cheap scalable solution, use open source alternatives to get some of the heavy lifting off your plate. Protect your daily energy at all costs. You need your brain to be totally fresh for the bigger strategic decisions. You can't be a visionary leader if you're completely exhausted from doing basic data entry. So taking control of your time becomes the ultimate business flex. Now you have the perfect strategy, but you still need one final push. Create massive momentum today. The only thing you're truly missing right now is momentum. You have the great ideas, you have the burning desire, but you keep waiting for the perfect moment to start. The perfect moment simply doesn't exist. You just need to take the very first messy step today. According to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, making visible progress on a goal drastically increases your motivation to keep going. It's called the progress principle. Don't worry about step 100 right now. Just focus entirely on step 1. Build a system to track your daily progress. Use a simple spreadsheet to monitor your daily habits or your nutrition goals. High protein foods, Greek yogurt, salmon, eggs. It gives your brain the energy to focus, but your tracking sheet gives you the discipline to execute. So register your domain name tonight. Film your first rough video today. Send that one terrifying email that you've been avoiding. Do something physical that makes your dream slightly more real. When you look back at your life as an old person, you won't regret the times you failed. You'll only regret the times that you never even tried. So don't let fear control your entire future. You're fully capable of achieving incredibly impossible things if you just refuse to stop stopping. Every single massive empire started with one single uncomfortable decision. So make that decision right now. You are absolutely ready. Your next step to greatness. You have everything you need right inside of you right now. So stop listening to the people telling you to play it safe, to be realistic. Step up and claim the life you actually want. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. Now let's learn the biggest lie about success people still believe. Retiring early is a completely broken goal that is secretly destroying your daily drive. When it comes to retirement, some people have a vastly different experience than the one you might imagine, filled with lazy days of sleeping in and no responsibilities. And for many, this major life shift may trigger some possible mental health issues. Working is not just about money. People don't understand this very often until they stop working. Work defines who you are. It provides a place where you're social with people. It gives you interaction with people all day long in an interesting way. It even helps you live longer and is very, very good for brain health. People are trying to wind down and figure out how they're going to slow it down or wrap it up. Fuck wrapping it up, man. Start it up. If you're working this hard just to escape your work, work, it means you have built a business or you have a job that you fundamentally hate. People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing, and it's totally true. And the reason is because it's so hard that if you don't, any rational person would give up. How can other people tap dance to work? What's the secret of that? You find your passion. What I, I tend to try to tell people in terms of what does it take to be successful, find something you, you love to do and then be great at it. If you don't pivot and build a lifestyle while you actually want to live today, you will wake up in 10 years exhausted, sick, and full of bitter regret. Sometimes it's, whoop, need to pivot, need to change the old aperture, change lenses on the way I'm looking at this position. When I'm 80, now 90, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have in my life. And most of our regrets are acts of omission. They're things we didn't try. It's the path untraveled. Um, those are the things that haunt us. You're haunted by all the opportunities that you missed by not bringing your best at that time when you could have won, but you didn't win because you allowed life to interfere with that one shot. There is a famous parable about a businessman who was walking on the pier of a small coastal village. He saw local fishermen fisherman dock a small boat with just a few fish. The businessman asked why he did not stay out longer to catch more. The fisherman said he had enough to feed his family. The businessman asked what he did with the rest of his day. The fisherman smiled and said he sleeps late, plays with his kids, takes a nap with his wife, and plays guitar with his friends at night. The businessman laughed and said, "I have an MBA and I can help you. You should work harder, buy a fleet of boats, open your own factory, and make millions." The fisherman asked how long that would take. The businessman said, "Maybe 20 years." The fisherman asked, "What would happen next?" The businessman said, "Then you can retire, move to a small village, sleep late, play with your kids, and play guitar with your friends." The fisherman just looked at him and said, "That's exactly what I'm doing right now." Now you might be thinking that you don't want to just sit on a beach all day. You have big goals. You want to make an impact. You actually like building your business. I do too. You don't have to give up your ambition to find peace. The point of the story is not to stop working. The point is to stop building a business that destroys your life today for a promised reward 20 years from now. You can have the success and the lifestyle right now, and I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. Define your actual enough. So you've been told your entire life that the ultimate goal of an entrepreneur is to build the biggest business possible. You start a company, you hit your first revenue goal. And what is the very first thing you do? You immediately set a larger goal, right? You hit $10,000 a month and suddenly you feel like a failure because you are not making $20,000. You cross $1 million a year and instantly you feel behind because you do not have a $10 million empire. This is running on an endless treadmill. The businessman in the story wanted the fisherman to scale his operations, to buy a fleet of boats, to open up a factory, but he had absolutely no real reason for the fisherman to do it. Other than the fact that society says bigger is always better? Do you actually have a real reason for wanting a massive business? You need to figure out what your actual financial enough is. Science proves that chasing money for the sake of money will never make you happy. There was a famous study that was conducted by researchers at Purdue University that looked at data from over 1 million people across the globe. They found that emotional wellbeing and daily happiness happiness actually peak at an income of about $75,000 a year. Making more money beyond that point does not significantly increase your daily joy, your peace, or your happiness. It often just brings more stress, more overhead, and more problems. Mo' money, mo' problems. You need to sit down today and calculate exactly what your ideal life costs. Write down the cost of your house, your food, your hobbies, the experiences that you want to have with your family. You will probably realize that you need far less money than you think to live the peaceful life that the fisherman was already living. So figure out what your is stop chasing some fake standard of success that leaves you completely exhausted. Once you know your number, you can finally stop putting off your life until tomorrow. Stop waiting for permission to live. The absolute biggest trap that the businessman presented was the idea of someday. He told the fisherman to suffer for 20 years so that someday he could finally relax. And chances are you're probably doing the same thing to yourself right now. You're telling yourself that you will finally take a vacation when the business hits a certain milestone, right? You tell yourself that you'll finally spend time with your kids when the operations are perfectly systemized, right? You're delaying your actual life or future that is completely unguaranteed. You have to stop waiting for permission to live. You need to apply the regret minimization framework that's famously used by Jeff Bezos. The concept is incredibly simple. You just imagine yourself as an 80-year-old sitting in a rocking chair, looking back on your life. You ask yourself, what will I regret more? Will I regret taking a risk to live the life I want right now, or will I regret playing it safe and waiting for someday? When I was 19, I used this exact framework. I was studying finance in university. I had the opportunity to go work for one of the biggest investment banking companies in the world. I thought it was my dream job. It was a 6-figure job straight outta university. It was safe, it was secure. It was exactly what society told me I should want. But I had another option. I could join 2 friends in a software startup. I would get $30 equity, but I'd only make $300 a month at the start. And it was the hardest decision of my life. I had to look at myself and ask what my older self would regret. I knew that if I did not try to build a business, I would regret it forever. I would rather fail knowing I had tried than spend the rest of my life wondering what could have happened. So I turned down the safe money and I chose the startup, and it was terrifying. And there were times that I wanted to quit, but it was the defining choice of my life. You have to make the same choice. Stop waiting for the perfect time. Take the action today to build the life you actually want to live. Find your true purpose in your deepest pain. You might be sitting there thinking that you don't even know what kind of business to build that would allow you to feel free. You want to escape the corporate grind, but you don't know what your real mission even is. The answer is usually hiding in your own past. Your true purpose comes directly from your deepest pain. Whatever you struggled with the most in your life is the exact thing that you are meant to help other people overcome. So So if you struggled with your weight and finally figured out how to get healthy, your mission is to help others do the same thing. If you struggled with massive debt and finally crawled your way out to financial freedom, your mission is to teach others your frameworks. When I was starting my journey, I struggled heavily with being an introverted, shy entrepreneur. I had zero confidence and zero belief in myself because I felt that intense pain. My entire life mission is now to help other entrepreneurs believe in themselves more. It's why I make these videos. When your business is tied to solving a pain that you deeply understand, it completely changes how you show up. It stops feeling like a stressful grind and starts feeling like it's your, it's your calling, that it's calling to you to act. You stop building a business just to make a quick dollar, and you start building something that actually matters to you and to others. And having this deep purpose is not just, it's not just good for your business, it's literally physically good for you. A major study published in the JAMA Network Open found that having a strong purpose is directly associated with a increased risk of early mortality. So people who have a reason to wake up in the morning literally live longer, healthier lives. So do not build a massive soulless fishing fleet just because a businessman told you it was a good idea. Build a business that solves a real problem for the younger version of yourself. And when you find that calling, you have to make sure that you do not lose sight of what actually matters. Focus on who you are serving today. The businessman in the story was obsessed with the global market. He wanted the fishermen to sell to middlemen, open a can "Move to the big city and dominate the world." Right? The businessman was completely focused on all the millions of strangers the fisherman was not currently reaching. But the fisherman, he was completely content focusing on his family, his friends, and his local village. He focused only on the people right in front of him. And this can be a massive lesson for your business. When you are trying to grow, it's incredibly easy to get obsessed with the audience that you do not have. You stare at your analytics, you complain about your lack of followers, you get frustrated that you're not famous yet. You forget about the actual humans who are already showing up for you and watching your content right now or buying your products right now. When I first started my YouTube channel, it was a very slow and painful grind. In my first year on the platform, I only gained 25 subscribers. My very first video sat on the internet for a year and got only 3 comments. One comment was from my mom, one was from my sister, and the third comment was from one random guy. Most people would look at those numbers and quit, right? They'd say the market is too small, nobody cares. But you have to focus on who you are serving, not who you are not serving. So I decided to make my videos for that one random guy. If my content helped him believe in himself a little bit more, then the video was a success. You can adopt that same exact mindset. If you have 10 clients, treat them like absolute royalty. Stop ignoring the people who support you today just because you are distracted by the thousands of people who do not know you yet. If you serve the few people in front of you deeply, the growth will happen naturally. But as that growth happens, you have to protect your schedule. Break the hustle prison to buy back your time. Now, you might already have a business that is completely running you into the ground. You want the fisherman's lifestyle, but you feel trapped inside the businessman's reality. You're working 80 hours a week. You answer emails at midnight. You can't even remember the last time you took a nap or played the guitar. To get your freedom back, you must ruthlessly apply a 3-step framework. You must eliminate, automate, delegate. First, you must eliminate. So here you look at your calendar and you audit every single task. You are probably doing things that bring absolute zero value to your life or to your clients. You are attending useless meetings. You are doomscrolling on social media. And you're creating reports that nobody reads, right? Stop doing them immediately. Second, you automate. So you have to use software and systems to take over repetitive tasks. Stop manually sending onboarding emails, stop manually booking appointments, and let technology do a lot of the heavy lifting. And then third, and maybe most importantly, is you delegate. You have to stop trying to be a control freak. You are holding your business back because you insist on doing everything yourself. You should not be editing your own videos. You should not be doing your own bookkeeping or designing your own graphics if you are not the best in the world at those skills or want to learn them. I'm terrible at video editing, so I don't edit my own videos. I hire people who love doing the work that I hate. If you don't learn to let go, you will destroy your physical and mental health. There was a comprehensive study by Gallup on employee and founder burnout that found unimaginable workloads and unreasonable time pressure are the leading causes of severe burnout. You are doing this to yourself. You have to fire yourself from the jobs you hate within your own company. That is the only way you buy back your time. That is how you build a real business that actually gives you the freedom to sleep late if you want to, spend time with your family, and enjoy your life today. Build a life you love today. You have the complete power to design a business that serves your life right now. Stop delaying your joy for tomorrow that is not guaranteed. You can have massive ambition motivation and daily peace at the exact same time. Now let's learn the 7 morning habits that can change your life instantly. 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 wanna achieve billionaire-level status as an entrepreneur, it starts with how you begin your day. So let's dive into the 7 morning habits that billionaires swear by so you can start adopting them too. 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. Up. Take Sir Richard Branson, for example. He rises at 5:00 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. 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 day. 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, 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 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 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 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 nonfiction 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 versus 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 things. 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. And over time, 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 their 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 AM 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 a 10 o'clock 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 task, 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 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 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 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 explain that when you find a purpose centered on serving others, it ignites you every 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 drives you. If you're spiritual, you might pray or meditate on 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, 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 the 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 clear 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 blanks 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. Believe. To learn how to build your dream life, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there. You are not lazy. You are just living a life that doesn't belong to you. Society, your parents, your teachers handed you a script for safety, but that safety is actually a prison that is suffocating your potential and draining your energy every single day.